Imagination in these days is the utter inability of the majority of
modern folk to understand its value. The creative ease and exquisite
happiness of an imaginative soul which builds up grand ideals of life
and love and immortality with less effort than is required for the
act of breathing, seems to be quite beyond their comprehension. And
so--unfortunately it often follows that what is above them they try to
pull down,--and what is too large for them to grasp, they endeavour
to bind within their own narrow ring of experience. The attempt is
of course useless. We cannot get the planet Venus to serve us as a
lamp on our dinner table. We cannot fit the eagle into a sparrow’s
nest. But some people are always trying to do this sort of thing.
And when they find they cannot succeed, they fall into a fit of the
spleen, and revile what they cannot emulate. There is no surer sign of
mental and moral decadence than this grudging envy of a great fame.
For the healthy mind rejoices in the recognition of genius wherever
or whenever it may be discovered, and has a keen sense of personal
delight in giving to merit all its due. Hero-worship is a much finer
and more invigorating emotion than hero-slander. The insatiate
desire which is shown by certain writers nowadays, to pull down the
great reputations of the past, destroy old traditions, and cheapen
noble attainment, resembles a sudden outbreak of insane persons who
strive to smash everything within their reach. It is in its way a
form of Imagination,--but Imagination diseased and demoralized. For
Imagination, like all other faculties of the brain, can become sickly
and perverted. When it is about to die it shows--in common with
everything else in that condition,--signs of its dissolution. Such
signs of feebleness and decay are everywhere visible in the world at
the present time. They are shown in the constant output of decadent
and atheistical literature--in the decline of music and the drama from
noble and classic forms to the repulsive “problem” play and the comic
opera--in the splashy daubing of good canvas called “impressionist”
painting--in the acceptance, or passive toleration, of the vilest
doggerel verse as “poetry”--and in the wretched return to the lowest
forms of ignorance displayed in the “fashionable” craze for palmistry,
clairvoyance, crystal-gazing, and sundry other quite contemptible
evidences of foolish credulity concerning the grave issues of life and
death,--combined with a most sorrowful, most deplorable indifference
to the simple and pure teachings of the Christian Faith. Even in the
Christian Faith itself, its chosen ministers seem unable to serve their
Divine Master without quarrelling over trifles,--which is surely no
part of their calling and election.
Everywhere there is a lack of high ideals,--and all the arts suffer
severely in consequence. Modern education itself checks and cramps the
growth of imaginative originality. The general tendency is unhappily
towards the basest forms of materialism, and a large majority of people
appear to be smitten with a paralysing apathy concerning everything
but the making of money. That art is pursued with a horrible avidity,
to the exclusion of every higher and nobler pursuit. Yet it needs
very little “imagination” to prophesy what the end of a nation is
bound to be when the unbridled fever of avarice once sets in. History
has chronicled the ruin of empires from this one cause over and over
again for our warning; and as Carlyle said in his stern and strenuous
way--“One thing I do know: Never on this earth was the relation of
man to man long carried on by cash payment alone. If at any time a
philosophy of Laissez-faire, Competition and Supply-and-Demand start up
as the exponent of human relations, expect that it will soon end.”
Perhaps some will say that Imagination is not a “vanishing gift”--and
that Idealism and Romance still exist, at any rate among the Celtic
races, and in countries such as Scotland, for instance, the home of
so much noble tradition, song and story. I wish I could believe this.
But unhappily the proofs are all against it. If the Imaginative Spirit
were not decaying in Scotland as elsewhere, should we have seen the
wanton and wicked destruction of one of its fairest scenes of natural
beauty--the Glen and Fall of Foyers? There, where once the clear
beautiful cascade whose praises were sung by Robert Burns, dashed down
in its thundering glory among the heather and bracken, there are now
felled trees, sorrowful blackened stumps, withering ferns and trampled
flowers, dirty car-tracks, and all the indescribable muck which follows
in the wake of the merely money-grubbing human microbe. And where once
the pulse was quickened to a sane and healthy delight in the grandeur
of unspoilt Nature, and the mind was uplifted from sordid cares to
high contemplation, we are now asked to buy an aluminium paper-knife
for a shilling! Human absurdity can no further go than this. There can
be little imagination left in the minds that could have tolerated the
building of aluminium works where Foyers once poured music through
the glen. And it is instructive to recall the action taken by the
Belgian people--who are generally supposed to be very prosaic,--when
some of their beautiful scenery on the river Amblève, was threatened
with similar destruction. Mustering together, three to four thousand
strong, they took a reduced model of the intended factory, burnt it
on the spot, and threw its ashes into the river; performing such a
terror-striking “carmagnole” of revolt, that the authorities were
compelled to prohibit the erection of the proposed works, for fear of
a general rising throughout the country. Would that such a protest
had been offered by the people of Scotland against the destruction of
Foyers!
And what of the pitiful ruin of Loch Katrine?--once an unspoilt gem of
Highland scenery, doubly beloved for the sake of Sir Walter Scott’s
“Lady of the Lake”? What of the submerging of “Ellen’s Isle”?--the
ruthless uprooting of that “entangled wood”--
Where Nature scattered, free and wild.
Each plant or flower, the mountain’s child,--
Here eglantine embalmed the air,
Heather and hazel mingled there.
* * * * *
The wanderer’s eye could barely view
The summer heaven’s delicious blue--
So wondrous wild!--the whole might seem
The scenery of a fairy dream!
I have been assured on the very best authority that all the beauty of
Loch Katrine could have been left undisturbed, had the Scottish people
taken any actively determined measures towards preserving it. The
increasing water-supply necessary for Glasgow could have been procured
from Loch Vennachar, which is a larger loch, and quite as good for the
purpose. Only it would have cost more money, and that extra cash was
not forthcoming, even for Sir Walter’s sake! It is a poor return to
make to the memory of him who did so much for the fame of Scotland,
to mutilate the scene he loved and immortalized! The struggles and
disasters of the Jacobite Cause, and the defeat at Culloden brought
more gain than loss to Scotland, by filling the land with glorious song
and heroic tradition,--the result of the noble idealistic spirit which
made even failure honourable,--but the defacement of Loch Katrine, the
scene of “The Lady of the Lake” is nothing but a disgrace to those who
authorized it, and to those who kept silence while the deed was done.
But there are yet other signs and tokens of the disappearance of
that idealistic and romantic spirit in Scotland, which has more than
anything, helped to make its history such a brilliant chronicle of
heroism and honour. There are “a certain class” of Scottish people who
are ashamed of the Scotch accent, and who affect to be unable to read
anything written in the Scotch dialect. I am told--though I would hope
it is not true--that the larger majority of Scottish ladies object to
Scotch music, and do not know any Scotch songs. If this _is_ true of
any “certain class” of Scottish people, I am sorry for them. They have
fallen down a long way from the height where birth and country placed
them! I should like to talk to any Scot, man or woman, who is ashamed
of the Scotch accent. As well be ashamed of the mountain heather! I
should like to interview any renegade son or daughter of the Celtic
race, who is not proud of every drop of Celtic blood, every word and
line of Celtic tradition,--every sweet song that expresses the Celtic
character. Nothing that is purely national should be set aside or
allowed to perish. It is a thousand pities that the old Gaelic speech
is dying out in the Highlands, along with the picturesque “plaid” and
“bonnet” of the Highland shepherds. The Gaelic language is a rich
and copious one, and should be kept up in every Scottish school and
University. Some of the Gaelic music, too, is the most beautiful in the
world,--and many a so-called “original” composer has taken the theme
for an overture or a symphony from an ancient, long-forgotten Gaelic
tune. A fine spirit of romance and idealism is the natural heritage of
the Celtic race;--far too precious a birthright to be exchanged for
the languid indifferentism of latter-day London fashion, which too
often makes a jest of noble enthusiasm, and which would, no doubt, call
Sir Walter Scott’s fine novel of _The Heart of Midlothian_, “kailyard
literature”--if it dared!
And who that understands anything about music is so foolish and
ignorant as to despise a Scottish song? Where can we match, in all
song literature, the songs of Robert Burns? What German “lied”--what
French or Italian “canzonet” or “chansonette” expresses such real human
tenderness as “Of a’ the airts” or “My Nannie O!”? And it should be
remembered that the imaginative pathos of the Scottish song has its
other side of imaginative humour--sly, dry humour, such as cannot be
rivalled in any language or dialect of the world. And in spite of the
incredible assertion that they are beginning to despise their native
Doric, there are surely few real Scotsmen who, even at this time of day
fail to understand the whimsical satire of the famous old Jacobite song:
Wha the deil hae we gotten for a king
But a wee, wee German lairdie,
An’ he’s brought fouth o’ foreign trash
An’ dibbled it in his yairdie,--
He’s pu’d the rose o’ England loons
An’ broken the harp o’ Irish clowns--
But our Scotch thistle will jag his thumbs!
The wee, wee German lairdie!
We shall not find anything of a bilious nature in a Scottish love-song.
We shall not hear the swain asking his lady-love to meet him “in some
sky,” or “when the hay is in the mow,” or any other vaguely indefinite
place or period. The Scottish lover appears,--if we may judge him
by his native song,--to be supremely healthy in his sentiments, and
gratefully conscious of the excellence of both life and love. He takes
even poverty with a light heart, and does not grizzle over it in
trickling tears of dismal melody. No; he says simply and cheerily:
My riches a’ my penny fee,
An’ I maun guide it cannie O,--
But this world’s gear ne’er fashes me,--
My thoughts are a’ my Nannie O!
It will be a sad day indeed when this spirit of wholesome, tender and
poetic imagination drifts away altogether from Scotland. We must not
forget that the Scottish race has taken a very firm root in the New
World Beyond Seas,--and that out in Canada and Australia and South
Africa the memories and the traditions of home are dear to the hearts
of thousands who call Scotland their mother. Surely they should be
privileged to feel that in their beautiful ancestral land, the old
proud spirit is still kept up,--the old legends, the old language,
the old songs,--all the old associations, which--far away as they
are forced to dwell--they can still hand down to their children and
their children’s children. No king,--no statesman, can do for a
country what its romancists and poets can,--for the sovereignty of the
truly inspired and imaginative soul is supreme, and as far above all
other earthly dominion as the fame of Homer is above the conquests
of Alexander. And when the last touch of idealistic fancy and poetic
sentiment has been crushed out of us, and only the dry husks of
realism are left to feed swine withal, then may we look for the end
of everything that is worth cherishing and fighting for in our much
boasted civilization.
For with the vanishing gift, vanish many other things, which may be
called in the quaint phrasing of an Elizabethan writer, “a bundle of
good graces.” The chivalrous spirit of man towards woman is one of
those “good graces” which is rapidly disappearing. Hospitality is
another “good grace” which is on the wane. The art of conversation
is almost a lost one. People talk as they ride bicycles--at a
rush--without pausing to consider their surroundings. Elegant manners
are also at a discount. The “scorching,” steaming, spasmodic motor
man-animal does not inspire reverence. The smoking, slangy horsey,
betting, woman-animal is not a graceful object. In the days of classic
Greece and Rome, men and women “imagined” themselves to be descended
from the gods;--and however extravagant the idea, it was likely to
breed more dignity and beauty of conduct than if they had “imagined”
themselves descended from apes. A nation rounds itself to an Ideal, as
the clay forms into shape on a potter’s wheel. It is well, therefore,
to see that the Ideal be pure and lofty, and not a mere Golden Image
like that set up by King Nebuchadnezzar, who ended his days by eating
grass,--possibly thistles. Some of our public men might perhaps be
better for a little more Imagination, and a little less red tape. It
might take them healthfully out of themselves. For most of them seem
burdened with an absurd self-consciousness, which is apt to limit the
extent of their view out on public affairs. Others again are afflicted
by the hedge-hog quality of “stand-offishness” which they unfortunately
mistake for dignity. And others affect to despise public opinion, and
have a curious habit of overlooking the fact that it is the much-abused
public which sets them in office and pays to keep them there. Their
Ideal of public life and service partakes too much of Self to be nobly
National.
What, after all, is Imagination? It is a great many things. It is
a sense of beauty and harmony. It is an instinct of poetry and of
prophecy. A Persian poet describes it as an immortal sense of memory
which is always striving to recall the beautiful things the Soul has
lost. Another fancy, also from the East, is that it is “an instinctive
premonition of beautiful things to come.” Another, which is perhaps
the most accurate description of all, is that it is “the Sun-dial of
the Soul on which God flashes the true time of day.” This is true, if
we bear in mind that Imagination is always ahead of Science, pointing
out in advance the great discovery to come. Shakespeare foretold the
whole science of geology in three words--“Sermons in stones,”--and
the vast business of the electric telegraph in one line--“I’ll put a
girdle round the earth in forty minutes.” One of the Hebrew prophets
“imagined” the phonograph when he wrote “Declare unto me the image
of a voice.” As we all know, the marks on the wax cylinder in a
phonograph are “the image of a voice.” The air-ship may prove a very
marvellous invention, but the imagination which saw Aladdin’s palace
flying from one country to another was long before it. All the genii
in the Arabian Nights stories were only the symbols of the elements
which man might control if he but rubbed the lamp of his intelligence
smartly enough. Every fairy tale has a meaning; every legend a lesson.
The submarine boat in perfection has been “imagined” by Jules Verne.
Wireless telegraphy appears to have been known in the very remote days
of Egypt, for in a rare old book called _The History of the Pyramids_,
translated from the Arabic, and published in France in 1672, we find
an account of a certain high priest of Memphis named Saurid,--who, so
says the ancient Arabian chronicler, “prepared for himself a casket
wherein he put magic fire, and shutting himself up with the casket, he
sent messages with the fire day and night, over land and sea, to all
those priests over whom he had command, so that all the people should
be made subject to his will. And he received answers to his messages
without stop or stay, and none could hold or see the running fire, so
that all the land was in fear by reason of the knowledge of Saurid.” In
the same volume we find that a priestess named Borsa evidently used the
telephone. For, according to her history, “She applied her mouth and
ears unto pipes in the wall of her dwelling, and so heard and answered
the requests of the people in the distant city.”
Thus it would seem that there is nothing new under the sun to that
“dainty Ariel” of the mind, Imagination. It sees all present things
at a glance, and foretells what is yet to come. It may well be called
the Sun-dial of the Soul; but it is a Dial that must be kept sound
and clean. There must be no crack in it,--it must not be allowed to
get overgrown with the slimy mosses and rank weeds of selfishness and
personal prejudice,--the index hand must be firmly set,--and none
of the numeral figures must be missing! So, perchance, shall God
flash the true time of day upon it, for such as will hold themselves
free to mark the Hour according to His will. And for those who do
thus hold themselves free,--for those who care to keep this precious
Sun-dial clear and clean in their souls, there shall always be light
and love,--and such clear reflections of divine beauty and peace as
are described by the “Ettrick Shepherd” in his story of _Kilmeny in
Fairyland_:
For Kilmeny had been, she knew not where,
And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare;
But it seemed as the harp of the sky had rung,
And the airs of heaven played round her tongue!
THE POWER OF THE PEN
The dignity of Literature is, or used to be, something more than a
mere phrase. Days there were in the long-ago, when the thinkers and
writers of a nation were held to be worthy of higher honour than
trade-kings and stock-jobbers,--when each one that shone out was “a
bright particular star” of genius, as frankly owned as an object
of admiration in the literary firmament. At that time there was
no “syndicated” press. The followers and disciples of Literature
were not all herded together, as it were, in a kind of scribbling
trades-union. The poet, the novelist, the essayist,--each one of
these moved in his or her own appointed orbit, and their differing
special ways of handling the topics of their time served to interest,
charm and stimulate the intelligences of people who were cultured and
appreciative enough to understand and honour their efforts. But now
things are greatly changed. What has been generally understood as
“cultured” society is rapidly deteriorating into baseness and voluntary
ignorance. The profession of letters is so little understood, and
so far from being seriously appreciated, that responsible editors
will accept and publish magazine articles by women of “title” and
“fashion,” who prove themselves as ignorant of grammar as they are of
spelling. The printer’s reader corrects the spelling, but the grammar
is generally left as its “aristocratic” writer penned it, in majestic
incompleteness. The newspapers are full, not of thoughtful, honestly
expressed public opinion on the affairs of the nation, but of vapid
“personalities,” interesting to none save gossips and busy-bodies. A
lamentable lack of strength is apparent in the whole “tone” of modern
Literature, together with a still more lamentable lack of wit. All
topics, say the pessimists, are exhausted. The quarrels of politicians
have exhausted earth,--the recriminations of the Churches have
exhausted Heaven,--and the bold immoralities of society have, almost,
if not quite, exhausted Hell. Yet the topic which holds in itself a
great many of the pleasures of earth and heaven--with perhaps a touch
of the other nameless place also, is still the Power of the Pen. It
remains, even in these days, the greatest power for good or evil in
the world. With the little instrument which rests so lightly in the
hand, whole nations can be moved. It is nothing to look at; generally
speaking it is a mere bit of wood with a nib at the end of it--but when
it is poised between thumb and finger, it becomes a living thing--it
moves with the pulsations of the loving heart and thinking brain, and
writes down, almost unconsciously, the thoughts that live--the words
that burn.
To the power of the Pen we owe our laws, our government, our
civilization, our very religion. For without it we should have no
Bible--no New Testament. Our histories, our classics, our philosophies,
our poetry, would all be lost with their originators. We should not
know that Julius Cæsar ever walked on the shores of Britain, or that
Nero fiddled while Rome was burning. In fact we should still be in
the dark ages, without so much as a dream of the magnificent era of
progress through which we have come, and in which we, of this present
generation, have our glorious share. And so I think and venture to
say that the power of the Pen is one which commands more millions of
human beings than any monarch’s rule, and that the profession of the
pen, called Literature, is the greatest, the highest, and the noblest
that is open to aspiring ambition. Empires, thrones, commerce, war,
politics, society--these things last but their brief hour--the Power of
the Pen takes note of them as they pass--but outlives them all!
We should know nothing to-day of the grandeurs of old Egypt, or the
histories of her forgotten kings, if it were not for the Rosetta
stone--on which the engraver’s instrument, serving as a pen, wrote the
Egyptian hieroglyphics beside the Greek characters, thus giving us
the clue to the buried secrets of a long past great civilization. The
classic land of Greece, once foremost in all things which make nations
great, particularly in the valour and victorious deeds of her military
heroes, has almost forgotten her ancient glory--she might perhaps be
forgotten by other nations altogether in the constant springing up of
new countries and peoples if it were not for Homer! The blind, despised
old man, who sang her golden days of pride and conquest, still keeps
her memory green. And let us not forget that other glorious poet, who
laid his laurel-wreath and life upon her shrine--our own immortal
Byron--whose splendid lyric, “The Isles of Greece” may stand beside
the finest lines of Homer, and not be shamed.
What does all Italy, and particularly Florence, make chief boast of
to-day? Not commerce, not wealth--simply Dante! In his lifetime he was
made a subject for hatred and derision--he was scorned, cast out, and
exiled by his fellow-townsfolk--yet now he is the great glory of his
native city which claims respect from all the world for having been the
birthplace of so supreme a soul. So, even after death, the Power of the
Pen takes its revenge, and ensures its just recognition.
Yet there are many workers in Literature who say that the Power of
the Pen gives them no joy at all,--that it is a “grind,”--that it is
full of disappointment and bitterness, and that they never get paid
enough for what they do. This last is always a very sore point with
them. They brood on it, and consider it so often, that by and by the
question of how much or how little payment they get, becomes the only
way in which they regard their profession. It is the wrong way. It is
the way that leads straight to biliousness and chronic dyspepsia. It is
not my way. To me, what little power of the pen I possess, is a magic
talisman which I would not exchange for millions of money. It makes
life beautiful for me--it intensifies and transfigures all events and
incidents--it shows me a whole history in the face of a child--a whole
volume of poetry and philosophy in the cup of a flower. It enables
me to see the loveliness of nature with keener and more appreciative
gratitude--and it fills me with an inward happiness which no outward
circumstance can destroy.
Of course just payment is to be demanded and expected for every kind
of work. The rule of “give and take” holds good in all classes of
employment. Each author’s power of the pen commands its price according
to the value set upon it by the public. But I, personally, have refused
many considerable sums of money offered to me if I would consent to
“work up” or “bring forward” certain schemes and subjects with which
I have no sympathy. The largest cheque would never tempt me to write
against my own inclination. If I were given such a choice as this--to
write something entirely opposed to my own feeling and conscience for
a thousand pounds, or to write my honest thought for nothing, I would
write my honest thought, and let the thousand pounds go. I am glad to
say that some of my contemporaries are with me in this particular form
of literary faith--but not as many as, for the honour of our calling, I
could desire.