he rightly argued, would break up the harmony of the family circle,
particularly as his eldest son had married the daughter of his luckless
victim. Few criminals are so thoughtful for others as Mr. Bourchier is,
and we are not without admiration for the unselfishness of one who can
give up the luxury of a death-bed repentance.
A Cardinal Sin, then, on the whole, may be regarded as a crude novel of a
common melodramatic type. What is painful about it is its style, which
is slipshod and careless. To describe a honeymoon as a _rare occurrence
in any one person's life_ is rather amusing. There is an American story
of a young couple who had to be married by telephone, as the bridegroom
lived in Nebraska and the bride in New York, and they had to go on
separate honeymoons; though, perhaps, this is not what Mr. Conway meant.
But what can be said for a sentence like this?--'The established
favourites in the musical world are never quite sure but the _new comer_
may not be _one among the many they have seen fail_'; or this?--'As it is
the fate of such a very small number of men to marry a prima donna, I
shall be doing little harm, _or be likely to change plans of life_, by
enumerating some of the disadvantages.' The nineteenth century may be a
prosaic age, but we fear that, if we are to judge by the general run of
novels, it is not an age of prose.
A Cardinal Sin. By Hugh Conway. (Remington and Co.)
TO READ OR NOT TO READ
(Pall Mall Gazette, February 8, 1886.)
Books, I fancy, may be conveniently divided into three classes:--
1. Books to read, such as Cicero's Letters, Suetonius, Vasari's Lives of
the Painters, the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, Sir John
Mandeville, Marco Polo, St. Simon's Memoirs, Mommsen, and (till we get a
better one) Grote's History of Greece.
2. Books to re-read, such as Plato and Keats: in the sphere of poetry,
the masters not the minstrels; in the sphere of philosophy, the seers not
the savants.
3. Books not to read at all, such as Thomson's Seasons, Rogers's Italy,
Paley's Evidences, all the Fathers except St. Augustine, all John Stuart
Mill except the essay on Liberty, all Voltaire's plays without any
exception, Butler's Analogy, Grant's Aristotle, Hume's England, Lewes's
History of Philosophy, all argumentative books and all books that try to
prove anything.
The third class is by far the most important. To tell people what to
read is, as a rule, either useless or harmful; for, the appreciation of
literature is a question of temperament not of teaching; to Parnassus
there is no primer and nothing that one can learn is ever worth learning.
But to tell people what not to read is a very different matter, and I
venture to recommend it as a mission to the University Extension Scheme.
Indeed, it is one that is eminently needed in this age of ours, an age
that reads so much, that it has no time to admire, and writes so much,
that it has no time to think. Whoever will select out of the chaos of
our modern curricula 'The Worst Hundred Books,' and publish a list of
them, will confer on the rising generation a real and lasting benefit.
After expressing these views I suppose I should not offer any suggestions
at all with regard to 'The Best Hundred Books,' but I hope you will allow
me the pleasure of being inconsistent, as I am anxious to put in a claim
for a book that has been strangely omitted by most of the excellent
judges who have contributed to your columns. I mean the Greek Anthology.
The beautiful poems contained in this collection seem to me to hold the
same position with regard to Greek dramatic literature as do the delicate
little figurines of Tanagra to the Phidian marbles, and to be quite as
necessary for the complete understanding of the Greek spirit.
I am also amazed to find that Edgar Allan Poe has been passed over.
Surely this marvellous lord of rhythmic expression deserves a place? If,
in order to make room for him, it be necessary to elbow out some one
else, I should elbow out Southey, and I think that Baudelaire might be
most advantageously substituted for Keble.
No doubt, both in the Curse of Kehama and in the Christian Year there are
poetic qualities of a certain kind, but absolute catholicity of taste is
not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all
schools of art.
TWELFTH NIGHT AT OXFORD
(Dramatic Review, February 20, 1886.)
On Saturday last the new theatre at Oxford was opened by the University
Dramatic Society. The play selected was Shakespeare's delightful comedy
of Twelfth Night, a play eminently suitable for performance by a club, as
it contains so many good acting parts. Shakespeare's tragedies may be
made for a single star, but his comedies are made for a galaxy of
constellations. In the first he deals with the pathos of the individual,
in the second he gives us a picture of life. The Oxford undergraduates,
then, are to be congratulated on the selection of the play, and the
result fully justified their choice. Mr. Bourchier as Festa the clown
was easy, graceful and joyous, as fanciful as his dress and as funny as
his bauble. The beautiful songs which Shakespeare has assigned to this
character were rendered by him as charmingly as they were dramatically.
To act singing is quite as great an art as to sing. Mr. Letchmere Stuart
was a delightful Sir Andrew, and gave much pleasure to the audience. One
may hate the villains of Shakespeare, but one cannot help loving his
fools. Mr. Macpherson was, perhaps, hardly equal to such an immortal
part as that of Sir Toby Belch, though there was much that was clever in
his performance. Mr. Lindsay threw new and unexpected light on the
character of Fabian, and Mr. Clark's Malvolio was a most remarkable piece
of acting. What a difficult part Malvolio is! Shakespeare undoubtedly
meant us to laugh all through at the pompous steward, and to join in the
practical joke upon him, and yet how impossible not to feel a good deal
of sympathy with him! Perhaps in this century we are too altruistic to
be really artistic. Hazlitt says somewhere that poetical justice is done
him in the uneasiness which Olivia suffers on account of her mistaken
attachment to Orsino, as her insensibility to the violence of the Duke's
passion is atoned for by the discovery of Viola's concealed love for him;
but it is difficult not to feel Malvolio's treatment is unnecessarily
harsh. Mr. Clark, however, gave a very clever rendering, full of subtle
touches. If I ventured on a bit of advice, which I feel most reluctant
to do, it would be to the effect that while one should always study the
method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The
manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is
absolutely universal. The first is personality, which no one should
copy; the second is perfection, which all should aim at. Miss Arnold was
a most sprightly Maria, and Miss Farmer a dignified Olivia; but as Viola
Mrs. Bewicke was hardly successful. Her manner was too boisterous and
her method too modern. Where there is violence there is no Viola, where
there is no illusion there is no Illyria, and where there is no style
there is no Shakespeare. Mr. Higgins looked the part of Sebastian to
perfection, and some of the minor characters were excellently played by
Mr. Adderley, Mr. King-Harman, Mr. Coningsby Disraeli and Lord Albert
Osborne. On the whole, the performance reflected much credit on the
Dramatic Society; indeed, its excellence was such that I am led to hope
that the University will some day have a theatre of its own, and that
proficiency in scene-painting will be regarded as a necessary
qualification for the Slade Professorship. On the stage, literature
returns to life and archaeology becomes art. A fine theatre is a temple
where all the muses may meet, a second Parnassus, and the dramatic
spirit, though she has long tarried at Cambridge, seems now to be
migrating to Oxford.
Thebes did her green unknowing youth engage;
She chooses Athens in her riper age.
THE LETTERS OF A GREAT WOMAN
(Pall Mall Gazette, March 6, 1886.)
Of the many collections of letters that have appeared in this century
few, if any, can rival for fascination of style and variety of incident
the letters of George Sand which have recently been translated into
English by M. Ledos de Beaufort. They extend over a space of more than
sixty years, from 1812 to 1876, in fact, and comprise the first letters
of Aurore Dupin, a child of eight years old, as well as the last letters
of George Sand, a woman of seventy-two. The very early letters, those of
the child and of the young married woman, possess, of course, merely a
psychological interest; but from 1831, the date of Madame Dudevant's
separation from her husband and her first entry into Paris life, the
interest becomes universal, and the literary and political history of
France is mirrored in every page.
For George Sand was an indefatigable correspondent; she longs in one of
her letters, it is true, for 'a planet where reading and writing are
absolutely unknown,' but still she had a real pleasure in letter-writing.
Her greatest delight was the communication of ideas, and she is always in
the heart of the battle. She discusses pauperism with Louis Napoleon in
his prison at Ham, and liberty with Armand Barbes in his dungeon at
Vincennes; she writes to Lamennais on philosophy, to Mazzini on
socialism, to Lamartine on democracy, and to Ledru-Rollin on justice. Her
letters reveal to us not merely the life of a great novelist but the soul
of a great woman, of a woman who was one with all the noblest movements
of her day and whose sympathy with humanity was boundless absolutely. For
the aristocracy of intellect she had always the deepest veneration, but
the democracy of suffering touched her more. She preached the
regeneration of mankind, not with the noisy ardour of the paid advocate,
but with the enthusiasm of the true evangelist. Of all the artists of
this century she was the most altruistic; she felt every one's
misfortunes except her own. Her faith never left her; to the end of her
life, as she tells us, she was able to believe without illusions. But
the people disappointed her a little. She saw that they followed persons
not principles, and for 'the great man theory' George Sand had no
respect. 'Proper names are the enemies of principles' is one of her
aphorisms.
So from 1850 her letters are more distinctly literary. She discusses
modern realism with Flaubert, and play-writing with Dumas fils; and
protests with passionate vehemence against the doctrine of L'art pour
l'art. 'Art for the sake of itself is an idle sentence,' she writes;
'art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is beautiful and good,
that is the creed I seek.' And in a delightful letter to M. Charles
Poncy she repeats the same idea very charmingly. 'People say that birds
sing for the sake of singing, but I doubt it. They sing their loves and
happiness, and in that they are in keeping with nature. But man must do
something more, and poets only sing in order to move people and to make
them think.' She wanted M. Poncy to be the poet of the people and, if
good advice were all that had been needed, he would certainly have been
the Burns of the workshop. She drew out a delightful scheme for a volume
to be called Songs of all Trades and saw the possibilities of making
handicrafts poetic. Perhaps she valued good intentions in art a little
too much, and she hardly understood that art for art's sake is not meant
to express the final cause of art but is merely a formula of creation;
but, as she herself had scaled Parnassus, we must not quarrel at her
bringing Proletarianism with her. For George Sand must be ranked among
our poetic geniuses. She regarded the novel as still within the domain
of poetry. Her heroes are not dead photographs; they are great
possibilities. Modern novels are dissections; hers are dreams. 'I make
popular types,' she writes, 'such as I do no longer see, but such as they
should and might be.' For realism, in M. Zola's acceptation of the word,
she had no admiration. Art to her was a mirror that transfigured truths
but did not represent realities. Hence she could not understand art
without personality. 'I am aware,' she writes to Flaubert, 'that you are
opposed to the exposition of personal doctrine in literature. Are you
right? Does not your opposition proceed rather from a want of conviction
than from a principle of aesthetics? If we have any philosophy in our
brain it must needs break forth in our writings. But you, as soon as you
handle literature, you seem anxious, I know not why, to be another man,
the one who must disappear, who annihilates himself and is no more. What
a singular mania! What a deficient taste! The worth of our productions
depends entirely on our own. Besides, if we withhold our own opinions
respecting the personages we create, we naturally leave the reader in
uncertainty as to the opinion he should himself form of them. That
amounts to wishing not to be understood, and the result of this is that
the reader gets weary of us and leaves us.'
She herself, however, may be said to have suffered from too dominant a
personality, and this was the reason of the failure of most of her plays.
Of the drama in the sense of disinterested presentation she had no idea,
and what is the strength and life-blood of her novels is the weakness of
her dramatic works. But in the main she was right. Art without
personality is impossible. And yet the aim of art is not to reveal
personality, but to please. This she hardly recognised in her aesthetics,
though she realised it in her work. On literary style she has some
excellent remarks. She dislikes the extravagances of the romantic school
and sees the beauty of simplicity. 'Simplicity,' she writes, 'is the
most difficult thing to secure in this world: it is the last limit of
experience and the last effort of genius.' She hated the slang and argot
of Paris life, and loved the words used by the peasants in the provinces.
'The provinces,' she remarks, 'preserve the tradition of the original
tongue and create but few new words. I feel much respect for the
language of the peasantry; in my estimation it is the more correct.'
She thought Flaubert too much preoccupied with the sense of form, and
makes these excellent observations to him--perhaps her best piece of
literary criticism. 'You consider the form as the aim, whereas it is but
the effect. Happy expressions are only the outcome of emotion and
emotion itself proceeds from a conviction. We are only moved by that
which we ardently believe in.' Literary schools she distrusted.
Individualism was to her the keystone of art as well as of life. 'Do not
belong to any school: do not imitate any model,' is her advice. Yet she
never encouraged eccentricity. 'Be correct,' she writes to Eugene
Pelletan, 'that is rarer than being eccentric, as the time goes. It is
much more common to please by bad taste than to receive the cross of
honour.'
On the whole, her literary advice is sound and healthy. She never
shrieks and she never sneers. She is the incarnation of good sense. And
the whole collection of her letters is a perfect treasure-house of
suggestions both on art and on politics. The manner of the translation
is often rather clumsy, but the matter is always so intensely interesting
that we can afford to be charitable.
Letters of George Sand. Translated and edited by Raphael Ledos de
Beaufort. (Ward and Downey.)
NEWS FROM PARNASSUS
(Pall Mall Gazette, April 12, 1886.)
That most delightful of all French critics, M. Edmond Scherer, has
recently stated in an article on Wordsworth that the English read far
more poetry than any other European nation. We sincerely hope this may
be true, not merely for the sake of the public but for the sake of the
poets also. It would be sad indeed if the many volumes of poems that are
every year published in London found no readers but the authors
themselves and the authors' relations; and the real philanthropist should
recognise it as part of his duties to buy every new book of verse that
appears. Sometimes, we acknowledge, he will be disappointed, often he
will be bored; still now and then he will be amply rewarded for his
reckless benevolence.
Mr. George Francis Armstrong's Stories of Wicklow, for instance, is most
pleasant reading. Mr. Armstrong is already well known as the author of
Ugone, King Saul and other dramas, and his latest volume shows that the
power and passion of his early work has not deserted him. Most modern
Irish poetry is purely political and deals with the wickedness of the
landlords and the Tories; but Mr. Armstrong sings of the picturesqueness
of Erin, not of its politics. He tells us very charmingly of the magic
of its mists and the melody of its colour, and draws a most captivating
picture of the peasants of the county Wicklow, whom he describes as
A kindly folk in vale and moor,
Unvexed with rancours, frank and free
In mood and manners--rich with poor
Attuned in happiest amity:
Where still the cottage door is wide,
The stranger welcomed at the hearth,
And pleased the humbler hearts confide
Still in the friend of gentler birth.
The most ambitious poem in the volume is De Verdun of Darragh. It is at
once lyrical and dramatic, and though its manner reminds us of Browning
and its method of Maud, still all through it there is a personal and
individual note. Mr. Armstrong also carefully observes the rules of
decorum, and, as he promises his readers in a preface, keeps quite clear
of 'the seas of sensual art.' In fact, an elderly maiden lady could read
this volume without a blush, a thrill, or even an emotion.
Dr. Goodchild does not possess Mr. Armstrong's literary touch, but his
Somnia Medici is distinguished by a remarkable quality of forcible and
direct expression. The poem that opens his volume, Myrrha, or A Dialogue
on Creeds, is quite as readable as a metrical dialogue on creeds could
possibly be; and The Organ Builder is a most romantic story charmingly
told. Dr. Goodchild seems to be an ardent disciple of Mr. Browning, and
though he may not be able to reproduce the virtues of his master, at
least he can echo his defects very cleverly. Such a verse as--
'Tis the subtle essayal
Of the Jews and Judas,
Such lying lisp
Might hail a will-o'-the-wisp,
A thin somebody--Theudas--
is an excellent example of low comedy in poetry. One of the best poems
in the book is The Ballad of Three Kingdoms. Indeed, if the form were
equal to the conception, it would be a delightful work of art; but Dr.
Goodchild, though he may be a master of metres, is not a master of music
yet. His verse is often harsh and rugged. On the whole, however, his
volume is clever and interesting.
Mr. Keene has not, we believe, a great reputation in England as yet, but
in India he seems to be well known. From a collection of criticisms
appended to his volume it appears that the Overland Mail has christened
him the Laureate of Hindostan and that the Allahabad Pioneer once
compared him to Keats. He is a pleasant rhymer, as rhymers go, and,
though we strongly object to his putting the Song of Solomon into bad
blank verse, still we are quite ready to admire his translations of the
Pervigilium Veneris and of Omar Khayyam. We wish he would not write
sonnets with fifteen lines. A fifteen-line sonnet is as bad a
monstrosity as a sonnet in dialogue. The volume has the merit of being
very small, and contains many stanzas quite suitable for valentines.
Finally we come to Procris and Other Poems, by Mr. W. G. Hole. Mr. Hole
is apparently a very young writer. His work, at least, is full of
crudities, his syntax is defective, and his grammar is questionable. And
yet, when all is said, in the one poem of Procris it is easy to recognise
the true poetic ring. Elsewhere the volume is amateurish and weak. The
Spanish Main was suggested by a leader in the Daily Telegraph, and bears
all the traces of its lurid origin. Sir Jocellyn's Trust is a sort of
pseudo-Tennysonian idyll in which the damozel says to her gallant
rescuer, 'Come, come, Sir Knight, I catch my death of cold,' and
recompenses him with
What noble minds
Regard the first reward,--an orphan's thanks.
Nunc Dimittis is dull and The Wandering Jew dreadful; but Procris is a
beautiful poem. The richness and variety of its metaphors, the music of
its lines, the fine opulence of its imagery, all seem to point to a new
poet. Faults, it is true, there are in abundance; but they are faults
that come from want of trouble, not from want of taste. Mr. Hole shows
often a rare and exquisite sense of beauty and a marvellous power of
poetic vision, and if he will cultivate the technique of his craft a
little more we have no doubt but that he will some day give us work
worthy to endure. It is true that there is more promise than perfection
in his verse at present, yet it is a promise that seems likely to be
fulfilled.
(1) Stories of Wicklow. By George Francis Armstrong, M.A. (Longmans,
Green and Co.)
(2) Somnia Medici. By John A. Goodchild. Second Series. (Kegan Paul.)
(3) Verses: Translated and Original. By H. E. Keene. (W. H. Allen and
Co.)
(4) Procris and Other Poems. By W. G. Hole. (Kegan Paul.)
SOME NOVELS
(Pall Mall Gazette, April 14, 1886.)
After a careful perusal of 'Twixt Love and Duty, by Mr. Tighe Hopkins, we
confess ourselves unable to inform anxious inquirers who it is that is
thus sandwiched, and how he (or she) got into so unpleasant a
predicament. The curious reader with a taste for enigmas may be advised
to find out for himself--if he can. Even if he be unsuccessful, his
trouble will be repaid by the pleasant writing and clever character
drawing of Mr. Hopkins's tale. The plot is less praiseworthy. The whole
Madeira episode seems to lead up to this dilemma, and after all it comes
to nothing. We brace up our nerves for a tragedy and are treated instead
to the mildest of marivaudage--which is disappointing. In conclusion,
one word of advice to Mr. Hopkins: let him refrain from apostrophising
his characters after this fashion: 'Oh, Gilbert Reade, what are you about
that you dally with this golden chance?' and so forth. This is one of
the worst mannerisms of a bygone generation of story tellers.
Mr. Gallenga has written, as he says, 'a tale without a murder,' but
having put a pistol-ball through his hero's chest and left him alive and
hearty notwithstanding, he cannot be said to have produced a tale without
a miracle. His heroine, too, if we may judge by his descriptions of her,
is 'all a wonder and a wild desire.' At the age of seventeen she 'was
one of the Great Maker's masterpieces . . . a living likeness of the
Dresden Madonna.' One rather shudders to think of what she may become at
forty, but this is an impertinent prying into futurity. She hails from
'Maryland, my Maryland!' and has 'received a careful, if not a superior,
education.' Need we add that she marries the heir to an earldom who, as
aforesaid, has had himself perforated by a pistol-bullet on her behalf?
Mr. Gallenga's division of this book into acts and scenes is not
justified by anything specially dramatic either in its structure or its
method. The dialogue, in truth, is somewhat stilted. Nevertheless, its
first-hand sketches of Roman society are not without interest, and one or
two characters seem to be drawn from nature.
The Life's Mistake which forms the theme of Mrs. Lovett Cameron's two
volumes is not a mistake after all, but results in unmixed felicity; and
as it is brought about by fraud on the part of the hero, this conclusion
is not as moral as it might be. For the rest, the tale is a very
familiar one. Its personages are the embarrassed squire with his
charming daughter, the wealthy and amorous mortgagee, and the sailor
lover who is either supposed to be drowned or falsely represented to be
fickle--in Mrs. Cameron's tale he is both in succession. When we add
that there is a stanza from Byron on the title-page and a poetical
quotation at the beginning of each chapter, we have possessed the
discerning reader of all necessary information both as to the matter and
the manner of Mrs. Cameron's performance.