of Lyonesse," compelled to realise that in these two books we have
got all of Swinburne that we shall ever get worth reading--all the
concentrated fire of that genius which is dying out day by day into
dull ashes. Theodore Watts, practical, friendly Watts, something of a
poet himself in a grave and lumbersome way, can do nothing to revive
that once brilliant if lurid glow that animated Algernon's formerly
reckless spirit. It is all over--the lamp is quenched, and the harp
is broken. It would have been almost better for Swinburne's fame had
he died in his youth, consumed, like the fabled Phœnix, by the fierce
glare of the poetic hell-flames he had kindled about himself, rather
than have lived till now to drivel into a silly dotage of roundels
concerning babies' toes and noses and fingers, which are assuredly
the most uninteresting subject-matter to the lover of true poesy. His
attempts, too, in the "Border-Ballad" style are the weakest and most
unsatisfactory imitations of the rough but vigorous original models.
And while on the subject of imitation, it is rather interesting to the
careful student of poetic "style" to read the admirable translations
made from the earlier Italian poets by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and
compare them with some of Swinburne's earlier pieces. It will be
remembered that Swinburne was at one time of his life much in the
company of Rossetti, and he would most probably have heard many
of these translations read before they were published; anyway, the
similitude of measure and rhythm between Rossetti's "renderings" and
Swinburne's "originals" is somewhat striking.
Personally, I am inclined to think that the worthy Algernon Charles
caught his particular trick of rhyming and rounding his verse in the
fashion now known as "Swinburnian" entirely from the Italian school
of Guido Cavalcanti, Rinaldo D'Aquino, and others of their time, as
well as from a few old French models of the François Villon type. His
actual masterpiece, a work which contains no such borrowed juggleries
of rhyme, is "Tristram of Lyonesse." This great poem is not half so
well known as it ought to be--most people appear never to have heard
of it, much less to have read it. In perusing its pages, one scarcely
thinks of the author save as the merest human phonograph through which
Inspiration speaks--in fact, it is rather curious to realise how little
we really do take the personal Swinburne into our consideration while
reading his works, or for that matter the personal anybody who has
ever done anything. Personalities are very seldom really interesting.
It is only when we have a wild, wicked Byron that we are fascinated by
"personality"; a man who turns upon us, saying that he is--
"only not to desperation driven,
_Because not altogether of such clay
As rots into the souls of those whom I survey_."
Well, well! And what of Browning? Why, Browning is dead. Moreover, he
is buried in damp, dirty, evil-smelling Westminster Abbey. What more
would you have for him? Fame? Let be, let be; he had Notoriety. That
must suffice, and that being done, why, all is done, and there is no
more to be said. Notoriety is not Fame. Fame is not Notoriety. No man
can have both, though he may cheat himself into taking the lesser for
the greater, and die happy in the pleasing delusion. Even so Browning
died; even so was he honourably interred. May he rest in peace. Amen.
XV.
OF MORE POETS.
Are there no other poets in the crowd save Tennyson and Swinburne? God
bless my soul, you don't suppose I am going to offend a whole mob of
verse-writers--no other poets? Of course there are others! no end of
others. Poets over-run our land even as the locusts over-ran Egypt, and
they are all "as good, and a darned sight better," as the Yankees say,
than either the Laureate or Algernon Charles, in their own opinion.
Mark that last clause, please; it is important. The number of "poets"
so styled by themselves is legion; only I, who am a rudely-opiniated
and fastidious masquer, decline to recognise their clamorous claims
to the deathless laurel. But this does not matter. Who cares what
I either decline or accept? My opinions are "nothing to nobody." I
only express them for my own satisfaction and amusement; I have no
other good to gain thereby. As for the chance of offending the "poets"
alluded to, I certainly care not a jot. I have no desire to please them
in any way, as I consider most of them an offence and an obstruction
in literature. Some people run away with the notion that Edwin Arnold
(I give him the full glory of his "Sir" and C.S.I. elsewhere) is a
poet. Certainly his books sell. The "Light of Asia," with all its best
bits taken out of the original "Mahabhârata," is a perfect triumph of
verse-making. All the religious ladies read it because it is so very
unexciting and heavenly and harmless, and because, like all pious
poetry, it preaches virtue that no one ever dreams of practising. It
is a capital book for school prizes, too; it will not hurt any boy or
girl to read it, and it may providentially check them in time from
trying to write verse themselves. As for the "Light of the World,"
it will probably meet with the same success among the same class of
readers, though it is much inferior to the "Light of Asia," owing to
having no "Mahabhârata" in it. But Lewis Morris is quite as great a
favourite with the "goodys" of society as Sir Edwin. The "goodys" don't
know, and don't want to know, anything about Dante's "Inferno," and are
therefore quite satisfied to accept "The Epic of Hades" as _bonâ fide_
"original" matter,--and there are some "sweetly pretty" lines in "A
Vision of Saints." Both productions are well adapted for gift-books,
and will suit the taste of the demure provincial "misses" who wish to
be discovered reading poetry under a shady tree what time the bachelor
curate of the parish passeth by. All the same, I, who am a Nobody,
decline to consider either Morris or Arnold poets. They are excellent
verse-compilers though, and suit the tastes of those who do not care
about either originality or inspiration.
I am nothing if not eccentric, and so I am disposed to place one
Alfred C. Calmour among the poets. He has published no poems--he has
only produced "poetical" plays, failures all, save "The Amber Heart,"
and he has been generally "sent to the right about" by persons with
infinitely less brain than himself. It is curious to observe what spite
and meanness waken in the manly breasts of certain of his fellows at
the mere mention of his name. I spoke in praise of "The Amber Heart" on
one occasion to a critical brother, and he at once said--"All filched
out of Wills's waste-paper basket; he was Wills's secretary." "What
of 'Cyrene'?" I asked. "Oh, I don't know anything about 'Cyrene'; but
if there's anything good in it, depend upon it, it is stolen from
Wills." I relapsed into silence, for I never thought and never shall
think anything of Wills, whereas I do think something of Calmour. He
is writing a drama, I hear, on "Dante and Beatrice," and I confess to
anticipating it with intense interest. I want him to do as my dear
friend Oscar Wilde has done--pulverise his enemies by a big success.
And why? Because I hate to see a hard-working man "sat upon." And
Calmour does work hard, lives hard too, and never complains or "girds"
at fate, wherefore I venture to prophecy fame for him one of these
days. I have been assured he is conceited. I have never found him
so. Suppose he were, is conceit a singular fault in authors? Are we
to believe that they are more boastfully disposed than actors, for
instance?
"What do you think of Calmour?" I asked E. S. Willard on one occasion,
when, in all the grave consciousness of "looking" _Judah_ to the
life, he stood beside me sipping convivial tea in Wilson Barrett's
drawing-room.
"Think of Calmour?" he replied, with an inimitable air of
self-sufficiency. "I never think of Calmour!"
Magnificent wind-bag assertiveness! but hopelessly unreasonable.
Calmour is more worth thinking about than Willard, only Willard
doesn't see it. The creator of a part merits greater consideration
than the mime who performs it. I confess to being a lover of fair
play, and when a lot of people try to "hustle" a man, I am disposed
to fight for him. Anyway, Calmour has a clean and delicate pen, and
does not pander to vulgar vice like that wretched old Scandinavian
humbug, Ibsen. Why we should abuse Calmour and praise Ibsen passes my
comprehension. Except that "foreign" scribblers are all "geniuses" with
us at once--they must be, you know, simply because they _are_ foreign;
they have a "subtlety," a "flavour," an "ardour," a "naturalism,"
and--a Nastiness which is not the legitimate inheritance of the English
School. Had any one of our own men dared to offer us a "Hedda Gabler,"
or a "Rosmersholm," or Maeterlinck's piece of bathos, "L'Intruse," he
would have been shrieked and howled down with derisive laughter.
I often wonder what on earth the faddists of the poor old doddering,
doting _Athenæum_ mean by poking and prodding about for sparks of
genius in their new "heavy man," William Watson? It is very funny
to call him a poet--very funny, indeed. He is a sort of fifth-rate
Wordsworth--and while we can just stand the sonnets and shorter poems
of Wordsworth at first-hand, a diluted example of his pattern in these
days is too much for our patience. I know a good many people--in fact,
I meet in social intercourse nearly everybody worth knowing--but as yet
I have come upon nobody who reads Watson's poems, or who appear to know
anything about Watson. Curious, isn't it? The _Athenæum_ seems to carry
no conviction whatever to the Ass-public.
Messrs. Trübner sent to me some time ago a book of poems, which first
surprised and then fascinated me into the belief that I had discovered
an English Petrarch. I think I have, too. If absolute music, perfect
rhythm, and exquisite wording of love-thoughts are Petrarchian, then
my man is a Petrarch. His book is called "A Lover's Litanies," and the
"litanies" are the poems. There are ten of them, and each one has a
title borrowed from the old church missal--rather a quaint idea. It
would be difficult to match the one called "Vox Amoris" among all the
love-poems of the world. Does the dear old purblind _Athenæum_ know
anything about this real poet, who has perhaps not been "discovered" by
Mr. Grant Allen or Andrew Lang? Cheer up, old _Athenæum_, put on thy
spectacles, and look about for the author of these "Litanies," lest the
outer world should say thou art napping! People are reading "A Lover's
Litanies"--those people who do not know anything about William Watson.
Robert Louis Stevenson started as a "poet," I believe. Now he has
become the "Thucydides of literature"--_vide Pall Mall Gazette_.
Such nice, pretty classical names the _Pall Mall_ discovers for its
particular darlings. Has the _Pall Mall_ read Thucydides? I rather
doubt it. I have, and find no resemblance to Mr. Stevenson. And, truth
to tell, I preferred Mr. Stevenson's past poetry to his present prose.
Yet why should I murmur, remembering the sweet, sound slumber into
which I fell over "The Wrecker"--that trying mixture of Marryat and
Clark Russell. I think it is a capital story for schoolboys though, and
that is why the _Pall Mall_ admires it. I am not a schoolboy; the _Pall
Mall_ is; a dear, bright, gamesome, peg-top-and-marble creature, who
thinks the greatest joke in life is to break a neighbour's window or
ring a neighbour's bell, and then run away laughing. Its animal spirits
are too delightfully boisterous for it to appreciate any sort of deep
sentiment; a story of strong human passions, or a romance in which
love has the most prevailing share, would not appeal to its unlessoned
fancy. And, very naturally, it appreciates Stevenson, because he gives
it no hard, uncomfortable life-problems to think about.
Another "poet" who calls himself so is Hall Caine. He says the
"Scapegoat" is not so much a novel as a drama, and not so much a drama
as a "poem." Very good indeed! Excellent fooling, upon my life. Hall
Caine can be very funny if he likes, though you wouldn't think it to
look at him. When he called his story of the "Bondman" a "New Saga,"
it was only his fun. His wit is quite irrepressible. Among other
humorous things, he has had his portrait taken in a loose shirt and
knickers, seated facing the bust of Shakespeare, like a day-labourer
fronting the Sphynx. It is altogether refreshing to find a Lilliputian
literary ephemera so entirely delighted with himself as Hall Caine.
He is much more convinced of the intrinsic value of his own genius
than Oscar Wilde, with less reason than Oscar for his conviction.
Oscar is a really clever man; Hall Caine tries to be clever and does
not succeed. Oscar is a born wit, moreover, and though he does crib a
few _bon-mots_ from Molière and a few paradoxes from Rochefoucauld,
what does it matter for the English who do not understand French, and
have to get "books of the words" in order to "follow" Sarah Bernhardt.
Besides, Hall Caine borrows from the French also; the plot of his
"Scapegoat" is taken from the French, so one of my critical friends
assures me, and critics are always right. Francis Adams (also a "poet")
"went" for Hall Caine not long ago in the _Fortnightly_--a regular good
knock-down thrust it was, too. But Adams's prowess is of no avail in
these things. The more you abuse a fellow, the more his books sell.
The best way to utterly damn an author is to say that his novels are
"nicely written," "prettily told," "harmless fiction," or "innocuous
literature." If these phrases do not finish him off, nothing will. An
original, powerful, passionate writer is always "slated," and always
"sells." Witness the career of one Emile Zola. With all his faults,
the man is a great poet; realism and romance unite in strange colours
on his literary palette, and with his forceful brush he paints life
in all its varied aspects fearlessly and without any regard for
outside opinions. His one blemish is the blemish of the whole French
nation--moral Nastiness. But if we talk of "poets" who, though making
their bread-and-butter out of the writing of prose, still insist on
belonging to the gods of Parnassus, none of the stringers of rhyme and
jinglers of ballads, and weavers of "sagas" and the like, that afflict
this enlightened and imaginative nation, could write such a true poem
from end to end as "Le Rêve." Such consummate art, such unravelling of
exquisite romance out of commonplace material, is not to be discovered
in the English literary brain. The English literary brain is dull,
lumpish, and heavy--the English literary worker is dominated by one
idea, and that is, how much hard cash shall he get for his work? And
thus it is that poets, real poets, are rarer than swallows in snow; so
that is why I am slightly exercised in my mind respecting the Petrarch
sort of minstrel I spoke of a while ago. He is unquestionably a poet,
and seems to get on without any "booming." This strikes me as very
odd. However, most of the "best" men go unboomed. No occasion to puff
a good article. As for the pretended poets, countless as the sands of
the sea, there is a great consolation in the reflection that in a few
more years they will all be as though they never had been. Good old
Posterity will know nothing about them, and herein Posterity is to be
heartily congratulated. Poetical gnats must live like other gnats, I
suppose--they are rather troublesome, and make a buzzing noise in one's
ears, but as their whole existence lasts no more than a day, we must
have patience till the sun sets.
XVI.
TO A MIGHTY GENIUS.
"O Rudyard Kipling! Phœbus! What a name,
To fill the speaking trump of future Fame!"
This, with apologies to the shade of the "loose ungrammatical" Byron,
as the perfectly grammatical Gosse calls him. Dear Gosse! He has
cause to be somewhat irritated with his own career as a poet, for he
has not yet "set the Thames on fire," as he expected to do with the
torch of his inspiration. Hence he was compelled to vent his pent-up
spleen somehow, and what better dead giant to fall upon and beat with
pigmy blows of pigmy personal vexation than Byron, whose Apollo-like
renown (with scarce an effort on his own part) sent thunders through
Europe. Oh, grammatical Gosse!--but never mind him just now; I
must concentrate my soul on Kip; on Rudyard; on the glory of this
literary age. Let me look at you, you blessed baby! treasure of
its own Grandmother Journalism's heart! There you are, crowing and
chuckling, small but "virile," every inch of you, though you are not
overstocked with hair on the top of that high head of yours, and it
is hard to begin life by viewing it through spectacles. But _as_ you
are, there you are! and my pulses leap at the sight of you. Fielding,
Sterne, Thackeray, Dickens, all these parted spirits have, as it
were, distilled themselves into a fiery fluid wherewith to animate
your miniature form; was ever such a thrilling wonder? Hear we good
Uncle _Blackwood_, the while he dances you upon his gouty knee:--"If
her Majesty's Ministers will be guided by us (which perhaps is not
extremely probable; yet we confess we should like the command of a
Minister's ear for several shrewd suggestions) they will bestow a Star
of India without more ado upon this young man of genius who has shown
us all what the Indian Empire means."
No doubt, good 'nuncle! no doubt the Ministry will listen to thy
"shrewd suggestions" what time the moon is made of ripe green cheese.
Go on, old man, go on, in thy cracked and aged pipe, growing wheezy
with emotion. "The battle in the 'Main Guard' is like Homer or Sir
Walter.... If her Majesty herself, who knows so much, desires a fuller
knowledge of her Indian Empire, we desire respectfully to recommend to
the Secretary for India that he should place no sheaves of despatches
in the royal hands, but Mr. Rudyard Kipling's books.... What Mr.
Rudyard Kipling has done is an imperial work, and worthy of an imperial
reward!"
Bravo, worthy 'nuncle! Homer begged his bread, but the pen-and-ink
sketcher of "Mrs. Hauksbee" shall have rewards imperial! To it again,
garrulous 'nuncle--to it and cease not! "Here, by the dignified hand of
Maga the ever young, we bid the young genius All hail! and more power
to his elbow, to relapse into vernacular speech, which is always more
convincing than the high-flown." Should it not have been written "to
relapse into bathos," good 'nuncle? And beware of declaring thyself
to be "ever young," for nothing lives that shall not grow old, and
the younger generation already profanely dub thee "antiquated." Wipe
thine eyes, Uncle _Blackwood_, polish thy spectacles, and set down our
precious baby for an instant the while his other nurses, godfathers and
godmothers, look at him, and speculate upon his probable growth.
Let us listen to the hysterical _D. T._ the while it raveth in strophes
of gin-and-water:--"Mr. Rudyard Kipling is, and seems likely to
remain, a literary enigma. Who can deny his strength, his virility,
his dramatic sense, his imaginative wealth, his masterful genius?
He is like a young and sportive Titan, piling Pelion on Ossa in his
reckless ambition to scale Olympus; he is always renewing his strength
like an eagle, and rejoicing like a giant to run his course. Nothing
comes amiss to him; he will produce out of his boundless stores
things new and old--tragedies, comedies, farces, epics, ballads, or
lyrical odes. His earliest Anglo-Indian stories revealed a new world
to the astonished West; his "Soldiers Three" have attained almost the
reputation of the "Three Musketeers"; his Learoyd, his Ortheris, his
Mulvaney, his Mrs. Hauksbee, his Torpenhow are household words; while
his barrack-room ditties, and his ballads of East and West have not
only startled by their daring frankness, but conquered all criticism by
their picturesqueness and truth."
All this, an' so please you, on two or three volumes of small magazine
stories and rhymed doggerel! That "Soldiers Three" should have attained
the reputation of the "Three Musketeers" is of course only the
delirious frenzy of the _D. T._ asserting itself in gasping shrieks
of illiterate mindlessness--Europe knows better than to place the
intellect of a smart newspaper man like Kipling on the same level with
that of Dumas. Kipling is the Jumbo of the _D. T._ for the present,
and journalists would not be what they are if they could not get up a
"boom" somehow. Now hark we to the fond maudlin murmur of an evening
journal!
"Where did Kipling get his ideas about Art from?" This is indeed a
pathetic question. It crops up in a paragraph-ecstasy over "The Light
that Failed." It is as if one should ask, "Where did Shakespeare get
his knowledge of the human soul from?" Where, oh where? We cannot, we
will not believe he has any imagination, this dear Kipling of ours,
because imagination is a thing we abhor. The triumphal and eternal
books of the world have all been purely imaginative, but this does
not matter to us. We, in this modern day, refuse to accept the idea
that anybody can describe a thing they have not seen and felt and
turned over and over under a microscope; we are so exact. And oh,
where then did Shakespeare (to revert to him again, because his is
the only name we can conscientiously compare with Kipling), where did
Shakespeare find Ariel and Caliban, and Puck and Titania, and Julius
Cæsar, and Antony and Cleopatra? He could not have seen these people?
No. Then, alas! he had that fatal gift, that monstrous blemish of
the brain which spoils true genius, Imagination--the grossest form
of cerebral disease. In this he was inferior to our Rudyard, our
hop-skip-and-a-jump Rudyard, who is actually going bald in his youth
from the strain of his minute observation of life, and the profundity
of his meditations thereon. Our "delectable one!" Our precious Kip!
Who would not join in the chorus of the paragraph-men when they
propound the fond, almost maternally-admiring query, "Where did he
get his ideas about Art from?" And then, when we find out that he
has "artistic" relations; that his papa is, or has been, painting a
ceiling or a wall in Windsor Castle, we naturally feel almost beside
ourselves with delight, because we find our baby's ideas are the result
of heritage, and have nothing to do with that curse of literature,
Imagination. As for me, I weep whenever I turn the sacred leaves of
"Plain Tales from the Hills," because I know I have in its pages all
that ever was or will be excellent in the way of fiction. There is
nothing more to be said--nothing more to come after. It is a sad
thought that fiction should have culminated here--it is always sad
to think that anything should have an end--but when the end is so
glorious, who shall complain? And so I have sold my set of Waverley
novels (the real Abbotsford edition); I have put my Shakespeare on an
almost unreachable top shelf (I only keep him for reference); I have
sent my Dickens volumes to a hospital, and my Thackeray to a "home for
incurables." I shall not want these things any more. The only natural
reflex of life as it is lived nowadays is to be found in the works of
Rudyard; on Rudyard I mentally feed and thrive. To Kip I cling as the
drowning sailor to a rope; all difficulties and perplexities in Art,
Literature, Science, Politics, Manners and Morals vanish at the touch
of his mighty pen--he is the one, the only Kip;--the crowning splendour
of our time. Why should we make any parliamentary pother over the
preservation of old buildings at Stratford-on-Avon? What do we want
with Stratford-on-Avon? since our Kip was born in India, or we believe
he was. Now, India is something like a place for a Genius to be born
in--big, vast, legendary, historical--and yet the American Interviewer,
conscious of Kipling's might, thinks it possible he may have already
exhausted its capabilities for literary treatment; swallowed it off at
one gulp as it were, like the precious pearl Hafiz consumed in his cup
of wine.