For ever on looking backwards one is filled with regrets, and one
thing I regret greatly about Henry Maitland is that, though I might
perhaps have purchased his little library, the books he had
accumulated with so much joy and such self-sacrifice, I never thought
of this until it was too late. Books made up so much of his life,
and few of his had not been bought at the cost of what others would
consider pleasure, or by the sacrifice of some sensation which he
himself would have enjoyed at the time. Now I possess none of his
books but those he gave me, save only the little "Anthologia Latina"
which Thérèse herself sent to me. This was a volume in which he took
peculiar delight, perhaps even more delight than he did in the Greek
anthology, which I myself preferred so far as my Greek would then
carry me. Many times I have seen him take down the little Eton
anthology and read aloud. Now I myself may quote:
_Animula vagula, blandula,
Hospes comesque corporis,
Qua nunc abibis in loca
Pallidula, rigida, nudula----_
I believe his library was sold in Paris, for now that Thérèse had no
settled home it was impossible to carry it about with her. Among
these books were all those beautifully bound volumes which he had
obtained as prizes at Moorhampton College, and others which he had
picked up at various times in the various bookshops of London, so
many of which he speaks of in "The Meditations"--his old Gibbon in
quarto, and some hundreds of others chosen with joy because they
appealed to him in a way only a book-lover can understand. He had a
strange pleasure in buying old copies of the classics, which shows
that he was perhaps after all more of a bookman than a scholar. He
would perhaps have rather possessed such a copy of Lucretius as is on
my own shelves, which has no notes but is wonderfully printed, than
the newest edition by the newest editor. He was conscious that his
chief desire was literature rather than scholarship. Few indeed
there are who know the classics as well as he did, who read them for
ever with so much delight.
Maitland, for an Englishman, knew many languages. His Greek, though
not extraordinarily deep, was most familiar. He could read
Aristophanes lying on the sofa, thoroughly enjoying it, and rarely
rising to consult Liddell and Scott, a book which he adored in the
most odd fashion, perhaps because it knew so much Greek. There was
no Latin author whom he could not read fluently. I myself frequently
took him up a difficult passage in Juvenal and Persius, and rarely,
if ever, found him at fault, or slow to give me help. French he knew
very nearly as well as a Frenchman, and spoke it very fluently. His
Italian was also very good, and he spoke that too without hesitation.
Spanish he only read; I do not think he often attempted to speak it.
Nevertheless he read "Don Quixote" in the original; and his Italian
can be judged by the fact that he read Dante's "Divina Commedia"
almost as easily as he read his Virgil. German too was an open book
to him, and he had read most of the great men who wrote in it,
understanding even the obscurities of "Titan." I marked down the
other day many of the books in which he chiefly delighted, or rather,
let me say, many of the authors. Homer, of course, stood at the head
of the list, for Homer he knew as well as he knew Shakespeare. His
adoration for Shakespeare was, indeed, I think, excessive, but the
less said of that the better, for I have no desire to express fully
what I think concerning the general English over-estimation of that
particular author. I do, however, understand how it was that
Maitland worshipped him so, for whatever may be thought of
Shakespeare's dramatic ability, or his characterisation, or his
general psychology, there can be no dispute about his having been a
master of "beautiful words." Milton he loved marvellously, and
sometimes he read his sonnets to me. Much of "Lycidas" he knew by
heart, and some of "Il Penseroso." Among the Latins, Virgil,
Catullus, and Tibullus were his favourites, although he took a
curious interest in Cicero, a thing in which I was never able to
follow him. I once showed to Maitland in the "Tusculan Disputations"
what Cicero seemed to think a good joke. It betrayed such an
extraordinary lack of humour that I was satisfied to leave the
"Disputations" alone henceforth. The only Latin book which I myself
introduced to Maitland was the "Letters" of Pliny. They afterwards
became great favourites with him because some of them dealt with his
beloved Naples and Vesuvius. Lucian's "Dialogues" he admired very
much, finding them, as indeed they are, always delightful; and it was
very interesting to him when I showed him to what extent Disraeli was
indebted to Lucian in those clever _jeux d'esprit_ "Ixion in Heaven,"
"Popanilla," and "The Infernal Marriage." The "Golden Ass" of
Apuleius he knew almost by heart. Petronius he read very frequently;
it contained some of the actual life of the old world. He knew
Diogenes Laertius very well, though he read that author, as Montaigne
did, rather for the light he throws upon the private life of the
Greeks than for the philosophy in the book; and he frequently dipped
into Athenæus the Deipnosophist. Occasionally, but very
occasionally, he did read some ancient metaphysics, for Plato was a
favourite of his--not, I think, on account of his philosophy, but
because he wrote so beautifully. Aristotle he rarely touched,
although he knew the "Poetics." He had a peculiar admiration for the
Stoic Marcus Aurelius, in which I never followed him because the
Stoic philosophy is so peculiarly inhuman. But, after all, among the
Greeks his chief joy was the tragedians, and there was no single play
or fragment of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides that he did not
know almost by heart. Among the Frenchmen his great favourites were
Rabelais and Montaigne and, later, Flaubert, Maupassant, Victor Hugo,
Zola, Balzac, and the Goncourts. As I have said before, he had a
great admiration for the Russian writers of eminence, and much
regretted that he did not know Russian. He once even attempted it,
but put it aside. I think Balzac was the only writer of importance
that he read much of who did not possess a style; he owned that he
found him on that account at times almost impossible to read.
Nevertheless he did read him, and learnt much from him; but his chief
admiration among the French on the ground of their being artists was
for Flaubert and Maupassant. Zola's style did not appeal to him; in
fact in many of his books it is little better than Balzac's.
Maitland's love of beautiful words and the rhythms of prose was as
deep as that of Meredith; and as I have said, his adoration of
Shakespeare was founded on the fact that Shakespeare still remains
the great enchanter in the world of phrases. He read English very
deeply. There was little among the fields of English prose that he
did not know well; but again he loved best those who had a noble
style of their own, notably Sir Thomas Browne. If a man had
something to say and did not say it well, Maitland read him with
difficulty and held him at a discount. That is why he loved Landor
at his best, why he loved Meredith, and why he often adored Hardy,
especially in Hardy's earlier works, before he began to "rail at the
universe" and disturb him. I think among other living writers of
English fiction I can hardly mention more than one of whom he spoke
with much respect, and he was Henry James. As he was a conservative
he was especially a conservative critic. He found it difficult to
appreciate anything which was wholly new, and the rising school of
Celtic literature, which means much, and may mean more, in English
literature, did not appeal to him greatly. He lived in the past,
even in English, and often went back to Chaucer and drank at his well
and at the everlasting fountain of Malory. So, as I have said, he
loved old Walton. Boswell he read yearly at least, for he had an
amazing admiration for old Johnson, a notable truth-teller. The man
who could say what he thought, and say it plainly, was ever his
favourite, although I could never induce him to admire Machiavelli,
for the coldness of Machiavelli's intellect was a little too much for
him. The pure intellect never appealed to Maitland. I think if he
had attempted "The Critique of Pure Reason" he would have died before
he had learnt Kant's vocabulary. Yet I once gave him a copy of it in
the original. The only very modern writer that he took to was Walt
Whitman, and the trouble I had in getting him to see anything in him
was amazing, though at last he succumbed and was characteristically
enthusiastic.
What he wanted in literature was emotion, feeling, and
humour--literature that affected him sensuously, and made him happy,
and made him forget. For it is strange when one looks back at his
books to think how much he loved pure beauty, though he found himself
compelled to write, only too often, of the sheer brutality of modern
civilisation and the foulest life of London. Of course he loved
satire, and his own mind was essentially in some ways satiric. His
greatest gift was perhaps that of irony, which he frequently
exercised at the expense of his public. I remember very well his joy
when something he had written which was ironically intended from the
first word to the last was treated seriously by the critics. He was
reminded, as he indeed reminded me, of Samuel Butler's "Fairhaven,"
that book on Christianity which was reviewed by one great religious
paper as an essay in religious apologetics. This recalls to my mind
the fact that I have forgotten to say how much he loved Samuel
Butler's books, or those with which he was more particularly
acquainted, "Erewhon" and "Erewhon Revisited." Anything which dug
knives into the gross stupidity of the mass of English opinion
afforded him the intensest gratification. If it attacked their
religion or their vanity he was equally delighted, and when it came
to their hypocrisy--in spite of the defence he made later in "The
Meditations" of English hypocrisy--he was equally pleased. In this
connection I am reminded of a very little thing of no particular
importance which occurred to him when he was upon one occasion at the
Royal Academy. That year Sir Frederick Leighton exhibited a very
fine decorative panel of a nude figure. While Maitland was looking
at it a typical English matron with three young flappers of daughters
passed him. One of the girls stood in front of this nude and said,
"Oh, mamma, what is this?" Whereupon her mother replied hurriedly,
"Only a goddess, my dear, only a goddess! Come along,--only a
goddess." And he quoted to himself and afterwards to me, from "Roman
Women": "And yet I love you not, nor ever can, Distinguished woman on
the Pincian!" If I remember rightly, the notable address to
Englishwomen in T.E. Brown's poem was published separately in a
magazine which I brought to him. It gave great occasion for
chuckling.
I have not attempted to give any far-reaching notion of all
Maitland's reading, but I think what I have said will indicate not
unfairly what its reach was. What he desired was to read the best
that had been written in all western languages; and I think, indeed,
that very few men have read so much, although he made, in some ways,
but little use of it. Nevertheless this life among books was his
true life. Among books he lived, and among them he would have died.
Had any globe-trotting Gillman offered to show him the world, he
would have declined, I think, to leave the littoral of the
Mediterranean, though with a book-loving Gillman he might have
explored all literature.