Adventures in Criticism Part 8

Now Burns does exhibit his deep feelings, as I demonstrated by quotations. And I suggested that it is just his strength of emotion, his command of pathos and readiness to employ it, by which Burns appeals to the ma.s.s of his countrymen. On this point "J.B." expressly agrees with me; but--he will have nothing to do with my quotations!

"However excellent in their way" these quotations may be, they "are not those that any Scotsman would trust to in support of the above proposition"; the above proposition being that "Burns appeals to the hearts and feelings of the ma.s.ses in a way that Scott never does."

You see, I have concluded rightly; but on wrong evidence. Let us see, then, what evidence a Scotsman will call to prove that Burns is a writer of deep feeling. "A Scotsman," says "J.B." "would at once appeal to "Scots wha hae," "Auld Lang Syne," and "A man's a man for a'

that." ... Think of the soul-inspiring, 'fire-eyed fury' of 'Scots wha hae'; the glad, kind, ever fresh greeting of 'Auld Lang Syne'; the manly, st.u.r.dy independence of 'A man's a man for a' that,' and who can wonder at the ever-increasing enthusiasm for Burns' name?... I would rather," says "J.B.," "be the author of the above three lyrics than I would be the author of all Scott's novels."

Here, then, is the point at which I give up my attempts, and admit my stupidity to be incurable. I grant "J.B." his "Auld Lang Syne." I grant the poignancy of--

"We twa hae paidl't i' the burn, Frae morning sun till dine: But seas between us braid hae roar'd Sin auld lang syne."

I see poetry and deep feeling in this. I can see exquisite poetry and deep feeling in "Mary Morison"--

"Yestreen when to the trembling string, The dance ga'ed thro' the lighted ha', To thee my fancy took its wing, I sat, but neither heard nor saw: Tho' this was fair, and that was braw, And yor the toast a' the town, I sigh'd and said amang them a'

'Ye are na Mary Morison.'"

I see exquisite poetry and deep feeling in the Lament for the Earl of Glencairn--

"The bridegroom may forget the bride Was made his wedded wife yestreen; The monarch may forget the crown That on his head an hour has been; The mother may forget the child That smiles sae sweetly on her knee; But I'll remember thee, Glencairn, And a' that thou hast done for me!"

But--it is only honest to speak one's opinion and to hope, if it be wrong, for a better mind--I do _not_ find poetry of any high order either in "Scots wha hae" or "A man's a man for a' that." The former seems to me to be very fine rant--inspired rant, if you will--hovering on the borders of poetry. The latter, to be frank, strikes me as rather poor rant, neither inspired nor even quite genuine, and in no proper sense poetry at all. And "J.B." simply bewilders my Southron intelligence when he quotes it as an instance of deeply emotional song.

"Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha struts, and stares, and a' that; Tho' hundreds wors.h.i.+p at his word, He's but a coof for a' that: For a' that, and a' that, His riband, star and a' that.

The man of independent mind, He looks and laughs at a' that."

The proper att.i.tude, I should imagine, for a man "of independent mind"

in these circ.u.mstances--a.s.suming for the moment that ribands and stars _are_ bestowed on imbeciles--would be a quiet disdain. The above stanza reminds me rather of ill-bred barking. People of a.s.sured self-respect do not call other people "birkies" and "coofs," or "look and _laugh_ at a' that"--at least, not so loudly. Compare these verses of Burns with Samuel Daniel's "Epistle to the Countess of c.u.mberland," and you will find a higher manner altogether--

"He that of such a height hath built his mind, And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong, As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind Of vanity and malice pierce to wrong His settled peace, or to disturb the same; What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may The boundless wastes and wilds of men survey?

"And with how free an eye doth he look down Upon these lower regions of turmoil?" ...

As a piece of thought, "A man's a man for a' that" unites the two defects of obviousness and inaccuracy. As for the deep feeling, I hardly see where it comes in--unless it be a feeling of wounded and blatant but militant self-esteem. As for the _poetry_--well, "J.B."

had rather have written it than have written one-third of Scott's novels. Let us take him at less than his word: he would rather have written "A man's a man for a' that" than "Ivanhoe," "Redgauntlet," and "The Heart of Midlothian."

_Ma sonties!_

CHARLES READE

March 10, 1894. "The Cloister and the Hearth."

There is a venerable proposition--I never heard who invented it--that an author is finally judged by his best work. This would be comforting to authors if true: but is it true? A day or two ago I picked up on a railway bookstall a copy of Messrs. Chatto & Windus's new sixpenny edition of _The Cloister and the Hearth_, and a capital edition it is.

I think I must have worn out more copies of this book than of any other; but somebody robbed me of the pretty "Elzevir edition" as soon as it came out, and so I have only just read Mr. Walter Besant's Introduction, which the publishers have considerately reprinted and thrown in with one of the cheapest sixpennyworths that ever came from the press. Good wine needs no bush, and the bush which Mr. Besant hangs out is a very small one. But one sentence at least has challenged attention.

"I do not say that the whole of life, as it was at the end of the fourteenth century, may be found in the _Cloister and the Hearth_; but I do say that there is portrayed so vigorous, lifelike, and truthful a picture of a time long gone by, and differing, in almost every particular from our own, that the world has never seen its like. To me it is a picture of the past more faithful than anything in the works of Scott."

This last sentence--if I remember rightly--was called a very bold one when it first appeared in print. To me it seems altogether moderate.

Go steadily through Scott, and which of the novels can you choose to compare with the _Cloister_ as a "vigorous, lifelike, and truthful picture of a time long gone by"?

Is it _Ivanhoe_?--a gay and beautiful romance, no doubt; but surely, as the late Mr. Freeman was at pains to point out, not a "lifelike and truthful picture" of any age that ever was. Is it _Old Mortality_?

Well, but even if we here get something more like a "vigorous, lifelike, and truthful picture of a time gone by," we are bound to consider the scale of the two books. Size counts, as Aristotle pointed out, and as we usually forget. It is the whole of Western Europe that Reade reconstructs for the groundwork of his simple story.

Mr. Besant might have said more. He might have pointed out that no novel of Scott's approaches the _Cloister_ in lofty humanity, in sublimity of pathos. The last fifty pages of the tale reach an elevation of feeling that Scott never touched or dreamed of touching.

And the sentiment is sane and honest, too: the author reaches to the height of his great argument easily and without strain. It seems to me that, as an appeal to the feelings, the page that tells of Margaret's death is the finest thing in fiction. It appeals for a score of reasons, and each reason is a n.o.ble one. We have brought together in that page extreme love, self-sacrifice, resignation, courage, religious feeling: we have the end of a beautiful love-tale, the end of a good woman, and the last earthly trial of a good man. And with all this, there is no vulgarization of sacred ground, no cheap parade of the heart's secrets; but a deep sobriety relieved with the most delicate humor. Moreover, the language is Charles Reade's at its best--which is almost as good as at its worst it is abominable.

That Scott could never reach the emotional height of Margaret's death-scene, or of the scene in Clement's cave, is certain. Moreover in the _Cloister_ Reade challenges comparison with Scott on Scott's own ground--the ground of sustained adventurous narrative--and the advantage is not with Scott. Once more, take all the Waverley Novels and search them through for two pa.s.sages to beat the adventures of Gerard and Denis the Burgundian (1) with the bear and (2) at "The Fair Star" Inn, by the Burgundian Frontier. I do not think you will succeed, even then. Indeed, I will go so far as to say that to match these adventures of Gerard and Denis you must go again to Charles Reade, to the homeward voyage of the _Agra_ in _Hard Cash_. For these and for sundry other reasons which, for lack of s.p.a.ce, cannot be unfolded here, _The Cloister and the Hearth_ seems to me a finer achievement than the finest novel of Scott's.

And now we come to the proposition that an author must be judged by his best work. If this proposition be true, then I must hold Reade to be a greater novelist than Scott. But do I hold this? Does anyone hold this? Why, the contention would be an absurdity.

Reade wrote some twenty novels beside _The Cloister and the Hearth_, and not one of the twenty approaches it. One only--_Griffith Gaunt_--is fit to be named in the same day with it; and _Griffith Gaunt_ is marred by an insincerity in the plot which vitiates, and is at once felt to vitiate, the whole work. On everything he wrote before and after _The Cloister_ Reade's essential vulgarity of mind is written large. That he shook it off in that great instance is one of the miracles of literary history. It may be that the sublimity of his theme kept him throughout in a state of unnatural exaltation. If the case cannot be explained thus, it cannot be explained at all. Other of his writings display the same, or at any rate a like, capacity for sustained narrative. _Hard Cash_ displays it; parts of _It is Never Too Late to Mend_ display it. But over much of these two novels lies the trail of that defective taste which makes _A Simpleton_, for instance, a prodigy of cheap inept.i.tude.

But if Reade be hopelessly Scott's inferior in manner and taste, what shall we say of the invention of the two men? Mr. Barrie once affirmed very wisely in an essay on Robert Louis Stevenson, "Critics have said enthusiastically--for it is difficult to write of Mr. Stevenson without enthusiasm--that Alan Breck is as good as anything in Scott.

Alan Breck is certainly a masterpiece, quite worthy of the greatest of all story-tellers, _who, nevertheless, it should be remembered, created these rich side characters by the score, another before dinner-time_." Inventiveness, is, I suppose, one of the first qualities of a great novelist: and to Scott's invention there was no end. But set aside _The Cloister_; and Reade's invention will be found to be extraordinarily barren. Plot after plot turns on the same old tiresome trick. Two young people are in love: by the villainy of a third person they are separated for a while, and one of the lovers is persuaded that the other is dead. The missing one may be kept missing by various devices; but always he is supposed to be dead, and always evidence is brought of his death, and always he turns up in the end.

It is the same in _The Cloister_, in _It is Never Too Late to Mend_, in _Put Yourself in His Place_, in _Griffith Gaunt_, in _A Simpleton_.

Sometimes, as in _Hard Cash_ and _A Terrible Temptation_, he is wrongfully incarcerated as a madman; but this is obviously a variant only on the favorite trick. Now the device is good enough in a tale of the fourteenth century, when news travelled slowly, and when by the suppression of a letter, or by a piece of false news, two lovers, the one in Holland, the other in Rome, could easily be kept apart. But in a tale of modern life no trick could well be stagier. Besides the incomparable Margaret--of whom it does one good to hear Mr. Besant say, "No heroine in fiction is more dear to me"--Reade drew some admirable portraits of women; but his men, to tell the truth--and especially his priggish young heroes--seem remarkably ill invented.

Again, of course, I except _The Cloister_. Omit that book, and you would say that such a character as Bailie Nicol Jarvie or Dugald Dalgetty were altogether beyond Reade's range. Open _The Cloister_ and you find in Denis the Burgundian a character as good as the Bailie and Dalgetty rolled into one.

Other authors have been lifted above themselves. But was there ever a case of one sustained at such an unusual height throughout a long, intricate and arduous work?

HENRY KINGSLEY

Feb. 9, 1895. Henry Kingsley.

Mr. Shorter begins his Memoir of the author of _Ravenshoe_ with this paragraph:--

"The story of Henry Kingsley's life may well be told in a few words, because that life was on the whole a failure. The world will not listen very tolerantly to a narrative of failure unaccompanied by the halo of remoteness. To write the life of Charles Kingsley would be a quite different task. Here was success, victorious success, sufficient indeed to gladden the heart even of Dr. Smiles--success in the way of Church preferment, success in the way of public veneration, success, above all, as a popular novelist, poet, and preacher. Canon Kingsley's life has been written in two substantial volumes containing abundant letters and no indiscretions. In this biography the name of Henry Kingsley is absolutely ignored. And yet it is not too much to say that, when time has softened his memory for us, as it has softened for us the memories of Marlowe and Burns and many another, the public interest in Henry Kingsley will be stronger than in his now more famous brother."[A]

A prejudice confessed.

I almost wish I could believe this. If one cannot get rid of a prejudice, the wisest course is to acknowledge it candidly: and therefore I confess myself as capable of jumping over the moon as of writing fair criticism on Charles or Henry Kingsley. As for Henry, I wors.h.i.+pped his books as a boy; to-day I find them full of faults--often preposterous, usually ill-constructed, at times unnatural beyond belief. John Gilpin never threw the Wash about on both sides of the way more like unto a trundling mop or a wild goose at play than did Henry Kingsley the decent flow of fiction when the mood was on him. His notion of constructing a novel was to take equal parts of wooden melodrama and low comedy and stick them boldly together in a paste of impertinent drollery and serious but entirely irrelevant moralizing. And yet each time I read _Ravenshoe_--and I must be close upon "double figures"--I like it better. Henry did my green unknowing youth engage, and I find it next to impossible to give him up, and quite impossible to choose the venerated Charles as a subst.i.tute in my riper age. For here crops up a prejudice I find quite ineradicable. To put it plainly, I cannot like Charles Kingsley. Those who have had opportunity to study the deportment of a certain cla.s.s of Anglican divine at a foreign _table d'hote_ may perhaps understand the antipathy. There was almost always a certain sleek offensiveness about Charles Kingsley when he sat down to write. He had a knack of using the most insolent language, and attributing the vilest motives to all poor foreigners and Roman Catholics and other extra-parochial folk, and would exhibit a pained and completely ludicrous surprise on finding that he had hurt the feelings of these unhappy inferiors--a kind of indignant wonder that Providence should have given them any feelings to hurt. At length, encouraged by popular applause, this very second-rate man attacked a very first-rate man. He attacked with every advantage and with utter unscrupulousness; and the first-rate man handled him; handled him gently, scrupulously, decisively; returned him to his parish; and left him there, a trifle dazed, feeling his muscles.

Charles and Henry.

Still, one may dislike the man and his books without thinking it probable that his brother Henry will supersede him in the public interest; nay, without thinking it right that he should. Dislike him as you will, you must acknowledge that Charles Kingsley had a lyrical gift that--to set all his novels aside--carries him well above Henry's literary level. It is sufficient to say that Charles wrote "The Pleasant Isle of Aves" and "When all the world is young, lad," and the first two stanzas of "The Sands of Dee." Neither in prose nor in verse could Henry come near such excellence. But we may go farther. Take the novels of each, and, novel for novel, you must acknowledge--I say it regretfully--that Charles carries the heavier guns. If you ask me whether I prefer _Westward Ho!_ or _Ravenshoe_, I answer without difficulty that I find _Ravenshoe_ almost wholly delightful, and _Westward Ho!_ as detestable in some parts as it is admirable in others; that I have read _Ravenshoe_ again and again merely for pleasure, and that I can never read a dozen pages of _Westward Ho!_ without wis.h.i.+ng to put the book in the fire. But if you ask me which I consider the greater novel, I answer with equal readiness that _Westward Ho!_ is not only the greater, but much the greater. It is a truth too seldom recognized that in literary criticism, as in politics, one may detest a man's work while admitting his greatness.

Even in his episodes it seems to me that Charles stands high above Henry. Sam Buckley's gallop on Widderin in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ is (I imagine) Henry Kingsley's finest achievement in vehement narrative: but if it can be compared for one moment with Amyas Leigh's quest of the Great Galleon then I am no judge of narrative. The one point--and it is an important one--in which Henry beats Charles as an artist is his sustained vivacity. Charles soars far higher at times; but Charles is often profoundly dull. Now, in all Henry's books I have not found a single dull page. He may be trivial, inconsequent, irrelevant, absurd; but he never wearies. It is a great merit: but it is not enough in itself to place a novelist even in the second rank. In a short sketch of Henry Kingsley, contributed by his nephew, Mr. Maurice Kingsley, to Messrs. Scribner's paper, _The Bookbuyer_, I find that the younger brother was considered at home "undoubtedly the novelist of the family; the elder being more of the poet, historian, and prophet."

(Prophet!) "My father only wrote one novel pure and simple--viz. _Two Years Ago_--his other works being either historical novels or 'signs of the times.'" Now why an "historical novel" should not be a "novel pure and simple," and what kind of literary achievement a "sign of the times" may be, I leave the reader to guess. The whole pa.s.sage seems to suggest a certain confusion in the Kingsley family with regard to the fundamental divisions of literature. And it seems clear that the Kingsley family considered novel-writing "pure and simple"--in so far as they differentiated this from other kinds of novel-writing--to be something not entirely respectable.

Their opinion of Henry Kingsley in particular is indicated in no uncertain manner. In Mrs. Charles Kingsley's life of her husband, Henry's existence is completely ignored. The briefest biographical note was furnished forth for Mr. Leslie Stephen's _Dictionary of National Biography_: and Mr. Stephen dismisses our author with a few curt lines. This disposition to treat Henry as an awful warning and nothing more, while sleek Charles is patted on the back for a saint, inclines one to take up arms on the other side and a.s.sert, with Mr.

Shorter, that "when time has softened his memory for us, the public interest in Henry Kingsley will be stronger than in his now more famous brother." But can we look forward to this reversal of the public verdict? Can we consent with it if it ever comes? The most we can hope is that future generations will read Henry Kingsley, and will love him in spite of his faults.