The bibliotaph, and other people

y.i««ity of crfl«-*.

~~&^IM3J2..

THE BIBLIOTAPH

And Other People

BY

LEON H. VINCENT

[g^^^^ES

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

0je mmiiitit pmrjf , Cambritise
1898

COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY LEON H. VINCBNT
ALL RIGHTS KSSERVBD

TO MY FATHER
THE REV. B. T. VINCENT, D.D.

THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS

^etiicateti

WITH LOVE AND ADMIRATION

Digitized by tine Internet Arcliive

in 2007 witli funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

littp://www.arcliive.org/details/bibliotapliotlierpOOvinciala

Four of these papers — the first Bibliotaph, and
the notes on Keats, Gautier, and Stevenson's Sf.
Ives — are reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly by
the kind permission of the editor.

I am also indebted to the literary editor of the
Sprin^eld Republican and to the editors of Poet-
Lore^ respectively, for allowing me to reprint the
paper on Thomas Hardy and the lecture on An
Elizabethan Novelist.

CONTENTS

PAGS

THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT NOT WHOLLY

IMAGINARY i

THE BIBLIOTAPH : HIS FRIENDS, SCRAP-BOOKS,

AND 'BINS' 27

LAST WORDS ON THE BIBLIOTAPH ... 54

THOMAS HARDY 80

A READING IN THE LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS 113

AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST 137

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FAIR-MINDED MAN 165
CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT ... 192
STEVENSON: THE VAGABOND AND THE PHI-
LOSOPHER 202

STEVENSON'S ST. IVES 219

THE BIBLIOTAPH AND OTHER
PEOPLE

THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT NOT
WHOLLY IMAGINARY

A POPULAR and fairly orthodox opinion con-
cerning book-collectors is that their vices are
many, their virtues of a negative sort, and their
ways altogether past finding out. Yet the most
hostile critic is bound to admit that the frater-
nity of bibliophiles is eminently picturesque. If
their doings are inscrutable, they are also roman-
tic ; if their vices are numerous, the heinous-
ness of those vices is mitigated by the fact that
it is possible to sin humorously. Regard him
how you will, the sayings and doings of the col-
lector give life and color to the pages of those
books which treat of books. He is amusing
when he is purely an imaginary creature. For
example, there was one Thomas Blinton. Every
one who has ever read the volume called Books
and Bookmen knows about Thomas Blinton.
He was a man who wickedly adorned his vol-
umes with morocco bindings, while his wife

2 THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT

* sighed in vain for some old point d'Alengon
lace' He was a man who was capable of bid-
ding fifteen pounds for a Foppens edition of
the essays of Montaigne, though fifteen pounds
happened to be 'exactly the amount which
he owed his plumber and gas-fitter, a worthy
man with a large family.' From this fictitious
Thomas Blinton all the way back to Richard
Heber, who was very real, and who piled up
books as other men heap together vulgar riches,
book-collectors have been a picturesque folk.

The name of Heber suggests the thought
that all men who buy books are not bibliophiles.
He alone is worthy the title who acquires his
volumes with something like passion. One may
buy books like a gentleman, and that is very
well. One may buy books like a gentleman and
a scholar, which counts for something more.
But to be truly of the elect one must resemble
Richard Heber, and buy books like a gentle-
man, a scholar, and a madman.

You may find an account of Heber in an old
file of The Gentlematis Magazine. He began
in his youth by making a library of the classics.
Then he became interested in rare English
books, and collected them con amove for thirty
years. He was very rich, and he had never
given hostages to fortune ; it was therefore pos-
sible for him to indulge his fine passion without
stint. He bought only the best books, and he
bought them by thousands and by tens of thou-

NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY 3

sands. He would have held as foolishness that
saying from the Greek which exhorts one to
do nothing too much. According to Heber's
theory, it is impossible to have too many good
books. Usually one library is supposed to be
enough for one man. Heber was satisfied only
with eight libraries, and then he was hardly
satisfied. He had a library in his house at
Hodnet. 'His residence in Pimlico, where he
died, was filled, like Magliabecchi's at Florence,
with books from the top to the bottom ; every
chair, every table, every passage containing
piles of erudition.' He had a house in York
Street which was crowded with books. He had
a Hbrary in Oxford, one at Paris, one at Ant-
werp, one at Brussels, and one at Ghent. The
most accurate estimate of his collections places
the number at 146,827 volumes. Heber is be-
lieved to have spent half a million dollars for
books. After his death the collections were dis-
persed. The catalogue was published in twelve
parts, and the sales lasted over three years.

Heber had a witty way of explaining why he
possessed so many copies of the same book.
When taxed with the sin of buying duplicates
he replied in this manner : * Why, you see, sir,
no man can comfortably do without three copies
of a book. One he must have for his show
copy, and he will probably keep it at his coun-
try house ; another he will require for his own
use and reference ; and unless he is inclined to

4 THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT

part with this, which is very inconvenient, or
risk the injury of his best copy, he must needs
have a third at the service of his friends.'

In the pursuit of a coveted volume Heber
was indefatigable. He was not of those Syb-
aritic buyers who sit in their offices while
agents and dealers do the work. ' On hearing
of a curious book he has been known to put
himself into the mail-coach, and travel three,
four, or five hundred miles to obtain it, fearful
to trust his commission to a letter.' He knew
the solid comfort to be had in reading a book
catalogue. Dealers were in the habit of send-
ing him the advance sheets of their lists. He
ordered books from his death-bed, and for any-
thing we know to the contrary died with a cata-
logue in his fingers.

A life devoted to such a passion is a stum-
bling-block to the practical man, and to the
Philistine foolishness. Yet you may hear men
praised because up to the day of death they
were diligent in business, — business which
added to life nothing more significant than that
useful thing called money. Thoreau used to
say that if a man spent half his time in the
woods for the love of the woods he was in dan-
ger of being looked upon as a loafer ; but if he
spent all his time as a speculator, shearing off
those woods and making Earth bald before her
time, he was regarded as an upright and indus-
trious citizen.

NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY 5

Heber had a genius for friendship as well as
for gathering together choice books. Sir Walter
Scott addressed verses to him. Professor Por-
son wrote emendations for him in his favorite
copy of AthefKEus. To him was inscribed Dr.
Ferrier's poetical epistle on Bibliomania. His
virtues were celebrated by Dibdin and by Bur-
ton, In brief, the sketch of Heber in The
Gentleman' s Magazine for January, 1834, con-
tains a list of forty-six names, — all men of dis-
tinction by birth, learning, or genius, and all
men who were proud to call Richard Heber
friend. He was a mighty hunter of books. He
was genial, scholarly, generous. Out-of-door
men will be pleased to know that he was ac-
tive physically. He was a tremendous walker,
and enjoyed tiring out his bailiff by an all-day
tramp.

Of many good things said of him this is one
of the best : * The learned and curious, whether
rich or poor, have always free access to his
library.' Thus was it possible for Scott very
truthfully to say to Heber, 'Thy volumes open
as thy heart.'

No life of this Prince of Book-Hunters has
been written, I believe. Some one with access
to the material, and a sympathy with the love
of books as books, should write a memoir of
Heber the Magnificent. It ought not to be a
large volume, but it might well be about the
size of Henry Stevens's Recollections of James

6 THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT

Lenox. And if it were equally readable it were
a readable book indeed.

Dibdin thought that Heber's tastes were so
catholic as to make it difficult to classify him
among hunters of books. The implication is
that most men can be classified. They have
their specialties. What pleases one collector
much pleases another but little or not at all.
Collectors differ radically in the attitude they
take with respect to their volumes. One man
buys books to read, another buys them to gloat
over, a third that he may fortify them behind
glass doors and keep the key in his pocket.
Therefore have learned words been devised to
make apparent the varieties of motive and taste.
These words begin with biblio ; you may have
a biblio almost anything.

Two interesting types of maniac are known
respectively as the bibliotaph and the biblio-
clast. A biblioclast is one who indulges him-
self in the questionable pleasure of mutilating
books in order more sumptuously to fit out a
particular volume. The disease is English in
origin, though some of the worst cases have
been observed in America. Clergymen and
presidents of colleges have been known to be
seized with it. The victim becomes more or
less irresponsible, and presently runs mad.
Such an one was John Bagford, of diabolical
memory, who mutilated not less than ten thou-
sand volumes to form his vast collection of title-

NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY 7

pages. John Bagford died an unrepentant sin-
ner, lamenting with one of his later breaths
that he could not live long enough to get hold
of a genuine Caxton and rip the initial page out
of that.

The bibliotaph buries books ; not literally,
but sometimes with as much effect as if he had
put his books underground. There are several
varieties of him. The dog-in-the-manger biblio-
taph is the worst ; he uses his books but little
himself, and allows others to use them not at
all. On the other hand, a man may be a
bibliotaph simply from inability to get at his
books. He may be homeless, a bachelor, a
denizen of boarding-houses, a wanderer upon
the face of the earth. He may keep his books
in storage or accumulate them in the country,
against the day when he shall have a town
house with proper library.

The most genial lover of books who has
walked city streets for many a day was a bib-
liotaph. He accumulated books for years in
the huge garret of a farmhouse standing upon
the outskirts of a Westchester County village.
A good relative ' mothered ' the books for him
in his absence. When the collection outgrew
the garret it was moved into a big village store.
It was the wonder of the place. The country
folk flattened their noses against the panes and
tried to peer into the gloom beyond the half-
drawn shades. The neighboring stores were

8 THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT

in comparison miracles of business activity. On
one side was a harness-shop ; on the other a
nondescript estabhshment at which one might
buy anything, from sunbonnets and corsets to
canned salmon and fresh eggs. Between these
centres of vUlage life stood the silent tomb for
books. The stranger within the gates had this
curiosity pointed out to him along with the new
High School and the Soldiers* Monument.

By shading one's eyes to keep away the glare
of the light, it was possible to make out tall
carved oaken cases with glass doors, which
lined the walls. They gave distinction to the
place. It was not difficult to understand the
point of view of the dressmaker from across
the way who stepped over to satisfy her curios-
ity concerning the stranger, and his concerning
the books, and who said in a friendly manner as
she peered through a rent in the adjoining
shade, * It 's almost like a cathedral, ain't it ? '

To an inquiry about the owner of the books
she replied that he was brought up in that
county; that there were people around there
who said that he had been an exhorter years
ago; her impression was that now he was a
'political revivalist,' if I knew what that was.

The phrase seemed hopeless, but light was
thrown upon it when, later, I learned that this
man of many buried books gave addresses upon
the responsibilities of citizenship, upon the
higher politics, and upon themes of like char-

NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY 9

acter. They said that he was humorous. The
farmers liked to hear him speak. But it was
rumored that he went to colleges, too. The
dressmaker thought that the buying of so many
books was ' wicked.' ' He goes from New York
to Beersheba, and from Chicago to Dan, buy-
ing books. Never reads 'em because he hardly
ever comes here.'

It became possible to identify the Bibliotaph
of the country store with a certain mature
youth who some time since 'gave his friends
the slip, chose land-travel or seafaring,' and has
not returned to build the town house with
proper library. They who observed him closely
thought that he resembled Heber in certain
ways. Perhaps this fact alone would justify an
attempt at a verbal portrait. But the additional
circumstance that, in days when people with
the slightest excuse therefor have themselves
regularly photographed, this old-fashioned youth
refused to allow his * likeness ' to be taken, —
this circumstance must do what it can to ex-
tenuate minuteness of detail in the picture, as
well as over-attention to points of which a
photograph would have taken no account.

You are to conceive of a man between thirty-
eight and forty years of age, big-bodied, rapidly
acquiring that rotund shape which is thought
becoming to bishops, about six feet high though
stooping a little, prodigiously active, walking
with incredible rapidity, having large limbs,

10 THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT

large feet, large though well-shaped and very
white hands ; in short, a huge fellow physically,
as big of heart as of body, and, in the Section-
ate thought of those who knew him best, as big
of intellect as of heart.

His head might be described as leonine. It
was a massive head, covered with a tremendous
mane of brown hair. This was never worn
long, but it was so thick and of such fine tex-
ture that it constituted a real beauty. He had
no conceit of it, being innocent of that peculiar
German type of vanity which runs to hair, yet
he could not prevent people from commenting
on his extraordinary hirsute adornment. Their
occasional remarks excited his mirth. If they
spoke of it again, he would protest. Once,
among a small party of his closest friends, the
conversation turned upon the subject of hair,
and then upon the beauty of his hair ; where-
upon he cried out, * I am embarrassed by this
unnecessary display of interest in my Samso-
nian assertiveness.'

He loved to tease certain of his acquaintances
who, though younger than himself, were rapidly
losing their natural head-covering. He prod-
ded them with ingeniously worded reflections
upon their unhappy condition. He would take
as a motto Erasmus's unkind salutation, * Bene
sit tibi cum tuo calvitio,' and multiply amusing
variations upon it. He delighted in sending
them prescriptions and advertisements clipped

NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY II

from newspapers and medical journals. He
quoted at them the remark of a pale, bald,
blond young literary aspirant, who, seeing him,
the Bibliotaph, passing by, exclaimed audibly
and almost passionately, * Oh, I perfectly adore
hair ! '

Of his clothes it might be said that he did
not wear them, but rather dwelt at large in
them. They were made by high-priced tailors
and were fashionably cut, but he lived in them
so violently — that is, traveled so much, walked
so much, sat so long and so hard, gestured so
earnestly, and carried in his many pockets such
an extraordinary collection of notebooks, indeli-
ble pencils, card-cases, stamp-boxes, penknives,
gold toothpicks, thermometers, and what not —
that within twenty-four hours after he had
donned new clothes all the artistic merits of the
garments were obliterated ; they were, from
every point of view, hopelessly degenerate.

He was a scrupulously clean man, but there
was a kind of civilized wildness in his appear-
ance which astonished people ; and in perverse
moments he liked to terrify those who knew
him but little by affirming that he was a near
relative of Christopher Smart, and then ex-
plaining in mirth-provoking phrases that one of
the arguments used for proving Smart's in-
sanity was that he did not love clean linen.

His appetite was large, as became a large and
active person. He was a very valiant trencher-

12 THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT

man ; and yet he could not have been said to
love eating for eating's sake. He ate when he
was hungry, and found no difficulty in being
hungry three times a day. He should have
been an Englishman, for he enjoyed a late sup-
per. In the proper season this consisted of
a bountiful serving of tomatoes, cucumbers,
onions, with a glass of lemonade. As a variant
upon the beverage he took milk. He was the
only man I have known, whether book-hunter
or layman, who could sleep peacefully upon a
supper of cucumbers and milk.

There is probably no occult relation between
first editions and onions. The Bibliotaph was
mightily pleased with both : the one, he said,
appealed to him aesthetically, the other dietet-
ically. He remarked of some particularly large
Spanish onions that there was *a globular
wholesomeness about them which was very
gratifying ; ' and after eating one he observed
expansively that he felt * as if he had swallowed
the earth and the fullness thereof.' His easy,
good-humored exaggerations and his odd com-
ments upon the viands made him a pleasant
table companion : as when he described a Par-
ker House Sultana Roll by saying that 'it
looked like the sanguinary output of the whole
Crimean war.'

High-priced restaurants did not please him
as well as humbler and less obtrusive places.
But it was all one, — Delmonico's, the Bellevue,

NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY 13

a stool in the Twelfth Street Market, or a
German caf6 on Van Buren Street. The hu-
mors of certain eating-houses gave him infinite
delight. He went frequently to the Diner's
Own Home, the proprietor of which, being
both cook and Christian, had hit upon the
novel plan of giving Scriptural advice and prac-
tical suggestions by placards on the walls. The
Bibliotaph enjoyed this juxtaposition of signs:
the first read, * The very God of peace sanctify
you wholly ; ' the second, * Look out for your
Hat and Coat.'

The Bibliotaph had no home, and was re-
puted to live in his post-office box. He con-
tributed to the support of at least three clubs,
but was very little seen at any one of them.
He enjoyed the large cities, and was contented
in whichever one he happened to find himself.
He was emphatically a city man, but what city
was of less import. He knew them all, and
was happy in each. He had his favorite hotel,
his favorite bath, his work, bushels of news-
papers and periodicals, friends who rejoiced in
his coming as children in the near advent of
Christmas, and finally book-shops in which to
browse at his pleasure. It was interesting to
hear him talk about city life. One of his quaint
mannerisms consisted in modifying a well-,
known quotation to suit his conversational
needs. 'Why, sir,' he would remark, 'Fleet
Street has a very animated appearance, but I

14 THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT

think the full tide of human existence is at the
corner of Madison and State.'

His knowledge of cities was both extensive
and peculiar. I have heard him name in order
all the hotels on Broadway, beginning at the
lower end and coming up as far as hotels exist,
branching off upon the parallel and cross
streets where there were noted caravansaries,
and connecting every name with an event of
importance, or with the life and fortunes of
some noted man who had been guest at that
particular inn. This was knowledge more be-
coming in a guide, perhaps, but it will illustrate
the encyclopaedic fullness of his miscellaneous
information.

As was natural and becoming in a man bom
within forty miles of the metropolis, he liked
best the large cities of the East, and was least
content in small Western cities. But this was
the outcome of no illiberal prejudice, and there
was a quizzical smile upon his lips and a teas-
ing look in his eyes when he bantered a West-
erner. * A man,' he would sometimes say,
•may come by the mystery of childbirth into
Omaha or Kansas City and be content, but he
can't come by Boston, New York, or Philadel-
phia.' Then, a moment later, paraphrasing his
remark, he would add, *To go to Omaha or
Kansas City by way of New York and Phila-
delphia is like being translated heavenward
with such violence that one passes through —
into a less comfortable region ! '

NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY 15

Strange to say, the conversation of this most
omnivorous of book-collectors was less of books
than of men. True, he was deeply versed in
bibliographical details and dangerously accurate
in his talk about them, but, after all, the per-
sonality back of the book was the supremely
interesting thing. He abounded in anecdote,
and could describe graphically the men he had
met, the orators he had heard, the occasions of
importance where he had been an interested
spectator. His conversation was delightfully
fresh and racy because of the vividness of the
original impressions, the unusual force of the
ideas which were the copies of these impres-
sions, and the fine artistic sense which enabled
him to determine at once what points should
be omitted, and what words should be used
most fittingly to express the ideas retained.

He had no pride in his conversational power.
He was always modest, but never diffident. I
have seen him sit, a respectful listener, abso-
lutely silent, while some ordinary chatterer held
the company's attention for an hour. Many
good talkers are unhappy unless they have the
privilege of exercising their gifts. Not so he.
Sometimes he had almost to be compelled to
begin. On such occasions one of his intimates
was wont to quote from Boswell : * Leave him
to me, sir ; I '11 make him rear.'

The superficial parts of his talk were more
easily retained. In mere banter, good-humored

l6 THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT

give-and-take, that froth and bubble of conver-
sational intercourse, he was delightful. His
hostess, the wife of a well-known comedian,
apologized to him for having to move him out
of the large guest-chamber into another one,
smaller and higher up, — this because of an
unexpected accession of visitors. He replied
that it did not incommode him ; and as for
being up another flight of stairs, ' it was a com-
fort to him to know that when he was in a
state of somnolent helplessness he was as near
heaven as it was possible to get in an actor's
house.' The same lady was taking him roundly
to task on some minor point in which he had
quite justly offended her ; whereupon he turned
to her husband and said, 'Jane worships but
little at the shrine of politeness because so
much of her time is mortgaged to the shrine of
truth.'

When asked to suggest an appropriate and
brief cablegram to be sent to a gentleman who
on the following day would become sixty years
of age, and who had taken full measure of life's
joys, he responded, * Send him this : " You
don't look it, but you 've lived like it." '

His skill in witty retort often expressed itself
by accepting a verbal attack as justified, and
elaborating it in a way to throw into shadow
the assault of the critic. At a small and famil-
iar supper of bookish men, when there was
general dissatisfaction over an expensive but

NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY 17

ill-made salad, he alone ate with apparent relish.
The host, who was of like mind with his guests,
said, * The Bibliotaph does n't care for the qual-
ity of his food, if it has filling power.' To
which he at once responded, 'You merely
imply that I am like a robin : I eat cherries
when I may, and worms when I must.'

His inscriptions in books given to his friends
were often singularly happy. He presented a
copy of Lowell's Letters to a gentleman and
his wife. The first volume was inscribed to
the husband as follows : —

* To Mr. , who is to the owner of

the second volume of these Letters what this
volume is to that : so delightful as to make one
glad that there 's another equally as good, if not
better.'

In volume two was the inscription to the
wife, worded in this manner : —

* To Mrs. , without whom the owner

of the first volume of these Letters would be as
that first volume without this one : interesting,
but incomplete.'

Perhaps this will illustrate his quickness to
seize upon ever so minute an occasion for the
exercise of his humor. A young woman whom
he admired, being brought up among brothers,
had received the nickname, half affectionately
and half patronizingly bestowed, of 'the Kid.'
Among her holiday gifts for a certain year was
a book from the Bibliotaph, a copy of Old-

i8 THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT

Fashioned Roses, with this dedication : * To a
Kid, had Abraham possessed which, Isaac had
been the burnt-offering.'

It is as a buyer and burier of books that the
subject of this paper showed himself in most
interesting hght. He said that the time to
make a Ubrary was when one was young. He
held the foolish notion that a man does not
purchase books after he is fifty ; I shall expect
to see him ransacking the shops after he is
seventy, if he shall survive his eccentricities of
diet that long. He was an omnivorous buyer,
picking up everything he could lay his hands
upon. Yet he had a clearly defined motive for
the acquisition of every volume. However
absurd the purchase might seem to the by-
stander, he, at any rate, could have given six
cogent reasons why he must have that par-
ticular book.

He bought according to the condition of his
purse at a given time. If he had plenty of
money, it would be expensive publications, like
those issued by the Grolier Club. If he was
financially depressed, he would hunt in the out-
of-door shelves of well-known Philadelphia book-
shops. It was marvelous to see what things,
new and old, he was able to extract from a ten-
cent alcove. Part of the secret lay in this idea :
to be a good book-hunter one must not be too
dainty ; one must not be afraid of soiling one's
hands. He who observes the clouds shall not

NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY 19

reap, and he who thinks of his cuffs is likely to
lose many a bookish treasure. Our Bibliotaph
generally parted company with his cuffs when
he began hunting for books. How many times
have I seen those cuffs with the patent fasten-
ers sticking up in the air, as if reaching out
helplessly for their owner ; the owner in the
mean time standing high upon a ladder which
creaked under his weight, humming to himself
as he industriously examined every volume
within reach. This ability to live without cuffs
made him prone to reject altogether that ortho-
dox bit of finish to a toilet. I have known him
to spend an entire day in New York between
club, shops, and restaurant, with one cuff on,
and the other cuff — its owner knew not where.
He differed from Heber in that he was not
*a classical scholar of the old school,' but there
were many points in which he resembled the
famous English collector. Heber would have
acknowledged him as a son if only for his
energy, his unquenchable enthusiasm, and the
exactness of his knowledge concerning the
books which he pretended to know at all. For
not alone is it necessary that a collector should
know precisely what book he wants ; it is even
more important that he should be able to know
a book as the book he wants when he sees it.
It is a lamentable thing to have fired in the
dark, and then discover that you have shot a
wandering mule, and not the noble game you

20 THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT

were in pursuit of. One cannot take his ref-
erence library with him to the shops. The
tests, the criteria, must be carried in the head.
The last and most inappropriate moment for
getting up bibliographical lore is that moment
when the pressing question is, to buy or not to
buy. Master Slender, in the play, learned the
difficulties which beset a man whose knowledge
is in a book, and whose book is at home upon a
shelf. It is possible to sympathize with him
when he exclaims, * I had rather than forty
shillings I had my Book of Songs and Sonnets
here ! ' In making love there are other re-
sources ; all wooers are not as ill equipped as
Slender was. But in hunting rare books the
time will be sure to come when a man may
well cry, * I had rather than forty dollars I had
my list of first editions with me ! '

The Bibliotaph carried much accurate infor-
mation in his head, but he never traveled with-
out a thesaurus in his valise. It was a small
volume containing printed lists of the first
editions of rare books. The volume was inter-
leaved; the leaves were crowded with manu-
script notes. An appendix contained a hundred
and more autograph letters from living authors,
correcting, supplementing, or approving the
printed bibliographies. Even these authors'
own lists were accurately corrected. They
needed it in not a few instances. For it is a
wise author who knows his own first edition.

NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY 2i

Men may write remarkable books, and under-
stand but little the virtues of their books from
the collector's point of view. Men are seldom
clever in more ways than one. Z. Jackson was
a practical printer, and his knowledge as a
printer enabled him to correct sundry errors in
the first folio of Shakespeare. But Z. Jackson,
as the Rev. George Dawson observes, 'ven-
tured beyond the composing-case, and, having
corrected blunders made by the printers, cor-
rected excellencies made by the poet.'

It was amusing to discover, by means of
these autograph letters, how seldom a good
author was an equally good bibliographer. And
this is as it should be. The author's business
is, not to take account of first editions, but to
make books of such virtue that bibliomaniacs
shall be eager to possess the first editions
thereof. It is proverbial that a poet is able to
show a farmer things new to him about his own
farm. Turn a bibliographer loose upon a poet's
works, and he will amaze the poet with an
account of his own doings. The poet will
straightway discover that while he supposed
himself to be making 'mere literature' he was
in reality contributing to an elaborate and exact
science.

The Bibliotaph was not a blind enthusiast on
the subject of first editions. He was one of
the few men who understood the exceeding
great virtues of second editions. He declared

22 THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT

that a man who was so fortunate as to secure
a second edition of Henry Crabb Robinson's
Diary was in better case than he who had
bothered himself to obtain a first. When it
fell in with his mood to argue against that
which he himself most affected, he would quote
the chUdish bit of doggerel beginning ' The
first the worst, the second the same,' and then
grow eloquent over the dainty Templeman Haz-
litts which are chiefly third editions. He
thought it absurd to worry over a first issue of
Carlyle's French Revolution if it were possible
to buy at moderate price a copy of the third
edition, which is a well-nigh perfect book,
'good to the touch and grateful to the eye.'
But this lover of books grew fierce in his spe-
cial mania if you hinted that it was also foolish
to spend a large sum on an editio princeps of
Paradise Lost or of Robinson Crusoe. There
are certain authors concerning the desirability
of whose first editions it must not be disputed.
The singular readiness with which bookish
treasures fell into his way astonished less for-
tunate buyers. Rare Stevensons dropped into
his hand like ripe fruit from a tree. The most
inaccessible of pamphlets fawned upon him,
begging to be purchased, just as the succulent
little roast pigs in The New Paul and Virginia
run about with knives and forks in their sides
pleading to be eaten. The Bibliotaph said he
did not despair of buying Poe's Tamerlane for

NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY 23

twenty-five cents one of these days ; and that
a rarity he was sure to get sooner or later was
a copy of that English newspaper which an-
nounced Shelley's death under the caption Now
he Knows whether there is a Hell or Not.

He unconsciously followed Heber in that he
disliked large-paper copies. Heber would none
of them because they took up too much room ;
their ample borders encroached upon the rights
of other books. Heber objected to this as
Prosper M6rim6e objected to the gigantic Eng-
lish hoopskirts of 1865, — there was space on
Regent Street for but one woman at a time.

Original as the Bibliotaph was in appearance,
manners, habits, he was less striking in what
he did than in what he said. It is a pity that
no record of his talk exists. It is not surpris-
ing that there is no such record, for his habits
of wandering precluded the possibility of his
making a permanent impression. By the time
people had fully awakened to the significance
of his presence among them he was gone. So
there grew up a legend concerning him, but no
true biography. He was like a comet, very
shaggy and very brilliant, but he stayed so
brief a time in a place that it was impossible
for one man to give either the days or the
thought to the reproduction of his more serious
and considered words. A greater difficulty was
involved in the fact that the Bibliotaph had
many socii, but no fidus Achates. Moreover,

24 THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT

Achates, in this instance, would have needed
the reportorial powers of a James Boswell that
he might properly interpret genius to the public.

This particular genius illustrated the mis-
fortune of having too great facility in establish-
ing those relations which lie midway between
acquaintance and friendship. To put the matter
in the form of a paradox, he had so many
friends that he had no friend. Perhaps this is
unjust, but friendship has a touch of jealousy
and exclusiveness in it. He was too large-
natured to say to one of his admirers, 'Thou
shalt have no other gods save myself ; ' but
there were those among the admirers who were
quite prepared to say to him, * We prefer that
thou shalt have no other worshipers in addi-
tion to us.'

People wondered that he seemed to have no
care for a conventional home life. He was
taxed with want of sympathy with what makes
even a humble home a centre of light and hap-
piness. He denied it, and said to his accusers,
* Can you not understand that after a stay in
your home I go away with much the feeling
that must possess a lusty young calf when his
well-equipped mother tells him that henceforth
he must find means of sustenance elsewhere t '

He professed to have been once in love, but
no one believed it. He used to say that his
most remarkable experience as a bachelor was
in noting the uniformity with which eligible

NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY 25

young women passed him by on the other side
of the way. And when a married friend offered
condolence, with that sleek complacency of
manner noteworthy in men who are conscious
of being mated for life better than they deserve,
the Bibliotaph said, with an admiring glance at
the wife, 'Your sympathy is supererogatory,
sir, for I fully expect to become your residuary
legatee.'

It is most pleasing to think of this unique
man * buffeting his books ' in one of those tem-
porary libraries which formed about him when-
ever he stopped four or five weeks in a place.
The shops were rifled of not a few of their
choicest possessions, and the spoils carried off
to his room. It was a joy to see him display
his treasures, a delight to hear him talk of
them. He would disarm criticism with respect
to the more eccentric purchases by saying,
' You would n't approve of this, but / thought
it was curious,* — and then a torrent of facts,
criticisms, quotations, all bearing upon the par-
ticular volume which you were supposed not to
like ; and so on, hour after hour. There was
no limit save that imposed by the receptive
capacity of the guest. It reminded one of the
word spoken concerning a ' hard sitter at books '
of the last century, that he was a literary giant
'born to grapple with whole libraries.' But the
fine flavor of those hours spent in hearing him
discourse upon books and men is not to be

26 THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT

recovered. It is evanescent, spectral, now. This
talk was like the improvisation of a musician
who is profoundly learned, but has in him a
vein of poetry too. The talk and the music
strongly appeal to robust minds, and at the same
time do not repel the sentimentalist.

It is not to be supposed that the Bibliotaph
pleased every one with whom he came in con-
tact. There were people whom his intellectual
potency affected in a disagreeable way. They
accused him of applying great mental force to
inconsidered trifles. They said it was a misfor-
tune that so much talent was going to waste.
But there is no task so easy as criticising an
able man's employment of his gifts.

THE BIBLIOTAPH: HIS FRIENDS,
SCRAP-BOOKS, AND 'BINS'

To arrive at a high degree of pleasure in
collecting a library, one must travel. The Bib-
liotaph regularly traveled in search of his vol-
umes. His theory was that the collector must
go to the book, not wait for the book to come
to him. No reputable sportsman, he said, would
wish the game brought alive to his back-yard
for him to kill. Half the pleasure was in track-
ing the quarry to its hiding-place. He himself
ordered but seldom from catalogues, and went
regularly to and fro among the dealers in books,
seeking the volume which his heart desired.
He enjoyed those shops where the book-seller
kept open house, where the stock was large and
surprises were common, where the proprietor
was prodigiously well-informed on some points
and correspondingly ill-informed on others. He
bought freely, never disputed a price, and laid
down his cash with the air of a man who be-
lieves that unspent money is the root of all
evil.

These travels brought about three results:

28 THE BIBLIOTAPH

the making of friends, the compilation of scrap-
books, and the establishment of * bins.' Before
speaking of any one of these points, a word on
the satisfactions of bibliographical touring.

In every town of considerable size, and in
many towns of inconsiderable size, are book-
shops. It is a poor shop which does not con-
tain at least one good book. This book bides
its time, and usually outstays its welcome. But
its fate is about its neck. Somewhere there is
a collector to whom that book is precious. They
are made for one another, the collector and the
book ; and it is astonishing how infrequently
they miss of realizing their mutual happiness.
The book-seller is a marriage-broker for un-
wedded books. His business is to find them
homes, and take a fee for so doing. Sugarman
the Shadchan was not more zealous than is
your vendor of rare books.

Now, it is a curious fact that the most de-
sirable of bookish treasures are often found
where one would be least likely to seek them.
Montana is a great State, nevertheless one does
not think of going to Montana for early editions
of Shakespeare. Let the book-hunter inwardly
digest the following plain tale of a clergyman
and a book of plays.

There is a certain collector who is sometimes
called 'The Bishop.' He is not a bishop, but
he may be so designated ; coming events have
been known to cast conspicuous shadows in

FRIENDS AND SCRAP-BOOKS 29

the likeness of mitre and crosier. The Bishop
heard of a man in Montana who had an old
book of plays with an autograph of William
Shakespeare pasted in it. Being a wise ecclesi-
astic, he did not exclaim * Tush ' and * Fie,' but
proceeded at once to go book-hunting in Mon-
tana. He went by proxy, if not in person ; the
journey is long. In due time the owner of the
volume was found and the book was placed in
the Bishop's hands for inspection. He tore off
the wrappers, and lo! it was a Fourth Folio
of Shakespeare excellently well preserved, and
with what appeared to be the great dramatist's
signature written on a slip of paper and pasted
inside the front cover. The problem of the
genuineness of that autograph does not con-
cern us. The great fact is that a Shakespeare
folio turned up in Montana. Now when he
hears some one express desire for a copy of
Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, or any other rare
book of Elizabeth's time, the Bishop's thoughts
fly toward the setting sun. Then he smiles a
notable kind of smile, and says, * If I could get
away I 'd run out to Montana and try to pick
up a copy for you.'

There is a certain gentleman who loves the
literature of Queen Anne's reign. He lives
with Whigs and Tories, vibrates between cof-
fee-house and tea-table. He annoys his daugh-
ter by sometimes calling her 'Belinda,' and
astonishes his wife' with his mock-heroic apos-

30 THE BIBLIOTAPH

trophes to her hood and patches. He reads his
Spectator at breakfast while other people bat-
ten upon newspapers only three hours old. He
smiles over the love-letters of Richard Steele,
and reverences the name and the writings of
Joseph Addison. Indeed, his devotion to Addi-
son is so radical that he has actually been guilty
of reading The Campaign and the Dialogue on
Medals. This gentleman hunted books one day
and was not successful. It seemed to him that
on this particular afternoon the world was
stuffed with Allison's histories of Europe, and
Jeffrey's contributions to the Edinburgh Re-
view. His heart was filled with bitterness and
his nostrils with dust. Books which looked in-
viting turned out to be twenty-second editions.
Of fifty things upon his list not one came to
light. But it was predestined that he should
not go sorrowing to his home. He pulled out
from a bottom shelf two musty octavo volumes
bound in dark brown leather, and each securely
tied with a string; for the covers had been
broken from the backs. The titles were invisi-
ble, the contents a mystery. The gentleman
held the unpromising objects in his hand and
meditated upon them. They might be a treatise
on conic sections, or a Latin Grammar, and
again they might be a Book. He untied the
string and opened one of the volumes. Was it
a breath of summer air from Isis that swept
out of those pages, which were as white as snow

FRIENDS AND SCRAP-BOOKS 31

in spite of the lapse of nearly two centuries ?
He read the title, Musarum Anglicanarum
Analecta, The date was 1699. He turned
to the table of contents, and his heart gave
a contented throb. There was the name he
wished to see, J. Addison, Magd. Coll. The
name occurred eight times. The dejected col-
lector had found a clean and uncut copy of
those two volumes of contemporary Latin verse
compiled by Joseph Addison, when he was a
young man at Oxford, and printed at the Shel-
donian Theatre. Addison contributed eight
poems to the second volume. The bookseller
was willing to take seventy-five cents for the
set, and told the gentleman as he did up the
package that he was a comfort to the trade.

That night the gentleman read The Battle of
the Pigmies and the Cranes, while his wife read
the evening edition of the Lurid Paragraph.
Now he says to his friends, 'Hunt books in
the most unpromising places, but make a thor-
ough search. You may not discover a Koh-i-
noor, but you will be pretty sure to run upon
some desirable little thing which gives you
pleasure and costs but a trifle.'

One effect of this adventure upon himself is
that he cannot pass a volume which is tied with
a string. He spends his days and Saturday
nights in tying and untying books with broken
covers. Even the evidence of a clearly-lettered
title upon the back fails to satisfy him. He is

32 THE BIBLIOTAPH

restless until he has made a thorough search
in the body of the volume.

The Bibliotaph's own best strokes of fortune
were made in out-of-the-way places. But some
god was on his side. For at his approach the
bibliographical desert blossomed like the rose.
He used to hunt books in Texas at one period
in his life; and out of Texas would he come,
bringing, so it is said, first editions of George
Borrow and Jane Austen. It was maddening
to be with him at such times, especially if one
had a gift for envy.

Yet why should one envy him his money, or
his unerring hand and eye } He paid for the
book, but it was yours to read and to caress so
long as you would. If he took it from you it
was only that he might pass it on to some other
friend. But if that volume once started in the
direction of the great tomb of books in West-
chester County, no power on earth could avail
to restore it to the light of day.

It is pleasant to meditate upon past journeys
with the Bibliotaph. He was an incomparable
traveling companion, buoyant, philosophic, in-
capable of fatigue, and never ill. Yet it is a
tradition current, that he, the mighty, who
called himself a friend to physicians, because
he never robbed them of their time either in
or out of office-hours, once succumbed to that
irritating little malady known as car-sickness.
He succumbed, but he met his fate bravely and

FRIENDS AND SCRAP-BOOKS 33

with the colors of his wit flying. The circum-
stances are these : —

There is a certain railway thoroughfare which
justly prides itself upon the beauty of its scen-
ery. This road passes through a hill-country,
and what it gains in the picturesque it loses in
that rectilinear directness most grateful to the
traveler with a sensitive stomach. The Biblio-
taph often patronized this thoroughfare, and
one day it made him sick. As the train swept
around a sharp curve, he announced his earliest
symptom by saying : ' The conspicuous advan-
tages of this road are that one gets views of
the scenery and reviews of his meals.'

A few minutes later he suggested that the
road would do well to change its name, and
hereafter be known as 'The Emetic G. and O.'

They who were with him proffered sym-
pathy, but he refused to be pitied. He thought
he had a remedy. He discovered that by tak-
ing as nearly as possible a reclining posture, he
got temporary relief. He kept settling more
and more till at last he was nearly on his back.
Then he said : ' If it be true that the lower
down we get the more comfortable we are, the
basements of Hell will have their compensa-
tions.'

He was too ill to say much after this, but his
last word, before the final and complete extinc-
tion of his manhood, was, 'The influence of
this road is such that employees have been
known involuntarily to throw up their jobs,'

34 THE BIBLIOTAPH

The Bibliotaph invariably excited comment
and attention when he was upon his travels. I
do not think he altogether liked it. Perhaps
he neither liked it nor disliked it. He accepted
the fact that he was not as other men quite as
he would have accepted any indisputable fact.
He used occasionally to express annoyance be-
cause of the discrepancy between his reputation
and appearance ; in other words, because he
seemed a man of greater fame than he was.
He suffered the petty discomforts of being a
personage, and enjoyed none of the advantages.
He declared that he was quite willing to be
much more distinguished or much less conspic-
uous. What he objected to was the Laodicean
character of his reputation as set over against
the pronounced and even startling character of
his looks and manner.

He used also to note with amusement how
indelible a mark certain early ambitions and
tentative studies had made upon him. People
invariably took him for a clergyman. They
decided this at once and conducted themselves
accordingly. He made no protest, but observed
that their convictions as to how they should
behave in his presence had corollaries in the
shape of very definite convictions as to how he
should carry himself before them. He thought
that such people might be described as moral
trainers. They do not profess virtue them-
selves, but they take a real pleasure in keeping
you up to your profession.

FRIENDS AND SCRAP-BOOKS 35

The Bibliotaph had no explanation to give
why he was so immediately and invariably ac-
counted as one in orders. He was quite sure
that the clerical look was innate, and by no
means dependent upon the wearing of a high
vest or a Joseph Parker style of whisker ; for
once as he sat in the hot room of a Turkish
bath and in the Adamitic simplicity of attire
suitable to the temperature and the place, a
gentleman who occupied the chair nearest in-
troduced conversation by saying, 'I beg your
pardon, sir, but are you not a clergyman ? '

'This incident,' said the Bibliotaph, 'gave me
a vivid sense of the possibility of determining
a man's profession by a cursory examination of
his cuticle.' Lowell's conviction about N, P.
Willis was well-founded : namely, that if it had
been proper to do so, Willis could have worn
his own plain bare skin in a way to suggest
that it was a representative Broadway tailor's
best work.

I imagine that few boys escape an outburst
of that savage instinct for personal adornment
which expresses itself in the form of rude tat-
tooing upon the arms. The Bibliotaph had had
his attack in early days, and the result was a
series of decorations of a highly patriotic char-
acter, and not at all in keeping with South
Kensington standards. I said to him once,
apropos of the pictures on his arms : * You are
a great surprise to your friends in this particu-

36 THE BIBLIOTAPH

lar.' * Yes,' he replied, 'few of them are aware
that the volume of this Life is extra-illustrated.'

But that which he of necessity tolerated in
himself he would not tolerate in his books.
They were not allowed to become pictorially
amplified. He saw no objection to inserting a
rare portrait in a good book. It did not neces-
sarily injure the book, and it was one way of
preserving the portrait. Yet the thing was
questionable, and it was likely to prove the first
step in a downward path. As to cramming a
volume with a heterogeneous mass of pictures
and letters gathered from all imaginable sources,
he held the practice in abhorrence, and the bib-
liographical results as fit only for the libraries
of the illiterate rich. He admitted the possi-
bility of doing such a thing well or ill ; but at
its best it was an ill thing skillfully done.

The Bibliotaph upon his travels was a note-
worthy figure if only because of the immense
parcel of books with which he burdened him-
self. That part of the journeying public which
loves to see some new thing puzzled itself
mightily over the gentleman of full habit, who
in addition to his not inconsiderable encum-
brance of flesh and luggage, chose to carry
about a shawl-strap loaded to utmost capacity
with a composite mass of books, magazines,
and newspapers. It was enormously heavy, and
the way in which its component parts adhered
was but a degree short of the miraculous. He

FRIENDS AND SCRAP-BOOKS 37

appeared hardly conscious of its weight, for he
would pick the thing up and literally trip with
it on a toe certainly not light, but undeniably
fantastic.

He carried the books about with him partly
because he had just purchased them and wished
to study their salient points, and partly because
he was taking them to a 'bin.' There is no
mystery about these 'bins.' They were merely
places of temporary rest for the books before
the grand moving to the main library. But if
not mysterious they were certainly astonishing,
because of their number and size. With re-
spect to number, one in every large city was
the rule. With respect to size, few people buy
in a lifetime as many books as were sometimes
heaped together in one of these places of de-
posit. He would begin by leaving a small bun-
dle of books with some favorite dealer, then
another, and then another. As the collection
enlarged, the accommodations would be in-
creased ; for it was a satisfaction to do the Bib-
liotaph this favor, he purchased so liberally and
tipped the juvenile clerks in so royal a manner.
Nor was he always in haste to move out after
he had once moved in. One bookseller, speak-
ing of the splendid proportions which the
' bin ' was assuming, declared that he some-
times found it difficult to adjust himself men-
tally to the situation ; he could n't tell when he
came to his place of business in the morning

38 THE BIBLIOTAPH

whether he was in his own shop or the Biblio-
taph's library.

The comer of the shop where the great col-
lector's accumulations were piled up was a
centre of mirth and conversation if he himself
chanced to be in town. Men dropped in for a
minute and stayed an hour. In some way time
appeared to broaden and leisure to grow more
ample. Life had an unusual richness, and
warmth, and color, when the Bibliotaph was
by. There was an Olympian largeness and
serenity about him. He seemed almost pagan
in the breadth of his hold upon existence. And
when he departed he left behind him what
can only be described as great unfilled mental
spaces. I recall that a placard was hung up
in his particular corner with the inscription,
'English spoken here.' This amused him.
Later there was attached to it another strip
upon which was crayoned, 'Sir, we had much
good talk,' with the date of the talk. Still
later a victim added the words, 'Yes, sir, on
that day the Bibliotaph tossed and gored a
number of people admirably.'

It was difficult for the Bibliotaph not to emit
intellectual sparks of one kind or another. His
habit of dealing with every fact as if it de-
served his entire mental force, was a secret of
his originality. Everything was worth while.
If the fact was a serious fact, all the strength
of his mind would be applied to its exposition

FRIENDS AND SCRAP-BOOKS 39

or defense. If it was a fact of less importance,
humor would appear as a means to the conver-
sational end. And he would grow more humor-
ous as the topics grew less significant. When
finally he rioted in mere word-play, banter,
quizzing, it was a sign that he regarded the
matter as worthy no higher species of notice.

I like this theory of his wit so well that I am
minded not to expose it to an over-rigid test.
The following small fragments of his talk are
illustrative of such measure of truth as the
theory may contain.

Among the Bibliotaph's companions was one
towards whose mind he affected the benevolent
and encouraging attitude of a father to a bud-
ding child. He was asked by this friend to
describe a certain quaint and highly successful
entertainer. This was the response : ' The
gentleman of whom you speak has the habit of
coming before his audience as an idiot and re-
tiring as a genius. You and I, sir, could n't do
that ; we should sustain the first character con-
sistently throughout the entire performance.'

It was his humor to insist that all the virtues
and gifts of a distinguished collector were due
for their expansion and development to asso-
ciation with himself and the writer of these
memories. He would say in the presence of
the distinguished collector : ' Henry will prob-
ably one day forget us, but on the Day of Judg-
ment, in any just estimate of the causes of his
success, the Lord won't.'

40 THE BIBLIOTAPH

I have forgotten what the victim's retort
was ; it is safe to assume that it was adequate.

This same collector had the pleasing habit of
honoring the men he loved, among whom the
Bibliotaph was chief, with brightly written
letters which filled ten and fifteen half-sheets.
But the average number of words to a line was
two, while a five-syllable word had trouble in
accommodating itself to a line and a half, and
the sheets were written only upon one side.
The Bibliotaph's comment was : ' Henry has a
small brain output, but unlimited influence at a
paper-mill.'

Of all the merry sayings in which the Bibli-
otaph indulged himself at the expense of his
closest friend this was the most comforting. A
gentleman present was complaining that Henry
took liberties in correcting his pronunciation.
* I have no doubt of the occasional need of such
correction, but it is n't often required, and not
half so often as he seems to think. I, on the
other hand, observe frequent minor slips in his
use of language, but I do not feel at liberty to
correct him.'

The Bibliotaph began to apply salve to the
bruised feelings of the gentleman present as
follows: 'The animus of Henry's criticism is
unquestionably envy. He probably feels how
few flies there are in your ointment. While
you are astonished that in his case there should
be so little ointment for so many flies.'

FRIENDS AND SCRAP-BOOKS 41

The Bibliotaph never used slang, and the
united recollections of his associates can adduce
but two or three instances in which he sunk
verbally so low as even to hint slang. He said
that there was one town which in his capacity
of public speaker he should like to visit. It was
a remote village in Virginia where there was a
girls' seminary, the catalogue of which set forth
among advantages of location this : that the
town was one to which the traveling lecturer
and the circus never came. The Bibliotaph
said, 'I should go there. For I am the one
when I am on the platform, and by the unani-
mous testimony of all my friends I am the
other when I am off.'

The second instance not only illustrates his
ingenuity in trifles, but also shows how he could
occasionally answer a friend according to his
folly. He had been describing a visit which he
had made in the hero-worshiping days of boy-
hood to Chappaqua ; how friendly and good-
natured the great farmer-editor was ; how he
called the Bibliotaph * Bub,' and invited him to
stay to dinner ; how he stayed and talked pol-
itics with his host ; how they went out to the
bam afterwards to look at the stock; what
Greeley said to him and what he said to Gree-
ley, — it was a perfect bit of word-sketching,
spontaneous, realistic, homely, unpretentious,
irresistibly comic because of the quaintness of
the dialogue as reported, and because of the

42 THE BIBLIOTAPH

mental image which we formed of this large-
headed, round-bellied, precocious youth, who at
the age of sixteen was able for three consecu-
tive hours to keep the conversational shuttle-
cock in the air with no less a person than
Horace Greeley. Amid the laughter and com-
ment which followed the narration one mirthful
genius who chose for the day to occupy the
seat of the scorner, called out to the Biblio-
taph : —

* How old did you say you were at that time,
"Bub"?'

* Sixteen.'

' And did you wear whiskers } '

The query was insulting. But the Bibliotaph
measured the flippancy of the remark with his
eye and instantly iitted an answer to the men-
tal needs of the questioner.

'Even if I had,' he said, 'it would have
availed me nothing, for in those days there was
no wind.'

The Bibliotaph was most at home in the
book-shop, on the street, or at his hotel. He
went to public libraries only in an emergency,
for he was impatient of that needful discipline
which compelled him to ask for each volume he
wished to see. He had, however, two friends
in whose libraries one might occasionally meet
him in the days when he hunted books upon
this wide continent. One was the gentleman
to whom certain letters on literature have

FRIENDS AND SCRAP-BOOKS 43

been openly addressed, and who has made a
library by a process which involves wise selec-
tion and infinite self-restraint. This priceless
little collection contains no volume which is
imperfect, no volume which mars the fine sense
of repose begotten in one at the sight of lovely
books becomingly clothed, and no volume which
is not worthy the name of literature. And
there is matter for reflection in the thought
that it is not the library of a rich man. Money
cannot buy the wisdom which has made this
collection what it is, and without self-denial it
is hardly possible to give the touch of real ele-
gance to a private library. When dollars are
not counted the assemblage of books becomes
promiscuous. How may we better describe
this library than by the phrase Infinite riches
in a little book-case !

There was yet another friend, the Country
Squire, who revels in wealth, buys large-paper
copies, reads little but deeply, and raises chick-
ens. His library (the room itself, I mean) is
a gentleman's library, with much cornice, much
plate-glass, and much carving ; whereof a wit
said, ' The Squire has such a beautiful library,
and no place to put his books.'

These books are of a sort to rejoice the heart,
but their tenure of occupancy is uncertain.
Hardly one of them but is liable to eviction
without a moment's notice. They have a look
in their attitude which indicates conscious-

44 THE BIBLIOTAPH

ness of being pilgrims and strangers. They
seem to say, * We can tarry, we can tarry but
a night.' Some have tarried two nights, others
a week, others a year, a few even longer. But
aside from a dozen or so of volumes, not one of
the remaining three thousand dares to affirm
that it holds a permanent place in its owner's
heart of hearts. It is indeed a noble procession
of books which has passed in and out of those
doors. A day will come in which the owner
realizes that he has as good as the market can
furnish, and then banishments will cease. One
sighs not for the volumes which deserved exile,
but for those which were sent away because
their master ceased to love them.

There was no friend with whom the Biblio-
taph lived on easier terms than with the Country
Squire. They were counterparts. They sup-
plemented one another. The Bibliotaph, though
he was born and bred on a farm, had fled for
his salvation to the city. The Squire, a man
of city birth and city education, had fled for
his soul's health to the country ; he had ren-
dered existence almost perfect by setting up an
urban home in rural surroundings. It was well
said of that house that it was finely reticent in
its proffers of hospitality, and regally magnifi-
cent in its kindness to those whom it delighted
to honor.

It was in the Country Squire's library that
the Bibliotaph first met that actor with whom

FRIENDS AND SCRAP-BOOKS 45

he became even more intimate than with the
Squire himself. The closeness of their relation
suggested the days of the old Miracle plays
when the theatre and the Church were as hand
in glove. The Bibliotaph signified his apprecia-
tion of his new friend by giving him a copy of
a sixteenth-century book * containing a plea-
sant invective against Poets, Pipers, Players,
Jesters, and such like Caterpillars of a Com-
monwealth.' The Player in turn compiled for
his friend of clerical appearance a scrap-book,
intended to show how evil associations corrupt
good actors.

This actor professed that which for want of
a better term might be called parlor agnosti-
cism. The Bibliotaph was sturdily inclined
towards orthodoxy, and there was from time to
time collision between the two. It is my im-
pression that the actor sometimes retired with
four of his five wits halting. But he was
brilliant even when he mentally staggered.
Neither antagonist convinced the other, and
after a while they grew wearied of traveling
over one another's minds.

It fell out on a day that the actor made a
fine speech before a large gathering, and mind-
ful of stage effect he introduced a telling allu-
sion to an all-wise and omnipotent Providence.
For this he was, to use his own phrase, * soundly
spanked ' by all his friends ; that is, he was
mocked at, jeered, ridiculed. To what end,

46 THE BIBLIOTAPH

they said, was one an agnostic if he weakly
yielded his position to the exigencies of an
after-dinner speech. The Bibliotaph alone took
pains to analyze his late antagonist's position.
He wrote to the actor congratulating him upon
his success. 'I wondered a little at this, re-
membering how inconsiderable has been your
practice ; and I infer that it has been inconsid-
erable, for I am aware how seldom an actor can
be persuaded to make a speech, I, too, was at
first shocked when I heard that you had made
a respectful allusion to Deity ; but I presently
took comfort, rememhering that your gods, like
your grease-paints, are purely professional.'

He was always capital in these teasing moods.
To be sure, he buffeted one about tremen-
dously, but his claws were sheathed, and there
was a contagiousness in his frolicsome humor.
Moreover one learned to look upon one's self
in the light of a public benefactor. To submit
to be knocked about by the Bibliotaph was in
a modest way to contribute to the gayety of na-
tions. If one was not absolutely happy one's
self, there was a chastened comfort in behold-
ing the happiness of the on-lookers.

A small author wrote a small book, so small
that it could be read in less time than it takes
to cover an umbrella, that is, 'while you wait,'
The Bibliotaph had Brobdingnagian joy of this
book. He sat and read it to himself in the
author's presence, and particularly diminutive

FRIENDS AND SCRAP-BOOKS 47

that book appeared as its light cloth cover was
outlined against the Bibliotaph's ample black
waistcoat. From time to time he would vent
* a series of small private laughs,' especially if
he was on the point of announcing some fresh
illustration of the fallibility of inexperienced
writers. Finally the uncomfortable author said,
'Don't sit there and pick out the mistakes.'
To which the Bibliotaph triumphantly replied,
' What other motive is there for reading it at
all.?'

He purchased every copy of this book which
he could find, and when asked by the author
why he did so, replied, * In order to withdraw
it from circulation.' A moment afterwards he
added reflectively, 'But how may I hope to
withdraw a book from that which it has never
had.?'

He was apt to be severe in his judgment of
books, as when he said of a very popular but
very feeble literary performance that it was an
argument for the existence of God. * Such in-
tensity of stupidity was not realized without
Infinite assistance.'

He could be equally emphatic in his com-
ments upon men. Among his acquaintance
was a church dignitary who blew alternately
hot and cold upon him. When advised of some
new illustration of the divine's uncertainty of
attitude, the Bibliotaph merely said, 'He's
more of a chameleon than he is a clergyman.*

48 THE BIBLIOTAPH

That Bostonian would be deficient in wit who
failed to enjoy this remark. Speaking of the
characteristics of American cities, the Biblio-
taph said, *It never occurs to the Hub that
anything of importance can possibly happen at
the periphery.'

He greatly admired the genial and philan-
thropic editor of a well-known Philadelphia
newspaper. Shortly after Mr. Childs's death
some one wrote to the Bibliotaph that in a
quiet Kentucky town he had noticed a sign
over a shop-door which read, *G. W. Childs,
dealer in Tobacco and Cigars.' There was
something graceful in the Bibliotaph's reply.
He expressed surprise at Mr. Childs's new oc-
cupation, but declared that for his own part he
was * glad to know that the location of Heaven
had at last been definitely ascertained.'

The Bibliotaph habitually indulged himself
in the practice of hero-worship. This propen-
sity led him to make those glorified scrap-books
which were so striking a feature in his collec-
tion. They were no commonplace affairs, the
ugly result of a union of cheap leather, news-
paper-clippings and paste, but sumptuous books
resplendent in morocco and gilt tooling, the
creations of an artist who was eminent among
binders. These scrap-books were chiefly de-
voted to living men, — men who were famous,
or who were believed to be on the high road to
fame. There was a book for each man. In this

FRIENDS AND SCRAP-BOOKS 49

way did the Bibliotaph burn incense before his
Dii majores et minores.

These books were enriched with everything
that could illustrate the gifts and virtues of the
men in whose honor they were made. They
contained rare manuscripts, rare pictures, auto-
graph comments and notes, a bewildering va-
riety of records, — memorabilia which were
above price. Poets wrote humorous verse, and
artists who justly held their time as too pre-
cious to permit of their working for love deco-
rated the pages of the Bibliotaph's scrap-books.
One does not abuse the word 'unique' when
he applies it to these striking volumes.

The Bibliotaph did not always follow contem-
porary judgment in his selection of men to be
so canonized. He now and then honored a
man whose sense of the relation of achievement
to fame would not allow him to admit to him-
self that he deserved the distinction, and whose
sense of humor could not but be strongly ex-
cited at the thought of deification by so un-
usual a process. It might be pleasant to con-
sider that the Bibliotaph cared so much for
one's letters as to wish not to destroy them,
but it was awful to think of those letters as
bound and annotated. This was to get a taste
of posthumous fame before posthumous fame
was due. The Bibliotaph added a new terror
to life, for he compelled one to live up to one's
scrap-book. He reversed the old Pagan for-

50 THE BIBLIOTAPH

mula, which was to the effect that * So-and-So
died and was made a god.' According to the
BibHotaph's prophetic method, a man was made
a god first and allowed to die at his leisure
afterward. Not every one of that little com-
pany which his wisdom and love have marked
for great reputation will be able to achieve it.
They are unanimously grateful that he cared
enough for them to wish to drag their humble
gifts into the broad light of publicity. But
their gratitude is tempered by the thought that
perhaps he was only elaborately humorous at
their expense.

The BibHotaph's intellectual processes were
so vigorous and his pleasure in mental activity
for its own sake was so intense that he was quite
capable of deciding after a topic of discussion
had been introduced which side he would take.
And this with a splendid disdain of the merits
of the cause which he espoused. I remember
that he once set out to maintain the thesis that
a certain gentleman, as notable for his virtues
as he was conspicuous for lack of beauty, was
essentially a handsome man. The person who
initiated the discussion by observing that * Mr.
Blank was unquestionably a plain man' ex-
pected from the Bibliotaph (if he expected any
remark whatever) nothing beyond a Platonic
'That I do most firmly believe.' He was not a
little astonished when the great book-collector
began an elaborate and exhaustive defense of

FRIENDS AND SCRAP-BOOKS 51

the gentleman whose claims to beauty had
been questioned. At first it was dialogue, and
the opponent had his share of talk ; but when
in an unlucky moment he hinted that such
energy could only be the result of conscious-
ness on the Bibliotaph's part that he was in a
measure pleading his own cause, the dialogue
changed to monologue. For the Bibliotaph
girded up his loins and proceeded to smite his
opponent hip and thigh. All in good humor, to
be sure, and laughter reigned, but it was tre-
mendous and it was logically convincing. It
was clearly not safe to have a reputation for
good looks while the Bibliotaph was in this
temper. All the gentlemen were in terror lest
something about their countenances might be
construed as beauty, and men with good com-
plexions longed for newspapers behind which
to hide their disgrace.

As for the disputant who had stirred up the
monster, his situation was as unenviable as it
was comic to the bystanders. He had never
before dropped a stone into the great geyser.
He was therefore unprepared for the result.
One likened him to an unprotected traveler in
a heavy rain-storm. For the Bibliotaph's un-
premeditated speech was a very cloud-burst of
eloquence. The unhappy gentleman looked de-
spairingly in every direction as if beseeching
us for the loan of a word-proof umbrella. There
was none to be had. We who had known a

52 THE BIBLIOTAPH

like experience were not sorry to stand under
cover and watch a fellow mortal undergo this
verbal drenching. The situation recalled one
described by Lockhart when a guest differed
on a point of scholarship with the great Cole-
ridge. Coleridge began to ' exert himself.' He
burst into a steady stream of talk which broad-
ened and deepened as the moments fled. When
finally it ceased the bewildered auditor pulled
himself together and exclaimed, * Zounds, I
was never so be-thumped with words in my
life!'

People who had opportunity of observing the
Bibliotaph were tempted to speculate on what
he might have become if he had not chosen to
be just what he was. His versatiHty led them
to declare for this, that, and the other profes-
sion, largely in accordance with their own per-
sonal preferences. Lawyers were sure that he
should have been an advocate ; ministers that
he would have done well to yield to the ' call '
he had in his youth ; teachers were positive
that he would have made an inspiring teacher.
No one, so far as I know, ever told him that in
becoming a book-collector he had deprived the
world of a great musician ; for he was like
Charles Lamb in that he was sentimentally
inclined to harmony but organically incapable
of a tune.

Yet he was so broad-minded that it was not
possible for him to hold even a neutral attitude

FRIENDS AND SCRAP-BOOKS 53

in the presence of anything in which other peo-
ple delighted. I have known him to sit through
a long and heavy organ recital, not in a re-
signed manner but actively attentive, clearly
determined that if the minutest portion of his
soul was sensitive to the fugues of J. S. Bach
he would allow that portion to bask in the sun-
shine of an unwonted experience. So that
from one point of view he was the incarnation
of tolerance as he certainly was the incarnation
of good-humor and generosity. He envied no
man his gifts from Nature or Fortune. He was
not only glad to let live, but painstakingly
energetic in making the living of people a plea-
sure to them, and he received with amused
placidity adverse comments upon himself.

Words which have been used to describe a
famous man of this century I will venture to
apply in part to the Bibliotaph. 'He was a
kind of gigantic and Olympian school-boy, . . .
loving-hearted, bountiful, wholesome and ster-
ling to the heart's core.'

LAST WORDS ON THE BIBLIOTAPH

The Bibliotaph's major passion was for col-
lecting books ; but he had a minor passion, the
bare mention of which caused people to lift
their eyebrows suspiciously. He was a shame-
less, a persistent, and a successful hunter of
autographs. His desire was for the signatures
of living men of letters, though an occasional
dead author would be allowed a place in the
collection, provided he had not been dead too
long. As a rule, however, the Bibliotaph cov-
eted the ' hand of write ' of the man who was
now more or less conspicuously in the public
eye. This autograph must be written in a
representative work of the author in question.
The Bibliotaph would not have crossed the
street to secure a line from Ben Jonson's pen,
but he mourned because the autograph of the
Rev. C. L. Dodgson was not forthcoming, nor
likely to be. His conception of happiness was
this : to own a copy of the first edition of
Alice in Wonderland, upon the fly-leaf of which
Lewis Carroll had written his name, together
with the statement that he had done so at the
Bibliotaph's request, and because that eminent

LAST WORDS 55

collector could not be made happy in any other
way.

The Bibliotaph liked the autograph of the
modern man of letters because it was modem,
and because there was a reasonable hope of its
being genuine. He loved genuineness. Every-
thing about himself was exactly what it pre-
tended to be. From his soul to his clothing he
was honest. And his love for the genuine
was only surpassed in degree by his contempt
for the spurious. I remember that some one
gave him a bit of silverware, a toilet article,
perhaps, which he next day threw out of a car
window, because he had discovered that it was
not sterling. He scouted the suggestion that
possibly the giver may not have known. Such
ignorance was inexcusable, he said, ' The likelier
interpretation was that the gift was symbolical
of the giver.' The act seemed brutal, and the
comment thereon even more so. But to realize
the atmosphere, the setting of the incident, one
must imagine the Bibliotaph's round and com-
fortable figure, his humorous look, and the air
of genial placidity with which he would do and
say a thing like this. It was as impossible to
be angry with him in behalf of the unfortunate
giver of cheap silver as to take offense at a tree
or mountain. And it was useless to argue the
matter — nay it was folly, for he would imme-
diately become polysyllabic and talk one down.

S6 THE BIBLIOTAPH

It was this desire for genuine things which
made him entirely suspicious of autographs
which had been bought and sold. He had no
faith in them, and he would weaken your faith,
supposing you were a collector of such things.
Offer him an autograph of our first president
and he would reply, ' I don't believe that it 's
genuine ; and if it were I should n't care for it ;
I never had the honor of General Washington's
acquaintance.' The inference was that one
could have a personal relation with a living
great man, and the chances were largely in
favor of getting an autograph that was not an
object of suspicion.

Few collectors in this line have been as happy
as the Bibliotaph. The problem was easily mas-
tered with respect to the majority of authors.
As a rule an author is not unwilling to give
such additional pleasure to a reader of his
book as may consist in writing his name in the
reader's copy. It is conceivable that the author
may be bored by too many requests of this
nature, but he might be bored to an even
greater degree if no one cared enough for him
to ask for his autograph. Some writers re-
sisted a little, and it was beautiful to see the
Bibliotaph bring them to terms. He was a
highwayman of the Tom Faggus type, just so
adroit, and courteous, and daring. He was
perhaps at his best in cases where he had
actually to hold up his victim; one may ima-

LAST WORDS 57

gine the scene, — the author resisting, the Bib-
hotaph determined and having the masterful air
of an expert who had handled just such cases
before.

A humble satellite who disapproved of these
proceedings read aloud to the Bibliotaph that
scorching little essay entitled Involuntary Bail-
ees, written by perhaps the wittiest living Eng-
lish essayist. An involuntary bailee — as the
essayist explains — is a person to whom people
(generally unknown to him) send things which
he does not wish to receive, but which they are
anxious to have returned. If a man insists
upon lending you a book, you become an in-
voluntary bailee. You don't wish to read the
book, but you have it in your possession. It
has come to you by post, let us suppose, 'and
to pack it up and send it back again requires
a piece of string, energy, brown paper, and
stamps enough to defray the postage.' And it
is a question whether a casual acquaintance
'has any right thus to make demands on a
man's energy, money, time, brown paper, string,
and other capital and commodities.' There are
other ways of making a man an involuntary
bailee. You may ask him to pass judgment on
your poetry, or to use his influence to get your
tragedy produced, or to do any one of a half
hundred things which he does n't want to do
and which you have no business to ask him to
do. The essayist makes no mention of the

58 THE BIBLIOTAPH

particular form of sin which the Bibliotaph
practiced, but he would probably admit that
malediction was the only proper treatment for
the idler who bothers respectable authors by
asking them to write their names in his copies
of their books. For to what greater extent
could one trespass upon an author's patience,
energy, brown paper, string, and commodities
generally ? It was amusing to watch the Bib-
liotaph as he listened to this arraignment of his
favorite pursuit. The writer of the essay admits
that there may be extenuating circumstances.
If the autograph collector comes bearing gifts
one may smile upon his suit. If for example
he accompanies his request for an autograph
with 'several brace of grouse, or a salmon of
noble proportions, or rare old books bound by
Derome, or a service of Worcester china with
the square mark,' he may hope for success.
The essayist opines that such gifts * will not be
returned by a celebrity who respects himself.'
'They bless him who gives and him who takes
much more than tons of manuscript poetry,
and thousands of entreaties for an autograph.'

A superficial examination of the Bibliotaph's
collection revealed the fact that he had either
used necromancy or given many gifts. The
reader may imagine some such conversation
between the great collector and one of his daz-
zled visitors : —

* Pray, how did you come by this ? '

LAST WORDS 59

'His lordship has always been very kind in
such matters.'

' And where did you get this ? '

* I am greatly indebted to the Prime Minister
for his complaisance.'

* But this poet is said to abhor Americans.'
'You see that his antipathy has not pre-
vented his writing a stanza in my copy of his
most notable volume.'

'And this?'

* I have at divers times contributed the sum
of five dollars to divers Fresh Air funds.'

The Bibliotaph could not be convinced that
his sin of autograph collecting was not venial.
When authors denied his requests, on the
ground that they were intrusions, he was in-
clined to believe that selfishness lay at the
basis of their motives. Some men are quite
willing to accept great fame, but they resent
being obliged to pay the penalties. They wish
to sit in the fierce light which beats on an in-
tellectual throne, but they are indignant when
the passers-by stop to stare at them. They
imagine that they can successfully combine the
glory of honorable publicity with the perfect
retirement enjoyed only by aspiring mediocrity.
The Bibliotaph believed that he was a mission-
ary to these people. He awakened in them a
sense of their obligations toward their admirers.
The principle involved is akin to that enun-
ciated by a certain American philosopher, who

6o THE BIBLIOTAPH

held that it is an act of generosity to borrow
of a man once in a while ; it gives that man a
lively interest in the possible success or pos-
sible failure of your undertaking.

He levied autographic toll on young writers.
For mature men of letters with established re-
putations he would do extraordinary and diffi-
cult services. A famous Englishman, not a
novelist by profession, albeit he wrote one of
the most successful novels of his day, earnestly
desired to own if possible a complete set of
all the American pirated editions of his book.
The Bibliotaph set himself to this task, and
collected energetically for two years. The un-
dertaking was considerable, for many of the
pirated editions were in pamphlet, and dating
from twenty years back. It was almost impos-
sible to get the earliest in a spotless condition.
Quantities of trash had to be overhauled, and
weeks might elapse before a perfect copy of a
given edition would come to light. Books are
dirty, but pamphlets are dirtier. The Biblio-
taph declared that had he rendered an itemized
bill for services in this matter, the largest item
would have been for Turkish baths.

Here was a case in which the collector paid
well for the privilege of having a signed copy
of a well-loved author's novel. He begrudged
no portion of his time or expenditure. If it
pleased the great Englishman to have upon his
shelves, in compact array and in spotless condi-

LAST WORDS 6i

tion, these proofs of what he did lit earn by
the publication of his books in America, well
and good. The Bibliotaph was delighted that
so modest a service on his part could give so
apparently great a pleasure. The Englishman
must have had the collecting instinct, and he
must have been philosophical, since he could
contemplate with equanimity these illegitimate
volumes.

The conclusion of the story is this : The
work of collecting the reprints was finished.
The last installment reached the famous Eng-
lishman during an illness which subsequently
proved fatal. They were spread upon the cover-
lid of the bed, and the invalid took a great and
humorous satisfaction in looking them over.
Said the Bibliotaph, recounting the incident in
his succinct way, 'They reached him on his
death-bed, — and made him willing to go.'

The Bibliotaph was true to the traditions of
the book-collecting brotherhood, in that he read
but little. His knowledge of the world was
fresh from life, not 'strained through books,'
as Johnson said of a certain Irish painter whom
he knew at Birmingham. But the Bibliotaph
was a mighty devourer of book-catalogues. He
got a more complete satisfaction, I used to
think, in reading a catalogue than in reading
any other kind of literature. To see him un-
wrapping the packages which his English mail
had brought was to see a happy man. For in

62 THE BIBLIOTAPH

addition to books by post, there would be bun-
dles of sale-catalogues. Then might you be-
hold his eyes sparkle as he spread out the
tempting lists ; the humorous lines about the
corners of his mouth deepened, and he would
take on what a little girl who watched him
called his 'pussy-cat look,' Then with an in-
delible pencil in his huge and pudgy left fist
(for the Bibliotaph was a Benjaminite), he would
go through the pages, checking off the items
of interest, rolling with delight in his chair as
he exclaimed from time to time, * Good books !
Such good books ! ' Say to him that you your-
self liked to read a catalogue, and his response
was pretty sure to be, * Pleasant, is n't it ? ' This
was expressive of a high state of happiness,
and was an allusion. For the Bibliotaph was
once with a newly-married man, and they two
met another man, who, as the conversation
proceeded, disclosed the fact that he also had
but recently been wed. Whereupon the first
bridegroom, marveling that there could be an-
other in the world so exalted as himself, ex-
claimed with sympathetic delight, 'And you,
too, are married.' 'Yes,' said the second,
* pleasant, isn 't it } ' with much the same air
that he would have said, ' Nice afternoon.' This
was one of the incidents which made the
Bibliotaph skeptical about marriage. But he
adopted the phrase as a useful one with which
to express the state of highest mental and
spiritual exaltation.

LAST WORDS 63

People wondered at the extent of his know-
ledge of books. It was very great, but it was
not incredible. If a man cannot touch pitch
without being defiled, still less can he handle
books without acquiring bibliographical infor-
mation. I am not sure that the Bibliotaph
ever heard of that professor of history who
used to urge his pupils to handle books, even
when they could not get time to read them.
'Go to the library, take down the volumes,
turn over the leaves, read the title-pages and
the tables of contents ; information will stick
to you ' — this was the professor's advice. In-
formation acquired in this way may not be pro-
found, but so far as it goes it is definite and
useful. For the collector it is indispensable.
In this way the Bibliotaph had amassed his
seemingly phenomenal knowledge of books.
He had handled thousands and tens of thou-
sands of volumes, and he never relinquished
his hold upon a book until he had ' placed ' it, —
until he knew just what its rank was in the
hierarchy of desirability.

Between a diligent reading of catalogues and
an equally diligent rummaging among the col-
lections of third and fourth rate old book-shops,
the Bibliotaph had his reward. He undoubt-
edly bought a deal of trash, but he also lighted
upon nuggets. For example, in Leask's Life
of Boswell is an account of that curious lit-
tle romance entitled Dorando. This so-called

64 , THE BIBLIOTAPH

Spanish Tale, printed for J. Wilkie at the Bible
in St. Paul's Church -Yard, was the work of
James Boswell. It was published anonymously
in 1767, and he who would might then have
bought it for ' one shilling.' It was to be * sold
also by J. Dodsley in Pall Mall, T. Davies in
Russell-Street, Covent Garden, and by the
Book-sellers of Scotland.' This T. Davies was
the very man who introduced Boswell to John-
son. He was an actor as well as a bookseller.
Dorando was a story with a key. Under the
names of Don Stocaccio, Don Tipponi, and
Don Rodomontado real people were described,
and the facts of the 'famous Douglas cause'
were presented to the public. The little vol-
ume was suppressed in so far as that was pos-
sible. It is rare, so rare that Boswell's latest
biographer speaks of it as the * forlorn hope of
the book-hunter,' though he doubts not that
copies of it are lurking in some private collec-
tion. One copy at least is lurking in the Bibli-
otaph's library. He bought it, not for a song
to be sure, but very reasonably. The Biblio-
taph declares that this book is good for but one
thing, — to shake in the faces of Boswell col-
lectors who have n't it.

The Bibliotaph had many literary heroes.
Conspicuous among them were Professor Rich-
ard Person and Benjamin Jowett, the late mas-
ter of Balliol. The Bibliotaph collected every-
thing that related to these two men, all the

LAST WORDS 65

books with which they had had anything to do,
every newspaper clipping and magazine article
which threw light upon their manners, habits,
modes of thought. He especially loved to tell
anecdotes of Porson. He knew many. He had
an interleaved copy of J. Selby Watson's Life
of Porson into which were copied a multitude
of facts not to be found in that amusing bio-
graphy. The Bibliotaph used to say that he
would rather have known Porson than any other
man of his time. He used to quote this as one
of the best illustrations of Porson's wit, and
one of the finest examples of the retort satiric
to be found in any language. One of Porson's
works was assailed by Wakefield and by Her-
mann, scholars to be sure, but scholars whose
scholarship Porson held in contempt. Being
told of their attack Porson only said that * what-
ever he wrote in the future should be written
in such a way that those fellows would n't be
able to reach it with their fore-paws if they
stood on their hind-legs to get at it ! '

The Bibliotaph gave such an air of contem-
poraneity to his stories of the great Greek pro-
fessor that it seemed at times as if they were
the relations of one who had actually known
Porson. So vividly did he portray the marvels
of that compound of thirst and scholarship that
no one had the heart to laugh when, after one
of his narrations, a gentleman asked the Biblio-
taph if he himself had studied under Porson.

66 THE BIBLIOTAPH

* Not under him but with him,' said the Bib-
liotaph. * He was my coeval. Porson, Richard
Bentley, Joseph Scaliger, and I were all stu-
dents together.'

Speaking of Jowett the Bibliotaph once said
that it was wonderful to note how culture failed
to counteract in an Englishman that disposition
to heave stones at an American. Jowett, with
his remarkable breadth of mind and temper,
was quite capable of observing, with respect to
a certain book, that it was American, *yet in
perfect taste.' 'This,' said the Bibliotaph, 'is
as if one were to say, " The guests were Ameri-
cans, but no one expectorated on the carpet." '
The Bibliotaph thought that there was not so
much reason for this attitude. The sins of
Englishmen and Americans were identical, he
believed, but the forms of their expression were
different. * Our sin is a voluble boastfulness ;
theirs is an irritating, unrestrainable, all-but-
constantly manifested, satisfied self-conscious-
ness. The same results are reached by dif-
ferent avenues. We praise ourselves ; they
belittle others.' Then he added with a smile :
* Thus even in these latter days are the Scrip-
tures exemplified ; the same spirit with varying
manifestations.'

He was once commenting upon Jowett' s
classification of humorists. Jowett divided hu-
morists * into three categories or classes ; those
who are not worth reading at all; those who

LAST WORDS 67

are worth reading once, but once only ; and
those who are worth reading again and again
and for ever.' This remark was made to Swin-
burne, who quotes it in his all too brief Recol-
lections of Professor Jowett. Swinburne says
that the starting-point of their discussion was
the Biglow Papers, which 'famous and admi-
rable work of American humour ' Jowett placed
in the second class. Swinburne himself thought
that the Biglow Papers was too good for the
second class and not quite good enough for the
third. * I would suggest that a fourth might
be provided, to include such examples as are
worth, let us say, two or three readings in a
life-time.'

The Bibliotaph made a variety of comments
on this, but I remember only the following ; it
is a reason for not including the Biglow Papers
in Jowett' s third and crowning class. * Humor
to be popular permanently must be general
rather than local, and have to do with a phase
of character rather than a fact of history ; that
is, it must deal in a great way with what is al-
ways interesting to all men. Humor that does
not meet this requirement is not likely, when
its novelty has worn off, to be read even occa-
sionally save by those who enjoy it as an in-
tellectual performance or who are making a
critical study of its author.' The observation,
if not profound, is at least sensible, and it illus-
trates very well the Bibliotaph's love of allitera-

68 THE BIBLIOTAPH

tion and antithesis. But it is easier to remem-
ber and to report his caustic and humorous
remarks.

The Country Squire had a card-catalogue of
the books in his library, and he delighted to
make therein entries of his past and his new
purchases. But it was not always possible to
find upon the shelves books that were men-
tioned in the catalogue. The Bibliotaph took
advantage of a few instances of this sort to
prod his moneyed friend. He would ask the
Squire if he had such-and-such a book. The
Squire would say that he had, and appeal to his
catalogue in proof of it. Then would follow a
search for the volume. If, as sometimes hap-
pened, no book corresponding to the entry could
be found, the Bibliotaph would be satirical and
remark : —

* I '11 tell you what you ought to name your
catalogue.'

'What.?'

* Great expectations ! '

Another time he said, * This is not a list of
your books, this is a list of the things that you
intend to buy ; ' or he would suggest that the
Squire would do well to christen his catalogue
Vaulting Ambition. Perhaps the variation
might take this form. After a fruitless search
for some book, which upon the testimony of
the catalogue was certainly in the collection,
the Bibliotaph would observe, ' This catalogue

LAST WORDS 69

might not inappropriately be spoken of as the
substance of things hoped for, and the evidence
of things not seen.' Another time the Biblio-
taph said to the Squire, calling to mind the
well-known dictum as to the indispensableness
of certain books, 'Between what one sees on
your shelves and what one reads in your card-
catalogue one would have reason to believe that
you were a gentleman.'

Once the Bibliotaph said to me in the pre-
sence of the Squire : * I think that our individ-
ual relation to books might be expressed in this
way. You read books but you don't buy them.
I buy books but I don't read them. The
Squire neither reads them nor buys them, —
only card-catalogues them ! '

To all this the Squire had a reply which was
worldly, emphatic, and adequate, but the object
of this study is not to exhibit the virtues of the
Squire's speech, witty though it was.

One of the Bibliotaph' s friends began with-
out sufficient provocation to write verse. The
Bibliotaph thought that if the matter were taken
promptly in hand the man could be saved. Ac-
cordingly, when next he gave this friend a book
he wrote upon a fly-leaf : * To a Poet who is
nothing if not original — and who is not origi-
nal ! ' And the injured rhymester exclaimed
when he read the inscription : * You deface
every book you give me.'

He could pay a compliment, as when he was

70 THE BIBLIOTAPH

dining with a married pair who were thought
to be not yet disenchanted albeit in the tenth
year of their married Hfe. The lady was speak-
ing to the Bibliotaph, but in the eagerness of
conversation addressed him by her husband's
first name. Whereupon he turned to the hus-
band and said : * Your wife implies that I am a
repository of grace and a bundle of virtues, and
calls me by your name.'

He once sent this same lady, apropos of the
return of the shirt-waist season, a dozen neck-
ties. In the box was his card with these words
penciled upon it : * A contribution to the man-
made dress of a God-made woman.'

The Squire had great skill in imitating the
cries of various domestic fowl, as well as dogs,
cats, and children. Once, in a moment of social
relaxation, he Was giving an exhibition of his
power to the vast amusement of his guests.
When he had finished, the Bibliotaph said :
'The theory of Henry Ward Beecher that
every man has something of the animal in him
is superabundantly exemplified in your case.
You, sir, have got the whole Ark.'

There was a quaint humor in his most com-
monplace remarks. Of all the fruits of the
earth he loved most a watermelon. And when
a fellow-traveler remarked, 'That watermelon
which we had at dinner was bad,' the Biblio-
taph instantly replied : * There is no such thing
as a bad watermelon. There are watermelons,
and ^^^2'^;' watermelons.'

LAST WORDS 71

I expressed astonishment on learning that he
stood six feet in his shoes. He repHed : * Peo-
ple are so preoccupied in the consideration of
my thickness that they don't have time to ob-
serve my height.'

Again, when he was walking through a pri-
vate park which contained numerous monstrosi-
ties in the shape of painted metal deer on
pedestals, pursued (also on pedestals) by hunt-
ers and dogs, the Bibliotaph pointed to one of
the dogs and said, * Cave cast-iron canem ! '

He once accompanied a party of friends and
acquaintances to the summit of Mt. Tom. The
ascent is made in these days by a very remark-
able inclined plane. After looking at the ex-
tensive and exquisite view, the Bibliotaph fell
to examining his return coupon, which read,
*Good for one Trip Down.' 'Then he said:

* Let us hope that in a post-terrestrial experi-
ence our tickets will not read in this way.'

He was once ascending in the unusually
commodious and luxurious elevator of a new
ten-story hotel and remarked to his companion :

* If we can't be carried to the skies on flowery
beds of ease, we can at least start in that direc-
tion under not dissimilar conditions.' He also
said that the advantage of stopping at this par-
ticular hotel was that you were able to get as
far as possible from the city in which it was
located.

He studied the dictionary with great dili-

72 THE BIBLIOTAPH

gence and was unusually accurate in his pro-
nunciation. He took an amused satisfaction in
pronouncing exactly certain words which in
common talk had shifted phonetically from
their moorings. This led a gentleman who
was intimate with the Bibliotaph to say to him,

* Why, if I were to pronounce that word among
my kinsfolk as you do they'd think I was
crazy.' * What you mean,' said the Bibliotaph,

* is, that they would look upon it in the light of
supererogatory supplementary evidence.'

He himself indulged overmuch in allitera-
tion, but it was with humorous intent ; and
critics forgave it in him when they would have
reprehended it in another. He had no notion
that it was fine. Taken, however, in connec-
tion with his emphatic manner and sonorous
voice he produced a decided and original effect.
Meeting the Squire's wife after a considerable
interval, I asked whether her husband had been
behaving well. She replied * As usual.' Where-
upon the Bibliotaph said, ' You mean that his
conduct in these days is characterized by a pleth-
ora of intention and a paucity of performance.'

He objected to enlarging the boundaries of
words until they stood for too many things.
Let a word be kept so far as was reasonable to
its earlier and authorized meaning. Speaking
of the word 'symposium,' which has been
stretched to mean a collection of short articles
on a given subject, the Bibliotaph said that he

LAST WORDS 73

could fancy a honey-bee which had been feast-
ing on pumice until it was unable to make the
line characteristic of its kind, explaining to its
queen that it had been to a symposium ; but
that he doubted if we ought to allow any other
meaning.

The Bibliotaph got much amusement from
what he insisted were the ill-concealed anxieties
of his friend the actor on the subject of a future
state. * He has acquired,' said the Bibliotaph,
'both a pathetic and a prophetic interest in
that place which begins as heaven does, but
stops off monosyllabically.'

The two men were one day discussing the
question of the permanency of fame, how ephem-
eral for example was that reputation which
depended upon the living presence of the artist
to make good its claim ; how an actor, an orator,
a singer, was bound to enjoy his glory while it
lasted, since at the instant of his death all tan-
gible evidence of greatness disappeared; he
could not be proven great to one who had never
seen and heard him. Having reached this
point in his philosophizing the Bibliotaph's
player-friend became sentimental and quoted a
great comedian to the effect that * a dead actor
was a mighty useless thing.' 'Certainly,' said
the Bibliotaph, ' having exhausted the life that
now is, and having no hope of the life that is to
come.'

Sometimes it pleased the Bibliotaph to main-

74 THE BIBLIOTAPH

tain that his friend of the footlights would be
in the future state a mere homeless wanderer,
having neither positive satisfaction nor positive
discomfort. For the actor was wont to insist
that even if there were an orthodox heaven its
moral opposite were the desirable locality ; all
the clever and interesting fellows would be
down below, * Except yourself,' said the Bibli-
otaph. *You, sir, will be eliminated by your
own reasoning. You will be denied heaven
because you are not good, and hell because you
are not great.'

On the whole it pleased the Bibliotaph to
maintain that his friend's course was down-
ward, and that the sooner he reconciled him-
self to his undoubted fate the better. 'Why
speculate upon it ? ' he said paternally to the
actor, 'your prospective comparisons will one
day yield to reminiscent contrasts.'

The actor was convinced that the Biblio-
taph's own past life needed looking into, and he
declared that when he got a chance he was
going to examine the great records. To which
the Bibliotaph promptly responded : ' The
books of the recording angel will undoubtedly
be open to your inspection if you can get an
hour off to come up. The probability is that
you will be overworked.'

The Bibliotaph never lost an opportunity for
teasing. He arrived late one evening at the
house of a friend where he was always heartily

LAST WORDS 75

welcome, and before answering the chorus of
greetings, proceeded to kiss the lady of the
mansion, a queenly and handsome woman. Be-
ing asked why he — who was a large man and
very shy with respect to women, as large men
always are — should have done this thing, he
answered that the kiss had been sent by a com-
mon friend and that he had delivered it at once,
'for if there was anything he prided himself
upon it was a courageous discharge of an
unpleasant duty.'

Once when he had been narrating this inci-
dent he was asked what reply the lady had
made to so uncourteous a speech. *I don't
remember,' said the Bibliotaph, *it was long
ago ; but my opinion is that she would have
been justified in denominating me by a mono-
syllable beginning with the initial letter of the
alphabet and followed by successive sibilants.'

One of the Bibliotaph' s fellow book-hunters
owned a chair said to have been given by Sir
Edwin Landseer to Sir Walter Scott. The
chair was interesting to behold, but the Biblio-
taph after attempting to sit in it immediately
got up and declared that it was not a genuine
relic : * Sir Edwin had reason to be grateful to
rather than indignant at Sir Walter Scott.'

He said of a highly critical person that if
that man were to become a minister he would
probably announce as the subject of his first
sermon : ' The conditions that God must meet

76 THE BIBLIOTAPH

in order to be acceptable to me.' He said of a
poor orator who had copyrighted one of his
most indifferent speeches, that the man 'posi-
tively suffered from an excess of caution.' He
remarked once that the great trouble with a
certain lady was * she labored under the delu-
sion that she enjoyed occasional seasons of san-
ity.'

The nil admirari attitude was one which he
never affected, and he had a contempt for men
who denied to the great in literature and art
that praise which was their due. This led him
to say apropos of an obscure critic who had
assailed one of the poetical masters : * When
the Lord makes a man a fool he injures him ;
but when He so constitutes him that the man
is never happy unless he is making that fact
public. He insults him.'

He enjoyed speculating on the subject of
marriage, especially in the presence of those
friends who unlike himself knew something
about it empirically. He delighted to tell his
lady acquaintances that their husbands would
undoubtedly marry a second time if they had
the chance. It was inevitable. A man whose
experience has been fortunate is bound to
marry again, because he is like the man who
broke the bank at Monte Carlo. A man who
has been unhappily married marries again be-
cause like an unfortunate gamester he has
reached the time when his luck has got to

LAST WORDS ^^

change. The Bibliotaph then added with a
smile : ' I have the idea that many men who
marry a second time do in effect what is often
done by unsuccessful gamblers at Monte Carlo ;
they go out and commit suicide.'

The Bibliotaph played but few games. There
was one, however, in which he was skillful. I
blush to speak of it in these days of much mus-
cular activity. What have goKers, and tennis-
players, and makers of century runs to do with
croquet .<* Yet there was a time when croquet
was spoken of as * the coming game ; ' and had
not Clintock's friend Jennings written an epic
poem upon it in twelve books, which poem he
offered to lend to a certain brilliant young lady }
But Gwendolen despised boys and cared even
less for their poetry than for themselves.

At the house of the Country Squire the Bib-
liotaph was able to gratify his passion for cro-
quet, and verily he was a master. He made a
grotesque figure upon the court, with his big
frame which must stoop mightily to take ac-
count of balls and short-handled mallets, with
his agile manner, his uncovered head shaggy
with its barbaric profusion of hair (whereby
some one was led to nickname him Bibliotaph
Indetonsus), with the scanty black alpaca coat
in which he invariably played — a coat so short
in the sleeves and so brief in the skirt that the
figure cut by the wearer might almost have
passed for that of Mynheer Ten Broek of many-

78 THE BIBLIOTAPH

trowsered memory. But it was vastly more
amusing to watch him than to play with him.
He had a devil 'most undoubted.' Only with
the help of black art and by mortgaging one's
soul would it have been possible to accomplish
some of the things which he accomplished.
For the materials of croquet are so imperfect
at best that chance is an influential element.
I 've seen tennis-players in the intervals of
their game watch the Bibliotaph with that
superior smile suggestive of contempt for the
puerility of his favorite sport. They might
even condescend to take a mallet for a while
to amuse him ; but presently discomfited they
would retire to a game less capricious than cro-
quet and one in which there was reasonable
hope that a given cause would produce its
wonted effect.

The Bibliotaph played strictly for the pur-
pose of winning, and took savage joy in his
conquests. In playing with him one had to do
two men's work ; one must play, and then one
must summon such philosophy as one might to
suffer continuous defeat, and such wit as one
possessed to beat back a steady onslaught of
daring and witty criticisms. *I play like a
fool,' said a despairing opponent after fruitless
effort to win a just share of the games. 'We
all have our moments of unconsciousness,'
purred the Bibliotaph blandly in response.
This same despairing opponent, who was an

LAST WORDS 79

expert in everything he played, said that there
was but one solace after croquet with the Bib-
liotaph ; he would go home and read Hazlitt's
essay on the Indian Jugglers.

Here ends the account of the BibHotaph.
From these inadequate notes it is possible to
get some little idea of his habits and conversa-
tion. The library is said to be still growing.
Packages of books come mysteriously from the
comers of the earth and make their way to
that remote and almost inaccessible village
where the great collector hides his treasures.
No one has ever penetrated that region, and no
one, so far as I am aware, has ever seen the
treasures. The books lie entombed, as it were,
awaiting such day of resurrection as their
owner shall appoint them. The day is likely to
be long delayed. Of the collector's where-
abouts now no one of his friends dares to speak
positively ; for at the time when knowledge of
him was most exact THE BIBLIOTAPH was
like a newly-discovered comet, — his course was
problematical.

THOMAS HARDY

'The reason why so few good books are
written is that so few people that can write
know anything.' So said a man who, during a
busy career, found time to add several fine vol-
umes to the scanty number of good books.
And in a vivacious paragraph which follows
this initial sentence he humorously anathema-
tizes the literary life. He shows convincingly
that * secluded habits do not tend to eloquence.'
He says that the 'indifferent apathy' so com-
mon among studious persons is by no means
favorable to liveliness of narration. He proves
that men who will not live cannot write ; that
people who shut themselves up in libraries have
dry brains. He avows his confidence in the
'original way of writing books,' the way of the
first author, who must have looked at things
for himself, ' since there were no books for hira
to copy from ; ' and he challenges the reader to
prove that this original way is not the best
way. 'Where,' he asks, 'are the amusing
books from voracious students and habitual
writers ? '

THOMAS HARDY 8i

This startling arraignment of authors has
been made by other men than Walter Bagehot.
Hazlitt in his essay on the * Ignorance of the
Learned' teaches much the same doctrine.
Its general truth is indisputable, though Bage-
hot himself makes exception in favor of Sir
Walter Scott. But the two famous critics are
united in their conviction that learned people
are generally dull, and that books which are
the work of habitual writers are not amusing.

There are as a matter of course more excep-
tions than one. Thomas Hardy is a distin-
guished exception, Thomas Hardy is an * ha-
bitual writer,' but he is always amusing. The
following paragraphs are intended to emphasize
certain causes of this quality in his work, the
quality by virtue of which he chains the atten-
tion and proves himself the most readable
novelist now living. That he does attract and
hold is clear to any one who has tried no more
than a half-dozen pages from one of his best
stories. He has the fatal habit of being inter-
esting, — fatal because it robs you who read
him of time which you might else have devoted
to ' improving ' literature, such as history, polit-
ical economy, or light science. He destroys
your peace of mind by compelling your sympa-
thies in behalf of people who never existed.
He undermines your will power and makes you
his slave. You declare that you will read but
one more chapter and you weakly consent to

82 THOMAS HARDY

make it two chapters. As a special indulgence
you spoil a working day in order to learn about
the Return of the Native, perhaps agreeing with
a supposititious * better self ' that you will waste
no more time on novels for the next six months.
But you are of ascetic fibre indeed if you do
not follow up the book with a reading of The
Woodlanders and The Mayor of Casterbridge.

There is a reason for this. If the practiced
writer often fails to make a good book because
he knows nothing, Mr. Hardy must succeed in
large part because he knows so much. The
more one reads him the more is one impressed
with the extent of his knowledge. He has an
intimate acquaintance with an immense number
of interesting things.

He knows men and women — if not all sorts
and all conditions, at least a great many varie-
ties of the human animal. Moreover, his men
are men and his women are women. He does
not use them as figures to accentuate a land-
scape, or as ventriloquist's puppets to draw
away attention from the fact that he himself is
doing all the talking. His people have indivi-
duality, power of speech, power of motion. He
does not tell you that such a one is clever or
witty ; the character which he has created does
that for himself by doing clever things and
making witty remarks. In an excellent story
by a celebrated modern master there is a young
lady who is declared to be clever and brilliant

THOMAS HARDY 83

Out of forty or fifty observations which she
makes, the most extraordinary concerns her
father ; she says, ' Is n't dear papa delightful ? '
At another time she inquires whether another
gentleman is not also delightful. Hardy's re-
sources are not so meagre as this. When his
people talk we listen, — we do not endure.

He knows other things besides men and
women. He knows the soil, the trees, the sky,
the sunsets, the infinite variations of the land-
scape under cloud and sunshine. He knows
horses, sheep, cows, dogs, cats. He under-
stands the interpretation of sounds, — a detail
which few novelists comprehend or treat with
accuracy ; the pages of his books ring with the
noises of house, street, and country. Moreover
there is nothing conventional in his transcript
of facts. There is no evidence that he has
been in the least degree influenced by other
men's minds. He takes the raw stuff of which
novels are made and moulds it as he will. He
has an absolutely fresh eye, as painters some-
times say. He looks on life as if he were the
first literary man, 'and none had ever lived
before him.' Paraphrasing Ruskin, one may
say of Hardy that in place of studying the old
masters he has studied what the old masters
studied. But his point of view is his own. His
pages are not reminiscent of other pages. He
never makes you think of something you have
read, but invariably of something you have

84 THOMAS HARDY

seen or would like to see. He is an original
writer, which means that he takes his material
at first hand and eschews documents. There
is considerable evidence that he has read books,
but there is no reason for supposing that books
have damaged him.

Dr. Farmer proved that Shakespeare had no
'learning.' One might perhaps demonstrate
that Thomas Hardy is equally fortunate. In
that case he and Shakespeare may felicitate
one another. Though when we remember that
in our day it is hardly possible to avoid a tinc-
ture of scholarship, we may be doing the fairer
thing by these two men if we say that the one
had small Greek and the other has adroitly con-
cealed the measure of Greek, whether great or
small, which is in his possession. To put the
matter in another form, though Hardy may
have drunk in large quantity * the spirit breathed
from dead men to their kind,' he has not al-
lowed his potations to intoxicate him.

This paragraph is not likely to be misinter-
preted unless by some honest soul who has yet
to learn that ' literature is not sworn testimony.'
Therefore it may be well to add that Mr. Hardy
undoubtedly owns a collection of books, and
has upon his shelves dictionaries and encyclo-
pedias, together with a decent representation of
those works which people call ' standard.' But
it is of importance to remember this : That
while he may be a well-read man, as the phrase

THOMAS HARDY 85

goes, he is not and never has been of that class
which Emerson describes with pale sarcasm as
'meek young men in libraries.' It is clear that
Hardy has not 'weakened his eyesight over
books,' and it is equally clear that he has
'sharpened his eyesight on men and women.*
Let us consider a few of his virtues.

II

. In the first place he tells a good story. No
extravagant praise is due him for this ; it is his
business, his trade. He ought to do it, and
therefore he does it. The * first morality ' of a
novelist is to be able to tell a story, as the first
morality of a painter is to be able to handle his
brush skillfully and make it do his brain's in-
tending. After all, telling stories in an admi-
rable fashion is rather a familiar accomplish-
ment nowadays. Many men, many women are
able to make stories of considerable ingenuity
as to plot, and of thrilling interest in the unroll-
ing of a scheme of events. Numberless writ-
ers are shrewd and clever in constructing their
'fable,' but they are unable to do much beyond
this. Walter Besant writes good stories ; Rob-
ert Buchanan writes good stories ; Grant Allen
and David Christie Murray are acceptable to
many readers. But unless I mistake greatly
and do these men an injustice I should be sorry
to do them, their ability ceases just at this
point. They tell good stories and do nothing

86 THOMAS HARDY

else. They write books and do not make liter-
ature. They are authors by their own will and
not by grace of God. It may be said of them
as Augustine Birrell said of Professor Freeman
and the Bishop of Chester, that they are homy-
handed sons of toil and worthy of their wage.
But one would like to say a little more. Grant-
ing that this is praise, it is so faint as to be
almost inaudible. If Hardy only wrote good
stories he would be merely doing his duty, and
therefore accounted an unprofitable servant.
But he does much besides.

He fulfills one great function of the literary
artist, which is to mediate between nature and
the reading public. Such a man is an eye
specialist. Through his amiable offices people
who have hitherto been blind are put into con-
dition to see. Near-sighted persons have spec-
tacles fitted to them — which they generally
refuse to wear, not caring for literature which
clears the mental vision.

Hardy opens the eyes of the reader to the
charm, the beauty, the mystery to be found in
common life and in every-day objects. So alert
and forceful an intelligence rarely applies its
energy to fiction. The result is that he makes
an almost hopelessly high standard. The ex-
ceptional man who comes after him may be a
rival, but the majority of writing gentlemen
can do little more than enviously admire. He
seems to have established for himself such a

THOMAS HARDY 87

rule as this, that he will write no page which
shall not be interesting. He pours out the
treasures of his observation in every chapter.
He sees everything, feels everything, sympa-
thizes with everything. To be sure he has an
unusually rich field for work. In The Mayor
of Casterbridge is an account of the discovery
of the remains of an old Roman soldier. One
would expect Hardy to make something graphic
of the episode. And so he does. You can
almost see the warrior as he lies there * in an
oval scoop in the chalk, like a chicken in its
shell ; his knees drawn up to his chest ; his
spear against his arm ; an urn at his knees, a
jar at his throat, a bottle at his mouth ; and
mystified conjecture pouring down upon him
from the eyes of Casterbridge street-boys and
men.'

The real virtue in this bit of description lies
in the few words expressive of the mental atti-
tude of the onlookers. And it is a nice distinc-
tion which Hardy makes when he says that
* imaginative inhabitants who would have felt
an unpleasantness at the discovery of a compar-
atively modern skeleton in their gardens were
quite unmoved by these hoary shapes. They
had lived so long ago, their hopes and motives
were so widely removed from ours, that be-
tween them and the living there seemed to
stretch a gulf too wide for even a spirit to
pass.'

88 THOMAS HARDY

He takes note of that language which, though
not articulate, is in common use among yeo-
men, dairymen, farmers, and the townsfolk of
his little world. It is a language superimposed
upon the ordinary language. * To express sat-
isfaction the Casterbridge market-man added to
his utterance a broadening of the cheeks, a
crevicing of the eyes, a throwing back of the
shoulders.' * If he wondered . . . you knew it
from perceiving the inside of his crimson mouth
and the target-like circling of his eyes.' The
language of deliberation expressed itself in the
form of ' sundry attacks on the moss of adjoin-
ing walls with the end of his stick ' or a * change
of his hat from the horizontal to the less so.'

The novel called The Woodlanders is filled
with notable illustrations of an interest in mi-
nute things. The facts are introduced unob-
trusively and no great emphasis is laid upon
them. But they cling to the memory. Giles
Winterbourne, a chief character in this story,
* had a marvelous power in making trees grow.
Although he would seem to shovel in the earth
quite carelessly there was a sort of sympathy
between himself and the fir, oak, or beach that
he was operating on ; so that the roots took
hold of the soil in a few days.' When any of
the journeymen planted, one quarter of the
trees died away. There is a graphic little
scene where Winterbourne plants and Marty
South holds the trees for him. 'Winter-

THOMAS HARDY 89

bourne's fingers were endowed with a gentle
conjurer's touch in spreading the roots of each
little tree, resulting in a sort of caress under
which the delicate fibres all laid themselves out
in their proper direction for growth.' Marty-
declared that the trees began to * sigh ' as soon
as they were put upright, ' though when they
are lying down they don't sigh at all.' Winter-
bourne had never noticed it. * She erected one
of the young pines into its hole, and held up
her finger ; the soft musical breathing instantly
set in, which was not to cease night or day till
the grown tree should be felled — probably
long after the two planters had been felled
themselves.'

Later on in the story there is a description
of this same Giles Winterboume returning with
his horses and his cider apparatus from a neigh-
boring village. ' He looked and smelt like
autumn's very brother, his face being sunburnt
to wheat color, his eyes blue as corn flowers,
his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit stains,
his hands clammy with the sweet juice of ap-
ples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and every-
where about him that atmosphere of cider
which at its first return each season has such
an indescribable fascination for those who have
been bom and bred among the orchards.'

Hardy throws off little sketches of this sort
with an air of unconsciousness which is fasci-
nating. It may be a sunset, or it may be only

go THOMAS HARDY

a flake of snow falling upon a young girl's hair,
or the light from lanterns penetrating the shut-
ters and flickering over the ceiling of a room in
the early winter morning, — no matter what
the circumstance or happening is, it is caught
in the act, photographed in permanent colors,
made indelible and beautiful.

Hardy's art is tyrannical. It compels one to
be interested in that which delights him. It
imposes its own standards. There is a rude
strength about the man which readers endure
because they are not unwilling to be slaves to
genius. You may dislike sheep, and care but
little for the poetical aspect of cows, if indeed
you are not inclined to question the existence
of poetry in cows ; but if you read Far from
the Madding Crowd you can never again pass
a flock of sheep without being conscious of a
multitude of new thoughts, new images, new
matters for comparison. All that dormant sec-
tion of your soul which for years was in a
comatose condition on the subject of sheep is
suddenly and broadly awake. Read Tess and
at once cows and a dairy have a new meaning
to you. They are a conspicuous part of the
setting of that stage upon which poor Tess
Durbeyfield's life drama was played.

But Hardy does not flaunt his knowledge in
his reader's face. These things are distinctly
means to an end, not ends in themselves. He
has no theory to advance about keeping bees

THOMAS HARDY 91

or making cider. He has taken no little jour-
neys in the world. On the contrary, where he
has traveled at all, he has traveled extensively.
He is like a tourist who has been so many times
abroad that his allusions are naturally and unaf-
fectedly made. But the man just back from a
first trip on the continent has astonishment
stamped upon his face, and he speaks of Paris
and of the Alps as if he had discovered both.
Zola is one of those practitioners who, big with
recently acquired knowledge, appear to labor
under the idea that the chief end of a novel is
to convey miscellaneous information. This is
probably a mistake. Novels are not handbooks
on floriculture, banking, railways, or the man-
agement of department stores. One may make
a parade of minute details and endlessly weari-
some learning and gain a certain credit thereby ;
but what if the details and the learning are
chiefly of value in a dictionary of sciences and
commerce .-* Wisdom of this sort is to be spar-
ingly used in a work of art.

In these matters I cannot but feel that Hardy
has a reticence so commendable that praise of it
is superfluous and impertinent. After all, men
and women are better than sheep and cows,
and had he been more explicit, he would have
tempted one to inquire whether he proposed
making a story or a volume which might bear
the title The Wessex Farmer's Own Hand-Book,
and containing wise advice as to pigs, poultry,

92 THOMAS HARDY

and the useful art of making two heads of cab-
bage grow where only one had grown before,

III

Among the most engaging qualities of this
writer is humor. Hardy is a humorous man
himself and entirely appreciative of the humor
that is in others. According to a distinguished
philosopher, wit and humor produce love.
Hardy must then be in daily receipt of large
measures of this * improving passion ' from his
innumerable readers on both sides of the At-
lantic.

His humor manifests itself in a variety of
ways ; by the use of witty epithet ; by ingen-
ious description of a thing which is not strik-
ingly laughable in itself, but which becomes
so from the closeness of his rendering; by a
leisurely and ample account of a character with
humorous traits, — traits which are brought ar-
tistically into prominence as an actor heightens
the complexion in stage make-up; and finally
by his lively reproductions of the talk of village
and country people, — a class of society whose
everyday speech has only to be heard to be en-
joyed. I do not pretend that the sources of
Hardy's humor are exhausted in this analysis,
but the majority of illustrations can be assigned
to some one of these divisions.

He is usually thought to be at his best in de-
scriptions of farmers, village mechanics, labor-

THOMAS HARDY 93

ers, dairymen, men who kill pigs, tend sheep,
furze-cutters, masons, hostlers, loafers who do
nothing in particular, and while thus occupied
rail on Lady Fortune in good set terms. Cer-
tainly he paints these people with affectionate
fidelity. Their virile, racy talk delights him.
His reproductions of that talk are often in-
tensely realistic. Nearly every book has its
chorus of human grotesques whose mere names
are a source of mirth. William Worm, Grand-
fer Cantle, ' Corp'el ' Tullidge, Christopher
Coney, John Upjohn, Robert Creedle, Martin
Cannister, Haymoss Fry, Robert Lickpan, and
Sammy Blore, — men so denominated should
stand for comic things, and these men do. Wil-
liam Worm, for example, was deaf. His deaf-
ness took an unusual form ; he heard fish frying
in his head, and he was not reticent upon the
subject of his infirmity. He usually described
himself by the epithet 'wambling,' and pro-
tested that he would never pay the Lord for
his making, — a degree of self-knowledge which
many have arrived at but few have the courage
to confess. He was once observed in the act
of making himself 'passing civil and friendly
by overspreading his face with a large smile
that seemed to have no connection with the
humor he was in.' Sympathy because of his
deafness elicited this response : * Ay, I assure
you that frying o' fish is going on for nights
and days. And, you know, sometimes 't is n't

94 THOMAS HARDY

only fish, but rashers o' bacon and inions. Ay,
I can hear the fat pop and fizz as nateral as
life.'

He was questioned as to what means of cure
he had tried,

' Oh, ay bless ye, I 've tried everything.
Ay, Providence is a merciful man, and I have
hoped he 'd have found it out by this time, liv-
ing so many years in a parson's family, too,
as I have ; but 'a don't seem to relieve me.
Ay, I be a poor wambling man, and life's a
mint o' trouble.'

One knows not which to admire the more,
the appetizing realism in William Worm's ac-
count of his infirmity, or the primitive state of
his theological views which allowed him to look
for special divine favor by virtue of the eccle-
siastical conspicuousness of his late residence.

Hardy must have heard, with comfort in the
thought of its literary possibilities, the follow-
ing dialogue on the cleverness of women. It
occurs in the last chapter of The Woodlanders.
A man who is always spoken of as the * hollow-
turner,' a phrase obviously descriptive of his
line of business, which related to wooden bowls,
spigots, cheese -vats, and funnels, talks with
John Upjohn.

* What women do know nowadays ! ' he says.
'You can't deceive 'em as you could in my
time.'

' What they knowed then was not small,' said

THOMAS HARDY 95

John Upjohn. 'Always a good deal more than
the men ! Why, when I went courting my wife
that is now, the skillfulness that she would
show in keeping me on her pretty side as she
walked was beyond all belief. Perhaps you 've
noticed that she 's got a pretty side to her face
as well as a plain one .'* '

" I can't say I 've noticed it particular much,'
said the hollow-turner blandly.

' Well,' continued Upjohn, not disconcerted,
* she has. All women under the sun be pret-
tier one side than t' other. And, as I was say-
ing, the pains she would take to make me walk
on the pretty side were unending. I warrent
that whether we were going with the sun or
against the sun, uphill or downhill, in wind or
in lewth, that wart of hers was always toward
the hedge, and that dimple toward me. There
was I too simple to see her wheelings and
turnings ; and she so artful though two years
younger, that she could lead me with a cotton
thread like a blind ham ; ... no, I don't think
the women have got cleverer, for they was
never otherwise.'

IV
These men have sap and juice in their talk.
When they think they think clearly. When
they speak they express themselves with an
energy and directness which mortify the thin
speech of conventional persons. Here is Far-

96 THOMAS HARDY

frae, the young Scotchman, in the tap-room of
the Three Mariners Inn of Casterbridge, sing-
ing of his ain contree with a pathos quite un-
known in that part of the world. The worthies
who frequent the place are deeply moved.
* Danged if our country down here is worth
singing about like that,' says Billy Wills, the
glazier, — while the literal Christopher Coney
inquires, * What did ye come away from yer
own country for, young maister, if ye be so
wownded about it ? ' Then it occurs to him
that it was n't worth Farfrae's while to leave
the fair face and the home of which he had
been singing to come among such as they.
*We be bruckle folk here — the best o' us
hardly honest sometimes, what with hard win-
ters, and so many mouths to fill, and God-
a'mighty sending his little taties so terrible
small to fill 'em with. We don't think about
flowers and fair faces, not we — except in the
shape of cauliflowers and pigs' chaps.'

I should like to see the man who sat to Artist
Hardy for the portrait of Corporal Tullidge in
The Trumpet- Major. This worthy, who was
deaf and talked in an uncompromisingly loud
voice, had been struck in the head by a piece
of shell at Valenciennes in '93. His left arm
had been smashed. Time and Nature had done
what they could, and under their beneficent in-
fluences the arm had become a sort of anatomi-
cal rattle-box. People interested in Corp'el

THOMAS HARDY 97

Tullidge were allowed to see his head and hear
his arm. The corp'el gave these private views
at any time, and was quite willing to show off,
though the exhibition was apt to bore him a
little. His fellows displayed him much as one
would a * freak ' in a dime museum.

'You have got a silver plate let into yer
head, have n't ye, corp'el ? ' said Anthony Crip-
plestraw. ' I have heard that the way they
mortised yer skull was a beautiful piece of work-
manship. Perhaps the young woman would like
to see the place.'

The young woman was Anne Garland, the
sweet heroine of the story ; and Anne did n't
want to see the silver plate, the thought of
which made her almost faint. Nor could she
be tempted by being told that one could n't see
such a 'wownd' every day. Then Cripple-
straw, earnest to please her, suggested that
Tullidge rattle his arm, which Tullidge did, to
Anne's great distress.

'Oh, it don't hurt him, bless ye. Do it, cor-
p'el ? ' said Cripplestraw.

'Not a bit,' said the corporal, still working
his arm with great energy. There was, how-
ever, a perf unctoriness in his manner ' as if the
glory of exhibition had lost somewhat of its
novelty, though he was still wilUng to oblige.'
Anne resisted all entreaties to convince herself
by feeling of the corporal's arm that the bones
were * as loose as a bag of ninepins,' and dis-

98 THOMAS HARDY

played an anxiety to escape. Whereupon the
corporal, * with a sense that his time was get-
ting wasted,' inquired : *Do she want to see or
hear any more, or don't she ? '

This is but a single detail in the account of
a party which Miller Loveday gave to soldier
guests in honor of his son John, — a descrip-
tion the sustained vivacity of which can only be
appreciated through a reading of those brilliant
early chapters of the story.

Half the mirth that is in these men comes
from the frankness with which they confess
their actual thoughts. Ask a man of average
morals and average attainments why he does n't
go to church. You won't know any better after
he has given you his answer. Ask Nat Chap-
man, of the novel entitled Two on a Tower, and
you will not be troubled with ambiguities. He
does n't like to go because Mr. Torkingham's
sermons make him think of soul-saving and
other bewildering and uncomfortable topics.
So when the son of Torkingham's predecessor
asks Nat how it goes with him, that tiller of
the soil answers promptly : * Pa'son Tarkenham
do tease a feller's conscience that much, that
church is no holler-day at all to the limbs, as it
was in yer reverent father's time ! '

The unswerving honesty with which they as-
sign utilitarian motives for a particular line of
conduct is delightful. Three men discuss a
wedding, which took place not at the home of

THOMAS HARDY 99

the bride but in a neighboring parish, and was
therefore very private. The first does n't blame
the new married pair, because *a wedding at
home means five and six handed reels by the
hour, and they do a man's legs no good when
he 's over forty.' A second corroborates the re-
mark and says : * True. Once at the woman's
house you can hardly say nay to being one in
a jig, knowing all the time that you be ex-
pected to make yourself worth your victuals.'

The third puts the whole matter beyond the
need of further discussion by adding : * For my
part, I like a good hearty funeral as well as
anything. You 've as splendid victuals and
drink as at other parties, and even better. And
it don't wear your legs to stumps in talking
over a poor fellow's ways as it do to stand up
in hornpipes.'

Beings who talk like this know their minds,
— a rather unwonted circumstance among the
sons of men, — and knowing them, they do the
next most natural thing in the world, which is
to speak the minds they have.

There is yet another phase of Hardy's humor
to be noted : that humor, sometimes defiant,
sometimes philosophic, which concerns death
and its accompaniments. It cannot be thought
morbid. Hardy is too fond of Nature ever to
degenerate into mere morbidity. He has lived
much in the open air, which always corrects a
tendency to * vapors.' He takes little pleasure

loo THOMAS HARDY

in the gruesome, a statement in support of
which one may cite all his works up to 1892,
the date of the appearance of Tess. This pa-
per includes no comment in detail upon the
later books ; but so far as Tess is concerned it
would be critical folly to speak of it as morbid.
It is sad, it is terrible, as Lear is terrible, or
as any one of the great tragedies, written by
men we call * masters,' is terrible. Jude is psy-
chologically gruesome, no doubt ; but not abso-
lutely indefensible. Even if it were as black a
book as some critics have painted it, the gen-
eral truth of the statement as to the healthful-
ness of Hardy's work would not be impaired.
This work judged as a whole is sound and in-
vigorating. He cannot be accused of over-fond-
ness for charnel-houses or ghosts. He does
not discourse of graves and vaults in order to
arouse that terror which the thought of death
inspires. It is not for the purpose of making
the reader uncomfortable. If the grave inter-
ests him, it is because of the reflections awak-
ened. 'Man, proud man,' needs that jog to his
memory which the pomp of interments and
aspect of tombstones give. Hardy has keen
perception of that humor which glows in the
presence of death and on the edge of the grave.
The living have such a tremendous advantage
over the dead, that they can neither help feel-
ing it nor avoid a display of the feeling. When
the lion is buried the dogs crack jokes at the

THOMAS HARDY loi

funeral. They do it in a subdued manner, no
doubt, and with a sense of proprieties, but
nevertheless they do it. Their immense supe-
riority is never so apparent as at just this mo-
ment.

This humor, which one notes in Hardy, is
akin to the humor of the grave-diggers in Ham-
let, but not so grim. I have heard a country
undertaker describe the details of the least at-
tractive branch of his uncomfortable business
with a pride and self-satisfaction that would
have been farcical had not the subject been so
depressing. This would have been matter for
Hardy's pen. There are few scenes in his
books more telling than that which shows the
operations in the family vault of the Luxellians,
when John Smith, Martin Cannister, and old
Simeon prepare the place for Lady Luxellian's
coffin. It seems hardly wise to pronounce this
episode as good as the grave-diggers' scene in
Hamlet ; that would shock some one and gain
for the writer the reputation of being enthusi-
astic rather than critical. But I profess that I
enjoy the talk of old Simeon and Martin Can-
nister quite as much as the talk of the first and
second grave-diggers.

Simeon, the shriveled mason, was * a marvel-
ously old man, whose skin seemed so much too
large for his body that it would not stay in
position.' He talked of the various great dead
whose coffins filled the family vault. Here was
the stately and irascible Lord George : —

I02 THOMAS HARDY

'Ah, poor Lord George,' said the mason,
looking contemplatively at the huge coffin ; ' he
and I were as bitter enemies once as any could
be when one is a lord and t' other only a mortal
man. Poor fellow ! He 'd clap his hand upon
my shoulder and cuss me as familiar and neigh-
borly as if he 'd been a common chap. Ay, 'a
cussed me up hill and 'a cussed me down ; and
then 'a would rave out again and the goold
clamps of his fine new teeth would glisten in
the sun like fetters of brass, while I, being a
small man and poor, was fain to say nothing at
all. Such a strappen fine gentleman as he was
too ! Yes, I rather liken en sometimes. But
once now and then, when I looked at his tower-
ing height, I 'd think in my inside, " What a
weight you '11 be, my lord, for our arms to lower
under the inside of Endelstow church some
day ! " '

* And was he .? ' inquired a young laborer.

* He was. He was five hundred weight if 'a
were a pound. What with his lead, and his
oak, and his handles, and his one thing and
t' other ' — here the ancient man slapped his
hand upon the cover with a force that caused a
rattle among the bones inside — * he half broke
my back when I took his feet to lower en down
the steps there. "Ah," saith I to John there —
did n't I, John } — " that ever one man's glory
should be such a weight upon another man ! "
But there, I liked my Lord George sometimes.'

THOMAS HARDY 103

It may be observed that as Hardy grows
older his humor becomes more subtle or quite
dies away, as if serious matters pressed upon
his mind, and there was no time for being jocu-
lar. Some day, perhaps, if he should rise to
the dignity of an English classic, this will be
spoken of as his third period, and critics will be
wise in the elucidation thereof. But just at
present this third period is characterized by the
terms 'pessimistic' and 'unhealthy.'

That he is a pessimist in the colloquial sense
admits of little question. Nor is it surprising ;
it is rather difficult not to be. Not a few per-
sons are pessimists and won't tell. They pre-
serve a fair exterior, but secretly hold that all
flesh is grass. Some people escape the disease
by virtue of much philosophy or much religion
or much work. Many who have not taken up
permanent residence beneath the roof of Scho-
penhauer or Von Hartmann are occasional
guests. Then there is that great mass of pes-
simism which is the result, not of thought, but
of mere discomfort, physical and super-physical.
One may have attacks of pessimism from a
variety of small causes. A bad stomach will
produce it. Financial difficulties will produce it.
The light-minded get it from changes in the
weather.

That note of melancholy which we detect in
many of Hardy's novels is as it should be. For
no man can apprehend life aright and still look

104 THOMAS HARDY

upon it as a carnival. He may attain serenity
in respect to it, but he can never be jaunty and
flippant. He can never slap life upon the back
and call it by familiar names. He may hold
that the world is indisputably growing better,
but he will need to admit that the world is hav-
ing a hard time in so doing.

Hardy would be sure of a reputation for pes-
simism in some quarters if only because of his
attitude, or what people think is his attitude,
toward marriage. He has devoted many pages
and not a little thought to the problems of the
relations between men and women. He is con-
siderably interested in questions of 'matrimo-
nial divergence.' He recognizes that most
obvious of all obvious truths, that marriage is
not always a success ; nay, more than this, that
it is often a makeshift, an apology, a pretense.
But he professes to undertake nothing beyond a
statement of the facts. It rests with the pub-
lic to lay his statement beside their experience
and observation, and thus take measure of the
fidelity of his art.

He notes the variety of motives by which
people are actuated in the choice of husbands
and wives. In the novel called The Woodland-
ers, Grace Melbury, the daughter of a rich
though humbly -born yeoman, has unusual
opportunities for a girl of her class, and is edu-
cated to a point of physical and intellectual
daintiness which make her seem superior to

THOMAS HARDY 105

her home environment. Her father has hoped
that she will marry her rustic lover, Giles Win-
terbourne, who, by the way, is a man in every
fibre of his being. Grace is quite unspoiled by
her life at a fashionable boarding school, but
after her return her father feels (and Hardy
makes the reader feel) that in marrying Giles
she will sacrifice herself. She marries Dr.
Fitzspiers, a brilliant young physician, recently
come into the neighborhood, and in so doing
she chooses for the worse. The character of
Dr. Fitzspiers is summarized in a statement he
once made (presumably to a male friend) that
* on one occasion he had noticed himself to be
possessed by five distinct infatuations at the
same time.'

His flagrant infidelities bring about a tem-
porary separation ; Grace is not able to compre-
hend 'such double and treble-barreled hearts.'
When finally they are reunited the life-problem
of each still awaits an adequate solution. For
the motive which brings the girl back to her
husband is only a more complex phase of the
same motive which chiefly prompted her to
marry him. Hardy says that Fitzspiers as a
lover acted upon Grace 'like a dram.' His
presence ' threw her into an atmosphere which
biased her doings until the influence was over.'
Afterward she felt ' something of the nature of
regret for the mood she had experienced.'

But this same story contains two other char-

lo6 THOMAS HARDY

acters who are unmatched in fiction as the
incarnation of pure love and self-forgetfulness.
Giles Winterbourne, whose devotion to Grace
is without wish for happiness which shall not
imply a greater happiness for her, dies that
no breath of suspicion may fall upon her. He
in tiu^n is loved by Marty South with a com-
pleteness which destroys all thought of self.
She enjoys no measure of reward while Winter-
bourne lives. He never knows of Marty's love.
But in that last fine paragraph of this remark-
able book, when the poor girl places the flow-
ers upon his grave she utters a little lament
which for beauty, pathos, and realistic simpli-
city is without parallel in modern fiction.
Hardy was never more of an artist than when
writing the last chapter of The Woodlanders.

After all, a book in which unselfish love is
described in terms at once just and noble can-
not be dangerously pessimistic, even if it also
takes cognizance of such hopeless cases as a
man with a chronic tendency to fluctuations of
the heart.

The matter may be put briefly thus : In
Hardy's novels one sees the artistic result of
an effort to paint life as it is, with much of its
joy and a deal of its sorrow, with its good peo-
ple and its selfish people, its positive characters
and its Laodiceans, its men and women who
dominate circumstances, and its unhappy ones
who are submerged. These books are the

THOMAS HARDY 107

record of what a clear-eyed, sane, vigorous,
sympathetic, humorous man knows about life ;
a man too conscious of things as they are to
wish grossly to exaggerate or to disguise them ;
and at the same time so entirely aware how
much poetry as well as irony God has mingled
in the order of the world as to be incapable of
concealing that fact either. He is of such
ample intellectual frame that he makes the
petty contentions of literary schools appear
foolish. I find a measure of Hardy's mind in
passages which set forth his conception of the
preciousness of life, no matter what the form
in which life expresses itself. He is pecul-
iarly tender toward brute creation. In that
paragraph which describes Tess discovering
the wounded pheasants in the wood. Hardy
suggests the thought, quite new to many peo-
ple, that chivalry is not confined to the rela-
tions of man to man or of man to woman.
There are still weaker fellow-creatures in Na-
ture's teeming family. What if we are unman-
nerly or unchivalrous toward them ?

He abounds in all manner of pithy sayings,
many of them wise, a few of them profound,
and not one which is unworthy a second read-
ing. It is to be hoped that he will escape the
doubtful honor of being dispersedly set forth in
a 'Wit and Wisdom of Thomas Hardy.' Such
books are a depressing species of literature and
seem chiefly designed to be given away at holi-

io8 THOMAS HARDY

day time to acquaintances who are too impor-
tant to be put off with Christmas cards, and
not important enough to be supplied with gifts
of a calculable value.

One must praise the immense spirit and viva-
city of scenes where something in the nature
of a struggle, a moral duel, goes on. In such
passages every power at the writer's command
is needed ; unerring directness of thought, and
words which clothe this thought as an athlete's
garments fit the body. Everything must
count, and the movement of the narrative must
be sustained to the utmost. The chess-playing
scene between Elfride and Knight in A Pair
of Blue Eyes is an illustration. Sergeant Troy
displaying his skill in handling the sword —
weaving his spell about Bathsheba in true
snake fashion, is another example. Still more
brilliant is the gambling scene in The Return
of the Native, where Wildeve and Diggory
Venn, out on the heath in the night, throw dice
by the light of a lantern for Thomasin's money.
Venn, the reddleman, in the Mephistophelian
garb of his profession, is the incarnation of a
good spirit, and wins the guineas from the
clutch of the spendthrift husband. The scene
is immensely dramatic, with its accompani-
ments of blackness and silence, Wildeve's hag-
gard face, the circle of ponies, known as heath-
croppers, which are attracted by the light, the
death's-head moth which extinguishes the can-

THOMAS HARDY 109

die, and the finish of the game by the light of
glow-worms. It is a glorious bit of writing in
true bravura style.

His books have a quality which I shall ven-
ture to call * spaciousness,' in the hope that the
word conveys the meaning I try to express. It
is obvious that there is a difference between
books which are large and books which are
merely long. The one epithet refers to atmo-
sphere, the other to number of pages. Hardy
writes large books. There is room in them
for the reader to expand his mind. They are
distinctly out-of-door books, 'not smacking of
the cloister or the library.' In reading them
one has a feeling that the vault of heaven is
very high, and that the earth stretches away to
interminable distances upon all sides. This
quality of largeness is not dependent upon
number of pages; nor is length absolute as
applied to books. A book may contain one
hundred pages and still be ninety-nine pages
too long, for the reason that its truth, its les-
son, its literary virtue, are not greater than
might be expressed in a single page.

Spaciousness is in even less degree dependent
upon miles. The narrowness, geographically
speaking, of Hardy's range of expression is
notable. There is much contrast between him
and Stevenson in this respect. The Scotch-
man has embodied in his fine books the experi-
ences of life in a dozen different quarters of

no THOMAS HARDY

the globe. Hardy, with more robust health,
has traveled from Portland to Bath, ajid from
* Wintoncester ' to * Exonbury,' — journeys
hardly more serious than from the blue bed to
the brown. And it is better thus. No reader
of The Return of the Native would have been
content that Eustacia Vye should persuade her
husband back to Paris. Rather than the boule-
vards one prefers Egdon heath, as Hardy paints
it, 'the great inviolate place,' the 'untamable
Ishmaelitish thing ' which its arch-enemy. Civi-
lization, could not subdue.

He is without question one of the best writ-
ers of our time, whether for comedy or for
tragedy ; and for extravaganza, too, as witness
his lively farce called The Hand of Ethelberta.
He can write dialogue or description. He is
so excellent in either that either, as you read
it, appears to make for your highest pleasure.
If his characters talk, you would gladly have
them talk to the end of the book. If he, the
author, speaks, you would not wish to inter-
rupt. More than most skillful writers, he pre-
serves that just balance between narrative and
colloquy.

His best novels prior to the appearance of
Tess, are The Woodlanders, Far from the Mad-
ding Crowd, The Return of the Native, and
The Mayor of Casterbridge. These four are
the bulwarks of his reputation, while a separate
and great fame might be based alone on that

THOMAS HARDY in

powerful tragedy called by its author Tess of
the U Urbervilles.

Criticism which glorifies any one book of a
given author at the expense of all his other
books is profitless, if not dangerous. More-
over, it is dangerous to have a favorite author
as well as a favorite book of that favorite
author. A man's choice of books, like his
choice of friends, is usually inexplicable to
everybody but himself. However, the chief
object in recommending books is to make con-
verts to the gospel of literature according to
the writer of these books. For which legiti-
mate purpose I would recommend to the reader
who has hitherto denied himself the pleasure of
an acquaintance with Thomas Hardy, the two
volumes known as The Woodlanders and The
Return of the Native. The first of these is
the more genial because it presents a more
genial side of Nature. But the other is a noble
piece of literary workmanship, a powerful book,
ingeniously framed, with every detail strongly
realized ; a book which is dramatic, humorous,
sincere in its pathos, rich in its word-coloring,
eloquent in its descriptive passages ; a book
which embodies so much of life and poetry that
one has a feeling of mental exaltation as he
reads.

Surely it is not wise in the critical Jeremiahs
so despairingly to lift up their voices, and so
strenuously to bewail the condition of the lit-

112 THOMAS HARDY

erature of the time. The Hterature of the time
is very well, as they would see could they but
turn their fascinated gaze from the meretri-
cious and spectacular elements of that litera-
ture to the work of Thomas Hardy and George
Meredith. With such men among the most
influential in modem letters, and with Barrie
and Stevenson among the idols of the reading
world, it would seem that the office of pub-
lic Jeremiah should be continued rather from
courtesy than from an overwhelming sense of
the needs of the hour.

A READING IN THE LETTERS OF
JOHN KEATS

One would like to know whether a first read-
ing in the letters of Keats does not generally
produce something akin to a severe mental
shock. It is a sensation which presently be-
comes agreeable, being in that respect like a
plunge into cold water, but it is undeniably a
shock. Most readers of Keats, knowing him,
as he should be known, by his poetry, have not
the remotest conception of him as he shows
himself in his letters. Hence they are unpre-
pared for this splendid exhibition of virile intel-
lectual health. Not that they think of him as
morbid, — his poetry surely could not make
this impression, — but rather that the popular
conception of him is, after all these years, a
legendary Keats, the poet who was killed by
reviewers, the Keats of Shelley's preface to
the Adonais, the Keats whose story is written
large in the world's book of Pity and of Death.
When the readers are confronted with a fair
portrait of the real man, it makes them rub
their eyes. Nay, more, it embarrasses them.
To find themselves guilty of having pitied one

114 LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS

who stood in small need of pity is mortifying.
In plain terms, they have systematically be-
stowed (or have attempted to bestow) alms on
a man whose income at its least was bigger
than any his patrons could boast. Small won-
der that now and then you find a reader, with
large capacity for the sentimental, who looks
back with terror to his first dip into the let-
ters.

The legendary Keats dies hard ; or perhaps
we would better say that when he seems to be
dying he is simply, in the good old fashion of
legends, taking out a new lease of life. For it
is as true now as when the sentence was first
penned, that * a mixture of a lie doth ever add
pleasure.' Among the many readers of good
books, there will always be some whose notions
of the poetical proprieties suffer greatly by the
facts of Keats's history. It is so much plea-
santer to them to think that the poet's sensi-
tive spirit was wounded to death by bitter
words than to know that he was carried off by
pulmonary disease. But when they are tired
of reading Endymion, Isabella, and The Eve of
St. Agnes in the light of this incorrect concep-
tion, let them try a new reading in the light
of the letters, and the masculinity of this very
robust young maker of poetry will prove re-
freshing.

The letters are in every respect good read-
ing. Rather than deplore their frankness, as

LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS 115

one critic has done, we ought to rejoice in their
utter want of affectation, in their boyish hon-
esty. At every turn there is something to
amuse or to startle one into thinking. We are
carried back in a vivid way to the period of
their composition. Not a Httle of the pulsing
life of that time throbs anew, and we catch
glimpses of notable figures. Often, the feeling
is that we have been called in haste to a win-
dow to look at some celebrity passing by, and
have arrived just in time to see him turn the
corner. What a touch of reality, for example,
does one get in reading that * Wordsworth went
rather huff' d out of town ' ! One is not in the
habit of thinking of Wordsworth as capable of
being 'huffed,' but the writer of the letters
feared that he was. All of Keats's petty anxi-
eties and small doings, as well as his aspirations
and his greatest dreams, are set down here in
black on white. It is a complete and charm-
ing revelation of the man. One learns how he
* went to Hazlitt's lecture on Poetry, and got
there just as they were coming out ; ' how he
was insulted at the theatre, and would n't tell
his brothers ; how it vexed him because the
Irish servant said that his picture of Shake-
speare looked exactly like her father, only ' her
father had more color than the engraving ; '
how he filled in the time while waiting for the
stage to start by counting the buns and tarts
in a pastry-cook's window, 'and had just begun

Il6 LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS

on the jellies ; ' how indignant he was at being
spoken of as ' quite the little poet ; ' how he sat
in a hatter's shop in the Poultry while Mr. Ab-
bey read him some extracts from Lord Byron's
'last flash poem,' Don Juan ; how some beef
was carved exactly to suit his appetite, as if he
' had been measured for it ; ' how he dined with
Horace Smith and his brothers and some other
young gentlemen of fashion, and thought them
all hopelessly affected ; in a word, almost any-
thing you want to know about John Keats can
be found in these letters. They are of more
value than all the 'recollections' of all his
friends put together. In their breezy good-
nature and cheerfulness they are a fine anti-
dote to the impression one gets of him in Hay-
don's account, 'lying in a white bed with a
book, hectic and on his back, irritable at his
weakness and wounded at the way he had been
used. He seemed to be going out of life with
a contempt for this world, and no hopes of the
other. I told him to be calm, but he muttered
that if he did not soon get better he would
destroy himself.' This is taking Keats at his
worst. It is well enough to know that he
seemed to Haydon as Haydon has described
him, but few men appear to advantage when
they are desperately ill. Turn to the letters
written during his tour in Scotland, when he
walked twenty miles a day, climbed Ben Nevis,
so fatigued himself that, as he told Fanny

LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS 117

Keats, * when I am asleep you might sew my
nose to my great toe and trundle me around
the town, like a Hoop, without waking me.
Then I get so hungry a Ham goes but a very
little way, and fowls are like Larks to me. . . .
I take a whole string of Pork Sausages down
as easily as a Pen'orth of Lady's fingers.' And
then he bewails the fact that when he arrives
in the Highlands he will have to be contented
*with an acre or two of oaten cake, a hogshead
of Milk, and a Cloaths basket of Eggs morn-
ing, noon, and night.' Here is the active Keats,
of honest mundane tastes and an athletic dispo-
sition, who threatens ' to cut all sick people if
they do not make up their minds to cut Sick-
ness.'

Indeed, the letters are so pleasant and amus-
ing in the way they exhibit minor traits, habits,
prejudices, and the like, that it is a temptation
to dwell upon these things. How we love a
man's weaknesses — if we share them ! I do
not know that Keats would have given occasion
for an anecdote like that told of a certain book-
loving actor, whose best friend, when urged to
join the chorus of praise that was quite uni-
versally sung to this actor's virtues, acquiesced
by saying amiably, * Mr. Blank undoubtedly has
genius, but he can't spell ; ' yet there are com-
forting evidences that Keats was no servile fol-
lower of the * monster Conventionality ' even in
his spelling, while in respect to the use of capi-

Il8 LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS

tals he was a law unto himself. He sprinkled
them through his correspondence with a lavish
hand, though at times he grew so economical
that, as one of his editors remarks, he would
spell Romeo with a small r, Irishman with a
small /, and God with a small g.

It is also a pleasure to find that, with his
other failings, he had a touch of book-madness.
There was in him the making of a first-class
bibliophile. He speaks with rapture of his
black-letter Chaucer, which he proposes to have
bound *in Gothique,' so as to unmodernize as
much as possible its outward appearance. But
to Keats books were literature or they were
not literature, and one cannot think that his
affections would twine about ever so bookish a
volume which was merely * curious.'

One reads with sympathetic amusement of
Keats's genuine and natural horror of paying
the same bill twice, 'there not being a more
unpleasant thing in the world (saving a thou-
sand and one others).' The necessity of pre-
serving adequate evidence that a bill had been
paid was uppermost in his thought quite fre-
quently ; and once when, at Leigh Hunt's in-
stance, sundry packages of papers belonging
to that eminently methodical and businesslike
man of letters were to be sorted out and in
part destroyed, Keats refused to bum any, ' for
fear of demolishing receipts.'

But the reader will chance upon few more

LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS 119

humorous passages than that in which the poet
tells his brother George how he cures himself
of the blues, and at the same time spurs his
flagging powers of invention : * Whenever I
find myself growing vaporish I rouse myself,
wash and put on a clean shirt, brush my hair
and clothes, tie my shoe-strings neatly, and, in
fact, adonize, as if I were going out — then all
clean and comfortable, I sit down to write.
This I find the greatest relief.* The virtues
of a clean shirt have often been sung, but it
remained for Keats to show what a change of
linen and a general adonizing could do in the
way of furnishing poetic stimulus. This is bet-
ter than coffee, brandy, absinthe, or falling in
love ; and it prompts one to think anew that
the English poets, taking them as a whole,
were a marvelously healthy and sensible breed
of men.

It is, however, in respect to the light they
throw upon the poet's literary life that the let-
ters are of highest significance. They gratify
to a reasonable extent that natural desire we
all have to see authorship in the act. The pro-
cesses by which genius brings things to pass
are so mysterious that our curiosity is continu-
ally piqued ; and our failure to get at the real
thing prompts us to be more or less content
with mere externals. If we may not hope to
see the actual process of making poetry, we
may at least study the poet's manuscript. By

120 LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS

knowing of his habits of work we flatter our-
selves that we are a little nearer the secret of
his power.

We must bear in mind that Keats was a boy,
always a boy, and that he died before he quite
got out of boyhood. To be sure, most boys of
twenty-six would resent being described by so
juvenile a term. But one must have success-
fully passed twenty-six without doing anything
in particular to understand how exceedingly
young twenty-six is. And to have wrought so
well in so short a time, Keats must have had
from the first a clear and noble conception of
the nature of his work, as he must also have
displayed extraordinary diligence in the doing
of it. Perhaps these points are too obvious,
and of a sort which would naturally occur to
any one ; but it will be none the less interest-
ing to see how the letters bear witness to their
truth.

In the first place, Keats was anything but a
loafer at literature. He seems never to have
dawdled. A fine healthiness is apparent in all
allusions to his processes of work. * I read and
write about eight hours a day,' he remarks in
a letter to Haydon. Bailey, Keats's Oxford
friend, says that the fellow would go to his
writing-desk soon after breakfast, and stay
there until two or three o'clock in the after-
noon. He was then writing Endymion. His
stint was about ' fifty lines a day, . . . and he

LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS 121

wrote with as much regularity, and apparently
with as much ease, as he wrote his letters. . . .
Sometimes he fell short of his allotted task, but
not often, and he would make it up another
day. But he never forced himself,' Bailey
quotes, in connection with this, Keats's own
remark to the effect that poetry would better
not come at all than not to come * as naturally
as the leaves of a tree.' Whether this sponta-
neity of production was as great as that of
some other poets of his time may be ques-
tioned; but he would never have deserved
Tom Nash's sneer at those writers who can
only produce by 'sleeping betwixt every sen-
tence.' Keats had in no small degree the * fine
extemporal vein' with 'invention quicker than
his eye.'

We uncritically feel that it could hardly have
been otherwise in the case of one with whom
poetry was a passion. Keats had an infinite
hunger and thirst for good poetry. His poeti-
cal life, both in the receptive and productive
phases of it, was intense. Poetry was meat
and drink to him. He could even urge his
friend Reynolds to talk about it to him, much
as one might beg a trusted friend to talk about
one's lady-love, and with the confidence that
only the fitting thing would be spoken. * When-
ever you write, say a word or two on some
passage in Shakespeare which may have come
rather new to you,' — a sentence which shows

122 LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS

his faith in the many-sidedness of the great
poetry. Shakespeare was forever 'coming
new ' to him, and he was * haunted ' by particu-
lar passages. He loved to fill the cup of his
imagination with the splendors of the best
poets until the cup overflowed. ' I find I can-
not exist without Poetry, — without eternal
Poetry ; half the day will not do, — the whole
of it ; I began with a little, but habit has made
me a leviathan.' He tells Leigh Hunt, in a
letter written from Margate, that he thought so
much about poetry, and *so long together,'
that he could not get to sleep at night.
Whether this meant in working out ideas of his
own, or living over the thoughts of other poets,
is of little importance ; the remark shows how
deeply the roots of his life were imbedded in
poetical soil. He loved a debauch in the verse
of masters of his art. He could intoxicate him-
self with Shakespeare's sonnets. He rioted in
'all their fine things said unconsciously.' We
are tempted to say, by just so much as he had
large reverence for these men, by just so much
he was of them.

Undoubtedly, this ability to be moved by
strong imaginative work may be abused until it
becomes a maudlin and quite disordered senti-
ment. Keats was too well balanced to be car-
ried into appreciative excesses. He knew that
mere yearning could not make a poet of one
any more than mere ambition could. He under-

LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS 123

stood the limits of ambition as a force in litera-
ture. Keats' s ambition trembled in the pre-
sence of Keats's conception of the magnitude
of the poetic office. * I have asked myself so
often why I should be a poet more than other
men, seeing how great a thing it is.' Yet he
had honest confidence. One cannot help lik-
ing him for the fine audacity with which he
pronounces his own work good, — better even
than that of a certain other great name in Eng-
lish literature ; one cannot help loving him for
the sweet humility with which he accepts the
view that, after all, success or failure lies en-
tirely without the range of self -choosing. There
is a point of view from which it is folly to hold
a poet responsible even for his own poetry, and
when Endymion was spoken of as 'slipshod'
Keats could reply, ' That it is so is no fault of
mine. . . . The Genius of Poetry must work
out its own salvation in a man. . . . That
which is creative must create itself. In Endy-
mion I leaped headlong into the sea, and
thereby have become better acquainted with
the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks,
than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and
piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable
advice. I was never afraid of failure ; for I
would sooner fail than not be among the great-
est.'

Well might a man who could write that last
sentence look upon poetry not only as a respon-

124 LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS

sible, but as a dangerous pursuit. Men who
aspire to be poets are gamblers. In all the
lotteries of the literary life none is so uncer-
tain as this. A million chances that you don't
win the prize to one chance that you do. It is
a curious thing that ever so thoughtful and
conscientious an author may not know whether
he is making literature or merely writing verse.
He conforms to all the canons of taste in his
own day ; he is devout and reverent ; he shuns
excesses of diction, and he courts originality ;
his verse seems to himself and to his unflatter-
ing friends instinct with the spirit of his time,
but twenty years later it is old-fashioned.
Keats, with all his feeling of certainty, stood
with head uncovered before that power which
gives poetical gifts to one, and withholds them
from another. Above all would he avoid self-
delusion in these things. ' There is no greater
Sin after the seven deadly than to flatter one's
self into an idea of being a great Poet.'

Keats, if one may judge from a letter written
to John Taylor in February, 1818, had little
expectation that his Endymion was going to be
met with universal plaudits. He doubtless
looked for fair treatment. He probably had
no thought of being sneeringly addressed as
'Johnny,' or of getting recommendations to
return to his 'plasters, pills, and ointment
boxes.' In fact, he looked upon the issue as
entirely problematical. He seemed willing to

LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS 125

take it for granted that in Endymion he had
but moved into the go-cart from the leading-
strings. 'If Endymion serves me for a pio-
neer, perhaps I ought to be content, for thank
God I can read and perhaps understand Shake-
speare to his depths ; and I have, I am sure,
many friends who if I fail will attribute any
change in my life to humbleness rather than
pride, — to a cowering under the wings of great
poets rather than to bitterness that I am not
appreciated.' And for evidence of any especial
bitterness because of the lashing he received
one will search the letters in vain. Keats was
manly and good-humored, most of his morbidity
being referred directly to his ill health. The
trouncing he had at the hands of the reviewers
was no more violent than the one administered
to Tennyson by Professor Wilson. Critics,
good and bad, can do much harm. They may
terrorize a timid spirit. But a greater terror
than the fear of the reviewers hung over the
head of John Keats. He stood in awe of his
own artistic and poetic sense. He could say
with truth that his own domestic criticism had
given him pain without comparison beyond
what Blackwood or the Quarterly could possi-
bly inflict. If he had had any terrible heart-
burning over their malignancy, if he had felt
that his life was poisoned, he could hardly have
forborne some allusion to it in his letters to his
brother, George Keats. But he is almost im-

126 LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS

perturbable. He talks of the episode freely,
says that he has been urged to publish his Pot
of Basil as a reply to the reviewers, has no idea
that he can be made ridiculous by abuse, notes
the futility of attacks of this kind, and then,
with a serene conviction that is irresistible,
adds, *I think I shall be among the English
Poets after my death ! '

Such egoism of genius is magnificent ; the
more so as it appears in Keats because it runs
parallel with deep humility in the presence of
the masters of his art. Naturally, the masters
who were in their graves were the ones he rev-
erenced the most and read without stint. But
it was by no means essential that a poet be a
dead poet before Keats did him homage. It
is impossible to think that Keats's attitude to-
wards Wordsworth was other than finely appre-
ciative, in spite of the fact that he applauded
Reynolds's Peter Bell, and inquired almost petu-
lantly why one should be teased with Words-
worth's ' Matthew with a bough of wilding in
his hand.' But it is also impossible that his
sense of humor should not have been aroused
by much that he found in Wordsworth, It was
Wordsworth he meant when he said, 'Every
man has his speculations, but every man does
not brood and peacock over them till he makes
a false coinage and deceives himself,' — a sen-
tence, by the way, quite as unconsciously funny
as some of the things he laughed at in the works
of his great contemporary.

LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS 127

It will be pertinent to quote here two or
three of the good critical words which Keats
scattered through his letters. Emphasizing the
use of simple means in his art, he says, * I think
that poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and
not by singularity ; it should strike the reader
as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and
appear almost a remembrance.'

* We hate poetry that has a palpable design
upon us. . . . Poetry should be great and un-
obtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul,
and does not startle it or amaze it with itself,
but with its subject.' Or as Ruskin has put
the thing with respect to painting, * Entirely
first-rate work is so quiet and natural that there
can be no dispute over it.'

Keats appears to have been in no sense a
hermit. With the exception of Byron, he was
perhaps less of a recluse than any of his poeti-
cal contemporaries. With respect to society
he frequently practiced total abstinence; but
the world was amusing, and he liked it. He
was fond of the theatre, fond of whist, fond of
visiting the studios, fond of going to the houses
of his friends. But he would run no risks ; he
was shy and he was proud. He dreaded con-
tact with the ultra-fashionables. Naturally, his
opportunities for such intercourse were limited,
but he cheerfully neglected his opportunities.
I doubt if he ever bewailed his humble origin ;
nevertheless, the constitution of English society

128 LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS

would hardly admit of his forgetting it. He
had that pardonable pride which will not allow a
man to place himself among those who, though
outwardly fair-spoken, offer the insult of a hos-
tile and patronizing mental attitude.

Most of his friendships were with men, and
this is to his credit. The man is spiritually
warped who is incapable of a deep and abiding
friendship with one of his own sex ; and to go
a step farther, that man is utterly to be dis-
trusted whose only friends are among women.
We may not be prepared to accept the radical
position of a certain young thinker, who pro-
claims, in season, but defiantly, that 'men are
the idealists, after all ; ' yet it is easy to com-
prehend how one may take this point of view.
The friendships of men are a vastly more inter-
esting and poetic study than the friendships of
men and women. This is in the nature of the
case. It is the usual victory of the normal
over the abnormal. As a rule, it is impossible
for a friendship to exist between a man and
woman, unless the man and woman in question
be husband and wife. Then it is as rare as it
is beautiful. And with men, the most admi-
rable spectacle is not always that where attend-
ant circumstances prompt to heroic display of
friendship, for it is often so much easier to
die than to live. But you may see young
men pledging their mutual love and support in
this difficult and adventurous quest of what is

LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS 129

noblest in the art of living. Such love will not
urge to a theatrical posing, and it can hardly
find expression in words. Words seem to pro-
fane it. I do not say that Keats stood in such
an ideal relation to any one of his many friends
whose names appear in the letters. He gave
of himself to them all, and he received much
from each. No man of taste and genius could
have been other than flattered by the way in
which Keats approached him. He was charm-
ing in his attitude toward Haydon ; and when
Haydon proposed sending Keats's sonnet to
Wordsworth, the young poet wrote, * The Idea
of your sending it to Wordsworth put me out
of breath — you know with what Reverence I
would send my well wishes to him.'

But interesting as a chapter on Keats's
friendships with men would be, we are bound
to confess that in dramatic intensity it would
grow pale when laid beside that fiery love pas-
sage of his life, his acquaintance with Fanny
Brawne. The thirty-nine letters given in the
fourth volume of Buxton Forman's edition of
Keats s Works tell the story of this affair of a
poet's heart. These are the letters which Mr.
William Watson says he has never read, and at
which no consideration shall ever induce him
to look. But Mr. Watson reflects upon people
who have been human enough to read them
when he compares such a proceeding on his
own part (were he able to be guilty of it) to the

130 LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS

indelicacy of ' listening at a keyhole or spying
over a wall.' This is not a just illustration.
The man who takes upon himself the responsi-
bility of being the first to open such intimate
letters, and adds thereto the infinitely greater
responsibility of publishing them in so attract-
ive a form that he who runs will stop running
in order to read, — such an editor will need to
satisfy Mr. Watson that in so doing he was not
listening at a keyhole or spying over a wall
For the general public, the wall is down, and
the door containing the keyhole thrown open.
Perhaps our duty is not to look. I, for one,
wish that great men would not leave their
love letters around. Nay, I wish you a better
wish than that : it is that the perfect taste of
the gentleman and scholar who gave us in its
present form the correspondence of Carlyle and
Emerson, the early and later letters of Carlyle,
and the letters of Lowell might have control
of the private papers of every man of genius
whose teachings the world holds dear. He
would need for this an indefinite lease upon
life ; but since I am wishing, let me wish
largely. There is need of such wishing. Many
editors have been called, and only two or three
chosen.

But why one who reads the letters of Keats
to Fanny Brawne should have any other feel-
ing than that of pity for a poor fellow who was
so desperately in love as to be wretched be-

LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS 131

cause of it I do not see. Even a cynic will
grant that Keats was not disgraced, since it is
very clear that he did not yield readily to what
Dr. Holmes calls the great passion. He had a
complacent boyish superiority of attitude with
respect to all those who are weak enough to
love women. * Nothing,' he says, * strikes me
so forcibly with a sense of the ridiculous as
love. A man in love I do think cuts the sorry-
est figure in the world. Even when I know a
poor fool to be really in pain about it I could
burst out laughing in his face. His pathetic
visage becomes irresistible.' Then he speaks
of that dinner party of stutterers and squinters
described in the Spectator, and says that it
would please him more * to scrape together a
party of lovers.' If this letter be genuine and
the date of it correctly given, it was written
three months after he had succumbed to the
attractions of Fanny Brawne. Perhaps he was
trying to brave it out, as one may laugh to con-
ceal embarrassment.

In a much earlier letter than this he hopes
he shall never marry, but nevertheless has a
good deal to say about a young lady with fine
eyes and fine manners and a * rich Eastern
look.' He discovers that he can talk to her
without being uncomfortable or ill at ease. * I
am too much occupied in admiring to be awk-
ward or in a tremble. . . . She kept me awake
one night as a tune of Mozart's might do. . . .

132 LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS

I don't cry to take the moon home with me in
my pocket, nor do I fret to leave her behind
me.' But he was not a Httle touched, and
found it easy to fill two pages on the subject
of this dark beauty. She was a friend of the
Reynolds family. She crosses the stage of the
Keats drama in a very impressive manner, and
then disappears.

The most extraordinary passage to be met
with in relation to the poet's attitude towards
women is in a letter written to Benjamin Bailey
in July, 1818. As a partial hint towards its full
meaning I would take two phrases in Daniel
Deronda. George Eliot says of Gwendolen
Harleth that there was * a certain fierceness of
maidenhood in her,' which expression is quoted
here only to emphasize the girl's feeling towards
men as described a little later, when Rex Gas-
coigne attempted to tell her his love. Gwen-
dolen repulsed him with a sort of fury that was
surprising to herself. The author's interpreta-
tive comment is, ' The life of passion had begun
negatively in her!

So one might say of Keats that the life of
passion began negatively in him. He was con-
scious of a hostility of temper towards women.
* I am certain I have not a right feeling toward
women — at this moment I am striving to be
just to them, but I cannot.' He certainly
started with a preposterously high ideal, for he
says that when a schoolboy he thought a fair

LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS 133

woman a pure goddess. And now he is dis-
appointed at finding women only the equals of
men. This disappointment helps to give rise
to that antagonism which is almost inexplicable
save as George Eliot's phrase throws light upon
it. He thinks that he insults women by these
perverse feelings of unprovoked hostility. * Is
it not extraordinary,' he exclaims, * when among
men I have no evil thoughts, no malice, no
spleen ; I feel free to speak or to be silent ;
... I am free from all suspicion, and comfort-
able. When I am among women, I have evil
thoughts, malice, spleen ; I cannot speak or be
silent ; I am full of suspicions, and therefore
listen to nothing ; I am in a hurry to be gone.'
He wonders how this trouble is to be cured.
He speaks of it as a prejudice produced from
* a gordian complication of feelings, which must
take time to unravel.' And then, with a good-
humored, characteristic touch, he drops the
subject, saying, 'After all, I do think better of
women than to suppose they care whether Mis-
ter John Keats, five feet high, likes them or
not.'

Three or four months after writing these
words he must have begun his friendly rela-
tions with the Brawne family. This would be
in October or November, 18 18. Keats's de-
scription of Fanny is hardly flattering, and not
even vivid. What is one to make of the color-
less expression * a fine style of countenance of

134 LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS

the lengthened sort ' ? But she was fair to
him, and any beauty beyond that would have
been superfluous. We look at the silhouette
and sigh in vain for trace of the loveliness
which ensnared Keats. But if our daguerreo-
types of forty years ago can so entirely fail of
giving one line of that which in its day passed
for dazzling beauty, let us not be unreasonable
in our demands upon the artistic capabilities of
a silhouette. Not infrequently is it true that
the style of dress seems to disfigure. But we
have learned, in course of experience, that
pretty women manage to be pretty, however
much fashion, with their cordial help, disguises
them.

It is easy to see from the letters that Keats
was a difficult lover. Hard to please at the
best, his two sicknesses, one of body and one
of heart, made him whimsical Nothing less
than a woman of genius could possibly have
managed him. He was jealous, perhaps quite
unreasonably so. Fanny Brawne was young, a
bit coquettish, buoyant, and he misinterpreted
her vivacity. She liked what is commonly
called * the world,' and so did he when he was
well ; but looking through the discolored glass
of ill health, all nature was out of harmony.
For these reasons it happens that the letters at
times come very near to being documents in
love-madness. Many a line in them gives
sharp pain, as a record of heart-suffering must

LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS 135

always do. You may read Richard Steele's
love letters for pleasure, and have it. The
love letters of Keats scorch and sting ; and the
worst of it is that you cannot avoid reflecting
upon the transitory character of such a passion.
Withering young love like this does not last.
It may burn itself out, or, what is quite as
likely, it may become sober and rational. But
in its earlier maddened state it cannot possibly
last ; a man would die under it. Men as a rule
do not so die, for the race of the Azra is nearly
extinct.

These Brawne letters, however, are not with-
out their bright side ; and it is wonderful to see
how Keats's elastic nature would rebound the
instant that the pressure of the disease relaxed
He is at times almost gay. The singing of a
thrush prompts him to talk in his natural epis-
tolary voice : * There 's the Thrush again — I
can't afford it — he '11 run me up a pretty Bill
for Music — besides he ought to know I deal at
dementi's.' And in the letter which he wrote
to Mrs. Brawne from Naples is a touch of the
old bantering Keats when he says that * it 's
misery to have an intellect in splints.' He was
never strong enough to write again to Fanny,
or even to read her letters.

I should like to close this reading with a few
sentences from a letter written to Reynolds in
February, 181 8, Keats says: 'I had an idea
that a man might pass a very pleasant life in

136 LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS

this manner — let him on a certain day read a
certain Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose,
and let him wander with it, and muse upon it,
. . . and prophesy upon it, and dream upon it,
until it becomes stale — but when will it do so ?
Never! When Man has arrived at a certain
ripeness in intellect any one grand and spiritual
passage serves him as a starting post towards
all the " two-and-thirty Palaces." How happy
is such a voyage of conception, what delicious
diligent Indolence! . . . Nor will this sparing
touch of noble Books be any irreverence to
their Writers — for perhaps the honors paid by
Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the
Benefit done by great Works to the Spirit and
pulse of good by their mere passive existence.'
May we not say that the final test of great
literature is that it be able to be read in the
manner here indicated ? As Keats read, so did
he write. His own work was

* accomplished in repose
Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.'

AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST

The fathers in English literature were not a
little given to writing books which they called
* anatomies.' Thomas Nash, for example, wrote
an Anatomy of Absurdities, and Stubbes an
Anatomy of Abuses. Greene, the novelist, en-
titled one of his romances Arbasto, the Ana-
tomy of Fortune. The most famous book which
bears a title of this kind is the Anatomy of
Melancholy, by Robert Burton. It is notable,
first, for its inordinate length ; second, for its
readableness, considering the length and the
depth of it ; third, for its prodigal and bar-
baric display of learning ; and last, because it
is said to have had the effect of making the
most indolent man of letters of the eighteenth
century get up betimes in the morning. Why
Dr. Johnson needed to get up in order to read
the Anatomy of Melancholy will always be an
enigma to some. Perhaps he did not get up.
Perhaps he merely sat up and reached for the
book, which would have been placed conven-
iently near the bed. For the virtue of the act
resided in the circumstance of his being awake
and reading a good book two hours ahead of

138 AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST

his wonted time for beginning his day. If he
colored his remark so as to make us think
he got up and dressed before reading, he may
be forgiven. It was innocently spoken. Just
as a man who lives in one room will somehow
involuntarily fall into the habit of speaking
of that one room in the plural, so the doctor
added a touch which would render him heroic
in the eyes of those who knew him, I should
like a pictorial book-plate representing Dr.
Johnson, in gown and nightcap, sitting up in
bed reading the Anatomy of Melancholy, with
Hodge, the cat, curled up contentedly at his
feet.

It would be interesting to know whether
Johnson ever read, in bed or out, a book called
Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit. It was pub-
lished in the spring of 1579 by Gabriel Cawood,
'dwelling in Paules Churchyard,' and was fol-
lowed one year later by a second part, Euphues
and his England. These books were the work
of John Lyly, a young Oxford Master of Arts.
According to the easy orthography of that time
(if the word orthography may be applied to a
practice by virtue of which every man spelled
as seemed right in his own eyes), Lyly's name
is found in at least six forms : Lilye, Lylie,
Lilly, Lyllie, Lyly, and Lylly. Remembering
the willingness of i and y to bear one another's
burdens, we may still exclaim, with Dr. Ingleby,
' Great is the mystery of archaic spelling ! '

AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST 139

Great indeed when a man sometimes had more
suits of letters to his name than suits of clothes
to his back. That the name of this young au-
thor was pronounced as was the name of the
flower, lily, seems the obvious inference from
Henry Upchear's verses, which contain pun-
ning allusions to Lyly and Robert Greene : —
* Of all the flowers a Lillie once I lov'd
Whose laboring beautie brancht itself abroad,' etc.

Original editions of the Anatomy of Wit and
its fellow are very rare. Probably there is not
a copy of either book in the United States.
This statement is ventured in good faith, and
may have the effect of bringing to light a
hitherto neglected copy.^ Strange it is that
princely collectors of yore appear not to have
cared for Euphues. Surely one would not ven-
ture to affirm that John, Duke of Roxburghe,
might not have had it if he had wanted it. The
book is not to be found in his sale catalogue ;
he had Lyly's plays in quarto, seven of them

1 The writer of this paper once sent to that fine scholar
and gracious gentleman, Professor Edward Arber, to inquire
whether in his opinion one might hope to buy at a modest
price a copy of either the first or the second part of Euphues.
Professor Arber's reply was amusingly emphatic : ' You might
as well try to purchase one of Mahomet's old slippers.' But
in July of 1896 there were four copies of this old novel on
sale at one New York bookstore. One of the copies was
of great beauty, consisting of the two parts of the story bound
up together in a really sumptuous fashion. The price was
not large as prices of such books go, but on the other hand
' 'a was not small.'

I40 AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST

each marked 'rare,' and he had two copies
of a well-known book called Euphues Golden
Legacie, written by Thomas Nash. The Per-
kins Sale catalogue shows neither of Lyly's
novels. List after list of the spoils of mighty
book-hunters has only a blank where the Ana-
tomy of Wit ought to be. From this we may
argue great scarcity, or great indifference, or
both. In the compact little reprint made by
Professor Arber one may read this moral tal^
which was fashionable when Shakespeare was
a youth of sixteen. For convenience it will be
advisable to speak of it as a single work in two
parts, for such it practically is.

To pronounce upon this romance is not easy.
We read a dozen or two of pages, and say, * This
is very fantastical humours.' We read further,
and are tempted to follow Sir Hugh to the
extent of declaring, 'This is lunatics.' One
may venture the not profound remark that it
takes all sorts of books to make a literature.
Euphues is one of the books that would prompt
to that very remark. For he who first said
that it takes all sorts of people to make a world
was markedly impressed with the differences
between those people and himself. He had in
mind eccentric folk, types which deviate from
the normal and the sane. So Euphues is a
very Malvolio among books, cross-gartered and
wreathed as to its countenance with set smiles.
The curious in literary history will always enjoy

AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST 141

such a production. The verdict of that part of
the reading world which keeps a book ahve by
calUng for fresh copies of it after the old copies
are worn out is against Euphues. It had a vi-
vacious existence between 1579 and 1636, and
then went into a literary retirement lasting two
hundred and thirty-six years. When it again
came before the public it was introduced as
*a great bibliographical rarity.' Its fatal old-
fashionedness hangs like a millstone about its
neck. In the poems of Chaucer and the dramas
of Shakespeare are a thousand touches which
make the reader feel that Chaucer and Shake-
speare are his contemporaries, that they have
written in his own time, and published but yes-
terday. Read Euphues, and you will say to
yourself, 'That book must have been written
three hundred years ago, and it looks its age.'
Yet it has its virtues. One may not say of it,
as Johnson said of the Rehearsal, that it * has
not wit enough to keep it sweet,' Neither may
he, upon second thought, conclude that * it has
not vitality enough to preserve it from putre-
faction.' It has, indeed, a bottom of good
sense ; and so had Malvolio. It is filled from
end to beginning with wit, or with what passed
for wit among many readers of that day. Often
the wit is of a tawdry and spectacular sort, —
mere verbal wit, the use of a given word not
because it is the best word, the most fitting
word, but because the author wants a word

142 AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST

beginning with the letter G, or the letter M, or
the letter F, as the case may be. On the sec-
ond page of Greene's Arbasto is this sentence :

* He did not so much as vouchsafe to give an
eare to my parley or an eye to my person.^
Greene learned this trick from Lyly, who was
a master of the art. The sentence represents
one of the common forms in Euphues, such as
this : * To the stomach quatted with dainties
all delicates seem queasie.' Sometimes the bal-
ance is preserved by three words on a side.
For example, the companions whom Euphues
found in Naples practiced arts * whereby they
might either soake his purse to reape commo-
dotie, or sootk his person to winne credited
Other illustrations are these : I can neither

* remember our miseries without grief e^ nor re-
dress e our mishaps without grones.' ' If the
wasting of our money might not dehort us, yet
the wounding of our mindes should deterre
us.' This next sentence, with its combination
of K sounds, clatters like a pair of castanets :
'Though Curio bee as hot as a toast, yet
Euphues is as cold as a clocke, though hee
bee a cocke of the game, yet Euphues is con-
tent to bee craven and crye creake.'

Excess of alliteration is the most obvious
feature of Lyly's style. That style has been
carefully analyzed by those who are learned in
such things. The study is interesting, with its
talk of alliteration and transverse alliteration,

AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST 143

antithesis, climax, and assonance. In truth,
one does not know which to admire the more,
the ingenuity of the man who constructed the
book, or the ingenuity of the scholars who have
explained how he did it. Between Lyly on the
one hand, and the grammarians on the other,
the reader is almost tempted to ask if this be
literature or mathematics. Whether Lyly got
his style from Pettie or Guevara is an impor-
tant question, but he made it emphatically his
own, and it will never be called by any other
name than Euphuism. The making of a book
on this plan is largely the result of astonishing
mental gymnastics. It commands respect in
no small degree, because Lyly was able to keep
it up so long. To walk from New York to
Albany, as did the venerable Weston not so
very long since, is a great test of human en-
durance. But walking is the employment of
one's legs and body in God's appointed way of
getting over the ground. Suppose a man were
to undertake to hop on one leg from New York
to Albany, the utility or the aesthetic value of
the performance would be less obvious. The
most successful artist in hopping could hardly
expect applause from the right-minded. He
would excite attention because he was able to
hop so far, and not because he was the expo-
nent of a praiseworthy method of locomotion.
Lyly gained eminence by doing to a greater ex-
tent than any man a thing that was not worth

144 AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST

doing at all. One is more astonished at Lyly's
power of endurance as author than at his own
power of endurance as reader. For the vol-
ume is actually readable even at this day. Did
Lyly not grow wearied of perpetually riding
these alliterative trick-ponies .-' Apparently not.
The book is * executed ' with a vivacity, a dash,
a *go,' that will captivate any reader who is
willing to meet the author halfway. Euphues
became the rage, and its literary style the fash-
ion. How or why must be left to him to ex-
plain who can tell why sleeves grow small and
then grow big, why skirts are at one time only
two and a half yards around and at another
time five and a half or eight yards around. An
Elizabethan gentleman might be too poor to
dress well, but he would squander his last penny
in getting his ruff starched, Lyly's style bris-
tles with extravagances of the starched ruff
sort, which only serve to call attention to the
intellectual deficiencies in the matter of doublet
and hose.

Of plot or story there is but little. The
hero, Euphues, who gives the title to the ro-
mance, is a young, clever, and rich Athenian.
He visits Naples, where his money and wit
attract many to his side. By his careless,
pleasure-seeking mode of life he wakens the
fatherly interest of a wise old gentleman, Eubu-
lus, who calls upon him to warn him of his
danger. The conversation between the two is

AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST 145

the first and not the least amusing illustration
of the courtly verbal fencing with which the
book is filled. The advice of the old man only
provokes Euphues into making the sophistical
plea that his style of living is right because
nature prompts him to it ; and he leaves Eubu-
lus * in a great quandary ' and in tears. Never-
theless, the old gentleman has the righteous
energy which prompts him to say to the depart-
ing Euphues, already out of hearing, 'Seeing
thou wilt not buy counsel at the first hand
good cheap, thou shalt buy repentance at the
second hand, at such unreasonable rate, that
thou wilt curse thy hard pennyworth, and ban
thy hard heart.' Euphues takes to himself a
new sworn brother, one Philautus, who carries
him to visit his lady-love, Lucilla. Lucilla is
rude at first, but becomes enamored of Eu-
phues's conversational power, and finally of
himself. In fact, she unceremoniously throws
over her former lover, and tells her father that
she will either marry Euphues or else lead apes
in hell. This causes a break in the friendship
between Euphues and Philautus, and there is
an exchange of formidably worded letters, in
which Philautus reminds Euphues that all
Greeks are liars, and Euphues quotes Euripides
to the effect that all is lawful in love. Lucilla,
who is fickle, suddenly dismisses her new cava-
lier for yet a third, while Euphues and Philau-
tus, in the light of their common misfortune,

146 AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST

fall upon each other's necks and are reconciled.
Both profess themselves to have been fools,
while Euphues, as the greater and more recent
fool, composes a pamphlet against love. This
he calls a 'cooling-card.' It is addressed pri-
marily to Philautus, but contains general advice
for ' all fond lovers.' Euphues' s own cure was
radical, for he says, * Now do I give a farewell
to the world, meaning rather to macerate my-
self with melancholy, than pine in folly, rather
choosing to die in my study amidst my books
than to court it in Italy in the company of
ladies.' He returns to Athens, applies himself
to the study of philosophy, becomes public
reader in the University, and, as crowning evi-
dence that he has finished sowing his wild oats,
produces three volumes of lectures. Realizing
how much of his own youth has been wasted,
he writes a pamphlet on the education of the
young, a dialogue with an atheist, and these,
with a bundle of letters, make up the first part
of the Anatomy of Wit. From one of the let-
ters we learn that Lucilla was as frail as she
was beautiful, and that she died in evil report.
The story, including the diatribe against love,
is about as long as The Vicar of Wakefield.
It begins as a romance and ends as a sermon.

The continuation of the novel, Euphues and
his England, is a little over a third longer than
Part One. The two friends carry out their pro-
ject of visiting England. After a wearisome

AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST 147

voyage they reach Dover, view the cliffs and
the castle, and then proceed to Canterbury.
Between Canterbury and London they stop for
a while with a * comely olde gentleman,' Fidus,
who keeps bees and tells good stories. He
also gives sound advice as to the way in which
strangers should conduct themselves. A lively
bit of writing is the account which Fidus gives
of his commonwealth of bees. It is not accord-
ing to Lubbock, but is none the less amusing.
In London the two travelers become favorites
at the court. Philautus falls in love, to the
great annoyance of Euphues, who argues
mightily with him against such folly. The two
gentlemen expend vast resources of stationery
and language upon the subject. They quarrel
violently, and Euphues becomes so irritated
that he must needs go and rent new lodgings,
* which by good friends he quickly got, and
there fell to his Pater noster, where awhile,'
says Lyly innocently, * I will not trouble him in
his prayers.' They are reconciled later, and
Philautus obtains permission to love; but he
has discovered in the mean time that the lady
will not have him. The account of his passion,
how it * boiled and bubbled,' of his visit to the
soothsayer to purchase love charms, his stately
declamations to Camilla and her elaborate re-
plies to him, of his love letter concealed in a
pomegranate, and her answer stitched into a
copy of Petrarch, — is all very lively reading,

148 AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST

much more so than that dreary love-making
between Pyrocles and Philoclea, or between
any other pair of the many exceedingly tire-
some folk in Sidney's Arcadia. Grant that it
is deliciously absurd. It is not to be supposed
that a clever eighteen-year-old girl, replying to
a declaration of love, will talk in the language
of a trained nurse, and say : * Green sores are to
be dressed roughly lest they fester, tettars are
to be drawn in the beginning lest they spread,
Ringworms to be anointed when they first
appear lest they compass the whole body, and
the assaults of love to be beaten back at the
first siege lest they undermine at the second.'
Was ever suitor in this fashion rejected ! It
makes one think of some of the passages in the
History of John Buncle, where the hero pours
out a torrent of passionate phrases, and the
* glorious ' Miss Noel, in reply, begs that they
may take up some rational topic of conversa-
tion ; for example, what is his view of that
opinion which ascribes 'primaevity and sacred
prerogatives ' to the Hebrew language.

But Philautus does not break his heart over
Camilla's rejection. He is consoled with the
love of another fair maiden, marries her, and
settles in England. Euphues goes back to
Athens, and presently retires to the country,
where he follows the calling of one whose pro-
fession is melancholy. Like most hermits of
culture, he leaves his address with his banker.

AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST 149

We assume this, for he was very rich ; it is not
difficult to be a hermit on a large income. The
book closes with a section called 'Euphues
Glasse for Europe,' a thirty-page panegyric on
England and the Queen,

They say that this novel was very popular,
and certain causes of its popularity are not
difficult to come at. A large measure of the
success that Euphues had is due to the com-
monplaceness of its observations. It abounds
in proverbs and copy-book wisdom. In this
respect it is as homely as an almanac. John
Lyly had a great store of ' miscellany thoughts,'
and he cheerfully parted with them. His book
succeeded as Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy
and Watts' On the Mind succeeded. People
believed that they were getting ideas, and peo-
ple like what they suppose to be ideas if no
great effort is required in the getting of them.
It is astonishing how often the world needs to
be advised of the brevity of time. Yet every
person who can wade in the shallows of his own
mind and not wet his shoe-tops finds a sweet
melancholy and a stimulating freshness in the
thought that time is short. John Lyly said,
'There is nothing more swifter than time,
nothing more sweeter,' — and countless Eliza-
bethan gentlemen and ladies underscored that
sentence, or transferred it to their common-
place books, — if they had such painful aids to
culture, — and were comforted and edified by

I50 AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST

the discovery that brilliant John Lyly had
made. This glib command of the matter-of-
course, with a ready use of the proverb and the

* old said saw,' is a marked characteristic of the
work. It emphasizes the youth of its author.
We learn what could not have been new even
in 1579, that 'in misery it is a great comfort to
have a companion ; ' that ' a new broom sweep-
eth clean;' that 'delays breed dangers;' that

* nothhig is so perilous as procrastination ; * that
' a burnt child dreadeth the fire ; ' that it is well
not to make comparisons *lest comparisons
should seem odious ; ' that * it is too late to
shut the stable door when the steed is stolen ; '
that ' many things fall between the cup and the
lip ; ' and that ' marriages are made in heaven,
though consummated on earth.' With these
old friends come others, not altogether familiar
of countenance, and quaintly archaic in their
dress : * It must be a wily mouse that shall
breed in the cat's ear ; ' ' It is a mad hare that
will be caught with a tabor, and a foolish bird
that stayeth the laying salt on her tail, and a
blind goose that cometh to the fox's sermon.'
Lyly would sometimes translate a proverb ; he
does not tell us that fine words butter no pars-
nips, but says, 'Fair words fat few,' — which is
delightfully alliterative, but hardly to be ac-
counted an improvement. Expressions that
are surprisingly modern turn up now and then.
One American street urchin taunts another by

AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST 151

telling him that he does n't know enough to
come in when it rains. The saying is at least
three hundred years old, for Lyly says, in a
dyspeptic moment, ' So much wit is sufficient
for a woman as when she is in the rain can
warn her to come out of it.'

Another cause of the popularity of Euphues
is its sermonizing. The world loves to hear
good advice. The world is not nervously anx-
ious to follow the advice, but it understands
the edification that comes by preaching. With
many persons, to have heard a sermon is almost
equivalent to having practiced the virtues taught
in the sermon. Churches are generally ac-
cepted as evidences of civilization. A man
who is exploiting the interests of a new West-
ern town will invariably tell you that it has so
many churches. Also, an opera-house. The
English world above all other worlds loves to
hear good advice. England is the natural
home of the sermon. Jusserand notes, almost
with wonder, that in the annual statistics of
the London publishers the highest numbers
indicate the output of sermons and theological
works. Then come novels. John Lyly was
ingenious ; he combined good advice and story-
telling. Not skillfully, hiding the sermon amid
lively talk and adventure, but blazoning the
fact that he was going to moralize as long as
he would. He shows no timidity, even declares
upon one of his title-pages that in this volume

IS2 AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST

* there is small offense by lightness given to the
wise, and less occasion of looseness proffered
to the wanton.' Such courage in this day
would be apt seriously to injure the sale of a
novel. Did not Ruskin declare that Miss
Edgeworth had made virtue so obnoxious that
since her time one hardly dared express the
slightest bias in favor of the Ten Command-
ments ? Lyly knew the public for which he
acted as literary caterer. They liked sermons,
and sermons they should have. Nearly every
character in the book preaches, and Euphues is
the most gifted of them all. Even that old
gentleman of Naples who came first to Euphues
because his heart bled to see so noble a youth
given to loose living has the tables turned upon
him, for Euphues preaches to the preacher
upon the sovereign duty of resignation to the
will of God.

A noteworthy characteristic is the frequency
of Lyly's classical allusions. If the only defini-
tion of pedantry be ' vain and ostentatious dis-
play of learning,' I question if we may dismiss
Lyly's wealth of classical lore with the word
'pedantry.' He was fresh from his university
life. If he studied at all when he was at Ox-
ford, he must have studied Latin and Greek,
for after these literatures little else was studied.
Young men and their staid tutors were com-
pelled to know ancient history and mytho-
logy. Like Heine, they may have taken a * real

AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST 153

delight in the mob of gods and goddesses who
ran so jolly naked about the world.' In the
first three pages of the Anatomy of Wit there
are twenty classical names, ten of them coupled
each with an allusion. Nobody begins a speech
without a reference of this nature within call-
ing distance. Euphues and Philautus fill their
talk with evidences of a classical training. The
ladies are provided with apt remarks drawn
from the experiences of Helen, of Cornelia, of
Venus, of Diana, and Vesta. Even the master
of the ship which conveyed Euphues from
Naples to England declaims about Ulysses and
Julius Caesar. This naturally destroys all dra-
matic effect. Everybody speaks Euphuism,
though classical allusion alone is not essentially
Euphuistic. John Lyly would be the last man
to merit any portion of that fine praise bestowed
by Hazlitt upon Shakespeare when he said that
Shakespeare's genius * consisted in the faculty
of transforming himself at will into whatever
he chose.* Lyly's genius was the opposite of
this ; it consisted in the faculty of transform-
ing everybody into a reduplication of himself.
There is no change in style when the narrative
parts end and the dialogue begins. All the
persons of the drama utter one strange tongue.
They are no better than the characters in a
Punch and Judy show, where one concealed
manipulator furnishes voice for each of the
figures. But in Lyly's novel there is not even

IS4 AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST

an attempt at the most rudimentary ventrilo-
quism.

What makes the book still less a reflection
of life is that the speakers indulge in intermi-
nably long harangues. No man (unless he were
a Coleridge) would be tolerated who talked in
society at such inordinate length. When the
characters can't talk to one another they retire
to their chambers and declaim to themselves.
They polish their language with the same care,
open the classical dictionary, and have at them-
selves in good set terms. Philautus, inflamed
with love of Camilla, goes to his room and pro-
nounces a ten-minute discourse on the pangs of
love, having only himself for auditor. They
are amazingly patient under the verbal inflic-
tions of one another. Euphues, angry with
Philautus for having allowed himself to fall in
love, takes him to task in a single speech con-
taining four thousand words. If Lyly had set
out with the end in view of constructing a story
by putting into it alone 'what is not life,' his
product would have been what we find it now.
One could easily believe the whole affair to
have been intended for a tremendous joke were
it not that the tone is so serious. We are
accustomed to think of youth as light-hearted :
but look at a serious child, — there is nothing
more serious in the world. Lyly was twenty-
six years when he first published. Much of the
seriousness in his romance is the burden of

AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST 155

twenty-six years' experience of life, a burden
greater perhaps than he ever afterward carried.
Being, as we take it, an unmarried man, Lyly
gives directions for managing a wife. He be-
lieves in the wholesome doctrine that a man
should select his own wife. * Made marriages
by friends ' are dangerous. * I had as lief
another should take measure by his back of my
apparel as appoint what wife I shall have by
his mind.' He prefers in a wife 'beauty before
riches, and virtue before blood.' He holds to
the radical English doctrine of wifely submis-
sion ; there is no swerving from the position
that the man is the woman's 'earthly master,'^
but in taming a wife no violence is to be em-
ployed. Wives are to be subdued with kind-
ness. * If their husbands with great threaten-
ings, with jars, with brawls, seek to make them
tractable, or bend their knees, the more stiff
they make them in the joints, the oftener they
go about by force to rule them, the more fro-
ward they find them ; but using mild words,
gentle persuasions, familiar counsel, entreaty,
submission, they shall not only make them to
bow their knees, but to hold up their hands,
not only cause them to honor them, but to.
stand in awe of them.' By such methods will
that supremest good of an English home be
brought about, namely, that the wife shall stand
in awe of her husband,

1 Lady Burton's Dedication of her husband's biography, —
' To my earthly master.' etc.

IS6 AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST

The young author admits that some wives
have the domineering instinct, and that way
danger Hes. A man must look out for himself.
If he is not to make a slave of his wife, he is
also not to be too submissive ; * that will cause
her to disdain thee.' Moreover, he must have
an eye to the expenditure. She may keep the
keys, but he will control the pocket-book. The
model wife in Ecclesiastes had greater privi-
leges ; she could not only consider a piece of
ground, but she could buy it if she liked it.
Not so this well-trained wife of Lyly's novel.
*Let all the keys hang at her girdle, but the
purse at thine, so shalt thou know what thou
dost spend, and how she can spare.' But in
setting forth his theory for being happy though
married, Lyly, methinks, preaches a dangerous
doctrine in this respect : he hints at the possi-
bility of a man's wanting, in vulgar parlance, to
go on a spree, expresses no question as to the
propriety of his so doing, but says that if a man
does let himself loose in this fashion his wife
must not know it. * Imitate the kings of Per-
sia, who when they were given to riot kept no
company with their wives, but when they used
good order had their queens even at the table.'
In short, the wife was to duplicate the moods
of her husband. * Thou must be a glass to thy
wife, for in thy face must she see her own ; for
if when thou laughest she weep, when thou
mournest she giggle, the one is a manifest sign

AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST 157

she delighteth in others, the other a token she
despiseth thee.' John Lyly was a wise youth.
He struck the keynote of the mode in which
most incompatible marriages are played when
he said that it was a bad sign if one's wife gig-
gled when one was disposed to be melancholy.

An interesting study is the author's attitude
toward foreign travel. It would appear to have
been the fashion of the time to indulge in much
invective against foreign travel, but neverthe-
less— to travel. Many men believed with
young Valentine that 'home keeping youth
have ever homely wits,' while others were rather
of Ascham's mind when he said, * I was once in
Italy, but I thank God my stay there was only
nine days.' Lyly came of a nation of travelers.
Then as now it was true that there was no
accessible spot of the globe upon which the
Englishman had not set his foot. Nomadic
England went abroad ; sedentary England
stayed at home to rail at him for so doing.
Aside from that prejudice which declared that
all foreigners were fools, there was a well-
founded objection to the sort of traveling usu-
ally described as seeing the world. Young
men went upon the continent to see question-
able forms of pleasure, perhaps to practice
them. Whether justly or not, common report
named Italy as the higher school of pleasurable
vices, and Naples as the city where one's doc-
torate was to be obtained. Gluttony and Ucen-

IS8 AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST

tiousness are the sins of Naples. Eubulus tells
Euphues that in that city are those who ' sleep
with meat in their mouths, with sin in their
hearts, and with shame in their houses.' There
is no limit to the inconveniences of traveling.
* Thou must have the back of an ass to bear all,
and the snout of a swine to say nothing. . . .
Travelers must sleep with their eyes open lest
they be slain in their beds, and wake with their
eyes shut lest they be suspected by their looks,'
Journeys by the fireside are better. ' If thou
covet to travel strange countries, search the
maps, there shalt thou see much with great
pleasure and small pains, if to be conversant in
all courts, read histories, where thou shalt
understand both what the men have been and
what their manners are, and methinketh there
must be much delight where there is no dan-
ger.' Perhaps Lyly intended to condemn trav-
eling with character unformed. A boy returned
with more vices than he went forth with pence,
and was able to sin both by experience and
authority. Lest he should be thought to speak
with uncertain voice upon this matter Lyly
gives Euphues a story to tell in which the chief
character describes the effect of traveling upon
himself, 'There was no crime so barbarous,
no murder so bloody, no oath so blasphemous,
no vice so execrable, but that I could readily
recite where I learned it, and by rote repeat the
peculiar crime of every particular country, city,

AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST 159

town, village, house, or chamber.' Here, in-
deed, is no lack of plain speech.

In the section called 'Euphues and his
Ephcebus' twenty-nine pages are devoted to
the question of the education of youth. It is
largely taken from Plutarch. Some of the
points are these: that a mother shall herself
nurse her child, that the child shall be early
framed to manners, 'for as the Steele is im-
printed in the soft waxe, so learning is engraven
in ye minde of an young Impe.' He is not to
hear 'fonde fables or filthy tales.' He is to
learn to pronounce distinctly and to be kept
from * barbarous talk,' that is, no dialect and no
slang. He is to become expert in martial
affairs, in shooting and darting, and he must
hunt and hawk for his ' honest recreation.' If
he will not study, he is not to be 'scourged
with stripes, but threatened with words, not
dulled with blows, like servants, the which, the
more they are beaten the better they bear it,
and the less they care for it.' In taking this
position Lyly is said to be only following As-
cham. Ascham was not the first in his own
time to preach such doctrine. Forty years be-
fore the publication of The Schoolmaster, Sir
Thomas Elyot, in his book called The Gover-
nour, raised his voice against the barbarity of
teachers 'by whom the wits of children be
dulled,' — almost the very words of John Lyly.

EuphueSy besides being a treatise on love

i6o AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST

and education, is a sort of Tudor tract upon
animated nature. It should be a source of joy
unspeakable to the general reader if only for
what it teaches him in the way of natural his-
tory. How much of what is most gravely
stated here did John Lyly actually believe ? It
is easy to grant so orthodox a statement of
physical fact as that 'the Sunne doth harden
the durte, and melte the waxe;' but ere the
sentence be finished, the author calls upon us
to believe that 'Perfumes doth refresh the
Dove and kill the Betill.' The same reckless
extravagance of remark is to be noted when-
ever bird, beast, or reptile is mentioned. The
crocodile of Shakespeare's time must have been
a very contortionist among beasts, for, says
Lyly, * when one approacheth neere unto him,
[he] gathereth up himselfe into the roundnesse
of a ball, but running from him, stretcheth
himselfe into the length of a tree.' Perhaps
the fame of this creature's powers grew in the
transmission of the narrative from the banks of
the Nile to the banks of the Thames. The
ostrich was human in its vanity according to
Lyly; men and women sometimes pull out
their white hairs, but ' the Estritch, that taketh
the greatest pride in her feathers, picketh some
of the worst out and bumeth them.' Nay,
more than that, being in * great haste she prick-
eth none but hirselfe which causeth hir to
runne when she would rest.' We shall pre-

AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST i6i

sently expect to hear that ostriches wear boots
by the straps of which they lift themselves
over ten-foot woven-wire fences. But Lyly
used the conventional natural history that was
at hand, and troubled himself in no respect to
inquire about its truth or falsity.

There is yet another cause of the popularity
of this book in its own time, which has been
too little emphasized. It is that trumpet blast
of patriotism with which the volume ends. We
feel, as we read the thirty pages devoted to the
praise of England and the Queen, that this is
right, fitting, artistic, and we hope that it is tol-
erably sincere. Flattery came easily to men in
those days, and there was small hope of advance-
ment for one who did not master the art. But
there is a glow of earnestness in these para-
graphs rather convincing to the skeptic. Nor
would the book be complete without this eulogy.
We have had everything else ; a story for who
wanted a story, theories upon the education of
children, a body of mythological divinity, a dis-
cussion of methods of public speaking, advice
for men who are about to marry, a theological
sparring match, in which a man of straw is set
up to be knocked down, and is knocked down,
a thousand illustrations of wit and curious read-
ing, and now, as a thing that all men could
understand, the author tells Englishmen of
their own good fortune in being Englishmen,
and is finely outspoken in praise of what he
calls 'the blessed Island.'

i62 AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST

This is an old-fashioned vein, to be sure, —
the ad captandum trick of a popular orator
bent upon making a success. It is not looked
upon in all places with approval. 'Our unri-
valed prosperity ' was a phrase which greatly
irritated Matthew Arnold. Here in America,
are we not taught by a highly fastidious journal
that we may be patriotic if we choose, but we
must be careful how we let people know it "i
We must n't make a fuss about it. We
must n't be blatant. The star-spangled banner
on the public schools is at best a cheap and
vulgar expression of patriotism. But somehow
even this sort of patriotism goes with the peo-
ple, and perhaps these instincts of the common
folk are not entirely to be despised. Many a
reader of Euphues, who cared but little for its
elaborated style, who was not moved by its
orthodoxy, who did n't read books simply be-
cause they were fashionable, must have felt his
pulse stirred by Lyly's chant of England's
greatness. For Euphues is John Lyly, and
John Lyly's creed was substantially that of
the well-known hero of a now forgotten comic
opera, * I am an Englishman.'

In the thin disguise of the chief character of
his story the author describes the happy island,
its brave gentlemen and rich merchants, its fair
ladies and its noble Queen. The glories of
London, which he calls the storehouse and
mart of all Europe, and the excellence of Eng-

AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST 163

lish universities, * out of which do daily proceed
men of great wisdom,' are alike celebrated.
England's material wealth in mines and quar-
ries is amply set forth, also the fine qualities of
the breed of cattle, and the virtues of English
spaniels, hounds, and mastiffs; for these con-
stitute a sort of good that all could appreciate.
He is satirical at the expense of his country-
men's dress, — 'there is nothing in England
more constant than the inconstancie of attire,'
— but praises their silence and gravity at their
meals. They have wise ministers in the court,
and devout guardians of the true religion and
of the church. *0 thrice happy England,
where such councilors are, where such people
live, where such virtue springeth.'

In the paragraphs relating to the queen, Lyly
grows positively eloquent. He praises her
matchless beauty, her mercy, patience, and
moderation, and emphasizes the fact of her vir-
ginity to a degree that would have satisfied the
imperial votaress herself if but once she had
considered her admirer's words : * O fortunate
England that hath such a Queen ; ungratef uU,
if thou pray not for her ; wicked, if thou do not
love her ; miserable, if thou lose her.' He calls
down Heaven's blessings upon her that she
may be * triumphant in victories like the Palm
tree, fruitful in her age like the Vine, in all
ages prosperous, to all men gracious, in all
places glorious : so that there be no end of her
praise, until the end of all flesh.'

i64 AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST

With passages such as these, this interesting
book draws to a conclusion. A most singular
and original book, worthy to be read, unless,
indeed, the reading of these out-of-the-way vol-
umes were found to encroach upon time belong-
ing by right of eminent intellectual domain to
Chaucer and to Shakespeare, to Spenser and
to Milton. That Euphues is in no exact sense
a novel admits of little question. It is also a
brilliant illustration of how not to write Eng-
lish, Nevertheless it is very amusing, and its
disappearance would be a misfortune, since it
would eclipse the innocent gayety of many a
man who loves to bask in that golden sunshine
which streams from the pages of old English
books.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FAIR-
MINDED MAN

It is by no means necessary that one be a
man of letters in order to write a good book.
Some very admirable books have been written
by men who gave no especial thought to litera-
ture as an art. They wrote because they were
so fortunate as to find themselves in possession
of ideas, and not because they had determined
to become authors. Literature as such implies
sophistication, and people who devote them-
selves to literature do so from a variety of
motives. But these writers of whom I now
speak have a less complex thought back of their
work. They do not, for example, propose plea-
sure to the reader as an object in writing.
Their aim is single. They recount an experi-
ence, or plead a cause. Literature with them
is always a means to an end. They are like
pedestrians who never look upon walking as
other than a rational process for reaching a
given place. It does not occur to them that
walking makes for health and pleasure, and that
it is also an exercise for displaying a graceful
carriage, the set of the shoulders, the poise of
the head.

i66 A FAIR-MINDED MAN

To be sure one runs the risk of being de-
ceived in this matter. The actress who plays
the part of an unaffected young girl, for aught
that the spectator knows to the contrary may
be a pronounced woman of the world. Not
every author who says to the public 'excuse
my untaught manner ' is on this account to be
regarded as a literary ingenu. His simplicity
awakens distrust. The fact that he professes
to be a layman is a reason for suspecting him.
He is probably an adept, a master of the wiles
by which readers are snared

But aside from the cases in which deception
is practiced, or at least attempted, there is in
the world a respectable body of literature which
is not the work of literary men. Its chief
characteristic is sincerity. The writers of these
books are so busy in telling the truth that they
have no time to think of literature.

Among the more readable of these pieces is
that unpretentious volume in which Dr. Joseph
Priestley relates the story of his life. For in
classing this book with the writings of authors
who are not men of letters one surely does not
go wide of the mark. There is a sense in
which it is entirely proper to say that Priestley
was not a literary man. He produced twenty-
five volumes of * works,' but they were for use
rather than for art. He wrote on science, on
grammar, on theology, on law. He published
controversial tracts: 'Did So-and-So believe

A FAIR-MINDED MAN 167

so-and-so or something quite different ? ' and
then a discussion of the ' grounds ' of this be-
lief. He made 'rejoinders,' 'defenses,' 'ani-
madversions,' and printed the details of his
Experiments on Different Kinds of Air. This
is distinctly uninviting. Let me propose an
off-hand test by which to determine whether or
no a given book is literature. Can you imagine
Charles Lamb in the act of reading that book ?
If you can; it 's literature ; if you can't, it is n't.
I find it difficult to conceive of Charles Lamb
as mentally immersed in the Letter to an Anti-
pcEdobaptist or the Doctrine of Phlogiston
Established, but it is natural to think of him
turning the pages of Priestley's Memoir, read-
ing each page with honest satisfaction and pro-
nouncing the volume to be worthy the title of
A BOOK.

It is a plain unvarnished tale and entirely
innocent of those arts by the practice of which
authors please their public. There is no elo-
quence, no rhetoric, no fine writing of any sort.
The two or three really dramatic events in
Priestley's career are not handled with a view
to producing dramatic effect. There are places
where the author might easily have become
impassioned. But he did not become impas-
sioned. Not a few paragraphs contain unwrit-
ten poems. The simple-hearted Priestley was
unconscious of this, or if conscious, then too
modest to make capital of it. He had never

168 A FAIR-MINDED MAN

aspired to the reputation of a clever writer, but
rather of a useful one. His aim was quite as
simple when he wrote the Memoir as when he
wrote his various philosophical reports. He
never deviated into brilliancy. He set down
plain statements about events which had hap-
pened to him, and people whom he had known.
Nevertheless the narrative is charming, and the
reasons of its charm are in part these : —

In the first place the book belongs to that
department of literature known as autobiogra-
phy. Autobiography has peculiar virtues. The
poorest of it is not without some flavor of life,
and at its best it is transcendent. A notable
value lies in its power to stimulate. This
power is very marked in Priestley's case, where
the self-delineated portrait is of a man who met
and overcame enormous difficulties. He knew
poverty and calumny, both brutal things. He
had a thorn in the flesh, — for so he himself
characterized that impediment in his speech
which he tried more or less unsuccessfully all
his life to cure. He found his scientific use-
fulness impaired by religious and political
antagonisms. He tasted the bitterness of mob
violence ; his house was sacked, his philosophi-
cal instruments destroyed, his manuscripts and
books scattered along the highway. But as he
looked back upon these things he was not
moved to impatience. There is a high serenity
in his narrative as becomes a man who has

A FAIR-MINDED MAN 169

learned to distinguish between the ephemeral
and the permanent elements of life.

Yet it is not impossible that autobiography
of this sort has an effect the reverse of stimu-
lating upon some people. It is pleasanter to
read of heroes than to be a hero oneself. The
story of conquest is inspiring, but the actual
process is apt to be tedious. One's nerves are
tuned to a fine energy in reading of Priestley's
efforts to accomplish a given task. * I spent
the latter part of every week with Mr. Thomas,
a Baptist minister, . . . who had no liberal
education. Him I instructed in Hebrew, and
by that means made myself a considerable pro-
ficient in that language. At the same time I
learned Chaldee and Syriac and just began to
read Arabic' This seems easy in the telling,
but in reality it was a long, a monotonous, an
exhausting process. Think of the expenditure
of hours and eyesight over barbarous alphabets
and horrid grammatical details. One must
needs have had a mind of leather to endure such
philological and linguistic wear and tear. Priest-
ley's mind not only cheerfully endured it but
actually toughened under it. The man was
never afraid of work. Take as an illustration
his experience in keeping school.

He had pronounced objections to this busi-
ness, and he registered his protest. But sup-
pose the alternative is to teach school or to
starve. A man will then teach school. I don't

I70 A FAIR-MINDED MAN

know that this was quite the situation in which
Priestley found himself, though he needed
money. He may have hesitated to enter a pro-
fession whiqh in his time required a more ex-
tensive muscular equipment than he was able
to furnish. The old English schoolmasters
were 'bruisers.' They had thick skins, hard
heads, and solid fists. The symbols of their
office were a Greek grammar and a flexible rod.
They were skillful either with the book or the
birch. It has taken many years to convince
the world that the short road to the moods and
tenses does not necessarily lie through the
valley of the shadow of flogging. Perhaps
Priestley objected to school-mastering because
it was laborious. It was indeed laborious as he
practiced it. One marvels at his endurance.
His school consisted of about thirty boys, and
he had a separate room for about half-a-dozen
young ladies. 'Thus I was employed from
seven in the morning until four in the after-
noon, without any interval except one hour for
dinner ; and I never gave a holiday on any con-
sideration, the red letter days excepted. Im-
mediately after this employment in my own
school-rooms I went to teach in the family of
Mr. Tomkinson, an eminent attorney, . . . and
here I continued until seven in the evening.'
Twelve consecutive hours of teaching, less one
hour for dinner ! It was hardly necessary for
Priestley to add that he had * but little leisure
for reading.'

A FAIR-MINDED MAN 171

He laid up no money from teaching, but like
a true man of genius spent it upon books, a
small air-pump, an electrical machine. By
training his advanced pupils to manipulate
these he 'extended the reputation' of his
school. This was playing at science. Several
years were yet to elapse before he should ac-
quire fame as an original investigator.

This autobiography is valuable because it
illustrates the events of a remarkable time.
He who cares about the history of theological
opinion, the history of chemical science, the
history of liberty, will read these pages with
keen interest. Priestley was active in each of
these fields. Men famous for their connection
with the great movements of the period were
among his friends and acquaintance. He knew
Franklin and Richard Price. John Canton,
who was the first man in England to verify
Franklin's experiments, was a friend of Priest-
ley. So too were Smeaton the engineer, James
Watt, Boulton, Josiah Wedgewood, and Eras-
mus Darwin. He knew Kippis, Lardner, Parr,
and had met Porson and Dr. Johnson. His
closest friend for many years was Theophilus
Lindsey. One might also mention the great
Lavoisier, Magellan the Jesuit philosopher, and
a dozen other scientific, ecclesiastical, and polit-
ical celebrities. The Memoir, however, is al-
most as remarkable for what it does not tell
concerning these people as for what it does.

172 A FAIR-MINDED MAN

Priestley was not anecdotal. And he is only a
little less reticent about himself than he is
about others. He does indeed describe his early
struggles as a dissenting minister, but the
reader would like a little more expansiveness in
the account of his friendships and his chemical
discoveries. These discoveries were made dur-
ing the time that he was minister at the Mill-
hill Chapel, Leeds. Here he began the serious
study of chemistry. And that without training
in the science as it was then understood. At
Warrington he had heard a series of chemical
lectures by Dr. Turner of Liverpool, a gentle-
man whom Americans ought to regard with
amused interest, for he was the man who con-
gratulated his fellows in a Liverpool debating
society that while they had just lost the terra
firma of thirteen colonies in America, they had
gained, under the generalship of Dr. Herschel,
a terra incognita of much greater extent in
nuhibus. Priestley not only began his experi-
ments without any great store of knowledge,
but also without apparatus save what he devised
for himself of the cheapest materials. In 1 772
he published his first important scientific tract,
' a small pamphlet on the method of impregnat-
ing water with fixed air.' For this he received
the Copley medal from the Royal Society. On
the first of August, 1 774, he discovered oxygen.
Nobody in Leeds troubled particularly to in-
quire what this dissenting minister was about

A FAIR-MINDED MAN 173

with his vials and tubes, his mice and his
plants. Priestley says that the only person
who took * much interest ' was Mr. Hey, a sur-
geon. Mr. Hey was a 'zealous Methodist' and
wrote answers to Priestley's theological papers.
Arminian and Socinian were at peace if science
was the theme. When Priestley departed from
Leeds, Hey begged of him the 'earthen trough'
in which all his experiments had been made.
This earthen trough was nothing more nor less
than a washtub of the sort in common local
use. So independent is genius of the elaborate
appliances with which talent must produce re-
sults.

The discoveries brought fame, especially
upon the Continent, and led Lord Shelburne
to invite Priestley to become his ' literary com-
panion.' Dr. Price was the intermediary in
effecting this arrangement. Priestley's nomi-
nal post was that of ' librarian,' and he now and
then officiated as experimentalist extraordinary
before Lord Shelburne' s guests. The com-
pensation was not illiberal, and the relation
seems to have been as free from degrading ele-
ments as such relations can be. Priestley was
not a sycophant even in the day when men of
genius thought it no great sin to give flattery
in exchange for dinners. It was never his
habit to burn incense before the great simply
because the great liked the smell of incense and
were accustomed to it. On the other hand,

174 A FAIR-MINDED MAN

Shelbume appears to have treated the philo-
sopher with kindness and delicacy, and the situ-
ation was not without difficulties for his lord-
ship.

Among obvious advantages which Priestley
derived from this residence were freedom from
financial worry, time for writing and experi-
menting, a tour on the Continent, and the priv-
ilege of spending the winter season of each
year in London.

It was during these London visits that he
renewed his acquaintance with Dr. Franklin.
They were members of a club of ' philosophical
gentlemen ' which met at stated times at the
London Coffee House, Ludgate Hill. There
were few days upon which the Father of Pneu-
matic Chemistry and the Father of Electrical
Science did not meet. When their talk was
not of dephlogisticated air and like matters it
was pretty certain to be political. The war
between England and America was imminent.
Franklin dreaded it. He often said to Priest-
ley that * if the difference should come to an
open rupture, it would be a war of ten years,
and he should not live to see the end of it.'
He had no doubt as to the issue. * The Eng-
lish may take all our great towns, but that will
not give them possession of the country,' he
used to say. Franklin's last day in England
was given to Priestley. The two friends spent
much of the time in reading American news-

A FAIR-MINDED MAN 175

papers, especially accounts of the reception
which the Boston Port Bill met with in Amer-
ica, and as Franklin read the addresses to the
inhabitants of Boston, from the places in the
neighborhood, *the tears trickled down his
cheeks.' He wrote to Priestley from Philadel-
phia just a month after the battle of Lexington,
briefly describing that lively episode, and men-
tioning his pleasant six weeks voyage with
weather 'so moderate that a London wherry
might have accompanied us all the way.' At
the close of his letter he says : * In coming
over I made a valuable philosophical discovery,
which I shall communicate to you when I can
get a little time. At present I am extremely
hurried.' In October of that year, 1775, Frank-
lin wrote to Priestley about the state of affairs
in America. His letter contains one passage
which can hardly be hackneyed from over-quo-
tation. Franklin wants Priestley to tell ' our
dear good friend,' Dr. Price, that America is
'determined and unanimous.' 'Britain at the
expense of three millions has kUled 150 yankees
this campaign, which is 20,000 1. a head ; and
at Bunker's Hill, she gained a mile of ground,
all of which she lost again, by our taking post
on Ploughed Hill. During the same time
60,000 children have been bom in America.'
From these data Dr. Price is to calculate 'the
time and expense necessary to kill us all, and
conquer the whole of our territory.' Then the

176 A FAIR-MINDED MAN

letter closes with greetings * to the club of hon-
est whigs at the London Coffee House.'

Seven years later Franklin's heart was still
faithful to the club. He writes to Priestley
from France : * I love you as much as ever, and
I love all the honest souls that meet at the
London Coffee House. ... I labor for peace
with more earnestness that I may again be
happy in your sweet society.' Franklin thought
that war was folly. In a letter to Dr. Price,
he speaks of the great improvements in natural
philosophy, and then says : * There is one im-
provement in moral philosophy which I wish to
see : the discovery of a plan that would induce
and oblige nations to settle their disputes with-
out first cutting one another's throats.'

Priestley lamented that a man of Franklin's
character and influence 'should have been an
unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done
as much as he did to make others unbelievers.'
Franklin acknowledged that he had not given
much attention to the evidences of Christianity,
and asked Priestley to recommend some * treat-
ises * on the subject * but not of great length.'
Priestley suggested certain chapters of Hart-
ley's Observations on Man, and also what he
himself had written on the subject in his In-
stitutes of Natural and Revealed Religion.
Franklin had promised to read whatever books
his friend might advise and give his * sentiments
on them.' 'But the American war breaking out

A FAIR-MINDED MAN 177

soon after, I do not believe,' says Priestley,
* that he ever found himself sufficiently at lei-
sure for the discussion.'

Priestley valued his own scientific reputation
not a little for the weight it gave, among skep-
tics, to his arguments in support of his religious
belief. He found that all the philosophers in
Paris were unbelievers. They looked at him
with mild astonishment when they learned that
he was not of the same mind. They may even
have thought him a phenomenon which re-
quired scientific investigation. * As I chose on
all occasions to appear as a Christian, I was
told by some of them that I was the only per-
son they had ever met with, of whose under-
standing they had any opinion, who professed
to believe Christianity.' Priestley began to
question them as to what they supposed Chris-
tianity was, and with the usual result, — they
were not posted on the subject.

In 1780 Priestley went to Birmingham. In
the summer of 1791 occurred that remarkable
riot, perhaps the most dramatic event in the
philosopher's not unpicturesque career. This
storm had long been gathering, and when it
broke, the principal victim of its anger was, I
verily believe, more astonished than frightened.
The Dissenters were making unusual efforts to
have some of their civil disabilities removed.
Feeling against them was especially bitter. In
Birmingham this hostility was intensified by

178 A FAIR-MINDED MAN

the public discourses of Mr. Madan, ' the most
respectable clergyman of the town,' says Priest-
ley. He published *a very inflammatory ser-
mon . . . inveighing against the Dissenters in
general, and myself in particular.' Priestley
made a defense under the title of Familiar
Letters to the Inhabitants of Birmingham.
This produced a 'reply' from Madan, and
'other letters' from his opponent. Being a
conspicuous representative of that body which
was most ' obnoxious to the court ' it is not sur-
prising that Priestley should have been singled
out for unwelcome honors. The feeling of
intolerance was unusually strong. It was said
— I don't know how truly — that at a confir-
mation in Birmingham tracts were distributed
against Socinianism in general and Priestley in
particular. Very reputable men thought they
did God service in inflaming the minds of the
rabble against this liberal-minded gentleman.
Priestley's account of the riot in the Memoir
is singularly temperate. It might even be
called tame. He was quite incapable of posing,
or of playing martyr to an audience of which
a goodly part was sympathetic and ready to
believe his sufferings as great as he chose to
make them appear. One could forgive a slight
outburst of indignation had the doctor chosen
so to relieve himself. 'On occasion of the
celebration of the anniversary of the French
revolution, on July 14, 1791, by several of ray

A FAIR-MINDED MAN 179

friends, but with which I had little to do, a mob,
encouraged by some persons in power, first
burned the meeting-house in which I preached,
then another meeting-house in the town, and
then my dwelling-house, demolishing my library,
apparatus, and as far as they could everything
belonging to me. . . . Being in some personal
danger on this occasion I went to London.'

A much livelier account from Priestley's
own hand and written the next day after the
riot is found in a letter to Theophilus Lindsay.
' The company were hardly gone from the inn
before a drunken mob rushed into the house
and broke all the windows. They then set fire
to our meeting-house and it is burned to the
ground. After that they gutted, and some say
burned the old meeting. In the mean time
some friends came to tell me that I and my
house were threatened, and another brought a
chaise to convey me and my wife away. I had
not presence of mind to take even my MSS. ;
and after we were gone the mob came and de-
molished everything, household goods, library,
and apparatus.' The letter differs from the
Memoir in saying that 'happily no fire could
be got.' Priestley afterwards heard that 'much
pains was taken, but without effect, to get fire
from my large electrical machine which stood in
the Library.'

It is rather a curious fact that Priestley was
not at the inn where the anniversary was cele-

i8o A FAIR-MINDED MAN

brating. While the company there were chant-
ing the praises of liberty he was at home play-
ing backgammon with his wife, a remarkably
innocent and untreasonable occupation. Mr.
Arthur Young visited the scene of the riot a
few days later and had thoughts upon it. * See-
ing, as I passed, a house in ruins, on inquiry I
found that it was Dr. Priestley's. I alighted
from my horse, and walked over the ruins of
that laboratory which I had left home with the
expectation of reaping instruction in ; of that
laboratory, the labours of which have not only
illuminated mankind but enlarged the sphere
of science itself ; which has carried its master's
fame to the remotest corner of the civilized
world ; and will now with equal celerity con-
vey the infamy of its destruction to the dis-
grace of the age and the scandal of the British
name.' It is not necessary to supplement
Arthur Young's burst of indignation with pri-
vate bursts of our own. We can afford to be
as philosophic over the matter as Priestley was.
That feeling was hot against him even in Lon-
don is manifest from the fact that the day after
his arrival a hand-bill was distributed beginning
with the words : ' Dr. Priestley is a damned
rascal, an enemy both to the religious and polit-
ical constitution of this country, a fellow of a
treasonable mind, consequently a bad Chris-
tian.' The 'bad Christian' thought it showed
*no small degree of courage' in Mr. William

A FAIR-MINDED MAN i8i

Vaughan to receive him into his house. 'But
it showed more in Dr. Price's congregation at
Hackney to invite me to succeed him.' The
invitation was not unanimous, as Priestley with
his characteristic passion for exactness is at
pains to tell the reader. Some of the members
withdrew, 'which was not undesirable.'

People generally looked askance at him. If
he was upon one side of the street the respect-
able part of the world made it convenient to
pass by on the other side. He even found his
relations with his philosophical acquaintance
'much restricted.' 'Most of the members of
the Royal Society shunned him,' he says. This
seems amusing and unfortunate. Apparently
one's qualifications as a scientist were of little
avail if one happened to hold heterodox views
on the Trinity, or were of opinion that more
liberty than Englishmen then had would be
good for them. Priestley resigned his fellow-
ship in the Royal Society.

One does not need even mildly to anathema-
tize the instigators of that historic riot. They
were unquestionably zealous for what they be-
lieved to be the truth. Moreover, as William
Hutton observed at the time, ' It 's the right of
every Englishman to walk in darkness if he
chooses.' The method employed defeated its
own end. Persecution is an imsafe investment
and at best pays a low rate of interest. No
dignified person can afford to indulge in it.

i82 A FAIR-MINDED MAN

There's the danger of being held up to the
laughter of posterity. It has happened so
many times that the unpopular cause has be-
come popular. This ought to teach zealots to
be cautious. What would Madan have thought
if he could have been told that within thirty
years one of his own coadjutors in this affair
would have publicly expressed regret for the
share he had in it ? Madan has his reward,
three quarters of a column in the Dictionary of
National Biography. But to-day Priestley's
statue stands in a public square of Birming-
ham opposite the Council House. Thus do
matters get themselves readjusted in this very
interesting world.

Rutt's Life of Priestley (that remarkable illus-
tration of how to make a very poor book out
of the best materials) contains a selection of
the addresses and letters of condolence which
were forthcoming at this tima Some of them
are stilted and dull, but they are actual * docu-
ments,' and the words in them are alive with
the passion of that day. They make the trans-
action very real and close at hand.

Priestley was comparatively at ease in his
new home. Yet he could not entirely escape
punishment. There were *a few personal in-
sults from the lowest of the rabble.' Anxiety
was felt lest he might again receive the atten-
tions of a mob. He humorously remarked : * On
the 14th of July, 1792, it was taken for granted

A FAIR-MINDED MAN 183

by many of my neighbors that my house was
to come down just as at Birmingham the year
before.' The house did not come down, but
its occupant grew ill at ease, and within another
two years he had found a new home in the new
nation across the sea

It is hardly exact to say that he was * driven '
from England, as some accounts of his life have
it. Mere personal unpopularity would not have
sufficed for this. But at sixty-one a man
has n't as much fight in him as at forty-five.
He is not averse to quiet. Priestley's three
sons were going to America because their
father thought that they could not be * placed '
to advantage in a country so * bigoted ' as their
native land was then. ' My own situation, if
not hazardous, was become unpleasant, so that
I thought my removal would be of more service
to the cause of truth than my longer stay in
England.'

The sons went first and laid the foundations
of the home in Northumberland, Pennsylvania.
The word 'Susquehanna' had a magic sound
to Englishmen. On March 30, 1794, Priestley
delivered his farewell discourse. April 6 he
passed with his friends the Lindsays in Essex
Street, and a day later went to Gravesend.
For the details of the journey one must go to
his correspondence.

His last letters were written from Deal and
Falmouth, April 9 and 11. The vessel was

i84 A FAIR-MINDED MAN

six weeks in making the passage. The weather
was bad and the travelers experienced every-
thing * but shipwreck and famine.' There was
no lack of entertainment, for the ocean was
fantastic and spectacular. Not alone were
there the usual exhibitions of flying-fish, whales,
porpoises, and sharks, but also 'mountains of
ice larger than the captain had ever seen be-
fore,' — for thus early had transatlantic captains
learned the art of pronouncing upon the excep-
tional character of a particular voyage for the
benefit of the traveler who is making that voy-
age. They saw water-spouts, 'four at one
time.' The billows were 'mountain-high, and
at night appeared to be all on fire.' They had
infinite leisure, and scarcely knew how to use
it. Mrs. Priestley wrote 'thirty -two large
pages of paper.' The doctor read 'the whole
of the Greek Testament and the Hebrew Bible
as far as the first book of Samuel.' He also
read through Hartley's second volume, and
'for amusement several books of voyages and
Ovid's Metamorphoses.' 'If I had [had] a
Virgil I should have read him through, too. I
read a great deal of Buchanan's poems, and
some of Petrarch's de remediisy and Erasmus's
Dialogues ; also Peter Pindar's poems, , . .
which pleased me much more than I expected.
He is Paine in verse.'

On June i the ship reached Sandy Hook.
Three days later Dr. and Mrs. Priestley ' landed

A FAIR-MINDED MAN 185

at the Battery in as private a manner as possi-
ble, and went immediately to Mrs. Loring's
lodging-house close by.' The next morning
the principal inhabitants of New York came to
pay their respects and congratulations ; among
others Governor Clinton, Dr. Prevoost, bishop
of New York ; Mr. Osgood, late envoy to Great
Britain ; the heads of the college ; most of the
principal merchants, and many others ; for an
account of which amenities one must read
Henry Wansey's Excursion to the United States
in the Summer of 171^4, published by Salisbury
in 1796, a most amusing and delectable volume.

Priestley missed seeing Vice-president John
Adams by one day. Adams had sailed for Bos-
ton on the third. But he left word that Boston
was * better calculated ' for Priestley than any
other part of America, and that ' he would find
himself very well received if he should be in-
clined to settle there.'

Mrs. Priestley in a letter home says : * Dr. P.
is wonderfully pleased with everything, and
indeed I think he has great reason from the
attentions paid him.' The good people became
almost frivolous with their dinner-parties, recep-
tions, calls, and so forth. Then there were
the usual addresses from the various organiza-
tions, — one from the Tammany Society, who
described themselves as *a numerous body of
freemen, who associate to cultivate among
them the love of liberty, and the enjoyment of

i86 A FAIR-MINDED MAN

the happy republican government under which
they live.' There was an address from the
* Democratic Society,' one from the * Associated
Teachers in the City of New York,' one from
the * Republican Natives of Great Britain and
Ireland,' one from the 'Medical Society.'

The pleasure was not unmixed. Dr. Priest-
ley the theologian had a less cordial reception
than Dr. Priestley the philosopher and martyr.
The orthodox were considerably disturbed by
his coming. * Nobody asks me to preach, and
I hear there is much jealousy and dread of me.'
In Philadelphia at a Baptist meeting the minis-
ter bade his people beware, for * a Priestley had
entered the land.' But the heretic was very-
patient and earnest to do what he might for
the cause of * rational ' Christianity. The wide-
spread infidelity distressed him. He mentioned
it as a thing to be wondered at that in America
the lawyers were almost universally unbeliev-
ers. He lost no time in getting to work. On
August 27, when he had been settled in North-
umberland only a month, he wrote to a friend
that he had just got Paine's Age of Reason, and
thought to answer it. By September 14 he
had done so. ' I have transcribed for the press
my answer to Mr. Paine, whose work is the
weakest and most absurd as well as most arro-
gant of anything I have yet seen.'

Priestley was fully conscious of the humor of
his situation. He was trying to save the pub-

A FAIR-MINDED MAN 187

lie, including lawyers, from the mentally debili-
tating effects of reading Paine's Age of Reason,
while at the same time all the orthodox divines
were warning their flocks of the danger conse-
quent upon having anything to do with him.

Honors and rumors of honors came to him.
He was talked of for the presidency of colleges
yet to be founded, and was invited to professor-
ships in colleges that actually were. He went
occasionally to Philadelphia, a frightful journey
from Northumberland in those days. Through
his influence a Unitarian society was estab-
lished. He gave public discourses, and there
was considerable curiosity to see and hear so
famous a man. ' I have the use of Mr. Win-
chester's pulpit every morning . . . and yester-
day preached my first sermon.' He was told
that 'a great proportion of the members of
Congress were present,' and we know that
*Mr. Vice-President Adams was a regular at-
tendant. '

In company with his friend Mr. Russell,
Priestley went to take tea with President Wash-
ington. They stayed two hours * as in any pri-
vate family,' and at leavetaking were invited
* to come at any time without ceremony.'

About a year later Priestley saw again Wash-
ington, who had finished his second term of
office. * I went to take leave of the late presi-
dent. He seemed not to be in very good spir-
its. He invited me to Mt. Vernon, and said he

i88 A FAIR-MINDED MAN

thought he should hardly go from home twenty-
miles as long as he lived.'

Priestley was not to have the full measure of
the rest which he coveted. He had left Eng-
land to escape persecution, and persecution fol-
lowed him. Cobbett, who had assailed him in
a scurrilous pamphlet at the time of his emi-
gration, continued his attacks. Priestley was
objectionable because he was a friend of France.
Moreover he had opinions about things, some
of which he freely expressed, — a habit he had
contracted so early in life as to render it hope-
less that he should ever break himself of it.
Cobbett's virulence was so great as to excite
the astonishment of Mr. Adams, who said to
Priestley, ' I wonder why the man abuses you ; '
when a hint from Adams, Priestley thought,
would have prevented it all. But it was not
easy to control William Cobbett. Adams may
have thought that Cobbett was a being created
for the express purpose of being let alone.
There are such beings. Every one knows, or
can guess, to what sort of animal Churton Col-
lins compared Dean Swift, when the Dean was
in certain moods. William Cobbett, too, had his
moods.

Yet it is impossible to read Priestley's letters
between 1798 and 1801 without indignation
against those who preyed upon his peace of
mind. He writes to Lindsay : * It is nothing
but a firm faith in a good Providence that is

A FAIR-MINDED MAN 189

my support at present : but it is an effectual
one.' 'His 'never failing resource' was the
'daily study of the Scriptures.' In moments
of depression he loved to read the introduction
to Hartley's second volume, those noble pas-
sages beginning: 'Whatever be our doubts,
fears, or anxieties, whether selfish or social,
whether for time or eternity, our only hope
and refuge must be in the infinite power, know-
ledge and goodness of God.'

Priestley was indeed a remarkable man. His
services to science were very great. He laid
the foundations of notable structures which,
however, other men were to rear. He might
have been a greater man had he been less ver-
satile. And yet his versatility was one source
of his greatness. He clung to old-fashioned
notions, defending the doctrine of * philogiston '
after it had been abandoned by nearly every
other chemist of repute. For this he has been
ridiculed. But he was not ridiculous, he was
singularly open-minded. He knew that his
reputation as a philosopher was under a cloud.
' Though all the world is at present against me,
I see no reason to despair of the old system ;
and yet, if I should see reason to change my
opinion^ I think I should rather feel a pride in
making the most public acknowledgment of it*
These are words which Professor Huxley might
well have quoted in his beautiful address on
Priestley delivered at Birmingham, for they are

I90 A FAIR-MINDED MAN

the perfect expression and symbol of the fair-
minded man.

He was as modest as he was fair-minded.
When it was proposed that he should accom-
pany Captain Cook's expedition to the South
Seas, and the arrangements were really com-
pleted, he was objected to because of his po-
litical and religious opinions. Dr. Reinhold
Foster was appointed in his stead. He was
a person 'far better qualified,' said Priestley.
Again when he was invited to take the chair of
Chemistry at Philadelphia he refused. This for
several reasons, the chief of which was that he
did not believe himself fitted for it. One would
naturally suppose that the inventor of soda-
water and the discoverer of oxygen would have
been able to give lectures to young men on
chemistry. But Priestley believed that he
* could not have acquitted himself in it to proper
advantage.' 'Though I have made discoveries
in some branches of chemistry, I never gave
much attention to the common routine of it,
and know but little of the common processes.'

Priestley still awaits a biographer. The two
thick volumes compiled by Rutt more than
sixty-three years ago have not been reprinted,
nor are they likely to be. But a life so precious
in its lessons should be recorded in just terms.
It would be an inspiring book, and its title
might well be * The Story of a Man of Charac-
ter.' Not the least of its virtues would consist

A FAIR-MINDED MAN 191

in ample recognition of Joseph Priestley's
unwavering confidence that all things were
ordered for the best; and then of his piety,
which prompted him to say, as he looked back
upon his life : * I am thankful to that good Pro-
vidence which always took more care of me
than ever I took of myself.'

CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT

Hero-worship is appropriate only to youth.
With age one becomes cynical, or indifferent,
or perhaps too busy. Either the sense of the
marvelous is dulled, or one's boys are just
entering college and life is agreeably practical
Marriage and family cares are good if only for
the reason that they keep a man from getting
bored. But they also stifle his yearnings after
the ideal They make hero-worship appear
foolish. How can a man go mooning about
when he has just had a good cup of coffee and
a snatch of what purports to be the news,
while an attractive and well-dressed woman sits
opposite him at breakfast-table, and by her
mere presence, to say nothing of her wit, com-
pels him to be respectable and to carry a level
head ? The father of a family and husband of
a federated club woman has no business with
hero-worship. Let him leave such folly to
beardless youth.

But if a man has never outgrown the boy
that was in him, or has never married, then
may he do this thing. He will be happy him-
self, and others will be happy as they consider

CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT 193

him. Indeed, there is something altogether
charming about the personality of him who
proves faithful to his early loves in literature
and art ; who continues a graceful hero-worship
through all the caprices of literary fortune;
and who, even though his idol may have been
dethroned, sets up a private shrine at which he
pays his devotions, unmindful of the crowd
which hurries by on its way to do homage to
strange gods.

Some men are born to be hero-worshipers.
Theophile Gautier is an example. If one did
not love Gautier for his wit and his good-
nature, one would certainly love him because
he dared to be sentimental. He displayed an
almost comic excess of emotion at his first
meeting with Victor Hugo. Gautier smiles as
he tells the story ; but he tells it exactly, not
being afraid of ridicule. He went to call upon
Hugo with his friends Gerard de Nerval and
P6trus Borel. Twice he mounted the staircase
leading to the poet's door. His feet dragged
as if they had been shod with lead instead of
leather. His heart throbbed ; cold sweat
moistened his brow. As he was on the point
of ringing the bell, an idiotic terror seized him,
and he fled down the stairs, four steps at a
time, Gerard and P6trus after him, shouting
with laughter. But the third attempt was suc-
cessful. Gautier saw Victor Hugo — and
lived. The author of Odes et Ballades was

194 CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT

just twenty-eight years old. Youth worshiped
youth in those great days.

Gautier said little during that visit, but he
stared at the poet with all his might. He
explained afterwards that one may look at gods,
kings, pretty women, and great poets rather
more scrutinizingly than at other persons, and
this too without annoying them. 'We gazed
at Hugo with admiring intensity, but he did
not appear to be inconvenienced.'

What brings Gautier especially to mind is
the appearance within a few weeks of an amus-
ing little volume entitled Le Romantisme et
tMiteur Renduel. Its chief value consists, no
doubt, in what the author, M. Adolphe Jullien,
has to say about Renduel. That noted pub-
lisher must have been a man of unusual gifts
and unusual fortune. He was a fortunate man
because he had the luck to publish some of the
best works of Victor Hugo, Saint e-Beuve, Th6-
ophile Gautier, Alfred de Musset, Gerard de
Nerval, Charles Nodier, and Paul Lacroix ; and
he was a gifted man because he was able suc-
cessfully to manage his troop of geniuses,
neither quarreling with them himself nor allow-
ing them to quarrel overmuch with one another.
Renduel's portrait faces the title-page of the
volume, and there are two portraits of him
besides. There are fac-similes of agreements
between the great publisher and his geniuses.
There is a famous caricature of Victor Hugo

CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT 195

with a brow truly monumental. There is a cari-
cature of Alfred de Musset with a figure like
a Regency dandy, — a figure which could have
been acquired only by much patience and unre-
mitted tight-lacing ; also one of Balzac, which
shows that that great novelist's waist-line had
long since disappeared, and that he had long
since ceased to care. What was a figure to
him in comparison with the flesh-pots of Paris !

One of the best of these pictorial satires is
Roubaud's sketch of Gautier. It has a teasing
quality, it is diabolically fascinating. It shows
how great an art caricature is in the hands of a
master.

But the highest virtue of a good new book
is that it usually sends the reader back to a
good old book. One can hardly spend much
time upon Renduel ; he will remember that
Gautier has described that period when hero-
worship was in the air, when the sap of a new
life circulated everywhere, and when he him-
self was one of many loyal and enthusiastic
youths who bowed the head at mention of Vic-
tor Hugo's name. The reader will remember,
too, that Gautier was conspicuous in that band
of Romanticists who helped to make Hemani
a success the night of its first presentation.
Gautier believed that to be the great event of
his life. He loved to talk about it, dream
about it, write of it.

There was a world of good fellowship among

196 CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT

the young artists, sculptors, and poets of that
day. They took real pleasure in shouting Ho-
sanna to Victor Hugo and to one another.
Even Zola, the Unsentimental, speaks of ma
tristesse as he reviews that delightful past. He
cannot remember it, to be sure, but he has
read about it. He thinks ill of the present as
he compares the present with 'those dead
years.' Writers then belonged to a sort of
heroic brotherhood. They went out like sol-
diers to conquer their literary liberties. They
were kings of the Paris streets. * But we,'
says Zola in a pensive strain, *we live like
wolves each in his hole.' I do not know how
true a description this is of modern French lit-
erary society, but it is not difficult to make
one's self think that those other days were the
days of magnificent friendships between young
men of genius. It certainly was a more bril-
liant time than ours. It was flamboyant, to
use one of Gautier's favorite words.

Youth was responsible for much of the en-
thusiasm which obtained among the champions
of artistic liberty. These young men who did
honor to the name of Hugo were actually
young. They rejoiced in their youth. They
flaunted it, so to speak, in the faces of those
who were without it. Gautier says that young
men of that day differed in one respect from
young men of this day ; modern young men
are generally in the neighborhood of fifty years
of age.

CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT 197

Gautier has described his friends and com-
rades most felicitously. All were boys, and all
were clever. They were poor and they were
happy. They swore by Scott and Shakespeare,
and they planned great futures for themselves.

Take for an example Jules Vabre, who owed
his reputation to a certain Essay on the Incon-
venience of Conveniences. You will search the
libraries in vain for this treatise. The author
did not finish it. He did not even commence
it, — only talked about it. Jules Vabre had a
passion for Shakespeare, and wanted to trans-
late him. He thought of Shakespeare by day
and dreamed of Shakespeare by night. He
stopped people in the street to ask them if they
had read Shakespeare.

He had a curious theory concerning lan-
guage. Jules Vabre would not have said. As a
man thinks so is he, but. As a man drinks so is
he. According to Gautier' s statement, Vabre
maintained the paradox that the Latin lan-
guages needed to be * watered ' {arroser) with
wine, and the Anglo-Saxon languages with
beer. Vabre found that he made extraordinary
progress in English upon stout and extra stout.
He went over to England to get the very atmo-
sphere of Shakespeare. There he continued
for some time regularly * watering ' his language
with English ale, and nourishing his body with
English beef. He would not look at a French
newspaper, nor would he even read a letter

198 CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT

from home. Finally he came back to Paris,
anglicized to his very galoshes. Gautier says
that when they met, Vabre gave him a * shake
hand ' almost energetic enough to pull the arm
from the shoulder. He spoke with so strong
an English accent that it was difficult to under-
stand him ; Vabre had almost forgotten his
mother tongue. Gautier congratulated the ex-
ile upon his return, and said, 'My dear Jules
Vabre, in order to translate Shakespeare it is
now only necessary for you to learn French.'

Gautier laid the foundations of his great fame
by wearing a red waistcoat the first night of
Hemani. All the young men were fantastic
in those days, and the spirit of carnival was in
the whole romantic movement. Gautier was
more courageously fantastic than other young
men. His costume was effective, and the pub-
lic never forgot him. He says with humorous
resignation : * If you pronounce the name of
Th^ophile Gautier before a Philistine who has
never read a line of our works, the Philistine
knows us, and remarks with a satisfied air, " Oh
yes, the young man with the red waistcoat and
the long hair." . . . Our poems are forgotten,
but our red waistcoat is remembered.' Gautier
cheerfully grants that when everything about
him has faded into oblivion this gleam of light
will remain, to distinguish him from literary
contemporaries whose waistcoats were of so-
berer hue.

CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT 199

The chapter in his Histoire du Romantisme
in which Gautier tells how he went to the tailor
to arrange for the most spectacular feature of
his costume is lively and amusing. He spread
out the magnificent piece of cherry - colored
satin, and then unfolded his design for a * pour-
point,' like a 'Milan cuirass.' Says Gautier,
using always his quaint editorial we, *It has
been said that we know a great many words,
but we don't know words enough to express
the astonishment of our tailor when we lay be-
fore him our plan for a waistcoat.' The man
of shears had doubts as to his customer's san-
ity.

'Monsieur,' he exclaimed, 'this is not the
fashion ! '

' It will be the fashion when we have worn
the waistcoat once,' was Gautier's reply. And
he declares that he delivered the answer with a
self-possession worthy of a Brummel or 'any
other celebrity of dandyism.'

It is no part of this paper to describe the
innocently absurd and good-naturedly extrava-
gant things which Gautier and his companions
did, not alone the first night of Hemani, but at
all times and in all places. They unquestion-
ably saw to it that Victor Hugo had fair play
the evening of February 25, 1830. The occa-
sion was an historic one, and they with their
Merovingian hair, their beards, their waistcoats,
and their enthusiasm helped to make it an un-
usually lively and picturesque occasion.

200 CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT

I have quoted a very few of the good things
which one may read in Gautier's Histoire du
Romantisme. The narrative is one of much
sweetness and humor. It ought to be trans-
lated for the benefit of readers who know
Gautier chiefly by Mademoiselle de Maupin
and that for reasons among which love of liter-
ature is perhaps the least influential.

It is pleasant to find that Renduel confirms
the popular view of Gautier's character. M.
Jullien says that Renduel never spoke of Gau-
tier but in praise. * Quel bon gar^on ! ' he used
to say. ' Quel brave cceur ! ' M. Jullien has
naturally no large number of new facts to give
concerning Gautier. But there are eight or
nine letters from Gautier to Renduel which
will be read with pleasure, especially the one in
which the poet says to the publisher, * Heaven
preserve you from historical novels, and your
eldest child from the smallpox.*

Gautier must have been both generous and
modest. No mere egoist could have been so
faithful in his hero-worship or so unpretentious
in his allusions to himself. One has only to
read the most superficial accounts of French
literature to learn how universally it is granted
that Gautier had skillful command of that lan-
guage to which he was born. Yet he himself
was by no means sure that he deserved a mas-
ter's degree. He quotes one of Goethe's say-
ings,— a saying in which the great German

CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT 201

poet declares that after the practice of many
arts there was but one art m which he could be
said to excel, namely, the art of writing in Ger-
man ; in that he was almost a master. Then
Gautier exclaims, 'Would that we, after so
many years of labor, had become almost a mas-
ter of the art of writing in French ! But such
ambitions are not for us ! '

Yet they were for him ; and it is a satisfac-
tion to note how invariably he is accounted, by
the artists in literature, an eminent man among
many eminent men in whose touch language
was plastic.

STEVENSON: THE VAGABOND AND
THE PHILOSOPHER

A CERTAIN critic said of Stevenson that he
was ' incurably literary ; ' the phrase is a good
one, being both humorous and true. There is
comfort in the thought that such efforts as
may have been made to keep him in the path
of virtuous respectability failed. Rather than
do anything Stevenson preferred to loaf and to
write books. And he early learned that con-
siderable loafing is necessary if one expects to
become a writer. There is a sense in which it
is true that only lazy people are fit for litera-
ture. Nothing is so fruitful as a fine gift for
idleness. The most prolific writers have been
people who seemed to have nothing to do.
Every one has read that description of George
Sand in her latter years, * an old lady who came
out into the garden at mid-day in a broad-
brimmed hat and sat down on a bench or wan-
dered slowly about. So she remained for hours
looking about her, musing, contemplating. She
was gathering impressions, absorbing the uni-
verse, steeping herself in Nature ; and at night
she would give all this forth as a sort of emana-

VAGABOND AND PHILOSOPHER 203

tion.' One shudders to think what the result
might have been if instead of absorbing the
universe George Sand had done something
practical during those hours. But the Scotch-
man was not like George Sand in any particular
that I know of save in his perfect willingness
to bask in the sunshine and steep himself in
Nature. His books did not 'emanate.' The
one way in which he certainly did not produce
literature was by improvisation. George Sand
never revised her work ; it might almost be said
that Robert Louis Stevenson never did any-
thing else.

Of his method we know this much. He
himself has said that when he went for a walk
he usually carried two books in his pocket, one
a book to read, the other a note-book in which
to put down the ideas that came to him. This
remark has undoubtedly been seized upon and
treasured in the memory as embodying a secret
of his success. Trusting young souls have
begun to walk about with note-books : only to
learn that the note-book was a detail, not an
essential, in the process.

He who writes while he walks cannot write
very much, but he may, if he chooses, write
very well. He may turn over the rubbish of
his vocabulary until he finds some exquisite and
perfect word with which to bring out his mean-
mg. This word need not be unusual ; and if it
is 'exquisite' then exquisite only in the sense

204 STEVENSON

of being fitted with rare exactness to the idea.
Stevenson wrote so well in part because he
wrote so deliberately. He knew the vulgarity
of haste, especially in the making of literature.
He knew that finish counted for much, per-
haps for half. Has he not been reported as
saying that it was n't worth a man's while to
attempt to be a writer unless he was quite will-
ing to spend a day if the need were, on the
turn of a single sentence.? In general this
means the sacrifice of earthly reward ; it means
that a man must work for love and let the ra-
vens feed him. That scriptural source has been
distinctly unfruitful in these latter days, and
few authors are willing to take a prophet's
chances. But Stevenson was one of the few.

He laid the foundations of his reputation
with two little volumes of travel. An Inland
Voyage appeared in 1878; Travels with a
Donkey in the Cevennes, in 1879. These books
are not dry chronicles of drier facts. They
bear much the same relation to conventional
accounts of travel that flowers growing in a
garden bear to dried plants in a herbarium.
They are the most friendly and urbane things
in modern English literature. They have been
likened to Sterne's Sentimental Journey. The
criticism would be better if one were able to
imagine Stevenson writing the adventure of the
Jille de chambre, or could conceive of Lawrence
Sterne writing the account of the meeting with

VAGABOND AND PHILOSOPHER 205

the Plymouth Brother. * And if ever at length,
out of our separate and sad ways, we should all
come together into one common-house, I have
a hope to which I cling dearly, that my moun-
tain Plymouth Brother will hasten to shake
hands with me again.' That was written
twenty years ago and the Brother was an old
man then. And now Stevenson is gone. How
impossible it is not to wonder whether they
have yet met in that ' one common-house.' * He
feared to intrude, but he would not willingly
forego one moment of my society; and he
seemed never weary of shaking me by the
hand.'

The Inland Voyage contains passages hardly
to be matched for beauty. Let him who would
be convinced read the description of the forest
Mormal, that forest whose breath was perfumed
with nothing less delicate than sweet brier. ' I
wish our way had always lain among woods,'
says Stevenson. 'Trees are the most civil
society.'

Stevenson's traveling companion was a young
English baronet. The two adventurers pad-
dled in canoes through the pleasant rivers and
canals of Belgium and North France. They
had plenty of rain and a variety of small mis-
adventures ; but they also had sunshine, fresh
air, and experiences among the people of the
country such as they could have got in no other
way. They excited not a little wonder, and

2o6 STEVENSON

the common opinion was that they were doing
the journey for a wager ; there seemed to be
no other reason why two respectable gentle-
men, not poor, should work so hard and get so
wet.

This was conceived in a more adventurous
vein than appears at first sight. In an unsub-
dued country one contends with beasts and
men who are openly hostUe. But when one is
a stranger in the midst of civilization and meets
civilization at its back door, he is astonished
to find how little removed civilization is from
downright savagery. Stevenson and his com-
panion learned as they could not have learned
otherwise how great deference the world pays
to clothes. Whether your heart is all right
turns out a matter of minor importance; but —
are your clothes all right ? If so, smiles, and
good beds at respectable inns ; if not, a lodging
in a cow-shed or beneath any poor roof which
suffices to keep off the rain. The voyagers
had constantly to meet the accusation of being
peddlers. They denied it and were suspected
afresh while the denial was on their lips. The
public mind was singularly alert and critical on
the subject of peddlers.

At La Fere, ' of Cursed Memory,' they had
a rebuff which nearly spoiled their tempers.
They arrived in a rain. It was the finest kind
of a night to be indoors * and hear the rain upon
the windows.* They were told of a famous

VAGABOND AND PHILOSOPHER 207

inn. When they reached the carriage entry
'the rattle of many dishes fell upon their ears.'
They sighted a great field of snowy table-cloth,
the kitchen glowed like a forge. They made
their triumphal entry, * a pair of damp rag-and-
bone men, each with a limp India-rubber bag
upon his arm.' Stevenson declares that he
never had a sound view of that kitchen. It
seemed to him a culinary paradise 'crowded
with the snowy caps of cookmen, who all turned
round from their sauce-pans and looked at us
with surprise.' But the landlady — a flushed,
angry woman full of affairs — there was no
mistaking her. They asked for beds and were
told to find beds in the suburbs : ' We are too
busy for the like of you ! ' They said they
would dine then, and were for putting down
their luggage. The landlady made a run at
them and stamped her foot : ' Out with you —
out of the door,' she screeched.

I once heard a young Englishman who had
been drawn into some altercation at a continen-
tal hotel explain a discreet movement on his
• own part by saying : * Now a French cook run-
ning amuck with a carving knife in his hand
would have bean a nahsty thing to meet, you
know.' There were no knives in this case,
only a woman's tongue. Stevenson says that
he does n't know how it happened, * but next
moment we were out in the rain, and I was
cursing before the carriage entry like a disaj>-
pointed mendicant.'

2o8 STEVENSON

* It *s all very fine to talk about tramps and
morality. Six hours of police surveillance
(such as I have had) or one brutal rejection
from an inn door change your views upon the
subject, like a course of lectures. As long as
you keep in the upper regions, with all the
world bowing to you as you go, social arrange-
ments have a very handsome air ; but once get
under the wheels and you wish society were at
the devil. I will give most respectable men a-
fortnight of such a life, and then I will offer
them twopence for what remains of their moral-
ity.'

Stevenson declares that he could have set
the temple of Diana on fire that night if it had
been handy. 'There was no crime complete
enough to express my disapproval of human
institutions.' As for the baronet, he was horri-
fied to learn that he had been taken for a ped-
dler again ; and he registered a vow before
Heaven never to be uncivil to a peddler. But
before making that vow he particularized a
complaint for every joint in the landlady's
body.

To read An Inland Voyage is to be impressed
anew with the thought that some men are born
with a taste for vagabondage. They are in-
stinctively for being on the move. Like the
author of that book they travel * not to go any
where but to go.' If they behold a stage-coach
or a railway train in motion they heartily wish

VAGABOND AND PHILOSOPHER 209

themselves aboard. They are homesick when
they stop at home, and are only at home when
they are on the move. Talk to them of foreign
lands and they are seized with unspeakable
heart-ache and longing. Stevenson met an
omnibus driver in a Belgian village who looked
at him with thirsty eyes because he was able
to travel. How that omnibus driver 'longed
to be somewhere else and see the round world
before he died.' 'Here I am,' said he. *I
drive to the station. Well. And then I drive
back again to the hotel. And so on every day
and all the week round. My God, is that life ? '
Stevenson opined that this man had in him the
making of a traveler of the right sort ; he
might have gone to Africa or to the Indies
after Drake. * But it is an evil age for the gip-
sily inclined among men. He who can sit
squarest on a three-legged stool, he it is who
has the wealth and glory.'

In his Travels with a Donkey the author had
no companionship but such as the donkey af-
forded; and to tell the truth this companion-
ship was almost human at times. He learned
to love the quaint little beast which shared his
food and his trials. * My lady-friend ' he calls
her. Modestine was her name ; ' she was pa-
tient, elegant in form, the color of an ideal
mouse and inimitably small' She gave him
trouble, and at times he felt hurt and was dis-
tant in manner towards her. Modestine car-

2IO STEVENSON

ried the luggage. She may not have known
that R. L. Stevenson wrote books, but she
knew as by instinct that R. L. Stevenson had
never driven a donkey. She wrought her will
with him, that is, she took her own gait. ' What
that pace was there is no word mean enough to
describe; it was something as much slower
than a walk as a walk is slower than a run.'
He must belabor her incessantly. It was an
ignoble toil, and he felt ashamed of himself
besides, for he remembered her sex. 'The
sound of my own blows sickened me. Once
when I looked at her she had a faint resem-
blance to a lady of my acquaintance who had
formerly loaded me with kindness ; and this
increased my horror of my cruelty.'

From time to time Modestine's load would
topple off. The villagers were delighted with
this exhibition and laughed appreciatively.
* Judge if I was hot ! ' says Stevenson. * I re-
membered having laughed myself when I had
seen good men struggling with adversity in the
person of a jack-ass, and the recollection filled
me with penitence. That was in my old light
days before this trouble came upon me.'

He had a sleeping-bag, waterproof without,
blue sheep's wool within, and in this portable
house he passed his nights afield. Not always
by choice, as witness his chapter entitled *A
Camp in the Dark.' There are two or three
pages in that chapter which come pretty near

VAGABOND AND PHILOSOPHER 211

to perfection, — if there be such a thing as per-
fection in literature. I don't know who could
wish for anything better than the paragraphs
in which Stevenson describes falling asleep in
the tempest, and awaking next morning to see
the * world flooded with a blue light, the mother
of dawn.' He had been in search of an adven-
ture all his life, *a pure dispassionate adventure,
such as befell early and heroic voyagers,' and
he thinks that he realized a fraction of his day-
dreams when that morning found him, an in-
land castaway, * as strange to his surroundings
as the first man upon the earth.'

Passages like these indicate Stevenson's qual-
ity. He was no carpet-knight ; he had the
true adventurer's blood in his veins. He and
Drake and the Belgian omnibus-driver should
have gone to the Indies together. Better still,
the omnibus driver should have gone with
Drake, and Stevenson should have gone with
Amyas Leigh. They say that Stevenson trav-
eled in search of health. Without doubt ; but
think how he would have traveled if he had
had good health. And one has strange mental
experiences alone with the stars. That came
of sleeping in the fields 'where God keeps an
open house.' *I thought I had rediscovered
one of those truths which are revealed to sav-
ages and hid from political economists.'

Much as he gloried in his solitude he 'be-
came aware of a strange lack ; ' for he was

212 STEVENSON

human. And he gave it as his opinion that 'to
Hve out of doors with the woman a man loves
is of all lives the most complete and free.' It
may be so. Such a woman would need to be
of heroic physical mould, and there is danger
that she would turn out of masculine mould as
well. Isopel Berners was of such sort. Isopel
could handle her clenched fists like a prize-
fighter. She was magnificent in the forest, and
never so perfectly in place as when she backed
up George Borrow in his fight with the Flam-
ing Tinman. Having been in the habit of tak-
ing her own part, she was able to give pertinent
advice at a critical moment. * It 's of no use
flipping at the Flaming Tinman with your left
hand,' she said, * why don't you use your right ? '
Isopel called Borrow's right arm * Long Mel-
ford.' And when the Flaming Tinman got his
knock-down blow from Borrow's right, Isopel
exclaimed, 'Hurrah for Long Melford; there
is nothing like Long Melford for shortness all
the world over ! '

But what an embarrassing personage Miss
Berners would have been transferred from the
dingle to the drawing-room ; nay, how impossi-
ble it is to think of that athletic young goddess
as Miss Berners ! The distinctions and titles
of conventional society refuse to cling even to
her name. I wonder how Stevenson would
have liked Isopel Berners.

And now his philosophy. Yet somehow

VAGABOND AND PHILOSOPHER 213

* philosophy ' seems a big word for so unpreten-
tious a theory of life as his. Stevenson did n't
philosophize much ; he was content to live and
to enjoy. He was deliberate, and in general
he would not suffer himself to be driven. He
resembled an admirable lady of my acquaint-
ance who, when urged to get something done
by a given time, usually replied that ' time was
made for slaves.* Stevenson had the same
feeling. He says : * Hurry is the resource of
the faithless. When a man can trust his own
heart and those of his friends to-morrow is as
good as to-day. And if he die in the mean
while, why, then, there he dies, and the ques-
tion is solved.'

You think this a poor philosophy ? But there
must be all kinds of philosophy ; the people in
the world are not run into one mould like so
much candle-grease. And because of this, his
doctrine of Inaction and Postponement, stem
men and practical women have frowned upon
Stevenson. In their opinion instead of being
up and doing he consecrated too many hours to
the idleness of literature. They feel towards
him as Hawthorne fancied his ancestor the
great witch judge would have felt towards Mm.
Hawthorne imagines that ghostly and terrible
ancestor looking down upon him and exclaim-
ing with infinite scorn, *A writer of story-
books. What kind of employment is that for
an immortal soul } '

214 STEVENSON

To many people nothing is more hateful
than this willingness to hold aloof and let
things drift. That any human being should
acquiesce with the present order of the world
appears monstrous to these earnest souls. An
Indian critic once called Stevenson * a faddling
Hedonist.' Stevenson quotes the phrase with
obvious amusement and without attempting to
gainsay its accuracy.

But if he allowed the world to take its course
he expected the same privilege. He wished
neither to interfere nor to be interfered with.
And he was a most cheerful nonconformist
withal. He says : * To know what you prefer
instead of humbly saying amen to what the
world tells you you ought to prefer is to have
kept your soul alive.' Independence and op-
timism are vital parts of his unformulated creed.
He hated cynicism and sourness. He believed
in praise of one's own good estate. He thought
it was an inspiriting thing to hear a man boast,
— * so long as he boasts of what he really has.*
If people but knew this they would boast ' more
freely and with a better grace.'

Stevenson was humorously alive to the old-
fashioned quality of his doctrine of happiness
and content. He says in the preface to an
Inland Voyage that although the book * runs to
considerably over a hundred pages, it contains
not a single reference to the imbecility of God's
universe, nor so much as a single hint that I

VAGABOND AND PHILOSOPHER 215

could have made a better one myself — I really
do not know where my head can have been.'
But while this omission will, he fears, render
his book ' philosophically unimportant ' he hopes
that 'the eccentricity may please in frivolous
circles.'

Stevenson could be militant. His letter on
Father Damien shows that. But there was
nothing of the professional reformer about him.
He had no hobby, and he was the artist first
and then the philanthropist. This is right ;
it was the law of his being. Other men are
better equipped to do the work of humanity's
city missionaries than was he. Let their more
rugged health and less sensitive nerves bear
the burden ; his poet's mission was not the less
important.

The remaining point I have to note, among
a number which might be noted, is his firm
grasp of this idea : that whether he is his
brother's keeper or not he is at all events his
brother's brother. It is * philosophy ' of a very
good sort to have mastered this conception
and to have made the life square with the
theory. This doctrine is fashionable just now,
and thick books have been written on the sub-
ject, filled with wise terms and arguments. I
don't know whether Stevenson bothered his
head with these matters from a scientific point
of view or not, but there are many illustrations
of his interest. Was it this that made him so

2i6 STEVENSON

gentle in his unaffected manly way ? He cer-
tainly understood how difficult it is for the well-
to-do member of society to get any idea not
wholly distorted of the feelings and motives of
the lower classes. He believed that certain
virtues resided more conspicuously among the
poor than among the rich. He declared that
the poor were more charitably disposed than
their superiors in wealth. *A workman or a
peddler cannot shutter himself off from his less
comfortable neighbors. If he treats himself to
a luxury he must do it in the face of a dozen
who cannot. And what should more directly
lead to charitable thoughts ? ' But with the
advent of prosperity a man becomes incapable
of understanding how the less fortunate live.
Stevenson likens that happy individual to a
man going up in a balloon. * He presently
passes through a zone of clouds and after that
merely earthly things are hidden from his gaze.
He sees nothing but the heavenly bodies, all in
admirable order and positively as good as new.
He finds himself surrounded in the most touch-
ing manner by the attentions of Providence,
and compares himself involuntarily with the
lilies and the sky-larks. He does not precisely
sing, of course ; but then he looks so unassum-
ing in his open landau ! If all the world dined
at one table this philosophy would meet with
some rude knocks.'

In the three years since Stevenson's death

VAGABOND AND PHILOSOPHER 217

many additions have been made to the body of
literature by him and about him. There are
letters, finished and unfinished novels, and re-
collections by the heaping handful. Critics
are considerably exercised over the question
whether any, or all, or only two or three of his
books are to last. The matter has, I believe,
been definitely decided so that posterity, what-
ever other responsibilities it has, will at least
not have that one ; and anything that we can
do to relieve the future of its burdens is altru-
ism worthy the name.

Stevenson was one of the best tempered
men that ever lived. He never prated about
goodness, but was unaffectedly good and sunny-
hearted as long as he lived. Of how many
men can it be said, as it can be said of him,
that he was sick all his days and never uttered
a whimper } What rare health of mind was
this which went with such poor health of body !
I 've known men to complain more over tooth-
ache than Stevenson thought it worth while to
do with death staring him in the face. He did
not, like Will o' the Mill, live until the snow
began to thicken on his head. He never knew
that which we call middle age.

He worked harder than a man in his condi-
tion should have done. At times he felt the
need to write for money ; and this was hostile
to his theory of literature. He wrote to his
friend Colvin : * I sometimes sit and yearn for

2i8 STEVENSON

anything in the nature of an income that would
come in — mine has all got to be gone and
fished for with the immortal mind of man.
What I want is an income that really comes in
of itself while all you have to do is just to
blossom and exist and sit on chairs.'

I wish he might have had it ; I can think of
no other man whose indolence would have been
so profitable to the world.

STEVENSON'S ST. IVES

With the publication of 5/. Ives the cata-
logue of Stevenson's important writings has
closed. In truth it closed several years ago, —
in 1 89 1, to be exact, — when Catriona was pub-
lished. Nothing which has appeared since that
date can modify to any great extent the best
critical estimate of his novels. Neither Weir
of Hermiston nor St. Ives affects the matter.
You may throw them into the scales with his
other works, and then you may take them out ;
beyond a mere trembling the balance is not
disturbed. But suppose you were to take out
Kidnapped, or Treasure Island, or The Master
of Ballantrae, the loss would be felt at once
and seriously. And unless he has left behind
him, hidden away among his loose papers, some
rare and perfect sketch, some letter to posterity
which shall be to his reputation what Neil Far-
aday's lost novel in The Death of the Lion
might have been to his, St. Ives may be re-
garded as the epilogue.

Stevenson's death and the publication of this
last effort of his fine genius may tend to draw

220 STEVENSON

away a measure of public interest from that
type of novel which he, his imitators, and his
rivals have so abundantly produced. This may
be the close of a ' period ' such as we read about
in histories of literature.

If the truth be told, has not our generation
had enough of duels, hair-breadth escapes, post-
chaises, and highwaymen, mysterious strangers
muffled in great-coats, and pistols which always
miss fire when they should n't ? To say posi-
tively that we Mve done with all this might
appear extravagant in the light of the popular-
ity of certain modern heroic novels. But it
might not be too radical a view if one were to
maintain that these books are the expression of
something temporary and accidental, that they
sustain a chronological relation to modern liter-
ature rather than an essential one.

Matthew Arnold spoke of Heine as a sar-
donic smile on the face of the Zeitgeist. Let
us say that these modern stories in the heroic
vein are a mere heightening of color on the
cheeks of that interesting young lady, the
Genius of the modem novel — a heightening of
color on the cheeks, for the color comes from
without and not from within. It is a matter of
no moment. Artificial red does no harm for
once, and looks well under gaslight.

These novels of adventure which we buy so
cheerfully, read with such pleasure, and make
such a good-natured fuss over, are for the

ST. IVES 221

greater part an expression of something alto-
gether foreign to the deeper spirit of modern
fiction. Surely the true modern novel is the
one which reflects the life of to-day. And life
to-day is easy, familiar, rich in material com-
forts, and on the whole without painfully strik-
ing contrasts and thrilling episodes. People
have enough to eat, reasonable liberty, and a
degree of patience with one another which sug-
gests indifference. A man may shout aloud in
the market-place the most revolutionary opin-
ions, and hardly be taken to task for it ; and
then on the other hand we have got our rulers
pretty well under control. This paragraph,
however, is not the peroration of a eulogy upon
• 'our unrivaled happiness.' It attempts merely
to lay stress on such facts as these, that it is
not now possible to hang a clergyman of the
Church of England for forgery, as was done in
I 'jj'j \ that a man may not be deprived of the
custody of his own children because he holds
heterodox religious opinions, as happened in
1816. There is widespread toleration; and
civilization in the sense in which Ruskin uses
the word has much increased. Now it is possi-
ble for a Jew to become Prime Minister, and
for a Roman Catholic to become England's
Poet Laureate.

If, then, life is familiar, comfortable, unre-

/strained, and easy, as it certainly seems to be,

▼how are we to account for the rise of this

222 STEVENSON

semihistoric, heroic literature? It is almost
grotesque, the contrast between the books
themselves and the manner in which they are
produced. One may picture the incongruous
elements of the situation, — a young society
man going up to his suite in a handsome mod-
ern apartment house, and dictating romance to
a type-writer. In the evening he dines at his
club, and the day after the happy launching of
his novel he is interviewed by the representa-
tive of a newspaper syndicate, to whom he ex-
plains his literary method, while the interviewer
makes a note of his dress and a comment on
the decoration of his mantelpiece.

Surely romance written in this way — and
we have not grossly exaggerated the way —
bears no relation to modern literature other
than a chronological one. The Prisoner of
Zenda and A Gentleman of France, to mention
two happy and pleasing examples of this type
of novel, are not modern in the sense that they
express any deep feeling or any vital character-
istic of to-day. They are not instinct with the
spirit of the times. One might say that these
stories represent the novel in its theatrical
mood. It is the novel masquerading. Just
as a respectable bookkeeper likes to go into
private theatricals, wear a wig with curls, a
slouch hat with ostrich feathers, a sword and
ruffles, and play a part to tear a cat in, so does
the novel like to do the same. The day after

ST. IVES 223

the performance the whole artificial equipment
drops away and disappears. The bookkeeper
becomes a bookkeeper once more and a natural
man. The hour before the footlights has done
him no harm. True, he forgot his lines at one
place, but what is a prompter for if not to act
in such an emergency.? Now that it is over
the affair may be pronounced a success, — par-
ticularly in the light of the gratifying statement
that a clear profit has been realized towards
paying for the new organ.

This is a not unfair comparison of the part
played by these books in modem fiction. The
public likes them, buys them, reads them ; and
there is no reason why the public should not.
In proportion to the demand for color, action,
posturing, and excessive gesticulation, these
books have a financial success ; in proportion
to the conscientiousness of the artist who cre-
ates them they have a literary vitality. But
they bear to the actual modem novel a relation
not unlike that which The Castle of Otranto
bears to Tom Jones, — making allowance of
course for the chronological discrepancy.

From one point the heroic novel is a protest
against the commonplace and stupid elements
of modem life. According to Mr. Frederic
Harrison there is no romance left in us. Life
is stale and flat ; yet even Mr. Harrison would
hardly go to the length of declaring that it is
also commercially unprofitable. The artificial

224 STEVENSON

apartment-house romance is one expression of
the revolt against the duller elements in our
civilization ; and as has often been pointed out,
the novel of psychological horrors is another
expression.

There are a few men, however, whose work
is not accounted for by saying that they love
theatrical pomp and glitter for its own sake, or
that they write fiction as a protest against the
times in which they live. Stevenson was of
this number. He was an adventurer by inher-
itance and by practice. He came of a race of
adventurers, adventurers who built lighthouses
and fought with that bold outlaw, the Sea. He
himself honestly loved, and in a measure lived,
a wild life. There is no truer touch of nature
than in the scene where St. Ives tells the boy
Rowley that he is a hunted fugitive with a price
set upon his head, and then enjoys the tragic
astonishment depicted in the lad's face.

Rowley ' had a high sense of romance and a
secret cultus for all soldiers and criminals.
His traveling library consisted of a chap-book
life of Wallace, and some sixpenny parts of the
Old Bailey Sessions Papers ; . . . and the
choice depicts his character to a hair. You
can imagine how his new prospects brightened
on a boy of this disposition. To be the servant
and companion of a fugitive, a soldier, and a
murderer rolled in one — to live by stratagems,
disguises, and false names, in an atmosphere of

ST. IVES 225

midnight and mystery so thick that you could
cut it with a knife — was really, I believe, more
dear to him than his meals, though he was a
great trencher-man and something of a glutton
besides. For myself, as the peg by which all
this romantic business hung, I was simply idol-
ized from that moment ; and he would rather
have sacrificed his hand than surrendered the
privilege of serving me.'

One can believe that Stevenson was a boy
with tastes and ambitions like Rowley. But
for that matter Rowley stands for universal
boy-nature.

Criticism of St Ives becomes both easy and
difficult by reason of the fact that we know so
much about the book from the author's point
of view. He wrote it in trying circumstances,
and never completed it ; the last six chapters
are from the pen of a practiced story-teller, who
follows the author's known scheme of events.
Stevenson was almost too severe in his com-
ment upon his book. He says of St. Ives : —

* It is a mere tissue of adventures ; the cen-
tral figure not very well or very sharply drawn ;
no philosophy, no destiny, to it ; some of the
happenings very good in themselves, I believe,
but none of them bildende, none of them con-
structive, except in so far perhaps as they make
up a kind of sham picture of the time, all in
italics, and all out of drawing. Here and there,
I think, it is well written ; and here and there

226 STEVENSON

it 's not. ... If it has a merit to it, I should
say it was a sort of deliberation and swing to
the style, which seems to me to suit the mail-
coaches and post-chaises with which it sounds
all through. 'T is my most prosaic book.'

One must remember that this is epistolary
self-criticism, and that it is hardly to be looked
upon in the nature of an * advance notice.' Still
more confidential and epistolary is the humor-
ous and reckless affirmation that St. Ives is ' a
rudderless hulk.' ' It 's a pagoda,' says Steven-
son in a letter dated September, 1 894, ' and you
can just feel — or I can feel — that it might
have been a pleasant story if it had only been
blessed at baptism.'

He had to rewrite portions of it in conse-
quence of having received what Dr. Johnson
would have called *a large accession of new
ideas.' The ideas were historical. The first
five chapters describe the experiences of French
prisoners of war in Edinburgh Castle. St.
Ives was the only 'gentleman' among them,
the only man with ancestors and a right to the
* particle.' He suffered less from ill treatment
than from the sense of being made ridiculous.
The prisoners were dressed in uniform, —
'jacket, waistcoat, and trousers of a sulphur or
mustard yellow, and a shirt of blue-and-white
striped cotton.' St. Ives thought that 'some
malignant genius had found his masterpiece of
irony in that dress.' So much is made of this

ST. IVES 227

point that one reads with unusual interest the
letter in which Stevenson bewails his 'miser-
able luck ' with St. Ives ; for he was halfway
through it when a book, which he had ordered
six months before, arrived, upsetting all his
previous notions of how the prisoners were
cared for. Now he must change the thing
from top to bottom. 'How could I have
dreamed the French prisoners were watched
over like a female charity school, kept in a gro-
tesque livery, and shaved twice a week } ' All
his points had been made on the idea that they
were 'unshaved and clothed anyhow.' He
welcomes the new matter, however, in spite of
the labor it entails. And it is easy to see how
he has enriched the earlier chapters by accen-
tuating St. Ives's disgust and mortification over
his hideous dress and stubby chin.

The book has a light-hearted note, as a ro-
mance of the road should have. The events
take place in 1 8 1 3 ; they might have occurred
fifty or seventy-five years earlier. For the
book lacks that convincing something which
fastens a story immovably within certain chro-
nological limits. It is the effect which Thomas
Hardy has so wonderfully produced in that lit-
tle tale describing Napoleon's night-time visit
to the coast of England ; the effect which Stev-
enson himself was equally happy in making
when he wrote the piece called A Lodging for
a Night.

228 STEVENSON

St Ives has plenty of good romantic stuff in
it, though on the whole it is romance of the
conventional sort. It is too well bred, let us
say too observant of the forms and customs
which one has learned to expect in a novel of
the road. There is an escape from the castle
in the sixth chapter, a flight in the darkness
towards the cottage of the lady-love in the
seventh chapter, an appeal to the generosity of
the lady-love's aunt, a dragon with gold-rimmed
eyeglasses, in the ninth chapter. And so on.
We would not imply that all this is lacking in
distinction, but it seems to want that high dis-
tinction which Stevenson could give to his
work. Ought one to look for it in a book con-
fessedly unsatisfactory to its author, and a book
which was left incomplete ?

There is a pretty account of the first meet-
ing between St. Ives and Flora. One naturally
compares it with the scene in which David Bal-
four describes his sensations and emotions when
the spell of Catriona's beauty came upon him.
Says David : —

'There is no greater wonder than the way
the face of a young woman fits in a man's
mind and stays there, and he could never tell
you why ; it just seems it was the thing he
wanted.'

This is quite perfect, and in admirable keep-
ing with the genuine simplicity of David's char-
acter : —

ST. IVES 229

'She had wonderful bright eyes like stars;
. . . and whatever was the cause, I stood there
staring like a fool.'

This is more concise than St. Ives's descrip-
tion of Flora ; but St. Ives was a man of the
world who had read books, and knew how to
compare the young Scotch beauty to Diana : —

*As I saw her standing, her lips parted, a
divine trouble in her eyes, I could have clapped
my hands in applause, and was ready to acclaim
her a genuine daughter of the winds.'

The account of the meeting with Walter
Scott and his daughter on the moors does not
have the touch of reality in it that one would
like. Here was an opportunity, however, of
the author's own making.

There are flashes of humor, as when St.
Ives found himself locked in the poultry-house
' alone with half a dozen sitting hens. In the
twilight of the place all fixed their eyes on me
severely, and seemed to upbraid me with some
crying impropriety.'

There are sentences in which, after Steven-
son's own manner, real insight is combined
with felicitous expression. St. Ives is com-
menting upon the fact that he has done a thing
which most men learned in the wisdom of this
world would have pronounced absurd ; he has
* made a confidant of a boy in his teens and
positively smelling of the nursery.' But he has
no cause to repent it. * There is none so apt

230 STEVENSON

as a boy to be the adviser of any man in diffi-
culties like mine. To the beginnings of virile
common sense he adds the last lights of the
child's imagination.'

Men have been known to thank God when
certain authors died, — not because they bore
the slightest personal ill-will, but because they
knew that as long as the authors lived nothing
could prevent them from writing. In thinking
of Stevenson, however, one cannot tell whether
he experiences the more a feeling of personal
or of literary loss, whether he laments chiefly
the man or the author. It is not possible to
separate the various cords of love, admiration,
and gratitude which bind us to this man. He
had a multitude of friends. He appealed to a
wider audience than he knew. He himself
said that he was read by journalists, by his fel-
low novelists, and by boys. Envious admira-
tion might prompt a less successful writer to
exclaim, * Well, is n't that enough ? ' No, for
to be truly blest one must have women among
one's readers. And there are elect ladies not a
few who know Stevenson's novels ; yet it is a
question whether he has reached the great
mass of female novel-readers. Certainly he is
not well known in that circle of fashionable
maidens and young matrons which justly prides
itself upon an acquaintance with Van Bibber.
And we can hardly think he is a familiar name
to that vast and not fashionable constituency

ST. IVES 231

which battens upon the romances of Marie
Corelli under the impression that it is perusing
literature, while he offers no comfort whatever
to that type of reader who prefers that a novel
shall be filled with hard thinking, with social
riddles, theological problems, and * sexual theo-
rems.' Stevenson was happy with his journal-
ists and boys. Among all modem British men
of letters he- was in many ways the most highly
blest ; and his career was entirely picturesque
and interesting. Other men have been more
talked about, but the one thing which he did
not lack was discriminating praise from those
who sit in high critical places.

He was prosperous, too, though not grossly
prosperous. It is no new fact that the sales of
his books were small in proportion to the mag-
nitude of his contemporary fame. People
praised him tremendously, but paid their dollars
for entertainment of another quality than that
supplied by his fine gifts. An Inland Voyage
has never been as popular as Three Men in a
Boaty nor Treasure Island and Kidnapped as
King Solomons Mines; while The Black
Arrow, which Mr. Lang does not like, and
Professor Saintsbury insists is *a wonderfully
good story,' has not met a wide public favor at
all. Travels with a Donkey, which came out
in 1879, ^^d o^^y reached its sixth English edi-
tion in 1887. Perhaps that is good for a book
so entirely virtuous in a literary way, but it was
not a success to keep a man awake nights.

232 STEVENSON

We have been told that it is wrong to admire
Jekyll and Hyde, that the story is ' coarse,' an
* outrage upon the grand allegories of the same
motive,' and several other things; nay, it is
even hinted that this popular tale is evidence
of a morbid strain in the author's nature.
Rather than dispute the point it is a temptation
to urge upon the critic that he is not radical
enough, for in Stevenson's opinion all literature
might be only a 'morbid secretion.'

The critics, however, agree in allowing us to
admire without stint those smaller works in
which his characteristic gifts displayed them-
selves at the best. Thrawn Janet is one of
these, and the story of Tod Lapraik, told by
Andie Dale in Catriona, is another. Stevenson
himself declared that if he had never written
anything except these two stories he would
still have been a writer. We hope that there
would be votes cast for Will o' the Mill, which
is a lovely bit of literary workmanship. And
there are a dozen besides these.

He was an artist of undoubted gifts, but he
was an artist in small literary forms. His
longest good novels are after all little books.
When he attempted a large canvas he seemed
not perfectly in command of his materials,
though he could use those materials as they
could have been used by no other artist. There
is nothing in his books akin to that broad and
massive treatment which may be felt in a novel

ST. IVES 233

like Rhoda Fleming or in a tragedy like Tess
of the n Urhervilles.

Andrew Lang was right when he said of
Stevenson : He is a * Little Master,' but of the
Little Masters the most perfect and delightful.

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A.

BLECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY

H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO.

DATE DUE

GAYLORD

rniNTCO IN U S A

A 000 751 363

.I'M

:!: il !

;i I

m