Chapter VIII: Part 8

But enough of conceit and vanity, let us turn to our second motive—a far pleasanter and more everyday affair—greed. I should put Shakespeare among the first and greatest whose motive was greed. I cannot imagine anyone taking the trouble to write a play from any other motive, certainly not from a lower motive. Shakespeare’s main desire in life, if we may trust his biographers, was to become a landowner in Warwickshire—possibly a county magistrate. What an ideal chairman he would have made of a licensing bench. Would Mistress Quickly’s license have been renewed? I doubt it. Shakespeare wrote plays for the contemporary box office to make money out of them and thrive. As Mr. Sidney Lee tells us he “stood rigorously by his rights in all business relations.” There being in those days no law of copyright he borrowed all he could from common stock, added to it the wonderful flavouring of his own personality and served up the immortal dramatic soup which nourishes us to-day. After this fashion of borrowing, if Emerson be right, the Lord’s Prayer was made. The single phrases of which it is composed were, he says, all in use at the time of our Lord in the rabbinical forms. “He picked out the grains of gold.” It is the same if you think of it with Æsop’s fables, the Iliad and the Arabian Nights, which no single author produced. And so must all great work be done, for we are nothing of ourselves and if we do not take freely of those who are gone before we can do naught. But only those have the right to borrow who can embroider some new and glorious pattern on the homely stuff they appropriate. Shakespeare had no vanity and conceit; no doubt he wrote for the fun of the thing, as all writers who are worth their salt must do, possibly—though I for one doubt it—he knew of the message he was delivering to the world; but that he wrote his plays primarily for greed, the few records of his life that we possess seem to me to prove beyond reasonable doubt. Unless, of course, you are mad enough to believe Bacon wrote the plays. Then indeed the motive power of the author was greed—greed of a baser sort than Shakespeare’s—for the great Lord Chancellor never did anything that I know of, except a few trivial scientific experiments, from any other motive.

But when I speak of Shakespeare and greed, I speak as a modern and not as an Elizabethan. Greed in Shakespeare’s day meant the greed of filthy lucre, the insatiate greediness of evil desires. It was an insanitary word in those days. But greed to-day means something quite otherwise. When I speak of greed as the main motive of authorship I use the word, not with any old-fashioned dictionary meaning, but in an up-to-date, clear-sighted, clarion, socialist sense. You speak to-day—those of you who are in the movement—of the greed of the capitalist, the greed of the employer. In this way I speak of the greed of the author. The greed of anyone to-day is the greed which urges him to endeavour to enrich himself and provide for himself and his family by using his brains in producing things. Incidentally he may employ a vast number of people with less brains or no brains, incidentally he may ruin himself after he has used his brains, and paid a large number of people in publishing the result of his brain-work; but do not let us in an age of socialism gainsay that it is pure greed to use your brains for the purpose of putting money into your own pocket. It is true this kind of greed led to Columbus discovering America—but if he had not done so how many fewer capitalists there would have been. Sir Walter Raleigh, too, was a bad instance of a man moved by greed; we cannot acquit Drake, or the great Lord Burghley or even my own historical heroine the Maiden Queen herself. The greed of Elizabethan England is a thing to shudder at, if you are a real socialist, and Shakespeare, I fear, must be found guilty from a modern standpoint of having written his plays from the simple motive power of greed.

I am the more certain of this for the only Shakespearean play of modern times “What the Butler Saw,” was written, I am ashamed to say, from similar motives. I happen to know that this is a play after Shakespeare’s own heart. I learned it in a vision. I am not a believer in dreams myself, but there must be something in some of them, and mine is worthy of the consideration of the Psychical Research Society. It was after the first night of the Butler in London, and after a somewhat prolonged and interesting supper with some of those responsible for the production,—in psychical research supper should always be confessed to,—that I had a curious dream of the people who were present at the theatre. Many who appeared had actually been present, others had not. Milton and Oliver Cromwell, both came up to me and hoped it would not have a long run—Wordsworth, I remember, wanted to know what the Butler really did see, and Charles Lamb, winking at me, took him away to tell him. It was then that Shakespeare came and patted me lightly on the shoulder, saying “It’s all right, my young friend”—young of course from Shakespeare’s point of view—“I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

Many will wonder why this story has not long before this gone the round of the press. The answer is that I am not a business man. I once mentioned the dream to a spiritualist, who said that there was no evidence that it was the shade of Shakespeare—it might have been the astral body of one of the inhabitants of the Isle of Man. I replied that then we should have heard of it long ago.

As an instance of dramatic justice it is interesting to know that the production of this play costs its authors money. Incidentally it made money for others, actors, actresses, scene-shifters, proprietors of theatres, dramatic critics and the like, to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds. Some day when I publish the play, as I hope to do, I will set out in detail its financial side, which is quite as amusing as the play itself. But the main point, which from a socialist point of view is so entirely satisfactory, is that the brain-workers who wrote it, and the capitalist who produced it lost over it; but that it provided work and bread and cheese for a large number of people who might otherwise have filled the ranks of the unemployed. It is a fitting termination to the work of an author whose motive power is greed. The only fear is that if this were always to happen, there might come a time when there would be a shortage of authors ready to supply food and wages for others at a cost to themselves. Personally, I do not think this is all likely to occur, for authors seem to me a class of persons who will always be actuated by vanity, and a greed of so unintelligent and unbusinesslike a character that they will go on writing for others, rather than themselves to the end of time. I in no way regret the results of “What the Butler Saw.” I fear my greed is of a very poor commercial standard. I had plenty of fun for my money. It is something to have written a masterpiece, and it is something better to have seen it beautifully acted. I am very poor at taking the amusements of life seriously, and even when playing golf I often find myself looking at the scenery instead of at the ball. Indeed, I am not sure that I did write “What the Butler Saw,” from any really high sense of greed, and that may account for its having turned on me and bitten me financially. I have more than a half belief that I wrote it for the fun of the thing.

And this brings me to my third motive of authorship, writing for the fun of the things. All the best writing in the world—short of the very highest and most sacred work—is done for the fun of the thing. Some people prefer the phrase the love of the thing, and say it is the love of the beautiful, or the love of mischief, or the love of romance that moves them to writing. But I prefer to call it writing for the fun of the thing, because that describes to me exactly what I mean. All games should be played in this spirit, and writing is a far less serious game with most of us than games like bridge or chess or golf or cricket.

Charles Marriott—not the national novelist of our high seas, but Marriott the modern—who has a gracious gift of hinting great ideas in simple phrases and never shouts them at you, so that if you are a deaf reader you do not always get the best out of him—Marriott says in “The Remnant”: “Quite in the beginning, when men went out to kill their enemies or their dinner, there was always one man who wanted to stay, at home and talk to the women, and make rhymes and scratch pictures on bones.” There are two great truths in this. One is that the first author was an artist. He scratched pictures on bones long before he made rhymes. Of course he did it for the fun of the thing. There could be no other reason, the motives of vanity and greed were not open to him. There was no publisher in the cave-dwellers’ days to seize his bones, and pay him a royalty on them, and build a big cave for himself out of the proceeds of the speculation, whilst the bone-scratcher slept in the open. I think a cave-artist had a good time. He enjoyed his life in his own way, and I believe got better food for his work than many an artist of to-day. But modern artists have forgotten the great truth that to paint well you must paint for the fun of the thing, as the cave-man scratched his bones, and as children draw to-day if you give them paper and pencil, and don’t look on and worry them. Few artists now paint for the fun of the thing without vanity or greed, but when they do they sometimes find an echo in the shape of a patron as mad as themselves, who buys pictures for the fun of the thing, and not because the critics tell him that this or that is good. The recent McCullough collection at Burlington House was worth showing despite the sneers of the superior persons, because it was an honest collection of what one man had really liked. What annoyed the critics was that a man had bought the pictures because he loved them, and not because he had been told he ought to love them.

And then there is another great truth in what Marriott says. The cave-artist stayed at home to make rhymes and pictures for the women whilst the men went out to get the dinner. How few writers remember that the real judges of literature are and must be the women of the country. Women necessarily fill the churches and lecture halls, and the lending libraries, and the theatres, and the picture galleries—only in music halls do men predominate. It is for women primarily that all literature and art are made to-day, just as they were in the cave-dweller’s time. To follow out this interesting theme and account scientifically for the phenomenon would take a longer essay than this. Moreover, one would run up against the problem of the women who want to vote and many other dangerous questions. The cave-dwellers really knew all about it. The men went out to get the dinner in those days merely because there were no shops in Cave Street—but the researches of all professors show that even in those days the women ordered the dinner. And the voice that orders the dinner, and the hand that rocks the cradle will always rule the world.

If you want to test the value of writing for the fun of the thing in relation to the work produced take the case of Southey. Southey was, among the many mansions of literature of his day, the most eligible mansion of all. He was a most erudite and superior literary man. But though what he wrote was important and well paid for when he wrote it, to-day the world has no use for it. But once in a way Southey wrote a story for the fun of the thing and it will live for ever. I refer of course to “The Three Bears.” Southey, strange to say, wrote that wonderful story. He invented the immortal three, the Great Huge Bear with his great rough gruff voice, and the Middle Bear with his middle voice, and the Little Small Wee Bear with his little small wee voice. And such a work of genius is it that already it is stolen and altered and the name of the author is almost unknown. And just because he wrote it for the fun of the thing it will go on living as long as there are children in the world to tell it to. Porthos, Athos, and Aramis, Dumas’ three musketeers, may vanish into oblivion, but the three bears will be a folk-lore story when the affairs of this century are a prehistoric myth.

Remember too, Southey’s companion, Wordsworth, the “respectable poet” as De Quincey unkindly called him. Did he ever write anything for the fun of the thing? Had he any fun in him to write with? Wordsworth serves his purpose to-day, no doubt. He is there for professors of English literature to profess. He is there for serious-minded uncles to present as a birthday gift, in one volume bound in whole morocco, floral back and sides, gilt roll, gilt edges, price sixteen shillings and sixpence, to sedate nieces. But do the sedate nieces read his poetry? As Sam Weller says: “I don’t think.” Coleridge again, when you set aside the few poems that he did write for the fun of the thing, presents the somewhat mournful spectacle of a literary man spending a literary life doing literary work. You read of him starting this periodical and that periodical, roaming about England in search of subscribers under the impression that he had a message to deliver; when, sad to say, all the while he was ringing his bell and shouting “Pies to sell” the tray on his head was empty of any useful food for mankind.

Compare these great names with that of their humble companion, Charles Lamb. He never wrote an essay or a letter except for the fun of the thing. He had to go down to an office day by day and do his task. He might have kept pigeons or done a little gardening or played billiards, but he preferred to read books and to go to plays and write about things he loved. Not that his hobby was in its nature a higher thing to him than another man’s, but it was his naturally, and he simply wrote because he enjoyed writing, in the same way that he drank because he enjoyed drinking. And what is the result? Southey has departed into the shadows, when you take Wordsworth off the young lady’s shelves you have to blow the dust off the top of the volume, and Coleridge is only to be found in school poetry books which are carefully compiled by economic editors of poems which are non-copyright. But Charles Lamb has more friends and lovers to-day than he had in his own lifetime. He wrote for the fun of the thing and the fun remains with us to-day, bounteous and joyful, bubbling over with humour and delight, and overflowing with affection and respect for everything that is best in human nature.

And perhaps part of what I mean by writing for the fun of the thing is to be found in a phrase that used to be uttered about writings that they “touch your heart.” It is a curious old-fashioned phrase. It would be interesting to enquire what it is that keeps a book alive through after-generations. I think that this capacity of “touching the heart” has much to do with it. Shakespeare, Dickens and Goldsmith had this quality; so in a different way had Izaak Walton and Samuel Pepys. It may be that this magic power is the salt that keeps a man’s writings sweet among the varied temperatures of thought through which they survive. Qualities of brain and intellect vary century by century, but what we call the heart of man is the same to-day as it was when King David wrote his psalms. Therefore, unless our writings appeal to the heart it is impossible for them to attain everlasting life. Much of the literature of to-day is, I fear, as Touchstone says—“damned like an ill-roasted egg all on one side.” For the fashion of the hour is to despise the heart and to sneer at the simple folk whose hearts still beat in harmony with the silly domestic notions of love and honour and charity and family life. To-day who would be a writer must write for the brains and intellects of the learned—meaning by the learned those who have passed sufficient examinations to render it unnecessary they should ever think for themselves again. And even this is outdone by the new school who pride themselves that the brain is as old-fashioned an audience for the author as the heart, that the proper portion in the twentieth century is the liver. If a book stirs the bile of all decent people it is to-day a popular success. So unintelligent a view do some take of the movement that they try to throw opprobrium upon it by the use of the epithet “yellow” as in the phrase “Yellow Press”: whereas, yellow among the inner brotherhood is the holy colour as typical of the movement as it is of jaundice itself. Personally, I should like to send many of our great novelists and playwrights of to-day to Harrogate for the season. I believe that a course of ten ounce doses of the “strong sulphur,” at that charming watering place would diminish the risk for them of a far longer course of far stronger sulphur in the hereafter. Their writings may have a vogue for a time and after all their position in literature will not be decided by anything I say, or anything their friendly and scholarly critics say, except in so far as we are atoms of the general mob of mankind whose taste is final. For as Newman said: “Scholars are the tribunal of Erudition, but of Taste the educated but unlearned public is the only right judge.”

But before I deal with the last motive of authorship which I suggest, let me say a few words about an entirely different answer to the question I am putting “Why be an Author?” There are wise men who declare that a man is an author from pre-destination; because he cannot help himself, because he is built that way. In other words that to be an author is a habit like drink or gambling. I can see that if this theory gains ground, libraries are going to have a rough time of it in the future. No doubt there are people—like myself—who waste a great deal of time in reading and writing which might be better used by digging in the garden, or cleaning the boots. As education proceeds upon the lines of to-day this bad habit will grow more popular. Young folk will take to spending their evenings, and even their Sundays, in libraries and meeting together over books as they do over football. Older folks will imbibe books much as they imbibe beer. Respectable employers of labour will see the danger of it—indeed, many of them to-day are clamouring against plays and fiction and other literary products as evil in themselves. They will, I think, rightly begin by persuasion. They will form Blue Ribbon Societies and a United Kingdom Alliance for the total suppression of the Book Trade. Then will come, in the natural order of things, a Licensing Bench to license libraries. On this no magistrate will sit who has ever written a book, or been connected with the publishing trade, but magistrates who are total abstainers from reading and writing will properly form a majority of the tribunal. And in the city of Manchester, which is a city of Libraries, which library will they close first? I should say the Ryland’s Library. For there is a seductive beauty about its surroundings, and the books it gives you to drink are of such wondrous flavour and served in such rare goblets, that to the poor erring man, who like myself is not a teetotaler among books, the temptation to leave his worldly duties and forget his tasks among its luxurious pleasures, is one that wise magistrates will not permit. Then, too, the landlord—I mean the librarian—is such a kind-hearted fellow. Always ready to give you another—and nothing to pay. Charles Lamb would never have got to the East India Office if the Ryland’s Library had been in his path. For my part I always used to approach my County Court in Quay Street from the other side, saying to myself as I crossed Deansgate, “Lead us not into temptation.”

Do not think that this idea of a future licensing authority for literature is by any means a fanciful one. We have seen a Yorkshire town council turning Fielding’s works out of a free library to their own eternal disgrace, and a Library Committee in Manchester boycotting Mr. Wells. Already Town Councils decide what sort of plays we may go and see, and what sort of dances are good for us, and absolutely settle for us what we are to drink in between the acts, putting all the whisky on one side of the street and all the soda on the other. When, therefore, the town council mind wakes up to the fact that from a respectable employer of labour point of view the author habit is as dangerous a habit as the drink habit, the licensing system will most certainly extend. And I feel sure when things progress and authors themselves are made to take out licenses I shall run a serious risk—unless I mend my ways—of having my license endorsed.

But for my own part, I do not believe in an author habit any more than I greatly believe in a drink habit. Given sanity I believe a man can keep off authorship if he tries. I never seriously tried, but I think I could stop, if I wished to, even now. And there would be a danger in any system of state or municipal control of authors that you might hinder or prevent the author who has a message to deliver. Surely there are enough amateur censors to bully and destroy the man with a message without setting the Town Council at him. And the man with a message after all is the only man who can plead justification to the indictment “Why be an Author?”

Of course there are messages and messages; purely business and temporary messages, and heaven-sent messages of eternal import to mankind. Of temporary messages, sermons, and scientific treatises should be published by telegraph, lest the message become stale news before it reaches its destination. All books written by craftsmen and schoolmen to impart knowledge are instances of books written by people who have messages to deliver. Lamb calls some of them _biblia a biblia_—books that are no books. In a sense he is right, the more so because this class of book is generally written by an author, wholly unable to explain the very limited message he sets out to deliver. Reading a text-book is too often like listening to a stutterer over the telephone. You know that he knows what he has to say, but he can’t get it over the wires to your receiver. Some literary gift is required even to write a school book. One must have knowledge, power of arrangement, and the gift of imparting knowledge to the ignorant. This last quality depends, I believe, in a great measure on the capacity in the writer to conceive the depth of ignorance in his probable readers.

He must have the rare faculty of putting himself in the students’ place. I do not myself remember a single good school book—but that may be due to my youthful inattention, rather than any critical insight in early life. On the other hand, I can name three books which I regard as models of the kind of message-literature I am speaking about; books that told me clearly and admirably everything I wanted to know about the subjects they dealt with. These books are, Dr. Abbott’s “How to write clearly,” Sir James Fitzjames Stephen’s “Law of Evidence,” and Mr. H. Paton’s “Etching Drypoint and Mezzotint.” The last book I regard as a model of what a practical treatise on a craft should be. Although himself an etcher of experience and great ability, he is able to follow the mind of the ignorant and its possible questions, so accurately, that he provides answers to the questions that arise from time to time in the mind of the duffer bent on making an etching on a copper plate. I have never seen the process done, but with the aid of this book I have made many etchings—and what I have done other duffers can do. I do not say these etchings of mine are masterpieces, but I do say that the book so delivers its message that the most ignorant may hear and understand. Mr. Justice Stephen’s book on Evidence is a most wonderful piece of codification. The English Law of Evidence has about as near relation to the real facts of life as the rules of the game of Poker. It is one of those things that must be learned more or less by heart, there is no sense or principle in it. Until Mr Justice Stephen published his book the law was a chaos of undigested decisions; since the publication it has been as orderly a science as a game of chess. It has still no reality about it, but the moves and gambits and openings are analysed and can be learned. As to Dr. Abbott’s “How to write clearly,” let no one think evil of the work on account of anything I have written, any more than Mr. Paton’s volume should be judged by the artistic quality of my etchings.

As to the greater messages of life which we have had delivered to us by the hands of the great authors, these are as I have suggested, the real answer to the question, “Why be an Author?” The writings of men like S. Paul and the author of the Book of Job and S. Augustine, and in our own day, of Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens, all seem to me to have been written in reply to some such command as was given to S. Paul himself to whom it was said: “Arise and go into the City and it shall be _told_ thee what thou must do.” The writer who has a message to deliver is generally told what it is and he never, I think, fails to deliver it. He does not need motives of vanity or greed—nor is there any question of writing for the fun of the thing—he is told by some force beyond and outside him what he must do, and he does. He is a happy messenger boy sent on his errand by the Great Postmaster, whose messages he delivers.

There are many names we all instinctively remember of writers who seem to have had messages to deliver to ourselves, and whose messages we have received with thankfulness, and I trust, humility. It is wonderful sometimes to remember how these messengers have been upheld in their service through dangers and difficulty, and protected against the hatred, malice and uncharitableness of the official ecclesiastical post-boys who claim a monopoly of all moral letter carrying. Take as an instance the author of the Book of Job. It has always been a marvel to me how he ran his message through the cordon of the infidelity and ignorance by which the holy places of his time were surrounded, and landed his book safely and soundly into the centre of the literature of the world. I suppose the creed of the author of the Book of Job was, as Froude puts it, “that the sun shines alike on good and evil, and that the victims of a fallen tower are not greater offenders than their neighbours.” That was a new message then, and very few believe it in their hearts now. Most of us have a secret notion that riches are the right reward of goodness, and poverty the appropriate punishment of evil. It must have required a stout heart to pen that message when the Book of Job was written, and a fearless heart to face the publication of it among the orthodox literature of the time.

I do not know if attention has ever been drawn to the point, but the author of the Book of Job has always settled for me the literary righteousness of the happy ending. Job, you know—as every hero of every story-book ought to—lives happily ever afterwards. The Lord gave him twice as much as he had before, his friends each gave him a piece of money and a ring of gold, and he finished up with fourteen thousand sheep and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand she-asses, not to mention seven sons and three daughters—“So Job died, being old and full of days.”

Now-a-days, when every story we read or play we see is deliberately formed to leave us more unhappy than it found us, is it not pleasant to those, who like myself do not believe in the dismal Jemmy school of writers, to remember that the author of the Book of Job “went solid” for the happy ending? I have no doubt the dramatic critic of the Babylon Guardian “went solid” for him, and called him a low down, despicable person—but the critics, if any, have disappeared—the author, too, has disappeared—only his message remains, and will always remain until it is no longer necessary to us. And one reason that it remains is, because he was a big enough author to know that if you write for mankind you must not despise mankind, you must not sneer in your hearts at the very people you are writing for, but you must write for them in a spirit of love and affection, and respect, even to the respecting of their little weaknesses, and you must remember that one of the weaknesses of mankind—if it be a weakness—is the child-like love of a story which begins with “Once upon a time,” and ends with everyone living happily ever afterwards.

I have not answered the question, “Why be an author?” because as I said in the beginning I do not know the answer. In so far as there is an answer, it is given, I think, in the words of the prophet, Thomas Carlyle. He is reassuring himself that the work of a writer is after all as real and sensible and practical a work as that of any smith or carpenter. “Hast thou not a Brain?” he says to himself, “furnished with some glimmerings of light; and three fingers to hold a pen withal? Never since Aaron’s Rod went out of practice, or even before it, was there such a wonder-working Tool: greater than all recorded miracles have been performed by Pens. For strangely in this so solid-seeming World, which nevertheless is in continual restless flux, it is appointed that _Sound_ to appearance the most fleeting, should be the most continuing of all things. The WORD is well said to be omnipotent in this world; man, thereby divine, can create as by a Fiat. Awake, arise! Speak forth what is in thee; what God has given thee, what the Devil shall not take away. Higher task than that of Priesthood was allotted to no man: wert thou but the meanest in that sacred Hierarchy, is it not honour enough therein to spend and be spent?”

That, if any, is the answer to the question, “Why be an Author?”

WHICH WAY IS THE TIDE?

“O call back yesterday, bid time return.”

_Richard II._ iii., 2.

Dozing in a railway carriage on a journey to Wales I listened dreamily to the faint echoes of an argument between a gentleman of the old school who contended that the country was going to the dogs, and a younger enthusiast who was optimistic as to the present and future of our race. It was at Deganwy that the older man, who had, I thought, somewhat the worst of the argument, pointed to the sea and said, with the air of one who uttered a new thought, that it was impossible for those who stood on the shore to say at the moment which way the tide was setting. The younger man accepted the stale simile with the courteous reverence that is the debt we willingly pay to age when we know that we know better.

A few days afterwards a friend handed me a copy of an old newspaper. His wife had discovered it with other of its fellows during the Spring cleaning. “The things,” she said in her practical way, “were harbouring dirt.” But from my point of view they were also harbouring history, and turning over the single sheet it occurred to me that it might help one to a conclusion about the ever interesting problem “which way is the tide?” The newspaper was, to be exact, the _Manchester Guardian_, of Saturday, January 24th, 1824, No. 143 of Vol. IV. The price was sevenpence or seven and sixpence a quarter if paid in advance, and eight shillings on credit. In the matter of price the tide was clearly with the moderns. There was an excellent wood-cut on the front page, a semi-advertisement—as I took it—of Messrs. David Bellhouse and Sons, of Eagle Quay, Oxford Road, who “respectfully informed the public that they have commenced carriers of timber by water betwixt Liverpool and Manchester” by means of a paddle steam tug “The Eagle,” with a funnel, the height of its mast and a huge square sail and two Union Jacks, one floating at the masthead and the other astern, and accompanying rafts of timber following the tug. In another column Fredk. and Chas. Barry, sworn brokers, of Vine Street, America Square, London, advertise that the fine fast sailing new brig, Walworth Castle, 240 tons, A.1. coppered, I. Wrentmore, Commander, will sail for Vera Cruz from London, and had only room for about fifty tons of goods. Certainly in the matter of the carriage of goods at sea and by canal we seem to have made progress. When you come to the matter of passenger traffic, it is interesting to read of “The Telegraph,” which leaves every afternoon at 3.30 for London through Macclesfield, Leek, Derby, Leicester, and Northampton to the White Horse, Fetter Lane. In the same column we read of the “North Briton” and “Robert Burns,” which leave every morning at 4.30, and run through Chorley, Preston, Lancaster, Kendal, and Carlisle, to the Buck Inn, Glasgow, and the splendid service of six coaches to Liverpool, starting at intervals from 5 a.m. to 5.30 in the evening. This column of coach advertisements is fine picturesque reading, but it is a little old-fashioned by the side of a sixpenny Bradshaw of to-day.

Again, if we turn to the report of the Salford Epiphany Quarter Sessions, Thomas Starkie, Esquire, Chairman, we have much to be thankful for in latter-day records. It must be remembered of course that the Sessions of to-day are more frequent, and different Sessions are held in small areas. Still, in January, 1824, there were no less than 240 prisoners, a number far in excess of anything we read of to-day. Nearly all the cases seem to have been cases of stealing, and there were few acquittals. The sentences were terrible, and only those who remember sentences given by some of the minor tribunals in comparatively recent years can credit the fact that such sentences were passed by humane and thoughtful men, in what was genuinely believed to be the interest of society. A long list of sentences begins thus: “Transported for life, William Thomas (16), for stealing one pocket handkerchief.” Lower down we find that Thomas Kinsey (21), for stealing thirty pieces of cotton cloth, gets off with transportation for fourteen years. The number of young people that are transported for small thefts is astonishing. Martha Jowett (30), for stealing a purse; John Webster (19) and John Drinkwater (24), for stealing a gun; Martha Myers (16), for stealing wearing apparel, and Mary Mason (24), for stealing a purse, are all among the list of those transported for seven years. More aristocratic sinners had a better chance of acquittal, and the receivers of the Birmingham notes stolen from the Balloon coach were respited because the jury found that the receiving “was elsewhere than in the County of Lancaster,” and counsel successfully contended that they must be discharged. Certainly in these matters the tide has flowed towards less crime and more humanity to prisoners since 1824.

But whereas human institutions seem to have improved, human nature seems to have been much as it is to-day. Dr. Lamert—the predecessor of many twentieth century quacks—is at No. 68 Piccadilly, ready to be consulted about and to cure “all diseases incidental to the human frame,” and has his testimonials and affidavits as to the success of his treatment almost in the very language in which we can read them to-day. “The greatest discovery in the memory of man is universally allowed to be the celebrated Cordial Balm of Rakasiri,” whose name is “blown on the bottle” and whose properties will cure any disease from “headache to consumptions.” “Smith’s Genuine Leamington Salts are confidently offered to the public under the recommendation of Dr. Kerr, Northampton,” and other eminent medical men, whilst from Mottershead and other chemists you can obtain Black Currant Lozenges “in which are concentrated all the well-known virtues of that fruit.” In this backwater of life the tide seems to be running, if at all, the other way. In the matter of gambling, too, it would be hard to say whether State lotteries, well protected from private imitations, were worse for our morals than free trade in bookmaking, coupled by uncertain and unequally worked police supervision. In the paper before me, “T. Bish, of the Old State Lottery Office, 4 Cornhill, respectfully reminds his best friends the public that the State lottery begins the 19th of next month.” There are to be seven £20,000 prizes and many others, and “in the very last Lottery Bish shared and sold 18,564, a prize of £20,000, 1379 a prize of £10,000, and several other capitals.” Bish of 1824 was but one evil more or less honest in his dealings and controlled by the State. Bish of 1911 is a legion of bookmakers, more or less dishonest and wholly uncontrolled. Still I am far from saying things are not better so, and even here could we discern it clearly the tide may be flowing the right way.

In the interest taken in art and literature it would be hard to say that we do not see signs of earnestness and enthusiasm in this one newspaper of 1824 that it would be hard to find in a single copy of a journal of to-day. The people of Liverpool are sinking sectarian differences and starting a mechanics and apprentices’ library, and already have 1,500 volumes. It is true that the whole thing was done very much on the lines of the gospel according to Mr. Barlow and Mr. Fairchild, but it was being done with enthusiasm. The elder Mr. Gladstone sent ten pounds and a letter of “correct ideas,” which was read to the meeting, but unfortunately we shall never read the “correct ideas” which were “basketed” by the then subeditor. The Library was to contain no works of controversial theology or politics, and the _Liverpool Advertiser_ sees with regret that “Egan’s Sporting Anecdotes” was amongst a number of volumes contributed by an American gentleman. The Pharisee, we must admit, is with us to-day, and even in well governed cities sometimes finds a place on Library Committees. But here is another announcement in this wonderful number of the newspaper which lovers of art will read with pious interest. “There is to be a General Meeting of the Governors of the Manchester Institution, to consider a report to be submitted with reference to the building and to the general welfare of the Institution.” Below this is printed “amounts already advertised £14,610,” and then follows a list of between thirty and forty new hereditary members subscribing forty guineas apiece.

A hundred years hence a newspaper of our own day will be unearthed to tell future generations of a City Council refusing supplies for continuing the great work that these city fathers started with their own monies. Could we to-day from a far richer Manchester and far wealthier citizens obtain hereditary subscribers at forty guineas apiece for a new theatre or opera house or art gallery, if such were required in Manchester? It is at least doubtful.

Two other announcements that cannot rightly be evidence of human progress, but which may make us worthily envious of the good old days that are gone:—at the Theatre Royal, Mr. Matthews is playing in “The Road to Ruin” and the musical farce of “The Bee Hive,” and on Wednesday he will have a benefit with three musical farces including “The Review.” It would be worth owning one of Mr. Wells’s time machines to take the chance of dropping into Manchester in 1824, if only to go to the Royal and see the show. And here is another echo of glad tidings. “We have been informed that the author of Waverley has contracted with his bookseller to furnish him with three novels a year for three years, and that he is to have ten thousand pounds a year for the supply, and that four novels have actually been delivered as per contract.”

When one reads an announcement such as that, and thinks of the joy of unpacking the parcel of books when it arrives, and cutting and reading three new masterpieces a year hot from the press, the novel reader of to-day may be excused if he sighs over a golden age that will never return. Nevertheless, man cannot live by Waverley novels alone; and what is this we read a little lower down the column? “Average price of corn from the returns received in the week ending January 10:

Wheat, 57s. 4d.”

Of a truth in essential things the tide has flowed steadily in the right direction since this year of 1824, and is not on the turn—as yet.

KISSING THE BOOK.[4]

“The evidence you shall give to the Court touching the matter
in question shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth—So help you God.”

_The Oath._

When the clerk in an English Court of Justice administers the usual oath, he finishes with the words “Kiss the Book,” spoken in an imperative mood, and if the witness shows any hesitation in carrying out the unsavoury ceremony, he does his best to compel performance. The imperative mood of the clerk has not, to my thinking, any legal sanction. Kissing the Book is not, and never has been, as far as I can learn, a necessary legal incident of the oath of a Christian witness or juror. Why, then, does the twentieth-century Englishman kiss the Book by way of assuring his fellow-citizens that he is not going to lie if he can help it? The answer is probably akin to the answer given to the question: “Why does a dog walk round and round in a circle before he flings himself upon the hearth-rug?” Naturalists tell us that it is because the wild dog of prehistoric days made his bed in the contemporary grass of the forest after that fashion. Both man and dog are victims of hereditary habit. Probably the majority of men and dogs never consider for a moment how they came by the habit. But when, as in the case of kissing the Book, the habit is so insanitary, superstitious and objectionable, it is worth a few moments to consider its history, origin, and practical purpose, and then to further consider whether mankind is not old enough to give it up, and whether we should not make an effort at reform in the healthy spirit that a growing schoolboy approaches the manly problem of ceasing to bite his nails.

In a modern English Encyclopædia of Law it is suggested that the habit of kissing the Book did not become recognised in the English Courts until the middle of the seventeenth century, and that it only became general in the latter part of the eighteenth century. For my part, I cannot subscribe to that view. It is true that there is very little direct authority in any ancient law book on practice which enables one to say what the practice was. But that is because the old lawyers did not consider “kissing the Book” essential to the oath, and the practice was so universally followed that there was no need to describe it.

Shakespeare wrote “The Tempest” about 1613. He gives Stephano, when offering Caliban the bottle, these lines: “Come, swear to this; kiss the book:—I will furnish it anon with new contents:—swear. (_Gives Caliban drink._)” And a few lines later on Caliban says, “I’ll kiss thy foot; I’ll swear myself thy subject.” To me, reading the scene to-day, and bearing in mind that it was a low-comedy scene written to amuse the groundlings, the conclusion is irresistible that Shakespeare drew his simile from the common stock of everyday affairs, and that the idea of kissing the Book was as familiar to the average playgoer at the Globe or the Curtain as it is to-day to the pittite at His Majesty’s. Beaumont and Fletcher, too, in _Women Pleased_, II, vi, have the lines: “Oaths I swear to you ... and kiss the book, too”; and no doubt, if diligent search were made in the Elizabethan writers other such popular references could be found.

Samuel Butler, who, we must remember, was clerk to Sir Samuel Luke, of Bedfordshire, and other Puritan Justices of the Peace, and therefore had administered the oath many hundreds of times prior to the Restoration, has the following passage in “Hudibras” concerning a perjurer:—

“Can make the Gospel serve his turn,
And helps him out; to be forsworn;
When ’tis laid hands upon and kiss’d;
To be betrayed and sold like Christ.”

This is, I think, conclusive that in 1660, in the common form of oath, the practice was for the witness to lay the hand upon the Book and afterwards to kiss it.

Fleetwood, the Recorder of London, writing to Lord Burghley, describing Serjeant Anderson taking his seat as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1582, notes that: “Then the clarke of the corone, Powle, did read hym his oathe, and after, he himself read the oathe of the supremacie, and so kist the booke.” This, of course, was a ceremonial oath, but it throws light upon the custom. Although the direct references to kissing the Book are few and far between, several interesting specimens are given in _Notes and Queries_ from early Irish records, showing that oaths were taken both upon holy relics and upon the Holy Gospels, _corporaliter tacta et deosculata_, in the time of Henry VI., and that in the reign of Edward I. kissing the Book was an incident of the official oath of the Exchequer. It is possible that a close study of the records of a Catholic country would throw light upon the origin of kissing the Book, which, from a Protestant point of view, is doubtless as superstitious a custom as kissing relics or the Pope’s toe or a crucifix. It was said by John Coltus, the Archbishop of Armagh, in 1397, that the English introduced the custom of swearing on the Holy Evangelists into Ireland, and that in earlier days the Irish resorted to croziers, bells, and other sacred reliquaries to give solemnity to their declarations. That kissing the Book is directly evolved from the superstitious but reverential worship of holy relics can scarcely be doubted. When Harold pledged his solemn oath to William the Conqueror, we learn in the old French _Roman de Rou_ how William piled up a reliquary with holy bodies and put a pall over them to conceal them, and, having persuaded Harold to take the oath upon these hidden relics, he afterwards showed Harold what he had done, and _Heraut forment s’espoanta_, Harold was sadly alarmed. Curious, but interesting, is the form of oath here described. Harold first of all _suz sa main tendi_, held his hand over the reliquary, then he repeated the words of his oath, and then _li sainz beisiez_ kissed the relics. It is almost the same ceremony that we have to-day, and in the same order. The Book is held in the hand, the words of the oath are repeated, and then the Book is kissed.

The Rev. James Tyler, in his interesting book on oaths, quotes an eleventh-century oath of Ingeltrude, wife of Boston, that she swore to Pope Nicholas, as one of the earliest examples of kissing the Book. It runs thus: “I, Ingeltrude, swear to my Lord Nicholas, the chief Pontiff and universal Pope, by the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and these four Evangelists of Christ our God which I hold in my hands and kiss with my mouth.” This early example of the habit shows that kissing the Book was contemporaneous with kissing bells, crucifixes and relics, and that the religious origin of the custom is similar. In the Roman Catholic ritual the priest still kisses the Gospel after he has read it, and I have been told that this is done in some Anglican churches. It is curious that the ceremony should survive in the law courts and have died out in most of the churches. But in these things the average man violently strains at gnats and complacently swallows camels. The Roman ceremony of kissing the Book—which is done reverently by the priest as part of a religious ceremony—would distress a Protestant, who watches the kissing of the same Book in a modern police court without the least sign of moral or mental disturbance.

Of the ultimate origin of kissing as a sign and pledge of truth much could be written, and it would be an interesting task to trace the history of the ceremonial kiss to its earliest source. The perjury of Judas was signed by a kiss, and Jacob deceived his father with the same pledge of faith. So also false, fleeting, perjured Clarence swears to his brother: “In sign of truth I kiss your highness’ hand.” The kiss as a pledge or symbol of truth is probably as old in the world as the degraded ceremony of spitting on a coin for luck, and is what students of folk-lore call a saliva custom, the origin of which seems to have been a desire on the part of the devotee for a union with the divine or holy thing.

So much for the ancient origin of the kissing portion of this ceremony. It is shown to be of superstitious if not idolatrous origin, and I hope to show beyond doubt that in the view of English lawyers it is not, and never has been, an essential part of the English Christian oath. That is to say, an English Christian has a legal right to take the oath by merely laying his hand upon the Book, and the act of kissing the Book afterwards is a work of supererogation, and of no legal force or effect whatever.