The Collected Essays 1875 1920 Vol III

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111

MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

THE
COLLECTED ESSAYS

AND PAPERS OF

GEORGE
SAINTSBURY

18751920

VOLUME III

1923

LONDON & TORONTO
J. M. DENT ftf SONS LTD

NEW YORK : E. P. BUTTON tf CO

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TN GREAT BRITAIN

PREFACE

IF the old reproach of crambe repetita be to some
extent valid against the two preceding volumes, it
is so against this to a much less. Nearly two-thirds of
its contents have never before been collected; and two
of the papers those on Spelling Reform and on The
Permanent and the Temporary in Literature both of
which I hope may have some interest have never been
printed till now. The " miscellaneous "-ness of the con-
tents may seem exaggerated; but is quite deliberate.
I am sure Dr Johnson himself would have admitted
that Literature, Politics, and Cookery form an excellent
leash of interests.

With regard to the "Historical Novel" essays I
should like to acknowledge, not out of vanity but with
due gratitude, the fact that Professor Firth quoted
them recently with distinct approval. His Majesty's
Navy has not always thus treated privateers.

For original and other dates of appearance, &c., see
General Preface, Vol. i. But I can now give that of
The Permanent and the Temporary in Literature as
October 1910.

G. S.

CONTENTS

I. THE HISTORICAL NOVEL i

I. THE DAYS OF IGNORANCE ... I

II. SCOTT AND DUMAS 2O

III. THE SUCCESSORS 41

II. MODERN ENGLISH PROSE 62

III. ENGLISH PROSE STYLE . ... 88

IV. THE PRESENT STATE OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL . 120
V. SHAKESPEARE AND THE GRAND STYLE . .151

VI. MILTON AND THE GRAND STYLE . . .175

VII. DANTE AND THE GRAND STYLE . . . .197

VIII. THE COOKERY OF THE GROUSE .... 220

IX. THE COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE . . . 238

X. THE YOUNG ENGLAND MOVEMENT . . . 254

XI. THOUGHTS ON REPUBLICS . 270

XII. TWENTY YEARS OF REVIEWING .... 285

XIII. SPELLING REFORM 314

XIV. THE PERMANENT AND THE TEMPORARY IN

LITERATURE 341

XV. BOLSHEVISM IN ITS CRADLE .... 365

w

MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

I
THE HISTORICAL NOVEL

I. THE DAYS OF IGNORANCE

HO wrote the first Historical Novel? The ortho-
dox, and perhaps on the whole the sufficient,
answer to this question is, Xenophon. And indeed the
Cyrop&dia does in many ways answer to the descrip-
tion of a historical novel better than anything, at least
anything extant, before it, and as well as most things
for more than two thousand years after it. It is true
that even nowadays hardly the most abandoned devotee
of the instructive in novels, would begin a book with
such a sentence as, " It occurred to us once upon a time
how many democracies have come to an end at the
hands of those who wished to have some kind of con-
stitution other than a democracy." But perhaps that
is only because we are profoundly immoral and so-
phisticated, while the Greeks were straightforward
and sincere. For the very novelist who artfully begins
with a scrap of dialogue, or a description of somebody
looking over a gate, or a pistol shot, or a sunset, or
a tea-party, will, before many pages are turned, plunge
you fathoms deeper than ever classical plummet can
have sounded in disquisition and dulness. Still, there
is no doubt that not merely on this earliest, but on
every early example of the kind, there weighed a
certain character of amateurishness and novitiate.
Not till within the nineteenth century in the hands of
Miss Austen and Scott did prose fiction of any kind

2 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

shake itself entirely free from the trammels of second-
ary purpose, without at the same time resigning itself
to the mere concoction of amusing or exciting adven-
ture. Even Fielding, though he would let nothing inter-
fere with his story, thought it desirable to interlard
and accompany that story with moral and philosophical
disquisitions.

It is not therefore wonderful that Xenophon, who
was quite a different person from Fielding, and was
moreover simply exploring an untried way, should
have subordinated his novel to his political purpose.
In fact it is perhaps rather excessive to regard him as
having intentionally written a novel, in our sense, at
all. He wanted to write a political treatise: he was a
pupil of Socrates; and vastly as the Socrates of Plato
and the Socrates of Xenophon differ, they agree in
exhibiting a strong predilection for the use of fictitious,
or semi-fictitious literary machinery for the convey-
ance of philosophical truth. The Cyropcedia is in fact
a sort of Entile of antiquity, devoted to the education
of a king instead of a private person. It may even be
argued that such romantic elements as it does contain
(the character, or at least personage, of Panthea, the
rivalry of Araspes and Abradatas, and so forth) are
introduced less for any attraction they may give to
the story than for the opportunities they afford to
Cyrus of displaying the proper conduct of the ruler.
And it is scarcely necessary to say that the actual
historical element in the book is very small indeed,
scarcely extending beyond the parentage, personality,
and general circumstances of Cyrus.

Such as the book is, however, it is the nearest ap-
proach to the kind that we have from classical times.
Some indeed would have it that Quintus Curtius has
taken nearly as great liberties with the destroyer as

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, I 3

Xenophon did with the founder of the Persian mon-
archy: but- the things obviously belong to different
kinds. The Cyrop&dia is a philosophical romance for
which its author has chosen to borrow a historic name
or two; the other (if indeed its author was a real
classical writer and not a mere re-arranger of mediaeval
fable) is a history which admits unhistorical and
romantic details. Nor can any of the extant Greek
Romances, as they are generally called, be said to
possess a historical complexion. They may sometimes,
for the convenience of the authors, allude more or less
slightly to historical facts ; but their general story and
their characters have nothing to do with anything of
the kind. The remarkable adventures of the conven-
tional pair of lovers need no such admixture; and
Anthea, Chariclea, Leucippe, Chloe, and Hysmine are
won and lost and won again without any but glances
(if even that) at historical characters or incidents.
Some things in Lucian's True History and other bur-
lesques have led to the idea that the Historical Novel
may have been more fully represented in works that
have perished; but there is little evidence of this.

It does not require very long or elaborate reflection
to show that things could not well have been different.
The attraction of historical subjects in fiction, for the
writer to some extent and still more for the reader,
depends entirely upon the existence of a considerable
body of written history, and on the public acquaint-
ance with it. Now although erudite enquiry has suffi-
ciently shown that the ancients were by no means so
badly off for books as it pleased Dr Johnson and others
to assume, it is perfectly certain that they cannot
possibly have had such a body of history. Except
some scraps of chiefly Persian chronicle and a certain
knowledge of affairs in Egypt, the Greeks had no

4 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

history but their own, and this latter they were making
and writing, not reading. They left the Romans a little
more but not much. There was thus little for a Roman,
and next to nothing for a Greek Scott or Dumas to
go upon even had he existed ; no materials to work up,
no public taste, imagination, or traditions to appeal to.
Even if instincts and desires of the kind did suggest
themselves to any one, the natural region in which it
was sought to gratify them was mythology, not history,
while the natural medium was verse, not prose. Apu-
leius, who worked up the legend of Cupid and Psyche
so charmingly, might no doubt, if it had occurred to
him, have done something of the same kind with
Appius and Virginia, with the expulsion of the Pisis-
tratidae, with a hundred other Greek and Roman inci-
dents of romantic capabilities. He would have had,
too, the immense advantage of being (modern as he
was in a way) on the right side of the gulf, of being,
as our jargon has it, more or less "in touch" with his
subjects, and of being free from the laborious and yet
ineffectual gropings which have marred all post-
mediaeval attempts at the Historical Novel with a
classical theme. But he did not; and if he did not
there was certainly no one else who was likely to do
it. The Historical Novel of Greece is we have seen a
philosophical treatise; the Historical Novel of Rome is
an epic, an epic differing in merit as JEneid from
Thebaid and Thebaid from Eellum Punicum, but still
alike in being an epic, and not a novel.

When the kind revives after the deluge of the bar-
barians it shows us one of the most curious and
interesting evidences of the strange fertilising power
of that deluge. The very identical separation which in
some five centuries dissolves and precipitates Latin
into Romance, begets the romance itself at the same

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, I 5

time. No doubt the new historical novels at first seem
to be epics, like their predecessors, in so far as they
had any. They are first in verse; but before very long
they are in prose also. And what is more, one of the
most essential and formative characteristics of the
Historical Novel appears in them. The Virgils and their
followers had gone a thousand years back for their
subjects; even Silius Italicus had selected his at a
prudent distance of hundreds. But the epics (before
very long to become prose romances) of the Carlovingian*
and Arthurian cycles attack comparatively recent times;
and when the Crusades begin, by one of the most
interesting things in literature, contemporary event
actually transforms itself into romance. The story of
fact seems to become alive, to twist itself out of the
hands of the chronicler who has actually seen the fear-
some host of the Tafurs before Antioch, and ridden
" red-wetshod " into Jerusalem. Moreover it takes to
itself all manner of strange legendary accretions, and
becomes (as in Les Chetifs and other parts of the Cru-
sading cycle) a historical novel, with some personages
and incidents strictly matter-of-fact, and others purely
and obviously fictitious.

There is no more difficult question than that of
deciding in exactly what manner these Romances were
received by our forefathers. These forefathers were (a
dim consciousness of it appears to be at last dawning
on their descendants) not by any means fools ; though
the belief that they were so may still survive in com-
pany with the kindred beliefs that they never took
baths, that they were extremely miserable, and so
forth. They knew perfectly well that these things were,
as they said themselves, trovts, invented, sometimes
by the very person who sang or said them, always by
somebody like him. At the same time they knew that

6 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

there was a certain amount of historic truth about
some of the personages. Probably (the gods not having
made them critical about things where criticism could
well be spared) they took in the thing pretty much the
same delight that the modern reader takes in the
mixture of truth and fiction which distinguishes the
Historical Novel itself, and did not care to separate
the constituents thereof.

It would take far too much space, and would be less
strictly appropriate to a handling of the Historical
Novel than to one of the Romance generally, to sort
out in any detail the different kinds of mediaeval story
and their exact relation to our particular kind. And
the investigation would be a little perplexed by the
incurable mediaeval habit of puttiug everything in
verse, science as well as fiction, imagination as well
as history. Perhaps the nearest approach to the His-
torical Novel proper is to be found in the Icelandic
Sagas, where the best authorities seem to agree that
simple and sober family and provincial history is
tricked out in the most inextricable and bewildering
manner with sheer Scaldic invention. But the explana-
tion is, as I have already hinted, that criticism was not
born or reborn. Some, I believe, would be well pleased
if it never had been; but that is neither here nor there.
Has not Professor Flint, the most learned and pains-
taking of investigators, told us that he can find no
trace of systematic historical criticism before Ibn
Khaldun, that erudite Arab and contemporary of
Chaucer? Now as without a considerable stock of
history and some general knowledge of it there is no
material for the Historical Novel, so without a more
or less distinct criticism of history, of what pretty
certainly has happened as distinguished from what
very certainly has not, it is impossible for this

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, I 7

kind of novel to attain a distinct and separate
existence.

And you never (or at any rate very seldom) can put
your finger on any part of any mediaeval history, in
prose or verse, whether it be avowedly chronicle or
half-avowedly fiction, and say, "Here the man con-
sciously and deliberately left his facts and took to his
fictions." The difficulty, the impossibility, as it seems
to me, of satisfactorily tracing the origins of the
Arthurian story lies precisely in this. Your Nennius,
your Caradoc of Lancarvan even, very possibly, nay
most probably, believed that they were giving simple
history. Perhaps your Archdeacon Walter (always
supposing that he ever existed) did the same. But
what are we to make of Geoffrey of Monmouth and
persons like him? Was Geoffrey a merely uncritical
chronicler, taking details from record and romance
alike? Was he, whether plagiarist in the main, or
plastic artist in the main, a "maker," a conscious
inventor? Or was he a historical novelist before his
time, taking his facts from Nennius and Walter (if
Walter there was), his inventions partly from Welsh
and Breton poetry, partly from his own brains, and
weaving it all into something like a whole? That is
exactly what no one can say.

But I cling to my own contention that it is impossible
to find out how much in the average mediaeval writer
was intended history, and how much deliberate ro-
mance, for the precise reason that he had never as a
rule bent his mind to consider the difference between
them. "The French book" said it, or the Latin book,
or something, anything, else; and he took the saying,
comparatively indifferent to its source, and handed it
on a little increased, or at any rate not diminished, like
the thrifty personage at the beginning of the Republic.

8 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

It will therefore be clear that, so long as this attitude
of mind prevailed, no Historical Novel in. the proper
sense of the term was possible. History and Romance
passed into each other with too bewildering a meta-
morphosis; what is pedantically called "the respect
of the document" was a thing absolutely unknown.
In the days when the Homeric tale of Troy expanded
itself through Dictys and Dares, through Benoit de
Sainte-More and Guido Colonna, into endless amplifi-
cations; when the already rather romantic Alexander
of Curtius (always supposing the order not to be the
reverse one) acquired twelve Paladins, and discovered
the Fountain of Youth, and all but achieved the Earthly
Paradise; when the merely poetical history of the
Chanson d'Antioche branched off into the sheer legend
of Les Chetifs and the endless imaginations of the
Chevalier au Cygne, there could be no special Historical
Novel because everything was at once novel and his-
tory. The peculiarities of romantic handling had become
ingrained in, were as it were inextricably blended with
and joined to, the literary forms in common use. Not
merely a superhuman genius like Dante, when he throws
contemporary event and feeling into a form which
seems to belong to all time or none, but lesser and more
strictly practical persons like Froissart and Guillaume
de Machault, when the one tells the contemporary
prowess of the English in France in brilliant prose, and
the other sings the contemporary exploits of Peter of
Lusignan at Alexandria in not very ornate verse, share
in the benefits or the drawbacks of this romantic
atmosphere. Without any scuffling they change rapiers ;
and you cannot tell which is which.

A kind which the restless ingenuity and fertile in-
vention of the Middle Ages had not discovered was
very unlikely to find existence in the dulness of the

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, I 9

fifteenth century. That age, so far as intellectual work
is concerned, was occupied either in tedious imitation
of the products of mediaeval genius, or in laborious
exhumation of the products of the genius of the
ancients. To history proper it did not pay very much
attention, and its chief achievement in fiction, the
Amadis cycle, is mainly remarkable for the way in
which it cuts itself altogether adrift from history. The
older romances, in conformity with the stock tag of
one of their writers about "the sayings and the doings
and the ways of the ancestors," tried to bring them-
selves from time to time into a sort of contact with
those central and accepted points of older romance
which were almost history. But Lobeira, or Montalvo,
or whoever he was, with his or their followers, hardly do
this at all. Their world of fantasy suffices them. And
perhaps, if anybody likes critical paradox, they may
be said to have in a way accelerated the real Historical
Novel by rejecting, half unconsciously no doubt, the
admixture of novel and history in the undistinguished
and indistinguishable fashion of the Middle Ages.

The sixteenth century was too busy with the actual,
and (in that which was not actual) with its marvellous
outburst of poetry and drama, with its passionate
devotion to religious, political, philosophical and other
learning to pay much attention to the comparatively
frivolous department of prose fiction. Even if it had
done so, the old constraints and disabilities waited on
it still. It was, however, getting rid of them pretty
rapidly. It was accumulating a great mass of historical
information which the Press was spreading and making
generally accessible ; it was gradually forging and exer-
cising itself with the weapons of criticism ; and side by
side with this exercise, it was developing the natural
corrective and supplement an intelligent and affec-

io MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

tionate retrospect of the past from the literary point
of view. This last is a thing of which we find little trace
either in classical or in mediaeval times: the most
obvious ancient indications of it are to be found in
Alexandria, that microcosm in advance of the modern
world, and especially in the writings of the Hellenistic
Jews. But it begins to appear or reappear in the
sixteenth century, and with it comes the promise of
the Historical Novel.

The promise, but not the performance. Among the
scanty fiction of the sixteenth century the work of
Rabelais and Cervantes (for though Don Quixote did
not appear till a year or two after the century had
arithmetically closed, it belongs thereto) towers with
a supremacy not merely born of the want of rivals.
But each is (so far as class goes) only a parody of the
older, and especially of the Amadis, romances. The
philosophical fictions, whether they be political like
Utopia or social and educational like Euphues, are
equally far from our subject, and obviously do but
copy the forms of Plato and Xenophon. Nearly all
the rest is but tale-telling, with an imitation of the
Greek pastoral here and there, blended with other
kinds, as in Arcadia and Astrtza and Diana.

The immediate descendants of these latter did indeed
in the next age attempt to give themselves historical
form, or at any rate historical names; and the names
if not the form prevailed for a considerable period.
Indeed, Le Grand Cyrus and Cleopdtre and Clelie, if we
take their glances at the present, as well as their nominal
references to the past, are doubly historical; and this
double appeal continued in the ordinary French novel
for a long time. Thus the characters of the famous
Princesse de Ctives (the first modern novel as some will
have it to be) were all real persons, or most of them,

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, I n

once upon a time, besides possessing real doubles in
the court of Louis the Fourteenth. But it was in the
latter, not in the former bearing of them that their
original readers took interest, while the writers here
and elsewhere cared not in the very least for any
historical verisimilitude whatever. And this continued
to be the case throughout the eighteenth century. The
Novel of Sensibility, either out of mere habit or for some
other reason, was rather fond of taking historical names
and even in a very broad and general way historical
incidents to help it; but nothing could be less like a
Historical Novel.

In England, as is very well known, the seventeenth
century gave us, properly speaking, neither novel nor
romance of the slightest importance. It allegorised;
and on one occasion its allegory shot up into the mighty
creation of The Pilgrim's Progress. It pursued its
explorations in fictitious political geography from
Utopia to Atlantis and from Atlantis to Oceana. It
told a story or so as the humour took it. But it was not
till the next century that the country which has since
been the school of every kind of novel to every other
country in Europe, and has in the past hundred and
fifty years probably produced more novels than all the
countries of Europe put together, began seriously to
devote itself to the kind. And even then it did not for
a long time discover the real Historical Novel. Defoe,
indeed, hovered around and about this kind as he did
around and about so many others. The Memoirs of a
Cavalier is a Historical Novel almost full-fledged, and
wanting only a stronger dramatic and personal element
in it. That unequal and puzzling book Roxana is almost
another: and if the Memoirs of Captain Carleton are
fiction, they may perhaps take rank with these, though
at a greater distance. But either Defoe's own incurable

12 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

tendencies to mystification, or the appetites of the
time, seem to have imposed upon him the need of pre-
tending that everything which he wrote was true. Nor
did he ever attain to that important variety of the
novelist's art which consists in detaching and isolating
the minor characters of his book, an art which is
nowhere of more consequence than in the Historical
Novel. If Roxana's Amy, and William the Quaker in
Captain Singleton stand out among his characters, it
is because by art or accident he has been able to impart
more of this detachment and individuality to them
than to almost any others. And as we shall see when
we come presently to consider what the Historical
Novel ought to be, there is hardly any qualification so
necessary to it as this.

But Defoe, as is well known, exercised little direct
influence on English literature, for all his genius, his
immense industry, and the multifarious ways in which
he was a precursor and innovator. He was read, rather
than imitated or critically admired; and even if his
influence had been more direct, another current would
have probably been strong enough to drive back or
absorb the waves of his for a time. Le Sage with Gil
Bias taking up and enforcing the previous popularity
of Don Quixote; Marivaux with his lessons to Richard-
son; and the strong satiric allegory of Swift, slightly
sweetened and humanised but not much weakened by
Fielding, still held the Historical Novel aloof, still kept
it "a bodiless childful of life in the gloom." And part
of the cause was still, unless I greatly mistake, that
which has been already assigned, the absence of a
distinct, full, and tolerably critical notion of history
such as the eighteenth century itself was hard at work
supplying.

Nor was the mere accumulation of historical facts,

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, I 13

or the mere diffusion of knowledge of them, the only
work of preparation for this special purpose in which
the century was engaged; though it was the greatest.
Few people, I think, quite realise how little history
was read and known in England before the middle of
the eighteenth century. It was then that Johnson could
mention Knollys (a very good and interesting writer
no doubt, but already antiquated and certainly not of
the first class) as our best if not our only historian on
the great scale. And it was only then that Hume and
Robertson and Gibbon by ushering the Historic Muse
in full dress into libraries, and Goldsmith by presenting
her in rather careless but very agreeable undress in
schoolrooms, were at once taking away this reproach
and spreading the knowledge of the subject; in other
words were providing the historical novel-writer with
material, and furnishing the historical novel-reader
with the appetite and the modicum of knowledge
necessary for its enjoyment. Yet it may be doubted
whether this would have sufficed alone, or without that
special additional stimulus which was given by what
is vaguely called the Romantic movement. When in
their very different ways Percy and Walpole and Gray,
with many others, directed or excited public curiosity
about the incidents, the manners, and the literature
of former times, they made the Historical Novel in-
evitable; and indeed it began to show itself with very
little delay.

Want of practice, want of the aforesaid historical
knowledge, and perhaps, above all, want of a genius
who chose to devote himself to the special subject,
made the earliest babblings of the style very childish
babblings indeed. The Castle of Otranto itself is in
essence a Historical Novel with the history omitted;
and a good many of its imitators endeavoured to supply

i 4 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

the want. For a time they did it with astonishing
clumsiness and want of the historic sense. Even
Godwin, a historian by profession and a man of really
very considerable historical knowledge, appears to have
had not the remotest notion of local colour, of anti-
quarian fitness, of the adjustment of atmosphere and
style, St Leon, for instance, is in its opening scenes to
no small extent historical, and keeps up the historic
connection to some degree throughout ; but, except for
a few bare facts, the whole thing is a gross anachronism,
only to be excused on the inadequate ground that in
"a romance of immortality" you cannot expect much
attention to miserable concerns of time. There is not
the least attempt to adjust the manners to those of
Francis the First's day, or the dialogue and general
incidents to anything known of the sixteenth century.
The age still told its novels, as it mounted its plays, with
a bland and complete disregard of details such as these.
And Godwin was a purist and a pedant in these
respects as compared with the great Anne Radcliffe.
The rare lapse into older carelessness which made the
sun set in the sea on the east coast of Scotland in The
Antiquary is a peccadillo not to be named beside the
astounding geography of the Mysteries of Udolpho, or
the wonderful glimpses of a France such as the gifted
lady imagined it to have been in the time of the religious
wars. Clara Reeve, the author of the once famous Old
English Baron, writing years before either Godwin or
Mrs Radcliffe, and on the direct and acknowledged
model of Walpole, threw the lessons of her master (who
really did know something both about mediaeval history
and manners,) entirely to the winds; and though she
took Henry the Sixth's youth and the regency of Bed-
ford for her time, made her picture one of no time at
all. Her French contemporaries were doing just the

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, I i$

same or worse; and all over Europe the return to the
Middle Ages- was being made to a Middle Age entirely,
or almost entirely of convention. Miss Reeve herself
found not a few imitators who were more boldly but
not more wisely historical than herself. In the ninth
decade of the eighteenth century when Scott was a
boy of twelve or fourteen. Miss Lee had produced her
egregious Recess, dealing with Elizabethan times and
Elizabeth herself. Many others followed, and the not
entirely forgotten novels of Jane Porter, though they
will be noticed later, actually preceded Scott.

If we could attach quite as much importance to
Scott's intromissions with Queenhoo Hall (1808) as he
himself seems to do in regard to the genesis of Waverley^
the performances of the Reeves and the Radcliffes
might be credited with a very large share in determining
the birth, at last, of the genuine Historical Novel
proper. For there can be no doubt that it was because
he was shocked at the liberties taken and the ignorance
shown in these works, that that eminent and excellent
antiquary, Mr Joseph Strutt, determined to show the
public how their ancestors really did live and move and
have their being, in the romance of Queenhoo Hall. I
am ashamed to say that my knowledge of that work is
entirely confined to Scott's own fragment, for the book
is a very rare one; at least I hardly ever remember
having seen a copy catalogued. But the account of it
which Scott himself gives, and the fragment which he
seems to have very dutifully copied in manner from
the original, are just what we should expect. Strutt
probably caring nothing for a story as a story and
certainly being unable to write one busied himself
only about making his language and his properties
and his general arrangement as archaically correct as
possible. His book therefore naturally bore the same

16 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

resemblance to a Historical Novel that Mr Oldbuck's
Caledoniad, could he ever have got it done according
to his own notions and without Lovel's assistance,
would have borne to an epic poem.

And now, as we have brought the Historical Novel
safely through that period of ante-natal history which
some great authorities have thought the most important
of all, as we have finished the account of the Days of
Ignorance (to adopt the picturesque and pleasing Arab
expression for the period of Arabian annals before
Mahomet), it would be obviously improper to bring in
the Prophet himself at the end of even a short pre-
liminary enquiry. And there is all the more reason for
not doing so because this is the place in which to con-
sider what the Historical Novel is. It will not do to
adopt the system of the bold empiric and say, "the
Novel as written by Scott." For some of the best of
Scott's novels (including Guy Mannering and The
Antiquary) are not historical novels at all. Yet it may
be confessed that Scott left but little in a general way
to be found out about the style, and that his practice,
according as it is less or more successful, may almost
be translated into the principles of the art.

We have already seen something of what a Historical
Novel ought not to be and is not; while the hundred
years which have passed since the publication of
Waverley^ if they have not shown us all possible forms
of what it ought to be and is, have probably gone very
far to do so. For the possibilities of art, though quite
infinite in the way of detail, by no means include very
many new things in their general outlines ; and when an
apparently new leaf is turned, the lines on that leaf
are apt to be filled in pretty quickly. Periclean and
Elizabethan drama each showed all it could do in less
than the compass of a lifetime, though no doubt good

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, I 17

examples were produced over a much longer period
than this. And though I hope that good historical
novels will be written for hundreds of years to come,
I do not think that they will be written on any very
different principles than those which showed themselves
in the novels produced during the forty years which
passed between the appearance of Waverley and the
appearance of Westward Ho!

We have seen how the advent of the Historical
Novel was delayed by the want of a general knowledge
of history, and we have seen how in that fate of
Queenhoo Hall, whereof Scott himself is the chronicler,
the opposite danger appeared when the first had been
removed. The danger of too much history lay not
merely in the way of too much pedantry like that of
the good Strutt, but in that of an encroachment of the
historic on the romantic element in divers ways. This,
if not so destructive of the very existence of the thing
as the other danger, is the more fatal of the two to its
goodness when it does exist.

The commonest and most obvious form of this error
is decanting too much of your history bodily into your
novel. Scott never falls into this error; it is much if
he once or twice approaches it very far off. But Dumas,
in the days when he let " the young men" do the work
with too little revision or warning, was prone to it;
G. P. R. James often fell into it; and Harrison Ains-
worth, in those painful later years when his dotages
fell into the reluctant hands of critics who had rejoiced
in him earlier as readers, was simply steeped in it. It
made not merely the besetting sin, but what may be
called the regular practice (unconscious of sin at all)
of writers like Southey's friend, Mrs Bray; and the
unwary beginner has not shaken himself or herself free
from it even now.

i8 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

This, however, is so gross and palpable a fault that
one could but wonder at its deceiving persons of ability
and literary virtue, if the temptations to it were not
equally palpable and gross. A much subtler, though
perhaps an even worse mistake, comes next, and ruins
books that might have been good and very good to
this day, though Scott himself, besides the warning of
his practice, marked it "dangerous" in more than one
place of his critical introductions, and though all the
better critics from Joubert and Sainte-Beuve down-
wards have blown their foghorns and rocked their bell-
buoys for its avoidance. This is the allotting too
prominent a position and too dominant an interest to
the real persons and the real incidents of the story. It
is, I suppose, in vain to repeat the aforesaid warnings.
Just before giving up novel-reviewing I can remember
two books both written with extreme care by persons
of no ordinary talent, and one of them at least intro-
ducing personages and a story of the most poignant
interest which were failures because the historical
attraction was not relegated to the second place. If
Scott himself had made Mary the actual heroine of
The Abbot, had raised George Douglas to the position
of hero, and had made their loves (practically fictitious
as they would have been) the central point of the story,
I do not doubt that he would have failed. If it be urged,
that he has made Richard almost the avowed hero of
The Talisman and not much less than the hero of
Ivanhoe, the answer is clear: that the story is in the
one case almost entirely, in the other everywhere, save
in a very few points, removed from actual history, and
that while we gain the popular interest in the Lion-
Heart as a stimulus, we are not in reality balked and
hampered by the too narrow room, the too inelastic
circumstances, which historic fact supplies. I have

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, I 19

always thought it a proof of the unerring tact which
guided Sir Walter in general on this matter that he
never once, save in the case of Rob Roy (and there the
reality was but a little one), took his title from a real
person, and only twice in the suggestive, but not
hampering instances of Kenilwortb and Woodstock,
from a real place. For The Legend of Montr ose and The
Fair Maid of Perth contain obvious fiction as their
main appeal. His successors were less wise; and they
paid for their want of wisdom.

The canons negative and affirmative will then run
somewhat thus: " Observe local colour and historical
propriety, but do not become a slave either to Dryas-
c^st or to Heavysterne. Intermix historic interest and
11({S charm of well-known figures, but do not incur the
ia nger of mere historical transcription ; still more take
caf*e that the prevailing ideas of your characters, or
yotar scene, or your action, or all three, be fantastic
ati& within your own discretion." When these are put
together we shall have what is vernacularly called "the
boxes" of the Historical Novel. Hereafter we may go
on o see what flesh has been imposed on this skeleton
byiearly three generations of practitioners. For the
prtent it may suffice to add that the Historical Novel
-iiKe all other novels without exception, if it is to be
good must not have a direct purpose of any sort,
though no doubt it may, and even generally does,
enforce certain morals both historical and ethical. It
is, fortunately, by its very form and postulates, freed
from the danger of meddling with contemporary pro-
blems; it is grandly and artistically unactual, though
here again it may teach unobtrusive lessons. Although,
oddly enough, those imperfect French examples of it
to which we have referred incline more to the novel
than to the romance, and busy themselves with a kind

2-2

20 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

of analysis, it is of course in its nature synthetic ai
not analytic. It is not in the least limited by consider
tions of time or country; it is as much at home on
Mexican teocalli as in an English castle, though it ce
tainly has, hitherto, exhibited the odd peculiarity th
no one has written a first-rate historical novel
classical times. While enquiry and research maim i.
chances of art in many, perhaps in most directior
they only multiply and enlarge the fields for this,
the drudgeries of the very dullest dog that ever edit
a document there may be the germ of a Quentin Di
ward\ and in itself this novel is perhaps the most pure
refreshing of all reading, precisely because of its curie
conjunction of romance and reality.

II. SCOTT AND DUMAS

I do not think that observation, however widely s
may extend and however narrowly she may concc
trate her view, will find in the history of literati
anything quite similar to the achievement of \
Waverley Novels. Their uniqueness does not consj
wholly, or from the present point of view even main'
in the fact that for bulk, excellence, and rapidity
production combined they can probably challenge ar t
thing else in letters. That they can do this I am by
no means disposed to deny. But the point of pre-
eminence at present to be considered is the singular
and miraculous fashion in which Sir Walter, taking a
kind of writing which had, as we have seen, been tried,
or at least tried at, for more than two thousand years,
and which had never yet been got to run smoothly on
its own lines to its own end, by one stroke effected
what the efforts of those two millenniums had been
bungling and balking themselves over.

That Waverley itself is the ideal of an historical novel

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, II 21

need not be contended; and I do not know that any
intelligent devotee would contend for anything of the
kind. It bears, especially in its earlier chapters, too
many marks of the old false procedure; and that in-
sipidity of the nominal hero, which is so constantly
and not so unjustly charged against Scott, appears in
it pretty strongly. His unworldly education and the
flustering influence of the Blessed Bear do not wholly
excuse Waverley even in so early a matter as the
Balmawhapple Duel. We can hardly blame his brother
officers for suspecting him of poltroonery; and he can
only clear himself from the charge of being a coward
by submitting to that of being a simpleton. And
though it is by no means the case that, according to
the stupid old rule of critics like Rymer, a hero must
be always wise as well as always fortunate, always
virtuous as well as always brave, yet the kinds of folly
permitted to him are rather limited in number. It is
worth while to dwell on this in order to show that
what is most wonderful about Waverley is not its indi-
vidual perfection as a work of art; though the Baron,
the Bailie, the whole of the actual scenes after the war
breaks out, and many other things and persons, exalt
it infinitely above anything of the kind known earlier.
But the chief marvel, the real point of interest, is
the way in which, after thousands of years of effort to
launch one particular ship into one particular ocean,
she at last slips as by actual miracle into the waves
and sweeps out into the open sea. Exactly how this
came about it may be impossible to point out with any
exhaustive certainty. Some reasons why the thing had
not been done before were given in the last paper; some
why it was done at this hour and by this man may
perhaps be given in the present. But we shall have to
end by assigning at least a large share of the explana-

22 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

tion to the formula that "Walter Scott made historical
novels because there was in him the virtue of the his-
torical novelist."

Nevertheless we can perhaps find out a little about
the component parts of this virtue, a little more
about the antecedents and immediate workings of it.
The desiderata which have been referred to before
the wide knowledge of history, the affectionate and
romantic interest in the past Scott possessed in com-
mon with his generation, but in very much larger
measure and more intense degree than most of its
members. Nor was it probably of slight importance
that when he commenced historical novelist he was a
man well advanced in middle age* and not merely
provided with immense stores of reading, and with
very considerable practice in composition of many
kinds, but also experienced in more than one walk of
practical business, thoroughly versed in society from
the highest to the lowest ranks, and lastly, which is a
matter of great importance in all cases, master of a
large portion of his own time. It had indeed for years
pleased him as it did afterwards, fortunately or un-
fortunately, to a still greater extent, to dispose of
much of this leisure in literary labour; but it was in
labour of his own choosing, and neither in task-work
nor in work necessary for bread-winning. The Sheriff-
dom and the Clerkship (least distressful of places) freed
him from all cares of this kind, augmented as his
revenues were by the extraordinary sums paid for his
poems.

But the most happy predisposition or preparation
to be found in his earlier career was beyond all doubt
his apprenticeship, if the word seem not too uncere-
monious, to these poems themselves. Here indeed he
had far less to originate than in the novels. From the

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, II 23

dawn of literature the narrative romance had been
written in verse, and from the dawn of literature it had
been wont at least to give itself out as historical. I
am not sure, however, that the present age, which,
while it gives itself airs of being unjust to Scott's prose,
is unjust in reality to his poetry, does not even here
omit to recognise the full value of his innovations or
improvements. Of most classical narrative poems (the
Odyssey being perhaps the sole exception) the famous
saying about Richardson, that if you read for the story
you would hang yourself, is true enough. It is true to
a great extent of Milton, to some extent even of Spenser,
and of nearly all the great narrative poets of the Con-
tinent, except Ariosto, in whom it is rather the stories
than the story, rather the endless flow of romantic and
comic digression than the plot and characters, that
attract us. As for the mediaeval writers whom Scott
more immediately followed, I believe I am in a con-
siderable minority. I find them interesting for the
story; but most people do not find them so, and I
cannot but admit myself that their interest of this
kind varies very much indeed, and is very seldom of
the highest.

With Scott it is quite different. Any child who is
good for anything knows why The Lay of the Last
Minstrel was so popular. It was not merely or mainly
because the form was novel and daring; for over a
hundred years past that form has been as familiar as
Pope's couplet was to our great-grandfathers. It was
not merely (though it was partly) because the thing is
interspersed with passages of delightful and undoubted
poetry. It was because it was and is interesting as a
story; because the reader wanted to know what became
of Deloraine and the Goblin page, and the rest ; because
the incidents and the scenes attracted, excited, fixed

24 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

attention. This was even more the case in Marmion
(which moreover approaches the historical novel in
verse more nearly still), and it never failed in any of
the rest. It was, to take some of the least popular of
all the poems, because Scott could tell an incident as
he has told the vengeance of Bertram Risingham in
Rokeby, because he could knit together the well-worn
and world-old string of familiar trials and temptations
as he has done in The Bridal of Triermain, that he made
his fortune in verse. He had the secret of tale-telling
and of adjusting tales to facts. He taught it to Byron
and others, and he made the popularity of the
thing.

The suitableness of verse, however, for the story as
the story, and especially for the historical novel as the
historical novel, is so far inferior to that of prose, and
the difficulty of keeping up a series of fictions in verse
is so immeasurably greater than that of doing the
same thing in prose, that I am disposed to believe that
Waverley would have appeared all the same if there
had been no Byron, and no chance of dethronement.
In fact, the historical novel had to be created, and
Scott had to create it. He had learned if so dull and
deliberate a process as learning can be asserted of what
seems to have been as natural and as little troublesome
to him as breathing to build the romantic structure,
to decorate it with ornament of fact and fancy from
the records of the past, to depict scenery and manners,
to project character, even to some extent to weave
dialogue. And I do not know that there is any more
remarkable proof of his literary versatility in general,
and his vocation for the historical novel in particular,
than the fact that the very fault of prose romances,
especially those immediately preceding his own, was
also one most likely to be encouraged by a course of

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, II 25

poetical practice, and yet is one from which he is
almost entirely free.

The Godwins and the Mrs Radcliffes had perpetually
offended, now by dialogue so glaringly modern that it
was utterly out of keeping with their story and their
characters, now by the adoption of the conventional
stage jargon which is one of the most detestable lingos
ever devised by man. With very rare exceptions
Sir Walter completely avoids both these dangers. His
conversation has not, indeed, that prominence in the
method of his work which we shall find it possessing
in the case of his great French follower. But it is for
the most part full of dramatic suitableness, it is often
excellently humorous or pathetic, and it almost always
possesses in some degree the Shakespearean quality of
fitting the individual and the time and the circum-
stances without any deliberate archaism or modernism.
No doubt Scott's wide reading enabled him to do a cer-
tain amount of mosaic work in this kind. Few for
instance, except those whose own reading is pretty
wide in the plays and pamphlets of the seventeenth
century, know how much is worked from them into The
Fortunes of Nigel and Woodstock. But this dialogue is
never mere mosaic. It has the quality which, already
called Shakespearean, also belongs to men of such
different kinds and orders of greatness from Scott's or
Shakespeare's as, for instance, Goldsmith the quality
of humanity, independent of time.

Now this is of itself of such importance to the his-
torical novelist, that it may be doubted whether any
other kind of craftsman can find it more important.
The laborious and uninspired attempt at fidelity to
"temp, of tale" in language, is nearly as destructive
of the equanimity proper to the reception of a novel,
as is the perpetual irritation which glaring and taste-

26 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

less anachronisms of speech excite. And it is not par-
ticularly easy to say whether this knack plays a greater
part in the fashioning of the " Scotch novel" (as it
used to be called, with an odd mixture of propriety
and impropriety), than the other ingredients of plot,
character, and description. In regard to plot, Scott
was from one point of view a great and confessing
sinner; from another, a most admirably justified one.
Plot, in the strict sense, he never achieved, and very
seldom even attempted to achieve it. It was only a few
years ago that there was published for the first time a
letter from his intimate friend and one of his best
critics, Lady Louisa Stuart (who, to be sure, had litera-
ture in the blood of her), stigmatising, more happily
perhaps than has ever been done" since, Sir Walter's
habit of " huddling up the cards and throwing them into
the bag in his impatience for a new deal." It may
almost be said that Scott never winds up a plot art-
fully; and the censure which he makes Captain Clutter-
buck pass in the introduction to The Fortunes of Nigel
is undoubtedly valid. When Peacock, in Crotchet
Castle, made that very crotchety comparison of Scott
to a pantomime librettist, he might at least have
justified it by the extraordinary fondness of the novel-
ist for a sort of transformation-scene which finishes
everything off in a trice, and, as Dryden says of his
hasty preacher,

Runs huddling to the benediction.

The powerful and pathetic scenes at Carlisle and the
delightful restoration of the Baron somewhat mask,
in Waverley itself, the extreme and rather improbable
ease with which the hero's pardon is extorted from a
government and a general rather prone to deal harshly
than mildly with technical traitors.' I never could
make out how, if Sir Arthur Wardour's fortune was half

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, II 27

so badly dipped as we are given to understand, his son,
even with more assistance from Lovel than a young man
of spirit was likely to accept from his sister's suitor,
could have disengaged it at the end of The Antiquary.
It is true that this is the least historical of all the novels,
but the procedure is the same. Diana and her father
were most theatrically lucky, and Clerk Jobson, and
even Rashleigh, scoundrels as both were, were astonish-
ingly unlucky, at the close of Rob Roy ; and it is especi-
ally difficult to understand why the attorney was struck
off the rolls for joining in the attempt to secure an
attainted person who subsequently got off by killing
the officers of the law in the execution of their duty.
One might go on with this sort of peddling criticism
right through the series, winding up with that cata-
strophe of Woodstock where Cromwell's mercy is even
more out of character and more unlikely than Cumber-
land's. Nor are these conclusions the only point of the
novels, as usually constructed, where a stop-watch
critic may blaspheme without the possibility of at
least technical refutation of his blasphemies. Scott has
a habit (due no doubt in part to his rapid and hazard-
ous composition) of introducing certain characters and
describing certain incidents with a pomp and prodi-
gality of detail quite out of proportion to their real
importance in the story. And even a person who would
no more hesitate to speak disrespectfully of the Unities
than of the Equator may admit that such an arrange-
ment as that in Rob Roy, where something like a
quarter of the book is taken up with the adventures
of four-and-twenty hours, is not wholly artistic.

Yet for my part I hold that the defence made by the
shadowy Author of Waverley in the Introduction afore-
said is a perfectly sound one, and that it applies with
special propriety to the historical division of the novels,

28 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

and with them to historical novels generally. The
Captain's gibe, conveyed in an anecdote of "his excel-
lent grandmother," shows that Scott (as he was far
too shrewd not to do) saw the weak points as well as
the strong of this defence. Indeed I am not sure that
he quite saw the strength of the strongest of all. It
was all very well to plead that he was only " trying to
write with sense and spirit a few scenes unlaboured and
loosely put together, but which had sufficient interest
in them to amuse in one corner the pain of body; in
another to relieve anxiety of mind ; in a third place to
unwrinkle a brow bent with the furrows of daily toil;
in another to fill the place of bad thoughts and suggest
better; in yet another to induce an idler to study the
history of his country ; in all, save' where the perusal
interrupted the discharge of serious duties, to furnish
harmless amusement." But the Captain might, if he
had ventured to take such a liberty with the author
of his being, have answered: "But, sir, could not you
amuse and relieve and unwrinkle and fill and induce
and furnish, and all the rest on't, at the same time
joining your flats a little more carefully?"

The Eidolon with the blotted revise would have
done better, argumentatively speaking, to have stuck
to his earlier plea, that, following Smollett and Le Sage,
he tried to write rather a "history of the miscellaneous
adventures which befall an individual in the course of
life, than the plot of a regular and concerted epopoeia,
where every step brings us nearer to the final cata-
strophe." For it so happens that this plea is much
nearer to the special business and ends of the historical
novelist than to those of the avowedly inventive writer.
As a matter of fact, we do know that Smollett certainly,
and suspect that Le Sage probably, wove a great deal
of actual experience into their stories; while Fielding,

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, II 29

who is in the passage cited contrasted with them, seems
never to have incorporated incidents, and at most a
few characters, such as those of his wife, Allen, and
one or two more whom he drew mainly in outline. A
man who thus keeps clear of the servitude of actual
occurrence, communicating reality by the results of
his observation of human nature and human life gene-
rally, can shape the ends of his story as well as rough-
hew them. But the man who makes incident and ad-
venture his first object, and in some cases at least
draws them from actual records, is bound to allow
himself a licence much greater than epic strictness
permits. That truth is stranger than fiction is only the
copybook form of a reflection which a hundred critics
have made and enforced in different ways since a
thousand writers put the occasion before them
to wit, that in real life things happen in a more
remiss and disorderly fashion than is allowable in
fiction.

This point is indeed put very well by Scott himself
in the introduction to The Abbot: " For whatever praise
may be due to the ingenuity which brings to a general
combination all the loose threads of a narrative, like
the knitter at the finishing of her stocking, I am greatly
deceived if in many cases a superior advantage is not
attained by the air of reality which the deficiency of
explanation attaches to a work written on a different
system. In life itself many things befall every mortal
of which the individual never knows the real cause or
origin; and were we to point out the most marked
distinction between a real and a fictitious narrative,
we would say that the former in reference to the remote
causes of the events it relates is obscure, doubtful,
and mysterious, whereas in the latter case it is a part
of the author's duty to afford satisfactory details upon

30 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

the causes of the events he has recorded, and, in a
word, to account for everything."

The historical novel, however, escapes this stricture
in part because there the irregularities, the unexpected-
nesses, the disproportions of action, are things accepted
and not to be argued about. Certain well-attested
points and contrasts in the character and conduct of
Marlborough and of Catherine the Second might be
justly objected to as unnatural in fiction : such historical
incidents as dive's defence of Arcot, or as the last fight
of the Revenge, would at least be frowned or smiled at
as if they were mere inventions. Dealing as the his-
torical novelist must with actual and authenticated
things like these, and moulding, as he will if he is a
deacon in his craft, his fictitious incidents on their
pattern, and to suit them, he can take to himself all
the irregularity, all the improbability, all the outrages
on the exact scale of Bossu, in which life habitually
indulges. And he is not obliged, he is even decidedly
unwise if he attempts it to adjust these things to
theory and probability by elaborate analyses of char-
acter. That is not his business at all : he not only may,
but should, leave it to quite a different kind of prac-
titioner. His is the big brush, the bold foreshortening,
the composition which is all the more effective accord-
ing as it depends least upon over-subtle strokes and
shades of line and colour. Not that he is to draw
carelessly or colour coarsely, but that niggling finish
of any kind is unnecessary and even prejudicial to his
effects. And in the recognition, at least in the practical
recognition, of these laws of the craft, as Scott set the
example, so he also left very little for any one else to
improve upon. He may have been equalled; he has
never been surpassed.

I have before now referred by anticipation to another,

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, II 31

point of his intuition, his instinctive grasp of the first
law of the historical novel, that the nominal hero and
heroine, the ostensibly central interest and story shall
not be or concern historical persons, or shall concern
them only in some aspect unrecorded or at best faintly
traced in history. The advantages of this are so clear
and obvious that it is astounding that they should
have been overlooked as they were, not merely by
'prentices of all kinds and all times, but by persons of
something more than moderate ability like G. P. R.
James and others. These advantages have been partly
touched upon, but one of them has not, I think, been
mentioned, and it may introduce to us another very
important feature of the subject. It is constantly
useful, and it may at times be indispensable, for the
historical novelist to take liberties with history. The
extent to which this is permissible or desirable may
indeed be matter for plentiful disagreement. It is
certainly carrying matters too far to make, as in Castle
Dangerous, a happy ending to a story the whole his-
torical and romantic complexion of which required the
ending to be unhappy; but Sir Walter was admittedly
but the shadow of himself when Castle Dangerous was
written. Although Dryasdust and Smelfungus have
both done after their worst fashion in objecting to his
anachronisms in happier days, yet I certainly think
that it was not necessary to make Shakespeare the
author of Midsummer Nighfs Dream in the eleventh
year of his age, if not earlier, as is done in Kenilworth,
or to play the tricks with chronology required by the
narrative of the misdeeds of Ulrica in Ivanhoe. Nothing
is gained in either of these cases for the story. But
there are cases where the story does undoubtedly gain
by taking liberties with history. And it is evident that
this can be done much more easily and much more

32 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

effectively when the actual historical characters whose
life is, so to speak, "coted and marked,", do not play
the first parts as far as the interest of the story goes.

But it might be tedious to examine more in detail
the special characteristics of work so well known.
Enough must have been said to show that Scott had
discovered, and to a great extent had discovered con-
sciously, not merely how to write an historical novel,
but how to teach others to write it. His critical faculty,
if not extraordinarily subtle, was always as sound and
shrewd as it was good-natured. And there is hardly
a better, as there is not a more interesting, example of
this combination than the remarks in the "Diary"
under the dates of October iyth and i8th, 1826,
occasioned by Harrison Ainsworth*s and Horace
Smith's attempts in his style Sir John Cbiverton and
Brambletye House. In one so utterly devoid of the
slightest tendency to over-value himself, his adoption
of Swift's phrase,

Which I was born to introduce,
Refined it first and shewed its use,

is a very strong affidavit of claim ; and it is one which,
as we have seen, is absolutely justified. No less so are
the remarks which follow a little later, on what he
calls, with his unfailing epieikeia, his "own errors, or,
if you will, those of the style." "One advantage," he
says, " I think I still have over all of them. They may
do it with a better grace, but I do it more naturally."
And then in a succession of light taps with the finger
he indicates not a few of the faults of the worst sort of
historical novel : the acquiring information in order to
write, instead of using in an unconstrained fashion
what has become part of the regular furniture of the
mind; the dragging in historical events by head and
shoulders; the too open stealing of actual passages

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, II 33

and pages from chronicles or previous works on the
subject, and $o forth; though he ends up with his usual
honesty by confessing once more his own occasional
carelessness of the management of the story.

He did not consider that his own plea of being
" hurried on so that he has no time to think of the
story" is a great deal more than an excuse. There is
extremely little danger of much fault being found,
except by professional fault-finders, with any writer
who neglects the conduct of his story because he has
so much story to tell. It is the other people, the people
who are at their wits' end to know what ought to come
next, who are intolerable, not those who have such an
abundance of arrows in their quiver that they sometimes
pull out one the notch of which does not exactly fit the
string. I remember reading Mr Crockett's The Raiders,
one of the best of those books, which have been
recently 1 written in the more or less direct following
of Scott when it first appeared. I had to read it "in
the way of business" (as Mr Turnbull would say), and
I soon saw that in the way of business there were many
things that might be said against it. It was here and
there too like this thing and that thing; its parts did
not hang very well together ; there were improbabilities
not a few, and the crowning incident was not a little
wanting in reason. But, having noted down these
things duly, I turned to the beginning of the book
once more and read it straight through, every word of
it, a second time for my own private and unprofessional
delectation. And I should suppose that the same thing
must have happened and happened often to critics
between 1815 and 1830.

For who can ever praise enough, or read enough, or
enjoy enough, those forty-eight volumes of such a

1 1895-

34 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

reader's paradise as nowhere else exists? The very
abundance and relish of their pure delightsomeness
has obscured in them qualities which would have made
a score of reputations. Of passion there may be little
or none; that string in Scott's case, as in those of
Bacon, of Milton, of Southey, and others, was either
wanting, or the artist's hand shrank from playing on
it. But there is almost everything else. I once began
and mislaid, a collection of what would be called in our
modern jargon "realist" details from Scott, which
showed as shrewd a knowledge at least and as uncom-
promising an acknowledgment of the weaknesses of
human nature as with a little jargon and a little bru-
tality would have set up half a dozen psychological
novelists 1 . In the observation and delineation of his
own countrymen he is acknowledged to have excelled
all other writers ; by which I do not mean merely that
no one has drawn Scotsmen as he has, but that no one
writer has drawn that writer's countrymen as Scott
has. And the consensus, I believe, of the best critics
would put him next to Shakespeare as a creator of
individual character of the miscellaneous human sort,
however far he may be below not merely Shakespeare
but Fielding, Thackeray, and perhaps Le Sage in a
certain subtle intimacy of detail and a certain massive
completeness of execution. And all these gifts all
these and many more he put at the service of the
kind that he "was born to introduce," the kind of the
historical novel.

Although Alexandre Dumas had begun to write
years before Sir Walter Scott's death, he had not at

1 Curiously enough, after writing the above, I came across the following
passage in a little-known but extraordinarily shrewd French critic of
English literature, Mr Browning's friend M. Milsand. "II y a plus de
philosophic dans ses [Scott's] contes (quoique la philosophic n^en soit
pas le caractere saillant) que dans bon nombre de romans philosophiques."

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, II 35

that time turned his attention to the novels which
have ranked- him as second only to Sir Walter himself
in that department. Nor was he by any means Scott's
first French imitator. He was busy on dramatic com-
position, in which, though he never attained anything
like Scott's excellence in his own kind of poetry, he
was nearly as great an innovator in his own country
and way. Nor can it be doubted that this practice
helped him considerably in his later work, just as
Scott's poetry had helped him, and in particular that
it taught Dumas a more closely knit construction and
a more constant "eye to the audience" than Scott had
always shown. Not indeed that the plots of Dumas, as
plots, are by any means of exceptional regularity. The
crimes and punishment of Milady may be said to com-
municate a certain unity to Les Trois Mousquetaires,
the vengeance of Dantes to Monte Cristo, and other
things to others. But when they are looked at from the
strictly dramatic side, all more or less are "chronicle
plays" in the form of novels, rather than novels;
lengths of adventure prolonged or cut short at the
pleasure or convenience of the writer rather than
definite evolutions of a certain definite scheme, which
has got to come to an end when the ball is fully un-
rolled. The advantage of Dumas's dramatic practice
shows itself most in the business-like way in which at
his best he works by tableaux, connected, it may be,
with each other rather by sequence and identity of
personages than by strict causality, but each possessing
a distinct dramatic and narrative interest of its own,
and so enchaining the attention. There are episodes
without end in Dumas; but there are comparatively
few (at least in his best work) of the "loose ends," of
the incidents, neither complete in themselves nor con-
tributing anything in particular to the general story,

3-3

36 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

to which Sir Walter pleads guilty, and which certainly
are to be found in him.

Another point in which Dumas may be said to have
improved, or at any rate alternated, upon Scott, and
which also may, without impropriety, be connected
with his practice for the stage, is the enormously
increased part allotted to dialogue in his novels. Cer-
tainly Scott was not weak in dialogue; on the contrary,
the intrinsic excellence of the individual speeches of
his characters in humour, in truth to nature, in pathos,
and in many other important points, is decidedly above
the Frenchman's. But his dialogue plays a much
smaller part in the actual evolution of the story. Take
down at hazard three or four different volumes of Dumas
from the shelf; open them, and run over the pages,
noting of what stuff the letterpress is composed. Then
do exactly the same with the same number of Scott.
You will find that the number of whole pages, and
still more the number of consecutive pages, wholly
filled with dialogue, or variegated with other matter
in hardly greater proportion than that of stage direc-
tions, is far larger in the French than in the English
master. It is true that the practice of Dumas varies
in this respect. In his latter books especially, in his
less good ones at all times, there is a much greater
proportion of solid matter. But then the reason of
this is quite obvious. He was here falling either in his
own person, or by proxy, into those very practices
of interpolating lumps of chronicle, and laboriously
describing historic incident and scene, with which, in
the passage above quoted, Scott reproaches his imi-
tators. But at his best Dumas delighted in telling his
tale as much as possible through the mouths of his
characters. In all his most famous passages the
scene at the Bastion Saint-Gervais in Les Trots Mous-

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, II 37

quetaires, the Vin de Porto and its ushering scenes in
Vingt Ans Aprils, the choicest episodes of Le Vicomte
de Bragelonne, the crises of La Reine Margot and
Les Quarante-Cinq the thing is always talked rather
than narrated. It is hardly fanciful to trace Dumas's
preference for heroes like D'Artagnan and Chicot to
the fact that they had it by kind to talk.

I do not know whether it is worth while to lay much
stress on another difference between Scott and Dumas
the much greater length of the latter's novels and his
tendency to run them into series. Scott only did the
latter once, in the case of The Monastery and The
Abbot, while it was probably more a determination
that the British public should like him yet, in his
dealings with so tempting a subject as the troubles of
Queen Mary's reign, than any inherent liking for the
practice that determined him to it in this case. Even
if we neglect the trilogy system, of which the adven-
tures of D'Artagnan and Chicot are the main speci-
mens, the individual length of Dumas's books is much
greater than that of Scott's. Putting such giants as
Monte Cristo and the Vicomte de Bragelonne aside,
Vingt Ans Apres would make, I should think, at least
two Waverleys, and La Reine Margot (one of the short-
est) an Ivanhoe and a half. But this increase in length
was only a return to old practices; for Scott himself
had been a great shortener of the novel. To say nothing
of the romances of chivalry and the later imitations of
them, Le Sage, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Mrs
Radcliffe, had all in their chief work run to a length
far exceeding what Sir Walter usually thought suffi-
cient. But I am not sure whether even Mademoiselle
de Scudery's proverbial prolixity much exceeds in any
one instance the length of the Vicomte de Bragelonne.

That this length is pretty closely connected with the

38 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

conversational manner just noticed cannot, I think, be
doubted. There is nothing so endless as talk; and inas-
much as an hour's leisurely speech will fill some thirty
octavo pages, valiant talkers like Miss Bates must
deliver (though fortunately not in a form which abides
with posterity) their volume a day, year in and year
out, given health and listeners, without any difficulty
or much exertion. That is three hundred and sixty-
five volumes a year, whereas five were all that even
Southey's brazen-bowelled industry warranted itself
to produce; and I do not think that Sir Walter himself
in his most tremendous bursts of energy exceeded the
rate of about a dozen.

Of the advantages and disadvantages, on the other
hand, of the length thus reintroduced into novel-
writing, it is not possible to speak with equal confidence.
People who read very fast, who like to read more than
once, and who are pleased to meet old friends in con-
stantly new situations, as a rule, I think, like long
books ; but the average subscriber to circulating libraries
does not. The taste for them is perhaps the more
generous as it certainly is the most ancient and most
human. It showed itself in the cycles of the ancients
and of mediaeval romance : it positively revelled in the
extraordinary filiations of the Amadis story; and it
has continued to assert itself in different forms to the
present day, now in that of long single books, now in
that of direct series and continuations, now in that of
books like Thackeray's and Trollope's, which are not
exactly series, but which keep touch with each other
by the community of more or fewer characters. Of
course it is specially easy to tempt and indulge this
taste in the historical department of novel-writing.
Even as it is, Dumas himself has made considerable
progress in the task of writing a connected novel-

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, II 39

history of France from the English wars to the Revo-
lution of 1789. I really do not know that, especially
now when the taste for the romance seems to have
revived somewhat vigorously, it would be an incon-
ceivable thing if somebody should write an English
historical Amadis in more than as many generations
as the original, deducing the fortunes of an English
family from King Arthur to Queen Victoria. Let it be
observed that I do not as a critic recommend this
scheme, nor do I specially hanker after its results as
a reader. But it is not an impossible thing, and it
would hardly exceed the total of Dumas's printed work.
I have never been able to count that mighty list of
volumes twice with the same result, a phenomenon
well known in legend respecting the wonderful works
of nature or of art. But it comes, I think, to some-
where about two hundred and forty volumes; that is
to say, a hundred and twenty novels of the length of
Les Trois Mousquetaires or La Reine Margot. And as
that would cover the time suggested, at not more than
ten or twelve years to a novel, it should surely be
ample.

To return to a proper seriousness: the main points
of strictly technical variation in Dumas as compared
with Scott are thus the more important use made of
dialogue, the greater length of the stories, and the
tendency to run them on in series. In quality of enjoy-
ment, also, the French master added something to his
English model. If Scott is not deep (I think him much
deeper than it is the fashion to allow), Dumas is posi-
tively superficial. His rapid and absorbing current of
narrative gives no time for any strictly intellectual
exertion on the part either of writer or reader; the
style as style is even less distinct and less distinguished
than Scott's; we receive not only few ideas but even

40 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

few images of anything but action few pictures of
scenery, no extraordinarily vivid touches of customs
or manners. Dumas is an infinitely inferior master of
character to Scott; he can make up a personage ad-
mirably, but seldom attains to a real character. Chicot
himself and Porthos are the chief exceptions; for
D'Artagnan is more a type than an individual, Athos
is the incarnate gentleman chiefly, Aramis is incom-
plete and shadowy, and Monte Cristo is a mere creature
of melodrama.

But Dumas excels Scott himself in the peculiar and
sustained faculty by which he can hold his reader by
and for the story. With Sir Walter one is never quite
unconscious, and one is delighted to be conscious, of
the existence and individuality of the narrator. The
"architect, artist, and man" (may Heaven forgive me,
as Scott certainly would, for coupling his idea in any
way with that of the subject of this phrase !) is always
more or less before us, with his vast, if not altogether
orderly, reading, his ardent patriotism, his saturation
with romance coexisting with the shrewdest common-
sense and knowledge of business, above all that golden
temperament which made him a man of letters without
pedantry and without vanity, a man of the world
without frivolity and without guile, a "man of good"
without prudery and without goodiness.

Of Dumas's personality (and no doubt this is in a
way a triumph of his art) we never think at all. We
think of nothing but of the story : whether D' Artagnan
will ever bring the diamonds safe home; whether the
compact between Richelieu and Milady can possibly
be fulfilled; whether that most terrible of all "black
strap " that flowed into the pewter pot when Grimaud
tried the cask will do its intended duty or not; whether
Margaret will be able to divert the silk cord in Alengon's

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, II 41

hand from its destination on La Mole's neck. No doubt
Scott has moments of the same arresting excitement;
but they are not so much his direct object, and from
the difference of his method they are not so prominent
or so numerous or engineered in such a manner as to
take an equally complete hold of the reader. No doubt
the generation which as yet had not Scott affected to
find similar moments in Mrs Radcliffe; but oh! the
difference to us of the moment when Emily draws
aside the Black Veil, and the moment when the corpse
of Mordaunt shoots above water with the moonlight
playing on the gold hilt of the dagger ! Dumas indeed
has no Wandering Willie; he had not poetry enough
in him for that. But in the scenes where Scott as a rule
excels him the scenes where the mere excitement of
adventure is enhanced by nobility of sentiment he
has a few, with the death of Porthos at the head of
them, which are worthy of Scott himself; while of
passages like the famous rescue of Henry Morton from
the Cameronians he has literally hundreds.

It was, then, this strengthening and extending of
the absorbing and exciting quality which the historical
novel chiefly owed to Dumas, just as it owed its first
just and true concoction and the indication of almost
all the ways in which it could seek perfection to Scott.
I shall not, I think, be charged with being unjust to
the pupil; but, wonderful as his work is, I think it not
so much likely as certain that it never would have been
done at all if it had not been for the Master.

III. THE SUCCESSORS

It was evidently impossible that such a combination
of luck and genius as the Historical Novel, when at
last it appeared from Scott's hands, should lack imme-
diate and unlimited imitation. As has been said, some

42 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

considerable number of years passed before the greatest
of Sir Walter's successors, the only successor who can
be said to have made distinct additions to the style
turned his attention to novel-writing. But as the
popularity of Scott, not only in his own country, but
elsewhere, was instantaneous, so was the following of
him. The peace after Waterloo assisted this popularity
in the odd way in which political and historical coinci-
dences often do influence the fortunes of literature;
and almost the whole of Europe, besides English-
speaking America, began not merely to read Scott, not
merely to translate him, but to write in his style. It
may even be doubted whether the subsequent or
simultaneous vogue abroad of his poetical supplanter
Byron did not assist the popularity of his novels; for
different as the two men and the two styles intrinsically
are, they have no small superficial resemblance of
appeal. In France the Royalism and the Romanticism
alike of the Restoration fastened eagerly on the style,
and Victor Hugo was only the greatest, if the most
immature, of scores of writers who hastened to pro-
duce the historical, especially the chivalrous and
mediaeval, romance. Germany did likewise, and set on
foot as well a trade of "Scotch novels made in Ger-
many," of which I believe the famous Walladmor (to
which Scott himself refers, and the history of which
De Quincey has told at characteristic length) was by
no means the only example. Walladmor appeared in
1823. G. P. R. James's Richelieu, the first English
example of considerable note by an author who gave
his name, came in 1825; while in America Cooper was
four years earlier with The Spy.

Hugo himself began writing novels (obviously on
Scott's suggestion, however little they might be like
Scott) with Han d'lslande in the same year as Wallad-

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, III 43

mor, and Germany, though clinging still to her famous
and to some extent indigenous romance of fantasy,
produced numerous early imitators of Scott of a less
piratical character than the Leipsic forger. Italy with
Manzoni and / Promessi Sposi in 1827 was a little, but
only a little later, so that long before the darkness
came on him and to some extent before even his worldly
fortunes were eclipsed, Scott could literally see as no
author before him or since has ever seen the whole of
Europe not merely taking its refreshment under the
boughs of the tree he had planted, but nursing seeds
and shoots of it in foreign ground. In comparison with
this the greatest literary dictatorships of the past were
but titular royalties. Voltaire, whose influence came
nearest to it in intensity and diffusion, was merely the
cleverest, most versatile, and most piquant writer of
an age whose writers were generally of the second class.
He had invented no kind, for even the satirical fantasy-
tale was but borrowed from Hamilton and others. As
a provider of patterns and models, he was inferior both
to Montesquieu and to Rousseau. But Scott enjoyed
in this respect such a royalty in both senses, the sense
of pre-eminence and the sense of patent rights, as had
never been known before. When he saved the begin-
ning of Waverley from among the fishing-tackle in the
old writing-desk, no one knew how to write a historical
novel, because no one had in the proper sense written
such a thing, though many had tried. In a few years
the whole of Europe was greedily reading historical
novels, and a very considerable part of the literary
population of Europe was busily writing them.

Indeed Scott was still in possession of all his faculties,
and the imitations of him in England as well as in
other countries had not had time, or had not fallen
under the hands of the right man to produce anything

44 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

but mere imitation, when a book of far greater merit
than anything else anterior to Dumas appeared. I do
not mean Notre Dame de Paris, for though this is
historical after a kind, the history is the least part of
it, and Hugo with all his Titanic power never suc-
ceeded in writing a good novel of any sort. The book
to which I refer and which appeared in 1829, a good
deal before Notre Dame de Paris, is Merimee's Chronique
de Charles IX. This book has been very variously
judged, and Merimee's most recent and best critical
biographer, M. Augustin Filon, does not, I think, put
it quite as high as I do. It has of course obvious faults.
M6rim6e, who had already followed Scott in La Jac-
querie, though for some reason or other he chose in that
case to give a quasi-dramatic form to the work, had all
his life the peculiarity (which may be set down either
to some excess of the critical or some flaw of the
creative part in him) of taking a style, doing something
that was almost or quite a masterpiece in it, and then
dropping it altogether. He did so in this instance, and
the Chronique had no follower from his hand. But
it showed the way to all Frenchmen who followed,
including Dumas himself, the way of transporting the
Scottish pattern into France, and blending with it the
attractions (including one peculiarly French and incon-
venient) necessary to acclimatise it.

It cannot however be denied that in this immense
and unprecedented dissemination the old proverb of
the fiddle and the rosin was plentifully illustrated and
justified. It was only Scott's good-nature which led
him to concede that his English imitators might per-
haps "do it with a better grace"; while there is no
doubt at all that he was far within the mark in saying
that he himself "did it more natural." The curses
which have been already mentioned, and others, rested

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, III 45

on the best of them; even upon James, even upon
Ainsworth, eyen upon Bulwer. I used to be as fond of
Henry Masterton and Old St Paul's, and those about
them, as every decently constructed boy ought to be;
and I can read a good many of the works of both
authors now with a great deal of resignation and with
a very hearty preference for them over most of the
novels of the present 1 day. I am afraid I cannot say
quite so much of the first Lord Lytton, who never
seems to me to have found his proper sphere in novel
writing till just before his death. But still no com-
petent critic, I suppose, would deny that The Last
Days of Pompeii is one of the very best attempts to
do what has never yet been thoroughly done, or that
The Last of the Barons is a very fine chronicle novel.
So too I remember reading Brambletye House itself
with a great deal of pleasure not so very many years
ago. But in the handling of all of these and of their
immediate contemporaries and successors before the
middle of the century there is what Mr Morris's melan-
choly lover found in running over that list of his loves
as he rode unwitting to the Hill of Venus "some lack,
some coldness."

One could forgive the two horsemen readily enough,
as well as other tricks of James's, if he were not at once
too conventional and too historical. To read Mary of
Burgundy and before or after that exercise to read
Quentin Durward, so near to it in time and subject, is
to move in two different worlds. In Quentin Durward
you may pick holes enough if you choose, as even
Bishop Heber, a contemporary, a friend, I think, of
Scott's, a good man, and a good man of letters, does
in his Indian Journal. It takes some uncommon
liberties with historical accuracy, and it would not

1 1895 (not 1923).

46 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

escape scot-free as a novel from a charge of Lise-
probabilite. But it is all perfectly alive and of a piece;
the story, whether historical or fictitious, moves uni-
formly and takes the reader alongwithit; thecharacters
(though I will give up Hayraddin to the sainted manes
of the Bishop) are real people who do real things and
talk real words. When the excellent Mr Senior, mean-
ing to be complimentary, calls Louis and Charles " per-
fectly faithful copies," he uses a perfectly inadequate
expression. He might as well call Moroni's Tailor or
Velasquez's Philip IV a perfectly faithful copy. They
are no copies; they are re-creations, agreeing with all
we know of what, for want of a better word, we call
the originals, but endowed with independent life.

In Mary of Burgundy, which is generally taken to
be one of the best of its author's, as in all that author's
books more or less, this wholeness and symmetry are
too often wanting. The history, where it is history, is
too often tediously lugged in ; the fictitious characters
lack at once power and keeping; and there is a fatal
convention of language, manners, general tone which
is the greatest fault of all. Instead of the only less
than Shakespearean universality of Scott's humanity
which does equally for characters of the eleventh,
the fifteenth, or the eighteenth century, simply because
it is always human, James gives us a sort of paint-
and-pasteboard substitute for flesh and blood which
cannot be said to be definitely out of character with
any particular time, simply because it never could
have been vividly appropriate to any time at all. In
fact such caricatures as Barbazure were more than
justified by the historical-romantic novels of a hundred
years ago, which might have gone far, and indeed did
go some way, to inspire a fear that the kind would
become as much a nuisance and would fall as far short

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, III 47

of its own highest possibilities as the Romance of
Terror which had preceded it. James was by no means
an ignorant man, or a man of little literary power.
But he had not that gift of character which is the
greatest of all the gifts of a novelist of whatever kind,
and as a historical novelist he was not sufficiently
saturated with the spirit of any period. Far less had
he that extension of the historical faculty which
enabled Scott, though he might make small blunders
easy to be detected by any schoolmaster if not by any
schoolboy, at once to grasp the spirit of almost any
period of which he had himself read something or of
any person with whom he was himself in even slight
sympathy.

Harrison Ainsworth had I think more "fire in his
belly" than James ever had; but he burned it out too
soon, and unluckily for him he lived and wrote for a
very long time after the flame had changed to smoke.
Fewer people perhaps now know than formerly knew
that most successful of Father Prout's serious or quasi-
serious poems, the piece in which a moral is drawn
from the misfortune of the bird in

the current old
Of the deep Garonne

for the warning of the then youthful novelist. But it
was certainly needed. I am glad to believe, and indeed
partly to know, that Ainsworth has not lost his hold
of the younger generation to-day as some other novelists
have. His latest books never I think came into any
cheap form, and therefore are not likely to have come
in many boys' way; but sixpenny editions of The Tower
of London and Windsor Castle are 1 seen often enough
in the hands of youth, which certainly they do not
misbecome. Not many, however, I should fancy, either

1 1895. Perhaps less now? (1923).

48 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

now read or ever have read Ainsworth much when they
were once out of their nonage.

He has, as indeed I have said, more fire, more spirit
than James. He either found out for himself, or took
the hint early from Dumas, that abundant dialogue
will make a story go more trippingly off than abundant
description. But there is a great deal of smoke mixed
with his fire, more than with that of James ; his chariots
though they move, drive heavily; he writes anything
but good English; and his dialogue is uncommonly
poor stuff for any eye or ear which is naturally, or by
study has become, attentive to "keeping." It may, I
think, be laid down without much rashness that though
the attractions which will suffice to lure a reader through
one reading, and in some cases even enable him to
enjoy or endure a second, are very numerous and
various, there must, in all but the very rarest cases,
be one or both of two things, style and character, to
make him return again and again to any novel. Now
Ainsworth certainly had neither of these; he had not
nearly so much of either as James. Most of the school-
boys who read him could with a little practice write
as well as he does; and though his puppets box it
about in a sufficiently business-like manner, they are
puppets of the most candid and unmistakable kind.
As far as I can remember Crichton and Esclairmonde
used to affect me with more interest than most of them :
and I am by no means certain that this was not as
much due to the lady's name as to anything else.
Generally speaking, one does not, even as a boy, feel
them to be alive at all when the story is ended. They
have rattled their mimic quarterstaves bravely and
gone back to their box. After a time the novelist lost
the faculty even of making them rattle their quarter-
staves ; and then the wreck was indeed total.

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, III 49

The third member of the trio, who provided England
with historical novels during the second quarter of the
century, had of course far more purely literary talent
than either James or Ainsworth. I have never been
able to rate Bulwer so highly as many people have done ;
but no one can possibly deny him a literary talent not
often surpassed in volume, in variety, or in certain
kinds of vigour. Why he never did anything better in
any one kind than he at least seems to me to have done
is a question over which I have often puzzled myself.
Perhaps it was a one-sided critical faculty it was
certainly, to say the least, unfortunate for a man in
the spring of his literary career to try to laugh down
Mr Alfred Tennyson, and in the winter thereof to try
the same operation upon Mr William Morris. Perhaps
it was the diffusion and dispersion of his aims and
energies between politics, literature, and society,
between prose, verse, and drama. Perhaps it was the
unlucky sentimentality of thought and the still more
unlucky tawdriness of language which so long defrayed
the exercises of satirists. At any rate, he never seems
to me to have done anything great or small that can
be called a masterpiece, except The Haunted and the
Haunters, which is all but, if not quite, perfect 1 . Still
he did many things surprisingly well, and I do not
know that his historical novels were not among the
best of them. That Lord Tennyson, who admired few
things at all and fewer if any bad ones, should have

1 It is perhaps desirable to lay stress on the word "perfect" lest
anybody should exclaim "What! you put a short ghost-story before
My Novell" Now I confess that I do not attach much importance to
mere bulk or mere shortness one way or the other. But in the text I am
only speaking of the relative consummateness of a thing in its own
kind. Both My Novel, and others of the books, especially the latest
(I have no small admiration for Kenelm Chillingly), may be more con-
siderable things in a kind deserving more consideration than the thing
and the kind of The Haunted and the Haunters. But they are not so
consummate.

50 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

admired Harold is almost decisive in its favour, though
I own I like The Last of the Barons better myself, and
consider it all but what it ought to be. If you mixed
The Last of the Barons with The Black Arrow, another
faulty but admirable book of another generation, but
on the same subject, you would go very near to per-
fection. The Last Days of Pompeii, though it has a double
share of the two faults mentioned above, is, as has
been said, easily first in its class, or first except Hypatia,
of which more presently. No doubt the playwright's
faculty which enabled Lord Lytton to write more than
one of the few very good acting English plays of the
century, stood him in stead here as it stood Dumas.
Perhaps this very faculty prevented him more than it
prevented Dumas from writing a supremely good novel.
For the narrative and the dramatic faculties are after
all not the same thing and the one is never a perfect
substitute for the other. Yet I happen to know that
there are some who, regarding him with considerably
more admiration than I do, set his shortcomings down
to a far more serious and damaging disability than
this. They doubt whether he had in any great, or at
least in any constant degree, the faculty of making a
"live" figure one of those which can defy time and
occupy space. Nor of course, if this is once admitted,
is there anything more to be said.

No reasonable space would suffice for a detailed
criticism, while a mere catalogue would be very un-
amusing, of the imitators of these men, or of Scott
directly, who practised the historical novel let us say,
between 1825 and 1850. The best of them (so far as I
can remember) was an anonymous writer, whose name
I think was Emma Robinson, and whose three chief
works were Whitehall, Whitefriars, and Owen Tudor.
These books held a station about midway between

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, III 51

James and Ainsworth, and they seem to me to have
been as superior to the latter in interest as they were
to the former in bustle and movement. But I think
there can be no doubt that the influence of Dumas,
who had by their time written much, was great and
direct on them. More than once have I attempted in
my graver years to read again that well-loved friend
of my boyhood James Grant; but each time my dis-
comfiture has been grievous. The excellent Chaplain-
General Gleig was a James of less fertility and liveli-
ness, indeed I fear he must be pronounced to have
deserved the same description as Mr Jingle's packing-
cases. In some others, such as G. W. M. Reynolds, I
confess that my study is but little. But in such things
of Reynolds as I have read, though it would be absurd
to say that there is no ability, I never found it devoted
to anything but a very inferior class of bookmaking.

Marryat, close as he came to the historical kind,
seems to have felt an instinctive dislike or disqualifica-
tion for it; and it will be noticed that his more purely
historical scenes and passages, the account of the
Mutiny at the Nore in The King's Own, that of the
battle of Cape St Vincent in Peter Simple, and so forth
are as a rule episodes and scarcely even episodes.
And though Lever wrought the historical part of his
stories more closely and intimately into their substance,
yet I should class him only with the irregulars of the
Historical Brigade. He is of course most like a regular
in Charles O'Malley. Yet even there one sees the differ-
ence. The true historical novelist, as has been pointed
out more than once, employs the reader's presumed
interest in historical scene and character as an instru-
ment to make his own work attractive. Lever does
nothing of the kind. His head was full of the stories
he had heard at Brussels from the veterans of the

4-2

52 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

Peninsula, of Waterloo, and even of the Grande Arm6e.
But it was at least equally full (as he showed long after
when he had got rid of the borrowed stories) of quaint
inventions and shrewd observations of his own. And
even as a historical novelist the original part got the
better of him. Wellington and Stewart and Crawford
are little more than names to us ; they are not one-tenth
part as real or one-hundredth part as interesting as
Major Monsoon. Nor is it the actual fate of war, at
Ciudad Rodrigo or on the Coa, that engrosses us so
much as the pell-mell fighting, the feats of horseman-
ship, the devilled kidneys (that for some incompre-
hensible reason so did irritate Edgar Poe) and all the
helter-skelter liberties with probability and chronology
and everything else which cram that -wonderful and to
some people never wearisome medley.

So too we need not trouble ourselves much with
Dickens's efforts in the kind for a not dissimilar reason.
Barnaby Rudge earlier and A Tale of Two Cities later,
work in a great deal of historical fact and some historical
character, and both fact and character are studied
with a good deal of care. But the historical characters
are almost entirely unimportant; while the whole thing
in each case is pure Dickens in its faults as in its merit.
We are never really in the Gordon Riots of 1780 or in
the Terror of thirteen years later. We are in the author's
No Man's Land of time and space where manners and
ethics and language and everything else are marked with
"Charles Dickens," and the well-known flourish after it.

It was about the middle of the century, I think, or
a little earlier, that the vogue which had sped the
Historical Novel for more than a technical generation
began to fail it, at least in England with which we are
chiefly concerned. The Dumas furnaces were still work-
ing full blast abroad, and of course there was no actual

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, III 53

cessation of production at home. But the public taste,
either out of -satiety, or out of mere caprice, or tempted
by attractive novelties, began to go in quite other
directions. Charlotte Bronte had already begun, and
George Eliot was about to begin styles of novels en-
tirely different from the simple and rather conventional
romance which writers, unable to keep at the level of
Scott, had taken to turning out. The general run of
Dickens's performance had been in a quite different
direction. So was Thackeray's, which in its perfection
was just beginning, though he was to produce not a
little and at least one unsurpassable thing in the historic
kind. Many minor kinds typified by work as different
as The Heir of Redclyffe and Guy Livingstone, as Uncle
Tom's Cabin and The Warden were springing up or to
spring. And so the Historical Novel though never
exactly abandoned (for George Eliot herself and most
of the writers already named or alluded to, as well
as others like Whyte-Melville, tried it now and then)
dropped, so to speak, into the ruck, and for a good
many years was rather despiteously spoken of by
critics until the popularity of Mr Blackmore's Lorna
Doone came to give it a new lease.

Yet in the first decade of this its disfavour, and while
most writers' and readers' attention was devoted to
other things, it could boast of the two best books that
had been written in it since the death of Scott; one an
imperishable masterpiece, the other a book which,
popular as it has been, has never had its due yet,
Esmond and Westward Ho!

That when anybody is perpetually laughing at
another body or at something, this facetiousness really
means that the laugher is secretly enamoured of the
abject of ridicule, is a great though not an universal
truth which has been recognised and illustrated by

54 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

authorities of the most diverse age and excellence
from the author of Much Ado About Nothing down-
wards. It was well seen of Thackeray in the matter
of the Historical Novel. He had been jesting at it for
the best part of twenty years that is to say for the
whole of his literary career. He had made free with it
a thousand times in a hundred different ways, from light
touches and gibes in his miscellaneous articles to the
admirable set of Burlesques, to the longer parodies, if
parodies they can properly be called, of Rebecca and
Rowena (one of his best things) and The Legend of the
Rhine, and on the biggest scale of all to that strange
unpleasant masterly failure Catherine. It is to be pre-
sumed, though it is not certain,that when he thus made
fun of historical novels, he did not think he should live
to be a historical novelist. Notwithstanding which, as
every one knows, he lived to write not one, but two,
and the beginning of a third.

It is not necessary to say much here about Denis
Duval, or to attempt to decide between the opinions
of those who say that it would have been the author's
masterpiece, and of those who think that it could at
best have stood to The Virginians as The Virginians
stands to Esmond. It is however worth noting that
Denis Duval displays that extremely careful and me-
thodical scaffolding and marshalling of historical
materials which Thackeray himself had been almost
the first to practise, and in which he has never been
surpassed. Scott had set the example, not too well
followed, of acquiring a pretty thorough familiarity
with the history and no small one with the literature
of the time of his story; and he had accidentally
or purposely brought in a good deal of local and
other knowledge. But he had not made the display of
this latter by any means a rule, and he had some-

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, III $$

times notoriously neglected it. Nor did anybody till
Thackeray himself make it a point of honour to search
the localities, to acquire all manner of small details from
guide-books and county histories and the like, to work
in scraps of colour and keeping from newspapers and
novels and pamphlets. Dickens, it is true, had already
done something of the kind in reference to his own style
of fiction; but Dickens as has been said was only a
historical novelist by accident, and he was at no time
a bookish man. The new, or at least the improved
practice was of course open to the same danger as that
which wrecked the labours of the ingenious Mr Strutt;
and it was doubtless for this reason that Scott in
the prefatory discussion to The Betrothed made "the
Preses" sit upon the expostulations of Dr Dryasdust
and his desire that "Lhuyd had been consulted." Too
great attention to veracity and propriety of detail is
very apt to stifle the story by overlaying it. Still the
practice when in strong and cunning hands no doubt
adds much to the attraction of the novel; and it is
scarcely necessary to say more than that all the better
historical novelists for the last sixty years have followed
Thackeray, and that Thackeray himself by no means
improbably took a hint from Macaulay's practice in
history itself.

Another innovation of Thackeray's, or at least an
alteration so great as almost to be an invention, was
that adjustment of the whole narrative and style to
the period of the story of which Esmond is the capital
and hitherto unapproached example. Scott, as we have
seen, had, by force rather of creative genius than of
elaborate study, devised a narrative style which, with
very slight alterations in the dialogue, would do for any
age. But he had not tried much to model the vehicle
of any particular story strictly to the language and

56 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

temper of that story's time. Dumas had followed him
with a still greater tendency to general modernisation.
Scott's English followers had very rarely escaped the
bastard and intolerable jargon of the stage. But
Thackeray in Esmond did really clothe the thought of
the mid-nineteenth century (for the thought is after
all of the nineteenth century) in the language of the
early eighteenth with such success as had never been
seen before and such as I doubt will never be seen again.
It must be admitted that the result, though generally,
is not universally approved. I have known it urged
by persons whose opinions are not to be lightly dis-
credited, that the book is after all something of a tour
de force^ that there is an irksome constraint and an
unnatural air about it, and that, effective as a falsetto
may be, it never can be so really satisfactory as a nativ~
note. We need not argue this out. It is perhaps bes
though there be a little confession and avoidance in
the evasion, to adopt or extend the old joke of Conde
or Charles the Second, and wish heartily that those
who find fault with Esmond as falsetto would, in falsetto
or out of it, give us anything one-twentieth part as
good.

For the merits of that wonderful book, though they
may be set off and picked out by its manner and style,
are in the main independent thereof. The incomparable
character of Beatrix Esmond, the one complete woman
of English prose fiction, would more than suffice to
make any book a masterpiece. And it would not be
difficult to show that the historical novel no less than
the novel generally may claim her. But the points of
the book which, if not historical in the sense of having
actually happened, are historic-fictitious, the entry
of Thomas Lord Castlewood and his injured Viscountess
on their ancestral home, the duel of Frank Esmond

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, III $7

and Mohun, the presentation of the Gazette by General
Webb to his- Commander-in-Chief at point of sword,
and the immortal scene in the turret chamber with
James the Third are all of the very finest stamp pos-
sible, as good as the best of Scott and better than the
best of Dumas. In a certain way Esmond is the crown
and flower of the historical novel; "the flaming limits
of the world" of fiction have been reached in it with
safety to the bold adventurer, but with an impossi-
bility of progress further to him or to any other.

One scene in the unequal and, I think, rather un-
fairly abused sequel, the scene where Harry fails to
recognise Beatrix's youthful protrait, is the equal of
any in Esmond, but this is not of the strictly or specially
historical kind. And indeed the whole of The Virginians,
though there is plenty of local colour and no lack of
historical personages, is distinctly less historical than
its forerunner. It is true that both time and event so
far as History goes, are much less interesting; and I
have never been able to help thinking that the author
was consciously or unconsciously hampered by a desire
to please both Englishmen and Americans. But what-
ever the cause may be it is certain that the historical
element is far less strong in The Virginians than in
Esmond, and that such interest as it has is the interest
of the domestic novel, the novel of manners, the novel
of character, rather than of the novel of history.

Esmond was published in 1852. Before the next
twelve-month was out Hypatia appeared, and it was
followed within two years more by Westward Ho! In
one respect and perhaps in more than one, these two
brilliant books could not challenge comparison with
even weaker work of Thackeray's than Esmond.
Neither in knowledge of human nature, nor (still less)
in power of projecting the results of that knowledge

58 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

into the creation of character, nor in the adjustment
to sequence of the minor and major events of life, was
Kingsley the equal of his great contemporary. But as
has been sufficiently pointed out, the most consum-
mate command of character in its interior working is
not necessary to the historical novelist. And in the
gifts which are necessary to that novelist, Kingsley
was very strong indeed, not least so in that gift of
adapting the novel of the past to the form and pressure
of the present, which if not a necessary, and indeed
sometimes rather a treacherous and questionable
advantage, is undoubtedly an advantage in its way.
He availed himself of this last to an unwise extent
perhaps in drawing the Raphael of Hypatia, just as in
Westward Ho! he gave vent to some* of the anti-Papal
feelings of his day to an extent sufficient to make him
in more recent days furiously unpopular with Roman
Catholic critics, who have not always honestly avowed
the secret of their depreciation. Nay, I have recently 1
heard, with almost incredulous amusement, that some
younger critics who sympathise with Liberalism in the
form into which Mr Gladstone brought it, are so shocked
and disgusted at Kingsley' s opinions that they can
hardly read his work. This is sufficiently odd to me:
for others of these opinions are quite as opposite to
mine, and I never found the opposition interfere in
the very least with my own enjoyment.

But the solid as well as original merits of these two
books are such as cannot possibly be denied by any
fair criticism which takes them as novels and not as
something else. The flame which had not yet cleared
itself of smoke in the earlier efforts of Alton Locke and
Yeast, which was to flicker, and alternate bright with
dimmer intervals, in Two Tears Ago and Hereward the
1 1895-

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, III 59

^ blazed with astonishing brilliancy in both. I
think I have- read Westward, Ho! the oftener; but I
hardly know which I like the better. No doubt if
Kingsley has escaped in Hypatia the curious curse
which seems to rest on the classical-historical novel, it
is by something not unlike one of those tricks whereby
Our Lady and the Saints outwit Satan in legend. Not
only is there much more of the thought and sentiment
of the middle of the nineteenth century than of the
beginning of the fifth, but the very antiquities and local
colour of the time itself are a good deal advanced and
made to receive much of the mediaeval touch which,
as we have observed, is in possible keeping with the
modern, rather than of that elder spirit from which we
are so helplessly divided.

But this is a perfectly legitimate stratagem and the
success of it is wonderful. If no figure (except perhaps
the slightly sketched one of Pelagia) is of the first order
for actual life, not one falls below the second, which,
let it be observed, is a very high class for the creations
of fiction. The action never fails or makes a fault; the
dialogue, if a little mannered and literary now and
then, is always crisp and full of pulse. But the splendid
tableaux of which the book is full, tableaux artfully
and even learnedly composed but thoroughly alive,
make the great charm and the great merit of it as a
historical novel. The voyage down the Nile; the night
riots and the harrying of the Jews; the panorama (I
know no other word for it, but the thing is one of the
finest in fiction), of the defeat of Heraclian; the scene
in the theatre at Alexandria; the murder of Hypatia
and the vengeance of the Goths; all of these are not
only bad to beat but in their own way, like all tho-
roughly good things, they cannot be beaten. Not that
the book in the least degree drags between them. On

60 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

the contrary the reader is carried on from start to
finish as he never is save in the best books. But I
think these tableaux, these "broads" if we may say
so, of the stream of story, are the triumph of it ; and if
I were a Croesus I should have one of the halls of my
Palace of Art exclusively and completely frescoed with
scenes from Hypatia.

The attractions of Westward Ho! are less pictorial
than those of its forerunner, which exceeds almost any
novel that I know in this respect; but they are even
more strictly historic and more closely connected with
historical action. Minute accuracy was never Kingsley's
forte ; and here, though rather less than elsewhere, he
laid himself open to the cavils of the enemy. But on
the whole, if not in detail, he had acquired a more than
competent knowledge of Elizabethan thought and
sentiment, and had grasped the action and passion of
the time with thorough and appreciative sympathy.
He had moreover thoroughly imbued himself with the
spirit of the regions over sea which he was to describe,
and he had a mighty action or series of actions, real or
feigned, for his theme. The result was once more what
may fairly be called a masterpiece. There is again per-
haps only one character, Salvation Yeo, who is distinctly
of the first class as a character; for Amyas is a little
too typical, a little too much of the Happy Warrior
who has one temptation and overcomes it. Frank (the
enemy may say and there may be some difficulty in
gainsaying him) is mawkish; Rose a doll; Don Guzman
a famous "portrait of a Spaniard" caped and sworded
duly; Ayacanora any savage princess. But even these
go through their motions quite satisfactorily; and all
the minor characters from Gary and Jack downward
among the fictitious, from Sir Richard Grenvile among
the real, are as good as any reasonable person can

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL, III 61

desire. And once more, though with the slight change
above noticed, the separate acts and scenes hurry the
reader along in the most admirable fashion. From the
day when Amyas finds the horn to the day when he
flings away the sword (a quaint, but of course not
intentional, reminder of the old ballad) the chronicle
goes on with step as light as it is steady, with interest
as well maintained as it is intense. What anybody
likes best will depend on idiosyncrasy. Only, if he
knows a good historical novel, and one of the very best
possible, when he sees it, if he is not uncritically deterred
by differences in religion and politics, in nationality
and literature, he must like Westward Ho! There is no
hope for him in this particular if he does not. He may
be a very good man: he may be a very good judge of
other novels; but he does not know a historical novel
when he sees it.

It may seem odd that after the appearance of three
such books in little more than three years the style
which they represented should have lost popularity.
But such was the fact for reasons partly assigned
already, and similar phenomena are by no means un-
common in literary history. For the best part of
twenty years the historical novel was a little out of
fashion. How it revived with Mr Blackmore's master-
piece, and how it has since been taken up with ever
increasing zest, everybody knows. But some one other
than the present writer must take up the history of
what is still among the youngest, though it has been
trying to be born ever since a time which would have
made it quite the eldest of the kinds of Prose Fiction.

II

MODERN ENGLISH PROSE [1876]

IN the days when I had to study the two great Histories
of Greece which England produced in the eighteenth cen-
tury, a thought, which has most probably of ten presented
itself to other students, frequently occurred to me.
Much as the two works differ in plan, in views, and in
manner of execution, their difference never struck me
so much as in the point of style. And the remarkable
feature of this difference is, that it is not by any means
the natural variation which we allow for, and indeed
expect, in the productions of any two men of decided
and distinct literary ability. It is not as the difference
between Hume and Gibbon, or the difference between
Clarendon and Taylor. In the styles of these great
writers, and in those of many others, there is the utmost
conceivable diversity; but at the same time they are
all styles. We can see (we see it, indeed, so clearly that
we hardly take the trouble to think about it) that each
of them made a distinct effort to arrange his words into
their clause, his clauses into their sentence, and his
sentences into their paragraph according to certain
forms, and that though these forms varied in the subtle
and indescribable measure of the taste and idiosyncrasy
of each writer, the effort was always present, and was
only accidentally if inseparably connected with the
intention to express certain thoughts, to describe
certain facts, or to present certain characters. But
when we come to compare Thirlwall with Grote, we
find not a variation of the kind just mentioned, but the
Full opposition of the presence of style on the one hand
and the absence of it on the other. The late Bishop of

MODERN ENGLISH PROSE 63

St David's will probably never be cited among the
greatest masters of English prose style, but still we can
.see without difficulty that he has inherited its tradi-
tions. It would be difficult, on the other hand, to
persuade a careful critic that Grote ever thought of
such things as the cadence of a sentence or the com-
position of a paragraph. That he took so much trouble
as might suffice to make his meaning clear and his
language energetic is obvious; that in no case did he
look beyond this is, I think, certain.

But the difference between these two great historians
is very far from being a mere isolated fact. It marks with
extraordinary precision the date and nature of a change
which has affected English literature to a degree and in
a manner worthy of the most serious consideration.
What this change is, and whether it amounts to an
actual decay or to a mere temporary neglect of style
in English prose writing, are questions which are
certainly of importance, and the answers to which
should not, as it seems to me, lack interest.

If, then, we take up almost any book of the eighteenth
century, we shall find that within varying limits the
effort of which I have just spoken is distinctly present.
The model upon which the writer frames his style may
be and probably is faulty in itself, and still more pro-
bably is faultily copied; there may be too much
Addison in the mixture, or too much Johnson; but
still we shall see that an honest attempt at style, an
honest endeavour at manner as apart from matter, has
been made, however clumsy the attempt may be, and
however far short of success it may fall. But if we
take up any book of the mid-nineteenth, save a very
few, the first thing that will strike us is the total
absence of any attempt or endeavour of the kind. The
matter will, as a rule, have been more or less carefully

64 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

attended to, and will be presented to the reader with
varying degrees of clearness and precision. But the
manner, except in so far as certain peculiarities of
manner may be conducive or prejudicial to clearness
and precision of statement sometimes perhaps to
apparent precision with any sacrifice of clearness
will in most cases be found to have been totally neg-
lected, if a thing may be said to be neglected which
does not appear to have even presented itself within
the circumference of the field of view. In other words,
and to adopt a convenient distinction, though there
may be a difference of manner, there is usually no
difference of style, for there is no style at all.

Before going any further, it may be well to follow
a commendable, if antiquated and scholastic practice,
and to set down accurately what is here meant by
style, and of what it consists. Style is the choice and
arrangement of language with only a subordinate
regard to the meaning to be conveyed. Its parts are
the choice of the actual words to be used, the further
selection and juxtaposition of these words, the structure
of the clauses into which they are wrought, the arrange-
ment of the clauses into sentences, and the composition
of the sentences into paragraphs. Beyond the para-
graph style can hardly be said to go, but within that
limit it is supreme. The faults incident to these parts
(if I may be allowed still to be scholastic) are perhaps
also worthy of notice. Every one can see, though every
one is by no means careful to put his knowledge into
practice, that certain words are bad of themselves, and
certain others to be avoided wherever possible. The
aext stage introduces difficulties of a higher order,
though these also are more or less elementary, such
as combination of incongruous notions and uninten-
tional repetitions of the same word. But these are

MODERN ENGLISH PROSE 65

mere rudiments; it is in the breach or neglect of the
rules that govern the structure of clauses,j}f sentences,
and of paragraphs that the real secret of style consists,
and to illustrate this breach or observation is less easy.
The task will be perhaps made easier if we consider
first, in the rough, how the prevalent English style of
the present day differs from that of past times.

De Quincey, when the century was not yet at the
midmost of its way, had already noticed and deplored
the deterioration of which we speak. In his Essay on
Style more particularly, as well as in other places, he
undertakes to discuss at some length the symptoms
and causes of the disease. Now De Quincey, as any
one who is at all acquainted with his works is aware,
gave considerable attention to the subject of style, and
professed to be no mean authority thereon. There
were, indeed, two peculiarities about him which pre-
vented him from deserving the highest place as a
referee on such matters. The first was his mistaken idea
that extremely ornate prose the prose which his ally
John Wilson called "numerous," and which others
have called Asiatic was the highest form attainable,
and that any writer who did not aim at this fell
naturally into a lower class. The other was his singular
crotchetiness, which made him frequently refuse to
see any good in the style of writers to whom, for some
reason or for no reason, he had taken a dislike* It will
probably be allowed, not merely by persons who hold
traditional opinions, but by all independent students
of literature, that we must look with considerable dis-
trust on the dicta of a critic who finds fault with the
styles of Plato and of Conyers Middleton 1 . The Essay
on Style, however (at least its first part, for the latter

1 I have kept this name out of honesty. But it is very many years
since I disjoined it from the other (1923).

66 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

portions go off into endless digressions of no pertinence
whatever), is much more carefully written and much
more carefully reasoned than most of De Quincey's
work. The purport of it is, that the decay of style is
to be attributed chiefly to the prevalence of journalism.
No one will deny that the influence of newspaper
writing is in many ways bad, and that to it is due much
of the decadence in style of which complaint is made.
But either the prevalent manner of journalism has
undergone a remarkable change during the past genera-
tion, or else the particular influence which De Quincey
supposes it to have had was mistaken by him. I do
not myself pretend to a very intimate acquaintance
with the periodical literature of the second quarter of
the century, and I am afraid that n6t even in the
pursuit of knowledge could I be tempted to plunge
into such a dreary and unbuoyant mare mortuunf. With
respect to the papers of to-day it is certainly not
difficult to discern some peculiarities in their styles,
or in what does duty for style in them. But in most of
all this we shall find little to bear out De Quincey's
verdict. Long and involved sentences, unduly stuffed
with fact and meaning, are what he complains of; and
though there is no doubt that we should not have to go
far in order to find such at the present day, yet it does
not appear, to me at least, that the main fault of con-
temporary English style is of this kind. On the con-
trary, the sin of which I should chiefly complain is the
sin of owrrslwitLSentences, of mere

balanced periods. Such a paragraph as the following
will illustrate what I mean: "That request was obeyed
by the massacre of six out of the surviving princes of
the imperial family. Two alone escaped. With such a
mingling of light and darkness did Constantine close

1 But I had to do so, later! (1923).

MODERN ENGLISH PROSE 67

his career." I think that any one who considers this
combination of two mutilated clauses with an inter-
jectional copula, and who perceives with what ease its
hideous cacophony might have been softened into a
complete and harmonious sentence, must feel certain
that its present form is to some extent intentional. The
writer might very well have written: "That request
was obeyed by the massacre of six out of the eight
surviving princes of the imperial family, and the career
of Constantine was closed in a mixture of light and
darkness." Why did he not?

Again, let us take a book of recent [1876] date, whose
style has received considerable praise both in England
and abroad Mr Green's Short History of the English
People. The character of Elizabeth is perhaps the most
carefully written, certainly the most striking, passage
in the book, and contains a most elaborate statement
of that view of the great queen which many historical
students now take. It enforces this view with the
greatest energy, and sets it before us in every detail
and difference of light and shade. But how inartistic
it is ! how thoroughly bad in conception, composition^
and style ! In the first place it occupies some seven
printed pages of unusual extent and closeness, each of
which is at least equal to two of the ordinary octavo
pages of an English classic author. Let any one, if he
can, imagine one of the great masters who could both
draw and compose Hume or Chesterfield 1 , Clarendon
or Swift giving us a character of fourteen pages. A
portrait on the scale of Brobdingnag, with all features
and all defects unnaturally emphasised and enlarged,
could hardly be more disgusting 2 .

1 "Middleton" again in original. I cannot think what I was about!

(1923).

2 I cannot refrain from noticing an instance from this writer of the
absurdity into which the passion for picturesque epithet betrays many

5-2

68 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

It is not necessary to multiply examples, which, iJ
all the defects of contemporary style were.to be noticed
and illustrated, would occupy a space longer than the
present chapter. In all but a very few writers we shall
observe with certain variations the same defects
inordinate copiousness of treatment combined with an
utter inability, or at best an extreme unwillingness,
to frame a sentence of due proportion and careful
structure. It should certainly be possible to trace the
origin and examine the nature of a phenomenon so
striking and so universal.

The secret of the manner will not long escape us if
we notice or can disengage the intention with which,
willingly or unwillingly, this manner has been adopted.
Nor is this intention very hard to discover. It is, as
it appears to me, a desire to present the subject, what-
ever it may be, to the reader in the most striking and
arresting fashion. The attention of the reading public
generally has, from causes to be presently noticed,
become gradually concentrated almost wholly upon
subject-matter. Among what may be called, intel-
lectually speaking, the lower classes, this concentration
shows itself not in the preference but in the exclusive
study of novels, newspapers, and sometimes of so-
called books of information. A book must be, as they
say, "about something," or it fails altogether to arrest
their attention. To such persons a page with (as it has
been quaintly put) no "resting-places," no proper
names and capital letters to fix the eye, is an intolerable

contemporary authors. At Newbury, we are told, "the London train
bands flung Rupert's horsemen roughly off their front of pikes." Here
roughly is in the Polonian sense " good." Visions of the sturdy and pious
citizen discomfiting the debauched cavalier are aroused. But let us
consider it with the sobriety proper to history and to art, and perhaps
we shall ask Mr Green to show us how to fling an enemy softly ona pike.
Roaring like a sucking-dove would be nothing to this gymnastic effort.
[It is now (1892 and still more in 1923) unfortunately impossible to
&sk him. But the instance is too characteristic to be omitted.]

MODERN ENGLISH PROSE 69

weariness, and to them it is evident that style can be
only a name- Somewhat above them come the (in-
tellectually) middle classes. They are not absolutely
confined to personal adventure, real or fictitious, or to
interesting facts. They can probably enjoy the better
class of magazine articles, superior biographies, travels,
and the other books that everybody reads and nobody
buys. This class will even read poetry if the poet's
name be known, and would consider it a grave affront
if it were hinted to them that their appreciation of
style is but dull and faulty. A certain amount of labour
is therefore required on work which is to please these
readers : labour, however, which is generally bestowed
in a wrong direction, on ornament and trick rather
than on really artistic construction and finish. Lastly
there is the highest class of all, consisting of those who
really possess, or might possess, taste, culture, and in-
tellect. Of these the great majority are now somewhat
alienated from pure literature, and devoted rather to
social matters, to science, or to the more fashionable
and profitable arts of design. Their demand for style
in literature is confined chiefly to poetry. They also
are interested more by their favourite subjects treated
anyhow, than by subjects for which they care little
treated well, so that even by them little encouragement
is given to the cultivation and little hindrance to the
decay of prose style.

Intimately connected with the influences that arise
from this attitude and temper of the general reader,
are some other influences which spring from such
prevalent forms and subjects of literature as present
themselves to the general writer. The first of these
forms, and unquestionably the most constant and
pervading in its influence, is now, as it was in De
Quincey's days, journalism. No one with the slightest

70 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

knowledge of the subject will pretend that the influence
of journalism upon writing is wholly bad. Whatever
may have been the case formerly, a standard of ex-
cellence which is in some respects really high is usually
aimed at, and not seldom reached, in the better class
of newspapers. Some appropriateness in the use of
words, a rigid avoidance of the more glaring gram-
matical errors, and a respectable degree of clearness
in statement, are expected by the reader and usually
observed by the writer. In these respects, therefore,
there is no falling off to be complained of, but rather
a marked improvement upon past times to be per-
ceived. Yet, as regards the higher excellences of style,
it is not possible that the influence of journalism should
be good. For it must at any cost be rapid, and rapidity
is absolutely incompatible with style. The journa 1 ' .
has as a rule one of two things to do ; he has eithe co
give a rapid account of certain facts, or to present al
rapid discussion of certain arguments. In either case
it becomes a matter of necessity for him to adopt
stereotyped phrases and forms of speech which, being
ready cut and dried, may abbreviate his labour and
leave him as little as possible to invent in his limited
time. Now there is nothing more fatal to the attain-
ment of a good style than the habit of using such
stereotyped phrases and forms. With the imperiousness
natural to all art, style absolutely refuses to avail
itself of, or to be found in company with, anything
that is ready made. The rule must be a leaden one, the
mould made for the occasion, and broken after it has
passed. Every one who has ever seriously tried to write
must be conscious how sorely he has been beset, and
how often he has been overcome, by the almost in-
sensible temptation to adopt the current phrases of
the day. Bad, however, as the influence of journalism

MODERN ENGLISH PROSE 71

is in this respect, it is perhaps worse in its tendency
to sacrifice everything to mere picturesqueness of style
(for the word must be thus misused because there is
no other). The journalist is bound to be picturesque
by the law of his being. The old phrase, segnius irritant,
is infinitely truer of pseudo-picturesque style as com-
pared with literature which holds to its proper means
of appeal, than it is of literal spectacle as compared
with narrative. And the journalist is obliged at any
cost irritare animos, and that in the least possible time.

This tendency of journalism is assisted and in-
tensified by that of another current form of literature,
novel-writing. A very little thought will show that if
the novel-writer attains to style it is almost a marvel.
Of the four constituent elements of the novel, plot,
character, description, and dialogue, none lend them-
selves in any great degree to the cultivation of the
higher forms of style, and some are distinctly opposed
to it. The most cunning plot may be developed equally
in the style of Plato and in the style of a penny dreadful.
Character drawing, as the novelist understands or
should understand it, is almost equally unconnected
with style. On the other hand, description and dia-
logue, unless managed with consummate skill, dis-
tinctly tend to develop and strengthen the crying
faults of contemporary style: its picturesqueness at
any cost, its grasping and ungraceful periods, itSj
neglect of purely literary effect. '

Lastly, there must be noticed the enormous influence
necessarily exerted by the growth of what is called
scientific study (to use the term in its largest and widest
sense), and by the displacement in its favour of many,
if not most, of the departments of literature which were
most favourable to the cultivation of style. In what-
ever quarter we look, we shall see that the primary

72 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

effort of the writer and the primary desire of the reader
are both directed to what are called scientific or positive
results, in other words, to matter instead of manner.
In using the word science here, I have not the slightest
intention of limiting its meaning, as it is too often
limited, to physical science. I extend it to every subject
which is capable of being treated in a scientific way.
And I think we shall find that all subjects and all kinds
of prose literature which are not capable of this sort
of treatment, or do not readily lend themselves to it,
are yearly occupying less and less the attention of both
artists and audiences. Parliamentary oratory of the
elaborate kind, which furnished a vigorous if a some-
what dangerous stimulant to the cultivation of style,
is dead utterly. Pulpit eloquence, whkh at its worst
maintained "stylistic" traditions, and at its best fur-
nished some of the noblest examples of style, is dying,
partly owing to the gradual divorce between the best
men of the universities and the clerical profession,
partly to the absence of the serene security of a settled
doctrine and position, but most of all to the demands
upon the time of the clergy which modern notions
enforce, and which make it utterly impossible for the
greater number to devote a proper time to study.
Philosophy, another great nurse of style, has now
turned stepmother, and turns out her nurselings to
wander in "thorniest queaches" of terminology and
jargon, instead of the ordered gardens wherein Plato
and Berkeley walked. History even, the last or almost
the last refuge of a decent and comely prose, is more
busy about records and manuscripts than about
periods and paragraphs. Only criticism, the youngest
and most hopeful birth of time as far as prose style
is concerned, has not yet openly apostatized. It is true
that even here signs of danger are not wanting, and

MODERN ENGLISH PROSE 73

that already we are told that criticism must be
scientific, that its reading must not be desultory, and
so forth. But on the whole there is little fear of relapse.
The man who would cut himself a coat from another's
cloth must bring to the task the care and labour of
a skilled fashioner if he is to make good his claim of
ownership. The man who has good work in perpetual
contemplation is not likely to be satisfied with the
complacent production of what is bad.

There is, moreover, one influence, or rather one set
of influences, hostile to the attainment of style in the
present day which I have as yet left unnoticed, and
the approach to which is guarded by ground somewhat
dangerous to the tread. It will, I think, appear to any
one who contemplates the subject fully and impartially
that style is essentially an aristocratic thing; and it is
already a commonplace to say that the spirit of to-day,
or perhaps the spirit of the times immediately behind
us, is essentially democratic. It is democratic not in
any mere political sense, but in the intolerance with
which it regards anything out of the reach of, or in-
comprehensible to, the ordinary Philistine, working by
the methods of Philistia. Intellectual and artistic pre-
eminence, except in so far as it ministers to the fancies
of the vulgar (great or small), is perhaps especially
the object of this intolerance. Every one has witnessed
or shared the angry impatience with which the ordinary
Briton resents anything esoteric, fastidious, or fine.
And the charms of prose style especially merit these
epithets, and are not to be read by any one who runs,
or tasted by any one who swallows in haste. Gaudy
ornament is intelligible, "graphic" drawing is in-
telligible ; but the finer cadences of the period, the more
intricate strokes of composition, fall unregarded on
the common ear and pass unnoticed by the common

74 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

eye. To be tickled, to, be dazzled, to be harrowed, are
impressions of which the uncultured man is capable ;
they require little intellectual effort, and scarcely any
judgment or taste in the direction of that little. But
the music of the spheres would form but a sorry attrac-
tion in a music-hall programme, and Christopher Sly
is not willing to accept nectar in exchange for a pot
of even the smallest ale. And if the angry resentment
of not a few readers gives the votary of style but little
chance of an audience, it must be admitted that the
lack of what I have called an aristocratic spirit gives
the audience little chance of a performer. The con-
ditions of modern life are unfavourable to the attain-
ment of the peculiar mood of somewhat arrogant
indifference which is the characteristic of the scholar.
Every one knows Dean Gaisford's three reasons for
the cultivation of the Greek language; and I for my
part have no doubt that one of them most accurately
describes an important feature of the Wesen des
Gelehrten. It may not be necessary for him "to read
the words of Christ in the original"; it may not be
of absolute importance that he should "have situations
of affluence opened to him." But it certainly is essential
that he should "look down on his fellow-creatures from
a proper elevation"; and this is what the tendency of
modern social progress is making more and more
difficult, at any rate in appearance. You cannot raise
the level of the valleys without diminishing the relative
height of the hills; and you cannot scatter education
and elementary cultivation broadcast without dimin-
ishing the value of the privileges which appertain to
superior culture. The old republic of letters was, like
other old republics, a democracy only in name, but
in reality a more or less close oligarchy, looking down
on metics and slaves whose degradations and dis-

MODERN ENGLISH PROSE 75

abilities heightened its courage and gave a zest to its
freedom. In letters, as in politics, we are doing our
.best to change all this; and the possible result may
be, that every one will soon be able to write a news-
paper article, and that no one will aspire to anything
beyond 1 .

The general characteristics of style which the in-
fluence, combined or partial, of these forces has pro-
duced have been already indicated, but may perhaps
now be summed up. Diff useness ; sacrifice of the graces
of literary proportion to real or apparent clearness of
statement; indulgence in cut-and-dried phrases; undue
aiming at pictorial effect; gaudiness of unnatural
ornament; preference of gross and glaring effects en
bloc to careful composition. Certain authors who are
either free from these defects, or have vigour enough to
excuse or transform them, must now be noticed.

For reasons obvious, though various, it is not my
intention to discuss in any way at the present time the
style of the author of Sartor Resartus. Mr Carlyle being
thus removed, there can be little question who must
take the foremost place in a discussion as to the merits
and demerits of modern English prose style. And yet,
it is at least doubtful whether in strictness we can
assign to Mr Ruskin a position in the very highest rank
of writers if we are to adopt style as a criterion. The
objection to his manner of writing is an obvious one,
and one which he might very likely take as a com-
pliment; it is too spontaneous in the first place, and

1 I have for the present thought it better to leave out of consideration
the probable effect of the diminished study of classics in modern school
and university education. That this effect is decidedly adverse to the
cultivation of style is sufficiently obvious, but the subject is too com-
plicated to be incidentally treated, and perhaps the diminution itself
is too recent for its effects to have been as yet much felt. [They have
made themselves much more sensible in the nearly fifty years which
have passed since this article was written. (1923.)]

76 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

too entirely subordinsLte, to the subject in the second.
I hope that it may be very clearly understood that I
can see passages in his works which, for splendour of,
imaginative effect, for appropriateness of diction, for
novelty and grandeur of conception, stand beyond all
chance of successful rivalry, almost beyond all hope
of decent parallel among the writings of ancient and
modern masters. But in most cases this marvellous
effect will, when carefully examined, be found to
depend on something wholly or partially extrinsic to
the style. Mr Ruskin writes beautifully because he
thinks beautifully, because his thoughts spring, like
Pallas, ready armed, and the fashion of the armour
costs him nothing. Everybody has heard of the un-
lucky critic whose comment on Scott's fertility was that
"the invention was not to be counted, for that came
to him of its own accord." So it is with Mr Ruskin.
His beauties of style "come to him of their own
accord," and then he writes as the very gods might
dream of writing. But in the moments when he is off
the tripod, or is upon some casual and un-Delphic
tripod of his own construction or selection, how is his
style altered ! The strange touches of unforeseen colour
become splashed and gaudy, the sonorous roll of the
prophetic sentence-paragraphs drags and wriggles like
a wounded snake, the cunning interweaving of scrip-
tural or poetic phrase is patched and seamy. A Balaam
on the Lord's side, he cannot curse or bless but as it
is revealed to him, whereas the possessor of a great
style can use it at will. He can shine on the just and
on the unjust; can clothe his argument for tyranny
or for liberty, for virtue or for vice, with the same
splendour of diction, and the same unperturbed per-
fection of manner; can convince us, carry us with him,
or leave us unconvinced but admiring, with the same

MODERN ENGLISH PROSE 77

unquestioned supremacy and the same unruffled calm.<
Swift can write a jeu d? esprit and a libel on the human
.race, a political pamphlet and a personal lampoon,
with the same felicity and the same vigour. Berkeley
can present tar-water and the Trinity, the theory of
vision and the follies of contemporary free-thinking,
with the same perfect lucidity and the same colourless
fairness. But with Mr Ruskin all depends on the
subject, and the manner in which the subject is to be
treated. He cannot even blame as he can praise; and
there must be many who are ready to accept everything
he can say of Tintoret or of Turner, and who feel no
call to object to any of his strictures on Canaletto or
on Claude, who yet perceive painfully the difference
of style in the panegyrist and the detractor, and who
would demand the stricter if less obvious justice, and
the more artistic if apparently perverted sensitiveness,
of the thorough master of style.

But if we have to quarrel with Mr Ruskin because
he has not sufficient command of the unquestioned
beauties of his style, because he is not, in Carew's
words

A king who rules as he thinks fit

The universal monarchy of wit,

but is rather a slave to his own thoughts and fancies,
a very opposite fault must be found with the next
writer who falls to be mentioned. "We do not," it
was once said of him, "we do not get angry so much
with what Mr Matthew Arnold says as with his in-
sufferable manner of saying it." In other words, there
is no fear of omitting to notice a deliberate command
and peculiarity of manner in Mr Arnold, whether that
manner be considered "insufferable" or no. For
myself I must confess, that I could very frequently
find it in my heart to wish that Mr Arnold had chosen

78 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

any other style than that which appeared to afford him
such extreme delight. Irony is an admirable thing, but
it must be grave and not grimacing. Innocence is an
admirable thing, but it should not be affected. To have
a manner of one's own is an admirable thing, but to
have a mannerism of one's own is perhaps not quite
so admirable. It is curious that his unfortunately
successful pursuit of this latter possession should have
led Mr Arnold to adopt a style which has more than
any other the fault he justly censured many years ago
as the special vice of modern art the fault of the
fantastic. No doubt the great masters of style have each
a cachet which is easily decipherable by a competent
student ; no doubt, in spite of Lord Macaulay, Arbuth-
not is to be distinguished from Swift, and the cunningest
imitators of Voltaire from Voltaire himself. But to
simulate this distinction by the deliberate adoption of
mere tricks and manners is what no true master of
style ever yet attempted, because for no true master
of style was it ever yet necessary. Mr Ruskin, to use
the old Platonic simile, has not his horses sufficiently
well in hand; at times the heavenly steed, with a
strong and sudden flight, will lift the car amid the
empyrean, at times the earth-born yoke-fellow will
drag it down, with scarcely the assistance and scarcely
the impediment of the charioteer. But even this is
better than the driving of one who has broken his
horses, indeed, but has broken them to little but
mincing graces.

It is not possible to speak with equal definiteness of
the style of a third master of English prose, who ranks
in point of age and of reputation with Mr Ruskin and
Mr Arnold. It would certainly be an over-hasty or an
ill-qualified critic who should assert that Mr Froude's
style is always faultless; but, on the other hand, it

MODERN ENGLISH PROSE 79

may be asserted, without any fear whatever of con-
tradiction carrying weight, that at its best it is sur-
passed by no style of the present day, and by few of
any other, and that at its worst its faults are not
of a venial character, for no fault in art is venial, but
at any rate of a kind which may meet with more
ready excuse than those of the writers previously
noticed. These faults are perhaps two only undue
diffuseness and undue aiming, at. the picturesque. We
have seen thatf these are tKe two most glaring faults
of the age, and by his indulgence in them, and the
splendid effects which he has produced by that in-
dulgence, Mr Froude has undoubtedly earned his place,
if not as a Sdcularischer Mensch, at any rate as a repre-
sentative man. No one, perhaps, who has read can fail
to count among the triumphs of English prose the
descriptions of the Pilgrimage of Grace in the History,
of Sir Richard Grenvile's last fight in the Short Studies,
of the wreckers at Ballyhige in the English in Ireland.
There are also many shorter passages which exhibit
almost every excellence that the most exacting critic
could demand. But it is not to be denied that Mr Froude
has very frequently bowed the knee before the altar
of Baal. It is unlawful to occupy twelve mighty
volumes with the history of one nation during little
more than half a century; it is unlawful for the sound
critical reason of St John, that if such a practice
obtained universally, the world could not contain the
books that should be written; and also for the reason
that in such writing it is almost impossible to observe
thejreticencejmd compression which^are j^ong_thg
laiTG^pTst^e. If is unlawful to imagine and set down,
except very sparingly, the colour of which the trees
probably were at the time when kings and queens made
their entrance into such and such a city, the buildings

8o MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

which they may or may not have looked upon, the
thoughts which may or may not hav.e occurred to
them. Such sacrificings at the shrine of effect, such
trespassings on the domains and conveying of the
methods of other arts and alien muses, are not to be
commended or condoned. But one must, at the same
time, allow with the utmost thankfulness that there are
whole paragraphs, if not whole pages, of Mr Froude's,
which, for practised skill of composition and for
legitimate beauty of effect, may take their place among
the proudest efforts of English art.

It will probably be agreed that the three writers
whom I have noticed stand at the head of contemporary
English prose authors in point of age and authority;
but there are other and younger authors who must
necessarily be noticed in any account of the subject
which aims at completeness. Mr Swinburne's progress
as a prose writer can hardly have failed to be a subject
of interest, almost equally with his career as a poet,
to every lover of our tongue. His earliest appearance,
the Essay on Byron, is even now in many respects
characteristic of his work; but it does not contain
and it is a matter of sincere congratulation for all lovers
of English prose that it does not contain any passage
at all equal to the magnificent descant on Marlowe
which closes its ten years younger brother, the Essay
on Chapman. In the work between and since these
two limits, the merits and defects of Mr Swinburne
as a prose writer may be read by whoso wills. At times
it has seemed as if the weeds would grow up with the
good seed and choke it. Mr Swinburne has fallen into
the error, not unnatural for a poet, of forgetting that
the figures and the language allowable in j)oetry_are
not also allowable in prose. The dangerous luxury of
alliteration has attracted him only too often, and the

MODERN ENGLISH PROSE 81

still more dangerous licence of the figure called chiasmus
has been to him even as a siren, from whose clutches
he has been hardly saved. But the noticeable thing
is that the excellences of his prose speech have grown
ever stronger and its weaknesses weaker since he began.
In the Essay on Blake, admirable as was much thereof,
a wilful waste of language not unfrequently verging on
a woful want of sense was too frequently apparent.
In the Notes on his Poems, and in Under the Microscope,
just as was most of the counter-criticism, it was im-
possible not to notice a tendency to verbiage and a
proneness, I will not say to prefer sound to sense, but
unnecessarily to reinforce sense with sound. But at
the same time, in the Essays and Studies, and the Essay
on Chapman, no competent critic could fail to notice,
notwithstanding occasional outbreaks, the growing
reticence and severity of form, as well as the increasing
weight and dignity of meaning. Mr Swinburne, as a
prose writer, is in need of nothing but the pruning-
hook. Most of his fellows are in want chiefly of some-
thing which might be worth pruning.

It is obviously impossible in the present essay to
notice minutely all even of the more prominent names
in contemporary prose. Some there are among the
older of our writers who yet retain the traditions of the
theological school of writing, to which style owes so
much. A good deal might be said of Cardinal Manning's
earlier style (for his progress in this hierarchy hardly
corresponded with his promotion in the other), as well
as of Dr Newman's admirable clearness and form,
joined as it is, perhaps unavoidably, to a certain hard-
ness of temper. Mr Disraeli's peculiarities in style
would almost demand an essay to themselves. They
have never perhaps had altogether fair-play; for novel-
writing and politics are scarcely friends to style. But

82 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

Mr Disraeli had the root of the matter in him, and never
was guilty of the degradation of the sentence, which
is the crying sin of modern prose ; while his unequalled
felicity in the selection of single epithets gave him a
supply of legitimate ornament which few writers have
ever had at command. Tastes, I suppose, will always
differ as to the question whether his ornamentation
was not sometimes illegitimate. The parrot-cry of
upholstery is easily raised. But I think we have at last
come to see that rococo work is good and beautiful
in its way, and he must be an ungrateful critic who
objects to the somewhat lavish emeralds and rubies of
the Arabian Nights. Of younger writers, there are not
many whose merits it would be proper to specify in
this place ; while the prevailing defects "of current style
have been already fully noticed. But there is one book
of recent appearance which sets the possibilities of
modern English prose in the most favourable light, and
gives the liveliest hope as to what may await us if
writers, duly heeding the temptations to which they
are exposed, and duly availing themselves of the
opportunities for study and imitation which are at their
disposal, should set themselves seriously to work to
'develop pro virili the prose resources of the English
tongue. Of the merely picturesque beauty of Mr Pater's
Studies in the History of the Renaissance, there can be
no necessity for me to say anything here. In the first
place it cannot escape the notice of any one who reads
the book, and in the second, if there be any truth in
what has been already said, the present age by no
means needs to be urged to cultivate or to appreciate
this particular excellence. The important point for us
is the purely formal or regular merit of this style, and
this is to be viewed with other eyes and tested by other
methods than those which are generally brought to

MODERN ENGLISH PROSE 83

bear by critics of the present day. The main point
which I shall- notice is the subordinate and yet inde-
pendent beauty of the sentences when taken separately
from the paragraph. This is a matter of the very
greatest importance. In too much of our present prose
the individual sentence is unceremoniously robbed of
all proper form and comeliness. If it adds its straw
to the heap, its duty is supposed to be done. Mr Pater
has not fallen into this error, nor has he followed the
multitude to do evil in the means which he has adopted
for the production of the singular "sweet attractive
kind of grace" which distinguishes these Studies. A
bungler would have depended, after the fashion of the
day, upon strongly coloured epithets, upon complicated
and quasi-poetic cadences of phrase, at least upon an
obtrusively voluptuous softness of thought and a
cumbrous protraction of sentence. Not so Mr Patei;.
There is not to be discovered in his work the least
sacrifice of the phrase to the word, of the clause to the
phrase, of the sentence to the clause, of the paragraph
to the sentence. Each holds its own proper place and
dignity while contributing duly to the dignity and
place of its superior in the hierarchy. Often the
cadence of the sentence, considered separately, will
seem to be and will in truth be quite different from
that of the paragraph, because its separate complete-
ness demands this difference. Yet the total effect, so
far from being marred, is enhanced. There is no surer
mark of the highest style than this separate and yet
subordinate finish. In the words of Mr Ruskin, it is
"so modulated that every square inch is a perfect
composition."

It is this perfection of modulation to which we must
look for the excellence that we require and do not meet
with in most of the work of the present day, and it is

6-2

84 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

exactly this modulation with which all the faults that
I have had to comment upon in the preceding pages
are inconsistent. To an artist who should set before
him such a model as either of the passages which I
have quoted, lapses into such faults would be impossible.
"He will not succumb to the easy diffuseness which may
obliterate the just proportion and equilibrium of his
periods. He will not avail himself of the ready assist-
ance of stereotyped phraseology to spare himself the
trouble of casting new moulds and devising new
patterns. He will not imagine that he is a scene painter
instead of a prose writer, a decorator instead of an
architect, a caterer for the desires of the many instead
of a priest to the worship of the few. He will not
indulge in a style which requires the maximum of
ornament in order to disguise and render palatable the
minimum of art and of thought. He will not consider
it his duty to provide, at the least possible cost of
intellectual effort on the part of the reader, something
which may delude him into the idea that he is exercising
his judgment and his taste. And, above all, he will
be careful that his sentences have an independent
completeness and harmony, no matter what purpose
they may be designed to fulfil. For the sentence is the
unit of style; and by the cadence and music, as well
as by the purport and bearing, of his sentences, the
master of style must stand or fall. For years, almost
for centuries, French prose has been held up as a model
to English prose writers, and for the most part justly.
Only of late has the example come to have something
of the Helot about it. The influence of Victor Hugo
an influence almost omnipotent among the younger
generation of French literary men has been exercised
in prose with a result almost as entirely bad as its
effect in verse has been good. The rules of verse had

MODERN ENGLISH PROSE 85

stiffened and cramped French poetry unnaturally, and
violent exercise was the very thing required to recover
suppleness and strength; but French prose required nc
such surgery, and it has consequently lost its ordered
beauty without acquiring compensatory charms. The
proportions of the sentence have been wilfully dis-
regarded, and the result is that French prose is pro-
bably now at a lower point of average merit than at
any time for two centuries.

That an art should be fully recognised as an art,
with strict rules and requirements, is necessary to
attainment of excellence in it; and in England this
recognition, which poetry has long enjoyed, has hardly
yet been granted to prose. No such verses as we find
by scores in such books as Marston's Satires would now
suggest themselves as possible or tolerable to any writer
of Marston's powers; but in prose many a sentence
quite as intolerable as any of these verses is constantly
written by persons of presumably sound education and
competent wits. The necessities of the prose writer are,
an .^ear j.n jthejfirst placer this is indispensable and per-
haps not too common. In the second place, due study
of the best authors, as well to know what to avoid as
what to imitate. Lastly, care, which perhaps is not too
much to demand of any artist, so soon as he has recog-
nised and has secured recognition of the fact that he
is an artist. Care is indeed the one thrice-to-be-
repeated and indispensable property of the prose writer.
It is pre-eminently necessary to him for the very reason
that it is so easy to dispense with it, and to write prose
without knowing what one does. Verse, at least verse
which is to stand, as Johnson says, "the test of the
finger if not of the ear," cannot be written without
conscious effort and observation. But something which
may be mistaken for prose can unfortunately be pro-

86 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

duced without either taste, or knowledge, or care. With
these three requisites there should be no limit to the
beauty and to the variety of the results obtained. The
fitness of English for prose composition will hardly be
questioned, though it may be contended with justice
that perhaps in no other language has the average
merit of its prose been so far below the excellence of
its most perfect specimens. But the resources which
in the very beginning of the practice of original com-
position in fully organised English could produce the
splendid and thoughtful, if quaint and cumbrous,
embroideries of Euphues and the linked sweetness of
the Arcadia, which could give utterance to the sym-
phonies of Browne and Milton, which could furnish
and suffice for the matchless simplicity of Bunyan, the
splendid strength of Swift, the transparent clearness
of Middleton and Berkeley, the stately architecture of
Gibbon, are assuredly equal to the demands of any
genius that may arise to employ them.

It is therefore the plain duty of every critic to assist
at least in impressing upon the mass of readers that
they do not receive what they ought to receive from
the mass of writers, and in suggesting a multiplication
and tightening of the requirements which a prose writer
must fulfil. There are some difficulties in the way of
such impression and suggestion in the matter of style.
It is not easy for the critic to escape being bidden, in
the words of Nicholas Breton, "not to talk too much
of it, having so little of it," or to avoid the obvious
jest of Diderot on Beccaria, that he had written an
"ouvrage sur le style ou il n'y a point de style." But
I know no Utopia which ought to be more speedily
rendered topic, than that in which at least the same
censure which is now incurred by a halting verse, a
discordant rhyme, or a clumsy stanza, should be

MODERN ENGLISH PROSE 87

accorded to a faultily-arranged clause, to a sentence
of inharmonious cadence, to a paragraph of irregular
and ungraceful architecture 1 .

1 There are some things in this which may seem ungraceful now. But
I have kept it almost unaltered, and never altered at all without warning
in important matters, because of its date. It was written but a year or
two after Mr Pater's Renaissance had definitely sounded the horn for
return to ornateness: and therefore may have some interest. (1923.)

Ill

ENGLISH PROSE STYLE

"The other harmony of prose." DRYDEN

IT was once reported that Victor Hugo, whose com-
mand of his own tongue was only equalled by his
ignorance of the English language and literature, gave
not long before his death his opinion of the difference
between French and English prose and verse. A perfect
language, he opined, should show a noteworthy
difference between its style in prose and its style in
verse: this difference existed in French and did not
exist in English. I shall give no opinion as to the truth
of this axiom in general, nor any as to its application
to French. But it is not inappropriate to begin an
essay on the subject of English prose style by observing
that, whatever may be its merits and defects, it is
entirely different different by the extent of the whole
heaven of language from English verse style. We have
had writers, including some of genius, who have striven
to make prose like verse; and we have had other
writers, including some of genius, who have striven to
make verse like prose. Both in so doing have shown
themselves to be radically mistaken. The actual
vocabulary of the best English style of different
periods is indeed almost entirely common to verse
and to prose, and it is perhaps this fact which induced
the distinguished person above referred to, and others
not much less distinguished, to make a mistake of
confusion. The times when the mere dictionary of
poetic style has been distinct from the mere dictionary
of prosaic style (for there have been such) have not
been those in which English literature was at its highest

ENGLISH PROSE STYLE 89

point. But between the syntax taking that word in
its proper sense of the order of words of prose and the
syntax of verse; between the rhythm of prose and the
rhythm of verse; between the sentence- and clause-
architecture of prose and the sentence- and clause-
architecture of verse, there has been since English
literature took a durable form in the sixteenth century
at least as strongly marked a difference in English as
in other languages.

Good poets have usually been good writers of prose;
but in English more than in any other tongue the prose
style of these writers has differed from their verse
style. The French prose and the French verse of Hugo
himself are remarkably similar in all but the most
arbitrary differences, and the same may be said, to a
less extent, of the prose and the verse style of Goethe.
But Shelley's prose and Shelley's verse (to confine
myself to examples taken from the nineteenth century)
are radically different in all points of their style and
verbal power; and so are Coleridge's prose and Cole-
ridge's verse. The same is eminently true of Shakespeare,
and true to a very great extent of Milton. If it is less
true of Dryden and of Pope (it is often true of Dryden
to a great degree), that is exactly in virtue of the some-
what un-English influence which, though it benefited
English prose not a little, worked upon both. In our
own days prose style has become somewhat disarranged,
but in the hands of those who have any pretence to
style at all, its merits and its defects are in great part
clearly traceable to a keeping apart on the one hand,
to a confusion on the other, of the separate and distinct
aims and methods of the prose-writer and the poet.

It should scarcely be necessary to say that no attempt
is made in this essay to compile a manual of English
prose writing, or to lay down didactically the principles

90 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

of the art. The most that can be done, or that is aimed
at, is the discovery, by a running critical and his-
torical commentary on the course of English prose-
generally, what have been the successive characteristics
of its style, what the aims of its writers, and what the
amounts of success that they have attained. There is
nothing presumptuous in the attitude of the student,
whatever there may be in the attitude of the teacher.
In the year 1876, at the suggestion of Mr John Morley,
I attempted in the Fortnightly Review a study of the
chief characteristics of contemporary prose 1 . Since
then I have reviewed many hundreds of new books,
and have read again, or for the first time, many
hundreds of old ones. I do not know that the two
processes have altered my views much: they certainly
have not lessened my estimate of the difficulty of
writing good prose, or of the merit of good prose when
written. During these years considerable attention has
undoubtedly been given by English writers to style:
I wish I could think that the result has been a distinct
improvement in the quality of the product. If the
present object were a study of contemporary prose,
much would have to be said on the growth of what I
may call the Aniline style and the style of Marivaudage,
the first dealing in a gorgeous and glaring vocabulary,
the second in unexpected turns and twists of thought
or phrase, in long-winded description of incident, and
in finical analysis of motive. Unexpectedness, indeed,
seems to be the chief aim of the practitioners of both,
and it lays them perhaps open to the damaging question
of Mr Milestone in Headlong Hall. When we hear that
a bar of music has "veracity," that there is a finely-
executed "passage" in a marble chimney-piece, that
some one is "part of the conscience of a nation," that

1 See this essay, supra. The present one dates from 1885.

ENGLISH PROSE STYLE 91

the " andante" of a sonnet is specially noteworthy, the
quest after the unexpected has become sufficiently
evident. But these things are not directly our subject,
though we shall find other things remarkably like them
in the history of the past. For there is nothing new
in art except its beauties, and all the faults of French
naturalism and English aestheticism were doubtless
perfectly well known to critics and admired by the
uncritical in the days of Hilpa and Shalum.

Although there are delightful writers in English
prose before the reign of Elizabeth, it was not till that
reign was some way advanced that a definite effort on
the part of writers to make an English prose style can
be perceived. This effort took for the most part one
of two directions. The first was vernacular in the main,
but very strongly tinged with a peculiar form of pre-
ciousness, the origin of which has been traced to various
sources, but which appears clearly enough in the French
rhetoriqueurs of the fifteenth century, whence it spread
to Italy, Spain, and England. This style, in part almost
vulgar, in part an estilo culto of the most quintessenced
kind, was represented chiefly by Lyly. But it is in fact
common to all the Elizabethan pamphleteers Greene,
Nash, Harvey, Dekker, Breton, and the rest. The
vernacular in many of them descends even to vulgarity,
and the cultivated in Lyly frequently ascends to the
incomprehensible. Few things are more curious than
this mixture of homespun and tinsel, of slang and
learning, of street repartees and elaborate coterie
preciousness. On the other hand, the' more sober
writers were not less classical than their forerunners,
though in the endeavour to write something else than
Latin sentences rendered into English, or English
sentences that would translate with little alteration
into Latin, they fell into new difficulties. In all the

92 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline authors, there
occur inelegancies and obscurities which may be traced
directly to the attempt to imitate the forms of a
language possessed of regular inflections and strict
syntax in a language almost destitute of grammar.
'Especially fatal is the attempt to imitate the Latin
relative and demonstrative pronouns, with their strict
agreement of gender, number, and case, to render them
in usage and meaning by the English words of all work
who, which, he, they, and to copy the oratio obliqua in
a tongue where the verbs for the most are indistin-
guishable whether used in obliqua or in recta. These
attempts lie at the root of the faults which are found
even in the succinct style of Hooker and Jonson, which
turn almost to attractions in the quaint paragraph-
heaps of the Anatomy of Melancholy, which mar many
of the finest passages of Milton and Taylor, and which
in Clarendon perhaps reach their climax. The abuse
of conjunctions which is also noticeable in most of
the writers of this period, and which leads them,
apparently out of mere wantonness, to prefer a single
sentence jointed and rejointed, parenthesised and post-
scripted, till it does the duty of a paragraph, to a
succession of orderly sentences each containing the
expression of a simple or moderately complex thought
is not chargeable quite so fairly on imitation of the
classics. But it has something to do with this, or rather
it has much to do with the absence of any model except
the classics. Most of these writers had a great deal to
say, and they were as much in want of models as of
deterrent examples in regard to the manner of saying
it. The feeling seems still to have prevailed that if a
man aimed at literary elegance and precision he should
write in Latin, that English might be a convenient
vehicle of matter, but was scarcely susceptible of form,

ENGLISH PROSE STYLE 93

that the audience was ex hypothesi incult, uncritical,
exoteric, and neither required nor could understand
refinements of phrase.

I have more than once seen this view of the matter
treated with scorn or horror, or both, as if those who
take it thought little of the beauty of seventeenth
century prose before the Restoration. This treatment
does not appear very intelligent. The business of the
critic is to deal with and to explain the facts, and all
the facts. It is the fact, no doubt, that detached
phrases, sentences, even long passages of Milton, of
Taylor, of Browne, equal if they do not excel in beauty
anything that English prose has since produced. It is
the fact that Clarendon is unmatched for moral portrait
painting to this day; that phrase after phrase of Hobbes
has the ring and the solidity and the sharp outline of
a bronze coin; that Bacon is often as glorious without
as within. But it is, at the same time, and not less
often, the fact that Clarendon gets himself into in-
volutions through which no breath will last, and which
cannot be solved by any kind effort of repunctuation;
that Milton's sentences, beginning magnificently, often
end in mere tameness, sometimes in mere discord; that
all the authors of the period abound in what look like
wilful and gratuitous obscurities, cacophonies, breaches
of senseTancf grammar and rhythm. To any one who
considers the matter in any way critically, and not in
the attitude of mind which shouts "Great is Diana of
the Ephesians " by the space of as many hours as may
be, it is perfectly evident that these great men, these
great masters, were not thoroughly masters of their
instrument; that their touch, for all its magic in its
happier moments, was not certain; that they groped,
and sometimes stumbled in their walk. When Browne
begins the famous descant, "Now these dead bones";

94 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

when Hobbes gathers up human vice and labels it
unconcernedly as "either an effect of power or a cause
of pleasure " ; when Milton pours forth any one of the
scores of masterpieces to be found here and there in
his prose work, let us hold our tongues and simply
admire. But it is a merely irrational admiration which
refuses to recognise that Browne's antithesis is oc-
casionally an anti-climax and his turn of words
occasionally puerile; that Milton's sentences constantly
descend from the mulier formosa to thepiscis; and that
Hobbes, after the very phrase above quoted, spoils its
effect as style by a clumsy repetition of nearly but not
quite the same form of words, after a fashion which few
writers possessing a tithe of Hobbes's genius would
have imitated in the eighteenth century. 'It is still more
irrational to deny that most of this great group of
writers occasionally make what are neither more nor
less than "faults of English," or grammatical blunders
which actually vitiate their sense. Let us admire
Alexander by all means, but let us not try to make
out that Alexander's wry neck is worthy of an Apollo
or an Antinous.

Among the chief reasons for this slowness on the
part even of great writers in recognising the more
obvious requirements of English prose style, not the
least perhaps may be found in the fact that English
writers had no opportunity of comparison in modern
tongues. German literature was not, and Spanish and
Italian, which had been cultivated in England with
some zeal, were too alien from English in all linguistic
points to be of much service. The Restoration intro-
duced the study and comparison of a language which,
though still alien from English, was far less removed
from it than the other Romance tongues, and which
had already gone through its own reforming process

ENGLISH PROSE STYLE 9$

with signal success. On the other hand, the period of
original and copious thought ceased in England for a
fcime, and men, having less to say, became more careful
in saying it. The age of English prose which opens with
Dryden and Tillotson (the former being really entitled
to almost the sole credit of opening it, while Tillotson
has enjoyed his reputation as a "stylist," and still more
as an originator of style at a very easy rate) produced,
with the exception of Swift and Dryden himself, no
writer equal in genius to those of the age before it. But
the talent of the writers that it did produce was in-
finitely better furnished with command of its weapons,
and before the period had ceased English prose as an
instrument may be said to have been perfected. Even
in Dryden, though not very often, and in his followers
Temple and Halifax occasionally, there appear ex-
amples of the old slovenlinesses; but in the writers of
the Queen Anne school these entirely disappear. To
the present day, though their vocabulary may have
in places become slightly antiquated, and their phrase,
especially in conversational passages, may include
forms which have gone out of fashion, there is hardly
anything in the structure of their clauses, their sen-
tences, or their paragraphs, which is in any way
obsolete.

The blemishes, indeed, which had to some extent
disfigured earlier English prose, were merely of the
kind that exists because no one has taken the trouble
to clear it away. Given on the one side a certain con-
versational way of talking English, inaccurate or rather
licentious as all conversational ways of speaking are,
and on the other side a habit of writing exact and
formal Latin, what had happened was what naturally
would happen. Dryden, who during the whole of his
life was a constant critical student of language and

96 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

style, may be said, if not to have accomplished the
change single-handed, at any rate to have given
examples of it at all its stages. He in criticism chiefly,
Temple in miscellaneous essay writing, and Halifax in
the political pamphlet, left very little to be done, and
the Queen Anne men found their tools ready for them
when they began to write. It is moreover very observ-
able that this literary change, unlike many if not most
other literary changes, had hardly anything that was
pedantic about it. So far was it from endeavouring to
classicise English style, that most of its alterations
were distinctly directed towards freeing English from
the too great admixture of Latin grammar and style.
The vernacular influence, of which, almost in its purity,
the early part of the period affords sucli an admirable
example in Bunyan, while the later part offers one not
much less admirable in Defoe, is scarcely less per-
ceptible in all the three writers just mentioned, Dryden,
Temple, and Halifax, and in their three great successors,
Swift, Addison, and Steele. Addison classicises the
most of the six, but Addison's style cannot be called
exotic. The ordinary English of the streets and the
houses helped these men to reform the long sentence,
with its relatives and its conjunctions, clumsily
borrowed from Latin, to reject inversions and involu-
tions of phrase that had become bewildering in the
absence of the clue of inflexional sounds, to avoid
attempts at oratio obliqua for which the syntax of the
language is ill-fitted, to be plain, straightforward, un-
adorned. It is true that in rejecting what they thought,
in many instances rightly, to be barbarisms, they to
a great extent lost the secret of a splendour which had
been by no means exclusively or often barbaric. They
were unrivalled in vigour, not easily to be beaten in
sober grace, abundantly capable of wit: but as a rule

ENGLISH PROSE STYLE 97

they lacked magnificence, and prose was with them*
emphatically a sermo pedestris. Except in survivors of
the older school, it is difficult to find in post-Restora-
tion prose an impassioned passage. When the men of
the time wished to be impassioned they thought it
proper to drop into poetry. South's satire on the
"fringes of the North-star" and other Taylorisms ex-
presses their attitude very happily. It is hardly an
accident that Dry den's subjects, capable though the
writer was of giving literary expression to every form
of thought and feeling, never in prose lead him to the
inditing of anything exalted ; that Temple gives a half-
sarcastic turn to the brief but exquisite passage on life
which closes his essay on poetry; that Addison's re-
nowned homilies on death and tombs and a future life
have rather an unrivalled decency, a propriety that is
quintessential, than solemnity in the higher sense of
the term. The lack of ornament in the prose of this
period is perhaps nowhere more clearly shown than
in the style of Locke, which, though not often absolutely
incorrect, is to me, I frankly own, a disgusting style,
bald, dull, plebeian, giving indeed the author's meaning,
but giving it ungraced with any due apparatus or
ministry. The defects, however, were for the most part
negative. The writers of this time, at least the greater
of them, spoilt nothing that they touched, and for the
most part omitted to touch subjects for which their
style was not suited. The order, lucidity, and pro-
portion of Dryden's criticism, the ease and well-bred
loquacity of Temple and the essayists, the mild or
rough polemic of Halifax and Bentley, the incomparable
ironic handling of Swift, the narrative and pictorial
faculty, so sober and yet so vivid, of Bunyan and
Defoe, are never likely to be surpassed in English
literature. The generation which equals the least of

Sill 7

98 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

them may be proud of its feat. This period, moreover,
it must never be forgotten, was not merely a great
period in itself as regarded production, but the school-
master of all periods to follow. It settled what the
form, the technical form, of English prose was to be,
and settled it once for all.

It is not usual to think or speak of the eighteenth
century as reactionary, and yet, in regard to its prose
style, it to some extent deserves this title. The pecu-
liarities of this prose, the most famous names among
whose practitioners are Johnson and Gibbon,, exhibit
a decided reaction against the plainness and vernacular
energy which, as has been said, characterised writers
from Dryden to Swift. Lord Chesterfield's well-known
denunciation of proverbial phrases in* speaking and
writing, and the Latinisms of the extreme Johnsonian
style, may seem to have but little to do with each other,
but they express in different ways the revolt of the
fine gentleman and the revolt of the scholar against
the simplicity and homeliness of the style which had
gone before. The men of 1660-1720 had not been afraid
of Latinisms, but they had not sought them: the
ampulla et sesquipedalia verba of Johnson at his worst
were by no means peculiar to himself, but may be
found alike in the prose and the verse of writers over
whom he exercised little or no influence. The altered
style, however, in the hands of capable men became
somewhat more suitable for the dignified branches of
sustained prose-writing. We shall never have a greater
historian in style as well as in matter than Gibbon;
in style at least we have not beaten Hume, though there
has been more than a century to do it in. Berkeley
belongs mainly to the latest school of seventeenth
century writers, to the Queen Anne men, but partly
also to the eighteenth century proper; and he, again

ENGLISH PROSE STYLE 99

with Hume as a second, is as unlikely to be surpassed
in mastery of philosophical style as Gibbon and Hume
are unlikely to be surpassed in the style of history. Nor
were there wanting tendencies and influences which
counteracted to a great extent the striving for elabora-
tion and dignity. The chief of these was the growth of
the novel. This is not only in itself a kind unfriendly
to a pompous style, but happened to attract to its
practice the great genius of Fielding, which was from
nothing so averse as from everything that had the
semblance or the reality of pretension, pedantry, or
conceit. Among the noteworthy writers of the time,
not a few stand apart from its general tendencies, and
others exhibit only part of those tendencies. The
homely and yet graceful narrative of the author of
Peter Wilkins derives evidently from Defoe; the
gossiping of the letters of Walpole, Gray, and others,
is an attempt partly to imitate French models, partly
to reproduce the actual talk of society; Sterne's de-
liberate eccentricity is an adaptation, as genius of
course adapts, of Rabelais and Burton, while the
curious and inimitable badness of the great Bishop
Butler's form is evidently due, not like Locke's to
carelessness and contempt of good literary manners,
but to some strange idiosyncrasy of defect. On the
whole, however, the century not merely added im-
mortal examples to English prose, but contributed not
a little to the further perfecting of the general in-
strument. A novelist like Fielding, a historian like
Gibbon, a philosopher like Hume, an orator and pub-
licist like Burke, could not write without adding to
the capacities of prose in the hands of others as well
as to its performances in their own. They gave a further
extension to the system of modulating sentences and
clauses with a definite regard to harmony. Although

7-2

ioo MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

there may be too much monotony in his method, it
seems unlikely that Gibbon will ever be surpassed in
the art of arranging the rhythm of a sentence of not
inconsiderable length without ever neglecting co-
ordination, and at the same time, without ever
committing the mistake of exchanging the rhythm
proper to prose for the metre which is proper to poetry.
Much the same may be said of Burke when he is at
his best, while two earlier ornaments of the period,
Bolingbroke and Conyers Middleton, though their prose
is less rhythmical, are scarcely less remarkable for a
deliberate and systematic arrangement of the sentence
within itself and of the sentences in the paragraph. To
enumerate separate particulars in which the eighteenth
and late seventeenth centuries subjected English prose
to laws would be appropriate rather to a manual of
composition than to an essay like the present. For
instance, such details as the reform of punctuation,
and especially the more frequent use of the full stop,
as the avoidance of the homoeoteleuton, and if possible
of the same word, unless used emphatically, in the
same sentence, can be only very summarily referred
to. But undoubtedly the matter of principal import-
ance was the practice, which as a regular practice
began with Dryden and was perfected in Gibbon, of
balancing and proportioning the sentence. Of course
there are numerous or innumerable examples of ex-
quisitely proportioned sentences in Milton and his
contemporaries, but that is not to the point. What is
to the point is such a sentence as the following from
the Areopagitica: "But if his rear and flanks be not
impaled, if his back-door be not secured by the rigid
licenser but that a bold book may now and then issue
forth and give the assault to some of his old collections
in their trenches, it will concern him then to keep

ENGLISH PROSE STYLE 101

waking, to stand in watch, to set good guards and
sentinels about his received opinions, to walk the
round and counter-round with his fellow-inspectors,
fearing lest any of his flock be seduced, who then also
would be better instructed, better exercised and dis-
ciplined" Here the sentence begins excellently, winds
up the height to "trenches," and descends again in
an orderly and regular fashion to "seduced." There in
sense, in sound, by all the laws of verbal architecture,
it should stop : but the author has an afterthought, and
he tacks on the words italicised, thereby ruining the
balance of his phrase, and adding an unnecessary and
disturbing epexegesis to his thought. Had Milton lived
a hundred years later he would no more have com-
mitted this merely careless and inerudite fault than
Gibbon would.

Like all rules of general character, the balancing of
the sentence has of course its difficulties and its
dangers. Carried out on principles too uniform, or by
means too obvious, it becomes monotonous and dis-
gusting. It is a considerable encouragement to sonorous
platitude, and (as satirists have sometimes amused
themselves by showing) it can sometimes be used to
disguise and carry off the simply unmeaning. When
Mrs St Clair in The Inheritance uttered that famous
sentence, "Happy the country whose nobles are thus
gifted with the power of reflecting kindred excellence,
and of perpetuating national virtue on the broad basis
of private friendship," she owed everything to the fact
that she was born after Dr Johnson. Very large
numbers of public speakers in and out of pulpits were,
during the time when prose rhythm by means of
balance was enforced or expected, in a similar case of
indebtedness. But- the amount of foolish speech and
writing in the world has not appreciably lessened since

102 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

every man became a law unto himself in the matter
of composition. And for my part I own, though it
may be immoral, that I prefer a platitude which seems
as if it might have some meaning, and at any rate
sounds well as sound, to a platitude which is nakedly
and cacophonously platitudinous or senseless, still
more to one which bedizens itself with adjectives and
crepitates, as Dr Johnson might have said, with
attempts at epigram. The Latinising of the language
was a greater evil by far, but one of no lasting con-
tinuance. No permanent harm came to English litera-
ture from Johnson's noted second thought about
vitality and putrefaction, or from Armstrong's singular
fancy (it is true this was in verse) for calling a cold bath
a gelid cistern. The fashion rose, lived, died, as fashions
do. But beauty looks only a little less beautiful in the
ugliest fashion, and so the genius and talent of the
eighteenth century showed themselves only to a little
less advantage because of their predilection for an
exotic vocabulary. No harm was done, but much good,
to the theory and practice of verbal architecture, and
if inferior material was sometimes used, Time has long
since dealt with each builder's work in his usual just
and equal fashion.

With the eighteenth century, speaking generally,
with Burke and Gibbon, speaking particularly, what
may be called the consciously or unconsciously forma-
tive period of English prose came to an end. In the
hundred years that have since passed we have had not
a few prose writers of great genius, many of extreme
talent. But they have all either deliberately innovated
upon, or obediently followed, or carefully neglected,
the two great principles which were established between
1660 and 1760, the principle, that is to say, which
limited the meaning of a sentence to a moderately

ENGLISH PROSE STYLE 103

complex thought in point of matter, and that which
admitted the necessity of balance and coherent
^structure in point of form. One attempt at the addition
of a special kind of prose, an attempt frequently made
but foredoomed to failure, I shall have to notice, but
only one.

The great period of poetical production which began
with the French Revolution and lasted till about 1830,
saw also much prose of merit. Coleridge, Southey,
Shelley, are eminent examples in both prose and verse,
while Wordsworth, Byron, Moore, and others, come
but little behind. Scott, the most voluminous of all
except perhaps Southey in prose composition, occupies
a rather peculiar position. The astonishing rapidity of
his production, and his defective education (for good
prose-writing is far more a matter of scholarship than
good verse-writing), may have had a somewhat in-
jurious influence on his style; but this style has on
the whole been rated much too low, and at its best
is admirable English. The splendour, however, of the
poetical production of the later Georgian period in
poetry no doubt eclipsed its production in prose, and
as a general rule that prose was rather even and ex-
cellent in general characteristics than eminent or
peculiar in special quality. The same good sense which
banished the artificial vocabulary of poetry achieved
the banishing of it from prose. But except that it is
always a little less stiff, and sometimes a little more
negligent, the best prose written by men of middle
or advanced age when George the Third was dying
does not differ very greatly from the best prose written
by men of middle or advanced age when he came to
the throne. The range of subjects, the tone of thought,
might be altered, the style was very much the same;
in fact, there can be very little doubt that while the

io 4 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

poets deliberately rebelled against their predecessors,
'the prose writers, who were often the same persons
in another function, deliberately followed, if they did
:not exactly imitate them.

It was not until the end of this period of brilliant
poetry that certain persons more or less deliberately
set themselves to revolutionise English prose, as the
poets for a full generation had been revolutionising
English verse. I say more or less deliberately, for the
revived fashion of "numerous" prose which one man
of genius and one man of the greatest talent, Thomas
de Quincey and John Wilson, proclaimed, which others
seem to have adopted without much of set purpose,
and which, owing especially to th'e great example of
Mr Ruskin, has enlisted so large a following, was in its
origin partial and casual. The introducers of this style
have hardly had due honour or due dishonour, for
what they have done is not small, whatever may be
thought of its character. Indeed, at the present day,
among a very large proportion of general readers, and
among a certain number of critics, "style" appears to
be understood in the sense of ornate and semi-metrical
style. A work which is "not remarkable for style" is
a work which does not pile on the adjectives, which
abstains from rhythm so pronounced and regular that
it ceases to be rhythm merely and becomes metre,
which avoids rather than seeks the drawing of attention
to originality of thought by singularity of expression,
and which worships no gods but proportion, clearness,
closeness of expression to idea, and (within the limits
incident to prose) rhythmical arrangement. To confess
the truth, the public has so little prose of this latter
quality put before it, and is so much accustomed to
find that every writer whose style is a little above the
school exercise, and his thought a little above platitude,

ENGLISH PROSE STYLE 105

aims at the distinction of prose-poet, that it has some
excuse for its blunder. That it is a blunder I shall
endeavour to show a little later. For the present, it is
sufficient to indicate the period of George the Fourth's
reign as the beginning of the flamboyant style in
modern English prose. Besides the two persons just
mentioned, whose writings were widely distributed in
periodicals, three other great masters of prose, though
not inclined to the same form of prose-poetry, did not
a little to break down the tradition of English prose
in which sobriety was the chief thing aimed at. These
were Carlyle, with his Germanisms of phrase and his
sacrifice (not at all German) of order to emphasis in
arrangement; Macaulay, with his sententious clause
and his endless fire of snapping antithesis ; and lastly,
with not much influence on the general reader, but with
much on the special writer, Landor, who, together with
much prose that is nearly perfect, gave the innovators
the countenance of an occasional leaning to the florid,
and of a neo-classicism which was sometimes un-
English.

Side by side with these great innovators there were
no doubt many and very excellent practitioners of the
older and simpler style. Southey survived and Lock-
hart flourished as accomplished examples of it in one
great literary organ; the influence of Jeffrey was
exerted vigorously, if not always wisely, to maintain
it in another. Generally speaking, it was not admitted
before 1850 that the best models for a young man in
prose could be any other than the chief ornaments of
English literature from Swift and Addison to Gibbon
and Burke. The examples of the great writers above
mentioned, however, could not fail to have a gradual
effect ; and, as time passed, more and more books came
to be written in which one of two things was evident.

106 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

The one was that the author had tried to write a prose-
poem as far as style was concerned, the other that he
was absolutely without principles of style. I can still
find no better instance of this literary antinomianism
than I found of old 1 in Grote's History, where there
is simply no style at all. The chief political speeches
and the most popular philosophical works of the day
supply examples of this antinomian eminence in other
departments. Take almost any chief speaker of either
House and compare him with Burke or Canning or
Lord Lyndhurst; take almost any living philosopher
and compare him with Berkeley, with Hume, or even
with Mill, and the difference is obvious at once. As
history, as politics, as philosophy, the later examples
may be excellent. But as literature they are not com-
parable with the earlier.

In the department of luxuriant ornament, the ex-
ample of Mr Ruskin may be said to have rendered
all other examples comparatively superfluous, though
many of our later practitioners, as usual, scorn their
model. From the date of the first appearance of Modern
Painters, the prose-poetry style has more and more
engrossed attention and imitation. It has eaten up
history, permeated novel-writing, affected criticism so
largely that those who resist it in that department are
but a scattered remnant. It is unnecessary to quote
instances, for the fact is very little likely to be gainsaid,
and if it is gainsaid at all, will certainly not be gainsaid
by any person who has frequent and copious examples
of English style coming before him for criticism 2 .

1 See the essay before referred to.

2 It should perhaps be added that in the seven years since the text
was first written the popularity in each case late, in each well de-
served, but in each also too often a matter of mere fashion, as was the
previous neglect of them of Mr Browning in verse and of Mr Meredith
in prose has set fresh models before those whose one idea is to escape,
at any cost, the appearance of commonplace. [1892.]

ENGLISH PROSE STYLE 107

At the same time the period of individualism has
given rise, as a former period of something like in-
dividualism did in the seventeenth century, to some
great and to many remarkable writers. Of these, so
far as they have not been distinguished by an adherence
to the ornate style, and so far as they have not, with
the disciples of literary incuria, let style go to the
winds altogether, Mr Carlyle was during all his later
days the chief, and in not a few cases the model. But
he had seconds in the work, in many of whom literary
genius to a great extent supplied the want of academic
correctness. Thackeray, with some remarkable sloven-
liness (he is probably the last writer of the first
eminence of whom the enemy "and which" has made
a conquest), elaborated, rather it would seem by practice
and natural genius, than in the carrying out of any
theory, a style which for the lighter purposes of litera-
ture has no rival in urbanity, flexibility, and width of
range since Addison, and which has found the widest
acceptance among men of letters. Dickens again,
despite very great faults of bad taste and mannerism,
did not lack the qualities of a great writer. He seldom
had occasion for a sustained effort in prose writing,
and the "tricks and manners" to which he was so
unfortunately given lent themselves but too easily to
imitation. Of the many writers of merit who stand
beside and below these two space here forbids detailed
mention. There are also many earlier authors who,
either because they have been merely exceptional, or
because they have been examples of tendencies which
others have exhibited in a more characteristic manner,
have not been noticed specially in the foregoing sketch.
To take the eighteenth century only, Cobbett ranks with
Bunyan and Defoe as the third of a trio of deliberately
vernacular writers. The exquisite grace and charm of

io8 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

Lamb, springing in part no doubt from an imitation
of the "giant race before the flood/ 5 especially Fuller,
Browne, and Burton, had yet in it so much of idiosyn-
crasy that it has never been and is never likely to be
successfully imitated. Peacock, an accomplished scholar
and a master of irony, has a peculiarity which is rather
one of thought than of style, of view-point towards
the world at large than of expression of the views taken.
The late Lord Beaconsfield, unrivalled at epigram and
detached phrase, very frequently wrote and sometimes
spoke below himself, and in particular corrimitted the
fault of substituting for a kind of English) Voltairian
style, which no one could have brought! to greater
perfection if he had given his mind to /it, corrupt
followings of the sensibility and philosophisim of Diderot
and the mere grandiloquence of Buffon.

Thus then the course of English prose style presents,
in little, the following picture. Beginning for the most
part with translations from Latin or Frerich, with prose
versions of verse writings, and with theological treatises
aiming more at edification, and at the edification of
the vulgar, than at style, it was not till after the in-
vention of printing that it attempted perfection of
form. But in its early strivings it was much hindered,
first by the persistent attempt to make an uninflected
do the duty of an inflected language, and secondly,
by the curious flood of conceits which accompanied,
or helped, or were caused by the Spanish and Italian
influences of the sixteenth and early seventeenth cen-
turies. In the latter period we find men of the greatest
genius producing singularly uneven and blemished
work, owing to the want of an accepted theory and
practice of style ; each man writing as seemed good in
bis own eyes, and selecting not merely his vocabulary
[as to that a great freedom has always, and rightly,

ENGLISH PROSE STYLE 109

prevailed in England), but his arrangement of clauses
and sentences, and even to some extent his syntax.
To this period of individualism an end was put by
Dryden, whose example in codifying and reforming was
followed for nearly a century. During this period the
syntactical part of English grammar was settled very
nearly as it has hitherto remained; the limitation of
the sentence to a single moderately simple proposition,
or at most to two or three propositions closely con-
nected in thought, was effected; the arrangement of
the single clause was prescribed as nearly as possible
in the natural order of vocal speech, inversions being
reserved as an exception and a licence for the pro-
duction of some special effect ; the use of the parenthesis
was (perhaps unduly) discouraged; and a general
principle was established that the cadence as well as
the sense of a sentence should rise gradually toward
the middle, should if necessary continue there on a
level for a brief period, and should then descend in a
gradation corresponding to its ascent. These principles
were observed during the whole of the eighteenth
century, and with little variation during the first
quarter of the nineteenth, a certain range of liberty
being given by the increasing subdivision of the sub-
jects of literature, and especially by the growth of
fiction and of periodical writing on more or less
ephemeral matters. The continuance of this latter
process, the increased study of foreign (especially
German) literature, the disuse of Greek and Latin as
the main instruments of education, and the example
of eminent or popular writers, first in small and then
in great numbers, have in the last two generations in-
duced a return of individualism. This has in most cases
taken the form either of a neglect of regular and
orderly style altogether, or of the preference of a highly

no MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

ornamented diction, and a poetical rather than prosaic
rhythm. The great mass of writers belong to the first
division, the smaller number who take some pains
about the ordering of their sentences almost entirely
to the second. That this laboured and ornate manner
will not last very long is highly probable, that it should
last long would be out of keeping with experience. But
it is not so certain that its disappearance will be
followed by anything like a return to the simplicity
of theory and practice in style which, while it left
eighteenth century and late seventeenth century authors
full room to display individual talents and peculiarities,
still caused between them the same resemblance which
exists in examples of an order of architecture or of a
natural species.

So much has been said about the balancing of the
sentence, and the rhythm appropriate to prose and
distinct from metre, that the reader may fairly claim
to be informed somewhat more minutely of the writer's
views on the subject. They will have to be put to a
certain extent scholastically, but the thing is really a
scholastic question, and the impatience with "iambs
and pentameters," which Mr Lowell (a spokesman far
too good for such a breed) condescended to express
a good many years ago on behalf of the vulgar, is in
reality the secret of much of the degradation of recent
prose. In dealing with this subject I shall have to
affront an old prejudice which has apparently become
young again the prejudice which deems terms of
quantity inapplicable to the English and other modern
languages. The truth is, that the metrical symbols and
system of scansion which the genius of the Greeks in-
vented, are applicable to all European languages,
though (and this is where the thoroughgoing defenders
of accent against quantity make their blunder) the

ENGLISH PROSE STYLE in

quantity of particular syllables is much more variable.
In other words, there are far more common syllables
in English and other modern languages than in Latin,
or even in the language of those

Quibus est nihil negatum
Et queis " are's ares" licet sonare.

A Greek would have laughed heartily enough at the
notion that the alternative quantity of Ares made it
impossible to scan Homer regularly. And an English-
man may borrow the laugh : despite the large number
of syllables (not by any means all) in his language
which are capable of being made long or short according
to the pleasure of the writer and the exigencies of the
verse. All good English verse, from the rudest ballad
of past centuries to the most elaborate harmonies of
tylr Swinburne and Lord Tennyson, is capable of being
Exhibited in metrical form as strict in its final, if not
in its initial laws, as that which governs the prosody
of Horace or of Euripides. Most bad English verse is
capable of having its badness shown by the application
of the same tests. In using therefore longs and shorts,
and the divisions of classical metre from Pyrrhic to
dochmiac, in order to exhibit the characteristics of
English prose rhythm and the differences which it
exhibits from the metre which is verse rhythm, I am
using disputed means deliberately and with the fullest
intention and readiness to defend them if required 1 .

I take it that the characteristic of metre that is
to say, poetic rhythm is not only the recurrence of
the same feet in the same line, but also the recurrence
of corresponding and similar arrangements of feet in

1 It has been pointed out to me, since the following remarks were
written, that I might have sheltered myself under a right reverend
precedent in the shape of some criticism of Kurd's on the rhythmical
peculiarities of Addison. I do so now all the more willingly, that no
one who compares the two passages will suspect me of merely following
the bishop. (1892.)

ii2 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

different lines. The Greek chorus, and in a less degree
the English pindaric, exhibit the first characteristic
scantly, but they make up, in the first case by a rigid,
and in the second by what ought to be a rigid, adherence
to the second. In all other known forms of literary
European verse Greek, Latin, English, French, Italian,
Spanish, German both requirements are complied
with in different measure or degree, from the cast-iron
regularity of the Latin alcaic to the wide licence of a
Greek comic senarius or an English anapaestic tetra-
meter. In blank verse or in couplets every verse is
(certain equivalent values being once recognised)
exactly equal to every other verse. In stanzas from
the quatrain to the Spenserian the parallelism, if more
intricate, is equally exact.

Now the requirement of a perfect prose rhythm is

that, while it admits of indication by quantity-marks,

land even by divisions into feet, the simplicity and

< equivalence of feet within the clause answering to the

jline are absent, and the exact correspondence of clause

| for clause, that is to say, of line for line, is absent

lalso, and still more necessarily absent. Let us take an

jexample. I know no more perfect example of English

prose rhythm than the famous verses of the last chapter

of the Canticles in the Authorised Version; I am not

certain that I know any so perfect. Here they are,

arranged for the purpose of exhibition in clause-lines,

quantified and divided into feet.

Sgt mS | &s a seal | up6n thine heart | as a seal | iip6n thine arm |
For love | is strong | as death | jealdus^ I is cruel | as the* grave |
ThS coals thereof fare coals | of firS | which hath | & m6st ve- j

hSmSnt flame |
MSuryf waters I cann6t qugnch love I neither | can the" floods I drown

It |
If a man | would give I all thS sub- | stance | 6f his house I fdr

ISve | it w6uld iit- | tSrty be" cdntgmned. I 1

1 For some remarks on this scansion those who care to take the
trouble may consult English Prose Rhythm, p. 21. (1923.)

ENGLISH PROSE STYLE 113

I by no means give the quantification of this, or the
distribution into lines and feet as final or impeccable,
though I think it is, on the whole as a good elocutionist
would read the passage accurate enough. But the
disposition will, I think, be sufficient to convince any
one who has an ear and a slight acquaintance with
res metrica, that here is a system of rhythm irreducible
to poetic form. The movement of the whole is per-
fectly harmonious, exquisitely modulated, finally com-
plete. But it is the harmony of finely modulated speech,
not of song; harmony, in short, but not melody,
divisible into clauses, but not into bars or staves,
having parts which continue each other, but do not
correspond to each other. A similar example may be
found in the almost equally beautiful Charity passage
of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, and if the reader
likes to see how the sense of rhythm flourishes in these
days, he may compare that with the version which has
been substituted for it by the persons called Revisers.
But let us take an example of different kind and of less
elaborate but still beautiful form, the already cited
close of Sir William Temple's Essay on Poetry:

"When all is done, human life is at the greatest and
the best but like a froward child, that must be played
with and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls
asleep, and then the care is over."

Here the division is that which has been noted as
the usual one in eighteenth century prose, an arsis (to
alter the use of the word a little) as far as "child," a
level space of progress till "asleep," and then a thesis,
here unusually brief, but quite sufficient for the pur-
pose. But here also the movement is quite different
from that of poetry. Part of the centre clause, "but
like a froward child that must be played with," may
indeed be twisted into something like a heroic, but

n 4 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

there is nothing corresponding to it earlier or later,
and the twisting itself is violent and unnatural. For
the clause or prose line does not begin at "but" and
does not end at "with."

Here is yet another and longer passage, this time
from Mr Ruskin, who, though he has by no means
always observed the distinction we are discussing, and
has taught many maladroit imitators to neglect it, is,
when he is at his best, thoroughly sound. The sentence
chosen shall be a long one, such as the writer loves :

"He did not teach them how to build for glory and
for beauty, He did not give them the fearless, faithful,
inherited energies that worked on and down from death
to death, generation after generation, that we might
give the work of their poured-out spirirto the axe and
to the hammer: He has not cloven the earth with
rivers that their wild white waves might turn wheels
and push paddles, nor turned it up under, as it were
fire, that it might heat wells and cure diseases: He
brings not up His quails by the east wind only to let
them fall in flesh about the camp of men: He has not
heaped the rocks of the mountain only for the quarry,
nor clothed the grass of the field only for the oven."

At first sight it may seem as if this admirable passage
(the brilliant effect of which is not in the least due to
spilth of adjectives, or to selection of exotic words, or
to eccentricity of word-order, for the vocabulary is
very simple and plain, and the order is quite natural)
incurs some of the blame due to the merely con-
glomerate sentence, in which the substitution of full
stops for colons or commas is sufficient to break up
the whole into independent wholes. But it does not,
and it is saved from this condemnation not merely by
the close connection of its matter, but by the arrange-
ment of its form. The separate members have a

ENGLISH PROSE STYLE 115

varying but compensating harmony, and the ascent
and descent of the sentence never finally ends till the
last word, which has been led up to by a most cunning
and in no invidious sense prosaic concatenation of
rhythm. Mr Ruskin, it is true, is not always impeccable.
In a fine passage of The Harbours of England (too long
for quotation, but which may be conveniently found
at p. 378 of the Selections from his works) I find the
following complete heroics imbedded in the prose:

"Hot in the morning sun, rusty and seamed."
"The grass of spring, the soft white cloud of foam."
"Fading or flying high into the breeze."
" Brave lives dashed

Away about the rattling beach like weeds."
" Still at the helm of every lonely boat,

Through starless night and hopeless dawn, His hand."

Now this is wrong, though of course it is impossible
always to avoid a complete heroic cadence. So is it,
also, with a very elaborate, and in its somewhat
illegitimate way, very beautiful passage of Charles
Kingsley the dream of Amyas at the Devil's Lime-
kiln, in Westward Ho! This sins not by conscious or
unconscious insertions of blank verse, but by the too
definitely regular and lyrical sweep of the rhythm in
the words, " I saw the grand old galleon," etc. This is
the great difficulty of very ornate prose, that it is
constantly tending to overstep the line between the
two rhythms. When this fault is avoided, and the
prose abides strictly by its own laws, and draws its
ornament, not from aniline dyes of vocabulary, but
from harmony of arrangement, nothing can be more
beautiful and more satisfactory. But in fact such prose
does not differ at all in kind from satisfactory specimens
of the simpler style, and it was De Quincey's great
critical fault that he not only overlooked but denied
this identity in his scornful criticisms of the style of

8-2

n6 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

Swift and other severe writers. The same principles
are applied with more or less elaboration as the case
may be, the criterion of appropriateness in each case
being the nature of the subject and the circumstances
of the utterance.

It is because the rule of prose writing is in this way
so entirely a no\vj3ivos Kav<*>v, because between the
limits of cacophony on the one hand and definitely
metrical effect on the other, the practitioner must
always choose and can never merely follow, that prose
writing is so difficult, that the examples of great
eminence in it are so rare, and that even these examples
are for the most part so unequal. It is easy to produce
long passages of English poetry which are absolutely
flawless, which, each according to its own plan and
requirements, could not be better. It is by no means
easy to produce long passages of English prose, or of
any prose, of which as much can be said. The artist
lacks the help of obvious and striking error which he
possesses in poetry. In poetry, as in the typewriter
on which I write these words, a bell rings loudly to
warn of certain simple dangers. The muse of prose is
silent, however awkwardly her suitors make love to
her. In the simpler style there is of course less danger
of flaws Swift is often quite impeccable but as the
style rises the danger increases. I do not think that
even in Landor or in Mr Ruskin, the most accomplished,
as the most opposed, English writers of the elaborate
style during the century, it is possible to find an un-
broken passage of very considerable length which is
absolutely faultless.

This art of rhythmical arrangement, applicable in
sentences so simple as that quoted from Temple, as
much as in sentences so complex as that quoted from
Mr Ruskin, applicable indeed in sentences much

ENGLISH PROSE STYLE 117

simpler than the one and even more complicated than
the other, is undoubtedly the principal thing in prose.
Applied in its simplest forms, it is constantly missed
by the vulgar, but is perhaps productive of not least
pleasure to the critic. Of its subsidiary arts and
arrangements of art, space would fail me to speak at
length, but the two most important articles, so im-
portant, indeed, that with the architectural process
they may be said to form the three great secrets of
prose success, are simplicity of language, and directness
of expression in the shorter clause and phrase. It is
against these two that the pseudo-stylists of our day
sin most constantly. A gaudy vocabulary is thought
a mark of style : a non-natural, twisted, allusive phrase
is thought a mark of it. Now no reasonable person,
certainly no competent critic, will advocate a grisdtre
style ; all that such a critic will contend for is a remem-
brance of the rule of the Good Clerk,

Red ink for ornament and black for use.

There are occasions for red ink in prose writing, no
doubt; but they are not every man's occasions, nor
are they, for the men whose occasions they are, on
every day or on every subject. Not only the test
passages taken above, but almost any well-selected
Prose Anthology will show what extreme error, what
bad art, what blind lack of observation, is implied in
the peppering and salting of sentence after sentence
with strange words or with familiar words used
strangely. It is not wanted to produce the effect aimed
at; it may safely be added that it produces the effect
aimed at only in the case of persons who are not
competent to judge whether the mark has been hit.
Obscurity of phrase, on the other hand, is only a more
venial crime than gaudiness of language because it
takes a little more trouble on the part of the sinner.

n8 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

It is at least as bad in itself. It may safely be laid
down that in almost any case where the phrase is not
comprehended as soon as read by a person of decent
intelligence and education in almost any case where,
without quite exceptional need for emphasis or for
attracting his attention, a non-natural, involved,
laboured diction is used in almost any case where,
as Addison has it of Durfey, "words are brought
together that, without his good offices, would never
have been acquainted with one another, so long as it
had been a tongue" there is bad style. Exceptions
there are, no doubt, as in the other case ; the fault, as
always, is in making the exception the rule.

To conclude, the remarks which have been made in
this essay are no doubt in many cases* disputable,
probably in some cases mistaken. They are given not
as dogma, but as doxa ; not as laws to guide practitioners
whose practice is very likely better than the lawgiver's,
but as the result of a good many years' reading of the
English literature of all ages with a constantly critical
intent. And of that critical intent one thing can be
said with confidence, that the presence and the observa-
tion of it, so far from injuring the delight of reading,
add to that delight in an extraordinary degree. It
infuses toleration in the study of the worst writers
for there is at any rate the result of a discovery or an
illustration of some secret of badness ; it heightens the
pleasure in the perusal of the best by transforming a
confused into a rational appreciation. I do not think
that keeping an eye on style ever interfered with
attention to matter in any competent writer; I am
quite sure that it never interfered with that attention
in any competent reader. Less obvious, more contest-
able in detail, far more difficult of continuous observance
than the technical excellences of verse, the technical

ENGLISH PROSE STYLE 119

excellences of prose demand, if a less rare, a not less
alert and vigorous exercise of mental power to produce
or to appreciate them. Nor will any time spent in
acquiring pleasant and profitable learning be spent to
much better advantage than the time necessary to
master the principles and taste the expression of what
has been called, by a master of both, "the other
harmony of prose." 1

1 The remarks on prose rhythm in the latter part of this essay have
been occasionally corrected, but for the most part only amplified and
systematised in the History of the subject above referred to (1923).

IV

THE PRESENT STATE OF THE
ENGLISH NOVEL [1892]

IN discussing the state of the English novel at a time
which seems likely to be a rather exceptionally in-
teresting one in the history of a great department of
literature in England, it will probably be as well to
make the treatment as little of a personal one as
possible. Reviews of the personnel are in some cases
allowable, and are at times not uninteresting: but they
are rarely desirable, except when something like
ignorance of it is presumable in the reader. When the
survey is presented in a form which aims at a certain
permanence they are better omitted, and so far as I
have availed myself of anything formerly written on
the present subject, or subjects akin to it, I have weeded
out almost entirely anything like personal and in-
dividual reference. An exception or two to this may
be found, but they shall be exceptions which certainly
do not infringe the rule. In regard, I think, to most
living practitioners of the craft, it will be more than
possible it will be a very great advantage altogether
to avoid either naming examples or expressing like
and dislike for them.

^For the question happens not to be one of liking
at all, still less one of ranking novelists, old and new,
in order of merit. It is one of setting in order, as well
as may be, the chief characteristics of the English
novels of the day, and of indicating, with as little rash-
ness as possible, which of them are on the mounting

1 From this point to p. 128 the substance of this essay appeared, with
some variation, in the Fortnightly Review for 1888.

THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1892 121

hand and which are on the sinking. And for my part,
and in the first place, I do not see any reason to think
the reappearance of the romance of adventure at all
likely to be a mere passing phenomenon. For the other
kind has gone hopelessly sterile in all countries, and is
very unlikely to be good for anything unless it is raised
anew from seed, and allowed a pretty long course of
time. In more than one sense its state was and is (for
it still flourishes after a sort) less perilous with us than
elsewhere. The habits and public opinion of the nation
have kept us from that curious scholasticism of dull
uncleanness on which too many French novelists spend
their time. There is still too much healthy beefiness
and beeriness (much of both as it has lost) in the English
temperament to permit it to indulge in the sterile
pessimism which seems to dominate Russian fiction.
When we come to the comparison with America, we
are getting on very delicate ground. Perhaps the best
way of putting the difference is to recall a pleasant
observation of Thackeray's, in his remarks on Maginn's
Maxims ofO'Doherty. O'Doherty laid it down (though
for himself he thought it "nonsense") as a maxim of
fashionable life, that you were to drink champagne
after white cheeses, water after red; and Thackeray
rejoined very truly that fashionable society did not
trouble itself whether you did both, or neither, or
either. Now America, a little young at "culture," is
taking her literary etiquette books very seriously and
trying to obey their minutest directions; while English-
men, whose literary breeding is of an older stamp and
tolerably well established, do not trouble themselves
about it at all. For my part, I have said before that
I think some of my friends are very hard on Mr Howells
when he makes those comic little critical excursions of
his, of which, my prayers having been heard, he has since

122 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

made a most valuable and instructive collection. Your
virtuous beginner always plays the game with sur-
passing strictness, and is shocked at the lax conduct
of oldsters.

In England we have escaped the worst of all these
things even yet : though we have been drawing nearer
and nearer to them. Half a score at least of writers
possessing gifts which range from very considerable
talent to decided genius, and perhaps not less than half
a thousand possessing gifts ranging from very consider-
able talent to none at all, have elaborated, partly by
their own efforts and partly by following the great
models of the last generation, a kind of mixed mode of
half-incident, half-character novel, which at its best is
sometimes admirable, and at its average" is often quite
tolerable pastime. We are still curiously behindhand
in the short story, the nouvelle properly so called, which
is not a mdrchen, or a burlesque, or a tale of terror
(these three we can sometimes do very well). If there
is any falling off, the determined optimist may re-
member the mercies which tempered the domination of
the Campaigner to poor Mr Binney. If we have cut
off the cigars we have considerably improved the
claret ; or in other words, if we have lost some graces,
some charms of the finest and rarest kind, we have
greatly bettered the average (I must be pardoned
italics here) the average structure and arrangement
of the average novel. How weak a point this has
always been with our great novelists, at any rate since
the beginning of the century, everybody who has
studied literary history knows. Scott never seems to
have had the slightest idea of what was going to happen,
or how it was going to happen, though as a matter
of fact it generally did happen delightfully if irregularly
enough. Dickens is supposed to have been very careful

THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1892 123

about his schemes, though if any man can explain
to me what the plot of Little Dorrit is ; why Mr Tulking-
horn chose in that entirely irrational and unprofitable
manner to persecute Lady Dedlock ; why anything, no
matter what, happens as it actually does happen in
Hard Times \ and what the sense or meaning of Estella's
general conduct is in Great Expectations, he will do more
than I have ever been able to do for myself, or than
any one else has yet been able to do for me. Thackeray's
sins (if in novel-writing it be not blasphemy to say that
Thackeray sinned at all) are gross, palpable, and, for
the matter of that, confessed by the sinner. In par-
ticular, if any one will try to arrange the chronology
of the various Pendennis books, and if his hair does
not turn white in the process, he may be guaranteed
against any necessity for a peruke arising from simi-
larly hopeless intellectual labour. Of course these
things are usually very small faults. But they are
faults, and I think that, on the whole, the tendency
in average novel-writing during the last twenty years
has been to correct them. Again, the average writing
of the said novel is decidedly better, and, generally
speaking, a distinct advance has been made in the
minor details of craftsmanship. There are one or two
popular writers, and many not yet popular, who still
sin flagrantly in the old direction of taking fair pains
over the first and the third volumes and flinging to
the public the slovenliest botch of a second that it is
likely to tolerate. But this want of literary conscience
and literary self-respect is much rarer than it used to
be, and appears to be regarded, by younger hands
especially, with proper disgust.

Nevertheless I do not think, much as I respect many
of its individual practitioners, that the English novel
of the day in its average form is a work of art which

i2 4 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

ranks very high. In the first place, though it has for
many years almost wholly devoted itself to character,
how many characters has it produced that will live,
that will accompany in the memories of posterity the
characters of the masters of the past? Very few, I
think. We read its books often with pleasure, and some-
times with admiration, at the moment, but they add
little to the abiding furniture of our minds and
memories. And here let me guard against an objection
which is obvious enough, that a man furnishes his
mind pretty early, and by the time he comes to forty
has no room left. I do not find it so. I have within the
last few years, within the last few months, read books
for the first time whose characters I am quite certain
I shall not forget till I forget everything. Nor am I
short of memory, for, as far as mere facts go, I could
give plenty of details of many novels published in the
last twenty years and more. But very few indeed of
their characters and their incidents and stories have
taken rank with Partridge at the theatre, with Habak-
kuk Mucklewrath's dying denunciation of Claverhouse,
with Elizabeth Bennet's rejection of Darcy, with
Esmond breaking his weapon before Beatrix's princely
lover, with Lavengro teaching Armenian to Isopel
Berners, with Amyas flinging his sword into the sea.
I must confess also that I hold a creed which may seem
to some people, perhaps to most, irrational and even
childish. I do not think that there is exactly the same
amount of genius and of talent always present on the
earth, but I do think that in the blossoming times of
the intellect the genius and the talent are pretty
constant in their total amount. If you get the sum
spread widely about you get the kind of work which is
now abundant, and nowhere so abundant as in the
novel. Of the immense numbers of novels which are

THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1892 125

now written, a very large proportion cannot be called
in any true sense bad, and of the still considerable
number which are written by our best men there are
few which may not be called in a very real sense good.
The great models which they have before them, the
large rewards of successful writing, and (for why should
not a man magnify his own office?) the constant ex-
posure and reprobation of the grosser faults of novel-
writing on the part of critics 1 , have brought about a
much higher general level of excellence, a better turn-
out of average work, than was ever known before. But,
either from the very fact of this imitating and school-
mastering, or from sheer haste, or what not, we do not
seem to get the very best things.

Undoubtedly, therefore, the return to the earliest
form of writing, to the pure romance of adventure,
is a very interesting thing indeed. We do not want
here a detailed criticism of the books which have
shown it. The point is, that in all the writers have
deliberately reverted to the simpler instead of the more
complicated kind of novel, trusting more to incident,
less to the details of manners and character. I hold
that they have done rightly and wisely. For the
fictitious (as distinguished from the poetic) portraiture
of manners and the fictitious dissection of character
deal for the most part with minute and superficial
points, and when those points have been attacked over
and over again, or when the manners and characters
of a time have become very much levelled and manner-

1 At the same time I must admit that I could not undertake to teach
the complete art of novel- writing in so many lessons. I was obliged
once to confess as much, to a very amiable person who, in consequence
of a critique of mine, sent me a cheque with an agreeable apology for
its not being larger, and a request for more of that excellent advice.
It was not possible to keep his cheque; but I have always thought that
he must have been a very nice man. As a general rule authors do not
send such documents to their critics; you may go a long way "without
a cheque" on that road.

126 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

ised, an inevitable monotony and want of freshness in
the treatment comes about. This seems to have been
the case more or less in all European languages for a
long time past. Except in the most insignificant details,
manners have altered very little for the last half-
century a stability which has not been a little in-
creased by the very popularity of novels themselves.
A boy or girl now learns manners less from life than
from books, and reproduces those manners in his or
her own fresh generation. The novel has thus u bred
in and in," until the inevitable result of feebleness of
strain has been reached. But the incidents, and the
broad and poetic features of character on which the
romance relies, are not matters which change at all.
They are always the same, with a sameness of nature,
not of convention. The zest with which we read novels
of character and manners is derived, at least in the
main, from the unlikeness of the characters and manners
depicted. The relish with which we read the great
romances in prose, drama, and verse is derived from
the likeness of the passions and actions, which are
always at bottom the same. There is no danger of
repetition here ; on the contrary, the more faithful the
repetition the surer the success, because the artist is
only drawing deeper on a perennial source. In the
other case he is working over and over again in shallow
ground, which yields a thinner and weedier return at
every cropping.

But it will be said, Are we to have nothing new?
Are we simply to hunt old trails ? Whereto I reply with
a distinguo. A time may possibly come, may be near
at hand, when some considerable change of political
or social life may bring about so new a state of manners,
and raise into prominence as an ordinary phase so
different a side of human character, that the analytic

THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1892 127

novelist may once more find ready to his hand new
material. This in its turn will grow stale, just as the
ordinary middle-class person, fairly educated and
acquainted with the novelists from Scott downwards,
is now getting stale in all European countries, even in
those which, like Russia and America, seem as if they
ought to have plenty of virgin soil to cultivate. And
then that generation, whether it is the next or the
next after, will have to return as we are doing to the
romance for something fresh. For the romance is of
its nature eternal and preliminary to the novel. The
novel is of its nature transitory and is parasitic on the
romance. If some of the examples of novels them-
selves partake of eternity, it is only because the
practitioners have been cunning enough to borrow
much from the romance. Miss Austen is the only
English novelist I know who attains the first rank with
something like a defiance of interest of story, and we
shall see another Homer before we see another Jane.
As for what we often hear about the novel of science,
the novel of new forms of religion, the novel of altruism,
and Heaven knows what else, it is all stark naught.
The novel has nothing to do with any beliefs, with any
convictions, with any thoughts in the strict sense,
except as mere garnishings. Its substance must always
be life not thought, conduct not belief, the passions
not the intellect, manners and morals not creeds and
theories. Its material, its bottom, must always be
either the abiding qualities or the fleeting appearances
of social existence, quicquid agunt homines not quicquid
cogitant. In the first and most important division there
has been no change within recorded history, and if
esoteric Buddhism were to become the Church of
England established by law, and a Great British
Republic were to take the place of the monarchy, there

128 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

would be no change in these. There would probably
be none if the whole human race were evicted from this
earth and re-established in Mars. In the other class
of materials there is a change, and the very fact of
this change necessitates a certain intermission of dead
seasons to let the new form germinate and ripen. There
is perhaps no reason why a really great romance
should not be written at any time. But it is almost
impossible that a continuous supply of great character-
novels or novels of manners should be kept up, and
no one will deny that the novel of character and
manners has been the favourite until quite recently.
And so in a manner consummatum est. The average man
and woman in England of the middle and late nine-
teenth century, has been drawn and quartered, analysed
and "introspected," till there is nothing new to be
done with him or her either as an ecorche, or with the
skin on, or with clothes on the skin. Merely as a man
or woman, he or she can still be dealt with profitably,
but then you have a romance and not a novel. Un-
fortunately, many of our best proved writers continue
to write the novel and not the romance, or to treat
the romance as if it were the novel. Thus we do not,
and for this and the other reasons given and to be
given, we cannot, get the best things.] 1

We get indeed many things that are good: good in
ways which not so many years ago were unexpected
if not undesired. The present year is the twentieth
from that in which I first began to review novels, and
during the earlier part of the intervening period it was
possible, without being unduly given to pessimism, to
take a very gloomy view of the future of English fiction,
not merely on the considerations just advanced but
for other reasons. The novelists of the elder generation

1 Here ends the previously published part of this essay.

THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1892 129

were dropping off one by one, and were not in their
later years giving anything that could on just critical
estimate rank with even their own best work. No
actual "youngsters" of decided genius or even very
remarkable talent had appeared in the early seventies.
Between the old and the new there were practitioners
of various, sometimes of great, ability, but hardly any
who fulfilled the two conditions of absolutely great
literature. The first of these is that something phrase,
personality, situation, what not shall survive the
reading of the book, the second that it shall be im-
possible to read it once only that it shall of necessity
and imperatively take its place on the shelves of that
smaller library of predilection which the greater library
even of the most limited book-collector contains. One
exception there has been indeed to this throughout the
whole period, and he to whom I refer remains an ex-
ception still. I remember when as a boy I read The
Ordeal of Richard Feverel, thinking more or less dimly
that here was a man from whom at any time an Esmond
or an Antiquary, a Manon Lescaut (though I do not
think I had read Manon then) or a Trois Mousquetaires
might be expected. Thirty years later I read One of Our
Conquerors with feelings almost exactly the same. I do
not know whether Mr Meredith will write that book yet 1 .
Defoe was on the eve of sixty when he wrote Robinson
Crusoe, and Dryden was on the eve of seventy when
he wrote the Fables.

During the last ten or fifteen years, but especially
during the last five or ten, things have been different.
There has been a great stir among the dry bones. Some
new comers, of power which would have been remark-
able at any time, have arisen : not a few oldsters have
aroused themselves to take their craft very seriously,

1 But he did not (1923).
sin 9

130 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

and perhaps to magnify their office even a little over-
much: journeyings have been made by well- willing
neophytes and others to the ends of the earth for
models and motives : an immense enthusiasm has been
shown for that one representative of the giant race
before the flood who has just been referred to. There
have been schools, methods, a propaganda, and indeed
more than one

Principle ! principle ! principle ! that's what I hears 'em say,

if the Laureate will pardon me. Our novelists have
been, whether by self-examination or by stress of
critics, convinced of sin in the matter of not taking
enough trouble with the style of their books, with the
plot, with the general stage management and stage
carpentry. One has said to himself, "Go to, let us
treat life with candour"; another, "Shall I live and die
in respect of the young person?" a third, "Is there not
something to be made of the undogmatically Christian
romance?" a fourth, "Let us cease to be insular"; a
fifth, "A bas Tincident!" a sixth (this is a rather
favourite cry just now), "Let us raise language to a
higher power and never say anything simply." Even
that other symptom of the uprising of novelists against
critics, and their demand that every newspaper shall
give at least a column to the sober and serious lauda-
tion (for nothing else is to be thought of) of every
serious work of fiction that issues from the press, is,
though rather a grotesque, a cheering and healthy sign.
The novelist, like the actor and the poet, is taking his
sacerdoce sacerdotally, and is indignant at being treated
lightly by the profane. This is, I say, a healthy sign:
and should be reverently treated by those who have
only too much difficulty in taking themselves or any-
thing else with due seriousness.

But when we come to look a little narrowly into the

THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1892 131

results of this activity it may be that they will not
strike us as altogether in correspondence. I saw not
long ago a half-shamefaced apology for the singular
succession of roars which has of late years hailed the
advent of divers new novelists and novels. This vocifera-
tion, it was urged, was at any rate better than a nasty
cold system of ignoring or sneering at the lambs of the
flock. I am not quite so sure of that. As a critic I
begin to feel myself like Mr Browning's legate, and
am constantly murmuring, "I have known four-and-
twenty new stars in the firmament of the English
novel/' This state of things, looked at from a personal
point of view, is no doubt pleasant for the four-and-
twentieth, and until the five-and-twentieth appears.
But I doubt whether the three-and-twenty like it, and
what is of much more importance, I doubt whether
it is a good state of things either for the stars or the
star-gazers, the latter especially. It must sometimes
have seemed to cool-headed onlookers during the last
few years that the British public, critics and all, had
simply lost all faculty of distinguishing good from bad.
Among the new reputations of the last decade we all
know some cases not merely of undoubted and quite
remarkable talent of talent that must have made its
way at any time, though it might have made it more
healthily under a less forcing system but of something
that may be called genius by those who are least
prodigal of the word. And we all all of us who are
in the least critical know some cases either of utter
worthlessness or of worth so excessively small that
one wonders how on earth it has come to be recognised.
This can hardly be a healthy state of things states
of "boom" seldom or never are signs of real health in
the business in which they from time to time occur.
Indeed, if nothing else were considered save the en-

9-2

132 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

couragement to over-production, the case would be
perilous enough. It is sometimes the fashion to throw
Scott in the face of those who demur to it, and who are
very often admirers of Scott. But it seems to be for-
gotten that when Scott began novel-writing seriously
he was a man far advanced in life, with an immense
accumulated experience of reading, of society, of
business, even of the practice of literature in other
kinds. This is not usually the case with those new
novelists of whom we have recently had about one a
year, and of whom we may, it seems, shortly expect
one a month. Once more let it be said that some at
least of these new novelists would have made their
way at any time and against any odds. But the others
would not.

However, let us count the positive gains of this
recent bustle. These are at least three variety of
method and subject, increased carefulness of treat-
ment, and increased carefulness of style. Perhaps all
three are chequered advantages, but they are advan-
tages. Some fifteen years ago the novel, the un-
conquerable unconventionality of Mr Meredith once
more excepted, had certainly got rather into a rut. The
difference between George Eliot and Miss Yonge,
between Mr Trollope and Mr Black to take examples
as widely different in appearance as possible, but all
of the upper class of novelists might at first seem
huge, but when it was subjected to true critical analysis
it became very much smaller. Hardly anything I
do not say nothing was cultivated but the novel as
opposed to the romance; and the novel was for the
most part further narrowed to ordinary upper middle-
class English life. Now we have at least altered all that.
The differences may still be a little more apparent than
real, but the reality has advanced in proportion far

THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1892 133

more than the appearance. We have revived the
romance, if not on the greatest scale, on a scale which,
with almost the solitary exceptions in the first class
of Lorna Doone and Westward Ho ! a whole generation
had not seen. We have wound ourselves up to some-
thing like the pitch of the Romantics of sixty or seventy
years ago in our demand for local colour, and that not
merely external, as theirs too often was, but the local
colour which derives from local peculiarities of thought
and feeling, of manners and life. We have to a great
extent shaken off the " diffusion-of-knowledge " Philis-
tinism and the " sword-and-pen " cant of the middle of
the century. If we are not more gay in one sense (for
'tis a generation which jocks wi' extreme deeficulty),
we are much more what I believe the very newest
school of critics calls bunt. In short, we are "boxing
it about" merrily, with the old Jacobite confidence
that "it will come to our father." Let us hope it will.
At the same time there is no doubt that the English
novelist of the present day, incited partly by his study
of foreign models and partly by the exhortations of
the wicked critics, whose crimes he is never tired of
denouncing (especially when, as frequently happens,
he is holding the pen of the critic himself), has bestirred
himself mightily in the matter of construction. Some-
thing has been said already on this point, and there is
no doubt that, from having been the most scholarly
of all novelists in the last century, Englishmen had
become the most haphazard and lawless in this. We
have altered that too to some extent nay, to a great
one. From the teller of short tales who bestirs himself
to take away the well-known reproach from England,
to the constructor of three-deckers who labours to
avoid the razeeing of that time-honoured form, by
constructing it more conscientiously and scientifically,

134 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

all our " fictionists " (as, I regret to observe, they allow
some of their admirers to call them without instantly
taking the offenders' lives) are as busy as bees. And
they are as busy once more in the direction of style,
where also their predecessors, good easy men, used to
be a little, nay, more than a little, remiss. Here
Mr Meredith's epigrams and his quaint remotely
worded pictures in phrase are religiously copied as far
as the copier can. There the dissection and mounting
on microscopic slides of action and thought which have
become fashionable in America occupy the reformers.
A third set shall be found vying with one another in
the endeavour to select and stick together the most
gorgeous adjectives, to use words in the most un-
familiar, not to say impossible senses. In short, there
is, as Mr Carlyle observed in one of the best because
one of the quietest of his sardonic passages, a cheerful
appearance of work going forward. And to do the
workers justice, their intention is not, as in that case,
destruction at all, but on the contrary construction.

How far has that intention been attained, and what
are the drawbacks attending these efforts ? This is the
less cheerful, but perhaps also the more important,
side of the subject. It would be uncritical to attack it
by asking whether any, and if so what, remarkable
books have been produced. Remarkable books may
be and are produced at any time when there happen
to be remarkable book-producers. The last decade in
England has seen at least three, perhaps more, new
writers of fiction who would have been remarkable at
any time. But the things to put the finger on if possible
are not these prize specimens, but the general results
of the efforts just described. And perhaps here we shall
have occasion to remember once more that exceedingly
uncomfortable proverb " Seldom comes a better."

THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1892 135

For the advantages above chronicled, with, I trust,
impartiality and the absence of prejudice, have brought
divers disadvantages in their train. To begin with,
there is that extraordinary oppression which weighs
upon so many of our novelists in regard to what is
called the Young Person. For some time past divers
of our most eminent hands have been lifting themselves
up against the Young Person, deploring the terrible
restraints that she imposes on their growing reputation,
occasionally even emancipating themselves from her
in a timid British way, and committing excesses in
another variety of that shivering consciousness of sin
which made Leigh Hunt, when he was a little boy of
seven, and had said a naughty word, for a long time
afterwards, when anybody took kind notice of him, say
to himself, "Ah, they little think I'm the boy who said
d n !" Ambition to be the boy who says d n causes
these fiery souls to languish. But why do they not say
d n, and have done with it? The creeping and
gingerly approaches to continental licences of speech
and subject which we have seen lately seem to me, I
confess, inexpressibly puerile.

Nor can I doubt that on the whole the general con-
vention of English novelists during this century has
been a sound one. There is, so far as I know, only one
instance Scott*s alteration of the plot of St Ronan's
Well where it did distinct, unremedied, irremediable
harm. I very much doubt whether Pendennis would
have been improved by the different cast of one of its
episodes which some of my friends desiderate, and I
am sure Vanity Fair positively gains by the ambiguity
in which Becky's technical "guilt" is left. The fact is
that the spring of what is very liberally called passion
is one which, in appearance facile and powerful, is
really a very difficult one to bring into play, and is

136 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

lamentably monotonous and ineffective when abused,
as it is apt to be. For my part, I would excuse either
novelist or poet for violating any convention of the
kind, but only on the admirable old condition that he
comes in with a rope about his neck and is strung up
ruthlessly if he fails to produce a masterpiece.

This, however, is of course only part of the great
Realist mistake, and that has been spoken of already,
and elsewhere. The rules as I take it, if rules can be
spoken of in such a matter, are two only. The first is,
"Disrealise everything, and never forget that whatever
art is, it is not nature." The second is the same as that
just given, "Try all things if you like: but if you try
the exceptional, the abnormal, the unconventional,
remember that you try it at your own peril, and that
you must either make a great success or an intolerable
and inexcusable failure."

So far, however, we are concerned simply with the
subject; and as a rule very little depends in any art
on the subject. The most that the subject can do is to
give the measure of the artist in point of strength. If
he is a good artist it does not matter how bad the
subject is: if he is a bad artist it does not matter how
good the subject is. All really depends on the treat-
ment; and here we get into quite a different region
a region, however, which happens to be that which
chiefly invites our attention. The two chief innova-
tions in treatment which have been seen in the period
under discussion, and the signs of which are most par-
ticularly evident at the present moment, are innovations,
the one in handling incident, situation, motive, and so
forth, the other in style.

The first may be said to consist in a great extension,
as compared with the practice ever since the revival
of the novel some eighty years ago, of the representa-

THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1892 137

tion of the component parts, the intermediate processes,
of thought and action. This is not in itself new : nothing
is. Another form was, or, rather, other forms of this
extension were conspicuous in the novel of Richardson
in England and Marivaux in France. The last great
practitioner of it was Miss Austen, who indeed raised
it to something like absolute perfection; but it died
with her among ourselves, at the same time, within
a few years, as that at which Benjamin Constant in
Adolphe was producing the last masterpiece of its
older manner in France. With us it had no immediate
resurrection: it was hardly dead in France before it
was revived with a considerable difference by Beyle
and Balzac on the other side of the Channel: and this
later form, with many alterations and variants, is that
which has survived in other countries to this day, is
more popular in some of them than ever, and has from
their practice been regrafted upon the English novel.
The completest exaggerations of it are to be found in
America and Russia. Now of this kind of novel (to
use the singular for convenience sake) it is sometimes
said that "the story is abolished," that "nothing
happens," and so forth. This is, of course, not strictly
true. A good deal often happens in Russian novels,
and I have read American stories of the straitest sect
in which incident was not entirely tabooed. But in
both the poor creature is taught to know its place. The
story, even if there is one, is of the last importance : the
solemn and painstaking indication, as was said of
Marivaux, of "everything you have said, and every-
thing you have thought, and everything you would
have liked to think but did not," is of the first. Instead
of the presentation of the result you have an endless
description of the process ; instead of a succinctly pre-
sented quotient, an endless array of dividends and

138 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

divisors. To say that this is never satisfactory would be
too much : I know at least one instance, Count Tolstoi's
Ivan Ilyitch, which may defy criticism. But this very
instance shows that the success is a tour de force, and
it has never, that I know of, been reached in a long story
by any one. As a contrast to the average Russian and
American novel, take that admirable masterpiece
Pepita Jimenez. Sefior Valera is, I believe, sometimes
pointed at for theirs by the ghostly Banquos of the
analytic school. O creatures as unfortunate as doleful !
It would be impossible to find a more complete or
convincing instantia contradictoria of their principles.
The only weak points in the book are those which draw
to their side. Its interest depends on the manners-
painting, the characters, and the story, the three things
that they never reach, or reach in spite of their ten-
dency to potter and trifle. Fortunately it cannot be
said that this particular form has laid much hold or
us, but it has laid some, and I expect it to lay more. Fo,
it is naturally attractive to the half-educated : and half-
education is advancing with us by leaps and bounds.

It is also to this kind of imperfect culture that the
other innovation of treatment, which has been widely
described as one of style, appeals. This is more rampant
with us, but it has also a more plausible pretext for
ramping, for it has excuses of precedent contrast, and
excuses of precedent pattern. Scott was notoriously
and confessedly a rather careless writer, and the fashion
of writing, either in parts separately published or in
chapters of magazines, which set in after his death was
the very likeliest fashion in the world to encourage
careless writing. On the other hand, some of the most
popular, and some of the greatest novelists of the second
and third quarters of the century Dickens, George
Eliot, Mr Meredith wide apart as they were in other

THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1892 139

ways, agreed in having styles the reverse of careless,
styles mannered and mannerised to the very n-th. We
know from their own descriptions how some much
younger writers of fiction have set themselves to acquire
manners of their own: we know from their books how
they and others have succeeded.

It would be superfluous to repeat here the various
remarks bearing on the exact amount and character
of that success which will be found in certain earlier
essays of this volume. But, as I was writing this paper,
a passage remarkable to the point came before me in
the latest published volume of the Journal des Goncourt,
the last, as M. Edmond de Goncourt assures us, that
we shall have in his lifetime. He was a little annoyed,
it seems, at finding that his old friend Flaubert had,
in his correspondence with George Sand, spoken dis-
respectfully of the Goncourtian epithet. "No, my dear
Flaubert," retorts M. de Goncourt, "you had not the
epithets osees, temeraires et personnelles which authors
who shall be nameless have. You had only les epithhes,
excellemment bonnes, de tout le monde" Now there is
no doubt that "les deux Goncourt," whatever may be
thought of the positive value of their work, did an-
ticipate, and have for many years (less excellently,
perhaps, since the death of M. Jules, but that is neither
here nor there) exhibited the tendencies and pre-
occupations as to style which have prevailed among
the more careful men of letters in all European countries
during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Un-
fortunately, it seems to me that the distinction which
M. de Goncourt here puts sharply and well tells in a
direction exactly opposite to that in which he intended
it to tell. The epithets of genius are exactly the epithets
de tout le monde, but "good to an excellent degree."
These are the epithets of Shakespeare, of Dante, of

140 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

Homer, of all who have the Shakespearian, the Homeric,
the Dantesque qualities. It is the attainment of this
"excellent" degree that is the test-rub of genius.
Whereas the "daring," the "rash," the "personal"
epithet, which is the special game and object of talent,
and especially of the talent of our day, stands in an
entirely different category. When the talent is great
the epithet is sometimes very happy, and you give 5
a hearty hand of approbation, as to the successf
trick of a master in conjuring. It is sometimes an
thing but happy, and if you are well-bred you do n^
hiss it, but let it pass with as much indulgence as ma)
be, like the couac of a generally well-graced singer. In
the lower order of attempts, it is at its best a little
fatiguing, at its worst utterly unendurable. Never does
it excite the immediate assent, the almost silent
rapture, the intense unceasing ever-novel admiration
which are aroused by the great efforts of genius in
making the common as though it were not common,
in sublimating the ordinary language terrestrial to the
seventh heaven.

Now it stands, I think, to reason that the deliberate
seeker after style will too often stray in the direction
of the os, the t&meraire, the personnel, not merely in
epithets but in other things. Whether it stands to
reason or not he certainly does it; and though there
may not be many at the moment who perceive his
error, the meet consequences of that error never have
failed, and are never likely to fail. They are also, as
it happens, illustrated unusually well in the history
of novels. I have myself gone about for many years
a very different and inferior La Fontaine asking,
"Avez-vous lu?" Hysminias and Hysmine, which the
books of reference sometimes call Ismenias and Ismene.
There must be people who have read it, though I never

THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1892 141

personally met one. Here, in a very wonderful kind
of Greek (it is perfectly useless to attempt to read the
book in a translation, for all its charms are necessarily
lost), did a certain person of the twelfth century, by
genius of anticipation or following of originals mostly
lost to us, concentrate in one book Euphuism, Mari-
vaudage, aestheticism, divers isms of the present day
j/hich I could only indicate by taking divers respected
:oper names in vain even Naturalism in a way,
except that the author was a gentleman after his Lower
a mpire fashion. If the task of reading him is too great
/-and I must own that his lingo is extraordinary and
his matter of a marvellous tediousness there is Lyly,
there is Madeleine de Scudery, there is Marivaux, -there
is the Mr Cumberland whom gods call Sir Fretful, there
are the followers of Mrs Radcliff e, there are many others,
great and small, persons of genius, persons of talent,
and persons equally destitute of either. They do not
always aim specially or principally at style, but they
often do so, and they always expend an immense
determination, an almost piteous endeavour, on the
attempt to do something great by taking thought, by
exaggerating popular fashions, by running directly
counter to them, by being eccentric, by being scrupu-
lously correct, by anything, in short, but waiting for
the shepherd's hour and profiting thereby in the best
and most straightforward way they can.

The point to which we are coming will no doubt have
been foreseen for a long time. It is that in this busy,
this conscientious, this serious period of novel-writing,
our novelists are, as a rule, far too much of Marthas
and far too little of Maries. They cumber themselves
tremendously about the fashion of serving us, and it
seems horribly ungracious to criticise the viands served;
yet it may be permissible to suggest that they are in

i 4 2 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

the wrong way. They seem to be beguiled by the
dictum true and important enough in itself that
novel-writing is an art. It is and a fine art. No doubt
also all art has its responsibilities. But the responsi-
bilities of different arts are different, and the methods
of discharging them are different too. What makes the
art of literature in general the most difficult of all is
the fact that nowhere is it more necessary to take pains,
and yet that nowhere is mere painstaking not merely
so insufficient but so likely to lead the artist wrong
And in this particular division of the literary art ther
is the still further difficulty that it is easiest, mos
obvious, and in the special circumstances of recent
English literature apparently most praiseworthy, to
take pains about those things which are not the root
of the matter. In poetry the so-called "formal" part
is of the essence. A halting verse, a cacophonous
rhyme, a lack of musical accompaniment and atmo-
sphere, will render unpoetical the very finest, and in
happier circumstances the most really poetical, thoughts.
Yet even in poetry attention to these formal matters
will but rarely it will sometimes when it is extra-
ordinary do of itself. In prose fiction, the nearest to
poetry of the kinds of literature when it is at its best,
the case is quite different. It is a pity that a novel
should not be well written: yet some of the greatest
novels of the world are, as no one of the greatest poems
of the world is, or could possibly be, written anything
but well. It is, at any rate, rather annoying that the
plot of a novel should hang loosely together, that the
chronology should be obviously impossible, that the
author should forget on page 200 what page 100 has
told his readers, that there should be little beginning,
less middle, and no end. Yet some of the great, some
of the greatest novels of the world, are open to objec-

THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1892 143

tions of this kind. The truth is, that the novel is, while
the poem is not, mainly and firstly a criticism of life.
Great truths always lurk in great errors, and Naturalism,
with its kindred faults, reveals this truth at once. The
life may be life as it is, and we have the novel proper
life as we would have it to be, and we have the
romance; but one or the other, not photographed, not
grovellingly dissected, but rendered in the mediums
and by the methods proper to art, it must be. All
the requirements of the novelist are subsidiary and
secondary to this, that he shall in his pages show us
die result of the workings of the heart and brain, of
>he body, soul, and spirit of actual or possible human
beings. Poetry is not so limited novel-writing is.

Now the mistake of many of our careful and clever
ones at the present day seems to me sometimes that,
forgetting this chief and principal thing, they concen-
trate themselves on the secondary and subsidiary
matters ; sometimes that, accepting the requirement of
rendering life, they prove unequal to it. I have already
said that I would not have any subject ruled out as
such. Remembering what a certain dramatist did with
a certain Bellafront centuries ago, I should not be
disposed to refuse permission to a certain novelist to
experiment with a certain Tess, though I greatly prefer
the straightforwardness of the earlier artist's title. I
think that many attempts, and an exactly equal
number of failures, have shown the impossibility of
making a great historical character of whom much is
directly known the central and ostensible hero or
heroine of a novel : but if any will try it, he or she may
try it at their own peril, and I will applaud if they
succeed. I can even conceive (though I have never
read one) a novel in which undogmatic Christianity
might play a considerable part, and which yet might

144 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

be readable, and a novel. We have not, as it seems to
me, a right to complain of any experiments: we have
only a right to complain when experiments are made
in the teeth of the teaching of experience, and do not
succeed. Paradox, crotchet, new moralities, new theories
of religion all may be susceptible of being made into
novels that ought to live and will live. It only seems
to me that at the present day our clever novelists are
a great deal too fond of deliberately selecting the most
unsuitable materials and then endeavouring to varnish
over the rickety construction with fine writing, with
fashionable tricks of expression or treatment, with
epithets ostes y temeraires et personnelles, with doses of
popular talk.

One special difficulty which besets the novelist, and
of which he not infrequently complains when he aims
at excellence, remains to be noticed. He is at the
present moment, perhaps, the only artist whose art
is liable to be confounded with the simple business of
the ordinary tradesman. There is, and has been for
at least two generations perhaps indeed for three or
four a certain steady and increasing demand for
"something to read" in the way of fiction. There are
no parallels, so far as I know, to his difficulty in this
respect. The only persons who stand in the same position
are the purveyor of sermons and the purveyor of news-
paper articles. But neither of these is expected, and
it is entirely at his own risk if either undertakes, to
present himself as a maker of books, that is to say, as
a producer of something which is intended to last. The
novel-producer, as distinguished from the novelist, is
in really evil case in this matter: and the novelist, a
distinguished from the novel-producer, is perhaps :
worse. Nobody insists (thank Heaven !) that the usu
journalist shall produce all his articles, or the usual

THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1892 145

preacher all his sermons, for the year in book form :
I can answer for one class that some representatives of
it, at any rate, though they may try to do their work
as well as possible, would be horrified at the idea. The
requirements of the circulating library insist upon the
novel-producer doing this very thing : and as we knoW,
the novelist, or he who hopes that he is a novelist, is
very angry at the confusion which thus arises from
their both addressing the same lady. It is natural, it
is inevitable, that the results of this confusion should
be almost always bad. When a man, as has just been
-^aid, caters for the general in sermon or article or
jplatform speech, it is perfectly understood that he
does not, except as a secondary thing and at his own
peril and distinct volition, enter for any other stakes
or seek to gain the Land of Matters Unforgot. When a
^nan writes verse and publishes it, he does in form
enter for the stakes, but the race is not run in public.
The minor bard competes, except in the rarest in-
stances, for his own pleasure before an extremely select
audience composed of a few critics and a number,
which it rests with him to limit in one direction and
with themselves to limit in another, of holders of
presentation copies. For myself I own that I am rather
fond of reading minor poetry much fonder of it than
of reading minor novels. But that is a purely personal
detail. It is an understood thing that the minor poet
is not I do not say that he does not wish to be read.
He publishes either because he cannot help it or because
L he likes it. The ambition of the curate, of the leader-
Kvriter, of the platform speaker, is sufficed by the day
t*>r the day after. But the unhappy novelist is obliged
3 uy the state of the demand to divulge himself widely,
r nd put himself on more or less perpetual record. There
are those of his kind who are very angry with the

146 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

managers of literary newspapers for taking account of
this fact. They would have literary notice restricted
to novels which aim at something higher than the
circulating library demand. I have never indeed, being
a person with some experience of newspapers, under-
stood quite how their demand is to be complied with.
Is the editor to read every novel and decide whether
it is novel-journalism or novel-literature? I think this
is barely feasible, for even an editor's day has but
twenty-four hours, and even an editor's brain requires
occasional rest and refreshment. Is he to have a special
novel-referee, one, in fact, to whom all novels are to be
handed over, and according to whose dictum they are
to be reviewed or not? The selection of such referees
would be difficult, and would, to tke an abominably
prosaic view, cost the proprietors of newspapers a
vast sum of money, for which, except in prayers anc
curses, they would certainly not receive any appreci-
able return. Or are the deciding persons to be guideo
by name, vogue, previous work? In this I am bound
again, from no small experience, to express my fear,
that a great deal of injustice would be done by in-
clusion in the selected circle, and a little (but the most
serious in the long-run) by exclusion from it.

This may seem something of a digression : but it has
a real connection with our subject. It is easily con-
ceivable that when journalism and literature are in
this way inextricably mixed and blended, almost any
means will seem justifiable, nay, praiseworthy, to the
aspirant to literature who wishes to declare himself,
at once and unmistakably, to be other than those who
are content with journalism. And this being so, we
can hardly wonder at that strain and stress which I
have noticed as marking our present more ambitious
novels, without on the whole any corresjjjpnding ex-

THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1892 147

cellence of result. Except at very rare intervals, it
is acknowledged that a nation is a lucky nation if
it possesses half a dozen persons who really deserve
the name of poet : and if the poets in the course of an
ordinary human life fill half a dozen volumes of the
ordinary content of the volume of a circulating library
novel, it is acknowledged that they have done very
handsomely. We expect to have our novelists by dozens,
by scores, by hundreds, and we expect them to produce
their volumes, if not by hundreds, yet almost by scores,
and certainly by dozens. Is this reasonable? Is this
treating the artist as he deserves to be treated? 1 I
do not take the other side and say, Is the acceptance
of such an expectation and the attempt to fulfil it
worthy of the novelist ? For then we get into that hope-
less and endless question of what Mr Anthony Trollope
used delicately to call "details" meaning thereby
pounds, shillings, and pence of the arguing of which
there is no end, and which, after all, does not concern
novel-writing more than any other kind of literature
except in one point which is a little important. It is
much more difficult for the novelist pure and simple
to write, as it has been phrased, "articles for money
and books for love," than for almost any other variety
of man of letters. His novel-journalism without his
name would be a drug: and with his name it at once
enters into competition with his novel-literature.

It may seem as if I were shaping a course towards
the somewhat paradoxical proposition that it will never
be merry with novelists till the public gives over

1 Since this was written I have found a counterpart of this argument
in M. Ferdinand Brunetiere's just published Essais sur la Literature
Contemporaine, art. "Critique et Roman," an excellent example of the
luthor's robust polemic, which, however, takes more of a side than
[ think it necessary to take in a quarrel which would be much better
untaught. *

i 4 8 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

reading novels. And indeed there might be something
to be said for this, for as long as the public insists on
novels by the hundred and five hundred every year to
read, certain things will follow. There will be a vast
amount of unworthy stuff produced : there will be now
and then for popular (not necessarily or probably foi
good) novels those huge prizes which entice more andf
more competitors into the race. There will be more
and more the inducement, subtly extending, at once
for the tradesman who aspires to be popular and for
the artist who aspires to be good, to strive for dis-
tinction of whatever kind by illegitimate or scarcely
legitimate means by oddity, by licence, by quaint-
ness, by strangeness, by spreading the sail, no matte*
at what angle, to the popularis aura* Demand no doub ^
creates supply, and supply stimulates demand: bijj
what sort of each does the reflex action produce? I
fear that churlish thing, the study of history, would
reply, A supply that is by turns cheap and nasty, or
distinguished from the cheap and nasty by fantastic
preciousness ; a demand that is by turns coarse and
uncritical or squeamish and morbid.

And all this while there may be some who remember
that the novel has never yet shown itself an enduring
form in literature; that it rose very late, and so may
be expected not to die nothing dies but to dwindle
or change very early; that it has already had an almost
unexampled flourishing time in slightly different
varieties of one particular form ; and that as for many
centuries of ascertained progress, or rather continuance,
in literature the unchanging human mind was content
with brief and occasional indulgences in it, it is by no
means impossible that the period of this particular
indulgence is drawing to a close. To such reminders
I neither assent wholly nor do I wholly rule them out.

THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1892 149

The printing-press and the common half-educated
reader must be taken into consideration. No former
age possessed this combination of means to produce
supply and circumstances to create demand. The news-
paper and the novel, though each has produced in its
time literature of the highest value, are both in them-
selves rather low forms of literature, and it is, I believe,
an axiom of physical science, which has given itself
to observing such things, that the low form is the
most tenacious of life. As long as the Board School
lasts, the ordinary manufacture of newspapers and
novels must go on a reflection which may have its
consolations to those who are obliged to get their living
by working at either mill. But whether either art or
craft is likely to develop improvements such as will
render it more prolific of real literature, that is one of
the too numerous things which are "obscure to all
except to God." The novel has at least produced some
of nearly the greatest things in literature; this is its
great, its exceeding great merit. That it has produced
vast volumes of things that to-day are and to-morrow
are cast into the oven, is not perhaps, rightly con-
sidered, a fact for regret.

And so we end with Quien sake? Enormous fatalism,
I take it, impresses itself on careful students of the
history of literature so obstinate is the wind in
blowing where it listeth without the slightest reference
either to the literary clerk of the weather, or to in-
genious and diligent persons who, like our young officers
in Burmah, get up on high places and explode large
quantities of blasting powder in the hope of coaxing
or forcing the wind and the rain with it. All things
are possible in a time when a novelist of real talent
like M. Zola dismisses Sir Walter Scott as a "boarding-
school novelist," and when a critic of real intelligence

150 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

like my friend Mr Brander Matthews takes Mr Howells
for an excellent critic. The safer plan is to stand still
and see the wondrous works of the Lord. After all,
the critic and the prophet are two extremely different
persons : and criticism has not been usually most happy
when it meddled with prophecy.

SHAKESPEARE AND THE GRAND STYLE 1

THE adventure of this paper may appear extravagant,
but it has seemed to me perhaps not unfitting, if not
for myself, yet for the person whom the English Associa-
tion has thought fit to choose for its president in the
third centenary year of the publication of the Sonnets.
Nor is the adventurer, however moderate his prowess,
quite untried in the kind, at any rate, of the quest.
Some years ago, at the request of the Dante Society,
I wrote and read a paper, till now unpublished, on the
relation of that great poet to the mysterious entity
called the Grand Style; and last year I ventured to
deal with Milton in the same way, before the Royal
Society of Literature. The opportunity of completing
the trio was tempting, and I can only hope that I have
not been tempted to too great a failure.

It is always in such a case as a ceremony desirable,
though except as a ceremony it can hardly be necessary,
to disclaim any intention of direct controversy. Such
controversy would be, in this case, with the founder
or re-founder of all recent discussion on the present
subject, Mr Matthew Arnold 2 . I do not share his
views: but controversy in detail would be quite out
of place in such a paper as this, and, in reference to
a dead antagonist, it would lack even the piquancy
which, when carried on between the living, it seems
to possess for many, I cannot say I think to the best,

1 See General Preface. These three Grand Style Essays or Lectures
may, from the circumstances of their origin, contain a very little repeti-
tion. But it seemed unnecessary to remove this (1923).

2 See the lectures On Translating Homer.

152 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

tastes. It is sufficient to remind you that Mr Arnold
could only accord to Shakespeare what I have else-
where called a sort of " uncovenanted " Grand Style
an occasional magnificence, chequered if not check-
mated by styles the reverse of grand. It appears to
me on the contrary that Shakespeare held the Grand
Style in the hollow of his hand, letting it loose or with-
holding it as good seemed to him: and further, that
the seeming almost always was good.

It has been often said in various forms, but hardly
ever without truth, that all dispute turns upon
difference of definition and that, if people were only
clear-witted enough and even-tempered enough, the
arrival at definition would be the conclusion of the
whole matter. For their differences % of opinion would
either disappear in the process, or they would be seen to
be irreconcilable, and to possess no common ground
on which argument is possible. My definition of the
Grand Style is certainly wider than Mr Arnold's, whose
own seems to have been framed to insist upon that
"high seriousness" of his which is no doubt a grand
thing. Mine would, I think, come nearer to the
Longinian " Sublime " the perfection of expression in
every direction and kind, the commonly called great
and the commonly called small, the tragic and the
comic, the serious, the ironic, and even to some extent
the trivial (not in the worst sense, of course). When-
ever this perfection of expression acquires such force
that it transmutes the subject and transports the
hearer or reader, then and there the Grand Style
exists, for so long, and in such a degree, as the trans-
mutation of the one and the transportation of the other
lasts. It may persist, or cease, or disappear and re-
appear, like a fixed or a revolving light, but there it is
in essentia or in potentia. If, on the other hand, you

THE GRAND STYLE SHAKESPEARE 153

limit the definition to the continual exertion of some
such a transforming force, it seems to me that, in the
first place, you are making an excessive and unnatural
restriction, forgetful of neque semper arcum and other
sayings of the wise, while, in the second place, as a
consequence of the first error, you are preparing for
yourself endless pitfalls. It is a question whether any
writer, except perhaps Milton, will answer to the
definition completely. Dante and Homer certainly
will not as, to give one example in each case out of
a hundred, the comparison of Adam in the Paradiso
to an animal struggling under a cloth, which has
shocked so many commentators, and that passage in
the Odyssey which shocked Longinus, will show.
Further, the perpetual Grand Style of the definition
which is not mine, can only be maintained is only
maintained by Milton himself at the cost of an
enormous tour de force of mannerism, which is at least
questionably justifiable or artistic which in fact itself
sometimes becomes the reverse of grand. The vast
region of the lighter vein must be abandoned, or
clumsily handled as it actually is by Milton when his
Grand Style is once "set." Even in serious subjects,
there must be a kind of "second sifting" of seriousness.
And, above all, there is the certainty of the arising of
a spurious Grand Style a style of mere grandiosity
a plaster imitation of the real thing, than which there
has been nothing in the past, and there is likely to be
nothing in the future, more detestable.

Of this there is no danger, essentially at least, under
the application of that definition of the Grand Style
which I prefer. It makes its appearance when it is
wanted, and when the hour is come; at other times it
abides apart, and possesses its strength in quietness
and in confidence, not frittering it away. Of its display

154 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

in this fashion I cannot remember any one in literature
not Homer, not Dante himself, not Milton certainly
who can produce such constant, such varied, such
magnificent instances as Shakespeare. Even in his
novitiate, when he was making his experiments, and
indeed making the tools with which to make these,
this Adamastor, this King of the Waves of the vasty
deep of style, never fails to come when he calls on it.
We do not know the exact order of his compositions ;
and there is dispute about some of the probably earlier
items in it. Some maintain that the Titus Andronicus
which we have is not the Titus that Meres attributed
to him; and some that the admitted re-writing of
Love's Labour's Lost makes it a doubtful witness ; while
the date of The Two Gentlemen of Verona is extremely
uncertain. But it would, I think, be difficult so to pack
a jury of competent scholars that these plays, and the
Comedy of Errors, should not be put in the van. And
though every one of them is full of crudities, the Grand
Style appears in each, as it never does appear in any
other probably contemporary work, except Marlowe's,
and not as it appears in Marlowe himself. The cen-
tral splendour of Adriana's speech in the Errors
(n. ii. iizff.); the glorious "phrase of the ring" in
the fatal discovery of the murder of Bassianus in Titus
(n. iii. 226 ff.) ; the famous and incomparable veiled
confession of Julia in the Two Gentlemen (iv. iv. 154 ff.) ;
at least a dozen passages in Love's Labour's Lost have
the broad arrow the royal mark upon them un-
mistakably.

But, it is said, there is so much else so much even
of the close context of these very passages which has
not the m^rk ! And why should it have ? Poetry, and
most especially dramatic poetry, is a microcosm: and
it may perhaps it should, like the macrocosm

THEGRANDSTYLE SHAKESPEARE 155

contain wood, hay, and stubble as well as gold and
silver. Again, in these plays, it is said, there are failures
of the Grand Style slips from it or mis-shots at it
fallings into conceit, preciousness, bombast, frigidity,
what not. Is it necessary, even at this time of day,
to recapitulate the classes of persons to whom, accord-
ing to the adage, half-done work should not be shown ?
Or is there any one, not included in these classes, who
really wishes that we had not got Shakespeare's half-
done work? I should be sorry to think that there is
especially in this audience. But, if there be, may I
suggest to him that on the calculus we are using, the
fact, supposing it to be a fact, does not matter? It
is not a question whether anything that is not the
Grand Style exists in these plays: but whether the
Grand Style itself exists there. And I profess myself
unable to understand how any one can deny its
presence in the passages to which I have referred, and
in scores, almost hundreds, of others.

But let us come to somewhat closer quarters. What
is it, in these passages themselves, which, in spite of
the evident novitiate of their author, claims for them
grandeur of style? It is no one thing; the sources of
the Sublime in style are many as many as the qualities
and circumstances of Style itself. Whenever one of
these qualities is displayed, whenever one of these
circumstances is utilised, in the transmuting and
transporting fashion and degree there is the Grand
Style. In the speech of Julia, above referred to,

She hath been fairer, Madam, than she is,
the secret lies, to a great extent, in the double meaning,
and in the pathetic moderation and modulation of the
disguised and deserted mistress. The language is quite
plain it is an instance, one of many, which shows
that poetic diction is not a sine qua non, though none

156 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

of these shows that it can be or ought to be wholly
dispensed with. But as I am, I confess, strongly and
indeed irreconcilably opposed to the doctrine that the
great thought ipso facto makes the Great Style that
the meaning is the thing I am particularly glad to
start with an instance where the secret does lie mainly
in the meaning.

It lies there less in the passage of the Errors ':

For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall

A drop of water in the breaking gulf,

And take unmingled thence that drop again,

Without addition or diminishing,

As take from me thyself, and not me too.

Here the meaning is good, is true, is pathetic but it
is not in it that the transport and the transmutation
lie. They lie partly, as Longinus would assert, in the
Figure the vivid image of the breaking gulf, and the
drop of water contrasted with and whelmed in it. They
lie, I think, partly also in the actual verbal phrase by
which that figure is conveyed. But to me they lie
most in the management of the metre, the alternative
check and rush of the rhythm of the now sundered,
now overlapping, verses the perfection of the entire
phrase, prosodic and poetic.

The third passage, that in Titus, is more of a
"Passage Perilous"; for the evidence of the novitiate
is here very strong:

Upon his bloody finger he doth wear

A precious ring that lightens all the hole,

Which, like a taper in some monument,

Doth shine upon the dead man's earthy cheeks

And shows the ragged entrails of the pit.

After this it goes off into mere failure about Pyramus
and the moon, and Cocytus, and other gradus matters.
Even here, in the lines quoted, the expression is not
thoroughly "brought off" it is the Grand Style in the
rough, with the master's hand not yet in case to finish

THE GRAND STYLE SHAKESPEARE 157

it. Yet the solemn splendour of the opening line, and
the lights and shades and contrasts of dim outline and
ghastly colour, have the right quality or at least the
promise of it.

When we come to such a play as Romeo and Juliet
the command of these sources is far surer and more
frequent, though it seems to be masqued or marred,
to some spectators, by the accompanying comedy or
farce, which is not, and is not intended to be, grand
in any way. The famous "Queen Mab" speech is not
quite up to our mark not at all because it is light in
subject, but because Mercutio, pleasant as is his fancy,
does, as Romeo says, "talk of nothing" to some extent,
or talk a little too much of his pleasant something.
But the famous later scenes of the play are full of the
Grand Style ; and Romeo's dying speeches, after he has
disposed of Paris, have it in perfection and in rare
volume. If anybody denies that this is the Grand Style
I should like to meet him foot to foot, he taking any
passage he likes from Homer, Dante, Milton or any one
else, and to fight the question out, phrase by phrase,
line by line, and total impression by total impression.

It is this increasing command of the style that trans-
mutes the subject and transports the reader, which is
so characteristic of Shakespeare; joined as it is to a
perfect readiness not to use it when he thinks it is not
required. I have pointed out that I think this some-
what misled Mr Arnold, and has misled others. They
cannot conceive Apollo without the bent bow; they
think that the Grand Style is a sort of panoply which
the wearer, like some adventurous knights under a vow,
must never take off. Once more, I cannot help thinking
this is a mistake. "Homer and the Grand Style" is
a subject which would be very interesting, and which
I should not be afraid to handle; but it would be quite

158 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

irrelevant to say much of it here. The Homeric grandeur,
whatever it is, is quite different in species from that of
Dante and Milton; and though it is more like Shake-
speare's, I do not think that the difference between the
two is small. But it is certain that Homer does not
wear his Grand Style as a continental officer wears his
uniform, while Milton does this to the utmost possible
extent, and Dante to an extent extremely great.
Shakespeare who is nothing if not English, except
that he is also universal is never more English than
in his preference for mufti on occasion. It seems to be
this preference which has, in the eyes of some, dis-
qualified him.

And yet no one can wear his uniform with more
dignity, or assume it with such lightning quickness;
while no one can keep it longer fresh on duty. The
Sonnets are, of course, the great example of this; for
with the rarest exceptions the Sonnets, whatever else
they may be or not be, are Grand Style throughout.
Their subject does not, from the point of view, matter;
whether Elizabethan sonnets in general, and these
sonnets at a rather extraordinary particular, present
rehandlings of old stuff, or not, is of no importance. Let
fifty let five hundred, or five thousand, people have
moralled, poetically or prosaically on sunrise, noon,
and sunset. When the fifty-first, or the five hundred
and first, writes,

Lp ! in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head,

the Grand Style appears. It is nearly as impossible
to describe, meticulously, the constituents of its
grandeur as to describe those of the majesty of the
sun itself. There is, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus was
perfectly right in holding, something mysterious in the
mere word-material the contrasted sound and structure

THEGRANDSTYLE SHAKESPEARE 159

of the words "orient," "gracious," "burning." There
is much more in their juxtaposition. But there is most
in the whole phrase; though with the contestable ex-
ception of "orient" and perhaps "Lo!" there is not
a single specimen of "poetic diction" in it; most of
it is in the simplest vocabulary; and the central
thought and image are as common as grass or earth.
But the attitude of the phrase is the thing; the simple
dignified attitude which sets oil, and is set off by
"orient" and "gracious" and "burning," as jewels set
off, and are set off by, simplicity and dignity and grace
combined in the human port and bearing. It is in this
that Shakespeare excels all his great competitors in
quantity, and differs from all but Dante in quality.
In Milton there is always something that is not exactly
simple; and in Homer "perpetual epithets," compound
epithets, and the like, interfere to some extent with
that ever-varying yet often extraordinarily plain
speech which we find in Shakespeare and in Dante.
On the other hand, Milton is segregated from the other
three by the fact that he depends less than any of
them on mighty single words; it is rather (putting
proper names out of the question) on the rhetorical
collocation of those which he uses that he relies. The
double epithets that he employs are imitations from
the Greek. But Shakespeare delights in such words
as " multitudinous," " incarnadine," " unwedgable,"
just as Dante does in such as ammassiccia andjiam-
meggiante. And yet Shakespeare can produce the Grand
Style effect with five repetitions of "never" in a single
line, or with such a renunciation of emphasis, such a
miracle of negative expression, as "The rest is Silence."
I suppose the very prodigality of his use of it, the in-
souciance of this. prodigality, like that of

Wealthy men who care not how they give,

i6o MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

and above all the disconcerting way in which he gives
it when people do not expect it, and are not prepared
for it, account to some extent for the dubiety and dis-
comfort with which it has been and is received, for
the tendency to plead "his time" and "the necessities
of the theatre" and the like. For it is a great mistake
to suppose that the day of apologies for Shakespeare
is over. The form of the apology alters, but the fact
remains: and I am inclined to think that Shakespeare,
though he would certainly have been amused by most
of his modern assailants, would have been still more
amused by some of his modern apologists. Still, the
"wilfulness" (as his own age would have said) of this
prodigality is no doubt disconcerting to some honest
folk. People are uncomfortable at being taken by
surprise. They want to be told to "prepare to receive
cavalry " ; there must be a warning-bell and a voluntary,
and ornaments and vestments, to put them into a
proper Grand Style frame of mind. Milton provides
all this, and he is recognised as a grand stylist; Shake-
speare does not, and his title is questioned. A respect-
able but rather futile gentleman like Duke Orsino is
plentifully supplied with the noblest phrase; a petulant,
dishonourable, almost worthless prince like -Richard II
is supplied more plentifully still, and from a still nobler
mint. He does not grudge it to his villains ; if

The wheel is come full circle; I am here 1
be not in the Grand Style, I confess myself utterly
ignorant what the Grand Style is. It comes sometimes,
as it were, "promiscuously" in the vulgar sense of that
term. It would, for instance, be exceedingly difficult
for the most expert, or the most futile, ingenuity of
the commentator to assign an exact reason for the
occurrence, where it occurs, of what is perhaps the

1 King Lear, v. iii. 174.

THE GRAND STYLE SHAKESPEARE 161

grandest example of the Grand Style in all literature
the words of Prospero to Ferdinand, when the revels
are ended. An excuse is wanted to break off the pretty
"vanity of his art"; to get rid of the lovers; and to
punish, in defeating it, the intentionally murderous but
practically idle plot of Caliban and his mates. Any-
thing would do ; and the actual pretext is anything or
nothing. But Shakespeare chooses to accompany it
with a "criticism of life" and of more than life so
all-embracing, couched in expression of such mag-
nificence, that one knows not where to look for its
like as form and matter combined. An ordinary man,
if, per impossible, he could have written it, would have
put it at the end; an extraordinary one might have
substituted it for, or added it to, the more definite
announcement of abdication and change which now
comes later with "Ye elves," etc. Shakespeare puts it
here.

Sometimes he will even outrage the Mrs Grundy ot
criticism by almost burlesquing the Grand Style, by
letting Titania, in her deluded courtship of Bottom,
be not merely graceful and fanciful, and pathetically
pleading, but by making her indulge in such positive
magnificence, such sheer Sublime as

The Summer still doth tend upon my state,
which the most serious poet, telling the severest tale,
might be only too happy to have invented. At other
times the examples are frequent in the probably re-
handled chronicle-plays he will take another man's
phrase which is not grand at all, and "grandee" it
equip it with the Orders of the King, and the qualifica-
tions necessary to justify them by a stroke or two of
added or altered diction. Constantly it seems as though
a sort of whim took him to be grand or as if (in the
words of one of his own characters who is too graceless

SIII II

162 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

for the strictly Grand Style, though grand enough in
his own fashion) "grandeur lay in his way and he found
it." Some of these characters Hamlet for one, of
course, and Macbeth for another would speak habitu-
ally in it if they had not more grace of congruity than
to do so. There is no one who has it more perfectly
than Antony unless it be Cleopatra when either
chooses; and Othello at his best excels almost all others.
Once more, if his last words be not in the Grand Style,
where are we to look for it ?

But the old aporia the old curious fallacy-objection
recurs. "These things are grand but there is so
much else that is not grand." To this there is, once
more, only the old answer to all fallacy-objections of
the kind. "Why not ?" I suspect that the fallacy arises,
as so many aesthetic fallacies do, from a confusion of
Arts. It is sometimes forgotten that literature, es-
pecially in some of its forms, is much more of a
macrocosm than any of its sister species of Imitation.
The greater epic, the novel, and especially the drama,
have got to face and reproduce life, character, action,
circumstance, in all their varieties, foul as well as fair,
trivial as well as dignified, commonplace as well as
exceptional. To attempt to clothe all this in the same
Grand Style, or in the Grand Style at all, is to offend
against the sumptuary laws of Art itself. The so-called
classical drama of modern time has made this attempt ;
and the wiser judgment of the best periods of criticism
has decided that it has failed. Poetry at large tried to
do it for a century and a half or thereabouts, and failed
even more egregiously. Prose fiction never really
succeeded until it cast the attempt aside. I have boldly
confessed that I do not think Dante did attempt it;
and that, though Milton certainly did, and achieved
perhaps the only success on record, he paid for it

THE GRAND STYLE SHAKESPEARE 163

somewhat dearly, and could not have attained what
success he did attain but for the extremely exceptional
nature of his subject. Further, I think that, in certain
notorious passages, he actually tried to get out of the
Grand Style without succeeding in getting into any-
thing else good. Your short poem, like your sculpture
or your picture, is all the better for being Grand Style
unmixed; not so your long one, and still less your
drama. Thus, Shakespeare himself never deserts the
Grand Style in the Sonnets, or indeed in any of his
poems, except and then not always songs in the
plays of such a character that grandeur would be
almost or wholly out of place. In his plays themselves
he suits style to subject, and so alternates Grand Style
with that which is not grand.

But the grandeur of its grandeur when it is grand !
And the inexhaustible variety of it, and of the means
whereby it is attained! I believe I was once rash
enough to assert that you could not open a double page
of the Globe edition which means something more
than two hundred lines (excepting of course the prose
passages, the plays only partially Shakespeare's and
those dealing with purely comic matter) without
coming on something unmistakably in the Grand
Style. To justify this boast "at the foot of the letter"
would no doubt be difficult, seeing that there are some-
thing like five hundred such page-openings. But in
such experiments as I have made and they are
numerous I have very rarely drawn the cover blank,
and have frequently "found" where, from the subject
and context, finding was unlikely.

This ubiquity of the Shakespearian Grand Style, as
combined and contrasted with its abstinence from con-
tinuity, is one of its most notable characteristics, and
is connected in the closest degree with that absence

164 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

of mannerism which has been noted. The extreme
difficulty of defining or even describing Shakespeare's
style has been alike the theme, and the despair of the
commentators; it extends to, and is intensified in the
case of, his Grand Style. The ticketing critics who were
so common in classical times, and who are not unknown
in modern, would be some of the latter have been
hopelessly "out" with him. You cannot fix on any
special collocation of words like Milton's adoption and
extension of the Chaucerian epithet before and after
the noun; on any tricks of grammar like Milton's
apposition; on any specially favourite words such as
those to be found in the most diverse writers. It seems
as if he had deliberately determined that no special
mould, no particular tool, no recipe of mixture and
arrangement, should be capable of being pointed out
as his secret, or even as one of his secrets, of attaining
grandeur. It has been remarked already that the
subject, or at least the context of subject, hardly
matters. But other things matter as little. Any
vocabulary; any syntax; any rhetoric, will do for
Shakespeare to produce his masterpieces; and it may
sometimes seem as if like conjurors very often and
chemists sometimes he had taken a sort of whimsical
delight in producing his effects with the minimum of
apparatus, or with apparatus of the least formal kind.
You may find curious instances of this in the very
forefront of his work as it is read, though it may have
been his last completed task. Take those two well-
known lines of Prospero's,

In the dark backward and abysm of Time,
and

To act her earthy and abhorred commands.

Now a hasty critic may dismiss the most obvious device
by which the style is raised in these as merely the old

THE GRAND STYLE SHAKESPEARE 16$

trick, familiar for generations before Shakespeare, and
already almost caricatured by men like Fisher and
Berners the trick of combining native and imported
elements. But there is something much more than a
mere draft on the Teutonic and Romance columns of
a conveniently arranged Dictionary of Synonyms. The
double source is drawn upon; "backward" and
"earthy" do stand to "abysm" and "abhorred" as
the pairs so familiar in Bible and Prayer-book do to
each other. But Shakespeare is not content with this
grammar-school antithesis. In the first place, he varies
the meaning in " backward " and " abysm," giving waste
horizontal stretch in the one case and unplumbed depth
in the other; and he also contrasts the mere sound of
the words as much as possible, while deliberately
adopting the form in "ysm" for the sake of euphony.
In the second he adds to the contrast of origin and
sound a complete change of point of view. "Earthy"
is a quality of the commands; "abhorred" an attitude
of the mind commanded. He has tapped not one but
many of the Longinian "sources"; he has blended the
products of his tapping. And yet these are mere every-
day instances, the ordinaire, as it were, of his cellar.

Pass from the almost certainly last to one of the
certainly earliest plays, the Two Gentlemen, and
avoiding the apex already quoted from it, taking (at
whatever may be their full value) the imperfect con-
struction, the more imperfect characterization, the
superabundant evidences of the novitiate in conceit
and word-play and trifling consider for a moment
one line of its second greatest passage (i. iii. 84),

The uncertain glory of an April day.

"Quite commonplace," says the quite commonplace
reader. "Everybody knows that April days are un-
certain." But has everybody called them so in this

166 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

simplicity and consummateness of phrase f Try obvious
variants :

The fickle glory of an April day,

or "the treacherous," or "the passing," or a dozen
others, not to mention the non-obvious ones which
would have commended themselves to second- or
tenth-rate writers of that day and this far-fetched
and dear-bought frigidities which will suggest them-
selves by the dozen. Then do the same thing with
"glory," substituting "splendour," "beauty," what
you will. Put all the results of experiment beside the
actual text, and you will, if you have a Grand Style
ear, have very little difficulty in determining where
the Grand Style lies with Ariel and the bee, not
beside the lamp and in the chemist's shop.

To go all through the plays, even by sample at fancy,
would be impossible ; but it may perhaps be permitted
to me to give a few more of my sortes Shakespearian^.
I shall avoid, as I have avoided, except by general
reference, the most famous passages for there is no
need to have recourse to them, and the means by which
their effects are achieved, though always different in
individual, are never different in general character
from those manifest in the smaller instances if any
can be called small. The most general touch of all is
perhaps that already noticed the ambidexterity with
which the poet uses the most and the least unusual
phrases and words. He has neither a studied grandilo-
quence nor a studied simplicity, nor does he specially
affect that peculiar source of sublimity that is to say,
"transport" which consists in a sort of catachresis
or deliberate misuse of words in secondary intentions,
like that frequently adopted by Sir Thomas Browne.
He will at one moment write a phrase "to tear with
thunder the wide cheeks of the air," which has the

THE GRAND STYLE SHAKESPEARE 167

very sound-effect of which it speaks, and which has
the largeness of the universe itself, with metrical
accompaniments to match; and then he will pass in
the same speech from this poetical magnificence to the
plain downright scorn of

This fellow had a Volscian to his mother 1 .

He will write, using the simplest words and most
familiar metre,

Fear no more the heat of the sun
Nor the furious winter's rages,

producing, it appears, on some people the effect of
"drivel" certainly producing on others the effect of
the most perfect and poignant poetry of ordinary life.
And then, within a page or two, he will sketch a picture
of war in a line and a half, with a couple of images
of sound and sight that could not be beaten in effect
by a paragraph, or another page:

That when they hear the Roman horses neigh,
Behold their quartered fires

where the absence of superfluity, and the presence of
concentration, are equally remarkable 2 . For my part,
if I had any doubt about Shakespeare having a hand
in Pericles, one line would settle it

A terrible childbed hast thou had, my dear 3 .

For even Middleton or Webster, the two who have
come nearest to Shakespearian phraseology, could
hardly have achieved this curious union of simplicity
and the Grand Style; while Cyril Tourneur, who has
been thought by some to have the touch, certainly
could not have achieved it.

Nor is it less interesting to examine the passages
which not of the greatest as wholes; not containing
any of the actual "jewels five words long" which are

1 Coriolanus, v. iii. 178. 2 Cymbeline, iv. ii. 258; iv. 17.

8 Pericles, in. i. 57.

168 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

so plentiful; not exempt, it may be, from the less grand
marks of the form and pressure of the time, in conceit
and euphuism and absence of restraint still betray
this Grand Style of Shakespeare's. Take, for instance,
that in some ways most Shakespearian of all the plays
not greatest Timon of Athens. The central situation is,
of course, dramatic enough; but it is not perhaps one
which lends itself to effective dramatic treatment of
the Shakespearian kind, because there is not sufficient
development of character; while it does lend itself to
that Shakespearian divagation and promiscuity of
handling which, though they do not disturb some of
us, seem to disturb others so much. But the play is
simply drenched with the Grand Style every rift is
packed with Grand Style gold not, it nray be, refined
to the point of the greatest, but gold unmistakable.
It peeps out of the rhetorical commonplaces of the
professional cynic Apemantus :

Like madness is the glory of this life,

As this pomp shows to a little oil and root,

where the first verse at least is perfect 1 . Alcibiades
in Shakespeare's scheme not the Admirable Crichton
of some views of him, if not of history, but only a rather
good specimen of professional soldier has vouchsafed
to him that splendid cadence

Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye
On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead
Is noble Timon 2 .

The excellent Flavius best of servants, but certainly
not most poetical of men is made mouthpiece of that
glorious line

O ! the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us 8 .
As for Timon himself, his misfortunes make him a

1 Timon of Athens, i. ii. 139.

* Ibid. V. iv. 78. 8 Ibid. iv. ii. 30.

THE GRAND STYLE SHAKESPEARE 169

Shakespeare. Even the first frantic retrospect of
cursing on Athens is, till the rhyme comes at least,
a Grand Style raving. The address to "the blessed
breeding sun" is greater still; and the better known
demonstration of the universality of thieving is raised
by the style, despite its desperate quaintness, almost
to the level of the greatest things in Hamlet.

The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, that this Grand
Style is not easily tracked or discovered by observa-
tion, unless you give yourself up primarily to the feeling
of it. You cannot tell how it arises, and you will often
have some difficulty in deciding why it goes. It is the
truest, precisely because it is the most irresponsible,
of the winds of the spirit no trade wind or Etesian
gale, but a breeze that rises and falls, if not exactly as
it listeth as the genius of the poet and the occasions
of the subject list. We may recur once more in the
useful, not the useless, fashion of comparison, the
fashion which appraises qualities, but does not ticket
values to the four names which, in Literature, have
been most frequently associated with this Style. Homer
has it in a form scarcely comparable with the others.
If we had more early Greek epic more especially if
we had Antimachus we should be much better judges
of the Homeric Grand Style than we are. As it is, we
see in it extraordinary and extraordinarily varied
melody of verse and phrase, a use of Figure, especially
of Simile, which is unsurpassed, and to which indeed
all subsequent literary poetry is directly or indirectly
indebted; and one great engine, the elaborate and
mostly perpetual epithet, which is a great puzzle to
cautious and widely experienced critics. For the ancients
will not tell us exactly how these epithets affected them ;
and we ought to know, lest we make the same mistakes
which, as we see, foreigners are constantly making

170 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

about English, and which, no doubt, Englishmen as
frequently make about foreign literature.

We are safer with Dante, for there we have practi-
cally all possible facilities of comparison. The language
is still living; we know what those who have spoken
and written it since thought and think about it; and
we have our own independent, but in this case fully
informed, judgment to be the sovereign guide. We find
that there is undoubtedly a prevalent style in Dante:
and that this is of a peculiar gravity, the gravest style
perhaps in all literature, yet in no sense stiff or stilted,
and not (to some tastes) at all affected. But it seems,
to some at least, that this style is very largely influenced,
and even to some considerable extent produced, by
the metre which is of an intense idiosyncrasy, and
though not in the least monotonous, curiously uniform
in general atmosphere much more so indeed than the
Greek hexameter, and quite infinitely more so than
the English blank verse. We find, further, that Dante
has no exclusive preference for lofty images or even
expressions: and that though he will use the most
elaborate and carefully-sifted poetic-pictorial diction,
his Grand Style is not so much a matter of that as
of the suffused atmosphere or aura spoken of above.
There is in fact, in the old sense of the word as applied
to music, a Dantesque mode pervading everything
and affecting grotesque, extravagance, pedantry
(these are not my words, but such as others use)
almost or quite as much as the grander parts them-
selves. Breaking chronological order, for obvious
reasons, we come to Milton, and here again we find
something all-pervading. But its nature is different:
and so is the nature of its pervasion. It is practically
independent of metre for the peculiarity of blank
verse is that it imposes no character of its own, but

THE GRAND STYLE SHAKESPEARE 171

takes that of its writer "blankness" in the worst
sense; the "tumid gorgeousness " which Johnson, not
without some excuse, mistook for its differentia; or a
varied magnificence in the best and strictest sense of
that word, which knows no limit and accepts no rule.
The Miltonic style is quite above the Miltonic metre
in one sense of "above" though hardly in another;
it is perceivable almost equally in the complicated
stanza of the "Nativity," in the octo-syllables of the
early middle poems, in the rhymed blank verse of
Lycidas, in the pure blank verse of the Paradises, in
the dialogues and the chorics of Samson. It admits
variety; but here also, plus (a change, plus fest la
meme chose. I do not know that we can free it from the
label of affectation; though it is affectation transcen-
dentalized and sublimed. The proof is that it cannot
descend and unbend as Dante's can. But we are not
talking at length of Milton here. Suffice it to say that
this undoubted uniformity, with the less universal but
somewhat similar uniformity of Dante, which no doubt
patterned it, and the quite different uniformity of
Homer, undoubtedly helped to create the idea of a
Grand Style existing almost ab extra, and bound to
present itself separately, at demand, everywhere, for
everything.

To this idea Shakespeare is certainly rebel; if a
manner so absolutely aristocratic as his can even admit
the suggestion of rebellion. Milton he cannot be for
many reasons, including the fact that he has to go
before Milton can come; Dante he does not choose to
be; Shakespeare he is. And as being Shakespeare in
order, indeed, to make what we mean by Shakespeare
he uses the Grand Style as his Attendant Spirit. He
says to it, "Come," and it comes; he says to it, "Go,"
and it goes. It is not his master, as to some extent their

172 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

styles were the masters both of Dante and of Milton.
He does not make it his mistress, as not a few hardly
lesser men have done caressing it; doing homage to
it; and never letting it out of his sight if he can help.
Sometimes he seems almost wilfully and capriciously
to give it its conge to take up with inferior creatures
for pastime. But this is a delusion. He knows that to
employ a being so majestical for every purpose of a
dramatic household is a profanation that she is for
the pageants and the passions, for the big wars and
the happy or unhappy loves, for the actions and the
agonies of pith and moment. For the rest, the hand-
maidens and the serving-men, the clowns and the fools,
the Osrics and the Poloniuses will do; though he will
not grudge even to them, when it suits % him, a touch
of the higher language, a flash of the sublimer thought.
To this you must make up your mind, if you go a
Grand-Styling with Shakespeare.

There is no fear, as I said before, of drawing the
covers blank. Take for our last instance that strange
play so puzzling in many ways, so offensive, I believe,
to some good folk, such a mixture of almost the highest
Shakespeare and almost the most ordinary University
Wit take Troilus and Cressida. Neglect, while to
this or that extent acknowledging for, if you cannot
combine acknowledgment and neglect in this way, you
may be an excellent neighbour and a very good bowler,
but you are no critic neglect the disappointment in
the handling of some of the characters, the confused
action, the uncomely patches. Neglect further or
rather do not neglect, but use only as a contrast and
foil the tale of bombasted blank verse and craggy
conceited phrase as it seems to some. Postpone for
consideration the jumble (I am here speaking through-
out the language of the Advocatus Diaboli) of long-

THE GRAND STYLE SHAKESPEARE 173

winded tirades and word-playing prose. What remains
in your sieve your crucible your gold-washing
cradle ? Not merely the famous " One touch of nature "
which has been so frequently and so curiously mis-
interpreted. Not merely the less generally known but
hardly inferior beauties of that same magnificent
speech which begins

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,

and ends

Made emulous missions 'mongst the Gods themselves
And drave great Mars to faction 1 .

This singular throwing into dramatic form of the
ordinary Troy-books perpetually develops Grand
Style; the commonplaces of Nestor and the other chiefs
break into it in the same odd fashion in which an
apparently quiet wave, hardly undulating the surface
a little way from shore, will break on the beach itself
with a sudden burst of glittering thunder. It is extra-
ordinary how the yi>(S/zcu, the "sentences" (as Greek
and Latin rhetoricians would have called them) of the
great debating Third Scene of the First Act stick in
one's memory. The play itself is never acted; never
used for those official purposes which, I fear, make
other parts of Shakespeare best known to us both in
youth and age ; nor is it in all ways seductive to private
reading. Yet the Grand Style impression is made
constantly: though with that singular diversity and
elusiveness of means, direct and suggested, to which
attention has been drawn throughout. Take this:

There is seen

The baby figure of the giant mass
Of things to come at large 8 .

That is no bad instance of what may be called the
middle or average Shakespearian Grand Style per-

1 Troilus and Cressida, in. iii. 145 ff. * Ibid. i. iii. 345.

174 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

haps indeed it is a little below the average. It is all
the better example. The poet takes, you see, the most
ordinary words the actual vocabulary of the phrase
is not above even Wordsworthian proof. He takes for
figure an equally ordinary antithesis "baby" and
"giant" though a different writer would probably
have spoilt his own farther chances by using "pygmy"
or "dwarf," instead of "baby." And here he gets his
first hold on us; for the baby, unlike the dwarf, will
grow though whether it will grow to giant size 01
not, only the Future can tell. Then he thinks of some-
thing else "figure" and "mass" being not, like
"baby" and "giant," contrasts of size merely, but
indicating the form, the idea, that is to be impressed
on the mass. And then he is not satisfied with the
limited greatness of "giant mass" itself; but expands
and flings it out into the obscure infinity of things to
come, and of things to come at large. You have passed
in some dozen or sixteen words, artfully selected, from
the definite doll of the baby figure to the vast of Space
and Time.

This may seem a fanciful sermon on a more fancifully
selected text ; but I venture to hope that it may induce
some who have not yet thought on the matter to take
not uninteresting views of the Grand Style in general
and of Shakespeare's Grand Style in particular. They
will not find these views easily exhaustible : all the less
so because all really Grand Style appeals to a certain
complementary gift and faculty in the person who is to
appreciate it; it is a sort of infinitely varying tally,
which awaits and adjusts itself to an infinite number
of counter-pieces. It abides; the counter-pieces may
get themselves ready as they can and will.

VI
MILTON AND THE GRAND STYLE

I NEED hardly assure you that I have no intention of
making the title of this paper a text for reviving the
great Arnoldian battle on the question "What is the
grand style, and who, exactly, are the poets entitled
to be credited with it?" This question unsettled in
fifty years and unlikely to be settled in five hundred
complicated, moreover, by Mr Arnold's special defini-
tions and applications, would be most inappropriate
to the present occasion 1 . But it is not inappropriate
it is, on the contrary, most appropriate to that
occasion to deal with a different and hardly conten-
tious side of the matter. The Grand Style, in its widest
and highest sense, may be said to include those forms
of expression in our present connection those forms
of poetic expression mainly, though not excluding
prose which are specially suitable to what, from the
famous treatise whose authorship is still debated, we
call "The Sublime." To do this it must possess charac-
teristics akin to the Sublime itself. It must go beyond
the commonplace and the prosaic in the bad sense; it
must stop short of the bombastic and the extravagant.
Now it is practically admitted by all but paradoxers
and crotcheteers, or persons honestly, but unfortu-
nately, deficient in the necessary literary sense, that
Milton possesses this style, whosoever else may or may
not possess it, and whatsoever conditions it may or
may not be reasonable to attach to the grant of the
possession in general. It is the purpose of this brief

1 As mentioned in Preface, the Milton Tercentenary, the paper being
read before the Royal Society of Literature.

i?6 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

paper to enquire into some of these conditions unden
which he seems to possess it in particular to see hov
he is distinguished from others who also admittedly
possess it, by relinquishing or adopting certain means'
for its attainment to endeavour in short to discover
some of the characteristics of his grand style in the
concrete, avoiding the perilous and rather unnecessary
question what may be the characteristics of the grand
style in the abstract.

Of the characteristics that are certainly his, the
most obvious are naturally the most important in one
way, the least in another. They are most important
because they, more than anything else, have coloured
the general conception of the Miltonic quality, and
because they have been usually imitated "by those who
have followed him. They are least important because
they, almost of necessity, produce only an external
and superficial grandeur or grace. Yet they certainly,
even putting the imitators and the general aside, are
not to be passed over lightly. That great critic whom I
shall still take the liberty of calling Longinus, admits
among the five sources or fountains of the Sublime
something which his translators render very variously,
but which, translated as closely as possible, comes to
this: "the quality of the writer's handling of figures
figures of speech as well as figures of thought." Now
one is sometimes tempted to a slight impatience of the
introduction of these apparently mechanical things,
which, indeed, are in ancient criticism nearly as much
of a nuisance as certain catchwords varying, of course,
from time to time are in modern. But this impatience
may be perhaps all impatience always is unwise.
Longinus was always the very last critic to submit to the
merely mechanical; and infinitely insubordinate as the
free human spirit is in details, it cannot help obeying

THE GRAND STYLE MILTON 177

certain general forms in its operations which, in this
particular sphere, may be called figures if anybody
pleases. They may be called by many other names by
many other names men actually do call them as, for
instance, when they do not like them "mannerisms,"
"tricks," "rhetorical devices" when they do like
them "secrets of art," "masteries of craftsmanship,"
and the like. That they exist exist eminently and
prominently, almost flagrantly in Milton, nobody
would dream of denying. And though I do not pro-
pose to invite your principal attention to them they
cannot be quite passed over. For they certainly have
to do have a very great deal to do with the Miltonic
style: and if the Miltonic style is even only one form of
the grand style, nothing that has to do with the
Miltonic style can be thought altogether alien from the
grand.

Take, for instance, such a well-known thing as the
habit as old as Chaucer, but brought to a pitch of
prominence and perfection by Milton of employing
two epithets and putting one before and one after the
noun, as in "cany waggons light," and "sad occasion
dear." This is a figure beyond all question it might
almost be called a figure with a vengeance, for at first
sight nothing can appear more arbitrarily mechanical,
more purely tricky. "What can it matter," says the
plain man who prides himself on regarding all con-
sideration of such things as pedantic fiddle-faddle
"whether you put the epithets together, or apart, or
before, or (except that it is unusual) after?" Well,
perhaps there is no reason: though this "perhaps" is
only to be granted for the sake of argument. The fact
remains that it does matter matters very much. And,
perhaps again, that " unusualness " is one of the reasons.
Perhaps there must always be something of unusual-

178 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

ness in the grand style: not merely Longinus, but
Aristotle, who is not generally supposed to have been
a patron of the eccentric and the bizarre, thought so.
When Wordsworth, and Mr Arnold himself, argued in
the opposite sense, and quoted certain great passages
in their favour, they forgot that usualness may be
unusual familiarity unfamiliar if the poet knows
how to make it so. But that is something of a digres-
sion. It is certain that "cany waggons light" is not
the usual arrangement that it is very effective
that, in the context especially, it does help the sublimity,
the grandeur, the consummateness-in-the-circum-
stances, of the style. For " consummateness in the
circumstances" is, I think, about as safe and probable
a definition of the indefinable as may be in the case of
our grand style. Nor, if any one thinks "Chineses"
and their "waggons" too slight for such a style, can
he find the same fault with "sad occasion dear" or
with many other exercises of this well-known device.
Like all such devices, it can be abused: and like most
of them it tempts the imitators to abuse it. Nothing
is more common in intentional or unintentional bur-
lesques of our poet : and especially when it is combined
with a travesty of his Latinisms, it can be very terrible.
Perhaps never did a true poet in a great poem admit
such a deformity as the "excoriate forks deform" in
Cowper's Tardley Oak. But we all know that the best
things, misused, become the worst.

Another well-known and still commoner device,
actually efficacious in producing the sublime, possibly
so in producing something almost ridiculous, is the
Miltonic apposition. Nothing can be finer or more
effective than this in such cases as

And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old.
But the parodists seized on it at once : and there is nothing

THE GRAND STYLE MILTON 179

more effective in another way than the adjustment of
it to the purposes of parody in The Splendid Shilling,
and all its best successors: nothing less grateful than
some serious abuses of it by Thomson and the other
mid-eighteenth century writers "in the manner of
Milton."

For this is the danger of all mechanical or merely
physical things that their use or abuse, their benefi-
cent or maleficent effect, does not lie in themselves.
The flame will torture and disfigure and destroy as
readily as it will give light and warmth: the steel will
take the life of the innocent as effectively and as ruth-
lessly as that of the guilty. Another ancient critic,
with less soul in him than Longinus, but with about
as much sense as ever critic had (Quintilian), observed
that it was sometimes hard to distinguish faults from
figures of speech. Nothing is more certain that it is
exceedingly possible, and exceedingly easy, to use
figures so that they shall be faults. Yet they remain
a "source of the sublime" as well as a source of other
things down to the ridiculous : and I should not wonder
if the famous "one step" adage suggested itself to the
first person who used it, in direct connection with this
habit of regarding figures as sublime-producing machin-
ery. Yet Milton could certainly make them so : he did
make them so in these and other instances which it
would take too long to enumerate, and which would
be absolutely impossible to describe or discuss on the
present occasion. Perhaps, indeed, no author would
have been more eagerly seized upon by Longinus him-
self to justify his inclusion of this source of sublimity.

Let us go a step higher. There will, I suppose, be
very little dispute about the extraordinary lift given
to Milton's style by his power to handle, and his con-
stant handling of language in a way less "mechanical"

i8o MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

(since we have used the word) than that just discussed;
hardly mechanical at all, some would say, and I should
agree with them ; but still a matter of pure style. This
is his selection, his moulding, his collocation of phrase
and rhythm so as to clothe the verse with the fullest
accompaniment of poetical music. I am not now pro-
posing to enter upon any matter strictly prosodic. I
know that there are a good many people who do not
want to hear about such matter at all: and I have
endeavoured to say what I have to say, to people who
do want to hear about it, elsewhere. The Johnstones
and the Maxwells, the Caravats and the Shanavests,
the Big-Endians and the Little-Endians of Miltonic
prosody may agree heartily on the point with which I
am now occupied. Here at least Milton avails himself
of the most obviously mechanical means of producing
grandeur and grace, less than almost any poet of
whom we have record except Shakespeare. Nobody
can put Dante higher than I do; in a moment you will
see that in some respects I think Milton his inferior.
But there can be no doubt that Dante owes a great
deal to his happy selection, once for all, of the inter-
rhymed tercet. Of course he has brought out the virtue
of it as no one else has done: but that virtue is, as in
the case of some other metres, to a great extent,
intrinsic and immanent at your command but not
exactly yow, or given by you. The same is the case
with the Spenserian, with the In Memoriam metre,
with rhyme-royal perhaps with others. You have got
to be the magician to set the spirit at work : but when
it does work its accomplishment is, to a certain extent,
its own and not yours. Now there is no spirit in the
whole range of the poetical hierarchy more potent than
blank verse: but its potency is the least automatic of
all, the most dependent on the continued guidance and

THE GRAND STYLE MILTON 181

commands of the poet himself. And he must give this
guidance and these commands not merely by way of
estimable subject and worthy moral idea. What a
chain of " extremely valuable thoughts" will come to
in blank verse when no care is taken to lighten it by
phrase and rhythm, and word-music, and word-
colour what a mere galley-slave load of rusty iron
it becomes, Wordsworth himself has taught us only
too well. I have never doubted that Milton's deter-
mination towards blank verse, and before that final
determination his selection of the curious " rhymed
blank verse," as it has been called, in which he clothed
perhaps his greatest single and moderate-sized poetical
achievement Lycidas was the result of his con-
sciousness of and his confidence in his powers. He
knew that he could manage phrase and rhythm in the
grand manner so as to suffice for the attainment of a
consummate poetic style. It was an adventure in the
fashion of those romances, the blessed paths among
which even his elder feet never forgot, though they
might actually sometimes wander in worse places a
gage to hold bridge or pass without shield or helmet,
with sword only or only spear, as against the full
armour of other poets. That he did it, first with only
a modified and very limited use of rhyme and a vague
and indefinite one of stanza, then with neither stanza
nor rhyme at all, everybody knows; how he did it, at
least in great part, I have no doubt. It was by the
grandeur and grace of style obtained mainly, if not
wholly, through the means which we are now more
particularly to notice.

For myself, I should want, outside of Dante and
Shakespeare and Aeschylus and Lucretius, no better
example of the grand style in poetry than Lycidas
itself. For variety of grandeur, I do not think you can

i82 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

find any passage of equal length in the Paradises to
match it : and if the selection surprises any one, I fear
he must be under the delusion which, according to
Schlegel, some one was witty enough to ascribe to
Burke that "the Sublime is a grenadier with very
large whiskers." Even the too famous outburst of
sectarianism to which I have the strongest personal
objection as a matter of history and opinion, and which
some of the stanchest of Milton's admirers have
admitted to be an error of taste and art seems to me,
for all that, not to lose grandeur of form. And why?
Because the supremacy of expression and phrase and
verse remains the discord and the declension, even
to those who find them such, are in the sentiment
only.

I do not know whether any one has ever been rash
enough, or perverse enough, to attempt to "set"
Lycidas. He would deserve penal servitude for life
with two barrel organs playing different tunes, out of
time, under the windows of his cell if only for the
utter superfluity of his naughtiness. Even if, per
impossibile, a musical accompaniment could be com-
posed that should not jar with the piece, it must
necessarily drown, or at least draw attention from,
the poetical music which this grandeur of style gives
and includes inevitably in itself. We know from the
Cambridge MS. what pains Milton took with the com-
position in the smallest details : and we know likewise
that his alterations and selections of alternative were
(what is by no means invariably the case when poets
alter and select) almost always decided improvements.
All of them, I think it may be said without rash-
ness, tend in the direction of still further exalting this
grandeur of style by word and sound-arrangement,
colour, outline. In one of the very grandest passages

THE GRAND STYLE MILTON 183

of all, one of the most perfect phrases in English
poetry

Sleepst by the fable of Bellerus old

Where the great vision of the guarded mount
Looks towards Namancos and Bayona's hold

we know, for instance, that he had at first written
"Corineus," a name just as good in itself as "Bellerus,"
well known to most of his probable readers in the
fables of the chroniclers who had the monopoly of the
history of England, but, as it happens, concerting,
symphonising, less well with the rest of the passage in
sound. So he justly coined "Bellerus" from "Bele-
rium," and gave him an extra / "for love and for
euphony" as a christening gift.

There are other points about this triplet too well
known for emphasising, now and here in particular:
but it may well serve as text for a few words on that
mighty engine of grandeur of style in the use of which
no one has ever surpassed Milton the employment of
proper names. No device of his that touches style is
more celebrated; none, perhaps, has been more vio-
lently disliked by those who cannot taste him. His
conscious reasons for adopting it may be variously
guessed at. There were the concurrent examples of the
ancients whom he revered and the mediaeval writers
whom he really loved for there never was, in all
literature, such a blend of Classic and Romantic as
Milton. There was the foible of the age and not a bad
foible either for the putting in evidence of learning
for giving, as it were, key- and catch-words which
brother students might recognise, and which might
awake in them, as in himself, pleasant trains of associ-
ation and remembrance. There was the delight in a
wide survey of times and countries, of looking back to
the famous men our fathers that were before us of

184 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

knitting his own literature to the literature of Spenser
and Ariosto, of Dante and Petrarch, of all the great
poets and prosemen of ancient times. But the master
inducement must have been really, whatever it was
consciously, the power and beauty of the words them-
selves the combination of attractive strangeness,
freedom from vulgarity, and intrinsic harmony. You
will never find Milton bringing in an ugly name: he
would have agreed with Boileau there, though he would
have had nothing of Boileau's arbitrary and finical
notions as to what was ugly. And so he scatters the
light and colour and music of these names all over his
verse seeming to grow fonder and fonder of the
practice as he grows older, from the consummate but
not lavish examples of it in Lycidas itself-down to the
positive revels of nomenclature geographical, myth-
ological, romantic which are to be found in Paradise
Regained.

But Milton does not depend on these "purple stripes
that give brightness to the dress" things that, as such
and in the phrase just used, even the sober taste of
Quintilian approved. His " common vocabulary" a
"common" which is made so uncommon, is as grand
as his "proper," and the grandeur is by no means
always achieved by unusual diction in individual
words, though it sometimes is. His oddities of spelling
"sovran," "harald," "murtherer," and the rest
conduce very little to it, if, indeed, they are not some-
thing of a drawback, as freaks of this kind always are.
But his selection of words and his arrangement of them
are simply consummate: and nothing could better
illustrate and confirm the famous doctrine of Longinus
that beautiful words are the very light of thought, or
the still more audaciously thoroughgoing principle of
Dionysius of Halicarnassus that you can trace the

THE GRAND STYLE MILTON 185

source of beautiful style right down or up to beautiful
letters. Let us open it cannot be opened too often
our Lycidas yet once more. It is true that there is
such a blaze of the grand style all through it that it is
difficult to isolate any particular ray: or rather to select
any particular ray for isolation and analysis. But the
difficulty only arises from their number, and the
unbroken succession of them. Take almost the earliest
that of the second line. He wants to tell us that
myrtle withers and that ivy is evergreen. It is not
all-important, but it is connected with the theme and
not a mere decorative addition; it is worthy of the
grand style, and it has it.

Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere

summons to its mere contrast of natural fact the aid
of the most cunning contrast of vowel sound and
arrangement of rhythm. Look down a few lines and
find the phrases which tip each line for four running
"lofty rhyme," "watery bier," "parching wind,"
"melodious tear." "Oh," says the objector, "anybody
can pile on adjectives." Yes; but can anybody pile
on these adjectives? In a certain other school the
" gradus epithet" is a well-known ornamental addition.
You can often, if not most often, take it away without
spoiling the sense, or substitute half a dozen others
without much affecting that sense. Here you cannot.
"Lofty" keys on directly and almost inevitably to
"build" which has come before; "watery" is necessary
to the occasion, "parching" independently of its value
as sound is wanted as a contrast to "watery," and
"melodious" tear is hardly a mere epithet at all. It
expresses "tears with melody" the melody of lament
and regret. That is how the grand style uses epithets:
and how the gradus does not suggest their use.

Again, alliteration, it sometimes has been held, is

i86 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

a childish thing perhaps worse a foolish and tawdry
bedizenment. Is it ? Try, for instance, such a phrase as

The swart star sparely looks.
Try it without the alliteration

The fierce star rarely looks.

Try it with the adverb which Milton himself once thought
of substituting "stintly"; try it with anything but
this cunning variation of the same "s" alliteration
with a different subsidiary consonant and the almost
more cunning selection of the different values of the
same vowel. Your ear, if you happen to possess one,
will tell you of the heavy change.

Try "the embattled mount" (an excellent phrase in
itself) for "the guarded mount" in the passage cited
above. Cut off

Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore

(it is not needed in sense) from the verse paragraph to
which it belongs and see what that change does. Roll
over on the palate of your mind such expressions as
"Clear Spirit," "Broad rumour." Weigh, measure,
adjust to each other, and consider the adjustment of
such words as the constituents of the line
To scorn delights and live laborious days.

You will begin, I suspect, to think more nobly of
the Dionysian "beautiful letters" than to hold them
the mere "rhetoricians' tools" which they have often
been considered: and you will estimate them at their
due worth as constituents, in their turn, of the grand
style. And if contrast is wanted, take what some, I
believe, have considered an exquisitely pathetic pas-
sage what is truly and genuinely pathetic in sub-
stance from a poet whom Mr Arnold, while exalting
him above all but the first two of our poets, pronounced
to have no "style at all"

THE GRAND STYLE MILTON 187

The wretched parents all that night

Went shouting far and wide,
But there was neither sound nor sight,

To serve them for a guide.

As pathetic as you like in substance: perhaps (it is
no matter, but it may be mentioned) expressing a more
genuine, certainly a deeper sorrow than that of Milton
for King. But of the grand style nothing intention-
ally nothing if you please, but nothing.

Yet let us, according to the ordinary classification,
go higher again. According to the ordinary classifi-
cation, I say, for that classification is not mine: and
among the mysteries of "the written word which
conquers time" I do not know one that is higher or
lower than another. But that is not the general
estimate: and I dare say some who hear me think long
till we come to what is commonly called substance or
matter and leave mere form though we shall find it
difficult to do that in discussing any kind of style,
grand, medium, or low. But we can shift to some extent
from the arrangement of words to their meaning: or
to more of the meaning and less of the mere arrange-
ment. In this plane of consideration there is certainly
nothing which contributes more to the grandeur of
Milton's style than what Macaulay (in a contrast with
Dante, which is, perhaps, more well meant than happily
expressed, and which, I believe, the late Mr Courthope
more fully treated) calls his "dim intimations" what
may be perhaps more happily called the "Miltonic
vague." With his usual love of the sharpest antithesis
Macaulay himself has selected from Dante examples
which, certainly not grotesque in the original, are
made to appear somewhat grotesque in the citation
and translation. There is no need to do this, and in
fact it is a mistake in criticism to do it : for grotesque
necessitates preciseness of a peculiar kind. You may

i88 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

see this in another art by contrasting Blake who, with
all his extravagance, is scarcely ever or almost never
grotesque, with Cruikshank, who is never anything
else. But though grotesque requires precision there is not
the slightest necessity that precision should be grotesque.
However, let us leave that side of the matter.

It is certain that among the few undoubted prac-
titioners of the grand style Milton stands almost alone
in this " dimness," this " vagueness" of his it is
indeed one of his most Romantic characteristics. Per-
haps in some cases it may require a certain amount of
reflection at any rate a certain amount of comparison
to appreciate its extent and peculiarity, for Milton
does not by any means shun description or the use o
apparently descriptive epithets. ^ivxCU Allegro and
// Penseroso through Comus and Lycidas to the Para-
dises and on to Samson he has abundance of it. In
fact, I am not sure that I do not myself see Harapha
and Dalilah in Samson more clearly than I see almost
any other of Milton's personages. I use "see" in its
strictest sense. His presentation of personage and
place and circumstance is always intellectually suffi-
cient; but the "mind's eye" with which they are con-
templated is not the one that Hamlet meant. Indeed,
in Hamlet's sense, I doubt whether there is a "visible"
person in Milton. Eve once comes pretty near it, and
there is a plausible biographical gloss which explains
that. But I see Virgil always, at least in the Inf&rno,
much more clearly than I generally see her. There are
touches of the visual appeal in Sin ; and I think Milton
meant to make Adam as clear as Palma il Vecchio
has made him to the eye ; but the very fact of this char-
acterises his style of literature in its absence of result.

It is perhaps, however, in places and scenes rather*
than in persons that this peculiar vagueness emerges

THE GRAND STYLE MILTON 189

most strikingly, as does the opposite quality in his
greatest rivals. One can see and could find one's way
about the Cave of the Nymphs with the greatest ease,
and if I am ever fortunate enough to reach the Earthly
Paradise I shall know exactly where to look for Matilda,
and almost exactly what she will look like. It may be
my fault, but I can see nothing with this same dis-
tinctness in Milton. It is, I dare say, known to not a
few in the present company that an ingenious lady
thinks she has exactly identified the scenery of
U Allegro and its companion, with a Swiss not an Eng-
lish landscape. For myself, I should certainly say that
Milton has endeavoured to give, and has very well
succeeded in giving an English landscape, but that the
landscape's original might be anywhere in England, at
least between Trent and the Channel, Severn and the
North Sea; that it is much more everywhere than any-
where in particular. It is the same with the wood of
Comus, and the same with much of the beautiful but
not strictly focus sed scenery of Lycidas, where, by the
way, the finest thing of all is the vast vague prospect
over the Atlantic waves, in the very lines so often
quoted. There is one particular picture in Dante to
which I know absolutely nothing similar in Milton; I
refer, of course, to similarity in kind not in particulars.
And that is the great passage of the Gate of Purgatory,
with the first stair of flashing white, and the second,
cross-riven, of sullen blue, and the blaze of blood-red
porphyry above, and the sworded angel in the ashen
cloak sitting on the threshold itself, his feet on the
crimson step. I do not remember any actual picture of
this, but I see it as if Rossetti had painted it for my
mantel-piece. The nearest thing in Milton is, I suppose,
the discovery by Ithuriel. We have all seen pictures
of that, but they do not " realise" Milton to me.

190 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

Now it would be, of course, not only possible but
easy to give a dozen reasons from tolerably plausible
to utterly fantastic why Milton does not attempt
pictura as well as poesis. That he could not have done
it is not, I think, one of these. I hardly know any-
thing that Milton could not have done except, perhaps,
be humorous. You may, if you like, urge national
tendencies : but there is the unfortunate fact before you
that Spenser, as good and pure an Englishman as
Milton, and in a manner his master, is almost the most
pictorial of poets, with numerous others, from Chaucer
long before him to men happily still alive, to keep him
in company. You may say it was Puritanism : but you
will find that very difficult to adjust to numberless
things in the poems from the earliest to the latest,
from the landscape of U Allegro through the great
flower-piece of Lycidas and the hospitality really shown
to Raphael in Paradise Lost to that delusively offered
to Christ in Paradise Regained. Milton has not the
slightest shrinking from varied colour, even from
voluptuous and luxurious detail. But he never com-
bines it with all the definiteness of the arts of design :
it is always left to the vaguer suggestiveness of one
variety of literary handling. As I have hinted, we know
so many illustrations to Milton that it may be hard to
realise this, but even here there is a lesson waiting for
those who care to learn it. There are many illustrations
to Milton, but there are few that satisfy or even please
his thorough admirers.

But is this abstinence from precise colour and form
an impediment in the way of reaching the grand style ?
Most certainly not, though the indulgence in it is as
certainly, an excellent means thereto. Perhaps there
is hardly even in Dante a passage achieving this grand
style better in the varied and elaborate fashion than

THE GRAND STYLE MILTON 191

the one just referred to. This brings under contribution
almost as many sources of the Sublime as ever flowed
on Ida, from the appeals to the mental sight just
particularised to others not less remarkable of the
audible kind. The great words ammassiccia andjiam-
meggiante we may be sure such a word-artist as Milton,
and such a student of Dante himself, must have envied
hisfmaster. But the grand style is the Rome of styles :
and all roads lead to it as to the other Eternal City.

The Miltonic vague is not only no drawback, it is
almost the central strength and source of the grandeur
of the poet's style. Macaulay was right there: however
much he may have been out in his actual contrast
with Dante. Nor is it at all necessary to have recourse
to the peculiar character of Milton's subject as excusing
what requires no excuses, or necessitating what, if the
poet had chosen to do so, could have been avoided.
It is sufficient that this vagueness was the method
which he preferred, to which he was best adapted,
which he exercises with most success, and which, when
he deserts it, brings him sometimes nearest to failure.
It is his element: he is monacbus in claustro with any
kind of restriction : and his powers are multiplied thirty
fold when he gets to the infinite or at any rate the com-
paratively boundless. There cannot be much less
definition given to the visual idea than in
All night the dreadless angel, unpursued
even the lines which follow adding very little. And yet
if these six words do not substitute an example of the
grand style I shall acknowledge my own unfitness to
treat of the subject. While if I must, if only as an
illuminative contrast, undertake the ungracious office
of pointing out what is not in the grand style I have
only to go a score or two lines lower in the same context

A -fi A
ana nna thou ^ n notary prowess next

192 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

which I do not think grand. You see Milton wanted to
confer upon the Archangel Gabriel the very definite
post of second in command, which Dante would have
expressed as definitely. But he preferred to paraphrase
and periphrase it into something less definite, and well !
did not quite succeed.

How magnificently, on the other hand, this quality
of vagueness has stood him in stead elsewhere it is
scarcely necessary to take up time by instancing. It
is difficult to conceive anything more suitable to it
than the journey of Satan from Hell to Paradise: and
it is at least possible that if he had relied on it more
exclusively he has actually used it with consummate
effect in the Sin- and Death-scene, he would have
avoided some of the condemnation with which that
scene has been visited, not merely by the adversary
and the entirely miscomprehending reader, but by
some weak brethren. The form of wide expatiation
and Pisgah-sight which this vagueness takes, notice-
able as has been said as early as Lycidas, if not earlier,
becomes more and more so as he goes on, and supplies
nearly all the finest passages except

'Tis true I am that spirit unfortunate
in Paradise Regained.

But it is an entire mistake to suppose that this
aspiration after space or rather no space, required
corresponding range of subject or scene in order to
show itself. It is not only Dr Johnson who has either
taken for granted or mistakenly argued that the poet
of Paradise Lost could not be a good poet in Sonnet.
As a matter of fact the Sonnets are among the chief
places for the Miltonic mastery of the grand style, and
by no means only where they call in some of the special
devices just referred to as in

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,

THE GRAND STYLE MILTON 193

where the last three words give one of the greatest
examples of the separation of epithets so much dwelt
on. The grand style retains and maintains its grandeur
in the most varied subjects. You see it see it indeed
in remarkable perfection as early as the Ode on the
Nativity, the famous stanzas on the silencing of the
Oracles have this particular gift in such a measure as
had been possessed by no one earlier in English except
Shakespeare. You have it in the curfew passages of
// Penseroso with the " source" of the wide horizon
specially drawn upon: and in many others of that
poem and its twin. Comus is a most interesting blend
for the more serious grand style achieved irregularly
in the earlier part, and the lighter grand style achieved
inevitably in the later. As for the Sonnets the better
of them at least are saturated with it. Such a phrase
for instance as

The milder shades of Purgatory,

especially in its actual place, is an instance which may,
at first sight, seem to lie outside the majestical range
of the grand style, but will be found well within it
when examined. Of Lycidas we have spoken, and the
Paradises are simply full of it by common consent.
But perhaps there are few more interesting, though
there may be more delectable, places of study for it
than Samson Agonistes. We have here, to some small
though certainly to no great extent, what Longinus
wrongly thought he saw in the author of the Odyssey
the spectacle of a great nature slowly and slightly
senescent not indeed turning to the childish in any
way, but with its joints a little stiffened, its arteries
faintly touched with sclerosis. The grandeur is almost
increased : but the grace has waned a little. It is plate
armour rather than mail heavier, less elastic, less
shot with varied colour. Yet it is still great and of the

sin 13

194 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

greatest : it has lost nothing of the lion's ramp, though
something of his spring. And if you take it with the
earlier forms it exhibits a range of its own possibilities
which few others have ever achieved; and which,
though certainly not coextensive with that of the grand
style itself to be that would be to be coextensive
within the range of possible literature holds a great
part of the field with undisputed grasp.

The peculiar importance of the grand style to blank
verse is a matter too obvious to require lengthy treat-
ment, but too intimately connected with our subject
to escape some notice. When Dr Johnson laid it down
that "if blank verse be not tumid and gorgeous it is
crippled prose" the truth which is always to be found
in Johnsonian statements, however mudi it be warped
and wrested by prejudice, is simply this necessary
connection or need of the grand style. Now, of course,
the "tumid and gorgeous" is merely a mistaken imi-
tation of the grand. It is, indeed, so far possible to
agree with Johnson as to hold that the writer of a
long poem will take blank verse for his vehicle at his
peril, however artfully he may manage it, and however
fully he may avail himself of its capacities of variation
in foot and pause. The few people who do read Southey
now know (as Macaulay in one of the happiest examples
of his not always happy criticism prophesied that they
would) that the many who do not read him are unwise.
But even these few can take little pleasure in his blank
verse long poems. Landor's blank verse pieces of
length are hardly more readable than those of his
friend on the opposite side of politics; and this is all
the odder because Landor was actually a master of
the grand style in short phrases and detached pieces
of verse, and in prose almost without that limitation.
Only Milton can keep supplies of it ready for the long

THE GRAND STYLE MILTON 195

journey through the rhymeless desert. It is wonderful
that they threaten drought so seldom. It would be
uncritical to say that the waterskins never run dry.

But if any one should say, as is so often said with
more or less of impatience, "These are all beggarly
elements. Why do you not come to the great thought
and the great subject which are the only begetters of
the grand style?" I shall respect his sentiments, but
demur to his principles. It is, indeed, impossible that
the grand style should exist without great thought and
great subject: for the very reason that it is of the
essence of the grand style itself to make every thought
that it embodies, every subject that it touches, great.
But unfortunately the converse is not true: and it is
perfectly possible and even not uncommon for great
subjects to be treated even for great thoughts to be
expressed without any grand style at all. To deny
this would be to take a strangely pessimist view of
humanity and of life a priori^ and to neglect the facts
of both a posteriori with a sublime carelessness, or a
not quite so sublime obstinacy. Milton, it is true,
chose great subjects: but so did Blackmore. Milton's
thought is great: but I do not think that it is greater
than Wordsworth's who possessed the grand style very
rarely and who as Mr Arnold has put it, perhaps, too
sweepingly without any proviso certainly very often
had no style at all, or a style the reverse of grand.
The fact is that there are few things in this world that
are not great if greatly handled : and that it is only by
obstinately darkening the cottage of the soul that you
can quite exclude the light of the great thoughts that
these great things offer you. But expressing them but
handling the subjects greatly that is quite another
thing. To not many has that power been given, even
once or twice in their lives; to few often; to none but

13-2

196 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

the very elect of the elect with any constancy. The
prophet himself saw the glory of the Lord before he
could express it : and could not express it when he saw
it. It was only when his lips had been touched by the
coal from the altar that the power of expression came.
That power of expression, in things mundane, is the
grand style : and I have been trying to put before you
some of the coals from the altar things, let it be
remembered, in themselves only ministerial, not part
of the glory itself nor even of the offering, nor identical
with the incense that they kindle, yet without which
the smoke cannot fill the temple and the sacrifice
cannot be consummated.

VII
DANTE AND THE GRAND STYLE

I MUST ask your permission to begin with a very few
words of explanation as to the title which I have
chosen for this paper. "The grand style" is an expres-
sion of uncertain origin: but in English at least it is
now almost indissolubly associated with the name of
the late Mr Matthew Arnold who, as is known to
almost everybody, used it as one of his favourite
weapons of argumentative iteration and classificatioa
Having had some occasion to consider, not only
Mr Arnold's use of it but its general application and
signification in criticism, I have been more and more
forced to conclude that Mr Arnold's own definition of
the thing and still more the sense in which that
definition really answers to the thing itself, applies
to Dante more than to either of the two other writers
to whom alone Mr Arnold grudgingly granted it
namely Homer and Milton. Nay I think that, without
too much narrowness, one might even say that Dante
is the only writer whom it thoroughly fits, and the only
one who can really have suggested it. I should myself
apply the term much more widely though by no
means less jealously than he did: I should make it
coincide with, and perhaps extend even a little beyond,
the "Sublime" of Longinus so as to apply it to any
"peak in Darien" to anything which at varying
heights and in different circumstances and positions
distinctly stands up and out against the sky of litera-
ture. I think even (and perhaps I may say something
later on this point) that Dante deserves it in other
senses than that to which Mr Arnold would have

198 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

limited it. But I wish chiefly, at this moment, to con-
sider the application to that poet of the Arnoldian
dictum vouchsafed not without a certain recalci-
trance that "the grand style arises when a noble
nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or
severity a serious subject." And, further, it will be
possible to limit the treatment of this very consider-
ably even as it stands. You will hardly expect from
me a demonstration that Dante's is a noble nature,
poetically gifted: we can safely here, I think, "leave
the Creation and pass to the Deluge" in regard to that
matter. Nor will you imagine that I am shirking a
difficulty if I do not argue at very great length that
the subject of the Divina Commedia is a serious sub-
ject: though I am, I think, entitled to'point out in
passing that the "seriousness" of the subject, in this
consummate example of the grand style, may have
made the critic a little excessive in insisting on it as a
necessary condition of any work that shall have the
grand style. And yet further I shall, I am sure, have
your leave not to chicane in the least degree about the
expression "simplicity or severity." In fact we shall
have but rare occasion to return to Mr Arnold at all.
What I wish to do to-night is to indicate a few results
of my own study of the manner in which this noble
and poetically gifted nature, dealing with its serious
subject simply and severely or otherwise, has developed,
exemplified, provided, for us, and for all time, that
palpable-elusive thing the grand style in literature.
Everything that I shall say will be no doubt familiar
to somebody, much to many, something to everybody
here present: but it is all at any rate based on a con-
tinuous reading of the whole poem for this special
purpose, and a subsequent comparison of the passages
noticed specially as bearing on the matter in that read-

THE GRAND STYLE DANTE 199

ing. I cannot boast the genius of the gentleman who
recently revealed to the public how he or somebody
else, being called upon to write about Chateaubriand
and never having read a line of him, simply decanted
or decocted Sainte-Beuve on the subject and was com-
plimented by "a well-known authority on French
literature" (I wonder who he was !) on his extraordinary
mastery of criticism. When I have to write about an
author I generally read him first; and I seldom find
that, with any author of any greatness, even repeated
readings fail to give some result fresh to the reader if
not to other people.

For the central quality of the grandeur of Dante's
style I do not find any word in the above definition
which to my mind exactly and positively fits. For
"nobility" is too general; " simplicity" does not fit
him as it fits Homer; and "severity" seldom (to my
fancy) fits him as it not seldom does Milton. "Dignity"
has a treacherous comic aura about it: and "grandeur"
would be mere tautology. What Spenser doubtless
meant by Magnificence that is to say a combination
of the Aristotelian peyaXoTrpeTreia and the Aristotelian
peyaXotywxta transposed to the key of literature comes
near. But Aristotle himself, in the dawn of criticism,
empowered everybody to use the inestimable method
of defining by negatives: and therefore there need be
no shame in using it, while we take reinforcement from
some positive words which, if not adequate* individu-
ally, help to make out something not quite inadequate.
However often I read Dante, I never can resist a fresh
and increasing astonishment at the "quietness and
confidence" in which as the Biblical phrase has it, is
the strength of his style. Part of this, of course, comes
from the very nature of the Italian hendecasyllable,
and of his special arrangement of it in terza rinta with.

200 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

as one of his best followers in English, the late Canon
Dixon, has said, " the playing of the structure round the
stanza arrested somewhat at the end." That hurry
(which though not quite fatal to all sublimity is always
fatal to this particular kind) cannot touch it. The fall
of the trochaic cadence is not a "dying fall" by any
means ; there is nothing languishing in it ; it is as much
alive as fire, and yet there is not the slightest agitation
about it. Nobody ever, for a constancy, has the much
spoken-of gift of "inevitableness," in style at least, as
Dante has. In passages of course especially in pas-
sages of the best known part of his work the Inevitable
becomes the Inexorable : but this is by no means always
so. What the touch of the wand of his style always does
is to make the expression whether for beauty, awe,
or what not final. " There is no more to seyn," to use
a favourite catchword with our first and not far from
our greatest English Dantist, Chaucer. There is nothing
to add with any possibility of improvement: and
seldom anything to add with any real necessity of
explanation. Dante's phrase is of course sometimes
obscure, but it is then rarely of his very greatest ; if it
is, the removal of the obscurity is only a work of super-
erogation; the general impression to any reasonably
intelligent person is sufficient and right.

Take, for instance, one of his most famous one
even of his most hackneyed phrases dove il sol tace,
"where the sun is silent." You may, as a commentator,
quite properly explain that this is a transference of
imagery from one sense to another and that parallels
occur to it in the same author and in others. And there
may be persons to whom such a proceeding is helpful,
persons to whom even it is necessary though for my
part I would rather not talk of it to them. But to any-
body who is old enough I had almost said who ever

THE GRAND STYLE DANTE 201

will be old enough to understand Dante at all, this is
entirely superfluous : and any really competent student
will see at once that the absence of expansion in the
original, and the superfluity of the comment, make the
grandeur. The sun which speaks in the silence of noon-
day; which suggests its speech by moon and stars in
the silence of midnight; is silent simply and sans
phrase in Hell. There could not be a more triumphant
illustration of Mr Arnold's definition of the grand
style: not I think a more complete one of a definition
that should be more complete than Mr Arnold's.

But such "a jewel four words long" cannot be
expected very often even in the greatest writers. Less
concise but very interesting examples of the grand
style, and that which is not the grand style, will be
found in the famous interchange of self-introductions
between Virgil and Dante in the second Canto, and in
Dante's description of his change of purpose in the
Third. There is hardly a line of the first passage (which
extends in its very best part to at least twenty) that
does not contain these final phrases, reduced to the
very lowest terms in compass and apparatus, charged
to the very highest with meaning, yet never over-
reduced or overcharged. In the second, though it is
a fine passage and true to nature, the expression does
not equally collect itself: it wanders and rests itself
with the repetition of the mood it gives, and so does not
quite give that mood in transcendence. The transcen-
dence recurs in another famous passage on the wretches
who "made refusal" the "caitiff choir." Even these
everlastingly quoted words do not seem to me quite so
"grand" in the combination of perfection of expression
with pregnancy of meaning as the five simple words that
come later que mai non fur vivi they who had never
dared to live, and therefore could never hope to die.

202 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

But I had rather, in so brief a survey, avoid the
universally known and quoted things Francesca and
Ugolino and Ulysses. There is a less commonly cited
passage (but one which struck Mr Pater long ago, and,
as has been made known since I wrote this paper,
another person) in the description (vii. 121) of the
victims of that mysterious sin of Accidia which is so
insufficiently translated by "Sloth" and for which
some whom the world certainly would not regard as
slothful might have trouble in Purgatory if not, let us
hope, elsewhere. This passage suffers, to an English
eye, from the fact that it contains the in our language
now unpardonable but in others and in our own of
old hardly even venial fault of identical rhymes : but
that is not essential: _ . . f

Tristi fummo

Nell' aer dolce che dal sol s' allegra,
Portando dentro accidioso fummo :
Or ci attristiam nella belletta negra.

That seems to me a perfect minor example if I may
say so of the grand style in its formulation of the
outward conditions in the present and the fatal inward
conditions precedent in the past. And I do not think the
next two lines (which some would call conceit) inferior

Quest' inno si gorgoglian nella strozza
Che dir nol posson con parola Integra

even clear resolute articulation being denied them for
their indolence past and present. But here comes in
that dispute at which I have hinted, as to the com-
patibility of conceit and the grand style, between those
who hold conceit to be an accursed thing and those
who hold as I do that the grand style can transmute
conceit and everything else, and that Dante does here
and elsewhere so transmute it. So too all may not see
grandeur in the few words on Caiaphas

disteso in croce
Tanto vilmente nel eterno esilio

THE GRAND STYLE DANTE 203

with their silent indignant comparison and contrast in
every way with the glorious cross of Christ. But one of
the main, if not even one of the constant, marks of the
grand style seems to me to be this suggestion of things
that are not said this evidence of things not seen. It
would take too long, though it is rather tempting, to
compare the great Fame passage in Canto xxiv with
that in Lycidas which it undoubtedly suggested: for
here we should have to settle that matter of Dante's
familiar (and as some think even shockingly familiar)
imagery which though closely connected with our
subject, would overweight the present treatment of it.
And I must also only indicate a comparison between
the remarkable last line of xxviii

Cosl s' osserva in me lo contrapasso
with Shakespeare's

The wheel is come full circle: I am here.
But this, like everything that I am quoting here, will
illustrate the way in which Dante attains grandeur by
an infinitely varied use of the old figure meiosis the
saying continually less than he means, but in such a
fashion as brings the full meaning home with double
force to the reader. This is the true literary interpre-
tation and bearing of the still older saying that the half
is greater than the whole : and it will be found constantly
applicable to this grand style of ours, and especially
to our poet in his exemplifications thereof. In this
sense the "sincerity or severity" cannot be denied
though, as some of my hearers will know very well,
there are occasions where Dante allows himself, and
seems rather to rejoice in, a copious complication and
to speak familiarly " roundaboutation" of phrase. I
have sometimes been tempted to think this an almost
deliberate set-off to the commoner terseness : but per-
haps this is fanciful.

204 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

No place is fuller of our evidence than the opening
of the Purgatorio : indeed the first two Cantos are almost
compact of it. The immense sense of relief which the
poet has managed to communicate to his readers
expresses itself in no relaxation of style: but only in
a greater glow and brightness. Some people no doubt
would think it mere trifling if one pointed out at length
the extraordinary skill with which the varying 0-sounds
of the first half of "Dolce color d ? oriental zaffiro" are
exchanged for the dominant a's of the last with the e
to bridge them and the final o to serve as a coda of
return. But I am not ashamed to confess absolute
belief in these " trifling " things : and in their connection
with the grandeur as well as with the sweetness of style.
And for the combined fascination of the ]grand and the
sweet I do not know where to look for anything to sur-
pass the passage of the appearance of the boat from
the line p er ^ g ross i vapor Marte rosseggia

onwards. It is perhaps not unworthy to note that
similes, despite the pride of place justly assigned to
them in all poetry from Homer downwards, are apt to
be rather dangerous implements for the grand style,
owing to their tendency to encourage frittering and
filigree rather than massive effects. But nobody gets
over this danger better than Dante: precisely because
of his unfailing hold on the grand. You may find an
instance of it in the description, just below, of the
angel's wings r eterne penne>

Che non si mutan come mortal pelo.

Dante, let it be observed, never throws away the word
"eternal" or any other of the greater gold coins of
speech: whereas our modern "stylists" are apt to play
chuck-farthing, or try to play it with them, till they are
as common as the farthing itself. But he is also, as we

THE GRAND STYLE DANTE 205

have seen, rather sparing of explanations: he likes to
leave his grandeurs to make their own effect. Yet he
achieves one here by the explanation itself and why?
Because at first sight the epithet may seem otiose.
Everything about the angel is immortal : why specially
his wings? And then the suggestion drops in the old
simple inevitable manner that that change and re-
freshing of plumage which is so noteworthy and so
beautiful in the mortal bird is unnecessary and would
be a blemish in the bird of God that there is no need
for him to mew his mighty and eternal youth. There
is an almost more striking instance of this after a
different fashion in iii. 122 where Manfred, acknow-
ledging the heinousness of his sins, says :

Ma la bont& infinita ha si gran braccia,
Che prende ci6 che si rivolge a lei.

At the very first sight and hearing a not quite foolish
person may regard the second line as an anti-climax.
But rivolge has here the full virtue of grandeur. The
Arms are so wide that they will even receive what
returns that is to say, what has at first scorned them
and turned from them. This canto in fact is very full
of great places and I can only wonder at any Dantist
being in the least surprised at such a one as del cammin
la mente, "the riddle of the painful road." The Sordello
passage and the Valley of the Kings and others I drop
on the same principle as before ; as well as (though not
without regret) the incomparable opening of Canto
Eight, Era gia V ora, which speaks with equal appeal
to the merest novice and to the past master in critical
appreciation. I shall only observe o this latter that
nothing could better exemplify the power of the Grand
Style itself on those sentimental commonplaces which
are the most treacherous of material. For it is an old
saying and a true, that nothing shows a poet's power

206 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

more than his dealing with these: and to particularise
this generality nothing shows Dante's power over the
grand style more than the zmcommonness of his com-
monplace. The very next canto presents a pendant
exemplification of this in the simile of the swallow at
morning.

But nothing in the whole poem can surpass, for
adequate and accurate magnificence of expression, the
description of the Steps of Purgatory. Contrasted
verbalisations of the three great colours, red, white and
blue, are innumerable in poetry: an invalid with his
or her mind not too much affected might make an
innocent diversion of collecting them. But surely there
is none so intense as this, with its symbolism open and
yet unenforced, its picture-effect clear to the mind's
eye like the greatest sight of nature or art to the bodily,
and accompanied by the most astonishing word-music.
Hardly anything shows the prowess of Italian, in the
less soft moods of its music, so well as the petrina
ruvida ed arsiccia and as the single verb ammassiccia
for the porfirofiammeggiante of the third step. Perhaps
indeed the thing is the example of the grand style, of
the more elaborate and sterner kind. And as I have
just noted the effect in the palette of the grand style
of these mighty words, let me quote another where
Dante avails himself as marvellously of another single
vocable as Shakespeare does of "multitudinous" and
"incarnadine" in a famous triumph of his. I speak
as absolutely no Italian scholar at all, in fact I apologise
very heartily 1 for mangling my citations with what has
always been the most English of mouths ; but I suppose
that no reader of the language who has been accustomed
to read any language minutely, while he may notice
the absence of compound words in Italian can have

* To hearers of course: readers fortunately escape it (1923).

THE GRAND STYLE DANTE 207

failed to notice the curious developments and amplifi-
cations of single words which it boasts. One of these
Dante has made a thing to marvel at just below the
place to which we had got where he says of the graven
history of the act that freed Trajan from Hell:

che diretro a Micol mi bianchieggiava.

This single word for the gleaming white and gold back-
ground is great enough. But remember to what and
whom it was a background to that not too well-
treated wife of David who has been pourtrayed as

Si come donna dispettosa e trista

and observe the contrast provided. And this cunning
manipulation of the dictionary is shown again a little
lower in the word disviticchia, "peers through the
vines," used of Dante trying to distinguish individuals
in the tangled crowd of those who stoop under the
burden of Pride.

If I am not teasing you too much with these detailed
references, I should like to note (Canto xiii) at the
beginning of the description of the pass of livid rock
that admits to the Circle of Envy, the singularly and
characteristically pregnant use of livido itself, uncom-
mented, undwelt upon, and all the more forcible. So
again to make great strides (not for dearth of matter
but for want of time) those words of Mark the Lom-
bard in the angry smoke where the belief (noblest
surely of all will-worships !) in the stars, is corrected
by the words :

A maggior forza ed a miglior natura
Liberi soggiacete

where the amplification and precision at once given by
the three adjectives and the verb to the substantives
is a very opal of style. And the wonderful description
of the Siren in the dream of Canto xix; and passage
after passage in the introductory scene with Statius;

208 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

and the curious illustration of that fancy for litotes
"lessening" (which we have noticed and which some-
times, to readers accustomed to more superlative and
gesticulatory styles, seems an anticlimax or a bareness)
in the poet's modest boast that when Diocletian perse-
cuted the Christians they came to seem so holy to him
that their cries were not without his tears. As for the
last six or seven cantos of this cantica the difficulty is
what example not to quote. I doubt whether in any
place of any poet there can be found such an astonish-
ing concentration and combination of poetical thought
with expression of the highest order, as that which
fills the whole space between the passage through the
Fire and the draught from the waters of Eunoe. There
must be about a thousand lines in al] : nd it is of the
rarest to find a single passage that descends even to
medium excellence in point of phrase. The very opening
of the Twenty-seventh Canto has one of those "grand
style conceits" as I have called them, which are so
interesting, in the amplification of "sanguine sunrise"
by the notion of the Sun making his rays quiver where
his Maker shed his blood. And the baptism of fire
itself; and the elaborate and beautiful comparison of
the three pilgrims' sleep on the mountain-side and its
unforced even unmentioned contrast of the cool dark
rest with the burning glow of the fiery cincture and
everything from this set of illustrations continues it.
The Leah-Rachel dream ; the resignation of his guide-
ship by Virgil; each of these is enshrined in this same
crystal rather than amber coating of style, which does
not merely give access to every shred and speck of
meaning, does not merely magnify it and make it more
easily perceptible, but adds lustre and iridescence
without detracting from clearness and veracity.
But it would be almost sufficient to take the Cantos

THE GRAND STYLE DANTE 209

of the Earthly Paradise alone for our special purposes
of illustration, at least on the milder side. The subject
has been and naturally enough a favourite one
with poets. To tell the honest truth, I fear it appeals
to most of us a good deal more closely than the
Heavenly. Let us at any rate say, if this seems shock-
ing, that we are much better furnished with ideas and
images wherewith to depict and adorn it. But for this
very reason there are certain dangers attending its
description dangers of a glorified Land of Cocaigne or
(according to time and idiosyncrasy) a glorified Inter-
national Exhibition. That Dante entirely avoids both
is due, not merely to his careful selection of subjects
but (and still more) to those peculiarities of his expres-
sion which we are here discussing. Any child must of
course notice the opening contrast of the forest the
divinaforesta spessa e viva with the evil wood where the
whole Commedia begins. But the poet justifies his
mastery by things much less obvious than this. The
passage of breeze and foliage and birds which follows
is great enough: but not, I think, quite equal to that
on Lethe the brown stream beneath the sunproof
and moonproof trees which "hides nothing" in itself
and yet when drunk hides everything but good from
the memory. Whether either is equal or superior to
the picture of Matilda which follows must be I suppose
very much a matter of individual taste.

It is possible that some one may here say may have
felt already inclined to say "Yes; these things are
beautiful and we know them very well: but there are
plenty of beautiful things in other poets: and even
as Dante's they have no special connection with the
grand style." Well; that is the question. My point is
that if you will compare them with other beautiful
passages of other poets you will find certain pecu-

210 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

liarities, some of which I have endeavoured to point
out, differentiating them from these: and for what
causes the differentiation I can find no better phrase
than that which forms our title. I think it is Southey
who says that a friend of his used to say of a thing as
his highest term of encomium that it was " necessary and
voluptuous and right." It is an excellent combination:
and I do not know any which better expresses the grand
style itself. There are some poets of the greater kind
I suppose most people would take Ariosto as a repre-
sentative of them though I am not sure that I do
who are "voluptuous" beyond dispute and in a manner
"right" but not exactly "necessary." There are others,
of whom Wordsworth most naturally suggests himself,
who are often right enough and sometimes quite neces-
sary, but too seldom voluptuous. In hardly any poet
do the three qualities meet so constantly and unite so
firmly as in Dante: and in no part of Dante is the
trinity more constantly obvious than here. This union
poetises the long and somewhat unpromising Pageant
of the Grifon with all its historico-politico-contro-
versial meanings. This union as it alone could be
is worthy to give in words the apparition of Beatrice
and the disparition of Virgil. It enforces the marvellous
"convincing of sin" which the poet receives from his
lady: and it is equal to the re-Baptism in Lethe. In
particular what I have called the apparition of
Beatrice is one of the most miraculous word-miracles
known to me. A painter could not do it at all : a stage
spectacle-maker, availing himself of all devices and
tricks of stage-carpentry and stage-chemistry could
only make a base mechanic travesty of it. It is pure
magic : the white magic of style and of grand style.

I have sometimes ventured to think that the com-
parative neglect of the Paradiso, as well as that baffle-

THE GRAND STYLE DANTE 211

ment which so many honest though not neglectful
students have confessed, and which I myself felt till
a very recent period, is due not merely to the greater
abstruseness of much of the subject-matter, but to the
fact that this abstruseness comes in the way of the
appreciation of the special mastery of style here dis-
played. When "the pikes are past" as the old Eliza-
bethan phrase has it when the unfamiliarity and the
frequent scholasticism of matter are left on one side,
the extraordinary quality of this can hardly be missed.
The terror and the pity, the variety and the stimulus
of the Inferno could though they do not dispense
with style. The intense personal interest of the Purga-
tory the most engrossing and intimately insisting of
the three and that which comes most home to the
soul might almost dispense with it. But the Paradise
would be almost the faulty faultlessness, the arid per-
fection which it is charged with being, if it were not
for the consummate expression which everywhere
clothes it with beauties like its own glories of colour
and light and harmony. I have never been able to
think that the famous line which Mr Arnold singled
out, and which many if not most English-writing
critics have obediently followed him in selecting,

In la sua volontade d nostra pace

is really the greatest example of this, magnificent as it
is. The greatness of meaning is rather tyrannous: it
imposes by itself. And the exquisite Leonine asso-
nance (if I may be pardoned the pedantry) of volontade
and pace is too much a matter of course : it is the dic-
tionary, not Dante, that does it for us. Elsewhere
there is no possibility of such (I fully admit the
impeachment) irreligious cavilling. Everything has
been done with Dante : and therefore, though I do not
know, I suppose that some on may have collected

14-2

212 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

separately what we may call "the Passages of the
Eyes" the prodigious and almost unbelievable vari-
ations of the one idea of the virtue and beauty of the
glance of Beatrice which Dante has scattered over the
poem never repeating himself, never condescending
to a mere conceit, and yet never failing, any more than
the Eyes themselves, to satisfy the almost incredulous
expectation of the astonished observer. And this may
bring me afresh to a fresh point glanced at already
the point of Dante and the Grand Style in reference
to Conceit to far-fetched and eccentric expression.
We know that according to some ideas of the Grand
Style to those of the ancients almost always, except
in the case of Longinus, and in his case sometimes
these two things are irreconcilable. Where Conceit
comes in, the Grand Style, say they, goes out: and
Frigidity takes its place. Some of us who most honour
the ancients are not of that opinion: I certainly am
not. The Grand Style is sovereign here as elsewhere:
it can give grandezza to any expression to which it
gives its hand to kiss and its garment to touch. Shake-
speare does this of course as well as Dante: much
lesser men than Shakespeare and Dante such as Donne,
can do it sometimes. But these latter cannot always
and Shakespeare though he always can, does not always
care to do it. I will not say that Dante never fails, but
he very seldom does: and a list of his conceits which
in other hands might have merely been the King's
jesters, and in his are Paladins and Peers, would not
be a difficult thing to draw up and would be a curious
thing to study. If you will permit me I will specify
one or two.

In the first place I am not sure that the extreme
scholasticism which has frequently been charged
against the Paradiso, and which often gives the appear-

THE GRAND STYLE DANTE 213

ance of Conceit, has not, in Dante's hands, though it
may be admitted that there are very few hands in
which it could have had the effect proved a positive
assistance by communicating that precision of expres-
sion which, as we have seen, has so much to do with
grandeur of style. The very first three lines exhibit this
quality in almost startling manner. They are from one
point of view a truism, a mere commonplace, some-
thing to which you say "Agreed. Agreed."

La gloria di Colui che tutto muove
Per 1' universe penetra, e risplende
In una parte piu, e meno altrove.

And yet this truism, this commonplace, gives perhaps
as nothing else could give pretty certainly as nothing
else could give better the keynote of the whole
cantica, the differing manifestations of the Glory of
God. How different and yet how similar is the phrase
at 1. 95 of the same canto respecting the
sorrise parolette brevi

"The little words rather smiled than spoken" with
which Beatrice puts an end to his doubt ! Less austere
than the first, and less reticent and sedate than the
second, is the magnificent opening of Canto v where
we have the grand style in full pomp of phrase, and
prodigality of vowel music, and ambient atmosphere
of sound a splendour in short almost as dazzling as
the accompanying glances of the Eyes themselves,
before which the mortal lover and sinner quails :

S' io ti fiammeggio nel caldo d' amore
Di Icl dal modo che in terra si vede,
Si che deg' occhi tuoi vinco il valore,
Non ti maravigliar.

Only the grandest of grand styles could suit that bold
and somewhat perilous passage of Folco's where he
says that those who, though pardoned, have sinned
for love, repent not but smile not for their fault, of

2i 4 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

which Lethe has taken away the very memory, but
for the blissful order of the world which they too
blindly abused. And only the same could befit the
companion passage where the glory of Rahab is likened
to that of sunlight in pure water. Very exemplary too
is the single line (xiv. 27)

Lo refrigerio dell' eterna ploia

where, as often happens in the two later Cantiche, the
sting of the beauty lies in the suggestion not dwelt on,
not even indicated in words, but there of the contrast
of the other eternal rains not refreshing but torturing
of fire and of water in Hell. Perhaps we may lay stress
again on this feature of grandeur of style allusiveness
that is not laboured, that permits brevity, and at the
same time extends meaning. Canto xiv contains a
strikingly different but strikingly complementary pas-
sage, the great description of the Cross in the Heaven
of Mars with the wonderful device of the word Cristo
twice rhyming to itself only, and as it were bracing
two tercets into a single quintet tipped trident-fashion
with the sacred sound. Almost as many know the last
line of the fifteenth (though it has been less quoted)
as those who know Mr Arnold's favourite: and the
acknowledgment of the perfection of

E venni del martirio in questa pace

can, I think, be even better justified, without any
qualification. Less splendid, but when examined not
less consummate perhaps, is a phrase early in the
sixteenth _

Dove appetite non si torce

with once more, as in all these great short phrases, its
unexpressed suggestion that appetite is not bad, that
it is good, if only care be taken to keep it "untwisted"
and directed to the proper objects. In xviii. 21 by

THE GRAND STYLE DANTE 215

good luck one of Dante's most delectable lines falls
naturally into no bad English equivalent:

Not only in my glance is Paradise.

The whole of the imagery of the Eagle in this context
deserves to be studied by those who care to follow out
what I have said of the marriage of the Grand Style
with Conceit : and its speech in the next two Cantos is
nearly as full of places for us despite the abstract
character of much of the substance.

Ch non pur nei miei occhi Paradiso.
Perhaps the three or four words

E quella non ridea

at the beginning of the Twenty-first are Dante's
tersest and most concentrated triumph 1 : and I hardly
know another poet, except Shakespeare, who would
have been able to refrain from hurting their effect by
interposing something about his own feelings between
the announcement of this eclipse, and Beatrice's
explanation of its reason. And then comes the return
of the smile in the Twenty-third a canto so full of
beauties of this kind that it would serve as a text by
itself with its shower of similes the most abundant
anywhere, as the poet strives to master his new privi-
leges. Even the " Examination Cantos " as we may call
them in a phrase which I can assure any part of my
audience who have doubts on the matter is quite as
disagreeable in association to Professors as it can
possibly be to others do not spare the spell. Who but
Dante would have thought of the phrase "La grazia
qui donnea con la tua mente" "the grace which rules
in thy mind as lady" with its double application? For
there is a Grand Style in compliment, and in gallantry,

1 They rank near to if not level with the two " jewels four words long"
of "The rest is silence" and ^yw 3 nbva. KareriSw, four well-known words
giving the most absolutely uncommon effect, which seem to me the
triumph of poetry in Shakespeare and Sappho.

216 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

and in everything just as we have seen it in Conceit.
I must pass rapidly over the beautiful simile of the
doves in Twenty-five; and the marvellous close of
this same when he has lost sight of his Mistress; and
passage after passage in the Third examination by
St John; and the strange audacious, simplicity of the
image when Adam is introduced ; to a passage famous
but extraordinarily interesting the great denunciation
of his successors by St Peter. It is almost needless to
say that hardly any English reader can avoid thinking
of that other passage in Lycidas which it suggested.
Dante will scarcely be acquitted by any but the blindest
worshippers of party-spirit: but how petty and
parochial is Milton's expression of it in comparison
with his ! and how poor the imagery and machinery of
the later poet in comparison with the blushing of the
whole sphere of Heaven in sympathy with the Apostle's
indignation ! Nor can I agree with an excellent critic
that one of the phrases for this is in any way "cum-
brous" a fault which would at once unfit it for being
called " grand." When Dante says that St Peter's

torcn *p a } ne u a sembianza sua divenne

Qual diverebbe Giove s' egli e Marte
Fossero augelli e cambiassersi penne,

it must be remembered that the first thing that has
struck him in the sphere of the Fixed Stars, where all
this happens, was the motion of the planets beneath.
He has Jupiter and Mars, in their natural colours,
revolving beneath and before him as he speaks: and
the exchange of these colours is a natural and telling
suggestion, recalling at the same time the grandeur
and vastness of the whole scene and situation. As I
have tried to point out, this suggestiveness, this inclu-
sion as it were of any amount of comment with the
text but without any cumbrous innuendo, is one of
the differentiae of the grand style in general and of

THE GRAND STYLE DANTE 217

Dante's in particular. I know however that these
minute illustrations are wearisome to many : and that
the critic is wiser who consults his hearers' or readers'
ease (happening also to consult his own at the same
time) by indulgence in generalities: and I shall only
trouble you with one or two more. One of these must
be the final Passage of the Smile in Canto xxx with
its wonderful fancy of the mind severed from itself by
memory j^ a men ^- e m j a ^ a se - me desma scema

the memory still able to record, but the plastic and
representative faculties vanquished by perfection from
reproducing. And the River of Light (where, as an
exception, he brings the sense of smell sub specie
eternitatis in spite of Aristotelian prudery) nearly fifty
lines of the most gorgeous imagery that any poet ever
poured forth, saved everywhere from the least touch
of tawdriness: and the Picture of the Rose itself; these
remain uncommented, uncommentable. Only the
grandest style, here and in the final Canto, could keep
matter of such intensity and such altitude from being
either unintelligible, or jejune, or frigid in expression:
yet it is so kept. And I am not aware of any more
remarkable example of the transforming powers of
such a style than the lines in reference to Beatrice

E che soffristi per la mia salute
In inferno lasciar le tue vestige.

Only the strictest verity of meaning, in reference to
the summoning of Virgil to be his guide, could avoid
here the suspicion of blasphemy: and only the strictest
accuracy as well as beauty of expression could save it
from the objection of bad taste. It will incur neither
save from those of whose disapproval Dante would
have been disdainfully glad in his more unregenerate
condition, and calmly neglectful after Lethe and Eunoe
had completed the purgation of the Seven Letters.

218 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

And now I have done with these citations in detail
and very nearly with all that I have to say on the sub-
ject; but a little summing up is a good fashion and to
be followed whenever possible. I have already quoted
Chaucer the number and character of whose own
Dante-citations and allusions is the more surprising
the more one looks into them and I shall venture to
quote him once more in his most remarkable reference
(that of the Monk's Tale) to

the great poet of Itaille
That highte Dante, for he can it devise
From point to point, not o word wol he faile.

It is possible of course to take this peculiar eulogy
"not one word will he fail" as merely concerning the
matter as referring to Dante's well-known minute-
ness and exactness of detail. I do not think, however,
that it is absolutely preposterous, especially when we
remember what a master of style Chaucer himself was,
how his own countrymen and contemporaries recog-
nised the "gold dewdrops of speech" which they were
unluckily unable to imitate to extend or concentrate
the eulogy upon those characteristics of Dante's style
to which I have been, however inadequately, endeavour-
ing to call your attention. That this style is nobly
poetic we shall all agree ; that it has at last very often
a singular simplicity and not seldom something that
may be called severity as well will not be commonly
denied ; perhaps my own belief that Mr Arnold had these
special notes of the special style principally and almost
too principally before him, when he defined the grand
style in general, may seem to some not quite gratuitous
or preposterous. But I think this phrase of Chaucer's
about "not failing in one word" is a happier as well as
briefer description of Dante's style than Mr Arnold's
would be if it were avowedly directed to Dante, and
(what is more) that it is a happier definition of the

THE GRAND STYLE DANTE 219

Grand Style in general than Mr Arnold's own. Not to
fail in one word means to be perfectly adequate to hit
the mark, and nothing else but the mark, and the mark
itself full and home. Where there is too large excursion,
too great abundance, or too great extravagance of
diction or imagery, the Grand Style escapes before the
writer has finished; where there is too great economy
and poverty of either even where there is not an
atmosphere and aura of suggestion as well as positive
statement the writer has fallen short of the Grand
Style and finished before he has attained it. It will
itself admit, as we have seen, of extreme complexity
nay of positive conceit as I have endeavoured to
argue; it will admit likewise (as is less likely to be
argued against) of the extremest conciseness of a
terseness which is in fact the reduction of speech to
its simplest terms. But always the two functions of
speech itself the accomplished conveyance of the
meaning as such, and the conveyance of it beautifully
must be achieved to the uttermost; in both these
functions the old requirement of the truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth, must be paid to the
uttermost farthing. I could enter into due refinements
on this if I thought it advisable or tolerable; I could
point out that that " myriadsidedness " of great expres-
sion which the best critics have noticed that fact that
it means this to me and that to thee is so far from
being an evasion or falsification of this law, that it is
an exact fulfilment thereof inasmuch as the capacity
of the individual for receiving depth of meaning and
beauty of expression varies. But this would be for the
moment at any rate superfluous. Let me end once
more with our first great poet of England that this
great poet of Italy "will not fail one word" in any trial
that you may set him of the Grand Style in poetry.

VIII
THE COOKERY OF THE GROUSE

I HAVE always regretted that I did not preserve a
French book on game and its cookery which passed
through my hands some 1 years ago. The author frankly
admitted that grouse do not live in France, though
black-game of course are found there. But he wished
to be complete, and moreover, as he very justly ob-
served, some of his French readers might have one or
more brace of grouse sent them by English friends,
and then what were they to do ? So he gave with great
pride what he was pleased to call a receipt for "Grouse
& la Dundy." Dundy, I remember, he defined as being
not only the gamiest, la plus giboyeuse^ city of Scotland,
but also renowned for every variety of refinement of
taste and luxury superior in short to Peebles itself.
And the way that they cooked grouse in Dundy was
but that is exactly what I have forgotten. To the
best of my memory it was like most French fashions
of cooking game a sufficiently ingenious method of
making the best of any natural flavour that the bird
might have, and imbuing it with a good many others,
not at all disagreeable, but superadded rather than
evolved or assisted, a method useful enough for old
birds or indifferent birds, but improper for others.

This process could nowhere be more a counsel of
imperfection than in the case of grouse; which, I
venture to think, has of all game birds the most distinct
and the least surpassable flavour. There are those, of
course, who will put in claims for others, and this is
not the place to fight the matter out. I shall only say

1 Thirty or forty now (1923).

THE COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 221

that while nearly all game birds are good, and some
eminently good, grouse seems to me to be the best,
to possess the fullest and at the same time the least
violent flavour to have the best consistency of flesh
and to present the greatest variety of attractions in
different parts. It has become almost an affectation
to speak of the excellence of his back; let us rather say
that he is all good back and breast, legs and wings.

Black-game, capercailzie, and ptarmigan are but
varieties of grouse, and almost everything that applies
to the red grouse applies to them. Indeed, the excellent
Baron Brisse characteristically includes both black-
game and capercailzie in saying that there are two
kinds of coq de bruyhe, the one about the size of a
peacock, the other about the size of a pheasant. All
three birds, it is scarcely necessary to say, have, owing
to their habitat and food, a much stronger flavour than
the red grouse; and it depends very much on the pre-
dominance or moderation of this flavour whether they
are intolerable, tolerable, or excellent. Moreover, in
the case of two of them at least, English estimation of
them is wont to be injuriously affected by the importa-
tion of vast numbers of ptarmigan and capercailzie
from the North of Europe, without the slightest regard
to their fitness for food. I have seen it stated, indeed,
that most of the Norwegian capercailzie which are sold
in English shops are poached by illegal and unsports-
manlike processes, at the very time when they are most
out of season. Ptarmigan soup, however, is quite
excellent, and I am not sure that even grouse at its
best can give points to a roast grey hen in good
condition. But partly because of the strong nature
of their food whereof pine and juniper shoots and
seeds are the chief parts and partly because they are
stronger flying birds, and therefore tougher than the

222 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

red grouse, black-game require even more keeping than
that "estimable volatile." The whole tribe, indeed,
will bear this process as no other birds will. It was the
custom of a hospitable friend of mine in Scotland, who
was equally good with rod and gun, to keep a supply
of grouse hanging till he could accompany them with
salmon caught in a river which was by no means a
very early opening one, and I never found birds
taste better. The less regarded members of the grouse
tribe will, as I have said, bear much longer keeping.
Indeed, the best if not the only really good capercailzie
that I ever tasted had been subjected to the indignity
of being forgotten. He was imported into the Channel
Islands by an enterprising game-dealer; I bought him,
and as the house in which I was living Tiad no good
larder, I asked the man to keep him on his own
premises till he and we were ready. We promptly forgot
all about him, and it was several weeks before the
shamefaced dealer, who was equally oblivious, said
one day, "I'm afraid, sir, that capercailzie... !" Never-
theless we had him sent home. It was necessary to
amputate and discard a considerable part of him, but
the rest was altogether admirable.

With all these birds* but especially with ptarmigan,
dryness is the great thing to be feared when roasting
them; and this must be guarded against by liberal
basting, by jackets of bacon, and in other well-known
ways, especially, perhaps, by the German method of
marinading and larding given below. Except in soup,
old birds of all the three kinds are very nearly hopeless,
and should not be attempted. And though in the
abstract most, if not all, of the methods of what may
be called applied grouse-cookery are applicable to them,
it is well to remember that the extremely strong flavour
above referred to marries itself but awkwardly to

THE COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 223

miscellaneous additions, and is almost impossible
simply to disguise with them. Indeed, it is noteworthy
that even French cookery books do not as a rule
meddle much with the coq de bruyhe, but prefer him
plain. Nor does any of the tribe make a very good
devil. "Tickler," indeed, in the Nodes Ambrosiance,
avoucheth that even eagle's thigh is good devilled ; but
the context does not inspire complete confidence in
the good faith of the sage of Southside at that moment.
On the whole, it may be laid down that black-game
and capercailzie (the latter when young and in very
good condition) are best roasted, ptarmigan stewed or
converted into soup. But I must own that I have
eaten roast ptarmigan which left the room (at least
the bones did) without a stain on their character
which were "white birds" as much metaphorically as
literally.

With these preliminary remarks and cautions as
to the outlying varieties we may turn to the cooking
of grouse proper. For very obvious reasons the anti-
quarian part of the matter needs but little attention.
Until railway-and-steamboat-time grouse were any-
thing but common in London and exceedingly un-
common in Paris, and the chef of literary tendencies
was not likely to trouble himself much about them.
Their rarity in the former place is exemplified in the
well-known though doubtless apocryphal legend of the
Highland chieftain who ordered "grouse and salmon"
for his domestics at a London hotel. And the books
said very little about them. For instance, a lady had
the great kindness to examine for me a country-house
collection of cookery books, English, Scotch, French,
and American, extending to some score of volumes,
and all printed between 1790 and 1830. They yielded
practically nothing but the direction " Roast moor-game

224 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

half an hour: serve with fried bread crumbs, bread
sauce, and sliced raw onions in a little water in the
same boat," and the still more general advice to "dress
them like partridges and send them up with currant
jelly and fried bread crumbs." It is somewhat interest-
ing to notice that the onion sauce (or rather salad) here
suggested is neither more nor less than a degraded
and barbarous survival of the onion puree which, as
will be seen in the following chapter on the Partridge,
Gervase Markham had prescribed for that bird some
two centuries earlier. As for the currant jelly I think it
hardly survives now, but for people who like currant
jelly with flesh or fowl it is not bad with grouse, while
as usual cranberry or rowan-berry jelly is better still.
German and American cooks also sometimes recom-
mend ^>/ww-sauce. But in connection with the general
direction to "cook them like partridges" I am tempted
to add two receipts for dressing that bird which I did
not know at the time of writing on it, but which seem
admirably adapted to grouse also, and which come
from the collection referred to above. They appear in
La Cuisine de Sante, an elaborate work in three
volumes written by M. Jourdain Le Cointe, and revised
in the year 1790 by a medical practitioner of Mont-
pellier. This latter man of art, by the way, seems during
that stirring time to have been as unpolitically en-
gaged as his brother savant who was indifferent to the
Revolution because he had an unprecedented number
of irregular verbs all nicely conjugated and written
out in his desk.

The first of these receipts is called a la Sultane,
and is described as one of the favourite dishes of
Venetian cookery; the other, also asserted to be Italian
in origin, is a la cendre.

For birds a la Sultane you take four, and sacrifice

THE COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 225

the least promising of the quartette to make a farce for
the other three, with the usual accompaniment of
mushrooms, anchovies, etc. You then, having stuffed
the others, lard them not merely with bacon but
with anchovies and truffles, and roast them before a
not too fierce fire, basting them till they are two-thirds
done with good consommt. "II unit 1'agrement et la
salubrite," says of his dish M. Jourdain Le Cointe or
the Montpellier doctor, evidently leaning back in his
chair with a sense of satisfaction after writing the
words. It would be interesting to try this receipt
with grouse, and I think it would answer, though I
should be disposed to omit the anchovies. The other
manner, a la cenctre^ contains a slight puzzle to me. It
is directed that the birds, jacketed in bacon and stuffed
with the usual farce made of one of their number, shall
each be wrapped with extreme care, so that no part is
uncovered, in a large sheet of white paper strewed with
sliced truffles. Each packet being carefully tied up
with packthread is buried in hot ashes, turning it if
necessary till cooked. Our authority says that this
way of cooking is very popular in Italy, but to his
thinking dries the birds too much and deprives them
of their qualite restaurante. That, I should say, would
depend on the stuffing and jacketing. But what sort
of paper is it that will stand the heat of ashes hot
enough to cook a partridge through ? Burnt-paper ash
is not the nicest of condiments, and, moreover, the
phrase "sortez-les du papier" at the end of the article
implies that the wrapping is ex hypothesi intact. Per-
haps somebody who has a hearth and wood-ashes at
his or her disposal will try the method.

Turning to modern and straightforward cookery, I
observe that some critics, while speaking very amiably
of my efforts in alien art on the partridge, have been

SHI I 5

226 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

pleased to speak compassionately of my preference of
plain roast bird as " very English/' I hope that nothing
worse will ever be said of any taste of mine; and that,
as according to a famous axiom, "it is permissible to
Dorians to speak Doric," so it may be permissible to
Englishmen to eat English food. At any rate, though
I have just given some and shall hope to give several
other receipts for more elaborate dealing, I must repeat
and emphasise the same preference here. A plainly and
perfectly roasted grouse, with the accompaniments
above referred to (or others, such as chipped or ribboned
potatoes), is so good that he can in no other way be
improved, though of course he may be varied. Some
extreme grouse-eaters even declare that you ought to
eat nothing at all but grouse at the same meal; and
though I cannot go with them there, I am thoroughly
of the mind of a certain wise and gracious hostess who
once said to me, "I have given you very few things
for dinner to-day; for there is grouse, and I think
grouse is a dinner." Certainly it is rather wicked to
eat a mere snippet of it at the end of a dinner of soup,
fish, half a dozen entrees, and very likely a solid relevL
The soup and the fish and one entree ought to be
ample when grouse in sufficient quantity forms the
roast. Also grouse forms a better "solid" than any-
thing else that I know to finish a fish dinner with
there is some subtle and peculiar appropriateness in
its specially earthy and dry savour as a contrast to the
fishinesses. For accompanying vegetables nothing can
equal French beans, which Nature supplies at the right
time exactly, and for drinking to match, nothing can
even approach claret, good, but not too good. Not
"forty thousand college councils" shall ever persuade
me but that it is something of a solecism and something
of a sin to drink the very best Bordeaux with any solid

THE COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 227

food whatever. That should be drunk with a recueille-
ment which is impossible to the palate when it is
simultaneously called to deal with the grosser act of
eating. Let, therefore, the host, however fortunate
and liberal, keep the First Three and also his best
Leovilles and Rauzans, Moutons and Pichon Longue-
villes, for the time when the grouse has vanished;
but let him accompany it while it is being discussed
with anything up to Palmer or Lagrange, or even
such second growths as Cos Destournel or Durfort.
Not that Burgundy (again just short of the very best)
goes ill with grouse, but that claret goes better. Alexis
Soyer, who, though I have heard good judges declare
him to have been a much overrated cook, said some
excellent things, soon to be quoted, about grouse,
recommends a "little sweet champagne" with grouse.
It was spoken like a Frenchman.

The accompaniments of roast grouse, besides those
already mentioned, are not very numerous. The liver
of the birds cooked separately, pounded and spread
upon the toast on which they are served, with butter,
salt, and cayenne, is often recommended. Most people
are unhappy without gravy; for myself I think if the
grouse is properly done, not too much and not too dry,
it is better without any. The favourite, and to the
general taste indispensable, bread crumbs are often
horribly ill cooked, and unless very well cooked are
the reverse of appetising. Soyer, as above reported
by a good Scotch writer on cookery, who calls herself
"Jenny Wren," liked to eat grouse, which he justly
declared to vary inexplicably in flavour from year to
year, "absolutely by themselves with nothing but a
crust of bread," and this shows a purity of taste which
makes one almost forgive him his sweet champagne
therewith. Watercress is as good with grouse as with

15-2

228 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

most roasted birds, and salad almost as good as with
any; though perhaps the brown-fleshed birds do not
so imperatively call for this adjunct as the white. I
seem to have heard that there were times and places
where grouse were eaten with melted butter; but it is
well known that there were times and seasons when
there was hardly anything to which Britons did not add
that unlovely trimming. It must be confessed that the
thing is still done (the trimming being actually poured
over the birds), in Scotland, where they certainly
understand cookery, and where they ought to under-
stand that of grouse in particular. But it seems to me
an abomination, and it must be remembered that if
Scottish cookery, admirable as it is, has a tendency
to sin, that tendency is in the direction of what is
delicately called "richness," and that this may be an
instance. No doubt the counter-tendency of the grouse
to the other original sin of dryness has also to be con-
sidered.

There is a good deal more dispute as to the time,
or in other words the degree, to which grouse ought to
be roasted than in regard to most other game birds.
Nobody not, I should suppose, even an ogre or a
cannibal likes underdone pheasant ; and I never heard
of anybody who liked underdone partridge. On the
other hand, only very unfortunately constituted persons
(who should not eat wild- or water-fowl at all) like wild
duck or widgeon, or anything of that kind, from solan
geese to plovers, otherwise than distinctly underdone.
But in regard to grouse it is impossible to say that
there is a distinctly orthodox or a distinctly heterodox
school in this respect. The ambiguity of general opinion
is shown by the variation in time from twenty
minutes to half an hour usually allotted for the
roasting of an average-sized young bird (I have even

THE COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 229

seen three-quarters advised, but this is utterly pre-
posterous). This amounts to the difference between
a distinct redness close to the bone and "cooking
through." There is even a school who would have
grouse decidedly underdone. I think they are wrong,
and that there should be nothing in the very least
saignant about a grouse when he is carved, but that,
if possible, he should be taken away from the fire the
very minute that the last possibility of such a trace
has disappeared.

The other two simple ways of cooking grouse (I
suppose men do boil them, just as they boiled Lord
Soulis, but I never knew a case) are broiling and con-
version into soup. A broiled or "brandered" grouse
is quite admirable, but must of course be quite young,
plentifully buttered (or oiled), and fairly peppered.
When successfully done it is like all broiled birds, one
of the very best things that it is possible to eat, and can
be accompanied by an almost unlimited variety of
sauces or gravies, from the plainest to the most
elaborate. The same hyperbole may be used of grouse
soup when it is what grouse soup should be. There are
considerable variations in the methods of preparing it ;
and, as in most cases, it is necessary to look to the end
or object. Philosophically considered, the whole sub-
ject of soup may be divided into three parts. There is
soup more or less clear, such as is probably at the
present moment most in favour as being most re-
storative in effect and most elegant in consumption.
There is a purfo of creamy texture, thick, but not con-
taining any positive solids. And lastly there is the
old-fashioned broth with solids in it, which is more an
olla or stew than a soup strictly speaking, and which,
though a little robust and massive for our modern
dinners, is one of the most satisfactory varieties of

230 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

food for reasonably hungry people. The first of these
forms is that in which grouse soup is least commonly
presented, and to which perhaps this bird lends itself
least characteristically. It is, however, good in its way,
and I never saw a better receipt for it than that which
is given by Mrs Henry Reeve. You take old, but quite
fresh birds, which may be either grouse or black-game,
or (I should add) ptarmigan. You add water at the rate
of three pints to the brace of birds, and keep it sim-
mering as slowly as possible for hours, adding pepper-
corns and a little onion and carrot. Some time before
serving you take the best pieces of the breast out
(the birds of course have been cut up at first), press
them and cut them up in little bits to add to the
strained soup.

Purte of grouse is much more in request and for
those who can consume thick soups much better.
The apparent variety of receipts for it is great; the
real, smaller. All can be reduced, with little difficulty,
to a common form. The birds are roasted, but not
so long as if they were going to be simply eaten a
quarter of an hour is generally held to be enough. All
or most of the meat is then removed from the bones,
which are put into a sufficient quantity of ready-
made clear stock or consommt, with vegetables and
seasonings to taste. This is allowed to simmer from
one to three hours, the longer the better. Meanwhile,
the meat which was taken off is pounded in a mortar
and pressed through a sieve, some adding butter and
grated biscuit or toasted bread, others ground rice,
others nothing but seasoning. This paste is then
stirred into the strained soup till it attains the required
thickness. Celery in moderation is an important in-
gredient in -purte of grouse, and some send lemon
with it to table; but lemon is one of those good things

THE COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 231

which are liable to abuse in cookery, in regard to meats
and fowls. It is more at home with fish and sweets.

Of the ruder and more national form (which is also,
I think, the best) of grouse soup, the celebrated stew
whereof Meg Merrilies made Dominie Sampson par-
take was probably a variety, though the authority
saith that moor-game were not the only ingredient of
that soup or broth or stew. The beginning is the
same as for puree, and indeed puree and this sort of
soup melt into each other by imperceptible gradations.
For you may either roast the birds as in the former
case, cut off the best of the meat, break up and slightly
pound the rest, fry it with butter, some ham and
vegetables, and then stew it with good stock, in quantity
sufficient (some say a quart to a bird), and after
straining put the best pieces of meat in at the last
moment, to warm up with a glass of claret. Or you
may cut up the birds into joints to begin with, fry
them in butter, and then add the stock, the vegetables
and the etceteras, proceeding in ordinary soup fashion
till the thing is done. Some in this last stage advocate
the adding of a young cabbage in pieces, with wine or
not, as liked. And as the birds have, in this case, no
ordinary cooking but the slight fry, and no pounding
or other mollification, it is necessary to "simmer till
tender," which in the case of an old grouse or black-
cock may be a considerable time. For the really hungry
man this is, no doubt, the best way of all; but as a
dinner dish it is perhaps, as has been hinted, too solid
for the mere overture to which we have now reduced
soup. In the days of the ancestors, they ate it late
instead of early in the order of dishes; and I am not
certain that they were wrong.

There are few things more engaging about grouse
than the excellent appearance that it makes in cold

232 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

cookery, whether by itself, in salads, or in pies.
Chaudfroid of grouse (it is quite useless for purists to
warn us that the word has nothing to do with chaud
and nothing with froid, that its being chaud is an
accident, and that its creator was one Chauffroix) is
excellent. So are grouse potted whole (baked, with
wine and butter, and afterwards stowed singly into
pots with clarified butter poured over), or in joints,
or in pounded paste. So is the cold roast bird in the
severest simplicity, especially if he has not 'been cut
into when hot. So is grouse salad, of which a savoury,
but rather violent, if not even slightly vulgar, variety
assigned to Soyer is to be found in all the books with
more or fewer changes. The general principle is that,
the joints of not too much roasted grouse being laid
on a bed of salad and fenced round with garnishings of
hard-boiled egg, gherkins, beetroot, etc., a dressing of
what the French would call an unusually corse kind is
poured over and if possible slightly iced. In the most
aggressive prescription I have seen for this, no less than
two table-spoonsful of chopped shallots and as much
of tarragon and chervil figure. But anybody who can
make a salad at all can, of course, adjust the dressing
to his or her fancy, and the garnishing likewise.

Grouse pie is of a higher order than these, although
the odd changes of fashion have banished it from the
chief meal of the day to breakfast, luncheon, and
supper, at neither of which does anything better often
appear. I do not know that anybody eats grouse pie
hot, though I can conceive no particular or valid
reason against it. It may be made, of course, in all
the gradations of pies the homely old variety with
edible crust, the "raised pie," whereof the crust is not
intended to be eaten, though persons of unsophisticated
habits and healthy appetite may be observed some-

THE COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 233

times to attempt the feat and the pie in which there
is no pretence of crust at all, but which is concocted in
a more or less ornamental case of fireproof china. (It
was this last, perhaps, of which the poet of the Lakes,
where there is much moor-game, wrote "celestial with
terrine" though his foolish printers usually spell it
"terrene.") And so the complexity of the materials
and methods observes similar gradations, which by
connection or accident very often adjust themselves
to the three varieties of casing just mentioned. The
simplest form of grouse pie merely requires the birds
(jointed, halved, or sometimes whole), a proportion
(a pound to a brace is usual) of rump steak cut into
knobs, seasoning, crust, and a sufficiency of good gravy
(which may or may not be touched up with lemon
juice and claret) to fill up and moisten the mixture.
To this, of course, the usual enrichments of hard eggs
(whether of the domestic fowl or, as the youthful heir
of Glenroy in Destiny suggests, plovers' eggs), mush-
rooms, truffles, forcemeat balls, and so forth, may be
added. These additions may further be said to be
customary in the raised grouse pie, and invariable in
that which is made in a terrine. These latter forms
merge themselves very much in the general "game
pie," an excellent thing in its way no doubt. But I
do not know that it is so good as the simple grouse
pie with nothing added but steak, seasoning, an
alliaceous touch of some sort, and a few eggs and
mushrooms.

And so we come at last to the more elaborate
varieties of cooking this noble animal. In that utter-
ance of Soyer's above quoted he is made to confess
that "his art cannot improve grouse," that in good
years the flavour is such as to baffle more ornamental
treatment, while in others there is nothing particular

234 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

to be done with the fowl. Nevertheless, people will
do things with it; and some of the things they do
must be told with the general caution, or at least
opinion, that they are vanity. In the first place there
is a way of pressing grouse which, since the initial
process is to boil or stew the bird to rags, must be
specially applicable, and should be chiefly or only
applied to the very oldest specimens. Having inflicted
this fiery and watery torment on them you pull the
meat off the bones, season it pretty freely, and clothe
it with jelly (either with ordinary aspic or by fortifying
the liquor in which it was boiled with gelatine), adding
eggs, truffles, and anything else you please before
letting it get solid in a mould or dish. It stands to
reason that this is only a way though not at all a
bad way of using birds not otherwise eatable.

Salmis of grouse stands much higher indeed, it
is probably the best of its kind, except that made of
wild duck; and inasmuch as there must always be
remnants of roast birds, it is almost a necessary sup-
plement to simpler cookery, besides being extremely
good of itself. But it is necessary to remember several
things about a salmis. The first is, that though the
birds are always cooked first, it is indispensable that
the sauce or gravy, or whatever you choose to call it,
should have a thorough flavour of them, which is not
to be attained by merely warming the pieces of game
in it. This may be given, of course, in various ways,
either by stewing the bones, skin, trimmings, and less
worthy pieces of the grouse in the stock used, or by
adding some puree or "essence of game"; but it must
be attained somehow. The next thing to remember is
that this gravy or sauce when finished should never
be a' mere bath or slop. Madame Lebour-Fawssett
says it should be "of the consistency of well-made

THE COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 235

melted butter," and I agree with her. Lastly, re-
member that there must always be wine in a salmis;
and that it is of great importance what wine it is.
English books will recommend port or sherry, which,
in my humble judgment, are extremely bad wines for
all savoury cooking purposes. Pale dry sherry is, for
that end, mostly quite useless, though I own that if
I were rich I should try the experiment of boiling a
ham in Manzanilla. The now despised, though in its
way gorgeous, "old brown" is apt to overpower every
other flavour, and is too sweet, objections which apply
still more strongly to port and even to Madeira, which
is sometimes recommended, and which is certainly
preferable to either port or sherry. Besides, all these
wines, and still more the brown "cooking" brandy,
which it is whispered is sometimes used, provoke
undue thirst and general discomfort. A sound red
Bordeaux with flavour and some body for brown meats,
and a good (not an acid or wiry) Chablis or Pouilly
for white, are probably the best things for the purpose.
And I must again praise the French lady above cited
for recommending equal parts of stock and wine as the
main body of salmis sauce. The mixture is added to
a foundation of well-warmed and browned butter and
flour, plenty of seasoning, including herbs, some shallot
rather than onion, and at the last a little lemon juice,
remembering the warnings above given. Nothing more
but patience, careful watching, and still greater care
when the game has been put in the mixture never to
let it boil, is required to make a good salmis. But all
this is required, and without it the thing cannot be a
success.

There is no perceptible difference between the better
class of receipts for hashing grouse and those \for a
salmis of it. If there is any, it is that the hash gravy

236 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

may be a little thinner; but that is a matter of taste,
and it is not uncommon to find cookery books in which
the titles of the receipts for the two processes might
be changed and little or no harm done. The fact is that
"salmis" (a term of which even the great Littr6 did
not know the origin, but which I venture to think a
mere abbreviation of " salmigondis ") is neither more
nor less than a hash or ragout of game or wild birds,
which has had its name extended without strict pro-
priety to the tame duck, but no farther.

Stewed grouse, which is, or was, common in Scot-
land, is a sort of application of the process of hashing
to birds not previously cooked, and presumably old*
You cut them up, fry them with butter and shallot,
or garlic, take out the latter and then simmer them
gently for half an hour with equal but not large
quantities of stock and wine. There should be a good
deal of pepper.

Grouse can of course be made into quenelles, kro-
meskis y croquettes, salpicons, bouchees, and all the other
varieties of rissoles in which pounded or minced meat
is conveyed into fanciful and easily consumed shapes
of small size. They might be made into a pain or
quenelle on a great scale; they can be souffled, and
are very good so. It is further obvious and easy to
stuff them in roasting or accompany them in pieces
with all kinds of forcemeat, from the simplest to the
most complicated, from the plain liver-and-bread-
crumb to compounds a lafinanctire and a la Lucullus,
in which truffles and cockscombs and the like figure.
Grouse cutlets the birds being usually halved, partly
boned, fried, and then simmered in espagnole or some
similar sauce are well enough, and can be sophisti-
cated before being served up by having truffles and
other associations stuck on them. It is also sometimes

THE COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 237

recommended that they should be prepared in this
way before being made into a pie.

Most of the books contain a receipt usually stated
(conscientiously) to be German, for marinading grouse
which might be useful either in the case of birds
accidentally kept too long or in that of very aged ones,
or, as observed above, to tame the wildness of the
rougher members of the tribe. Otherwise I cannot
conceive it to be necessary to treat good red grouse
in this way, however useful something of the same
kind may be to make pork taste like wild boar, rabbit
like hare, and very dry roe-venison like the flesh of a
hart of grease. You take (the particulars never vary)
a quarter of a pint of vinegar, a score of juniper berries,
some peppercorns, and two or three bay leaves. You
steep the birds in this for three days, frequently
turning them and spooning the marinade over them.
You then stuff them with turkey stuffing, lard the
breasts, roast and serve.

But after this and the other things the mind returns
from these excesses to the elegance of a good roast
grouse simple of himself, with some such a feeling as
that which " Neville Temple and Edward Trevor 1 "
attributed long ago to Tannhauser when

a dewy sense
Of innocent worship stole

over his heated brain and sense as he contemplated
the Princess after his return from the Venusberg. It
is true that the ingenious wickedness of some may
draw a bad moral in favour of variety even from this
comparison; but on their heads be it.

1 Called among men Julian Fane and Robert Lytton. It may perhaps
amuse readers of these cookery Essays to know that when I was, not
long after their appearance, appointed to my chair at Edinburgh, some
persons who were dissatisfied with the appointment affected to be
greatly shocked because of these performances of mine. This, in the
city of the Noctes Ambrosiana was some fun. (1923.)

IX
THE COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE

NOBODY who has been brought up on Aristotle can be
indifferent to the danger of "crossing over to another
kind," or confounding arts. Therefore, in beginning to
deal with matters of the art of cookery, let me at once
put myself under the protection of the names of
two of the greatest men of letters of their century,
Mr Thackeray and M. Alexandre Dumas, who dealt
with that same art, and by their action sanctioned the
intrusion of all others, however far below them, who
can make good their right to follow these glorious and
immortal memories.

There is no room here for mere antiquarianism, and,
therefore, the early cookery of the partridge may be
dismissed in a few lines all the more so for a reason
to be mentioned presently. It is enough that the grey
partridge (the only one which a true gourmand would
ever admit to the table if he could help it) appears to
be a native of Britain, and must therefore have been
very early eaten by Britons. It is classed by Gervase
Markham a great writer on all subjects of domestic
economy, and no mean man of letters in the early part
of the seventeenth century with pheasant and quail
as "me most daintiest of all birds"; and from further
remarks of Markham's it is clear that he had a sound
idea as to its preparation. In the first place, he recom-
mends for it and for all birds the process of "carbo-
nadoing" (grilling) on what he carefully distinguishes
as a "broiling-iron," an implement which, I think, has
gone out of our kitchens with some loss. The broiling-
iron (which, as Gervase pointedly remarks, is not a

THE COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 239

gridiron) was a solid iron plate, studded with hooks
and points much after the agreeable fashion of that
Moorish form of torture which in his own time was
known as the "guanches," and intended to be hung
up before the fire, so that smoke, etc. could not get
to the bird, while the iron background reflected heat
against it. It thus to a certain extent resembled a
Dutch oven; but, being open on all sides, must have
been more convenient for basting, and must also have
possessed that indescribable advantage which an un-
limited and unchecked supply of air communicates to
things grilled or roasted, and which is gradually, by
the disuse of open fires, and the substitution of ovens
under the name of " roasters," becoming strange, if not
unknown, to the present generation.

There is yet another point in which the excellent
Markham shows his taste. He prescribes as the best
sauce for pheasant or partridge, water and onions,
sliced proper, and a little salt mixed together, and but
stewed upon the coals. "To this," he says, "some will
put the juice or slices of an orange or lemon; but it is
according to taste, and indeed more proper for pheasant
than partridge." This at once shows a perception of
the root of the matter in game cookery, a perception
which was not too clear even to Markham's country-
men in his own day, and which, though we have
gradually waked up to it, is constantly dulled by con-
tamination from abroad. It cannot be too early or too
firmly laid down that in the case of all game-birds,
but especially in those which have the most distinct
character and taste, the simplest cookery is the best.
If anybody is fortunate enough to possess in his larder
partridges proper, uncontaminated with red-leggism,
young, plump, and properly kept, he will hardly be
persuaded to do anything else with them than roast

2 4 o MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

them in front of the fire, cooking them not enough to
make them dry, but sufficiently to avoid all appearance
of being underdone, for a partridge is not a wild duck.
He will then eat them hot, with whatever accompani-
ments of bread-sauce, bread-crumbs, fried potatoes, or
the like he pleases ; and those which are left to get cold
he will eat exactly as they are for breakfast, with no
condiment but salt and a little cayenne pepper. He
will thus have one of the best things for dinner, and
the very best thing for breakfast, that exists. The birds
in roasting may be waistcoated, like quails, with bacon
and vine-leaves if anybody likes, but with good basting
and good birds it is not necessary. The more utterly
"simple of themselves," as Sir John Falstaff said in
another matter, they are kept the better. This is the
counsel of perfection if they are good birds of the old
kind, young, wild, properly hung, and properly cooked.

But counsels of perfection are apt to pall upon man-
kind: and moreover, unfortunately they are not in-
variably listened to by partridges. There are partridges
which are not of the pure old kind there are (for-
tunately perhaps in some ways, unfortunately in others)
a great many of them. There are partridges which are
not young, and which no amount of hanging will make
so. There are partridges which have not eaten ants'
eggs, or have in their own self-willed fashion not eaten
them sufficiently to give them the partridge flavour.
And there are human beings who are either incapable
of appreciating roast partridges or who, in the words
of a proverb too well known for it to be lawful to cite
it just yet, object to roast partridge always.

The universality of these facts, or of some of them,
seems to be established by the other fact, that in the
case of no game-bird are there so many receipts for
cooking as in the case of the partridge, which is also

THE COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 241

of unusually wide distribution. It is true that the
Continental partridge is usually, though not always,
a red-leg, and that the American partridge is, unless
imported, only a big and rather plebeian quail. But
these facts are only a greater reason for applying the
counsels of ^perfection the various devices for dis-
guising the intrinsic incompleteness of the subject
under a weight of ornament. It must be confessed
that the result is by no means always contemptible
with the proper appliances and in the hands of a skilful
artist it could hardly be so. But with some exceptions
to be noticed presently, it is always something like a
crime in the case of the best birds, and something like
a confession in the case of the others.

To the best of my belief there are only two forms of
what may be called the secondary cookery of the
partridge which bear distinct marks of independence
and originality. One is the English partridge pudding,
and the other is the French Perdrix aux choux.
Speaking under correction, I should imagine that the
former was as indigenous at least as the bird. Puddings
meat puddings of all kinds are intensely English;
the benighted foreigner does not understand, and
indeed shudders at them for the most part, and it is
sad to have to confess that Englishmen themselves
appear to have lost their relish for them. There is a
theory that partridge pudding was an invention of the
South Saxons, and has or had its natural home in the
region (very lately sophisticated and made "residen-
tial") of Ashdown and St Leonard's Forests. Either
because of this localisation, or because it is thought
a waste, or because it is thought vulgar, receipts for it
are very rare in the books. In about a hundred modern
cookery-books which I possess, I have not come across
more than one or two, the best of which is in CasselPs

s in 16

242 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

large Dictionary of Cookery. It is true that an in-
telligent cook hardly requires one, for the pudding is
made precisely after the fashion of any other meat-
pudding, with steak as a necessary, and mushrooms as
a desirable, addition to the partridges. But the steak,
wise men advise, should not be cut up in pieces, but
laid as a thin foundation for the partridge to rest upon.
The result is certainly excellent, as all meat puddings
are for those who are vigorous enough to eat them
only much better than most. And while it is perhaps
one of the few modes in which young and good par-
tridges are not much less good than when roasted, it
gives an excellent account of the aged and the half-
bred.

Perdrix aux choux abroad is a dish not less homely,
though much more widely spread, than partridge
pudding in England ; and receipts for it are innumerable
in all French and many English books. I find this
succinct description (apparently half of French, half
of German origin) in The Professed Cook, third edition,
1776, by "B. Clermont, who has been many years
clerk of the kitchen to some of the first families in this
kingdom," and more particularly seems to have served
as ojficier de bouche to the Earls of Abingdon and Ash-
burnham, from whom, let us hope, that he continued,
even unto Zouche and Zetland. B. Clermont does not
waste many words over the dish, but thus dismisses it :

Perdrix d la braze (sic) aux choux. Brazed with cabbages and a
bit of pickled pork, with a good cullis sauce. Savoys are the best
for stewing. Such as would have them in the manner of sowerkrout
must stew the cabbage very tender and pretty high of spices, and
add as much vinegar as will give it a tartish taste. This last is
commonly served in a tureen, and then it is so-called. Old
partridges are very good for brazing, and may be served with any
ragout, stewed greens, and all kinds of pur6e.

This is simple enough and correct enough, but a
little vague. The truth is that perdrix aux choux is

THE COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 243

a dish, which, especially in the serving, admits of a
great deal of taste and fancy. For instance, take three
of the most recent French-English cookery-books
that of an estimable and very practical lady, Madame
Emilie Lebour-Fawssett (who is often beyond praise,
but who thinks Heaven help her! that the only
reason why English people prefer the grey partridge
to the red-leg is "because they are English"), the
famous Baron Brisse, and M. Duret's Practical House-
bold Cookery. There is no very great difference in their
general directions, but the lady recommends the
partridge and bacon to be, above all things, hidden
in the cabbage; the Baron directs the cabbage to be
put round the birds; and the ex-manager of St James's
Hall orders it to be made into a bed for them. The last
arrangement is, I think, the more usual and the best.
There is also a certain difference in the methods; for
while the Baron directs the cabbage to be nearly cooked
before it is combined with the partridges, which have
been separately prepared in a saucepan, Madame
Lebour-Fawssett prefers a mere scalding of the cabbage
first, and then a joint stew for two hours, if the birds
are young, and three if they are old, while M. Duret,
giving them a preliminary fry, ordains an hour and a
half of concoction together. But this is the way of
cookery-books, and without it a whole library would be
reduced to a very small bookshelf. The principle of the
whole is obvious enough. You have some probably
rather tough, and not improbably rather tasteless
birds, and you give them tenderness and taste by
adding them to, or cooking them with, bacon and
cabbage "poiled with the paeon and as coot as
marrow," as the Welsh farmer observes in Crotchet
Castle. You season with the usual vegetables and sauces,
and you add, partly as a decoration and partly as a

16-3

244 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

finish, some sort of sausage cervelas, chipolata, or
was Sie wunschen. Every one who has ever eaten a
well-cooked perdrix aux choux knows that the result
is admirable; but I do not think that it is mere pre-
judice or John-Bullishness to suspect that the perdrix
has the least say in the matter.

The partridge, however, is undoubtedly a most ex-
cellent vehicle for the reception and exhibition of
ingeniously concocted savours; and he has sufficient
character of his own, unless in extreme cases, not to
be overcome by them altogether. If I were disposed
to take an unmanly advantage of Madame Lebour-
Fawssett (for whom, on the contrary, I have a great
respect), I should dwell on a fatal little avowal of hers
in reference to another preparation -partridge salmis
that " if you have not quite enough partridge, some
cunningly cut mutton will taste just the same." No
doubt most meat will " taste just the same" in this
sort of cookery; but salmis of partridge when well made
is such a good thing that nobody need be angry at
its being surreptitiously " extended" in this fashion.
Salmis of partridge, indeed, comes, I think, next to
salmis of grouse and salmis of wild duck. It is in-
finitely better than salmis of pheasant, which is con-
fusion ; and, like other salmis, it is by no means always
or even very often done as it ought to be done by
English cooks. There are two mistakes as to dishes of
this kind into which these excellent persons are wont
to fall. The first is to make the liquid part of the
preparation call it sauce, gravy, or what you please
too liquid, and, so to speak, too detached from the
solid. The second is to procure body and flavour by
the detestable compounds known as "browning" or
by illegitimate admixture of ready-made sauces. In
a proper salmis (which, it ought not to be necessary

THE COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 245

to say, can only be made with red wine, though some
English books desperately persevere in recommending
" sherry" for such purposes), the gravy should be quite
thick and velvety, and the solid part should seem to
have been naturally cooked in it, not suddenly plumped
into a bath of independent preparation.

Of the many ordinary fashions of cooking partridges
it can hardly be necessary to speak here in detail.
Generally speaking, it may be said that whatever you
can do with anything you can do with a partridge. To
no animal with wings (always excepting the barndoor
fowl) do so many commonplace, but not therefore
despicable, means of adjustment lend themselves. It
is said that you may even boil a partridge, and that
accommodated in this fashion it is very good for
invalids; but I never tasted boiled partridge, and I
do not think that the chance of partaking of it would
be a sufficient consolation to me for being an invalid.
Partridge soup is not bad, and it offers means of dis-
posing of birds to those who in out-of-the-way places
happen to have more than they can dispose of in any
other way. But it is not like grouse soup and hare
soup, a thing distinctly good and independently re-
commendable. Partridge pie, on the other hand, is
excellent. The place of the steak which is used in the
ruder pudding is taken by veal, and in other respects
it is arranged on the common form of pies made of
fowl; but it is better than most of its fellows. There
will always be bold bad men who say that pigeon pie
is chiefly valuable for its steak, and chicken pie (despite
its literary renown from The Antiquary) because of its
seasoning. But the partridge has a sufficient value of
his own to communicate it to other things instead of
requiring to be reinforced by them. And perhaps in
no case is this more perceptible than in partridge pie,

246 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

which should, of course, like all things of the kind, be
cold to be in perfection.

It should be still more needless td say that partridge
may be grilled either spread-eagle fashion or in halves
(in which case, however, as in others, it will be
especially desirable to guard against possible dryness
by very careful basting, or waistcoats of bacon, or
larding) ; that he may be converted into various kinds
of salad; that the process of braising or stewing may
be applied without the cabbage being of necessity;
that in roasting him all manner of varieties of stuffing,
from the common bread variety with parsley (they use
marjoram in some counties, and it is decidedly better)
through mushrooms to truffles, are available. Par-
tridges can, of course, also be potted, either in' joints
or in the ordinary fashion of pounding up the fleshy
parts. They make, if a sufficient number is available,
and sufficient care is taken in the compounding,
admirable sandwiches, and like every other kind of
game they enter in their turn into the composition of
the true and rare Yorkshire pie, from which nothing
can possibly be more different than the mixture (by
no means despicable in its way) which is sold under
that name as a rule. The true Yorkshire pie consists
of birds of different sizes (tradition requires a turkey
to begin with and a snipe to end with) boned and
packed into each other with forcemeat to fill up the
interstices until a solid mass of contrasted layers is
formed. The idea is barbaric but grandiose; the
execution capital.

There are, however, divers ways of dealing with
partridges which might not occur even to an ordinarily
lively imagination with a knowledge of plain cookery.
I am driven to believe, from many years' experience
of cookery-books, that such an imagination combined

THE COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 247

with such a knowledge is by no means so common as
one might expect. But the possession of it would not
necessarily enable any one to discover for him or herself
the more elaborate or at least more out-of-the-way
devices to which we shall now come.

One of these (personally I think not one of the most
successful, but it depends very much on taste) is a
chartreuse of partridges. The receipts for this will be
found to differ very greatly in different books ; but the
philosopher who has the power of detecting likenesses
under differences will very quickly hit upon the truth
that a chartreuse of partridge is merely perdrix aux
cboux adjusted to the general requirements of the
chartreuse, which are that the mixture shall be put into
a mould and baked in an oven. The fullest descriptions
of both will be found almost identical, the savoy
cabbage being there, and the bacon, and the sausage.
The chief difference is that, for the sake of effect
chiefly, since the chartreuse is turned out of the mould
and exhibited standing, slices of carrot play a pro-
minent part. They are put, sometimes alternating with
sausage, sometimes with turnip, next to the sides of
the mould ; then comes a lining of bacon and cabbage,
and then the birds with more bacon and more cabbage
are packed in the middle, after being previously cooked
by frying and stewing in stock with more bacon and
the usual accessories. A simpler chartreuse is some-
times made with nothing but the birds and the vege-
tables, both bacon and sausage being omitted; and it
would clearly be within the resources and the rights
of science to use the bacon but not the sausage, and to
introduce other varieties. For, in fact, in the more
complex kinds of cookery there are no hard-and-fast
rules, and the proof not merely of puddings but of
every dish is in the eating.

248 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

A dish which seems at first sight to savour of will-
worship and extravagance is souffle of partridge. Yet
it is defensible from the charge of being false heraldry,
for the partridge is a winged animal, and that which
restores to him lightness is not against nature. But it
is important to remember that it has to be made of
young birds perdreaux, not perdrix and like all
things of its kind it is not for every cook to achieve.
Yet the main lines of the preparation are simple. The
meat of cold partridges is pounded, moistened, warmed
with stock, and passed through a sieve till it becomes
a puree. It is then combined with a still stronger stock,
made of the bones of the birds themselves, adding
butter, some nutmeg, four yolks of eggs, and two of
the whites carefully whipped, after which it is put into
the souffl6 dish and the souffle dish in the oven, and the
whole, as quickly as possible after rising, set before the
persons who are to eat it. Much good may it do them.

The perdreau trufft which so ravished Mr Titmarsh
at the Cafe Foy long since (I cannot conceive what
induced him to drink Sauterne with it, and after
Burgundy too ! it should have been at least Meursault,
if not Montrachet or White Hermitage) was no doubt
an excellent bird; but there might be others as good
as he. The truffle, to my fancy, is rather for com-
paratively faint natural tastes like turkey or capon,
than for a strong nativity like that of the partridge.
Still, there are strong flavours that go excellently with
this bird. I do not know that there are many better
things of the kind than a partridge a la Btarnaise. All
things a la Bearnaise have of course a certain family
likeness. There is oil, there is garlic (not too much of
it), there is stock; and you stew or braise the patient
in the mixture. Some would in this particular case add
tomatoes, which again is a matter of taste.

THE COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 249

I have seen in several books, but never tried, a
receipt for what was called mayonnaise of partridge.
The bird is roasted, cut up, and served with a hot
green mayonnaise sauce of hard-boiled eggs, oil,
tarragon vinegar, and a considerable proportion of
good stock, with slices of anchovy added as a garnish,
ft might be good, but as the bird is to be simply roasted
and merely warmed in the sauce, I should say he would
be better by himself, if he were in thorough condition,
and anything but acceptable if he were not. The sauce,
tiowever, would be something of a trial of a good cook,
[f that were wanted.

Few things lend themselves better than partridges
to the fabrication of a supreme. As there may be some
people who share that wonder which Mr Harry Foker
expressed so artlessly, but so well, when he said,
' Can't think where the souprames comes from. What
Decomes of the legs of the fowls?" it may be well to
transcribe from an American, at least French-American,
manual one of the clearest directions I remember. It
nay be observed in passing that the American par-
iridge is probably for the most part the Virginian quail,
md that "over there" they have a habit of eating it
soiled with celery sauce or puree of celery, a thing
vhich goes very well with all game-birds, and more
particularly with pheasant. But to the "souprames."
'Make an incision," says my mentor, "on the top of
:he breastbone from end to end; then with a sharp
oiife cut off the entire breast on each side of the
cartridge, including the small wing bone, which should
lot be separated from the breast." The remainder of
:he bird is then used for other purposes, and the
supreme is fashioned in the usual way, or ways, for
;here are many. This seems to be a better and more
ndividual thing than the common chicken supr/me,

250 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

in which the breast is if used cut into separate strips,
and the size of the partridge offers this advantage.

On the other hand, the partridge cutlet another
fashion of securing most of the meat of the bird in a
comparatively boneless condition is begun at the
other end by slitting the back and taking out all the
bones except the pinions and drumsticks, which are
left. Cutlets thus fashioned can be accommodated in
various ways, especially by sauteing them with divers
sauces. The name cutlet is also given to less imposing
fragments of the bird, which can be dealt with of course
in almost any of the myriad manners in which cutlets
are served. The best known perhaps and the com-
monest in books, if not best in the dish, is a la rtgence.
This is a rather complicated preparation, in which the
birds are subjected to three different methods of
cooking, the results of which are destined to be united.
The roasted breasts are cut into small round pieces
which serve to give distinction to artificial cutlets,
formed in moulds, of a farce or forcemeat made of raw
partridge pounded with egg, mushroom, etc. into a
paste. These cutlets are then sent up in a sauce made
of the bones and remnants of the birds stewed with
butter, bacon-bones, herbs, wine, and brown sauce,
finally compounded with about half the quantity of
celery shredded, stewed and pulped to a cream. The
effect is good, but the dish belongs to the family of
over-complicated receipts, which to my thinking belong
to a semi-barbarous period and theory of cookery.

Partridge a la Parisienne, on the other hand, is
sound in principle and excellent in effect. The birds
are browned in butter on not too fierce a fire; some
glaze, some stock, and a little white wine are added,
with a slight dredging of flour, pepper, and salt, and
then they are simmered for three-quarters of an hour

THE COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE

or thereabouts, and when done are served with the
sauce strained over them. Partridge a Vestouffade is
a little more complicated, but not much. The birds
are larded, put in a saucepan with onions, carrots,
bacon, herbs, stock, white wine, and, of course, pepper
and salt, covered up, simmered till done, and served
as in the other case, with the sauce strained and
poured over them. To these two excellent ways may
be added, as of the same family, partridge a la chasseur
and partridge a la Portugaise^ which are slightly
different ways of cooking the jointed and dismembered
birds in butter, with easily variable and imaginable
seasonings including in the last case, of course, garlic,
and the substitution of oil for butter. They are all good,
and always supposing that the cook knows his or her
business well enough to prevent greasiness, there are
no better ways of cooking really good birds, except
the plain roast. But as there will always be those who
love mixed, and disguised, and blended flavours, let
us end with two arrangements of greater complexity
partridge a la Cussy and partridge a Vltalienne.

Partridge a la Cussy is a braised partridge with
peculiarities. In the first place, he is boned completely,
except as to the legs. He is then stuffed with a mixture
of sweetbreads, mushrooms, truffles, and cockscombs,
sewn up, and half grilled, until he becomes reasonably
consolidated. Then a braising-pan is taken, lined with
ham, and garnished with the invariable accompani-
ments of partridge in French cookery onions, carrot,
mixed herbs in bouquets, chopped bacon, the bones of
the birds smashed up, salt and pepper, white wine, and
stock. Into this, after the accompaniments have been
reasonably cooked, the birds are put, protected by
buttered paper, and simmered slowly, with the due
rite of fire above as well as below, which constitutes

252 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

braising proper. They are finally served up, as usual,
with their own sauce strained and skimmed.

The Italian fashion is not wholly dissimilar, though
it is usually given under the general head of " baking,"
as will be evident to every one whose idea of cookery
has got past words and come to things. Indeed, though
I have never seen it recommended, I should think it
could be done best in what I am told is called at the
Cape a "Dutch baking-pot," which is a slightly more
refined edition of our old friend Robinson Crusoe's
favourite method of cooking. The partridges are simply
prepared as if for roasting, but instead of being left
hollow, each is stuffed with fine bread-crumbs, a little
nutmeg, salt, pepper, butter, parsley, and lemon juice.
A sheet of oiled paper being prepared'for each bird, it
is spread with a mixed mincemeat of mushroom, carrot,
onion, parsley, herbs a volontt and truffles. In the
sheet thus prepared the bird, previously waistcoated
with bacon, is tied up. Then he is put in a covered pan
and baked, being now and again uncovered and basted.
At last, after three-quarters of an hour or so, unclothe,
dish, and serve him with the trimmings and clothings
made thoroughly hot with stock, wine, and the usual
appurtenances for such occasions made and provided.

I think that this is a tolerable summary of most of
the best ways of cooking "the bird" par Eminence.
There are others which vitiosa libido^ or, if any likes it,
refined taste, has found out. Thus, before making a
partridge salad you may, if you like, marinade the
birds in veal stock, tarragon vinegar, salad oil, and
herbs, using the marinade afterwards as a dressing.
And you may play the obvious tricks of filling par-
tridges with/0zV gras and the like. In short, as has been
hinted more than once, the bird, while requiring a very
little purely decorative treatment, is very susceptible

THE COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 253

of it, inasmuch as his taste is neither neutral nor, like
that of waterfowl in general and the grouse tribe also,
so definite and pronounced that it is almost impossible
to smother it by the commingling of other flavours. I
own frankly that to my own taste these flavour-experi-
ments of cookery should be kept for things like veal,
which have no particular flavour of their own, and
which are, therefore, public material for the artist to
work upon. I do not think that you can have too much
of a very good thing, and if I wanted other good things
I should rather add them of a different kind than
attempt to corrupt and denaturalise the simplicity of
the first good thing itself.

But other people have other tastes, and the foregoing
summary will at least show that the catchword of
toujours perdrix a catchword of which I venture to
think that few people who use it know the original
context is not extremely happy. For with the positive
receipts, and the collateral hints to any tolerably
expert novice in cookery given above, it would be
possible to arrange partridge every day throughout
the season without once duplicating the dish.

X

THE YOUNG ENGLAND MOVEMENT

" They recognised imagination in the government of nations as a
quality not less important than reason. They trusted much to a popular
sentiment which rested on a heroic tradition, and was sustained by
the high spirit of a free aristocracy. Their economic principles were
not unsound, but they looked on the health and knowledge of the
multitude as not the least precious part of the wealth of nations. . . .
They were entirely opposed to the equality of man. . . . They held that
no society could be durable unless it was built on the principles of
loyalty and religious reverence."

THE above words, taken from the well-known preface
to Lotbair, refer, it need hardly be said, to the writer's
own works. "They" are books, not men. But the
passage is by no means an insufficient description of
the persons and the principles that directed what is
called Young England. Without an investigation
which would certainly be long, and would probably
be tedious, it would not be easy to trace the copyright
of the adjective "young/' as applied in this way to a
national substantive. In the second quarter of the
century Young France, Young England, and Young
Ireland successively exemplified the compound in
different ways. Young France was mainly literary and
artistic, with a slight dash of politics, chiefly in the
eccentric form of bousingotisme: Young Ireland was
desperately political, with a slight infusion of litera-
ture; but Young England might justly claim to be a
good deal wider in its aspirations than its forerunners
who crowded to support Hernani, or its imitators who
dilated on the excellence of the pike as a vehicle of
reform, in the columns of the Nation. It was political
first of all, but it took a wide view of politics, and it
recognised quicquid agunt homines as part of the

THE YOUNG ENGLAND MOVEMENT

politician's subject and material. This was its main
differentia, and in this lies the excuse for the foibles
which, as in all such cases, attracted most popular atten-
tion to it. No doubt some of its members paid more
attention to the fringe than to the stuff: that is usual
and inevitable in all such movements. No doubt some
joined it for the sake of the fringe only; that is also
inevitable. But any one who talks and thinks of it as
of a thing chiefly distinguished by the fact that one of
its heroes invented white waistcoats, and by the fact
that some of its followers emulated, or suggested, the
harmless freaks of Mr Lyle in Coningsby, and Mr Chain-
mail in Crotchet Castle, may rest assured that he knows
very little about it.

It is never very easy to trace the exact origin of the
complicated phenomena which are called " movements."
Few people nowadays fall into the slovenly error of
attributing the Reformation wholly to Luther, or set-
ting down the French Revolution to the machinations
of an entirely unhistorical Committee of Three, com-
posed of Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. The move-
ment now specially before us being a much looser, and
a much less striking, as well as in its immediate effects
a much more unimportant, example of its kind than
either of these, is proportionately more difficult to
isolate and to analyse. But it is perfectly certain that
it was a branch or an offshoot, whichever word may
be preferred, of the great Romantic revival which
affected all Europe during the first quarter of the cen-
tury. This revival has been repeatedly judged in a
summary fashion, and the judgments have not, as a
rule, been very happy. The reason is not far to seek:
it is to be found in the general omission to recognise
the fact that it was a revolt, but a revolt against
usurped authority, and so partook after all of the nature

256 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

of reaction and restoration. The formulas of the
Reformation and the Renaissance had crusted and
crystallised the literary and political, as well as to a
less degree the social life of Europe: the Romantic
revival cracked the crust, and dissolved the crystals.
It would lead us altogether too far to attempt the
general results of this process, but one special result is
the special subject before us.

The political, social, literary, and religious life of
England between the Revolution and the beginning of
the nineteenth century had been exceptionally affected
by the formulas just mentioned. It had not developed
any gigantic abuses. There was no need of an English
Revolution, and no general desire for one. English
literature had at no time fallen into* the portentous
state which French literature presented when the great
philosophes dropped off one by one. The Church of
England was orthodox in belief, decent in conduct, and
influential in the State. But everything was conven-
tional, and often most absurdly and contradictorily
r entional. Morals were somewhat loose, but the
rf manners was extraordinarily strict. The country
a free country, but the franchise was quaintly
Dotted, and seats were sold in the open market. The
Government was a party Government; yet from the
fall of Bolingbroke to the rise of Liverpool there were
not half-a-dozen statesmen who can be labelled as
distinctly Whig or distinctly Tory in principle. The free
and independent elector was the Omphalos of the con-
stitution ; but it was understood that the free and inde-
pendent elector would for the most part vote for
members of certain houses, or those who were favoured
by certain houses. It was the country of Shakespeare;
yet men of genius and talent wrote Irene and Douglas^
and did not put them in the fire when they had written

THE YOUNG ENGLAND MOVEMENT 257

them. It was the country of Arthur (at least of the
Arthurian legends) and Harold, of Coeur de Lion and
Becket, of Chandos and Chaucer, of Occam and Scotus;
yet people talked contemptuously of the "dark ages,"
and never willingly looked beyond 1688, except to
pay a regulation compliment to Queen Elizabeth and
the Reformers. Of course there were exceptions to
all this, but the general sentiment was as described.
The sense of historic, social, literary, religious con-
tinuity was, if not lost, at any rate dulled. The pattern
politician never looked beyond William the Deliverer:
the pattern divine made as deep a trench at the Refor-
mation as did his controversial opponents. Nobody,
except a few eccentrics, could give a political reasr
for the faith that was in him, save from the Bill
Rights and the Act of Settlement; and the Tb*
nine Articles in the same way closed the ecclesia
horizon. English poetry began, by grace of Dr Jot^
with Cowley; as for English social life, it began
ended with the conventional environment of the ii.o
vidual, with the fashion of the family, "the town," the
neighbourhood, the Court, or what not.

All this the Romantic movement, and its accom-
paniment the French Revolution, burst up in different
ways; and most of those ways concern us a little, for
most of them had something to do with Young Eng-
land. It gradually drew into itself, or would have
drawn, if it had ever become really powerful (for it
must be remembered that it was, as far as direct effect
went, very much of a failure), the dandyism of Byron
and D'Orsay, the medievalism of Scott, the Anglican-
ism of Coleridge and Wordsworth. It never, perhaps,
as a matter of history, moulded these various things
and others into a doctrine of politics and sociology so
coherent as that which its most illustrious politician
s m . 17

258 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

formulates, somewhat as an after-thought, in the motto
of this essay, but it assimilated them more or less
unconsciously. Among the numerous synonyms of
the strictly meaningless terms, "Tory" and "Whig,"
"traditional 35 and "doctrinaire" perhaps deserve a
place. The Young England movement was in all things
traditional in its revolt against eighteenth-century
convention, just as its enemy the Radical party was
above all things doctrinaire in carrying out the same
revolt. The Radical could find no logical reason why
men should not be equal in privileges, and proposed
to make them so: Young England pointed out that
they had never been equal historically, and proposed
\ leave them as they were. The Radical could think
"toothing better than laissez-faire for the regulation
stat ~{ a l problems apart from the question of political
l ous privilege : Young England had an amiable,
what visionary, theory of mutual assistance
i n a different form has been oddly enough taken
some Radicals of to-day. With regard to the
Church and the aristocracy, the Radical, after trying
in vain to argue down to them from his general prin-
ciples, would have none of them : Young England had
its memory filled with the exploits of both in the past,
and its imagination with the possibilities of both in
the future. It was thus at once, and in a remarkable
fashion, both reactionary and innovating. It proposed
to employ innumerable forces which the official con-
vention of the eighteenth century ignored; but they
were all forces to be connected with to be geared on
to, so to speak the traditional machinery of Govern-
ment and society, in order to bring into play many
wheels which the convention of the eighteenth century
had neglected and left idle.

One of these forces was literature. The pen was, of

THE YOUNG ENGLAND MOVEMENT 259

course, no new power in politics, but it had latterly
been considered a weapon for the irregulars. NoPrime
Minister, between Bolingbroke and Canning, left a
literary reputation ; Pulteney, and other statesmen who
followed Pulteney, wrote chiefly in secret. This was, of
course, the merest convention. It had no precedent
before the eighteenth century, but the contrary; it had
no foundation of reason whatever. Accordingly, the
Young England movement was essentially a literary
movement, and not least a literary movement applied
to politics. The very dandies were not dandies merely,
but wrote as earnestly as they dressed. They saw no
reason why a gentleman should not be a gentleman o f
the press, and none why a gentleman of the press shor
not be a gentleman. In that there appears nothi
all extraordinary now. But when it is remem
that, by no means in the earliest days of the Edin
Review, Macvey Napier's contributors minced and i
difficulties, which may yet be found in his corres
dence, on the subject of receiving cheques, it may L
seen that it required some courage to take the style
and title which Mr Disraeli took upon himself in the
face of Parliament. The members of the movement,
and especially one member, did more than despise the
disqualification; they removed it. And in so doing
they probably made not their least shocking innovation
to steady-going Whigs and Tories, who looked on
political writing, if not on all writing except that of an
occasional poem or book of travels, as professional and
undignified.

It is no part of the object of the present essay to go
through the list of the men who took part in the move-
ment. To mention the dead without mentioning the
living would be incomplete ; to mention the living would
be to enter on that domain of gossip and personality

17-2

260 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

which, in the present day especially, faithful servants
of history and literature are especially bound to
eschew 1 . The worst enemies of Young England can
hardly deny that it was a singularly wide-reaching
movement. The literature of it corresponds to its width
of reach, and any review of that literature would be
impossible in the present limits. It had dandy litera-
ture, poetical literature, political literature literature
of all sorts and kinds. If it could have assumed a
general motto, probably no better one could have been
taken than a sentence from the Life of Lord George
Bentinck: "The literary man who is a man of action
v s a two-edged weapon." Some of its devotees went
Y for tournaments, some for social reform, some for
<10i y, some for politics, some for art. It would
A 7 ^ly be unfair to claim for Young England, in
,%nt ways, Pugin and the "Graduate of Oxford,"

influ and " Felix Summerl 7-" Jt had an ex *ra-
r iary influence on the Universities, a still more
,ri:tTaordinary influence on the estimate of artistic
matters in the press. All this, it may be said, was a
matter of fringe to use the phrase which has been
already adopted. Be it so; but the fringe is part of
the garment, and it is the part which most catches
and touches outward things.

1 The remark still applies, though the ranks have been still further
thinned. To one person thus removed, to Lord Houghton, the invention,
not merely of the name, but of the movement itself, has sometimes been
attributed. The next time that I met him after writing the essay re-
printed in the text, he said to me, " I wish you had told me you were
going to write that. I could have set you right on a great many things
which nobody knows now except Lord John Manners," and he added,
what indeed I knew, as to Mr Disraeli, "He had nothing to do with it
at first; he came in afterwards." I suggested to him that he had much
better write the history himself, and he replied that he had thought of
doing so, but "he was too old and it was too much trouble." However,
on further persuasion, he said he would think of it; but I heard nothing
further of it, and his executors do not seem to have found anything.
The Duke of Rutland is now, I think, the very last survivor of the
inner cinacle (1892). And now of course there are none (1923).

THE YOUNG ENGLAND MOVEMENT 261

Fortunately, however, we are not reduced to arguing
from mere retrospect. There is to be found, by any one
who looks in the British Museum, a remarkable book,
entitled Anti-Coningsby, and published in the year
1844. I* * s a ver 7 unec pal book, and very badly
planned; but there are passages and phrases in it which
would not do discredit to Mr St Barbe himself. At the
end of this book there is a satirical programme of a
Young England Journal. The chief points in this pro-
gramme may not be uninteresting, and are certainly
unimpeachable as evidences of what was supposed by
contemporaries to be the tendency of the movement.
There are five points in this hostile representation.
The Young England "Journal will contain "slashing
politics on both sides"; that is to say, it will advocate
measures irrespective of the convenience of special
sections of the actual governing cliques. It will con-
tain unusually active foreign correspondence; that is
to say, it will try and interest the average Briton in
something beyond the cackle of his bourg. A very
strong point is made (with the evident expectation of
a laugh) over the " History of Cricket," which a young
peer will write in it. Another deals with the statistics
which are to be given as to " the use of the new wash-
houses." Lastly, a dead set is made on the display
which will be made in the Young England Journal of
"the virtues of Puseyism." These are the five points
omitting minor and personal matters which the
satirist marshals in his ironic charge against Young
England. They were not of the orthodox Whigs or the
orthodox Conservatives ; they tried to interest English-
men in the doings of the foolish foreigner; they took
an interest in athletics; they condescended to such
degrading particulars as the new wash-houses (washing-
houses, to be very exact, is the form which our

262 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

satirist prefers); and they held up the virtues of
Puseyism.

Now let us look at these objects of the scorn of
1844 through the spectacles of half 1 a century later. It
may be as well to assure a sceptical generation that
they were not drawn up of malice prepense by the
present writer. They happen, indeed, to have been
published before he was born. But I think, if we look
at public matters to-day, we shall hardly find that the
subjects to which the Young England Journal was sup-
posed to be about to devote its attention, have been
thrown into that dust-bin which in fifty years infallibly
accepts political crotchets that have not life in them.
"He was not of God," said Rochester of Cowley, pro-
fanely, doubtless, "and therefore he could not stand."
The crotchets of 1844 have certainly stood. It would
be very hard to bring the politics of either or any party
to-day under those of one of those two "sides" which
the scribe of fifty years ago indignantly assumed that
all respectable people must adopt. We are not quite
so indifferent about foreign correspondence as he
seems to have held that we should be, and it will even
be found on inquiry that nearly all the most interesting
events of the last thirty years have concerned that
matter 2 . The subscribers to a journal of to-day would
hardly feel scorn (except in so far as in the course of
years the thing may have become stale) at a person
of title writing a history of cricket, and athletics do not
now occupy exactly the position which the satirist
evidently thought they ought to occupy. Have we
taken up his cue of sublime contempt of wash-houses,
or have we interested ourselves more and more, as
years have gone on, in wash-houses and all their kind ?
There are still, no doubt, varying opinions about the

1 Now nearly a whole (1923). a And now? (1923).

THE YOUNG ENGLAND MOVEMENT 263

virtues of Puseyism; but it must be a singular social
historian who will deny that what was at that date
called Puseyism has grown and spread, and in itself
or its offshoots gone far to cover the land in the last
fifty years. So the satirist's own Young England is at
any rate tolerably justified of its works by the progress
of time. The demolition of that purely selfish party
spirit wHich saw all things in the conquest or retention
of "twelve hundred a year," is something; the breaking
down of the merely insular conception of English
politics, is something; the development of the physical
education of the people, is something; sanitas sanita-
tum is something ; the revival of vivid religious emotion
and the knitting afresh of the connection of religion
and art, is something. These are truisms propositions
almost shameful to be advanced, because of the im-
possibility of denying them. Yet a belief in these
propositions is what our satirist of the last century
charges on Young England. On his head be it !

It is scarcely possible to reiterate too often the cau-
tion that the conscious and the unconscious tendencies
of this particular movement cannot be too carefully
separated. It has just been seen that, if an enemy may
be trusted, the description of the Young England
crusade, given in the early part of this essay, is unim-
peachable. No one can say Quis vituperavit? for we
have the vituperation. But no doubt the movement
was in many ways a blind movement. The very multi-
plicity of its aims, the diversity of its tendencies, the
range of its sympathies, probably prevented most of
those who took part in it from taking anything like a
catholic survey of the field and the campaign. The
accounts of its greatest leader are too characteristically
fantastic to be accepted literally. They are more or
less true as summaries of the facts, but they are not

264 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

to be taken as absolutely trustworthy analyses of the
motives. It is partly from looking at the results, partly
from examining, as we have here examined, the testi-
monies of opponents, but most of all from comparison
of the state of rival parties, that the true nature of
this generally abortive yet specifically fruitful move-
ment becomes evident. To the political student who
has some experience in English history, the middle
third of the century is a sufficiently dreary time, un-
less he has the gift of looking before and after. The
ineptitude of most regular Whigs and Tories, each
convinced that the country must be ruined if it did not
employ them, and too many of each willing to ruin
the country if it bade them do so as the price of em-
ployment; the opportunism of the Peelites, as dull and
as selfish, but destitute of the traditional orthodoxy
which half excuses the others ; the doctrinairism of the
Radicals, dullest of all and least irradiated by any
sentiment, though faintly relieved by a certain intel-
lectual consistency, make up a grisly procession of
phantoms flitting across the political stage, in a manner
no doubt supremely important to themselves at the
time, but singularly forlorn to the posterity of spec-
tators.

Amongst these the men of the Young England move-
ment cannot be said to present a uniform or logically
compact appearance. They are scattered, uncertain
occasionally, futile often, running after a dozen hares
at once, frequently failing to catch any. But they are
at least generous, intelligent, conscious of the past,
hopeful of the future, awake to the changed circum-
stances of modern life, and ready, each in his self-
willed and confused way, with a plan of living to meet
those circumstances. Some years ago we had a certain
saying of Mencius held up to us in a Radical journal

THE YOUNG ENGLAND MOVEMENT 265

(I always like to quote authorities which cannot be
suspected of extreme sympathy with my subject) as
"worthy to be written in letters of gold in every legis-
lative hall and municipal chamber in the country."
The maxim is that, "if the people are made to share
in the means of enjoyment, they will cherish no feelings
of discontent." I do not know whether Young England
read Chinese; it certainly had no legislative hall or
municipal chamber of its own. But the motto was its
motto from the beginning. Long after it had as a move-
ment merged in the general stream of progress, Pea-
cock, who had satirised its earliest forms in Crotchet
Castle, returned as a kind of ghost to the world of
novelists in Gryll Grange. He then found a new develop-
ment to laugh at. The young peer did not equip a
baronial hall or write (to the deep disgust of the author
of Anti-Coningsby) on the history of cricket; but he
lectured, and he was "pantopragmatic." It is thirty
years [now sixty] since Gryll Grange was written, but
young peers are expected to lecture and be panto-
pragmatic quite as much as ever. That is an offshoot
of Young Englandism; whether good or bad, it is not
to the present purpose to decide. It is sufficient to
point out the numerous ways in which the movement
did actually influence English life.

For, on the whole, the influence actually exerted was
no doubt more social than political. It was of the very
nature of the movement to blend social and political
matters, and so in the long-run the social influence,
transformed in the process, became a political one.
But directly in the fusion of classes, or rather in the
interesting of one class in another while retaining their
division, and still more indirectly in its religious and
artistic developments, Young England promoted a
quiet social revolution. The historian of the future, if

266 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

not of the present, will hardly hesitate about his answer
to the question, Which have done the most for social
progress, the Radical doctrinaires with their reductio
ad absurdum in the Charter, or the advocates of cricket
and wash-houses and libraries, of friendly communica-
tion between classes, of the spread of art, of religious
services attractive to the general?

These latter ideas have of course long ceased to be
the property of one party, political or other. In
scuffling they change rapiers on that as on other stages,
and the result is apt to be confusing to all but careful
observers. The real tendency of the Young England
movement is, as always, to be sought far less in the
writings of those who supported it, than in the writings
of those who opposed or stood aloof frofti it. A search
on this principle, between 1840 and 1850, with a certain
margin on either side of the decade, will not leave much
doubt as to the real influence of the thing. Nowhere,
for instance, is that influence more apparent than in
the early writings of Charles Kingsley, certainly not a
sympathiser with it or with many of its developments.
Indeed, to trace the ramifications of agreement, dissent,
protest, and silent adoption of more or less of the
tendencies of the movement, would be to make a sur-
vey of the literature of the period. It is perceptible no
less in Past and Present (far removed as Carlyle was
from sympathy with Young England) than in the
Broad Stone of Honour, little less in The Princess than
in Coningsby. If the greatest literary name of the
period, next to those of Carlyle and Tennyson, was
rebel to its influence and wrote chiefly against it, that
is because Thackeray was, in the first place, a satirist
before all, and, in the second place (like Mr Pendennis),
singularly weak on politics and general history, and
extraordinarily John Bullish in his prejudices. Young

THE YOUNG ENGLAND MOVEMENT 267

England was not John Bullish it might, perhaps, have
been a little more so with advantage and it certainly
presented a good many handles to the enemy who had
command of irony. It was exceedingly easy to repre-
sent its members as belonging to "the order of the
gilets blancs" and it was not so easy for an admirer
of the eighteenth century to forgive the contempt it
poured on that period. The difference is of little im-
portance now. Indeed, cynics who see all things in
letters may be rather grateful for it as having given us
the admirable parody of Codlingsby, and the scarcely
less admirable caricature-retort of St Barbe. It has
only been mentioned here because, with what it is
hard to regard as anything but simple stupidity, some
good people have thought to show their allegiance to
Thackeray by scoffing at Young England. That is not
the attitude of the critic, who does not take sides in
such matters.

To sum up the social purport of the movement,
Young England aimed at loosening the rigid barriers
between the different classes of the population by the
influence of mutual good offices, by the humanising
effects of art and letters, by a common enjoyment of
picturesque religious functions, by popularising the
ideas of national tradition and historical continuity,
by restoring the merriment of life, by protesting against
the exchange of money and receipt for money as a
sufficient summary of the relations of man and man.
These were undoubtedly its objects; it would be diffi-
cult to show that they were the objects of any other
party, school, sect, or class, at the time. But (and this
is really the chief feather in the Young England cap)
they were objects so obviously desirable that no one
school, especially no one so loosely constituted, could
monopolise them. English social life at large has, to

268 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

a great extent, fallen into the lines thus indicated. It
has been generally without much consciousness of the
indicators, and often with not a little expressed ingrati-
tude to them; but this matters very little to the
historian. Parties much more definite, leaders much
more one-ideaed, persistent and successful, have before
now gone long without recognition, longer without
gratitude. But recognition, if not gratitude, comes
sooner or later to most, and it may fairly come now to the
despised patrons of cricket and wash-houses who afforded
so much amusement to our satirist.

The political mot, on the other hand, of the Young
England movement was not very different from Lord
Beaconsfield's famous boast. It introduced the "gentle-
man of the press" to practical politics; it made the
politician a gentleman of the press. Before 1830
political government had, in the first place, been
recognised as belonging more or less to a select circle
of families and officials, and, in the second, it has
busied itself with a very restricted range of subjects.
Social matters rarely came before Parliament, though
they sometimes forced their way in just as outsiders
sometimes forced their way into political place and
power. The purpose, whether clearly or dimly under-
stood and expressed, of Young England was to break
down the monopoly while retaining the advantages of
aristocracy; to enlarge the sphere of the politician, and
tp increase the number of levers on which he can work.
It was opposed as much to the mechanical alternation
of ready-made sets of governors which it found in
existence, as to the mechanical manipulation of the
constituencies which has grown up since its time.
Whether in such a country as England the ideal of a
nation following its "natural" leaders (be their letters
of naturalisation due to birth or won by brains), feeling

THE YOUNG ENGLAND MOVEMENT 269

the historic estimate sufficiently to prevent change for
change's sake, or for mere class interests, yet open to
improvement, was a chimerical ideal or not, there is
no need to attempt to decide here. But of one thing
there is no doubt, that Young England was the most
striking political result among us of the vast Romantic
revival which influenced literature and religion so
vitally; and that in establishing the impossibility of
separating political from social questions, it had in its
turn at least one result which cannot fail to be per-
manent.

For polemical purposes certain persons have called
it a harlequinade. We make much allowance in Eng-
land for polemical purposes, and some of the persons
who so call it know that it was much more than a
harlequinade. It was indeed, as has been pointed out,
in many ways a failure. It had, according to that
Scriptural doctrine which has been a favourite in our
time with men so different as Guizot, Lord Tennyson,
and M. Renan, to perish in order that it might produce
its effect. The men who took part in it had too different
and perhaps too inconsistent motives to bring it to
any complete end. It lacked a general programme and
a single purpose. Brilliant as was the talent of many
who took part in it, none of them, perhaps, had that
single-hearted and single-minded insanity of genius
which carries a movement completely to its goal. But
there is sufficient evidence to show that Young England
on detached points was prophetic as well as enthusi-
astic, and that it divined and helped the tendency of
the times in a manner which secures for it a place, and
no mean place, in the social and political history of the
country 1 .

1 It is perhaps of some slight importance to remember that this
was written 40 years ago as nearly as possible midway between the
date of the subject matter and to-day (1923).

XI
THOUGHTS ON REPUBLICS 1

IT is perhaps too much the custom of those of us who
earn our bread by surveying mankind from China to
Peru, and writing daily or weekly articles on politics,
to take things as they come weekly or daily, and indulge
in no further reflections on them. Some indeed have
said that it is not the custom of the present day to
indulge in further reflections upon anything; and there
are even those who, going yet more to extremes, add
that it is a very fortunate thing, the affairs of the
moment, and especially the political affairs, being re-
markably ill-suited to bear reflection of any kind,
above all the "further" kind. Once it was different,
and the political article of the day took the form of
The Character of a Trimmer, or The Conduct of the
Allies. Let it be allowed to a political journalist of
some years' standing than whom nobody can be
more conscious of the difference between himself and
Halifax or Swift to muse for a while, in the temper
of their musing if not with the merit of their expression,
on the latest of modern revolutions, the revolution
which had the happy thought of making the centenary
of 1789 practical. And let this musing take for its
subject, first, some expressed opinions on the birth of
tKe Brazilian Republic, then Republics themselves,
Brazilian and other.

It was natural, no doubt, that the action of the
patriotic Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca and his band of

1 Written shortly after the expulsion of the Emperor Dom Pedro of
Brazil. The experiences of the Brazilian Republic since have not
weakened whatever force there may be in these Thoughts, [Nor those
of others since. 1923.]

THOUGHTS ON REPUBLICS 271

brothers should attract most and earliest comment
from sympathisers. Mr Gladstone told us, as an after-
thought, that his own benediction on the infant Re-
public was bestowed in respect rather of the unobtru-
sive and unsanguinary manner of its birth than of its
Republican character. Not all commentators showed
even this Epimethean cautiousness. One bird of free-
dom (I forget its actual perch, but it was somewhere
between Maine and Florida) clapped its wings at once
over the fact that its own species were now crowing
from Cape Horn to the St Lawrence the bird forgot
Honduras, where the shadow of tyranny still broods,
but no matter. Echoes of the crowing in England
asked how any one could wonder that a people should
prefer managing its own affairs to having its affairs
managed for it, even by a sovereign of liberal ideas,
benevolent aspirations, culture, scientific acquirements,
and so forth. And some dispirited Monarchists seem
to have found little to reply except in groans, after the
manner of a Greek chorus, that a Republican dog
should have been found to bite so good a man as Dom
Pedro. Whether the Brazilian Monarchy had, at any
rate for some half century of its not much longer
existence, been much more than a Monarchy in name;
whether the substitution of Senhor Deodoro da Fonseca
for Dom Pedro d' Alcantara was much more than a
case of plus ga change, plus c*est la meme chose \ whether
a Republic established by a handful of soldiers and
schemers in one or two great towns of a thinly peopled
country covering half a continent could be said to have
any meaning as an expression of popular will these
were questions about which none of the eulogists of the
Brazilians for daring to be free troubled themselves.
But what they troubled themselves about least of all
was a set of questions lying much further back the

272 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

questions : What is a Republic ? Is there more freedom
under a Republic than under any other form of govern-
ment? Is it physically possible for a Republic to con-
duct public affairs on Republican principles, if those
principles are summed up or even distantly indicated
by the phrase " managing one's own affairs instead of
having them managed by somebody else/' or, as that
eminent politician, Mark Twain, prefers to put it,
"every man having a say in the government"?

In considering these interesting questions we shall
receive much assistance from one of the copious tele-
grams in composing which the Provisional Govern-
ment of Brazil appeared to delight. "It is a mistake,"
says the Provisional Government, "to suppose that it
[the Constituent Assembly] will have to decide between
the Republic and the Monarchy. The Monarchy is out
of the question the Constituent Assembly will only
have to organise the Republic." And again: "Every
attempt to disturb the peace shall be stamped out
with unflinching severity." These authoritative declara-
tions of Republican principles, set forth by the youngest
and therefore perhaps the most infallible, certainly the
least fossil, of Republics, are very welcome and very
instructive to the thinker on that form of polity. He
might have thought (if he had been a very inexperi-
enced thinker) that it was the business of a Constituent
Assembly to constitute : he now sees that it is only its
business to accept something already constituted. And
he might have thought (but here he would certainly
have shown himself yet more inexperienced) that if
there was one thing that a Republic could not con-
sistently do it would be to " stamp out with unflinching
severity attempts to disturb the peace" that is to
say, translating official into plain language, attempts
to change the government, The cardinal principle of

THOUGHTS ON REPUBLICS 273

the Republic is, one is told, the management of one's
own affairs. One, being a Brazilian, tries to do this:
and, lo! there appears on this side a grave pundit,
pointing out that it may only be done in one particular
way; and on that side a valiant marshal still more
significantly ready to stamp out anybody who wants
to do it in any other. There is plenty of imperium so
long as a sufficient number of Fonsecists are ready to
follow their Deodoro ; but where, oh where, is the libertas ?
It would, however, be extremely unphilosophical to
visit this inconsistency on the heads of the Generals
Marmalade and Lemonade, the rastaquoueres retour de
I ^Europe, the lawyers in want of a place, and the
journalists with great French pseudonyms, who made
the Brazilian Revolution. It is theirs by race they
are at least Republican in this little weakness. If it is
too much to ask lazy memories of recent years to go
back a quarter of a century and compare the almost
contemporary methods of Wittgenstein and Sherman,
to draw the parallel and strike the balance between
the fate of the kingdom of Poland and the fate of the
sovereign states of Virginia and Mississippi, let us take
more recent and less alarming instances for example,
the incidents of a certain contest between persons of
the names of Tilden and Hayes, not so very long ago,
or the eminent exploits of M. Constans in France yet
more recently. Nee Stbenebcea minus quant Cressa:
there is uncommonly little to choose between the
methods in any case just cited or referred to. Whether
the people has to be made to exercise its peaceful rights
in the way that is best for it, or whether its unrighteous
attempts to " disturb the peace" have to be " stamped
out," they are all in a tale, from never mind what
autocrat to Fonseca, Barbosa, Constant, and Company.
c Ah! but," says our friend of the last years of the

sin 1 8

474 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

nineteenth century, "what a difference! Here you are
stamped out by a tyrant: there by the majesty of the
people." Now, for my own private part I should have
an almost equal objection to be stamped out by any-
body. But from the point of view of my friend, I
should have an infinitely greater objection to be stamped
out by the majesty of the people; and it may not be
impertinent since in most political discussions of the
day it seems to be wholly forgotten to indicate the
point of this doubtless most unreasonable view.

Your Monarchy (at least your real Monarchy, for
it may be admitted that the constitutional variety,
though it keeps the main structure of theory, has
rather endangered the argumentative buttresses) is
thoroughly logical. For the purpose of governing, you
discover or invent a species different from the governed
not necessarily better (that is the error of Mr Andrew
Carnegie and his likes) but different and indisputable.
You may be as good a gentleman as the king, but you
are not the king, and as you can't become the king
you are neither jealous of him not feel yourself de-
graded by his existence. Cest son mhier a lui d'etre
Roi: it is your business on your part to be loyal. There
is no competition: therefore there is no emulation:
therefore there is no ill-feeling. The bulls in Egypt who
had not the Apis marks might as well have been jealous
of the bull that had. And these things being so, the
right of the king to cut off heads, to impose laws, to
"stamp out," is quite unquestionable. If you want to
question it you take your life in your hands, you rebel,
and you win or you don't. If you don't, it is part of
the game that you should be "stamped out," and no
reasonable man who plays quarrels with the game.
You go to the gallows, the block, the garrotting chair,
as Mr Thackeray says somewhere, with "manly re-

THOUGHTS ON REPUBLICS 275

signation though with considerable disgust " ; but you
do not feel that any one has altered the laws of the
game while you were playing. In a less tragic and more
conventional state of things there is the same consola-
tion. A law is passed, and you do not like it. You have
fought against it to the utmost of your powers; you
have voted against it; you have written the most ad-
mirable and unanswerable articles against it. But it is
passed, and you submit. Why? Not because it has
passed the Commons, whom you elect in part, whose
majority, if against you, has been elected by persons
who were your own equals (to say nothing less); not
because it has passed the Lords, whose political
position you admit as an excellent thing, but to none
of whom do you pay any more personal respect than
to any other gentleman. Hundreds of Bills pass both
Houses separately : several every year merely miss the
double passing by accident. All are waste paper till
they receive the Royal Assent. It is the Royal Assent
that you obey. They tell you it cannot be refused : but
what does that matter? The important point is that,
"cannot" or no "cannot," nothing is valid till it is
given. You are not bidden to obey by Johnson or
Thompson, but by the king; if you disobey, it is the
king who hangs you, not Thompson or Johnson. The
game is played throughout: and let me repeat, no
rational man minds losing when the game is played.

But the Republic never plays the game. Its whole
force, its whole appeal, rests on the consent of the
citizens, just as the force and appeal of the Monarchy
rest either on the negation of that consent altogether
or on the hypothesis that once given it cannot be
retracted. And yet, as the Brazilian Government so
kindly pointed out afresh to us, it cannot get itself
constituted, it cannot carry on government for a week

18-2

276 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

or two, without casting consent to the winds and
levelling rifles at dissenters. It is quite heart-rending
to think of the sufferings of a logical victim of any
anti-Republican counter-pronunciamiento at Rio. Keen
are the pangs of being stamped out in any case, but
keener far to feel that you are being stamped out con-
trary to the laws of the game. The nation, let us say,
consists of a hundred persons. Fifty-one vote for a
Republic, forty-nine wish for a Monarchy. Man for
man, vote for vote, there is no conceivable difference
between the value of the individuals and the value of
their desires ; yet the purely accidental, irrelevant, and
irrational fact of fifty people agreeing with A and only
forty-eight with B, gives A the power to tyrannise over
B just as much as any Pedro, cruel or -cultured, would
do. B's liberty becomes, for the nonce, a quantity
negligible and neglected it is his ex hypothesi, but if
he attempts to use it he is stamped out. This is bad
enough, but worse remains behind, a still more hideous
self-contradiction. Fifty-one persons, as we have said,
vote for a Republic, the fiftieth and fifty-first being, let
us say, Joao and Beltrao. A week, a day, an hour
afterwards Joao and Beltrao change their highly
respectable minds. It may be that the actual revolu-
tion has not recognised their merits sufficiently in the
distribution of spoils. It may be that a real counter-
revolution has effected itself in their opinions. But
whatever the cause, the two fall off, attempt to assert
their new principles, fail, the power being in the other
hands, and are stamped out. Now, reflect on the horror
of this, which is a much more exquisite horror than the
other. Not only are these two poor men stamped out in
defiance of the Republican principle that the citizen's
political affairs shall be managed by him, not for him,
but they are now actually part of the majority the

THOUGHTS ON REPUBLICS 277

minority having become such by the transference of
their voices. Therefore they ought to be hanging others
instead of being hanged themselves; therefore a most
ghastly act of high treason to the Republic is being
committed; therefore (always on strict Republican
principles) Freedom ought to shriek over them as loud
as over Kosciusko, and much louder than over Kossuth.
Here the practical man, the practical Republican,
finding that he cannot (as indeed it is quite impossible)
find any technical flaw in this unpleasant chain of
reasoning, will doubtless cry, "This logic-chopping is
all very fine, but it is purely academic. You know very
well that no government can be carried on unless the
will of the majority is deferred to; unless that majority
is supposed to remain intact for some more or less
considerable time; unless the central authority puts
down breaches of the peace." Unfortunate practical
man ! In less than half a dozen lines he has accumulated
all the worst fallacies, the most degrading sophistries
(according to Republican argument), of the politics of
despotism. The paramount importance of order, the
right of the strongest, the necessity of obeying con-
vention, the superiority of expediency to justice all
the tyrant's pleas, all the sycophant's justifications,
here they once more rear their horrid heads and hiss
their poisonous venom. Not a word has the practical
man said, not a single way or byway of argument has
he indicated, which would not justify Jeffreys and bear
Bomba harmless through. On the Monarchical side his
arguments are good enough and consistent enough. It
is, indeed, the common-sense basis of the Legitimist-
Monarchical contention that to obviate civil dissension
and disorder by making the possession of supreme
power dependent, if not upon some essential quality,
yet upon some inseparable and incommunicable acci-

278 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

dent, is the first object of politics, and that everything
must give way to this. The Republican who admits
this, or anything like it, is lost.

And he is more lost still if we meet him on another
part of the field, a very favourite part with him, the
question of personal dignity. To listen to democrats of
the Carnegie stamp one would imagine that the true
subjects of a Monarchy were always and necessarily
tormented with a sense of inferiority to their " betters."
We have already seen how far this is from the truth,
though it may be admitted that it gives an interesting
light on the point of view of those who say it. They, it
is clear, have this uneasy sense of being in the presence
of "betters." And, indeed, it would be odd if they had
not. It is impossible to imagine anything more galling
to the sense of personal dignity than existence as one
of the minority in a Republic. You are by hypothesis
as good as the President, of equal political rights with
the President, as well entitled to have your say (vide
Mr Clemens) on any matter as the President. And yet
as if there never had been any godlike stroke of
Brutus, any Riitli, any Lexington, any Jeu de Paume
the President can give places, can sanction legisla-
tion, can even, as few haughty monarchs dare to do,
veto it. And you can do just nothing at all but shoot
him, which exposes you to the most unpleasant conse-
quences. Even if you got out of this by regarding the
President as a gilded slave, as your paid man, as a
creature handshakable a merci et a misericorde, there
remains the abominable inequality of Jones, conferred
upon Jones by Equality, and not tempered by any
possible considerations of the sort. If Jones happens
to be a member of the majority, and you happen to be
a member of the minority, you are for years practically
the slave of Jones. You may not politically do or say

THOUGHTS ON REPUBLICS 279

the thing you will, but the thing that Jones wills. You
make war with foreign nations at the discretion of
Jones; you violently object to a disgraceful peace with
them, and Jones quietly makes it; you are an ardent
Free-trader, and Jones studies with practical success
to make you, in your capacity as citizen, a Protectionist
more wicked than the late Sir Richard Vyvyan him-
self; you are a non-interventionist, and Jones sends the
ironclads, for which you pay, to bombard harmless
towns; you like an honest glass of beer, and Jones
sends you to prison if you drink it. This is "managing
your own affairs"; this is Liberty; this is Equality;
this is having a say in the government. And the only
possible consolation that perhaps after the next elec-
tion you may take your revenge on Jones, may make
peace with his enemies and bombard his friends, may
sweep away his tariff and give instead a State bounty
to every brewer and every distiller ought not, if you
are a real Republican, to give you the slightest com-
fort. Ejuxria or Utopia ought no more to be governed
in opposition to the wishes of a free Ejuxrian or Utopian
like Jones than it ought to be governed in opposition
to your own. You are as false to your principles in
tyrannising as in being tyrannised over. Perhaps it is
a hidden sense of this hopeless contradiction, of this
inextricable dilemma, that has made Republicans from
time to time so fond of the maxim, "Be my brother or
I will kill you." Only when all the citizens are your
brothers in opinion, or when you have killed all who
are not, can you get the Republic theoretically to work.
And alas ! you know very well that if you did get it so
to work there would be a split next day. You must do
the thing that Jones wishes, and you do not; or the
thing that Jones does not wish, and you do. In either
case you are false to your principles; in one case you

280 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

are a slave (and therefore degraded), in the other a
tyrant, and therefore (see all the Republican copy-
books) much more degraded than a slave.

It may seem, then, necessary to inquire a little how
it is that anybody consents to live under such an odious
and illogical form of government; next to inquire
further how it is that any one can be found to exchange
more intelligent varieties for it. As to which points
there were much to be said. The candid man will con-
fess on the one hand that even in these restless days
people are by no means inordinately given to examining
the first principles of their beliefs; on the other that
Monarchies themselves have for many years taken to
playing with Republican principles so much that a
little confusion is inevitable and excusable. But there
are some considerations which may be put. In the
first place your Republic (teste its great expositor
before cited) offers every man "a say in the govern-
ment." He doesn't get it : as I have humbly endeavoured
to prove, it is practically impossible that he should get
it ; but it is offered him it is the gold piece in the child's
pocket. Then the Republic tells him that he is "as
good as anybody else." He is not: it proceeds to show
him as much in the very first division where he happens
to be in the minority; but it tells him that he is, and
he believes it. Furthermore, the Republic appeals, as
no Monarchy can possibly appeal, to the gambling
instinct in human nature, to the instinct of vanity, and
to the instinct of greed. Let me guard promptly
against the charge of having duplicated in the matter
of gambling and greed. They are not the same instinct
by any means. Under the domination of greed a man
makes for certain gain, and is purely actuated by con-
siderations thereof. Show him that he may even prob-
ably lose and his zeal is cooled at once. The gambling

THOUGHTS ON REPUBLICS 281

instinct is quite different. Here the element of attrac-
tion is not certainty but uncertainty; the prospect of
gain is alluring, no doubt, but it is rather a question
whether the risk of loss has not something alluring in it
also. The real point is the chance, the uncertainty, the
gamble: so much so that men have often been known
to venture quite disproportionate stakes in business,
in sport, in love, in war, simply for the excitement, for
the "flutter."

Now, in all these points the Republic has more to
offer than the Monarchy. Its general bonus, the attrac-
tion of "no ticket without a prize" which it offers, is
addressed to vanity. It is dear to the uninstructed and
unintelligent man to be told that he has no betters,
that he is as good as anybody else. The instructed and
intelligent man knows that if twenty Constitutions
brayed these assertions at him through twenty thou-
sand trumpets they would still be false. A would be
handsomer, B taller, C more gifted, and therefore it
matters very little to him whether D is more "privi-
leged." The ultima ratio of relative value after all
depends on a man's own estimate of his own worth,
and is not affected by any Constitution. But to the
majority, who are either not conscious of possessing
any worth at all, or painfully doubtful as to the accuracy
of their own judgment, it is no doubt comforting to be
told that they are as good as anybody else. At any
rate it would seem to be so. And so the Republic hits
the majority of its birds on this wing.

Others it hits from the point of view of downright
greed. This is not a pleasant consideration, but men
are what they are. There can be no question either
with any historical student or with any student of
actual politics that "Republic" usually spells "cor-
ruption." It always has been so; it is so; in the nature

282 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

of things it must always be so. No doubt Monarchies
have known plentiful waste and plentiful malversation
of public money; but the thing has been limited to
comparatively few persons, and has always had more
or less specious excuses of services rendered, or of the
giving away of property which was the king's property,
not the nation's. It was a Republic which invented the
plain, simple, unblushing doctrine of "the spoils to the
victors," and long before a Republic had formulated
the doctrine, almost all Republics had favoured the
practice. To make the most out of Jones while you have
the upper hand of him ; to lay up for yourself as much
as possible against the evil day when Jones shall have
the upper hand of you this stands, if not to reason,
yet to human nature. The king is always restrained to
a certain extent by simple considerations of prudence;
it is not worth his while to kill the goose for the sake
of the golden eggs. The temporarily dominant party
in a Republic is under an exactly opposite temptation.
Why keep the goose for the possible, nay certain,
benefit of the abominable Jones? To which it has to
be added that, pretend the contrary who may, it is
impossible to feel a genuine sense of duty towards
what is only an exaggeration, to the nth power, of
oneself. The sole claim which a Republic has to the
obedience, the respect, the loyalty, of each man is his
own consent to it; and his respect for its property
must necessarily, however loudly on his moral days he
may proclaim the contrary, be conditioned by that
fact. He says not as a personal brag, not as an
exaggeration, but as a plain statement of logical and
political first principle Utat c'est moi. Nor is it at
all surprising that he should go on, "The property of
the State is my property," and proceed to effect
restitution of the said property to its owner.

THOUGHTS ON REPUBLICS 283

But most of all does the Republic appeal to the gam-
bling element in man. Under the Monarchy, the big
prize is by hypothesis unattainable; even the middle
chances are usually and in practice restricted to a
small, or comparatively small, number of persons. And
not only the actual distribution of the loaves and
fishes, but the whole course of public life generally
offers much less of the temptation of the unforeseen
than is the case under the Republic. In some examples
thereof every other man you meet may be said, with-
out much exaggeration, to be an ex-Minister: and
if that seem not a very delightful state it has to
be remembered that every ex-Minister hopes to be
Minister again, and that every one who looks upon an
ex-Minister says to himself, "What he was yesterday
I may be to-morrow." The famous jest of the old, the
real, Revolution, to the unfortunate producer of title-
deeds centuries old, "If you have had it so long,
citizen, it is time for some other citizen to take his
turn," is hardly a burlesque of actual Republican
sentiment, and not a burlesque at all of the unspoken
hope which makes men Republicans.

And so the Republic scores by its appeal to perhaps
the strongest, and certainly the most widely diffused
of human weaknesses vanity, greed, the love of the
uncertain and the unforeseen, while it hardly loses by
its congenital unreasonableness and self-contradiction.
It always flatters, though it often deceives ; it sometimes
gives solid rewards, it almost invariably excites, stimu-
lates, interests, allures. The Monarchy, on the other
hand, satisfies little but the reason, which is not
usually the governing part of that animal which is
good enough to call itself rational. It hurts the snob's
self-love, it leaves nine greedy men out of ten unfed
and without hope of food, it is regular, punctual, hum-

284 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

drum, not interesting. If at crises and intervals it
provides opportunities for the display of virtues and
graces as rare and delightful as the vices of the Republic,
both ordinary and extraordinary, are disgusting, this
only happens now and then. Not every day, nor once
in every century, shall the words "I have kept the
bird in my bosom " fit Sir Ralph Percy's lips. Whereas
the particular felicities of " Respublica the public
thing," are to be found at any moment quite facile and
ready. She is always ready to tickle vanity, to promise
satisfaction to greed, to bait the gambling trap with
hopes. Therefore, it would appear, she is rather on the
winning hand just now, and hopes to be even more
so. And if these hopes be realised, the joyful future
condition not merely of statesmanship* but of taste,
manners, learning, arts, and most other things that
make life worth living, may be very easily learnt from
the past, and found pretty plentifully illustrated in the
present 1 .

1 Not quite inappropriate in 1923?

XII

TWENTY YEARS OF REVIEWING

(1873-1895)

IF a writer or lecturer on Reviewing had no further
desire than to amuse his readers or his audience at the
least cost to himself, he could hardly do better than
make a cento of extracts from authors on the subject
of reviewers. There would certainly be no lack of
matter; and as certainly there would be no lack of
piquancy in what there was. As Mr Pendennis re-
marked of his uncle and Captain Henchman, that
he was "sorry to say they disliked each other ex-
tremely, and sorry to add that it was very amusing
to hear them speak of each other," so may it be said
of authors and reviewers. Indeed the comparison is
more than usually appropriate, for as Captain Hench-
man and Major Pendennis belonged after all to the
same class, so also do reviewers and authors.

However, it is not my present purpose to compile
in this fashion, and we may content ourselves with two
key-notes uttered in harmony by perhaps the two most
dissimilar writers of genius in England in the early
years of the century William Cobbett and Percy
Bysshe Shelley. Cobbett, in triumphant comment on
his own English Grammar, asserts that fifty thousand
copies of it have been sold, "without its ever having
been mentioned by those old shuffling bribed sots, the
reviewers." And Shelley, in one of the cancelled
sentences of the preface to Adonais sentences can-
celled, not out of repentance, but because he preferred
to put the thing differently informs us that "Re-
viewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid
and malignant race." Putting aside "old" which

286 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

cannot, I think, be predicated nowadays of at least
the majority of reviewers and "sots," which is
irrelevant and actionable, these two sentences from
the most ethereal of great poets and the most prosaic
of great prose-writers pretty well sum up the general
indictment. Bribed, shuffling, stupid, malignant to
worth and genius, neglectful of it when not malignant.
That is what authors (when they are not reviewing,
which often happens) say of reviewers.

But it is not all that is said. Persons, sometimes
really impartial, sometimes affecting impartiality, and,
at any rate, not merely abusive or indignant, ask what
is the good of reviewing; whether any man who has
real knowledge and talent would not be much better
employed in creative, or at any rate substantive, work,
than in simply commenting on the work of others;
whether the habit of reading reviews does not provide
an unhealthy substitute for the habit of reading the
books themselves ; whether the diversity of equipment
to begin with, and the diversity of verdict in the end,
do not make reviews almost impossible as instruments
of instruction or edification of any kind ? I have even
known odder charges than these made, and complaints
raised that the reviewer, by extracting (yet, on the
other hand, one meets with complaints that he does
not extract), spoils the author's market, and in fact
violates his copyright. In fact, the reviewer is in even
worse case than a celebrated heroine of one of the poets,
who hated reviewers worst in his own peculiar fashion,
and who, to do him justice, had no very great reason
to love them. He is a being whom "there are few to
praise and not a soul to love."

I do not on this occasion hold any brief for the
reviewer; but as it has long seemed to me that there
is not only a good deal of passion in some of the things

TWENTY YEARS OF REVIEWING 287

that are said against him, but a considerable deficiency
of knowledge in very many of the things that are said,
if not against yet about him, it may not be uninteresting
to hear what a reviewer of pretty considerable ex-
perience, who has given up reviewing, has to say on
the subject 1 . I had had rather more than twenty
years' practice in reviewing at the time I gave it up;
and during the greater part of that period I think my
practice was about as extensive and various as that of
any of my contemporaries. I have written reviews in
half-a-dozen lines and reviews in forty pages. I have
reviewed books in classics, in mathematics, in history,
in philosophy, in geography, in politics, in the fine arts,
in the arts of war by land and sea, in theology, in
cookery, in pugilism, and in law. I have reviewed
"travels and novels and poems," at least as many as
ever did the aforesaid Mr Pendennis. I have, though
very rarely indeed, and always under protest, reviewed
books with the printer's devil waiting to carry away
the sheets to press as they were written.

I once (by no offer or intrigue of my own, but simply
because as many editors, unasked, sent the volume
to me) wrote five different reviews of the same book.
And if any one unkindly says: "In short, you were
a reviewer of all work, and refused none," I can clear
myself from that imputation. For I once refused to
review a book in Syriac, because I do not know a word
of that language ; and I always refused to review books
on the currency, because I have (for reasons based on
observation) made it a rule to refrain from under-

1 This was written because I had, when appointed to my Chair in
Edinburgh, deliberately given up the practice as incompatible with
my new position. I am not sure now that this was not Quixotic: it
certainly lessened my income by some useful hundreds a year, and
impaired to some extent my touch on the pulse of current literature.
But I held to it pretty firmly during the twenty years which followed
these other twenty (1923).

288 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

standing anything whatever about that subject. I can
thus, at least, plead experience, and as I never wish
to write another review of the ordinary kind 1 , I can
also plead complete disinterestedness.

In one respect this paper may be found disappointing,
for I have no mystery of iniquity to reveal, no " Satan's
Invisible World" to display. No doubt there are venal
reviewers, and no doubt there are spiteful ones; there
are, I presume, rascals and shabby fellows in all pro-
fessions, vocations, and employments. If a man has
strong private or party animus, and no very high sense
of honour, he will no doubt make up his mind, as we
know Macaulay did in Croker's case, to "dust the
varlet's jacket for him" when he gets hold of a book
by a person whom, for either reason, he "dislikes. Nay,
as there are many people who have the fortunate or
unfortunate gift of being able to convert their likes
and dislikes into ethical and intellectual approval or
disapproval of a quasi-sincere kind, the dusting will,
no doubt, often be done with a sense of action ad
majorem Dei gloriam with a conviction that it is a
noble action and a virtuous one. But, once more, these
curious self-delusions, as well as the more downright
and unquestionable indulgences in evil-speaking and
evil-doing, are not peculiar to reviewing. There may be
a little more temptation to and opportunity for them
there than elsewhere: but this temptation and this
opportunity are reduced to a minimum if the editor
has his wits about him and does his duty. Of course,
editor and reviewer may be in a conspiracy; but I do
not believe that conspiracies are more common in re-
viewing than anywhere else. They exist, doubtless, in
some cases: but in most they are simply figments of

1 True at the time, but on revient toujours. The professorship ceasing,
the reviewer revives (1923).

TWENTY YEARS OF REVIEWING 289

a very well-known and only too common form of mania,
and sometimes figments, half-ludicrously and half-
pathetically contrary to the fact.

The most curious instance of this that I ever knew
was as follows: There was once upon a time a not
undistinguished man of letters whom we may call A;
and there was, contemporary with him, a busy re-
viewer whom we shall call B. B, with his name,
reviewed, not by any means savagely, but with rather
qualified admiration and some strictures, a volume of
A ? s poems. Some time afterwards he was told that
A was what is familiarly called a skinless person; and
not finding any particular amusement in tormenting,
thenceforward, when a book of A's came in his way,
praised it if he could, or let it alone. On one occasion
B received through an editor a letter of thanks from A
for an anonymous review of his. But after A's death,
which happened some years later, B learnt that A had
been under the constant idea, and had frequently
declared to his friends, that he, the said B, had been
"hounding him anonymously throughout the press for
years!" Of course nothing can be done with or for
such Heauton-timoroumenoi as these. No praise is ever
sufficient for them : all blame is undeserved, interested,
malignant. But in cases of real personal enmity or
friendship, or of very strong disapproval on religious
or political or other grounds, I think there is a very
simple rule for the reviewer. If the book of a friend
which you cannot praise, or that of an unfriend which
you have to blame severely, comes to you send it
back again. The right of silence is the only one of the
Rights of Man for which I have the slightest respect,
or which I should feel disposed to fight for.

It has also to be remembered, when the subject of
unfair and biased reviewing is under consideration,

sin 19

290 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

that, at any rate nowadays, when reviews are very
numerous, and when no single vehicle of them enjoys
dictatorial reputation or influence, such reviewing
does no very great harm. It is unpleasant, of course.
If a man say he likes it nobody believes him, even
though a gratuitous advertisement that one is not
connected with certain journals may be a distinct com-
pliment, and a kind of present. A once well-known
member of the House of Commons amused it not so
very many years ago by avowing his terror of the
"Skibbereen Eagle." It was no doubt not shared by
his hearers; but it may be doubted whether any one
of them would not have in fact preferred, though only
by a faint preference, praise in the "Skibbereen Eagle"
to abuse in it. Yet it is hardly conceivable that the
abuse can really damage any one; and it sometimes,
when unskilfully and extravagantly indulged in, creates
a distinct revulsion in favour of the victim. It is certain
that the dead-set made many years ago in certain
quarters at the late Mr Froude's historical work deter-
mined more persons than one to take a more favourable
view of it and of him than they might otherwise have
taken ; and I think there have been similar cases since*
At any rate, to my mind deliberately unfair and par-
tisan reviewing does much less harm than the process
known as "slating" for slating's sake, or than the old
and constantly revived notion that an author is mainly,
if not merely, something for the critic to be clever upon.
But of that we shall speak presently: some other
matters must come before it.

For it will probably not be undesirable to inquire
before going any further what a review ought to be,
as a not useless preliminary to the discovery what
ought to be the nature of a reviewer, and whether
reviewing is a benefit or a nuisance per se. And in this

TWENTY YEARS OF REVIEWING 291

inquiry we may start by clearing up a slight confusion
which, like other slight confusions, has caused no slight
error. I take it that a review in the general sense is
addressed to and intended for the benefit of the general
congregation of decently educated and intelligent
people. There may be a special kind of review which is
addressed to specialists, and which must be written
for them by themselves. A scientific monograph, which
purports to tell what further progress has been made
in some particular department of chemistry or physio-
logy, cannot in the proper sense be "reviewed." Its
results can be abstracted; its conclusions, if they are
disputable, can be argued for or against; corollaries
or riders can be indicated or suggested by the expert.
But as such a thing is never, except by accident and
once in a thousand times, literature as even when it
is literature its literary character is accidental it does
not lend itself to review. For, once more, a review,
as I take it (and the taking is not a private crotchet
but a mere generalisation of actual practice and fact
during the two centuries or a little more which make
the life of the review), is a thing addressed to the general
body of educated people, telling whether it is or is not
worth their while to make further acquaintance with
such and such a document purporting to bear their
address. As the circle of knowledge which is supposed
to be open to the general reader and to come within
the range of literature widens, the circle of reviewing
will widen too. But it will always remain true that the
way in which the author has done his work is the main
if not the sole province of the reviewer.

Has he formed an allowable, an agreeable, a fairly
orderly conception of his subject ? Has he shown decent
diligence and accuracy in carrying this conception out ?
Does his book, if it belongs to the literature of know-

19-2

292 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

ledge, supply some real want? Does it, if it belongs
to the literature of power or art, show a result not
merely imitated from something else ? Has it, if a poem,
distinct characteristics of metre, word-sound, style?
Does it, if a work of argument or exposition, urge old
views freshly, or put new ones with effect? If it is a
novel, does it show grasp of character, ingenuity in
varying plot, brilliancy of dialogue, felicity of de-
scription? Can you, in short, "recommend it to a
friend" for any of these or any similar qualities. Or
can you even recommend it the most disputable and
dangerous of the grounds of recommendation, but still
perhaps a valid ground in its way because you like
it, because it affects you pleasurably or beneficially,
because you gain from it a distinct neryous impression,
a new charm, or even, as Victor Hugo put it, a "new
shudder"?

A review which observes these conditions will,
whether it answers the questions in the negative or the
affirmative, probably be a good re view,, always keeping
in mind the inestimable caution of Hippothadee to
Panurge, si Dieu plaist. On the contrary, there are
certain other questions and conditions which will
almost certainly make any review conducted under
their influence a bad review. Such questions for it
would be more than ever impossible to put them all
are as follows. Do I to begin nearest to the debate-
able ground with which we finished the last list Do
I dislike this book, without being able to give myself
or others any distinct and satisfactory reason why I
dislike it ? Do I like or dislike the author, his opinions,
his party, his country, his University, or his grand-
mother? Does the book run counter to, or ignore, or
slight some published or private opinion of mine? Is
it, without being exactly contrary to, different from

TWENTY YEARS OF REVIEWING 293

something which I might have written or should have
liked to write on the subject? Is there something else
that I like better? Does it display more knowledge
than I have, and so make me feel uncomfortably at
a disadvantage? Is it about something in which I take
no particular interest? In such cases the proviso of
Hippothad6e will have to be turned round, and we
shall have to say that unless Heaven pleases very
specially, it is likely to be a very bad review indeed.

For the reader will not get and cannot get from it
a trustworthy answer to his legitimate question, Is this
on the whole and on the author's own conception of
his task the said conception being not utterly idiotic
a fair addition to the literature of the class which
it intends to reach ? He will only get an answer to any
one or any combination of a large number of other
questions which he has not asked and to which he does
not care in the least to know the answer. He has
asked, Do you as a judge think that I ought to read,
or may at least with chance of profit and pleasure read,
this book? He is in effect answered: I, not as a judge
but as a most unjudicial advocate or even party to
the other side of the cause, wish you not to read this
book or to think badly of it if you read it. But I have
put on the judge's robes, and deliver my opinion from
the bench or a substitute for it, in hopes to make you
accept my pleading as a sentence and my evidence or
assertion as a verdict.

It is this danger which, not always in appropriate
words or with very clear conceptions, is urged by the
opponents of reviewing: and no doubt it is in a certain
measure and degree a real one. We shall see better what
this measure and degree is by shaking out the subject
into some different shapes and lights.

Reviewing, like everything else, has a tendency to

294 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

fall into certain vogues, into certain channels or ruts,
where it continues for a time, and then shifts into
others. The most common, the most obvious, and
apparently to some views, friendly as well as un-
friendly of the subject, the most natural, is that of
"slating," as modern slang has it, though the thing
is very far from modern. The principle or mock prin-
ciple on which it depends was never put with a more
innocent frankness than in the Judex damnatur cum
nocens absolvitur of the Edinburgh Review \ and though
when it is thus stated it becomes almost ludicrous to
a really critical critic himself, there is no doubt that it
reflects the idea of the critical profession as conceived
by outsiders, and even as practised by a large part of
the profession itself. We have only, it js true, to carry
out the analogy suggested by the phrase to see its
absurdity. Her Majesty's judges do not deem it their
duty to regard the entire body of her Majesty's
subjects as guilty till they are proved innocent; nor
even those who on prima facie suspicion are brought
before them. The Edinburgh motto would at least seem
to infer that every book is to be regarded as bad until
it is proved to be good. And further, as the functions
of a judge of court are limited to condemnation or
acquittal as he is admittedly travelling rather beyond
them even when he observes that the defendant leaves
the court without a stain on his character so it would
seem that positive praise, that the assignment of
decorations or titles of honour, is not part of the
function of the critic at all.

Yet, absurd as this notion is, ill as it will stand the
slightest examination, there can be no doubt that it is
frequently entertained, and by no means uncommonly
put in practice. We have all read it would appear that
even some of us have enjoyed, though I confess it always

TWENTY YEARS OF REVIEWING 295

seemed to me from my youth up that there was no
drearier reading monotonous series of "slashing"
reviews, in each of which some wretched novel, de-
serving at worst of a dozen lines of merciful and good-
humoured raillery, was solemnly scourged round the
town in two columns of laboured cavilling and forced
horse-laughter. And we have all read likewise some
of us let it be hoped with a devout prayer to be kept
from imitating it the pert yet ponderous efforts at
epigram; the twentieth-hand Macaulayese of "will it
be believed" and "every schoolboy knows"; the up-
lifting of hands and averting of eyes at a misprinted
date, and an imperfectly revised false concord in
short, all the stale tricks and stock devices of the
"slater."

Of course there are books which well deserve the
utmost extremity 1 of criticism; and nobody can have
practised reviewing long without having not in the
least upon his conscience but on his memory in-
stances in which he has had to do his duty, and has
been well entitled to ejaculate Laissez passer la justice
de Dieu! But the conception of the ideal reviewer as
a Judge Jeffreys doubled with a Jack Ketch is, as has
been said, quite ludicrously narrow; and it turns, like
so many other things, upon a mere fallacy of equivoca-
tion, the double meaning of the word "judge." The critic
is a judge; but he is a judge of the games as well as
of the courts, a caliph or cadi rather than a Lord Chief
Justice or a Lord Chief Baron. He can administer
sequins as well as lashes, and send a man to ride round

1 It being remembered that this extremity stops dead short at
insolence. If you can't kill your man like a gentleman with a rapier,
or knock him out like a stout yeoman with fist or quarterstaff, keep
out of the ring. Stiletto and poleaxe, sandbag and scavenger-shovel are
barred. I fear I may have most politely, most politely" made some
authors uncomfortable: but I am sure I was never rude and never hit
below the belt (1923).

296 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

the town in royal apparel as well as despatch him to
the gallows. Or rather, to drop metaphor, his business
is in the main the business of judging not the man or
the merits of the man so much as the work and the
nature, rather than the merits or demerits, of the work.
If he discern and expound that nature rightly, the
exposition will sometimes be of itself high praise and
sometimes utter blame, with all blends and degrees
between the two. But the blame and the praise are
rather accidents than essentials of his function.

Partly from a dim consciousness of this; partly no
doubt in reaction from the excesses of Jack Ketchish-
ness, reviewing very often wanders into other excesses
or defects which are equally far from the golden mean.
It is sometimes openly asserted, and gperhaps more
often secretly held that it is the critic's chief duty to
praise that he ought to be generous, good-natured,
eager to welcome the achievements of his own time,
and so forth. This, no doubt, is a less offensive error
than the other; it is even a rather amiable one, and it
has the additional attraction that, as it is much more
difficult to praise, at least to praise well, than to blame,
there is the interest of seeing how the practitioner will
do it. But, after all, it is an error; and I am afraid,
though a less superficially offensive, it is a rather more
dangerous error than the other. It is seldom that real
harm is done to any one except perhaps to the critic
himself by over-savage reviewing. Excessive praise
does harm all round ; to the critic (at least if he gives
it sincerely), because it dulls and debauches his own
critical perceptions ; to the public, because the currency
is debased, the standards of literary value tampered
with and obscured; to the author most of all, because
while his human weaknesses will of themselves prevent
him from being injured by the blame, they will help

TWENTY YEARS OF REVIEWING 297

the praise to spoil him. Especially dangerous is the
form of praise very common just now, as it is in all
periods when a great literary generation is just fading
away, and its successors are shining with rather un-
certain light the form which insists that our side or
our time is the equal of any other. I saw the other day
that a critic in whose original work I take great delight,
and whose criticism is always careful and generous,
speculated on the beatitude which future generations
would attribute to him in that he had seen in one week,
I think, the publication of four masterpieces. I shall
say nothing of these masterpieces themselves; I have
not read them all, and I defy anybody to outgo me in
cordial appreciation of some of the work I mean
Mr Kipling's to which "Q" referred. But I cannot
help thinking that it is a little dangerous to indulge
in such a Nunc Dimittis. If the critic, say thirty years
hence, finds his admiration of his Four Masters un-
changed, or even heightened, it will be time to tempt
Time himself by such an utterance. But Time is as
dangerous a person to tempt as Providence; and that
"wallet at his back" contains among its other alms
for Oblivion, or worse still for an occasional memory
of contempt, no small number of these admiring en-
comia on the unequalled happiness of particular periods
and the mastery of particular achievements.

Yet again, reviewers, afraid of or disinclined to mere
blame, and having no taste or no opportunity for mere
praise, very frequently take refuge in a sort of wishy-
washy, shilly-shally attempt to keep clear of either,
or else in a mere " account rendered," which is rather
an argument of the book than a review of it, and yet
as different as possible from the argumentative ex-
position above commended. I have seen it frequently
complained sometimes by partisans of the " slating"

MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

or the " gushing " review respectively, but also by
others that the shilly-shally kind is particularly
prevalent nowadays. Perhaps it is, and for reasons
of which more later. It is certainly not a good thing.
If a man has not time, or knowledge, or ability, to
sum up decidedly what a book is, and how it is done,
he had better be sent about his business, which is
evidently not reviewing. If it is the fault, as no doubt
happens sometimes, and perhaps in these days rather
often, of the book itself, then that book had much
better not be reviewed at all. But I confess I think
myself that, except in the case of scientific works, as
above referred to, with official reports and other books
that are no books, the mere compte-rendu is the worst
review of all. It argues in the reviewer either a total
want of intellect in general or a total want of under-
standing of the particular matter ; it fills up the columns
of the paper to no earthly purpose; it disappoints the
just expectations of author, reader, everybody, except,
perhaps, the publisher, who may like to see a certain
space occupied by a notice; and it is a distinct insult
to the eyes before which it is put. If I were an editor
I should ruthlessly refuse to insert reviews of this kind,
no matter who wrote them.

And yet it is a question whether they are worse than
another kind which is very popular with editors and
the public, though it may be rather less so with authors.
This is the kind, or rather group of kinds, for there are
many sub-varieties, of the review which is not what
the Germans call eingehend at all, which simply makes
the book a peg, as the old journalist slang, by this time
almost accepted English, has it, on which to hang the
reviewer's own reflections, grave or gay. To this
practice in the longer reviews, which appear at con-
siderable intervals, there is no great objection. It has

TWENTY YEARS OF REVIEWING 299

given us much of the best critical and general work of
the century. Quarterlies at least can never hope now
and could never hope to any great extent to introduce
books to readers for the first time; and, besides, the
prefixing of the title of a book or books to such articles
is a perfectly understood convention. But in a review
proper, a review which presumably the reader is to see
before he sees the book, and which is to determine him
whether that book is worth seeing or not, the practice
seems to me to be improper, impertinent, and very
nearly impudent. When the late Mr Anthony Trollope
ma4e Post Office inquiries on horseback, simultaneously
(or at least on the same day) using the horses which he
kept for the purpose as hunters, it was perhaps the
furthest recorded instance of making the best of the
two worlds of business and pleasure, duty and off-duty.
But Mr Trollope did make the inquiries; nobody, I
believe, ever charged him with remissness in that. The
reviewer of the class to which I refer keeps the horse
at the expense of the author, and uses him for the
pleasure of himself and the reader only.

Nevertheless, in the more unfavourable examples of
all these varieties, even of the first to some extent, I
think we shall find that Ignorance as usual is more to
blame than malice, and not Ignorance of fact so much
as what we may call Ignorance of Art. I am sure that
my late colleagues in that art, at least those of them
who are worth considering, will not find fault with me
for this admission, which indeed need gall no one who
does not feel that he deserves galling. We have all
been in the same boat, and I am only, so to speak,
coaching from the bank. I do not think that reviewers
deserve a good deal of the evil that is said of them;
but I do think that something of this Ignorance of Art
is, especially in beginners, rather the rule than the

300 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

exception. Of ignorance of fact I shall say little. It
exists of course. I remember some one it was Mr John
Morley, I think being once magisterially taken to
task by a critic for using such an affected word as
"incarnadine," the critic thereby, I need hardly say,
showing a slight ignorance of another author not
Mr Morley whom we are all at least supposed to
know. I have much more recently seen a plaintive
and ingenious expostulation with an author for speaking
about the subject of his book in a way showing con-
siderable familiarity with the subject but not illumina-
tive to the critic, when as a matter of fact the author's
remarks showed a very distinct wwfamiliarity with that
subject. But though a reviewer should certainly know
Shakespeare, and though it would be at least well that
he should not review a book about, let us say, Syriac
without knowing it, it is, as I have already said, a
blunder to require specialist knowledge in all cases.
A good sound education in the tongues and the liberal
arts, with the knack of putting oneself at the special
point of view by resorting if necessary to the best
standard authorities, combined with some portion of
the critical talent and some knowledge of the critical
art, will do infinitely better than specialist knowledge,
which not infrequently hampers that talent and in-
terferes with the practice of that art by interposing
" idols " of more kinds than one. But the education
and the experience in the Art itself are indispensables ;
and it is a question whether they are not rather often
dispensed with.

It is the less invidious to admit this as an open
question, or even to answer it in the affirmative that,
as things go, a man can very rarely help himself. I
am as sure that there is an Art of Criticism as I am sure
that there is no Science of it. But until very recently,

TWENTY YEARS OF REVIEWING 301

when in more Universities than one or two the in-
stitution of Honours Schools in English Literature has
led to something like a systematic study of literary
criticism, there has not been in England, or Scotland
either, anything of the sort. The Professors of Poetry
at Oxford by an honourable tradition which the
names of Warton, Keble, and Mr Arnold have made
not only honourable but illustrious, and which later
incumbents have maintained have done what they
could; but the opportunities of that Chair are scanty
and passing. The Scottish Chairs of Rhetoric have had
more opportunity, and excellent work has been done
in them ; but until the institution of Honours they have
been hampered by the necessity of levelling down to
a pass standard. Even abroad there has been much
less done than seems to be fancied by those who think
that all things are better ordered abroad than at home.
The famous French professors, from Villemain down-
wards, have not, as a rule, escaped that curious note of
parochiality of seeing all things in French Literature
which marks the nation: the Germans, incomparable
at philology, are notoriously weak on the literary side
of criticism. It is true that the Oxford School of
Literae Humaniores, which has acted for a hundred
years better up to its name and to the genius of litera-
ture than any teaching machine of any University in
the world, has always taught men a little directly and
a great deal indirectly in this kind. But the direct
teaching has been very little : and I understand that it
has rather lessened than increased of late years. And
the constant shortening of University training, with
the multiplication of examinations, has done positive
harm. I question whether, limited as was his reading
and too often narrow as were his views, a man who left
Oxford or Cambridge in the seventeenth century, after

302 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

the usual seven years' course, was not much better
qualified as a reviewer than he who now leaves them
after four or at most five. He had mastered the
"Rhetoric" and the "Poetics" which, grievous as are
their gaps and huge as are the blinkers which were on
Aristotle's eyes, still contain the root of the matter.
He had read no small quantity of good literature;
most, if not all, of it with no direct purpose of examina-
tion. Above all, he had had time to think about what
he read, even if he had not actually thought. Dryden,
no doubt, was Dryden a man of genius, and of not
very quickly developing genius. But if he had written
the Essay of Dramatic Poesy at two-and-twenty, and
just after scrambling through his tripos; instead of
after seven years at Cambridge and as many more
of reading, and a little (not too much) writing in London,
I do not think the Essay of Dramatic Poesy would be
what it is.

For, after all, study of literature, range in it, oppor-
tunity of comparing different kinds, of remembering
the vastly different estimates held of different works,
or even the same work at different times are of even
more importance to the reviewer than formal teaching
in criticism. The latter will save him a great deal of
time and trouble, will put him and perhaps keep him
in the right road; but it will not accomplish the journey
for him. The journey itself must except in those cases
of exceptional genius for the art which may be neglected,
as they occur in all arts and are not common in any
be performed ; and it is only at the end of it, or rather
(for that end never comes) at a fairly advanced stage
of it, that a man becomes a really qualified reviewer.

It will follow from this that the number of really
qualified reviewers can never be very large; and from
that again that it is quite possible to have at any given

TWENTY YEARS OF REVIEWING 303

time rather more reviewing than is altogether ex-
pedient. It would perhaps be wiser to say nothing on
this head; for, to alter my old friend the Oxford
Spectator a little, "the large and well-armed tribe of
reviewers 55 is ill to offend by one who has himself
renounced their weapons though he remains exposed
to their aim. But I confess that I think there is at the
present moment a little too much reviewing, and I may
say so freely, because I shall not be suspected of any
trade-union jealousy. No doubt books have increased,
and readers have increased, in the last thirty years.
There are more libraries; the great multiplication of
clubs and the increased habit of supplying them with
new books must be considered; there may even be more
book-buying. But I am not sure that these things of
themselves necessitate a larger proportion of reviewing :
and reviewing itself has certainly increased rather out
of than in proportion. At the beginning of the last
third of the nineteenth century there were in London
four or five weekly reviews at the most which had any
repute ; reviews in the daily London papers were quite
uncommon things, and betokened perhaps special
merit, certainly special favour; while out of London
there was hardly any daily or weekly journal through-
out the United Kingdom which carried much weight
in reviewing, and there were extremely few that
attempted it, at least on any large scale. I need not say
how different is the case now. The number of weekly
papers has increased : the great and deserved vogue of
the Pall Mall Gazette at the very beginning of the
period of which I speak made reviewing a special
function of the newer London evening papers: while,
owing to the example rather of the great English pro-
vincial newspapers and of those of Scotland, than at
the initiation of the London dailies themselves, almost

304 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

every morning newspaper which aims at any position
now at least attempts a complete review of the books
of the week, in allotments varying from some columns
to some lines.

This might on the face of it look as if, to quote
Dryden's words as those who dislike reviewers might
quote them

The sons of Belial had a glorious time.

I am not so sure of it, either from their own point of
view, or from others. In the first place, there can, I
think, be no doubt that the individual review and even
the "chorus of reviewers," indolent or otherwise, has
lost some of its old authority. There are so many
reviews that even the simplest person who believes in
the newspapers, if such a man there be, cannot attach
absolute importance to any one of them ; they come out
so thick and so fast that any mark made by a single one
on that elastic target the public apprehension is quickly
effaced by others ; and the variety of their utterances,
where these utterances are distinct at all, cannot but
do them some harm. And if they lose some of their
effect from these causes which are not their own fault,
they perhaps lose more from others which are. If there
is any truth in what I have said above if the old
adage, "it is hard to be good," applies at least as much
to reviewers as to others then this extreme multipli-
cation of reviews, this increase in the rapidity with
which they are required, must have some slight effect
of damage on the review itself. A reviewer is made at
least as slowly as an A.B. : and we all know what comes
of manning fleets, not even with pressed men, but with
casual volunteers. It is true that the evil is to some
extent mitigated by the fact well enough known to
experts that though at one time it was rather un-
common for a man to write in more than one paper,

TWENTY YEARS OF REVIEWING 305

any man who establishes a reputation for reviewing in
London may now, if he chooses, write for a dozen, and
is nearly sure to be asked to write for a dozen. But this
in its turn does some harm. I have hinted that I do
not think the practice of doubling reviews, if carried
out honestly and industriously, so abominable as some
people think. But I must own that there is something
in what was once said to me by the late Mr Harwood,
who kept himself in what would seem to these days
almost incredible abstinence from publicity and self-
advertisement during his long tenure of the editorship
of the Saturday Review, but who was known to his
contributors as a marvel of experience, patience, good
sense, and assiduity in his office. He had already sent
me a book when I received it from another editor ; and
I called upon him to ask whether he had any objection
to my duplicating. He was good enough to say, "No,
I don't mind your doing it; but I am not fond of it as
a rule. If the reviews are unfavourable, it is scarcely
fair to the author; and if they are favourable, it rather
deceives the public." It cannot, I think, be denied that
there is a good deal of force in this. Moreover, it will
necessarily happen that if a man has a great deal of
reviewing work thrown on his hands, and if, at the
same time (as the conditions above enumerated make
almost certain), his editors would much rather have
short slight reviews from him than long and careful
ones, he will I shall not say scamp his work I think
very few gentlemen of the press do that but (let us
say) do what is required of him and no more.

On the other hand, the great mass of reviewing
cannot possibly be done by these few men, and it is
doubtless done by others. The result of course varies
inevitably in quality, from work as good as the most
practised hand can turn out down to that class of work

306 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

which is described by a catchword very rife just now
among men of letters, I believe, as "done by the office-
boy." And I have been told and indeed partly know
that this evil is attended by another, which though a
little delicatejto speak of is very serious. Those who
have studied the history of newspapers and periodicals,
know that the extreme disrepute into which newspaper
writing generally, and reviewing in particular, fell at
the end of the eighteenth century coincided with an
"office-boy" period in other words, with a period
when it was handed over to wretchedly paid hacks of all
work, or even to volunteers, who for vanity, or spite, or
pastime, or what not, would write without any pay at
all. These were the days of Southey's "seven pounds
and a pair of breeches" for six months' reviewing I
cannot be certain of the exact figures, but it was some-
thing about as absurd as this. The establishment of
the Edinburgh, with its hard-and-fast rule that every-
body was to be paid, that everybody was to take his
pay, and that the pay itself was to be fair, was the
turning-point from this state of things, and until quite
recently reviewing of the better class, if not a mag-
nificently, was at any rate a fairly well-paid profession.
People will grumble at anything of course. But for
my own part I do not think that any one but a very
great man can consider himself underpaid when he
receives, as used to be the average, three pounds ten
shillings for work which should on the average take
him an evening to read, and not the whole of the next
morning to write. For I think that a review should
never be written on the same day on which the book
is read. The night brings counsel; tones down dislike
to a reasonable disapproval and rash fancy to in-
telligent appreciation; substitutes order and grasp for
chaos and want of apprehension. But this is a digres-

TWENTY YEARS OF REVIEWING 307

sion, and we must return to s. d. I am told once more
that with the rapid spread and rise in numbers both
of reviews and reviewers, the average payment of the
latter has gone down very considerably, and that with
the constant supply of workers and the apparently
reduced demand for the best work as compared with
quantity of work, it is likely to go down farther.

This is as it may be; and at any rate I see nothing
improbable in it. For (and this is a point to which I
have not yet come, and it is one on which I should be
sorry to be silent) reviewing is very fascinating work,
and its very fascination increases its perils of all kinds,
not least those of which we have just been speaking.
To a person who really loves literature and knows
something of it, who has a fairly wide range of tastes
beyond mere books, and takes some interest in life
likewise, I know no occupation more constantly de-
lightful. I never myself got tired of it with a slight
exception, I must admit, in the case of the lower class
of novel in the course of twenty years' unceasing
practice. The words of that locus classicus of reviewing,
the middle part of Pendennis: "As for Pen, he had
never been so delighted in his life; his hand trembled
as he cut the string of the packet and beheld within
a smart new set of neat calico-bound books novels,
and travels, and poems" remain true (except, per-
haps, as to the trembling of the hand) of some of us to
the last. To find such a package by your table at break-
fast ; to be fortunate enough (which seldom happens to
reviewing man) to remember that you have got no
horrid fixed engagement to spoil the fair perspective
of the day; to dip into the books before you settle which
you will formally read first; to select that temporary
sultana ; to diverge from her and look along your shelves
for an older favourite which may settle some point,

308 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

or suggest a comparison, or fill up a gap in your memory;
to ejaculate "What an ass the man is !" when you dis-
agree with him; or nod approval when he puts your
sentiments neatly; to find luncheon-time coming just
when the books have given you an appetite for some-
thing else besides authors, and relapse upon them, not
unaided by tobacco, perhaps, when you have done,
these are pleasant things and good. I do not say be
it mine often so to spend my days, because change is
good, and it is a mistake to reopen closed accounts.
But I do say most heartily and sincerely that I have
never in any kind of work enjoyed days more than such
as these, and that a very large proportion of days of
ostensible pleasure seem to me very dreary things in
comparison.

Sometimes, too, these generally pleasing labours
become something more than merely pleasing, and the
reviewer, like Lockhart's Wandering Knight in his
"ride from land to land," his "sail from sea to sea,"
finds fate more kind at last. He may, when scarcely
out of his apprenticeship, open upon such a matchless

stanza as

As a star sees the sun and falters,

Touched to death by diviner eyes,
As on the old gods' un tended altars

The old fire of withered worship dies.

He may a little later discover in the Voyage ofMaeldune
how half a century of constant poetical production need
impair neither the poet's mastery nor even his com-
mand of new measures and methods. He may, after
for years delighting in another poet's verse, see how
Mr William Morris, like Sir Walter Scott, though not
with like welcome from the vulgar, could close the
volume of poetic romance only to open that of romance
in prose. He may hear almost simultaneously the
raising of two such swan-songs as the prologue to

TWENTY YEARS OF REVIEWING 309

Asolando and Crossing the Bar\ and he may discover,
as at last in Catriona, the only grace that had been
missing to make perfect the work of the most brilliant
of his younger contemporaries. These things are but
a selection of the good fortunes that fell to the lot
of one reviewer: and doubtless the lucky-bag is not
closed for others.

I should therefore be sorry very sorry indeed if
the occupation which has given me so much pleasure,
in which I have learnt so much, which has helped me to
pay, as it were, double debts, by doing a momentary
duty and adding a little to more permanent stores of
knowledge and habits of practice, should go out of
fashion. I hope it may never cease to be one in which
a man may engage without loss of self-respect, and
with that feeling which, though none but prigs parade
it, necessarily accompanies all honourable occupations,
that one's work is of use to others as well as of honour
and of decent profit to oneself. I can see no reason why
any such evil day should come, even if prospects be
at the moment a little downcast. There is still plenty
of excellent reviewing to be found; and if it is rather
more scattered than it should be, there is no reason
to despair of seeing it once more concentrated. The
general reviewing of England, after improving im-
mensely between the beginning of the century and that
fatal period of 1830 to 1835 which Wordsworth from
another point of view celebrated in the very last effusion
of his really great poetry, fell off astonishingly for some
twenty years and more, and only began to improve
again about the middle of the 'fifties. It has had
vicissitudes since ; and if it is not I do not say that it
is not at its very best to-day, there is all the more
reason for hoping that to-morrow may see it better.

That the disuse of reviewing, or its relegation to the

310 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

sort of valueless reclame or puff to which it has sunk
in more than one country, at more than one time, to
a chorus of unintelligent exaltation of our noble selves,
to a jangle of inconsequent snarls, merely intended to
gratify spite and the appetite for spite, or, worst of
all, to a Dead Sea of colourless writing about it, and
about, with little outbreaks of temper or vanity or
caprice diversifying it here and there, that any such
decline and fall would be in many ways a disastrous
thing, I have no doubt. It would deprive authors and
let it be remembered that the author who is at no time
a reviewer, or the reviewer who is at no time an author,
is an almost unknown creature not merely of oc-
casionally valuable censorship, but of very commonly
valuable practice. It would leave literature, to a far
greater extent than is commonly understood

Helmless in middle turn of tide

drifting about anyhow as the popular breeze chooses,
without protest and without correction; and it would
leave the public absolutely guideless. Reviewers,
according to their unfriends, are but one-eyed guides;
yet the one-eyed are kings in the kingdom of the blind,
and it is inevitable that the public should be very
nearly blind in the case of books, if not wholly so. It
simply has not time, if it had the other necessaries,
for reading everything; it wants to be told, and ought
to be told, what to read, not perhaps without the
addition of a few remarks how to read it. That is the
function which a good review ought to perform.

Whether the review be good enough or not depends,
I verily believe, more on the editor than on the re-
viewer, just as the triumphs of an army depend
infinitely more on the general than on the soldier. A
bundle of even individually good criticisms will have
little weight or authority if they be simply pitchforked

TWENTY YEARS OF REVIEWING 311

together, if the principles enunciated on one page or
in one week's issue be set at nought in another, if
animus, mannerism, and other plagues be allowed to
get the better of fair dealing and sober sanity. And it
is very seldom that an editor will be able even to get
such a bundle together unless he picks his men care-
fully, unless he keeps them as far as possible to himself
by good pay and plenty of work, unless he manages
to indoctrinate them with esprit de corps, and to get
them, like other soldiers, to do what he wants and not
what they want the most absolute liberty of con-
science being of course reserved. No man ever writes
his best against his conscience unless he has got none
at all which is a bull, but of the nobler breed and
a man who has no conscience very seldom has much else
that is worth having. And while a good editor will
never wantonly or idly alter his contributor's work
while he will certainly not alter it from a childish fancy
for writing everything into his own style, or adjusting
everything to his own crotchet no good editor will
ever hesitate to alter, and no contributor who is worth
much will ever object to seeing altered, things which
do not suit the attitude or policy of the paper, which
show signs of undue private grudge or excessive private
favour. And, lastly, I may say that, as a general rule,
a good editor will take care to allot books for review
according to his own judgment, and not according to
the requests of reviewers. Of course there are cases
where the two coincide. But the plan which I have
known to be practised, and which is, I believe, even
rather common, the plan of not " sending a book out,"
as the technical phrase goes, till somebody asks for it,
seems to me an exceedingly bad one; and that which,
if not common, certainly has existed, of letting con-
tributors come and pick and choose at their pleasure

MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

from the review bookshelves, seems to me utterly
suicidal. The allotting of a book of any consequence
there must always, of course, be a certain ruck to
be left to the judgment, not of the office-boy, but of
some reviewer of rather unusual trustworthiness and
general knowledge should be a matter of distinct
deliberation, a deliberation from which the reviewer
himself is, as a rule, better excluded, and from which,
unless he is very unwise, he will certainly not resent
his exclusion.

Fewer reviews; greater concentration of power and
authority in those which are given; something like
despotism, provided it be vigilant, intelligent, and
benevolent on the part of the editor; better training
in the history and methods of criticism in general
literature and knowledge this may serve as a summary
of the things which may be reasonably demanded in
the review of the future. As for the Reviews of the
present and the past, in which I have taken a part,
I think they have been not exactly perfect, perhaps in
some cases rather far from perfection, but a good deal
better than they have seemed to some, and bad, if
bad at all, in ways rather different from those for which
others have reproved them. That they have, as they
most undoubtedly have, served as a staff to many
stout aspirants, if also as a crutch to any useless
cripples, in letters is, both as a plea and as a reproach,
rather apart from the merits; but the good side of it
cannot be quite ignored. That without them the public,
which does not know too much of literature as it is,
would know a great deal less is, I think, undeniable.
And, as has been seen, I am even rash enough to think
that they have in strict criticism done some good;
that they have as a rule set their faces against prevalent
follies and faults ; that their strictures, even when harsh,

TWENTY YEARS OF REVIEWING 313

have been wholesome in particulars. I admit that the
work they undertake to do is exceedingly difficult work ;
that it demands qualities not very often found in the
workman, and perhaps qualities rarer still in his cap-
tains of industry. I think there might be improve-
ment in these respects. But the great merit of even
the worst review that retains some shred of honesty
and with others, as I have said, it is unnecessary to
deal is, that however blunderingly, however unsuccess-
fully, it at least upholds the principle that there is a
good and a bad in literature, that mere good intentions
will not make up for bad performances. In short, the
review in its very nature, and inevitably, insists that
Literature is an Art, and the man of letters an Artist ;
that to admire bad art is a disastrous and terrible thing,
almost worse than the production of bad art itself;
and that while to produce the good falls not to all
falls perhaps to few to admire it, to understand it,
to rejoice in it, is the portion of every one who chooses
to take a very small amount of trouble, and the ex-
ceeding great reward of that trouble itself 1 .

1 I reprint this practically unaltered because I think that, like other
things in this collection, it may have some use in constituting what Mr
Arnold liked to call a point de vep&re. The multiplication of reviews and
the tendency to substitute " butter" for "slate" has certainly increased.
But if I were to complain of either I should be, as far as my personal
experience goes, a curmudgeon of curmudgeons. The establishment of
Chairs of English Literature at Oxford and Cambridge has both extended
and intensified instruction in ' ' Rhetoric. ' ' Some remarks on what seems
to me the present state of criticism will be found by any one who cares
for them in A Scrap-Book (London: Macmillan, 1922).

XIII
SPELLING REFORM

[Among the bad things which, driven under cover by
the great interests of the war, and the (in quite another
sense) great worries of the peace, are beginning to show
their noxious heads again, Spelling Reform has recently
made its appearance. That it lurked for a time is not sur-
prising: for the idea in its more modern shape came from
Germany when the Huns mutilated their pretty "That"
and "Thai" into the ugly "Tat" and "Tal" and was
chiefly supported by actual anglicised Germans, or by
philologists who had taken Germany to be their spiritual
school if not home. The following paper was delivered as
a lecture, not long before the war itself, to two University
audiences first at St Andrews and afterwards at Liver-
pool. It may amuse some readers to know that on the first
occasion the enemy was so much alarmed that it sent down
a special missionary to antidote my bane; whether any-
thing similar happened at Liverpool I do not know. But
as everybody does know, fas ab hoste, and since that
enemy has come out of his den the guard against him
should be mobilised. I find little to add to the original
paper except that I find in the new attacks a very amusing
" splurt" at those who do practise "eye-spelling" as nasty
poaching creatures who play false. Also perhaps if any one
says with regard to an argument at the end " Of course we
do not intend to re spell past literature" I should like to
extend my compassion still more deeply and widely to
posterity. With the present quite proper habit of spelling
Middle English and sixteenth century, if not also seven-
teenth^ as in the originals; eighteenth and nineteenth

SPELLING REFORM 315

according to the established norm and twentieth (if they
can get their way) in their own cacography, the task of the
future reader of our literature will, as the Americans say,
be "some" task indeed."]

THERE can be few people who have studied the history
of this country, and who do not know that steady,
unwearied, and comparatively unopposed talking will
do almost anything in and with it. So it is just as well
that the talking should not be all on one side and that
renewed advocacy of Spelling Reform should be met
with renewed opposition.

The question itself is, however, a many-sided one;
and to attempt to deal with all its sides in a two or
three-score minutes' paper would mean either extreme
inadequacy or a bundle of scattered remarks. There
are two large and important aspects of the matter on
which I propose to say little or nothing not in the least
because I have nothing to say about them, but merely
to narrow the issues. There is, for instance, the formid-
able problem which some may think lies, irremovably
except by solution, on the threshold whether, sup-
posing the present system to be bad, and supposing
that it ought to be replaced by one based on what are
called phonetic principles, a workable and adequate
phonetic orthography can be formed. Some people
whom I respect think that it can ; I must confess that
I myself, after a good deal of study of the subject,
think that it cannot. But I am prepared at the present
moment to allow, for the sake of argument only, that
such a system might be framed that the election is
not on this occasion to be decided by the simple absence
of any properly qualified candidate to contest it with
the sitting member. I should be perfectly ready to pro-
duce my own reasons for thinking that a change would

316 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

be undesirable on this ground also; but I waive them
for the moment.

Secondly, I do not propose to indulge on this
occasion in criticisms, numerous and often unanswer-
able as I think them to be, of orthographical incon-
sistencies or inadequacies in the system or systems
which have been actually offered in exchange for our
own. Glances in this direction, as in the other, may be
unavoidable; but on the whole I am content to leave
both as neutral ground. I may indeed seem thus to
give up the most amusing if not the most effective part
of the matter: for the grotesqueries of phonetic spelling
are inexhaustible. But even after these immense con-
cessions we may find something to say.

I propose to deal first, though not at any great length,
with some of the reasons put forward for making a
change at all. Three of the principal of these in fact
the only three, so far as I know, that have even an
appearance of formidableness as being serious are as
follows :

I. The anomalies of our present spelling.

II. Its failure to correspond to true phonetic prin-
ciples.

III. The difficulties which it presents to our own
children first, and most of all; secondly, to older per-
sons whose education has been neglected; lastly, as
some would add, to foreigners.

Now the first objection I confess I meet with a flat
demurrer, in the proper sense of that often misused
word. Why shouldn't it have anomalies? And pray
let me request you not to consider this as a mere
flippancy, or a bit of rhetorical artifice. You will see
that it has a perfectly serious and logical connection
with something that I shall say at once and something

SPELLING REFORM 317

else that I shall say later. To me language, like litera-
ture, though it may be what we call a thing of art, is
not in the least what we call an artificial and still less
a mechanical thing. It is a thing of life, a thing of
nature, a thing of history. And for my part I know
nothing of nature and none of the best things of art
that are not full of anomalies : though merely mechanical
things may not be so. As the hackneyed saying has it
you will hardly find two leaves that are exactly like
each other; I will be bound that nobody ever saw (out
of fiction) two pretty faces, or indeed two ugly ones, that
were exactly like each other; and if everybody and
everything looked the same, behaved in the same way,
and so forth, existence would be as uninteresting as a
quadratic equation and more so. For there are differ-
ences in quadratic equations. But it will be said, this
is really frivolous ; language is a means to an end and
a product of certain processes. The means ought to
achieve the end with as little trouble as possible: and
the processes ought to work regularly and scientifically.
Observe that I deny all these propositions, if they
are laid down without large conditions and reserves.
But I will examine them as they stand and admit them
at least to trial. With regard indeed to the second the
alleged incompatibility with phonetics I am partly
empowered and partly restricted by my opening limita-
tion to say little about it. I will only say that in the
first place these phonetic principles seem to me, if they
are attainable, not to have been attained in any manner
meeting with or deserving common consent; and,
secondly, that I decline to admit any necessary con-
nection between spoken and written words except as
hereafter to be defined. Some time before the war
indeed, and before the Germanisers had interned them-
selves, some new and very remarkable arguments were

3i8 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

advanced by them to the effect that we the defenders
of orthodoxy " confuse spelling and language." Why
that is exactly what we do not do, and what our Simple
Simons do! We say that pronunciation may be a
matter of language: but that spelling is a matter of
literature; that the reduction of spelling to a mere
phonetic diagram does confuse it with language in the
most hopeless and mischievous way. No small part of
the arguments which I have been putting and shall put
before you arguments arranged and written down in
some cases long before I read this singular contention
are mainly if not wholly based on this confusion of
spelling and language by Spelling Reformers. If the
plans of these latter should unfortunately prevail the
confusion will become incapable of disentanglement.
Spelling will be language and language spelling. What
will become of literature in the presence of this identi-
fication we need not at the moment erxquire.

But, no doubt, the head and front of the offending
of our present orthography lies in the third count that
it does not fulfil its object, that it throws obstacles in
the way of understanding and indeed of learning the
language itself. Let us take these objections in reverse
order. As to the foreigner item I can hardly think that
it is seriously urged. I pass with merely a glance the
somewhat important point that a phonetic alphabet
adjusted to English pronunciation would help the
foreigner very little; indeed I have been told by
men of real current weight not fossil Tories like my-
self, but advanced and rather cosmopolitan persons
that foreigners who have learnt English by phonetic
methods have a most ghastly pronunciation. But,
dropping that, what a prospect presents itself ! I have
no objection to the foreigner. I have frequently and
personally 'liked himself (and especially herself) very

SPELLING REFORM ;: '319

much; I delight (when they are good) in his wines, his
cigars, his literature. But when it is proposed to make
such a change as this to suit him it really "does seem
going far." I should never dream of asking a German
to give up his belated accidence; I don't expect a
Frenchman to alter his pleasing but to me unattainable
intonation ; or a native of either part of the Peninsula
to give up that peculiar guttural, or whatever it is, which
in various degrees distinguishes both Spaniards and
Portuguese and which (to me again) makes those two
beautiful languages so much more beautiful to read
than to hear. Then why should he ask me to give up
my spelling? or why should I be asked to do so by
intrusive go-betweens ?

As far as fact goes, I should imagine that there is, if
only from a certain extremely limited point of view,
more to be said for the " persons whose education has
been neglected" than for any others. These have lost
the adaptability of children and they will in most
cases never reach the point of appreciating literature.
How they come to exist after the hundreds of millions
lavished on education in the last fifty years is a side
issue. But, good Heavens ! are we to risk what I hope
to show Reformed Spelling would mean for a mere
handful of people, who after all could manage the
difficulties perfectly well if they chose, and if they
had brains enough to make it of the slightest import-
ance whether they managed it or not ?

But now let us come to the children themselves
those precious children whose coddling appears to be
a passion with the twentieth century. Are their suffer-
ings so atrocious as sympathetic spelling reformers
depict them? We have been recently told by these
apostles that an English child requires so many, I
think it is over two thousand, hours to teach him our

320 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

spelling, while a child, in Utopia or somewhere else,
can learn Italian (which as you know has been largely
phoneticised) in so many hundred less. Now really!
I have prescribed to myself the most inviolable courtesy
of language in these criticisms: and though I possess
from long practice in reading and writing, especially in
the public press, a large and varied store of epithets,
I can hardly find one which combines politeness and
accuracy in regard to this point. In the first place, how
is it possible to arrive with any approach to trust-
worthiness at such a result? Just think of it: for the
difficulties may not strike you at once. Remember the
differences of ability in children ; remember the same
difference^ in teachers ; remember that there are many
different/ methods of teaching and that probably the
best is as I have hinted above no method at all.
Remember too the immense difficulty if not impos-
sibility of getting a sufficient number of experiences
for averaging with the same teacher on the same child :
which if not necessary would be scientifically desirable.
Probably the statistics relied on are mere time-table
averages in certain schools which are simply valueless.
But in dismissing them I have no intention of declining
battle on the main point. Are (I repeat) the sufferings
and difficulties of children so dreadful, and the waste
of time so shocking?

I am of course an old man ; you may call me a dotard
if you like, and it will not in the least perturb me. But
among the numerous infirmities not always amiably
attributed to old age I do not know that an increased
tendency to deliberate lying is one. And I do know
that while one's memory as to recent events is said to
be sometimes impaired, it is also usually allowed to be
rather quickened as to events long distant. I can
remember my early education very well: and I can

SPELLING REFORM 32!

also remember disliking some things that I had to
learn. But I never remember any woes at all as regards
spelling. If anybody says " Perhaps you learnt it too
young to remember the process" he rather gives him-
self away. That is just my point. A child ought to begin
spelling and reading nothing else I think at about
three years old. You don't give him much of it; and
you teach him his alphabet not in the silly way of
making " buffs" and "fuffs" and " puffs" to indicate
the sound of the letter in combination ineffectually 1 ,
but in the good old <z, , c style which lets him know
the conventional value of the letter when he sees it.
Then you let him read to himself as much as is safely
possible; and make him read aloud in reasonable pro-
portion. He will learn the sound-equivalents of these
visible letter-combinations gradually, easily, painlessly.
It will take him some time; but he has plenty of time.
He will extend his knowledge imperceptibly but surely;
and he will have laid the foundation not merely of
spelling, not merely of reading, but of all education
and all knowledge worth the name by finding out as
much as possible for himself and having as little as
possible tabloided for him.

Nor is this merely a fanciful picture or an empirical
generalisation from insufficient facts. I am very cer-
tainly convinced not only that with the majority of
good spellers is good spelling a question of eye rather
than of ear: but I am further convinced that it ought
to be so. When one speaks of eye-spelling to a spelling
reformer he is apt to exclaim "Of course! with your
bewildering and irrational fashion of spelling it is
almost obliged to be so." But I acknowledge no hit,
palpable or other, in such a retort. I repeat not only

1 Put the simulacra of c, h t i, an4 n together an4 ee how like " chin'*
it sounds !

sin 31

322 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

that spelling in most cases is, but that in all cases it
ought to be, a matter of eye and not of ear merely or
mainly. So long as communication is carried on by
speech only, the ear, of course, is master; though, as
we shall see shortly, it finds itself even then sometimes
at a loss and would continue to do so, unless something
more than mere spelling is to be reformed, under the
purest system of phonetics imaginable. But when
language comes to be written down, the ear perforce
surrenders the immediate command of the channel of
communication to the eye. Except in half-educated
or very slow-witted persons, I doubt whether the ear
comes in at all in the process of transmission of meaning
from the written or printed sheet of ordinary prose to
the brain. Of course the ear retains large prerogatives.
You cannot appreciate the beauty of a piece of poetry
or prose unless you read it over with at least what may
be called your "mind's ear"; perhaps not unless you
actually speak it or hear it ; though, as I shall hope to
show presently, the eye's help is not superfluous even
then and its pleasure is never to be neglected. But for
mere conveyance of meaning the original purpose
remember of communication of any kind the ear is,
I think, in some if not in all cases entirely superseded.
A difficult passage may sometimes call in its help as an
addition : but I am sure there must be not a few here
who will agree with me that one sweeps one's eye over
a page of ordinary print in a fashion which neither
requires nor admits any phoneticising whatever. And
this "faithful eye," as Horace long ago observed in
another but related matter, outstrips the "sluggish
ear" hopelessly in its transmission of ideas to the mind.
In connection with this matter of eye and ear I was
much amused by a remark of that most distinguished and
amiable Spelling Reformer the late Principal Donald-

SPELLING REFORM 323

son of St Andrews when he took the chair at my first
utterance of these blasphemies. By way of softening
them he said, "You see Mr Saintsbury is a man of
letters. All the philologists are on one side in this
question and all the men of letters on the other." Now
just please think of that. I don't say that it is true;
but take it as a dictum of the enemy, though in this
case a very amiable enemy. Philologists are at any
rate sometimes quite respectable people. Their occu-
pation is certainly useful, and may occasionally be
necessary. But it admittedly stops short of literature,
though it may be a stage towards it. Now spelling is
part of literature, which cannot exist without some kind
of it. Both may be (as Mr Matthew Arnold rather
pusillanimously allowed of literature itself) "faculta-
tive," but you cannot have one without some kind of
the other. And therefore I say that those who have
to do with literature clearly have to do with spelling
and ought to be heard first. This may be partisanship.
But if all philologists are in favour of reformed spelling,
then I say with no possible suspicion of being a partisan
that they are cutting off their right hands and the
ground under their feet. For phonetic spelling swamps
philology; passes the sponge over the origin, the history,
the kinship of words. If I were a philologist I should be
as bitter a foe to it as I am now on the side of literature :
and a foe bitterer still on the side of philology itself.

But I should like to make yet another diversion or
strategic retreat before I tackle the main argument of
this paper. Let us suppose for a moment that the
spelling reformers are right about children that the
present system does give them unnecessary trouble;
that you could get the other into their heads more
quickly and easily. Should I admit this as even an
advantage in itself? much more or less as worth the

324 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

disadvantages appurtenant? No; a thousand times
no ! They used, you know, to call old spelling-books
"readamadeasies": and though the old spelling-books
are regarded now as curiosities beneath contempt
except as curiosities things fit only for the museum
the accursed principle of "making easy" has itself
made continual progress. All subjects and all methods
of teaching that give real trouble Greek, Euclid,
Latin verse, the teaching of languages by grammar
and dictionary work, everything of the kind -fs^or is
to be abandoned for more subjects and more short-cuts
to subjects with more go-carts and carriers and seven-
leagued boots to shorten the short-cuts. "Why don't
you get a cheap primer" as the honourable (Labour)
gentleman asked in the House the other,day evidently
believing that in the cheap primer was all anybody
could want.

Now I do not hesitate to say that in education, and
especially in early education, the element of difficulty is
the most important and valuable of all elements. You
might as well expect to mangle linen with rollers made
of sponge; to break a horse by simply turning him into
a pleasant field with a hayrack and a water-trough in
one corner; as to give real education by some of the
methods now in use.

But if this seems to be a digression (it is not really one)
let us turn directly to the reasons against the proposed
reforms.

In the first place I put forward with perfect know-
ledge of what I am saying and the objections to it
the Ugliness of the proposed substitutes. "Oh!" says
the spelling reformer. "This is a mere delusion a
Fallacy of the Unaccustomed the newly-formed words
are strange to you and you don't like them." Once
more I deny the major. I do not dislike things because

SPELLING REFORM 325

I am not accustomed to them rather the contrary.
I see daily (or as often as I am lucky enough) faces,
flowers, prospects, pictures, that I never saw before
and I don't think them ugly at all. I once knew a
lady, very good-looking, whom I had been accustomed
to $ee with black hair and whom after a day or two's
interval I saw with golden: and I thought her very
much improved. Further, I may plead with perfect
modesty that I am not exactly unaccustomed to varied
spellings of English. I have before my mind's eye at

A O O J J

the present moment, in the gallery of memory, pages on
pages of styles from the tenth to the twentieth century:
and though I may think that some forms of some words
have been prettier at one time than at another, I never
did and do not now think the general form of the
language ugly at any time from Caedmon to Kipling.
But I have never seen a page or a passage of phonetic
or "simplified" spelling which did not strike me at
once as hideously and ludicrously ugly. And as in a
former instance I am prepared with reason for my
dislike.

Spelling I suppose nobody will deny this even in
so controversial a discussion whether it is my spelling
or that of the Simplifiers is a work of art not of nature,
in the beginning at leasts Kittens and primroses are
not born or flowered with name-tickets on them. v Now
no work of art (I say it without fear of or care for
contradiction) is ever beautiful when it is simply, solely
and with deliberate exclusiveness devoted to an utili-
tarian purpose. Mind, I am saying nothing so silly as
that utility and beauty are opposed or incompatible
or anything of that kind. I believe it to be perfectly
possible for everything useful to be made beautiful,
not by plastering or disguising it with ornament but
by considering utility and beauty in its manufacture.

326 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

I believe that if we were so unfortunate as to be cursed
with phonetic spelling at the present time, I or any
man with a sense of the beautiful, could make it beau-
tiful even if we had lost our memory of present ortho-
graphy. I know further, and it will come into our
argument, that nature will take an ugly but useful
work of art into her own hands and beautify it make
it beautiful by subtle processes and mere patience on
her own part and her brother Time's. She has often
done this with spelling itself. But here we have a
process of art, not nature, which not only looks to the
direct production of a particular useful effect on the
ear, but ostentatiously and contumaciously denies
appeal to the greater organ of receptivity of beauty,
the eye. In what further way the eye-wbrd is deprived
of its qualities and privileges we shall see later. It is
sufficient here to point to the fact (which again I defy
any one to deny) that the word itself becomes a mere
symbolic machine; an item of notation; perhaps an
unwanted record of the real or supposed physical pro-
cess by which words are produced, but nothing more
in short a piece of linguistic algebra. Of course I am
prepared to believe that there are persons to whom
this argument and others which I shall put forward
do not appeal at all. If they hear the beauty of words
(which they may or may not) they certainly do not
see it. In the disputes about tinkering the Bible it is
not uncommon to find people who say that they neither
feel nor want to feel charms of rhythm or style. But
surely it is a curious argument that the blind and the
deaf should be permitted to inflict discord and ugliness
on those who can hear and see. Even the dog lay in
the manger if he couldn't eat the corn ; but these dogs
would defile the corn and destroy the manger at once.
I am, however, well aware that what are called

SPELLING REFORM 327

aesthetic objections are regarded by some people with
contempt: and I will for the moment at least pass to
something that the most Benthamite of Utilitarians
cannot despise as a general consideration, whatever he
may think of its particular validity. I have said that
I do not on this occasion propose (much as I doubt it)
to question the possibility of an adequate phonetic
alphabet and a valid heterography. But this concession
of abstention by no means precludes me from com-
menting on some consequences which would attend
the most successful attempt of this kind. It is of course
quite clear that no such reform can do anything what-
ever to remove the difficulty of the large number of
words in English, not merely spelt but pronounced
alike, which have different and sometimes totally un-
connected meanings still more of those which are
pronounced in the same way without being spelt alike.
Phonetic spelling could not of course help the inno-
cent child or the guileless foreigner in distinguishing
the various senses of "box" and "ball." It may say,
quite justly, that this is out of its province. But it
would not only not ^confuse but would worse and
worse confound the confusion of the visible expression
of such sounds as those designating the first personal
pronoun, the organ of vision, and one at least of the
pronunciations of a certain form of assent. I have no
doubt that many of my hearers or readers know how
troublesome and sometimes actually puzzling is the
practice in the sixteenth and early seventeenth cen-
turies (when there was still a good deal of phonetic
spelling about) of actually printing the capital "I" for
the meaning "Yes."

But this, though very far from positively, is com-
paratively a trifle. A much more serious poser in the
same line or class follows. What standard of pronunci-

328 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

ation are you going to take for your alphabet and your
orthography? I do not mean to put this question with
the rather sophistical sub-meaning "What individual
is to be Adam to the new menagerie of word-beasts
and give them their names?" I shall only say that
I have very frequently found the pronunciation of
phoneticians themselves sounding strangely in my ear:
and I had a father who was a martinet on the subject.
But I am not aiming at this. " What general standard
are you going to take?" Although in consequence of
the immense extension of intercommunication between
different parts of the kingdom and of what is called
education, the sharpest differences the actual dialectic
distinctions have been much rubbed down, that very
process has blunted as much as it has smoothed, if
indeed " smoothed" is the word at all. Attempts are
now quite commonly made to defend what not long
ago were regarded as mere vulgarisms the hideous
"parasitic r" as they call it; the omission of the final
g; and other horrors of the sort. Now as an example
of the danger of attempting to fix spelling one could
hardly have a better than the fact that it has actually
been proposed to take this bastard, blunted, vulgarised,
down-at-heel fashion of speech and make it the stand-
ard. I know that this appalling notion is not that of
all spelling reformers, but it certainly has been put
forward by some very influential ones both among the
living and the dead.

And how amazing is it to find other spelling reformers
actually arguing for reform on the plea that it would
bring back the music of English ! This at least and at
worst would prevent the atrocity just mentioned. But
what music are you going to bring us back to? And,
when you have settled that, "What right have you to
prescribe a particular music to Englishmen for all time? "

SPELLING REFORM 329

Now I may partly apply this, and partly pass on to
another stage of my argument, by pointing out that
phonetic spelling necessarily stereotypes, to the utmost
of its power, whatever it produces or reproduces : and
makes, as in this case, a sporadic disease into an endemic
and almost incurable one. There have been, as all real
students of our language and literature know, large
changes in pronunciation, though by no means so large
as some busy theorists would make out. In particular
there have been false or fanciful or inconvenient pro-
nunciations which grew up, flourished, and passed
unhindered no doubt but also unhelped and most
assuredly not perpetuated by spelling itself. "Goold"
and "Room" were once almost universal for "gold"
and "Rome"; had they been registered in an official
phonetic spelling they must have prevailed. "Tea"
and "Tay" fought, as spoken words, long for titleship
of the herb that does not always cheer, and sometimes
does something worse than inebriate. You will find
both as sounds in contemporary if not in the very same
compositions of Queen Anne's time. But spelling saw
fair between them and let the best win. "Yalla" (I
rather doubt Yalbr in any decent mouth) was at one
time by no means a vulgarism for "Yellow": and
"Chawyot" and "Hawyot" were rather choice fas-
tidiousnesses for "chariot" and "Harriet." But they
were not petrified by spelling into stalagmitic immo-
bility: and Time and Nature put them right.

These are strong objections and I may even strengthen
them later. But they lead up to the construction of
a much more powerful battering-ram. "What right
have you to prescribe the pronunciation of the English
language to future generations?" "How dare you lay
your soon-to-be dead hand on the ears and tongues,
not to mention the eyes, of all time? " In the case just

330 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

referred to the consecration or mummification of the
provincialised Cockneyisms or Cockneyfied provincial-
isms of "board-school" diction it would be a loath-
some outrage. In any case it seems to me that it would
be an unpardonable pretension to omnipotence a
thing which (as you may remember if you have rather
improbably read The Curse of Kehama) requires omni-
science to wield it. Or do you perhaps disclaim lightly
or seriously, any such pretension? and explain that
alterations of spelling to suit phonetic changes will be
permitted from time to time ? A pretty reform ! The
only ground on which it can possibly base itself is the
provision of certainty and fixity; and that ground is
self-cut from it. Who pray are to be the adjusters?
We are good certainly nowadays at providing fresh
government departments with comfortable salaries;
and we show a docility (which must be a little astonish-
ing to our fathers when they look up or down at us)
in obeying departmental orders. But I don't envy the
National Spelling Commissioners except on quarter-
days.

Let us pass again for the list of arguments against
Spelling Reform is so long that if each item were to be
fully argued out a hundred lectures or papers would
not suffice for deploying them. There is no more
Debateable Land in the whole seat of the war than the
etymological province : and we must turn to it. It has
been a boast of Spelling Reformers and, I believe, a
discomfort to the weak-kneed on the right side, that
my regretted friend the late Professor Skeat was a
spelling reformer and even defended Spelling Reform on
those etymological grounds whereon he seemed to be
so strong. The fact is undeniable: and there are living
persons who think as he did. But when you come to
look into the matter, you will find that every man Jack

SPELLING REFORM 331

of them, from Professor Skeat onwards, has been
affected by one of those curious idols of the tribe, as the
philosophers would say, one of those diseases of trades
and professions, as the doctors would put it, which attack
that odd person the expert. Just as you will find
professors of Greek who would rather not have Greek
taught at all than have it taught insufficiently or in
what they think the wrong way, so you will find etymo-
logists who would much rather that people kept clear
of etymology altogether than that they should enter-
tain etymological notions which seem to the expert
erroneous. Now there is no doubt that our present
spelling embodies a good many etymological notions
or suggestions, and that some of these notions may be
actually incorrect; some others doubtful; a great many
(for after all etymology is a science with a good deal
of guesswork in it) open to controversy; and not a few
contrary to the special ideas of particular authorities
on the subject. It was disagreeable to my respected
friend that anyone should put a b in "doubt" because,
though the connection with duBitare is induBitable,
the French word doute had been formed without the
B (though it got in there too later) and he would have
liked the Middle English form d-o-u-t-e-n to be con-
tinued. I wish I had asked him whether "dout"
wouldn't suggest "do out" like "doff" and "don."

This point of view "Let us have no visible or sug-
gested etymology at all merely a formless and meaning-
less diagram of letters rather than an incorrect one"
is perhaps noble; but I cannot take it. Let us
remember that under any phonetic spelling-reform
system etymology will go except by accident, altogether
or in the majority of cases; and our words will be left
as kinless loons, shivering symbols, without father or
mother or inherited properties and dresses; naked

332 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

things that really might make one weep at their naked-
ness if it were only a little prettier form of nudity. All
the rich associations of our actual vocabulary are to
be pared off: and to be restored only by a precarious
separate process for which only a very few persons
would either have the time or take the trouble.

It is with no affectation or pretence for no argu-
mentative or rhetorical display that I say that these
etymological and other historical associations make one
of the largest parts of the enjoyment of the linguistic
side of literature to a person who really enjoys literature
as such, and who has been educated in such a fashion
as to enable him to gratify his tastes. They create an
atmosphere round the word which phonetic spelling
would utterly destroy. For instance, one"of the spellings
that our reformers hate most and against which they
urge most vehemently the pseudo-etymological objec-
tion is the ncble and splendid word " sovereign," e-i-g-n.
"Intrusive g!" they cry; "horrible suggestion of
c reign' with which no connection really exists." Well:
and so much more sensible the spelling which, while
keeping fairly to the sound of the original word in
French as transferred to English adds, by sleight of
orthography, a connected suggestion which can deceive
none and may please some of the best, while it beau-
tifies the word itself and puts as it were a flower in its
cap.

But, as I have hinted just now, it is not the mere
etymological and linguistic atmosphere that this
Reform would banish, leaving us the bare symbols for
the ear to comfort or discomfort itself with. Prac-
tically speaking all historical interests go too or are
relegated to separate studies very unlikely to be under-
taken. You may almost apply to the actual form of our
language Burke's gorgeous description of the tempered

SPELLING REFORM 333

and blended order and liberty which distinguish (or
at one time did distinguish) the British Constitution.
"It has a pedigree and illustrating ancestors. It has
its bearings and its ensigns armorial; its monumental
inscriptions; its records, evidences, and titles." We
are asked to take in exchange for it a box of blank
counters; a set of disembodied symbols; at best a
clumsy mechanical gramophone which does not even
present the spoken utterance of any given qualified
individual. Etymology is to go; word-history is to go;
the endless and curious associations of literature which
have accompanied that word to its present condition
and are more or less reflected therein are to go like-
wise. Two thousand years ago or not much less
Dionysius of Halicarnassus recognised the inherent
beauty of the word, and its constitution by syllables
and letters. For more than two hundred years in fact
for fully three English has carried out a practical and
rational system of gradual change for the attainment
and retainment of beauty. And it is all to be effaced,
and a soulless algebra substituted, to suit the fancies
of a few pedants; the supposed but extremely doubtful
convenience of some of our stupider children and of
foreigners; and perhaps also the desire of certain
Americans to get rid of things specially British.

For, if you please, I am not going to be content with
mere criticism of the proposed innovation. I maintain
not indeed that the existing spelling is the best of all
possible spellings I am not Dr Pangloss or any of his
tribe but that it is a thing good enough and more
than good enough in itself to satisfy any reasonable
English-speaking person. I remember a Spelling Re-
former, rather frequent in the press, who constantly
twitted his opponents with being under the ferule, or
the thumb, or the wing, or the something or other of

334 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

Dr Johnson. Now as a matter of fact, I myself would
as lief, if I am to be under the control of anybody, be
under Dr Johnson's, and a great deal liefer be under his
than under that of most other people, especially Ger-
man and American aliens. But Dr Johnson has very
little indeed to do with the matter. We do not even
always spell like him: for he spelt "critic" with a "k,"
and "author" with a "u" while our general system of
spelling is a great deal older than his time. It would
in fact be just as much to the point and rather truer
to say that Dr Johnson generally spells like us.

The fact is that our present spelling is the result,
as I partly said just now, of successive processes of
revision, clarification, and the like, continued un-
ceasingly through the most prolific part'of the history
of English literature and begun about the time (the
second quarter of the seventeenth century) when Eng-
lish itself was beginning to be consciously studied as
a language. In these last words I am not speaking at
random or presuming on the difficulty of disproving a
general statement. It was my employment during my
spare time from about 1905 to 1915 to read, not in the
ordinary fashion, a large number of books printed be-
tween 1625 and 1675. When I say "not in the ordinary
fashion 55 I mean that I read them not merely for the
meaning, or for the merit as literature, but also and
rather particularly for the closest details of word-use
and spelling of words. These books were in many cases
by quite obscure authors, never reprinted in some, and
presenting the widest diversity of what is contemptu-
ously called (but not by me) "printers' spelling." In
some cases, too, I believe the spelling to have been
phonetic after a kind, that is to say, the manuscript
had been simply read to the compositor and never
"read" in the other sense afterwards, by a competent

SPELLING REFORM 335

corrector of the press. The most eccentric forms abound
in them ; and of course the phenomena which we should
expect to find in seventeenth century books unneces-
sary or ill-placed apostrophe, doubled "IPs" at the end
of words, superfluous "e's" and a hundred other things
of the kind occur constantly. Yet it is perfectly
common to find in them lines, sentences, passages,
pages almost, in which hardly a deviation from our
present spelling is to be met; while in a very large
number of instances you will find, in the same book and
even in the same page of it, an antiquated and a modern
form of the same word. In others there is to be found,
two centuries and a half ago or more, a distinct and
unmistakable trend from older forms to that which has
now prevailed. Changes of pronunciation such as those
mentioned before and a vast number of others have
of course occurred: but as a rule the spelling has not
altered, being not under the Law of Phonetics but
under the Grace of English. Changes of actual spelling
have occurred, but they have never been prompted by
systematic or doctrinaire considerations, and have
almost if not quite always been connected with, if not
caused by, considerations not of sound but of amenity
to the eye, more complete naturalisation from foreign
into English guise, and the like. Perhaps the most
remarkable of all these changes is the disuse of the
capital initial for any but proper nouns or words to
which some special attention is to be called, some
special position and meaning assigned.

This last, I need hardly say, is a change which has
nothing to do with modern Spelling Reform proposals.
Not infrequently different spellings have been adopted
for the same sounding word with different meanings such
as "Waist," "Waste" and "Wast" a process which,
though utterly repugnant to phonetic principles, is,

336 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

despite or because of that very fact, one of the most
sensible proceedings possible. And all these changes
have, once more, taken place in the gradual, cautious,
half-imperceptible fashion which, as I have said, is the
fashion of the beneficent changes of Nature herself.
There has been no revolution of the language. We are
often told that much of the wickedness of modern
spelling is due to Renaissance authors and printers,
who, in their blind reverence for the classics, not
always coupled with very accurate classical scholarship,
forced combinations of vowels and diphthongs, con-
sonants and double consonants into the modern lan-
guages wholesale and higgledy-piggledy. There is of
course a shadow of truth in this; but there is in regard
to English (I do not say in regard to Frerich) very little
substance. To hear some people talk you would imagine
that there was a pure, uniform, strictly phonetic ortho-
graphy of Middle English: and that these fiends of
printers came and muddled it with their wicked clas-
sical flourishes and anti-phonetic vagaries. This is
simply false. The printers (take any half-dozen of the
volumes of the Early English Text Society and see)
had no standard of orthography for English and had to
make one for their newly invented art. If something
more easily accessible is wanted than the volumes at
large of these most careful reproductions, look at a few
pages of Skeat's larger Chaucer and see the variations
that occur even in the selected readings from MSS.

Now when the early printers (who, let it be remem-
bered, were almost invariably, in fact almost neces-
sarily, men of education, letters and taste) were con-
fronted with the task of producing, not in single copies
but wholesale, something to represent anomalies like
these; as well as with altered pronunciations of the
words in some cases they had, as their French con-

SPELLING REFORM 337

temporaries would have said, to "take a party" to
make up their minds to do something definite. They
did it: and did it, as it seems to me, with excellent
judgment on the whole; though of course not perfectly
especially at first. They called in the assistance of
the ancestral or parallel words in Latin, French, etc. ;
they discarded some of the unnecessary doublets of
letters found in Middle English but added others,
phonetically unnecessary, when there seemed to be
reason or attraction in doing so. The process went on
rather unsystematically for the first century and a half
or so; then more deliberately and slowly till now.
Every now and then individuals or groups of more or
less importance have adopted for themselves, and tried
to impress on others, reversions to old fashions or con-
versions to new ones. There was Landor's extended
use of "t" for "ed" in the participle which caught
Tennyson and some other great ones, but has slipped
out again. There was the form "diocess" for " diocese"
which The Times held to for a long time and which
I rather like myself. Sometimes double forms like
"Marquis" and "Marquess," each of which has some-
thing to say for itself, have kept ground side by side.
But on the whole changes have latterly been few and
gradual; and the whole history has exhibited that
steadiness and good sense which distinguish Nature
as from (I will not say art but) artifice: together with
the regard for beauty which comes in the same way.

"Met/v?," for instance, is a pretty form and "Meter"
an ugly one of the same sound. If anybody as in a
former case says "This is mere prejudice" let me humbly
suggest to him the parallel of "Peter" and "Petre"
in which no prejudice can occur, or at any rate in my
case does. Homo sum and I know that any man might
have committed St Peter's one fault. I like his way

338 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

of letter-writing very much : and I know that it is not
in the least his fault if people will read into Tu es
Petrus what is not there. On the other hand I never
fell in love with any lady or made friends with any
man of the noble Roman Catholic house which spells it
the other way. Yet I dare, begging the pardon of an
eminent ecclesiastical relative of mine, to pronounce
Peter a rather ugly word and Petre a pretty one.

Therefore let us stick to "metr<?" as we do for
the more beautiful meaning of the word (compare
"theatre"), the alternative to which is uglier than
"Peter." But we have also got from metron a name
for a quite different thing, useful but ugly a thing
merely intended for measuring gas and water and so
on. We rightly call that "Meter" and spell it so, though
there is no appreciable difference in the pronunciation.

Thus the existing spelling unites in itself a quite
extraordinary number of merits; while it has at the
outside but two corresponding but unimportant de-
fects. One is its theoretical want of correspondence to
the pronunciation with which it is only in part connected :
and the other its very dubious and only occasional
difficulty in adapting itself to the preliminary process
of education. Babes and sucklings are no doubt indis-
pensable and so not intolerable parts of creation : while
they are sometimes quite agreeable in themselves. But
we do not usually, unless we are nearly idiots, upset
or even quietly rearrange the entire scheme of things in
deference to the supposed needs of babes and sucklings.
I believe indeed and this is the one of the points
reserved above that some spelling reformers do not
"go the whole hog"; that they want phonetic reform
only in the preparatory stage, and even insist that
initiation in it will positively facilitate subsequent
mastery of real literary orthography. This would, of

SPELLING REFORM 339

course, to some extent remove my objection (except
as to a superfluity) if I believed that this process would
take place in any considerable number of cases. But
I think and I have all my life been more apt to look
at facts than at theories that it is seldom if ever
worth while to learn a thing only to unlearn it. The
proper form of words can only be found by reading:
the proper sound of them by listening to people who
know how to speak them. And I would remind this
sect that if, according to them, spelling is always a
burden, double spelling will be a punishment for only
very bad little boys indeed.

So, too, I must deal very briefly with those whom I
may call occupants of a Halfway House in this matter
those who would not insist on a full phonetic substi-
tution, but would modify the actual system in the
American direction. I could say a good deal about
them; but I shall content myself once more with re-
marking that the curse of all halfway-houses seems to
rest on theirs. They have neither literary nor scientific
justification: and so are hardly worth powder and shot
at any rate in so brief a campaign as this. But to
the thorough-going reformers I have one more query
to address, with some remarks on it to follow. Are they
going to reprint all English literature in their own
lovely dialect? If they are not and I believe they do
say they are not their efforts will be all but futile and
will result in a welter of conflicting variants imposing
a hundred-fold burden on the poor dear children and
foreigners whom they have so close at heart. If they
are going to reprint, or rather to misprint but one
need hardly follow out that horn of the dilemma.
Absurdities have a chance of triumphing for a time, but
for a time only. And, lastly, if you could pay the bills,
and achieve the destruction, and win the victory you

22-2

340 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

would have such a substitution of baldness for beauty,
such a setting up of lifeless symbols in the place of
living creatures as I myself find it difficult to charac-
terise in seemly language. Fortunately, however, one
good old phrase will do the business. No " abomination
of desolation" that ever appalled or enraged the soul
of a Jewish prophet could be more desolate or more
abominable than the prose and the poetry of the last
three hundred years grotesqued and gibberished into
the cyphers of phonetics. No hamper or handicap
could be imposed on new writers worse than such a
change. It is idle to say that use would accustom the
users to it. To the whole of the present generation in
the widest sense, from dotards of seventy to decent
little dears of seven, it would be as^superfluous as it
would be offensive. You must clear us all off before
you have the field clear for Baal. And that other
generation Baal's own would grow up to such a
frightfully wasted heritage, would enjoy such miserably
limited means of enjoying the past and enriching the
present and the future, as surely no age of mankind
silly as the ages have sometimes been would will-
ingly bring upon itself.

XIV

THE PERMANENT AND THE
TEMPORARY IN LITERATURE

SOME months 1 ago my eye fell on some words exactly
whose I really do not know and do not greatly care
about man "lacking the courage or not realising the
need to scrap old ideals as machinery is scrapped"
together with a statement quite unquestionably true
that it was some three hundred years since Shake-
speare's plays were given to the world. I am not going
to say anything directly or principally about Shake-
speare. Scrap-heaps and he, I fancy, are still far enough
asunder. But what these words, original or quoted,
silly or wise, made me think of, and what I am going
to talk about, is what they suggested to me the
question how far this process of scrapping is applicable
to ideals in general and literary ideals in particular;
whether it is applicable at all, and, if so, what are the
conditions of its application. You know what scrapping
means. It is decided that some piece of machinery
intended for a practical purpose, such as a packet-boat,
a pump or a professor, has either fulfilled that purpose
too long, or has outlived the purpose for which it was
intended, or has in other ways become useless and in
the way. So, in accordance with the principle the
principle of "Cut it down, why cumbereth it the
ground?" you break the machine up and throw it
aside. Some people, I believe, hold that scrap-iron
is a particularly useful ingredient (not always fully
acknowledged) in the manufacture of new machines;
but I do not propose to follow that suggestion out.

1 Years now (1923).

342 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

Everybody here, I should hope, is perfectly competent
to do that. I only propose, as I said, to consider for
a little the question what is and what is not scrappable
or what is really permanent and what is merely
temporary in literary ideals and literary accomplish-
ments. For it is quite clear that what is permanent
you cannot scrap; you will only break your nails and
your tools against it; in fact it may very probably
scrap you. Even if you merely neglect it, the neglect
will be at your risk.

About one much discussed and much disputed
element of permanency I do not at present intend to
say much; partly because I have, like others, said a
great deal about it in other places. Hardly anybody
denies that Style is an extraordinary preservative:
though there are some people who seem to grudge it
this power of preservation. But it is not style of which
I am principally thinking. We heard something just
now about "ideals." " Ideal" is a very great word;
perhaps, if you think of it, the greatest word that exists
or at any rate almost a synonym of the greatest
that can exist. Lower it however if you like to "idea"
without the / which is not quite so great: though
great enough. Lower it further again to such con-
ceptions as "subject," "temper," "fashion," others
which denote, from various sides, the matter rather
than the manner of literature. There is a familiar and
inexact but very useful phrase, "What is the book
about?" This excludes style: but includes almost
everything else. Now my proposed subject of enquiry
concerns this. When you have satisfied yourself what
a book is about, can you go further, and distinguish
in this the permanent from the temporary, the parts
that have enabled or are likely to enable it to last for
three hundred or three thousand years, and the parts

THE PERMANENT IN LITERATURE 343

which have cast it, or are likely to cast it, on the scrap-
heap or into the oven in some hundreds or thousands
of days ? I think you can : and it may perhaps be worth
while to spend a few minutes in working out the
suggestion. I am all the more tempted to do this
because I have sometimes seen myself described, by
persons who were good enough to occupy themselves
with my humble personality, as a blasphemer of "the
subject" and a rebel to "meaning." I need, I hope,
hardly plead "not guilty" to such a charge: and it
would be irrelevant to do more than point out that it
is a very different thing to despise "subject" and
" meaning" as such and to endeavour to recall, to those
who think of subject and meaning only, the fact that
there are other things in literature. At present I have
to do almost entirely with subject and with meaning:
or at least with things inextricably connected with
them.

It would of course be hopeless to address any argu-
ment on the subject to the apostles of "scrapping"
themselves. They are exactly in the mental condition
of that famous judge, in the hey-day of the French
Revolution^ who after a luckless landowner had proved
beyond dispute a title many centuries old observed,
"If you have had it so long, Citizen, it is time that
some other citizen should take his turn." The position
is simple, and perhaps rather in favour just now, as
applied to a considerable number of questions: but
looked at with the cool eyes of logic, and the ex-
perienced ones of literature, it appears a little thin.
It may be very degrading to the modern spirit to
accept the lessons of history all the more so perhaps
that these very lessons teach (in their stubborn and
curmudgeonly way) that the modern spirit will have
to submit to them, as so many once modern spirits

344 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

have had to do before. But it is clearly to history that
all unprejudiced minds must go in order to get an
answer to the question, "What apparently has con-
duced to permanence in literature, and what to
temporariness?" There is of course the possibility of
further dispute as to whether what has been will be:
and this, not being myself a prophet, I cannot pretend
to answer except by pointing to History once more.
Constantly, modern spirits have thought that "to-
morrow will be a new day," that things are going to
be quite different, and much better. As constantly
the wiser minds among these modern spirits have
found out their mistake in the one respect as in the
other. But let us leave these generalities and come to
individual instances and applications.^

To begin with the classics. The classics are a very
unfashionable subject: and I understand that there is
something "undemocratic" I believe that is the word
in knowing anything about them. But I observe that
one of the arguments most frequently used in de-
nouncing the study of Greek and Latin is that it is
possible to be well acquainted with their literatures in
translations. I have my own opinion on that matter.
But you will at once perceive that this argument,
whatever it may be good for in its own division, is no
argument against our present treatment of the question.
For what you can acquaint yourself with in transla-
tions of Greek and Latin is exclusively "what they
are about" their temper, their subject-matter, the
ideas they convey, and the like. And we are going in
the main to confine ourselves to this, not without, it
would seem, a certain common field of argument (even
with the enemy) as to its value.

What is it, then, that has kept these classics alive
and "unscrapped" for from nearly three thousand to

THE PERMANENT IN LITERATURE 345

more than fifteen hundred years? Their style cer-
tainly: but we have dropped that; and as a matter of
fa'ct there have been long periods in which hardly any,
and few periods in which many people were great judges
of pure style, or very likely to be attracted by it. Mere
prescription and custom, though often urged, will not
do. These are powerful things, no doubt : but historical
experience, the universal master, teaches us that
though these things may be "deep almost as life" they
are not quite so deep : and have again and again shown
themselves mortal. The secret of this life of the Classics
is that the great Classical writers and as to others,
we have a fact from which it may be possible to draw
further useful inferences presently express life itself
in its perennial aspects and qualities. The "chorus-
ending in Euripides" I don't know that I should
follow Mr Browning in selecting Euripides, but the
quotation is all the more to the point expresses for
us, in a way better than we can do it, what we have all
thought, what we have all felt, what we have all gone
through. Homer for the simpler though not always so
very simple emotions and experiences ; Thucydides for
politics ; Herodotus and Xenophon for world-travel and
business ; Aeschylus and Sophocles for the great poetry
and tragedy; Lucretius for that passionate pessimism
which is in all of us but the basest, and for that
curiosity and explanation of the riddles of the earth
which is in some; Sappho and Catullus for love;
Aristophanes for the eternal (though it would seem not
quite universal) sense of humour; Virgil for that of
delicate art; Horace for worldly wisdom and polished
wit; Ovid for a curious combination of romance, pure
narrative interest, and knowledge of human nature
all these appeal to the perennial characteristics of
humanity: and all these have made good and will make

346 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

good the human appeal to every one who will listen to
them.

They contain of course much else: and upon part
of this attention has (in the peculiar circumstances of
their preservation and of the study of them) been quite
properly concentrated, upon their pictures of manners,
their allusions to the fashions of the time, their dealings
with matters (religious and other) which are obsolete.
But these are not the things that have kept them alive;
it may rather be said that attention is directed to these
because the other things have kept them alive without
these. And there was, we know, an enormous mass of
literature, belonging to the same periods, which has
not been kept alive at all. Part of this disappearance
was no doubt due to regrettable accidents; but I
venture to doubt very much whether the whole can
be assigned to such a cause. If it seem a begging of
the question to suggest that a great, perhaps the
greater part of the lost works of Greek and Latin
literature dealt less with universal and perennial things
than what we have, let us take an example. The
ancients regarded Aristophanes and Menander as the
two greatest Greek comic writers: and we happen to
know that most ancient critics preferred Menander.
Time seems to have been of a different opinion. We
have about a dozen, in complete condition, of the half
hundred dramas of Aristophanes: we have no single

play of Menander complete. But we have a lame

*

collection of in some cases substantial fragments of

him, and some pretty full accounts, besides the un-
doubted copies of Terence, so that we can make
something like a fair comparison. Menander seems to
have been an excellent playwright, as we count play-
wrights now, and would probably have made a popular
novelist if he had lived to-day, and taken to that line

THE PERMANENT IN LITERATURE 347

instead of the dramatic. He had style of a kind, a
pretty hand at a certain sort of character, an excellent
acquaintance with the society of his own day and with
its literary and other conventions. Nor does he seem
to have had any very glaring faults. But his characters,
abundant and for the purpose effective as they were,
seem to have been altogether of the type kind. The
conditions of the New Comedy (I daresay I need hardly
refer to the late Professor Churton Collins's essay on
Menander here 1 ) assisted in keeping him to a certain
limited and conventional kind of writing: and his
abundant fragments contain, with one or two doubtful
exceptions, hardly a passage which goes much above
an elegant commonplace. How different it is with
Aristophanes ! He has glaring faults enough : and beside
them qualities which are likely not to be thought
exactly merits as time goes on. He is outrageously
partial and unfair in his partisanship. He is notoriously
destitute of any sense of decency. His plays are usually
in one or other kind of extravaganza. And worst of
all, he is at first sight utterly topical a sort of dramatic
journalist or at best pamphleteer. And yet almost every
line, certainly every page of him is alive to this day.
He does not deal with types: and yet if it were not
libellous, I could pair his characters with public men
of the present day and of every day since his: while
all difference between English and Athenian manners,
religion and the rest does not prevent speech after
speech of theirs, whether public or private, from corre-
sponding to something that one has heard, or read, or
thought or spoken oneself. Above all, he has managed
to incorporate, as literature incorporates, one of the
great perennial moods of the human mind, the mood
of Scorn the sense of the ridiculous and the con-

1 The paper was originally read at Birmingham (1923).

348 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

temptible after a fashion which defies the attacks of
Time. Nothing is more perennial than the best satire,
just as nothing, absolutely nothing, is more temporary
than the lower kinds. He has isolated, in a human way,
this human quality: and he and his work are safe for
as long as humanity itself shall last. He has other
lasting claims too for he is a poet and a thinker, a
master of style and a painter of manners that are more
than temporary and by these also he lives.

Perhaps I may be excused for taking one other
classical example before I come to English a tempting
one because here we have the fullest opportunity of
comparison and the eclipse is not one actually of text.
When the name of Aristides is mentioned I suppose
999 out of every 1000 hearers, if they attach any idea
to it at all, think of Aristides the Just, and of his
ostracism, and of the useful lesson thereof and so
forth. But the person of whom I am thinking was not
Aristides of Athens, the statesman and general; nor
Aristides of Miletus, the first recorded author of pure
romance I wish we had him nor Aristides the painter,
whose works sold for what would even now be a hand-
some price at Christie's; nor Aristides the musician,
whom we do possess, but with whose work I am ashamed
to say that I am not acquainted. It is Aristides of
Smyrna, a Greek rhetorician of the second century after
Christ whom critics, including it would seem the great
Longinus, thought comparable to Demosthenes an
opinion with which, you will be surprised to hear,
Aristides himself did not entirely disagree. Of his
writing we possess a very considerable bulk twice as
much, I should say, speaking roughly, as we have of
Demosthenes, if not more. But who reads him? I
happen to have done so myself "in the way of business"
as old Turnpenny observes in Redgauntlet: but I fear

THE PERMANENT IN LITERATURE 349

I should not have done so otherwise. And I know
scholars to whose knowledge of Greek mine is but
ignorance who admit that they have hardly glanced
at him. Now why is this? He writes excellently: and,
what is more, in a beautiful difficult fashion which
really ought to appeal to present tastes. He is a sort
of Greek George Meredith both in his command of
thought and language, and in the tricks which he plays
with both. He knew literature well and he loved it
intensely: and he is full of what we may call "modern
touches," though they are not our modernity. But
before you have wrestled with many pages of him you
see at once, if you have any critical faculty, that he
was too modern; that he was thinking of the fashions,
the tastes, the " slang" (using that word in no vulgar
sense, and in a wide one) of his time, of his own pro-
fession, of other things that would interest his audience,
of the things that would show what a clever fellow he
himself was. And he is nearly as dead as if we had not
a page of him instead of three stout volumes attainable
in more than one edition.

But Demosthenes? Demosthenes is not dead nor
likely to die, even though courses of halfpenny news-
papers and musical comedies be substituted in schools
and Universities for the study of the classics. I do not
know that he writes much better than Aristides:
though of course he belongs to a better period of Greek.
He, again, like Aristophanes, has the drawback of
dealing exclusively more exclusively even than the
comic poet with passing affairs the politics of
Athens, the law-suits of its citizens, perhaps, let us
confess it, the political and professional rivalries of
himself and his fellow-orators. But then, once more,
he pervades these things with, and subordinates them
to, the great and eternal interests of humanity the

350 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

ideas and ideals which are never scrapped, and which
save everything connected with them from scrapping.
The sense of patriotism ; the struggle of the Athenian
state, no longer as it had been for domination, but for
existence or at least independence ; the mighty fighting
instinct which, if it has a dram of evil in it, has hundred-
weights and tons of good 1 ; nay even on a lower plane
the intense personality and the maintenance of it
against rivals and enemies: these are no fashions,
they are as ancient as they are modern, and as modern
as they are ancient. You must clothe them of course
in a clothing of thought and style, and Demosthenes
does this: but you must have them there to be
clothed. Observe too, or the comparison would be
unfair, that Aristides does deal with these very same
subjects, or with subjects like them with Miltiades,
Themistocles, Pericles, Cimon. He was not their
contemporary he could not help that but he might
have treated them as Froude and Carlyle have treated
Henry the Eighth and Cromwell. He does not: he is
literary and modern merely, and his literature and his
modernity will not save him, or rather his modernity
drags down his literature. For here the secret blurts
itself out. In so far as you are for an age and in so far
as you are not for all time, you will die with the age
that you are for and be scrapped by the Time that you
are not for. And the very principle of "scrapping"
implies that you should aim at being for an age and
not for all time, it implies that you cannot be for
the latter do what you will.

But I must leave the classics: though it would be
interesting to me to make another contrast or contrasts
between Demosthenes again and his own contemporary

1 Most of us are thinking just now, after 1918, just as they did after
1815 of the dram rather than of the cwts and tons: but the account,
like all accounts, will be balanced some day (1923).

THE PERMANENT IN LITERATURE 351

Isocrates, between Aristides again and his contemporary
Lucian like him a professional rhetorician but unlike
him translated^ imitated again and again in some of the
greatest works of modern literature, and, by those who
can, read with unabated delight to the present day.
And this not merely because of his style, which dis-
appears in translation and in imitation, not even because
of his wit: but because of the way in which this wit
fastens upon perennial things as well as on mere
fashions. Let us come to our own special flock.

I might almost have made the body of this whole
discourse concern Chaucer alone. The curious history
of his reputation is well known; though perhaps it is
not always well remembered. He seems to have sprung
into popularity almost at once not by any means a
test of merit, and still less perhaps a test of enduring
fame. But in his case this popularity was not short-
lived and it did not decrease, but rather increased, for
half a dozen generations after his death. It was sus-
tained (not altogether according to knowledge no doubt)
by constant imitation for the whole fifteenth century;
it turned after the beginning of the next to one of those
half foolish engouements or fashion-crazes which gene-
rally fall to the lot only of the living or (rarely) of the
just dead; it was championed in most splendid fashion
by his first great successor Spenser. But though it
never quite died down, it was, from the middle of the
seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth, to
some extent in abeyance : and some very foolish as well
as ignorant things were said about it even by such a
person as Addison. Yet in this very time it found
another champion and the greatest it could have found,
in Dryden and that for the very reasons to which we
shall shortly come, while for the last century it has
been reviving and almost growing from most different

352 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

points of view. The august philologer, the sensible
historian and even that poor creature, the mere
belletrist, alike admire it and cry it up. Now what is
the meaning of this ? Here is a case where "scrapping"
was actually tried where indeed it has been tried
more than once for even in modern times there have
been anti-Chaucerites and where it has conspicuously
failed. Why is this ? For nobody here can need to be
laboriously reminded that Chaucer is rather heavily
handicapped in this race for long-distance popularity.
The very thing that endears him to philologists dis-
inclines ordinary folk to him. In the same way, what
makes him valuable to the historian and the anti-
quarian makes him hard of digestion by the layman.
His style of poetry does not, it would seem, appeal to
everyone who loves literature. You know that it did
not appeal, or appealed only with large drawbacks, to
the late Mr Matthew Arnold. Chaucer has been accused
of lacking philosophy, of refusing to take the politics
of his time seriously, of being alternately a scoffer and
a Laodicean conformist in matters religious, of many
other wicked things. And yet almost everybody who
takes the exceedingly small trouble necessary to " taste "
him at all tastes him vividly and rejoicingly. But this
relish can be set down, in only a few cases, to the causes
which no doubt enhance it in those few, to his
admirable versification ; his " gold dewdrops " of phrase ;
his complete and almost superhuman command of the
contemporary capacities of th'e English language. It
must be something else; and what it was Dryden put
with that massive commonsense of his, and in his
own nervous diction, more than two hundred years
ago, nearly three hundred after Chaucer and at the
very time when Chaucer's general vogue was at its
lowest and when even the panegyrist himself, for mere

THE PERMANENT IN LITERATURE 353

want of technical knowledge, thought his favourite not
"harmonious" only "rudely sweet." It was because
he found him a "perpetual fountain of good sense,"
a "follower of nature everywhere," a provider of figures
and characters which one actually sees before one. And
if anybody (knowing a little but not enough) says that
this is "only Boileau," I shall trouble that person to be
good enough to compare what Boileau would have said
of Chaucer, what he did say of Chaucer's own contem-
poraries and of French poets even nearer to his own
time. And Dryden did not stick to these critical
generalities. He went straight to the point, noting
Chaucer's seizing of the various manners and humours
of the English nation and transmitting them alive, "for
mankind," says he, "is ever the same; and nothing is
lost out of nature, though everything is altered 1 ."

Now, in saying this, Dryden, as great writers and
great critics generally do, says a good deal more than
he seems to say or than belongs to his immediate
subject. He justifies Chaucer from "scrapping"
directly and triumphantly: but, indirectly, he upsets
the whole principle and doctrine of the scrappers,
"Mankind is ever the same; and nothing is lost out of
nature, though everything is altered."

To escape scrapping therefore, all that you have to
do is to find this immutable underneath the mutations.
Stick to the alterations merely to the fashionable
and the business of the scrappers revives, though as
a matter of fact they are almost always adherents of
mere fashion themselves. Dryden had a very good
example, which he perfectly well knew, but which he
employed tenderly in his usual good-humoured and

1 It is not very rare now for Science to say unhandsome things of
Literature and vice versa. But Sir Oliver Lodge, who, as Vice-Chancellor,
presided on the occasion when this paper was delivered, expressed the
warmest admiration of this phrase of Dryden's (1923).

sin 23

354 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

really scholarly fashion. Cowley, he tells us, could not
"taste" Chaucer, not even though the recommenda-
tions of persons of quality had great weight in the
seventeenth century when the poet was recommended
to him by Algernon Sidney's brother, Lord Leicester.
Yet Cowley's own fame, which had been of the widest,
went in a generation. "It was not of God," said
Rochester, " and so it could not stand," while Chaucer's
had then stood for half a score and has now lasted for
nearer a whole one of generations. It is true that
Cowley's occultation is rather unjust: for he has some-
thing "of God" in him, inasmuch as he really is a poet
though hardly a great one. But he put the temporary
above the permanent, and the alteration above the
abiding nature trick of conceit, trick of Pindaric,
trick of "strong" verse, as he and they called it
above the substance of strictly poetic thought and
strictly poetic expression. In reading Chaucer you find
yourself among a multitude of persons in strange
garments, occupied as people are not occupied now,
talking as they do not talk, with backgrounds
scenery properties, etc., all unfamiliar. But the people
themselves are all alive and even their speech, for all
its old-fashionedness, fits the circumstances of to-day.
In reading Cowley the strangeness of dress and so forth
is very similar, at any rate it is hardly less. But instead
of being in a moving, breathing, acting world you are
in a sort of Madame Tussaud's, or even in a vast ware-
house of fancy frippery like that made famous as
belonging to Mr Solomon Lucas of Eatanswill. Some-
times the wax figures or the empty clothes stir a little,
however old-fashioned: occasionally the thin chirping
ghostly voices become lively, and then things are
better. But on the whole it is at best a museum, at
worst a frippery-shop. It is lucky if you have anti-

THE PERMANENT IN LITERATURE 355

quarian and technical interest enough of this or that
kind to spend an hour in it not unpleasantly.

And this we shall find the key of the whole problem,
the fact that "nothing is lost in nature" though every-
thing alters in appearance: and that if you can get
hold of that which is not lost, you are safe from
scrappers, whom you will occasionally see scrapped in
their turn. The fault of the neo-classical critics whose
language Dryden used, though he parted from them
in reality, was that, quite properly recognising this
general fact, they limited their "nature," their "good
sense" and the like, arbitrarily and irrationally. For
instance let us go from Chaucer to Spenser. Spenser,
you know, has been repeatedly charged has indeed
of late been charged quite often with not adhering
to nature and with being merely fanciful and romantic.
Yet he has had, if not so large a following as Chaucer,
a continuous one and one of no slight consequence for
the more than three hundred years that have passed
since his death. And why? In part for his extra-
ordinary artistic beauty, no doubt : that being, as has
been admitted, a passport to eternity, but not the
particular one of which we are mainly speaking to-day.
It is too often forgotten that the things with which
Spenser is reproached his dreaminess, his romance,
his "other-worldliness" in a peculiar sense, are just
as actual parts of the unchanging human mind as any
others. They may be present in fewer people, they
may be in less or more evidence at this or that time,
they may not exist at all or exist only fitfully in this
or that man : but they are part of mankind all the same
and, as such, unscrappable. Spenser has got fast hold
of them of much else too that is permanent but
certainly of them: and permanence passes from them
into him and into his fame. I have the highest respect

23-2

356 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

for my friend His Excellericy M. Jusserand, who is not
only technically excellent as an Ambassador but really
so in the most difficult art of appreciation of a foreign
literature. But I will back Spenser's quality against
his strictures for many a generation to come.

I have said that I do not intend to deal much with
Shakespeare. He is indeed almost too ready-made an
instance of the truth which I am endeavouring, un-
necessarily perhaps, to establish or at least to illustrate.
On the one hand, the famous saying "he was not of
an age but for all time" asserts it specifically; on the
other, the equally famous phrases of the " largeness and
universality" of his soul go straight to our mark. But
two things there are which may be remarked. The one
is that though Shakespeare's fame, as* has often been
demonstrated, has practically never been eclipsed or
occulted, there have also never been wanting efforts
to " scrap" him from the early attempts to make
him out a plagiarist, an ignoramus or a mere player,
through the Puritan iconoclasm by which even Milton
allowed himself to be tainted, through the travestying
and vulgarising of the Restoration and the demonstra-
tions by the Rymers and the Voltaires and others, of
his extreme and lamentable imperfections, down to the
well-known theories of to-day which do not indeed
attempt to scrap the work, but the man and to direct
attacks on the work itself from the most different points
of view, ultra-Catholic, ultra-socialist, ultra-farcical,
ultra- in every quality but commonsense and the sense
of poetry.

Still there is a point of some curiosity in the com-
parison of Shakespeare himself with his contemporaries.
Of those contemporaries, even down to the minors and
minims among them, I may profess myself a diligent
reader and a humble admirer. But I am the very first

THE PERMANENT IN LITERATURE ^357

to admit that there is a mighty difference between them
and him and to base that difference on the very contrast
which we have been discussing here. I know that there
are some persons (perhaps the majority) who do not
agree with me when I say that Shakespeare seems to
me to be almost as consciously not of his age as he is,
consciously and unconsciously, for all time. For my
own part I learn very little from the Plays about the
age of Elizabeth even about its special temper and
character, much more about its manners, habits,
fashions and other alterable things. It cannot, I think,
be a mere accident that Shakespeare never takes a
contemporary subject: it most certainly is not an
accident that his not having done so has freed him from
one danger, or set of dangers, which his contemporaries,
and still more his followers, have incurred, and which
has been almost fatal to some of them.

For they, or at least nearly all of them, were by no
means indifferent to the maxim "Be up-to-date"
whether they would have formulated it thus or not.
From Ben Jonson downwards they might almost seem
to have had definitely before them the commands (not
unknown at any time but particularly rife for the last
century) to let the dead bury their dead in literature,
to "look alive," to be "modern" and the like. You will
find more information about things and thoughts,
matters and manners Elizabethan in any one of half
a dozen plays of Ben Jonson's or any one of a dozen
and more of Middleton's, than you will in the entire
theatre of Shakespeare from The Tempest to Pericles.
I do not know that you will find a single play of theirs
(except perhaps Jonson's exquisite fragment of the
Sad Shepherd and those classical plays of his which
are a kind of cento from the classics) which is not,
whatever its subject, saturated with what then was

358 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

modernity. But Jonson also scattered everywhere a
great deal that was not modern a great deal that was
perennial: and he has been saved, partially, by this.
Middleton, who was not, I think, much inferior in genius
to any of his fellows, who could write the magnificent
De Flores and Beatrix- Joanna scenes of The Changeling
and the fine "problem-play" as we should call it now
of Women beware Women, and the delightful romantic-
comic medley of The Spanish Gipsy, Middleton has
been dragged down by his temporary modernity with
its need of transposition and explanation and allowance.
Who, except those harmless drudges, literary historians,
really knows of most of the others, even Webster and
Dekker, even Beaumont and Fletcher themselves (who
do however generalise and disrealise m&re than most),
anything but the stock passages recovered by Lamb and
others most of them, if not all, possessing nothing
specially Elizabethan but the kind of the poetry, and
no ideals but what have been the ideals of humanity
at all times of which literature gives example or history
record ? Of course these and other apparent connections
between the modern and the perishable, the non-
modern and the permanent, may be merely delusive
coincidences, not real instances of causation. But they
have at least a pestilent habit of continually re-
presenting themselves.

I cannot follow them up here even in the rapid and
merely representative fashion in which I have dealt
with some of the greatest names of our literature up
to this point. The handling of the remainder of this
paper must be more scattered and cursory. The kinds
of literature which seem to be most exposed to this
scrapping influence of modernity when it ceases to be
modern are certainly the drama and the novel for
obvious reasons. In no division except pure journalism,

THE PERMANENT IN LITERATURE 359

is the immediate appeal to popular taste by ephemeral
touches more tempting or more likely to be immediately
successful: in none is it more surely punished in being
thrust out on the scrap-heap by its own kind later. In
the days which, when everybody played or sang, "an
old song" was the usual term for something utterly
effete and done for: "An old novel" has, with some
people at least, taken its place though there is a
pleasant touch of satire in the fact that if you reprint
an old novel so that it looks new, people will sometimes
read it. But a really "old novel" that is to say, one
of which the atmosphere and manners are thoroughly
out of date without being exalted by positive genius
out of consideration of date at all is terribly hard
reading. I can read almost anything: and partly from
taste, partly in that way of business of which I have
spoken, I have read a very large number of old novels,
often, I am bound to confess, with much more satis-
faction than, that which new ones generally give me.
But I have always found that when a novel has dealt
with the special fashions, the special problems, the
special fancies of a day that is long enough ago for
these to have ceased to be actual, it becomes all but
unreadable save for some special gift of style. Even
what we commonly call a convention (it was the saving
of eighteenth century literature) is better than a
fashion: because a convention has almost necessarily
something of the ideal if only of the pseudo-ideal
about it and a fashion has none. Satire of fashion may
do because satire is itself perennial: exposition of
fashion in religion and politics, of fashion in manners,
in morals, in thought even will not do at all. I cannot
(though I have used it elsewhere before now) refrain
from the striking example of this furnished in the
special branch of the subject by Theodore Hook. Hook

360 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

was a man of talent almost approaching genius, and
perhaps amounting to a minor kind of it. He knew the
society, the politics, the tastes of his day and date
almost perfectly. He did a good deal, though he stopped
short of the best, in restoring the novel to its estate in
real life which it had lost by the extravagance of the
Terror school, of the Sentimentalists, and others. Both
Dickens and Thackeray owed him not a little of what
might be called profanely their start and stock in
business. He had plenty of wit; a sense of situation;
fertility in a certain kind of character. Yet I scarcely
know a harder writer to read through : precisely because
of his antiquated modernity.

The law holds less in poetry, though it holds there
also because the very essence of poetry that is poetry
is eternal and unchangeable. There is extraordinarily
little difference in spirit, or even in real form, between
a chorus of Prometheus Bound and a chorus of Pro-
metheus Unbound, between a specimen piece of Sappho
and one of Mr Swinburne. But short of the highest
and most persistent styles and subjects, fashion still
exercises its baleful and corrupting influence. The
allegory of the fifteenth century; the metaphysicalism
of the seventeenth; the artificial conventions of the
eighteenth we are too near as yet to go farther all
have shown this. Allegory, though it is not popular
just now, I dare swear to be in itself an admirable and
respectable thing, if anybody can make it so as, for-
tunately, not a few people have made it. I will fight
for metaphysicalism at its. best at any time: even
though it has revived in a different form nowadays and
I don't love that form at all. The person who cannot
taste the poetry of the " teacup times of hood and hoop,
and when the patch was worn" is only to be slightly
less commiserated than is he who cannot taste Chaucer.

THE PERMANENT IN LITERATURE 361

But in all these cases the things lent themselves too
much to fashion: and fashion, if it did not kill them
(for poetry cannot die) made them appear diseased
and wretched and miserable and poor and blind and
naked to other times, precisely because they had seemed
to be rich and to be beautiful and to have need of
nothing to the generation that produced them. Once
again the modern is the enemy of the perennial.

But do I mean to suggest that you can secure per-
manence by merely not being modern by setting your
face against modernity and imitating some particular
period of the past ? I am not, I hope, quite so foolish.
In the first place, the thing has been tried and failed.
The less wise spirits of the Renaissance thought that
they could do this by absolutely slavish imitation of
and downright stealing from Cicero and Virgil. The
whole Neo-classic period of the late seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries did the same thing in a rather less
extravagant way. The weaker vessels of the earlier
romantic period did it with things mediaeval. And they
all failed: and could not but fail. You can no more
put back the hands of this clock than you can hurry
them forward or keep them at a standstill. Besides,
to set yourself deliberately against modernity is to
undergo the basest kind of slavery to it, and to bind
yourself to "follow it in the other direction." But you
may decline to follow it in its own direction unless the
direction coincides with what has been proved a safe
one before : and you may be specially wary of following
it in a headlong wholesale, and undiscriminating
manner.

For, if you think for a moment, you will see that
suspicion of modernity is not based on any prejudice
or superstition but on very simple and irrefragable
logical considerations. The advantage of even any given

362 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

period of the Past still more of the whole Past over
the Present is a rational and demonstrable one
especially demonstrable as it touches literature. It
may or may not have been better or worse when it
was a Present itself: we know in looking back, that
the literary values of different ages have varied
curiously and, as it seems to some sober observers,
almost unaccountably. But what was good and what
was bad in it, what was temporary and what was
permanent, have been separated, riddled, precipitated,
whatever metaphor you choose, from each other by
Time itself. In the Present this has not been done. The
critic, by natural and cultivated gift, can do it to some
extent : but the less he is of a charlatan the more frankly
will he confess that he cannot do it wholly.

Therefore it behoves every age, and every individual
in an age, to be extremely distrustful of anything that
is not proven. Some years ago not many there was
a German Professor who gloried in "the God-given
power vouchsafed to us Germans before all other
nations, by the grace of which we are enabled to
recognise true genius of whatever nation better than
other nations." On the very day on which I wrote
these words I had just seen in an English newspaper
the statement less ludicrously and childishly Philistine
in form but equally deluded and delusive that "it is
the glory of our modern age to excel all others in in-
tellectual receptivity." Alas ! alas ! the humour of this
kind of thing is great, but the pity of it is perhaps
greater. When an individual, or a country, or an age
gets into this state of mind one knows what is before
it and him; and I am sure it must be unnecessary to
point out at any length how much the tendency to
this absurdly self-sufficient attitude is likely to be in-
creased by a too great faith in the doctrine of scrapping.

THE PERMANENT IN LITERATURE 363

Do I then, once more but in a different way wish
successive ages to fold their hands, or only open them
to take what has already been given, to acquiesce in
La Bruyere's saying that "All has been said" and so
to enter upon and abide in that "stationary state"
which, we are told, is a thoroughly unhealthy one?
Again, by no means. The very historical argument which
I have been using would at once prove any such wish
or advice to be absurd: for its adoption would have
prevented the coming into existence of the very ideals
and examples of which I have been maintaining the
permanency and the value. You can never know
whether something apparently new will be an "altera-
tion," to use Dryden's word, of the everlasting same-
ness an alteration of a valuable kind till you try it
by the tests and touchstones of the old : but you ought
never to reject it until these tests and touchstones have
been duly applied and have failed to validate the
presence of the right qualities in it. By this process,
and this only, can you distinguish the crank from the
sage, the quack from the true man, the rubbish from
the sterling matter, the permanent from the tem-
porary.

It is true that some fashions, even of the most purely
fashionable kind, have nothing in themselves objection-
able, and deserve to be kept in a kind of museum if not
granted long life and immortality with the unscrappable
ideals and the eternal results of art. But this itself
must be determined by the judgment not of the age,
not of the next age, but of a series of ages.

On the whole, therefore, this truth as regards
literature no less than as regards other things but per-
haps much more, is that the fact of a thing being of
this century or of that being up to date or not has
absolutely nothing to do with its intrinsic goodness,

364 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

and possesses only a subordinate and comparatively
vulgar value of any kind. How much of the eternal has
it in it ? is the question : and that question you can only
answer by looking back on the past and comparing.
There is revolution as well as evolution in that past:
and you may sometimes come upon things apparently
long-lived and apparently contradictory. But the
appearance is deceitful : they are not contradictory but
complementary. There is no real contradiction, for
instance, between "Classical" and "Romantic" except
as regards an excessive partisanship of them : they are
the gold and silver sides of the shield of all great
literature; they represent eternal things in human
nature, of which one comes uppermost at one time and
in one person, the other at and in another. But always
these admirable words of Dryden will apply and be
true : and always will they be the motto of every sound
critic and every accomplished lover of literature. "Man-
kind is ever the same ; and nothing is lost out of nature,
though everything is altered." For what is true of
mankind is true of mankind's works: and should be
truest of the noblest of those works, Art and of the
noblest of the Arts, Literature.

XV

BOLSHEVISM IN ITS CRADLE
THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF WILLIAM GODWIN

IT cannot be quite alien from the objects and subjects
of The New World to cast a glance on the prophet of
what was once proudly or shrinkingly called "The
New Philosophy"; more particularly when this old-
new doctrine, or set of doctrines, has recently become
new again with a vengeance. What makes the subject
more interesting still is that, as so often happens,
Godwin was very much forgotten, at least in England,
but a very short time ago, comparatively speaking.
His novels, indeed (with which it is not proposed to
deal here, though Caleb Williams is a sort of com-
panion in fiction to Political Justice), kept him in a
certain remembrance, for the book just mentioned
never went out of print ; and some people read St Leon,
though not many ventured on Fleetwood, fewer still on
Mandeville, and fewest of all on Cloudesley. But of
those who had any notion of Political Justice itself,
some (probably most) got that notion from a charac-
teristic passage of De Quincey (whereon more presently),
and two persons of very high repute in English aca-
demics and letters during the latter part of the nine-
teenth century expressed themselves pretty con-
temptuously about its author. Mr Jowett, most famous
of all masters of Balliol since Wyclif, is said, if I recol-
lect aright, to have objected to someone reading
Godwin's Political Justice because it was merely
second-rate stuff, and obsolete besides ; and Mr Matthew
Arnold, who did not by any means always agree with

366 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

Mr Jowett, was much more explicit while delivering
the same opinion in a passage of a letter to a French
friend of his. This French friend, it would seem, was
anxious to find some good subject in English literature
for an essay, and had thought of Godwin. Mr Arnold
objected. "Godwin," he says, "is interesting, but he
is not a * source' an origin." "Of the actual currents
which are bearing us along, none comes from him."
There was at the time he wrote it was 1876 the
Life of Norman Macleod, there was the Life of Lord
Macaulay, there were many good subjects on all sides.
"You would be wrong," he says to M. Fontanes, "to
leave them on one side and write an article on Godwin."
Here are two weighty authorities to go against, and
yet somehow I do not feel, and whaHs more never did
feel, much abashed by them. Mr Jowett, very free
from prejudices in some respects, had plenty of them
in others, and was rather notorious for regarding not
merely what he did not know, but what he did not care
to know, as "not knowledge." He had grown up at
a time when Godwin's anarchism had gone out of
fashion and had not come into it again; the man, no
exact scholar and a Bohemian in the outskirts of
literature, was not likely to appeal to him; and so
Godwin was dismissed. Mr Arnold's disapproval is
even more easily intelligible. Expert and leader as he
was in literary criticism, exquisite as his accomplish-
ments were in literary practice both of verse and prose,
Mr Arnold was not a great proficient in, and a rather
lukewarm admirer of, literary or any history. He
thought that the historic estimate tended to make
people pay too much attention to things other than
the great and principal things to which he would have
had us solely devote ourselves; and certainly none
would say that Godwin's work was one of these. But

BOLSHEVISM IN ITS CRADLE 367

see how history revenges herself. Mr Arnold here made
a distinct blunder in fact. Godwin, if not the author,
was in England the first clear and thorough-going
codifier of those anarchist doctrines in politics and
philosophy which were not quite unknown or unim-
portant things in his own day, and have grown into
the greatest portent of our present period. In letters
Godwin exercised the very strongest influence for a
time on the two men, Wordsworth and Coleridge, who
a hundred and twenty years ago revolutionised English
poetry and almost English literature. That, too, is
something of a claim to be a source something of a
title to be an origin : and the two together may perhaps
make him at least as good a subject as Dr Norman
Macleod.

Godwin, whose very name shows his essentially
English blood, was born on 3rd March, 1756, at Wisbech
in Cambridgeshire, but came of a family which seems
to have been established in Wessex, at Newbury, for
some generations at any rate. His father was a Non-
conformist minister, and a pupil of the famous Dr Dod-
dridge ; he was educated himself for the same vocation,
and actually for a time pursued it, first at Ware, then
at Stowmarket. And though his orthodoxy gradually
gave way, he does not seem to have made any kind of
violent severance between himself and his co-religionists,
but rather to have slipped almost insensibly out of
ministerial and into literary work. Of his performances
in his new function very scanty and indistinct accounts
exist for some time. He wrote, before his success with
Caleb Williams, at least three novels (which nobody
seems to have read, and which I myself never came
across) for ridiculous sums of money ten or twelve
pounds apiece. He contributed to reviews at the
starvation prices two guineas the sheet of sixteen

368 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

pages or thereabouts which were customary till
Jeffrey and the Edinburgh Review gave a dead-lift in
this matter to the extent of from five hundred to a
thousand per cent. He once had, for a time, poorly
paid but regular employment on an extremely useful
publication, the Biographia Britannica. He even
appears by degrees to have attained, in a way more
common in the eighteenth century than since, a position
in London literary society rather justified by his abilities
than by his performances, and certainly not due either
to wealth or to powerful connections in blood or friend-
ship, or to party subserviency. For Godwin, though in
some ways, as we shall see, not exactly a high-minded
man, had an unconquerable scrupulosity in adherence
to his own opinions, and would have been quite unable,
even if he had been willing, to write to order on any
subject or in any prescribed line of policy or creed
whatsoever,

He was very nearly forty when his two famous books,
different in outward character but due to very much
the same inward purpose, at once made him a person-
age of distinction in literature and of formidable im-
portance in politics, and gave him an influence the
character and amount of which, though for a long
time pooh-poohed or ignored, are absolutely undeniable
by any one who has studied the subject. These books
were the in more than one sense great treatise on
Political Justice and the novel of Caleb Williams. The
ideas of both were no doubt partly inspired by his
friend Holcroft, a self-educated man of crude and
violent opinions, but a dramatist and novelist of real
talent. Holcroft, however, had neither the education
nor the systematic temperament necessary to work out
such a treatise as the Political Justice. For the book
is the most remarkable example extant in its own

BOLSHEVISM IN ITS CRADLE 369

direction of what has been called the intellect left to
itself, and working out consequences from certain
assumed principles, without regard to experience, or
expediency, or humour, or common sense. Appearing,
as it did, just at the time when the practical excesses
of the French Revolution had reached their highest,
Political Justice arranged the Anarchist theory the
theory which regards all positive law, all regular insti-
tutions, all punishments, all interferences, in short, of
any kind with the individual except in the way of
kindness, as things utterly unjustifiable and radically
bad. The antithesis between Justice and Law is at the
very root of this book, and is not much less at the root
of Caleb Williams.

Marriage, religion, monarchy, being all restraints,
have to go ; though Godwin is so preternaturally serious
and thorough-going that he deprecates the use of force
to overthrow institutions quite as strongly as the use
of force to maintain them. It was possibly this, and the
obvious want of practicalness in his doctrines generally,
that saved him from the prosecution which was un-
successfully directed against his friends Holcroft and
Home Tooke, and more successfully against others.
Such a prosecution must almost certainly have suc-
ceeded in his own case, either in England, or still more
in Scotland, where one can imagine Lord Hermiston
finding Godwin a subject equally congenial to his own
taste, and inspiring to the pen that, alas ! dropped from
the hands of his future biographer. Godwin's adver-
saries, however, who included Canning and other
persons plentifully provided with the humour which he
as plentifully lacked, declared that Political Justice
was not prosecuted because a book published in quarto
at three guineas could do the general public no harm.
There is truth as well as humour in this gibe. The book

s in 24

370 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

my own copy of which, probably in consequence of
the odium attaching to it, was bound with no title on
the back formed a huge volume of the size of a large
family Bible, printed with margins which, though cut
down in binding, are still of the most lavish, containing
with Preface and Contents more than nine hundred
pages; and, though very well and clearly written, con-
ducting its demonstrations with a relentless and stolid
contempt of all sense of the ridiculous on the one hand,
and on the other of those appeals by rhetoric to passion,
which are most formidable when addressed to popular
audiences. Its effect on the unthinking was probably
next to nil\ its fallacies were seen at once by steady
heads; but its influence on young and enthusiastic
persons of more wits than experience was incalculable.
This has been described in the above-mentioned pas-
sage of De Quincey's, which, though a little, is not
much exaggerated in [tone, and which, though the
writer was too young to have known the facts actually
at the time of the book's appearance, represents very
recent tradition and a direct acquaintance with some
of Godwin's most illustrious if most temporary con-
verts, such as Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey.
He speaks of the shock to Society as being, though
momentary, fearful of men being appalled by the
cold fury of the challenge.

Perhaps one ought to qualify this rather strong

language by showing something of the other side, of

the grave and grotesque absurdity which saturates

Godwin's anarchism. Despite or through the varnish

of amiability above-mentioned, there are germs of the

worst results of Bolshevism itself. But we may find

something equally amusing and suggestive in hvs serious

reposition that "All attachments ^individuals,

ept in pro p ortion to their merits, are plainly u njust."

BOLSHEVISM IN ITS CRADLE 371

One sees at once how extremely convenient this is, or
would be, on one slight supposition that human
beings were not human beings. Attachment being a
mere calculus of merits, envy, jealousy, hatred, malice
and all uncharitableness would vanish at once. If my
friend dropped me for another friend I should philo-
sophically observe that the other friend's merits were
no doubt superior to mine. If my wife left me in the
same way, or if any young lady refused to be my wife,
the same reflection would at once remove all soreness
of feeling. If my father cut me off with a shilling
though indeed on Godwin's system there would be
no shillings and no cutting off, with very dubious
fatherhood I should either acknowledge the paternal
acuteness in perceiving my want of merit, or deplore
the blindness in miscalculating my possession of it.
Perhaps the following passage, which has to do with
community of goods, is even funnier. Godwin was a
student; and it seems to have occurred even to him
that it would be rather a nuisance if another person
came into his room and said: " Philosopher, I want this
room to sit in and that table to work at." But his
undoubting mind was never staggered long by any
commonsense consideration. "Disputes," he says
and I am now quoting his very words "would in
reality be impossible. They are the offspring of a mis-
shapen and disproportionate love of ourselves. Do you
want my table? Make one for yourself; or, if I be more
skilful in that respect than you, I will make one for
you. Do you want it immediately? Let us compare the
urgency of my wants and yours, and let justice decide."
That an abstraction can't decide: that each disputant
will be quite certain beforehand that she decides for
him ; and that the upshot of it will be either resort to
brute force (which Godwin hated) or to that embodied

24-2

372 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

Justice, to wit Law, which he perhaps hated less, but
which his system compelled him to declare to be worse;
that if you are perpetually to interrupt business and
pleasure to discuss and compare respective claims to
their implements life cannot go on for a day these are
the things which the plain man sees at once, but to
which Godwin shut his eyes with that sublime, that
inexpugnable, that utterly hopeless and desperately
mischievous persistence which only implicit faith in
theory can confer upon mankind. When a man decides,
as Godwin does, that exactly half an hour's work per
diem on the part of everybody will satisfy all the reason-
able wants of the human race, he is beyond argument :
you can only laugh at him or shut him up.

Caleb Williams still a common * enough book, not
merely in libraries but in modern bookshops, ever
willing to book orders is a sort of fictitious illustra-
tion or object-lesson in the doctrines of the more
abstract treatise. The hero by chance discovers the
fact of a murder having been committed (under cir-
cumstances, it is true, of gross provocation) by a man
of high reputation and otherwise unblemished character,
and the whole story of the book, which is very ingeni-
ously constructed, turns upon the efforts of the criminal
to suppress the danger of a revelation. Even here the
indictment against society is of the most unpractical
kind, and Godwin is apparently blind to the obvious
retort that in his own ideal commonwealth private
murder would probably be one of the most frequent of
things, inasmuch as on the one hand there would be
no other hope of redressing an injury, and on the other
there would, on the strictest system of Political 'Justice,
be no fear of punishment.

This point is of importance. It will be observed, and
may be objected, that this "Bolshevism in its Cradle"

BOLSHEVISM IN ITS CRADLE 373

lacks a good many things which are associated with the
same creed, or no-creed, at the present day. There are
no Soviets ; there is no special anti-Capitalism ; there is
no special worship of the proletariat; and there is a
special putting forward of sweet reasonableness and
absence of violent methods. But then most of us in
our cradles do differ considerably from our grown-up
stages: even Lord Palmerston, who thought we were
all "born good," certainly did not think that we all
remained good. And while Godwinism was practically
certain to develop all the corruptions of its maturity,
that development would be as certain in some cases
by reaction as in others by development proper. If
Godwin did not say in so many words, "La propriete
c'est le vol" his own theory of temporary and read just-
able property according to merit must (human nature
being what human nature is) turn into Proudhon's;
and it only wanted time and the Marxian miasma to
spread the notion that capital is the worst form of
property. So, also, though Soviet authority must
logically share the curse of all authority according to
the pure Godwinian anarchism, something of the kind
was sure to arise. As for the transformation of mild
persuasion into murder, that is the most inevitable of
all. "Be my brother or I will kill you" is not a joke,
but a simple expression of natural human sentiment,
observable and verifiable in all fanatics religious,
political, social, teetotal and every other kind. Once
remove government according to law as found necessary
and imposed by traditional experience of human his-
tory, and all these things follow, with the agreeable
further developments in detail of Moscow and Munich,
as a matter of course. And this removal is certainly
the be-all, though in two senses, good and bad, it
cannot be pronounced the end-all, of Godwin's New

374 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

Philosophy. On the abstract characteristics of that no
more need be said; but something remains to be said
in regard to his later life. It was in some ways curiously
inconsistent with his opinions; but it never was false
to his doctrine of what was due to merit which in his
own case he naturally presumed to be high.

The period the eventful years 1793-4 which saw
Godwin shoot up from his long-occupied position of
a respectable hack of letters to that of a dreaded or
revered political philosopher and a popular novelist,
also begins, again late, his history as a personally
interesting hero of another kind of romance. If he was
such a hero, it was to a great extent in his own despite.
He was all his life an exceedingly cold-blooded person,
though his admirers will have it that he was passion-
ately in love with his first wife, the famous and luckless
Mary Wollstonecraft. But either because of this very
insensibility, or because of his fame, he seems to have
been rather an object of admiration to the other sex;
and though he had the unpleasant experience of being
more than once rejected as a suitor, and at least once
cast off as a friend, by ladies, it seems to have been due,
in all cases, mainly to his extraordinary inability to
conduct himself like a man of this world. Before he
met Mary Wollstonecraft he was on terms of intimate
and honourable friendship with the beautiful and
bewitching actress and dramatist, Mrs Inchbald,
who found Caleb Williams "sublimely horrible, capti-
vatingly frightful," and whose breach with him on his
marriage was pretty certainly due to pique. He had
also, it would seem, aroused, though no doubt most
innocently, the jealousy of a Mr Reveley, the husband
of a very pretty lady who is well known to readers of
Godwin's future son-in-law as a friend of the Shelleys,
though under the name of Gisborne, which she took

BOLSHEVISM IN ITS CRADLE 375

by a second marriage. But when he met the author of
the Rights of Woman he seems to have succumbed to
her almost at once.

She was not very young ; and she had had no pleasant
experience of the male sex, in a spendthrift father, an
unkind brother, and a lover who behaved as badly as
any lover possibly could behave. Her portraits show
her to have been, though not regularly beautiful as
Mrs Inchbald was, yet of very attractive appearance,
and her charm is attested by every impartial person
who knew her, and by some on the opposite side to her
in politics. The insubordinate character of her prin-
cipal book, however, with her unhappy history, and,
it must be admitted, some crudities and vulgarities of
expression which seem to have been due to an unfortu-
nate bringing-up rather than to any want of real
delicacy of mind, had prejudiced the general opinion
very much against her: and it was only in distinctly
Jacobin, or, to antedate a useful word, distinctly
Bohemian, circles in London that she could hope to be
welcomed without awkward limitations. The really
comic thing was that, according to a very common but
always amusing law of humanity, she and Godwin,
both of whom testified against marriage, lost no time
in getting married. Their married life was short, not
unhappy, though it might have become so, but at least
as unconventional as could be expected from the
prophet of the New Philosophy of General Anarchism
and the prophetess of the Rights of Woman. Although
they did not exactly keep entirely separate establish-
ments, Godwin had separate lodgings in which he spent
sometimes the whole, sometimes part of the day; and
they wrote notes to each other asking for "a call" if
they had occasion to confer with each other. An
exchange of letters during a tour which he took in the

376 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

country not long after the marriage is sufficiently
lover-like, but not least so in containing some lovers'
quarrels on the lady's side. But perhaps it is rather
difficult to expect continued happiness in the case of a
passionate and excitable woman like Mary Wollstone-
craft, and a man like Godwin, the eccentricity of whose
opinions was only equalled by the extraordinary phlegm
of his temperament. It is, however, certain in the first
place that his two chief women friends, Mrs Inchbald
and Mrs Reveley, were, the one irretrievably, the other
temporarily, estranged by the marriage; and in the
second place that Godwin very bitterly lamented the
loss of his wife, which followed shortly after the birth
of the future Mrs Shelley. It is, according to established
opinion, no argument against the sincerity of this
lamenting that he very speedily resolved to marry
again, though the resolve emphasises the comment on
his previously expressed opinions upon marriage still
more tragi-comically. " Marriage, that institution
which I wish to see abolished," says he, "and which I
would recommend to my fellow-men never to practise
but with the greatest caution." As we shall see, if he
did not in the second instance practise it with caution,
it was not for want of repeated trials ; and the caution
was rather on the other side.

In a remarkable collection of Essays published in the
year of his marriage (1797) and called The Enquirer,
Godwin did not so much recant or draw back from any
of his previously announced opinions as vary and extend
his method of enquiry into other and sometimes, though
not always, less dangerous districts of discussion. The
preface, however, contains, though no recantation, a
distinct apology for the previous effervescence of his
zeal, confesses that he "did not escape the contagion of
exaltation and ferment," and avows his old plan of

BOLSHEVISM IN ITS CRADLE 377

starting with one or two simple principles and deducing
fearlessly without any regard to consequences ; accom-
panying the avowal with a further confession of its
extreme danger, and acknowledging that he has sub-
stituted the recurrence to experiment and actual obser-
vation. Accordingly The Enquirer has nothing of the
interest of startling and scandalous novelty which
belongs, or at least belonged, to Political Justice. To
those who only want excitement it is rather a hum-
drum book; though Godwin's invincible insensibility
to those considerations, now of prudence, now of
absurdity, now of other restraints, which beset ordinary
minds, gives it piquancy now and then. It was quite
clear, however, that in such paths no literary fortune
was to be won; and Godwin turned to drama (the
unlucky Antonio of the damnation of which Lamb has
given a delightful account); the later novels above
referred to, and other things. But these are not for
us to-day.

We may return to the personal interest of Godwin's
life, which now grew acute again. He had, as I have
said, discovered that whether it was desirable or not
that mankind should "practise marriage with caution,"
there is a good deal to be said for the practice in itself.
And with two girl children of tender years to be taken
care of (his own, and Mary's by her lover Imlay), there
would have been much excuse for him even if he had
had no other reason for returning to the said practice.
Unluckily that incurable incapacity for behaving like
a man of this world which has been noticed, and which
is so closely connected with his opinions, rather in-
creased upon him. His friend, Mr Reveley, died in
July, 1799; and before a month was out Godwin pro-
posed to the widow. We have not got Mrs Reveley's
answers to his letters; but we have the letters them-

378 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

selves, or some of them, and they are quite enough.
He storms at " cowardly ceremonies"; his confession,
or practical confession, in the Preface to The Enquirer
that there was a good deal more in cowardly cere-
monies than he had once thought, having apparently
been forgotten under the pressure of personal dis-
appointment. He tells the lady, with his customary
maladroitness, that she said she loved him when she
had a husband, and therefore she ought to marry him
now that she has none. She seems to have told him
that she was afraid of his superior understanding;
whereupon instead of protesting, as any lover with a
grain of intelligence would have done, that she was
much the cleverer of the two, he admits the soft im-
peachment, says that she ought to like him all the
better, and tells her that he knows she esteemed him
more than she ever esteemed any man, and that she
cannot form so despicable an opinion of him as to
suppose that he can regard her with no eyes except
those of a lover. Having thus said "nothing that he
ought to say and everything he oughtn't to," he was,
it is scarcely surprising to add, summarily rejected: at
least it is supposed so. Nor can there be any doubt
that he was intensely astonished.

This, however, was not the only, or the first, attempt
he made to fill Mary Wollstonecraft's place. A year
earlier, in 1798, between the publication of The
Enquirer and that of St Leon, he had paid his addresses
(if such a phrase can be used when there was so singular
a want of address) to another person once of repute,
now much forgotten Miss Harriet Lee, joint author
with her sister Sophia of divers novels and tales. How
absolutely impossible a person (in a sense of the word
in which French has anticipated English) Godwin was
may almost sufficiently be judged from the fact that

BOLSHEVISM IN ITS CRADLE 375

after he had first met Miss Lee at Bath he set to worl
when he got back to London "to make elaborate
analyses of her conversation." Having satisfied him-
self that she would suit him by the process of elaborate
analysis of her conversation (let it be remembered thai
Miss Lee, though a woman of letters, was not in th<
least of advanced or unconventional ideas in anj
respect), he suggested that she should come and staj
in his house as that of a person who "did justice t(
her merits." Not unnaturally she sent him no answer
and after puzzling himself as to what this silence coulc
possibly mean, he wrote to say that he was "obligee
to be in Bristol next week," and would come and see
her. The lady, who seems to have been a prude wit}
a dash of the coquette and more than a dash of pride
was offended at his exceedingly naif avowal that he
was not coming on purpose; but agreed to see him
Her difficulties in accepting him were chiefly religious
and in any such case Godwin's chance was quite hope
less, inasmuch as he was both far too honest a man tc
conceal his opinions, and far too clumsy a one to pu
them in any way that could fail to be offensive to i
sincere believer. He lectured her by letter, in a populai
and condescending manner, on the points at issue, ver)
much as he might have done if it had happened tha
she preferred Tweedledum and he Tweedledee; and a
last received from her a plain statement (which ever
then did not take the scales from his eyes) that th<
difference between them was not in her eyes a matte:
of theory, and that she would have nothing more tc
say to him. In fact, Godwin might have been describee
by Dr Johnson (whom, naturally enough, he did no
like) as an unsnubbable person. It is recorded tha
on one occasion, when his friend and constant helper
Thomas Wedgwood, had told him frankly that thei:

380 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

friendship was safer if they did not meet, Godwin
replied by suggesting that they should meet to " discuss
the question whether it was better that they should
meet or not"!

When a man has made up his mind in this way, to
marry, no matter whom, for better, for worse, it nearly
always happens that he does so for worse. And so it
happened to Godwin, though not quite as much for
worse as, perhaps, he deserved. A widow of the name
of Clairmont took a house next to his in the North of
London ; and, though it was not Leap Year, addressed
him one evening as they sat on their contiguous bal-
conies: "Is it possible that I behold the immortal
Godwin ? " She is admitted it is one of the few good
things said about her to have been handsome, and
not a fool; the immortal Godwin was always to be
caught by flattery, and they very shortly married, the
bride adding her own two children to the curiously
assorted Godwin nursery; proceeding to comport her-
self after the fashion which made Lamb nickname
her "The Bad Baby"; but, in business respects
especially, perhaps giving Godwin as good a wife as
he deserved.

The marriage took place just inside the nineteenth
century, and Godwin lived till 1836. A great deal could
be said (very easily, too, by the present writer) about
this later part of his life, which saw many of the events
connecting him most closely with general knowledge.
He always worked hard ; but his work was now almost
purely literary in character, interesting, too, in its
kinds, and perhaps not quite sufficiently valued, but
out of our main subject. It was in this time that the
events which gave his family affairs a notoriety of no
very pleasant character the suicide of Fanny Imlay
and the elopements of Mary Godwin and Claire (less

BOLSHEVISM IN ITS CRADLE 381

prettily but more accurately Jane) Clairmont took
place. In the last years of it occurred one of the least
unpleasant ironies of Fate, the appointment by the
Reformers of 1832 of this ancient anarchist to a sine-
cure office, the Yeoman Ushership of the Exchequer.
I have sometimes thought that it would be amusing
to print a collection of title-pages of famous books
adjusted to the history and characters of their authors.
"Political Justice, by the Yeoman Usher of the
Exchequer," would not be the least piquant of these.
But it was also during this later half of his life that a
feature of our New Philosopher developed itself which
may be fairly connected with his earlier opinions
which, indeed, has been definitely and elaborately
excused by reference to these opinions. Godwin, to
put it plumply, became, whatever he may have been
earlier, the most shameless spunger on record the
most shameless, that is to say, of the grave and serious
kind as opposed to the lighter methods and attitude of
that contemporary and friend of his whom men call
" Leigh Hunt" and gods "Skimpole." Everybody
knows the fashion in which he bled Shelley. But
perhaps everybody does not know that he borrowed
money from poor men like Ritson and did not repay it;
that the very next morning after he had been intro-
duced to young Talfourd, he called upon that sucking
and luckily quite impecunious barrister to request a loan
of 150; or that after Sir Walter's misfortune, and when
he was, as every man of letters in England knew,
working himself to death to pay off his own debts and
other people's, Godwin pestered him for what was
practically a guarantee of money. "Oh! but," say his
defenders, "he did not accept ordinary conventions
of conduct." One may certainly thank them for that
word, and, if such are the fruits, form a very decided

382 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

opinion as to the tree. No doubt the original New
Philosophy might justify an attempt to make someone
else exert benevolence and acquire merit thereby; but,
as in the other cases noticed earlier in this article, the
logical developments of the proceeding would be in-
convenient. It would not take long for housebreaking
and highway robbery to result from this principle, just
as murder and outrage naturally develop from the
others.

That, as he grew older, Godwin grew in some respects

wiser not merely in the way of becoming, without

the slightest regard to correlative merit, a sinecurist

under Government, though he had previously held that

everybody ought to work and that there ought to be

no Government at all is not surprising. The children

(or indeed the parents) of Revolution generally grow

wiser unless their offspring or parent devours them too

soon. But he has also left very amusing letters to

intending disciples who took Political Justice at the

foot of its letter. And his last philosophical work, the

Thoughts on Man, of 1831, would certainly not of itself

suggest identity of authorship with his first. But this

again is common, and, except to those who care only

for the anecdotage of literature and history, adds

nothing to the interest of Political Justice itself. That

interest lies in the fact that the book is the first book

in English, and one of the first books in any language,

to advocate complete reversal, or at any rate removal,

of all hitherto accepted principles of law in politics,

religion, morals and everything that affects the conduct

of men. The author's history and personality add a

little to the interest of the book and supply comment,

sometimes decidedly ironic, on its principles ; nor is this

addition, perhaps, quite accidental or uninstructive.

BOLSHEVISM IN ITS CRADLE 383

But it is as an early gospeller of what in various modi-
fications or developments has since been known as
Anarchism, Nihilism, Communism (in the Commune
sense), and finally Bolshevism, that Godwin most
deserves attention and will best "repay perusal.' 5

END OF VOLUME THREE

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