(1850-)
Those to whom the discovery of a relishing new literary flavor means the
permanent annexation of a new tract of enjoyment have not forgotten what
happened in 1885. A slender 16mo volume entitled "Obiter Dicta",
containing seven short literary and biographic essays, came out in that
year, anonymous and unheralded, to make such way as it might among a
book-whelmed generation. It had no novelty of subject to help it to a
hearing; the themes were largely the most written-out, in all seeming,
that could have been selected,--a few great orthodox names on which
opinion was closed and analysis exhausted. Browning, Carlyle, Charles
Lamb, and John Henry Newman are indeed very beacons to warn off the
sated bookman. A paper on Benvenuto Cellini, one on Actors, and one on
Falstaff (by another hand) closed the list. Yet a few weeks made it the
literary event of the day. Among epicures of good reading the word
swiftly passed along that here was a new sensation of unusually
satisfying charm and freshness. It was a _tour de force_ like the
"Innocents Abroad", a journey full of new sights over the most staled
and beaten of tracks. The triumph was all the author's own.
[Illustration: AUGUSTINE BIRRELL]
Two years later came another volume as a "Second Series", of the same
general character but superior to the first. Among the subjects of its
eleven papers were Milton, Pope, Johnson, Burke, Lamb again, and
Emerson; with some general essays, including that on "The Office of
Literature", given below.
In 1892 appeared "Res Judicatæ", really a third volume of the same
series, and perhaps even richer in matter and more acute and original in
thought. Its first two articles, prepared as lectures on Samuel
Richardson and Edward Gibbon, are indeed his high-water, mark in both
substance and style. Cowper, George Borrow, Newman again, Lamb a third
time (and fresh as ever), Hazlitt, Matthew Arnold, and Sainte-Beuve are
brought in, and some excellent literary miscellanea.
A companion volume called 'Men, Women, and Books' is disappointing
because composed wholly of short newspaper articles: Mr. Birrell's
special quality needs space to make itself felt. He needs a little time
to get up steam, a little room to unpack his wares; he is no pastel
writer, who can say his say in a paragraph and runs dry in two. Hence
these snippy editorials do him no justice: he is obliged to stop every
time just as he is getting ready to say something worth while. They are
his, and therefore readable and judicious; but they give no idea of his
best powers.
He has also written a life of Charlotte Brontë. But he holds his place
in the front rank of recent essayists by the three 'Obiter Dicta' and
'Res Judicatæ' volumes of manly, luminous, penetrating essays, full of
racy humor and sudden wit; of a generous appreciativeness that seeks
always for the vital principle which gave the writer his hold on men;
still more, of a warm humanity and a sure instinct for all the higher
and finer things of the spirit which never fail to strike chords in the
heart as well as the brain. No writer's work leaves a better taste in
the mouth; he makes us think better of the world, of righteousness, of
ourselves. Yet no writer is less of a Puritan or a Philistine; none
writes with less of pragmatic purpose or a less obtrusive load of
positive fact. He scorns such overladen pedantry, and never loses a
chance to lash it. He tells us that he has "never been inside the
reading-room of the British Museum," and "expounds no theory save the
unworthy one that literature ought to please." He says the one question
about a book which is to be part of _literature_ is, "Does it read?"
that "no one is under any obligation to read any one else's book," and
therefore it is a writer's business to make himself welcome to readers;
that he does not care whether an author was happy or not, he wants the
author to make him happy. He puts his theory in practice: he makes
himself welcome as a companion at once stimulating and restful, of
humane spirit and elevated ideals, of digested knowledge and original
thought, of an insight which is rarely other than kindly and a deep
humor which never lapses into cynicism.
Mr. Birrell helps to justify Walter Bagehot's dictum that the only man
who can write books well is one who knows practical life well; but still
there are congruities in all things, and one feels a certain shock of
incongruity in finding that this man of books and purveyor of light
genial book-talk, who can hardly write a line without giving it a
quality of real literary savor, is a prominent lawyer and member of
Parliament, and has written a law book which ranks among recognized
legal authorities. This is a series of lectures delivered in 1896, and
collected into a volume on 'The Duties and Liabilities of Trustees.' But
some of the surprise vanishes on reading the book: even as 'Alice in
Wonderland' shows on every page the work of a logician trained to use
words precisely and criticize their misuse, so in exactly the opposite
way this book is full of the shrewd judgment, the knowledge of life, and
even the delightful humor which form so much of Birrell's best equipment
for a man of letters.
Mr. Birrell's work is not merely good reading, but is a mental clarifier
and tonic. We are much better critics of other writers through his
criticisms on his selected subjects. After every reading of 'Obiter
Dicta' we feel ashamed of crass and petty prejudice, in the face of his
lessons in disregarding surface mannerisms for the sake of vital
qualities. Only in one case does he lose his impartiality: he so objects
to treating Emerson with fairness that he even goes out of his way to
berate his idol Matthew Arnold for setting Emerson aloft. But what he
says of George Borrow is vastly more true of himself: he is one of the
writers we cannot afford to be angry with.