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National Library of Scotland
*B000297142*

This Edinburgh Edition consists of

one thousand and thirty-five copies

all numbered

Vol. V. of issue : March 1895

THE WORKS OF

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

EDINBURGH EDITION

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2010 with funding from

National Library of Scotland

http://www.archive.org/details/familiarstudiesOOstev

THE WORKS OF

ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON

MISCELLANIES

VOLUME II

EDINBURGH

PRINTED BY T. AND A. CONSTABLE FOR

LONGMANS GREEN AND CO : CASSELL AND CO.

SEELEY AND CO : CHAS. SCRIBNER'S SONS

AND SOLD BY CHATTO AND WINDUS

PICCADILLY : LONDON

1895

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FAMILIAR

STUDIES OF

MEN AND

BOOKS

THOMAS STEVENSON

CIVIL ENGINEER

BY WHOSE DEVICES THE GREAT SEA LIGHTS

IN EVERY QUARTER OF THE WORLD NOW SHINE MORE BRIGHTLY

THIS VOLUME IS IN LOVE AND GRATITUDE

DEDICATED BY HIS SON

THE AUTHOR

First Collected Edition : Chatto and Windus,

London, 1882.
Originally published :

Gornhill Magazine, August 1874.
11. Gornhill Magazine, October 1879.

III. New Quarterly Magazine, October 1 878.

IV. Gornhill Magazine, June 1 880.
V. Gornhill Magazine, March 1 880.

VI. Gornhill Magazine, August 1877.

VII. Gornhill Magazine, December 1876.
VIII. Gornhill Magazine, July 1881.

IX. Macmillans Magazine, September and
October 1875.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Preface by way of Criticism . . 1

I. Victor Hugo's Romances . . .17

II. Some Aspects of Robert Burns . . 49

III. Walt Whitman . . . .95

IV. Henry David Thoreau : His Character

and Opinions . . . .128

V. Yoshida-Torajiro . . . .165

VI. Fran(;;ois Villon, Student, Poet, and

Housebreaker . . .182

VII. Charles of Orleans . . . 221

VIII. Samuel Pepys .... 268

IX. John Knox and his relations to Women . 300

PREFACE BY WAY OF CRITICISM

These studies are collected from the monthly press. One
appeared in the New Quarterly, one in Macmillati's, and the
rest in the Cornhill Magazine. To the Cornhill I owe a double
debt of thanks ; first, that I was received there in the very best
society, and under the eye of the very best of editors ; and
second, that the proprietors have allowed me to republish so
considerable an amount of copy.

These nine worthies have been brought together from many
different ages and countries. Not the most erudite of men
could be perfectly prepared to deal with so many and such
various sides of human life and manners. To pass a true
judgment upon Knox and Burns implies a grasp upon the
very deepest strain of thought in Scotland, — a country far
more essentially different from England than many parts of
America ; for, in a sense, the first of these men re-created
Scotland, and the second is its most essentially national pro-
duction. To treat fitly of Hugo and Villon would involve yet
wider knowledge, not only of a country foreign to the author
by race, history, and religion, but of the growth and liberties of
art. Of the two Americans, Whitman and Thoreau, each is
the type of something not so much realised as widely sought
after among the late generations of their countrymen ; and
5— A I

MEN AND BOOKS

to see them clearly in a nice relation to the society that
brought them forth, an author would require a large habit
of life among modern Americans, As for Yoshida, I have
already disclaimed responsibility ; it was but my hand that
held the pen.

In truth, these are but the readings of a literary vagrant.
One book led to another, one study to another. The first was
published with trepidation. Since no bones were broken, the
second was launched with greater confidence. So, by insensible
degrees, a young man of our generation acquires, in his own
eyes, a kind of roving judicial commission through the ages ;
and, having once escaped the perils of the Freemans and the
Furnivalls, sets himself up to right the wrongs of tmiversal
history and criticism. Now it is one thing to write with
enjoyment on a subject while the story is hot in your mind
from recent reading, coloured with recent prejudice ; and it is
quite another business to put these writings coldly forth again
in a bound volume. We are most of us attached to our
opinions ; that is one of the ' natural affections ' of which we
hear so much in youth ; but few of us are altogether free from
paralysing doubts and scruples. For my part, I have a small
idea of the degree of accuracy possible to man, and I feel sure
these studies teem with error. One and all were written with
genuine interest in the subject ; many, however, have been
conceived and finished with imperfect knowledge ; and all
have lain, from beginning to end, under the disadvantages
inherent in this style of writing.

Of these disadvantages a word must here be said. The

writer of short studies, having to condense in a few pages

the events of a whole lifetime, and the effect on his own mind

of many various volumes, is bound, above all things, to make

PREFACE

that condensation logical and striking. For the only justifi-
cation of his writing at all is that he shall present a brief,
reasoned, and memorable view. By the necessity of the case,
all the more neutral circumstances are omitted from his narra-
tive ; and that of itself, by the negative exaggeration of which
I have spoken in the text, lends to the matter in hand a certain
false and specious glitter. By the necessity of the case, again,
he is forced to view his subject throughout in a particular
illumination, like a studio artifice. Like Hales with Pepys, he
must nearly break his sitter''s neck to get the proper shadows
on the portrait. It is from one side only that he has time to
represent his subject. The side selected will either be the one
most striking to himself, or the one most obscured by contro-
versy ; and in both cases that will be the one most liable to
strained and sophisticated reading. In a biography, this and
that is displayed ; the hero is seen at home, playing the flute ;
the different tendencies of his work come one after another
into notice ; and thus something like a true general impression
of the subject may at last be struck. But in the short study,
the writer, having seized his ' point of view," must keep his eye
steadily to that. He seeks, perhaps, rather to differentiate
than truly to characterise. The proportions of the sitter must
be sacrificed to the proportions of the portrait ; the lights are
heightened, the shadows overcharged ; the chosen expression,
continually forced, may degenerate at length into a grimace ;
and we have at best something of fa caricature, at worst a
calumny. Hence, if they be readable at all, and hang together
by their own ends, the peculiar convincing force of these brief
representations. They take so little a while to read, and yet
in that little while the subject is so repeatedly introduced in
the same light and with the same expression, that, by sheer force

MEN AND BOOKS

of repetition, that view is imposed upon the reader. The two
English masters of the style, Macaulay and Carlyle, largely
exemplify its dangers. Carlyle, indeed, had so much more
depth and knowledge of the heart, his portraits of mankind are
felt and rendered with so much more poetic comprehension,
and he, like his favourite Ram Dass, had a fire in his belly so
much more hotly burning than the patent reading-lamp by
which Macaulay studied, that it seems at first sight hardly fair
to bracket them together. But the ' point of view ' was im-
posed by Carlyle on the men he judged of in his writings with
an austerity not only cruel but almost stupid. They are too
often broken outright on the Procrustean bed ; they are pro-
bably always disfigured. The rhetorical artifice of Macaulay is
easily spied ; it will take longer to appreciate the moral bias of
Carlyle. So with all writers who insist o^ forcing some signi-
ficance from all that comes before them ; and the writer of
short studies is bound, by the necessity of the case, to write
entirely in that spirit. What he cannot vivify he should
omit.

Had it been possible to rewrite some of these papers, I hope
I should have had the courage to attempt it. But it is not
possible. Short studies are, or should be, things woven like a
carpet, from which it is impossible to detach a strand. What
is perverted has its place there for ever, as a part of the tech-
nical means by which what is right has been presented. It is
only possible to write another study, and then, with a new
' point of view,' would follow new perversions and perhaps a
fresh caricature. Hence it will be at least honest to offer a
few grains of salt to be taken with the text; and as some
words of apology, addition, correction, or amplification fall to
be said on almost every study in the volume, it will be most

PREFACE

simple to run them over in their order. But this must not be
taken as a propitiatory offering to the gods of shipwreck ; I
trust my cargo unreservedly to the chances of the sea ; and do
not, by criticising myself, seek to disarm the wrath of other
and less partial critics.

HUGO'S ROMANCES. This is an instance of the 'point
of view.' The five romances studied with a different purpose
might have given different results, even with a critic so warmly
interested in their favour. The great contemporary master of
workmanship, and indeed of all literary arts and technicalities,
had not unnaturally dazzled a beginner. But it is best to
dwell on merits, for it is these that are most often over-
looked.

BURNS. I have left the introductory sentences on Prin-
cipal Shairp, partly to explain my own paper, which was
merely supplemental to his amiable but imperfect book, partly
because that book appears to me truly misleading both as to
the character and the genius of Burns. This seems ungracious,
but Mr. Shairp has himself to blame ; so good a Words-
worthian was out of character upon that stage.

This half-apology apart, nothing more falls to be said except
upon a remark called forth by my study in the columns of a
literary Review. The exact terms in which that sheet disposed
of Burns I cannot now recall ; but they were to this effect —
that Burns was a bad man, the impure vehicle of fine verses ;
and that this was the view to which all criticism tended. Now
I knew, for my own part, that it was with the profoundest
pity, but with a growing esteem, that I studied the man's
desperate efforts to do right ; and the more I reflected, the
stranger it appeared to me that any thinking being should feel
otherwise. The complete letters shed, indeed, a light on the

MEN AND BOOKS

depths to which Burns had sunk in his character of Don Juan,
but they enhance in the same proportion the hopeless nobility
of his marrying Jean. That I ought to have stated this more
noisily I now see ; but that any one should fail to see it for
himself is to me a thing both incomprehensible and worthy of
open scorn. If Burns, on the facts dealt with in this study, is
to be called a bad man, I question very much whether either I
or the writer in the Review have ever encountered what it
would be fair to call a good one. All have some fault. The
fault of each grinds down the hearts of those about him, and
— let us not blink the truth — hurries both him and them into
the grave. And when we find a man persevering indeed, in his
fault, as all of us do, and openly overtaken, as not all of us are,
by its consequences, to gloss the matter over, with too polite
biographers, is to do the work of the wrecker disfiguring
beacons on a perilous seaboard ; but to call him bad, with a
self-righteous chuckle, is to be talking in oner's sleep with
Heedless and Too-bold in the arbour.

Yet it is undeniable that much anger and distress is raised
in many quarters by the least attempt to state plainly what
every one well knows of Burns's profligacy, and of the fatal
consequences of his marriage. And for this there are perhaps
two subsidiary reasons. For, first, there is, in our drunken
land, a certain privilege extended to drunkenness. In Scot-
land, in particular, it is almost respectable, above all when
compared with any ' irregularity between the sexes.' The self-
ishness of the one, so much more gross in essence, is so much
less immediately conspicuous in its results, that our demiurgeous
Mrs. Grundy smiles apologetically on its victims. It is often
said — I have heard it with these ears — that drunkenness ' may
lead to vice.' Now I did not think it at all proved that Burns
6

PREFACE

was what is called a drunkard ; and I was obliged to dwell very
plainly on the irregularity and the too frequent vanity and
meanness of his relations to women. Hence, in the eyes of
many, my study was a step towards the demonstration of
Burns's radical badness.

But, second, there is a certain class, professors of that low
morality so greatly more distressing than the better sort of
vice, to whom you must never represent an act that was
virtuous in itself as attended by any other consequences than
a large family and fortune. To hint that Burns's marriage
had an evil influence is, with this class, to deny the moral law.
Yet such is the fact. It was bravely done ; but he had pre-
sumed too far on his strength. One after another the lights of
his life went out, and he fell from circle to circle to the dis-
honoured sickbed of the end. And surely, for any one that has
a thing to call a soul, he shines out tenfold more nobly in the
failure of that frantic effort to do right, than if he had turned
on his heel with Worldly Wiseman, married a congenial spouse,
and lived orderly and died reputably an old man. It is his
chief title that he refrained from ' the wrong that amendeth
wrong.' But the common, trashy mind of our generation
is still aghast, like the Jews of old, at any word of an
unsuccessful virtue. Job has been written and read ; the
tower of Siloam fell nineteen hundred years ago ; yet we
have still to desire a little Christianity, or, failing that, a
little even of that rude, old Norse nobility of soul, which
saw virtue and vice alike go unrewarded, and was yet not
shaken in its faith.

WALT WHITMAN. This is a case of a second difficulty
which lies continually before the writer of critical studies : that
he has to mediate between the author whom he loves and the

MEN AND BOOKS

public who are certainly indifferent and frequently averse.
Many articles had been written on this notable man. One
after another had leaned, in my eyes, either to praise or blame
unduly. In the last case, they helped to blindfold our fasti-
dious public to an inspiring writer ; in the other, by an excess
of unadulterated praise, they moved the more candid to revolt.
I was here on the horns of a dilemma; and between these
horns I squeezed myself, with perhaps some loss to the sub-
stance of the paper. Seeing so much in Whitman that was
merely ridictilous, as well as so much more that was unsurpassed
in force and fitness, — seeing the true prophet doubled, as I
thought, in places with the Bull in a China Shop, — it appeared
best to steer a middle course, and to laugh with the scorners
when I thought they had any excuse, while I made haste to
rejoice with the rejoicers over what is imperishably good, lovely,
human, or divine, in his extraordinary poems. That was
perhaps the right road ; yet I cannot help feeling that in this
attempt to trim my sails between an author whom I love and
honour and a public too averse to recognise his merit, I have
been led into a tone unbecoming from one of my stature to one
of Whitman's. But the good and the great man will go on
his way not vexed with my little shafts of merriment. He, first
of any one, will understand how, in the attempt to explain him
credibly to Mrs. Grundy, I have been led into certain airs of
the man of the world, which are merely ridiculous in me, and
were not intentionally discourteous to himself But there is a
worse side to the question ; for in my eagerness to be all things
to all men, I am afraid I may have sinned against proportion.
It will be enough to say here that Whitman's faults are few and
unimportant when they are set beside his surprising merits. I
had written another paper full of gratitude for the help that

PREFACE

had been given me in my life, full of enthusiasm for the
intrinsic merit of the poems, and conceived in the noisiest
extreme of youthful eloquence. The present study was a
rifacimento. From it, with the design already mentioned, and
in a fit of horror at my old excess, the big words and emphatic
passages were ruthlessly excised. But this sort of prudence is
frequently its own punishment ; along with the exaggeration,
some of the truth is sacrificed ; and the result is cold, con-
strained, and grudging. In short, I might almost everywhere
have spoken more strongly than I did.

THOREAU. Here is an admirable instance of the ' point
of view' forced throughout, and of too earnest reflection on
imperfect facts. Upon me this pure, narrow, sunnily-ascetic
Thoreau had exercised a great charm. I have scarce written
ten sentences since I was introduced to him, but his influence
might be somewhere detected by a close observer. Still it was
as a writer that I had made his acquaintance ; I took him on
his own explicit terms ; and when I learned details of his life,
they were, by the nature of the case and my own parti pris,
read even with a certain violence in terms of his writings.
There could scarce be a perversion more justifiable than that ;
yet it was still a perversion. The study, indeed, raised so
much ire in the breast of Dr. Japp (H. A. Page), Thoreau's
sincere and learned disciple, that had either of us been men,
I please myself with thinking, of less temper and justice, the
difference might have made us enemies instead of making us
friends. To him, who knew the man from the inside, many of
my statements sounded like inversions made on purpose ; and
yet when we came to talk of them together, and he had under-
stood how I was looking at the man through the books, while
he had long since learned to read the books through the man,

MEN AND BOOKS

I believe he understood the spirit in which I had been led
astray.

On two most important points, Dr. Japp added to my
knowledge, and with the same blow fairly demolished that
part of my criticism. First, if Thoreau were content to dwell
by Walden Pond, it was not merely with designs of self-
improvement, but to serve mankind in the highest sense.
Hither came the fleeing slave ; thence was he despatched along
the road to freedom. That shanty in the woods was a station
in the great Underground Railroad ; that adroit and philo-
sophic solitary was an ardent worker, soul and body, in that so
much more than honourable movement, which, if atonement
were possible for nations, should have gone far to wipe away
the guilt of slavery. But in history sin always meets with
condign punishment ; the generation passes, the offence re-
mains, and the innocent must suffer. No underground rail-
road could atone for slavery, even as no bills in Parliament
can redeem the ancient wrongs of Ireland. But here at least
is a new light shed on the Walden episode.

Second, it appears, and the point is capital, that Thoreau
was once fairly and manfully in love, and, with perhaps too
much aping of the angel, relinquished the woman to his
brother. Even though the brother were like to die of it, we
have not yet heard the last opinion of the woman. But be
that as it may, we have here the explanation of the ' rarefied
and freezing air ' in which I complained that he had taught
himself to breathe. Reading the man through the books, I
took his professions in good faith. He made a dupe of me,
even as he was seeking to make a dupe of himself, wresting
philosophy to the needs of his own sorrow. But in the light
of this new fact, those pages, seemingly so cold, are seen to
lO

PREFACE

be alive with feeling. What appeared to be a lack of interest
in the philosopher turns out to have been a touching in-
siflcerity of the man to his own heart ; and that fine-spun airy
theory of friendship, so devoid, as I complained, of any quality
of flesh and blood, a mere anodyne to lull his pains. The
most temperate of living critics once marked a passage of my
own with a cross and the words ' This seems nonsense."* It not
only seemed ; it was so. It was a private bravado of my own,
which I had so often repeated to keep up my spirits that I
had grown at last wholly to believe it, and had ended by
setting it down as a contribution to the theory of life. So
with the more icy parts of this philosophy of Thoreau's. He
was affecting the Spartanism he had not ; and the old senti-
mental wound still bled afresh, while he deceived himself with
reasons.

Thoreau's theory, in short, was one thing and himself
another : of the first, the reader will find what I believe to be
a pretty faithful statement and a fairly just criticism in the
study ; of the second he will find but a contorted shadow. So
much of the man as fitted nicely with his doctrines, in the
photographer's phrase, came out. But that large part which
lay outside and beyond, for which he had found or sought no
formula, on which perhaps his philosophy even looked askance,
is wanting in my study, as it was wanting in the guide I
followed. In some ways a less serious writer, in all ways a
nobler man, the true Thoreau still remains to be depicted.

VILLON. I am tempted to regret that I ever wrote on this
subject, not merely because the paper strikes me as too pictur-
esque by half, but because I regarded Villon as a bad fellow.
Others still think well of him, and can find beautiful and
human traits where I saw nothing but artistic evil ; and by

MEN AND BOOKS

the principle of the art, those should have written of the man,
and not I, Where you see no good, silence is the best.
Though this penitence comes too late, it may be well, at least,
to give it expression.

The spirit of Villon is still living in the literature of France.
Fat Peg is oddly of a piece with the work of Zola, the Gon-
courts, and the infinitely greater Flaubert ; and, while similar
in ugliness, still surpasses them in native power. The old
author, breaking with an eclat de voice out of his tongue-tied
century, has not yet been touched on his own ground, and
still gives us the most vivid and shocking impression of reality.
Even if that were not worth doing at all, it would be worth
doing as well as he has done it ; for the pleasure we take in
the author*'s skill repays us, or at least reconciles us to the
baseness of his attitude. Fat Peg (La Grosse Margot) is
typical of much ; it is a piece of experience that has nowhere
else been rendered into literature ; and a kind of gratitude for
the author*'s plainness mingles, as we read, with the nausea
proper to the business. I shall quote here a verse of an old
students*' song worth laying side by side with Villon's startling
ballade. This singer, also, had an unworthy mistress, but he
did not choose to share the wages of dishonour ; and it is thus,
with both wit and pathos, that he laments her fall : —

Nunc plango florem

iEtatis tenerae
Nitidiorem

Veneris sidere :
Tunc columbinam

Mentis dulcedinem.
Nunc serpentinam

Amaritudinem.

PREFACE

Verbo rogantes

Removes ostio,
Munera dantes
Foves cubic ulo,

lUos abire praecipis
A quibus nihil accipis,
Caecos claudosque recipis,
Viros illustres decipis
Cum melle venenosa.^

But our illustrious writer of ballades it was unnecessary to
deceive ; it was the flight of beauty alone, not that of honesty
or honour, that he lamented in his song ; and the nameless
mediaeval vagabond has the best of the comparison.

There is now a Villon Society in England ; and Mr. John
Payne has translated him entirely into English, a task of
unusual difficulty. I regret to find that Mr. Payne and I
are not always at one as to the author's meaning ; in such
cases I am bound to suppose that he is in the right, although
the weakness of the flesh withholds me from anything beyond
a formal submission. He is now upon a larger venture, pro-
mising us at last that complete Arabian Nights to which we
have all so long looked forward.

CHARLES OF ORLEANS. Perhaps I have done scanty
justice to the charm of the old Duke's verses, and certainly he
is too much treated as a fool. The period is not sufficiently
remembered. What that period was, to what a blank of
imbecility the human mind had fallen, can only be known to
those who have waded in the chronicles. Excepting Comines
and La Salle and Villon, I have read no author who did not
appal me by his torpor ; and even the trial of Joan of Arc,

^ Gaudeamus : Carmina vagorum selecta. Leipsic : Triibnerj 1879.

MEN AND BOOKS

conducted as it was by chosen clerks, bears witness to a dreary,
sterile folly, — a twilight of the mind peopled with childish
phantoms. In relation to his contemporaries, Charles seems
quite a lively character.

It remains for me to acknowledge the kindness of Mr. Henry
Pyne, who, immediately on the appearance of the study, sent
me his edition of the Debate between the Heralds : a cou^-tesy
from the expert to the amateur only too uncommon in these
days.

KNOX. Knox, the second in order of interest among the
reformers, lies dead and buried in the works of the learned
and unreadable M'Crie. It remains for some one to break
the tomb and bring him forth, alive again and breathing, in
a human book. With the best intentions in the world, I
have only added two more flagstones, ponderous like their
predecessors, to the mass of obstruction that buries the re-
former from the world ; I have touched him in my turn with
that ' mace of death,"* which Carlyle has attributed to Dryas-
dust ; and my two dull papers are, in the matter of dulness,
worthy additions to the labours of M'Crie. Yet I believe
they are worth reprinting in the interest of the next bio-
grapher of Knox. I trust his book may be a masterpiece;
and I indulge the hope that my two studies may lend him a
hint or perhaps spare him a delay in its composition.

Of the PEPYS I can say nothing ; for it has been too re-
cently through my hands ; and I still retain some of the heat
of composition. Yet it may serve as a text for the last remark
I have to offer. To Pepys I think I have been amply just;
to the others, to Burns, Thoreau, Whitman, Charles of Orleans,
even Villon, I have found myself in the retrospect ever too
grudging of praise, ever too disrespectful in manner. It is

PREFACE

not easy to see why I should have been most liberal to the
man of least pretensions. Perhaps some cowardice withheld
me from the proper warmth of tone ; perhaps it is easier to
be just to those nearer us in rank and mind. Such at least is
the fact, which other critics may explain. For these were all
men whom, for one reason or another, I loved ; or when I
did not love the men, my love was the greater to their books.
I had read them and lived with them ; for months they were
continually in my thoughts; I seemed to rejoice in their joys
and to sorrow with them in their griefs ; and behold, when I
came to write of them, my tongue was sometimes hardly
courteous and seldom wholly j ust.

R. L. S.

VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES

Apres le roman pittoresque mais prosaique de Walter Scott il restera
un auti'e roman a creer^ plus beau et plus complet encore selon nous.
C'est le roman^ a la fois drame et epopee, pittoresque mais poetique, reel
mais ideal, vrai mais grand, qui enchassera Walter Scott dans Homere.
— Victor Hugo on Quentin Durward,

Victor Hugo's romances occupy an important
position in the history of literature ; many innova-
tions, timidly made elsewhere, have in them been
carried boldly out to their last consequences ; much
that was indefinite in literar)- tendencies has attained
to definite maturity ; many things have come to a
point and been distinguished one from the other;
and it is only in the last romance of all, Quatre-
vingt-treize, that this culmination is most perfect.
This is in the nature of things. Men who are in any
way typical of a stage of progress may be compared
more justly to the hand upon the dial of the clock,
which continues to advance as it indicates, than to
the stationary milestone, which is only the measure
of what is past. The movement is not arrested.
That significant something by which the work of
such a man differs from that of his predecessors
5— B 17

MEN AND BOOKS

goes on disengaging itself and becoming more and
more articulate and cognisable. The same principle
of growth that carried his first book beyond the
books of previous writers carries his last book be-
yond his first. And just as the most imbecile pro-
duction of any literary age gives us sometimes the
very clue to comprehension we have sought long and
vainly in contemporary masterpieces, so it may be
the very weakest of an author's books that, coming
in the sequel of many others, enables us at last to
get hold of what underlies the whole of them — of
that spinal marrow of significance that unites the
work of his life into something organic and rational.
This is what has been done by Quatrevingt-treize
for the earlier romances of Victor Hugo, and, through
them, for a whole division of modern literature. We
have here the legitimate continuation of a long and
living literary tradition ; and hence, so far, its ex-
planation. When many hues diverge from each
other in direction so slightly as to confuse the eye,
we know that we have only to produce them to
make the chaos plain : this is continually so in
literary history; and we shall best understand the
importance of Victor Hugo's romances if we think
of them as some such prolongation of one of the
main lines of literary tendency.

When we compare the novels of Walter Scott

with those of the man of genius who preceded him,

and whom he dehghted to honour as a master in the

art — I mean Henry Fielding — we shall be somewhat

VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES

puzzled, at the first moment, to state the difference
that there is between these two. Fielding has as
much human science ; has a far firmer hold upon the
tiller of his story ; has a keen sense of character,
which he draws (and Scott often does so too) in a
rather abstract and academical manner ; and finally,
is quite as humorous and quite as good-humoured as
the great Scotsman. With all these points of resem-
blance between the men, it is astonishing that their
work should be so different. The fact is, that the
Enghsh novel was looking one way and seeking one
set of effects in the hands of Fielding ; and in the
hands of Scott it was looking eagerly in all ways and
searching for all the effects that by any possibility
it could utilise. The difference between these two
men marks a great enfranchisement. With Scott
the Romantic movement, the movement of an ex-
tended curiosity and an enfranchised imagination, has
begun. This is a trite thing to say ; but trite things
are often very indefinitely comprehended : and this
enfranchisement, in as far as it regards the technical
change that came over modern prose romance, has
never perhaps been explained with any clearness.

To do so, it will be necessary roughly to compare
the two sets of conventions upon which plays and
romances are respectively based. The purposes of
these two arts are so much alike, and they deal so
much with the same passions and interests, that we
are apt to forget the fundamental opposition of
their methods. And yet such a fundamental opposi-
tion exists. In the drama the action is developed in

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great measure by means of things that remain out-
side of the art ; by means of real things, that is, and
not artistic conventions for things. This is a sort of
realism that is not to be confounded with that realism
in painting of which we hear so much. The realism
in painting is a thing of purposes ; this, that we have
to indicate in the drama, is an affair of method.

We have heard a story, indeed, of a painter in
France who, when he wanted to paint a sea-beach,
carried realism from his ends to his means, and
plastered real sand upon his canvas ; and that is
precisely what is done in the drama. The dramatic
author has to paint his beaches with real sand : real
live men and women move about the stage ; we hear
real voices ; what is feigned merely puts a sense upon
what is ; we do actually see a woman go behind a
screen as Lady Teazle, and, after a certain interval,
we do actually see her very shamefully produced
again. Now all these things, that remain as they
were in life, and are not transmuted into any artistic
convention, are terribly stubborn and difficult to deal
with ; and hence there are for the dramatist many
resultant limitations in time and space. These Mmi-
tations in some sort approximate towards those of
painting : the dramatic author is tied down, not
indeed to a moment, but to the duration of each
scene or act ; he is confined to the stage almost as
the painter is confined within his frame. But the
great restriction is this, that a dramatic author must
deal with his actors, and with his actors alone.
Certain moments of suspense, certain significant dis-

VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES

positions of personages, a certain logical growth of
emotion, — these are the only means at the disposal of
the playwright. It is true that, with the assistance
of the scene-painter, the costumier and the conductor
of the orchestra, he may add to this something of
pageant, something of sound and fury ; but these
are, for the dramatic writer, beside the mark, and do
not come under the vivifying touch of his genius.

When we turn to romance, we find this no longer.
Here nothing is reproduced to our senses directly.
Not only the main conception of the work, but the
scenery, the appliances, the mechanism by which
this conception is brought home to us, have been
put through the crucible of another man's mind, and
come out again, one and all, in the form of written
words. With the loss of every degree of such
realism as we have described, there is for art a clear
gain of liberty and largeness of competence. Thus
painting, in which the round outlines of things are
thrown on to a flat board, is far more free than
sculpture, in which their solidity is preserved. It is
by giving up these identities that art gains true
strength. And so in the case of novels as compared
with the stage. Continuous narration is the flat
board on to which the novelist throws everything.
And from this there results for him a great loss of
vividness, but a great compensating gain in his
power over the subject ; so that he can now sub-
ordinate one thing to another in importance, and
introduce all manner of very subtle detail, to a
degree that was before impossible. He can render

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just as easily the flourish of trumpets before a vic-
torious emperor and the gossip of country market
women, the gradual decay of forty years of a man's
life and the gesture of a passionate moment. He
finds himself equally unable, if he looks at it from
one point of view — equally able, if he looks at it
from another point of view — to reproduce a colour,
a sound, an outline, a logical argument, a physical
action. He can show his readers, behind and around
the personages that for the moment occupy the fore-
ground of his story, the continual suggestion of the
landscape ; the turn of the weather that will turn
with it men's lives and fortunes, dimly foreshadowed
on the horizon ; the fatality of distant events, the
stream of national tendency, the salient framework
of causation. And all this thrown upon the flat
board — all this entering, naturally and smoothly,
into the texture of continuous intelligent narration.

This touches the difference between Fielding and
Scott. In the work of the latter, true to his char-
acter of a modern and a romantic, we become
suddenly conscious of the background. Fielding, on
the other hand, although he had recognised that the
novel was nothing else than an epic in prose, wrote
in the spirit, not of the epic, but of the drama. This
is not, of course, to say that the drama was in any
way incapable of a regeneration similar in kind to
that of which I am now speaking with regard to the
novel. The notorious contrary fact is sufficient to
guard the reader against such a misconstruction.
All that is meant is, that Fielding remained ignorant

VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES

of certain capabilities which the novel possesses over
the drama ; or, at least, neglected and did not de-
velop them. To the end he continued to see things
as a playwright sees them. The world with which
he dealt, the world he had reahsed for himself and
sought to realise and set before his readers, was a
world of exclusively human interest. As for land-
scape, he was content to underline stage-directions,
as it might be done in a play-book : Tom and Molly
retire into a practicable wood. As for nationality
and pubUc sentiment, it is curious enough to think
that Tovi Jones is laid in the year forty-five, and
that the only use he makes of the rebellion is to
throw a troop of soldiers into his hero's way. It is
most really important, however, to remark the
change which has been introduced into the concep-
tion of character by the beginning of the romantic
movement and the consequent introduction into
fiction of a vast amount of new material. Fielding
tells us as much as he thought necessary to account
for the actions of his creatures ; he thought that each
of these actions could be decomposed on the spot
into a few simple personal elements, as we decompose
a force in a question of abstract dynamics. The
larger motives are all unknown to him ; he had not
understood that the nature of the landscape or the
spirit of the times could be for anything in a story ;
and so, naturally and rightly, he said nothing about
them. But Scott's instinct, the instinct of the man
of an age profoundly different, taught him other-
wise; and, in his work, the individual characters

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begin to occupy a comparatively small proportion of
that canvas on which armies manoeuvre, and great
hills pile themselves upon each other's shoulders.
Fielding's characters were always great to the full
stature of a perfectly arbitrary will. Already in
Scott we begin to have a sense of the subtle influ-
ences that moderate and qualify a man's personality ;
that personality is no longer thrown out in unnatural
isolation, but is resumed into its place in the con-
stitution of things.

It is this change in the manner of regarding men
and their actions first exhibited in romance, that
has since renewed and vivified history. For art
precedes philosophy, and even science. People must
have noticed things and interested themselves in
them before they begin to debate upon their causes
or influence. And it is in this way that art is the
pioneer of knowledge ; those predilections of the
artist he knows not why, those irrational accepta-
tions and recognitions, reclaim, out of the world that
we have not yet realised, ever another and another
corner ; and after the facts have been thus vividly
brought before us and have had time to settle and
arrange themselves in our minds, some day there will
be found the man of science to stand up and give the
explanation. Scott took an interest in many things
in which Fielding took none ; and for this reason,
and no other, he introduced them into his romances.
If he had been told what would be the nature of the
movement that he was so lightly initiating, he would
have been very incredulous and not a Httle scandalised.
24

VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES

At the time when he wrote, the real drift of this
new manner of pleasing people in fiction was not yet
apparent ; and, even now, it is only by looking at
the romances of Victor Hugo that we are enabled to
form any proper judgment in the matter. These
books are not only descended by ordinary generation
from the Waverley Novels, but it is in them chiefly
that we shall find the revolutionary tradition of Scott
carried further ; that we shall find Scott himself, in
so far as regards his conception of prose fiction and
its purposes, surpassed in his own spirit, instead of
tamely followed. We have here, as I said before, a
line of Hterary tendency produced, and by this pro-
duction definitely separated from others. When we
come to Hugo, we see that the deviation, which
seemed slight enough and not very serious between
Scott and Fielding, is indeed such a great gulf in
thought and sentiment as only successive genera-
tions can pass over : and it is but natural that one of
the chief advances that Hugo has made upon Scott
is an advance in self- consciousness. Both men follow
the same road ; but where the one went blindly and
carelessly, the other advances with all deliberation
and forethought. There never was artist much more
unconscious than Scott ; and there have been not
many more conscious than Hugo. The passage at
the head of these pages shows how organically he
had understood the nature of his own changes. He
has, underlying each of the five great romances
(which alone I purpose here to examine), two de-
liberate designs : one artistic, the other consciously

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ethical and intellectual. This is a man living in a
different world from Scott, who professes sturdily
(in one of his introductions) that he does not believe
in novels having any moral influence at all ; but still
Huffo is too much of an artist to let himself be

hampered by his dogmas ; and the truth is that the
artistic result seems, in at least one great instance, to
have very little connection with the other, or directly
ethical result.

The artistic result of a romance, what is left upon
the memory by any really powerful and artistic novel,
is something so complicated and refined that it is
difficult to put a name upon it ; and yet something
as simple as nature. These two propositions may
seem mutually destructive, but they are so only in
appearance. The fact is, that art is working far
ahead of language as well as of science, reahsing for
us, by all manner of suggestions and exaggerations,
effects for which as yet we have no direct name ;
nay, for which we may never perhaps have a direct
name, for the reason that these effects do not enter
very largely into the necessities of life. Hence alone
is that suspicion of vagueness that often hangs about
the purpose of a romance : it is clear enough to us in
thought ; but we are not used to consider anything
clear until we are able to formulate it in words, and
analytical language has not been sufficiently shaped
to that end. We all know this difficulty in the case
of a picture, simple and strong as may be the impres-
sion that it has left with us ; and it is only because
language is the medium of romance that we are
26

VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES

prevented from seeing that the two cases are the
same. It is not that there is anything bkirred or
indefinite in the impression left with us, it is just
because the impression is so very definite after its
own kind, that we find it hard to fit it exactly with
the expressions of our philosophical speech.

It is this idea which underlies and issues from a
romance, this something which it is the function of
that form of art to create, this epical value, that I
propose chiefly to seek and, as far as may be, to
throw into relief, in the present study. It is thus,
I beheve, that we shall see most clearly the great
stride that Hugo has taken beyond his predecessors,
and how, no longer content with expressing more or
less abstract relations of man to man, he has set
before himself the task of reahsing, in the language
of romance, much of the involution of our compli-
cated lives.

This epical value is not to be found, let it be
understood, in every so-called novel. The great
majority are not works of art in anything but a very
secondary signification. One might almost number
on one's fingers the works in which such a supreme
artistic intention has been in any way superior to the
other and lesser aims, themselves more or less artistic,
that generally go hand in hand with it in the concep-
tion of prose romance. The purely critical spirit is,
in most novels, paramount. At the present moment
we can recall one man only, for whose works it
would have been equally possible to accomplish 6ur
present design : and that man is Hawthorne. There

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is a unity, an unwavering creative purpose, about
some at least of Hawthorne's romances, that impresses
itself on the most indifferent reader ; and the very
restrictions and weaknesses of the man served
perhaps to strengthen the vivid and single impres-
sion of his works. There is nothing of this kind in
Hugo : unity, if he attains to it, is indeed unity out
of multitude ; and it is the wonderful power of sub-
ordination and synthesis thus displayed that gives
us the measure of his talent. No amount of mere
discussion and statement, such as this, could give a
just conception of the greatness of this power. It
must be felt in the books themselves, and all that
can be done in the present essay is to recall to the
reader the more general features of each of the five
great romances, hurriedly and imperfectly, as space
will permit, and rather as a suggestion than any-
thing more complete.

The moral end that the author had before him in
the conception of Notre Dame de Paris was (he tells
us) to ' denounce ' the external fatality that hangs
over men in the form of foolish and inflexible super-
stition. To speak plainly, this moral purpose seems
to have mighty little to do with the artistic concep-
tion ; moreover, it is very questionably handled,
while the artistic conception is developed with the
most consummate success. Old Paris lives for us
with newness of life : we have ever before our eyes
the city cut into three by the two arms of the river,
the boat-shaped island * moored ' by five bridges to
28

VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES

the different shores, and the two unequal towns on
either hand. We forget all that enumeration of
palaces and churches and convents which occupies
so many pages of admirable description, and the
thoughtless reader might be inclined to conclude
from this that they were pages thrown away; but
this is not so ; we forget, indeed, the details, as we
forget or do not see the different layers of paint on a
completed picture ; but the thing desired has been
accomphshed, and we carry away with us a sense of
the ' Gothic profile ' of the city, of the ' surprising
forest of pinnacles and towers and belfries,' and we
know not what of rich and intricate and quaint.
And throughout, Notre Dame has been held up over
Paris by a height far greater than that of its twin
towers : the Cathedral is present to us from the first
page to the last ; the title has given us the clue, and
already in the Palace of Justice the story begins to
attach itself to that central building by character
after character. It is purely an effect of mirage ;
Notre Dame does not, in reality, thus dominate and
stand out above the city ; and any one who should
visit it, in the spirit of the Scott-tourists to Edin-
burgh or the Trossachs, would be almost offended at
finding nothing more than this old church thrust
away into a corner. It is purely an effect of mirage,
as we say ; but it is an effect that permeates and
possesses the whole book with astonishing consist-
ency and strength. And then, Hugo has peopled
this Gothic city, and, above all, this Gothic church,
with a race of men even more distinctly Gothic

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than their surroundings. We know this generation
already : we have seen them clustered about the
worn capitals of pillars, or craning forth over the
church-leads with the open mouths of gargoyles.
About them all there is that sort of stiff quaint
unreality, that conjunction of the grotesque, and
even of a certain bourgeois smugness, with passionate
contortion and horror, that is so characteristic of
Gothic art. Esmeralda is somewhat an exception ;
she and the goat traverse the story like two children
who have wandered in a dream. The finest moment
of the book is when these two share with the two
other leading characters, Dom Claude and Quasi-
modo, the chill shelter of the old cathedral. It is
here that we touch most intimately the generative
artistic idea of the romance : are they not all four
taken out of some quaint moulding illustrative of
the Beatitudes, or the Ten Commandments, or the
seven deadly sins? What is Quasimodo but an
animated gargoyle? What is the whole book but
the re-animation of Gothic art ?

It is curious that in this, the earliest of the five
gre^t romances, there should be so httle of that
extravagance that latterly we have come almost to
identify with the author's manner. Yet even here
we are distressed by words, thoughts, and incidents
that defy belief and alienate the sympathies. The
scene of the in pace, for example, in spite of its
strength, verges dangerously on the province of the
penny novelist. I do not beUeve that Quasimodo
rode upon the bell ; I should as soon imagine that
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VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES

he swung by the clapper. And again the following
two sentences, out of an otherwise admirable chapter,
surely surpass what it has ever entered into the
heart of any other man to imagine (vol. ii. p. 180) :
* II soufFrait tant que par instants il s'arrachait des
poignees de cheveux, pour voir s'lls ne hlancliissaient
pas.' And, p. 181: ' Ses pens^es etaient si insup-
portables qu'il prenait sa tete a deux mains et tachait
de I'arracher de ses epaules pour la briser sur le
pave.'

One other fault, before we pass on. In spite of
the horror and misery that pervade all of his later
work, there is in it much less of actual melodrama
than here, and rarely, I should say never, that sort
of brutality, that useless insufferable violence to the
feelings, which is the last distinction between melo-
drama and true tragedy. Now, in Notre Davie, the
whole story of Esmeralda's passion for the worthless
archer is unpleasant enough ; but when she betrays
herself in her last hiding-place, herself and her
wretched mother, by caUing out to this sordid hero
who has long since forgotten her — well, that is just
one of those things that readers will not forgive ;
they do not like it, and they are quite right ; life
is hard enough for poor mortals without having it
indefinitely embittered for them by bad art.

We look in vain for any similar blemish in Les
Miserables. Here, on the other hand, there is per-
haps the nearest approach to literary restraint that
Hugo has ever made : there is here certainly the

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ripest and most easy development of his powers. It
is the moral intention of this great novel to awaken
us a little, if it may be — for such awakenings are
unpleasant — to the great cost of the society that
we enjoy and profit by, to the labour and sweat of
those who support the litter, civilisation, in which
we ourselves are so smoothly carried forward. People
are all glad to shut their eyes ; and it gives them a
very simple pleasure when they can forget that our
laws commit a million individual injustices, to be
once roughly just in the general ; that the bread
that we eat, and the quiet of the family, and all
that embellishes life and makes it worth having,
have to be purchased by death — by the deaths of
animals, and the deaths of men wearied out with
labour, and the deaths of those criminals called
tyrants and revolutionaries, and the deaths of those
revolutionaries called criminals. It is to something
of all this that Victor Hugo wishes to open men's
eyes in Les Miserables; and this moral lesson is
worked out in masterly coincidence with the artistic
effect. The deadly weight of civilisation to those
who are below presses sensibly on our shoulders as
we read. A sort of mocking indignation grows upon
us as we find Society rejecting, again and again,
the services of the most serviceable; setting Jean
Valjean to pick oakum, casting GaHleo into prison,
even crucifying Christ. There is a haunting and
horrible sense of insecurity about the book. The
terror we thus feel is a terror for the machinery of
law, that we can hear tearing, in the dark, good and
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VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES

bad between its formidable wheels with the iron
stolidity of all machinery, human or divine. This
terror incarnates itself sometimes and leaps horribly
out upon us; as when the crouching mendicant looks
up, and Jean Valjean, in the light of the street-lamp,
recognises the face of the detective ; as when the
lantern of the patrol flashes suddenly through the
darkness of the sewer ; or as when the fugitive comes
forth at last at evening, by the quiet river-side, and
finds the police there also, waiting stolidly for vice
and stolidly satisfied to take virtue instead. The
whole book is full of oppression, and full of preju-
dice, which is the great cause of oppression. We
have the prejudices of M. Gillenormand, the pre-
judices of Marius, the prejudices in revolt that
defend the barricade, and the throned prejudices
that carry it by storm. And then we have the
admirable but ill-written character of Javert, the
man who had made a religion of the police, and
would not survive the moment when he learned
that there was another truth outside the truth of
laws ; a just creation, over which the reader will do
well to ponder.

With so gloomy a design this great work is still
full of life and light and love. The portrait of the
good Bishop is one of the most agreeable things in
modern literature. The whole scene at Montfermeil
is full of the charm that Hugo knows so well how to
throw about children. Who can forget the passage
where Cosette, sent out at night to draw water,
stands in admiration before the illuminated booth,
5-c 33

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and the huckster behind ' lui faisait un peu Veffet
d'etre le Fere eternel ' ? The pathos of the forlorn
sabot laid trustingly by the chimney in expectation
of the Santa Claus that was not, takes us fairly by
the throat; there is nothing in Shakespeare that
touches the heart more nearly. The loves of Cosette
and Marius are very pure and pleasant, and vv^e
cannot refuse our affection to Gavroche, although
we may make a mental reservation of our profound
disbelief in his existence. Take it for all in all,
there are few books in the world that can be com-
pared with it. There is as much calm and serenity
as Hugo has ever attained to ; the melodramatic
coarsenesses that disfigured Notre Dame are no
longer present. There is certainly much that is
painfully improbable ; and again, the story itself is a
little too well constructed; it produces on us the
effect of a puzzle, and we grow incredulous as we
find that every character fits again and again into
the plot, and is, like the child's cube, serviceable on
six faces ; things are not so well arranged in life as
all that comes to. Some of the digressions, also,
seem out of place, and do nothing but interrupt and
irritate. But when all is said, the book remains of
masterly conception and of masterly development,
full of pathos, full of truth, full of a high eloquence.

Superstition and social exigency having been thus
dealt with in the first two members of the series, it
remained for Les Travailleurs de la Mer to show
man hand to hand with the elements, the last form

VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES

of external force that is brought against him. And
here once more the artistic effect and the moral
lesson are worked out together, and are, indeed, one.
Gilliat, alone upon the reef at his herculean task,
offers a type of human industry in the midst of the
vague 'diffusion of forces into the inimitable,' and
the visionary development of ' wasted labour ' in the
sea, and the winds, and the clouds. No character
was ever thrown into such strange relief as Gilliat.
The great circle of sea-birds that come wonderingly
around him on the night of his arrival, strikes at
once the note of his pre-eminence and isolation.
He fills the whole reef with his indefatigable toil ;
this solitary spot in the ocean rings with the clamour
of his anvil ; we see him as he comes and goes,
thrown out sharply against the clear background of
the sea. And yet his isolation is not to be compared
with the isolation of Robinson Crusoe, for example ;
indeed, no two books could be more instructive to
set side by side than Les Travailleurs and this other
of the old days before art had learnt to occupy
itself with what lies outside of human will. Crusoe
was one sole centre of interest in the midst of a
nature utterly dead and utterly unrealised by the
artist ; but this is not how we feel with Gilliat ; we
feel that he is opposed by a 'dark coalition of forces,'
that an ' immense animosity ' surrounds him ; we are
the witnesses of the terrible warfare that he wages
with 'the silent inclemency of phenomena going
their own way^ and the great general law, implacable
and passive : ' ' a conspiracy of the indifferency of

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things ' is against him. There is not one interest on
the reef, but two. Just as we recognise Gilhat for
the hero, we recognise, as impUed by this indif-
ferency of things, this direction of forces to some
purpose outside our purposes, yet another character
who may almost take rank as the villain of the
novel, and the two face up to one another blow for
blow, feint for feint, until, in the storm, they fight
it epically out, and Gilliat remains the victor ; — a
victor, however, who has still to encounter the octo-
pus. I need say nothing of the gruesome, repulsive
excellence of that famous scene ; it will be enough
to remind the reader that Gilliat is in pursuit of a
crab when he is himself assaulted by the devil-fish,
and that this, in its way, is the last touch to the
inner significance of the book ; here, indeed, is the
true position of man in the universe.

But in Les Travailleurs, with all its strength, with
all its eloquence, with all the beauty and fitness of
its main situations, we cannot conceal from ourselves
that there is a thread of something that will not
bear calm scrutiny. There is much that is dis-
quieting about the storm, admirably as it begins. I
am very doubtful whether it would be possible to
keep the boat from foundering in such circumstances
by any amount of breakwater and broken rock. I
do not understand the way in which the waves are
spoken of, and prefer just to take it as a loose way
of speaking, and pass on. And lastly, how does it
happen that the sea was quite calm next day ? Is
this great hurricane a piece of scene-painting after
36

VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES

all ? And when we have forgiven Gilliat's prodigies
of strength (although, in soberness, he reminds us
more of Porthos in the Vicomte de Bragelonne than
is quite desirable), what is to be said to his suicide,
and how are we to condemn in adequate terms that
unprincipled avidity after effect, which tells us that
the sloop disappeared over the horizon, and the head
under the water, at one and the same moment?
Monsieur Hugo may say what he will, but we know
better ; we know very well that they did not ; a
thing like that raises up a despairing spirit of oppo-
sition in a man's readers ; they give him the lie
fiercely, as they read. Lastly, we have here already
some beginning of that curious series of English
blunders, that makes us wonder if there are neither
proof-sheets nor judicious friends in the whole of
France, and affects us sometimes with a sickening
uneasiness as to what may be our own exploits when
we touch upon foreign countries and foreign tongues.
It is here that we shall find the famous 'first of
the fourth,' and many English words that may be
comprehensible perhaps in Paris. It is here that
we learn that ' laird ' in Scotland is the same title as
' lord ' in England. Here also is an account of a
Highland soldier's equipment, which we recommend
to the lovers of genuine fun.

In UHomme qui Rit, it was Hugo's object to
' denounce ' (as he would say himself) the aristocratic
principle as it was exhibited in England; and this
purpose, somewhat more unmitigatedly satiric than

MEN AND BOOKS

that of the two last, must answer for much that is
unpleasant in the book. The repulsiveness of the
scheme of the story, and the manner in which it is
bound up with impossibilities and absurdities, dis-
courage the reader at the outset, and it needs an
effort to take it as seriously as it deserves. And
yet when we judge it deliberately, it will be seen
that, here again, the story is admirably adapted to
the moral. The constructive ingenuity exhibited
throughout is almost morbid. Nothing could be
more happily imagined, as a reductio ad absurdum
of the aristocratic principle, than the adventures of
Gwynplaine, the itinerant mountebank, snatched
suddenly out of his little way of hfe, and installed
vnthout preparation as one of the hereditary legis-
lators of a great country. It is with a very bitter
irony that the paper, on which all this depends, is
left to float for years at the will of wind and tide.
What, again, can be finer in conception than that
voice from the people heard suddenly in the House
of Lords, in solemn arraignment of the pleasures
and privileges of its splendid occupants? The
horrible laughter, stamped for ever ' by order of the
king' upon the face of this strange spokesman of
democracy, adds yet another feature of justice to the
scene ; in all time, travesty has been the argument
of oppression ; and, in all time, the oppressed might
have made this answer : ' If I am vile, is it not your
system that has made me so ? ' This ghastly laughter
gives occasion, moreover, for the one strain of ten-
derness running through the web of this unpleasant

VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES

story : the love of the blind girl Dea for the mon-
ster. It is a most benignant providence that thus
harmoniously brings together these two misfortunes ;
it is one of those compensations, one of those after-
thoughts of a relenting destiny, that reconcile us
from time to time to the evil that is in the world ;
the atmosphere of the book is purified by the pre-
sence of this pathetic love ; it seems to be above the
story somehow, and not of it, as the full moon over
the night of some foul and feverish city.

There is here a quality in the narration more
intimate and particular than is general with Hugo ;
but it must be owned, on the other hand, that the
book is wordy, and even, now and then, a little
wearisome. Ursus and his wolf are pleasant enough
companions ; but the former is nearly as much an
abstract type as the latter. There is a beginning,
also, of an abuse of conventional conversation, such
as may be quite pardonable in the drama where
needs must, but is without excuse in the romance.
Lastly, I suppose one must say a word or two about
the weak points of this not immaculate novel ; and
if so, it will be best to distinguish at once. The
large family of English blunders, to which we have
alluded already in speaking of Les Travailleurs, are
of a sort that is really indifferent in art. If Shake-
speare makes his ships cast anchor by some sea-port
of Bohemia, if Hugo imagines Tom-Jim-Jack to be
a likely nickname for an English sailor, or if either
Shakespeare or Hugo, or Scott, for that matter, be
guilty of ' figments enough to confuse the march of

MEN AND BOOKS

a whole history — anachronisms enough to overset all
chronology,'^ the life of their creations, the artistic
truth and accuracy of their work, is not so much as
compromised. But when we come upon a passage
like the sinking of the Our que in this romance, we
can do nothing but cover our face with our hands :
the conscientious reader feels a sort of disgrace in
the very reading. For such artistic falsehoods,
springing from what I have called already an un-
principled avidity after effect, no amount of blame
can be exaggerated ; and above all, when the
criminal is such a man as Victor Hugo. We cannot
forgive in him what we might have passed over in a
third-rate sensation novehst. Little as he seems to
know of the sea and nautical affairs, he must have
known very well that vessels do not go down as he
makes the Ourque go down ; he must have known
that such a liberty with fact was against the laws
of the game, and incompatible with all appearance of
sincerity in conception or workmanship.

In each of these books, one after another, there
has been some departure from the traditional canons
of romance ; but taking each separately," one would
have feared to make too much of these departures,
or to found any theory upon what was perhaps
purely accidental. The appearance of Quatrevingt-
treize has put us out of the region of such doubt.
Like a doctor who has long been hesitating how to
classify an epidemic malady, we have come at last

^ Prefatory letter to Peveril of the Peak.
40

VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES

upon a case so well marked that our uncertainty is
at an end. It is a novel built upon 'a sort of
enigma,' which was at that date laid before revolu-
tionary France, and which is presented by Hugo to
Tellmarch, to Lantenac, to Gauvain, and very terribly
to Cimourdain, each of whom gives his own solution
of the question, clement or stern, according to the
temper of his spirit. That enigma was this : ' Can
a good action be a bad action ? Does not he who
spares the wolf kill the sheep ? ' This question, as I
say, meets with one answer after another during the
course of the book, and yet seems to remain unde-
cided to the end. And something in the same way,
although one character, or one set of characters,
after another comes to the front and occupies our
attention for the moment, we never identify our
interest with any of these temporary heroes, nor
regret them after they are withdrawn. We soon
come to regard them somewhat as special cases of a
general law ; what we really care for is something
that they only imply and body forth to us. We
know how history continues through century after
century ; how this king or that patriot disappears
from its pages with his whole generation, and yet
we do not cease to read, nor do we even feel as if we
had reached any legitimate conclusion, because our
interest is not in the men, but in the country that
they loved or hated, benefited or injured. And so
it is here : Gauvain and Cimourdain pass away, and
we regard them no more than the lost armies of
which we find the cold statistics in military annals ;

MEN AND BOOKS

what we regard is what remains behind ; it is the
principle that put these men where they were, that
filled them for a while with heroic inspiration, and
has the power, now that they are fallen, to inspire
others with the same courage. The interest of the
novel centres about revolutionary France: just as
the plot is an abstract judicial difficulty, the hero is
an abstract historical force. And this has been done,
not as it would have been before, by the cold and
cumbersome machinery of allegory, but with bold,
straightforward realism, dealing only with the objec-
tive materials of art, and dealing with them so master-
fully that the palest abstractions of thought come be-
fore us, and move our hopes and fears, as if they were
the young men and maidens of customary romance.

The episode of the mother and children in Qitatre-
vingt-treize is equal to anything that Hugo has
ever written. There is one chapter in the second
volume, for instance, called 'Seingueri, coeur saignant,''
that is full of the very stuff of true tragedy, and
nothing could be more delightful than the humours
of the three children on the day before the assault.
The passage on La Vendee is really great, and the
scenes in Paris have much of the same broad merit.
The book is full, as usual, of pregnant and splendid
sayings. But when thus much is conceded by way of
praise, we come to the other scale of the balance, and
find this, also, somewhat heavy. There is here a yet
greater over-employment of conventional dialogue
than in L' Homme qui Rit ; and much that should
have been said by the author himself, if it were to be
42

VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES

said at all, he has most unwarrantably put into the
mouths of one or other of his characters. We should
like to know what becomes of the main body of the
troop in the wood of La Saudraie during the thirty
pages or so in which the fore-guard lays aside all
discipline, and stops to gossip over a woman and
some children. We have an unpleasant idea forced
upon us at one place, in spite of all the good-natured
incredulity that we can summon up to resist it. Is
it possible that Monsieur Hugo thinks they ceased
to steer the corvette while the gun was loose ? Of
the chapter in which Lantenac and Halmalho are
alone together in the boat, the less said the better ;
of course, if there were nothing else, they would
have been swamped thirty times over during the
course of Lantenac's harangue. Again, after Lan-
tenac has landed, we have scenes of almost inimitable
workmanship that suggest the epithet ' statuesque '
by their clear and trenchant outhne ; but the tocsin
scene will not do, and the tocsin unfortunately per-
vades the whole passage, ringing continually in our
ears with a taunting accusation of falsehood. And
then, when we come to the place v/here Lantenac
meets the royalists, under the idea that he is going
to meet the repubhcans, it seems as if there were a
hitch in the stage mechanism. I have tried it over
in every way, and I cannot conceive any disposition
that would make the scene possible as narrated.

Such then, with their faults and their signal
excellences, are the five great novels.

MEN AND BOOKS

Romance is a language in which many persons
learn to speak with a certain appearance of fluency ;
but there are few who can ever bend it to any
practical need, few who can ever be said to express
themselves in it. It has become abundantly plain in
the foregoing examination that Victor Hugo occupies
a high place among those few. He has always a
perfect command over his stories ; and we see that
they are constructed with a high regard to some
ulterior purpose, and that every situation is informed
with moral significance and grandeur. Of no other
man can the same thing be said in the same degree.
His romances are not to be confused with ' the novel
with a purpose ' as familiar to the English reader :
this is generally the model of incompetence ; and we
see the moral clumsily forced into every hole and
corner of the story, or thrown externally over it like
a carpet over a railing. Now the moral significance,
with Hugo, is of the essence of the romance ; it is
the organising principle. If you could somehow
despoil Les Miserables or Les Travailleurs of their
distinctive lesson, you would find that the story had
lost its interest and the book was dead.

Having thus learned to subordinate his story to
an idea, to make his art speak, he went on to teach
it to say things heretofore unaccustomed. If you
look back at the five books of which we have now so
hastily spoken, you will be astonished at the freedom
with which the original purposes of story-telling
have been laid aside and passed by. Where are
now the two lovers who descended the main water-

VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES

shed of all the Waverley Novels, and all the novels
that have tried to follow in their wake ? Sometimes
they are almost lost sight of before the solemn
isolation of a man against the sea and sky, as in
Les Travailleurs ; sometimes, as in Les Miser ahles,
they merely figure for a while, as a beautiful episode
in the epic of oppression ; sometimes they are entirely
absent, as in Quatrevingt-treize. There is no hero
in Notre Dame : in Les MisSrables it is an old man :
in L' Homme qui Bit it is a monster : in Quatrevingt-
treize it is the Revolution. Those elements that
only began to show themselves timidly, as adjuncts,
in the novels of Walter Scott, have usurped ever
more and more of the canvas ; until we find the
whole interest of one of Hugo's romances centring
around matter that Fielding would have banished
from his altogether, as being out of the field of fic-
tion. So we have elemental forces occupying nearly
as large a place, playing (so to speak) nearly as im-
portant a role, as the man, Gilliat, who opposes and
overcomes them. So we find the fortunes of a
nation put upon the stage with as much vividness
as ever before the fortunes of a village maiden or a
lost heir ; and the forces that oppose and corrupt
a principle holding the attention quite as strongly as
the wicked barons or dishonest attorneys of the past.
Hence those individual interests that were supreme
in Fielding, and even in Scott stood out over every-
thing else, and formed as it were the spine of the
story, figure here only as one set of interests among
many sets, one force among many forces, one thing

MEN AND BOOKS

to be treated out of a whole world of things
equally vivid and important. So that, for Hugo,
man is no longer an isolated spirit without antece-
dent or relation here below, but a being involved in
the action and reaction of natural forces, himself a
centre of such action and reaction ; or an unit
in a great multitude, chased hither and thither by
epidemic terrors and aspirations, and, in all serious-
ness, blown about by every wind of doctrine. This
is a long way that we have travelled ; between such
work and the work of Fielding is there not, indeed,
a great gulf of thought and sentiment ?

Art, thus conceived, realises for men a larger
portion of life, and that portion one that it is more
difficult for them to realise unaided ; and, besides
helping them to feel more intensely those restricted
personal interests which are patent to all, it awakes
in them some consciousness of those more general
relations that are so strangely invisible to the average
man in ordinary moods. It helps to keep man in
his place in nature, and, above all, it helps him to
understand more intelligently the responsibilities of
his place in society. And in all this generalisation
of interest we never miss those small humanities
that are at the opposite pole of excellence in art ;
and while we admire the intellect that could see
life thus largely, we are touched with another senti-
ment for the tender heart that shpped the piece of
gold into Cosette's sabot, that was virginally troubled
at the fluttering of her dress in the spring wind, or
put the blind girl beside the deformity of the laugh-
46

VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES

ing man. This, then, is the last praise that we can
award to these romances. The author has shown
a power of just subordination hitherto unequalled ;
and as, in reaching forward to one class of effects,
he has not been forgetful or careless of the other,
his work is more nearly complete work, and his art,
with all its imperfections, deals more comprehensively
with the materials of Hfe, than that of any of his
otherwise more sure and masterly predecessors.

These five books would have made a very great
fame for any writer, and yet they are but one fa9ade
of the monument that Victor Hugo has erected to
his genius. Everywhere we find somewhat the same
greatness, somewhat the same infirmities. In his
poems and plays there are the same unaccountable
protervities that have already astonished us in the
romances. There, too, is the same feverish strength,
welding the fiery iron of his idea under forge-hammer
repetitions — an emphasis that is somehow akin to
weakness — a strength that is a little epileptic. He
stands so far above all his contemporaries, and so
incomparably excels them in richness, breadth,
variety, and moral earnestness, that we almost feel
as if he had a sort of right to fall oftener and more
heavily than others ; but this does not reconcile us
to seeing him profit by the privilege so freely. We
like to have, in our great men, something that is
above question ; we like to place an implicit faith in
them, and see them always on the platform of their
greatness ; and this, unhappily, cannot be with
Hugo. As Heine said long ago, his is a genius

MEN AND BOOKS

somewhat deformed ; but, deformed as it is, we
accept it gladly ; we shall have the wisdom to see
where his foot slips, but we shall have the justice
also to recognise in him one of the greatest artists
of our generation, and, in many ways, one of the
greatest artists of time. If we look back, yet once,
upon these five romances, we see blemishes such
as we can lay to the charge of no other man in the
number of the famous ; but to what other man can
we attribute such sweeping innovations, such a new
and significant presentment of the life of man, such
an amount, if we merely think of the amount, of
equally consummate performance ?

SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

To write with authority about another man we
must have fellow-feehng and some common ground
of experience with our subject. We may praise or
blame according as we find him related to us by
the best or worst in ourselves ; but it is only in
virtue of some relationship that we can be his
judges, even to condemn Feelings which we share
and understand enter for us into the tissue of the
man's character ; those to which we are strangers
in our own experience we are inclined to regard as
blots, exceptions, inconsistencies, and excursions of
the diabolic ; we conceive them with repugnance,
explain them with difficulty, and raise our hands
to heaven in wonder when we find them in con-
junction with talents that we respect or virtues that
we admire. David, king of Israel, would pass a
sounder judgment on a man than either Nathanael
or David Hume. Now, Principal Shairp's recent
volume, although I beheve no one will read it with-
out respect and interest, has this one capital defect —
that there is imperfect sympathy between the author
5—1^ 49

MEN AND BOOKS

and the subject, between the critic and the person-
ality under criticism. Hence an inorganic, if not
an incoherent, presentation of both the poems and
the man. Of Holy Willies Prayer, Principal
Shairp remarks that ' those who have loved most
what was best in Burns's poetry must have regretted
that it was ever written.' To the Jolly Beggars, so
far as my memory serves me, he refers but once ;
and then only to remark on the ' strange, not to
say painful,' circumstance that the same hand which
wrote the Cotters Saturday Night should have
stooped to write the Jolly Beggars. The Saturday
Night may or may not be an admirable poem ; but
its significance is trebled, and the power and range
of the poet first appears, when it is set beside the
Jolly Beggars. To take a man's work piecemeal,
except with the design of elegant extracts, is the
way to avoid, and not to perform, the critic's duty.
The same defect is displayed in the treatment of
Burns as a man, which is broken, apologetical, and
confused. The man here presented to us is not
that Burns, teres atque rotundus — a burly figure in
literature, as, from our present vantage of time, we
have begun to see him. This, on the other hand,
is Burns as he may have appeared to a contemporary
clergyman, whom we shall conceive to have been a
kind and indulgent but orderly and orthodox person,
anxious to be pleased, but too often hurt and dis-
appointed by the behaviour of his red-hot protege,
and solacing himself with the explanation that the
poet was ' the most inconsistent of men.' If you
50

SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

are so sensibly pained by the misconduct of your
subject, and so paternally delighted with his virtues,
you will always be an excellent gentleman, but a
somewhat questionable biographer. Indeed, we can
only be sorry and surprised that Principal Shairp
should have chosen a theme so uncongenial. When
we find a man writing on Burns, who Hkes neither
Holy Willie, nor the Beggars, nor the Ordination,
nothing is adequate to the situation but the old cry of
Geronte : ' Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galere ? '
And every merit we find in the book, which is sober
and candid in a degree unusual with biographies of
Burns, only leads us to regret more heartily that good
work should be so greatly thrown away.

It is far from my intention to tell over again a
story that has been so often told ; but there are
certainly some points in the character of Burns that
will bear to be brought out, and some chapters in
his life that demand a brief rehearsal. The unity
of the man's nature, for all its richness, has fallen
somewhat out of sight in the pressure of new in-
formation and the apologetical ceremony of bio-
graphers. Mr. Carlyle made an inimitable bust of
the poet's head of gold ; may I not be forgiven if
my business should have more to do with the feet,
which were of clay ?

YOUTH

Any view of Burns would be misleading which
passed over in silence the influences of his home and

MEN AND BOOKS

his father. That father, Wilham Burnes, after having
been for many years a gardener, took a farm, married,
and, like an emigrant in a new country, built him-
self a house with his own hands. Poverty of the
most distressing sort, with sometimes the near
prospect of a gaol, embittered the remainder of his
life. Chill, backward, and austere with strangers,
grave and imperious in his family, he was yet a man
of very unusual parts and of an affectionate nature.
On his way through life he had remarked much
upon other men, with more result in theory than
practice ; and he had reflected upon many subjects
as he delved the garden. His great delight was in
solid conversation ; he would leave his work to talk
with the schoolmaster Murdoch ; and Robert, when
he came home late at night, not only turned aside
rebuke but kept his father two hours beside the
fire by the charm of his merry and vigorous talk.

Nothing is more characteristic of the class in
general, and William Burnes in particular, than the
pains he took to get proper schooling for his boys,
and, when that was no longer possible, the sense and
resolution with which he set himself to supply the
deficiency by his own influence. For many years he
was their chief companion ; he spoke with them
seriously on all subjects as if they had been grown
men ; at night, when work was over, he taught them
arithmetic ; he borrowed books for them on history,
science, and theology ; and he felt it his duty to
supplement this last — the trait is laughably Scottish
— by a dialogue of his own composition, where his
52

SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

own private shade of orthodoxy was exactly re-
presented. He would go to his daughter as she
stayed afield herding cattle, to teach her the names
of grasses and wild-flowers, or to sit by her side
when it thundered. Distance to strangers, deep
family tenderness, love of knowledge, a narrow,
precise, and formal reading of theology — everything
we learn of him hangs well together, and builds up
a popular Scottish type. If I mention the name of
Andrew Fairservice, it is only as I might couple
for an instant Dugald Dalgetty with old Marshal
Loudon, to help out the reader's comprehension by
a popular but unworthy instance of a class.

Such was the influence of this good and wise man
that his household became a school to itself, and
neighbours who came into the farm at meal-time
would find the whole family, father, brothers, and
sisters, helping themselves with one hand and holding
a book in the other. We are surprised at the prose
style of Robert ; that of Gilbert need surprise us no
less ; even William writes a remarkable letter for a
young man of such slender opportunities. One
anecdote marks the taste of the family. Murdoch
brought Titus Androriicus, and, with such dominie
elocution as we may suppose, began to read it aloud
before this rustic audience ; but when he had reached
the passage where Tamora insults Lavinia, with one
voice and ' in an agony of distress ' they refused to
hear it to an end. In such a father, and with such a
home, Robert had already the making of an excellent
education ; and what Murdoch added, although it

MEN AND BOOKS

may not have been much in amount, was in
character the very essence of a hterary training.
Schools and colleges, for one great man whom they
complete, perhaps unmake a dozen ; the strong spirit
can do well upon more scanty fare.

Robert steps before us, almost from the first, in
his complete character — a proud, headstrong, im-
petuous lad, greedy of pleasure, greedy of notice ; in
his own phrase ' panting after distinction,' and in
his brother's 'cherishing a particular jealousy of
people who were richer or of more consequence than
himself ; ' with all this, he was emphatically of the
artist nature. Already he made a conspicuous figure
in Tarbolton church, with the only tied hair in the
parish, ' and his plaid, which was of a particular
colour, wrapped in a particular manner round his
shoulders.' Ten years later, when a married man,
the father of a family, a farmer, and an officer of
Excise, we shall find him out fishing in masquerade,
with fox-skin cap, belted greatcoat, and great High-
land broadsword. He liked dressing up, in fact, for
its own sake. This is the spirit which leads to the
extravagant array of Latin Quarter students, and
the proverbial velveteen of the English landscape-
painter ; and, though the pleasure derived is in
itself merely personal, it shows a man who is, to
say the least of it, not pained by general attention
and remark. His father wrote the family name
Burnes', Robert early adopted the orthography
Burness from his cousin in the Mearns ; and in
his twenty- eighth year changed it once more to
54

SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

Burns. It is plain that the last transformation was
not made without some qualm ; for in addressing his
cousin he adheres, in at least one more letter, to
spelling number two. And this, again, shows a man
pre-occupied about the manner of his appearance
even down to the name, and little willing to follow
custom. Again, he was proud, and justly proud, of
his powers in conversation. To no other man's have
we the same conclusive testimony from different
sources and from every rank of life. It is almost a
commonplace that the best of his works was what
he said in talk. Robertson the historian * scarcely
ever met any man whose conversation displayed
greater vigour;' the Duchess of Gordon declared
that he ' carried her off her feet ; ' and, when he
came late to an inn, the servants would get out of
bed to hear him talk. But, in these early days at
least, he was determined to shine by any means.
He made himself feared in the village for his tongue.
He would crush weaker men to their faces, or even
perhaps — for the statement of Sillar is not absolute
— say cutting things of his acquaintances behind
their back. At the church door, between sermons,
he would parade his religious views amid hisses.
These details stamp the man. He had no genteel
timidities in the conduct of his life. He loved to
force his personality upon the world. He would
please himself, and shine. Had he lived in the
Paris of 1830, and joined his lot with the Roman-
tics, we can conceive him writing Jehan for Jean,
swaggering in Gautier's red waistcoat, and horrify-

MEN AND BOOKS

ing Bourgeois in a public cafe with paradox and
gasconade.

A leading trait throughout his whole career was
his desire to be in love. Ne fait pas ce tour qui
veut. His affections were often enough touched,
but perhaps never engaged. He was all his hfe on
a voyage of discovery, but it does not appear con-
clusively that he ever touched the happy isle. A
man brings to love a deal of ready-made sentiment,
and even from childhood obscurely prognosticates
the symptoms of this vital malady. Burns was
formed for love ; he had passion, tenderness, and a
singular bent in the direction ; he could foresee, with
the intuition of an artist, what love ought to be ;
and he could not conceive a worthy life without it.
But he had ill-fortune, and was besides so greedy
after every shadow of the true divinity, and so much
the slave of a strong temperament, that perhaps his
nerve was relaxed and his heart had lost the power
of self-devotion before an opportunity occurred.
The circumstances of his youth doubtless counted
for something in the result. For the lads of Ayr-
shire, as soon as the day's work was over and the
beasts were stabled, would take the road, it might
be in a winter tempest, and travel perhaps miles by
moss and moorland to spend an hour or two in
courtship. Rule 10 of the Bachelors' Club at
Tarbolton provides that ' every man proper for a
member of this Society must be a professed lover of
one or more of the female sex.' The rich, as Burns
himself points out, may have a choice of pleasurable
56

SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

occupations, but these lads had nothing but their
' cannie hour at e'en.' It was upon love and flirta-
tion that this rustic society was built ; gallantry was
the essence of life among the Ayrshire hills as well
as in the Court of Versailles ; and the days were
distinguished from each other by love-letters, meet-
ings, tiffs, reconciliations, and expansions to the
chosen confidant, as in a comedy of Marivaux.

Here was a field for a man of Burns's indiscriminate
personal ambition, where he might pursue his voyage
of discovery in quest of true love, and enjoy tem-
porary triumphs by the way. He was ' constantly
the victim of somelfair enslaver' — at least, when it
was not the other way about ; and there were often
underplots and secondary fair enslavers in the back-
ground. Many — or may we not say most ? — of these
affairs were entirely artificial. One, he tells us, he
began out of ' a vanity of showing his parts in court-
ship,' for he piqued himself on his ability at a love-
letter. But, however they began, these flames of
his were fanned into a passion ere the end ; and he
stands unsurpassed in his power of self-deception,
and positively without a competitor in the art, to
use his own words, of ' battering himself into a
warm affection,' — a debilitating and futile exercise.
Once he had worked himself into the vein, ' the
agitations of his mind and body ' were an astonish-
ment to all who knew him. Such a course as this,
however pleasant to a thirsty vanity, was lowering
to his nature. He sank more and more towards the
professional Don Juan. With a leer of what the

MEN AND BOOKS

French call fatuity, he bids the belles of Mauchline
beware of his seductions ; and the same cheap self-
satisfaction finds a yet uglier vent when he plumes
himself on the scandal at the birth of his first
bastard. We can well believe what we hear of his
facility in striking up an acquaintance with women :
he woidd have conqviering manners ; he would bear
down upon his rustic game with the grace that comes
of absolute assurance — the Richelieu of Lochlea or
Mossgiel. In yet another manner did these quaint
ways of courtship help him into fame. If he were
great as principal, he was unrivalled as confidant.
He could enter into a passion ; he could counsel
wary moves, being, in his own phrase, so old a
hawk ; nay, he could turn a letter for some unlucky
swain, or even string a few lines of verse that should
clinch the business and fetch the hesitating fair
one to the ground. Nor, perhaps, was it only
his ' curiosity, zeal, and intrepid dexterity ' that
recommended him for a second in such affairs ; it
must have been a distinction to have the assistance
and advice of Rah the Ranter ; and one who was
in no way formidable by himself might grow danger-
ous and attractive through the fame of his associate.
I think we can conceive him, in these early years,
in that rough moorland country, poor among the
poor with his seven pounds a year, looked upon
with doubt by respectable elders, but for all that
the best talker, the best letter- writer, the most
famous lover and confidant, the laureate poet, and
the only man who wore his hair tied in the parish.
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SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

He says he had then as high a notion of himself
as ever after ; and I can well believe it. Among
the youth he walked facile princeps, an apparent
god ; and even if, from time to time, the Reverend
Mr. Auld should swoop upon him with the thunders
of the Church, and, in company with seven others,
Rab the Ranter must figure some fine Sunday on
the stool of repentance, would there not be a sort
of glory, an infernal apotheosis, in so conspicuous
a shame ? Was not Richelieu in disgrace more
idolised than ever by the dames of Paris ? and
when was the highwayman most acclaimed but
on his way to Tyburn ? Or, to take a simile from
nearer home, and still more exactly to the point,
what could even corporal punishment avail, adminis-
tered by a cold, abstract, unearthly schoolmaster,
against the influence and fame of the school's hero ?

And now we come to the culminating point of
Burns's early period. He began to be received into
the unknown upper world. His fame soon spread
from among his fellow-rebels on the benches, and
began to reach the ushers and monitors of this great
Ayrshire academy. This arose in part from his lax
views about religion ; for at this time that old war of
the creeds and confessors, which is always grumbling
from end to end of our poor Scotland, brisked up in
these parts into a hot and virulent skirmish ; and
Burns found himself identified with the opposition
party, — a clique of roaring lawyers and half-heretical
divines, with wit enough to appreciate the value of
the poet's help, and not sufficient taste to moderate

MEN AND BOOKS

his grossness and personality. We may judge of
their surprise when Holy Willie was put into their
hand ; Hke the amorous lads of Tarbolton, they
recognised in him the best of seconds. His satires
began to go the round in manuscript ; Mr. Aiken,
one of the lawyers, ' read him into fame ; ' he himself
was soon welcome in many houses of a better sort,
where his admirable talk, and his manners, which
he had direct from his Maker, except for a brush he
gave them at a country dancing-school, completed
what his poems had begun. We have a sight of
him at his first visit to Adamhill, in his ploughman's
shoes, coasting around the carpet as though that
were sacred ground. But he soon grew used to
carpets and their owners ; and he was still the
superior of all whom he encountered, and ruled the
roost in conversation. Such was the impression
made, that a young clergyman, himself a man of
ability, trembled and became confused when he saw
. Robert enter the church in which he was to preach.
It is not surprising that the poet determined to
publish : he had now stood the test of some pub-
licity, and under this hopeful impulse he composed
in six winter months the bulk of his more important
poems. Here was a young man who, from a very
humble place, was mounting rapidly ; from the cyno-
sure of a parish he had become the talk of a county ;
once the bard of rural courtships, he was now about
to appear as a bound and printed poet in the world s
bookshops.

A few more intimate strokes are necessary to
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SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

complete the sketch. This strong young plough-
man, who feared no competitor with the flail,
suffered like a fine lady from sleeplessness and
vapours ; he would fall into the blackest melan-
choHes, and be filled with remorse for the past
and terror for the future. He was still not per-
haps devoted to rehgion, but haunted by it; and
at a touch of sickness prostrated himself before
God in what I can only call unmanly penitence.
As he had aspirations beyond his place in the world,
so he had tastes, thoughts, and weaknesses to match.
He loved to walk under a wood to the sound of a
winter tempest ; he had a singular tenderness for
animals ; he carried a book with him in his pocket
when he went abroad, and wore out in this service
two copies of the Man of Feeling. With young
people in the field at work he was very long-suffer-
ing ; and when his brother Gilbert spoke sharply to
them — ' O man, ye are no' for young folk,' he would
say, and give the defaulter a helping hand and a
smile. In the hearts of the men whom he met he
read as in a book ; and, what is yet more rare, his
knowledge of himself equalled his knowledge of
others. There are no truer things said of Burns than
what is to be found in his own letters. Country
Don Juan as he was, he had none of that bhnd
vanity which values itself on what it is not ; he
knew his own strength and weakness to a hair : he
took himself boldly for what he was, and, except
in moments of hypochondria, declared himself con-
tent.

MEN AND BOOKS

THE LOVE-STORIES

On the night of Mauchhne races, 1735, the young
men and women of the place joined in a penny ball,
according to their custom. In the same set danced
Jean Armour, the master-mason's daughter, and our
dark-eyed Don Juan. His dog (not the immortal
Luath, but a successor unknown to fame, caret quia
vote sacro), apparently sensible of some neglect, fol-
lowed his master to and fro, to the confusion of the
dancers. Some mirthful comments followed; and
Jean heard the poet say to his partner — or, as I
should imagine, laughingly launch the remark to
the company at large— that 'he wished he could
get any of the lassies to like him as well as his
dog.' Some time after, as the girl was bleaching
clothes on Mauchline green, Robert chanced to go
by, still accompanied by his dog; and the dog,
'scouring in long excursion,' scampered with four
black paws across the linen. This brought the two
into conversation; when Jean, with a somewhat
hoydenish advance, inquired if ' he had yet got any
of the lassies to like him as well as his dog.'

It is one of the misfortunes of the professional Don
Juan that his honour forbids him to refuse battle ;
he is in life like the Roman soldier upon duty, or
like the sworn physician who must attend on all
diseases. Burns accepted the provocation ; hungry

hope reawakened in his heart; here was a girl

pretty, simple at least, if not honestly stupid, and
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SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

plainly not averse to his attentions : it seemed to
him once more as if love might here be waiting
him. Had he but known the truth ! for this facile
and empty-headed girl had nothing more in view
than a flirtation ; and her heart, from the first and
on to the end of her story, was engaged by another
man. Burns once more commenced the celebrated
process of ' battering himself into a warm affection ; '
and the proofs of his success are to be found in many
verses of the period. Nor did he succeed with him-
self only ; Jean, with her heart still elsewhere, suc-
cumbed to his fascination, and early in the next year
the natural consequence became manifest. It was a
heavy stroke for this unfortunate couple. They had
trifled with Hfe, and were now rudely reminded of
life's serious issues. Jean awoke to the ruin of her
hopes ; the best she had now to expect was mar-
riage with a man who was a stranger to her dearest
thoughts ; she might now be glad if she could get
what she would never have chosen. As for Burns,
at the stroke of the calamity he recognised that his
voyage of discovery had led him into a wrong hemi-
sphere— that he was not, and never had been, really
in love with Jean. Hear him in the pressure of the
hour. 'Against two things,' he writes, *I am as
fixed as fate — staying at home, and owning her
conjugally. The first, by heaven, I will not do ! —
the last, by hell, I will never do ! ' And then he
adds, perhaps already in a more relenting temper :
* If you see Jean, tell her I will meet her, so God
help me in my hour of need.' They met accord-

MEN AND BOOKS

ingly; and Burns, touched with her misery, came
down from these heights of independence, and gave
her a written acknowledgment of marriage.

It is the punishment of Don Juanism to create con-
tinually false positions — relations in hfe which are
wrong in themselves, and which it is equally wrong
to break or to perpetuate. This was such a case.
Worldly Wiseman would have laughed and gone his
way; let us be glad that Burns was better counselled
by his heart. When we discover that we can be no
longer true, the next best is to be kind. I daresay he
came away from that interview not very content, but
with a glorious conscience; and as he went homeward,
he would sing his favourite, ' How are Thy servants
blest, O Lord ! ' Jean, on the other hand, armed
with her ' lines,' confided her position to the master-
mason, her father, and his wife. Burns and his
brother were then in a fair way to ruin themselves
in their farm; the poet was an execrable match
for any well-to-do country lass ; and perhaps old
Armour had an inkling of a previous attachment
on his daughter's part. At least, he was not so
much incensed by her slip from virtue as by the
marriage which had been designed to cover it.
Of this he would not hear a word. Jean, who
had besought the acknowledgment only to appease
her parents, and not at all from any violent incHna-
tion to the poet, readily gave up the paper for
destruction ; and all parties imagined, although
wrongly, that the marriage was thus dissolved. To
a proud man Hke Burns here was a crushing blow.
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SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

The concession which had been wrung from his
pity was now publicly thrown back in his teeth.
The Armour family preferred disgrace to his con-
nection. Since the promise, besides, he had doubt-
less been busy 'battering himself back again into
his affection for the girl ; and the blow would not
only take him in his vanity, but wound him at the
heart.

He relieved himself in verse; but for such a
smarting affront manuscript poetry was insufficient
to console him. He must find a more powerful
remedy in good flesh and blood, and after this dis-
comfiture set forth again at once upon his voyage
of discovery in quest of love. It is perhaps one
of the most touching things in human nature, as
it is a commonplace of psychology, that when a
man has just lost hope or confidence in one love,
he is then most eager to find and lean upon another.
The universe could not be yet exhausted ; there
must be hope and love waiting for him somewhere ;
and so, with his head down, this poor, insulted poet
ran once more upon his fate. There was an innocent
and gentle Highland nursery-maid at service in a
neighbouring family ; and he had soon battered him-
self and her into a warm affection and a secret
engagement. Jean's marriage-lines had not been
destroyed till March 13, 1786 ; yet all was settled
between Burns and Mary Campbell by Sunday,
May 14, when they met for the last time, and
said farewell with rvistic solemnities upon the banks
of Ayr. They each wet their hands in a stream,
5-E 65

MEN AND BOOKS

and, standing one on either bank, held a Bible
between them as they vowed eternal faith. Then
they exchanged Bibles, on one of which Burns,
for greater security, had inscribed texts as to the
binding nature of an oath ; and surely, if ceremony
can do aught to fix the wandering affections, here
were two people united for life. Mary came of a
superstitious family, so that she perhaps insisted on
these rites ; but they must have been eminently to
the taste of Burns at this period ; for nothing would
seem supei'fluous, and no oath great enough, to stay
his tottering constancy.

Events of consequence now happened thickly in
the poet's life. His book was announced ; the
Armours sought to summon him at law for the
ahment of the child; he lay here and there in
hiding to correct the sheets ; he was under an
engagement for Jamaica, where Mary was to join
him as his wife ; now he had ' orders within three
weeks at latest to repair aboard the Nancy, Captain
Smith ; ' now his chest was already on the road to
Greenock ; and now, in the wild autumn weather on
the moorland, he measures verses of farewell : —

' The bursting tears my heart declare ;
Farewell the bonny banks of Ayr ! '

But the great Master Dramatist had secretly another
intention for the piece ; by the most violent and
complicated solution, in which death and birth and
sudden fame all play a part as interposing deities, the
act-drop fell upon a scene of transformation. Jean
was brought to bed of twins, and, by an amicable
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SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

arrangement, the Burnses took the boy to bring up
by hand, while the girl remained with her mother.
The success of the book was immediate and emphatic;
it put £20 at once into the author's purse ; and he
was encouraged upon all hands to go to Edinburgh
and push his success in a second and larger edition.
Third and last in these series of interpositions, a
letter came one day to Mossgiel farm for Robert.
He went to the window to read it ; a sudden change
came over his face, and he left the room without a
word. Years afterwards, when the story began to
leak out, his family understood that he had then
learned the death of Highland Mary. Except in
a few poems and a few dry indications purposely
misleading as to date. Burns himself made no refer-
ence to this passage of his life ; it was an adventure
of which, for I think sufficient reasons, he desired to
bury the details. Of one thing we may be glad : in
after years he visited the poor girl's mother, and left
her with the impression that he was * a real warm-
hearted chield.'

Perhaps a month after he received this intelli-
gence, he set out for Edinburgh on a pony he had
borrowed from a friend. The town that winter
was 'agog with the ploughman poet.' Robertson,
Dugald Stewart, Blair, ' Duchess Gordon and all
the gay world,' were of his acquaintance. Such a
revolution is not to be found in literary history.
He was now, it must be remembered, twenty-seven
years of age ; he had fought since his early boyhood
an obstinate battle against poor soil, bad seed, and

MEN AND BOOKS

inclement seasons, wading deep in Ayrshire mosses,
guiding the plough in the furrow, wielding 'the
thresher's weary flingin'-tree ; ' and his education,
his diet, and his pleasures, had been those of a
Scots countryman. Now he stepped forth sud-
denly among the polite and learned. We can see
him as he then was, in his boots and buckskins,
his blue coat and waistcoat striped with buff and
blue, like a farmer in his Sunday best ; the heavy
ploughman's figure firmly planted on its burly legs ;
his face full of sense and shrewdness, and with a
somewhat melancholy air of thought, and his large
dark eye ' literally glowing ' as he spoke. ' I never
saw such another eye in a human head,' says Walter
Scott, 'though I have seen the most distinguished
men of my time.' With men, whether they were
lords or omnipotent critics, his manner was plain,
dignified, and free from bashfulness or affectation.
If he made a slip, he had the social courage to pass
on and refrain from explanation. He was not em-
barrassed in this society, because he read and judged
the men ; he could spy snobbery in a titled lord ;
and, as for the critics, he dismissed their system
in an epigram. ' These gentlemen,' said he, ' remind
me of some spinsters in my country who spin their
thread so fine that it is neither fit for weft nor woof.'
Ladies, on the other hand, surprised him ; he was
scarce commander of himself in their society; he
was disqualified by his acquired nature as a Don
Juan ; and he, who had been so much at his ease
with country lasses, treated the town dames to an
6S

SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

extreme of deference. One lady, who met him
at a ball, gave Chambers a speaking sketch of his
demeanour. *His manner was not prepossessing
— scarcely, she thinks, manly or natural. It seemed
as if he affected a rusticity or la?idertness, so that
when he said the music was "bonnie, bonnie," it
was like the expression of a child.' These would
be company manners ; and doubtless on a slight
degree of intimacy the affectation would grow less.
And his talk to women had always ' a turn either to
the pathetic or humorous, which engaged the atten-
tion particularly.'

The Edinburgh magnates (to conclude this episode
at once) behaved well to Burns from first to last.
Were heaven-born genius to revisit us in similar
guise, I am not venturing too far when I say that
he need expect neither so warm a welcome nor such
solid help. Although Burns was only a peasant,
and one of no very elegant reputation as to morals,
he was made welcome to their homes. They gave
him a great deal of good advice, helped him to some
five hundred pounds of ready money, and got him,
as soon as he asked it, a place in the Excise. Burns,
on his part, bore the elevation with perfect dignity ;
and with perfect dignity returned, when the time
had come, into a country privacy of life. His
powerful sense never deserted him, and from the
first he recognised that his Edinburgh popularity
was but an ovation and the affair of a day. He
wrote a few letters in a high-flown, bombastic vein
of gratitude ; but in practice he suffered no man to

MEN AND BOOKS

intrude upon his self-respect. On the other hand, he
never turned his back, even for a moment, on his
old associates ; and he was always ready to sacrifice
an acquaintance to a friend, although the acquaint-
ance were a duke. He would be a bold man who
should promise similar conduct in equally exacting
circumstances. It was, in short, an admirable appear-
ance on the stage of hfe — socially successful, inti-
mately self-respecting, and like a gentleman from
first to last.

In the present study this must only be taken
by the way, while we return to Burns's love-affairs.
Even on the road to Edinburgh he had seized upon
the opportunity of a flirtation, and had carried the
'battering' so far that when next he moved from
town, it was to steal two days with this anonymous
fair one. The exact importance to Burns of this
affair may be gathered from the song in which he
commemorated its occurrence. ' I love the dear
lassie,' he sings, 'because she loves me;' or, in the
tongue of prose : ' Finding an opportunity, I did not
hesitate to profit by it ; and even now, if it returned,
I should not hesitate to profit by it again.' A love
thus founded has no interest for mortal man. Mean-
time, early in the winter, and only once, we find him
regretting Jean in his correspondence. ' Because ' —
such is his reason — ' because he does not think he
will ever meet so delicious an armful again ; ' and
then, after a brief excursion into verse, he goes
straight on to describe a new episode in the voyage
of discovery with the daughter of a Lothian farmer
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SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

for a heroine. I must ask the reader to follow all
these references to his future wife ; they are essential
to the comprehension of Burns's character and fate.
In June we find him back at Mauchline, a famous
man. There, the Armour family greeted him with
a *mean, sei-vile compliance,' which increased his
former disgust. Jean was not less compliant ; a
second time the poor girl submitted to the fascina-
tion of the man whom she did not love, and whom
she had so cruelly insulted little more than a year
ago ; and, though Burns took advantage of her
weakness, it was in the ugUest and most cynical
spirit, and with a heart absolutely indifferent.
Judge of this by a letter written some twenty days
after his return — a letter to my mind among the
most degrading in the whole collection — a letter
which seems to have been inspired by a boastful,
libertine bagman. * I am afraid,' it goes, ' I have
almost ruined one source, the principal one, indeed,
of my former happiness — the eternal propensity I
always had to fall in love. My heart no more
glows with feverish rapture ; I have no paradisiacal
evening interviews.' Even the process of ' batter-
ing' has failed him, you perceive. Still he had some
one in his eye — a lady, if you please, with a fine
figure and elegant manners, and who had ' seen the
pohtest quarters in Europe.' 'I frequently visited
her,' he writes, 'and after passing regularly the
intermediate degrees between the distant formal
bow and the familiar grasp round the waist, I
ventured, in my careless way, to talk of friend-

MEN AND BOOKS

ship in rather ambiguous terms ; and after her re-
turn to I wrote her in the same terms. Miss,

construing my remarks further than even I intended,
flew off* in a tangent of female dignity and reserve,
hke a mountain lark in an April morning; and
wrote me an answer which measured out very com-
pletely what an immense way I had to travel before
I could reach the climate of her favours. But I am
an old hawk at the sport, and wrote her such a cool,
dehberate, prudent reply, as brought my bird from
her aerial towerings, pop, down to my foot, like
Corporal Trim's hat' I avow a carnal longing,
after this transcription, to buffet the Old Hawk
about the ears. There is little question that to
this lady he must have repeated his addresses, and
that he was by her (Miss Chalmers) eventually,
though not at all unkindly, rejected. One more
detail to characterise the period. Six months after
the date of this letter, Burns, back in Edinburgh, is
served with a writ in meditatione fugce, on behalf of
some Edinburgh fair one, probably of humble rank,
who declared an intention of adding to his family.

About the beginning of December (1787) a
new period opens in the story of the poet's random
affections. He met at a tea-party one Mrs. Agnes
M'Lehose, a married woman of about his own age,
who, with her two children, had been deserted by
an unworthy husband. She had wit, could use her
pen, and had read Werther with attention. Sociable,
and even somewhat frisky, there was a good, sound,
human kernel in the woman; a warmth of love,
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SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

strong dogmatic religious feeling, and a considerable,
but not authoritative, sense of the proprieties. Of
what biogi-aphers refer to daintily as 'her some-
what voluptuous style of beauty,' judging from the
silhouette in Mr. Scott Douglas's invaluable edition,
the reader will be fastidious if he does not approve.
Take her for all in all, I believe she was the best
woman Burns encountered. The pair took a fancy
for each other on the spot ; Mrs. M'Lehose, in her
turn, invited him to tea ; but the poet, in his
character of the Old Hawk, preferred a tete-a-tete,
excused himself at the last moment, and offered a
visit instead. An accident confined him to his
room for nearly a month, and this led to the famous
Clarinda and Sylvan der correspondence. It was
begun in simple sport; they are already at their
fifth or sixth exchange, when Clarinda writes : ' It
is really curious so much fun passing between two
persons who saw each other only once',' but it is
hardly safe for a man and woman in the flower of
their years to wi'ite almost daily, and sometimes in
terms too ambiguous, sometimes in terms too plain,
and generally in terms too warm for mere acquaint-
ance. The exercise partakes a little of the nature of
battering, and danger may be apprehended when
next they meet. It is difficult to give any account
of this remarkable correspondence ; it is too far
away from us, and perhaps not yet far enough, in
point of time and manner ; the imagination is baffled
by these stilted literary utterances, warming, in
bravura passages, into downright truculent nonsense.

MEN AND BOOKS

Clarinda has one famous sentence in which she bids
Sylvander connect the thought of his mistress with
the changing phases of the year ; it was enthusiasti-
cally admired by the swain, but on the modern
mind produces mild amazement and alarm. ' Oh,
Clarinda,' writes Burns, ' shall we not meet in a
state — some yet unknown state — of being, where
the lavish hand of Plenty shall minister to the
highest wish of Benevolence, and where the chill
north wind of Prudence shall never blow over the
flowery field of Enjoyment ? ' The design may be
that of an Old Hawk, but the style is more
suggestive of a Bird of Paradise. It is sometimes
hard to fancy they are not gravely making fun of
each other as they write. Religion, poetry, love,
and charming sensibility, are the current topics. ' I
am delighted, charming Clarinda, with your honest
enthusiasm for religion,' writes Burns ; and the pair
entertained a fiction that this was their ' favourite
subject.' ' This is Sunday,' writes the lady, ' and
not a word on our favourite subject. O f y ! " divine
Clarinda ! " ' I suspect, although quite unconsciously
on the part of the lady, who was bent on his
redemption, they but used the favourite subject as
a stalking-horse. In the meantime, the sportive
acquaintance was ripening steadily into a genuine
passion. Visits took place, and then became frequent.
Clarinda's friends were hurt and suspicious ; her
clergyman interfered ; she herself had smart attacks
of conscience ; but her heart had gone from her
control ; it was altogether his, and she ' counted all
74

SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

things but loss — heaven excepted — that she might
win and keep him/ Burns himself was transported
while in her neighbourhood, but his transports some-
what rapidly dechned during an absence. I am
tempted to imagine that, womanlike, he took on
the colour of his mistress's feeling; that he could
not but heat himself at the fire of her unaffected
passion; but that, like one who should leave the
hearth upon a winter's night, his temperature soon
fell when he was out of sight, and in a word, though
he could share the symptoms, that he had never
shared the disease. At the same time, amid the
fustian of the letters there are forcible and true
expressions, and the love- verses that he wrote
upon Clarinda are among the most moving in the
language.

We are approaching the solution. In mid-winter,
Jean, once more in the family-way, was turned out
of doors by her family ; and Burns had her received
and cared for in the house of a friend. For he
remained to the last imperfect in his character of
Don Juan, and lacked the sinister courage to desert
his victim. About the middle of February (1788)
he had to tear himself fi'om his Clarinda and make
a journey into the south-west on business. Clarinda
gave him two shirts for his little son. They were
daily to meet in prayer at an appointed hour.
Burns, too late for the post at Glasgow, sent her
a letter by parcel that she might not have to wait.
Clarinda on her part writes, this time with a beauti-
ful simplicity : * I think the streets look deserted-

MEN AND BOOKS

like since Monday ; and there 's a certain insipidity
in good kind folks I once enjoyed not a little.
Miss Wardrobe supped here on Monday. She once
named you, which kept me from falling asleep. I
drank your health in a glass of ale — as the lasses do
at Hallowe'en — " in to mysel'." ' Arrived at Mauch-
line, Burns installed Jean Armour in a lodging, and
prevailed on Mrs. Armour to promise her help and
countenance in the approaching confinement. This
was kind at least ; but hear his expressions : * I have
taken her a room ; I have taken her to my arms ; I
have given her a mahogany bed ; I have given her
a guinea. ... 1 swore her privately and solemnly
never to attempt any claim on me as a husband,
even though anybody should persuade her she had
such a claim — which she has not, neither during my
life nor after my death. She did all this like a good
girl.' And then he took advantage of the situation.
To Clarinda he wrote : ' I this morning called for
a certain woman. I am disgusted with her ; I can-
not endure her;' and he accused her of 'tasteless
insipidity, vulgarity of . soul, and mercenary fawn-
ing.' This was already in March; by the 13th of
that month he was back in Edinburgh. On the
17th he wrote to Clarinda : ' Your hopes, your
fears, your cares, my love, are mine, so don't mind
them. I will take you in my hand through the
dreary wilds of this world, and scare away the raven-
ing bird or beast that would annoy you.' Again,
on the 21st: *Will you open, with satisfaction and
delight, a letter from a man who loves you, who has
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SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

loved you, and who will love you, to death, through
death, and for ever ? . . . How rich am I to have
such a treasure as you ! . . . " The Lord God
knoweth," and, perhaps, *' Israel he shall know," my
love and your merit. Adieu, Clarinda ! I am going
to remember you in my prayers.' By the 7th of
April, seventeen days later, he had already decided
to make Jean Armour publicly his wife,

A more astonishing stage-trick is not to be found.
And yet his conduct is seen, upon a nearer examina-
tion, to be grounded both in reason and in kindness.
He was now about to embark on a sohd worldly
career ; he had taken a farm ; the affair with
Clarinda, however gratifying to his heart, was too
contingent to offer any great consolation to a man
like Burns, to whom marriage must have seemed
the very dawn of hope and self-respect. This is to
regard the question from its lowest aspect ; but
there is no doubt that he entered on this new period
of his life with a sincere determination to do right.
He had just helped his brother with a loan of a
hundred and eighty pounds ; should he do nothing
for the poor girl whom he had ruined ? It was true
he could not do as he did without brutally wounding
Clarinda; that was the punishment of his bygone
fault ; he was, as he truly says, ' damned with a
choice only of different species of error and miscon-
duct.' To be professional Don Juan, to accept the
provocation of any lively lass upon the village green,
may thus lead a man through a series of detestable
words and actions, and land him at last in an

MEN AND BOOKS

undesired and most unsuitable union for life. If he
had been strong enough to refrain or bad enough to
persevere in evil ; if he had only not been Don Juan
at all, or been Don Juan altogether, there had been
some possible road for him throughout this trouble-
some world ; but a man, alas ! who is equally at the
call of his worse and better instincts, stands among
changing events without foundation or resource/

DOWNWARD COURSE

It may be questionable whether any marriage
could have tamed Burns; but it is at least certain
that there was no hope for him in the marriage he
contracted. He did right, but then he had done
wrong before; it was, as I, said, one of those rela-
tions in life which it seems equally wrong to break
or to perpetuate. He neither loved nor respected
his wife. 'God knows,' he writes, 'my choice was
as random as bUnd man's buff.' He consoles him-
self by the thought that he has acted kindly to her ;
that she ' has the most sacred enthusiasm of attach-
ment to him ; ' that she has a good figure ; that
she has a ' wood-note wild,' ' her voice rising with
ease to B natural,' no less. The effect on the
reader is one of unmingled pity for both parties
concerned. This was not the wife who (in his own
words) could 'enter into his favourite studies or

^ For the love-affairs see, in particular, Mr. Scott Douglas's edition
under the different dates.

SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

relish his favourite authors ; ' this was not even a
wife, after the affair of the marriage-lines, in whom
a husband could joy to place his trust. Let her
manage a farm with sense, let her voice rise to B
natural all day long, she would still be a peasant to
her lettered lord, and an object of pity rather than
of equal affection. She could now be faithful, she
could now be forgiving, she could now be generous
even to a pathetic and touching degree ; but coming
from one who was unloved, and who had scarce
shown herself worthy of the sentiment, these were
all virtues thrown away, which could neither change
her husband's heart nor affect the inherent destiny
of their relation. From the outset, it was a marriage
that had no root in nature; and we find him, ere
long, lyrically regretting Highland Mary, renewing
correspondence with Clarinda in the warmest lan-
guage, on doubtful terms with Mrs. Riddel, and on
terms unfortunately beyond any question with Anne
Park.

Alas ! this was not the only ill circumstance in
his future. He had been idle for some eighteen
months, superintending his new edition, hanging
on to settle with the publisher, travelling in the
Highlands with Willie Nicol, or philandering with
Mrs. M'Lehose ; and in this period the radical part
of the man had suffered irremediable hurt. He
had lost his habits of industry, and formed the
habit of pleasure. Apologetical biographers assure
us of the contrary ; but from the first he saw and
recognised the danger for himself; his mind, he

MEN AND BOOKS

writes, is ' enervated to an alarming degree ' by
idleness and dissipation ; and again, ' my mind has
been vitiated with idleness.' It never fairly re-
covered. To business he could bring the required
diligence and attention without difficulty ; but he
was thenceforward incapable, except in rare in-
stances, of that superior effort of concentration
which is required for serious literary work. He
may be said, indeed, to have worked no more, and
only amused himself with letters. The man who
had written a volume of masterpieces in six months,
during the remainder of his life rarely found courage
for any more sustained effort than a song. And
the nature of the songs is itself characteristic of
these idle later years ; for they are often as polished
and elaborate as his earlier works were frank, and
headlong, and colloquial ; and this sort of verbal
elaboration in short flights is, for a man of literary
turn, simply the most agreeable of pastimes. The
change in manner coincides exactly with the Edin-
burgh visit. In 1786 he had written the Address
to a Louse, which may be taken as an extreme
instance of the first manner ; and already, in 1787,
we come upon the rosebud pieces to Miss Cruik-
shank, which are extreme examples of the second.
The change was, therefore, the direct and very
natural consequence of his great change in life ;
but it is not the less typical of his loss of moral
courage that he should have given up all larger
ventures, nor the less melancholy that a man who
first attacked literature with a hand that seemed
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SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

capable of moving mountains, should have spent
his later years in whittling cherry-stones.

Meanwhile the farm did not prosper; he had
to join to it the salary of an exciseman ; at last he
had to give it up, and rely altogether on the latter
resource. He was an active officer ; and, though
he sometimes tempered severity with mercy, we
have local testimony, oddly representing the pubhc
feeling of the period, that, while ' in everything else
he was a perfect gentleman, when he met with
anything seizable he was no better than any other
gauger.'

There is but one manifestation of the man in
these last years which need delay us : and that
was the sudden interest in politics which arose from
his sympathy with the great French Revolution.
His only political feeling had been hitherto a
sentimental Jacobitism, not more or less respect-
able than that of Scott, Aytoun, and the rest of
what George Borrow has nicknamed the ' Charlie
over the water' Scotsmen. It was a sentiment
almost entirely literary and picturesque in its origin,
built on ballads and the adventures of the Young
Chevalier; and in Burns it is the more excusable,
because he lay out of the way of active politics in
his youth. With the great French Revolution,
something living, practical, and feasible appeared to
him for the first time in this realm of human action.
The young ploughman who had desired so earnestly
to rise, now reached out his sympathies to a whole
nation animated with the same desire. Already in
5-F 8 1

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1788 we find the old Jacobitism hand in hand with
the new popular doctrine, when, in a letter of in-
dignation against the zeal of a Whig clergyman, he
writes : ' I daresay the American Congress in 1776
will be allowed to be as able and as enlightened as
the English Convention was in 1688 ; and that their
posterity will celebrate the centenary of their de-
liverance from us, as duly and sincerely as we do
ours from the oppressive measures of the wrong-
headed house of Stuart' As time wore on, his
sentiments grew more pronounced, and even violent ;
but there was a basis of sense and generous feeling
to his hottest excess. What he asked was a fair
chance for the individual in life; an open road to
success and distinction for all classes of men. It
was in the same spirit that he had helped to found
a public library in the parish where his farm was
situated, and that he sang his fervent snatches
against tyranny and tyrants. Witness, were it
alone, this verse : —

' Here 's freedom to him that wad i-ead,
Here 's freedom to him that wad write ;
There 's iiane ever feared that the truth should be heard
But them wham the truth wad indite.'

Yet his enthusiasm for the cause was scarce guided
by wisdom. Many stories are preserved of the
bitter and unwise words he used in country coteries ;
how he proposed Washington's health as an amend-
ment to Pitt's, gave as a toast ' the last verse of the
last chapter of Kings,' and celebrated Dumouriez
in a doggerel impromptu full of ridicule and hate.
82

SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

Now his sympathies would inspire him with Scots
wlia hae ; now involve him in a drunken broil with
a loyal officer, and consequent apologies and ex-
planations, hard to offer for a man of Burns's
stomach. Nor was this the front of his offending.
On February 27, 1792, he took part in the capture
of an armed smuggler, bought at the subsequent sale
four carronades, and despatched them with a letter
to the French Assembly. Letter and guns were
stopped at Dover by the English officials ; there
was trouble for Burns with his superiors; he was
reminded firmly, however delicately, that, as a paid
official, it was his duty to obey and to be silent ;
and all the blood of this poor, proud, and falUng
man must have rushed to his head at the humilia-
tion. His letter to Mr. Erskine, subsequently Earl
of Mar, testifies, in its turgid, turbulent phrases, to
a perfect passion of alarmed self-respect and vanity.
He had been muzzled, and muzzled, when all was
said, by his paltry salary as an exciseman ; alas !
had he not a family to keep ? Already, he wrote,
he looked forward to some such judgment from a
hackney scribbler as this : ' Burns, notwithstanding
t\ieJa7ifa?'onnade of independence to be found in his
works, and after having been held forth to public view
and to public estimation as a man of some genius,
yet, quite destitute of resources within himself to
support his borrowed dignity, he dwindled into a
paltry exciseman, and slunk out the rest of his
insignificant existence in the meanest of pursuits,
and among the vilest of mankind.' And then

MEN AND BOOKS

on he goes, in a style of rodomontade, but filled
with living indignation, to declare his right to a
political opinion, and his willingness to shed his
blood for the political birthright of his sons. Poor,
perturbed spirit ! he was indeed exercised in vain ;
those who share and those who differ from his
sentiments about the Revolution, alike understand
and sympathise with him in this painful strait ; for
poetry and human manhood are lasting like the race,
and politics, which are but a wrongful striving after
right, pass and change from year to year and age to
age. The Twa Dogs has already outlasted the
constitution of Sieyes and the policy of the Whigs ;
and Burns is better known among English-speaking
races than either Pitt or Fox.

Meanwhile, Avhether as a man, a husband, or a
poet, his steps led downward. He knew, knew
bitterly, that the best was out of him : he refused to
make another volume, for he felt it would be a dis-
appointment ; he grew petulantly alive to criticism,
unless he was sure it reached him from a friend.
For his songs, he would take nothing ; they were all
that he could do ; the proposed Scots play, the
proposed series of Scots tales in verse, all had
gone to water ; and in a fling of pain and dis-
appointment, which is surely noble with the nobility
of a viking, he would rather stoop to borrow than
to accept money for these last and inadequate
efforts of his muse. And this desperate abnegation
rises at times near to the height of madness ; as
when he pretended that he had not written, but
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SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

only found and published, his immortal Auld Lang
Syne. In the same spirit he became more scrupu-
lous as an artist ; he was doing so little he would
fain do that little well; and about two months
before his death he asked Thomson to send back all
his manuscripts for revisal, saying that he would
rather write five songs to his taste than twice that
number otherwise. The battle of his life was lost ;
in forlorn efforts to do well, in desperate submissions
to evil, the last years flew by. His temper is dark
and explosive, launching epigrams, quarrelling with
his friends, jealous of young puppy officers. He
tries to be a good father ; he boasts himself a liber-
tine. Sick, s^d, and jaded, he can refuse no occasion
of temporary pleasure, no opportunity to shine ; and
he who had once refused the invitations of lords and
ladies is now whistled to the inn by any curious
stranger. His death (July 21, 1796), in his thirty-
seventh year, was indeed a kindly dispensation. It
is the fashion to say he died of drink ; many a man
has drunk more and yet lived with reputation, and
reached a good age. That drink and debauchery
helped to destroy his constitution, and were the
means of his unconscious suicide, is doubtless true ;
but he had failed in life, had lost his power of work,
and was already married to the poor, unworthy,
patient Jean, before he had shown his inchnation
to convivial nights, or at least before that inclina-
tion had become dangerous either to his health or
his self-respect. He had trifled with life, and must
pay the penalty. He had chosen to be Don Juan,

MEN AND BOOKS

he had grasped at temporary pleasures, and sub-
stantial happiness and solid industry had passed him
by. He died of being Robert Burns, and there is
no levity in such a statement of the case ; for shall
we not, one and all, deserve a similar epitaph ?

WORKS

The somewhat cruel necessity which has lain upon
me throughout this paper only to touch upon those
points in the life of Burns where correction or
amplification seemed desirable, leaves me little
opportunity to speak of the works which have made
his name so famous. Yet, even here, a few observa-
tions seem necessary.

At the time when the poet made his appearance
and great first success, his work was remarkable in
two ways. For, first, in an age when poetry had
become abstract and conventional, instead of con-
tinuing to deal with shepherds, thunderstorms, and
personifications, he dealt with the actual circum-
stances of his life, however matter-of-fact and sordid
these might be. And, second, in a time when
English versification was particularly stiff", lame, and
feeble, and words were used with ultra-academical
timidity, he wrote verses that were easy, racy,
graphic, and forcible, and used language with
absolute tact and courage as it seemed most fit
to give a clear impression. If you take even those
Enghsh authors whom we know Burns to have most
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SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

admired and studied, you will see at once that he
owed them nothing but a warning. Take Shenstone,
for instance, and watch that elegant author as he
tries to grapple with the facts of life. He has a
description, I remember, of a gentleman engaged
in sliding or walking on thin ice, which is a little
miracle of incompetence. You see my memory
fails me, and I positively cannot recollect whether
his hero was sliding or walking ; as though a writer
should describe a skirmish, and the reader, at the
end, be still uncertain whether it were a charge of
cavalry or a slow and stubborn advance of foot.
There could be no such ambiguity in Burns ; his
work is at the opposite pole from such indefinite
and stammering performances ; and a whole lifetime
passed in the study of Shenstone would only lead a
man further and further from writing the Address
to a Louse. Yet Burns, like most great artists, pro-
ceeded from a school and continued a tradition ;
only the school and tradition were Scottish, and not
English. While the English language was becoming
daily more pedantic and inflexible, and English
letters more colourless and slack, there was another
dialect in the sister country, and a different school of
poetry, tracing its descent, through King James i.,
from Chaucer. The dialect alone accounts for
much ; for it was then written colloquially, which
kept it fresh and supple ; and, although not shaped
for heroic flights, it was a direct and vivid medium
for all that had to do with social life. Hence, when-
ever Scottish poets left their laborious imitations of

MEN AND BOOKS

bad English verses, and fell back on their own
dialect, their style would kindle, and they would
write of their convivial and somewhat gross exist-
ences with pith and point. In Ramsay, and far
more in the poor lad Fergusson, there was mettle,
humour, literary courage, and a power of saying
what they wished to say definitely and brightly,
which in the latter case should have justified great
anticipations. Had Burns died at the same age as
Fergusson, he would have left us literally nothing
worth remark. To Ramsay and to Fergusson, then,
he was indebted in a very uncommon degree, not
only following their tradition and using their
measures, but directly and avowedly imitating their
pieces. The same tendency to borrow a hint, to
work on some one else's foundation, is notable in
Burns from first to last, in the period of song- writing
as well as in that of the early poems ; and strikes
one oddly in a man of such deep originality, who
left so strong a print on all he touched, and whose
work is so greatly distinguished by that character of
' inevitability ' which Wordsworth denied to Goethe.
When we remember Burns's obligations to his
predecessors, we must never forget his immense
advances on them. They had already ' discovered '
nature ; but Burns discovered poetry — a higher and
more intense way of thinking of the things that go
to make up nature, a higher and more ideal key of
words in which to speak of them. Ramsay and
Fergusson excelled at making a popular — or shall
we say vulgar ? — sort of society verses, comical and
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SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

prosaic, written, you would say, in taverns while a
supper-party waited for its laureate's word ; but on
the appearance of Burns this coarse and laughing
literature was touched to finer issues, and learned
gravity of thought and natural pathos.

What he had gained from his predecessors was a
direct, speaking style, and to walk on his own feet
instead of on academical stilts. There was never
a man of letters with more absolute command of
his means ; and we may say of him, without excess,
that his style was his slave. Hence that energy
of epithet, so concise and telling, that a foreigner
is tempted to explain it by some special richness
or aptitude in the dialect he wrote. Hence that
Homeric justice and completeness of description
which gives us the very physiognomy of nature,
in body and detail, as nature is. Hence, too, the
unbroken literary quality of his best pieces, which
keeps him from any slip into the wearyful trade of
word-painting, and presents everything, as every-
thing should be presented by the art of words, in
a clear, continuous medium of thought. Principal
Shairp, for instance, gives us a paraphrase of one
tough verse of the original ; and for those who
know the Greek poets only by paraphrase, this has
the very quality they are accustomed to look for and
admire in Greek. The contemporaries of Burns
were surprised that he should visit so many cele-
brated mountains and waterfalls, and not seize the
opportunity to make a poem. Indeed, it is not for
those who have a true command of the art of words,

MEN AND BOOKS

but for peddling, professional amateurs, that these
pointed occasions are most useful and inspiring. As
those who speak French imperfectly are glad to
dwell on any topic they may have talked upon or
heard others talk upon before, because they know
appropriate words for it in French, so the dabbler
in verse rejoices to behold a waterfall, because he
has learned the septiment and knows appropriate
words for it in poetry. But the dialect of Burns
was fitted to deal with any subject ; and whether
it was a stormy night, a shepherd's collie, a sheep
struggling in the snow, the conduct of cowardly
soldiers in the field, the gait and cogitations of a
drunken man, or only a village cockcrow in the
morning, he could find language to give it freshness,
body, and relief He was always ready to borrow
the hint of a design, as though he had a difficulty
in commencing — a difficulty, let us say, in choosing
a subject out of a world which seemed all equally
hving and significant to him ; but once he had the
subject chosen, he could cope with nature single-
handed, and make every stroke a triumph. Again,
his absolute mastery in his art enabled him to
express each and all of his diffisrent humours, and
to pass smoothly and congruously from one to
another. Many men invent a dialect for only one
side of their nature — perhaps their pathos or their
humour, or the delicacy of their senses — and, for
lack of a medium, leave all the others unex-
pressed. You meet such an one, and find him in
conversation full of thought, feeling, and experience,
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SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

which he has lacked the art to employ in his writ-
ings. But Burns was not thus hampered in the
practice of the literary art ; he could throw the whole
weight of his nature into his work, and impregnate
it from end to end. If Doctor Johnson, that stilted
and accomplished stylist, had lacked the sacred
Boswell, what should we have known of him ? and
how should we have delighted in his acquaintance
as we do ? Those who spoke with Burns tell us
how much we have lost who did not. But I think
they exaggerate their privilege : I think we have
the whole Burns in our possession set forth in his
consummate verses.

It was by his style, and not by his matter, that
he affected Wordsworth and the world. There is,
indeed, only one merit worth considering in a man
of letters — that he should write well ; and only one
damning fault — that he should write ill. We are
little the better for the reflections of the sailor's parrot
in the story. And so, if Burns helped to change the
course of literary history, it was by his frank, direct,
and masterly utterance, and not by his homely
choice of subjects. That was imposed upon him,
not chosen upon a principle. He wrote from his
own experience, because it was his nature so to
do, and the tradition of the school from which he
proceeded was fortunately not opposed to homely
subjects. But to these homely subjects he com-
municated the rich commentary of his nature ; they
were all steeped in Burns ; and they interest us not
in themselves, but because they have been passed

MEN AND BOOKS

through the spirit of so genuine and vigorous a man.
Such is the stamp of living hterature ; and there was
never any more alive than that of Burns.

What a gust of sympathy there is in him some-
times flowing out in byways hitherto unused, upon
mice, and flowers, and the devil himself ; sometimes
speaking plainly between human hearts ; sometimes
ringing out in exultation like a peal of bells ! When
we compare the Farmers Salutation to his Auld
Mare Maggie, with the clever and inhumane pro-
duction of half a century earlier, The Auld Mans
Mares Dead, we see in a nutshell the spirit of the
change introduced by Burns. And as to its manner,
who that has read it can forget how the collie, Luath,
in the Twa Dogs, describes and enters into the
merry-making in the cottage ?

' The luntin' pipe an' sneeshin* mill
Are handed round wi' richt guid will ;
The canty auld folks crackin' erouse.
The young anes ran tin' through the house —
My heart has been sae fain to see them,
That I for joy hae barkit wi' them.'

It was this ardent power of sympathy that was fatal
to so many women, and, through Jean Armour, to
himself at last. His humour comes from him in a
stream so deep and easy that I will venture to call
him the best of humorous poets. He turns about in
the midst to utter a noble sentiment or a trenchant
remark on human life, and the style changes and
rises to the occasion. I think it is Principal Shairp
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SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS

who says, happily, that Burns would have been no
Scotsman if he had not loved to moralise ; neither,
may we add, would he have been his father's son ;
but (what is worthy of note) his morahsings are to a
large extent the moral of his own career. He was
among the least impersonal of artists. Except in
the Jolly Beggars, he shows no gleam of dramatic
instinct. Mr. Carlyle has complained that Tam o'
Shanter is, from the absence of this quality, only a
picturesque and external piece of work ; and I may
add that in the Twa Dogs it is precisely in the in-
fringement of dramatic propriety that a great deal
of the humour of the speeches depends for its exist-
ence and effect. Indeed, Burns was so full of his
identity that it breaks forth on every page ; and
there is scarce an appropriate remark either in praise
or blame of his own conduct but he has put it
himself into verse. Alas for the tenor of these
remarks ! They are, indeed, his own pitiful apology
for such a marred existence and talents so misused
and stunted ; and they seem to prove for ever how
small a part is played by reason in the conduct of
man's affairs. Here was one, at least, who with
unfaihng judgment predicted his own fate ; yet his
knowledge could not avail him, and with open eyes
he must fulfil his tragic destiny. Ten years before
the end he had written his epitaph ; and neither
subsequent events, nor the critical eyes of posterity,
have shown us a word in it to alter. And, lastly,
has he not put in for himself the last unanswerable
plea ? —

MEN AND BOOKS

Then gently scan your brother man.

Still gentler sister woman ;
Though they may gang a kennin' wrang.

To step aside is human :
One point must still be greatly dark '

One ? Alas ! I fear every man and woman of us
is ' greatly dark ' to all their neighbours, from the
day of birth until death removes them, in their
greatest virtues as well as in their saddest faults ;
and we, who have been trying to read the character
of Bm-ns, may take home the lesson and be gentle
in our thoughts.

Ill

WALT WHITMAN

Of late years the name of Walt Whitman has been
a good deal bandied about in books and magazines.
It has become familiar both in good and ill repute.
His works have been largely bespattered with praise
by his admirers, and cruelly mauled and mangled by
irreverent enemies. Now, whether his poetry is
good or bad as poetry, is a matter that may admit
of a difference of opinion without alienating those
who differ. We could not keep the peace with a
man who should put forward claims to taste and yet
depreciate the choruses in Samson Agonistes; but,
I think, we may shake hands with one who sees no
more in Walt AVhitman's volume, from a hterary
point of view, than a farrago of incompetent essays
in a wrong dii'ection. That may not be at all our
own opinion. We may think that, when a work
contains many unforgettable phrases, it cannot be
altogether devoid of literary merit. We may even
see passages of a high poetry here and there among
its eccentric contents. But when all is said, Walt

' 95

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Whitman is neither a Milton nor a Shakespeare ; to
appreciate his works is not a condition necessary to
salvation ; and I would not disinherit a son upon
the question, nor even think much the worse of a
critic, for I should always have an idea what he
meant.

What Whitman has to say is another affair from
how he says it. It is not possible to acquit any one
of defective intelligence, or else stiff prejudice, who
is not interested by Whitman's matter and the spirit
it represents. Not as a poet, but as what we must
call (for lack of a more exact expression) a prophet,
he occupies a curious and prominent position.
Whether he may greatly influence the future or
not, he is a notable symptom of the present. As
a sign of the times, it would be hard to find his
parallel. I should hazard a large wager, for instance,
that he was not unacquainted with the works of
Herbert Spencer ; and yet where, in all the history-
books, shall we lay our hands on two more incon-
gruous contemporaries ? Mr. Spencer so decorous
— I had almost said, so dandy — in dissent ; and
Whitman, like a large shaggy dog, just unchained,
scouring the beaches of the world and baying at
the moon. And when was an echo more curiously
like a satire, than when Mr. Spencer found his
Synthetic Philosophy reverberated from the other
shores of the Atlantic in the ' barbaric yawp ' of
Whitman ?

WALT WHITMAN

Whitman, it cannot be too soon explained, writes
up to a system. He was a theoriser about society
before he was a poet. He first perceived something
wanting, and then sat down squarely to supply the
want. The reader, running over his works, will find
that he takes nearly as much pleasure in critically
expounding his theory of poetry as in making poems.
This is as far as it can be from the case of the
spontaneous village minstrel dear to elegy, who has
no theory whatever, although sometimes he may have
fully as much poetry as WTiitman. The whole of
Whitman's work is deliberate and preconceived. A
man born into a society comparatively new, full of
conflicting elements and interests, could not fail,
if he had any thoughts at all, to reflect upon the
tendencies around him. He saw much good and
evil on all sides, not yet settled down into some
more or less unjust compromise as in older nations,
but still in the act of settlement. And he could
not but wonder what it would turn out ; whether
the compromise would be very just or very much
the reverse, and give great or little scope for healthy
human energies. From idle wonder to active
speculation is but a step ; and he seems to have
been early struck with the inefficacy of literature
and its extreme unsuitabihty to the conditions.
What he calls ' Feudal Literature ' could have little
living action on the tumult of American democracy ;
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what he calls the ' Literature of AVoe,' meaning the
whole tribe of Werther and Byron, could have no
action for good in any time or place. Both proposi-
tions, if art had none but a direct moral influence,
would be true enough ; and as this seems to be
Whitman's view, they were true enough for him.
He conceived the idea of a Literature which was to
inhere in the life of the present ; which was to be
first human, and next American ; which was to be
brave and cheerful as per contract ; to give culture
in a popular and poetical presentment ; and, in so
doing, catch and stereotype some democratic ideal
of humanity which should be equally natural to all
grades of wealth and education, and suited, in one
of his favourite phrases, to ' the average man.' To
the formation of some such literature as this his
poems are to be regarded as so many contributions,
one sometimes explaining, sometimes superseding,
the other : and the whole together not so much a
finished work as a body of suggestive hints. He
does not profess to have built the castle, but he
pretends he has traced the lines of the foundation.
He has not made the poetry, but he flatters himself
he has done something towards making the poets.

His notion of the poetic function is ambitious,
and coincides roughly with what Schopenhauer has
laid down as the province of the metaphysician.
The poet is to gather together for men, and set in
order, the materials of their existence. He is ' The
Answerer ; ' he is to find some way of speaking
about life that shall satisfy, if only for the moment,
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WALT WHITMAN

man's enduring astonishment at his own position.
And besides having an answer ready, it is he who
shall provoke the question. He must shake people
out of their indifference, and force them to make
some election in this world, instead of sliding dully
forward in a dream. Life is a business we are all
apt to mismanage ; either living recklessly from day
to day, or suffering ourselves to be gulled out of our
moments by the inanities of custom. We should
despise a man who gave as little activity and fore-
thought to the conduct of any other business. But
in this, which is the one thing of all others, since
it contains them all, we cannot see the forest for
the trees. One brief impression obliterates another.
There is something stupefying in the recurrence of
unimportant things. And it is only on rare pro-
vocations that we can rise to take an outlook beyond
daily concerns, and comprehend the narrow limits
and great possibilities of our existence. It is the
duty of the poet to induce such moments of clear
sight. He is the declared enemy of all living by
reflex action, of all that is done betwixt sleep
and waking, of all the pleasureless pleasurings and
imaginary duties in which we coin away our hearts
and fritter invaluable years. He has to electrify his
readers into an instant unflagging activity, founded
on a wide and eager observation of the world, and
make them direct their ways by a superior prudence,
which has little or nothing in common with the
maxims of the copy-book. That many of us lead
such lives as they would heartily disown after two

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hours' serious reflection on the subject is, I am
afraid, a true, and, I am sure, a very gaUing thought.
The Enchanted Ground of dead-ahve respectabihty
is next, upon the map, to the Beulah of considerate
virtue. But there they all slumber and take their
rest in the middle of God's beautiful and wonderful
universe ; the drowsy heads have nodded together in
the same position since first their fathers fell asleep ;
and not even the sound of the last trumpet can wake
them to a single active thought. The poet has a
hard task before him to stir up such fellows to a
sense of their own and other people's principles in
life.

And it happens that literature is, in some ways,
but an indifferent means to such an end. Language
is but a poor bull's-eye lantern wherewith to show
off the vast cathedral of the world ; and yet a par-
ticular thing once said in words is so definite and
memorable, that it makes us forget the absence of
the many which remain unexpressed ; like a bright
window in a distant view, which dazzles and confuses
our sight of its surroundings. There are not words
enough in all Shakespeare to express the merest
fraction of a man's experience in an hour. The
speed of the eyesight and the hearing, and the con-
tinual industry of the mind, produce, in ten minutes,
what it would require a laborious volume to shadow
forth by comparisons and roundabout approaches.
If verbal logic were sufficient, life would be as plain
sailing as a piece of Euclid. But, as a matter of
fact, we make a travesty of the simplest process of

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WALT WHITMAN

thought when we put it into words ; for the words
are all coloured and forsworn, apply inaccurately,
and bring with them, from former uses, ideas of
praise and blame that have nothing to do with the
question in hand. So we must always see to it
nearly, that we judge by the realities of life and not
by the partial terms that represent them in man's
speech ; and at times of choice, we must leave words
upon one side, and act upon those brute convictions,
unexpressed and perhaps inexpressible, which cannot
be flourished in an argument, but which are truly
the sum and fruit of our experience. Words are for
communication, not for judgment. This is what
every thoughtful man knows for himself, for only
fools and silly schoolmasters push definitions over
far into the domain of conduct ; and the majority of
women, not learned in these scholastic refinements,
five all-of-a-piece and unconsciously, as a tree grows,
without caring to put a name upon their acts or
motives. Hence, a new difficulty for Whitman's
scrupulous and argumentative poet : he must do
more than waken up the sleepers to his words ; he
must persuade them to look over the book and at
hfe with their own eyes.

This side of truth is very present to Whitman ;
it is this that he means when he tells us that ' to
glance with an eye confounds the learning of all
times.' But he is not unready. He is never weary
of descanting on the undebatable conviction that is
forced upon our minds by the presence of other men,
of animals, or of inanimate things. To glance with

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an eye, were it only at a chair or a park railing, is by
far a more persuasive process, and brings us to a far
more exact conclusion than to read the works of all
the logicians extant. If both, by a large allowance,
may be said to end in certainty, the certainty in the
one case transcends the other to an incalculable
degree. If people see a Hon, they run away ; if they
only apprehend a deduction, they keep wandering
around in an experimental humour. Now, how is
the poet to convince hke nature, and not like books ?
Is there no actual piece of nature that he can show
the man to his face, as he might show him a tree
if they were walking together ? Yes, there is one :
the man's own thoughts. In fact, if the poet is to
speak efficaciously, he must say what is already in
his hearer's mind. That, alone, the hearer will
believe ; that, alone, he will be able to apply intel-
ligently to the facts of life. Any conviction, even if
it be a whole system or a whole religion, must pass
into the condition of commonplace, or postulate,
before it becomes fully operative. Strange excur-
sions and high-flying theories may interest, but they
cannot rule behaviour. Our faith is not the highest
truth that we perceive, but the highest that we have
been able to assimilate into the very texture and
method of our thinking. It is not, therefore, by
flashing before a man's eyes the weapons of dialectic ;
it is not by induction, deduction, or construction ; it
is not by forcing him on from one stage of reasoning
to another, that the man will be effectually renewed.
He cannot be made to believe anything ; but he can

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WALT WHITMAN

be made to see that he has always beheved it.
And this is the practical canon. It is when the
reader cries, ' Oh, I know ! ' and is, perhaps, half
irritated to see how nearly the author has forestalled
his own thoughts, that he is on the way to what is
called in theology a Saving Faith.

Here we have the key to Whitman's attitude.
To give a certain unity of ideal to the average popu-
lation of America — to gather their activities about
some conception of humanity that shall be central
and normal, if only for the moment — the poet must
portray that population as it is. Like human law,
human poetry is simply declaratory. If any ideal is
possible, it must be akeady in the thoughts of the
people ; and, by the same reason, in the thoughts of
the poet, who is one of them. And hence Whit-
man's own formula : ' The poet is individual — he is
complete in himself : the others are as good as he ;
only he sees it, and they do not' To show them
how good they are, the poet must study his fellow-
countrymen and himself somewhat like a traveller
on the hunt for his book of travels. There is a
sense, of course, in which all true books are books of
travel ; and all genuine poets must run their risk of
being charged with the traveller's exaggeration ; for
to whom are such books more surprising than to
those whose own life is faithfully and smartly pic-
tured ? But this danger is all upon one side ; and
you may judiciously flatter the portrait without any
likelihood of the sitter's disowning it for a faithful
likeness. And so Whitman has reasoned : that by

MEN AND BOOKS

drawing at first-hand from himself and his neigh-
bours, accepting without shame the inconsistencies
and brutahties that go to make up man, and yet
treating the whole in a high, magnanimous spirit, he
would make sure of belief, and at the same time
encourage people forward by the means of praise.

We are accustomed nowadays to a great deal of
puling over the circumstances in which we are
placed. The great refinement of many poetical
gentlemen has rendered them practically unfit for
the jostling and ugliness of life, and they record their
unfitness at considerable length. The bold and
awful poetry of Job's complaint produces too many
flimsy imitators ; for there is always something con-
solatory in grandeur, but the symphony transposed
for the piano becomes hysterically sad. This litera-
ture of woe, as Whitman calls it, this Maladie de
Rene, as we like to call it in Europe, is in many
ways a most humiliating and sickly phenomenon.
Young gentlemen with three or four hundred a year
of private means look down from a pinnacle of dole-
ful experience on all the grown and hearty men who
have dared to say a good word for life since the
beginning of the world. There is no prophet but
the melancholy Jaques, and the blue devils dance
on all our literary wires.

It would be a poor service to spread culture, if
this be its result, among the comparatively innocent
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and cheerful ranks of men. When our Httle poets
have to be sent to look at the ploughman and learn
wisdom, we must be careful how we tamper with
our ploughmen. Where a man in not the best of
circumstances preserves composure of mind, and
rehshes ale and tobacco, and his wife and children,
in the intervals of dull and unremunerative labour ;
where a man in this predicament can afford a lesson
by the way to what are called his intellectual
superiors, there is plainly something to be lost, as
well as something to be gained, by teaching him to
think differently. It is better to leave him as he is
than to teach him whining. It is better that he
should go without the cheerful lights of culture, if
cheerless doubt and paralysing sentimentalism are to
be the consequence. Let us, by all means, fight
against that hide-bound stoHdity of sensation and
sluggishness of mind which blurs and decolorises
for poor natures the wonderful pageant of conscious-
ness ; let us teach people, as much as we can, to
enjoy, and they will learn for themselves to sym-
pathise ; but let us see to it, above all, that we give
these lessons in a brave, vivacious note, and build
the man up in courage while we demolish its sub-
stitute, indifference.

Whitman is alive to all this. He sees that, if the
poet is to be of any help, he must testify to the
hveableness of hfe. His poems, he tells us, are to be
'hymns of the praise of things.' They are to make
for a certain high joy in living, or what he calls him-
self ' a brave delight fit for freedom's athletes.' And

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he has had no difficulty in introducing his optimism :
it fitted readily enough with his system ; for the
average man is truly a courageous person and truly
fond of living. One of Whitman's remarks upon
this head is worth quotation, as he is there perfectly
successful, and does precisely what he designs to do
throughout : Takes ordinary and even commonplace
circumstances ; throws them out, by a happy turn
of thinking, into significance and something like
beauty ; and tacks a hopeful moral lesson to the
end.

* The passionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early risers,
cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields,' he says, ' the
love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons,
drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, — all is
an old unvaried sign of the unfailing perception of beauty, and
of a residence of the poetic in outdoor people.'

There seems to me something truly original in
this choice of trite examples. You will remark how
adroitly Whitman begins, hunters and woodmen
being confessedly romantic. And one thing more.
If he had said 'the love of healthy men for the
female form,' he would have said almost a silliness ;
for the thing has never been dissembled out of deli-
cacy, and is so obvious as to be a public nuisance.
But by reversing it, he tells us something not unlike
news ; something that sounds quite freshly in words ;
and, if the reader be a man, gives him a moment of
great self-satisfaction and spiritual aggrandisement.
In many different authors you may find passages
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WALT WHITMAN

more remarkable for grammar, but few of a more
ingenious turn, and none that could be more to the
point in our connection. The tenacity of many
ordinary people in ordinary pursuits is a sort of
standing challenge to everybody else. If one man
can grow absorbed in delving his garden, others
may grow absorbed and happy over something else.
Not to be upsides in this with any groom or gar-
dener is to be very meanly organised. A man
should be ashamed to take his food if he has not
alchemy enough in his stomach to turn some of it
into intense and enjoyable occupation.

Whitman tries to reinforce this cheerfulness by
keeping up a sort of outdoor atmosphere of senti-
ment. His book, he tells us, should be read ' among
the cooling influences of external nature ; ' and this
recommendation, like that other famous one which
Hawthorne prefixed to his collected tales, is in itself
a character of the work. Every one who has been
upon a walking or a boating tour, living in the open
air, with the body in constant exercise and the mind
in fallow, knows true ease and quiet. The irritating
action of the brain is set at rest ; we think in a plain,
unfeverish temper ; little things seem big enough,
and great things no longer portentous ; and the
world is smilingly accepted as it is. This is the
spirit that Whitman inculcates and parades. He
tliinks very ill of the atmosphere of parlours or
hbraries. Wisdom keeps school outdoors. And he
has the art to recommend this attitude of mind by
simply pluming himself upon it as a virtue ; so that

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the reader, to keep the advantage over his author
which most readers enjoy, is tricked into professing
the same view. And this spirit, as it is his chief
lesson, is the greatest charm of his work. Thence,
in spite of an uneven and emphatic key of expres-
sion, something trenchant and straightforward,
something simple and surprising, distinguishes his
poems. He has sayings that come home to one like
the Bible. We fall upon Whitman, after the works
of so many men who write better, with a sense of
relief from strain, with a sense of touching nature, as
when one passes out of the flaring, noisy thorough-
fares of a great city into what he himself has called,
with unexcelled imaginative justice of language,
' the huge and thoughtful night.' And his book in
consequence, whatever may be the final judgment of
its merit, whatever may be its influence on the
future, should be in the hands of all parents and
guardians as a specific for the distressing malady of
being seventeen years old. Green-sickness yields
to his treatment as to a charm of magic ; and the
youth, after a short course of reading, ceases to carry
the universe upon his shoulders.

Ill

Whitman is not one of those who can be deceived
by famiharity. He considers it just as wonderful
that there are myriads of stars as that one man
should rise from the dead. He declares ' a hair on
the back of his hand just as curious as any special
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WALT WHITMAN

revelation.' His whole life is to him what it was to
Sir Thomas Browne, — one perpetual miracle. Every-
thing is strange, everything unaccountable, every-
thing beautiful ; from a bug to the moon, from the
sight of the eyes to the appetite for food. He makes
it his business to see things as if he saw them for the
first time, and professes astonishment on principle.
But he has no leaning towards mythology ; avows his
contempt for what he calls ' unregenerate poetry ; '
and does not mean by nature

' the smooth walks, trimmed hedges, butterflies, posies, and
nightingales of the English poets, but the whole orb, with its
geologic history, the Kosmos, carrying fire and snow, that
rolls through the illimitable areas, light as a feather though
weighing billions of tons.'

Nor is this exhaustive ; for in his character of
idealist all impressions, all thoughts, trees and
people, love and faith, astronomy, history, and
religion, enter upon equal terms into his notion of
the universe. He is not against religion ; not,
indeed, against any religion. He wishes to drag
with a larger net, to make a more comprehensive
synthesis, than any or than all of them put together.
In feeling after the central type of man, he must
embrace all eccentricities ; his cosmology must sub-
sume all cosmologies, and the feelings that gave
birth to them ; his statement of facts must include
all religion and all irreligion, Christ and Boodha, God
and the devil. The world as it is, and the whole
world as it is, physical, and spiritual, and historical,

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with its good and bad, with its manifold inconsis-
tencies, is what he wishes to set forth, in strong,
picturesque, and popular lineaments, for the under-
standing of the average man. One of his favourite
endeavours is to get the whole matter into a nut-
shell; to knock the four corners of the universe,
one after another, about his readers' ears ; to hurry
him, in breathless phrases, hither and thither, back
and forward, in time and space ; to focus all this
about his own momentary personality ; and then,
drawing the ground from under his feet, as if by
some cataclysm of nature, to plunge him into the
unfathomable abyss sown with enormous suns and
systems, and among the inconceivable numbers and
magnitudes and velocities of the heavenly bodies.
So that he concludes by striking into us some sense
of that disproportion of things which Shelley has
illuminated by the ironical flash of these eight
words : The desire of the moth for the star.

The same truth, but to what a different purpose !
Whitman's moth is mightily at his ease about all
the planets in heaven, and cannot think too highly
of our sublunary tapers. The universe is so large
that imagination flags in the effort to conceive it;
but here, in the meantime, is the world under our
feet, a very warm and habitable corner. ' The earth,
that is sufficient ; I do not want the constellations
any nearer,' he remarks. And again: 'Let your
soul stand cool and composed,' says he, 'before a
million universes.' It is the language of a transcen-
dental common sense, such as Thoreau held and

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sometimes uttered. But Whitman, who has a some-
what vulgar inclination for technical talk and the
jargon of philosophy, is not content with a few
pregnant hints ; he must put the dots upon his i's ;
he must corroborate the songs of Apollo by some of
the darkest talk of human metaphysic. He tells his
disciples that they must be ready 'to confront the
growing arrogance of Realism.' Each person is, for
himself, the keystone and the occasion of this uni-
versal edifice. 'Nothing, not God,' he says, 'is
greater to one than oneself is ; ' a statement with an
irreligious smack at the first sight ; but like most
startling sayings, a manifest truism on a second.
He will give effect to his own character without
apology; he sees 'that the elementary laws never
apologise.' ' I reckon,' he adds, with quaint col-
loquial arrogance, ' I reckon I behave no prouder
than the level I plant my house by, after all.' The
level follows the law of its being ; so, unrelentingly,
will he; everything, every person, is good in his
own place and way ; God is the maker of all, and all
are in one design. For he believes in God, and that
with a sort of blasphemous security. ' No array of
terms,' quoth he, 'no array of terms can say how
much at peace I am about God and about death.'
There certainly never was a prophet who carried
things with a higher hand ; he gives us less a body
of dogmas than a series of proclamations by the
grace of God ; and language, you will observe, posi-
tively fails him to express how far he stands above
the highest human doubts and trepidations.

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But next in order of truths to a person's sublime
conviction of himself, comes the attraction of one
person for another, and all that we mean by the
word love : —

' The dear love of man for his comrade — the attraction of
friend for friend,
Of the well-married husband and wife, of children and parents.
Of city for city and land for land/

The solitude of the most sublime idealist is broken
in upon by other people's faces ; he sees a look in
their eyes that corresponds to something in his own
heart; there comes a tone in their voices which
convicts him of a startling weakness for his fellow-
creatures. While he is hymning the ego and com-
mercing with God and the universe, a woman goes
below his window ; and at the turn of her skirt, or
the colour of her eyes, Icarus is recalled from heaven
by the run. Love is so startlingly real that it takes
rank upon an equal footing of reality with the con-
sciousness of personal existence. We are as heartily
persuaded of the identity of those we love as of our
own identity. And so sympathy pairs with self-
assertion, the two gerents of human life on earth ;
and Whitman's ideal man must not only be strong,
free, and self-reliant in himself, but his freedom must
be bounded and his strength perfected by the most
intimate, eager, and long-suffering love for others.
To some extent this is taking away with the left
hand what has been so generously given with the
right. Morality has been ceremoniously extruded

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from the door only to be brought in again by the
window. We are told, on one page, to do as we
please; and on the next we are sharply upbraided
for not having done as the author pleases. We are
first assured that we are the finest fellows in the
world in our own right ; and then it appears that we
are only fine fellows in so far as we practise a most
quixotic code of morals. The disciple who saw him-
self in clear ether a moment before is plunged down
again among the fogs and complications of duty.
And this is all the more overwhelming because
Whitman insists not only on love between sex and
sex, and between friends of the same sex, but in the
field of the less intense political sympathies ; and his
ideal man must not only be a generous friend but a
conscientious voter into the bargain.

His method somewhat lessens the difficulty. He
is not, the reader will remember, to tell us how good
we ought to be, but to remind us how good we are.
He is to encourage us to be free and kind by proving
that we are free and kind already. He passes our
corporate life under review, to show that it is upheld
by the very virtues of which he makes himself the
advocate. ' There is no object so soft,' he says
somewhere in his big, plain way, ' there is no object
so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd universe.'
Rightly understood, it is on the softest of all objects,
the sympathetic heart, that the wheel of society
turns easily and securely as on a perfect axle. There
is no room, of course, for doubt or discussion, about
conduct, where every one is to follow the law of
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his being with exact compliance. Whitman hates
doubt, deprecates discussion, and discourages to his
utmost the craving, carping sensibihties of the con-
science. We are to imitate, to use one of his absurd
and happy phrases, ' the satisfaction and aplomb of
animals.' If he preaches a sort of ranting Chris-
tianity in morals, a fit consequent to the ranting
optimism of his cosmology, it is because he declares
it to be the original deliverance of the human heart ;
or at least, for he would be honestly historical in
method, of the human heart as at present Christian-
ised. His is a morality without a prohibition ; his
policy is one of encouragement all round. A man
must be a born hero to come up to Whitman's
standard in the practice of any of the positive
virtues ; but of a negative virtue, such as temperance
or chastity, he has so httle to say, that the reader
need not be surprised if he drops a word or two
upon the other side. He would lay down nothing
that would be a clog; he would prescribe nothing
that cannot be done ruddily, in a heat. The great
point is to get people under way. To the faithful
Whitmanite this would be justified by the behef that
God made all, and that all was good ; the prophet,
in this doctrine, has only to cry 'Tally-ho,' and
mankind will break into a gallop on the road to El
Dorado. Perhaps, to another class of minds, it may
look hke the result of the somewhat cynical reflec-
tion that you will not make a kind man out of one
who is unkind by any precepts under heaven ; tem-
pered by the beUef that, in natural circumstances,
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WALT WHITMAN

the large majority is well disposed. Thence it would
follow, that if you can only get every one to feel
more warmly and act more courageously, the balance
of results will be for good.

So far, you see, the doctrine is pretty coherent as
a doctrine ; as a picture of man's life it is incomplete
and misleading, although eminently cheerful. This
he is himself the first to acknowledge ; for if he is
prophetic in anything, it is in his noble disregard of
consistency. 'Do I contradict myself?' he asks
somewhere ; and then pat comes the answer, the
best answer ever given in print, worthy of a sage, or
rather of a woman : ' Very well, then, I contradict
myself!' mth this addition, not so feminine and
perhaps not altogether so satisfactory : ' I am large
— I contain multitudes.' Life, as a matter of fact,
partakes largely of the nature of tragedy. The
gospel according to Whitman, even if it be not so
logical, has this advantage over the gospel according
to Pangloss, that it does not utterly disregard the
existence of temporal evil. Whitman accepts the
fact of disease and wretchedness like an honest man ;
and instead of trying to qualify it in the interest of
his optimism, sets himself to spur people up to be
helpful. He expresses a conviction, indeed, that all
will be made up to the victims in the end; that
' what is untried and afterward ' will fail no one, not
even 'the old man who has lived without purpose
and feels it with bitterness worse than gall.' But
this is not to palliate our sense of what is hard or
melancholy in the present. Pangloss, smarting under

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one of the worst things that ever was supposed to
come from America, consoled himself with the re-
flection that it was the price we have to pay for
cochineal. And with that murderous parody, logical
optimism and the praises of the best of possible
worlds went irrevocably out of season, and have been
no more heard of in the mouths of reasonable men.
Whitman spares us all allusions to the cochineal ; he
treats evil and sorrow in a spirit almost as of wel-
come ; as an old sea-dog might have welcomed the
sight of the enemy's topsails off the Spanish Main.
There, at least, he seems to say, is something obvious
to be done. I do not know many better things in
literature than the brief pictures — brief and vivid
like things seen by lightning, — with which he tries
to stir up the world's heart upon the side of mercy.
He braces us, on the one hand, with examples of
heroic duty and helpfulness ; on the other, he touches
us with pitiful instances of people needing help.
He knows how to make the heart beat at a brave
story ; to inflame us with just resentment over the
hunted slave ; to stop our mouths for shame when
he tells of the drunken prostitute. For all the
afflicted, all the weak, all the wicked, a good word is
said in a spirit which I can only call one of ultra-
Christianity ; and however wild, however contradic-
tory it may be in parts, this at least may be said for
his book, as it may be said of the Christian Gospels,
that no one will read it, however respectable, but he
gets a knock upon his conscience ; no one however
fallen, but he finds a kindly and supporting welcome.
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WALT WHITMAN

Nor has he been content with merely blowing the
trumpet for the battle of well-doing ; he has given
to his precepts the authority of his own brave
example. Naturally a grave, believing man, with
Uttle or no sense of humour, he has succeeded as
well in life as in his printed performances. The
spirit that was in him has come forth most eloquently
in his actions. Many who have only read his poetry
have been tempted to set him down as an ass, or
even as a charlatan ; but I never met any one who
had known him personally who did not profess a
solid affection and respect for the man's character.
He practises as he professes ; he feels deeply that
Christian love for all men, that toleration, that
cheerful delight in serving others, which he often
celebrates in literature with a doubtful measure of
success. And perhaps, out of all his writings, the
best and the most human and convincing passages
are to be found in 'these soil'd and creas'd little
livraisons, each composed of a sheet or two of paper,
folded small to carry in the pocket, and fastened
with a pin,' which he scribbled during the war by
the bedsides of the wounded or in the excitement
of great events. They are hardly literature in the
formal meaning of the word ; he has left his jottings
for the most part as he made them ; a homely detail,
a word from the lips of a dying soldier, a business
memorandum, the copy of a letter — short, straight-

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forward to the point, with none of the trappings of
composition ; but they breathe a profound sentiment,
they give us a vivid look at one of the sides of hfe,
and they make us acquainted with a man whom it is
an honour to love.

Whitman's intense Americanism, his unhmited
belief in the future of These States (as, with rever-
ential capitals, he loves to call them), made the war
a period of great trial to his soul. The new virtue.
Unionism, of which he is the sole inventor, seemed
to have fallen into premature unpopularity. All
that he loved, hoped, or hated, hung in the balance.
And the game of war was not only momentous to
him in its issues; it sublimated his spirit by its
heroic displays, and tortured him intimately by the
spectacle of its horrors. It was a theatre, it was a
place of education, it was like a season of religious
revival. He watched Lincoln going daily to his
work ; he studied and fraternised with young soldiery
passing to the front ; above all, he Avalked the hos-
pitals reading the Bible, distributing clean clothes,
or apples, or tobacco ; a patient, helpful, reverend
man, full of kind speeches.

His memoranda of this period are almost be-
wildering to read. From one point of view they
seem those of a district visitor ; from another, they
look like the formless jottings of an artist in the
picturesque. More than one woman, on whom I
tried the experiment, immediately claimed the writer
for a fellow-woman. More than one literary purist
might identify him as a shoddy newspaper corre-
ii8

WALT WHITMAN

spondent without the necessary faculty of style. And
yet the story touches home ; and if you are of the
weeping order of mankind, you will certainly find
your eyes fill with tears, of which you have no reason
to be ashamed. There is only one way to charac-
terise a work of this order, and that is to quote.
Here is a passage from a letter to a mother, un-
known to Whitman, whose son died in hospital : —

' Frank, as far as I saw, had everything requisite in surgical
treatment, nursing, etc. He had watches much of the time.
He was so good and well-behaved, and aiFectionate, I myself
liked him very much. I was in the habit of coming in after-
noons and sitting by him, and he liked to have me — liked to
put out his arm and lay his hand on my knee — would keep it
so a long while. Toward the last he was more restless and
flighty at night — often fancied himself with his regiment — by
his talk sometimes seeni'd as if his feelings were hurt by being
blamed by his officers for something he was entirely innocent
of — said "I never in my life was thought capable of such a
thing, and never was." At other times he would fancy himself
talking as it seem'd to children or such like, his relatives, I
suppose, and giving them good advice ; would talk to them a
long while. All the time he was out of his head not one single
bad word, or thought, or idea escaped him. It was remarked
that many a man''s conversation in his senses was not half so
good as Frank's delirium.

' He was perfectly willing to die — he had become very weak,
and had suffered a good deal, and was perfectly resigned, poor
boy. I do not know his past life, but I feel as if it must have
been good. At any rate what I saw of him here, under the
most trying circumstances, with a painful wound, and among
strangers, I can say that he behaved so brave, so composed, and
so sweet and affectionate, it could not be surpassed. And
now, like many other noble and good men, after serving his

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country as a soldier, he has yielded up his young life at the
very outset in her service. Such things are gloomy — yet there
is a text, " God doeth all things well," the meaning of which,
after due time, appears to the soul.

'I thought perhaps a few words, though from a stranger,
about your son, from one who was with him at the last, might
be worth while, for I loved the young man, though I but saw
him immediately to lose him.''

It is easy enough to pick holes in the grammar of
this letter, but what are we to say of its profound
goodness and tenderness? It is written as though
he had the mother's face before his eyes, and saw her
wincing in the flesh at every word. And what,
again, are we to say of its sober truthfulness, not
exaggerating, not running to phrases, not seeking to
make a hero out of what was only an ordinary but
good and brave young man ? Literary reticence is
not Whitman's stronghold ; and this reticence is not
literary, but humane ; it is not that of a good artist
but that of a good man. He knew that what the
mother wished to hear about was Frank; and he
told her about her Frank as he was.

Something should be said of Whitman's style, for
style is of the essence of thinking. And where a
man is so critically deliberate as our author, and
goes solemnly about his poetry for an ulterior end,
every indication is worth notice. He has chosen a
rough, unrhymed, lyrical verse; sometimes instinct
with a fine processional movement ; often so rugged
1 20

WALT WHITMAN

and careless that it can only be described by saying
that he has not taken the trouble to write prose. I
believe myself that it was selected principally because
it was easy to write, although not without recollec-
tions of the marching measures of some of the prose
in our EngHsh Old Testament. According to Whit-
man, on the other hand, 'the time has arrived to
essentially break down the barriers of form between
Prose and Poetry . . . for the most cogent pur-
poses of those great inland states, and for Texas,
and California, and Oregon ' ; — a statement which
is among the happiest achievements of American
humour. He calls his verses 'recitatives,' in easily
followed allusion to a musical form. 'Easily- written,
loose-fingered chords,' he cries, ' I feel the thrum of
your climax and close.' Too often, I fear, he is the
only one who can perceive the rhythm ; and in spite
of Mr. Swinburne, a great part of his work con-
sidered as verses is poor bald stuff. Considered, not
as verse, but as speech, a great part of it is full of
strange and admirable merits. The right detail is
seized ; the right word, bold and trenchant, is thrust
into its place. Whitman has small regard to literary
decencies, and is totally free from literary timidities.
He is neither afraid of being slangy nor of being
dull ; nor, let me add, of being ridiculous. The result
is a most surprising compound of plain grandeur,
sentimental affectation, and downright nonsense. It
would be useless to follow his detractors and give
instances of how bad he can be at his worst; and
perhaps it would be not much wiser to give extracted

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specimens of how happily he can write when he is at
his best. These come in to most advantage in their
own place ; owing something, it may be, to the offset
of their curious surroundings. And one thing is
certain, that no one can appreciate Whitman's ex-
cellences until he has grown accustomed to his
faults. Until you are content to pick poetry out of
his pages almost as you must pick it out of a Greek
play in Bohn's translation, your gravity will be con-
tinually upset, your ears perpetually disappointed,
and the whole book will be no more to you than a
particularly flagrant production by the Poet Close.

A writer of this uncertain quality was, perhaps,
unfortunate in taking for thesis the beauty of the
world as it now is, not only on the hill-tops but in
the factory ; not only by the harbour full of stately
ships, but in the magazine of the hopelessly prosaic
hatter. To show beauty in common things is the
work of the rarest tact. It is not to be done by
the wishing. It is easy to posit as a theory, but to
bring it home to men's minds is the problem of
literature, and is only accomplished by rare talent,
and in comparatively rare instances. To bid the
whole world stand and deliver, with a dogma in one's
right hand by way of pistol ; to cover reams of paper
in a galloping, headstrong vein ; to cry louder and
louder over everything as it comes up, and make no
distinction in one's enthusiasm over the most in-
comparable matters ; to prove one's entire want of
sympathy for the jaded, literary palate, by calling,
not a spade a spade, but a hatter a hatter, in a lyrical

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WALT WHITMAN

apostrophe ; — this, in spite of all the airs ox inspira-
tion, is not the way to do it. It may be very wrong,
and very wounding to a respectable branch of indus-
try, but the word ' hatter ' cannot be used seriously
in emotional verse ; not to understand this is to
have no literary tact ; and I would, for his own sake,
that this were the only inadmissible expression with
which Whitman had bedecked his pages. The book
teems with similar comicalities ; and, to a reader
who is determined to take it from that side only,
presents a perfect carnival of fun.

A good deal of this is the result of theory playing
its usual vile trick upon the artist. It is because he
is a Democrat that Whitman must have in the
hatter. If you may say Admiral, he reasons, why
may you not say Hatter ? One man is as good as
another, and it is the business of the ' great poet ' to
show poetry in the life of the one as well as the
other. A most incontrovertible sentiment, surely,
and one which nobody would think of controverting,
where — and here is the point — where any beauty has
been shown. But how, where that is not the case?
where the hatter is simply introduced, as God made
him and as his fellow-men have miscalled him, at the
crisis of a high-flown rhapsody ? And what are we
to say, where a man of Whitman's notable capacity
for putting things in a bright, picturesque, and novel
way, simply gives up the attempt, and indulges,
with apparent exultation, in an inventory of trades
or implements, with no more colour or coherence
than so many index- words out of a dictionary ? I

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MEN AND BOOKS

do not know that we can say anything, but that it
is a prodigiously amusing exhibition for a line or so.
The worst of it is, that Whitman must have known
better. The man is a great critic, and, so far as I
can make out, a good one ; and how much criticism
does it require to know that capitulation is not
description, or that fingering on a dumb keyboard,
with whatever show of sentiment and execution, is
not at all the same thing as discoursing music. I
wish I could believe he was quite honest with us ;
but, indeed, who was ever quite honest who wrote a
book for a purpose ? It is a flight beyond the reach
of human magnanimity.

One other point, where his means failed him, must
be touched upon, however shortly. In his desire to
accept all facts loyally and simply, it fell within his
programme to speak at some length and with some
plainness on what is, for I really do not know what
reason, the most delicate of subjects. Seeing in
that one of the most serious and interesting parts
of life, he was aggrieved that it should be looked
upon as ridiculous or shameful. No one speaks of
maternity with his tongue in his cheek ; and Whit-
man made a bold push to set the sanctity of father-
hood beside the sanctity of motherhood, and introduce
this also among the things that can be spoken of
without either a blush or a wink. But the Philistines
have been too strong ; and, to say truth, Whitman
has rather played the fool. We may be thoroughly
conscious that his end is improving ; that it would
be a good thing if a window were opened on these
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WALT WHITMAN

close privacies of life ; that on this subject, as on all
others, he now and then lets fall a pregnant saying.
But we are not satisfied. We feel that he was not
the man for so difficult an enterprise. He loses our
sympathy in the character of a poet by attracting
too much of our attention in that of a Bull in a
China Shop. And where, by a little more art, we
might have been solemnised ourselves, it is too often
Whitman alone who is solemn in the face of an
audience somewhat indecorously amused.

Lastly, as most important, after all, to human
beings in our disputable state, what is that higher
prudence which was to be the aim and issue of these
deliberate productions ?

Whitman is too clever to slip into a succinct
formula. If he could have adequately said his say
in a single proverb, it is to be presumed he would
not have put himself to the trouble of writing several
volumes. It was his programme to state as much
as he could of the world with all its contradictions,
and leave the upshot with God who planned it.
What he has made of the world and the world's
meanings is to be found at large in his poems. These
altogether give his answers to the problems of beUef
and conduct; in many ways righteous and high-
spirited, in some ways loose and contradictory. And
yet there are two passages from the preface to the
Leaves of Grass which do pretty well condense his

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MEN AND BOOKS

teaching on all essential points, and yet preserve a
measure of his spirit :

' This is what you shall do,' he says in the one, ' love the
earth, and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every
one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your
income and labour to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning
God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off
your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or
number of men ; go freely with powerful uneducated persons,
and with the young, and mothers of families, read these leaves
[his own works] in the open air every season of every year of
your life; re-examine all you have been told at school or
church, or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own
soul.""

' The prudence of the greatest poet,' he adds in the other—
and the greatest poet is, of course, himself—' knows that the
yomig man who composedly perilled his life and lost it, has
done exceeding well for himself; while the man who has not
perilled his life, and retains it to old age in riches and ease,
has perhaps achieved nothing for himself worth mentioning ;
and that only that person has no great prudence to learn, who
has learnt to prefer real long-lived things, and favours body and
soul the same, and perceives the indirect surely following the
direct, and what evil or good he does leaping onward and
waiting to meet him again, and who in his spirit, in any
emergency whatever, neither hurries nor avoids death.'

There is much that is Christian in these extracts,
starthngly Christian. Any reader who bears in mind
Whitman's own advice and 'dismisses whatever
insults his own soul ' will find plenty that is bracing,
brightening, and chastening to reward him for a
little patience at first It seems hardly possible
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WALT WHITMAN

that any being should get evil from so healthy a
book as the Leaves of Grass, wliich is simply comical
wherever it falls short of nobility ; but if there be
any such, who cannot both take and leave, who can-
not let a single opportunity pass by without some
unworthy and unmanly thought, I should have as
great difficulty, and neither more nor less, in recom-
mending the works of Whitman as in lending them
Shakespeare, or letting them go abroad outside of
the grounds of a private asylum.

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HENRY DAVID THOREAU

HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS

Thoreau's thin, penetrating, big-nosed face, even in
a bad woodcut, conveys some hint of the limitations
of his mind and character. With his almost acid
sharpness of insight, with his almost animal dex-
terity in act, there went none of that large, uncon-
scious geniality of the world's heroes. He was not
easy, not ample, not urbane, not even kind ; his
enjoyment was hardly smiling, or the smile was
not broad enough to be convincing; he had no
waste lands nor kitchen-midden in his nature, but
was all improved and sharpened to a point. * He
was bred to no profession,' says Emerson ; ' he never
married ; he lived alone ; he never went to church ;
he never voted ; he refused to pay a tax to the
State ; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never
knew the use of tobacco ; and, though a naturalist,
he used neither trap nor gun. When asked at
dinner what dish he preferred, he answered, "the
nearest."' So many negative superiorities begin to
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HENRY DAVID THOREAU

smack a little of the prig. From his later works he
was in the habit of cutting out the humorous pas-
sages, under the impression that they were beneath
the dignity of his moral muse ; and there we see the
prig stand public and confessed. It was 'much
easier,' says Emerson acutely, much easier for
Thoreau to say no than yes ; and that is a charac-
teristic which depicts the man. It is a useful accom-
plishment to be able to say no, but surely it is the
essence of amiabihty to prefer to say yes where it is
possible. There is something wanting in the man
who does not hate himself whenever he is con-
strained to say no. And there was a great deal
wanting in this born dissenter. He was almost
shockingly devoid of weaknesses ; he had not enough
of them to be truly polar with humanity ; whether
you call him demi-god or demi-man, he was at least
not altogether one of us, for he was not touched
with a feehng of our infirmities. The world's heroes
have room for all positive qualities, even those which
are disreputable, in the capacious theatre of their
dispositions. Such can live many lives ; while a
Thoreau can live but one, and that only with per-
petual foresight.

He was no ascetic, rather an Epicurean of the
nobler sort ; and he had this one great merit, that
he succeeded so far as to be happy. ' I love my fate
to the core and rind,' he wrote once ; and even while
he lay dying, here is what he dictated (for it seems
he was already too feeble to control the pen) : ' You
ask particularly after my health. I suppose that I
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MEN AND BOOKS

have not many months to live, but of course know
nothing about it. I may say that I am enjoying
existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.' It
is not given to all to bear so clear a testimony to the
sweetness of their fate, nor to any without courage
and wisdom ; for this world in itself is but a painful
and uneasy place of residence, and lasting happiness,
at least to the self-conscious, comes only from within.
Now Thoreau's content and ecstasy in living was,
we may say, Uke a plant that he had watered and
tended with womanish solicitude ; for there is apt to
be something unmanly, something almost dastardly,
in a life that does not move with dash and freedom,
and that fears the bracing contact of the world. In
one word, Thoreau was a skulker. He did not wish
virtue to go out of him among his fellow-men, but
slunk into a corner to hoard it for himself He left
all for the sake of certain virtuous self-indulgences.
It is true that his tastes were noble ; that his ruling
passion was to keep himself unspotted from the
world ; and that his luxuries were all of the same
healthy order as cold tubs and early rising. But a
man may be both coldly cruel in the pursuit of good-
ness, and morbid even in the pursuit of health. I
cannot lay my hands on the passage in which he
explains his abstinence from tea and coffee, but I am
sure I have the meaning correctly. It is this : He
thought it bad economy and worthy of no true
virtuoso to spoil the natural rapture of the morning
with such muddy stimulants; let him but see the
sun rise, and he was already sufficiently inspirited for
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HENRY DAVID THOREAU

the labours of the day. That may be reason good
enough to abstain from tea ; but when we go on to
find the same man, on the same or similar grounds,
abstain from nearly everything that his neighbours
innocently and pleasurably use, and from the rubs
and trials of human society itself into the bargain,
we recognise that valetudinarian healthfulness which
is more dehcate than sickness itself. We need have
no respect for a state of artificial training. True
health is to be able to do without it. Shakespeare,
we can imagine, might begin the day upon a quart
of ale, and yet enjoy the sunrise to the full as much
as Thoreau, and commemorate his enjoyment in
vastly better verses. A man who must separate
himself from his neighbours' habits in order to be
happy is in much the same case with one who
requires to take opium for the same purpose. What
we want to see is one who can breast into the world,
do a man's work, and still preserve his first and pure
enjoyment of existence.

Thoreau's faculties were of a piece with his moral
shyness ; for they were all dehcacies. He could
guide himself about the woods on the darkest night
by the touch of his feet. He could pick up at once
an exact dozen of pencils by the feehng, pace dis-
tances with accuracy, and gauge cubic contents by
the eye. His smeU was so dainty that he could
perceive the foetor of dwelling-houses as he passed
them by at night ; his palate so unsophisticated that,
hke a child, he disliked the taste of wine — or per-
haps, living in America, had never tasted any that

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was good ; and his knowledge of nature was so
complete and curious that he could have told the
time of year, within a day or so, by the aspect
of the plants. In his dealings with animals he was
the original of Hawthorne's Donatello. He pulled
the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail ; the
hunted fox came to him for protection ; wild squir-
rels have been seen to nestle in his waistcoat; he
would thrust his arm into a pool and bring forth
a bright, panting fish, lying undismayed in the palm
of his hand. There were few things that he could
not do. He could make a house, a boat, a pencil,
or a book. He was a surveyor, a scholar, a natural
historian. He could run, walk, climb, skate, swim,
and manage a boat. The smallest occasion served to
display his physical accomplishment ; and a manu-
facturer, from merely observing his dexterity with
the window of a railway carriage, offered him a
situation on the spot. ' The only fruit of much
living,' he observes, ' is the ability to do some slight
thing better.' But such was the exactitude of his
senses, so alive was he in every fibre, that it seems
as if the maxim should be changed in his case, for he
could do most things with unusual perfection. And
perhaps he had an approving eye to himself when he
wrote : ' Though the youth at last grows indifferent,
the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are
for ever on the side of the most sensitive.''

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HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Thoreau had decided, it would seem, from the
very first to lead a life of self-improvement : the
needle did not tremble as with richer natures, but
pointed steadily north ; and as he saw duty and
inclination in one, he turned all his strength in
that direction. He was met upon the threshold
by a common difficulty. In this world, in spite of
its many agreeable features, even the most sensi-
tive must undergo some drudgery to hve. It is
not possible to devote your time to study and medi-
tation without what are quaintly but happily de-
nominated private means ; these absent, a man must
contrive to earn his bread by some service to the
public such as the public cares to pay him for ;
or, as Thoreau loved to put it, Apollo must serve
Admetus. This was to Thoreau even a sourer
necessity than it is to most ; there was a love of
freedom, a strain of the wild man, in his nature,
that rebelled with violence against the yoke of
custom ; and he was so eager to cultivate himself
and to be happy in his own society, that he could
consent with difficulty even to the interruptions of
friendship. 'Such are my engagements to myself
that I dare not promise,' he once wrote in answer to
an invitation ; and the italics are his own. Marcus
Aurelius found time to study virtue, and between
whiles to conduct the imperial affairs of Rome ; but
Thoreau is so busy improving himself that he must

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think twice about a morning call. And now imagine
him condemned for eight hours a day to some uncon-
genial and unmeaning business ! He shrank from
the very look of the mechanical in life ; all should,
if possible, be sweetly spontaneous and swimmingly
progressive. Thus he learned to make lead-pencils,
and, when he had gained the best certificate, and his
friends began to congratulate him on his establish-
ment in life, calmly announced that he should never
make another. ' Why should I ? ' said he ; 'I would
not do again what I have done once.' For when a
thing has once been done as well as it wants to be, it
is of no further interest to the self-improver. Yet in
after years, and when it became needful to support
his family, he returned patiently to this mechanical
art — a step more than worthy of himself

The pencils seem to have been Apollo's first
experiment in the service of Admetus ; but others
followed. ' I have thoroughly tried school-keeping,'
he writes, ' and found that my expenses were in pro-
portion, or rather out of proportion, to my income ;
for I was obliged to dress and train, not to say,
think, and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time
into the bargain. As I did not teach for the benefit
of my fellow-men, but simply for a Hvelihood, this
was a failure. I have tried trade, but I found that
it would take ten years to get under way in that,
and that then I should probably be on my way to
the devil.' Nothing, indeed, can surpass his scorn
for all so-called business. Upon that subject gall
squirts from him at a touch. ' The whole enterprise
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HENRY DAVID THOREAU

of this nation is not illustrated by a thought,' he
writes ; ' it is not warmed by a sentiment ; there is
nothing in it for which a man should lay down his
life, nor even his gloves.' And again : ' If our mer-
chants did not most of them fail, and the banks
too, my faith in the old laws of this world would
be staggered. The statement that ninety-six in
a hundred doing such business surely break down
is perhaps the sweetest fact that statistics have
revealed.' The wish was probably father to the
figures ; but there is something enlivening in a
hatred of so genuine a brand, hot as Corsican re-
venge, and sneering like Voltaire.

Pencils, school-keeping, and trade being thus dis-
carded one after another, Thoreau, with a stroke of
strategy, turned the position. He saw his way to
get his board and lodging for practically nothing ;
and Admetus never got less work out of any servant
since the world began. It was his ambition to be
an Oriental philosopher ; but he was always a very
Yankee sort of Oriental. Even in the pecuhar atti-
tude in which he stood to money, his system of
personal economics, as we may call it, he displayed
a vast amount of truly down-East calculation, and
he adopted poverty like a piece of business. Yet
his system is based on one or two ideas which, I
believe, come naturally to all thoughtful youths,
and are only pounded out of them by city uncles.
Indeed, something essentially youthful distinguishes
all Thoreau's knock-down blows at current opinion.
Like the posers of a child, they leave the orthodox

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in a kind of speechless agony. These know the
thing is nonsense. They are sure there must be
an answer, yet somehow cannot find it. So it is
with his system of economy. He cuts through the
subject on so new a plane that the accepted argu-
ments apply no longer; he attacks it in a new
dialect where there are no catchwords ready made
for the defender; after you have been boxing for
years on a pohte, gladiatorial convention, here is
an assailant who does not scruple to hit below the
belt.

'The cost of a thing,' says he, 'is the amount of
what I will call life which is required to be exchanged
for it, immediately or in the long-run.' I have been
accustomed to put it to myself, perhaps more clearly,
that the price we have to pay for money is paid in
liberty. Between these two ways of it, at least, the
reader will probably not fail to find a third definition
of his own ; and it follows, on one or other, that a
man may pay too dearly for his hvelihood, by giving,
in Thoreau's terms, his whole life for it, or, in mine,
bartering for it the whole of his available hberty, and
becoming a slave till death. There are two ques-
tions to be considered— the quahty of what we buy,
and the price we have to pay for it. Do you want a
thousand a year, a two thousand a year, or a ten
thousand a year hvehhood ? and can you afford the
one you want ? It is a matter of taste ; it is not in
the least degree a question of duty, though com-
monly supposed so. But there is no authority for
that view anywhere. It is nowhere in the Bible. It
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HENRY DAVID THOREAU

is true that we might do a vast amount of good if
we were wealthy, but it is also highly improbable ;
not many do ; and the art of growing rich is not
only quite distinct from that of doing good, but the
practice of the one does not at all train a man for
practising the other. 'Money might be of great
service to me,' writes Thoreau ; ' but the difficulty
now is that I do not improve my opportunities, and
therefore I am not prepared to have my oppor-
tunities increased.' It is a mere illusion that, above
a certain income, the personal desires will be satisfied
and leave a wider margin for the generous impulse.
It is as difficult to be generous, or anything else
except perhaps a member of Parhament, on thirty
thousand as on two hundred a year.

Now Thoreau's tastes were well defined. He
loved to be free, to be master of his times and
seasons, to indulge the mind rather than the body ;
he preferred long rambles to rich dinners, his own
reflections to the consideration of society, and an
easy, calm, unfettered, active life among green trees
to dull toiling at the counter of a bank. And such
being his inclination he determined to gratify it. A
poor man must save off something ; he determined
to save off his livelihood. ' When a man has
attained those things which are necessary to life,'
he writes, 'there is another alternative than to
obtain the superfluities ; he may adventure on life
now, his vacation from humbler toil having com-
menced.' Thoreau would get shelter, some kind
of covering for his body, and necessary daily bread ;

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MEN AND BOOKS

even these he should get as cheaply as possible ; and
then, his vacation from humbler toil having com-
menced, devote himself to Oriental philosophers,
the study of nature, and the work of self-improve-
ment.

Prudence, which bids us all go to the ant for
wisdom and hoard against the day of sickness, was
not a favourite with Thoreau. He preferred that
other, whose name is so much misappropriated :
Faith. When he had secured the necessaries of
the moment, he would not reckon up possible acci-
dents or torment himself with trouble for the future.
He had no toleration for the man ' who ventures to
live only by the aid of the mutual insurance com-
pany, which has promised to bury him decently.'
He would trust himself a little to the world. ' We
may safely trust a good deal more than we do,' says
he. ' How much is not done by us ! or what if
we had been taken sick ? ' And then, with a stab
of satire, he describes contemporary mankind in a
phrase : ' All the day long on the alert, at night
we unwillingly say our prayers and commit our-
selves to uncertainties.' It is not hkely that the
public will be much affected by Thoreau, when
they blink the direct injunctions of the religion
they profess ; and yet, whether we will or no, we
make the same hazardous ventures ; we back our
own health and the honesty of our neighbours for
all that we are worth ; and it is chilhng to think
how many must lose their wager.

In 1845, twenty-eight years old, an age by which
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HENRY DAVID THOREAU

the liveliest have usually dechned into some con-
formity with the world, Thoreau, with a capital of
something less than five pounds and a borrowed axe,
walked forth into the woods by Walden Pond, and
began his new experiment in hfe. He built himself
a dwelling, and returned the axe, he says with char-
acteristic and workman-hke pride, sharper than when
he borrowed it ; he reclaimed a patch, where he
cultivated beans, peas, potatoes, and sweet corn ;
he had his bread to bake, his farm to dig, and for
the matter of six weeks in the summer he worked at
surveying, carpentry, or some other of his numerous
dexterities, for hire. For more than five years this
was all that he required to do for his support, and he
had the winter and most of the summer at his entire
disposal. For six weeks of occupation, a httle cook-
ing and a little gentle hygienic gardening, the man,
you may say, had as good as stolen his livelihood.
Or we must rather allow that he had done far
better ; for the thief himself is continually and
busily occupied; and even one born to inherit a
million will have more calls upon his time than
Thoreau. Well might he say, 'What old people
tell you you cannot do, you try and find you can.'
And how surprising is his conclusion : ' I am con-
vinced that to maintain oneself' on this earth is not a
hardship, but a pastime, if we will live simply and
wisely ; as the pursuits of simpler nations are still the
sports of the more artificiaV

When he had enough of that kind of hfe, he
showed the same simplicity in giving it up as in

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beginning it. There are some who could have done
the one, but, vanity forbidding, not the other ; and
that is perhaps the story of the hermits ; but
Thoreau made no fetich of his own example, and
did what he wanted squarely. And five years is
long enough for an experiment, and to prove the
success of transcendental Yankeeism. It is not his
frugality which is worthy of note ; for, to begin
with, that was inborn, and therefore inimitable by
others who are differently constituted ; and again,
it was no new thing, but has often been equalled by
poor Scots students at the Universities. The point
is the sanity of his view of life, and the insight with
which he recognised the position of money, and
thought out for himself the problem of riches and
a Hvelihood. Apart from his eccentricities, he had
perceived, and was acting on, a truth of universal
application. For money enters in two different char-
acters into the scheme of life. A certain amount,
varying with the number and empire of our desires,
is a true necessary to each one of us in the present
order of society ; but beyond that amount, money
is a commodity to be bought or not to be bought,
a luxury in which we may either indulge or stint
ourselves, Hke any other. And there are many
luxuries that we may legitimately prefer to it,
such as a grateful conscience, a country Hfe, or the
woman of our incHnation. Trite, flat, and obvious
as this conclusion may appear, we have only to look
round us in society to see how scantily it has been
recognised ; and perhaps even ourselves, after a
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HENRY DAVID THOREAU

little reflection, may decide to spend a trifle less
for money, and indulge ourselves a trifle more in
the article of freedom.

Ill

*To have done anything by which you earned
money merely,' says Thoreau, * is to be ' (have been,
he means) 'idle and worse.' There are two passages
in his letters, both, oddly enough, relating to fire-
wood, which must be brought together to be rightly
understood. So taken, they contain between them
the marrow of all good sense on the subject of work
in its relation to something broader than mere liveli-
hood. Here is the first : ' I suppose I have burned
up a good-sized tree to-night — and for what? I
settled with Mr. Tarbell for it the other day ; but
that wasn't the final settlement. I got off" cheaply
from him. At last one will say : " Let us see, how
much wood did you burn, sir?" And I shall shudder
to think that the next question will be, ' What did
you do while you were warm ? " ' Even after we
have settled with Admetus in the person of Mr.
Tarbell, there comes, you see, a further question.
It is not enough to have earned our hvelihood.
Either the earning itself should have been service-
able to mankind, or something else must follow.
To Uve is sometimes very difficult, but it is never
meritorious in itself ; and we must have a reason to
allege to our own conscience why we should con-
tinue to exist upon this crowded earth. If Thoreau

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nad simply dwelt in his house at Walden, a lover of
trees, birds, and fishes, and the open air and virtue, a
reader of wise books, an idle, selfish self-improver,
he would have managed to cheat Admetus, but, to
cling to metaphor, the devil would have had him in
the end. Those who can avoid toil altogether and
dwell in the Arcadia of private means, and even
those who can, by abstinence, reduce the necessary
amount of it to some six weeks a year, having the
more liberty, have only the higher moral obligation
to be up and doing in the interest of man.

The second passage is this : ' There is a far
more important and warming heat, commonly lost,
which precedes the burning of the wood. It is the
smoke of industry, which is incense. I had been so
thoroughly warmed in body and spirit, that when at
length my fuel was housed, I came near selhng it to
the ashman, as if I had extracted all its heat.'
Industry is, in itself and when properly chosen,
delightful and profitable to the worker ; and when
your toil has been a pleasure, you have not, as
Thoreau says, ' earned money merely,' but money,
health, delight, and moral profit, all in one. 'We
must heap up a great pile of doing for a small
diameter of being,' he says in another place ; and
then exclaims, ' How admirably the artist is made
to accomplish his self-culture by devotion to his
art ! ' We may escape uncongenial toil, only to
devote ourselves to that which is congenial. It is
only to transact some higher business that even
Apollo dare play the truant from Admetus. We
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HENRY DAVID THOREAU

must all work for the sake of work ; we must all
work, as Thoreau says again, in any ' absorbing pur-
suit—it does not much matter what, so it be honest ;'
but the most profitable work is that which combines
into one continued effort the largest proportion of
the powers and desires of a man's nature ; that into
which he will plunge with ardour, and from which
he will desist with reluctance ; in which he will
know the weariness of fatigue, but not that of
satiety ; and which will be ever fresh, pleasing, and
stimulating to his taste. Such work holds a man
together, braced at all points ; it does not suffer him
to doze or wander ; it keeps him actively conscious
of himself, yet raised among superior interests ; it
gives him the profit of industry with the pleasures of
a pastime. This is what his art should be to the
true artist, and that to a degree unknown in other
and less intimate pursuits. For other professions
stand apart from the human business of life ; but an
art has its seat at the centre of the artist's doings
and sufferings, deals directly with his experiences,
teaches him the lessons of his own fortunes and
mishaps, and becomes a part of his biography. So
says Goethe :

' Spat erklingt was friih erklang ;
Gliick und Ungliick wird Gesang.'

Now Thoreau's art was literature ; and it was one
of which he had conceived most ambitiously. He
loved and believed in good books. He said well,
* Life is not habitually seen from any common plat-

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form so truly and unexaggerated as in the light of
literature.' But the literature he loved was of the
heroic order. ' Books, not which afford us a cower-
ing enjoyment, but in which each thought is of
unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read,
and a timid one would not be entertained by, which
even make us dangerous to existing institutions —
such I call good books.' He did not think them
easy to be read. ' The heroic books,' he says, ' even
if printed in the character of our mother-tongue,
will always be in a language dead to degenerate
times ; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of
each word and hne, conjecturing a larger sense than
common use permits out of what wisdom and valour
and generosity we have.' Nor does he suppose that
such books are easily written. ' Great prose, of
equal elevation, commands our respect more than
great verse,' says he, * since it impUes a more per-
manent and level height, a hfe more pervaded with
the grandeur of the thought. The poet often only
makes an irruption, like the Parthian, and is off
again, shooting while he retreats ; but the prose
writer has conquered like a Roman and settled
colonies.' We may ask ourselves, almost with
dismay, whether such works exist at all but in the
imagination of the student. For the bulk of the
best of books is apt to be made up with ballast;
and those in which energy of thought is com-
bined with any statehness of utterance may be
almost counted on the fingers. Looking round in
Enghsh for a book that should answer Thoreau's
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HENRY DAVID THOREAU

two demands of a style like poetry and sense that
shall be both original and inspiriting, I come to
Milton's Areopagitica, and can name no other
instance for the moment. Two things at least are
plain : that if a man will condescend to nothing
more commonplace in the way of reading, he must
not look to have a large library ; and that if he
proposes himself to write in a similar vein, he will
find his work cut out for him.

Thoreau composed seemingly while he walked, or
at least exercise and composition were with him
intimately connected ; for we are told that ' the
length of his walk uniformly made the length of
his writing.' He speaks in one place of 'plainness
and vigour, the ornaments of style,' which is rather
too paradoxical to be comprehensively true. In
another he remarks : ' As for style of writing, if
one has anything to say it drops from him simply
as a stone falls to the ground.' We must con-
jecture a very large sense indeed for the phrase
'if one has anything to say.' When truth flows
from a man, fittingly clothed in style and without
conscious effort, it is because the effort has been
made and the work practically completed before
he sat down to write. It is only out of fulness of
thinking that expression drops perfect like a ripe
fruit; and when Thoreau wrote so nonchalantly at
his desk, it was because he had been vigorously
active during his walk. For neither clearness, com-
pression, nor beauty of language, come to any living
creature till after a busy and prolonged acquaintance
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MEN AND BOOKS

with the subject on hand. Easy writers are those
who, hke Walter Scott, choose to remain contented
with a less degree of perfection than is legitimately
within the compass of their powers. We hear of
Shakespeare and his clean manuscript; but in face
of the evidence of the style itself and of the various
editions of Hamlet, this merely proves that Messrs.
Hemming and Condell were unacquainted with the
common enough phenomenon called a fair copy. He
who would recast a tragedy already given to the
world must frequently and earnestly have revised
details in the study, Thoreau himself, and in spite
of his protestations, is an instance of even extreme
research in one direction ; and his effort after heroic
utterance is proved not only by the occasional
finish, but by the determined exaggeration of his
style. ' I trust you realise what an exaggerator
I am — that I lay myself out to exaggerate,' he
writes. And again, hinting at the explanation :
' Who that has heard a strain of music feared lest
he should speak extravagantly any more for ever ? '
And yet once more, in his essay on Carlyle, and this
time with his meaning well in hand : * No truth, we
think, was ever expressed but with this sort of
emphasis, that for the time there seemed to be no
other.' Thus Thoreau was an exaggerative and a
parabolical writer, not because he loved the litera-
ture of the East, but from a desire that people
should understand and realise what he was writing.
He was near the truth upon the general question ;
but in his own particular method, it appears to me,
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HENRY DAVID THOREAU

he wandered. Literature is not less a conventional
art than painting or sculpture ; and it is the least
striking, as it is the most comprehensive of the three.
To hear a strain of music, to see a beautiful woman,
a river, a great city, or a starry night, is to make
a man despair of his Lilliputian arts in language.
Now, to gain that emphasis which seems denied
to us by the very natul-e of the medium, the
proper method of literature is by selection, which is
a kind of negative exaggeration. It is the right of
the literary artist, as Thoreau was on the point of
seeing, to leave out whatever does not suit his
purpose. Thus we extract the pure gold ; and thus
the well-written story of a noble life becomes, by its
very omissions, more thrilhng to the reader. But to
go beyond this, like Thoreau, and to exaggerate
directly, is to leave the saner classical tradition, and
to put the reader on his guard. And when you
write the whole for the half, you do not express your
thought more forcibly, but only express a different
thought which is not yours.

Thoreau's true subject was the pursuit of self-
improvement combined with an unfriendly criticism
of life as it goes on in our societies ; it is there
that he best displays the freshness and surprising
tren chancy of his intellect ; it is there that his style
becomes plain and vigorous, and therefore, accord-
ing to his own formula, ornamental. Yet he did
not care to follow this vein singly, but must drop
into it by the way in books of a different purport.
Walden, or Life in the Woodsy A Week on the

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Concord and Merrimack Rivers ; The Maine Woods,
— such are the titles he affects. He was probably
reminded by his delicate critical perception that the
true business of literature is with narrative ; in
reasoned narrative, and there alone, that art enjoys
all its advantages, and suffers least from its defects.
Dry precept and disembodied disquisition, as they
can only be read with an effort of abstraction, can
never convey a perfectly complete or a perfectly
natural impression. Truth, even in literature, must
be clothed with flesh and blood, or it cannot tell
its whole story to the reader. Hence the effect
of anecdote on simple minds ; and hence good
biographies and works of high, imaginative art,
are not only far more entertaining, but far more
edifying, than books of theory or precept. Now
Thoreau could not clothe his opinions in the gar-
ment of art, for that was not his talent ; but he
sought to gain the same elbow-room for himself, and
to afford a similar rehef to his readers, by minghng
his thoughts with a record of experience.

Again, he was a lover of nature. The quality
which we should call mystery in a painting, and
which belongs so particularly to the aspect of the
external world and to its influence upon our feelings,
was one which he was never weary of attempting to
reproduce in his books. The seeming significance
of nature's appearances, their unchanging strange-
ness to the senses, and the thrilhng response which
they waken in the mind of man, continued to sur-
prise and stimulate his spirits. It appeared to him,
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HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I think, that if we could only write near enough
to the facts, and yet with no pedestrian calm, but
ardently, we might transfer the glamour of reality
direct upon our pages ; and that, if it were once
thus captured and expressed, a new and instructive
relation might appear between men's thoughts and
the phenomena of nature. This was the eagle that
he pursued all his life long, like a schoolboy with a
butterfly net. Hear him to a friend : ' Let me
suggest a theme for you — to state to yourself pre-
cisely and completely what that walk over the
mountains amounted to for you, returning to this
essay again and again until you are satisfied that all
that was important in your experience is in it.
Don't suppose that you can tell it precisely the first
dozen times you try, but at 'em again ; especially
when, after a sufficient pause, you suspect that you
are touching the heart or summit of the matter,
reiterate your blows there, and account for the
mountain to yourself Not that the story need be
long, but it will take a long while to make it short.'
Such was the method, not consistent for a man
whose meanings were to ' drop from him as a stone
falls to the ground.' Perhaps the most successful
work that Thoreau ever accomplished in this direc-
tion is to be found in the passages relating to fish in
the Week. These are remarkable for a vivid truth
of impression and a happy suitability of language,
not frequently surpassed.

Whatever Thoreau tried to do was tried in fair,
square prose, with sentences solidly built, and no

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help from bastard rhythms. Moreover, there is a
progression — I cannot call it a progress — in his work
towards a more and more strictly prosaic level, until
at last he sinks into the bathos of the prosy. Emer-
son mentions having once remarked to Thoreau :
' Who would not like to write something which all
can read, like Robinson Crusoe ? and who does not
see with regret that his page is not solid with a right
materiahstic treatment which delights everybody ? '
I must say in passing, that it is not the right
materialistic treatment which delights the world in
Robinson, but the romantic and philosophic interest
of the fable. The same treatment does quite the
reverse of delighting us when it is appUed, in Colonel
Jack, to the management of a plantation. But I
cannot help suspecting Thoreau to have been in-
fluenced either by this identical remark or by some
other closely similar in meaning. He began to fall
more and more into a detailed materiahstic treat-
ment ; he went into the business doggedly, as one
who should make a guide-book ; he not only
chronicled what had been important in his own
experience, but whatever might have been important
in the experience of anybody else ; not only what
had affected him, but all that he saw or heard. His
ardour had grown less, or perhaps it was incon-
sistent with a right materialistic treatment to display
such emotions as he felt ; and, to complete the
eventful change, he chose, from a sense of moral
dignity, to gut these later works of the saving quality
of humour. He was not one of those authors who
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HENRY DAVID THOREAU

have learned, in his own words, 'to leave out their
dulness.' He inflicts his full quantity upon the
reader in such books as Cape Cod or The Yankee in
Canada. Of the latter he confessed that he had not
managed to get much of himself into it. Heaven
knows he had not, nor yet much of Canada, we may
hope. ' Nothing,' he says somewhere, ' can shock a
brave man but dulness.' Well, there are few spots
more shocking to the brave than the pages of The
Yankee in Canada.

There are but three books of his that will be read
with much pleasure : the Week, Walden, and the
collected letters. As to his poetry, Emerson's word
shall suffice for us, it is so accurate and so prettily
said : ' The thyme and marjoram are not yet honey.'
In this, as in his prose, he relied greatly on the
goodwill of the reader, and wrote throughout in
faith. It was an exercise of faith to suppose that
many would understand the sense of his best work,
or that any could be exhilarated by the dreary
chronicling of his worst. ' But,' as he says, ' the
gods do not hear any rude or discordant sound, as
we learn from the echo ; and I know that the nature
towards which I launch these sounds is so rich that
it will modulate anew and wonderfully improve my
rudest strain.'

' What means the fact,' he cries, ' that a soul
which has lost all hope for itself can inspire in

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another listening soul such an infinite confidence in
it, even while it is expressing its despair ? ' The
question is an echo and an illustration of the words
last quoted; and it forms the key-note of his
thoughts on friendship. No one else, to my know-
ledge, has spoken in so high and just a spirit of the
kindly relations ; and I doubt whether it be a draw-
back that these lessons should come from one in
many ways so unfitted to be a teacher in this branch.
The very coldness and egoism of his own intercourse
gave him a clearer insight into the intellectual basis
of our warm, mutual tolerations ; and testimony to
their worth comes with added force from one who
was solitary and disobliging, and of whom a friend
remarked, with equal wit and wisdom, ' I love
Henry, but I cannot like him.'

He can hardly be persuaded to make any dis-
tinction between love and friendship ; in such rarefied
and freezing air, upon the mountain-tops of medita-
tion, had he taught himself to breathe. He was, in-
deed, too accurate an observer not to have remarked
that ' there exists already a natural disinterestedness
and liberality ' between men and women ; yet, he
thought, ' friendship is no respecter of sex. ' Perhaps
there is a sense iu which the words are true ; but
they were spoken in ignorance ; and perhaps we shall
have put the matter most correctly, if we call love a
foundation for a nearer and freer degree of friendship
than can be possible without it. For there are deli-
cacies, eternal between persons of the same sex, which
are melted and disappear in the warmth of love.
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HENRY DAVID THOUEAU

To both, if they are to be right, he attributes the
same nature and condition. ' We are not what we
are,' says he, ' nor do we treat or esteem each other
for such, but for what we are capable of being.' ' A
friend is one who incessantly pays us the comph-
ment of expecting all the virtues from us, and who
can appreciate them in us.' 'The friend asks no
return but that his friend will rehgiously accept and
wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him.' ' It is
the merit and preservation of friendship that it takes
place on a level higher than the actual characters of
the parties would seem to warrant' This is to put
friendship on a pedestal indeed ; and yet the root of
the matter is there; and the last sentence, in par-
ticular, is hke a light in a dark place, and makes
many mysteries plain. We are different with
different friends ; yet if we look closely we shaU find
that every such relation reposes on some particular
apotheosis of oneself ; with each friend, although we
could not distinguish it in words from any other, we
have at least one special reputation to preserve : and
it is thus that we run, when mortified, to our friend
or the woman that we love, not to hear ourselves
called better, but to be better men in point of fact.
We seek this society to flatter ourselves with our
own good conduct. And hence any falsehood in the
relation, any incomplete or perverted understanding,
wiU spoil even the pleasure of these visits. Thus
says Thoreau again : ' Only lovers know the value
of truth.' And yet again : ' They ask for words and
deeds, when a true relation is word and deed.'

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But it follows that since they are neither of them
so good as the other hopes, and each is, in a very
honest manner, playing a part above his powers,
such an intercourse must often be disappointing to
both. * We may bid farewell sooner than com-
plain,' says Thoreau, 'for our complaint is too well
grounded to be uttered.' 'We have not so good a
right to hate any as our friend.'

' It were treason to our love
And a sin to God above.
One iota to abate
Of a pure, impartial hate.'

Love is not blind, nor yet forgiving. 'O yes,
believe me,' as the song says, 'Love has eyes!'
The nearer the intimacy, the more cuttingly do we
feel the unworthiness of those we love ; and because
you love one, and would die for that love to-morrow,
you have not forgiven, and you never will forgive,
that friend's misconduct. If you want a person's
faults, go to those who love him. They will not
tell you, but they know. And herein lies the
magnanimous courage of love, that it endures this
knowledge without change.

It required a cold, distant personahty like that of
Thoreau, perhaps, to recognise and certainly to utter
this truth ; for a more human love makes it a point
of honour not to acknowledge those faults of which
it is most conscious. But his point of view is both
high and dry. He has no illusions; he does not
give way to love any more than to hatred, but pre-
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serves them both with care like valuable curiosities.
A more bald-headed picture of life, if I may so
express myself, has seldom been presented. He is
an egoist ; he does not remember, or does not
think it worth while to remark, that, in these near
intimacies, we are ninety-nine times disappointed
in our beggarly selves for once that we are dis-
appointed in our friend; that it is we who seem
most frequently undeserving of the love that unites
us ; and that it is by our friend's conduct that we
are continually rebuked and yet strengthened for
a fresh endeavour. Thoreau is dry, priggish, and
selfish. It is profit he is after in these intimacies ;
moral profit, certainly, but still profit to himself. If
you will be the sort of friend I want, he remarks
naively, ' my education cannot dispense with your
society.' His education ! as though a friend were
a dictionary. And with all this, not one word about
pleasure, or laughter, or kisses, or any quality of
flesh and blood. It was not inappropriate, surely,
that he had such close relations with the fish. We
can understand the friend already quoted, when he
cried: 'As for taking his arm, I would as soon
think of taking the arm of an elm-tree ! '

As a matter of fact he experienced but a broken
enjoyment in his intimacies. He says he has been
perpetually on the brink of the sort of intercourse
he wanted, and yet never completely attained it.
And what else had he to expect when he would
not, in a happy phrase of Carlyle's, ' nestle down
into it ' ? Truly, so it will be always if you only

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stroll in upon your friends as you might stroll in
to see a cricket-match ; and even then not simply
for the pleasure of the thing, but with some after-
thought of self-improvement, as though you had
come to the cricket-match to bet. It was his theory
that people saw each other too frequently, so that
their curiosity was not properly whetted, nor had
they anything fresh to communicate ; but friendship
must be something else than a society for mutual
improvement— indeed, it must only be that by the
way, and to some extent unconsciously ; and if
Thoreau had been a man instead of a manner of
elm-tree, he would have felt that he saw his friends
too seldom, and have reaped benefits unknown to his
philosophy from a more sustained and easy inter-
course. We might remind him of his own words
about love : ' We should have no reserve ; we should
give the whole of ourselves to that business. But
commonly men have not imagination enough to be
thus employed about a human being, but must
be coopering a barrel, forsooth.' Ay, or reading
Oriental philosophers. It is not the nature of the
rival occupation, it is the fact that you suffer it to
be a rival, that renders loving intimacy impossible.
Nothing is given for nothing in this world ; there
can be no true love, even on your own side, without
devotion ; devotion is the exercise of love, by which
it grows ; but if you will give enough of that, if you
will pay the price in a sufficient ' amount of what
you call life,' why then, indeed, whether with wife
or comrade, you may have months and even years
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HENRY DAVID THOREAU

of such easy, natural, pleasurable, and yet improving
intercourse as shall make time a moment and kind-
ness a dehght.

The secret of his retirement lies not in misan-
thropy, of which he had no tincture, but part in
his engrossing design of self-improvement and part
in the real deficiencies of social intercourse. He
was not so much difficult about his fellow human
beings as he could not tolerate the terms of their
association. He could take to a man for any
genuine qualities, as we see by his admirable sketch
of the Canadian woodcutter in Walden ; but he
would not consent, in his own words, to 'feebly
fabulate and paddle in the social slush.' It seemed
to him, I think, that society is precisely the reverse
of friendship, in that it takes place on a lower level
than the characters of any of the parties would
warrant us to expect. The society talk of even
the most brilUant man is of greatly less account
than what you will get from him in (as the French
say) a little committee. And Thoreau wanted
geniality ; he had not enough of the superficial,
even at command ; he could not swoop into a parlour
and, in the naval phrase, ' cut out ' a human being
from that dreary port ; nor had he inclination
for the task. I suspect he loved books and nature
as well and near as warmly as he loved his fellow-
creatures, — a melancholy, lean degeneration of the
human character.

' As for the dispute about solitude and society,'
he thus sums up : ' Any comparison is impertinent.

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It is an idling down on the plain at the base of the
mountain instead of climbing steadily to its top.
Of course you will be glad of all the society you
can get to go up with. Will you go to glory with
me ? is the burden of the song. It is not that
we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and
when we do soar the company grows thinner and
thinner till there is none at all. It is either the
tribune on the plain, a sermon on the mount, or a
very private ecstasy still higher up. Use all the
society that will abet you.' But surely it is no very
extravagant opinion that it is better to give than
to receive, to serve than to use our companions ;
and above all, where there is no question of service
upon either side, that it is good to enjoy their com-
pany like a natural man. It is curious and in some
ways dispiriting that a writer may be always best
corrected but of his own mouth ; and so, to con-
clude, here is another passage from Thoreau which
seems aimed directly at himself : ' Do not be too
moral ; you may cheat yourself out of much hfe
so. . . . All fables, indeed, have theii^ morals; but
the innocent enjoy the story. '

' The only obligation,' says he, ' which I have a
right to assume is to do at any time what I think
right' 'Why should we ever go abroad, even across
the way, to ask a neighbour's advice ? ' ' There
is a nearer neighbour within, who is incessantly
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HENRY DAVID THOREAU

telling us how we should behave. But we wait
for the neighbour without to tell us of some false,
easier way.' ' The greater part of what my neigh-
bours call good I believe in my soul to be bad.' To
be what we are, and to become what we are capable
of becoming, is the only end of life. It is ' when
we fall behind ourselves ' that ' we are cursed with
duties and the neglect of duties.' ' I love the wild,'
he says, * not less than the good.' And again : ' The
life of a good man wdll hardly improve us more than
the life of a freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear
as plainly in the infringement as in the observance,
and ' (mark this) ' our lives are sustained by a nearly
equal expense of virtue of some kind.' Even al-
though he were a prig, it will be owned he could
announce a startling doctrine. ' As for doing good,'
he writes elsewhere, ' that is one of the professions
that are full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and,
strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does
not agree with my constitution. Probably I should
not conscientiously and deliberately forsake my
particular calling to do the good which society
demands of me, to save the universe from annihila-
tion ; and I believe that a like but infinitely greater
steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it.
If you should ever be betrayed into any of these
philanthropies, do not let your left hand know
what your right hand does, for it is not worth know-
ing.' Elsewhere he returns upon the subject, and
explains his meaning thus : * If I ever did a man
any good in their sense, of course it was something

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exceptional and insignificant compared with the
good or evil I am constantly doing by being what
I am.'

There is a rude nobility, hke that of a barbarian
king, in this unshaken confidence in himself and
indifference to the wants, thoughts, or sufferings of
others. In his whole works I find no trace of pity.
This was partly the result of theory, for he held the
world too mysterious to be criticised, and asks con-
clusively : ' What right have T to grieve who have
not ceased to wonder ? ' But it sprang still more
from constitutional indifference and superiority ; and
he grew up healthy, composed and unconscious from
among life's horrors, like a green bay-tree from a
field of battle. It was from this lack in himself that
he failed to do justice to the spirit of Christ ; for
while he could glean more meaning from individual
precepts than any score of Christians, yet he con-
ceived life in such a different hope, and viewed it
with such contrary emotions, that the sense and
purport of the doctrine as a whole seems to have
passed him by or left him unimpressed. He could
understand the idealism of the Christian view, but
he was himself so unaffectedly unhuman that he
did not recognise the human intention and essence
of that teaching. Hence he complained that Christ
did not leave us a rule that was proper and sufficient
for this world, not having conceived the nature of
the rule that was laid down ; for things of that
character that are sufficiently unacceptable become
positively non-existent to the mind. But perhaps
1 60

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

we shall best appreciate the defect in Thoreau by
seeing it supplied in the case of Whitman. For the
one, I feel confident, is the disciple of the other ; it
is what Thoreau clearly whispered that Whitman so
uproariously bawls ; it is the same doctrine, but with
how immense a difference ! the same argument, but
used to what a new conclusion ! Thoreau had
plenty of humour until he tutored himself out of
it, and so forfeited that best birthright of a sensible
man ; Whitman, in that respect, seems to have been
sent into the world naked and unashamed ; and yet
by a strange consummation, it is the theory of the
former that is arid, abstract, and claustral. Of these
two philosophies, so nearly identical at bottom, the
one pursues Self-improvement — a churhsh, mangy
dog ; the other is up with the morning, in the best of
health, and following the nymph Happiness, buxom,
blithe, and debonair. Happiness, at least, is not
solitary ; it joys to communicate ; it loves others,
for it depends on them for its existence ; it sanctions
and encourages to all delights that are not unkind
in themselves ; if it lived to a thousand, it would
not make excision of a single humorous passage ;
and while the self-improver dwindles towards the
prig, and, if he be not of an excellent constitution,
may even grow deformed into an Obermann, the very
name and appearance of a happy man breathe of
good-nature, and help the rest of us to live.

In the case of Thoreau, so great a show of
doctrine demands some outcome in the field of
action. If nothing were to be done but build a
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shanty beside Walden Pond, we have heard al-
together too much of these declarations of inde-
pendence. That the man wrote some books is
nothing to the purpose, for the same has been done
in a suburban villa. That he kept himself happy
is perhaps a sufficient excuse, but it is disappointing
to the reader. We may be unjust, but when a man
despises commerce and philanthropy ahke, and has
views of good so soaring that he must take himself
apart from mankind for their cultivation, we will
not be content without some striking act. It was
not Thoreau's fault if he were not martyred ; had
the occasion come, he would have made a noble
ending. As it is, he did once seek to interfere in
the world's course ; he made one practical appear-
ance on the stage of affairs ; and a strange one it
was, and strangely characteristic of the nobihty and
the eccentricity of the man. It was forced on him
by his calm but radical opposition to negro slavery.
' Voting for the right is doing nothing for it,' he
saw ; ' it is only expressing to men feebly your desire
that it should prevail.' For his part, he would not
' for an instant recognise that political organisation
for his government which is the slaves government
also.' ' I do not hesitate to say,' he adds, ' that
those who call themselves Abolitionists should at
once effectually withdraw their support, both in
person and property, from the government of Mas-
sachusetts.' That is what he did : in 1843 he ceased
to pay the poll-tax. The highway-tax he paid, for
he said he was as desirous to be a good neighbour
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HENRY DAVID THOREAU

as to be a bad subject ; but no more poll-tax to the
State of Massachusetts. Thoreau had now seceded,
and was a polity unto himself; or, as he explains
it with admirable sense, 'In fact, I quietly declare
war with the State after my fashion, though I will
still make what use and get what advantage of her
I can, as is usual in such cases.' He was put in
prison ; but that was a part of his design. ' Under
a government which imprisons any unjustly, the
true place for a just man is also a prison. I know
this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if
ten men whom I could name — ay, if one honest
man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold
slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartner-
ship, and be locked up in the county gaol therefor,
it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For
it matters not how small the beginning may seem
to be ; what is once well done is done for ever.'
Such was his theory of civil disobedience.

And the upshot ? A friend paid the tax for him ;
continued year by year to pay it in the sequel ; and
Thoreau was free to walk the woods unmolested.
It was a fiasco, but to me it does not seem laugh-
able ; even those who joined in the laughter at the
moment would be insensibly affected by this quaint
instance of a good man's horror for injustice. We
may compute the worth of that one night's imprison-
ment as outweighing half a hundred voters at some
subsequent election ; and if Thoreau had possessed
as great a power of persuasion as (let us say) Fal-
staff, if he had counted a party however small, if

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his example had been followed by a hundred or by
thirty of his fellows, I cannot but beheve it would
have greatly precipitated the era of freedom and
justice. We feel the misdeeds of our country with so
little fervour, for we are not witnesses to the suffering
they cause ; but when we see them wake an active
horror in our fellow-man, when we see a neighbour
prefer to He in prison rather than be so much as pas-
sively implicated in their perpetration, even the dullest
of us will begin to reahse them with a quicker pulse.

Not far from twenty years later, when Captain
John Brown was taken at Harper's Ferry, Thoreau
was the first to come forward in his defence. The
committees wrote to him unanimously that his
action was premature. ' I did not send to you for
advice,' said he, ' but to announce that I was to
speak.' I have used the word 'defence'; in truth
he did not seek to defend him, even declared it
would be better for the good cause that he should
die ; but he praised his action as I think Brown
would have liked to hear it praised.

Thus this singularly eccentric and independent
mind, wedded to a character of so much strength,
singleness, and purity, pursued its own path of self-
improvement for more than half a century, part
gymnosophist, part backwoodsman ; and thus did
it come twice, though in a subaltern attitude, into
the field of political history.

Note. — For many facts in the above essay^ among which I may mention
the incident of the squirrel, I am indebted to Thoreau: His Life and
Aims, by ' H. A. Page/ i.e., as is well known. Dr. Japp.
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YOSHIDA-TORAJIRO

The name at the head of this page is probably
unknown to the English reader, and yet I think it
should become a household word like that of Gari-
baldi or John Brown. Some day soon, we may
expect to hear more fully the details of Yoshida's
history, and the degree of his influence in the trans-
formation of Japan ; even now there must be
Englishmen acquainted with the subject, and per-
haps the appearance of this sketch may elicit some-
thing more complete and exact. I wish to say that
I am not, rightly speaking, the author of the present
paper : I tell the story on the authority of an in-
telligent Japanese gentleman, Mr. Taiso Masaki,
who told it me with an emotion that does honour
to his heart ; and though I have taken some pains,
and sent my notes to him to be corrected, this can
be no more than an imperfect outline.

Yoshida-Torajiro was son to the hereditary military
instructor of the house of Choshu. The name you
are to pronounce with an equality of accent on the

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different syllables, almost as in French, the vowels
as in Italian, but the consonants in the English
manner — except the j, which has the French sound,
or, as it has been cleverly proposed to write it, the
sound of zh. Yoshida was very learned in Chinese
letters, or, as we might say, in the classics, and in
his father's subject ; fortification was among his
favourite studies, and he was a poet from his boy-
hood. He was born to a lively and intelligent
patriotism ; the condition of Japan was his great
concern ; and while he projected a better future, he
lost no opportunity of improving his knowledge of
her present state. With this end he was continually
travelling in his youth, going on foot and sometimes
with three days' provisions on his back, in the brave,
self-helpful manner of all heroes. He kept a full
diary while he was thus upon his journeys, but it is
feared that these notes have been destroyed. If
their value were in any respect such as we have
reason to expect from the man's character, this
would be a loss not easy to exaggerate. It is still
wonderful to the Japanese how far he contrived to
push these explorations ; a cultured gentleman of
that land and period would leave a complimentary
poem wherever he had been hospitably entertained ;
and a friend of Mr. Masaki, who was likewise a great
wanderer, has found such traces of Yoshida's passage
in very remote regions of Japan.

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which
no preparation is thought necessary ; but Yoshida
considered otherwise, and he studied the miseries of
i66

YOSHIDA-TORAJIRO

his fellow-countrymen with as much attention and
research as though he had been going to write a
book, instead of merely to propose a remedy. To
a man of his intensity and singleness, there is no
question but that this survey was melancholy in the
extreme. His dissatisfaction is proved by the eager-
ness with which he threw himself into the cause of
reform ; and what would have discouraged another
braced Yoshida for his task. As he professed the
theory of arms, it was firstly the defences of Japan
that occupied his mind. The external feebleness of
that country was then illustrated by the manners of
overriding barbarians, and the visits of big barbarian
war-ships : she was a country beleaguered. Thus
the patriotism of Yoshida took a form which may be
said to have defeated itself : he had it upon him to
keep out these all-powerful foreigners, whom it is
now one of his chief merits to have helped to in-
troduce ; but a man who follows his own virtuous
heart will be always found in the end to have been
fighting for the best. One thing leads naturally to
another in an awakened mind, and that with an up-
ward progress from effect to cause. The power and
knowledge of these foreigners were things insepar-
able ; by envying them their military strength,
Yoshida came to envy them their culture ; from
the desire to equal them in the first sprang his
desire to share with them in the second ; and thus
he is found treating in the same book of a new
scheme to strengthen the defences of Kioto and of
the establishment, in the same city, of a university

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of foreign teachers. He hoped, perhaps, to get the
good of other lands without their evil ; to enable
Japan to profit by the knowledge of the barbarians,
and still keep her inviolate with her own arts and
virtues. But whatever was the precise nature of his
hope, the means by which it was to be accomplished
were both difficult and obvious. Some one with
eyes and understanding must break through the
official cordon, escape into the new world, and
study this other civilisation on the spot. And who
could be better suited for the business ? It was not
without danger, but he was without fear. It needed
preparation and insight ; and what had he done since
he was a child but prepare himself with the best
culture of Japan, and acquire in his excursions the
power and habit of observing ?

He was but twenty-two, and already all this was
clear in his mind, when news reached Choshu that
Commodore Perry was lying near to Yeddo. Here,
then, was the patriot's opportunity. Among the
Samurai of Choshu, and in particular among the
councillors of the Daimio, his general culture, his
views, which the enlightened were eager to accept,
and, above all, the prophetic charm, the radiant
persuasion of the man, had gained him many and
sincere disciples. He had thus a strong influence
at th^, provincial Court ; and so he obtained leave
to q,uit the district, and, by way of a pretext, a
privilege to follow his profession in Yeddo. Thither
he hurried, and arrived in time to be too late : Perry
had weighed anchor, and his sails had vanished from
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YOSHIDA-TORAJmO

the waters of Japan. But Yoshida, having put his
hand to the plough, was not the man to go back ;
he had entered upon this business, and, please God,
he would carry it through ; and so he gave up his
professional career and remained in Yeddo to be at
hand against the next opportunity. By this be-
haviour he put himself into an attitude towards his
superior, the Daimio of Choshu, which I cannot
thoroughly explain. Certainly, he became a Ronyin,
a broken man, a feudal outlaw ; certainly he was
liable to be arrested if he set foot upon his native
province ; yet I am cautioned that ' he did not really
break his allegiance,' but only so far separated him-
self as that the prince could no longer be held
accountable for his late vassal's conduct. There is
some nicety of feudal custom here that escapes my
comprehension.

In Yeddo, with this nondescript political status,
and cut off from any means of livehhood, he was
joyfully supported by those who sympathised with
his design. One was Sakuma-Shozan, hereditary
retainer of one of the Shogun's councillors, and from
him he got more than money or than money's worth.
A steady, respectable man, with an eye to the
world's opinion, Sakuma was one of those who, if
they cannot do great deeds in their own person,
have yet an ardour of admu'ation for those who can,
that recommends them to the gratitude of history.
They aid and abet greatness more, perhaps, than we
imagine. One thinks of them in connection with
Nicodemus, who visited our Lord by night. And

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MEN AND BOOKS

Sakuma was in a position to help Yoshida more
practically than by simple countenance ; for he could
read Dutch, and was eager to communicate what he
knew.

While the young Ronyin thus lay studying in
Yeddo, news came of a Russian ship at Nangasaki.
No time was to be lost. Sakuma contributed ' a long
copy of encouraging verses ' ; and off set Yoshida
on foot for Nangasaki. His way lay through his
own province of Choshu ; but, as the high-road to
the south lay apart from the capital, he was able to
avoid arrest. He supported himself, like a trouvere,
by his proficiency in verse. He carried his works
along with him to serve as an introduction. When
he reached a town he would inquire for the house of
any one celebrated for swordsmanship, or poetry, or
some of the other acknowledged forms of culture ;
and there, on giving a taste of his skill, he would be
received and entertained, and leave behind him,
when he went away, a compliment in verse. Thus
he travelled through the Middle Ages on his voyage
of discovery into the nineteenth century. When he
reached Nangasaki he was once more too late. The
Russians were gone. But he made a profit on his
journey in spite of fate, and stayed a while to pick
up scraps of knowledge from the Dutch interpreters
— a low class of men, but one that had opportunities ;
and then, still full of purpose, returned to Yeddo on
foot, as he had come.

It was not only his youth and courage that sup-
ported him under these successive disappointments,
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YOSHIDA-TORAJIRO

but the continual affluence of new disciples. The
man had the tenacity of a Bruce or a Columbus,
with a pliability that was all his own. He did not
fight for what the world would call success ; but for
'the wages of going on.' Check him off in a dozen
directions, he would find another outlet and break
forth. He missed one vessel after another, and the
main work still halted; but so long as he had a
single Japanese to enlighten and prepare for the
better future, he could still feel that he was working
for Japan. Now, he had scarce returned from Nan-
gasaki, when he was sought out by a new inquirer,
the most promising of all. This was a common
soldier, of the Hemming class, a dyer by birth, who
had heard vaguely^ of Yoshida's movements, and
had become filled with wonder as to their design.
This was a far different inquirer from Sakuma-
Shozan, or the councillors of the Daimio of Choshu.
This was no two-sworded gentleman, but the com-
mon stuff of the country, born in low traditions and
unimproved by books ; and yet that influence, that
radiant persuasion that never failed Yoshida in any
circumstance of his short Ufe, enchanted, enthralled,
and converted the common soldier, as it had done

1 Yoshida, when on his way to Nangasaki, met the soldier and talked
with him by the roadside ; they then parted, but the soldier was so much
struck by the words he heard, that on Yoshida's return he sought him
out and declared his intention of devoting his life to the good cause. I
venture, in the absence of the writer, to insert this correction, having
been present when the story was told by Mr. Masaki.— F. J. [Fleeming
Jenkin]. And I, there being none to settle the difference, must reproduce
both versions.— R. L. S.

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MEN AND BOOKS

already with the elegant and learned. The man
instantly burned up into a true enthusiasm ; his mind
had been only waiting for a teacher ; he grasped in
a moment the profit of these new ideas ; he, too,
would go to foreign, outlandish parts, and bring back
the knowledge that was to strengthen and renew
Japan ; and in the meantime, that he might be the
better prepared, Yoshida set himself to teach, and
he to learn, the Chinese literature. It is an episode
most honourable to Yoshida, and yet more honour-
able still to the soldier, and to the capacity and
virtue of the common people of Japan.

And now, at length. Commodore Perry returned
to Simoda. Friends crowded round Yoshida with
help, counsels, and encouragement. One presented
him with a great sword, three feet long and very
heavy, which, in the exultation of the hour, he swore
to carry throughout all his wanderings, and to bring
back — a far-travelled weapon — to Japan. A long
letter was prepared in Chinese for the American
officers ; it was revised and corrected by Sakuma,
and signed by Yoshida, under the name of Urinaki-
Manji, and by the soldier under that of Ichigi-Koda.
Yoshida had supplied himself with a profusion of
materials for writing ; his dress was literally stuffed
with paper which was to come back again enriched
with his observations, and make a great and happy
kingdom of Japan. Thus equipped, this pair of
emigrants set forward on foot from Yeddo, and
reached Simoda about nightfall. At no period within
history can travel have presented to any European
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YOSHTDA-TORAJIRO

creature the same face of awe and terror as to these
courageous Japanese. The descent of Ulysses into
hell is a parallel more near the case than the boldest
expedition in the Polar circles. For their act was
unprecedented ; it was criminal ; and it was to take
them beyond the pale of humanity into a land of
devils. It is not to be wondered at if they were
thrilled by the thought of their unusual situation ;
and perhaps the soldier gave utterance to the senti-
ment of both when he sang, ' in Chinese singing ' (so
that we see he had already profited by his lessons),
these two appropriate verses :

' We do not know where we are to sleep to-night.
In a thousand miles of desert where we can see no
human smoke.'

In a little temple, hard by the sea-shore, they lay
down to repose ; sleep overtook them as they lay ;
and when they awoke, * the east was already white '
for their last morning in Japan. They seized a
fisherman's boat and rowed out — Perry lying far to
sea because of the two tides. Their very manner of
boarding was significant of determination ; for they
had no sooner caught hold upon the ship than they
kicked away their boat to make return impossible.
And now you would have thought that all was over.
But the Commodore was already in treaty with the
Shogun's Government ; it was one of the stipulations
that no Japanese was to be aided in escaping from
Japan ; and Yoshida and his followers were handed
over as prisoners to the authorities at Simoda. That

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night he who had been to explore the secrets of the
barbarian, slept, if he might sleep at all, in a cell too
short for lying down at full length, and too low for
standing upright. There are some disappointments
too great for commentary.

Sakuma, implicated by his handwriting, was sent
into his own province in confinement, from which he
was soon released. Yoshida and the soldier suffered
a long and miserable period of captivity, and the
latter, indeed, died, while yet in prison, of a skin
disease. But such a spirit as that of Yoshida-Torajiro
is not easily made or kept a captive ; and that which
cannot be broken by misfortune you shall seek in
vain to confine in a bastille. He was indefatigably
active, writing reports to Government and treatises
for dissemination. These latter were contraband ;
and yet he found no difficulty in their distribution,
for he always had the jailer on his side. It was in
vain that they kept changing him from one prison to
another; Government by that plan only hastened
the spread of new ideas ; for Yoshida had only to
arrive to make a convert. Thus, though he himself
was laid by the heels, he confirmed and extended his
party in the State.

At last, after many lesser transferences, he was
given over from the prisons of the Shogun to those
of his own superior, the Daimio of Choshu. I
conceive it possible that he may then have served
out his time for the attempt to leave Japan, and was
now resigned to the provincial Government on a
lesser count, as a Bonyin or feudal rebel. But
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YOSHIDA-TORAJIRO

however that may be, the change was of great im-
portance to Yoshida ; for by the influence of his
admirers in the Daimio's council, he was allowed
the privilege, underhand, of dwelling in his own
house. And there, as well to keep up communica-
tion with his fellow-reformers as to pursue his work
of education, he received bol^s to teach. It must
not be supposed that he was free ; he was too marked
a man for that ; he was probably assigned to some
small circle, and lived, as we should say, under
police surveillance ; but to him, who had done so
much from under lock and key, this would seem a
large and profitable liberty.

It was at this period that Mr. Masaki was brought
into personal contact with Yoshida ; and hence,
through the eyes of a boy of thirteen, we get one
good look at the character and habits of the hero.
He was ugly and laughably disfigured with the
small-pox ; and while nature had been so niggardly
with him from the first, his personal habits were
even sluttish. His clothes were wretched ; when he
ate or washed he wiped his hands upon his sleeves ;
and as his hair was not tied more than once in the
two months, it was often disgusting to behold.
With such a picture, it is easy to believe that he
never married. A good teacher, gentle in act,
although violent and abusive in speech, his lessons
were apt to go over the heads of his scholars, and to
leave them gaping, or more often laughing. Such
was his passion for study that he even grudged
himself natural repose ; and when he grew drowsy

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over his books he would, if it was summer, put
mosquitoes up his sleeve ; and, if it was winter,
take off his shoes and run barefoot on the snow.
His handwriting was exceptionally villainous ; poet
though he was, he had no taste for what was elegant;
and in a country where to write beautifully was not
the mark of a scrivener but an admired accomplish-
ment for gentlemen, he suffered his letters to be
jolted out of him by the press of matter and the
heat of his convictions. He would not tolerate even
the appearance of a bribe ; for bribery lay at the
root of much that was evil in Japan, as well as in
countries nearer home ; and once when a merchant
brought him his son to educate, and added, as was
customary,^ a little private sweetener, Yoshida dashed
the money in the giver's face, and launched into
such an outbreak of indignation as made the matter
pubhc in the school. He was still, when Masaki
knew him, much weakened by his hardships in
prison ; and the presentation-sword, three feet long,
was too heavy for him to wear without distress ; yet
he would always gird it on when he went to dig in
his garden. That is a touch which quahfies the man.
A weaker nature would have shrunk from the sight
of what only commemorated a failure. But he was of
Thoreau's mind, that if you can ' make your failure
tragical by courage, it will not differ from success.'
He could look back without confusion to his enthu-
siastic promise. If events had been contrary, and

^ I understood that the merchant was endeavouring surreptitiously to
obtain for his son instruction to which he was not entitled. — F. J.
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YOSHIDA-TORAJIRO

he found himself unable to carry out that purpose —
well, there was but the more reason to be brave and
constant in another ; if he could not carry the sword
into barbarian lands, it should at least be witness to
a life spent entirely for Japan.

This is the sight we have of him as he appeared
to schoolboys, but not related in the schoolboy spirit.
A man so careless of the graces must be out of court
with boys and women. And indeed, as we have all
been more or less to school, it will astonish no one
that Yoshida was regarded by his scholars as a
laughing-stock. The schoolboy has a keen sense of
humour. Heroes he learns to understand and to
admire in books ; but he is not forward to recognise
the heroic under the traits of any contemporary
man, and least of all in a brawUng, dirty, and
eccentric teacher. But as the years went by, and
the scholars of Yoshida continued in vain to look
around them for the abstractly perfect, and began
more and more to understand the drift of his instruc-
tions, they learned to look back upon their comic
schoolmaster as upon the noblest of mankind.

The last act of this brief and full existence was
already near at hand. Some of his work was done ;
for already there had been Dutch teachers admitted
into Nangasaki, and the country at large was keen
for the new learning. But though the renaissance
had begun, it was impeded and dangerously threat-
ened by the power of the Shogun. His minister —
the same who was afterwards assassinated in the
snow in the very midst of his body-guard — not only
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MEN AND BOOKS

held back pupils from going to the Dutchmen, but
by spies and detectives, by imprisonment and death,
kept thinning out of Japan the most inteUigent and
active spirits. It is the old story of a power upon
its last legs — Learning to the bastille, and courage to
the block ; when there are none left but sheep and
donkeys, the State will have been saved. But a
man must not think to cope with a revolution ; nor
a minister, however fortified with guards, to hold in
check a country that had given birth to such men
as Yoshida and his soldier-follower. The violence of
the ministerial Tarquin only served to direct atten-
tion to the illegality of his master's rule ; and people
began to turn their allegiance from Yeddo and the
Shogun to the long-forgotten Mikado in his seclusion
at Kioto. At this juncture, whether in consequence
or not, the relations between these two rulers be-
came strained ; and the Shogun's minister set forth
for Kioto to put another affront upon the rightful
sovereign. The circumstance was well fitted to
precipitate events. It was a piece of religion to
defend the Mikado ; it was a plain piece of political
righteousness to oppose a tyrannical and bloody
usurpation. To Yoshida the moment for action
seemed to have arrived. He was himself still con-
fined in Choshu. Nothing was free but his intelli-
gence ; but with that he sharpened a sword for the
Shogun's minister. A party of his followers were
to waylay the tyrant at a village on the Yeddo and
Kioto road, present him with a petition, and put him
to the sword. But Yoshida and his friends were
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YOSHIDA-TORAJmo

closely observed; and the too great expedition of
two of the conspirators, a boy of eighteen and his
brother, wakened the suspicion of the authorities,
and led to a full discovery of the plot and the arrest
of all who were concerned.

In Yeddo, to which he was taken, Yoshida was
thrown again into a strict confinement. But he was
not left destitute of sympathy in this last hour of
trial. In the next cell lay one Kusakabe, a reformer
from the southern highlands of Satsuma. They
were in prison for different plots, indeed, but for the
same intention ; they shared the same behefs and
the same aspirations for Japan ; many and long were
the conversations they held through the prison wall,
and dear was the sympathy that soon united them.
It fell first to the lot of Kusakabe to pass before the
judges ; and when sentence had been pronounced he
was led towards the place of death below Yoshida's
window. To turn the head would have been to
implicate his fellow-prisoner ; but he threw him a
look from his eye, and bade him farewell in a loud
voice, with these two Chinese verses : —

' It is better to be a crystal and be broken,
Than to remain perfect like a tile upon the housetop.'

So Kusakabe, from the highlands of Satsuma, passed
out of the theatre of this world. His death was like
an antique worthy's.

A little after, and Yoshida too must appear before
the Court. His last scene was of a piece with his
career, and fitly crowned it. He seized on the op-

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portumty of a public audience, confessed and gloried
in his design, and, reading his auditors a lesson in
the history of their country, told at length the
illegality of the Shogun's power and the crimes by
which its exercise was sullied. So, having said his
say for once, he was led forth and executed, thirty-
one years old.

A military engineer, a bold traveller (at least in
wish), a poet, a patriot, a schoolmaster, a friend to
learning, a martyr to reform, — there are not many
men, dying at seventy, who have served their country
in such various characters. He was not only wise
and provident in thought, but surely one of the
fieriest of heroes in execution. It is hard to say
which is the most remarkable — his capacity for com-
mand, which subdued his very jailers ; his hot,
unflagging zeal; or his stubborn superiority to defeat.
He failed in each particular enterprise that he at-
tempted ; and yet we have only to look at his
country to see how complete has been his general
success. His friends and pupils made the majority
of leaders in that final Revolution, now some twelve
years old ; and many of them are, or were until the
other day, high placed among the rulers of Japan.
And when we see all round us these brisk intelligent
students, with their strange foreign air, we should
never forget how Yoshida marched afoot from
Choshu to Yeddo, and from Yeddo to Nangasaki,
and from Nangasaki back again to Yeddo ; how he
boarded the American ship, his dress stuffed with
writing material ; nor how he languished in prison,
1 80

YOSHIDA-TORAJIRO

and finally gave his death, as he had formerly given
all his life and strength and leisure, to gain for his
native land that very benefit which she now enjoys
so largely. It is better to be Yoshida and perish,
than to be only Sakuma and yet save the hide.
Kusakabe, of Satsuma, has said the word : it is
better to be a crystal and be broken.

I must add a word ; for I hope the reader will not
fail to perceive that this is as much the story of a
heroic people as that of a heroic man. It is not
enough to remember Yoshida ; we must not forget
the common soldier, nor Kusakabe, nor the boy of
eighteen, Nomura, of Choshu, whose eagerness be-
trayed the plot. It is exhilarating to have lived in
the same days with these great-hearted gentlemen.
Only a few miles from us, to speak by the propor-
tion of the universe, while I was droning over my
lessons, Yoshida was goading himself to be wakeful
with the stings of the mosquito ; and while you
were grudging a penny income-tax, Kusakabe was
stepping to death with a noble sentence on his lips.

i8i

FRANQOIS VILLON, STUDENT, POET
AND HOUSEBREAKER

Perhaps one of the most curious revolutions in
literary history is the sudden bull's-eye light cast by
M. Longnon on the obscure existence of Fran9ois
Villon.^ His book is not remarkable merely as a
chapter of biography exhumed after four centuries.
To readers of the poet it will recall, with a flavour
of satire, that characteristic passage in which he
bequeaths his spectacles — with a humorous reserva-
tion of the case — to the hospital for blind paupers
known as the Fifteen- Score. Thus equipped, let the
blind paupers go and separate the good from the
bad in the cemetery of the Innocents ! For his own
part, the poet can see no distinction. Much have
the dead people made of their advantages. What
does it matter now that they have lain in state beds
and nourished portly bodies upon cakes and cream !
Here they all lie, to be trodden in the mud; the
large estate and the small, sounding virtue and

^ Etude Biographique sur Francois Villon. Paris : H. Menu.
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FRAN(;:OIS VILLON

adroit or powerful vice, in very much the same con-
dition ; and a bishop not to be distinguished from
a lamphghter with even the strongest spectacles.

Such was Villon's cynical philosophy. Four hun-
dred years after his death, when surely all danger
might be considered at an end, a pair of critical
spectacles have been apphed to his own remains;
and though he left behind him a sufficiently ragged
reputation from the first, it is only after these four
hundred years that his dehnquencies have been
finally tracked home, and we can assign him to his
proper place among the good or wicked. It is a
staggering thought, and one that affords a fine figure
of the imperishability of men's acts, that the stealth
of the private inquiry office can be carried so far
back into the dead and dusty past. We are not so
soon quit of our concerns as Villon fancied. In the
extreme of dissolution, when not so much as a man's
name is remembered, when his dust is scattered to
the four winds, and perhaps the very grave and the
very graveyard where he was laid to rest have been
forgotten, desecrated, and buried under populous
towns, — even in this extreme let an antiquary fall
across a sheet of manuscript, and the name will be
recalled, the old infamy will pop out into dayhght
like a toad out of a fissure in the rock, and the
shadow of the shade of what was once a man will be
heartily pilloried by his descendants. A httle while
ago and Villon was almost totally forgotten; then
he was revived for the sake of his verses ; and now
he is being revived with a vengeance in the detection

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of his misdemeanours. How unsubstantial is this
projection of a man's existence, which can he in
abeyance for centuries and then be brushed up again
and set forth for the consideration of posterity by
a few dips in an antiquary's inkpot ! This pre-
carious tenure of fame goes a long way to justify
those (and they are not few) who prefer cakes and
cream in the immediate present.

A WILD YOUTH

Fran9ois de Montcorbier, alias Fran9ois des Loges,
alias Fran9ois Villon, alias Michel Mouton, Master
of Arts in the University of Paris, was born in that
city in the summer of 1431. It was a memorable
year for France on other and higher considerations.
A great-hearted girl and a poor-hearted boy made,
the one her last, the other his first appearance on the
pubhc stage of that unhappy country. On the 30th
of May the ashes of Joan of Arc were thrown into
the Seine, and on the 2nd of December our Henry
Sixth made his Joyous Entry dismally enough into
disaffected and depopulating Paris. Sword and fire
still ravaged the open country. On a single April
Saturday twelve hundred persons, besides children,
made their escape out of the starving capital. The
hangman, as is not uninteresting to note in connec-
tion with Master Francis, was kept hard at work in
1431 ; on the last of April and on the 4th of May
alone, sixty-two bandits swung from Paris gibbets.^

^ Bourgeois de Paris, ed. Pantheon, pp. 688, 689.
184

FRANCOIS VILLON

A more confused or troublous time it would have
been difficult to select for a start in life. Not even
a man's nationality was certain ; for the people of
Paris there was no such thing as a Frenchman. The
English were the English indeed, but the French
were only the Armagnacs, whom, with Joan of Arc
at their head, they had beaten back from under their
ramparts not two years before. Such public senti-
ment as they had centred about their dear Duke of
Burgundy, and the dear Duke had no more urgent
business than to keep out of their neighbourhood.
. . . At least, and whether he liked it or not, our
disreputable troubadour was tubbed and swaddled
as a subject of the English crown.

We hear nothing of Villon's father, except that
he was poor and of mean extraction. His mother
was given piously, which does not imply very much
in an old Frenchwoman, and quite uneducated. He
had an uncle, a monk in an abbey at Angers, who
must have prospered beyond the family average, and
was reported to be worth live or six hundred crowns.
Of this uncle and his money-box the reader will hear
once more. In 1448 Francis became a student of
the University of Paris ; in 1450 he took the degree
of Bachelor, and in 1452 that of Master of Arts.
His bourse, or the sum paid weekly for his board,
was of the amount of two sous. Now two sous was
about the price of a pound of salt butter in the bad
times of 1417 ; it was the price of half a pound in
the worse times of 1419 ; and in 1444, just four years
before Villon joined the University, it seems to have

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MEN AND BOOKS

been taken as the average wage for a day's manual
labour/ In short, it cannot have been a very pro-
fuse allow^ance to keep a sharp-set lad in breakfast
and supper for seven mortal days ; and Villon's share
of the cakes and pastry and general good cheer, to
which he is never weary of referring, must have been
slender from the first.

The educational arrangements of the University
of Paris were, to our way of thinking, somewhat
incomplete. Worldly and monkish elements were
presented in a curious confusion, which the youth
might disentangle for himself. If he had an oppor-
tunity, on the one hand, of acquiring much hair-
drawn divinity and a taste for formal disputation, he
was put in the way of much gross and flaunting vice
upon the other. The lecture-room of a scholastic
doctor was sometimes under the same roof with
establishments of a very different and peculiarly un-
edifying order. The students had extraordinary
privileges, which by all accounts they abused extra-
ordinarily. And while some condemned themselves
to an almost sepulchral regularity and seclusion,
others fled the schools, swaggered in the street ' with
their thumbs in their girdle,' passed the night in riot,
and behaved themselves as the worthy forerunners
of Jehan Frollo in the romance of Notre Dame de
Paris. Villon tells us himself that he was among
the truants, but we hardly needed his avowal. The
burlesque erudition in which he sometimes indulged
implies no more than the merest smattering of know-

1 Bourgeois, pp. 627, 636^ and 725.

i86

FRANQOIS VILLON

ledge; whereas his acquaintance with blackguard
haunts and industries could only have been acquired
by early and consistent impiety and idleness. He
passed his degrees, it is true ; but some of us who
have been to modern Universities will make their
own reflections on the value of the test. As for his
three pupils, Colin Laurent, Girard Gossouyn, and
Jehan Marceau — if they were really his pupils in any
serious sense — what can we say but God help them !
And sure enough, by his own description, they
turned out as ragged, rowdy, and ignorant as was to
be looked for from the views and manners of their
rare preceptor.

At some time or other, before or during his Uni-
versity career, the poet was adopted by Master
Guillaume de Villon, chaplain of Saint Benoit-le-
Betourne, near the Sorbonne. From him he bor-
rowed the surname by which he is known to posterity.
It was most likely from his house, called the Porte
Rouge, and situated in a garden in the cloister of
St. Benoit, that Master Francis heard the bell of the
Sorbonne ring out the Angelus while he was finishing
his Small Testament at Christmastide in 1456. To-
wards this benefactor he usually gets credit for a
respectable display of gratitude. But with his trap
and pitfall style of writing, it is easy to make too
sure. His sentiments are about as much to be relied
on as those of a professional beggar ; and in this, as
in so many other matters, he comes towards us
whining and piping the eye, and goes off again with
a whoop and his finger to his nose. Thus, he calls

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MEN AND BOOKS

Guillaume de Villon his 'more than father,' thanks
him with a great show of sincerity for having helped
him out of many scrapes, and bequeaths him his
portion of renown. But the portion of renown
which belonged to a young thief, distinguished (if,
at the period when he wrote this legacy, he was
distinguished at all) for having written some more or
less obscene and scurrilous ballads, must have been
little fitted to gratify the self-respect or increase the
reputation of a benevolent ecclesiastic. The same
remark applies to a subsequent legacy of the poet's
library, with specification of one work which was
plainly neither decent nor devout. We are thus left
on the horns of a dilemma. If the chaplain was a
godly, philanthropic personage, who had tried to
graft good principles and good behaviour on this
wild slip of an adopted son, these jesting legacies
would obviously cut him to the heart. The position
of an adopted son towards his adoptive father is one
full of delicacy ; where a man lends his name he
looks for great consideration. And this legacy of
Villon's portion of renown may be taken as the mere
fling of an unregenerate scapegrace who has wit
enough to recognise in his own shame the readiest
weapon of offence against a prosy benefactor's feel-
ings. The gratitude of Master Francis figures, on
this reading, as a frightful minus quantity. If, on
the other hand, those jests were given and taken in
good humour, the whole relation between the pair
degenerates into the unedifying complicity of a
debauched old chaplain and a witty and dissolute

FRANQOIS VILLON

young scholar. At this rate the house with the red
door may have rung with the most mundane min-
strelsy ; and it may have been below its roof that
Villon, through a hole in the plaster, studied, as he
tells us, the leisures of a rich ecclesiastic.

It was, perhaps, of some moment in the poet's life
that he should have inhabited the cloister of Saint
Benoit. Three of the most remarkable among his
early acquaintances are Catherine de Vausselles, for
whom he entertained a short-lived affection and an
enduring and most unmanly resentment ; Regnier de
Montigny, a young blackguard of good birth ; and
Colin de Cayeux, a fellow with a marked aptitude
for picking locks. Now we are on a foundation of
mere conjecture, but it is at least curious to find
that two of the canons of Saint Benoit answered
respectively to the names of Pierre de Vaucel and
Etienne de Montigny, and that there was a house-
holder called Nicolas de Cayeux in a street — the
Rue des Poirees — in the immediate neighbourhood
of the cloister. M. Longnon is almost ready to
identify Catherine as the niece of Pierre ; Regnier
as the nephew of Etienne, and Colin as the son of
Nicolas. Without going so far, it must be owned
that the approximation of names is significant. As
we go on to see the part played by each of these
persons in the sordid melodrama of the poet's life,
we shall come to regard it as even more notable. Is
it not Clough who has remarked that, after all,
everything lies in juxtaposition ? Many a man's
destiny has been settled by nothing apparently more

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grave than a pretty face on the opposite side of the
street and a couple of bad companions round the
corner.

Catherine de Vausselles (or de Vaucel — the change
is within the Umits of Villon's licence) had plainly
delighted in the poet's conversation ; near neigh-
bours or not, they were much together ; and Villon
made no secret of his court, and suffered himself to
believe that his feeling was repaid in kind. This
may have been an error from the first, or he may
have estranged her by subsequent misconduct or
temerity. One can easily imagine Villon an im-
patient wooer. One thing, at least, is sure : that
the affair terminated in a manner bitterly humiliating
to Master Francis. In presence of his lady-love,
perhaps under her window, and certainly with her
connivance, he was unmercifully thrashed by one
Noe le Joly — beaten, as he says himself, like dirty
linen on the washing-board. It is characteristic that
his malice had notably increased between the time
when he wrote the Small Testament immediately on
the back of the occurrence, and the time when he
wrote the Large Testament five years after. On the
latter occasion nothing is too bad for his ' damsel
with the twisted nose,' as he calls her. She is
spared neither hint nor accusation, and he tells his
messenger to accost her with the vilest insults.
Villon, it is thought, was out of Paris when these
amenities escaped his pen ; or perhaps the strong
arm of Noe le Joly would have been again in requi-
sition. So ends the love-story, if love-story it may
190

FRAN(;:OIS VILLON

properly be called. Poets are not necessarily for-
tunate in love ; but they usually fall among more
romantic circumstances, and bear their disappoint-
ment with a better grace.

The neighbourhood of Regnier de Montigny and
Colin de Cayeux was probably more influential on
his after life than the contempt of Catherine. For
a man who is greedy of all pleasures, and provided
with little money and less dignity of character, we
may prophesy a safe and speedy voyage downward.
Humble or even truckling virtue may walk unspotted
in this life. But only those who despise the plea-
sures can afford to despise the opinion of the world.
A man of a strong, heady temperament, like Villon,
is very differently tempted. His eyes lay hold on
all provocations greedily, and his heart flames up
at a look into imperious desire ; he is snared and
broached-to by anything and everything, from a
pretty face to a piece of pastry in a cookshop
window ; he will drink the rinsing of the wine-cup,
stay the latest at the tavern party ; tap at the ht
windows, follow the sound of singing, and beat the
whole neighbourhood for another reveller, as he goes
reluctantly homeward ; and grudge himself every
hour of sleep as a black empty period in which he
cannot follow after pleasure. Such a person is lost
if he have not dignity, or, failing that, at least pride,
which is its shadow and in many ways its substitute.
Master Francis, I fancy, would follow his own eager
instincts without much spiritual struggle. And we
soon find him fallen among thieves in sober, Hteral

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earnest, and counting as acquaintances the most
disreputable people he could lay his hands on ;
fellows who stole ducks in Paris Moat ; sergeants of
the criminal court, and archers of the watch ; black-
guards who slept at night under the butchers' stalls,
and for whom the aforesaid archers peered about
carefully with lanterns ; Regnier de Montigny, Colin
de Cayeux, and their crew, all bound on a favouring
breeze towards the gallows ; the disorderly abbess
of Port-Royal, who went about at fair-liime with
soldiers and thieves, and conducted her abbey on the
queerest principles ; and most likely Perette Mauger,
the great Paris receiver of stolen goods, not yet
dreaming, poor woman ! of the last scene of her
career, when Henry Cousin, executor of the high
justice, shall bury her, alive and most reluctant, in
front of the new Montigny gibbet.^ Nay, our friend
soon began to take a foremost rank in this society.
He could string off verses, which is always an agree-
able talent ; and he could make himself useful in
many other ways. The whole ragged army of Bo-
hemia, and whosoever loved good cheer without at
all loving to work and pay for it, are addressed in
contemporary verses as the ' Subjects of Francois
Villon.' He was a good genius to all hungry and
unscrupulous persons ; and became the hero of a
whole legendary cycle of tavern tricks and cheateries.
At best, these were doubtful levities, rather too
thievish for a schoolboy, rather too gamesome for a
thief But he would not linger long in this equi-

^ Chronique Scandaleuse, ed. Pantheon, p. 237.
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FRANCpOIS VILLON

vocal border-land. He must soon have complied
w^ith his surroundings. He was one who would go
where the cannikin clinked, not caring who should
pay ; and from supping in the wolves' den, there is
but a step to hunting with the pack. And here, as
I am on the chapter of his degradation, I shall say
all I mean to say about its darkest expression, and
be done with it for good. Some charitable critics
see no more than Sijeu d' esprit, a graceful and trifling
exercise of the imagination, in the grimy ballad of
Fat Peg {Grosse Mar got). I am not able to follow
these gentlemen to this polite extreme. Out of all
Villon's works that ballad stands forth in flaring
reality, gross and ghastly, as a thing written in a
contraction of disgust. M. Longnon shows us more
and more clearly at every page that we are to read
our poet literally, that his names are the names of
real persons, and the events he chronicles were actual
events. But even if the tendency of criticism had
run the other way, this ballad would have gone far
to prove itself I can well understand the reluctance
of worthy persons in this matter ; for of course it is
unpleasant to think of a man of genius as one who
held, in the words of Marina to Boult —

' A place, for which the pained' st fiend
Of hell would not in reputation change.'

But beyond this natural unwillingness, the whole
difficulty of the case springs from a highly virtuous
ignorance of life. Paris now is not so different from
the Paris of then ; and the whole of the doings of

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Bohemia are not written in the sugar-candy pastorals
of Miirger. It is really not at all surprising that a
young man of the fifteenth century, with a knack of
making verses, should accept his bread upon dis-
graceful terms. The race of those who do so is not
extinct ; and some of them to this day write the
prettiest verses imaginable. . . . After this, it were
impossible for Master Francis to fall lower : to go
and steal for himself would be an admirable advance
from every point of view, divine or human.

And yet it is not as a thief, but as a homicide,
that he makes his first appearance before angry
justice. On June 5, 1455, when he was about
twenty-four, and had been Master of Arts for a
matter of three years, we behold him for the first
time quite definitely. Angry justice had, as it were,
photographed him in the act of his homicide ; and
M. Longnon, rummaging among old deeds, has
turned up the negative and printed it off for our
instruction. Villon had been supping — copiously
we may believe — and sat on a stone bench in front
of the Church of St. Benoit, in company with a priest
called Gilles and a woman of the name of Isabeau.
It was nine o'clock, a mighty late hour for the period,
and evidently a fine summer's night. Master Francis
carried a mantle, like a prudent man, to keep him
from the dews (serain), and had a sword below it
dangling from his girdle. So these three dallied in
front of St. Benoit, taking their pleasure {pou?^ soy
eshatre). Suddenly there arrived upon the scene a
priest, Philippe Chermoye or Sermaise, also with
194

FRAN(;:OIS VILLON

sword and cloak, and accompanied by one Master
Jehan le Mardi. Sermaise, according to Villon's
account, which is all we have to go upon, came up
blustering and denying God ; as Villon rose to make
room for him upon the bench, thrust him rudely
back into his place ; and finally drew his sword and
cut open his lower lip, by what 1 should imagine
was a very clumsy stroke. Up to this point Villon
professes to have been a model of courtesy, even of
feebleness : and the brawl, in his version, reads like
the fable of the wolf and the lamb. But now the
lamb was roused ; he drew his sword, stabbed Ser-
maise in the groin, knocked him on the head with a
big stone, and then, leaving him to his fate, went
away to have his own lip doctored by a barber of the
name of Fouquet. In one version he says that
Gilles, Isabeau, and Le Mardi ran away at the first
high words, and that he and Sermaise had it out
alone ; in another, Le Mardi is represented as return-
ing and wresting Villon's sword from him : the
reader may please himself Sermaise was picked up,
lay all that night in the prison of Saint Benoit,
where he was examined by an official of the Chatelet
and expressly pardoned Villon, and died on the fol-
lowing Saturday in the Hotel Dieu.

This, as I have said, was in June. Not before
January of the next year could Villon extract a
pardon from the King ; but while his hand was in,
he got two. One is for ' Fran9ois des Loges, alias
{autrement dit) de Villon ' ; and the other runs in
the name of Fran9ois de Montcorbier. Nay, it

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MEN AND BOOKS

appears there was a further complication ; for in the
narrative of the first of these documents it is men-
tioned that he passed himself off upon Fouquet,
the barber-surgeon, as one Michel Mouton. M.
Longnon has a theory that this unhappy accident
with Sermaise was the cause of Villon's subsequent
irregularities ; and that up to that moment he had
been the pink of good behaviour. But the matter
has to my eyes a more dubious air. A pardon
necessary for Des Loges and another for Mont-
corbier ? and these two the same person ? and one
or both of them known by the alias of Villon, how-
ever honestly come by? and lastly, in the heat of
the moment, a fourth name thrown out with an
assured countenance ? A ship is not to be trusted
that sails under so many colours. This is not the
simple bearing of innocence. No — the young master
was already treading crooked paths ; already, he
would start and blench at a hand upon his shoulder,
with the look we know so well in the face of Hogarth's
Idle Apprentice ; already, in the blue devils, he
would see Henry Cousin, the executor of high
justice, going in dolorous procession towards Mont-
faucon, and hear the wind and the birds crying
around Paris gibbet.

A GANG OF THIEVES

In spite of the prodigious number of people who
managed to get hanged, the fifteenth century was by
no means a bad time for criminals. A great con-
196

FRANCOIS VILLON

fusion of parties and great dust of fighting favoured
the escape of private housebreakers and quiet fellows
who stole ducks in Paris Moat. Prisons were leaky ;
and as we shall see, a man with a few crowns in his
pocket, and perhaps some acquaintance among the
officials, could easily slip out and become once more
a free marauder. There was no want of a sanctuary
where he might harbour until troubles blew by ; and
accomplices helped each other with more or less good
faith. Clerks, above all, had remarkable facilities
for a criminal way of life ; for they were privileged,
except in cases of notorious incorrigibility, to be
plucked from the hands of rude secular justice and
tried by a tribunal of their own. In 1402, a couple
of thieves, both clerks of the University, were con-
demned to death by the Provost of Paris. As they
were taken to Montfaucon, they kept crying 'high
and clearly' for their benefit of clergy, but were
none the less pitilessly hanged and gibbeted. In-
dignant Alma Mater interfered before the King ; and
the Provost was deprived of all royal offices, and
condemned to return the bodies and erect a great
stone cross, on the road from Paris to the gibbet,
graven with the effigies of these two holy martyrs.^
We shall hear more of the benefit of clergy ; for
after this the reader will not be surprised to meet
with thieves in the shape of tonsured clerks, or even
priests and monks.

To a knot of such learned pilferers our poet
certainly belonged ; and by turning over a few more

^ Monstreletj Pantheon Litteraire, p. 26.

MEN AND BOOKS

of M. Longnon's negatives, we shall get a clear idea
of their character and doings. Montigny and De
Cayeux are names already known ; Guy Tabary,
Petit-Jehan, Dom Nicolas, little Thibault, who was
both clerk and goldsmith, and who made picklocks
and melted plate for himself and his companions —
with these the reader has still to become acquainted.
Petit-Jehan and De Cayeux were handy fellows and
enjoyed a useful pre-eminence in honour of their
doings with the picklock. '^ JDictus des Cahyeus est
fortis operator crochetorum,' says Tabary 's interroga-
tion, " sed dictus Petit-Jehan, ejus socius, est forcius
operator.^ But the flower of the flock was little
Thibault ; it was reported that no lock could stand
before him ; he had a persuasive hand ; let us salute
capacity wherever we may find it. Perhaps the
term gang is not quite properly applied to the
persons whose fortunes we are now about to fol-
low ; rather they were independent malefactors,
socially intimate, and occasionally joining together
for some serious operation, just as modern stock-
jobbers form a syndicate for an important loan.
Nor were they at all particular to any branch of
misdoing. They did not scrupulously confine them-
selves to a single sort of theft, as I hear is com-
mon among modern thieves. They were ready
for anything, from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter.
Montigny, for instance, had neglected neither of
these extremes, and we find him accused of cheat-
ing at games of hazard on the one hand, and on the
other of the murder of one Thevenin Pensete in a
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FIlAN(;:OIS VILLON

house by the Cemetery of St. John. If time had
only spared us some particulars, might not this last
have furnished us with the matter of a grisly winter's
tale?

At Christmas-time in 1456, readers of Villon will
remember that he was engaged on the Small Testa-
ment. About the same period, circa festum nativi-
tatis Domini, he took part in a memorable supper at
the Mule Tavern, in front of the Church of St.
Mathurin. Tabary, who seems to have been very
much Villon's creature, had ordered the supper in
the course of the afternoon. He was a man who
had had troubles in his time, and languished in the
Bishop of Paris's prisons on a suspicion of picking
locks ; confiding, convivial, not very astute — who
had copied out a whole improper romance with his
own right hand. This supper-party was to be his
first introduction to De Cayeux and Petit-Jehan,
which was probably a matter of some concern to
the poor man's muddy wits ; in the sequel, at least,
he speaks of both with an undisguised respect, based
on professional inferiority in the matter of picklocks.
Dom Nicolas, a Picardy monk, was the fifth and last
at table. When supper had been despatched and
fairly washed down, we may suppose, with white
Baigneux or red Beaune, which were favourite wines
among the fellowship, Tabary was solemnly sw9rn
over to secrecy on the night's performances ; and
the party left the Mule and proceeded to an un-
occupied house belonging to Robert de Saint- Simon.
This, over a low wall, they entered without difficulty.

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MEN AND BOOKS

All but Tabary took off their upper garments ; a
ladder was found and applied to the high wall which
separated Saint-Simon's house from the court of the
College of Navarre ; the four fellows in their shirt-
sleeves (as we might say) clambered over in a twink-
ling ; and Master Guy Tabary remained alone beside
the overcoats. From the court the burglars made
their way into the vestry of the chapel, where they
found a large chest, strengthened with iron bands
and closed with four locks. One of these locks they
picked, and then, by levering up the corner, forced
the other three. Inside was a small coffer, of walnut
wood, also barred with iron, but fastened with only
three locks, which were all comfortably picked by
way of the keyhole. In the walnut coffer — a joyous
sight by our thieves' lantern — were five hundred
crowns of gold. There was some talk of opening
the aumries, where, if they had only known, a booty
eight or nine times greater lay ready to their hand ;
but one of the party (I have a humorous suspicion it
was Dom Nicolas, the Picardy monk) hurried them
away. It was ten o'clock when they mounted the
ladder ; it was about midnight before Tabary beheld
them coming back. To him they gave ten crowns,
and promised a share of a two-crown dinner on
the morrow ; whereat we may suppose his mouth
watered. In course of time he got wind of the
real amount of their booty and understood how
scurvily he had been used ; but he seems to have
borne no malice. How could he, against such
superb operators as Petit-Jehan and De Cayeux ;
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FIlAN(;^OIS VILLON

or a person like Villon, who could have made a new
improper romance out of his own head, instead of
merely copying an old one with mechanical right
hand?

The rest of the winter was not uneventful for the
gang. First they made a demonstration against the
Church of St. Mathurin after chalices, and were
ignominiously chased away by barking dogs. Then
Tabary fell out with Casin ChoUet, one of the fellows
who stole ducks in Paris Moat, who subsequently
became a sergeant of the Chatelet and distinguished
himself by misconduct, followed by imprisonment
and public castigation, during the wars of Louis
Eleventh. The quarrel was not conducted with a
proper regard to the King's peace, and the pair
publicly belaboured each other until the pohce
stepped in, and Master Tabary was cast once more
into the prisons of the Bishop. While he still lay
in durance, another job was cleverly executed by
the band in broad daylight, at the Augustine Monas-
tery. Brother Guillaume Coiffier was beguiled by
an accomplice to St. Mathurin to say mass ; and
during his absence his chamber was entered and
five or six hundred crowns in money and some
silver plate successfully abstracted. A melancholy
man was Coiffier on his return ! Eight crowns
from this adventure were forwarded by little Thi-
bault to the incarcerated Tabary ; and with these
he bribed the jailer and reappeared in Paris taverns.
Some time before or shortly after this, Villon set
out for Angers, as he had promised in the Small

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MEN AND BOOKS

Testament. The object of this excursion was not
merely to avoid the presence of his cruel mistress
or the strong arm of Noe le Joly, but to plan a
dehberate robbery on his uncle the monk. As soon
as he had properly studied the ground, the others
were to go over in force from Paris — picklocks and
all — and away with my uncle's strongbox ! This
throws a comical side-hght on his own accusation
against his relatives, that they had 'forgotten
natural duty ' and disowned him because he was
poor. A poor relation is a distasteful circumstance
at the best, but a poor relation who plans deliberate
robberies against those of his blood, and trudges
hundreds of weary leagues to put them into execu-
tion, is surely a little on the wrong side of toleration.
The uncle at Angers may have been monstrously
undutiful ; but the nephew from Paris was upsides
with him.

On the 23rd April, that venerable and discreet
person, Master Pierre Marchand, Curate and Prior of
Paray-le-Monial, in the diocese of Chartres, arrived
in Paris and put up at the sign of the Three Chande-
liers, in the Rue de la Huchette. Next day, or the
day after, as he was breakfasting at the sign of the
Armchair, he fell into talk with two customers, one
of whom was a priest and the other our friend
Tabary. The idiotic Tabary became mighty con-
fidential as to his past life. Pierre Marchand, who
was an acquaintance of Guillaume Coiffier's, and had
sympathised with him over his loss, pricked up his
ears at the mention of picklocks, and led on the
202

FRAN(;^OIS VILLON

transcriber of improper romances from one thing to
another, until they were fast friends. For picklocks
the Prior of Paray professed a keen curiosity ; but
Tabary, upon some late alarm, had thrown all his
into the Seine. Let that be no difficulty, however,
for was there not little Thibault, who could make
them of all shapes and sizes, and to whom Tabary,
smelling an accomplice, would be only too glad to
introduce his new acquaintance ? On the morrow,
accordingly, they met ; and Tabary, after having
first wet his whistle at the Prior's expense, led him
to Notre Dame and presented him to four or five
' young companions,' who were keeping sanctuary in
the church. They were all clerks, recently escaped,
like Tabary himself, from the episcopal prisons.
Among these we may notice Thibault, the operator,
a little fellow of twenty-six, wearing long hair be-
hind. The Prior expressed, through Tabary, his
anxiety to become their accomplice and altogether
such as they were {de leur sorte et de leurs com-
plices). Mighty polite they showed themselves, and
made him many fine speeches in return. But for all
that, perhaps because they had longer heads than
Tabary, perhaps because it is less easy to wheedle
men in a body, they kept obstinately to generalities
and gave him no information as to their exploits,
past, present, or to come. I suppose Tabary groaned
under this reserve ; for no sooner were he and the
Prior out of the church than he fairly emptied his
heart to him, gave him full details of many hanging
matters in the past, and explained the future inten-

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MEN AND BOOKS

tions of the band. The scheme of the hour was to
rob another Augustine monk, Robert de la Porte,
and in this the Prior agreed to take a hand with
simulated greed. Thus, in the course of two days,
he had turned this wineskin of a Tabary inside out.
For a while longer the farce was carried on ; the
Prior was introduced to Petit-Jehan, whom he de-
scribes as a little, very smart man of thirty, with a
black beard and a short jacket ; an appointment was
made and broken in the de la Porte affair ; Tabary
had some breakfast at the Prior's charge and leaked
out more secrets under the influence of wine and
friendship ; and then all of a sudden, on the 17th of
May, an alarm sprang up, the Prior picked up his
skirts and walked quietly over to the Chatelet to
make a deposition, and the whole band took to their
heels and vanished out of Paris and the sight of the
police.

Vanish as they like, they all go with a clog about
their feet. Sooner or later, here or there, they will
be caught in the fact, and ignominiously sent home.
From our vantage of four centuries afterwards, it is
odd and pitiful to watch the order in which the
fugitives are captured and dragged in.

Montigny was the first. In August of that same
year he was laid by the heels on many grievous
counts, — sacrilegious robberies, frauds, incorrigibility,
and that bad business about Thevenin Pensete in
the house by the Cemetery of St. John. He was
reclaimed by the ecclesiastical authorities as a clerk ;
but the claim was rebutted on the score of incorriiji-
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rRAN(;:;ois villon

bility, and ultimately fell to the ground ; and he was
condemned to death by the Provost of Paris. It
was a very rude hour for Montigny, but hope was
not yet over. He was a fellow of some birth ; his
father had been king's pantler; his sister, probably
married to some one about the Court, was in the
family way, and her health would be endangered if
the execution was proceeded with. So down comes
Charles the Seventh with letters of mercy, commut-
ing the penalty to a year in a dungeon on bread and
water, and a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James
in Galicia. Alas ! the document was incomplete ; it
did not contain the full tale of Montigny 's enormi-
ties ; it did not recite that he had been denied
benefit of clergy, and it said nothing about Thevenin
Pensete. Montigny's hour was at hand. Benefit
of clergy, honourable descent from king's pantler,
sister in the family way, royal letters of commuta-
tion— all were of no avail. He had been in prison
in Rouen, in Tours, in Bordeaux, and four times
already in Paris ; and out of all these he had come
scatheless ; but now he must make a little excursion
as far as Montfaucon with Henry Cousin, executor
of high justice. There let him swing among the
carrion crows.

About a year later, in July 1458, the police laid
hands on Tabary. Before the ecclesiastical commis-
sary he was twice examined, and, on the latter occa-
sion, put to the question ordinary and extraordinary.
What a dismal change from pleasant suppers at the
Mule, where he sat in triumph with expert operators

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MEN AND BOOKS

and great wits ! He is at the lees of life, poor rogue ;
and those fingers which once transcribed improper
romances are now agonisingly stretched upon the
rack. We have no sure knowledge, but we may-
have a shrewd guess of the conclusion. Tabary,
the admirer, would go the same way as those whom
he admired.

The last we hear of is CoUn de Cayeux. He was
caught in autumn 1460, in the great Church of St.
Leu d'Esserens, which makes so fine a figure in the
pleasant Oise valley between Creil and Beaumont.
He was reclaimed by no less than two bishops ; but
the Procureur for the Provost held fast by incor-
rigible Colin. 1460 was an ill-starred year : for
justice was making a clean sweep of ' poor and in-
digent persons, thieves, cheats, and lockpickers,' in
the neighbourhood of Paris ; ^ and Colin de Cayeux,
with many others, was condemned to death and
hanged.^

VILLON AND THE GALLOWS

Villon was still absent on the Angers expedition
when the Prior of Paray sent such a bombshell
among his accomplices ; and the dates of his return

1 Chron. Scand., ut supra.

2 Here and there^ principally in the order of events^ this article differs
from M. Longnon's own reading of his material. The ground on which
he defers the execution of Montigny and De Cayeux beyond the date of
their trials seems insufficient. There is a law of parsimony for the con-
struction of historical documents ; simplicity is the first duty of narra-
tion ; and hanged they were.

206

FRANQOIS VILLON

and arrest remain un discoverable. M. Campaux
plausibly enough opined for the autumn of 1457,
which would make him closely follow on Montigny,
and the first of those denounced by the Prior to
fall into the toils. We may suppose, at least, that
it was not long thereafter ; we may suppose him
competed for between lay and clerical Courts ; and
we may suppose him alternately pert and impudent,
humble and fawning, in his defence. But at the
end of all supposing, we come upon some nuggets of
fact. For first, he was put to the question by water.
He who had tossed off so many cups of white Bai-
gneux or red Beaune, now drank water through linen
folds, until his bowels were flooded and his heart
stood still. After so much raising of the elbow,
so much outcry of fictitious thirst, here at last
was enough drinking for a lifetime. Truly, of our
pleasant vices the gods make whips to scourge us.
And secondly he was condemned to be hanged.
A man may have been expecting a catastrophe for
years, and yet find himself unprepared when it
arrives. Certainly, Villon found, in this legitimate
issue of his career, a very staggering and grave con-
sideration. Every beast, as he says, clings bitterly
to a whole skin. If everything is lost, and even
honour, life still remains ; nay, and it becomes, like
the ewe lamb in Nathan's parable, as dear as all the
rest. ' Do you fancy,' he asks, in a lively ballad,
'that I had not enough philosophy under my hood
to cry out: "I appeal"? If I had made any bones
about the matter I should have been planted vip-

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MEN AND BOOKS

right in the fields, by the St. Denis Road ' — Mont-
faucon being on the way to St. Denis. An appeal
to Parliament, as we saw in the case of Colin de
Cayeux, did not necessarily lead to an acquittal or
a commutation ; and while the matter was pending,
our poet had ample opportunity to reflect on his
position. Hanging is a sharp argument, and to
swing with many others on the gibbet adds a
horrible corollary for the imagination. With the
aspect of Montfaucon he was well acquainted; in-
deed, as the neighbourhood appears to have been
sacred to junketing and nocturnal picnics of wild
young men and women, he had probably studied it
under all varieties of hour and weather. And now,
as he lay in prison waiting the mortal push, these
different aspects crowded back on his imagination
with a new and startling significance ; and he wrote
a ballad, by way of epitaph for himself and his com-
panions, which remains unique in the annals of man-
kind. It is, in the highest sense, a piece of his
biography : —

' La pluye nous a debuez et lavez,
Et le soleil dessechez et noirciz ;
Pies, corbeaulx, nous ont les yeux cavez,
Et arrachez la barbe et les sourcilz.
Jamais, nul temps, nous ne sommes rassis ;
Puis 9a, puis la, coraime le vent varie,
A son plaisir sans cesser nous charie,
Plus becquetez d'oiseaulx que dez a couldre.
Ne soyez done de nostre confraii-ie,
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre.'

Here is some genuine thieves' literature after so
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FRAN(;:;OIS VILLON

much that was spurious ; sharp as an etching, written
with a shuddering soul. There is an intensity of
consideration in the piece that' shows it to be the
transcript of famihar thoughts. It is the quint-
essence of many a doleful nightmare on the straw,
when he felt himself swing helpless in the wind,
and saw the birds turn about him, screaming and
menacing his eyes.

And, after all, the Parliament changed his sen-
tence into one of banishment ; and to Roussillon, in
Dauphiny, our poet must carry his woes without
delay. Travellers between Lyons and Marseilles
may remember a station on the Hne, some way
below Vienne, where the Rhone fleets seaward be-
tween vine-clad hills. This was Villon's Siberia.
It would be a little warm in summer perhaps, and
a little cold in winter in that draughty valley be-
tween two great mountain fields ; but what with
the hills, and the racing river, and the fiery Rhone
wines, he was little to be pitied on the conditions
of his exile. Villon, in a remarkably bad ballad,
written in a breath, heartily thanked and fulsomely
belauded the Parliament ; the envoi, like the pro-
verbial postscript of a lady's letter, containing the
pith of his performance in a request for three days'
delay to settle his affairs and bid his friends farewell.
He was probably not followed out of Paris, like
Antoine Fradin, the popular preacher, another exile
of a few years later, by weeping multitudes ;^ but I
daresay one or two rogues of his acquaintance would

^ Chron. Scand., p. 338.

5— o 209

MEN AND BOOKS

keep him company for a mile or so on the south
road, and drink a bottle with him before they
turned. For banished people, in those days, seem
to have set out on their own responsibility, in their
own guard, and at their own expense. It was no
joke to make one's way from Paris to Roussillon
alone and penniless in the fifteenth century. Villon
says he left a rag of his tails on every bush. Indeed,
he must have had many a weary tramp, many a
slender meal, and many a to-do with blustering
captains of the Ordonnance. But with one of his
light fingers, we may fancy that he took as good as
he gave ; for every rag of his tail he would manage
to indemnify himself upon the population in the
shape of food, or wine, or ringing money ; and his
route would be traceable across France and Bur-
gundy by housewives and innkeepers lamenting
over petty thefts, like the track of a single human
locust. A strange figure he must have cut in the
eyes of the good country people : this ragged, black-
guard city poet, with a smack of the Paris student,
and a smack of the Paris street arab, posting along
the highways, in rain or sun, among the green fields
and vineyards. For himself, he had no taste for
rural loveHness ; green fields and vineyards would
be mighty indifferent to Master Francis ; but he
would often have his tongue in his cheek at the
simplicity of rustic dupes, and often, at city gates,
he might stop to contemplate the gibbet with its
swinging bodies, and hug himself on his escape.
How long he stayed at Roussillon, how far he

2IO

FRANCOIS VILLON

became the protege of the Bourbons, to whom that
town belonged, or when it was that he took part,
under the auspices of Charles of Orleans, in a rhym-
ing tournament to be referred to once again in the
pages of the present volume, are matters that still
remain in darkness, in spite of M. Longnon's dihgent
rummaging among archives. When we next find
him, in summer 1461, alas ! he is once more in
durance : this time at Meun-sur-Loire, in the prisons
of Thibault d'Aussigny, Bishop of Orleans. He
had been lowered in a basket into a noisome pit,
where he lay all summer, gnawing hard crusts and
railing upon fate. His teeth, he says, were like the
teeth of a rake ; a touch of haggard portraiture all
the more real for being excessive and burlesque, and
all the more proper to the man for being a caricature
of his own misery. His eyes were * bandaged with
thick walls.' It might blow hurricanes overhead;
the lightning might leap in high heaven ; but no
word of all this reached him in his noisome pit. '11
nentre, ou gist, nescler ni tourbillon.' Above all,
he was fevered with envy and anger at the freedom
of others ; and his heart flowed over into curses as
he thought of Thibault d'Aussigny walking the
streets in God's sunlight, and blessing people with
extended fingers. So much we find sharply lined in
his own poems. Why he was cast again into prison
— how he had again managed to shave the gallows —
this we know not, nor, from the destruction of
authorities, are we ever likely to learn. But on
^October 2nd, 1461, or some day immediately preced-

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MEN AND BOOKS

ing, the new king, Louis Eleventh, made his joyous
entry into Meun. Now it was a part of the formahty
on such occasions for the new king to liberate
certain prisoners ; and so the basket was let down
into Villon's pit, and hastily did Master Francis
scramble in, and was most joyfully hauled up, and
shot out, blinking and tottering, but once more a
free man, into the blessed sun and wind. Now or
never is the time for verses ! Such a happy revolu-
tion would turn the head of a stocking-weaver, and
set him jingling rhymes. And so— after a voyage
to Paris, where he finds Montigny and De Cayeux
clattering their bones upon the gibbet, and his three
pupils roystering in Paris streets, ' with their thumbs
under their girdles,' — down sits Master Francis to
write his Large Testament, and perpetuate his name
in a sort of glorious ignominy.

THE 'LAUGE TESTAMENT'

Of this capital achievement and, with it, of Villon's
style in general, it is here the place to speak. The
Large Testame^it is a hurly-burly of cynical and
sentimental reflections about life, jesting legacies to
friends and enemies, and, interspersed among these,
many admirable ballades both serious and absurd.
With so free a design, no thought that occurred to
him would need to be dismissed without expression;
and he could draw at full length the portrait of his
own bedevilled soul, and of the bleak and black-
guardly world which was the theatre of his exploits

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FRANQOIS VILLON

and sufferings. If the reader can conceive some-
thing between the slap-dash inconsequence of Byron's
Don Juan and the racy humorous gravity and brief
noble touches that distinguish the vernacular poems
of Burns, he will have formed some idea of Villon's
style. To the latter writer — except in the ballades,
which are quite his own, and can be paralleled from
no other language known to me — he bears a par-
ticular resemblance. In common with Burns he has
a certain rugged compression, a brutal vivacity of
epithet, a homely vigour, a delight in local per-
sonalities, and an interest in many sides of life, that
are often despised and passed over by more effete
and cultured poets. Both also, in their strong, easy
colloquial way, tend to become difficult and obscure ;
the obscurity in the case of Villon passing at times
into the absolute darkness of cant language. They
are perhaps the only two great masters of expression
who keep sending their readers to a glossary.

' Shall we not dare to say of a thief,' asks Mon-
taigne, 'that he has a handsome leg?' It is a far
more serious claim that we have to put forward in
behalf of Villon. Beside that of his contemporaries,
his writing, so full of colour, so eloquent, so pic-
turesque, stands out in an almost miraculous isolation.
If only one or two of the chroniclers could have
taken a leaf out of his book, history would have
been a pastime, and the fifteenth century as present
to our minds as the age of Charles Second. This
gallows-bird was the one great writer of his age and
country, and initiated modern literature for France.

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MEN AND BOOKS

Boileau, long ago, in the period of pernkes and
snuff-boxes, recognised him as the first articulate
poet in the language ; and if we measure him, not by
priority of merit, but living duration of influence,
not on a comparison with obscure forerunners, but
with great and famous successors, we shall instal this
ragged and disreputable figure in a far higher niche
in glory's temple than was ever dreamed of by the
critic. It is in itself a memorable fact that before
1542, in the very dawn of printing, and while modern
France was in the making, the works of Villon ran
through seven different editions. Out of him flows
much of Rabelais; and through Rabelais, directly
and indirectly, a deep, permanent, and growing
inspiration. Not only his style, but his callous per-
tinent way of looking upon the sordid and ugly sides
of Hfe, becomes every day a more specific feature in
the literature of France. And only the other year, a
work of some power appeared in Paris, and appeared
with infinite scandal, which owed its whole inner
significance and much of its outward form to the
study of our rhyming thief

The world to which he introduces us is, as before
said, blackguardly and bleak. Paris swarms before
us, full of famine, shame, and death ; monks and the
servants of great lords hold high wassail upon cakes
and pastry; the poor man licks his lips before the
baker's window; people with patched eyes sprawl
all night under the stalls ; chuckhng Tabary tran-
scribes an improper romance; bare-bosomed lasses
and ruffling students swagger in the streets ; the
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FRANC^OIS VILLON

drunkard goes stumbling homewards ; the graveyard
is full of bones ; and away on Montfaucon, Colin de
Cayeux and Montigny hang draggled in the rain.
Is there nothing better to be seen than sordid misery
and worthless joys ? Only where the poor old
mother of the poet kneels in church below painted
windows, and makes tremulous supplication to the
Mother of God.

In our mixed world, full of green fields and happy
lovers, where not long before Joan of Arc had led
one of the highest and noblest lives in the whole
story of mankind, this was all worth chronicling that
our poet could perceive. His eyes were indeed
sealed with his own filth. He dwelt all his life in a
pit more noisome than the dungeon at Meun. In
the moral world, also, there are large phenomena
not cognisable out of holes and corners. Loud winds
blow, speeding home deep-laden ships and sweeping
rubbish from the earth ; the lightning leaps and
cleans the face of heaven ; high purposes and brave
passions shake and sublimate men's spirits ; and
meanwhile, in the narrow dungeon of his soul, Villon
is mumbhng crusts and picking vermin.

Along with this deadly gloom of outlook, we must
take another characteristic of his work, its unrivalled
insincerity. I can give no better similitude of this
quality than I have given already : that he comes
up with a whine and runs away with a whoop and
his finger to his nose. His pathos is that of a pro-
fessional mendicant who should happen to be a man
of genius ; his levity that of a bitter street arab, full

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MEN AND BOOKS

of bread. On a first reading, the pathetic passages
pre-occupy the reader, and he is cheated out of an
alms in the shape of sympathy. But when the thing
is studied the illusion fades away : in the transitions,
above all, we can detect the evil, ironical temper of
the man ; and instead of a flighty work, where many
crude but genuine feelings tumble together for the
mastery as in the Hsts of tournament, we are tempted
to think of the Large Testament as of one long-
drawn epical grimace, pulled by a merry-andrew,
who has found a certain despicable eminence over
human respect and human affections by perching
himself astride upon the gallows. Between these
two views, at best, all temperate judgments will be
found to fall ; and rather, as I imagine, towards the
last.

There were two things on which he felt with
perfect and, in one case, even threatening sincerity.

The first of these was an undisguised envy of those
richer than himself He was for ever drawing a
parallel, already exemplified from his own words,
between the happy life of the well-to-do and the
miseries of the poor. Burns, too proud and honest
not to work, continued through all reverses to sing
of poverty with a light, defiant note. Beranger
waited till he was himself beyond the reach of want
before writing the Old Vagabond or Jacques. Samuel
Johnson, although he was very sorry to be poor,
' was a great arguer for the advantages of poverty '
in his ill days. Thus it is that brave men carry their
crosses, and smile with the fox burrowing in their
216

FRANQOIS VILLON

vitals. But Villon, who had not the courage to be
poor with honesty, now whiningly implores our
sympathy, now shows his teeth upon the dung-heap
with an ugly snarl. He envies bitterly, envies pas-
sionately. Poverty, he protests, drives men to steal,
as hunger makes the wolf sally from the forest. The
poor, he goes on, will always have a carping word to
say, or, if that outlet be denied, nourish rebellious
thoughts. It is a calumny on the noble army of the
poor. Thousands in a small way of life, ay, and
even in the smallest, go through life with tenfold as
much honour and dignity and peace of mind as the
rich gluttons whose dainties and state-beds awakened
Villon's covetous temper. And every morning's sun
sees thousands who pass whistling to their toil. But
Villon was the ' mauvais pauvre ' defined by Victor
Hugo, and, in its English expression, so admirably
stereotyped by Dickens. He was the first wicked
sans-culotte. He is the man of genius with the
moleskin cap. He is mighty pathetic and beseech-
ing here in the street, but I would not go down a
dark road with him for a large consideration.

The second of the points on which he was genuine
and emphatic was common to the middle ages ; a
deep and somewhat snivelhng conviction of the
transitory nature of this life and the pity and horror
of death. Old age and the grave, with some dark
and yet half- sceptical terror of an after- world — these
were ideas that clung about his bones like a disease.
An old ape, as he says, may play all the tricks in its
repertory, and none of them will tickle an audience

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MEN AND BOOKS

into good humour. ' Tousjours vieil synge est des-
plaisant' It is not the old jester who receives most
recognition at a tavern party, but the young fellow,
fresh and handsome, who knows the new slang, and
carries off his vice with a certain air. Of this, as a
tavern jester himself, he would be pointedly con-
scious. As for the women with whom he was best
acquainted, his reflections on their old age, in all
their harrowing pathos, shall remain in the original
for me. Horace has disgraced himself to something
the same tune ; but what Horace throws out with an
ill-favoured laugh, Villon dwells on with an almost
maudlin whimper.

It is in death that he finds his truest inspiration ;
in the swift and sorrowful change that overtakes
beauty ; in the strange revolution by which great
fortunes and renowns are diminished to a handful of
churchyard dust ; and in the utter passing away of
what was once loveable and mighty. It is in this
that the mixed texture of his thought enables him
to reach such poignant and terrible effects, and to
enhance pity with ridicule, like a man cutting capers
to a funeral march. It is in this also that he rises
out of himself into the higher spheres of art. So, in
the ballade by which he is best known, he rings the
changes on names that once stood for beautiful and
queenly women, and are now no more than letters
and a legend. 'Where are the snows of yester year ?'
runs the burden. And so, in another not so famous,
he passes in review the different degrees of bygone
men, from the holy Apostles and the golden Emperor

2l8

FRANCOIS VILLON

of the East, down to the heralds, pursuivants, and
trumpeters, who also bore their part in the world's
pageantries and ate greedily at great folks' tables :
all this to the refrain of ' So much carry the winds
away ! ' Probably, there was some melancholy in his
mind for a yet lower grade, and Montigny and Colin
de Cayeux clattering their bones on Paris gibbet.
Alas, and with so pitiful an experience of life, Villon
can offer us nothing but terror and lamentation
about death ! No one has ever more skilfully com-
naunicated his own disenchantment ; no one ever
blown a more ear-piercing note of sadness. This
unrepentant thief can attain neither to Christian
confidence nor to the spirit of the bright Greek
saying, that whom the gods love die early. It is a
poor heart, and a poorer age, that cannot accept the
conditions of life with some heroic readiness.

The date of the Large Testament is the last date
in the poet's biography. After having achieved that
admirable and despicable performance, he disappears
into the night from whence he came. How or when
he died, whether decently in bed or trussed up to a
gallows, remains a riddle for foolhardy commentators.
It appears his health had suffered in the pit at
Meun ; he was thirty years of age and quite bald ;
with the notch in his under lip where Sermaise had
struck him with the sword, and what wrinkles the
reader may imagine. In default of portraits, this is
all I have been able to piece together, and perhaps

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MEN AND BOOKS

even the baldness should be taken as a figure of his
destitution. A sinister dog, in all likelihood, but
with a look in his eye, and the loose flexile mouth
that goes with wit and an overweening sensual tem-
perament. Certainly the sorriest figure on the rolls
of fame.

220

VII

CHARLES OF ORLEANS

For one who was no great politician, nor (as men
go) especially wise, capable, or virtuous, Charles of
Orleans is more than usually enviable to all who love
that better sort of fame which consists in being
known not widely, but intimately. ' To be content
that time to come should know there was such a
man, not caring? whether they knew more of him,
or to subsist under naked denominations, without
deserts or noble acts,' is, says Sir Thomas Browne, a
frigid ambition. It is to some more specific memory
that youth looks forward in its vigils. Old kings
are sometimes disinterred in all the emphasis of life,
the hands untainted by decay, the beard that had so
often wagged in camp or senate still spread upon
the royal bosom ; and in busts and pictures, some
similitude of the great and beautiful of former days
is handed down. In this way, public curiosity may
be gratified, but hardly any private aspiration after
fame. It is not likely that posterity will fall in love
with us, but not impossible that it may respect oi-
sympathise ; and so a man would rather leave behind

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MEN AND BOOKS

him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his
face, figuram animi viagis quam corporis. Of those
who have thus survived themselves most completely,
left a sort of personal seduction behind them in the
world, and retained, after death, the art of making
friends, Montaigne and Samuel Johnson certainly
stand first. But we have portraits of all sorts of
men, from august Csesar to the king's dwarf ; and all
sorts of portraits, from a Titian treasured in the
Louvre to a profile over the grocer's chimney shelf.
And so in a less degree, but no less truly, than the
spirit of Montaigne lives on in the delightful Essays,
that of Charles of Orleans survives in a few old songs
and old account-books ; and it is still in the choice
of the reader to make this duke's acquaintance, and,
if their humours suit, become his friend.

His birth — if we are to argue from a man's parents
—was above his merit. It is not merely that he
was the grandson of one king, the father of another,
and the uncle of a third; but something more specious
was to be looked for from the son of his father,
Louis de Valois, Duke of Orleans, brother to the
mad king Charles vj., lover of Queen Isabel, and
the leading patron of art and one of the leading
politicians in France. And the poet might have
inherited yet higher virtues from his mother, Valen-
tina of Milan, a very pathetic figure of the age, the
faithful wife of an unfaithful husband, and the friend

222

CHARLES OF ORLEANS

of a most unhappy king. The father, beautiful,
eloquent, and accomplished, exercised a strange fas-
cination over his contemporaries ; and among those
who dip nowadays into the annals of the time there
are not many — and these few are little to be envied
— who can resist the fascination of the mother. All
mankind owe her a debt of gratitude because she
brought some comfort into the life of the poor mad-
man who wore the crown of France.

Born (May 1391) of such a noble stock, Charles
was to know from the first all favours of nature and
art. His father's gardens were the admiration of
his contemporaries ; his castles were situated in the
most agreeable parts of France, and sumptuously
adorned. We have preserved, in an inventory of
1403, the description of tapestried rooms where
Charles may have played in childhood.^ ' A green-
room, with the ceiling full of angels, and the dossier
of shepherds and shepherdesses seeming {faisant
contenance) to eat nuts and cherries. A room of
gold, silk, and worsted, with a device of little children
in a river, and the sky full of birds. A room of
green tapestry, showing a knight and lady at chess
in a pavilion. Another green-room, with shep-
herdesses in a treUised garden worked in gold and
silk. A carpet representing cherry-trees, where there
is a fountain, and a lady gathering cherries in a
basin.' These were some of the pictures over which
his fancy might busy itself of an afternoon, or at
morning as he lay awake in bed. With our deeper

^ Champolliou-Figeac's Louis et Charles d'Orleans, p. 348.

2 2,^

MEN AND BOOKS

and more logical sense of life, we can have no idea
how large a space in the attention of medigeval men
might be occupied by such figured hangings on the
wall. There was something timid and purblind in
the view they had of the world. Morally, they saw
nothing outside of traditional axioms ; and Httle of
the physical aspect of things entered vividly into
their mind, beyond what was to be seen on church
windows and the walls and floors of palaces. The
reader will remember how Villon's mother conceived
of heaven and hell and took all her scanty stock of
theology from the stained glass that threw its light
upon her as she prayed. And there is scarcely a
detail of external effect in the chronicles and romances
of the time, but might have been borrowed at second
hand from a piece of tapestry. It was a stage in
the history of mankind which we may see paralleled
to some extent in the first infant school, where the
representations of lions and elephants alternate round
the wall with moral verses and trite presentments of
the lesser virtues. So that to live in a house of
many pictures was tantamount, for a time, to a
liberal education in itself.

At Charles's birth an order of knighthood was
inaugurated in his honour. At nine years old he
was a squire ; at eleven, he had the escort of a
chaplain and a schoolmaster ; at twelve, his uncle the
king made him a pension of twelve thousand livres
d'or.^ He saw the most brilliant and the most

1 D'Hericault's admirable Memoir, prefixed to his edition of Charles's
works, vol, i. p. xi.
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CHARLES OF ORLEANS

learned persons of France in his father's court;
and would not fail to notice that these brilliant
and learned persons were one and all engaged in
rhyming. Indeed, if it is difficult to realise the
part played by pictures, it is perhaps even more
difficult to realise that played by verses in the polite
and active history of the age. At the siege of Pon-
toise, English and French exchanged defiant ballades
over the walls. ^ If a scandal happened, as in the
loathsome thirty-third story of the Cent Nouvelles
Nouvelles, all the wits must make rondels and
chansonnettes, which they would hand from one to
another with an unmanly sneer. Ladies carried
their favourite's ballades in their girdles.^ Margaret
of Scotland, all the world knows already, kissed
Alain Chartier's lips in honour of the many virtuous
thoughts and golden sayings they had uttered ; but
it is not so well known that this princess was her-
self the most industrious of poetasters, that she is
supposed to have hastened her death by her literary
vigils, and sometimes wrote as many as twelve
rondels in the day.^ It was in rhyme, even, that the
young Charles should learn his lessons. He might
get all manner of instruction in the truly noble art
of the chase, not without a smack of ethics by the
way, from the compendious didactic poem of Gace de
la Eigne. Nay, and it was in rhyme that he should
learn rhyming : in the verses of his father's Maitre

^ Vallet de Viriville, Charles VII. et son J^poque, ii. 428, note 2.

2 See Lecoy de la Marche, Le Roi Rend, i. 167.

3 Vallet, Charles VII., ii. 85, 86, note 2.

5— p ' 225

MEN AND BOOKS

d'Hotel, Eustache Deschamps, which treated of
Vart de dictier et de faire chansons, ballades, virelais
et rondeaux, along with many other matters worth
attention, from the courts of Heaven to the mis-
government of France.^ At this rate, all know-
ledge is to be had in a goody, and the end of it
is an old song. We need not wonder when we
hear from Monstrelet that Charles was a very well
educated person. He could string Latin texts to-
gether by the hour, and make ballades and rondels
better than Eustache Deschamps himself He had
seen a mad king who would not change his clothes,
and a drunken emperor who could not keep his hand
from, the wine-cup. He had spoken a great deal
with jesters and fiddlers, and with the profligate
lords who helped his father to waste the revenues
of France. He had seen ladies dance on into broad
daylight, and much burning of torches and waste of
dainties and good wine.^ And when all is said, it
was no very helpful preparation for the battle of life.
'I beheve Louis xi.,' writes Comines, 'would not
have saved himself, if he had not been very diiferently
brought up from such other lords as I have seen
educated in this country; for these were taught
nothing but to play the jackanapes with finery and
fine words.' ^ I am afraid Charles took such lessons

1 Chanipolliou-Figeac, pp. 193-198. 2 j^^-^ p_ £09.

3 The student will see that there are facts cited, and expressions bor-
rowed, in this paragraph, from a period extending over almost the whole
of Charles's life, instead of being confined entirely to his boyhood. As
I do not believe there was any change, so I do not believe there is any
anachronism involved.

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CHARLES OF ORLEANS

to heart, and conceived of life as a season principally
for junketing and war. His view of the whole duty
of man, so empty, vain, and wearisome to us, was
yet sincerely and consistently held. When he came
in his ripe years to compare the glory of two king-
doms, England and France, it was on three points
only — pleasures, valour, and riches, — that he cared
to measure them ; and in the very outset of that
tract he speaks of the life of the great as passed,
' whether in arms, as in assaults, battles, and sieges,
or in jousts and tournaments, in high and stately
festivities and in funeral solemnities.'^

When he was no more than thirteen, his father
had him affianced to Isabella, virgin-widow of our
Richard ii. and daughter of his uncle Charles vi. ;
and, two years after (June 29, 1406), the cousins
were married at Compiegne, he fifteen, she seventeen
years of age. It was in every way a most desirable
match. The bride brought five hundred thousand
francs of dowry. The ceremony was of the utmost
magnificence, Louis of Orleans figuring in crimson
velvet, adorned with no less than seven hundred
and ninety-five pearls, gathered together expressly
for this occasion. And no doubt it must have been
very gratifying for a young gentleman of fifteen to
play the chief part in a pageant so gaily put upon
the stage. Only, the bridegroom might have been a
little older ; and, as ill-luck would have it, the bride

1 The Debate between the Heralds of France and England, translated and
admirably edited by Mr. Henry Pyne. For the attribution of this tract
to Charles, the reader is referred to Mr. Pyne's conclusive argument.

227

MEN AND BOOKS

herself was of this way of thinking, and would not
be consoled for the loss of her title as queen, or the
contemptible age of her new husband. Pleuroit fort
ladite Isabeau ; the said Isabella wept copiously.^ It
is fairly debatable whether Charles was much to be
pitied when, three years later (September 1409), this
odd marriage was dissolved by death. Short as it
was, however, this connection left a lasting stamp
upon his mind ; and we find that, in the last decade
of his life, and after he had remarried for perhaps the
second time, he had not yet forgotten or forgiven
the violent death of Richard ii. Ce mauvais cas —
that ugly business, he writes, has yet to be avenged.
The marriage festivity was on the threshold of
evil days. The great rivalry between Louis of
Orleans and John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy,
had been forsworn with the most reverend solem-
nities. But the feud was only in abeyance, and
John of Burgundy still conspired in secret. On
November 23, 1407 — in that black winter when the
frost lasted six-and-sixty days on end — a summons
from the King reached Louis of Orleans at the Hotel
Barbette, where he had been supping with Queen
Isabel. It was seven or eight in the evening, and
the inhabitants of the quarter were abed. He set
forth in haste, accompanied by two squires riding on
one horse, a page and a few varlets running with
torches. As he rode, he hummed to himself and
trifled with his glove. And so riding, he was beset
by the bravoes of his enemy and slain. My lord of

^ Des Ursins.
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CHARLES OF ORLEANS

Burgundy set an ill precedent in this deed, as he
found some years after on the bridge of Montereau ;
and even in the meantime he did not profit quietly
by his rival's death. The horror of the other princes
seems to have perturbed himself; he avowed his
guilt in the council, tried to brazen it out, finally
lost heart and fled at full gallop, cutting bridges
behind him, towards Bapaume and Lille. And so
there we have the head of one faction, who had just
made himself the most formidable man in France,
engaged in a remarkably hurried journey, with black
care on the pillion. And meantime, on the other
side, the widowed duchess came to Paris, in appro-
priate mourning, to demand justice for her husband's
death. Charles vi., who was then in a lucid interval,
did probably all that he could, when he raised up
the kneeling suppliant with kisses and smooth words.
Things were at a dead-lock. The criminal might be
in the sorriest fright, but he was still the greatest of
vassals. Justice was easy to ask and not difficult
to promise ; how it was to be executed was another
question. No one in France was strong enough to
punish John of Burgundy; and perhaps no one, except
the widow, very sincere in wishing to punish him.

She, indeed, was eaten up of zeal ; but the in-
tensity of her eagerness wore her out ; and she died
about a year after the murder, of grief and indigna-
tion, unrequited love and unsatisfied resentment.
It was during the last months of her life that this
fiery and generous woman, seeing the soft hearts of
her own children, looked with envy on a certain

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MEN AND BOOKS

natural son of her husband's, destined to become
famous in the sequel as the Bastard of Orleans, or
the brave Dunois. ' Vou were stolen from me," she
said ; ' it is you who are fit to avenge your father.'
These are not the words of ordinary mourning, or
of an ordinary woman. It is a saying over which
Balzac would have rubbed his episcopal hands.
That the child who was to avenge her husband had
not been born out of her body was a thing intoler-
able to Valentina of Milan ; and the expression of
this singular and tragic jealousy is preserved to us
by a rare chance, in such straightforward and vivid
words as we are accustomed to hear only on the
stress of actual hfe, or in the theatre. In history —
where we see things as in a glass darkly, and the
fashion of former times is brought before us, deplor-
ably adulterated and defaced, fitted to very vague
and pompous words, and strained through many
men's minds of everything personal or precise — this
speech of the widowed duchess startles a reader,
somewhat as the footprint startled Robinson Crusoe.
A human voice breaks in upon the silence of the
study, and the student is aware of a fellow-creature
in his world of documents. With such a clue in
hand, one may imagine how this wounded lioness
would spur and exasperate the resentment of her
children, and what would be the last words of
counsel and command she left behind her.

With these instancies of his dying mother — almost
a voice from the tomb — still tingUng in his ears, the
position of young Charles of Orleans, when he was
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CHAHLES OF ORLEANS

left at the head of that great house, was curiously
similar to that of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The times
were out of joint ; here was a murdered father to
avenge on a powerful murderer ; and here, in both
cases, a lad of inactive disposition born to set these
matters right. Valentina's commendation of Dunois
involved a judgment on Charles, and that judgment
was exactly correct. Whoever might be, Charles
was not the man to avenge his father. Like Hamlet,
this son of a dear father murdered was sincerely
grieved at heart. Like Hamlet, too, he could
unpack his heart with words, and wrote a most
eloquent letter to the king, complaining that what
was denied to him would not be denied 'to
the lowest born and poorest man on earth.' Even
in his private hours he strove to preserve a
lively recollection of his injury, and keep up the
native hue of resolution. He had gems engraved
with appropriate legends, hortatory or threatening:
* Dieu le scetj God knows it ; or * Souvenez-vous
de — ' Remember ! ^ It is only towards the end that
the two stories begin to differ ; and in some points
the historical version is the more tragic. Hamlet
only stabbed a silly old councillor behind the arras ;
Charles of Orleans trampled France for five years
under the hoofs of his banditti. The miscarriage of
Hamlet's vengeance was confined, at widest, to the
palace ; the ruin wrought by Charles of Orleans was
as broad as France.

Yet the first act of the young duke is worthy of

1 Michelet, iv. App. 179, p. 337.

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MEN AND BOOKS

honourable mention. Prodigal Louis had made enor-
mous debts ; and there is a story extant, to illustrate
how lightly he himself regarded these commercial
obligations. It appears that Louis, after a narrow
escape he made in a thunderstorm, had a smart
access of penitence, and announced he would pay his
debts on the following Sunday. More than eight
hundred creditors presented themselves, but by that
time the devil was well again, and they were shown
the door with more gaiety than politeness. A time
when such cynical dishonesty was possible for a man
of culture is not, it will be granted, a fortunate epoch
for creditors. When the original debtor was so lax,
we may imagine how an heir would deal with the
incumbrances of his inheritance. On the death of
Philip the Forward, father of that John the Fearless
whom we have seen at work, the widow went through
the ceremony of a public renunciation of goods ;
taking off her purse and girdle, she left them on the
grave, and thus, by one notable act, cancelled her
husband's debts and defamed his honour. The con-
duct of young Charles of Orleans was very different.
To meet the joint liabilities of his father and mother
(for Valentina also was lavish), he had to sell or
pledge a quantity of jewels ; and yet he would not
take advantage of a pretext, even legally valid, to
diminish the amount. Thus, one Godefroi Lefevre,
having disbursed many odd sums for the late duke,
and received or kept no vouchers, Charles ordered
that he should be beheved upon his oath.^ To a

^ Champollion-Figeac, pp. 279-82.
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CHARLES OF ORLEANS

modern mind this seems as honourable to his father's
memory as if John the Fearless had been hanged as
high as Haman. And as things fell out, except a
recantation from the University of Paris, which had
justified the murder out of party feehng, and various
other purely paper reparations, this was about the
outside of what Charles was to effect in that direc-
tion. He lived five years, and grew up from sixteen
to twenty-one, in the midst of the most horrible
civil war, or series of civil wars, that ever devastated
France ; and from first to last his wars were ill-
starred, or else his victories useless. Two years after
the murder (March 1409), John the Fearless having
the upper hand for the moment, a shameful and
useless reconcihation took place, by the King's
command, in the Church of Our Lady at Chartres.
The advocate of the Duke of Burgundy stated that
Louis of Orleans had been killed 'for the good of
the King's person and realm.' Charles and his
brothers, with tears of shame, under protest, pour
ne pas desobeir au roi, forgave their father's mur-
derer and swore peace upon the missal. It was, as
I say, a shameful and useless ceremony ; the very
grefiier, entering it in his register, wrote in the
margin, ^ Pax, paoc, inquit Propheta, et non est
pax.'^

Charles was soon after allied with the abominable
Bernard d'Armagnac, even betrothed or married to
a daughter of his, called by a name that sounds like
a contradiction in terms. Bonne d'Armagnac. From

1 Michelet, iv. pp. 123-24.

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that time forth, throughout all this monstrous period
— a very nightmare in the history of France — he is
no more than a stalking-horse for the ambitious
Gascon. Sometimes the smoke lifts, and you can
see him for the twinkling of an eye, a very pale
figure ; at one moment there is a rumour he will be
crowned king ; at another, w^hen the uproar has
subsided, he will be heard still crying out for justice;
and the next (1412), he is showing himself to the
applauding populace on the same horse with John of
Burgundy, But these are exceptional seasons, and
for the most part he merely rides at the Gascon's
bridle over devastated France. His very party go,
not by the name of Orleans, but by the name of
Armagnac. Paris is in the hands of the butchers :
the peasants have taken to the woods. Alliances
are made and broken as if in a country dance ; the
English called in, now by this one, now by the other.
Poor people sing in church, with white faces and
lamentable music : ^Domine Jesu, parce populo tuo,
dirige in viam pads principes.' And the end and
upshot of the whole affair for Charles of Orleans
is another peace with John the Fearless. France is
once more tranquil, with the tranquillity of ruin ; he
may ride home again to Blois, and look, with what
countenance he may, on those gems he had got
engraved in the early days of his resentment,
' Souvenez-vous de — ' Remember ! He has killed
Polonius, to be sure ; but the King is never a penny
the worse.

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CHAKLES OF ORLEANS

From the battle of Agincourt (Oct. 1415) dates
the second period of Charles's life. The English
reader will remember the name of Orleans in the
play of Henry V. ; and it is at least odd that we
can trace a resemblance between the puppet and the
original. The interjection, ' I have heard a sonnet
begin so to one's mistress ' (Act iii. scene 7), may
very well indicate one who was already an expert in
that sort of trifle ; and the game of proverbs he plays
with the Constable in the same scene would be
quite in character for a man who spent many years
of his life capping verses with his courtiers. Cer-
tainly, Charles was in the great battle with five
hundred lances (say, three thousand men), and there
he was made prisoner as he led the van. According
to one story, some ragged English archer shot him
down ; and some diligent English Pistol, hunting
ransoms on the field of battle, extracted him from
under a heap of bodies and retailed him to our King
Henry. He was the most important capture of the
day, and used with all consideration. On the way to
Calais, Henry sent him a present of bread and wine
(and bread, you will remember, was an article of
luxury in the English camp), but Charles would
neither eat nor drink. Thereupon Henry came to
visit him in his quarters. ' Noble cousin,' said he,
' how are you ? ' Charles replied that he was well.
' Why then do you neither eat nor drink ? ' And

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then with some asperity, as I imagine, the young
duke told him that ' truly he had no inclination for
food.' And our Henry improved the occasion with
something of a snuffle, assuring his prisoner that
God had fought against the French on account of
their manifold sins and transgressions. Upon this
there supervened the agonies of a rough sea-passage ;
and many French lords, Charles certainly among
the number, declared they would rather endure such
another defeat than such another sore trial on ship-
board. Charles, indeed, never forgot his sufferings.
Long afterwards, he declared his hatred to a seafaring
life, and willingly yielded to England the empire of
the seas, ' because there is danger and loss of life,
and God knows what pity when it storms ; and sea-
sickness is for many people hard to bear ; and the
rough life that must be led is little suitable for the
nobility : ' ^ which, of all babyish utterances that ever
fell from any public man, may surely bear the bell.
Scarcely disembarked, he followed his victor, with
such wry face as we may fancy, through the streets
of holiday London. And then the doors closed
upon his last day of garish life for more than a quar-
ter of a century. After a boyhood passed in the
dissipations of a luxurious court or in the camp of
war, his ears still stunned and his cheeks still burning
from his enemies' jubilations ; out of all this ringing
of English bells and singing of English anthems,
from among all these shouting citizens in scarlet
cloaks, and beautiful virgins attired in white, he

^ Debate between the Heralds.
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CHARLES OF ORLEANS

passed into the silence and solitude of a political
prison.^

His captivity was not without alleviations. He
was allowed to go hawking, and he found Eng-
land an admirable country for the sport ; he was
a favourite with English ladies, and admired their
beauty ; and he did not lack for money, wine, or
books ; he was honourably imprisoned in the strong-
holds of great nobles, in Windsor Castle and the
Tower of London. But when all is said, he was
a prisoner for five-and-twenty years. For five-and-
twenty years he could not go where he would,
or do what he liked, or speak with any but
his jailers. We may talk very wisely .of allevia-
tions ; there is only one alleviation for which the
man would thank you : he would thank you to
open the door. With what regret Scottish James i.
bethought him (in the next room perhaps to Charles)
of the time when he rose 'as early as the day.'
What would he not have given to wet his boots
once more with morning dew, and follow his vagrant
fancy among the meadows ? The only alleviation to
the misery of constraint lies in the disposition of the
prisoner. To each one this place of discipline brings
his own lesson. It stirs Latude or Baron Trenck
into heroic action ; it is a hermitage for pious and
conformable spirits. Beranger tells us he found
prison life, with its regular hours and long evenings,
both pleasant and profitable. The Pilgrhns Progress
and Don Quiocote were begun in prison. It was

^ Sir H. Nicholas, Agincourt.

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MEN AND BOOKS

after they were become (to use the words of one of
them), ' Oh, worst imprisonment — the dungeon of
themselves ! ' that Homer and Milton worked so
hard and so well for the profit of mankind. In the
year 1415 Henry v. had two distinguished prisoners,
French Charles of Orleans and Scottish James i.,
who whiled away the hours of their captivity with
rhyming. Indeed, there can be no better pastime
for a lonely man than the mechanical exercise of
verse. Such intricate forms as Charles had been
used to from childhood, the ballade with its scanty
rhymes ; the rondel, with the recurrence first of the
whole, then of half the burthen, in thirteen verses,
seem to have been invented for the prison and the
sick-bed. The common Scots saying, on the sight
of anything operose and finical, 'he must have
had little to do that made that ! ' might be put
as epigraph on all the song-books of old France.
Making such sorts of verse belongs to the same
class of pleasures as guessing acrostics or 'burying
proverbs.' It is almost purely formal, almost purely
verbal. It must be done gently and gingerly. It
keeps the mind occupied a long time, and never so
intently as to be distressing ; for anything hke strain
is against the very nature of the craft. Sometimes
things go easily, the refrains fall into their place as
if of their own accord, and it becomes something of
the nature of an intellectual tennis ; you must make
your poem as the rhymes will go, just as you must
strike your ball as your adversary played it. So that
these forms are suitable rather for those who wish
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CHAKLES OF ORLEANS

to make verses than for those who wish to express
opinions. Sometimes, on the other hand, difficulties
arise : rival verses come into a man's head, and fugi-
tive words elude his memory. Then it is that he
enjoys at the same time the deliberate pleasures of
a connoisseur comparing wines, and the ardour of
the chase. He may have been sitting all day long
in prison with folded hands ; but when he goes to
bed the retrospect will seem animated and eventful.

Besides confirming himself as an habitual maker
of verses, Charles acquired some new opinions
during his captivity. He was perpetually reminded
of the change that had befallen him. He found
the climate of England cold and 'prejudicial to the
human frame ' ; he had a great contempt for English
fruit and English beer ; even the coal fires were
unpleasing in his eyes.^ He was rooted up from
among his friends and customs and the places that
had known him. And so in this strange land he
began to learn the love of his own. Sad people all
the world over are like to be moved when the wind
is in some particular quarter. So Burns preferred
when it was in the west, and blew to him from his
mistress ; so the girl in the ballade, looking south
to Yarrow, thought it might carry a kiss betwixt
her and her gallant ; and so we find Charles singing
of the ' pleasant wind that comes from France.' ^
One day, at ' Dover-on-the-Sea,' he looked across
the straits, and saw the sandhills about Calais.
And it happened to him, he tells us in a ballade,

^ Debate between the Heralds. ^ Works (ed. d'Hericault), i. 43.

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MEN AND BOOKS

to remember his happiness over there in the past ;
and he was both sad and merry at the recollection,
and could not have his fill of gazing on the shoi-es
of France.^ Although guilty of unpatriotic acts,
he had never been exactly unpatriotic in feeling.
But his sojourn in England gave, for the time at
least, some consistency to what had been a very
weak and ineffectual prejudice. He must have been
under the influence of more than usually solemn
considerations, when he proceeded to turn Henry's
puritanical homily after Agin court into a ballade,
and reproach France, and himself by implication,
with pride, gluttony, idleness, unbridled covetous-
ness, and sensuality.^ For the moment, he must
really have been thinking more of France than of
Charles of Orleans.

And another lesson he learned. He who was
only to be released in case of peace begins to think
upon the disadvantages of war. ' Pray for peace,'
is his refrain : a strange enough subject for the ally
of Bernard d'Armagnac.^ But this lesson was plain
and practical ; it had one side in particular that
was specially attractive for Charles, and he did not
hesitate to explain it in so many words. ' Every-
body,' he writes — I translate roughly-—' everybody
should be much inclined to peace, for everybody has
a deal to gain by it.' ^

Charles made laudable endeavours to acquire
English, and even learned to write a rondel in that

1 Works (ed. d'Hericault;, i. 143. ^ /j,-^ 190.

3 Ibid. 144. * Ibid. 158.

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CHARLES OF ORLEANS

tongue of quite average mediocrity. ^ He was for
some time billeted on the unhappy Suffolk, who
received fourteen shillings and fourpence a day for
his expenses ; and from the fact that Suffolk after-
wards visited Charles in France while he was nego-
tiating the marriage of Henry vi., as well as the
terms of that nobleman's impeachment, we may
believe there was some not unkindly intercourse
between the prisoner and his jailer : a fact of con-
siderable interest when we remember that Suffolk's
wife was the granddaughter of the poet Geoffrey
Chaucer.^ Apart from this, and a mere catalogue
of dates and places, only one thing seems evident
in the story of Charles's captivity. It seems evident
that, as these five-and-twenty years drew on, he
became less and less resigned. Circumstances were
against the growth of such a feeling. One after
another of his fellow-prisoners was ransomed and
went home. More than once he was himself per-
mitted to visit France ; where he worked on abortive
treaties and showed himself more eager for his own
deliverance than for the profit of his native land.
Resignation may follow after a reasonable time upon
despair ; but if a man is persecuted by a series of
brief and irritating hopes, his mind no more attains
to a settled frame of resolution than his eye would
grow familiar with a night of thunder and lightning.

1 M. Champollion-Figeac gives many in his editions of Charles's works^
most (as I should think) of very doubtful authenticity, or worse.

2 Rymer, x. 564 ; D'Hericault's Memoir, p. xli. ; Gairdner's Paston
Letters, i. 27, 99.

5— Q 241

MEN AND BOOKS

Years after, when he was speaking at the trial of
that Duke of Alen9on who began Hfe so hopefully
as the boyish favourite of Joan of Arc, he sought
to prove that captivity was a harder punishment
than death. 'For I have had experience myself,'
he said ; ' and in my prison of England, for the
weariness, danger, and displeasure in which I then
lay, I have many a time wished I had been slain at
the battle where they took me.' ^ This is a flourish,
if you will, but it is something more. His spirit
would sometimes rise up in a fine anger against the
petty desires and contrarieties of life. He would
compare his own condition with the quiet and dig-
nified estate of the dead ; and aspire to lie among
his comrades on the field of Agincourt, as the
Psalmist prayed to have the wings of a dove and
dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea. But such
high thoughts came to Charles only in a flash.

John the Fearless had been murdered in his turn
on the bridge of Montereau so far back as 1419.
His son, Philip the Good — partly to extinguish the
feud, partly that he might do a popular action, and
partly, in view of his ambitious schemes, to detach
another great vassal from the throne of France — had
taken up the cause of Charles of Orleans, and nego-
tiated dihgently for his release. In 1433 a Burgun-
dian embassy was admitted to an interview with the
captive duke, in the presence of Suffolk. Charles
shook hands most affectionately with the ambas-
sadors. They asked after his health. 'I am well

^ Cliampollion-Figeac^ p. 377.
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CHARLES OF ORLEANS

enough in body,' he replied, ' but far from well in
mind. I am dying of grief at having to pass the best
days of my life in prison, with none to sympathise.'
The talk falling on the chances of peace, Charles
referred to Suffolk if he were not sincere and con-
stant in his endeavours to bring it about. ' If peace
depended on me,' he said, ' I should procure it
gladly, were it to cost me my life seven days after.'
We may take this as showing what a large price he
set, not so much on peace, as on seven days of free-
dom. Seven days ! — he would make them seven
years in the employment. Finally, he assured the
ambassadors of his good-will to Philip of Burgundy ;
squeezed one of them by the hand and nipped him
twice in the arm to signify things unspeakable before
Suffolk ; and two days after sent them Suffolk's
barber, one Jean Carnet, a native of Lille, to testify
more freely of his sentiments. ' As I speak French,'
said this emissary, ' the Duke of Orleans is more
familiar with me than with any other of the house-
hold ; and I can bear witness he never said anything
against Duke Philip.'^ It will be remembered that
this person, with whom he was so anxious to stand
well, was no other than his hereditary enemy, the
son of his father's murderer. But the honest fellow
bore no malice, indeed — not he. He began exchang-
ing ballades with Philip, whom he apostrophises as
his companion, his cousin, and his brother. He
assures him that, soul and body, he is altogether
Burgundian ; and protests that he has given his

1 Dom Plancher, iv, 178-9.

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MEN AND BOOKS

heart in pledge to him. Regarded as the history
of a vendetta, it must be owned that Charles's life
has points of some originaUty. And yet there is an
engaging frankness about these ballades which dis-
arms criticism.^ You see Charles throwing himself
head-foremost into the trap ; you hear Burgundy, in
his answers, begin to inspire him with his own pre-
judices, and draw melancholy pictures of the mis-
government of France. But Charles's own spirits
are so high and so amiable, and he is so thoroughly
convinced his cousin is a fine fellow, that one's
scruples are carried away in the torrent of his happi-
ness and gratitude. And his would be a sordid
spirit who would not clap hands at the consumma-
tion (Nov. 1440) ; when Charles, after having sworn
on the Sacrament that he would never again bear
arms against England, and pledged himself body and
soul to the unpatriotic faction in his own country, set
out from London with a light heart and a damaged
integrity.

In the magnificent copy of Charles's poems, given
by our Henry vii. to Elizabeth of York on the
occasion of their marriage, a large illumination
figures at the head of one of the pages, which, in
chronological perspective, is almost a history of his
imprisonment. It gives a view of London with all
its spires, the river passing through the old bridge
and busy with boats. One side of the White Tower
has been taken out, and we can see, as under a sort
of shrine, the paved room where the duke sits writing.

1 Works, i. 157-63.
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CHARLES OF ORLEANS

He occupies a high-backed bench in front of a great
chimney ; red and black ink are before him ; and
the upper end of the apartment is guarded by many
halberdiers, with the red cross of England on their
breast. On the next side of the tower he appears
again, leaning out of window and gazing on the river;
doubtless there blows just then ' a pleasant wind
from out the land of France,' and some ship comes
up the river : 'the ship of good news.' At the door
we find him yet again ; this time embracing a
messenger, while a groom stands by holding two
saddled horses. And yet farther to the left a
cavalcade defiles out of the tower ; the duke is on
his way at last towards 'the sunshine of France.'

Ill

During the five-and-twenty years of his captivity
Charles had not lost in the esteem of his fellow-
countrymen. For so young a man, the head of
so great a house and so numerous a party, to be
taken prisoner as he rode in the vanguard of France,
and stereotyped for all men in this heroic attitude,
was to taste untimeously the honours of the grave.
Of him, as of the dead, it would be ungenerous
to speak evil ; what little energy he had displayed
would be remembered with piety when all that
he had done amiss was courteously forgotten. As
English folk looked for Arthur ; as Danes awaited
the coming of Ogier ; as Somersetshire peasants or

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sergeants of the Old Guard expected the return of
Monmouth or Napoleon ; the countrymen of Charles
of Orleans looked over the straits towards his English
prison with desire and confidence. Events had so
fallen out while he was rhyming ballades, that he
had become the type of all that was most truly
patriotic. The remnants of his old party had been
the chief defenders of the unity of France. His
enemies of Burgundy had been notoriously favourers
and furtherers of English domination. People for-
got that his brother still lay by the heels for an
unpatriotic treaty with England, because Charles
himself had been taken prisoner patriotically fight-
ing against it. That Henry v. had left special
orders against his liberation served to increase the
wistful pity with which he was regarded. And
when, in defiance of all contemporary virtue, and
against express pledges, the English carried war
into their prisoner's fief, not only France, but all
thinking men in Christendom, were roused to in-
dignation against the oppressors, and sympathy with
the victim. It was little wonder if he came to
bulk somewhat largely in the imagination of the
best of those at home. Charles le Boutteillier, when
(as the story goes) he slew Clarence at Beauge, was
only seeking an exchange for Charles of Orleans.^
It was one of Joan of Arc's declared intentions to
deliver the captive duke. If there was no other
way, she meant to cross the seas and bring him
home by force. And she professed before her

1 Vallet's Cliarles VII., i. 251.
' 246

CHARLES OF ORLEANS

judges a sure knowledge that Charles of Orleans
was beloved of God.^

Alas ! it was not at all as a deliverer that Charles
returned to France. He was nearly fifty years
old. Many changes had been accomplished since,
at twenty-three, he was taken on the field of Agin-
court. But of all these he was profoundly ignorant,
or had only heard of them in the discoloured reports
of Philip of Burgundy. He had the ideas of a
former generation, and sought to correct them by
the scandal of a factious party. With such quahfi-
cations he came back eager for the domination, the
pleasures, and the display that befitted his princely
birth. A long disuse of all political activity com-
bined with the flatteries of his new friends to fill
him with an overweening conceit of his own capacity
and influence. If aught had gone wrong in his
absence, it seemed quite natural men should look
to him for its redress. Was not King Arthur come
again ?

The Duke of Burgundy received him with politic
honours. He took his guest by his foible for
pageantry, all the easier as it was a foible of his
own ; and Charles walked right out of prison into
much the same atmosphere of trumpeting and beU-
rinsfinff as he had left behind when he went in.
Fifteen days after his deliverance he was married
to Mary of Cleves, at St. Omer. The marriage
was celebrated with the usual pomp of the Bur-
gundian court ; there were joustings and illumina-

^ Froces de Jeanne d' Arc, i. 133-55.

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MEN AND BOOKS

tions, and animals that spouted wine ; and many
nobles dined together, comme en brigade, and were
served abundantly with many rich and curious
dishes. 1 It must have reminded Charles not a little
of his first marriage at Compiegne ; only then he
was two years the junior of his bride, and this time
he was five-and- thirty years her senior. It will be
a fine question which marriage promises more : for
a boy of fifteen to lead off with a lass of seventeen,
or a man of fifty to make a match of it with a child
of fifteen. But there was something bitter in both.
The lamentations of Isabella will not have been
forgotten. As for Mary, she took up with one
Jaquet de la Lain, a sort of muscular Methody of
the period, with a huge appetite for tournaments,
and a habit of confessing himself the last thing
before he went to bed.^ With such a hero the
young duchess's amours were most likely innocent ;
and in all other ways she was a suitable partner
for the duke, and well fitted to enter into his
pleasures.

When the festivities at Saint Omer had come to
an end, Charles and his wife set forth by Ghent and
Tournay. The towns gave him offerings of money
as he passed through, to help in the payment of
his ransom. From all sides, ladies and gentlemen
thronged to offer him their services ; some gave him
their sons for pages, some archers for a bodyguard ;

1 Moustrelet.

2 Vallet's Charles VIL, iii. chap. i. But see the chronicle that bears
Jaquet's name : a lean and dreary book.

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CHARLES OF ORLEANS

and by the time he reached Tournay he had a
followmg of 300 horse. Everywhere he was received
as though he had been the king of France.^ If he
did not come to imagine himself something of the
sort, he certainly forgot the existence of any one with
a better claim to the title. He conducted himself
on the hypothesis that Charles vii. was another
Charles vi. He signed with enthusiasm that treaty
of Arras, which left France almost at the discretion
of Burgundy. On December 18 he was still no
farther than Bruges, where he entered into a private
treaty with Philip ; and it was not until January 14,
ten weeks after he disembarked in France, and
attended by a ruck of Burgundian gentlemen, that
he arrived in Paris and offered to present himself
before Charles vii. The King sent word that he
might come, if he would, with a small retinue, but
not with his present following ; and the duke, who
was mightily on his high horse after all the ovations
he had received, took the King's attitude amiss, and
turned aside into Touraine, to receive more welcome
and more presents, and be convoyed by torchlight
into faithful cities.

And so you see here was King Arthur home
again, and matters nowise mended in consequence.
The best we can say is, that this last stage of
Charles's public life was of no long duration. His
confidence was soon knocked out of him in the
contact with others. He began to find he was an
earthen vessel among many vessels of brass ; he

1 Monstrelet.

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MEN AND BOOKS

began to be shrewdly aware that he was no King
Arthur. In 1442, at Limoges, he made himself the
spokesman of the malcontent nobility. The King
showed himself humiliatingly indifferent to his
counsels, and humiliatingly generous towards his
necessities. And there, with some blushes, he may
be said to have taken farewell of the political stage.
A feeble attempt on the county of Asti is scarce
worth the name of exception. Thenceforward let
Ambition wile whom she may into the turmoil of
events, our duke will walk cannily in his well-
ordered garden, or sit by the fire to touch the
slender reed.^

If it were given each of us to transplant his life
wherever he pleased in time or space, with all the
ages and all the countries of the world to choose
from, there would be quite an instructive diversity
of taste. A certain sedentary majority would prefer
to remain where they were. Many would choose
the Renaissance ; many some stately and simple
period of Grecian hfe ; and still more elect to pass
a few years wandering among the villages of
Palestine with an inspired conductor. For some
of our quaintly vicious contemporaries, we have the
decline of the Roman Empire and the reign of
Henry iii. of France. But there are others, not
quite so vicious, who yet cannot look upon the

^ D'He'ricault's Memoir, xl. xli.; Vallet^ Charles VII., ii. 485.
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CHARLES OF ORLEANS

world with perfect gravity, who have never taken
the categorical imperative to wife, and have more
taste for what is comfortable than for what is
magnanimous and high ; and I can imagine some
of these casting their lot in the court of Blois
during the last twenty years of the life of Charles
of Orleans.

The duke and duchess, their staff of officers and
* ladies, and the high-born and learned persons who
were attracted to Blois on a visit, formed a society
for killing time and perfecting each other in various
elegant accomplishments, such as we might imagine
for an ideal watering-place in the Delectable Moun-
tains. The company hunted and went on pleasure-
parties ; they played chess, tables, and many other
games. What we now call the history of the period
passed, I imagine, over the heads of these good
people much as it passes over our own. News
reached them, indeed, of great and joyful import.
William Peel received eight livres and five sous
from the duchess when he brought the first tidings
that Rouen was recaptured from the English. ^ A
little later and the duke sang, in a truly patriotic
vein, the deliverance of Guyenne and Normandy.^
They were liberal of rhymes and largesse, and wel-
comed the prosperity of their country much as they
welcomed the coming of spring, and with no more
thought of collaborating towards the event. Religion
was not forgotten in the court of Blois. Pilgrim-
ages were agreeable and picturesque excursions. In

1 Champollion-Figeac, p. 368. 2 Works, i. 115.

MEN AND BOOKS

those days a well-served chapel was something
like a good vinery in our own, — an opportunity for
display and the source of mild enjoyments. There
was probably something of his rooted dehght in
pageantry, as well as a good deal of gentle piety,
in the feelings with which Charles gave dinner
every Friday to thirteen poor people, served them
himself, and washed their feet with his own hands. ^
Solemn affairs would interest Charles and his courtiers
from their trivial side. The duke perhaps cared
less for the deliverance of Guyenne and Normandy
than for his own verses on the occasion ; just as
Dr. Russell's correspondence in The Times was
among the most material parts of the Crimean
War for that talented correspondent. And I think
it scarcely cynical to suppose that religion as well
as patriotism was principally cultivated as a means
of filling up the day.

It was not only messengers fiery red with haste
and charged with the destiny of nations who were
made welcome at the gates of Blois. If any man
of accompKshment came that way, he was sure of
an audience, and something for his pocket. The
courtiers would have received Ben Jonson like
Drummond of Hawthornden, and a good pugilist
like Captain Barclay. They were catholic, as none
but the entirely idle can be catholic. It might be
Pierre, called Dieu d'amours, the juggler, or it
might be three high English minstrels ; or the two
men, players of ghitterns, from the kingdom of

^ D'Hericault's Memoir, xlv.
252

CHARLES OF ORLEANS

Scotland, who sang the destruction of the Turks ;
or again Jehan Rognelet, player of instruments of
music, who played and danced with his wife and
two children ; they would each be called into the
castle to give a taste of his proficiency before my
lord the duke.^ Sometimes the performance was of
a more personal interest, and produced much the
same sensations as are felt on an EngHsh green
on the arrival of a professional cricketer, or round
an Enghsh bilUard-table during a match between
Roberts and Cooke. This was when Jehan Negre,
the Lombard, came to Blois and played chess against
all these chess-players, and won much money from
my lord and his intimates ; or when Baudet Harenc
of Chalons made ballades before all these ballade-
makers.-

It will not surprise the reader to learn they were
all makers of ballades and rondels. To write verses
for May-day seems to have been as much a matter
of course as to ride out with the cavalcade that
went to gather hawthorn. The choice of Valentines
was a standing challenge, and the courtiers pelted
each other with humorous and sentimental verses as
in a hterary carnival. If an indecorous adventure
befell our friend Maistre Estienne le Gout, my lord
the duke would turn it into the funniest of rondels,
all the rhymes being the names of the cases of nouns
or the moods of verbs ; and Maistre Estienne would
make reply in similar fashion, seeking to prune the
story of its more humiliating episodes. If Fredet

1 Champomon-Figeac, pp. 361, 381. 2 /^j^, pp. 359^ 36I.

MEN AND BOOKS

was too long away from Court, a rondel went to
upbraid him; and it was in a rondel that Fredet
would excuse himself. Sometimes two or three, or
as many as a dozen, would set to work on the same
refrain, the same idea, or in the same macaronic
jargon. Some of the poetasters were heavy enough ;
others were not wanting in address ; and the duchess
herself was among those who most excelled. On
one occasion eleven competitors made a ballade on
the idea,

' I die of thirst beside the fountain's edge.'
(Je meurs de soif empres de la fontaine.)

These eleven ballades still exist; and one of them
arrests the attention rather from the name of the
author than from any special merit in itself. It
purports to be the work of Fran9ois Villon ; and so
far as a foreigner can judge (which is indeed a small
way) it may very well be his. Nay, and if any one
thing is more probable than another, in the great
tabula rasa, or unknown land, which we are fain to
call the biography of Villon, it seems probable
enough that he may have gone upon a visit to
Charles of Orleans. Where Master Baudet Harenc,
of Chalons, found a sympathetic, or perhaps a
derisive, audience (for who can tell now-a-days the
degree of Baudet 's excellence in his art?), favour
would not be wanting for the greatest ballade-maker
of all time. Great as would seem the incongruity,
it may have pleased Charles to own a sort of kinship
with ragged singers, and whimsically regard himself
254

CHARLES OF ORLEANS

as one of the confraternity of poets. And he would
have other grounds of intimacy with Villon. A
room looking upon Windsor gardens is a different
matter from Villon's dungeon at Meun ; yet each in
his own degree had been tried in prison. Each in
his own way also loved the good things of this life
and the service of the Muses. But the same gulf
that separated Burns from his Edinburgh patrons
would separate the singer of Bohemia from the
rhyming duke. And it is hard to imagine that
Villon's training amongst thieves, loose women, and
vagabond students had fitted him to move in a
society of any dignity and courtliness. Ballades
are very admirable things ; and a poet is doubtless
a most interesting visitor. But among the courtiers
of Charles there would be considerable regard for
the proprieties of etiquette ; and even a duke will
sometimes have an eye to his teaspoons. Moreover,
as a poet, I can conceive he may have disappointed
expectation. It need surprise nobody if ^^illon's
ballade on the theme,

' I die of thirst beside the fountain's edge,'

was but a poor performance. He would make
better verses on the lee-side of a flagon at the sign
of the Pomme du Pin than in a cushioned settle in
the halls of Blois.

Charles liked change of place. He was often not
so much travelling as making a progress ; now to
join the King for some great tournament ; now to
visit King Rene, at Tarascon, where he had a study

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MEN AND BOOKS

of his own and saw all manner of interesting things
— Oriental curios, King Rene painting birds, and,
what particularly pleased him, Triboulet, the dwarf
jester, whose skull-cap was no bigger than an
orange.^ Sometimes the journeys were set about on
horseback in a large party, with the founders sent
forward to prepare a lodging at the next stage. We
find almost Gargantuan details of the provision
made by these officers against the duke's arrival,
of eggs and butter and bread, cheese and peas and
chickens, pike and bream and barbel, and wine both
white and red.^ Sometimes he went by water in a
barge, playing chess or tables with a friend in the
pavilion, or watching other vessels as they went
before the wind.^ Children ran along the bank, as
they do to this day on the Crinan Canal ; and when
Charles threw in money they would dive and bring
it up.^ As he looked on at their exploits, I wonder
whether that room of gold and silk and worsted
came back into his memory, with the device of little
children in a river, and a sky full of birds ?

He was a bit of a book-fancier, and had vied with
his brother Angouleme in bringing back the library
of their grandfather Charles v., when Bedford put it
up for sale in London.^ The duchess had a library

^ Lecoy de la Marche, Roi Rene, ii. 155, 177.

2 Champollion-Figeac, chaps, v. and vi.

3 Ibid. p. 364 ; Works, i. 172.

■* ChampoUion-Figeac, p. 364 : ' Jeter de I'argent aux pe^s eufans qui
estoient au long de Bourbon, pour les faire nouuer en I'eau et aller
querre I'argent au fond. '

^ Champollion-Figeac, p. 387.
256

CHARLES OF ORLEANS

of her own ; and we hear of her borrowing romances
from ladies in attendance on the blue-stocking Mar-
garet of Scotland.^ Not only were books collected,
but new books were written at the court of Blois.
The widow of one Jean Fougere, a bookbinder,
seems to have done a number of odd commissions
for the bibliophilous count. She it was who re-
ceived three vellum skins to bind the duchess's Book
of Hours, and who was employed to prepare parch-
ment for the use of the duke's scribes. And she it
was who bound in vermilion leather the great
manuscript of Charles's own poems, which was
presented to him by his secretary, Anthony Astesan,
with the text in one column, and Astesan's Latin
version in the other.^

Such tastes, with the coming of years, would
doubtless take the place of many others. We find
in Charles's verse much semi-ironical regret for other
days, and resignation to growing infirmities. He
who had been ' nourished in the schools of love '
now sees nothing either to please or displease him.
Old age has imprisoned him within doors, where he
means to take his ease, and let younger fellows
bestir themselves in life. He had written (in earlier
days, we may presume) a bright and defiant httle
poem in praise of solitude. If they would but leave
him alone with his own thoughts and happy re-
collections, he declared it was beyond the power of

^ Nouvelle Biographie Didof, art. ' Marie de Cleves ; ' Vallet, Charles VII. ,
iii. 85, note 1.

2 ChampoUion-Figeac, pp. 383-386.

5— R 257

MEN AND BOOKS

melancholy to affect him. But now, when his
animal strength has so much declined that he sings
the discomforts of winter instead of the inspirations
of spring, and he has no longer any appetite for life,
he confesses he is wretched when alone, and, to keep
his mind from grievous thoughts, he must have
many people around him, laughing, talking, and
singing.^

While Charles was thus falling into years, the
order of things, of which he was the outcome and
ornament, was growing old along with him. The
semi-royalty of the princes of the blood was already
a thing of the past; and when Charles vii. was
gathered to his fathers, a new king reigned in
France, who seemed every way the opposite of
royal. Louis xi. had aims that were incompre-
hensible, and virtues that were inconceivable, to his
contemporaries. But his contemporaries were able
enough to appreciate his sordid exterior, and his
cruel and treacherous spirit. To the whole nobility
of France he was a fatal and unreasonable pheno-
menon. All such courts as that of Charles at Blois,
or his friend Rene's in Provence, would soon be
made impossible : interference was the order of the
day ; hunting was already abolished ; and who
should say what was to go next? Louis, in fact,
must have appeared to Charles primarily in the light
of a kill-joy. I take it, when missionaries land in
South Sea Islands and lay strange embargo on the
simplest things in life, the islanders will not be

1 Works, ii. 57, 258.
258

CHARLES OF ORLEANS

much more puzzled and irritated than Charles of
Orleans at the policy of the Eleventh Louis. There
was one thing, I seem to apprehend, that had
always particularly moved him ; and that was, any
proposal to punish a person of his acquaintance.
No matter what treason he may have made or
meddled with, an Alen9on or an Armagnac was
sure to find Charles reappear from private life and
do his best to get him pardoned. He knew them
quite well. He had made rondels with them. They
were charming people in every way. There must
certainly be some mistake. Had not he himself
made anti-national treaties almost before he was out
of his nonage? And for the matter of that, had
not every one else done the like ? Such are some
of the thoughts by which he might explain to him-
self his aversion to such extremities ; but it was on
a deeper basis that the feeling probably reposed.
A man of his temper could not fail to be impressed
at the thought of disastrous revolutions in the for-
tunes of those he knew. He would feel painfully
the tragic contrast, when those who had everything
to make life valuable were deprived of life itself.
And it was shocking to the clemency of his spirit,
that sinners should be hurried before their Jud^e
without a fitting interval for penitence and satisfac-
tion. It was this feeling which brought him at last,
a poor, purblind blue-bottle of the later autumn,
into collision with ' the universal spider,' Louis xi.
He took up the defence of the Duke of Brittany at
Tours. But Louis was then in no humour to hear

259

MEN AND BOOKS

Charles's texts and Latin sentiments ; he had his
back to the wall, the future of France was at stake ;
and if all the old men in the world had crossed his
path, they would have had the rough side of his
tongue hke Charles of Orleans. I have found
nowhere what he said, but it seems it was mon-
strously to the point, and so rudely conceived that
the old duke never recovered the indignity. He
got home as far as Amboise, sickened, and died two
days after (Jan. 4, 1465), in the seventy-fourth year
of his age. And so a whifF of pungent prose stopped
the issue of melodious rondels to the end of time.

The futility of Charles's public life was of a piece
throughout. He never succeeded in any single
purpose he set before him ; for his deliverance from
England, after twenty-five years of failure, and at
the cost of dignity and consistency, it would be
ridiculously hyperbolical to treat as a success.
During the first part of his life he was the stalking-
horse of Bernard d'Armagnac ; during the second,
he was the passive instrument of English diplomat-
ists ; and before he was well entered on the third,
he hastened to become the dupe and cat's-paw of
Burgundian treason. On each of these occasions
a strong and not dishonourable personal motive
determined his behaviour. In 1407 and the follow-
ing years he had his father's murder uppermost
in his mind. During his English captivity, that
260

CHARLES OF ORLEANS

thought was displaced by a more immediate desire
for his own hberation. In 1440 a sentiment of
gratitude to Phihp of Burgundy bhnded him to all
else, and led him to break with the tradition of his
party and his own former hfe. He was born a great
vassal, and he conducted himself Hke a private
gentleman. He began life in a showy and brilliant
enough fashion, by the light of a petty personal
chivalry. He was not without some tincture of
patriotism ; but it was resolvable into two parts :
a preference for life among his fellow-countrymen,
and a barren point of honour. In England, he
could comfort himself by the reflection that 'he
had been taken while loyally doing his devoir,'
without any misgiving as to his conduct in the
previous years, when he had prepared the disaster
of Agincourt by wasteful feud. This unconscious-
ness of the larger interests is perhaps most happily
exampled out of his own mouth. When Alen9on
stood accused of betraying Normandy into the
hands of the English, Charles made a speech in his
defence, from which I have already quoted more
than once. Alen9on, he said, had professed a great
love and trust towards him ; ' yet did he give no
great proof thereof, when he sought to betray Nor-
mandy ; whereby he would have made me lose an
estate of 10,000 livres a year, and might have
occasioned the destruction of the kingdom and of
all us Frenchmen.' These are the words of one,
mark you, against whom Gloucester warned the
English Council because of his ' great subtility and

261

MEN AND BOOKS

cautelous disposition.' It is not hard to excuse the
impatience of Louis xi. if such stuff was foisted on
him by way of pohtical dehberation.

This incapacity to see things with any greatness,
this obscure and narrow view, was fundamentally
characteristic of the man as well as of the epoch.
It is not even so striking in his public life, where
he failed, as in his poems, where he notably suc-
ceeded. For wherever we might expect a poet to
be unintelligent, it certainly would not be in his
poetry. And Charles is unintelligent even there.
Of all authors whom a modern may still read, and
read over again with pleasure, he has perhaps the
least to say. His poems seem to bear testimony
rather to the fashion of rhyming, which distinguished
the age, than to any special vocation in the man
himself Some of them are drawing-room exercises,
and the rest seem made by habit. Great writers
are struck with something in nature or society, with
which they become pregnant and longing ; they are
possessed with an idea, and cannot be at peace until
they have put it outside of them in some distinct
embodiment. But with Charles literature was an
object rather than a means ; he was one who loved
bandying words for its own sake; the rigidity of
intricate metrical forms stood him in lieu of precise
thought ; instead of communicating truth, he ob-
served the laws of a game ; and when he had no
* one to challenge at chess or rackets, he made verses
in a wager against himself From the very idleness
of the man's mind, and not from intensity of feeling,
262

CHARLES OF ORLEANS

it happens that all his poems are more or less auto-
biographical. But they form an autobiography
singularly bald and uneventful. Little is therein
recorded beside sentiments. Thoughts, in any true
sense, he had none to record. And if we can gather
that he had been a prisoner in England, that he had
lived in the Orleannese, and that he hunted and
went in parties of pleasure, I believe it is about as
much definite experience as is to be found in all
these five hundred pages of autobiographical verse.
Doubtless, we find here and there a complaint on
the progress of the infirmities of age. Doubtless, he
feels the great change of the year, and distinguishes
winter from spring ; winter as the time of snow and
the fireside ; spring as the return of grass and
flowers, the time of St. Valentine's Day and a beat-
ing heart. And he feels love after a fashion. Again
and again we learn that Charles of Orleans is in
love, and hear him ring the changes through the
whole gamut of dainty and tender sentiment. But
there is never a spark of passion ; and heaven alone
knows whether there was any real woman in the
matter, or the whole thing was an exercise in fancy.
If these poems were indeed inspired by some living
mistress, one would think he had never seen, never
heard, and never touched her. There is nothing in
any one of these so numerous love-songs to indicate
who or what the lady was. Was she dark or fair,
passionate or gentle like himself, witty or simple?
Was it always one woman ? or are there a dozen
here immortalised in cold indistinction ? The old

263

MEN AND BOOKS

English translator mentions grey eyes in his version
of one of the amorous rondels ; so far as I remem-
ber, he was driven by some emergency of the verse ;
but in the absence of all sharp lines of character and
anything specific, we feel for the moment a sort of
surprise, as though the epithet were singularly happy
and unusual, or as though we had made our escape
from cloudland into something tangible and sure.
The measure of Charles's indifference to all that
now pre-occupies and excites a poet is best given
by a positive example. If, besides the coming of
spring, any one external circumstance may be said
to have struck his imagination, it was the despatch
of fourriers, while on a journey, to prepare the
night's lodging. This seems to be his favourite
image ; it reappears like the upas-tree in the early
work of Coleridge : we may judge with what childish
eyes he looked upon the world, if one of the sights
which most impressed him was that of a man going
to order dinner.

Although they are not inspired by any deeper
motive than the common run of contemporaneous
drawing-room verses, those of Charles of Orleans
are executed with inimitable lightness and dehcacy
of touch. They deal with floating and colourless
sentiments, and the writer is never greatly moved,
but he seems always genuine. He makes no attempt
to set off thin conceptions with a multiplicity of
phrases. His ballades are generally thin and scanty
of import ; for the ballade presented too large a
canvas, and he was pre-occupied by technical require-
264

CHARLES OF ORLEANS

ments. But in the rondel he has put himself before
all competitors by a happy knack and a prevailing
distinction of manner. He is very much more of a
duke in his verses than in his absurd and incon-
sequential career as a statesman ; and how he shows
himself a duke is precisely by the absence of all
pretension, turgidity, or emphasis. He turns verses,
as he would have come into the king's presence, with
a quiet accomplishment of grace.

Theodore de Banville, the youngest poet of a
famous generation now nearly extinct, and himself a
sure and finished artist, knocked off, in his happiest
vein, a few experiments in imitation of Charles of
Orleans. I would recommend these modern rondels
to all who care about the old duke, not only because
they are delightful in themselves, but because they
serve as a contrast to throw into relief the peculiari-
ties of their model. When de Banville revives a
forgotten form of verse — and he has already had the
honour of reviving the ballade — he does it in the
spirit of a workman choosing a good tool wherever
he can find one, and not at all in that of the
dilettante, who seeks to renew bygone forms of
thought and make historic forgeries. With the
ballade this seemed natural enough ; for in connec-
tion with ballades the mind recurs to Villon, and
Villon was almost more of a modern than de Ban-
ville himself But in the case of the rondel, a
comparison is challenged with Charles of Orleans,
and the difference between two ages and two
literatures is illustrated in a few poems of thirteen

265

MEN AND BOOKS

lines. Something, certainly, has been retained of
the old movement; the refrain falls in time like a
well-played bass ; and the very brevity of the thing,
by hampering and restraining the greater fecundity
of the modern mind, assists the imitation. But
de Banville's poems are full of form and colour ;
they smack racily of modern life, and own small
kindred with the verse of other days, when it seems
as if men walked by twilight, seeing little, and that
with distracted eyes, and instead of blood, some thin
and spectral fluid circulated in their veins. They
might gird themselves for battle, make love, eat and
drink, and acquit themselves manfully in all the
external parts of life ; but of the life that is within,
and those processes by which we render ourselves
an intelligent account of what we feel and do, and
so represent experience that we for the first time
make it ours, they had only a loose and troubled
possession. They beheld or took part in great
events, but there was no answerable commotion
in their reflective being ; and they passed through-
out turbulent epochs in a sort of ghostly quiet and
abstraction. Feeling seems to have been strangely
disproportioned to the occasion, and words were
laughably trivial and scanty to set forth the feeling
even such as it was. Juvenal des Ursins chronicles
calamity after calamity, with but one comment for
them all: that 'it was great pity.' Perhaps, after
too much of our florid literature, we find an adventi-
tious charm in what is so different; and while the
big drums are beaten every day by perspiring editors
266

CHARLES OF ORLEANS

over the loss of a cock-boat or the rejection of a
clause, and nothing is heard that is not proclaimed
with sound of trumpet, it is not wonderful if we
retire with pleasure into old books, and listen to
authors who speak small and clear, as if in a private
conversation. Truly this is so with Charles of
Orleans. We are pleased to find a small man
without the buskin, and obvious sentiments stated
without affectation. If the sentiments are obvious,
there is all the more chance we may have ex-
perienced the Hke. As we turn over the leaves,
we may find ourselves in sympathy with some one
or other of these staid joys and smiling sorrows. If
we do we shall be strangely pleased, for there is a
genuine pathos in these simple words, and the hues
go with a hit, and sing themselves to music of
their own.

267

VIII

SAMUEL PEPYS

In two books a fresh light has recently been thrown
on the character and position of Samuel Pepys.
Mr. Mynors Bright has given us a new transcription
of the Diary, increasing it in bulk by near a third,
correcting many errors, and completing our know-
ledge of the man in some curious and important
points. We can only regret that he has taken
hberties with the author and the pubHc. It is no
part of the duties of the editor of an established
classic to decide what may or may not be ' tedious
to the reader.' The book is either an historical
document or not, and in condemning Lord Bray-
brooke Mr. Bright condemns himself. As for the
time-honoured phrase, ' unfit for publication,' with-
out being cynical, we may regard it as the sign of a
precaution more or less commercial ; and we may
think, without being sordid, that when we purchase
six huge and distressingly expensive volumes, we
are entitled to be treated rather more like scholars
and rather less like children. But Mr. Bright may
268

SAMUEL PEPYS

rest assured : while we complain, we are still grate-
ful. Mr. Wheatley, to divide our obligation, brings
together, clearly and with no lost words, a body of
illustrative material.^ Sometimes we might ask a
little more ; never, I think, less. And as a matter
of fact, a great part of Mr. Wheatley 's volume might
be transferred, by a good editor of Pepys, to the
margin of the text, for it is precisely what the reader
wants.

In the light of these two books, at least, we have
now to read our author. Between them they con-
tain all we can expect to learn for, it may be, many
years. Now, if ever, we should be able to form some
notion of that unparalleled figure in the annals of
mankind — unparalleled for three good reasons : first,
because he was a man known to his contemporaries
in a halo of almost historical pomp, and to his remote
descendants with an indecent familiarity, hke a tap-
room comrade ; second, because he has outstripped
all competitors in the art or virtue of a conscious
honesty about oneself; and, third, because, being in
many ways a very ordinary person, he has yet placed
himself before the public eye with such a fulness and
such an intimacy of detail as might be envied by a
genius like Montaigne. Not then for his own sake
only, but as a character in a unique position, en-
dowed with a unique talent, and shedding a unique
light upon the lives of the mass of mankind, he is
surely worthy of prolonged and patient study.

1 H. R. Wheatley, Samuel Pepys and the World he Lived in. 1880.

269

MEN AND BOOKS

THE DIARY

That there should be such a book as Pepys's
Diary is incomparably strange. Pepys, in a corrupt
and idle period, played the man in public employ-
ments, toiling hard and keeping his honour bright.
Much of the little good that is set down to James
the Second comes by right to Pepys ; and if it were
little for a king, it is much for a subordinate. To
his clear, capable head was owing somewhat of the
greatness of England on the seas. In the exploits
of Hawke, Rodney, or Nelson, this dead Mr. Pepys
of the Navy Office had some considerable share.
He stood well by his business in the appalling plague
of 1666. He was loved and respected by some of
the best and wisest men in England. He was
President of the Royal Society ; and when he came
to die, people said of his conduct in that solemn
hour— thinking it needless to say more — that it was
answerable to the greatness of his life. Thus he
walked in dignity, guards of soldiers sometimes at-
tending him in his walks, subalterns bowing before his
periwig ; and when he uttered his thoughts they were
suitable to his state and services. On February 8,
1668, we find him writing to Evelyn, his mind
bitterly occupied with the late Dutch war, and some
thoughts of the different story of the repulse of the
Great Armada : ' Sir, you will not wonder at the
backwardness of my thanks for the present you
270

SAMUEL PEPYS

made me, so many days since, of the Prospect of
the Medway, while the Hollander rode master in it,
when I have told you that the sight of it hath led
me to such reflections on my particular interest, by
my employment, in the reproach due to that mis-
carriage, as have given me little less disquiet than he
is fancied to have who found his face in Michael
Angelo's hell. The same should serve me also in
excuse for my silence in celebrating your mastery
shown in the design and draught, did not indigna-
tion rather than courtship urge me so far to com-
mend them, as to wish the furniture of our House of
Lords changed from the story of '88 to that of '67
(of Evelyn's designing), till the pravity of this were
reformed to the temper of that age, wherein God
Almighty found his blessings more operative than,
I fear, he doth in ours his judgments.'

This is a letter honourable to the writer, where
the meaning rather than the words is eloquent.
Such was the account he gave of himself to his con-
temporaries ; such thoughts he chose to utter, and
in such language : giving himself out for a grave and
patriotic public servant. We turn to the same date
in the Diary by which he is known, after two cen-
turies, to his descendants. The entry begins in the
same key with the letter, blaming the * madness of
the House of Commons ' and ' the base proceedings,
just the epitome of all our public proceedings in this
age, of the House of Lords ; ' and then, without the
least transition, this is how our diarist proceeds :
* To the Strand, to my bookseller's, and there bought

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an idle, rogueish French book, Uescholle des Filles,
which I have bought in plain binding, avoiding the
buying of it better bound, because I resolve, as soon
as I have read it, to burn it, that it may not stand in
the list of books, nor among them, to disgrace them,
if it should be found.' Even in our day, when
responsibility is so much more clearly apprehended,
the man who wrote the letter would be notable ;
but what about the man, I do not say who bought a
roguish book, but who was ashamed of doing so, yet
did it, and recorded both the doing and the shame in
the pages of his daily journal ?

We all, whether we write or speak, must some-
what drape ourselves when we address our fellows ;
at a given moment we apprehend our character and
acts by some particular side ; we are merry with one,
grave with another, as befits the nature and demands
of the relation. Pepys's letter to Evelyn would
have little in common with that other one to Mrs.
Knipp which he signed by the pseudonym of Dapper
Dicky ; yet each would be suitable to the character
of his correspondent. There is no untruth in this,
for man, being a Protean animal, swiftly shares and
changes with his company and surroundings ; and
these changes are the better part of his education in
the world. To strike a posture once for all, and to
march through life like a drum-major, is to be highly
disagreeable to others and a fool for oneself into the
bargain. To Evelyn and to Knipp we understand
the double facing; but to whom was he posing in
the Diary, and what, in the name of astonishment,
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SAMUEL PEPYS

was the nature of the pose ? Had he suppressed all
mention of the book, or had he bought it, gloried in
the act, and cheerfully recorded his glorification, in
either case we should have made him out. But no ;
he is full of precautions to conceal the ' disgrace ' of
the purchase, and yet speeds to chronicle the whole
affair in pen and ink. It is a sort of anomaly in
human action, which we can exactly parallel from
another part of the Diary.

Mrs. Pepys had written a paper of her too just
complaints against her husband, and written it in
plain and very pungent English. Pepys, in an
agony lest the world should come to see it, brutally
seizes and destroys the tell-tale document ; and then
— you disbelieve your eyes — down goes the whole
story with unsparing truth and in the cruellest detail.
It seems he has no design but to appear respectable,
and here he keeps a private book to prove he was
not. You are at first faintly reminded of some of
the vagaries of the morbid religious diarist ; but at
a moment's thought the resemblance disappears.
The design of Pepys is not at all to edify ; it is not
from repentance that he chronicles his peccadilloes,
for he tells us when he does repent, and, to be just
to him, there often follows some improvement.
Again, the sins of the religious diarist are of a very
formal pattern, and are told with an elaborate whine.
But in Pepys you come upon good, substantive mis-
demeanours ; beams in his eye of which he alone
remains unconscious ; healthy outbreaks of the
animal nature, and laughable subterfuges to himself
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that always command belief and often engage the
sympathies.

Pepys was a young man for his age, came slowly
to himself in the world, sowed his wild oats late,
took late to industry, and preserved till nearly forty
the headlong gusto of a boy. So, to come rightly
at the spirit in which the Diary was written, we
must recall a class of sentiments which with most of
us are over and done before the age of twelve. In
our tender years we still preserve a freshness of sur-
prise at our prolonged existence; events make an
impression out of all proportion to their consequence ;
we are unspeakably touched by our own past adven-
tures, and look forward to our future personality
with sentimental interest. It was something of this,
I think, that clung to Pepys. Although not senti-
mental in the abstract, he was sweetly sentimental
about himself. His own past clung about his heart,
an evergreen. He was the slave of an association.
He could not pass by Islington, where his father
used to carry him to cakes and ale, but he must
light at the ' King's Head ' and eat and drink ' for
remembrance of the old house sake.' He counted it
good fortune to he a night at Epsom to renew his
old walks, ' where Mrs. Hely and I did use to walk
and talk, with whom I had the first sentiments of
love and pleasure in a woman's company, discourse
and taking her by the hand, she being a pretty
woman.' He goes about weighing up the Assurance,
which lay near Woolwich under water, and cries in
a parenthesis, ' Poor ship, that I have been twice
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SAMUEL PEPYS

merry in, in Captain Holland's time ; ' and after
revisiting the Nasehy, now changed into the Charles,
he confesses ' it was a great pleasure to myself to see
the ship that I began my good fortune in.' The
stone that he was cut for he preserved in a case ;
and to the Turners he kept aUve such gratitude for
their assistance, that for years, and after he had begun
to mount himself into higher zones, he continued to
have that family to dinner on the anniversary of the
operation. Not HazHtt nor Rousseau had a more
romantic passion for their past, although at times
they might express it more romantically ; and if
Pepys shared with them this childish fondness, did
not Rousseau, who left behind him the Confessions,
or Hazlitt, who wrote the Liber Amoris, and loaded
his essays with loving personal detail, share with
Pepys in his unwearied egotism ? For the two
things go hand in hand ; or, to be more exact, it is
the first that makes the second either possible oi
pleasing.

But, to be quite in sympathy with Pepys, we
must return once more to the experience of children.
I can remember to have written, in the fly-leaf of
more than one book, the date and the place where I
then was — if, for instance, I was ill in bed or sitting
in a certain garden ; these were jottings for my
future self; if I should chance on such a note in
after years, I thought it would cause me a particular
thrill to recognise myself across the intervening
distance. Indeed, I might come upon them now,
and not be moved one tittle — which shows that I

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have comparatively failed in life, and grown older
than Samuel Pepys. For in the Diary we can find
more than one such note of perfect childish egotism ;
as when he explains that his candle is going out,
' which makes me write thus slobberingly ; ' or as in
this incredible particularity, * To my study, where I
only wrote thus much of this day's passages to this *,
and so out again ; ' or lastly, as here, with more of
circumstance : ' I staid up till the bellman came by
with his bell under my window, as I was winting of
this very line, and cried, " Past one of the clock, and
a cold, frosty, windy morning." ' Such passages are
not to be misunderstood. The appeal to Samuel
Pepys years hence is unmistakable. He desires
that dear, though unknown, gentleman keenly to
realise his predecessor ; to remember why a passage
was uncleanly written ; to recall (let us fancy, with
a sigh) the tones of the bellman, the chill of the
early, windy morning, and the very line his own
romantic self was scribing at the moment. The
man, you will perceive, was making reminiscences —
a sort of pleasure by ricochet, which comforts many
in distress, and turns some others into sentimental
libertines : and the whole book, if you will but look
at it in that way, is seen to be a work of art to
Pepys's own address.

Here, then, we have the key to that remarkable
attitude preserved by him throughout his Diary, to
that unflinching — I had almost said, that unintelli-
gent— sincerity which makes it a miracle among
human books. He was not unconscious of his errors
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SAMUEL PEPYS

— far from it; he was often startled into shame,
often reformed, often made and broke his vows of
change. But whether he did ill or well, he was still
his own unequalled self; still that entrancing ego of
whom alone he cared to write ; and still sure of his
own affectionate indulgence, when the parts should
be changed, and the writer come to read what he
had written. Whatever he did, or said, or thought,
or suffered, it was still a trait of Pepys, a character
of his career ; and as, to himself, he was more inter-
esting than Moses or than Alexander, so all should
be faithfully set down. I have called his Diary a
work of art. Now when the artist has found some-
thing, word or deed, exactly proper to a favourite
character in play or novel, he will neither suppress
nor diminish it, though the remark be silly or the
act mean. The hesitation of Hamlet, the credulity
of Othello, the baseness of Emma Bovary, or the
irregularities of Mr. Swiveller, caused neither dis-
appointment nor disgust to their creators. And so
with Pepys and his adored protagonist : adored not
blindly, but with trenchant insight and enduring,
human toleration. I have gone over and over the
greater part of the Diary ; and the points where, to
the most suspicious scrutiny, he has seemed not
perfectly sincere, are so few, so doubtful, and so
petty, that I am ashamed to name them. It may
be said that we all of us write such a diary in airy
characters upon our brain ; but I fear there is a dis-
tinction to be made ; I fear that as we render to our
consciousness an account of our daily fortunes and

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behaviour, we too often weave a tissue of romantic
compliments and dull excuses ; and even if Pepys
were the ass and coward that men call him, we must
take rank as sillier and more cowardly than he. The
bald truth about oneself, what we are all too timid
to admit when we are not too dull to see it, that was
what he saw clearly and set down unsparingly.

It is improbable that the Diary can have been
carried on in the same single spirit in which it was
begun. Pepys was not such an ass, but he must
have perceived, as he went on, the extraordinary
nature of the work he was producing. He was a
great reader, and he knew what other books were
like. It must, at least, have crossed his mind that
some one might ultimately decipher the manuscript,
and he himself, with all his pains and pleasures, be
resuscitated in some later day ; and the thought,
although discouraged, must have warmed his heart.
He was not such an ass, besides, but he must have
been conscious of the deadly explosives, the gun-
cotton and the giant powder, he was hoarding in his
drawer. Let some contemporary light upon the
Journal, and Pepys was plunged for ever in social
and political disgrace. We can trace the growth of
his terrors by two facts. In 1660, while the Diary
was still in its youth, he tells about it, as a matter
of course, to a lieutenant in the navy ; but in 1669,
when it was already near an end, he could have
bitten his tongue out, as the saying is, because he
had let slip his secret to one so grave and friendly
as Sir William Coventry. And from two other facts
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SAMUEL PEPYS

I think we may infer that he had entertained, even
if he had not acquiesced in, the thought of a far-
distant pubUcity. The first is of capital importance :
the Diary was not destroyed. The second— that he
took unusual precautions to confound the cipher in
'rogueish' passages — proves, beyond question, that
he was thinking of some other reader besides himself
Perhaps while his friends were admiring the ' great-
ness of his behaviour ' at the approach of death, he
may have had a twinkhng hope of immortaUty.
Mens cujusque is est quisque, said his chosen motto ;
and, as he had stamped his mind with every crook
and foible in the pages of the Diary, he might
feel that what he left behind him was indeed
himself There is perhaps no other instance so
remarkable of the desire of man for publicity and an
enduring name. The greatness of his life was open,
yet he longed to communicate its smallness also;
and, while contemporaries bowed before him, he
must buttonhole posterity with the news that his
periwig was once aUve with nits. But this thought,
although I cannot doubt he had it, was neither his
first nor his deepest ; it did not colour one word that
he wrote ; and the Diary, for as long as he kept it,
remained what it was when he began, a private
pleasure for himself It was his bosom secret; it
added a zest to all his pleasures ; he lived in and for
it, and might well write these solemn words, when
he closed that confidant for ever : ' And so I betake
myself to that course which is almost as much as to
see myself go into the grave ; for which, and all the

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discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the
good God prepare me.'

A LIBERAL GENIUS

Pepys spent part of a certain winter Sunday, when
he had taken physic, composing ' a song in praise of
a liberal genius (such as I take my own to be) to all
studies and pleasures.' The song was unsuccessful,
but the Diary is, in a sense, the very song that he
was seeking ; and his portrait by Hales, so admirably
reproduced in Mynors Bright's edition, is a confirma-
tion of the Diary. Hales, it would appear, had
known his business ; and though he put his sitter to
a deal of trouble, almost breaking his neck ' to have
the portrait full of shadows,' and draping him in an
Indian gown hired expressly for the purpose, he was
pre-occupied about no merely picturesque effects,
but to portray the essence of the man. Whether we
read the picture by the Diary or the Diary by the
picture, we shall at least agree that Hales was among
the number of those who can * surprise the manners
in the face.' Here we have a mouth pouting, moist
with desires ; eyes greedy, protuberant, and yet apt
for weeping too ; a nose great alike in character and
dimensions ; and altogether a most fleshly, melting
countenance. The face is attractive by its promise
of reciprocity. I have used the word greedy, but
the reader must not suppose that he can change it
for that closely kindred one of hungry, for there is
here no aspiration, no waiting for better things, but
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SAMUEL PEPYS

an animal joy in all that comes. It could never be
the face of an artist ; it is the face of a viveur —
kindly, pleased and pleasing, protected from excess
and upheld in contentment by the shifting versatility
of his desires. For a single desire is more rightly to
be called a lust; but there is health in a variety,
where one may balance and control another.

The whole world, town or country, was to Pepys
a garden of Armida. Wherever he went, his steps
were winged with the most eager expectation ; what-
ever he did, it was done with the most lively pleasure.
An insatiable curiosity in all the shows of the world
and all the secrets of knowledge filled him brimful
of the longing to travel, and supported him in the
toils of study. Rome was the dream of his life ; he
was never happier than when he read or talked of
the Eternal City. When he was in Holland he was
'with child' to see any strange thing. Meeting
some friends and singing with them in a palace near
the Hague, his pen fails him to express his passion
of delight, ' the more so because in a heaven of
pleasure and in a strange country.' He must go to
see all famous executions. He must needs visit the
body of a murdered man, defaced 'with a broad
wound,' he says, ' that makes my hand now shake to
write of it.' He learned to dance, and was ' like to
make a dancer.' He learned to sing, and walked
about Gray's Inn Fields ' humming to myself (which
is now my constant practice) the trillo.' He learned
to play the lute, the flute, the flageolet, and the
theorbo, and it was not the fault of his intention if

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MEN AND BOOKS

he did not learn the harpsichord or the spinet He
learned to compose songs, and burned to give forth
'a scheme and theory of music not yet ever made
in the world.' When he heard ' a fellow whistle
like a bird exceeding well,' he promised to return
another day and give an angel for a lesson in the art.
Once, he writes, ' I took the Bezan back with me,
and with a brave gale and tide reached up that night
to the Hope, taking great pleasure in learning the
seamen's manner of singing when they sound the
depths.' If he found himself rusty in his Latin
grammar, he must fall to it like a schoolboy. He
was a member of Harrington's Club till its dissolu-
tion, and of the Royal Society before it had received
the name. Boyle's Hydrostatics was ' of infinite
delight ' to him, walking in Barnes Elms. We find
him comparing Bible concordances, a captious judge
of sermons, deep in Descartes and Aristotle. We
find him, in a single year, studying timber and the
measurement of timber ; tar and oil, hemp, and the
process of preparing cordage ; mathematics and ac-
counting ; the hull and the rigging of ships from a
model; and 'looking and informing himself of the
[naval] stores with ' — hark to the fellow ! — ' great
delight.' His familiar spirit of delight was not the
same with Shelley's ; but how true it was to him
through life ! He is only copying something, and
behold, he ' takes great pleasure to rule the hues,
and have the capital words wrote with red ink ; ' he
has only had his coal-cellar emptied and cleaned, and
behold, 'it do please him exceedingly.' A hog's
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SAMUEL PEPYS

harslett is ' a piece of meat he loves.' He cannot
ride home in my Lord Sandwich's coach, but he
must exclaim, with breathless gusto, ' his noble, rich
coach.' When he is bound for a supper-party he
anticipates a * glut of pleasure.' When he has a new
watch, ' to see my childishness,' says he, ' I could not
forbear carrying it in my hand and seeing what
o'clock it was an hundred times.' To go to Vauxhall,
he says, and 'to hear the nightingales and other
birds, hear fiddles, and there a harp and here a Jew's
trump, and here laughing, and there fine people
walking, is mighty divertising.' And the nightin-
gales, I take it, were particularly dear to him ; and
it was again ' with great pleasure ' that he paused to
hear them as he walked to Woolwich, while the fog
was rising and the April sun broke through.

He must always be doing something agreeable,
and, by preference, two agreeable things at once. In
his house he had a box of carpenter's tools, two dogs,
an eagle, a canary, and a blackbird that whistled
tunes, lest, even in that full life, he should chance
upon an empty moment. If he had to wait for a
dish of poached eggs, he^ must put in the time by
playing on the fiageolet ; if a sermon were dull, he
must read in the book of Tobit or divert his mind
with sly advances on the nearest women. When he
walked, it must be with a book in his pocket to
beguile the way in case the nightingales were silent ;
and even along the streets of London, with so many
pretty faces to be spied for and dignitaries to be
saluted, his trail was marked by little debts ' for wine,

MEN AND BOOKS

pictures, etc.,' the true headmark of a life intolerant
of any joyless passage. He had a kind of idealism
in pleasure ; like the princess in the fairy story, he
was conscious of a rose-leaf out of place. Dearly as
he loved to talk, he could not enjoy nor shine in a
conversation when he thought himself unsuitably
dressed. Dearly as he loved eating, he 'knew not
how to eat alone ; ' pleasure for him must heighten
pleasure ; and the eye and ear must be flattered like
the palate ere he avow himself content. He had
no zest in a good dinner when it fell to be eaten
' in a bad street and in a periwig-maker's house ; ' and
a collation was spoiled for him by indifferent music.
His body was indefatigable, doing him yeoman's
service in this breathless chase of pleasures. On
April 11, 1662, he mentions that he went to bed
' weary, which I seldom am ; ' and already over thirty,
he would sit up all night cheerfully to see a comet.
But it is never pleasure that exhausts the pleasure-
seeker ; for in that career, as in all others, it is
failure that kills. The man who enjoys so wholly,
and bears so impatiently the slightest widowhood
from joy, is just the man to lose a night's rest over
some paltry question of his right to fiddle on the
leads, or to be ' vexed to the blood ' by a solecism in
his wife's attire ; and we find in consequence that he
was always peevish when he was hungry, and that
his head 'aked mightily' after a dispute. But
nothing could divert him from his aim in life; his
remedy in care was the same as his delight in pro-
sperity : it was with pleasure, and with pleasure only,
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SAMUEL PEPYS

that he sought to drive out sorrow ; and, whether
he was jealous of his wife or skulking from a bailiff,
he would equally take refuge in the theatre. There,
if the house be full and the company noble, if the
songs be tunable, the actors perfect, and the play
diverting, this odd hero of the secret Diary, this
private self-adorer, will speedily be healed of his
distresses.

Equally pleased with a watch, a coach, a piece of
meat, a tune upon the fiddle, or a fact in hydrostatics,
Pepys was pleased yet more by the beauty, the
worth, the mirth, or the mere scenic attitude in life
of his fellow-creatures. He shows himself through-
out a sterling humanist. Indeed, he who loves
himself, not in idle vanity, but with a plenitude of
knowledge, is the best equipped of all to love his
neighbours. And perhaps it is in this sense that
charity may be most properly said to begin at home.
It does not matter what quality a person has : Pepys
can appreciate and love him for it. He 'fills his
eyes ' with the beauty of Lady Castlemaine ; indeed,
he may be said to dote upon the thought of her for
years ; if a woman be good-looking and not painted,
he will walk miles to have another sight of her ; and
even when a lady by a mischance spat upon his
clothes, he was immediately consoled when he had
observed that she was pretty. But, on the other
hand, he is delighted to see Mrs. Pett upon her
knees, and speaks thus of his Aunt James : ' a poor,
religious, well-meaning, good soul, talking of nothing
but God Almighty, and that with so much innocence

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that mightily pleased me.' He is taken with Pen's
merriment and loose songs, but not less taken with
the sterling worth of Coventry. He is jolly with a
drunken sailor, but listens with interest and patience,
as he rides the Essex roads, to the story of a
Quaker's spiritual trials and convictions. He lends
a critical ear to the discourse of kings and royal
dukes. He spends an evening at Vauxhall with
' Killigrew and young Newport — loose company,'
says he, 'but worth a man's being in for once, to
know the nature of it, and their manner of talk and
lives.' And when a rag-boy lights him home, he
examines him about his business and other ways of
livelihood for destitute children. This is almost
half-way to the beginning of philanthropy ; had it
only been the fashion, as it is at present, Pepys had
perhaps been a man famous for good deeds. And
it is through this quality that he rises, at times,
superior to his surprising egotism ; his interest in
the love-affairs of others is, indeed, impersonal ; he
is filled with concern for my Lady Castlemaine,
whom he only knows by sight, shares in her very
jealousies, joys with her in her successes ; and it is
not untrue, however strange it seems in his abrupt
presentment, that he loved his maid Jane because
she was in love with his man Tom.

Let us hear him, for once, at length : ' So the
women and W. Hewer and I walked upon the
Downes, where a flock of sheep was ; and the most
pleasant and innocent sight that ever I saw in my
life. We found a shepherd and his little boy read-
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SAMUEL PEPYS

ing, far from any houses or sight of people, the Bible
to him ; so I made the boy read to me, which he did
with the forced tone that children do usually read,
that was mighty pretty ; and then I did give him
something, and went to the father, and talked with
him. He did content himself mightily in my liking
his boy's reading, and did bless God for him, the
most like one of the old patriarchs that ever I saw
in my life, and it brought those thoughts of the old
age of the world in my mind for two or three days
after. We took notice of his woolen knit stockings
of two colours mixed, and of his shoes shod with
iron, both at the toe and heels, and with great nails
in the soles of his feet, which was mighty pretty ;
and taking notice of them, "Why," says the poor
man, " the downes, you see, are full of stones, and
we are faine to shoe ourselves thus ; and these," says
he, "will make the stones fly till they ring before
me," I did give the poor man something, for which
he was mighty thankful, and I tried to cast stones
with his home crooke. He values his dog mightily,
that would turn a sheep any way which he would
have him, when he goes to fold them ; told me there
was about eighteen score sheep in his flock, and that
he hath four shillings a week the year round for
keeping of them ; and Mrs. Turner, in the common
fields here, did gather one of the prettiest nosegays
that ever I saw in my life.'

And so the story rambles on to the end of that
day's pleasuring ; with cups of milk, and glowworms,
and people walking at sundown with their wives and

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children, and all the way home Pepys still dreaming
' of the old age of the world ' and the early innocence
of man. This was how he walked through life, his
eyes and ears wide open, and his hand, you will
observe, not shut ; and thus he observed the hves,
the speech, and the manners of his fellow-men, with
prose fidelity of detail and yet a lingering glamour
of romance.

It was ' two or three days after ' that he extended
this passage in the pages of his Journal, and the style
has thus the benefit of some reflection. It is generally
supposed that, as a writer, Pepys must rank at the
bottom of the scale of merit. But a style which is
indefatigably lively, telling, and picturesque through
six large volumes of everyday experience, which
deals with the whole matter of a life, and yet is
rarely wearisome, which condescends to the most
fastidious particulars, and yet sweeps all away in the
forthright current of the narrative,— such a style may
be ungrammatical, it may be inelegant, it may be
one tissue of mistakes, but it can never be devoid of
merit. The first and the true function of the writer
has been thoroughly performed throughout ; and
though the manner of his utterance may be childishly
awkward, the matter has been transformed and as-
similated by his unfeigned interest and delight. The
gusto of the man speaks out fierily after all these
years. For the difference between Pepys and Shelley,
to return to that half-whimsical approximation, is
one of quality, but not one of degree ; in his sphere,
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SAMUEL PEPYS

poetry — prose because the spirit of the man was
narrow and earthly, hut poetry because he was de-
lightedly alive. Hence, in such a passage as this
about the Epsom shepherd, the result upon the
reader's mind is entire conviction and unmingled
pleasure. So, you feel, the thing fell out, not other-
wise ; and you would no more change it than you
would change a sublimity of Shakespeare's, a homely
touch of Bunyan's, or a favoured reminiscence of
your own.

There never was a man nearer being an artist,
who yet was not one. The tang was in the family ;
while he was writing the journal for our enjoyment
in his comely house in Navy Gardens, no fewer than
two of his cousins were tramping the fens, kit under
arm, to make music to the country girls. But he
himself, though he could play so many instruments,
and pass judgment in so many fields of art, remained
an amateur. It is not given to any one so keenly
to enjoy, without some greater power to understand.
That he did not like Shakespeare as an artist for
the stage may be a fault, but it is not without either
parallel or excuse. He certainly admired him as a
poet ; he was the first beyond mere actors on the
rolls of that innumerable army who have got ' To be
or not to be ' by heart. Nor was he content with
that ; it haunted his mind ; he quoted it to himself
in the pages of the Diary, and, rushing in where
angels fear to tread, he set it to music. Nothing,
indeed, is more notable than the heroic quality of
the verses that our little sensualist in a periwig
5 — T 289

MEN AND BOOKS

chose out to marry with his own mortal strains.
Some gust from brave Ehzabethan times must have
warmed his spirit, as he sat tuning his subUrae theorbo.
' To be or not to be. Whether 'tis nobler ' — ' Beauty-
retire, thou dost my pity move ' — ' It is decreed, nor
shall thy fate, O Rome ; ' — open and dignified in the
sound, various and majestic in the sentiment, it was
no inapt, as it was certainly no timid, spirit that
selected such a range of themes. Of ' Gaze not on
Swans,' I know no more than these four words ; yet
that also seems to promise well. It was, however,
on a probable suspicion, the work of his master, Mr.
Berkenshaw — as the drawings that figure at the
breaking up of a young ladies' seminary are the work
of the professor attached to the establishment. Mr.
Berkenshaw was not altogether happy in his pupil.
The amateur cannot usually rise into the artist, some
leaven of the world still clogging him ; and we find
Pepys behaving like a pickthank to the man who
taught him composition. In relation to the stage,
which he so warmly loved and understood, he was
not only more hearty but more generous to others.
Thus he encounters Colonel Reames, 'a man,' says
he, * who understands and loves a play as well as I,
and I love him for it.' And again, when he and his
wife had seen a most ridiculous insipid piece, ' Glad
we were,' he writes, *that Betterton had no part in
it.' It is by such a zeal and loyalty to those who
labour for his delight that the amateur grows worthy
of the artist. And it should be kept in mind that,
not only in art, but in morals, Pepys rejoiced to
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SAMUEL PEPYS

recognise his betters. There was not one speck of
envy in the whole human-hearted egotist.

RESPECTABILITY

When writers inveigh against respectabiUty, in
the present degraded meaning of the word, they are
usually suspected of a taste for clay pipes and beer-
cellars ; and their performances are thought to hail
from the Owl's Nest of the comedy. They have
something more, however, in their eye than the
dulness of a round million dinner-parties that sit
down yearly in old England. For to do anything
because others do it, and not because the thing is
good, or kind, or honest in its own right, is to resign
all moral control and captaincy upon yourself, and
go post-haste to the devil with the greater number.
We smile over the ascendency of priests ; but I had
rather follow a priest than what they call the leaders
of society. No life can better than that of Pepys
illustrate the dangers of this respectable theory of
hving. For what can be more untoward than the
occurrence, at a critical period, and while the habits
are still pliable, of such a sweeping transformation as
the return of Charles the Second ? Round went the
whole fleet of England on the other tack ; and while
a few tall pintas, Milton or Pen, still sailed a lonely
course by the stars and their own private compass, the
cock-boat, Pepys, must go about with the majority
among 'the stupid starers and the loud huzzas.'

The respectable are not led so much by any desire

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MEN AND BOOKS

of applause as by a positive need for countenance.
The weaker and the tamer the man, the more will
he require this support; and any positive quality
relieves him, by just so much, of this dependence.
In a dozen ways, Pepys was quite strong enough to
please himself without regard for others ; but his
positive quahties were not co-extensive with the
field of conduct ; and in many parts of fife he fol-
lowed, with gleeful precision, in the footprints of the
contemporary Mrs. Grundy. In morals, particularly,
he lived by the countenance of others ; felt a slight
from another more keenly than a meanness in him-
self; and then first repented when he was found out.
You could talk of religion or morality to such a
man ; and by the artist side of him, by his lively
sympathy and apprehension, he could rise, as it were
dramatically, to the significance of what you said.
All that matter in religion which has been nicknamed
other-worldliness was strictly in his gamut ; but a rule
of life that should make a man rudely virtuous, fol-
lowing right in good report and ill report, was foolish-
ness and a stumbling-block to Pepys. He was much
thrown across the Friends ; and nothing can be more
instructive than his attitude towards these most in-
teresting people of that age. I have mentioned how
he conversed with one as he rode ; when he saw
some brought from a meeting under arrest, ' I would
to God,' said he, ' they would either conform, or be
more wise and not be catched ; ' and to a Quaker in
his own office he extended a timid though effectual
protection. Meanwhile there was growing up next
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SAMUEL PEPYS

door to him that beautiful nature, William Pen. It
is odd that Pepys condemned him for a fop ; odd,
though natural enough when you see Pen's portrait,
that Pepys was jealous of him with his wife. But
the cream of the story is when Pen publishes his
Sandy Foundation Shaken, and Pepys has it read
aloud by his wife. ' I find it,' he says, ' so well writ
as, I think, it is too good for him ever to have writ
it ; and it is a serious sort of book, and not Jit for
everybody to read.' Nothing is more galling to the
merely respectable than to be brought in contact
with religious ardour. Pepys had his own founda-
tion, sandy enough, but dear to him from practical
considerations, and he would read the book with
true uneasiness of spirit ; for conceive the blow if,
by some plaguy accident, this Pen were to convert
him ! It was a different kind of doctrine that he
judged profitable for himself and others. ' A good
sermon of Mr, Gilford's at our church, upon " Seek
ye first the kingdom of heaven." A very excellent
and persuasive, good and moral sermon. He showed,
like a wise man, that righteousness is a surer moral
way of being rich than sin and villainy.' It is thus
that respectable people deske to have their Great-
hearts address them, telhng, in mild accents, how you
may make the best of both worlds, and be a moral
hero without courage, kindness, or troublesome re-
flection ; and thus the Gospel, cleared of Eastern
metaphor, becomes a manual of worldly prudence, and
a handybook for Pepys and the successful merchant.
The respectability of Pepys was deeply grained.

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MEN AND BOOKS

He has no idea of truth except for the Diary. He
has no care that a thing shall be, if it but appear ;
gives out that he has inherited a good estate, when
he has seemingly got nothing but a lawsuit ; and is
pleased to be thought liberal when he knows he has
been mean. He is conscientiously ostentatious. I
say conscientiously, with reason. He could never
have been taken for a fop, hke Pen, but arrayed
himself in a manner nicely suitable to his position.
For long he hesitated to assume the famous periwig;
for a public man should travel gravely with the
fashions, not foppishly before, nor dowdily behind,
the central movement of his age. For long he durst
not keep a carriage ; that, in his circumstances, would
have been improper ; but a time comes, with the
growth of his fortune, when the impropriety has
shifted to the other side, and he is ' ashamed to be
seen in a hackney.' Pepys talked about being *a
Quaker or some very melancholy thing;' for my part, I
can imagine nothing so melancholy, because nothing
half so silly, as to be concerned about such problems.
But so respectability and the duties of society haunt
and burden their poor devotees ; and what seems at
first the very primrose path of life, proves difficult
and thorny like the rest. And the time comes to
Pepys, as to all the merely respectable, when he
must not only order his pleasures, but even clip his
virtuous movements, to the pubhc pattern of the age.
There was some juggling among officials to avoid
direct taxation ; and Pepys, with a noble impulse,
growing ashamed of this dishonesty, designed to
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SAMUEL PEPYS

charge himself with £1000"; but finding none to set
him an example, 'nobody of our ablest merchants'
with this moderate liking for clean hands, he judged
it ' not decent ; ' he feared it would ' be thought vain
glory ; ' and, rather than appear singular, cheerfully
remained a thief One able merchant's countenance,
and Pepys had dared to do an honest act! Had
he found one brave spirit, properly recognised by
society, he might have gone far as a disciple. Mrs.
Turner, it is true, can fill him full of sordid scandal,
and make him believe, against the testimony of his
senses, that Pen's venison pasty stank like the devil ;
but, on the other hand. Sir William Coventry can
raise him by a word into another being. Pepys,
when he is with Coventry, talks in the vein of an old
Roman. What does he care for office or emolument ?
' Thank God, I have enough of my own,' says he, ' to
buy me a good book and a good fiddle, and I have a
good wife.' And again, we find this pair projecting
an old age when an ungrateful country shall have
dismissed them from the field of public service ;
Coventry living retired in a fine house, and Pepys
dropping in, 'it may be, to read a chapter of Seneca.'
Under this influence, the only good one in his life,
Pepys continued zealous and, for the period, pure in
his employment. He would not be ' bribed to be
unjust,' he says, though he was ' not so squeamish as
to refuse a present after,' suppose the King to have
received no wrong. His new arrangement for the
victualling of Tangier, he tells us with honest com-
placency, will save the King a thousand and gain

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MEN AND BOOKS

Pepys three hundred pounds a year, — a statement
which exactly fixes the degree of the age's enUghten-
ment. But for his industry and capacity no praise
can be too high. It was an unending struggle for
the man to stick to his business in such a garden of
Armida as he found this life ; and the story of his
oaths, so often broken, so courageously renewed, is
worthy rather of admiration than the contempt it
has received.

Elsewhere, and beyond the sphere of Coventry's
influence, we find him losing scruples and daily
complying further with the age. When he began
the Journal, he was a trifle prim and puritanic ;
merry enough, to be sure, over his private cups,
and stiU remembering Magdalene ale and his
acquaintance with Mrs. Ainsworth of Cambridge.
But youth is a hot season with all ; when a man
smells April and May he is apt at times to stumble ;
and in spite of a disordered practice, Pepys's theory,
the better things that he approved and followed
after, we may even say were strict. Where there
was ' tag, rag, and bobtail, dancing, singing, and
drinking,' he felt ' ashamed, and went away ; ' and
when he slept in church he prayed God forgive him.
In but a little while we find him with some ladies
keeping each other awake 'from spite,' as though
not to sleep in church were an obvious hardship ;
and yet later he calmly passes the time of service,
looking about him, with a perspective-glass, on all the
pretty women. His favourite ejaculation, ' Lord ! '
occurs but once that I have observed in 1660, never
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SAMUEL PEPYS

in '61, twice in '62, and at least five times in '63 ;
after which the ' Lords ' may be said to pullulate like
herrings, with here and there a solitary ' damned,' as
it were a whale among the shoal. He and his wife,
once filled with dudgeon by some innocent freedoms
at a marriage, are soon content to go pleasuring with
my Lord Brouncker's mistress, who was not even,
by his own account, the most discreet of mistresses.
Tag, rag, and bobtail, dancing, singing, and drinking,
become his natural element; actors and actresses and
drunken, roaring courtiers are to be found in his
society ; until the man grew so involved with Satur-
nalian manners and companions that he was shot
almost unconsciously into the grand domestic crash
of 1668.

That was the legitimate issue and punishment of
years of staggering walk and conversation. The
man who has smoked his pipe for half a century in
a powder-magazine finds himself at last the author
and the victim of a hideous disaster. So with our
pleasant-minded Pepys and his peccadilloes. All of
a sudden, as he still trips dexterously enough among
the dangers of a double-faced career, thinking no
great evil, humming to himself the trillo. Fate takes
the further conduct of that matter from his hands,
and brings him face to face with the consequences of
his acts. For a man still, after so many years, the
lover, although not the constant lover, of his wife, —
for a man, besides, who was so greatly careful of
appearances, — the revelation of his infidelities was
a crushing blow. The tears that he shed, the in-

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MEN AND BOOKS

dignities that he endured, are not to be measured.
A vulgar woman, and now justly incensed, Mrs.
Pepys spared him no detail of suffering. She was
violent, threatening him with the tongs ; she was
careless of his honour, driving him to insult the
mistress whom she had driven him to betray and to
discard ; worst of all, she was hopelessly inconse-
quent in word and thought and deed, now lulling
him with reconciliations, and anon flaming forth
again with the original anger. Pepys had not used
his wife well ; he had wearied her with jealousies,
even while himself unfaithful ; he had grudged her
clothes and pleasures, while lavishing both upon
himself; he had abused her in words ; he had bent
his fist at her in anger ; he had once blacked her
eye ; and it is one of the oddest particulars in that
odd Diary of his, that, while the injury is referred to
once in passing, there is no hint as to the occasion
or the manner of the blow. But now, when he is in
the wrong, nothing can exceed the long-suffering
affection of this impatient husband. While he was
still sinning and still undiscovered, he seems not to
have known a touch of penitence stronger than what
might lead him to take his wife to the theatre, or for
an airing, or to give her a new dress by way of com-
pensation. Once found out, however, and he seems
to himself to have lost all claim to decent usage. It
is perhaps the strongest instance of his externality.
His wife may do what she pleases, and though he
may groan, it will never occur to him to blame her ;
he has no weapon left but tears and the most abject
298

SAMUEL PEPYS

submission. We should perhaps have respected him
more had he not given way so utterly — above all,
had he refused to write, under his wife's dictation,
an insulting letter to his unhappy fellow-culprit,
Miss Willet ; but somehow I believe we like him
better as he was.

The death of his wife, following so shortly after,
must have stamped the impression of this episode
upon his mind. For the remaining years of his long
life we have no Diary to help us, and we have seen
already how little stress is to be laid upon the tenor
of his correspondence ; but what with the recollec-
tion of the catastrophe of his married life, what with
the natural influence of his advancing years and
reputation, it seems not unlikely that the period of
gallantry was at an end for Pepys ; and it is beyond
a doubt that he sat down at last to an honoured and
agreeable old age among his books and music, the
correspondent of Sir Isaac Newton, and, in one
instance at least, the poetical counsellor of Dryden.
Through all this period, that Diary which contained
the secret memoirs of his Ufe, with all its inconsis-
tencies and escapades, had been religiously preserved;
nor, when he came to die, does he appear to have
provided for its destruction. So we may conceive
him faithful to the end to all his dear and early
memories ; still mindful of Mrs. Hely in the woods
at Epsom ; still lighting at Islington for a cup of
kindness to the dead ; still, if he heard again that air
that once so much disturbed him, thrilling at the
recollection of the love that bound him to his wife.

299

JOHN KNOX AND HIS RELATIONS
TO WOMEN

THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT FEMALE RULE

When first the idea became widely spread among
men that the Word of God, instead of being truly
the foundation of all existing institutions, was rather
a stone which the builders had rejected, it was but
natural that the consequent havoc among received
opinions should be accompanied by the generation of
many new and lively hopes for the future. Some-
what as in the early days of the French Revolution,
men must have looked for an immediate and univer-
sal improvement in their condition. Christianity,
up to that time, had been somewhat of a failure
politically. The reason was now obvious, the
capital flaw was detected, the sickness of the body
politic traced at last to its efficient cause. It was
only necessary to put the Bible thoroughly into
practice, to set themselves strenuously to realise in
hfe the Holy Commonwealth, and all abuses and
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JOHN KNOX

iniquities would surely pass away. Thus, in a
pageant played at Geneva in the year 1523, the
world was represented as a sick man at the end of
his wits for help, to whom his doctor recommends
Lutheran specifics.^

The Reformers themselves had set their affections
in a different world, and professed to look for the
finished result of their endeavours on the other side
of death. They took no interest in politics as such ;
they even condemned political action as Antichris-
tian : notably, Luther in the case of the Peasants'
War. And yet, as the purely religious question was
inseparably complicated with pohtical difficulties,
and they had to make opposition, from day to day,
against principalities and powers, they were led, one
after another, and again and again, to leave the
sphere which was more strictly their own, and
meddle, for good and evil, with the affairs of State.
Not much was to be expected from interference in
such a spirit. Whenever a minister found himself
galled or hindered, he would be inclined to suppose
some contravention of the Bible. Whenever Chris-
tian liberty was restrained (and Christian hberty for
each individual would be about co-extensive with
what he wished to do), it was obvious that the
State was Antichristian. The great thing, and the
one thing, was to push the Gospel and the Re-
formers' own interpretation of it. Whatever helped
was good ; whatever hindered was evil ; and if this
simple classification proved inapplicable over the

1 Gaberel's Eglise de Geneve, i. 88.

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MEN AND BOOKS

whole field, it was no business of his to stop and
reconcile incongruities. He had more pressing con-
cerns on hand ; he had to save souls ; he had to be
about his Father's business. This short-sighted view
resulted in a doctrine that was actually Jesuitical in
application. They had no -serious ideas upon poli-
tics, and they were ready, nay, they seemed almost
bound, to adopt and support whichever ensured for
the moment the greatest benefit to the souls of their
fellow-men. They were dishonest in all sincerity.
Thus Labitte, in the introduction to a book^ in
which he exposes the hypocritical democracy of the
Catholics under the League, steps aside for a
moment to stigmatise the hypocritical democracy
of the Protestants. And nowhere was this ex-
pediency in political questions more apparent than
about the question of female sovereignty. So much
was this the case that one James Thomasius, of
Leipsic, wrote a little paper^ about the rehgious
partialities of those who took part in the contro-
versy, in which some of these learned disputants
cut a very sorry figure.

Now Knox has been from the first a man well
hated ; and it is somewhat characteristic of his luck
that he figures here in the very forefront of the list
of partial scribes who trimmed their doctrine with
the wind in all good conscience, and were political
weathercocks out of conviction. Not only has

^ La Democratie ches les Predicateurs de la Ligue.

2 Historia affeetuum se immiscentium controversice de gyncecocratia. It
is in his collected prefaces ; Leipsic^ 1683.

302

JOHN KNOX

Thomasius mentioned him, but Bayle has taken
the hint from Thomasius, and dedicated a long
note to the matter at the end of his article on the
Scottish Reformer. This is a little less than fair. If
any one among the evangelists of that period showed
more serious political sense than another, it was
assuredly Knox ; and even in this very matter of
female rule, although I do not suppose any one
nowadays will feel inclined to indorse his senti-
ments, I confess I can make great allowance for
his conduct. The controversy, besides, has an in-
terest of its own, in view of later controversies.

John Knox, from 1556 to 1559, was resident in
Geneva, as minister, jointly with Goodman, of a
little church of English refugees. He and his
congregation were banished from England by one
woman, Mary Tudor, and proscribed in Scotland by
another, the Regent Mary of Guise. The coinci-
dence was tempting : here were many abuses cen-
tring about one abuse ; here was Christ's Gospel
persecuted in the two kingdoms by one anomalous
power. He had not far to go to find the idea that
female government was anomalous. It was an age,
indeed, in which women, capable and incapable,
played a conspicuous part upon the stage of Euro-
pean history ; and yet their rule, whatever may
have been the opinion of here and there a wise
man or enthusiast, was regarded as an anomaly by
the great bulk of their contemporaries. It was
defended as an anomaly. It, and all that accom-
panied and sanctioned it, was set aside as a single

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MEN AND BOOKS

exception ; and no one thought of reasoning down
from queens and extending their privileges to ordi-
nary women. Great ladies, as we know, had the
privilege of entering into monasteries and cloisters,
otherwise forbidden to their sex. As with one thing,
so with another. Thus, Margaret of Navarre wrote
books with great acclamation, and no one, seem-
ingly, saw fit to call her conduct in question ; but
Mademoiselle de Gournay, Montaigne's adopted
daughter, was in a controversy with the world
as to whether a woman might be an author with-
out ilicongruity. Thus, too, we have Theodore
Agrippa d'Aubigne writing to his daughters about
the learned women of his century, and cautioning
them, in conclusion, that the study of letters was
unsuited to ladies of a middling station, and should
be reserved for princesses.^ And once more, if we
desire to see the same principle carried to ludicrous
extreme, we shall find that Reverend Father in God,
the Abbot of Brantome, claiming, on the authority
of some lord of his acquaintance, a privilege, or
rather a duty, of free love for great princesses, and
carefully excluding other ladies from the same gal-
lant dispensation.^ One sees the spirit in which
these immunities were granted ; and how they were
but the natural consequence of that awe for courts
and kings that made the last writer tell us, with
simple wonder, how Catherine de Medici would
' laugh her fill just like another ' over the humours

^ CEuvres de d'Aubigne, i. 449.
2 Dames lUustres, pp. 358-360.

JOHN KNOX

of pantaloons and zanies. And such servility was,
of all things, what would touch most nearly the
republican spirit of Knox. It was not difficult for
him to set aside this weak scruple of loyalty. The
lantern of his analysis did not always shine with a
very serviceable Hght; but he had the virtue, at
least, to carry it into many places of fictitious hoh-
ness, and was not abashed by the tinsel divinity that
hedged kings and queens from his contemporaries.
And so he could put the proposition in the form
already mentioned ; there was Christ's Gospel per-
secuted in the two kingdoms by one anomalous
power ; plainly, then, the ' regiment of women ' was
Antichristian. Early in 1558 he communicated this
discovery to the world, by publishing at Geneva his
notorious book — The First Blast of the Trumpet
against the Mojistrous Regiment of Womeii}

As a whole, it is a dull performance ; but the pre-
face, as is usual with Knox, is both interesting and
morally fine. Knox was not one of those who are
humble in the hour of triumph ; he was aggressive
even when things were at their worst. He had a
grim reliance in himself, or rather in his mission ; if
he were not sure that he was a great man, he was at
least sure that he was one set apart to do great
things. And he judged simply that whatever passed
in his mind, whatever moved him to flee from per-
secution instead of constantly facing it out, or, as
here, to pubUsh and withhold his name from the
title-page of a critical work, would not fail to be

^ Works of John Knox, iv. 349.

5— u 305

MEN AND BOOKS

of interest, perhaps of benefit, to the world. There
may be something more finely sensitive in the
modern humour, that tends more and more to
withdraw a man's personality from the lessons he
inculcates or the cause that he has espoused ; but
there is a loss herewith of wholesome responsibility ;
and when we find in the works of Knox, as in the
Epistles of Paul, the man himself standing nakedly
forward, courting and anticipating criticism, putting
his character, as it were, in pledge for the sincerity
of his doctrine, we had best waive the question of
delicacy, and make our acknowledgments for a
lesson of courage, not unnecessary in these days
of anonymous criticism, and much light, otherwise
unattainable, on the spirit in which great move-
ments were initiated and carried forward. Knox's
personal revelations are always interesting; and, in
the case of the ' First Blast,' as I have said, there
is no exception to the rule. He begins by stating
the solemn responsibility of all who are watchmen
over God's flock ; and all are watchmen (he goes on
to explain, with that fine breadth of spirit that char-
acterises him even when, as here, he shows himself
most narrow), all are watchmen 'whose eyes God
doth open, and whose conscience he pricketh to
admonish the ungodly.' And with the full con-
sciousness of this great duty before him, he sets
himself to answer the scruples of timorous or
worldly-minded people. How can a man repent,
he asks, unless the nature of his transgression is
made plain to him ? ' And therefore I say,' he
.^06

JOHN KNOX

continues, * that of necessity it is that this monstri-
ferous empire of women (which among all enormities
that this day do abound upon the face of the whole
earth, is most detestable and damnable) be openly
and plainly declared to the world, to the end that
some may repent and be saved.' To those who
think the doctrine useless, because it cannot be
expected to amend those princes whom it would
dispossess if once accepted, he makes answer in a
strain that shows him at his greatest. After having
instanced how the rumour of Christ's censures found
its way to Herod in his own court, 'even so,' he
continues, ' may the sound of our weak trumpet, by
the support of some wind (blow it from the south,
or blow it from the north, it is of no matter), come
to the ears of the chief offenders. But whether it do
or not, yet dare we not cease to blow as God will
give strength. For we are debtors to more than to
princes, to wit, to the great multitude of our brethren,
of whom, no doubt, a great number have heretofore
offended by error and ignorance.'

It is for the multitude, then, he writes ; he does
not greatly hope that his trumpet will be audible in
palaces, or that crowned women will submissively
discrown themselves at his appeal ; what he does
hope, in plain English, is to encourage and justify
rebellion ; and we shall see, before we have done,
that he can put his purpose into words as roundly as
I can put it for him. This he sees to be a matter of
much hazard ; he is not ' altogether so brutish and
insensible, but that he has laid his account what the

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MEN AND BOOKS

finishing of the work may cost.' He knows that he
will find many adversaries, since 'to the most part
of men, lawful and godly appeareth whatsoever
antiquity hath received.' He looks for opposition,
' not only of the ignorant multitude, but of the wise,
politic, and quiet spirits of the earth.' He will be
called foolish, curious, despiteful, and a sower of
sedition ; and one day, perhaps, for all he is now
nameless, he may be attainted of treason. Yet he
has ' determined to obey God, notwithstanding that
the world shall rage thereat.' Finally, he makes
some excuse for the anonymous appearance of this
first instalment : it is his purpose thrice to blow the
trumpet in this matter, if God so permit ; twice he
intends to do it without name ; but at the last blast
to take the odium upon himself, that all others may
be purged.

Thus he ends the preface, and enters upon his
argument with a secondary title : ' The First Blast
to awake Women degenerate.' We are in the land
of assertion without delay. That a woman should
bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire over any
realm, nation, or city, he tells us, is repugnant to
nature, contumely to God, and a subversion of good
order. Women are weak, frail, impatient, feeble,
and foolish. God has denied to woman wisdom to
consider, or providence to foresee, what is profitable
to a commonwealth. Women have been ever lightly
esteemed ; they have been denied the tutory of their
own sons, and subjected to the unquestionable sway
of their husbands ; and surely it is irrational to give
308

JOHN KNOX

the greater where the less has been withheld, and
suffer a woman to reign supreme over a great king-
dom who would be allowed no authority by her own
fireside. He appeals to the Bible ; but though he
makes much of the first transgression and certain
strong texts in Genesis and Paul's Epistles, he does
not appeal with entire success. The cases of De-
borah and Huldah can be brought into no sort of
harmony with his thesis. Indeed, I may say that,
logically, he left his bones there ; and that it is but
the phantom of an argument that he parades thence-
forward to the end. Well was it for Knox that he
succeeded no better ; it is under this very ambiguity
about Deborah that we shall find him fain to creep
for shelter before he is done with the regiment of
women. After having thus exhausted Scripture, and
formulated its teaching in the somewhat blasphemous
maxim that the man is placed above the woman,
even as God above the angels, he goes on triumph-
antly to adduce the testimonies of TertuUian,
Augustine, Ambrose, Basil, Chrysostom, and the
Pandects ; and having gathered this little cloud of
witnesses about him, like pursuivants about a herald,
he solemnly proclaims all reigning women to be
traitresses and rebels against God; discharges all
men thenceforward from holding any office under
such monstrous regiment, and calls upon all the
lieges with one consent to 'study to repress the
inordinate pride and tyranny' of queens. If this
is not treasonable teaching, one would be glad to
know what is ; and yet, as if he feared he had not

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MEN AND BOOKS

made the ease plain enough against himself, he goes
on to deduce the startling corollary that all oaths of
allegiance must be incontinently broken. If it was
sin thus to have sworn even in ignorance, it were
obstinate sin to continue to respect them after fuller
knowledge. Then comes the peroration, in which
he cries aloud against the cruelties of that cursed
Jezebel of England — that horrible monster Jezebel
of England ; and after having predicted sudden
destruction to her rule and to the rule of all crowned
women, and warned all men that if they presume to
defend the same when any ' noble heart ' shall be
raised up to vindicate the liberty of his country,
they shall not fail to perish themselves in the ruin,
he concludes with a last rhetorical flourish : ' And
therefore let all men be advertised, for the Trumpet

HATH ONCE BLOWN.'

The capitals are his own. In writing, he probably
felt the want of some such reverberation of the
pulpit under strong hands as he was wont to em-
phasise his spoken utterances withal ; there would
seem to him a want of passion in the orderly lines of
type ; and I suppose we may take the capitals as
a mere substitute for the great voice with which he
would have given it forth, had we heard it from his
own lips. Indeed, as it is, in this little strain of
rhetoric about the trumpet, this current allusion
to the fall of Jericho, that alone distinguishes his
bitter and hasty production, he was probably right,
according to all artistic canon, thus to support and
accentuate in conclusion the sustained metaphor of
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JOHN KNOX

a hostile proclamation. It is curious, by the way, to
note how favourite an image the trumpet was with
the Reformer. He returns to it again and again ;
it is the Alpha and Omega of his rhetoric ; it is to
him what a ship is to the stage sailor ; and one
would almost fancy he had begun the world as a
trumpeter's apprentice. The partiality is surely
characteristic. All his life long he was blowing
summonses before various Jerichos, some of which
fell duly, but not all. Wherever he appears in
history his speech is loud, angry, and hostile ; there
is no peace in his life, and little tenderness ; he is
always sounding hopefully to the front for some
rough enterprise. And as his voice had something
of the trumpet's hardness, it had something also of
the trumpet's warlike inspiration. So Randolph,
possibly fresh from the sound of the Reformer's
preaching, writes of him to Cecil : ' Where your
honour exhorteth us to stoutness, I assure you the
voice of one man is able, in an hour, to put more
life in us than six hundred trumpets continually
blustering in our ears.'^

Thus was the proclamation made. Nor was it
long in wakening all the echoes of Europe. What
success might have attended it, had the question
decided been a purely abstract question, it is difficult
to say. As it was, it was to stand or fall not by
logic, but by political needs and sympathies. Thus,
in France, his doctrine was to have some future,
because Protestants suffered there under the feeble

1 M'^Crie's lAfe of Knox, ii. 41.

MEN AND BOOKS

and treacherous regency of Catherine de Medici ;
and thus it was to have no future anywhere else,
because the Protestant interest was bound up with
the prosperity of Queen Ehzabeth. This stumbHng-
block lay at the very threshold of the matter ; and
Knox, in the text of the ' First Blast,' had set every-
body the wrong example and gone to the ground
himself He finds occasion to regret ' the blood of
innocent Lady Jane Dudley.' But Lady Jane
Dudley, or Lady Jane Grey, as we call her, was a
would-be traitress and rebel against God, to use his
own expressions. If, therefore, political and re-
ligious sympathy led Knox himself into so grave a
partiality, what was he to expect from his disciples ?
If the trumpet gave so ambiguous a sound, who
could heartily prepare himself for the battle ? The
question whether Lady Jane Dudley was an innocent
martyr, or a traitress against God, whose inordinate
pride and tyranny had been effectually repressed,
was thus left altogether in the wind ; and it was not,
perhaps, wonderful if many of Knox's readers con-
cluded that all right and wrong in the matter turned
upon the degree of the sovereign's orthodoxy and
possible helpfulness to the Reformation. He should
have been the more careful of such an ambiguity of
meaning, as he must have known well the lukewarm
indifference and dishonesty of his fellow-reformers in
political matters. He had already, in 1556 or 1557,
talked the matter over with his great master, Calvin,
in ' a private conversation ' ; and the interview ^

^ Described by Calvin in a letter to Cecily Knox's Works, vol. iv.
312

JOHN KNOX

must have been truly distasteful to both parties.
Calvin, indeed, went a far way with him in theory,
and owned that the ' government of women was
a deviation from the original and proper order of
nature, to be ranked, no less than slavery, among
the punishments consequent upon the fall of man.'
But, in practice, their two roads separated. For the
Man of Geneva saw difficulties in the way of the
Scripture proof in the cases of Deborah and Huldah,
and in the prophecy of Isaiah that queens should
be the nursing-mothers of the Church. And as the
Bible was not decisive, he thought the subject
should be let alone, because, 'by custom and
public consent and long practice, it has been estab-
lished that realms and principalities may descend
to females by hereditary right, and it would not be
lawful to unsettle governments which are ordained
by the peculiar providence of God.' I imagine
Knox's ears must have burned during this interview.
Think of him listening dutifully to all this — how it
would not do to meddle with anointed kings — how
there was a peculiar providence in these great affairs ;
and then think of his own peroration, and the 'noble
heart ' whom he looks for ' to vindicate the liberty
of his country ; ' or his answer to Queen Mary, when
she asked him who he was, to interfere in the
affairs of Scotland : ' Madam, a subject born within
the same ' ! Indeed, the two doctors who differed
at this private conversation represented, at the
moment, two principles of enormous import in the
subsequent history of Europe. In Calvin we have

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MEN AND BOOKS

represented that passive obedience, that toleration
of injustice and absurdity, that holding back of the
hand from political aiFairs as from something unclean,
which lost France, if we are to believe M. Michelet,
for the Reformation ; a spirit necessarily fatal in the
long-run to the existence of any sect that may pro-
fess it ; a suicidal doctrine that survives among us
to this day in narrow views of personal duty, and
the low political morality of many virtuous men.
In Knox, on the other hand, we see foreshadowed
the whole Puritan Revolution and the scaffold of
Charles i.

There is little doubt in my mind that this inter-
view was what caused Knox to print his book
without a name.^ It was a dangerous thing to con-
tradict the Man of Geneva, and doubly so, surely,
when one had had the advantage of correction from
him in a private conversation ; and Knox had his
little flock of English refugees to consider. If they
had fallen into bad odour at Geneva, where else was
there left to flee to ? It was printed, as I said, in
1558 ; and, by a singular mal-a-p?^opos, in that same
year Mary died, and Elizabeth succeeded to the
throne of England. And just as the accession of
Catholic Queen Mary had condemned female rule
in the eyes of Knox, the accession of Protestant
Queen Elizabeth justified it in the eyes of his
colleagues. Female rule ceases to be an anomaly,

1 It was anonymously published, but no one seems to have been in
doubt about its authorship ; he might as well have set his name to it,
for all the good he got by holding it back.

JOHN KNOX

not because Elizabeth can ' reply to eight ambassa-
dors in one day in their different languages,' but
because she represents for the moment the political
future of the Reformation. The exiles troop back
to England with songs of praise in their mouths.
The bright occidental star, of which we have all read
in the Preface to the Bible, has risen over the dark-
ness of Europe. There is a thrill of hope through
the persecuted Churches of the Continent. Calvin
writes to Cecil, washing his hands of Knox and his
political heresies. The sale of the * First Blast' is
prohibited in Geneva ; and along with it the bold
book of Knox's colleague, Goodman — a book dear to
Milton — where female rule was briefly characterised
as a 'monster in nature and disorder among men.'^
Any who may ever have doubted, or been for a
moment led away by Knox or Goodman, or their
own wicked imaginations, are now more than
convinced. They have seen the occidental star.
Aylmer, with his eye set greedily on a possible
bishopric, and ' the better to obtain the favour of the
new Queen,' ^ sharpens his pen to confound Knox
by logic. What need ? He has been confounded
by facts. ' Thus what had been to the refugees of
Geneva as the very word of God, no sooner were
they back in England than, behold ! it was the word
of the devil.' ^

Now, what of the real sentiments of these loyal

^ Knooc's Works, iv. 858. 2 Strype's Aylmer, p. 16.

^ It may interest the reader to know that these (so says Thomasius)
are the ' ipsissima verba Schlusselburgii.'

MEN AND BOOKS

subjects of Elizabeth ? They professed a holy horror
for Knox's position : let us see if their own would
please a modern audience any better, or was, in
substance, greatly different

John Aylmer, afterwards Bishop of London, pub-
lished an answer to Knox, under the title of A71
Harbour for Faithful and true Subjects against the
late Blown Blast, concerning the government of
Women} And certainly he was a thougHt more
acute, a thought less precipitate and simple, than
his adversary. He is not to be led away by such
captious terms as natural and unnatural. It is
obvious to him that a woman's disability to rule is
not natural in the same sense in which it is natural
for a stone to fall or fire to burn. He is doubtful,
on the whole, whether this disability be natural at
all ; nay, when he is laying it down that a woman
should not be a priest, he shows some elementary
conception of what many of us now hold to be the
truth of the matter. ' The bringing up of women,'
he says, ' is commonly such ' that they cannot have
the necessary qualifications, * for they are not brought
up in learning in schools, nor trained in disputation.'
And even so, he can ask, ' Are there not in England
women, think you, that for learning and wisdom
could tell their household and neighbours as good
a tale as any Sir John there ? ' For all that, his
advocacy is weak. If women's rule is not unnatural
in a sense preclusive of its very existence, it is neither

^ I am indebted for a sight of this book to the kindness of Mr. David
Laing, the editor of Knox's Works.

JOHN KNOX

so convenient nor so profitable as the government
of men. He holds England to be specially suitable
for the government of women, because there the
governor is more limited and restrained by the
other members of the constitution than in other
places ; and this argument has kept his book from
being altogether forgotten. It is only in hereditary
monarchies that he will offer any defence of the
anomaly. ' If rulers were to be chosen by lot or
suffrage, he would not that any women should stand
in the election, but men only. ' The law of succession
of crowns was a law to him, in the same sense as the
law of evolution is a law to Mr. Herbert Spencer ;
and the one and the other counsels his readers, in
a spirit suggestively alike, not to kick against the
pricks or seek to be more wise than He who made
them.^ If God has put a female child into the
direct line of inheritance, it is God's affair. His
strength will be perfected in her weakness. He
makes the Creator address the objectors in this not
very flattering vein : ' I, that could make Daniel, a
sucking babe, to judge better than the wisest
lawyers ; a brute beast to reprehend the folly of a
prophet ; and poor fishers to confound the great
clerks of the world — cannot I make a woman to be
a good ruler over you ? ' This is the last word of
his reasoning. Although he was not altogether
without Puritanic leaven, shown particularly in
what he says of the incomes of Bishops, yet it was
rather loyalty to the old order of things than any

1 Social Statics, p. 64, etc.

MEN AND BOOKS

generous belief in the capacity of women, that
raised up for them this clerical champion. His
courtly spirit contrasts singularly with the rude,
bracing republicanism of Knox. *Thy knee shall
bow,' he says, ' thy cap shall off, thy tongue shall
speak reverently of thy sovereign.' For himself, his
tongue is even more than reverent. Nothing can
stay the issue of his eloquent adulation. Again and
again, ' the remembrance of Elizabeth's virtues '
carries him away ; and he has to hark back again
to find the scent of his argument. He is repressing
his vehement adoration throughout, until when the
end comes, and he feels his business at an end, he
can indulge himself to his heart's content in indis-
criminate laudation of his royal mistress. It is
humorous to think that this illustrious lady, whom he
here praises, among many other excellencies, for the
simplicity of her attire and the ' marvellous meek-
ness of her stomach,' threatened him, years after,
in no very meek terms, for a sermon against female
vanity in dress, which she held as a reflection on
herself^

Whatever was wanting here in respect for women
generally, there was no want of respect for the
Queen ; and one cannot very greatly wonder if
these devoted servants looked askance, not upon
Knox only, but on his little flock, as they came
back to England tainted with disloyal doctrine.
For them, as for him, the occidental star rose some-
what red and angry. As for poor Knox, his position

^ Hallam's Const. Hist, of England, i. 225^ note "'.
318

JOHN KNOX

was the saddest of all. For the juncture seemed to
him of the highest importance ; it was the nick of
time, the flood-water of opportunity. Not only was
there an opening for him in Scotland, a smouldering
brand of civil liberty and religious enthusiasm which
it should be for him to kindle into flame with his
powerful breath ; but he had his eye seemingly on
an object of even higher worth. For now, when
religious sympathy ran so high that it could be set
against national aversion, he wished to begin the
fusion together of England and Scotland, and to
begin it at the sore place. If once the open wound
were closed at the Border, the work would be half
done. Ministers placed at Berwick and such places
might seek their converts equally on either side of
the march ; old enemies would sit together to hear
the gospel of peace, and forget the inherited
jealousies of many generations in the enthusiasm
of a common faith ; or — let us say better — a common
heresy. For people are not most conscious of
brotherhood when they continue languidly together
in one creed, but when, with some doubt, with some
danger perhaps, and certainly not without some
reluctance, they violently break wdth the tradition
of the past, and go forth from the sanctuary of their
fathers to worship under the bare heaven. A new
creed, like a new country, is an unhomely place of
sojourn ; but it makes men lean on one another and
join hands. It was on this that Knox relied to begin
the union of the English and the Scottish. And he
had, perhaps, better means of judging than any even

319

MEN AND BOOKS

of his contemporaries. He knew the temper of both
nations ; and already during his two years' chap-
laincy at Berwick, he had seen his scheme put to
the proof. But whether practicable or not, the
proposal does him much honour. That he should
thus have sought to make a love-match of it between
the two peoples, and tried to win their inclination
towards a union instead of simply transferring them,
like so many sheep, by a marriage, or testament, or
private treaty, is thoroughly characteristic of what
is best in the man. Nor was this all. He had,
besides, to assure himself of English support, secret
or avowed, for the Reformation party in Scotland ;
a delicate affair, trenching upon treason. And so he
had plenty to say to Cecil, plenty that he did not care
to ' commit to paper neither yet to the knowledge of
many.' But his miserable publication had shut the
doors of England in his face. Summoned to Edin-
burgh by the confederate lords, he waited at Dieppe,
anxiously praying for leave to journey through
England. The most dispiriting tidings reach him.
His messengers, coming from so obnoxious a quar-
ter, narrowly escape imprisonment. His old con-
gregation are coldly received, and even begin to
look back again to their place of exile with regret.
'My First Blast,' he writes ruefully, 'has blown
from me all my friends of England.' And then he
adds, with a snarl, ' The Second Blast, I fear, shall
sound somewhat more sharp, except men be more
moderate than I hear they are.' ^ But the threat is

1 Knox to Mrs. Locke^ 6th April 1559.— Works, vi. 14.
320

JOHN KNOX

empty ; there will never be a second blast — he has
had enough of that trumpet. Nay, he begins to
feel uneasily that, unless he is to be rendered useless
for the rest of his life, unless he is to lose his right
arm and go about his great work maimed and im-
potent, he must find some way of making his peace
with England and the indignant Queen. The letter
just quoted was written on the 6th of April 1559 ;
and on the 10th, after he had cooled his heels for
four days more about the streets of Dieppe, he gave
in altogether, and writes a letter of capitulation to
Cecil. In this letter,^ which he kept back until
the 22nd, still hoping that things would come right
of themselves, he censures the great secretary for
having^ ' followed the world in the way of perdition,'
characterises him as ' worthy of hell,' and threatens
him, if he be not found simple, sincere, and fervent
in the cause of Christ's gospel, that he shall ' taste
of the same cup that politic heads have drunken in
before him.' This is all, I take it, out of respect for
the Reformer's own position ; if he is going to be
humiliated, let others be humiliated first ; like a
child who will not take his medicine until he has
made his nurse and his mother drink of it before
him. 'But I have, say you, written a treasonable
book against the regiment and empire of women.
. . . The writing of that book I will not deny ; but
prove it treasonable I think it shall be hard. ... It
is hinted that my book shall be written against. If
so be, sir, I greatly doubt they shall rather hurt nor

^ Knox to Sir William Cecily 10th April 1559.— Works, ii. 16, or vi. 15.

5— X 321

MEN AND BOOKS

(than) mend the matter.' And here come the terms
of capitulation ; for he does not surrender uncondi-
tionally, even in this sore strait: 'And yet if any,'
he goes on, ' think me enemy to the person, or yet
to the regiment, of her whom God hath now pro-
moted, they are utterly deceived in me, for the
miraculous work of God, comforting His afflicted hy
means of an infirm vessel, I do acknowledge, and the
power of His most potent hand I will obey. More
plainly to speak, if Queen Elizabeth shall confess,
that the extraordinary dispensation of God's great
mercy maketh that lawful unto her which both nature
and God's law do deny to all women, then shall none
in England be more willing to maintain her lawful
authority than I shall be. But if (God's wondrous
work set aside) she ground (as God forbid) the just-
ness of her title upon consuetude, laws, or ordinances
of men, then ' — Then Knox will denounce her ? Not
so ; he is more politic nowadays — then, he ' greatly
fears ' that her ingratitude to God will not go long
without punishment.

His letter to Elizabeth, written some few months
later, was a mere amplification of the sentences
quoted above. She must base her title entirely upon
the extraordinary providence of God ; but if she
does this, 'if thus, in God's presence, she humbles
herself, so will he with tongue and pen justify her
authority, as the Holy Ghost hath justified the same
in Deborah, that blessed mother in Israel.'^ And
so, you see, his consistency is preserved ; he is merely

^ Knox to Queen Elizabeth, July 20th, 1559.— Works, vi. 47, or ii. 26.
322

JOHN KNOX

applying the doctrine of the 'First Blast.' The
argument goes thus : The regiment of women is,
as before noted in our work, repugnant to nature,
contumely to God, and a subversion of good order.
It has nevertheless pleased God to raise up, as
exceptions to this law, first Deborah, and afterward
Elizabeth Tudor — whose regiment we shall proceed
to celebrate.

There is no evidence as to how the Reformer's
explanations were received, and indeed it is most
probable that the letter was never shown to Eliza-
beth at all. For it was sent under cover of another
to Cecil, and as it was not of a very courtly con-
ception throughout, and was, of all things, what
would most excite the Queen's uneasy jealousy
about her title, it is like enough that the secretary
exercised his discretion (he had Knox's leave in this
case, and did not always wait for that, it is reputed)
to put the letter harmlessly away beside other value-
less or unpresentable State Papers. I wonder very
much if he did the same with another,'' written two
years later, after Mary had come into Scotland, in
which Knox almost seeks to make Elizabeth an
accomplice with him in the matter of the 'First Blast.'
The Queen of Scotland is going to have that work
refuted, he tells her; and 'though it were but
foolishness in him to prescribe unto her Majesty
what is to be done,' he would yet remind her that
Mary is neither so much alarmed about her own
security, nor so generously interested in Elizabeth's,

1 Knox to Queen Elizabeth, August 6th, 1561.— Works, vi, 126.

MEN AND BOOKS

*that she would take such pains, unless her crafty
counsel in so doing shot at a further mark.' There is
something really ingenious in this letter ; it showed
Knox in the double capacity of the author of the
' First Blast ' and the faithful friend of Elizabeth ;
and he combines them there so naturally that one
would scarcely imagine the two to be incongru-
ous.

Twenty days later he was defending his intem-
perate publication to another queen — his own queen,
Mary Stuart. This was on the first of those three
interviews which he has preserved for us with so
much dramatic vigour in the picturesque pages of
his History. After he had avowed the authorship in
his usual haughty style, Mary asked : ' You think,
then, that I have no just authority ? ' The question
was evaded. 'Please your Majesty,' he answered,
'that learned men in aU ages have had their judg-
ments free, and most commonly disagreeing from
the common judgment of the world ; such also have
they published by pen and tongue ; and yet notwith-
standing they themselves have lived in the common
society with others, and have borne patiently with
the errors and imperfections which they could not
amend.' Thus did 'Plato the philosopher': thus
will do John Knox. 'I have communicated my
judgment to the world : if the realm finds no incon-
venience from the regiment of a woman, that which
they approve shall I not further disallow than within
my own breast ; but shall be as well content to live
under your Grace as Paul was to live under Nero.

324

JOHN KNOX

And my hope is, that so long as ye defile not your
hands with the blood of the saints of God, neither I
nor my book shall hurt either you or your authority.'
All this is admirable in wisdom and moderation,
and, except that he might have hit upon a com-
parison less offensive than that with Paul and Nero,
hardly to be bettered. Having said thus much, he
feels he needs say no more ; and so, when he is
further pressed, he closes that part of the discussion
with an astonishing sally. If he has been content
to let this matter sleep, he would recommend her
Grace to follow his example with thankfulness of
heart ; it is grimly to be understood which of them
has most to fear if the question should be reawakened.
So the talk wandered to other subjects. Only, when
the Queen was summoned at last to dinner ('for it
was afternoon ') Knox made his salutation in this
form of words : ' I pray God, Madam, that you
may be as much blessed within the Commonwealth
of Scotland, if it be the pleasure of God, as ever
Deborah was in the Commonwealth of Israel.'^
Deborah again.

But he was not yet done with the echoes of his
own 'First Blast' In 1571, when he was already
near his end, the old controversy was taken up in
one of a series of anonymous libels against the
Reformer, affixed, Sunday after Sunday, to the
church door. The dilemma was fairly enough stated.
Either his doctrine is false, in which case he is a
' false doctor ' and seditious ; or, if it be true, why

1 Knox's Works, ii. 278-280.

MEN AND BOOKS

does he *avow and approve the contrare, I mean
that regiment in the Queen of England's person;
which he avoweth and approveth, not only praying
for the maintenance of her estate, but also procuring
her aid and support against his own native country ' ?
Knox answered the libel, as his wont was, next
Sunday, from the pulpit He justified the 'First
Blast ' with all the old arrogance ; there is no drawing
back there. The regiment of women is repugnant
to nature, contumely to God, and a subversion of
good order, as before. When he prays for the main-
tenance of Elizabeth's estate, he is only following
the example of those prophets of God who warned
and comforted the wicked kings of Israel; or of
Jeremiah, who bade the Jews pray for the prosperity
of Nebuchadnezzar. As for the Queen's aid, there
is no harm in that : quia (these are his own words)
quia omnia munda mundis : because to the pure all
things are pure. One thing, in conclusion, he ' may
not pretermit ' ; to give the lie in the throat to his
accuser, where he charges him with seeking support
against his native country. ' What I have been to
my country,' said the old Reformer, ' What I have
been to my country, albeit this unthankful age will
not know, yet the ages to come will be compelled to
bear witness to the truth. And thus I cease, re-
quiring of all men that have anything to oppone
against me, that he may (they may) do it so plainly,
as that I may make myself and all my doings
manifest to the world. For to me it seemeth a
thing unreasonable, that, in this my decrepit age, T
326

JOHN KNOX

shall be compelled to fight against shadows, and
howlets that dare not abide the light. '^

Now, in this, which may be called his Last Blast
there is as sharp speaking as any in the ' First Blast '
itself. He is of the same opinion to the end, you
see, although he has been obliged to cloak and garble
that opinion for political ends. He has been tacking
indeed, and he has indeed been seeking the favour
of a queen ; but what man ever sought a queen's
favour with a more virtuous purpose, or with as
little courtly policy? The question of consistency
is delicate, and must be made plain. Knox never
changed his opinion about female rule, but lived to
regret that he had published that opinion. Doubt-
less he had many thoughts so far out of the range
of public sympathy that he could only keep them
to himself, and, in his own words, bear patiently
with the errors and imperfections that he could not
amend. For example, I make no doubt myself that,
in his own heart, he did hold the shocking dogma
attributed to him by more than one calumniator ;
and that, had the time been right, had there been
aught to gain by it, instead of all to lose, he would
have been the first to assert that Scotland was
elective instead of hereditary — ' elective as in the
days of paganism,' as one Thevet says in holy horror.^
And yet, because the time was not ripe, I find no
hint of such an idea in his collected works. Now,

^ Calderwood's History of the Kirk of Scotland, edition of the Wodrow
Society, iii. 51-54.
2 Bayle's Historical Dictionary, Art. Knox, remark G.

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MEN AND BOOKS

the regiment of women was another matter that he
should have kept to himself; right or wrong, his
opinion did not fit the moment ; right or wrong, as
Aylmer puts it, ' the Blast was blown out of season.'
And this it was that he began to perceive after the
accession of Elizabeth ; not that he had been wrong,
and that female rule was a good thing, for he had
said from the first that ' the felicity of some women
in their empires ' could not change the law of God
and the nature of created things ; not this, but that
the regiment of women was one of those imperfec-
tions of society which must be borne with because
yet they cannot be remedied. The thing had seemed
so obvious to him, in his sense of unspeakable mas-
cuHne superiority, and in his fine contempt for what
is only sanctioned by antiquity and common consent,
he had imagined that, at the first hint, men would
arise and shake off the debasing tyranny. He found
himself wrong, and he showed that he could be
moderate in his own fashion, and understood the
spirit of true compromise. He came round to Cal-
vin's position, in fact, but by a different way. And
it derogates nothing from the merit of this wise
attitude that it was the consequence of a change of
interest. We are all taught by interest ; and if the
interest be not merely selfish, there is no wiser
preceptor under heaven, and perhaps no sterner.

Such is the history of John Knox's connection

with the controversy about female rule. In itself,

this is obviously an incomplete study ; not fully to

be understood without a knowledge of his private

328

JOHN KNOX

relations with the other sex, and what he thought of
their position in domestic hfe. This shall be dealt
with in another paper.

PRIVATE LIFE

To those who know Knox by hearsay only, I believe
the matter of this paper will be somewhat astonish-
ing. For the hard energy of the man in all public
matters has possessed the imagination of the world ;
he remains for posterity in certain traditional phrases,
browbeating Queen Mary, or breaking beautiful
carved work in abbeys and cathedrals, that had long
smoked themselves out and were no more than
sorry ruins, while he was still quietly teaching
children in a country gentleman's family. It does
not consist with the common acceptation of his char-
acter to fancy him much moved, except with anger.
And yet the language of passion came to his pen as
readily, whether it was a passion of denunciation
against some of the abuses that vexed his righteous
spirit, or of yearning for the society of an absent
friend. He was vehement in affection, as in doctrine.
I will not deny that there may have been, along
with his vehemence, something shifty, and for the
moment only ; that, like many men, and many
Scotsmen, he saw the world and his own heart, not
so much under any very steady equable light, as by
extreme flashes of passion, true for the moment, but
not true in the long-run. There does seem to me

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MEN AND BOOKS

to be something of this traceable in the Reformer's
utterances : precipitation and repentance, hardy
speech and action somewhat circumspect, a strong
tendency to see himself in a heroic light and to
place a ready belief in the disposition of the moment.
Withal he had considerable confidence in himself, and
in the uprightness of his own disciplined emotions,
underlying much sincere aspiration after spiritual
humility. And it is this confidence that makes his
intercourse with women so interesting to a modern.
It would be easy, of course, to make fun of the
whole affair, to picture him strutting vaingloriously
among these inferior creatures, or compare a religious
friendship in the sixteenth century with what was
called, I think, a literary friendship in the eighteenth.
But it is more just and profitable to recognise what
there is sterling and human underneath all his theo-
retical affectations of superiority. Women, he has
said in his ' First Blast,' are ' weak, frail, impatient,
feeble, and foolish ; ' and yet it does not appear that
he was himself any less dependent than other men
upon the sympathy and affection of these weak,
frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish creatures ; it
seems even as if he had been rather more dependent
than most.

Of those who are to act influentially on their
fellows, we should expect always something large
and public in their way of life, something more or
less urbane and comprehensive in their sentiment for
others. We should not expect to see them spend
their sympathy in idyls, however beautiful. We
330

JOHN KNOX

should not seek them among those who, if they have
but a wife to their bosom, ask no more of woman-
kind, just as they ask no more of their own sex, if
they can find a friend or two for their immediate
need. They will be quick to feel all the pleasures
of our association — not the great ones alone, but all.
They will know not love only, but all those other
ways in which man and woman mutually make each
other happy — by sympathy, by admiration, by the
atmosphere they bear about them — down to the
mere impersonal pleasure of passing happy faces in
the street. For, through all this gradation, the dif-
ference of sex makes itself pleasurably felt. Down
to the most lukewarm courtesies of life, there is a
special chivalry due and a special pleasure received,
when the two sexes are brought ever so hghtly into
contact. We love our mothers otherwise than we
love our fathers ; a sister is not as a brother to us ;
and friendship between man and woman, be it never
so unalloyed and innocent, is not the same as friend-
ship between man and man. Such friendship is not
even possible for all. To conjoin tenderness for a
woman that is not far short of passionate with such
disinterestedness and beautiful gratuity of affection
as there is between friends of the same sex, requires
no ordinary disposition in the man. For either it
would presuppose quite womanly delicacy of per-
ception, and, as it were, a curiosity in shades of
differing sentiment ; or it would mean that he had
accepted the large, simple divisions of society: a
strong and positive spirit robustly virtuous, who has

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MEN AND BOOKS

chosen a better part coarsely, and holds to it stead-
fastly with all its consequences of pain to himself
and others ; as one who should go straight before
him on a journey, neither tempted by wayside flowers
nor very scrupulous of small lives under foot. It
was in virtue of this latter disposition that Knox
was capable of those intimacies with women that
embellished his life ; and we find him preserved for
us in old letters as a man of many women friends ; a
man of some expansion toward the other sex ; a man
ever ready to comfort weeping women, and to weep
along with them.

Of such scraps and fragments of evidence as to
his private life and more intimate thoughts as have
survived to us from all the perils that environ written
paper, an astonishingly large proportion is in the shape
of letters to women of his familiarity. He was twice
married, but that is not greatly to the purpose ; for
the Turk, who thinks even more meanly of women
than John Knox, is none the less given to marry-
ing. What is really significant is quite apart from
marriage. For the man Knox was a true man, and
woman, the ewig-weihliche, was as necessary to him,
in spite of all low theories, as ever she was to
Goethe. He came to her in a certain halo of his
own, as the minister of truth, just as Goethe came
to her in a glory of art ; he made himself necessary
to troubled hearts and minds exercised in the painful
compHcations that naturally result from all changes
in the world's way of thinking ; and those whom he
had thus helped became dear to him, and were made
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JOHN KNOX

the chosen companions of his leisure if they were at
hand, or encouraged and comforted by letter if they
were afar.

It must not be forgotten that Knox had been a
presbyter of the old Church, and that the many
women whom we shall see gathering around him, as
he goes through life, had probably been accustomed,
while still in the communion of Rome, to rely much
upon some chosen spiritual director, so that the
intimacies of which I propose to offer some account,
while testifying to a good heart in the Reformer,
testify also to a certain survival of the spirit of the
confessional in the Reformed Church, and are not
properly to be judged without this idea. There is
no friendship so noble, but it is the product of the
time ; and a world of little finical observances, and
little frail proprieties and fashions of the hour, go to
make or to mar, to stint or to perfect, the union of
spirits the most loving and the most intolerant of
such interference. The trick of the country and the
age steps in even between the mother and her child,
counts out their caresses upon niggardly fingers, and
says, in the voice of authority, that this one thing
shall be a matter of confidence between them, and
this other thing shall not. And thus it is that we
must take into reckoning whatever tended to modify
the social atmosphere in which Knox and his women
friends met, and loved and trusted each other. To
the man who had been their priest, and was now
their minister, women would be able to speak with
a confidence quite impossible in these latter days;

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MEN AND BOOKS

the women would be able to speak, and the man to
hear. It was a beaten road just then ; and I daresay
we should be no less scandalised at their plain
speech than they, if they could come back to earth,
would be offended at our waltzes and worldly
fashions. This, then, was the footing on which Knox
stood with his many women friends. The reader will
see, as he goes on, how much of warmth, of interest,
and of that happy mutual dependence which is the
very gist of friendship, he contrived to engraft upon
this somewhat dry relationship of penitent and
confessor.

It must be understood that we know nothing of
his intercourse with women (as indeed we know
httle at all about his life) until he came to Berwick
in 1549, when he was already in the forty-fifth year
of his age. At the same time it is just possible that
some of a httle group at Edinburgh, with whom he
corresponded during his last absence, may have been
friends of an older standing. Certainly they were,
of all his female correspondents, the least personally
favoured. He treats them throughout in a com-
prehensive sort of spirit that must at times have
been a little wounding. Thus, he remits one of
them to his former letters, ' which I trust be com-
mon betwixt you and the rest of our sisters, for
to me ye are all equal in Christ.'^ Another letter
is a gem in this way. 'Albeit,' it begins, 'albeit I
have no particular matter to write unto you, beloved
sister, yet I could not refrain to write these few lines

^ Works, iv. 244.

334

JOHN KNOX

to you in declaration of my remembrance of you.
True it is that I have many whom I bear in equal
remembrance before God with you, to whom at
present I write nothing, either for that I esteem
them stronger than you, and therefore they need the
less my rude labours, or else because they have not
provoked me by their writing to recompense their
remembrance. '1 His 'sisters in Edinburgh' had
evidently to 'provoke' his attention pretty con-
stantly ; nearly all his letters are, on the face of
them, answers to questions, and the answers are
given with a certain crudity that I do not find
repeated when he writes to those he really cares
for. So when they consult him about women's
apparel (a subject on which his opinion may be
pretty correctly imagined by the ingenious reader
for himself), he takes occasion to anticipate some of
the most offensive matter of the ' First Blast ' in a
style of real brutality.^ It is not merely that he
tells them ' the garments of women do declare their
weakness and inability to execute the office of man,'
though that in itself is neither very wise nor very
opportune in such a correspondence, one would
think; but if the reader will take the trouble to
wade through the long, tedious sermon for himself,
he will see proof enough that Knox neither loved,
nor very deeply respected, the women he was then
addressing. In very truth, I believe these Edin-
burgh sisters simply bored him. He had a certain
interest in them as his children in the Lord ; they

1 Works, iv. 246. 2 jjj^ jy^ 225.

335

MEN AND BOOKS

were continually ' provoking him by their writing ; '
and, if they handed his letters about, writing to
them was as good a form of publication as was then
open to him in Scotland. There is one letter, how-
ever, in this budget, addressed to the wife of Clerk
Register Mackgil, which is worthy of some further
mention. The Clerk Register had not opened his
heart, it would appear, to the preaching of the
Gospel, and Mrs. Mackgil has written, seeking the
Reformer's prayers in his behalf. 'Your husband,'
he answers, *is dear to me for that he is a man
indued with some good gifts, but more dear for that
he is your husband. Charity moveth me to thirst
his illumination, both for his comfort and for the
trouble which you sustain by his coldness, which
justly may be called infidelity.' He wishes her,
however, not to hope too much ; he can promise
that his prayers will be earnest, but not that they
will be effectual ; it is possible that this is to be her
' cross ' in life ; that ' her head, appointed by God
for her comfort, should be her enemy.' And if this
be so — well, there is nothing for it ; ' with patience
she must abide God's merciful deliverance,' taking
heed only that she does not ' obey manifest iniquity
for the pleasure of any mortal man.'^ I conceive
this epistle would have given a very modified sort
of pleasure to the Clerk Register, had it chanced
to fall into his hands. Compare its tenor — the dry
resignation not without a hope of merciful deliver-
ance therein recommended — with these words from

1 Works, iv. 245.

JOHN KNOX

another letter, written but the year before to two
married women of London : ' Call first for grace by
Jesus, and thereafter communicate with your faith-
ful husbands, and then shall God, I doubt not,
conduct your footsteps, and direct your counsels to
His glory.' 1 Here the husbands are put in a very
high place ; we can recognise here the same hand
that has written for our instruction how the man is
set above the woman, even as God above the angels.
But the point of the distinction is plain. For Clerk
Register Mackgil was not a faithful husband ; dis-
played, indeed, towards religion, a ' coldness which
justly might be called infidelity.' We shall see in
more notable instances how much Knox's concep-
tion of the duty of wives varies according to the
zeal and orthodoxy of the husband.

As I have said, he may possibly have made the
acquaintance of Mrs. Mackgil, Mis. Guthrie, or some
other, or all, of these Edinburgh friends while he was
still Douglas of Longniddry's private tutor. But our
certain knowledge begins in 1549. He was then but
newly escaped from his captivity in France, after pull-
ing an oar for nineteen months on the benches of
the galley Nostre Dame ; now up the rivers, holding
stealthy intercourse with other Scottish prisoners
in the castle of Bouen ; now out in the North Sea,
raising his sick head to catch a glimpse of the far-off
steeples of St. Andrews. And now he was sent
down by the English Privy Council as a preacher to
Berwick-upon-Tweed ; somewhat shaken in health

1 Works, iv, 221,

5— Y ZZ7

MEN AND BOOKS

by all his hardships, full of pains and agues, and
tormented by gravel, that sorrow of great men ;
altogether, what with his romantic story, his weak
health, and his great faculty of eloquence, a very
natural object for the sympathy of devout women.
At this happy juncture he fell into the company of
a Mrs. Elizabeth Bowes, wife of Richard Bowes, of
Aske, in Yorkshire, to whom she had borne twelve
children. She was a religious hypochondriac, a very
weariful woman, full of doubts and scruples, and
giving no rest on earth either to herself or to those
whom she honoured with her confidence. From the
first time she heard Knox preach she formed a high
opinion of him, and was solicitous ever after of his
society.^ Nor was Knox unresponsive. *I have
always delighted in your company,' he writes, ' and
when labours would permit, you know I have not
spared hours to talk and commune with you.' Often
when they had met in depression he reminds her,
'God hath sent great comfort unto both.'^ We
can gather from such letters as are yet extant how
close and continuous was their intercourse. ' I think
it best you remain till the morrow,' he writes once,
' and so shall we commune at large at afternoon.
This day you know to be the day of my study and
prayer unto God ; yet if your trouble be intolerable,
or if you think my presence may release your pain,
do as the Spirit shall move you. . . . Your messenger
found me in bed, after a sore trouble and most
dolorous night, and so dolour may complain to

1 Works, vi. 514. 2 jn^^ m 334.

JOHN KNOX

dolour when we two meet. . . . And this is more
plain than ever I spoke, to let you know you have a
companion in trouble.'^ Once we have the curtain
raised for a moment, and can look at the two
together for the length of a phrase. 'After the
writing of this preceding,' writes Knox, ' yom-
brother and mine, Harrie WyclifFe, did advertise
me by writing, that your adversary (the devil) took
occasion to trouble you because that / did start back
from you rehearsing your infirmities. I remember
myself so to have done, and that is my common coji-
suetude when anything pierceth or toucheth my heart.
Call to your mind what I did standing at the cupboard
at Alnwick. In very deed I thought that no
creature had been tempted as I was ; and when I
heard proceed from your mouth the very same
words that he troubles me with, I did wonder and
from my heart lament your sore trouble, knowing in
myself the dolour thereof'^ Now intercourse of
so very close a description, whether it be religious
intercourse or not, is apt to displease and disquiet
a husband ; and we know incidentally from Knox
himself that there was some little scandal about his
intimacy with Mrs. Bowes. 'The slander and fear
of men,' he writes, ' has impeded me to exercise my
pen so oft as I would ; yea, very shame hath holden
me from your company, when I was most surely
persuaded that God had appoiiited me at that time to
comfort and feed your hungry and afflicted soul. God
in His infinite mercy,' he goes on, ' remove not only

1 Works, iii. 352, 353. 2 n^i^, {{{, 350.

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MEN AND BOOKS

^rom me all fear that tendeth not to godliness, hut
from others suspicion to judge of me otherwise than it
becometh one member to judge of another.''^ And the
scandal, such as it was, would not be allayed by the
dissension in which Mrs. Bowes seems to have
lived with her family upon the matter of religion,
and the countenance shown by Knox to her resist-
ance. Talking of these conflicts, and her courage
against ' her own flesh and most inward affections,
yea, against some of her most natural friends,' he
writes it, ' to the praise of God, he has wondered at
the bold constancy which he has found in her when
his own heart was faint. ' ^

Now, perhaps in order to stop scandalous mouths,
perhaps out of a desire to bind the much-loved
evangelist nearer to her in the only manner possible,
Mrs. Bowes conceived the scheme of marrying him
to her fifth daughter, Marjorie ; and the Reformer
seems to have fallen in with it readily enough. It
seems to have been believed in the family that the
whole matter had been originally made up between
these two, with no very spontaneous inclination on
the part of the bride. ^ Knox's idea of marriage, as I
have said, was not the same for all men ; but on the
whole, it was not lofty. We have a curious letter of
his, written at the request of Queen Mary, to the
Earl of Argyle, on very delicate household matters ;
which, as he tells us, * was not well accepted of the
said Earl.'^ We may suppose, however, that his

1 Works, iii, 890, 391. 2 jj^^^ jij, 142.

3 Ibid. iii. 378. * Ibid. ii. 379.

JOHN KNOX

own home was regulated in a similar spirit. I can
fancy that for such a man, emotional, and with a
need, now and again, to exercise parsimony in
emotions not strictly needful, something a little
mechanical, something hard and fast and clearly
understood, would enter into his ideal of a home.
There were storms enough without, and equability
was to be desired at the fireside even at a sacrifice
of deeper pleasures. So, from a wife, of all women,
he would not ask much. One letter to her which
has come down to us is, I had almost said, con-
spicuous for coldness.^ He calls her, as he called
other female correspondents, ' dearly beloved sister ; '
the epistle is doctrinal, and nearly the half of it
bears, not upon her own case, but upon that of her
mother. However, we know what Heine wrote in
his wife's album ; and there is, after all, one passage
that may be held to intimate some tenderness,
although even that admits of an amusingly opposite
construction. ' I think,' he says, ' I timik this be
the first letter I ever wrote to you.' This, if we are
to take it literally, may pair off with the 'two or
three children' whom Montaigne mentions having
lost at nurse ; the one is as eccentric in a lover as
the other in a parent. Nevertheless, he displayed
more energy in the course of his troubled wooing
than might have been expected. The whole Bowes
family, angry enough already at the infiuence he had
obtained over the mother, set their faces obdurately
against the match. And 1 daresay the opposition

1 Works, iii. 394.

MEN AND BOOKS

quickened his inclination. I find him writing to
Mrs. Bowes that she need no further trouble herself
about the marriage; it should now be his business
altogether; it behoved him now to jeopard his life
'for the comfort of his own flesh, both fear and
friendship of all earthly creature laid aside.' ^ This
is a wonderfully chivalrous utterance for a Reformer
forty-eight years old ; and it compares well with the
leaden coquetries of Calvin, not much over thirty,
taking this and that into consideration, weighing
together dowries and religious qualifications and the
instancy of friends, and exhibiting what M. Bun-
gener calls ' an honourable and Christian difficulty '
of choice, in frigid indecisions and insincere pro-
posals. But Knox's next letter is in a humbler
tone; he has not found the negotiation so easy as
he fancied ; he despairs of the marriage altogether,
and talks of leaving England, — regards not 'what
country consumes his wicked carcass.' 'You shall
understand,' he says, ' that this sixth of November,
I spoke with Sir Robert Bowes ' (the head of the
family, his bride's uncle) ' in the matter you know,
according to your request; whose disdainful, yea,
despiteful, words hath so pierced my heart that my
life is bitter to me. I bear a good countenance with
a sore-troubled heart, because he that ought to
consider matters with a deep judgment is become
not only a despiser, but also a taunter of God's
messengers — God be merciful unto him ! Amongst
others his most unpleasing words, while that I was

1 Works, iii. 376.

JOHN KNOX

about to have declared my heart in the whole
matter, he said, " Away with your rhetorical reasons !
for I will not be persuaded with them." God knows
I did use no rhetoric nor coloured speech ; but
would have spoken the truth, and that in most
simple manner. I am not a good orator in my own
cause ; but what he would not be content to hear
of me, God shall declare to him one day to his
displeasure, unless he repent.'^ Poor Knox, you
see, is quite commoved. It has been a very un-
pleasant interview. And as it is the only sample
that we have of how things went with him during
his courtship, we may infer that the period was not
as agreeable for Knox as it has been for some others.
However, when once they were married, I imagine
he and Marjorie Bowes hit it off together com-
fortably enough. The little we know of it may be
brought together in a very short space. She bore
him two sons. He seems to have kept her pretty
busy, and depended on her to some degree in his
work; so that when she fell ill, his papers got at
once into disorder. ^ Certainly she sometimes wrote
to his dictation ; and, in this capacity, he calls her
*his left hand.' 3 In June 1559, at the headiest
moment of the Reformation in Scotland, he writes
regretting the absence of his helpful colleague,
Goodman, 'whose presence' (this is the not very
grammatical form of his lament) ' whose presence
I more thirst, than she that is my own flesh.' ^

1 Works, iii. 378. ^ jud. vi. 104.

3 Ibid. V. 6. * Ibid. vi. 27.

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MEN AND BOOKS

And this, considering the source and the circum-
stances, may be held as evidence of a very tender
sentiment. He tells us himself in his History, on
the occasion of a certain meeting at the Kirk of
Field, that he was in no small heaviness by reason
of the late death of his ' dear bedfellow, Marjorie
Bowes.' 1 Calvin, condoling with him, speaks of her
as 'a wife whose like is not to be found every-
where' (that is very like Calvin), and again, as 'the
most delightful of wives.' We know what Calvin
thought desirable in a wife, ' good humour, chastity,
thrift, patience, and sohcitude for her husband's
health,' and so we may suppose that the first Mrs.
Knox fell not far short of this ideal.

The actual date of the marriage is uncertain ; but
by the summer of 1554, at the latest, the Reformer
was settled in Geneva with his wife. There is no
fear either that he will be dull ; even if the chaste,
thrifty, patient Marjorie should not altogether occupy
his mind, he need not go out of the house to seek
more female sympathy ; for behold ! Mrs. Bowes is
duly domesticated with the young couple. Dr.
M'Crie imagined that Richard Bowes was now dead,
and his widow, consequently, free to Hve where she
would ; and where could she go more naturally than
to the house of a married daughter ? This, however,
is not the case. Richard Bowes did not die till
at least two years later. It is impossible to believe
that he approved of his wife's desertion, after so
many years of marriage, after twelve children had

1 Works, ii. 138.
344

JOHN KNOX

been born to them ; and accordingly we find in his
will, dated 1558, no mention either of her or of
Knox's wife.^ This is plain sailing. It is easy
enough to understand the anger of Bowes against
this interloper, who had come into a quiet family,
married the daughter in spite of the father's opposi-
tion, ahenated the wife from the husband and the
husband's religion, supported her in a long course of
resistance and rebellion, and, after years of intimacy,
already too close and tender for any jealous spirit
to behold without resentment, carried her away with
him at last into a foreign land. But it is not quite
easy to understand how, except out of sheer weari-
ness and disgust, he was ever brought to agree to
the arrangement. Nor is it easy to square the
Reformer's conduct with his public teaching. We
have, for instance, a letter addressed by him, Craig,
and Spottiswood, to the Archbishops of Canterbury
and York, anent ' a wicked and rebellious woman,'
one Anne Good, spouse to ' John Barron, a minister
of Christ Jesus his evangel,' who, ' after great re-
bellion shown unto him, and divers admonitions
given, as well by himself as by others in his name,
that she should in no wise depart from this realm,
nor from his house without his licence, hath not the
less stubbornly and rebelhously departed, separated
herself from his society, left his house, and with-
drawn herself from this realm.' ^ Perhaps some sort
of licence was extorted, as I have said, from Richard

1 Mr. Laing's preface to the sixth volume of Knox's Wo^•ks, p. Ixii.

2 Works, vi. 534.

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MEN AND BOOKS

Bowes, weary with years of domestic dissension ;
but setting that aside, the words employed with so
much righteous indignation by Knox, Craig, and
Spottiswood, to describe the conduct of that wicked
and rebelUous woman, Mrs. Barron, would describe
nearly as exactly the conduct of the religious Mrs.
Bowes. It is a little bewildering, until we recollect
the distinction between faithful and unfaithful hus-
bands ; for Barron was ' a minister of Christ Jesus
his evangel,' while Richard Bowes, besides being
own brother to a despiser and taunter of God's
messengers, is shrewdly suspected to have been 'a
bigoted adherent of the Roman Catholic faith,' or,
as Knox himself would have expressed it, ' a rotten
Papist.'

You would have thought that Knox was now
pretty well supplied with female society. But we
are not yet at the end of the roll. The last year of
his sojourn in England had been spent principally
in London, where he was resident as one of the
chaplains of Edward the Sixth ; and here he boasts,
although a stranger, he had, by God's grace, found
favour before many.^ The godly women of the
metropolis made much of him ; once he writes to
Mrs. Bowes that her last letter had found him
closeted with three, and he and the three women
were all in tears. ^ Out of all, however, he had
chosen two. ' God/ he writes to them, * brought us
in such familiar acquaintance, that your hearts were
incensed and kindled with a special care over me, as

1 Works, iv. 220. 2 jj^i^^ \^i gsO.

346

JOHN KNOX

a mother useth to be over her natural child ; and my
heart was opened and compelled in your presence to
be more plain than ever I was to any.' ^ And out
of the two even he had chosen one, Mrs. Anne
Locke, wife to Mr. Harry Locke, merchant, nigh to
Bow Kirk, Cheapside, in London, as the address
runs. If one may venture to judge upon such im-
perfect evidence, this was the woman he loved best.
I have a difficulty in quite forming to myself an
idea of her character. She may have been one of
the three tearful visitors before alluded to ; she may
even have been that one of them who was so pro-
foundly moved by some passages of Mrs. Bowes's
letter, which the Reformer opened, and read aloud
to them before they went. ' O would to God,' cried
this impressionable matron, 'would to God that I
might speak with that person, for I perceive there
are more tempted than I.'^ This may have been
Mrs. Locke, as I say ; but even if it were, we must
not conclude from this one fact that she was such
another as Mrs. Bowes. All the evidence tends the
other way. She was a woman of understanding,
plainly, who followed political events with interest,
and to whom Knox thought it worth while to write,
in detail, the history of his trials and successes.
She was religious, but without that morbid per-
versity of spirit that made rehgion so heavy a
burden for the poor-hearted Mrs. Bowes. More of
her I do not find, save testimony to the profound
affection that united her to the Reformer. So we

1 Works, iv. 220. 2 jud. iii. 380.

347

MEN AND BOOKS

find him writing to her from Geneva, in such terms
as these : — * You write that your desire is earnest
to see me. Dear sister, if I should express the thirst
and languor which I have had for your presence, I
should appear to pass measure. . . . Yea, I weep
and rejoice in remembrance of you ; but that would
evanish by the comfort of your presence, which I
assure you is so dear to me, that if the charge of
this httle flock here, gathered together in Christ's
name, did not impede me, my coming should pre-
vent my letter.' ^ I say that this was written from
Geneva; and yet you will observe that it is no
consideration for his wife or mother-in-law, only the
charge of his little flock, that keeps him from setting
out forthwith for London, to comfort himself with
the dear presence of Mrs. Locke. Remember that
was a certain plausible enough pretext for Mrs.
Locke to come to Geneva — ' the most perfect school
of Christ that ever was on earth since the days of
the Apostles ' — for we are now under the reign of
that ' horrible monster Jezebel of England,' when a
lady of good orthodox sentiments was better out of
London, It was doubtful, however, whether this
was to be. She was detained in England, partly by
circumstances unknown, 'partly by empire of her
head,' Mr. Harry Locke, the Cheapside merchant.

It is somewhat humorous to see Knox struggling
for resignation, now that he has to do with a faithful
husband (for Mr. Harry Locke was faithful). Had it
been otherwise, ' in my heart,' he says, ' I could have

1 Works, iv. 238.

JOHN KNOX

wished — yea,' here he breaks out, ' yea, and cannot
cease to wish — that God would guide you to this
place.' ^ And after all, he had not long to wait, for,
whether Mr. Harry Locke died in the interval, or
was wearied, he too, into giving permission, five
months after the date of the letter last quoted,
'Mrs. Anne Locke, Harry her son, and Anne her
daughter, and Katharine her maid,' arrived in that
perfect school of Christ, the Presbyterian paradise,
Geneva. So now, and for the next two years, the
cup of Knox's happiness was surely full. Of an
afternoon, when the bells rang out for the sermon,
the shops closed, and the good folk gathered to the
churches, psalm-book in hand, we can imagine him
drawing near to the English chapel in quite patri-
archal fashion, with Mrs. Knox and Mrs. Bowes
and Mrs. Locke, James his servant, Patrick his
pupil, and a due following of children and maids.
He might be alone at work all morning in his study,
for he wrote much during these two years ; but at
night, you may be sure there was a circle of admir-
ing women, eager to hear the new paragraph, and
not sparing of applause. And what work, among
others, was he elaborating at this time, but the
notorious ' First Blast ' ? So that he may have rolled
out in his big pulpit voice, how women were weak,
frail, impatient, feeble, foolish, inconstant, variable,
cruel, and lacking the spirit of counsel, and how
men were above them, even as God is above the
angels, in the ears of his own wife, and the two

1 Works, iv. 240.

349

MEN AND BOOKS

dearest friends he had on earth. But he had lost
the sense of incongruity, and continued to despise in
theory the sex he honoured so much in practice, of
whom he chose his most intimate associates, and
whose courage he was compelled to wonder at, when
his own heart was faint.

We may say that such a man was not worthy of
his fortune ; and so, as he would not learn, he was
taken away from that agreeable school, and his
fellowship of women was broken up, not to be re-
united. Called into Scotland to take at last that
strange position in history which is his best claim to
commemoration, he was followed thither by his wife
and his mother-in-law. The wife soon died. The
death of her daughter did not altogether separate
Mrs. Bowes from Knox, but she seems to have come
and gone between his house and England. In 1562,
however, we find him characterised as 'a sole man
by reason of the absence of his mother-in-law, Mrs.
Bowes,' and a passport is got for her, her man, a
maid, and ' three horses, whereof two shall return,'
as well as liberty to take all her own money with
her into Scotland. This looks like a definite arrange-
ment ; but whether she died at Edinburgh, or went
back to England yet again, I cannot find. With
that great family of hers, unless in leaving her hus-
band she had quarrelled with them all, there must
have been frequent occasion for her presence, one
would think. Knox at least survived her ; and we
possess his epigraph to their long intimacy, given to
the world by him in an appendix to his latest pubh-
350

JOHN KNOX

cation. I have said in a former paper that Knox
was not shy of personal revelations in his published
'works. And the trick seems to have grown on him.
To this last tract, a controversial onslaught on a Scot-
tish Jesuit, he prefixed a prayer, not very pertinent
to the matter in hand, and containing references to
his family which were the occasion of some wit in
his adversary's answer ; and appended what seems
equally irrelevant, one of his devout letters to Mrs.
Bowes, with an explanatory preface. To say truth,
I believe he had always felt uneasily that the circum-
stances of this intimacy were very capable of mis-
construction ; and now, when he was an old man,
taking ' his good-night of all the faithful in both
realms,' and only desirous ' that without any notable
sclander to the evangel of Jesus Christ, he might
end his battle ; for as the world was weary of him,
so was he of it ; ' — in such a spirit it was not, per-
haps, unnatural that he should return to this old
story, and seek to put it right in the eyes of all men,
ere he died. 'Because that God,' he says, 'because
that God now in His mercy hath put an end to the
battle of my dear mother. Mistress Elizabeth Bowes,
before that He put an end to my wretched life, I
could not cease but declare to the world what was
the cause of our great familiarity and long acquaint-
ance ; which was neither flesh nor blood, but a
troubled conscience upon her part, which never suf-
fered her to rest but when she was in the company
of the faithful, of whom (from the first hearing of
the word at my mouth) she judged me to be one.

351

MEN AND BOOKS

. . . Her company to me was comfortable (yea,
honourable and profitable, for she was to me and
mine a mother), but yet it was not without some'
cross ; for besides trouble and fashery of body sus-
tained for her, my mind was seldom quiet, for doing
somewhat for the comfort of her troubled con-
science.' ^ He had written to her years before, from
his first exile in Dieppe, that ' only God's hand '
could withhold him from once more speaking with
her face to face ; and now, when God's hand has
indeed interposed, when there lies between them,
instead of the voyageable straits, that great gulf
over which no man can pass, this is the spirit in
which he can look back upon their long acquaint-
ance. She was a religious hypochondriac, it appears,
whom, not without some cross and fashery of mind
and body, he was good enough to tend. He might
have given a truer character of their friendship had
he thought less of his own standing in public estima-
tion, and more of the dead woman. But he was in
all things, as Burke said of his son in that ever
memorable passage, a public creature. He wished
that even into this private place of his affections
posterity should follow him with a complete ap-
proval ; and he was willing, in order that this might
be so, to exhibit the defects of his lost friend, and
tell the world what weariness he had sustained
through her unhappy disposition. There is some-
thing here that reminds one of Rousseau.

I do not think he ever saw Mrs. Locke after he

1 Works, vi. 513, 514.

JOHN KNOX

left Geneva ; but his correspondence with her con-
tinued for three years. It may have continued
longer, of course, but I think the last letters we
possess read like the last that would be written.
Perhaps Mrs. Locke was then remarried, for there is
much obscurity over her subsequent history. For
as long as their intimacy was kept up, at least, the
human element remains in the Reformer's life.
Here is one passage, for example, the most likable
utterance of Knox's that I can quote : — Mrs. Locke
has been upbraiding him as a bad correspondent.
* My remembrance of you,' he answers, ' is not so
dead, but I trust it shall be fresh enough, albeit it be
renewed by no outward token for one year. Of
nature, I am churlish ; yet one thing I ashame not to
affirm, that familiarity once thoi^oughly contracted
was never yet broken on my default. The cause may
be that I have rather need of all, than that any have
need of me. However it {that) be, it cannot be, as I
say, the corporal absence of one year or two that can
quench in my heart that familiar acquaintance in
Christ Jesus, which half a year did engender, and
almost two years did nourish and confirm. And
therefore, whether I write or no, be assuredly per-
suaded that I have you in such memory as becometh
the faithful to have of the faithful.'' This is the
truest touch of personal humility that I can remem-
ber to have seen in all the five volumes of the
Reformer's collected works : it is no small honour to
Mrs. Locke that his affection for her should have

^ Works, vi. 11.

5— z ^So

MEN AND BOOKS

brought home to hhn this unwonted feelmg of
dependence upon others. Everything else in the
course of the correspondence testifies to a good,
sound, downright sort of friendship between the
two, less ecstatic than it was at first, perhaps, but
serviceable and very equal. He gives her ample
details as to the progress of the work of reformation ;
sends her the sheets of the Confession of Faith, * in
quairs,' as he calls it ; asks her to assist him with her
prayers, to collect money for the good cause in Scot-
land, and to send him books for himself — books by
Calvin especially, one on Isaiah, and a new revised
edition of the Institutes. ' I must be bold on your
liberality,' he writes, ' not only in that, but in greater
things as I shall need.'^ On her part she applies to
him for spiritual advice, not after the manner of the
drooping Mrs. Bowes, but in a more positive spirit,
— advice as to practical points, advice as to the
Church of England, for instance, whose ritual he
condemns as a 'mingle-mangle.'- Just at the end
she ceases to write, sends him 'a token, without
writing.' ' I understand your impediment,' he
answers, * and therefore I cannot complain. Yet if
you understood the variety of my temptations, I
doubt not but you would have written somewhat.'^
One letter more, and then silence.

And I think the best of the Reformer died out
with that correspondence. It is after this, of course,
that he wrote that ungenerous description of his
intercourse with Mrs. Bowes. It is after this, also,

^ Works, VI. 21, 101, 108, 130. 2 /jj-^. yi. 83. ^ jj;^. vi_ 120.

354

JOHN KNOX

that we come to the unlovely episode of his second
marriage. He had been left a widower at the age
of fifty-five. Three years after, it occurred appar-
ently to yet another pious parent to sacrifice a child
upon the altar of his respect for the Reformer. In
January 1563 Randolph writes to Cecil : ' Your
Honour will take it for a great wonder when I shall
write unto you that Mr. Knox shall marry a very
near kinswoman of the Duke's, a Lord's daughter, a
young lass not above sixteen years of age.'^ He
adds that he fears he will be laughed at for reporting
so mad a story. And yet it was true; and on
Palm Sunday, 1564, Margaret Stewart, daughter of
Andrew Lord Stewart of Ochiltree, aged seventeen,
was duly united to John Knox, Minister of St.
Giles's Kirk, Edinburgh, aged fifty-nine, — to the
great disgust of Queen Mary from family pride, and
I would fain hope of many others for more humane
considerations. ' In this,' as Randolph says, ' I wish
he had done otherwise.' The Consistory of Geneva,
' that most perfect school of Christ that ever was on
earth since the days of the Apostles,' were wont to
forbid marriages on the ground of too great a dis-
proportion in age. I cannot help wondering whether
the old Reformer's conscience did not uneasily re-
mind him, now and again, of this good custom of his
religious metropolis, as he thought of the two-and-
forty years that separated him from his poor bride.
Fitly enough, we hear nothing of the second Mrs.
Knox until she appears at her husband's deathbed,

1 Works, vi. 532.

355

MEN AND BOOKS

eight years after. She bore him three daughters in
the interval ; and I suppose the poor child's martyr-
dom was made as easy for her as might be. She was
* extremely attentive to him ' at the end, we read ;
and he seems to have spoken to her with some con-
fidence. Moreover, and this is very characteristic,
he had copied out for her use a little volume of his
own devotional letters to other women.

This is the end of the roll, unless we add to it
Mrs. Adamson, who had dehghted much in his
company *by reason that she had a troubled con-
science,' and whose deathbed is commemorated at
some length in the pages of his History.^

And now, looking back, it cannot be said that
Knox's intercourse with women was quite of the
highest sort. It is characteristic that we find him
more alarmed for his own reputation than for the
reputation of the women with whom he was familiar.
There was a fatal preponderance of self in all his
intimacies : many women came to learn from him,
but he never condescended to become a learner in
his turn. And so there is not anything idyllic in
these intimacies of his; and they were never so
renovating to his spirit as they might have been.
But I believe they were good enough for the women.
I fancy the women knew what they were about
when so many of them followed after Knox. It is
not simply because a man is always fully persuaded
that he knows the right from the wrong and sees
his way plainly through the maze of life, great

1 Works, i. 246.

JOHN KNOX

qualities as these are, that people will love and
follow him, and write him letters full of their
' earnest desire for him ' when he is absent. It is
not over a man, whose one characteristic is grim
fixity of purpose, that the hearts of women are
' incensed and kindled with a special care,' as it were
over their natural children. In the strong quiet
patience of all his letters to the weariful Mrs. Bowes,
we may perhaps see one cause of the fascination he
possessed for these religious women. Here was one
whom you could besiege all the year round with
inconsistent scruples and complaints ; you might
write to him on Thursday that you were so elated it
was plain the devil was deceiving you, and again on
Friday that you were so depressed it was plain God
had cast you off for ever ; and he would read all this
patiently and sympathetically, and give you an
answer in the most reassuring polysyllables, and all
divided into heads — who knows ? — like a treatise on
divinity. And then, those easy tears of his. There
are some women who like to see men crying ; and
here was this great-voiced, bearded man of God,
who might be seen beating the solid pulpit every
Sunday, and casting abroad his clamorous denuncia-
tions to the terror of all, and who on the Monday
would sit in their parlours by the hour, and weep
with them over their manifold trials and tempta-
tions. Nowadays, he would have to drink a dish of
tea with all these penitents. ... It sounds a little
vulgar, as the past will do, if we look into it too
closely. We could not let these great folk of old

357

MEN AND BOOKS

into our drawing-rooms. Queen Elizabeth would
positively not be eligible for a housemaid. The old
manners and the old customs go sinking from grade
to grade, until, if some mighty emperor revisited the
glimpses of the moon, he would not find any one of
his way of thinking, any one he could strike hands
with and talk to freely and without offence, save
perhaps the porter at the end of the street, or the
fellow with his elbows out who loafs all day before
the public-house. So that this little note of vul-
garity is not a thing to be dwelt upon ; it is to be
put away from us, as we recall the fashion of these
old intimacies ; so that we may only remember
Knox as one who was very long-suffering with
women, kind to them in his own way, loving them
in his own way — and that not the worst way, if it
was not the best — and once at least, if not twice,
moved to his heart of hearts by a woman, and
giving expression to the yearning he had for her
society in words that none of us need be ashamed to
borrow.

And let us bear in mind always that the period I
have gone over in this essay begins when the Re-
former was already beyond the middle age, and
already broken in bodily health : it has been the
story of an old man's friendships. This it is that
makes Knox enviable. Unknown until past forty,
he had then before him five-and-twenty years of
splendid and influential life, passed through un-
common hardships to an uncommon degree of power,
lived in his own country as a sort of king, and did

358

JOHN KNOX

what he would with the sound of his voice out of
the pulpit. And besides all this, such a following of
faithful women ! One would take the first forty-two
years gladly, if one could be sure of the last twenty-
five. Most of us, even if, by reason of great strength
and the dignity of grey hairs, we retain some degree
of public respect in the latter days of our existence,
will find a falling away of friends, and a soHtude
making itself round about us day by day, until we
are left alone with the hired sick-nurse. For the
attraction of a man's character is apt to be outlived,
like the attraction of his body ; and the power to
love grows feeble in its turn, as well as the power to
inspire love in others. It is only with a few rare
natures that friendship is added to friendship, love
to love, and the man keeps growing richer in affec-
tion— richer, I mean, as a bank may be said to grow
richer, both giving and receiving more — after his
head is white and his back weary, and he prepares to
go down into the dust of death.

359

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