Immortal Memories Part 12

My readers for the most part have read every one of these books. I throw out this list as a tentative effort in the direction of suggesting a hundred books with which to start a library. The young student will find much to amuse, and certainly nothing here to bore him. These books will not make him a prig, as Mr. James Payn said that Lord Avebury's list would make him a prig. They will make the dull man less dull, the bright man brighter. Here is good, cheerful, robust reading for boy and girl, for man and woman. There are many sins of omission, but none of commission. Our young friend will add to this list fast enough, but there is nothing in it that he may not read with profit. These books, I repeat, make an universal appeal. The learned man may enjoy them, the unlearned may enjoy them also. They are, as _Hamlet_ is, of universal interest. Devotion to science will not impair a taste for them, nor will zest for abstract speculations. Not even those who are "better skilled in grammar than in poetry" can fail to appreciate. These hundred books will in the main be the hundred best books of many of my readers who are quite capable of selecting for themselves. One last word of advice. Let not the young reader buy large quant.i.ties of books at once or be beguiled into subscribing for some cheap series which will save him the trouble of selecting. He may buy many books from such cheap series afterwards, but not his first hundred, I think. These should be acquired through much saving, and purchased with great thought and deliberation. The purchase of a book should become to the young book-lover a most solemn function.

_Butler and Tanner_, _The Selwood Printing Works_, _Frome_, _and London_

Footnotes:

{3} Richard Garnett (1835-1906) was son of the philologist of the same name who was for a time priest-vicar of Lichfield Cathedral. He attended the Johnson Celebration on Sept. 18, 1905, and proposed "the Immortal Memory of Dr. Johnson." He died on the following Good Friday, April 13, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery April 17, 1906.

{6} Anna Seward (1747-1809). Her works were published after her death:--_The Poetical Works of Anna Seward_. _With Extracts from her Literary Correspondence_. Edited by Walter Scott, Esq. In three volumes--_John Ballantyne & Co._, 1810. _Letters of Anna Seward written between the Years_ 1784 _and_ 1807. In six volumes. Archibald Constable & Co., 1811. "Longwinded and florid" one biographer calls her letters, but by the aid of what Scott calls 'the laudable practice of skipping'

they are quite entertaining.

{8} Sir Robert Thomas White-Thomson, K.C.B., wrote to me in reference to this estimate of Miss Seward from Broomford Manor, Exbourne, North Devon, and his letter seemed of sufficient importance from a genealogical standpoint for me to ask his permission to make an extract from the letter: "I have read your address in a Lichfield newspaper. Apart from the wider and more important bearings of your words, those which had reference to the Seward family were especially welcome to me. You will understand this when I tell you that, with the exception of the Romney portrait of Anna, and a few other objects left 'away' by her will, my grandfather, Thomas White, of Lichfield Close, her cousin and residuary legatee, became possessed of all the contents of her house. Some of the books and engravings were sold by auction, but the remainder were taken good care of, and pa.s.sed to me on my mother's death in 1860. As thus, 'in a way' the representative of the 'Swan of Lichfield,' you can easily see what such an appreciation of her as was yours means to me. Of course I know her weak points, and how the pot of clay must suffer in trying to 'b.u.mp' the pot of iron in midstream, but I also know that she was no ordinary personage in her day, when the standard of feminine culture was low, and I have resented some things that have been written of her. Mrs.

Oliphant treats her kindly in her _Literary History of England_, and now I have your 'appreciation' of her, for which I beg to thank you."

{15} Once certainly in the lines "On the Death of Mr. Robert Levet":--

Well try'd through many a varying year, See Levet to the grave descend, Officious, innocent, sincere, Of ev'ry friendless name the friend.

{18} _Prayers and Meditations_: composed by Samuel Johnson, LL.D., and published from his Ma.n.u.scripts by George Straham, D.D., Prebendary of Rochester and Vicar of Islington in Middles.e.x, 1785. Dr. Birkbeck Hill suggests that Johnson could not have contemplated the publication of the work in its entirety, but the world is the better for the self revelation, notwithstanding Cowper's remark in a letter to Newton (August 27, 1785), that "the publisher of it is neither much a friend to the cause of religion nor to the author's memory; for by the specimen of it that has reached us, it seems to contain only such stuff as has a direct tendency to expose both to ridicule."

{19} There is an edition with a brief Introduction by Augustine Birrell, published by Elliot Stock in 1904, and another, with an Introduction by "H. C.," was issued by H. R. Allenson in 1906.

{31} The Rev. Angus Mackay, author of _The Brontes In Fact and Fiction_.

He was Rector of Holy Trinity Church, Dean Bridge, Edinburgh, when he died, aged 54, on New Year's Day, 1907. Earlier in life he had been a Curate at Olney.

{34} John Newton (1725-1807) had been the captain of a slave s.h.i.+p before his 'conversion.' He became Curate of Olney in 1764 and published the famous Olney Hymns with Cowper in 1779. In 1780 Newton became the popular Inc.u.mbent of St. Mary Woolnoth, London.

{35} See the Globe _Cowper_, with an Introduction by the Rev. William Benham, the Rector of St. Edmund's, Lombard Street. Canon Benham has written many books, but he has done no better piece of work than this fine Introduction which first appeared in 1870.

{36} Thomas Scott (1747-1821). His commentaries first appeared in weekly parts between 1788 and 1792, and were first issued in ten volumes, 1823-25. He was Rector of Astin Sandford in Buckinghams.h.i.+re from 1801 until his death. His _Life_ was published by his son, the Rev. John Scott, in 1822.

{37} Thomas Percy (1729-1811) became Vicar of Easton Maudit, Northamptons.h.i.+re, in 1753. Johnson visited him here in 1764. In 1765 Percy published his _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_. He became Bishop of Dromere in 1782.

{38a} William Hayley (1745-1820) was counted a great poet in his day and placed in the same rank with Dryden and Pope. He wrote _Triumphs of Temper_ 1781, _Triumphs of Music_ 1804, and many other works; but he is of interest here by virtue of his _Life and Letters of William Cowper_, _Esq._, _with Remarks on Epistolary Writers_, published in 1803.

{38b} Robert Southey (1774-1843), whose _Life and Works of Cowper_ is in fifteen volumes, which were published by Baldwin & Cradock between the years 1835 and 1837. The attractive form in which the works are presented, the many fine steel engravings, and the excellent type make this still the only way for book lovers to approach Cowper. Southey had to suffer the compet.i.tion of the Rev. T. S. Grimshawe, who produced, through Saunders & Otley, about the same time a reprint of Hayley's biography with much of Cowper's correspondence that is not in Southey's volumes. The whole correspondence was collected by Mr. Thomas Wright, and published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1904.

{38c} Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) in his _Literary Studies_. James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) in his _Essays_. Mrs. Oliphant (1828-1897) in her _Literary History of England_; and George Eliot (1819-1880) in her _Essays_ (Worldliness and Other Worldliness).

{44} It has no bearing upon the subject that the horrors of the Bastille at the time of its fall were greatly exaggerated.

{47} _Theology in the English Poets_, by Stopford A. Brooke.

{56} Mr. Leslie Stephen, who became Sir Leslie Stephen, K.C.B., in 1902, was born in 1832 and died in 1904. In addition to the article in the _D.N.B._, this great critic has one on "Cowper and Rousseau" in his _Hours in a Library_.

{62} Sir John Fenn (1739-1794), the antiquary, obtained the originals of the _Paston Letters_ from Thomas Worth, a chemist of Diss. The following lines were first printed in Cowper's Collected Poems, by Mr. J. C. Bailey in his admirable edition of 1906, published by the Methuens:--

Two omens seem propitious to my fame, Your spouse embalms my verse, and you my name; A name, which, all self-flattery far apart Belongs to one who venerates in his heart The wise and good, and therefore of the few Known by these t.i.tles, sir, both yours and you.

They were written to please his cousin John Johnson who was to oblige Fenn by giving him an autograph of Cowper's.

{66} Edward Stanley (1779-1849), the father of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-1881), Dean of Westminster, was Bishop of Norwich from 1837 to 1849.

{80} Borrow's step-daughter, Henrietta Clarke, married James McOubrey, an Irish doctor. She outlived Borrow for many years, dying at Great Yarmouth in 1904. All her literary effects, including many interesting ma.n.u.scripts, have been pa.s.sed on to me by her executor, Mr. Hubert Smith, and these will be used in my forthcoming biography of Borrow.

{84} I ventured to ask my friend Mr. Birrell for a line to read to my Norwich audience and he sent me the following characteristic letter dated December 8, 1903:--

". . . For my part I should leave George Borrow alone, to take his own part even as Isopel Berners learnt to take hers in the great house at Long Melford. He has an appealing voice which no sooner falls on the ear of the born Borrovian, than up the lucky fellow must get and follow his master to the end of the chapter.

"However, if you will insist upon going out into the highways and hedges and compelling the wayfaring man--though a fool--to come in and take a seat at the _Lavengro_ feast, n.o.body can stop you.

"The great thing is to get people to read the Borrow books: there is nothing else to be done. If, after having read them, some enthusiasts go on to learn _Romany_ and seek to trace authorities on Gypsies and Gypsy lore--why, let them. They may soon know more about Gypsies than Borrow ever did--but they will never write about them as he did.

"The essence of the matter is to enjoy Borrow's books for themselves alone. As for Borrow's biography, it appears to me either that he has already written it, or it is not worth writing. Anyhow, place the books in the forefront, reprint things as often as you dare without _note or comment_ or even _prefatory appreciation_, and you cannot but earn the grat.i.tude of every true Borrovian who in consequence of your efforts come upon the Borrow books for the first time."

{97} M. Rene Huchon, who addressed the visitors at the Crabbe Celebration, published his _George Crabbe and his Times_: _A Critical and Biographical Study_, through Mr. John Murray, early in the present year, 1907.

{98} This reproach has since been removed by the appearance of the _Complete Works of George Crabbe_ in three volumes of the Cambridge English Cla.s.sics Series, published by the Cambridge University Press, and edited by Dr. A. W. Ward, the Master of Peterhouse.

{100} The original letter is in the possession of Mr. A. M. Broadley, of Bridport. It is reprinted from the Hanmer Correspondence in an appendix to M. Huchon's biography.

{106} But M. Huchon makes it clear in _George Crabbe and his Times_ that Crabbe declined at the last moment to marry Miss Charlotte Ridout, who seems to have been really in love with him.

{138} This monument, a fine statue facing the house which replaces the one in which Sir Thomas Browne lived, was unveiled in October, 1905.

{144} For every student Cunningham's nine volumes have been superseded since this Address was delivered by the sixteen volumes of the Letters of Horace Walpole, edited by Mrs. Paget Toynbee for the Clarendon Press.

{145} The other side of the picture may, however, be presented. Horace, says Cunningham (Walpole's _Letters_, vol. i.), hated Norfolk, the native country of his father, and delighted in Kent, the native country of his mother. "He did not care for Norfolk ale, Norfolk turnips, Norfolk dumplings and Norfolk turkeys. Its flat, sandy aguish scenery was not to his taste." He dearly liked what he calls most happily, "the rich, blue prospects of Kent."

{153} Goldsmith doubtless had more than one experience in his mind when he wrote of:--

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain.

Lissoy, near Ballymahon, Ireland, served to provide many concrete features of the picture, but that the author drew upon his experiences of Houghton is believed by his princ.i.p.al biographer, John Forster, by Professor Ma.s.son and others, and on no other a.s.sumption than that of an English village can the lines be explained:--

A time there was, ere England's griefs began, When every rood of ground maintained its man.

{185} Originally written to serve as an Introduction to an edition of Mr. George Meredith's _Tragic Comedians_, of which book La.s.salle is the hero. That edition was published by Messrs. Ward Lock & Bowden, who afterwards transferred all rights in it to Messrs. Archibald Constable & Co., by whose courtesy the paper is included here.

{186} La.s.salle's _Tagebuch_, edited by Paul Lindau, 1891.

{187} _Henrich Heine's sammtliche Werke_, vol. xxii., pp. 84-99.

{188} The most concise account of the affair is contained in the story of Sophie Solutzeff, ent.i.tled, _Eine Liebes-episode aus dem Leben Ferdinand La.s.salle's_. This booklet, which is published in German, French, and Russian, professes to be an account of La.s.salle's love for a young Russian lady, Sophie Solutzeff, some two years before he met Helene von Donniges. He is represented as being himself in a frenzy of pa.s.sion; the lady, however, rejecting as a lover the man she had been prepared to wors.h.i.+p as a teacher. There can be little doubt that the whole story is a fabrication, in which the Countess von Hatzfeldt had a considerable part. The Countess was rightly judged by popular opinion to have played a discreditable role in the love pa.s.sages between La.s.salle and Helene; and Helene's own account of the matter in her _Reminiscences_ was an additional blow at the pseudo-friend who might have helped the lovers so much. What more natural than that the Countess should be anxious to break the force of Helene's indictment, by endorsing the popular, and indeed accurate judgment, that La.s.salle was very inflammable where women were concerned. This she could do by depicting him, a little earlier, in precisely similar bondage to that which he had professed to Helene. That the Countess wrote, or a.s.sisted to write, the compilation of letters and diaries, does not, however, destroy its value as a record of La.s.salle's struggle on her behalf. That account, if not written by La.s.salle, was written or inspired by the other great actor in the Hatzfeldt drama, and may therefore be considered a fairly safe guide in recounting the story.

Mr. Israel Zangwill, since the above was written, has published an article on La.s.salle in his _Dreamers of the Ghetto_. He accepts Sophie Solutzeff's story as genuine, but that is merely the credulity of an accomplished romancer.