dislike to be known as critics. In this we somewhat resemble those dear
old robbers of legendary lore who went out pillaging and murdering
merrily by night, and were the most perfect fine gentlemen in the
daytime. Such altogether fascinating fellows they were! But we play
our parts almost as cleverly, and I am sure with quite as much ease
and charm. In polite society we claim to be "literary men"; the term
is delightfully vague and may imply anything or everything. Some of
us, however, say boldly out and out that we are not critics, but
poets--_i.e._, not judges, but criminals. We feel quite proud and glad
when we have said this sort of thing. Take my amiable acquaintance,
William Sharp, for instance. _He_ says he is a poet, and he has a
most refreshingly ingenuous and positive faith in his own statement.
Few agree with him, but what does that matter, provided he is happy?
Then there is Edmund Gosse; he also says he is a poet, and so he is,
in a pretty daff-a-down-dilly, lady-like fashion. Only he sits as
critic on other poets occasionally, and, strange to say, is never
able to find anything in their productions quite equal to the sounds
once evoked from "Lute and Viol." "Young" McCarthy, Justin Huntly (he
is only called "young" lest he should be mistaken for "old"), he who
uttereth oracles concerning plays and playwrights, he not only says
he is a poet, but he once went so far as to call himself Hafiz--Hafiz
in London. Yes; very much in London. Between the real Hafiz and the
sham is a "great gulf fixed," and the ghost of the Persian singer is
more valuable to literature than all the McCarthy substance. Now as to
Edwin Arnold--Sir Edwin Arnold, C.S.I. (it never does to forget his
C.S.I.), the admirer of those pretty ladies whose portraits appear on
tea-trays--is he a poet?--is he a critic? Well, some of his own verses
were described in the journal with which he is, or used to be, chiefly
connected, _i.e._ the _Daily Telegraph_, as "the finest things that had
appeared since the New Testament." Now, I consider this pretty strong,
and I don't wish to comment upon it. If such an eulogy had been uttered
by some other newspaper we should have said that the reviewer was some
unduly excited personal friend who wanted to "use" Edwin afterwards for
his own private purposes, but in the _Daily Telegraph_, C.S.I.'s own
pulpit, it suggested--no matter what! Anyway, I am quite sure Edwin was
not in Japan at the time.
I come now to another point in our careers as critics, and not such a
very pleasant point either. We are the victims of toadyism. The little
men of the Press, the dwarfs of journalism, toady us to the verge of
distraction, as soon as we attain to Half-a-Guinea-a-Column power. Of
course we are really somebodies then, and we have to pay the penalty of
greatness. Still it is a bore. We are told all sorts of things that we
know are not true, concerning our "fine literary abilities," our "keen
discrimination," and our "quiet humour," but we are perfectly aware
all the time that such "flattering unction" is merely the distilled
essence of the most strongly concentrated humbug. No sane man, unless
he has some private end in view which he hopes to gain by blandishment,
would dream of giving us credit for "fine literary abilities," because
if we had such abilities we should be doing something more paying than
criticism. But our pigmy flatterers think we can swallow anything. Here
is a small specimen of what I call Press-toadyism, which was bestowed
on my dearest Andrew in _Galignani's Messenger_ by somebody calling
himself a _London Correspondent_. It purported to be a "review" of that
amazingly dreary production, "The World's Desire," which, whatever its
faults, had at least the effect of showing the joint authors thereof
exactly what position they occupied as compared to Homer. Otherwise
they might possibly have made some mistake about precedence. And thus
ran the glib remarks of the _London Correspondent_:--
"That some parts are well written (Mr. Lang's) and some badly written
(Mr. Haggard's), and that fights are many and blood is plentiful,
and that there are many bits of delightful verse (Mr. Lang's, of
course), and a cackling old person (the invention of Mr. Haggard
evidently);" but there! I need not go on. The inquisitive individual
who yearns to read the whole so-called "critique" can refer back
to _Galignani_ of December 8, 1890. The gratuitous and unnecessary
insolence to Mr. Haggard, and the equally unnecessary and gratuitous
licking-of-the-boots of Mr. Lang must have been decidedly offensive
to both authors. This _London Correspondent_ may be a man, but he
certainly is not a brother.
_Apropos_ of the subject of Press-toadyism, _in re_ my friend Andrew,
I must not forget here to chronicle my boundless admiration for that
elaborate and beautiful witticism once contained in the _Saturday
Review_. Criticising Andrew's "Essays in Little," the _Saturday_
said:--"The public may like Little, but they certainly prefer it Lang!"
_O mirabile dictu!_ Shade of Joe Miller, retire discomfited! Was ever
heard the like? What are the quips and cranks of a Yorick compared
to this? Poor and feeble are the epigrammatic sentences of Molière;
miserable to the verge of bathos every "happy thought" beside this
sparkling production of the _Saturday_; this scintillating firework of
atticism, launched with so much delicacy! Let me wipe my fevered brow,
moist with the dews of ecstasy; I had always hoped the _Saturday_ might
one day be witty, but I never thought to see the fond anticipation
realised. "Moribund," quotha? Never was the Jumbo of Reviews so frisky
or so full of life before! Glorious old _Saturday Slasher_! As our
American cousins say, "_Lang_ may you wave!" Whoever perpetrated that
delicious conceit on Andrew--Andrew, the very Pythias of my Damon
worship--let him look me up at the Savile Club, and if I am there when
he chances to call, he shall have such wine and welcome as can only be
offered by a Critic with cash to a Critic of humour!
XVIII.
EULOGISETH ANDREW.
In speaking of Andrew I wish it to be very distinctly understood that
there is only one Andrew; and he is "the" Andrew as pronouncedly and
positively as "the" Mactavish or "the" Mackintosh. He is, to use the
words of the old Scottish song, "Lang, Lang, Lang a'comin'," always
"a'comin'" it in every English printed journal and newspaper under the
sun. His finger is in every literary pie. His shrill piping utterance
is even as the voice of Delphic oracles, pronouncing judgment on all
men and all things. He is the Author's Own Patent Incubator. His
artificial warmth hatches all sorts of small literary fledglings
who might otherwise have perished in the shell; and out they come
chirping, all fuss and feathers, with as much good stamina as though
they had been nursed into being under the wings of that despised old
hen, Art. Andrew is better than Art, because he is the imitation of
Art, and he comes cheaper than the real article. The way in which
the old hen hatches her chicks is slow and infinitely laborious; the
Lang Patent Incubator does the work in half the time and ever so much
less worry. If you can only manage to place a literary egg close
enough to the Incubator for him to "take notice" as it were, why
there you are; out comes a chuckling author immediately and begins to
pick his food from the paragraph-men with quite an appetite. He is
quite a curious and wonderful institution in literature, is my dear
Andrew. The pensters have had all sorts of things "occur" to them in
their profession, such as "booms," "blackmail," "puffs," "burkings,"
"cliques," "literary societies," and the like, but I believe it has
been left to our time to produce a literary Incubator. Of course
Art goes on hatching strange birds in her own tedious and trying
way--birds that soar sky-high and refuse paragraph-crumbs--but then
they are a special breed that would have died of suffocation in the
Lang Incubator. And they are a troublesome sort of fowl at best; they
will never fly where they are told, never sing when they are bidden,
and are never to be found scratching up dust in the press-yard by
any manner of means. Now the Incubator produces no wild brood of
this kind. He hatches excellent tame chicks, who make the prettiest
little clucking noise imaginable, and scratch among the press-dust
with grateful and satisfied claws, the while they prune each other's
feathers occasionally with the tenderest "Savile" solicitude. Even
timid spinsters could take up such pretty poultry in their aprons
without harm. There are no horrible, snapping, strong-winged eagles
among them? Lord bless you, no! Andrew would never be bothered with
an eagle. It might bite his nose off! Eagles--_i.e._, geniuses--are
detestable creatures; you never know where to have them. And the
Incubator must know where to have his chicks, else how could he look
after them? Besides, geniuses always cause disaster and confusion
in the press-yard--they find fault with the food there, and object
to roost on the critically appointed perches. Fortunately, however,
they are rare; and when Art does let loose such big troublesome
chickabiddies the world generally lets them forage for themselves.
Andrew certainly never troubles his head about them--indeed, he does
his best to forget the unpleasant fact that they are flying about and
might at any moment pounce on his "yairdie" and make havoc of his own
carefully-incubated little literary brood.
Needless to say I am devoted to Andrew. He has done me the greatest
kindness in the world. He does not know how kind he has been; in fact,
he has such an open, guileless disposition that I believe he is quite
unconscious of the heavy debt of gratitude I owe him. I have often
thought I would try to express my sentiments towards him in some way,
but my emotions have choked me, and I have refrained. Besides, great
souls do not require to be thanked, and Andrew has a great soul. A
great soul and "brindled hair." These qualities make him what he is,
worthy of the admiration of all true Scots and inferior men. And of
the "inferior" I will stand second to none in Lang-worship. Have I
not followed him at a respectful distance when he has started off to
rummage old bookstalls in search of literary provender? And have I
not always admired the "pawkie" manner in which he has fathomed the
childlike ignorance of the British public? For are not the contents of
the books he picks up secondhand, forgotten, or unknown by the British
public? and is it not well and seemly that he, Andrew, should revive
them once more as specimens of pure Lang wit and wisdom? Certainly.
No one would do the Incubator the hideous injustice of imagining him
to be capable of any new ideas. New ideas have from time immemorial
been an affront and an offence to the reviewer, and Andrew is not
only a reviewer himself but the friend of reviewers. New ideas are
therefore very properly tabooed from his list. But for old ideas,
carefully selected and re-worded, no one can beat Andrew. He is a
wandering "complete edition" of ideas taken from "dead" as well as
living authors. As for poetry, I don't suppose any one will dispute the
right he has to the Laureateship. The stamp of immortality rests on
"Ballads in Blue China"--that same immortality which attends Kipling's
"Barrack-Room" marvels. These things will be read what time future
generations ask vaguely, "Who was Tennyson?"
Yes, Andrew, it is even so. You are a great creature, and a
useful creature too, because you can turn your hand to anything.
You are not dominated by any cerebral monomania. You are a Press
jack-of-all-trades, and, like G. A. S., could write as smartly about
a pin as about a creed. It is very clever of you, and I appreciate
your cleverness thoroughly. I have had the patience to listen to some
lectures of yours, sitting at your feet as at the feet of another
Gamaliel, drinking in the wisdom of the secondhand bookstalls without
a murmur. Only the most intense admiration of your qualities could
have made me do that. I have even managed to spell out some of your
calligraphy, which resembles nothing so much as the casual pattern
which might be made by a spider crawling on the paper after having
previously fallen into the ink. That was a feat performed in your
honour--a feat of which I am justly proud. Then again I shall always
love you for your frankly-open detestation of literary females. Females
who presume to take up our writing weapons--and use them almost as well
as we do ourselves--these are our pet aversion. We hate scribblers in
petticoats, don't we, good Andrew? Yea, verily! We loathe their verses,
we abominate their novels; we would kick them if we dared. We do kick
them, metaphorically, whenever we can, in whatever journals we command;
but that is not half as much as we would like to do. Almost we envy
Hodge who can (and does) give an interfering woman a good dig in the
ribs with his heavy hob-nailed boot whenever she provokes him; and in
the close competition for literary honours we would fain be Hodges too,
every man-jack of us. It is an absurdity that should not be tolerated
in any civilised nation, this admission of women into the literary
profession. What has she done there? What will she ever do? Ask Walter
of the _Times_ (he is a great authority) what he thinks of women who
write. He will tell you that they are merely the weak imitators of men,
and that they are absolutely incapable of humour or epigram. And I am
convinced he is right. Mrs. Browning, Charlotte Bronté, Georges Sand,
George Eliot, and others whose names assume to be "celebrated," are
really nobodies after all. Walter of the _Times_ could himself beat
them out of the field--if he liked. But he is too mercifully disposed
for this: he reserves his genius. Sparkling all over with witticism, he
only permits occasional flashes of it to appear in the columns of his
magnificent journal, lest the public should be too much dizzied and
dazzled. No wonder the _Times_ costs threepence; you could not expect
to get even a glimpse of a man like Walter for less. We ought to be
glad and grateful for his opinions at any price.
And these epithets "glad" and "grateful" occur to me as the only
suitable terms to apply to you, most super-excellent Andrew; my good
friend to whom I owe so much. I am glad and grateful to know that your
"lang" personality is a familiar object at so many newspaper offices.
I am delighted to feel that English literature would come to a dead
halt without your pleasantly long finger to push it on. It rejoices my
heart to realise what a power you are. I am lost in astonishment at
the extraordinary collection of Lilliputian authors you have hatched
by your incubating process. They are the prettiest little brood
imaginable, and what is so charming about them is that they are all so
tame and well-behaved that they will never fly. This is such a comfort.
Just a little scurrying and flopping through the press-yard is all
they are capable of, and quite enough too. Comfortable hencoop sanity
in literature is the thing; we don't want any of Professor Lombroso's
maniacs in the way of geniuses about. They are dangerous. They do
strange things and break out in strange places, and often succeed in
stopping all the world on its way to look at them. Nothing would alarm
you so much, I assure you, my dear Andrew, as the involuntary hatching
of a genius. In fact, I believe it would be all over with you. You
could not survive.
But, thanks to a merciful Providence, you run no risk of this. The
old hen Art is a savage bird and lays her eggs among wild thorns and
bracken out in the open, where no man can find them to bring to you
for the artificial bursting heat of a "boom." You only get the dwarf
product of the domestic poultry of the press-yard. And these are
easily incubated by your patent process--in fact, they almost hatch
themselves, they are in such a hurry to chirp forth their claims to
literary distinction. But being fragile of constitution they need
constantly looking after, which I should imagine must be rather a bore.
Relays of paragraph-men have to come and throw corn and savouries all
the while lest your little chicks should die of inanition, they having
no stamina in themselves. Some will die, some are dying, some are
dead; yet weep not, gentle Incubator, for their fate. It better suits
thy purpose that such should perish, so long as thou dost remain to
hatch fresh fowl upon demand. The press-yard relies upon thee for its
stock of guaranteed male birds--its gifted "virile" roosters, whose
"cocksure" literary crowings may wake old Granny Journalism at stated
hours from too-prolonged and loudly-snoring slumbers; but produce no
hens, Andrew, for if thou dost, thou art a mistaken patent and workest
by a wrong process! Continue in the path of wisdom, therefore, and
faithfully incubate only masculine fledglings for the literary coops.
More we do not expect of thee, save that thou continue to be the king
of compilers and the enemy of blue stockings. For myself, personally
speaking, admiring thee as I am fain to do, I naturally implore thee to
go on in all the magazines and journals telling me the things I knew
before--the old stories I read when I was a thoughtless child, the
scraps of information familiar to me as copybook maxims, the ancient
jokes at which my elders laughed, the snatches of French romance and
fable I picked up casually at school. For being always a book-lover
it is but natural I should have learned the things wherewith thou
instructest the ignorant world; but thou shalt tell me of them again
and yet again, good Andrew, and yet I will not murmur nor ask of thee
one thought original. Aware of all thou canst say, I still entreat
thee, say it! Say it (to quote the jovial old _Saturday_ once more) in
"little," that I may have it "lang."
And now, ever famous and beloved Andrew, I must for the moment take
my leave of thee. The glory of thy reputation is as a band of light
around the foggy isles of Britain, and that benighted Europe knows
thee not at all is but a trifle to us, though a loss to Europe. When
Hall Caine recently found out that he was not celebrated in Germany
he wondered thereat and said the Germans had no taste for English
literature. No--not though they are the finest Shakesperian scholars
in the world and the most ardent lovers of Byron's poesy. "Benighted
Fatherland!" inwardly moaned the writer of "Sagas"--"Benighted
country that knoweth not my works! Benighted people that have never
heard--ye gods, imagine it!--have never heard the name of Kipling!"
Oh, dull, beer-drinking, Wagner-ridden disciples of Goethe, Schiller,
and Heine! To be ignorant of Kipling! To be only capable of a bovine
questioning stare at Caine! To be impervious to the electric name of
Lang! To know nothing about the new "Thucydides," R. L. Stevenson!
Heaven forgive them, for I cannot. I abjure the Rhineland till it has
been to school with Lang's text-books under its arm. Drop Heine, ye
besotted slaves of "lager-bier," and read Kipling. _Try_ to read him,
anyway. If you can't, my friend Andrew will show you how. Andrew
will show you anything that can be shown in English journals and
newspapers. But beyond these he cannot go. You must not expect him
to expand farther. His incubating work belongs solely to the English
Press Poultry-yard--his name, his power, his influence avail, alas! as
Nothing, out in the wide, wide world!
XIX.
BYRON LOQUITUR.
If I did not believe, or pretend to believe, in Spiritualism,
Theosophism, Buddhism, or some other fashionable "ism" which is totally
opposed to Christianity, I should not be "in the swim" of things. And
of course I would rather perish than not be in the swim of things.
I cannot, if I wish to "go" with my time, admit to any belief in
God; like Zola's Jean Bearnat, I say, "Rien, rien, rien! Quand on
souffle sur le soleil ça sera fini," or, with the reckless Corelli,
I propound to myself the startling question, "Suppose God were dead?
We see that the works of men live ages after their death--why not the
works of God?" The exclamation of "Rien, rien!" is _la mode_, and
those who are loudest in its utterance generally take to a belief in
bogies--Blavatsky bogies, Annie Besant bogies, Sinnett bogies, Florence
Marryat bogies, many of which disembodied spirits, by the by, talk
bad grammar and lose control over their H's. My jovial acquaintance,
Captain Andrew Haggard (brother of Rider), and I, have rejoiced in
the society of bogies very frequently. We have called "spirits from
the vasty deep," and sometimes, if all the "influences" have been
in working order, they have come. We know all about them. Haggard,
perhaps, knows more than I do, for I believe he confesses to being
enamoured of a rather pretty bogie--feminine, of course. She has no
substance, so the little flirtation is quite harmless. I regret to
say the "spirits" do not flirt with me. They don't seem to like me,
especially since the Tomkins episode. The Tomkins episode occurred
in this wise. At a certain _séance_ in which I took a somewhat too
obtrusive part a "bogie" appeared who announced himself as Tomkins.
Some one asked for his baptismal name, and he said "George." A devil
of mischief prompted me to hazard the remark that I once knew a John
Tomkins, but he was dead.
"That's me!" said the bogie, hurriedly. "I'm John."
"How did you come to be George?" I demanded.
"My second name was George," replied the prompt bogie.
"That's odd!" I said. "I never knew it."
"You can't expect to know everything," remarked the bogie,
sententiously.
"No, I can't," I agreed. "And, what is more, I never knew a Tomkins at
all, John or George, living or dead! You are a fraud, my friend!"
Confusion ensued, and I was promptly expelled as an "unbeliever" who
disturbed the "influences." And since that affair the "spirits" are shy
of me.
Whether the memory of the Tompkins episode haunted me, or whether
it was the effect of an excellent dinner enjoyed with "Labby"
just previously, I do not know, but certain it is that on one
never-to-be-forgotten evening I saw a ghost--a _bonâ-fide_ ghost,
who entered my sleeping apartment without permission, and addressed
me without the assistance of a "medium." He was a ghost of average
height and build, and I observed that he kept one foot very carefully
concealed beneath his long, cloudy draperies, which were disposed
about him in the fashion of the classic Greek. Upon his head, which
was covered with clustering curls fit to adorn the brows of Apollo, he
wore a wreath of laurels whose leaves were traced in light, and these
cast a brilliant circle of supernatural radiance around him. In one
hand he grasped a scroll, and as he turned his face upon me he beckoned
with this scroll, slowly and majestically, after the style of Hamlet's
father on the battlements of Elsinore. I trembled, but had no power to
move. Again he beckoned, and his eyes flashed fire.
"My lord----!" I stammered, shrinking beneath his indignant gaze, and
fervently hoping that I was not the object of his evident wrath.
"Lord me no lords!" said a deep voice that seemed to quiver with
disdain. "Speak, puny mortal! Knowest thou me?"
Know him! I should think I did. There was no mistaking him. He was
BYRON all over--Byron, more thoroughly Byronic of aspect than any
portrait has ever made him. Involuntarily I thought of the present Lord
Wentworth and his occasionally flabby allusions to his "Grandfather,"
and smiled at the comparison between ancestor and descendant. My
ghostly visitant had a sense of humour, and, reading my thoughts,
smiled too.
"I see thou hast wit," he was good enough to observe in more pacific
accents. "Hear me, therefore, and mark my every word! There are such
follies in this age--such literary rascals, such damned rogues of
rhymesters--oh, don't be startled! every one swears in Hades--that I
have writ some lines and remodelled others, to suit the exigencies
of the modern school of Shams. Never did Art stand at a premium in
England, but God knows it should not fall to zero as it is rapidly
doing. Listen! and move not while I speak; my lines shall burn
themselves upon thy brain till thou inscribe and print them for the
world to read; then, and then only, having done my bidding, shalt thou
again be free!"
I bowed my head submissively and begged the noble Ghost to proceed,
whereupon he unfolded his scroll, and read, with infinite gusto, the
following:--
"ENGLISH SCRIBES AND SMALL REVIEWERS.
"Still must I hear? Shall SWINBURNE mouth and scream
His wordy couplets in a drunken dream,
And I not sing, lest haply small reviews
Should dub me 'dead' and forthwith damn my muse?
No! My proud spirit shall not suffer wrong;
'Booms' are my theme--let satire be my song.
"Through Nature's new-found gift, Magnetic skill,
My soul obeys an influential Will,
And I from Hades rise to life again
To wield once more mine own especial pen,
Which none have rivalled in these sickly days
Of tawdry epics and translated plays,
When knavish cliques o'er honest Art prevail,
And weigh out judgment by the 'Savile' scale.
The petty vices of the time demand
Another scourging from my fearless hand;
Still are there flocks of geese for me to chase,
Still false pretenders to the 'poet's' place.
Who dare to pile detraction on my name,
Let such beware, for scribblers are my game!
Speed Pegasus! Ye modern pensters small,
WATTS, BRYDGES, MORRIS, ARNOLD, have at you all!
Remember well how once upon a time
I poured along the town a flood of rhyme
So strong and scathing that the little fry
Of rhymesters like yourselves were doomed to die!
Moved by that triumph past, I still pursue
The self-same road, despite the _New Review_
And _Quarterly_, and other journals silly,
That take dull articles by Mr. LILLY.