I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, nor how lowly the room
which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with
it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing
company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal
into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more.
You have left all that is vulgar and all that is sordid behind you.
There stand your noble, silent comrades, waiting in their ranks. Pass
your eye down their files. Choose your man. And then you have but to
hold up your hand to him and away you go together into dreamland.
Surely there would be something eerie about a line of books were it not
that familiarity has deadened our sense of it. Each is a mummified soul
embalmed in cere-cloth and natron of leather and printer’s ink. Each
cover of a true book enfolds the concentrated essence of a man. The
personalities of the writers have faded into the thinnest shadows, as
their bodies into impalpable dust, yet here are their very spirits at
your command.
It is our familiarity also which has lessened our perception of the
miraculous good fortune which we enjoy. Let us suppose that we were
suddenly to learn that Shakespeare had returned to earth, and that he
would favour any of us with an hour of his wit and his fancy. How
eagerly we would seek him out! And yet we have him—the very best of
him—at our elbows from week to week, and hardly trouble ourselves to
put out our hands to beckon him down. No matter what mood a man may be
in, when once he has passed through the magic door he can summon the
world’s greatest to sympathize with him in it. If he be thoughtful,
here are the kings of thought. If he be dreamy, here are the masters of
fancy. Or is it amusement that he lacks? He can signal to any one of
the world’s great story-tellers, and out comes the dead man and holds
him enthralled by the hour. The dead are such good company that one may
come to think too little of the living. It is a real and a pressing
danger with many of us, that we should never find our own thoughts and
our own souls, but be ever obsessed by the dead. Yet second-hand
romance and second-hand emotion are surely better than the dull,
soul-killing monotony which life brings to most of the human race. But
best of all when the dead man’s wisdom and the dead man’s example give
us guidance and strength and in the living of our own strenuous days.
Come through the magic door with me, and sit here on the green settee,
where you can see the old oak case with its untidy lines of volumes.
Smoking is not forbidden. Would you care to hear me talk of them? Well,
I ask nothing better, for there is no volume there which is not a dear,
personal friend, and what can a man talk of more pleasantly than that?
The other books are over yonder, but these are my own favourites—the
ones I care to re-read and to have near my elbow. There is not a
tattered cover which does not bring its mellow memories to me.
Some of them represent those little sacrifices which make a possession
dearer. You see the line of old, brown volumes at the bottom? Every one
of those represents a lunch. They were bought in my student days, when
times were not too affluent. Threepence was my modest allowance for my
midday sandwich and glass of beer; but, as luck would have it, my way
to the classes led past the most fascinating bookshop in the world.
Outside the door of it stood a large tub filled with an ever-changing
litter of tattered books, with a card above which announced that any
volume therein could be purchased for the identical sum which I carried
in my pocket. As I approached it a combat ever raged betwixt the hunger
of a youthful body and that of an inquiring and omnivorous mind. Five
times out of six the animal won. But when the mental prevailed, then
there was an entrancing five minutes’ digging among out-of-date
almanacs, volumes of Scotch theology, and tables of logarithms, until
one found something which made it all worth while. If you will look
over these titles, you will see that I did not do so very badly. Four
volumes of Gordon’s “Tacitus” (life is too short to read originals, so
long as there are good translations), Sir William Temple’s Essays,
Addison’s works, Swift’s “Tale of a Tub,” Clarendon’s “History,” “Gil
Blas,” Buckingham’s Poems, Churchill’s Poems, “Life of Bacon”—not so
bad for the old threepenny tub.
They were not always in such plebeian company. Look at the thickness of
the rich leather, and the richness of the dim gold lettering. Once they
adorned the shelves of some noble library, and even among the odd
almanacs and the sermons they bore the traces of their former
greatness, like the faded silk dress of the reduced gentlewoman, a
present pathos but a glory of the past.
Reading is made too easy nowadays, with cheap paper editions and free
libraries. A man does not appreciate at its full worth the thing that
comes to him without effort. Who now ever gets the thrill which Carlyle
felt when he hurried home with the six volumes of Gibbon’s “History”
under his arm, his mind just starving for want of food, to devour them
at the rate of one a day? A book should be your very own before you can
really get the taste of it, and unless you have worked for it, you will
never have the true inward pride of possession.
If I had to choose the one book out of all that line from which I have
had most pleasure and most profit, I should point to yonder stained
copy of Macaulay’s “Essays.” It seems entwined into my whole life as I
look backwards. It was my comrade in my student days, it has been with
me on the sweltering Gold Coast, and it formed part of my humble kit
when I went a-whaling in the Arctic. Honest Scotch harpooners have
addled their brains over it, and you may still see the grease stains
where the second engineer grappled with Frederick the Great. Tattered
and dirty and worn, no gilt-edged morocco-bound volume could ever take
its place for me.
What a noble gateway this book forms through which one may approach the
study either of letters or of history! Milton, Machiavelli, Hallam,
Southey, Bunyan, Byron, Johnson, Pitt, Hampden, Clive, Hastings,
Chatham—what nuclei for thought! With a good grip of each how pleasant
and easy to fill in all that lies between! The short, vivid sentences,
the broad sweep of allusion, the exact detail, they all throw a glamour
round the subject and should make the least studious of readers desire
to go further. If Macaulay’s hand cannot lead a man upon those pleasant
paths, then, indeed, he may give up all hope of ever finding them.
When I was a senior schoolboy this book—not this very volume, for it
had an even more tattered predecessor—opened up a new world to me.
History had been a lesson and abhorrent. Suddenly the task and the
drudgery became an incursion into an enchanted land, a land of colour
and beauty, with a kind, wise guide to point the path. In that great
style of his I loved even the faults—indeed, now that I come to think
of it, it was the faults which I loved best. No sentence could be too
stiff with rich embroidery, and no antithesis too flowery. It pleased
me to read that “a universal shout of laughter from the Tagus to the
Vistula informed the Pope that the days of the crusades were past,” and
I was delighted to learn that “Lady Jerningham kept a vase in which
people placed foolish verses, and Mr. Dash wrote verses which were fit
to be placed in Lady Jerningham’s vase.” Those were the kind of
sentences which used to fill me with a vague but enduring pleasure,
like chords which linger in the musician’s ear. A man likes a plainer
literary diet as he grows older, but still as I glance over the Essays
I am filled with admiration and wonder at the alternate power of
handling a great subject, and of adorning it by delightful detail—just
a bold sweep of the brush, and then the most delicate stippling. As he
leads you down the path, he for ever indicates the alluring side-tracks
which branch away from it. An admirable, if somewhat old-fashioned,
literary and historical education might be effected by working through
every book which is alluded to in the Essays. I should be curious,
however, to know the exact age of the youth when he came to the end of
his studies.
I wish Macaulay had written a historical novel. I am convinced that it
would have been a great one. I do not know if he had the power of
drawing an imaginary character, but he certainly had the gift of
reconstructing a dead celebrity to a remarkable degree. Look at the
simple half-paragraph in which he gives us Johnson and his atmosphere.
Was ever a more definite picture given in a shorter space—
“As we close it, the club-room is before us, and the table on which
stand the omelet for Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson. There are
assembled those heads which live for ever on the canvas of Reynolds.
There are the spectacles of Burke, and the tall thin form of Langton,
the courtly sneer of Beauclerk and the beaming smile of Garrick, Gibbon
tapping his snuff-box, and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In
the foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the
figures of those among whom we have been brought up—the gigantic body,
the huge massy face, seamed with the scars of disease, the brown coat,
the black worsted stockings, the grey wig with the scorched foretop,
the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the
eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches; we see the heavy form
rolling; we hear it puffing, and then comes the ‘Why, sir!’ and the
‘What then, sir?’ and the ‘No, sir!’ and the ‘You don’t see your way
through the question, sir!’”
It is etched into your memory for ever.
I can remember that when I visited London at the age of sixteen the
first thing I did after housing my luggage was to make a pilgrimage to
Macaulay’s grave, where he lies in Westminster Abbey, just under the
shadow of Addison, and amid the dust of the poets whom he had loved so
well. It was the one great object of interest which London held for me.
And so it might well be, when I think of all I owe him. It is not
merely the knowledge and the stimulation of fresh interests, but it is
the charming gentlemanly tone, the broad, liberal outlook, the general
absence of bigotry and of prejudice. My judgment now confirms all that
I felt for him then.
My four-volume edition of the History stands, as you see, to the right
of the Essays. Do you recollect the third chapter of that work—the one
which reconstructs the England of the seventeenth century? It has
always seemed to me the very high-water mark of Macaulay’s powers, with
its marvellous mixture of precise fact and romantic phrasing. The
population of towns, the statistics of commerce, the prosaic facts of
life are all transmuted into wonder and interest by the handling of the
master. You feel that he could have cast a glamour over the
multiplication table had he set himself to do so. Take a single
concrete example of what I mean. The fact that a Londoner in the
country, or a countryman in London, felt equally out of place in those
days of difficult travel, would seem to hardly require stating, and to
afford no opportunity of leaving a strong impression upon the reader’s
mind. See what Macaulay makes of it, though it is no more than a
hundred other paragraphs which discuss a hundred various points—
“A cockney in a rural village was stared at as much as if he had
intruded into a kraal of Hottentots. On the other hand, when the lord
of a Lincolnshire or Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he was
as easily distinguished from the resident population as a Turk or a
Lascar. His dress, his gait, his accent, the manner in which he gazed
at the shops, stumbled into gutters, ran against the porters, and stood
under the waterspouts, marked him out as an excellent subject for the
operations of swindlers and banterers. Bullies jostled him into the
kennel, Hackney coachmen splashed him from head to foot, thieves
explored with perfect security the huge pockets of his horseman’s coat,
while he stood entranced by the splendour of the Lord Mayor’s Show.
Money-droppers, sore from the cart’s tail, introduced themselves to
him, and appeared to him the most honest friendly gentlemen that he had
ever seen. Painted women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone
Park, passed themselves on him for countesses and maids of honour. If
he asked his way to St. James’, his informants sent him to Mile End. If
he went into a shop, he was instantly discerned to be a fit purchaser
of everything that nobody else would buy, of second-hand embroidery,
copper rings, and watches that would not go. If he rambled into any
fashionable coffee-house, he became a mark for the insolent derision of
fops, and the grave waggery of Templars. Enraged and mortified, he soon
returned to his mansion, and there, in the homage of his tenants and
the conversation of his boon companions, found consolation for the
vexations and humiliations which he had undergone. There he was once
more a great man, and saw nothing above himself except when at the
assizes he took his seat on the bench near the Judge, or when at the
muster of the militia he saluted the Lord Lieutenant.”
On the whole, I should put this detached chapter of description at the
very head of his Essays, though it happens to occur in another volume.
The History as a whole does not, as it seems to me, reach the same
level as the shorter articles. One cannot but feel that it is a
brilliant piece of special pleading from a fervid Whig, and that there
must be more to be said for the other side than is there set forth.
Some of the Essays are tinged also, no doubt, by his own political and
religious limitations. The best are those which get right away into the
broad fields of literature and philosophy. Johnson, Walpole, Madame
D’Arblay, Addison, and the two great Indian ones, Clive and Warren
Hastings, are my own favourites. Frederick the Great, too, must surely
stand in the first rank. Only one would I wish to eliminate. It is the
diabolically clever criticism upon Montgomery. One would have wished to
think that Macaulay’s heart was too kind, and his soul too gentle, to
pen so bitter an attack. Bad work will sink of its own weight. It is
not necessary to souse the author as well. One would think more highly
of the man if he had not done that savage bit of work.
I don’t know why talking of Macaulay always makes me think of Scott,
whose books in a faded, olive-backed line, have a shelf, you see, of
their own. Perhaps it is that they both had so great an influence, and
woke such admiration in me. Or perhaps it is the real similarity in the
minds and characters of the two men. You don’t see it, you say? Well,
just think of Scott’s “Border Ballads,” and then of Macaulay’s “Lays.”
The machines must be alike, when the products are so similar. Each was
the only man who could possibly have written the poems of the other.
What swing and dash in both of them! What a love of all that is manly
and noble and martial! So simple, and yet so strong. But there are
minds on which strength and simplicity are thrown away. They think that
unless a thing is obscure it must be superficial, whereas it is often
the shallow stream which is turbid, and the deep which is clear. Do you
remember the fatuous criticism of Matthew Arnold upon the glorious
“Lays,” where he calls out “is this poetry?” after quoting—
“And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the Temples of his Gods?”
In trying to show that Macaulay had not the poetic sense he was really
showing that he himself had not the dramatic sense. The baldness of the
idea and of the language had evidently offended him. But this is
exactly where the true merit lies. Macaulay is giving the rough, blunt
words with which a simple-minded soldier appeals to two comrades to
help him in a deed of valour. Any high-flown sentiment would have been
absolutely out of character. The lines are, I think, taken with their
context, admirable ballad poetry, and have just the dramatic quality
and sense which a ballad poet must have. That opinion of Arnold’s shook
my faith in his judgment, and yet I would forgive a good deal to the
man who wrote—
“One more charge and then be dumb,
When the forts of Folly fall,
May the victors when they come
Find my body near the wall.”
Not a bad verse that for one’s life aspiration.
This is one of the things which human society has not yet
understood—the value of a noble, inspiriting text. When it does we
shall meet them everywhere engraved on appropriate places, and our
progress through the streets will be brightened and ennobled by one
continual series of beautiful mental impulses and images, reflected
into our souls from the printed thoughts which meet our eyes. To think
that we should walk with empty, listless minds while all this splendid
material is running to waste. I do not mean mere Scriptural texts, for
they do not bear the same meaning to all, though what human creature
can fail to be spurred onwards by “Work while it is day, for the night
cometh when no man can work.” But I mean those beautiful thoughts—who
can say that they are uninspired thoughts?—which may be gathered from a
hundred authors to match a hundred uses. A fine thought in fine
language is a most precious jewel, and should not be hid away, but be
exposed for use and ornament. To take the nearest example, there is a
horse-trough across the road from my house, a plain stone trough, and
no man could pass it with any feelings save vague discontent at its
ugliness. But suppose that on its front slab you print the verse of
Coleridge—
“He prayeth best who loveth best
All things, both great and small
For the dear Lord who fashioned him
He knows and loveth all.”
I fear I may misquote, for I have not “The Ancient Mariner” at my
elbow, but even as it stands does it not elevate the horse-trough? We
all do this, I suppose, in a small way for ourselves. There are few men
who have not some chosen quotations printed on their study
mantelpieces, or, better still, in their hearts. Carlyle’s
transcription of “Rest! Rest! Shall I not have all Eternity to rest
in!” is a pretty good spur to a weary man. But what we need is a more
general application of the same thing for public and not for private
use, until people understand that a graven thought is as beautiful an
ornament as any graven image, striking through the eye right deep down
into the soul.
However, all this has nothing to do with Macaulay’s glorious lays, save
that when you want some flowers of manliness and patriotism you can
pluck quite a bouquet out of those. I had the good fortune to learn the
Lay of Horatius off by heart when I was a child, and it stamped itself
on my plastic mind, so that even now I can reel off almost the whole of
it. Goldsmith said that in conversation he was like the man who had a
thousand pounds in the bank, but could not compete with the man who had
an actual sixpence in his pocket. So the ballad that you bear in your
mind outweighs the whole bookshelf which waits for reference. But I
want you now to move your eye a little farther down the shelf to the
line of olive-green volumes. That is my edition of Scott. But surely I
must give you a little breathing space before I venture upon them.