There has been some idea mooted of forming an Academy in England on the lines of the Academy of France, but it would never be the same kind of institution, or exercise the same authority. The English temper is not academic, the Royal Academy is proof enough of that. Moreover, Englishmen are indifferent to the use or abuse of their language, and the first care of an Academy must be to keep the national language pure, and clear, and elegant. The well of English undefiled is sadly muddy, nowadays, and any roaring screamer of English or American slang is as welcome to those who call themselves critics as though he wrote like Matthew Arnold or John Morley. Lacking an Academy of Letters, and the writers who would make one, there is in London what is called a Society of Authors, which is supposed to resemble the Société des Gens de Lettres in Paris, but the English Society appears to be chiefly an association for the multiplication and publication of inferior works, and its authority on literature isnil. In addition to these, there are persons who callthemselves literary agents; but the latter have a decidedly anti-intellectual influence, and to them is probably, in part, due the enormous increase in the issue of rubbish of all kinds, which is at the present time doing so much injury to the English literary reputation.
The number of volumes which pour annually from the English press is, at the present hour, appalling. One house alone produces, in number, enough volumes for the whole trade. Why are these volumes, usually worthless, ever produced? Why do the circulating libraries accept them? Who reads them? Who buys them? Why does one see in the lists of London 'remainders' the announcement of volumes originally published at six, eight, ten, twelve shillings, to be sold second-hand, perfectly new and uncut, at the miserable prices of two shillings, eighteen-pence, one shilling, and even sixpence? Amongst these is sometimes a work of real and scholarly worth, which it is painful to see thus sacrificed, but rarely; for it is rarely that such a work is now issued in London. Where is this to end? With whom does the fault of it lie? Someone, I suppose, must gain by such an insane method of over-production, but I cannot see who it can possibly be. One well-known publisher tells me that he must issue books thus, or starve. He is not in danger of bodily starvation, but the public is mentally starved by such a system.
When the three-volume novel was abolished (a course which I urged long before it was taken) great things were expected by many from its abolition. I myself hoped that London would adopt the Parismethod, and issue novels and all other works, exceptéditions de luxe, at small prices and in paper covers; not the gaudy, hideous, pictorial, paper cover, but the pale smooth grey or cream-coloured paper, so easily obtainable, with the title of the book clearly printed on its flank. Instead of this result, some unwritten law, as violently despotic as that which used to compel the three-volume issue, has decreed that the London romance shall always appear in a cloth-bound volume at six shillings; the most foolish price that could be selected, too dear to be suitable for private purchase, too low to allow of a handsome edition being issued. There is something grotesquely ludicrous, as well as extremely painful, in seeing the lists of 'ten new six-shilling novels,' or 'a dozen new six-shilling novels,' whereby some publishers' advertisement lists are disfigured in the newspapers with every new season. It makes a commerce of fiction in a manner most injurious and deplorable.
Again, no sooner has the six-shilling novel been a year before the public, than the publisher issues the self-same book at two-and-sixpence. Why does he cut his own throat thus? It is to me as inexplicable as why the London drapers sell you a stuff at six shillings a yard in February, but, if you wait till June, sell it you at two-and-sixpence a yard at the clearance sales. Either the stuff is sold at a price unjust and unfair to the purchaser in February, or it is sold at a price unjust and unfair to the vendor in June. From this proposition there seems to me no escape.
It is the same with the six-shilling book as with the draper's stuffs. If the first price be correct, why alterit to the second in a year's time? If the second price be sufficient to pay expense of production, why not start with it.
The draper, moreover, has an advantage over the publisher. If I want a stuff whilst it is a novelty, and when its like has not been worn by shop girls and servant girls, I must buy it at its high price in February; but if I want to read a novel whilst it is at its highest price, I can read it in that form, taking it from the libraries, and wait for a year to buy it at its lower price, if I then care to do so, which it is improbable that I shall do.
Now, why not have from first to last, in London, an edition of a novel similar to that French form which is good enough for Pierre Loti, for Gyp, for Anatole France, for the brilliant Frères Margueritte? Why?
I suppose because our masters, the librarians, will not have it so; or because some other unwritten law lies like lead on the souls of London publishers.
I read few English books for pleasure myself, I prefer the literatures of other countries; but it pains me to see such a deluge of worthless verbosity pour from London lanes and London streets where printing presses of yore worked for Addison and Goldsmith, Thackeray and Arthur Helps.
If this stream of pseudo-literature be not stopped, it will carry away and swamp all true English literature under it, as a moving bog covers flocks and pastures, cottages and country seats.
I have asked several London publishers why it is allowed to go on; their answers are evasive andcontradictory. They assert that most of the volumes published are paid for by the authors; that they themselves must publish something, or cease to exist as a trade; and that the public does not know good from bad, so it does not matter what is printed. Yet, surely to them, as to the drapers, the apparently insensate system must be lucrative, or it would not be pursued?
There was a comical lamentation in the London Press the other day for what was called 'the death of the novel'; not the approaching death which I expect for it by suffocation under the dust-storms of verbosity and imbecility, but of death by its own suicide, through its own curtailed proportions. It was indignantly asked why it was not as long as it used to be in the 'Fifties and 'Sixties, and why novelists now wrote short stories which in that period would have found no sale, would not, indeed, have even found the preliminary necessary to a sale-publication.
Surely we remember some short stories calledThe Cricket on the HearthandThe Chimes, and others telling the adventures of the Great Hoggarty Diamond and of one Barry Lyndon? As for the length of novels nowadays, my ownMassarenes, published in 1897, contains precisely the same number of words asEsmond, and, I think, Mr Mallock's novels, and those of Mrs Humphry Ward, must surely be quite as long, whilst Mr Hall Caine's marvellous narratives appear as endless as 'the thread of Time reel'd off the wheel of Fate.' The critic who grieves over the brevity of present-day volumes, thinks that Thackeray andDickens wrote at such length because they were obliged to fill their monthly numbers! It seems to me far more likely that they were in love with their characters, as every writer of true talent is, and lingered tenderly over many needless details and dialogues out of sheer pleasure in their creations; and it must be admitted that both of them had naturally a discursive style, which would have been the better for some excision. But were it true that there is an unwritten law which limits or expands the length of romances according to the public caprice or taste, surely nothing could be more harmful to fiction than such limitation? Every story, if it be worth the telling, has its own natural length, which cannot be stretched or shortened arbitrarily without hurt. The sculptor knows that the form which he creates has its own natural proportions, its own inherent symmetry according to natural rules, which he must obey. The painter knows that, according to the nature of his subject, and of his intended treatment, he must take for his picture, either a small panel, a kit-kat, or a large canvas; and that if he force its dimensions, either by over-compression or over-extension, his work will be a failure.
Why is the author not bound by the same canon of art? Artistically, he certainly is so bound. Intellectually, he certainly is so bound. That this obligation is continually defied and broken through by many English writers, proves only that the great majority of these writers are not artists in any sense of the word.
The brevity or length of a literary work can have nothing to do with its beauty or excellence. If it bebeautiful, if it be excellent, its proportions will be those which naturally grew out of its subject; and the writer who is an artist will know, as the painter knows, that he cannot alter the unwritten law which prescribes to him those proportions. What has either length or brevity to do with either excellence or beauty? What give both excellence and beauty are qualities not to be measured by a publisher's counting up of words, or a printer's enumeration of pages.
A sketch of a few pages of Maupassant's is worth all the volumes put together of Georges Ohnet; one of theSonnets of Proteusis worth the whole swagger of theSeven Seas.
There seems to be, unhappily, an unwritten law in English literature that cheapness must of necessity be allied to ugliness. A cheap book is in England an inferior and unlovely thing. But it need not be so. It is not so everywhere. I have now before me a book of Pompeo Molmenti's, issued by Bemporad, of Florence; its cost is two francs twenty-five centièmes; less than one-and-sixpence in your money. It is bound in thick cream-coloured paper; it is calledIl Moretto di Brescia, being a brief study of the life and works of the great artist of whose pure and noble work the city of Brescia is full. That the text is of rare scholarly excellence, and of the finest critical and appreciative qualities, there can be no question, since it is written by the President of the Accademia delle Arte of Venice. The type is large, the paper fine, the illustrations (phototyped) are of extreme delicacy and beauty, rendering worthily the works of the Moretto; the size of the book is Imperial 8vo.
Will you tell me where I should find anything equal to it at its price in London?
Your books are all ill-stitched, and fall to pieces as soon as one handles them. Your type is usually ugly, even at its best; all foreign readers complain of its clumsiness and confusing effect on the eyes. Compare a page of a Parisian book at three francs and a half with a page of a six-shilling English novel. The former is incomparably the superior. Your cheap illustrated books are still more scandalously treated. I have before me a book priced four-and-sixpence, more than double the price ofIl Moretto. It is a book for children; its illustrations have been reproduced from earlier works, and they are not even all of the same method or the same size; some are printed from old wood-blocks, some are photographed; in one a child is represented the size of a fly, in another a dog is drawn bigger than a man; anything is thought good enough, it seems, for children. Artistic beauty is entirely lacking in the illustrations of English juvenile books; and there is nothing so irritating as the sight of illustrations of various qualities bound up in the same volume.
Even certain illustrated periodicals and journals are not above using up their old wood-blocks in their new numbers. It is a very disgraceful and unworthy practice. When the illustrations are fresh, the designer frequently does not attempt to adapt them to the text; a gentlemen is drawn like a cad, and a Newfoundland dog is drawn like a poodle; a peasant of the Romagna is drawn like a loafer in Shoreditch, and so on continually, without the slightest attention to accuracy.
There is also, beyond all doubt, an unwritten law which has been so universally observed that it has become, properly, as binding as a written law. I mean the law that when once a romance, or a story, or a poem have been published they cannot be altered.
What should we think of the painter who repainted his picture after sale, or of a sculptor who sawed off an arm from his statue, and affixed another? Both picture and statue may have many faults; they probably have; but such as they went out from the studio they must remain. This is the common morality, the elementary honour, of art, and a similar canon should certainly lie upon literature.
Yet some writers have of late presumed that they had a right to change the ending of their romances when these were already well known to their readers. They would urge, I suppose, that they have a right to do what they like with their own. But your work once given to the public is no more your own than your daughter is when you have married her, and she has become theGaiaof herGaius.
Besides, there is an unspoken good faith on the part of the author which should be observed in his relations towards the public. He should give them nothing which is incomplete; nothing, at least, which is not as harmonious as it is in his power to create. Every work of fiction requires to be long dreamed of, long thought of, clearly seen in the mind before written; it ought to be no more susceptible of change than a conclusion in Euclid. To the writer, as to the reader of a story, it should seem absolutely true; the actors in it should appear absolutely real. The illusion ofreality is only strong in the reader according to the strength of that illusion in the writer; but some such illusion must always exist whilst the reader reads fiction, or fiction would have no attraction for anyone. The writer who alters his romance after it has once appeared destroys this illusion, and says effectively to his public, 'What fools you are to take me seriously!' Moreover, he insults them, for he tells them that he has set before them a half-finished and immature thing, about which he has entirely changed his mind. He is like a cook who should snatch off the table a dish just placed on it because he wished to alter the flavour. A Vätel or a Soyer would not do that: if he had made a mistake he would abide by it, though he might kill himself in despite at it.
In the course of a literary or artistic life, or any other life from which the blessing of privacy has been lost, there are many wrongs met with which are real and great wrongs, yet which must be endured because they cannot be remedied by law suits, and there is no other kind of tribunal open; nothing analogous, for instance, to the German Courts of Honour in military matters.
There is, for example, a habit amongst some editors of seeking the expression of opinion, on some political or public question, of some well-known writer; printing this expression of opinion, and, before it is published, showing the proof to some other writer, so that an article of contrary views and opinions may be written in readiness for the following number. Now this seems to me an absolutely disloyal betrayal of trust. In the first place, the proof of an article is of necessityentirely dependent on the good faith of the editor. It is an understood thing, a tacit, unwritten law, that no one except the editor is to see it until the public does so. It is never considered necessary to stipulate this. To show it to a third person to obtain a refutation, or a burlesque, of it before the article is published, seems to me a distinctly incorrect thing to do; an extremely unfair thing to do. Yet it is becoming a common practice; and a writer has no redress against it. It is manifestly not the kind of offence which can be taken into a tribunal, yet it is a very genuine and very annoying injury, and it is one against which I think that authors, whose names are of value, should be protected in some manner.
What redress, moreover, is there for the innumerable thefts from which a writer suffers during his career? I doubt if we, any of us, know the extent to which we are robbed by bookmakers, who are not of the turf, but are quite as unscrupulous as those of the turf.
A few years ago I saw, in the pages of one of the highest class of London periodicals, a story, contained in one number, which was nothing more or less than the reproduction of the Derbyshire part of my well-known novel ofPuck: the narrative of Ben Dare and his love for his worthless sister Anice. It was far more than a plagiarism; it was a monstrous theft. The name of a lady was put at the end of it, as that of the author; of course, I wrote to the editor, expecting, despite previous experiences, to receive apology and reparation. I misunderstood my generation. The editor wrote back, with airy indifference, that the ladywho had produced this shameless piracy had never readPuck. To my citation, in reply, of the words of the Emperor Julian, 'If it be sufficient to deny, who will ever be found guilty?' and to my objection that an appropriation of an entire section of a novel could not by any possibility be otherwise than an intentional theft, this model of editors replied not at all. I ought, perhaps, to have sued the publisher, who was doubtless quite innocent, but had I done so it is more than probable that I should have obtained no apology or redress. To begin a law suit is a very serious thing, and all these grievances and piracies are so incessant, though few are quite as impudent as was this, that if one pursued them as they merit one would spend all one's life and substance in Courts of Law.
Moreover, in the case of the plaintiff in any suit residing out of England, a large sum for costs must be deposited at the English tribunal into which the suit is brought; a kind of foregone conclusion that the plaintiff has no valid case, which seems to me very prejudicial to that person.
What, then, is to be done in such circumstances?
Nothing at all. You must endure the injury, leave unpunished the plagiarism; and the offender escapes scot-free.
I do not think that anyone should sue another for any mere expression of opinion, however hostile or rudely expressed, as Mr Whistler sued Mr Ruskin, for the liberty of the Press is of more importance than the annoyance of individuals.
But some protection is required against swindling in literature; and at the present moment none exists.Practically none exists either against libel. I saw, a few years ago, three very gross and libellous English newspaper articles upon myself, and sent them to a high personage in the law, who is always kind enough to give me his advice, and asked him if he considered it worth while for me to prosecute them. He wrote me in answer: 'All three articles are foully slanderous, yet one only, perhaps, would come within the grip of the law; upon this one you would most certainly obtain damages, but prosecution entails so much expense, trouble, worry, and insult, to the aggrieved party, that I would always say to any friend of mine what I say now to you: Do not do that which you have a perfect right to do.'
I followed the advice, for if one asks counsel of a person whom one respects, one ought to submit to it; but the fact remains that, for the most offensive social libels, there is, neither in law nor in society, any means of obtaining redress which a great lawyer can honestly recommend to a friend. For such matters, why cannot there be a tribunal set apart from other tribunals; one having the attributes of a Court of Honour, and without the odious publicity of Courts of Law?
Against libel, even of the grossest character, what can one do, as the law stands, which is not more disagreeable than silently to 'grin and bear' it? The great preliminary cost; the extreme uncertainty and irritation involved, the odious publicity necessarily incurred; the chatter, the comments, the cross-examination; the insolence and the jeers of the counsel for the defence, are all punishments which fall upon the plaintiff. What consolation is it for them that hemay perhaps be awarded a thousand pounds damages, though it is more probable that he will receive only a farthing, and be left to the enjoyment of paying his own costs? In either result, is the game worth its very costly candle? Is the injury made less an injury? Is the combat not in every sense most unjust and unequal, being less a combat indeed than an assassination by a bravo? To what can we ever look for any remedy of this except from the unwritten law of opinion? But as the world is at present constituted it delights far too greatly in this garbage for it ever to rebuke the providers of it. Hogs do not rend the man who carries the swill-tub.
In one of the Prince Consort's letters to his eldest daughter, then Crown Princess of Prussia, he tells her to set aside a portion of her money every year to meet the inevitable blackmail which will certainly be levied upon her. This blackmail is levied on every kind of success as well as on royalty. What is to be done? To submit to it, is repugnant to all one's sense of justice; to rebel against it, however such resistance be justified, is often ruinous.
The true remedy would lie in a finer, juster, higher kind of public feeling; but where is there any likelihood of this arising in the world as it is?
My own feeling is very strongly always against the anonymity of the Press. Everyone surely should have the candour and courage to put his signature after his opinions. But, unfortunately, the Press gains so much importance (fictitious importance) from its anonymity that it is hopeless to ask for an unwritten or a written law on this subject. The arrogant 'we' would soonfall to zero in its influence on the public if it were signed by a Tom, Dick, or Harry, who, as Matthew Arnold used to say, forms his opinions from what he overhears on the knifeboard of a city or suburban omnibus. It is, perhaps, worthy of a nation which treats duelling as a penal offence to countenance anonymous assertions, anonymous opinions, anonymous bravado, and anonymous insults; but the result cannot be beneficial to the national character.
For many months in this past year, and in the year before that, hundreds of anonymous correspondents and leader-writers of the English Press have been doing their utmost by violence of language to drive to war the nations of England and of France. Is it not probable, even certain, that if all these writers had been obliged to sign their names to these furious articles, they would have paused before making themselves responsible for such language? I am often accused of using too strong language; but at all events I sign whatever I say, and I should be ashamed to do otherwise. An anonymous Press possesses dangerous privileges; such privileges as the mask gives a masquerade; it also, as I have said, acquires a dignity and an importance which are not its own; it is unfair and harmful; it protects exaggeration, hyperbole, flattery, and calumny, but it is too useful to too many not to be sustained; it can always serve the Bourses much better than a signed Press could do, and obey much more efficiently the nods and signs and cypher dispatches of the great financiers; but it is cowardly, and can easily, if it chooses, be dishonest.
It will, perhaps, be objected that the anonymity ofthe Press is more apparent than real; that the greater writers of the London Press at least are all recognised by their style, or well known by the initiated; but this knowledge is limited to a few hundred persons, and can never be shared by the general public, and it is on the general public that anonymous journalism has its chief influence.
To whom or what can we look for the pressure of an influence which would enforce honesty in literature? To public opinion? Undoubtedly we might, and we should, if public opinion were what it should be. But it is not, and, most probably, never will be. Breeding and manners grow worse every day; and it is they alone which could enforce that unwritten code which is so sorely needed. It is, after all, the absence of moral and honourable feeling in the world in general which makes the violation of these not only condoned by others but frequently profitable to the sinners. Take two instances of this: The sale of private letters both of the living and of the dead; and the seizure of the plots and characters of romances by people who are themselves dramatic adapters. The latter is the more trivial offence of the two; but it is as impudent as it is dishonest. It is injurious in a great degree, and extremely annoying to the original author, whose name is bawled and placarded about in connection with that of his robber, with no consent of his own, and usually to his extreme irritation, whilst his ideas are borrowed, and his characters travestied, and his entire creation belittled and vulgarised. Would the stalls be filled nightly to witness pieces stolen in this manner were the public governed by any unwritten law of respect formeumandtuum?
The other offence of selling letters is still more heinous; it is difficult to conceal the piracy of a romance for theatrical purposes, but it is perfectly easy to conceal the sale of letters; head it the sale of autographs, and it passes with entire impunity. There is, I believe, a law (a written law) that letters are the property of the writer of them; but it is absolutely a dead law; as dead as many of those of the Tudors or Stuarts. I think that letters ought to be the property of the recipient, but it should be an inalienable property which he should be no more able to sell than he is able to sell entailed property. To write a letter, even a brief one, is, in a sense, an act of confidence. In writing it we assume that its contents will not be used against us, either for injury or ridicule. If a conversation be considered confidential, how much more should a correspondence be so! A letter, in any degree intimate, is a hostage given into the hands of its recipient. We are justified in expecting that any sentiments, views, or opinions it may contain shall not go beyond the reader for whom they have been penned. This is so much to be desired in the interests of all letter-writers that no one, I think, can dispute its justice. What, then, are we to say of the constant appearance in catalogues of sales of letters of living, and of lately dead, persons?
If it be, as I understand, illegal, why is it permitted publicly? If it be not thus illegal, why does not general indignation render it impossible? I have more than once seen, in the autograph-albums of men and women of the world, letters of the most intimate character by distinguished writers; letterswhich have been evidently written in the careless, open-heartedness of a warm friendship, and which were lying on a drawing-room or library table, open to the sneer, the jest, or the wonder of everyone who turned over the pages of the book.
'N'y touchez pas, N'y touchez pas! Je l'ai payé vingt louis!' cried, in my hearing, a lady (arastaquouère), who owned amongst other autographs a letter which it was especially wrong to place in such a collection, since the writer of it is great and is alive. Not for twenty louis, not for twenty thousand, should it ever have been purchasable. What traitor sold it? What servant stole it? How did it find its way into the market, that familiar and intimate thing? Through treachery, through death, through accident, through greed? We shall never know. It was certainly not through friendship.
Surely, also, some unwritten law should prescribe and limit the license of caricature. It is scarcely fair that, because a personality has interest and eminence attached to it, every draughtsman who can scrawl a line can make that personality hideous or ridiculous at pleasure.
'You cannot like it?' I said once to a person of considerable eminence, who was the subject that week of one of the 'Portraits' of a satirical and political English journal of wide circulation.
'No, I do not!' he answered. 'Of course, I should not object to it if it were a pen-and-ink drawing being handed about to amuse people in my own country house; but when one knows that it will be seen by tens of thousands of people whowill never see me in the flesh, the thing becomes annoying.'
His opinion must be shared by all those who are thus pilloried, even if they think it politic to laugh and seem indifferent.
It is 'the penalty of distinction,' the offenders reply. But why should distinction be weighted by a penalty, like the successful racer? I believe that the world in general is the loser by this kind of persecution; for dislike to the vulgar ridicule which snarls at the heels of all eminence in this day, keeps aloof from the public arena men who would do honour to it, but whose strength of intellect is accompanied by shyness, pride, and sensitive reserve. Some unwritten law should also render impossible those verbal libels which are continually published by persons cunning enough to keep to the windward side of law in the offensive matter which they write. This is again another penalty-weight laid on the back of the racer who has won; and it is precisely this kind of penalty from which an unwritten law, in the Press, and in the world, should protect such winners of the gold cups of life.
The unwritten law of common honour should make such a book as that which was recently issued on Bismarck impossible, because those who would have the power of writing it would be above the temptation of doing so. There may be a strong temptation to say what we know better than any other of one whose name is eminent. But I doubt whether we should yield to the temptation, even if we ourselves suffer in reputation by not doing so. But the bookmakersof the world have no such excuse as this temptation offers; they are merely footmen who have listened with pricked ears whilst they waited at table on their masters, and when their master is powerless to chastise, sell what they remember or invent. Even where it is not libellous, the sickening intrusion into private life which nowadays disgraces journalism must, to any temper of any refinement and reserve, be an offence irritating beyond endurance. There are flatteries and intrusions beside which censure is sweet and obloquy would be welcome.
There is a great pathos in the fact that the greatest man of these last fifty years, the man of blood and iron, should, as soon as he lies in his coffin, be insulted by such a book as this. The hand in its steel gauntlet, which welded fragments into a nation, is powerless to defend its owner against betrayal and false witness. The vulgar, insatiable curiosity of the general world breeds such traitors as these makers of post-mortem recollections; breeds them, nourishes them, recompenses them. There would be no supply if there were no demand. The general world has a greedy appetite for diseased food; as with its jaws it devours putrid game, decayed oysters, and the swollen livers of tortured geese, so it loves to devour with its frothy brain all that belittles, ridicules, dishonours, or betrays the few amongst it—the very few!—who are above it in mind, in will, in force, in fame. 'Come, come!' they cry to the great man's servants when the great man lies dead; 'tell us, you who saw him in his hours of abandonment, tell us of all that can drag him down nearer to our level! Tell us of his varicocele, tell usof his dyspepsia, tell us of his caprices, tell us of his humours, tell us of his tears when his poisoned dog lay dying—you saw them through the keyhole—tell us of his hasty words, his pettish foibles, his human mortal waywardness—you know so much about them, you who waited behind his chair and filled his tobacco-pouch—come, come, comfort us; his great shadow seems still to lie upon the earth and make us small and crawling insects crushed by his spurred boot—come, come, comfort us! Tell us, show us, make us happy belittling him; let us, the envious, the puny, the mean, rejoice, for you who cleaned his boot and held his bare foot in your hired hand, can tell us that he, the maker of emperors and of nations, he, the Mighty, had Achilles' heel!' For there is an unwritten law, not of literature but of life, which decrees that the jealousy of the small soul for the great soul shall be cruel and deathless as Fate.[10]
This little square book, the colour of meadow forget-me-nots, is so modest and simple that it may very easily be passed over in a period which has little sympathy with tenderness of feeling and simplicity of expression. The verses, of which this small volume is full, resemble thestornelliandrispettiof Italian songs rather than any kind of verse which has preceded them in English literature, unless it be the earliest and briefest songs of Robert Lytton, with which they have a certain kindred, both in their measure and in their themes. Auberon Herbert is known to the world as a daring and original thinker, a sociologist who lives three centuries before his time, a fearless preacher of new liberties and ideal creeds; in this tiny azure booklet he is also a poet, or, as he would rather himself say, a singer. The verse springs from the depths of his heart, and calls to those who, like himself, have loved and suffered and found nothing endure except the consolations of natural beauty.
'In the West is the golden glory,As the great king goes to his rest;In the East the purple stainethThe hills from foot to crest.'And I stand and look in wonderTill my heart is cleft in twain,Half for the vision of glory,And half for the dying pain.'
'In the West is the golden glory,As the great king goes to his rest;In the East the purple stainethThe hills from foot to crest.
'And I stand and look in wonderTill my heart is cleft in twain,Half for the vision of glory,And half for the dying pain.'
Like the Italiancanzone, these little lyrics, brief as a summer breeze, which momentarily sways the stalks of grass, must be heard with the ear of the heart. Coldly criticised by the mind alone, they will lie like the gathered field-poppy, inert and colourless. They are the cries of the heart, like those brief verses which the southern lover sings to the sobbing lute beneath the moon. He who has killed his heart in the pressure of the world will find nothing in them. They who are steeped in the chill indifference of mundane interests will no more heed them than such heed the skylark's or the linnet's song, which they resemble. They were not written in the study, or fashioned with the pruning-knife; they were born by the edge of the sea, in the woodland shade, by the clover path of the country hedge, in the falling rain of the peach and pear-blossoms, in the starlight above the olives. They are the elder children of the lonely shores and flowering pastures; they have never known the gaslight of the streets or the electric light of the drawing-room. They are as sweet and pure as violets.
To those who know, and respect as they should be respected, the virile and original philosophies of the writer, there is an added charm in these tender blossoms in the fact that they spring from the same intelligence as that which proclaims individualism inits boldest forms and attacks the tyrannies of social and political superstitions.
They are but little songs, short as a ripple of music from a woodlark's throat, of no more account, if you will, than the blue stars of mouse-ear by the brook's side, than the dog-rose on the bank; too simple it may be said, speaking of emotions too trite, of sorrow too common, of sights too familiar, in language that the dullest can scarce fail to understand. Yes; no doubt, they are like field-flowers, like hedge-birds; they claim to be no more than these; they were not wrestled for as Wordsworth wrestled for an ode beneath the shadow of Rydal, or as Coleridge strove with the rebellious forces of a halting sonnet when lying down face foremost amongst 'the common grass.' They are spontaneous utterances, as natural as the ripple of the water over the cresses in a brook's bed beneath willow and alder. It may be easy to dismiss them with indifference, to underrate them with hypercritic sneer, and assuredly those who take pleasure in the strained archaic obscurities of much modern verse will find no more charm in them than the languid æsthete, musing over the pages of Verlaine and Mallarme, would find in a sea-wet breeze blowing across a hayfield at early morning. There is no studied mannerism, no sought-for darkness of expression, no exaggerated ecstasy or pessimism; there is such a natural feeling, of joy as of sorrow, as comes to the soul at once robust and sensitive; and these are expressed with frank, unstudiednaïveté, with the candour as of a child, and the self-control of a man blent in their simplicity. 'Look in your ownheart and write,' has been the only precept which their creator has obeyed.
The most intense attachment in them is for the sea. The sea, whether those grey sad tides which sway from the sands of Christchurch to the rocks of Freshwater, or that azure radiance which rolls from the headland of Antibes to the gardens of Porto Fino, has the same magic for Auberon Herbert that it has for Algernon Swinburne; a charm much calmer and more peaceful, but not less strong. Many of these little poems speak of the sea only; are full of that happy sense of return and recognition which so many amongst us feel when, after absence from the sea, we tread again its wet salt sands, and feel its white spray dance against our cheek. Swinburne is the great laureate of ocean, the chords of whose mighty lyre reverberate with the ocean storm and echo the thunder of breakers breaking upon iron shores, and of billows sweeping from pole to pole. The song of Auberon Herbert is the homing cry of the sea-swallows swaying on the crest of the waves.
'Back to the Sea Mother' he calls these yearning lines:—
'Kindest of mothers, from whom I have strayed,Back again, tired, I come to thee,Chaunting and crooning the old wave-song;Sing it, oh! sing it again to me!'Weary and spent as the hour draws near,Hush me to sleep with the soft wave-song;Wash all the cares away, wash all the strifes away,All the old pains that to living belong.'Down at thy side I place me to rest;Slowly my senses are stealing from me;Passions and pleadings have ceased in my breast,Gently my spirit floats away free.'
'Kindest of mothers, from whom I have strayed,Back again, tired, I come to thee,Chaunting and crooning the old wave-song;Sing it, oh! sing it again to me!
'Weary and spent as the hour draws near,Hush me to sleep with the soft wave-song;Wash all the cares away, wash all the strifes away,All the old pains that to living belong.
'Down at thy side I place me to rest;Slowly my senses are stealing from me;Passions and pleadings have ceased in my breast,Gently my spirit floats away free.'
And yet again:—
'Thou great strong sea, fast lock'd in dreams,Clouds journeying to and fro,Whose tender blue the stars come through,I can but love ye so!'Ye take possession of my heart,And all my life renew;Like grain of dust I grow a part,A small stray part of you.'Thy sounds, O storm, are far and faint,As thou stridest over the sea;And we need thy breath from many a taintTo set us clean and free.'But when thou comest on mighty wings,Deal gently with forest and tree,For my heart is woe for the goodly thingsThat to-morrow will cease to be.'Yes! I shall go and you will dream,And drink the pale blue sky,Beneath the hill that hugs you roundAs silver days go by.'When others come your love to claim,You still, you pale blue sea,Oh, shall you mean for them the same,That once you meant for me?'And shall they look on you with eyesAs tender true as mine,And love each changing gleam that fliesAcross that face of thine?'
'Thou great strong sea, fast lock'd in dreams,Clouds journeying to and fro,Whose tender blue the stars come through,I can but love ye so!
'Ye take possession of my heart,And all my life renew;Like grain of dust I grow a part,A small stray part of you.
'Thy sounds, O storm, are far and faint,As thou stridest over the sea;And we need thy breath from many a taintTo set us clean and free.
'But when thou comest on mighty wings,Deal gently with forest and tree,For my heart is woe for the goodly thingsThat to-morrow will cease to be.
'Yes! I shall go and you will dream,And drink the pale blue sky,Beneath the hill that hugs you roundAs silver days go by.
'When others come your love to claim,You still, you pale blue sea,Oh, shall you mean for them the same,That once you meant for me?
'And shall they look on you with eyesAs tender true as mine,And love each changing gleam that fliesAcross that face of thine?'
I dislike the translation of expression from one art to another, otherwise I would call these verses impressionist. They have the quickly-captured forms, the frail fugitive colour, the infinite suggestiveness, which are the notes of the highest impressionism in painting.
See these eight lines:—
'The sun is at rest—for the storms are o'er;Just touch'd with the hand of night,And a line of shadow creeps to the shore,Then flashes in silver light—'Like a note that stops in its flight and droops,And clings for a while to the ground;Then trembles and wakes from its trance and breaksInto passion and glory of sound.'
'The sun is at rest—for the storms are o'er;Just touch'd with the hand of night,And a line of shadow creeps to the shore,Then flashes in silver light—
'Like a note that stops in its flight and droops,And clings for a while to the ground;Then trembles and wakes from its trance and breaksInto passion and glory of sound.'
How entirely true are these to the breaking of a smooth, pale expanse of water into motion and light; the sudden flashing as of a million spears with which the sea, when smitten by the sword of the Sun, rises to the challenge of Morning. And yet by what simple and common words this strong effect is produced!
Or this:—
'Only a bit of land-locked bay,With a haunting face on the further side;Yet the ocean as well might bar the way,So far from each other our lives divide.'For you jest at times, and at times you pray,And you tread a path that cannot be mine;And the world is with you from day to day,And all that you are I dare not divine.'
'Only a bit of land-locked bay,With a haunting face on the further side;Yet the ocean as well might bar the way,So far from each other our lives divide.
'For you jest at times, and at times you pray,And you tread a path that cannot be mine;And the world is with you from day to day,And all that you are I dare not divine.'
Or this:—
'In the glory of youth the young man went;His heart with pride was stirred;"They should yield," he cried, "to the message sent,And force of the burning word."'The long years passed and a wearied manCrept back to the old home door:"I have spoken my word and none has heard,And the great world rolls as before."'
'In the glory of youth the young man went;His heart with pride was stirred;"They should yield," he cried, "to the message sent,And force of the burning word."
'The long years passed and a wearied manCrept back to the old home door:"I have spoken my word and none has heard,And the great world rolls as before."'
Or this:—
'Forward we look, and we gild it all,Rich is the picture and tender and fair,Backward we look, and the blue mists fall,Veiling the troubles that once were there.'Ah! well, and ah! well, and lighter the load,If heart the enchanter weave his web;If he tells love-stories to cheat the road,And binds in our dreams the purple thread.'
'Forward we look, and we gild it all,Rich is the picture and tender and fair,Backward we look, and the blue mists fall,Veiling the troubles that once were there.
'Ah! well, and ah! well, and lighter the load,If heart the enchanter weave his web;If he tells love-stories to cheat the road,And binds in our dreams the purple thread.'
Or this:—