Chapter XX: Part 20

"Then dies to idle air my longing wild,
As dies a dream along the paths of night;
And Cytherea widowed is, exiled
From love itself; and now--an idle sight--
The Loves sit in my halls, and all delight
My charmèd girdle moves, is all undone!
Why wouldst thou, rash one, seek the maddening fight?
Why, beauteous, wouldst thou not the combat shun?"--
Thus Cytherea--and the Loves weep, all as one.

Alas for Cytherea!--he is dead.
Her hopeless sorrow breaks in tears, that rain
Down over all the fair, beloved head,--
Like summer showers, o'er wind-down-beaten grain;
They flow as fast as flows the crimson stain
From out the wound, deep in the stiffening thigh;
And lo! in roses red the blood blooms fair,
And where the tears divine have fallen close by,
Spring up anemones, and stir all tremblingly.

I weep for Adonaïs--he is dead!
No more, O Cypris, weep thy wooer here!
Behold a bed of leaves! Lay down his head
As if he slept--as still, as fair, as dear,--
In softest garments let his limbs appear,
As when on golden couch his sweetest sleep
He slept the livelong night, thy heart anear;
Oh, beautiful in death though sad he keep,
No more to wake when Morning o'er the hills doth creep.

And over him the freshest flowers fling--
Ah me! all flowers are withered quite away
And drop their petals wan! yet, perfumes bring
And sprinkle round, and sweetest balsams lay;--
Nay, perish perfumes since thine shall not stay!
In purple mantle lies he, and around,
The weeping Loves his weapons disarray,
His sandals loose, with water bathe his wound,
And fan him with soft wings that move without a sound.

The Loves for Cytherea raise the wail.
Hymen from quenched torch no light can shake.
His shredded wreath lies withered all and pale;
His joyous song, alas, harsh discords break!
And saddest wail of all, the Graces wake;
"The beauteous Adonaïs! He is dead!"
And sigh the Muses, "Stay but for our sake!"
Yet would he come, Persephone is dead;--
Cease, Cypris! Sad the days repeat their faithful tread!

Paraphrase of Anna C. Brackett, in Journal of Speculative Philosophy.

HESPER

Hesper, thou golden light of happy love,
Hesper, thou holy pride of purple eve,
Moon among stars, but star beside the moon,
Hail, friend! and since the young moon sets to-night
Too soon below the mountains, lend thy lamp
And guide me to the shepherd whom I love.
No theft I purpose; no wayfaring man
Belated would I watch and make my prey:
Love is my goal; and Love how fair it is,
When friend meets friend sole in the silent night,
Thou knowest, Hesper!

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL

(1850-)

Those to whom the discovery of a relishing new literary flavor means the permanent annexation of a new tract of enjoyment have not forgotten what happened in 1885. A slender 16mo volume entitled "Obiter Dicta", containing seven short literary and biographic essays, came out in that year, anonymous and unheralded, to make such way as it might among a book-whelmed generation. It had no novelty of subject to help it to a hearing; the themes were largely the most written-out, in all seeming, that could have been selected,--a few great orthodox names on which opinion was closed and analysis exhausted. Browning, Carlyle, Charles Lamb, and John Henry Newman are indeed very beacons to warn off the sated bookman. A paper on Benvenuto Cellini, one on Actors, and one on Falstaff (by another hand) closed the list. Yet a few weeks made it the literary event of the day. Among epicures of good reading the word swiftly passed along that here was a new sensation of unusually satisfying charm and freshness. It was a _tour de force_ like the "Innocents Abroad", a journey full of new sights over the most staled and beaten of tracks. The triumph was all the author's own.

Two years later came another volume as a "Second Series", of the same general character but superior to the first. Among the subjects of its eleven papers were Milton, Pope, Johnson, Burke, Lamb again, and Emerson; with some general essays, including that on "The Office of Literature", given below.

In 1892 appeared "Res Judicatæ", really a third volume of the same series, and perhaps even richer in matter and more acute and original in thought. Its first two articles, prepared as lectures on Samuel Richardson and Edward Gibbon, are indeed his high-water, mark in both substance and style. Cowper, George Borrow, Newman again, Lamb a third time (and fresh as ever), Hazlitt, Matthew Arnold, and Sainte-Beuve are brought in, and some excellent literary miscellanea.

A companion volume called 'Men, Women, and Books' is disappointing because composed wholly of short newspaper articles: Mr. Birrell's special quality needs space to make itself felt. He needs a little time to get up steam, a little room to unpack his wares; he is no pastel writer, who can say his say in a paragraph and runs dry in two. Hence these snippy editorials do him no justice: he is obliged to stop every time just as he is getting ready to say something worth while. They are his, and therefore readable and judicious; but they give no idea of his best powers.

He has also written a life of Charlotte Brontë. But he holds his place in the front rank of recent essayists by the three 'Obiter Dicta' and 'Res Judicatæ' volumes of manly, luminous, penetrating essays, full of racy humor and sudden wit; of a generous appreciativeness that seeks always for the vital principle which gave the writer his hold on men; still more, of a warm humanity and a sure instinct for all the higher and finer things of the spirit which never fail to strike chords in the heart as well as the brain. No writer's work leaves a better taste in the mouth; he makes us think better of the world, of righteousness, of ourselves. Yet no writer is less of a Puritan or a Philistine; none writes with less of pragmatic purpose or a less obtrusive load of positive fact. He scorns such overladen pedantry, and never loses a chance to lash it. He tells us that he has "never been inside the reading-room of the British Museum," and "expounds no theory save the unworthy one that literature ought to please." He says the one question about a book which is to be part of _literature_ is, "Does it read?" that "no one is under any obligation to read any one else's book," and therefore it is a writer's business to make himself welcome to readers; that he does not care whether an author was happy or not, he wants the author to make him happy. He puts his theory in practice: he makes himself welcome as a companion at once stimulating and restful, of humane spirit and elevated ideals, of digested knowledge and original thought, of an insight which is rarely other than kindly and a deep humor which never lapses into cynicism.

Mr. Birrell helps to justify Walter Bagehot's dictum that the only man who can write books well is one who knows practical life well; but still there are congruities in all things, and one feels a certain shock of incongruity in finding that this man of books and purveyor of light genial book-talk, who can hardly write a line without giving it a quality of real literary savor, is a prominent lawyer and member of Parliament, and has written a law book which ranks among recognized legal authorities. This is a series of lectures delivered in 1896, and collected into a volume on 'The Duties and Liabilities of Trustees.' But some of the surprise vanishes on reading the book: even as 'Alice in Wonderland' shows on every page the work of a logician trained to use words precisely and criticize their misuse, so in exactly the opposite way this book is full of the shrewd judgment, the knowledge of life, and even the delightful humor which form so much of Birrell's best equipment for a man of letters.

Mr. Birrell's work is not merely good reading, but is a mental clarifier and tonic. We are much better critics of other writers through his criticisms on his selected subjects. After every reading of 'Obiter Dicta' we feel ashamed of crass and petty prejudice, in the face of his lessons in disregarding surface mannerisms for the sake of vital qualities. Only in one case does he lose his impartiality: he so objects to treating Emerson with fairness that he even goes out of his way to berate his idol Matthew Arnold for setting Emerson aloft. But what he says of George Borrow is vastly more true of himself: he is one of the writers we cannot afford to be angry with.

DR. JOHNSON

"Criticism," writes Johnson in the 60th Idler, "is a study by which men grow important and formidable at a very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labor of learning those sciences which may by mere labor be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured: but every man can exert such judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critick."

To proceed with our task by the method of comparison is to pursue a course open to grave objection; yet it is forced upon us when we find, as we lately did, a writer in the Times newspaper, in the course of a not very discriminating review of Mr. Froude's recent volumes, casually remarking, as if it admitted of no more doubt than the day's price of consols, that Carlyle was a greater man than Johnson. It is a good thing to be positive. To be positive in your opinions and selfish in your habits is the best recipe, if not for happiness, at all events for that far more attainable commodity, comfort, with which we are acquainted. "A noisy man," sang poor Cowper, who could not bear anything louder than the hissing of a tea-urn, "a noisy man is always in the right," and a positive man can seldom be proved wrong. Still, in literature it is very desirable to preserve a moderate measure of independence, and we therefore make bold to ask whether it is as plain as the "old hill of Howth" that Carlyle was a greater man than Johnson? Is not the precise contrary the truth? No abuse of Carlyle need be looked for, here or from me. When a man of genius and of letters happens to have any striking virtues, such as purity, temperance, honesty, the novel task of dwelling on them has such attraction for us that we are content to leave the elucidation of his faults to his personal friends, and to stern, unbending moralists like Mr. Edmund Yates and the World newspaper. To love Carlyle is, thanks to Mr. Froude's superhuman ideal of friendship, a task of much heroism, almost meriting a pension; still it is quite possible for the candid and truth-loving soul. But a greater than Johnson he most certainly was not.

There is a story in Boswell of an ancient beggar-woman who, whilst asking an alms of the Doctor, described herself to him, in a lucky moment for her pocket, as "an old struggler." Johnson, his biographer tells us, was visibly affected. The phrase stuck to his memory, and was frequently applied to himself. "I too," so he would say, "am an old struggler." So too, in all conscience, was Carlyle. The struggles of Johnson have long been historical; those of Carlyle have just become so. We are interested in both. To be indifferent would be inhuman. Both men had great endowments, tempestuous natures, hard lots. They were not amongst Dame Fortune's favorites. They had to fight their way. What they took they took by storm. But--and here is a difference indeed--Johnson came off victorious, Carlyle did not.

Boswell's book is an arch of triumph, through which, as we read, we see his hero passing into eternal fame, to take up his place with those--

"Dead but sceptred sovereigns who still rule
Our spirits from their urns."

Froude's book is a tomb over which the lovers of Carlyle's genius will never cease to shed tender but regretful tears.

We doubt whether there is in English literature a more triumphant book than Boswell's. What materials for tragedy are wanting? Johnson was a man of strong passions, unbending spirit, violent temper, as poor as a church-mouse, and as proud as the proudest of Church dignitaries; endowed with the strength of a coal-heaver, the courage of a lion, and the tongue of Dean Swift, he could knock down booksellers and silence bargees; he was melancholy almost to madness, "radically wretched," indolent, blinded, diseased. Poverty was long his portion; not that genteel poverty that is sometimes behindhand with its rent, but that hungry poverty that does not know where to look for its dinner. Against all these things had this "old struggler" to contend; over all these things did this "old struggler" prevail. Over even the fear of death, the giving up of "this intellectual being," which had haunted his gloomy fancy for a lifetime, he seems finally to have prevailed, and to have met his end as a brave man should.

Carlyle, writing to his wife, says, and truthfully enough, "The more the devil worries me the more I wring him by the nose;" but then if the devil's was the only nose that was wrung in the transaction, why need Carlyle cry out so loud? After buffeting one's way through the storm-tossed pages of Froude's (Carlyle,)--in which the universe is stretched upon the rack because food disagrees with man and cocks crow,--with what thankfulness and reverence do we read once again the letter in which Johnson tells Mrs. Thrale how he has been called to endure, not dyspepsia or sleeplessness, but paralysis itself:--

"On Monday I sat for my picture, and walked a considerable way with little inconvenience. In the afternoon and evening I felt myself light and easy, and began to plan schemes of life. Thus I went to bed, and in a short time waked and sat up, as has long been my custom; when I felt a confusion in my head which lasted, I suppose, about half a minute; I was alarmed, and prayed God that however much He might afflict my body He would spate my understanding.... Soon after I perceived that I had suffered a paralytic stroke, and that my speech was taken from me. I had no pain, and so little dejection in this dreadful state that I wondered at my own apathy, and considered that perhaps death itself, when it should come, would excite less horror than seems now to attend it. In order to rouse the vocal organs I took two drams.... I then went to bed, and strange as it may seem I think slept. When I saw light it was time I should contrive what I should do. Though God stopped my speech, He left me my hand. I enjoyed a mercy which was not granted to my dear friend Lawrence, who now perhaps overlooks me as I am writing, and rejoices that I have what he wanted. My first note was necessarily to my servant, who came in talking, and could not immediately comprehend why he should read what I put into his hands.... How this will be received by you I know not. I hope you will sympathize with me; but perhaps

"'My mistress, gracious, mild, and good,
Cries--Is he dumb? 'Tis time he should.'

"I suppose you may wish to know how my disease is treated by the physicians. They put a blister upon my back, and two from my ear to my throat, one on a side. The blister on the back has done little, and those on the throat have not risen. I bullied and bounced (it sticks to our last sand), and compelled the apothecary to make his salve according to the Edinburgh dispensatory, that it might adhere better. I have now two on my own prescription. They likewise give me salt of hartshorn, which I take with no great confidence; but I am satisfied that what can be done is done for me. I am almost ashamed of this querulous letter, but now it is written let it go."

This is indeed tonic and bark for the mind.

If, irritated by a comparison that ought never to have been thrust upon us, we ask why it is that the reader of Boswell finds it as hard to help loving Johnson as the reader of Froude finds it hard to avoid disliking Carlyle, the answer must be that whilst the elder man of letters was full to overflowing with the milk of human kindness, the younger one was full to overflowing with something not nearly so nice; and that whilst Johnson was pre-eminently a reasonable man, reasonable in all his demands and expectations, Carlyle was the most unreasonable mortal that ever exhausted the patience of nurse, mother, or wife.

Of Dr. Johnson's affectionate nature nobody has written with nobler appreciation than Carlyle himself. "Perhaps it is this Divine feeling of affection, throughout manifested, that principally attracts us to Johnson. A true brother of men is he, and filial lover of the earth."

The day will come when it will be recognized that Carlyle, as a critic, is to be judged by what he himself corrected for the press, and not by splenetic entries in diaries, or whimsical extravagances in private conversation.

Of Johnson's reasonableness nothing need be said, except that it is patent everywhere. His wife's judgment was a sound one--"He is the most sensible man I ever met."

As for his brutality, of which at one time we used to hear a great deal, we cannot say of it what Hookham Frere said of Lander's immorality, that it was--

"Mere imaginary classicality
Wholly devoid of criminal reality."

It was nothing of the sort. Dialectically the great Doctor was a great brute. The fact is, he had so accustomed himself to wordy warfare that he lost all sense of moral responsibility, and cared as little for men's feelings as a Napoleon did for their lives. When the battle was over, the Doctor frequently did what no soldier ever did that I have heard tell of,--apologized to his victims and drank wine or lemonade with them. It must also be remembered that for the most part his victims sought him out. They came to be tossed and gored. And after all, are they so much to be pitied? They have our sympathy, and the Doctor has our applause. I am not prepared to say, with the simpering fellow with weak legs whom David Copperfield met at Mr. Waterbrook's dinner-table, that I would sooner be knocked down by a man with blood than picked up by a man without any; but, argumentatively speaking, I think it would be better for a man's reputation to be knocked down by Dr. Johnson than picked up by Mr. Froude.

Johnson's claim to be the best of our talkers cannot, on our present materials, be contested. For the most part we have only talk about other talkers. Johnson's is matter of record. Carlyle no doubt was a great talker--no man talked against talk or broke silence to praise it more eloquently than he, but unfortunately none of it is in evidence. All that is given us is a sort of Commination Service writ large. We soon weary of it. Man does not live by curses alone.

An unhappier prediction of a boy's future was surely never made than that of Johnson's by his cousin, Mr. Cornelius Ford, who said to the infant Samuel, "You will make your way the more easily in the world as you are content to dispute no man's claim to conversation excellence, and they will, therefore, more willingly allow your pretensions as a writer." Unfortunate Mr. Ford! The man never breathed whose claim to conversation excellence Dr. Johnson did not dispute on every possible occasion; whilst, just because he was admittedly so good a talker, his pretensions as a writer have been occasionally slighted.

Johnson's personal character has generally been allowed to stand high. It, however, has not been submitted to recent tests. To be the first to "smell a fault" is the pride of the modern biographer. Boswell's artless pages afford useful hints not lightly to be disregarded. During some portion of Johnson's married life he had lodgings, first at Greenwich, afterwards at Hampstead. But he did not always go home o' nights; sometimes preferring to roam the streets with that vulgar ruffian Savage, who was certainly no fit company for him. He once actually quarreled with Tetty, who, despite her ridiculous name, was a very sensible woman with a very sharp tongue, and for a season, like stars, they dwelt apart. Of the real merits of this dispute we must resign ourselves to ignorance. The materials for its discussion do not exist; even Croker could not find them. Neither was our great moralist as sound as one would have liked to see him in the matter of the payment of small debts. When he came to die, he remembered several of these outstanding accounts; but what assurance have we that he remembered them all? One sum of £10 he sent across to the honest fellow from whom he had borrowed it, with an apology for his delay; which, since it had extended over a period of twenty years, was not superfluous. I wonder whether he ever repaid Mr. Dilly the guinea he once borrowed of him to give to a very small boy who had just been apprenticed to a printer. If he did not, it was a great shame. That he was indebted to Sir Joshua in a small loan is apparent from the fact that it was one of his three dying requests to that great man that he should release him from it, as, of course, the most amiable of painters did. The other two requests, it will be remembered, were to read his Bible, and not to use his brush on Sundays. The good Sir Joshua gave the desired promises with a full heart, for these two great men loved one another; but subsequently discovered the Sabbatical restriction not a little irksome, and after a while resumed his former practice, arguing with himself that the Doctor really had no business to extract any such promise. The point is a nice one, and perhaps ere this the two friends have met and discussed it in the Elysian fields. If so, I hope the Doctor, grown "angelical," kept his temper with the mild shade of Reynolds better than on the historical occasion when he discussed with him the question of "strong drinks."

Against Garrick, Johnson undoubtedly cherished a smoldering grudge, which, however, he never allowed any one but himself to fan into flame. His pique was natural. Garrick had been his pupil at Edial, near Lichfield; they had come up to town together with an easy united fortune of fourpence--"current coin o' the realm." Garrick soon had the world at his feet and garnered golden grain. Johnson became famous too, but remained poor and dingy. Garrick surrounded himself with what only money can buy, good pictures and rare books. Johnson cared nothing for pictures--how should he? he could not see them; but he did care a great deal about books, and the pernickety little player was chary about lending his splendidly bound rarities to his quondam preceptor. Our sympathies in this matter are entirely with Garrick; Johnson was one of the best men that ever lived, but not to lend books to. Like Lady Slattern, he had a "most observant thumb." But Garrick had no real cause for complaint. Johnson may have soiled his folios and sneered at his trade, but in life Johnson loved Garrick, and in death embalmed his memory in a sentence which can only die with the English language:--"I am disappointed by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the gayety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure."

Will it be believed that puny critics have been found to quarrel with this colossal compliment on the poor pretext of its falsehood? Garrick's death, urge these dullards, could not possibly have eclipsed the gayety of nations, since he had retired from the stage months previous to his demise. When will mankind learn that literature is one thing, and sworn testimony another? ...

Johnson the author is not always fairly treated. Phrases are convenient things to hand about, and it is as little the custom to inquire into their truth as it is to read the letterpress on bank-notes. We are content to count bank-notes and to repeat phrases. One of these phrases is, that whilst everybody reads Boswell, nobody reads Johnson. The facts are otherwise. Everybody does not read Boswell, and a great many people do read Johnson. If it be asked, What do the general public know of Johnson's nine volumes octavo? I reply, Beshrew the general public! What in the name of the Bodleian has the general public got to do with literature? The general public subscribes to Mudie, and has its intellectual, like its lacteal sustenance, sent round to it in carts. On Saturdays these carts, laden with "recent works in circulation," traverse the Uxbridge Road; on Wednesdays they toil up Highgate Hill, and if we may believe the reports of travelers, are occasionally seen rushing through the wilds of Camberwell and bumping over Blackheath. It is not a question of the general public, but of the lover of letters. Do Mr. Browning, Mr. Arnold, Mr. Lowell, Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Stephen, Mr. Morley, know their Johnson? "To doubt would be disloyalty." And what these big men know in their big way, hundreds of little men know in their little way. We have no writer with a more genuine literary flavor about him than the great Cham of literature. No man of letters loved letters better than he. He knew literature in all its branches--he had read books, he had written books, he had sold books, he had bought books, and he had borrowed them. Sluggish and inert in all other directions, he pranced through libraries. He loved a catalogue; he delighted in an index. He was, to employ a happy phrase of Dr. Holmes, at home amongst books as a stable-boy is amongst horses. He cared intensely about the future of literature and the fate of literary men. "I respect Millar," he once exclaimed; "he has raised the price of literature." Now Millar was a Scotchman. Even Horne Tooke was not to stand in the pillory: "No, no, the dog has too much literature for that." The only time the author of 'Rasselas' met the author of the 'Wealth of Nations' witnessed a painful scene. The English moralist gave the Scotch one the lie direct, and the Scotch moralist applied to the English one a phrase which would have done discredit to the lips of a costermonger; but this notwithstanding, when Boswell reported that Adam Smith preferred rhyme to blank verse, Johnson hailed the news as enthusiastically as did Cedric the Saxon the English origin of the bravest knights in the retinue of the Norman king. "Did Adam say that?" he shouted: "I love him for it. I could hug him!" Johnson no doubt honestly believed he held George III. in reverence, but really he did not care a pin's fee for all the crowned heads of Europe. All his reverence was reserved for "poor scholars." When a small boy in a wherry, on whom had devolved the arduous task of rowing Johnson and his biographer across the Thames, said he would give all he had to know about the Argonauts, the Doctor was much pleased, and gave him, or got Boswell to give him, a double fare. He was ever an advocate of the spread of knowledge amongst all classes and both sexes. His devotion to letters has received its fitting reward, the love and respect of all "lettered hearts."

THE OFFICE OF LITERATURE

Dr. John Brown's pleasant story has become well known, of the countryman who, being asked to account for the gravity of his dog, replied, "Oh, sir! life is full of sairiousness to him--he can just never get eneugh o' fechtin'." Something of the spirit of this saddened dog seems lately to have entered into the very people who ought to be freest from it,--our men of letters. They are all very serious and very quarrelsome. To some of them it is dangerous even to allude. Many are wedded to a theory or period, and are the most uxorious of husbands--ever ready to resent an affront to their lady. This devotion makes them very grave, and possibly very happy after a pedantic fashion. One remembers what Hazlitt, who was neither happy nor pedantic, has said about pedantry:--

"The power of attaching an interest to the most trifling or painful pursuits is one of the greatest happinesses of our nature. The common soldier mounts the breach with joy, the miser deliberately starves himself to death, the mathematician sets about extracting the cube-root with a feeling of enthusiasm, and the lawyer sheds tears of delight over 'Coke upon Lyttleton.' He who is not in some measure a pedant, though he may be a wise, cannot be a very happy man."

Possibly not; but then we are surely not content that our authors should be pedants in order that they may be happy and devoted. As one of the great class for whose sole use and behalf literature exists,--the class of readers,--I protest that it is to me a matter of indifference whether an author is happy or not. I want him to make me happy. That is his office. Let him discharge it.

I recognize in this connection the corresponding truth of what Sydney Smith makes his Peter Plymley say about the private virtues of Mr. Perceval, the Prime Minister:--

"You spend a great deal of ink about the character of the present Prime Minister. Grant all that you write--I say, I fear that he will ruin Ireland, and pursue a line of policy destructive to the true interests of his country; and then you tell me that he is faithful to Mrs. Perceval and kind to the Master Percevals. I should prefer that he whipped his boys and saved his country."

We should never confuse functions or apply wrong tests. What can books do for us? Dr. Johnson, the least pedantic of men, put the whole matter into a nut-shell (a cocoa-nut shell, if you will--Heaven forbid that I should seek to compress the great Doctor within any narrower limits than my metaphor requires) when he wrote that a book should teach us either to enjoy life or endure it. "Give us enjoyment!" "Teach us endurance!" Hearken to the ceaseless demand and the perpetual prayer of an ever unsatisfied and always suffering humanity!

How is a book to answer the ceaseless demand?

Self-forgetfulness is the essence of enjoyment, and the author who would confer pleasure must possess the art, or know the trick, of destroying for the time the reader's own personality. Undoubtedly the easiest way of doing this is by the creation of a host of rival personalities--hence the number and the popularity of novels. Whenever a novelist fails, his book is said to flag; that is, the reader suddenly (as in skating) comes bump down upon his own personality, and curses the unskillful author. No lack of characters, and continual motion, is the easiest recipe for a novel, which like a beggar should always be kept "moving on." Nobody knew this better than Fielding, whose novels, like most good ones, are full of inns.

When those who are addicted to what is called "improving reading" inquire of you petulantly why you cannot find change of company and scene in books of travel, you should answer cautiously that when books of travel are full of inns, atmosphere, and motion, they are as good as any novel; nor is there any reason in the nature of things why they should not always be so, though experience proves the contrary.

The truth or falsehood of a book is immaterial. George Borrow's 'Bible in Spain' is, I suppose, true; though now that I come to think of it in what is to me a new light, one remembers that it contains some odd things. But was not Borrow the accredited agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society? Did he not travel (and he had a free hand) at their charges? Was he not befriended by our minister at Madrid, Mr. Villiers, subsequently Earl of Clarendon in the peerage of England? It must be true: and yet at this moment I would as lief read a chapter of the 'Bible in Spain' as I would 'Gil Bias'; nay, I positively would give the preference to Señor Giorgio. Nobody can sit down to read Borrow's books without as completely forgetting himself as if he were a boy in the forest with Gurth and Wamba.

Borrow is provoking and has his full share of faults, and though the owner of a style, is capable of excruciating offences. His habitual use of the odious word "individual" as a noun-substantive (seven times in three pages of 'The Romany Rye') elicits the frequent groan, and he is certainly once guilty of calling fish the "finny tribe." He believed himself to be animated by an intense hatred of the Church of Rome, and disfigures many of his pages by Lawrence-Boythorn-like tirades against that institution; but no Catholic of sense need on this account deny himself the pleasure of reading Borrow, whose one dominating passion was _camaraderie_, and who hob-a-nobbed in the friendliest spirit with priest and gipsy in a fashion as far beyond praise as it is beyond description by any pen other than his own. Hail to thee, George Borrow! Cervantes himself, 'Gil Bias,' do not more effectually carry their readers into the land of the Cid than does this miraculous agent of the Bible Society, by favor of whose pleasantness we can, any hour of the week, enter Villafranca by night, or ride into Galicia on an Andalusian stallion (which proved to be a foolish thing to do), without costing anybody a _peseta_, and at no risk whatever to our necks--be they long or short.

Cooks, warriors, and authors must be judged by the effects they produce: toothsome dishes, glorious victories, pleasant books--these are our demands. We have nothing to do with ingredients, tactics, or methods. We have no desire to be admitted into the kitchen, the council, or the study. The cook may clean her saucepans how she pleases--the warrior place his men as he likes--the author handle his material or weave his plot as best he can--when the dish is served we only ask, Is it good? when the battle has been fought, Who won? when the book comes out, Does it read?

Authors ought not to be above being reminded that it is their first duty to write agreeably; some very disagreeable ones have succeeded in doing so, and there is therefore no need for any one to despair. Every author, be he grave or gay, should try to make his book as ingratiating as possible. Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable. Nobody is under any obligation to read any other man's book.

Literature exists to please,--to lighten the burden of men's lives; to make them for a short while forget their sorrows and their sins, their silenced hearths, their disappointed hopes, their grim futures--and those men of letters are the best loved who have best performed literature's truest office. Their name is happily legion, and I will conclude these disjointed remarks by quoting from one of them, as honest a parson as ever took tithe or voted for the Tory candidate, the Rev. George Crabbe. Hear him in 'The Frank Courtship':--

"I must be loved," said Sybil; "I must see
The man in terrors, who aspires to me:
At my forbidding frown his heart must ache,
His tongue must falter, and his frame must shake;
And if I grant him at my feet to kneel,
What trembling fearful pleasure must he feel!
Nay, such the rapture that my smiles inspire
That reason's self must for a time retire."
"Alas! for good Josiah," said the dame,
"These wicked thoughts would fill his soul with shame;
He kneel and tremble at a thing of dust!
He cannot, child:"--the child replied, "He must."

Were an office to be opened for the insurance of literary reputations, no critic at all likely to be in the society's service would refuse the life of a poet who could write like Crabbe. Cardinal Newman, Mr. Leslie Stephen, Mr. Swinburne, are not always of the same way of thinking, but all three hold the one true faith about Crabbe.

But even were Crabbe now left unread, which is very far from being the case, his would be an enviable fame--for was he not one of the favored poets of Walter Scott, and whenever the closing scene of the great magician's life is read in the pages of Lockhart, must not Crabbe's name be brought upon the reader's quivering lip?

To soothe the sorrow of the soothers of sorrow, to bring tears to the eyes and smiles to the cheeks of the lords of human smiles and tears, is no mean ministry, and it is Crabbe's.

TRUTH-HUNTING

Is truth-hunting one of those active mental habits which, as Bishop Butler tells us, intensify their effects by constant use; and are weak convictions, paralyzed intellects, and laxity of opinions amongst the effects of Truth-hunting on the majority of minds? These are not unimportant questions.

Let us consider briefly the probable effects of speculative habits on conduct.

The discussion of a question of conduct has the great charm of justifying, if indeed not requiring, personal illustration; and this particular question is well illustrated by instituting a comparison between the life and character of Charles Lamb and those of some of his distinguished friends.

Personal illustration, especially when it proceeds by way of comparison, is always dangerous, and the dangers are doubled when the subjects illustrated and compared are favorite authors. It behoves us to proceed warily in this matter. A dispute as to the respective merits of Gray and Collins has been known to result in a visit to an attorney and the revocation of a will. An avowed inability to see anything in Miss Austen's novels is reported to have proved destructive of an otherwise good chance of an Indian judgeship. I believe, however, I run no great risk in asserting that, of all English authors, Charles Lamb is the one loved most warmly and emotionally by his admirers, amongst whom I reckon only those who are as familiar with the four volumes of his 'Life and Letters' as with 'Elia.'

But how does he illustrate the particular question now engaging our attention?

Speaking of his sister Mary, who, as every one knows, throughout 'Elia' is called his cousin Bridget, he says:--

"It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I could have wished, to have had for her associates and mine free-thinkers, leaders and disciples of novel philosophies and systems; but she neither wrangles with nor accepts their opinions."

Nor did her brother. He lived his life cracking his little jokes and reading his great folios, neither wrangling with nor accepting the opinions of the friends he loved to see around him. To a contemporary stranger it might well have appeared as if his life were a frivolous and useless one as compared with those of these philosophers and thinkers. _They_ discussed their great schemes and affected to prove deep mysteries, and were constantly asking, "What is truth?" _He_ sipped his glass, shuffled his cards, and was content with the humbler inquiry, "What are trumps?" But to us, looking back upon that little group, and knowing what we now do about each member of it, no such mistake is possible. To us it is plain beyond all question that, judged by whatever standard of excellence it is possible for any reasonable human being to take, Lamb stands head and shoulders a better man than any of them. No need to stop to compare him with Godwin, or Hazlitt, or Lloyd; let us boldly put him in the scales with one whose fame is in all the churches--with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "logician, metaphysician, bard."

There are some men whom to abuse is pleasant. Coleridge is not one of them. How gladly we would love the author of 'Christabel' if we could! But the thing is flatly impossible. His was an unlovely character. The sentence passed upon him by Mr. Matthew Arnold (parenthetically, in one of the 'Essays in Criticism')--"Coleridge had no morals"--is no less just than pitiless. As we gather information about him from numerous quarters, we find it impossible to resist the conclusion that he was a man neglectful of restraint, irresponsive to the claims of those who had every claim upon him, willing to receive, slow to give.

In early manhood Coleridge planned a Pantisocracy where all the virtues were to thrive. Lamb did something far more difficult: he played cribbage every night with his imbecile father, whose constant stream of querulous talk and fault-finding might well have goaded a far stronger man into practicing and justifying neglect.

That Lamb, with all his admiration for Coleridge, was well aware of dangerous tendencies in his character, is made apparent by many letters, notably by one written in 1796, in which he says:--

"O my friend, cultivate the filial feelings! and let no man think himself released from the kind charities of relationship: these shall give him peace at the last; these are the best foundation for every species of benevolence. I rejoice to hear that you are reconciled with all your relations."

This surely is as valuable an "aid to reflection" as any supplied by the Highgate seer.

Lamb gave but little thought to the wonderful difference between the "reason" and the "understanding." He preferred old plays--an odd diet, some may think, on which to feed the virtues; but however that may be, the noble fact remains, that he, poor, frail boy! (for he was no more, when trouble first assailed him) stooped down, and without sigh or sign took upon his own shoulders the whole burden of a lifelong sorrow.

Coleridge married. Lamb, at the bidding of duty, remained single, wedding himself to the sad fortunes of his father and sister. Shall we pity him? No; he had his reward--the surpassing reward that is only within the power of literature to bestow. It was Lamb, and not Coleridge, who wrote 'Dream-Children: a Reverie':--

"Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W---- n; and as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness and difficulty and denial meant in maidens--when, suddenly turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of representment that I became in doubt which of them stood before me, or whose that bright hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding and still receding, till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech. 'We are not of Alice nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing, less than nothing, and dreams. We are only _what might have been_.'"

Godwin! Hazlitt! Coleridge! Where now are their "novel philosophies and systems"? Bottled moonshine, which does _not_ improve by keeping.

"Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust."

Were we disposed to admit that Lamb would in all probability have been as good a man as every one agrees he was--as kind to his father, as full of self-sacrifice for the sake of his sister, as loving and ready a friend--even though he had paid more heed to current speculations, it is yet not without use in a time like this, when so much stress is laid upon anxious inquiry into the mysteries of soul and body, to point out how this man attained to a moral excellence denied to his speculative contemporaries; performed duties from which they, good men as they were, would one and all have shrunk: how, in short, he contrived to achieve what no one of his friends, not even the immaculate Wordsworth or the precise Southey, achieved--the living of a life the records of which are inspiriting to read, and are indeed "the presence of a good diffused"; and managed to do it all without either "wrangling with or accepting" the opinions that "hurtled in the air" about him.

BENVENUTO CELLINI

From 'Obiter Dicta'

What a liar was Benvenuto Cellini!--who can believe a word he says? To hang a dog on his oath would be a judicial murder. Yet when we lay down his Memoirs and let our thoughts travel back to those far-off days he tells us of, there we see him standing, in bold relief, against the black sky of the past, the very man he was. Not more surely did he, with that rare skill of his, stamp the image of Clement VII. on the papal currency, than he did the impress of his own singular personality upon every word he spoke and every sentence he wrote.

We ought, of course, to hate him, but do we? A murderer he has written himself down. A liar he stands self-convicted of being. Were any one in the nether world bold enough to call him thief, it may be doubted whether Rhadamanthus would award him the damages for which we may be certain he would loudly clamor. Why do we not hate him? Listen to him:--

"Upon my uttering these words, there was a general outcry, the noblemen affirming that I promised too much. But one of them, who was a great philosopher, said in my favor, 'From the admirable symmetry of shape and happy physiognomy of this young man, I venture to engage that he will perform all he promises, and more.' The Pope replied, 'I am of the same opinion;' then calling Trajano, his gentleman of the bedchamber, he ordered him to fetch me five hundred ducats."

And so it always ended: suspicions, aroused most reasonably, allayed most unreasonably, and then--ducats. He deserved hanging, but he died in his bed. He wrote his own memoirs after a fashion that ought to have brought posthumous justice upon him, and made them a literary gibbet, on which he should swing, a creaking horror, for all time; but nothing of the sort has happened. The rascal is so symmetrical, and his physiognomy, as it gleams upon us through the centuries, so happy, that we cannot withhold our ducats, though we may accompany the gift with a shower of abuse.

This only proves the profundity of an observation made by Mr. Bagehot--a man who carried away into the next world more originality of thought than is now to be found in the Three Estates of the Realm. Whilst remarking upon the extraordinary reputation of the late Francis Horner and the trifling cost he was put to in supporting it, Mr. Bagehot said that it proved the advantage of "keeping an atmosphere."

The common air of heaven sharpens men's judgments. Poor Horner, but for that kept atmosphere of his always surrounding him, would have been bluntly asked "what he had done since he was breeched," and in reply he could only have muttered something about the currency. As for our special rogue Cellini, the question would probably have assumed this shape: "Rascal, name the crime you have not committed, and account for the omission."

But these awkward questions are not put to the lucky people who keep their own atmospheres. The critics, before they can get at them, have to step out of the every-day air, where only achievements count and the Decalogue still goes for something, into the kept atmosphere, which they have no sooner breathed than they begin to see things differently, and to measure the object thus surrounded with a tape of its own manufacture. Horner--poor, ugly, a man neither of words nor deeds--becomes one of our great men; a nation mourns his loss and erects his statue in the Abbey. Mr. Bagehot gives several instances of the same kind, but he does not mention Cellini, who is however in his own way an admirable example.

You open his book--a Pharisee of the Pharisees. Lying, indeed! Why, you hate prevarication. As for murder, your friends know you too well to mention the subject in your hearing, except in immediate connection with capital punishment. You are of course willing to make some allowance for Cellini's time and place--the first half of the sixteenth century and Italy! "Yes," you remark, "Cellini shall have strict justice at my hands." So you say as you settle yourself in your chair and begin to read. We seem to hear the rascal laughing in his grave. His spirit breathes upon you from his book--peeps at you roguishly as you turn the pages. His atmosphere surrounds you; you smile when you ought to frown, chuckle when you should groan, and--oh, final triumph!--laugh aloud when, if you had a rag of principle left, you would fling the book into the fire. Your poor moral sense turns away with a sigh, and patiently awaits the conclusion of the second volume.

How cautiously does he begin, how gently does he win your ear by his seductive piety! I quote from Mr. Roscoe's translation:--

"It is a duty incumbent on upright and credible men of all ranks, who have performed anything noble or praiseworthy, to record, in their own writing, the events of their lives; yet they should not commence this honorable task before they have passed their fortieth year. Such at least is my opinion now that I have completed my fifty-eighth year, and am settled in Florence, where, considering the numerous ills that constantly attend human life, I perceive that I have never before been so free from vexations and calamities, or possessed of so great a share of content and health as at this period. Looking back on some delightful and happy events of my life, and on many misfortunes so truly overwhelming that the appalling retrospect makes me wonder how I have reached this age in vigor and prosperity, through God's goodness I have resolved to publish an account of my life; and ... I must, in commencing my narrative, satisfy the public on some few points to which its curiosity is usually directed; the first of which is to ascertain whether a man is descended from a virtuous and ancient family.... I shall therefore now proceed to inform the reader how it pleased God that I should come into the world."

So you read on page i; what you read on page 191 is this:--

"Just after sunset, about eight o'clock, as this musqueteer stood at his door with his sword in his hand, when he had done supper, I with great address came close up to him with a long dagger, and gave him a violent back-handed stroke, which I aimed at his neck. He instantly turned round, and the blow, falling directly upon his left shoulder, broke the whole bone of it; upon which he dropped his sword, quite overcome by the pain, and took to his heels. I pursued, and in four steps came up with him, when, raising the dagger over his head, which he lowered down, I hit him exactly upon the nape of the neck. The weapon penetrated so deep that, though I made a great effort to recover it again, I found it impossible."

So much for murder. Now for manslaughter, or rather Cellini's notion of manslaughter.

"Pompeo entered an apothecary's shop at the corner of the Chiavica, about some business, and stayed there for some time. I was told he had boasted of having bullied me, but it turned out a fatal adventure to him. Just as I arrived at that quarter he was coming out of the shop, and his bravoes, having made an opening, formed a circle round him. I thereupon clapped my hand to a sharp dagger, and having forced my way through the file of ruffians, laid hold of him by the throat, so quickly and with such presence of mind that there was not one of his friends could defend him. I pulled him towards me to give him a blow in front, but he turned his face about through excess of terror, so that I wounded him exactly under the ear; and upon repeating my blow, he fell down dead. It had never been my intention to kill him, but blows are not always under command."

We must all feel that it would never have done to have begun with these passages; but long before the 191st page has been reached, Cellini has retreated into his own atmosphere, and the scales of justice have been hopelessly tampered with.