No More Learning

»
When a small boy in a wherry, on whom had
devolved the arduous task of rowing Johnson and his biographer
across the Thames, said he would give all he had to know about
the Argonauts, the Doctor was much pleased, and gave him, or
got Boswell to give him, a double fare. He was ever an advo-
cate of the spread of knowledge amongst all classes and both
sexes. His devotion to letters has received its fitting reward, the
love and respect of all "lettered hearts. "


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1908
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
THE OFFICE OF LITERATURE
DR
R. JOHN BROWN's pleasant story has become well known, of
the countryman who, being asked to account for the grav-
ity of his dog, replied, "Oh, sir! life is full of sairiousness
to him he can just never get enough o' fechtin'. " Something
of the spirit of this saddened dog seems lately to have entered
into the very people who ought to be freest from it, — our men
of letters. They are all very serious and very quarrelsome. To
some of them it is dangerous even to allude. Many are wedded
to a theory or period, and are the most uxorious of husbands-
ever ready to resent an affront to their lady. This devotion
makes them very grave, and possibly very happy after a pedantic
fashion. One remembers what Hazlitt, who was neither happy
nor pedantic, has said about pedantry:—
"The power of attaching an interest to the most trifling or
painful pursuits is one of the greatest happinesses of our nature.
The common soldier mounts the breach with joy, the miser de-
liberately starves himself to death, the mathematician sets about
extracting the cube-root with a feeling of enthusiasm, and the
lawyer sheds tears of delight over 'Coke upon Lyttleton. ' He
who is not in some measure a pedant, though he may be a wise,
cannot be a very happy man. ”
Possibly not; but then we are surely not content that our
authors should be pedants in order that they may be happy and
devoted. As one of the great class for whose sole use and
behalf literature exists, the class of readers, I protest that it
is to me a matter of indifference whether an author is happy or
not. I want him to make me happy. That is his office. Let
him discharge it.
I recognize in this connection the corresponding truth of
what Sydney Smith makes his Peter Plymley say about the pri-
vate virtues of Mr. Perceval, the Prime Minister:-
"You spend a great deal of ink about the character of the
present Prime Minister. Grant all that you write — I say, I
fear that he will ruin Ireland, and pursue a line of policy de-
structive to the true interests of his country; and then you tell
me that he is faithful to Mrs. Perceval and kind to the Master
Percevals. I should prefer that he whipped his boys and saved
his country. "
-
--
_____. com


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AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1909
We should never confuse functions or apply wrong tests.
What can books do for us? Dr. Johnson, the least pedantic of
men, put the whole matter into a nut-shell (a cocoa-nut shell,
if you will- Heaven forbid that I should seek to compress the
great Doctor within any narrower limits than my metaphor re-
quires) when he wrote that a book should teach us either to
enjoy life or endure it. "Give us enjoyment! " "Teach us en-
durance! " Hearken to the ceaseless demand and the perpetual
prayer of an ever unsatisfied and always suffering humanity!
How is a book to answer the ceaseless demand?
Self-forgetfulness is the essence of enjoyment, and the author
who would confer pleasure must possess the art, or know the
trick, of destroying for the time the reader's own personality.
Undoubtedly the easiest way of doing this is by the creation of
a host of rival personalities- hence the number and the popu-
larity of novels. Whenever a novelist fails, his book is said to
flag; that is, the reader suddenly (as in skating) comes bump
down upon his own personality, and curses the unskillful author.
No lack of characters, and continual motion, is the easiest recipe
for a novel, which like a beggar should always be kept "moving
on. " Nobody knew this better than Fielding, whose novels, like
most good ones, are full of inns.
When those who are addicted to what is called "improving
reading" inquire of you petulantly why you cannot find change.
of company and scene in books of travel, you should answer
cautiously that when books of travel are full of inns, atmosphere,
and motion, they are as good as any novel; nor is there any rea-
son in the nature of things why they should not always be so,
though experience proves the contrary.
The truth or falsehood of a book is immaterial. George
Borrow's Bible in Spain' is, I suppose, true; though now that
I come to think of it in what is to me a new light, one re-
members that it contains some odd things. But was not Borrow
the accredited agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society?
Did he not travel (and he had a free hand) at their charges?
Was he not befriended by our minister at Madrid, Mr. Villiers,
subsequently Earl of Clarendon in the peerage of England?
It must be true: and yet at this moment I would as lief
read a chapter of the Bible in Spain' as I would Gil Blas';
nay, I positively would give the preference to Señor Giorgio. No-
body can sit down to read Borrow's books without as completely


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AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1910
forgetting himself as if he were a boy in the forest with Gurth
and Wamba.
Borrow is provoking and has his full share of faults, and
though the owner of a style, is capable of excruciating offences.
His habitual use of the odious word "individual" as a noun-
substantive (seven times in three pages of The Romany Rye')
elicits the frequent groan, and he is certainly once guilty of
calling fish the "finny tribe. " He believed himself to be ani-
mated by an intense hatred of the Church of Rome, and dis-
figures many of his pages by Lawrence-Boythorn-like tirades
against that institution; but no Catholic of sense need on this
account deny himself the pleasure of reading Borrow, whose one
dominating passion was camaraderie, and who hob-a-nobbed in
the friendliest spirit with priest and gipsy in a fashion as far
beyond praise as it is beyond description by any pen other than
his own.
Hail to thee, George Borrow! Cervantes himself, 'Gil
Blas,' do not more effectually carry their readers into the land of
the Cid than does this miraculous agent of the Bible Society, by
favor of whose pleasantness we can, any hour of the week, enter
Villafranca by night, or ride into Galicia on an Andalusian
stallion (which proved to be a foolish thing to do), without cost-
ing anybody a peseta, and at no risk whatever to our necks-
be they long or short.
Cooks, warriors, and authors must be judged by the effects
they produce: toothsome dishes, glorious victories, pleasant books—
these are our demands. We have nothing to do with ingredients,
tactics, or methods. We have no desire to be admitted into the
kitchen, the council, or the study. The cook may clean her
saucepans how she pleases- the warrior place his men
as he
likes - the author handle his material or weave his plot as best
he can- when the dish is served we only ask, Is it good? when
the battle has been fought, Who won? when the book comes out,
Does it read?
Authors ought not to be above being reminded that it is
their first duty to write agreeably; some very disagreeable ones
have succeeded in doing so, and there is therefore no need for
any one to despair. Every author, be he grave or gay, should
try to make his book as ingratiating as possible. Reading is not
a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagree-
able. Nobody is under any obligation to read any other man's
book.


## p. 1911 (#101) ###########################################

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1911
Literature exists to please,-to lighten the burden of men's
lives; to make them for a short while forget their sorrows and
their sins, their silenced hearths, their disappointed hopes, their
grim futures—and those men of letters are the best loved who
have best performed literature's truest office. Their name is
happily legion, and I will conclude these disjointed remarks by
quoting from one of them, as honest a parson as ever took tithe
or voted for the Tory candidate, the Rev. George Crabbe. Hear
him in The Frank Courtship':-
——
"I must be loved," said Sybil; "I must see
The man in terrors, who aspires to me:
At my forbidding frown his heart must ache,
His tongue must falter, and his frame must shake;
And if I grant him at my feet to kneel,
What trembling fearful pleasure must he feel!
Nay, such the rapture that my smiles inspire
That reason's self must for a time retire. "
"Alas! for good Josiah," said the dame,
"These wicked thoughts would fill his soul with shame;
He kneel and tremble at a thing of dust!
He cannot, child:"-the child replied, "He must. "
Were an office to be opened for the insurance of literary
reputations, no critic at all likely to be in the society's service
would refuse the life of a poet who could write like Crabbe.
Cardinal Newman, Mr. Leslie Stephen, Mr. Swinburne, are not
always of the same way of thinking, but all three hold the one
true faith about Crabbe.
But even were Crabbe now left unread, which is very far from
being the case, his would be an enviable fame - for was he not
one of the favored poets of Walter Scott, and whenever the clos-
ing scene of the great magician's life is read in the pages of
Lockhart, must not Crabbe's name be brought upon the reader's
quivering lip?
To soothe the sorrow of the soothers of sorrow, to bring tears
to the eyes and smiles to the cheeks of the lords of human
smiles and tears, is no mean ministry, and it is Crabbe's.


## p. 1912 (#102) ###########################################

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1912
TRUTH-HUNTING
Is
S TRUTH-HUNTING one of those active mental habits which, as
Bishop Butler tells us, intensify their effects by constant use;
and are weak convictions, paralyzed intellects, and laxity of
opinions amongst the effects of Truth-hunting on the majority of
minds? These are not unimportant questions.
Let us consider briefly the probable effects of speculative
habits on conduct.
The discussion of a question of conduct has the great charm
of justifying, if indeed not requiring, personal illustration; and
this particular question is well illustrated by instituting a
parison between the life and character of Charles Lamb and those
of some of his distinguished friends.
Personal illustration, especially when it proceeds by way of
comparison, is always dangerous, and the dangers are doubled
when the subjects illustrated and compared are favorite authors.
It behoves us to proceed warily in this matter. A dispute as to
the respective merits of Gray and Collins has been known to
result in a visit to an attorney and the revocation of a will. An
avowed inability to see anything in Miss Austen's novels is
reported to have proved destructive of an otherwise good chance.
of an Indian judgeship. I believe, however, I run no great risk
in asserting that, of all English authors, Charles Lamb is the one
loved most warmly and emotionally by his admirers, amongst
whom I reckon only those who are as familiar with the four
volumes of his 'Life and Letters' as with Elia. '
But how does he illustrate the particular question now enga-
ging our attention?
Speaking of his sister Mary, who, as every one knows, through-
out 'Elia' is called his cousin Bridget, he says:-
"It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I
could have wished, to have had for her associates and mine free-
thinkers, leaders and disciples of novel philosophies and systems;
but she neither wrangles with nor accepts their opinions. "
Nor did her brother. He lived his life cracking his little.
jokes and reading his great folios, neither wrangling with nor
accepting the opinions of the friends he loved to see around him.
To a contemporary stranger it might well have appeared as if
his life were a frivolous and useless one as compared with those


## p. 1913 (#103) ###########################################

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1913
of these philosophers and thinkers. They discussed their great
schemes and affected to prove deep mysteries, and were con-
stantly asking, "What is truth? " He sipped his glass, shuffled
his cards, and was content with the humbler inquiry, “What are
trumps ? »
But to us, looking back upon that little group, and
knowing what we now do about each member of it, no such mis-
take is possible. To us it is plain beyond all question that, judged
by whatever standard of excellence it is possible for any reason-
able human being to take, Lamb stands head and shoulders a
better man than any of them. No need to stop to compare him
with Godwin, or Hazlitt, or Lloyd; let us boldly put him in the
scales with one whose fame is in all the churches- with Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, "logician, metaphysician, bard. ”
There are some men whom to abuse is pleasant. Coleridge
is not one of them. How gladly we would love the author of
'Christabel' if we could! But the thing is flatly impossible.
His was an unlovely character. The sentence passed upon him
by Mr. Matthew Arnold (parenthetically, in one of the Essays
in Criticism')- "Coleridge had no morals" is no less just than
pitiless. As we gather information about him from numerous
quarters, we find it impossible to resist the conclusion that he
was a man neglectful of restraint, irresponsive to the claims of
those who had every claim upon him, willing to receive, slow
to give.
In early manhood Coleridge planned a Pantisocracy where all
the virtues were to thrive. Lamb did something far more diffi-
cult: he played cribbage every night with his imbecile father,
whose constant stream of querulous talk and fault-finding might
well have goaded a far stronger man into practicing and justify-
ing neglect.
That Lamb, with all his admiration for Coleridge, was well
aware of dangerous tendencies in his character, is made appar-
ent by many letters, notably by one written in 1796, in which
he says:
་
"O my friend, cultivate the filial feelings! and let no man
think himself released from the kind charities of relationship:
these shall give him peace at the last; these are the best founda-
tion for every species of benevolence. I rejoice to hear that you
are reconciled with all your relations. "
This surely is as valuable an "aid to reflection " as any sup-
plied by the Highgate seer.


## p. 1914 (#104) ###########################################

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1914
Lamb gave but little thought to the wonderful difference be-
tween the "reason" and the "understanding. " He preferred old
plays an odd diet, some may think, on which to feed the virtues;
but however that may be, the noble fact remains, that he, poor,
frail boy! (for he was no more, when trouble first assailed him)
stooped down, and without sigh or sign took upon his own shoul-
ders the whole burden of a lifelong sorrow.
Coleridge married. Lamb, at the bidding of duty, remained
single, wedding himself to the sad fortunes of his father and
sister.
Shall we pity him? No; he had his reward-the sur-
passing reward that is only within the power of literature to
bestow. It was Lamb, and not Coleridge, who wrote 'Dream-
Children: a Reverie':
"Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes,
sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice
W—n; and as much as children could understand, I explained
to them what coyness and difficulty and denial meant in mai-
dens-when, suddenly turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice
looked out at her eyes with such a reality of representment that
I became in doubt which of them stood before me, or whose that
bright hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the children
gradually grew fainter to my view, receding and still receding,
till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the
uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed
upon me the effects of speech. We are not of Alice nor of
thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice call
Bartrum father. We are nothing, less than nothing, and dreams.
We are only what might have been. »
Godwin! Hazlitt! Coleridge! Where now are their "novel
philosophies and systems"? Bottled moonshine, which does not
improve by keeping.
-
"Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust. "
Were we disposed to admit that Lamb would in all proba-
bility have been as good a man as every one agrees he was-
as kind to his father, as full of self-sacrifice for the sake of his
sister, as loving and ready a friend-even though he had paid
more heed to current speculations, it is yet not without use
in a time like this, when so much stress is laid upon anxious
inquiry into the mysteries of soul and body, to point out how
-


## p. 1915 (#105) ###########################################

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1915
this man attained to a moral excellence denied to his speculative
contemporaries; performed duties from which they, good men as
they were, would one and all have shrunk; how, in short, he
contrived to achieve what no one of his friends, not even the
immaculate Wordsworth or the precise Southey, achieved - the
living of a life the records of which are inspiriting to read, and
are indeed "the presence of a good diffused"; and managed to
do it all without either "wrangling with or accepting" the opin-
ions that "hurtled in the air" about him.
BENVENUTO CELLINI
From Obiter Dicta'
WHA
HAT a liar was Benvenuto Cellini! -who can believe a word
he says? To hang a dog on his oath would be a judi-
cial murder. Yet when we lay down his Memoirs and
let our thoughts travel back to those far-off days he tells us of,
there we see him standing, in bold relief, against the black sky
of the past, the very man he was. Not more surely did he, with
that rare skill of his, stamp the image of Clement VII. on the
papal currency, than he did the impress of his own singular per-
sonality upon every word he spoke and every sentence he wrote.
We ought, of course, to hate him, but do we? A murderer
he has written himself down. A liar he stands self-convicted of
being. Were any one in the nether world bold enough to call
him thief, it may be doubted whether Rhadamanthus would
award him the damages for which we may be certain he would
loudly clamor. Why do we not hate him? Listen to him:
“Upon my uttering these words, there was a general outcry,
the noblemen affirming that I promised too much. But one of
them, who was a great philosopher, said in my favor, 'From the
admirable symmetry of shape and happy physiognomy of this
young man, I venture to engage that he will perform all he
promises, and more. ' The Pope replied, 'I am of the same
opinion;' then calling Trajano, his gentleman of the bedchamber,
he ordered him to fetch me five hundred ducats. "
And so it always ended: suspicions, aroused most reasonably,
allayed most unreasonably, and then-ducats. He deserved hang-
ing, but he died in his bed. He wrote his own memoirs after a
fashion that ought to have brought posthumous justice upon him,


## p. 1916 (#106) ###########################################

1916
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
and made them a literary gibbet, on which he should swing, a
creaking horror, for all time; but nothing of the sort has hap-
pened. The rascal is so symmetrical, and his physiognomy, as it
gleams upon us through the centuries, so happy, that we cannot
withhold our ducats, though we may accompany the gift with a
shower of abuse.
This only proves the profundity of an observation made by
Mr. Bagehot -a man who carried away into the next world more
originality of thought than is now to be found in the Three
Estates of the Realm. Whilst remarking upon the extraordinary
reputation of the late Francis Horner and the trifling cost he
was put to in supporting it, Mr. Bagehot said that it proved the
advantage of "keeping an atmosphere. "
The common air of heaven sharpens men's judgments. Poor
Horner, but for that kept atmosphere of his always surrounding
him, would have been bluntly asked "what he had done since he
was breeched," and in reply he could only have muttered some-
thing about the currency. As for our special rogue Cellini, the
question would probably have assumed this shape: "Rascal, name
the crime you have not committed, and account for the omission. "
But these awkward questions are not put to the lucky people
who keep their own atmospheres. The critics, before they can
get at them, have to step out of the every-day air, where only
achievements count and the Decalogue still goes for something,
into the kept atmosphere, which they have no sooner breathed
than they begin to see things differently, and to measure the
object thus surrounded with a tape of its own manufacture.
Horner -poor, ugly, a man neither of words nor deeds-be-
comes one of our great men; a nation mourns his loss and
erects his statue in the Abbey. Mr. Bagehot gives several
instances of the same kind, but he does not mention Cellini,
who is however in his own way an admirable example.
You open his book-a Pharisee of the Pharisees. Lying,
indeed! Why, you hate prevarication. As for murder, your
friends know you too well to mention the subject in your hear-
ing, except in immediate connection with capital punishment.
You are of course willing to make some allowance for Cellini's
time and place the first half of the sixteenth century and
Italy! "Yes," you remark, "Cellini shall have strict justice at
my hands. " So you say as you settle yourself in your chair and
begin to read. We seem to hear the rascal laughing in his


## p. 1917 (#107) ###########################################

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
grave.
peeps at
His spirit breathes upon you from his book -
you roguishly as you turn the pages. His atmosphere surrounds
you; you smile when you ought to frown, chuckle when you
should groan, and-oh, final triumph! -laugh aloud when, if you
had a rag of principle left, you would fling the book into the
fire. Your poor moral sense turns away with a sigh, and
patiently awaits the conclusion of the second volume.
How cautiously does he begin, how gently does he win your
ear by his seductive piety! I quote from Mr. Roscoe's transla-
tion:
·
1917
"It is a duty incumbent on upright and credible men of all
ranks, who have performed anything noble or praiseworthy, to
record, in their own writing, the events of their lives; yet they
should not commence this honorable task before they have passed
their fortieth year. Such at least is my opinion now that I have
completed my fifty-eighth year, and am settled in Florence,
where, considering the numerous ills that constantly attend
human life, I perceive that I have never before been so free
from vexations and calamities, or possessed of so great a share
of content and health as at this period. Looking back on some
delightful and happy events of my life, and on many misfortunes
so truly overwhelming that the appalling retrospect makes me
wonder how I have reached this age in vigor and prosperity,
through God's goodness I have resolved to publish an account of
my life; and
I must, in commencing my narrative,
satisfy the public on some few points to which its curiosity is
usually directed; the first of which is to ascertain whether a man
is descended from a virtuous and ancient family.
I shall
therefore now proceed to inform the reader how it pleased God
that I should come into the world. "
•
So you read on page 1; what you read on page 191 is this:
"Just after sunset, about eight o'clock, as this musqueteer
stood at his door with his sword in his hand, when he had done
supper, I with great address came close up to him with a long
dagger, and gave him a violent back-handed stroke, which I
aimed at his neck. He instantly turned round, and the blow,
falling directly upon his left shoulder, broke the whole bone of
it; upon which he dropped his sword, quite overcome by the
pain, and took to his heels. I pursued, and in four steps came
up with him, when, raising the dagger over his head, which he
lowered down, I hit him exactly upon the nape of the neck.
――


## p. 1918 (#108) ###########################################

1918
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
The weapon penetrated so deep that, though I made a great
effort to recover it again, I found it impossible. "
So much for murder. Now for manslaughter, or rather Cel-
lini's notion of manslaughter.
«Pompeo entered an apothecary's shop at the corner of the
Chiavica, about some business, and stayed there for some time.
I was told he had boasted of having bullied me, but it turned
out a fatal adventure to him. Just as I arrived at that quarter
he was coming out of the shop, and his bravoes, having made an
opening, formed a circle round him. I thereupon clapped my
hand to a sharp dagger, and having forced my way through
the file of ruffians, laid hold of him by the throat, so quickly
and with such presence of mind that there was not one of his
friends could defend him.
I pulled him towards me to give
him a blow in front, but he turned his face about through
excess of terror, so that I wounded him exactly under the ear;
and upon repeating my blow, he fell down dead. It had never
been my intention to kill him, but blows are not always under
command. »
We must all feel that it would never have done to have
begun with these passages; but long before the 191st page has
been reached, Cellini has retreated into his own atmosphere, and
the scales of justice have been hopelessly tampered with.
That such a man as this encountered suffering in the course
of his life should be matter for satisfaction to every well-regu-
lated mind; but somehow or other, you find yourself pitying
the fellow as he narrates the hardships he endured in the Castle
of St. Angelo. He is so symmetrical a rascal! Just hear him!
listen to what he says well on in the second volume, after the
little incidents already quoted:-
"Having at length recovered my strength and vigor, after I
had composed myself and resumed my cheerfulness of mind, I
continued to read my Bible, and so accustomed my eyes to that
darkness, that though I was at first able to read only an hour
and a half, I could at length read three hours. I then reflected
on the wonderful power of the Almighty upon the hearts of
simple men, who had carried their enthusiasm so far as to believe
firmly that God would indulge them in all they wished for; and
I promised myself the assistance of the Most High, as well
through His mercy as on account of my innocence. Thus turn-
ing constantly to the Supreme Being, sometimes in prayer, some-


## p. 1919 (#109) ###########################################

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1919
times in silent meditation on the divine goodness, I was totally
engrossed by these heavenly reflections, and came to take such
delight in pious meditations that I no longer thought of past
misfortunes. On the contrary, I was all day long singing psalms
and many other compositions of mine, in which I celebrated and
praised the Deity. "
Thus torn from their context, these passages may seem to
supply the best possible falsification of the previous statement
that Cellini told the truth about himself. Judged by these pass-
ages alone, he may appear a hypocrite of an unusually odious
description. But it is only necessary to read his book to dispel
that notion. He tells lies about other people; he repeats long
conversations, sounding his own praises, during which, as his
own narrative shows, he was not present; he exaggerates his own
exploits, his sufferings-even, it may be, his crimes: but when
we lay down his book, we feel we are saying good-by to a man
whom we know.
He has introduced himself to us, and though doubtless we
prefer saints to sinners, we may be forgiven for liking the com-
pany of a live rogue better than that of the lay-figures and
empty clock-cases labeled with distinguished names, who are to
be found doing duty for men in the works of our standard his-
torians. What would we not give to know Julius Cæsar one-
half as well as we know this outrageous rascal? The saints of
the earth, too, how shadowy they are! Which of them do we
really know? Excepting one or two ancient and modern Quiet-
ists, there is hardly one amongst the whole number who being
dead yet speaketh. Their memoirs far too often only reveal to
us a hazy something, certainly not recognizable as a man. This
is generally the fault of their editors, who, though men them-
selves, confine their editorial duties to going up and down the
diaries and papers of the departed saint, and obliterating all
human touches. This they do for the "better prevention of
scandals"; and one cannot deny that they attain their end, though
they pay dearly for it.
I shall never forget the start I gave when, on reading some
old book about India, I came across an after-dinner jest of
Henry Martyn's. The thought of Henry Martyn laughing over
the walnuts and the wine was almost, as Robert Browning's un-
known painter says, "too wildly dear;" and to this day I cannot
help thinking that there must be a mistake somewhere.


## p. 1920 (#110) ###########################################

1920
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
To return to Cellini, and to conclude. On laying down his
Memoirs, let us be careful to recall our banished moral sense,
and make peace with her, by passing a final judgment on this
desperate sinner; which perhaps after all, we cannot do better
than by employing language of his own concerning a monk, a
fellow-prisoner of his, who never, so far as appears, murdered
anybody, but of whom Cellini none the less felt himself entitled
to say:
"I admired his shining qualities, but his odious vices I freely
censured and held in abhorrence. "
-
ON THE ALLEGED OBSCURITY OF MR. BROWNING'S POETRY
IT
N
considering whether a poet is intelligible and lucid, we
ought not to grope and grub about his work in search of
obscurities and oddities, but should, in the first instance
at all events, attempt to regard his whole scope and range; to
form some estimate, if we can, of his general purport and
effect, asking ourselves for this purpose such questions as these:
- How are we the better for him? Has he quickened any
passion, lightened any burden, purified any taste? Does he
play any real part in our lives? When we are in love, do we
whisper him in our lady's ear? When we sorrow, does he ease
our pain? Can he calm the strife of mental conflict? Has he
had anything to say which wasn't twaddle on those subjects
which, elude analysis as they may, and defy demonstration as
they do, are yet alone of perennial interest
"On man, on nature, and on human life,"
on the pathos of our situation, looking back on to the irrevo-
cable and forward to the unknown? If a poet has said, or
done, or been any of these things to an appreciable extent, to
charge him with obscurity is both folly and ingratitude.
But the subject may be pursued further, and one may be
called upon to investigate this charge with reference to partic-
ular books or poems. In Browning's case this fairly may be
done; and then another crop of questions arises, such as: What
is the book about, i. e. , with what subject does it deal, and
From Obiter Dicta


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AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
what method of dealing does it employ? Is it didactical, analyt-
ical, or purely narrative? Is it content to describe, or does it
aspire to explain? In common fairness these questions must be
asked and answered, before we heave our critical half-bricks at
strange poets. One task is of necessity more difficult than
another. Students of geometry who have pushed their re-
searches into that fascinating science so far as the fifth proposi-
tion of the first book, commonly called the 'Pons Asinorum'
(though now that so many ladies read Euclid, it ought, in com-
mon justice to them, to be at least sometimes called the Pons
Asinarum'), will agree that though it may be more difficult to
prove that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are
equal, and that if the equal sides be produced, the angles on
the other side of the base shall be equal, than it was to describe
an equilateral triangle on a given finite straight line; yet no
one but an ass would say that the fifth proposition was one whit
less intelligible than the first. When we consider Mr. Browning
in his later writings, it will be useful to bear this distinction in
mind.
(
Looking then at the first period, we find in its front eight
plays:-
'Strafford,' written in 1836, when its author was twenty-
four years old, and put upon the boards of Covent Garden
Theatre on the 1st of May, 1837; Macready playing Strafford,
and Miss Helen Faucit Lady Carlisle. It was received with much
enthusiasm, but the company was rebellious and the manager
bankrupt; and after running five nights, the man who played
Pym threw up his part, and the theatre was closed.
2.
'Pippa Passes. '
3. King Victor and King Charles. '
4.
'The Return of the Druses. '
1921
5. 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. '
This beautiful and pathetic play was put on the stage of
Drury Lane on the 11th of February, 1843, with Phelps as Lord
Tresham, Miss Helen Faucit as Mildred Tresham, and Mrs. Stir-
ling, still known to us all, as Guendolen.
It was a brilliant
success. Mr. Browning was in the stage-box; and if it is any
satisfaction for a poet to hear a crowded house cry "Author,
author! " that satisfaction has belonged to Mr. Browning. The
play ran several nights; and was only stopped because one of
Mr. Macready's bankruptcies happened just then to intervene.
It
IV-121


## p. 1922 (#112) ###########################################

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1922
was afterwards revived by Mr. Phelps, during his "memorable
management" of Sadlers' Wells.
6. 'Colombe's Birthday. ' Miss Helen Faucit put this upon
the stage in 1852, when it was reckoned a success.
'Luria. '
7.
8. A Soul's Tragedy. '
To call any of these plays unintelligible is ridiculous; and
nobody who has ever read them ever did, and why people who
have not read them should abuse them is hard to see. Were
society put upon its oath, we should be surprised to find how
many people in high places have not read All's Well that Ends.
Well, or Timon of Athens'; but they don't go about saying
these plays are unintelligible. Like wise folk, they pretend to
have read them, and say nothing. In Browning's case they are
spared the hypocrisy. No one need pretend to have read 'A
Soul's Tragedy'; and it seems, therefore, inexcusable for any one
to assert that one of the plainest, most pointed and piquant bits
of writing in the language is unintelligible. But surely some-
thing more may be truthfully said of these plays than that they
are comprehensible. First of all, they are plays, and not works
- like the dropsical dramas of Sir Henry Taylor and Mr. Swin-
burne. Some of them have stood the ordeal of actual represent-
ation; and though it would be absurd to pretend that they met
with that overwhelming measure of success our critical age has
reserved for such dramatists as the late Lord Lytton, the author
of Money,' the late Tom Taylor, the author of The Overland
Route,' the late Mr. Robertson, the author of 'Caste,' Mr. H.
Byron, the author of 'Our Boys,' Mr. Wills, the author of
'Charles I. ,' Mr. Burnand, the author of The Colonel,' and Mr.
Gilbert, the author of so much that is great and glorious in our
national drama; at all events they proved themselves able to
arrest and retain the attention of very ordinary audiences. But
who can deny dignity and even grandeur to 'Luria,' or withhold
the meed of a melodious tear from Mildred Tresham? What
action of what play is more happily conceived or better rendered
than that of Pippa Passes'? — where innocence and its reverse,
tender love and violent passion, are presented with emphasis,
and yet blended into a dramatic unity and a poetic perfection,
entitling the author to the very first place amongst those
dramatists of the century who have labored under the enormous
disadvantage of being poets to start with.


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AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1923
Passing from the plays, we are next attracted by a number
of splendid poems, on whose base the structure of Mr. Brown-
ing's fame perhaps rests most surely, his dramatic pieces;
poems which give utterance to the thoughts and feelings of
persons other than himself, or as he puts it when dedicating a
number of them to his wife:-
――――――――
"Love, you saw me gather men and women,
Live or dead, or fashioned by my fancy,
Enter each and all, and use their service,
Speak from every mouth the speech-a poem;"
or again in 'Sordello':
"By making speak, myself kept out of view,
The very man as he was wont to do. "
At a rough calculation, there must be at least sixty of these
pieces. Let me run over the names of a very few of them.
'Saul,' a poem beloved by all true women; 'Caliban,' which the
men, not unnaturally perhaps, often prefer. The Two Bishops':
the sixteenth-century one ordering his tomb of jasper and basalt
in St. Praxed's Church, and his nineteenth-century successor roll-
ing out his post-prandial Apologia. 'My Last Duchess,' the
Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister,' 'Andrea del Sarto,' 'Fra Lippo
Lippi,' 'Rabbi Ben Ezra,' 'Cleon,' 'A Death in the Desert,'
'The Italian in England,' and 'The Englishman in Italy. '
It is plain truth to say that no other English poet, living or
dead, Shakespeare excepted, has so heaped up human interest for
his readers as has Robert Browning.
Against these dramatic pieces the charge of unintelligibility
fails as completely as it does against the plays. They are all
perfectly intelligible; but- and here is the rub-they are not
easy reading, like the estimable writings of the late Mrs. Hemans.
They require the same honest attention as it is the fashion to
give to a lecture of Professor Huxley's or a sermon of Canon
Liddon's; and this is just what too many persons will not give
to poetry.
They
"Love to hear
A soft pulsation in their easy ear;
To turn the page, and let their senses drink
A lay that shall not trouble them to think. "


## p. 1924 (#114) ###########################################

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1924
Next to these dramatic pieces come what we may be content
to call simply poems: some lyrical, some narrative. The latter
are straightforward enough, and as a rule full of spirit and hu-
mor; but this is more than can always be said of the lyrical
pieces. Now, for the first time in dealing with this first period,
excluding Sordello,' we strike difficulty. The Chinese puzzle
comes in.
We wonder whether it all turns on the punctuation.
And the awkward thing for Mr. Browning's reputation is this,
that these bewildering poems are for the most part very short.
We say awkward, for it is not more certain that Sarah Gamp
liked her beer drawn mild than it is that your Englishman likes
his poetry cut short; and so, accordingly, it often happens that
some estimable paterfamilias takes up an odd volume of Brown-
ing his volatile son or moonstruck daughter has left lying about,
pishes and pshaws! and then, with an air of much condescension
and amazing candor, remarks that he will give the fellow another
chance, and not condemn him unread. So saying, he opens the
book, and carefully selects the very shortest poem he can find;
and in a moment, without sign or signal, note or warning, the
unhappy man is floundering up to his neck in lines like these,
which are the third and final stanza of a poem called 'Another
Way of Love': -
«And after, for pastime,
If June be refulgent
With flowers in completeness,
All petals, no prickles,
Delicious as trickles
Of wine poured at mass-time,
And choose One indulgent
To redness and sweetness;
Or if with experience of man and of spider,
She use my June lightning, the strong insect-ridder
To stop the fresh spinning,—why June will consider. »
He comes up gasping, and more than ever persuaded that
Browning's poetry is a mass of inconglomerate nonsense, which
nobody understands-least of all members of the Browning
Society.
We need be at no pains to find a meaning for everything
Mr. Browning has written. But when all is said and done-
when these few freaks of a crowded brain are thrown overboard


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AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1925
to the sharks of verbal criticism who feed on such things— Mr.
Browning and his great poetical achievement remain behind to
be dealt with and accounted for. We do not get rid of the Lau-
reate by quoting: -
"O darling room, my heart's delight,
Dear room, the apple of my sight,
With thy two couches soft and white
There is no room so exquisite —
No little room so warm and bright
Wherein to read, wherein to write;"
or of Wordsworth by quoting: -
"At this, my boy hung down his head:
He blushed with shame, nor made reply,
And five times to the child I said,
"Why, Edward? tell me why? >»
or of Keats by remembering that he once addressed a young
lady as follows:
"O come, Georgiana! the rose is full blown,
The riches of Flora are lavishly strown:
The air is all softness and crystal the streams,
The west is resplendently clothed in beams. "
The strength of a rope may be but the strength of its weak-
est part; but poets are to be judged in their happiest hours, and
in their greatest works.
The second period of Mr. Browning's poetry demands a dif-
ferent line of argument; for it is, in my judgment, folly to deny
that he has of late years written a great deal which makes very
difficult reading indeed. No doubt you may meet people who
tell you that they read The Ring and the Book' for the first
time without much mental effort; but you will do well not to
believe them. These poems are difficult-they cannot help being
so. What is The Ring and the Book'? A huge novel in twenty
thousand lines- told after the method not of Scott but of Balzac;
it tears the hearts out of a dozen characters; it tells the same
story from ten different points of view. It is loaded with detail
of every kind and description: you are let off nothing. As with
a schoolboy's life at a large school, if he is to enjoy it at all, he
must fling himself into it, and care intensely about everything-
――


## p. 1926 (#116) ###########################################

1926
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
so the reader of The Ring and the Book' must be interested
in everybody and everything, down to the fact that the eldest
daughter of the counsel for the prosecution of Guido is eight
years old on the very day he is writing his speech, and that he
is going to have fried liver and parsley for his supper.
If you are prepared for this, you will have your reward; for
the style, though rugged and involved, is throughout, with the
exception of the speeches of counsel, eloquent and at times
superb; and as for the matter, if your interest in human nature
is keen, curious, almost professional—if nothing man, woman, or
child has been, done, or suffered, or conceivably can be, do, or
suffer, is without interest for you; if you are fond of analysis,
and do not shrink from dissection-you will prize The Ring
and the Book' as the surgeon prizes the last great contribution
to comparative anatomy or pathology.
But this sort of work tells upon style. Browning has, I think,
fared better than some writers. To me, at all events, the step
from 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' to 'The Ring and the Book'
is not so marked as is the mauvais pas that lies between 'Amos
Barton' and 'Daniel Deronda. ' But difficulty is not obscurity.
One task is more difficult than another. The angles at the base
of the isosceles triangles are apt to get mixed, and to confuse us
all-man and woman alike. 'Prince Hohenstiel' something or
another is a very difficult poem, not only to pronounce but to
read; but if a poet chooses as his subject Napoleon III. — in
whom the cad, the coward, the idealist, and the sensualist were
inextricably mixed-and purports to make him unbosom himself
over a bottle of Gladstone claret in a tavern at Leicester Square,
you cannot expect that the product should belong to the same
class of poetry as Mr. Coventry Patmore's admirable 'Angel in
the House. '
It is the method that is difficult. Take the husband in 'The
Ring and the Book. ' Mr. Browning remorselessly hunts him
down, tracks him to the last recesses of his mind, and there bids
him stand and deliver. He describes love, not only broken but
breaking; hate in its germ; doubt at its birth. These are diffi-
cult things to do either in poetry or prose, and people with easy,
flowing Addisonian or Tennysonian styles cannot do them.
I seem to overhear a still, small voice asking, But are they
worth doing? or at all events, is it the province of art to do
them? The question ought not to be asked. It is heretical,


## p. 1927 (#117) ###########################################

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1927
being contrary to the whole direction of the latter half of this
century. The chains binding us to the rocks of realism are
faster riveted every day; and the Perseus who is destined to cut
them is, I expect, some mischievous little boy at a Board-school.
But as the question has been asked, I will own that sometimes,
even when deepest in works of this, the now orthodox school, I
have been harassed by distressing doubts whether after all this
enormous labor is not in vain; and wearied by the effort, over-
loaded by the detail, bewildered by the argument, and sickened
by the pitiless dissection of character and motive, have been
tempted to cry aloud, quoting—or rather, in the agony of the
moment, misquoting - Coleridge:-
"Simplicity — thou better name
Than all the family of Fame. »
But this ebullition of feeling is childish and even sinful. We
must take our poets as we do our meals—as they are served up
to us. Indeed, you may, if full of courage, give a cook notice,
but not the time-spirit who makes our poets. We may be sure
to appropriate an idea of the late Sir James Stephen—that if
Robert Browning had lived in the sixteenth century, he would
not have written a poem like 'The Ring and the Book'; and if
Edmund Spenser had lived in the nineteenth century he would
not have written a poem like the 'Faerie Queene. '
It is therefore idle to arraign Mr. Browning's later method
and style for possessing difficulties and intricacies which are
inherent to it. The method at all events has an interest of its
own, a strength of its own, a grandeur of its own. If you do
not like it you must leave it alone. You are fond, you say, of
romantic poetry; well, then, take down your Spenser and qualify
yourself to join "the small transfigured band" of those who are
able to take their Bible-oaths they have read their 'Faerie
Queene' all through. The company, though small, is delightful,
and you will have plenty to talk about without abusing Brown-
ing, who probably knows his Spenser better than you do. Real-
ism will not for ever dominate the world of letters and art
the fashion of all things passeth away-but it has already
earned a great place: it has written books, composed poems,
painted pictures, all stamped with that "greatness" which, despite
fluctuations, nay, even reversals of taste and opinion, means
immortality.


## p. 1928 (#118) ###########################################

1928
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
But against Mr. Browning's later poems it is sometimes
alleged that their meaning is obscure because their grammar is
bad. A cynic was once heard to observe with reference to that
noble poem 'The Grammarian's Funeral,' that it was a pity the
talented author had ever since allowed himself to remain under
the delusion that he had not only buried the grammarian, but
his grammar also. It is doubtless true that Mr. Browning has
some provoking ways, and is something too much of a verbal
acrobat. Also, as his witty parodist, the pet poet of six genera-
tions of Cambridge undergraduates, reminds us:
➖➖➖
"He loves to dock the smaller parts of speech,
As we curtail the already cur-tailed cur. »
It is perhaps permissible to weary a little of his 's and o's, but
we believe we cannot be corrected when we say that Browning
is a poet whose grammar will bear scholastic investigation better
than that of most of Apollo's children.
A word about 'Sordello. ' One half of 'Sordello,' and that,
with Mr. Browning's usual ill-luck, the first half, is undoubtedly
obscure. It is as difficult to read as 'Endymion' or the 'Revolt
of Islam,' and for the same reason-the author's lack of experi-
ence in the art of composition. We have all heard of the young
architect who forgot to put a staircase in his house, which con-
tained fine rooms, but no way of getting into them. 'Sordello'
is a poem without a staircase. The author, still in his twenties,
essayed a high thing. For his subject—
"He singled out
Sordello compassed murkily about
With ravage of six long sad hundred years. '»
He partially failed; and the British public, with its accustomed
generosity, and in order, I suppose, to encourage the others, has
never ceased girding at him because forty-two years ago he pub-
lished at his own charges a little book of two hundred and fifty
pages, which even such of them as were then able to read could
not understand.


## p. 1929 (#119) ###########################################

1929
OTTO EDWARD LEOPOLD VON BISMARCK
(1815-)
BY MUNROE SMITH
TTO EDWARD LEOPOLD, fourth child of Charles and Wilhelmina
von Bismarck, was born at Schönhausen in Prussia, April 1,
1815. The family was one of the oldest in the "Old Mark »
(now a part of the province of Saxony), and not a few of its mem-
bers had held important military or diplomatic positions under the
Prussian crown. The young Otto passed his school years in Berlin,
and pursued university studies in law (1832-5) at Göttingen and at
Berlin. At Göttingen he was rarely seen at lectures, but was a
prominent figure in the social life of the student body: the old uni-
versity town is full of traditions of his prowess in duels and drink-
ing bouts, and of his difficulties with the authorities.