seen a stream so small, nor so pure, nor so young, nor so far from men.
But you are on your way to things you do not know. For first of all
you will join that boasting sister of yours which has come from under
the hills, and can talk of nothing else; and then you will go past the
King’s Bridge being no longer among kind and silent Spaniards, and you
will have entered the territory of the Republic which is fierce and
evil, and you will grow greater and wider and not more happy until you
will come to the perfectly detestable town of Toulouse.... Thence after
you will have no pleasure, but only a certain grandeur to be passing
through the Gascon fields, and all your desire will be for the sea in
which at last you shall merge and be lost. And so strong will be your
desire for that dissolution that you will be willing to mix your name
with another name, to marry the Dordogne, and then you will die and you
will be glad of it.”
This is the way my friend spoke to the Garonne when he saw it first
rising in the hills. He did not sing it as he might have sung it, the
song it best likes to hear, which is called, “Had the Garonne but
wished!” Nor did he try to console it with any flap-doodle about the
common lot of rivers, knowing well that some rivers were happier and
some less happy. But he spoke to the Garonne as to something that could
hear and know. Now this is what men have always done to rivers.
It is in this way that rivers have acquired names, not only among men
but among gods; and it is in this way that they convey a fate to the
countrysides of which they are the souls.
There is no country of which this is more true than it is true of
England. Englishmen of this time--or at least of the time just
past--perpetually and rightly complained that somehow or other they
missed themselves. Some took refuge in a dream of a sort of a mystical
England which was not there. Others reposed in the idea of an older
England which may once have been; others, more foolish, hoped to find
England again in something overseas. None of these would have suffered
their error had they learnt England down English waters, seeing the
great memories of England reflected in the English rivers, and meeting
them in the silence and the perfection of the streams. But our roads
first, and then our railways, our commerce which is from ports, and
which must go direct towards them, our life, which is now in vast
cities independent of streams, has made us neglect these things.
Consider such a list as this: Arundel when you see it as you come up
Arun on the full flood tide. Chichester as you see it on the flood tide
from Chichester harbour. Durham as you see it coming down under that
cliff with the Cathedral as massive as the rock. Chester as you see it,
sailing up the Dee with a light north wind from the sea. Gloucester
as you see it from the Severn. Or Winchester as you pull, if you can
pull, or paddle which is easier, against the clear and violent thrust
of the Itchin. Canterbury as you see it from above or from below, upon
the easy water of the Stour; and Lincoln as you see it from its little
ditch--and I wonder how many men now journey up in any fashion from
Boston! So Norwich from the Yare. So Bramber for that matter from a
place where the Adur grows narrow; and what a sight Bramber must have
been when the Castle stood whole upon the hill, physically blocking the
advance into the Weald.
There is only one stream left, the Thames, which we still know,
and we very rightly know it; but we love it only for giving us one
experience which we might, if we chose, repeat up and down England
everywhere. There is no country in the world like this for rivers. The
tide pushes up them to the very Midlands, from every sea. There is
nothing of the history of England but is on a river, and as England is
an island of birds, so is it more truly an island of rivers. Consider
the River Eden, which is so difficult to descend; the Wiltshire Avon
and the Hampshire Avon, and those little branch streams the Thame, the
Cherwell, and the Evenlode.
Best of all, I think, as a memory or an experience is the Ouse, which
runs from Bedford to the Wash, and has upon it the astonishing monument
of Ely. Here is a river which no one can descend without feeling as
he descends it the change of English provinces from the Midlands to
the sea. He should start at Bedford; then he will pass through fields
where tall elms give to the plains something more than could be given
them by distant hills. The river runs between banks of deep grass
in summer. It is contented everywhere; and as you go you are in the
middle of a thousand years. You pass villages that have not changed;
you carry your boat over weirs where there are mills, always shaded by
large trees. Once in a day, at the most, you find an unchanging town:
Huntingdon is such an one, or St. Ives, where I do believe the people
are kinder than in any other town. Then, as you still go on, the land
takes on another character. You begin to know that England is not only
rich and full of fields but also was made by the sea. For you come to
great flats--and that rather suddenly--where, as at sea, the sky is
your contemplation. You notice the light, the colour, and the shapes
of clouds. The birds that wheel and scream over these spaces seem to
be sea birds. You expect at any moment to hear beyond the dead line of
the horizon the sound of surf and to see the glint of live water. Above
such a waste rises, on what is called “an island,” and is in truth “an
island,” the superb strength of Ely.
No one has seen Ely who has not seen it from the Ouse. It is a hill
upon a hill, and now permanently present in the midst of loneliness. It
is something made with a framework all around of accidental marsh and
emptiness. Thenceafter the Ouse goes on. You get through and down the
deep step of a lock, and beyond it is the salt water and busy energy
that comes and goes from the sea. Very deep banks, alive with the salt
and the swirl of the tide, shut in the boat for miles, and there are
very high bridges uniting village to village above one, till at last
the whole thing broadens, and one sees under the sunlight the roofs and
the spars of King’s Lynn; and, if one has no misadventure, one ends the
journey at some narrow quay at a narrow lane of that delightful port
and town.
There is one English river out of at least thirty others. I wish that
all were known! That journey down the Ouse is three days’ journey--but
it is such a slice of time and character and history as teaches you
most you need know upon this Island. Only I warn anyone attempting it,
let the boat be light and let it be shallow, and be ready to sleep in
it; it is only thus that you can know an English river, and if you can
draw, why it will be a greater pleasure. It is very cheap.
On Two Manuals
Flaubert, I believe, designed once to publish a Dictionary of Errors,
and would actually have set about it had he not found the subject
growing much too vast for any human pen. He also designed a reference
book, or rather anthology, of follies, stupidities, rash judgments, and
absurdities, but never lived to complete this great task. Now, reading
this, I have wondered whether two little books might not be written
which should prove useful severally to the undergraduate and to the
politician. I do not say to the schoolboy, for no book yet written
ever was or ever will be useful to him. But for the undergraduate a
useful book might be written which I shall presently describe, and
which would make a sort of foundation for all his studies. So also for
the politician a second book might be written which should be of the
greatest service. Let me now describe these two books. Perhaps among
those who read this there will be so many men of leisure and learning
as can in combination give the world the volumes I imagine.
The first book should be called “Modern Thought,” and in this, without
praise or blame and without any wandering into metaphysics or religion,
the young fellow should be plainly taught to distinguish the certain
from the uncertain. I know of nothing in which academic training just
now is more at fault. That training seems to consist in two branches.
First, the setting down of a very great number of things each equally
certain with the last and all forming together one huge amorphic body
or lump of assertion; second, a whole sheaf of theories, the whole fun
of which consists in the fact that no one of them can positively be
proved but that all are guesswork. These theories change from year to
year, and while they are defended with a passion astonishing to those
who live in a larger world, there is no pretence that they are true.
The whole business of them is quite obviously a game. Consider, for
instance, history. A lad is taught that William the Conqueror won at
Hastings in 1066; that the opinion of the English people was behind
the little wealthy clique that put an end to the Stuarts; that London
heartily sympathised with the seven Bishops; that all Parliamentary
institutions grew up on the soil of this island in the thirteenth
century from Saxon origins; and that four people called Hengist, and
Horsa, and Aella, and Cerdic led a great number of Germans to various
points of this Island, killed the people living there and put the
Germans in their stead. Now of these assertions, all of which he is to
receive with equal certitude, all dogmatically affirmed, all taught to
him as brute bits of truth--some, as that about Hastings, are rigidly
true; some, such as the attitude of London towards the seven Bishops,
are morally certain (though hardly capable of definite proof); some,
as the weight of public opinion behind the Whigs, debatable though
probable; some, like the Hengist and Horsa business, almost certainly
mere legends--and so forth. It is to be noted that, if you are to teach
at all, you must always have in your teaching some admixture of this
error. No one can exactly balance the degree of probability attaching
to each separate statement; there is no time to array all the evidence,
and if there were, the mind of the student could not carry it. Each
teacher, moreover, will have a scheme of values somewhat different from
his neighbour’s; but even if some admixture of the error I speak of be
necessary, at least let the student be warned that it exists. For if he
is not so warned one of two things will happen: either he will believe
all he is told, with the most appalling results to himself, and, should
he later become powerful, to the whole nation (we are seeing something
of that in economics to-day), or he will (as the cleverer undergraduate
usually does) become sceptical of all he hears; he will begin to
wonder, having once found his teacher out in, let us say, the absurdity
of pretending that Parliamentary institutions were peculiar to Britain,
whether the Battle of Hastings were really fought in 1066 or no.
When he has discovered, as any boy of education, travel, and common
sense will discover, that the Normans were not Scandinavians, but
Frenchmen, he will be led to reason that perhaps William the Conqueror
never existed at all. This mood of universal scepticism is even more
dangerous than that of bovine assurance, more dangerous to character,
that is, and more dissolving of national strength.
As with the assertions so with the theories. There was a theory, for
instance, that a tenure of land existed in ancient England by which
this land was the common property of all, and was called the land
of the “folk.” Then this theory burst, and another theory swelled,
which was that the “folk land” meant the land held by customary
right as distinguished from land held by charter. Again, there was a
theory that an original Saxon tendency to breed large landowners had
gradually prevailed over feudal tenure. This theory burst, and another
theory swelled, which was that the large units of land grew up by an
accidental interpretation of Roman law.
In the book I propose all these theories could be very simply dealt
with. The student should be warned that they are theories, and theories
only, that their whole point and value is that they are not susceptible
to positive proof; that what makes them amusing and interesting is the
certitude that one can go on having a good quarrel about them, and the
inner faith that when one is tired of them one can drop them without
regret. Older men know this, but young men often do not, and they will
take a theory in the Academies and make a friend of it, and at last, as
it were, another self, and clasp it close to their souls and intertwine
themselves with it, only to find towards thirty that they have been
hugging a shade.
So much, then, for this first book. It would not need to be more than
a little pocket volume of fifty or sixty pages, and a young man should
have it to refer to at any moment of his studies. One of its maxims
would be to look up the original evidence upon which anything he was
told was based. Another rule he would find in it would be to underline
all such words as “seems,” “probably,” and so forth, and watch in his
books the way in which they gradually turn, as the argument proceeds,
into “is” and “certainly.” He would also be warned before reading the
work of any authority to remember that that authority was a human
being, to look up his biography, if possible to meet him personally,
to find out what general knowledge he had and what impression he made
upon the casual man that met him. How many men have written histories
of a campaign and yet have been proved at a dinner-table ignorant of
the range of artillery during their period! How many men have learnedly
criticised the style of Rousseau upon a knowledge of French very much
inferior to that of most governesses! I at Oxford knew a don who
exposed and ridiculed the legend of the Girondins, but throughout his
remarks pronounced their title with a hard _g_.
As for the politicians, their little guide-book through life should
be of another sort. In this the first and most valuable part would
deal with political judgment and prophecy. The utmost care would be
taken by the author to show how valueless is any determination of the
future, and how crass the mind which predicts with confidence. Since so
very few men happen to have made lucky shots, it would be the peculiar
care of the author in a loving manner to collect all the follies and
misjudgments which these same men had made upon other grave matters.
And, in general, the reader would be left very certain that every
pompous prophecy he heard was a piece of folly. Next in the book would
come examples of all that political men have said and done which they
most particularly desired to have forgotten. This would serve a twofold
purpose, for first it would amuse and instruct the politician as he
read it, since the misfortunes of others are delightful to human kind,
and, secondly, it would show him that he could not himself trust to
the effect of time, and that his natural desire to turn his coat or to
pretend to some policy he did not understand would at last be judged as
it deserved. In the third and final portion of the book the politician
would be given a list of interesting truths, with regard to the matter
of his trade. It would be proved to him in a few sentences that his
decisions depend upon various difficult branches of study, and by a few
suggested questions he would be convinced of his ignorance therein. The
shortness of human life would be insisted upon, with examples showing
how a man having painfully reached power was stricken with paralysis
or died in torment. The ludicrous miscarriage of great plans would be
laid before him, and, better still, the proof that the most successful
adventures had proceeded almost entirely from chance, and surprised no
one more than their authors.
At the end of the book would be a certain number of coupons permitting
the reader to travel to many places which politicians commonly ignore,
and there would be a list of the sights that he should see. As, for
instance, the troops of such and such a nation upon the march, the
artillery of such another at firing practice, and the opinion expressed
by the populace in taverns in such and such a town. Then at the end
would come a number of common phrases such as _cui bono_, _persona
grata_, _toujours perdrix_, _double entendre_, _sturm und drang_, etc.,
with their English equivalents, if any, and their approximate meaning,
when they possess a meaning. Upon the last page would be a list of
the duties of a Christian man and a short guide to general conduct in
conversation with the rich.
Armed with these manuals, the youth and manhood of a nation would at
once and vastly change. You would find young men recently proceeded
from the University filled with laudable doubts arising from the
vastness of God’s scheme, and yet modestly secure in certain essential
truths such as their own existence and that of an objective universe,
the voice of conscience, and the difference between right and wrong.
While among those of more mature years, who were controlling the
energies of the State, there would appear an exact observance of real
things, an admitted inability to know what would happen fifty or even
twenty years hence, and a habit of using plain language which they and
their audience could easily understand; of using such language tersely,
and occasionally with conviction.
But this revolution will not take place. The two books of which I speak
will not be written. And if anyone doubts this, let him sit down and
try to frame the scheme of one, and he will soon see that it is beyond
any man’s power.
On Fantastic Books
There has fallen upon criticism since perhaps a century ago, and with
increasing weight, a sort of gravity which is in great danger of
becoming tomfoolery at last: as all gravity is in danger of becoming.
No one dares to discuss all that lighter thing which is the penumbra
of letters, and, what is more, no man of letters dares to whisper
that letters themselves are not often much more than a pastime to the
reader, and are only very rarely upon a level with good and serious
speculation: never upon a level with philosophy: still less upon a
level with religion. It is perhaps even a mark of the eclipse of
religion when any department of mere intellectual effort can raise
itself as high as literature has raised itself in its own eyes; and
since all expression now (or nearly all) is through the pen literature
thus suffering from pride can impose its pride upon the world.
Two things alone correct this pride: first, that those who practise
the trade of literature starve if they are austere or run into debt if
they are not; secondly, that now and then one of the inner circle gives
the thing away--for instance, Mr. Andrew Lang in his excellent and
never-to-be-forgotten remarks delivered only last year at the dinner of
the Royal Literary Fund. This Member of our Union said (with how much
truth!) that the writers of stories should remember they were writers
of stories and not teachers and preachers. And the same might be said
to others of the Craft. If a man has had granted to him by the Higher
Powers a jolly little lyric, why, that is a jolly little lyric. He
should bow and scrape to those who gave it to him and hand it on to
his fellow-men for a dollar. But it does not make him a god, and if it
gives him so much as a swelled head it makes him intolerably wearisome.
More tolerable are the victors of campaigns discussing at table their
successes in the field than poets who forget their Muse: for to their
Muse alone, or to those who sent her, do they owe what they are, as
may very clearly be seen in the case of those whose Muse has deserted
them and flown again up to her native heaven; nor is any case more
distressing than that of ----.
All of which leads me to the Fantastic Books. One, two, a dozen at the
most, in all the history of the world have ranked with the greatest.
Rabelais is upon the summit, and the _Sentimental Journey_ will live
for some hundreds of years, but how many others are there which men
remember? There is a sort of conspiracy against them led by the few
intelligent vicious in league with the numerous and virtuous fools;
and thus the salt of the Fantastic Books, which is as good as the salt
of the sea, is lost to the most of mankind.
Men sit in front of the writers of Fantastic Books fair and squarely
with their hands on their knees, their eyes set, their mouths glum,
their souls determined, and say:
“Come now, Fantastic Book, are you serious or are you not serious?”
And when the Fantastic Book answers “I am both.”
Then the man gets up with a sigh and concludes that it is neither. Yet
the Fantastic Book was right, and if people were only wise they would
salt all their libraries with Fantastic Books.
Note that the Fantastic Books are not of necessity jocose books or
ribald books, nor even extravagant books. If I had meant to write about
extravagant books, _quâ_ extravagant, you may be certain I should have
chosen that word. Rabelais is extravagant and so is Sterne, but not
on account of their extravagance are they fantastic. The note of the
Fantastic Book is an easy escape from the world. It is not imagination,
though imagination is a necessary spring to it: it is that faculty by
which the mind travels, as it reads, whether through space or through
time or through _quality_. A book is a Fantastic Book, though time and
space be commonplace enough, though the time be to-day and the place
Camberwell, if only the mind perpetually travels, seeing one after
another unexpected things in the consequence of human action or in the
juxtaposition of emotions.
There is a category of Fantastic Books most delightful, and never to
my thinking overdone, which deals with journeys to worlds beyond the
earth. I confess that I care nothing whether they are well written
or ill written; so long as they are written in any language that I
can understand I will read them; and to day as I write I have before
me a notable collection of such, every one of which I have read over
and over again. I remember one called the _Anglo-Saxon Conquest of
the Solar System_ or words to that effect; another of a noble kind,
called _Thuka of the Moon_. I only mention the two together by way
of contrast; and I remember one in which somebody or other went to
Mars and went mad, but I forget the title. Be they as well written
as the _First Men in the Moon_, which is or will be a classic, or as
ill written as a book which I may not mention because there is a law
forbidding any one to tell unpleasant truths, so long as they concern
voyages to the Planets they are worth reading.
Then, also, there is the future. The _Time Machine_ is, perhaps, the
chief of them; but writers who travel into the future, good or bad, are
all delightful.
You may say that they are also always a little boring because they
always try to teach a lesson or to prophesy. That is true, but when
you have comforted yourself with the firm conviction that prophecies
of this kind are invariably and wildly wrong the disturbance which
they cause in your mind will disappear. I have among my most treasured
books one of the early nineteenth century, called _Revelations of the
Dead Alive_, in which the end of our age and its opinions upon _that_
age are presented, and it is all wrong! But it is very entertaining
all the same. Most ridiculous but not least entertaining of such books
are the Socialist books, the books showing humanity in the future all
Socialist and going on like sticks. There is, indeed, another type of
mournful Socialist book much more real and much more troubling, in
which Socialism has failed, and the mass of men go on like slaves; but
no matter. A prophecy (when it is scientific) is always and invariably
absolutely and totally wrong:--and a great comfort it is to remember
_that_!
Yet another sort of Fantastic Book is your Journey to Hell or to
Heaven. There is one I have read and re-read. It is called _The Outer
Darkness_. I shall never cease to read it. It is a journey to a sort
of Hell, and these are as a rule more entertaining than the Heavenly
journey, though why I cannot tell. Does the same hold true of Dante?
Lastly, and much the most rare and much the most valued of all are the
books which are fantastic, though they cling to the present and to
things known. In these I would include imaginary people in the Islands
and in the Arctic, and even those which introduce half-rational beasts,
for such books depend for their character not upon the matter of the
fantasy, but upon the manner. There is a book called _Ninety North_,
for instance, which is all about a race of people at the North Pole,
but the power of the book resides not in the distance of the scene, but
in the vision of the writer and in the little irony that trickles down
every page.