habits, however infinite his capacity for drinking sack, he belonged
intellectually to the party of sobriety. In all ages the drunks and
the sobers have confronted one another, each party loud in derision
and condemnation of the defects which it observes in the other. "The
Tamerlanes and Tamer-Chams of the late age" accuse the sober Ben of
being "barren, dull, lean, a poor writer." Ben retorts that they "have
nothing in them but the scenical strutting and furious vociferation
to warrant them to the ignorant gapers." At another period it is the
Hernanis and the Rollas who reproach that paragon of dryness, the
almost fiendishly sober Stendhal, with his grocer's style. Stendhal
in his turn remarks: "En paraissant, vers 1803, le _Génie_ de
Chateaubriand m'a semblé ridicule." And to-day? We have our sobers and
our drunks, our Hardy and our Belloc, and Chesterton. The distinction
is universally and eternally valid. Our personal sympathies may lie
with one or the other; but it is obvious that we could dispense with
neither. Ben, then, was one of the sobers, protesting with might and
main against the extravagant behaviour of the drunks, an intellectual
insisting that there was no way of arriving at truth except by
intellectual processes, an apotheosis of the Plain Man determined
to stand no nonsense about anything. Ben's poetical achievement,
such as it is, is the achievement of one who relied on no mysterious
inspiration, but on those solid qualities of sense, perseverance, and
sound judgment which any decent citizen of a decent country may be
expected to possess. That he himself possessed, hidden somewhere in
the obscure crypts and recesses of his mind, other rarer spiritual
qualities is proved by the existence of his additions to _The Spanish
Tragedy_--if, indeed, they are his, which there is no cogent reason
to doubt--and his last fragment of a masterpiece, _The Sad Shepherd_.
But these qualities, as Professor Gregory Smith points out, he seems
deliberately to have suppressed; locked them away, at the bidding
of his imperious theory, in the strange dark places from which, at
the beginning and the very end of his career, they emerged. He might
have been a great romantic, one of the sublime inebriates; he chose
rather to be classical and sober. Working solely with the logical
intellect and rejecting as dangerous the aid of those uncontrolled
illogical elements of imagination, he produced work that is in its
own way excellent. It is well-wrought, strong, heavy with learning
and what the Chaucerians would call "high sentence." The emotional
intensity and brevity excepted, it possesses all the qualities of
the French classical drama. But the quality which characterises the
best Elizabethan and indeed the best English poetry of all periods,
the power of moving in two worlds at once, it lacks. Jonson, like
the French dramatists of the seventeenth century, moves on a level,
directly towards some logical goal. The road over which his great
contemporaries take us is not level; it is, as it were, tilted and
uneven, so that as we proceed along it we are momently shot off at a
tangent from the solid earth of logical meaning into superior regions
where the intellectual laws of gravity have no control. The mistake
of Jonson and the classicists in general consists in supposing that
nothing is of value that is not susceptible of logical analysis;
whereas the truth is that the greatest triumphs of art take place in a
world that is not wholly of the intellect, but lies somewhere between
it and the inenarrable, but, to those who have penetrated it, supremely
real, world of the mystic. In his fear and dislike of nonsense, Jonson
put away from himself not only the Tamer-Chams and the fustian of the
late age, but also most of the beauty it had created.
With the romantic emotions of his predecessors and contemporaries
Jonson abandoned much of the characteristically Elizabethan form of
their poetry. That extraordinary melodiousness which distinguishes the
Elizabethan lyric is not to be found in any of Ben's writing. The poems
by which we remember him--_Cynthia_, _Drink to Me Only_, _It is Not
Growing Like a Tree_--are classically well made (though the cavalier
lyrists were to do better in the same style); but it is not for any
musical qualities that we remember them. One can understand Ben's
critical contempt for those purely formal devices for producing musical
richness in which the Elizabethans delighted.
Eyes, why did you bring unto me these graces,
Grac'd to yield wonder out of her true measure,
Measure of all joyes' stay to phansie traces
Module of pleasure.
The device is childish in its formality, the words, in their obscurity,
almost devoid of significance. But what matter, since the stanza is a
triumph of sonorous beauty? The Elizabethans devised many ingenuities
of this sort; the minor poets exploited them until they became
ridiculous; the major poets employed them with greater discretion,
playing subtle variations (as in Shakespeare's sonnets) on the crude
theme. When writers had something to say, their thoughts, poured into
these copiously elaborate forms, were moulded to the grandest poetical
eloquence. A minor poet, like Lord Brooke, from whose works we have
just quoted a specimen of pure formalism, could produce, in his moments
of inspiration, such magnificent lines as:
The mind of Man is this world's true dimension,
And knowledge is the measure of the mind;
or these, of the nethermost hell:
A place there is upon no centre placed,
Deepe under depthes, as farre as is the skie
Above the earth; darke, infinitely spaced:
Pluto the king, the kingdome, miserie.
Even into comic poetry the Elizabethans imported the grand manner. The
anonymous author of
Tee-hee, tee-hee! Oh sweet delight!
He tickles this age, who can
Call Tullia's ape a marmosite
And Leda's goose a swan,
knew the secret of that rich, facile music which all those who wrote
in the grand Elizabethan tradition could produce. Jonson, like Donne,
reacted against the facility and floridity of this technique, but in a
different way. Donne's protest took the form of a conceited subtlety
of thought combined with a harshness of metre. Jonson's classical
training inclined him towards clarity, solidity of sense, and economy
of form. He stands, as a lyrist, halfway between the Elizabethans and
the cavalier song-writers; he has broken away from the old tradition,
but has not yet made himself entirely at home in the new. At the best
he achieves a minor perfection of point and neatness. At the worst he
falls into that dryness and dullness with which he knew he could be
reproached.
We have seen from the passage concerning the true artificer that Jonson
fully realised the risk he was running. He recurs more than once in
_Discoveries_ to the same theme, "Some men to avoid redundancy run into
that [a "thin, flagging, poor, starved" style]; and while they strive
to have no ill-blood or juice, they lose their good." The good that
Jonson lost was a great one. And in the same way we see to-day how a
fear of becoming sentimental, or "chocolate-boxy," drives many of the
younger poets and artists to shrink from treating of the great emotions
or the obvious lavish beauty of the earth. But to eschew a good because
the corruption of it is very bad is surely a sign of weakness and a
folly.
Having lost the realm of romantic beauty--lost it deliberately and of
set purpose--Ben Jonson devoted the whole of his immense energy to
portraying and reforming the ugly world of fact. But his reforming
satiric intentions interfered, as we have already shown, with his
realistic intentions, and instead of re-creating in his art the actual
world of men, he invented the wholly intellectual and therefore wholly
unreal universe of Humours. It is an odd new world, amusing to look
at from the safe distance that separates stage from stalls; but not
a place one could ever wish to live in--one's neighbours, fools,
knaves, hypocrites, and bears would make the most pleasing prospect
intolerable. And over it all is diffused the atmosphere of Jonson's
humour. It is a curious kind of humour, very different from anything
that passes under that name to-day, from the humour of _Punch_, or
_A Kiss for Cinderella_. One has only to read _Volpone_--or, better
still, go to see it when it is acted this year by the Phœnix Society
for the revival of old plays--to realise that Ben's conception of a
joke differed materially from ours. Humour has never been the same
since Rousseau invented humanitarianism. Syphilis and broken legs
were still a great deal more comic in Smollett's day than in our own.
There is a cruelty, a heartlessness about much of the older humour
which is sometimes shocking, sometimes, in its less extreme forms,
pleasantly astringent and stimulating after the orgies of quaint pathos
and sentimental comedy in which we are nowadays forced to indulge.
There is not a pathetic line in _Volpone_; all the characters are
profoundly unpleasant, and the fun is almost as grim as fun can be.
Its heartlessness is not the brilliant, cynical heartlessness of the
later Restoration comedy, but something ponderous and vast. It reminds
us of one of those enormous, painful jokes which fate sometimes plays
on humanity. There is no alleviation, no purging by pity and terror.
It requires a very hearty sense of humour to digest it. We have reason
to admire our ancestors for their ability to enjoy this kind of comedy
as it should be enjoyed. It would get very little appreciation from a
London audience of to-day.
In the other comedies the fun is not so grim; but there is a certain
hardness and brutality about them all--due, of course, ultimately to
the fact that the characters are not human, but rather marionettes
of wood and metal that collide and belabour one another, like the
ferocious puppets of the Punch and Judy show, without feeling
the painfulness of the proceeding. Shakespeare's comedy is not
heartless, because the characters are human and sensitive. Our modern
sentimentality is a corruption, a softening of genuine humanity. We
need a few more Jonsons and Congreves, some more plays like _Volpone_,
or that inimitable _Mariage à la Mode_ of Dryden, in which the curtain
goes up on a lady singing the outrageously cynical song that begins:
Why should a foolish marriage vow,
That long ago was made,
Constrain us to each other now
When pleasure is decayed?
Too much heartlessness is intolerable (how soon one turns, revolted,
from the literature of the Restoration!), but a little of it now and
then is bracing, a tonic for relaxed sensibilities. A little ruthless
laughter clears the air as nothing else can do; it is good for us,
every now and then, to see our ideals laughed at, our conception of
nobility caricatured; it is good for solemnity's nose to be tweaked,
it is good for human pomposity to be made to look mean and ridiculous.
This should be the great social function--as Marinetti has pointed
out--of the music halls, to provide this cruel and unsparing laughter,
to make a buffoonery of all the solemnly-accepted grandeurs and
nobilities. A good dose of this mockery, administered twice a year
at the equinoxes, should purge our minds of much waste matter, make
nimble our spirits and brighten the eye to look more clearly and
truthfully on the world about us.
Ben's reduction of human beings to a series of rather unpleasant
Humours is sound and medicinal. Humours do not, of course, exist in
actuality; they are true only as caricatures are true. There are times
when we wonder whether a caricature is not, after all, truer than a
photograph; there are others when it seems a stupid lie. But at all
times a caricature is disquieting; and it is very good for most of us
to be made uncomfortable.
STEPHEN CRANE
_A Note Without Dates_
By JOSEPH CONRAD
My acquaintance with Crane was brought about by Mr. S. S. Pawling,
partner in the publishing firm of Mr. William Heinemann.
One day Mr. Pawling said to me: "Stephen Crane has arrived in England.
I asked him if there was anybody he wanted to meet and he mentioned
two names. One of them was yours." I had then just been reading, like
the rest of the world, Crane's _Red Badge of Courage_. The subject of
that story was war, from the point of view of an individual soldier's
emotions. That individual (he remains nameless throughout) was
interesting enough in himself, but on turning over the pages of that
little book which had for the moment secured such a noisy recognition
I had been even more interested in the personality of the writer. The
picture of a simple and untried youth becoming through the needs of
his country part of a great fighting machine was presented with an
earnestness of purpose, a sense of tragic issues, and an imaginative
force of expression which struck me as quite uncommon and altogether
worthy of admiration.
Apparently Stephen Crane had received a favourable impression from
reading the _Nigger of the Narcissus_, a book of mine which had also
been published lately. I was truly pleased to hear this.
On my next visit to town we met at a lunch. I saw a young man of medium
stature and slender build, with very steady, penetrating blue eyes, the
eyes of a being who not only sees visions but can brood over them to
some purpose.
He had indeed a wonderful power of vision, which he applied to the
things of this earth and of our mortal humanity with a penetrating
force that seemed to reach within life's appearances and forms the very
spirit of their truth. His ignorance of the world at large--he had seen
very little of it--did not stand in the way of his imaginative grasp of
facts, events, and picturesque men.
His manner was very quiet, his personality at first sight interesting,
and he talked slowly with an intonation which on some people, mainly
Americans, had, I believe, a jarring effect. But not on me. Whatever
he said had a personal note, and he expressed himself with a graphic
simplicity which was extremely engaging. He knew little of literature,
either of his own country or of any other, but he was himself a
wonderful artist in words whenever he took a pen into his hand. Then
his gift came out--and it was seen to be much more than mere felicity
of language. His impressionism of phrase went really deeper than the
surface. In his writing he was very sure of his effects. I don't think
he was ever in doubt about what he could do. Yet it often seemed
to me that he was but half aware of the exceptional quality of his
achievement.
This achievement was curtailed by his early death. It was a great loss
to his friends, but perhaps not so much to literature. I think that he
had given his measure fully in the few books he had the time to write.
Let me not be misunderstood: the loss was great, but it was the loss of
the delight his art could give, not the loss of any further possible
revelation. As to himself, who can say how much he gained or lost by
quitting so early this world of the living, which he knew how to set
before us in terms of his own artistic vision? Perhaps he did not lose
a great deal. The recognition he was accorded was rather languid and
given him grudgingly. The worthiest welcome he secured for his tales
in this country was from Mr. W. Henley in the _New Review_ and later,
towards the end of his life, from the late Mr. William Blackwood in his
magazine. For the rest I must say that during his sojourn in England
he had the misfortune to be, as the French say, _mal entouré_. He
was beset by people who understood not the quality of his genius and
were antagonistic to the deeper fineness of his nature. Some of them
have died since, but dead or alive they are not worth speaking about
now. I don't think he had any illusions about them himself; yet there
was a strain of good-nature and perhaps of weakness in his character
which prevented him from shaking himself free from their worthless
and patronising attentions, which in those days caused me much secret
irritation whenever I stayed with him in either of his English homes.
My wife and I like best to remember him riding to meet us at the
gate of the Park at Brede. Born master of his sincere impressions he
was also a born horseman. He never appeared so happy or so much to
advantage as on the back of a horse. He had formed the project of
teaching my eldest boy to ride and meantime, when the child was about
two years old, presented him with his first dog.
I saw Stephen Crane a few days after his first arrival in London. I saw
him for the last time on his last day in England. It was in Dover, in
a big hotel, in a bedroom with a large window looking on to the sea.
He had been very ill and Mrs. Crane was taking him to some place in
Germany, but one glance at that wasted face was enough to tell me that
it was the most forlorn of all hopes. The last words he breathed out
to me were: "I am tired. Give my love to your wife and child." When
I stopped at the door for another look I saw that he had turned his
head on the pillow and was staring wistfully out of the window at the
sails of a cutter yacht that glided slowly across the frame, like a dim
shadow against a grey sky.
Those who have read his little tale, _Horses_, and the story, _The Open
Boat_, in the volume of that name, know with what fine understanding he
loved horses and the sea. And his passage on this earth was like that
of a horseman riding swiftly in the dawn of a day fated to be short and
without sunshine.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND NEWS
_Correspondence from readers on all subjects of bibliographical
interest is invited. The Editor will, to the best of his ability,
answer all queries addressed to him._
GENERAL NOTES
One of the great autobiographies, and a very important document for any
one who undertakes the most rudimentary study of the English romantic
movement, is the _Life of B. R. Haydon_, drawn from his journals. He
was the friend of Keats, Lamb, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt; he moved in
many different spheres, among Dukes and politicians, and artists, and
the debtors in King's Bench Prison. A man of boundless energy, an able
writer capable of rendering his impressions vividly and with force, he
was, indeed, everything but what he believed himself with passionate
faith to be, what he even succeeded in persuading others that he was--a
great painter. He was convinced--as firmly convinced as of the fact
that two and two are four--that he was a genius as overwhelmingly great
as Michael Angelo. He was, as a matter of fact, one of the second-rate
romantic painters of the early nineteenth century, in some things a
little better, in others a good deal worse, than his contemporaries in
the same line of trade. The book is a fascinating study in psychology
as well as one of the most vivid pictures of an interesting society.
It is, therefore, unfortunate that it should now be a matter of some
difficulty to lay one's hand on a copy. The first edition of the book
appeared in 1853, the second and last some ten years later--more than
half a century ago. We venture to express the pious hope that some
beneficent publisher will reprint what is certainly one of the most
peculiar human and historical documents of the nineteenth century.
* * * * *
We learn from Mr. Leslie Chaundy, of Oxford, that he has purchased
intact the whole library of the late Provost of Worcester. Dr. Daniel's
collection comprises a great number of rare and interesting books,
including, of course, all the volumes issued from the famous Daniel
Press. A catalogue is, we understand, in course of preparation and will
be issued shortly.
* * * * *
October 31st saw the publication of the first number of the _Bookman's
Journal and Print Collector_, qualified in a sub-title as _The Journal
for the Trade, for Collectors, and for Libraries_. "Our aim," we read
in the editorial, "is to be useful, not ornamental. Booksellers,
publishers, librarians, and collectors alike from all parts of the
country have agreed with the need for such a journal as this, and
have given us generous support." The magazine contains reviews, a
library supplement of "New Publications and Reprints of the Week,"
miscellaneous articles and notes on books and booksellers, prints
and engravings. A useful feature of the journal will be the series
of complete bibliographies of modern authors which it is proposed to
publish. The first is devoted to the works of Hubert Crackanthorpe,
who died in 1896, aged only twenty-six. Similar bibliographies of
Masefield, Galsworthy, Conrad, Gissing, George Moore, and Merrick are
in preparation. Those who wish to buy or sell books will be interested
in the "Books Wanted" and "Books for Sale" columns of advertisements.
Altogether, we think that this little paper will have no difficulty
in substantiating its claims and will prove very valuable to all
book-lovers.
Another interesting event in the world of books is the opening of the
Chelsea Book Club at 65 Cheyne Walk. "It is being founded," we are
told, "in the belief that in bookselling selection and specialisation
are essential. It will aim, therefore, at having a stock of those
books, new and second-hand, English and foreign, dealing with
Belles Lettres and Art which appear to be most worthy of study and
appreciation." A reading-room for the use of members will be attached
to the club, in which lectures and exhibitions of works of art will be
held from time to time. Those who wish to have further particulars as
to membership, country book-service, lectures and exhibitions are asked
to apply to the Secretary, 65 Cheyne Walk, London, S.W.3.
* * * * *
At the sale, by Messrs. Sotheby, of the late Mr. W. J. Leighton's
stock, to which we referred last month, a copy of Walton's _Compleat
Angler_ (1655) fetched £21 10_s._; _The Pricke of Conscience_,
fifteenth century M.S., £50; _Myrrour and Description of the Worlde_,
printed by Laurence Andrews, _circa_ 1530, £72. Important auction sales
in the month of November were Messrs. Sotheby's sale of the late Sir
Frank Crisp's library and the sale of Mr. Christie Miller's library on
the 28th of the month. We shall have gone to press before the results
of the sale are known. What will be paid for Lot 81, we wonder_?--Mr.
William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies_, the first
edition, folio, 1623.
The Christie-Miller library contains many other books of extraordinary
interest, among them three unique copies of works by Nicholas Breton:
_A Smale Handfull of Fragrant Flowers, Selected and Gathered out of
the Lovely Garden of Sacred Scripture_; _A Floorish upon Fancie_,
_As Gallant a Glose upon so Triflinge a Text as ever was Written_;
and _The Workes of a Young Wit Trust up with a Fardell of Prettie
Fancies_. Robert Greene is represented by three unique copies, one of
_Gwydonius_, and another of _Arbasto, The Anatomie of Fortune_; and
the third of the earliest edition of _A Quip for an Upstart Courtier_,
containing the passage, suppressed in all the later editions, in abuse
of Gabriel Harvey and his brothers, which started the literary war
between Greene and the pedant of Cambridge.
* * * * *
ITEMS FROM THE BOOKSELLERS' CATALOGUES
It is possible, with a bundle of booksellers' catalogues, to waste
more time more pleasantly than in any other way. As one idly turns the
pages, catching sight here and there of a strange title or a book on
some impossibly queer subject, one realises, more fully than one could
do in years of social intercourse with one's fellow-men, how fantastic
a thing is the human mind--a stable full of prancing hobby-horses for
crochety horsemen to ride about the world. We can speculate pleasantly
on the character of the practical parson who wrote the _Clergyman's
Intelligencer; or, a Compleat Alphabetical List of all the Patrons
in England and Wales, with the ... Benefices in their Gift and their
Valuation Annexed_ (1745), for which Mr. Mayhew asks 5_s._ In the same
catalogue is offered that curiosity in the history of science, P. H.
Gosse's _Creation (Omphalus); an Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot_,
published in 1857, two years before the _Origin of Species_. The title,
_Ode to the Duke of Wellington and Other Poems, Written Between the
Ages of Eleven and Thirteen Years_, by Robert Charles Dallas (1819),
calls up visions of some tight-trousered infant prodigy; and we wish
that the book were not an example of fine binding, and that Mr.
Chaundy could part with it for less than 30_s._ Just above the infant,
alphabetically and perhaps also in order of merit, we find the name
of D'Adelsward, the author of a volume of poems (of which, in our
ignorance, we had never heard) entitled _Les Cortèges Qui Sont Passés_.
The volume, which was published in 1903, is bound in pink watered
silk, and costs four guineas. We have a vision of something even more
prodigious than the infant of 1819.
* * * * *
Mr. Chaundy has a number of first editions of Disraeli's novels for
sale. The very scarce _Contarini Fleming_ (1832) is priced at £6; _The
Voyage of Captain Popanilla_ (1828) at 35_s._; _Vivian Grey_ (1826) at
21_s._; _Venetia_ (1837) at 20_s._ A first edition of Borrow's _Wild
Wales_, in three volumes (1862), is offered by Messrs. Heffer, of
Cambridge, for £9 _9s._ It is almost worth paying that for the sake of
the description, at the beginning of the book, of the negro who sat on
the walls of Chester, spitting into the void. You can have George Eliot
for a good deal less. Mr. James Miles, of Leeds, has a _Silas Marner_
(first edition, 1861) for 25_s._ First editions of Robert Bridges are,
we notice, priced a good deal higher than the later firsts of Robert
Browning. _Eros and Psyche_ costs 15_s._ at Messrs. Heffer's, and
_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangan_ only 5_s._ The four volumes of the first
edition of _The Ring and the Book_ (1868) cost one 32_s._ at the same
bookseller's.
Similarly Conrad firsts are more precious than Bennetts, if we may
judge from the fact that _Hilda Lessways_ (1911) costs 7_s._ at Mr.
Chaundy's shop, while _Chance_ and _Victory_ (novels of Mr. Conrad's
corresponding period), at Messrs. Heffer's, are priced at 12_s._ and
9_s._ respectively, and the precious _Almayer's Folly_ of 1895 costs £3
3_s._
* * * * *
Mr. P. J. Dobell has already done good work in the field of
bibliography. The catalogue published by him last year, under the
title, _The Literature of the Restoration_, was a useful guide for all
students of the period. He has now issued a supplementary catalogue of
works connected with the Popish Plot.