to the lofty and the beautiful. There is no rule of art more important
than the sense of modesty. Vice grows not a little by immodesty of
thought.” True. And immodesty of thought fulfils its mission in
the “strong” book, which alone succeeds in winning the applause of
that “Exclusive Set of Degenerates” known as the E.S.D. under the
Masonic Scriptural sign of ISHBOSHETH (laying particular emphasis on
the syllable between the “Ish” and the “eth,”) who manage to obtain
temporary posts on the ever-changeful twirling treadmill of the daily
press. The Ishbosheth singular is the man who praises the “strong”
book--the Ishbosheth in the plural are the Exclusive Set who are sworn
to put down Virtue and extol Vice. Hence the “strong” cult, also the
“virile.” This last excellent and expressive word has become seriously
maltreated in the hands of the Ishbosheth, and is now made answerable
for many sins which it did not originally represent. “Virile” is from
the Latin _virilis_, a male--virility is the state and characteristic
of the adult male. Applied to certain books, however, by the Ishbosheth
it will be found by the discerning public to mean coarse--rough--with
a literary “style” obtained by sprinkling several pages of prose with
the lowest tavern-oaths, together with the name of God, pronounced
“Gawd.” Anything written in that fashion is at once pronounced “virile”
and commands wide admiration from the Ishbosheth, particularly if it
should be a story in which women are depicted at the lowest kickable
depth of drab-ism to which men can drag them, while men are represented
as the suffering victims of their wickedness. This peculiar kind of
turncoat morality was, according to Genesis, instituted by Adam in
his cowardly utterance: “The woman tempted me,” as an excuse for his
own base greed; and it has apparently continued to sprout forth in
various of his descendants ever since that time, especially in the
community of the Ishbosheth. “Virility,” therefore, being the state and
characteristic of the adult male, or the adult Adam, means, according
to the Ishbosheth, men’s proper scorn for the sex of their mothers, and
an egotistical delight in themselves, united to a barbarous rejoicing
in bad language and abandoned morals. It does not mean this in decent
every-day life, of course; but it does in books--such books as are
praised by the Ishbosheth.
“I don’t want one of your ‘strong’ books,” said a customer at one of
the circulating libraries the other day. “Give me something I can read
to my wife without being ashamed.” This puts the case in a nutshell.
No clean-minded man can read the modern “strong” book praised by the
Ishbosheth and feel quite safe, or even quite manly in his wife’s
presence. He will find himself before he knows it mumbling something
about the gross and fleshly temptations of a deformed gentleman with
short legs; or he will grow hot-faced and awkward over the narrative
of a betrayed milkmaid who enters into all the precise details of her
wrongs with a more than pernicious gusto. It is true that he will
probably chance upon no worse or more revolting circumstances of human
life than are dished up for the general Improvement of Public Morals in
our halfpenny dailies; but he will realize, if he be a man of sense,
that whereas the divorce court and police cases in the newspaper are
very soon forgotten, the impression of a “strong” book, particularly if
the “strong” parts are elaborately and excruciatingly insisted upon,
lasts, and sometimes leaves tracks of indelible mischief on minds
which, but for its loathsome influence, would have remained upright
and innocent. Thought creates action. An idea is the mainspring of an
epoch. Therefore the corrupters of thought are responsible for corrupt
deeds in an individual or a nation. From a noble thought--from a
selfless pure ideal--what great actions spring! Herein should the
responsibility of Literature be realized. The Ishbosheth, with their
“strong” books, have their criminal part in the visible putrescence
of a certain section of society known as the “swagger set.” Perhaps
no more forcible illustration of the repulsion exercised by nature
itself to spiritual and literary disease could be furnished than by
the death of the French “realist” Zola. Capable of fine artistic work,
he prostituted his powers to the lowest grade of thought. From the
dust-hole of the frail world’s ignorance and crime he selected his
olla-podrida of dirty scrapings, potato-peelings, candle-ends, rank
fat, and cabbage water, and set them all to seethe in the fire of
his brain, till they emitted noxious poison, and suffocating vapours
calculated to choke the channels of every aspiring mind and idealistic
soul. Nature revenged herself upon him by permitting him to be likewise
asphyxiated--only in the most prosy and “realistic” manner. It was one
of those terribly grim jests which she is fond of playing off on those
who blaspheme her sacred altars. A certain literary aspirant hovering
on the verge of the circle of the Ishbosheth, complained the other day
of a great omission in the biography of one of his dead comrades of the
pen. “They should have mentioned,” he said, “that he allowed his body
to _swarm with vermin_!” This is true Ishbosheth art. Suppress the fact
that the dead man had good in him, that he might have been famous had
he lived, that he had some notably strong points in his character, but
_don’t_ forget, for Heaven’s sake, to mention the “vermin”! For the
Ishbosheth “cult” see nothing in a sunset, but much in a flea.
Hence when we read the criticism of a “strong” book, over the signature
of one of the Ishbosheth, we know what to expect. All the bad, low,
villainous and soiled side of sickly or insane human nature will be in
it, and nothing of the healthful or sound. For, to be vicious is to
be ill--to commit crime is to be mentally deformed--and the “strong”
book of the Ishbosheth only deals with phases of sickness and lunacy.
There are other “strong” books in the world, thank Heaven--strong
books which treat strongly of noble examples of human life, love
and endeavour--books like those of Scott and Dickens and Brontë and
Eliot--books which make the world all the better for reading them. But
they are not books admired of the Ishbosheth. And as the Ishbosheth
have their centres in the current press, they are not praised in the
newspapers. Binding as the union of the Printers is all over the
world, I suppose they cannot take arms against the Ishbosheth and
decline to print anything under this Masonic sign? If they could,
what a purification there would be--what a clean, refreshing world
of books--and perhaps of men and women! No more vicious heroes with
short legs; no more painfully-injured milkmaids; no more “twins,”
earthly or heavenly--while possibly a new _Villette_ might bud and
blossom forth--another _Fortunes of Nigel_, another brilliant _Vanity
Fair_--and books which contain wit without nastiness, tenderness
without erotics, simplicity without affectation, and good English
without slang, might once again give glory to literature. But this
millennium will not be till the “strong” book of the Ishbosheth ceases
to find a publisher, and the Ishbosheth themselves are seen in their
true colours, and fully recognized by the public to be no more than
they are--a mere group of low sensualists, who haunt Fleet Street
bars and restaurants, and who out of that sodden daily and nightly
experience get a few temporary jobs on the Press, and “pose” as a cult
and censorship of art. And fortunately the very phrase “strong book”
has become so much their own that it has now only to be used in order
to warn off the public from mere pot-house opinion.
ON THE MAKING OF LITTLE POETS
Great Poets discover themselves. Little Poets have to be “discovered”
by somebody else. Otherwise they would live and die in the shadow
of decent obscurity, unheard, unseen, unknown. And it is seriously
open to question whether their so living and dying would not be an
advantage to society in the abating of a certain measure of boredom.
Looking back upon the motley crowd of Little Poets who had their day of
“discovery” and “boom” at the very period when the thunderous voice of
the Muse at her grandest was shaking the air through the inspired lips
of Byron, Shelley and Keats, and noting to what dusty oblivion their
little names and lesser works are now relegated without regret, it is
difficult to understand why they were ever dragged from the respectable
retirement of common-place mediocrity by their critic-contemporaries.
Byron was scorned, Shelley neglected, and Keats killed by these same
critics;--neither of the three were “discovered” or “made.” Their
creation was not of man, but of their own innate God-given genius,
and, according to the usual fate attending such divine things, the
fastidious human _dilettante_ of their day would have none of them. He
set up his own verse-making Mumbo-Jumbo; and one Pye was Laureate. Pye
was Laureate,--yet Byron lived, and there was a reigning monarch in
England, strange as these assorted facts will seem to all intellectual
posterity. For a monarch’s word,--even a prince’s word,--must always
carry a certain weight of influence, and one asks wonderingly how,
under such circumstances, that word came to be left unsaid? No voice
from the Throne called the three greatest geniuses of the era to
receive any honour due to their rare gifts and quality. On the contrary
they were cast out as unvalued rubbish from their native land, and
the Little Poets had their way. Pye continued to write maudlin rhymes
unmolested, never dreaming that the only memory we should keep of him
or of his twaddle, would be the one scathing line of the banished Byron:
Better to err with Pope than shine with Pye!
And feeble penny whistles played trumpery tunes to the languid votaries
of “cultchaw” in those days, and pennywhistle verse was voted “classic”
and supreme; but ever and anon the Nation turned a listening ear across
the seas and caught the music made by its outlawed singers,--music
it valued even then, and treasures now among its priceless and
imperishable glories. For the Nation knows what true Poetry is,--and no
“discoverer” will ever force it to accept a tallow candle for a star.
The gulf between Great Poets and Little is a wide one,--wider than
that which yawned between Lazarus in heaven and Dives in hell. The
Great Poet is moved by an inspiration which he himself cannot analyse,
and in which neither the desire of money nor the latent hope of fame
have the chiefest part. He sings simply because he must sing. He does
not labour at it, piecing his thoughts and words together with the
tardy and tame patience of a worker in mosaics, for though such exact
execution be admirable in mosaic-work, it is dull and lifeless in
poetry. Colour, fire, music, passion, and intense, glowing vitality are
the heritage of the Great Poet; and when the torrent of unpremeditated
love-song, battle-chant, dirge and prophecy pours from his lips, the
tired world slackens its pace to listen, and listening, silently crowns
him Laureate in its heart of hearts, regardless of Prime Minister or
Court Chamberlain. But the Little Poet is not able so to win attention;
he cannot sing thus “wildly well” because he lacks original voice.
He can only trim a sorry pipe of reed and play weak echoes thereon;
derivative twists of thought and borrowed fancies caught up from the
greater songs already ringing through the centuries. And when he
first begins piping in this lilliputian fashion he is generally very
miserable. He pipes “for pence; Ay me, how few!” Nobody listens; people
are too much engrossed with their own concerns to care about echoes.
Their attention can only be secured by singing them new songs that will
stir their pulses to new delights. The too-tootling of the Little Poet,
therefore, would never be noticed at all, even by way of derision,
unless he went down on all-fours and begged somebody to “discover” him.
The “discoverer” in most cases is a Superannuated-literary-gentleman,
who has tried his own hand at poetry and failed ignominiously.
Incapacity to do any good work of one’s own frequently creates a
thirsty desire to criticize the work of other people; thus, in the
intervals of his impotent rage at the success of the deserving, the
Superannuated, resolved to push himself into notice somehow, takes to
“discovering” Little Poets. It is his poor last bid for fame; a final
forlorn effort to get his half-ounce of talent to the front by tacking
it on to some new name which he thinks (and he is quite alone in the
idea) may by the merest chance in the world, like a second-rate horse,
win a doubtful race. To admire any Great Poet who may happen to exist
among us, is no part of the Superannuated’s programme. He ignores Great
Poets generally, fearing lest the mere mention of their names should
eclipse his dwarfish nurslings.
Now the public, mistakenly called fools, are perfectly aware of the
Superannuated. They see his signature affixed to many of the Little
Poets Booms, and ask each other with smiling tolerance, “What has he
done?” Nothing. “Oh! Then how does he know?” Ah, that is his secret! He
thinks he knows; and he wants you, excellent Fool-Public, to believe he
thinks he knows! And, under the pleasing delusion that you always have
your Fool’s Cap on, and never take it off under any circumstances, he
“discovers” Mr. Podgers for you. Who is Mr. Podgers? A poet. If we are
to credit the Superannuated, he is “a new star on the literary horizon,
of the first magnitude.” The “first magnitude”!--the public shakes its
caps and bells in amused scepticism. Another Shelley? Another Byron?
These were of the “first magnitude,” and shall we thank a bounteous
heaven for one more such as these? No, no, nothing of the sort, says
the Superannuated with indignation, for it is high time you put this
sort of Shelley-Byron stuff behind you. Mr. Swinburne has distinctly
said that “Byron was no poet.” Learn wisdom, therefore, and turn from
Byron to Podgers. He has written a little book, has Podgers, for which
those who desire to possess it must pay a sum out of all proportion to
its size. What shall we find in this so-little book? Anything to make
our hearts beat in more healthful and harmonious tune? No. Nothing
of this in Podgers. Nothing, in fact, of any kind in Podgers which
we have not heard before. There are a few lines that we remember as
derived from Wordsworth, and one stanza seems to us like a carefully
transposed bit of Tennyson;--but for anything absolutely new in thought
or in treatment we search in vain. Unless we make exception for a
set of verses which are a tribute to the art of Log-Rolling, namely
Podgers’s “Ode” to Podgers’s favouring critic. We confess this to be
somewhat of a novelty, and we begin to pity Podgers. He must have
fallen very low to write (and publish) an “Ode” to the Superannuated,
his chief flatterer on the Press, and he must be very short-sighted if
he imagines that action is a millstone _without_ a hole in it. And so,
despite the loud eulogies of the Superannuated (who is naturally proud
to be made the subject of any “Ode” however feeble) we do not purchase
Podgers’s book, though it is urged upon us as being a “limited”
edition. But the Superannuated is not herein baffled. If, he says,
if you are so asinine, so crass, so dull and dense of comprehension
as to reject this marvellous, this classic Podgers, what say you to
Stodgers? Stodgers is a “young” poet (forty-five last birthday),
entirely free from “manner” and manners. He has resorted to the last
and lowest method employed by Little Poets for obtaining temporary
notoriety, namely,--outraging decency. Coarseness and blasphemy are
the prevailing themes of his verse, but to the Superannuated these
grave blemishes constitute “power.” A “strong” line is a lewd line; a
“masterful” stanza contains a prurient suggestion. It suits the purpose
of the Superannuated to compare his two “discoveries,” Podgers and
Stodgers, and to work them against each other in those quarters of the
Press he controls, like the “toy millers” one buys for children. It is
a case of “Podgers come up and Stodgers come down,” as fits his humour
and digestion. Meanwhile the vital test of the whole matter is that
notwithstanding all this energetic “hawking about” of the Little Poets
by the Superannuated, neither Podgers nor Stodgers _sell_. Everything
is done to secure for them this desired result; unavailingly. And it
is not as if they came out in a “common” way, Podgers and Stodgers. No
publishing-firm with a simple name such as Messrs. Smith or Brown would
suit the Little Poets. They must come out singularly, and apart from
others. So they elect a publisher who, as it were, puts up a sign, as
though he were a Tavern. “Published at the Dragon’s Mouth” or “At the
Sign of the Flagon” would seem to be more convincing than “Published by
Messrs. So and So.” Now Podgers’s little book has a fanciful title-page
stating that it is published at the “Goose and Gridiron.” Stodgers,
we find, bursts upon the world at “The Blue Boar.” There is something
very delusive about all this. A flavour of ale and mulled wine
creeps insidiously into the air, and we are moved to yearn for good
warm drinks, whereas we only get indifferent cold verse. Now if the
proprietors of the “Goose and Gridiron” and the “Blue Boar” would only
sell inspiring liquids instead of uninspired rhymes, how their trade
would improve! No longer would they bend, lean and furrowed, over their
account-books--no longer would they have to scheme and puzzle over the
“making” of Little Poets; because it must not be imagined that the
Superannuated “discoverer” is the only one concerned in the business.
“Goose and Gridiron” and “Blue Boar” have to deal in many small tricks
of trade to compass it. Of course it is understood that the Little
Poets get no money out of their productions. What they stipulate for
with “Blue Boar” and likewise with “Goose and Gridiron” is a “hearing.”
This “hearing” is obtained variously. Podgers got it in this way, as
followeth: His verses, which had appeared from time to time in Sunday
papers and magazines, were issued in a “limited edition.” Such “limited
edition” was at once dispersed among booksellers in different parts of
the country “on sale or return,” and while thus doubtfully awaiting
purchasers, “Goose and Gridiron” tipped the trade-wink and perhaps
something else more substantial besides, to the Superannuated,--who
straightway seized his pen and wrote: “We hear that the first edition
of Mr. Podgers’s poems is exhausted, and that original copies are
already at a premium.” This done, and “passed” through many papers,
the publisher followed it up with an advertisement to the effect that
“The first edition of Mr. Podgers’s poems being exhausted, a Second
will be ready in a few days.” And here, it may as well be said for
the rectitude of “Goose and Gridiron,” things came to a standstill.
Because the Little Poets seldom get beyond a second edition. When
Podgers’s first editions came back unsold from the provinces (as they
did), attempts were made to dispose of them at fancy prices as a last
resource,--such attempts naturally ending in disaster. The times are
too hard, and people have too much to do with their money to part with
any of it for first editions of Podgers or Stodgers. The public is a
very shrewd one, moreover, and is not to be “taken in” by gnat-rhymers
dancing up and down for an hour in the “discoverer’s” artificial
sunbeams. And the Superannuated, in his eager desire to assert himself
as an oracular personage, forgets one very important fact, and this is,
that being a Nobody he cannot be accepted as warrant for a Somebody.
The public is not his child; he cannot whip it into admiring Mr.
Podgers, or coerce its judgment respecting Mr. Stodgers. Its ways
are wilful, and it has a ridiculous habit (considering what a Fool
the critic imagines it to be) of preferring its own opinion to that
of the Superannuated. It is capable, it thinks, what with Compulsory
Education and the rest of it, of making its own choice. And on the
whole it prefers the Great Poet,--the man who scorns to be “discovered”
by an inferior intellect, and who makes his own way independently and
with a grand indifference to the squabbling of Log-rollers. He is not
“made”; he forms part of the country’s blood and life; he chants the
national thought in haunting rhythm as did the prophet bards of old;
he, careless of “pence,” praise or fame, does so mix himself with his
land’s history, that he becomes, as it were the very voice of the age
in which he lives, and the Superannuated may ignore him as he will,
he cannot get him out of the nation’s heart when he has once got in.
But of the feeble, absurdly conceited tribe of Little Poets who come
jostling one upon another nowadays in such a puling crowd, piping out
their wretchedly small personalities in versed pessimism or coarse
metaphor,--men “made” by the Tavern-publisher and the Superannuated
Failure;--we have had enough of these, and more than enough. Too much
good paper, good ink and good binding are wasted on their totally
undesired productions. Life with us now is lived at too hard and too
difficult a pace for any one to need poetry that is _only_ verse.
Hearts break every day in the truest sense of that sentimental phrase;
brains reel into insanity and the darkness of suicide; and it is no
Little Poet’s personal pangs about “pence” and such trifles, that can,
like David’s harp of old, soothe or dismiss the dark spirit brooding
over the latter-day Saul. It is the Great Poet we care for, whose
singing-soul mystically comprehends our unuttered thoughts of love or
glory; who chants not only his pains, but ours; not his joy, so much as
the whole world’s joy. Such a man needs no “discoverer” to prove his
existence; he is self-evident. When we grow so purblind as to need a
still blinder Mole to point us out the sun, then, but not till then
shall we require the assistance of the Superannuated to “discover” what
we understand by a Poet. At present we are actively conscious both of
the orb of day, and the true quality of genius; and though the Poet we
choose for ourselves and silently acknowledge as worthy of all honour,
may not be, and seldom is, the recommended favourite of a clique, we
are fully aware of him, and show our love and appreciation by setting
his book among our household gods. No “limited edition” will suffice
for such a man; we need to have his poems singing about us wherever we
go. For the oft-repeated truth is to-day as true as ever,--that the
Great Poet is “born,” and never has been and never will be “made.”
THE PRAYER OF THE SMALL COUNTRY M.P.
WHICH HE PRAYETH DAILY
O thou Especial Little God of Parliaments and Electors, with whom the
greater God of the Universe has nothing whatever to do!--I beseech Thee
to look upon me, Thy chosen servant, with a tolerant and favourable Eye!
Consider with Leniency the singular and capricious Chance which has
enabled me to become a Member of the Government, and grant me Thy
protection, so that my utter Incapacity for the Post may never be
discovered! Enable me, I implore Thee, to altogether dispense with
the assistance of a certain Journalist and Press-Reporter in the
composition of my Speeches! His Terms are high, and I am not sure of
his Discretion!
Impart unto me by spiritual telegraphy such Knowledge of the general
Situation of Affairs that I may be able to furnish forth an occasional
Intelligent Remark to the farmers of this Constituency, whose Loyalty
to the Government is as firm as their Trust in the Power of Beer!
Give me the grace of such shallow Profundity and Pretension as
shall convince Rustic minds of my complete Superiority to them in
matters concerning their Interest and Welfare; and teach me to use
their Simplicity for the convenient furtherance of my own Cunning!
Fill me with such necessary and becoming Arrogance as shall make me
overbearingly insolent to Persons of Intellect, while yet retaining
that sleek Affability which shall cause me to appear a Fawning Flunkey
to Persons of Rank! Enable me to so condescendingly patronize the
Electors who gave me their Majority that it shall seem I was returned
through Merit only, and not through Bribes and Beer! And mercifully
defend me, O Beneficent little Deity, from all possibility of ever
being called upon to address the House! I am no speaker,--and even if I
were, I have no Ideas whereon to hang a fustian sentence! Thou Knowest,
All-Knowing-One, that I have not so much as an Opinion, save that it
is good for me, in respect of Social Advantage, to write M.P. after
my name! And surely Thou dost also know that I have paid Two Thousand
Pounds for the purchase of this small portion of the Alphabet, making
One Thousand Pounds per letter, which may humbly be submitted to Thee,
O Calculating Ruler of Parliamentary Elections, as somewhat dear!