fiercely contentious about it. Let us remember Dr. Watts, and be
pacified. _Our_ little hands were never made to tear each other’s eyes.
It is possible surely to plead for female suffrage without saying
spiteful and sarcastic things about men, especially as it is not their
opposition, but the listless indifference of our own sex, which stands
between the eager advocate and her vote. There is still less propriety
in permitting this angry sentiment to bias our conceptions of morality,
and we pay but a poor tribute to woman in assuming that she should be
privileged to sin. The damnation of Faust and the apotheosis of Margaret
make one of the most effective of stage illusions; but it is not a safe
guide to practical rectitude, and we might do well to remember that it
is not Goethe’s final solution of the problem. In our vehement reaction
from the stringent rules of the past, we are now assuming that the seven
deadly sins grow less malignant in woman’s hands, and that she can shift
the burden of moral responsibility to the shoulders of that arch
offender, man. The shameful evidence of the courts is bandied about in
social circles, and made the subject-matter of denunciatory rhetoric on
the part of those whom self-respect should silence. It does not
strengthen one’s confidence in the future, to see the present lack of
moderation and sanity in people who are going to reform the world. When
wives and mothers meet to denounce with bitter eloquence the immorality
of men, and then ask contributions for a monument to Mary
Wollstonecraft, “who suffered social martyrdom in England a hundred
years ago, for advocating the rights of woman,” one feels a little
puzzled as to the mental attitude of these impetuous creatures. A sense
of humor would save us from many discouraging outbreaks, but humor is
not a common attribute of reformers. It is the peace-maker of the world,
and this is the day of contentions.
THE PASSING OF THE ESSAY.
It is the curious custom of modern men of letters to talk to the world a
great deal about their work; to explain its conditions, to uphold its
value, to protest against adverse criticism, and to interpret the needs
and aspirations of mankind through the narrow medium of their own
resources. A good many years have passed since Mr. Arnold noticed the
growing tendency to express the very ordinary desires of very ordinary
people by such imposing phrases as “laws of human progress” and “edicts
of the national mind.” To-day, if a new story or a new play meets with
unusual approbation, it is at once attributed to some sudden mental
development of society, to some distinct change in our methods of
regarding existence. We are assured without hesitation that all stories
and all plays in the near future will be built up upon these favored
models.
To a few of us, perhaps, such prophetic voices have but a dismal ring.
We listen to their repeated cry, “The old order passeth away,” and we
are sorry in our hearts, having loved it well for years, and feeling no
absolute confidence in its successor. Then some fine afternoon we look
abroad, and are amazed to see so much of the old order still remaining,
and apparently disinclined to pass away, even when it is told plainly to
go. How many times have we been warned that poetry is shaking off its
shackles, and that rhyme and rhythm have had their little day? Yet now,
as in the past, poets are dancing cheerfully in fetters, with a
harmonious sound which is most agreeable to our ears. How many times
have we been told that Sir Walter Scott’s novels are dead, stone dead;
that their grave has been dug, and their epitaph written? Yet new and
beautiful editions are following each other so rapidly from the press,
that the most ardent enthusiast wonders wistfully who are the happy men
with money enough to buy them. How many times have we been assured that
realistic and psychological fiction has supplanted its gay brother of
romance? Yet never was there a day when writers of romantic stories
sprang so rapidly and so easily into fame. Stevenson leads the line,
but Conan Doyle and Stanley Weyman follow close behind; while as for Mr.
Rider Haggard, he is a problem which defies any reasonable solution. The
fabulous prices paid by syndicates for his tales, the thousands of
readers who wait breathlessly from week to week for the carefully
doled-out chapters, the humiliating fact that “She” is as well known
throughout two continents as “Robert Elsmere,”--these uncontrovertible
witnesses of success would seem to indicate that what people really
hunger for is not realism, nor sober truthfulness, but the maddest and
wildest impossibilities which the human brain is capable of conceiving.
And so when I am told, among other prophetic items, that the “light
essay” is passing rapidly away, and that, in view of its approaching
death-bed, it cannot be safely recommended as “a good opening for
enterprise,” I am fain, before acquiescing gloomily in such a decree, to
take heart of grace, and look a little around me. It is discouraging,
doubtless, for the essayist to be suddenly informed that his work is _in
articulo mortis_. He feels as a carpenter might feel were he told that
chairs and doors and tables are going out of fashion, and that he had
better turn his attention to mining engineering, or a new food for
infants. Perhaps he endeavors to explain that a great many chairs were
sold in the past week, that they are not without utility, and that they
seem to him as much in favor as ever. Such feeble arguments meet with no
response. Furniture, he is assured,--on the authority of the
speaker,--is distinctly out of date. The spirit of the time calls for
something different, and the “best business talent”--delightful phrase,
and equally applicable to a window-frame or an epic--is moving in
another direction. This is what Mr. Lowell used to call the conclusive
style of judgment, “which consists simply in belonging to the other
parish;” but parish boundaries are the same convincing things now that
they were forty years ago.
Is the essay, then, in such immediate and distressing danger? Is it
unwritten, unpublished, or unread? Just ten years have passed since a
well-printed little book was offered carelessly to the great English
public. It was anonymous. It was hampered by a Latin title which
attracted the few and repelled the many. It contained seven of the very
lightest essays that ever glided into print. It grappled with no
problems, social or spiritual; it touched but one of the vital issues of
the day. It was not serious, and it was not written with any very
definite view, save to give entertainment and pleasure to its readers.
By all the laws of modern mentors, it should have been consigned to
speedy and merited oblivion. Yet what happened? I chanced to see that
book within a few months of its publication, and sent at once to London
for a copy, thinking to easily secure a first edition. I received a
fourth, and, with it, the comforting assurance that the first was
already commanding a heavy premium. In another week the American
reprints of “Obiter Dicta” lay on all the book counters of our land. The
author’s name was given to the world. A second volume of essays followed
the first; a third, the second; a fourth, the third. The last are so
exceedingly light as to be little more than brief notices and reviews.
All have sold well, and Mr. Birrell has established--surely with no
great effort--his reputation as a man of letters. Editors of magazines
are glad to print his work; readers of magazines are glad to see it;
newspapers are delighted when they have any personal gossip about the
author to tell a curious world. This is what “the best business talent”
must call success, for these are the tests by which it is accustomed to
judge. The light essay has a great deal of hardihood to flaunt and
flourish in this shameless manner, when it has been severely warned that
it is not in accord with the spirit of the age, and that its day is on
the wane.
It is curious, too, to see how new and charming editions of “Virginibus
Puerisque” meet with a ready sale. Mr. Stevenson has done better work
than in this volume of scattered papers, which are more suggestive than
satisfactory; yet there are always readers ready to exult over the
valorous “Admirals,” or dream away a glad half-hour to the seductive
music of “Pan’s Pipes.” Mr. Lang’s “Essays in Little” and “Letters to
Dead Authors” have reached thousands of people who have never read his
admirable translations from the Greek. Mr. Pater’s essays--which,
however, are not light--are far better known than his beautiful “Marius
the Epicurean.” Lamb’s “Elia” is more widely read than are his letters,
though it would seem a heart-breaking matter to choose between them.
Hazlitt’s essays are still rich mines of pleasure, as well as fine
correctives for much modern nonsense. The first series of Mr. Arnold’s
“Essays in Criticism” remains his most popular book, and the one which
has done more than all the rest to show the great half-educated public
what is meant by distinction of mind. Indeed, there never was a day when
by-roads to culture were more diligently sought for than now by people
disinclined for long travel or much toil, and the essay is the smoothest
little path which runs in that direction. It offers no instruction, save
through the medium of enjoyment, and one saunters lazily along with a
charming unconsciousness of effort. Great results are not to be gained
in this fashion, but it should sometimes be play-hour for us all.
Moreover, there are still readers keenly alive to the pleasure which
literary art can give; and the essayists, from Addison down to Mr.
Arnold and Mr. Pater, have recognized the value of form, the powerful
and persuasive eloquence of style. Consequently, an appreciation of the
essay is the natural result of reading it. Like virtue, it is its own
reward. “Culture,” says Mr. Addington Symonds, “makes a man to be
something. It does not teach him to create anything.” Most of us in this
busy world are far more interested in what we can learn to do than in
what we can hope to become; but it may be that those who content
themselves with strengthening their own faculties, and broadening their
own sympathies for all that is finest and best, are of greater service
to their tired and downcast neighbors than are the unwearied toilers who
urge us so relentlessly to the field.
A few critics of an especially judicial turn are wont to assure us now
and then that the essay ended with Emerson, or with Sainte-Beuve, or
with Addison, or with Montaigne,--a more remote date than this being
inaccessible, unless, like Eve in the old riddle, it died before it was
born. Montaigne is commonly selected as the idol of this exclusive
worship. “I don’t care for any essayist later than Montaigne.” It has a
classic sound, and the same air of intellectual discrimination as
another very popular remark: “I don’t read any modern novelist, except
George Meredith.” Hearing these verdicts, one is tempted to say, with
Marianne Dashwood, “This is admiration of a very particular kind.” To
minds of a more commonplace order, it would seem that a love for
Montaigne should lead insensibly to an appreciation of Sainte-Beuve;
that an appreciation of Sainte-Beuve awakens in turn a sympathy for Mr.
Matthew Arnold; that a sympathy for Mr. Arnold paves the way to a keen
enjoyment of Mr. Emerson or Mr. Pater. It is a linked chain, and, though
all parts are not of equal strength and beauty, all are of service to
the whole. “Let neither the peculiar quality of anything nor its value
escape thee,” counsels Marcus Aurelius; and if we seek our profit
wherever it may be found, we insensibly acquire that which is needful
for our growth. Under any circumstances, it is seldom wise to confuse
the preferences or prejudices of a portion of mankind with the
irresistible progress of the ages. Rhymes may go, but they are with us
still. Romantic fiction may be submerged, but at present it is well
above water. The essay may die, but just now it possesses a lively and
encouraging vitality. Whether we regard it as a means of culture or as a
field for the “best business talent,” we are fain to remark, in the
words of Sancho Panza, “This youth, considering his weak state, hath
left in him an amazing power of speech.”