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THE GENTLE READER




The Gentle Reader

BY

SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1904

_Copyright, 1903

By Samuel McChord Crothers

All rights reserved

Published October, 1903_




Preface


When Don Quixote was descanting on the beauty of the peerless Dulcinea,
the Duchess interrupted him by expressing a doubt as to that lady's
existence.

"Much may be said on that point," said Don Quixote. "God only knows
whether there be any Dulcinea or not in the world. These are things the
proof of which must not be pushed to extreme lengths."

But this admission does not in the least interfere with the habitual
current of his thoughts, or cool the ardor of his loyalty. He proceeds
after the momentary digression as if nothing had happened. "I behold her
as she needs must be, a lady who contains within herself all the
qualities to make her famous throughout the world; beautiful, without
blemish; dignified, without haughtiness; tender, and yet modest;
gracious from courtesy, and courteous from good breeding; and lastly of
illustrious birth."

If in the following pages I begin by admitting that there is much to be
said in behalf of the popular notion that the Gentle Reader no longer
exists, let this pass simply as an evidence of my decent respect for the
opinion of mankind. To my mind the Gentle Reader is the most agreeable
of companions, and to make his acquaintance is one of the pleasures of
life.

Of so elusive a personality it is not always possible to give a
consistent account. I have no doubt that I may have occasionally
attributed to him sentiments which are really my own; on the other hand,
I suspect that some views that I have set down as my own may have been
unconsciously derived from him. I have particular reference to the
opinions expressed on the subject of Ignorance. Such confusion of
mental properties the Gentle Reader will readily pardon, for there is no
one in all the world so careless of the distinctions between Meum and
Tuum.




CONTENTS

                                                                    PAGE

THE GENTLE READER                                                      1

THE ENJOYMENT OF POETRY                                               35

THE MISSION OF HUMOR                                                  64

CASES OF CONSCIENCE CONCERNING WITCHCRAFTS                           101

THE HONORABLE POINTS OF IGNORANCE                                    135

THAT HISTORY SHOULD BE READABLE                                      167

THE EVOLUTION OF THE GENTLEMAN                                       201

THE HINTER-LAND OF SCIENCE                                           227

THE GENTLE READER'S FRIENDS AMONG THE CLERGY                         243

QUIXOTISM                                                            271

INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE AND DELIGHT                                       303




The Gentle Reader


What has become of the Gentle Reader? One does not like to think that he
has passed away with the stagecoach and the weekly news-letter; and that
henceforth we are to be confronted only by the stony glare of the
Intelligent Reading Public. Once upon a time, that is to say a
generation or two ago, he was very highly esteemed. To him books were
dedicated, with long rambling prefaces and with episodes which were
their own excuse for being. In the very middle of the story the writer
would stop with a word of apology or explanation addressed to the Gentle
Reader, or at the very least with a nod or a wink. No matter if the fate
of the hero be in suspense or the plot be inextricably involved.

"Hang the plot!" says the author. "I must have a chat with the Gentle
Reader, and find out what he thinks about it."

And so confidences were interchanged, and there was gossip about the
Universe and suggestions in regard to the queerness of human nature,
until, at last, the author would jump up with, "Enough of this, Gentle
Reader; perhaps it's time to go back to the story."

The thirteenth book of Tom Jones leaves the heroine in the greatest
distress. The last words are, "Nor did this thought once suffer her to
close her eyes during the whole succeeding night." Had Fielding been
addressing the Intelligent Modern Public he would have intensified the
interest by giving an analysis of Sophia's distress so that we should
all share her insomnia. But not at all! While the dear girl is
recovering her spirits it is such an excellent opportunity to have
uninterrupted discourse with the Gentle Reader, who doesn't take these
things too hard, having long since come to "the years that bring the
philosophic mind." So the next chapter is entitled An Essay to prove
that an author will write better for having some knowledge of the
subject on which he treats. The discussion is altogether irrelevant;
that is what the Gentle Reader likes.

"It is a paradoxical statement you make," he says, trying to draw the
author out. "What are your arguments?"

Then the author moderates his expressions. "To say the truth I require
no more than that an author should have some little knowledge of the
subject of which he treats."

"That sounds more reasonable," says the Gentle Reader. "You know how
much I dislike extreme views. Let us admit, for the sake of argument,
that a writer may know a little about his subject. I hope that this may
not prove the opening wedge for erudition. By the way, where was it we
left the sweet Sophy; and do you happen to know anything more about that
scapegrace Jones?"

That was the way books were written and read in the good old days before
the invention of the telephone and the short story. The generation that
delighted in Fielding and Richardson had some staying power. A book was
something to tie to. No one would say jauntily, "I have read Sir Charles
Grandison," but only, "I am reading." The characters of fiction were
not treated as transient guests, but as lifelong companions destined to
be a solace in old age. The short story, on the other hand, is invented
for people who want a literary "quick lunch." "Tell me a story while I
wait," demands the eager devourer of fiction. "Serve it hot, and be
mighty quick about it!"

In rushes the story-teller with love, marriage, jealousy, disillusion,
and suicide all served up together before you can say Jack Robinson.
There is no time for explanation, and the reader is in no mood to allow
it. As for the suicide, it must end that way; for it is the quickest.
The ending, "They were happy ever after," cannot be allowed, for the
doting author can never resist the temptation to add another chapter,
dated ten years after, to show how happy they were.

I sometimes fear that reading, in the old-fashioned sense, may become a
lost art. The habit of resorting to the printed page for information is
an excellent one, but it is not what I have in mind. A person wants
something and knows where to get it. He goes to a book just as he goes
to a department store. Knowledge is a commodity done up in a neat
parcel. So that the article is well made he does not care either for the
manufacturer or the dealer.

Literature, properly so called, is quite different from this, and
literary values inhere not in things or even in ideas, but in persons.
There are some rare spirits that have imparted themselves to their
words. The book then becomes a person, and reading comes to be a kind of
conversation. The reader is not passive, as if he were listening to a
lecture on The Ethics of the Babylonians. He is sitting by his fireside,
and old friends drop in on him. He knows their habits and whims, and is
glad to see them and to interchange thought. They are perfectly at their
ease, and there is all the time in the world, and if he yawns now and
then nobody is offended, and if he prefers to follow a thought of his
own rather than theirs there is no discourtesy in leaving them. If his
friends are dull this evening, it is because he would have it so; that
is why he invited them. He wants to have a good, cosy, dull time. He has
had enough to stir him up during the day; now he wants to be let down.
He knows a score of good old authors who have lived long in the happy
poppy fields.

In all good faith he invokes the goddess of the Dunciad:--

    "Her ample presence fills up all the place,
     A veil of fogs dilates her awful face.
     Here to her Chosen all her works she shews,
     Prose swelled to verse, verse loitering into prose."

The Gentle Reader nods placidly and joins in the ascription:--

                    "Great tamer of all human art!
     First in my care and ever at my heart;
     Dullness whose good old cause I still defend.

           *       *       *       *       *

     O ever gracious to perplex'd mankind,
     Still shed a healing mist before the mind;
     And lest we err by wit's wild dancing light,
     Secure us kindly in our native night."

I would not call any one a gentle reader who does not now and then take
up a dull book, and enjoy it in the spirit in which it was written.

Wise old Burton, in the Anatomy of Melancholy, advises the restless
person to "read some pleasant author till he be asleep." Many persons
find the Anatomy of Melancholy to answer this purpose; though Dr.
Johnson declares that it was the only book that took him out of bed two
hours before he wished to rise. It is hard to draw the line between
stimulants and narcotics.

This insistence on the test of the enjoyment of the dullness of a dull
book is not arbitrary. It arises from the characteristic of the Gentle
Reader. He takes a book for what it is and never for what it is not. If
he doesn't like it at all he doesn't read it. If he does read it, it is
because he likes its real quality. That is the way we do with our
friends. They are the people of whom we say that "we get at them." I
suppose every one of us has some friend of whom we would confess that as
thinker he is inferior to Plato. But we like him no less for that. We
might criticise him if we cared,--but we never care. We prefer to take
him as he is. It is the flavor of his individuality that we enjoy.
Appreciation of literature is the getting at an author, so that we like
what he is, while all that he is not is irrelevant.

There are those who endeavor to reduce literary criticism to an exact
science. To this end they would eliminate the personal element, and
subject our admirations to fixed standards. In this way it is hoped
that we may ultimately be able to measure the road to Parnassus by
kilometers. All this is much more easily said than done. Personal
likings will not stay eliminated. We admire the acuteness of the critic
who reveals the unsuspected excellence of our favorite writer. It is a
pleasure like that which comes when a friend is received into a learned
society. We don't know much about his learning, but we know that he is a
good fellow, and we are glad to learn that he is getting on. We feel
also a personal satisfaction in having our tastes vindicated and our
enjoyment treated as if it were a virtue, just as Mr. Pecksniff was
pleased with the reflection that while he was eating his dinner, he was
at the same time obeying a law of the Universe.

But the rub comes when the judgment of the critic disagrees with ours.
We discover that his laws have no penalties, and that if we get more
enjoyment from breaking than from obeying, then we are just that much
ahead. As for giving up an author just because the judgment of the
critic is against him, who ever heard of such a thing? The stanchest
canons of criticism are exploded by a genuine burst of admiration.

That is what happens whenever a writer of original force appears. The
old rules do not explain him, so we must make new rules. We first enjoy
him, and then we welcome the clever persons who assure us that the
enjoyment is greatly to our credit. But--

    "You must love him ere to you
     He shall seem worthy of your love."

I asked a little four-year-old critic, whose literary judgments I accept
as final, what stories she liked best. She answered, "I like Joseph and
Aladdin and The Forty Thieves and The Probable Son."

It was a purely individual judgment. Some day she may learn that she has
the opinion of many centuries behind her. When she studies rhetoric she
may be able to tell why Aladdin is better than The Shaving of Shagpat,
and why the story of "The Probable Son" delights her, while the
half-hour homily on the parable makes not the slightest impression on
her mind. The fact is, she knows a good story just as she knows a good
apple. How the flavor got there is a scientific question which she has
not considered; but being there, trust the uncloyed palate to find it
out! She does not set up as a superior person having good taste; but she
says, "I can tell you what tastes good."

The Gentle Reader is not greatly drawn to any formal treatises. He does
not enjoy a bare bit of philosophy that has been moulded into a fixed
form. Yet he dearly loves a philosopher, especially if he turns out to
be a sensible sort of man who doesn't put on airs.

He likes the old Greek way of philosophizing. What a delight it was for
him to learn that the Academy in Athens was not a white building with
green blinds set upon a bleak hilltop, but a grove where, on pleasant
days, Plato could be found, ready to talk with all comers! That was
something like; no board of trustees, no written examinations, no
text-books--just Plato! You never knew what was to be the subject or
where you were coming out; all you were sure of was that you would come
away with a new idea. Or if you tired of the Academy, there were the
Peripatetics, gentlemen who were drawn together because they imagined
they could think better on their legs; or there were the Stoics, elderly
persons who liked to sit on the porch and discuss the "cosmic weather."
No wonder the Greeks got such a reputation as philosophers! They deserve
no credit for it. Any one would like philosophy were it served up in
that way.

All that has passed. Were Socrates to come back and enter a downtown
office to inquire after the difference between the Good and the
Beautiful, he would be confronted with one of those neatly printed
cards, intended to discourage the Socratic method during business hours:
"This is our busy day."

The Gentle Reader also has his business hours, and has learned to submit
to their inexorable requirements; but now and then he has a few hours to
himself. He declines an invitation to a progressive euchre party, on the
ground of a previous engagement he had made long ago, in his college
days, to meet some gentlemen of the fifth century B. C. The evening
passes so pleasantly, and the world seems so much fresher in interest,
that he wonders why he doesn't do that sort of thing oftener. Perhaps
there are some other progressive euchre parties he could cut, and the
world be none the worse.

How many people there have been who have gone through the world with
their eyes open, and who have jotted down their impressions by the way!
How quickly these philosophers come to know their own. Listen to Izaak
Walton in his Epistle to the Reader: "I think it fit to tell thee these
following truths, that I did not undertake to write or publish this
discourse of Fish and Fishing to please myself, and that I wish it may
not displease others. And yet I cannot doubt but that by it some readers
may receive so much profit that if they be not very busy men, may make
it not unworthy the time of their perusal. And I wish the reader to take
notice that in the writing of it I have made a recreation of a
recreation; and that it might prove so to thee in the reading, and not
to read dully and tediously, I have in several places mixed some
innocent mirth; of which if thou be a severe, sour-complexioned man,
then I here disallow thee to be a competent judge.... I am the willinger
to justify this innocent mirth because the whole discourse is a kind of
picture of my own disposition, at least of my disposition on such days
and times as I allow myself--when Nat and I go fishing together." How
cleverly he bows out the ichthyologists! How he rebukes the sordid
creature who has come simply to find out how to catch fish! That is the
very spirit of Simon Magus! "Thou hast neither part nor lot in this
matter!"

The Gentle Reader has no ulterior aims. All he wants to know is how
Izaak Walton felt when he went fishing, and what he was thinking about.

"A kind of picture of a man's own disposition," that is literature. Even
the most futile attempt at self-revelation evokes sympathy. I remember,
as a boy, gazing at an austere volume in my grandfather's library. It
was, as far as I could ascertain, an indigestible mixture of theology
and philology. But my eye was caught by the title, The Diversions of
Purley. I had not the slightest idea who Purley was, but my heart went
out to him at once.

"Poor Purley!" I said. "If these were your diversions, what a dog's life
you must have led!" I could see Purley gazing vaguely through his
spectacles as he said: "Don't pity me! It's true I have had my
trials,--but then again what larks! See that big book; I did it!" Only
long after did I learn that my sympathy was un-called for, as Purley
was not a person but a place.

       *       *       *       *       *

Of all the devices for promoting a good understanding the old-fashioned
Preface was the most excellent. It was not an introduction to the
subject, its purpose was personal. In these days the Preface, where it
survives, is reduced to the smallest possible space. It is like the
platform of an electric car which affords the passenger a precarious
foothold while he strives to obey the stern demand of the conductor that
he move forward. But time was when the Preface was the broad hospitable
porch on which the Author and Reader sat for an hour or so and talked
over the enterprise that was before them. Sometimes they would talk so
long that they almost forgot their ostensible subject.

The very title of Sir William Davenant's "Preface before Gondibert"
suggests the hospitable leisure of the seventeenth century. Gondibert is
a poetical masterpiece not to be lightly adventured upon. The mind must
be duly prepared for it. Sir William, therefore, discourses about poetry
in general, and then takes up special instances.

"I will (according as all times have applied their reverence) begin with
Homer."

"Homer is an admirable point of departure, and I have no doubt but that
you will also tell what you think of Virgil," says the Gentle Reader,
who when he is asked to go a mile is glad to go twain.

Then follows discourse on Lucan, Statius, Tasso, and the rest.

"But I feel (sir) that I am falling into the dangerous Fit of a hot
writer; for instead of performing the promise which begins this Preface,
and doth oblige me (after I had given you the judgement of some upon
others), to present myself to your censure, I am wandering after new
thoughts; but I shall ask your pardon and return to my undertaking."

"No apologies are necessary, I assure you. With new thoughts the rule is
first come, first served, while an immortal masterpiece can wait till
such time as we can enjoy it together."

After some reflections on the fallibility of the clergy and the state of
the country, the author proceeds to describe the general structure of
his poem.

"I have now given you an account of such provisions as I have made for
this new Building, and you may next please, having examined the
substance, to take a view of the form." He points out the "shadowings,
happy strokes, and sweet graces" of his work. This is done with an
intimacy of knowledge and fullness of appreciation that could not be
possible in a stranger.

"'Tis now fit, after I have given you so long a survey of the Building,
to render you some account of the Builder, that you may know by what
times, pains, and assistance I have already proceeded."

The time passes with much pleasure and profit until at last the host
says: "And now (sir) I shall after my busy vanitie in shewing and
describing my new Building, with great quietness, being almost as weary
as yourself, bring you to the Back-dore."

It is all so handsomely done that the reader is prepared to begin upon
the poem itself, and would do so were it not that the distinguished
friend of the author, Mr. Hobbes, has prepared An Answer to the
Preface--a point of politeness which has not survived the seventeenth
century. Mr. Hobbes is of the opinion that there is only one point in
which Gondibert is inferior to the masterpieces of antiquity, and that
is that it is written in English instead of in Greek or Latin. The
Preface and Answer to the Preface having been read, the further
discovery is made that there is a Postscript.

The Author, it appears, has fallen on evil days, and is in prison
charged with High Treason.

"I am arrived here at the middle of the Third Book which makes an equal
half of the Poem, and I was now by degrees to present you (as I promised
in the Preface) the several keys to the Main Building, which should
convey you through such short walks as give you an easie view of the
whole Frame. But 'tis high time to strike sail and cast anchor (though I
have but run half my course), when at the Helme I am threatened with
Death, who though he can trouble us but once seems troublesome, and even
in the Innocent may beget such gravitie as diverts the Musick of Verse.
I beseech thee if thou art as civill as to be pleased with what is
written, not to take it ill that I run not till my last gasp.... If thou
art a malicious Reader thou wilt remember my Preface boldly confessed
that a main motive to this undertaking was a desire of Fame, and thou
maist likewise say that I may not possibly live to enjoy it.... If thou
(Reader) art one of those who has been warmed with Poetick Fire, I
reverence thee as my Judge, and whilst others tax me with Vanitie as if
the Preface argued my good Opinion of the Work, I appeal to thy
Conscience whether it be much more than such a necessary assurance as
thou hast made to thyself in like Undertakings."

The Gentle Reader feels that whatever may be the merits of Gondibert,
Sir William Davenant is a gallant gentleman and worthy of his lasting
friendship.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Gentle Reader has a warm place in his heart for those whom he calls
the paradisaical writers. These are the unfallen spirits who reveal
their native dispositions and are not ashamed. They write about that
which they find most interesting--themselves. They not only tell us what
happens, but what they think and how they feel. We are made partners of
their joys and sorrows. The first person singular is glorified by their
use.

"But," says the Severe Moralist, "don't you frequently discover that
these persons are vain?"

"Precisely so," answers the Gentle Reader, "and that's what I want to
find out. How are you going to discover what an author thinks about
himself if he hides behind a mask of impersonality? There is no getting
acquainted with such hypocrites. In five hundred pages you may not have
a glimpse of the man behind the book, though he may be bubbling over
with self-conceit. There was Alexander Cruden, one of the most eccentric
persons of the eighteenth century. Fully persuaded of his own greatness,
he called himself Alexander the Corrector and announced that he was
destined to be 'the second Joseph and a great man at court.' He haunted
the ante-chambers of the nobility, but found only one nobleman who would
listen to him, Earl Paulett, 'who being goutish in his feet could not
run away from the Corrector as other men are apt to do.' Cruden appears
to have spent his leisure moments in going about London with a large
piece of sponge with which he erased any offensive chalk marks on the
walls. 'This employment,' says his biographer, 'occasionally made his
walks very tedious.' Now one might consult Cruden's 'Concordance of the
Holy Scriptures' in vain for any hint of these idiosyncrasies of the
author. Perhaps the nature of the work made this impossible. But what
shall we say of writers who, having no such excuse, take pains to
conceal from us what manner of men they were. Even David Hume, whose
good opinion of himself is a credit to his critical sagacity, assumes an
apologetic tone when he ventures upon a sketch of his own life. 'It is
difficult,' he says, 'for a man to speak long about himself without
vanity; therefore I shall be brief.' What obtuseness that shows in a
philosopher who actually wrote a treatise on human nature! What did he
know about human nature if he thought anybody would read an
auto-biography that was without vanity? Vanity is one of the most
lovable of weaknesses. If in our contemporaries it sometimes troubles
us, that is only because two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the
same time. But when it is all put in a book and the pure juices of
self-satisfaction have been allowed to mellow for a few centuries,
nothing can be more delicious."

His heart was won by a single sentence in one of Horace Walpole's
letters: "I write to you as I think." To the writer who gives him this
mark of confidence he is as faithful as is the Arab to the guest who has
eaten salt in his tent. The books which contain the results of thought
are common enough, but it is a rare privilege to share with a pleasant
gentleman the act of thinking. If the thoughts are those which arise
spontaneously out of the incidents of the passing day, so much the
better. He therefore warmly resents Wordsworth's remark about "that cold
and false-hearted, frenchified coxcomb, Horace Walpole."

"What has Horace Walpole done except to give us a picture of his own
disposition and incidentally of the world he lived in? It is an instance
of the ingratitude of Republics--and the Republic of Letters is the most
ungrateful of them all--that this should be made the ground of a railing
accusation against him. Walpole might answer as Timoleon did, when,
after having restored the liberties of Syracuse, a citizen denounced him
in the popular assembly. The Liberator replied: 'I cannot sufficiently
express my gratitude to the gods for granting my request in permitting
me to see all the Syracusans enjoy the liberty of saying what they think
fit.' A man who could write letters for sixty-two years revealing every
phase of feeling for the benefit of posterity earns the right of making
as magnanimous a retort as that of any of Plutarch's men. He might well
thank the gods for permitting him to furnish future generations with
ample material for passing judgment upon him. For myself, I do not agree
with Wordsworth. I have summered and wintered with Horace Walpole and he
has never played me false; he has shown himself exactly as he is. To be
sure, he has his weaknesses, but he is always ready to share them with
his friends. I suppose that is the reason why he is accused of being
frenchified. A true born Englishman would have kept his faults to
himself as if they were incommunicable attributes. I am not going to
allow a bit of criticism to come between us at this late day. The
relation between Reader and Author is not to be treated so lightly. I
believe that there is no reason for separation in such cases except
incompatibility of temper."

Then he makes his way to Strawberry Hill and listens to its master
describing his possession. "It is set in enameled meadows with filigree
hedges,--

    'A small Euphrates through the piece is rolled
     And little finches wave their wings of gold.'

Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually
with coaches and chaises; barges as solemn as barons of the exchequer
move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham Walks bound my prospects;
but thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry.
Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around; and Pope's ghost is
just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight."

It is pleasant to sit in the Gothic villa on Strawberry Hill and see the
world pass by. The small Euphrates, the filigree hedges, and the
gossiping dowagers, being in the foreground, appear more important than
they do in the formal histories which have no perspective. But the great
world does pass by, and the master of the house is familiar with it and
recognizes every important person in the procession. Was he not a Prime
Minister's son, and were not his first letters written from Downing
Street?

How rapidly the procession moves, giving only time for a nod and a word!
The reader is like a country cousin in the metropolis bewildered by a
host of new sensations. Now and then he smiles as some one whose name
has been long familiar is pointed out. The chief wonder is that there
are so many notabilities of whom he has never heard before. What an
unconscionable number of Duchesses there are, and each one has a
history! How different the Statesmen are from what he had imagined; not
nearly so wise but ever so much more amusing. Even the great William
Pitt appears to be only "Sir William Quixote," and a fantastic figure he
is! Strawberry Hill has its prejudices. It listens incredulously to the
stories illustrative of incorruptible political virtue. They are tales
to be told to Posterity.

In regard to the historical drama that unfolds there is a pleasant
ambiguity. Which is it that sees behind the scenes,--the writer or the
present-day reader? The reader representing Posterity has a general
notion of the progress of events. He thinks he knows how things actually
came out and which were the more important. He is anxious to know how
they strike a contemporary. But he is chastened by the discovery of the
innumerable incidents which Posterity has forgotten, but which made a
great stir in their day. "The Tower guns have sworn through thick and
thin that Prince Ferdinand has entirely demolished the French, and city
bonfires all believe it." Prince Ferdinand "is the most fashionable man
in England. Have not the Tower guns and all the parsons in London been
ordered to pray for him?"

The Gentle Reader is almost tempted to look up Prince Ferdinand, but is
diverted from this inquiry by a bit of gossip about the Duke of
Marlborough and the silver spoons.

When he comes to the glorious year 1775 he is eager to learn the
sensations of Walpole when the echoes of the "shot heard round the
world" come to him. The shot is heard, but its effect is not so
startling as might have been imagined. "I did but put my head into
London on Thursday, and more bad news from America. I wonder when it
will be bad enough to make folks think it so, without going on?" Then
Walpole turns to something more interesting. "I have a great mind to
tell you a Twickenham story."

It is about a certain Captain Mawhood who had "applied himself to learn
the classics and free-thinking and was always disputing with the parson
of the parish about Dido and his own soul."

It is not just what the Gentle Reader was expecting, but he adapts
himself cheerfully to the situation.

"I was about to inquire what you thought about the American war, but we
may come to that at some other time. Now let us have the Twickenham
story."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Gentle Reader loves the writers who reveal their intellectual
limitations, but he does not care for those who insist upon telling him
their physical ailments. He is averse to the letters and journals which
are merely contributions to pathology. Indeed, he would, if he had his
own way, allow the mention of only one malady, the gout. This is
doubtless painful enough in the flesh, but in a book it has many
pleasant associations. Its intervals seem conducive to reminiscence, and
its twinges are the occasions of eloquent objurgations which light up
many an otherwise colorless page.

With all his tolerance of vanity he dislikes that inverted kind which
induces certain morbid persons to write out painful confessions of their
own sins. He is willing to believe that they are far from perfect, but
he is sceptical in regard to their claims to be the chief of sinners. It
is hard to attain distinction in a line where there is so much
competition.

When he finds a book of Life and Letters unreadable, he does not bring a
railing accusation against either the biographer or the biographee.

They may both have been interesting persons, though the result in cold
print is not exhilarating. He knows how volatile is the charm of
personality, and how hard it is to preserve the best things. His friend,
who is a great diner-out, says: "Those were delightful people I met at
dinner yesterday, and what a capital story the judge told! I laugh every
time I think about it."

"What story?" asks the Gentle Reader, eager for the crumbs that fall
from the witty man's table.

"I can't remember just what it was about, or what was the point of it;
but it was a good story, and you would have thought so, too, if you had
heard the judge tell it."

"I certainly should," replies the Gentle Reader, "and I shall always
believe, on your testimony, that the judge is one of the best
story-tellers in existence."

In like manner he believes in interesting things that great men must
have done which unfortunately were not taken down by any one at the
time.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Gentle Reader himself is not much at home in fashionable literary
society. He is a shy person, and his embarrassment is increased by the
consciousness that he seldom gets round to a book till after people are
through talking about it. Not that he prides himself on this fact; for
he is far from cherishing the foolish prejudice against new books.

"'David Copperfield' was a new book once, and it was as good then as it
is now." It simply happens that there are so many good books that it is
hard to keep up with the procession. Besides, he has discovered that the
books that are talked about can be talked about just as well without
being read; this leaves him more time for his old favorites.

"I have a sweet little story for you," says the charming authoress. "I
am sure you like sweet little stories."

"Only one lump, if you please," says the Gentle Reader.

In spite of his genial temperament there are some subjects on which he
is intolerant. When he picks up a story that turns out to be only a
Tract for the Times, he turns indignantly on the author.

"Sirrah," he cries, under the influence of deep feeling, relapsing into
the vernacular of romance, "you gained access to me under the plea that
you were going to please me; and now that you have stolen a portion of
my time, you throw off all disguise, and admit that you entered with
intent to instruct, and that you do not care whether you please me or
not! I've a mind to have you arrested for obtaining my attention under
false pretenses! How villainously we are imposed upon! Only the other
day a man came to me highly recommended as an architect. I employed him
to build me a Castle in Spain, regardless of expense. When I suggested a
few pleasant embellishments, the wretch refused on the ground that he
never saw anything of the kind in the town he came from,--Toledo, Ohio.
If he had pleaded honest poverty of invention I should have forgiven
him, but he took a high and mighty tone with me, and said that it was
against his principles to allow any incident that was not probable. 'Who
said that it should be probable?' I replied. 'It is your business to
make it _seem_ probable.'"

He highly disapproves of what he considers the cheese-paring economy on
the part of certain novelists in the endowment of their characters.
"Their traits are so microscopic, and require such minute analysis, that
I get half through the book before I know which is which. It seems as if
the writers were not sure that there was enough human nature to go
around. They should study the good old story of Aboukir and Abousir.

"'There were in the city of Alexandria two men,--one was a dyer, and his
name was Aboukir; the other was a barber, and his name was Abousir. They
were neighbors, and the dyer was a swindler, a liar, and a person of
exceeding wickedness.'

"Now, there the writer and reader start fair. There are no unnecessary
concealments. You know that the dyer is a villain, and you are on your
guard. You are not told in the first paragraph about the barber, but you
take it for granted that he is an excellent, well-meaning man, who is
destined to become enormously wealthy. And so it turns out. If our
writers would only follow this straightforward method we should hear
less about nervous prostration among the reading classes." He is very
severe on the whimsical notion, that never occurred to any one until the
last century, of saying that the heroine is not beautiful.

"Such a remark is altogether gratuitous. When I become attached to a
young lady in fiction she always appears to me to be an extraordinarily
lovely creature. It's sheer impertinence for the author to intrude,
every now and then, just to call my attention to the fact that her
complexion is not good, and that her features are irregular. It's bad
manners,--and, besides, I don't believe that it's true."

Nothing, however, so offends the Gentle Reader as the trick of
elaborating a plot and then refusing to elucidate it, and leaving
everything at loose ends. He feels toward this misdirected ingenuity as
Miss Edgeworth's Harry did toward the conundrum which his sister
proposed.

"This is quite different," he said, "from the others. The worst of it is
that after laboring ever so hard at one riddle it does not in the least
lead to another. The next is always on some other principle."

"Yes, to be sure," said Lucy. "Nobody who knows how to puzzle would give
two riddles of the same kind; that would be too easy."

"But then, without something to guide one," said Harry, "there is no
getting on."

"Not in your regular way," said Lucy.

"That is the very thing I complain of," said Harry.

"Complain! But my dear Harry, riddles are meant only to divert one."

"But they do not divert me," said Harry; "they only puzzle me."

The Gentle Reader is inclined to impute unworthy motives to the writer
whose work merely puzzles him.

"The lazy unscrupulous fellow takes a job, and then throws it up and
leaves me to finish it for him. It's a clear breach of contract! That
sort of thing would never have been allowed in any well-governed
community. Fancy what would have happened in the court of Shahriar,
where story-telling was taken seriously."

Sheherazade has got Sindbad on the moving island.

"How did he get off?" asks the Sultan.

"That's for your majesty to find out," answers Sheherazade archly.
"Maybe he got off, and maybe he didn't. That's the problem."

"Off with her head!" says the Sultan.

When sore beset by novelists who, under the guise of fiction, attempt to
saddle him with "the weary weight of all this unintelligible world," the
Gentle Reader takes refuge with one who has never deceived him.

"What shall it be?" says Sir Walter.

"As you please, Sir Walter."

"No! As _you_ please, Gentle Reader. If you have nothing else in mind,
how would this do for a start?--

    'Waken! Lords and Ladies gay!
     On the mountain dawns the day.'

It's a fine morning, and it's a gallant company!
Let's go with them!"

"Let's!" cries the Gentle Reader.




The Enjoyment of Poetry


Browning's description of the effect of
the recital of classic poetry upon a band of
piratical Greeks must seem to many persons to
be exaggerated:--

"Then, because Greeks are Greeks, and hearts are hearts,
 And poetry is power, they all outbroke
 In a great joyous laughter with much love."

Because Americans are Americans, and business is business, and time is
money, and life is earnest, we take our poetry much more seriously than
that. We are ready to form classes to study it and to discuss it, but
these solemn assemblies are not likely to be disturbed by outbursts of
"great joyous laughter."

We usually accept poetry as mental discipline. It is as if the poet
said, "Go to, now. I will produce a masterpiece." Thereupon the
conscientious reader answers, "Very well; I can stand it. I will apply
myself with all diligence, that by means of it I may improve my mind."
Who has not sometimes quailed before the long row of British Poets in
uniform binding, standing stiffly side by side, like so many British
grenadiers on dress parade? Who has not felt his courage ooze away at
the sight of those melancholy volumes labeled Complete Poetical Works?
Poetical Remains they used to call them, and there is something funereal
in their aspect.

The old hymn says, "Religion never was designed to make our pleasures
less," and the same thing ought to be said about poetry. The distaste
for poetry arises largely from the habit of treating it as if it were
only a more difficult kind of prose. We are so much under the tyranny of
the scientific method that the habits of the school-room intrude, and we
try to extract instruction from what was meant to give us joy. The
prosaic commentary obscures the beauty of the text, so that

    "The glad old romance, the gay chivalrous story,
     With its fables of faery, its legends of glory,
     Is turned to a tedious instruction, not new,
     To the children, who read it insipidly through."

One of the most ruthless invasions of the prosaic faculties into the
realm of poetry comes from the thirst for general information. When this
thirst becomes a disease, it is not satisfied with census reports and
encyclopaedia articles, but values literature according to the number of
facts presented. Suppose these lines from "Paradise Lost" to be taken
for study:--

    "Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
     In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades
     High over-arched embower, or scattered sedge
     Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed
     Hath vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew
     Busiris and his Memphian chivalry."

What an opportunity this presents to the schoolmaster! "Come now," he
cries with pedagogic glee, "answer me a few questions. Where is
Vallombrosa? What is the character of its autumnal foliage? Bound
Etruria. What is sedge? Explain the myth of Orion? Point out the
constellation on the map of the heavens. Where is the Red Sea? Who was
Busiris? By what other name was he known? Who were the Memphian
Chivalry?"

Here is material for exhaustive research in geography, ancient and
modern, history, botany, astronomy, meteorology, chronology, and
archaeology. The industrious student may get almost as much information
out of "Paradise Lost" as from one of those handy compilations of useful
knowledge, which are sold on the railway cars for twenty-five cents. As
for the poetry of Milton, that is another matter.

       *       *       *       *       *

Next to the temptation to use a poem as a receptacle for a mass of
collateral information is that to use it for the display of one's own
penetration. As in the one case it is treated as if it were an
encyclopaedia article, in the other it is treated as if it were a verbal
puzzle. It is taken for granted that the intention of the poet is to
conceal thought, and the game is for the reader to find it out. We are
hunting for hidden meanings, and we greet one another with the grim
salutation of the creatures in the jungle: "Good hunting!" "What is the
meaning of this passage?" Who has not heard this sudden question
propounded in regard to the most transparent sentence from an author who
is deemed worthy of study? The uninitiated, in the simplicity of his
heart, might answer that he probably means what he says. Not at all; if
that were so, "what are we here for?" We are here to find hidden
meanings, and one who finds the meaning simple must be stopped, as
Armado stops Moth, with

    "Define, define, well-educated infant."

It is a verbal masquerade to which we have been invited. No knowing what
princes in disguise, as well as anarchists and nihilists and other
objectionably interesting persons, may be discovered when the time for
unmasking comes.

Now, the effect of all this is that many persons turn away from the
poets altogether. Why should they spend valuable time in trying to
unravel the meaning of lines which were invented to baffle them? There
are plenty of things we do not understand, without going out of our way
to find them. Then, as Pope observes,

    "True No-meaning puzzles more than Wit."

The poets themselves, as if conscious that they are objects of
suspicion, are inclined to be apologetic, and endeavor to show that
they are doing business on a sound prosaic basis. Wordsworth set the
example of such painstaking self-justification. His conscience compelled
him to make amends to the literal minded Public for poetic
indiscretions, and to offer to settle all claims for damages. What a
shame-faced excuse he makes for the noble lines on Rob Roy's grave. "I
have since been told that I was misinformed as to the burial-place of
Rob Roy; if so, I may plead in excuse that I wrote on apparently good
authority, namely that of a well-educated lady who lived at the head of
the lake."

One is reminded of the preface to the works of The Sweet Singer of
Michigan: "This little book is composed of truthful pieces. All those
which speak of being killed, died, or drowned are truthful songs, others
are more truth than poetry."

It is against this mistaken conscientiousness that the Gentle Reader
protests. He insists that the true "defense of poesy" is that it has an
altogether different function from prose. It is not to be appreciated by
the prosaic understanding; unless, indeed, that awkward faculty be
treated to some Delsartean decomposing exercises to get rid of its
stiffness.

"When I want more truth than poetry," he says, "I will go directly to
The Sweet Singer of Michigan, or I will inquire of the well-educated
lady who lives at the head of the lake. I do not like to have a poet
troubled about such small matters."

Then he reads with approval the remarks of one of his own order who
lived in the seventeenth century, who protests against those "who take
away the liberty of a poet and fetter his feet in the shackles of an
historian. For why should a poet doubt in story to mend the intrigues of
fortune by more delightful conveyances of probable fictions because
austere historians have entered into bond to truth; an obligation which
were in poets as foolish and unnecessary as is the bondage of false
martyrs, who lie in chains for a mistaken opinion. But by this I would
imply that truth, narrative and past, is the idol of historians (who
worship a dead thing), and truth operative and by effects continually
alive is the mistress of poets, who hath not her existence in matter but
in reason."

I am well aware that the attitude of the Gentle Reader seems to many
strenuous persons to be unworthy of our industrial civilization. These
persons insist that we shall make hard work of our poetry, if for no
other reason than to preserve our self-respect. Here as elsewhere they
insist upon the stern law that if a man will not labor neither shall he
eat. Even the poems of an earlier and simpler age which any child can
understand must be invested with some artificial difficulty. The learned
guardians of these treasures insist that they cannot be appreciated
unless there has been much preliminary wrestling with a "critical
apparatus," and much delving among "original sources." This is the same
principle that makes the prudent householder provide a sharp saw and a
sufficient pile of cord wood as a test to be applied to the stranger who
asks for a breakfast. There is much academic disapproval of one who in
defiance of all law insists on enjoying poetry after his own "undressed,
unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather unlettered, or
ratherest unconfirmed fashion." I, however, so thoroughly sympathize
with the Gentle Reader that I desire to present his point of view.

To understand poetry is a vain ambition. That which we fully understand
is the part that is not poetry. It is that which passes our
understanding which has the secret in itself. There is an incommunicable
grace that defies all attempts at analysis. Poetry is like music; it is
fitted, not to define an idea or to describe a fact, but to voice a
mood. The mood may be the mood of a very simple person,--the mood of a
shepherd watching his flocks, or of a peasant in the fields; or, on the
other hand, it may be the mood of a philosopher whose mind has been
engrossed with the most subtle problems of existence. But in each case
the mood, by some suggestion, must be communicated to us. Thoughts and
facts must be transfigured; they must come to us as through some finer
medium. As we are told that we must experience religion before we know
what religion is, so we must experience poetry. The poet is the
enchanter, and we are the willing victims of his spells:--

                                   "Would'st thou see
    A man i' th' clouds and hear him speak to thee?
    Would'st thou be in a dream and yet not sleep?
    Or would'st thou in a moment laugh and weep?
    Wouldest thou lose thyself and catch no harm?
    And find thyself again without a charm?

           *       *       *       *       *
                                  O then come hither
    And lay my book, thy head and heart together."

Only the reader who yields to the charm can dream the dream. The poet
may weave his story of the most common stuff, but "there's magic in the
web of it." If we are conscious of this magical power, we forgive the
lack of everything else. The poet may be as ignorant as Aladdin himself,
but he has a strange power over our imaginations. At his word they obey,
traversing continents, building palaces, painting pictures. They say,
"We are ready to obey as thy slaves, and the slaves of all that have
that lamp in their hands,--we and the other slaves of the lamp."

This is the characteristic of the poet's power. He does not construct a
work of the imagination,--he makes our imaginations do that. That is why
the fine passages of elaborate description in verse are usually
failures. The verse-maker describes accurately and at length. The poet
speaks a word, and Presto! change! We are transported into a new land,
and our eyes are "baptized into the grace and privilege of seeing."
Many have taken in hand to write descriptions of spring; and some few
painstaking persons have nerved themselves to read what has been
written. I turn to the prologue of the "Canterbury Tales;" it is not
about spring, it is spring, and I am among those who long to go upon a
pilgrimage. A description of a jungle is an impertinence to one who has
come under the spell of William Blake's

    "Tiger! tiger! burning bright
    In the forest of the night."

Those fierce eyes glowing there in the darkness sufficiently illuminate
the scene. Immediately it is midsummer, and we feel all its delicious
languor when Browning's David sings of

    "The sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell
     That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well."

The first essential to the enjoyment of poetry is leisure. The demon
Hurry is the tempter, and knowledge is the forbidden fruit in the poet's
paradise. To enjoy poetry, you must renounce not only your easily
besetting sins, but your easily besetting virtues as well. You must not
be industrious, or argumentative, or conscientious, or strenuous. I do
not mean that you must be a person of unlimited leisure and without
visible means of support. I have known some very conscientious students
of literature who, when off duty, found time to enjoy poetry. I mean
that if you have only half an hour for poetry, for that half hour you
must be in a leisurely frame of mind.

The poet differs from the novelist in that he requires us to rest from
our labors. The ordinary novel is easy reading, because it takes us as
we are, in the midst of our hurry. The mind has been going at express
speed all the day; what the novelist does is to turn the switch, and off
we go on another track. The steam is up, and the wheels go around just
the same. The great thing is still action, and we eagerly turn the pages
to see what is going to happen next,--unless we are reading some of our
modern realistic studies of character. Even then we are lured on by the
expectation that, at the last moment, something may happen. But when we
turn to the poets, we are in the land of the lotus-eaters. The
atmosphere is that of a perfect day,

    "Whereon it is enough for me
     Not to be doing, but to be."

Into this land our daily cares cannot follow us. It is an

          "enchanted land, we know not where,
    But lovely as a landscape in a dream."

Once in this enchanted country, haste seems foolish. Why should we toil
on as if we were walking for a wager? It is as if one had the privilege
of joining Izaak Walton as he loiters in the cool shade of a sweet
honeysuckle hedge, and should churlishly trudge on along the dusty
highway rather than accept the gentle angler's invitation: "Pray, let us
rest ourselves in this sweet, shady arbor of jessamine and myrtle; and I
will requite you with a bottle of sack, and when you have pledged me, I
will repeat the verses I promised you." One may, as a matter of strict
conscience, be both a pedestrian and a prohibitionist, and yet not find
it in his heart to decline such an invitation.

The poets who delight us with their verses are not always serious-minded
persons with an important thought to communicate. When I read,

    "In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
     A stately pleasure-dome decree,"

I am not a bit wiser than I was before, but I am a great deal happier;
although I have not the slightest idea where Xanadu was, and only the
vaguest notion of Kublai Khan.

There are poems whose charm lies in their illusiveness. Fancy any one
trying to explain Rossetti's "Blessed Damozel." Yet when the mood is on
us we see her as she leans

    "From the gold bar of Heaven:
     Her eyes were deeper than the depth
     Of waters stilled at even;
     She had three lilies in her hand
     And the stars in her hair were seven."

We look over the mystic ramparts and are dimly conscious that

             "the souls mounting up to God
    Went by her like thin flames."

This is not astronomy nor theology, nor any of the things we know all
about--it is only poetry.

Let no one trouble me by attempting to elucidate "Childe Roland to the
Dark Tower came." I do not care for a Baedeker. I prefer to lose my way.
I love the darkness rather than light. I do not care for a topographical
chart of the hills that

         "like giants at a hunting lay,
    Chin upon hand."

The mood in which we enjoy such poetry is that described in Emerson's
"Forerunners."

    "Long I followed happy guides,
     I could never reach their sides.

           *       *       *       *       *

     But no speed of mine avails
     To hunt upon their shining trails.

           *       *       *       *       *

     On eastern hills I see their smokes,
     Mixed with mist by distant lochs.
     I met many travelers
     Who the road had surely kept:
     They saw not my fine revelers."

If our thoughts make haste to join these "fine revelers," rejoicing in
the sense of freedom and mystery, delighting in the mist and the wind,
careless of attaining so that we may follow the shining trails, all is
well.

As there are poems which are not meant to be understood, so there are
poems that are not meant to be read; that is, to be read through. There
is Keats's "Endymion," for instance. I have never been able to get on
with it. Yet it is delightful,--that is the very reason why I do not
care to get on with it. Wherever I begin, I feel that I might as well
stay where I am. It is a sweet wilderness into which the reader is
introduced.

                 "Paths there were many,
    Winding through palmy fern and rushes fenny
    And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly
    To a wide lawn...
                      Who could tell
    The freshness of the space of heaven above,
    Edged round with dark tree-tops?--through which a dove
    Would often beat its wings, and often, too,
    A little cloud would move across the blue."

We are brought into the very midst of this pleasantness. Deep in the
wood we see fair faces and garments white. We see the shepherds coming
to the woodland altar.

    "A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks
     As may be read of in Arcadian books;
     Such as sat list'ning round Apollo's pipe
     When the great deity, for earth too ripe,
     Let his divinity o'erflowing die
     In music, through the vales of Thessaly."

We see the venerable priest pouring out the sweet-scented wine, and then
we see the young Endymion himself:--

                            "He seemed
    To common lookers-on like one who dreamed
    Of idleness in groves Elysian."

What happened next? What did Endymion do? Really, I do not know. It is
so much pleasanter, at this point, to close the book, and dream "of
idleness in groves Elysian." The chances are that when one turns to the
poem again he will not begin where he left off, but at the beginning,
and read as if he had never read it before; or rather, with more
enjoyment because he has read it so many times:--

    "A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
     Its loveliness increases; it will never
     Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
     A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
     Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing."

Shelley describes a mood such as Keats brings to us:--

    "My spirit like a charmed bark doth swim
     Upon the liquid waves of thy sweet singing
     Far away into regions dim
     Of rapture, as a boat with swift sails winging
     Its way adown some many-winding river."

He who finds himself afloat upon the "many-winding river" throws aside
the laboring oar. It is enough to float on,--he cares not whither.

What greater pleasure is there than in the "Idylls of the King" provided
we do not study them, but dream them. We must enter into the poet's own
mood:--

                             "I seemed
    To sail with Arthur under looming shores,
    Point after point, till on to dawn, when dreams
    Begin to feel the truth and stir of day."

It is good to be there, in that far-off time, good to come to Camelot:--

    "Built by old kings, age after age,
     So strange and rich and dim."

All we see of kings, and magicians, and ladies, and knights is "strange
and rich and dim." Over everything is a luminous haze. There are

           "hollow tramplings up and down,
    And muffled voices heard, and shadows past."

There is the flashing of swords, the weaving of spells, the seeing of
visions. All these things become real to us; not simply the stainless
king and the sinful queen, the prowess of Lancelot and the love of
Elaine, but the magic of Merlin and the sorceries of Vivien, with her
charms

    "Of woven paces and of waving hands."

And we must stand at last with King Arthur on the shore of the mystic
sea, and see the barge come slowly with the three queens, "black-stoled,
black-hooded, like a dream;" and hear across the water a cry,

        "As it were one voice, an agony
    Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills
    All night in a waste land, where no one comes,
    Or hath come, since the making of the world."

But what good is there in all this? Why waste time on idle dreams? We
hear Walt Whitman's challenge to romantic poetry:--

    "Arthur vanished with all his knights, Merlin and Lancelot
         and Galahad, all gone, dissolved utterly like an exhalation;
     Embroidered, dazzling, foreign world, with all its gorgeous
         legends, myths,
     Its kings and castles proud, its priests and warlike lords and
         courtly dames,
     Passed to its charnel vault, coffined with crown and armor on,
     Blazoned with Shakspere's purple page
     And dirged by Tennyson's sweet sad rhyme."

Away with the old romance! Make room for the modern bard, who is

    "Bluffed not a bit by drain-pipes, gasometers,
        and artificial fertilizers."

The Gentle Reader, also, is not to be bluffed by any useful things,
however unpleasant they may be, but he winces a little as he reads that
the "far superber themes for poets and for art" include the teaching by
the poet of how

  "To use the hammer and the saw (rip or cross-cut),
   To cultivate a turn for carpentering, plastering, painting,
   To work as tailor, tailoress, nurse, hostler, porter,
   To invent a little something ingenious to aid the washing,
      cooking, cleaning."

The Muse of Poetry shrieks at the mighty lines in praise of
"leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making," and the rest.
Boiler-making, she protests, is a useful industry and highly to be
commended, but it is not music. When asked to give a reason why she
should not receive all these things as poetry, the Muse is much
embarrassed. "It's all true," she says. "Leather-dressing and
boiler-making are undoubted realities, while Arthur and Lancelot may be
myths." Yet she is not quite ready to be off with the old love and on
with the new,--it's all so sudden.

Whitman himself furnishes the best illustrations of the difference
between poetry and prose. He comes like another Balaam to prophesy
against those who associate poetry with beauty of form and melody of
words; and then the poetic spirit seizes upon him and lifts him into the
region of harmony. In the Song of the Universal he declares that--

    "From imperfection's murkiest cloud
     Darts always forth one ray of perfect light,
     One flash of heaven's glory.
     To fashion's, customs discord,
     To the mad Babel's din, the deafening orgies,
     Soothing each lull, a strain is heard, just heard
     From some far shore, the final chorus sounding.
     O the blest eyes, the happy hearts
     That see, that know the guiding thread so fine
     Along the mighty labyrinth."

There speaks the poet declaring the true faith, which except a man
believe he is condemned everlastingly to the outer darkness. His task is
selective. No matter about the murkiness of the cloud he must make us
see the ray of perfect light. In the mad Babel-din he must hear and
repeat the strain of pure music. As to the field of choice, it may be as
wide as the world, but he must choose as a poet, and not after the
manner of the man with the muck-rake.

    "In this broad earth of ours
     Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
     Inclosed and safe within the central heart
     Nestles the seed perfection."

When the poet delves in the grossness and the slag, he does so as one
engaged in the search for the perfect.

"My feeling," says the Gentle Reader, "about the proper material for
poetry, is very much like that of Whitman in regard to humanity--

  'When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite, and are my
      friendly companions,
   I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as
      I do of men and women like you.'

"So I say, when drain pipes and cross-cut saws and the beef on the
butcher's stalls are invested with beautiful associations and thrill my
soul in some mysterious fashion, then I will make as much of these
things as I do of the murmuring pines and the hemlocks. When a poet
makes bank clerks and stevedores and wood-choppers to loom before my
imagination in heroic proportions, I will receive them as I do the
heroes of old. But, mind you, the miracle must be actually performed; I
will not be put off with a prospectus."

Now and then the miracle is performed. We are made to feel the romance
that surrounds the American pioneer, we hear the

    "Crackling blows of axes sounding musically, driven by strong arms."

But, for the most part, Whitman, when under the influence of deep
feeling, forgets his theory, and uses as his symbols those things which
have already been invested with poetical associations. Turn to that
marvelous dirge, "When Lilacs last in the Dooryard bloomed." There is
here no catalogue of facts or events, no parade of glaring realism.
Tennyson's "sweet sad rhyme" has nowhere more delicious music than we
find in the measured cadence of these lines. We are not told the news of
the assassination of Lincoln as a man on the street might tell it. It
comes to us through suggestion. We are made to feel a mood, not to
listen to the description of an event. There is symbolism, suggestion,
color mystery. We inhale the languorous fragrance of the lilacs; we see
the drooping star; in secluded recesses we hear "a shy and hidden bird"
warbling a song; there are dim-lit churches and shuddering organs and
tolling bells, and there is one soul heart-broken, seeing all and
hearing all.

    "Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to
           keep, for the dead I loved so well,
     For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands--and
           this for his dear sake,
     Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
     There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim."

This is real poetry, and yet while we yield to the charm we are
conscious that it is made up of the old familiar elements.

Tennyson's apology to a utilitarian age was not needed:--

    "Perhaps some modern touches here and there
     Redeemed it from the charge of nothingness."

The "modern touches" we can spare. The modern life we have always with
us; but it is a rare privilege to enjoy the best things of the past. It
is the poet who is the minister of this fine grace. The historian tells
us what men of the past did, the philosopher tells us how their
civilizations developed and decayed; we smile at their superstitions,
and pride ourselves upon our progress. But the ethereal part has
vanished, that which made their very superstitions beautiful and cast a
halo over their struggles. These are the elements out of which the poet
creates his world, into which we may enter. In the order of historic
development chivalry must give way before democracy, and loyalty to the
king must fade before the increasing sense of liberty and equality; but
the highest ideals of chivalry may remain. Imaginative and romantic
poetry has this high mission to preserve what otherwise would be lost.
It lifts the mind above the daily routine into the region of pure joy.
Whatever necessary changes take place in the world we find, in

    "All lovely tales which we have heard or read,
     An endless fountain of immortal drink,
     Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink."

I have said that one may be a true poet without having any very
important thought to communicate, but it must be said that most of the
great poets have been serious thinkers as well. They have had their
philosophy of life, their thoughts about nature and about human duty and
destiny. It is the function of the poet not only to create for us an
ideal world and to fill it with ideal creatures, but also to reveal to
us the ideal element in the actual world.

"I do not know what poetical is," says Audrey. "Is it honest in deed and
word? Is it a true thing?" We must not answer with Touchstone: "No,
truly! for the truest poetry is the most feigning."

The poetical interpretation of the world is not feigning; it is a true
thing,--the truest thing of which we can know. The grace and sublimity
which we see through the poet's eyes are real. We must, however, still
insist on our main contention. The poet, if he is to hold us, must
always be a poet. His thought must be in solution, and not appear as a
dull precipitate of prose. He may be philosophical, but he must not
philosophize. He may be moral, but he must not moralize. He may be
religious, but let him spare his homilies.

"Whatever the philosopher saith should be done," said Sir Philip Sidney;
"the peerless poet giveth a perfect picture of it. He yieldeth to the
power of the mind an image of that of which the philosopher bestoweth
but a wordish description.... The poet doth not only show the way, but
doth give so sweet a prospect unto the way as will entice any man to
enter it. Nay, he doth as if your journey should lie through a fair
vineyard, at first give you a cluster of grapes."

We have a right to ask our poets to be pleasant companions even when
they discourse on the highest themes. Even when they have theories of
their own about what we should enjoy, let us not allow them to foist
upon us "wordish descriptions" of excellent things instead of poetry.
When the poet invites me to go with him I first ask, "Let me taste your
grapes."

You remember Mr. By-ends in the "Pilgrim's Progress,"--how he said of
Christian and Hopeful, "They are headstrong men who think it their duty
to rush on in their journey in all weathers, while I am for waiting for
wind or tide. I am for Religion when he walks in his silver slippers in
the sunshine." That was very reprehensible in Mr. By-ends, and he richly
deserved the rebuke which was afterward administered to him. But when we
change the subject, and speak, not of religion, but of poetry, I confess
that I am very much of Mr. By-ends' way of thinking. There are literary
Puritans who, when they take up the study of a poet, make it a point of
conscience to go on to the bitter end of his poetical works. If they
start with Wordsworth on his "Excursion," they trudge on in all
weathers. They _do_ the poem, as when going abroad they do Europe in six
weeks. As the revival hymn says, "doing is a deadly thing." Let me say,
good Christian and Hopeful, that though I admire your persistence, I
cannot accompany you. I am for a poet only when he puts on his singing
robes and walks in the sunshine. As for those times when he goes on
prosing in rhyme from force of habit, I think it is more respectful as
well as more pleasurable to allow him to walk alone.

       *       *       *       *       *

Shelley's definition of poetry as "the record of the best and happiest
moments of the happiest and best minds" suggests the whole duty of the
reader. All that is required of him is to obey the Golden Rule. There
must be perfect reciprocity and fraternal sympathy. The poet, being
human, has his unhappy hours, when all things are full of labor. Upon
such hours the Gentle Reader does not intrude. In their happiest moments
they meet as if by chance. In this encounter they are pleased with one
another and with the world they live in. How could it be otherwise? It
is indeed a wonderful world, transfigured in the light of thought.
Familiar objects lose their sharp outlines and become symbols of
universal realities. Likenesses, before unthought of, appear. Nature
becomes a mirror of the soul, and answers instantly to each passing
mood. Words are no longer chosen, they come unbidden as the poet and his
reader

        "mount to Paradise
    By the stairway of surprise."




The Mission of Humor


In "The Last Tournament" we are told how

    "Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his moods
     Had made mock-knight of Arthur's Table Round,
     At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods,
     Danced like a withered leaf before the hall."

That is the view which many worthy people take of the humorist. He is
Sir Dagonet. Among the serious persons who are doing the useful work of
the world, discovering its laws, classifying its facts, forecasting its
future, this light-minded, light-hearted creature comes with his
untimely jests. In their idle moments they tolerate the mock-knight, but
when important business is on hand they dismiss him, as did Sir
Tristram, with

    "Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?"

This half-contemptuous view is very painful to the Gentle Reader who,
though he may seem to some to take his poetry too lightly, is disposed
to take his humor rather seriously. Humor seems to him to belong to the
higher part of our nature. It is not the enjoyment of a grotesque image
in a convex mirror, but, rather, the recognition of fleeting forms of
truth.

"I have brought you a funny book, Gentle Reader," says the Professional
Humorist.

"Thank you," he answers, struggling against his melancholy forebodings.
"You will pardon me if I seem to take my pleasures sadly."

It is hard for him to force a smile as he watches the procession of
jokes, each as broad as it is long. This ostentatious jocosity is not to
his liking.

"Thackeray," he says, "defines humor as a mixture of love and wit.
Humor, therefore, being of the nature of love, should not behave itself
unseemly."

He cannot bear to see it obtruding itself upon the public. Its proper
habit is to hide from observation "as if the wren taught it
concealment." When a Happy Thought ventures abroad it should be as a
royal personage traveling _incognito_.

This is a big world, and it is serious business to live in it. It makes
many demands. It requires intensity of thought and strenuousness of will
and solidity of judgment. Great tasks are set before us. We catch
fugitive glimpses of beauty, and try to fix them forever in perfect
form,--that is the task of art. We see thousands of disconnected facts,
and try to arrange them in orderly sequence,--that is the task of
science. We see the ongoing of eternal force, and seek some reason for
it,--that is the task of philosophy.

But when art and science and philosophy have done their best, there is a
great deal of valuable material left over. There are facts that will not
fit into any theory, but which keep popping up at us from the most
unexpected places. Nobody can tell where they come from or why they are
here; but here they are. Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net
result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectnesses. We are
surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many
different ways. Everything is under the reign of strict law; but many
queer things happen, nevertheless. What are we to do with all the waifs
and strays? What are we to do with all the sudden incongruities which
mock at our wisdom and destroy the symmetry of our ideas?

The solemnly logical intelligence ignores their existence. It does not
trouble itself about anything which does not belong to its system. The
system itself has such perfect beauty that it is its own excuse for
being.

More sensitive and less self-centred natures do not find the way so
easy. They allow themselves to be worried by the incongruities which
they cannot ignore. It seems to them that whenever they are in earnest
the world conspires to mock them. Continually they feel that intellect
and conscience are insulted by whipper-snappers of facts that have no
right to be in an orderly universe. They can expose a lie, and feel a
certain superiority in doing it; but a little unclassified,
irreconcilable truth drives them to their wit's end. There it stands in
all its shameless actuality asking, "What do you make of me?"

Just here comes the beneficent mission of humor. It takes these
unassorted realities that are the despair of the sober intelligence, and
extracts from them pure joy. If life depends on the perpetual
adjustment of the organism to its environment, humor is the means by
which the intellectual life is sustained on those occasions when the
expected environment is not there. The adjustment must be made, without
a moment's warning, to an altogether new set of conditions. We are
called upon to swap horses while crossing the stream. It is a method
which the serious minded person does not approve. While arguing the
matter he is unhorsed, and finds himself floundering in the water. The
humorist accepts the situation instantly. As he scrambles upon his new
nag it is with a sense of triumph, for the moment at least, he feels
that he has the best of the bargain.

One may have learned to enjoy the sublime, the beautiful, the useful,
the orderly, but he has missed something if he has not also learned to
enjoy the incongruous, the illusive, and the unexpected. Artistic
sensibility finds its satisfaction only in the perfect. Humor is the
frank enjoyment of the imperfect. Its objects are not so high,--but
there are more of them.

Evolution is a cosmic game of Pussy wants a corner. Each creature has
its eye on some snug corner where it would rest in peace. Each corner
is occupied by some creature that is not altogether satisfied and that
is on the lookout for a larger sphere. There is much beckoning between
those who are desirous of making a change. Now and then some bold spirit
gives up his assured position and scrambles for something better. The
chances are that the adventurer finds it harder to attain the coveted
place than he had thought. For the fact is that there are not corners
enough to go around. If there were enough corners, and every one were
content to stay in the one where he found himself at the beginning, then
the game would be impossible. It is well that this never happens. Nature
looks after that. When things are too homogeneous she breaks them up
into new and amazing kinds of heterogeneity. It is a good game, and one
learns to like it after he enters into the spirit of it.

If the Universe had a place for everything and everything was in its
place, there would be little demand for humor. As a matter of fact the
world is full of all sorts of people, and they are not all in their
proper places. There are amazing incongruities between station and
character. It is not a world that has been reduced to order; it is still
in the making. One may easily grow misanthropic and pessimistic by
dwelling upon the misfits.

    "As to behold desert a beggar born
     And needy nothing trimmed in jollity.

           *       *       *       *       *

     And art made tongue-tied by authority,
     And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
     And folly doctor-like, controlling skill,
     And captive good attending captive ill."

But fortunately these incongruities are not altogether tragical. There
are certain moods when we rather enjoy seeing "needy nothing trimmed in
jollity." We are pleased when Justice Shallow slaps Sir John Falstaff on
the back and says, "Ha! it was a merry night, Sir John." We are not
irritated beyond endurance because in this world where so many virtuous
people have a hard time, such trifling fellows as Sir Toby and Sir
Andrew have their cakes and ale. When folly puts on doctor-like airs it
is not always disagreeable. We would not have Dogberry put off the watch
to give place to some one who could pass the civil service examination.

The humorist, when asked what he thinks of the actual world, would turn
upon his questioner as Touchstone turned upon Corin when he was asked
how he liked the shepherd's life:--

"Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?" The world is not at all like
the descriptions of it, and yet he cannot take a very gloomy view of it.
In respect to itself it is a good world, and yet in respect that it is
not finished it leaves much to be desired. Yet in respect that it leaves
much to be desired, and much to be done by us, it is perhaps better _for
us_ than if it were finished. In respect that many things happen that
are opposed to our views of the eternal fitness of things, it is a
perplexing world. Yet in respect that we have a faculty for enjoying the
occasional unfitness of things, it is delightful. On the whole, he sums
up with Touchstone, "It suits my humor well."

Humor is impossible to the man of one idea. There must be at least two
ideas moving in opposite directions, so that there may be a collision.
Such an accident does not happen in a mind under economical management
that runs only one train of thought a day.

There are many ideas that have a very insecure tenure. They hold their
own as squatters. By and by Science will come along and evict them, but
in the mean time these homely folk make very pleasant neighbors. All
they ask is that we shall not take them too seriously. That a thing is
not to be taken too seriously does not imply that it is either unreal or
unimportant:--it only means that it is not to be taken that way. There
is, for example, a pickaninny on a Southern plantation. The
anthropologist measures his skull and calls it by a long Latin name. The
psychologist carefully records his nervous reactions. The pedagogical
expert makes him the victim of that form of inquisition known as "child
study." The missionary perplexes himself in vain attempting to get at
his soul. Then there comes along a person of another sort. At the first
look, a genial smile of recognition comes over the face of this new
spectator. He is the first one who has seen the pickaninny. The one
essential truth about a black, chubby, kinky-haired pickaninny is that,
when he rolls up his eyes till only the whites are visible, he is
irresistibly funny. This is what theologians term "the substance of
doctrine" concerning the pickaninny.

When Charles Lamb slipped on the London pavement, he found delight in
watching the chimney sweep who stood laughing at his misfortune. "There
he stood irremovable, as though the jest were to last forever, with such
a maximum of glee and minimum of mischief in his mirth--for the grin of
a genuine sweep hath no malice in it--that I could have been content, if
the honor of a gentleman might endure it, to have remained his butt and
his mockery till midnight." There were many middle-aged London citizens
who could no more appreciate that kind of pleasure than a Hottentot
could appreciate an oratorio. That is only saying that the average
citizen and the average Hottentot have, as Wordsworth mildly puts it,
"faculties which they have never used."

The high place that humor holds among our mental processes is evident
when we consider that it is almost the only one that requires that we
shall be thoroughly awake. In our dreams we have many aesthetic
enjoyments, as vague splendors pass before us. At other times there is
an abnormal sensitiveness to the sovereignty, not to say the despotism
of ethics. We feel burdened with the weight of unpardonable sins. We are
able also in our sleep to philosophize after a fashion which is, for the
time, quite satisfactory. At such times we are sure that we have made
important discoveries; if we could only remember what they were. A
thousand incongruities pass through our minds, but there is one thing
which we cannot do. We cannot recognize that they are incongruous. Such
a discovery would immediately awaken us.

Tennyson tells how

          "half awake I heard
    The parson taking wide and wider sweeps,
    Now harping on the church commissioners,
    Now hawking at Geology and schism."

It would be possible for the parson and his congregation to keep on with
that sort of thing Sunday after Sunday. They would discover nothing
absurd in the performance, so long as they were in their usual
semi-somnolent condition.

Humor implies mental alertness and power of discrimination. It also
implies a hospitality toward all the differences that are recognized.
Psychologists speak of the Association of Ideas. It is a pleasant
thought, but it is, in reality, difficult to induce Ideas to associate
in a neighborly way. In many minds the different groups are divided by
conventional lines, and there are aristocratic prejudices separating the
classes from the masses. The Working Hypothesis, honest son of toil that
he is, does not expect so much as a nod of recognition from the High
Moral Principle who walks by in his Sunday clothes. The steady Habit
does not associate with the high-bred Sentiment. They do not belong to
the same set. Only in the mind of the humorist is there a true
democracy. Here everybody knows everybody. Even the priggish Higher
Thought is not allowed to enjoy a sense of superiority. Plain Common
Sense slaps him on the back, calls him by his first name, and bids him
not make a fool of himself.

Of the two ingredients which Thackeray mentions, the first, love, is
that which gives body; the addition of wit gives the effervescence. The
pleasure of wit lies in its unexpectedness. In humor there is the added
pleasure of really liking that which surprises us. It is like meeting an
old friend in an unexpected place. "What, you here?" we say. This is the
kind of pleasure we get from Dr. Johnson's reply to the lady who asked
why he had put a certain definition in his dictionary: "Pure ignorance,
madam."

The fact is that long ago we made the acquaintance of one whom Bunyan
describes as "a brisk young lad named Ignorance." He is a dear friend of
ours, and we are on very familiar terms with him when we are at home;
but we do not expect to meet him in fine society. Suddenly we turn the
corner, and we see him walking arm in arm with so great a man as Dr.
Samuel Johnson. At once we are at our ease in the presence of the great
man; it seems we have a mutual acquaintance.

Another element in real humor is a certain detachment of mind. We must
not be afraid, or jealous, or angry; in order to take a really humorous
view of any character, we must be in a position to see all around it. If
I were brought before Fielding's Squire Western on charge of poaching,
and if I had a pheasant concealed under my coat, I should not be able
to appreciate what an amusing person the squire is. I should be inclined
to take him very seriously.

The small boy who pins a paper to the schoolmaster's coat tail imagines
that he has achieved a masterpiece of humor. But he is not really in a
position to reap the fruits of his perilous adventure. It is a fearful
and precarious joy which he feels. What if the schoolmaster should turn
around? That would be tragedy. Neither the small boy nor the
schoolmaster gets the full flavor of humor. But suppose an old friend of
the schoolmaster happens just then to look in at the door. His delight
in the situation has a mellowness far removed from the anxious,
ambiguous glee of the urchin. He knows that the small boy is not so
wicked as he thinks he is, and the schoolmaster is not so terrible as he
seems. He remembers the time when the schoolmaster was up to the same
pranks. So, from the assured position of middle age, he looks upon the
small boy that was and upon the small boy that is, and finds them both
very good,--much better, indeed, than at this moment they find each
other.

It is this sense of the presence of a tolerant spectator, looking upon
the incidents of the passing hour, which we recognize in the best
literature. Books that are meant simply to be funny are very
short-lived. The first reception of a joke awakens false expectations.
It is received with extravagant heartiness. But when, encouraged by this
hospitality, it returns again and again, its welcome is worn out. There
is something melancholy in a joke deserted in its old age.

The test of real literature is that it will bear repetition. We read
over the same pages again and again, and always with fresh delight. This
bars out all mere jocosity. A certain kind of wit, which depends for its
force on mere verbal brilliancy, has the same effect. The writers whom
we love are those whose humor does not glare or glitter, but which has
an iridescent quality. It is the perpetual play of light and color which
enchants us. We are conscious all the time that the light is playing on
a real thing. It is something more than a clever trick; there is an
illumination.

Erasmus, in dedicating his "Praise of Folly" to Sir Thomas More,
says:--

"I conceived that this would not be least approved by you, inasmuch as
you are wont to be delighted with such kind of pleasantry as is neither
unlearned nor altogether insipid. Such is your sweetness of temper that
you can and like to carry yourself to all men a man of all hours. Unless
an overweening opinion of myself may have made me blind, I have praised
folly not altogether foolishly. I have moderated my style, that the
understanding reader may perceive that my endeavor is to make mirth
rather than to bite."

Erasmus has here described a kind of humor that is consistent with
seriousness of purpose. The characteristics he notes are good temper,
insight into human nature, a certain reserve, and withal a gentle irony
that makes the praise of folly not unpleasing to the wise. It is a way
of looking at things characteristic of men like Chaucer and Cervantes
and Montaigne and Shakespeare, and Bunyan and Fielding and Addison,
Goldsmith, Charles Lamb and Walter Scott. In America, we have seen it in
Irving and Dr. Holmes and James Russell Lowell.

I have left out of the list one whom nature endowed for the supreme man
of humor among Englishmen,--Jonathan Swift. Charles Lamb argues against
the common notion that it is a misfortune to a man to have a surly
disposition. He says it is not his misfortune; it is the misfortune of
his neighbors. It is our misfortune that the man who might have been the
English Cervantes had a surly disposition. Dean Swift's humor would have
been irresistible, if it had only been good humor.

One of the best examples of humor pervading a work of the utmost
seriousness of purpose is Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." The "Pilgrim's
Progress" is not a funny book; the humor is not tacked on as a moral is
tacked on to a fable, nor does it appear by way of an interlude to
relieve the tension of the mind. It is so deeply interfused, so a part
and parcel of the religious teaching, that many readers overlook it
altogether. One may read the book a dozen times without a smile, and
after that he may recognize the touch of the born humorist on every
page. Bunyan himself recognized the quality of his work:--

    "Some there be that say he laughs too loud,
     And some do say his head is in a cloud.

           *       *       *       *       *

     One may, I think, say both his laughs and cries
     May well be guessed at by his wat'ry eyes.
     Some things are of that nature as to make
     One's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache."

There speaks the real humorist; not the Merry Andrew laughing at his
meaningless pranks, but one whose quick imagination is at play when his
conscience is most overtasked. Even in the Valley of Humiliation, where
the fierce Apollyon was wont to fright the pilgrims, they heard a boy
singing cheerily,--

    "He that is down need fear no fall."

And Mr. Great Heart said: "Do you hear him? I dare say that boy lives a
merrier life, and wears more of the herb called heart's-ease in his
bosom, than he that is clad in silk and velvet." It is a fine spirit
that can find time, on such a strenuous pilgrimage, to listen to these
wayside songs.

Take the character sketch of Mr. Fearing:--

"Now as they walked together, the guide asked the old gentleman if he
did not know one Mr. Fearing that came on a pilgrimage out of his
parts?

"_Honest_. Yes, very well, said he. He was a man that had the root of
the matter in him, but he was one of the most troublesome pilgrims that
ever I met in all my days.

"_Great Heart_. Why, he was always afraid he should come short of
whither he had a desire to go. Everything frightened him that he heard
anybody speak of that had but the least appearance of opposition in it.
I hear that he lay roaring in the Slough of Despond for about a month
together.... Well, after he had lain in the Slough of Despond a great
while, as I have told you, one sunshine morning, I do not know how, he
ventured and so got over; but when he was over he would scarce believe
it. He had, I believe, a Slough of Despond in his mind, a slough he
carried everywhere with him.... When he came to the Hill Difficulty he
made no stick at that; nor did he much fear the lions; for you must know
his trouble was not about such things as those.... When he was come at
Vanity Fair, I thought he would have fought with all the men at the
fair.... He was a man of choice spirit though he kept himself very low."

Poor Mr. Fearing. We all have been made uncomfortable by him. But we
love Bunyan for that touch about the lions, for we know it is true. Easy
things go hard with Mr. Fearing; but give him something difficult, like
going up San Juan hill in the face of a withering fire, and Mr. Fearing
can keep up with the best Rough Rider of them all. It takes Mr. Great
Heart to do justice to Mr. Fearing.

It is the mission of a kindly humor to take a person full of foibles and
weaknesses and suddenly to reveal his unsuspected nobleness. And there
is considerable room for this kind of treatment; for there are a great
many lovable people whose virtues are not chronic, but sporadic. These
virtues grow up, one knows not how, without visible means of support in
the general character, and in defiance of moral science; and yet it is a
real pleasure to see them.

There are two very different kinds of humor. One we naturally describe
as a flavor, the other as an atmosphere. We speak of the flavor of the
essays of Charles Lamb. It is a discovery we make very much as Bobo made
the discovery of roast pig. The mind of Charles Lamb was like a
capacious kettle hanging from the crane in the fireplace; all sorts of
savory ingredients were thrown into it, and the whole was kept gently
simmering, but never allowed to come to the boil.

Lamb says, "C. declares that a man cannot have a good conscience who
refuses apple dumpling, and I confess that I am of the same opinion." I
am inclined to pass that kind of judgment on the person who does not
have a comfortable feeling of satisfaction in reading for the twentieth
time The Complaint on the Decay of Beggars, and the Praise of Chimney
Sweepers.

Charles Lamb is not jocose. He likes to theorize. Now, your prosaic
theorist has a very laborious task. He tries to get all the facts under
one formula. This is very ticklish business. It is like the game of Pigs
in Clover. He gets all the facts but one into the inner circle. By a
dexterous thrust he gets that one in, and the rest are out.

Lamb is a philosopher who does not have this trouble. He does not try to
fit all the facts to one theory. That seems to him too economical, when
theories are so cheap. With large-hearted generosity he provides a
theory for every fact. He clothes the ragged exception with all the
decent habiliments of a universal law. He picks up a little ragamuffin
of a fact, and warms its heart and points out its great relations. He is
not afraid of generalizing from insufficient data; he has the art of
making a delightful summer out of a single swallow. When we turn to the
essay on the Melancholy of Tailors, we do not think of asking for
statistics. If one tailor was melancholy, that was enough to justify the
generalization. When we find a tailor who is not melancholy, it will be
time to make another theory to fit his case.

This is the charm of Lamb's letter to the gentleman who inquired
"whether a person at the age of sixty-three, with no more proficiency
than a tolerable knowledge of most of the characters of the English
alphabet amounts to, by dint of persevering application and good
masters, may hope to arrive within a presumable number of years at that
degree of attainment that would entitle the possessor to the character
of a _learned man_." The answer is candid, serious, and exhaustive. No
false hopes are encouraged. The difficulties are plainly set forth.
"However," it is said, "where all cannot be compassed, much may be
accomplished; but I must not, in fairness, conceal from you that you
have much to do." The question is thoroughly discussed as to whether it
would be well for him to enter a primary school. "You say that you stand
in need of emulation; that this incitement is nowhere to be had but in
the public school. But have you considered the nature of the emulation
belonging to those of tender years which you would come in competition
with?"

Do you think these dissertations a waste of time? If you do, it is
sufficient evidence that you sadly need them; for they are the antitoxin
to counteract the bacillus of pedantry. Were I appointed by the school
board to consider the applicants for teachers' certificates, after they
had passed the examination in the arts and sciences, I should subject
them to a more rigid test. I should hand each candidate Lamb's essays on
The Old and New Schoolmaster and on Imperfect Sympathies. I should make
him read them to himself, while I sat by and watched. If his countenance
never relaxed, as if he were inwardly saying, "That's so," I should
withhold the certificate. I should not consider him a fit person to have
charge of innocent youth.

Just as we naturally speak of the flavor of Charles Lamb, so we speak of
the atmosphere of Cervantes or of Fielding. We are out of doors in the
sunshine. All sorts of people are doing all sorts of things in all sorts
of ways; and we are glad that we are there to see them. It is one of the

                 "charmed days
    When the Genius of God doth flow;
    The wind may alter twenty ways
    But a tempest cannot blow."

On such days it doesn't matter what happens. We are not "under the
weather," but consciously superior to it. We are in no mood to grumble
over mishaps,--the more the merrier. The master of the revels has made
the brave announcement that his programme shall be carried out "rain or
shine," and henceforth we have no anxieties.

This diffused good-humor can only come from a mind which is free from
any taint of morbidness. It is that merry-heartedness that "doth good
like medicine." It is an overflowing friendliness, which brings a
laughter that is without scorn.

This kind of humor is possible only among persons who are thoroughly
congenial, and who take mutual good-will for granted. It is for this
reason that it is so difficult to translate it or to carry it from one
community to another. It is customary for every nation to bring the
accusation against foreigners that they are destitute of the sense of
humor. Even peoples so near akin as the English and Americans cherish
such suspicions. The American is likely to feel that his English friends
do not receive his pleasantries with that punctuality which is the
politeness of kings. They are conscientious enough and eventually do the
right thing; but procrastination is the thief of wit as well as of time.
But we, on our side, are equally slow, and Mr. Punch often causes
anxious thoughts.

The real difficulty is not in understanding what is said but in
appreciating that which should be taken for granted. The stranger does
not see the serious background of sober thought and genuine admiration,
into which the amusing figures suddenly intrude. The frontiersman would
see no point in a story that might delight a common room in Oxford. What
if a bishop did act in an undignified manner or commit a blunder? Why
shouldn't he--like the rest of us? To enjoy his foibles one must first
have a realizing sense of what a great man a bishop is, and how
surprising it is that, now and then, he should step down from his
pedestal.

On the other hand, the real humor of the frontier is missed by one who
has not learned to take seriously the frontiersman's life and who has
not entered into his habitual point of view.

Dickens is an example of the way in which a man's humor is limited to
the sphere of his sympathies. How genial is the atmosphere which
surrounds Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Sam Weller! Whatever they do, they can
never go wrong. But when we turn to the "American Notes" or to the
American part of "Martin Chuzzlewit," we are conscious of a difference.
There is no atmosphere to relieve the dreariness. Mr. Jefferson Brick is
not amusing; he is odious. The people on the Ohio River steamer do not
make us smile by their absurdities. Dickens lets us see how he despises
them all. He is fretful and peevish. He fails utterly to catch the
humor of the frontier. He is unable to follow out the hint which Mark
Tapley gave when, looking over the dreary waste of Eden on the
Mississippi, he said apologetically, "Eden ain't all built yet."

To an Englishman that does not mean much, but to an American it is
wonderfully appealing. Martin Chuzzlewit saw only the ignominious
contrast between the prospectus and the present reality. Eden was a
vulgar fraud, and that was the whole of it. The American, with
invincible optimism, looking upon the same scene, sees something more!
He smiles, perhaps, a little cynically at the incongruity between the
prospectus and the present development, and then his fancy chuckles at
what his fancy sees in the future. "Eden ain't all built yet,"--that's a
fact. But just think what Eden will be when it is all built!

       *       *       *       *       *

By the way, there is one particularly good thing about the atmosphere;
it prevents our being hit by meteors. The meteor, when it strikes the
upper air, usually ignites, and that is the end of it. There are some
minds that have not enough atmosphere to protect them. They are pelted
continually; whatever is unpleasant comes to them in solid chunks. There
are others more fortunately surrounded, who escape this impact. All that
is seen is a flash in the upper air. They are none the worse for passing
through a meteoric shower of petty misfortunes.

The mind that is surrounded by an atmosphere of humorous suggestiveness
is also favored in its outlook upon the shortcomings of mankind. Their
angularities are softened and become less uniformly unpleasing. That
fine old English divine, Dr. South, has a sermon in which he defends the
thesis that it is a greater guilt to enjoy the contemplation of our
neighbor's sins than to commit the same offences in our proper persons.
That seems to me to be very hard doctrine. I am inclined to make a
distinction. There are some faults which ought to be taken seriously at
all times, but there are others which the neighbors should be allowed to
enjoy, if they can.

Indeed, it is the genuine reformer who is seeking to right great wrongs
who most needs the capacity to distinguish between grave evils and
peccadillos. A measure of good-humored tolerance for human weakness is a
part of his equipment for effective work. Lacking in this, he is doomed
to perpetual irritation and disappointment. He mistakes friends for foes
and wages a losing battle. He is likely to be the victim of a moral
egoism which distorts the facts of experience and confuses his personal
whims with his disinterested purposes. His great ideal is lost sight of
in some petty strife. Above all, he loses the power of endurance in the
time of partial failure.

The contest of wits between the inventors of projectiles and the makers
of armor plate seemed at one time settled by Harvey's process for
rendering the surface of the resisting steel so hard that the missiles
hurled against it were shattered. The answer of the gun-makers was made
by attaching a tip of softer metal to the shell. The soft tip received
the first shock of the impact, and it was found that the penetrating
power of the shell was increased enormously. The scientific explanation
I have forgotten. I may, however, hazard an anthropomorphic
explanation. If there is any human nature in the atoms of steel, I can
see a great advantage in having the softer particles go before the hard,
to have a momentary yielding before the inevitable crash. When they are
hurtling through the air, tense and strained by the initial velocity
till it seems that they must fly apart, it is a great thing to have a
group of good-humored, happy-go-lucky atoms in the front, who call out
cheerily: "Come along, boys! Don't take it too hard; we're in for it."
And sure enough, before they have time to fall apart they are in. Those
whose thoughts and purposes have most penetrated the hard prejudices of
their time have learned this lesson.

Your unhumorous reformer, with painful intensity of moral
self-consciousness, cries out:--

    "The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
     That ever I was born to set it right!"

He takes himself and his cause always with equal seriousness. He hurls
himself against the accumulated wrongs and the invincible ignorance of
the world, and there is a great crash; but somehow, the world seems to
survive the shock better than he does. It is a tough old world, and
bears a great deal of pounding. Indeed, it has been pounded so much and
so long that it has become quite solid.

Now and then, however, there comes along a reformer whose zeal is tipped
with humor. His thought penetrates where another man's is only
shattered. That is what made Luther so effective. He struck heavy blows
at the idols men adored. But he was such a genial, whole-souled
iconoclast that those who were most shocked at him could not help liking
him--between times. He would give a smashing blow at the idol, and then
a warm hand grasp and a hearty "God bless you" to the idolater; and then
idolater and iconoclast would be down on the floor together, trying to
see if there were any pieces of the idol worth saving. It was all so
unexpected and so incongruous and so shocking, and yet so unaffectedly
religious and so surprisingly the right thing to do, that the upshot of
it all was that people went away saying, "Dr. Martin isn't such a bad
fellow, after all."

Luther's "Table Talk" penetrated circles which were well protected
against his theological treatises. Men were conscious of a good humor
even in his invective; for he usually gave them time to see the kindly
twinkle in his eye before he knocked them down.

In order to engage Karlstadt in a controversy, Luther drew out a florin
from his pocket and cried heartily, "Take it! Attack me boldly!"
Karlstadt took it, put it in his purse, and gave it to Luther. Luther
then drank to his health. Then Karlstadt pledged Luther. Then Luther
said, "The more violent your attacks, the more I shall be delighted."
Then they gave each other their hands and parted. One can almost be
reconciled to theological controversy, when it is conducted in a manner
so truly sportsmanlike.

Luther had a way of characterizing a person in a sentence, that was much
more effective than his labored vituperation (in which, it must be
confessed, he was a master). Thus, speaking of the attitude of Erasmus,
he said, "Erasmus stands looking at creation like a calf at a new door."
It was very unjust to Erasmus, and yet the picture sticks in the mind;
for it is such a perfect characterization of the kind of mind that we
are all acquainted with, which looks at the marvels of creation with the
wide-eyed gaze of bovine youthfulness, curious, not to know how that
door came there, but only to know whether it leads to something to eat.

The humor of Luther suggests that of Abraham Lincoln. Both were men of
the people, and their humor had a flavor of the soil. They were alike
capable of deep dejection, but each found relief in spontaneous
laughter. The surprise of the grave statesman when Lincoln would preface
a discussion with a homely anecdote of the frontier was of the same kind
felt by the sixteenth-century theologians when Luther turned aside from
his great arguments, which startled Europe, to tell a merry tale in
ridicule of the pretensions of the monks.

If I were to speak of the humorist as a philosopher, some of the gravest
of the philosophers would at once protest. Humor, they say, has no place
in their philosophy; and they are quite right. Indeed, it is doubtful if
a humorist would ever make a good, systematic philosopher. He is a
modest person. He is only a gleaner following the reapers; but he
manages to pick up a great many grains of wisdom which they overlook.

Dante pictures the sages of antiquity as forever walking on a verdant
mead, "with eyes slow and grave, and with great authority in their
looks;" as if, in the other world, they were continually oppressed by
the wisdom they had acquired in this. But I can imagine a gathering of
philosophers in a different fashion. Gravely they have come, each
bearing his ponderous volume, in which he has explained the universe and
settled the destiny of mankind. Then, suddenly, in contrast with their
theories, the reality is disclosed. The incorrigible pedants and
dogmatists turn away in sullen disappointment; but from all true lovers
of wisdom there arises a peal of mellow laughter, as each one realizes
the enormous incongruity between what he knew and what he thought he
knew.

The discovery that things are not always as they seem is one that some
people make in this world. They get a glimpse of something that is going
on behind the scenes, and their smile is very disconcerting to the sober
spectators around them.

Sometimes it is the bitter smile of disillusion. Matthew Arnold wrote of
Heine:--

    "The Spirit of the world,
     Beholding the absurdity of men,--
     Their vaunts, their feats,--let a sardonic smile,
     For one short moment, wander o'er his lips.
     That smile was Heine."

But there is another kind of smile evoked by the incongruity between the
appearance and the reality. It is the smile that comes when behind some
mask that had affrighted us we recognize a familiar and friendly face.
There is a smile which is not one of disillusion. There is a philosophy
which is dissolved in humor. The wise man sees the incongruities
involved in the very nature of things. They are the result of the free
play of various forces. To his quick insight the actual world is no more
like the formal descriptions of it than the successive attitudes of a
galloping horse are like the pose of an equestrian statue. His mind
catches instantaneous views of this world as its elements are
continually dissolving and recombining. It is all very surprising, and
he smiles as he sees how much better they turn out than might be
expected.

    "Sad-eyed Fakirs swiftly say
     Endless dirges to decay.

           *       *       *       *       *

     And yet it seemeth not to me
     That the high gods love tragedy;
     For Saadi sat in the sun.

           *       *       *       *       *

     Sunshine in his heart transferred,
     Lighted each transparent word.

           *       *       *       *       *

     And thus to Saadi said the Muse:
     'Eat thou the bread which men refuse;
     Flee from the goods which from thee flee;
     Seek nothing,--Fortune seeketh thee.

           *       *       *       *       *

     On thine orchard's edge belong
     All the brags of plume and song.

           *       *       *       *       *

     Nor scour the seas, nor sift mankind,
     A poet or a friend to find:
     Behold, he watches at the door!
     Behold his shadow on the floor!'"

In the book of Proverbs, Wisdom says, "I, Wisdom, dwell with Prudence."
But there is another member of the household. It is Humor, sister of
serene Wisdom and of the heavenly Prudence. She does not often laugh,
and when she does it is mostly at her sister Wisdom, who cannot long
resist the infection. There is not one set smile upon her face, as if
she contemplated an altogether amusing world. The smiles that come and
go are shy, elusive things, but they cannot remain long in hiding.

Wisdom, from her high house, takes wide views, and Prudence peers
anxiously into the future; but gentle Humor loves to take short views;
she delights in homely things, and continually finds surprises in that
which is most familiar. Wisdom goes on laborious journeys, and comes
home bringing her treasures from afar; and Humor matches them, every
one, with what she has found in the dooryard.




Cases of Conscience Concerning Witchcrafts


That was a curious state of things in Salem village. There was the
Meeting-House in plain sight, with sermons every Sunday and lectures on
week-days. There were gospel privileges for all, and the path of duty
was evident enough for the simplest understanding. Nevertheless, certain
persons who should have listened to the sermons, when they heard the
sound of a trumpet hied to the rendezvous of witches. When haled before
the court their only answer was that they couldn't help it.

The ministers were disturbed, but being thorough-going men, they did not
rest content with academic discussion of the question of the falling-off
in church attendance. They inquired into its cause, and became
convinced that they were dealing with sorcery. All this is duly set down
in Increase Mather's treatise on "Cases of Conscience concerning
Witchcrafts."

This method of inquisition is commended to those writers who look upon
the Gentle Reader's love of Romance as a deadly sin. The trouble, as I
understand it, is this. A number of gentlemen devoted to literature have
cultivated style till it is as near a state of utter perfection as human
nature will tolerate. Indeed, they emulate that classic writer of whom
Roger Ascham remarked that he labored "with uncontented care to write
better than he could." They have attained such accuracy of observation
and such skill in the choice of words that the man in the book is as
like to the man on the street as two peas. They are also skilled in
criticism and are able to prove that it is our duty not only to admire
but also to read their books. The complaint is that the readers, instead
of walking in the path of duty, troop off after some mere story-teller
who has never passed an examination in Pathology, and who is utterly
incapable of making an exhaustive analysis of motives.

The Gentle Reader when he hears the accusations of the stern realists
makes no denial of the facts. He admits that he likes a good story
better than an involved study of character. He listens to the reproofs
with the helplessness of one who has only the frail barrier of a
personal taste to shield him from the direct blow of the categorical
imperative. If personal taste were to be accepted as a sufficient plea,
he is aware that the most besotted inebriate would go unwhipped of
justice. In this predicament he shields himself behind his favorite
authors. If there be a fault it is theirs, not his. They have bewitched
him by their spells. It is impossible for him to withstand the potent
enchantments of these wizards.

I am inclined to think that there is much justice in this view of the
matter and that the militant realists should turn their attention from
the innocent reader to those who have power to bewitch him.

The accepted signs of witchcraft, as enumerated by the Mathers, are
present. Thus we are told: "A famous Divine recites among other
Convictions of a Witch, the Testimony of the Party bewitched, together
with the joint Oaths of sufficient Persons that they have seen
Prodigious Pranks or Feats wrought by the Party accused."

This was the kind of evidence relied upon in the case of G. B. in the
Court of Oyer and Terminer held at Salem in 1692. "He was accused by
Nine Persons for extraordinary Lifting and such Feats of Strength as
could not be done without Diabolical Assistance." It was said that
"though he was a Puny Man yet he had done things beyond the strength of
a Giant. A Gun of about seven foot Barrel, and so heavy that strong Men
could not steadily hold it out with both hands; there were several
Testimonies that he made nothing of taking up such a Gun behind the
Lock, with one hand, and holding it out like a Pistol at arm's end." Any
readers of romance can tell of many such prodigious pranks which, while
the spell was upon them, seemed altogether credible.

The test which was looked upon as infallible by those judicious judges
who put little confidence in the flotation of witches on the mill pond,
was that of the lack of intellectual consistency. "Faltering, faulty,
inconstant, and contrary answers upon judicial and deliberate
Examination are accounted unlucky symptoms of guilt."

Such inconsistencies may be found in all romantic fiction; yet the
magicians seem to have the power to make all things appear probable. I
might tell what a pleasant thrill is sometimes produced by these
sorceries, but I had better follow the policy of Cotton Mather, who
declined to tell all he knew about the Invisible World, lest he might
make witchcraft too attractive. "I will not speak plainly lest I should,
unaware, poison some of my Readers, as the pious Hermingius did one of
his Pupils when he only by way of Diversion recited a Spell."

Cotton Mather makes a suggestion which is of value in regard to the
different grades of witches and other wonder-working spirits. His
remarks upon this head are so judicious that they should be quoted in
full.

"Thirdly, 'tis to be supposed, that some _Devils_ are more peculiarly
_Commission'd_, and perhaps _Qualify'd_, for some Countries, while
others are for others. This is intimated when in _Mar_. 5. 10. The
Devils _besought_ our Lord much, _that he would not send them away out
of the Countrey_. Why was that? But in all probability, because _these
Devils_ were more able to _do the works of the Devil_, in such a
Countrey, than in another. It is not likely that every Devil does know
every _Language_; or that every Devil can do every _Mischief_. 'Tis
possible, that the _Experience_, or, if I may call it so, the
_Education_ of all Devils is not alike, and that there may be some
difference in their _Abilities_. If one might make an Inference from
what the Devils _do_, to what they _are_, One cannot forbear dreaming,
that there are _degrees_ of Devils. Who can allow, that such Trifling
_Demons_, as that of _Mascon_, or those that once infested our
New-berry, are of so much Grandeur, as those _Demons_, whose Games are
mighty Kingdoms? Yea, 'tis certain, that all Devils do not make a like
figure in the _Invisible World_. Nor does it look agreeably, That the
_Demons_, which were Familiars of such a Man as the old _Apollonius_,
differ not from those baser Goblins that chuse to Nest in the filthy and
loathsome Rags of a beastly Sorceress. Accordingly, why may not some
Devils be more accomplished for what is to be done in such and such
places, when others must be _detach'd_ for other Territories? Each
Devil, as he sees his advantage, cries out, _Let me be in this Countrey,
rather than another_."

It is only on the theory of bewitchment by a trifling demon who belongs
to the lower orders of the literary world that I can account for the sad
fall of the reader whose confession follows. Carefully shielded in his
youth from all the enticements of the imagination, he yet fell from
grace. The unfortunate person seems to be lacking in strength of will,
and yet to have some good in him. In my opinion he was more sinned
against than sinning. But I will let him tell his story in his own way.


A CONFESSION

One half the world does not know what the other half reads; but good
people are now taught that the first requisite of sociological virtue is
to interest themselves in the other half. I therefore venture to call
attention to a book that has pleased me, though my delight in it may at
once class me with the "submerged tenth" of the reading public. It is
"The Pirate's Own Book."

By way of preface to a discussion of this volume, let me make a personal
explanation of the causes which led me to its perusal. My reading of
such a book cannot be traced to early habit. In my boyhood I had no
opportunity to study the careers of pirates, for I was confined to
another variety of literature. On Sunday afternoons I read aloud a book
called "The Afflicted Man's Companion." The unfortunate gentleman
portrayed in this work had a large assortment of afflictions,--if I
remember rightly, one for each day of the month,--but among them was
nothing so exciting as being marooned in the South Seas. Indeed, his
afflictions were of a generalized and abstract kind, which he could have
borne with great cheerfulness had it not been for the consolations which
were remorselessly administered to him.

If I have become addicted to tales of piracy, I must attribute it to the
literary criticisms of too strenuous realists. Before I read them, I
took an innocent pleasure in romantic fiction. Without any compunction
of conscience I rejoiced in Walter Scott; and when he failed I was
pleased even with his imitators. My heart leaped up when I beheld a
solitary horseman on the first page, and I did not forsake the horseman,
even though I knew he was to be personally conducted through his journey
by Mr. G. P. R. James. Fenimore Cooper, in those days, before I was
awakened to the nature of literary sin, I found altogether pleasant. The
cares of the world faded away, and a soothing conviction of the
essential rightness of things came over me, as the pioneers and Indians
discussed in deliberate fashion the deepest questions of the universe,
between shots. As for stories of the sea, I never thought of being
critical. I was ready to take thankfully anything with a salty flavor,
from "Sindbad the Sailor" to Mr. Clark Russell. I had no inconvenient
knowledge to interfere with my enjoyment. All nautical language was
alike impressive, and all nautical manoeuvres were to me alike
perilous. It would have been a poor Ancient Mariner who could not have
enthralled me, when

    "He held me with his skinny hand;
     'There was a ship,' quoth he."

And if the ship had raking masts and no satisfactory clearance papers,
that was enough; as to what should happen, I left that altogether to
the author. That the laws of probability held on the Spanish Main as on
dry land, I never dreamed.

But after being awakened to the sin of romance, I saw that to read a
novel merely for recreation is not permissible. The reader must be put
upon oath, and before he allows himself to enjoy any incident must swear
that everything is exactly true to life as he has seen it. All vagabonds
and sturdy vagrants who have no visible means of support, in the present
order of things, are to be driven out of the realm of well-regulated
fiction. Among these are included all knights in armor; all rightful
heirs with a strawberry mark; all horsemen, solitary or otherwise; all
princes in disguise; all persons who are in the habit of saying
"prithee," or "Odzooks," or "by my halidome;" all fair ladies who have
no irregularities of feature and no realistic incoherencies of speech;
all lovers who fall in love at first sight, and who are married at the
end of the book and live happily ever after; all witches,
fortune-tellers, and gypsies; all spotless heroes and deep-dyed
villains; all pirates, buccaneers, North American Indians with a taste
for metaphysics; all scouts, hunters, trappers, and other individuals
who do not wear store clothes. According to this decree, all readers are
forbidden to aid and abet these persons, or to give them shelter in
their imagination. A reader who should incite a writer of fiction to
romance would be held as an accessory before the fact.

After duly repenting of my sins and renouncing my old acquaintances, I
felt a preeminent virtue. Had I met the Three Guardsmen, one at a time
or all together, I should have passed them by without stopping for a
moment's converse. I should have recognized them for the impudent
Gascons that they were, and should have known that there was not a word
of truth in all their adventures. As for Stevenson's fine old pirate,
with his contemptible song about a "dead men's chest and a bottle of
rum," I should not have tolerated him for an instant. Instead, I should
have turned eagerly to some neutral-tinted person who never had any
adventure greater than missing the train to Dedham, and I should have
analyzed his character, and agitated myself in the attempt to get at his
feelings, and I should have verified his story by a careful reference
to the railway guide. I should have treated that neutral-tinted
character as a problem, and I should have noted all the delicate shades
in the futility of his conduct. When, on any occasion that called for
action, he did not know his own mind, I should have admired him for his
resemblance to so many of my acquaintances who do not know their own
minds. After studying the problem until I came to the last chapter, I
should suddenly have given it up, and agreed with the writer that it had
no solution. In my self-righteousness, I despised the old-fashioned
reader who had been lured on in the expectation that at the last moment
something thrilling might happen.

But temptations come at the unguarded point. I had hardened myself
against romance in fiction, but I had not been sufficiently warned
against romance in the guise of fact. When in a book-stall I came upon
"The Pirate's Own Book," it seemed to answer a felt want. Here at least,
outside the boundaries of strict fiction, I could be sure of finding
adventure, and feel again with Sancho Panza "how pleasant it is to go
about in expectation of accidents."

I am well aware that good literature--to use Matthew Arnold's phrase--is
a criticism of life. But the criticism of life, with its discriminations
between things which look very much alike, is pretty serious business.
We cannot keep on criticising life without getting tired after a while,
and longing for something a little simpler. There is a much-admired
passage in Ferishtah's Fancies, in which, after mixing up the beans in
his hands and speculating on their color, Ferishtah is not able to tell
black from white. Ferishtah, living in a soothing climate, could stand
an indefinite amount of this sort of thing; and, moreover, we must
remember that he was a dervish, and dervishry, although a steady
occupation, is not exacting in its requirements. In our more stimulating
climate, we should bring on nervous prostration if we gave ourselves
unremittingly to the discrimination between all the possible variations
of blackishness and whitishness. We must relieve our minds by
occasionally finding something about which there can be no doubt. When
my eyes rested on the woodcut that adorns the first page of "The
Pirate's Own Book," I felt the rest that comes from perfect certainty in
my own moral judgment. Ferishtah himself could not have mixed me up.
Here was black without a redeeming spot. On looking upon this pirate, I
felt relieved from any criticism of life; here was something beneath
criticism. I was no longer tossed about on a chop sea, with its
conflicting waves of feeling and judgment, but was borne along
triumphantly on a bounding billow of moral reprobation.

As I looked over the headings of the chapters, I was struck by their
straightforward and undisguised character. When I read the chapter
entitled The Savage Appearance of the Pirates, and compared this with
the illustrations, I said, "How true!" Then there was a chapter on the
Deceitful Character of the Malays. I had always suspected that the
Malays were deceitful, and here I found my impressions justified by
competent authority. Then I dipped into the preface, and found the same
transparent candor. "A piratical crew," says the author, "is generally
formed of the desperadoes and renegades of every clime and nation."
Again I said, "Just what I should have expected. The writer is evidently
one who 'nothing extenuates.'" Then follows a further description of
the pirate: "The pirate, from the perilous nature of his occupation,
when not cruising on the ocean, that great highway of nations, selects
the most lonely isles of the sea for his retreat, or secretes himself
near the shores of bays and lagoons of thickly wooded and uninhabited
countries." Just the places where I should have expected him to settle.

"The pirate, when not engaged in robbing, passes his time in singing old
songs with choruses like,--

    'Drain, drain the bowl, each fearless soul!
       Let the world wag as it will;
     Let the heavens growl, let the devil howl,
      Drain, drain the deep bowl and fill!'

Thus his hours of relaxation are passed in wild and extravagant frolics,
amongst the lofty forests and spicy groves of the torrid zone, and
amidst the aromatic and beautiful flowering vegetable products of that
region."

Again: "With the name of pirate is also associated ideas of rich
plunder,--caskets of buried jewels, chests of gold ingots, bags of
outlandish coins, secreted in lonely out-of-the-way places, or buried
about the wild shores of rivers and unexplored seacoasts, near rocks
and trees bearing mysterious marks, indicating where the treasure is
hid." "As it is his invariable practice to secrete and bury his booty,
and from the perilous life he lives being often killed, he can never
revisit the spot again, immense sums remaining buried in these places
are irrevocably lost." Is it any wonder that, with such an introduction,
I became interested?

After a perusal of the book, I am inclined to think that a pirate may be
a better person to read about than some persons who stand higher in the
moral scale. Compare, if you will, a pirate and a pessimist. As a
citizen and neighbor I should prefer the pessimist. A pessimist is an
excellent and highly educated gentleman, who has been so unfortunate as
to be born into a world which is inadequate to his expectations.
Naturally he feels that he has a grievance, and in airing his grievance
he makes himself unpopular; but it is certainly not his fault that the
universe is no better than it is. On the other hand, a pirate is a bad
character; yet as a subject of biography he is more inspiring than the
pessimist. In one case, we have the impression of one good man in a
totally depraved world; in the other case, we have a totally depraved
man in what but for him would be a very good world. I know of nothing
that gives one a more genial appreciation of average human nature, or a
greater tolerance for the foibles of one's acquaintances, than the
contrast with an unmitigated pirate.

My copy of "The Pirate's Own Book" belongs to the edition of 1837. On
the fly-leaf it bore in prim handwriting the name of a lady who for many
years must have treasured it. I like to think of this unknown lady in
connection with the book. I know that she must have been an excellent
soul, and I have no doubt that her New England conscience pointed to the
moral law as the needle to the pole; but she was a wise woman, and knew
that if she was to keep her conscience in good repair she must give it
some reasonable relaxation. I am sure that she was a woman of versatile
philanthropy, and that every moment she had the ability to make two
duties grow where only one had grown before. After, however, attending
the requisite number of lectures to improve her mind, and considering in
committees plans to improve other people's minds forcibly, and going to
meetings to lament over the condition of those who had no minds to
improve, this good lady would feel that she had earned a right to a few
minutes' respite. So she would take up "The Pirate's Own Book," and feel
a creepy sensation that would be an effectual counter-irritant to all
her anxieties for the welfare of the race. Things might be going slowly,
and there were not half as many societies as there ought to be, and the
world might be in a bad way; but then it was not so bad as it was in the
days of Black Beard; and the poor people who did not have any societies
to belong to were, after all, not so badly off as the sailors whom the
atrocious Nicola left on a desert island, with nothing but a blunderbuss
and Mr. Brooks's Family Prayer Book. In fact, it is expressly stated
that the pirates refused to give them a cake of soap. To be on a desert
island destitute of soap made the common evils of life appear trifling.
She had been worried about the wicked people who would not do their
duty, however faithfully they had been prodded up to it, who would not
be life members on payment of fifty dollars, and who would not be
annual members on payment of a dollar and signing the constitution, and
who in their hard and impenitent hearts would not even sit on the
platform at the annual meeting; but somehow their guilt seemed less
extreme after she had studied again the picture of Captain Kidd burying
his Bible in the sands near Plymouth. A man who would bury his Bible,
using a spade several times too large for him, and who would strike such
a world-defying attitude while doing it, made the sin of not joining the
society appear almost venial. In this manner she gained a certain moral
perspective; even after days when the public was unusually dilatory
about reforms, and the wheels of progress had begun to squeak, she would
get a good night's sleep. Contrasting the public with the black
background of absolute piracy, she grew tolerant of its shortcomings,
and learned the truth of George Herbert's saying, that "pleasantness of
disposition is a great key to do good."

Not only is a pirate a more comfortable person to read about than a
pessimist, but in many respects he is a more comfortable person to read
about than a philanthropist. The minute the philanthropist is
introduced, the author begins to show his own cleverness by discovering
flaws in his motives. You begin to see that the poor man has his
limitations. Perhaps his philanthropies are of a different kind from
yours, and that irritates you. Musical people, whom I have heard
criticise other musical people, seem more offended when some one flats
just a little than when he makes a big ear-splitting discord; and
moralists are apt to have the same fastidiousness. The philanthropist is
made the victim of the most cruel kind of vivisection,--a
character-study.

Here is a fragment of conversation from a study of character: "'That was
really heroic,' said Felix. 'That was what he wanted to do,' Gertrude
went on. 'He wanted to be magnanimous; he wanted to have a fine moral
pleasure; he made up his mind to do his duty; he felt sublime,--that's
how he likes to feel.'"

This leaves the mind in a painful state of suspense. The first instinct
of the unsophisticated reader is that if the person has done a good
deed, we ought not to begrudge him a little innocent pleasure in it. If
he is magnanimous, why not let him feel magnanimous? But after Gertrude
has made these subtle suggestions we begin to experience something like
antipathy for a man who is capable of having a fine moral pleasure; who
not only does his duty, but really likes to do it. There is something
wrong about him, and it is all the more aggravating because we are not
sure just what it is. There is no trouble of that kind in reading about
pirates. You cannot make a character-study out of a pirate,--he has no
character. You know just where to place him. You do not expect anything
good of him, and when you find a sporadic virtue you are correspondingly
elated.

For example, I am pleased to read of the pirate Gibbs that he was
"affable and communicative, and when he smiled he exhibited a mild and
gentle countenance. His conversation was concise and pertinent, and his
style of illustration quite original." If Gibbs had been a
philanthropist, it is doubtful whether these social and literary graces
would have been so highly appreciated.

So our author feels a righteous glow when speaking of the natives of the
Malabar coasts, and accounting for their truthfulness: "For as they had
been used to deal with pirates, they always found them men of honor in
the way of trade,--a people enemies of deceit, and that scorned to rob
but in their own way."

He is a very literal-minded person, and takes all his pirates seriously,
but often we are surprised by some touch of nature that makes the whole
world kin. There was the ferocious Benevedes, who flourished on the west
coast of South America, and who, not content with sea power, attempted
to gather an army. It is said that "a more finished picture of a pirate
cannot be conceived," and the description that follows certainly bears
out this assertion. Yet he had his own ideas of civilization, and a
power of adaptation that reminds us of the excellent and ingenious Swiss
Family Robinson. When he captures the American whaling-ship Herculia, we
are prepared for a wild scene of carnage; but instead we are told that
Benevedes immediately dismantled the ship, and "out of the sails made
trousers for half his army." After the trousers had been distributed,
Benevedes remarked that his army was complete except in one essential
particular,--he had no trumpets for the cavalry: whereupon, at the
suggestion of the New Bedford skipper, he ripped off the copper sheets
of the vessel, out of which a great variety of copper trumpets were
quickly manufactured, and soon "the whole camp resounded with the
warlike blasts." While the delighted pirates were enjoying their
instrumental music, the skipper and nine of the crew took occasion to
escape in a boat which had been imprudently concealed on the river bank.

In the "Proverbial Philosophy" we are told that

    "Many virtues weighted by excess sink among the vices,
     Many vices, amicably buoyed, float among the virtues."

Had Mr. Tupper been acquainted with the career of Captain Davis of the
Spanish Main, he would have found many apt illustrations of his thesis.
Captain Davis had the vices incidental to a piratical career, but they
were amicably buoyed up by some virtues which would have adorned a
different station in life. He was a great stickler for parliamentary
law, and everything under his direction was done decently and in order.
Whenever it was possible, he made his demands in writing, a method which
was business-like and left no room for misunderstanding. After a sloop
had been seized and duly pillaged, we are informed that:--

"In full possession of the vessel and stores and goods, a large bowl of
punch was made. Under its exhilarating influence it was proposed to
choose a commander, and to form a future mode of policy. The election
was soon over and a large majority of legal voters were in favor of
Davis, and, no scrutiny being demanded, Davis was declared duly elected.
He then addressed them in a short and appropriate speech."

The chief virtue of Davis seemed to be neatness, which on one occasion
he used to admirable advantage. "Encountering a French ship of
twenty-four guns, Davis proposed to the crew to attack her, assuring
them that she would prove a rich prize. This appeared to the crew such a
hazardous enterprise that they were adverse to the measure; but he
acquainted them that he had conceived a stratagem that he was confident
would succeed."

This stratagem was worthy of the Beau Brummel of pirates. At the
critical moment, the crew "according to the direction of Davis appeared
on deck in white shirts, which making an appearance of numbers the
Frenchman was intimidated and struck." Why the white shirts should have
given the appearance of numbers it is difficult to understand, but we
can well understand the surprise of the Frenchman over the pirates'
immaculate attire.

Most of the pirates seem to have conducted their lives on a highly
romantic, not to say sensational plan. This reprehensible practice, of
course, must shut them off from the sympathy of all realists of the
stricter school, who hold that there should be no dramatic situations,
and that even when a story is well begun it should not be brought to a
finish, but should "peter out" in the last chapters, no one knows how or
why. Sometimes, however, a pirate manages to come to an end sufficiently
commonplace to make a plot for a most irreproachable novel. There was
Captain Avery. He commenced the practice of his profession very
auspiciously by running away with a ship of thirty guns from Bristol. In
the Indian Ocean he captured a treasure-ship of the Great Mogul. In this
ship, it is said, "there were several of the greatest persons of the
court." There was also on board the daughter of the Great Mogul, who
was on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The painstaking historian comments on this
very justly: "It is well known that the people of the East travel with
great magnificence, so that they had along with them all their slaves,
with a large quantity of vessels of gold and silver and immense sums of
money. The spoil, therefore, that Avery received from that ship was
almost incalculable." To capture the treasure-ship of the Great Mogul
under such circumstances would have turned the head of any ordinary
pirate who had weakened his mind by reading works tinged with
romanticism. His companions, when the treasure was on board, wished to
sail to Madagascar, and there build a small fort; but "Avery
disconcerted the plan and rendered it altogether unnecessary." We know
perfectly well what these wretches would have done if they had been
allowed to have their own way: they would have gathered in one of the
spicy groves, and would have taken up vociferously their song,--

    "Drain, drain the bowl, each fearless soul!
     Let the world wag as it will."

Avery would have none of this, so when most of the men were away from
the ship he sailed off with the treasure, leaving them to their evil
ways, and to a salutary poverty. Here begins the realism of the story.
With the treasures of the Great Mogul in his hold, he did not follow the
illusive course of Captain Kidd, "as he sailed, as he sailed." He did
not even lay his course for the "coasts of Coromandel." Instead of that
he made a bee-line for America, with the laudable intention of living
there "in affluence and honor." When he got to America, however, he did
not know what to do with himself, and still less what to do with the
inestimable pearls and diamonds of the Great Mogul. An ordinary pirate
of romance would have escaped to the Spanish Main, but Avery did just
what any realistic gentleman would do: after he had spent a short time
in other cities--he concluded to go to Boston. The chronicler adds,
"Arriving at Boston, he almost resolved to settle there." It was in the
time of the Mathers. But in spite of its educational and religious
advantages, Boston furnished no market for the gems of the Orient, so
Captain Avery went to England. If he had in his youth read a few
detective stories, he might have known how to get his jewels exchanged
for the current coin of the realm; but his early education had been
neglected, and he was of a singularly confiding and unsophisticated
nature--when on land. After suffering from poverty he made the
acquaintance of some wealthy merchants of Bristol, who took his gems on
commission, on condition that they need not inquire how he came by them.
That was the last Avery saw of the gems of the Great Mogul. A plain
pirate was no match for financiers. Remittances were scanty, though
promises were frequent. What came of it all? Nothing came of it; things
simply dragged along. Avery was not hanged, neither did he get his
money. At last, on a journey to Bristol to urge the merchants to a
settlement, he fell sick and died. What became of the gems? Nobody
knows. What became of those merchants of Bristol? Nobody cares. A
novelist might, out of such material, make an ending quite clever and
dreary.

To this realistic school of pirates belongs Thomas Veal, known in our
history as the "Pirate of Lynn." To turn from the chapter on the Life,
Atrocities, and Bloody Death of Black Beard to the chapter on the Lynn
Pirate, is a relief to the overstrained sensibilities. Lynn is in the
temperate zone, and we should naturally reason that its piracies would
be more calm and equable than those of the tropics, and so they were.
"On one pleasant evening, a little after sunset, a small vessel was seen
to anchor near the mouth of the Saugus River. A boat was presently
lowered from her side, into which four men descended and moved up the
river." It is needless to say that these men were pirates. In the
morning the vessel had disappeared, but a man found a paper whereon was
a statement that if a quantity of shackles, handcuffs, and hatchets were
placed in a certain nook, silver would be deposited near by to pay for
them. The people of Lynn in those days were thrifty folk, and the
hardware was duly placed in the spot designated, and the silver was
found as promised. After some months four pirates came and settled in
the woods. The historian declares it to be his opinion (and he speaks as
an expert) that it would be impossible to select a place more convenient
for a gang of pirates. He draws particular attention to the fact that
the "ground was well selected for the cultivation of potatoes and common
vegetables." This shows that the New England environment gave an
industrial and agricultural cast to piracy which it has not had
elsewhere. In fact, after reading the whole chapter, I am struck by the
pacific and highly moral character of these pirates. The last of
them--Thomas Veal--took up his abode in what is described as a "spacious
cavern," about two miles from Lynn. "There the fugitive fixed his
residence, and practiced the trade of a shoemaker, occasionally coming
down to the village to obtain articles of sustenance." By uniting the
occupations of market-gardening, shoe-making, and piracy, Thomas Veal
managed to satisfy the demands of a frugal nature, and to live respected
by his neighbors in Lynn. It must have been a great alleviation in the
lot of the small boys, when now and then they escaped from the eyes of
the tithing-men, and in the cave listened to Mr. Veal singing his
pirate's songs. Of course a solo could give only a faint conception of
what the full chorus would have been in the tropical forests, but still
it must have curdled the blood to a very considerable extent.

There is, I must confess, a certain air of vagueness about this
interesting narration. No overt act of piracy is mentioned. Indeed, the
evidence in regard to the piratical character of Mr. Veal, so far as it
is given in this book, is largely circumstantial.

There is, first, the geographical argument. The Saugus River, being a
winding stream, was admirably adapted for the resort of pirates who
wished to prey upon the commerce of Boston and Salem. This establishes
the opportunity and motive, and renders it antecedently probable that
piracy was practiced. The river, it is said, was a good place in which
to secrete boats. This we know from our reading was the invariable
practice of pirates.

Another argument is drawn from the umbrageous character of the Lynn
woods. We are told with nice particularity that in this tract of country
"there were many thick pines, hemlocks, and cedars, and places where the
rays of the sun at noon could not penetrate." Such a place would be just
the spot in which astute pirates would be likely to bury their treasure,
confident that it would never be discovered. The fact that nothing ever
has been discovered here seems to confirm this supposition.

The third argument is that while a small cave still remains, the
"spacious cavern" in which Thomas Veal, the piratical shoemaker, is said
to have dwelt no longer exists. This clinches the evidence. For there
was an earthquake in 1658. What more likely than that, in the
earthquake, "the top of the rock was loosened and crushed down into the
mouth of the cavern, inclosing the unfortunate inmate in its unyielding
prison?" At any rate, there is no record of Mr. Veal or of his spacious
cavern after that earthquake.

No one deserves to be called an antiquarian who cannot put two and two
together, and reconstruct from these data a more or less elaborate
history of the piracies of Mr. Thomas Veal. The only other explanation
of the facts presented, that I can think of as having any degree of
plausibility, is that possibly Mr. Veal may have been an Anabaptist,
escaped from Boston, who imposed upon the people of Lynn by making them
believe that he was only a pirate.

I must in candor admit that the Plutarch of piracy is sometimes more
edifying than entertaining. He can never resist the temptation to draw a
moral, and his dogmatic bias in favor of the doctrine of total
depravity is only too evident. But his book has the great advantage that
it is not devoid of incident. Take it all in all, there are worse books
to read--after one is tired of reading books that are better.

I am inclined to think that our novelists must make home happy, or they
may drive many of their readers to "The Pirate's Own Book." The policy
of the absolute prohibition of romance, while excellent in theory, has
practical difficulties in the way of enforcement. Perhaps, under certain
restrictions, license might be issued to proper persons to furnish
stimulants to the imagination. Of course the romancer should not be
allowed to sell to minors, nor within a certain distance of a
schoolhouse, nor to habitual readers. My position is the conservative
one that commended itself to the judicious Rollo.

"'Well, Rollo,' said Dorothy, 'shall I tell you a true story, or one
that is not true?'

"'I think, on the whole, Dorothy, I would rather have it true.'"

But there must have been times--though none are recorded--when Rollo
tired even of the admirable clear thinking and precise information of
Jonas. At such times he might have tolerated a story that was not so
very true, if only it were interesting. There are main thoroughfares
paved with hard facts where the intellectual traffic must go on
continually. There are tracks on which, if a heedless child of romance
should stray, he is in danger of being run down by the realists, those
grim motor-men of the literary world. But outside the congested
districts there should be some roadways leading out into the open
country where all things are still possible. At the entrance to each of
these roads there ought to be displayed the notice, "For pleasure only.
No heavy teaming allowed." I should not permit any modern improvements
in this district, but I should preserve all its natural features. There
should be not only a feudal castle with moat and drawbridge, but also a
pirate's cave.




The Honorable Points of Ignorance


I happen to live in a community where there is a deeply rooted prejudice
in favor of intelligence, with many facilities for its advancement. I
may, therefore, be looked upon as unmindful of my privileges when I
confess that my chief pleasures have been found in the more secluded
paths of ignorance.

I am no undiscriminating lover of Ignorance. I do not like the
pitch-black kind which is the negation of all thought. What I prefer is
a pleasant intellectual twilight, where one sees realities through an
entrancing atmosphere of dubiety.

In visiting a fine old Elizabethan mansion in the south of England our
host took us to a room where he had discovered the evidences of a secret
panel. "What is behind it?" we asked. "I do not know," he answered;
"while I live it shall never be opened, for then I should have no secret
chamber."

There was a philosopher after my own heart. He was wise enough to resist
the temptation to sell his birthright of mystery for a mess of
knowledge. The rural New Englander expresses his interest by saying, "I
want to know!" But may one not have a real interest in persons and
things which is free from inquisitiveness? For myself, I frequently
prefer not to know. Were Bluebeard to do me the honor of intrusting me
with his keys, I should spend a pleasant half-hour speculating on his
family affairs. I might even put the key in the lock, but I do not think
I should turn it. Why should I destroy twenty exciting possibilities for
the sake of a single discovery?

I like to watch certain impressive figures as they cross the College
Yard. They seem like the sages whom Dante saw:--

    "People were there with solemn eyes and slow,
     Of great authority in their countenance."

Do I therefore inquire their names, and intrusively seek to know what
books they have written, before I admire their scholarship? No, to my
old-fashioned way of thinking, scholarship is not a thing to be
measured; it is a mysterious effluence. Were I to see--

    "Democritus who puts the world on chance,
     Diogenes, Anaxagoras, and Thales,
     Zeno, Empedocles, and Heraclitus,

           *       *       *       *       *

     Tully and Livy and moral Seneca,
     Euclid, geometrician, and Ptolemy,
     Galen, Hippocrates, and Avicenna,"

I should not care to ask, "Which is which?" still less should I venture
to interview Galen on the subject of medicine, or put leading questions
to Diogenes. The combined impression of ineffable wisdom would be more
to me than any particular information I might get out of them.

But, as I said, I am not an enthusiast for Ignorance. Mine is not the
zeal of a new convert, but the sober preference of one to the manner
born. I do not look upon it as a panacea, nor, after the habit of
reformers, would I insist that it should be taught in the public
schools. There are important spheres wherein exact information is much
to be preferred.

Because Ignorance has its own humble measure of bliss I would not jump
at the conclusion that it is folly to be wise. That is an extravagant
statement. If real wisdom were offered me I should accept it gratefully.
Wisdom is an honorable estate, and, doubtless, it has pleasures of its
own. I only have in mind the alternative that is usually presented to
us, conscious ignorance or a kind of knowingness.

It is necessary, at this point, to make a distinction. A writer on the
use of words has a chapter on Ignorantism, which is a term he uses to
indicate Ignorance that mistakes itself, or seeks to make others mistake
it, for Knowledge. For Ignorantism I make no plea. If Ignorance puts on
a false uniform and is caught within the enemy's lines, it must suffer
the penalties laid down in the laws of war.

Nor would I defend what Milton calls "the barbarous ignorance of the
schools." This scholastic variety consists of the scientific definition
and classification of "things that aren't so." It has no value except as
a sort of gelatine culture for the propagation of verbal bacteria.

But the affectations of the pedants or the sciolists should not be
allowed to cast discredit on the fair name of Ignorance. It is only
natural Ignorance which I praise; not that which is acquired. It was a
saying of Landor that if a man had a large mind he could afford to let
the greater part of it lie fallow. Of course we small proprietors cannot
do things on such a generous scale; but it seems to me that if one has
only a little mind it is a mistake to keep it all under cultivation.

I hope that this praise of Ignorance may not give offense to any
intelligent reader who may feel that he is placed by reason of his
acquirements beyond the pale of our sympathies. He need fear no such
exclusion. My Lady Ignorance is gracious and often bestows her choicest
gifts on those who scorn her. The most erudite person is intelligent
only in spots. Browning's Bishop Blougram questioned whether he should
be called a skeptic or believer, seeing that he could only exchange

          "a life of doubt diversified by faith,
    For one of faith diversified by doubt:
    We called the chess-board white,--we call it black."

Whether a person thinks of his own intellectual state as one of
knowledge diversified by ignorance or one of ignorance diversified by
knowledge is a matter of temperament. We like him better when he frankly
calls his intellectual chess-board black. That, at any rate, was the
original color, the white is an afterthought.

Let me, then, without suspicion of treasonable intent, be allowed to
point out what we may call in Shakespearean phrase "the honorable points
of ignorance."

The social law against "talking shop" is an indication of the very
widespread opinion that the exhibition of unmitigated knowledge is
unseemly, outside of business hours. When we meet for pleasure we prefer
that it should be on the humanizing ground of not knowing. Nothing is so
fatal to conversation as an authoritative utterance. When a man who is
capable of giving it enters,

    "All talk dies, as in a grove all song
     Beneath the shadow of a bird of prey."

Conversation about the weather would lose all its easy charm in the
presence of the Chief of the Weather Bureau.

It is possible that the fear of exhibiting unusual information in a
mixed company may be a survival of primitive conditions. Just as the
domesticated dog will turn around on the rug before lying down, for
hereditary reasons which I do not remember, so it is with civilized man.
Once ignorance was universal and enforced by penalties. In the progress
of the race the environment has been modified, but so strong is the
influence of heredity that The Man Who Knows no sooner enters the
drawing-room than he is seized by guilty fears. His ancestors for having
exhibited a moiety of his intelligence were executed as wizards. But
perhaps the ordinary working of natural selection may account for the
facts. The law of the survival of the fittest admits of no exceptions,
and the fittest to give us pleasure in conversation is the sympathetic
person who appears to know very little more than we do.

In the commerce of ideas there must be reciprocity. We will not deal
with one who insists that the balance of trade shall always be in his
favor. Moreover there must be a spice of incertitude about the
transaction. The real joy of the intellectual traffic comes when we
sail away like the old merchant adventurers in search of a market. There
must be no prosaic bills of exchange: it must be primitive barter. We
have a choice cargo of beads which we are willing to exchange for
frankincense and ivory. If on some strange coast we should meet
simple-minded people who have only wampum, perhaps even then we might
make a trade.

Have you never when engaged in such commerce felt something of the
spirit of the grave Tyrian trader who had sailed away from the
frequented marts, and held on

    "O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale,
     Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily,
     To where the Atlantic raves
     Outside the western straits, and unbent sails
     There where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam,
     Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come;
     And on the beach undid his corded bales."

It is not every day that one meets with such shy traffickers, for the
world is becoming very sophisticated. One does not ask that those with
whom we converse should be ignorant of everything; it is enough that
they should not know what is in our bales before we undo them.

One very serious drawback to our pleasure in conversation with a too
well-informed person is the nervous strain that is involved. We are
always wondering what will happen when he comes to the end of his
resources. After listening to one who discourses with surprising
accuracy upon any particular topic, we feel a delicacy in changing the
subject. It seems a mean trick, like suddenly removing the chair on
which a guest is about to sit down for the evening. With one who is
interested in a great many things he knows little about there is no such
difficulty. If he has passed the first flush of youth, it no longer
embarrasses him to be caught now and then in a mistake; indeed your
correction is welcomed as an agreeable interruption, and serves as a
starting point for a new series of observations.

The pleasure of conversation is enhanced if one feels assured not only
of wide margins of ignorance, but also of the absence of uncanny
quickness of mind.

I should not like to be neighbor to a wit. It would be like being in
proximity to a live wire. A certain insulating film of kindly stupidity
is needed to give a margin of safety to human intercourse. There are
certain minds whose processes convey the impression of alternating
currents of high voltage on a wire that is not quite large enough for
them. From such I would withdraw myself.

One is freed from all such apprehensions in the companionship of people
who make no pretensions to any kind of cleverness. "The laughter of
fools is like the crackling of thorns under a pot." What cheerful
sounds! The crackling of the dry thorns! and the merry bubbling of the
pot!

There is an important part played by what I may call defensive
Ignorance. It was said of Robert Elsmere that he had a mind that was
defenseless against the truth. It is a fine thing to be thus open to
conviction, but the mental hospitality of one who is without prejudices
is likely to be abused. All sorts of notions importunately demand
attention, and he who thinks to examine all their credentials will find
no time left for his own proper affairs.

For myself, I like to have a general reception-room in my mind for all
sorts of notions with which I desire to keep up only a calling
acquaintance. Here let them all be welcomed, good, bad, and
indifferent, in the spacious antechamber of my Ignorance. But I am not
able to invite them into my private apartments, for I am living in a
small way in cramped quarters, where there is only room for my own
convictions. There are many things that are interesting to hear about
which I do not care to investigate. If one is willing to give me the
result of his speculations on various esoteric doctrines I am ready to
receive them in the spirit in which they are offered, but I should not
think of examining them closely; it would be too much like looking a
gift horse in the mouth.

I should like to talk with a Mahatma about the constitution of the
astral body. I do not know enough about the subject to contradict his
assertions, and therefore he would have it all his own way. But were he
to become insistent and ask me to look into the matter for myself, I
should beg to be excused. I would not take a single step alone. In such
a case I agree with Sir Thomas Browne that "it is better to sit down in
modest ignorance and rest contented with the natural blessings of our
own reasons."

There are zealous persons of a proselyting turn of mind who insist upon
our accepting their ideas or giving reasons for our rejection of them.
When we see the flames of controversy sweeping upon us, the only safety
lies in setting a back fire which shall clear the ground of any fuel for
argument. If we can only surround ourselves with a bare space of
nescience we may rest in peace. I have seen a simple Chinese
laundry-man, by adopting this plan, resist a storm of argument and
invective without losing his temper or yielding his point. Serene,
imperturbable, inscrutable, he stood undisturbed by the strife of
tongues. He had one supreme advantage,--he did not know the language.

It was thus in the sixteenth century, when religious strife waxed mad
around him, that Montaigne preserved a little spot of tolerant thought.
"O what a soft, easy, and wholesome pillow is ignorance and incuriosity
whereon to compose a well-contrived head!"

This sounds like mere Epicureanism, but Montaigne had much to say for
himself: "Great abuse in the world is begot, or, to speak more boldly,
all the abuses of the world are begot by our being taught to be afraid
of professing our ignorance, and that we are bound to accept all things
we are not able to refute.... They make me hate things that are likely
when they impose upon me for infallible. I love those words which
mollify and moderate the temerity of our propositions, 'Peradventure, in
some sort, 'tis said, I think,' and the like.... There is a sort of
ignorance, strong and generous, that yields nothing in honor and courage
to knowledge; an ignorance which to conceive requires no less knowledge
than knowledge itself."

Not only is protection needed from the dogmatic assaults of our
neighbors, but also from our own premature ideas. There are opinions
which we are willing to receive on probation, but these probationers
must be taught by judicious snubbing to know their place. The
plausibilities and probabilities that are pleasantly received must not
airily assume the place of certainties. Because you say to a stranger,
"I'm glad to see you," it is not certain that you are ready to sign his
note at the bank.

When one happens to harbor any ideas of a radical character, he is
fortunate if he is so constituted that it is not necessary for his
self-respect that he should be cock-sure. The consciousness of the
imperfection of his knowledge serves as a buffer when the train of
progress starts with a jerk.

Sir Thomas More was, it is evident, favorably impressed with many of the
sentiments of the gentleman from Utopia, but it was a great relief to
him to be able to give them currency without committing himself to them.
He makes no dogmatic assertion that the constitution of Utopia was
better than that of the England of Henry VIII. In fact, he professes to
know nothing about Utopia except from mere hearsay. He gracefully
dismisses the subject, allowing the seeds of revolutionary ideas to
float away on the thistle-down of polite Ignorance.

"When Raphael had made an end of speaking, though many things occurred
to me both concerning the manners and laws of that country that seemed
very absurd ... yet since I perceived that Raphael was weary and I was
not sure whether he could bear contradiction ... I only commended their
constitution and the account he had given of it in general; and so,
taking him by the hand, carried him to supper, and told him I would
find some other time for examining this subject more particularly and
discoursing more copiously upon it."

       *       *       *       *       *

One whose quiet tastes lead him away from the main traveled roads into
the byways of Ignorance is likely to retain a feeling in regard to books
which belongs to an earlier stage of culture. Time was when a book was a
symbol of intellectual mysteries rather than a tool to be used. When
Omar Khayyam sang of the delights of a jug of wine and a book, I do not
think he was intemperate in the use of either. The same book and the
same jug of wine would last him a long time. The chief thing was that it
gave him a comfortable feeling to have them within reach.

The primitive feeling in regard to a book as a kind of talisman survives
chiefly among bibliophiles, but with them it is overlaid by matters of
taste which are quite beyond the comprehension of ordinary people. As
for myself, I know nothing of such niceties.

I know nothing of rare bindings or fine editions. My heart is never
disturbed by coveting the contents of my neighbor's bookshelves.
Indeed, I have always listened to the tenth commandment with a tranquil
heart since I learned, in the Shorter Catechism, that "the tenth
commandment forbiddeth all discontentment with our own estate, envying
or grieving at the good of our neighbor and all inordinate motions and
affections to anything that is his." If that be all, it is not aimed at
me, particularly in this matter of books.

I feel no discontentment at the disorderly array of bound volumes that I
possess. I know that they are no credit either to my taste or to my
scholarship, but if that offends my neighbor, the misery is his, not
mine. If he should bring a railing accusation against me, let him
remember that there is a ninth commandment which "forbiddeth anything
that is injurious to our own or our neighbor's good name." As for any
inordinate motions or affections toward his literary treasures, I have
no more than toward his choice collection of stamps.

Yet I have one weakness in common with the bibliophile; I have a liking
for certain books which I have neither time nor inclination to read.
Just as according to the mediaeval theory there was a sanctity about a
duly ordained clergyman altogether apart from his personal character, so
there is to my mind an impressiveness about some volumes which has
little to do with their contents, or at least with my knowledge of them.
Why should we be too curious in regard to such matters? There are books
which I love to see on the shelf. I feel that virtue goes out of them,
but I should think it undue familiarity to read them.

The persons who have written on "Books that have helped me" have usually
confined their list to books which they have actually read. One book has
clarified their thoughts, another has stimulated their wills, another
has given them useful knowledge. But are there no Christian virtues to
be cultivated? What about humility, that pearl of great price?

To be constantly reminded that you have not read Kant's "Critique of the
Pure Reason," and that therefore you have no right to express a final
opinion on philosophy, does not that save you from no end of unnecessary
dogmatism? The silent monitor with its accusing, uncut pages is a
blessed help to the meekness of wisdom. A book that has helped me is
"The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars of England," by Edward,
Earl of Clarendon. I am by nature and education a Cromwellian, of a
rather narrow type. I am more likely than not to think of Charles I. as
a man of sin. When, therefore, I brought home Clarendon's History I felt
a glow of conscious virtue; the volume was an outward and visible sign
of inward and spiritual grace,--the grace of tolerance; and so it has
ever been to me.

Years have passed, and the days of leisure have not yet come when I
could devote myself to the reading of it. Perhaps the fact that I
discovered that the noble earl's second sentence contains almost three
hundred words may have had a discouraging influence,--but we will let
that pass. Because I have not crossed the Rubicon of the second chapter,
will you say that the book has not influenced me? "When in my sessions
of sweet, silent thought," with the Earl of Clarendon, "I summon up
remembrance of time past," is it necessary that I should laboriously
turn the pages? It is enough that I feel my prejudices oozing away, and
that I am convinced, when I look at the much prized volume, that there
are two sides to this matter of the English Commonwealth. Could the
most laborious reading do more for me?

Indeed, it is dangerous, sometimes, not to let well-enough alone.
Wordsworth's fickle Muse gave him several pretty fancies about the
unseen banks of Yarrow. "Yarrow Unvisited" was so delightful that he was
almost tempted to be content with absent treatment.

    "We will not see them, will not go
     To-day nor yet to-morrow,
     Enough if in our hearts we know
     There's such a place as Yarrow.
     Be Yarrow's stream unseen, unknown,
     It must, or we shall rue it,
     We have a vision of our own,
     Ah, why should we undo it?"

Ah, why, indeed? the reader asks, after reading Yarrow Visited and
Yarrow Re-visited. The visits were a mistake.

Perhaps Clarendon Unread is as good for my soul as Clarendon Read or
Clarendon Re-read. Who can tell?

       *       *       *       *       *

There is another sphere in which the honorable points of ignorance are
not always sufficiently appreciated, that of Travel. The pleasure of
staying at home consists in being surrounded by things which are
familiar and which we know all about. The primary pleasure of going
abroad consists in the encounter with the unfamiliar and the unknown.

That was the impulse which stirred old Ulysses to set forth once more
upon his travels.

                       "For my purpose holds
    To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
    Of all the western stars, until I die.
    It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,
    It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
    And see the great Achilles, whom we knew."

"It may be"--there lay the charm. There was no knowing what might happen
on the dark, broad seas. Perhaps they might get lost, and then again
they might come upon the Happy Isles. And if as they sailed under their
looming shores they should see the great Achilles--why all the better!

What joys the explorers of the New World experienced! The heart leaps up
at the very title of Sebastian Cabot's joint stock company. "Merchants
Adventurers of England for the discovery of lands, territories, isles
and signories, unknown." There was no knowing beforehand which was an
island and which the mainland. All they had to do was to keep on, sure
only of finding something which they had not expected. When they got to
the mainland they were as likely as not to stumble on the great Khan
himself. Of course they might not make a discovery of the first
magnitude like that of the Spaniards on the Peak in Darien,--but if it
was not one thing it was another!

Two or three miles back of Plymouth, Mass., is a modest little pond
called Billington's Sea. Billington, an adventurous Pilgrim, had climbed
a tree, and looking westwards had caught sight of the shimmering water.
He looked at it with a wild surmise, and then the conviction flashed
upon him that he had discovered the goal of hardy mariners,--the great
South Sea. That was a great moment for Billington!

Of course the Spaniards were more fortunate in their geographical
position. It turned out that it was the Pacific that they saw from their
Peak in Darien; while Billington's Sea does not grow on acquaintance.

But my heart goes out to Billington. He also was a discoverer,
according to his lights. He belonged to a hardy breed, and could stare
on new scenes with the best of them. It was not his fault that the
Pacific was not there. If it had been, Billington would have discovered
it. We know perfectly well that the Pacific Ocean does not lave the
shores of Plymouth County, and so we should not go out into the woods on
a fine morning to look for it. There is where Billington had the
advantage of us.

Is it not curious that while we profess to envy the old adventurers the
joys of discovery, yet before we set out on our travels we make it a
point of convenience to rob ourselves of these possibilities? Before we
set out for Ultima Thule we must know precisely where it is, and how we
are going to get there, and what we are to see and what others have said
about it. After a laborious course of reading the way is as familiar to
our minds as the road to the post office. After that there is nothing
more for us to do but to sally forth to verify the guide-books. We have
done all that we could to brush the bloom off our native Ignorance.

Of course even then all the possibilities of discovery are not shut
out. The best-informed person cannot be completely guarded against
surprise. Accidents will happen, and there is always the chance that one
may have been misinformed.

I remember a depressed looking lady whom I encountered as she trudged
through the galleries of the Vatican with grim conscientiousness. She
had evidently a stern duty to perform for the cause of Art. But in the
Sistine Chapel the stillness was broken by her voice, which had a note
of triumph as she spoke to her daughter. She had discovered an error in
Baedeker. It infused new life into her tired soul.

    "Some flowerets of Eden we still inherit
     Though the trail of the serpent is over them all."

Speaking of the Vatican, that suggests the weak point in my argument. It
suggests that there are occasions when knowledge is very convenient. On
the Peak in Darien the first comer, with the wild surmise of ignorance,
has the advantage in the quality of his sensation; but it is different
in Jerusalem or Rome. There the pleasure consists in the fact that a
great many interesting people have been there before and done many
interesting things, which it might be well to know about.

At this point I am quite willing to grant an inch; with the
understanding that it shall not be lengthened into an ell. The Camel of
Knowledge may push his head into the tent, and we shall have to resist
his further encroachments as we may.

What we call the historic sense is not consistent with a state of
nescience. The picture which the eye takes in is incomplete without the
thousand associations which come from previous thought. Still, it
remains true that the finest pleasure does not come when the mental
images are the most precise. Before entering Paradise the mediaeval
pilgrims tasted of the streams of Eunoe and Lethe,--the happy memory and
the happy forgetfulness. The most potent charm comes from the judicious
mingling of these waters.

There is a feeling of antiquity that only comes now and then, but which
it is worth traveling far to experience. It is the thrill that comes
when we consciously stand in the presence of the remote past. Some scene
brings with it an impression of immemorial time. In almost every case
we find that it comes from being reminded of something which we have
once known and more than half forgotten. What are the "mists of time"
but imperfect memories?

Modern psychologists have given tardy recognition to the "Subliminal
Self,"--the self that lodges under the threshold of consciousness. He is
a shy gnome, and loves the darkness rather than the light; not, as I
believe, because his deeds are evil, but for reasons best known to
himself. To all appearances he is the most ignorant fellow in the world,
and yet he is no fool. As for the odds and ends that he stores up under
the threshold, they are of more value than the treasures that the
priggish Understanding displays in his show windows upstairs.

In traveling through historic lands the Subliminal Self overcomes his
shyness. There are scenes and even words that reach back into hoar
antiquity, and bring us into the days of eld.

Each person has his own chronology. If I were to seek to bring to mind
the very ancientest time, I should not think of the cave-dwellers: I
should repeat, "The Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the
Hittites, the Perizzites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the
Girgashites."

There is antiquity! It is not only a long time since these tribes dwelt
in the land; it has been a long time since I first heard of them.

My memory goes back to the time when a disconsolate little boy sat on a
bench in a Sunday-school and asked himself, "What is a Girgashite?"

The habit of the Sunday-school of mingling the historical and ethical
elements in one inextricable moral had made it uncertain whether the
Girgashite was a person or a sin. In either case it happened a long time
ago. There upon the very verge of Time stood the Girgashite, like the
ghost in Ossian, "His spear was a column of mist, and the stars looked
dim through his form."

Happily my studies have not led in that direction, and there is nothing
to disturb the first impression. If some day wandering over Oriental
hills I should come upon some broken monuments of the Girgashites, I am
sure that I should feel more of a thrill than could possibly come to my
more instructed companion. To him it would be only the discovery of
another fact, to fit into his scheme of knowledge: to me it would be
like stumbling unawares into the primeval world.

What is more delightful than in a railway train in Italy to hear voices
in the night calling out names that recall the lost arts of our
childhood! There is a sense

    "Of something here like something there,
     Of something done, I know not where,
     Such as no language can declare."

There is a bittersweet to it, for there is a momentary fear that you may
be called upon to construe; but when that is past it is pure joy.

"Monte Soracte," said the Italian gentleman on the train between Foligno
and Rome, as he pointed out a picturesque eminence. My answering smile
was intended to convey the impression that one touch of the classics
makes the whole world kin. Had I indeed kept up my Horace, a host of
clean-cut ideas would have instantly rushed into my mind. "Is that
Soracte! It is not what I had reason to expect. As a mountain I prefer
Monadnock."

Fortunately I had no such prepossessions. I had expected nothing. There
only came impressions of lessons years ago in a dingy school-room
presided over by a loved instructor whom we knew as "Prof. Ike." Looking
back through the mists of time, I felt that I had been the better for
having learned the lessons, and none the worse for having long since
forgotten them. In those days Soracte had been a noun standing in
mysterious relations to a verb unknown; but now it was evident that it
was a mountain. There it stood under the clear Italian sky just as it
had been in the days of Virgil and Horace. Thoughts of Horace and of the
old professor mingled pleasantly so long as the mountain was in sight.

       *       *       *       *       *

It may seem to some timid souls that this praise of Ignorance may have a
sinister motive, and may be intended to deter from the pursuit of
knowledge. On the contrary, it is intended to encourage those who are
"faint yet pursuing."

It must have occurred to every serious person that the pursuit of
knowledge is not what it once was. Time was when to know seemed the
easiest thing in the world. All that a man had to do was to assert
dogmatically that a thing was so, and then argue it out with some one
who had even less acquaintance with the subject than he had. He was not
hampered by a rigid, scientific method, nor did he need to make
experiments, which after all might not strengthen his position. The
chief thing was a certain tenacity of opinion which would enable him, in
Pope's phrase, to "hold the eel of science by the tail." There were no
troublesome experts to cast discredit on this slippery sport. If a man
had a knack at metaphysics and a fine flow of technical language he
could satisfy all reasonable curiosity about the Universe. Or with the
minimum of effort he might attain a jovial scholarship adequate for all
convivial purposes, like Chaucer's pilgrim

    "Whan that he wel dronken had the win,
     Than wold he speken no word but Latin."

It was the golden age of the amateur, when certainty could be had for
the asking, and one could stake out any part of the wide domain of human
interest and hold it by the right of squatter sovereignty. But in these
days the man who aspires to know must do something more than assert his
conviction. He must submit to all sorts of mortifying tests, and at best
he can obtain a title to only the tiniest bit of the field he covets.

With the severer definitions of knowledge and the delimitation of the
territory which any one may call his own there has come a curious
result. While the aggregate of intellectual wealth has increased, the
individual workers are being reduced to penury. It is a pathetic
illustration of Progress and Poverty. The old and highly respected class
of gentlemen and scholars is being depleted. Scholarship has become so
difficult that those who aspire after it have little time for the
amenities. It is not as it was in the "spacious times of great
Elizabeth." Enter any company of modern scholars and ask what they know
about any large subject, and you will find that each one hastens to take
the poor debtor's oath. How can they be expected to know so much?

On this minute division of intellectual labor the exact sciences thrive,
but conversation, poetry, art, and all that belongs to the humanities
languish.

Your man of highly specialized intelligence has often a morbid fear of
half-knowledge, and he does not dare to express an opinion that has not
been the result of original research. He shuns the innocent questioners
who would draw him out, as if they were so many dunning creditors. He
becomes a veritable Dick Swiveller as one conversational thoroughfare
after another is closed against him, until he no longer ventures abroad.
The worst of it is that he has a haunting apprehension that even the bit
of knowledge which he calls his own may be taken away from him by some
new discovery, and he may be cast adrift upon the Unknowable.

It is then that he should remember the wisdom of the unjust steward, so
that when he is cast out of the House of Knowledge he may find congenial
friends in the habitations of Ignorance.

There are a great many mental activities that stop short of strict
knowledge. Where we do not know, we may imagine, and hope, and dare; we
may laugh at our neighbor's mistakes, and occasionally at our own. We
may enjoy the delicious moments of suspense when we are on the verge of
finding out; and if it should happen that the discovery is postponed,
then we have a chance to go over the delightful process again.

To say "I do not know" is not nearly as painful as it seems to those
who have not tried it. The active mind, when the conceit of absolute
knowledge has been destroyed, quickly recovers itself and cries out,
after the manner of Brer Rabbit when Brer Fox threw him into the brier
patch, "Bred en bawn in a brier patch, Brer Fox--bred en bawn in a brier
patch!"




That History should be Readable


That was a clever device which a writer of "mere literature" hit upon
when he boldly dedicated his book to a man of prodigious learning. "Who
so guarded," he says, "can suspect his safety even when he travels
through the Enemy's Country, for such is the vast field of Learning,
where the Learned (though not numerous enough to be an Army) lie in
small Parties, maliciously in Ambush, to destroy all New Men who look
into their Quarters."

It is doubtful, however, whether in these days a lover of Ignorance--or,
if you prefer, an ignorant lover of good things--could be safe in the
enemy's country, even under the protection of such a Mr. Great Heart.
It is no longer true that the Learned are not numerous enough to be an
army and are content with guerrilla warfare; on the contrary, they have
increased to multitudes, and their well-disciplined forces hold all the
strategic points. As for those who love to read and consider, rather
than to enter into minute researches, it is as in the days of Shamgar,
the son of Anoth, when "the highways were unoccupied and the people
walked through byways."

There is one field, however, that the Gentle Reader will not give up
without a struggle--it is that of history. He claims that it belongs to
Literature as much as to Science. History and Story are variations of
the same word, and the historian who is master of his art must be a
story-teller. Clio was not a school-mistress, but a Muse, and the
papyrus roll in her hand does not contain mere dates and statistics, it
is filled with the record of heroic adventures. The primitive form of
history was verbal tradition, as one generation told the story of the
past to the generation that followed.

"There was a great advantage in that method," says the Gentle Reader,
"the irrelevant details dropped out. It is only the memorable things
that can be remembered. What a pleasant invitation that was in the
eighty-first psalm to the study of Hebrew History, in order to learn
what had happened when Israel went out through the land of Egypt:--

    'Take up the psalm and bring hither the timbrel,
     The pleasant harp with the psaltery,
     Blow up the trumpet in the new moon,
     And the full moon on our solemn feast days.'

"The Jews had a way of setting their history to music, and bringing in
the great events as a glorious refrain, which they never feared
repeating too often; perhaps that is one reason why their history has
lasted so long."

The Gentle Reader's liking for histories that might be read to the
accompaniment of the "pleasant harp and psaltery," and which now and
then stir him as with the sound of a trumpet, brings upon him many a
severe rebuke. He is told that his favorite writers are frequently
inaccurate and one-sided. The true historian, he is informed, is a
prodigy of impartiality, who has divested himself of all human passions,
in order that he may set down in exact sequence the course of events.
The Gentle Reader turns to these highly praised volumes and finds
himself adrift, without human companionship, on a bottomless sea of
erudition,--writings, writings everywhere and not a page to read!
Returning from this perilous excursion, he ever after adheres to his
original predilection for histories that are readable.

He is of the opinion that a history must be essentially a work of the
imagination. This does not mean that it must not be true, but it means
that the important truth about any former generation can only be
reproduced through the imagination. The important thing is that these
people were once alive. No critical study of their meagre memorials can
make us enter into their joys, their griefs, and their fears. The
memorials only suggest to the historic imagination what the reality must
have been.

Peter Bell could recognize a fact when he saw it:--

    "A primrose on the river's brim
     A yellow primrose was to him,
     And it was nothing more."

As long as the primrose was there, he could be trusted to describe it
accurately enough. But set Peter Bell the task of describing last year's
primrose. "There aren't any last year's primroses on the river's brim,"
says Peter, "so you must be content with a description of the one in my
herbarium. Last year's primroses, you will observe, are very much
flattened out." To Mr. Peter Bell, after he has spent many years in the
universities, a document is a document, and it is nothing more. When he
has compared a great many documents, and put them together in a
mechanical way, he calls his work a history. That's where he differs
from the Gentle Reader who calls it only the crude material out of which
a man of genius may possibly make a history.

To the Gentle Reader it is a profoundly interesting reflection that
since this planet has been inhabited people have been fighting, and
working, and loving, and hating, with an intensity born of the
conviction that, if they went at it hard enough, they could finish the
whole business in one generation. He likes to get back into any one of
these generations just "to get the feel of it." He does not care so much
for the final summing up of the process, as to see it in the making.
Any one who can give him that experience is his friend.

He is interested in the stirring times of the English Revolution, and
goes to the historical expert to find what it was all about. The
historical expert starts with the Magna Charta and makes a preliminary
survey. Then he begins his march down the centuries, intrenching every
position lest he be caught unawares by the critics. His intellectual
forces lack mobility, as they must wait for their baggage trains. At
last he comes to the time of the Stuarts, and there is much talk of the
royal prerogative, and ship money, and attainders, and acts of
Parliament. There are exhaustive arguments, now on the one side and now
on the other, which exactly balance one another. There are references to
bulky volumes, where at the foot of every page the notes run along, like
little angry dogs barking at the text.

The Gentle Reader calls out: "I have had enough of this. What I want to
know is what it's all about, and which side, on the whole, has the right
of it. Which side are you on? Are you a Roundhead or a Cavalier? Are
your sympathies with the Whigs or the Tories?"

"Sympathies!" says the expert. "Who ever heard of a historian allowing
himself to sympathize? I have no opinions of my own to present. My great
aim is not to prejudice the mind of the student."

"Nonsense," says the Gentle Reader; "I am not a student, nor is this a
school-room. It's all in confidence; speak out as one gentleman to
another under a friendly roof! What do you think about it? No matter if
you make a mistake or two, I'll forget most that you say, anyway. All
that I care for is to get the gist of the matter. As for your fear of
warping my mind, there's not the least danger in the world. My mind is
like a tough bit of hickory; it will fly back into its original shape
the moment you let go. I have a hundred prejudices of my own,--one more
won't hurt me. I want to know what it was that set the people by the
ears. Why did they cut off the head of Charles I., and why did they
drive out James II.? I can't help thinking that there must have been
something more exciting than those discussions of yours about
constitutional theories. Do you know, I sometimes doubt whether most of
the people who went to the wars knew that there was such a thing as the
English Constitution; the subject hadn't been written up then. I suspect
that something happened that was not set down in your book; something
that made those people fighting mad."

Then the Gentle Reader turns to his old and much criticised friend
Macaulay, and asks,--

"What do you think about it?"

"Think about it!" says Macaulay. "I'll tell you what I think about it.
To begin with, that Charles I., though good enough as a family man, was
a consummate liar."

"That's the first light I've had on the subject," says the Gentle
Reader. "Charles lied, and that made the people mad?"

"Precisely! I perceive that you have the historic sense. We English
can't abide a liar; so at last when we could not trust the king's word
we chopped off his head. Mind you, I'm not defending the regicides, but
between ourselves I don't mind saying that I think it served him right.
At any rate our blood was up, and there was no stopping us. I wish I had
time to tell you all about Hampden, and Pym, and Cromwell, but I must
go on to the glorious year 1688, and tell you how it all came about, and
how we sent that despicable dotard, James, flying across the Channel,
and how we brought in the good and wise King William, and how the great
line of Whig statesmen began. I take for granted--as you appear to be a
sensible man--that you are a Whig?"

"I'm open to conviction," says the Gentle Reader.

In a little while he is in the very thick of it. He is an Englishman of
the seventeenth century. He has taken sides and means to fight it out.
He knows how to vote on every important question that comes before
Parliament. No Jacobite sophistry can beguile him. When William lands he
throws up his hat, and after that he stands by him, thick or thin. When
you tell him that he ought to be more dispassionate in his historical
judgments, he answers: "That would be all very well if we were not
dealing with living issues,--but with Ireland in an uproar and the
<DW7>s ready to swarm over from France, there is a call for decision. A
man must know his own mind. You may stand off and criticise William's
policy; but the question is, What policy do you propose? You say that I
have not exhausted the subject, and that there are other points of view.
Very likely. Show me another point of view, only make it as clear to me
as Macaulay makes his. Let it be a real view, and not a smudge. Some
other day I may look at it, but I must take one thing at a time. What I
object to is the historian who takes both sides in the same paragraph.
That is what I call offensive bi-partisanship."

The Gentle Reader is interested not only in what great men actually
were, but in the way they appeared to those who loved or hated them. He
is of the opinion that the legend is often more significant than the
colorless annals. When a legend has become universally accepted and has
lived a thousand years, he feels that it should be protected in its
rights of possession by some statute of limitation. It has come to have
an independent life of its own. He has, therefore, no sympathy with
Gibbon in his identification of St. George of England with George of
Cappadocia, a dishonest army contractor who supplied the troops of the
Emperor Julian with bacon. Says Gibbon: "His employment was mean; he
rendered it infamous. He accumulated wealth by the basest arts of fraud
and corruption; but his malversations were so notorious that George was
compelled to escape from the pursuit of his enemies.... This odious
stranger, disguising every circumstance of time and place, assumed the
mask of a martyr, a saint, and a Christian hero; and the infamous George
of Cappadocia has been transformed into the renowned St. George of
England, the patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the garter."

"That is a serious indictment," says the Gentle Reader. "I have no plea
to make for the Cappadocian; I can readily believe that his bacon was
bad. But why not let bygones be bygones? If he managed to transform
himself into a saint, and for many centuries avoid all suspicion, I
believe that it was a thorough reformation. St. George of England has
long been esteemed as a valiant gentleman,--and, at any rate, that
affair with the dragon was greatly to his credit."

Sometimes the Gentle Reader is disturbed by finding that different lines
of tradition have been mixed, and his mind becomes the battleground
whereon old blood feuds are fought out. Thus it happens that as a child
he was brought up on the tales of the Covenanters and imbibed their
stern resentment against their persecutors. He learned to hate the very
name of Graham of Claverhouse who brought desolation upon so many
innocent homes. On the other hand, his heart beats high when he hears
the martial strains of Bonnie Dundee. "There was a man for you!"

    "Dundee he is mounted, he rides up the street,
     The bells are rung backward, the drums they are beat.

           *       *       *       *       *

    'Away to the hills, to the caves, to the rocks--
     Ere I own as usurper, I'll couch with the fox!
     And tremble, false Whigs, in the midst of your glee,
     You have not seen the last of my bonnet and me!'

           *       *       *       *       *

     He waved his proud hand, and the trumpets were blown,
     The kettle-drums clashed, and the horsemen rode on,
     Till on Ravelston's cliffs and on Clermeston's lee
     Died away the wild war notes of Bonnie Dundee."

"When I see him wave his proud hand," says the Gentle Reader, "I am his
clansman, and I'm ready to be off with him."

"I thought you were a Whig," says the student of history.

"I thought so too,--but what's politics where the affections are
enlisted? Don't you hear those wild war notes?"

"But are you aware that the Bonnie Dundee is the same man whom you have
just been denouncing under the name of Graham of Claverhouse?"

"Are you sure they are the same?" sighs the Gentle Reader. "I cannot
make them seem the same. To me there are two of them: Graham of
Claverhouse, whom I hate, and the Bonnie Dundee, whom I love. If it's
all the same to you, I think I shall keep them separate and go on loving
and hating as aforetime."

       *       *       *       *       *

But though the Gentle Reader has the defects of his qualities and is
sometimes led astray by his sympathies, do not think that he is
altogether lacking in solidity of judgment. He has a genuine love of
truth and finds it more interesting than fiction--when it is well
written. If he objects to the elimination of myth and fable it is
because he is profoundly interested in the history of human feeling. The
story that is the embodiment of an emotion is itself of the greatest
significance. In Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, before Jupiter himself
is revealed, the Phantasm of Jupiter appears and speaks. Prometheus
addresses him:--

    "Tremendous Image, as thou art must be
      He whom thou shadowest forth."

On the stage of history each great personage has a phantasmal
counterpart; sometimes there are many of them. Each phantasm becomes a
centre of love and hate.

The cold-blooded historian gives us what he calls the real Napoleon. He
is, he asserts, neither the Corsican Ogre of the British imagination nor
the Heroic Emperor for whom myriads of Frenchmen gladly died. Perhaps
not; but when the Napoleonic legend has been banished, what about the
Napoleonic wars? The Phantasms of Napoleon appear on every battlefield.
The men of that day saw them, and were nerved to the conflict. The
reader must, now and then, see them, or he can have no conception of
what was going on. He misses "the moving why they did it." And as for
the real Napoleon, what was the magic by which he was able to call such
phantasms from the vasty deep?

The careful historian who would trace the history of Europe in the
centuries that followed the barbarian invasion is sorely troubled by the
intrusion of legendary elements. After purging his work of all that
savors of romance, he has a very neat and connected narrative.

"But is it true?" asks the Gentle Reader. "I for one do not believe it.
The course of true history never did run so smooth. Here is a worthy
person who undertakes to furnish me with an idea of the Dark Ages, and
he forgets the principal fact, which is that it was dark. His picture
has all the sharp outlines of a noon-day street scene. I don't believe
he ever spent a night alone in a haunted house. If he had he would have
known that if you don't see ghosts, you see shapes that look like them.
At midnight mysterious forms loom large. The historian must have a
genius for depicting Chaos. He must make me dimly perceive 'the
fragments of forgotten peoples,' with their superstitions, their
formless fears, their vague desires. They were all fighting them in the
dark.

    "'For friend and foe were shadows in the mist,
      And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew;
      And some had visions out of golden youth,
      And some beheld the faces of old ghosts
      Look in upon the battle; and in the mist
      Was many a noble deed, and many a base
      And chance and craft and strength in single fights,
      And ever and anon with host to host
      Shocks, and the splintering spear, the hard mail hewn,
      Shield-breakings, and the clash of brands, the crash
      Of battle axes on shattered helms, and shrieks
      After the Christ, of those who falling down
      Looked up for heaven and only saw the mist.'"

"But, Gentle Reader," says the Historian, "that is poetry, not history."

"Perhaps it is, but it's what really happened."

       *       *       *       *       *

He is of the opinion that many histories owe their quality of
unreadableness to the virtues of their authors. The kind-hearted
historians over-load their works through their desire to rescue as many
events and persons as possible from oblivion. When their better judgment
tells them that they should be off, they remain to drag in one more.
Alas, their good intention defeats itself; their frail craft cannot bear
the added burden, and all hands go to the bottom. There is no surer
oblivion than that which awaits one whose name is recorded in a book
that undertakes to tell all.

The trouble with facts is that there are so many of them. Here are
millions of happenings every day. Each one has its infinite series of
antecedents and consequents; and each takes longer in the telling than
in the doing. Evidently there must be some principle of selection.
Naturalists with a taste for mathematics tell us of the appalling
catastrophe which would impend if every codfish were to reach maturity.
It would be equaled by the state of things which would exist were every
incident duly chronicled. A foretaste of this calamity has been given in
our recent war,--and yet there were some of our military men who did not
write reminiscences.

What the principle of selection shall be depends upon the predominant
interest of the writer. But there must be a clear sequence; one can
relate only what is related to the chosen theme. The historian must
reverse the order of natural evolution and proceed from the
heterogeneous to the homogeneous. Alas for the ill-fated pundit who,
forgetting his aim, flounders in the bottomless morass of heterogeneity.
The moment he begins to tell how things are he remembers some
incongruous incident which proves that they were quite otherwise. The
genius for narrative consists in the ability to pick out the facts which
belong together and which help each other along. The company must keep
step, and the stragglers must be mercilessly cut off. One cannot say of
any fact that it is important in itself. The important thing is that
which has a direct bearing on the subject. The definition of dirt as
matter in the wrong place is suggestive. All the details that throw
light on the main action are of value. Those that obscure it are but
petty dust. It is no sufficient plea that the dust is very real and that
it took a great deal of trouble to collect it.

As vivid a bit of history as one may read is the Journal of Sally
Wister, a Quaker girl who lived near Philadelphia during the period of
the American Revolution. She gives a narrative of the things which
happened to her during those fateful years. In October, 1777, she says,
"Here, my dear, passes an interval of several weeks in which nothing
happened worth the time and paper it would take to write it."

The editor is troubled at this remark, because during that very week the
Battle of Germantown and been fought not far away. But Sally Wister had
the true historical genius. The Battle of Germantown was an event, and
so was the coming of a number of gay young officers to the hospitable
country house; and this latter event was much more important to Sally
Wister. So omitting all irrelevant incidents, she gives a circumstantial
account of what was happening on the centre of the stage.

"Cousin Prissa and myself were sitting at the door; I in my green skirt,
dark gown, etc. Two genteel men of the military order rode up to the
door. 'Your servant, ladies,' etc. Asked if they could have quarters for
General Smallwood."

"I can see just how they did it," says the Gentle Reader, "and what a
commotion the visit made. Now when a person who is just as much absorbed
in the progress of the Revolutionary War as Sally Wister was in those
young officers writes about it I will read his history gladly."

       *       *       *       *       *

Some otherwise excellent histories fall into the abyss of unreadableness
because of the author's unnecessary pains to justify his heroes to the
critical intelligence of the reader. He is continually making apologies
when he should be telling a story. He is comparing the deeds of one age
with the ethical standards of another; and the result is a series of
moral anachronisms. There is a running fire of more or less irrelevant
comment.

What a delightful plan that was, which the author of the Book of Judges
hit upon to avoid this difficulty! He had a hard task. His worthies were
not persons of settled habits, and they did many things that might
appear shocking to later generations. They were called upon to do rough
work and they did it in their own way. If the author had undertaken to
justify their conduct by any conventional standard he would have made
sorry work of it. What he did was much better than that. Whenever he
came to a point where there was danger of the mind of the reader
becoming turbid with moral reflections that belonged to a later age, he
threw in the clarifying suggestion, "And there was no King in Israel,
and every man did what was right in his own eyes." This precipitated all
the disturbing elements, and the story ran on swift and clear. It was
as if when the reader was about to protest the author anticipated him
with, "What would you do, reader, if the Philistines were upon you and
there were no King in Israel?" Undoubtedly under such circumstances it
would be a great relief to catch sight of Gideon or Samson. It would not
be a time for fastidiousness about their shortcomings; they would be
hailed as strong deliverers.

"That is just the point of it," cries the Gentle Reader. "They were on
our side. The important thing is to recognize our friends. To teach us
who our friends are is the purpose of history. Here is a conflict that
has been going on for ages. The men who have done valiant service are
not all smooth-spoken gentlemen in black coats--but what of it? They
have done what they could. We can't say that each act was absolutely
right, but they were moving in the right direction. When a choice was
offered they took the better part. The historian should not only know
what they did, but what was the alternative offered them. There was the
Prophet Samuel. Some persons will have no further respect for him after
they learn that he hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord. They think he
ought to have stood up for Free Religion. They take for granted that the
alternative offered him was religious toleration as we understand it. It
was nothing of the sort. The question for a man of that age was, Shall
Samuel hew Agag in pieces, or shall Agag hew Samuel in pieces, and my
sympathies are with Samuel."

Having once made allowance for the differences of time and place, he
follows with eager interest the fortunes of the men who have made the
world what it is. What if they do have their faults? He does not care
for what he calls New England Primer style of History:--

    "Young Obadias, David, Josias
     All were pious."

Such monotony of excellence wearies him, and the garment of praise is
accompanied by a spirit of heaviness.

"I like saints best in the state of nature," he says; "the process of
canonization does not seem good for them. When too many of them are
placed together in a book their virtues kill one another, and at a
little distance all halos look very much alike."

There are certain histories which he finds readable, not because he
cares very much for their ostensible subject, but because of the light
they throw on the author's personality. He, good man, thinks he is
telling the story of the Carlovingian Dynasty, or the rise of the
Phoenician sea power, while in reality he is giving an intimate
account of his own state of mind. The author is like a bee which wanders
far afield and visits many flowers, but always brings back the spoil to
one hollow tree. The Gentle Reader, like a practiced bee hunter, is
careless of the outward journeys, but watches closely the direction of
the return flight.

"If you would know a person's limitations," he says, "induce him to
write on some large subject like the History of Civilization, or the
History of the Origin and Growth of the Moral Sentiment. You will find
his particular hobby writ large."

He takes up a History of the Semites. "What a pertinacious fellow he
is," alluding not to any ancient Semite but to the Author, "how closely
he sticks to his point! He has discovered a new fact about the
Amalekites,--I wonder what he will do with it. Just as I expected! there
he is back with it to that controversy he is having with his
Presbytery. I notice that he calls the children of Israel the
Beni-Israel. He knows that that sort of thing irritates the conservative
party. It suggests that he is following Renan, and yet it may only prove
that he thinks in Hebrew."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Gentle Reader regards ambitious works on the Philosophy of History
with mingled suspicion and curiosity. So much depends, in such cases,
upon the philosopher. In spite of many misadventures, curiosity
generally gets the better of caution.

He opens Comte's "Positive Philosophy" and reads, "In order to
understand the true value and character of the 'Positive Philosophy' we
must take a brief, general view of the progressive course of the human
mind regarded as a whole." Then he is conducted through the three stages
of the theological or fictitious, the metaphysical or abstract, and the
scientific or positive; which last circle proves large enough only for
Comte's own opinions. He is caught in a trap and goes round and round
without finding the hole through which he came in.

"When a learned person asks one," says the Gentle Reader, "to accompany
him on a brief general survey of the progressive course of the human
mind, regarded as a whole, I am apt to be wary. I want to know what he
is up to. I fear the philosopher bearing historical gifts."

Yet where the trap is made of slighter fabric, and he feels that he can
break through at will, he enjoys watching the author and his work. How
marvelous are the powers of the human mind! How the facts of experience
can be bent to a sternly logical formula! And how the whole trend of
things seems to yield to an imperious will that is stronger than fate!

Here is a book published in Wheeling, Virginia, in 1809. It is "A
Narrative of the Introduction and Progress of Christianity in Scotland,
before the Reformation; and the Progress of Religion since in Scotland
and America." We are told that the history was read paragraph by
paragraph at a meeting of the Reformed Dissenting Presbytery at the
Three Ridge Meeting House, and unanimously approved. At the beginning we
are taken into a wide place and given a comprehensive view of early
Christianity. Then we are shown how in the sixteenth century began a
series of godly reformations. Christianity, bursting through the
barriers of Popery, began its resistless flow toward the pure theology
of the Three Ridge Meeting House. As the articles of the true faith were
increased the number of persons who were able to hold correct opinions
upon them all diminished. The history, by perfectly logical processes,
brings us down to the year 1799, when secession had done its perfect
work and the true church had attained to an apostolic purity of doctrine
and a more than apostolic paucity of membership. It is with a fearful
joy that the historians proclaim the culmination of the age-long
evolution. "O! the times we live in! There were but two of us to defend
the doctrine of the Bible and the Westminster Confession." At the time
the history of the Progress of Christianity was written there were but
two ministers who held the uncorrupted faith; namely, Robert Warwick and
Alexander McCoy. These two brethren were the joint authors of the
history, and in their capacity as church council gave it ecumenical
authority. Had McCoy disagreed with Warwick about Preterition, or had
Warwick suspected McCoy of Sublapsarianism, then we should have had two
histories of Christianity instead of one. It would have appeared that
all the previous developments of Christianity were significant only as
preparing for the Great Schism.

"There is a great deal of this Three Ridge Meeting House kind of
history," says the Gentle Reader, "and I confess I find it very
instructive. I like to find out what the writers think on the questions
of the day."

The fact is that there is a great deal of human nature even in learned
people, and they cannot escape from the spell of the present moment.
They are like the rest of us, and feel that they are living at the
terminus of the road and not at a way station. The cynical reflection on
the way in which the decisions of the Supreme Court follow the election
returns suggests the way in which historical generalizations follow the
latest telegraphic dispatches. Something happens and then we look up its
historical antecedents. It seems as if everything had been pointing to
this one event from the beginning.

"Here is a very readable History of Fans. The writer justly says that
the subject is one that has been much neglected. 'In England brief
sketches on the subject have occasionally appeared in the magazines, but
thus far a History of Fans has not been published in book form.... The
subject amply repays careful study, and will not fail to interest the
reader, provided the demands on both his patience and his time are not
too great.' I confess that it is a line of research I have never taken
up, but it is evident that there is ample material. The beginning
inspires confidence. 'The chain of tradition, followed as far as
possible into the past, carries us but to the time when the origin of
the fan is derived from tradition.' It appears that we come out upon
firm ground when we reach the Mahabharata. But the question which
arouses my curiosity is, How did it occur to any one that there should
be a history of fans? The author reveals the inciting cause,--'The Loan
Exhibition held at South Kensington in 1870 gave a great impulse to the
collection and decoration of fans.' I suspect that almost all readable
histories have some such origin."

The title of Professor Freeman's "History of Federal Government from the
Foundation of the Achaian League to the Disruption of the United
States" was timely when the first volume was published in 1863. The
terminal points seemed closely connected in 1862 and the spring of 1863.
Gettysburg and Appomattox destroyed the line of communication. But there
was a time when the subject had great dramatic unity.

One May morning the Gentle Reader saw in the newspapers the account of
the victory of Admiral Dewey at Manila, and learned how the English
people rejoiced over the success of American arms. "This will remake a
great deal of history," he said, "and there will be a great revival of
interest in Hengist and Horsa. These primitive Anglo-Saxon expansionists
kept their own counsel, but it's evident that the movement they set on
foot must go on to its logical conclusion. When a competent scholar
takes hold of the history it will be seen that it couldn't stop with the
Heptarchy or the destruction of the Spanish Armada. It was a foregone
conclusion that these Anglo-Saxons would eventually take the
Philippines."

When one by one the books began to come out he read them with eager
interest. That there should be histories of the triumphant progress of
Anglo-Saxondom, after the Spanish-American war, he looked upon as
something as inevitable as the history of fans, after the South
Kensington Exhibition. It was manifest destiny.

       *       *       *       *       *

There is one page in the history books which the Gentle Reader looks
upon with a skeptical smile; it is that which contains the words, "The
End."

"The writer may think that the subject has been exhausted, and that he
has said the last word; but in reality there is no end."

He is well aware that at best he gets but a glimpse of what is going on.
The makers of history are for the most part unknown to the writers of
it. He loves now and then to catch sight of one of these unremembered
multitudes. For a moment the searchlight of history falls upon him, and
he stands blinking in the unaccustomed glare, and then the light shifts
and oblivion swallows him up.

He stops to meditate when he comes upon this paragraph in Bishop
Burnet's "History of his Own Times."

"When King James I. was in Scotland he erected a new Bishopric, and made
one Forbes Bishop. He was a very learned and pious man; he had a strange
faculty of preaching five or six hours at a time. His way of life and
devotion was thought monastic, and his learning lay in antiquity; he
studied to be a reconciler between <DW7>s and Protestants, leaning
rather to the first; he was a simple-hearted man and knew little of the
world, so he fell into several errors of conduct, but died soon after
suspected of Popery."

"That man Forbes," says the Gentle Reader, "doesn't cut much of a figure
on the pages of history. Indeed, that is all that is said of him, yet I
doubt not but that he was a much more influential man in his day than
many of those bishops and reformers that I have been reading about. A
learned man who has a faculty for preaching five or six hours at a time
is a great conservative force. He keeps things from going too fast. When
one reads about the Reformation of the sixteenth century, one wonders
that it didn't make a clean sweep. We must remember the number of good
Protestants who died suspected of Popery."

But though he loves to get a glimpse of Forbes and men of his kind, he
knows that they are not of the stuff that readable histories are made
of. The retarding influences of the times must be taken into account,
but after all the historian is concerned with the people who are "in the
van of circumstance." They may be few in number, but their achievements
are the things worth telling.

"Every history," says the Gentle Reader, "should be a Book of Genesis. I
want to see things in their beginnings and in their fresh growth. I do
not care to follow the processes of decay. Fortunately there is no
period when something is not beginning. 'Sweet is the genesis of
things.' History is a perpetual spring-time. New movements are always on
foot. Even when I don't approve of them I want to know what they are
like. When the band strikes up 'See the Conquering Hero come,' it's
sheer affectation not to look up. The conquering hero is always worth
looking at, even if you do not approve of him. The historian who
undertakes to tell what men at any period were about must be quick to
detect their real enthusiasms. He must join the victorious army and not
cling to a lost cause. I have always thought that it was a mistake for
Gibbon to call his great work, 'The History of the Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire.' The declining power of the Roman Empire was not the
great fact of those ten centuries. There were powers which were not
declining, but growing. How many things were in the
making,--Christianity, Mohammedanism, the new chivalry, the Germanic
civilization. As for the Roman Empire, one could see that _that_ game
was lost, and it wasn't worth while to play it out to the last move. I
couldn't make those shadowy Emperors at Constantinople seem like
Caesars--and, for that matter, they weren't."

On this last point I think that the Gentle Reader is correct, and that
the great historian is one who has a certain prophetic gift. He is quick
to discern the signs of the times. He identifies himself so thoroughly
with the age of which he writes that he always seems to be at the
beginning of an era peering into the yet dim future. In this way he
shares the hopes and aspirations of the men of whom he writes. For there
was a day when all our familiar institutions were new. There was a time
when the Papacy was not an established fact, but a vague dream of
spiritual power and unity, a challenge to a barbarian world. It appealed
to young idealists as the federation of the world or a socialistic
commonwealth appeals to-day. There was a time when constitutional
government was a Utopian experiment which a few brave men were willing
to try. There was a time when Calvinism was a spiritual adventure.

The historian whom we love is one who stands at the parting of the ways,
and sees ideals grow into actualities. He is not reminiscent. He is
forward-looking as he speaks to each age out of intimate acquaintance
with its new hopes, as one

    "Who hath forsaken old and sacred thrones
     For prophecies of thee, and for the sake
     Of loveliness new born."




The Evolution of the Gentleman


"What is your favorite character, Gentle Reader?" "I like to read about
gentlemen," he answers; "it's a taste I have inherited, and I find it
growing upon me."

And yet it is not easy to define a gentleman, as the multitudes who have
made the attempt can testify. It is one of the cases in which the
dictionary does not help one. Perhaps, after all, definitions are to be
looked upon as luxuries, not as necessities. When Alice told her name to
Humpty Dumpty, that intolerable pedant asked,--

"'What does it mean?'

"'Must a name mean something?' Alice asked doubtfully.

"'Of course it must,' Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh. 'My name
means the shape I am,--and a good handsome shape it is, too.'"

I suppose that almost any man, if he were asked what a gentleman is,
would answer with Humpty Dumpty, "It is the shape I am." I judge this
because, though the average man would not feel insulted if you were to
say, "You are no saint," it would not be safe to say, "You are no
gentleman."

And yet the average man has his misgivings. For all his confident talk,
he is very humble minded. The astral body of the gentleman that he is
endeavoring to project at his neighbors is not sufficiently materialized
for his own imperfect vision. The word "gentleman" represents an ideal.
Above whatever coarseness and sordidness there may be in actual life,
there rises the ideal of a finer kind of man, with gentler manners and
truer speech and braver action.

In every age we shall find the true gentleman--that is, the man who
represents the best ideal of his own time, and we shall find the mimicry
of him the would-be gentleman who copies the form while ignorant of the
substance. These two characters furnish the material, on the one hand
for the romancer, and on the other for the satirist. If there had been
no real gentlemen, the epics, the solemn tragedies, and the stirring
tales of chivalry would have remained unwritten; and if there had been
no pretended gentlemen, the humorist would have lost many a pleasure.
Always the contrasted characters are on the stage together; simple
dignity is followed by strutting pomposity, and after the hero the
braggart swaggers and storms. So ridicule and admiration bear rule by
turns.

The idea of the gentleman involves the sense of personal dignity and
worth. He is not a means to an end; he is an end in itself. How early
this sense arose we may not know. Professor Huxley made merry over the
sentimentalists who picture the simple dignity of primitive man. He had
no admiration to throw away on "the dignified and unclothed savage
sitting in solitary meditation under trees." And yet I am inclined to
think that the gentleman must have appeared even before the advent of
tailors. The peasants who followed Wat Tyler sang,--

    "When Adam delved and Eve span
     Who was then the gentleman?"

But a writer in the age of Queen Elizabeth published a book in which he
argued that Adam himself was a perfect gentleman. He had the advantage,
dear to the theological mind, that though affirmative proof might be
lacking, it was equally difficult to prove the negative.

As civilization advances and literature catches its changing features,
the outlines of the gentleman grow distinct.

In the Book of Genesis we see Abraham sitting at his tent door. Three
strangers appear. When he sees them, he goes to meet them, and bows, and
says to the foremost, "My Lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight,
pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant. Let a little water, I pray
you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree:
and I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after
that ye shall pass on."

There may have been giants in those days, and churls, and all manner of
barbarians, but as we watch the strangers resting under the oak we say,
"There were also gentlemen in those days." How simple it all is! It is
like a single palm tree out-lined against the desert and the sky.

We turn to the Analects of Confucius and we see the Chinese gentleman.
Everything with him is exact. The disciples of Confucius are careful to
tell us how he adjusted the skirts of his robe before and behind, how he
insisted that his mince-meat should be cut quite small and should have
exactly the right proportion of rice, and that his mat must be laid
straight before he would sit on it. Such details of deportment were
thought very important. But we forget the mats and the mince-meat when
we read: "Three things the master had not,--he had no prejudices, he had
no obstinacy, he had no egotism." And we forget the fantastic garb and
the stiff Chinese genuflections, and come to the conclusion that the
true gentleman is as simple-hearted amid the etiquette of the court as
in the tent in the desert, when we hear the master saying: "Sincerity is
the way of Heaven; the wise are the unassuming. It is said of Virtue
that over her embroidered robe she puts a plain single garment."

When we wish to see a masculine virtue which has no need of an
embroidered garment we go to Plutarch's portrait gallery of antique
gentlemen. What a breed of men they were! They were no holiday
gentlemen. With the same lofty dignity they faced life and death. How
superior they were to their fortunes. No wonder that men who had learned
to conquer themselves conquered the world.

Most of Plutarch's worthies were gentlemen, though there were
exceptions. There was, for example, Cato the Censor, who bullied the
Roman youth into virtue, and got a statue erected to himself as the
restorer of the good old manners. Poor Plutarch, who likes to do well by
his heroes, is put to his wits' end to know what to do with testy,
patriotic, honest, fearless, parsimonious Cato. Cato was undoubtedly a
great man and a good citizen; but when we are told how he sold his old
slaves, at a bargain, when they became infirm, and how he left his
war-horse in Spain to save the cost of transportation, Plutarch adds,
"Whether such things be an evidence of greatness or littleness of soul
let the reader judge for himself." The judicious reader will conclude
that it is possible to be a great man and a reformer, and yet not be
quite a gentleman.

When the Roman Empire was destroyed the antique type of gentleman
perished. The very names of the tribes which destroyed him have yet
terrible associations. Goths, Vandals, Huns--to the civilized man of the
fifth and sixth centuries these sounded like the names of wild beasts
rather than of men. You might as well have said tigers, hyenas, wolves.
The end had come of a civilization that had been the slow growth of
centuries.

Yet out of these fierce tribes, destroyers of the old order, a new order
was to arise. Out of chaos and night a new kind of gentleman was to be
evolved. The romances of the Middle Ages are variations on a single
theme, the appearance of the finer type of manhood and its struggle for
existence. In the palace built by the enchantment of Merlin were four
zones of sculpture.

    "And in the lowest beasts are slaying men,
     And in the second men are slaying beasts,
     And on the third are warriors, perfect men,
     And on the fourth are men with growing wings."

Europe was in the second stage, when men were slaying beasts and what
was most brutal in humanity. If the higher manhood was to live, it must
fight, and so the gentleman appears, sword in hand. Whether we are
reading of Charlemagne and his paladins, or of Siegfried, or of Arthur,
the story is the same. The gentleman has appeared. He has come into a
waste land,

    "Thick with wet woods and many a beast therein,
     And none or few to scare or chase the beast."

He comes amid savage anarchy where heathen hordes are "reddening the sun
with smoke and earth with blood." The gentleman sends forth his clear
defiance. All this shall no longer be. He is ready to meet force with
force; he is ready to stake his life upon the issue, the hazard of new
fortunes for the race.

It is as a pioneer of the new civilization that the gentleman has
pitched

    "His tent beside the forest. And he drave
     The heathen, and he slew the beast, and felled
     The forest, and let in the sun."

The ballads and romances chronicle a struggle desperate in its beginning
and triumphant in its conclusion. They are in praise of force, but it is
a noble force. There is something better, they say, than brute force: it
is manly force. The giant is no match for the gentleman.

If we would get at the mediaeval idea of the gentleman, we must not
listen merely to the romances as they are retold by men of genius in
our own day. Scott and Tennyson clothe their characters in the old
draperies, but their ideals are those of the nineteenth century rather
than of the Middle Ages. Tennyson expressly disclaims the attempt to
reproduce the King Arthur

                                  "whose name, a ghost,
    Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain peak,
    And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or him
    Of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's, one
    Touched by the adulterous finger of a time
    That hovered between war and wantonness."

When we go back and read Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, we find
ourselves among men of somewhat different mould from the knights of
Tennyson's idylls. It is not the blameless King Arthur, but the
passionate Sir Launcelot, who wins admiration. We hear Sir Ector crying
over Launcelot's body, "Ah, Launcelot, thou wert the head of the
Christian knights. Thou wert the courtliest knight that ever bare
shield; and thou wert the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrode
horse; and thou wert the truest lover for a sinful man that ever loved
woman; and thou wert the kindest man that ever strake with sword; and
thou wert the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights;
and thou wert the meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate in hall
with ladies; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that
ever put spear in the rest."

We must take, not one of these qualities, but all of them together, to
understand the gentleman of those ages when good and evil struggled so
fiercely for the mastery. No saint was this Sir Launcelot. There was in
him no fine balance of virtues, but only a wild tumult of the blood. He
was proud, self-willed, passionate, pleasure-loving; capable of great
sin and of sublime expiation. What shall we say of this gentlest,
sternest, kindest, goodliest, sinfulest of knights,--this man who knew
no middle path, but who, when treading in perilous places and following
false lights, yet draws all men admiringly to himself?

We can only say this: he was the prototype of those mighty men who were
the makers of the modern world. They were the men who fought with
Charlemagne, and with William the Conqueror, and with Richard; they were
the men who "beat down the heathen, and upheld the Christ;" they were
the men from whom came the crusades, and the feudal system, and the
great charter. As we read the history, we say at one moment, "These men
were mail-clad ruffians," and at the next, "What great-hearted
gentlemen!"

Perhaps the wisest thing would be to confess to both judgments at once.
In this stage of his evolution the gentleman may boast of feats that
would now be rehearsed only in bar-rooms. This indicates that the
standard of society has improved, and that what was possible once for
the nobler sort of men is now characteristic of the baser sort. The
modern rowdy frequently appears in the cast-off manners of the old-time
gentleman. Time, the old-clothes man, thus furnishes his customers with
many strange misfits. What is of importance is that through these
transition years there was a ceaseless struggle to preserve the finer
types of manhood.

The ideal of the mediaeval gentleman was expressed in the word
"gallantry." The essence of gallantry is courage; but it is not the
sober courage of the stoic. It is courage charged with qualities that
give it sparkle and effervescence. It is the courage that not only faces
danger, but delights in it. What suggestions of physical and mental
elasticity are in Shakespeare's description of the "springing, brave
Plantagenet"! Scott's lines express the gallant spirit:--

    "One crowded hour of glorious life
     Is worth an age without a name."

Gallantry came to have another implication, equally characteristic. The
knight was gallant not only in war, but in love also. There had come a
new worship, the worship of woman. In the Church it found expression in
the adoration of the Madonna, but in the camp and the court it found its
place as well. Chivalry was the elaborate and often fantastic ritual,
and the gentleman was minister at the altar. The ancient gentleman stood
alone; the mediaeval gentleman offered all to the lady of his love. Here,
too, gallantry implied the same overflowing joy in life. If you are
anxious to have a test by which to recognize the time when you are
growing old,--so old that imagination is chilled within you,--I should
advise you to turn to the chapter in the Romance of King Arthur entitled
"How Queen Guenever went maying with certain Knights of the Table Round,
clad all in green." Then read: "So it befell in the month of May, Queen
Guenever called unto her knights and she gave them warning that early
upon the morrow she would ride maying into the woods and fields besides
Westminster, and I warn you that none of you but that he be well horsed
and that ye all be clothed in green.... I shall bring with me ten ladies
and every knight shall have a squire and two yeomen. So upon the morn
they took their horses with the Queen and rode on maying through the
woods and meadows in great joy and delights."

If you cannot see them riding on, a gallant company over the meadows,
and if you hear no echoes of their laughter, and if there is no longer
any enchantment in the vision of that time when all were "blithe and
debonair," then undoubtedly you are growing old. It is time to close the
romances: perhaps you may still find solace in Young's "Night Thoughts"
or Pollok's "Course of Time." Happy are they who far into the seventies
still see Queen Guenever riding in the pleasant month of May: these are
they who have found the true fountain of youth.

The gentleman militant will always be the hero of ballads and romances;
and in spite of the apostles of realism, I fancy he has not lost his
charm. There are Jeremiahs of evolution, who tell us that after a time
men will be so highly developed as to have neither hair nor teeth. In
that day, when the operating dentists have ceased from troubling, and
given way to the manufacturing dentists, and the barbers have been
superseded by the wig-makers, it is quite possible that the romances may
give place to some tedious department of comparative mythology. In that
day, Chaucer's knight who "loved chevalrie, trouthe and honour, fredom
and curtesie," will be forgotten, though his armor on the museum walls
will be learnedly described. But that dreadful day is still far distant;
before it comes, not only teeth and hair must be improved out of
existence, but a substitute must be found for good red blood. Till that
time "no laggard in love or dastard in war" can steal our hearts from
young Lochinvar.

The sixteenth century marks an epoch in the history of the gentleman, as
in all else. Old ideas disappear, to come again in new combinations.
Familiar words take on meanings that completely transform them. The same
hands wielded the sword and the pen. The scholars, the artists, the
poets, began to feel a sense of personal worth, and carried the gallant
spirit of the gentleman into their work. They were not mere specialists,
but men of action. The artist was not only an instrument to give
pleasure to others, but he was himself a centre of admiration. Out of
this new consciousness how many interesting characters were produced!
There were men who engaged in controversies as if they were tournaments,
and who wrote books and painted pictures and carved statues, not in the
spirit of professionalism, but as those who would in this activity enjoy
"one crowded hour of glorious life." Very frequently, these gentlemen
and scholars, and gentlemen and artists, overdid the matter, and were
more belligerent in disposition than were the warriors with whom they
began to claim equality.

To this self-assertion we owe the most delightful of
autobiographies,--that of Benvenuto Cellini. He aspired to be not only
an artist, but a fine gentleman. No one could be more certain of the
sufficiency of Humpty Dumpty's definition of a gentleman than was he.

If we did not have his word for it, we could scarcely believe that any
one could be so valiant in fight and so uninterrupted in the pursuit of
honor without its interfering with his professional work. Take, for
example, that memorable day when, escaping from the magistrates, he
makes an attack upon the household of his enemy, Gherardo Guascanti. "I
found them at table; and Gherardo, who had been the cause of the
quarrel, flung himself upon me. I stabbed him in the breast, piercing
doublet and jerkin, but doing him not the least harm in the world."
After this attack, and after magnanimously pardoning Gherardo's father,
mother, and sisters, he says: "I ran storming down the staircase, and
when I reached the street, I found all the rest of the household, more
than twelve persons: one of them seized an iron shovel, another a thick
iron pipe; one had an anvil, some hammers, some cudgels. When I got
among them, raging like a mad bull, I flung four or five to the earth,
and fell down with them myself, continually aiming my dagger now at one,
and now at another. Those who remained upright plied with both hands
with all their force, giving it me with hammers, cudgels, and the
anvil; but inasmuch as God does sometimes mercifully intervene, he so
ordered that neither they nor I did any harm to one another."

What fine old days those were, when the toughness of skin matched so
wonderfully the stoutness of heart! One has a suspicion that in these
degenerate times, were a family dinner-party interrupted by such an
avalanche of daggers, cudgels, and anvils, some one would be hurt. As
for Benvenuto, he does not so much as complain of a headache.

There is an easy, gentleman-like grace in the way in which he recounts
his incidental homicides. When he is hiding behind a hedge at midnight,
waiting for the opportunity to assassinate his enemies, his heart is
open to all the sweet influences of nature, and he enjoys "the glorious
heaven of stars." He was not only an artist and a fine gentleman, but a
saint as well, and "often had recourse with pious heart to holy
prayers." Above all, he had the indubitable evidence of sainthood, a
halo. "I will not omit to relate another circumstance, which is perhaps
the most remarkable that ever happened to any one. I do so in order to
justify the divinity of God and of his secrets, who deigned to grant me
this great favor: forever since the time of my strange vision until now,
an aureole of glory (marvelous to relate) has rested on my head. This is
visible to every sort of man to whom I have chosen to point it out, but
these have been few." He adds ingenuously, "I am always able to see it."
He says, "I first became aware of it in France, at Paris; for the air in
those parts is so much freer from mists that one can see it far better
than in Italy."

Happy Benvenuto with his Parisian halo, which did not interfere with the
manly arts of self-defense! His self-complacency was possible only in a
stage of evolution when the saint and the assassin were not altogether
clearly differentiated. Some one has said, "Give me the luxuries of
life, and I can get along without the necessities." Like many of his
time, Benvenuto had all the luxuries that belong to the character of a
Christian gentleman, though he was destitute of the necessities. An
appreciation of common honesty as an essential to a gentleman seems to
be more slowly developed than the more romantic sentiment that is called
honor.

The evolution of the gentleman has its main line of progress where there
is a constant though slow advance; but, on the other hand, there are
arrested developments, and quaint survivals, and abortive attempts.

In each generation there have been men of fashion who have mistaken
themselves for gentlemen. They are uninteresting enough while in the
flesh, but after a generation or two they become very quaint and
curious, when considered as specimens. Each generation imagines that it
has discovered a new variety, and invents a name for it. The dude, the
swell, the dandy, the <DW2>, the spark, the macaroni, the blade, the
popinjay, the coxcomb,--these are butterflies of different summers.
There is here endless variation, but no advancement. One fashion comes
after another, but we cannot call it better. One would like to see
representatives of the different generations together in full dress.
What variety in oaths and small talk! What anachronisms in swords and
canes and eye-glasses, in ruffles, in collars, in wigs! What affluence
in powders and perfumes and colors! But "will they know each other
there"? The real gentlemen would be sure to recognize each other.
Abraham and Marcus Aurelius and Confucius would find much in common.
Launcelot and Sir Philip Sidney and Chinese Gordon would need no
introduction. Montaigne and Mr. Spectator and the Autocrat of the
Breakfast-Table would fall into delightful chat. But would a "swell"
recognize a "spark"? And might we not expect a "dude" to fall into
immoderate laughter at the sight of a "popinjay"?

Fashion has its revenges. Nothing seems so ridiculous to it as an old
fashion. The <DW2> has no toleration for the obsolete foppery. The
artificial gentleman is as inconceivable out of his artificial
surroundings as the waxen-faced gentleman of the clothing store outside
his show window.

There was Beau Nash, for example,--a much-admired person in his day,
when he ruled from his throne in the pump-room in Bath. Everything was
in keeping. There was Queen Anne architecture, and Queen Anne furniture,
and Queen Anne religion, and the Queen Anne fashion in fine gentlemen.
What a curious piece of bricabrac this fine gentleman was, to be sure!
He was not fitted for any useful purpose under the sun, but in his place
he was quite ornamental, and undoubtedly very expensive. Art was as
self-complacent as if nature had never been invented. What multitudes of
the baser sort must be employed in furnishing the fine gentleman with
clothes! All Bath admired the way in which Beau Nash refused to pay for
them. Once when a vulgar tradesman insisted on payment, Nash compromised
by lending him twenty pounds,--which he did with the air of a prince. So
great was the impression he made upon his time that a statue was erected
to him, while beneath were placed the busts of two minor contemporaries,
Pope and Newton. This led Lord Chesterfield to write:--

    "This statue placed the busts between
     Adds to the satire strength,
     Wisdom and wit are little seen,
     But folly at full length."

Lord Chesterfield himself had nothing in common with the absurd
imitation gentlemen, and yet the gentleman whom he described and
pretended to admire was altogether artificial. He was the Machiavelli of
the fashionable world. He saw through it, and recognized its
hollowness; but such as it was it must be accepted. The only thing was
to learn how to get on in it. "In courts you may expect to meet
connections without friendships, enmities without hatred, honor without
virtue, appearances saved and realities sacrificed, good manners and bad
morals."

There is something earnestly didactic about Lord Chesterfield. He gives
line upon line, and precept upon precept, to his "dear boy." Never did a
Puritan father teach more conscientiously the shorter catechism than did
he the whole duty of the gentleman, which was to save appearances even
though he must sacrifice reality. "My dear boy," he writes
affectionately, "I advise you to trust neither man nor woman more than
is absolutely necessary. Accept proffered friendships with great
civility, but with great incredulity."

No youth was more strenuously prodded up the steep and narrow path of
virtue than was little Philip Stanhope up the steep and narrow path of
fashion. Worldliness made into a religion was not without its
asceticism. "Though you think you dance well, do not think you dance
well enough. Though you are told that you are genteel, still aim at
being genteeler.... Airs, address, manners, graces, are of such infinite
importance and are so essentially necessary to you that now, as the time
of meeting draws near, I tremble for fear that I may not find you
possessed of them."

Lord Chesterfield's gentleman was a man of the world; but it was, after
all, a very hard and empty world. It was a world that had no eternal
laws, only changing fashions. It had no broken hearts, only broken vows.
It was a world covered with glittering ice, and the gentleman was one
who had learned to skim over its dangerous places, not caring what
happened to those who followed him.

It is a relief to get away from such a world, and, leaving the fine
gentleman behind, to take the rumbling stagecoach to the estates of Sir
Roger de Coverley. His is not the great world at all, and his interests
are limited to his own parish. But it is a real world, and much better
suited to a real gentleman. His fashions are not the fashions of the
court, but they are the fashions that wear. Even when following the
hounds Sir Roger has time for friendly greetings. "The farmers' sons
thought themselves happy if they could open a gate for the good old
knight, which he requited with a nod or a smile, and a kind inquiry
after their fathers and uncles."

But even dear old Roger de Coverley cannot rest undisturbed as an ideal
gentleman. He belonged, after all, to a privileged order, and there is a
force at work to destroy all social privileges. A generation of farmers'
sons must arise not to be so easily satisfied with a kindly nod and
smile. Liberty, fraternity, and equality have to be reckoned with.
Democracy has come with its leveling processes.

    "The calm Olympian height
     Of ancient order feels its bases yield."

In a revolutionary period the virtues of an aristocracy become more
irritating than their vices. People cease to attribute merit to what
comes through good fortune. No wonder that the disciples of the older
time cry:--

    "What hope for the fine-nerved humanities
     That made earth gracious once with gentler arts?"

What becomes of the gentleman in an age of democratic equality? Just
what becomes of every ideal when the time for its fulfillment has come.
It is freed from its limitations and enters into a larger life.

Let us remember that the gentleman was always a lover of equality, and
of the graces that can only grow in the society of equals. The gentleman
of an aristocracy is at his best only when he is among his peers. There
is a little circle within which there is no pushing, no assumption of
superiority. Each member seeks not his own, but finds pleasure in a
gracious interchange of services.

But an aristocracy leaves only a restricted sphere for such good
manners. Outside the group to which he belongs the gentleman is
compelled by imperious custom to play the part of a superior being. It
has always been distasteful and humiliating to him. It is only an
essentially vulgar nature that can really be pleased with the servility
of others.

An ideal democracy is a society in which good manners are universal.
There is no arrogance and no cringing, but social intercourse is based
on mutual respect. This ideal democracy has not been perfected, but the
type of men who are creating it has already been evolved. Among all the
crude and sordid elements of modern life, we see the stirring of a new
chivalry. It is based on a recognition of the worth and dignity of the
common man.

Milton in memorable words points out the transition which must take
place from the gentleman of romance to the gentleman of enduring
reality. After narrating how, in his youth, he betook himself "to those
lofty fables and romances which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of
knighthood founded by our victorious kings and thence had in renown
through all Christendom," he says, "This my mind gave me that every free
and gentle spirit, without that oath ought to be born a knight, nor
needed to expect a gilt spur or the laying on of a sword upon his
shoulder."




The Hinter-land of Science


A genial critic detects a note of exaggeration in my praise of
Ignorance. It is, he declares, a bit of "Yellow Journalism." The
reader's attention is attracted by a glaring headline which leads him to
suppose that a crime has been committed, when in reality nothing out of
the ordinary has happened. That a person who has emerged from the state
of absolute illiteracy far enough to appear in print should express a
preference for Ignorance would be important if true. After perusing the
chapter, however, he is of the opinion that it is not Ignorance, at all,
that is described, but something much more respectable. It is akin to a
state of mind which literary persons have agreed to praise under the
name of Culture.

It is very natural that these literary persons should prefer a
high-sounding name, and one free from vulgar associations, but I do not
think that their plea will stand the test of scientific analysis.
Science will not tolerate half knowledge nor pleasant imaginings, nor
sympathetic appreciations; it must have definite demonstration. The
knowledge of the best that has been said and thought may be very
consoling, but it implies an unscientific principle of selection. It can
be proved by statistics that the best things are exceptional. What about
the second best, not to speak of the tenth rate? It is only when you
have collected a vast number of commonplace facts that you are on the
road to a true generalization.

In the Smithsonian Institution at Washington there is a children's room,
in which there is a case marked "Pretty Shells." The specimens fully
justify the inscription. The very daintiest shapes, and the most
intricate convolutions, and the most delicate tints are represented.
They are pretty shells, which have not left their beauty on the shore.
But the delight in all this loveliness is not scientific. The kind
gentleman who arranged the shells according to this classification
acted not in his capacity as a conchologist, but as the father of a
family.

Nor does the enjoyment of the most beautiful thoughts or words satisfy
the requirements of those sciences which deal with humanity. The
distinction between Literature and Science is fundamental. What is a
virtue in one sphere is a vice in the other. After all that has been
said about the scientific use of the imagination it remains true that
the imagination is an intruder in the laboratory. Even if it were put to
use, that would only mean that it is reduced to a condition of slavery.
In its own realm it is accustomed to play rather than to work. It is
also true that the attempts to introduce the methods of the laboratory
into literature have been dismal failures. That way dullness lies.

Now and then, indeed, Nature in a fit of prodigality endows one person
with both gifts.--Was not Oliver Wendell Holmes a Professor of Anatomy?
In such a case there is a perpetual effervescence. But even Dr. Holmes
could not insinuate a sufficient knowledge of Anatomy by means of a
series of discursive essays; nor could he give scientific value to the
reflections of the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table."

There was a time when the ability to read was such a rare accomplishment
that it seemed to furnish the key to all knowledge. Men of the baser
sort had to learn by experience, but the reader followed a royal path to
the very fountain head of wisdom. Ordinary rules were not for him; he
could claim the benefit of clergy. Only a generation ago young men of
parts prepared themselves for the bar--and very good lawyers they
made--by "reading Blackstone." Blackstone is a pleasant author, with a
fund of wise observations, and many pleasant afternoons were spent in
his company. In like manner other young men "read medicine."

It is now coming to be understood that one cannot read a science; it
must be studied in quite a different fashion. "Book-learning" in such
matters has been discredited.

The Gentle Reader has learned this lesson. It may be that he has
cultivated some tiny field of his own, and has thus come to know how
different this laborious task is from the care-free wandering in which
at other hours he delights. But though he cannot read his way into the
domains of strict science, yet there is an adjacent territory which he
frequents. Into this territory, though he holds an ambiguous position,
and finds many to molest and make him afraid, he is drawn by an
insatiable curiosity. In a border-land danger has attractions and
mystery is alluring. There is pleasant reading in spite of many
threatening technicalities which seem to bar further progress.

On the coasts of the Dark Continent of Ignorance the several sciences
have gained a foothold. In each case there is a well-defined country
carefully surveyed and guarded. Within its frontiers the laws are
obeyed, and all affairs are carried on in an orderly fashion. Beyond it
is a vague "sphere of influence," a Hinter-land over which ambitious
claims of suzerainty are made; but the native tribes have not yet been
exterminated, and life goes on very much as in the olden time. Into the
Hinter-land the Gentle Reader wanders, and he is known to the scientific
explorer as a friendly native, whose good-will is worth cultivating. He
is often confounded with the "General Reader," a very different person,
whose omnivorous appetite and intemperance in the use of miscellaneous
information are very offensive to him. Unscrupulous adventurers carry on
a thriving trade with the General Reader in damaged goods, which are
foisted on him under the name of Popular Science.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the Hinter-land there is dense ignorance of the achievements and even
of the names of most of those who are recognized as authorities in their
several sciences. They are as unknown as is the Lord Mayor of London to
the natives on the banks of the Zambesi. The heroes of the Hinter-land
are the bold explorers who in militant fashion have made their way into
regions as yet unsubdued.

In the middle of the nineteenth century there was an heroic period
during which scientific investigation took on all the color of romance.
The Gentle Reader turns to the lives and works of Darwin, Huxley, and
Tyndall, very much as he would turn to the tales of Charlemagne and his
Paladins. Here was a field of action. Something happened. As he reads he
is conscious that he has nothing of that impersonal attitude which
belongs to pure science. It is not scientific but human interest which
moves him. He is anxious to know what these men did, and what was the
result of their deeds. It is an intellectual adventure of which the
outcome is still uncertain.

The new generation cannot fully realize what the word "Evolution" meant
to those who saw in it a portent of mysterious change. In its early
advocates there was a mingling of romantic daring and missionary zeal.
Its enemies resisted with the fortitude which belongs to those who never
know when they are beaten. In almost any old bookstores one may see a
counter labeled "Second-hand Theology, very cheap." It is a collection
of the spent ammunition which may still be found on the field of battle.
It is in an unfrequented corner. Now and then a theological student may
visit it, but even he seems rather to be a vague considerer of worthy
things than a bargain hunter. Yet once these volumes were eagerly read.

Out of the border warfare between Science and certain types of Theology
and Philosophy there came a kind of literature that has a very real
value and which is not lacking in charm. What a sense of relief came to
the Gentle Reader when he stumbled upon John Fiske's "Excursions of an
Evolutionist." This was the very thing he had been looking for; not an
exhaustive survey, nor a strenuous campaign, but an excursion with a
competent guide and interpreter, a friendly person acquainted with the
country who would tell him the things he wanted to know, and not weary
him with irrelevant and confusing details.

What an admirable interpreter Fiske was! Darwin, with characteristic
modesty, acknowledged his indebtedness to him for pointing out some of
the larger results of his own investigations. He had the instinct which
enabled him to seize the salient points; to open up new vistas, to make
clear a situation. His histories are always readable because he followed
the main stream and never lost himself in a sluggish bayou. The same
method applied to cosmic forces makes him see their dramatic movement.
It is the genius of a born man of letters using the facts discovered by
scientific methods for its own purpose. That purpose is always broad and
humanizing.

The specialist is apt to speak patronizingly of such work, as if it were
necessarily inferior to his own. It seems to bear the marks of
superficiality. To appreciate it properly one must take it for what it
is. Man was interested in the Universe long before he began to study it
scientifically. He dreamed about it, he mused over its mysteries, he
talked about its more obvious aspects. And it is as interesting now as
it ever was and as fit an object of thought. The conceptions which
satisfied us in the days when ignorance had not arrived at
self-consciousness have to be given up; but we are anxious to know what
have taken their places. We want to get our bearings and to discern the
general trend of the forces which make the world. It is no mean order of
mind that is fitted to answer our needs by wise interpretation.

There is often a conflict between private owners and the public over the
right to fish in certain waters. The landowners put up warning signs and
try to prevent trespass, while the public insists on its ancient
privileges. The law, with that admirable common sense for which it has
such a great reputation, makes a distinction. The small pond may be
privately owned and fenced in, but "boatable waters" are free to all.

So we may concede to the specialist the exclusive right to have an
opinion on certain subjects--subjects let us say of a size suitable for
the thesis of a Doctor of Philosophy. But we are not to be shut off from
the pleasure of thinking on more sizable themes. We have all equal
rights on the "boatable waters."

       *       *       *       *       *

Matthew Arnold retells the story of the Scholar-gypsy who, forsaking the
university, "took to the woods,"--so far as we can learn from the poem,
to his own spiritual and intellectual advantage. The combination of the
scholar and gypsy has a fascination. One likes to conceive of thought as
playing freely among the other forces of nature, and dealing directly
with all objects and not with those especially prepared for it.

Across the border-land of the physical sciences one may meet many such
scholar-gypsies. They have taken to the wilderness and yet carried into
it a trained intelligence. Here may be found keen observers, who might
have written text-books on ornithology had they not fallen in love with
birds. They follow their friends into their haunts in the thickets, and
they love to gossip about their peculiarities. Here are botanists who
love the growing things in the fields and woods better than the
specimens in their herbariums. They love to describe better than to
analyze. Now and then one may meet a renegade who carries a geologist's
hammer. It is a sheer hypocrisy, like a fishing rod in the hands of a
contemplative rambler. It is merely an excuse for being out of doors and
among the mountains.

The Gentle Reader finds unfailing delight in these wanderers. They open
up to him a leafy world. Thanks to them there are places where he feels
intimately at home: a certain English parish; a strip of woodland in
Massachusetts; the vicinity of a farm on the Hudson; an enchanted
country in the high Sierras.

"I verily believe," he says, "there is more Natural History to be
learned in such places than in all the museums. Besides, I never liked a
museum."

The fact is that he does learn a good many things in this way--and some
of them he remembers.

       *       *       *       *       *

The native African who is capable of understanding the philosophy of
history may adjust his mind to the idea that his continent is intended
for exploitation by a superior race. The forests in which his ancestors
have hunted for generations form only a part of the Hinter-land of some
colony on the coast which he has never seen. After a time, by an
inevitable process of expansion, the colony will absorb and assimilate
all the adjoining country. But his perplexities are not over when he
has, in a general way, resigned himself to manifest destiny. He
discovers that all Europeans are not alike, though they certainly look
alike. There are conflicting claims. To whose sphere of influence does
he belong? It is not easy to answer such questions, and mistakes are
liable to bring down upon him punitive expeditions from different
quarters.

A similar perplexity arises in the minds of the simple inhabitants of
the scientific Hinter-lands. They are ready to admit the superior claims
of the exact sciences, but they are puzzled to know to what particular
sphere they belong.

In the absence of any generally received philosophy each special science
pushes out as far as it can and attempts to take in the whole of
existence. The specialist, forgetting his self-imposed limitations, and
fired with the ambition for wide generalization, which is the infirmity
of all active minds, becomes an intellectual tyrant. He is a veritable
Tamerlane, and if he rears no pyramids of skulls, he leaves behind him a
multitude of muddled brains.

Wilberforce tells us of the havoc wrought in his day by the new science
of Political Economy. Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" was hailed as the
complete solution of all social problems. Forgetting the narrow scope of
the inquiry which had to do with only a single aspect of human life, the
maxims of trade were elevated into the place of the moral law.
Superstition magnified those useful twins, Demand and Supply, into two
all-powerful Genii who were quite capable of doing the work of
Providence. For any one in the spirit of brotherly kindness to interfere
with their autocratic operations was looked upon as an act of rebellion
against the nature of things. "A dismal science," indeed, as any science
is when it becomes an unlimited despotism.

At the present time Geology is a very modest science, remaining
peacefully within its natural frontiers; but in the days of Hugh Miller
it was viewed with alarm. Elated with its victory in the affair with
Genesis, its adherents were filled with militant ardor and were in the
mood for universal conquest. In alliance with Chemistry it invaded the
sphere of morals. Was not even Ruskin induced to write of the "Ethics of
the Dust"? In the form of Physical Geography and with the auxiliary
forces of Meteorology, it was ready to recast human history. Books were
written to show that all civilization could be sufficiently explained by
one who took account only of such features of the world as soil and
climate.

While learned men were geologizing through the successive
stratifications of humanity, a new claimant appeared. Biology became
easily the paramount power. Its fame spread far and wide among those who
knew nothing of its severer methods. In the Hinter-land the worship of
Protoplasm became a cult. The hopes and fears and spiritual powers of
humanity seemed illusory unless such phenomena were confirmed by
analogies drawn from "the psychic life of micro-organisms." Fortunately
at about this time the aggressive temper of "The New Psychology" did
much to restore the balance of power. Under its influence those who
still adhered to the belief that the proper study of mankind is man took
heart and ventured, though with caution, to move abroad. The new
Psychology in its turn has developed imperialistic ambitions. Its
conquests have not been without much devastation, especially in the fair
fields of education. A distinguished Psychologist has sounded a note of
warning. He would have psychological experiments confined to the
laboratory, leaving the school-room to the wholesome government of
common sense. It is doubtful, however, whether such protests will avail
any more than the eloquence of the Little Englanders has been able to
limit colonial expansion.

The border-land between Psychology and Sociology is the scene of many a
foray. The Psychologist thinks nothing of following a fleeing idea
across the frontier. He deals confidently with the "Psychology of the
mob," and "the aggregate mind," and the hypnotic influence of the crowd.
There is such an air of authority about it all, that we forget that he
is dealing with figures of speech. On the other hand, the Sociologist
attempts to solve the most delicate problems of the individual soul by
the statistical method.

The Hinter-land has not yet been reduced to order. The Gentle Reader
suspects that no one of the rival sciences is strong enough to impose
its own laws over so wide a region. Perhaps, after all, they may have to
call upon Philosophy to undertake the task of forming a responsible
government.




The Gentle Reader's Friends among the Clergy


"There has been a sad falling off in clerical character," says the
Gentle Reader. "In the old books it is a pleasure to meet a parson. He
is so simple and hearty that you feel at home with him at once. You know
just where to find him, and he always takes himself and his profession
for granted. He may be a trifle narrow, but you make allowance for that,
and as for his charity it has no limits. You expect him to give away
everything he can lay hands on. As for his creed it is always the same
as the church to which he belongs, which is a great relief and saves no
end of trouble. But the clergyman I meet with in novels nowadays is in a
chronic state of fidgetiness. Nothing is as it seems or as it ought to
be. He is as full of problems as an egg is full of meat. Everything
resolves itself into a conflict of duties, and whichever duty he does he
wishes it had been the other one. When the poor man is not fretting
because of evil-doers he begins to fret because of the well-doers, who
do well in the old fashion without any proper knowledge of the Higher
Criticism or Sanitary Drainage. What with his creed and his congregation
and his love affairs, all of which need mending, he lives a distracted
life. Though the author in the first chapter praises his athletic
prowess, he seems to have no staying powers and his nerves give out
under the least strain. He is one of those trying characters of whom
some one has said that 'we can hear their souls scrape.' I prefer the
old-time parsons. They were much more comfortable and in more rugged
health. I like the phrase 'Bishops and other Clergy.' The bishops are
great personages whose lives are written like the lives of the Lord
Chancellors; and they are not always very readable. But my heart goes
out to the other clergy, the good sensible men who were neither great
scholars nor reformers nor martyrs, and who therefore did not get into
the Church Histories, but who kept things going."

When he turns to the parson of "The Canterbury Tales" he finds the
refreshment that comes from contact with a perfectly wholesome nature.
Here is an enduring type of natural piety. In the person of the good man
the prayers of the church for the healthful spirit of grace had been
answered in full measure. In his ministry in his wide parish we cannot
imagine him as being worried or hurried. There could be for him no
conflict of duties; the duties plodded along one after another in sturdy
English fashion. And when the duties were well done that was the end of
them. Their pale uneasy ghosts did not disturb his slumbers, and point
with vague menace to the unattainable. The parson had his place and his
definite task. He trod the earth as firmly and sometimes as heavily as
did the ploughman.

If the virtues of the fourteenth-century parson were of the enduring
order, so were his foibles. The Gentle Reader is familiar with his
weaknesses; for has he not "sat under his preaching?" The homiletic
habit is hard to break, and renders its victim strangely oblivious to
the passage of time. Every incident suggests a text and every text
suggests a new application. In the homiletic sphere perpetual motion is
an assured success.

What sinking of heart must have come to laymen like the merchant and the
yeoman when the parson on the pleasant road to Canterbury called their
attention to the resemblance between their journey and

    "...thilke parfit, glorious pilgrymage,
     That highte Jerusalem celestial."

They knew the symptoms. When the homilist has got scent of an analogy he
will run it down, however long the chase.

It would be interesting to discover the origin of the impression so
persistent in the lay mind that sermons are long. A sermon is seldom as
long as it seems. But it is always with trepidation that the listener
observes in a discourse a constitutional tendency to longevity. In his
opinion the good die young. As it is to-day so it was on the afternoon
when the host, with ill-concealed alarm, called upon the good parson to
take his turn.

    "Telleth," quod he, "youre meditacioun;
     But hasteth yow, the sonne wole adoun.
     Beth fructuous, and that in litel space."

It is needless to say that what the parson called his "little tale in
prose" proved to be one of his old sermons which he delivered without
notes. He was very unskillful in concealing his text, which was Jeremiah
vi. 16.

We are familiar with that interesting picture of the pilgrims as they
set out in the morning, each figure alert. I wonder that some one has
not painted a picture of them about sunset, as the parson was in the
middle of his discourse. It is said that in every battle there is a
critical moment when each side is almost exhausted. The side which at
this moment receives reinforcements or rallies for a supreme effort
gains the victory. So one must have noticed in every over-long discourse
a critical moment when the speaker and his hearers are equally
exhausted. If at that moment the speaker, who has apparently used up his
material, boldly announces a new head, the hearers' discomfiture is
complete. This point of strategy the parson, guileless as he was,
understood and so managed to get in the last word, so that "The
Canterbury Tales" end with the Canterbury sermon.

By the way, there was one ministerial weakness from which Chaucer's
parson was free,--the love of alliteration. One is often struck, when
listening to a fervent discourse against besetting sins, with the
curious fact that all the transgressions begin with the same letter of
the alphabet. There is something suspicious in this circumstance. Not a
great many years ago a political party suffered severely because its
candidate received an address from a worthy clergyman who was addicted
to this habit, and instead of the usual three R's enumerated "Rum,
Romanism, and Rebellion." The chances are that he meant no offense to
his Roman Catholic fellow citizens; but once on the toboggan slide of
alliteration he could not stop. If instead of rum he had begun with
whiskey, his homiletic instinct would have led him to assert that the
three perils of the Republic were whiskey, war, and woman-suffrage.

It is to the credit of Chaucer's parson that he distinctly repudiated
alliteration with all its allurements, especially in connection with the
seductive letter R.

    "I kan nat geeste '_rum_, _ram_, _ruf_,' by lettre;
     Ne, God woot, rym holde I but litel bettre."

When it came to plain prose without any rhetorical embellishments, he
was in his element.

It must be confessed that the clergyman is not an eminently
Shakespearean character. The great high ecclesiastics, like Pandulph and
Wolsey, are great personages who make a fine show, but the other clergy
are not always in good and regular standing. They are sometimes little
better than hedge-priests. But what pleasant glimpses we get into the
unwritten history of the English Church in the days when it was still
Merry England. The Cranmers and the Ridleys made a great stir in those
days, but no rumors of it reached the rural parishes where Holofernes
kept school and Nathanael warmed over for his slumbering congregation
the scraps he had stolen in his youth from the feast of the languages.
As for the parishioners, they were doubtless well satisfied and could
speak after the fashion of Constable Dull when he was reproved for his
silence.

"Goodman Dull, thou hast said no word all this while."

Dull,--"Nor understood none neither, sir!"

The innocent pedant whose learning lies in the dead languages and who
has a contempt for the living world is a type not extinct; but what
shall we say of the Welsh curate of Windsor, Hugh Evans? In Windsor Park
Mrs. Ford whispers, "Where is Nan now and her troop of fairies, and that
Welsh devil Sir Hugh?"

That was her affectionate, though not respectful, way of referring to
her spiritual adviser. Curate Evans was certainly not an example of what
has been termed "the mild and temperate spirituality which has always
characterized the Church of England." The dignity of the cloth is not in
his mind as he cries, "Trib, fairies, trib, come and remember your
parts, pe pold, I pray you, ... when I give the watch'ords do as I pid
you."

Yet though he seemed not to put so much emphasis on character in
religion as we in these more serious days think fitting, this Welsh
devil of a parson had enough of the professional spirit to wish to point
a moral on all proper occasions. Not too obtrusive or moral, nor
carrying it to the sweating point, but a good, sound approbation of
right sentiment. When Master Slender declares his resolution, "After
this trick I'll ne'er be drunk while I live again but in honest, civil,
godly company. If I be drunk I'll be drunk with those who fear God," the
convivial curate responds, "So God judge me that shows a virtuous mind."

That Shakespeare intended any reflection on the Welsh clergy is not
probable; but so late as the eighteenth century a traveler in Wales
remarks that the ale house was usually kept by the parson. One wonders
whether with such manifest advantages the Welsh ministers' meetings were
given over to lugubrious essays on "Why we do not reach the masses."

Shakespeare uses the word Puritan once, but Malvolio was a prig rather
than a true Puritan. His objection to cakes and ale was rather because
revelry disturbed his slumbers than because it troubled his conscience.
But when we turn to Ben Jonson's Alchemist and come across Tribulation
Wholesome, from Amsterdam, we know that the battle between the stage and
the conventicle has begun. We know the solid virtues of these sectaries
from whom came some of the best things in England and New England. But
we must not expect to find this side of their character in the
literature of the next two or three centuries. Unfortunately the
non-conformist conscience was offended at those innocent pleasures in
which amiable writers and readers have always taken satisfaction.

Charles Lamb inclined to the opinion of his friend who held that "a man
cannot have a good conscience who refuses apple dumpling." The
gastronomic argument against Puritanism has always been a strong one
with the English mind. It was felt that a person must be a hypocrite who
could speak disrespectfully of the creature comforts. There was no
toleration for the miserable pretender who would "blaspheme custard
through the nose." Tribulation Wholesome was deserving only of the
pillory. There was no doubt but that the viands which were publicly
reprobated were privately enjoyed.

    "You rail against plays to please the alderman
     Whose daily custard you devour.
     ...You call yourselves
     By names of Tribulation, Persecution,
     Restraint, Long Patience and such-like, affected
     Only for glory and to catch the ear
     Of the disciple."

In "Bartholomew Fair" we meet Mr. Zeal of the Land Busy, an unlicensed
exhorter, who has attained the liberty of prophesying, and is the leader
of a little flock.

Did history keep on repeating itself, or did literary men keep on
repeating each other? At any rate Mr. Zeal of the Land Busy reappears
continually. He is in every particular the prototype of those painful
brethren who roused the wrath of honest Sam Weller. We recognize his
unctuous speech, his unfailing appetite, and even his offensive and
defensive alliance with the mother-in-law.

Mr. Little-Wit introduces him as "An old elder from Banbury who puts in
here at meal times to praise the painful brethren and to pray that the
sweet singers may be restored; and he says grace as long as his breath
lasts."

To which Mrs. Little-Wit responds, "Yes, indeed, we have such a tedious
time with him, what for his diet and his clothes too, he breaks his
buttons and cracks seams at every saying that he sobs out."

In answer to the anxious inquiry of his mother-in-law, Dame Pure-Craft,
Little-Wit announces that he has found the good man "with his teeth
fast in the cold turkey-pie in the cupboard, with a great white loaf on
his left hand, and a glass of malmsey on his right." In Dame Pure-Craft
he finds a stanch supporter. "Slander not the brethren, wicked one," she
cries.

Zeal of the Land Busy attempts to lead his flock through the perils of
Bartholomew Fair. "Walk in the middle of the way--turn neither to the
right nor to the left. Let not your eyes be drawn aside by vanity nor
your ears by noises." It was indeed a dangerous journey, for it was
nothing less than "a grove of hobby horses and trinkets; the wares are
the wares of devils, and the fair is the shop of Satan."

But, alas, though the eyes and ears were guarded, another avenue of
temptation had been forgotten. The delicious odor of roast pig came from
one of the booths. It was a delicate little pig, cooked with fire of
juniper and rosemary branches. Mrs. Little-Wit longed for it and her
husband encouraged her weakness. Dame Pure-Craft rebukes him and bids
him remember the wholesome admonition of their leader.

Zeal of the Land Busy is a casuist of no mean ability, and is equal to
the task of finding an exception to his own rule.

"It may offer itself by other means to the sense, as by way of steam,
which I think it doth in this place, huh! huh!--yes, it doth. And it
were a sin of obstinacy, high and horrible obstinacy, to resist the
titillation of the famelic sense which is smell. Therefore be bold,
follow the scent; enter the tents of the unclean for this once, and
satisfy your wife's frailty. Let your frail wife be satisfied; your
zealous mother and my suffering self will be satisfied also."

Zeal of the Land Busy was like a certain English statesman of whom it
was said, "His conscience, instead of being his monitor, became his
accomplice."

One characteristic of these unlicensed exhorters seems to be very
persistent,--their almost superhuman fluency. Despising preparation and
trusting to the inspiration of the moment, they are never left without
words. Preaching without notes is not particularly difficult if one has
something to say, but these exhorters attempt to preach without notes
and also without ideas. They require nothing but a word to begin with.
The speaker is like an army which, having broken away from its base of
supplies, lives on the country through which it is marching. The
hortatory guerrilla gets forage enough in one sentence to carry him on
through the next. This was the homiletical method which Zeal of the Land
used in his discourse at the fair. At a venture he cries out,--

"Down with Dagon!"

Leather-Head, the hobby-horse seller, asks very imprudently,--

"What do you mean, sir!"

That was enough; a torrent of impromptu eloquence is let loose.

"I will remove Dagon there, I say; that idol, that heathenish idol, that
remains as I may say a beam, a very beam, not a beam of the sun, nor a
beam of the moon, nor a beam of the balance, neither a house beam, nor a
weaver's beam, but a beam in the eye, an exceeding great beam!"

It was the same method employed long after by Mr. Chadband in his moving
address to little Joe.

"My young friend, you are to us a pearl, a diamond, you are to us a
jewel. And why, my young friend?"

"I don't know," replied Joe, "I don't know nothink."

This gave Mr. Chadband his opportunity for continued speech. "My young
friend, it is because you know nothing that you are to us a gem, a
jewel. For what are you? Are you a beast of the field? No! Are you a
fish of the river? No! You are a human boy! Oh, glorious to be a human
boy! And why glorious, my young friend?"

Marvelous, to taciturn folk, is this flow of language. The little rill
becomes a torrent, and soon there are waters to swim in. It seems to
savor of the supernatural, being of the nature of creation out of
nothing. And yet like many other wonderful things, it is easy when one
knows how to do it.

The churchmen of those days joined with the wits in laughter which
greeted the tinkers and the bakers who turned to prophesying on their
own account. But now and then one of the zealous independents could give
as keen a thrust as any which were received. It would be hard to find
more delicate satire than in the description of Parson Two Tongues of
the town of Fair Speech, who was much esteemed by his distinguished
parishioners, My Lord Time-Server, Mr. Facing Both-Ways, and Mr.
Anything. The parson was a man of good family, though his grandfather
had been a waterman, and had thus learned the art of looking one way and
rowing another. It is his parishioner Mr. Bye-Ends who propounds the
question of ministerial ethics. "Suppose a minister, a worthy man,
possessed of but a small benefice, has in his eye a greater, more fat
and plump by far; he has also now an opportunity of getting it, yet so
as being more studious, by preaching more zealously, and because the
temper of the people requires it, by altering some of his principles,
for my part I see no reason but a man may do this (provided he has a
call), aye, and a great deal more besides, and be an honest man." As for
changing his principles to suit the times, Mr. Bye-Ends argues that it
shows that the minister "is of a self-sacrificing temper."

The argument for conformity is put so plausibly that it is calculated to
deceive the very elect; and then as if by mere inadvertence we are
allowed a glimpse of the seamy side. It is evident that the wits were
not all banished from the conventicles.

       *       *       *       *       *

To those who are acquainted only with the pale and interesting
tea-drinking parsons of nineteenth-century English fiction, there is
something surprising in the clergymen one meets in the pages of
Fielding. They are all in such rude health! There is not a suggestion of
nervous prostration nor of minister's sore throat. Not one of them seems
to be in need of a vacation; perhaps because they are out of doors all
the time. Their professional duties were doubtless done, but they are
not obtruded on the reader's attention.

The odious Chaplain Thwackum is chiefly remembered for his argument with
the free-thinker Square. Square having asserted that honor might exist
independently of religion, Thwackum refutes him in a manner most
satisfactory. "When I mention religion I mean the Christian religion,
and not only the Christian religion but the Protestant religion, and not
only the Protestant religion but the religion of the Church of England;
and when I mention honor I mean that mode of divine grace which is
dependent on that religion."

"Thwackum," says the Gentle Reader, "was, after all, an unworldly man.
He was content to remain a mere hanger-on of the church when he was
capable of thoughts which were really in great demand. I have been
looking over a huge controversial volume by an author of that day, and I
found nothing but Thwackum argument expanded and illustrated. The author
was made a bishop for it."

As for Parson Trulliber, the Falstaff of divines, the less said about
him the better. The curate Barnabas is a more pleasing character, though
hardly an example of spirituality. He reminds one of the good parson
who, in his desire for moderation, prayed that the Lord might lead his
people "in the safe middle path between right and wrong."

When Joseph Andrews confessed his sins to him, Barnabas was divided
between his eagerness to do his professional duty to the sinner, and the
desire to prepare the punch for the company downstairs, a work in which
he particularly excelled.

"Barnabas asked him if he forgave his enemies 'as a Christian ought.'

"Joseph desired to know what that forgiveness was.

"'That is,' answered Barnabas, 'to forgive them--as--it is to forgive
them as--in short, to forgive them as a Christian.'

"Joseph replied 'He forgave them as much as he could.'

"'Well! Well!' said Barnabas, 'that will do!' He then demanded of him if
he had any more sins unrepented of, and if he had, to repent of them as
fast as he could; ... for some company was waiting below in the parlor
where the ingredients for punch were all in readiness, for that no one
could squeeze the oranges till he came."

Barnabas would have been shocked at the demands of the Methodists for
immediate repentance, but on this occasion he was led into almost equal
urgency.

But Fielding more than atones for all the rest by the creation of Parson
Adams. Dear, delightful Parson Adams! to know him is to love him! In him
the Church of England appears a little out at the elbows, but in good
heart. With the appetite of a ploughman, and "a fist rather less than
the knuckle of an ox," he represents the true church militant. He has a
pipe in his mouth, and a short great coat which half conceals his
cassock, which he had "torn some ten years ago in passing over a stile."
But however uncanonical his attire, his heart is in the right place.

What a different world Parson Adams lived in from that of George Eliot's
Amos Barton, bewildered with thoughts which he could not express. "'Mr.
Barton,' said his rural parishioner, 'can preach as good a sermon as
need be when he writes it down, but when he tries to preach without book
he rambles about, and every now and then flounders like a sheep as has
cast itself and can't get on its legs.'"

One cannot imagine Parson Adams floundering about, under any
circumstances. There is a sturdy strength and directness about all he
says and does. His simplicity is endearing but never savors of weakness.

He sets great store by his manuscript sermons, for which he seeks a
publisher. The curate Barnabas throws cold water on his plans. The age,
he says, is so wicked that nobody reads sermons;

"'Would you think it, Mr. Adams, I intended to print a volume of
sermons, myself, and they had the approbation of three bishops, but what
do you think the bookseller offered me?'

"'Twelve guineas,' cried Adams.

"'Nay,' answered Barnabas, 'the dog refused me a concordance in
exchange.... To be concise with you, three bishops said they were the
best sermons that were ever writ; but indeed there are a pretty moderate
number printed already, and they are not all sold yet.'"

The theology of Parson Adams was genially human. "'Can anything,' he
said, 'be more derogatory to the honor of God than for men to imagine
that the all-wise Being will hereafter say to the good and virtuous,
Notwithstanding the purity of thy life, notwithstanding the constant
rule of virtue and goodness in which thou walkedst upon earth; still, as
thou didst not believe everything in the true orthodox manner, thy want
of faith shall condemn thee? Or, on the other side, can any doctrine be
more pernicious in society than the persuasion that it will be a good
plea for a villain at the last day,--"Lord, it is true I never obeyed
any of Thy commandments; yet punish me not, for I believe in them
all?"'"

This was not sound doctrine in the opinion of the itinerant bookseller.
"'I am afraid,' he said, 'that you will find a backwardness in the trade
to engage in a book which the clergy would be certain to cry down.'"

The good parson had the clerical weakness for reading sermons in season
and out of season. At a festive gathering there was a call for speeches,
to which it was objected that no one was prepared for an address;
"'Unless,' turning to Adams, 'you have a sermon about you.'

"'Sir,' said Adams, 'I never travel without one, for fear of what might
happen.'"

Like other clergymen, he dabbled occasionally in politics. "'On all
proper seasons, such as at the approach of an election, I throw a
suitable dash or two into my sermons, which I have the pleasure to hear
is not disagreeable to Sir Thomas and the other honest gentlemen, my
neighbors.'"

At one time he actively labored for the election of young Sir Thomas
Booby, who had lately returned from his travels. He was elected, "'and
a fine Parliament man he was. They tell me he made speeches of an hour
long, and I have been told very fine ones; but he could never persuade
Parliament to be of his opinion.'"

Estimable, eloquent Sir Thomas Booby! How many orators have found the
same result following their speeches of an hour long!

To the returned traveler who had engaged in a controversy with him,
Parson Adams gave expression to his literary faith.

"'Master of mine, perhaps I have traveled a great deal further than you,
without the assistance of a ship. Do you imagine sailing by different
cities or countries is traveling. I can go further in an afternoon than
you in a twelve-month. What, I suppose you have seen the pillars of
Hercules and perhaps the walls of Carthage?... You have sailed among the
Cyclades and passed the famous straits which took their name from the
unfortunate Helle, so sweetly described by Apollonius Rhodius; you have
passed the very spot where Daedalus fell into the sea; you have doubtless
traversed the Euxine, and called at Colchis to see if there was another
golden fleece.'

"'Not I, truly,' said the gentleman. 'I never touched at any of these
places.'

"'But I have been in all these,' replied Adams.

"'Then you have been in the Indies, for there are no such places, I'll
be sworn, either in the West Indies or in the Levant.'

"'Pray, where is the Levant?' quoth Adams.

"'Oho! You're a pretty traveler and not to know the Levant. You must not
tip me for a traveler, it won't go here.'

"'Since thou art so dull as to misunderstand me,' quoth Adams, 'I will
inform thee. The traveling I mean is in books, the only kind of
traveling by which any knowledge is acquired.'"

"There is a great deal to be said in defense of that opinion," says the
Gentle Reader.

       *       *       *       *       *

To turn from Parson Adams to the Vicar of Wakefield is to experience a
change of spiritual climate. Parson Adams was a good man, and so was Dr.
Primrose; otherwise they were quite different. Was piety ever made more
attractive to restless, over-driven people than in the person of the
dear, non-resistant vicar. Here was a man who might be reviled and
persecuted,--but he never could be hurried.

The Gentle Reader rejoices in the peace of the opening chapters. "The
year was spent in moral and rural amusements. We had no revolutions to
fear, no fatigues to undergo, all our adventures were by the fireside,
and all our migrations were from the blue bed to the brown." And
good-natured Mrs. Primrose, absorbed in making pickles and gooseberry
wine, and with her ability to read any English book without much
spelling, was an ideal minister's wife, before the days of missionary
societies and general information. It was only her frivolous daughters
who were brought into society, where there was talk of "pictures, taste,
Shakespeare, and the musical glasses." These subjects not then being
supposed to have any esoteric, religious significance, which it was the
duty of the minister's wife to discover and disseminate, she busied
herself with her domestic concerns without any haunting sense that she
was neglecting the weightier matters. The vicar's favorite sermons were
in praise of matrimony, and he preached out of a happy experience.

This peaceful scene bears the same relation to the trials that
afterwards befell the good man that the prologue to the Book of Job does
to the main part of it. Satan has his will with Job, so also it happened
with Dr. Primrose. His banker absconds to Amsterdam, his daughter elopes
with the wicked young squire who has the father thrown into prison,
where he hears of the death of his wretched daughter who has been cast
off by her betrayer. Troubles came thick and fast; yet did not the vicar
hurry, nor for a moment change the even tenor of his way. It was the
middle of the eighteenth century, when piety was not treated as an
elemental force. It did not lift up its voice and cry out against
injustice. The church was the patient Griselda married to the state, and
the clergyman was a teacher of resignation.

Upon learning of his daughter's abduction, Dr. Primrose calls for his
Bible and his staff, but he does not indulge in any haste unbecoming a
clergyman. He finds time in his leisurely pursuit to discourse most
judiciously and at considerable length on the royal prerogative. He
remembers his duty to the landed gentry, and on his return from his
unsuccessful quest remains several days to enjoy the squire's
hospitality.

Was ever poetical justice done with more placidity and completeness than
in the prison scene? The vicar, feeling that he is about to die,
proceeds to address his fellow wretches. He falls naturally into an old
sermon on the evils of free-thinking philosophy, that being the line of
the least resistance. The discourse being finished, it is without
surprise and yet with real pleasure that we learn that he does not die;
nor is his son, who was about to be hanged, hanged at all; on the
contrary, he appears not long after handsomely dressed in regimentals,
and makes a modest and distant bow to Miss Wilmot, the heiress. That
young lady had just arrived and was to be married next day to the wicked
young squire, but on learning that young gentleman's perfidy, "'Oh
goodness!' cried the lovely girl, 'how I have been deceived.'" The
vicar's son being on the spot in his handsome regimentals, they are
engaged in the presence of the company, and her affluent fortune is
assured to this hitherto impecunious youth. And the daughter Olivia at
the same time appears, it happening that she was not dead after all,
and that she has papers to show that she is the lawful wife of the young
squire. And the banker who ran away with the vicar's property has been
captured and the money restored. In the mean time--for happy accidents
never come singly--the wretch who was in the act of carrying off the
younger daughter Sophy has been foiled by the opportune arrival of Mr.
Burchell. And best of all, Mr. Burchell proves not to be Mr. Burchell at
all, but the celebrated Sir William Thornhill, who is loyal to the
constitution and a friend of the king. The Vicar is so far restored that
he leaves the jail and partakes of a bountiful repast, at which the
company is "as merry as affluence and innocence could make them."

Affluence as the providential, though sometimes long delayed, reward of
innocence was a favorite thesis of eighteenth-century piety.

"It may sound very absurd," says the Gentle Reader, "to those who insist
that all the happenings should be realistic; but the Vicar of Wakefield
is a very real character, nevertheless; and he is the kind of a person
for whom you would expect things to come out right in the end."




Quixotism


When Falstaff boasted that he was not only witty himself but the cause
of wit in other men, he thought of himself more highly than he ought to
have thought. The very fact that he was witty prevented him from the
highest efficiency in stimulating others in that direction. The
atmospheric currents of merriment move irresistibly toward a vacuum.
Create a character altogether destitute of humor and the most sluggish
intelligence is stirred in the effort to fill the void.

When we seek one who is the cause of wit in other men we pass by the
jovial Falstaff and come to the preternaturally serious Don Quixote.
Here we have not the chance outcropping of "the lighter vein," but the
mother lode which the humorist finds inexhaustible. Don Quixote, with a
lofty gravity which never for an instant relaxes, sets forth upon his
mission. His is a soul impenetrable to mirth; but as he rides he
enlivens the whole country-side. Everywhere merry eyes are watching him;
boisterous laughter comes from the stables of village inns; from castle
windows high-born ladies smile upon him; the peasants in the fields
stand gaping and holding their sides; the countenances of the priests
relax, and even the robbers salute the knight with mock courtesy. The
dullest La Manchan is refreshed, and feels that he belongs to a choice
coterie of wits.

Cervantes tells us that he intended only a burlesque on the books of
chivalry which were in vogue in his day. Had he done no more than he
intended, he would have amused his own generation and then have been
forgotten. It would be too much to ask that we should read the endless
tales about Amadis and Orlando, only that we might appreciate his clever
parody of them. A satire lasts no longer than its object. It must shoot
folly as it flies. To keep on shooting at a folly after it is dead is
unsportsmanlike.

But though we have not read the old books of chivalry, we have all come
in contact with Quixotism. I say we have all come in contact with it;
but let no selfish, conventional persons be afraid lest they catch it.
They are immune. They may do many foolish things, but they cannot
possibly be quixotic. Quixotism is a malady possible only to generous
minds.

Listen to Don Quixote as he makes his plea before the duke and duchess.
"I have redressed grievances, righted the injured, chastised the
insolent, vanquished giants. My intentions have all been directed toward
virtuous ends and to do good to all mankind. Now judge, most excellent
duke and duchess, whether a person who makes it his study to practice
all this deserves to be called a fool."

Our first instinct is to answer confidently, "Of course not! Such a
character as you describe is what we call a hero or a saint." But the
person whose moral enthusiasm has been tempered with a knowledge of the
queer combinations of goodness and folly of which human nature is
capable is more wary, and answers, "That depends."

In the case of Don Quixote it depends very much on the kind of world he
lives in. If it should happen that in this world there are giants
standing truculently at their castle doors, and forlorn maidens at every
cross-roads waiting to be rescued, we will grant him the laurels that
are due to the hero. But if La Mancha should not furnish these materials
for his prowess,--then we must take a different view of the case.

The poor gentleman is mad, that is what the curate and the barber say;
but when we listen to his conversation we are in doubt. If the curate
could discourse half so eloquently he would have been a bishop long
before this. The most that can be said is that he has some notions which
are not in accordance with the facts, and that he acts accordingly; but
if that were a proof of madness there would not be enough sane persons
in the world to make strait-jackets for the rest. His chief peculiarity
is that he takes himself with a seriousness that is absolute. All of us
have thoughts which would not bear the test of strict examination. There
are vagrant fancies and random impulses which, fortunately for our
reputations, come to nothing. We are just on the verge of doing
something absurd when we recognize the character of our proposed
action; and our neighbors lose a pleasure. We comfort ourselves by the
reflection that their loss is our gain. Don Quixote has no such
inhibition; he carries out his own ideas to their logical conclusion.

The hero of Cervantes had muddled his wits by the reading of romances.
Almost any kind of printed matter may have the same effect if one is not
able to distinguish between what he has read and what he has actually
experienced. One may read treatises on political economy until he
mistakes the "economic man" who acts only according to the rules of
enlightened self-interest for a creature of flesh and blood. One may
read so many articles on the Rights of Women that he mistakes a
hard-working American citizen who spends his summer in a down-town
office, in order that his wife and daughter may go to Europe, for that
odious monster the Tyrant Man. It is possible to read the Society
columns of the daily newspapers till the reader does not know good
society when he sees it. An estimable teacher in the public schools may
devote herself so assiduously to pedagogical literature that she
mistakes her school-room for a psychological laboratory, with results
that are sufficiently tragical. There are excellent divines so learned
in the history of the early church that they believe that
semi-pelagianism is still the paramount issue. There were few men whose
minds were, in general, better balanced than Mr. Gladstone's, yet what a
fine example of Quixotism was that suggested by Queen Victoria's remark:
"Mr. Gladstone always addresses me as if I were a public meeting." To
address a woman as if she were a public meeting is the mistake of one
who had devoted himself too much to political speeches.

A thoroughly healthy mind can endure a good deal of reading and a
considerable amount of speculation with impunity. It does not take the
ideas thus derived too seriously. It is continually making allowances,
and every once in a while there is a general clearance. It is like a gun
which expels the old cartridge as the new shot is fired. When the
delicate mechanism for the expulsion of exploded opinions gets out of
order the mind becomes the victim of "fixed ideas." The best idea
becomes dangerous when it gets stuck. When the fixed ideas are of a
noble and disinterested character we have a situation which excites at
once the admiration of the moralist and the apprehension of the
alienist. Perhaps this border-land between spiritual reality and
intellectual hallucination belongs neither to the moralist nor to the
alienist, but to the wise humorist. He laughs, but there is no
bitterness or scorn in his laughter. It is mellow and human-hearted.

The world is full of people who have a faculty which enables them to
believe whatever they wish. Thought is not, for them, a process which
may go on indefinitely, a work in which they are collaborating with the
universe. They do it all by themselves. It is the definite transaction
of making up their minds. When the mind is made up it closes with a
snap. After that, for an unwelcome idea to force an entrance would be a
well-nigh impossible feat of intellectual burglary.

We sometimes speak of stubborn facts. Nonsense! A fact is a mere babe
when compared with a stubborn theory. Let the theory, however
extravagant in its origin, choose its own ground, and intrench itself in
the mind of a well-meaning lady or gentleman of an argumentative turn,
and I'll warrant you it can hold its own against a whole regiment of
facts.

Did you ever attend a meeting of the society for the--perhaps I had
better not mention the name of the society, lest I tread on your
favorite Quixotism. Suffice it to say that it has a noble purpose. It
aims at nothing less than the complete transformation of human society,
by the use of means which, to say the least, seem quite inadequate.

After the minutes of the last meeting have been read, and the objects of
the society have been once more stated with much detail, there is an
opportunity for discussion from the floor.

"Perhaps there is some one who may give some new suggestions, or who may
desire to ask a question."

You have observed what happens to the unfortunate questioner. What a
sorry exhibition he makes of himself! No sooner does he open his mouth
than every one recognizes his intellectual feebleness. He seems unable
to grasp the simplest ideas. He stumbles at the first premise, and lies
sprawling at the very threshold of the argument. "If what I have taken
for granted be true," says the chairman, "do not all the fine things I
have been telling you about follow necessarily?"

"But," murmurs the questioner, "the things you take for granted are just
what trouble me. They don't correspond to my experience."

"Poor, feeble-minded questioner!" cry the members of the society, "to
think that he is not even able to take things for granted! And then to
set up his experience against our constitution and by-laws!"

We sometimes speak of an inconsequent, harum-scarum person, who is
always going off after new ideas, as quixotic. But true Quixotism is
grave, self-contained, conservative. Within its own sphere it is
accurate and circumstantial. There is no absurdity in its mental
processes; all that is concealed in its assumptions. Granted the reality
of the scheme of knight-errantry, and Don Quixote becomes a solid,
dependable man who will conscientiously carry it out. There is no danger
of his going off into vagaries. He has a mind that will keep the
roadway.

He is a sound critic, intolerant of minor incongruities. When the
puppet-player tells about the bells ringing in the mosques of the
Moorish town, the knight is quick to correct him. "There you are out,
boy; the Moors have no bells; they only use kettledrums. Your ringing
of bells in Sansuena is a mere absurdity." Such absurdities were not
amusing; they were offensive to his serious taste.

The quixotic mind loves greatly the appearance of strict logic. It is
satisfied if one statement is consistent with another statement; whether
either is consistent with the facts of the case is a curious matter
which it does not care to investigate. So much does it love Logic that
it welcomes even that black sheep of the logical family, the Fallacy;
and indeed the impudent fellow, with all his irresponsible ways, does
bear a family resemblance which is very deceiving. Above all is there
delight in that alluring mental exercise known as the argument in a
circle. It is an intellectual merry-go-round. A hobby-horse on rockers
is sport for tame intelligences, but a hobby that can be made to go
round is exciting. You may see grave divines and astute metaphysicians
and even earnest sociologists rejoicing in the swift sequence of their
own ideas, as conclusion follows premise and premise conclusion, in
endless gyration. How the daring riders clutch the bridles and
exultingly watch the flying manes of their steeds! They have the sense
of getting somewhere, and at the same time the comfortable assurance
that that somewhere is the very place from which they started.

"Didn't we tell you so!" they cry. "Here we are again. Our arguments
must be true, for we can't get away from them."

Your ordinary investigator is a disappointing fellow. His opinions are
always at the mercy of circumstances over which he has no control. He
cuts his coat according to his cloth, and sometimes when his material
runs short his intellectual garments are more scanty than decency
allows. Sometimes after a weary journey into the Unknown he will return
with scarcely an opinion to his back. Not so with the quixotist. His
opinions not being dependent on evidence, he does not measure different
degrees of probability. Half a reason is as good as a whole one, for the
result in any case is perfect assurance. All things conspire, in most
miraculous fashion, to confirm him in his views. That other men think
differently he admits, he even welcomes their skepticism as a foil to
his faith. His imperturbable tolerance is like that of some knight who,
conscious of his coat of mail, good-humoredly exposes himself to the
assaults of the rabble. It amuses them, and does him no harm.

When Don Quixote had examined Mambrino's enchanted helmet, his candor
compelled him to listen to Sancho's assertion that it was only a
barber's basin. He was not disposed to controvert the evidence of the
senses, but he had a sufficient explanation ready. "This enchanted
helmet, by some strange accident, must have fallen into the possession
of one who, ignorant of its true value as a helmet, and seeing it to be
of the purest gold, hath inconsiderately melted down the one half for
lucre's sake, and of the other half made this, which, as thou sayest,
doth indeed look like a barber's basin; but to me, who know what it
really is, its transformation is of no importance, for I will have it so
repaired in the first town where there is a smith that it shall not be
surpassed or even equaled. In the mean time I will wear it as I can, for
something is better than nothing, and it will be sufficient to defend me
from stones."

Where have you heard that line of argument, so satisfying to one who has
already made up his mind? Yesterday, it runs, we had several excellent
reasons for the opinion which we hold. Since then, owing to
investigations which we imprudently entered into before we knew where we
were coming out, all our reasons have been overthrown. This, however,
makes not the slightest difference. It rather strengthens our general
position, as it is no longer dependent on any particular evidence for
its support.

We prate of the teaching of Experience. But did you ever know Experience
to teach anything to a person whose ideas had set up an independent
government of their own? The stern old dame has been much overrated as
an instructor. Her pedagogical method is very primitive. Her instruction
is administered by a series of hard whacks which the pupil is expected
to interpret for himself. That something is wrong is evident; but what
is it? It is only now and then that some bright pupil says, "That means
that I made a mistake." As for persons of a quixotic disposition, the
most adverse experience only confirms their pre-conceptions. At most the
wisdom gained is prudential. After Don Quixote had made his first
unfortunate trial of his pasteboard visor, "to secure it against like
accidents in future he made it anew, and fenced it with thin plates of
iron so skillfully that he had reason to be satisfied with his work, and
so, without further experiment, resolved that it should pass for a good
and sufficient helmet."

One is tempted to linger over that moment when Quixote ceased to
experiment and began to dogmatize. What was the reason of his sudden
dread of destructive criticism? Was he quite sincere? Did he really
believe that his helmet was now cutlass proof?

For myself, I have no doubts of his knightly honor and of his
transparent candor. He certainly believed that he believed; though under
the circumstances he felt that it was better to take no further risks.

In his admirable discourse with Don Fernando on the comparative merits
of arms and literature, he describes the effects of the invention of
gunpowder.

"When I reflect on this I am almost tempted to say that in my heart I
repent of having adopted the profession of knight-errantry in so
detestable an age as we live in. For though no peril can make me fear,
still it gives me some uneasiness to think that powder and lead may rob
me of the opportunity of making myself famous and renowned throughout
the world by the might of my arm and the edge of my sword."

There is here a bit of uneasiness, such as comes to any earnest person
who perceives that the times are out of joint. Still the doubt does not
go very deep. In an age of artillery knight-errantry is doubtless more
difficult, but it does not seem impossible.

It is the same feeling that must come now and then to a gallant
twentieth-century Jacobite who meets with his fellow conspirators in an
American city, to lament the untimely taking off of the blessed martyr
King Charles, and to plot for the return of the House of Stuart. The
circumstances under which they meet are not congenial. The path of
loyalty is not what it once was. A number of things have happened since
1649; still they may be treated as negligible quantities. It is a fine
thing to sing about the king coming to his own again.

"But what if there isn't any king to speak of?"

"Well, at any rate, the principle is the same."

I occasionally read a periodical devoted to the elevation of mankind by
means of a combination of deep breathing and concentrated thought. The
object is one in which I have long been interested. The means used are
simple. The treatment consists in lying on one's back for fifteen
minutes every morning with arms outstretched. Then one must begin to
exhale self and inhale power. The directions are given with such
exactness that no one with reasonably good lungs can go astray. The
treatment is varied according to the need. One may in this way breathe
in, not only health and love, but, what may seem to some more important,
wealth.

The treatment for chronic impecuniosity is particularly interesting. The
patient, as he lies on his back and breathes deeply, repeats, "I am
Wealth." This sets the currents of financial success moving in his
direction.

One might suppose that a theory of finance so different from that of the
ordinary workaday world would be surrounded by an air of weirdness or
strangeness. Not at all. Everything is most matter of fact. The Editor
is evidently a sensible person when it comes to practical details, and,
on occasion, gives admirable advice.

A correspondent writes: "I have tried your treatment for six months, and
I am obliged to say that I am harder up than ever before. What do you
advise?"

It is one of those obstinate cases which are met with now and then, and
which test the real character of the practitioner. The matter is treated
with admirable frankness, and yet with a wholesome optimism. The patient
is reminded that six months is a short time, and one must not expect too
quick results. A slow, sure progress is better, and the effects are more
lasting. This is not the first case that has been slow in yielding to
treatment. Still it may be better to make a slight change. The formula,
"I am Wealth," may be too abstract, though it usually has worked well. A
more concrete thought might possibly be more effective. Why not try,
remembering, of course, to continue the same breathings, "I am Andrew
Carnegie?"

Then the practitioner adds a bit of advice which was certainly worth the
moderate fee charged: "When the exercises are over, ask yourself what
Andrew would do next. Andrew would hustle."

A slight acquaintance with the pseudo sciences which are in vogue at the
present day reveals a world to which only the genius of Cervantes could
do justice. We see Absurdity clothed, and in its right mind. It is
formally correct, punctiliously exact, completely serious, and withal
high-minded. Until it comes in contact with the actual world we do not
realize that it is absurd.

Religion and medicine have always furnished tempting fields for persons
of the quixotic temper. Perhaps it is because their professed objects
are so high, and perhaps also because their achievements fall so far
below what we have been led to expect. Neither spiritual nor mental
health is so robust as to satisfy us with the usual efforts in their
behalf. Sin and sickness are continual challenges. Some one ought to
abolish them. An eager hearing is given to any one who claims to be able
to do so. The temptation is great for those who do not perceive the
difference between words and things to answer the demands.

It is not necessary to go for examples either to fanatics or quacks. Not
to take too modern an instance, there was Bishop Berkeley! He was a
true philosopher, an earnest Christian, and withal a man of sense, and
yet he was the author of "Siris, a Chain of Philosophical Reflections
and Inquiries concerning the Virtues of Tar Water, and divers other
Subjects connected together, and arising One from Another." It is one of
those works which are the cause of wit in other men. It is so learned,
so exhaustive, so pious, and the author takes it with such utter
seriousness!

Tar is the good bishop's Dulcinea. All his powers are enlisted in the
work of proclaiming the matchless virtues of this mistress of his
imagination, who is "black but comely." Our minds are prepared by a
lyric outburst:--

    "Hail, vulgar Juice of never-fading Pine!
     Cheap as thou art! thy virtues are divine,
     To show them and explain (such is thy store),
     There needs much modern and much ancient Lore."

For this great work the author is well equipped. Plato, Aristotle,
Pliny, and the rest of the ancients appear as vanquished knights
compelled to do honor to my Lady Tar.

Other specifics are allowed to have their virtues, but they grow pale
before this paragon. Common soap has its admirers; they are treated
magnanimously, but compelled to surrender at last. "Soap is allowed to
be cleansing, attenuating, opening, resolving, sweetening; it is
pectoral, vulnerary, diuretic, and hath other good qualities; which are
also found in tar water.... Tar water therefore is a soap, and as such
hath all the medicinal qualities of soaps." To those who put their faith
in vinegar a like argument is made. It is shown that tar water is not
only a superior kind of soap, but also a sublimated sort of vinegar; in
fact, it appears to be all things to all men.

To those who incline to the philosophy of the ancient fire-worshipers a
special argument is made. "I had a long Time entertained an Opinion
agreeable to the Sentiments of many ancient Philosophers, that Fire may
be regarded as the Animal Spirit of this visible World. And it seemed to
me that the attracting and secreting of this Fire in the various Pores,
Tubes, and Ducts of Vegetables, did impart their specifick Virtues to
each kind, that this same Light, or Fire, was the immediate Cause of
Sense and Motion, and consequently of Life and Health to animals; that
on Account of this Solar Light or Fire, Phoebus was in the ancient
Mythology reputed the God of Medicine. Which Light as it is leisurely
introduced, and fixed in the viscid juice of old Firs and Pines, so
setting it free in Part, that is, the changing its viscid for a volatile
Vehicle, which may mix with Water, and convey it throughout the Habit
copiously and inoffensively, would be of infinite Use in Physic." It
appears therefore that tar water is not only a kind of soap, but also a
kind of fire.

Yet is not Quixote himself more careful to avoid all appearance of
extravagance? The author shrinks from imposing conclusions on another.
After an elaborate argument which moves irresistibly to one conclusion,
he stops short. "This regards the Possibility of a Panacea in general;
as for Tar Water in particular, I do not say it is a Panacea, I only
suspect it to be so." Yet he must be a churlish reader who could go with
him so far and then refuse to take the next step. Nor can a right-minded
person be indifferent to the moral argument in favor of "Tar Water,
Temperance, and Early Hours." If tar water is to be known by the company
it keeps, it is to be commended.

There is a great advantage in taking our example from another age than
ours. Our enjoyment of the bishop's Quixotism does not cast discredit on
any similar hobby of our own day. "However," as the author of Siris
remarked, "it is hoped they will not condemn one Man's Tar Water for
another Man's Pill or Drop, any more than they would hang one Man for
another's having stole a Horse."

Indeed, of all quixotic notions the most extreme is that of those who
think that Quixotism can be overcome by any direct attack. It is a state
of mind which must be accepted as we accept any other curious fact. As
well tilt against a cloud as attempt to overcome it by argument. It is a
part of the myth-making faculty of the human mind. A myth is a quixotic
notion which takes possession of multitudes rather than of a single
person. Everybody accepts it; nobody knows why. You can nail a lie, but
you cannot nail a myth,--there is nothing to nail it to. It is of no use
to deny it, for that only gives it a greater vogue.

I have great sympathy for all mythical characters. It is possible that
Hercules may have been an amiable Greek gentleman of sedentary habits.
Some one may have started the story of his labors as a joke. In the next
town it was taken seriously, and the tale set forth on its travels.
After it once had been generally accepted, what could Hercules do? What
good would it have been for him to say, "There's not a word of truth in
what everybody is saying about me. I am as averse to a hard day's work
as any gentleman of my social standing in the community. They are
turning me into a sun-myth, and mixing up my private affairs with the
signs of the zodiac! I won't stand it!"

Bless me! he would have to stand it! His words would but add fuel to the
flame of admiration. What a hero he is; so strong and so modest! He has
already forgotten those feats of strength! It is ever so with greatness.
To Hercules it was all mere child's play. All the more need that we keep
the stories alive in order to hand them down to our children. Perhaps we
had better touch them up a bit so that they may be more interesting to
the little dears. And so would begin a new cycle of myths.

After Socrates had once gained the reputation for superlative wisdom,
do you think it did any good for him to go about proclaiming that he
knew nothing? He was suspected of having some ulterior design. Nobody
would believe him except Xanthippe.

When after hearing strange noises in the night Don Quixote sallies forth
only to discover that the sounds come from fulling hammers instead of
from giants, he rebukes the ill-timed merriment of his squire. "Come
hither, merry sir! Suppose these mill hammers had really been some
perilous adventure, have I not given proof of the courage requisite to
undertake and achieve it? Am I, being a knight, to distinguish between
sounds, and to know which are and which are not those of a fulling mill,
more especially as I have never seen any fulling mills in my life?"

If the mill hammers could only be transformed into giants, how easy the
path of reform! for it would satisfy the primitive instinct to go out
and kill something. I have heard a temperance orator denounce the Demon
Drink so roundly that every one in the audience was ready to destroy the
monster on sight. The solution of the liquor problem, however, was
quite a different matter. The young patriot who conceives of the money
power under the terrifying image of an octopus resolves at once to give
it battle. When elected to the legislature he meets many smooth-spoken
gentlemen whose schemes are so plausible that he readily assents to
them,--but not an octopus does he see. Yet I believe that were he to see
an octopus he would slay it.

Perhaps there is no better test of a person's nature than his attitude
toward Quixotism. The man of coarse, unfriendly humor sees in it nothing
but a broad farce. He greets the misadventures of Don Quixote with a
loud guffaw. What a fool he was not to know the difference between an
ordinary inn and a castle!

There are persons of a sensitive and refined disposition to whom it is
all a tragedy, exquisitely painful to contemplate. Alas, poor gentleman,
with all his lofty ideals, to be so buffeted by a world unworthy of him!

But this refinement of sentiment comes perilously near to
sentimentalism. Cervantes had the more wholesome attitude. He
appreciated the valor of Don Quixote. It was genuine, though the
knight, owing to circumstances beyond his own control, had been
compelled to make his visor out of pasteboard. He had heroism of soul;
but what of it! There was plenty more where it came from. A man who had
fought at Lepanto, and endured years of Algerine captivity, was not
inclined to treat manly virtue as if it were a rare and delicate fabric
that must be preserved in a glass case. It was amply able to take care
of itself. He knew that he couldn't laugh genuine chivalry away, even if
he tried. It could stand not only hard knocks from its foes, but any
amount of raillery from its friends.

The bewildered soldier who mistakes a harmless camp follower for the
enemy must expect to endure the gibes of his comrades; yet no one doubts
that he would have acquitted himself nobly if the enemy had appeared.
The rough humor of the camp is a part of its wholesome discipline.

Quixotism is a combination of goodness and folly. To enjoy it one must
be able to appreciate them both at the same time. It is a pleasure
possible only to one who is capable of having mixed feelings.

When we consider the faculty which many good people have of believing
things that are not so, and ignoring the plainest facts and laws of
nature, we are sometimes alarmed over the future of society. If any of
the Quixotisms which are now in vogue should get themselves established,
what then?

Fortunately there is small need of anxiety. When the landsman first
ventures on the waves he observes with alarm the keeling over of the
boat under the breeze, for he expects the tendency to be followed to its
logical conclusion. Fortunately for the equilibrium of society,
tendencies which are viewed with alarm are seldom carried to their
logical conclusion. They are met by other tendencies before the danger
point is reached, and the balance is restored.

The factor which is overlooked by those who fear the ascendency of any
quixotic notion is the existence of the average man. This individual is
not a striking personality, but he holds the balance of power. Before
any extravagant idea can establish itself it must convert the average
man. He is very susceptible, and takes a suggestion so readily that it
seems to prophesy the complete overthrow of the existing order of
things. But was ever a conversion absolute? The best theologians say no.
A great deal of the old Adam is always left over. When the average man
takes up with a quixotic notion, only so much of it is practically
wrought out as he is able to comprehend. The old Adam of common sense
continually asserts itself. The natural corrective of Quixotism is
Sancho-Panzaism. The solemn knight, with his head full of visionary
plans, is followed by a squire who is as faithful as his nature will
permit. Sancho has no theories, and makes no demands on the world. He
leaves that sort of thing to his master. He has the fatalism which
belongs to ignorant good nature, and the tolerance which is found in
easy-going persons who have neither ideals nor nerves. He has no
illusions, though he has all the credulity of ignorance.

He belongs to the established order of things, and can conceive no
other. When knight-errantry is proposed to him, he reduces that also to
the established order. He takes it up as an honest livelihood, and rides
forth in search of forlorn maidens with the same contented jog with
which he formerly went to the village mill. When it is explained that
faithful squires become governors of islands he approves of the idea,
and begins to cherish a reasonable ambition. Knight-errantry is brought
within the sphere of practical politics. Sancho has no stomach for
adventures. When his master warns him against attacking knights, until
such time as he has himself reached their estate, he answers:--

"Never fear, I'll be sure to obey your worship in that, I'll warrant
you; for I ever loved peace and quietness, and never cared to thrust
myself into frays and quarrels."

When Sancho becomes governor of his snug, land-locked island, there is
not a trace of Quixotism in his executive policy. The laws of Chivalry
have no recognition in his administration; and everything is carried on
with most admirable common sense.

It is an experience which is quite familiar to the readers of history.
"All who knew Sancho," moralizes the author, "wondered to hear him talk
so sensibly, and began to think that offices and places of trust inspire
some men with understanding, as they stupefy and confound others."

Mother wit has a great way of evading the consequences of theoretical
absurdities. Natural law takes care of itself, and preserves the
balance. So long as Don Quixote can get no other follower than Sancho
Panza, we need not be alarmed. There is no call for a society for the
Preservation of Windmills.

After all, there is an ambiguity about Quixotism. They laugh best who
laugh last; and we are not sure that satire has the last word. Was Don
Quixote as completely mistaken as he seemed? He mistook La Mancha for a
land of romance, and wandered through it as if it were an enchanted
country.

The Commentator explains to us that in this lay the jest, for no part of
Spain was so vulgarly commonplace. Its villages were destitute of charm,
and its landscape of beauty. La Mancha was a name for all that was
unromantic.

"I cannot make it appear so," says the Gentle Reader, who has come under
the spell of Cervantes. "Don Quixote seems to be wandering through the
most romantic country in the world. I can see

    'The long, straight line of the highway,
       The distant town that seems so near,

           *       *       *       *       *

     White crosses in the mountain pass,
     Mules gay with tassels, the loud din
     Of muleteers, the tethered ass
     That crops the dusty wayside grass,
     And cavaliers with spurs of brass
     Alighting at the inn;

     White hamlets hidden in fields of wheat,

           *       *       *       *       *

     White sunshine flooding square and street,
     Dark mountain-ranges, at whose feet
     The river-beds are dry with heat,--
     All was a dream to me.'

"Through this enchanted country it is pleasant to wander about in
irresponsible fashion, climbing mountains, loitering in secluded
valleys, where shepherds and shepherdesses still make love in Arcadian
fashion, meeting with monks, merchants, muleteers, and fine gentlemen,
and coming in the evening to some castle where one is lulled to sleep by
the splash of fountains and the tinkle of guitars; and if it should turn
out that the castle is only an inn,--why, to lodge in an inn of La
Mancha would be a romantic experience!"

The Spain of the sixteenth century is to us as truly a land of romance
as any over which a knight-errant roamed. It seems just suited for
heroic adventure.

Some day our quixotic characters may appear to the future reader thus
magically conformed to the world they live in, or rather, the world may
be transformed by their ideals.

"They do seem strange to us," the Gentle Reader of that day will say,
"but then we must remember that they lived in the romantic dawn of the
twentieth century."




Intimate Knowledge and Delight


IN the affairs of the mind we are all "Indian givers." We will part with
our most cherished convictions for a merely nominal consideration, such
as "for the sake of the argument,"--even when we do not really care for
arguments. But let no one be deceived into thinking that this is the
end. Renunciation usually has some mental reservation, or at least some
saving ambiguity.

You may see a saint, in his enthusiasm for disinterested virtue, give up
all claim to personal happiness. But does he expect to be taken at his
word and to live miserably ever after? Not he! Already, if he be a true
saint, he has begun to enjoy the beatific vision.

I know a teacher of religion who is inclined to rebel against what seems
to him to be the undue emphasis upon faith. For himself, it seems a
wholesome thing to do a little doubting now and then, and he looks upon
this as a religious exercise. He affirms that the characteristic
attitudes of the spiritual man can be expressed in terms of skepticism
as well as of belief. It is all one whether the matter be put positively
or negatively. Materialism he treats as a form of dogmatism based on the
appearance of things. The religious mind is incredulous of this
explanation of the universe and subjects it to a destructive criticism.
The soul of man is full of "obstinate questionings of sense and outward
things." Yet this same person, when he forgets his argument, is apt to
talk like the rest of us. After all, it is some kind of faith that he is
after, even when he pursues it by the methods of skepticism. In his most
radical moods he never lets his convictions slip away from him; at
least, they never go so far away that he cannot get them again.

In like manner I must confess that I am an Indian giver. In giving over
to Science all claim to the domain of Knowledge, and reserving to my
friend the Gentle Reader only the right of way over the picturesque but
less fruitful fields of Ignorance, I was actuated by the purest motives.
At the time it seemed very magnanimous, and, moreover, it saved the
trouble of a doubtful contest.

But now that so much has been given away, I am visited by compunctions,
and, if it is not too late, I will take back part of the too generous
gift. Let us make a distinction, and instead of treating knowledge as if
it were indivisible, let us speak, after the manner of Swedenborg, of
knowledges. The greater number of knowledges we will make over without
question to Science and Philosophy; the knowledges which are concerned
with laws and forces and with the multitudinous facts which are capable
of classification. But for the Gentle Reader and his kind let us reserve
the claim to a knowledge of some things which cannot be classified. I
hardly believe that they will be missed; they are not likely to be
included in any scientific inventory; their value is chiefly in personal
association.

There is a knowledge of persons as well as of things, and in particular
there is a knowledge of certain persons to whom one is drawn in close
friendship. Emerson, in his essay on Milton, speaks of those who come to
the poet with "intimate knowledge and delight." It is, after all,
convenient to treat this feeling of delightful intimacy as a kind of
knowledge. If it is not that, what is it?

The peculiarity of this kind of knowledge is that it is impossible to
formulate it; and that the very attempt to do so is an offence. The
unpardonable sin against friendship is to merge the person in a class.
Think of an individual as an adult Caucasian, "an inhabitant of North
America, belonging to the better classes," as to religion a moderate
churchman, in politics a Republican, and you may accumulate a number of
details interesting enough in a stranger. You may in this way "know
where to place him." But if you do actually place him there, and treat
him accordingly, he has ceased to be your friend.

A friend is unique. He belongs to no categories. He is not a case, nor
the illustration of a thesis. Your interest is neither pathological nor
anthropological nor statistical. You are concerned not with what he is
like, but with what he is. There is an element of jealous exclusiveness
in such knowledge.

In the Song of Songs, after the ecstatic praise of the beloved, the
question is asked:--

  "What is thy beloved more than any other beloved, that thou dost so
     adjure us?"

The answer is a description of his personal perfections:--

    "My beloved is white and ruddy,

           *       *       *       *       *

     His locks are bushy, and black as a raven.
     His eyes are like doves beside the water brooks.

           *       *       *       *       *

     His aspect is like Lebanon, excellent as the cedars,
     His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely.
     This is my beloved, and this is my friend,
     O daughters of Jerusalem."

Do you think that the daughters of Jerusalem would be so tactless as to
reply that they had seen a number of handsome youths with bushy black
hair and languishing eyes and fine forms, and that they represented an
admirable type of manly beauty? That would be to confess that they had
not seen the beloved, for he was unlike all others. "My beloved is
marked out with a banner among ten thousand."

The knowledge that is required is not contained in a catalogue of the
points in which he resembles the nine thousand nine hundred and
ninety-nine; it is a recognition of the incommunicable grace that is his
own.

Even in ordinary social intercourse the most delicate compliment is to
treat the person with whom you are talking as an exception to all rules.
That he is a clergyman or a commercial traveler tells you nothing of his
inner life. That is left for him to reveal, if it so pleases him. Even a
king grows tired of being addressed in terms appropriate to royalty. It
is a relief to travel incognito, and he is flattered when he is assured
that no one suspects his station in life. It makes him feel that he is
not like the ordinary run of kings.

No one likes to be pigeon-holed or reduced to a formula. We resent being
classed as old or middle-aged or young. Why should we be confounded with
our coevals? We may not be any better than they are; but we are
different. Nor is it pleasant to have our opinions treated as if they
were the necessary product of social forces. There is something
offensive in the curiosity of those who are all the time asking how we
came by our ideas. What if they do bear a general resemblance to those
of the honest people who belong to our party and who read the same
newspaper. We do not care to be reminded of these chance coincidences.
Because one has found it convenient and economical to buy a ready-made
suit of clothing, it does not follow that he is willing to wear the tag
which contains the statement of the price and size. These labels were
very useful so long as the garment was kept in stock by the dealer, but
the information that they convey is now irrelevant.

This sensitiveness in regard to personal identity is strangely lacking
in many modern students of literature. They treat the man of genius as a
phenomenon, to be explained by other phenomena and used to illustrate a
general law. They love to deal in averages and aggregates. They describe
minutely the period to which a writer belongs, its currents of thought,
its intellectual limitations, and its generally received notions. With a
knowledge of antecedent conditions there is the expectancy of a certain
type of man as the result. Our minds are prepared for some one who
resembles the composite photograph which is first presented to us. We
are, for example, given an elaborate account of the Puritan movement in
England. We form a conception of what the Puritan was, and then we are
introduced to Milton. Our preconceptions stand in the way of personal
sympathy.

The method of the Gentle Reader is more direct. He is fortunate enough
to have read Milton before he has read much about him, and he returns to
the reading with ever fresh delight. He does not think of him as
belonging to a past age. He is a perpetual contemporary. The seventeenth
century gave color to his words, but it did not limit his genius.

Seventeenth century Independency might be, as a general thing, lacking
in grace, but when we turn away from Praise-God-Barebones to John Milton
we find it transformed into a--

                              "divine philosophy,
    Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose,
    But musical as is Apollo's lute,
    And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets."

Into its austere beauty, into its wide free spaces, into its sensuous
charms, no one but Milton can conduct us. We must follow not as those
who know beforehand what is to be seen or heard, but as those who are
welcomed by a generous householder who brings out of his treasures
things new and old.

We come upon a sublime spirit--

    "Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free."

That is Milton; but it is Milton also who can sing of--

    "Jest and youthful Jollity,
     Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles,
     Nods and Becks and wreathed Smiles
     Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
     And love to live in dimple sleek,
     Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
     And Laughter holding both his sides."

If this be Puritanism, it is Puritanism with a difference. Did any one
in a few words give such a picture of mirth--

    "So buxom, blithe, and debonair?"

Was this the real Milton? Why not? His radiant youth was as real as his
blindness and his old age. And Milton the political pamphleteer was real
too, though his language was not always that which might have been
expected from the author of "Paradise Lost." We pass lightly over pages
of vituperation which any one might have written, and then come upon
splendid passages which could have come from him alone. The sentiment of
democratic equality is invested with a dignity which makes all the
pretensions of privileged orders seem vulgar. Here is the Milton who is
invoked to--

    "Give us manners, virtue, freedom, power!"

In these moments we become aware of a man who was not to be explained by
any general rule.

To one who takes delight in the personality of Milton, even "Paradise
Lost" is not a piece of unmitigated sublimity. It is full of
self-revelations. The reader who has come to share Milton's passion for
personal liberty and scorn for a "fugitive and cloistered virtue" is
curious to know how he will treat his new theme. In the "Areopagitica"
he had frankly treated the "Fall of Man" as a "fall upward." "Good and
evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost
inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven
with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly
to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed on Psyche
as an increased labor to cull out and sort asunder, were not more
intermixt. And perhaps that is the doom which Adam fell into of knowing
good and evil; that is to say, of knowing good by evil. As therefore the
state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence
to forbear without the knowledge of evil.... That virtue, therefore,
which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the
utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a
blank virtue, not a pure.... Since, therefore, the knowledge and survey
of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human
virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can
we more safely and with less danger scout into the region of sin and
falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner
of reasons."

What would such an adventurous spirit make

    "Of man's first Disobedience and the Fruit
     Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
     Brought Death into the World and all our woe,
     With loss of Eden"?

What would Milton make of Adam in his sheltered Paradise? And what would
one whose whole life had been a passionate protest against the idea of
submission to mere arbitrary power do with the element of arbitrariness
which the theology of his day attributed to the Divine Ruler? And what
of Satan?

                          "One who brings
    A mind not to be changed by Place or Time.
    The mind is its own place, and in itself
    Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
    What matter where, if I be still the same?"

There is a note in that proud creed that could not be altogether
uncongenial to one who in his blindness could--

                        "still bear up and steer
    Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
      The Conscience, Friend, t' have lost them overplied
    In liberty's defense, my noble task;
      Of which all Europe rings from side to side.
    This thought might lead me through this World's vain mask
      Content though blind, had I no better Guide."

In its ostensible plot "Paradise Lost" is a tragedy; but did Milton
really feel it to be so? One fancies--though he may be mistaken--that as
Adam and Eve leave Paradise he hears a sigh of relief from the poet,
who was himself ever a lover of "the Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty." At
any rate, there is an undertone of cheer.

    "Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon,
     The World was all before them where to choose
     Their place of rest, and Providence their guide."

Adam, when the old sheltered life is over, and the possibilities of the
new life of struggle were revealed,--

    "Replete with joy and wonder thus replied.
     O goodness infinite, goodness immense!
     That all this good of evil shall produce,
     And evil turn to good; more wonderful
     Than that which by creation first brought forth
     Light out of darkness! full of doubt I stand,
     Whether I should repent me now of sin
     By me done and occasioned or rejoice
     Much more that much more good thereof shall spring."

That Adam should treat the loss of Eden in such a casual manner, and
that he should express a doubt as to whether the estate into which his
fall plunged the race was not better than one in which no moral struggle
was necessary, was not characteristic of seventeenth-century
theology,--but it was just like Milton.

There is no knowledge so intimate as that possessed by the reader of one
book. It is an esoteric joy. The wisdom of the ages concentrated into
one personality and then graciously communicated to the disciple has a
flavor of which the multitudes of mere scholars know nothing. To them
Wisdom is a public character.

    "Doth not Wisdom cry,
     And understanding put forth her voice?
     In the top of high places
     Where the paths meet she standeth."

But the disciple is not content with such publicity. He shuns the
crowded highways, and delights to hear wisdom speaking in confidential
tones.

In a little settlement in the far West I once met a somewhat
depressed-looking man who remained silent till a chance remark brought a
glow of enthusiasm to his eyes.

"Oh," he cried, "you have been reading the Ruins."

My remark had been of a kind that needed no special reading to account
for it. It merely expressed one of those obvious truths which are likely
to occur to the majority of persons. But to him it seemed so reasonable
that it could only come from the one source of wise thought with which
he was acquainted.

"The Ruins" proved to be a translation of Volney's "Ruins of Empire." I
fear that I must have given the impression of greater familiarity with
that work than was warranted by the facts, for my new-found friend
received me as a member of the true brotherhood. His tongue was
unloosed, and his intellectual passions, so long pent up, were freed.
Had we not both read "The Ruins"! It was to him more than a book; it was
a symbol of the unutterable things of the mind. It was a passionate
protest against the narrow opinions of his neighbors. It stood for all
that was lifted above the petty gossip of the little community, and for
all that united him to an intellectual world of which he dreamed.

As we talked I marveled at the amount of sound philosophy this lonely
reader had extracted from "The Ruins." Or had it been that he had
brought the wisdom from his own meditation and deposited it at this
shrine? One can never be sure whether a text has suggested the thought
or the thought has illuminated the text.

When it happens that the man of one book has chosen a work of intrinsic
value, the result is a kind of knowledge which is of inestimable worth.
It is deeply interfused with the whole imaginative life, it is involved
in every personal experience.

The supreme example of such intimate knowledge was that which
generations of English speaking men had of the Bible. Apart from any
religious theory, this familiarity was a wonderful fact in the history
of culture. It meant that the ordinary man was not simply in his youth
but throughout his life brought into direct contact with great poetry,
sublime philosophy, vivid history. These were not reserved for state
occasions; they were the daily food of the mind. Into the plain fabric
of western thought was woven a thread of Oriental sentiment. Children
were as familiar with the names and incidents of remote ages and lands
as with their own neighborhood.

The important things about this culture of the common people was that it
came through mere reading. The Bible was printed "without note or
comment." The lack of critical apparatus and of preliminary training
was the cause of many incidental mistakes; but it prevented the greatest
mistake of all,--that of obscuring the text by the commentary.

In these days there has been a great advance in critical scholarship.
Much more is known about the Bible, at least by those who have made it
the object of special study; but there is a suspicion that fewer persons
know the Bible than in the days when there were no "study classes," but
only the habit of daily reading.

The Protestant insistence upon publishing the Scriptures without note or
comment was an effort to do away with the middle-men who stood between
the Book and its readers. Private judgment, it was declared, was a
sufficient interpreter even of the profoundest utterances. This is a
doctrine that needs to be revived and extended till it takes in all
great literature.

To come to a book as to a friend, to allow it to speak for itself,
without the intrusion of a third person, this is the substance of the
whole matter. There must be no hard and fast rules, no preconceived
opinions. Because the author has a reputation as a humorist, let him not
be received with an expectant smile. Nothing can be more disconcerting
to his sensitive spirit; and besides, how can you know that he has not a
very serious message to communicate? Because he is said to be capable of
sublimity, do not await him with overstrained sensibilities. Perhaps you
may find him much less sublime and much more entertaining than you had
anticipated. If the sublime vision does come, you will appreciate it all
the more if it comes upon you unawares.

"As cloud on cloud, as snow on snow, as the bird on the air, and the
planet on space in its flight, so do nations of men and their
institutions rest on thoughts."

If this be so, can there be any knowledge more important than the
knowledge of what a man actually thinks. "A penny for your thoughts," we
say lightly, knowing well that this hidden treasure cannot be bought.
The world may be described in formal fashion as if it were an unchanging
reality; but how the world appears to each inhabitant of it he alone can
declare. Or perhaps he cannot declare it, for most of us find it
impossible to tell what we really think or feel. In attempting to do it
we fall into conventionality, and succeed only in telling what we think
other people would like to have us think. Only now and then is one born
with the gift of true self-expression. In his speech we recognize a real
person, and not the confused murmur of a multitude. Institutions and
traditions do not account for him; this thought is the more fundamental
fact. Here is a unique bit of knowledge. There is no other way of
getting at it than that of the Gentle Reader,--to shut out the rest of
the world and listen to the man himself.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Riverside Press
_Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._

       *       *       *       *       *

The following typographical error was corrected by the etext
transcriber:

the surprise of the Frenchman over the pirate's immaculate attire.=>the
surprise of the Frenchman over the pirates' immaculate attire.





End of Project Gutenberg's The Gentle Reader, by Samuel McChord Crothers

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