I have been looking into some of my books, now that the sea is so calm
and the weather so enchantingly fair. I find a pleasurable contrast in
dipping into such volumes as Boswell's "Johnson," Goldsmith's "Beau
Nash," and Lady Montague's "Letters." The life they depict is so
different, the opinions they express so dissimilar from those I have
myself gradually grown to affect. And what an amazing _farrago_ is
that same Boswell! Surely, if ever a book was written _con amore_, it
is that one. Compare it with the "Life of Beau Nash." Each is the
biography of a remarkable man, but what a difference! In every line
Goldsmith displays a certain forced interest. I do not know, but I am
almost positive he cared very little for his subject; I feel that the
work is only being carried on for the sake of gain. Regarded so, it is
a masterly little Life. Two hundred small pages--Nash merits no more
on the roll of fame.
But the former, twelve hundred closely printed pages. No paltry little
anecdote or incident, germane or not, is too contemptible for him. The
identity of some obscure school, the mastership of which Johnson never
held, is argued about until one is weary of the thing. The illegible
note, written for his own eye alone, is construed in a dozen ways, and
judgment delivered as though the fate of empires hung thereon. The
smug complaisance with which he cites some prayer or comment to
illustrate his idol's religious orthodoxy would have angered me
once--_did_ anger me once--but out here, on the broad blue ocean, I
smile at the toady, and marvel at the wondrous thing he has wrought.
Pleasant, too, to turn the leaves of my Dryden, and glance through
some of those admirably composed prefaces, those egotistical
self-criticisms so full of literary pugnacity, in an age when pluck in
a poet needed searching for. I often say to folk who deplore Bernard
Shaw's prefatory egotism that if they would read Dryden they would
discover that Shaw is only up to his own masterly old game of
imitating his predecessor's tactics. But Shaw is quite safe. He knows
people do not read the literature of their own land nowadays.
I had a laugh last evening all to myself when I noticed that, in a
hasty re-arrangement of my book-shelves, _Gorky_ stood shouldering old
_Chaucer_! Could disparity go further? And yet each is a master of his
craft, each does his work with skill--with "trade finish," as we say.
And so it seemed to me that, after all, one might leave the "Romaunt
of the Rose" side by side with "Three of Them," on condition that each
is read and re-read, if only for the workmanship.
Cellini, too, draws me as regularly and irresistibly as the moon makes
our tides. Here is richness. The breathless impetuosity of the whole
narrative, the inconceivable truculence of the man, fascinates me,
who am so different. When I looked at that "Perseus" in Florence, when
I leaned over the medal-cases in South Kensington and stared hard at
the work of his murderous hands, I felt awed and baffled. How could he
do it--he with his dagger just withdrawn from some rival's shoulders,
his fingers just unclasped from some enemy's windpipe? Then, again,
the virile cheerfulness of the man! God is ever on his side, Justice
is his guardian angel. And while musing upon him some few days back, I
fell to wondering if I might not imitate him. I mean, why could not I
take the life of some such man (and I know one at least who could sit
for the portrait), and write a fictitious autobiography in that
truculent, bombastic, interesting style? I have the material, and I
believe I could do it. What do you think, old friend? It is already
one of my plans for the future, when I am done wandering.
That last word reminds me of my Borrow. Who can describe the
bewildering delight when one first plunges into "Lavengro" and the
"Romany Rye"? To take them from the book-case and carry them out to
Barnet, where the Kingmaker fell, and read with the wind in your face
and the Great North Road before your eyes--is that too much to ask of
mine ancient Londoner? Believe me, the thing is worth doing. No man
ever put so divine an optimism into his books, so genuine a love of
"nature." Says Mr. Petulengro: "There's night and day, brother, both
sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's
likewise the wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would
wish to die?"
One of the most precious memories of my younger manhood is brought
back to me as I write those words. It was a Sunday afternoon in late
autumn, in one of those unfrequented ways which slant off from the
Great North Road beyond Hadley Heath, where the green turf bordered
the brown road and the leaves covered the earth beneath the trees with
a carpet of flaming cloth-of-gold. I had left my book and bicycle to
one side, and, seated upon a low grey stone wall, I watched the sun go
down. Behind me, across the intervening meadows, rose clouds of dust,
redolent of waste gases, where thundered an ever-increasing traffic of
swift vehicles. In front a vaporous mist was rising from the land; the
shadows broadened, and the red western glow grew deeper, while in the
middle distance a tiny child, clad in green cloak and little red hood,
stood conning her Sunday story--a jewel of quiet colour in the
gathering autumn twilight. And so, as I listened to the roar from the
macadamed highway and looked out upon that evening glory, it was as
though I heard, far off, the throbbing pulse of the great world's
mighty hand, while I sat still in the heart of it.
"Life is very sweet, brother: who would wish to die?"