· SHAKESPEARE F late we have regarded Shakespeare O , so far as we have regarded him at all, solely as a Patriot and a War- Poet, and by so doing have run the risk of forgetting

FROM SHAKESPEARE

TO 0 . HENRY

STUDIES IN LITERATURE

S . P . B. MAISAuthor 0]

“ A Puélz’

c Sclzool in War Time

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

TO

MY WIFE

CONTENTS

I. SHAKESPEARE

II . THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

III . SOME MODERN POETS

IV . SOME MORE MODERN POETS

V . THE MODERN NOVEL

VI. MODERN DRAMA

VII. SAMUEL BUTLER

V III . RICHARD MIDDLETON

IX. THE GENIUS OF JOHN MASEFIELD

X. RUPERT BROOKE

XI. THE POETRY OF THOMAS HARDY

O. HENRY

SHAKESPEARE

F late we have regarded Shakespeare, so far

O as w e have regarded him at all, solely as aPatriot and a War-Poet, and by so doing

have run the risk of forgetting altogether his claimto be the greatest dramatist of our own if not of allnations ; it is perhap s just as well that the Tercentenary of his death should fall in war time, for it willtend to bring us back to our attitude of reverence andnever-ceasing gratitude for all that he has done for us.

It i s also time to readjust our point of View regardinghis life and work in the light of what recent criticismhas done in the way of showing us the true Shak espeare .

There has never been an age so rich or so diverse inShak espearean criticism as our own we have beenabl e, in a more unbiassed mann er than our fathers, toglean what there was of lasting value in the pages ofDryden, John son, Coleridge, Lamb and Hazlitt add edto this there has been the never sufficiently to be praisedlife study of Sir Sidney Lee, and the fact that we are

somehow more honest or more insp ired than ourancestors . Whatever the cause, there can be no doubtthat the studies of Brandes, Ten Brink, Taine, Raleigh,Bradley, Frank Harris, Masefield and Dowden haveOpened up new roads of thought, each of them differentfrom the other, but each converging on the one end wewould all attain , the heart of Shakespeare .

We recognise now, for instance, that Wordsworthwas far more of a seer than Browning , and more

14 STUDIES IN LITERATURE

probably right when he suggested that in the Sonnetswe have the real l iving Shakespeare : with this keyShakespeare unlocked his heart .

”The theory that we

know little or nothing of the dramatist’s own life 1 orpoint of View is exploded, we may hope , for ever : thetruth is that we know more, not l ess, about the actualdetails of his l ife than we do about any other dramatistof hi s time , owing to the indefatigable energy of S irSidney Lee, Professor Wallace and others and, asBagehot says, Shakespeare is, after all, his own

biographer . Surely no man could desire a betterBoswell . As it was one of Shakespeare’s most notablegifts to b e able to make a fictitious character live morereally than many people with whom we have beenintimately connected all our lives, so when he comes toportray his own idiosyncrasies we find that we knowShakespeare better almost than anybody else in thewhole world . It has been said , of course, that it i s thebusiness of the dramatist to treat his art obj ective ly ,to stand right outside it and so far to obliterate his ownpoint of V iew as to be able to step into the very bodyand soul of his dramatis personce and, for the time being,to become them to see life from their particular nicheand to utter sentiments (which may be totally opposedto his own) which fit their character. This is all quitetrue and sound criticism, but when Homer nods, whenthe character for some inexplicable reason gratuitouslyemphasises points in his character which rather tend toretard than to deve lop the action, we may justifiablybegin to think that at these times the personality of theauthor is unconsciously obtruding itself and is, in aword , his own temperament giving Voice to its l ikes anddislikes .

1 Sir George Greenwood’s theory that Shakespeare the actor and

Shakespeare”the playwright were two different men does not come

within the scope of this paper, but cannot be neg lected .

SHAKESPEARE 15

Again, when a dramatist returns time after time tothe same peculiarities in his major creations, it is obviousthat he is at any rate interested in those peculiarities,either because they are his own obsessions or arepossessed by his most intimate friends . No man candepict what he fails to understand , nor does he usuallyattempt to draw what never interests him Shakespeare,for instance, nowhere gives us a living portrait of thezealous Puritan fanatic reformer, or the shopkeeping ,middle-class citizen : neither type interested him .

Two types alone stand out among his del ineations ofm en as Doctor Johnson shrewdly remarks, Shakespeare has no heroes ; his best pictures of men are

those which depict them as creatures of obvious humanfailings like unto ourselves, and they stand out, Veryclear-cut, in two main groups .

First there is the group which we identify as like innearly all points to Shakespeare himself—the Hamlet,Biron , Vincentio, Orsino, Prospero, Jaques, Macbeth,Posthum us, Richard the Second type . These m en areamazingly alike even when, by all the laws of drama,they ought not to b e . They all love solitude, are fartoo much given to introspection and thinking too precisely on the event, it is their great failing that theirnative hue of resolution is sicklied o’er by the pale castof thought, they

‘

allfind solace in music , they are gentle,

almost too gentle, too full of the milk of hum ankindness,

” in all of them their imaginative faculty isdeveloped at the expense of all their other faculties .

They may , in some cases, describe themselves as plain,

blunt m en ,

” but as a matter of fact they delude themselves when they say so the truth is that they are allpoets ; they never speak anything but the purestpoetry they are simply Shakespeare, Shakespearehimself speaking through the lips of these kings and


pri nces and dukes , Shakespeare the gentle, the passionate, the irresolute . After all, if we take Leonardo daV inci’s opinion to be worth anything , we should expectthis . For the form,

”he says , we go to Nature and

use our observations, for the soul w e look into our ownhearts and paint ourselves .

”

This it is that seems to m e to account for ShakeSpeare’s failure when we begin to analyse his depictionof the second broad group—the men of action . For

who are Shakespeare’s men of actionOthello He begins as man of action and ends as

a man of action, but in the middle of the play he is thepoet, imaginative , given to much thinking (it is almosta sine qua non that ourmen of action should not b e overburdened with intellect ; it is just because they don

’twaste time in overmuch thinking that we admire themso) , an abominably bad judge of character (where yourman of action is almost infallible) , suspicious to anextraordinary degree . He talks too much .

Macbeth He i s sup erstitious, lily - livered in hisfear of blood, more a poet , and far more sensitive ofsoul than Othello .

Henry the Fifth As a king he may compel admiration

,but as a man he is almost beneath contempt he

is a low ,common cad who deserts his friends, butchers

his enemies and makes love like a savage .

Hotspur His masterpiece of the man of action isa medley of contrarieties, who hates mincing poetryand yet employ s it ad nauseam, losing himself in mistimed philosophic reflection when he ought to b e thebrave

,blunt hero .

Richard the Second Heavens, no Falconbridge ? He is slavishly Copied from The Troublesome

Search the plays through and through and you will

SHAKESPEARE 17

find that Shakespeare mars in some particular all hismen of action . The truth is that he is not sufficientlyinterested in them to understand them . How otherwise can w e explain the fact that he never took thetrouble to depict a Raleigh, a Hawkins, a Frobisher, aDrake or a Sir Philip Sidney He had models enoughnear at hand he must have come into intimate contact with men of this famous breed ; he nowhereportrays them any more than he portray s the zealousPuritan or the middle-class shopkeeper . He hadnothing in common with them . He had , truly , the

finest experiencing nature ever given to man his mindwas like a highly sensitive photographic plate . Gonsequently , he has imm ortalised types which will live forever in tragedy and comedy . His Falstaff, aboutwhom it has been said that if anyone were to garner upall the humour and gaiety of his entire life it wouldamount to about the worth of one sentence of theimmortal knight his Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, whoremains ever fresh when all our real nurses are forgotten ; his Dogberry, who contains the essence of allthe policemen w e have had the misfortune to know ;

his Shallow,whose humour Masefield compares to an

apple - loft in some old barn where the apples of last yearlie sweet in the straw—all these are in the world’s greatportrait gallery . Yet it must not b e forgotten that, inspite of these , Shakespeare had his limitations, and thisfailure to depict the man of action was one of the mostnoticeable . He seems himself to have been a manobsessed with a horror of bloodshed . He can neverquite rise to an adequate description of courage—asFrank Harris says

,when w e want to see this side of

life faithfully rendered w e have to turn to BunyanValiant-for-Truth, with his Ifought till my sword didcleave to my hand and when they were joined together


as if a sword grew out of my arm, and when the bloodran through my fingers, then I fought with mostcourage,

” is quite beyond the scope of Shakespeare .

But, as Professor Saintsbury says in his P eace of theAugustans, it is not a sin fora potato not to b e a peachornot to b e sorry because it is one it is not Shakespeare’s fault if he left us no picture of the modernPublic School boy or drew the happy warrior lesshappily than Wordsworth ; what is sinful is for usto pretend that he did what he did not do . For

the soul we look into our own hearts and paintourselves .

”

So when Shakespeare came to portray womanhood Ibelieve he painted those whom he knew, and sometimesidealised them to such a degree that they became lifelessabstractions .

Haz litt’s dictum that Shakespeare’s heroines

(though they have been found fault with as insipid) arethe finest in the world ,

” l ikemost ofHaz litt’s judgments ,

hits the nail on the head .

When suddenly we are asked to pick out our favouriteheroines in fiction we are hard put to it to think of anywith whom w e would willingly spend our day s . Scottonce, in Jeanie Deans, painted a real live girl, Meredithagain and again but few other writers have succeededin pleasing the fastidious male . Shakespeare certainlyhas left the best w e know

,but with many even of his we

are prone to find fault .

Who, forinstance, would willingly marry an OpheliaShe is scarcely more than a puppet . There are timesWhen w e are so tortured in Othello that we long for anygirl of our acquaintance to change places for half-anhourwith Desdemona . There simply would have beenno tragedy had a flesh-and-blood girl been in her situation it is Desdemona’s dumbness, Desdemona

’s

SHAKESPEARE 19

etherial qualities that allow a tragedy which strains theprobabilities almost to breaking-point .

In Cordelia, however, Shakespeare rises to hishighest ; though she speaks barely a hundred lines shelives for us for ever ; her foolish obstinacy, her show oftemper as she leaves her sisters, her amazing filial

devotion , all endear herto us, so that she stands out farabove all the other women whom Shak espeare depicted .

The truth is that Shakespeare was alway s painting idealportraits of girls : in Rosalind, in Portia, in Beatrice,in Juliet . Again and again we have the same sprightly

,

witty,loose-talking, boy ish girl who is like no one w e

ever met, but in some points like the girl of our dreams .

Occasionally we get a p icture of a shrew, as inAdriana,Katherine, or Constance (in the earlier scenes) , andfrom hints that Shakespeare drop s from time to time

we may well believe that he was here depicting thatunfortunate Anne Hathaway , the wife Who was eightyears older than her husband , to whom the second-bestbed was his last bequest . In Volumnia, that splendidRoman matron, he has paid a grand tribute to mothers ,and it is quite on the cards that in the bloodless ab stractions with which he occupied himself in his closing y ears ,in Perdita, Marina and Miranda, he may well have hadin mind his daughter Judith . But it none the lessremains true that he never succeeds in painting anytyp e of womanhood so successfully again as he did inCleopatra . No other woman in Shakesp eare is worthyto compare with her ; she is astoundingly alive andreal . She has the power of making us feel that hadwe been Antony we should have done what Antonydid, and in rereading the play it seems impossibleto imagine that Shakespeare drew entirely from hisimagination when he conceived such a character .

Frank Harris’s theory that Cleopatra and Cressida are


both portraits of the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, thatShakespeare’s great tragedy was his unbridled passionfor this lady , call herMary Fitton or Whom you will, isat least plausible, and becomes more and more likely aswe follow up the threads of his argum ent .

That Shakespeare personally experienced deep suffering of some sort seems to b e obvious it is inconceivablethat he should have written Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth andOthello had he not himself been in the depths ; whatthat experience was we cannot now know for certain,but, judging from what w e do know of him, it app earsmore lik ely to have been an agony of love, of treacheryand baseness in love than anything else . The story ofthe friend being deputed to make love to the girl forthe hero does not occur, be it remembered , only in theSonnets w e have the same story retold in Much Ado

About Nothing and in Twelfth Night. It i s an absurdstory for a dramatist so Versatile as Shakespeare toharp on, but he somehow cannot g et away from it

, as hewould not, were he recalling an episode in his own life .

When we recollect how often Shakespeare inveighsagainst the sin of ingratitude, to him obviously the

worst offence imaginable, it lends colour all the m orestrongly to the theory that Shakespeare sent the youngHerbert to plead his cause with Mary Fitton, only todiscover that she succumbed to the attractiveness of

the friend and betrayed Shakespeare by giving herselfto his friend .

Whatever the truth of this may b e, there is at leastno doubt that Shakespeare was more successful in hisportraiture ofwomen when he was painting the Coquette,the wanton Cleopatra (whom he seemed to know rightdown to the utmost depths) than he was in any othertype of womanhood at all . Even Ruskin noticed thatnearly all Shakespeare’s women were faultless, but he

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lowest form of wit—cheap , vulgar, relegated to the lessdesirable type of music-hall . No fashion changes morequickly than the fashion offun , the criterion of what isor what is not humorous it is this that so surprises usin Johnson’

s other statement when he says that in hiscomic scenes Shakespeare seems to produce withoutlabour what no labour can improve ; Hazlitt strikes atruer note when he says that we prefer Shakespeareantragedy to Shak espearean comedy for the simple reasonthat tragedy is better than comedy . Nothing , forinstance , could be more tedious or more wooden tomodern ears than the opening scene of Romeo and

Juliet, with its silly talk about choler,” collier and

collar .

” It is now almost painful to have to attribute such drivel to the pen that created Sir AndrewAguecheek, Sir Toby Belch and Bottom .

Shakespeare’s failures in the world of humour are

more noticeable than any other man’s, for the simplereason that he was more richly endowed with theprecious gift than any other man ; as Meredith trulypoints out, from Mother Earth

Came the honeyed corner of his l ips,The conquering smile whe re in his spirit sails

Calm as the God who the white sea-wave whips,

Ye t full of spe e ch and intershifting tale s,Cl ose mirrors of us thence had he the laughWe fe e l i s hers .

There was in his life a summer time when his innatecapacity for sunny gaiety came to full expression in thegolden comedies of TwelfthN

fight, AMidsummerNight’s

Dream and As You Like It.How different is his success in the ever-famous Nurse

and in Bully Bottom and their likes, all of whom hesaw with loving observation, from his pictures of men

SHAKESPEARE 28

of action : very rarely does his humour become sardonic or contemptuous rather is it closely allied withMeredith’s Comic Spirit—sympathetic, harmless andbeautiful as summer lightning . As Meredith says of

Shake spe are i s a well- spring of characte rs which are

saturated with the Comic Spirit with more of what w e callblood - l ife than is to b e found anywhe re e l se : and they are ofthis world

,but they are of the world enlarged to our embrace

by imagination and by great poe t ic imagination .

So much for the particular . But it is when Meredithgeneralises on the Comic Spirit that he gives us so truea p icture of Shakespearean humour .

It has the sage ’s brows,and the sunny malice of a faun

lurks at the corners of the half-closed lips drawn in an idlewarine s s of half-tension . I t shows sunlight of the mind,mental richne ss rathe r than noisy enormity . Its commonaspe ct is one of unsol icitous obse rvation , as if surveying a fullfie ld and having le i sure to

'

dart on its chosen morse l s, w ithoutany flatte ring eage rne ss . Men’s future upon earth doe s notattract it ; the ir hone sty and shape l ine ss in the pre sent doe sand whene ve r they wax out of proportion, ove rblown , affe cted ,pre tentious

,bombastical

,hypocriti cal , pedantic , fantastical ly

de l icate wheneve r it se e s them se lf-de ce ived or hoodwinked ,given to run riot in idolatrie s , drifting into vanitie s, congregating in absurditie s

,planning short- sightedly, plotting

dementedly wheneve r th ey are at variance with the ir profe ssions and violate the unwritten laws binding them inconside ration one to anothe r ; whene ve r they offend soundreason

,fair j ustice are false in humil ity, or mixed with

conce it, individually or in the bulk—the Spiri t ove rhead wil llook humane ly malign and cast an oblique l ight on them,

followed by volleys of silve ry laughte r .

This so exactly and so perfectly describes Shakespeare’s humour that to add or subtract a word i sonly to Spoil a consummately exact picture. It leaves


nothing to b e said . Every iota of this criticism applieswith wonderful exactness to all his finest comic scenes .

III

We should have thought, from the fact that Shakespeare must have met many hundreds of boys on thestage, that he would have left us one deathless portraitat least of the hum an boy , but by a strange paradoxhe has left no picture of the living boy w e know . All

Shakespeare’s boy characters are precocious and almostgirlish in their ways . Arthur is far the best of them,

and may well stand as a type for all the others . Thereis no question of his being alive he holds a very dearplace in our hearts among the gallery of Shakespeare’smost successful characters

,but he i s scarcely the boy

as we know him ; he i s all angelic love , a woman-childin his unselfish sympathy , exceedingly tender and sweetof heart, almost perfect and yet quite natural, nevermawkish or sentimental ; it i s a wonderful creation ,tear-compelling in his pathetic helplessness , just as arethe prattling Princes orMacduff’s son .

So then we see, whether we are discussing Shakespeare

’s heroes, heroines, humour or boy characters ,

broadly defined some of his own peculiar idiosyncrasieshis gentle, forgiving, almost feminine mind stands outat every phase of his life

’s journey and betrays him tous. It remains for us to fill in the portrait by noting ina careful rereading what other qualities he seems toplace in the category of good or bad .

First and by far the most noticeable is his love ofmusic ; all his favourite characters, from Orsino toCl eopatra, call for music on the slightest pretext ; heeven goes out of his way to condemn the man who hasno music in his soul , though we know well enough how

SHAKESPEARE 25

false a judgment that is . It is on a par with the loveme, love my dog theory , and incidentally in this connection it is worthy of remark that Shakespeare alway sderides dogs for him they seem alway s to be synonymous with some Vice ; he is, if there ever was one , a doghater, which is all the more strange when w e think of

his love for the open air and the country ,and his know

ledge ofhounds . N0man ever described the chase fromthe point of View of the hare so well as Shakespeare ;no man ever described a hound so well—and yet hehated dogs It i s a strange anomaly .

That he was generous and liberal-minded is clear toanyone who has read The Merchant of Venice ; everyone in the play (except Shy lock ) seems to look on moneyas dirt

,and miserliness is, to Shakespeare

’s mind,

certainly only a lesser crime than ingratitude . I havetouched on his snobbishn ess before ; it is, of course, anational trait, but Shakespeare seems to have sufferedfrom the malady badly it is strange indeed to thinkthat so great a man should have worried to appeal tothe Heralds’ Court to b e assigned a coat of arms asb efitted a gentleman ; that he was a gentleman andan aristocrat is obvious, but none the less, he seemsdelighted alway s to portray himself as a duke or princewhenever possible .

With regard to his politics we may be sure that hesided with law , order and the Constitution . It is notalways remembered that he wrote in Tudor times—itwould have been strange indeed had he done otherwise ,constituted as he was—he was certainly not the man tounderstand Jack Cade ; Piers Plowman would have lefthim cold . It has been pointed out frequently that in TheTempest he damned the Socialistic point of view forever,but it may well b e doubted whether, had he been livingnow, he would

'

hav e taken even the trouble to do that .


Shakespeare has nowhere drawn the religious typeof man in his plays so runs the famous indictmentof the great critic, and for many years the generalreader has agreed complacently without taking the

trouble to forage for himself and prove the truth orfalsity of this sweeping g eneralisation .

It all depends upon what you mean by the wordreligious in an age which no one in his senses couldcall tolerant, Shakespeare stands out without a traceof bigotry . It was scarcely lik ely that he would extolthe Roman Catholics on the other hand, he has nowhere left a living picture of the fanatic Puritan ,

readyto burn for his principles if need b e , obsessed by the

zeal of his faith which could remove mountains itwould have b een so easy for a genius who had only(apparently ) to observe a man to become him to havedrawn an imperishable portrait of the fin est type ofPuritan : but no ; the truth must b e confessedShakespeare , like Homer, had his blind side to put itshortly ,

the type did not interest him ; the middle classshopkeeper, together with the zealot, failed to attracthim . Shakespeare was for ever depicting the highestand the lowest ; he seemed not to see the vast millionswho lay in between : that was part and parcel of hisaristocratic temperament .

That he was contemptuous, in a quite minor degree,both of ordinary citizens and of the Puritans , wasnatural when we think how both these types combined toOppose the acting ofplays , and even petitioned Elizabethto banish theatres to the suburbs, but it is absurd to takeSir Andrew Aguecheek’s opinion as Shakespeare’s

Maria. Marry , s ir, some time s he i s a kind of Puritan .

SirAndrew . 0 ,if Ithought that

,I’

d beat him l ike a dog .

Sir Toby . What, for be ing a Puritan P Thy exquisitereason , dear knight ?

SHAKESPEARE 27

Sir Andrew. I have no exquisite reason for’t,but I have

reason good enough .

Incidentally it is to b e noticed a propos of Malvolio,

that Maria replies to this The devil a Puritan thathe is , or anything constantly but a time -pleaser .

”

It was certainly not for his Puritanic leanings thatShakespeare thought fit to make Malvolio a mostnotorious geek and gull.The above dialogue reflects altogether on the utter

foolishness of Sir Andrew, and not at all on the Puritansas a body . It might with more justice b e urged thatShakespeare is here paying the Puritans a very highcompliment .

No : the truth is that we may search Shakespearethrough and through in vain to discover any sectarianpoint of View he ld up to admiration or ridicule . Butreligion

,to all except the few , is not sectarian . The

point at issue rather is , does or does not Shakespearepropound a theory to explain the riddle of life Doeshe praise Virtue and condemn Vice Is he , in the

broadest and only true sense , religious ? I answer,

Without the shadow of a doubt, yesIt must, however, first of all b e remembered that the

dramatist’s first duty is , like the novelist’s

,to attract

and amuse his audience . He must not obtrude hisown personality ormoralise upon his dramatis personae .

His business is to show you the unfolding of character,

not to tell you what to think of the character as if hewere the editor of a school edition of his own play s .

He is also bound to depict life as he sees it,not as it

ought or ought not to b e .

Hence to the dullard it is quite possible that Shakespeare seems to have no ulterior moral purpose . We

have tragedy after tragedy in which the stage is literallyheaped with the corpse s of righteous and Vicious alike

,!


in that indiscriminating way which, as the Psalmistsaw

,is so true to life . The righteous man may b eg his

bread, and appear to all intents and purposes forsaken,while the wicked man obviously flourishes like a greenbay

-tree . But that is not all we are most distinctlyleft with a sense (never mentioned in so many words ,but plainly hinted at again and again ) that this worldis not all

,and that even in this world the purpose of its

progress is towards Virtue , for it is evil that Violentlydisturbs our ordered path hence it follows thatnature is not indifferent b etween evil and good , but isquite definitely on the side of the angel s . The wholetheory of Shakespearean tragedy is a proof of Shakespeare’s sane , broad-minded

,religious point of View .

What could b e more defin ite , more succinct, morenoble , than the whole attitude of Edgar towards life,summed up in this one immortal phrase

men must endureThe ir going hence , even as the ir coming hithe r :Ripene ss i s all .

again, his dictum that

The gods are j ust,and of our pleasant vice s

Make instrum ents to scourge us.

Or,

Think that the cleare st gods , who make them honoursOfmen’s impossibil itie s, have pre se rved the e .

It would b e easy to multiply instances from his lipsto prove that Edgar

,for one

,was deeply religious . To

come to a far more famous instance, who would denythat Hamlet was instinct with a very real sense of

religion

Not a whit, w e de fy augury the re is a Spe cial providencein the fall of the sparrow . If i t b e now,

’tis not to come ;



like the God-fearing man he was , but it is all of no avail .He succumbs , and swift retribution follows .

Shakespeare lovers will scarcely need to be remindedof the innate sense of religion which is so outstanding acharacteristic of Horatio as well as Hamlet

Hamlet. The re ’s a divinity that shape s our endsRough-hew them how w e will .Horatio. That is most certain .

But what is more important than these isolated casesis the general sense and unanalysable impression fromall Shakespearean tragedy . As Bradley very trulysays

Some time s from the ve ry furnace of affliction a convictionse ems borne to us that somehow

,if w e could se e it

,this

agony counts as nothing against the heroism and love w hichappear in it and thrill our hearts . Some tim e s w e are drivento cry out that the se mighty or heavenly spirits who perishare too great for the l ittle space in which th ey move , andthat they vanish not into nothingne ss but into fre edom .

Some time s from the se source s and from oth e rs come s apre sentiment, formle ss but haunting and even profound ,that all the fury of conflict, with its waste and w oe , is le ssthan half the truth

, even an il lusion , such stuff as dreamsare made on .

And just because Shakespeare felt so deeply andsympathised so keenly with suffering humanity , hisreligion could not bear to b e confined within the narrowlim its of one strait sect, least of all of that sort of sectwhich , in a few years , was to banish the maypole andall gaiety , and substitute a horrible repression of allnatural outlets for the emotions of the people .

His was the religion of week-day s as well as of

Sundays

Dost thou think because thou art virtuous that the re shallb e no more cake s and ale

Yea and by St Anne , ginge r shall b e hot 1 the mouthtoo .

SHAKESPEARE 31

No man without a very real re ligion would ever havepossessed in such an accentuated degree that almostdivine gift of forgiveness . In all the later plays wefind that Shakespeare pockets all his grievances and ,God - like , pardons his enemies

The rare r action isIn virtue than in vengeance : they be ing penitent,The sole drift of my purpose doth extendNot a frown furthe r .

Posthumus with all the reason in the world to giveover Iachimo to the death exclaims

The powe r that I have on you, i s to spare youThe

’ malice towards you, to forgive you : Live ,And deal with othe rs be tte r .

No one will convince m e that the man who coined thosetwo phrases was devoid of the religious temperament .

Shakespeare did not shrink from heaping scorn onto the heads of ecclesiastical hypocrites , when it wasnecessary , any more than he ever refrained from showing up abuses in any branch of the State , even to thedelineation of such a man as Angelo , but he is likewisenot ashamed to put simple

,sincere prayers into the

mouths of his soldier-kings,Henry V . and others , which

come straight from the heart of the dramatist himself.And , finally , to any one who yet doubts , I would recommend a close perusal of all that is to b e found aboutBrutus in Julius Caesar.

Shakespeare always leaves us on a note of hopefulness .

We are never depressed by any of his tragedies as w e areby the work of so many of the moderns . As Meredithso wonderfully puts it

How smile s he at a gene ration rankedIn gloomy noddings ove r l ife ! They pass .

Not he to fe ed upon a breast unthanked ,Or eye a beaute ous face in a cracked glass .


But he can spy that l ittle twist of brainWhich moved some we ighty le ade r of the blind ,

Unwitting ’twas the goad of pe rsonal pain,

To V iew in curst e clipse our Mothe r’s mind,

And show us of some rigid harridanThe wre tched bondmen till the end of time ,

0 l ived the Maste r now to paint us Man,That l ittle twist of brain would ring a chime

Ofwhence it came and what it caused , to startThunde rs of laughte r, clearing air and he art .

Tragedy is to Shakespeare a consequence of some

obsession in Hamlet the consequence of irresolutionfollowing upon too much thinking in Lear the conse

quence of a foolish inability to understand hum annature ; in Coriolanus the consequence of too overweening a pride in Othello the consequence of a toocredulous mind in Antony the consequence of an unbridled passion . In every case man suffers in a waytotally disproportionate to the wrong done the pointto notice is that in each case the calamities do not

simply happen, nor are they sent they proceed mainlyfrom actions the protagonist sets the wheels of Fatein motion and nothing can prevent their revolving tothe inexorable end , the death, after intolerable suffering , of the hero . The tragedy lies in the fact that, oncehaving started the course of events , man is no longerable to calculate the results nor to control them ; the

interest lies entirely in the inward struggle but w e arenev erdepressed, simply because we never get the feelingthat man is but a poor

,weak creature . On the con

trary , in most cases he puts up a magnificent fight andhas so much greatness that w e are led to dwell ratherupon the grand possibilities of human nature than uponits downfall in this particular case , and , most importantof all , we notice that the main source of the suffering intragedy is evil . If

, therefore, it is evil that Violently

SHAKESPEARE 38

disturbs the order of this world , this order cannot b efriendly to evil or indifferent between evil and good .

This leads us to a consideration of Shakespeare’sVillains, among whom, of course, Iago takes precedence,much as Falstaffdoes among his m en of humour . Eversince the day when Coleridge coined his magic phrase ofmotiveless malignity ,

” opinion with regard to Iago’stemperament has differed almost as much as it hasabout Hamlet . There is no quarrel about Iago’sintellectual gifts he had not a stupendous intellect,but, within limits , he most certainly had a fi nely working brain it is almost as if Shakesp eare had embodiedhis own intelligence in him . He is critical, but, strangelyenough, not maliciously so . Think for a moment of hispicture of the women . You’re pictures out of doors ,bells in your parlours , wild cats in your kitchens ,

” andso on . What could b e wittier or fairer But Shakespeare almost immediately impales himself upon the

horns of a dilemma from which there is no escape .

Having endowed his puppet with brains , he then strivesto make him concrete, which is a contradiction in terms,for intellect is never entirely maleficent perfect pitilessmalignity is as impossible for man as perfect innategoodness . Again and again the reader asks himselfwhy Iago is so venomous again and again Iago strivesvaliantly (in soliloquy) to provide us with a reason ;he adduces many not one of them will hold water foran instant .

In the end Othello himself asks piteously

Will you, I pray , demand that demi-devi lWhy he hath thus ensnared my soul and body ?

Iago refuses to answer ; in any case, whether he wouldor would not, he could not, for the simple reason thathe literally did not know . Iachimo is but the pale


shadow of Iago, and even less of a real person . Edmundalone of the Villain s has gaiety , and is more or less to beunderstood . He is Shakesp eare

’s only portrait of theadventurer pure and simple, though by no m eansdestitute of feeling . He certainly lives for us, bei ngneither all black nor all white , as so many of the

dramatist’s characters are .

There is one other point in conn exion With Shakespearean tragedy which is not the least important part ofits hold upon our imagination . I m ean the continualuse which Shakespeare makes of irony ,

particularly inMacbeth, irony on the part of the author himself,ironical jux tapositions of persons and events, andespecially that Species which w e call Sophoclean ,whereby a speaker is made to use words bearing to theaudience, in addition to his own meaning, a further andominous sense, hidden from himself and , usually, fromthe other persons on the stage .

Macbeth’s first words

So foul and fair a day I have not se en

are a famous example of this, echoing, as they do,

the witches’ Fair is foul, and foul is fair . Failnot our feast, say s Macbeth

,later, to Banquo,

who is about to b e murdered . My lord, I willnot,

” is his blood-curdling reply—and he keeps hispromise.

Instances of this will occur at once to all readers ofthe tragedies ; this device is extremely useful for contributing to excite the vague fear of hidden forcesOperating on minds unconscious of their influence ;added to this , and far more potent, of course, is themachinery of the unseen world and the spirit of evil , tothe Elizabethan audiences a far more real dread thanit is to us.

SHAKESPEARE 85

IV

Bothgin thegtragedies and comedies it is essential thatwe take into account the audiences for whom Shakespeare wrote their credulity (if w e can call it so) wasextraordinary witchcraft was treated with respect

,as

we discover in Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of WitchcraftFairy lore and astrology occupied the serious

attention of vast numbers of the populaccg but farmore important than this , from our point of V iew, is theinsatiable thirst for poetry, which was almost the mostpronounced characteristic of these rough, bloodthirstymen who thronged , afternoon after afternoon, in the

theatres , fresh from the Spanish Main or the battle-fields

in Flanders . Men were beginning to use the ir languageand extend their vocabulary ; new ideas of amazingimport were penetrating their senses daily . Theybegan to go crazy over poetry ; they all wrote it,they all demanded it from their favourite playwrights .

Shakespeare, as usual , gave the public what the publicwanted it is a noteworthy feature of his genius thathe seemed to pander to the public taste by giving themall their old favourite machinery while changing thismachinery in the crucible of his mind into the undy ingindividual men and women we now know . For ex

ample, the audience demanded a fool and he gave themFeste and the Fool in Lear. They demanded a Jew whoshould b e baited and he gave them Shylock . Theydemanded witches and he gave them Macbeth. Theydemanded b lood and he gave them Othello and Hamlet.

Most of all they demanded poetry , and he gave themthirty- seven plays so steeped in magic that he caused aLow Dutch

adialect to become

,

the chiefest instrumentof civilisation, the world-speech of humanity at large .


Shakespeare found the blank-verse form a powerfulvehicle of dramatic elocution as used by Marlowe andp erfected it until in his years of maturity almost unwittingly he seemed to coin a new heaven and a new

earth of language ; here as elsewhere, however, it is aswell to recognise that he was no innovator as Wordsworth was he did not invent the blank-verse form anymore than he invented the plots for his plays he tookwhatever he found to b e grist for his mill , as all geniusesdo

,from the store-cupboard of all the writers who had

lived before him—discarding here, adding there, withno thought but of b enefiting from them and improvingupon the ir mistakes . He must have been an omnivorous reader, much of the same type as Doctor Johnson ,

who tore the hearts out of books ruthlessly in order toextract the honey out of them expeditiously . The factthat Shakespeare was an actor surely helped himenormously knowing as he did the exigencies of thestage

,he would in his remodelling of old play s know

exactly how to adapt them to meet the popular demands,and we shall do well to bear in mind the eight feature sthat Coleridge noted when he tried to particularise onShakespeare’s peculiarities .

First he notices that Shakespeare gains his effectalways by expectation in preference to surprise ; this isever the way of genius ; his business lies in the nu

ravelling of character . Your interest as reader orplaygoer is in the development of character, not in suddensurprises . InMacbeth, for instance, we are led gradual lyto expect the murder ofDuncan that is not the climaxof the play ; it is the result of the murder upon Macbeth’s inner consciousness that so holds our attentionthat we scarcely dare to draw a breath until the lastscene ; so it is with Hamlet. It is the strange, unaccountable reluctance in the hero to take the obvious



independence between the dramatic interest and theplot the plot is simply the canvas , nothing more it isquite secondary to and independent of the main purpose—the unfolding of character . This explains onceagain why Shakespeare never troubled to invent a plotthe fifth peculiarity follows from the fourth, and is theindependence of the interest on the story as the groundwork of the plot .

The sixth feature is the interfusion of the lyrical with,in and through the dram atic . Songs

, Coleridge noticed ,in Shakespeare are introduced as songs only and yethow he heightens the humour, tightens the intensityand more forcibly brings home to us the point of vi ewhe would have us carry away . His personal love of

music to a great extent, of course , accounts forthis , but

it is as well to rem ember how here again he takes the oldmachinery and turns it to his own good purpose .

The seventh point is perhaps the most important ofall it is that the characters of the dramatis personce ,

like those in real life, are to b e inferred by the reader

they are not told to him . This is the reason why w e

come to so many different conclusions in our readingsof the different characters foryears w e are content totake other men’s opinions , and then, suddenly waking upfrom our lethargic acquiescence in their Views , w e rereadthe playagain for ourselves and find ,perhaps, thatHenrythe Fifth was not the model man ofvalour w e had beenled to think him, nor Falstaff so much of a coward asw e had been led to believe . We find that many of hislater heroines are scarcely more than milk and wateryabstractions, where w e had before thought them gloriousSpecimens of perfect English girlhood at its best .

Lastly , Coleridge would have us notice how everything , however heterogeneous in Shakespeare , is united ,as it is in Nature ; in other words , passion is that by

SHAKESPEARE 39

which the individual is distinguished from others, notthat which makes a different kind of him . These eightpeculiarities are specially important forus to notice aswe pass along

,try ing to build up forourselves the com

plete picture of our Shakespeare . So far as he goe sColeridge is seldom in the wrong , but there are severalpoints still to b e touched on before we can hope to havegained an all -round View .

For instanoe, Coleridge never mentioned the astonishingly brilliant way in which Shakespeare introduced hisvery necessary stag e directions into the text . When w etake into account the absence ofall scenery and the factthat these play s were acted in broad day light, intheatres open alike to sun and rain , w e begin to realiseWith what alm ost insurmountable difficulties the playwright had to cope , w e are lost in admiration at thenatural way in which the poet intersperses his hintsabout the time of day ,

the attitude and dress of thecharacter, almost urmoticeab ly in the text . How often ,for instance, in the churchyard se ene inRomeo andJuliet,

does Shakespeare lay stress upon the fact that it is pitchdark The Opening words attune our ears to the

general gloom

G ive m e thy torch , b oy hence and stand aloof,Yet put it out

,for I would not b e se en

,

say s Paris . Romeo, after he has killed him,pretends

that he has not been able to see his opponent’s faceLet m e peruse this face .

” When Friar Laurenceenters he begins

What torch is yond’

,that vainly lends his l ight

To grubs and eye le ss skulls ?


Paris’s page on his re-entry with the watchsays

This i s the place the re , whe re the torch doth burn .

But Shakespeare not only introduces these very neces

sary hints into the poetry, but he sometimes, withmagical success, makes his stage direction have a realbearing on the plot . The most famous instance of thisis, of course, in Othello

Put out the l ight, and then put out the l ight

when Othello comes in to murder Desdemona .

In Julius Caesar, when Brutus and Cassius are commun ing apart, Shakespeare seizes the opportunity toemphasise the time of day by making the rest of theconspirators argue

Decius. Here l ie s the east : doth not the day break he reCasca . No .

Cinna . O ,pardon

,sir

,it

_

doth : and yon grey l ine s ,That fre t the clouds, are me ssengers of day .

Casca. You shall confe s s that you are both dece ived .

H e re , as I point my sword , the sun arise sWhich i s a great way growing on the south ,We ighing the youthful season of the year .

How extraordinarily it adds to the poignancy of

Macduff’s suffering to hear Malcolm’s

What man , ne’

e r pull your hat upon your brows.

It Visualises the scene exactly ; you feel that you arereally there, a spectator of the sad sight of the strongman bowed with grief, unable to do anything toassuage it .

Shakespeare more than any other man in the worldseems always to have the exact word or phrase at hiscommand with which to captivate our attention . How

graphic is that touch of crying in Prospero’s

SHAKESPEARE 41

description of his wandering with Miranda in an openboat in her infant years Me and thy crying self,

” orthat wonderful use of the word inly in the inlytouch of love .

”

Everyone will recall the hoary leaves of the willowwhich were showing in the glassy stream whereOphelia drowned herself, and Cl eopatra

’s

He’

s speaking now,Ormurmuring Where ’s my se rpent of old Ni le ?

His language seems always to have been, as Hazlittsaid , hieroglyphical it translates thoughts into Visibl eimages , so that you not only see and understand whathe d escribes but are yourself transported there . Thinkof this description ! Light thickens and the crowmakes wing to the rooky wood .

” No other wordswould do , nothing else call up quite the image which wevisualise when we read this .

Strangely enough,wh en his characters are acting

under the stress of great emotion , they have a wonderful habit of coining words . By far the best knowninstance is the

No ; thi s my hand will rathe rThe multitudinous seas incam adine,Making the gre en one red

of Macbeth .

It is here particularly that w e congratulate ourselveson the fact that Shakespeare was unacademic and hadno conventional prejudices to outgrow he would haveno natural repugnance against coining a fresh word ifhis vocabulary failed him at a particular point . Whathe did possess was an unerring ear for music , so

finely developed that words seem to come at hisbeck and call straight from heaven . It is this that


makes us gasp at the pure magic of such a lyricaloutburst as

O ! my love ! my wife !D eath , that hath sucked the honey of thy breath ,Hath had no powe r ye t against thy beautyThou art not conquer

’

d ; be auty’s ensign ye t

I s crimson in thy l ips, and in thy che eks ,And death’s pale flag is not advanced th ere .

He had this gift from the Very start . Think of thestupendous sonnet which begins

Ful l many a glorious morning have I se e nFlatte r the mountain tops with sovran eye ,Kissing with golden face the meadows gre en,Gilding pale stre ams with heavenly alchymy .

Could ever passionate love find more exquisiteexpression in fewer words than in the

O thou we ed that are so love ly fairThat the sense ache s at thee

of OthelloOrwas ever a picture of Nature’s beauties drawn that

would parallel Perdita’s

DaffodilsThat come be fore the swallow dare s and takeThe winds of March with beauty : viole ts dimBut swe e te r than the l ids of Juno’s eye sOrCythe rea

’s breath

Milton’s attempts, fine as they are, induce the criticism which Bagehot invented . Why,

”he say s , at the

conclusion of a long description of natural phenomenain P aradise Lost, you could draw a map of it .

”

This, then, is the secret of Shakespeare’s greatness ;

not only had he, owing to his experiencing nature, hislarge catholic sympathies, his ever-roaming, everinterested eye, the power of Visualising man’s char

SHAKESPEARE 43

acteristics, but superimposed upon that he had the

faculty for clothing his myriad thoughts in the mostperfectly fitting expressions that it has been the goodfortune of any genius to own .

It is easy to sum up his l imitations, for they are almosttrivial ; he does not seem to have been interested innovelties (he never mentions potatoes or tobacco we

get a better insight into the comm on life of the Eliza !

b ethans by reading the contemporary drama of Dekker,Jonson and the rest of them) . He had a supreme contempt for misers, Puritans and the middle classes hemay have been a bit of a snob , and was probablysensuous—his faults only make him the more human,the more lovable . What we do know about him is thathe was sunny, gentle, richly endowed with a sense ofhumour which, in all probability , saved him in the y earswhen he probed from hell to hell the hum an passions ,but we know that he emerged serene in the latest y ears ,having discovered that

The rare r action isIn v irtue than in vengeance .

The power of being able to forgive your adversaryShakespeare ranks as almost the most priceless attributeof man . He can even find it in him to forgive Iachimo .

What an inhuman world , some modern philosopheronce said , it would b e without the old .

”Youth is

apt to b e astonishingly cruel from the day s when inearliest infancy it deprives the fly upon the windowpane of its wings

,just for fun . Shakespeare seem s

to have been the great exception to this he had a veryreal horror of all kinds of cruelty . He was almostwomanish in his dislike of harsh words or blows ; wefeel that he could never have been a soldier he shrankinstinctively from bloodshed as he shrank from crowds


whom he did not understand but only loathed,as

sensitive people so often do . He was never so happyas when he was in solitude or in the country , where hecould people the air with his fancies , yet he took adelight in the material world or he would never havebeen able to float those bubbles in the air or to lift theland into mountain slopes so naturally , so entirelywithout effort, as Emerson says

He had the faculty of be ing able to change place s at wil lwith al l humanity, turning the globe round for his amusementi t i s not that he se eks to edify us

,he wishe s rathe r to amuse

both himse lf and us the dre ams of childhood, the

ravings of de spair were alike the toys of his fancy.

His was not that cloistered Virtue which Milton heldso much in contempt, which refused to sally forth andseek its adversary ; rather at times did gentle Shakespeare suffer horrible tortures amid the dust and heatsed non sine pulvere palma .

”Through tribulation

he came to know men better, and out of the fire he came

purified seven times, so that he left behind , as histestament to mankind , poetry so rich and full of multitudinous beauties that the language in which it waswritten has become the noblest in the world , a galleryof portraits of men and women whom we know moreintimately than our nearest and dearest, and thoughtscouched in the most inspiring , unforgettable phraseology that ever man could desire to solace and refreshhim in the arid deserts of life .

When we want to laugh, to cry , to b e quiet, to b eboisterous , to find a friend , or b e alone, whatever ourmood , Shak espcare can enter into it and-provide us withexactly the companion w e most need . Of all m en whohave really lived he is the first to whom w e turn whenin trouble or joy ; he halves our sorrows and doublesourdelights , for he is the most human , the readiest to


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

R SAINTSBURY, in his latest critical work,very cleverly proves how necessary it is forthose of us who pine and peek and fret amid

the turmoil of our frenzied life to -day to go back to theeighteenth century for the sake of our peace of mind .

We are only too apt to live for the newspapers , buyingedition after edition in the hope of finding better newsfrom all the various scenes of action . Our conversationruns in the everlasting groove of war and all its sideissues ; when work is over, and w e are for a fewmomentsat leisure, w e either go out to a theatre or else plungerecklessly into a modern novel , with its inevitable leading up to the climax ofAugust, 1914 . How much betterit would be if w e could only uproot ourselves from ourpresent age of agony in our hours of recreation andimm erse ourselves in the placid waters of the Augustanlake .

No century has received more neglect than this one ;no century ever deserved neglect iess. From 1700 to1798 is a period full of good things, all specifics for ourpresent-day malady . It is just a case of having giventhe dog a bad name and the name has most un justlystuck . It will therefore b e, perhaps, a good thing firstof all to clear the ground and state exactly what theeighteenth century set out to do how far it attainedits aim ; what it did not pretend to achieve , and whereinlie s the difference between our own ag e and that of theearlier Georges . The whole century was given over tothe cult of common-sense ; it viewed any tendency

46

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 7

towards such a thing as Enthusiasm with susp icion ;clarity of diction, sparkl ing wit, sound material-mindedness, etc . , the avoidance of any exaggerated notionsabout idealism or other abstract highfalutin words,were conspicuously present in all its writers . Nothingcould have been further removed from Shakespeareand Milton on the one side or the Romantic revivalistson the other . The field it set before itself to cover wasa small one . The point to remember is that it coveredit perfectly ; it never failed to achieve its purpose,whether in prose, poetry , satire, the writing of letters,or the more gigantic feat of composing novels . It hadno conception of the desire of the moth for the startheory, and K eats and Shelley were right outside itsken . It had no dealings with the sublime, and itdescended but rarely to the ridiculous . There was arobust sanity about it which compels admiration at alltimes

,and it was rarely dull .

Now everyone will allow that the tendency to-day isall towards introspeetion , a state of continual hustleas we search after whatever chimera for the momentattracts us. Some of us believe (Mr Saintsbury is notamong the number ; he seizes every opportunity to berude to this fledgling century of ours) that the last fewyears have been extraordinarily productive of goodpoetry, lasting novels, and even of some signs of a sanedramatic revival . However that may b e, the pointrather lies in the fact that w e have much to learn froman ag e when enthusiasm was regarded as a Vice, and theend of knowledge, the habit of moderating the passions .It is a truism that our best work is done when w e are

calm, cool and collected , as the nerve doctors say .

Most of us suffer from too highly strung nerves, andconsequently splash our canvas with all manner ofcolours, careless of co-ordination, of shadows and lights ,


only pl eased that such and such a patch looks beautiful .

There is tod ay a very noticeable lack of method , a kindof neurasthenic irritability in the work of even the bestm en , which indicates the need for a long rest cureamong the Augustans . In a word , our enthusiasms ,excellent in intention as they are, need the temp eringthat can only b e gained by a course of Swift, Johnson,

Addison, Pop e and the rest of a school who neversuffered their passions to get the upper hand .

It is good forus to renew our acquaintance with SirRoger d e Coverley, Will Honeycomb and all the adorable bevy of bepatched beauties—Chloe, Clarissa,Vanessa, FlaVia and so on, of The Tatlerand Spectatorto turn over the pages ofAddison’s or Steele’s Essays,and to watch Sir Roger at the play , in church, in VVestminster Abbey, with the gipsies, at the Quarter Sessions—to enter again into that life where ladies are laughedout of their petty foibles and vain fancies , to readAddison’s Saturday sermons or his criticism on P aradise

Lost, interleaved with his sly reprimands to the oglersand street-criers, the antics of the fan-wavers and themembers of the Trumpet and other clubs . It is all veryquiet, always witty, never heavy or dull , and, what ismost important, as different as possible from our lifeto-day . And after Addison, Swift . Miserrimus ashe was in his own life, he never lifted the Veil too far .

It was, as he himself said, only mankind in the massthat he hated individual members of society he loved ,and, for all the carping of our more inane critics,Gu lliver

’s Travels does stand out as one of the most

humorous books ever written . Lacking, indeed , in thecomic spirit must that man be who is unable to b etickled inwardly at the innumerable funny things inLilliput and Brobdingnag, or intellectually fed with theamazing genius that went to the making of A Tale of a


Tub . It is all part and parcel of the scheme of thecentury that Swift was so far able to control his passionsthat he could write so sweetly (yes, sweetly ) that childrenare kept from their play by the delights of Gulliver andgrown—upm en and Women can find refection in the finestsatire that has ever been written . But it is to TheJournal to S tella that we ought most surely to turn if wewant comfort and rest . Here we have a slice of important history, a sketch of manners delightful in themselves, a gazette in miniature, mingled pathos, humourand love, pride and j ealousy , all written not in ink, butblood, making up a marvellous and absolutely genuineautobiography . It is doubtful whether, when werequire pure recreation, there is any author so capableof gripping our attention and holding us as the manwho wrote not only the above, but P olite Conversation,

A Modest Proposal, The Drapie’

rLetters and The Battleof the B ooks, to satisfy our aching senses .

Pope’s place in literature has long been decided , but,because it has been granted that he is not a poet of theWordsworthian order, it has somehow followed that hehas been little read of late . We acknowledge his lackoforiginality , his insincerity and shallowness of thought,but his positive qualities more than outweigh thesedeficiencies . He is always witty

,always polished and

urbane, and never devoid of an intellectual quality thatis not to b e analysed

,but is always felt and appreciated

by all but the most meticulously romantic critics . The

man or woman who fails to derive a very real pleasurefrom that consummately artistic mock-heroic epic , TheRape ofthe Lock , is sincerely to b e pitied , while the Essayon Criticism and the Essay onMan sum up ,

in the mostcompact and charming style , aphorisms that havebecome the commonplaces of our everyday Speech .

The couplet about true w it i s not the less valuable


because it has suffered from too much bandy ing about .

But w e ought to reread not only Pope , but the sunnyhoney-tongued Prior, Gay ,

Ak enside , Churchill , Thomson and Young , all of whom contributed poetry of akind that is at once direct

,soothing

,witty and polished .

Forfar too long have these poets suffered an undeservedneglect and been chastised for daring to b e l imited inscope and execution . They form a very definite linkin the history of English poetry . If they did nothingelse they knocked a real sense of regular rhythm intothe English head

,and for this alone w e ought to b e

devoutly thankful . But it is when w e arrive at thebirth of the novel proper in Richardson , Fielding,Smollett and Sterne that w e stand on the surest ground .

I by no means agree withMrSaintsbury’s estimate of

our own ag e when he complains of the poverty of omodern novelists . Rather do I feel , after a new workof Compton Mackenzie , Hugh Walpole , Joseph Conrad ,H . G . Wells

,Arnold Bennett

,Gilbert Cann an , St John

Lucas and the rest of ouryounger writers , that w e l ivein the golden ag e of the novel , but I readily acknowledge that, for pure rest and refreshm ent

,I p refer

Fielding , the innovator and perfecter of the directnarrative type of fiction . There is so much searchingof heart, so much dwelling on sordid details in thenovelist of to-day , that w e become troubled andnervy ourselves after a dose of their work .

Fielding, on the other hand , simply enchants us . We

are not in the least perturbed by the many accidents byflood and field that befall Tom Jones orJosephAndrewsw e watch the rapidly moving events as if in a kinema .

We are transported to an ag e in which w emost decidedlywould not choose to live

,but which is still picturesque ,

real , robust and full of sound common-sense and goodlnunour. Partridge and Parson Adams are an ever


lasting joy,and give us as much real rest and happiness

as any of Shakespeare’s characters . I am convincedthat no better prescription could b e devised for thosewho would forget for a few hours the woes of to-daythan a course of eighteenth -century novel-reading—notonly all Fielding, P amela, Humphrey Clinker andTristmm Shandy, but John B zmcle, The Spiritual

Quixote, The Case of Otranto, Vathek, P eter Wilkinsand JVl oll Flanders . All these novel s are written withthe one idea of amusing their readers and interestingthem by excitement, suspense, pathos , sarcasm—b ywhatever means their authors could devise . That theysucceeded for their own immed iate readers is wellknown ; that they are less read to -day casts an un

worthy aspersion on our critical faculties . For the byno means to b e despised gift of story -telling , this agehas never been approached ,

and it is this lost art thatwe now so much deplore and so much need to comfortand console us in our leisure hours .

Lord Rosebery only echoed an opinion held by verymany cultivated m en of taste when he declared thatthere was no b ed book in the world to compare withBoswell’s Life of Johnson, no other book which couldcompete with it as a solace for the convalescent . Imyself can put on record that, when I had six monthsof forced indolence after a somewhat serious illness,Boswell was my constant companion and contributedmore than anything to my ultimate recovery . And

,

as everyone has pointed out , Doctor Johnson is the

eighteenth century in epitome ; no other ag e did or

could produce him . In him iswrapt up all theAugustanSplendid sanity- its intolerance of cant, its magnificent

common-sense (tempered in his case by a melancholywisdom) its in imitable humour and avoidance of dullness its direct Vision

,which has been mistaken more


often than not for platitudinising its habit of sayingoutright what pleased and what displeased it

,regardless

of quaint rul ings of other ages its inflexib le rigidity of

principle, combined with a very real charity its wideknowledge, which has no sort of affinity with pedantryits curiosity, mingled with a wholesome scepticism itsindomitable courage

,coupled with that my sterious

charm which so many of us for so long a time have heldup to ridicule or scorned as being too childish for theselatter days of wisdom .

Doctor John son is John Bull as w e l ike to fancyhim

,not as travestied in the Press—superstitious ,

weak-kneed , maudlin or scandalmongering—but steadfast, robust, intellectual , religious, and not ashamed of

being thought so companionable,witty and courteous

(I repeat, courteous think of the doctor’s famousepigram to Mrs Siddons or his treatment of the inmatesof his house ) ; and it is not only John son the manwhom w e meet in Boswell , but the John son of TheRambler, of The Vanity ofHuman Wishes, of Rasselas,ofThe Lives ofthe P oets and The Preface to ShakespeareJohn son the writer, with whom Mr Saintsbury wouldhave us intimate . The legend that it is the man , andnot the writer, who is able to afford us such a perfectrest and refreshment is utterly and radically erroneous .

We ought to reread his works as well as to listen tohis inimitable remarks . I would go even farther andsuggest that w e no longer deride Johnson as a critic .

Within his very obvious limitations he is not only agood , but a great, critic . I know few more illuminating,and no more refreshing , pieces of criticism than hisremarks on Shakespeare . That he disliked blank verseis very plain—he admits it and

,after all

,every man

is entitled to his own opinion . The question is, takingall his idiosyncrasies into account, whether or not he



one of them, and hours afterwards may still be foundglutting ourselves with their witticisms

,their pictures of

the life and manners oftheir times , their delightful anecdotes and the thousand and one things about them thatattract us. Lady Mary

,with herwonderful description

of life in Turkey and admonitions about her husband’s

prospects Lord Chesterfield , with his never-failingAttic salt and acumen , trying to model a perfect man of

the world HoraceWalpole (to me the most interestingof all , and to Mr Saintsbury so important that herecommends these ten volum es as a thirdsman tothe Bible and Shakespeare ) , with his abounding Vitalityand endlessly refreshing kale idoscope of current events,portraying the history of his timemore exactly than anyhistorian could ever hope to Gray ,

with his scholarlyand scientifically inclined investigations, keeping hiseye on the obj ect like the true poet that he was andCowper, most popular of all , with his pen picturescoined from nothing at all , able to interest us quietly,sedately , y et withal amusingly , about Olney , his garden,or a hare, the most exquisite small beer—all theseafford us a garden with never- ending pleasances andarbours

,to which w e can retire with absolute certitude

that we shall return to the whirl of our daily roundreinvigorated , full of new ideas , all our tangled skeinsunravelled

,and quietly confident because of our new

found peace . And wherein lies the magic of thesepecu liarly eighteenth-century letter-writers ? Is it notin the unfailing good sense , the inevitable good temper,the obvious leisured ease of the ‘ authors and the genuineinterest betrayed and aroused in all sorts of differentthings ? Nowhere did the century find so natural anoutlet for its genius as in this art, and to neglect theseletter-writers is to miss a very considerable portion ofthe spice of life .


Of Gibbon and Burke Mr Saintsbury say s but little ;he recognises the refreshing qualities of The Decline and

Fall, but he by no means does justice to the gorg eousrhetoric of ournoblest statesmen . Lawyers invariablytell m e that they alway s look on a man who doesn

’tknow his Burke as only half educated , and certainly Ihave derived more considerable aesthetic refreshmentfrom the speeches on India, France and America thanin any writers of a like kind in any language . To some

extent a novel depreciation of Sheridan has of late setin . There were better things written between 1700

and 1798 than his three plays, and critics wax angrybecause w e don’t read them ; but that ought not toblind them to the fact that in their class these comediesstand alone , and have been the constant delight of allplaygoers and readers ever since . No one in his senseswould deny that he gains a Very defin ite sense of restand refreshm ent after seeing or rereading the comediesof Sheridan orGoldsmith the stage , without these twoin this century , would have been poor indeed . But allthis time there has been an undercurrent of revoltagainst the tenets of theAugustan school TheFugitives

from the Happy Valley were headed , of course, by Grayand Collins , who, in spite of their personified abstraetions, handed on a very definite torch to Wordsworthhim self.Collins , in particular, had that peculiar dream quality,

that touch of pure lyrical softness, which haunts us inthe later romantics . He at least breaks with a schoolwhich aims at neatness and polish and common -senseabove all el se . How S leep the Brave and The Ode toEvening need no relative eulogy ; they are absolute,final, ineffably graceful and sweet . Macpherson’sOssian is, I fear, still caviare to the general , but its popularity and influence were once widespread throughout


Europe . The point is that this verse-prose , withits breath of the blue mountains of Sky e and theHebrides and magic vagueness , shows yet anothercleavage from the school of Pope . But it is when w ecom e to Percy

’s Religues the most epoch-makingbook that appeared between 1700 and 1798, that we seethe first real glimmerings of the great dawn of the

Romantic revival . How good it must have been forthe eighteenth century to read S irCauline, S irPatrickSpens and The Nut Brown Maid . It would , we feel ,have been worth while to have lived at that period ,ordinarily ignorant, and suddenly to have come acrossa copy fresh from the press . No wonder Scott ravedso about it . I never m et anyone , boy orman , who wasnot in raptures over it when it was first brought to hisnotice .

It is difficult to analy se the charm which balladpoetry exercises over us ; the fact remains that w ewould part w ith many precious heritages before we

would consent to lose Chevy Chase, The Battle ofOtterbourne, YoungWaters and so on . It is hardly necessaryat this time of day to recommend people who are in

need of rest and refreshm ent to go back to the ballad ,but it is worth noticing that it is to the eighteenthcentury that w e ow e its revival and consequentpopularity . Chatterton’s Ballade of Excellent Charityand Smart’s S ong to David will never fail to prov iderestful pleasure to all who have ey es to see and earsto hear, but their place at this time of day is alsowell assured . And so w e arrive at the setting of the

Augustan sun . Cowper, almost as versatile as Goldsmith

,w e already know as a letter-writer . His hymns

stand out as the finest w e possess,his John Gilpin and

The Task scarcely need mention here,but it is perhaps

perm issible once more to draw attention to the import


ance of Yardley Oak , which certainly contains mattersentirely foreign to the earlier writers in the century .

Here w e have the imaginative envisagement of everything

, the half—pantheistic feeling of the community of

man and Nature and God , which is so perfectly developedlater on in Wordsworth . In all his poems, however,there is the same peacefulness and quiet humour whichare so necessary for those in search of rest .

We feel , on lay ing down The P eace of the Augustans,that Mr Saintsbury has conferred upon the State a realb enefit , for there never was a time when w e all of us sosorely needed all that the eighteenth century has to giveus—level-headedness, a sense of humour, a , sense ofquiet, even though oppressed and weighed down byinnum erable troubles, robust strength, an avoidance of

thinking too precisely on the event—all these and manymore are the gifts which this ag e has to bestow . It isall the m ore difficult when w e feel so grateful for sucha piece of criticism to have to comm ent adversely on

many features , but, in common fairness to ourselves, aword must b e added on the reverse side .

Never before can there have been such an astuteliterary critic who wrote so deplorably as MrSaintsbury .

His sty le has long been recognised as almost as bad ashis criticisms are good

,but in this book he has out

Saintsburied Saintsbury ,

” which must weigh withuniversity lecturers before they take the responsibilityof advocating this book as a text-book of criticism .

Furthermore , he is a Tory of the Tories, and obviouslyprefers a political fight to all the literature there everwas . Like many others of his belief

,he is un able to

understand the modem s, and consequently revilesthem most unjustly . Lastly

,and most important of

all , we close this book with a feeling that he himselfdoes actually preferthe low- lying levels of the Augustan


poets to the sublime heights of K eats, Shelley andWordsworth . We feel that w e have been cheated by avery clever counsel , who insidiously recommends that,for our sanity’s sake , we should try his prescription ofeighteenth-century literature ; and , when he has us inhis clutches

,he would have us leave all our glories of sea

and sky and mountain , and stay with him in this fieldof very limited Vision for ever .

The clever reader will take Mr Saintsbury’s advice

gladly for a cure, but, when he is rested, he will riseagain like a giant refreshed with wine and come backto the present age, ready to fight afresh for the new idealsand the twentieth-century theory of life and letters,which anyone less biased than Mr Saintsbury will alloware incomparably finerthan those of the nineteenth andtotally beyond the k en of the very earthy schemers ofthe eighteenth century .

SOME MODERN POETS

HEN Mr Marsh first collected the poemsmost representative of his ag e in 1912, he

kindly provided the critic with a beaconquoting the following passage from Lord

Of all mate rials for labour, dre ams are the harde st ; andthe artificer in ideas i s the chie f of worke rs

,who out of

nothing wil l make a pie ce of work that m ay s top a child fromcrying or lead nations to highe r th ings . For what is it tob e a poe t ? I t i s to se e at a glance the glory of the world,to se e be auty in al l i ts forms and manife stations, to fe e lugline ss l ike a pain

,to re sent the wrongs of othe rs as bitterly

as one ’s own,to know mankind as othe rs know single m en ,

to know nature as botanists know a flowe r,to b e thought a

fool, to hear at moments the clear voice of God .

This brave venture appeared just at a time whenthere was literally no sale whatever for poetry ,

whenRichard Middleton was driven to comm it suicidebecause he could make no headway in an age given overto materialism . It seemed that so far as the generalpublic was concerned poetry was at its nadir ; the poetwas

,in Dun sany

’s words , truly thought to be a fool ;

yet MrMarsh persisted , and , as w e now know,took the

tide on its turn by May , 1914, this slender volume hadgone into its tenth edition ; poetry had come into its

Cambridge published its own productions in verse,

59


poets to the sublime heights of K eats, Shelley andWordsworth . We feel that w e have been cheated by avery clever counsel , who insid iously recomm ends that,for our sanity

’s sake , w e should try his prescription ofeighteenth-century literature ; and , when he has us inhis clutches , he would have us leave all our glories of seaand sky and mountain , and stay with him in this fieldof very limited vision for ever .

The clever reader will take Mr Saintsbury’s advice

gladly for a cure, but, when he is rested , he will riseagain like a giant refreshed with wine and come backto the present ag e , ready to fight afresh forthe new idealsand the twentieth-century theory of life and letters,which anyone less biased than Mr Saintsbury will alloware incomparably finerthan those of the nineteenth andtotally beyond the k en of the Very earthy schemers ofthe eighteenth century .



Oxford followed suit ; quite normal citizens waitedimpatiently for fresh issues of

“

New Numbers,

” sothat they might glut themselves with the poetry ofWilfrid Gibson, Lascell es Abercrombie and JohnDrinkwater ; where previously John Masefield alonehad been able to create a public for his long narrativepoems , now every new poet had a following , a coterieof devoted adherents . Then the war came

,and with

it the inevitable reaction . A writer of doggerel inone of the halfpenny papers welcomed a new ag e of

action which should cause us to turn aside from thisfoolish cult of reading and making poetry ; MrBirrellpublicly announced that it would b e as well to givepoetry the go

-by until after the war publishersfound that money lay in war books only in The Timesdid the dy ing Muse dare to assert herself, and thererarely with d istinction ; silence would have been asweeter swan- song, but with the passage of days thepublic became discontented with S ecrets of the PrussianCourt ; they longed for some seductive writer whowould carry them away from the war and lure themback to an ag e when w e were obsessed by less weightyproblems , back to a time when destruction was not theworld’s united aim . Reprints of the great masterpieces began to sell again ; the modern novelist re

turned to his old successful niche ; and now there hascome about a reaction even against the six - shillingnovel . Poetry which but a little time ago was shunnedby every canny publisher is now being sought by themeagerly it is not really easy to discover why .

Most of us can , of course, understand the reason forRupert Brooke’s enormous success ; he stood alone

,

above his ag e, as one who expressed finally all its aimsand aspirations . Everything about him attractedsomething in each of us ; his brilliant intellect

SOME MODERN POETS 61

captivated some,his ruthless realism others, his sense

of beauty ensnared the most perhaps,but his poetry

lives as the epitome of all our cravings and ourstrange perplexities w e are like blind children in thedark , and w e cling to a slightly stronger brother whocan y et, forall that, give Voice to our agony

Who want and know not what w e want and cryWith crooked mouths for He aven and throw it by .

There is no doubt, too , that the manner of his deathenticed the great public to start buying and even reading his work . But though he is the greatest, he iscertain ly not the only poet whose works are selling .

We hear that John Oxenham ’s B ees in Amberand All’s

Well have quite outstripp ed his novels in circulation,that Miss M‘

Leod’s S ongs to save a S oul are having an

immense vogue, that Miss Elinor Jenk ins has herthousands of readers ; all our public and secondaryschool boys and girls are reading with great keenn essthat splendid collection of contemporary poetry broughtout by Messrs Sidgwick Jackson ,

at the instigation of

the English Association , entitled P oems of To-day . To

these we have now to add daily the songs ofdead heroesof the type of Charles Sorley, Colwyn Philipps, andcountless others .

All these are signs that there is a very sure renascenceofpoetry in our midst, and it is worth while try ing tofind out what are the leading principles of its pioneersand whether it is likely to b e ephemeral or lasting .

We expect to find (and are not disappointed ) all thebest traits and most characteristic results in MrMarsh’second volum e of Georgian P oetry ,

1 which contains allthe work written between 1913 and 1915 which he was

1 Georg ian P oetry ,19 13

- 19 15. The Poetry Bookshop , 1915.


allowed to reproduce and at the same time thoughtworthy of inclusion . Taken in conjunction with hisvolum e of three y ears earlier, the contrast is in someway s amazing .

Most of the present-day critics are loud in their protestations against this new school ; they say that intheir passionate revolt against the Romantic movem entthey are rapidly working into a groove of m echanicalreaction ; that there is a danger lest their conventionbecome on ly a worse convention than that of the

Victorians , who drew beauty for its own sake as if it wereinteresting quite apart from what is made of it worsein that the young poet now draws ugliness for its own

sake , though it neither points a moral nor adorns atale .

This seems to b e the one handle which the critic turnsunceasingly : Rupert Brooke was attacked for hisrealism in Jealousy, Menehzus and Helen, A Channel

Passage and innumerable other poems . Even thosewho professed themselves among his most fervidadmirers exclaim ed that they could not b ear the introduction of words like dirty and blear- eyed intothe middle of poems otherwise beautiful . What suchpeople fail to realise is that in his search for beauty thetrue poet must occasionally find himself confronted byugliness ; he refuses to shut his eyes to it ; he knowsit to b e monstrous , unreasonable and yet almost acommonplace to less sensitive

,saner minds who can

accustom themselves to the monstrous and graduallybecome blind to it , in d irect proportion as they become

blind to the beauty all around them fearlessly he setsout to correlate it with his other Vision , and the resultis to alienate m en and women ofweaker stomachs whoimagine that he dabbles in uncleanness because helikes it .


In the first, and in some ways the greatest, poem inthis new volume , K ing Lear

’s Wife, Gordon Bottomley

has given such critics ground for complaint, which theyhave not been slow to take .

What right, they ask ,has a poet to deduce that Lear

in his earlier life was wanton ,callous and neglectful of

his wife , making mistresses of hermaidensThey declare that this is a play of great beauty , Spoilt

by hideous touches , notably by lyrics about lice, whichhave nothing to do with the great Shakespeareantragedy . In point of fact, anyone who has for yearsbeen troubled by the earlier play will recognise at oncehow much the new one clears up the ground . It isimpossible to reread K ing Lear after finishing K ingLear

’s Wife without noticing again and again points

that used to puzzle the imagination , now made perfectlyplain . Why did the old K ing, in his madness, burstforth into that frenzied speech about adultery Therewas method in his madness there alway s is in Shakespeare’s madness . This is not altogether fool , myLord .

” His mind casts back to some episode in hisearlier day s , to Gormflaith

Open your window when the moon is dead,And I will come again .

The m en say e ve rywhe re that you are faithle ss,The women say your face is a fal se faceAnd your eye s shifty

.

eye s . Ah,but I love you, Gormflaith.

The following passage sheds an entirely new light on therelationship existing between Cordelia and her mucholder sisters

Be cause a woman give s he rse lf for eve r,Corde i l the use le s s had to b e conce ivedTo ke ep her fathe r from anothe r woman .


Does it not help us in our differentiation betweenGoneril and Regan that Goneril is here shown firm ,

wary , swift and secret, the virgin huntress , harsh inher purity , one lustful to kill but one who would killcleanly

,full of contempt for her sister

Doe s Regan worship anywhe re at dawn ?The sweaty, half- clad cook-maids rende r lardOut in the scul le ry , afte r pig-kill ing ,And Regan sidle s among the ir greasy skirts ,Smeary and hot as they, for craps to suck .

She kills her father’s mistress and so obtains an ascendancy over him which she never after loses . I thoughtshe had been broken long ago ,

” say s Lear in his lastspeech She must b e wedded and broken I cannotdo it . What a blaze of sudden light this throws onGoneril as we have known her only in her later day s .

We gained some insight into Mr Gordon Bottomley’s

poetic Vision in the earlier volume, but in K ing Lear’s

Wife he may , without hyperbole , b e said to have arrived .

MrMarsh is not wrong when he speaks of the honourwhich the author has done to the book by allowing hisplay to b e published for the first time there . All

readers at once feel impatient on coming to the end

that they cannot at once rush out and see it acted .

The quiet sadness of the neglected dying queen ,the

savagery of Lear,the freshn ess of the cold Goneril , the

tragedy of Cordeil , the lullaby with which Hygd ishushed to sleep

The owle ts in roof hole s Can sing for themse lve s ;The smalle s t brown squirre l Both s campe rs and de lve s ;But a baby doe s nothing—She neve r knows howShe must hark to hermother Who sings to her now

the love -making of Gormflaith


I t i s a lone ly thing to love a king,Life holds no more than this for m e : this is my hour ;

her singing in the garden,her premonition of

approaching disaster all go to prove that Mr

Bottomley has here touched high-water mark .

No one would deny that there are ugly things hereand there , just as there are ugly things in life , butcertain ly beauty predominates . Goneril’s worship onthe hills at dawn ,

raising up her shining hand in coldstern adoration Even as the first great gleam went upthe sky,

” her lament over the body ofhermother

This i s not death : death could not b e l ike this .I did not know death could come all at once .

Come back come back the things I have not doneBeat in upon my brain from eve ry sideIf I could have you now I could act we l lMy inward life , de eds that you have not known ,I burn to te l l you in a sudden dreadThat now your ghost discove rs them in m e

all these are beautiful , beautiful not with an exoticrichness that hides its meaning under a magic rhythm

,

but beautiful with the inevitable simplicity of the

Anglo -Saxon,monosyllabic y et haunting . It is their

very directness , the ir terse, uncompromising , actual ,everyday speech that first attracts us in all these new

writers . MrBottomley does not strive to heighten hiseffect by the introduction of the quaint or the remotehe is almost Blake - like in his choice of phrases . The

result is that he has written a play which will remain inthe memory (in spite of the weak machinery of thelay ing-out women which we could well have spared) aslong as any w e have ever read . It is a fine achievement, not the least fine part of its great attraction lying


in that direct, straightforward simplicity which is thekeynote to the whole volume .

Rupert Brooke occupies the second place of honour ,and w e are here given valuable g limmes of his laterdevelopment .

In Tiare Tahiti w e find him rebelling once moreagainst the Paradise of theWise he is so much in lovewith material beauty , Miri’s laugh , Teipo

’s feet, and

the hands of Matua, Mamua , your lovelier headthat he cannot reconcile himself to the idea that inanother life there might b e richness of life withoutmatter and the individuality ofmatter

How shall w e wind the se wreaths of ours,

Where the re are ne ithe r heads nor flow ers ?

There’s little comfort in the wise , he concludes . To

accentuate this point further there is also included TheGreat Lover, in which the poet shows us his overpowering passion for the beauty of the ordinary things of life

White plate s and cups,clean-gleaming

,

R inged with blue l ine s new -pee led sticksAnd shining pools on grass .

His great regret is that they cannot accompany him intothe life hereafter. His scintillating wit is shown by theinclusion of Heaven, in which the poet frames a religionand a View of the Beyond for fish a poem compact ofbitter

,caustic irony relieved by an exquisite humour .

Onewarsonnet and two more on the subj ect of the afterl ife complete the extracts from one of the greatest poetsof ourtime ; they are certainly representative and oughtto drive anyone who has not yet read all Brooke

’s work

(if any such exist) to remedy this deficiency . He who

has given expression to all the insatiable yearnings of


68 STUDIES“

IN LITERATURE

nor the delicate,fantastic j oy in Ofi the Ground

Thre e j ol ly FarmersOnce b e t a pound

Each dance the others wouldOff the ground .

One—Two—Thre eAnd away they g o ,

Not too fast,And not too slow

of their progress through

Withy—We llover

Wassop—Wo

until at last they reach the great green sea, whereuponFarmer Tovey joins the mermaids and win s the b et .

Mrde la Mare seems to make poetry for the pure delightof rhyming , for the sheer e cstasy of hearing wordsbubble l ike a mountain burn the irresponsibility of

childhood,infants’happy laughter—these are the things

that his poetry brings back to us w e forget the scheme

and order of life,its myriad perp lexities w e are content

sirnply to sit spellbound and listen ; here, at least, ishappiness of a sort .

John Drinkwater is a poet of very brilliant calibre .

He has certainly never before risen to the height that hereaches in The Carverin S tone of this volume here one

may read exactly what is the impelling force that guidesthe young genius of to-day this Carver with eyes

Grey, l ike the drift of twitch -fire s blown in June ,That

,without fearing, searched if any wrong

M ight threaten from your heart

is Every-poet of the Georgian age ; he is talking ofhimself


S lowly out of the dark confusion, spreadBy l ife

's innumerable venturingsOve r his brain

,he would triumph into the l ight

Of one clear mood,unblemished of the bl ind

Legions of errant thought that cried aboutHis rapt se clusion

Here we find ourselves again in the atmosphere of

Rupert Brooke ; the sense of adventure , the sense of

an eternal y earning after self- expression ,the brave

attempt to leave something behind us which wil l lastlong enough to show those who shall come after thatin sp ite of multitudinous futilities there is much finestuff intermingled with the dross of the world if w ecould only see it and translate it into real metal butthe Carver cannot bear the travesties which pass forsound workmanship with the crowd

Figures of habit driven on the stoneBy chise l s gove rned by no heat of the brain ,But drudge s of hand that moved by easy rule .

Proudly re corded mood was none , no thoughtPlucke d from the dark battalions of the mindAnd throned in e ve rlasting sight .

Worst of all are the critics , wise

Wi th words,weary of custom and eye s askew

That watched the ir ne ighbour’s face for any n ewsOf the be st way of j udgment, till , each sureNone would de te rmine with authority,Al l spoke in prudent praise .

Sickened by the inanity of the judges , when he isbidden to reshape his chosen god along the walls of thetemple together with all his fellow-craftsmen , he seize son the idea of carving a queer, puff—bellied toad , witheyes that always stared sidelong at heaven and saw no


heaven there . This toad seemed to him to stand for anemblem of his kings and priests ; he loathed the falsework ofhis colleagues that passed for true and so determined that his truth should not b e doomed to marchamong this falsehood to the ages . So he chose asecluded Spot and there fashioned his toad , and roundit his people’s gods , tigers , bats and owls allsigns of sightless thought adventuring the host that ismere spirit his leopard became fear in flight beforeaccusing faith his bull bore the burden ofthe patientof the earth .

And othe r than the gods he made the stalksOf bluebe l l s heavy with the news of spring,Al l we re deftly orde red , duly se t

Ti l l on the wall,out of the sullen stone ,

A glory blazed, hi s vision manife st,His wonder captive . And he was content .

In this poem w e are made to feel all the wild, un

satisfied longings of the would-b e creator,the ecstatic

joy of him who builds for eternity ,the paean of triumph

of the man who has risen sup erior to all the littleempty world of critics and out of the crucible ofhis mind has formed and p erfected solid , substantial ,lasting beauty . It stands as the Victorious anthemof the poet of our era whose hand has found atlast something worthy to do and is doing it with allhis power, knowing full well that he is building foreternity and in the serenity of his might content withthat .

No more shall we hear the cry of the restless Spiritof Brooke , no more will the sweet

,exotic flavour

of Flecker’s Eastern poems lull our senses in thesevolum es ; of these two w e take our farewell here, anddeep indeed is our regret . Widely differing as these


poets were, they both attracted much the same lovers .

Who could resist the metre ofYasmin‘7

But when the s ilve r dove de scends I find the l ittle flower offriends

Whose very name that swee tly ends I say when I have said,Yasmin .

Though perhaps it sounds a grotesque sim ile, the triplerhyme in this metre strikes exactly the same chord asis struck by the noise of a railway engine when it isstart ing out of a station ; it is attractive, though somehow it ought to b e ugly . We hear the throb of theengin e again in The Gates ofDamascus

The dragon-green, the luminous,the dark

,the serpent

haunted sea,

The snow-be sprinkled wine of earth, the white and blueflower foaming sea.

Unlike most of his school, Flecker relies for effect on

strange words and Oriental names ; there is more ofK eats in his beauty than in most of his younger contemporaries . As a master of metre and lyrical expression he stood high among his companions, as can beseen in The Dying P atriot

Noon strike s on England,noon on Oxford town ,

—Beauty she was statue cold—the re ’s blood upon her gown .

Noon of my dreams, 0 noonProud and goodly kings had buil t her, l ong ago,With her towers and tombs and statue s all arow,With her fair and floral air and the love that l inge rs there ,And the stre e ts where the great m en g o

No more beautiful poem has been written since the warbegan . And now he can sing to us no more . One moreapostle of beauty is lost to us just when we neededhim most .


No one who had read The Hare of Wilfrid Gibson in1912 doubted but that he had a rare gift of dramatic,musical self- expression , but in Hoops he has outgrownany puerilities ofwhich he might then have been justifiab ly accused . Here again w e have the passionatelove of beauty , this time beauty of form, as desired bya mis-stitched , gnarled , crooked stableman and odd-jobman attached to a travelling circus

I’

ve always worshipped the body, all my l ifeThe body, quick with the pe rfe ct health which is beauty,Live ly, l issom ,

ale rtThe l iving God made manife st in man .

Wilfrid Gibson seems to owe something of his easy,colloquial sty l e in verse to Masefield

’s longer narrative

poems ; he seems —alone in this book—to b e carry ingon that tradition which threatened to become an ob

session amongst our poetasters before the war. ButWilfrid Gibson has something to say ; he does see

beauty in all its forms and manifestations he certainlydoes , more almost than all the others, feel ugliness likea pain though he does not shut his ey es to it , as allthose who have read his short volume of war poemsknow .

Ralph Hodgson is a new -comer, and all true lovers ofpoetry will welcome him with Open arms , for he hascome to stay . Time, you ohi Gypsy Man, w e regret tosee, is not included in this volume but that

,after all

,

is obtainable in P oems of To-day . We certainly couldnot spare either of the two of his poems which are included . Many people prefer The Bull to anything inthe book . It is a wonderful piece of realism ; thebeauty and horror of the jungle permeate every linethe whole poem is throbbing with life ; it reads almost,as someone has said

,as if it were written by one bull

about another w e seem actually to see him


Standing with his head hung downIn a stupor

,d ream ing things

Green savannas, j ungle s brown,Battlefields and b ellowing s,Bulls undone and lions deadAnd vulture s flapping overhead .

Dreaming things of days he spentW ith his mother gaunt and leanIn the valley warm and gre en ,Full of baby wonde rmentBlinking out of silly eye sAt a hundred myste rie s .

now he is deserted , dying and has to turn

From his vis ionary he rdsAnd his splendid ye sterday,Turns to mee t the loathly birdsFlocking round him from the skie s ,Waiting for the fle sh that die s .

Ralph Hodgson more than fulfils Lord Dunsany’s

d efinition of a poet,for he does more than know man

kind as others know single m en ; he seems to know the

world of beasts better than most of us know single men .

But there are sure to b e some to whom this poem willcome as a tour de force they will acknowledge itsbeauty of finish

,the perfect workmanship that went to

the making of it , but they will deny that such a subjectis the end and aim of poetry . Let such readers turn toThe S ong of Honour ; there will they find a un iversalhymn of thankfulness from all the world that should b esung on the hill - tops by every lover ofNature it is thehosanna of all created things

The song of e ach and all who gazeOn Be auty in her naked blaze ,Or se e her dimly in a haz e .

The song of al l not whol ly dark,Not wholly sunk in stupor starkToo de ep for groping Heaven .


All the songs that ever man sang are grouped togetherhere and poured out in one glorious medley

,the song of

every singing bird,ofpoets

,painters

,wise men

,beggars

,

of men who face a hopeless hill with sparkling anddelight, of sailors, fighters, lovers, of men whose loveof motherland is like a dog’s for one dear hand

,sole

,

selfless, boundless, blind

The song of men all sorts and kinds,

As many tempe rs , m oods and mindsAs leave s are on a tre e .

It places MrHodgson among those rare singers who uplift us and put new courage in our hearts by reason of

their sublime j oyfulness ; w e forget the real genius ofhis lyricism in the sheer un reasoning abandon of histheme . He makes us, too , want to cry out withthankfulness for being alive .

MrD . H . Lawrence is a poet of rigidity some y earsago he wrote some beautiful verses on A S choolmastersince then he has been cursed with an obsession of sexwhich has threatened to destroy his equipoise ; he stillachieves beauty at intervals

,but there is an under

current of morbidity which d isturbs the whole truecurrent of his art . You see it most p lainly here inCruelty and Love ; somehow he alway s leaves us witha sense that Lust is at the back of both his Cruelty andhis Love ; it is too fleshly altogether : He caresses mymouth with his fing ers, smelling grim Of the rabbit’sfur .

”The girl talks of her lover nosing like a stoat

Who sniffs with joy before he drinks the blood .

” Itisn’t that it is not nice ; it is much worse than that ;it is not artistically true . That such things happen inisolated cases does not justify a man portraying it as ifit were a universal tendency among lovers ; it is themore distressing because in Mr Lawrence we have a



quite a number of people to be out of place . On the

other hand,the theme of Children of Love (the infant

Christ and the child Cupid) is most delicately handled ,and is one of the many really beautifully conceivedideas in the volume .

The criticism which we applied to MrW. H . Daviesapplies almost equally to Mr James Stephens ; w e allwent into rhapsodies over The Crock of Gold and overparts of Here are Ladies, but his art was too precious tob e roughly handled ; somehow he seems to have lostfor the moment his faery touch

,his glorious sense of

hum our ; much the same has happened to his verse .

There was infinitely more real poetry in his contribution to the 1912 volume than there can be said to b e inthe present one he has melody and facility he is intouch with Nature him self

,but he is unable to make us

realise quite how Nature affects him ; his simplicitymakes the poverty underlying his words more than everevident ; there is not enough reality to make us lovehim

,probably because w e in our overburdened lives

have somehow got past that childish ingenuousnessand cannot tolerate it any longer ; so many ofus have had to grow up in the last two or threeyears .

The volume ends,as it begins

,with a play : Mr

Lascelles Abercrombie’s The End of the World . Let itb e granted at once that there will be endless discussionsas to which is the greater of the two ,

MrBottomley’s or

Mr Abercrombie’s ; for the moment it is sufficient tosay that they are both good enough to make us gladto live in an ag e both great and courageous enough toproduce them .

The plot of The End of the World is quite simple .

The scene is an ale -house kitchen a stranger comes infull ofnews to the assembled drinkers, news which they


attempt to drag from him by various means . He triesto convey to them his state of mind

'

Iwonde r, did you eve r hate to fe e lThe earth so splendid and so fine ?

They come to the conclusion that he is mad

Ye s, I was mad and crying mad, to se eThe earth so fine , fine al l for nothing ;

he then opens the door and shows them a comet in thesky ; he say s that that means the end of the worldthey are about to be burnt up

Time shal l brush the fields as visiblyAs a “rough hand brushe s against the napOf gleaming cloth—killing the season’5 colourAnd sailors panting on the ir warping de cksWil l watch the sea steam like broth about them .

The publican wishes he had his old wife with him

This would have suited her.

I do like things to happen ! she would say,Neve r shindy enough for her5 and nowShe ’s gone and can’t b e se e ing that .

Each man takes the news differently and calls down thederision of the dowser on their original scepticism

Ay, you begin to fe e l it now, I think ;But Life ,

Life with her sk ill of a million ye ars’ pe rfe ction,

Of sunlight, and of clouds about the moon,Spring lighting her dafl'

odils

And mountain s sitting in the ir purple clothe s0 l ife I am th inking of, l ife the wonde r,Al l b lotcht out by a brutal thrust of fireLike a midge that a clumsy thumb squashe s and smears .

Huff the farmer seizes the occasion to gloat over thefaithlessness of his wife now at least he will see


veng eance . The man with whom his wife ran awaycomes in and Huff attempts to make him cower, butto no purpose, and the curtain rings down on Act I. ,

leaving the dowser alone bemoaning the intolerablewaste of beauty that all this scorching of the world willbring about .

On the rise of the curtain for the second and last Actwe see Sollers, the wainwright, wrecking the ale-houseroom in a frenzy of apprehension the publican comesin weeping, I

’

v e seen the moon ; it has nigh brokemy heart I never before so noted her .

” Beautyat last is beginning to mean something to him now thatit is all about to b e smashed up and ruined . Merrick,the smith, begin s to achieve a philosophy ; he begins tofind a meaning in the life which is just slipping past him

You know, this is much more than be ing happy .

’

Tis hunge r of some powe r in you, that l ive sOu your heart

’s we lcome for all sorts of luck ,But always looks beyond you for its me aning.

The world was always looking to use its lifeIn some great handsome way at last . And nowWe are just fooled . I

’

ve had my turn .

The world may b e for the sake of naught at last,But it has been for my sake : I

’

ve had that .

Huff comes in , moody, unable to find comfort in thevengeance he thought to obtain from the panic- strickeneVil-doers ; his good, straight life has been like that of acrawling caterpillar he thinks of a day long pastin Droitwich where he saw women half-naked cookingbrine he could have been daring once but missedhis chance . Suddenly Shale

,his wife ’s lover, comes in

and irnplores Huff to take his wife back ; Warp , the

molecatcher,enters during the scene that follows and

tells them that there is nothing to fear ; the cometis going away from them ; Huff

’s ricks are alight,certainly, but there is to be no end of the world—yet .


Mrs Huffturns both from her lover and her husband

They thinking I’

ld b e near one or the othe rAfte r thi s night .

We are left with V ine moaning

But is it ce rtain there ’ll b e nothing smasht ?

Not even a house knock t roaring down in crumble sAnd I did think, PM Open my wife

’s mouthWith envy of the dreadful things I

’

d seen !

There is no doubt about the fascination of the play itholds the reader’s attention throughout ; there is nota false note from beginning to end . It contains all thephilosophy of the younger school the unending searchafter beauty

,the refusal to shut the eyes to ugliness

and dirt,the endeavour to find a meaning in life

,the

determination to live life to the full and to enjoy . At

all costs they strive to avoid sentimentality thesecountry folk in The End of the World really live ; theymay b e coarse ; they certainly have their tragedies,but they are human . We seem to know them throughand through w e certainly sympathise with their trialsand resent their wrongs as bitterly as we do our own .

This noble Volum e is intensely typ ical of the age ;everything is tentative, experimental we are no longersatisfied with the old gods , the old ideals ; we set outto prove all things and get most horribly hurt in doingit ; but l ife becomes much more of an adventure ; weare at least brave enough to cut ourselves adrift fromthe old , safe, enclosed harbourage ; we make manyand gross mistakes , but we do achieve something ; webegin to learn for ourselves what life really means andare not content to let our elders tell us what they thinkit ought to mean .

It means beauty to start with, and that is an almost


new thought ; at any rate beauty has to be found byeach individual soul at the cost of much sorrow ofheart and much unfortunate experience with the uglyit means love , which is not so easily to be found as ourforefathers seem to have thought we are not to b e putoff with shams it means courage , and courage isnot to be cultivated in safety , in an arm-chair ; w e haveto cut adrift, away from convention and laws made fora milk-livered generation . Georgian P oetry 1913—1914is a brave book ; it is the standard of revolt of theyounger, braver souls among us, and w e who are apt attimes to acquiesce because it is easier ow e much to abook which strengthens and fortifies our resolution justwhen we show signs of wav ering . Our poets are ourreal national leaders they alone can express all thosedesires which w e feel but are unable to articulate ; ifour poets are false to us, then indeed are w e decadent .

From 1918 to 1915 at any rate w e may b e thankfulthat they have led us fearlessly , put fresh Vitality andrenewed energy into our hopes and helped us oncemore to try to wrest life’s secret from her.

SOME MORE MODERN POETS

T is commonly said that the only true critics ofpoetry are the masters in the same craft, and ifthe case of Swinburne may b e taken as typical ,

I agree . We think of Francis Thompson’s superbtribute to Shelley and Masefield

’s contribution to our

completer understanding of Shakespeare , and shudderat the thought of a mere prose -writer daring to penetrate the sanctuary and lay his rude hands on thebeauty he can never hope to explain . Suddenly w e

think of Hazlitt and take comfort . To what critic dow e turn so often, and why 9

Because he acts as half—way '

house in the ascent ofParnassus ; he is the intermediary between the godsand ourselves, because he does what the poets themselves never find time to do , and that is to translate forus exactly what they are at as he understands it . The

poets are so busy doing things that they never stopto explain and w e are left labouring far in the rear,panting

,dispirited and sometimes even sym

pathise with our intellectually moribund , materiallyminded acquaintances or relatives who start at theword poetry as if they had been shot , and exclaimWhat’s the use of it anyway What useful purposedoes it serve 9 as if they expected it to be a dynamoin the physical as we ll as the spiritual world .

Those of us who have no poetry in our compositionand yet delight in it as the cleanser and purifier of life ,who regard poets as the unacknowledged legislators ofthe world

,in some way are perhaps best fitted to

81


bring a realisation of it home to the busin esses andbosoms of m en w e pay less heed to the technique (inso doing , of course , w e miss some of the beauties) andmore to the m atter . For it seems to m e of the firstimportance that a poet should have something to say .

I don’t exactly m ean a message to bear, but a songthat will ease the heart, cause aesthetic delight, help usto face l ife with a cheerier Spirit, fuller of determ inationnot only to see it through , but to make the most of it .

Poetry makes the deaf to hear, the blind to see, themaimed and halt to walk if it doesn’t do this , itisn’t poetry . Hence it follows that sincerity andnobility of purpose are as e ssential to our poet assweetness and music in fact

,these follow from it

,for

there is no sweetness where there i s no light and nomusic where there is no motive . Facile versifiers

abound I am one of them you p ick up their stuff inall the daily and weekly papers ; they are not to bedespised any more than an undergraduate is to bedespised for dishing up second-hand opinions to histutor and calling it an essay it is popularly known asan education . It may b e you and I are not professors ,w e are not paid to read or give academic exercises—weneedn’t waste our time over what appears in ephemeralj ournals .

What is much more extraordinary is that good poetsabound . There has never been an ag e so rich in poetsin history as our own,

not even the wonderful day sexactly a hundred y ears ago .

We live in a time of amazing literary geniuses ofevery sort ; the whole of England suddenly seems tohave become articulate

,and in order to express itself

it has chosen the vehicle ofpoetry for the most part .

In times of intense emotional crises , face to face withthe eternal realities of birth and love and death, man



so persistently on beauty that he has left us no ideaof his own theory of the riddle of the universe . We

poets crave no heaven but what is ours,

”he say s ,

and his heaven is this familiar world refashionedwithout man’s and Nature’s pain

Grant me e arth’s treats in Paradise to findNor listen to that island -bound St John

,

Who’d have no S ea in H eaven, no Sea to sai l upon !

thereby linking himself up with both K ipling andBrooke .

So insistent is his love for the sea and the beauty ofships that I doubt whether I could find any poemmoretyp ical of Flecker’s work than The Old Ships . We

have in it that delicious honey ofHymettus,admixture

of colour and sensuous beauty that have made his name

famous to-day and will cause a place to b e reserved forhim eternally in the Temple of Parnassus .

THE OLD SHIPSI HAVE se en old ships sai l l ike swans asle epBeyond the v illage which m en stil l call Tyre ,With leaden ag e o

’

ercarg oed , dipping de epFor Famagusta and the hidden sunThat rings b lack Cyprus with a lake of fire ;And all those ships we re ce rtain ly so oldWho knows how oft with squat and noisy gun ,Que sting brown slave s or Syrian orange s ,The pirate Genoe seHe ll - raked them till they rol ledBlood

,wate r, frui t and corpse s up the hold .

But now through friendly seas they softly run,

Painted the mid - sea blue or shore - sea gre en,Stil l patte rned with the vine s and grape s in gold .

But I have se enPointing her shape ly shadows from the lawnAnd image tumb led on a rose - swept bayA drowsy ship of some ye t olde r day ;And

,wonde r’s breath indrawn ,

SOME MORE MODERN POETS 85

Thought I—who knows—who knows—but in that same(Fished up beyond Ae aea, patched up n ew“ Ste rn painted brighte r blueThat talkative , bald -headed seaman came(Twe lve patient comrade s sweating at the oar)From Troy

’s doom - crimson shore ,And with great l ie s about his wooden horseSe t the crew laughing, and forgot his course .

I t was so old a ship—who knows,who knows ?

-And yet so be autiful , I watched in vainTo se e the mast burs t open with a rose ,And the whole de ck put on its leave s again .

This and Brumaua seem to me to mark the highwater mark of Flecker’s genius .

I now want,for a little

,to leave the well -known men

and talk almost at random about one or two of the

myriad m en who are writing poetry in partial obscurity ,

to see how far they carry on the tradition of theirmasters . There was recently published a sl im volume

called Fragments , by a subaltern in the Welsh Guards,Evan Morgan

,out of which I cull one sonnet .

LABURNUM

Lo ! from thy verdant arms drooping and pensile ,Molten gold fall s in summe r- scented cone sCl inging with quivering tongue , thirsty, prehensile ,Into thy l ip s thy ve lve t lover drone s .Subtle thy raiment, shading thy umbe r arms ,Falls like to sun-bars, or maiden

’s aure ole tre sse sPie rcing thy eme rald cloak, naked thy charms ,Lie for passion

’

d June ’s untuned care sse s .One early rose -kissed cloud of morning’s loveSaw through thy tape strie s a naked nymphAmidst thy sinuous arms more sinuous moveAnd slip into the l ily-painted lymph .

HerGod-l ike lover with a silve ry ne t

Drew back his prize all glistening and all w e t .

There is much in this sonnet which will cause gravesearchings of heart among the older school of poets, but


it has freshn ess , it is original if slightly bizarre in toneand rather too intellectual . The influence of RupertBrooke is immediately manifest . He is an obviousdisciple both of Flecker and Brooke , though he neces

sarily lags far behind . Like so many of these youngpoets

,he is careless about rhyme schemes ; he rhymes

ore with floor,

” amber with unbar and ev en“ castle ” with “ battle .

” His publisher even allowssuch ridiculous solecisms as

The clouds are shook out in th e i r play .

Thou shouldst l ift up your hands, dear, and ne stle m e ove ryour heart .

”

But these are merely the foibles of y outh, which is everindolent and averse from taking those pain s which are

so essential to every artist .

We forgive all the touches of coenobitic loons andocelliferous l eaves (even Cowper never descended so lowas that when w e come across the perfect simplicityof S ong in Valediction and the sensuous lovelin ess of

Laburnum . He play s with realism in an odious sonnetto a drift of seawe ed, and dwells too frequently onanatomical perfection ; it is all very young, but certainlyworth doing as he say s, and he is his own bestcritic

,Here is Love , Joy , Sorrow, Reflection,

acosmopolitan piece, ill - shapen , sincere .

”The ill- shape

may b e grown out of sincerity is too rare and toovaluable to b e sneered at . We welcome him amongthe Georgians . It is this cosmopolitan trait that is sohealthy a sign of our times . My next example isEgbert T. Sandford , at the opposite end of the socialscale .

His influences areWilliam Blake and Francis Thompson,

as will b e seen at once in Great in their Littkness .

His one obj ect is to take the common things of life and


weave them into song . He is the apostle of light andhappiness . Life looms with laughter : God fills ourworld with gladness to the brim,

” he sings again andagain

,trilling like a lark for the p leasure that is in him .

After treading the fire - strewn floors of hell he emergesstrengthened

,joyful and endowed with the gift of pure

lyrical song , and , like all true poets, has something tosay which strikes an entirely new chord . I seem toremember a text in the Bible which runs somehowlike this : Blessed are the barren ; for they shall bearchildren —the kind of paradoxical phrase I could notunderstand . To Mr Sandford as to Blake such thingsare pellucidly clear, and in The Voice he translates sothat w e purblind people can realise the glory and thetruth of that prophecy . His is the gospel of song , andstrife and love and life .

GREAT IN THE IR LITTLENESS

THE fainte st star in darke st nightAdds light unto the realms of l ight .

The smalle st wave that breasts the sea

H e lps with the oce an’s me lody .

The frail e st flowe r that de cks e arth’s sodLends lustre to the fe e t of God .

THE VO ICE

DEEP from a day, as sunle ss as’twas lone,

The re came a voice ,Saying to her : Rej oiceNot e very child is formed of fle sh and bone .

So, when his eye s are brui sed and stained with tears,Do thou bring forth swe e t Laughte r. When wild fearsA s sail his soul

,then le t thy l ittle one

Be Joy ; and bid thy children run


Run straight to him .—Ah Dost thou know

Thine offspring shall wax strongAnd thou

,thyse lf, shalt go

From strength to strength , with them . E’

en thoughThou couldst not b e the mothe r of his son ,Thou stil l mayst b e the Mothe r of his Song .

Live ! Live ! Live he writes . They onlyd ie who never try to live .

How exactly he echoes the thoughts of every womanin the land in HerPrayer

—ForHim .

HER PRAYER—FOR HIMI DO not ask that he may neve r yie ldWhen fighting on the foam or on the fie ld ,S ince this I knowWhe re ’

e r his country calls my man will go .

I only prayThat while he is awayYou guard and guide him day by day 'And give m e strength to tend his little one sUntil he come s .On land or sea,Whe reve r he may b e ,God

,kiss my man for me

In the last two poems which I have time to quote of

his,as in the one I hav e just quoted , w e find the same

universality in each he crystallises a point of Viewthat all of us have kept in the secret recesses of ourhearts and not been able

,for want of adequate expres

sion , to give voice to .

IF I SHOULD DIE

IF I should d ieBe fore you, dear,God knows that IWould b e so lone ly in that othe r Land ;Ye t

, I am sure that He would unde rstand ,


And have pe rmiss ion givenThat I might wande r in and out of HeavenTo mee t you, here .

Love , shal l I te ll you whe re to look for m e

In that dim dayNot in the silent grave -

yard way,Through which grim ghosts of sorrow stray,I shal l not tarry thereCome to a sunlit bush or tre e ,To wind- swept moor

,to storm - lashed sea ;

By brook , or bank, or flowe r, or star,And , whe re the stained -with- struggle are

Look for m e the re ! look for me the re !

IN WAR

SHE spread the cloth for twoAnd placed his chair.Then cried How silly !Why, I thought that he was here .

At length there came a le tte r,Saying : Dear,Did you find m e ye ste rday ?

How I did prayThat I might me e t youIn our w e e home -way .

Ah,then she knew

Why she had placed his chair,And plate , and cup and sauce rHe was the re .

Mr Theodore Maynard , my next choice, may b e

known to you . I certamly hope so, for if not you havemissed a great poet . His slim volume

,called Laughs

and Whifts of S ongs , is a sheer delight . He is oneof those starveling poets and enthusiasts who haveshirked no battle for the stricken earth against itstyrants’ spears and arbalests with courage and withmirth . Yes—that is the word—mirth . He has some


thing of the large , fat, good-humoured touches ofGilbertChesterton, whose disciple he obviously is ; a my stic,like Sandford

, y et he is poles removed from him in hissense of colour, which pervades every poem . He issimple

,sincere

,direct, whimsical and withal humorous .

He is the poet of that serene cheerfulness which is thepeculiar gift of the happy warrior . We see that at onceinWhenIRide into the Town . TheEnglishSpring is justtypical of the ag e in which we live , now that we havegrown to recognise at last how lovely is our own land .

InApocalypse we get that same hankering after materialbeauty hereafter which Brooke so exquisitely describedin Tiare Tahiti . To a Good Atheist and To a B adAtheistshow us the distance w e have trave lled in overcomingour ancient prejudices and at last arrived at a sanejudgment .

APOCALYPSE

SHALL summer wood whe re w e have laughed our fill ;Shal l all your grass so good to walk upon

Each field which w e have loved, each little hill ,

Be burn t l ike pape r—as hath said Saint JohnThen not alone they die For God hath toldHow all His plains of mingled fire and glass,His wall s of hyacinth , His stre e ts of gold ,His aureole s of j ew elled l ight shall pass,

That he may make us noble r things than the se ,And in his royal robe s of blazing red

Adorn his bride . Ye a, with what mysterie sAnd might and mirth shall she b e diamonded !

And what new se cre ts shall our God discl ose ;Or se t what suns of burnished brass to flare

Orwhat empurpled blooms to oust the roseOrwhat strange grass to glow like ange l s’ hair

What pinnacle s of s ilve r trace ry ,What dizzy, vampired towers shall God devise

Of topaz , be ryl and chalcedonyTo make Heaven pleasant to His children’s eye s !



Ye t, s ince you are a solemn l ittle chap,In spite of al l your blasphemy and booze ,That dreadful sword of satire which you shakeHurts no hide but your own,—you cannot useA weapon which is bigge r than yourse lf.

Ye t some the re we re who rode all clad in mail ,With crosse s blazoned on the ir mighty sh ie lds ,Roland who blew his horn against the Moor,R ichard who charged for Christ at Ascalon,Louis a pilgrim with his chivalry ,And ble ssed Jeanne who saved the crown of FrancePah ! You may ke ep your whining Supe r-man .

The Mystic and Free-Will carry on the same broadsympathies and acute perception , and w e take leave ofa real live poet in Requiem , which for sheer beauty isworth its place in any anthology .

REQU IEM

WHEN my last s ong is sung and I am de adAnd laid away beneath the kindly clay,

Se t a square stone above my dreamle ss head ,And sign m e W ith the cross and signing sayH e re l ie th one who loved the steadfast thingsOf hi s own land, its gladne s s and its grace ,

The stubbled fields, the l inne ts’ gle aming wings ,

The long, l ow gable s of his native place ,I ts grave l le d paths

,and the strong wind that sends

The boughs about the house,the hearth’s red glow ,

The surly, s low good -fe llowship of friends,The humour of the men he used to know ,

And all the ir swinging choruse s and mirthThen turn aside and leave my dust in earth .

Miss Eva Gore -Booth has already earned for herselfa name not lightly to b e forgotten in The Little Waves ofBrefiny, which is closely related to The Lake Isle ofInnisfree. She sings of the East

, of mysticism, but


most of all of the sun and the wind and the April rain ,

and the wild seas’ shining plain, the ancient joy in theworld’s young eyes

, the blue hills’ dim eternal range .

THE LITTLE WAVES OF BREFFNY

THE grand road from the mountain goe s shining to the sea,

And the re i s traffic in it, and many a horse and cart ;But the l ittle roads of Cloonagh are deare r far to m e ,

And the l ittle roads of Cloonagh g o rambling through myheart .

A great storm from the ocean goe s shouting o’

er the hill .And the re i s glory in it and terror on the windBut the haunted air of twilight i s ve ry strange and still ,And the l ittle winds of twilight are deare r to my mind .

The great wave s of the Atlantic swe ep storming on the ir way,Shining gre en and s ilve r with the hidden he rring shoal ;But the l ittle wave s of Breflh y have drenched my heart inspray,

And the l ittle wave s of Brefl'

ny go stumbl ing through mysoul .

Mr Cecil Roberts , the marvellous b oy , has beenin turn auctioneer’s clerk , schoolmaster, journalist ,starved on the Embankment, stood forParliamentfighting for recognition as a poet through it all , withthe result that at twenty-three he has earned fromthe big critics the title of our twentieth -centuryK eats .

Unfortunately it is impossible to give you his bestpoems—Andromache, A Child

’s Eyes and The Youth of

B eauty—so I must wrench one stanza from its context ,

and hope that you will grasp from that somethingof the blend of K eats and Francis Thompson thatmakes him so dear to the hearts of all lovers of

beauty .


A CHILD’

S EYES

ONCE upon a time ,That sad, all- suffe ring time ,When pre saging song had filled my heart with woe ,

I chance d to g o,A forlorn songste r

,smutted with the grime

Of the most heartle ss City of the World,S ickened with unde serving long negle ct,Into a place whe re spreadOu le tte red she lve s the great

,undying dead ,

V'Vhose singing souls, in p ilgrimage e le ct,Stil l wing them down the ringing ways of TimeW ith Fame ’s immortal banne r o ’

er them furled :And taking down a ve l lum-cove red book,

I sought a nookWhe re in to scent the fragrance of its rhymeAh

,then how shall I te l l this thing so gre at,

What song,what lyric rapture magical

Can fitly te l l an act grown tragicalWith che rished fondne s s in my foolish heart ?This l ittle act beyond all e stimate ,For ’twas at lowe s t e b b of Fortune ’s floodA child intuitive ly understood,A l ittle child that in most tragic-wiseLooked with her b ig wide eye s ,Then spake , and changed my H e l l to singing Paradise

The whole idea of modern life is to open the heart,broaden the sympathies

,make p eople realise how

beautiful the world is, how unnecessarily brutal w e

have allowed part of it to become .

You would not expect m e to introduce a Guardsmanto you With such a remark, but Captain ColwynPhilipps , devotee of Rudyard K ipling as he was, has inhis best work so simple and sincere a feeling that heachieves almost unconsciously the poetic in his pityand love for all humanity . There is no need for m e toquote extracts from his work

,for

,like his fellow-captain,

Charles Sorley , he is very widely read . These two,


whom w e could ill spare as poets and still less as men,

have both been killed , and England is the poorer- allthe best m en go

—as if God were j ealous of our too goodfortune in having them .

I turn now from individual works to anthologies, andfirst I would very shortly commend to your notice TheCountry Ltfe Anthology of Verse, which maintains alevel of excellence which I can best typify by selectingjust two poems, S eparation and P arliament Hill. Eventhe ephemeral weekly papers you see contain poetry ofa kind that is certainly far removed from mere Verse .

SEPARATION

THOUGH you have passed so ve ry far awayYour l ife i s mine , as mine is yours, tod ay .

Time , space , are powerle ss and not as barsOur groping thoughts to s eve r .Dawns

,faint and fair

,and sunse ts flam ing wide

Stil l bring you to my side ;And all h igh hope s that throb beneath the starsAre yours and mine for eve r.

But ah the l ittle things for which I sigh,As e ach day passe s by :

The op en book,the flowe r upon the floor,

The dainty disarray,The sound of passing fe e t,The distant doorA las, the l itt le things of e ve ry day lThe s ilent ev e , my swe e t,The lone ly wakingA las, alas ! for little things my heart is breaking.

I SABEL BUTCHART.

PARLIAMENT HILLHAVE you se en the lights of London , how they twinkle ,twinkle , twinkle ,

Ye l low lights,and silve r lights, and crimson lights, and

blue ?


And there among the othe r lights is Daddy’s l ittle lante rn

light,

Bending like a fing er- tip and be ckoning to you.

Neve r was so tal l a bill for tiny fe e t to scramble up,Never was so strange a world to b aflie l ittle eye s ,Half of it as black as ink, with ghostly fe e t to fal l on it,And half of i t al l crammed with lamps

,and che e rful

sounds and crie s .

Lamps in golden palace s, and station - lamps,and steame r

lamps,

Very nearly al l the lamp s that Mothe r eve r knew,And there among the othe r lamps is Daddy

’s little lante rnlamp

,

Bending like a fing er- tip and be ckoning to you.

H . H . BASHFORD.

R . L . Stevenson never excelled the fragile tendernessthe exquisite whimsicality of this

,even in The Lamp

lighter.

A far more irnportant volume is Sidgwick Jackson’s

brave venture,P oems of To-day, an anthology for

schools . I can scarcely believe that there is anycultured person who does not possess a copy itssignificance is overwhelming . First of all it means thatwe do realise our own greatness

,we are in no doubt as to

what is poetry , and we recognise the difference that itmakes to the l ives of the young , who are of all peoplethe most easily influenced by imaginative work .

The selection has been made with infinite care , andincludes nothing that does not stand the test which w eapply to real poetry ; each poem contains a theme ,

musically ,perfectly expressed

,a thought that could

not have been translated into words in any otherway .

It tells of the beauty of the countrys ide , of love ofwomen

,of high and noble actions

,of all that goes home


to the hearts of men . My quotations must necessarilyb e short . I cannot conceive that I am here giving

you anything that you do not already know betterthan I do

,but it would be hopelessly inadequate

to treat of modern poetry without reference to thisvolume .

The selections are divided into three group s : of

History,of the Earth, ofEngland again and the long

ing of the exile for home, of this and that familiarcountry -side

, of woodland and meadow and garden , ofthe process of the season, of the open road and the windon the heath

,of the city , its deprivations and its con

solations,

” and finally of life itself, of the moods inwhich it may b e faced , of religion , of man

’s exce llentvirtues, of friendship and childhood, of passion, grief,and comfort . All these poems mingle and interpenetrate throughout, to the music of Pan

’s flute , and of

love’s Viol , and the bugle -call of Endeavour, and thepassing-bell of Death .

”

Almost every modern poet of genius is repre

sented , from Stevenson,Meredith

,Bridges

, A. E . ,

Yeats, Alice Meynell and Francis Thompson , toGerald Gould , Chesterton, Lionel Johnson and JohnDavidson .

It is the one great proof, if one were needed ,to show that this ag e need fear comparison with no

other in the whole range of English literature . A boldassertion

, you say . Well,here is one extract, chosen

almost at random, from one of the lesser-known poets .

What poet of what other age could have excelled thisin its own line

A s I went down to Dymchurch wall,I heard the South sing o’

er the land ;I saw the ye l low sunlight fallOn knoll s where Norman churche s stand .


And ringing shrilly, taut and lithe ,W ithin the wind a core of sound

,

The wire from Romney town to HytheAlone its airy j ourney wound .

A ve il of purple vapour flow edAnd trailed its fringe along the Straits ;

The uppe r air l ike sapphire glowe d ;And rose s filled H eaven’s central gate s .

Masts in the offing wagged the ir tops ;The swinging wave s pealed on the shore

The saffron beach , all diamond dropsAnd beads of surge

,prolonged the roar.

As I came up from Dymchurch wall ,I saw above the Down’s low cre st

The crimson brands of sunse t fall,Flicke r and fade from out the We st .

Night sank like flake s of silve r fireThe stars in on e great showe r came down ;

Shrill blew the wind ; and shril l the wireRang out from Hythe to Romney town .

The darkly shining salt sea dropsStreamed as the wave s clashed on the shore ,

The beach, with all its organ stopsPeal ing again, prolonged the roar.

Here are old favourites like Yeats’ Lake Isle ofIunis

free and Newbolt’s stirring songs of the sea

,Brooke’s

Grantchester and Kipling’s Sussex, Meredith’s Lark

Ascend ing and Thompson’s To a Snowflake, Masefield

’s

Beauty and the best ofAlice Meynell .But perhaps nothing remains more clearly in the

mind than that Vigorous, peerless paean of praise ofChesterton, The Praise ofDust.

What of vile dust the preache r said .

Me thought the whole world woke ,The dead stone l ived beneath my foot,And my whole body spoke .



Mr Erskine Macdonald has collected the work oftwenty-four soldier poets, ranging from Captain JulianGrenfell’s Iuto Battle, already almost a classic, to theoutpourings of Sergeant Streets .

No one of these brave singers, however, has so surea touch as Lieutenant E . F . Wilkinson , M.C. ,

whosetwo poems, Dad 0

’ Mine and To my P eople, deservequotation in full .

M idsummer-day, and the mad world a-fighting ,Fighting in hole s

,Dad 0’ M ine .

Nature ’s old spe lls are no longe r de lightingPassion -filled souls, Dad 0

’ M ine .

Vainly the birds in the branches are singing,Vainly the sunshine its me ssage is bringing,Ove r the gre en-clad earth stark hate i s fl ingingShadow for shine , Dad 0

’ M ine ,Shadow for shine .

No one dare prophe sy when come s an end to it,End to the strife , Dad 0

’ M ine .

When w e can take j oy and once again bend to it,What’s le ft of life , Dad 0

’ M ine .

Ye t for one day we’l l le t all slip behind us,

So that your birthday, Dad, stil l may remind usHow strong ye t supple the bonds are that bind usThrough shade and shine

,Dad 0’ M ine ,

Through shade and shine .

League s lie betwe en us, but league s cannot seve rLinks forged by love , Dad 0

’ M ine ,Bonds of his binding are fast bound for eve r,Future will prove , Dad 0

’ M ine .

Your strength was mine since I first lisped your name , Dad ,Your thoughts we re my thoughts at le sson or game , Dad ,In childhood’s griefs, it was eve r the same , Dad,Your hand round mine , Dad 0

’ M ine ,Your hand round mine .

Strengthened by shadow and shine borne toge ther,Comrade s and chums, Dad 0

’ M ine ,We shall not falte r through fair or foul weathe r,Whateve r come s, Dad 0

’ M ine .


So in the years to b e when you grow olde r,Ag e puts his claim in and weakne s s grows bolde r ;We

’l l stand up and me e t them , Dad , shoulde r to shoulde r,Your arm in mine

,Dad 0’ M ine ,

Your arm in mine .

How far we have travelled from the sickly sentimentality of the nineteenth century here This is thefrank, fearless, outspoken affection of a boy , not afraidto love his father and to express this love straightforwardly , purely and strongly . It is simple, with thesimplicity of one who has faced the eternal reality ofdeath and has no further use for the reticence or thegood form which used to b e the god ofyouth .

In the next poem he goes still further and puts intoexquisite poetry his convictions with regard to warlife

,death and the life after death .

If then , amidst some millions more , this heartShould ce ase to beat,Mourn not for me too sadly ; I have been ,For months of an exalted life , a king ;Pe er for the s e months of those whose grave s grow gre enWhe re ’

e r the borde rs of our empire fl ingThe ir mighty arms . And if the crown is d eath,Death while I’m fighting for my home and king,Thank God the son who drew from you his breath

To death could bring

A not entire ly worthle ss sacrifice ,Be cause of those brie f months when life me ant moreThan selfish ple asure s . Grudge not then the price ,But say, Our country in the storm of warHas found him fit to fight and d ie for herAnd lift your heads in pride for eve rmore .

But when the leave s the e vening bre e ze s s tirClose not the door .

For if there ’s any consciousne s s to followThe de ep , de ep slumbe r that w e know as Death ,If Death and Life are not all vain and hollow,I f Life i s more than so much indrawn breath ,


Then in the hush of twilight I shall comeOne with immortal l ife , that knows not DeathBut eve r change s form—I shall come home ;A lthough

,beneath

A wooden cross the clay that once was IHas ta’e n its ancient e arthy form anew .

But l isten to the wind that hurrie s by,To all the Song of Life for tune s you knew .

For in the voice of birds, the scent of flow ers,The evening silence and the fall ing dew

,

Through e ve ry throbbing pulse of nature’s powers

I ’l l speak to you.

This is brave and it is new moreover,and which is

infinitely more important, it is true . It states a quited efinite fact, a fact as comforting and uplifting as it iscertain . It is also poetry ,

if poetry means the outpourings of a sp irit that will not b e denied

,the expres

sion and cry stallisation of a thought that cannot beexpressed or crystallised in any other way .

This volume is likely to prove of invaluable serviceas a factor in the new education . Now that Sir ArthurQuiller-Couch would have all our young m en composepoems

,not in order to b e poets, but to perfect them

selves in the expression of their ideas, it is as well thatthey should have easy access to all that is best in thework of the modem s .

So many beginn ers imagine that the composition ofpoetry is a heaven- sent gift, that the lines just come andyou write them down ; here is a strong corrective forsuch loose thinking . If every would-b e poet were setdown to study the technique and intricate rhyme

schemes of half the poems in this book, they wouldlearn a much-needed lesson .

Most of us have an overpowering love for some

corner of England,which we would give a deal to be

able to put into words . It will help us more than alittle to study the way in which greater men have



If ye our close st fe l lowship must spurn ,Re turn

,and bring us only, as be fore ,

Some vague , swe e t song that make s the spirit burnSome twilight whispering of faery lore

The Catholic Anthology, as we gather from its Cubistcover

,is a violent attempt to divert our attention from

what we technically recognise as poetry to a chaotic,disordered , formless type of versify ing , mainly transatlantic .

There are well-known names here,Ezra Pound ,

Edgar Lee Masters, Harold Monro and Orrick Johns,but no one of them succeeds in doing more than mildlyamusing us, except T. S . Eliot, who , in The Love S ongof J Alfred Prufrock and P ortrait of a Lady convincesus that a poet has the right to free himself from thetrammels of artistic construction on rare occasions .

And would it have be en worth it, afte r all ,Would i t have been worth while

,

Afte r the sunse ts and the dooryards and the sprinkled stree ts,Afte r the nove l s, afte r the teacups, afte r the sk irts that trailupon the floor

And this,and so much more

It i s impossible to say just what I mean !But as i f a magic lante rn threw the nerve s in patterns on ascre en

Would it have been worth whileIf on e , se ttling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,And turning toward the window

,should say : That i s not

it at al l,

That is not what I meant at al l .

Igrow old Igrow old

I shal l wear the bottoms of my trousers rol led .

Shall I part my hair behind ? Do I dare to eat a peach ?I shall wear white flanne l trouse rs, and walk upon the beach .

I have he ard the m e rmaids singing, each to each .

I do not think that they will sing to me .

I have se en them riding seaward in the wave s,Combing the white wave s blown back


When the wind blows the wate r white and black .

\Ve have l inge red in the chambe rs of the sea

By sea girls wreathed with seawe ed red strownTi ll human voice s wake us, and w e drown .

These certainly are lines that young men, tossingon their beds, rhymed out in love’s despair to flatterbeauty’s ignorant ear, as Yeats says .

There is a depth of feeling and a striving to articulate,without which no poetry is worth anything . What w efeel on laying down this volume is a rather harsh butquite accurate judgment .

Would it not b e better for these young men to waituntil they really knew what they did want before theyput on paper their childish gropings after truth andbeauty They are as uncertain as autumn leaves

,

driven hither and thither by every whimsical gust of

wind,inconsequent

,purposeless .

MrEliot,for instance

,has all the makings of a great

poet, but in the day of his success his lovers will thinkofMiss Helen S lingsby and shudder that he should ever,even in childhood , have sunk to such a depth of bathosor failed to cultivate a sense of hum our . That is themain fault of all these Impressionists : they have nosense of humour ; they strain at sublimity and achievethe ridiculous they take themselves far too seriously .

It is refreshing to turn from this side ofAmerica toAlfred Noyes

’Collection of Undergraduate Verse, written

by his pupil s at Princeton University . His guidinginfluence is everywhere evident and we see the youngmen developing their sense of the poetic in a lucid ,orderly manner ; these men are not only captains oftheir own souls, but of their words also .

Al l love ly things I love ,Whe ther of sky or seaEarth and the frui t the reof,


And the starry companyThat wande r through Heaven above ,S inging unceasingly.

I love all swe e t-voiced thingsThe coil of fall ing stre ams

,

The honeyed murmuringsOf bee s in the ir noontide dreams,And the brush of Night

’

s great wings,That a swe e te r s ilence se ems .

I love al l silent thoughtPrisoned in cadenced sound ;And many a j ewe l broughtFrom hearted cave s profoundAnd ye t in al l I

’

ve soughtSome thing I have not found .

This is a far cry from T. S . Eliot , and it is worth whilebearing in mind that it is by a younger mind ;We see at once the influence of the great masters of

English literature translated by Noyes himself

As I begin to se e beyond thy rhyme ,And learn to p lace e ach pleasing sound aright,And view the s teps by which thy ve rse s climbThrough strength to beauty, and on from he ight to he ightThen I begin to fe e l that e agle ’s lureWhich turns his gaze toward a challenging sun,To leave behind the dul l and leve l moorFor those high crags whe re glorious colours run .

So would I know with the e that ste ep ascent,That difficult way to prospe cts ye t unknown,The winding paths , the chasms de eply rent,The whispering pine s by winds of poe sy blown,And face that sun of song whose radiance flowsIn sky-born colours through this earth’s dark prose .

Here we see at once the truth of that law which al ltrue geniuses realise , that the human spirit in the

height of its ecstasy desires and obeys the strictest



It is in such a poem as this I imagine that MrNoyessees those seeds which he speaks of in such high terms .

The Splendid task of carry ing on the torch of literature

,

”he say s in his preface, may y et b e reserved for

America .

”Few of us would have guessed that the

extracts I have quoted were written by any except ourown youthful poets . The older country has extendeda help ing hand to its younger sons across the sea andshown them that sweetness and light come not exceptby arduous practice in the imitation of the greatmasters . The undergraduates of Princeton have atany rate l earnt their lesson admirably , and , to judgefrom this volume , are a nest of singing birds presaginga glorious future for a nation that has striven hard togive voice to its high aspirations in prose and poetry ,without any too generous recognition on this side of theAtlantic .

In conclusion,I hope I may b e pardoned if I introduce

the work of the best three boys who have passedthrough my hands as a schoolmaster . I have knownand attempted to educate many youthful poets, butthree of these, each absolutely individual and asdifferent as possible from the others, stand out fromthe rest .

The first, J R . Ackerley, is a captain in the EastSurrey Regiment . At school he was an avoweddisciple of Masefield . When he l eft he was about to

go up to Magdalene College, Cambridge, when the warbroke out and he did the obvious thing . The influence

of Masefield can easily b e traced in the only poem whichhe has yet had printed, The Everlasting Terror, which Igive in full, because I think it deserves it .


THE EVERLASTING TERROR

To BOBBY

Fon fourte en years s ince I beganI learnt to b e a gentleman ,I learnt that two and two made fourAnd al l the othe r college lore

,

That al l that’s good and right and fitWas copied in the Holy Writ,That rape was wrong and murde r worseThan stealing money from a purse ,That if your ne ighbour caused you painYou turned the othe r che ek again ,And vague ly did I learn the rhymeOh give us peace , Lord , in our time ,And grant us Peace in H eaven as we l l,And save our souls from fire in He l lSo s ince the day that I beganI learnt to b e a gentleman .

But when I’d turned nine te en and moreI took my righte ousne s s to War .The one thing that I can’t re callI s why I went to war at allI wasn’t brave , nor coward quite ,But stil l I went, and I was right .

But now I’m nearly twenty- twoAnd hale as any one of you ;I’

ve kil led more men than I can te llAnd be en through many forms of He l l,And now I come to think of itThey te l l you in the Holy WritThat H e l l’s a place of mise ryWhe re Laughte r stands in pilloryAnd Vice and Hunge r walk abroadAnd bre ed contagion ’gainst the Lord .

We l l, p

’

r’

aps it i s , but all the same ,I t heal s the halt

,the blind , the lame ,

I t take s and trample s down your prideAnd sin and vainne ss fall be side ,

109


It turns you out a be tte r foolThan you were taught to b e at school,And, what the Bible doe s not te ll ,I t give s you gentlene ss as we ll .

Oh,God I

’

ve heard the screams of men

In suffe ring beyond our k en,And shudde red at the thought that IM ight scream as we ll i f I should die .

I’

ve seen them crushed or torn to bits,Oh

,iron te ars you whe re it h its !

And when the flag of Dawn unfurlsThey cry

—not God’s name , but the ir girl s’,Whose shade s, pe rhaps, l ike Night

’s cool breath,Are pre sent on that field of death,And sit and we ep and tend them there ,God’s halo blazing round the ir hair.Thou shalt not kill . But in the grimeOf smoke and blood and sme l l of limeWhich cre eping m en have scatte red roundA blood-disfigured pie ce of ground ,When Time we ighs on you l ike a ton,And Te rror make s your water run ,And earth and sky are red with flame ,And Death is standing the re to claimHis tol l among you, when the hourArrive s when you must show your powe rAnd take your little fighting chance ,Ge t up and out and so advance ,When crimson swims be fore your eye sAnd in your mouth strange oaths arise ,Then some thing in you se ems to breakAnd thoughts you never dreamt of wakeUpon your brain and drive you ou,

So that you s tab til l l ife i s gone ,So that you throttle , shoot or stick,A shrinking man and don’t fe e l s ickNor fe e l one l ittle j ot of shame ;My God, but it

’

s a bloody game

Oh yes, I’

ve seen it al l and more ,And fe l t the knocke r on Death’s door ;I’

ve be en whe reve r Satan take s you,And He l l i s good, because it makes you.



And in his memory I’l l find

The swe e tne ss of the b i tte r rindOf lone ly l ife in front of m e

And terror’s sle eple ss memory .

j une 3oth, 1916.

There are lines in this which Masefield himself wouldhave been proud to acknowledge

As though there were some ange l s coringBlack marks against you for your s insAnd he who gets the least marks wins

is in the best Masefield manner .

I like it for its honesty and nervous energy . It iscertainly beyond the power of any mere ephemeralv ersifier, becaus e of its perfect crystallisation ofa mood .

He has written with his eye on the obj ect and bringshome to us as a consequence the precise feelings of animaginative poet in action . I doubt if anyone hasportrayed so accurately the exact state of mind of thepoet- soldier . I

’

ve watched the progress of this youngpoet since he was fourteen, and it seems to m e that hehas increased (poetically) in stature and in wisdom yearby year ever since . I have a drawer full of his work,which I am convinced will some day b e required at myhands by a discerning public . I can only give you hislatest and let you form your own conclusions . It is nogood extracting portions of them you must have themin their entirety , because you will not b e able to come

at them elsewhere . They are here printed for the firsttune


OCTOBER 1916

THAT he i s deadSe ems unbe l ie vable ,False , inconce ivable ,He was so young .

Can it b e saidLife indispensableFalling insensibleLe ave s us unsung ?P icture the sight,Clothe s hanging muddily,SOPpingly , bloodilyEye s staring wideOne l ittle fightStre tching him rigid ly,Clammily, frigidlyOn to his side

Picture the death,Young and so beautiful,Lovab le , dutiful,Borne to the graveQuite out of breathF lowers of mate rnityPlunged in e te rnityC lean and so braveWhat is the prizeEngland is unmole st,Happy and unoppre ssed ?England is Free POh , the se are l ie s !Let England’s glory waneGive him back whole again ,Him whom I bore in pain ,Give him to me .


I

I WANT to g o to DevonshireTo hide myse lf away,And try to find the glory- sunThat neve r warmed my day ;To sit awhile and think a b itOf al l that might have be enIf I had only heard of loveWhen I was se vente en.

I IIf only I had had a chanceWhen I was stil l a child

,

Instead of hav ing smutty friends,Instead of running wild ;Instead of spending all my nightsA long with Cunny Jan eI wouldn’t do the things I doneIf I might l ive again .

But everything’s a’

fin ished andThe re ain’t a se cond tryI ’l l have to g o on aimle sslyUntil I come to dieI ne ver had a chance to live

,

A God to cal l my own .

I took the road I stood uponAnd walked it al l alone .

I started ofl‘ with Ned and A lf

Be fore I’d learnt to think,And N ed was hanged in ’

99And Al f ’

e died 0’ drink ;

And I kept up with Cunny JaneUntil she s ickened me

So that’s the way Istarted ofI

In e ighte en nine ty thre e .



No matter what the Dad allows,

I’

ll leave the farm and fields and sows,

I ’l l take the road without the cowsAn

’ walk it all alone .

There ’s Henry gone an’ Alfred too,

An’ I stayed back be cause 0

’

you,But now I’m off to see i t through

Upon my own .

I’l l neve r turn me back againAn

’ se ek the l ittle sunken laneThat leads m e back to ye l low grain

An’

you an’ shadow j oy .

I know the way a maiden crie s ;I know the vainne ss in her eyes—It i sn’t hollow , twisted lie s

That kill a boy !

I ’l l b e the man I want to b e ;I’

ll ne ve r take farewe l l of theeI ’l l take the road towards the sea

An’ se tting 0’

the sun .

I t isn’t love that matters he re ,It isn’t pain

,nor j oy nor fear,

I t’s pluck that make s you pe rsevereWhen all i s done

j uly 3oth, 1915.

Masefield, you say ofcourse a young man mustimitate his masters . It is only Byron over again in hisyouth imitating Pope, or Tennyson modelling himselfon K eats . He has a sense of the dramatic which is al lhis own ; he is clever enough to see this and his play s

(of which there are many ) have not been acted inLondon theatres solely because of the weird plots whichhe persists in using : a Cabinet minister throwing aCornish labourer over a cliff in one instance, and a


tobacconist with a Swiftean sense of humour frightening the life out of a lady customer in his shop by pretending to be mad .

He has a direct personal style which is rare indeed .

He already gives promise of a great future ; the poemsI have quoted are not without genius .

My second example is a cadet at Sandhurst, Alec R .

Waugh, son of the famous ArthurWaugh, worthy scionof a great house. As a boy he was impregnated witha passion for Wilde, Dowson, Rossetti, Swinburneand Byron . He wrote a sensuous and luscious playon Vashti, modelled on Stephen Phillips and ArthurSymons

,which had germs of beauty

,but he too has

developed enormously since he left school .The first poem I quote of his was written while still

at school , and shows at once his debt to these men .

THE PAGAN’

S DREAM

I WATCHED the state ly cavalcade of Sulla’s triumph passing by,

I saw the palace He rod made whe re Mariamne’

s beautie s lie ,I heard once more the feve red groan of Cleopatra’s poisonedslave ,

And the long breake r’s sul len moan be side great Pompey’s

shifting grave .

The pageant of the past swept by, the Pagan he l d his forme rsway,

And passionate gleamed the purple sky, with memorie s ofye sterday .

From the dim tombs of ancient years , from Babylon andNineveh,

We lled the great fount of human tears straining towards theshore le ss sea.

Fantastic forms with swirl grote sque trailing the ir rainbowcanopy,

Wove into wondrous arabe sque a safl'

ron-tinted tape stry .

Apo llo with his golden hair,and He len on her rose -white

throne ,Proserpina, for earth too fair, and Hera

’s billowy tresse s blown


Across the ruby-painted sun shone bright beyond the foam of

timeWhere all the things in life begun

,the half-dreamed dream ,

the unsung rhyme ,The love that burnt itse lf to hate , the Lily-Beauty turned todross

,

The longing wild unsatiate , the yearning and the poignantloss

,

S le ep on for eve r in the arms of re st’s e te rnal slumberlandAs Merlin once to Vivian’s charms in that far-ofl'

Broceliande .

Ou s ilve r wings, on fairy fe e t, I tripped across that magic sea,Called by that music b itte r swe e t, that haunting, cl ingingme lody,

Of Pagan hope s and Pagan dreams, of spire s clad in ame thys t,Of stars whose lustre faintly gleams out through a ve i l ofshaded mist,

Of icy glacie rs’ snow- tipped peaks, of bright red wine and

purple rose ,Of passionate red -tinted cheeks where the fre sh bloom ofbeauty glows,

Of endle s s splendid pageantry where all the l onging of theears,

Knit?into one great e cstasy, one note of laughte r and oftears .

And the re si t the immortals throned in silent splendour : all

the whileTired men forge tting how they groaned in the past years,upon this isle

Hear the slow music of the wave s, hear the long e choe s ofdead days,

Wafted from whe re l ife ’s ocean lave s the shore s of night thatdawn be trays .

He re i s the end of al l l ife’s care s , and here the end of all ourrie f

,

Here

gis the gue rdon of our praye rs, for s leep is long and l ifei s brie f

For love is but an hour’s unre st and hate i s nought, and sorrowmirth

And he re we reach the last behe st of al l w e yearned for uponearth ,

H e re is the song and here the feast, for through the crossingof that sea

From all our woe s and pain re leased w e l augh into e tern ity.



experience . After all , what experience do you expectfrom a schoolboy of sixteenHow immeasurably he has advanced since then may

be gauged from the following

THE SECRET OF LIFE

SA ITH the sage : youth flie th by ,Like the dawn be fore the day

Soon the flagon must run dry,Soon the rainbow fade away .

Store your treasure s for old ag eSaith the sage .

Saith the rose one thing is sure ,Nothing is more swe e t than laughte r.

Who can te l l what may endure ,What man knows what follows afte r ?

Take what’s ce rtain ere it goe s :Saith the rose .

Sai th my heart : l ife’s se cre t lie s

Not alone in ag e nor youth ,But to both the same voice crie s ,Colours change but not the truth .

Only love and neve r partSaith my heart .

IMMUTABILITY

IN the long emptine ss of daysBe fore I knew you,

on thi s hillI used to lie and watch the raysOf the dying sunse t quive rThrough the re eds be side the rive r,And on the laughing stream ,

untilI t lay a she e t of ruffled gold .

Long shadows crept along the wold ,Ghostly, maj e stic : through the hazeShrouding the waters, glimme red faintTall l ilie s swaying .


BeautifulAnd calm as some old martyred saintThe e vening died .

My heart wasOf a wild glory : j oy and praiseSupreme ly mingled : Beauty thril ledMy hungry sense s : colour sweptBe fore my eye s : my Spirit leaptKnowing its vague dreams fulfilled ,Its yearnings satisfied .

But nowI gaze across the se fields unmoved,Across the se fields that once I loved .

For I have found you faire r farThan morning mist or evening star .How should I praise the dawn , the skie s,Once hav ing looked into your eye s,That smoulder with the ardent glowOf hidden fire ? Even the bre e z eThat flutte rs through the swaying tre e s ,I s not as soft as your white hand .

And,Love , the very sun is cold

When se t against the rebe l goldOfyour swift hair .

And yet I knowThat love will die ; and I shall standSome day alone and watch the sunBurn out its heart, its passion done .

While the l ilie s sway, and nightTremble s in the wake of l ight .And the same cool wind will blowThrough the re eds be side the river.Ye t I shall not weep for you,Nor for the love that has grown cold .

For though now your warm lips quive rUnde r mine , w e shall grow oldOld and past de sire , swee t,M iss the pass ion and the heat

,

121


Kiss for habit’s sake Oh thenWe , who have be en so brave and true ,Clear-eyed and fearle ss , shall w e stayTo mock at love

,day afte r day

With words and make -be l ieving,when

The flame i s out ? Shall w e pre tendThat w e love still

,or make an end

Of fol ly nobly ?

Oh, Iknow

That you will turn aside and go ,Taking your separate path ; and IShall stand he re as be fore and gaz eAcross the valley whe re the hazeHove rs above the re eds , and shadowsSteal acros s the sun-kissed meadows .

And, love , for al l that we’re apart,

I shal l fe e l Beauty in my heart,Watching the long day s ink and die .

8th j uly 1916.

SONNET

THE conte st doe s not last so ve ry longThat w e should cringe be fore it . For a whileThe proud, disdainful gods look down and smile

On us and on our efforts : right and wrongTo-day se em merged in one . Ye t, H eart, be brave !Fearle ss and proud against immortal powe rLe t us stand firm . I t i s but for an hour.

The re i s no ne ed for fear this s ide the grave .

But if some dim e te rnity should rendThe ve il of silence , and no bound is se tTo Time and its proce ssional of painIf w e should wake to j ourney on again

With hope le s s eye s, unable to forge t .There i s the fear. If Death we re not the end .

6th August 1916.



Unfe tte red by mortal ity,The sense of you will l inger s til lIn flowe r and wind and wooded hill

,

And safe from the grave ’s nothingne ssIn undiminshed love l ine s sYour lambent spirit ye t will broodAbove the darkling solitudeAnd hovering in the e vening airMake the faire st things more fair.And I shal l find you when dim nightIn twilight’s mantle kisse s light .My heart an altar for your sakeWi l l burn with ve stal flam e s that takeIntense r radiance from the senseOf your divine omniscience .

And in the corners of my brainYour pre sence will awake againThe leaping fount of poe tryWith knowledge that though rose s dieBeauty imperishable stillWorks out its s e lf-appointed will .

0 Love behind the darkne ss waitsWe know not what : the j ealous fate sGuard we l l the ir se cre ts ; but as longAs l ife in fire and gold leaps strongThrough pul s ing ve ins, and the glad earthScatte rs its gifts of love and mirth,Passion and Friendship, the bright flame

Of your quick soul unchanged , the sameThat sings to-night

,wil l kindle men ,

Out of the ir agony and painTo mould a heaven out of thoughtAnd seek the star that change th not .

Septemher I9I6.

THE SEARCHLIGHT

YVEARIED by the los t battle of the day ,And sick with knowledge that all fair th ings mustSome t ime into obl ivion or de cay,Nightlong I lay upon the scented grass,Quie t, at peace the soft wind on my eye s


Re sting its summer wings .And I was fre e from the fierce myste riesAnd hope le ss que stioningsOf l ife and art and love .

And I watched far aboveThe long clear stream of light,Flicke r and fade shine bright and die

Then shine again, pie rcing with ke en re lentle ss eyeThe se cre ts of the night ;

Seeking the dark myste rious thingThat hove red somewhe re in the dim expanse

Of high heaped myste rie s .In its Wild danceThrough the dim skie s

Its brilliance for a moment turnedA sable cloud lost in its wande ringInto a flaming radiance that burnedIn transient e ternity.

The Beam passed on , stil l searching the wide sky,On to the last grey l imit of its bound,

Forthe dark myste ry that i t neve r found .

I watched and watched until I sawMy soul and not the searchlight, moveI ts fiery beam,

probing the dark of outworn law ,

Of dead tradition, use le s s loveSe arching for truth , for one th ing truly wise

Acros s a sky dark with the se cre ts of long gene rations ,Blank with the emptine s s of hollow nations

To se e against a host of lie s .And as that wandering light, I found nothing but the nightAnd the gloom of the night

Except on moments when some moodThat he ld a semblance of the e te rnal truth ,Be fore me burst in l ight

,

And for an instant,flamed like youth ,

And then like youth subsided and was still .

While my soul through the night’s wild solitude ,

Sought for the one , the real, the imperishable .

But as I watched that lambent flame

Steadfast, immutable , the same


Dauntle ss in failure and reve rseStriving against an alien unive rse .

I knew that some time , e ither to-morrow or afte r many days,That beam would find the thing it sought .

And then the ve ry night would blazeThe sky would totte r as a weak thing wrought

Offlame and fire and by itse lf consumedCo lours would leap and fall whe re shadows had loomed ,

And a primrose glow,l ike a halo, would re s t

On a world long opprest.

And I fe lt that I too, before deathHad crept and with sensuous breathKissed me to slumbe r, should find

Wi thin some long- locked chambe r of my mindThe truth, the e te rnal truth , the se cre t of all

That should l ight the pathway of man, and lead him afarFrom his sloth

,and riot and carnival

To the one true starThat, hid no longe r by mistShone s ilve r and gold, scarle t and ame thyst,Pure as the mystic rose , warm as the Cythe rean ,

A splendour, the mingled glory of Pagan and Gal ilean .

And out of the old world’s dustA new world would rise , clean , laughing and whole ,Untouched by the tramme l s of lie s and lust,With flaming heart and a flaming soul .

2 Ist Octoher 1916.

TO YOUR DAUGHTER

FOR DOR IS AND PETRE MA IS

THE Thracians when a child was bornIn s olemn vigil wept, be cause

Ye t one more soul, adrift, forlornMust know the we ight of mortal laws .

But when one died , with reve lryThey bore the s ilent corpse to re st

Glad that at least one man was fre eTo them not to b e born was best .



Not to b e born, s ince right and wrongSe em bound toge ther and the same

And dust’s the end of eve ry songBut Happine ss is not l ife ’s aim .

A soul of such material wroughtIs armed sufficiently to brave

The teeming myrmidons of doubt .That is enough this side the grave .

Unflinching you wil l face the truth .

And othe rs not so nobly wiseWill lay be fore your fee t, the i r youth,The ir hope s, and the ir heart

’s treasurie s .

So though you de em the gift of l ifeBe tte r not had

,those others torn

And bleeding in the throe s of strifeWil l thank the ir God, that you were born .

These all see the light of day for the first time now ,

and it is for you to judge their worth . It is hard tocriticise the work ofone’s own pupils . One is apt to beprejudiced—but they certainly do express that continual search after beauty which is the poet’s peculiarprerogative . All that I can say is that I am proud tohave a daughter who has insp ired such a poem as ToYourDaughter, and whatever fate may be in store forher, she is lucky to have had so sweet a tribute paidto her as this ; it is comparable only to FrancisThompson’s poems to Olive and V iola Meynell .My last example is from a boy , K . de B . Codrington ,

now at Quetta . He has no definite master he hasread widely and deeply

,and browsed in all sorts of

obscure nooks in the fields of English literature .

Like so many youngsters of to -day, he has learnt tosing through suffering ; his mother, to whom he was


devoted , was drowned in the P ersia, and all his bestpoems are merely reminiscences of her.

He sings of Nature and her appeal to the instinctof beauty . I said that he had no definite master

,but

there are obvious traces of Rupert Brooke here andthere , and sometimes, though much less obviously , ofFlecker .

LONDON FROM THE COUNTRY

THE Sparrows twitte r in the hedgeAnd flutte r by the window- ledge

,

And golden -red anothe r dayCre eps slowly up and fade s to grey .

Gre at gathe ring clouds g o sailing by,Cold and grey in the sodden sky,And softly patte ring the rainBeats down and blurs the window-pane .

The poplars by the garden wal lSway in the wind and dead le ave s fallAl l brown and sodden in the rainBy the window, into the lane .

The willows whisper in the windAnd in the field , j ust close behind,The wind beats through the w e t clove rAl l murmuring : The be st i s ove r .Grow old and live and die with usAmong the willows and the grass .To -day I watch the misty down .

Ye t ye ste rday I slept in town ,Four storie s high above the square ,Above the noise and clatte r the re ,Lulled by the traffic

’

s rumbl ing songAmid the eve r- passing throng

,

Five days of happine ss supreme ,And now I’m here and they

’re a dream .

The shops,the re staurants in Soho

,

And eve rything I love and know,Those matine e s , j ust you and I,Are memorie s, and he re I lie ,


Watching the dawn -mists move and rise,

Dim wisps of grey against the skie s .Last night the arcs we re burning bright

,

Throwing great golden rings of light,

Now flick ering above the throng,Low dancing to the trafiic ’

s song ;And he re P—the stars gleame d dim and coldAnd ove rhead the s torm - clouds rolledLast night

,that table by the palm ,

W ith its old waite r,fat and calm

The music rising soft and low,

Faintly in gusts from down be low ,

The clinking sound of touching glas s,

As the quick waite rs come and pass,

And you be side m e , s itting the reAs if that n ight would last a year.

The hanging ivy move s and sighs ,And slow the rose - Sprays dip and rise ,And the wind blows by the clove r,Stil l whispe ring The be st is ove r.

EVENING CLOUDS

FA IR tints of e vening in the sky,Why haste away so soon

“

?

The wind stil l whispe rs on the hillAnd lingers on the dune .

The daffodil s s till nod the ir headsAnd bend be fore the bre e ze ,

And still the painted butterflie sHang by the apple - tre e s .

Above the swallows homeward flyAnd circle round the e ave s,

Ye t day stil l loite rs in the laneAnd gl imme rs on the leave s .

Night fal ls,and thou art gone , too soon ,

Fair pledge s of the day,And as the stars com e cre eping out

,

Thy glorie s fade away .



Rule s all round , ye t never so fre e ,Is i t j ust as it used to he ?Are the re shadows stil l on the grass—And do the clouds still , laughing, pass ?

Othe rs go whe re w e used to walkAnd linge r whe re w e used to talk

,

Time s have altered e ve rywhere ,Now strange face s turn to stare

Unknown face s turn to stare ,With eye s that no remembrance bear ,Time has flown and the day was shortWhen I too loite red through the court

Only the same old he art- fe lt love,Only the laughing clouds above ,Only the wind in the l inden tre e ,S ings the same old songs to m e .

A REQU IEM

FOLD thine arms upon thy breast,Close thine eye s and take thy re st,Sunse t in the golden we st,Glorious

,die s .

I wil l sing no dirge for the e ,For in eve ry brake and tre eBirds sing out in me l ody,To grey skie s .

So, now thou hast gone from m e ,

I will sing my me lody ;Day grows old , to wane and d ie ,Ye t to rise .

Still the wind stirs the rose s,Hung in gre at fragrant posie s ,But your sunse t ne

’

e r lose s ,Golden skie s .


Golden - tinted clouds sai l by,Twil ight cre eps across the sky,Shadows fal l and lightly lie ,On the eye s .

Night falls gl e aming in the we st,Thou who wast of al l , the be st,Fold thy arms and take thy re st,Close thy eye s .

As usual, I am afraid to criticise them, because theyare too near to me . They were shown up as workand amid all the humdrum platitudes and inconse

quent nonsense that boys produce as prep . , to come

upon one such poem as Requiem is like reading a playof Goldsmith after Mrs Aphra B en, or a criticism of

Dixon Scott after the l iterary editor’s reviews in ahalfpenny evening rag .

” I can only murmur tomy self Exquisite

,

” Beautiful ,” and to the pupil

Yes, yes, but what about technique 9 These l inesdon’t scan It is the schoolmaster’s special missionnever to encourage , always to pick hole s ; for whatreason I know not .

All I feel at the moment is a fierce pleasure thatAckerley , Waugh and Codrington all came, at one

time or another, under my influence . To me as anindividual they owe less than nothing to the books Iput into their hands , more than they will ever acknowledge . I refuse to believe that their poems are any

whit inferior to the majority of those which I havequoted elsewhere inthis paper ; the only difference l iesin the fact that they still have to make their name, tofind a publisher and a public .

It staggers m e to think that there are probablyhundreds of poets at this moment working quietly inthis country , as good as these , of whom w e have heardliterally nothing it is the finest sign of our tim es .


You may talk about the Renascence of Wonder, of theElizabetha n lyricists, and other golden periods ofEnglish literature , but I feel absolutely certa in on thisone point, that the greatest ag e in our own nationalhistory , if not in that of the whole world , is hereand now ; not as individuals, but collectively we are

living in the supreme ag e of lyrical sweetness ; neverbefore has beauty been so sought after andthe reason ? Is it not sirnply because of the constant,never ending blare of the trumpets of ugliness on everysid e of us ?

‘

Action and reaction, cause and effect, theswing of the pendulum . It is science ; it is logic ; itis l ife .



if we join with those biased judges who would awaywith lightness , frivolity and jocund dance because

(according to these poor, weak-witted fools) it undermines ourmorals and destroy s our intellect . It doesnothing of the sort it revives us, it tends to make uscheerful, it helps us to carry -on and not give way toghoulish fears and despair . But the day of the revueis not for ever With the coming ofpeace the stage willbecome in the end what w e intend it to become, the

platform from which w e can thrash out the problemsthat beset us with regard to life and love and death .

On the other hand , the trashy , noxious, prurient,bastard nove l increases and multiplies and is as strongas mongrels usually are . It is not with these that I amconcerned to -day ; it is with the score or so of greathearted men and women who keep their head above thewater and write , not for the busin ess man’s leisurehours

,nor in order to fill up the evenings of the lonely ,

stupid Vicar’s daughter, but (for the only reason that

justifies m en in writing anything at all) because theymust because their own l ives are so appallinglycomplicated that they must advise others not so

experienced how to extricate themselves from the

labyrinth by which they are encompassed .

It follows,then, that the first point to b e noticed about

the present-day novelists is their sense of psychology ;they are introspective—and in that they are un

like their fathers in art . We look in vain to -day forthe simple , full—blooded , narrative sty le of Fielding, thequietude of Jane Austen, the sentimentality ofDickens

,

the dogmatic baldness of George Eliot, the historicsense of Scott (thank God ) , the uncleanness of Sterne ,the intellectual obscurity of Meredith, and we are gladof it .

The novelists of to -day have broken free from all

THE MODERN NOVEL 137

tradition,not because , as their elders so often think, that

they like shocking people —tilting at existing conv en

tions or descending to the sordid —but solely becausethey are intent upon one thing alone, the search aftertruth . Like the great scientists and all true reformers ,they are content to take nothing upon trust they mustprove all things and hold fast to that which they findto b e good . Now , to b e accurate, this definition of

their aim s necessarily makes us adjust our point of

view about the date of the beginning of these traits .

It is not Love and Mr Lewisham but The Way of AllFlesh that holds the place of honour as the pioneer ofthis movement .

In that book,which might have been produced this

season ,so modern (in my present sense of the word )

it is, w e see a boy brought up in the deadening atmos

phere of a country parsonage, exceedingly religious ,bent on taking Orders, until he finds that he cannothonestly conform to the accepted belief in the efficacy

of infant baptism . It is strictly autobiographical , andgives us, with a wealth of detail, all the doubts thatassail the mind of youth with regard to the myriadbeliefs which his elders hold quite complacently, but ,accord ing to his po int of View,

quite unreasoninglyand therefore immorally .

And this brings m e to my first great rock on whichso many writers split, the relation of life to art . How

far has the novelist the right to transcribe from life ?How far ought he to aim at the objective and the

impersonal ?If we listen to one who was himself both a consum

mate artist and able critic , R . L . Stevenson , we shouldconclude that no art ever dare s , in Henry James’sphrase , to compete with life . Life is monstrous, infinite,illogical , abrupt and poignant ; art is neat, finite , self


contained , rational , flowing and emasculate ; yes, ifyou please

,I repeat—emasculate .

A man settling down to write a novel,just like his

brother artist , the musician or the painter, definitelydecides upon a theme, which he harps upon , ruthlesslyprun ing away all irrelevancies until he has finished hisartistic conception

,which is orderly ,

consecutive and

intelligible . Now l ife is seldom , if ever, intelligible ,never consecutive and most certainly not orderly ;your true artist half shuts his eyes to the dazzle and

confusion of reality and flees the challenge of life,pursuing instead an independent and creative aim

he does not pretend to give a true picture of life ratherdoes he make , so far as he is able , his story typical ,which accounts, ofcourse , forSamWeller, MrMicawberand Mrs Gamp . Hence follow

,to the artist’s horror

on the publication of each fresh work, a whole series ofmisunderstandings, each one of the small circle of his

acquaintances endeavouring to p lace them selvesand other of his friends in the book —whereas, of

course , no man deliberately paints any man as he

see s him,but , taking a trait here and a trait there ,

presents a composite portrait of the creature of hisimagination .

Lest I tire you with these general hypotheses , as if Iwere here to prove a proposition in geometry , let me

descend to the particular score or so ofwriters whom Ihave in mind as representative of the art of novelwriting at its best to -day

,and I will try to b e asmodern

as I possibly can b e .

But before I can do this.I must perforce call your

attention to an astonishing sameness in the writers ofourera . Their theme is nearly always the same theytake a small child and work out , with m iraculousaccuracy and meticulous care , his orher attitude to life



which your father tells you is a will-o’- the-wisp it hurts

such a man abominably to b e told , as he is on everyoccasion

,that this much-vaunted open-mindedness

and breadth is only a euphemism for lack of d epthand shallowness . There may b e lack of depth in thenew writer before he has found his feet ; the veryshallows are sometimes mistaken by the passionatespirit for the deep waters, but he soon learns to profitby his m istakes . No—it is not the spirit that is lacking ; the impulse is all right—publishers will tell youthat they are sometimes frightened by the am ount ofgood stuffwhich is sent to them daily . What is wrongis the absence of any technique ; so anxious are thesefirebrands to give voice to their disquietude

,so keen to

b e gospellers,that they forget that he who practises an

art must obey the laws that govern that art . Theythink that it is enough to have something to say and

say it , which would b e strictly true were novel -writinga sort of photography , a literal transcription from life .

It is something very different from this even if weagree that novels are now a chemical analysis of l ife .

In the scientific sense this is not quite true ; it is impossible to put down on paper, with precise verisimilitude

,what you have evolved as a result of your tests

with alkalis and acids ; the compound of emotions,

impressions and volitions are not so easy to disin

tegrate, the human factor looms too large ; it is men’ssouls that you are striving to analy se and the processbrings tears of shame and pity ; sympathy of a veryacute kind is essential in the analyst, which is obviouslynot a feature that enters into the calculation of the

chemist . To put it even more plainly , there is no

ease in these new novels they are uncomfortable,and

designedly so ; they do not make for happy, restfulevenings they are purgative pill s for the soul , tearing


it up by the roots lest it should die for want of exerciseor become sluggish through inaction .

And here I am constrained against my wish to haveto talk on a theme that apparently causes quite anumber of hostile critics to prejudge these feverishreformers and banish their work summarily at sight .

The theme is realism . The fact that stoats slaughterrabbits in a bestially cruel manner, that Nature isharsh, ugly and unsympathetic, that man , in Meredith’sphrase , has not y et rounded Cape Turk in his attitudeto women

,that mud and dirt exist, terrifies these

writers they are honest, so they refuse to blind themselves to the truth they are searching for beauty andmeet ugliness, so they must needs write down the impression it makes on them . Hence follows the croak ofthe unco’ guid about indecent and revolting details .

The coward trick of employing asterisks is the

resort of all the hucksters and the popularity hunters ,while the band of twenty stalwarts goes its way , heedless of the cries of Shame,

” and in the end out of thesordid they evolve Splendour, out of the grotesque ,beauty , out of the shams and lies, truth . So realismcomes to mean reaction against the comfortable, dull ,cowardly attitude to life which was so characteristic ofthe eighteen -nineties . It does not mean, and neverhas meant, play ing in the mire for love of mud . Irefuse to dwell on the point further . Let m e come tothe individual members ofmy score .

I will take the women first . It is a curious thing thatwhereas the sexes have never conflicted in the world of

poetry (where are Christina Rossetti and Mrs Browningwhen set up against K eats

,Milton

,Shelley and the rest

of our English singers 9) as novelists, women hold theirown easily . There have been many ready to acclaimJane Austen as worthy of a place nearer the Shake


spearean throne than any other of our writers, and sheis not, like Jael, alone . So to -day w e have at least e ightplaces among my score taken by women—Ivy Low ,

V iola Meynell , Ethel Sidgwick, Rose Macaulay ,Dorothy

Richardson , Miss E . H . Young, Sheila K aye -Smith andMay Sinclair . I will content myself with fiv e . It is noargum ent —perhaps you are thinking of it—to suggestthat our worst writers are also women . Each of these ,in her individual way , fans the flame of revolt anddrives home the crudity of life, the inexplicability ofit all, the need for courage to test, to experience, toventure all in the cause of beauty and truth .

Ethel Sidgwick is no mean disciple of Meredith andJames . The Accolade would have been welcomed byeither ; she represents the intellectual, aristocratic sideof the quarrel . Certainly impersonal

,she yet lives

again in her characters , who are living men and women,full of hum an frailty and hum an passions and of infinitecharm, even when they fall short, as all the heroes andheroines in the novels under discussion do fall short, ofthe high calling whereto they were called .

She recognises, as do the others, how amazingly swiftthe transition is between the sublime and the ridiculous

,

how in a second of time a coward may become brave,a good man turn Villain ; in other words , she refuses tobelieve in the old conventional theory , which is all righton the boards of the Lyceum (The Jll oruing P ost wouldsay that it was the only safe guide in life) , that men canb e divided into sheep and goats ; if they could therewould be no need for our age at all there would b e noproblem ; it is the question of shad ows and half lightsand tricky optical illusions of the soul that so worriesus . If all were either white or black this paper wouldb e meaningless and so would the writing of novels .Ivy Low and V iola Meynell have much in common



V iola Meynell and the rest of them want to find out

and want us to find out in the lives of those near to uswho are miserable and neglected as of no account . Itis hard to group these writers together like this, but Ithink the guiding principle that is common to all ofthem is the avoidance at all costs of snobbery—w —snobberyof any kind . These accidental pronunciations

,these

tricks of eating, these vulgar colloquialisms, thesedowdy clothes, these astonishing limitations all makeus so deuced superior . As this is , like nearly everything I do

,an intensely personal paper, I will e laborate

what I mean a little further . I know nothing whateverabout picture s, but by a very happy accident I reallydo like the work that is supposed , by the only artistswhom I know, to b e the best we

’ve got . I mean, ofcourse , Augustus John , Mark Gertler, Nevinson,Rothenste in and so on . The sight of a Blair Leighton,a Marcus Stone , a Landseer or a Dicksee makesme physically ill—and yet

—well , my own house iscrowded with these criminal things . I keep them on

purpose—I know now what I like—but I keep thesein remembrance of the time when I bowed to popularop inion and gave my own judgment no chance . And

yet my novelist friends, men of taste and judgment ,don’t laugh at m e—they are not snobs ; they don

’teven laugh at m e behind my back .

Now , it’s these people who have given me a soul

they haven’t laughed ; they have tried to find where

my l imitations extend . Other people don’t : otherpeople are snobs . I

’v e explained that badly . These

women writers are full of the milk of hum an kindnessand extend the ir love to those who seem least of alldeserving of it . The only people they cannot stomachare the safe, self-complacent men and women whohave been nurtured from their earliest youth in the


established tradition and done all the right things in theright way , even to marrying and being buried .

Of my dozen or so male writers I propose to takeConrad first, not necessarily because he is greater or lessthan any of the others , but because he stands ratheroutside the group . We ought to have been readinghim thirty years ago , only , be ing led by the critics ,

whoare like a man who

,through oversmoking, can

’t tell aWoodbine from a Weinberg , w e never recognised hisgenius until almost too late . One point he has in common with the younger school—in psychological analy sislies his greatness ; his difference lies in the fact thatwhereas Bennett and the rest don’t care “ tuppenceabout narrative

,he revels in the telling of a tale . He is

a born raconteur ; he tells a story in the best possibleway he looks at it from every point of view he hastaken a most valuable leaf out of Browning’s book—Ioften wonder quite how much Conrad owes to The Ringand the Book . I again often wonder whether a fineranaly sis of a boy

’s life has ever been made than Conradmade of that excessively romantic son of the parsonage ,inscrutable of heart, tearing himself out of the arm s ofa jealous love at the sign , at the call of his exaltedegoism . He leaves a living woman to celebrate a pitilesswedding with a shadowy ideal of conduct . But youall know the story ; alone among modern books w ehave here a hero who is quite certain ofhimself, realisesquite definitely that errors are irretrievable and worksout his scheme of expiation to perfection .

Wells , too , in some degree stands a little aloof fromthe moderns ; the best thing about him which he holdsin common with Arnold Bennett IS his conviction of the

sacredness of his calling as novelist . Not once nortwice but a hundred time s Wells re iterates his gospelin the clear notes of the clarion nothing is so sacred as


work,nothing matters in comparison with getting your

mind clear ; life is wasted on every side ; only thenovelist really lives at all only he has the true Vision .

Having cut away the frippery and foolishnesses of themyriad things which pass for living, he alone can pointthe way to where true happiness and contentment lie—in the cultivation of the scientific spirit, in passion

ate love and immense sympathy . To him has fallenthe wonderful privilege of be ing able to reveal the soulof England during the past two y ears in Mr BritlingS ees It Through, by far the ablest novel writtensince 1914 . That is Mr Wells’ triumph—he is thesuprem e clarifier and cry stalliser . He writes not asRomain Rolland , with the detachm ent of a calmobserver on a Swiss peak ,

but with the passionateresentment of a father who has lost his only son , whowas to remould the world after his father’s death —it isintrospective and subj ective to an extraordinary extent ;through it all w e see the old Wells we had so learnt tolove and reverence sadly chastened by a crime whichwas so exactly to fulfil his ag e

-old prophecies and putback the progress of the country for countless y ears .

Wells had many detractors in the past, but no one

in his senses could dare to deny that as a m aster inhandling the English language and making it meanquite clearly and consistently exactly what he wishesto convey he stands alone ; his sincerity and honestyperhaps frightened those who were afraid of the

lengths to which sincerity and honesty could go intheir search for truth . ButWells has proved his largeheartedness long ago in his splendid sense of fun ; hissympathy with man, in spite of his appalling narrowness and refusal to take the advantages of education, isoverwhelmingly strong and gives us an insight into hiscapacity for love .



conflict of life to secure real , lasting love, are told withan honesty of purpose that almost scares you ; hedeliberately sets out to dissect and reveal his innerbeing -there is no plot, no climax ; there rarely is inthe modern novel . There is no heightening effect tosecure a romantic atmosphere ; it is all realistic , baldand cold—and y et cold not with a moral frigidity ,but cold as a perfectly executed marble statue hewn outby genius at fever heat from the formless block . At

the end of three Volumes he has at last found happinesswith Betty and her babies , but even so he is still umsatisfied , he is still a candidate for truth . V irtue liesonly ,

”he writes, in the continued renewal of effort ;

the boast of success is an admission of failure .

” JacobStahl could never rest content with any such attainment as was provided by the comfort of his wife’s love ,by the fin e , unselfish joy he finds in the care of his threechildren , or, least of all, by such satisfactions as come

to him from his modern achievements in the world ofletters . He i s ever at the beginning of life , reaching outtowards those eternal values that are ever beyond hisgrasp . He is handicapped in many ways and mustcontinually regret his own ignorances and intellectuall imitations, but he has not been threatened by thatdecay of mind which slowly petrifies and kills thosewho fall into the habit of fixed Opinions .

Truly he who marries and has children,says

Bacon , gives hostages to fortune , but our generationis giving the lie direct to this seemingly profound assertion . The point that matters is to preserve an un

biased mind the fight’s the thing .

” Browningdimly recognised it in the unlit lamp and the ungirtloin , though he Spoilt his ideal by that dreadful line immediately following, but this is ethical and I am here todiscuss the artistic, so far as they can b e differentiated.


Bere sford is exactly typical of his school he is whatwe call , in ourordinary language , absolutely straight ,

”

and fearless the world is an unweeded garden, thingsrank and gross possess it merely . Instead of acquies

cing in this quite true Shak eSp carean remark, instead of

shutting its ey es to it as uncomfortable and shocking,the new generation forges straight ahead

,intent only

on solution . Now in the first place it is quite likely(though I don

’t believe this) that there isn’t one ; it

doesn’t seem to me to matter if there isn’t everythingis relative , but the j oy lies in the search if the end b e

but a chimera . Secondly , such a search makes for discontent and unhappiness—acute unhappiness , atonedfor , w e think, by moments of sheer ecstasy undreamtof by the rest of the world .

It is this sense ofdirectness of aim, in spite of causingmisery , that attracts us, in the first place , to perhapsthe best known and most widely read of this school ,Compton Mackenzie . I want

,so far as possible , to

avoid comparison, because I firmly feel that out of myscore or so of great writers ten at least stand right outfrom the ir generation and deserve to live so long asEnglish literature is read . Mackenzie may or may

not b e one of these ten—he is certain ly not the leader .

It is difficult to speak in cold , critical terms of a bookwhich all the reviewers (once given a lead ) hailed as oneof the masterpieces of our language .

In the first place , as with Meredith , we can at onceplace our fing eron one characteristic and praise God forMackenzie’s intellect ; his novels are certainly amongthe cleverest . But far more important than that is hissense of beauty not the pseudo -romantic , bizarre sort ofbeauty with which some people credit him

,owing to his

unfortunate love of archaic forms,but the passionate

love of precise, pellucid phrases , and it is this sense of


beauty which enables us to probe into the secrets of

youth and see a picture of a Public School boy’s life ,

which is not merely so much wasted pap er, but then , of

course , it is so frightfully unfair to take a school likeSt Paul’s , situated right in the heart of London ; theinfluences that acted on Michael’s life were main ly fromwithout the school . At Oxford he tries to give animpression of the callow life of the undergraduate ,forgetful of the fact that there is no typical Oxford or

typical Cambridge . All that you can say of e ither isthat exquisite poems might b e written of the feet of the

young m en who pass so very quickly , of the amazinglack of sympathy they receive with any ofthe emotionalcrises they pass through—in other words , that toeach individual soul the un iversity means somethingquite different from what it means to everybody else .

And Compton Mackenzie falls into the same errorwhich lesser men naturally do

,of thinking that

bonners and brekk ers and theatre rags and

burnpers matter in the least .

No ; the secret of Compton Mackenzie’s claim to

greatness lies in this one single sentenceSoon will come a great war and everybody will dis

cover it has come either because people are Christiansorbecause they are not Christians . Nobody will thinkit is because each man wants to interfere with theconduct of his neighbour .

”

That is where Mackenzie comes into line with myargument . In Spite of all his delving in the depths- H

and I am afraid I hold with that time -honoured adagethat w e must all eat our peck of dirt before we die —hehas a clear, sane Vision—excess of Vice, like excess ofVirtue

,is a crime—in either case comes the interference

with the conduct of one’s neighbour —interference notemanating from sympathy, but proceeding from that



resisting temptation ; it’s solely a question of how to

fulfil your destiny and thereby attain true nobil ity ofcharacter . The fug itive and c loistered Virtue no longerexists ; ignorance is immoral , unforgivable, just in proportion as it is senseless and needless .

Jenny had to learn her hard lesson in the school oflife , than which no lesson can b e harder , to differentiatebetween love and passion, to uproot the animalismthat still lurks, cloven-footed , in primitive humannature , and replace it by that divine fervour whichanybody can attain once he gives up the canting, oldfashioned , effete theories about sex . Mackenzie’s highwater mark is reached in his latest novel , Guy and

Pauline, which is'

simply The S tatue and the Bust re

written

Where i s the use of the lips’ red charm,

The h eaven of hair, the pride of the browAnd the bl ood that blue s the ins id e armUnle ss w e turn , as the soul knows how,

The e arthly gift to an end divine ?

That is the secret of everything . Here we have anidyll ic picture set in an exquisitely beautiful setting of

two charming people madly in love with each other,

and watch , with agony in ourhearts the gradual diminution of passion , the gradual realisation on the part ofeach of them that they were insufficient for each other—a book that might have saved many unions . Thereis nothing like it in the language ; it i s the epic of

mistaken ideals .

I take Hugh Walpole next because he is in some

degree akin to Mackenzie, not , I mean , in the accidentalfact that they both , l ike so many of the younger school,alway s go to Cornwall for their setting, but because of

that far more important feature, their unanimity in


their outlook on l ife . The whole of MrWalpole’s textlies on the first and last pages of Fortitude .

’

Tisn’t life

that matters the courage you bring to it .

Peter Westcott, imaginative, crude, potentially agenius possessed of all the splendours and terrors whichthat word implies , suffers abominably, un justly, at thehands of a girl brought up just in the way that allthese men so deprecate , the way of ignorance andfear, of convention and second-hand opinions —Petcrthinks that in herhe will find that il lim itable affectionthat is so necessary for him . She fails him , and he isutterly broken temporarily . We leave him on the

Cornish moor listening to the new beatitudes whichare so pure, so fine , so intensely typical of the new andglorious England which is now in its birth throes :Blessed b e pain and torment and every torture of the

body . Blessed b e plague and pestilence and the ilhi essof nations . Blessed b e all loss and failure of friendsand sacrifice of love . Blessed b e the destruction of allpossessions, the ruin of all property , fine cities and greatpalaces . Blessed b e the disappointment of all ambitions . Blessed b e all failure and the ruin of everyearthly hope . Blessed b e all sorrows

,torments

,hard

ships,endurances that demand courage . Blessed b e

these things—for of these things cometh the making of

a man .

You see how they all hang together in their splendidcreed—not home comforts but homeless discomforts

,

not safety but danger, not ignorance but experience,not self-complacency but hideous doubts, not the pretence of love but the eternal search after the unattain

able this is the gospel of to-day . The secret lie s ind issatisfaction , strife and energy , the glorious buffetingand training of the soul .Gilbert Cannan , intellectually superior to most of the


school , yet comes to the same conclusion . If ever

you find yourself faced with a risk, take it , concludesold Mole, after a life of torture and the disillusionmentof experience . There is a thing called yesterday ,

butthat is only the dust-bin at the door, into which w e castour refuse , our failures, our worn-out souls . There is athing called to -morrow, bursting with far better thingsthan those which w e have d iscarded . But into to -daythe whole passionate force of the universe is pouredand therefore to -day is marvellous .

There are few m en and women born w ithout thekernel ofpassion , but what do they do with it 9 Passionis looked upon by our eldersm who have outlived it ,crushed it , controlled it so well that it has vanishedas something positively indecent—whereas passionis only the prelude , the very necessary prelude to idealism so laughed at in England ) , to the belief that thereis a wisdom greater than the wisdom of m en . In itsplace we have bowed the knee to the Baal of hypocrisy ,

so that every man’s home become s a theatre—a carefully kept up pretence , everything stunted

,soul

,

affections , hum an passions . Now w e come to an ag e

tired of this amazing puppet show in the home , andwhat happens ? What happened to the Chinesewoman’s feet when unbound 9 They cause her agoniesof suffering, so that she cannot walk—so it has beenwith us . That is the them e of Old Moledescribed by one leading reviewer as a divertingstudy .

”About as diverting as Othello . That is what

the English reading public want—diversion . That iswhat I ought to be writing a paper on The ModernEnglish Novel—Some Agencies ofDiversion , with Illustrativ e Readings from the works of Mrs HumphryWard , Jeffery Farnol, John Buchan, Ian Hay,Marjorie Bowen , Lucas Malet, Beatrice Harraden,



rightful prey , writi ng upon her face the careworn linesand characters with which she signalises herelect . God’sjustice is greater than man’s justice , God

’s wisdom thanman’s wisdom , God

’s love than man’s love, and God’

s

forgiveness than man’s . Yet Fond ie , in spite of all,forgave all, loving her so much . We may leave it withthe Infin ite to love and forgive more than man ,

withall his limitations and narrow codes . So runs theindictment ; the story is comm onplace, ordinary—tob e seen every day in the news columns and in the serialcolum ns of every halfpenny paper .

It is the attitude with which the author regards thestory , the beauty of his nature expressed in the beautyof his language that makes us include him in the list ofthose who matter . Such things are , such things oughtnot to b e . In common with the rest of his contem

poraries , he does not write merely to interest by narrative, as the eighteenth -century novelists did , but to drivea message home . These novel s are all lay sermonswell , why not 9 I refuse to submit to the absurd d ictumthat art is se lf—sufiicing and serves no useful purposeall that nonsense about beating beautiful ineffectualwings,

” and so on . The finest art is just the finestsermon in the world .

Mr St John Lucas brings us back to the main bodyagain w e can leave Mr Booth safely guarding our

flank . In The FirstRound, published seven years ago ,

and its sequel , April Folly, we reach, perhaps , thehigh-water mark of the school .In the first place, though this is partially irrelevant,

The First Round contains the finest picture of PublicSchool life as it really is that has ever been printed .

I know that MrWalpole, in MrP errin and MrTw ill,

did for a certain sort of school what ComptonMackenzie did for a certain sort of man—both these


things may have been necessary . Personally, I thinkMr Walpole’s novel was necessary, but the trueartist gives us the typ ical, and the school depictedin The First Round might equally well b e Sherborne,Winchester, Wellington , Uppingham or Shrewsbury .

It is the life story of a boy with the aesthetic facultieswe ll developed ; he has the makings of a greatmusician . Now there are more of these types—typ esthat are supra-normal—than are commonly allowedfor

,and they suffer indescribable torture wherever

they are . D enis Yorke ’s first round in the battleof life is an extremely severe one, and he comesout of it just as Peter Westco tt in Mr Walpole’sbook —c leaner, saner, truer to the ideal . Sympathyand forgetfulness of self this was the answer tothe ridd le of life , the magic talisman that madeexistence beautiful in the darkest places, the greatcomp ensation for all the poverty and suffering andinjustice in the world . The path was now p lain . Abelief in others—this was the true path, not coldlyisolated , as he had thought, but full of hosts of otherpilgrims, on a j ourney where Love himself forbade thateven the Vilest should fall by the wayside for lack of

succour from his comrades . In the sequel w e see

where this theory lands him . One of his pup il s (he b ecomes a teacher ofmusic) falls madly in love with him,

and he is at present deceived into thinking that he lovesher. When he finds out, nothing will alter himfrom his determination to carry it through, but she

finds out and leaves him . They meet years afterwards—an anticlimax , of course , like everything in life—a

miserable conversation follows , and they separate again .

An old man who has watched the meeting accosts thehero, and leaves him with this advice . I

’v e seen the

world ,”he said . I know life . Take an old man’s


advice and never do that—never hurt a woman .

Women, women give us every thing, love and adorationand pity , and then w e don’t know how to treat them,

and they go away cry ing . They lay their hearts in theroad and w e trample on them . Never do that, youngsir, never do that .

The irony of it—the same old lesson—the same

causes,the same effect, misunderstanding , misery ,

neglect all through the one agency—ignorance He

didn’t know—he didn’t know .

You must think that I have been appallingly serious,that after all , as the philosopher say s, Nothing mattershalf so much as we think it does .

”On the other hand ,

though,I grant you that at once it is equally true that

everything matters a great deal more than w e think itdoesThere is light-hearted , full-blooded humour in every

single one of these novels (with the exception, perhaps,of Conrad’s) : without it half the philosophy wouldb e lost . These young men do not take themselvesquite so seriously as I have perhaps led you tothink, but I have only just time to touch upon the

really salient feature s . I dare not pretend to offeryou anything like a complete picture of (for instance )the sympathy with which they draw the very p eoplewho are the prime movers of all the evil - the parents ,the schoolmasters , the parochial -minded advisers oftheir youth . They are all treated with a quite astonishing courtesy , their good points g iven full play ; andthey have , of course , any number of good qualities .

They have their awful tragedies too the only thing isthat they are mercifully saved by their very blindnessfrom ever realising them to the full extent .

Had I time I would press home the need for readingthe humorists pure and simple, the inimitable Mr



already knows . Conversely , or rather hence, neutralendings predominate in this school of writing becausethey also—notoriously—predominate in real l ife . Butall this talk of unhappiness does not detract frombeauty such an argument is only an illustration of the

terrible way in which ourminds g et confused . Ratherhave the Realists discovered a new beauty in things , thelovel iness that lies in obscure places, the splendour ofsordidness, hum ility and pain . They have taught usthat beauty , like the Holy Spirit, blows where it listsno true Realist but is an Idealist too .

MODERN DRAMA

W0 totally different factors have led m e totry to elucidate exactly whither w e are tendingin our stagecraft at the present time : (1 ) the

hubbub caused b y certain generals and bishops whosee in revue nothing but suggestivenes s anda Vicious lure ; and (2 ) the amazingly brilliant criticalwork of the late Mr Dixon - Scott

,published recently

under the title ofMen ofLetters .

With regard to the theatre ofto-day the most obviouscriticism to make is that out of all the thirty or soplays now running in London, every one ofwhich drawsa full house every night , only two are b y m en of re

cognised standing in the dramatic world , and one of

these is a revival . And yet only three years ago our

most enlightened and unbiased historians were stating quite definitely that the novel had had its day andwas immediately to b e supplanted by a literary revivalin drama which should astonish the world . The

machine-made play s of Labriche and Sardou had beenousted b y the freer, more natural istic school of Ibsen .

The stage had become a platform for the discussion of

all the intricate problems ofmodern life , the emancipation ofwomen, the crime of poverty , fal se romanticism ,

Home Rule , the struggle between labour and capital ,the evils that arose from all forms of stereotyped conv entions, and so on . Most ofthe leading geniuses ofourtime had contributed their quota to these polemicaldiscourses, nearly always with brilliance , if not with analtogether satisfactory knowledge of craftsmanship and

1 161


technique . There were also meteoric flights of po eticgeniuses who neither followed nor founded any school ,but flashed brill iantly foran hour and then swept b y .

Then the war came,and with it the cessation of all

serious drama . All domestic problems vanished beforethe one great , overwhelming one of coping with the

enemy,and this was scarcely one to brook being dis

cussed on the boards . Moreover, there was no argument ; the maximum output of energy directed intoits best channels was the only theme of the ardentpatriots . The nerves of the nation became tense, itsmuscles taut ; w e all went into training . The resultwas that w e temporarily lost sight of art or its uses .Relaxation w e understood to b e necessary forall of us,el se why should soldiers ever b e granted leave 9 The

point was : What sort of relaxation was best for thefighter and worker 9 We were not long left in doubt .

America stepped into the breach l eft by the legitimatedrama’s decease and charmed us with revue .

”

Musical comedy maintained a rather precarious holdon its conservative lovers , comedy and tragedy properdied , the music-halls, in order to save their lives, werecompelled to abandon isolated “ turns for this newcraze

,and as a result w e have now the choice between

revue and nothing .

Men back from the front were supplied with thedishes for which their souls ached : lightness, prettiness ,merriment , catchy songs , colour, youth , and, in moderation (because of its exceeding rarity ) , beauty . Theyfound it possible to forget all the mud and blood

,the

horror of separation and death ; for three hours theycould laugh whole heartedly , lose themselves in delightand carry away impressions of gaiety which wouldbuoy them up in the dark moments which threatenedtheir future .



thinking powers to sleep . That object the creatorsof revue seem to m e to have produced .

I am amazed at the hue and cry raised at presentagainst these so necessary amusements

,but it does

indirectly raise the question of serious acting .

Surely there must by now b e many people who are

tired of an interminable round of “ telephone -scenes ,”

of the effect (once so bizarre and delectable ) of playing the “ revue ” backwards, of j ingling , m eaninglessrhymes, and songs that drive you desperate with theirthinness ofmelody and lack of originality in theme .

It is time a new dramatist arose to carry on the hightraditions of 1913, to give us fresh ideas and noblerideals, to amuse us, not by buffoonery , but b y subtletyand charm , to ensnare us artistically . We do not wantmerely the revival of Shakespeare and Sheridan , w ewant a fresh irnpetus in the world of drama as w e havein the Sphere of poetry and painting , fiction and music .

Why is it that the theatre alone has played us falsein this crisis ? In the face of incredible difficulties,artists and musicians have kept the flam e of beautyalive in our hearts it is time beauty returned to thestag e . At the present day most thinking m en andwomen seek pleasure anywhere but in the theatrethe galleries are crowded , the concert-halls betterattended than ever before . The only reason why therevues are full is because everyone necessarily

gravitates in war-time to London . The country isunbearable ; we tend to become introspective

,which

Spell s madness in these days . Be ing in London,w e

naturally attend its theatre s consequently moneyis pouring into the laps of the managers and proprietors .But if only a little courage could b e cultivated by thesemost conservative purveyors of amusement I think thatthey would find that Brighouse and Barrie are not the

MODERN DRAMA 165

only serious playwrights who are able to command our

attention . Where are Granville Barker, Shaw, ArnoldBennett, Masefield and Chesterton 9—to mention the

most obvious quintette .

Do the theatre owners really think, because there is awar on , that w e are unable to appreciate the artistryof such plays as The Madras House , Nan , Magic, The

Great Adventure, or How He Lied to Her Husband 9

It has already been proved that w e cannot toleratemelodramatic rubbish like The Hawk . We are muchmore critical , much more alert than w e used to b e

,as a

natural consequence of ourquadrupled energy . We donot want eternal narcotics as our refection ; after atime they cease to take effect . A change of environm ent

,

not mere blankness,is the best refreshm ent for the

body and brain ,the j aded munitioneer or the wounded

warrior . It is just as much a national service for ourgreat playwrights to exert the ir powers on our behalfas it is for those of us whose lot l ies in more mundaneduties to do what w e best can for the cause to whichwe are pledged . Who then are the m en w e look to tocom e forward and cleanse our stage ,

” and what is itthat w e expect from them 9It is at this point that I would introduce MrDixon

Scott’s critical essay s to the notice of those unfortunateswho are as yet unfamiliar with them .

Many critics , particularlyMrChesterton, have writtenbrilliant expositions of the work of Bernard Shaw

,but

no one has got so close to the heart of the matter asMr Dixon Scott. To find out exactly what Shaw hasdone for the stage w e have to go back som e years, tothe days

,in fact

,when he set out

,Quixote -l ike

,to make

the theatre a factory of thought, a prompter of conscience , an elucidator of conduct , an armoury againstdespair and dullness , and a temple of the Ascent of


Man all this simply because he happened tob e dramatic critic of The Saturday Review, for, as MrDixon Scott has pointed out , Shaw

’s besetting weaknessis a certain stubborn pride of soul which cannot permithim to adm it , even in a whisper to hirnself, that thecause he is engaged in is not crucial . As Rodin hassaid

,susceptible to impressions l ike all artists and a

philosopher at the same tim e Shaw cannot do otherwise than deceive hirnself. At any rate by 1898 he

had deceived himself into thinking that the drama washis special mission . Now in the first place he lackedthe prime essential of all dramatists , the qual ity of animaginative sympathy : the quality of just watchingwith ever-growing delight the doings of every sort andsize of people no one could b e less fitted than he wasto give the public the sort of play that they ought tohave had . He was intolerant ofhis audience’s stupidityand viciousness , part of them nine-tenths chapelgoers b y temperament , and the remainder ten-tenthsblackguards .” His early training in social ism hadmade him unsociabl e, and a moment’s thought willconvince us of the l imitations of a playwright whowantonly narrows his range because of his m isundertanding of and contempt for the people .

Secondly , the very brilliance of his diction, terse, intellectually incisive , keen and crisp as it had become by

years of practice, necessarily cut him adrift from morethan nine-tenths of his fellow-m en . He could onlywrite definite dialogue , so all his characters have to b em en and women of quite definite convictions . All the

dramatis personae seem to belong to one exclusive caste .

Thirdly, this exclusiveness made him innocently acceptwhat was then known as the “

New Woman ”

(how

grotesque and old-fashioned she seems to-day ) as woman .

The amazing thing is that in Spite of these l imitations


1 68 STUDIES IN LITERATURE

for those who wish to forget the pain and lies thatawait them outside the theatre . It is no question of

holding the m irror up to nature either with Shaw or

Wilde any more than it was with Congreve and hisfellow Restoration dramatists . It is, w e may say withR . L . Stevenson , with the ob j ect of escaping from life

that w e turn to b ook s or the stage to-day . No one

wants to see our actual conflict with the powers of

evil depicted on the London stage . We want to b eamused : why not permit society

’s licensed j esters ofthe last two decades to come and cut their capers beforeus once again ? Ag e cannot wither nor custom staletheir artificial humour.Again, what has happened to the Irish players ?

Only a few years ago w e were all agog with enthusiasmover the Ce ltic Revival, with the Sparkling , astringent,tonic qualities of Synge and his compatriots , Yeats,Lady Gregory , St John Irvine, Rutherford Mayne ,Lennox Robinson and the rest of them .

Certainly w e find a different school of thoughtcatered for again here . There is no question of changing the world . Synge writes down in a musical ,rhythmical pro se that has never been equalled beforenorsince exactly what he heard and saw in those remoteislands offthe west of Ireland . Is there no room to-dayfor such a play as TheWell of the S aints, with its centralmotif of the tragedy of fulfilled desire ; do w e no

longer care to witness artistic representations ofworldtruths 9 To judg e from letters and articles in the Press,w e are only just beginning to b e alive to them whythen banish them from the stage ? Do our theatricalmanagers really bel ieve that a revival of The t yboyof the Wester‘n Worht would involve financial loss ?Why , there never was a time when m en and womenwere so interested in the development of the soul

MODERN DRAMA 169

within us. War has made many of us likely gaffersin the end of all who might otherwise have been contentto crawl from cradle to grave feckless , blind , un

ambitious and useless as Christy Mahon was beforeP egeen Mike (the prototype of war) awoke in him selfconfidence and the thousand latent talents which wereto make a man of him . There is no sermonising here ,but only a vast imaginative sympathy , a telling senseof dramatic values and the haunting m elody of a patoisfew of us had ever appreciated before . There was

,

moreover, acting ofa kindw e had never seen in Englandthese Irish play ers appeared m erely to b e living theirordinary lives and w e privil eged to look through thewindows of their cottages as they went about the irbusiness, ignorant of our presence .

No wonder the best critics became optimistic andprophesied a brave future for the drama but whyhave war’s alarms driven them from our midst ? We

need them now more than ever w e did .

Why did the repertory system make such headwayin Dublin , Glasgow , Birmingham , Manchester andBristol and fail ignominiously in London 9 There can b eno doubt that salvation lie s in this system and in thisalone . Such a play as Mr Chesterton’s Magic

has a perennial charm . It can no more grow stalethan Max Beerb ohm

’s cartoons or Henry James’s

novel s can . It is for all time . That being so , there isno need to put it on for two hundred nights and thenconsign it to oblivion as is done with the majority of

long-run plays , the machine -made melodrama , the

treacly sentimental comedy , the vacuous musical ( l)farce or the pageant-play . In common with the worksof other geniuses which deal with beauty and the eternalVerities it ought to take its turn for a fortnight

,say ,

sandwiched between S trife and The Tragedy of Nam,


then be given a rest and produced again in three or

four months . It is just such a fantasy as will whirl

you away into a wonderland of pure mirth mingl edw ith real pathos

,where shrewdness and intellect are

not blunted but rather exhilarated and sharpened . Itleav es you think ing, as you come out

,over the many

suggestions , the flashes of insight into the meaning of

life which encrust the play like so many rich j ewels .It has the gift, which is almost the criterion of everygood play , of not leaving you where it found you . You

have advanced yet another rung on the difficult ladderof l ife .

All these men fulfil Synge’s dictum that on the

stage one must have reality, and one must have joy .

”

Mr Granville Barker, the pierrot on pilgrimage, is thenext playwright on whom the critical genius ofMrDixon Scott alights : of his plays he picks out The

Madras House as the high-water mark of his genius ,Here w e have ,

” say sMrScott, a beautiful loyalty tol ife , an exquisitely natural unfurl ing and effoliation of

character and motive , undeflected by an arbitraryconcept ormerely intellectual creed a del iciously fluentpose, balance , grace of construction and design beautycomes flying back to this play, a glittering invader,gloriously flushing and confirm ing al l its action .

” Ineighteen years Mr Barker has written only four plays ,but each ofthese belongs to the imperishable type whichwill long outlast the generation for whom they werewritten ; for eighteen years he has been laboriously,slowly cutting letters out afresh , in order that he cansee and use the Virgin ore beneath ourphrases , fightingdown to som ething dense as metal , as enduring as amarble pavement underneath , economical as a cablegram and yet with a charm , grace and elegance , asilvery sl endern ess , a quivering

“ l ife like the Spring



another fiv e years would have seen the dramatist as asuccessful w riter of fiction . The immediate point atissue is that there was much in his play s which w e

deplore the want of to -day . H e may have been imitative w e can smell Shaw, Wilde , Hankin , Bennett,and even Synge in most of his work

,but he wrested

from these a sense of witty and crisp dialogue which isaltogether dead now .

In his plays he may, as Mr Brighouse asserts , haveobserved life from the comic writer’s point of view,

which is not the poet’s . For his art, not the beauty of

l ife , but the absurdities and hypocrisies of daily existence , were the targets of his aim . Even so w e may b e

duly grateful for such a manifestation of the ComicSpirit, for she is woefully lacking in the theatre to -day .

Hindle Wakes and The YoungerGeneration did at leastbring reality back to the stage

,and also joy : they

woke us up to the fact that even in the North (soprovincial are w e Southrons things are movingthe youth of the ag e was knocking at the door anddemanding a right to live its own life in its ow nway .

MrDixon Scott is hardly just to Houghton he is too

keen to prove that he was a dramatist b y force ofcircumstances , a novel ist by instinct ; he forgets that even inthe l ittl e that w e pos sess ofhis dram atic work he showsan insight into character, a sense of situation

,

” andan amazing shrewdness which are just the qualitie sw e most need on the stage at this juncture .

He does not moral ise l ike Shaw he just stands aside ,draws the curtain and lets his characters developnormally, shocking us b y their crudity , pleasing us

with their real ity , tickling our minds with their“ foreign ” method of speech and code of manners .Mr Brighouse has learnt how effective the Lancashiredialect can b e to amuse a London audience . It is on

MODERN DRAMA 173

the same plane as the Scots brogue in Bunty pulls theS trings or the Irish in the Synge play s .The debt owed by the drama to Masefield , that

versatile genius who succeeds in whatever form of

literary composition he undertakes , is by no meansinconsiderable . P ompey the Great no doubt owes itsmodern note to Caesar and Cleopatra,

but its poetry isall Masefield

’

s own . Nan is an attempt to create anew form of drama in which beauty and the highthings of the soul may pass from the stage to the mind ,a result of that power of exultation which comes froma delighted brooding on excessive , terrible things .It is only by such a Vision as is presented to us in playsof this calibre that the multitude can b e brought tothe passionate knowledge of things exulting and eternal .The short, staccato sentences ofMasefield , who always

works with an economy of vocabulary little short of

astounding , are l ike scmtillating jewels . Like all hisgreat contemporaries

,he lets his puppets loose and

watche s them develop ; no one is ever the same atthe end as he was at the beginning of the play , whetheractor or audience ; it is all nonsense to pretend thatw e are depressed b y an artistic representation of the

terrible it is only the exploitation of the sordid b y themuck—merchants that revolts us there is an intellectualdelight to b e found in all real tragedy unlike any othersort of delight in the world and yet we are toldthat because it is war-time w e must not have seriousplays They will make us brood . Nothingcould b e further from the truth .

The quarrel,as a matter of fact, goes deeper than that.

It is a question of the unintelligence of the Englishstage as a whole . The public is given what the publicwants ; there are hundreds of intell igent dramatistsonly too anxious to put intell igent dramas on to the


boards , but they are kept out in the cold, sol ely becausethe managers will not risk taking on their shoulders theeducation of the public . Had this not been so w e

should not have Arnold Bennett ly ing fallow at thismoment.Cupid and Commonsense

,What the Public Wants,

Milestones and The GreatAdventure may not b e highlyimaginative plays, but they are intell igent, they havehumour, they did fill a most pronounced gap in thehis tory of English drama ; they left the audiencepondering over various problems of modern l ife , with adetermination to g et more out of existence , to see , tomove , to squeeze whatever juice they could from theinchoate , hum drum medley of contradictions whichmade up their day s . Furthermore , they lent themselves to good acting and bringing out the latent talentof all the cast .None of these modern dramatists ever write;one

-manplay s . All the subsidiary characters have their own

intrinsic irnportance ; they are not mere puppets ,who walk on and off, arousing on interest . We are

keenly alive to the human side of all the dramatispersonae . Gal sworthy, of course , l ike Shaw , uses thestage as a platform for the presentation of his these son social problems . More than any contemporaryartist he detaches himself from his characters

,and gives

both sides of a case with scrupulous fairness . InS trife w e are compelled to admire both the conservativestolidity and courageous obstinacy of the capital ist,and the struggle of the m en against their employers .Galsworthy will never show his hand . He has a superbsense of situation and of atmosphere

,and presents

both with beautiful, consummate artistry. In The

S ilverBoa: each character is delineated with a masterlyinsight and a tremendous sympathymade individualistic



kind as to cause us to stop over it it is sentimental,machine-made and not capable of bearing carefulscrutiny .

He has made numbers of mistakes as Stevensonforeshadowed as long ago as 1892 Stuff in that youngman ; but he must see and not b e too funny he

wrote Rosy Rapture, which would have damned a lesserman ; but he also wrote Ah Admirable Crichton

and P eter Pan,and he is imm ediately forgiven . His

strength l ies in his power to rouse our delight in a one

act play , Rosalind , The Will, The Twelve-

pound Look

and The New Word he can quietly, whimsicallyyet quite surely in one l ittle half-hour make us runthrough the whole gamut of human emotions ; he isa master of quaint conceits, of bizarre touches andchildlike ingeniousness and yet all the time , asMrDixon Scott so superbly puts it , w e are cognisantoftwo quite separate egos fighting forthe mastery inthis man’s composition : one, the solemn aspirant, tre !

m endously aware of the dignity of letters , worshippingportraits of great writers with all the grim ambitiousness of the Scot ; the other, an incurable lover of

the pretty and the prankish . P eople are fond of say ingthat he has never grown up ; the truth is that he hasgrown down and dwindled just when he longed mostpassionately to tower, and finds his feet pervers elytrotting off to the Round Pond to play with children,when all the time he was ordering them to mount thegranite staircase that leads to lasting fame . Whenhe is neither hum orous nor pathetic he is nothing ,

”

say s Arnold Bennett ;“ imagine a diet all salt and

sugar —and this is,in truth , the final word with

regard to him . He is always touching us to laughteror tears ; no one l iving can move us more quickly toweep with laughter and then, within a moment , cause

MODERN DRAMA 177

us to weep with grief, only to laugh hilariously againthe next second . His diet is really all condimentsthere is no body in it , no lasting nutriment, as thereis in the work of Galsworthy and Barker—and yet

there is artistry, there is a shimmery sort of beauty ,

Opalescent , gossamer .Few of ourtheatrical Optimists , in 1913 ,

would havedared to prophesy that by 1916 St John Hankin wouldb e dead

,but his name has crossed the l ips of no play

goersince thewarbegan . Surelyw e have not advancedso far that w e can afford to neglect such supreme lywitty, clarifying , astringent work as The Charity that

B egan at Home, The Cassilis Engagement and The

Return of the Prodigal. He has something of the

aristocratic detachment of Galsworthy, the same

l impid,musical pro se style and acute perception of

dialogue all of which excellences are sadly to

seek in the stage to -day ; w e might as well shut oureyes to the beauty of Wilde . They have this muchin common : a shrewd sense of humour and a tellingsense of situation .

” Hankin cared a good deal aboutocial problems , Wilde not at all . Both were devotedto the cause of art

,and gave of their best to make the

stage intelligent and literary . Perhaps no other manis so well qualified to make us forget the miseries of ourown time as a genius ofWilde’s temperament

,with his

astonishing epigram and paradox,his remoteness from

actual workaday life and amoral attitude to everything .

The English theatre is in dire need ofbrains . We

have borne,for two and a halfyears, more or less sadly,

with ephemeral , sentimental rubbish, gaudy pageantry ,

cheap melodrama , American revue ,” musical comedy ,

rowdy farces , one -man “ light comedies , all writtenwith an ey e on the gallery ; it is time some brave


producer took his stand and resuscitated legitimatedrama , revived Wilde, Hankin , Bennett, Synge,Houghton,Arthur Symons, StephenPhillips , Chesterton,Masefield, Barker and Shaw (what joy s their verynames conjure up to the lover of art 1) and encouragedthe young geniuses of the new generation to follow intheir steps and perfect what they left undone . Thereis no lack of native latent talent it is only waiting foran invitation to come forward .

It is not imm orality that w e charge the stage withnowadays : it is dullness , sheer blankness , a desperate ,stereotyped form of entertainm ent , without a Spark of

original ity , relying on ag e-old , threadbare j ests, inane

dialogue , and an absence of any artistry. The actingis all right . It is marvellous how much our leadingactors and actresse s can g et out of the w ooden, l ifelessparts which are assigned to them .

We cannot too often repeat Syng e’s dictum that on

the stage one must have reality and joy as at presentconstituted there is a lamentable absence of both .

Nothing could well b e further removed from e ither thanthe play s which are commonly accounted successes ;a false , hysterical giggling has supplanted joy, and anartificial convention

,as remote from actual ity as the

feuilleton in a halfpemiy paper, has taken the placeof realism .

We never needed amusement more than we do nowwe do not want, as Shaw tried to delude himself intobelieving , the theatre turned into a sort of pulpit, butwe do want it to appeal to our sense of the beautiful ,and our intellectual senses . We do not want to b esent to sleep ; w e want to b e transported, as ShakeSpeare

,Goldsmith and Sheridan transported ourfathers,

into a land of sheer delights ; w e want to feel againthe purgative joy s of true tragedy , to revel in the


SAMUEL BUTLER

I

O the question , What sort of man was the

author of Erewhon ? I suppose the best andquickest answer would b e He was the sort

of man who preferred Hande l above all other com

posers, Italy above all other countries, disliked Tenn!son , Dickens and Thackeray, and was not afraid to sayso, and , according to Shaw

’s own accoun t, was theprim e influence in the formation of that iconoclast’scharacter .

”

That he is still but little known in educationalquarters can b e gauged by the fact that at one greatPublic School the librarian bought from MrFifield hiscomplete works, under the impression that they wereby the author of Hudibm s . I know of no other bigschool where the complete works of our Samuel Butlerare to b e found . He was related neither to the Bishopnor to the Restoration poet . His grandfather was theheadmaster of Shrewsbury ; his father the Vicar ofLangar, near Nottingham,

where Samuel himself wasborn on 4th December 1885 . He naturally attendedthe school where his grandfather had been headmaster ,and was there for six y ears . In 1854 he went up toSt John’s College, Cambridge, and took a first-class inthe Classical Tripos in 1858 . In the sam e year he wentto London with the idea of working among the poor andeventually taking Holy Orders, but he now began todoubt the efficacy of infant baptism, which led to hisabandoning this proj ect and he sailed to New Z ealand

180

SAMUEL BUTLER 181

and started sheep -farming instead . His interest inDarwin’s theory of Selection began to manifest itselfin 1862, when he wrote to the Press on the subj ect inan article called Darwin on the Origin of Species—ADialogue . In 1864 he returned to England and settleddown for the rest ofhis life at 15 Clifford’s Inn , London ,

as a painter, exhibiting at the Royal Academy and elsewhere . He had constantly been over to Italy since hisearly boyhood , and in 1870 he returned there to recoverfrom a sp ell of overwork . The same year he m et MissEliza Mary Ann Savage, who so influenced the rest ofhis life , and whose character is so splend idly portrayedin Alethea in The Way ofAllF lesh. In 1872 Erewhonwas published , and the following y ear saw the publication ofThe FairHoven , an ironical work purporting tob e in d efence of the miraculous element in ourLord’sm inistry upon earth

,both as against rationalistic

impugners and certain orthodox defenders,” written

under the pseudonym of John P ickard Owen , with am emoir of the supposed author by his brother, WilliamBickersteth Owen .

This book, to Butler’s supreme joy ,

was takenseriously by certain Church papers and praised for its

plendid defence of orthodox Christianity .

Between 1876 and 1886 he experienced seriousfinancial difficulties , but he had the good fortune in thefirst of these years to make the acquaintance of MrHenry Festing Jones , who has preserved for us so manyofhis conversations and given us Butler’s greatest workin The Noteboohs, where in is contained all the creamofhis philosophy and humour .

In 1877 was published Life and Hain'

t,which gives in

detail his Views on Darwin’s theory and his points ofdivergence from it . It was followed , in 1881 , by Alpsand Sanctuaries, one of his most interesting and perhaps


themost charming ofhisworks , as he wrote it in holidaymood and illustrated it throughout himself. In 1883he began to compose music as nearly as he could in thesty le of Hand el . Two y ears later Miss Savage d ied ,and the y ear following the death of his father finallyended his financial distress .

In 1892 he gave his lecture on TheHumourofHomer,in which we see , for the first time , his conceptionas to the authorship of the Odyssey, which he maintain ed was written by a woman and very probably byNausicaa .

In 1897 he printed The Authoress of the Odyssey , tostrengthen this View, and in 1899 he published a mostvaluable criticism on Shakespeare’s Sonnets, in whichhe follows the autobiographical tradition very strongly .

1901 saw the publication of Erewhon Revisited, and on18th June 1902 he died , leaving behind the MS . ofhis purely autobiographical novel , The Way of AllF lesh, which was published by R . A. Streatfeild in

1903 .

As everyone knows, Butler’s fame in his lifetime was

not great, but every year since his death has increasedthe circle of his readers . Gilbert Cannan’

s able book ,

followed by that ofMrJohn F . Harris , has done muchto keep him before the public eye , and it is probablethat as time goes on the thinking public will b e attractedmore and more to a man who could think so clearly ,

argue so convincingly, preserve so perfect a sense of

hum our and freshen and enliven the imagination andthe intellect as Samuel Butler did . He is certainlysafe for his good average threescore years and tenof immortality if ever man was .



country parsonage in all its phases , and never has thisodious existence been more ruthlessly exposed or withsuch w ealth of detail . We are given the boy’s life atschool , with the gradual dawning of his doubts as tomany of the things which the V ictorians adhered tolike limpets as part and parcel of their creed, withoutwhich the whole fabric of their lives would fall abouttheir ears .

His life in lodgings in London is so vividly done thatnothing could ever make us forget Mrs Jupp , whodeserves to live longer than Mrs Gamp ,

or Mrs Gummidge as an eternal type

,imperishable so long as

human nature remains what it is. His adventures withhis fellow-lodgers are ghastly , and y et how inevitablytrue that is what so attracts us about the wholebook it is absolutely real you don

’t feel at all thatit was written about an ag e long past which w e abhorbeyond all others . It would b e just as true were itwritten about life to -day . Perhap s w e care less aboutthese strange cavillings over orthodox beliefs . We are

also more emancipated in other way s, but w e, too, have

just the same fight for the right to live our own liveseven if the hydras w e oppose are slightly different fromthose against which Samuel Butler so successfully tilted .

The romance ofhis life w e can only guess at . We knowhow much he cared for Miss Savage we shouldhave known that from his picture of Alethea alone .

Why he never married herwe do not know his affection for hermay have been like Swift

’s for Stella ; itcertainly seems so to the casual reader .

Authors are notorious for the way they mess up thebest part of their l ives ; their relations with theirwomenfolk are best left alone it is hard to probe theirreasons and not altogether important .

The feeling that one has on finishing The Way ofAll

SAMUEL BUTLER 185

Flesh is that w e must begin it all over again at oncewe then wish and wish that he had written not one buttwenty novels - so terse a sty le, so definite a pointof view, so much sense, so l ittle padding is not to b eseen once in ten years in the novel s of to -day .

Alps and S anctuaries was received with contemptuoussilence from the critics , for the most part ; those whomentioned it treated it with op en hostility . It is impossible to imagine either point of View to -day . It isan open-air, genial book packed with good things , notleast among which are the amazing sketches from the

p encil of Butler himself . It is simply an account of awalking tour through Italy taken by Butler in the company of his friend , Festing Jones . In it w e find thatovermastering love ofHandel , which was one ofButler

’smost pronounced characteristics, coming out on everypage : a chapel , a valley , a snow- clad peak , a Village—any picturesque setting sets him off and he im

mediately puts it to music . He is reminded of a snatchfrom an oratorio of Handel , and puts it straight downin the book , and so insidious is his description that hemakes you see the place more clearly than any otherwriter, solely because of his threefold power of attracting you by his music, his painting and his writing .

He tells us all sorts of interesting things about himself of his dislik e of Milton , of his habit ofmarking inred on the ordnance map the places he passes . He givesyou exquisite hints for the avoidance of canting,hypocritical points of View .

Witness this test for liking a picture


Would you care to look at it alone 9and this for the appreciation of good music

Do you find your attention stray ing to the adver

tisements on the back of the programme 9

His sense of the whim sical is almost Celtic , and re

minds us of James Stephens . The potato is a goodtempered , frivolous plant, easily aroused and easilybored ; and one, moreover, which , if bored , yawnshorribly The spider is an ugly creature, but Isuppose God likes it .

”

It is in Alps and S anctuaries that there occurs thatfamous emendation There

’

l ives more doubt inhonest faith, believe m e , than in - which wascorrected in the margin of the British Museum copy

(a story that sounds too good to b e true) . How

Butler would have loved to have seen that marginalcorrectionPhilosophy , too , abounds . A bad sign for man’s

peace in his own convictions when he cannot standturn ing the canvas of his life upside down .

”This

might have been taken by G . K . Chesterton for his l ifemotto

, so exactly does it fit that robust Christian .

Sourtout point d e zele , he continue s,“ take a

Spiritual outing occasionally , try seasonarianism , peoplemust go to church to b e a little better, to the theatre tob e a little naughtier, to the Royal Institution to b e alittle more scientific than they really are .

”

Is there not some healthy , breezy sort of feeling thatcomes over you as you read that ? No one but adefinitely religious and devout man could have writtenit—one who had resolutely faced all the problems thatworry humanity and forced an answer out of theinfinite . Samuel Butler, most ofall men , was delightedto wrestle with that same spirit whom Jacob met

but who nowadays, forsome reason , leaves us alone to



as looking up , nothing encourages so much as lookingdown . It does a beginner positive harm to look at themasterpieces of Turn er and Rembrandt . The secretsof success are affection for the pursuit chosen, a flatrefusal to b e hurried or to pass anything as understoodwhich is not understood , and an obstinacy of character

together with a slight infusion of its directopposite .

”

We close the book on a note ringing like a gale sweeping all ourpreconceived , second -hand theorie s away likea piece ofpaper on the rocks .

“ Raffaelle , P lato , M. Aurelius, Dante , Goethe and twoothers (ne ither of them Englishmen) should b e consignedto limbo as the Seven Humbugs of Christendom .

”

I said We close the book .

” I am wrong . The wiseman will find infinite enjoyment in perusing the index,where he will b e sent back to follow up such clues as aregiven by Pantheism of Rhubarb

,

”or Rhinocero s

grunts a fourth ,

” and other delectable treasures . Alps

and S anctuaries deserves far more fame than has yetbeen accorded to it . It is a joyous , thoughtful book—a sort of Alice in Wonderland of a great scientistand philosopher . And it is a truism that the holidaymoods of these world-think ers are not lightly to b edespised ; the ir lightning flashes of merry wit are allpregnant with illuminating , blinding shocks whichelectrify our system and cause us to delve deeper forourselve s into the world’s mysterie s and come awayfrom our search enriched beyond all our wildest dreams .

One of the many things we missed by being bornabout the time of Queen V ictoria’s jubilee was hearing

SAMUEL BUTLER 189

Ruskin lecture another wasWilliam Morris . To thiswe now have to add Samuel Butler’s scintillating gossipto working m en on The Humour of Homer. How he

must have shaken the dovecotes of Oxford and Cambridge , if they even so much as heard that a new

prophet had arisen who knew not Homer but openlyfiaunted his belief in the woman authorship of theOdyssey . His translation is the only one we knowwhich renders the pure spirit of the Greek into modern ,up

-to -date English prose .

Here , if anywhere , he has followed his own advicethat a man should b e clear of his meaning before hegives it any utterance having made up his mind whatto say , he should say it briefly , pointedly and plainly .

It is in this book that w e learn that the Burmah, onwhich he fully meant to sail for New Z ealand , wentdown with all hands . Surely there is a Providencethat guides our ends . It is in The Humour ofHomer that we also learn that Chapman Hall, totheir everlasting disgrace , refused the MS . of Erewhon,

on the advice ofno less gifted a critic than Meredith .

Butler conce ived a theory ,fantastic and half

humorous,that Wordsworth harbourcd a dark secret

in his life , and in an amazingly humorous passageannotates the text of one of the Lucy poem s toprove that he had done the poor girl to death . It wouldhave puzzled him not a little to discover that he wasnearer the truth than he thought, and that it remainedfor an American

,in 1916 , to reveal what had been

successfully hidden from the world for over a centurynamely ,

thatWordsworth, the revered apostle oforthodoxy , the standb y of all who believe in regularity of

living and rectitude of conduct, was the father of anatural child by a French girl whom he was unable tomarry .


One piece of advice he gives us with regard to Homerwhich should be engraven on a text and distributedthroughout every classroom in every classical school inthe kingdom . If w e are to b e at home with Homer,there must be no sitting on the edge of one’s chairdazzled .

It is here that he makes his epigram with regard tothe three Samuel Butlers of literary fame .

6 ‘ If Erewhon’were a horse I should say Erewhonb y Hudibras out ofAnalogy,

’ in which there is a profundity of meaning uncomm on in epigrammatic speech .

It delights the hearts of those of us who believe thatShakespeare drew upon his acquaintances for his majorcharacters to find that Butler believed that Mrs Quicklywas found by the dramatist in real life and s implyphotographed on to the stage . It needed courage tosay this in the e ighties with impunity ; even in 1916such a statement does not go un scathed .

There is a splendid paragraph in this book on TitlesforBooks I hope toWh‘ ite .

’One of themost inspiring is

‘Half-Hours with theW01s tAuthors . Howmany ofuscould submit endless cutti ngs for that gallery nowadays .

And now we are come to the book whereon we shouldb e content te let all Samuel Butler’s fame rest, TheNote

books . In this volume is collected together all the germsof all his work in tablet, portmanteau form . To readthem is to copy them out ; to copy them out is to learnthem ; and to learn them is an education in itself.

Apparently Butler carried a notebook about withhim wherever he went

,and copied into it whatever of

value he heard anyone say or whatever he said himself



We get here a glimpse of that theory which was socharacteristic of Butler

,that death was nothing, our

immortality was the thought with which w e enrichedthe world orthat shameful deed which impoverished it .

As to the art of living , he say s A sense of humourkeen enough to show a man his own absurd ities , as wellas those of other people , will keep him from the commission of all sins

,or nearly all , save those that are

worth committing .

”This little tang in the tail of his

epigrams reminds us of Rupert Brooke and strikes anote which is commonly supposed to b e much moremodern than the V ictorian ag e in which Butler lived .

Life is like music,

”he continue s . It must b e

composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule .

Nev ertheless, one had better know the rules, for theysometimes guide in doubtful cases—though not often .

It comes as a shock to the unco’ guid , but how itmust have delighted the heart of the youthful G . B . S .

to hear his master say that all progress is based upon aun iversal innate desire on the part of every organismto live beyond its income followed by the quaintconfession that he was glad that he had squandered agood deal of his life . What a heap of rubbishthere would have been if I had not , he whimsicallyconcludes . Life beyond the grave to him meansseventy y ears of immortality, of fame after he is dead ,

as a guide to the next generations of Englishmen whoshall come after him .

A delightful piece of philosophy is contained in one of

his earliest notes, to the effect that all things are e itherof the nature of a piece of string ora knife . One make sfor togetheriness ,

”the other for splitty

-uppiness.

”

In high philosophy one should never look at a piece ofstring without considering it also as a knife , nor at aknife without considering it as a piece of string .

”

SAMUEL BUTLER 193

The second section is on Elementary Morality , wherewe find a code of right and wrong which acts likeammonia on our dulled senses . When the righteousman turneth away from his righteousness that he hathcommitted and doeth that which is neither quite lawfulnor quite right, he will generally b e found to have gainedin amiability what he has lost in holiness . It is as immoral to b e too good as to b e too anything else . How

often do w e not see children ruined through the Virtues,real or supposed , of the ir parents ? Truly he Visiteththe Virtues of the fathers upon the children unto thethird and fourth generation . V ice is the awakening tothe knowledge of good and evil—without which thereis no life worthy of the name . There cannot b e aHold fast that which is good without a Prove allthings going before it .

”

Here w e see the reaction against the Nottinghamshire Rectory coming out with a vengeance . This isthe result of the convention-ridden atmosphere of strictSabbatarianism . Oh that men might b e made to see

the agony they inflict on their children by a thoughtless , rigid code of ethics, doled out without thought oftemperament or changing times . Here is a text thatshould again b e hung, not only all round the dormitories of Public Schools, but in every church and chapelin the British Isles .

It is also as well that some of us should take to heartwhat our doctors so frequently tell us, that intellectualover- indulgence is the most gratuitous and disgracefulform which excess can take ; for we pride ourselveshypocritically on the fact that half England does nowork at all, while w e slave for our daily bread nightand day without rest throughout the livelong yearboasting about it as if it were a virtue one might aswell brag of drinking night and day .

N


The extremes of vice and Virtue , Butler is never tiredof pointing out , are alike detestable ; absolute Virtueis as sure to kill a man as absolute Vice is, let alone thedullnesses of it and the pomposities of it .

It send s a d isagreeable thrill through one’s toocomfortable mind to rem ember that, after all, moralityis the custom of one’s country and consequently thatcannibalism is moral in a cann ibal country . On everypage of The Notebooks w e see more and more howmuch Shaw owes to Butler ; of course he has acknowledged the debt, but for some inexplicable reason no one

has y et taken the trouble to believe him . Ignorantcritics still hiss Nietzsche, and w e are content to leaveit at that .

Compare this sta tem ent,for instance, with countless

passages in Shaw’s play s : I believe that more un

happiness comes from the attempt to prolong familyconnection unduly and to make people hang togetherartificially who would never naturally do so than fromany other .

” Why here is the whole Shavian bag of

tricks, the very thing that has sent country parsonsboiling over with rage in the pulpit, seething withrighteous indignation about sacred family ties andall the rest of the jargon so popular among thatuneducated type .

I propose to pass over the notes that apply to suchd efinitely technical theories as are contained in the

Darwin controversy and the germs of Erewhon andLife and Habit because I am end eavouring here simplyto show how necessary Butler is to all who think at allgenerally or care about the laws that govern ourmodeof life . Butler’s contributions to evolution are, shortly



In this same section of notes on Mi nd and Matter w ecome across that note on Nightshirts and Babies whichso pleased the heart of John Harris .

On Hindhead , last Easter, w e saw a family washhtmg out to dry . There were papa’s two great nightshirts and mamma’s two lesser nightgowns and thenthe children’s smaller articles of clothing and mamma’sdrawers and the girls’ drawers, all full swollen with astrong north—east wind . But mamm a’s nightgownwas not so well p inned on and , instead of being full ofsteady wind like the others , kept blowing up and downas though she were preaching wild ly . We stood andlaughed for ten minutes . The housewife came to thewindow and wondered at us, but w e could not resist thepleasure of watching the absurdly lifelike gestureswhich the nightgowns made . I should like a S antaFamiglz

'

a with clothes d ry ing in the background .

”

You must read the rest of this peerless note for yourself it is simply wonderful, but too long to give indetail .

But it is on the subj ect of the making of music,pictures and books that Butler pleases the ordinaryman of the world most . Here he gives us the mostprofound thoughts that ever emanated from his mindand w e get more clues than we can find in any otherliterary m an’s work that I can forthe moment recollect,except , perhaps, Robert Louis Stevenson .

“ What w e should read ,”he say s, is not the

words but the man whom w e feel to b e behind thewords .

Again Words are like money there is nothing so

useless,unless when in actual use . Books are simple

SAMUEL BUTLER 197

imprisoned souls until someone takes them down fromthe shelf and reads them .

”

He say s that the same rule applies to the making of

literature, music and pictures what is required is

that the artist shall say or depict what he elects to say

or depict discreetly that he shall b e quick to see the

gist of a matter and give it pithily without e itherprolixity or stint of words the fewest words ortouches

,there lies the secret of the whole business .

Would to heaven that all the writers and painters ofmy acquaintance would follow out this golden advice .

Shortly after this w e come upon a most illuminatingpiece of adv ice I have alway s found compressing,cutting out, and tersifying a passage suggest more thananything else does . Things pruned off in this way are

like the heads of the hydra, two grow for every one thatis lopped off. Brevity is not only the soul of Wit, butthe soul of making oneself agreeable and of gettingon with people, and indeed of everything that makeslife worth living .

”

To our surprise he tell s us to let the main work slidewhen a number of small things remain to be done , j ustas we do with unpaid bills . If w e attend continuallyand promptly to the l ittle that w e can do

,w e shall ere

long b e surprised to find how little remains that w ecannot do . The rule should b e never to learn a thingtill one is pretty sure one wants it ,

”he says, apropos

of knowledge and power . There are plenty of thingsthat most boy s would give their ears to know

,these

and these only are the proper things for them to sharpentheir wits upon .

” If a b oy is idle and does not wantto learn anything at all , Butler would not have himflogged into learning things against the grain, butrather that he should never b e made to learn anythingtill it is pretty obvious that he cannot g et on without it .


In conclusion he tells us Don’t learn to do,but

learn in doing [this is only the apprenticeship noteamplified]. Let your falls not b e on a prepared ground ,but let them b e bonafide falls in the rough and tumbleof the world ; only , of course, let them b e on a smallscale in the first instance till you feel your feet safeunder you . Act more and rehearse less . Above all ,work so slowly as never to g et out of breath . Take iteasy , in fact, until forced not to do so . Do not huntfor subj ects , let them choose you, not you them .

Only do that which insists upon being done and runsright up against you, hitting you in the ey e until youdo it . Till called in this way do nothing .

”This is

invaluable advice to all young writers possessed offeverish energy who whip themselves into action

,

however flagging their Spirit is .

One of Butler’s great charms is this potent doctrinewhich compel s you to act on his advice as if he weresome great Harley Street specialist . It is only whatw e expect to find when w e read that Butler is herepreaching after practising . He tells us that he nevermade his books they grew,

insisting on being writtenhe confesses that he did not want to write Erewhon, hewanted to go on with his painting ; only those bookslive , he thinks, that have drained much oftheir author

’sown life into them . The personality of the writerinterests us far more than hiswork . Everything shouldb e read aloud as soon as it is written in order to detectthose weak places which when read to oneself are

passed over as all right .

Lastly , the audience to whom one should addre ssone’s thoughts are mainly specialists and peoplebetween twenty and thirty . After the age of thirty ,he shrewd ly remarks

,only a few men and women read

at all .



own life . He there tells us his aversion from the

literary and scientific giants of his ag e . If I was to

g et in with them I should hate them and they me . Ishould fritter away my time and my freedom withoutgetting a quid pro guo as i t is, I am free and I give theswells every now and then such a facer as they g et fromno one else [It might b e the Voice of Bernard Shawhim self speaking]; I know that I don

’t go the rightway to g et on in a commercial sense , but I am goingthe right way to secure a lasting reputation and thatis what I really care for . I have gone in forposthumousfame only ,

and that I believe I shall secure .

When he had written Erewhon people immed iatelyimplored him to set to work at once and write anotherbook like it . Nothing, he says , is so cruel as to try andforce a man beyond his natural power ; if he has gotmore stuff in him it will come out in its own time andin its own way . The more promise a young writer hasgiven

, the more his friends should urge him not to overtax himself. He lost apparently over £750 on hisbooks

,and gives as a reason the fact that he attacked

people who were at once unscrupulous and powerfuland made no alliances . His own ag e would not toleratehim because he attacked two powerful sets of vestedinterests at onceg the Church and Science . It isbetter, he concludes, to write fearlessly for posterity ,

if you can afford to , than to write like George Eliotand make a lot ofmoney by it . As to being adequatelypaid , however, he says , who can say , when w e realisehow much w e inherit from past generations and all thatnow makes life worth living, London, with its source sof pleasure and amusement , good theatres, concerts,picture galleries , the British Museum Reading Room

,

newspapers , a comfortable dwelling, railway s, and ,

above all,the society of friends we value . In the note

SAMUEL BUTLER 201

which follows this on Cash and Credit we hear moreabout the requirements of the true writer . Emphasising again the need for brevity and clarity (Butlernever tires of reiterating the importance of thesequalities) he proceeds to point out the necessity for

honesty . Whether a book will personally do him goodor harm should never be allowed to weigh at all witha writer ; he only is the genuin e man of letters wholives in fear and trembling lest he should fail in respectof keeping his good name spotless among those whoseOpinion he values (this sounds like Milton more andmore am I inclined to think that Butler, like Shaw,

willin the end b e placed among the great Puritans of

English writers) , who never writes without thinkinghow he shall best serve good causes and damage badones . Such work is done as a bird sings—for the loveof it —it is persevered in as long as body and soul canbe kept together without thought or hope ofpecun iaryreward . As soon as any art is pursued with a Viewto money

,then farewell all hope of genuine good work .

There is a certain sort of p erson very commonly to b efound among those who despise all art, who asks , whenhe see s a great picture , reads a fine poem, or hears arich sonata or oratorio Well , this is all very well ,but what useful purpose does it serve 9 And w e

are in nine cases out of ten hard put to it to answer insuch a way as to make our opponent understand .

It is refreshing to listen to Butler on this vexedquestion When I look at those works which w e allhold to b e the crowning glories of the world , as , forexample, the Iliad, the Odyssey, Hamlet, The Messiah,

Rembrandt’s portraits, or Holbein’s,or Giovanni

Bellini’s [it sheds not a little light on Butler’s personality

to go carefully through this list]the connection betweenthem and use is, to say the least of it , far from obvious .


Music , indeed , can hardly be tortured into being usefulat all , unless to drown the cries of the wounded inbattle, or to enable p eople to talk more freely atevening parties . The uses of painting , materiallySp eaking , are again very doubtful ; and literaturemay b e useful until it reaches its highest point, but thehighest cannot b e put in harness to any but spiritualuses . So w e conclude that it is fatal to the highest artthat it should b e done with a View to those uses thattend towards money .

”

As so many great writers have endeavoured to definethat indefinab le will-o’

-the -wisp word Genius, w e are

all the more delighted to g et still a different facetshown us by Butler. Everyone , he say s , has more or

less genius—that is to say ,everyone has more or less

madness and inspiration—but it is the small excessweight of it that carries a man over the border . It is ,he say s , exquisitely parody ing Carly le , the supreme

capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of allkinds and keeping them therein so long as the geniusremains . It is a mistake to suppose that m en possessedof this spirit are alway s painstaking ; sometimes if theyhad been less so they would have been greater geniuses .

Pains can serve it or even mar it , but they cannotmake it . Perhaps an even better definition would bethat genius is the supreme capacity for saving otherpeople from having to take pains, if the highest flightsof genius did not seem to know nothing about painsone way or the other . Genius points to change , andchange is a hank ering after another world , so the oldworld suspects it as subversive of order, unsettling toourmores and hence immoral.But you must be careful here to take Butler

’s connotation of morality . Absolute morality , it followsfrom the above , is absolute stagnation and death



to study Dante , and we knewDantewas no good becausehe was so fond of V irgil , and V irgil was no good becauseTenny son ran him ,

and as forTennysonfi well, Tenny son

goes without say ing .

”

I should like to have been in the Athenaeum Clubwith the bishops and headmasters and antique , wellgroomed critics when that note was first published ,and read it out loud to as large an audience as I couldhave gathered round me and then got Herkomer andAugustus John to paint their faces : another thing Ihave missed by being born too late . For years w enourish within ourown minds our secret dissatisfactionwith poets who have been thrust down our throats asdivine, never daring to contradict our elders, and hereis a man old enough to b e our great-grandfather whoopenly propagated his opinion fearlessly y ears beforewe were born . What cowards we are 1He then goes on to throw bricks into the rose-garden

of the V ictorian prose -writers . Mr Walter Pater’ssty le is to m e like the face of some old woman whohas had herself enamelled . The bloom is nothing butpowder and paint, and the odour is cherry -blossom .

Matthew Arnold’s odour is as the faint sickliness of

hawthorn . No one who reads that will ever be ableto read e ither of these stylists without recalling theseamazingly perfect similes . What consternation theymust have caused in the academic circles of his dayhow good for the undergraduate bookworm of the dayto have been compelled to write his essay s fromButler’s Notebooks .

It is at this point that Butler makes his generalconfession .

I have left unsaid much that I am sorry I did notsay ,

but I have said little that I am sorry for havingsaid , and I am pretty well on the whole , thank you .

”

SAMUEL BUTLER 205

On the question of sty le we learn more in a paragraph of Butler’s than from whole books of betterknown m en .

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallestpains with his sty le and was at the same time readable .

P lato’s having had seventy shie s at one sentence isquite enough to explain to m e why I dislike him . Aman may , and ought to take a great deal of pains towrite clearly , tersely and euphemistically he will writemany a sentence three or four times over—to do muchmore than this is worse than not re -writing at allhe will b e at great pains to see that he does not repeathimself, to arrange his matter in the way that shallbest enable the reader to master it , or cut out superfluous words, and even more

,to eschew irrelevant

matter but in each case he will b e think ing not of hisown sty le but of his reader’s convenience . I do notknow whether I have a sty le or not : What I believeand hope I have is just common

,simple straight

forwardness . More than this is a loss to yourselfand your readers .

”

Incidentally it does seem to occur to him that hemay have been begging the question , for after allis not this a d efinition of sty le—and a counsel of

p erfection at that 9 Butler almost confesses so imm edi

ately after . In fact, he sums up his point of View andclinches the argument finally in another passage inan earlier portion of the book A man’s sty le shouldb e like his clothes, neat, well -cut and such as not tocall any attention to him at all .

”

He returns imm ediately to his criticism of authors .

He finds The P ilgrim’s Progress an infamous libe l on

life and things, a blasphemy against the fundamentalideas of right and wrong ; its heaven is essentiallyinfidel, a transformation scene at Drury Lane . No


crown , no cross for me’ is the bargaining, Jewish

spirit that pervades it . There is no conception of thefaith that a man should do his duty cheerfully ,

withall his m ight

,though he will never b e paid directly or

indirectly . Still less is there any conception thatunless a man has this faith he is not worth thinkingabout .

” No wonder Butler abandoned the thought oftaking Holy Orders . Like nearly all other iconoclasts

,

like Shelley especially , he was angry at a world whichrefused to smash a half—and-half religion and demandfor itself one nearer to its heart

’s best desire . Whata pity it is,

”he continues, that Christian never met

Mr Comm on- sense with his daughter Good-Humour,and heraffianced husband , MrHate-Cant .

”

It is in this note that we learn of Butler’s love forSwift, a far more human and genuine person than heis generally represented ,

” and , strangely enough, hisdislike of Fielding .

Probably he was too much of a Puritan to relish thefull-blooded canvas of the eighteenth -century novelist .

He then generalises by pointing out what we have allof us thought, but no one, so far as I know, has ever yetexpressed

The highest poetry is ineffab leg it must be feltfrom one person to another, it cannot b e articulated .

Apropos of versify ing he says that the last thing agreat poet will do in these day s is to write verse s . He

finds Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece

fatiguing to read ; They teem with good things, butthey are got-up fine things .

”He consideres that a

sonnet is the utmost length to which any rhymedpoem should extend . He certainly here , as everywhereelse, practises what he preaches . I can for the momentrecollect no genius so steadfastly consistent as SamuelButler was, which is another proof of the likelihood of



least pretensions to holiness and neither of them oftranscendent merit . They would stand no chance ofbeing accepted by Messrs Cassell Co . or by any

biblical publisher of the present day . Chatto 82:

Windus might take The Song of Solomon but, with thisexception , I doubt if there is a publisher in London whowould give a guin ea for the pair . Ecclesiastes conta inssome fine things but is strongly tinged with p essimism,

cyn icism and affectation ; the Psalms generally are

poor,and for the most part querulous, spiteful and

introspective . Mud ie would not take thirteen copiesof the lot if they were to appear now for the first time ,

un less their royal authorship were to arouse an adv en

titious interest in them . As for the prophets, well ,they will not hold the ir own against The P ilgrim

’s

Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels , and Tom

Jones . Whether there b e prophecies, say s the Apostle ,they shall fail . On the whole I should say that Isaiahand Jeremiah must b e held to have failed . To -dayw e can read this without a tremor . Nay ,

more, mostof us can cordially agree , but think of the effect of suchcriticism, blasphemy they would have called it, on our

fathers ! He finds the wisest text in the Bible inBe not righteous over much ; neither make thyselfover wise : why shoulde st thou destroy thy self ? B e

not over much wicked , neither b e thou foolish : whyshouldest thou die before thy time 9 On the subj ect ofknowing what gives us pleasure he quotes from his greatnamesake, not once nor twice

“ Sure ly the pleasureis as great of being cheated as to cheat . So long asthere is discomfort somewhere it is all right . Of

prayer he say s that prayers are to men as dolls are tochildren it is not easy to take them very seriously .

In the chapter labelled Higgledy-Piggledy ”w e g et

a potpourri or hotchpotch of good things, none of them

SAMUEL BUTLER 209

without value, many of them never to b e forgottenonce they are read . He writes of his notes here thatthey were not meant for publication . The bad oneswere to serve as bread for the j am of the good ones .Certainly there is little except jam at any rate in thispart of the book . Witness such an excellent piece ofadvice as It does not matter much what a man hatesso long as he hates something .

”

In an apology for the devil he tells us to rememberthat it must be remembered that we have only heardone side of the case . God has written all the books .With regard to the time in which w e now l ive it does

us good to think that everything matters more than w ethink it does

,and at the same time nothing matters so

much as w e think it does . The merest spark may setall Europe in a blaze

,but though all Europe b e set in

a blaze twenty times over,the world will wag itself

right again . It is important to those of us who wantto gain a full picture of the man to realise that Naturenot only meant to him mountain

,rivers, clouds and

undomesticated anim als and plants but also—and muchmore—the works of man and man himself. Returning to the subj ect of Providence

, he tell s us that to putone’s trust in God is only a longer way of say ing thatone will chance it , and as to Providence himself, if hecould be seen at all

, he would probably turn out tob e a most disappointing person—a little wizened old

gentleman with a cold in his head , wandering aimlesslyabout the streets, poking his way about and loiteringcontinually at shop windows and second-hand bookstalls .

To u nderstand a proposition thoroughly , in Butler’s

words, we must put it on its head and shake it like apurse , and w e shall then b e surprised to find how muchcomes out of it .


Often w e find that Butler expresses something wehave frequently thought but never been able to putinto words . An illustration of this may b e found in hisnote on that psalm in which David say s that he hasmore understand ing than his teachers . Ifhis teacherswere anything like mine , say s Butler, this need notimply much understanding on David’s part . And ifhis teachers did not know more than the PsalmsHeaven help them .

”

On the top of this comes one of the most poignantlytruthful and wise remarks he ever penn ed To liveis like to love—all reason is against it —all healthyinstinct for it .

”

It is surprismg to read immediately after this , fromso stern an ascetic , that he had come to the conclusionthat life is, au fond, sensual , say what we will . Thisutterance must have been forced out of him by thatundeviating power to state at all costs the truth andnothing but the truth, but it must have been a hardersaying to him than almost anything else he ever wrote .

The courage of the rigid Puritan who refused to sell hisey es however much the truth hurt him is one of the

finest things in all modern literature . The next notemay , to a certain extent , explain this a little moreclearly . It is called Women and Religion .

It has been said that all sensible men are of the

same religion and that no sensible man ever say s whatthat religion is. So all sensible men are of the same

opinion about women and no sensible man ever say swhat that opinion is .

”

He concludes the Higgledy -Piggledy section by anote which is never out of my mind when I stand ona platform saying good -bye to some loved friend whois leaving me alone and m iserable I can generallybear the separation , but I don

’t like the leave-taking .



he found you he points the way to the gap s and gateswhich we had been too slack or too busy grazing tonotice for ourselves, and few indeed ought to b e thosewho, inspired by his example, fail to explore the coun trythat lies beyond the calm,

monotonous meadowlandof our ordinary vocation .

It is in the chapter on First Principles that herecounts for our b enefit that inimitable story of thefreethink er who exclaimed I am an athe ist, thankGod which runs close to being the best short anecdotein the world .

With regard to his readers he say s It is the

mann er of gods and prophets to begin : Thou shalthave none other god or prophet but m e . If I were tostart as a god or a prophet I think I should take thel ine : Thou shalt not believe in m e . Thou shalt nothave m e for a god . Thou shalt worship any damnedthing thou likest except m e . This should b e my firstand great comm andment and my second should b e likeunto it . If my readers must believe in anything, letthem believe in the music of Handel , the painting of

Giovanni Bellini, and in the thirteenth chapter of StPaul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians .

It is not the church in the Village that is the sourceof mischief, but the rectory . I would not touch achurch from one end of England to the other .

” Italmost recalls the Bacon -Shakespeare controversy toread , apropos of theist and atheist, that the fight

between them is as to whether God shall b e calledGod or shall have some other name .

This section on Rebelliousness is full of carp ing at

SAMUEL BUTLER 213

orthodox Christianity . As there is a peace morecomfortable than any understanding , so there is anunderstanding more covetable than any peace ,

” whichis a point of View never before put into words, but noless true in every whit than the more famous words ofthe collect from which Butler found the origin of hisnote .

When Butler gets on to the subj ect of cant andhypocrisy w e see more clearly than ever the legiti

mate l ine between Swift and Shaw . Gratitude likerevenge,

”he opens, is a mistake unless under certain

securities . We have organised a legitimate channelfor lust and revenge by the institution of marriage andthe law courts .

So it is with the professions of religion and medicine .

You swindle a man as much when you sell him a drugofwhose action you are ignorant as when you give hima bit of bread and assure him that it is the body of HisLord and then send a plate round for a subscription .

”

This passage,unpalatable as it may b e

,is simply a

transcript from A Tale of a Tub, written even moreconcisely and straightforwardly than Jonathan Sw iftwrote . It is inevitable that a man who writes so fearlessly as Butler should b e frequently misquoted by hisopponents

,and on the subj ect of drunkenness it has

often been adduced against him that he advocated it .

What he actually said was that in spite of his hatingdrunkenness he was convinced that the human intellectowed its superiority over that of the lower animalsto the stimulus which alcohol gives to the imagination or illusion

,which is a quite different thing and

undeniably true .

After having listened to innumerable persons h0pelessly entangling themselves in their endeavour toexp lain the sin against the Holy Ghost, it is an immense


rel ief to turn to a wise man like Butler and read hisrendering of the meaning of this difficult passage .

What Christ meant was that a man may b e

pardoned for being unable to believe in the Christianmythology ,

but that if he made light of that spiritwhich the common conscience of all m en, whatevertheir particular creed , recognises as divine there wasno hope forhim . No more there is .

”

And y et, in Spite of this note , there are m en andwomen who maintain that Butler is an atheist, ablasphemer and a blackguard . What a crime it is inEngland to possess an organic mind and dare to followSt Paul’s advice about proving all things before youaccept any .

As he himself explains, he does not fall foul ofChristians and the ir religion , but for what he held to b etheir want of religion

,for the low Views they take of

God and of His glory and for the unworthiness withwhich they try to serve Him .

When I was young ,”he continues, I used to

think that the only certain thing about life was thatI should one day die . Now I think that the onlycertain thing about life is that there is no such thingas death .

” If this is not the utterance of a trulydevout man, I have still to learn what devout means .

In The Life of the World to Come,”of all strange

places,w e hit upon another introspective, personal

touch about himself,which is, after all , ourmain obj ect

of search I do not read much ,”he say s . I look ,

listen, think and write . I note what my friends say ,

think it over, adapt it and give it permanent form .

They throw good things off as Sparks ; I collect themand turn them into warmth .

”

Talking of fictional characters (quaintly enough, inthe same note) he points out what Spender noticed in



increasing colony of Erewhon lovers you will only readon feverishly—and as a result b e brought up sharpby one of those astringent surprises which Butlerdelights to keep in store for some such moment as thisby meeting a page of statistics about the sale of hisworks .

Apparently he lost money on every book he wroteexcept Erewhon,

increasing his debit account from £350

to close on £800. On the Opposite page to this interesting list of book-keeping we read : If I deserveto b e remembered

,it will not b e so much for anything

I have written, or for any new way of looking at oldfacts as for having shown that a man of no Specialability ,

with no literary connections, not part icularlylaborious

,fairly

,but not supremely, accurate as far as

he goes, may yet , by be ing perfectly square , sticking tohis point, not letting his temper run away with him ,

and biding his time, b e a match for the most powerful

literary and scientific coterie that England has everknown . I hope it may b e said ofm e that I discomfitedan un scrupulous , self-seeking clique , and set a morewholesome example myself. To have done this is thebest of all discoveries ,

I am not one of those who have travelled alonga set road towards an end that I have foreseen and

desired to reach . I have made a succession of j auntsor pleasure trips from meadow to meadow . Nev erthe

less I have strayed into no field in which I have notfound a flower that was worth the finding .

He then catalogues the seventeen different things thathe has left fortheworld to judge him by , among themostimportant being the emphasising the analogies betweencrime and disease, the emphasising the analogies betweenthe development of the organs of ourbodies and thosewhich are not incorporate with our bodies and which

SAMUEL BUTLER 217

we call tools or machines , the clearing up the historyof the events in connection with the crucifixion of OurLord , the perception that personal identity cannot b edenied between parents and offspring without deny ingit as between the different ages and moments in thelife of the individual , the exposure of Charles Darwinand Wallace, the perception of the principle that ledorganic life to Split up into animal and vegetable, theperception that if the K inetic theory holds good , ourthought of a thing is in reality an exceedingly weakdilution of the actual thing itself, the finding out thatthe Odyssey was written at Trapani by a woman, andthe elucidation of Shake speare’s sonnets . Not a badlife’s work for any man

It would b e foolish to leave this fascinating subj ectwithout a word as to Butler’s poems . The P salm ofMontreal is by far the most famous, on account of theglorious

,breezy, unconventional finish to each stanza

which everybody knows : O God 0 MontrealThe reason for this outburst is not so well known .

The first stanza will explain

Stowed away in a Montreal lumbe r-roomThe Discobolus stande th and turne th his face to the wallDusty, cobweb- cove red, maim ed and se t at naught,Beauty crie th in an attic and no man regarde th

O God ! 0 Montreal

Beauty crieth in an attic and no man regardeth .

That was Butler’s complaint against humanity , as ithas been the poets’ despairing cry all through the ages .


In his next poem , To Critics and Others, he imitatesWalt Whitman with conspicuous success

0 critics, cultured criticsWho wil l praise m e afte r I am dead,Who will se e in m e both more and le s s than I intended ,But who will swear that whateve r it w as i t was al l perfe ctlyright :

You will think you are be tte r than the people who,when I

was al ive , swore that whateve r I did was wrongAnd damned my books for m e as fast as I could write them ;But you will not b e bette r, you will b e j ust the same , ne ithe r

be tter nor worse ,And you will g o for some future Butle r as your fathe rs havegone for m e .

Oh ! How I should have hated you !

I should very much like to quote more of this refreshing poem ; it is so exceedingly good for us to b e rid iculed in advance like this . Even after his death hemanages to sting , and he warns us not to thrust himdown the throats of the public of our or any other ag e .

You, Nice Peop le who will b e sick ofm e because thecritics thrust m e down your throats , but who wouldtake me willingly enough if you were not bored aboutme neglect m e , burlesque me, boil m e down [that

’swhat I’v e done, being no critic], do whatever you likewith me

,but do not think that, if I were living , I should

not aid and abet you . There is nothing that evenShakespeare would enjoy more than a good burlesqueof Hamlet .

”

It would require an exceedingly able man to rag,

parody or burlesque Butler, and he most certamlyknew it ; but he failed if he thought that by writingthis poem he would stop critics from writing about him .

It has been his good or ill fortune to have been thesubj ect of innumerable lectures and articles and even



of English poetry that I know, and y et , so far as I canrecollect

,it is included in none .

It is certainly very far removed from mere versify ingif it cannot b e claimed as great poetry .

Once again w e are reminded of Rupert Brooke’spoetry in the concluding couplet of the sonnet entitledA Prayer, in which he asks that his open sins should b eforgiven and cleansed first

,they being so gross ,

” andlet the others wait

And cleanse not all even then, leave m e a few ,

I would not b e—not quite—so pure as you.

I know of no one except some of the very youngestpoets of our time who have this power of lead ing up toa daring climax and then turning the tables suddenly ,

and so leave youwith a point ofView at once unexpected ,

startling,brilliant and yet true .

I have never heard it suggested that Brooke owedanything to Butler, nor can I find any d efinite proof ofit , but in the light of the concluding lines of the aboveand the next two sonn ets I for one refuse to believethat Brooke did not know his Butler .

In Life AfterDeath the last couplet runs

Ye t me e t w e shall , and part, and me e t again,Whe re dead m en m ee t, on lips of l iving men ;

and last of all in Handel, best loy ’d of all the deadwhom I love b est,

” he finishes on a note of panegyricthat is rare indeed

Me thinks the ve ry worms wil l find some strainOfyours still l inge ring in my wasted brain .

We are now at the end of our journey and I haveobeyed Butler’s own advice in boiling him dow n ratherthan criticising him , for the sole purpose of driving

SAMUEL BUTLER 221

those to whom he is still but a name to cull from the

Vineyard whence I have just gathered a sample clusterof grapes .

His great value to us of to -day is his exhilaratingirreverence , his amazing candour and entire absence ofself- consciousness . He washes us clear from all taint ofthe dishonesty that clings round our stereotyp ed Viewson Christianity , money and sex . He stands aloneamong the masters of irony , Swift, Newman andMeredith, the torch-bearer of that unique gift to ageneration not at all at home in its clear, rarefied

atmosphere . His sense of detachm ent enables him to

become our greatest commentator on life , by one wholooks on . AsMrHarris say s : In a sense he stands forcivilisation looking at itself and laughing in the realisation of how funny it all is . This capacity for laughteron all occasions is one of his most lovable traits , forwhatever e lse he was Samuel Butler was at all time slovable , owing to his large -hearted humanity, hisnever-failing kindness and undeviating sincerity . He

preached in what is the only possible palatable way

nowaday s, a light-hearted , humorous vein . Everythingmade him chuckle ” every twist and turn in the worldabout him left himimmensely astonished and intenselyamused . He had , as Shakespeare had , the experiencingmind ; everything was grist to his mill ; he forgotnothing , because he had the good sense to take noteswhenever and wherever a thought or scene struck himas worth committing to paper .

This is an age of much writing and omn ivorous reading , but as in art the process of selection is one of thehardest to attain , so in reading if w e choose this w emust miss that . Woe to that man who wantonly andwilfully omits to make the acquaintance of SamuelButler, for he will have lost a chance of making a life


long friend of one of the most penetrating , courageousand original m en of letters which England has ever hadthe good fortune to produce .

We owe Bernard Shaw to him ; our feeling on re

reading his works for the twelfth time is one ofwonder that he has not left, not one foster-son only ,

but a score or more, each of them as much superiorto Shaw as Butler was to him .

For all who wish to leave behind them some workwhich shall outlive their own lifetim e

,a careful study

of Butler’s works is not only a pleasure but a prime

necessity . He will give them fresh ideas and renewtheir courage and shower on them hints about life andits meaning and how to transcribe its effect on themmore abundantly than any other writer of whatever ag e .



and committed suicide in Brussels at the age of twentynine .

He was educated at St Paul’s School,and then went

into an in surance office in the City ,afterwards giving

up a large salary,

” to quote his own word s , in orderto write poetry .

” He became a sub - editor under MrFrank Harris, but his casual , cheerfully unpunctualnature hardly suited the profession he had now entered

,

so he threw it up in order to confine his attention whollyto poetry , all of which so pleased MrHarris that he hadno difficulty in getting it printed in the papers overwhich from time to time his editor had control . InContemporary P ortraits Mr Frank Harris gives us

valuable first-hand impressions of a man who seemsto have been known only to the few .

He had thick black hair, a furrowed forehead, shrewd,wistful, penetrating eyes ( like Conrad ) , had never shavedin his life , and was devoted to , and beloved of, allchildren . He was deeply read in English, and possessedan astonishingly sure judgment of other men’s workof his own he had the self-criticism of the masters .His prose was alway s the prose of the singer

fi limpid ,

musical , rhythmic , almost too perfectly rounded . And

yet in it there is the magic that make s word s live allhis thoughts pass through the testing crucible of artisticperception and come out changed

,winged , eternal .

Whether it b e that famous story of The Ghost Ship,

where w e seem really to see the fairy barque sailing awayover the turnip field , through the windy stars , its portholes and b ay -windows blazing with lights to the aecom

paniment of singing and fiddling on deck on the partof all the Village ghosts who have been inveigled awayon it, or that incid ent in The Brighton Road , where thedead boy is eternally condemned to go on trampingtramping in all his stories there is an uncanny

RICHARD MIDDLETON 225

something which makes them take wing beyond the

author’s conception, that elusive quality which, forwant of a better word ,

w e call g eniuHis stories are woven like delicate Spiders’-webs, b e

sprinkled with d ew they are pure gossamer, unb elievably beautiful but touch them and they fall to piecesin your hand . They must be read in their entirety tob e appreciated quotation in this case is like DrJohnson’

s brick, no criterion whatever of the excellenceof the building .

The effect is always heightened by a sure sense ofhumour which crops up in all sorts of unexpected placesthroughout his work .

What a quantity of wisdom is hidden in this paragraph on his own schooldays . You’re only here fora little spell

,

”he said you

’ll b e surprised how shortit is . And don’t b e miserable just because you

’redifferent . I

’m different it’s a j olly good thing to

b e different -and then , after a pause All the

same , I don’t see why you should alway s have d irty

nails . Or, again , in this story ofthe author, who ,having finished his great book, read it to his friends,who made suggestions that would have involved itsre -writing from one end to the other he read it to hisenemies, who told him that it was nearly good enoughto publish he read it to his wife , who said that it wasvery nice, and that it was time to dress for dinner .

”

It is this faculty which must have so endeared him tochildren . Certainly no other man , K enneth Grahame

and Sir ames Barrie alone excepted , ever entered so

completely into the thoughts and ways of childhood .

No man has so faithfully transcribed the best momentsand those hidden thoughts of our early days which w eimagined were forgotten or a part of ourselves that wasdead before we came across this book . How perfect


and yet how characteristic is the sentence utteredalmost unconsciously by the small b oy in the wood .

All the wasted m oonlight,”he cried ; the grass is

quite w et with it .

”

He brings back all the secret longings and untellableecstasies of our early youth which w e never breathed tothe Olympians for fear of ridicule . Childhood’s lovesare strange loves but they are very real ; uncanny tothe adult mind , but so natural to the infant intelligenceas scarcely to need comm ent . The majority of us are

nowaday s scarcely enamoured of the lawn-mower,but

have w e forgotten the day when the very app earanceof the thing was cheery and companionable, with itshands outstretched to welcome mine and its coat ofgreen more Vivid than any lawn . To seize hold of itssmooth handles was like shaking hands with an oldfriend, and as it rattled over the grave l path it chatteredto m e in the gruff tones of a jovial uncle . Once on thesmooth lawn its voice thrilled to song tremulous andappealing and filled with the throbbings of great wings .

And cheered by that song I might drive my chariotwhere I would . Not for m e the stiff, brocaded patternbeloved of our gardener : I made curves , skirting theshadows of the tall poplars or cutting the lawn intoislands and lagoons with the cold inhumanity ofyouthI would marvel at the injudicious earthworms thattried to stay my progress and perished for their pains .

”

Surely that wakes a responsive chord in our minds ofdays when w e burnt witche s on the rubbish heap , whenwe coiled the garden hose round our legs , Laocoonlike, when w e , too, launched our Argonauts, bravingFarmer Bates’ terrible wrath , by sailing past his forbidden meadow, when w e too tramped through thewoods in search of the magic pool by night.

There are only too few books that are able to transport



a mathematical problem, some insidious sound,a cock

crowing, the scrunch of a wheelbarrow,the haveutter

in the fields, the pack of hounds giving tongue, somewave of recollection sweeps over us and on the instantw e are back in that old garden, chasing the guinea-fowl

,

penetrating the meadow brook to the forbidden hauntsof the pixy -ridden mill and the deep trout pool

,seated

in the cleft of the blasted oak looking out overWestward Ho and Lundy for a sight of Amyas Leighand Salvation Yeo, for John Silver and CaptainBartholomew Roberts some friends show us overtheir house, and having penetrated every recess , w e say ,

to their complete mystification May I see the atticnow ,

please ? and coldly wondering at the lunaticthey harbour as their guest they push us into the rafteredroom full of apples . In a moment w e are thousands ofmiles away on a lonely sea , ply ing ourraft, with rationsgiven out and hope lost when suddenly the crygoes up A sail a sail and w e are taken on boardthe friendly sloop and swear eternal vows of comradeship with the pirate chief, whose incarnadined face ,bandage -hidden , haunts our dreams a thousand nights .

Such tricks do our senses play us, and how pitiable arethose (if there exist any such , which I much doubt) whoare never betrayed by the smell of leaves on a Novembernight

,by the sight of a Guy Fawkes b onfire , by the

chestnut roasting on All-Hallows E’en , when theygaze into the fire and build again those gorgeous palaceswhich were once so real—so real but I am lostmy self. You see the effect of Middleton : he drives

you back willy -nilly , and life becomes for a few preciousmoments all sunshine, laughter and innocence, and warand separation are no more .

But there is another side to Middleton which it isnecessary to understand before w e can pretend to have


in our minds a p icture of the complete man . He

recurs to it again and again both in his prose and hispoetry—and in its essence w e might call this trait thelament ofthe writer, the tragedy of the artist an overpowering sense of the inadequacy of the word -makerand the dreamer in comparison with the man of actionseems an ever-present topic in the mind of Middletonas it was in the mind of Robert Louis Stevenson .

While ordinary efficient m en and women are enj oying thepromise of the morning, the fulfilm ent of the afte rnoon, thetranqui llity of e vening, w e are stil l trying to discove r a fittingepithe t for the dew of dawn . For us Spring pave s the woodswith be autiful words rathe r than flow ers, and when w e lookinto the eye s of our mistre ss w e se e nothing but adj e ctive s .Doe s a handful of love - songs really outwe igh the smile ofa pre tty girl , or a hardly-written romance compensate the

author for months of lost adventure ? We have only one l ifeto l ive

,and w e spend the greate r part of it writing the

history of dead hours .Few of us are fortunate enough to accomplish anythingthat was in the least worth doing, so w e fal l back on thearid philosophy that it i s effort alone that counts .

And then, in a passage pregnant with real introspection, he gives us a rare insight into his own character .

It had been raining, he said , one morning, and whilewatching from his window he suddenly became conscious of a w et morning y ears before when he was eight

y ears old , a real w et, grey day ,when he heard the rain

dripping from the fir-trees on to the scullery roof andthe wind every now and then drove the rain down onthe soaked lawn with a noise like breaking surf he

remembered thinking how nice it would b e if it rainedreally hard and flooded the house so that they wouldall have to starve for three weeks, and then b e rescuedexcitingly in boats behind him in the room hisbrothers were playing chess and his sister was patiently


beating a doll in a corner . The clock on the mantelp iece ticked very slowly and he realised that an eternityof those long seconds separated him from dinner-time .

He thought he would like to go out . The enterprisepresented certain difficulties and dangers, but none thatwere insuperable . He would have to steal down to thehall unobserved he would have to open the front doorwithout making a noise and he would have to run downthe front drive under the eyes of many windows . Oncebeyond the gate, however, he would b e safe .

In the wood near the house he might meet themag ician for whom he had looked so often in vain onsunny days , for it was quite likely that he preferredwalking in bad weather when no one else was about .

Then he thought of the probable punishm ents thatwould ensue, but they did not trouble him much, atany rate in retrospect . And yet he did not go outhe stay ed dreaming until the golden moment for actionhad passed and he was called back to a prosaic world bythe shrieks of the chess -players , who were suddenlylocked in battle . And this later morning , as he stoodat the window again watching the rain, Richard Middleton indulges in the vain wish that he had then set forthto seek adventure . He would have met the enchanterin the wood and he would have taught him to conquerworlds, and to leave the easy triumphs of dreams tomadmen, philosophers and poets . He would havemade him a man of action , a statesman , a soldier, afounder of cities or a digger of graves .

And then comes the crucial passage . He concludesthe essay thus

I t se ems to m e l ike ly enough that that moment of he sitation before the schoolroom window de te rmined a habi t ofmind that has kept m e dreaming eve r since . For al l my l ifeI have pre fe rred thought to action : I have neve r run to the



on the side of ugliness and make a religion of it . Not

so Richard Middleton

When a young man first awakens to a sense of the beautyand value of l ife , it i s natural that he should b e overwhe lmedby the ugline s s of the inheritance that his ance stors haveforced upon him . He finds in the civil isation that he hashad no p lace in devising a tyranny against which it appearsalmost impossib le to make any re sistance , a dogma which hei s told eve ryone except a young fool must accept as a truth .

He m ay, for instance , think that it is be tte r to growand love rose s in a cottage garden than to re ign in anumbre lla factory : but this briefe st of the illusions of youthwil l b e shatte red forthwith b y what appears to b e the first

law of civil ised life : that a man can only earn his living bythe manufacture of ugl ine ss .

He then shows you the young man turning for comfort to latter-day prophets and philosophers, who spendtheir time

,he finds (in Middleton

’s glorious phrase) inscheming little revolutions on a sound conservative basisonly in the poets can the young man find solace .

It is unnecessary , he goes on , to point out that thedangerous revolutionary spirit which worships lovelythings is not encouraged in ournational schools .

The children of the State are taught to cut up flowersand to call the fragments by cunning names , but theyare not invited to love them for their beauty .

Their l ip s lisp dates and the dry husks ofhistory , butthey have no knowledge of the splendid pageant of

bygone kingdoms and dead races .

The cheaper newspapers, which alone are read by thep eople , as a whole seek out and dilate on ugliness withpassionate ingenuity only in the poets Irepeat, can a young man find solace .

And would you know how to b e a poet in Middleton’s

words 9Take something—Iwould say take anything—and


love it, and thereafter, if he were a child of his century ,

I should have to tell him of love , the rude , uncivilisedforce that has inspired all the deeds worth doing, thathas made all the things worth making . I should tellhim that it was nonsense to Speak of anything or any

body be ing worthy of his love , that the question waswhether he could make his love worthy of any shadowof an idea that penetrates his education . I should tellhim—to what end 9 That he might see life as he wouldhave made it, and weep his y ears away that he mightfind beauty and fail to win it ; that he might cry hisscorn of ugliness on the hills and have never a hearerfor his pains 9 Pooh It were kinder to let him snorewith the others . There are too many unhappy peoplealready .

”

Yet Middleton himself, with his eves op en, chose thebetter way it i s as a poet that he l ive s for the majoritVof his readers, one who ever strove to keep the sun uponthe western wall .

Rose s and lilie s blowing fair,A sunny castle in old Spain,A lock of my be loved

’s hair,

A tale that shall b e told again,Joy and sorrow, heaven and he l lThe se are all the ware s I se l l .

As one of his critics has said , the Visible world and thepassions ofm en and women were all his care .

Mr Frank Harris declares that The Bathing B oy isfiner than anything in Herrick .

His theory ofpoetry is to b e found definitely , clearlyand finally in that remarkable passage in The P oet

’s

Allegory

So he pulled out his pipe and made a mournful song tohimse lf of the dancing gnats and the bitter odour of theb onfires in the townsfolks’ gard ens . And the children drew


near to hear h im s ing, for they thought his song was pre tty,until the ir fathe rs drove them home , saying

“ That stuffhas no educational value .

Why haven’t you a me ssage ? they asked the boy .

I come to te l l you that the grass is gre en beneath yourfee t and that the sky i s blue ove r your heads .

Oh ! But w e know all that they answered .

Do you Do you I screamed the b oy . Do you thinkyou could stop ove r your absurd labours if you knew how bluethe sky i s ? You would b e out singing on the hills with m e .

Then who would do our work 9 they said , mocking him .

Then who would want it done ? he re torted .

When I l ived I sought no wings,Schemed no heaven , planned no he ll ,But

,content wi th little things,

Made an e arth , and i t was we l l .Song and laughte r

,food and wine ,

Rose s , rose s red and white ,And a star or two to shineOu my dewy world at n ight.Lord

,what more could I de sire ?

With my l ittle heart of clayI have l it no e te rnal fireTo burn my dreams on Judgment Day !

But w e , the great British public , had no use for songand laughter, the sweet beauty of roses in those prewar day s it is only now that poets can sell their ware sand so continue to exist .

First John Davidson and then Richard Middletongreat singers both —had to leave a world grown old andcold and weary and plunge into the unknown , and inone last piteous cry Middleton takes his farewell ofus

So he re ’s an end ; I ask forge tfulne ssNow that my l ittle store of hours is spent ,And heart to laugh upon my punishment .Dear God , what means a poe t more or le ss ?



said , was absolutely unknown to the great majority ofthinking men and women in this country , and yet thereare among us several who are certain that he haswritten nothing so fine or lasting (except August, 1 914,which is by far the best poem yet written on the war)since that time , and those who assert this are not carping critics . But I wish to expand that statement later .

Those of us who were lucky enough to come into thecircle ofMasefield - lovers while that circle was still oneof small compass feel a thrill of joy and pleasure tothink that w e recognised the capabilitie s of the poetand came under his Spell before the mass of readers hadeven heard his name .

The diversity of the man now is bewildering . Firstw e knew him as a writer of lyrics and ballads , one ortwo of which are unlike anything el se in the Englishlanguage . Shortly after this w e found him blossomingout into a novelist ; Captain Margaret, Multitude and

S olitude and The S treet of To-Day are the novel s of apoet, it is true , but they are stil l able to hold their ownin that particular niche , a small one , which contains thenovel s w e keep to read again . AndA TarpaulinMuster

a book of short stories—must not b e forgotten .

No sooner had w e recovered from the astonishmentof this than w e found him proffering us a secondTreasure Island, beating Stevenson on his own ground .

I know of many boy s who prefer Jim Davis andLost EMeavour to any other stories of buccaneers ,pirates and adventure y et written .

Then those who have seen P ompey the Great, Nan andPhilip the King acted declare that all other contem

porary drama is insipid in comparison . He has thedramatist’s true touch and absolute realisation of theexigencies of the stage . Nan without doubt is a playthat will outlive all the other dramas of its ag e .

JOHN MASEFIELD 237

But it is not to my purpose here to discuss MrMasefield as a dramatist, as a novelist, or as a writerof boy s

’ adventure stories .

It is his fate to have become the most popular poetof the age at a bound , and it is possible now , with themass of material he has produced , to find reasons forthis , and to come to some sort of conclusion as towhether it has b enefited his art so to have been takenup as a craze .

In nearly every case it has been truly said of poetsthat their genuine success always varies inversely withtheir contemporary success . Martin Tupper, Byronand Longfellow are outstanding instances of v ersifierswho drew crowds to pay homage while they were alive ,whereas Milton , K eats and Shelley—to select a fewgreat names at random—were absolutely unrecognisedby the great mass of readers of their ag e , and made nosort of impression on their contemporarieAs I have a sort of thesis to propound , it will b e better

formy scheme not to take all the poems in chronologicalorder , but to arrange them in the best possible way formy argument .

In one of the lesser known , but most valuable , of

Mr Masefield’s works , A Mainsail Haul, published on

the 1st June 1905 , occur these verses

I yarned with ancient shipmen be side the galley range ,And some were fond of women, but al l we re fond ofchange ;

They sang the ir quive ring chantie s, all in a fo’c’s’le drone ,

And I was finely suited, if I had only known .

I re sted in an ale -house that had a sanded floor,

Whe re seamen sat a- drinking and chalking up the score ;They yarned of ships and mermaids , of topsail she e ts andslings

,

But I was discontented ; I looked for b e tter things .


I heard a drunken fiddler, in Billy Le e’s Saloon,

I brooked an empty be lly with th inking of the tuneI swung the doors disgusted as drunkard s rose to dance ,And now I know the music was life and life ’s romance .

The poem gives a wondrous sight into the mind ofthe author in all of his poems there is that insatiablehankering after the sea ; it is dragged in even at theend ofDafiodilFields, of all unlikely places .

The poem has practically nothing to do with the sea ,but the author cannot resist the temptation to makethe story a legend common among sailors hence thislast stanza that you may rise from reading , as from allhis other poems , with a strong taste of salt in themouth .

But these introductory verses to A Mainsail Haul

show us something more . They explain his right to beconsidered The Genius of the Ale-house . He must forever confine his genius to that section of society whosevocabulary is nearly limited to He ll ,

”By Crimes ,

”

Bloody and other even less savoury eXpletiv es .

1

Imitators of Mr Masefield , and these have alreadybeen many , have based their forms of flattery nearlyentirely upon this phase , forgetful of the fact that it isthe lyrical beauty in the background of the poems thatmakes the poet what he is, and not the daring (it willsoon cease to b e that) innovation of employ ing bargeeand bricklayer terms to heighten the sense of reality .

The language, customs , manners and traits of thedrunkard and sottish are to him life and life’sromance .

” He is “

finely suited in describing the

way s of the doxy and the labourer’s mistress .

1 It is not b ecause he like s it that he doe s this , but because hishypersensitive nature so abhors oaths that he is fascinated ag ainsthis will, much in the same way as Ang lo-Indian children are

fascinated by the venomous beauty of snake s :



All the company of spectators and Victor thenproceed to The Lion to celebrate the event . On

the way up the dark stairs he accosts the barmaid , amistress of his , and arranges an assignation .

A riotous scene ensued

Jack chucked her chin, and Jim accost herWith him out of the Maid of Gloster.And fifte en arms went round herwaist .(And then m en ask , Are Barmaids chaste P)

This last line reads more like the heading of a letterto a daily newspaper than a serious contribution tocontemporary poetry .

After the company had drunk themselves silly , Sauldrunkenly meditates on life . At last

A madne ss took m e then . I fe l tI’

d l ike to hit the world a be l t .I fe lt that I could fly through air,A s creaming star with blazing hair

Instead of that he tore his clothes in shreds , flunghis boots through the windows and dashed downstairs ,smashing lamps on the way . Then he rang the firebell .This having roused the populace , he proceeded to

harangue them , urging them to chase him, which theydo . Owing to his fleetness of foot he easily escapes andmanages to sleep till half-past two in the followingafternoon .

Then a second frenzy takes him and he goes oncemore into the street . By luck he meets the parson , andin a long socialistic speech denounces the universe .

The parson , one in a thousand , quietly argues for thepresent state

You think the Church an outworn fe tte r ;Kane , ke ep it, til l you

’ve buil t a be tte r.

JOHN MASEFIELD

To g e t the whole world out of b edAnd washed, and dre ssed , and warmed , and fed ,To work

,and back to b ed again

,

Be l ieve m e , Saul , costs worlds of pain .

These last four lines are worth all the rest of the poemput together . It is the first time that that universaltruth has been stated quite so boldly and yet with suchunerring accuracy .

1

Meanwhile (the parson continues) ,

my friend ,’twould b e no sin

To mix more wate r with your gin .

We’re ne ithe r saints nor Philip S idneys,

But mortal m en with mortal kidneys .

It is a joy foronce , by the way , to find a parson winningall along the line .

He finds himself a little later in the market-place ,talking to a small boy who had lost his mother . Thenfollows a scene of real poetry and pure delight, gossamerlike in its flimsy flights, but having the true ring aboutit .

I told a tale , to J im’s de l ight,

Of whe re the tom-cats g o by night .

But it is all too short andMrs Jaggard comes hastily onto the scene , and reviews Saul

’s and her own past lifein a whirl of words truly woeful .

this old mothe r made m e se e

The harm I done by be ing m e .

So back to bar to g e t more drink

This time Miss Bourne , the friend , upbraids him the

whole poem is a succession of sermons . But for the

1 It is really extraordinary how often Masefield reminds us ofPope . I have not space to expand this , but cp . B z

’

ogmfi/zy withPope

’s best couplets it will bear the te s t.Q


first time w e hit upon a my sticism that remindsThe AncientMariner

1 got a g l impse of what i t meant,How she and Ihad stood be foreIn some old town by some old doorWaiting inte nt while some one knockedBefore the door for e ve r locked

Out into the darkness he sped like Christy Mahon todiscover his own soul . In Nature’s own wondrousbeauty he discovers peace old Callow, the ploughman ,

gives him the clue to salvation . So ends the poem thatmade MrMasefield famous as a poet .

Sufficient time has now passed for our judgments tobe cooled wherein lies the appeal of this strange novelin Verse ? It read s at times like a Salvation Armytract , a Revivalist conversion hymn . The story isgraphic and real enough . Such things have happened ,

do happen daily and are to b e read in The ChristianWorld and The Family Herald .

There are traces of the passionate ly ricism thatmarked the young John Masefield , but we tremble forwhat he is going to make ofhimself .

His carelessness in metre and rhyme is appalling . Ihave already given several instances . Here are somemore

“ clock for you i s succe eded by “ crock for you,fly

’

un by Lion,

” sons ” by“ once ,

”

m e rry all”

by burial,

” black by“ back

,

floodin’

by sudden is and was by“ Caiaplias

mistake s by stake s,

bew ild’

rin’

by children ,knows his by

“ dispose s ” and “ he re b oy, or”by

blubbe r for .

One could multiply these by ten and yet not exhaustthe list . He has taken a leaf out ofByron’s book , andthat not a good one .



H e swept out, repeating one swe e t name ,Anna

,oh Anna

,to the e vening star.

Anna was sipping whisky in the bar.

The Sophoclean irony of the last two lines is very dearto MrMasefield .

Jim is led into deceiving his mother, and buy ingtrinkets for his Anna, til l at last there follows theinevitable scene , where his mother tries to make himsee that he is throwing his love away on a light woman .

The dialogue is dramatic , tense and real, and shows theenormous advance the poet has made in technique onhis earlier work . It’s all no use .

Pe op le in love cannot b e won by kindne ssAnd opposition make s them fe e l l ike martyrs .

It is in one ofthe sol iloquies that follow that there occursone of the imperishable thoughts that have never beenso expressed before , and for which Mr Masefield isbound to outlive this ag e . The poor old mother,finding her pleading of no avail , in bitter anguish cries

Life ’s a long headache in a noisy stre e t .

Anna , meanwhile, is using Jimmy merely as a bait tobring back her former lover, Shepherd Ern , who hadbeen errant during the fair, owing to the attractions ofGipsy Bessie ; she was entirely successful , and thenimmediately has no more use for Jim , who first suspects ,then

Raging,he hurried back to learn the truth .

He rushes in on the discovered pair, is knockedout by the Shepherd and makes off swearingrevenge .

It reads like a play written for the cinematograph .

JOHN MASEFIELD 245

He ran down to the water, sensuous thoughts halfkilling him .

Al l through the night the stream ran to the sea,

The diffe rent wate r always say ing the same .

Cat- l ike and then a tinkle,ne ve r gle e ,

A lone ly l ittle child alone in shame .

Anothe r snapped a thorn twig when he came ,I t drifted down

,it passed the Haze l M i l l ,

I t passed the Springs : but Jimmy stayed there still .

It is in a stanza such as this that w e realise the vein oftruth and beauty , bursting to be expressed , that runsthrough MrMasefield .

Whoever bettered that

Lone ly l ittle ch ild alone in shame ?

Having stayed out all night, Jim goes to work, andill , distraught, asks for the sack , gets it , drinks himselfmad while his mother is searching for him, and wouldhave found and saved him but for a cruel

,malicious

stroke of fate

Whe the r she ’d g o to th 1nn and find her son,

Or take the field and le t the doom b e done .

Of course she takes the field , while Jim rushes to hisdestiny . He kills Ern with one blow of a Spudderagain we are irresistibly reminded of the P layboy ; andthen at once he becomes sane again .

Man cannot cal l the brimming instant backTime ’s an affair of instants spun to day s ;If man must make an instant gold, or black,Le t him,

he m ay, but Time must g o his ways .Life may b e dulle r for an instant

’s blaze,

Life’s an affair of instants spun to ye arsInstants are only cause of al l the se te ars .

He is tried , convicted , converted and hanged . Again it


falls to the mother to utter one of Masefield’s immortallines

God warms his hands at man ’s heart when he prays .

She is left comfortless , beaten , but alive

Some of l ife ’s sad one s are too strong to die ,

and w e are left on a note of pure poetry to watch thewandering witless way s of the old woman as she walkssinging sad songs to remind her of Jim who is comingback to her soon .

The stars are pl acid on the evening’s blue,

Burning like eye s so calm,so unafraid

Of al l that God has given and man has made .

Burning they watch, and moth - l ike owls come out,The redbreast warbl e s shril ly once and stopsThe homing cowman give s his dog a shout

,

The lamps are l ighted in the village shops .S i lence the las t b ird passe s : in the copseThe haze l s cross the moon, a night -j ar spins,Dew we ts the grass , the nightingale begins .

No finer description than that can b e found in anypoetry of ourday , and he who denies thatMrMasefield

is a poet has to reckon not with a solitary instance l ikethis, but with stanza after stanza of a like beauty .

The whole poem shows an advance in every department of Mr Masefield

’s power . He has a better grip

ofhis subj ect, he digresses and moralises less , though hestill does so too much ; there is more real beauty , lesslicence and carelessness , and greater cohesion altogetherthan in The Everlasting Mercy .

In May , 1912, he published a little known poem ,

entitled B iography, of inestimable value to all thosewho would know something of the man behind theartist . Of course, as we expect, there is the usualpanegyric on oceans


STUDIES IN LITERATURE

And fai l in what they mean, whate’

e r they doYou should have se en, m en cannot te l l to youThe beauty of the ships of that my city .

Dauberis TheAncientMariuerof the twentieth century ,with these differences . MrMasefield knows the sea asno poet ever has before ; Falconer in his Castaway isthe nearest approach , and he is poles removed .

The poem tells the story of a young farmer whorefused to carry on the trad ition of his fathers , butwent to sea in order to paint it from the inside .

I t’s not been done , the sea, not ye t be en done ,From the inside by one who really knows,I’

d give up all if I could b e the on e ,

But art come s dear the way the money goe s .

He had to work his way out in a vessel rounding CapeHorn , and in pursuing his art to encounter the gibes ,and worse , of his mates , who with some of the PublicSchool instinct towards what it cannot understand ,did all in their power to harass and upset him .

Three reefers slashed his canvases to ribbons , as aresult of which he made an ineffectual appeal to thecaptain and became the laughing -stock of the crew .

To one of the reefers, however, he comm unicates ina confidential mood his life story , how he had brokenhis father’s heart for this whim , this passion , thisinsensate craving for painting and the sea

That ’s what I loved , wate r, and time to read .

One day he got a job below the bridge, and then saw

for the first time a clipper .

That alte red l ife for m e : I had neve r se enA ship before , for al l my thought of ships :And the re was this great clippe r like a que en,W ith a white curl of bubble s at her l ips,All made of beauty to the ste rn

’s e ll ipse ,

JOHN MASEFIELD 249

Her ensign rulh ing red , her bunts in pile ,Beauty and strength toge the r, wonder, style .

I wasn’t happy then : I fe l t too ke enlyHow hard it is to paint : but when I sawHermasts across the rive r rising que enly,Built out of so much chaos brought to law,I learned the powe r of knowing how to draw,Of beating thought into the pe rfe ct line ,I vowed to make that powe r of beauty mine .

Many storms were encountered before they reachedthe Horn , all which tested Dauber

’s manhood andstirred him on to high effort, so that by suffering paina little hour he might b e able to draw that line of sailors’

faces sweating the sail , their passionate play and change ,their might, their misery , their tragic power in orderthat m en the world over should understand theirfeeling through his power of portrayal .Then follows that wonderful fifth canto , telling of

the rounding of the Horn , in which the poet rises toheights he never reached before , and which alone wouldsuffice to give him a reputation above all l iving writershad he written nothing else . No description of astorm at sea has ever approached this one the wordspour out , wild , passionate , pell -mell , pregnant withreality , comparable only with passages in The Infernoit is far too long to quote I can only implore anyonewho has not yet read it to buy , borrow or steal a copyto -day .

Scene s of horror are ushered in by this superbcouplet

then from the sea

Came a cold sudden breath that made the hairStiff in the ne ck as though Death whispe red there .

The reader feels the ghastly dizziness that assails theneophyte when he finds himself for the first time in the


rigging in a gale : the frozen hands , the cold sweat offear, and all the tortures of the damned that Dauberhad to undergo . Somehow he survived , but with apeculiar irony as dear to Mr Masefield

’

s heart as toThomas Hardy

’s , he'

escapes only to fall from the foretopgallant yard weather arm shortly afterward s in thelast gale before Valparaiso he just breathed : It will

go on,

” not knowing his meaning rightly, but he spoke

With the intensene s s of a fading soulWhose share of Nature ’s fire turns to smoke

,

Whose hand on Nature’s whe e l lose s control .I t will g o on

,he cried aloud, and passed .

And almost at once afte rwards they reached the haven .

Altogether this is the most powerful poem that MrMasefield has written , because his whole heart and soulwere in his work he has the passion to paint for us inwords what Dauber would have painted on canvas , thelives and way s of those who go down to the sea in shipsand occupy their business in great waters .

Yet with it all , as in the later work of Shakespeare,there is an incredible carelessness as if he could notrestrain his flow of words but had written the wholepoem at a sitting . Unnecessary alliterations , stupidrepetitions ofwords lik e “

multitudinous,”extraordinary

and gross tampering s with the metre , all serve to weakenthe general effect and give the reader the impressionthat it is the result of one gigantic effort inspirednearly throughout, but so good as not to b e retouchedagain . By God it is good , take it or leave it ,he might say with Ben Jonson , and leave it we mustat that .

The Dafiodil Fields followed in February , 1913 , notin February , 1912, as MrMasefield says in his reprintededition, published in October, 1918 . This , like all his



Fev erel’s immortal meeting with Lucy . It is all too

short in a few stanzas

The flag waved,the engine snorted

,then

S lowly the coupl ings tautened, and the trainMoved, bearing off from her herman of m en ;

She looked towards its going,blind with pain .

He soon forgets her, however, in the new country andlives with a Spanish beauty , not even answering hisfirst love’s letters . By a rather strained poetic licenceMary

’s ardent but earthy , steadfast , disappointedlover at home , Lion Occleve , has bred a wonderfulbull , which he takes to Michael

’s country to sell , meetshim , implores him to give up hismistress and come backto Mary , who is wasting away for want of him , all,however, to no purpose . Lion returns to Mary withhis woeful tale , and after months of pleading he managesto make hermarry him .

Michael hears of the wedding and immediatelyrealising all that he is losing , impetuously rushes home ,

and after failing to find her in her own house , intowhich he crept , his better nature urges him to go awayhe meets herby accident and the tragedy hastens to itsfinish . At once Mary returns to Lion

’s house , throwsher ring on the table and , deaf to all entreaties andthreats , goes off to live with Michael . Lion is thenroused and the end , though curiously protracted , is near .

One day Lion meets Michael and offers him hishedging -hook as a weapon , himself using a stake drawnfrom the hedge . Michael , who has obviously some

thing ofvast importance to say , is effectually preventedfrom uttering it until each has mortally wounded theother : then only has he time to gasp out in his dy ingbreath that Mary and he had agreed to separate , thatshe was at that moment on herway to rejoin Lion .

JOHN MASEFIELD 253

She comes , sees Michael dead and , weeping bitterly ,

laments the murder of her only real love : her heartbreaks and the tragedy b ed is loaded with three corpses .

A gruesome story , curiously uneven . The languagewhich the disputants employ is half that of the culturedscholar, half that of the farmer never consistent .

There is, too , the quaint conce it of the daffodil fieldsbrought in as a last line to every canto , quite un

necessarily the title has really no bearing on the talewhatever, except that MrMasefield likes to digress asto a point of seasons whenever a fresh nail is driveninto the coffin of the luckless trio .

There is again much carelessness and a redundancythat threatens to become an obsession . Here is one

example out of about thirty

A spring come s bubb l ing up th ere , cold as glass,I t bubble s down, crusting the le ave s with lime ,Babbling the se lf- same song that it has sung through time .

Here is one even worse

Counting the dreary time , the dreary beatOf dreary minute s dragging through the day .

Surely Mr Masefield cannot believe that such tricksmake for effectiveness . His powers of description are

not dulled, he has wonderful fertility of language andbrings his characters to play their puppet parts withthe best possible skill that verse can command , butthere is still something lacking .

It is not these long poems at all that make MrMasefield the great poet . I have purposely left his greatwork , and curiously enough his least known and earliest,till the last .

Ballads and P oems were published y ears before anyof the long poems , and some of the best stuff in them


was written , he tells us, in his adolescence, under theinfluence (it is obvious) ofRudyard K ipl ing .

This little volume , containing just one hundred pages ,has more real poetry in it than all his other outputadded together the true magic is rung in nearly everyline words of most ordinary significance assume aheightened sense , and music of a more poignant andhaunting fragrance than w e meet with elsewhere in hiswritings , so much so that , admire as w e do his narrativepoems , w e feel (most of us) certain that his true vocation is the short lyric , not the metric annals ofthe sordidand the wretched .

On the first page w e light -on a verse totally unlikeanything in the “ longer poems . It is called The Ballad

Would I could win some quie t and re st and a l i ttle ease ,In the cool grey hush of the dusk, in the dim gre en place ofthe tre e s,

Whe re the birds are singing, singing, cry ing aloudThe song of the red

,red rose that blossoms beyond the seas .

There is more than a flash of resemblance to La B elleDame S ans Merci in that stanza . Further on in the

same poem we come across the l ine ,

A star will glow l ike a note God strike s on the silve r be ll,

a line that lives in the memory when all thought ofJimGurney, Saul Kane , Michael Ke ir, and the rest of them ,

is entireiy obliterated . How different, again, is Cargoes ,now better known owing to the music that has beenwritten for it .

Quinquirem e of Nineveh from distant Ophir,

Rowing home to haven in sunny Pale stine ,With a cargo of ivory ,And ape s and peacocks ,Sandalwood, cedarwood and swee t white wine .



just accentuate the beauty of the quoted hymn of

adoration .

True poetry has been defined as the retelling ofgreat events remembered in passivity , heightened bylanguage that could b e uttered in no other way , musical ,magic , from the soul.

ForMrMasefield this is the true touchstone . Eachevent seen and lived through , leaves its impress on hispoetic soul , and he strives to express in words what hasthrilled him through and through with beautyHe may thank God for the perceptive vision , he is

endowed with divine powers those ofus who love himmost watch with trepidation lest he should b e led fromthe path in which his real g enius lies to prostitute histalents and pander to a taste which revels in hisbloodies ,

” his audacious sensuality , his excerptsfrom the lowest Sunday papers .

Meanwhile we hug the few Ballads and P oems we

own the closer, reading and rereading them until hecomes back to us .

We would leave him with one final warning . Couldhe but read the reams of rubbish with which his so

called imitators are flooding their studies , he wouldpause before pursuing his present path further .

As a playwright of poetic drama , he has no livingequal , neither has he peer in ballad or lyric . Let himrealise his limitations , and give us in the years to come

more of the Coram Street and Tettenhall genius andless of the world-famous original poet of these last fouryears .

RUPERT BROOKE

A young Apollo, golden -haired,Stands dreaming on the ve rge of strife ,

Magnificently unpreparedFor the long littlene ss of l ife .

N the first throes of anguish which every man

who knew the poet exp erienced on hearing thatRupert Brooke was dead it seemed incredible

that one so absolutely the incarnation of youth andspring could have vanished from us for ever but laterthis feeling gave way to another which will probablyremain as the more lasting ; it now seems equally impossible that he could ever have lived he was almosttoo good to b e true ; he was certainly one of thosewhom the gods love

, efiqbvfig Ka i efipaQfis.

The son of a house -master at Rugby ,he was himself

educated there , and was successful both as a youthfulpoet and as an athlete, for he gained his colours forcricket and football in addition to winning the schoolEnglish V erse Prize . In after y ears, at K ing

’s College ,Cambridge

,he took a second - class in the Classical

Tripos,and was elected to a fellowship as the result of

a thesis onWebster .

Deciding to travel , he was led by the Spirit of Stevenson across the plains to the South Sea Islands, andwrote vivid prose impressions , which were printed inThe Westmz

’

usterGaz ette . He eventually returned withthe id ea of settling down at the old V icarage , Grantehester, in order to lecture to undergraduates of hisuniversity . The war put a stop to this, however, and

R 257


he joined the Royal Naval Division in stead, underwentthe horrors of Antwerp , came back unscathed , andafter a short train ing at Blandford was sent out to theDardanel les . Early in April, 1915 , he contracted sun

stroke ; septicaem ia then my steriously set in , and he diedaboard a French hospital ship on Shakespeare’s supposeddeath -day ,

and lies buried in the Island of Lemnos, thegreatest poet of his time . It read s like legend ; it is soexactly what each of us would have demanded of ourfairy godmother had w e had the chance .

That nothing should b e denied him , to his greatintellectual

!

gifts were added an exceptional charm ofmanner and beauty of form . This bod ily beauty had ,I think, a direct influence on his work . In commonwith many think ing m en of his ag e (he was only twentyseven when he died) , he lived in a state of continualprotest against the merely pretty ; he was in deadlyfear of falling into a flattered literary career, ofwinn ingfame as one more beautiful poet of beautiful themes,so he ran counter to the accepted tradition into Violenceand coarseness for salvation . The same tendency maywith equal certainty b e traced in the work ofMasefield ,

Cannan , D . H . Lawrence and‘

Wilfrid Gibson .

The temptation to generalise on this point is insidiousbut futile . I will , however, attempt to sum up in one

sentence what I believe to b e the gu iding principle of

the twentieth-century poet with regard to this A

thing is not necessarily beautiful because the majoritythink it to b e so the only way to arrive at a sense ofreal beauty is to cast out fear, become an iconoclast, toprove all things and to hold fast that which w e find tob e good .

The result of such a point of View on the world caneasily b e imagined ; strange labels are attached by theconventional critic to the poetry which makes him un



and Jealousy, where we are shown unlovely lovemaking grown old .

To Brooke it was hypocrisy to restrain the directexpression of himself out of consideration for others .

This side of his work is important as reflecting the

natural ebullition of youthful sp irits . Mr HaroldMonro calls all these poems jokes a good joke , hesay s, is, after all , more stimulating than the best pieceof advice . It is the most necessary thing for a poet tobe able to laugh well . His principal failing seems tohave been a sort of fear lest he should b e taken seriously .

If he thought he had loved too well he would laughaway his feelings in a horrible poem like Jealousy or

Ambarvalia .

In point of fact, despite Henry James’s label ofshamelessly undodgy as applied to the youthful

poets of to -day as if it were a new thing , not one ofthese poems in conception is new at all . I know thatit is commonly accepted that the genius of the twentiethcentury owns to no masters in his craft ; he must b eabove all things a pioneer, hacking his way ruthlesslythrough Virgin jungle but Rupert Brooke , at any rate ,is in this entirely at variance With his contemporaries .

What makes his work shine so far beyond that of anyother man of his ag e is just this characteristic he doeslean upon two g iants , John Webster and John Donne ,great geniuses both, but each, unfortunately for hisreputation

,overshadowed by a greater man . Webster

is only second to Shakespeare in tragic intensity ;Donne i s only not the finest poet of the seventeenthcentury because Milton happened to live about the same

time .

Neither man is even yet recognised at his true worth,although Charles Lamb did his best for the one, andBrowni ng for the other .

RUPERT BROOKE 261

In Webster, Rupert Brooke found realism—there are

passages in The White Devil and The Duchess ofMalfimuch more shamelessly undodgy than anything inBrooke—vigour

, and an intellect as scintillating as hisow n

,a writer whose thoughts toppled over p ell-mell

into a wealth of simile and metaphor as sane and aptas those of Shakespeare and Arnold , an exuberance ofbeauty made all the more conspicuous by the brusque,harsh, unmusical lines that compassed it about, agenius so audacious that he could afford , like Shakespeare in his famous fiv e nevers in K ing Lear, torise to those heights of sublimity that are so perilouslynear the ridiculous as to make us shiver with apprehen

sion while w e read , only to thrill with ecstasy afterwardswhen w e realise that the dramatist has o’ertopped man

’sexpectations and for a moment given us a glimpse intothe unknown . Everyone knows the lines

Vittoria . I am l ost for e ve r .Brachiano. How mise rable a thing it is to die

’Mongst women howling.

or the

I have caught an e ve rlasting cold : I have lost my voicemost irre cove rably,

in The Duchess ofMalfi.

Rupert Brooke owed much to a dramatist whose sureness of touch could lead him to write the l ine that hasbeen said to be the high-water mark of Romanticism

Cove r her face mine eye s dazzle : she died young,

to a man who could heap horror on horror,gloomy

fatalism on melancholic madness,and yet know that

he was one of those rare spirits who had achieved thesupreme ideal of tragedy in purging the emotions byterror and pity .


You can trace quite easily all these different facetsof VVeb ster

’s craft in Rupert Brooke’s work

,but his

allegiance to John Donne was even more loyal , his debtinfinitely greater .

When in the fulness of time justice is done to theburning Vitality , the clarity of Vision ,

the fertility of

imagination, the amazing intellectual versatility , the

heightened humour, and the true sense of beauty pervading all Brooke’s work, then and then only will thepart that Donne play ed in the making ofRupert Brookeb e ad equately understood .

What drove Brooke to Donne was, of course , hisrecognition of the similarity of their tastes just as theV ictorians saw nothing in Donne, because he was asdiametrically opposed to their point of View as SamuelButler and Meredith were, so any individual man orclique will , in spite of Ruskin

’s advice, try to findinspiration in the genius to whom he or it most naturallyapproximates . Though this is a truism, it needs saying for there is every likelihood of some such absurdmyth as the following becoming part of the stock-in

trade ofBrooke’s critics .

Donne’s first published poem was written whileserving in the Royal Naval Division under the Earl ofEssex before Cadiz, and is dedicated to a Cambridgeman whose name was Brooke A unique coincidencewith scarcely a parallel in the world of letters . This iswhat drove Brooke of 1914 to Donne Of course itis unique ; all coincidences are ; but it ismost decidedlynot what drove Rupert to John . Rupert Brooke issimply John Donne come to life again , a reincarnation .

We are told by Professor Grierson that Donne’s intense

individuality was alway s eager to find a North-VVest

Passage of its own , pressed its curious and scepticalquestioning into every corner of love and life and



and illusion, pulling up the gay -coloured tangled weedsthat choked thoughts, planting the seeds of fresh invention . Where his forerunners had been idealist,epicurean

, or adoring , he was brutal , cynical andimmitigably realist .

How can w e find 9 How can w e re st ? How canWe , be ing gods , find j oy, or peace , be ing man ?We

,the gaunt zanie s of a witle ss Fate ,

Who love the unloving, and the l over hate ,Forge t the moment ere the moment sl ips,Kiss with blind eye s that se ek beyond the l ips,Who want, and know not what w e want, and cryWith crooked mouths for Heaven , and throw it by .

can see it in Kindliness

When Love has changed to kindline ss .That time when all is ove r, andHand neve r flinche s

,brushing hand

And blood lie s quie t, for all you’re near ;

And it’s but spoken words w e hear,Whe re trumpe ts sang : when the me re skie sAre strange r and noble r than your eye s ;And fle sh is fle sh , was flame be fore ;And infinite hunge rs leap no moreIn the chance swaying of your dre ss .

Or in The Wayfarers

Each crawl ing dayWill pale a l ittle your scarle t l ips, each mileDull the dear pain of your remembered face .

In The B eginning

I ’l l curse the thing that once you we re ,Be cause i t i s changed and pale and old ,(Lips that were scarle t, hair that was gold) .

The underlying thought in all these comes straightfrom Donne . I could quote a thousand instances .Here is one

RUPERT BROOKE 265

Who would not laugh at me if I should sayI saw a flash of powde r last a day P

Changed love s are but changed sorts of meatAnd when he hath the kerne l eatWho doth not fl ing away the she ll ?

Or,to hark back for a moment to the series which I

quoted on Brooke’s realism , does not this strike aharmonious chord

And like a bunch of ragged carrots standThe short swollen fing ers of thy gouty hand ?

How he huddles a new thought on the one before it,before the first has had time to express itself how hesees things and analyses emotions so swiftly and subtlyhimself that h e forgets the slower comprehensions of

his readers ; how he always trembles on the verge ofthe inarticulate ; how his restless intellect finds new

and subtler shades of emotion and thought inv i sibleto other pairs of ey es, and cannot, because speech ismodelled on the average of our intelligence, find wordsto express them . This might b e a criticism of Browning ; it really is a criticism of Donne , and it exactlydescribes such a poem of Brooke’s as Diuing-Room Tea .

But you will have noticed here that a new note hascrept in . I have already commented on his fear of

becoming the beautiful poet of beautiful themes ; hehated most, I imagine, the decadents and their schoolbut he has another not less awful dread you see it inZli enelaus and Helen and in K indliuess : the thoughtthat he might one day grow old

,that a time might

conceivably come when infinite longings leap nomore,

”terrified him .

This constantly recurring obsession would havedriven him mad (he was, in common with many other


young men of great strength, given to appalling fitsof nervous breakdown ) had it not been that

,like

Shakespeare, who was probably as restless as he was,and unlike Milton , who most decided ly was not , he hadthe saving grace of a sense of humour ; I say savingadvisedly , for I believe that humour is the only antidoteknown to this form ofmental depression .

In the hills north-west of Ottawa, he wrote , there

grows a romantic light purp le -red flower which iscall ed firew eed , because it is the first vegetation to

Spring up in the prairie after a fire has passed over, andso might b e adopted as the emblematic flower ofa senseof humour . A parable—a piece ofpure autobiography .

Ever and alway s you will see in Brooke’s poems how

fascinating , how explanatory , how wistful and faithfula follower is this will-o’

-the -wisp,hum our . It brings

him back with a j erk from the inane pursuit of theabstract there’s little comfort in the wise to the

direct simplicity of actualities .

Think how Gray or Collins would have treated thisthrenody

'

on The Funeral of Youth

Foily went first,With muffled be ll s and coxcomb still revers dAnd after trod the beare rs, hat in handLaughter, most hoarse , and Captain Pride with tannedAnd martial face all grim

,and fussy Joy ,

Who had to catch a train,and Lust, poor, snive ll ing b oy

The fathe rle ss children , Colour, Tune, and Rhyme,(The swe e t lad Rhyme) ran all - uncomprehending.

Beauty was the re ,Pale in her black ; dry- eyed she stood alone .

Contentment, who had known Youth as a childAnd neve r se en him since .

All,except only Love. Love had died long ago .

Webster is here in the line on B eauty ; Donne too ,the Donne of the general reader

,the Donne known of



the same unlawful desires to pry into the hiddenrecesses even at the risk of lo sing his own soul ; the

same love of words forwords’ sake only .

It is not because of the fortuitous accident of dy ing

young and in Greece, nor because he was inord inatelyfond of swimming in the dark , that he reminds m e of

Byron ; he was possessed by the same exuberant andd efiantly adventurous spirit, the same protesting passionof revolt, and the same delight in real existence

I shal l de sire and I shall findThe be st of my de sire s

The autumn road , the me l low windThat soothe s the darkening shire s .And laughte r

,and inn -fires .

His claim to b e called the Shelley of our dayis less obvious ; there is no doubt , however, that hehad in him much of that clear, ethereal Vision thatso endears Shelley to us, much of that intellectualhypersensitiveness peculiar to Shelley which acts asso strong and biting an antidote to sentimentalismin thought and melodious facility in writing ; thereare , moreover, times when w e feel that had RupertBrooke lived he could have left just such another poemas The Ceuci . But the Shelley an influence is mostnoticeable in two sonnets d ealing with the Beyond

Not with vain tears , when we’re beyond the sun,

We’ll beat on the substantial doors, nor tread

Those dusty high - roads of the aimle ss deadPlaintive for Earth ; but rathe r turn and runDown some close - cove red by-way of the air,Some l ow swe e t alley be twe en wind and wind,Stoop unde r faint gleams

,thread the shadows, hnd

Some whispering ghost- forgotten nook, and the reSpend in pure conve rse our e te rnal day ;

RUPERT BROOKE 269

In another sonnet he compares the dead to clouds

I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as the se ,In wise maj e stic me lancholy train,

And watch the moon,and the stil l raging seas

,

And m en ,coming and going on the earth .

When the warbroke out he began naturally to writemore and more about Death ; he felt certain that hewas not to b e permitted to return alive , and he has leftbehind a series of sonn ets which threaten to become his

best-known work, so often have they been quoted of late

War knows no powe r . Safe shal l b e my going,Se cre tly armed against all death

’s e ndeavour :Safe though all safe ty

’s lost ; safe whe re m en fal lAnd if the se poor l imbs die , safe st of all .

Even here he has not forgotten his master ; the

sonnet is alm ost a direct plagiarism from Donne

Who is so safe as w e ?

In another he begins characteristically

Now,God b e thanked Who has matched us with H is hour,

To turn glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move ,And half-m en ,

and the ir dirty songs and dreary,And al l the l ittle emptine ss of love .

You see what a hold this early hatred of false lovekeeps on a man of fastidious delicacy like Brooke .

There is a touch reminiscent of Shelley’s love’s sad

satiety in the comparison of love’s emptiness with thedirty ,

dreary songs of half-men .

But by far his most famous war sonnet is The S oldier,which recalls exactly Masefield ’

s verse about those who

Died (uncouthly, most) in fore ign landsFor some idea, but dimly unde rstood ,Of an English city neve r built by hands,Which love of England prompted and made good .


I f I should d ie , think only this of m e

That there ’s some corne r of a fore ign fieldThat is for e ve r England . The re shall b eIn that rich e arth a riche r dust concealed ;A dust whom England bore , shaped, made aware ,Gave , once , herflow ers to love , her ways to roam ,

A body of England’s,breathing English air,

Washed by the rive rs, b le st by suns of home .

It has been said that in this poem he fell a Victimto that very romanticism which he so detested ; anotable successor of Donne’s at St Paul’s has commented adversely on the materialism underly ingthe thought ; it has also been described as infinitelythe most inspired poem written since August, 1914 .

I do not know ; we are , perhaps, a little too near theb ig event to be able to judge calmly or rationally ofthe lasting power of war poetry . What therecan b e no possible doubt about is the beauty of the

conception and the perfection of the execution . Thevery repetition of the word England here is likethe repetition of a majestic chord in a peculiarly finepiece of music . It should be noted

,however, that his

love of country found expression in Grantchesteras longago as 1912, and at the very beginn ing of the war hewrote in a prose essay in The NemS tatesman

The word “ England se ems to flash l ike a l ine of foam .

But for myself I must confess that I prefer TheTreasure, which is comparatively unknown, to any ofthe fiv e sonnets

When colour goe s home into the eye s,And lights that shine are shut againW ith dancing girl s and swe e t birds’ crie sBehind the gateways of the brain ;And that no-place which gave them birth, shall closeThe rainbow and the rose



You see it in The Charm

You,asle ep,

In some cool room that’s open to the nigh tLying half-forward, breathing quie tly,One white hand on the whiteUnrumpled she e t, and the e ve r-moving hairQuie t and stil l at length .

You see it in Day that I have Loved

From the inland me adows,

Fragrant of June and clove r, floats the dark, and fillsThe hollow sea’s dead face with little cre ep ing shadows ,And the white s ilence brims the hol low of the hills .

But you see it most of all in Grantchester, the one

poem by which the poet was generally known beforethe war

Just now the l i lac is in bloom,

A l l before my l ittle room ;And in my flowe r-beds, I think ,Smile the carnation and the pinkAnd down the borde rs, we l l I know,The poppy and the pan sy blow .

Oh ! the re the che stnuts, summer throughBe side the rive r make for youA tunne l of gre en gloom

,and sl e ep

De eply above ; and gre en and de epThe stream myste rious glide s beneath,

Da lieber Gott

Here am I,sw eating

,s ick

,and hot

,

And the re the shadowed wate 1 s fre shLean up to embrace the naked fle sh .

£396 yevoipnyv would I w e i eI n Grantche ste r

,in Grantche ste r !

Oh,i s the wate r swe e t and cool ,

Gentle and brown,above the pool ?

And laughs the immortal rive r stil lUnde r the mil l, unde r the mill ?Say, is the re Beauty ye t to find ?And Ce rtainty ? and Quie t kind 9

RUPERT BROOKE 273

This exquisite cameo,this perfect setting of an

English landscape , this final expression of a passionatelocal patriotism , is one of those poems the fate ofwhichis absolutely sure . It enters into that select list whichcontains L’

Allegro, Fancy, Corinna and Friar Bacon

and Friar B uugay . Here is the seeing eye , the in

evitable word , the god speaking through the lips ofman ; it is true magic , gossamerlike, almost unb elievably beautiful . It makes one g et a faint glimmeringof what that critic m eant who said that had it not beenfor K eats w e should have had no Brooke . If theprocess of pruning on which I touched at the beginningof this paper enables a man to rebuild his conceptionsof beauty as effectively as this, from henceforward Ibelong to the iconoclasts .

I come now to my final stage , the discussion ofBrooke’s attitude to Love .

It is by no mere coincidence that Browning was thegreatest lov e poet England has ever had that Browningwas merely the Victorian edition of Donn e ; thatBrooke is the Georgian reincarnation of the same man ;there is 110 fallacy in these premises . Doctor Johnsonwould not have been alone in stigmatising these lines

I ’ll write upon the shrinking skie sThe scarle t splendour of your name

extravagantly hyperbolical , but that does notprove that they are not true . There can b e nohyperbole in real love . These lines are no morethan the naked truth to a man of Rupert Brooke

’

stemp erament . Just as he only d iscovered real beautyby smashing up the seem ingly beautiful , so he foundreal love only after many ghastly experiments withthe false .


I said I splendidly loved you ; i t’s not true .

Such long swift tide s stir not a land - locked sea.

Cm gods or fools the high risk falls—on you

The cle an clear bitte r- swe e t that’s not for m e .

But—the re are wande re rs in the middle mist,

Who cry for shadows, clutch, and cannot te llWhe the r th ey love at al l .

They doubt, and sigh ,And do not love at al l . Of the se am I.

How absolutely Donne - like is this almost too clevertwist in the tail . You see it again in this favouriteselection of two such different critics as Gilbert Murrayand Charles VVhib ley

Breathle ss , w e flung us on the windy hill,Laughed in the sun , and kissed the lovely grass .You said

,Through glory and e cstasy w e pass ;

W ind,sun

,and e arth remain, the b irds sing still,

When w e are old are old .

Life i s our cry . We have ke pt the faith w e saidWe shal l g o down with unre luctant treadRose -crowned into the darkne ss ! ” Proud w e

we re ,And laughed , that had such brave true things to say.

—And then you suddenly cried , and turned away .

In Mummia, another love poem which would havecaused Doctor John son qualms, he says

So I, from paint , stone , tale , and rhym e,

Stuffed love ’s infinity ,And sucked all love rs of all timeTo rare fy e cstasy,

and goes on to pray that his love may b e the quintessence of all the great lovers ofdistant ages

For the utte rmost years have cried and clungTo kiss your mouth to mine .



of the hectic nineties ; you imagine that he is aboutto describe his Cyneras and Jenny s . Not so .

The se have I lovedWhite plate s and cups, cle an -gle aming

,

R inged with blue l ine s and fe athe ry , faery dustWe t roofs, beneath the lamp-l ight ; the strong crustOf friendly bread ; and many- tasting food ;Ra inbows ; and the b lue bitte r smoke of woodAnd radiant raindrops couching in cool flow ers

O dear my love s, O faithle ss , once againThis on e last gift I give ; that afte r m en

Shall know,and late r love rs, far- removed ,

Praise you, A l l the se were love ly say,“ He loved .

Walt Whitman himself never exulted in so sustainedan anthem it is the benedicite of all lovers ofNature .

How in stantly and surely does Brooke show us the

captivation of the sudden flowering miracle of theordinary .

We , too , go out after reading this , and for a momentgaze Spellbound in ecstasy w ith new eye s at the beautyof boy s bathing in a pool , of the lighted cottage windowat dusk, the dim religious light of an abbey crownedby the crescent moon ; w e, too, have our immortalmoment in lilac and laburnum time , when w e picturesome old song’s lady , a snatch of a forgotten tune , theechoing laughter of our best beloved who may b e faraway or dead w e , too , stand on the heights unpinionedand gaze out over the empurpled hills, razor- like in theirmaj estic nakedness, and for a million years enraptured ,god - like , appreciative ; w e , too, can see Visions of

Arthur setting out for that distant vale of Avilion ,where falls not hail , or rain, or any snow , nor ever windblows loudly ; w e , too , can hear the voice of manywaters

,of the breeze, of the lark ; the scent of sweet

brier and of peach has the power to drive even us almost

RUPERT BROOKE 277

mad with infinite longing s but for the most partw e are content to crawl homewards with downcast eye ,oblivious ofbeauty , forgetful of love it is in these arid ,never- ending , Viewless deserts that w e need most of allthe poets , our souls

’ tin- openers , that w e may open our

eyes to see , our ears to hear to see in the long melancholic train of clouds ourd ead friends hovering, to hearin the j oyous trilling of birds our loved ones’ happylaughter . We , too, need to have something of thatmagnificent unpreparedness for the long littleness of

life which is only to b e learnt ofpoets . Rupert Brooke,

p erhaps more than any poet of our era, is able to teachus something of the things that matter . It was notfor nothing that B en Jonson sty led Donne the firstpoet in the world for some things . So is his disciple ,Brooke . If you require a corrective for lazy thinkingand facile writing , turn to Donne or Brooke ; if thatkind ofwit which is one long succession of disconcertingsurprises refreshes you and inspires you, you will findit in each of these ; if you are willing or able to letbeauty come to you as it comes to the Alchemist whoGlorifies his pregnant pot , If by the way to him befall ,Some odoriferous thing ormedicina youwill b e helpedagain by reading these two m en, you will forgive thefrequently bizarre, the sometimes even repellent tonethat creeps in almost unconsciously ,

because of thatrare intensity of feeling which pervades their wholeoutlook on life . If you love Browning, but are tootroubled to acquiesce without question in his toocomfortabl e God’s in His Heaven—All’s right withtheWorld ,

”orhis non-proven optimism about reunion,

I shall clasp thee again , 0 thou soul ofmy soul , andwith God b e the rest,

” turn to Brooke and youwill findthe same erudition, the same packed intricacies, thesamemultitudinous beauties and whimsical phraseology ,


but none of his annoy ing sophistry . There is alwayslatent that surest of all foundations, a perfect blendof reason and imagination , each restraining the otherso that reason does not become unsympathetic hardness nor im agination degenerate into what Wordsworth so well called mere fancy .

If your criterion of a poet be that he should possessfire

,a joy in life, a classical taste, an Hellenic ey e for

beauty and grace , a sense of the lovely ,and b e able to

differentiate that best of all things, Love , from thatworst travesty , Sentimentalism, you will b e amongthose who will turn for solace and true enjoyment toRupert Brooke .

There has passed away through his death a gloryfrom the earth each of us is the poorer by the loss ofa man whom all his friends idolised and his readersrevered . He died as he had lived ; as England hadlavished on him all the gifts in superabundance thatmortal man can desire , so he was willing to renouncethem as a sacrifice on the altar of honour . Proudthen , clear-eyed and laughing , go to greet Death as afriend .

”Of him it can truly b e said as of few others

Nothing i s he re for tears, nothing to wailOr knock the breast ; no weakne ss , no contempt,Dispraise or blame no thing but we l l and fair

,

And what may quie t us in a death so noble .

A young Apollo, golden-haired ,Stands dreaming on the ve rge of strife ,

Magnificently unpreparedFor the l ong l ittlene ss of l ife .



inconsiderable merit . Ivy Low but there are farmore famous instances than these ; Robert LouisStevenson and George Meredith , George Eliot andthe Bronte s , K ipling and Goldsm ith , Scott—the listis unending . The difficulty is to find an exception ,whereas it is hard to imagine those who are primarilypoets writing novels at all . What sort of a novelshould we expect from Wordsworth , K eats , Shelley ,

Rupert Brooke, Swinburne , Tenny son , Browning,Robert Bridges, Yeats , Noyes, Walter de la Mare ,Drinkwater orFlecker 9Naturally w e read with unqualified delight and

interest all that our favourite novel ists put into poetry ,for w e there find their philosophy cry stallised , w e find

more of themselves , for, broadly speaking , the averagenovel is objective and dramatic whereas poetry issubjective and reflectiv e . We g et a far closer insightinto the working s of our novelist’s mind if he w ritespoetry , for there at least w e can b e certain of finding

the man him self . So just as all true lovers ofMeredithread his poetry with no less avidity than his novels ,so all disciples of Hardy will b e grateful for thisexceedingly well-chosen coll ection of his poems nowpublished .

The book , which is all too slim , and contains less thanone hundred and fifty short poems , is divided into threeparts—Lyrical , Narrativ e and Martial- written in everyconceivable sort ofmetre . ForHardy is nothing if notexperimental ; he ranges from the severely classicalSapphic to the most formless ofmodern metric deviceshe achieves beauty in nearly every case , but he isobviously never satisfied that he has found the bestmould in which to cast his thoughts ; he repeatshimself less than any contemporary poet, whether inlanguage or form . On the other hand his philosophy ,

THOMAS HARDY 281

the essence of his work , is stable and uniform ; the

fatalism which we have come to regard as his mostpronounced characteristic is softened to a considerableextent . We could no longer imagine Mr G . K .

Chesterton , for instance , comparing him in this instancewith the Village atheist blaspheming over the Villageidiot .

Browning , to take a typical example, might well havewritten On the Departure P latform, with its theory of

the transitory nature of human happiness .

And why, young man , must e te rnally flyA j oy you

’l l repeat,if you love herwe l l ?

0 friend , nought happens twice thu s ; why,I cannot te l l !

and Browning above all m en was dear to the heart ofChesterton . It is a mistake to suppose that Hardyhas not experienced his ecstatic moments in commonwith the most thoughtless of us .

A Day is drawing to its fal lI had not dreamed to se e ;

The first of many to enthral lMy spirit, will i t b e ?

Or is this eve the end of al lSuch new de light for m e ?

I j ourney home : the patte rn growsOfmoon s hade s on the way :

Soon the first quarte r, I suppose ,Sky

-glancing trave llers say .

I real ize that it, for those ,Has be en a common day .

This scarcely fits in with our preconceived theoriesabout the pessimistic ugliness of the author of Tess .

The truth is rather that Hardy is of all l iving poetsthe most sensitive to the appeal of beauty out of the


simplest hack phrases of conversation he seems toevolve a magical melody .

Le t m e enj oy the earth no le ssBe cause the all - enacting M ight

That fashioned forth its love l ine ssHad othe r aims than my de light

is a brave verse , and certainly not the despairing cry

of the village atheist blaspheming .

“ Life offers—todeny ,

”he sings in Yell’ham-Wood

’s S tory , but that is

merely the cry of a heart that will not allow reason tobe overpowered by plausible blind emotion ; he refusesto blink the fact that life is tragic , poignant, illogicaland uncomfortable .

Hemerely wishes to put on record his experience that ,given the time and the place and the loved one all together, there still lurks some secret thing which preventsman from seizing the golden opportunity . He picturesin At an I7mtwo lovers left alone as Love’s own pairwho had resigned all for love’s dear ends .

”

The kis s the ir zeal fore told ,And now de emed come ,

Came not ; within his holdLove l inge red numb .

Why cast he on our portA bloom not ours ?

Why shaped us for his SportIn afte r-hours 9

As w e se emed w e we re notThat day afar,

And now w e se em not whatWe aching are .

0 seve ring sea and land,

0 laws of m en,

Ere death , once le t us standAs we stood then I



supremely exquisite effect with the common phraseologyof every day transmuted into music by the genius ofthe poet

I t was your way, my dear,To b e gone without a wordWhen calle rs, friends, or kinHad left

,and I hastened in

To rej oin you, as I infe rred .

And when you’d a mind to care er

Ofl'

anywhe re—say to townYou we re all on a sudden goneBefore I had thought the reon ,Or noticed your trunks we re down .

So now,that you disappear

For e ve r in that swift styleYour m eaning se em s to m e

Just as it used to b eGood -bye i s not worth while !

It is worth while analysing this poem in detail , if

you would discover Hardy’s mastery ov er the common

place . Notice the intricate rhyme scheme , theordinariness of when you

’d a mind to career off

anywhere—say to town could anything be moreconversational , more like the Speech of every day ?How Wordsworth would have delighted in this consummate proof of the efficacy of his theory of poeticdiction : it requires more than common courage torisk such bare simplicity, for if you fail , your fall isseen at once by even the dullest critic ; conversely ,if you succeed , as there is no doubt Hardy does here,your success is due to genius alone , unaided by anycloying sweetness , or exotic , fair-sounding words thatlull the senses and put all one’s critical faculties tosleep .

THOMAS HARDY 285

Could anything b e more simple than his two superbpoems to his dead wife , At Castle Boterel and The

Phantom Horsewomau ?

Queer are the ways of a man I knowHe come s and standsIn a careworn craz e ,And looks at the sandsAnd the seaward hazeWith move le ss handsAnd face and gaze ,The n turns to g o .

And what doe s he se e when he gaze s so ?

They say he se e s as an instant thingMore cle ar than to-day,A swe e t soft s ceneThat once was in playBy that briny gre en :Ye s

,note s alway

Warm,real, and ke en ,

What his back years bringA phantom of his own fig uring .

A ghost girl - ride r . And though,toil - tried,

He withers daily,Time touche s her not,But she stil l ride s gailyIn his rapt thoughtOn that shagged and shalyAtlanti c spot

,

And as when first eyedDraws re in and sings to the swing of the tide .

It will surprise many of those people who for yearshave denounced Hardy for his miserable lack of hopeor faith to find that he comes into line with all the

youngest soldier-poets of to day , who sing incessantlyof the future life when their Spirits will return to theplaces they had learnt to love best .


My Spirit will not haunt the moundAbove my breast,But trave l , memory-posse ssed ,To where my tremulous be ing foundLife large st, be st .

This scarcely fits in with the accepted ideas aboutp essimism . The truth is , Hardy was as capable of

experiencing the finest passions as any great genius islife’s peerless moments of bliss had come his way tooand he had not despised them . His love for his wifeis as self-evident as Browning’s was ; only the inev itable reaction came . Too fragrant was Life’s earlybloom, Too tart the fruit it brought .

”Just as he

was capable of loving much so was he condemned ,

as all great lovers are, to suffer in exactly the sameproportion .

Brush not the bough for midnight scentsThat come forth linge ringly,

And wake the same swe e t sentimentsThey bre athed to you and m e

When living se emed a laugh,and love

A l l it was said to b e .

I did not knowThat heydays fade and g o,But de emed that what was would b e always

Is not this rather the awakening of the optimist to asense of this world’s shortcomings ?I think it was Chesterton who first pointed out that

the pessimist was really m ore Optimistic than the

Optimist because he was not content with things as

they are but saw in his Visions a much finerworld andspent his whole l ife in try ing to bring it into being .

In To an Unborn Pauper Child we g et this point ofView exactly



parable of life in the poem on the tradition of the oxenkneeling on Christmas Ev e .

I fe e lsomeone said on Christmas Eve ,Come ; see the oxen kne e l

In the lone ly barton by yonde r coombOur childhood used to know,I should g o with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might b e so .

How Wordsworthian, again , is The Dear, in whichhe describes his chance meeting on the hill-tops witha maiden , one fain would guard from every hazardand every care

I wondered how succe eding sunsWould shape herwayfarings,

And wished such Powe r might take such one sUnde r its warding wings .

He then greeted her Commiserate still . ‘ Goodmorning , my Dear I said . She replied that she wasnot his dear and passed him by and “ Idid not try to make her understand .

It is easy enough to misread such a poem altogetherand dismiss it with a sneer, but it is a mistake into whichwe often fall , this of attributing to genius intellects notvery far superior to our own . We have to remembertoo , that , unlik e many great poets , Hardy has a veryfinely develop ed sense of humour and is not likely tob e led astray into writing rubbish .

Some of his narrative poems have as their theme

the most commonplace incidents , which yet become

pregnant with meaning when seen through the eyes ofthe seer . Few who have read B eyond the Last Lampbeyond Tooting Common (of all unpoetic places) willeasily forget the impression made on them by the story

THOMAS HARDY 289

of the miserable couple pacing up and down heedlessof the night and rain .

”

One could but wonde r who they we reAnd what wild w oe de tained them the re .

Thirty years after, the poet still sees them whennights are weird and w et it is this interest in allthe world about him that makes the only true criterionby which w e can judge ourpoet .

The Face at the Casement is more definitely tragic .

The lover passes with his beloved under the windowof the dying man, who had also loved her, but in vain .

He wished to marry m e,

So I am bound,when I drive near him ,

To e nquire , if but to ch e e r him,

How he may b e .

Hermessage is sent up to the sick man , who thanksher extravagantly for coming , and they drive on .

The favoured lover then designs a deed of hell : knowing his rival to b e gazing out of the lattice upon theirreceding figures, he puts his arm about her that hemight see , nor doubt her

“

my plighted Love The

poem then ends on a note quite foreign to our old ideaof Hardy

Love i s long-sufiering , brave ,Swee t, prompt, pre cious as a j ewe lBut 0,

too, Love i s crue l ,Crue l as the grave .

It seems hard to believe that he would concede somuch to love as to allow her those fiv e all -conqueringattributes , especially when w e remember that in anearlier poem he had definitely stated that it would b ebetter for mankind to cease without love’s kindlingcoupling-vow rather than to learn what her swaymeant .


A third narrative poem , longer than the others ,called The Burghers (Casterbridg e , 17 tells of a manwho caught his wife on the point of running away witha man instead ofkilling them, as his friend advises , heheaps on her all his possessions and sees them quietlyoff the grounds .

I t was my friend . I have struck we l l . Th ey fly,But carry wounds that none can cicatrize .

Not mortal ? said he . Linge ring—worse , said I.

Once only , in In Teuebris , does he lament his loneliness and separation from mankind ; once only , j ust asMeredith let us see his deep agony in his letters .

The poem is more self-revelatory than anything elseHardy ever wrote—it is wrung out of him .

He begins by quoting Psalm 141 Considerabam

ad dexteram , et V idebam et non erat qui cognosceret3

m e .

When the clouds’ swoln bosoms e cho back the shouts of themany and strong,

The things are all as they be st may be , save a few to b e rightere l ong

,

And my eye s have not the vision in them to discern what tothe se is so clear,

The bl ot se ems straightway in m e alone one be tter he we renot he re .

Le t him in whose e ars the low-voiced Be s t is kil led by theclash of the First,

Who holds that if w ay to the Be tte r the re b e , i t exacts a fulllook at the Worst,

Who fe e l s that de light is a de l icate growth cramped bycrookedne ss, custom, and fear,

Ge t him up and b e gone as one shaped awry : he disturbsthe order he re .

So we g et ourHardy humanised even more than wethought ; he does care, he does suffer horribly under



when patriotism , grown God-like, will scorn to standbondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas . Waris so amazingly futile and purposeless .

Ye s ; quaint and curious war is !You shoot a fe l low downYou’d tre at if m e t where any bar isOr he lp to half-a-crown .

and yet and yet

Is it a purblind prank, 0 think you,Friend with the musing eye ,Who watch us stepping byW ith doubt and dolorous sigh P

Can much ponde ring so hoodwink youI s it a purb l ind prank, 0 think you,Friend with the musing eye

P

Nay . We we l l se e what w e are doing,Though some may not se eDallie rs as they b eEngland’s ne ed are w e

Her distre ss would leave us rue ing,Nay . We we l l se e what w e are doing,

Though some may not se e .

This is a good note on which to leave this all tooslim volum e . Hardy himself has never been in anydoubt as to his aims—it is only we who are in blinkerswhen we attribute to such an intellect purblindpranks or the inspissated gloom of the cursing atheist .

He has found life very sweet, and as a quite naturalcorollary he has also found it exceeding bitter ; he

reveals himself in all his moods ; at one moment heturns from the trees to human companionship :

S ince,then

,no grace I find

Taught me of tre e s,Turn I back to my kind ,W orthy as these .

THOMAS HARDY 293

There at le ast smile s abound ,The re discourse tril ls around ,

The re , now and then , are foundLife - loyaltie s .

At another he seeks the Wessex Heights to escapefrom the ghosts that continually haunt him in thelowlands

M ind-chains do not clank whe re one ’s next ne ighbour isthe sky .

The re are some he ights in We ssex, shaped as if by a kindlyhand

For thinking,dreaming, dying ou

,and at crise s when I stand,

Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or onWylls Ne ck we stwardly,I se em whe re I was before my birth , and afte r de ath may b e .

So I am found on Ing pen Beacon, or on Wylls Ne ck to thewe st .

Or e l se on home ly Bulbarrow ,or lit tle P ilsdon cre st,

Where m en have neve r cared to haunt , nor women havewalked with m e

,

And ghosts then ke ep the ir d istance : and I know somel ibe rty .

Curiously enough , Hardy’s superb descriptions of the

beauties of the Dorset which he has made all his ownare reserved for his prose epics ; he never approachesthe majesty of the opening chapters of The Return ofthe Native in any of his descriptive poems he is rarelyin his poetry merely descriptive at all . At his sweetest,he uses the scenery , say , of the Cornish coast as a background and a setting for his wife’s portrait . Not thathe cannot crystallise in the most exquisite form anymood of Nature which he wants to pin down , moreparticularly , of course , her harsher ones .

I leant upon a coppice gateWhen Frost was spe ctre -grey,

And winter’s days made de solateThe weakening eye of day .


The tangled bine - stems scored the skyLike strings of broken lyre s ,

And al l mankind that haunted nighHad sought the ir household fires.

The land ’s sharp feature s se emed to b eThe Century

’s corpse outleant,His crypt the cloudy canopy,The wind his death - lament .

The ancient pulse of germ and birthWas shrunken hard and dry,

And eve ry spirit upon earthSeemed fe rvourle ss as I.

His wonderful manipulation of diverse metricalforms , his passionate love forhis wife and his never-tob e -forgotten sense of loss when she died , beautifullyexpressed in imperishable Verse, his keen , penetratingphilosophy , his delight in the mere telling of a story ,

all combine to make this all too slim body of work of

rare and lasting value .

His sense of the musical was evident to anyone whostudied the lyrics in The Dynasts , but his amazingsuccesses with every sort of metrical and rhythm icalexperiment that he tried are not so commonly recognised . The point most to b e kept in mind is that heattains that success with the ordinary , everyday speechof us all . Here is none of the dreamy , sensuouslanguage of K eats or Coleridge , heavy with romancewords ; his is the vocabulary of the satirist , of Swift,Anglo-Saxon, monosyllabic , intellectual , bare he

has followed no school and founded none . He d is

dains to employ any tricks to cajole the multitude tolisten to his pipings consequently , the Caesar to whomhe appeal s for judgm ent is posterity . He will nevercreate a furore among his contemporaries ; he hasremained isolated and aloof all these years and may b e

well content to remain so for the remainder of his life .


O. HENRY

CANNOT claim to b e among that select band whofound and loved O. Henry

’s short stories beforethe present boom set in . I owe my knowledge

of him entirely to Stephen Leacock’s eulogistic essay ,

in which he prophesies that the time is coming whenthe whole English-speaking world will recognise in0 . Henry one of the great masters ofmodern literature .

I read him to refute this amazing paean I read everyword he published ; I read a great deal of him aloud,and I may say , in passing, that he gains infinitely bybeing read aloud . Now comes an authentic biographyof him from a Professor ofEnglish in the University of

V irginia, who say s that in 0 . Henry non- critical readersfind a range of fancy , an exuberance of humour, asympathy , an understanding, a knowledge of the raw

material of life , an ability to interpret the passing interms of the permanent, an insight into individual andinstitutional character, a resolute and pervasive desireto help those in need ofhelp—in a word, a constant andessential democracy that they find in no other shortstory writer .

I fear that the two professors , in their enthusiasmover their hero , are likely to overshoot the mark anddrive away many timid readers who , carefully enticed ,might have become devotees of this remarkable writerfor however much the method of thrusting down thethroat may succeed inAmerica , it cuts very little icein England .

We are told that his adherents across the Atlantic

296

O. HENRY 297

can b e counted in millions , which rather tends to makethe cultured, academic mind of this country avoid so

successful a genius . He thinks fretfully ofthose writerswho count as best sellers in the British Isles . So farfrom being a point in their favour, such evidence onlymilitates against them here , for the most popular writersare rarely the masters and are but seldom among thosewho have any new message to deliver .

Respecting, however, the calm verdict of so obviouslysane a critic as Professor Leacock, they buy one volum e

of O. Henry’s

,ready to find fault, and within a few

minutes they have found a dozen or a score of tacticalerrors that rankle .

They obj ect to his slap-dash style , his far-fetchedmetaphors and similes with which he besprinkles nearlyevery sentence . He is as fond of a ridiculous illustration as Shakespeare was of puns . They cavil at hisimpossible exaggerations as palpable and false asFalstaff’s ; his wit, which degenerates only too ofteninto buffoonery at a thousand things which an Englishwriter would have left unsaid at the constant irruptionofthe narrator into the story the take it or leave it ,

”

high-handed tone which he takes with his readers atthe blatancy of the tricks he plays upon the imagination - at a thousand little details .

Many quite acute critics never get beyond this stage ,and give 0 . Henry much too short a trial , only to turnfrom him in disgust before they penetrate to the realwriter at all . It must b e allowed at once that thepure gold , of which there is much , is hidden beneath agood deal of dross . There are twelve Volumes of thesestories , and in each volume there are over two dozenseparate tales . It is not to b e expected that of thesetwo hundred and seventy odd experiments all willsucceed . I would guarantee to select fifty which would


make an irresistible appeal to the most exacting andcaptious critic, but these fifty would have to b e chosenwith great circumspection, and they are to b e found inno two or three volumes . They are scattered haphazard in between stories that are merely dull , pointless or insipid, and to the full appreciation of them aknowledge of the salient points of O. Henry

’s life wouldb e necessary so this I propose to give now .

His biographer, Professor Alphonso Sm ith , devotesa great many unnecessary pages to his ancestors andother irrelevant matter . He has written a book whichis not at all to b e commended to those who wouldunderstand the true Henry , and yet without it w eshould b e apt to miss a great deal that is important ifw e wish fully to understand the appeal that his beststories ought to make .

In the first place , as most people know, his name wasnot 0. Henry at all, butW illiam Sydney Porter . He

was born at Greensborough, North Carolina, in 1862,

and as a boy in his native town gained a good deal oflocal approbation as a cartoonist . After leaving schoolb e became apprenticed to his uncle , and spent fiv e yearsin a drug store, and completed his education by readingomnivorously . Among his favourite books were TheArabian Nights , The Anatomy ofMelancholy , the novelsof Scott , Dickens , Thackeray , Charles Reade , BulwerLytton , Wilkie Collins , V ictor Hugo and Dumas . Hishealth , however, was not strong (he came of a consumptiv e stock) , and so at the age of e ighteen he wassent to Texas in order to learn the art of ranching .

His thirst for knowledge during this period seems tohave been unquenchable . History , fiction, biography ,

science and magazines of every sort were devoured andtalked about with eager interest . Tennyson and

Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary were his two most



also the year in which he began to rely on his pen asa supplementary source of income . There was bornduring this period his only daughter, Margaret WorthPorter, who is now herself making a name in Americaas an author .

In 1894 he started a paper called The Rolling S tone,which lived for exactly a year . He then accepted a

job on the staff of The Houston Daily P ost, which heheld from October

,1895, to June , 1896, when he was

suddenly recalled to Austin to answer a charge ofembezzlement while acting as te ller at the bank . Thathe was innocent no one now doubts , but he committedwhat he afterwards called the one irretrievable error ofhis life by running away . He took train from Houston

,

obviously with the intent of standing his trial , but atHempstead his too imaginative mind betrayed him ,

andhe got out and took the night train to New Orleans

,a

fugitive from justice . He went on by fruit steamer toHonduras , and there met the leader of a notorious gangof train robbers

,whom he j oined , and together this

strange pair circled the entire west of South America .

He wrote regularly to his wife , and was full of plans forthe education of his daughter in Honduras

,when

suddenly he learnt that his wife was dangerously ill .He immediately returned and gave himself up in orderto b e near her. She died in July, 1897, and his trialwas held in February ofthe following year . He pleadednot guilty, but appeared to b e indifferent as to the result .

One peculiar feature of the indictment was that hewas accused of stealing money in November, 1895 ,nearly a year after he had left the bank This appearsnot to have been commented on at all . Like LordJim ,

”0 . Henry appears to have been crushed by his

one great mistake , in running away . The rest of thematter did not appear to concern him . He was

O. HENRY 301

sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, but came out in1901 , after three years , owing to his flawless record inprison . He acted during these years as drug clerkin the penitentiary , and Professor Smith includes inhis biography a great number of letters written to hisdaughter during this time , over which it is not necessarynow to dwe ll . He retained no trace ofbitterness at thehardness of his lot . The years had left an ineradicablemark upon his character, and he came out into theworld again a changed man , nobler, of infinite charityand kindliness, with an intense sympathy for all hisfellow-creatures .

It was at this time that he began to write under anassumed name , the name by which he is now knownto practically every intelligent person in the Englishspeaking countries .

The stories that were written in prison , under thestress of so great suffering , mark the transition from

journalism to the domain of literature proper .

In the spring of 1902 came the call to him to go toNew York . From that time forward he found that hecould not work outside of the city which he now madehis own and which claims him as her most inspiredlover . If ever,

” writes Professor Smith, inAmericanliterature the place and the man met, they met when0 . Henry strolled for the first time along the streetsof New York .

”

Conqueror-like,he began to rechristen the city of his

choice ,Little Old Bagdad-on-the -Subway ,

”The

City ofTooMany Caliphs ,”Noisyv ille on theHudson ,

”

Wolfville on the Subway and The City of Chame

leon Changes will give some idea of the impression thisvast Manhattan made on its greatest lover . He mademany and valuable friends, but was very much aversefrom any tendency that might b e shown to lionise him .


He was nearly always penniless , owing to his lack ofthrift and his incurable habit of promiscuous charity ,

but he was never tempted by golden offers to swell hiscoffers . On one occasion a very famous publishingfirm , who had refused many ofhis short stories when hewas unknown , now came forward and sent him a chequefor a thousand dollars , asking him for something fromhis pen—anything . His reply was to send back thecheque without further comment .

There were but two things that could b e reallycounted upon to offend him—a salacious story and theproffer of a plot . He preferred to g et his plots for himself by mixing with shop girls and salesmen, by roamingat all hours of the day and night along the river frontand talking with anyone who would condescend to do so .

He seems never to have wanted copy .

”

If I could have a thousand years ,”he writes , in one

of his short stories just one little thousand yearsmore of life , I might, in that time , draw near enough totrue Romance to touch the hem of her robe .

Up from ships men come , and from waste places,and forest and road and garret and cellar to maunderto me in strangely distributed words of the things theyhave seen and considered . The recording of their tale sis no more than a matter of ears and fingers . Thereare only two fate s I dread—deafness and writer’scramp .

”

To one of his stories , Madame Bo-Peep, oftheRanches,he owes his second wife , Miss Sallie Coleman ofAsheville ,North Carolina . She had written to him about thisstory and told him of her own ambition to write .

His reply is illuminating and quite extraordinarilyhelpful , not only to a true understanding of the romantictrait which is O. Henry’s predominant and most charming characteristic, but also as a piece of advice to the



Here we get the clue to O. Henry’s greatness , hiskinship with Dickens and Shakespeare and all greatwriters . He was the born, large -hearted democrat who

,

with the utmost sincerity,can lay his hand upon his

breast and say : Humani nihil a me alienum puto .

Each succeeding year, until 1911 , saw the publicationof two collections of his stories touching on every sortof topic, treating of every kind of life .

In 1909 he showed signs of breaking up, and in theautumn of that year he returned to Asheville , only toreturn to his beloved city in the following March . On

the evening of the 3rd of June he was taken to thePolyclinic Hospital , and on the following Sundaymorning , just before sunrise, with a whimsical smileand a j est upon his lips Turn up the lights I don’twant to go home in the dark —he died .

Such is the life story of a man who has been variouslysty led The American K ipling ,

”The American de

Maupassant,”

The American Gogol ,” Our Fielding (1

lamode,”

The Bret Harte of the City ,

”The

Boccaccio,”

The Homer of the Tenderloin ,”

The

Twentieth Century Haroun Al-Ra schid,”

the GreatestLiving Master of the Short Story .

”

It remains to see how far he has justified these extraordinary titles .

First, then, as to technique .

No man has made so much his own the art of thenuexpected ending . He begins quietly , yet arrestingly ,

but you are unable to tell whether you are to b e let infor a tragic or comic dénouement, a defeat or Victory .

In the second stage , that of the first guess , you begin todiscover the plot something definite and resultant seemsto b e on the way ; you can

’t guess the end , but youcan’t help trying to .

The third stage shows you that your guess was wrong .

O. HENRY 805

This is the stage of the first surprise . Something hashappened that ought not to have happened if the storywas to end according to your expectations .

The last stage is marked by light out of darkness .

We are surprised, happily surprised, and then surprisedagain that we should have been surprised at first .

He alway s worke d a triple -hinged surpriseTo end the scene and make one rub one ’s eye s .

The sting in the tail , the entire volte-face from whatone expected, is amazingly in the ve in of Rupert Brooke ,and adds tremendously to the charm of the narrative ,but it is , after all , a trick , mechanical and often tiresome

after one gets accustomed to it . But there is some

thing much deeper than this : there is the art which

yet makes the unexpected the inevitable . You go overthe stories a second time and then begin to perceive themastery with which the tricks are forged . It is all ofa piece . There are no loose ends , no irrelevancies .

All 0 . Henry’s stories are marked by a fierce economy

of detail which at once put him on a plane far differentfrom that occupied by the average te ller of short stories .

The next point to b e noticed is his gift of observationmingled with what Bagehot called the experiencingmind . Not only did he watch with meticulous carefulness all the idiosyncrasies of every sort of person withwhom he came into contact, but he was further obsessedwith a passionate interest in and sympathy with everytype of man .

He is particularly fond of turning the tables onHaroun Al-Raschid . Not only does he let the richwander incognito among the poor, but he gives hisimagination rein and

, P ippa-like , bestows upon the

poverty-stricken clerk a day when he can become one

with the rich . Again and again he returns to this

U


subject, every time to treat of it from a fresh andinspiring point of View .

We see it in the story of the salesman who saved upten dollars every seventy days in order to masqueradeas a man about town for one night . He meets a girlwho is masquerading as a shop girl for amusement ;he takes her out to dinner and talks of his bridge and

yachts and golf and other aimless amusements ofthe life that he pretends to belong to . They separate

,

and we see her at the close of the story lamenting thatshe could find it in her heart to love a man who was

chivalrous and kind to poor shop girls , but never one

who wasted his life in expensive amusements .

Habit was another favourite topic . 0 . Henry wasVery interested in the question of relapse .

The P endulum is perhaps the best in this vein .

There we have a man who gets tired of the monotonyof home life , and so forms the habit, at eight-fifteenevery night , of leaving his wife alone and going off toa game of pool with his male companions .

One night on returning from work he finds a note fromhis wife saying that she has been called away to see her

mother, who is ill . He immediately begins to feelconscience -stricken ; he has treated his wife abominably .

When she comes back he will spend the rest of his life inmaking up for his desertions . He is ruminating on allthis when she suddenly returns ; her mother was notso bad as she had been led to expect . Imm ediatelythe husband looks up at the clock . Eight-fifteen ! He

gets up , preparatory to leaving the house . Querulouslyhis wife asks where he is going . Thought I’d drop upto he replied , and play a game ortwo ofpool with the fellows .

”

But by far the most insistent note in O. Henry’s

stories is that searching for what is round the corner,”



The answer is No . Destiny awaits you . Youcannot order, shun or wield or mould it

It ain’t the roads we take it’s what’s inside of usthat make s us turn out the way w e do .

”

But Henry’s true venturer dares Fate in its blindest

manifestations the true venturer does not ask aschedule and map from Fate when he begins a j ourney .

What he wants is to encounter an adventure to whichhe can predict no conclusion .

But he attains the topmost pinnacle of his fame onlywhen he writes about the shop girl . It is as the littleshOp girl

’s true knight-errant that 0 . Henry standsmost vividly before us .

Of all socia l problems (and social problems were thevery life blood of0. Henry ) , that of the conditions underwhich the shop girl lives

,and of her outlook on life

,

interested him most .

In A Lickpenny Lover we see her, beautiful , shrewd,cunning, with Vision limited behind the counter in aglove store . To her comes I1y ing Carter, paintei ,millionaire , gentleman, and falls immediately in lovewith her. Summoning up courage

,he suggests that he

should call on her people .

Carter did not know the shop girl . He did notknow that herhome is often e ither a scarcely habitabletiny room or a domicile filled to ov erflowing with kithand kin . The street-corner is her parlour

,the park is

her drawing-room ; the avenue is hergarden walk yet

for the most part she is as inviolate mistress of herselfin them as is my lady inside her tapestried chamber .

”

He meets her in the streets and implores her to marryhim , drawing a perfect picture of Venice and India,Persia and the ends of the earth to which he will takeher .

To her bosom friend next she recounted the episode .

O. HENRY 309

Say, Lu, what do you think that fellow wanted meto do 9 He wanted me to marry him and go down toConey Island for a wedding tour .

In Elsie in New York we have the story of a girl looking for work, who is met on the threshold of each placeby some se lf- styled charity organisation which preventsher from accepting without providing herwith anythingelse . In the end she falls a Victim to the worst type ofscoundrel .In The Gu ilty Party Liz is driven to the streets and

ruin simply because her father would do nothing tomake her home attractive for her .

Ah Unfinished S tory dwells on the underpayment ofworking girls and their ultimate ruin owing to the irquite natural love of adornm ent . It finishes thus :

I dreamed that I was standing near a crowd ofprosperous - looking ange ls , and a policeman took me bythe wing and asked if I belonged to them .

Who are they 9 I asked .

Why ,

’ said he , they are the men who hiredworking girls , and paid

’em fiv e or six dollars a week

to live on . Are you one of the bunch 9Not on your immortality,

’ said I. I’m only the

fellow that set fire to an orphan asylum , and murdereda blind man for his pennies .

’

In Brickdust Row we are reminded of Shaw inWidowers’ Houses . The shaft is aimed at those whocompel girls to meet m en on the boats , in church ,in the park or on the street .

A girl has got to meet the men , says Florence tothe man who has fallen in love with her but doesn’tunderstand the sort of life she is forced to live thefirst time one spoke to me on the street, I ran home andcried all night . But you get used to it . I meet a goodmany nice fellows at church .

”


The hero finds that he owns the very block of flatsin which the girl lives . His lawyer suggests makingreception rooms .

Man ,” replies the agonised lover, it

’s too late , I

tell you . It’s too late . It’s too late . It’s too late .

”

In The Trimmed Lamp we see two shop girls and thedevoted lover . One of the girls , caring only forostentation and finery , throws him over, and he mates with theother . At the end we are shown the flashy girl , ledastray by baubles , expensively clad , with diamond ringsand all the paraphernalia of hernew profession , crouching down by a dark fence , sobbing , with a plainly dressedworking girl by her side who was doing her best toconsole her.

Another main feature of 0 . Henry is his study ofcities .

He studied cities as women study their reflections inmirrors a city was a thing with a soul , an individualconglomeration of life , with its own peculiar essence ,flavour and feeling,

”he says ofRaggles

,in The Making

of a Nem Yorker, Chicago seemed to swoop downupon him with a breezy suggestion of Mrs Partington ,plumes and patchouli

,Pittsburg impressed him as the

play ofOthello performed in Russian in a railroad stationby Dockstader

’s minstrels . New Orleans simply gazed

down upon him from a balcony ,Boston seemed to him a

white,cold cloth that had been bound tightly round

his brow to spur him on to some unknown buttremendous mental effort .

”

New York seemed to ignore him altogether until hehad been knocked down by a motor car, when he discovered how ,

underneath the surface , she stood kindly ,

hum an , sympathetic , a veritable mother city .

In A Municipal Report, which Professor Leacockadm ires more than all his other stories , he tries to show



divisa est which is the same as to say ; we will need allof our gall in devising means to tre e them parties .

”

Again he lets slip from time to time , usually aproposof nothing, little passages of philosophy which, onceread

,we are likely to carry with us to the grave . Of

these the one that I remember most clearly run s thusYou can’t write with ink, and you can

’t write with

your own heart’s blood, but you can write with the

heart’s blood of someone else . You have to b e a cadbefore you can b e an artist .

”

In The Country of Elusion we see his hatred of the

sham Bohemia of the New Yorker .

You know how the Bohemian feast of reason keepsup with the courses . Humour with the oysters ; witwith the soup ; repartee w ith the entrée ; brag withthe roast ; knocks for Whistler and K ipling with thesalad ; songs With the coffee ; the slapsticks with the

cordials . Freedom is the Tyrant that holds ourBohemians in slavery .

”

I notice that no writer on 0 . Henry dares to concludewithout asserting Violently his preference for one storyover the rest . Perhaps so great a choice (out of twohundred and seventy) eggs one on to do a thing like this .

Anyway, I will try my hand at the game too . For

pure humour I place Let Me Feel Your Pulse easilyfirst . It has an appeal which none of the others hasfor the purely English reader . It is freer of exaggeratedjargon ; it is purer in style (0. Henry was no stylist,at any rate , in diction) , and has , as all good humorousstories should have , a quite pregnant climax . It obeysthe laws laid down by Meredith for the Comic Spiritit makes us laugh at human follies ; it satirises andridicules and yet it does us quite active and appreciablegood . It is an anodyne in itself for all bodily ailments ,an infallible prescription from an unerring doctor .

O. HENRY 313

For pathos I place The Furnished Room and Past

One at Rooney’s as exquisite examples of what drama

it is possible to convey through the medium of theshort story , and for a picture of the life which 0 . Henrywas most fond of, that of the New York shop girl

,I

think most readers might wander farther and fare worsethan contenting themselve s with The Third Ingredieut,but all of the stories which I have mentioned are of thekind that one reads only to reread with greater enj oyment every time one comes back to them .

That 0 . Henry is one of the world’s great geniuse sis probably not true . That he was a vastly divertingraconteur, poignant in his pathos , terrible in his tragedy ,witty, urbane and k indly in his hum our, is an established fact which no sane critic can deny . Luckily

(for us) his reputation is growing day by day, andwhether the whole English-speaking world come torecognise in him one of the greatest masters or not, thetime is surely not far distant when everyone will get toknow him well enough to offer up a prayer of gratitudethat we should have been privileged to come underthe influence of so eminently sane , human, and healthya writer .

Documents

· SHAKESPEARE F late we have regarded Shakespeare O , so far as we have regarded him at all, solely as a Patriot and a War- Poet, and by so doing have run the risk of forgetting