"The British soldier tremblesWhen Marion's name is told."
"The British soldier tremblesWhen Marion's name is told."
"The British soldier trembles
When Marion's name is told."
It would never, never do, he explained, for him to publish a book with even the smallest suggestion in it that the British soldier was a man to "tremble" at any danger. It would simply ruin him to publish this direct charge of cowardice against Tommy Atkins.
The Irving Incident
For the time Irving was at a loss to know what to do. Mr. Bryant was three thousand miles away and the only way of communicating with him was by ocean mails, carriedby sailing craft at long intervals, low speed, and uncertain times of arrival. To write to him and get a reply would require a waste of many weeks—perhaps of several months. In his perplexed anxiety to serve his friend, Irving decided to take the liberty of making an entirety innocent alteration in the words, curing them of their offensiveness to British sensitiveness, without in the least altering their significance. Instead of:
"The British soldier tremblesWhen Marion's name is told,"
"The British soldier tremblesWhen Marion's name is told,"
"The British soldier trembles
When Marion's name is told,"
he made the lines read:
"The foeman trembles in his tentWhen Marion's name is told."
"The foeman trembles in his tentWhen Marion's name is told."
"The foeman trembles in his tent
When Marion's name is told."
"So far as I was concerned," said Mr. Bryant in telling me of the matter, "what Irving did seemed altogether an act of friendly intervention, the more so because the acquaintance between him and me was very slight at that time. He was a warm-hearted man, who in doing a thing of that kind, reckoned upon a slight friendship for justification, as confidently as men of natures less generous might reckon upon a better established acquaintance. He always took comradery for granted, and where his intentions were friendly and helpful, he troubled himself very little with formal explanations that seemed to him wholly unnecessary. I had asked him to secure the publication of my poems in England, a thing that only his great influence there could have accomplished at that time. He had been at great pains and no little trouble to accomplish my desire. Incidentally, it had become necessary for him either to accept defeat in that purpose or to make that utterly insignificant alteration in my poem. I was grateful to him for doing so, but I did not understandhis careless neglect to write to me promptly on the subject. I did not know him then as I afterwards learned to do. The matter troubled me very little or not at all; but possibly I mentioned his inattention in some conversation with Coleman, of theEvening Post. I cannot now remember whether I did so or not, but at any rate, Coleman, who was both quick and hot of temper, and often a trifle intemperate in criticism, took the matter up and dealt severely with Irving for having taken the liberty of altering lines of mine without my authority.
"The affair gave rise to the report, which you have perhaps heard—for it persists—that Irving and I quarreled and became enemies. Nothing could be further from the truth. We were friends to the day of his death."
Inasmuch as different versions of the Irving-Bryant affair are extant, it seems proper to say that immediately after the conversation ended I put into writing all that I have here directly quoted from Mr. Bryant. I did not show the record of it to him for verification, for the reason that I knew him to be sensitive on the subject of what he once referred to as "the eagerness of a good many persons to become my literary executors before I am dead." That was said with reference to the irksome attempts a certain distinguished literary hack was making to draw from Mr. Bryant the materials for articles that would sell well whenever the aged poet should die.
After a séance with that distinguished toady one day, Mr. Bryant came to me, in some disturbance of mind, to ask for a volume of verse that I had just reviewed—to soothe his spirit, he said. Then he told me of the visitation he had had, and said:
"I tried to be patient, but I fear I was rude to him at the last. There seemed to be no other way of getting rid of him."
Alas, even rudeness had not baffled the bore; for when Mr. Bryant died the pestilent person published a report of that very interview, putting into the poet's mouth many utterances directly contrary to Mr. Bryant's oft-expressed opinions.
Mr. Bryant's Tenderness of Poets
Exigent and solicitous as he was with reference to every utterance in theEvening Postconcerning literature, Mr. Bryant never interfered with my perfect liberty as literary editor, except in the one matter of the treatment of poets and poetry.
"Deal gently—very gently, with the poets," he said to me at the time of my assumption of that office. "Remember always, that the very sensitiveness of soul which makes a man a poet, makes him also peculiarly and painfully susceptible to wounds of the spirit."
I promised to bear his admonition in mind, and I did so, sometimes perhaps to the peril of my soul—certainly at risk of my reputation for critical acumen and perhaps for veracity. One day, however, I encountered a volume of verse so ridiculously false in sentiment, extravagant in utterance, and inane in character, that I could not refrain from poking a little fun at its absurdity. The next day Mr. Bryant came to see me. After passing the time of day, he said:
"Mr. Eggleston, I hope you will not forget my desire that you shall deal gently with the poets."
I replied that I had borne it constantly in mind.
"I don't know," he answered, shaking his head; "what you said yesterday about X. Y. Z.'s volume did not seem to me very gentle."
"Considered absolutely," I replied, "perhaps it wasn't. But considered in the light of the temptation I was underto say immeasurably severer things, it was mild and gentle in an extreme degree. The man is not a poet, but a fool. He not only hasn't the smallest appreciation of what poetry is or means, but he hasn't the ability to entertain a thought of any kind worthy of presentation in print or in any other way. I should have stultified myself and theEvening Postif I had written more favorably of his work than I did. I should never have thought of writing of it at all, but for theEvening Post'srule that every book offered here for review must be mentioned in some way in the literary columns. Here is the book. I wish you would glance at the alleged poems and tell me how I could have said anything concerning them of a more considerately favorable character than what in fact I printed."
He took the book from my hand and looked it over. Then he laid it on my desk, saying:
"It is indeed pretty bad. Still, I have always found that it is possible to find something good to say about a poet's work."
A little later a still worse case came to my lot. It was a volume of "verse," with no sense at all in it, without even rhythm to redeem it, and with an abundance of "rhymes" that were not easily recognizable even as assonances. It was clumsily printed and "published" at some rural newspaper office, and doubtless at the expense of the author. Finally the cover attempt at decoration had resulted in a grotesque combination of incompatible colors and inconsequent forms. In brief, the thing was execrably, hopelessly, irredeemably bad all over and clear through.
I was puzzling over the thing, trying to "find something good to say" of it, when Mr. Bryant came into my den. I handed him the volume, saying:
"I wish you would help me with a suggestion, Mr.Bryant. I'm trying to find something good that I can say of that thing, and I can't—for of course you do not want me to write lies."
"Lies? Of course not. But you can always find something good in every volume of poems, something that can be truthfully commended."
"In this case I can't regard the sprawlings of ill-directed aspiration as poems," I replied, "and it seems to me a legitimate function of criticism to say that they are not poems but idiotic drivel—to discriminate between poetry in its unworthiest form and things like that. However, the man calls his stuff poetry. I wish you would help me find something good that I may say of it without lying."
Commending a Cover
He took the book and looked through it. Finally he said:
"It is pretty sorry stuff, to be sure. It is even idiotic, and it doesn't suggest poetic appreciation or poetic impulse or poetic perception on the part of its author. Still, the man aspires to recognition as a poet, and he is doubtless sensitively conscious of his own shortcomings. Let us deal gently with him."
"But what can I say, Mr. Bryant?"
"Well, of course, there is nothinginsidethe book that you can praise," he answered, "but you might commend the cover—no, that is an affront to taste and intelligence,"—looking it over with an expression of disgust—"but at any rate you can commend the publishers forputting it on well."
With that—apparently dreading further questioning—he left the room. I proceeded to review the book by saying simply that the cover was put on so strongly that even the most persistent and long continued enjoyment or critical study of the text was not likely to detach or loosen it.
I am disposed to think that Mr. Bryant's excessive tenderness toward poets was lavished chiefly upon the weaklings of that order. For a little while later a poet of genuine inspiration, who afterwards did notable work, put forward his first volume of verse. I found an abundance of good things to say about it, but there was one line in one of his poems that was so ridiculously inconsequent and absurd, that I could not refrain from poking fun at it. I am convinced that the poet in question, with his larger experience and the development that afterward came to his critical faculties, would not have permitted that line to stand if it had occurred in a poem of a later period. It appealed to him then by its musical quality, which was distinctly marked, but when subjected to the simplest analysis it was obvious and arrant nonsense.
Mr. Bryant was interested in the review I wrote of the volume, and in talking with me about it, he distinctly chuckled over my destructive analysis of the offending line. There was no suggestion in what he said, that he regarded the criticism as in the least a transgression of his injunction to "deal gently with the poets."
Unfortunately, the poet criticised seemed less tolerant of the criticism. He was a personal friend of my own, but when next I saw him his mood was that of one cruelly injured, and for many years thereafter he manifested this sense of injury whenever he and I met. I think he afterward forgave me, for we later became the best of friends, and I am glad to believe there was no rancor in his heart toward me when he died a little while ago.
Anonymous Criticism
In these cases I was at a peculiar disadvantage—though I think it not at all an unjust one—in every indulgence in anything like adverse criticism. I may best explain this, perhaps, by telling of an incident that happened soon after I assumed my position. I had been lucky enough to secure from Richard Henry Stoddard a verybrilliant review of a certain book which he was peculiarly the fittest man in all the land to write about. I had the review in type, when I mentioned to Mr. Bryant my good fortune in securing it.
"Is it signed?" he asked in his gentlest manner.
I answered that it was not, for the reason that Stoddard was under a certain assertion of obligation which he refused to recognize but which I could not ask him to repudiate, not to write things of that character for other than a particular publication.
"Then I request that you shall not use it," said Mr. Bryant.
"But really, Mr. Bryant, there is not the smallest obligation upon him in the matter. He is perfectly free——"
"It is not of that that I was thinking," he interrupted. "That is a matter between him and his own conscience, and you and I have nothing whatever to do with it. My objection to your use of the article is thatI regard an anonymous literary criticism as a thing quite as despicable, unmanly, and cowardly as an anonymous letter. It is something that no honorable man should write, and no honorably conducted newspaper should publish."
"But my own reviews in theEvening Postare all of them anonymous," I suggested.
"Not at all," he answered. "When you were appointed literary editor the fact was communicated to every publisher in the country. I directed that and saw that it was done, so that every publisher and, through the publishers, every author, should know that every literary criticism in theEvening Postwas your utterance. In veritable effect, therefore, everything you print in our literary columns is signed, just as every critical article in the great British reviews is. When Jeffrey ridiculed 'Hours of Idleness,' and later, when he seriously criticised 'Cain,' Byron had no need to inquire who his critic was. Thework was responsibly done, as such work should be in every case. The reasons seem to me obvious enough. In the first place, anonymous literary criticism may easily become a cowardly stabbing in the back under cover of darkness. In the second place, the reader of such criticism has no means of knowing what value to place upon it. He cannot know whether the critic is a person competent or incompetent, one to whose opinions he should defer or one whose known incapacity would prompt him to dismiss them as unworthy of consideration because of their source. In the third place, anonymous literary criticism opens wide the door of malice on the one hand, and of undue favoritism on the other. It is altogether despicable, and it is dangerous besides. I will have none of it on theEvening Post."
I suggested that I had myself read the book that Stoddard had reviewed, and that I was ready to accept his criticism as my own and to hold myself responsible for it.
"Very well," he replied. "In that case you may print it as your own, but I had much rather you had written it yourself."
I have often meditated upon these things since, and I have found abundant reason to adopt Mr. Bryant's view that an anonymous literary criticism is as despicable as an anonymous letter. About a year ago I was startled by the utterance of precisely the same thought in nearly identical words, by Professor Brander Matthews. I was sitting between him and Mr. Howells at a banquet given by Colonel William C. Church to the surviving writers for that best and most literary of American magazines,The Galaxy, and when Matthews uttered the thought I turned to Mr. Howells and asked him what his opinion was.
"I have never formulated my thought on that question, even in my own mind," he replied. "I don't know howfar it would be just to judge others in the matter, but for myself, I think I never wrote a literary criticism that was not avowedly or ascertainably my own. Without having thought of the ethical question involved, my own impulse is to shrink from the idea of striking in the dark or from behind a mask."
A Thrifty Poet's Plan
On one occasion Mr. Bryant's desire to "deal gently with the poets" led to an amusing embarrassment. Concerning a certain volume of verse "made in Ohio" and published by its author, I had written that "this is the work of a man who seems to have an alert appreciation of the poetic side of things, but whose gift of poetic interpretation and literary expression is distinctly a minus quantity."
Soon afterward Mr. Bryant entered my den with an open letter in his hand and a look of pained perplexity on his face.
"What am I to do with that?" he asked, handing me the letter to read.
I read it. The poet, knowing Mr. Bryant to be the editor of theEvening Post, evidently supposed that he wrote everything that appeared in the columns of that newspaper. Assuming that Mr. Bryant had written the review of his book, he wrote asking that he might be permitted to use the first half of my sentence as an advertisement, with Mr. Bryant's name signed to it. To facilitate matters he had prepared, on a separate sheet, a transcript of the words:
"This is the work of a man who seems to have an alert appreciation of the poetic side of things."
This he asked Mr. Bryant to sign and return to himfor use as an advertisement, explaining that "Your great name will help me to sell my book, and I need the money. It cost me nearly two hundred dollars to get the book out, and so far I haven't been able to sell more than twenty-seven copies of it, though I have canvassed three counties at considerable expense for food, lodging, and horse-feed."
I saw how seriously distressed Mr. Bryant was by this appeal, and volunteered to answer the letter myself, by way of relieving him. I answered it, but I did not report the nature of my answer to Mr. Bryant, for the reason that in my personal letter I dealt by no means "gently" with this particular poet.
For the further distraction of Mr. Bryant's mind from a matter that distressed him sorely, I told him of the case in which a thrifty and shifty London publisher turned to good advertising account one of theSaturday Review'smost murderous criticisms. TheReviewhad written:
"There is much that is good in this book, and much that is new. But that which is good is not new, and that which is new is not good."
The publisher, in his advertisements, made display of the sentence: "There is much that is good in this book, and much that is new.—Saturday Review."
One thing leads to another in conversation and I went on—by way of the further diversion of Mr. Bryant's mind—to illustrate the way in which theSaturday Review, like many other publications, sometimes ruined its richest utterances by dilution. I cited a case in which that periodical had begun a column review of a wishy-washy book by saying:
"This is milk for babes, with water superadded. The milk is pure and the water is pure, but the diet is not invigorating."
As a bit of destructive criticism, this was complete andperfect. But the writer spoiled it by going on to write a column of less trenchant matter, trampling, as it were, and quite needlessly, upon the corpse of the already slain offender.
The habit of assuming that the distinguished editor of a newspaper writes everything of consequence that appears in its columns, is not confined to rural poets in Ohio, as three occurrences during my service on theEvening Postrevealed to me.
Mr. Bryant and My Poe Article
When a great Poe celebration was to be held in Baltimore, on the occasion of the unveiling of a monument or something of that kind, Mr. Bryant was earnestly urged to send something to be read on the occasion and published as a part of the proceedings. He had no stomach for the undertaking. It was said among those who knew him best that his personal feelings toward Poe's memory were of a bitterly antagonistic kind. However that may be—and I do not know whether it was true or not—he was resolute in his determination to have no part or lot in this Poe celebration. In reply to the urgent invitations sent him, he wrote a carefully colorless note, excusing himself on the plea of "advancing age."
When the day of the celebration came, however, I wrote a long, critical appreciation of Poe, with an analysis of his character, borrowed mainly from what Charles F. Briggs had said to me. My article was published as an editorial in theEvening Post, and straightway half a dozen prominent newspapers in different cities reprinted it under the headline of "William Cullen Bryant's Estimate of Poe."
Fearing that Mr. Bryant might be seriously annoyed at being thus made responsible for an "estimate of Poe" which he had been at pains not to write, I went to his room to speak with him about the matter.
"Don't let it trouble you, my dear boy," he said inhis most patient manner. "We are both paying the penalty of journalistic anonymity. I am held responsible for utterances not my own, and you are robbed of the credit due you for a very carefully written article."
Again, on the occasion of Longfellow's seventieth birthday, Mr. Bryant resisted all entreaties for any utterance—even the briefest—from him. I was assigned to write the necessary editorial article, and when it appeared, one of the foremost newspapers in the country reprinted it as "One Great Poet's Tribute to Another," and in an introductory paragraph explained that, while the article was not signed, it was obviously from Mr. Bryant's pen.
During the brief time that I remained on theEvening Post'sstaff after Mr. Carl Schurz became its editor, I wrote a rather elaborate review of Colonel Theodore Dodge's book, "The Campaign of Chancellorsville." TheSpringfield Republicanreprinted it prominently, saying that it had special importance as "the comment of General Schurz on a campaign in which he had borne a conspicuous part."
A Tupper Trepidation
When it was given out that Martin Farquhar Tupper intended to visit America during the Centennial Exposition of 1876, I wrote a playful article about the "Proverbial Philosophy" man and handed it to the managing editor for publication as a humorous editorial. Mr. Sperry was amused by the article, but distressingly perplexed by apprehensions concerning it. He told me of the difficulty. It seems that some years before that time, during a visit to England, Mr. Bryant had been very hospitably entertained by Tupper, wherefore Sperry feared that Mr. Bryant might dislike the publication of the article. At the same time he was reluctant to lose the fun of it.
"Why not submit the question to Mr. Bryanthimself?" I suggested, and as Mr. Bryant entered at that moment Sperry acted upon the suggestion.
Mr. Bryant read the article with many manifestations of amusement, but when he had finished he said:
"I heartily wish, Mr. Sperry, you had printed this without saying a word to me about it, for then, when Mr. Tupper becomes my guest, as he will if he comes to America, I could have explained to him that the thing was done without my knowledge by one of the flippant young men of my staff. Now that you have brought the matter to my attention, I can make no excuse."
Sperry pleaded that Tupper's coming was not at all a certainty, adding:
"And at any rate, he will not be here for several months to come, and he'll never know that the article was published or written."
"Oh, yes he will," responded Mr. Bryant. "Some damned, good-natured friend will be sure to bring it to his attention."
As Mr. Bryant never swore, the phrase was of course a quotation.
There has been a deal of nonsense written and published with respect to Mr. Bryant'sIndex Expurgatorius, a deal of arrogance, and much cheap and ill-informed wit of a certain "superior" sort expended upon it. So far as I have seen these comments, they have all been founded upon ignorance of the facts and misconception of Mr. Bryant's purpose.
In the first place, Mr. Bryant never published the index and never intended it to be an expression of his views with respect to linguistic usage. He prepared it solely for office use, and it was meant only to check certaintendencies of the time so far as theEvening Postwas concerned. The reporters on more sensational newspapers had come to call every big fire a "carnival of flame," every formal dinner a "banquet," and to indulge in other verbal exaggerations and extravagances of like sort. Mr. Bryant catalogued these atrocities in hisIndexand forbade their use on theEvening Post.
He was an intense conservative as to the English language, and his conscience was exceedingly alert to preserve it in its purity, so far as it was within his power to do so. Accordingly he ruled out ofEvening Postusage a number of things that were creeping into the language to its corruption, as he thought. Among these were the use of "numerous" where "many" was meant, the use of "people" for "persons," "monthly" for "monthly magazine," "paper" for "newspaper," and the like. He objected to the phrase "those who," meaning "those persons who," and above all his soul revolted against the use of "such" as an adverb—as in the phrase "such ripe strawberries" which, he contended, should be "so ripe strawberries" or "strawberries so ripe." The fact that Webster's and Worcester's dictionaries recognized many of the condemned usages, made not the smallest impression on his mind.
"He must be a poor scholar," he once said in my hearing, "who cannot go behind the dictionaries for his authority."
We had a copy of Johnson's dictionary in the office, and it was the only authority of that kind I ever knew Mr. Bryant to consult. Even in consulting that he gave small attention to the formal definitions. He searched at once the passages quoted from classic English literature as illustrations of usage, and if these did not justify the particular locution under consideration, he rejected and condemned it.
Mr. Bryant's "Index"
For another thing, theIndexas it has been quoted for purposes of cheap ridicule, held much that Mr. Bryant did not put into it, and for which he was in no way responsible. The staff of theEvening Postwas composed mainly of educated men, and each of them was free to add to theIndexsuch prohibitions as seemed to him desirable. Some of these represented mere crotchets, but they were all intended to aid in that conservation of English undefiled which was so dear a purpose to Mr. Bryant.
In the main the usages condemned by theIndexwere deserving of condemnation, but in some respects the prohibitions were too strait-laced, too negligent of the fact that a living language grows and that usages unknown to one generation may become altogether good in another. Again some of the prohibitions were founded upon a too strict regard for etymology, in forgetfulness of the fact that words often change or modify and sometimes even reverse their original significance. As an example, Shakespeare uses the expression "fearful adversaries," meaning badly scared adversaries, and that is, of course, the etymological significance of the word. Yet we now universally use it in a precisely opposite sense, meaning that the things called "fearful" are such as fill us with fear.
Finally, it is to be said that Mr. Bryant neither intended nor attempted to enforce theIndexarbitrarily, or even to impose its restrictions upon any but the least educated and least experienced of the writers who served his newspaper. I used to violate it freely, and one day I mentioned the fact to Mr. Bryant. He replied:
"My dear Mr. Eggleston, theIndexwas never intended to interfere with scholarly men who know how to write good English. It is meant only to restrain the inconsiderate youngsters and start them in right paths."
His subordinates were less liberal in their interpretationof the matter. The man whose duty it was to make clippings from other newspapers to be reprinted in theEvening Post, was expected so to edit and alter them as to bring them withinIndexrequirements, and sometimes the alterations were so considerable as to make of the extracts positive misquotations. I have often wondered that none of the newspapers whose utterances were thus "edited" out of their original forms and still credited to them ever complained of the liberties taken with the text. But so far as I know none of them ever did.
When Mr. Bryant and I were talking of theIndexand of the license I had to violate it judiciously, he smilingly said to me:
"After all a misuse of words is sometimes strangely effective. In the old days when I wrote more for the editorial columns than I do now, I had a friend who was deeply interested in all matters of public concern, and whose counsel I valued very highly because of the abounding common sense that always inspired it. His knowledge of our language was defective, but he was unconscious of the fact, and he boldly used words as he understood them, without the smallest fear of criticism before his eyes. Once when some subject of unusual public importance was under popular consideration, I wrote a long and very careful article concerning it. I did my best to set forth every consideration that in any wise bore upon it, and to make clear and emphatic what I regarded as the marrow of the matter. My friend was deeply interested, and came to talk with me on the subject.
An Effective Blunder in English
"'That is a superb article of yours, Mr. Bryant,' he said, 'but it will do no manner of good.' I asked him why, and he answered: 'Because you have exhausted the subject, and won't come back to it. That never accomplishes anything. If you want to produce an effectyou must keep hammering at the thing. I tell you, Mr. Bryant, it isreirritationthat does the business.'
"I thought the matter over and saw that he was right, not only in his idea but still more in the word he had mistakenly chosen for its expression. In such cases it is not only reiteration, butreirritationthat is effective."
There are other indexes in other newspaper offices. Those of them that I have seen represent crass ignorance quite as often as scholarship. One of them absolutely forbids the use of the pronoun "which." Another which I saw some years ago, put a ban on the conjunctions "and" and "but." This prohibition, I am informed, was designed to compel the use of short sentences—a very desirable thing, of course, but one which may easily be pushed to extremes. Imagine a reporter having to state that "X and Y were caught in the act of firing a tenement house, and arrested by two policemen, officers A and B, but that X escaped on the way to the station-house after knocking policeman B down and seriously if not fatally injuring him." If the reader will try to make that simple statement without the use of the four "ands" and the one "but" in the sentence, he will have a realizing sense of the difficulty the writers on that newspaper must have had in their efforts to comply with the requirements of the index.
In still another case the unscholarly maker of the index, having learned that it is incorrect to say "on to-day," "on yesterday," and "on to-morrow," has made a blanket application of what he has mistaken for a principle, and has decreed that his writers shall not say "on the fourth of March" or "on Wednesday of next week," or anything else of the kind. The ignorance shown in that case is not merely a manifestation of a deficient scholarship; it means that the maker of the index knew so littleof grammar as not to know the difference between an adverb and a noun. Yet every one of the newspapers enforcing these ignorant index requirements has made fun of Mr. Bryant's scholarly prohibitions.
Reserved, dignified, self-conscious as he was, Mr. Bryant was always a democrat of the proud old conservative sort. He never descended to undue familiarity with anybody. He patted nobody on the back, and I have never been able to imagine what would have happened if anybody had taken familiar liberties of that kind with him. Certainly nobody ever ventured to find out by practical experiment. He never called even the youngest man on his staff by his given name or by his surname without the prefix "Mr."
In that respect he differed radically and, to my mind, pleasingly from another distinguished democrat.
When Mr. Cleveland was for the third time a candidate for the Presidency, I called on him by Mr. Pulitzer's request just before sailing for Paris, where Mr. Pulitzer was then living. I entered the reception room at his hotel quarters and sent in my card. Mr. Cleveland came out promptly and greeted me with the exclamation:
"Why, hello, Eggleston! How are you? I'm glad to see you."
There was no harm in it, I suppose, but it disagreeably impressed me as the greeting of a politician rather than that of a distinguished statesman who had been President of the United States and hoped to be so again. Had I been an intimate personal friend who could say "Hello, Cleveland!" in response, I should have accepted his greeting as a manifestation of cordiality and good-fellowship. I was in fact only slightly acquainted with him, and in view of all the circumstances his familiarity of address impressed me as boorish. Years afterwards I learned how easy it was for him to do boorish things—how muchrestraint, indeed, he found it necessary to impose upon himself in order to avoid the doing of boorish things.
Mr. Bryant on British Snobbishness
But while Mr. Bryant never indulged in undue familiarity with anybody, he never lost sight of the dignity of those with whom he conversed, and above all, he never suffered shams to obscure his perception of realities. One Sunday at his home in Roslyn he told me the story of his abrupt leaving of England during a journey to Europe. I will tell it here as nearly as possible in his own words.
"English society," he said, "is founded upon shams, falsehoods, and arrogant pretenses, and the falsehoods are in many ways insulting not only to the persons whom they directly affect, but to the intelligence and manhood of the casual observer who happens to have an honest and sincere mind. When I was over there I was for a time the guest of a wealthy manufacturer, a man of education, refinement, and culture, whose house in the country was an altogether delightful place to visit and whose personality I found unusually pleasing. One day as he and I were walking through his grounds a man came up on horseback and my host introduced us. It seems he was the head of one of the great 'county families,' as they call themselves and are called by others. He explained that he was on his way to my host's house to call upon me, wherefore we turned back in his company. During the call he asked me to be his guest at dinner on a day named, and I accepted, he saying that he would have a number of 'the best county people' to meet me. As the evening of the dinner day approached, I asked my host: 'When shall we dress for the dinner?' He looked at his watch and replied: 'It is time foryouto begin dressing now.' I observed the stress he laid upon the word 'you' and asked: 'Isn't it time for you, also?'
"'Oh, I am not invited,' he replied.
"'Not invited? Why, what can you mean?' I asked.
"'Why, of course I'm not invited. Those are county people and I am only a manufacturer—a man in trade. They would never think of inviting me to dinner.'
"I was surprised and shocked.
"'Do you mean to tell me,' I asked, 'that that man came into your house where I am a guest, and invited me to dinner, to meet his friends, without including you, my host, in the invitation?'
"'Why, yes, of course,' he replied. 'You must remember that they are county families, aristocrats, while I am a man in trade. They would not think of inviting me, and I should never expect it.'
"I was full of disgust and indignation. I asked my host to let one of his servants carry a note for me to the great man's house.
"'But why?' he asked. 'You will be going over there yourself within the hour.'
"'I am not going,' I replied. 'I will not be a party to so gross an affront to my host. I shall send a note, not of apology but of unexplained declination.'
"I did so, and as soon thereafter as I could arrange it, I quitted England in disgust with a social system so false, so arbitrary, and so arrogant that one may not even behave like a gentleman without transgressing its most insistent rules of social exclusiveness.
"The worst of the matter was the meek submissiveness of my host to the affront put upon him. He was shocked and distressed that I should decline to go to the dinner. He could not understand that the smallest slight had been put upon him, and I could not make him understand it. That showed how completely saturated the English mind is with the virus of arbitrary caste. I am told that there has been some amelioration of all this during recent years. I do not know how much it amounts to. But did you ever hear an Englishgrande damecrush the life out ofa sweet and innocent young girl by calling her 'that young person'? If not, you cannot imagine what measureless contempt can be put into a phrase, or how much of cruelty and injustice may be wrought by the utterance of three words."
The Newspaper Critic's Function
During my service as a literary editor, I held firmly to the conviction that the function of the newspaper book reviewer is essentially a news function; that it is not his business to instruct other people as to how they should write, or to tell them how they ought to have written, but rather to tell readers what they have written and how; to show forth the character of each book reviewed in such fashion that the reader shall be able to decide for himself whether or not he wishes to buy and read it, and that in the main this should be done in a helpful and generously appreciative spirit, and never carpingly, with intent to show the smartness of the reviewer—a cheap thing at best. The space allotted to book reviews in any newspaper is at best wholly insufficient for anything like adequate criticism, and very generally the reviewer is a person imperfectly equipped for the writing of such criticism.
In accordance with this conception of my functions, I always held the news idea in mind. I was alert to secure advance sheets of important books, in order that theEvening Postmight be the first of newspapers to tell readers about them.
Usually the publishers were ready and eager to give theEvening Postthese opportunities, though the literary editors of some morning newspapers bitterly complained of what they regarded as favoritism when I was able to anticipate them. On one very notable occasion, however, great pains were taken by the publishers to avoid allgrounds of complaint. When Tennyson's "Harold" was published in 1876, there had been no previous announcement of its coming. The greatest secrecy, indeed, had been maintained. Neither in England nor in America had any hint been given that any poem by Tennyson was presently forthcoming. On the day of publication, precisely at noon, copies of "Harold" were laid upon the desks of all the literary editors in England and America.
My book reviews for that day were already in type and in the forms. One hour later the first edition of the paper—the latest into which book reviews could go—must go to press. I knew that my good friends, the literary editors of the morning newspapers, would exploit this great literary news the next morning, and that the evening papers would have it in the afternoon following. I resolved to be ahead of all of them.
I hurriedly sent for the foreman of the composing room and enlisted his coöperation. With the aid of my scissors I got two columns of matter ready, consisting mainly of quotations hastily clipped from the book, with a connective tissue of comment, and with an introductory paragraph or two giving the first news of the publication of an important and very ambitious dramatic poem by Tennyson.
At one o'clock theEvening Postwent to press with this literary "beat" displayed upon its first page. It proved to be the first announcement of the poem's publication either in England or in America, and it appeared twelve or fifteen hours in advance of any other publication either by advertisement or otherwise.
Mr. Bryant and His Contemporaries
On that occasion I tried to draw from Mr. Bryant some expression of opinion regarding Tennyson's work and the place he would probably occupy among English poets when the last word should be said concerning him. I thought to use the new poem and a certain coincidenceconnected with it—presently to be mentioned—as a means of drawing some utterance of opinion from him. It was of no avail. In reply to my questioning, Mr. Bryant said:
"It is too soon to assign Tennyson to his permanent place in literature. He may yet do things greater than any that he has done. And besides, we are too near to judge his work, except tentatively. You remember Solon's dictum—'Call no man happy until death.' It is especially unsafe to attempt a final judgment upon the works of a poet while the glamor of them is still upon us. Moreover, I have never been a critic. I should distrust any critical judgment of my own."
That reminded me that I had never heard Mr. Bryant express his opinion with regard to the work of any modern poet, living or dead. The nearest approach to anything of the kind that I can recall was in a little talk I had with him when I was about leaving for Boston to attend the breakfast given in celebration of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes's seventieth year. The subject of Holmes's work arose naturally, and in talking of it Mr. Bryant said:
"After all, it is as a novelist chiefly that I think of him."
"You are thinking of 'Elsie Venner'?" I asked.
"No,—of 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,'" he answered. "Few persons care for anything in that except the witty wisdom of it, and I suppose Dr. Holmes wrote it for the sake of that. But there is a sweet love story in the book—hidden like a bird in a clump of obtrusively flowering bushes. It is a sweet, wholesome story, and the heroine of it is a very natural and very lovable young woman."
The coincidence referred to above was this. Almost exactly at the time of the publication of Tennyson's "Harold," some American whose name I have forgotten, tomy regret, brought out a dramatic poem on the same subject, with the same hero, and in a closely similar form. It was entitled "The Son of Godwin," and, unless my memory plays me a trick, it was a work of no little merit. It was completely overshadowed, of course, by Tennyson's greater performance, but it had enough of virility and poetic quality in it to tempt me to write a carefully studied comparison of the two works.
While Mr. Bryant shrank from the delivery of opinions concerning the moderns, his judgments of the older writers of English literature were fully formed and very positive. He knew the classic literature of our language—and especially its poetic literature—more minutely, more critically, and more appreciatively than any other person I have ever known, and he often talked instructively and inspiringly on the subject.
On one of those periodically recurring occasions when the Baconian authorship of Shakespeare's works is clamorously contended for by ill-balanced enthusiasts, Mr. Bryant asked me if I had it in mind to write anything about the controversy. I told him I had not, unless he particularly wished me to do so.
"On the contrary," he answered; "I particularly wish otherwise. It is a sheer waste of good brain tissue to argue with persons who, having read anything avowedly written by Bacon, are still able to persuade themselves that the least poetical and most undramatic of writers could have written the most poetical and most dramatic works that exist in any language."
"It seems to me," I answered, "that the trouble with such persons is that they are futilely bothering their brains in an attempt to account for the unaccountable. Shakespeare was a genius, and genius is a thing that can in nowise be measured, or weighed, or accounted for, while genius itself accounts for anything and everythingit may do. It is subject to no restrictions, amenable to no law, and restrained by no limitations whatsoever."
"That is an excellent way of putting an obvious truth," he answered. "I wish you would write it down precisely as you have uttered it orally, and print it as theEvening Post'ssole comment upon the controversy."
Then he sat musing for a time, and after a while added:
"Genius exists in varying degrees in different men. In Shakespeare it was supreme, all-inspiring, all-controlling. In lesser men it manifests itself less conspicuously and less constantly, but not less positively. No other poet who ever lived could have written Coleridge's 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' yet Coleridge could no more have written 'Hamlet' or 'Macbeth' or 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' than any child in pinafores could. When poetry is genuine, it is inspired, as truly as any sacred Scripture ever was. Without inspiration there may be cleverness, beauty, and grandeur in metrical composition, but genuine poetry is the result of inspiration always, and inspiration is genius."
"Whence comes the inspiration?" I ventured to ask, hoping to draw something further from him.
"I do not know," he answered. "Whence comes the color of the rose or the violet or the dandelion? I am not a theologian, to dogmatize about things that are beyond the ken of human intelligence. I only know that the inspiration is there, just as I know that the colors of the flowers are there—in both cases because the thing perceived is obvious."
Genius and "Thanatopsis"
One day I asked Mr. Bryant about "Thanatopsis." When I made my first acquaintance with that poem in a school reader, it was printed with some introductory lines in smaller type, and I had never been able to discover the relation of those lines to the poem or to the thought that inspired it.
In answer to my questions Mr. Bryant explained that the lines in question really had no relation to the poem and no possible connection with it.
"I was a mere boy," he said, "when 'Thanatopsis' was written. It bore no title in my manuscript—that was supplied by an editor who knew Greek, a language of which I did not then know even the alphabet. My father got possession of the poem, took it to Boston, and had it published, all without my knowledge. With the manuscript of it he found some other lines of mine and assumed that they belonged to the poem, as they did not. The editor printed them at top in smaller type, and they got into the schoolbooks in that way. That is the whole story."