ESSAYS IN MINIATURE
Fiction, Fact, and Fancy Series.
MERRY TALES.
BY MARK TWAIN.
THE GERMAN EMPEROR AND HIS EASTERN NEIGHBORS.
BY POULTNEY BIGELOW.
PADDLES AND POLITICS DOWN THE DANUBE.
BY POULTNEY BIGELOW.
SELECTED POEMS.
BY WALT WHITMAN.
AUTOBIOGRAPHIA: THE STORY OF A LIFE.
BY WALT WHITMAN.
DON FINIMONDONE: CALABRIAN SKETCHES.
BY ELISABETH CAVAZZA.
THE MASTER OF SILENCE: A ROMANCE.
BY IRVING BACHELLER.
WRITINGS OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.
EDITED BY PAUL LEICESTER FORD.
ESSAYS IN MINIATURE.
BY AGNES REPPLIER.
MR. BILLY DOWNS AND HIS LIKES.
BY RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON.
Bound in Illuminated Cloth, each, 75 Cents. Complete Set, 10 Volumes, in
Box, $7.50.
⁂ _For Sale by all Booksellers, or sent postpaid, on receipt of price, by
the Publishers_,
CHAS. L. WEBSTER & CO., NEW YORK.
Fiction, Fact, and Fancy Series
EDITED BY ARTHUR STEDMAN
ESSAYS IN MINIATURE
ESSAYS IN MINIATURE
BY
AGNES REPPLIER
New York
CHARLES L. WEBSTER & CO.
1892
Copyright, 1892,
CHARLES L. WEBSTER & CO.
(_All rights reserved._)
PRESS OF
JENKINS & MCCOWAN,
NEW YORK.
CONTENTS
PAGE
OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS 11
TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 28
THE OPPRESSION OF NOTES 45
CONVERSATION IN NOVELS 59
A SHORT DEFENCE OF VILLAINS 70
A BY-WAY IN FICTION 87
COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE 104
MR. WILDE’S _Intentions_ 121
HUMORS OF GASTRONOMY 129
CHILDREN IN FICTION 144
THREE FAMOUS OLD MAIDS 157
THE CHARM OF THE FAMILIAR 171
OLD WORLD PETS 182
BATTLE OF THE BABIES 195
THE NOVEL OF INCIDENT 207
ESSAYS IN MINIATURE
OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS
There is a short paragraph in Hazlitt’s _Conduct of Life_ that I read
very often, and always with fresh delight. He is offering much good
counsel to a little lad at school, and when he comes to a matter upon
which most counselors are wont to be exceedingly didactic and diffuse—the
choice of books—he condenses all he has to say into a few wise and gentle
words that are well worth taking to heart:
“As to the works you will have to read by choice or for amusement, the
best are the commonest. The names of many of them are already familiar to
you. Read them as you grow up with all the satisfaction in your power,
and make much of them. It is perhaps the greatest pleasure you will
have in life, the one you will think of longest, and repent of least. If
my life had been more full of calamity than it has been (much more than
yours, I hope, will be) I would live it over again, my poor little boy,
to have read the books I did in my youth.”
In all literature there is nothing truer or better than this, and its
sad sincerity contrasts strangely with the general tone of the essay,
which is somewhat in the manner of Lord Chesterfield. But here, at least,
Hazlitt speaks with the authority of one whose books had ever been his
friends; who had sat up all night as a child over _Paul and Virginia_,
and to whom the mere sight of an odd volume of some good old English
author, on a street stall, brought back with keen and sudden rapture the
flavor of those early joys which he remembered longest, and repented
least. His words ring consolingly in these different days, when we have
not only ceased reading what is old, but when—a far greater misfortune—we
have forgotten how to read “with all the satisfaction in our power,”
and with a simple surrendering of ourselves to the pleasure which has no
peer. There are so many things to be considered now besides pleasure,
that we have well-nigh abandoned the effort to be pleased. In the first
place, it is necessary to “keep up” with a decent proportion of current
literature, and this means perpetual labor and speed, whereas idleness
and leisure are requisite for the true enjoyment of books. In the second
place, few of us are brave enough to withstand the pressure which
friends, mentors and critics bring to bear upon us, and which effectually
crushes anything like the weak indulgence of our own tastes. The reading
they recommend being generally in the nature of a corrective, it is urged
upon us with little regard to personal inclination; in fact, the less we
like it, the greater our apparent need. There are people in this world
who always insist upon others remodeling their diet on a purely hygienic
basis; who entreat us to avoid sweets or acids, or tea or coffee, or
whatever we chance to particularly like; who tell us persuasively that
cress and dandelions will purify our blood; that celery is an excellent
febrifuge; that shaddocks should be eaten for the sake of their quinine,
and fish for its phosphorus; that stewed fruit is more wholesome than
raw; that rice is more nutritious than potatoes;—who deprive us, in a
word, of that hearty human happiness which should be ours when dining.
Like Mr. Woodhouse, they are capable of having the sweetbreads and
asparagus carried off before our longing eyes, and baked apples provided
as a substitute.
It is in the same benevolent spirit that kind-hearted critics are good
enough to warn us against the books we love, and to prescribe for us
the books we ought to read. With robust assurance they offer to give
our tutelage their own personal supervision, and their disinterested
zeal carries them occasionally beyond the limits of discretion. I have
been both amazed and gratified by the lack of reserve with which these
unknown friends have volunteered to guide my own footsteps through the
perilous paths of literature. They are so urgent, too, not to say
severe, in their manner of proffering assistance: “To Miss Repplier we
would particularly recommend”—and then follows a list of books of which
I dare say I stand in open need; but which I am naturally indisposed to
consider with much kindness, thrust upon me, as they are, like paregoric
or a porous plaster. If there be people who can take their pleasures
medicinally, let them read by prescription and grow fat! But let me
rather keep for my friends those dear and familiar volumes which have
given me a large share of my life’s happiness. If they are somewhat
antiquated and out of date, I have no wish to flout their vigorous age.
A book, Hazlitt reminds us, is not, like a woman, the worse for being
old. If they are new, I do not scorn them for a fault which is common
to all their kind. _Paradise Lost_ was once new, and was regarded as a
somewhat questionable novelty. If they come from afar, or are compatriots
of my own, they are equally well-beloved. There can be no aliens in the
ranks of literature, no national prejudice in an honest enjoyment of
art. The book, after all, and not the date or birthplace of its author,
is of material importance. “It seems ungracious to refuse to be a _terræ
filius_,” says Mr. Arnold; “but England is not all the world.” Neither,
for that matter, is America, nor even Russia. The universe is a little
wider and a little older than we are pleased to think, and to have lived
long and traveled far does not necessarily imply inferiority. The volume
that has crossed the seas, the volume that has survived its generation,
stand side by side with their new-born American brother, and there is no
lack of harmony in such close companionship. Books of every age and of
every nation show a charming adaptability in their daily intercourse;
and, if left to themselves, will set off each other’s merits in the most
amiable and disinterested manner, each one growing better by contact with
its excellent neighbor. It is only when the patriotic critic comes along,
and stirs up dissensions in their midst, that this peaceful atmosphere
is rent with sudden discord; that the English book grows disdainful
and supercilious; the American, aggressive and sarcastic; the French,
malicious and unkind. It is only when we apply to them a test which is
neither wise nor worthy that they show all their bad qualities, and
afford a wrangling ground for the ill-natured reviewers of two continents.
There is a story told of the Russian poet, Pushkin, which I like to
think true, because it is so pretty. When he was carried home fatally
wounded from the duel which cost him his life, his young wife, who had
been the innocent cause of the tragedy, asked him whether there were no
relatives or friends whom he wished to see summoned to his bedside. The
dying man lifted his heavy eyes to the shelf where stood his favorite
books, and murmured faintly in reply, “Farewell, my friends.” When we
remember that Pushkin lived before Russian literature had become a great
and dispiriting power, when we realize that he had never been ordered
by critics to read Turguéneff, never commanded severely to worship
Tolstoi or be an outcast in the land, never even reveled in the dreadful
gloom of Dostoïevsky, it seems incredible to the well-instructed that
he should have loved his books so much. It is absolutely afflicting
to think that many of these same volumes were foreign, were romantic,
perhaps even cheerful in their character; that they were not his mentors,
his disciplinarians, his guides to a higher and sadder life, but only
his “friends.” Why, Hazlitt himself could have used no simpler term of
endearment. Charles Lamb might have uttered the very words when he closed
his patient eyes in the dull little cottage at Edmonton. Sir Walter
Scott might have murmured them on that still September morn when the
clear rippling of the Tweed hushed his tired heart to rest. I think that
Shelley bade some swift, unconscious farewell to all the dear delights of
reading, when he thrust into his pocket the little volume of Keats, with
its cover bent hastily backward, and rose, still dreamy with fairy-land,
to face a sudden death. I think that Montaigne bade farewell to the
fourscore “every-day books” that were his chosen companions, before
turning serenely away from the temperate pleasures of life.
For all these men loved literature, not contentiously, nor austerely,
but simply as their friend. All read with that devout sincerity which
precludes petulance, or display, or lettered asceticism, the most dismal
self-torment in the world. In that delicious dialogue of Landor’s between
Montaigne and Scaliger, the scholar intimates to the philosopher that
his library is somewhat scantily furnished, and that he and his father
between them have written nearly as many volumes as Montaigne possesses
on his shelves. “Ah!” responds the sage with gentle malice, “to write
them is quite another thing; but one reads books without a spur, or even
a pat from our Lady Vanity.”
Could anything be more charming, or more untrue than this? Montaigne,
perched tranquilly on his Guyenne hill-slope, may have escaped the goad;
but we, the victims of our swifter day, know too well how remorselessly
Lady Vanity pricks us round the course. Are we not perpetually showing
our paces at her command, and under the sharp incentive of her heel? Yet
Charles Lamb, in the heart of London, preserved by some fine instinct the
same intellectual freedom that Montaigne cherished in sleepy Gascony. He
too was fain to read for pleasure, and his unswerving sincerity is no
less enviable than the clearness of his literary insight. Indeed, while
many of his favorite authors may have no message for our ears, yet every
line in which he writes his love is pregnant with enjoyment; every word
expresses subtly a delicious sense of satisfaction. The soiled and torn
copies of _Tom Jones_ and _The Vicar of Wakefield_ from the circulating
library, which speak eloquently to him of the thousand thumbs that have
turned over each well-worn page; the “kind-hearted play-book” which he
reaches down from some easy shelf; the old _Town and Country Magazine_
which he finds in the window-seat of an inn; the “garrulous, pleasant
history” of Burnet; the “beautiful, bare narrative” of _Robinson Crusoe_;
the antiquated, time-stained edition of “that fantastic old great man,”
Robert Burton; the Folio Beaumont and Fletcher—all these and many more
are Lamb’s tried friends, and he writes of them with lingering affection.
He is even able, through some fine choice of words, to convey to us the
precise degree and quality of pleasure which they yield him, and which
he wins us to share, not by exhortations or reproaches, but gently, with
alluring smiles, and hinted promises of reward. How craftily he holds
each treasured volume before our eyes! How apt the brief, caressing
sentence in which he sings its praises!—“The sweetest names, and which
carry a perfume in the mention, are Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of
Hawthornden, and Cowley.” “Milton almost requires a solemn service of
music to be played before you enter upon him. Who listens, had need
bring docile thoughts, and purged ears.” “Winter evenings—the world
shut out—with less of ceremony the gentle Shakespeare enters. At such a
season, the _Tempest_, or his own _Winter’s Tale_.”
In fact, the knowledge of when to read a book is almost as valuable
as the knowledge of what book to read, and Lamb, as became a true
lover of literature, realized instinctively that certain hours and
certain places seem created expressly for the supreme enjoyment of an
author, who yields to these harmonious surroundings his best and rarest
gifts. To pick up _The Faerie Queene_ as a stop-gap in the five or six
impatient minutes before dinner, to carry _Candide_ into the “serious
avenues” of a cathedral, to try and skim over Richardson when in the
society of a lively girl—Lamb knew too well that these unholy feats are
the accomplishments of an intellectual acrobat, not of a modest and
simple-hearted reader. Hazlitt also was keenly alive to the influences
of time and place. His greatest delight in poring over the books of his
youth lay in the many recollections they aroused of scenes and moments
rich in vanished joys. He opened a faded, dusty volume, and behold!
the spot where first he read it, the day it was received, the feeling
of the air, the fields, the sky, all returned to him with charming
distinctness, and with them returned his first rapturous impression of
that long-closed, long-neglected romance: “Twenty years are struck off
the list, and I am a child again.” Mr. Pater lays especial emphasis on
the circumstances under which our favorite authors are read. “A book,”
he says, “like a person, has its fortunes with one; is lucky or unlucky
in the precise moment of its falling in our way; and often, by some
happy accident, ranks with us for something more than its independent
value.” Thus it is that Marius and Fabian, nestled in the ripened corn
amid the cool brown shadows, receive from the _Golden Ass_ of Apuleius
a strange keen pleasure; each lad taking from the story that which he
is best fitted to absorb; each lad as unmindful of the other’s feelings
as of the grosser elements in the tale. For without doubt a book has a
separate message for every reader, and tells him, of good or evil, that
which he is able to hear. Plato, indeed, complains of all books that
they lack reticence or propriety toward different classes of persons,
and his protest embodies the aversion of the flexible Greek mind for the
precision of written literature. A poem or an oration which, crystallized
into characters, speaks to all alike, and reveals itself indiscriminately
to everybody, is of less value to the ancient scholar than the poem or
oration which lingers in the master’s mind, and maintains a delicate
reserve toward the inferior portion of the community. Plato is so far
removed from the modern spirit which seeks to persuade the multitude
to read Shakespeare and Milton, that he practically resents their
peering with rude, but pardonable curiosity, into the stately domains
of genius. We have now grown so insistently generous in these matters
that our unhappy brothers, harassed beyond endurance, may well envy the
plebeian Greeks their merciful limitations; or wish, with the little
girl in _Punch_, that they had lived in the time of Charles II., “for
then education was very much neglected.” But strive as we may, we cannot
coerce great authors into universal complaisance. Plato himself, were he
so unfortunate as to be living now, would recognize and applaud their
manifest reserves. Even to the elect they speak with varying voices, and
it is sometimes difficult to believe that all have read alike. When _Guy
Mannering_ was first given to the public, who awaited it with frantic
eagerness, Wordsworth thoughtfully observed that it was a novel in the
style of Mrs. Radcliffe. Murray, from whom one expects more discernment,
wrote to Hogg that _Meg Merrilies_ was worthy of Shakespeare; “but all
the rest of the novel might have been written by Scott’s brother, or any
other body.” Blackwood, about the same time, wrote to Murray: “If Walter
Scott be the author of _Guy Mannering_, he stands far higher in this line
than in his former walk.” One of these verdicts has been ratified by
time, but who could suppose that Julia Mannering and honest Dandy Dinmont
would ever have whispered such different messages into listening ears!
And it is precisely because of the independence assumed by books, that
we have need to cherish our own independence in return. They will not
all be our friends, and not one of them will give itself freely to us at
the dictation of a peremptory critic. Hazlitt says nobly of a few great
writers, notably Milton and Burke, that “to have lived in the cultivation
of an intimacy with such works, and to have familiarly relished such
names, is not to have lived in vain.” This is true, yet if we must seek
for companionship in less august circles, there are many milder lights
who shine with a steady radiance. It is not the privilege of every one
to love so great a prose writer as Burke, so great a poet as Milton. “An
appreciation of _Paradise Lost_,” says Mr. Mark Pattison, “is the reward
of exquisite scholarship;” and the number of exquisite scholars is never
very large. To march up to an author as to the cannon’s mouth is at best
but unprofitable heroism. To take our pleasures dutifully is the least
likely way to enjoy them. The laws of Crete, it is said, were set to
music, and sung as alluringly as possible after dinner; but I doubt if
they afforded a really popular pastime. The well-fed guests who listened
to such decorous chants applauded them probably from the standpoint of
citizenship, rather than from any undisguised sentiment of enjoyment, and
a few degenerate souls must have sighed occasionally over the joys of a
rousing and unseemly chorus. We of to-day are so rich in laws, so amply
disciplined at every turn, that we have no need to be reminded at dinner
of our obligations. A kind-hearted English critic once said that reading
was not a duty, and had therefore no business to be made disagreeable;
and that no man was under any obligation to read what another man wrote.
This is an old-fashioned point of view, which has lost favor of late
years, but which is not without compensations of its own. If the office
of literature be to make glad our lives, how shall we seek the joy in
store for us save by following Hazlitt’s simple suggestion, and reading
“with all the satisfaction in our power”? And how shall we insure this
satisfaction, save by ignoring the restrictions imposed upon us, and
cultivating, as far as we can, a sincere and pleasurable intercourse with
our friends, the books?
TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER
In reading the recently published _Memoirs and Correspondence of John
Murray_, a very interesting and valuable piece of biography—albeit
somewhat lengthy for these hurried days—we are forcibly impressed
with one surprising truth which we were far from suspecting in our
ignorance—namely, that the publisher’s life, like the policeman’s, is
not a happy one, but filled to the brim with vexations peculiarly his
own. It was as much the fashion in Murray’s time as it is in ours to
bewail the hard fate of down-trodden authors, and to hint that he who
prints the book absorbs the praise and profit which belong in justice to
him who writes it. In fact, that trenchant and time-honored jest, “Now
Barabbas was a publisher,” dates from this halcyon period when _Marmion_
was sold for a thousand guineas, and the third canto of _Childe Harold_
for nearly twice that sum. Murray himself possessed such influence in the
literary world that the battle with the public was thought to be half won
when a book appeared armed with the sanction of his name. He was a man of
wealth, too, of social standing, of severe and fastidious tastes; exactly
fitted by circumstances, if not by nature, to play the autocratic _rôle_
popularly assigned to all his craft, to crush the aspiring poet in the
dust, to freeze the budding genius who sought assistance at his hands, to
override with haughty arrogance the wan and needy scholar who waited at
his door. Instead of this, we see him enduring with lamblike gentleness
an amount of provocation which would have hallowed a mediæval saint, and
which seems to our undisciplined spirits as wantonly exasperating and
malign.
In the first place, his Scotch allies, Constable and the ever-sanguine
James Ballantyne, appeared to have looked upon the English firm as an
inexhaustible mine of wealth, from which they could, when convenient,
draw whatever they required. Ballantyne, especially, required so much,
and required that much so often, that Murray was obliged to sever a
connection too costly for his purse. Then his partial ownership of
_Blackwood’s Magazine_ was for years a thorn in his flesh, and there
is something truly pathetic in his miserable attempts to modify the
personalities of that utterly irrepressible journal. “In the name of
God,” he writes vehemently to William Blackwood, “why do you seem to
think it necessary that each number must give pain to some one?” Even
the _Quarterly_, his own literary offspring, and the pride and glory
of his heart, was at times but a fractious child, and cost him, after
the fashion of children, many sleepless nights. Gifford, the editor,
was incurably unbusinesslike in his habits, and never could understand
why subscribers should complain and raise a row because the magazine
chanced to be a month or six weeks late. It was sure to appear some time,
and they had all the pleasure of anticipation. It was a point of honor
with him, also, to conceal the names of his contributors, so that when
offence was given to anybody—which was pretty nearly always—the aggrieved
person immediately attacked Murray in return. There are hosts of letters
in these volumes from indignant authors who express themselves with
true British candor because the _Quarterly_ has assailed their books,
or their friends’ books, or their friends’ friends’ books, or their pet
politicians, or their most cherished political schemes. There are hosts
of other letters which merely record a distinctly unfavorable opinion
of the magazine’s literary qualities, and which lament with pitiless
sincerity that the last number hardly contained a single readable article.
All these annoyances, however, prickly though they appear, are but
trifles in comparison with the extraordinary demands made upon Murray as
a publisher. Impecunious playwrights, like poor Charles Maturin, pelt
him with unsalable dramas and heartrending appeals for help. Impecunious
essayists, like Charles Marsh, send papers to the _Quarterly_, and—before
they are read—request fifteen pounds, “as money on manuscript
deposited.” Impecunious patriots, like Foscolo—that bright particular
star of sentimental Liberals—demand loans of a thousand pounds, to be
repaid with literary work. Impecunious poets, like James Hogg, borrow
fifty pounds with the lofty patronage of sovereigns. It is very amusing
to note the tone assumed by the Ettrick Shepherd in his intercourse with
a man of Murray’s influence and position. When he is in a good humor,
that is, when he has negotiated a successful loan, he writes in this
generous fashion: “Though I have heard some bitter things against you, I
never met with any man whatever who, on so slight an acquaintance, has
behaved to me so much like a gentleman.” Or again, “You may be misled,
and you may be mistaken, my dear Murray, but as long as you tell me
the simple truth as plainly, you and I will be friends.” If things go
haltingly, however, and there is a delay in forwarding cheques, this
magnificent condescension sharpens into angry protest. “What the deuce,”
he writes vehemently, “have you made of my excellent poem,[1] that you
are never publishing it, while I am starving for money, and cannot even
afford a Christmas goose to my friends?” When a new edition of _The
Queen’s Wake_ was printed in Edinburgh, a very handsome quarto selling
for a guinea—which seems a heart-breaking price—Murray with his usual
generosity subscribed for twenty-five copies; whereupon we find Hogg
promptly acknowledging this munificence by begging him to persuade others
to do likewise. “You must make a long pull and a strong pull in London
for subscriptions,” he writes, with enviable composure, “as you and Mr.
Rogers are the principal men I have to rely on.” There is something very
tranquillizing in the gentle art of shifting one’s burdens to other
shoulders. Genius flourishes like the mountain oak when it can strike
root in the money-boxes of less gifted friends.
If tact and patience were both required in soothing Hogg’s petulant
vanity and in providing for his extravagant habits, the task became
harder and more thankless when Leigh Hunt presented himself in the
field. I can imagine few things more delightful than to have had money
transactions with a person of Leigh Hunt’s peculiar and highly original
methods. He was a kind of literary Oliver, crying perpetually for more.
When the _Story of Rimini_ was still uncompleted, it was offered by the
poet to Murray with this diverting assurance:
“Booksellers tell me I ought not to ask less than four hundred and fifty
pounds (which is a sum I happen to want just now), and my friends, not
in the trade, say I ought not to ask less than five hundred, with such a
trifling acknowledgment upon the various editions, after the second and
third, as shall enable me to say that I am still profiting by it.”
Murray, evidently disconcerted by the coolness of this proposal, writes
back with veiled and courteous sarcasm, suggesting that the manuscript
be offered upon these terms to other publishers. Should they refuse to
accept it, he is willing to print a small edition at his own expense,
and divide the profits with the author, to whom the copyright shall be
restored. Rather to our amazement, and perhaps to Murray’s, Leigh Hunt
closes immediately with this very moderate offer; and as soon as the book
appears he writes again, begging to have part of the money advanced to
him. Murray’s reply is eminently characteristic of the man. The poem, he
says, is selling well. Should the entire edition be exhausted, which he
doubts not will be the case, the poet’s share of the profits would amount
to exactly forty-eight pounds and ten shillings. He takes pleasure in
enclosing a cheque for fifty pounds, and only asks that a receipt may
be sent him for the same. The receipt is not sent until ten days are
past, when it arrives accompanied by a long letter in which Leigh Hunt
enlarges upon his pecuniary troubles—concerning these he is as explicit
as Micawber—and proposes that Murray should now purchase the copyright of
_Rimini_ for four hundred and fifty pounds, and let him have the money
at once. Unhappily, the answer to this admirable piece of negotiation
has been lost, but it was evidently too patronizing to please the poet,
who was as sensitive as he was insatiable. The next letter we have from
him sharply reminds Murray that he is not seeking for assistance, but
merely endeavoring to transact a piece of business which would involve no
possible risk for any one. Finally the poor harassed publisher persuades
him with soft words to sell the copyright of _Rimini_ to another firm,
and there must have been a deep breath of relief drawn in Albemarle
Street when the matter was at last adjusted, and the troublesome
correspondence ceased. In fact, there is a letter from Blackwood frankly
congratulating Murray on his escape. “I dare say you are well rid of
Leigh Hunt,” writes this experienced ally to his fellow-sufferer; “and
I really pity you when I think of the difficulty you must often have in
managing with authors, and particularly with the friends of authors whom
you wish to oblige.”
One of those whom Murray wished eagerly to oblige, until he found the
task too costly for his purse, was Madame de Staël. For the English
and French editions of her work on Germany he paid no less than fifteen
hundred pounds, and speedily found himself a loser by the transaction.
Gifford, who had scant liking for the celebrated “hurricane in
petticoats,” writes to him on the occasion with gentle malice, and a
too evident amusement at his discomfiture: “I can venture to assure you
that the hope of keeping her from the press is quite vain. The family
of Œdipus were not more haunted and goaded by the Furies than the
Neckers, father, mother, and daughter, have always been by the demon
of publication. Madame de Staël will therefore write and print without
intermission.” Not without being well paid, however; for three years
later we find the Baron de Staël writing to Murray in his mother’s name,
and demanding four thousand pounds for her three-volume work, _Des Causes
et des Effets de la Révolution Française_. “My mother _insists_ upon four
thousand pounds, besides a credit in books for every new edition,” says
this imperative gentleman, somewhat in the manner of a footpad; to whom
Murray responds with much tranquillity, thanking him for his “obliging
letter,” and intimating that he and Longman together are willing to pay
one thousand pounds for the first French and English editions, and three
hundred and fifty pounds for the second. Madame de Staël indignantly
repudiates this offer, declaring that twenty-five hundred pounds is
the least she can think of taking, and that the book will be a bargain
at such a price. Murray, who knows something about bargains, and who
has been rendered more cautious than usual by his experience with
_L’Allemagne_, declines such palpable risks, and excuses himself from
further negotiations. _La Révolution Française_ did not appear until
after Madame de Staël’s death, when it was published by Messrs. Baldwin
and Cradock, and proved a lamentable failure, people having begun by that
time to grow a trifle weary of such a thrice-told tale.
The most amusing and at the same time most pathetic bit of correspondence
in these two big volumes relates to a translation of _Faust_, which
Coleridge, so eminently qualified for the task, offers to write for
Murray. He unfolds his views in a letter as long as an average essay—or
what we call an essay in these degenerate days—evincing on every page a
superb contempt for the reading public, which was expected to buy the
book, a painful reluctance to “attempt anything of a literary nature
with any motive of pecuniary advantage”—which does not prevent him
from doing some elaborate bargaining later on—and a tendency to plunge
into intellectual abstractions, calculated to chill the heart of the
stoutest publisher in Christendom. There is one incomparable paragraph
which Coleridge alone could have written, and a portion of which—only a
portion—I cannot refrain from quoting:
“Any work in Poetry strikes me with more than common awe, as proposed
for realization by myself, because from long habits of meditation on
language, as the symbolic medium of the connection of Thought with
Thought as affected and modified by Passion and Emotion, I should spend
days in avoiding what I deemed faults, though with the full foreknowledge
that their admission would not have offended three of all my readers,
and might perhaps be deemed beauties by three hundred—if so many there
were; and this not out of any respect for the public (_i.e._, the
persons who might happen to purchase and look over the book) but from
a hobby-horsical, superstitious regard to my own feelings and sense of
Duty. Language is the sacred Fire in this Temple of Humanity, and the
Muses are its especial and vestal priestesses. Though I cannot prevent
the vile drugs and counterfeit Frankincense which render its flames
at once pitchy, glowing, and unsteady, I would yet be no voluntary
accomplice in the Sacrilege. With the commencement of a Public, commences
the degradation of the Good and the Beautiful—both fade and retire before
the accidentally Agreeable. _Othello_ becomes a hollow lip-worship; and
the _Castle Spectre_, or any more peccant thing of Froth, Noise, and
Impermanence, that may have over-billowed it on the restless sea of
curiosity, is the true Prayer of the Praise and Admiration.”
Fancy the feelings of a poor publisher assailed with this raging torrent
of words! Murray, stemming the tide as best he can, replies in a short,
businesslike note, proposing terms—not very liberal ones—for the desired
translation. Whereupon Coleridge writes a second letter, actually
longer than the first, intimating that a hundred pounds is but scant
remuneration for such a piece of work, “executed as alone I can or dare
do it—that is, to the utmost of my power; for which the intolerable Pain,
nay the far greater Toil and Effort of doing otherwise, is a far safer
Pledge than any solicitude on my part concerning the approbation of the
Public.”
Finally, the undertaking was abandoned, and the English-speaking world
lost its single chance of having _Faust_ adequately translated; lost it,
I truly believe, through the reluctance of even a patient man to stomach
any further correspondence.
Trials of a very different order poured in on Murray through his
connection with Lord Byron, an honor which was not altogether without
thorns. People who thought Byron’s poetry immoral wrote frankly to Murray
to say so. People who did not think Byron’s poetry immoral wrote quite as
frankly to complain of those who did. His noble lordship himself was at
times both petulant and exacting, and there is a ring of true dignity in
the following remonstrance offered by the publisher to the peer, by “Mr.
Bookseller Murray,” as Napier contemptuously calls him, to the poet whose
good qualities he was so quick to understand:
“I assure you,” he writes, “that I take no umbrage at irritability
which will occasionally burst from a mind like yours; but I sometimes
feel a deep regret that in our pretty long intercourse I appear to have
failed to show that a man in my situation may possess the feelings and
principles of a gentleman. Most certainly do I think that, from personal
attachment, I could venture as much in any shape for your service as any
of those who have the good fortune to be ranked amongst your friends.”
In fact, the friends of authors were too often, as Blackwood hinted,
the sources of Murray’s severest trials. Friends are obliging creatures
in their way, and always ready to give with lavish hearts their wealth
of criticism and opinion. There is a delightful letter from the Rev. H.
H. Milman, Dean of St. Paul’s, offering to Murray his sadly unreadable
poem _Belshazzar_, with this timely intimation: “I give you fair warning
that all the friends who have hitherto seen it assure me that I shall
not do myself justice unless I demand a very high price for it.” Murray,
in reply, hints as urbanely as he can that, as it is he and not Mr.
Milman’s friends who is to pay the price, he cannot accept their judgment
in the matter as final; he is compelled to take into consideration his
own chances of profit. Throughout all his correspondence we note this
tone of careful self-repression, of patient and courteous kindness. Now
and then only, particularly trying letters appear to have been left
unanswered, as though the limits of even his endurance had been reached.
When we remember that the _Quarterly_ was the cherished idol of his
life, and that his pride and delight in it knew no bounds, we can dimly
appreciate his feelings on receiving the following lines from Southey,
whose principal income for years had been derived from the magazine’s
most liberal and open-handed payments. “It is a great price,” writes
the author of _Thalaba_, who has just pocketed a comfortable sum, “and
it is very convenient for me to receive it. But I will tell you, with
that frankness which you have always found in my correspondence and
conversation, that I must suspect my time might be more profitably
employed (as I am sure it might be more worthily) than in writing for
your journal, even at that price.”
I am not wont to peer too closely into the secrets of the human heart,
but I would like to know exactly how Murray felt when he read that
letter. “Let me at least be eaten by a lion!” says Epictetus. “Let me
at least be insulted by a genius!” might well have been the publisher’s
lament.
THE OPPRESSION OF NOTES
That innocent nondescript, the average reader, is suffering very sorely
at the present day from what might be justly called the oppression or
tyranny of notes. I hear, indeed, from time to time, bitter complaints
of editorial inaccuracy, of the unscholarly treatment of quite forgotten
masterpieces by the industrious gentlemen who seek to reintroduce them
to the public; but such inaccuracy can wound only the limited number who
know more than the editor, and who in their secret souls are not sorry to
prove him wrong. The average reader, even though he hold himself to be
of moderate intelligence, is happily ignorant of such fine shadings, and
only asks that he may enjoy his books in a moderately intelligent manner;
that he may be helped over hedges and ditches, and allowed to ramble
unmolested where the ground seems tolerably smooth. This is precisely
the privilege, however, which a too liberal editor is disinclined to
allow. He will build you a bridge over a raindrop, put ladders up a
pebble, and encompass you on every side with ingenious alpenstocks and
climbing-irons; yet when, perchance, you stumble and hold out a hand for
help, behold, he is never there to grasp it. He merely refers you, with
some coldness, to a remote authority who will give you the assistance
you require when you have reached the end of your journey. Mr. Ritchie,
for example, who has recently edited a volume of Mrs. Carlyle’s early
letters, expects you patiently to search for the information you want in
Mr. Froude’s pages, which is always a disheartening thing to be asked to
do. Yet when Jeanie Welsh, writing cheerfully of an inconstant lover,
says, “_Mais n’importe!_ It is only one more Spanish castle demolished;
another may start up like a mushroom in its place;” an explanatory note
carefully reveals to you that “Spanish castle” really means “château en
Espagne”—a circumstance which even Macaulay’s schoolboy would probably
have deciphered for himself.
If it be hard on the average reader to be referred chillingly to modern
writers who are at least within approachable distance, it is harder still
to be requested to look up classical authorities. If it be hard to be
told occasionally by that prince of good editors, Mr. Alfred Ainger, to
please turn elsewhere for the little bits of information which we think
he might give us about Charles Lamb, it is harder still to have Mr.
Wright refuse to translate for us Edward Fitzgerald’s infrequent lapses
into Greek. What is the use of saying in a note “v. 9” when Fitzgerald
quotes Herodotus? If I can read the quotation for myself, I have no
need to hunt up v. 9; and if I can’t, v. 9 is of no use to me when
found. Even “Hor. Od. I. 4, 14, 15,” is not altogether satisfactory to
the indifferent scholar, for whom Fitzgerald himself had such generous
sympathy, and for whom his translations were avowedly undertaken.
These are merely cases, however, in which notes refuse to be helpful;
they are apt to become absolutely oppressive when accompanying older
writers. A few years ago I bought a little English edition of the
_Religio Medici_, to which are added the _Letter to a Friend_ and
_Christian Morals_. The book is one of Macmillan’s Golden Treasury
Series, and is edited by Mr. W. A. Greenhill, who opens with an “Editor’s
Preface,” eighteen pages long, and fairly bristling with knowledge
points. After this come a “Chronological Table of Dates, Connected
with Sir Thomas Browne,” two pages long; “Note on the Discovery of the
Remains of Sir Thomas Browne in 1840,” two pages; “Brief Notices of
Former Editors of the _Religio Medici_,” four pages; “List of Editions of
_Religio Medici_,” thirteen pages; “Collations of Some Old Editions of
_Religio Medici_,” three pages; “List of Editions of _Letter to a Friend_
and _Christian Morals_,” five pages; “_Addenda et Corrigenda_,” one page.
Having thus laboriously cleared the way, we are at last gladdened by a
sight of the _Religio Medici_ itself, which, together with the _Letter_
and _Christian Morals_, occupies two hundred and thirty pages. Then,
following close, like the mighty luggage of a Persian army, come an
array of “Notes Critical and Explanatory,” eighty-eight pages; and an
Index just sixty-nine pages long. Thus it will be seen that two hundred
and five pages of editorial work are deemed necessary to elucidate two
hundred and thirty pages of Sir Thomas Browne, which seems like an
intolerable deal of sack for such a quantity of bread. To compress all
this into a small volume requires close printing and flimsy paper, and
the ungrateful reader thinks in his hardened heart that he would rather a
little more space had been given to the author, and a little less to the
editor, who is for most of us, after all, a secondary consideration. It
is also manifestly impossible, with such a number of notes, even to refer
to them at the bottom of the page; yet without this guiding finger they
are often practically useless. We are not as a rule aware, when we read,
what information we lack, and it becomes a grievous duty to examine every
few minutes and see if we ought not to be finding something out.
A glance at the notes themselves is very discouraging:
“P. 10, l. 14, directed, A to E, G; direct, F, H to L.
“P. 10, l. 16, rectified, A to I; rectified, J, K, L.
“P. 10, l. 28, consist, A to J; resist, K, L.”
Reading with such helps as these becomes a literary nightmare:
“P. 8, l. 8, distinguished] Chapman (R) and Gardiner (W) read ‘being
distinguished.’
“P. 8, l. 8, distinguished not only] Wilkin (T) read ‘not only
distinguished.’”
And this is weirder still:
“P. 59, l. 4, antimetathesis, C to M; antanaclasis, A, B; transposition
of words, N, O.”
It may easily be surmised that eighty-eight pages of such concentrated
and deadly erudition weigh very heavily on the unscholarly soul. We are
reminded forcibly of the impatience manifested by Mr. E. S. Dallas, in
_The Gay Science_, over Person’s notes on Euripides, from which he had
hoped so much and gleaned so little; which were all about words and less
than words—syllables, letters, accents, punctuation.
“Codex A and Codex B, Codex Cantabrigiensis and Codex Cottonianus, were
ransacked in turn to show how this noun should be in the dative, not in
the accusative; how that verb should have the accent paroxytone, not
perispomenon; and how, by all the rules of prosody, there should be an
iambus, not a spondee, in this place or that.” The lad who has heard all
his college life about the wonderful supplement to the _Hecuba_ turns to
it with wistful eyes, expecting to find some subtle key to Greek tragedy.
“Behold, it is a treatise on certain Greek metres. Its talk is of cæsural
pauses, penthemimeral and hephthemimeral, of isochronous feet, of
enclitics and cretic terminations; and the grand doctrine it promulgates
is expressed in the canon regarding the pause which, from the discoverer,
has been named the Porsonian—that when the iambic trimeter after a word
of more than one syllable has the cretic termination included either in
one word or in two, then the fifth foot must be an iambus. The young
student throws down the book thus prefaced and supplemented, and wonders
if this be all that giants of Porsonian height can see or care to speak
about in Greek literature.”
But then be it remembered that Euripides, as edited by Porson, was
intended for the use of scholars, and there exists an impression—perhaps
erroneous—that this is the sort of food for which scholars hunger and
thirst. Sir Thomas Browne has, happily, not yet passed out of the hands
of the general reader, whose appetite for intellectual abstraction and
the rigors of precision is distinctly moderate, and in whose behalf I
urge my plea to-day.
After the oppressively erudite notes come those which interpret trifles
with painstaking fidelity, and which reveal to us the meaning of
quite familiar words. In Ferrier’s admirable edition of the _Noctes
Ambrosianæ_, for example, we are told with naïve gravity that “wiselike”
means “judicious,” that “glowering” means “staring,” that “parritch” is
“porridge,” that “guffaw” is a “loud laugh,” that “douce” is “sedate,”
that “gane” is “gone,” and that “in a jiffy” means “immediately.” But
surely the readers of Christopher North do not require information like
this. “Douce” and “parritch” and “guffaw” are not difficult words to
understand, and “in a jiffy” would seem to come within the intellectual
grasp of many who have not yet made the acquaintance of the alphabet.
It may be, however, that there are people who really like to be
instructed in this manner, just as there are people who like to go to
lectures and to organ recitals. It may even be that a taste for notes,
like a taste for gin, or opium, or Dr. Ibsen’s dramas, increases with
what it feeds on. In that tiny volume of _Selected Poems_ by Gray which
Mr. Gosse has edited for the Clarendon Press, there are forty-two pages
of notes to sixty pages of poetry; and while some of them are valuable
and interesting, many more seem strangely superfluous. But Mr. Gosse,
who has his finger on the literary pulse of his generation, is probably
the last man in England to furnish information unless it is desired. He
knows, better than most purveyors of knowledge, what it is that readers
want; he is not prone to waste his precious minutes; he has a saving
sense of humor; and he does not aspire to be a lettered philanthropist
fretting to enlighten mankind. If, then, he finds it necessary to
elucidate that happy trifle, _On the Death of a Favorite Cat_, with no
less than seven notes, which is at the rate of one for every verse,
it must be that he is filling an expressed demand; it must be that he
is aware that modern students of Gray—every one who reads a poet is a
“student” nowadays—like to be told by an editor about Tyrian purple, and
about Arion’s dolphin, and about the difference between a tortoise-shell
and a tabby. As for the seven pages of notes that accompany the _Elegy_,
they carry me back in spirit to the friend of my childhood, Miss
Edgeworth’s Rosamond, who was expected to understand every word of every
poem she studied. What a blessing Mr. Gosse’s notes would have been to
that poor, dear, misguided little girl, who rashly committed the _Elegy_
to memory because, in honest, childish fashion, she loved its pretty
sound! Who can forget the pathetic scene where she attempts to recite it,
and has only finished the first line,
“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,”
when Godfrey, whom I always thought, and still think, a very disagreeable
boy, interrupts her ruthlessly.
“‘What is meant by the “curfew”? What is meant by “tolls”? What is a
“knell”? What is meant by “parting day”?’
“‘Godfrey, I cannot tell the meaning of every word, but I know the
general meaning. It means that the day is going, that it is evening, that
it is growing dark. Now let me go on.’
“‘Go on,’ said Godfrey, ‘and let us see what you will do when you come
to “the boast of heraldry,” to “the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,”
to the “village Hampden,” to “some mute inglorious Milton,” and to “some
Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood,” you who have not come to
Cromwell yet, in the history of England.’”