His devotion to letters has
received
its fitting reward, the
love and respect of all "lettered hearts.
love and respect of all "lettered hearts.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v04 - Bes to Bro
He puts his theory in practice: he
makes himself welcome as a companion at once stimulating and
restful, of humane spirit and elevated ideals, of digested knowledge
and original thought, of an insight which is rarely other than kindly
and a deep humor which never lapses into cynicism.
Mr. Birrell helps to justify Walter Bagehot's dictum that the only
man who can write books well is one who knows practical life well;
but still there are congruities in all things, and one feels a certain
shock of incongruity in finding that this man of books and purveyor
of light genial book-talk, who can hardly write a line without giving
it a quality of real literary savor, is a prominent lawyer and member
of Parliament, and has written a law book which ranks among recog-
nized legal authorities. This is a series of lectures delivered in
1896, and collected into a volume on 'The Duties and Liabilities of
Trustees. ' But some of the surprise vanishes on reading the book:
## p. 1900 (#90) ############################################
1900
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
even as 'Alice in Wonderland' shows on every page the work of a
logician trained to use words precisely and criticize their misuse,
so in exactly the opposite way this book is full of the shrewd judg-
ment, the knowledge of life, and even the delightful humor which
form so much of Birrell's best equipment for a man of letters.
Mr. Birrell's work is not merely good reading, but is a mental
clarifier and tonic. We are much better critics of other writers
through his criticisms on his selected subjects. After every reading
of 'Obiter Dicta' we feel ashamed of crass and petty prejudice, in the
face of his lessons in disregarding surface mannerisms for the sake
of vital qualities. Only in one case does he lose his impartiality: he
so objects to treating Emerson with fairness that he even goes out of
his way to berate his idol Matthew Arnold for setting Emerson aloft.
But what he says of George Borrow is vastly more true of himself:
he is one of the writers we cannot afford to be angry with.
DR. JOHNSON
"C
RITICISM," writes Johnson in the 60th Idler, "is a study by
which men grow important and formidable at a very small
expense. The power of invention has been conferred by
nature upon few, and the labor of learning those sciences which
may by mere labor be obtained, is too great to be willingly
endured: but every man can exert such judgment as he has upon
the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and
idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name
of a critick. "
To proceed with our task by the method of comparison is to
pursue a course open to grave objection; yet it is forced upon us
when we find, as we lately did, a writer in the Times newspaper,
in the course of a not very discriminating review of Mr. Froude's
recent volumes, casually remarking, as if it admitted of no more.
doubt than the day's price of consols, that Carlyle was a greater
man than Johnson. It is a good thing to be positive. To be
positive in your opinions and selfish in your habits is the best
recipe, if not for happiness, at all events for that far more attain-
able commodity, comfort, with which we are acquainted.
"A
noisy man," sang poor Cowper, who could not bear anything
louder than the hissing of a tea-urn, "a noisy man is always in
the right," and a positive man can seldom be proved wrong.
Still, in literature it is very desirable to preserve a moderate
## p. 1901 (#91) ############################################
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1901
measure of independence, and we therefore make bold to ask
whether it is as plain as the "old hill of Howth" that Carlyle
was a greater man than Johnson? Is not the precise contrary
the truth? No abuse of Carlyle need be looked for, here or from
me. When a man of genius and of letters happens to have any
striking virtues, such as purity, temperance, honesty, the novel
task of dwelling on them. has such attraction for us that we are
content to leave the elucidation of his faults to his personal
friends, and to stern, unbending moralists like Mr. Edmund Yates.
and the World newspaper. To love Carlyle is, thanks to Mr.
Froude's superhuman ideal of friendship, a task of much heroism,
almost meriting a pension; still it is quite possible for the candid
and truth-loving soul. But a greater than Johnson he most cer-
tainly was not.
There is a story in Boswell of an ancient beggar-woman who,
whilst asking an alms of the Doctor, described herself to him, in
a lucky moment for her pocket, as "an old struggler. " Johnson,
his biographer tells us, was visibly affected. The phrase stuck
to his memory, and was frequently applied to himself. "I too,"
so he would say, «<
am an old struggler. " So too, in all con-
science, was Carlyle. The struggles of Johnson have long been
historical; those of Carlyle have just become so. We are inter-
ested in both. To be indifferent would be inhuman.
Both men
had great endowments, tempestuous natures, hard lots.
They
were not amongst Dame Fortune's favorites. They had to fight
their way.
What they took they took by storm. But- and here
is a difference indeed-Johnson came off victorious, Carlyle did
not.
Boswell's book is an arch of triumph, through which, as we
read, we see his hero passing into eternal fame, to take up his
place with those-
"Dead but sceptred sovereigns who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.
>>
Froude's book is a tomb over which the lovers of Carlyle's genius
will never cease to shed tender but regretful tears.
We doubt whether there is in English literature a more trium-
phant book than Boswell's. What materials for tragedy are want-
ing? Johnson was a man of strong passions, unbending spirit,
violent temper, as poor as a church-mouse, and as proud as the
proudest of Church dignitaries endowed with the strength of a
## p. 1902 (#92) ############################################
1902
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
coal-heaver, the courage of a lion, and the tongue of Dean Swift,
he could knock down booksellers and silence bargees; he was
melancholy almost to madness, "radically wretched," indolent,
blinded, diseased. Poverty was long his portion; not that genteel
poverty that is sometimes behindhand with its rent, but that
hungry poverty that does not know where to look for its dinner.
Against all these things had this "old struggler" to contend; over
all these things did this "old struggler" prevail. Over even the
fear of death, the giving up of "this intellectual being," which
had haunted his gloomy fancy for a lifetime, he seems finally to
have prevailed, and to have met his end as a brave man should.
>>
Carlyle, writing to his wife, says, and truthfully enough, "The
more the devil worries me the more I wring him by the nose;
but then if the devil's was the only nose that was wrung in the
transaction, why need Carlyle cry out so loud? After buffeting
one's way through the storm-tossed pages of Froude's 'Carlyle,' —
in which the universe is stretched upon the rack because food
disagrees with man and cocks crow,- with what thankfulness and
reverence do we read once again the letter in which Johnson tells
Mrs. Thrale how he has been called to endure, not dyspepsia or
sleeplessness, but paralysis itself:-
"On Monday I sat for my picture, and walked a considerable
way with little inconvenience. In the afternoon and evening I
felt myself light and easy, and began to plan schemes of life.
Thus I went to bed, and in a short time waked and sat up, as
has long been my custom; when I felt a confusion in my head
which lasted, I suppose, about half a minute; I was alarmed, and
prayed God that however much He might afflict my body He
would spare my understanding.
Soon after I perceived
that I had suffered a paralytic stroke, and that my speech was
taken from me. I had no pain, and so little dejection in this
dreadful state that I wondered at my own apathy, and considered
that perhaps death itself, when it should come, would excite less
horror than seems now to attend it. In order to rouse the vocal
organs I took two drams.
I then went to bed, and
strange as it may seem I think slept. When I saw light it was
time I should contrive what I should do. Though God stopped
my speech, He left me my hand. I enjoyed a mercy which was
not granted to my dear friend Lawrence, who now perhaps over-
looks me as I am writing, and rejoices that I have what he
wanted. My first note was necessarily to my servant, who came
•
## p. 1903 (#93) ############################################
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1903
in talking, and could not immediately comprehend why he should
read what I put into his hands.
How this will be received
by you I know not. I hope you will sympathize with me; but
perhaps
"My mistress, gracious, mild, and good,
Cries Is he dumb? 'Tis time he should. '
"I suppose you may wish to know how my disease is treated
by the physicians. They put a blister upon my back, and two
from my ear to my throat, one on a side. The blister on the
back has done little, and those on the throat have not risen. I
bullied and bounced (it sticks to our last sand), and compelled
the apothecary to make his salve according to the Edinburgh dis-
pensatory, that it might adhere better. I have now two on my
own prescription. They likewise give me salt of hartshorn, which
I take with no great confidence; but I am satisfied that what can
be done is done for me. I am almost ashamed of this querulous
letter, but now it is written let it go. "
This is indeed tonic and bark for the mind.
If, irritated by a comparison that ought never to have been
thrust upon us, we ask why it is that the reader of Boswell finds
it as hard to help loving Johnson as the reader of Froude finds.
it hard to avoid disliking Carlyle, the answer must be that whilst
the elder man of letters was full to overflowing with the milk of
human kindness, the younger one was full to overflowing with
something not nearly so nice; and that whilst Johnson was pre-
eminently a reasonable man, reasonable in all his demands and
expectations, Carlyle was the most unreasonable mortal that ever
exhausted the patience of nurse, mother, or wife.
Of Dr. Johnson's affectionate nature nobody has written with
nobler appreciation than Carlyle himself. "Perhaps it is this
Divine feeling of affection, throughout manifested, that principally
attracts us to Johnson. A true brother of men is he, and filial
lover of the earth. "
The day will come when it will be recognized that Carlyle, as
a critic, is to be judged by what he himself corrected for the
press, and not by splenetic entries in diaries, or whimsical extrava-
gances in private conversation.
Of Johnson's reasonableness nothing need be said, except that
it is patent everywhere. His wife's judgment was a sound one
"He is the most sensible man I ever met. "
## p. 1904 (#94) ############################################
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1904
As for his brutality, of which at one time we used to hear a
great deal, we cannot say of it what Hookham Frere said of
Landor's immorality, that it was
"Mere imaginary classicality
Wholly devoid of criminal reality. "
It was nothing of the sort. Dialectically the great Doctor was a
great brute. The fact is, he had so accustomed himself to wordy
warfare that he lost all sense of moral responsibility, and cared
as little for men's feelings as a Napoleon did for their lives.
When the battle was over, the Doctor frequently did what no
soldier ever did that I have heard tell of,- apologized to his
victims and drank wine or lemonade with them. It must also be
remembered that for the most part his victims sought him out.
They came to be tossed and gored. And after all, are they so
much to be pitied? They have our sympathy, and the Doctor
has our applause. I am not prepared to say, with the simpering
fellow with weak legs whom David Copperfield met at Mr.
Waterbrook's dinner-table, that I would sooner be knocked down
by a man with blood than picked up by a man without any; but,
argumentatively speaking, I think it would be better for a man's
reputation to be knocked down by Dr. Johnson than picked up
by Mr. Froude.
Johnson's claim to be the best of our talkers cannot, on our
present materials, be contested. For the most part we have only
talk about other talkers. Johnson's is matter of record. Carlyle
no doubt was a great talker-no man talked against talk or
broke silence to praise it more eloquently than he, but unfortu-
nately none of it is in evidence. All that is given us is a sort
of Commination Service writ large. We soon weary of it. Man
does not live by curses alone.
An unhappier prediction of a boy's future was surely never
made than that of Johnson's by his cousin, Mr. Cornelius Ford,
who said to the infant Samuel, "You will make your way the
more easily in the world as you are content to dispute no man's
claim to conversation excellence, and they will, therefore, more
willingly allow your pretensions as a writer. " Unfortunate Mr.
Ford! The man never breathed whose claim to conversation
excellence Dr. Johnson did not dispute on every possible occas-
ion; whilst, just because he was admittedly so good a talker, his
pretensions as a writer have been occasionally slighted.
## p. 1905 (#95) ############################################
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1905
Johnson's personal character has generally been allowed to
stand high. It, however, has not been submitted to recent tests.
To be the first to "smell a fault" is the pride of the modern
biographer. Bosweil's artless pages afford useful hints not lightly
to be disregarded. During some portion of Johnson's married life
he had lodgings, first at Greenwich, afterwards at Hampstead.
But he did not always go home o' nights; sometimes preferring
to roam the streets with that vulgar ruffian Savage, who was cer-
tainly no fit company for him. He once actually quarreled with
Tetty, who, despite her ridiculous name, was a very sensible
woman with a very sharp tongue, and for a season, like stars,
they dwelt apart. Of the real merits of this dispute we must
resign ourselves to ignorance. The materials for its discussion do
not exist; even Croker could not find them. Neither was our
great moralist as sound as one would have liked to see him in
the matter of the payment of small debts. When he came to die,
he remembered several of these outstanding accounts; but what
assurance have we that he remembered them all? One sum of
10 he sent across to the honest fellow from whom he had
borrowed it, with an apology for his delay; which, since it had
extended over a period of twenty years, was not superfluous. I
wonder whether he ever repaid Mr. Dilly the guinea he once
borrowed of him to give to a very small boy who had just
been apprenticed to a printer. If he did not, it was a great
shame. That he was indebted to Sir Joshua in a small loan is
apparent from the fact that it was one of his three dying requests
to that great man that he should release him from it, as, of
course, the most amiable of painters did. The other two requests,
it will be remembered, were to read his Bible, and not to use his
brush on Sundays. The good Sir Joshua gave the desired prom-
ises with a full heart, for these two great men loved one another;
but subsequently discovered the Sabbatical restriction not a little
irksome, and after a while resumed his former practice, arguing
with himself that the Doctor really had no business to extract
any such promise. The point is a nice one, and perhaps ere this
the two friends have met and discussed it in the Elysian fields.
If so, I hope the Doctor, grown "angelical," kept his temper with
the mild shade of Reynolds better than on the historical occasion
when he discussed with him the question of "strong drinks. "
Against Garrick, Johnson undoubtedly cherished a smoldering
grudge, which, however, he never allowed any one but himself to
IV-120
## p. 1906 (#96) ############################################
1906
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
«<
fan into flame. His pique was natural. Garrick had been his
pupil at Edial, near Lichfield; they had come up to town together
with an easy united fortune of fourpence. current coin o' the
realm. " Garrick soon had the world at his feet and garnered
golden grain. Johnson became famous too, but remained poor
and dingy. Garrick surrounded himself with what only money
can buy, good pictures and rare books. Johnson cared nothing
for pictures—how should he? he could not see them; but he did
care a great deal about books, and the pernickety little player
was chary about lending his splendidly bound rarities to his
quondam preceptor. Our sympathies in this matter are entirely
with Garrick; Johnson was one of the best men that ever lived,
but not to lend books to. Like Lady Slattern, he had a "most
observant thumb. " But Garrick had no real cause for complaint.
Johnson may have soiled his folios and sneered at his trade, but
in life Johnson loved Garrick, and in death embalmed his memory
in a sentence which can only die with the English language:- "I
am disappointed by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the
gayety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless
pleasure. "
Will it be believed that puny critics have been found to quarrel
with this colossal compliment on the poor pretext of its false-
hood? Garrick's death, urge these dullards, could not possibly
have eclipsed the gayety of nations, since he had retired from the
stage months previous to his demise. When will mankind learn.
that literature is one thing, and sworn testimony another? . . .
Johnson the author is not always fairly treated. Phrases are
convenient things to hand about, and it is as little the custom to
inquire into their truth as it is to read the letterpress on bank-
notes. We are content to count bank-notes and to repeat phrases.
One of these phrases is, that whilst everybody reads Boswell,
nobody reads Johnson. The facts are otherwise. Everybody does
not read Boswell, and a great many people do read Johnson. If
it be asked, What do the general public know of Johnson's nine
volumes octavo ? I reply, Beshrew the general public! What in
the name of the Bodleian has the general public got to do with
literature? The general public subscribes to Mudie, and has its
intellectual, like its lacteal sustenance, sent round to it in carts.
On Saturdays these carts, laden with "recent works in circula-
tion," traverse the Uxbridge Road; on Wednesdays they toil up
Highgate Hill, and if we may believe the reports of travelers,
## p. 1907 (#97) ############################################
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1907
are occasionally seen rushing through the wilds of Camberwell
and bumping over Blackheath. It is not a question of the gen-
eral public, but of the lover of letters. Do Mr. Browning, Mr.
Arnold, Mr. Lowell, Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Stephen, Mr. Morley,
know their Johnson? "To doubt would
"To doubt would be disloyalty. " And
what these big men know in their big way, hundreds of little
men know in their little way. We have no writer with a more
genuine literary flavor about him than the great Cham of litera-
ture. No man of letters loved letters better than he. He knew
literature in all its branches-he had read books, he had written
books, he had sold books, he had bought books, and he had
borrowed them. Sluggish and inert in all other directions, he
pranced through libraries. He loved a catalogue; he delighted
in an index. He was, to employ a happy phrase of Dr. Holmes,
at home amongst books as a stable-boy is amongst horses. He
cared intensely about the future of literature and the fate of
literary men. "I respect Millar," he once exclaimed; "he has
raised the price of literature. " Now Millar was a Scotchman.
Even Horne Tooke was not to stand in the pillory: "No, no,
the dog has too much literature for that. " The only time the
author of 'Rasselas met the author of the 'Wealth of Nations'
witnessed a painful scene. The English moralist gave the Scotch
one the lie direct, and the Scotch moralist applied to the English
one a phrase which would have done discredit to the lips of a
costermonger; but this notwithstanding, when Boswell reported
that Adam Smith preferred rhyme to blank verse, Johnson hailed
the news as enthusiastically as did Cedric the Saxon the English
origin of the bravest knights in the retinue of the Norman king.
"Did Adam say that? " he shouted: "I love him for it. I could
hug him! " Johnson no doubt honestly believed he held George
III. in reverence, but really he did not care a pin's fee for all the
crowned heads of Europe. All his reverence was reserved for
"poor scholars. »
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. "
## p. 1908 (#98) ############################################
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
## p. 1909 (#99) ############################################
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
## p. 1910 (#100) ###########################################
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.
makes himself welcome as a companion at once stimulating and
restful, of humane spirit and elevated ideals, of digested knowledge
and original thought, of an insight which is rarely other than kindly
and a deep humor which never lapses into cynicism.
Mr. Birrell helps to justify Walter Bagehot's dictum that the only
man who can write books well is one who knows practical life well;
but still there are congruities in all things, and one feels a certain
shock of incongruity in finding that this man of books and purveyor
of light genial book-talk, who can hardly write a line without giving
it a quality of real literary savor, is a prominent lawyer and member
of Parliament, and has written a law book which ranks among recog-
nized legal authorities. This is a series of lectures delivered in
1896, and collected into a volume on 'The Duties and Liabilities of
Trustees. ' But some of the surprise vanishes on reading the book:
## p. 1900 (#90) ############################################
1900
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
even as 'Alice in Wonderland' shows on every page the work of a
logician trained to use words precisely and criticize their misuse,
so in exactly the opposite way this book is full of the shrewd judg-
ment, the knowledge of life, and even the delightful humor which
form so much of Birrell's best equipment for a man of letters.
Mr. Birrell's work is not merely good reading, but is a mental
clarifier and tonic. We are much better critics of other writers
through his criticisms on his selected subjects. After every reading
of 'Obiter Dicta' we feel ashamed of crass and petty prejudice, in the
face of his lessons in disregarding surface mannerisms for the sake
of vital qualities. Only in one case does he lose his impartiality: he
so objects to treating Emerson with fairness that he even goes out of
his way to berate his idol Matthew Arnold for setting Emerson aloft.
But what he says of George Borrow is vastly more true of himself:
he is one of the writers we cannot afford to be angry with.
DR. JOHNSON
"C
RITICISM," writes Johnson in the 60th Idler, "is a study by
which men grow important and formidable at a very small
expense. The power of invention has been conferred by
nature upon few, and the labor of learning those sciences which
may by mere labor be obtained, is too great to be willingly
endured: but every man can exert such judgment as he has upon
the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and
idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name
of a critick. "
To proceed with our task by the method of comparison is to
pursue a course open to grave objection; yet it is forced upon us
when we find, as we lately did, a writer in the Times newspaper,
in the course of a not very discriminating review of Mr. Froude's
recent volumes, casually remarking, as if it admitted of no more.
doubt than the day's price of consols, that Carlyle was a greater
man than Johnson. It is a good thing to be positive. To be
positive in your opinions and selfish in your habits is the best
recipe, if not for happiness, at all events for that far more attain-
able commodity, comfort, with which we are acquainted.
"A
noisy man," sang poor Cowper, who could not bear anything
louder than the hissing of a tea-urn, "a noisy man is always in
the right," and a positive man can seldom be proved wrong.
Still, in literature it is very desirable to preserve a moderate
## p. 1901 (#91) ############################################
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1901
measure of independence, and we therefore make bold to ask
whether it is as plain as the "old hill of Howth" that Carlyle
was a greater man than Johnson? Is not the precise contrary
the truth? No abuse of Carlyle need be looked for, here or from
me. When a man of genius and of letters happens to have any
striking virtues, such as purity, temperance, honesty, the novel
task of dwelling on them. has such attraction for us that we are
content to leave the elucidation of his faults to his personal
friends, and to stern, unbending moralists like Mr. Edmund Yates.
and the World newspaper. To love Carlyle is, thanks to Mr.
Froude's superhuman ideal of friendship, a task of much heroism,
almost meriting a pension; still it is quite possible for the candid
and truth-loving soul. But a greater than Johnson he most cer-
tainly was not.
There is a story in Boswell of an ancient beggar-woman who,
whilst asking an alms of the Doctor, described herself to him, in
a lucky moment for her pocket, as "an old struggler. " Johnson,
his biographer tells us, was visibly affected. The phrase stuck
to his memory, and was frequently applied to himself. "I too,"
so he would say, «<
am an old struggler. " So too, in all con-
science, was Carlyle. The struggles of Johnson have long been
historical; those of Carlyle have just become so. We are inter-
ested in both. To be indifferent would be inhuman.
Both men
had great endowments, tempestuous natures, hard lots.
They
were not amongst Dame Fortune's favorites. They had to fight
their way.
What they took they took by storm. But- and here
is a difference indeed-Johnson came off victorious, Carlyle did
not.
Boswell's book is an arch of triumph, through which, as we
read, we see his hero passing into eternal fame, to take up his
place with those-
"Dead but sceptred sovereigns who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.
>>
Froude's book is a tomb over which the lovers of Carlyle's genius
will never cease to shed tender but regretful tears.
We doubt whether there is in English literature a more trium-
phant book than Boswell's. What materials for tragedy are want-
ing? Johnson was a man of strong passions, unbending spirit,
violent temper, as poor as a church-mouse, and as proud as the
proudest of Church dignitaries endowed with the strength of a
## p. 1902 (#92) ############################################
1902
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
coal-heaver, the courage of a lion, and the tongue of Dean Swift,
he could knock down booksellers and silence bargees; he was
melancholy almost to madness, "radically wretched," indolent,
blinded, diseased. Poverty was long his portion; not that genteel
poverty that is sometimes behindhand with its rent, but that
hungry poverty that does not know where to look for its dinner.
Against all these things had this "old struggler" to contend; over
all these things did this "old struggler" prevail. Over even the
fear of death, the giving up of "this intellectual being," which
had haunted his gloomy fancy for a lifetime, he seems finally to
have prevailed, and to have met his end as a brave man should.
>>
Carlyle, writing to his wife, says, and truthfully enough, "The
more the devil worries me the more I wring him by the nose;
but then if the devil's was the only nose that was wrung in the
transaction, why need Carlyle cry out so loud? After buffeting
one's way through the storm-tossed pages of Froude's 'Carlyle,' —
in which the universe is stretched upon the rack because food
disagrees with man and cocks crow,- with what thankfulness and
reverence do we read once again the letter in which Johnson tells
Mrs. Thrale how he has been called to endure, not dyspepsia or
sleeplessness, but paralysis itself:-
"On Monday I sat for my picture, and walked a considerable
way with little inconvenience. In the afternoon and evening I
felt myself light and easy, and began to plan schemes of life.
Thus I went to bed, and in a short time waked and sat up, as
has long been my custom; when I felt a confusion in my head
which lasted, I suppose, about half a minute; I was alarmed, and
prayed God that however much He might afflict my body He
would spare my understanding.
Soon after I perceived
that I had suffered a paralytic stroke, and that my speech was
taken from me. I had no pain, and so little dejection in this
dreadful state that I wondered at my own apathy, and considered
that perhaps death itself, when it should come, would excite less
horror than seems now to attend it. In order to rouse the vocal
organs I took two drams.
I then went to bed, and
strange as it may seem I think slept. When I saw light it was
time I should contrive what I should do. Though God stopped
my speech, He left me my hand. I enjoyed a mercy which was
not granted to my dear friend Lawrence, who now perhaps over-
looks me as I am writing, and rejoices that I have what he
wanted. My first note was necessarily to my servant, who came
•
## p. 1903 (#93) ############################################
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1903
in talking, and could not immediately comprehend why he should
read what I put into his hands.
How this will be received
by you I know not. I hope you will sympathize with me; but
perhaps
"My mistress, gracious, mild, and good,
Cries Is he dumb? 'Tis time he should. '
"I suppose you may wish to know how my disease is treated
by the physicians. They put a blister upon my back, and two
from my ear to my throat, one on a side. The blister on the
back has done little, and those on the throat have not risen. I
bullied and bounced (it sticks to our last sand), and compelled
the apothecary to make his salve according to the Edinburgh dis-
pensatory, that it might adhere better. I have now two on my
own prescription. They likewise give me salt of hartshorn, which
I take with no great confidence; but I am satisfied that what can
be done is done for me. I am almost ashamed of this querulous
letter, but now it is written let it go. "
This is indeed tonic and bark for the mind.
If, irritated by a comparison that ought never to have been
thrust upon us, we ask why it is that the reader of Boswell finds
it as hard to help loving Johnson as the reader of Froude finds.
it hard to avoid disliking Carlyle, the answer must be that whilst
the elder man of letters was full to overflowing with the milk of
human kindness, the younger one was full to overflowing with
something not nearly so nice; and that whilst Johnson was pre-
eminently a reasonable man, reasonable in all his demands and
expectations, Carlyle was the most unreasonable mortal that ever
exhausted the patience of nurse, mother, or wife.
Of Dr. Johnson's affectionate nature nobody has written with
nobler appreciation than Carlyle himself. "Perhaps it is this
Divine feeling of affection, throughout manifested, that principally
attracts us to Johnson. A true brother of men is he, and filial
lover of the earth. "
The day will come when it will be recognized that Carlyle, as
a critic, is to be judged by what he himself corrected for the
press, and not by splenetic entries in diaries, or whimsical extrava-
gances in private conversation.
Of Johnson's reasonableness nothing need be said, except that
it is patent everywhere. His wife's judgment was a sound one
"He is the most sensible man I ever met. "
## p. 1904 (#94) ############################################
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1904
As for his brutality, of which at one time we used to hear a
great deal, we cannot say of it what Hookham Frere said of
Landor's immorality, that it was
"Mere imaginary classicality
Wholly devoid of criminal reality. "
It was nothing of the sort. Dialectically the great Doctor was a
great brute. The fact is, he had so accustomed himself to wordy
warfare that he lost all sense of moral responsibility, and cared
as little for men's feelings as a Napoleon did for their lives.
When the battle was over, the Doctor frequently did what no
soldier ever did that I have heard tell of,- apologized to his
victims and drank wine or lemonade with them. It must also be
remembered that for the most part his victims sought him out.
They came to be tossed and gored. And after all, are they so
much to be pitied? They have our sympathy, and the Doctor
has our applause. I am not prepared to say, with the simpering
fellow with weak legs whom David Copperfield met at Mr.
Waterbrook's dinner-table, that I would sooner be knocked down
by a man with blood than picked up by a man without any; but,
argumentatively speaking, I think it would be better for a man's
reputation to be knocked down by Dr. Johnson than picked up
by Mr. Froude.
Johnson's claim to be the best of our talkers cannot, on our
present materials, be contested. For the most part we have only
talk about other talkers. Johnson's is matter of record. Carlyle
no doubt was a great talker-no man talked against talk or
broke silence to praise it more eloquently than he, but unfortu-
nately none of it is in evidence. All that is given us is a sort
of Commination Service writ large. We soon weary of it. Man
does not live by curses alone.
An unhappier prediction of a boy's future was surely never
made than that of Johnson's by his cousin, Mr. Cornelius Ford,
who said to the infant Samuel, "You will make your way the
more easily in the world as you are content to dispute no man's
claim to conversation excellence, and they will, therefore, more
willingly allow your pretensions as a writer. " Unfortunate Mr.
Ford! The man never breathed whose claim to conversation
excellence Dr. Johnson did not dispute on every possible occas-
ion; whilst, just because he was admittedly so good a talker, his
pretensions as a writer have been occasionally slighted.
## p. 1905 (#95) ############################################
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1905
Johnson's personal character has generally been allowed to
stand high. It, however, has not been submitted to recent tests.
To be the first to "smell a fault" is the pride of the modern
biographer. Bosweil's artless pages afford useful hints not lightly
to be disregarded. During some portion of Johnson's married life
he had lodgings, first at Greenwich, afterwards at Hampstead.
But he did not always go home o' nights; sometimes preferring
to roam the streets with that vulgar ruffian Savage, who was cer-
tainly no fit company for him. He once actually quarreled with
Tetty, who, despite her ridiculous name, was a very sensible
woman with a very sharp tongue, and for a season, like stars,
they dwelt apart. Of the real merits of this dispute we must
resign ourselves to ignorance. The materials for its discussion do
not exist; even Croker could not find them. Neither was our
great moralist as sound as one would have liked to see him in
the matter of the payment of small debts. When he came to die,
he remembered several of these outstanding accounts; but what
assurance have we that he remembered them all? One sum of
10 he sent across to the honest fellow from whom he had
borrowed it, with an apology for his delay; which, since it had
extended over a period of twenty years, was not superfluous. I
wonder whether he ever repaid Mr. Dilly the guinea he once
borrowed of him to give to a very small boy who had just
been apprenticed to a printer. If he did not, it was a great
shame. That he was indebted to Sir Joshua in a small loan is
apparent from the fact that it was one of his three dying requests
to that great man that he should release him from it, as, of
course, the most amiable of painters did. The other two requests,
it will be remembered, were to read his Bible, and not to use his
brush on Sundays. The good Sir Joshua gave the desired prom-
ises with a full heart, for these two great men loved one another;
but subsequently discovered the Sabbatical restriction not a little
irksome, and after a while resumed his former practice, arguing
with himself that the Doctor really had no business to extract
any such promise. The point is a nice one, and perhaps ere this
the two friends have met and discussed it in the Elysian fields.
If so, I hope the Doctor, grown "angelical," kept his temper with
the mild shade of Reynolds better than on the historical occasion
when he discussed with him the question of "strong drinks. "
Against Garrick, Johnson undoubtedly cherished a smoldering
grudge, which, however, he never allowed any one but himself to
IV-120
## p. 1906 (#96) ############################################
1906
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
«<
fan into flame. His pique was natural. Garrick had been his
pupil at Edial, near Lichfield; they had come up to town together
with an easy united fortune of fourpence. current coin o' the
realm. " Garrick soon had the world at his feet and garnered
golden grain. Johnson became famous too, but remained poor
and dingy. Garrick surrounded himself with what only money
can buy, good pictures and rare books. Johnson cared nothing
for pictures—how should he? he could not see them; but he did
care a great deal about books, and the pernickety little player
was chary about lending his splendidly bound rarities to his
quondam preceptor. Our sympathies in this matter are entirely
with Garrick; Johnson was one of the best men that ever lived,
but not to lend books to. Like Lady Slattern, he had a "most
observant thumb. " But Garrick had no real cause for complaint.
Johnson may have soiled his folios and sneered at his trade, but
in life Johnson loved Garrick, and in death embalmed his memory
in a sentence which can only die with the English language:- "I
am disappointed by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the
gayety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless
pleasure. "
Will it be believed that puny critics have been found to quarrel
with this colossal compliment on the poor pretext of its false-
hood? Garrick's death, urge these dullards, could not possibly
have eclipsed the gayety of nations, since he had retired from the
stage months previous to his demise. When will mankind learn.
that literature is one thing, and sworn testimony another? . . .
Johnson the author is not always fairly treated. Phrases are
convenient things to hand about, and it is as little the custom to
inquire into their truth as it is to read the letterpress on bank-
notes. We are content to count bank-notes and to repeat phrases.
One of these phrases is, that whilst everybody reads Boswell,
nobody reads Johnson. The facts are otherwise. Everybody does
not read Boswell, and a great many people do read Johnson. If
it be asked, What do the general public know of Johnson's nine
volumes octavo ? I reply, Beshrew the general public! What in
the name of the Bodleian has the general public got to do with
literature? The general public subscribes to Mudie, and has its
intellectual, like its lacteal sustenance, sent round to it in carts.
On Saturdays these carts, laden with "recent works in circula-
tion," traverse the Uxbridge Road; on Wednesdays they toil up
Highgate Hill, and if we may believe the reports of travelers,
## p. 1907 (#97) ############################################
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
1907
are occasionally seen rushing through the wilds of Camberwell
and bumping over Blackheath. It is not a question of the gen-
eral public, but of the lover of letters. Do Mr. Browning, Mr.
Arnold, Mr. Lowell, Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Stephen, Mr. Morley,
know their Johnson? "To doubt would
"To doubt would be disloyalty. " And
what these big men know in their big way, hundreds of little
men know in their little way. We have no writer with a more
genuine literary flavor about him than the great Cham of litera-
ture. No man of letters loved letters better than he. He knew
literature in all its branches-he had read books, he had written
books, he had sold books, he had bought books, and he had
borrowed them. Sluggish and inert in all other directions, he
pranced through libraries. He loved a catalogue; he delighted
in an index. He was, to employ a happy phrase of Dr. Holmes,
at home amongst books as a stable-boy is amongst horses. He
cared intensely about the future of literature and the fate of
literary men. "I respect Millar," he once exclaimed; "he has
raised the price of literature. " Now Millar was a Scotchman.
Even Horne Tooke was not to stand in the pillory: "No, no,
the dog has too much literature for that. " The only time the
author of 'Rasselas met the author of the 'Wealth of Nations'
witnessed a painful scene. The English moralist gave the Scotch
one the lie direct, and the Scotch moralist applied to the English
one a phrase which would have done discredit to the lips of a
costermonger; but this notwithstanding, when Boswell reported
that Adam Smith preferred rhyme to blank verse, Johnson hailed
the news as enthusiastically as did Cedric the Saxon the English
origin of the bravest knights in the retinue of the Norman king.
"Did Adam say that? " he shouted: "I love him for it. I could
hug him! " Johnson no doubt honestly believed he held George
III. in reverence, but really he did not care a pin's fee for all the
crowned heads of Europe. All his reverence was reserved for
"poor scholars. »
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. "
## p. 1908 (#98) ############################################
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
## p. 1909 (#99) ############################################
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
## p. 1910 (#100) ###########################################
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.
