Chapter XVI: Part II: opened with a suite in F Major for orchestra (op. 39) by (10)

Life, then, is not the having been born—it is rather an effort to be born. But why should some succeed in attaining to this future life and others fail? Why should some be born more than others? Why should not some one in a future state taunt Lazarus with having a good time now and tell him it will be the turn of Dives in some other and more remote hereafter? I must have it that neither are the good rewarded nor the bad punished in a future state, but every one must start anew quite irrespective of anything they have done here and must try his luck again and go on trying it again and again _ad infinitum_. Some of our lives, then, will be lucky and some unlucky and it will resolve itself into one long eternal life during which we shall change so much that we shall not remember our antecedents very far back (any more than we remember having been embryos) nor foresee our future very much, and during which we shall have our ups and downs _ad infinitum_—effecting a transformation scene at once as soon as circumstances become unbearable.

Nevertheless, some men’s work does live longer than others. Some achieve what is very like immortality. Why should they have this piece of good fortune more than others? The answer is that it would be very unjust if they knew anything about it, or could enjoy it in any way, but they know nothing whatever about it, and you, the complainer, do profit by their labour, so that it is really you, the complainer, who get the fun, not they, and this should stop your mouth. The only thing they got was a little hope, which buoyed them up often when there was but little else that could do so.

Preparation for Death

That there is a life after death is as palpable as that there is a life before death—see the influence that the dead have over us—but this life is no more eternal than our present life.

Shakespeare and Homer may live long, but they will die some day, that is to say, they will become unknown as direct and efficient causes. Even so God himself dies, for to die is to change and to change is to die to what has gone before. If the units change the total must do so also.

As no one can say which egg or seed shall come to visible life and in its turn leave issue, so no one can say which of the millions of now visible lives shall enter into the afterlife on death, and which have but so little life as practically not to count. For most seeds end as seeds or as food for some alien being, and so with lives, by far the greater number are sterile, except in so far as they can be devoured as the food of some stronger life. The Handels and Shakespeares are the few seeds that grow—and even these die.

And the same uncertainty attaches to posthumous life as to pre-lethal. As no one can say how long another shall live, so no one can say how long or how short a time a reputation shall live. The most unpromising weakly-looking creatures sometimes live to ninety while strong robust men are carried off in their prime. And no one can say what a man shall enter into life for having done. Roughly, there is a sort of moral government whereby those who have done the best work live most enduringly, but it is subject to such exceptions that no one can say whether or no there shall not be an exception in his own case either in his favour or against him.

In this uncertainty a young writer had better act as though he had a reasonable chance of living, not perhaps very long, but still some little while after his death. Let him leave his notes fairly full and fairly tidy in all respects, without spending too much time about them. If they are wanted, there they are; if not wanted, there is no harm done. He might as well leave them as anything else. But let him write them in copying ink and have the copies kept in different places.

The Vates Sacer

Just as the kingdom of heaven cometh not by observation, so neither do one’s own ideas, nor the good things one hears other people say; they fasten on us when we least want or expect them. It is enough if the kingdom of heaven be observed when it does come.

I do not read much; I look, listen, think and write. My most intimate friends are men of more insight, quicker wit, more playful fancy and, in all ways, abler men than I am, but you will find ten of them for one of me. I note what they say, think it over, adapt it and give it permanent form. They throw good things off as sparks; I collect them and turn them into warmth. But I could not do this if I did not sometimes throw out a spark or two myself.

Not only would Agamemnon be nothing without the _vates sacer_ but there are always at least ten good heroes to one good chronicler, just as there are ten good authors to one good publisher. Bravery, wit and poetry abound in every village. Look at Mrs. Boss [the original of Mrs. Jupp in _The Way of All Flesh_] and at Joanna Mills [_Life and Letters of Dr. Butler_, I, 93]. There is not a village of 500 inhabitants in England but has its Mrs. Quickly and its Tom Jones. These good people never understand themselves, they go over their own heads, they speak in unknown tongues to those around them and the interpreter is the rarer and more important person. The _vates sacer_ is the middleman of mind.

So rare is he and such spendthrifts are we of good things that people not only will not note what might well be noted but they will not even keep what others have noted, if they are to be at the pains of pigeon-holing it. It is less trouble to throw a brilliant letter into the fire than to put it into such form that it can be safely kept, quickly found and easily read. To this end a letter should be gummed, with the help of the edgings of stamps if necessary, to a strip, say an inch and a quarter wide, of stout hand-made paper. Two or three paper fasteners passed through these strips will bind fifty or sixty letters together, which, arranged in chronological order, can be quickly found and comfortably read. But how few will be at the small weekly trouble of clearing up their correspondence and leaving it in manageable shape! If we keep our letters at all we throw them higgledy-piggledy into a box and have done with them; let some one else arrange them when the owner is dead. The some one else comes and finds the fire an easy method of escaping the onus thrown upon him. So on go letters from Tilbrook, Merian, Marmaduke Lawson {364}—just as we throw our money away if the holding on to it involves even very moderate exertion.

On the other hand, if this instinct towards prodigality were not so great, beauty and wit would be smothered under their own selves. It is through the waste of wit that wit endures, like money, its main preciousness lies in its rarity—the more plentiful it is the cheaper does it become.

The Dictionary of National Biography

When I look at the articles on Handel, on Dr. Arnold, or indeed on almost any one whom I know anything about, I feel that such a work as the _Dictionary of National Biography_ adds more terror to death than death of itself could inspire. That is one reason why I let myself go so unreservedly in these notes. If the colours in which I paint myself fail to please, at any rate I shall have had the laying them on myself.

The World

The world will, in the end, follow only those who have despised as well as served it.

Accumulated Dinners

The world and all that has ever been in it will one day be as much forgotten as what we ate for dinner forty years ago. Very likely, but the fact that we shall not remember much about a dinner forty years hence does not make it less agreeable now, and after all it is only the accumulation of these forgotten dinners that makes the dinner of forty years hence possible.

Judging the Dead

The dead should be judged as we judge criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of a doubt. When no doubt exists they should be hanged out of hand for about a hundred years. After that time they may come down and move about under a cloud. After about 2000 years they may do what they like. If Nero murdered his mother—well, he murdered his mother and there’s an end. The moral guilt of an action varies inversely as the squares of its distances in time and space, social, psychological, physiological or topographical, from ourselves. Not so its moral merit: this loses no lustre through time and distance.

Good is like gold, it will not rust or tarnish and it is rare, but there is some of it everywhere. Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

Myself and My Books

Bodily offspring I do not leave, but mental offspring I do. Well, my books do not have to be sent to school and college and then insist on going into the Church or take to drinking or marry their mother’s maid.

My Son

I have often told my son that he must begin by finding me a wife to become his mother who shall satisfy both himself and me. But this is only one of the many rocks on which we have hitherto split. We should never have got on together; I should have had to cut him off with a shilling either for laughing at Homer, or for refusing to laugh at him, or both, or neither, but still cut him off. So I settled the matter long ago by turning a deaf ear to his importunities and sticking to it that I would not get him at all. Yet his thin ghost visits me at times and, though he knows that it is no use pestering me further, he looks at me so wistfully and reproachfully that I am half-inclined to turn tall, take my chance about his mother and ask him to let me get him after all. But I should show a clean pair of heels if he said “Yes.”

Besides, he would probably be a girl.

Obscurity

When I am dead, do not let people say of me that I suffered from misrepresentation and neglect. I was neglected and misrepresented; very likely not half as much as I supposed but, nevertheless, to some extent neglected and misrepresented. I growl at this sometimes but, if the question were seriously put to me whether I would go on as I am or become famous in my own lifetime, I have no hesitation about which I should prefer. I will willingly pay the few hundreds of pounds which the neglect of my works costs me in order to be let alone and not plagued by the people who would come round me if I were known. The probability is that I shall remain after my death as obscure as I am now; if this be so, the obscurity will, no doubt, be merited, and if not, my books will work not only as well without my having been known in my lifetime but a great deal better; my follies and blunders will the better escape notice to the enhancing of the value of anything that may be found in my books. The only two things I should greatly care about if I had more money are a few more country outings and a little more varied and better cooked food. [1882.]

P.S.—I have long since obtained everything that a reasonable man can wish for. [1895.]

Posthumous Honours

I see Cecil Rhodes has just been saying that he was a lucky man, inasmuch as such honours as are now being paid him generally come to a man after his death and not before it. This is all very well for a politician whose profession immerses him in public life, but the older I grow the more satisfied I am that there can be no greater misfortune for a man of letters or of contemplation than to be recognised in his own lifetime. Fortunately the greater man he is, and hence the greater the misfortune he would incur, the less likelihood there is that he will incur it. [1897.]

Posthumous Recognition

Shall I be remembered after death? I sometimes think and hope so. But I trust I may not be found out (if I ever am found out, and if I ought to be found out at all) before my death. It would bother me very much and I should be much happier and better as I am. [1880.]

P.S.—This note I leave unaltered. I am glad to see that I had so much sense thirteen years ago. What I thought then, I think now, only with greater confidence and confirmation. [1893.]

Analysis of the Sales of My Books

Copies Sold Cash Profit Cash Loss Total Profit Total loss Value of stock Erewhon 3843 62 10 10 — 69 3 10 — 6 13 0 The Fair Haven 442 — 41 2 2 — 27 18 2 13 4 0 Life and Habit 640 — 4 17 1½ 7 19 1½ — 12 16 3 Evolution Old & New 541 — 103 11 10 — 89 13 10 13 18 0 Unconscious Memory 272 — 38 13 5 — 38 13 5 — Alps and Sanctuaries 332 — 113 6 4 — 110 18 4 22 8 0 Selections from Previous Works 120 — 51 4 10½ — 48 10 10½ 2 14 0 Luck or Cunning? 284 — 41 6 4 — 13 18 10 27 7 6 Ex Voto 217 — 147 18 0 — 111 8 0 36 10 0 Life and Letters of Dr. Butler 201 — 216 18 0 — 193 18 0 23 0 0 The Authoress of the Odyssey 165 — 81 1 3 — 59 10 3 21 11 0 The Iliad in English Prose 157 — 89 4 8 — 77 6 8 11 18 0 A Holbein Card 6 — 8 1 9 — 8 1 9 — A Book of Essays 0 — 3 11 9 — — 3 11 9 62 10 10 960 17 6 77 2 11½ 779 18 1½ 195 11 6

To this must be added my book on the Sonnets in respect of which I have had no account as yet but am over a hundred pounds out of pocket by it so far—little of which, I fear, is ever likely to come back.

It will be noted that my public appears to be a declining one; I attribute this to the long course of practical boycott to which I have been subjected for so many years, or, if not boycott, of sneer, snarl and misrepresentation. I cannot help it, nor if the truth were known, am I at any pains to try to do so. {369}

Worth Doing

If I deserve to be remembered, it will be not so much for anything I have written, or for any new way of looking at old facts which I may have suggested, as for having shown that a man of no special ability, with no literary connections, not particularly laborious, fairly, but not supremely, accurate as far as he goes, and not travelling far either for his facts or from them, may yet, by being perfectly square, sticking to his point, not letting his temper run away with him, and biding his time, be a match for the most powerful literary and scientific coterie that England has ever known.

I hope it may be said of me that I discomfited an unscrupulous, self-seeking clique, and set a more wholesome example myself. To have done this is the best of all discoveries.

Doubt and Hope

I will not say that the more than coldness with which my books are received does not frighten me and make me distrust myself. It must do so. But every now and then I meet with such support as gives me hope again. Still, I know nothing. [1890.]

Unburying Cities

Of course I am jealous of the _éclat_ that Flinders Petrie, Layard and Schliemann get for having unburied cities, but I do not see why I need be; the great thing is to unbury the city, and I believe I have unburied Scheria as effectually as Schliemann unburied Troy. [_The Authoress of the Odyssey_.] True, Scheria was above ground all the time and only wanted a little common sense to find it; nevertheless people have had all the facts before them for over 2500 years and have been looking more or less all the time without finding. I do not see why it is more meritorious to uncover physically with a spade than spiritually with a little of the very commonest common sense.

Apologia

i

When I am dead I would rather people thought me better than I was instead of worse; but if they think me worse, I cannot help it and, if it matters at all, it will matter more to them than to me. The one reputation I deprecate is that of having been ill-used. I deprecate this because it would tend to depress and discourage others from playing the game that I have played. I will therefore forestall misconception on this head.

As regards general good-fortune, I am nearly fifty-five years old and for the last thirty years have never been laid up with illness nor had any physical pain that I can remember, not even toothache. Except sometimes, when a little over-driven, I have had uninterrupted good health ever since I was about five-and-twenty.

Of mental suffering I have had my share—as who has not?—but most of what I have suffered has been, though I did not think so at the time, either imaginary, or unnecessary and, so far, it has been soon forgotten. It has been much less than it very easily might have been if the luck had not now and again gone with me, and probably I have suffered less than most people, take it all round. Like every one else, however, I have the scars of old wounds; very few of these wounds were caused by anything which was essential in the nature of things; most, if not all of them, have been due to faults of heart and head on my own part and on that of others which, one would have thought, might have been easily avoided if in practice it had not turned out otherwise.

For many years I was in a good deal of money difficulty, but since my father’s death I have had no trouble on this score—greatly otherwise. Even when things were at their worst, I never missed my two months’ summer Italian trip since 1876, except one year and then I went to Mont St. Michel and enjoyed it very much. It was those Italian trips that enabled me to weather the storm. At other times I am engrossed with work that fascinates me. I am surrounded by people to whom I am attached and who like me in return so far as I can judge. In Alfred [his clerk and attendant] I have the best body-guard and the most engaging of any man in London. I live quietly but happily. And if this is being ill-used I should like to know what being well-used is.

I do not deny, however, that I have been ill-used. I have been used abominably. The positive amount of good or ill fortune, however, is not the test of either the one or the other; the true measure lies in the relative proportion of each and the way in which they have been distributed, and by this I claim, after deducting all bad luck, to be left with a large balance of good.

Some people think I must be depressed and discouraged because my books do not make more noise; but, after all, whether people read my books or no is their affair, not mine. I know by my sales that few read my books. If I write at all, it follows that I want to be read and miss my mark if I am not. So also with _Narcissus_. Whatever I do falls dead, and I would rather people let me see that they liked it. To this extent I certainly am disappointed. I am sorry not to have wooed the public more successfully. But I have been told that winning and wearing generally take something of the gilt off the wooing, and I am disposed to acquiesce cheerfully in not finding myself so received as that I need woo no longer. If I were to succeed I should be bored to death by my success in a fortnight and so, I am convinced, would my friends. Retirement is to me a condition of being able to work at all. I would rather write more books and music than spend much time over what I have already written; nor do I see how I could get retirement if I were not to a certain extent unpopular.

It is this feeling on my own part—omnipresent with me when I am doing my best to please, that is to say, whenever I write—which is the cause why I do not, as people say, “get on.” If I had greatly cared about getting on I think I could have done so. I think I could even now write an anonymous book that would take the public as much as _Erewhon_ did. Perhaps I could not, but I think I could. The reason why I do not try is because I like doing other things better. What I most enjoy is running the view of evolution set forth in _Life and Habit_ and making things less easy for the hacks of literature and science; or perhaps even more I enjoy taking snapshots and writing music, though aware that I had better not enquire whether this last is any good or not. In fact there is nothing I do that I do not enjoy so keenly that I cannot tear myself away from it, and people who thus indulge themselves cannot have things both ways. I am so intent upon pleasing myself that I have no time to cater for the public. Some of them like things in the same way as I do; that class of people I try to please as well as ever I can. With others I have no concern, and they know it so they have no concern with me. I do not believe there is any other explanation of my failure to get on than this, nor do I see that any further explanation is needed. [1890.]

ii

Two or three people have asked me to return to the subject of my supposed failure and explain it more fully from my own point of view. I have had the subject on my notes for some time and it has bored me so much that it has had a good deal to do with my not having kept my Note-Books posted recently.

Briefly, in order to scotch that snake, my failure has not been so great as people say it has. I believe my reputation stands well with the best people. Granted that it makes no noise, but I have not been willing to take the pains necessary to achieve what may be called guinea-pig review success, because, although I have been in financial difficulties, I did not seriously need success from a money point of view, and because I hated the kind of people I should have had to court and kow-tow to if I went in for that sort of thing. I could never have carried it through, even if I had tried, and instinctively declined to try. A man cannot be said to have failed, because he did not get what he did not try for. What I did try for I believe I have got as fully as any reasonable man can expect, and I have every hope that I shall get it still more both so long as I live and after I am dead.

If, however, people mean that I am to explain how it is I have not made more noise in spite of my own indolence in matter, the answer is that those who do not either push the themselves into noise, or give some one else a substantial interest in pushing them, never do get made a noise about. How can they? I was too lazy to go about from publisher to publisher and to decline to publish a book myself if I could not find some one to speculate in it. I could take any amount of trouble about writing a book but, so long as I could lay my hand on the money to bring it out with, I found publishers’ antechambers so little to my taste that I soon tired and fell back on the short and easy method of publishing my book myself. Of course, therefore, it failed to sell. I know more about these things now, and will never publish a book at my own risk again, or at any rate I will send somebody else round the antechambers with it for a good while before I pay for publishing it.

I should have liked notoriety and financial success well enough if they could have been had for the asking, but I was not going to take any trouble about them and, as a natural consequence, I did not get them. If I had wanted them with the same passionate longing that has led me to pursue every enquiry that I ever have pursued, I should have got them fast enough. It is very rarely that I have failed to get what I have really tried for and, as a matter of fact, I believe I have been a great deal happier for not trying than I should have been if I had had notoriety thrust upon me.

I confess I should like my books to pay their expenses and put me a little in pocket besides—because I want to do more for Alfred than I see my way to doing. As a natural consequence of beginning to care I have begun to take pains, and am advising with the Society of Authors as to what will be my best course. Very likely they can do nothing for me, but at any rate I shall have tried.

One reason, and that the chief, why I have made no noise, is now explained. It remains to add that from first to last I have been unorthodox and militant in every book that I have written. I made enemies of the parsons once for all with my first two books. [_Erewhon_ and _The Fair Haven_.] The evolution books made the Darwinians, and through them the scientific world in general, even more angry than _The Fair Haven_ had made the clergy so that I had no friends, for the clerical and scientific people rule the roast between them.

I have chosen the fighting road rather than the hang-on-to-a-great-man road, and what can a man who does this look for except that people should try to silence him in whatever way they think will be most effectual? In my case they have thought it best to pretend that I am non-existent. It is no part of my business to complain of my opponents for choosing their own line; my business is to defeat them as best I can upon their own line, and I imagine I shall do most towards this by not allowing myself to be made unhappy merely because I am not fussed about, and by going on writing more books and adding to my pile.

My Work

Why should I write about this as though any one will wish to read what I write?

People sometimes give me to understand that it is a piece of ridiculous conceit on my part to jot down so many notes about myself, since it implies a confidence that I shall one day be regarded as an interesting person. I answer that neither I nor they can form any idea as to whether I shall be wanted when I am gone or no. The chances are that I shall not. I am quite aware of it. So the chances are that I shall not live to be 85; but I have no right to settle it so. If I do as Captain Don did [_Life of Dr. Butler_, I, opening of Chapter VIII], and invest every penny I have in an annuity that shall terminate when I am 89, who knows but that I may live on to 96, as he did, and have seven years without any income at all? I prefer the modest insurance of keeping up my notes which others may burn or no as they please.

I am not one of those who have travelled along a set road towards an end that I have foreseen and desired to reach. I have made a succession of jaunts or pleasure trips from meadow to meadow, but no long journey unless life itself be reckoned so. Nevertheless, I have strayed into no field in which I have not found a flower that was worth the finding, I have gone into no public place in which I have not found sovereigns lying about on the ground which people would not notice and be at the trouble of picking up. They have been things which any one else has had—or at any rate a very large number of people have had—as good a chance of picking up as I had. My finds have none of them come as the result of research or severe study, though they have generally given me plenty to do in the way of research and study as soon as I had got hold of them. I take it that these are the most interesting—or whatever the least offensive word may be:

1. The emphasising the analogies between crime and disease. [_Erewhon_.]

2. The emphasising also the analogies between the development of the organs of our bodies and of those which are not incorporate with our bodies and which we call tools or machines. [_Erewhon_ and _Luck or Cunning_?]

3. The clearing up the history of the events in connection with the death, or rather crucifixion, of Jesus Christ; and a reasonable explanation, first, of the belief on the part of the founders of Christianity that their master had risen from the dead and, secondly, of what might follow from belief in a single supposed miracle. [_The Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ_, _The Fair Haven_ and _Erewhon Revisited_.]

4. The perception that personal identity cannot be denied between parents and offspring without at the same time denying it as between the different ages (and hence moments) in the life of the individual and, as a corollary on this, the ascription of the phenomena of heredity to the same source as those of memory. [_Life and Habit_.]

5. The tidying up the earlier history of the theory of evolution. [_Evolution Old and New_.]

6. The exposure and discomfiture of Charles Darwin and Wallace and their followers. [_Evolution Old and New_, _Unconscious Memory_, _Luck or Cunning_? and “The Deadlock in Darwinism” in the _Universal Review_ republished in _Essays on Life_, _Art and Science_.] {376}

7. The perception of the principle that led organic life to split up into two main divisions, animal and vegetable. [_Alps and Sanctuaries_, close of Chapter XIII: _Luck or Cunning_?]

8. The perception that, if the kinetic theory is held good, our thought of a thing, whatever that thing may be, is in reality an exceedingly weak dilution of the actual thing itself. [Stated, but not fully developed, in _Luck or Cunning_? Chapter XIX, also in some of the foregoing notes.]

9. The restitution to Giovanni and Gentile Bellini of their portraits in the Louvre and the finding of five other portraits of these two painters of whom Crowe and Cavalcaselle and Layard maintain that we have no portrait. [Letters to the _Athenæum_, &c.]

10. The restoration to Holbein of the drawing in the Basel Museum called _La Danse_. [_Universal Review_, Nov., 1889.]

11. The calling attention to Gaudenzio Ferrari and putting him before the public with something like the emphasis that he deserves. [_Ex Voto_.]

12. The discovery of a life-sized statue of Leonardo da Vinci by Gaudenzio Ferrari. [_Ex Voto_.]

13. The unearthing of the Flemish sculptor Jean de Wespin (called Tabachetti in Italy) and of Giovanni Antonio Paracca. [_Ex Voto_.]

14. The finding out that the _Odyssey_ was written at Trapani, the clearing up of the whole topography of the poem, and the demonstration, as it seems to me, that the poem was written by a woman and not by a man. Indeed, I may almost claim to have discovered the _Odyssey_, so altered does it become when my views of it are adopted. And robbing Homer of the _Odyssey_ has rendered the _Iliad_ far more intelligible; besides, I have set the example of how he should be approached. [_The Authoress of the Odyssey_.]

15. The attempt to do justice to my grandfather by writing _The Life and Letters of Dr. Butler_ for which, however, I had special facilities.

16. In _Narcissus_ and _Ulysses_ I made an attempt, the failure of which has yet to be shown, to return to the principles of Handel and take them up where he left off.

17. The elucidation of Shakespeare’s _Sonnets_. [_Shakespeare’s Sonnets Reconsidered_.]

I say nothing here about my novel [_The Way of All Flesh_] because it cannot be published till after my death; nor about my translations of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. Nevertheless these three books also were a kind of picking up of sovereigns, for the novel contains records of things I saw happening rather than imaginary incidents, and the principles on which the translations are made were obvious to any one willing to take and use them.

The foregoing is the list of my “mares’-nests,” and it is, I presume, this list which made Mr. Arthur Platt call me the Galileo of Mares’-Nests in his diatribe on my _Odyssey_ theory in the _Classical Review_. I am not going to argue here that they are all, as I do not doubt, sound; what I want to say is that they are every one of them things that lay on the surface and open to any one else just as much as to me. Not one of them required any profundity of thought or extensive research; they only required that he who approached the various subjects with which they have to do should keep his eyes open and try to put himself in the position of the various people whom they involve. Above all, it was necessary to approach them without any preconceived theory and to be ready to throw over any conclusion the moment the evidence pointed against it. The reason why I have discarded so few theories that I have put forward—and at this moment I cannot recollect one from which there has been any serious attempt to dislodge me—is because I never allowed myself to form a theory at all till I found myself driven on to it whether I would or no. As long as it was possible to resist I resisted, and only yielded when I could not think that an intelligent jury under capable guidance would go with me if I resisted longer. I never went in search of any one of my theories; I never knew what it was going to be till I had found it; they came and found me, not I them. Such being my own experience, I begin to be pretty certain that other people have had much the same and that the soundest theories have come unsought and without much effort.

The conclusion, then, of the whole matter is that scientific and literary fortunes are, like money fortunes, made more by saving than in any other way—more through the exercise of the common vulgar essentials, such as sobriety and straightforwardness, than by the more showy enterprises that when they happen to succeed are called genius and when they fail, folly. The streets are full of sovereigns crying aloud for some one to come and pick them up, only the thick veil of our own insincerity and conceit hides them from us. He who can most tear this veil from in front of his eyes will be able to see most and to walk off with them.

I should say that the sooner I stop the better. If on my descent to the nether world I were to be met and welcomed by the shades of those to whom I have done a good turn while I was here, I should be received by a fairly illustrious crowd. There would be Giovanni and Gentile Bellini, Leonardo da Vinci, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Holbein, Tabachetti, Paracca and D’Enrico; the Authoress of the _Odyssey_ would come and Homer with her; Dr. Butler would bring with him the many forgotten men and women to whom in my memoir I have given fresh life; there would be Buffon, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck; Shakespeare also would be there and Handel. I could not wish to find myself in more congenial company and I shall not take it too much to heart if the shade of Charles Darwin glides gloomily away when it sees me coming.

XXV Poems

Prefatory Note

i. _Translation from an Unpublished Work of Herodotus_

ii. _The Shield of Achilles_, _with Variations_

iii. _The Two Deans_

iv. _On the Italian Priesthood_

_Butler wrote these four pieces while he was an undergraduate at St. John’s College_, _Cambridge_. _He kept no copy of any of them_, _but his friend the Rev. Canon Joseph McCormick_, _D.D._, _Rector of St. James’s_, _Piccadilly_, _kept copies in a note-book which he lent me_. _The only one that has appeared in print is_ “_The Shield of Achilles_,” _which Canon McCormick sent to_ The Eagle, _the magazine of St. John’s College_, _Cambridge_, _and it was printed in the number for December_ 1902, _about six months after Butler’s death_.

“_On the Italian Priesthood_” _is a rendering of the Italian epigram accompanying it which_, _with others under the heading_ “_Astuzia_, _Inganno_,” _is given in_ Raccolta di Proverbi Toscani di Giuseppe Giusti (_Firenze_, 1853).

v. _A Psalm of Montreal_

_This was written in Canada in_ 1875. _Butler often recited it and gave copies of it to his friends_. _Knowing that Mr. Edward Clodd had had something to do with its appearance in the_ Spectator _I wrote asking him to tell me what he remembered about it_. _He very kindly replied_, 29_th_ _October_, 1905:

“_The_ ‘_Psalm_’ _was recited to me at the Century Club by Butler_. _He gave me a copy of it which I read to the late Chas. Anderson_, _Vicar of S. John’s_, _Limehouse_, _who lent it to Matt. Arnold_ (_when inspecting Anderson’s Schools_) _who lent it to Richd. Holt Hutton who_, _with Butler’s consent_, _printed it in the_ Spectator _of_ 18_th_ _May_, 1878.”

_The_ “_Psalm of Montreal_” _was included in_ Selections from Previous Works (1884) _and in_ Seven Sonnets, _etc._

vi. _The Righteous Man_

_Butler wrote this in_ 1876; _it has appeared before only in_ 1879 _in the_ Examiner, _where it formed part of the correspondence_ “_A Clergyman’s Doubts_” _of which the letter signed_ “_Ethics_” _has already been given in this volume_ (_see p._ 304 _ante_). “_The Righteous Man_” _was signed_ “_X.Y.Z._” _and_, _in order to connect it with the discussion_, _Butler prefaced it with a note comparing it to the last six inches of a line of railway_; _there is no part of the road so ugly_, _so little travelled over_, _or so useless generally_, _but it is the end_, _at any rate_, _of a very long thing_.

vii. _To Critics and Others_.

_This was written in_ 1883 _and has not hitherto been published_.

viii. _For Narcissus_

_These are printed for the first time_. _The pianoforte score of_ Narcissus _was published in_ 1888. _The poem_ (_A_) _was written because there was some discussion then going on in musical circles about additional accompaniments to the_ Messiah _and we did not want any to be written for_ Narcissus.

_The poem_ (_B_) _shows how Butler originally intended to open Part II with a kind of descriptive programme_, _but he changed his mind and did it differently_.

ix. _A Translation Attempted in Consequence of a Challenge_

_This translation into Homeric verse of a famous passage from_ Martin Chuzzlewit _was a by-product of Butler’s work on the_ Odyssey _and the_ Iliad. _It was published in_ The Eagle _in March_, 1894, _and was included in_ Seven Sonnets.

_I asked Butler who had challenged him to attempt the translation and he replied that he had thought of that and had settled that_, _if any one else were to ask the question_, _he should reply that the challenge came from me_.

x. _In Memoriam H. R. F._

_This appears in print now for the first time_. _Hans Rudolf Faesch_, _a young Swiss from Basel_, _came to London in the autumn of_ 1893. _He spent much of his time with us until_ 14_th_ _February_, 1895, _when he left for Singapore_. _We saw him off from Holborn Viaduct Station_; _he was not well and it was a stormy night_. _The next day Butler wrote this poem and_, _being persuaded that we should never see Hans Faesch again_, _called it an In Memoriam_. _Hans did not die on the journey_, _he arrived safely in Singapore and settled in the East where he carried on business_. _We exchanged letters with him frequently_; _he paid two visits to Europe and we saw him on both occasions_. _But he did not live long_. _He died in the autumn of_ 1903 _at Vien Tiane in the Shan States_, _aged_ 32, _having survived Butler by about a year and a half_.

xi. _An Academic Exercise_

_This has never been printed before_. _It is a Farewell_, _and that is why I have placed it next after the In Memoriam_. _The contrast between the two poems illustrates the contrast pointed out at the close of the note on_ “_The Dislike of Death_” (_ante_, p. 359):

“_The memory of a love that has been cut short by death remains still fragrant though enfeebled_, _but no recollection of its past can keep sweet a love that has dried up and withered through accidents of time and life_.”

_In the ordinary course Butler would have talked this Sonnet over with me at the time he wrote it_, _that is in January_, 1902; _he may even have done so_, _but I think not_. _From_ 2_nd_ _January_, 1902, _until late in March_, _when he left London alone for Sicily_, _I was ill with pneumonia and remember very little of what happened then_. _Between his return in May and his death in June I am sure he did not mention the subject_. _Knowing the facts that underlie the preceding poem I can tell why Butler called it an In Memoriam_; _not knowing the facts that underlie this poem I cannot tell why Butler should have called it an Academic Exercise_. _It is his last Sonnet and is dated_ “_Sund. Jan._ 12th 1902,” _within six months of his death_, _at a time when he was depressed physically because his health was failing and mentally because he had been_ “_editing his remains_,” _reading and destroying old letters and brooding over the past_. _One of the subjects given in the section_ “_Titles and Subjects_” _(ante_) _is_ “_The diseases and ordinary causes of mortality among friendships_.” _I suppose that he found among his letters something which awakened memories of a friendship of his earlier life—a friendship that had suffered from a disease_, _whether it recovered or died would not affect the sincerity of the emotions experienced by Butler at the time he believed the friendship to be virtually dead_. _I suppose the Sonnet to be an In Memoriam upon the apprehended death of a friendship as the preceding poem is an In Memoriam upon the apprehended death of a friend_.

_This may be wrong_, _but something of the kind seems necessary to explain why Butler should have called the Sonnet an Academic Exercise_. _No one who has read_ Shakespeare’s Sonnets Reconsidered _will require to be told that he disagreed contemptuously with those critics who believe that Shakespeare composed his Sonnets as academic exercises_. _It is certain that he wrote this_, _as he wrote his other Sonnets_, _in imitation of Shakespeare_, _not merely imitating the form but approaching the subject in the spirit in which he believed Shakespeare to have approached his subject_. _It follows therefore that he did not write this sonnet as an academic exercise_, _had he done so he would not have been imitating Shakespeare_. _If we assume that he was presenting his story as he presented the dialogue in_ “_A Psalm of Montreal_” _in a form_ “_perhaps true_, _perhaps imaginary_, _perhaps a little of the one and a little of the other_,” _it would be quite in the manner of the author of_ The Fair Haven _to burlesque the methods of the critics by ignoring the sincerity of the emotions and fixing on the little bit of inaccuracy in the facts_. _We may suppose him to be saying out loud to the critics_: “_You think Shakespeare’s Sonnets were composed as academic exercises_, _do you_? _Very well then_, _now what do you make of this_?” _And adding aside to himself_: “_That will be good enough for them_; _they’ll swallow anything_.”

xii. _A Prayer_

_Extract from Butler’s Note-Books under the date of February or March_ 1883:

“‘_Cleanse thou me from my secret sins_.’ _ I heard a man moralising on this and shocked him by saying demurely that I did not mind these so much_, _if I could get rid of those that were obvious to other people_.”

_He wrote the sonnet in_ 1900 _or_ 1901. _In the first quatrain_ “_spoken_” _does not rhyme with_ “_open_”; _Butler knew this and would not alter it because there are similar assonances in Shakespeare_, _e.g._ “_open_” _and_ “_broken_” _in Sonnet LXI_.

xiii. _Karma_

_I am responsible for grouping these three sonnets under this heading_. _The second one beginning_ “_What is’t to live_” _appears in Butler’s Note-Book with the remark_, “_This wants much tinkering_, _but I cannot tinker it_”—_meaning that he was too much occupied with other things_. _He left the second line of the third of these sonnets thus_:

“_Them palpable to touch and view_.”

_I have_ “_tinkered_” _it by adding the two syllables_ “_and clear_” _to make the line complete_.

_In writing this sonnet Butler was no doubt thinking of a note he made in_ 1891:

“_It is often said that there is no bore like a clever bore_. _Clever people are always bores and always must be_. _That is_, _perhaps_, _why Shakespeare had to leave London—people could not stand him any longer_.”

xiv. _The Life after Death_

_Butler began to write sonnets in_ 1898 _when he was studying those of Shakespeare on which he published a book in the following year_. (Shakespeare’s Sonnets Reconsidered, _&c._) _He had gone to Flushing by himself and on his return wrote to me_:

24 _Aug._ 1898. “_Also at Flushing I wrote one myself_, _a poor innocent thing_, _but I was surprised to find how easily it came_; _if you like it I may write a few more_.”

_The_ “_poor innocent thing_” _was the sonnet beginning_ “_Not on sad Stygian shore_,” _the first of those I have grouped under the heading_ “_The Life after Death_.” _It appears in his notebooks with this introductory sentence_:

“_Having now learned Shakespeare’s Sonnets by heart—and there are very few which I do not find I understand the better for having done this—on Saturday night last at the Hotel Zeeland at Flushing_, _finding myself in a meditative mood_, _I wrote the following with a good deal less trouble than I anticipated when I took pen and paper in hand_. _I hope I may improve it_.”

_Of course I liked the sonnet very much and he did write_ “_a few more_”—_among them the two on Handel which I have put after_ “_Not on sad Stygian shore_” _because he intended that they should follow it_. _I am sure he would have wished this volume to close with these three sonnets_, _especially because the last two of them were inspired by Handel_, _who was never absent from his thoughts for long_. _Let me conclude these introductory remarks by reproducing a note made in_ 1883:

“_Of all dead men Handel has had the largest place in my thoughts_. _In fact I should say that he and his music have been the central fact in my life ever since I was old enough to know of the existence of either life or music_. _All day long—whether I am writing or painting or walking_, _but always—I have his music in my head_; _and if I lose sight of it and of him for an hour or two_, _as of course I sometimes do_, _this is as much as I do_. _I believe I am not exaggerating when I say that I have never been a day since I was_ 13 _without having Handel in my mind many times over_.”

i—Translation from an Unpublished Work of Herodotus

And the Johnians practise their tub in the following manner:—They select 8 of the most serviceable freshmen and put these into a boat and to each one of them they give an oar; and, having told them to look at the backs of the men before them, they make them bend forward as far as they can and at the same moment, and, having put the end of the oar into the water, pull it back again in to them about the bottom of the ribs; and, if any of them does not do this or looks about him away from the back of the man before him, they curse him in the most terrible manner, but if he does what he is bidden they immediately cry out:

“Well pulled, number so-and-so.”

For they do not call them by their names but by certain numbers, each man of them having a number allotted to him in accordance with his place in the boat, and the first man they call stroke, but the last man bow; and when they have done this for about 50 miles they come home again, and the rate they travel at is about 25 miles an hour; and let no one think that this is too great a rate for I could say many other wonderful things in addition concerning the rowing of the Johnians, but if a man wishes to know these things he must go and examine them himself. But when they have done they contrive some such a device as this, for they make them run many miles along the side of the river in order that they may accustom them to great fatigue, and many of them, being distressed in this way, fall down and die, but those who survive become very strong and receive gifts of cups from the others; and after the revolution of a year they have great races with their boats against those of the surrounding islanders, but the Johnians, both owing to the carefulness of the training and a natural disposition for rowing, are always victorious. In this way, then, the Johnians, I say, practise their tub.

ii—The Shield of Achilles—With Variations