PART I

William Fishburne, Charles Aldarondo, and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team.

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

BY I. ZANGWILL

Author Of "The Master," "Children Of The Ghetto" Etc., Etc.

* * * * *

TO YOU

* * * * *

_NOTE_

_This book is a selection, slightly revised, from my miscellaneous work

during the last four or five years, and the title is that under which the

bulk of it has appeared, month by month, in the "Pall Mall Magazine." In

selecting, I have omitted those pieces which hang upon other people's

books, plays, or pictures--a process of exclusion which, while giving

unity to a possible collection of my critical writings in another volume,

leaves the first selection exclusively egoistic._

_I.Z._

* * * * *

CONTENTS

I

GOSSIPS AND FANTASIES

I. A VISION OF THE BURDEN OF MAN: WHICH MAY SERVE TO INTRODUCE THE

INTRODUCTION

II. TUNING UP

III. ART IN ENGLAND

IV. BOHEMIA AND VERLAINE

V. THE INDESTRUCTIBLES

VI. CONCERNING GENERAL ELECTIONS

VII. THE REALISTIC NOVEL

VIII. IN DEFENCE OF GAMBLING

IX. TRULY RURAL

X. OPINIONS OF THE YOUNG FOGEY

XI. CRITICS AND PEOPLE

XII. TABLE-TALK

XIII. THE ABOLITION OF MONEY

XIV. MODERN MYTH-MAKING

XV. THE PHILOSOPHY OF TOPSY-TURVYDOM

XVI. GHOST-STORIES

XVII. A THEORY OF TABLE-TURNING

XVIII. SOCIETIES TO FOUND

XIX. INDECENCY ON THE ENGLISH STAGE

XX. LOVE IN LIFE AND LITERATURE

XXI. DEATH AND MARRIAGE

XXII. THE CHOICE OF PARENTS

XXIII. PATER AND PROSE

XXIV. THE INFLUENCE OF NAMES

XXV. AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS

XXVI. THE PENALTIES OF FAME

XXVII. ON FINISHING A BOOK

II

HERE, THERE, AND SOMEWHERE ELSE: Philosophic Excursions

I. ABERDEEN

II. ANTWERP

III. BROADSTAIRS AND RAMSGATE

IV. BUDAPEST

V. CHICAGO

VI. EDINBURGH

VII. FIESOLE AND FLORENCE

VIII. GLASGOW

IX. HASLEMERE

X. PARIS

XL SLAPTON SANDS

XII. VENICE

XIII. VENTNOR

XIV. SOMEWHERE ELSE

III

AFTERTHOUGHTS: A Bundle of Brevities

MOONSHINE

CAPITAL

CREDIT

THE SMALL BOY

A DAY IN TOWN

THE PROFESSION OF CHARITY

THE PRIVILEGES OF POVERTY

SALVATION FOR THE SERAPHIM

TRUTH--LOCAL AND TEMPORAL

THE CREED OF DESPAIR

SOCIAL BUGBEARS

MARTYRS

THE LONDON SEASON

THE ACADEMY

PORTRAITS OF GENTLEMEN

PHOTOGRAPHY AND REALISM

THE GREAT UNHUNG

THE ABOLITION OF CATALOGUES

THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT

PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

LAY CONFESSORS

Q. E. D. NOVELS

THE MOUSE WHO DIED

THEOLOGIC NOVELS

MUDIE MEASURE

THE PROP OF LETTERS

THE LATTER-DAY POET

AN ATTACK OF ALLITERATION

THE HUMOROUS

THE DISCOUNT FARCE

THE FRANCHISE FARCE

THE MODERN WAR FARCE

FIREWORKS

TIME'S FORELOCK

DIARIES

"LOOKING BACKWARD"

LONG LIVES

VIVE LA MORT!

MEN AND BOOKMEN

JAMES I. ON TOBACCO

A COUNTERBLAST TO JAMES I.

VALEDICTORY

* * * * *

PART I

GOSSIPS AND FANTASIES

I

A VISION OF THE BURDEN OF MAN

And it came to pass that my soul was vexed with the problems of life, so

that I could not sleep. So I opened a book by a lady novelist, and fell

to reading therein. And of a sudden I looked up, and lo! a great host of

women filled the chamber, which had become as the Albert Hall for

magnitude--women of all complexions, countries, times, ages, and sexes.

Some were bewitching and beautiful, some wan and flat-breasted, some

elegant and stately, some ugly and squat, some plain and whitewashed, and

some painted and decorated; women in silk gowns, and women in divided

skirts, and women in widows' weeds, and women in knickerbockers, and

women in ulsters, and women in furs, and women in crinolines, and women

in tights, and women in rags; but every woman of them all in tears. The

great chamber was full of a mighty babel; shouts and ululations, groans

and moans, weeping and wailing and gnashing of false and genuine teeth,

and tearing of hair both artificial and natural; and therewith the

flutter of a myriad fans, and the rustle of a million powder-puffs. And

the air reeked with a thousand indescribable scents--patchouli and attar

of roses and cherry blossom, and the heavy odours of hair-oil and dyes

and cosmetics and patent medicines innumerable.

Now when the women perceived me on my reading-chair in their midst, the

shrill babel swelled to a savage thunder of menace, so that I deemed they

were wroth with me for intruding upon them in mine own house; but as mine

ear grew accustomed to the babel of tongues, I became aware of the true

import of their ejaculations.

"O son of man!" they cried, in various voices: "thy cruel reign is over,

thy long tyranny is done; thou hast glutted thyself with victims, thou

hast got drunken on our hearts' blood, we have made sport for thee in our

blindness. But the Light is come at last, the slow night has budded into

the rose of dawn, the masculine monster is in his death-throes, the

kingdom of justice is at hand, the Doll's House has been condemned by the

sanitary inspector."

I strove to deprecate their wrath, but my voice was as the twitter of a

sparrow in a hurricane. At length I ruffled my long hair to a leonine

mane, and seated myself at the piano. And lo! straightway there fell a

deep silence--you could have heard a hairpin drop.

"What would you have me do, O daughters of Eve?" I cried. "What is my

sin? what my iniquity?" Then the clamour recommenced with tenfold

violence, disappointment at the loss of a free performance augmenting

their anger.

"Give me a husband," shrieked one.

"Give me a profession," shrieked another.

"Give me a divorce," shrieked a third.

"Give me free union," shrieked a fourth.

"Give me an income," shrieked a fifth.

"Give me my deceased sister's husband," shrieked a sixth.

"Give me my divorced husband's children," shrieked a seventh.

"Give me the right to paint from the nude in the Academy schools,"

shrieked an eighth.

"Give me an Oxford degree," shrieked a ninth.

"Give me a cigar," shrieked a tenth.

"Give me a vote," shrieked an eleventh.

"Give me a pair of trousers," shrieked a twelfth.

"Give me a seat in the House," shrieked a thirteenth.

"Daughters of the horse-leech," I made answer, taking advantage of a

momentary lull, "I am not in a position to give away any of these things.

You had better ask at the Stores." But the tempest out-thundered me.

"I want to ride bareback in the Row in tights and spangles at 1 p. m. on

Sundays," shrieked a soberly clad suburban lady, who sported a

wedding-ring. "I want to move the world with my pen or the point of my

toe; I want to write, dance, sing, act, paint, sculpt, fence, row, ride,

swim, hunt, shoot, fish, love all men from young rustic farmers to old

town _roués_, lead the Commons, keep a salon, a restaurant, and a

zoological garden, row a boat in boy's costume, with a tenor by moonlight

alone, and deluge Europe and Asia with blood shed for my intoxicating

beauty. I am primeval, savage, unlicensed, unchartered, unfathomable,

unpetticoated, tumultuous, inexpressible, irrepressible, overpowering,

crude, mordant, pugnacious, polyandrous, sensual, fiery, chaste, modest,

married, and misunderstood."

"But, madam," I remarked--for in her excitement she approached within

earshot of me--"I understand thee quite well, and I really am not

responsible for thy emotions." Her literary style beguiled me into the

responsive archaicism of the second person singular.

"Coward!" she snapped. "Coward and satyr! For centuries thou hast

trampled upon my sisters, and desecrated womanhood."

"I beg thy pardon," I rejoined mildly.

"Thou dost not deserve it," she interrupted.

"Thou art substituting hysteria for history," I went on. "I was not born

yesterday, but I have only scored a few years more than a quarter of one

century, and seeing that my own mother was a woman, I must refuse to be

held accountable for the position of the sex."

"Sophist!" she shrieked. "It is thy apathy and selfishness that

perpetuate the evil."

Then I bethought me of my long vigils of work and thought, the slow,

bitter years in which I "ate my bread with tears, and sat weeping on my

bed," and I remembered that some of those tears were for the sorrows of

that very sex which was now accusing me of organised injustice. But I

replied gently: "I am no tyrant; I am a simple, peaceful citizen, and it

is as much as I can do to earn my bread and the bread of some of thy sex.

Life is hard enough for both sexes, without setting one against the

other. We are both the outcome of the same great forces, and both of us

have our special selfishnesses, advantages, and drawbacks. If there is

any cruelty, it is Nature's handiwork, not man's. So far from trampling

on womanhood, we have let a woman reign over us for more than half a

century. We worship womanhood, we have celebrated woman in song, picture,

and poem, and half civilisation has adored the Madonna. Let us have

woman's point of view and the truth about her psychology, by all means.

But beware lest she provoke us too far. The _Ewigweibliche_ has become

too literal a fact, and in our reaction against this everlasting woman

question we shall develop in unexpected directions. Her cry for equal

purity will but end in the formal institution of the polygamy of the

Orient--"

As I spoke the figure before me appeared to be undergoing a

transformation, and, ere I had finished, I perceived I was talking to an

angry, seedy man in a red muffler.

"Thee keeps down the proletariat," he interrupted venomously. "Thee lives

on the sweat of his brow, while thee fattens at ease. Thee plants thy

foot on his neck."

"Do I?" I exclaimed, lifting up my foot involuntarily.

Mistaking the motion, he disappeared, and in his stead I saw a withered

old pauper with the Victoria Cross on his breast. "I went to the mouth of

hell for thee," he said, with large reproachful eyes; "and thou leavest

me to rot in the workhouse."

"I am awfully sorry!" I said. "I never heard of thee. It is the nation--"

"The nation!" he cried scornfully. "_Thou_ art the nation; the nation is

only a collection of individuals. Thou art responsible. Thou art the

man."

"Thou art the man," echoed a thousand voices: "Society is only an

abstraction." And, looking round, I saw, to my horror, that the women had

quite disappeared, and their places were filled by men of all

complexions, countries, times, ages, and sexes.

"I died in the streets," shouted an old cripple in the background--"round

the corner from thy house, in thy wealthy parish--I died of starvation in

this nineteenth century of the Christian era, and a generation after

Dickens's 'Christmas Carol.'"

"If I had only known!" I murmured, while my eyes grew moist. "Why didst

thou not come to me?"

"I was too proud to beg," he answered. "The really poor never beg."

"Then how am I responsible?" I retorted.

"How art thou responsible?" cried the voices indignantly; and one

dominating the rest added: "I want work and can't get it. Dost thou call

thyself civilised?"

"Civilised?" echoed a weedy young man scornfully. "I am a genius, yet I

have had nothing to eat all day. Thy congeners killed Keats and

Chatterton, and when I am dead thou wilt be sorry for what thou hast not

done."

"But hast thou published anything?" I asked.

"How could I publish?" he replied, indignantly.

"Then how could I be aware of thee?" I inquired.

"But my great-grandfather _did_ publish," said another. "Thou goest into

ecstacies over him, and his books have sold by tens of thousands; but me

thou leavest pensionless, to earn my living as a cooper. Bah!"

"And thou didst put _my_ father in prison," said another, "for publishing

the works of a Continental novelist; but when the novelist himself comes

here, thou puttest him in the place of honour."

I was fast growing overwhelmed with shame.

"Where is thy patriotism! Thou art letting some of the most unique

British birds become extinct!" "Yes, and thou lettest Christmas cards be

made in Germany, and thou deridest Whistler, and refusest to read Dod

Grile, and thou lettest books be published with the sheets pinned instead

of sewn. And the way thou neglectest Coleridge's grave----"

"Coleridge's grave?" interrupted a sad-eyed enthusiast. "Why, thou hast

put no stone at all to mark where James Thomson lies!"

"Thou Hun, thou Vandal!" shrieked a fresh contingent of voices in

defiance of the late Professor Freeman. "Thou hast allowed the Emanuel

Hospital to be knocked down, thou hast whitewashed the oaken ceiling of

King Charles's room at Dartmouth, and threatened to destroy the view from

Richmond Hill. Thou hast smashed cathedral windows, or scratched thy name

on them, hast pulled down Roman walls, and allowed commons to be

inclosed. Thou coverest the Lake District with advertisements of pills,

and the blue heaven itself with sky-signs; and in thy passion for cheap

and nasty pictorial journalism thou art allowing the art of

wood-engraving to die out, even as thou acceptest photogravures instead

of etchings."

I cowered before their wrath, while renewed cries of "Thou art

responsible! Thou! Thou!" resounded from all sides.

"A pretty Christian _thou_ art!" exclaimed another voice in unthinking

vituperation. "Thou decimatest savage tribes with rum and Maxim guns,

thou makest money by corrupting the East with opium. Thou allowest the

Armenians to be done to death, and thou wilt not put a stop to

child-marriages in India."

"But for thee I should have been alive to-day," broke in a venerable

spirit hovering near the ceiling. "If thou hadst refused to sell poison

except in specially shaped bottles----"

"What canst thou expect of a man who allows anybody to carry firearms?"

interrupted another voice.

"Or who fills his newspaper with divorce cases?"

"Is it any wonder the rising generation is cynical, and the young maiden

of fifteen has ceased to be bashful?"

"Shame on thee!" hissed the chorus, and advanced upon me so threateningly

that I seized my hat and rushed from the room. But a burly being with a

Blue Book blocked my way.

"Where didst thou get that hat?" he cried. "Doubtless from some sweating

establishment. And those clothes; didst thou investigate where they were

made? didst thou inquire how much thy tailor paid his hands? didst thou

engage an accountant to examine his books?"

"I--I am so busy," I stammered feebly.

"Shuffler! How knowest thou thou art not spreading to the world the germs

of scarlet fever and typhoid picked up in the sweaters' dens?"

"What cares _he_?" cried a tall, thin man, with a slight stoop and gold

spectacles. "Does he not poison the air every day with the smoke of his

coal fires?"

"Pison the air!" repeated a battered, blear-eyed reprobate. "He pisoned

my soul. He ruined me with promiskus charity. Whenever I was stoney-broke

'e give me doles in aid, 'e did. 'E wos werry bad to me, 'e wos. 'E

destroyed my self-respeck, druv me to drink, broke up my home, and druv

my darters on the streets."

"This is what comes of undisciplined compassion," observed the

gold-spectacled gentleman, glowering at me. "The integrity and virtue of

a whole family sacrificed to the gratification of thy altruistic

emotions!"

"Stand out of the way!" I cried to the burly man; "I wish to leave my own

house."

"And carry thy rudeness abroad?" he retorted indignantly. "Perchance thou

wouldst like to go to the Continent, and swagger through Europe clad in

thy loud-patterned checks and thine insular self-sufficiency."

I tried to move him out of the way by brute force, and we wrestled, and

he threw me. I heard myself strike the floor with a thud.

Rubbing my eyes, instead of my back, I discovered that I was safe in my

reading-chair, and that it was the lady novelist's novel that had made

the noise. I picked it up, but I still seemed to see the reproachful eyes

of a thousand tormentors, and hear their objurgations. Yet I had none of

the emotions of Scrooge, no prickings of conscience, no ferment of good

resolutions. Instead, I felt a wave of bitterness and indignation

flooding my soul.

"I will _not_ be responsible for the universe!" I cried to the ceiling.

"I am sick of the woman question, and the problem of man makes my gorge

rise. Is there one question in the world that can really be settled? No,

not one, except by superficial thinkers. Just as the comprehensive

explanation of 'the flower in the crannied wall' is the explanation of

the whole universe, so every question is but a thin layer of ice over

infinite depths. You may touch it lightly, you may skate over it; but

press it at all, and you sink into bottomless abysses. The simplest

interrogation is a doorway to chaos, to endless perspectives of winding

paths perpetually turning upon themselves in a blind maze. Suppose one is

besought to sign a petition against capital punishment. A really

conscientious and logical person, pursuing truth after the manner

recommended by Descartes, and professed by Huxley, could not settle this

question for himself without going into the endless question of Free-will

_versus_ Necessity, and studying the various systems of philosophy and

ethics. Murder may be due to insane impulse: Insanity must therefore be

studied. Moreover, ought not hanging to be abolished in cases of murder

and reserved for more noxious crimes, such as those of fraudulent

directors? This opens up new perspectives and new lines of study. The

whole theory of Punishment would also have to be gone into: should it be

restrictive, or revengeful, or reformative? (See Aristotle, Bentham,

Owen, etc.) Incidentally great tracts of the science of Psychology are

involved. And what right have we to interfere with our fellow-creatures

at all? This opens up the vast domains of Law and Government, and

requires the perusal of Montesquieu, Bodin, Rousseau, Mill, etc., etc.

Sociology would also be called in to determine the beneficent or

maleficent influence of the death-punishment upon the popular mind; and

statistics would be required to trace the operation of the systems of

punishment in various countries. History would be consulted to the same

effect. The sanctity of human life being a religious dogma, the religions

of the world would have to be studied, to see under what conditions it

has been thought permissible to destroy life. One ought not to rely on

translations: Confucius should be read in Chinese, the Koran in Arabic,

and the few years spent in the acquisition of Persian would be rewarded

by a first-hand familiarity with the Zend Avesta. The Old Testament

enjoins capital punishment. On what grounds, then, if one is leaning the

other way, may a text be set aside that seems to settle the matter

positively? Here comes in the vast army of Bible commentators and

theologians. But perhaps the text is of late origin, interpolated. The

Dutch and German savants rise in their might, with their ingenious

theories and microscopic scholarship. But there are other scientists who

bid us not heed the Bible at all, because it contradicts the latest

editions of their primers. Is, then, science strictly accurate? To answer

this you must have a thorough acquaintance with biology, geology,

astronomy, besides deciding for yourself between the conflicting views at

nearly every point. By the time you have made up your mind as to whether

capital punishment should be abolished, it has passed out of the

statute-book, and you are dead, or mad, or murdered.

"But were this the only question a man has to settle in his short span of

years, he might cheerfully engage in its solution. But life bristles with

a hundred questions equally capital, and with a thousand-and-one minor

problems on which he is expected to have an opinion, and about which he

is asked at one time or other, if only at dinner."

At this moment the Poet who shares my chambers came in--later than he

should have done--and interrupted my soliloquy. But I was still hot, and

enlisted his interest in my vision and my apologia, and began drawing up

a list of the questions, in which after a while he became so interested

that he started adding to it. Hours flew like minutes, and only the

splitting headache we both brought upon ourselves drove us to desist.

Here is our first rough list of the questions that confront the modern

man--a disorderly, deficient, and tautological list, no doubt, to which

any reader can add many hundred more.

VEXED QUESTIONS

Queen Mary and Bothwell. Shakespeare and Bacon. Correct

transliteration of Greek; pronunciation of Latin. Sunday opening of

museums; of theatres. The English Sunday; Bank Holiday. Darwinism. Is

there spontaneous creation? or spontaneous combustion? The germ

theory; Pasteur's cures; Mattei's cures; Virchow's cell theory. Unity

of Homer; of the Bible. Dickens v. Thackeray. Shall we ever fly? or

steer balloons? The credit system; the discount system.

Impressionism, decadence, Japanese art, the _plein air_ school.

Realism _v._ romance; Gothic _v._ Greek art. Russian fiction, Dutch,

Bulgarian, Norwegian, American, etc., etc.: opinion of every novel

ever written, of every school, in every language (you must read them

in the original); ditto of every opera and piece of music, with

supplementary opinions about every vocalist and performer; ditto of

every play, with supplementary opinions about every actor, dancer,

etc.; ditto of every poem; ditto of every picture ever painted, with

estimates of every artist in every one of his manners at every stage

of his development and decisions as to which pictures are not

genuine; also of every critic of literature, drama, art, and music

(in all of which departments certain names are equal to an appalling

plexus of questions--Wagner, Ibsen, Meredith, Browning, Comte,

Goethe, Shakespeare, Dante, Degas, Rousseau, Tolstoï, Maeterlinck,

Strindberg, Zola, Whistler, Leopardi, Emerson, Carlyle, Swedenborg,

Rabelais). Socialism, its various schools, its past and its future;

Anarchism: bombs. Labour questions: the Eight Hours' Day, the

Unemployed, the Living Wage, etc., etc. Mr. Gladstone's career. Shall

members of Parliament be paid? Chamberlain's position; ditto for

every statesman in every country, to-day and in all past ages. South

Africa, Rhodes, Captain Jim. The English girl _v._ the French or the

American. Invidious comparisons of every people from every point of

view, physical, moral, intellectual, and aesthetic. Vizetelly.

Vivisection. First love _v._ later love; French marriage system _v._

the English. The corrupt choruses in the Greek dramas (also in modern

burlesque--with the question of the Church and Stage Guild, Zaeo's

back, the County Council, etc.). How to make London beautiful. Fogs.

Bi-metallism. Secondary Education. Volunteer or conscript? Anonymity

in journalism. Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism:

their mutual superiorities, their past and their future. Plato,

Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and all philosophers and philosophies. The

Independent Theatre. The origin of language, Where do the Aryans come

from? Was Mrs. Maybrick guilty? Same question for every great

murderer. The Tichborne case, and every other _cause célèbre_,

including divorce cases. Crime and punishment. Music-hall songs.

Heredity: are acquired qualities inherited? Is tobacco a mistake? Is

drink? Is marriage? Is the high hat? Polygamy; the social evil. Are

the planets inhabited? Is the English concert pitch too high? The

divided skirt. The antiquity of man. Geology: is the story of the

rocks short, or long, or true? Geology _v._ Genesis; Genesis _v._

Kuenen. Was Pope a poet? Was Whitman? Was Poe a drunkard, or Griswold

a liar? Was Hamlet mad? Was Blake? Is waltzing immoral? Is humour

declining? Is there a modern British drama? Corporal punishment in

schools. Compulsory vaccination. What shall we do with our daughters?

or our sons? or our criminals? or our paupers? or ourselves? Female

franchise. Republicanism. Which is the best soap? or tooth-powder? Is

Morris's printing really good? Is the race progressing? Is our navy

fit? Should dynamite be used in war? or in peace? What persons should

be buried in Westminster Abbey? Origin of every fairy-tale. Who made

our proverbs and ballads? Cold baths _v._ hot or Turkish. Home Rule.

Should the Royal Academy be abolished? and who should be the next

R.A.? Should there be an Academy of Literature? or a Channel Tunnel?

Was De Lesseps to blame? Should we not patronise English

watering-places? Should there be pianos in board schools? or

theology? Authors and publishers; artists and authors. Is literature

a trade? Should pauper aliens be admitted? or pauper couples

separated? Bank Holiday. Irving _v._ Tree. The world's politics,

present, future, and even past--retrospective questions being

constantly re-agitated: as, Should the American slaves have been

emancipated? or Was the French Revolution a Folly? _Apropos_, which

is the best history of it? Who is the rightful Queen of England? Is

cycling injurious to the cyclist? or the public? Who was the Man in

the Iron Mask? Is the Stock Exchange immoral? What is influenza?

Ought we to give cabmen more than their fare? Tips generally. Should

dogs be muzzled? Have we a right to extend our empire? or to keep it?

Should we federate it? Are there ghosts? Is spiritualism a fraud? Is

theosophy? Was Madame Blavatsky? Was Jezebel a wretch, or a

Hellenist? The abuse of the quarantine. Should ladies ride astride?

Amateurs _v_. professionals in sports. Is prize-fighting beneficial?

Is trial by jury played out? The cost of law: Chancery. Abuses of the

Universities. The Cambridge Spinning House. Compulsory Greek. The

endowment of research. A teaching university in London. Is there a

sea-serpent? Servants _v._ mistresses. Shall the Jews have Palestine?

Classical _v._ modern side in schools. Should we abolish the

censorship of plays? or fees? or found a dramatic academy? or a State

theatre? Should gambling be legal? Should potatoes be boiled in their

skins? should dynamiters? Should newspapers publish racing tips? or

divorce cases? or comment? The New Journalism. What is the best ninth

move in the Evans gambit? Would Morphy have been a first-class

chess-player to-day? Is the Steinitz gambit sound? Do plants dream?

Ought we to fill up income-tax papers accurately? Shelley and Harriet

and Mary. Swift and Vanessa and Stella. Lord and Lady Byron. Did Mrs.

Carlyle deserve it? The limits of biography; of photography in

painting; of the spot-stroke in billiards. Did Shakespeare hold

horses? Should girls be brought up like boys, or boys like girls, or

both like one another? Are animals automata? Have they reason? or do

they live without reason? Will Brighton A's fall? or Peruvians rise?

Is it cruel to cage birds and animals? What is the best breed of

horses? Did Wellington say "Up, Guards, and at 'em"? Cremation _v._

Burial. Should immoral men be allowed to retain office? Is suicide

immoral? Opinion of the character of Elizabeth, Parnell, Catherine,

Cleopatra, Rousseau, Jack the Ripper, Semiramis, Lucrezia Borgia,

etc., etc. The present state of the Libel Law; and of the Game Laws.

Is vegetarianism higher? or healthier? Do actors feel their parts?

Should German type be abolished? or book-edges cut? or editions

artificially limited? or organ-grinders? How about

church-and-muffin-bells? Peasant proprietorship. Deer or Highlanders?

Were our ancestors taller than we? Is fruit or market-gardening or

cattle-farming more profitable? Dutch _v._ Italian gardening. What is

an etching? Do dreams come true? Is freemasonry a fraud? or

champagne? are Havanas? Best brand of whiskey? Ought Building and

Friendly Societies to be supervised? Smoking in theatres. Should

gentlemen pay ladies' cab-fares? Genius and insanity. Are cigarettes

poisonous? Is luxury a boon? Thirteen at table, and all other

superstitions--are they foolish? Why young men don't marry. Shall we

ever reach the Pole? How soon will England and the States be at war?

The real sites and people in Thackeray's novels. A universal penny

post? Cheap telegrams and telephones? Is the Bank of England safe?

Are the planets inhabited? Should girls have more liberty? Should

they propose? or wear crinolines? Why not have an unlimited paper

currency? or a decimal system and coinage? or a one-pound note?

Should we abolish the Lords? or preserve the Commons? Why not

euthanasia? Should dramatic critics write plays? Who built the

Pyramids? Are the English the Lost Ten Tribes? Should we send

missions to the heathen? How long will our coal hold out? Who

executed Charles I.? Are the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna trustworthy?

are hieroglyphic readers? Will war ever die? or people live to a

hundred? The best moustache-forcer, bicycle, typewriter, and system

of shorthand or of teaching the blind? Was Sam Weller possible? Who

was the original of Becky Sharp? Of Dodo? Does tea hurt? Do

gutta-percha shoes? or cork soles? Shall we disestablish the church?

or tolerate a reredos in St. Paul's? Is Euclid played out? Is there a

fourth dimension of space? Which is the real old Curiosity Shop? Is

the Continental man better educated than the Briton? Why can't we

square the circle? or solve equations to the _n_th degree? or

colour-print in England? What is the use of South Kensington? Is

paraffin good for baldness? or eucalyptus for influenza? How many

elements are there? Should cousins marry? or the House be adjourned

on Derby Day? Do water-colours fade? Will the ether theory live? or

Stanley's reputation? Is Free Trade fair? Is a Free Press? Is

fox-hunting cruel? or pigeon-shooting? How about the Queen's

staghounds? Should not each railway station bear its name in big

letters? and have better refreshments? Should we permit sky-signs?

Limits of advertisement. Preservation of historic buildings and

beautiful views _v_. utilitarianism. Is the coinage ugly? Should we

not get letters on Sunday? Who really wrote the "Marseillaise"? Are

examinations any real test? Promotion in the Army or the Civil

Service. Is logic or mathematics the primal science? and what is the

best system of symbolic logic? Should curates be paid more and

archbishops less? Should postmen knock? or combine? Are they under

military régime? or underpaid? Should Board School children be taught

religion? The future of China and Japan. Is Anglo-Indian society

immoral? Style or matter? Have we one personality or many?--with a

hundred other questions of psychology and ethics. A graduated income

tax--with a hundred other questions of political economy. Asphalt for

horses. Will the French republic endure? Will America have an

aristocracy? Shall Welsh perish? Is Platonic love possible? Did

Shakespeare write "Coriolanus"? Is there a skull in Holbein's

"Ambassadors"? What is the meaning of Dryden's line, "He was and is

the Captain of the Test"? or of the horny projection under the left

wing of the sub-parasite of the third leg of a black-beetle? Was Orme

poisoned? Are there fresh-water jelly-fishes? Is physiognomy true? or

phrenology? or graphology? or cheiromancy? If so, what are their

laws? Opinions on Guelphs and Ghibellines, fasting displays,

infanticide, the genealogy of the peerage, the origin of public-house

signs, Siberia, the author of Junius, of the Sibylline Books,

werewolves, dyeing one's hair, coffin-ships, standing armies, the

mediaeval monasteries, Church Brotherhoods, state insurance of the

poor, promiscuous almsgiving, the rights of animals, the C. D. Acts,

the Kernoozer Club, emigration, book-plates, the Psychical Society,

Kindergarten, Henry George, Positivism, Chevalier's Coster,

colour-blindness, Total Abstinence, Arbitration, the best hundred

books, Local Option, Women's Rights, the Wandering Jew, the Flying

Dutchman, the Neanderthal skull, the Early Closing movement, the

Prince of Wales, and the Tonic Sol-fa notation. Is there an English

hexameter? Is a perfect translation impossible? Will the coloured

races conquer? Is consumption curable? Is celibacy possible? Can

novels be really dramatised? Is the French school of acting superior

to ours? Should literary men be offered peerages? or refuse them?

Should quack-doctors be prosecuted? Should critics practise without a

license? Are the poor happier or unhappier than the rich? or is Paley

right? Did Paley steal his celebrated watch? Did Milton steal from

Vondel? Is the Salon dead in England? Should duelling be revived?

What is the right thing in dados, hall-lamps, dressing-gowns, etc.?

Should ladies smoke? Is there a Ghetto in England? Anti-Semitism. Why

should London wait? or German waiters? Mr. Stead's revival of

pilgrimages. Is Grimm's Law universal? The abuses of the Civil

Service; of the Pension List. Dr. Barnardo. Grievances of

match-girls; of elementary teachers. Are our police reliable? Is

Stevenson's Scotch accurate? Is our lifeboat service efficient? The

Eastern Question. What is an English fairy-tale? What are the spots

on the sun? Have they anything to do with commercial crises? Should

we spoil the Court if we spared the Black Rod? or the City if we

spared the Lord Mayor? Is chloroforming dangerous? Should armorial

bearings be taxed? or a tradesman's holiday use of his cart? Should

classical texts be Bowdlerised for school-boys? Is the confessional

of value? Is red the best colour for a soldier's uniform or for a

target? Will it rain to-morrow? Ought any one to carry firearms? Do

we permit the cancan on the English stage? or aërial flights without

nets? Where are the lost Tales of Miletus? Should lawyers wear their

own hair? Was the Silent System so bad? Should a novel have a

purpose? Was the _Victoria_ Fund rightly distributed? What is the

origin of Egyptian civilisation? Is it allowable to say, "It's me"?

Every other doubtful point of grammar and--worse still--of

pronunciation; also of etymology. May we say "Give an ovation"? Is

the German Emperor a genius, or a fool? Should bachelors be taxed?

Will the family be abolished? Ensilage. Why was Ovid banished from

Rome? Is the soul immortal? Is our art-pottery bad? Is the Revised

Version of the Bible superior to the Old? Who stole Gainsborough's

picture? Which are the rarest coins and stamps? Is there any sugar in

the blood? Blondes or brunettes? Do monkeys talk? What should you

lead at whist? Should directors of insolvent companies be prosecuted?

Or classics be annotated? Was Boswell a fool? Do I exist? Does

anybody else exist? Is England declining? Shall the costers stand in

Farringdon Street? Do green wall-papers contain arsenic? Shall we

adopt phonetic spelling? Is life worth living?

The last question at least I thought I could answer, as I bore to bed

with me that headache which you have doubtless acquired if you have been

foolish enough to read the list. If only one were a journalist, one would

have definite opinions on all these points.

And to these questions every day brings a fresh quota. You are expected

to have read the latest paragraph in the latest paper, and the newest

novel, and not to have missed such and such an article in such and such a

quarterly. And all the while you are fulfilling the duties of, and

solving the problems of, son, brother, cousin, husband, father, friend,

parishioner, citizen, patriot, all complicated by specific religious and

social relations, and earning your living by some business that has its

own hosts of special problems, and you are answering letters from

everybody about everything, and deciding as to the genuineness of begging

appeals, and wrestling with some form or forms of disease, pain, and

sorrow.

"Truly, we are imperfect instruments for determining truth," I said to

the Poet. "The sane person acts from impulse, and only pretends to give a

reason. Reason is only called in to justify the verdict of prejudice.

Sometimes the impulse is sentiment--which is prejudice touched with

emotion. We cannot judge anything on pure, abstract grounds, because the

balance is biassed. A human being is born a bundle of prejudices, a group

of instincts and intuitions and emotions that precede judgment.

Patriotism is prejudice touched with pride, and politics is prejudice

touched with spite. Philosophy is prejudice put into propositions, and

art is prejudice put into paint or sound, and religion is a pious

opinion. Every man is born a Platonist or an Aristotelian, a Romanticist,

or a Realist, or an Impressionist, and usually erects his own limitations

into a creed. Every country, town, district, family, individual, has a

special set of prejudices along the lines of which it moves, and which it

mistakes for exclusive truths or reasoned conclusions. Touch human

society anywhere, it is rotten, it crumbles into a myriad notes of

interrogation; the acid of analysis dissolves every ideal. Humanity only

keeps alive and sound by going on in faith and hope,--_solvitur

ambulando_,--if it sat down to ask questions, it would freeze like the

traveller in the Polar regions. The world is saved by bad logic."

"And by good feeling," added my friend the Poet.

"And in the face of all these questions," I cried, surveying the list

ruefully again, "we go on accumulating researches and multiplying books

without end, vituperating the benefactors who destroyed the library of

Alexandria, and exhuming the civilisations that the earthquakes of Time

have swallowed under. The Hamlet of centuries, 'sicklied o'er with the

pale cast of thought,' the nineteenth of that ilk mouches along,

soliloquising about more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of

in any of its predecessors' philosophies. Ah me! Analysis is paralysis

and introspection is vivisection and culture drives one mad. What will be

the end of it all?"

"The end will be," answered the Poet, "that the overstrung nerves of the

century will give way, and that we shall fall into the simple old faith

of Omar Khayyám:

"A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness--

O Wilderness were Paradise enow."

"Yes," said I, "the only wisdom is to live. Action is substance and

thought shadow." And so--paradoxically enough--I began to think out

A WORKING PHILOSOPHY

The solar system turns without thine aid.

Live, die! The universe is not afraid.

What is is right! If aught seems wrong below,

Then wrong it is--of thee to leave it so.

Then wrong it first becomes for human thought,

Which else would die of dieting on naught.

Tied down by race and sex and creed and station,

Go, learn to find thy strength in limitation,

To do the little good that comes to hand,

Content to love and not to understand;

Faithful to friends and country, work and dreams,

Knowing the Real is the thing that seems.

While reverencing every nobleness,

In whatsoever tongue or shape or dress,

Speak out the word that to _thy_ soul seems right,

Strike out thy path by individual light:

'Tis contradictory rays that give the White.

"The ideas are good. But what a pity you are not a poet!" said my friend

the Poet.

But, though I recognise that prejudice in the deepest sense supplies the

matter of judgment, while logic is only regulative of the form, yet in

the more work-a-day sense of the word in which prejudice is taken to mean

an opinion formed without reasoning and maintained in despite of it, I

claim to write absolutely without prejudice. The syllogism is my lord and

king. A kind-hearted lady said I had a cruel face. It is true. I am

absolutely remorseless in tracking down a _non sequitur_, pitiless in

forcing data to yield up their implicit conclusions. "Logic! Logic!"

snorted my friend the Poet. "Life is not logical. We cannot be logical."

"Of course not," said I; "I should not dream of asking men to live

logically: all I ask is that they should argue logically."

But to be unprejudiced does not mean to have no convictions. The

superficial confuse definiteness with prejudice, forgetting that definite

opinions may be the result of careful judgment. Post-judiced I trust I

am. But prejudiced? Heaven forfend! Why, 'tis because I do not wish to

bind myself to anything that I may say in them that I mark these personal

communications "Without Prejudice"! For I do not at all mind

contradicting myself. If it were some one of reverend years or superior

talents I might hesitate, but between equals----! Contradiction is the

privilege of _camaraderie_ and the essence of _causerie_. We agree to

differ--I and myself. I am none of your dogmatic fellows with

pigeon-holes for minds, and whatever I say I do not stick to. And I will

tell you why. There is hardly a pretty woman of my acquaintance who has

not asked for my hand. Owing to this passion for palmistry in polite

circles, I have discovered that I possess as many characters as there are

palmists. Do you wonder, therefore, if, with such a posse of

personalities to pick from, I am never alike two days running? With so

varied a psychological wardrobe at command, it would be mere self-denial

to be faithful to one's self. I leave that to the one-I'd who can see

only one side of a question. Said Tennyson to a friend (who printed it):

"'In Memoriam' is more optimistic than I am"; and there is more of the

real man in that little remark than in all the biographies. The published

prophet has to live up to his public halo. So have I seen an actress on

tour slip from a third-class railway carriage into a brougham. Tennyson

was not mealy-mouthed, but then he did not bargain for an audience of

phonographs. Nowadays it is difficult to distinguish your friends from

your biographers. The worst of it is that the land is thick with fools

who think nothing of a great man the moment they discover he was a man.

Tennyson was all the greater for his honest doubt. The cocksure centuries

are passed for ever. In these hard times we have to work for our

opinions; we cannot rely on inheriting them from our fathers.

I write with a capital I at the risk of being accused of egotism.

Apparently it is more modest to be conceited in the third person, like

the child who says "Tommy is a good boy," or in the first person plural,

like the leader-writer of "The Times," who bids the Continent tremble at

his frown. By a singular fallacy, which ought scarcely to deceive

children, it is forgotten that everything that has ever been written

since the world began has been written by some one person, by an "I,"

though that "I" might have been omitted from the composition or replaced

by the journalistic "we." To some extent the journalist does sink his

personality in that imaginary personality of his paper, a personality

built up, like the human personality, by its past; and the result is a

pompous, colourless, lifeless simulacrum. But in every other department

of letters the trail of the "I" is over every page and every sentence.

The most impersonal essays and poems are all in a sense egoistic.

Everything should really be between inverted commas with an introductory

_Thus say I_. But as these are omitted, as being understood, they come at

last to be _mis_understood.

In the days ere writing was invented, this elementary error was not

possible. The words were heard issuing from the lips of a single man;

every opinion, every law of conduct, must have been at first formulated

through the lips of some one man. And to this day, in spite of the

wilderness of tradition and authority by which we are overgrown, the

voice of the one man is still our only living source of inspiration and

help. Every new thought must pass through the brain, every moral ideal

through the conscience, of an individual. Voices, voices, we want--not

echoes. Better the mistaken voice of honest individuality than the

soulless bleat of the flock. There are too many of Kipling's Tomlinsons

in the world, whose consciences are wholly compact of _on dits_, on whom

the devil himself, sinned they never so sadly, would refuse to waste his

good pit-coal. "Bad taste"--that opprobrious phrase which, worse than the

accusation of a crime, cannot be refuted, for it is the king of the

question-beggars,--"bad taste" is responsible for half the reticence that

marks current writing, for the failure to prick the bladders of every

species that bloat themselves all around us. "Good taste" is the

staunchest ally of hypocrisy, and corruption is the obverse side of

civilisation. I do not believe in these general truths that rule the

market. What is "true for all" is false for each. It is the business of

every man to speak out, to be himself, to contribute his own thought to

the world's thinking--to be egoistic. To be egoistic is not to be

egotistic. Egoism should be distinguished from egotism. The egoist thinks

for himself, the egotist about himself. Mr. Meredith's Sir Willoughby

should not have been styled the _Egoist_. The egoist offers his thought

to his fellow-men, the egotist thinks it is the only thought worth their

acceptance. These papers of mine joyously plead guilty to egoism, but not

to egotism. If they, for instance, pretend to appraise the powers of my

contemporaries, they do not pretend to be more than an individual

appraisal. Whoever wants another opinion can go somewhere else. There is

no lack of practitioners in criticism, more or less skilful. There must

be a struggle for existence among opinions, as among all other things,

and the egoist is content to send the children of his thought into the

thick of the fray, confident that the fittest will survive. Only he is

not so childish as to make-believe that an impersonal dignified

something-not-himself that makes for the ink-pot is speaking--and not he

himself, he "with his little I." The affectation of modesty is perhaps

the most ludicrous of all human shams. I am reminded of the two Jews who

quarrelled in synagogue, during the procession of palm-branches, because

each wanted to be last, as befitted the humblest man in Israel, which

each claimed to be. This is indeed "the pride that apes humility." There

is a good deal of this sort of pride in the careful and conscientious

suppression of the egoistic in books and speeches. I have nothing of this

modesty to be proud of. I know that I am cleverer than the man in the

street, though I take no credit to myself for it, as it is a mere

accident of birth, and on the whole a regrettable one. It was this

absence of modesty from my composition that recently enabled me to

propose the toast of literature coupled with the name of Mr. Zangwill. I

said that I could wish that some one more competent and distinguished

than myself had been chosen to do justice to such a toast and to such a

distinguished man of letters, but I did my best to pay him the tribute he

deserved ere I sat down amid universal applause. When I rose amid renewed

cheers to reply, I began by saying that I could wish that some one more

competent and distinguished than myself had been chosen to respond to so

important a toast--the last speaker had considerably overrated my humble

achievements in the fields of literature. So that you see I could easily

master the modest manner, if I took any pains or set any store by it. But

in my articles of faith the "I" is just what I would accentuate most, the

"I" through which for each of us the universe flows, by which any truth

must be perceived in order to be true, and which is not to be replaced by

that false abstraction, the communal mind. Here are a laughing

philosopher's definitions of some cardinal things:

Philosophy--All my I.

Art--All my Eye.

Religion--All my Ay.

Also at the outset let it be distinctly understood that I write without

any prejudice in favour of grammar. The fear of the critics is the

beginning of pedantry. I detest your scholiast whose footnotes would take

Thackeray to task for his "and whiches," and your professor who disdains

the voice of the people, which is the voice of the god of grammar. I know

all the scholiast has to say (surely he is the silly [Greek:

scholastikos] of Greek anecdote), and indeed I owe all my own notions of

diction to a work on "Style" written by him. It was from the style of

this work that I learnt what to avoid. The book reminded me of my old

schoolmaster, who grew very angry with me for using the word "ain't," and

vociferated "Ain't! How often am I to tell you ain't ain't a word?" I

suppose one may take it for granted that the greater the writer the worse

the grammar. "Fools follow rules. Wise men precede them." (Query: this

being a quotation from myself, was I bound to put the inverted commas?)

Shakespeare has violated every rule of the schoolroom, and the more

self-conscious stylist of our own day--Stevenson--would be caned for

composition. I find him writing "They are not us," which is almost as

blasphemous as "It's me." His reputation has closed the critics' eyes to

such sentences as these in his essay on "Some Portraits by Raeburn":

"Each of his portraits are not only a piece of history ..."; "Neither of

the portraits of Sir Walter Scott were very agreeable to look upon."

Stevenson is a master, but not a schoolmaster, of English. Of course bad

grammar does not make a genius, any more than bad morals. (Note how much

this sentence would lose in crispness if I made it grammatical by tacking

on "do.") My friend the musician complained to me that when he studied

harmony and form he was told he must not do this, that and the other;

whereas, when he came to look into the works of the great composers he

found they made a practice of all the three. "Am I a genius?" he queried

pathetically. "If so, I could do as I please. I wish I knew." Every

author who can read and write is in the same predicament: on the one hand

his own instinct for a phrase or a sentence, on the other the contempt of

every honest critic. The guardians of the laws of English have a stock of

taboos; but unlike the guardians of the laws of England they credit every

disregard of them to ignorance. They cannot conceive of malice

aforethought. We are forbidden, for example, to use the word "phenomenal"

in the sense of "extraordinary." But, with Mr. Crummles's Infant

Phenomenon in everybody's mind, can we expect the adjective to shake off

the old associations of its parent noun?

Last year I culled an amusing sentence from a "Standard" criticism of a

tale of adventure: "The story is a well-told, and in spite of the word

'unreliable,' a well-written one." Now just as many foolish persons

object to "a ... one" as to "unreliable." As for the first phrase, I am

sure so great a writer as Tom Hood would have pronounced it A1, while

"unreliable" is defended with unusual warmth by Webster's Dictionary. The

contention that "reliable" should be "reli-on-able," is ridiculous, and

Webster's argument is "laughable," which should obviously be

"laugh-at-able." These remarks are made quite without prejudice, for

personally I have little to complain of. (By the way, this sentence is as

open to blame as that of the professor who told his pupils "You must not

use a preposition to end a sentence with.") Though I have sat under an

army of critics, I have but once been accused of inelegant English, and

then it was only by a lady who wrote that my slipshod style "aggravated"

her.

Finally it will be remarked that by dispensing with illustrations I

preserve intact my egoism and the dignity of a rival art. Nothing can be

more absurd than the conventional illustration which merely attempts to

picture over again what the writer has already pictured in words. Not

only is the effort superfluous, a waste of force, but the artist's

picture is too often in flat contradiction of the text. Whom are you to

believe, the author or the artist? the man who tells you that the heroine

is ethereal, or the man who plainly demonstrates that she is podgy? How

often, too, do the people dress differently in the words and in the

picture, not to speak of the shifting backgrounds! Dickens had so much

difficulty with his illustrations because he saw his characters so much

more clearly than any other novelist; the sight of his inner eye was so

good. And one can understand, too, how Cruikshank came to fancy he had

created Oliver Twist, much as an actor imagines he "creates" a character.

The true collaboration between author and artist requires that the work

should be divided between them, not reduplicated. Those parts of the

story which need the intervention of words should be allotted to the

writer, while to the artist should be entrusted the parts better told by

pencil. Neither need trench on the other's province. Description--which

so many readers skip already--would be abolished. Even incidents--such as

murder--could be caught by the artist in the act. And after the artist

had killed a character, the author could preach over his corpse. Thus

there would be an agreeable reversion to picture-language, the earliest

way of writing, and the latest. The ends of the ages would meet in a

romance written on these lines:--

"Sick at heart we watched till the grey dawn stole in through the

diamond-paned casements of the Grange, and then, at last, when we had

given up all hope, we saw coming up the gravel pathway----"

[_Illustration._[*]]

After which the author proceeds: "Fascinated by the blood that dripped

from the edges of the eight umbrellas, we stood silent; then, throwing

off our coats, we----

[_Illustration._[*]]

"So that was how I won the sweetest little bride I ever wedded. But if I

live to wed a hundred, I shall never forget that terrible night in

Grewsome Grange.

"THE END."

[* Transcriber's note: So in original. These are _not_ placeholders for

actual illustrations in the book.]

My friend the artist once collaborated with me in an experiment of this

sort, but we did not pursue it, discovering how feeble an advance ours

would be after all; for there were points at which both of us felt we

ought to give way to the tone-poet. When the emotions became too

intangible for intellectual expression I asked my friend the musician to

insert paragraphs in a minor key. The love-scenes I was particularly

anxious to have written in musical phrases. But he shrank from so

unconventional a form, not being sure he was a genius. I was also

disheartened by the disappointing behaviour of the diverse scents with

which I had expressed myself on certain blank pages. They would not

remain in their places.

II

TUNING UP

They were "tuning up" in a wooden hall, stupidly built on the pier to

shut off the sea and the night (a penny to pay for the privation), and in

that strange cacophony of desolate violin strings, tuneless trombones,

and doleful double basses, in that homeless wail of forlorn brass and

lost catgut, I found a music sweeter than a Beethoven symphony; for

memory's tricksy finger touched of a sudden the source of tears, and

flashed before the inner eye a rainbow-lit panorama of the early joys of

the theatre--the joys that are no more. Was it even at a theatre--was it

even more than an interlude in a diorama?--that divine singing of "The

Last Rose of Summer" by a lady in evening dress, whose bust is, perhaps

for me alone in all the world, still youthful? Was it from this hall of

the siren, or was it from some later enchantment, that I, an infant

Ulysses, struggled home by night along a sea road, athwart a gale that

well-nigh blew me out to sea? How fierce that salt wind blew, a-yearn to

drive me to the shore's edge and whirl me over! How fresh and tameless it

beats against me yet, blowing the cobwebs from my brain as that real

breeze outside the pier could never do! When my monitory friends gabble

of change of air I inhale that wind and am strong. For the child is of

the elements, elemental, and the man of the complexities, complex. And so

that good salt wind blows across my childhood still, though it cannot

sweep away the mist that hovers thereover.

For who shall say whether 't was I or my sister who was borne shrieking

with fear from the theatre when the black man, "Othello," appeared on the

boards! The first clear memory of things dramatic is of an amateur

performance--alas! I have seen few others. 'T was a farce--when was an

amateur performance other? There was much play of snuff-boxes passed

punctiliously 'twixt irascible old gentlemen with coloured handkerchiefs.

Also there was dinner beforehand--my first experience of chicken and

champagne. And then there is a great break till the real theatre rises

stately and splendid, like Britannia ruling the waves--nay, Britannia

herself, or, as they call it lovingly down Shoreditch way, "the Brit."

When to my fashionable friends I have held forth on the glories and the

humours of "the Brit.," they have taken it for granted, and I have lacked

the courage or the energy to undeceive them, that my visits to this

temple of the people were expeditions of Haroun Al Raschid in the back

streets of Bagdad or adventures of Prince Florizel in Rupert Street; but

of a truth I have climbed the gallery stairs in sober boyish earnestness,

elbowed of the gods, and elbowing, and if I did not yield to the

seductions of "ginger-beer and Banbury" that filled up clamantly the

entr'actes, 't was that I had not the coppers. "Guy Fawkes" was my first

piece, in the days when the drama's "fireworks" were not epigrams, and so

the smell of the sulphur still purifies the air. All the long series of

"London successes," with their array of genius and furniture, have faded

like insubstantial pageants, but the rude vault piled with flour-barrels

for the desperado's torch is fixed as by chemic process. Consider the

preparation of the brain for that memory. What! I should actually go to a

play--that far-off wonder! "The Miller and his Men" cut in cardboard

should no longer stave off my longing for the living passion of the

theatre. 'T was a very elongated young man who took me, a young

cigar-maker fond of reciting, spouting Shakespeare from a sixpenny

edition, playing Hamlet mentally as he rolled the tobacco-leaf. There was

a halo about his head, for he was on speaking terms with the low comedian

of the "Brit.," and, I understood, was permitted upon occasion to pay for

a pint of half-and-half. Alas! all this did not avail to save him from an

early tomb. Poor worshipper of the green room, perchance thy ghost still

walks there. Or is there room in some other world for thy baffled

aspirations?

In such clouds of glory did the drama first come to me, sulphurously

splendid. In the "Brit." I made my first acquaintance with the limelit

humanity that, magnificent in its crimes and in its virtues, sins or

suffers in false eyebrows or white muslin to the sound of soft music.

Here I met that strange creation, the villain--a being as mythic,

meseems, as the centaur, and, like it, more beast than man. The "Brit."

was a hot place for villains, the gallery accepting none but the highest

principles of speech and conduct, and ginger-beer were not too weighty a

form of expressing detestation of the more comprehensive breaches of the

decalogue. Hisses the villain never escaped, and I was puzzled to know

how the poor actor could discriminate betwixt the hiss ethical and the

hiss aesthetic. But perhaps no player ever received the latter; the house

was very loyal to its favourites, all of whom had their well-defined

rôles in every play, which spared the playwrights the task of indicating

character. Before the heroine had come on we knew that she was young and

virtuous--had she not been so for the last five and twenty years?--the

comic man had not to open his mouth for us to begin to laugh; a latent

sibilance foreran the villain. Least mutable of all, the hero swaggered

on, virtuous without mawkishness, pugnacious without brutality. How

sublime a destiny, to stand for morals and muscle to the generations of

Hoxton, to incarnate the copy-book crossed with the "Sporting Times!"

Were they bearable in private life, these monsters of virtue?

J. B. Howe was long this paragon of men--affectionately curtailed to

Jabey. Once, when the villain was about to club him, "Look out, Jabey!"

cried an agonised female voice. It followed from the happy understanding

on both sides of the curtain that--give ear, O envious lessees!--no play

ever failed. How could it? It was always the same play.

Of like kidney was the Grecian Theatre, where one went out between the

acts to dance, or to see the dancing, upon a great illuminated platform.

'T was the drama brought back to its primitive origins in the Bacchic

dances--the Grecian Theatre, in good sooth! How they footed it under the

stars, those regiments of romping couples, giggling, flirting, munching!

Alas! _Fuit Troja!_ The Grecian is "saved." Its dancing days are over, it

is become the Headquarters of Salvation. But it is still gay with music,

virtue triumphs on, and vice grovels at the penitent form. In such quaint

wise hath the "Eagle" renewed its youth, for the Grecian began life as

the Eagle, and was Satan's deadliest lure to the 'prentices of

Clerkenwell and their lasses:

Up and down the City Road,

In and out the Eagle;

That's the way the money goes!

Pop goes the weasel.

Concerning which immortal lines one of your grammatical pedants has

observed, "There ain't no rhyme to City Road, there ain't no rhyme to

Eagle." Great pantomimes have I seen at the Grecian--a happy gallery boy

at three pence--pantomimes compact of fun and fantasy, far surpassing,

even to the man's eye, the gilded dullnesses of Drury Lane. The

pantomimes of the Pavilion, too, were frolicsome and wondrous, marred

only by the fact that I knew one of the fairies in real life, a

good-natured girl who sewed carpet-slippers for a living. The Pavilion,

by the way, is in the Whitechapel Road, not a mile from the People's

Palace, in the region where, according to the late Mr. Walter Besant,

nobody ever laughs. The Pavilion, like the "Brit.," had its stock

company, and when the leading lady appeared for her Benefit as "Portia,"

she was not the less applauded for being drunk. The quality of mercy is

_not_ strained. And what more natural than that one should celebrate

one's benefit by getting drunk? Sufficient that "Shylock" was sober!

In Music-Halls, the East-End was as rich as the West,--was it not the

same talent that appeared at both, like Sir Boyle Roche's bird, winging

its way from one to t' other in cabs? Those were the days of the great

Macdermott, who gave Jingoism to English history, of the great Vance, of

the lion comiques, in impeccable shirt-fronts and crush hats. There was

still a chairman with a hammer, who accepted champagne from favoured

mortals, stout gentlemen with gold chains, who might even aspire to

conversation with the comiques themselves. _Sic itur ad astra_. Now there

is only a chairman of directors who may, perhaps, scorn to be seen in a

music-hall: a grave and potent seignior whose relations with the

footlights may be purely financial. There were still improvisatori who

would turn you topical verses on any subject, and who, on the very

evening of Derby-day, could rhyme the winner when unexpectedly asked by

the audience to do so. A verse of Fred Coyne's--let me recall the name

from the early oblivion which gathers over the graves of those who live

amid the shouts of worshippers--still lingers in my memory, bearing in

itself its own chronology:

And though we could wish, some beneficent fairy

Had preserved the life of the Prince so dear,

Yet we WON'T lay the blame on Lieutenant Carey;

And these are the latest events of the year.

With what an answering pandemonium we refused to hold the lieutenant

accountable for the death of the victim of the African assegais! And the

ladies! How ravishingly they flashed upon the boards, in frocks that,

like Charles Lamb at the India Office, made up for beginning late by

finishing early! How I used to agree with the bewitching creature who

sang that lovely lyric strangely omitted from the Anthologies:

What a nice place to be in!

What a nice place, I 'm sure!

Such a very jolly place,

I've never seen before.

It gives me, oh! such pleasure,

And it fills my heart with bliss,

I could stay here for ever:

What a nice place is this!

Such eyes she made at me--at whom else?--aloft in the balcony; and oh,

what arch smiles, what a play of white teeth! If we could only have met!

Yester-year at a provincial town some one offered to introduce her to me.

She was still playing principal boy in the pantomime--a gay, gallant

Prince, in plumed cap and tights. But I declined. Another of the great

comic singers of my childhood--a man--I met on a Margate steamboat. He

told me of the lost glories of the ancient days _quorum pars magna fuit_,

and of the after-histories of his great rivals. One, I recollect, had

retired with a fortune, opened a magnificent Temperance Hotel at the

seaside, and then broken his neck by falling down his own splendid

staircase, drunk. "Ah," said the veteran, sighing at an overcrowded

profession, "there were only two or three comic singers in those days."

"There are only two or three now," quoth I. And the old man beamed.

Another ancient hero of the halls, long since translated to the theatres,

whom I first saw at a music-hall in St. Giles', buttonholed me the other

night in St. James', in the halls of a Duchess: a curious meeting. That I

should have ever reverenced him seemed as strange as that there should be

still people to reverence the coronet of the Duchess. Yes, it is very far

off, that magic time when the world was full of splendid things and

splendid men and women, a great Fair, and I, like the child in Henley's

poem, wandered about, enjoying, desiring, possessing. Now I know there is

nothing worth wanting, and nothing but poor flesh and blood, despite all

the costumes and accessories. For there is no sense in which I have not

been "behind the scenes." And as for the literal theatric sense, I have

flirted with the goddesses at the wings till they have missed their cues,

I have supped at the Garrick Club of a Saturday night, when all the stars

come out, I have toured with a travelling company, I have had words of my

own spoken by dainty lips,--nay, I have even played myself, _en amateur_,

the irascible old gentleman with the snuff-box and the coloured

handkerchief. And what is there to say of the human spectacle, but that

perhaps the pains and the crimes are necessary to the show, and that

without a blood-and-thunder plot human life would not run, drying up of

its own dullness? "All the world's a stage," and we are all cast for

stock rôles. Some of us have the luck to be heroes, the complacent centre

of eternal plaudits, some are born for villainy and the brickbat. And

while others have had to play goodness knows what--mediaeval Italian

princesses, Cockney cabmen, old Greek hetairae, German cuirassiers,

American presidents, burglars, South Sea Islanders--I find myself--for

the first time on any stage--in the applauded rôle of man of letters, if

with little option of throwing up the part. They have an optimistic

phrase, those happy-go-lucky creatures of the footlights, when, on the

very day of production, nobody knows his words or his business, the scene

will not shape itself, and chaos is lord. "It will be all right at

night," they say. And we, who play our parts gropingly on this confused

and noisy scene, wondering what is the plot, and where is the manager,

and straining our ears for the prompter's whisper, can but echo with

another significance their cheery hope: "It will be all right at night."

Perhaps, when the long day's work has drawn to its end, and the curtain,

has fallen upon the plaudits and the hisses, we shall all sit down to

supper after the play, complimented by the Author, smiling at the

seriousness with which we took our rôles of hero or villain, and glad to

be done with, the make-up and the paint. And in the music that shall

hover about our table, we may perhaps find a celestial restfulness,

compared to which the most exquisite orchestras of this earth shall sound

but as "tuning up."

III

ART IN ENGLAND

My friend the Apostle was in hot haste, and would not stay to be

contradicted. "Not going to-night!" he cried, in horror-struck accents.

"Why, to-night is the turning-point in the history of the British drama!

To-night is the test-battle of the old and the new; it is the shock of

schools, the clash of nature against convention. This play will decide

the fate of our drama for the rest of the century. Here you have a play

by a leader of the old school produced at a leading theatre. If it

succeeds, the old drama may linger on for a year or two more; but if it

fails, it will be the death-blow of the old gang. They may pack up!" The

Apostle was at the other end of the street ere I had taken in the full

import of these brave words. What! there was a crisis in the drama, and

I, living in the heart of art, had heard nothing about it! Fortunately it

was not too late. I could still make amends for my ignorance. It was

still open to me to assist at this historic contest, for the arena was to

be the Haymarket, where I am a _persona gratis_. Visions of the great

first night of "Hernani" thronged tumultuously before me; my blood pulsed

with something of its ancient youthful ardour as I girded my loins with

black trousers for the fray, and adjusted my white tie with faltering

fingers. I had half a mind to don a _gilet rouge_, but the reflection

that my wardrobe did not boast of coloured waistcoats gave the victory to

the other half. I dashed up to the theatre. All was placid. The stalls

were packed with a brilliant audience in correct and unemotional costume.

There were classic faces, and romantic faces, and faces that were

realistic, but each and all blank of the consciousness of a crisis. The

talk was of everything save art and literature. The critics did not even

sharpen their pencils. They looked bored to a man. In vain my eye roved

the arm-chairs in search of a fighting figure. I could not even see the

musical iconoclast who had carried his pepper-and-salt suit into the holy

of holies of the Italian opera. My heart sank within me. When the

orchestra ceased I gave one last despairing glance all round the theatre

in search of my friend the Apostle. _He was not there!_

The play was "The Charlatan,"--the work of that other apostle, whose

outspoken Epistles to the English chronically relieve the dull decorum of

London journalism; the man of whom Tennyson came near writing--

Buchanan to right of him,

Buchanan to left of him,

Buchanan in front of him,

Volleyed and thundered.

But that night it was the audience that volleyed and thundered, in

unanimous applause. Hisses or party-cries were not. During the intense

episodes, when the house was wrapt in silence, and you could have heard a

programme drop, no opposition partisan as much as laughed. The author was

called at curtain-fall, and retired uninjured. Next morning the critics

were scrupulously suave, with no sign of the battle they had been

through. Most wonderful to relate, Mr. William Archer, the risen hope of

the stern and unbending Radicals, launched into unwonted praise, and gave

an airing to some of the eulogistic adjectives that had been mouldering

in his dictionary; nor did he even appear to be aware that he had gone

over to the enemy!

For one thing, Bard Buchanan had given us neither old school nor new, but

a blend of both--nay, a blend of all forms of both--a structure at once

modern and mediaeval, with a Norwegian wing. It combined the common-sense

of England with the glamour of the East, the physiology of the hypnotist

with the psychology of Ibsen. More! It was an epitome of all the

Haymarket plays, a _résumé_ of all Mr. Tree's successes. The heroine was

a mixture of Ophelia and hysteria, the hero was a combination of Captain

Swift, Hamlet, and the Tempter; the paradoxical pessimist was a reminder

of Mr. Wilde's comedies, the bishop and scientist were in the manner of

Mr. Jones. How clever! Social satire _à la Savoy_, séance _à la salle

Egyptienne_, sleep-walking _à la Bellini_, moonlight poetry _à la

Christabel_, a touch of spice _à la Française_, and copious confession _à

la Norvégienne_, all baked into one pie. How characteristic! And

characteristic, mark you, not only of Mr. Buchanan's chaotic cleverness,

but of Mr. Tree's experimental eclecticism. Did I say an epitome of the

Haymarket plays? This is but another way of saying an abstract and brief

chronicle of the time, to whose age and body Mr. Tree so shrewdly holds

up the mirror. For this dying century of ours is all things to all men.

We are living in the most picturesque confusion of the old and new known

to history--in a cross-road of chronology where all the ages meet. 'T is

a confusion of tongues outbabbling Babel, a simultaneous chattering of

the centuries. And, more troubled than the Tower-builders, we understand,

one another better than we understand ourselves; again, like "The

Charlatan," half odic force, half fraud, who is never so honest as when

he confesses himself charlatan.

But this is not what I set out to say. There was a moral to the tale of

my friend the absentee Apostle who was so cocksure about the crisis. This

moral is that he has Continental blood in his veins. To these foreign

corpuscles he owes the floridness of his outlook, his conception of the

excited Englishman. The Englishman takes his authors placidly; he is

never in a ferment or a frenzy about anything save politics, religion, or

sport: these are the poles and the axis of his life's pivot; he is not an

artistic person. Art has never yet taken the centre of the stage in his

consciousness; it has never even been accepted as a serious factor of

life. All the pother about plays, poems and pictures is made by small

circles. Our art has never been national art: I cannot imagine our making

the fuss about a great writer that is made about a second-rate journalist

in Paris. It is Grace the cricketer for whom the hundred thousand

subscribe their shilling: fancy a writer thus rewarded, even after

scoring his century of popular novels. The winning of the Derby gives a

new fillip to the monarchy itself. A Victor Hugo in London is a thought

_à faire rire_. A Goethe at the court of Victoria, or directing Drury

Lane Theatre, is of a comic-opera incongruity. Our neighbours across the

border have a national celebration of Burns' birthday--they think as much

of him as of the Battle of Bannockburn. We English, who have produced the

man whom the whole world acknowledges its greatest poet, have not even a

Shakespeare Day. Surely Shakespeare Sunday would do as much good to the

nation as Hospital Saturday or Shrove Tuesday! Charles Lamb wanted to say

grace before reading Shakespeare, but the Puritans who make England so

great and so dull are only thankful for stomachic mercies.

I cannot easily conceive our working ourselves up to such enthusiasm as

the Hungarians lately displayed over the jubilee of Jokaï, an enthusiasm

that resounded even unto this country, and shook the _lacunar aureum_ of

the Holborn Restaurant with shouts of "Eljen."

The peculiarity of the Hungarian temperament does not, however, entirely

explain their joy in Jokaï. He is so much more than a mere novelist, poet

and dramatist, with three or four hundred volumes (one need not be

particular to a hundred with this modern Lope de Vega) to his credit. He

is also a soldier and a politician, skilful with the sword as well as the

pen, and with the tongue as well as the sword. He has drawn blood with

each and all of these weapons, and though nowadays he often votes in the

House without inquiring what he is voting for till he has recorded his

vote, this does not diminish his claims to practical wisdom. He married

the leading actress of Hungary, who, without waiting for an introduction,

rushed forward from the audience to present him with a bunch of flowers

when a play of his made a hit. Fancy Ellen Terry rushing forward to

present Pinero with a bunch of flowers at the conclusion of "The Second

Mrs. Tanqueray"! No, the thing is as impossible in England as the

combination of rôles in Jokaï himself. The idea of letting a man be at

once man of letters and man of action! Why, we scarcely allow that a man

of letters may occupy more than one pigeonhole! If he is a poet, we will

not admit he can write prose--forgetting that is just what most poets do.

If he is a novelist, he cannot write plays,--the truth being, of course,

that it is the playwrights who cannot write plays. If he is a humourist

he can never be taken seriously, and if he is accepted seriously he must

be careful to conceal his sense of the humour of the position. Not only

so, but we insist on the sub-sub-specialisation which Adam Smith showed

to be so profitable in the making of pins, and which, passing from the

factory to the laboratory, now threatens to pass from science into

literature. Having analysed away the infinitely great, we are now

devoting ourselves to the apotheosis of the infinitely little.

_A priori_, one would think action the salvation of the literary man, the

corrective of "the fallacies of the den," the provider of that experience

which is the raw material of literature, and prevents it from being spun

out of the emptiness of one's own entrails. But the practical Briton

knows better. He has never forgiven John Morley for going into politics

(though I doubt not "honest John" would now find much to revise in his

essay on "Compromise"); and he finds Socialism ever so much more Utopian

since William Morris went into it. Can you imagine a true-born Briton

following the flag of Swinburne, or throwing up a barricade with George

Meredith? To the last Beaconsfield was suspected of persiflage because he

wrote novels and was witty. America makes her authors ministers and

envoys, but England insists that brains are a disqualification for

practical life. "Authors are so unpractical: we don't want them to

act--we only want them to teach us how to act." A chemist or an

astronomer must needs isolate himself from the world to supply the pure

theory on which the practical arts are founded, and so the _littérateur_,

too, is expected to live out of the world in order to teach it how to

live. But the analogy is false.

You can work out your mathematical calculations by the week, and hand

over the results to the navigator. But the navigation of the stream of

time is another matter. There is no abstract theory of life that can be

studied without living oneself. Life is always concrete; it is built up

of emotions, and you cannot have the emotions brought into your study, as

you can order in your hydrochloric acid or your frog's leg. As well

expect anchorites to set the tune for men in the thick of the fight! They

will chant Masses when they should be shouting Marseillaises. In despair

our men of letters leave the country, and become politicians in little

savage islands; or they leave the town and become invisible behind their

haloes; or they take to golf in small Scotch cities, and pretend that

this satisfies their thirst for activity. Sometimes they turn

market-gardeners and fob off the interviewer with remarks about

caterpillars. Browning was reduced to dining out. It may be contended

that the writer must sequester himself to cultivate the Beautiful. But

the Beautiful that has not its roots in the True is not the Good. Or it

maybe urged that active life would limit the writer's output. Exactly:

that is one of the reasons that make active life so advisable. Every

writer would write less and feel more. The crop of literature should only

be grown in alternate years. As it is, a writer is a barrel-organ who

comes to the end of his tunes, clicks, and starts afresh, just as a

scholar is a revolving bookcase. Consider, too, how a holiday of action

would disenthral the writer from the pettiness of cliques and coteries,

with their pedantic atmosphere and false perspectives. I would have every

University don work in the docks six months a year (six months' idleness

is surely quite enough for any man); every platonic essayist should

attend a course of music-halls; and if I could afford it I would set up

all the superfine critics in nice little grocers' shops, with the cosiest

of back parlours. Why, bless my soul! it is your man of culture, your

author, your leader of thought, who is parochial, suburban, _borné_, and

the rest of it! It is a commonplace that the Londoner is the most

provincial of all Englishmen, living in sublime ignorance of what is

thought and done in the rest of the kingdom; and in similar wise, when a

man sneers at the _bourgeoisie_, I never think of looking up his pedigree

in Debrett. It is, no doubt, extremely exasperating that the world was

not created for the convenience and to the taste of artistic persons, but

unfortunately the thing had to be turned out before their advice could be

obtained.

That young England--bless its stupid healthy soul--is more interested in

life and football than in literature and art, was amply proved by the

lethargy about the Laureateship. On the Continent the claims of the

rivals would have set the students brawling and the journalists duelling;

here it barely caused a ripple in the five o'clock teacup. My friend the

Apostle was not wholly wrong; there is a development of native drama

ahead of us; only it will come about peaceably,--we shall not hear the

noise of the captains and the shouting. And the old conventions have a

long run yet before them. They cling even to the skirts of "The Second

Mrs. Tanqueray." Indeed, the new school can scarcely be said to have

appeared. The literary quality of our plays has improved, thanks to Jones

and Pinero, and not forgetting Grundy. And that is all. The old school is

as vigorous as ever. In the person of "Charley's Aunt" it is alive and

kicking up its petticoats, and the audience rolls in helpless laughter at

Mr. Penley's slightest movement. Talk of literature, indeed! Why, the

fortunate comedian assured me that if he chose he could spin out

"Charley's Aunt" from a two-hours' play to a four-hours' play, merely by

eking out his own "business." Think of this, aspiring Sheridans, ye who

polish the dialogue with midnight oil; realise the true inwardness of the

drama, and go burn me your epigrams!

In literature, where the clash of new and old is more audible, it is

still the same story. On the conservative side, the real fighting is done

by Messrs. Smith, who refuse to sell the too daring publication. The

radicals are crippled by the timidity of editors, and cajoled by the

fatness of their purses. A gifted young story-teller has been lecturing

on the Revolt of the Authors. But it seems to me our literature has

already as wide a charter as is desirable. The two bulwarks of the

British library are Shakespeare and the Bible, and both treat human life

comprehensively, not with the onesidedness of self-styled Realism. I

would advise my young literary friends to emblazon on their banner

"Shakespeare and the Bible." Real Realism is what English literature

needs. The one undoubted development in recent English literature is the

short story. But this is less due to any advance in artistic aspiration

than to the fact that there is a good serial market for short stories,

and the turnover is quicker for the trader than if he turned out long

novels. Small stories, quick returns! In verity, this much-vaunted

efflorescence of the _conte_ is due to the _compte_. It is quite

characteristic of our nation to arrive at a new art-form through this

practical channel. But if you want a proof of the half-heartedness of our

literary battles, turn to the "Fogey's" article on "The Young Men" in a

recent _Contemporary Review_. What a chance for a much-needed onslaught

on our minor prophets! It might have been "English bards and Scotch

reviewers" over again. But no! the Scotch reviewer's weapon is merely a

rose-water squirt. The only thing that perturbates him (as Mr. Francis

Thompson would say) is my assertion that a ray of hopefulness is stealing

again into English poetry. Since the days of Jeffrey we have only had one

really "first-class fighting man" (Henley); but even with him there is no

real party fighting, for he is catholic in his antipathies, and those

whom he chastises love him, and swear that his is the least jaded Pegasus

of the day. You see, therefore, how well-balanced we are in this "happy

isle, set in a silver sea." The Fogeys are respectful to the young men,

and the young men actually admire the Fogeys. That the young men admire

one another goes without saying. Here surely is "the atmosphere of

praise" of Mr. Pinero's hortation.

And while I do not believe that art is best nourished in this "atmosphere

of praise," preferring to read instead "an atmosphere of appraisal," I

believe that of this appraisal the more important element is "praise."

Criticism with the praise left out savours of the counsel for the

prosecution rather than of the judge,--and indeed some critics assume

that every author is guilty till he is proved good: if he is popular the

presumption of his guilt is almost irresistible. A Henley young man once

explained to me that the function of the critic was to guard the gates of

literature, keeping at bay the bulk of print, for it would surely not be

literature. This last is true enough; yet the watch-dog attitude

generates a delight to bark and bite, and turns critic literally into

cynic. Should not the true critic be an interpreter? For bad work let him

award the damnation of silence. "It is better to fight for the good than

to rail at the ill."

It is a great privilege to praise. It is a great joy to give an artist

the joy of being understood. Not every artist arrives at the divine

standpoint: "And God saw all that He made, and behold it was very good."

The human creator is not always content with the rapture of creation. He

sits lonely amid his worlds. Neglect may be the nurse of strength, but as

often it is the handmaid of idleness. The artist without an audience will

smoke the enchanted cigarettes of Balzac. The rough labour of execution

is largely the labour of conveying to others what the artist already

feels and sees. Why should he toil thanklessly? It is sweeter to dream.

Even the money that art produces may be a valuable incentive. Not, of

course, if the artist aims at the money; but art wrought for love may

bring in money, like a woman married for love. In so far as the lover has

his eye on the dowry, in so far his love is vitiated; and in so far as

the artist has his eye on the profits, in so far is he untrue to a

mistress who demands undivided allegiance. Natheless, the _auri sacra

fames_ may be his salvation. What subtle sympathy connects _fama_ with

_fames_? The butcher's bill may drive him from the dreamland of luxurious

meditation to the practical embodiment of his dreams. Only, while he is

at work, the laws of art alone must be his masters; he must not alter or

abate a jot by way of concession to the great cash question. When he has

completed his work, then indeed he may sell it in the best market. But

the least preliminary paltering with the spirit of commerce is a

degradation. Does this seem an ideal demand? Let us remember, then,

ideals are goads and goals, counsels of perfection. No one expects people

to come quite up to them, but it is better for human nature that they

should be there. For there is something in hero-worship, despite

Carlyle's grandiosities, provided you choose your hero wisely. We do, in

this valley of doubt and confusion, touched with false sparkles, follow

men who speak from their souls sincerely, who work from their hearts.

Instinctively we feel it degrading and disillusionising that inspiration

shall be paid in hard cash, and genius entered on the credit side of a

ledger. Does a man plead that he has to support his wife and children?

Well, in the first place, he need not have got them. In the second, one

may be admirable as a man, but as an artist abominable. Still it is

better that a man should write Adelphi dramas than that his starving

family should qualify for scenes in them. All honour to the artist who

lives on bread and water in a garret rather than prostitute his art! but

less honour to the man who lives on _my_ bread, and adds somebody else's

whisky to his water, rather than earn an honest living by dishonest books

and plays. This was the question that split up the Bohemians of Murger.

While the majority did odd jobs for the Philistines, to have the time for

real art, the very poet consenting to write Alexandrines for a dentist at

fifteen sous a dozen--vastly cheaper than oysters--there was an inner

band of the faithful who preferred starvation to the desecration of their

genius for the unsaleable. Even so among the vegetarians there is a

holier circle that eats only nuts and fruits. The sensible artist will

compromise. There is in political economy a region called "the margin of

subsistence." It is a sort of purgatory. Above it, we enter the heaven of

superfluities; below it, lies the dread Hades of hunger. It is here that

the impecunious artist--with a family (and, alas! the artist is nearly

always impecunious--with a family) should pitch his tent. He may be

allowed to prostitute himself, if need be, sufficiently to pay the

ground-rent. He must not be driven lower down by his devotion to the

Muses: an artist who dies of starvation is simply a dead donkey. Rather

than play a false note, he stops his music for ever. It is sublime--but

silly. He had better black boots. There is no reason on earth why a

shoeblack should not read Schiller, or moralise as he does in Bret

Harte's parody of Bulwer Lytton. A bachelor artist might do worse than

get locked up for some simple offence, and thus throw himself upon the

nation. Remember what Sir Walter Raleigh did in prison. The poet can rise

superior to the sordidness of skilly. Only he must be careful to preserve

his seclusion. Leigh Hunt made his cell the artistic centre of London,

but I doubt if he got through much work; and more recently, when Jokaï

was in gaol, he was compelled to insist on two hours' privacy and

confinement per day. To be a "first-class misdemeanant" seems to me the

height of happiness for a literary man.

Unfortunately there are few honest opportunities for going to gaol. The

most honest way of all would be to write the truth about men and things;

but this editors will not print. So one has to live at one's own expense.

Nevertheless, the Hotel of the Black Maria remains an ideal.

IV

BOHEMIA AND VERLAINE

It is one of the pleasures of my life that I never saw Tennyson. Hence I

am still able to think of him as a poet, for even his photograph is not

disillusionising, and he dressed for the part almost as well as Beerbohm

Tree would have done. Why one's idea of a poet is a fine frenzied being,

I do not quite know. One seems to pick it up in the very nursery, and

even the London _gamin_ knows a poet when he doesn't see one. Probably it

rests upon the ancient tradition of oracles and sibyls, foaming at the

mouth like champagne bottles. Inspiration meant originally demoniac

possession, and to "modern thought" prophecy and poetry are both

epileptic. "Genius is a degenerative psychosis of the epileptoid order."

A large experience of poets has convinced me as little of this as of the

old view summed up in _genus irritabile vatum_. Poets seem to me the

homeliest and most hardworking of mankind--'t is a man in possession, not

a _daimon_ nor a disease. Of course they have their mad moods, but they

don't write in them. Writing demands serenity, steadiness, patience; and

of all kinds of writing, poetry demands the steadiest pen. Complex metres

and curious rhyme-schemes are not to be achieved without pain and

patience. Prose is a path, but poetry is a tight-rope, and to walk on it

demands the nicest dexterity. You may scribble off prose in the fieriest

frenzy--who so fiery and frenzied as your journalist with the printer's

devil at his elbow?--but if you would aspire to Parnassus, you must go

slow and steady. Fancy inditing a sonnet with the compositors waiting for

"copy"! Pegasus were more truly figured as a drayhorse than a steed with

wings; he jogs along trot-trot, and occasionally he stands at an

obstinate pause. The splendid and passionate lyrics of Swinburne, with

their structural involutions and complicacies, must have been "a dem'd

grind." The English language does not easily lend itself to so much

"linked sweetness long drawn out." Even the manuscript of Pope's easy

meandering verse is disfigured by ceaseless corrections. As he himself

says:

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,

As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.

Probably these very lines run in the original manuscript somewhat as

follows:

[Illustration: Handwriting sample]

Shelley is the ideal of a poet, a soul of white fire, fed by bread and

raisins; yet Shelley's last manuscripts are full of lacunae and erasures,

some of which have had to be reproduced perforce in the printed editions.

Clothed with the ... as with light,

And the shadows of the night,

Like ... next, Hypocrisy,

On a crocodile rode by.

It reads like a puzzle set by a Competition Editor. Here is another one,

which begins as beautifully as Hedda Gabler could desire, and ends in

blankness.

Within the surface of the fleeting river

The wrinkled image of the city lay,

Immovably unquiet, and for ever

It trembles, but it never fades away;

Go to the [ ]

You, being changed, will find it then as now.

The fact is, of course, that inspiration is no guarantee of perfection.

The limitations of inspiration vary with the limitations of the writer--a

proposition that may be commended to the theologians. Genius can no more

safeguard a man against his own ignorance than it can find a rhyme to

"silver." Inspiration could not save Keats from his Cockney rhymes nor

Mrs. Browning from her rhymeless rhymes. I met a poet in a London

suburb--it seemed odd to see one out of Fleet Street--but after a few

bewildered instants I recognised him. There was on his brow the burden of

a brooding sorrow. I sought delicately to probe the cause of his grief,

and he confessed at last that in a much-praised poem just published he

had made a monosyllable dissyllabic. He had never got over a youthful

mispronunciation, and in an unguarded moment of inspiration it had

slipped in.