Pausing awhile to consider the question, I find that on the whole, most of you, my dear friends, appear to get on excellently well without either manners or morals. There you all are, taking your several parts in the pageant before me, pushing, scrambling, and making generally the most infernal din, the while you move heaven and earth to serve your own personal interest and pleasure, regardless of anybody else's convenience, and you manage to make a tolerably good show of respectability. Your finished education in the great art of counterfeiting does everything for you. The sum and substance of modern culture is in the one line, "Assume a virtuethough you have it not." You all "assume" superbly. And yet the best actors tell us they find their profession entails fatigue and exhaustion at times, and they are glad when they can throw aside the mask and take to "rough-and-tumble" in the secrecy of their own homes. For there is one great fact about us which we all strive to hide, and yet which is for ever declaring itself, and that is, that despite all our civilisation and progress, we are savages still. Absolute barbarians are we, born so, made so, and neither God nor Time shall alter us. Our education teaches us how to cover Nature with a mask, even as our innocent Scriptural progenitors covered themselves with fig-leaves; but Nature is not thereby destroyed. The savage leaps out at all sorts of times and seasons, in the tempers and habits of the most highly cultured men and women. "My Lord," unbracing himself at night and unbuttoning his waistcoat to give freedom to his ample paunch, hiccoughs himself into bed with as much rude noise as the naked Zuluwho has drunk himself nearly dead on rum. "My Lady," unclasping her fashionable "corset" and allowing her beauties to expand, sighs, yawns, shakes herself jelly-wise in freedom, and plumps between the sheets as casually as any squaw in a wigwam. And it is probable that both my lord and my lady asleep, snore as loudly and look as open-mouthed and ugly in their slumbers as any uncivilised brutes ever born. Old Carlyle's notion of the virtue of clothes was the correct one. What should we do with a naked Parliament? The clothes maintain order and respectability, but without artificial covering the whole community would be as they truly are in their heart of hearts—savages, and no more.
I think we are all pretty well conscious of this, some of us perhaps painfully so. And what we are painfully aware of we always try to conceal. Byron, despite his genius, was always thinking of his club-foot. So are we always voluntarily or involuntarily, thinking of our savagery. It will out, still, as I say, we do try to keep itin. We do most faithfully pretend we are civilised, though we know we never shall be; not in this planet. The thing is manifestly impossible. The attraction of sex, the love of fighting, the thirst of conquest, the greed of power: these things are savage elements, like wind and fire and lightning; they make up life, and so long as life is ours, so long shall we be savages at heart—savages in our grandest passions as well as in our meanest. That is why I am disposed to think the doctrines of Christianity unsuited to the world, because they are so directly opposed to natural instinct. However, this is a point I am quite unfitted to argue upon, being of no creed myself, and very much of a savage to boot. Personally, I would not give a fig for a man who had nothing of the savage about him. I have met the kind of fellow often, especially among the literary set. "Not that I intend to imply," as the G. O. M. sayeth, "that under certain circumstances, and given certain conditions," the literary set cannot be savage—theycan be, and are, but it is a savagery that is mere palaver, and never comes to honest fisticuffs. The "literary set" are physically timorous, and not fond of firearms or manly sports; effeminacy and dyspepsia mark these gifted creatures for their own. They have "nerves," have the bookish folk, like fine ladies, and with the "nerves" spite and petulance go as a matter of course. Real,bonâ-fide, fierce savagery is infinitely preferable to the puling whine or the cynical snarl of little poets and "society" philosophers; and the company of a bluff soldier who has "faced fire" is preferable to that of a dozen magazine editors.
Gathering my domino closer about me, I gaze steadily over the circling noisy throng that whirls before me, and I think of wild tribes and famished hordes scurrying fiercely along through clouds of sand over miles of desert, and I see very little difference between the "cultured" crowd and the hungry "barbarians." Desert, or the road called Custom; sand or dust in the eyes of moralperception—they come to very much the same thing in the end. Can it be possible that the present century is "helping on" civilisation? I don't believe it any more than I believe that the wretches who flung themselves under the car of Juggernaut went straight to heaven. The most curious and awful part of the whole spectacle to me is to realise that all this movement, clamour, and confusion, should be doomed to end in sudden silence by and by; such silence, that not a sound from any one of these now living noisy tongues will stir it by so much as a curse or a groan.
Yes, my friends; deny it if you will that we are all savages (I expect you to deny it because I assert it, and you would not be human if you did not contradict me), you will hardly refuse to admit that we are all skeletons. Our flesh makes our savagery. Our clothes make our morality. But reduced to our primal selves, we are plain Bones. And in honest, unadorned Bones, to be positive to the utmost degree of positivism, weinvariably discover ourselves grinning. At what? Ah, who shall say! Unless it be at our own exquisite fooling with fate, which, truth to tell, is very exquisite indeed. And, however serious we may look in the flesh, we must remember our own death's-head is always laughing at us.
Death's-heads are jolly companions. Some of my friends are fond of wearing imitation ones to remind them of the wide perpetual smile they carry behind their own fleshly covering. One or two charming ladies I know carry jewelled death's-heads on their watch-chains, and play with them in a sufficiently gruesome manner. Lady Dorothy Nevill, she of shrewd Walpole wit and keen intelligence, wears a conspicuous ornament given her by our own amiable Prince of Wales—a red coral or cornelian death's-head, with a couple of diamonds in the eye-sockets. I wonder what Albert Edward was thinking about when he made the lady this valuable present, and whether the line, "To this complexion must we come at last," occurred at all to his memory. Lady Dorothyherself is particularly fond of the suggestive bauble; she perceives and appreciates as much as I do the delicate irony of a skull's smile.
And it really needs a good deal of intelligence to understand death's-heads. A duke I know, of the best possible ducal brand, annoys me exceedingly by his lack of perception in this regard. The handle of his walking-stick is an ivory skull, and he is always sucking it. The effect of this act is indescribable. He seems to be mouthing the dried and polished cranium of an ancestor. I meet him frequently in the "row," or Snobs' Parade, where gilded youth goes to stare at gilded age, by which phrase I mean that the foot-passengers are mostly young and lissom of limb, while the fine carriages frequently contain naught but the dried and desolate fragments of old age, or the painted and bedizened wrecks of youth. It is really quite curious to note how few pretty or even genial-looking persons are seen in the vehicles that crowd the Row during a "season." Max O'Rell declares that the entire show is likeTussaud's wax-work taken out for an airing, but I have never seen any one so good-looking or so clear-complexioned as wax-work in a carriage. On foot, yes; there are any number of pretty women and tolerably well set-up men to be met with strolling about under the trees, and it is precisely for this reason that whenever I go to the Park I walk instead of driving, as I prefer pretty women to ugly ones.
And thus by preamble and general tedium I have come leisurely round to the point I wished to arrive at, which is the narration of a singular dream I once had; a vision which fell upon me, not in the "silence of the night," but in the glaring heat of a midsummer afternoon while I was seated on a penny chair in the middle of the Row. I had just exchanged the usual greetings with my kindly young idiot friend the duke (sucking the ivory skull on his cane as usual) and he had gone on his way blandly grinning. I had shaken hands with a couple of vagrant journalists. I had saluted a few charming women,chatted for ten minutes with Lord Salisbury, and had imparted to a dear paunchy diplomat the secret of stewing prawns in wine—a dish which I assure you, on the faith of a truegourmet, is excellent. I had studied the back of a massively fat woman's dress for several seconds, trying to puzzle out the ways and means by which it got fastened over so much rebellious flesh. Fatigued with these exertions, and lulled by the monotonous noise of the rolling wheels of the carriages going to and fro, I fell into a sort of semi-conscious doze, in which I was perfectly aware of my surroundings, though more than half asleep. And "a change came o'er the spirit" of the scene—a change which might have alarmed unphilosophic people, but which to one like myself, who am surprised at nothing, merely transformed a dull and ordinary spectacle into a deeply interesting one. A curious white light pervaded the atmosphere and tinged the overhanging foliage with a sickly shade of green, the yellow sunshine took upon itself a jaundiced hue, and lo! all suddenly and straightway the"row" was stripped of its "too, too solid flesh" and appeared as too, too truthful Bones. Bones were the fashion of the hour—skulls the order of the day. Clothes were worn, of course, for decency's sake, clothes, too, of the very newest fashion and cut; but flesh was discarded as superfluous. And so the most elegant Paris "creations" in the way of lace parasols shaded the sun from the delicate female death's-heads; skeleton steeds in gorgeous trappings worked their ribs bravely, guided along by skeleton coachmen superb in plush and wigs well powdered; and dear antiquated Lady Doldrums, as she turned her eye-sockets to right and left with a pleasant leer, seemed to be more cheerful than she had been for many a long day. She still wore her favourite style of youthful hat, pinched artistically about the brim and turned up with artificial roses, but these handsomely-made French flowers now nodded quite waggishly against her bare jaws, knowing there was no longer any painted flesh there to eclipse their colour. Yes, Lady Doldrums was herself at last—the terriblestrain of pretending to be young was over, and the onlycoquetterieshe practised in her honest condition of Bones, was the wielding of a fan in her grisly sticks of fingers, not for heat's sake—no, merely to keep away the flies. And the wonderful crowd thickened every moment—bones, bones, nothing but bones;—they multiplied by scores, and I began to find out a few of my dear society friends by the armorial bearings on their carriages. I could guess nothing by their faces, as these were nearly all alike, and there was no variety of expression. True, there were short jaws and long, high foreheads and low, wide skulls and narrow, but I was unable to guide myself entirely by these hints. I found out Randolph Churchill, though, in a minute, but then his head is of a curious shape one does not easily forget. I should know his skull anywhere as thoroughly as the gravedigger inHamletknew Yorick's. He looked very cool and comfortable in his bones, I thought. So did the delightfuldanseusewho followed close behind him in a high-wheeled trap,with the smartest little skeleton "tiger" possible to conceive, pranked out in livery, an impudent little top-hat perched jauntily on his impudent little half-grown skull, while as for the exquisite "dancing-girl" herself, good heavens! her bones were positively fascinating! The wind whistled in and out them with a breezy amorousness—and then her smile was more than usually perfect owing to the admirable set of false teeth which were so dexterously screwed into her jaw. It would take years of mouldering away to loosen those teeth, and the mouldering had evidently not yet begun. She wore a wig too—a bronze-red wig in beauteous curl—and upon my soul, she looked almost as well arrayed in bones as in her usual heavily enamelled flesh. Very different was the aspect of the toothless old bundle that came after, seated in a springy victoria, and wrapped in rich rugs to the chin. His skeleton steeds pranced nobly, his skeleton coachman sat stiffly upright, his skeleton footman preserved the accustomed dignified cross-armed attitude, but he himself, poorwretch, rolled uneasily from side to side, till it seemed that his yellow skull would sever itself from the spinal attachment and fall incontinently into his own shaking claws. I recognised him by the showy monogram on his carriage-rug; he was the rich proprietor of several newspapers, the "impresario" of several music-halls, and the dotard lover of several ballet-girls. After him came a "four-in-hand," a marvellous sight to see with its skeleton team, its "lordly" skeleton driver, and its "select" party of skeleton "professional beauties" on top. It made quite a white glare as it passed in the sickly sun, and scattered a good deal of bone-dust from its wheels. Quite close to me there were a couple of skeletons engaged in love dallyings of the most ethereal description. The one, a female, was seated in a victoria, sheltering the top of her skull (on which a fashionable bonnet was perched) with a black lace parasol lined in crimson—a tint which flung a rouge-like reflection on her fleshless but still sensually-shaped jaws. The other, a man, clothed in "afternoonvisiting" costume, leaned tenderly towards her over the park-railing, proferring for her acceptance a spray of white lilies which he had taken from his button-hole, and which he held affectionately between his dry bone fingers. Anything more sublimely chaste, yet "realistic," can never be imagined. The way their two skulls nodded and grinned at each other was intensely edifying—it was a case of purely "spiritual" love and platonic desire, in which the wicked flesh had no existing part. And one of the most remarkable features of the whole pageant was the intense stillness which pervaded the movements of the elegant bony throng of "rank, beauty, and fashion." Not a leaf on the trees rustled, not a joint in any distinguished skeleton cracked. Two skeleton policemen kept order, and the crowd itself kept silence. The skeleton horses rubbed against each other in the press, but not a bone clattered, and not a wheel grated. As noiselessly as mist or rolling cloud, the white-ribbed, motley-clothed multitude moved on; the foot-passengers wereskeletons also, and 'Arry, turning empty eye-sockets about, looked quite as "noble" as my lord the duke in his barouche, somewhat more so in fact, though wearing shabbier clothes. A delightful equality ruled the scene—a true "fraternity," fulfilling some of the socialistic ideas to the letter. For once the "row" had cast off hypocrisy, and appeared in its absolutely real aspect—everybody had found out everybody else—there was no polite lie possible; frank Bones declared themselves as Bones, and nothing more. Moreover, each skeleton was so like its neighbour skeleton that there were really no differences left to argue about. The famous beauty, Lady N., could no longer scowl at her rival, the Duchess of L., because they looked precisely similar, save for a trifling difference in length of jaw, and also for the more impressive fact that one wore blue and the other grey. The bones were the same in each "fair" composition, and as bones, the two ladies were, or seemed to be, amiable enough—it was only the wretched flesh that had made them quarrelsome. And of allthings, the chief thing that was truly beautiful to witness was the universal smile that beamed through the vast assemblage. Never had the "row" presented itself to broad daylight with such a sincerely unaffected, all-pervading Grin! From end to end the grin prevailed—horses, dogs, and men—there was not one serious exception. Into the air, into the very sky, the wide, perpetual, toothy smile appeared to stretch itself out illimitably, everlastingly: like a grim satire carved in letters of white bone, it seemed to inscribe itself upon the blue of heaven; a mockery, a savagery, a protest, a curse, and a sneer in one, it spread itself in ghastly dumb mirth to the very edge of the far horizon, till I, watching it, could stand the death's-head jollity no longer. Starting in my chair, I uttered a smothered cry, and awoke. A friendly hand fell on my shoulder—a pair of friendly eyes twinkled good-humouredly into mine. "Hullo! Were you asleep?" And there beside me stood Labby—the genial Labby—with "Truth" glittering all over him. Should I tell him of myqueer vision, I thought, as I took his arm and strolled away in his ever-delightful company? No. Why should I bother him with the question of honest Bonesversusdishonest Flesh? He was (and is) already too busy exposing Shams.
V.
HOW NAMES ARE SUPERIOR TO PERSONS.
"What's in a name?" sighed the fair Juliet of Shakespeare's fancy. She was very much in love when she propounded the question, so she must be excused for coming to the conclusion that a name meant nothing. But no one who is not in love, no one who is not absolutely mad, can be pardoned for indulging in such an opinion. Romeo was more than his name to Juliet, but out of romantic poesy, nobody is more than his name as a rule. The Name is everything; the Person behind the Name is generally nothing when you come to know him. A fine title frequently covers the most unpretentious individual. Beginning with the very highest example in theland, can there be anything more lofty-sounding than this—"Her Majesty Victoria Regina, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of India!" The full-mouthed, luscious, trumpet-roll of this description calls up before the imagination something beyond all speech to express; visions of great nations, glittering armies, stately war-ships, kingdoms of the Orient, stores of wealth and wonder untold—well, and after it all, when you come to stand face to face with this so tremendous Victoria Regina, you find only a dear, simple old lady attired in dowdy black, who might just as well be Mrs. Anybody as the Queen, for all she looks to the contrary. She is a dreadful disappointment to the young and enthusiastic, who almost expect to see something of the enthroned goddess about her, with Athene's shield and buckler bracing her woman's breast, and all the jewels of her Eastern Empire blazing on her brow. Alas for the young and enthusiastic! They are doomed to a great many such disillusions. They dreamof Names, and find only Persons, and the fall from their empyrean is an almost paralysing shock as a rule. There are exceptions of course. There is a majestic Cardinal in Rome who looks every inch a Cardinal—the others might be anybodies or nobodies. The Pope is not entirely disappointing; he has the air of a refined Spanish Inquisitor, a sort of etherialised Torquemada. He is much more impressive in demeanour than our own excellent Archbishop of Canterbury, who does not overawe us at any time. In fact, we are seldom awed by persons at all, only by names. A small boy of my acquaintance, taken to see the Shah, expressed his disgust in a loud voice—"Why, he's only a man!" There is the whole mischief of the thing. Only a man—only a woman. Nothing more. But the Names seem so much more. Names spread themselves in a large, vast way over the habitable globe—they are everywhere, while the Persons remain limited to one place, or else are nowhere. The name of Shakespeareis so all-pervading that we will not hear of Bacon being substituted for it, even though Donelly should chance to be right. How well it is for us that we never knew the Person (whoever he was) that wrote the plays. Even Homer himself—should we have cared to know him? I doubt it. His name has proved infinitely better than himself because more lasting. And so, what slight amount of reverence I have in my nature I bestow entirely on Names—for Persons I have little or no respect. A great name possesses a great charm—a great person is generally a great bore. Any one who takes the trouble to observe society closely will support my theory of the superiority of names to individuals. Try the mere sound of several names and see. "The Prince of Wales." That is a fine historical designation, but, curiously enough, it does not convey so much in the way of grand suggestions as it ought to do. Yet he who bears it now is the first gentleman in the land; kindly, courteous, chivalrous, and a veritable Prince ofgood fellows. "Baron Rothschild"—a name suggestive of wealth galore—but the great financier himself is not such wondrous company. "His Grace the Duke of Marlborough" hath a pleasing roll in the utterance, but when you get close to the distinguished biped so designated, you are conscious of a dismal sense of failure somewhere. "Her Grace the Duchess of Torrie MacTavish" suggests a "gathering of the clans" and bonfires on the Highland hills, but her Grace herself is but a little mean old Scotchwoman, with an avaricious eye upon every "bawbee" expended in her household. "Prime Minister" is a fine title—"Prime Minister of England"—the finest title in the world; but Salisbury is the only man who looks the stately part. The G.O.M. is pure Plebeian—a big-brained plebeian, if you like, but plebeian to the marrow. The demagogue declares itself in the shape of his feet and hands, which are as long and flat as it is the privilege of demagogue hands and feet to be. Coming to the "dream-weavers," ormen of letters, some of us (young and enthusiastic) breathe the name "Tennyson" with reverential tenderness, thinking the old man must be well-nigh a demi-god. Not a bit of it. Crusty and perverse, he will have little of our company, and against many of those who have bought his books he thunders denunciation and bars his garden-gate. A little of the exquisite vanity of old Victor Hugo, who used to show himself to passers-by at his window, would better become our veteran Laureate than his hermit-like sourness. "Ruskin" is another great name—but who can count the intense disappointments entailed on ardent admirers of the Name when they discover the Person! "Swinburne" suggests poetry, romance, wild and wondrous things—a bitter awakening awaits those who will insist on peering behind the Name to see the bearer thereof. And it is nearly always so. Names open to us the gates of the Ideal—Persons shut us up in the dungeon of Commonplace. Few famous people come up to theirnames—still fewer go beyond them. If ever I chance to meet a celebrated man or woman whose personal charm fascinates me more than his or her celebrated name, I shall make a great fuss about it. I shall—let me see, what shall I do?—why, I shall write to theTimes. TheTimesis the only correct threepenny outlet for ebullitions of sincere national feeling. But till I am otherwise convinced, I adhere to my expressed opinion that Names are the chief motors of social influence, and that individuals are of infinitely less account. Thus, I think it a thousand pities that Stanley did not meet with the good old style of melo-dramatic hero's death in the Dark Continent. His Name might have become a glory and a watchword—as matters now stand his Person has extinguished his Name.
Yes, my dear friends all, I assure you, on my honour as an honest masquer, that both my opinion and advice in this matter are well worth following. When you have selected a Name tohold in some particular reverence, you will be unwise if you try to peep behind it in search of the person belonging to it. The Name is like the door forbidden to Bluebeard's wife: once opened, it shows no end of horrors, headless corpses of good intentions weltering in their blood, and hacked limbs of fine sentiment mouldering on the floor. Keep the door shut therefore. Never unlock it. Let no light fall through the crannies. Stand outside and worship what you imagine may be within. Do as I do—know as many Names as you like and as few Persons as possible. Life is more agreeable that way. For example, if you wanted to findmeout, and you were to peep behind my name and tear off my domino, you would only be disappointed. You would find nothing but—a person; a Person who might possibly be your friend and might equally be your foe. 'Twere well to be wary in such a doubtful business. Best accept me as I appear, and entertain yourselves with the notion that there may be a "Somebody" hiddenbehind the mask. Make an "ideal" of me if you choose—ideal saint, or devil, whichever pleases your fancy, for I have no taste either way. Only, for Heaven's sake, remember that if you do persuade yourselves into thinking I am a Somebody, and I turn out after all to be a Nobody, it is not my fault. Don't blame me; blame your own self-deception. Inasmuch as it is especially necessary in my case to bear in mind that the Name is not the Person.
VI.
CONVERSETH WITH LORD SALISBURY.
Excellent and courteous friend, one moment, I beseech you! I know how busy you are, but I also know, much to my satisfaction, that, like a true diplomat and wise man, you give ear to all, even to fools occasionally, inasmuch as from fools sometimes emanate certain snatches of wisdom. Therefore pause beside me for an instant with the patient grace and friendliness I am accustomed to from you; for though I call myself a fool with the heartiest good will, you have often thought and spoken of me otherwise, for which condescension I thank you. It is something to have won your good opinion, inasmuch as you are guiltless of "booming" second-rate literature, in the styleof the venerable Woodcutter of Hawarden, for the sake of bringing yourself into notice. Indeed, I think the admirable qualities of your head and heart have hardly been sufficiently insisted upon by the party you serve. And the genius of patriotism and love of Queen and country which inspire your spirit—are these rightly, fairly, acknowledged? No. But what can you or any one else expect from the weak, vacillating souls you are called upon to lead, such as Randolph Churchill, for example, whose political career is but a disappointment and mockery to public onlookers. I consider that you fight single-handed. Your endeavours are noble and fearless, but those who should support you are for the most part cowards—and not only cowards, but selfish cowards; for to some of your party whom I know, a matter of digestion is more paramount than the good of the country. When a leading Conservative finds himself slightly bilious through over-eating, he hastens away abroad, there to nurse his miserable physical ills and pamper his worthless carcase, regardlessof, or indifferent to, the fact that, by virtue of his position, if not his brains, his presence in England might be useful and valuable. There are numerous such lazy hounds in your party, my dear Lord, who deserve to be lashed with the whip of a Fox's or a Pitt's eloquence. And I have wondered oft why you have not spoken the lurking reproach against them, the indignant "Shame on you all!" that must have frequently burned for utterance in your mind.
And "shame on you all!" is the cry that leaps to the lips of every true Briton who thinks of the former historical glories of his country, and at the same time observes the lamentable unsteadiness, the lack of courage, the dearth of principle in politicians of every grade to-day. Parliament gabbles; it does not speak. Often it resembles a cackling chorus of old women striving to describe their own and their friends' various ailments. Why is Radicalism rampant? Why is there any Radicalism? Because so many Radicals are honest, hard-working men—honest in theiropinions, honest in the utterance of those opinions, honest in thinking that their cause is good. And you, my dear Lord, have a certain sympathy with this active, energetic, vital, if wrong-headed honesty—you know you have. You love your Sovereign, you love your country, you love the constitution, but for all that you cannot but sympathise with integrity. You know that the Monarch has left England pretty much to itself for the last thirty years, and that she has allowed the people to realise that they can get on without her, seeing she will take no part with them in their daily round. A pity! but the evil is done, and it is too late to remedy it. There is practically no social ruler of the realm, and you must confess, good Salisbury, that this fact makes your work difficult. The mass of the people can only be got to understand a monarch who behaves like one, and the more intellectual food you put into them, the more obstinate they become on the point. With similar pigheadedness they can only understand the personality of a prince whose conduct isa princely example; they are quite sure about themselves here, and have the most appallingly distinct notions concerning right and wrong. They do not go to church for these notions—no. Many cobblers and coalheavers would be mentally refreshed if they were allowed to kick a few seeming-holy clerics whose hypocrisies are apparent despite sermons on Sunday. It must not be forgotten that education is making huge strides among the populace; it has got its seven-leagued boots on, and is clearing all manner of difficulties at a bound. When your greengrocer studies Plato o' nights, when your shoemaker carries the maxims of Marcus Aurelius about in his pocket to refresh himself withal in the intervals of stitching leather, when the wife of your butcher sheds womanly tears over Keats' "Pot of Basil," a poem which the "cultured" dame has "no time" to read—these be the small signs and tokens of a wondrous change by and by. Cheap literature, especially when it is a selection of the finest in the world, is a dangerous "factor" in themaking of revolutions, and among other purveyors of literary food for the million, one who calleth himself Walter Scott, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, is unconsciously doing a curious piece of work. He is putting into the hands of the "lower classes," for the moderate price of one shilling (discount price ninepence) small volumes well bound and well printed, which contain the grandest thoughts of humanity, such as "Epictetus," "Seneca," Mazzini's "Essays," "Sartor Resartus," "Past and Present," the "Religio Medici," the Emerson "Essays," and what not—and it is necessary to take into consideration the fact that the people who buy these books read them. Yes, they read them, every line, no matter how slowly or laboriously; for whether they have expended a shilling or the discount ninepence, they always want to know what they have got for their money. This is the peculiar disposition of the "masses"; the "upper ten" are not so particular, and will lay out a few guineas on Mudie by way of annual subscription, getting scarce anything back of valuein exchange. After this fashion, too, the "upper ten" entertain the ungrateful, keep horses and carriages for display, and trot the dreary round of season after season, striving to extract amusement from the dried-up gourd of modern social life, and finding nothing in it all but a bitter jest or a sneering laugh at the slips in morality of their so-called "friends" and neighbours. And thus it is, my dear Lord, that the balance of things is becoming alarmingly unequal; the "aristocratic" set are a scandal to the world with their divorce cases, their bankruptcies, their laxity of principle, their listless indifference to consequences; they never read, they never learn, they never appear to see anything beyond themselves. Whereas the "bas-peuple"arereading, and reading the books that have helped to make national destinies—theyarelearning, and they are not afraid to express opinions. They do not think a duke who seduces his friend's wife merely "unfortunate"—they call him in plain language a low blackguard. They cannot be brought to believe that the heir to agreat name who has gambled away all his estates on the turf a "gentleman"—they call him a "loose fish" without parley. Now you, excellent and true-hearted Salisbury, have to look on two sides of the question. On the one are your own people, the aristocrats, the Tories, lazy, indifferent, inert, many of them—fond of what they term "pleasure," and as careless of the interests of the country (with a few rare exceptions) as they can well be. On the other hand you have the sturdy, loyal, splendid English "masses," who in their heart of hearts are neither Radicals, Whigs, or Tories, but are simply as they always have been—"For God and the Right!" It matters not which party expresses what they consider the Right; it is the Right they want, and the Right they will have, and they will try all means and appliances in their power till they get it. And it is with this clamour for the Right that you, my Lord, sympathise, because you know how much there is just now that is wrong; how politicians shuffle and lie and play at cross-purposes simply to attaintheir own personal ends; how over-competition is cutting the throat of Free Trade; how foolishly the tricksters have played with poor distracted Ireland; how openly we have lowered the standard of society by admitting into it men and women of well-known degraded reputation, as well as the painted mimes and puppets of the stage; how wives are bargained for and bought for a price, almost as shamelessly as in an open market; how good faith, chivalry, honour, and modesty are every day becoming rarer and rarer among men; and how, worst of all, we try to cover our vices by a cloak of hypocrisy—the most canting hypocrisy current in the world. English hypocrisy, the ultra-pious form—oh! "it is rank; it smells to heaven!" There is nothing like it anywhere—nothing—no devil so well sainted by psalm-singing, church-going, Sunday observance, and charitable subscription lists. The married woman of title and high degree who sells the jewel of her wifely chastity for the trifling price of a fool's praise, is ever careful to look after the poor, and give her "distinguished" patronage to church-bazaars.Pah! such things are as a sickness to the mind; one's gorge rises at them; and yet they are, as the Queen said to Hamlet, "common." So common, i' faith, that we are beginning to accept them as an inevitable part of our "social observances." And, alas, my Lord of Salisbury, you can do nothing to remedy these things, and yet it is precisely "these things" that swell the rising wave of Radicalism. And despite all the power of your keen, capacious brain, and all the love of country working in your soul, believe me, the storm will break. Nothing will keep it back; because, though there are men of genius in the realm, these men are not permitted to speak. The tyrant Journalism forbids. Why "tyrant"? Is not Journalism free? Not so, my Lord; it is not the "voice of the people" at all; it is simply the voice of a few editors. Were the most gifted man that ever held a pen to write a letter to any of the papers on a crying subject of national shame, he would be refused a hearing unless he were a friend of the proprietors of whatever journal heelected to write to. And men of genius seldom are friends of editors—a curious fact, but true. And so we never really hear the "voice of the people" save in some great crisis, and when we do, it invariably astonishes us. It upsets our nerves, too, for a long time afterwards. It is always so horribly loud, authoritative and convincing! The "voices of editors" die away on these occasions like the alarmed squealings of cats chased by infuriated hounds, and into the place of such a smug and well-satisfied person as the Editor of theTimes, for example, leaps a shabby, dirty, hungry, eager-eyed creature like Jean Jacques Rousseau, who, instead of a clean and carefully prepared pen, uses for the nonce a red, sputtering torch of revolution, which, setting fire to old abuses, spreads wide conflagration through the land. And how the heart leaps, how the blood thrills, when old abusesaredestroyed! When the rats' nests of cliques are thrust out to perish in the gutter, when the dirty cobwebs of self-interest and love of gain are swept down, and the fat spiders within themtrampled under foot, when the great white palace of national Honour is cleansed and made sweet and fresh for habitation, even at the cost of groaning labour, confusion, and stress, how one breathes again, how one lives the life of a true man in the purified strong air!
As you know well, my Lord, I am of no political party. I am proud to be as one with this great nation in its vital desire for the Right and the Just. Wherever the Right appears I am its follower to the death. I hate false things; I hate bubble reputations, empty wind-bags of policy, dried skeletons of faith. Why not leave this dubious handling of bones and dusty material? It is too late to set wry matters straight. They are an obstruction, and must be cleared from the path of England. Had you the temerity, as I know you have the will, you would speak your thoughts more openly than you have yet done. You would say: "I refuse to lead cowards. I will call to my side men of proved brain and honesty and skill, with whom honour is more thanpelf; I will get at the heart of England, and move withitspulsations; and of those who are not with this heart I will have none. I will at once make some attempt to remedy the frightful abuses of the law; I will move heaven and earth till England, not party, is satisfied!"
And oh, my most excellent friend, what a wise thing you would do, if you would only keep a watchful eye on the scribblers—the poor and hungry and ambitious scribblers especially! Your party at all times of history has been foolishly prone to neglect this sort of inky folk, and what an error of policy is such neglect! These same inky folk, my Lord, do cause thrones to fall and empires to tremble, wherefore you and all whom it concerns should look after them warily. Make friends with them; soothe their irritated nerves; take time and trouble to explain a situation to them, and remember, never was there dusty, crusty writing-biped yet but could not be moved to a pale, pleased smile of response to a royal hand-shake, a royal greeting, given in good season.It is not singers and twiddlers on musical strings that a wise Court should patronise, but the wielders of pens—they, who, if despised and neglected, take relentless vengeance, and, fearing neither God nor devil, proceed to make strange bargains with both. The Press is a plebeian creature—yes, I know; but for all that, it has stumbled with its big, hob-nailed shoes and Argus eyes into the Royal precincts, and stands there smacking its greasy lips and staring rudely, after the fashion of all plebeians unaccustomed to polite society. It is vulgar, this Press—there is no doubt of that; it dresses badly, and wears, not a sword by its side, but a stumpy pen stuck unbecomingly behind its ear, and it gives itself a vast amount of coarse swagger because it is for the most part deficient in education, and picks up its knowledge by hearsay—nevertheless it has power. And it is a power which neither you nor any one else can afford to despise; wherefore, good friend, when you have any grand object in view and want to attain it, let all else go if necessary, but gather a grand muster-roll of Pens. Theseshall win you your cause if you only know how to lead them, and without their assistance you shall be lost in a sea of contradictions. Some of these Pens are already yours to command; but others are not, and you trouble not your head concerning these "others" which are the very ones you should secure. As for me, I could go on advising you with the most infinite tedium on sundry matters, but I will not now, inasmuch as we shall have frequent opportunities for discourse in the library at Hatfield. And so, till we meet again, accept the assurance of my admiration and devoted service. You are one of the noblest of living Englishmen; you have the kindest heart in the world; your foreign policy means peace and satisfaction to Europe; and yet, with it all, and with my ardent friendship for you, I cannot help asking myself the question whether, if the storm breaks and the waves rise mountains high, will you have the strength to be a pilot for the ship of England in her dark hour? And if it should be proved that you cannot steer us, Who shall be found that can?
VII.
CHATTETH WITH THE GRAND OLD MAN.
Dost thou remember, my dear Mr. Gladstone, a certain warm and pleasant July afternoon when thou didst honour and oppress me with thy Grand Old Presence for a couple or more of weary hours, regardless of the fact that the "House" expected thee to appear and reply on some moot point or other to Mr. Goschen? There in my modest studio thou didst sit, rubbing that extensive ear of thine with one long forefinger, and smiling suavely at such regular intervals as almost to suggest the idea of there being a patent smiling-machine secreted behind thy never-resting jaw!
Ah, that was a day! We talked—but no! 'twas thou didst talk, thou noble old man! and I—asall poor mortals must needs do in thy company—listened. Listened intently; helpless to remove thee from the chair in which thou sattest; hopeless of putting any stop to thine eloquence; while on, on, on, still on, rolled the stream of thy fluent and wordy contradictions, till my mind like a ship broken loose from its moorings, rocked up and down in a wild, dark sea of uncertainty as to what thou didst mean; or whether thy meaning, if it could by chance be discovered, should in truth be meant? Hadst thou been a Book instead of a Man, I should have flung thee aside, walked the room, and clutched my hair after the manner of the intense tragedian; but with thee, thou astonishing Biped, I could do no more than stare stonily at thy careless collar-ends and concentrate all my soul on my powers of hearing. "Listen, fool!" I said to my inner self—"Listen! It is Gladstone who is speaking—Gladstone the old man eloquent; Gladstone the thinker; Gladstone the Bible scholar; Gladstone the Greek translator; Gladstone the Scotchman, Gladstone theIrishman, Gladstone the—the—the—Wood-cutter! Listen!"
And, as I live, I listened to thee, Gladstone; I swallowed, as it were, thine every word, in spite of increasingly lethargic mental indigestion. Specially did I strive to follow thee in thy wild flights up the stairs of many religious theories, when with gray hair ruffled and eyes aglare, thou didst solemnly rend piecemeal "Robert Elsmere," forgetting, O thou grand old Paradox, that if thou hadst never lifted up that clamant voice of thine inNineteenth-Century-Magazineutterance, Robert and his oppressive religious troubles might scarcely have attracted notice? Didst thou not "boom" Robert, and then feign surprise at the result? Ay, venerable Splitter of Straws and Hewer of Logs, wilt deny the truth? And shall I not advise thee in thine own terms to retire from public life, not "now," but "at present." Or if not "at present" then "now"? Either will serve, before thou dost make more blows with thy hatchet-brain (somewhat dulled at theedge) at the future honour and welfare of thy country.
Ah, what things I could have said to thee, thou Quibble, when thou didst venture to assail me with thy converse, if thou hadst but taken decent pause for breathing! Why, amongst other marvels, didst thou deem it worth thy while to flatter me, or to praise the casual sputterings of my pen? Thy unctuous insinuations carried no persuasion; thy "nods and becks and wreathed smiles" were wasted on me; thy soft assurances of the "certainty of my future brilliant fame" went past my ears like the murmur of an idle wind. For a fame "assured" by thee is nothing worth; and thy Polonius-like approbation of any piece of work, literary or otherwise, is as a mark set on it to make it seem ridiculous. For thou art destitute of humour save in wood-cutting; and thou needest many a lesson from my dear friend Andrew Lang before thou canst successfully comprehend the subtly critical art of proving a goose to be a swan. And so, by monosyllables slipt in like frailestwedges between thy florid bursts of ambiguity, I strove to entice thy wandering wits back to the discussion of personal faith in matters religious, wherein I found thee most divertingly inchoate, but my feeble efforts were of small avail. For lo, while yet I strove to understand whether thou wert in truth a Roman Papist, a Calvinist, a Hindoo, a Theosophist, or a Special Advocate of theWar Cry, the subject of Creed, like a magic-lantern slide, disappeared from thy mental view, and Divorce came up instead. Frightful and wonderful, according to thee, goodman Gladstone, are the wicked ways of the married! No sooner are they united than they move heaven and earth to get parted—so it is at any rate very frequently in the free and happy American Republic, where the disagreeing parties need not move heaven and earth, but simply make a mutual assertion. Oh, of a truth here was no smiling matter! No Deity in question, but a very positive Devil, needing thy exhortation and exorcism; and thy jaws clacked on sternly, strenuously, and with a resolute gravityand persistency that seemed admirable. Not every man could be expected to find a Mrs. Gladstone, but surely all were bound to try and discover such a paragon. If all married society were composed of Mr. and Mrs. Gladstones, why, married society would realise the fabled Elysium. And supposing there continued to be only one Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, and all the rest were quite a different set of hopelessly different temperaments, then, naturally, it was impossible to state what disasters might ensue. It would be a case of Noah and his wife over again—after them the Deluge. In the interim, Divorce was shocking, abominable, sinful, diabolical, ungodly—an upsetting of the most sacred foundations of morality—and it was chiefly because Gladstonian domestic tastes were not universal. This, at least, is what I seemed to gather from thee in thine onslaughts against the large and melancholy mass of the Miserably Married; I say I "seemed" to gather it, because it "seemed" thy meaning, but as thy whole mode of speech and action is only "seems," I cannot beabsolutely sure either of myself or thyself. For thou didst set out an attractive row of various learned propositions, gently, and with the bland solicitude of a hen-wife setting out her choicest eggs for sale, then suddenly and incontinently, and as one in a fit of strangest madness, thou didst sweep them up and fling them aside into airy nothingness without concern for the havoc wrought. Thou didst calmly state what appeared to be a Fact, reasonable and graspable; and with all the powers of my being I seized upon it as a grateful thing and good for consideration; when suddenly thy senile smile obscured the intellectual horizon, and thy equably modulated voice murmured such words as these: "Not that I desire to imply by any means that this is so, or should be so, but that it might (under certain circumstances, and provided certain minds were at harmony upon the point) probably become so." Ah, thou embodied Confusion worse Confounded! Had it not been for this constant playing of thine at thy favourite shuffling game of cross-purposes, I shouldhave roused my soul from its stupor of forced attention to demand of thee more of thy profound Bible scholarship. Whether, for example, if Divorce, thy bugbear, were ungodly, and the Bible true, a man should not have two, three, nay, half-a-dozen wives at his pleasure for as long or as short a time as he chose, and find situations for them afterwards as servants, telegraph-clerks, and bookkeepers, when their beauty was gone and snappishness of temper had taken the place of endearing docility. Whether English harem-life, lately set in vogue by certain great and distinguished "Upper" people, could not be easily proved pleasing unto the Most High Jehovah? For did not God love His servant Abraham? and did not Abraham bestow his affections on Sarai and Hagar? and when the hoary old reprobate was "well stricken in years" and "the Lord had blessed him in all things" did he not again take a wife named Keturah, who presented him in his centenarian decrepitude with six sons?—all "fine babies," no doubt. What sayest thou tothese morals of Holy Writ, thou "many-sounding" mouthpiece of opinion? Answer me on a postcard, for with thee, more than with any other man, should brevity be the soul of wit!
Some of us younger and irreverent folk oft take to speculating why, in the name of bodies politic, thy days, O Venerable, are so long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee? The Lord thy God, friend William Ewart, must have some excellent reason for allowing thee to ruthlessly cut down so many growing oaks of English honour and walk unscathed across the bare, disfigured country, with the wild dogs of Democracy sneaking at thy heels. And I forgot, in speaking of the holy Abraham, that late events have proved the high superiority of thy tastes in morality to those of God's anciently-favoured servant. For didst thou not disown thy sweetest nursling, thine own favourite adopted son, Parnell, simply and solely to publicly clasp and kiss the wrinkled, withering hand of Mrs. Grundy? And knowest thou not, thou gray-haired Conundrum, that nothing hasever seemed more preternaturally absurd to the impartial observer and student of social life in all countries, than this making a public question out of personal matter?—this desertion of a former friend, a man, too, of immense intellectual capability, all because, as the old German ballad goes, "he loved a, to him, temptingly-forbidden lady"? Just Heavens! I could name dozens of men (but I will not), party men too, respectably married likewise, who have their "temptingly-forbidden ladies" tucked snugly away in the innermost recesses of their confidence, and who avoid betraying themselves into such impulsiveness as might lead to a fire-escape and political dissolution. As for Mrs. Grundy, the dear old soul never sees anything now unless she is led up to it with her spectacles on; she is more than half blind, and totally deaf—a poor, frail creature very much on her last legs—and she must have been vaguely flattered and surprised at thy voluntary Grand Old Hand-Shake, given to her in the very face of all the staring world of intelligence and fashion. It musthave soothed her aching heart and comforted her tottering limbs to find she still had left to her a pale vestige of past power. Ah, it was a grand and edifying party-split!—almost as exciting as if it had occurred on a question of Beer, which fateful subject angrily discussed, did, I believe, on one occasion actually effect a change of Ministry. And it is rather a notable proof of the curious littleness of the age we live in, that of late, political parties have seldom broken up on great questions—questions of momentous and general interest affecting the welfare of the state and people—but nearly always on petty, personal, nay almost vulgar and childish disputes, such as might make Fox and Pitt turn and groan in their graves. Is there no such thing as unadulterated patriotism left, I wonder?—no real ardent love of the "Mother" England? or hast thou, old Would-Be Despot, choked it all by thy pernicious gabble?
And yet, whatever may be said of thee now or in after history as a Man-Enigma, thy bitterest enemy, unless he be an idiot born, can hardly beblind to thy numerous and extraordinary endowments. Jumbled as they are together with so much confusion that it is difficult to tell which savour most of vice or most of virtue, they are nevertheless Endowments, rare enough to find in any other living composition of mortal mould. And the mystic gift that keeps thee powerful to grasp and retain thy dominance over the minds of the Majority, is simple Genius—a gift of which there are many spurious imitations, but which in itself is given to so few as to make it seem curious and remarkable, aye, even a thing suggestive of downright madness to the men of mere business talent and capacity who form the largest portion of the governing body. Misguided, captious, flighty as caprice itself, it is nevertheless a flash of the veritable Promethean fire which works that busy, massive brain of thine—a kindling, restless heat which is entirely deficient in the brains of nearly all thy fellow-statesmen of the hour. This it is that fascinates the Public—the giant Public that above all the whisperings and squealings ofthe Press, reserves its own opinion, and only utters it when called upon to do so, with sundry roarings and vociferations as of a hungry lion roused—a convincing manner of eloquence which doth wake to speculative timorousness the wandering penny-a-liner. For Genius is the only quality the Public does in absolute truth admire, without being taught or forced into admiration—and that Genius has ever in reality been despised or neglected by the world, is, roughly speaking, a Lie. Everything noble that deserves to live, lives; and Homer wrote as much for the England of to-day as for the Greece of past time. The things that die, deserve to die; the "genius" who deems himself ill-used, does by his childish querulousness prove himself unworthy of appreciation. For no great soul complains, inasmuch as all complaint is cowardice.
Thus, when I bring the Public well into sympathetic view, and consider thee in relation to it, O Grand Old Gladstone, I understand readily enough what is meant by the feeling of the"majority" concerning thy civic and personal qualifications for power. It is this—that the people feel, that notwithstanding thy chameleon-like variableness, and thy darkly cabalistic utterances on the political How, When, and Why, thou art still the "only" man in the professed service of the country possessing this talisman of Genius which from time immemorial has carried its own peculiar triumph over the heads of all opposers. For when thou shalt be gone the way of all flesh, who is left? Little brilliancy of wit or good counsel is there now in the Commons, and the Lords are but weary creatures, bent on maintaining their own interests in the face of all change. Is there a man who can be truly said to have the gift of eloquence save Thou? Wherefore the attention and interest of the people still continue to revolve round thy charmed pivot, thou Hawarden Thinker, with, as the Scotch say, "a bee" in thy bonnet. And, whether Premier or Ex-Premier, all because thouarta Thinker in spite of the bee. Thy thoughts may be "long, long thoughts" likethe "thoughts of youth" in Longfellow's pretty poem—they may be indeed without any definite end at all, but they are thoughts, they are not mere business calculations of the State's expenses. Only being ill-assorted and still worse defined, they are unfit to blossom into words, which they generally do, to the perplexity and anxiety of everybody concerned. And there is the mischief—a mischief irremediable, for nothing will stop thy tongue, thou Grand Old Gabbler, save a certain Grand Old Silence wearing only bones and carrying a scythe, who is not so much interested in politics as in mould and earthwormsà laDarwin.
Nevertheless I, for one, shall be exceedingly sorry when this fleshless "reaper whose name is Death" mows thee down, poor Gladdy, and turns thee remorselessly into one more pinch of dust for his overflowing granary. Remember me or not as thou mayest, do me good service or bad, I care nothing either way. Thy visits to me were of thine own seeking, and of conversation thou didst keep the absolute monopoly; but what matter?—Iat least was privileged to gaze upon thee freely and mentally comment upon thy collar unreproved. 'Twas but thy unctuous flattery that vexed my soul; for Gladstonian praise is but Art's rebuke. Otherwise I bear thee no malice, though for sundry reasons I might well do so.... Oh, venerable Twaddler! Didst thou but know me as I am, would not the hairs upon thy scalp, aye "each particular hair" rise one by one in anger and astonishment, and thou for once be rendered speechless?... Nay, good Gladstone-Grundy, have no fear! I will not blab upon thee; I am well covered, closely masked; and thou shalt hear no more of me as I slip by, save ... a smothered laugh behind my domino!
VIII.
OF THE TRUE JOURNALIST AND HIS CREED.
I am very fond of journalists. I look upon them, young and old, fat and lean, masculine and feminine, as the salt of the earth wherewith to savour the marrow of the country. And I like to put them through their paces. I am always devoured by an insatiable curiosity to fathom the depths of their learning—depths which I feel are almost infinite; yet despite this infinity I am always fain to plunge. Whenever I see a son of the ink-pot I collar him, and demand of him information—information on all things little and big, because he knows all things. I believe he even knows why Shakespeare left his second-best bed to his wife, only he won't tell. As for languages, he iseverybody's own Ollendorf. He knows French, he knows Russian, he knows Italian, he knows Spanish, he knows Hindustani, he knows Chinese, he knows—oh divine Apollo! what does henotknow! Let anybody write a book and try to introduce into its pages one word of Cherokee, one wild unpronounceable word, and the omniscient journalist is down upon him instantly with the bland assertion that it is a wrong word, wrongly spelt, wrongly used. For the journalist knows Cherokee; he spoke it when a gurgling infant in his mother's arms, together with all the living and dead dialects of all nations. So that when I get a journalist to dine with me, is it to be wondered at that I am consumed by a desire toknow? The thirst of wisdom enters into me, and having plied my man with eatables and wine, I hang on his lips entranced. For can he not tell me everything that ever was, or ever shall be?—and shall I not also aspire to oracles?
Once upon a time, to my unspeakable joy, I caught a fledgling journalist; a fluttering creature,all eagle-wings and chuckles, and I carried him home in a cab to dinner. He was a wild fowl, with plumage unkempt, and beak,i.e., a Wellingtonian nose, that spoke volumes of knowledge already. I discovered him hopping about a club, and seeing he was hungry, I managed to coax him along to my "den." When I had him there safe, I could have shouted with pure ecstasy! He became gentle; he smoothed his ruffled feathers; he dipped his beak into my burgundy wine and pronounced in a god-like way that "behold, it was very good." Then, when his inner man was satisfied, he spoke; and information, information, came rolling out with every brief and slangy sentence. Of kings and queens, of princes and commoners, of he and she and we and they, of fire, police, law, council, parliament, and my lady's chamber, of all that whirls in the giddy circle of our time, my fledgling had taken notes—yea, even on the very wheels of government, he had placed his ink-stained finger.
"O wondrous young man!" I muttered as Iheard; "O marvel of the age! Why do not the kings of the earth gather together to hear thy wisdom? Why do not the councils of Europe wait to learn the arts of government from thee? Wert thou at the right hand of Deity, I wonder, when worlds were created and comets begotten?" ... Here, filled with ideas, I poured more wine out for the moistening of the Wellingtonian beak, and demanded feverishly—"Tell me, friend, of things that are unknown to most men—tell me of the dark mysteries of time, which must be clear as daylight to a brain like yours!—instruct me in faith and morals—show me the paths of virtue—explain to me your theories of the future, of creed—"
I stopped, choked by my own emotion; I felt I was on the point of comprehending the incomprehensible—of grasping great facts made clear through the astute perception of this literary Gamaliel. And he arose in response to my adjuration; he expanded his manly chest, and stood in an attitude of "attention"; his nose was redder than when he first sat down to dine, andthe vacuous chuckle of his laugh was music to my soul.
"Creed!" said he. "Drop that! I'm not a church-goer. I've got one form of faith though." And he chuckled once again.
"And that is?" I questioned eagerly.
"This!"
And with proud unction he recited the following simple formula:—
I believe in theTimes.And in theMorning Post, Maker of news fashionable and unfashionable.And in oneTruth, the property of one Labby, the only-begotten son of honesty in Journalism,Who for us men and our salvation, socially, legally, and politically,Came down from Diplomacy into Bolt Court, Fleet Street,And was there self-incarnated Destroyer of Shams. Labby of Labby, Truth of Truth, Very Rad of Very Rad, Born not made, Being onewith himself and answerable to nobody for his opinions.Member for Northampton, he suffered there, secured votes and was left unburied,And he sitteth in the House, save when he ariseth and speaketh,And he will continue with triumph to judge all those that judge, both the living and the dead,Whose "legal pillory" shall have no end.And I believe in onePall Mall Gazette, Pure Giver of frequently mistaken information, which proceedeth from pens feminine,And which with the soporificSt. James's, together, exerteth the lungs of the newsboys.I acknowledge one holy and absoluteCourt Circular.I confess one "Saturday" for the flaying of new authors,And I look for the death of theNineteenth CenturyAnd the life of a less dull magazine to come Amen.
I believe in theTimes.
And in theMorning Post, Maker of news fashionable and unfashionable.
And in oneTruth, the property of one Labby, the only-begotten son of honesty in Journalism,
Who for us men and our salvation, socially, legally, and politically,
Came down from Diplomacy into Bolt Court, Fleet Street,
And was there self-incarnated Destroyer of Shams. Labby of Labby, Truth of Truth, Very Rad of Very Rad, Born not made, Being onewith himself and answerable to nobody for his opinions.
Member for Northampton, he suffered there, secured votes and was left unburied,
And he sitteth in the House, save when he ariseth and speaketh,
And he will continue with triumph to judge all those that judge, both the living and the dead,
Whose "legal pillory" shall have no end.
And I believe in onePall Mall Gazette, Pure Giver of frequently mistaken information, which proceedeth from pens feminine,
And which with the soporificSt. James's, together, exerteth the lungs of the newsboys.
I acknowledge one holy and absoluteCourt Circular.
I confess one "Saturday" for the flaying of new authors,
And I look for the death of theNineteenth Century
And the life of a less dull magazine to come Amen.
With this, my journalistic fledgling gave way to Homeric laughter, and helped himself anew to wine. And since that day, since that witching hour, I have watched his wild career. I track him in the magazines; I recognise the ebullitions of his wit in "society" paragraphs; I discover his withering, blistering sarcasm in his reviews of the books he never reads; in fact, I find him everywhere. As the air permeates space, he permeates literature. He is the all-sure, the all-wise, the all-conquering one. With such a faith as his, so firmly held, so nobly uttered, he is born to authority. I only wish some one would make him Prime Minister. Everything that is wrong would be righted, and with a Journalist (and such a journalist!) at the head of affairs, all questions of government would be as easy to settle as child's play. He himself—the Journalist—implies as much, and with all the fibres of my soul I believe him!
IX.
OF WRITERS IN GROOVES.