This may fairly be claimed as a popular subject. It is one in which nearly everybody—perhaps everybody—is interested. There can surely be few, if any, who do not care about the outside of a book. Even if a man never opens a volume, he likes its exterior to be pleasing. Nay, there are books which may be said to be produced and utilized only for their outward garb. How often does one find a volume described as a charming one ‘for the table’! It is for the table that certain publications are destined. Enter a drawing-room, and you will find a few books scattered here and there ‘with artful care.’ I do not say they are intended never to be opened, but their primary function is to look nice—to ‘set off’ the table-cloth, and,generally, to give a bright appearance to the room. And their adaptability for this purpose is so widely recognised that you can scarcely go anywhere without coming across books of this complexion. You find them exposed to view in your doctor’s or your dentist’s ante-chamber; you find them placed before you, usually very much the worse for wear, in hotel waiting-rooms. And the instinct which prompts all this display is genuine enough. It is perfectly true—there is no furniture so agreeable to the eye as books. Nothing makes a room look at once so picturesque and home-like, if the volumes be but sufficiently varied in size and hue.
And that brings us in presence of a point of controversy. Ought there to be so much variety in the exteriors of books? Ought they to be ‘got up’ in so many different styles? Some people would answer these questions with a decided negative. These are the persons who like uniformity in their libraries, who would have one shelf look forall the world like the facsimile of the other. These are the persons who, almost as soon as they buy a book, are desirous to have it rebound after some fantastic notion of their own. There is a class of purchaser which revels in long lines of volumes in ‘full calf gilt.’ You see that sort of thing in most old-fashioned collections. And the effect is not bad in some respects. The rows look handsome enough. They have solidity and richness. Nor do I say that for a certain species of publication ‘full calf gilt’ is not a very judicious form of binding. One likes to see the quarterlies and higher-class monthlies done up in that style. It befits the seriousness of their contents. But do not let everything be put into ‘full calf gilt,’ solid and rich though it appears. Let us give full play to the element of variety. Let every book have an individuality, a character, of its own. Let us be able to identify it easily. Let it retain its original garb, so that we may always be able to distinguish it. Surely it is one of the greatest charms of a row of volumesthat each has its special features, and can readily be found when wanted.
It may be laid down as a general rule that the binding of a book should have a distinct reference to the nature of its contents. It should be appropriate to the author and to the subject. One sympathizes with Posthumus in the play, when, apostrophizing the volume in his prison, he says:
‘O rare one!Be not, as is our fangled world, a garmentNobler than that it covers: let thy effectsSo follow, to be most unlike our courtiers,As good as promise.’
Juliet, when she hears that Romeo has slain Tybalt, asks:
‘Was ever book containing such vile matterSo fairly bound?’
And in a like spirit Charles Lamb, in his well-known essay, complains of the ‘things in books’ clothing’ which, by reason of their inappropriate exteriors, afford so much disappointment to the reader. ‘To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, andhope it is some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what “seem its leaves,” to come bolt upon a withering population essay’—‘to expect a Steele or a Farquhar, and find—Adam Smith’—those, indeed, are doleful and dispiriting experiences, to which the unsuspecting student ought not in enlightened times to be subjected. If Mr. Gilbert’s Mikado be right in the view that the punishment ought to ‘fit the crime,’ so assuredly ought a book’s binding to fit the matter that is contained within it. It should be the outward sign of the inward grace.
I am ready to admit that, as a rule, this is so. In general, it is quite easy to tell the nature of a volume from its cover. And for this the publishers are greatly to be thanked. An amateur, publishing for himself, may every now and then insist upon dressing up the product of his brains incongruously; but, for the most part, the booksellers of to-day have a very excellent sense of what is fitting. The result is that those who care about books can differentiate them at a glance. They knowwhat is the approved style and line for biography and history, for poetry and fiction, for sermons, for gift-books, and soad infinitum. The ‘Life’ of So-and-so, and the ‘Annals’ of Such-and-such, are unmistakeable; they have respectability written on every corner and angle of them. The dull brown or the dull green is sufficiently obvious to everyone. And so with poetry. You know minor verse directly you see it. It has acachetconcerning which there can be no possible error. Happily, a Tennyson, a Browning, or a Swinburne is equally recognisable. A novel, of course, bears its character on its face. The three-volume form is notorious. But it scarcely matters what shape fiction may take. It can be identified by instinct, whether it be in yellow boards or in some more quiet habit. Sermons cannot be misapprehended; there is no fear of their being taken on a railway journey instead of the latest book of memoirs. As for gift-books, whether for boy or girl, adult or juvenile, they have their destination markedupon them in all the colours of the rainbow. Some complain of this, and call it vulgar. No doubt it often is so. But a gift-book is produced for a definite purpose, and the public would be surprised, and probably annoyed, if it were not as gorgeous in gold and colours as it was expected to be. Gold and colours are what are wanted, and the publishers do well to supply them.
One thing, perhaps, is too little considered—that a book is, in most cases, intended to be read and to be preserved. Certain books are not issued for that purpose, but are deliberately manufactured to be thrown away when read. The shilling novel, one may presume, is not designed for a permanent existence. If it is, why is it so frequently brought out in a paper cover, which either comes off altogether, or else curls up at the edges in the most irritating fashion? It must be confessed that a paper cover is an infliction, demanding the eventual destruction of the book or its prompt rebinding in more durable style. But it is not sufficient only that avolume should be bound. It should be bound so that it can be opened and perused with comfort. It should not be in too stiff a cover, or it will be awkward to hold. And the cover should not be in white or in too delicate a colour, or one will not care to handle it. Nor should a book be bound too limply, for the cover will soon begin to look shapeless. A parchment binding is charming to gaze at for a time, but how quickly its glory fades! I should say to the ordinary bookbuyer, in metaphoric language, Avoid the kickshaws and stick to the solids! In other words, leave the delicacies to the connoisseur, and give your attention to the books so clothed that you can read and keep them as you will.
Imake no allusion here to the heroine of Mr. Haggard’s well-known romance. What I am thinking of at the moment is not the impossible ‘She’ of recent fiction, but the ‘not impossible She’ of Master Richard Crashaw—the ‘perfect monster,’ in female form, who was to ‘command his heart and him,’ and whom he was good enough to sketch for us in advance within the limits of some forty verses—the damsel whose beauty was to
‘Owe not all its dutyTo gaudy tire or glistering shoe-tye;’
whose face was to be
‘Made upOut of no other shopThan what Nature’s white hand sets ope;’
who was to have ‘a well-tamed heart,’
‘Sidneian showersOf sweet discourse,’
and so on, and of whom the poet was so kind as to say that, if Time knew of anyone who answered the description,
‘Her that dares beWhat these lines wish to see—I seek no further—it is She.’
Master Crashaw is not the only man by many who in the past has been seduced into putting into words and verse the aspirations, on this subject, which filled his soul. It would probably be found, if anyone had the requisite patience to go through with it, that there has been scarcely a poet who has not thus given expression to his conception of an ideal woman and to his desire for her companionship. Much more numerous, to be sure, are the rapturous tributes which have been paid to actual persons of the other sex: the poetry of praise, as written by men of women, has not yet been exhausted, and probably never will be. But the ideal description has generally come first, and verynotable it has usually been. Sir Thomas Wyatt declared that
‘A face that should content me wondrous wellShould not be fair, but lovely to behold;Of lively look, all grief for to repel;With right good grace,’
et cætera. He further asserted that ‘her tress also should be of crispèd gold,’ and intimated graciously that
‘With wit, and these, perchance I might be tied,And knit again with knot that should not slide.’
His contemporary, Lord Surrey, included among ‘the means to attain happy life,’ ‘the faithful wife, without debate’—that is, I suppose, a lady without forty-parson-power of talk—a not impossible, nay, fairly common, She.
In a lyric by Beaumont and Fletcher, we find the supposed speaker giving utterance to a series of such wishes. ‘May I,’ he says, ‘find a woman fair, And her mind as clear as air!’
‘May I find a woman rich,And of not too high a pitch!...May I find a woman wise,And her falsehood not disguise!...May I find a woman kind,And not wavering like the wind!...’
And, in truth, he talks throughout as if he did not expect to discover any such rarity. Everyone knows the little poem in which Ben Jonson details his preferences in women’s dress, declaring that ‘a sweet disorder’ does more bewitch him ‘than when art Is too precise in every part.’ But elsewhere he paints for us, not a perfect feminine attire, but the faultless maid herself, as he would have her:
‘I would have her fair and witty,Favouring more of Court than City,A little proud, but full of pity,Light and humorous in her toying,Oft building hopes and soon destroying...Neither too easy nor too hard,All extremes I would have barr’d.’
That, it would seem, was rare Ben’s ideal.
Carew, it is notorious, professed to despise ‘lovely cheeks or lips or eyes,’ if they were not combined with ‘A smooth and steadfast mind, Gentle thoughts, and calm desires.’ A rosy cheek, a coral lip, and evenstar-like eyes, as he sagely said, would waste away. And in this somewhat priggish, and perhaps not wholly sincere, vein, he finds a rival in the anonymous bard who declared that he did not demand
‘A crystal brow, the moon’s despair,Nor the snow’s daughter, a white hand,Nor mermaid’s yellow pride of hair,’
and so on, but instead,
‘A tender heart, a loyal mind,Which with temptation I would trust,Yet never link’d with error find—‘One in whose gentle bosom ICould pour my secret heart of woes,Like the care-burthen’d honey-flyThat hides his murmurs in the rose.’
So Bedingfield, conceding to friend Damon ‘the nymph that sparkles in her dress,’ avows his own fondness for the maid ‘whose cheeks the hand of Nature paints.’ Of this young person he says:
‘No art she knows or seeks to know;No charm to wealthy pride will owe;No gems, no gold she needs to wear;She shines intrinsically fair.’
Cowley, it will be remembered, in sketching his notion of true happiness, included in it the picture of
‘A mistress moderately fair,And good as guardian angels are,Only beloved and loving me!’
With that ‘one dear She’—and a few other things—he thought he could get on pretty comfortably. But probably at once the most obliging and most exigent of modern lovers was the sentimental gentleman to whose feelings Mrs. Bowen-Graves (‘Stella’) gave appropriate voice in the over-familiar ‘My Queen.’
‘I will not dream of her tall and stately—She that I love may be fairy light;’
nay, more:
‘I will not say she should walk sedately—Whatever she does, it will sure be right.‘And she may be humble or proud, my lady,Or that sweet calm which is just between’
(as if anyone could be a ‘sweet calm’!); moreover:
‘Whether her birth be noble or lowly,I care no more than the spirit above;’
but there is at least one point upon which this gentleman insists:
‘She must be courteous, she must be holy,Pure in her spirit, that maiden I love’—
and, being that, she may depend upon the stars falling, and the angels weeping, ere he ceases to love her, his Queen, his Queen!
Ah! the poets have much to answer for. Here is Mr. Longfellow assuring his readers that
‘No one is so utterly desolate,But some heart, though unknown,Responds unto his own;’
and here is Sir Edwin Arnold declaring, with equal confidence, that
‘Somewhere there waiteth in this world of oursFor one lone soul another lonely soul’—
et cætera, et cætera. Is it any wonder that, in the face of such encouragement, young men go on dreaming, each of thedimidium suæ animæwhom he is to meet by-and-by, and framing to that end all sorts of beautifulideals? It may be that the Shes thus dreamed of are ‘not impossible’—they may ‘arrive;’ but it is as well not to be too sanguine. And, above all, it is as well not to draw too extravagant a picture, if only because you may not be worthy of the original when you see it. Corydon is too disposed to expect in Phyllis charms and virtues for which he might find it difficult to show counterparts in himself. If the lady is to be the pattern of beauty and of goodness, ought not the gentleman to bring an equal amount of capital into the matrimonial firm?
When Bunthorne has recited his ‘wild, weird, fleshly thing,’ called ‘Oh, Hollow! Hollow! Hollow!’ the Duke of Dunstable remarks that it seems to him to be nonsense. ‘Nonsense, perhaps,’ replies the Lady Saphir, ‘but oh, what precious nonsense!’ And there really is a sense in which nonsense—genuine, diverting nonsense—is precious indeed. There is so little of it. The late Edward Lear bubbled over with true whimsicality. His ‘Book of Nonsense’ is what it professes to be—the most delightful non-sense possible. But of how much of that sort of thing does English literature boast? There is plenty of unconscious nonsense, of course, but it is not of the right quality. Dryden said of Shadwell that he reigned, ‘without dispute, throughoutthe realms of nonsense absolute’—he ‘never deviated into sense’—and yet he was the dullest of dull dogs. The fact is, that nothing is more difficult than to write amusing nonsense, and it is worth noting how few people, comparatively speaking, have ever attempted to produce it.
One of the earliest efforts of the kind in the language is a certain passage in Udall’s ‘Ralph Roister Doister,’ where Dame Christian receives from the hero a letter which seems, on the face of it, insulting:
‘Sweete mistresse, where as I love you nothing at all,Regarding your substance and richesse chief of all,To your personage, beauty, demeanour, and wit,I commend me unto you never a whit,’
and so on—the joke lying, of course, in the incorrectness of the punctuation adopted. In general, the Elizabethans were too much in earnest to write absolute nonsense. Nonsense is to be found in Shakespeare, but usually in parody of the euphemists of his time. Some of thepersonæare made to talk sad stuff, but it has not the merit of being‘precious’ in the Lady Saphir’s sense. It is very tedious indeed, and one likes to think that Shakespeare, perhaps, did not write it, after all. Drummond, in his ‘Polemo-Middinia,’ gave an early example of a kind ofjeu d’espritwhich has since been frequently imitated—a species of dog-Latinin extremis:
‘Hic aderunt Geordy Akinhedius and little Johnus,Et Jamy Richæus, et stout Michel Hendersonus,Qui jolly tryppas ante alios dansare solebat,Et bobbare bene, et lassas kissare boneas.’
But though this is not wholly unamusing, it is hardly, as nonsense, up to the standard instituted for us by Mr. Lear.
The real thing is more nearly visible in Swift’s macaronic lines about Molly—‘Mollis abuti, Hasan acuti,’ etc.—another vein of fun which has been exceedingly well worked out by successive writers. But such inspirations as these have too much method in them to be quite admissible. Much better was Swift’s ‘Love Song in the Modern Taste,’ beginning:
‘Fluttering spread thy purple pinions,Gentle Cupid, o’er my heart.’
Even this, however, has too much sense for it to pass muster. Nor can one receive Johnson’s
‘If a man who turnips cries,Cry not when his father dies,’
and so on, as sufficiently nonsensical. It is simply ajeu de mots, and no more, though funny enough as it stands. One is better satisfied when one comes to the ‘Tom Thumb’ of Henry Fielding and the ‘Chrononhotonthologos’ of Henry Carey, though even in those diverting squibs it is rarely that the versifier surrenders himself wholly to ‘Divine Nonsensia.’ That charming goddess was saluted to more purpose in ‘The Anti-Jacobin,’ where she was invoked to make charming fun of ‘The Loves of the Plants.’ In ‘The Progress of Man’ (in the same delectable collection) occurs the inspired passage:
‘Ah, who has seen the mailèd lobster rise,Clap her broad wings, and, soaring, claim the skiesWhen did the owl, descending from her bower,Crop, ’mid the fleecy flocks, the tender flower?Or the young heifer plunge, with pliant limb,In the salt wave and, fish-like, strive to swim?’
But even this is too consistent in its grotesqueness to be perfect nonsense.
One becomes acquainted with better nonsense the nearer one gets to one’s own times. How clever, for instance, was that well-known ‘dream’ of Planché’s, in which he fancied that he
‘Was walking with Homer, and talkingThe very best Greek I was able—was able—When Guy, Earl of Warwick, with Johnson and Garrick,Would dance a Scotch-reel on the table—the table;When Hannibal, rising, declared ’twas surprisingThat gentlemen made such a riot—a riot—And sent in a bustle to beg Lord John RussellWould hasten and make them all quiet—all quiet.’
It may be that Mr. W. S. Gilbert had this in his mind when, in ‘Patience,’ he pictured the processes by which to manufacture a heavy dragoon; but here, again, the design is too obvious, the incongruity a little too apparent. The late Shirley Brooks extracted much fun out of a mosaic of quotations from the poets, beginning:
‘Full many a gem of purest ray serene,That to be hated needs but to be seen,Invites my lay; be present, sylvan maids,And graceful deer reposing in the shades.’
Very good nonsense is this, if not of the best; and it leads us up naturally to the more consummate performances of Mr. Calverley, whose exquisite mimicry of Mr. Browning and Miss Ingelow, in their most incomprehensible or most affected moods, is too well known to need description. Favourable mention may also be made of a certain ballad composed by the late Professor Palmer, in illustration of his inability to master nautical terms, which he furbishes up in mirth-provoking fashion.
But, putting aside Mr. Lear, the most successful, the most precious nonsense ever written has been supplied by writers still, happily, in our midst. And of these, of course, Mr. Lewis Carroll is obviouslyfacile princeps—not only by reason of the immortal ‘Jabberwocky,’ but by reason, also, of ‘The Hunting of the Snark,’ in which there are some very felicitous passages.
‘They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care,They pursued it with forks and hope;They threatened its life with a railway share;They charmed it with smiles and soap.’
It requires genius, of a kind, to conceive and execute such lines as these, easy as (no doubt) it seems to write them. Not that Mr. Carroll is unapproachable. There are probably many who think that his ‘Jabberwocky’ is at least equalled by Mr. Gilbert’s ‘Sing for the Garish Eye,’ in which the invented words are truly ‘Carrollian’:
‘Sing for the garish eye,When moonless brandlings cling;Let the froddering crooner cry,And the braddled sapster sing!’—
though, to be sure, Mr. Gilbert could hardly be expected to do anything better than that lovely quatrain of Bunthorne’s about ‘The dust of an earthy to-day’ and ‘The earth of a dusty to-morrow.’
The example set by Mr. Lear has been followed by many versifiers, who have sought to create their effects after a manner now sufficiently familiar. Thus, we have had multitudinous efforts like the following:
‘There was an old priest in PeruWho dreamt he’d converted a Jew:He woke in the nightIn a deuce of a fright,And found it was perfectly true.’
Performances of that sort are, however, easy; and more merit attaches to such studies in unintelligibility as Bret Harte’s ‘Songs without Sense,’ of which the ‘Swiss Air’ is a good example:
‘I’m a gay tra, la, la,With my fal, lal, la, la,And my bright—And my light—Tra, la, le. [Repeat.]Then laugh, ha, ha, ha,And ring, ting, ling, ling,And sing fal, la, la,La, la, le.’ [Repeat.]
Probably, however, the poetry of pure nonsense has never been better represented than in these contemporary verses on the suitable topic of ‘Blue Moonshine’:
‘Ay! for ever and for everWhilst the love-lorn censers sweep,Whilst the jasper winds dissever,Amber-like, the crystal deep;Shall the soul’s delirious slumber,Sea-green vengeance of a kiss,Teach despairing crags to numberBlue infinities of bliss.’
Most people have heard of that Mr. Gerard Hamilton who, suddenly and unexpectedly making in the House of Commons an oration which ‘threw into the shade every other orator except Pitt,’ was henceforth known by the nickname of ‘Single-Speech’—not because he never addressed the House again, but because those who so nicknamed him chose to regard this performance as the distinguishing feature of his career. He continued to be known by that one discourse, and it is by virtue of it that he has a place in history. The fact is notable, and yet by no means uncommon. The world is, and always has been, full of Single-Speech Hamiltons—male and female—who have gained and maintained their notoriety by one specialeffort. Human nature is so constituted that the man or woman who is unable to produce a series of successes may yet have the capacity to compass one—may possess the energy and the ability to make at least one strong impression before retiring wholly into the background.
The truth of this is observable, for example, in the sphere of poetry. How many are the excellent versifiers whose reputation is based wholly upon a solitary effusion! They have been inspired once, and the outcome is literary immortality. They cannot always be regarded strictly as poets, and yet they have a vogue which any poet might envy. They reign and shine by virtue of what may be called a happy accident. Thus, Lady Ann Barnard is known, in the world of verse, only by her ‘Auld Robin Gray,’ just as Miss Elliott and Mrs. Cockburn are known only by their respective ‘Flowers of the Forest.’ We remember Oldys merely by his ‘Busy, curious, thirsty fly,’ Sir William Jones by his ‘What constitutes a State?’ Blanco White byhis one Sonnet upon Night, Charles Wolfe by his ‘Burial of Sir John Moore,’ John Collins by his ‘In the Downhill of Life,’ and Herbert Knowles by his ‘Lines in a Churchyard.’ As Artemus Ward said of the oil-painting achieved by the Old Masters: ‘They did this, and then they expired.’ Some of them wrote other things, but the world received them not. It took count only of the single occasion on which they had been influenced by the divineafflatus—of the one thing which they had done ‘supremely’ well.
Authors themselves are, no doubt, surprised at the caprices of the public, and somewhat piqued by the preferences of their patrons. Some are Single-Speech Hamiltons only because their readers have taken a special fancy to particular performances—not always because the achievements were obviously the best, but simply because circumstances brought them to the fore. It is, one may assume, to the charm of Haydn’s musical setting that Mrs. Hunter owes thefame and popularity of ‘My mother bids me bind my hair’: it is to the composer, in that case, that the acceptance of the words are owing. Obvious causes, again, have given precedence to Heber’s ‘From Greenland’s icy mountains’ over all his other work in verse; just as the fact of having got into the extract books has accorded to Blake’s ‘Tiger, tiger, burning bright’ a pre-eminence in the public mind over all his other efforts. In these matters the world will have its own way. It still extends recognition to Young’s ‘Night Thoughts,’ but is apparently indifferent to his ‘Universal Passion.’ It thinks of Bloomfield only in connection with ‘The Farmer’s Boy,’ and ignores the rest; just as it faintly recollects ‘The Sabbath’ of James Grahame, but has forgotten even the titles of ‘Biblical Pictures’ and ‘The British Georgics.’
This dependence of literary fame upon special public favourites is, perhaps, most strikingly represented in the field of fiction and the drama. Nothing is more commonthan that a novelist or a dramatist should remain in the popular memory by virtue of a single production. Beckford is for most people only the author of ‘Vathek’; it is only the bibliophile who troubles himself about ‘Azemia’ or ‘The Elegant Enthusiast.’ Miss Porter is remembered by her ‘Scottish Chiefs’—scarcely at all, perhaps, by her ‘Thaddeus of Warsaw.’ Everybody knows how strongly ‘The Monk’ took the fancy of the reading world—so strongly that the writer was ‘Monk’ Lewis, and ‘Monk’ Lewis only, ever after. Mackenzie’s ‘Man of Feeling’ survives, but the ‘Man of the World’ and ‘Julia Roubigné’ are as if they had never existed. And look at the playwrights! ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ is a classic, but ‘The Good-Natured Man’ is not even good-naturedly tolerated. ‘The Road to Ruin’ has eclipsed ‘Duplicity’ and ‘The Deserted Daughter.’ We all know ‘The Honeymoon,’ but who has seen, how many have read, ‘The Curfew’ and ‘The School for Authors’? We flock to ‘WildOats,’ but alas for ‘The Agreeable Surprise’! ‘The Man of the World’ keeps Macklin’s name before us, but we have said good-bye to ‘Love à la Mode.’
In truth, it is not a bad thing thus to be associated with one definite, unmistakable success. Gerard Hamilton did more for himself by that single brilliant speech than if he had delivered a whole multitude of less striking orations. There is nothing more fatal to a man than middlingness—a sort of dead level of mediocre performance. The world loses count of merely respectable outcome. To obtain its regard you must take its imagination captive at least once. You may be a very excellent person, and do very useful work; but, if you desire to be kept in mind, you must achieve something to which your name can be popularly attached. It is thus that Beattie and ‘The Minstrel,’ Green and ‘The Spleen,’ Somerville and ‘The Chase,’ Blair and ‘The Grave,’ Falconer and ‘The Shipwreck,’ Pollok and ‘The Course of Time’—to name no others—areinseparably associated the one with the other. The works in question, probably, are rarely opened, but their titles at any rate have stuck in the general memory. Even in our own time, for the great majority of people, Miss Braddon will always be the author of ‘Lady Audley’s Secret,’ Mrs. Oliphant always the author of ‘The Chronicles of Carlingford,’ Mrs. Henry Wood always the author of ‘East Lynne’—and so on. That is the way in which they are remembered.
Generally speaking, versatility is undesirable when reputation is the object aimed at. The world has not a very good memory, or, rather, it has so much to think about that it desires not to be more encumbered than it can help. Such men as the late Lord Lytton, for example, are, in one respect, a nuisance to it. Bulwer was about equally distinguished as a novelist, as a dramatist, and as an essayist; and, ever since, the average man has been puzzled whether to think of him as the author of ‘Pelham,’ the author of ‘TheLady of Lyons,’ or the author of ‘Caxtoniana.’ Bulwer tried hard to establish a position as a poet, but, happily, there is no need to trouble one’s self greatly about ‘King Arthur.’ As it is, the fame of Bulwer’s dramas appears likely, by-and-by, to eclipse altogether the fame of his novels. And this, if it ever happens, will prove once more that a man can be the worst enemy of himself. Single-Speech Hamilton was not satisfied with his big success, but spoke again. Nothing could have been more unwise. He should have rested on his laurels—unless indeed, he could have been quite sure that he would surpass his former triumph. Unless one can be perfectly certain of that, it is, best, in general, to let well alone.
The production on the London stage of a piece called ‘The Schoolmistress’ no doubt caused many lovers and students of the drama to consider for a moment whether—and, if so, to what extent—the general subject of school-life had been dealt with by preceding playwrights.
Mr. Pinero was fortunate, to begin with, in the fact that he had hit upon a title for his piece hitherto unused—so far as I am aware—by any dramatist of whom history bears record. And this piece of originality is in itself remarkable, seeing that novelty in title is nowadays sufficiently rare. There is no official registry of such things, and, where so many active pens have been at work, a playwright must be self-confident indeed who can be sure that he has alighted upon a namewhich has never been used by any other native dramatist. To give only a few instances out of dozens:—Mr. Albery’s play of ‘The Spendthrift’ had been anticipated, so far as title was concerned, by ‘The Spendthrift’ of Matthew Draper, acted in 1731, and by ‘The Spendthrift’ of Dr. Kenrick, performed in 1758, to say nothing of two anonymous plays, each called ‘The Spendthrift,’ dating from 1680 and 1762 respectively. And to come down to quite recent days, the ‘Loyal Lovers’ played lately at the London Vaudeville had had a predecessor, in the matter of name, in the ‘Loyal Lovers,’ by Major Manuche, which saw the light so long ago as 1652. Similarly, the ‘Woman of the World,’ performed at the Haymarket in 1886, had had its prototype, so far as the title was concerned, in the ‘Woman of the World’ of Nelson Lee and Stirling Coyne.
Exceptionally lucky, indeed, is the dramatic writer who can now discover a wholly new name for his production. A wholly fresh subject is, of course, even more difficult to achieve. Take what phase of life you will—make whatuse of it you please—you cannot secure absolute novelty. You cannot find a piece of ground which has not been trodden, however slightly, however differently, by a predecessor. The author of ‘The Schoolmistress’ introduces his audiences to a very charming lady pupil-teacher, and to three scarcely less charming lady pupils. But one thinks at once of the still more delightful bevy of tutors and scholars presented to us just nineteen years ago, by T. W. Robertson, who, inspired by a German original, gave us not only Bella and Naomi Tighe, but a ‘rosebud garden of girls,’ of which the attraction has by no means yet departed. Mr. Ruskin has sneered at Bella as ‘an amiable governess who, for the general encouragement of virtue in governesses, is rewarded by marrying a lord.’ But for all that, she is a pleasant figure, and Naomi is a piquant one, and the English stage has witnessed few more agreeable scenes than those in which Dr. and Mrs. Sutcliffe’s young ladies take part in the course of ‘School.’
As everybody knows, there is an ‘angry schoolboy’ in ‘The Alchemist,’ who is likely to survive not only in literature, but in history, by reason of the effective use which Sheridan once made of him when retorting upon Pitt in the House of Commons. Is there not, too, a comedy of Brome’s—‘The Antipodes’—in which the fathers go to school instead of their sons, and are made to ape the habits of the youthful scholar? Richard Lovelace, we read, wrote a comedy called ‘The Scholar,’ but it was never printed, and probably had reference to the adult rather than the juvenile student. In the early years of last century, ‘The Schoolboy’ was the title given to a farce played at Drury Lane, a piece of which one Johnny was the hero—a Johnny who had the honour of being impersonated by the great Roscius himself, and by actors, too, of the calibre of Woodward, Shuter, and J. W. Dodd. Early, again, in the present century, ‘The Scholar’ was the name of a play adapted from the French by Buckstone; but in this case, as, no doubt, there was in Lovelace’s,there is more of the scholastic than of the school. The subject and title of ‘Schoolfellows’ was taken by Douglas Jerrold, the schoolfellows in it being, however, no longer under the tutelage of their old master. A ‘Schoolboy’s Masque’ was printed in 1742; a ‘School Moderator’ was included in Garrick’s collection; a ‘School Play,’ it is recorded, was performed at a private grammar school in Middlesex, in 1663; and of recent years an extravaganza has been endowed with the suggestive title of ‘School Bored.’
There is, of course, a sense in which the word ‘school’ can be used for the larger opportunities of education given by contact with the world. And in this sense the word has been used by English dramatists with remarkable and characteristic frequency. In the second quarter of the seventeenth century Shirley printed, as ‘the firstfruits of his Muses,’ his comedy called ‘The School of Compliment,’ which had been played at Drury Lane; and in the list of comedies of the nineteenth century will be found ‘TheSchool of Reform,’ by Thomas Morton, and the ‘School of Intrigue,’ by Mr. Mortimer; the former devoted to instructing ladies ‘how to rule a husband,’ and the latter to a fresh treatment of the world-famous story of the Count and Countess Almaviva. But the dramatic pieces whose titles begin with ‘The School of’ are few indeed in comparison with those whose names begin with ‘The School for.’ Of the latter the most famous is, of course, ‘The School for Scandal,’ now just 111 years old. But Sheridan’s work had been preceded, in the following order, by ‘The School for Lovers,’ ‘The School for Guardians,’ ‘The School for Rakes,’ ‘The School for Fathers,’ and ‘The School for Wives.’ Nor is it surprising that, the fashion having once been set, Sheridan’s comedy should be followed successively by ‘The School for Eloquence,’ ‘The School for Ladies,’ ‘The School for Vanity,’ ‘The School for Greybeards,’ ‘The School for Widows,’ ‘The School for Arrogance,’ ‘The School for Prejudice,’ ‘The School forFriends,’ ‘The School for Authors,’ ‘The School for Grown Children,’ ‘The School for Grown Gentlemen,’ and ‘The School for Scheming’—this last being one of the numerous performances of Mr. Boucicault.
Nor is this all. History relates that Steele began a comedy named ‘The School for Action,’ and there are records of pieces called ‘The School for Husbands,’ ‘The School for Women,’ ‘The School for Coquettes,’ ‘The School for Daughters,’ and ‘The School for Tigers.’ Probably no word has been so often utilized by the dramatists as ‘School,’ and probably, too, no modern playwright would be disposed to add lightly to the number of those who have ‘annexed’ it.