"I shall never be friends again with roses,I shall loathe sweet tunes, where a note grown strongRelents and recoils, and climbs and closes,As a wave of the sea turned back by song."
"I shall never be friends again with roses,I shall loathe sweet tunes, where a note grown strongRelents and recoils, and climbs and closes,As a wave of the sea turned back by song."
"I shall never be friends again with roses,I shall loathe sweet tunes, where a note grown strongRelents and recoils, and climbs and closes,As a wave of the sea turned back by song."
"I shall never be friends again with roses,
I shall loathe sweet tunes, where a note grown strong
Relents and recoils, and climbs and closes,
As a wave of the sea turned back by song."
One can, however, easily believe that he wrote of himself in the following passage:—
"But who now on earth need care how I live?Have the high gods anything left to giveSave dust and laurels and gold and sand?Which gifts are goodly; but I will none."
"But who now on earth need care how I live?Have the high gods anything left to giveSave dust and laurels and gold and sand?Which gifts are goodly; but I will none."
"But who now on earth need care how I live?Have the high gods anything left to giveSave dust and laurels and gold and sand?Which gifts are goodly; but I will none."
"But who now on earth need care how I live?
Have the high gods anything left to give
Save dust and laurels and gold and sand?
Which gifts are goodly; but I will none."
Swinburne, like Tennyson, manifests a great abhorrence for the society of his fellow-creatures, but his shrinking churlishness is more accountable to the world than that of the elder bard. Tennyson's muse is pure, refined, and ever persuasive to good; while at times Swinburne seems possessed of a very devil of lewdness and atheism; and lewdness and atheism are not yet openly accepted as desirable parts of a liberal education. Of his former rank and rampant republicanism nothing need be said; the politics of a poet are always the most absurd and shifty part of him. And though lewdness of the pen is beginning to be more tolerated than once it was, thanks to the importation of such foreign trash as the "Kreutzer Sonata" and other publications of a like free-and-easy pruriency, the love of moral filth is not yetuniversal. We are dabbling in mire, but we do not willingly wallow in it—at least, not at present. The honest British guffaw of laughter that greets crazy old Ibsen's contemptible delineations of women, has a jovial wholesome music in it which the caterwauling of cliques cannot silence. And there is a strong under-current of feeling in the peoples of nearly all countries, that whatever prose-writers may choose to do by way of degrading themselves and their profession, poets should draw the line somewhere. Poor paralytic old Mrs. Grundy still pretends, in the most ridiculously senile way, to be quite shocked at the idea of reading "Don Juan," when, as a matter of fact, she has put on strong spectacles over her blear eyes in order to gloat upon far worse literary provender. There is not a line that Byron ever wrote approaching to the revolting indecency of Swinburne's "Faustine"—a most disgusting set of bad verses, let me tell Algernon, with my frankest compliments. The only excuse that can be offered for such a sickening affront to the veryname of poetry, is that the writer must have been suffering at the time he wrote it from a sort of moral disease.
From moral disease no moral health can come—and in spite of Swinburne's unquestioned and unquestionable genius, I believe his fame will perish as utterly and hopelessly as a brilliant torch plunged suddenly in the sea. There is no stamina in him—nothing to hold or to keep in all this meteor-like shower of words upon words, thoughts upon thoughts, similes upon similes; there lacks steadiness in the music; none of the vast eternal underthrobbings of nature give truth or grandeur to the strain. It is the harsh raving and shrill chanting of a man in fever and delirium; not the rich pulsing rhythm of a singer in noble accord with life, love, and labour.
One of the most unpleasant characteristics of Swinburne's muse is the idea conveyed therein of the sex feminine. Women are no better (and rather worse) than wild animals according to this poet's standard; or if not animals, passivecreatures, to be "bitten" and "sucked" and "pressed" and "crushed" as though they were a peculiar species of grape for man's special eating. Their hair is "woven and unwoven" recklessly till one feels it must surely be plucked out by the roots; their "flanks" are supposed to "shine," their "eyelids" are "as sweet savour issuing;" and the following vaguely comic lines occur in "Anactoria":—
"Ah, ah, thy beauty!like a beast it bites,Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.Ah, sweet, and sweet again, andseven times sweetThe paces and the pauses of thy feet!"
"Ah, ah, thy beauty!like a beast it bites,Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.Ah, sweet, and sweet again, andseven times sweetThe paces and the pauses of thy feet!"
"Ah, ah, thy beauty!like a beast it bites,Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.Ah, sweet, and sweet again, andseven times sweetThe paces and the pauses of thy feet!"
"Ah, ah, thy beauty!like a beast it bites,
Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.
Ah, sweet, and sweet again, andseven times sweet
The paces and the pauses of thy feet!"
More preposterously insane nonsense than this it would be difficult to find on any printed page extant.
It will be chiefly on account of his utterly false conception of life and the higher emotions of the human heart, that Swinburne will not leave the great name he might have left had he recognisedthe full dignity of his calling. He had the power, but not the will. I say he "had" advisedly, because he has it no longer. His last productions are positively puerile as compared with his first, and each new thing he writes shows the falling-off in his skill more and more perceptibly. His similes are heavy and confused; his strained efforts at impossible paradox almost ludicrous. This is the kind of thing he revels in:—
The formless form of a mouthless mouth,And the biteless bite of a tooth that has gone.
The formless form of a mouthless mouth,And the biteless bite of a tooth that has gone.
The formless form of a mouthless mouth,And the biteless bite of a tooth that has gone.
The formless form of a mouthless mouth,
And the biteless bite of a tooth that has gone.
We are, perforce, thrown back on the "Poems and Ballads" and "Tristram of Lyonesse," compelled to realise that in these two books we have got all of Swinburne that we shall ever get worth reading—all the concentrated fire of that genius which is dying out day by day into dull ashes. Theodore Watts, practical, friendly Watts, something of a poet himself in a grave and lumbersome way, can do nothing to revive that once brilliantif lurid glow that animated Algernon's formerly reckless spirit. It is all over—the lamp is quenched, and the harp is broken. It would have been almost better for Swinburne's fame had he died in his youth, consumed, like the fabled Phœnix, by the fierce glare of the poetic hell-flames he had kindled about himself, rather than have lived till now to drivel into a silly dotage of roundels concerning babies' toes and noses and fingers, which are assuredly the most uninteresting subject-matter to the lover of true poesy. His attempts, too, in the "Border-Ballad" style are the weakest and most unsatisfactory imitations of the rough but vigorous original models. And while on the subject of imitation, it is rather interesting to the careful student of poetic "style" to read the admirable translations made from the earlier Italian poets by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and compare them with some of Swinburne's earlier pieces. It will be remembered that Swinburne was at one time of his life much in the company of Rossetti, and he would most probablyhave heard many of these translations read before they were published; anyway, the similitude of measure and rhythm between Rossetti's "renderings" and Swinburne's "originals" is somewhat striking.
Personally, I am inclined to think that the worthy Algernon Charles caught his particular trick of rhyming and rounding his verse in the fashion now known as "Swinburnian" entirely from the Italian school of Guido Cavalcanti, Rinaldo D'Aquino, and others of their time, as well as from a few old French models of the François Villon type. His actual masterpiece, a work which contains no such borrowed juggleries of rhyme, is "Tristram of Lyonesse." This great poem is not half so well known as it ought to be—most people appear never to have heard of it, much less to have read it. In perusing its pages, one scarcely thinks of the author save as the merest human phonograph through which Inspiration speaks—in fact, it is rather curious to realise how little we really do take the personal Swinburne into ourconsideration while reading his works, or for that matter the personal anybody who has ever done anything. Personalities are very seldom really interesting. It is only when we have a wild, wicked Byron that we are fascinated by "personality"; a man who turns upon us, saying that he is—
"only not to desperation driven,Because not altogether of such clayAs rots into the souls of those whom I survey."
"only not to desperation driven,Because not altogether of such clayAs rots into the souls of those whom I survey."
"only not to desperation driven,Because not altogether of such clayAs rots into the souls of those whom I survey."
"only not to desperation driven,
Because not altogether of such clay
As rots into the souls of those whom I survey."
Well, well! And what of Browning? Why, Browning is dead. Moreover, he is buried in damp, dirty, evil-smelling Westminster Abbey. What more would you have for him? Fame? Let be, let be; he had Notoriety. That must suffice, and that being done, why, all is done, and there is no more to be said. Notoriety is not Fame. Fame is not Notoriety. No man can have both, though he may cheat himself into taking the lesser for the greater, and die happy in the pleasing delusion. Even so Browning died; even so was he honourably interred. May he rest in peace. Amen.
XV.
OF MORE POETS.
Are there no other poets in the crowd save Tennyson and Swinburne? God bless my soul, you don't suppose I am going to offend a whole mob of verse-writers—no other poets? Of course there are others! no end of others. Poets over-run our land even as the locusts over-ran Egypt, and they are all "as good, and a darned sight better," as the Yankees say, than either the Laureate or Algernon Charles, in their own opinion. Mark that last clause, please; it is important. The number of "poets" so styled by themselves is legion; only I, who am a rudely-opiniated and fastidious masquer, decline to recognise their clamorous claims to thedeathless laurel. But this does not matter. Who cares what I either decline or accept? My opinions are "nothing to nobody." I only express them for my own satisfaction and amusement; I have no other good to gain thereby. As for the chance of offending the "poets" alluded to, I certainly care not a jot. I have no desire to please them in any way, as I consider most of them an offence and an obstruction in literature. Some people run away with the notion that Edwin Arnold (I give him the full glory of his "Sir" and C.S.I. elsewhere) is a poet. Certainly his books sell. The "Light of Asia," with all its best bits taken out of the original "Mahabhârata," is a perfect triumph of verse-making. All the religious ladies read it because it is so very unexciting and heavenly and harmless, and because, like all pious poetry, it preaches virtue that no one ever dreams of practising. It is a capital book for school prizes, too; it will not hurt any boy or girl to read it, and it may providentially check them in timefrom trying to write verse themselves. As for the "Light of the World," it will probably meet with the same success among the same class of readers, though it is much inferior to the "Light of Asia," owing to having no "Mahabhârata" in it. But Lewis Morris is quite as great a favourite with the "goodys" of society as Sir Edwin. The "goodys" don't know, and don't want to know, anything about Dante's "Inferno," and are therefore quite satisfied to accept "The Epic of Hades" asbonâ fide"original" matter,—and there are some "sweetly pretty" lines in "A Vision of Saints." Both productions are well adapted for gift-books, and will suit the taste of the demure provincial "misses" who wish to be discovered reading poetry under a shady tree what time the bachelor curate of the parish passeth by. All the same, I, who am a Nobody, decline to consider either Morris or Arnold poets. They are excellent verse-compilers though, and suit the tastes of those who do not care about either originality or inspiration.
I am nothing if not eccentric, and so I am disposed to place one Alfred C. Calmour among the poets. He has published no poems—he has only produced "poetical" plays, failures all, save "The Amber Heart," and he has been generally "sent to the right about" by persons with infinitely less brain than himself. It is curious to observe what spite and meanness waken in the manly breasts of certain of his fellows at the mere mention of his name. I spoke in praise of "The Amber Heart" on one occasion to a critical brother, and he at once said—"All filched out of Wills's waste-paper basket; he was Wills's secretary." "What of 'Cyrene'?" I asked. "Oh, I don't know anything about 'Cyrene'; but if there's anything good in it, depend upon it, it is stolen from Wills." I relapsed into silence, for I never thought and never shall think anything of Wills, whereas I do think something of Calmour. He is writing a drama, I hear, on "Dante and Beatrice," and I confess to anticipating it with intense interest. I want him todo as my dear friend Oscar Wilde has done—pulverise his enemies by a big success. And why? Because I hate to see a hard-working man "sat upon." And Calmour does work hard, lives hard too, and never complains or "girds" at fate, wherefore I venture to prophecy fame for him one of these days. I have been assured he is conceited. I have never found him so. Suppose he were, is conceit a singular fault in authors? Are we to believe that they are more boastfully disposed than actors, for instance?
"What do you think of Calmour?" I asked E. S. Willard on one occasion, when, in all the grave consciousness of "looking"Judahto the life, he stood beside me sipping convivial tea in Wilson Barrett's drawing-room.
"Think of Calmour?" he replied, with an inimitable air of self-sufficiency. "I never think of Calmour!"
Magnificent wind-bag assertiveness! but hopelessly unreasonable. Calmour is more worth thinking about than Willard, only Willard doesn'tsee it. The creator of a part merits greater consideration than the mime who performs it. I confess to being a lover of fair play, and when a lot of people try to "hustle" a man, I am disposed to fight for him. Anyway, Calmour has a clean and delicate pen, and does not pander to vulgar vice like that wretched old Scandinavian humbug, Ibsen. Why we should abuse Calmour and praise Ibsen passes my comprehension. Except that "foreign" scribblers are all "geniuses" with us at once—they must be, you know, simply because theyareforeign; they have a "subtlety," a "flavour," an "ardour," a "naturalism," and—a Nastiness which is not the legitimate inheritance of the English School. Had any one of our own men dared to offer us a "Hedda Gabler," or a "Rosmersholm," or Maeterlinck's piece of bathos, "L'Intruse," he would have been shrieked and howled down with derisive laughter.
I often wonder what on earth the faddists of the poor old doddering, dotingAthenæummean by poking and prodding about for sparks of geniusin their new "heavy man," William Watson? It is very funny to call him a poet—very funny, indeed. He is a sort of fifth-rate Wordsworth—and while we can just stand the sonnets and shorter poems of Wordsworth at first-hand, a diluted example of his pattern in these days is too much for our patience. I know a good many people—in fact, I meet in social intercourse nearly everybody worth knowing—but as yet I have come upon nobody who reads Watson's poems, or who appear to know anything about Watson. Curious, isn't it? TheAthenæumseems to carry no conviction whatever to the Ass-public.
Messrs. Trübner sent to me some time ago a book of poems, which first surprised and then fascinated me into the belief that I had discovered an English Petrarch. I think I have, too. If absolute music, perfect rhythm, and exquisite wording of love-thoughts are Petrarchian, then my man is a Petrarch. His book is called "A Lover's Litanies," and the "litanies" are the poems. There are ten of them, and each onehas a title borrowed from the old church missal—rather a quaint idea. It would be difficult to match the one called "Vox Amoris" among all the love-poems of the world. Does the dear old purblindAthenæumknow anything about this real poet, who has perhaps not been "discovered" by Mr. Grant Allen or Andrew Lang? Cheer up, oldAthenæum, put on thy spectacles, and look about for the author of these "Litanies," lest the outer world should say thou art napping! People are reading "A Lover's Litanies"—those people who do not know anything about William Watson.
Robert Louis Stevenson started as a "poet," I believe. Now he has become the "Thucydides of literature"—vide Pall Mall Gazette. Such nice, pretty classical names thePall Malldiscovers for its particular darlings. Has thePall Mallread Thucydides? I rather doubt it. I have, and find no resemblance to Mr. Stevenson. And, truth to tell, I preferred Mr. Stevenson's past poetry to his present prose. Yet why should Imurmur, remembering the sweet, sound slumber into which I fell over "The Wrecker"—that trying mixture of Marryat and Clark Russell. I think it is a capital story for schoolboys though, and that is why thePall Malladmires it. I am not a schoolboy; thePall Mallis; a dear, bright, gamesome, peg-top-and-marble creature, who thinks the greatest joke in life is to break a neighbour's window or ring a neighbour's bell, and then run away laughing. Its animal spirits are too delightfully boisterous for it to appreciate any sort of deep sentiment; a story of strong human passions, or a romance in which love has the most prevailing share, would not appeal to its unlessoned fancy. And, very naturally, it appreciates Stevenson, because he gives it no hard, uncomfortable life-problems to think about.
Another "poet" who calls himself so is Hall Caine. He says the "Scapegoat" is not so much a novel as a drama, and not so much a drama as a "poem." Very good indeed! Excellent fooling, upon my life. Hall Caine can be veryfunny if he likes, though you wouldn't think it to look at him. When he called his story of the "Bondman" a "New Saga," it was only his fun. His wit is quite irrepressible. Among other humorous things, he has had his portrait taken in a loose shirt and knickers, seated facing the bust of Shakespeare, like a day-labourer fronting the Sphynx. It is altogether refreshing to find a Lilliputian literary ephemera so entirely delighted with himself as Hall Caine. He is much more convinced of the intrinsic value of his own genius than Oscar Wilde, with less reason than Oscar for his conviction. Oscar is a really clever man; Hall Caine tries to be clever and does not succeed. Oscar is a born wit, moreover, and though he does crib a fewbon-motsfrom Molière and a few paradoxes from Rochefoucauld, what does it matter for the English who do not understand French, and have to get "books of the words" in order to "follow" Sarah Bernhardt. Besides, Hall Caine borrows from the French also; the plot of his "Scapegoat" is taken fromthe French, so one of my critical friends assures me, and critics are always right. Francis Adams (also a "poet") "went" for Hall Caine not long ago in theFortnightly—a regular good knock-down thrust it was, too. But Adams's prowess is of no avail in these things. The more you abuse a fellow, the more his books sell. The best way to utterly damn an author is to say that his novels are "nicely written," "prettily told," "harmless fiction," or "innocuous literature." If these phrases do not finish him off, nothing will. An original, powerful, passionate writer is always "slated," and always "sells." Witness the career of one Emile Zola. With all his faults, the man is a great poet; realism and romance unite in strange colours on his literary palette, and with his forceful brush he paints life in all its varied aspects fearlessly and without any regard for outside opinions. His one blemish is the blemish of the whole French nation—moral Nastiness. But if we talk of "poets" who, though making their bread-and-butter out of thewriting of prose, still insist on belonging to the gods of Parnassus, none of the stringers of rhyme and jinglers of ballads, and weavers of "sagas" and the like, that afflict this enlightened and imaginative nation, could write such a true poem from end to end as "Le Rêve." Such consummate art, such unravelling of exquisite romance out of commonplace material, is not to be discovered in the English literary brain. The English literary brain is dull, lumpish, and heavy—the English literary worker is dominated by one idea, and that is, how much hard cash shall he get for his work? And thus it is that poets, real poets, are rarer than swallows in snow; so that is why I am slightly exercised in my mind respecting the Petrarch sort of minstrel I spoke of a while ago. He is unquestionably a poet, and seems to get on without any "booming." This strikes me as very odd. However, most of the "best" men go unboomed. No occasion to puff a good article. As for the pretended poets, countless as the sands of the sea, there is a greatconsolation in the reflection that in a few more years they will all be as though they never had been. Good old Posterity will know nothing about them, and herein Posterity is to be heartily congratulated. Poetical gnats must live like other gnats, I suppose—they are rather troublesome, and make a buzzing noise in one's ears, but as their whole existence lasts no more than a day, we must have patience till the sun sets.
XVI.
TO A MIGHTY GENIUS.
"O Rudyard Kipling! Phœbus! What a name,To fill the speaking trump of future Fame!"
"O Rudyard Kipling! Phœbus! What a name,To fill the speaking trump of future Fame!"
"O Rudyard Kipling! Phœbus! What a name,To fill the speaking trump of future Fame!"
"O Rudyard Kipling! Phœbus! What a name,
To fill the speaking trump of future Fame!"
This, with apologies to the shade of the "loose ungrammatical" Byron, as the perfectly grammatical Gosse calls him. Dear Gosse! He has cause to be somewhat irritated with his own career as a poet, for he has not yet "set the Thames on fire," as he expected to do with the torch of his inspiration. Hence he was compelled to vent his pent-up spleen somehow, and what better dead giant to fall upon and beat with pigmy blows of pigmy personal vexation than Byron, whose Apollo-like renown (with scarce an effort on his own part) sent thunders through Europe. Oh, grammatical Gosse!—but never mind him justnow; I must concentrate my soul on Kip; on Rudyard; on the glory of this literary age. Let me look at you, you blessed baby! treasure of its own Grandmother Journalism's heart! There you are, crowing and chuckling, small but "virile," every inch of you, though you are not overstocked with hair on the top of that high head of yours, and it is hard to begin life by viewing it through spectacles. Butasyou are, there you are! and my pulses leap at the sight of you. Fielding, Sterne, Thackeray, Dickens, all these parted spirits have, as it were, distilled themselves into a fiery fluid wherewith to animate your miniature form; was ever such a thrilling wonder? Hear we good UncleBlackwood, the while he dances you upon his gouty knee:—"If her Majesty's Ministers will be guided by us (which perhaps is not extremely probable; yet we confess we should like the command of a Minister's ear for several shrewd suggestions) they will bestow a Star of India without more ado upon this young man of genius who has shown us all what the Indian Empire means."
No doubt, good 'nuncle! no doubt the Ministry will listen to thy "shrewd suggestions" what time the moon is made of ripe green cheese. Go on, old man, go on, in thy cracked and aged pipe, growing wheezy with emotion. "The battle in the 'Main Guard' is like Homer or Sir Walter.... If her Majesty herself, who knows so much, desires a fuller knowledge of her Indian Empire, we desire respectfully to recommend to the Secretary for India that he should place no sheaves of despatches in the royal hands, but Mr. Rudyard Kipling's books.... What Mr. Rudyard Kipling has done is an imperial work, and worthy of an imperial reward!"
Bravo, worthy 'nuncle! Homer begged his bread, but the pen-and-ink sketcher of "Mrs. Hauksbee" shall have rewards imperial! To it again, garrulous 'nuncle—to it and cease not! "Here, by the dignified hand of Maga the ever young, we bid the young genius All hail! and more power to his elbow, to relapse into vernacular speech, which is always moreconvincing than the high-flown." Should it not have been written "to relapse into bathos," good 'nuncle? And beware of declaring thyself to be "ever young," for nothing lives that shall not grow old, and the younger generation already profanely dub thee "antiquated." Wipe thine eyes, UncleBlackwood, polish thy spectacles, and set down our precious baby for an instant the while his other nurses, godfathers and godmothers, look at him, and speculate upon his probable growth.
Let us listen to the hystericalD. T.the while it raveth in strophes of gin-and-water:—"Mr. Rudyard Kipling is, and seems likely to remain, a literary enigma. Who can deny his strength, his virility, his dramatic sense, his imaginative wealth, his masterful genius? He is like a young and sportive Titan, piling Pelion on Ossa in his reckless ambition to scale Olympus; he is always renewing his strength like an eagle, and rejoicing like a giant to run his course. Nothing comes amiss to him; he will produce out of his boundless stores things new and old—tragedies, comedies, farces,epics, ballads, or lyrical odes. His earliest Anglo-Indian stories revealed a new world to the astonished West; his "Soldiers Three" have attained almost the reputation of the "Three Musketeers"; his Learoyd, his Ortheris, his Mulvaney, his Mrs. Hauksbee, his Torpenhow are household words; while his barrack-room ditties, and his ballads of East and West have not only startled by their daring frankness, but conquered all criticism by their picturesqueness and truth."
All this, an' so please you, on two or three volumes of small magazine stories and rhymed doggerel! That "Soldiers Three" should have attained the reputation of the "Three Musketeers" is of course only the delirious frenzy of theD. T.asserting itself in gasping shrieks of illiterate mindlessness—Europe knows better than to place the intellect of a smart newspaper man like Kipling on the same level with that of Dumas. Kipling is the Jumbo of theD. T.for the present, and journalists would not be what they are if they could not get up a "boom" somehow. Now hark we to the fond maudlin murmur of an evening journal!
"Where did Kipling get his ideas about Art from?" This is indeed a pathetic question. It crops up in a paragraph-ecstasy over "The Light that Failed." It is as if one should ask, "Where did Shakespeare get his knowledge of the human soul from?" Where, oh where? We cannot, we will not believe he has any imagination, this dear Kipling of ours, because imagination is a thing we abhor. The triumphal and eternal books of the world have all been purely imaginative, but this does not matter to us. We, in this modern day, refuse to accept the idea that anybody can describe a thing they have not seen and felt and turned over and over under a microscope; we are so exact. And oh, where then did Shakespeare (to revert to him again, because his is the only name we can conscientiously compare with Kipling), where did Shakespeare find Ariel and Caliban, and Puck and Titania, and Julius Cæsar, and Antony and Cleopatra? He could not have seen these people? No. Then, alas! he had that fatal gift, that monstrous blemish of the brain which spoilstrue genius, Imagination—the grossest form of cerebral disease. In this he was inferior to our Rudyard, our hop-skip-and-a-jump Rudyard, who is actually going bald in his youth from the strain of his minute observation of life, and the profundity of his meditations thereon. Our "delectable one!" Our precious Kip! Who would not join in the chorus of the paragraph-men when they propound the fond, almost maternally-admiring query, "Where did he get his ideas about Art from?" And then, when we find out that he has "artistic" relations; that his papa is, or has been, painting a ceiling or a wall in Windsor Castle, we naturally feel almost beside ourselves with delight, because we find our baby's ideas are the result of heritage, and have nothing to do with that curse of literature, Imagination. As for me, I weep whenever I turn the sacred leaves of "Plain Tales from the Hills," because I know I have in its pages all that ever was or will be excellent in the way of fiction. There is nothing more to be said—nothing more to come after. Itis a sad thought that fiction should have culminated here—it is always sad to think that anything should have an end—but when the end is so glorious, who shall complain? And so I have sold my set of Waverley novels (the real Abbotsford edition); I have put my Shakespeare on an almost unreachable top shelf (I only keep him for reference); I have sent my Dickens volumes to a hospital, and my Thackeray to a "home for incurables." I shall not want these things any more. The only natural reflex of life as it is lived nowadays is to be found in the works of Rudyard; on Rudyard I mentally feed and thrive. To Kip I cling as the drowning sailor to a rope; all difficulties and perplexities in Art, Literature, Science, Politics, Manners and Morals vanish at the touch of his mighty pen—he is the one, the only Kip;—the crowning splendour of our time. Why should we make any parliamentary pother over the preservation of old buildings at Stratford-on-Avon? What do we want with Stratford-on-Avon? since our Kip was born in India, or webelieve he was. Now, India is something like a place for a Genius to be born in—big, vast, legendary, historical—and yet the American Interviewer, conscious of Kipling's might, thinks it possible he may have already exhausted its capabilities for literary treatment; swallowed it off at one gulp as it were, like the precious pearl Hafiz consumed in his cup of wine.
"Do you consider Mr. Kipling has exhausted India?" anxiously inquired the American Interviewer of Rider Haggard, when the weary author of "She" landed in New York.
"India is a big place," was the simple answer, given with a patient gentleness for which Haggard deserves great credit, seeing how he has lately been despitefully used and persecuted by the very reviewers who once flattered him.
Yes, Indiaisa big place; not too big for our Kip though. He requires to take life in Gargantuan gulps in order to support the giant forces of his mind. But Stratford-on-Avon! A mere English country town—hardly more than a village—whatdo we care about it now? Shakespeare, after all, was perhaps only Bacon—but Kip is Kip—there's no doubt about him—he is his own noblebonâ-fideself, whose bootlaces we are not worthy to untie. There is "stern strength," there is "virility," there is a "strong strain of humour," there is "masculine vigour" in everything he writes. Mark the following passage from "Watches of the Night":—
"Platte, the subaltern, being poor, had a Waterbury watch and a plain leather guard.
"The Colonel had a Waterbury watch also, and for guard the lip-strap of a curb chain."
Now, note that carefully—"The lip-strap of a curb chain."
What a luscious flowing sound there is in those few exquisitively chosen words! "The lip-strap of a curb chain!" It is positively fascinating. One could dream of it all day and all night too, for that matter, like Mark Twain's famous refrain of "Punch in the presence of the passenjare." But going on from this delicious line, which isalmost poetry, one finds instant practical information.
"Lip-straps make the best watch-guards. They are strong and short. Between a lip-strap and an ordinary leather guard there is no great difference; between one Waterbury watch and another, none at all."
Now, there we have the "strain of humour." No difference between one Waterbury watch and another, "none at all." Ha, ha, ha! No difference between one—ha, ha, ha!—Waterbury, ha, ha!—watch—ha, ha, ha!—and another—ha, ha, ha!—none at all. Ha, ha! That "none at all" is so exquisitely facetious! It comes in so well! Was ever such a delightful little bit of sly, dry, brilliant, sparkling Wit, with a big W, as this peculiar manner of our Kip! Turning over the leaves of this glorious, this immortal "Plain Tales," you cannot help coming upon humour, spontaneous, rollicking humour everywhere. It bristles out of each particular page "like quills upon the fretful porcupine." Take this, for example—
"One of the Three men had a cut on his nose, caused by the kick of a gun.Twelve-bores kick rather curiously."
So they do. The remarkable part of this is that twelve-boresdokick—it is a positive fact—a fact that every one has been dying to have made public, and "rather curiously" is the exact expression that suits their mode of behaviour. So true, so quaint is Kip. And here is another charming bit of expression—a descriptive picture, finely painted. It is from "The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly."
"His boots and breeches were plastered with mud and beer stains. He wore a muddy-white, dunghill sort of thing on his head, and it hung down in slips on his shoulders, which were a good deal scratched. He was half in and half out of a shirt, as nearly in two pieces as it could be, and he was begging the guard to look at the name on the tail of it."
Now this requires thinking over, because it is so subtle. The "muddy-white, dunghill sort ofthing" is really a new expression—quite new—and beautiful. It suggests so much! But you must come to the humour—you must remember there was a shirt mentioned, and that the hero was "begging the guard to look at the name on the tail of it." I went off into positive convulsions of mirth when I first read that passage. Falstaff's coarse witticisms seemed unbearable after it. "To look at the name on the tail of it!" It is simply inimitable. There is a jovial sound in the very swing of the sentence. And Private Mulvaney! What a creation! Just listen to him—
"I'm a born scutt av the barrick-room! The Army's mate and dhrink to me, bekase I'm wan av the few that can't quit ut. I've put in sivinteen years an' the pipeclay's in the marrow av me. Av I wud have kept out av wan big dhrink a month, I wud have been a Hon'ry Lift'nint by this time—a nuisince to my betthers, a laughin' stock to my equils an' a curse to meself. Bein 'fwhat I am, I'm Privit Mulvaney wid no good-conduc' pay an' a devourin' thirst. Always barrin' me little frindBob Bahadur, I know as much about the Army as most men."
No wonder, after this, that the ever-watchful purveyors of "Literary Gossip" rouse themselves up from lachrymose tenderness to positive passionin rethis marvellous Rudyard, and speak of him as "the stronger Dickens going forth conquering and to conquer."
The phrase, "the stronger Dickens," is coming it very strong indeed, but—it's only the paragraph-men. These chroniclers of the time have pathetically informed us how on one occasion Kip ran away from the "clamour" (of the paragraph-men) to India to fetch his papa, and how his papa came back with him, to look after him, I suppose, and protect him from all the naughty, vicious people who wanted to blow his skin out into the size of a bull when Nature meant him to keep to the strict proportions of the other figure in the fable. Good Rudyard! Already the bloom is off the rye, just slightly, for if we are to believe theAthenæum, an Eden Phillpotts is "the new Kipling." "OEden Phillpotts! Phoebus! What a name! To fill the speaking-trump of future Fame!" The "loose ungrammatical" Byron's lines fit Phillpotts as excellent well as Kipling. Phillpotts is really a fine name in every way—splendidly hideous, and available for all sorts of Savile Club andSaturday Reviewwitticisms, such as—
"Phill the Pott and fill the canEden is our Coming Man!"
"Phill the Pott and fill the canEden is our Coming Man!"
"Phill the Pott and fill the canEden is our Coming Man!"
"Phill the Pott and fill the can
Eden is our Coming Man!"
Or this, sung slowly with religious nasal intonation to the well-known hymeneal melody—
"The voice that breathed o'erEden,FromAthenæumbowers,Said 'Phillpotts' stories must be praised,He is a friend of ours!'"
"The voice that breathed o'erEden,FromAthenæumbowers,Said 'Phillpotts' stories must be praised,He is a friend of ours!'"
"The voice that breathed o'erEden,FromAthenæumbowers,Said 'Phillpotts' stories must be praised,He is a friend of ours!'"
"The voice that breathed o'erEden,
FromAthenæumbowers,
Said 'Phillpotts' stories must be praised,
He is a friend of ours!'"
Think of it, Rudyard! think of it! Art ready to cope with Phill? Wilt meet Potts on his own ground? Deem not thyself Eden's superior, for he "understands," according to theAthenæum, "proportion, contrast, balance, and the value ofunhalting movement," things that inferior persons like Scott, Thackeray, Balzac, and others had to study all their lives long. Moreover, another journal dictatorially announces that "novel-readers must prepare to welcome" Phillpotts. Mark that "must"! That "must" would fain seize the Ass-public by the throat, and make it eat Phillpotts like a turnip. But the Ass is a fastidious ass sometimes—it likes to nose its food before devouring; it will nose Phillpotts at its pleasure. Meantime, it is nosing thee, friend Kipling, dubiously and with a faint touch of derision. Ridicule kills; beware of it, my boy. And to avoid ridicule and secure dignity, hist!—a side-whisper, meant kindly—Put down your Boom business!Stamp it out. Hush it up. If you don't take my advice you'll regret it. The thing has been over-done. You have had more friends than are good for you; a few stanch foes would have brought you much more benefit in the long run. When your ill-advised flatterers quote your jingly "Barrack-Room Ballads" as though theywere things immortal—when good Frank Harris, ofFortnightlyprowess, imposes a growling recital of scraps of your doggerel, "Fuzzy-wuz," on patiently-bored people sitting at a social meal, with the air of one considering it a finer production than "The Isles of Greece," or Shelley's "Cloud"—we say with Hamlet, "Somewhat too much of this." In the year of grace 1900 "Barrack-Boom Ballads" will have gone the way of all "occasional verse," and not a line will remain in the memory of the public. The English people know perfectly well what poetry is, and no critic will ever persuade them that you can write it. At the same time no one wishes to deny your surface cleverness or your literary ability. You are on the same rank with Bret Harte, Frank Harris, Frank Stockton, Anstey, and a host of others, and there is no objection taken to your standing along with these; but there is objection, honest objection, made to your being forced higher aloft than your compeers, by means of a ridiculously exaggerated, aggressively ubiquitous "boom." When Walter oftheTimesrushed frantically into a court of law about his copyright in a Kipling article (he having taken no such heed of any other author's article till then), the outside public laughed and shrugged their shoulders at the absurdity of the thing. From the fuss made, one would have imagined that God Himself read theTimesevery morning, and was particularly interested in Kipling. This sort of nonsense never lasts. The reaction infallibly sets in. Never was a name sent up sky-high like a rocket, but it did not fall plump down like a stick. And so, excellent Rudyard, beware! You are not "the greatest English author" by a long way. In weak moments I admit that the newspaper-gushers work me into a delirium-tremens of ecstasy about you, and, like my friend Frank Harris, my hand trembles and my voice takes on a rich growl as I quote "Fuzzy-wuz" and the "immortal" (alas!) "Tomlinson"—but in these fits I am not answerable for my words or actions. When I put away "Plain Tales" and "Life's Handicap," and forget all your pressnotices, I can think of you calmly and quite dispassionately, as one literary labourer among hundreds of others, who are all striving to put their little brick into the building of the Palace of Art, and I perceive that yours is a very small brick indeed! I fear it will scarcely be perceived in the wall twenty years hence. And my present opinion of you is—would you care to know it? Of course not, but you shall have it all the same. I consider you, then, to be a talented little fellow with a good deal of newspaper-reporter "smartness" about you, and an immense idea of your own cleverness, an idea fostered to a regrettable extent by the overplus of "beans" which gentle Edmund Yates, among others, is sorry to have given you. You have some literary skill, and you use a rough brevity of language which passes for originality in these days of decadence, but you are shallow, Rudyard; as shallow as the small mountain brook that makes a great noise in the rapidity of its descent, but can neither turn a mill-wheel or bear a boat on its surface. Your mencharacters are mostly coarse bears—unmannerly ruffians in their speech at least—your women are, on the average, either trifling or despicable. Though unlovable, they are, however, interesting for the moment, but only for the moment. Because a good many of us know fellows who are brave and "virile" and all the rest of it, and yet who are not obliged to use a slang word in every sentence; and we also know women who are not solely occupied with the subjugation of the "masculine persuasion"; and we prefer these decent folk as a rule. But, whatever your literary failings or attainments, and however you may display themin futuro, be wise in time and put down your "boom." No man can live up to a "boom"; it is not humanly possible. As for your "strong strain of humour," I am disposed to accept that as a fact. Itisa strain—your humour. Your hydraulic pump is for ever going, and if the result is not always witty, it is flippant enough. And flippancy passes for wit nowadays. "Chaff" has replaced epigram, except when one findsabon motin an old forgotten French play or novel, and passes it off in English as one's own "to set the table in a roar." As a matter of fact though, human life is tragic; and the comedy part of it is only invented hurriedly and inserted by the clowns of the piece.
And now Kip—though I perceive you are staring at me, wondering who the d—l I am—I will e'en leave you to your own devices, and, as the police say, "move on." Not even with the aid of your spectacles can you peer through the folds of my domino—not till I choose. I am not going about masked always—oh no! You shall see me face to face one day. And if, when these attractive features of mine are unveiled to your ken, you find yourself at all put out by the familiar manner of my speech to you, why, we will cross the Channel to some convenient scene of action, and you shall order (if you like) pistols for two and coffee for one. I am really one of the best of your friends, because I do not flatter you. The only place on which my observations may hurt you is a soft spot in everyman's composition called Conceit. It is a spot that bruises easily and keeps sore for a long period. But the true artist requires to have this spot taken out of him if possible. It is as bad as a cancer, and needs instant cutting. Again I say, I do not flatter you. And if I had more time, I think I should possibly warn you against one ofyour"boomers," andmydear friends, DaddyLang-legs. He has the caprices of a fine lady, has Daddy—you can never be sure when he is going to be pleased or displeased. He may discontinue a promising young "boom" quite suddenly, or on the other hand he may go on with it for an indefinite period. Of course he is an adorable creature, only it is not prudent to judge the position of all Literature by the phases of his humour.
And so, ta-ta Rudyard! See you again by and by! Don't inflate that little literary personality of yours too much, lest it should burst. Don't you believe you are a "stronger Dickens"; it won't do. It's bad for you. A little modesty will nothurt you; it is an old-fashioned manner, but is still considered good form. Read and compare the greater authors who never were "boomed"; who starved and died, some of them, to win greatness; they who are the positive "Immortals," and whom neither you nor any of us will ever distance; mistrust your own powers and "go slow." If there is anything very exceptional in you, time will prove it; if not, why, Time will sweep you away, my good fellow, as remorselessly as it has swept away many another pampered and petted "Press" baby out of the very shadow of remembrance. Don't swallowallthe "beans" my boy! Leave a few. Better die of starvation than surfeit!
XVII.
CONCERNING A GREAT FRATERNITY.
Ha! I spy a Critic. Hail fellow, well met! Whether you have a strawberry mark on your left arm or not, you are my own, my long, my never-lost brother. I love you as the very apple of mine eye! And to speak truly, I love all critics, from the loftiest oracle to the lowest half-crown paragraphist; they are dear to me as the fibres of my heart, and I am never so happy as in their company. And why? Why, because I am a critic myself; one of the mystic band; and, moreover, one of the joyous throng wearing (for the present moment) the safety-badge marked "Anonymous"; one of the pleasant personal friend-detectives who watch the unsuspiciousauthor playing his game of literary "baccarat," and, on the merest hint, decide that he is cheating. I shake the unsuspicious author's hand, I break his bread, I drink his wine, I smoke his best havanas; I tell him verbally that he is a first-rate fellow, almost a genius, in fact, and then?—well, then I sneak cautiously behind the sheltering sidewall of a leading journal with the rest of my jolly compeers, and at the first convenient opportunity I stab him in the back!—"dead for a ducat." And how we all laugh when he falls, his foolish face turned up in dumb appeal to the callous stars; he was a star-gazer from the first, we say, chucklingly—these ambitious dunderheads always are!
By Heaven! there is nothing in all the length and breadth of literature so thoroughly enjoyable as the life of a critic, if one were only better paid. One is member of a sort of "Vehmgericht," or secret inquisition, where great intellects are broken on the wheel, and small ones escape scot free, not being dangerous. The only unfortunate thingabout it is that we are losing power a little. The public read too many books, and begin to know too much about us and our ways, which is very regrettable. We like to toss together our own style of literary forage and force it down the gaping throat of the public, because somehow we have always considered the public an Ass, whose best food was hay and thistles. But our Ass has lately turned restive and frequently refuses to accept our proferred nourishment. It snorts dubiously at our George Meredith Eccentricity, it kicks at the phonographic utterances of Browning, and it positively bolts at Ibsen. A disgusting Ass, this public! It actually devours volumes we have decided to ignore—it relishes poems which We pretend never to have heard of—it tosses its head at novels which We recommend, and hangs fondly over those We abuse; and it even goes and fawns at the feet of certain authors who show unrestrained passion and idealism in their writings, and whom, on account of that very passion and idealism, we have determined to send to Coventry.My heart sank to zero on a recent occasion when the editor of theAcademysaid to me, despondently, "The time is past, my friend, when criticism can either make or mar an author's reputation." Good God! I mentally ejaculated; then what amI—what arewe—to do? What becomes of our occupation? If we may neither stuff nor flay authors, where is our fun? And how are we to get our bread-and-butter? The selling of three-volume novels alone will not keep us, though we always add a little to our incomes by that business.
This is how we generally manage. A Three-volumer comes in "for review," nicely bound, well got up; we look at the title-page, and if it is by some individual whom we know to be a power in one or other of the cliques, we pay strict attention to it, cover its faults, and quote platitudes as epigrams. But if it is by some one we personally dislike, or if it is by a woman, we never read it. We simply glance through it in search of a stray ungrammatical sentence, a misprint, or a hastyslip of the pen. (The misprints we invariably set down to the author, as though he had personally worked the printing-press and muddled the type out of sheer malice.) We obtain a vague idea of the story by this means, and if we find the ungrammatical sentence or the slip of the pen we are happy—we have quite enough to go upon. We tuck our Three-volumer under our arm and make straight for a secondhand book-store (where we are known), and there we sell it, after somewhat undignified bargaining, for three or five shillings, perhaps more, if its author has any reputation with the public. Then we go home and write half a column of "smart" abuse about it, or what is worse, luke-warm praise, for which we are paid from about five shillings to half a guinea, which, added to what we have wrested out of our secondhand bookseller, makes a respectable little sum, particularly when we get many Three-volumers, and effect many sales. (Poverty-stricken editors who write all their "reviews" themselves, or get their young sons and daughters at home todo it to save their pockets, and who sell for their own advantage all the "books received," naturally make quite a decent thing out of it.) And we can take our money always with the holy consciousness of having done more than our duty.
Yet, considering the earnestness with which we go to work, we are really very miserably rewarded. We do not make half such big incomes as the authors we judge and condemn. I say this advisedly, because, as a positive fact, the men and women writers whom we most hold up to opprobrium are the wretches who make the most money. The very devil is in it! The poets we go out of our way to praise, our Oxford and Cambridge pets and our heavy men, don't "sell"; not as they ought to (in our opinion), by any manner of means. And then they come to us—these children of the Muse—and complain bitterly that certain Press-ignored fellows, who never had a "boom" in their lives,dosell. And it is all the fault of the Ass-public, and we are supposed to be responsible for the humours of the Ass. It is too bad. We cannothelp it if the Ass persists in remaining idiotically ignorant of the astounding wisdom contained behind the thick skull and solemn brow of a certain dear and choice morsel of mannerism we know, who dwelleth at Oxford, and who is called by some of his disciples "A Marvel." Aye, a marvel so marvellous that he hath grown weighty with the burden of his own wonder. And the phrase "I wonder!" is a frequent and favourite murmur of this impassive phenomenon; this "leader" of an excessively narrow literary "set"—this true "heavy father" of the little low comedy of Clique. For the rest, his voice is mild and dreamy, his eyes reserved and bilious, his step as of one in doubt, who deems the morning come when it is yet but night. Of a truth he is a good and simple goose, well stuffed with savoury learning; but whether the world will ever benefit by the dish is a matter which only the world itself can decide. Personally, I like the "Marvel"; I know him for a harmless soul, a gentlemanly dullposeur, whose posing vexes no one and amusesmany. Only I have ceased to try and "write him up," because I have read his classic novel, and having accomplished that daring and difficult feat I consider I have done enough.
Among the minor entertaining experiences in the life of a critic are the appeals made to one's "quality of mercy" by the tender green goslings in authorship, who fondly imagine that by a coaxing word, or a flattery delicately turned, they can persuade Us to praise them. I saw a young woman striving to beguile my friend Lang in this way on one occasion, using sundry bewitchments of eye and gesture for the accomplishment of her fell purpose, and I caught a fragment of her soft yet desperate petition. "I am sure you will say a good word for my poems, Mr. Lang!" Her poems! ye gods and goddesses! A woman's poems, and—Andrew Lang! Surely a Mephistophelian "ha, ha, ha!" rang out in the infernal regions of log-rolling at such a ridiculous combination, for when ever did the "Sign of the Ship" wave hopeful encouragement to a femalerhymester? No, no; Lang, like myself, must know better than to give any foothold to the "vapid" feminine climber who wantonly attempts to scale Parnassus (a mountain exclusively set apart for the masculine gender), and threatens to overcome our "intensely moving, intensely virile stern strength;"videpublisher's advertisements of our ever-glorious Kipling.
Another curious feature of the critical disposition is our rooted dislike to be known as critics. In this we somewhat resemble those dear old robbers of legendary lore who went out pillaging and murdering merrily by night, and were the most perfect fine gentlemen in the daytime. Such altogether fascinating fellows they were! But we play our parts almost as cleverly, and I am sure with quite as much ease and charm. In polite society we claim to be "literary men"; the term is delightfully vague and may imply anything or everything. Some of us, however, say boldly out and out that we are not critics, but poets—i.e., not judges, but criminals. We feel quite proud andglad when we have said this sort of thing. Take my amiable acquaintance, William Sharp, for instance.Hesays he is a poet, and he has a most refreshingly ingenuous and positive faith in his own statement. Few agree with him, but what does that matter, provided he is happy? Then there is Edmund Gosse; he also says he is a poet, and so he is, in a pretty daff-a-down-dilly, lady-like fashion. Only he sits as critic on other poets occasionally, and, strange to say, is never able to find anything in their productions quite equal to the sounds once evoked from "Lute and Viol." "Young" McCarthy, Justin Huntly (he is only called "young" lest he should be mistaken for "old"), he who uttereth oracles concerning plays and playwrights, he not only says he is a poet, but he once went so far as to call himself Hafiz—Hafiz in London. Yes; very much in London. Between the real Hafiz and the sham is a "great gulf fixed," and the ghost of the Persian singer is more valuable to literature than all the McCarthy substance. Now as to EdwinArnold—Sir Edwin Arnold, C.S.I. (it never does to forget his C.S.I.), the admirer of those pretty ladies whose portraits appear on tea-trays—is he a poet?—is he a critic? Well, some of his own verses were described in the journal with which he is, or used to be, chiefly connected,i.e.theDaily Telegraph, as "the finest things that had appeared since the New Testament." Now, I consider this pretty strong, and I don't wish to comment upon it. If such an eulogy had been uttered by some other newspaper we should have said that the reviewer was some unduly excited personal friend who wanted to "use" Edwin afterwards for his own private purposes, but in theDaily Telegraph, C.S.I.'s own pulpit, it suggested—no matter what! Anyway, I am quite sure Edwin was not in Japan at the time.
I come now to another point in our careers as critics, and not such a very pleasant point either. We are the victims of toadyism. The little men of the Press, the dwarfs of journalism, toady us to the verge of distraction, as soon as we attain toHalf-a-Guinea-a-Column power. Of course we are really somebodies then, and we have to pay the penalty of greatness. Still it is a bore. We are told all sorts of things that we know are not true, concerning our "fine literary abilities," our "keen discrimination," and our "quiet humour," but we are perfectly aware all the time that such "flattering unction" is merely the distilled essence of the most strongly concentrated humbug. No sane man, unless he has some private end in view which he hopes to gain by blandishment, would dream of giving us credit for "fine literary abilities," because if we had such abilities we should be doing something more paying than criticism. But our pigmy flatterers think we can swallow anything. Here is a small specimen of what I call Press-toadyism, which was bestowed on my dearest Andrew inGalignani's Messengerby somebody calling himself aLondon Correspondent. It purported to be a "review" of that amazingly dreary production, "The World's Desire," which, whatever its faults, had at least the effect ofshowing the joint authors thereof exactly what position they occupied as compared to Homer. Otherwise they might possibly have made some mistake about precedence. And thus ran the glib remarks of theLondon Correspondent:—
"That some parts are well written (Mr. Lang's) and some badly written (Mr. Haggard's), and that fights are many and blood is plentiful, and that there are many bits of delightful verse (Mr. Lang's, of course), and a cackling old person (the invention of Mr. Haggard evidently);" but there! I need not go on. The inquisitive individual who yearns to read the whole so-called "critique" can refer back toGalignaniof December 8, 1890. The gratuitous and unnecessary insolence to Mr. Haggard, and the equally unnecessary and gratuitous licking-of-the-boots of Mr. Lang must have been decidedly offensive to both authors. ThisLondon Correspondentmay be a man, but he certainly is not a brother.
Aproposof the subject of Press-toadyism,in remy friend Andrew, I must not forget here tochronicle my boundless admiration for that elaborate and beautiful witticism once contained in theSaturday Review. Criticising Andrew's "Essays in Little," theSaturdaysaid:—"The public may like Little, but they certainly prefer it Lang!"O mirabile dictu!Shade of Joe Miller, retire discomfited! Was ever heard the like? What are the quips and cranks of a Yorick compared to this? Poor and feeble are the epigrammatic sentences of Molière; miserable to the verge of bathos every "happy thought" beside this sparkling production of theSaturday; this scintillating firework of atticism, launched with so much delicacy! Let me wipe my fevered brow, moist with the dews of ecstasy; I had always hoped theSaturdaymight one day be witty, but I never thought to see the fond anticipation realised. "Moribund," quotha? Never was the Jumbo of Reviews so frisky or so full of life before! Glorious oldSaturday Slasher! As our American cousins say, "Langmay you wave!" Whoever perpetrated that delicious conceit on Andrew—Andrew, the very Pythias of myDamon worship—let him look me up at the Savile Club, and if I am there when he chances to call, he shall have such wine and welcome as can only be offered by a Critic with cash to a Critic of humour!
XVIII.
EULOGISETH ANDREW.
In speaking of Andrew I wish it to be very distinctly understood that there is only one Andrew; and he is "the" Andrew as pronouncedly and positively as "the" Mactavish or "the" Mackintosh. He is, to use the words of the old Scottish song, "Lang, Lang, Lang a'comin'," always "a'comin'" it in every English printed journal and newspaper under the sun. His finger is in every literary pie. His shrill piping utterance is even as the voice of Delphic oracles, pronouncing judgment on all men and all things. He is the Author's Own Patent Incubator. His artificial warmth hatches all sorts of small literary fledglings who might otherwise have perished inthe shell; and out they come chirping, all fuss and feathers, with as much good stamina as though they had been nursed into being under the wings of that despised old hen, Art. Andrew is better than Art, because he is the imitation of Art, and he comes cheaper than the real article. The way in which the old hen hatches her chicks is slow and infinitely laborious; the Lang Patent Incubator does the work in half the time and ever so much less worry. If you can only manage to place a literary egg close enough to the Incubator for him to "take notice" as it were, why there you are; out comes a chuckling author immediately and begins to pick his food from the paragraph-men with quite an appetite. He is quite a curious and wonderful institution in literature, is my dear Andrew. The pensters have had all sorts of things "occur" to them in their profession, such as "booms," "blackmail," "puffs," "burkings," "cliques," "literary societies," and the like, but I believe it has been left to our time to produce a literary Incubator. Of course Art goes on hatchingstrange birds in her own tedious and trying way—birds that soar sky-high and refuse paragraph-crumbs—but then they are a special breed that would have died of suffocation in the Lang Incubator. And they are a troublesome sort of fowl at best; they will never fly where they are told, never sing when they are bidden, and are never to be found scratching up dust in the press-yard by any manner of means. Now the Incubator produces no wild brood of this kind. He hatches excellent tame chicks, who make the prettiest little clucking noise imaginable, and scratch among the press-dust with grateful and satisfied claws, the while they prune each other's feathers occasionally with the tenderest "Savile" solicitude. Even timid spinsters could take up such pretty poultry in their aprons without harm. There are no horrible, snapping, strong-winged eagles among them? Lord bless you, no! Andrew would never be bothered with an eagle. It might bite his nose off! Eagles—i.e., geniuses—are detestable creatures; you never know whereto have them. And the Incubator must know where to have his chicks, else how could he look after them? Besides, geniuses always cause disaster and confusion in the press-yard—they find fault with the food there, and object to roost on the critically appointed perches. Fortunately, however, they are rare; and when Art does let loose such big troublesome chickabiddies the world generally lets them forage for themselves. Andrew certainly never troubles his head about them—indeed, he does his best to forget the unpleasant fact that they are flying about and might at any moment pounce on his "yairdie" and make havoc of his own carefully-incubated little literary brood.
Needless to say I am devoted to Andrew. He has done me the greatest kindness in the world. He does not know how kind he has been; in fact, he has such an open, guileless disposition that I believe he is quite unconscious of the heavy debt of gratitude I owe him. I have often thought I would try to express my sentiments towards him in some way, but my emotions have choked me,and I have refrained. Besides, great souls do not require to be thanked, and Andrew has a great soul. A great soul and "brindled hair." These qualities make him what he is, worthy of the admiration of all true Scots and inferior men. And of the "inferior" I will stand second to none in Lang-worship. Have I not followed him at a respectful distance when he has started off to rummage old bookstalls in search of literary provender? And have I not always admired the "pawkie" manner in which he has fathomed the childlike ignorance of the British public? For are not the contents of the books he picks up secondhand, forgotten, or unknown by the British public? and is it not well and seemly that he, Andrew, should revive them once more as specimens of pure Lang wit and wisdom? Certainly. No one would do the Incubator the hideous injustice of imagining him to be capable of any new ideas. New ideas have from time immemorial been an affront and an offence to the reviewer, and Andrew is not only a reviewer himself but thefriend of reviewers. New ideas are therefore very properly tabooed from his list. But for old ideas, carefully selected and re-worded, no one can beat Andrew. He is a wandering "complete edition" of ideas taken from "dead" as well as living authors. As for poetry, I don't suppose any one will dispute the right he has to the Laureateship. The stamp of immortality rests on "Ballads in Blue China"—that same immortality which attends Kipling's "Barrack-Room" marvels. These things will be read what time future generations ask vaguely, "Who was Tennyson?"
Yes, Andrew, it is even so. You are a great creature, and a useful creature too, because you can turn your hand to anything. You are not dominated by any cerebral monomania. You are a Press jack-of-all-trades, and, like G. A. S., could write as smartly about a pin as about a creed. It is very clever of you, and I appreciate your cleverness thoroughly. I have had the patience to listen to some lectures of yours, sitting at your feet as at the feet of another Gamaliel, drinking in thewisdom of the secondhand bookstalls without a murmur. Only the most intense admiration of your qualities could have made me do that. I have even managed to spell out some of your calligraphy, which resembles nothing so much as the casual pattern which might be made by a spider crawling on the paper after having previously fallen into the ink. That was a feat performed in your honour—a feat of which I am justly proud. Then again I shall always love you for your frankly-open detestation of literary females. Females who presume to take up our writing weapons—and use them almost as well as we do ourselves—these are our pet aversion. We hate scribblers in petticoats, don't we, good Andrew? Yea, verily! We loathe their verses, we abominate their novels; we would kick them if we dared. We do kick them, metaphorically, whenever we can, in whatever journals we command; but that is not half as much as we would like to do. Almost we envy Hodge who can (and does) give an interferingwoman a good dig in the ribs with his heavy hob-nailed boot whenever she provokes him; and in the close competition for literary honours we would fain be Hodges too, every man-jack of us. It is an absurdity that should not be tolerated in any civilised nation, this admission of women into the literary profession. What has she done there? What will she ever do? Ask Walter of theTimes(he is a great authority) what he thinks of women who write. He will tell you that they are merely the weak imitators of men, and that they are absolutely incapable of humour or epigram. And I am convinced he is right. Mrs. Browning, Charlotte Bronté, Georges Sand, George Eliot, and others whose names assume to be "celebrated," are really nobodies after all. Walter of theTimescould himself beat them out of the field—if he liked. But he is too mercifully disposed for this: he reserves his genius. Sparkling all over with witticism, he only permits occasional flashes of it to appear in the columns of his magnificent journal, lest the public should be toomuch dizzied and dazzled. No wonder theTimescosts threepence; you could not expect to get even a glimpse of a man like Walter for less. We ought to be glad and grateful for his opinions at any price.
And these epithets "glad" and "grateful" occur to me as the only suitable terms to apply to you, most super-excellent Andrew; my good friend to whom I owe so much. I am glad and grateful to know that your "lang" personality is a familiar object at so many newspaper offices. I am delighted to feel that English literature would come to a dead halt without your pleasantly long finger to push it on. It rejoices my heart to realise what a power you are. I am lost in astonishment at the extraordinary collection of Lilliputian authors you have hatched by your incubating process. They are the prettiest little brood imaginable, and what is so charming about them is that they are all so tame and well-behaved that they will never fly. This is such a comfort. Just a little scurrying and flopping through thepress-yard is all they are capable of, and quite enough too. Comfortable hencoop sanity in literature is the thing; we don't want any of Professor Lombroso's maniacs in the way of geniuses about. They are dangerous. They do strange things and break out in strange places, and often succeed in stopping all the world on its way to look at them. Nothing would alarm you so much, I assure you, my dear Andrew, as the involuntary hatching of a genius. In fact, I believe it would be all over with you. You could not survive.
But, thanks to a merciful Providence, you run no risk of this. The old hen Art is a savage bird and lays her eggs among wild thorns and bracken out in the open, where no man can find them to bring to you for the artificial bursting heat of a "boom." You only get the dwarf product of the domestic poultry of the press-yard. And these are easily incubated by your patent process—in fact, they almost hatch themselves, they are in such a hurry to chirp forth their claims to literary distinction. But being fragile ofconstitution they need constantly looking after, which I should imagine must be rather a bore. Relays of paragraph-men have to come and throw corn and savouries all the while lest your little chicks should die of inanition, they having no stamina in themselves. Some will die, some are dying, some are dead; yet weep not, gentle Incubator, for their fate. It better suits thy purpose that such should perish, so long as thou dost remain to hatch fresh fowl upon demand. The press-yard relies upon thee for its stock of guaranteed male birds—its gifted "virile" roosters, whose "cocksure" literary crowings may wake old Granny Journalism at stated hours from too-prolonged and loudly-snoring slumbers; but produce no hens, Andrew, for if thou dost, thou art a mistaken patent and workest by a wrong process! Continue in the path of wisdom, therefore, and faithfully incubate only masculine fledglings for the literary coops. More we do not expect of thee, save that thou continue to be the king of compilers and the enemy of blue stockings. For myself, personallyspeaking, admiring thee as I am fain to do, I naturally implore thee to go on in all the magazines and journals telling me the things I knew before—the old stories I read when I was a thoughtless child, the scraps of information familiar to me as copybook maxims, the ancient jokes at which my elders laughed, the snatches of French romance and fable I picked up casually at school. For being always a book-lover it is but natural I should have learned the things wherewith thou instructest the ignorant world; but thou shalt tell me of them again and yet again, good Andrew, and yet I will not murmur nor ask of thee one thought original. Aware of all thou canst say, I still entreat thee, say it! Say it (to quote the jovial oldSaturdayonce more) in "little," that I may have it "lang."