Chapter V: Part 5

Stop, stop, my dear Lord Tennyson! Whither away so fast? Why turn your back churlishly upon me?--why spoil dignity by hastening your steps?--why hide that venerable and honoured head in a hermit's cowl of distrust for all human kind? I am not the "ubiquitous interviewer"; I do not want a lock of your hair or your autograph, for the autograph I have in your own letters, and certainly you cannot spare any hair just now. Fear me not, then, O great but crusty Poet; my silver domino conceals the features of a friend; I will do no more than render you distant but most absolute homage. I would not pry into your garden solitudes at Haslemere--no, not for the '_World_.' I would not force my way into your little kingdom at Freshwater for anything an enterprising editor might offer me; for I love you as all England loves you, and the utmost I can wish is that you would be friends with both me and England. What have we done to you, my dear Lord--peer of the realm and Peer of Poets--that you should disdain us, every one, and take so much precaution to avoid our company? Have we not, as it were, fallen at your feet in worship?--marked you out in our hearts and histories as the greatest poet of the Victorian Era, and taken pride in the splendour of your fame? Despise us not, noble Singer of sweet idylls, for remember we have never despised _you_. In our troubles and losses we have dropped soft tears over "In Memoriam"; in our loves and hopes we have wandered among the woods and fields, singing in thought the songs of "Maud" and "The Princess"; in our dreamy moods we have pored over "The Lotus-Eaters," "The Palace of Art," "Tithonus," or "Ænone"; in our passionate moments we have felt all the scorn and burning sorrow pent up in "Locksley Hall." You are the divine melodist who has set our deep-hidden English romance and sentiment to most tenderly expressed music; we are grateful, and we have shown our gratitude. We have given you such fond hearing as few poets ever win; we have lodged you in fair domains, and guarded you as a precious jewel of the realm. What can we do more to satisfy you? Is there any grander guerdon for a poet's labour than the whole English-speaking people's honour? And that you have; and yet you manifest a soured discontent that sadly misfits your calling. What is it all about? You do not want to be looked at--"stared at" is your own way of expressing it--you do not wish to be spoken to--you desire to ignore those who most reverence you, and you treat with ill-mannered, "touch-me-not" disdain the very people whose faithful admiration gives you all the good things of this life which you enjoy. Oh, petulant Poet-peer! Do no memories of the great dead bards (greater in genius than yourself, but less fortunate in their reward) sometimes flit like ghosts across the horizon of your dreams? Of Chatterton, self-slain through biting poverty; of Keats, dying before he reached his prime, while on the very verge of the promised land of Fame; of Byron, self-exiled, his splendid muse embittered by private woes; of Shelley, piteously drowned before he had time to measure his own vast intellectual forces?--while you, my good Lord, fostered by a nation's love and recognition, have experienced no such cutting cruelties at the hand of destiny. Perhaps, indeed, you have been too fortunate, and continuous prosperity has made you careless and over-easily satisfied with the lightest trifle of verse that suggests itself to your fancy. But if you are careless, you need not be crusty. The British Public has been likened unto an Ass by many, but to my thinking it is more like a dog--an honest, good-natured dog who never bites except under the severest and most repeated provocation. As a dog it has fawned at your footstool, looked up in your eyes affectionately and wagged its tail persistently--have you no other response to such fidelity save a kick or a blow? Oh, fie on such ill-humour--such uncalled-for cantankerousness! Why should you seek to be "protected" from those who would fain do you honour? We should all like to see you sometimes, in society, at theatre or opera, at flower-show and harmless festival; we should like to say to one another on beholding you, "There is our Laureate--our grand old Tennyson, one of the glories of England!" We should not harm you by our affection. We have no design upon your life, save to pray that it may be guarded and prolonged. Believe me, it would be far more natural, and, let me add, more Christian (for I knew by your noble lines "Across the Bar" that you have not smirched your white flag of song with the ugly blot of atheism) if you could persuade the world to understand that a journey or a sea-voyage in the company of England's Laureate, were it possible to devise such an out-of-the-way form of pleasure, would be one of the most cheery, prosperous, and ideal trips ever made; that the heart of the great poet-thinker was so expansive and warm, that even the tiny, toddling children adored him; that his sympathy was so vast that the poorest and most unhappy scribbler alive was sure to have a genial word from the "singing lips that speak no guile"--in brief, that every soul on board the good ship sailing sunwards, must needs be better, happier, wiser, and more full of the milk of human kindness for those few days passed in the near presence of the golden-voiced Minstrel of the legended Arthur's court. Why, good my Lord Alfred, should you, of all people in the world, preach and not practise? You, whose majestic figure seems already receding from us through the opening portals of the Unknown--why should you not stretch out hands of benediction on us ere you go? You are leaving us for other lands, dear Poet, and we all stand gazing after you sorrowfully, waving "farewell!" while the fond and foolish women we love, waft you kisses amid their tears; praise and thanks and blessings to the last from us, my Lord--and will you give us nothing better at parting than a frown? Of a truth there are countless worlds in the universe beside this one; only we cannot follow you where you are going, and so we know not whether you may find a kingdom in the stars better than Shakespeare's England. But whatsoever is deemed the highest reward among high Immortals, that reward we desire may be yours; for all the happiness which pure thoughts, sweet music, and tender song can give, you have given to the little country you are soon to see the last of. The end is not yet indeed, but it is nigh.

It is not the people, my Lord, the people on whom you have bestowed the life-long fruits of your genius, who are to blame for the grossly ill-judged and indelicate speculations that have lately been rife as to who shall occupy your throne and wear your crown, when you shall have resigned both for larger labours. It is the Press, with which the people have really nothing to do. And as to the Laureateship, I, like every one else, have my ideas, not of putting in a claim for the post, (though I could, at a push, write blank verse, quite as prettily and inanely as Lewis Morris), but of making it of wider application. After yourself I consider that no one should be permitted to hold it as you have done for an entire lifetime. It should be given to the deserving bard for five or seven years, no longer; and at each expiration of the appointed period there should be a brisk competition for the right of succession. Such an arrangement would give a great impetus to literature generally, and the recurring competitions would waken up society to a sense of artistic feeling and excitement. Moreover, to keep pace with the demands of the time, when the people are supposed to be worthy of having a voice in everything, the election of England's Laureate should be voted for by England's Public, and not left to the decision of a Clique. Cliquism would put an end to all possibility of fair play or justice, as it always does. To keep this public judgment up to a certain intellectual standard, every householder paying rent and taxes amounting together to not less than £200 per annum, should have a vote; and, because women are frequently the best readers and judges of poetry, one woman in every such household should also be entitled to a vote. The result of the plan would be that by degrees society would become interested in Poetry, which by tradition and heritage is distinctly the first of the Fine Arts--and would take pains to understand it, by which piece of additional education nothing would be lost to civilisation, but rather much might be gained in gentleness, quick perception, and fine feeling. It would be a safer and more respectable line of study at any rate than turf speculations. But, like all good ideas, it will, I suppose, have no chance of acceptance, in which case, rather than see inferior men, like Morris or Edwin Arnold, in the position which you, my Lord, have so greatly dignified, I would say with others whom I know, "Abolish the post, and let Tennyson be our last Laureate." For there is no one fitted to occupy it after you, unless it be some singer unknown to the Log-rolling community. Therefore, it would be best for England, in losing you, to also lose the very name of Laureate, save as a noble and unsullied memory.

You see how truly my devotion turns towards you, my dear Lord, though you will have none of it, nor of any such "outside vulgar" sympathy. A recent letter of yours to me contains the following sentence: "_I sometimes wish I had never written a line_." Alas, good Nestor among modern bards, has Fame brought no happier end than this? No more than spleen and peevishness? Suppose, for sake of argument, this curious wish of yours had been granted, and you had never "_written a line_." Well? What of the glory of renown?--what of the peerage which descends, a poet's mantle, on your heirs? what of the creature comforts of Haslemere and Freshwater?--what of the good honest cash that is paid for every airy rhyme that is blown from your imagination as lightly as the winged pine-seed from its cone? If you had "_never written a line_," would you have gained anything? Nay, surely you would have lost much. Therefore, why carp and cavil in the radiant face of Fortune, the smiling goddess who has never deserted you since the publication of your first volume? Cheerly, cheerly, good heart! Lift up your head and look frank kindness on the world! It is not a bad world after all, and whatever its faults, it loves you. Let it see you at your best and friendliest before you say "Good-bye!"

When I was very youthful and imaginative, I used to believe implicitly in that old fairy legend (known to Shakespeare as well as myself) which declares that toads "ugly and venomous" have precious jewels in their heads. And I had a special partiality for toads in consequence. I used to assist them respectfully with a stick when they came panting out under the leaves in hot weather in search of water, and guide them gently towards the object of their desires. When a toad stared at me fixedly with his peculiarly bright eyes, I felt vaguely flattered. I had an idea that perhaps he might be intellectually capable of making a will and leaving me his brain-jewel. Needless to say I was disappointed; no toad ever fulfilled the hopes I had of him. But since those green and happy days I have gained an insight into the hidden meaning of the fable--which is, of course, that unfascinating and personally disappointing individuals may possess the greatest intellectual powers. Now there is one man who is distinctly inimical to me, personally speaking, and yet I am fain to do his "brain-jewel" justice. I allude to Algernon Charles Swinburne, whom, to meet on his way to and from "The Pines," Putney, serves as a revelation. The first impression one gets is of a small man with large feet, walking as if for a wager, arms swinging hither and thither, and fingers briskly playing imaginary tunes in the air as he goes. Then, as the eccentric shape comes nearer, one is aware of a stubbly beard, and peeping eyes expressive of mingled distrust and aversion; a hideous hat is clapped down over the broad brow, which hat when lifted displays a bald expanse of skull bearing no sort of resemblance whatever to the counterfeit presentments of Apollo, and yet, incongruous though it seem, this little, nervous, impatient, querulous being is no other than the author of the "Triumph of Time," one of the finest poems in the English language; and these twiddling restless fingers penned the majestic, burning, beautiful "Tristram of Lyonesse," a book which, like an imperial jewel-casket, is literally piled with gems. To look at the man and to think of his poems at the same time is enough to make one gasp for breath. It appears quite impossible to realise that this solitary biped trotting full speed to Wimbledon should have written such lines as these:--

"I shall never be friends again with roses,
I shall loathe sweet tunes, where a note grown strong
Relents and recoils, and climbs and closes,
_As a wave of the sea turned back by song_."

One can, however, easily believe that he wrote of himself in the following passage:--

"_But who now on earth need care how I live?_
Have the high gods anything left to give
Save dust and laurels and gold and sand?
Which gifts are goodly; but I will none."

Swinburne, like Tennyson, manifests a great abhorrence for the society of his fellow-creatures, but his shrinking churlishness is more accountable to the world than that of the elder bard. Tennyson's muse is pure, refined, and ever persuasive to good; while at times Swinburne seems possessed of a very devil of lewdness and atheism; and lewdness and atheism are not yet openly accepted as desirable parts of a liberal education. Of his former rank and rampant republicanism nothing need be said; the politics of a poet are always the most absurd and shifty part of him. And though lewdness of the pen is beginning to be more tolerated than once it was, thanks to the importation of such foreign trash as the "Kreutzer Sonata" and other publications of a like free-and-easy pruriency, the love of moral filth is not yet universal. We are dabbling in mire, but we do not willingly wallow in it--at least, not at present. The honest British guffaw of laughter that greets crazy old Ibsen's contemptible delineations of women, has a jovial wholesome music in it which the caterwauling of cliques cannot silence. And there is a strong under-current of feeling in the peoples of nearly all countries, that whatever prose-writers may choose to do by way of degrading themselves and their profession, poets should draw the line somewhere. Poor paralytic old Mrs. Grundy still pretends, in the most ridiculously senile way, to be quite shocked at the idea of reading "Don Juan," when, as a matter of fact, she has put on strong spectacles over her blear eyes in order to gloat upon far worse literary provender. There is not a line that Byron ever wrote approaching to the revolting indecency of Swinburne's "Faustine"--a most disgusting set of bad verses, let me tell Algernon, with my frankest compliments. The only excuse that can be offered for such a sickening affront to the very name of poetry, is that the writer must have been suffering at the time he wrote it from a sort of moral disease.

From moral disease no moral health can come--and in spite of Swinburne's unquestioned and unquestionable genius, I believe his fame will perish as utterly and hopelessly as a brilliant torch plunged suddenly in the sea. There is no stamina in him--nothing to hold or to keep in all this meteor-like shower of words upon words, thoughts upon thoughts, similes upon similes; there lacks steadiness in the music; none of the vast eternal underthrobbings of nature give truth or grandeur to the strain. It is the harsh raving and shrill chanting of a man in fever and delirium; not the rich pulsing rhythm of a singer in noble accord with life, love, and labour.

One of the most unpleasant characteristics of Swinburne's muse is the idea conveyed therein of the sex feminine. Women are no better (and rather worse) than wild animals according to this poet's standard; or if not animals, passive creatures, to be "bitten" and "sucked" and "pressed" and "crushed" as though they were a peculiar species of grape for man's special eating. Their hair is "woven and unwoven" recklessly till one feels it must surely be plucked out by the roots; their "flanks" are supposed to "shine," their "eyelids" are "as sweet savour issuing;" and the following vaguely comic lines occur in "Anactoria":--

"Ah, ah, thy beauty! _like a beast it bites_,
Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.
Ah, sweet, and sweet again, and _seven times sweet
The paces and the pauses of thy feet_!"

More preposterously insane nonsense than this it would be difficult to find on any printed page extant.

It will be chiefly on account of his utterly false conception of life and the higher emotions of the human heart, that Swinburne will not leave the great name he might have left had he recognised the full dignity of his calling. He had the power, but not the will. I say he "had" advisedly, because he has it no longer. His last productions are positively puerile as compared with his first, and each new thing he writes shows the falling-off in his skill more and more perceptibly. His similes are heavy and confused; his strained efforts at impossible paradox almost ludicrous. This is the kind of thing he revels in:--

The formless form of a mouthless mouth,
And the biteless bite of a tooth that has gone.

We are, perforce, thrown back on the "Poems and Ballads" and "Tristram of Lyonesse," compelled to realise that in these two books we have got all of Swinburne that we shall ever get worth reading--all the concentrated fire of that genius which is dying out day by day into dull ashes. Theodore Watts, practical, friendly Watts, something of a poet himself in a grave and lumbersome way, can do nothing to revive that once brilliant if lurid glow that animated Algernon's formerly reckless spirit. It is all over--the lamp is quenched, and the harp is broken. It would have been almost better for Swinburne's fame had he died in his youth, consumed, like the fabled Phœnix, by the fierce glare of the poetic hell-flames he had kindled about himself, rather than have lived till now to drivel into a silly dotage of roundels concerning babies' toes and noses and fingers, which are assuredly the most uninteresting subject-matter to the lover of true poesy. His attempts, too, in the "Border-Ballad" style are the weakest and most unsatisfactory imitations of the rough but vigorous original models. And while on the subject of imitation, it is rather interesting to the careful student of poetic "style" to read the admirable translations made from the earlier Italian poets by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and compare them with some of Swinburne's earlier pieces. It will be remembered that Swinburne was at one time of his life much in the company of Rossetti, and he would most probably have heard many of these translations read before they were published; anyway, the similitude of measure and rhythm between Rossetti's "renderings" and Swinburne's "originals" is somewhat striking.

Personally, I am inclined to think that the worthy Algernon Charles caught his particular trick of rhyming and rounding his verse in the fashion now known as "Swinburnian" entirely from the Italian school of Guido Cavalcanti, Rinaldo D'Aquino, and others of their time, as well as from a few old French models of the François Villon type. His actual masterpiece, a work which contains no such borrowed juggleries of rhyme, is "Tristram of Lyonesse." This great poem is not half so well known as it ought to be--most people appear never to have heard of it, much less to have read it. In perusing its pages, one scarcely thinks of the author save as the merest human phonograph through which Inspiration speaks--in fact, it is rather curious to realise how little we really do take the personal Swinburne into our consideration while reading his works, or for that matter the personal anybody who has ever done anything. Personalities are very seldom really interesting. It is only when we have a wild, wicked Byron that we are fascinated by "personality"; a man who turns upon us, saying that he is--

"only not to desperation driven,
_Because not altogether of such clay
As rots into the souls of those whom I survey_."

Well, well! And what of Browning? Why, Browning is dead. Moreover, he is buried in damp, dirty, evil-smelling Westminster Abbey. What more would you have for him? Fame? Let be, let be; he had Notoriety. That must suffice, and that being done, why, all is done, and there is no more to be said. Notoriety is not Fame. Fame is not Notoriety. No man can have both, though he may cheat himself into taking the lesser for the greater, and die happy in the pleasing delusion. Even so Browning died; even so was he honourably interred. May he rest in peace. Amen.

XV.

OF MORE POETS.

Are there no other poets in the crowd save Tennyson and Swinburne? God bless my soul, you don't suppose I am going to offend a whole mob of verse-writers--no other poets? Of course there are others! no end of others. Poets over-run our land even as the locusts over-ran Egypt, and they are all "as good, and a darned sight better," as the Yankees say, than either the Laureate or Algernon Charles, in their own opinion. Mark that last clause, please; it is important. The number of "poets" so styled by themselves is legion; only I, who am a rudely-opiniated and fastidious masquer, decline to recognise their clamorous claims to the deathless laurel. But this does not matter. Who cares what I either decline or accept? My opinions are "nothing to nobody." I only express them for my own satisfaction and amusement; I have no other good to gain thereby. As for the chance of offending the "poets" alluded to, I certainly care not a jot. I have no desire to please them in any way, as I consider most of them an offence and an obstruction in literature. Some people run away with the notion that Edwin Arnold (I give him the full glory of his "Sir" and C.S.I. elsewhere) is a poet. Certainly his books sell. The "Light of Asia," with all its best bits taken out of the original "Mahabhârata," is a perfect triumph of verse-making. All the religious ladies read it because it is so very unexciting and heavenly and harmless, and because, like all pious poetry, it preaches virtue that no one ever dreams of practising. It is a capital book for school prizes, too; it will not hurt any boy or girl to read it, and it may providentially check them in time from trying to write verse themselves. As for the "Light of the World," it will probably meet with the same success among the same class of readers, though it is much inferior to the "Light of Asia," owing to having no "Mahabhârata" in it. But Lewis Morris is quite as great a favourite with the "goodys" of society as Sir Edwin. The "goodys" don't know, and don't want to know, anything about Dante's "Inferno," and are therefore quite satisfied to accept "The Epic of Hades" as _bonâ fide_ "original" matter,--and there are some "sweetly pretty" lines in "A Vision of Saints." Both productions are well adapted for gift-books, and will suit the taste of the demure provincial "misses" who wish to be discovered reading poetry under a shady tree what time the bachelor curate of the parish passeth by. All the same, I, who am a Nobody, decline to consider either Morris or Arnold poets. They are excellent verse-compilers though, and suit the tastes of those who do not care about either originality or inspiration.

I am nothing if not eccentric, and so I am disposed to place one Alfred C. Calmour among the poets. He has published no poems--he has only produced "poetical" plays, failures all, save "The Amber Heart," and he has been generally "sent to the right about" by persons with infinitely less brain than himself. It is curious to observe what spite and meanness waken in the manly breasts of certain of his fellows at the mere mention of his name. I spoke in praise of "The Amber Heart" on one occasion to a critical brother, and he at once said--"All filched out of Wills's waste-paper basket; he was Wills's secretary." "What of 'Cyrene'?" I asked. "Oh, I don't know anything about 'Cyrene'; but if there's anything good in it, depend upon it, it is stolen from Wills." I relapsed into silence, for I never thought and never shall think anything of Wills, whereas I do think something of Calmour. He is writing a drama, I hear, on "Dante and Beatrice," and I confess to anticipating it with intense interest. I want him to do as my dear friend Oscar Wilde has done--pulverise his enemies by a big success. And why? Because I hate to see a hard-working man "sat upon." And Calmour does work hard, lives hard too, and never complains or "girds" at fate, wherefore I venture to prophecy fame for him one of these days. I have been assured he is conceited. I have never found him so. Suppose he were, is conceit a singular fault in authors? Are we to believe that they are more boastfully disposed than actors, for instance?

"What do you think of Calmour?" I asked E. S. Willard on one occasion, when, in all the grave consciousness of "looking" _Judah_ to the life, he stood beside me sipping convivial tea in Wilson Barrett's drawing-room.

"Think of Calmour?" he replied, with an inimitable air of self-sufficiency. "I never think of Calmour!"

Magnificent wind-bag assertiveness! but hopelessly unreasonable. Calmour is more worth thinking about than Willard, only Willard doesn't see it. The creator of a part merits greater consideration than the mime who performs it. I confess to being a lover of fair play, and when a lot of people try to "hustle" a man, I am disposed to fight for him. Anyway, Calmour has a clean and delicate pen, and does not pander to vulgar vice like that wretched old Scandinavian humbug, Ibsen. Why we should abuse Calmour and praise Ibsen passes my comprehension. Except that "foreign" scribblers are all "geniuses" with us at once--they must be, you know, simply because they _are_ foreign; they have a "subtlety," a "flavour," an "ardour," a "naturalism," and--a Nastiness which is not the legitimate inheritance of the English School. Had any one of our own men dared to offer us a "Hedda Gabler," or a "Rosmersholm," or Maeterlinck's piece of bathos, "L'Intruse," he would have been shrieked and howled down with derisive laughter.

I often wonder what on earth the faddists of the poor old doddering, doting _Athenæum_ mean by poking and prodding about for sparks of genius in their new "heavy man," William Watson? It is very funny to call him a poet--very funny, indeed. He is a sort of fifth-rate Wordsworth--and while we can just stand the sonnets and shorter poems of Wordsworth at first-hand, a diluted example of his pattern in these days is too much for our patience. I know a good many people--in fact, I meet in social intercourse nearly everybody worth knowing--but as yet I have come upon nobody who reads Watson's poems, or who appear to know anything about Watson. Curious, isn't it? The _Athenæum_ seems to carry no conviction whatever to the Ass-public.

Messrs. Trübner sent to me some time ago a book of poems, which first surprised and then fascinated me into the belief that I had discovered an English Petrarch. I think I have, too. If absolute music, perfect rhythm, and exquisite wording of love-thoughts are Petrarchian, then my man is a Petrarch. His book is called "A Lover's Litanies," and the "litanies" are the poems. There are ten of them, and each one has a title borrowed from the old church missal--rather a quaint idea. It would be difficult to match the one called "Vox Amoris" among all the love-poems of the world. Does the dear old purblind _Athenæum_ know anything about this real poet, who has perhaps not been "discovered" by Mr. Grant Allen or Andrew Lang? Cheer up, old _Athenæum_, put on thy spectacles, and look about for the author of these "Litanies," lest the outer world should say thou art napping! People are reading "A Lover's Litanies"--those people who do not know anything about William Watson.

Robert Louis Stevenson started as a "poet," I believe. Now he has become the "Thucydides of literature"--_vide Pall Mall Gazette_. Such nice, pretty classical names the _Pall Mall_ discovers for its particular darlings. Has the _Pall Mall_ read Thucydides? I rather doubt it. I have, and find no resemblance to Mr. Stevenson. And, truth to tell, I preferred Mr. Stevenson's past poetry to his present prose. Yet why should I murmur, remembering the sweet, sound slumber into which I fell over "The Wrecker"--that trying mixture of Marryat and Clark Russell. I think it is a capital story for schoolboys though, and that is why the _Pall Mall_ admires it. I am not a schoolboy; the _Pall Mall_ is; a dear, bright, gamesome, peg-top-and-marble creature, who thinks the greatest joke in life is to break a neighbour's window or ring a neighbour's bell, and then run away laughing. Its animal spirits are too delightfully boisterous for it to appreciate any sort of deep sentiment; a story of strong human passions, or a romance in which love has the most prevailing share, would not appeal to its unlessoned fancy. And, very naturally, it appreciates Stevenson, because he gives it no hard, uncomfortable life-problems to think about.

Another "poet" who calls himself so is Hall Caine. He says the "Scapegoat" is not so much a novel as a drama, and not so much a drama as a "poem." Very good indeed! Excellent fooling, upon my life. Hall Caine can be very funny if he likes, though you wouldn't think it to look at him. When he called his story of the "Bondman" a "New Saga," it was only his fun. His wit is quite irrepressible. Among other humorous things, he has had his portrait taken in a loose shirt and knickers, seated facing the bust of Shakespeare, like a day-labourer fronting the Sphynx. It is altogether refreshing to find a Lilliputian literary ephemera so entirely delighted with himself as Hall Caine. He is much more convinced of the intrinsic value of his own genius than Oscar Wilde, with less reason than Oscar for his conviction. Oscar is a really clever man; Hall Caine tries to be clever and does not succeed. Oscar is a born wit, moreover, and though he does crib a few _bon-mots_ from Molière and a few paradoxes from Rochefoucauld, what does it matter for the English who do not understand French, and have to get "books of the words" in order to "follow" Sarah Bernhardt. Besides, Hall Caine borrows from the French also; the plot of his "Scapegoat" is taken from the French, so one of my critical friends assures me, and critics are always right. Francis Adams (also a "poet") "went" for Hall Caine not long ago in the _Fortnightly_--a regular good knock-down thrust it was, too. But Adams's prowess is of no avail in these things. The more you abuse a fellow, the more his books sell. The best way to utterly damn an author is to say that his novels are "nicely written," "prettily told," "harmless fiction," or "innocuous literature." If these phrases do not finish him off, nothing will. An original, powerful, passionate writer is always "slated," and always "sells." Witness the career of one Emile Zola. With all his faults, the man is a great poet; realism and romance unite in strange colours on his literary palette, and with his forceful brush he paints life in all its varied aspects fearlessly and without any regard for outside opinions. His one blemish is the blemish of the whole French nation--moral Nastiness. But if we talk of "poets" who, though making their bread-and-butter out of the writing of prose, still insist on belonging to the gods of Parnassus, none of the stringers of rhyme and jinglers of ballads, and weavers of "sagas" and the like, that afflict this enlightened and imaginative nation, could write such a true poem from end to end as "Le Rêve." Such consummate art, such unravelling of exquisite romance out of commonplace material, is not to be discovered in the English literary brain. The English literary brain is dull, lumpish, and heavy--the English literary worker is dominated by one idea, and that is, how much hard cash shall he get for his work? And thus it is that poets, real poets, are rarer than swallows in snow; so that is why I am slightly exercised in my mind respecting the Petrarch sort of minstrel I spoke of a while ago. He is unquestionably a poet, and seems to get on without any "booming." This strikes me as very odd. However, most of the "best" men go unboomed. No occasion to puff a good article. As for the pretended poets, countless as the sands of the sea, there is a great consolation in the reflection that in a few more years they will all be as though they never had been. Good old Posterity will know nothing about them, and herein Posterity is to be heartily congratulated. Poetical gnats must live like other gnats, I suppose--they are rather troublesome, and make a buzzing noise in one's ears, but as their whole existence lasts no more than a day, we must have patience till the sun sets.

XVI.

TO A MIGHTY GENIUS.

"O Rudyard Kipling! Phœbus! What a name,
To fill the speaking trump of future Fame!"

This, with apologies to the shade of the "loose ungrammatical" Byron, as the perfectly grammatical Gosse calls him. Dear Gosse! He has cause to be somewhat irritated with his own career as a poet, for he has not yet "set the Thames on fire," as he expected to do with the torch of his inspiration. Hence he was compelled to vent his pent-up spleen somehow, and what better dead giant to fall upon and beat with pigmy blows of pigmy personal vexation than Byron, whose Apollo-like renown (with scarce an effort on his own part) sent thunders through Europe. Oh, grammatical Gosse!--but never mind him just now; I must concentrate my soul on Kip; on Rudyard; on the glory of this literary age. Let me look at you, you blessed baby! treasure of its own Grandmother Journalism's heart! There you are, crowing and chuckling, small but "virile," every inch of you, though you are not overstocked with hair on the top of that high head of yours, and it is hard to begin life by viewing it through spectacles. But _as_ you are, there you are! and my pulses leap at the sight of you. Fielding, Sterne, Thackeray, Dickens, all these parted spirits have, as it were, distilled themselves into a fiery fluid wherewith to animate your miniature form; was ever such a thrilling wonder? Hear we good Uncle _Blackwood_, the while he dances you upon his gouty knee:--"If her Majesty's Ministers will be guided by us (which perhaps is not extremely probable; yet we confess we should like the command of a Minister's ear for several shrewd suggestions) they will bestow a Star of India without more ado upon this young man of genius who has shown us all what the Indian Empire means."

No doubt, good 'nuncle! no doubt the Ministry will listen to thy "shrewd suggestions" what time the moon is made of ripe green cheese. Go on, old man, go on, in thy cracked and aged pipe, growing wheezy with emotion. "The battle in the 'Main Guard' is like Homer or Sir Walter.... If her Majesty herself, who knows so much, desires a fuller knowledge of her Indian Empire, we desire respectfully to recommend to the Secretary for India that he should place no sheaves of despatches in the royal hands, but Mr. Rudyard Kipling's books.... What Mr. Rudyard Kipling has done is an imperial work, and worthy of an imperial reward!"

Bravo, worthy 'nuncle! Homer begged his bread, but the pen-and-ink sketcher of "Mrs. Hauksbee" shall have rewards imperial! To it again, garrulous 'nuncle--to it and cease not! "Here, by the dignified hand of Maga the ever young, we bid the young genius All hail! and more power to his elbow, to relapse into vernacular speech, which is always more convincing than the high-flown." Should it not have been written "to relapse into bathos," good 'nuncle? And beware of declaring thyself to be "ever young," for nothing lives that shall not grow old, and the younger generation already profanely dub thee "antiquated." Wipe thine eyes, Uncle _Blackwood_, polish thy spectacles, and set down our precious baby for an instant the while his other nurses, godfathers and godmothers, look at him, and speculate upon his probable growth.

Let us listen to the hysterical _D. T._ the while it raveth in strophes of gin-and-water:--"Mr. Rudyard Kipling is, and seems likely to remain, a literary enigma. Who can deny his strength, his virility, his dramatic sense, his imaginative wealth, his masterful genius? He is like a young and sportive Titan, piling Pelion on Ossa in his reckless ambition to scale Olympus; he is always renewing his strength like an eagle, and rejoicing like a giant to run his course. Nothing comes amiss to him; he will produce out of his boundless stores things new and old--tragedies, comedies, farces, epics, ballads, or lyrical odes. His earliest Anglo-Indian stories revealed a new world to the astonished West; his "Soldiers Three" have attained almost the reputation of the "Three Musketeers"; his Learoyd, his Ortheris, his Mulvaney, his Mrs. Hauksbee, his Torpenhow are household words; while his barrack-room ditties, and his ballads of East and West have not only startled by their daring frankness, but conquered all criticism by their picturesqueness and truth."

All this, an' so please you, on two or three volumes of small magazine stories and rhymed doggerel! That "Soldiers Three" should have attained the reputation of the "Three Musketeers" is of course only the delirious frenzy of the _D. T._ asserting itself in gasping shrieks of illiterate mindlessness--Europe knows better than to place the intellect of a smart newspaper man like Kipling on the same level with that of Dumas. Kipling is the Jumbo of the _D. T._ for the present, and journalists would not be what they are if they could not get up a "boom" somehow. Now hark we to the fond maudlin murmur of an evening journal!

"Where did Kipling get his ideas about Art from?" This is indeed a pathetic question. It crops up in a paragraph-ecstasy over "The Light that Failed." It is as if one should ask, "Where did Shakespeare get his knowledge of the human soul from?" Where, oh where? We cannot, we will not believe he has any imagination, this dear Kipling of ours, because imagination is a thing we abhor. The triumphal and eternal books of the world have all been purely imaginative, but this does not matter to us. We, in this modern day, refuse to accept the idea that anybody can describe a thing they have not seen and felt and turned over and over under a microscope; we are so exact. And oh, where then did Shakespeare (to revert to him again, because his is the only name we can conscientiously compare with Kipling), where did Shakespeare find Ariel and Caliban, and Puck and Titania, and Julius Cæsar, and Antony and Cleopatra? He could not have seen these people? No. Then, alas! he had that fatal gift, that monstrous blemish of the brain which spoils true genius, Imagination--the grossest form of cerebral disease. In this he was inferior to our Rudyard, our hop-skip-and-a-jump Rudyard, who is actually going bald in his youth from the strain of his minute observation of life, and the profundity of his meditations thereon. Our "delectable one!" Our precious Kip! Who would not join in the chorus of the paragraph-men when they propound the fond, almost maternally-admiring query, "Where did he get his ideas about Art from?" And then, when we find out that he has "artistic" relations; that his papa is, or has been, painting a ceiling or a wall in Windsor Castle, we naturally feel almost beside ourselves with delight, because we find our baby's ideas are the result of heritage, and have nothing to do with that curse of literature, Imagination. As for me, I weep whenever I turn the sacred leaves of "Plain Tales from the Hills," because I know I have in its pages all that ever was or will be excellent in the way of fiction. There is nothing more to be said--nothing more to come after. It is a sad thought that fiction should have culminated here--it is always sad to think that anything should have an end--but when the end is so glorious, who shall complain? And so I have sold my set of Waverley novels (the real Abbotsford edition); I have put my Shakespeare on an almost unreachable top shelf (I only keep him for reference); I have sent my Dickens volumes to a hospital, and my Thackeray to a "home for incurables." I shall not want these things any more. The only natural reflex of life as it is lived nowadays is to be found in the works of Rudyard; on Rudyard I mentally feed and thrive. To Kip I cling as the drowning sailor to a rope; all difficulties and perplexities in Art, Literature, Science, Politics, Manners and Morals vanish at the touch of his mighty pen--he is the one, the only Kip;--the crowning splendour of our time. Why should we make any parliamentary pother over the preservation of old buildings at Stratford-on-Avon? What do we want with Stratford-on-Avon? since our Kip was born in India, or we believe he was. Now, India is something like a place for a Genius to be born in--big, vast, legendary, historical--and yet the American Interviewer, conscious of Kipling's might, thinks it possible he may have already exhausted its capabilities for literary treatment; swallowed it off at one gulp as it were, like the precious pearl Hafiz consumed in his cup of wine.

"Do you consider Mr. Kipling has exhausted India?" anxiously inquired the American Interviewer of Rider Haggard, when the weary author of "She" landed in New York.

"India is a big place," was the simple answer, given with a patient gentleness for which Haggard deserves great credit, seeing how he has lately been despitefully used and persecuted by the very reviewers who once flattered him.

Yes, India _is_ a big place; not too big for our Kip though. He requires to take life in Gargantuan gulps in order to support the giant forces of his mind. But Stratford-on-Avon! A mere English country town--hardly more than a village--what do we care about it now? Shakespeare, after all, was perhaps only Bacon--but Kip is Kip--there's no doubt about him--he is his own noble _bonâ-fide_ self, whose bootlaces we are not worthy to untie. There is "stern strength," there is "virility," there is a "strong strain of humour," there is "masculine vigour" in everything he writes. Mark the following passage from "Watches of the Night":--

"Platte, the subaltern, being poor, had a Waterbury watch and a plain leather guard.

"The Colonel had a Waterbury watch also, and for guard the lip-strap of a curb chain."

Now, note that carefully--"_The lip-strap of a curb chain._"

What a luscious flowing sound there is in those few exquisitively chosen words! "_The lip-strap of a curb chain!_" It is positively fascinating. One could dream of it all day and all night too, for that matter, like Mark Twain's famous refrain of "Punch in the presence of the passenjare." But going on from this delicious line, which is almost poetry, one finds instant practical information.

"Lip-straps make the best watch-guards. They are strong and short. Between a lip-strap and an ordinary leather guard there is no great difference; between one Waterbury watch and another, none at all."

Now, there we have the "strain of humour." No difference between one Waterbury watch and another, "none at all." Ha, ha, ha! No difference between one--ha, ha, ha!--Waterbury, ha, ha!--watch--ha, ha, ha!--and another--ha, ha, ha!--none at all. Ha, ha! That "none at all" is so exquisitely facetious! It comes in so well! Was ever such a delightful little bit of sly, dry, brilliant, sparkling Wit, with a big W, as this peculiar manner of our Kip! Turning over the leaves of this glorious, this immortal "Plain Tales," you cannot help coming upon humour, spontaneous, rollicking humour everywhere. It bristles out of each particular page "like quills upon the fretful porcupine." Take this, for example--

"One of the Three men had a cut on his nose, caused by the kick of a gun. _Twelve-bores kick rather curiously._"

So they do. The remarkable part of this is that twelve-bores _do_ kick--it is a positive fact--a fact that every one has been dying to have made public, and "rather curiously" is the exact expression that suits their mode of behaviour. So true, so quaint is Kip. And here is another charming bit of expression--a descriptive picture, finely painted. It is from "The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly."

"His boots and breeches were plastered with mud and beer stains. He wore a muddy-white, dunghill sort of thing on his head, and it hung down in slips on his shoulders, which were a good deal scratched. He was half in and half out of a shirt, as nearly in two pieces as it could be, and he was begging the guard to look at the name on the tail of it."

Now this requires thinking over, because it is so subtle. The "muddy-white, dunghill sort of thing" is really a new expression--quite new--and beautiful. It suggests so much! But you must come to the humour--you must remember there was a shirt mentioned, and that the hero was "begging the guard to look at the name on the tail of it." I went off into positive convulsions of mirth when I first read that passage. Falstaff's coarse witticisms seemed unbearable after it. "To look at the name on the tail of it!" It is simply inimitable. There is a jovial sound in the very swing of the sentence. And Private Mulvaney! What a creation! Just listen to him--

"I'm a born scutt av the barrick-room! The Army's mate and dhrink to me, bekase I'm wan av the few that can't quit ut. I've put in sivinteen years an' the pipeclay's in the marrow av me. Av I wud have kept out av wan big dhrink a month, I wud have been a Hon'ry Lift'nint by this time--a nuisince to my betthers, a laughin' stock to my equils an' a curse to meself. Bein 'fwhat I am, I'm Privit Mulvaney wid no good-conduc' pay an' a devourin' thirst. Always barrin' me little frind Bob Bahadur, I know as much about the Army as most men."

No wonder, after this, that the ever-watchful purveyors of "Literary Gossip" rouse themselves up from lachrymose tenderness to positive passion _in re_ this marvellous Rudyard, and speak of him as "the stronger Dickens going forth conquering and to conquer."

The phrase, "the stronger Dickens," is coming it very strong indeed, but--it's only the paragraph-men. These chroniclers of the time have pathetically informed us how on one occasion Kip ran away from the "clamour" (of the paragraph-men) to India to fetch his papa, and how his papa came back with him, to look after him, I suppose, and protect him from all the naughty, vicious people who wanted to blow his skin out into the size of a bull when Nature meant him to keep to the strict proportions of the other figure in the fable. Good Rudyard! Already the bloom is off the rye, just slightly, for if we are to believe the _Athenæum_, an Eden Phillpotts is "the new Kipling." "O Eden Phillpotts! Phoebus! What a name! To fill the speaking-trump of future Fame!" The "loose ungrammatical" Byron's lines fit Phillpotts as excellent well as Kipling. Phillpotts is really a fine name in every way--splendidly hideous, and available for all sorts of Savile Club and _Saturday Review_ witticisms, such as--

"Phill the Pott and fill the can
Eden is our Coming Man!"

Or this, sung slowly with religious nasal intonation to the well-known hymeneal melody--

"The voice that breathed o'er _Eden_,
From _Athenæum_ bowers,
Said 'Phillpotts' stories must be praised,
He is a friend of ours!'"