The Gentle Reader
by Samuel McChord Crothers · English · Gutenberg #38873 · 373,361 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Gentle Reader
Author: Samuel McChord Crothers
Release date: February 14, 2012 [eBook #38873]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38873
Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GENTLE READER ***
Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously available at The Internet
Archive)
THE GENTLE READER
The Gentle Reader
BY
SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1904
_Copyright, 1903
By Samuel McChord Crothers
All rights reserved
Published October, 1903_
Preface
When Don Quixote was descanting on the beauty of the peerless Dulcinea,
the Duchess interrupted him by expressing a doubt as to that lady's
existence.
"Much may be said on that point," said Don Quixote. "God only knows
whether there be any Dulcinea or not in the world. These are things the
proof of which must not be pushed to extreme lengths."
But this admission does not in the least interfere with the habitual
current of his thoughts, or cool the ardor of his loyalty. He proceeds
after the momentary digression as if nothing had happened. "I behold her
as she needs must be, a lady who contains within herself all the
qualities to make her famous throughout the world; beautiful, without
blemish; dignified, without haughtiness; tender, and yet modest;
gracious from courtesy, and courteous from good breeding; and lastly of
illustrious birth."
If in the following pages I begin by admitting that there is much to be
said in behalf of the popular notion that the Gentle Reader no longer
exists, let this pass simply as an evidence of my decent respect for the
opinion of mankind. To my mind the Gentle Reader is the most agreeable
of companions, and to make his acquaintance is one of the pleasures of
life.
Of so elusive a personality it is not always possible to give a
consistent account. I have no doubt that I may have occasionally
attributed to him sentiments which are really my own; on the other hand,
I suspect that some views that I have set down as my own may have been
unconsciously derived from him. I have particular reference to the
opinions expressed on the subject of Ignorance. Such confusion of
mental properties the Gentle Reader will readily pardon, for there is no
one in all the world so careless of the distinctions between Meum and
Tuum.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE GENTLE READER 1
THE ENJOYMENT OF POETRY 35
THE MISSION OF HUMOR 64
CASES OF CONSCIENCE CONCERNING WITCHCRAFTS 101
THE HONORABLE POINTS OF IGNORANCE 135
THAT HISTORY SHOULD BE READABLE 167
THE EVOLUTION OF THE GENTLEMAN 201
THE HINTER-LAND OF SCIENCE 227
THE GENTLE READER'S FRIENDS AMONG THE CLERGY 243
QUIXOTISM 271
INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE AND DELIGHT 303
The Gentle Reader
What has become of the Gentle Reader? One does not like to think that he
has passed away with the stagecoach and the weekly news-letter; and that
henceforth we are to be confronted only by the stony glare of the
Intelligent Reading Public. Once upon a time, that is to say a
generation or two ago, he was very highly esteemed. To him books were
dedicated, with long rambling prefaces and with episodes which were
their own excuse for being. In the very middle of the story the writer
would stop with a word of apology or explanation addressed to the Gentle
Reader, or at the very least with a nod or a wink. No matter if the fate
of the hero be in suspense or the plot be inextricably involved.
"Hang the plot!" says the author. "I must have a chat with the Gentle
Reader, and find out what he thinks about it."
And so confidences were interchanged, and there was gossip about the
Universe and suggestions in regard to the queerness of human nature,
until, at last, the author would jump up with, "Enough of this, Gentle
Reader; perhaps it's time to go back to the story."
The thirteenth book of Tom Jones leaves the heroine in the greatest
distress. The last words are, "Nor did this thought once suffer her to
close her eyes during the whole succeeding night." Had Fielding been
addressing the Intelligent Modern Public he would have intensified the
interest by giving an analysis of Sophia's distress so that we should
all share her insomnia. But not at all! While the dear girl is
recovering her spirits it is such an excellent opportunity to have
uninterrupted discourse with the Gentle Reader, who doesn't take these
things too hard, having long since come to "the years that bring the
philosophic mind." So the next chapter is entitled An Essay to prove
that an author will write better for having some knowledge of the
subject on which he treats. The discussion is altogether irrelevant;
that is what the Gentle Reader likes.
"It is a paradoxical statement you make," he says, trying to draw the
author out. "What are your arguments?"
Then the author moderates his expressions. "To say the truth I require
no more than that an author should have some little knowledge of the
subject of which he treats."
"That sounds more reasonable," says the Gentle Reader. "You know how
much I dislike extreme views. Let us admit, for the sake of argument,
that a writer may know a little about his subject. I hope that this may
not prove the opening wedge for erudition. By the way, where was it we
left the sweet Sophy; and do you happen to know anything more about that
scapegrace Jones?"
That was the way books were written and read in the good old days before
the invention of the telephone and the short story. The generation that
delighted in Fielding and Richardson had some staying power. A book was
something to tie to. No one would say jauntily, "I have read Sir Charles
Grandison," but only, "I am reading." The characters of fiction were
not treated as transient guests, but as lifelong companions destined to
be a solace in old age. The short story, on the other hand, is invented
for people who want a literary "quick lunch." "Tell me a story while I
wait," demands the eager devourer of fiction. "Serve it hot, and be
mighty quick about it!"
In rushes the story-teller with love, marriage, jealousy, disillusion,
and suicide all served up together before you can say Jack Robinson.
There is no time for explanation, and the reader is in no mood to allow
it. As for the suicide, it must end that way; for it is the quickest.
The ending, "They were happy ever after," cannot be allowed, for the
doting author can never resist the temptation to add another chapter,
dated ten years after, to show how happy they were.
I sometimes fear that reading, in the old-fashioned sense, may become a
lost art. The habit of resorting to the printed page for information is
an excellent one, but it is not what I have in mind. A person wants
something and knows where to get it. He goes to a book just as he goes
to a department store. Knowledge is a commodity done up in a neat
parcel. So that the article is well made he does not care either for the
manufacturer or the dealer.
Literature, properly so called, is quite different from this, and
literary values inhere not in things or even in ideas, but in persons.
There are some rare spirits that have imparted themselves to their
words. The book then becomes a person, and reading comes to be a kind of
conversation. The reader is not passive, as if he were listening to a
lecture on The Ethics of the Babylonians. He is sitting by his fireside,
and old friends drop in on him. He knows their habits and whims, and is
glad to see them and to interchange thought. They are perfectly at their
ease, and there is all the time in the world, and if he yawns now and
then nobody is offended, and if he prefers to follow a thought of his
own rather than theirs there is no discourtesy in leaving them. If his
friends are dull this evening, it is because he would have it so; that
is why he invited them. He wants to have a good, cosy, dull time. He has
had enough to stir him up during the day; now he wants to be let down.
He knows a score of good old authors who have lived long in the happy
poppy fields.
In all good faith he invokes the goddess of the Dunciad:--
"Her ample presence fills up all the place,
A veil of fogs dilates her awful face.
Here to her Chosen all her works she shews,
Prose swelled to verse, verse loitering into prose."
The Gentle Reader nods placidly and joins in the ascription:--
"Great tamer of all human art!
First in my care and ever at my heart;
Dullness whose good old cause I still defend.
* * * * *
O ever gracious to perplex'd mankind,
Still shed a healing mist before the mind;
And lest we err by wit's wild dancing light,
Secure us kindly in our native night."
I would not call any one a gentle reader who does not now and then take
up a dull book, and enjoy it in the spirit in which it was written.
Wise old Burton, in the Anatomy of Melancholy, advises the restless
person to "read some pleasant author till he be asleep." Many persons
find the Anatomy of Melancholy to answer this purpose; though Dr.
Johnson declares that it was the only book that took him out of bed two
hours before he wished to rise. It is hard to draw the line between
stimulants and narcotics.
This insistence on the test of the enjoyment of the dullness of a dull
book is not arbitrary. It arises from the characteristic of the Gentle
Reader. He takes a book for what it is and never for what it is not. If
he doesn't like it at all he doesn't read it. If he does read it, it is
because he likes its real quality. That is the way we do with our
friends. They are the people of whom we say that "we get at them." I
suppose every one of us has some friend of whom we would confess that as
thinker he is inferior to Plato. But we like him no less for that. We
might criticise him if we cared,--but we never care. We prefer to take
him as he is. It is the flavor of his individuality that we enjoy.
Appreciation of literature is the getting at an author, so that we like
what he is, while all that he is not is irrelevant.
There are those who endeavor to reduce literary criticism to an exact
science. To this end they would eliminate the personal element, and
subject our admirations to fixed standards. In this way it is hoped
that we may ultimately be able to measure the road to Parnassus by
kilometers. All this is much more easily said than done. Personal
likings will not stay eliminated. We admire the acuteness of the critic
who reveals the unsuspected excellence of our favorite writer. It is a
pleasure like that which comes when a friend is received into a learned
society. We don't know much about his learning, but we know that he is a
good fellow, and we are glad to learn that he is getting on. We feel
also a personal satisfaction in having our tastes vindicated and our
enjoyment treated as if it were a virtue, just as Mr. Pecksniff was
pleased with the reflection that while he was eating his dinner, he was
at the same time obeying a law of the Universe.
But the rub comes when the judgment of the critic disagrees with ours.
We discover that his laws have no penalties, and that if we get more
enjoyment from breaking than from obeying, then we are just that much
ahead. As for giving up an author just because the judgment of the
critic is against him, who ever heard of such a thing? The stanchest
canons of criticism are exploded by a genuine burst of admiration.
That is what happens whenever a writer of original force appears. The
old rules do not explain him, so we must make new rules. We first enjoy
him, and then we welcome the clever persons who assure us that the
enjoyment is greatly to our credit. But--
"You must love him ere to you
He shall seem worthy of your love."
I asked a little four-year-old critic, whose literary judgments I accept
as final, what stories she liked best. She answered, "I like Joseph and
Aladdin and The Forty Thieves and The Probable Son."
It was a purely individual judgment. Some day she may learn that she has
the opinion of many centuries behind her. When she studies rhetoric she
may be able to tell why Aladdin is better than The Shaving of Shagpat,
and why the story of "The Probable Son" delights her, while the
half-hour homily on the parable makes not the slightest impression on
her mind. The fact is, she knows a good story just as she knows a good
apple. How the flavor got there is a scientific question which she has
not considered; but being there, trust the uncloyed palate to find it
out! She does not set up as a superior person having good taste; but she
says, "I can tell you what tastes good."
The Gentle Reader is not greatly drawn to any formal treatises. He does
not enjoy a bare bit of philosophy that has been moulded into a fixed
form. Yet he dearly loves a philosopher, especially if he turns out to
be a sensible sort of man who doesn't put on airs.
He likes the old Greek way of philosophizing. What a delight it was for
him to learn that the Academy in Athens was not a white building with
green blinds set upon a bleak hilltop, but a grove where, on pleasant
days, Plato could be found, ready to talk with all comers! That was
something like; no board of trustees, no written examinations, no
text-books--just Plato! You never knew what was to be the subject or
where you were coming out; all you were sure of was that you would come
away with a new idea. Or if you tired of the Academy, there were the
Peripatetics, gentlemen who were drawn together because they imagined
they could think better on their legs; or there were the Stoics, elderly
persons who liked to sit on the porch and discuss the "cosmic weather."
No wonder the Greeks got such a reputation as philosophers! They deserve
no credit for it. Any one would like philosophy were it served up in
that way.
All that has passed. Were Socrates to come back and enter a downtown
office to inquire after the difference between the Good and the
Beautiful, he would be confronted with one of those neatly printed
cards, intended to discourage the Socratic method during business hours:
"This is our busy day."
The Gentle Reader also has his business hours, and has learned to submit
to their inexorable requirements; but now and then he has a few hours to
himself. He declines an invitation to a progressive euchre party, on the
ground of a previous engagement he had made long ago, in his college
days, to meet some gentlemen of the fifth century B. C. The evening
passes so pleasantly, and the world seems so much fresher in interest,
that he wonders why he doesn't do that sort of thing oftener. Perhaps
there are some other progressive euchre parties he could cut, and the
world be none the worse.
How many people there have been who have gone through the world with
their eyes open, and who have jotted down their impressions by the way!
How quickly these philosophers come to know their own. Listen to Izaak
Walton in his Epistle to the Reader: "I think it fit to tell thee these
following truths, that I did not undertake to write or publish this
discourse of Fish and Fishing to please myself, and that I wish it may
not displease others. And yet I cannot doubt but that by it some readers
may receive so much profit that if they be not very busy men, may make
it not unworthy the time of their perusal. And I wish the reader to take
notice that in the writing of it I have made a recreation of a
recreation; and that it might prove so to thee in the reading, and not
to read dully and tediously, I have in several places mixed some
innocent mirth; of which if thou be a severe, sour-complexioned man,
then I here disallow thee to be a competent judge.... I am the willinger
to justify this innocent mirth because the whole discourse is a kind of
picture of my own disposition, at least of my disposition on such days
and times as I allow myself--when Nat and I go fishing together." How
cleverly he bows out the ichthyologists! How he rebukes the sordid
creature who has come simply to find out how to catch fish! That is the
very spirit of Simon Magus! "Thou hast neither part nor lot in this
matter!"
The Gentle Reader has no ulterior aims. All he wants to know is how
Izaak Walton felt when he went fishing, and what he was thinking about.
"A kind of picture of a man's own disposition," that is literature. Even
the most futile attempt at self-revelation evokes sympathy. I remember,
as a boy, gazing at an austere volume in my grandfather's library. It
was, as far as I could ascertain, an indigestible mixture of theology
and philology. But my eye was caught by the title, The Diversions of
Purley. I had not the slightest idea who Purley was, but my heart went
out to him at once.
"Poor Purley!" I said. "If these were your diversions, what a dog's life
you must have led!" I could see Purley gazing vaguely through his
spectacles as he said: "Don't pity me! It's true I have had my
trials,--but then again what larks! See that big book; I did it!" Only
long after did I learn that my sympathy was un-called for, as Purley
was not a person but a place.
* * * * *
Of all the devices for promoting a good understanding the old-fashioned
Preface was the most excellent. It was not an introduction to the
subject, its purpose was personal. In these days the Preface, where it
survives, is reduced to the smallest possible space. It is like the
platform of an electric car which affords the passenger a precarious
foothold while he strives to obey the stern demand of the conductor that
he move forward. But time was when the Preface was the broad hospitable
porch on which the Author and Reader sat for an hour or so and talked
over the enterprise that was before them. Sometimes they would talk so
long that they almost forgot their ostensible subject.
The very title of Sir William Davenant's "Preface before Gondibert"
suggests the hospitable leisure of the seventeenth century. Gondibert is
a poetical masterpiece not to be lightly adventured upon. The mind must
be duly prepared for it. Sir William, therefore, discourses about poetry
in general, and then takes up special instances.
"I will (according as all times have applied their reverence) begin with
Homer."
"Homer is an admirable point of departure, and I have no doubt but that
you will also tell what you think of Virgil," says the Gentle Reader,
who when he is asked to go a mile is glad to go twain.
Then follows discourse on Lucan, Statius, Tasso, and the rest.
"But I feel (sir) that I am falling into the dangerous Fit of a hot
writer; for instead of performing the promise which begins this Preface,
and doth oblige me (after I had given you the judgement of some upon
others), to present myself to your censure, I am wandering after new
thoughts; but I shall ask your pardon and return to my undertaking."
"No apologies are necessary, I assure you. With new thoughts the rule is
first come, first served, while an immortal masterpiece can wait till
such time as we can enjoy it together."
After some reflections on the fallibility of the clergy and the state of
the country, the author proceeds to describe the general structure of
his poem.
"I have now given you an account of such provisions as I have made for
this new Building, and you may next please, having examined the
substance, to take a view of the form." He points out the "shadowings,
happy strokes, and sweet graces" of his work. This is done with an
intimacy of knowledge and fullness of appreciation that could not be
possible in a stranger.
"'Tis now fit, after I have given you so long a survey of the Building,
to render you some account of the Builder, that you may know by what
times, pains, and assistance I have already proceeded."
The time passes with much pleasure and profit until at last the host
says: "And now (sir) I shall after my busy vanitie in shewing and
describing my new Building, with great quietness, being almost as weary
as yourself, bring you to the Back-dore."
It is all so handsomely done that the reader is prepared to begin upon
the poem itself, and would do so were it not that the distinguished
friend of the author, Mr. Hobbes, has prepared An Answer to the
Preface--a point of politeness which has not survived the seventeenth
century. Mr. Hobbes is of the opinion that there is only one point in
which Gondibert is inferior to the masterpieces of antiquity, and that
is that it is written in English instead of in Greek or Latin. The
Preface and Answer to the Preface having been read, the further
discovery is made that there is a Postscript.
The Author, it appears, has fallen on evil days, and is in prison
charged with High Treason.
"I am arrived here at the middle of the Third Book which makes an equal
half of the Poem, and I was now by degrees to present you (as I promised
in the Preface) the several keys to the Main Building, which should
convey you through such short walks as give you an easie view of the
whole Frame. But 'tis high time to strike sail and cast anchor (though I
have but run half my course), when at the Helme I am threatened with
Death, who though he can trouble us but once seems troublesome, and even
in the Innocent may beget such gravitie as diverts the Musick of Verse.
I beseech thee if thou art as civill as to be pleased with what is
written, not to take it ill that I run not till my last gasp.... If thou
art a malicious Reader thou wilt remember my Preface boldly confessed
that a main motive to this undertaking was a desire of Fame, and thou
maist likewise say that I may not possibly live to enjoy it.... If thou
(Reader) art one of those who has been warmed with Poetick Fire, I
reverence thee as my Judge, and whilst others tax me with Vanitie as if
the Preface argued my good Opinion of the Work, I appeal to thy
Conscience whether it be much more than such a necessary assurance as
thou hast made to thyself in like Undertakings."
The Gentle Reader feels that whatever may be the merits of Gondibert,
Sir William Davenant is a gallant gentleman and worthy of his lasting
friendship.
* * * * *
The Gentle Reader has a warm place in his heart for those whom he calls
the paradisaical writers. These are the unfallen spirits who reveal
their native dispositions and are not ashamed. They write about that
which they find most interesting--themselves. They not only tell us what
happens, but what they think and how they feel. We are made partners of
their joys and sorrows. The first person singular is glorified by their
use.
"But," says the Severe Moralist, "don't you frequently discover that
these persons are vain?"
"Precisely so," answers the Gentle Reader, "and that's what I want to
find out. How are you going to discover what an author thinks about
himself if he hides behind a mask of impersonality? There is no getting
acquainted with such hypocrites. In five hundred pages you may not have
a glimpse of the man behind the book, though he may be bubbling over
with self-conceit. There was Alexander Cruden, one of the most eccentric
persons of the eighteenth century. Fully persuaded of his own greatness,
he called himself Alexander the Corrector and announced that he was
destined to be 'the second Joseph and a great man at court.' He haunted
the ante-chambers of the nobility, but found only one nobleman who would
listen to him, Earl Paulett, 'who being goutish in his feet could not
run away from the Corrector as other men are apt to do.' Cruden appears
to have spent his leisure moments in going about London with a large
piece of sponge with which he erased any offensive chalk marks on the
walls. 'This employment,' says his biographer, 'occasionally made his
walks very tedious.' Now one might consult Cruden's 'Concordance of the
Holy Scriptures' in vain for any hint of these idiosyncrasies of the
author. Perhaps the nature of the work made this impossible. But what
shall we say of writers who, having no such excuse, take pains to
conceal from us what manner of men they were. Even David Hume, whose
good opinion of himself is a credit to his critical sagacity, assumes an
apologetic tone when he ventures upon a sketch of his own life. 'It is
difficult,' he says, 'for a man to speak long about himself without
vanity; therefore I shall be brief.' What obtuseness that shows in a
philosopher who actually wrote a treatise on human nature! What did he
know about human nature if he thought anybody would read an
auto-biography that was without vanity? Vanity is one of the most
lovable of weaknesses. If in our contemporaries it sometimes troubles
us, that is only because two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the
same time. But when it is all put in a book and the pure juices of
self-satisfaction have been allowed to mellow for a few centuries,
nothing can be more delicious."
His heart was won by a single sentence in one of Horace Walpole's
letters: "I write to you as I think." To the writer who gives him this
mark of confidence he is as faithful as is the Arab to the guest who has
eaten salt in his tent. The books which contain the results of thought
are common enough, but it is a rare privilege to share with a pleasant
gentleman the act of thinking. If the thoughts are those which arise
spontaneously out of the incidents of the passing day, so much the
better. He therefore warmly resents Wordsworth's remark about "that cold
and false-hearted, frenchified coxcomb, Horace Walpole."
"What has Horace Walpole done except to give us a picture of his own
disposition and incidentally of the world he lived in? It is an instance
of the ingratitude of Republics--and the Republic of Letters is the most
ungrateful of them all--that this should be made the ground of a railing
accusation against him. Walpole might answer as Timoleon did, when,
after having restored the liberties of Syracuse, a citizen denounced him
in the popular assembly. The Liberator replied: 'I cannot sufficiently
express my gratitude to the gods for granting my request in permitting
me to see all the Syracusans enjoy the liberty of saying what they think
fit.' A man who could write letters for sixty-two years revealing every
phase of feeling for the benefit of posterity earns the right of making
as magnanimous a retort as that of any of Plutarch's men. He might well
thank the gods for permitting him to furnish future generations with
ample material for passing judgment upon him. For myself, I do not agree
with Wordsworth. I have summered and wintered with Horace Walpole and he
has never played me false; he has shown himself exactly as he is. To be
sure, he has his weaknesses, but he is always ready to share them with
his friends. I suppose that is the reason why he is accused of being
frenchified. A true born Englishman would have kept his faults to
himself as if they were incommunicable attributes. I am not going to
allow a bit of criticism to come between us at this late day. The
relation between Reader and Author is not to be treated so lightly. I
believe that there is no reason for separation in such cases except
incompatibility of temper."
Then he makes his way to Strawberry Hill and listens to its master
describing his possession. "It is set in enameled meadows with filigree
hedges,--
'A small Euphrates through the piece is rolled
And little finches wave their wings of gold.'
Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually
with coaches and chaises; barges as solemn as barons of the exchequer
move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham Walks bound my prospects;
but thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry.
Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around; and Pope's ghost is
just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight."
It is pleasant to sit in the Gothic villa on Strawberry Hill and see the
world pass by. The small Euphrates, the filigree hedges, and the
gossiping dowagers, being in the foreground, appear more important than
they do in the formal histories which have no perspective. But the great
world does pass by, and the master of the house is familiar with it and
recognizes every important person in the procession. Was he not a Prime
Minister's son, and were not his first letters written from Downing
Street?
How rapidly the procession moves, giving only time for a nod and a word!
The reader is like a country cousin in the metropolis bewildered by a
host of new sensations. Now and then he smiles as some one whose name
has been long familiar is pointed out. The chief wonder is that there
are so many notabilities of whom he has never heard before. What an
unconscionable number of Duchesses there are, and each one has a
history! How different the Statesmen are from what he had imagined; not
nearly so wise but ever so much more amusing. Even the great William
Pitt appears to be only "Sir William Quixote," and a fantastic figure he
is! Strawberry Hill has its prejudices. It listens incredulously to the
stories illustrative of incorruptible political virtue. They are tales
to be told to Posterity.
In regard to the historical drama that unfolds there is a pleasant
ambiguity. Which is it that sees behind the scenes,--the writer or the
present-day reader? The reader representing Posterity has a general
notion of the progress of events. He thinks he knows how things actually
came out and which were the more important. He is anxious to know how
they strike a contemporary. But he is chastened by the discovery of the
innumerable incidents which Posterity has forgotten, but which made a
great stir in their day. "The Tower guns have sworn through thick and
thin that Prince Ferdinand has entirely demolished the French, and city
bonfires all believe it." Prince Ferdinand "is the most fashionable man
in England. Have not the Tower guns and all the parsons in London been
ordered to pray for him?"
The Gentle Reader is almost tempted to look up Prince Ferdinand, but is
diverted from this inquiry by a bit of gossip about the Duke of
Marlborough and the silver spoons.
When he comes to the glorious year 1775 he is eager to learn the
sensations of Walpole when the echoes of the "shot heard round the
world" come to him. The shot is heard, but its effect is not so
startling as might have been imagined. "I did but put my head into
London on Thursday, and more bad news from America. I wonder when it
will be bad enough to make folks think it so, without going on?" Then
Walpole turns to something more interesting. "I have a great mind to
tell you a Twickenham story."
It is about a certain Captain Mawhood who had "applied himself to learn
the classics and free-thinking and was always disputing with the parson
of the parish about Dido and his own soul."
It is not just what the Gentle Reader was expecting, but he adapts
himself cheerfully to the situation.
"I was about to inquire what you thought about the American war, but we
may come to that at some other time. Now let us have the Twickenham
story."
* * * * *
The Gentle Reader loves the writers who reveal their intellectual
limitations, but he does not care for those who insist upon telling him
their physical ailments. He is averse to the letters and journals which
are merely contributions to pathology. Indeed, he would, if he had his
own way, allow the mention of only one malady, the gout. This is
doubtless painful enough in the flesh, but in a book it has many
pleasant associations. Its intervals seem conducive to reminiscence, and
its twinges are the occasions of eloquent objurgations which light up
many an otherwise colorless page.
With all his tolerance of vanity he dislikes that inverted kind which
induces certain morbid persons to write out painful confessions of their
own sins. He is willing to believe that they are far from perfect, but
he is sceptical in regard to their claims to be the chief of sinners. It
is hard to attain distinction in a line where there is so much
competition.
When he finds a book of Life and Letters unreadable, he does not bring a
railing accusation against either the biographer or the biographee.
They may both have been interesting persons, though the result in cold
print is not exhilarating. He knows how volatile is the charm of
personality, and how hard it is to preserve the best things. His friend,
who is a great diner-out, says: "Those were delightful people I met at
dinner yesterday, and what a capital story the judge told! I laugh every
time I think about it."
"What story?" asks the Gentle Reader, eager for the crumbs that fall
from the witty man's table.
"I can't remember just what it was about, or what was the point of it;
but it was a good story, and you would have thought so, too, if you had
heard the judge tell it."
"I certainly should," replies the Gentle Reader, "and I shall always
believe, on your testimony, that the judge is one of the best
story-tellers in existence."
In like manner he believes in interesting things that great men must
have done which unfortunately were not taken down by any one at the
time.
* * * * *
The Gentle Reader himself is not much at home in fashionable literary
society. He is a shy person, and his embarrassment is increased by the
consciousness that he seldom gets round to a book till after people are
through talking about it. Not that he prides himself on this fact; for
he is far from cherishing the foolish prejudice against new books.
"'David Copperfield' was a new book once, and it was as good then as it
is now." It simply happens that there are so many good books that it is
hard to keep up with the procession. Besides, he has discovered that the
books that are talked about can be talked about just as well without
being read; this leaves him more time for his old favorites.
"I have a sweet little story for you," says the charming authoress. "I
am sure you like sweet little stories."
"Only one lump, if you please," says the Gentle Reader.
In spite of his genial temperament there are some subjects on which he
is intolerant. When he picks up a story that turns out to be only a
Tract for the Times, he turns indignantly on the author.
"Sirrah," he cries, under the influence of deep feeling, relapsing into
the vernacular of romance, "you gained access to me under the plea that
you were going to please me; and now that you have stolen a portion of
my time, you throw off all disguise, and admit that you entered with
intent to instruct, and that you do not care whether you please me or
not! I've a mind to have you arrested for obtaining my attention under
false pretenses! How villainously we are imposed upon! Only the other
day a man came to me highly recommended as an architect. I employed him
to build me a Castle in Spain, regardless of expense. When I suggested a
few pleasant embellishments, the wretch refused on the ground that he
never saw anything of the kind in the town he came from,--Toledo, Ohio.
If he had pleaded honest poverty of invention I should have forgiven
him, but he took a high and mighty tone with me, and said that it was
against his principles to allow any incident that was not probable. 'Who
said that it should be probable?' I replied. 'It is your business to
make it _seem_ probable.'"
He highly disapproves of what he considers the cheese-paring economy on
the part of certain novelists in the endowment of their characters.
"Their traits are so microscopic, and require such minute analysis, that
I get half through the book before I know which is which. It seems as if
the writers were not sure that there was enough human nature to go
around. They should study the good old story of Aboukir and Abousir.
"'There were in the city of Alexandria two men,--one was a dyer, and his
name was Aboukir; the other was a barber, and his name was Abousir. They
were neighbors, and the dyer was a swindler, a liar, and a person of
exceeding wickedness.'
"Now, there the writer and reader start fair. There are no unnecessary
concealments. You know that the dyer is a villain, and you are on your
guard. You are not told in the first paragraph about the barber, but you
take it for granted that he is an excellent, well-meaning man, who is
destined to become enormously wealthy. And so it turns out. If our
writers would only follow this straightforward method we should hear
less about nervous prostration among the reading classes." He is very
severe on the whimsical notion, that never occurred to any one until the
last century, of saying that the heroine is not beautiful.
"Such a remark is altogether gratuitous. When I become attached to a
young lady in fiction she always appears to me to be an extraordinarily
lovely creature. It's sheer impertinence for the author to intrude,
every now and then, just to call my attention to the fact that her
complexion is not good, and that her features are irregular. It's bad
manners,--and, besides, I don't believe that it's true."
Nothing, however, so offends the Gentle Reader as the trick of
elaborating a plot and then refusing to elucidate it, and leaving
everything at loose ends. He feels toward this misdirected ingenuity as
Miss Edgeworth's Harry did toward the conundrum which his sister
proposed.
"This is quite different," he said, "from the others. The worst of it is
that after laboring ever so hard at one riddle it does not in the least
lead to another. The next is always on some other principle."
"Yes, to be sure," said Lucy. "Nobody who knows how to puzzle would give
two riddles of the same kind; that would be too easy."
"But then, without something to guide one," said Harry, "there is no
getting on."
"Not in your regular way," said Lucy.
"That is the very thing I complain of," said Harry.
"Complain! But my dear Harry, riddles are meant only to divert one."
"But they do not divert me," said Harry; "they only puzzle me."
The Gentle Reader is inclined to impute unworthy motives to the writer
whose work merely puzzles him.
"The lazy unscrupulous fellow takes a job, and then throws it up and
leaves me to finish it for him. It's a clear breach of contract! That
sort of thing would never have been allowed in any well-governed
community. Fancy what would have happened in the court of Shahriar,
where story-telling was taken seriously."
Sheherazade has got Sindbad on the moving island.
"How did he get off?" asks the Sultan.
"That's for your majesty to find out," answers Sheherazade archly.
"Maybe he got off, and maybe he didn't. That's the problem."
"Off with her head!" says the Sultan.
When sore beset by novelists who, under the guise of fiction, attempt to
saddle him with "the weary weight of all this unintelligible world," the
Gentle Reader takes refuge with one who has never deceived him.
"What shall it be?" says Sir Walter.
"As you please, Sir Walter."
"No! As _you_ please, Gentle Reader. If you have nothing else in mind,
how would this do for a start?--
'Waken! Lords and Ladies gay!
On the mountain dawns the day.'
It's a fine morning, and it's a gallant company!
Let's go with them!"
"Let's!" cries the Gentle Reader.
The Enjoyment of Poetry
Browning's description of the effect of
the recital of classic poetry upon a band of
piratical Greeks must seem to many persons to
be exaggerated:--
"Then, because Greeks are Greeks, and hearts are hearts,
And poetry is power, they all outbroke
In a great joyous laughter with much love."
Because Americans are Americans, and business is business, and time is
money, and life is earnest, we take our poetry much more seriously than
that. We are ready to form classes to study it and to discuss it, but
these solemn assemblies are not likely to be disturbed by outbursts of
"great joyous laughter."
We usually accept poetry as mental discipline. It is as if the poet
said, "Go to, now. I will produce a masterpiece." Thereupon the
conscientious reader answers, "Very well; I can stand it. I will apply
myself with all diligence, that by means of it I may improve my mind."
Who has not sometimes quailed before the long row of British Poets in
uniform binding, standing stiffly side by side, like so many British
grenadiers on dress parade? Who has not felt his courage ooze away at
the sight of those melancholy volumes labeled Complete Poetical Works?
Poetical Remains they used to call them, and there is something funereal
in their aspect.
The old hymn says, "Religion never was designed to make our pleasures
less," and the same thing ought to be said about poetry. The distaste
for poetry arises largely from the habit of treating it as if it were
only a more difficult kind of prose. We are so much under the tyranny of
the scientific method that the habits of the school-room intrude, and we
try to extract instruction from what was meant to give us joy. The
prosaic commentary obscures the beauty of the text, so that
"The glad old romance, the gay chivalrous story,
With its fables of faery, its legends of glory,
Is turned to a tedious instruction, not new,
To the children, who read it insipidly through."
One of the most ruthless invasions of the prosaic faculties into the
realm of poetry comes from the thirst for general information. When this
thirst becomes a disease, it is not satisfied with census reports and
encyclopaedia articles, but values literature according to the number of
facts presented. Suppose these lines from "Paradise Lost" to be taken
for study:--
"Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades
High over-arched embower, or scattered sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed
Hath vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry."
What an opportunity this presents to the schoolmaster! "Come now," he
cries with pedagogic glee, "answer me a few questions. Where is
Vallombrosa? What is the character of its autumnal foliage? Bound
Etruria. What is sedge? Explain the myth of Orion? Point out the
constellation on the map of the heavens. Where is the Red Sea? Who was
Busiris? By what other name was he known? Who were the Memphian
Chivalry?"
Here is material for exhaustive research in geography, ancient and
modern, history, botany, astronomy, meteorology, chronology, and
archaeology. The industrious student may get almost as much information
out of "Paradise Lost" as from one of those handy compilations of useful
knowledge, which are sold on the railway cars for twenty-five cents. As
for the poetry of Milton, that is another matter.
* * * * *
Next to the temptation to use a poem as a receptacle for a mass of
collateral information is that to use it for the display of one's own
penetration. As in the one case it is treated as if it were an
encyclopaedia article, in the other it is treated as if it were a verbal
puzzle. It is taken for granted that the intention of the poet is to
conceal thought, and the game is for the reader to find it out. We are
hunting for hidden meanings, and we greet one another with the grim
salutation of the creatures in the jungle: "Good hunting!" "What is the
meaning of this passage?" Who has not heard this sudden question
propounded in regard to the most transparent sentence from an author who
is deemed worthy of study? The uninitiated, in the simplicity of his
heart, might answer that he probably means what he says. Not at all; if
that were so, "what are we here for?" We are here to find hidden
meanings, and one who finds the meaning simple must be stopped, as
Armado stops Moth, with
"Define, define, well-educated infant."
It is a verbal masquerade to which we have been invited. No knowing what
princes in disguise, as well as anarchists and nihilists and other
objectionably interesting persons, may be discovered when the time for
unmasking comes.
Now, the effect of all this is that many persons turn away from the
poets altogether. Why should they spend valuable time in trying to
unravel the meaning of lines which were invented to baffle them? There
are plenty of things we do not understand, without going out of our way
to find them. Then, as Pope observes,
"True No-meaning puzzles more than Wit."
The poets themselves, as if conscious that they are objects of
suspicion, are inclined to be apologetic, and endeavor to show that
they are doing business on a sound prosaic basis. Wordsworth set the
example of such painstaking self-justification. His conscience compelled
him to make amends to the literal minded Public for poetic
indiscretions, and to offer to settle all claims for damages. What a
shame-faced excuse he makes for the noble lines on Rob Roy's grave. "I
have since been told that I was misinformed as to the burial-place of
Rob Roy; if so, I may plead in excuse that I wrote on apparently good
authority, namely that of a well-educated lady who lived at the head of
the lake."
One is reminded of the preface to the works of The Sweet Singer of
Michigan: "This little book is composed of truthful pieces. All those
which speak of being killed, died, or drowned are truthful songs, others
are more truth than poetry."
It is against this mistaken conscientiousness that the Gentle Reader
protests. He insists that the true "defense of poesy" is that it has an
altogether different function from prose. It is not to be appreciated by
the prosaic understanding; unless, indeed, that awkward faculty be
treated to some Delsartean decomposing exercises to get rid of its
stiffness.
"When I want more truth than poetry," he says, "I will go directly to
The Sweet Singer of Michigan, or I will inquire of the well-educated
lady who lives at the head of the lake. I do not like to have a poet
troubled about such small matters."
Then he reads with approval the remarks of one of his own order who
lived in the seventeenth century, who protests against those "who take
away the liberty of a poet and fetter his feet in the shackles of an
historian. For why should a poet doubt in story to mend the intrigues of
fortune by more delightful conveyances of probable fictions because
austere historians have entered into bond to truth; an obligation which
were in poets as foolish and unnecessary as is the bondage of false
martyrs, who lie in chains for a mistaken opinion. But by this I would
imply that truth, narrative and past, is the idol of historians (who
worship a dead thing), and truth operative and by effects continually
alive is the mistress of poets, who hath not her existence in matter but
in reason."
I am well aware that the attitude of the Gentle Reader seems to many
strenuous persons to be unworthy of our industrial civilization. These
persons insist that we shall make hard work of our poetry, if for no
other reason than to preserve our self-respect. Here as elsewhere they
insist upon the stern law that if a man will not labor neither shall he
eat. Even the poems of an earlier and simpler age which any child can
understand must be invested with some artificial difficulty. The learned
guardians of these treasures insist that they cannot be appreciated
unless there has been much preliminary wrestling with a "critical
apparatus," and much delving among "original sources." This is the same
principle that makes the prudent householder provide a sharp saw and a
sufficient pile of cord wood as a test to be applied to the stranger who
asks for a breakfast. There is much academic disapproval of one who in
defiance of all law insists on enjoying poetry after his own "undressed,
unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather unlettered, or
ratherest unconfirmed fashion." I, however, so thoroughly sympathize
with the Gentle Reader that I desire to present his point of view.
To understand poetry is a vain ambition. That which we fully understand
is the part that is not poetry. It is that which passes our
understanding which has the secret in itself. There is an incommunicable
grace that defies all attempts at analysis. Poetry is like music; it is
fitted, not to define an idea or to describe a fact, but to voice a
mood. The mood may be the mood of a very simple person,--the mood of a
shepherd watching his flocks, or of a peasant in the fields; or, on the
other hand, it may be the mood of a philosopher whose mind has been
engrossed with the most subtle problems of existence. But in each case
the mood, by some suggestion, must be communicated to us. Thoughts and
facts must be transfigured; they must come to us as through some finer
medium. As we are told that we must experience religion before we know
what religion is, so we must experience poetry. The poet is the
enchanter, and we are the willing victims of his spells:--
"Would'st thou see
A man i' th' clouds and hear him speak to thee?
Would'st thou be in a dream and yet not sleep?
Or would'st thou in a moment laugh and weep?
Wouldest thou lose thyself and catch no harm?
And find thyself again without a charm?
* * * * *
O then come hither
And lay my book, thy head and heart together."
Only the reader who yields to the charm can dream the dream. The poet
may weave his story of the most common stuff, but "there's magic in the
web of it." If we are conscious of this magical power, we forgive the
lack of everything else. The poet may be as ignorant as Aladdin himself,
but he has a strange power over our imaginations. At his word they obey,
traversing continents, building palaces, painting pictures. They say,
"We are ready to obey as thy slaves, and the slaves of all that have
that lamp in their hands,--we and the other slaves of the lamp."
This is the characteristic of the poet's power. He does not construct a
work of the imagination,--he makes our imaginations do that. That is why
the fine passages of elaborate description in verse are usually
failures. The verse-maker describes accurately and at length. The poet
speaks a word, and Presto! change! We are transported into a new land,
and our eyes are "baptized into the grace and privilege of seeing."
Many have taken in hand to write descriptions of spring; and some few
painstaking persons have nerved themselves to read what has been
written. I turn to the prologue of the "Canterbury Tales;" it is not
about spring, it is spring, and I am among those who long to go upon a
pilgrimage. A description of a jungle is an impertinence to one who has
come under the spell of William Blake's
"Tiger! tiger! burning bright
In the forest of the night."
Those fierce eyes glowing there in the darkness sufficiently illuminate
the scene. Immediately it is midsummer, and we feel all its delicious
languor when Browning's David sings of
"The sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell
That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well."
The first essential to the enjoyment of poetry is leisure. The demon
Hurry is the tempter, and knowledge is the forbidden fruit in the poet's
paradise. To enjoy poetry, you must renounce not only your easily
besetting sins, but your easily besetting virtues as well. You must not
be industrious, or argumentative, or conscientious, or strenuous. I do
not mean that you must be a person of unlimited leisure and without
visible means of support. I have known some very conscientious students
of literature who, when off duty, found time to enjoy poetry. I mean
that if you have only half an hour for poetry, for that half hour you
must be in a leisurely frame of mind.
The poet differs from the novelist in that he requires us to rest from
our labors. The ordinary novel is easy reading, because it takes us as
we are, in the midst of our hurry. The mind has been going at express
speed all the day; what the novelist does is to turn the switch, and off
we go on another track. The steam is up, and the wheels go around just
the same. The great thing is still action, and we eagerly turn the pages
to see what is going to happen next,--unless we are reading some of our
modern realistic studies of character. Even then we are lured on by the
expectation that, at the last moment, something may happen. But when we
turn to the poets, we are in the land of the lotus-eaters. The
atmosphere is that of a perfect day,
"Whereon it is enough for me
Not to be doing, but to be."
Into this land our daily cares cannot follow us. It is an
"enchanted land, we know not where,
But lovely as a landscape in a dream."
Once in this enchanted country, haste seems foolish. Why should we toil
on as if we were walking for a wager? It is as if one had the privilege
of joining Izaak Walton as he loiters in the cool shade of a sweet
honeysuckle hedge, and should churlishly trudge on along the dusty
highway rather than accept the gentle angler's invitation: "Pray, let us
rest ourselves in this sweet, shady arbor of jessamine and myrtle; and I
will requite you with a bottle of sack, and when you have pledged me, I
will repeat the verses I promised you." One may, as a matter of strict
conscience, be both a pedestrian and a prohibitionist, and yet not find
it in his heart to decline such an invitation.
The poets who delight us with their verses are not always serious-minded
persons with an important thought to communicate. When I read,
"In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree,"
I am not a bit wiser than I was before, but I am a great deal happier;
although I have not the slightest idea where Xanadu was, and only the
vaguest notion of Kublai Khan.
There are poems whose charm lies in their illusiveness. Fancy any one
trying to explain Rossetti's "Blessed Damozel." Yet when the mood is on
us we see her as she leans
"From the gold bar of Heaven:
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand
And the stars in her hair were seven."
We look over the mystic ramparts and are dimly conscious that
"the souls mounting up to God
Went by her like thin flames."
This is not astronomy nor theology, nor any of the things we know all
about--it is only poetry.
Let no one trouble me by attempting to elucidate "Childe Roland to the
Dark Tower came." I do not care for a Baedeker. I prefer to lose my way.
I love the darkness rather than light. I do not care for a topographical
chart of the hills that
"like giants at a hunting lay,
Chin upon hand."
The mood in which we enjoy such poetry is that described in Emerson's
"Forerunners."
"Long I followed happy guides,
I could never reach their sides.
* * * * *
But no speed of mine avails
To hunt upon their shining trails.
* * * * *
On eastern hills I see their smokes,
Mixed with mist by distant lochs.
I met many travelers
Who the road had surely kept:
They saw not my fine revelers."
If our thoughts make haste to join these "fine revelers," rejoicing in
the sense of freedom and mystery, delighting in the mist and the wind,
careless of attaining so that we may follow the shining trails, all is
well.
As there are poems which are not meant to be understood, so there are
poems that are not meant to be read; that is, to be read through. There
is Keats's "Endymion," for instance. I have never been able to get on
with it. Yet it is delightful,--that is the very reason why I do not
care to get on with it. Wherever I begin, I feel that I might as well
stay where I am. It is a sweet wilderness into which the reader is
introduced.
"Paths there were many,
Winding through palmy fern and rushes fenny
And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly
To a wide lawn...
Who could tell
The freshness of the space of heaven above,
Edged round with dark tree-tops?--through which a dove
Would often beat its wings, and often, too,
A little cloud would move across the blue."
We are brought into the very midst of this pleasantness. Deep in the
wood we see fair faces and garments white. We see the shepherds coming
to the woodland altar.
"A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks
As may be read of in Arcadian books;
Such as sat list'ning round Apollo's pipe
When the great deity, for earth too ripe,
Let his divinity o'erflowing die
In music, through the vales of Thessaly."
We see the venerable priest pouring out the sweet-scented wine, and then
we see the young Endymion himself:--
"He seemed
To common lookers-on like one who dreamed
Of idleness in groves Elysian."
What happened next? What did Endymion do? Really, I do not know. It is
so much pleasanter, at this point, to close the book, and dream "of
idleness in groves Elysian." The chances are that when one turns to the
poem again he will not begin where he left off, but at the beginning,
and read as if he had never read it before; or rather, with more
enjoyment because he has read it so many times:--
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing."
Shelley describes a mood such as Keats brings to us:--
"My spirit like a charmed bark doth swim
Upon the liquid waves of thy sweet singing
Far away into regions dim
Of rapture, as a boat with swift sails winging
Its way adown some many-winding river."
He who finds himself afloat upon the "many-winding river" throws aside
the laboring oar. It is enough to float on,--he cares not whither.
What greater pleasure is there than in the "Idylls of the King" provided
we do not study them, but dream them. We must enter into the poet's own
mood:--
"I seemed
To sail with Arthur under looming shores,
Point after point, till on to dawn, when dreams
Begin to feel the truth and stir of day."
It is good to be there, in that far-off time, good to come to Camelot:--
"Built by old kings, age after age,
So strange and rich and dim."
All we see of kings, and magicians, and ladies, and knights is "strange
and rich and dim." Over everything is a luminous haze. There are
"hollow tramplings up and down,
And muffled voices heard, and shadows past."
There is the flashing of swords, the weaving of spells, the seeing of
visions. All these things become real to us; not simply the stainless
king and the sinful queen, the prowess of Lancelot and the love of
Elaine, but the magic of Merlin and the sorceries of Vivien, with her
charms
"Of woven paces and of waving hands."
And we must stand at last with King Arthur on the shore of the mystic
sea, and see the barge come slowly with the three queens, "black-stoled,
black-hooded, like a dream;" and hear across the water a cry,
"As it were one voice, an agony
Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills
All night in a waste land, where no one comes,
Or hath come, since the making of the world."
But what good is there in all this? Why waste time on idle dreams? We
hear Walt Whitman's challenge to romantic poetry:--
"Arthur vanished with all his knights, Merlin and Lancelot
and Galahad, all gone, dissolved utterly like an exhalation;
Embroidered, dazzling, foreign world, with all its gorgeous
legends, myths,
Its kings and castles proud, its priests and warlike lords and
courtly dames,
Passed to its charnel vault, coffined with crown and armor on,
Blazoned with Shakspere's purple page
And dirged by Tennyson's sweet sad rhyme."
Away with the old romance! Make room for the modern bard, who is
"Bluffed not a bit by drain-pipes, gasometers,
and artificial fertilizers."
The Gentle Reader, also, is not to be bluffed by any useful things,
however unpleasant they may be, but he winces a little as he reads that
the "far superber themes for poets and for art" include the teaching by
the poet of how
"To use the hammer and the saw (rip or cross-cut),
To cultivate a turn for carpentering, plastering, painting,
To work as tailor, tailoress, nurse, hostler, porter,
To invent a little something ingenious to aid the washing,
cooking, cleaning."
The Muse of Poetry shrieks at the mighty lines in praise of
"leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making," and the rest.
Boiler-making, she protests, is a useful industry and highly to be
commended, but it is not music. When asked to give a reason why she
should not receive all these things as poetry, the Muse is much
embarrassed. "It's all true," she says. "Leather-dressing and
boiler-making are undoubted realities, while Arthur and Lancelot may be
myths." Yet she is not quite ready to be off with the old love and on
with the new,--it's all so sudden.
Whitman himself furnishes the best illustrations of the difference
between poetry and prose. He comes like another Balaam to prophesy
against those who associate poetry with beauty of form and melody of
words; and then the poetic spirit seizes upon him and lifts him into the
region of harmony. In the Song of the Universal he declares that--
"From imperfection's murkiest cloud
Darts always forth one ray of perfect light,
One flash of heaven's glory.
To fashion's, customs discord,
To the mad Babel's din, the deafening orgies,
Soothing each lull, a strain is heard, just heard
From some far shore, the final chorus sounding.
O the blest eyes, the happy hearts
That see, that know the guiding thread so fine
Along the mighty labyrinth."
There speaks the poet declaring the true faith, which except a man
believe he is condemned everlastingly to the outer darkness. His task is
selective. No matter about the murkiness of the cloud he must make us
see the ray of perfect light. In the mad Babel-din he must hear and
repeat the strain of pure music. As to the field of choice, it may be as
wide as the world, but he must choose as a poet, and not after the
manner of the man with the muck-rake.
"In this broad earth of ours
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Inclosed and safe within the central heart
Nestles the seed perfection."
When the poet delves in the grossness and the slag, he does so as one
engaged in the search for the perfect.
"My feeling," says the Gentle Reader, "about the proper material for
poetry, is very much like that of Whitman in regard to humanity--
'When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite, and are my
friendly companions,
I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as
I do of men and women like you.'
"So I say, when drain pipes and cross-cut saws and the beef on the
butcher's stalls are invested with beautiful associations and thrill my
soul in some mysterious fashion, then I will make as much of these
things as I do of the murmuring pines and the hemlocks. When a poet
makes bank clerks and stevedores and wood-choppers to loom before my
imagination in heroic proportions, I will receive them as I do the
heroes of old. But, mind you, the miracle must be actually performed; I
will not be put off with a prospectus."
Now and then the miracle is performed. We are made to feel the romance
that surrounds the American pioneer, we hear the
"Crackling blows of axes sounding musically, driven by strong arms."
But, for the most part, Whitman, when under the influence of deep
feeling, forgets his theory, and uses as his symbols those things which
have already been invested with poetical associations. Turn to that
marvelous dirge, "When Lilacs last in the Dooryard bloomed." There is
here no catalogue of facts or events, no parade of glaring realism.
Tennyson's "sweet sad rhyme" has nowhere more delicious music than we
find in the measured cadence of these lines. We are not told the news of
the assassination of Lincoln as a man on the street might tell it. It
comes to us through suggestion. We are made to feel a mood, not to
listen to the description of an event. There is symbolism, suggestion,
color mystery. We inhale the languorous fragrance of the lilacs; we see
the drooping star; in secluded recesses we hear "a shy and hidden bird"
warbling a song; there are dim-lit churches and shuddering organs and
tolling bells, and there is one soul heart-broken, seeing all and
hearing all.
"Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to
keep, for the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands--and
this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim."
This is real poetry, and yet while we yield to the charm we are
conscious that it is made up of the old familiar elements.
Tennyson's apology to a utilitarian age was not needed:--
"Perhaps some modern touches here and there
Redeemed it from the charge of nothingness."
The "modern touches" we can spare. The modern life we have always with
us; but it is a rare privilege to enjoy the best things of the past. It
is the poet who is the minister of this fine grace. The historian tells
us what men of the past did, the philosopher tells us how their
civilizations developed and decayed; we smile at their superstitions,
and pride ourselves upon our progress. But the ethereal part has
vanished, that which made their very superstitions beautiful and cast a
halo over their struggles. These are the elements out of which the poet
creates his world, into which we may enter. In the order of historic
development chivalry must give way before democracy, and loyalty to the
king must fade before the increasing sense of liberty and equality; but
the highest ideals of chivalry may remain. Imaginative and romantic
poetry has this high mission to preserve what otherwise would be lost.
It lifts the mind above the daily routine into the region of pure joy.
Whatever necessary changes take place in the world we find, in
"All lovely tales which we have heard or read,
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink."
I have said that one may be a true poet without having any very
important thought to communicate, but it must be said that most of the
great poets have been serious thinkers as well. They have had their
philosophy of life, their thoughts about nature and about human duty and
destiny. It is the function of the poet not only to create for us an
ideal world and to fill it with ideal creatures, but also to reveal to
us the ideal element in the actual world.
"I do not know what poetical is," says Audrey. "Is it honest in deed and
word? Is it a true thing?" We must not answer with Touchstone: "No,
truly! for the truest poetry is the most feigning."
The poetical interpretation of the world is not feigning; it is a true
thing,--the truest thing of which we can know. The grace and sublimity
which we see through the poet's eyes are real. We must, however, still
insist on our main contention. The poet, if he is to hold us, must
always be a poet. His thought must be in solution, and not appear as a
dull precipitate of prose. He may be philosophical, but he must not
philosophize. He may be moral, but he must not moralize. He may be
religious, but let him spare his homilies.
"Whatever the philosopher saith should be done," said Sir Philip Sidney;
"the peerless poet giveth a perfect picture of it. He yieldeth to the
power of the mind an image of that of which the philosopher bestoweth
but a wordish description.... The poet doth not only show the way, but
doth give so sweet a prospect unto the way as will entice any man to
enter it. Nay, he doth as if your journey should lie through a fair
vineyard, at first give you a cluster of grapes."
We have a right to ask our poets to be pleasant companions even when
they discourse on the highest themes. Even when they have theories of
their own about what we should enjoy, let us not allow them to foist
upon us "wordish descriptions" of excellent things instead of poetry.
When the poet invites me to go with him I first ask, "Let me taste your
grapes."
You remember Mr. By-ends in the "Pilgrim's Progress,"--how he said of
Christian and Hopeful, "They are headstrong men who think it their duty
to rush on in their journey in all weathers, while I am for waiting for
wind or tide. I am for Religion when he walks in his silver slippers in
the sunshine." That was very reprehensible in Mr. By-ends, and he richly
deserved the rebuke which was afterward administered to him. But when we
change the subject, and speak, not of religion, but of poetry, I confess
that I am very much of Mr. By-ends' way of thinking. There are literary
Puritans who, when they take up the study of a poet, make it a point of
conscience to go on to the bitter end of his poetical works. If they
start with Wordsworth on his "Excursion," they trudge on in all
weathers. They _do_ the poem, as when going abroad they do Europe in six
weeks. As the revival hymn says, "doing is a deadly thing." Let me say,
good Christian and Hopeful, that though I admire your persistence, I
cannot accompany you. I am for a poet only when he puts on his singing
robes and walks in the sunshine. As for those times when he goes on
prosing in rhyme from force of habit, I think it is more respectful as
well as more pleasurable to allow him to walk alone.
* * * * *
Shelley's definition of poetry as "the record of the best and happiest
moments of the happiest and best minds" suggests the whole duty of the
reader. All that is required of him is to obey the Golden Rule. There
must be perfect reciprocity and fraternal sympathy. The poet, being
human, has his unhappy hours, when all things are full of labor. Upon
such hours the Gentle Reader does not intrude. In their happiest moments
they meet as if by chance. In this encounter they are pleased with one
another and with the world they live in. How could it be otherwise? It
is indeed a wonderful world, transfigured in the light of thought.
Familiar objects lose their sharp outlines and become symbols of
universal realities. Likenesses, before unthought of, appear. Nature
becomes a mirror of the soul, and answers instantly to each passing
mood. Words are no longer chosen, they come unbidden as the poet and his
reader
"mount to Paradise
By the stairway of surprise."
The Mission of Humor
In "The Last Tournament" we are told how
"Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his moods
Had made mock-knight of Arthur's Table Round,
At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods,
Danced like a withered leaf before the hall."
That is the view which many worthy people take of the humorist. He is
Sir Dagonet. Among the serious persons who are doing the useful work of
the world, discovering its laws, classifying its facts, forecasting its
future, this light-minded, light-hearted creature comes with his
untimely jests. In their idle moments they tolerate the mock-knight, but
when important business is on hand they dismiss him, as did Sir
Tristram, with
"Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?"
This half-contemptuous view is very painful to the Gentle Reader who,
though he may seem to some to take his poetry too lightly, is disposed
to take his humor rather seriously. Humor seems to him to belong to the
higher part of our nature. It is not the enjoyment of a grotesque image
in a convex mirror, but, rather, the recognition of fleeting forms of
truth.
"I have brought you a funny book, Gentle Reader," says the Professional
Humorist.
"Thank you," he answers, struggling against his melancholy forebodings.
"You will pardon me if I seem to take my pleasures sadly."
It is hard for him to force a smile as he watches the procession of
jokes, each as broad as it is long. This ostentatious jocosity is not to
his liking.
"Thackeray," he says, "defines humor as a mixture of love and wit.
Humor, therefore, being of the nature of love, should not behave itself
unseemly."
He cannot bear to see it obtruding itself upon the public. Its proper
habit is to hide from observation "as if the wren taught it
concealment." When a Happy Thought ventures abroad it should be as a
royal personage traveling _incognito_.
This is a big world, and it is serious business to live in it. It makes
many demands. It requires intensity of thought and strenuousness of will
and solidity of judgment. Great tasks are set before us. We catch
fugitive glimpses of beauty, and try to fix them forever in perfect
form,--that is the task of art. We see thousands of disconnected facts,
and try to arrange them in orderly sequence,--that is the task of
science. We see the ongoing of eternal force, and seek some reason for
it,--that is the task of philosophy.
But when art and science and philosophy have done their best, there is a
great deal of valuable material left over. There are facts that will not
fit into any theory, but which keep popping up at us from the most
unexpected places. Nobody can tell where they come from or why they are
here; but here they are. Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net
result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectnesses. We are
surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many
different ways. Everything is under the reign of strict law; but many
queer things happen, nevertheless. What are we to do with all the waifs
and strays? What are we to do with all the sudden incongruities which
mock at our wisdom and destroy the symmetry of our ideas?
The solemnly logical intelligence ignores their existence. It does not
trouble itself about anything which does not belong to its system. The
system itself has such perfect beauty that it is its own excuse for
being.
More sensitive and less self-centred natures do not find the way so
easy. They allow themselves to be worried by the incongruities which
they cannot ignore. It seems to them that whenever they are in earnest
the world conspires to mock them. Continually they feel that intellect
and conscience are insulted by whipper-snappers of facts that have no
right to be in an orderly universe. They can expose a lie, and feel a
certain superiority in doing it; but a little unclassified,
irreconcilable truth drives them to their wit's end. There it stands in
all its shameless actuality asking, "What do you make of me?"
Just here comes the beneficent mission of humor. It takes these
unassorted realities that are the despair of the sober intelligence, and
extracts from them pure joy. If life depends on the perpetual
adjustment of the organism to its environment, humor is the means by
which the intellectual life is sustained on those occasions when the
expected environment is not there. The adjustment must be made, without
a moment's warning, to an altogether new set of conditions. We are
called upon to swap horses while crossing the stream. It is a method
which the serious minded person does not approve. While arguing the
matter he is unhorsed, and finds himself floundering in the water. The
humorist accepts the situation instantly. As he scrambles upon his new
nag it is with a sense of triumph, for the moment at least, he feels
that he has the best of the bargain.
One may have learned to enjoy the sublime, the beautiful, the useful,
the orderly, but he has missed something if he has not also learned to
enjoy the incongruous, the illusive, and the unexpected. Artistic
sensibility finds its satisfaction only in the perfect. Humor is the
frank enjoyment of the imperfect. Its objects are not so high,--but
there are more of them.
Evolution is a cosmic game of Pussy wants a corner. Each creature has
its eye on some snug corner where it would rest in peace. Each corner
is occupied by some creature that is not altogether satisfied and that
is on the lookout for a larger sphere. There is much beckoning between
those who are desirous of making a change. Now and then some bold spirit
gives up his assured position and scrambles for something better. The
chances are that the adventurer finds it harder to attain the coveted
place than he had thought. For the fact is that there are not corners
enough to go around. If there were enough corners, and every one were
content to stay in the one where he found himself at the beginning, then
the game would be impossible. It is well that this never happens. Nature
looks after that. When things are too homogeneous she breaks them up
into new and amazing kinds of heterogeneity. It is a good game, and one
learns to like it after he enters into the spirit of it.
If the Universe had a place for everything and everything was in its
place, there would be little demand for humor. As a matter of fact the
world is full of all sorts of people, and they are not all in their
proper places. There are amazing incongruities between station and
character. It is not a world that has been reduced to order; it is still
in the making. One may easily grow misanthropic and pessimistic by
dwelling upon the misfits.
"As to behold desert a beggar born
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity.
* * * * *
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And folly doctor-like, controlling skill,
And captive good attending captive ill."
But fortunately these incongruities are not altogether tragical. There
are certain moods when we rather enjoy seeing "needy nothing trimmed in
jollity." We are pleased when Justice Shallow slaps Sir John Falstaff on
the back and says, "Ha! it was a merry night, Sir John." We are not
irritated beyond endurance because in this world where so many virtuous
people have a hard time, such trifling fellows as Sir Toby and Sir
Andrew have their cakes and ale. When folly puts on doctor-like airs it
is not always disagreeable. We would not have Dogberry put off the watch
to give place to some one who could pass the civil service examination.
The humorist, when asked what he thinks of the actual world, would turn
upon his questioner as Touchstone turned upon Corin when he was asked
how he liked the shepherd's life:--
"Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?" The world is not at all like
the descriptions of it, and yet he cannot take a very gloomy view of it.
In respect to itself it is a good world, and yet in respect that it is
not finished it leaves much to be desired. Yet in respect that it leaves
much to be desired, and much to be done by us, it is perhaps better _for
us_ than if it were finished. In respect that many things happen that
are opposed to our views of the eternal fitness of things, it is a
perplexing world. Yet in respect that we have a faculty for enjoying the
occasional unfitness of things, it is delightful. On the whole, he sums
up with Touchstone, "It suits my humor well."
Humor is impossible to the man of one idea. There must be at least two
ideas moving in opposite directions, so that there may be a collision.
Such an accident does not happen in a mind under economical management
that runs only one train of thought a day.
There are many ideas that have a very insecure tenure. They hold their
own as squatters. By and by Science will come along and evict them, but
in the mean time these homely folk make very pleasant neighbors. All
they ask is that we shall not take them too seriously. That a thing is
not to be taken too seriously does not imply that it is either unreal or
unimportant:--it only means that it is not to be taken that way. There
is, for example, a pickaninny on a Southern plantation. The
anthropologist measures his skull and calls it by a long Latin name. The
psychologist carefully records his nervous reactions. The pedagogical
expert makes him the victim of that form of inquisition known as "child
study." The missionary perplexes himself in vain attempting to get at
his soul. Then there comes along a person of another sort. At the first
look, a genial smile of recognition comes over the face of this new
spectator. He is the first one who has seen the pickaninny. The one
essential truth about a black, chubby, kinky-haired pickaninny is that,
when he rolls up his eyes till only the whites are visible, he is
irresistibly funny. This is what theologians term "the substance of
doctrine" concerning the pickaninny.
When Charles Lamb slipped on the London pavement, he found delight in
watching the chimney sweep who stood laughing at his misfortune. "There
he stood irremovable, as though the jest were to last forever, with such
a maximum of glee and minimum of mischief in his mirth--for the grin of
a genuine sweep hath no malice in it--that I could have been content, if
the honor of a gentleman might endure it, to have remained his butt and
his mockery till midnight." There were many middle-aged London citizens
who could no more appreciate that kind of pleasure than a Hottentot
could appreciate an oratorio. That is only saying that the average
citizen and the average Hottentot have, as Wordsworth mildly puts it,
"faculties which they have never used."
The high place that humor holds among our mental processes is evident
when we consider that it is almost the only one that requires that we
shall be thoroughly awake. In our dreams we have many aesthetic
enjoyments, as vague splendors pass before us. At other times there is
an abnormal sensitiveness to the sovereignty, not to say the despotism
of ethics. We feel burdened with the weight of unpardonable sins. We are
able also in our sleep to philosophize after a fashion which is, for the
time, quite satisfactory. At such times we are sure that we have made
important discoveries; if we could only remember what they were. A
thousand incongruities pass through our minds, but there is one thing
which we cannot do. We cannot recognize that they are incongruous. Such
a discovery would immediately awaken us.
Tennyson tells how
"half awake I heard
The parson taking wide and wider sweeps,
Now harping on the church commissioners,
Now hawking at Geology and schism."
It would be possible for the parson and his congregation to keep on with
that sort of thing Sunday after Sunday. They would discover nothing
absurd in the performance, so long as they were in their usual
semi-somnolent condition.
Humor implies mental alertness and power of discrimination. It also
implies a hospitality toward all the differences that are recognized.
Psychologists speak of the Association of Ideas. It is a pleasant
thought, but it is, in reality, difficult to induce Ideas to associate
in a neighborly way. In many minds the different groups are divided by
conventional lines, and there are aristocratic prejudices separating the
classes from the masses. The Working Hypothesis, honest son of toil that
he is, does not expect so much as a nod of recognition from the High
Moral Principle who walks by in his Sunday clothes. The steady Habit
does not associate with the high-bred Sentiment. They do not belong to
the same set. Only in the mind of the humorist is there a true
democracy. Here everybody knows everybody. Even the priggish Higher
Thought is not allowed to enjoy a sense of superiority. Plain Common
Sense slaps him on the back, calls him by his first name, and bids him
not make a fool of himself.
Of the two ingredients which Thackeray mentions, the first, love, is
that which gives body; the addition of wit gives the effervescence. The
pleasure of wit lies in its unexpectedness. In humor there is the added
pleasure of really liking that which surprises us. It is like meeting an
old friend in an unexpected place. "What, you here?" we say. This is the
kind of pleasure we get from Dr. Johnson's reply to the lady who asked
why he had put a certain definition in his dictionary: "Pure ignorance,
madam."
The fact is that long ago we made the acquaintance of one whom Bunyan
describes as "a brisk young lad named Ignorance." He is a dear friend of
ours, and we are on very familiar terms with him when we are at home;
but we do not expect to meet him in fine society. Suddenly we turn the
corner, and we see him walking arm in arm with so great a man as Dr.
Samuel Johnson. At once we are at our ease in the presence of the great
man; it seems we have a mutual acquaintance.
Another element in real humor is a certain detachment of mind. We must
not be afraid, or jealous, or angry; in order to take a really humorous
view of any character, we must be in a position to see all around it. If
I were brought before Fielding's Squire Western on charge of poaching,
and if I had a pheasant concealed under my coat, I should not be able
to appreciate what an amusing person the squire is. I should be inclined
to take him very seriously.
The small boy who pins a paper to the schoolmaster's coat tail imagines
that he has achieved a masterpiece of humor. But he is not really in a
position to reap the fruits of his perilous adventure. It is a fearful
and precarious joy which he feels. What if the schoolmaster should turn
around? That would be tragedy. Neither the small boy nor the
schoolmaster gets the full flavor of humor. But suppose an old friend of
the schoolmaster happens just then to look in at the door. His delight
in the situation has a mellowness far removed from the anxious,
ambiguous glee of the urchin. He knows that the small boy is not so
wicked as he thinks he is, and the schoolmaster is not so terrible as he
seems. He remembers the time when the schoolmaster was up to the same
pranks. So, from the assured position of middle age, he looks upon the
small boy that was and upon the small boy that is, and finds them both
very good,--much better, indeed, than at this moment they find each
other.
It is this sense of the presence of a tolerant spectator, looking upon
the incidents of the passing hour, which we recognize in the best
literature. Books that are meant simply to be funny are very
short-lived. The first reception of a joke awakens false expectations.
It is received with extravagant heartiness. But when, encouraged by this
hospitality, it returns again and again, its welcome is worn out. There
is something melancholy in a joke deserted in its old age.
The test of real literature is that it will bear repetition. We read
over the same pages again and again, and always with fresh delight. This
bars out all mere jocosity. A certain kind of wit, which depends for its
force on mere verbal brilliancy, has the same effect. The writers whom
we love are those whose humor does not glare or glitter, but which has
an iridescent quality. It is the perpetual play of light and color which
enchants us. We are conscious all the time that the light is playing on
a real thing. It is something more than a clever trick; there is an
illumination.
Erasmus, in dedicating his "Praise of Folly" to Sir Thomas More,
says:--
"I conceived that this would not be least approved by you, inasmuch as
you are wont to be delighted with such kind of pleasantry as is neither
unlearned nor altogether insipid. Such is your sweetness of temper that
you can and like to carry yourself to all men a man of all hours. Unless
an overweening opinion of myself may have made me blind, I have praised
folly not altogether foolishly. I have moderated my style, that the
understanding reader may perceive that my endeavor is to make mirth
rather than to bite."
Erasmus has here described a kind of humor that is consistent with
seriousness of purpose. The characteristics he notes are good temper,
insight into human nature, a certain reserve, and withal a gentle irony
that makes the praise of folly not unpleasing to the wise. It is a way
of looking at things characteristic of men like Chaucer and Cervantes
and Montaigne and Shakespeare, and Bunyan and Fielding and Addison,
Goldsmith, Charles Lamb and Walter Scott. In America, we have seen it in
Irving and Dr. Holmes and James Russell Lowell.
I have left out of the list one whom nature endowed for the supreme man
of humor among Englishmen,--Jonathan Swift. Charles Lamb argues against
the common notion that it is a misfortune to a man to have a surly
disposition. He says it is not his misfortune; it is the misfortune of
his neighbors. It is our misfortune that the man who might have been the
English Cervantes had a surly disposition. Dean Swift's humor would have
been irresistible, if it had only been good humor.
One of the best examples of humor pervading a work of the utmost
seriousness of purpose is Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." The "Pilgrim's
Progress" is not a funny book; the humor is not tacked on as a moral is
tacked on to a fable, nor does it appear by way of an interlude to
relieve the tension of the mind. It is so deeply interfused, so a part
and parcel of the religious teaching, that many readers overlook it
altogether. One may read the book a dozen times without a smile, and
after that he may recognize the touch of the born humorist on every
page. Bunyan himself recognized the quality of his work:--
"Some there be that say he laughs too loud,
And some do say his head is in a cloud.
* * * * *
One may, I think, say both his laughs and cries
May well be guessed at by his wat'ry eyes.
Some things are of that nature as to make
One's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache."
There speaks the real humorist; not the Merry Andrew laughing at his
meaningless pranks, but one whose quick imagination is at play when his
conscience is most overtasked. Even in the Valley of Humiliation, where
the fierce Apollyon was wont to fright the pilgrims, they heard a boy
singing cheerily,--
"He that is down need fear no fall."
And Mr. Great Heart said: "Do you hear him? I dare say that boy lives a
merrier life, and wears more of the herb called heart's-ease in his
bosom, than he that is clad in silk and velvet." It is a fine spirit
that can find time, on such a strenuous pilgrimage, to listen to these
wayside songs.
Take the character sketch of Mr. Fearing:--
"Now as they walked together, the guide asked the old gentleman if he
did not know one Mr. Fearing that came on a pilgrimage out of his
parts?
"_Honest_. Yes, very well, said he. He was a man that had the root of
the matter in him, but he was one of the most troublesome pilgrims that
ever I met in all my days.
"_Great Heart_. Why, he was always afraid he should come short of
whither he had a desire to go. Everything frightened him that he heard
anybody speak of that had but the least appearance of opposition in it.
I hear that he lay roaring in the Slough of Despond for about a month
together.... Well, after he had lain in the Slough of Despond a great
while, as I have told you, one sunshine morning, I do not know how, he
ventured and so got over; but when he was over he would scarce believe
it. He had, I believe, a Slough of Despond in his mind, a slough he
carried everywhere with him.... When he came to the Hill Difficulty he
made no stick at that; nor did he much fear the lions; for you must know
his trouble was not about such things as those.... When he was come at
Vanity Fair, I thought he would have fought with all the men at the
fair.... He was a man of choice spirit though he kept himself very low."
Poor Mr. Fearing. We all have been made uncomfortable by him. But we
love Bunyan for that touch about the lions, for we know it is true. Easy
things go hard with Mr. Fearing; but give him something difficult, like
going up San Juan hill in the face of a withering fire, and Mr. Fearing
can keep up with the best Rough Rider of them all. It takes Mr. Great
Heart to do justice to Mr. Fearing.
It is the mission of a kindly humor to take a person full of foibles and
weaknesses and suddenly to reveal his unsuspected nobleness. And there
is considerable room for this kind of treatment; for there are a great
many lovable people whose virtues are not chronic, but sporadic. These
virtues grow up, one knows not how, without visible means of support in
the general character, and in defiance of moral science; and yet it is a
real pleasure to see them.
There are two very different kinds of humor. One we naturally describe
as a flavor, the other as an atmosphere. We speak of the flavor of the
essays of Charles Lamb. It is a discovery we make very much as Bobo made
the discovery of roast pig. The mind of Charles Lamb was like a
capacious kettle hanging from the crane in the fireplace; all sorts of
savory ingredients were thrown into it, and the whole was kept gently
simmering, but never allowed to come to the boil.
Lamb says, "C. declares that a man cannot have a good conscience who
refuses apple dumpling, and I confess that I am of the same opinion." I
am inclined to pass that kind of judgment on the person who does not
have a comfortable feeling of satisfaction in reading for the twentieth
time The Complaint on the Decay of Beggars, and the Praise of Chimney
Sweepers.
Charles Lamb is not jocose. He likes to theorize. Now, your prosaic
theorist has a very laborious task. He tries to get all the facts under
one formula. This is very ticklish business. It is like the game of Pigs
in Clover. He gets all the facts but one into the inner circle. By a
dexterous thrust he gets that one in, and the rest are out.
Lamb is a philosopher who does not have this trouble. He does not try to
fit all the facts to one theory. That seems to him too economical, when
theories are so cheap. With large-hearted generosity he provides a
theory for every fact. He clothes the ragged exception with all the
decent habiliments of a universal law. He picks up a little ragamuffin
of a fact, and warms its heart and points out its great relations. He is
not afraid of generalizing from insufficient data; he has the art of
making a delightful summer out of a single swallow. When we turn to the
essay on the Melancholy of Tailors, we do not think of asking for
statistics. If one tailor was melancholy, that was enough to justify the
generalization. When we find a tailor who is not melancholy, it will be
time to make another theory to fit his case.
This is the charm of Lamb's letter to the gentleman who inquired
"whether a person at the age of sixty-three, with no more proficiency
than a tolerable knowledge of most of the characters of the English
alphabet amounts to, by dint of persevering application and good
masters, may hope to arrive within a presumable number of years at that
degree of attainment that would entitle the possessor to the character
of a _learned man_." The answer is candid, serious, and exhaustive. No
false hopes are encouraged. The difficulties are plainly set forth.
"However," it is said, "where all cannot be compassed, much may be
accomplished; but I must not, in fairness, conceal from you that you
have much to do." The question is thoroughly discussed as to whether it
would be well for him to enter a primary school. "You say that you stand
in need of emulation; that this incitement is nowhere to be had but in
the public school. But have you considered the nature of the emulation
belonging to those of tender years which you would come in competition
with?"
Do you think these dissertations a waste of time? If you do, it is
sufficient evidence that you sadly need them; for they are the antitoxin
to counteract the bacillus of pedantry. Were I appointed by the school
board to consider the applicants for teachers' certificates, after they
had passed the examination in the arts and sciences, I should subject
them to a more rigid test. I should hand each candidate Lamb's essays on
The Old and New Schoolmaster and on Imperfect Sympathies. I should make
him read them to himself, while I sat by and watched. If his countenance
never relaxed, as if he were inwardly saying, "That's so," I should
withhold the certificate. I should not consider him a fit person to have
charge of innocent youth.
Just as we naturally speak of the flavor of Charles Lamb, so we speak of
the atmosphere of Cervantes or of Fielding. We are out of doors in the
sunshine. All sorts of people are doing all sorts of things in all sorts
of ways; and we are glad that we are there to see them. It is one of the
"charmed days
When the Genius of God doth flow;
The wind may alter twenty ways
But a tempest cannot blow."
On such days it doesn't matter what happens. We are not "under the
weather," but consciously superior to it. We are in no mood to grumble
over mishaps,--the more the merrier. The master of the revels has made
the brave announcement that his programme shall be carried out "rain or
shine," and henceforth we have no anxieties.
This diffused good-humor can only come from a mind which is free from
any taint of morbidness. It is that merry-heartedness that "doth good
like medicine." It is an overflowing friendliness, which brings a
laughter that is without scorn.
This kind of humor is possible only among persons who are thoroughly
congenial, and who take mutual good-will for granted. It is for this
reason that it is so difficult to translate it or to carry it from one
community to another. It is customary for every nation to bring the
accusation against foreigners that they are destitute of the sense of
humor. Even peoples so near akin as the English and Americans cherish
such suspicions. The American is likely to feel that his English friends
do not receive his pleasantries with that punctuality which is the
politeness of kings. They are conscientious enough and eventually do the
right thing; but procrastination is the thief of wit as well as of time.
But we, on our side, are equally slow, and Mr. Punch often causes
anxious thoughts.
The real difficulty is not in understanding what is said but in
appreciating that which should be taken for granted. The stranger does
not see the serious background of sober thought and genuine admiration,
into which the amusing figures suddenly intrude. The frontiersman would
see no point in a story that might delight a common room in Oxford. What
if a bishop did act in an undignified manner or commit a blunder? Why
shouldn't he--like the rest of us? To enjoy his foibles one must first
have a realizing sense of what a great man a bishop is, and how
surprising it is that, now and then, he should step down from his
pedestal.
On the other hand, the real humor of the frontier is missed by one who
has not learned to take seriously the frontiersman's life and who has
not entered into his habitual point of view.
Dickens is an example of the way in which a man's humor is limited to
the sphere of his sympathies. How genial is the atmosphere which
surrounds Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Sam Weller! Whatever they do, they can
never go wrong. But when we turn to the "American Notes" or to the
American part of "Martin Chuzzlewit," we are conscious of a difference.
There is no atmosphere to relieve the dreariness. Mr. Jefferson Brick is
not amusing; he is odious. The people on the Ohio River steamer do not
make us smile by their absurdities. Dickens lets us see how he despises
them all. He is fretful and peevish. He fails utterly to catch the
humor of the frontier. He is unable to follow out the hint which Mark
Tapley gave when, looking over the dreary waste of Eden on the
Mississippi, he said apologetically, "Eden ain't all built yet."
To an Englishman that does not mean much, but to an American it is
wonderfully appealing. Martin Chuzzlewit saw only the ignominious
contrast between the prospectus and the present reality. Eden was a
vulgar fraud, and that was the whole of it. The American, with
invincible optimism, looking upon the same scene, sees something more!
He smiles, perhaps, a little cynically at the incongruity between the
prospectus and the present development, and then his fancy chuckles at
what his fancy sees in the future. "Eden ain't all built yet,"--that's a
fact. But just think what Eden will be when it is all built!
* * * * *
By the way, there is one particularly good thing about the atmosphere;
it prevents our being hit by meteors. The meteor, when it strikes the
upper air, usually ignites, and that is the end of it. There are some
minds that have not enough atmosphere to protect them. They are pelted
continually; whatever is unpleasant comes to them in solid chunks. There
are others more fortunately surrounded, who escape this impact. All that
is seen is a flash in the upper air. They are none the worse for passing
through a meteoric shower of petty misfortunes.
The mind that is surrounded by an atmosphere of humorous suggestiveness
is also favored in its outlook upon the shortcomings of mankind. Their
angularities are softened and become less uniformly unpleasing. That
fine old English divine, Dr. South, has a sermon in which he defends the
thesis that it is a greater guilt to enjoy the contemplation of our
neighbor's sins than to commit the same offences in our proper persons.
That seems to me to be very hard doctrine. I am inclined to make a
distinction. There are some faults which ought to be taken seriously at
all times, but there are others which the neighbors should be allowed to
enjoy, if they can.
Indeed, it is the genuine reformer who is seeking to right great wrongs
who most needs the capacity to distinguish between grave evils and
peccadillos. A measure of good-humored tolerance for human weakness is a
part of his equipment for effective work. Lacking in this, he is doomed
to perpetual irritation and disappointment. He mistakes friends for foes
and wages a losing battle. He is likely to be the victim of a moral
egoism which distorts the facts of experience and confuses his personal
whims with his disinterested purposes. His great ideal is lost sight of
in some petty strife. Above all, he loses the power of endurance in the
time of partial failure.
The contest of wits between the inventors of projectiles and the makers
of armor plate seemed at one time settled by Harvey's process for
rendering the surface of the resisting steel so hard that the missiles
hurled against it were shattered. The answer of the gun-makers was made
by attaching a tip of softer metal to the shell. The soft tip received
the first shock of the impact, and it was found that the penetrating
power of the shell was increased enormously. The scientific explanation
I have forgotten. I may, however, hazard an anthropomorphic
explanation. If there is any human nature in the atoms of steel, I can
see a great advantage in having the softer particles go before the hard,
to have a momentary yielding before the inevitable crash. When they are
hurtling through the air, tense and strained by the initial velocity
till it seems that they must fly apart, it is a great thing to have a
group of good-humored, happy-go-lucky atoms in the front, who call out
cheerily: "Come along, boys! Don't take it too hard; we're in for it."
And sure enough, before they have time to fall apart they are in. Those
whose thoughts and purposes have most penetrated the hard prejudices of
their time have learned this lesson.
Your unhumorous reformer, with painful intensity of moral
self-consciousness, cries out:--
"The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!"
He takes himself and his cause always with equal seriousness. He hurls
himself against the accumulated wrongs and the invincible ignorance of
the world, and there is a great crash; but somehow, the world seems to
survive the shock better than he does. It is a tough old world, and
bears a great deal of pounding. Indeed, it has been pounded so much and
so long that it has become quite solid.
Now and then, however, there comes along a reformer whose zeal is tipped
with humor. His thought penetrates where another man's is only
shattered. That is what made Luther so effective. He struck heavy blows
at the idols men adored. But he was such a genial, whole-souled
iconoclast that those who were most shocked at him could not help liking
him--between times. He would give a smashing blow at the idol, and then
a warm hand grasp and a hearty "God bless you" to the idolater; and then
idolater and iconoclast would be down on the floor together, trying to
see if there were any pieces of the idol worth saving. It was all so
unexpected and so incongruous and so shocking, and yet so unaffectedly
religious and so surprisingly the right thing to do, that the upshot of
it all was that people went away saying, "Dr. Martin isn't such a bad
fellow, after all."
Luther's "Table Talk" penetrated circles which were well protected
against his theological treatises. Men were conscious of a good humor
even in his invective; for he usually gave them time to see the kindly
twinkle in his eye before he knocked them down.
In order to engage Karlstadt in a controversy, Luther drew out a florin
from his pocket and cried heartily, "Take it! Attack me boldly!"
Karlstadt took it, put it in his purse, and gave it to Luther. Luther
then drank to his health. Then Karlstadt pledged Luther. Then Luther
said, "The more violent your attacks, the more I shall be delighted."
Then they gave each other their hands and parted. One can almost be
reconciled to theological controversy, when it is conducted in a manner
so truly sportsmanlike.
Luther had a way of characterizing a person in a sentence, that was much
more effective than his labored vituperation (in which, it must be
confessed, he was a master). Thus, speaking of the attitude of Erasmus,
he said, "Erasmus stands looking at creation like a calf at a new door."
It was very unjust to Erasmus, and yet the picture sticks in the mind;
for it is such a perfect characterization of the kind of mind that we
are all acquainted with, which looks at the marvels of creation with the
wide-eyed gaze of bovine youthfulness, curious, not to know how that
door came there, but only to know whether it leads to something to eat.
The humor of Luther suggests that of Abraham Lincoln. Both were men of
the people, and their humor had a flavor of the soil. They were alike
capable of deep dejection, but each found relief in spontaneous
laughter. The surprise of the grave statesman when Lincoln would preface
a discussion with a homely anecdote of the frontier was of the same kind
felt by the sixteenth-century theologians when Luther turned aside from
his great arguments, which startled Europe, to tell a merry tale in
ridicule of the pretensions of the monks.
If I were to speak of the humorist as a philosopher, some of the gravest
of the philosophers would at once protest. Humor, they say, has no place
in their philosophy; and they are quite right. Indeed, it is doubtful if
a humorist would ever make a good, systematic philosopher. He is a
modest person. He is only a gleaner following the reapers; but he
manages to pick up a great many grains of wisdom which they overlook.
Dante pictures the sages of antiquity as forever walking on a verdant
mead, "with eyes slow and grave, and with great authority in their
looks;" as if, in the other world, they were continually oppressed by
the wisdom they had acquired in this. But I can imagine a gathering of
philosophers in a different fashion. Gravely they have come, each
bearing his ponderous volume, in which he has explained the universe and
settled the destiny of mankind. Then, suddenly, in contrast with their
theories, the reality is disclosed. The incorrigible pedants and
dogmatists turn away in sullen disappointment; but from all true lovers
of wisdom there arises a peal of mellow laughter, as each one realizes
the enormous incongruity between what he knew and what he thought he
knew.
The discovery that things are not always as they seem is one that some
people make in this world. They get a glimpse of something that is going
on behind the scenes, and their smile is very disconcerting to the sober
spectators around them.
Sometimes it is the bitter smile of disillusion. Matthew Arnold wrote of
Heine:--
"The Spirit of the world,
Beholding the absurdity of men,--
Their vaunts, their feats,--let a sardonic smile,
For one short moment, wander o'er his lips.
That smile was Heine."
But there is another kind of smile evoked by the incongruity between the
appearance and the reality. It is the smile that comes when behind some
mask that had affrighted us we recognize a familiar and friendly face.
There is a smile which is not one of disillusion. There is a philosophy
which is dissolved in humor. The wise man sees the incongruities
involved in the very nature of things. They are the result of the free
play of various forces. To his quick insight the actual world is no more
like the formal descriptions of it than the successive attitudes of a
galloping horse are like the pose of an equestrian statue. His mind
catches instantaneous views of this world as its elements are
continually dissolving and recombining. It is all very surprising, and
he smiles as he sees how much better they turn out than might be
expected.
"Sad-eyed Fakirs swiftly say
Endless dirges to decay.
* * * * *
And yet it seemeth not to me
That the high gods love tragedy;
For Saadi sat in the sun.
* * * * *
Sunshine in his heart transferred,
Lighted each transparent word.
* * * * *
And thus to Saadi said the Muse:
'Eat thou the bread which men refuse;
Flee from the goods which from thee flee;
Seek nothing,--Fortune seeketh thee.
* * * * *
On thine orchard's edge belong
All the brags of plume and song.
* * * * *
Nor scour the seas, nor sift mankind,
A poet or a friend to find:
Behold, he watches at the door!
Behold his shadow on the floor!'"
In the book of Proverbs, Wisdom says, "I, Wisdom, dwell with Prudence."
But there is another member of the household. It is Humor, sister of
serene Wisdom and of the heavenly Prudence. She does not often laugh,
and when she does it is mostly at her sister Wisdom, who cannot long
resist the infection. There is not one set smile upon her face, as if
she contemplated an altogether amusing world. The smiles that come and
go are shy, elusive things, but they cannot remain long in hiding.
Wisdom, from her high house, takes wide views, and Prudence peers
anxiously into the future; but gentle Humor loves to take short views;
she delights in homely things, and continually finds surprises in that
which is most familiar. Wisdom goes on laborious journeys, and comes
home bringing her treasures from afar; and Humor matches them, every
one, with what she has found in the dooryard.
Cases of Conscience Concerning Witchcrafts
That was a curious state of things in Salem village. There was the
Meeting-House in plain sight, with sermons every Sunday and lectures on
week-days. There were gospel privileges for all, and the path of duty
was evident enough for the simplest understanding. Nevertheless, certain
persons who should have listened to the sermons, when they heard the
sound of a trumpet hied to the rendezvous of witches. When haled before
the court their only answer was that they couldn't help it.
The ministers were disturbed, but being thorough-going men, they did not
rest content with academic discussion of the question of the falling-off
in church attendance. They inquired into its cause, and became
convinced that they were dealing with sorcery. All this is duly set down
in Increase Mather's treatise on "Cases of Conscience concerning
Witchcrafts."
This method of inquisition is commended to those writers who look upon
the Gentle Reader's love of Romance as a deadly sin. The trouble, as I
understand it, is this. A number of gentlemen devoted to literature have
cultivated style till it is as near a state of utter perfection as human
nature will tolerate. Indeed, they emulate that classic writer of whom
Roger Ascham remarked that he labored "with uncontented care to write
better than he could." They have attained such accuracy of observation
and such skill in the choice of words that the man in the book is as
like to the man on the street as two peas. They are also skilled in
criticism and are able to prove that it is our duty not only to admire
but also to read their books. The complaint is that the readers, instead
of walking in the path of duty, troop off after some mere story-teller
who has never passed an examination in Pathology, and who is utterly
incapable of making an exhaustive analysis of motives.
The Gentle Reader when he hears the accusations of the stern realists
makes no denial of the facts. He admits that he likes a good story
better than an involved study of character. He listens to the reproofs
with the helplessness of one who has only the frail barrier of a
personal taste to shield him from the direct blow of the categorical
imperative. If personal taste were to be accepted as a sufficient plea,
he is aware that the most besotted inebriate would go unwhipped of
justice. In this predicament he shields himself behind his favorite
authors. If there be a fault it is theirs, not his. They have bewitched
him by their spells. It is impossible for him to withstand the potent
enchantments of these wizards.
I am inclined to think that there is much justice in this view of the
matter and that the militant realists should turn their attention from
the innocent reader to those who have power to bewitch him.
The accepted signs of witchcraft, as enumerated by the Mathers, are
present. Thus we are told: "A famous Divine recites among other
Convictions of a Witch, the Testimony of the Party bewitched, together
with the joint Oaths of sufficient Persons that they have seen
Prodigious Pranks or Feats wrought by the Party accused."
This was the kind of evidence relied upon in the case of G. B. in the
Court of Oyer and Terminer held at Salem in 1692. "He was accused by
Nine Persons for extraordinary Lifting and such Feats of Strength as
could not be done without Diabolical Assistance." It was said that
"though he was a Puny Man yet he had done things beyond the strength of
a Giant. A Gun of about seven foot Barrel, and so heavy that strong Men
could not steadily hold it out with both hands; there were several
Testimonies that he made nothing of taking up such a Gun behind the
Lock, with one hand, and holding it out like a Pistol at arm's end." Any
readers of romance can tell of many such prodigious pranks which, while
the spell was upon them, seemed altogether credible.
The test which was looked upon as infallible by those judicious judges
who put little confidence in the flotation of witches on the mill pond,
was that of the lack of intellectual consistency. "Faltering, faulty,
inconstant, and contrary answers upon judicial and deliberate
Examination are accounted unlucky symptoms of guilt."
Such inconsistencies may be found in all romantic fiction; yet the
magicians seem to have the power to make all things appear probable. I
might tell what a pleasant thrill is sometimes produced by these
sorceries, but I had better follow the policy of Cotton Mather, who
declined to tell all he knew about the Invisible World, lest he might
make witchcraft too attractive. "I will not speak plainly lest I should,
unaware, poison some of my Readers, as the pious Hermingius did one of
his Pupils when he only by way of Diversion recited a Spell."
Cotton Mather makes a suggestion which is of value in regard to the
different grades of witches and other wonder-working spirits. His
remarks upon this head are so judicious that they should be quoted in
full.
"Thirdly, 'tis to be supposed, that some _Devils_ are more peculiarly
_Commission'd_, and perhaps _Qualify'd_, for some Countries, while
others are for others. This is intimated when in _Mar_. 5. 10. The
Devils _besought_ our Lord much, _that he would not send them away out
of the Countrey_. Why was that? But in all probability, because _these
Devils_ were more able to _do the works of the Devil_, in such a
Countrey, than in another. It is not likely that every Devil does know
every _Language_; or that every Devil can do every _Mischief_. 'Tis
possible, that the _Experience_, or, if I may call it so, the
_Education_ of all Devils is not alike, and that there may be some
difference in their _Abilities_. If one might make an Inference from
what the Devils _do_, to what they _are_, One cannot forbear dreaming,
that there are _degrees_ of Devils. Who can allow, that such Trifling
_Demons_, as that of _Mascon_, or those that once infested our
New-berry, are of so much Grandeur, as those _Demons_, whose Games are
mighty Kingdoms? Yea, 'tis certain, that all Devils do not make a like
figure in the _Invisible World_. Nor does it look agreeably, That the
_Demons_, which were Familiars of such a Man as the old _Apollonius_,
differ not from those baser Goblins that chuse to Nest in the filthy and
loathsome Rags of a beastly Sorceress. Accordingly, why may not some
Devils be more accomplished for what is to be done in such and such
places, when others must be _detach'd_ for other Territories? Each
Devil, as he sees his advantage, cries out, _Let me be in this Countrey,
rather than another_."
It is only on the theory of bewitchment by a trifling demon who belongs
to the lower orders of the literary world that I can account for the sad
fall of the reader whose confession follows. Carefully shielded in his
youth from all the enticements of the imagination, he yet fell from
grace. The unfortunate person seems to be lacking in strength of will,
and yet to have some good in him. In my opinion he was more sinned
against than sinning. But I will let him tell his story in his own way.
A CONFESSION
One half the world does not know what the other half reads; but good
people are now taught that the first requisite of sociological virtue is
to interest themselves in the other half. I therefore venture to call
attention to a book that has pleased me, though my delight in it may at
once class me with the "submerged tenth" of the reading public. It is
"The Pirate's Own Book."
By way of preface to a discussion of this volume, let me make a personal
explanation of the causes which led me to its perusal. My reading of
such a book cannot be traced to early habit. In my boyhood I had no
opportunity to study the careers of pirates, for I was confined to
another variety of literature. On Sunday afternoons I read aloud a book
called "The Afflicted Man's Companion." The unfortunate gentleman
portrayed in this work had a large assortment of afflictions,--if I
remember rightly, one for each day of the month,--but among them was
nothing so exciting as being marooned in the South Seas. Indeed, his
afflictions were of a generalized and abstract kind, which he could have
borne with great cheerfulness had it not been for the consolations which
were remorselessly administered to him.
If I have become addicted to tales of piracy, I must attribute it to the
literary criticisms of too strenuous realists. Before I read them, I
took an innocent pleasure in romantic fiction. Without any compunction
of conscience I rejoiced in Walter Scott; and when he failed I was
pleased even with his imitators. My heart leaped up when I beheld a
solitary horseman on the first page, and I did not forsake the horseman,
even though I knew he was to be personally conducted through his journey
by Mr. G. P. R. James. Fenimore Cooper, in those days, before I was
awakened to the nature of literary sin, I found altogether pleasant. The
cares of the world faded away, and a soothing conviction of the
essential rightness of things came over me, as the pioneers and Indians
discussed in deliberate fashion the deepest questions of the universe,
between shots. As for stories of the sea, I never thought of being
critical. I was ready to take thankfully anything with a salty flavor,
from "Sindbad the Sailor" to Mr. Clark Russell. I had no inconvenient
knowledge to interfere with my enjoyment. All nautical language was
alike impressive, and all nautical manoeuvres were to me alike
perilous. It would have been a poor Ancient Mariner who could not have
enthralled me, when
"He held me with his skinny hand;
'There was a ship,' quoth he."
And if the ship had raking masts and no satisfactory clearance papers,
that was enough; as to what should happen, I left that altogether to
the author. That the laws of probability held on the Spanish Main as on
dry land, I never dreamed.
But after being awakened to the sin of romance, I saw that to read a
novel merely for recreation is not permissible. The reader must be put
upon oath, and before he allows himself to enjoy any incident must swear
that everything is exactly true to life as he has seen it. All vagabonds
and sturdy vagrants who have no visible means of support, in the present
order of things, are to be driven out of the realm of well-regulated
fiction. Among these are included all knights in armor; all rightful
heirs with a strawberry mark; all horsemen, solitary or otherwise; all
princes in disguise; all persons who are in the habit of saying
"prithee," or "Odzooks," or "by my halidome;" all fair ladies who have
no irregularities of feature and no realistic incoherencies of speech;
all lovers who fall in love at first sight, and who are married at the
end of the book and live happily ever after; all witches,
fortune-tellers, and gypsies; all spotless heroes and deep-dyed
villains; all pirates, buccaneers, North American Indians with a taste
for metaphysics; all scouts, hunters, trappers, and other individuals
who do not wear store clothes. According to this decree, all readers are
forbidden to aid and abet these persons, or to give them shelter in
their imagination. A reader who should incite a writer of fiction to
romance would be held as an accessory before the fact.
After duly repenting of my sins and renouncing my old acquaintances, I
felt a preeminent virtue. Had I met the Three Guardsmen, one at a time
or all together, I should have passed them by without stopping for a
moment's converse. I should have recognized them for the impudent
Gascons that they were, and should have known that there was not a word
of truth in all their adventures. As for Stevenson's fine old pirate,
with his contemptible song about a "dead men's chest and a bottle of
rum," I should not have tolerated him for an instant. Instead, I should
have turned eagerly to some neutral-tinted person who never had any
adventure greater than missing the train to Dedham, and I should have
analyzed his character, and agitated myself in the attempt to get at his
feelings, and I should have verified his story by a careful reference
to the railway guide. I should have treated that neutral-tinted
character as a problem, and I should have noted all the delicate shades
in the futility of his conduct. When, on any occasion that called for
action, he did not know his own mind, I should have admired him for his
resemblance to so many of my acquaintances who do not know their own
minds. After studying the problem until I came to the last chapter, I
should suddenly have given it up, and agreed with the writer that it had
no solution. In my self-righteousness, I despised the old-fashioned
reader who had been lured on in the expectation that at the last moment
something thrilling might happen.
But temptations come at the unguarded point. I had hardened myself
against romance in fiction, but I had not been sufficiently warned
against romance in the guise of fact. When in a book-stall I came upon
"The Pirate's Own Book," it seemed to answer a felt want. Here at least,
outside the boundaries of strict fiction, I could be sure of finding
adventure, and feel again with Sancho Panza "how pleasant it is to go
about in expectation of accidents."
I am well aware that good literature--to use Matthew Arnold's phrase--is
a criticism of life. But the criticism of life, with its discriminations
between things which look very much alike, is pretty serious business.
We cannot keep on criticising life without getting tired after a while,
and longing for something a little simpler. There is a much-admired
passage in Ferishtah's Fancies, in which, after mixing up the beans in
his hands and speculating on their color, Ferishtah is not able to tell
black from white. Ferishtah, living in a soothing climate, could stand
an indefinite amount of this sort of thing; and, moreover, we must
remember that he was a dervish, and dervishry, although a steady
occupation, is not exacting in its requirements. In our more stimulating
climate, we should bring on nervous prostration if we gave ourselves
unremittingly to the discrimination between all the possible variations
of blackishness and whitishness. We must relieve our minds by
occasionally finding something about which there can be no doubt. When
my eyes rested on the woodcut that adorns the first page of "The
Pirate's Own Book," I felt the rest that comes from perfect certainty in
my own moral judgment. Ferishtah himself could not have mixed me up.
Here was black without a redeeming spot. On looking upon this pirate, I
felt relieved from any criticism of life; here was something beneath
criticism. I was no longer tossed about on a chop sea, with its
conflicting waves of feeling and judgment, but was borne along
triumphantly on a bounding billow of moral reprobation.
As I looked over the headings of the chapters, I was struck by their
straightforward and undisguised character. When I read the chapter
entitled The Savage Appearance of the Pirates, and compared this with
the illustrations, I said, "How true!" Then there was a chapter on the
Deceitful Character of the Malays. I had always suspected that the
Malays were deceitful, and here I found my impressions justified by
competent authority. Then I dipped into the preface, and found the same
transparent candor. "A piratical crew," says the author, "is generally
formed of the desperadoes and renegades of every clime and nation."
Again I said, "Just what I should have expected. The writer is evidently
one who 'nothing extenuates.'" Then follows a further description of
the pirate: "The pirate, from the perilous nature of his occupation,
when not cruising on the ocean, that great highway of nations, selects
the most lonely isles of the sea for his retreat, or secretes himself
near the shores of bays and lagoons of thickly wooded and uninhabited
countries." Just the places where I should have expected him to settle.
"The pirate, when not engaged in robbing, passes his time in singing old
songs with choruses like,--
'Drain, drain the bowl, each fearless soul!
Let the world wag as it will;
Let the heavens growl, let the devil howl,
Drain, drain the deep bowl and fill!'
Thus his hours of relaxation are passed in wild and extravagant frolics,
amongst the lofty forests and spicy groves of the torrid zone, and
amidst the aromatic and beautiful flowering vegetable products of that
region."
Again: "With the name of pirate is also associated ideas of rich
plunder,--caskets of buried jewels, chests of gold ingots, bags of
outlandish coins, secreted in lonely out-of-the-way places, or buried
about the wild shores of rivers and unexplored seacoasts, near rocks
and trees bearing mysterious marks, indicating where the treasure is
hid." "As it is his invariable practice to secrete and bury his booty,
and from the perilous life he lives being often killed, he can never
revisit the spot again, immense sums remaining buried in these places
are irrevocably lost." Is it any wonder that, with such an introduction,
I became interested?
After a perusal of the book, I am inclined to think that a pirate may be
a better person to read about than some persons who stand higher in the
moral scale. Compare, if you will, a pirate and a pessimist. As a
citizen and neighbor I should prefer the pessimist. A pessimist is an
excellent and highly educated gentleman, who has been so unfortunate as
to be born into a world which is inadequate to his expectations.
Naturally he feels that he has a grievance, and in airing his grievance
he makes himself unpopular; but it is certainly not his fault that the
universe is no better than it is. On the other hand, a pirate is a bad
character; yet as a subject of biography he is more inspiring than the
pessimist. In one case, we have the impression of one good man in a
totally depraved world; in the other case, we have a totally depraved
man in what but for him would be a very good world. I know of nothing
that gives one a more genial appreciation of average human nature, or a
greater tolerance for the foibles of one's acquaintances, than the
contrast with an unmitigated pirate.
My copy of "The Pirate's Own Book" belongs to the edition of 1837. On
the fly-leaf it bore in prim handwriting the name of a lady who for many
years must have treasured it. I like to think of this unknown lady in
connection with the book. I know that she must have been an excellent
soul, and I have no doubt that her New England conscience pointed to the
moral law as the needle to the pole; but she was a wise woman, and knew
that if she was to keep her conscience in good repair she must give it
some reasonable relaxation. I am sure that she was a woman of versatile
philanthropy, and that every moment she had the ability to make two
duties grow where only one had grown before. After, however, attending
the requisite number of lectures to improve her mind, and considering in
committees plans to improve other people's minds forcibly, and going to
meetings to lament over the condition of those who had no minds to
improve, this good lady would feel that she had earned a right to a few
minutes' respite. So she would take up "The Pirate's Own Book," and feel
a creepy sensation that would be an effectual counter-irritant to all
her anxieties for the welfare of the race. Things might be going slowly,
and there were not half as many societies as there ought to be, and the
world might be in a bad way; but then it was not so bad as it was in the
days of Black Beard; and the poor people who did not have any societies
to belong to were, after all, not so badly off as the sailors whom the
atrocious Nicola left on a desert island, with nothing but a blunderbuss
and Mr. Brooks's Family Prayer Book. In fact, it is expressly stated
that the pirates refused to give them a cake of soap. To be on a desert
island destitute of soap made the common evils of life appear trifling.
She had been worried about the wicked people who would not do their
duty, however faithfully they had been prodded up to it, who would not
be life members on payment of fifty dollars, and who would not be
annual members on payment of a dollar and signing the constitution, and
who in their hard and impenitent hearts would not even sit on the
platform at the annual meeting; but somehow their guilt seemed less
extreme after she had studied again the picture of Captain Kidd burying
his Bible in the sands near Plymouth. A man who would bury his Bible,
using a spade several times too large for him, and who would strike such
a world-defying attitude while doing it, made the sin of not joining the
society appear almost venial. In this manner she gained a certain moral
perspective; even after days when the public was unusually dilatory
about reforms, and the wheels of progress had begun to squeak, she would
get a good night's sleep. Contrasting the public with the black
background of absolute piracy, she grew tolerant of its shortcomings,
and learned the truth of George Herbert's saying, that "pleasantness of
disposition is a great key to do good."
Not only is a pirate a more comfortable person to read about than a
pessimist, but in many respects he is a more comfortable person to read
about than a philanthropist. The minute the philanthropist is
introduced, the author begins to show his own cleverness by discovering
flaws in his motives. You begin to see that the poor man has his
limitations. Perhaps his philanthropies are of a different kind from
yours, and that irritates you. Musical people, whom I have heard
criticise other musical people, seem more offended when some one flats
just a little than when he makes a big ear-splitting discord; and
moralists are apt to have the same fastidiousness. The philanthropist is
made the victim of the most cruel kind of vivisection,--a
character-study.
Here is a fragment of conversation from a study of character: "'That was
really heroic,' said Felix. 'That was what he wanted to do,' Gertrude
went on. 'He wanted to be magnanimous; he wanted to have a fine moral
pleasure; he made up his mind to do his duty; he felt sublime,--that's
how he likes to feel.'"
This leaves the mind in a painful state of suspense. The first instinct
of the unsophisticated reader is that if the person has done a good
deed, we ought not to begrudge him a little innocent pleasure in it. If
he is magnanimous, why not let him feel magnanimous? But after Gertrude
has made these subtle suggestions we begin to experience something like
antipathy for a man who is capable of having a fine moral pleasure; who
not only does his duty, but really likes to do it. There is something
wrong about him, and it is all the more aggravating because we are not
sure just what it is. There is no trouble of that kind in reading about
pirates. You cannot make a character-study out of a pirate,--he has no
character. You know just where to place him. You do not expect anything
good of him, and when you find a sporadic virtue you are correspondingly
elated.
For example, I am pleased to read of the pirate Gibbs that he was
"affable and communicative, and when he smiled he exhibited a mild and
gentle countenance. His conversation was concise and pertinent, and his
style of illustration quite original." If Gibbs had been a
philanthropist, it is doubtful whether these social and literary graces
would have been so highly appreciated.
So our author feels a righteous glow when speaking of the natives of the
Malabar coasts, and accounting for their truthfulness: "For as they had
been used to deal with pirates, they always found them men of honor in
the way of trade,--a people enemies of deceit, and that scorned to rob
but in their own way."
He is a very literal-minded person, and takes all his pirates seriously,
but often we are surprised by some touch of nature that makes the whole
world kin. There was the ferocious Benevedes, who flourished on the west
coast of South America, and who, not content with sea power, attempted
to gather an army. It is said that "a more finished picture of a pirate
cannot be conceived," and the description that follows certainly bears
out this assertion. Yet he had his own ideas of civilization, and a
power of adaptation that reminds us of the excellent and ingenious Swiss
Family Robinson. When he captures the American whaling-ship Herculia, we
are prepared for a wild scene of carnage; but instead we are told that
Benevedes immediately dismantled the ship, and "out of the sails made
trousers for half his army." After the trousers had been distributed,
Benevedes remarked that his army was complete except in one essential
particular,--he had no trumpets for the cavalry: whereupon, at the
suggestion of the New Bedford skipper, he ripped off the copper sheets
of the vessel, out of which a great variety of copper trumpets were
quickly manufactured, and soon "the whole camp resounded with the
warlike blasts." While the delighted pirates were enjoying their
instrumental music, the skipper and nine of the crew took occasion to
escape in a boat which had been imprudently concealed on the river bank.
In the "Proverbial Philosophy" we are told that
"Many virtues weighted by excess sink among the vices,
Many vices, amicably buoyed, float among the virtues."
Had Mr. Tupper been acquainted with the career of Captain Davis of the
Spanish Main, he would have found many apt illustrations of his thesis.
Captain Davis had the vices incidental to a piratical career, but they
were amicably buoyed up by some virtues which would have adorned a
different station in life. He was a great stickler for parliamentary
law, and everything under his direction was done decently and in order.
Whenever it was possible, he made his demands in writing, a method which
was business-like and left no room for misunderstanding. After a sloop
had been seized and duly pillaged, we are informed that:--
"In full possession of the vessel and stores and goods, a large bowl of
punch was made. Under its exhilarating influence it was proposed to
choose a commander, and to form a future mode of policy. The election
was soon over and a large majority of legal voters were in favor of
Davis, and, no scrutiny being demanded, Davis was declared duly elected.
He then addressed them in a short and appropriate speech."
The chief virtue of Davis seemed to be neatness, which on one occasion
he used to admirable advantage. "Encountering a French ship of
twenty-four guns, Davis proposed to the crew to attack her, assuring
them that she would prove a rich prize. This appeared to the crew such a
hazardous enterprise that they were adverse to the measure; but he
acquainted them that he had conceived a stratagem that he was confident
would succeed."
This stratagem was worthy of the Beau Brummel of pirates. At the
critical moment, the crew "according to the direction of Davis appeared
on deck in white shirts, which making an appearance of numbers the
Frenchman was intimidated and struck." Why the white shirts should have
given the appearance of numbers it is difficult to understand, but we
can well understand the surprise of the Frenchman over the pirates'
immaculate attire.
Most of the pirates seem to have conducted their lives on a highly
romantic, not to say sensational plan. This reprehensible practice, of
course, must shut them off from the sympathy of all realists of the
stricter school, who hold that there should be no dramatic situations,
and that even when a story is well begun it should not be brought to a
finish, but should "peter out" in the last chapters, no one knows how or
why. Sometimes, however, a pirate manages to come to an end sufficiently
commonplace to make a plot for a most irreproachable novel. There was
Captain Avery. He commenced the practice of his profession very
auspiciously by running away with a ship of thirty guns from Bristol. In
the Indian Ocean he captured a treasure-ship of the Great Mogul. In this
ship, it is said, "there were several of the greatest persons of the
court." There was also on board the daughter of the Great Mogul, who
was on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The painstaking historian comments on this
very justly: "It is well known that the people of the East travel with
great magnificence, so that they had along with them all their slaves,
with a large quantity of vessels of gold and silver and immense sums of
money. The spoil, therefore, that Avery received from that ship was
almost incalculable." To capture the treasure-ship of the Great Mogul
under such circumstances would have turned the head of any ordinary
pirate who had weakened his mind by reading works tinged with
romanticism. His companions, when the treasure was on board, wished to
sail to Madagascar, and there build a small fort; but "Avery
disconcerted the plan and rendered it altogether unnecessary." We know
perfectly well what these wretches would have done if they had been
allowed to have their own way: they would have gathered in one of the
spicy groves, and would have taken up vociferously their song,--
"Drain, drain the bowl, each fearless soul!
Let the world wag as it will."
Avery would have none of this, so when most of the men were away from
the ship he sailed off with the treasure, leaving them to their evil
ways, and to a salutary poverty. Here begins the realism of the story.
With the treasures of the Great Mogul in his hold, he did not follow the
illusive course of Captain Kidd, "as he sailed, as he sailed." He did
not even lay his course for the "coasts of Coromandel." Instead of that
he made a bee-line for America, with the laudable intention of living
there "in affluence and honor." When he got to America, however, he did
not know what to do with himself, and still less what to do with the
inestimable pearls and diamonds of the Great Mogul. An ordinary pirate
of romance would have escaped to the Spanish Main, but Avery did just
what any realistic gentleman would do: after he had spent a short time
in other cities--he concluded to go to Boston. The chronicler adds,
"Arriving at Boston, he almost resolved to settle there." It was in the
time of the Mathers. But in spite of its educational and religious
advantages, Boston furnished no market for the gems of the Orient, so
Captain Avery went to England. If he had in his youth read a few
detective stories, he might have known how to get his jewels exchanged
for the current coin of the realm; but his early education had been
neglected, and he was of a singularly confiding and unsophisticated
nature--when on land. After suffering from poverty he made the
acquaintance of some wealthy merchants of Bristol, who took his gems on
commission, on condition that they need not inquire how he came by them.
That was the last Avery saw of the gems of the Great Mogul. A plain
pirate was no match for financiers. Remittances were scanty, though
promises were frequent. What came of it all? Nothing came of it; things
simply dragged along. Avery was not hanged, neither did he get his
money. At last, on a journey to Bristol to urge the merchants to a
settlement, he fell sick and died. What became of the gems? Nobody
knows. What became of those merchants of Bristol? Nobody cares. A
novelist might, out of such material, make an ending quite clever and
dreary.
To this realistic school of pirates belongs Thomas Veal, known in our
history as the "Pirate of Lynn." To turn from the chapter on the Life,
Atrocities, and Bloody Death of Black Beard to the chapter on the Lynn
Pirate, is a relief to the overstrained sensibilities. Lynn is in the
temperate zone, and we should naturally reason that its piracies would
be more calm and equable than those of the tropics, and so they were.
"On one pleasant evening, a little after sunset, a small vessel was seen
to anchor near the mouth of the Saugus River. A boat was presently
lowered from her side, into which four men descended and moved up the
river." It is needless to say that these men were pirates. In the
morning the vessel had disappeared, but a man found a paper whereon was
a statement that if a quantity of shackles, handcuffs, and hatchets were
placed in a certain nook, silver would be deposited near by to pay for
them. The people of Lynn in those days were thrifty folk, and the
hardware was duly placed in the spot designated, and the silver was
found as promised. After some months four pirates came and settled in
the woods. The historian declares it to be his opinion (and he speaks as
an expert) that it would be impossible to select a place more convenient
for a gang of pirates. He draws particular attention to the fact that
the "ground was well selected for the cultivation of potatoes and common
vegetables." This shows that the New England environment gave an
industrial and agricultural cast to piracy which it has not had
elsewhere. In fact, after reading the whole chapter, I am struck by the
pacific and highly moral character of these pirates. The last of
them--Thomas Veal--took up his abode in what is described as a "spacious
cavern," about two miles from Lynn. "There the fugitive fixed his
residence, and practiced the trade of a shoemaker, occasionally coming
down to the village to obtain articles of sustenance." By uniting the
occupations of market-gardening, shoe-making, and piracy, Thomas Veal
managed to satisfy the demands of a frugal nature, and to live respected
by his neighbors in Lynn. It must have been a great alleviation in the
lot of the small boys, when now and then they escaped from the eyes of
the tithing-men, and in the cave listened to Mr. Veal singing his
pirate's songs. Of course a solo could give only a faint conception of
what the full chorus would have been in the tropical forests, but still
it must have curdled the blood to a very considerable extent.
There is, I must confess, a certain air of vagueness about this
interesting narration. No overt act of piracy is mentioned. Indeed, the
evidence in regard to the piratical character of Mr. Veal, so far as it
is given in this book, is largely circumstantial.
There is, first, the geographical argument. The Saugus River, being a
winding stream, was admirably adapted for the resort of pirates who
wished to prey upon the commerce of Boston and Salem. This establishes
the opportunity and motive, and renders it antecedently probable that
piracy was practiced. The river, it is said, was a good place in which
to secrete boats. This we know from our reading was the invariable
practice of pirates.
Another argument is drawn from the umbrageous character of the Lynn
woods. We are told with nice particularity that in this tract of country
"there were many thick pines, hemlocks, and cedars, and places where the
rays of the sun at noon could not penetrate." Such a place would be just
the spot in which astute pirates would be likely to bury their treasure,
confident that it would never be discovered. The fact that nothing ever
has been discovered here seems to confirm this supposition.
The third argument is that while a small cave still remains, the
"spacious cavern" in which Thomas Veal, the piratical shoemaker, is said
to have dwelt no longer exists. This clinches the evidence. For there
was an earthquake in 1658. What more likely than that, in the
earthquake, "the top of the rock was loosened and crushed down into the
mouth of the cavern, inclosing the unfortunate inmate in its unyielding
prison?" At any rate, there is no record of Mr. Veal or of his spacious
cavern after that earthquake.
No one deserves to be called an antiquarian who cannot put two and two
together, and reconstruct from these data a more or less elaborate
history of the piracies of Mr. Thomas Veal. The only other explanation
of the facts presented, that I can think of as having any degree of
plausibility, is that possibly Mr. Veal may have been an Anabaptist,
escaped from Boston, who imposed upon the people of Lynn by making them
believe that he was only a pirate.
I must in candor admit that the Plutarch of piracy is sometimes more
edifying than entertaining. He can never resist the temptation to draw a
moral, and his dogmatic bias in favor of the doctrine of total
depravity is only too evident. But his book has the great advantage that
it is not devoid of incident. Take it all in all, there are worse books
to read--after one is tired of reading books that are better.
I am inclined to think that our novelists must make home happy, or they
may drive many of their readers to "The Pirate's Own Book." The policy
of the absolute prohibition of romance, while excellent in theory, has
practical difficulties in the way of enforcement. Perhaps, under certain
restrictions, license might be issued to proper persons to furnish
stimulants to the imagination. Of course the romancer should not be
allowed to sell to minors, nor within a certain distance of a
schoolhouse, nor to habitual readers. My position is the conservative
one that commended itself to the judicious Rollo.
"'Well, Rollo,' said Dorothy, 'shall I tell you a true story, or one
that is not true?'
"'I think, on the whole, Dorothy, I would rather have it true.'"
But there must have been times--though none are recorded--when Rollo
tired even of the admirable clear thinking and precise information of
Jonas. At such times he might have tolerated a story that was not so
very true, if only it were interesting. There are main thoroughfares
paved with hard facts where the intellectual traffic must go on
continually. There are tracks on which, if a heedless child of romance
should stray, he is in danger of being run down by the realists, those
grim motor-men of the literary world. But outside the congested
districts there should be some roadways leading out into the open
country where all things are still possible. At the entrance to each of
these roads there ought to be displayed the notice, "For pleasure only.
No heavy teaming allowed." I should not permit any modern improvements
in this district, but I should preserve all its natural features. There
should be not only a feudal castle with moat and drawbridge, but also a
pirate's cave.
The Honorable Points of Ignorance
I happen to live in a community where there is a deeply rooted prejudice
in favor of intelligence, with many facilities for its advancement. I
may, therefore, be looked upon as unmindful of my privileges when I
confess that my chief pleasures have been found in the more secluded
paths of ignorance.
I am no undiscriminating lover of Ignorance. I do not like the
pitch-black kind which is the negation of all thought. What I prefer is
a pleasant intellectual twilight, where one sees realities through an
entrancing atmosphere of dubiety.
In visiting a fine old Elizabethan mansion in the south of England our
host took us to a room where he had discovered the evidences of a secret
panel. "What is behind it?" we asked. "I do not know," he answered;
"while I live it shall never be opened, for then I should have no secret
chamber."
There was a philosopher after my own heart. He was wise enough to resist
the temptation to sell his birthright of mystery for a mess of
knowledge. The rural New Englander expresses his interest by saying, "I
want to know!" But may one not have a real interest in persons and
things which is free from inquisitiveness? For myself, I frequently
prefer not to know. Were Bluebeard to do me the honor of intrusting me
with his keys, I should spend a pleasant half-hour speculating on his
family affairs. I might even put the key in the lock, but I do not think
I should turn it. Why should I destroy twenty exciting possibilities for
the sake of a single discovery?
I like to watch certain impressive figures as they cross the College
Yard. They seem like the sages whom Dante saw:--
"People were there with solemn eyes and slow,
Of great authority in their countenance."
Do I therefore inquire their names, and intrusively seek to know what
books they have written, before I admire their scholarship? No, to my
old-fashioned way of thinking, scholarship is not a thing to be
measured; it is a mysterious effluence. Were I to see--
"Democritus who puts the world on chance,
Diogenes, Anaxagoras, and Thales,
Zeno, Empedocles, and Heraclitus,
* * * * *
Tully and Livy and moral Seneca,
Euclid, geometrician, and Ptolemy,
Galen, Hippocrates, and Avicenna,"
I should not care to ask, "Which is which?" still less should I venture
to interview Galen on the subject of medicine, or put leading questions
to Diogenes. The combined impression of ineffable wisdom would be more
to me than any particular information I might get out of them.
But, as I said, I am not an enthusiast for Ignorance. Mine is not the
zeal of a new convert, but the sober preference of one to the manner
born. I do not look upon it as a panacea, nor, after the habit of
reformers, would I insist that it should be taught in the public
schools. There are important spheres wherein exact information is much
to be preferred.
Because Ignorance has its own humble measure of bliss I would not jump
at the conclusion that it is folly to be wise. That is an extravagant
statement. If real wisdom were offered me I should accept it gratefully.
Wisdom is an honorable estate, and, doubtless, it has pleasures of its
own. I only have in mind the alternative that is usually presented to
us, conscious ignorance or a kind of knowingness.
It is necessary, at this point, to make a distinction. A writer on the
use of words has a chapter on Ignorantism, which is a term he uses to
indicate Ignorance that mistakes itself, or seeks to make others mistake
it, for Knowledge. For Ignorantism I make no plea. If Ignorance puts on
a false uniform and is caught within the enemy's lines, it must suffer
the penalties laid down in the laws of war.
Nor would I defend what Milton calls "the barbarous ignorance of the
schools." This scholastic variety consists of the scientific definition
and classification of "things that aren't so." It has no value except as
a sort of gelatine culture for the propagation of verbal bacteria.
But the affectations of the pedants or the sciolists should not be
allowed to cast discredit on the fair name of Ignorance. It is only
natural Ignorance which I praise; not that which is acquired. It was a
saying of Landor that if a man had a large mind he could afford to let
the greater part of it lie fallow. Of course we small proprietors cannot
do things on such a generous scale; but it seems to me that if one has
only a little mind it is a mistake to keep it all under cultivation.
I hope that this praise of Ignorance may not give offense to any
intelligent reader who may feel that he is placed by reason of his
acquirements beyond the pale of our sympathies. He need fear no such
exclusion. My Lady Ignorance is gracious and often bestows her choicest
gifts on those who scorn her. The most erudite person is intelligent
only in spots. Browning's Bishop Blougram questioned whether he should
be called a skeptic or believer, seeing that he could only exchange
"a life of doubt diversified by faith,
For one of faith diversified by doubt:
We called the chess-board white,--we call it black."
Whether a person thinks of his own intellectual state as one of
knowledge diversified by ignorance or one of ignorance diversified by
knowledge is a matter of temperament. We like him better when he frankly
calls his intellectual chess-board black. That, at any rate, was the
original color, the white is an afterthought.
Let me, then, without suspicion of treasonable intent, be allowed to
point out what we may call in Shakespearean phrase "the honorable points
of ignorance."
The social law against "talking shop" is an indication of the very
widespread opinion that the exhibition of unmitigated knowledge is
unseemly, outside of business hours. When we meet for pleasure we prefer
that it should be on the humanizing ground of not knowing. Nothing is so
fatal to conversation as an authoritative utterance. When a man who is
capable of giving it enters,
"All talk dies, as in a grove all song
Beneath the shadow of a bird of prey."
Conversation about the weather would lose all its easy charm in the
presence of the Chief of the Weather Bureau.
It is possible that the fear of exhibiting unusual information in a
mixed company may be a survival of primitive conditions. Just as the
domesticated dog will turn around on the rug before lying down, for
hereditary reasons which I do not remember, so it is with civilized man.
Once ignorance was universal and enforced by penalties. In the progress
of the race the environment has been modified, but so strong is the
influence of heredity that The Man Who Knows no sooner enters the
drawing-room than he is seized by guilty fears. His ancestors for having
exhibited a moiety of his intelligence were executed as wizards. But
perhaps the ordinary working of natural selection may account for the
facts. The law of the survival of the fittest admits of no exceptions,
and the fittest to give us pleasure in conversation is the sympathetic
person who appears to know very little more than we do.
In the commerce of ideas there must be reciprocity. We will not deal
with one who insists that the balance of trade shall always be in his
favor. Moreover there must be a spice of incertitude about the
transaction. The real joy of the intellectual traffic comes when we
sail away like the old merchant adventurers in search of a market. There
must be no prosaic bills of exchange: it must be primitive barter. We
have a choice cargo of beads which we are willing to exchange for
frankincense and ivory. If on some strange coast we should meet
simple-minded people who have only wampum, perhaps even then we might
make a trade.
Have you never when engaged in such commerce felt something of the
spirit of the grave Tyrian trader who had sailed away from the
frequented marts, and held on
"O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale,
Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily,
To where the Atlantic raves
Outside the western straits, and unbent sails
There where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam,
Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come;
And on the beach undid his corded bales."
It is not every day that one meets with such shy traffickers, for the
world is becoming very sophisticated. One does not ask that those with
whom we converse should be ignorant of everything; it is enough that
they should not know what is in our bales before we undo them.
One very serious drawback to our pleasure in conversation with a too
well-informed person is the nervous strain that is involved. We are
always wondering what will happen when he comes to the end of his
resources. After listening to one who discourses with surprising
accuracy upon any particular topic, we feel a delicacy in changing the
subject. It seems a mean trick, like suddenly removing the chair on
which a guest is about to sit down for the evening. With one who is
interested in a great many things he knows little about there is no such
difficulty. If he has passed the first flush of youth, it no longer
embarrasses him to be caught now and then in a mistake; indeed your
correction is welcomed as an agreeable interruption, and serves as a
starting point for a new series of observations.
The pleasure of conversation is enhanced if one feels assured not only
of wide margins of ignorance, but also of the absence of uncanny
quickness of mind.
I should not like to be neighbor to a wit. It would be like being in
proximity to a live wire. A certain insulating film of kindly stupidity
is needed to give a margin of safety to human intercourse. There are
certain minds whose processes convey the impression of alternating
currents of high voltage on a wire that is not quite large enough for
them. From such I would withdraw myself.
One is freed from all such apprehensions in the companionship of people
who make no pretensions to any kind of cleverness. "The laughter of
fools is like the crackling of thorns under a pot." What cheerful
sounds! The crackling of the dry thorns! and the merry bubbling of the
pot!
There is an important part played by what I may call defensive
Ignorance. It was said of Robert Elsmere that he had a mind that was
defenseless against the truth. It is a fine thing to be thus open to
conviction, but the mental hospitality of one who is without prejudices
is likely to be abused. All sorts of notions importunately demand
attention, and he who thinks to examine all their credentials will find
no time left for his own proper affairs.
For myself, I like to have a general reception-room in my mind for all
sorts of notions with which I desire to keep up only a calling
acquaintance. Here let them all be welcomed, good, bad, and
indifferent, in the spacious antechamber of my Ignorance. But I am not
able to invite them into my private apartments, for I am living in a
small way in cramped quarters, where there is only room for my own
convictions. There are many things that are interesting to hear about
which I do not care to investigate. If one is willing to give me the
result of his speculations on various esoteric doctrines I am ready to
receive them in the spirit in which they are offered, but I should not
think of examining them closely; it would be too much like looking a
gift horse in the mouth.
I should like to talk with a Mahatma about the constitution of the
astral body. I do not know enough about the subject to contradict his
assertions, and therefore he would have it all his own way. But were he
to become insistent and ask me to look into the matter for myself, I
should beg to be excused. I would not take a single step alone. In such
a case I agree with Sir Thomas Browne that "it is better to sit down in
modest ignorance and rest contented with the natural blessings of our
own reasons."
There are zealous persons of a proselyting turn of mind who insist upon
our accepting their ideas or giving reasons for our rejection of them.
When we see the flames of controversy sweeping upon us, the only safety
lies in setting a back fire which shall clear the ground of any fuel for
argument. If we can only surround ourselves with a bare space of
nescience we may rest in peace. I have seen a simple Chinese
laundry-man, by adopting this plan, resist a storm of argument and
invective without losing his temper or yielding his point. Serene,
imperturbable, inscrutable, he stood undisturbed by the strife of
tongues. He had one supreme advantage,--he did not know the language.
It was thus in the sixteenth century, when religious strife waxed mad
around him, that Montaigne preserved a little spot of tolerant thought.
"O what a soft, easy, and wholesome pillow is ignorance and incuriosity
whereon to compose a well-contrived head!"
This sounds like mere Epicureanism, but Montaigne had much to say for
himself: "Great abuse in the world is begot, or, to speak more boldly,
all the abuses of the world are begot by our being taught to be afraid
of professing our ignorance, and that we are bound to accept all things
we are not able to refute.... They make me hate things that are likely
when they impose upon me for infallible. I love those words which
mollify and moderate the temerity of our propositions, 'Peradventure, in
some sort, 'tis said, I think,' and the like.... There is a sort of
ignorance, strong and generous, that yields nothing in honor and courage
to knowledge; an ignorance which to conceive requires no less knowledge
than knowledge itself."
Not only is protection needed from the dogmatic assaults of our
neighbors, but also from our own premature ideas. There are opinions
which we are willing to receive on probation, but these probationers
must be taught by judicious snubbing to know their place. The
plausibilities and probabilities that are pleasantly received must not
airily assume the place of certainties. Because you say to a stranger,
"I'm glad to see you," it is not certain that you are ready to sign his
note at the bank.
When one happens to harbor any ideas of a radical character, he is
fortunate if he is so constituted that it is not necessary for his
self-respect that he should be cock-sure. The consciousness of the
imperfection of his knowledge serves as a buffer when the train of
progress starts with a jerk.
Sir Thomas More was, it is evident, favorably impressed with many of the
sentiments of the gentleman from Utopia, but it was a great relief to
him to be able to give them currency without committing himself to them.
He makes no dogmatic assertion that the constitution of Utopia was
better than that of the England of Henry VIII. In fact, he professes to
know nothing about Utopia except from mere hearsay. He gracefully
dismisses the subject, allowing the seeds of revolutionary ideas to
float away on the thistle-down of polite Ignorance.
"When Raphael had made an end of speaking, though many things occurred
to me both concerning the manners and laws of that country that seemed
very absurd ... yet since I perceived that Raphael was weary and I was
not sure whether he could bear contradiction ... I only commended their
constitution and the account he had given of it in general; and so,
taking him by the hand, carried him to supper, and told him I would
find some other time for examining this subject more particularly and
discoursing more copiously upon it."
* * * * *
One whose quiet tastes lead him away from the main traveled roads into
the byways of Ignorance is likely to retain a feeling in regard to books
which belongs to an earlier stage of culture. Time was when a book was a
symbol of intellectual mysteries rather than a tool to be used. When
Omar Khayyam sang of the delights of a jug of wine and a book, I do not
think he was intemperate in the use of either. The same book and the
same jug of wine would last him a long time. The chief thing was that it
gave him a comfortable feeling to have them within reach.
The primitive feeling in regard to a book as a kind of talisman survives
chiefly among bibliophiles, but with them it is overlaid by matters of
taste which are quite beyond the comprehension of ordinary people. As
for myself, I know nothing of such niceties.
I know nothing of rare bindings or fine editions. My heart is never
disturbed by coveting the contents of my neighbor's bookshelves.
Indeed, I have always listened to the tenth commandment with a tranquil
heart since I learned, in the Shorter Catechism, that "the tenth
commandment forbiddeth all discontentment with our own estate, envying
or grieving at the good of our neighbor and all inordinate motions and
affections to anything that is his." If that be all, it is not aimed at
me, particularly in this matter of books.
I feel no discontentment at the disorderly array of bound volumes that I
possess. I know that they are no credit either to my taste or to my
scholarship, but if that offends my neighbor, the misery is his, not
mine. If he should bring a railing accusation against me, let him
remember that there is a ninth commandment which "forbiddeth anything
that is injurious to our own or our neighbor's good name." As for any
inordinate motions or affections toward his literary treasures, I have
no more than toward his choice collection of stamps.
Yet I have one weakness in common with the bibliophile; I have a liking
for certain books which I have neither time nor inclination to read.
Just as according to the mediaeval theory there was a sanctity about a
duly ordained clergyman altogether apart from his personal character, so
there is to my mind an impressiveness about some volumes which has
little to do with their contents, or at least with my knowledge of them.
Why should we be too curious in regard to such matters? There are books
which I love to see on the shelf. I feel that virtue goes out of them,
but I should think it undue familiarity to read them.
The persons who have written on "Books that have helped me" have usually
confined their list to books which they have actually read. One book has
clarified their thoughts, another has stimulated their wills, another
has given them useful knowledge. But are there no Christian virtues to
be cultivated? What about humility, that pearl of great price?
To be constantly reminded that you have not read Kant's "Critique of the
Pure Reason," and that therefore you have no right to express a final
opinion on philosophy, does not that save you from no end of unnecessary
dogmatism? The silent monitor with its accusing, uncut pages is a
blessed help to the meekness of wisdom. A book that has helped me is
"The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars of England," by Edward,
Earl of Clarendon. I am by nature and education a Cromwellian, of a
rather narrow type. I am more likely than not to think of Charles I. as
a man of sin. When, therefore, I brought home Clarendon's History I felt
a glow of conscious virtue; the volume was an outward and visible sign
of inward and spiritual grace,--the grace of tolerance; and so it has
ever been to me.
Years have passed, and the days of leisure have not yet come when I
could devote myself to the reading of it. Perhaps the fact that I
discovered that the noble earl's second sentence contains almost three
hundred words may have had a discouraging influence,--but we will let
that pass. Because I have not crossed the Rubicon of the second chapter,
will you say that the book has not influenced me? "When in my sessions
of sweet, silent thought," with the Earl of Clarendon, "I summon up
remembrance of time past," is it necessary that I should laboriously
turn the pages? It is enough that I feel my prejudices oozing away, and
that I am convinced, when I look at the much prized volume, that there
are two sides to this matter of the English Commonwealth. Could the
most laborious reading do more for me?
Indeed, it is dangerous, sometimes, not to let well-enough alone.
Wordsworth's fickle Muse gave him several pretty fancies about the
unseen banks of Yarrow. "Yarrow Unvisited" was so delightful that he was
almost tempted to be content with absent treatment.
"We will not see them, will not go
To-day nor yet to-morrow,
Enough if in our hearts we know
There's such a place as Yarrow.
Be Yarrow's stream unseen, unknown,
It must, or we shall rue it,
We have a vision of our own,
Ah, why should we undo it?"
Ah, why, indeed? the reader asks, after reading Yarrow Visited and
Yarrow Re-visited. The visits were a mistake.
Perhaps Clarendon Unread is as good for my soul as Clarendon Read or
Clarendon Re-read. Who can tell?
* * * * *
There is another sphere in which the honorable points of ignorance are
not always sufficiently appreciated, that of Travel. The pleasure of
staying at home consists in being surrounded by things which are
familiar and which we know all about. The primary pleasure of going
abroad consists in the encounter with the unfamiliar and the unknown.
That was the impulse which stirred old Ulysses to set forth once more
upon his travels.
"For my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew."
"It may be"--there lay the charm. There was no knowing what might happen
on the dark, broad seas. Perhaps they might get lost, and then again
they might come upon the Happy Isles. And if as they sailed under their
looming shores they should see the great Achilles--why all the better!
What joys the explorers of the New World experienced! The heart leaps up
at the very title of Sebastian Cabot's joint stock company. "Merchants
Adventurers of England for the discovery of lands, territories, isles
and signories, unknown." There was no knowing beforehand which was an
island and which the mainland. All they had to do was to keep on, sure
only of finding something which they had not expected. When they got to
the mainland they were as likely as not to stumble on the great Khan
himself. Of course they might not make a discovery of the first
magnitude like that of the Spaniards on the Peak in Darien,--but if it
was not one thing it was another!
Two or three miles back of Plymouth, Mass., is a modest little pond
called Billington's Sea. Billington, an adventurous Pilgrim, had climbed
a tree, and looking westwards had caught sight of the shimmering water.
He looked at it with a wild surmise, and then the conviction flashed
upon him that he had discovered the goal of hardy mariners,--the great
South Sea. That was a great moment for Billington!
Of course the Spaniards were more fortunate in their geographical
position. It turned out that it was the Pacific that they saw from their
Peak in Darien; while Billington's Sea does not grow on acquaintance.
But my heart goes out to Billington. He also was a discoverer,
according to his lights. He belonged to a hardy breed, and could stare
on new scenes with the best of them. It was not his fault that the
Pacific was not there. If it had been, Billington would have discovered
it. We know perfectly well that the Pacific Ocean does not lave the
shores of Plymouth County, and so we should not go out into the woods on
a fine morning to look for it. There is where Billington had the
advantage of us.
Is it not curious that while we profess to envy the old adventurers the
joys of discovery, yet before we set out on our travels we make it a
point of convenience to rob ourselves of these possibilities? Before we
set out for Ultima Thule we must know precisely where it is, and how we
are going to get there, and what we are to see and what others have said
about it. After a laborious course of reading the way is as familiar to
our minds as the road to the post office. After that there is nothing
more for us to do but to sally forth to verify the guide-books. We have
done all that we could to brush the bloom off our native Ignorance.
Of course even then all the possibilities of discovery are not shut
out. The best-informed person cannot be completely guarded against
surprise. Accidents will happen, and there is always the chance that one
may have been misinformed.
I remember a depressed looking lady whom I encountered as she trudged
through the galleries of the Vatican with grim conscientiousness. She
had evidently a stern duty to perform for the cause of Art. But in the
Sistine Chapel the stillness was broken by her voice, which had a note
of triumph as she spoke to her daughter. She had discovered an error in
Baedeker. It infused new life into her tired soul.
"Some flowerets of Eden we still inherit
Though the trail of the serpent is over them all."
Speaking of the Vatican, that suggests the weak point in my argument. It
suggests that there are occasions when knowledge is very convenient. On
the Peak in Darien the first comer, with the wild surmise of ignorance,
has the advantage in the quality of his sensation; but it is different
in Jerusalem or Rome. There the pleasure consists in the fact that a
great many interesting people have been there before and done many
interesting things, which it might be well to know about.
At this point I am quite willing to grant an inch; with the
understanding that it shall not be lengthened into an ell. The Camel of
Knowledge may push his head into the tent, and we shall have to resist
his further encroachments as we may.
What we call the historic sense is not consistent with a state of
nescience. The picture which the eye takes in is incomplete without the
thousand associations which come from previous thought. Still, it
remains true that the finest pleasure does not come when the mental
images are the most precise. Before entering Paradise the mediaeval
pilgrims tasted of the streams of Eunoe and Lethe,--the happy memory and
the happy forgetfulness. The most potent charm comes from the judicious
mingling of these waters.
There is a feeling of antiquity that only comes now and then, but which
it is worth traveling far to experience. It is the thrill that comes
when we consciously stand in the presence of the remote past. Some scene
brings with it an impression of immemorial time. In almost every case
we find that it comes from being reminded of something which we have
once known and more than half forgotten. What are the "mists of time"
but imperfect memories?
Modern psychologists have given tardy recognition to the "Subliminal
Self,"--the self that lodges under the threshold of consciousness. He is
a shy gnome, and loves the darkness rather than the light; not, as I
believe, because his deeds are evil, but for reasons best known to
himself. To all appearances he is the most ignorant fellow in the world,
and yet he is no fool. As for the odds and ends that he stores up under
the threshold, they are of more value than the treasures that the
priggish Understanding displays in his show windows upstairs.
In traveling through historic lands the Subliminal Self overcomes his
shyness. There are scenes and even words that reach back into hoar
antiquity, and bring us into the days of eld.
Each person has his own chronology. If I were to seek to bring to mind
the very ancientest time, I should not think of the cave-dwellers: I
should repeat, "The Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the
Hittites, the Perizzites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the
Girgashites."
There is antiquity! It is not only a long time since these tribes dwelt
in the land; it has been a long time since I first heard of them.
My memory goes back to the time when a disconsolate little boy sat on a
bench in a Sunday-school and asked himself, "What is a Girgashite?"
The habit of the Sunday-school of mingling the historical and ethical
elements in one inextricable moral had made it uncertain whether the
Girgashite was a person or a sin. In either case it happened a long time
ago. There upon the very verge of Time stood the Girgashite, like the
ghost in Ossian, "His spear was a column of mist, and the stars looked
dim through his form."
Happily my studies have not led in that direction, and there is nothing
to disturb the first impression. If some day wandering over Oriental
hills I should come upon some broken monuments of the Girgashites, I am
sure that I should feel more of a thrill than could possibly come to my
more instructed companion. To him it would be only the discovery of
another fact, to fit into his scheme of knowledge: to me it would be
like stumbling unawares into the primeval world.
What is more delightful than in a railway train in Italy to hear voices
in the night calling out names that recall the lost arts of our
childhood! There is a sense
"Of something here like something there,
Of something done, I know not where,
Such as no language can declare."
There is a bittersweet to it, for there is a momentary fear that you may
be called upon to construe; but when that is past it is pure joy.
"Monte Soracte," said the Italian gentleman on the train between Foligno
and Rome, as he pointed out a picturesque eminence. My answering smile
was intended to convey the impression that one touch of the classics
makes the whole world kin. Had I indeed kept up my Horace, a host of
clean-cut ideas would have instantly rushed into my mind. "Is that
Soracte! It is not what I had reason to expect. As a mountain I prefer
Monadnock."
Fortunately I had no such prepossessions. I had expected nothing. There
only came impressions of lessons years ago in a dingy school-room
presided over by a loved instructor whom we knew as "Prof. Ike." Looking
back through the mists of time, I felt that I had been the better for
having learned the lessons, and none the worse for having long since
forgotten them. In those days Soracte had been a noun standing in
mysterious relations to a verb unknown; but now it was evident that it
was a mountain. There it stood under the clear Italian sky just as it
had been in the days of Virgil and Horace. Thoughts of Horace and of the
old professor mingled pleasantly so long as the mountain was in sight.
* * * * *
It may seem to some timid souls that this praise of Ignorance may have a
sinister motive, and may be intended to deter from the pursuit of
knowledge. On the contrary, it is intended to encourage those who are
"faint yet pursuing."
It must have occurred to every serious person that the pursuit of
knowledge is not what it once was. Time was when to know seemed the
easiest thing in the world. All that a man had to do was to assert
dogmatically that a thing was so, and then argue it out with some one
who had even less acquaintance with the subject than he had. He was not
hampered by a rigid, scientific method, nor did he need to make
experiments, which after all might not strengthen his position. The
chief thing was a certain tenacity of opinion which would enable him, in
Pope's phrase, to "hold the eel of science by the tail." There were no
troublesome experts to cast discredit on this slippery sport. If a man
had a knack at metaphysics and a fine flow of technical language he
could satisfy all reasonable curiosity about the Universe. Or with the
minimum of effort he might attain a jovial scholarship adequate for all
convivial purposes, like Chaucer's pilgrim
"Whan that he wel dronken had the win,
Than wold he speken no word but Latin."
It was the golden age of the amateur, when certainty could be had for
the asking, and one could stake out any part of the wide domain of human
interest and hold it by the right of squatter sovereignty. But in these
days the man who aspires to know must do something more than assert his
conviction. He must submit to all sorts of mortifying tests, and at best
he can obtain a title to only the tiniest bit of the field he covets.
With the severer definitions of knowledge and the delimitation of the
territory which any one may call his own there has come a curious
result. While the aggregate of intellectual wealth has increased, the
individual workers are being reduced to penury. It is a pathetic
illustration of Progress and Poverty. The old and highly respected class
of gentlemen and scholars is being depleted. Scholarship has become so
difficult that those who aspire after it have little time for the
amenities. It is not as it was in the "spacious times of great
Elizabeth." Enter any company of modern scholars and ask what they know
about any large subject, and you will find that each one hastens to take
the poor debtor's oath. How can they be expected to know so much?
On this minute division of intellectual labor the exact sciences thrive,
but conversation, poetry, art, and all that belongs to the humanities
languish.
Your man of highly specialized intelligence has often a morbid fear of
half-knowledge, and he does not dare to express an opinion that has not
been the result of original research. He shuns the innocent questioners
who would draw him out, as if they were so many dunning creditors. He
becomes a veritable Dick Swiveller as one conversational thoroughfare
after another is closed against him, until he no longer ventures abroad.
The worst of it is that he has a haunting apprehension that even the bit
of knowledge which he calls his own may be taken away from him by some
new discovery, and he may be cast adrift upon the Unknowable.
It is then that he should remember the wisdom of the unjust steward, so
that when he is cast out of the House of Knowledge he may find congenial
friends in the habitations of Ignorance.
There are a great many mental activities that stop short of strict
knowledge. Where we do not know, we may imagine, and hope, and dare; we
may laugh at our neighbor's mistakes, and occasionally at our own. We
may enjoy the delicious moments of suspense when we are on the verge of
finding out; and if it should happen that the discovery is postponed,
then we have a chance to go over the delightful process again.
To say "I do not know" is not nearly as painful as it seems to those
who have not tried it. The active mind, when the conceit of absolute
knowledge has been destroyed, quickly recovers itself and cries out,
after the manner of Brer Rabbit when Brer Fox threw him into the brier
patch, "Bred en bawn in a brier patch, Brer Fox--bred en bawn in a brier
patch!"
That History should be Readable
That was a clever device which a writer of "mere literature" hit upon
when he boldly dedicated his book to a man of prodigious learning. "Who
so guarded," he says, "can suspect his safety even when he travels
through the Enemy's Country, for such is the vast field of Learning,
where the Learned (though not numerous enough to be an Army) lie in
small Parties, maliciously in Ambush, to destroy all New Men who look
into their Quarters."
It is doubtful, however, whether in these days a lover of Ignorance--or,
if you prefer, an ignorant lover of good things--could be safe in the
enemy's country, even under the protection of such a Mr. Great Heart.
It is no longer true that the Learned are not numerous enough to be an
army and are content with guerrilla warfare; on the contrary, they have
increased to multitudes, and their well-disciplined forces hold all the
strategic points. As for those who love to read and consider, rather
than to enter into minute researches, it is as in the days of Shamgar,
the son of Anoth, when "the highways were unoccupied and the people
walked through byways."
There is one field, however, that the Gentle Reader will not give up
without a struggle--it is that of history. He claims that it belongs to
Literature as much as to Science. History and Story are variations of
the same word, and the historian who is master of his art must be a
story-teller. Clio was not a school-mistress, but a Muse, and the
papyrus roll in her hand does not contain mere dates and statistics, it
is filled with the record of heroic adventures. The primitive form of
history was verbal tradition, as one generation told the story of the
past to the generation that followed.
"There was a great advantage in that method," says the Gentle Reader,
"the irrelevant details dropped out. It is only the memorable things
that can be remembered. What a pleasant invitation that was in the
eighty-first psalm to the study of Hebrew History, in order to learn
what had happened when Israel went out through the land of Egypt:--
'Take up the psalm and bring hither the timbrel,
The pleasant harp with the psaltery,
Blow up the trumpet in the new moon,
And the full moon on our solemn feast days.'
"The Jews had a way of setting their history to music, and bringing in
the great events as a glorious refrain, which they never feared
repeating too often; perhaps that is one reason why their history has
lasted so long."
The Gentle Reader's liking for histories that might be read to the
accompaniment of the "pleasant harp and psaltery," and which now and
then stir him as with the sound of a trumpet, brings upon him many a
severe rebuke. He is told that his favorite writers are frequently
inaccurate and one-sided. The true historian, he is informed, is a
prodigy of impartiality, who has divested himself of all human passions,
in order that he may set down in exact sequence the course of events.
The Gentle Reader turns to these highly praised volumes and finds
himself adrift, without human companionship, on a bottomless sea of
erudition,--writings, writings everywhere and not a page to read!
Returning from this perilous excursion, he ever after adheres to his
original predilection for histories that are readable.
He is of the opinion that a history must be essentially a work of the
imagination. This does not mean that it must not be true, but it means
that the important truth about any former generation can only be
reproduced through the imagination. The important thing is that these
people were once alive. No critical study of their meagre memorials can
make us enter into their joys, their griefs, and their fears. The
memorials only suggest to the historic imagination what the reality must
have been.
Peter Bell could recognize a fact when he saw it:--
"A primrose on the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more."
As long as the primrose was there, he could be trusted to describe it
accurately enough. But set Peter Bell the task of describing last year's
primrose. "There aren't any last year's primroses on the river's brim,"
says Peter, "so you must be content with a description of the one in my
herbarium. Last year's primroses, you will observe, are very much
flattened out." To Mr. Peter Bell, after he has spent many years in the
universities, a document is a document, and it is nothing more. When he
has compared a great many documents, and put them together in a
mechanical way, he calls his work a history. That's where he differs
from the Gentle Reader who calls it only the crude material out of which
a man of genius may possibly make a history.
To the Gentle Reader it is a profoundly interesting reflection that
since this planet has been inhabited people have been fighting, and
working, and loving, and hating, with an intensity born of the
conviction that, if they went at it hard enough, they could finish the
whole business in one generation. He likes to get back into any one of
these generations just "to get the feel of it." He does not care so much
for the final summing up of the process, as to see it in the making.
Any one who can give him that experience is his friend.
He is interested in the stirring times of the English Revolution, and
goes to the historical expert to find what it was all about. The
historical expert starts with the Magna Charta and makes a preliminary
survey. Then he begins his march down the centuries, intrenching every
position lest he be caught unawares by the critics. His intellectual
forces lack mobility, as they must wait for their baggage trains. At
last he comes to the time of the Stuarts, and there is much talk of the
royal prerogative, and ship money, and attainders, and acts of
Parliament. There are exhaustive arguments, now on the one side and now
on the other, which exactly balance one another. There are references to
bulky volumes, where at the foot of every page the notes run along, like
little angry dogs barking at the text.
The Gentle Reader calls out: "I have had enough of this. What I want to
know is what it's all about, and which side, on the whole, has the right
of it. Which side are you on? Are you a Roundhead or a Cavalier? Are
your sympathies with the Whigs or the Tories?"
"Sympathies!" says the expert. "Who ever heard of a historian allowing
himself to sympathize? I have no opinions of my own to present. My great
aim is not to prejudice the mind of the student."
"Nonsense," says the Gentle Reader; "I am not a student, nor is this a
school-room. It's all in confidence; speak out as one gentleman to
another under a friendly roof! What do you think about it? No matter if
you make a mistake or two, I'll forget most that you say, anyway. All
that I care for is to get the gist of the matter. As for your fear of
warping my mind, there's not the least danger in the world. My mind is
like a tough bit of hickory; it will fly back into its original shape
the moment you let go. I have a hundred prejudices of my own,--one more
won't hurt me. I want to know what it was that set the people by the
ears. Why did they cut off the head of Charles I., and why did they
drive out James II.? I can't help thinking that there must have been
something more exciting than those discussions of yours about
constitutional theories. Do you know, I sometimes doubt whether most of
the people who went to the wars knew that there was such a thing as the
English Constitution; the subject hadn't been written up then. I suspect
that something happened that was not set down in your book; something
that made those people fighting mad."
Then the Gentle Reader turns to his old and much criticised friend
Macaulay, and asks,--
"What do you think about it?"
"Think about it!" says Macaulay. "I'll tell you what I think about it.
To begin with, that Charles I., though good enough as a family man, was
a consummate liar."
"That's the first light I've had on the subject," says the Gentle
Reader. "Charles lied, and that made the people mad?"
"Precisely! I perceive that you have the historic sense. We English
can't abide a liar; so at last when we could not trust the king's word
we chopped off his head. Mind you, I'm not defending the regicides, but
between ourselves I don't mind saying that I think it served him right.
At any rate our blood was up, and there was no stopping us. I wish I had
time to tell you all about Hampden, and Pym, and Cromwell, but I must
go on to the glorious year 1688, and tell you how it all came about, and
how we sent that despicable dotard, James, flying across the Channel,
and how we brought in the good and wise King William, and how the great
line of Whig statesmen began. I take for granted--as you appear to be a
sensible man--that you are a Whig?"
"I'm open to conviction," says the Gentle Reader.
In a little while he is in the very thick of it. He is an Englishman of
the seventeenth century. He has taken sides and means to fight it out.
He knows how to vote on every important question that comes before
Parliament. No Jacobite sophistry can beguile him. When William lands he
throws up his hat, and after that he stands by him, thick or thin. When
you tell him that he ought to be more dispassionate in his historical
judgments, he answers: "That would be all very well if we were not
dealing with living issues,--but with Ireland in an uproar and the
Papists ready to swarm over from France, there is a call for decision. A
man must know his own mind. You may stand off and criticise William's
policy; but the question is, What policy do you propose? You say that I
have not exhausted the subject, and that there are other points of view.
Very likely. Show me another point of view, only make it as clear to me
as Macaulay makes his. Let it be a real view, and not a smudge. Some
other day I may look at it, but I must take one thing at a time. What I
object to is the historian who takes both sides in the same paragraph.
That is what I call offensive bi-partisanship."
The Gentle Reader is interested not only in what great men actually
were, but in the way they appeared to those who loved or hated them. He
is of the opinion that the legend is often more significant than the
colorless annals. When a legend has become universally accepted and has
lived a thousand years, he feels that it should be protected in its
rights of possession by some statute of limitation. It has come to have
an independent life of its own. He has, therefore, no sympathy with
Gibbon in his identification of St. George of England with George of
Cappadocia, a dishonest army contractor who supplied the troops of the
Emperor Julian with bacon. Says Gibbon: "His employment was mean; he
rendered it infamous. He accumulated wealth by the basest arts of fraud
and corruption; but his malversations were so notorious that George was
compelled to escape from the pursuit of his enemies.... This odious
stranger, disguising every circumstance of time and place, assumed the
mask of a martyr, a saint, and a Christian hero; and the infamous George
of Cappadocia has been transformed into the renowned St. George of
England, the patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the garter."
"That is a serious indictment," says the Gentle Reader. "I have no plea
to make for the Cappadocian; I can readily believe that his bacon was
bad. But why not let bygones be bygones? If he managed to transform
himself into a saint, and for many centuries avoid all suspicion, I
believe that it was a thorough reformation. St. George of England has
long been esteemed as a valiant gentleman,--and, at any rate, that
affair with the dragon was greatly to his credit."
Sometimes the Gentle Reader is disturbed by finding that different lines
of tradition have been mixed, and his mind becomes the battleground
whereon old blood feuds are fought out. Thus it happens that as a child
he was brought up on the tales of the Covenanters and imbibed their
stern resentment against their persecutors. He learned to hate the very
name of Graham of Claverhouse who brought desolation upon so many
innocent homes. On the other hand, his heart beats high when he hears
the martial strains of Bonnie Dundee. "There was a man for you!"
"Dundee he is mounted, he rides up the street,
The bells are rung backward, the drums they are beat.
* * * * *
'Away to the hills, to the caves, to the rocks--
Ere I own as usurper, I'll couch with the fox!
And tremble, false Whigs, in the midst of your glee,
You have not seen the last of my bonnet and me!'
* * * * *
He waved his proud hand, and the trumpets were blown,
The kettle-drums clashed, and the horsemen rode on,
Till on Ravelston's cliffs and on Clermeston's lee
Died away the wild war notes of Bonnie Dundee."
"When I see him wave his proud hand," says the Gentle Reader, "I am his
clansman, and I'm ready to be off with him."
"I thought you were a Whig," says the student of history.
"I thought so too,--but what's politics where the affections are
enlisted? Don't you hear those wild war notes?"
"But are you aware that the Bonnie Dundee is the same man whom you have
just been denouncing under the name of Graham of Claverhouse?"
"Are you sure they are the same?" sighs the Gentle Reader. "I cannot
make them seem the same. To me there are two of them: Graham of
Claverhouse, whom I hate, and the Bonnie Dundee, whom I love. If it's
all the same to you, I think I shall keep them separate and go on loving
and hating as aforetime."
* * * * *
But though the Gentle Reader has the defects of his qualities and is
sometimes led astray by his sympathies, do not think that he is
altogether lacking in solidity of judgment. He has a genuine love of
truth and finds it more interesting than fiction--when it is well
written. If he objects to the elimination of myth and fable it is
because he is profoundly interested in the history of human feeling. The
story that is the embodiment of an emotion is itself of the greatest
significance. In Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, before Jupiter himself
is revealed, the Phantasm of Jupiter appears and speaks. Prometheus
addresses him:--
"Tremendous Image, as thou art must be
He whom thou shadowest forth."
On the stage of history each great personage has a phantasmal
counterpart; sometimes there are many of them. Each phantasm becomes a
centre of love and hate.
The cold-blooded historian gives us what he calls the real Napoleon. He
is, he asserts, neither the Corsican Ogre of the British imagination nor
the Heroic Emperor for whom myriads of Frenchmen gladly died. Perhaps
not; but when the Napoleonic legend has been banished, what about the
Napoleonic war
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