Chapter VI: Part 6

In 1867 Mr. Locker published his _Lyra Elegantiarun. A Collection of Some of the Best Specimens of Vers de Société and Vers d'Occasion in the English Languages by Deceased Authors_. In his preface Locker gave what may now be fairly called the 'classical' definition of the verses he was collecting. '_Vers de société_ and _vers d'occasion_ should' (so he wrote) 'be short, elegant, refined and fanciful, not seldom distinguished by heightened sentiment, and often playful. The tone should not be pitched high; it should be idiomatic and rather in the conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be marked by tasteful moderation, high finish and completeness; for however trivial the subject-matter may be--indeed, rather in proportion to its triviality, subordination to the rules of composition and perfection of execution should be strictly enforced. The definition may be further illustrated by a few examples of pieces, which, from the absence of some of the foregoing qualities, or from the excess of others, cannot be properly regarded as _vers de société_, though they may bear a certain generic resemblance to that species of poetry. The ballad of "John Gilpin," for example, is too broadly and simply ludicrous; Swift's "Lines on the Death of Marlborough," and Byron's "Windsor Poetics," are too savage and truculent; Cowper's "My Mary" is far too pathetic; Herrick's lyrics to "Blossoms" and "Daffodils" are too elevated; "Sally in our Alley" is too homely and too entirely simple and natural; while the "Rape of the Lock," which would otherwise be one of the finest specimens of _vers de société_ in any language, must be excluded on account of its length, which renders it much too important.'

I have made this long quotation because it is an excellent example of Mr. Locker's way of talking about poets and poetry, and of his intimate, searching, and unaffected criticism.

_Lyra Elegantiarum_ is a real, not a bookseller's collection. Mr. Locker was a great student of verse. There was hardly a stanza of any English poet, unless it was Spenser, for whom he had no great affection, which he had not pondered over and clearly considered as does a lawyer his cases. He delighted in a complete success, and grieved over any lapse from the fold of metrical virtue, over any ill-sounding rhyme or unhappy expression. The circulation of _Lyra Elegantiarum_ was somewhat interfered with by a 'copyright' question. Mr. Locker had a great admiration for Landor's short poems, and included no less than forty-one of them, which he chose with the utmost care. Publishers are slow to perceive that the best chance of getting rid of their poetical wares (and Landor was not popular) is to have attention called to the artificer who produced them. The Landorian publisher objected, and the _Lyra_ had to be 'suppressed'--a fine word full of hidden meanings. The second-hand booksellers, a wily race, were quick to perceive the significance of this, and have for more than thirty years obtained inflated prices for their early copies, being able to vend them as possessing the _Suppressed Verses_. There is a great deal of Locker in this collection. To turn its pages is to renew intercourse with its editor.

In 1879 another little volume instinct with his personality came into existence and made friends for itself. He called it _Patchwork_, and to have given it any other name would have severely taxed his inventiveness. It is a collection of stories, of _ana_, of quotations in verse and prose, of original matter, of character-sketches, of small adventures, of table-talk, and of other things besides, if other things, indeed, there be. If you know _Patchwork_ by heart you are well equipped. It is intensely original throughout, and never more original than when its matter is borrowed. Readers of _Patchwork_ had heard of Mr. Creevey long before Sir Herbert Maxwell once again let that politician loose upon an unlettered society.

The book had no great sale, but copies evidently fell into the hands of the more judicious of the pressmen, who kept it by their sides, and every now and again

'Waled a portion with judicious care'

for quotation in their columns. The _Patchwork_ stories thus got into circulation one by one. Kind friends of Mr. Locker's, who had been told, or had discovered for themselves, that he was somewhat of a wag, would frequently regale him with bits of his own _Patchwork_, introducing them to his notice as something they had just heard, which they thought he would like--murdering his own stories to give him pleasure. His countenance on such occasions was a _rendezvous_ of contending emotions, a battlefield of rival forces. Politeness ever prevailed, but it took all his irony and sad philosophy to hide his pain. _Patchwork_ is such a good collection of the kind of story he liked best that it was really difficult to avoid telling him a story that was _not_ in it. I made the blunder once myself with a Voltairean anecdote. Here it is as told in _Patchwork_: 'Voltaire was one day listening to a dramatic author reading his comedy, and who said, "Ici le chevalier rit!" He exclaimed: "Le chevalier est _bien_ heureux!"' I hope I told it fairly well. He smiled sadly, and said nothing, not even _Et tu, Brute_!

In 1886 Mr. Locker printed for presentation a catalogue of his printed books, manuscripts, autograph letters, drawings, and pictures. Nothing of his own figures in this catalogue, and yet in a very real sense the whole is his. Most of the books are dispersed, but the catalogue remains, not merely as a record of rareties and bibliographical details dear to the collector's heart, but as a token of taste. Just as there is, so Wordsworth reminds us, 'a spirit in the woods,' so is there still, brooding over and haunting the pages of the 'Rowfant Catalogue,' the spirit of true connoisseurship. In the slender lists of Locker's 'Works' this book must always have a place.

Frederick Locker died at Rowfant on May 30, 1895, leaving behind him, carefully prepared for the press, a volume he had christened _My Confidences: An Autographical Sketch addressed to My Descendants_.

In due course the book appeared, and was misunderstood at first by many. It cut a strange, outlandish figure among the crowd of casual reminiscences it externally resembled. Glancing over the pages of _My Confidences_, the careless library subscriber encountered the usual number of names of well-known personages, whose appearance is supposed by publishers to add sufficient zest to reminiscences to secure for them a sale large enough, at any rate, to recoup the cost of publication. Yet, despite these names, Mr. Locker's book is completely unlike the modern memoir. Beneath a carefully-constructed, and perhaps slightly artificially maintained, frivolity of tone, the book is written in deadly earnest. Not for nothing did its author choose as one of the mottoes for its title-page, 'Ce ne sont mes gestes que j'écrie; c'est moy.' It may be said of this book, as of Senancour's _Oberman_:

'A fever in these pages burns;
Beneath the calm they feign,
A wounded human spirit turns
Here on its bed of pain.'

The still small voice of its author whispers through _My Confidences_. Like Montaigne's _Essays_, the book is one of entire good faith, and strangely uncovers a personality.

As a tiny child Locker was thought by his parents to be very like Sir Joshua Reynolds' picture of Puck, an engraving of which was in the home at Greenwich Hospital, and certainly Locker carried to his grave more than a suspicion of what is called Puckishness. In _My Confidences_ there are traces of this quality.

Clearly enough the author of _London Lyrics_, the editor of _Lyra Elegantiarum_, of _Patchwork_, and the whimsical but sincere compiler of _My Confidences_ was more than a mere connoisseur, however much connoisseurship entered into a character in which taste played so dominant a part.

Stronger even than taste was his almost laborious love of kindness. He really took too much pains about it, exposing himself to rebuffs and misunderstandings; but he was not without his rewards. All down-hearted folk, sorrowful, disappointed people, the unlucky, the ill-considered, the _mésestimés_--those who found themselves condemned to discharge uncongenial duties in unsympathetic society, turned instinctively to Mr. Locker for a consolation, so softly administered that it was hard to say it was intended. He had friends everywhere, in all ranks of life, who found in him an infinity of solace, and for his friends there was nothing he would not do. It seemed as if he could not spare himself. I remember his calling at my chambers one hot day in July, when he happened to have with him some presents he was in course of delivering. Among them I noticed a bust of Voltaire and an unusually lively tortoise, generally half-way out of a paper bag. Wherever he went he found occasion for kindness, and his whimsical adventures would fill a volume. I sometimes thought it would really be worth while to leave off the struggle for existence, and gently to subside into one of Lord Rowton's homes in order to have the pleasure of receiving in my new quarters a first visit from Mr. Locker. How pleasantly would he have mounted the stair, laden with who knows what small gifts?--a box of mignonette for the window-sill, an old book or two, as likely as not a live kitten, for indeed there was never an end to the variety or ingenuity of his offerings! How felicitous would have been his greeting! How cordial his compliments! How abiding the sense of his unpatronizing friendliness! But it was not to be. One can seldom choose one's pleasures.

In his _Patchwork_ Mr. Locker quotes Gibbon's encomium on Charles James Fox. Anyone less like Fox than Frederick Locker it might be hard to discover, but fine qualities are alike wherever they are found lodged; and if Fox was as much entitled as Locker to the full benefit of Gibbon's praise, he was indeed a good fellow.

'In his tour to Switzerland Mr. Fox gave me two days of free and private society. He seemed to feel and even to envy the happiness of my situation, while I admired the powers of a superior man as they are blended in his character with the softness and simplicity of a child. _Perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly exempted from the taint of malevolence, vanity, and falsehood._'

OUR GREAT MIDDLE CLASS

The republication of Mr. Arnold's _Friendship's Garland_ after an interval of twenty-seven years may well set us all a-thinking. Here it is, in startling facsimile--the white covers, destined too soon to become black, the gilt device, the familiar motto. As we gazed upon it, we found ourselves exclaiming, so vividly did it recall the past:

'It is we, it is we, who have changed.'

_Friendship's Garland_ was a very good joke seven-and-twenty years ago, and though some of its once luminous paint has been rubbed off, and a few of its jests have ceased to effervesce, it is a good joke still. Mr. Bottle's mind, qua mind; the rowdy Philistine Adolescens Leo, Esq.; Dr. Russell, of the _Times_, mounting his war-horse; the tale of how Lord Lumpington and the Rev. Esau Hittall got their degrees at Oxford; and many another ironic thrust which made the reader laugh 'while the hair was yet brown on his head,' may well make him laugh still, 'though his scalp is almost hairless, and his figure's grown convex.' Since 1871 we have learnt the answer to the sombre lesson, 'What is it to grow old?' But, thank God! we can laugh even yet.

The humour and high spirits of _Friendship's Garland_ were, however, but the gilding of a pill, the artificial sweetening of a nauseous draught. In reality, and joking apart, the book is an indictment at the bar of _Geist_ of the English people as represented by its middle class and by its full-voiced organ, the daily press. Mr. Arnold invented Arminius to be the mouthpiece of this indictment, the traducer of our 'imperial race,' because such blasphemies could not artistically have been attributed to one of the number. He made Arminius a Prussian because in those far-off days Prussia stood for Von Humboldt and education and culture, and all the things Sir Thomas Bazley and Mr. Miall were supposed to be without. Around the central figure of Arminius the essentially playful fancy of Mr. Arnold grouped other figures, including his own. What an old equity draughtsman would call 'the charging parts' of the book consist in the allegations that the Government of England had been taken out of the hands of an aristocracy grown barren of ideas and stupid beyond words, and entrusted to a middle class without noble traditions, wretchedly educated, full of _Ungeist_, with a passion for clap-trap, only wanting to be left alone to push trade and make money; so ignorant as to believe that feudalism can be abated without any heroic Stein, by providing that in one insignificant case out of a hundred thousand, land shall not follow the feudal law of descent; without a single vital idea or sentiment or feeling for beauty or appropriateness; well persuaded that if more trade is done in England than anywhere else, if personal independence is without a check, and newspaper publicity unbounded, that is, by the nature of things, to be great; misled every morning by the magnificent _Times_ or the 'rowdy' _Telegraph_; desperately prone to preaching to other nations, proud of being able to say what it likes, whilst wholly indifferent to the fact that it has nothing whatever to say.

Such, in brief, is the substance of this most agreeable volume. Its message was lightly treated by the grave and reverend seigniors of the State. The magnificent _Times_, the rowdy _Telegraph_, continued to preach their gospels as before; but for all that Mr. Arnold found an audience fit, though few, and, of course, he found it among the people he abused. The barbarians, as he called the aristocracy, were not likely to pay heed to a professor of poetry. Our working classes were not readers of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ or purchasers of four-and-sixpenny tracts bound in white cloth. No; it was the middle class, to whom Mr. Arnold himself belonged, who took him to honest hearts, stuck his photograph upon their writing-tables, and sounded his praises so loudly that his fame even reached the United States of America, where he was promptly invited to lecture, an invitation he accepted. But for the middle classes Mr. Arnold would have had but a poor time of it. They did not mind being insulted; they overlooked exaggeration; they pardoned ignorance--in a word, they proved teachable. Yet, though meek in spirit, they have not yet inherited the earth; indeed, there are those who assert that their chances are gone, their sceptre for ever buried. It is all over with the middle-class. Tuck up its muddled head! Tie up its chin!

A rabble of bad writers may now be noticed pushing their vulgar way along, who, though born and bred in the middle classes, and disfigured by many of the very faults Mr. Arnold deplored, yet make it a test of their membership, an 'open sesame' to their dull orgies, that all decent, sober-minded folk, who love virtue, and, on the whole, prefer delicate humour to sickly lubricity, should be labelled 'middle class.'

Politically, it cannot but be noticed that, for good or for ill, the old middle-class audience no longer exists in its integrity. The crowds that flocked to hear Cobden and Bright, that abhorred slavery, that cheered Kossuth, that hated the income-tax, are now watered down by a huge population who do not know, and do not want to know, what the income-tax is, but who do want to know what the Government is going to do for them in the matter of shorter hours, better wages, and constant employment. Will the rabble, we wonder, prove as teachable as the middle class? Will they consent to be told their faults as meekly? Will they buy the photograph of their physician, or heave half a brick at him? It remains to be seen. In the meantime it would be a mistake to assume that the middle class counts for nothing, even at an election. As to ideas, have we got any new ones since 1871? 'To be consequent and powerful,' says Arminius, 'men must be bottomed on some vital idea or sentiment which lends strength and certainty to their action.' There are those who tell us that we have at last found this vital idea in those conceptions of the British Empire which Mr. Chamberlain so vigorously trumpets. To trumpet a conception is hardly a happy phrase, but, as Mr. Chamberlain plays no other instrument, it is forced upon me. Would that we could revive Arminius, to tell us what he thinks of our new Ariel girdling the earth with twenty Prime Ministers, each the choicest product of a self-governing and deeply-involved colony. Is it a vital or a vulgar idea? Is it merely a big theory or really a great one? Is it the ornate beginning of a Time, or but the tawdry ending of a period? At all events, it is an idea unknown to Arminius von Thunder-Ten-Tronckh, and we ought to be, and many are, thankful for it.

TAR AND WHITEWASH

I am, I confess it, hard to please. If a round dozen of Bad Women, all made in England too, does not satisfy me, what will? What ails the fellow at them? Yet was I at first dissatisfied, and am, therefore, glad to notice that whilst I was demurring and splitting hairs the great, generous public was buying the _Lives of Twelve Bad Women_, by Arthur Vincent, and putting it into a second edition. This is as it should be. When the excellent Dean Burgon dubbed his dozen biographies _Twelve Good Men_, it probably never occurred to him that the title suggested three companion volumes; but so it did, and two of them, _Twelve Bad Men_ and _Twelve Bad Women_, have made their appearance. I still await, with great patience, _Twelve Good Women_. Twelve was the number of the Apostles. Had it not been, one might be tempted to ask, Why twelve? But as there must be some limit to bookmaking, there is no need to quarrel with an arithmetical limit.

My criticism upon the Dean's dozen was that they were not by any means, all of them, conspicuously good men; for, to name one only, who would call old Dr. Routh, the President of Magdalen, a particularly good man? In a sense, all Presidents, Provosts, Principals, and Masters of Colleges are good men--in fact, they must be so by the statutes--but to few of them are given the special notes of goodness. Dr. Routh was a remarkable man, a learned man, perhaps a pious man--undeniably, when he came to die, an old man--but he was no better than his colleagues. This weakness of classification has run all through the series, and it is my real quarrel with it. I do not understand the principle of selection. I did not understand the Dean's test of goodness, nor do I understand Mr. Seccombe's or Mr. Vincent's test of badness. What do we mean by a good man or a bad one, a good woman or a bad one? Most people, like the young man in the song, are 'not very good, nor yet very bad.' We move about the pastures of life in huge herds, and all do the same things, at the same times, and for the same reasons. 'Forty feeding like one.' Are we mean? Well, we have done some mean things in our time. Are we generous? Occasionally we are. Were we good sons or dutiful daughters? We have both honoured and dishonoured our parents, who, in their turn, had done the same by theirs. Do we melt at the sight of misery? Indeed we do. Do we forget all about it when we have turned the corner? Frequently that is so. Do we expect to be put to open shame at the Great Day of Judgment? We should be terribly frightened of this did we not cling to the hope that amidst the shocking revelations then for the first time made public our little affairs may fail to attract much notice. Judged by the standards of humanity, few people are either good or bad. 'I have not been a great sinner,' said the dying Nelson; nor had he--he had only been made a great fool of by a woman. Mankind is all tarred with the same brush, though some who chance to be operated upon when the brush is fresh from the barrel get more than their share of the tar. The biography of a celebrated man usually reminds me of the outside of a coastguardsman's cottage--all tar and whitewash. These are the two condiments of human life--tar and whitewash--the faults and the excuses for the faults, the passions and pettinesses that make us occasionally drop on all fours, and the generous aspirations that at times enable us, if not to stand upright, at least to adopt the attitude of the kangaroo. It is rather tiresome, this perpetual game of French and English going on inside one. True goodness and real badness escape it altogether. A good man does not spend his life wrestling with the Powers of Darkness. He is victor in the fray, and the most he is called upon to do is every now and again to hit his prostrate foe a blow over the costard just to keep him in his place. Thus rid of a perpetual anxiety, the good man has time to grow in goodness, to expand pleasantly, to take his ease on Zion. You can see in his face that he is at peace with himself--that he is no longer at war with his elements. His society, if you are fond of goodness, is both agreeable and medicinal; but if you are a bad man it is hateful, and you cry out with Mr. Love-lust in Bunyan's Vanity Fair: 'Away with him. I cannot endure him; he is for ever condemning my way.'

Not many of Dean Burgon's biographies reached this standard. The explanation, perhaps, is that the Dean chiefly moved in clerical circles where excellence is more frequently to be met with than goodness.

In the same way a really bad man is one who has frankly said, 'Evil, be thou my good.' Like the good man, though for a very different reason, the bad one has ceased to make war with the devil. Finding a conspiracy against goodness going on, the bad man joins it, and thus, like the good man, is at peace with himself. The bad man is bent upon his own way, to get what he wants, no matter at what cost. Human lives! What do they matter? A woman's honour! What does that matter? Truth and fidelity! What are they? To know what you want, and not to mind what you pay for it, is the straight path to fame, fortune, and hell-fire. Careers, of course, vary; to dominate a continent or to open a corner shop as a pork-butcher's, plenty of devilry may go to either ambition. Also, genius is a rare gift. It by no means follows that because you are a bad man you will become a great one; but to be bad, and at the same time unsuccessful, is a hard fate. It casts a little doubt upon a man's badness if he does not, at least, make a little money. It is a poor business accompanying badness on to a common scaffold, or to see it die in a wretched garret. That was one of my complaints with Mr. Seccombe's Twelve Bad Men. Most of them came to violent ends. They were all failures.

But I have kept these twelve ladies waiting a most unconscionable time. Who are they? There are amongst them four courtesans: Alice Perrers, one of King Edward III.'s misses; Barbara Villiers, one of King Charles II.'s; Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke, who had to be content with a royal Duke; and Mrs. Con Phillips. Six members of the criminal class: Alice Arden, Moll Cutpurse, Jenny Diver, Elizabeth Brownrigg, Elizabeth Canning, and Mary Bateman; and only two ladies of title, Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset, and Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston. Of these twelve bad women one-third were executed, Alice Arden being burnt at Canterbury, Jenny Diver and Elizabeth Brownrigg being hung at Tyburn, and Mary Bateman suffering the same fate at Leeds. Elizabeth Canning was sentenced to seven years' transportation, and, indeed, if their biographers are to be believed, all the other ladies made miserable ends. There is nothing triumphant about their badness. Even from the point of view of this world they had better have been good. In fact, squalor is the badge of the whole tribe. Some of them, probably--Elizabeth Brownrigg, for example--were mad. This last-named poor creature bore sixteen children to a house-painter and plasterer, and then became a parish mid-wife, and only finally a baby-farmer. Her cruelty to her apprentices had madness in every detail. To include her in this volume was wholly unnecessary. She lives but in George Canning's famous parody on Southey's sonnet to the regicide Marten.

With those sentimentalists who maintain that all bad people are mad I will have no dealings. It is sheer nonsense; lives of great men all remind us it is sheer nonsense. Some of our greatest men have been infernal scoundrels--pre-eminently bad men--with nothing mad about them, unless it be mad to get on in the world and knock people about in it.

_Twelve Bad Women_ contains much interesting matter, but, on the whole, it is depressing. It seems very dull to be bad. Perhaps the editor desired to create this impression; if so, he has succeeded. Hannah More had fifty times more fun in her life than all these courtesans and criminals put together. The note of jollity is entirely absent. It was no primrose path these unhappy women traversed, though that it led to the everlasting bonfire it were unchristian to doubt. The dissatisfaction I confessed to at the beginning returns upon me as a cloud at the end; but, for all that, I rejoice the book is in a second edition, and I hope soon to hear it is in a third, for it has a moral tendency.

ITINERARIES

Anyone who is teased by the notion that it would be pleasant to be remembered, in the sense of being read, after death, cannot do better to secure that end than compose an Itinerary and leave it behind him in manuscript, with his name legibly inscribed thereon. If an honest bit of work, noting distances, detailing expenses, naming landmarks, moors, mountains, harbours, docks, buildings--indeed, anything which, as lawyers say, savours of realty--and but scantily interspersed with reflections, and with no quotations, why, then, such a piece of work, however long publication may be delayed--and a century or two will not matter in the least--cannot fail, whenever it is printed, to attract attention, to excite general interest and secure a permanent hold in every decent library in the kingdom.

Time cannot stale an Itinerary. _Iter, Via, Actus_ are words of pith and moment. Stage-coaches, express trains, motor-cars, have written, or are now writing, their eventful histories over the face of these islands; but, whatever changes they have made or are destined to make, they have left untouched the mystery of the road, although for the moment the latest comer may seem injuriously to have affected its majesty.

The Itinerist alone among authors is always sure of an audience. No matter where, no matter when, he has but to tell us how he footed it and what he saw by the wayside, and we must listen. How can we help it? Two hundred years ago, it may be, this Itinerist came through our village, passed by the wall of our homestead, climbed our familiar hill, and went on his way; it is perhaps but two lines and a half he can afford to give us, but what lines they are! How different with sermons, poems, and novels! On each of these is the stamp of the author's age; sentiments, fashions, thoughts, faiths, phraseology, all worn out--cold, dirty grate, where once there was a blazing fire. Cheerlessness personified! Leland's anti-Papal treatise in forty-five chapters remains in learned custody--a manuscript; a publisher it will never find. We still have Papists and anti-Papists; in this case the fire still blazes, but the grates are of an entirely different construction. Leland's treatise is out of date. But his _Itinerary_ in nine volumes, a favourite book throughout the eighteenth century, which has graced many a bookseller's catalogue for the last hundred years, and seldom without eliciting a purchaser--Leland's _Itinerary_ is to-day being reprinted under the most able editorship. The charm of the road is irresistible. The _Vicar of Wakefield_ is a delightful book, with a great tradition behind it and a future still before it; but it has not escaped the ravages of time, and I would, now, at all events, gladly exchange it for Oliver Goldsmith's _Itinerary through Germany with a Flute_!

Vain authors, publisher's men, may write as they like about _Shakespeare's_ country, or _Scott's_ country, or _Carlyle's_ country, or _Crockett's_ country, but--

'Oh, good gigantic smile of the brown old earth!'

the land laughs at the delusions of the men who hurriedly cross its surface.

'Rydal and Fairfield are there,--
In the shadow Wordsworth lies dead.
So it is, so it will be for aye,
Nature is fresh as of old,
Is lovely, a mortal is dead.'

These reflections, which by themselves would be enough to sink even an Itinerary, seemed forced upon me by the publication of _A Journey to Edenborough in Scotland by Joseph Taylor, Late of the Inner Temple, Esquire_. This journey was made two hundred years ago in the Long Vacation of 1705, but has just been printed from the original manuscript, under the editorship of Mr. William Cowan, by the well-known Edinburgh bookseller, Mr. Brown, of Princes Street, to whom all lovers of things Scottish already owe much.

Nobody can hope to be less known than this our latest Itinerist, for not only is he not in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, but it is at present impossible to say which of two Joseph Taylors he was. The House of the Winged Horse has ever had Taylors on its roll, the sign of the Middle Temple, a very fleecy sheep, being perhaps unattractive to the clan, and in 1705 it so happened that not only were there two Taylors, but two Joseph Taylors, entitled to write themselves 'of the Inner Temple, Esquire.' Which was the Itinerist? Mr. Cowan, going by age, thinks that the Itinerist can hardly have been the Joseph Taylor who was admitted to the Inn in 1663, as in that case he must have been at least fifty-eight when he travelled to Edinburgh. For my part, I see nothing in the _Itinerary_ to preclude the possibility of its author having attained that age at the date of its composition. I observe in the _Itinerary_ references which point to the Itinerist being a Kentish man, and he mentions more than once his 'Cousin D'aeth.' Research among the papers of the D'aeths of Knowlton Court, near Dover, might result in the discovery which of these two Taylors really was the Itinerist. As nothing else is at present known about either, the investigation could probably be made without passion or party or even religious bias. It might be best begun by Mr. Cowan telling us in whose custody he found the manuscript, and how it came there. These statements should always be made when old manuscripts are first printed.

The journey began on August 2, 1705. The party consisted of Mr. Taylor and his two friends, Mr. Harrison and Mr. Sloman. They travelled on horseback, and often had difficulties with the poor beast that carried their luggage. They reached Edinburgh in the evening of August 31, and left it on their return journey on September 8, and got home on the 25th of the same month. The _Itinerary_ concludes as follows:

'Thus we spent almost 2 months in a Journy of many 100 miles,
sometimes thro' very charming Countryes, and at other times over
desolate and Barren Mountaines, and yet met with no particular
misfortune in all the Time.'

I may say at once of these three Itinerists--Mr. Taylor, Mr. Harrison, and Mr. Sloman--that they appear to have been thoroughly commonplace, well behaved, occasionally hilarious Englishmen, ready to endure whatever befell them, if unavoidable; accustomed to take their ease in their inn and to turn round and look at any pretty woman they might chance to meet on their travels. Their first experience of what the Itinerist calls 'the prodigies of Nature,' 'at once an occasion both of Horrour and Admiration,' was in the Peak Country 'described in poetry by the ingenious Mr. Cotton.' This part of the world they 'did' with something of the earnestness of the modern tourist. But I hardly think they enjoyed themselves. The 'prodigious' caverns and strange petrifactions shocked them; 'nothing can be more terrible or shocking to Nature.' Mam Tor, with its 1,710 feet, proved very impressive, 'a vast high mountain reaching to the very clouds.' This gloom of the Derbyshire hills and stony valleys was partially dispelled for our travellers by a certain 'fair Gloriana' they met at Buxton, with whom they had great fun, 'so much the greater, because we never expected such heavenly enjoyments in so desolate a country.' If it be on susceptibilities of this nature that Mr. Cowan rests his case for thinking that the Itinerist can hardly have attained 'the blasted antiquity' of fifty-eight, we must think Mr. Cowan a trifle hasty, or a very young man, perhaps under forty, which is young for an editor.

After describing, somewhat too much like an auctioneer, the splendours of Chatsworth, 'a Paradise in the deserts of Arabia,' the Itinerist proceeds on his way north through Nottingham to Belvoir Castle, where 'my Lord Rosses Gentleman (to whom Mr. Harrison was recommended) entertained us by his Lordship's command with good wine and the best of malt liquors which the cellar abounds with'; the pictures in the Long Gallery were shown them by 'my Lord himself.' At Doncaster, 'a neat market-town which consists only in one long street,' they had some superlative salmon just taken out of the river. By Knaresborough Spaw, where they drank the waters and had icy cold baths, and dined at the ordinary with a parson whose conversation startled the propriety of the Templar, the travellers made their way to York, and for the first and last time a few pages of _Guide Book_ are improperly introduced. Then on to Scarborough.

'The next morning early we left Scarborough and travelled through a
dismall road, particularly near Robins Hood Bay; we were obliged to
lead our horses, and had much ado to get down a vast craggy
mountain which lyes within a quarter of a mile of it. The Bay is
about a mile broad, and inhabited by poor fishermen. We stopt to
taste some of their liquor and discourse with them. They told us
the French privateers came into the Very Bay and took 2 of their
Vessels but the day before, which were ransom'd for £25 a piece. We
saw a great many vessels lying upon the Shore, the masters not
daring to venture out to sea for fear of undergoing the same fate.'

We boast too readily of our inviolate shores.

A curious description is given of the Duke of Buckingham's alum works near Whitby. The travellers then procured a guide, and traversed 'the vast moors which lye between Whitby and Gisborough.' The civic magnificence of Newcastle greatly struck our travellers, who, happier than their modern successors, were able to see the town miles off. The Itinerist quotes with gusto the civic proverb that the men of Newcastle pay nothing for the Way, the Word, or the Water, 'for the Ministers of Religion are maintained, the streets paved, and the Conduits kept up at the publick charge.' A disagreeable account is given of the brutishness of the people employed in the salt works at Tynemouth. At Berwick the travellers got into trouble with the sentry, but the mistake was rectified with the captain of the guard over '2 bowles of punch, there being no wine in the town.'

Scotland was now in sight, and the travellers became grave, as befitted the occasion. They were told that the journey that lay before them was extremely dangerous, that 'twould be difficult to escape with their lives, much less (ominous words) without 'the distemper of the country.' But Mr. Taylor, Mr. Harrison, and Mr. Sloman were as brave as Mr. Pickwick, and they would on. 'Yet notwithstanding all these sad representations, we resolv'd to proceed and stand by one another to the last.'

What the Itinerists thought of Scotland when they got there is not for me to say. I was once a Scottish member.

They arrived in Edinburgh at a great crisis in Scottish history. They saw the Duke of Argyll, as Queen Anne's Lord High Commissioner, go to the Parliament House in this manner:

'First a coach and six Horses for his Gentlemen, then a Trumpet,
then his own coach with six white horses, which were very fine,
being those presented by King William to the Duke of Queensbury,
and by him sold to the Duke of Argyle for £300; next goes a troop
of Horse Guards, cloathed like my Lord of Oxford's Regiment, but
the horses are of several colours; and the Lord Chancellor and the
Secretary of State, and the Lord Chief Justice Clerk, and other
officers of State close the cavalcade in coaches and six horses.
Thus the Commissioner goes and returns every day.'

The Itinerists followed the Duke and his procession into the Parliament House, and heard debated the great question--the greatest of all possible questions for Scotland--whether this magnificence should cease, whether there should be an end of an auld sang--in short, whether the proposed Act of Union should be proceeded with. By special favour, our Itinerists had leave to stand upon the steps of the throne, and witnessed a famous fiery and prolonged debate, the Duke once turning to them and saying, _sotto voce_, 'It is now deciding whether England and Scotland shall go together by the ears.' How it was decided we all know, and that it was wisely decided no one doubts; yet, when we read our Itinerist's account of the Duke's coach and horses, and the cavalcade that followed him, and remember that this was what happened every day during the sitting of the Parliament, and must not be confounded with the greater glories of the first day of a Parliament, when every member, be he peer, knight of the shire, or burgh member, had to ride on horseback in the procession, it is impossible not to feel the force of Miss Grisel Dalmahoy's appeal in the _Heart of Midlothian_, she being an ancient sempstress, to Mr. Saddletree, the harness-maker:

'And as for the Lords of States ye suld mind the riding o' the
Parliament in the gude auld time before the Union. A year's rent o'
mony a gude estate gaed for horse-graith and harnessing, forby
broidered robes and foot-mantles that wad hae stude by their lane
with gold and brocade, and that were muckle in my ain line.'

The graphic account of a famous debate given by, Taylor is worth comparing with the _Lockhart Papers_ and Hill Burton. The date is a little troublesome. According to our Itinerist, he heard the discussion as to whether the Queen or the Scottish Parliament should nominate the Commissioners. Now, according to the histories, this all-important discussion began and ended on September 1, but our Itinerist had only arrived in Edinburgh the night before the first, and gives us to understand that he owed his invitation to be present to the fact that whilst in Edinburgh he and his friends had had the honour to have several lords and members of Parliament to dine, and that these guests informed him 'of the grand day when the Act was to be passed or rejected.' The Itinerist's account is too particular--for he gives the result of the voting--to admit of any possibility of a mistake, and he describes how several of the members came afterwards to his lodgings, and, so he writes, 'embraced us with all the outward marks of love and kindness, and seemed mightily pleased at what was done, and told us we should now be no more English and Scotch, but Brittons.' In the matter of nomenclature, at all events, the promises of the Union have not been carried out.

After September 1 the Parliament did not meet till the 4th, when an Address was passed to the Queen, but apparently without any repetition of debate. So it really is a little difficult to reconcile the dates. Perhaps Itinerists are best advised to keep off public events.

How our travellers escaped the 'national distemper' and journeyed home by Ecclefechan, Carlisle, Shap Fell, Liverpool, Chester, Coventry, and Warwick must be read in the _Journey_ itself, which, though it only occupies 182 small pages, is full of matter and even merriment; in fact, it is an excellent itinerary.

EPITAPHS

Epitaphs, if in rhyme, are the real literature of the masses. They need no commendation and are beyond all criticism. A Cambridge don, a London bus-driver, will own their charm in equal measure. Strange indeed is the fascination of rhyme. A commonplace hitched into verse instantly takes rank with Holy Scripture. This passion for poetry, as it is sometimes called, is manifested on every side; even tradesmen share it, and as the advertisements in our newspapers show, are willing to pay small sums to poets who commend their wares in verse. The widow bereft of her life's companion, the mother bending over an empty cradle, find solace in thinking what doleful little scrag of verse shall be graven on the tombstone of the dead. From the earliest times men have sought to squeeze their loves and joys, their sorrows and hatreds, into distichs and quatrains, and to inscribe them somewhere, on walls or windows, on sepulchral urns and gravestones, as memorials of their pleasure or their pain.

'Hark! how chimes the passing bell--
There's no music to a knell;
All the other sounds we hear
Flatter and but cheat our ear.'

So wrote Shirley the dramatist, and so does he truthfully explain the popularity of the epitaph as distinguished from the epigram. Who ever wearies of Martial's 'Erotion'?--

'Hic festinata requiescit Erotion umbra,
Crimine quam fati sexta peremit hiems.
Quisquis eris nostri post me regnator agelli
Manibus exiguis annua justa dato.
Sic lare perpetuo, sic turba sospite, solus
Flebilis in terra sit lapis iste tua'--

so prettily Englished by Leigh Hunt:

'Underneath this greedy stone
Lies little sweet Erotion,
Whom the Fates with hearts as cold
Nipped away at six years old.
Those, whoever thou may'st be,
That hast this small field after me,
Let the yearly rites be paid
To her little slender shade;
So shall no disease or jar
Hurt thy house or chill thy Lar,
But this tomb be here alone
The only melancholy stone.'

Our English epitaphs are to be found scattered up and down our country churchyards--'uncouth rhymes,' as Gray calls them, yet full of the sombre philosophy of life. They are fast becoming illegible, worn out by the rain that raineth every day, and our prim, present-day parsons do not look with favour upon them, besides which--to use a clumsy phrase--besides which most of our churchyards are now closed against burials, and without texts there can be no sermons:

'I'll stay and read my sermon here,
And skulls and bones shall be my text.

* * * *

Here learn that glory and disgrace,
Wisdom and Folly, pass away,
That mirth hath its appointed space,
That sorrow is but for a day;
That all we love and all we hate,
That all we hope and all we fear,
Each mood of mind, each turn of fate,
Must end in dust and silence here.'

The best epitaphs are the grim ones. Designed, as epitaphs are, to arrest and hold in their momentary grasp the wandering attention and languid interest of the passer-by, they must hit him hard and at once, and this they can only do by striking some very responsive chord, and no chords are so immediately responsive as those which relate to death and, it may be, judgment to come.

Mr. Aubrey Stewart, in his interesting _Selection of English Epigrams and Epitaphs_, published by Chapman and Hall, quotes an epitaph from a Norfolk churchyard which I have seen in other parts of the country. The last time I saw it was in the Forest of Dean. It is admirably suited for the gravestone of any child of very tender years, say four:

'When the Archangel's trump shall blow
And souls to bodies join,
Many will wish their lives below
Had been as short as mine.'

It is uncouth, but it is warranted to grip.

Frequently, too, have I noticed how constantly the attention is arrested by Pope's well-known lines from his magnificent 'Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,' which are often to be found on tombstones:

'So peaceful rests without a stone and name
What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame.
How loved, how honoured once avails thee not,
To whom related or by whom begot.
A heap of dust alone remains of thee;
'Tis all thou art and all the proud shall be.'

I wish our modern poetasters who deny Pope's claim to be a poet no worse fate than to lie under stones which have engraved upon them the lines just quoted, for they will then secure in death what in life was denied them--the ear of the public.

Next to the grim epitaph, I should be disposed to rank those which remind the passer-by of his transitory estate. In different parts of the country--in Cumberland and Cornwall, in Croyland Abbey, in Llangollen Churchyard, in Melton Mowbray--are to be found lines more or less resembling the following:

'Man's life is like unto a winter's day,
Some break their fast and so depart away,
Others stay dinner then depart full fed,
The longest age but sups and goes to bed.
O reader, there behold and see
As we are now, so thou must be.'

The complimentary epitaph seldom pleases. To lie like a tombstone has become a proverb. Pope's famous epitaph on Newton:

'Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.'

is hyperbolical and out of character with the great man it seeks to honour. It was intended for Westminster Abbey. I rejoice at the preference given to prose Latinity.

The tender and emotional epitaphs have a tendency to become either insipid or silly. But Herrick has shown us how to rival Martial:

'UPON A CHILD THAT DIED.

Here she lies a pretty bud
Lately made of flesh and blood;
Who as soon fell fast asleep
As her little eyes did peep.
Give her strewings, but not stir
The earth that lightly covers her.'

Mr. Dodd, the editor of the admirable volume called _The Epigrammatists_, published in Bohn's Standard Library, calls these lines a model of simplicity and elegance. So they are, but they are very vague. But then the child was very young. Erotion, one must remember, was six years old. Ben Jonson's beautiful epitaph on S.P., a child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel, beginning,

'Weep with me all you that read
This little story;
And know for whom the tear you shed
Death's self is sorry,'

is fine poetry, but it is not life or death as plain people know those sober realities. The flippant epitaph is always abominable. Gay's, for example:

'Life is a jest, and all things show it.
I thought so once, but now I know it.'

But _does_ he know it? Ay, there's the rub! The note of Christianity is seldom struck in epitaphs. There is a deep-rooted paganism in the English people which is for ever bubbling up and asserting itself in the oddest of ways. Coleridge's epitaph for himself is a striking exception:

'Stop, Christian passer-by! stop, child of God,
And read with gentle breast, Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seemed he.
O lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C,
That he who many a year with toil of breath
Found death in life, may here find life in death!
Mercy for praise--to be forgiven for fame,
He ask'd and hoped through Christ. Do thou the same.'

'HANSARD'

'Men are we, and must mourn when e'en the shade of that which once was great has passed away.' This quotation--which, in obedience to the prevailing taste, I print as prose--was forced upon me by reading in the papers an account of some proceedings in a sale-room in Chancery Lane last Tuesday,[A] when the entire stock and copyright of _Hansard's Parliamentary History and Debates_ were exposed for sale, and, it must be added, to ridicule. Yet 'Hansard' was once a name to conjure with. To be in it was an ambition--costly, troublesome, but animating; to know it was, if not a liberal education, at all events almost certain promotion; whilst to possess it for your very own was the outward and visible sign of serious statesmanship. No wonder that unimaginative men still believed that _Hansard_ was a property with money in it. Is it not the counterpart of Parliament, its dark and majestic shadow thrown across the page of history? As the pious Catholic studies his _Acta Sanctorum_, so should the constitutionalist love to pore over the _ipsissima verba_ of Parliamentary gladiators, and read their resolutions and their motions. Where else save in the pages of _Hansard_ can we make ourselves fully acquainted with the history of the Mother of Free Institutions? It is, no doubt, dull, but with the soberminded a large and spacious dulness like that of _Hansard's Debates_ is better than the incongruous chirpings of the new 'humourists.' Besides, its dulness is exaggerated. If a reader cannot extract amusement from it the fault is his, not _Hansard's_. But, indeed, this perpetual talk of dulness and amusement ought not to pass unchallenged. Since when has it become a crime to be dull? Our fathers were not ashamed to be dull in a good cause. We are ashamed, but without ceasing to be dull.

[Footnote A: March 8, 1902.]

But it is idle to argue with the higgle of the market. 'Things are what they are,' said Bishop Butler in a passage which has lost its freshness; that is to say, they are worth what they will fetch. 'Why, then, should we desire to be deceived?' The test of truth remains undiscovered, but the test of present value is the auction mart. Tried by this test, it is plain that _Hansard_ has fallen upon evil days. The bottled dreariness of Parliament is falling, falling, falling. An Elizabethan song-book, the original edition of Gray's _Elegy_, or _Peregrine Pickle_, is worth more than, or nearly as much as, the 458 volumes of _Hansard's Parliamentary Debates_. Three complete sets were sold last Tuesday; one brought £110, the other two but £70 each. And yet it is not long ago since a _Hansard_ was worth three times as much. Where were our young politicians? There are serious men on both sides of the House. Men of their stamp twenty years ago would not have been happy without a _Hansard_ to clothe their shelves with dignity and their minds with quotations. But these young men were not bidders.

As the sale proceeded, the discredit of _Hansard_ became plainer and plainer. For the copyright, including, of course, the goodwill of the name--the right to call yourself 'Hansard' for years to come--not a penny was offered, and yet, as the auctioneer feelingly observed, only eighteen months ago it was valued at £60,000. The cold douche of the auction mart may brace the mind, but is apt to lower the price of commodities of this kind. Then came incomplete and unbound sets, with doleful results. For forty copies of the 'Indian Debates' for 1889 only a penny a copy was offered. It was rumoured that the bidder intended, had he been successful, to circulate the copies amongst the supporters of a National Council for India; but his purpose was frustrated by the auctioneer, who, mindful of the honour of the Empire, sorrowfully but firmly withdrew the lot, and proceeded to the next, amidst the jeers of a thoroughly demoralized audience. But this subject why pursue? It is, for the reason already cited at the beginning, a painful one. The glory of _Hansard_ has departed for ever. Like a new-fangled and sham religion, it began in pride and ended in a police-court, instead of beginning in a police-court and ending in pride, which is the now well-defined course of true religion.