Bygones Worth Remembering Volume I Part 4

"I could only disclose that before a Royal Commission"--alluding to a political artifice then coming into vogue in Parliament When a Minister did not know what to say to a popular demand, or found it inconvenient to say it if he did know, he would suggest a Commission to inquire into it, as is done to this day.

Then the clown would demand, "What is the good of a Royal Commission?"

when the answer would be: "Every good in the world to a Ministry, for before the Commission agreed as to the answer to be given, the public would forget what the question was." Under this diversion of the audience, no one noticed that no answer was given to the original question put to the jester. Whether I could have succeeded in this walk was never decided. It was found that I lacked the loud, radiant, explosive voice necessary for circus effects, and I ceased to dream of distinction there.

I suppose, like many others who could not well write anything, I thought poetry might be my latent--very latent--faculty. So I began. For all I knew, my genius, if I had any, might lie that way. To "body forth things unknown," which I was told poets did, must be delightful. To "build castles in the air"--as my means did not enable me to pay ground rent--was at least an economical project. So I began with a question, as new Members of Parliament do, until they discover something to say. My first production, which I hoped would be mistaken for a poem, was in the form of a "Question to a Pedestrian":--

"Saw you my Lilian pa.s.s this way?

You would know her by the ray Of light which doth attend her.

Her eye such fire of pa.s.sion hath, That none who meet her ever pa.s.s, But they some message send her."

The critics said to me, as they said to Keats, to whom I bore no other resemblance, "This sort of thing will never do. It is an imitation of Shenstone, or of one of the Shepherd and Shepherdess School of the Elizabethan era"--of whom I knew nothing. So I was lost to the Muses, who, however, never missed me.

But my career was not ended. I was told there might be an opening for me in criticism, especially of poetry, as there were many persons great in the critical line, who could not write a verse themselves--and yet lived to become a terror to all who could. My first effort in this direction was upon the book of a young poet whom I knew personally. Not venturing upon longer pieces at first, I selected two sonnets--as the author, Emslie Duncan, called them. The opening was very striking, and was thus expressed:--

"Great G.o.d: What is it that I see?

A figure shrimping in the sea."

How natural is the exclamation, I began. The poet invokes the Deity on the threshold of a great surprise. Luther did the same in his famous hymn beginning--

"Great G.o.d! What do mine eyes behold!"

Our sonneteer may be said to have borrowed the exclamation from Luther.*

But we have no doubt the exclamation of our poet is purely original.

He next demands an interpretation of his vision. It is early morning, though the poet does not mention it (great poets are suggestive, and stoop not to detail). An evasive grey mist spreads everywhere, like the new fiscal policy of the Bentinckian type (then in the air), obscuring the landmarks of long-time safety. Still there is one object visible.

The poet's eye in "fine frenzy rolling" sees something. He is not sure of the personality that confronts him, and with agnostic precaution worthy of Huxley, he declines to say what it is--until he knows--and so contents himself with telling the reader it is a "figure" out shrimping.

The scene is most impressive. As amateurs say, when they do not understand a picture they are praising, "It grows upon you." So this marvellous sonnet grows upon the

* The opening of Luther's fine hymn:--

"Great G.o.d! What do mine eyes behold!

The end of things created"--

which long imposed on my imagination and does so still.

reader. If there be not imagination and profundity here, we do not know where to look for it.

Next our poet returns to town, and in White-chapel meets with the statue of a lady attired only in a blouse. Notwithstanding his astonishment he varies his abjuration, and exclaims--

"Judge ye G.o.ds, of my surprise, A lady naked in her chemise!"

This is unquestionably very fine. True, there is some contradiction in nudity and attire; but splendid contradiction is an eternal element of poetry. What would Milton's "Paradise Lost" be without it? The reader cannot tell whether the surprise of the poet is at the lady or her drapery. There is no use in asking a great poet what he meant in writing his brilliant lines. If as candid as Browning, he would answer as Browning did, that "he had not the slightest idea what he meant."

Nothing remains for us but to congratulate the public on the advent of a new poet who is equally great on subjects of land or sea.

There is a good deal of reviewing done on this principle, and reputations made by this sort of writing as fully without foundation, and I looked forward to further employment.

The editor to whom I sent these primal specimens of my new vocation seemed undecided what to do with them--throw them into his waste-paper basket or submit them to his readers. I a.s.sured him I had seen a number of criticisms less restrained than mine, on performances quite as slender as the sonnets I had described. With kindly consideration, lest he might be repressing a rising genius in me, he asked me to give my opinion upon a charming little poem by Longfellow--to commend, as he hoped I could, as a new edition in which he was interested was about to be published.

The object of the poet, I found, was to awaken certain young ladies, whose only fault consisted in getting up late in the morning. The lines addressed to them, if I rightly remember, began thus:--

"Awake! Arise! and greet the day.

Angels are knocking at the door.

They are in haste and may not stay, And once departed come no more."

This verse reminds the readers of Omar Khayyam. Two ideas in it are his, and the terms used are his; but I resisted this temptation to imitate those popular critics, whose aim is not to discover the graces of a new poet, but his plagiarisms, and to show that everybody reproduces the ideas of everybody else, and prove that--

"Nothing is, and all things seem And we the shadows of a dream"--

and of old, antediluvian dreams. Disdaining this royal road to critical renown, I commenced by praising the enchanting invocation of the poet, who when the ladies heard it would leap out of bed and dress. I observed that to the reader who did not look below the surface--did not "read between the lines," is the favourite phrase--the poem presented some mysteries of diction. Instead of appearing as the angel in Leigh Hunt's "Abou Ben Adhem" did, who diffused himself in the room like a vision, these peripatetic visitants presented themselves like celestial postmen "knocking at the door." Then why were they out so early themselves?

Had they more calls to make than they could well accomplish in the time allowed them? Why were they "in haste"? No wonder mankind lack repose if angels are in a hurry. The Kingdom of the Blest is supposed to be the land of rest Manifestly these morning angels had to be back by a stipulated time, and like a tax-collector could make no second call.

Apparently Longfellow's angels are like Mr. Stead's favourite spirit Julia. They are hara.s.sed with appointments, commissions, and cares.

It is of no use being a spirit if you cannot move about with regal leisureliness, such as was displayed by the first Shah of Persia who visited us. The writer has seen nothing like it in any European monarch.

While in the lines now in question supernatural misgivings of angelic perturbation are awakened. But as an example of poetry, irrespective of its meaning and suggestions, every reader will covet a new edition of the American poet, and no library could be complete without a copy upon its shelves.

I had visited the poet at his Cambridge home, and was proud of the opportunity of adding ever so small an addition to the pyramid of regard raised to his memory.

The editor looked dubious on reading this review, and said the higher criticism might be entertaining in theology, but the higher criticism of poetry, which dealt with its meaning, was a different thing and might not be well taken. In vain I suggested that a poet ought to mean something, as Byron did, whose fascination is still real, and there was pathos and beauty, tragedy, tenderness and courtesy enough in the world to employ more poets than we have on hand. I received no more commissions in the way of criticisms, and had to think of some other vocation.

Some of the happiest evenings of younger days were spent in the rooms of university students. It was pleasant to be near persons who dwelt in the kingdom of knowledge, who could wander at will on the mountain tops of science and literature, and have glimpses of unknown lands of light which I might never see. Who has seen London under the reign of the sun, after a sullen, fitful season, knows how wondrous is the transformation.

Like the sheen of the G.o.ds the glittering rays descend, dispelling and absorbing the sombre clouds. A radiance rests on turret and roof. Then hidden creatures that crawl or fly come forth and put on golden tints.

The cheerless poor emerge from their fireless chambers with the grateful emotions of sun worshippers.

How like is all this to the change which comes over the realm of ignorance! Light does not change vegetation more than the light of knowledge changes the realm of the mind. The thirsty crevices of thought drink in, as it were, the refreshing beams. Once conscious of the liberty and power which comes of knowing--ignorance itself becomes eager, impatient--covetous of information. Faculties unsuspected disclose themselves. Qualities undreamed-of appear. So it came to be my choice to enter the field of instruction. It seemed to me a great thing to endow any, however few, in any way, however humble, with the cheeriness and strength of ideas. True, I began to teach what I did not know--or knew but partially--yet not without personal advantage, since no one knows anything well until he has tried to teach it to another.

The dullest pupil will make his master sensible of defects in his own explanation. Formerly, the dulness of a learner was supposed to discover the necessity of a cane, whereas all it proved was incapacity or unwillingness to take trouble--on the part of the teacher. The result was that I wrote several elementary books of instruction. All owed their existence, or whatever success attended them, to the experience of the cla.s.s-room.

All things have an end, as many observant people know, and before long I turned my attention to journalism. I had read somewhere a saying of Aristotle--"Now I mean to speak conformably to the truth." That seems every man's duty--if he speaks at all. Anyhow, Aristotle's words appeared to const.i.tute a good rule for a journalist I had never heard or never heeded the injunction of Byron:--

"Let him who speaks beware Of whom, of what, and when, and where."

The Aristotelian rule I had adopted soon brought me into difficulties, probably from want of skill in applying it. It was in propagandist journalism that I had ventured, which I mention for the purpose of saying that it is not, as many suppose, a profitable profession. It is excellent discipline, but it is not thought much of by your banker. Its securities are never saleable on the Stock Exchange. Nevertheless, the Press has its undying attraction. It is the fame-maker. Without it n.o.ble words, as well as n.o.ble deeds, would die. Day by day there descend from the Press ideas in fertilising showers, falling on the parched and arid plains of life, which in due season become verdant and variegated.

Difficulties try men's souls, but true ideas expand them. And they have done so. Literature is a much brighter thing than it was when I first began to meddle or "muddle" in it, as Lord Salisbury would say.

Nothing was thought cla.s.sical then that was not dull No definition of importance was found to be utterly unintelligible until a University man had explained it. All is different now--let us hope.

Instances of the progress of literary opinion are perhaps more instructive and better worth remembering. In 1850, when George Henry Lewes and Thornton Hunt included my name in their published list of contributors to the _Leader_, it cost the proprietors, I had reason to know, 2,000. It set the Rev. Dr. Jelf, of King's College, on fire, and caused an orthodox spasm of a serious kind in Charles Kingsley and Professor Maurice, as witness their letters of that day.

One journal projected by me in 1850 is still v issued--_Public Opinion_.

Mr. W. H. Ashurst asked me to devise a paper I thought the most needed.

As Peel had said, "England was governed by opinion," I suggested that this opinion should be collected. I wrote the prospectus of the new journal, specifying that each article quoted should be prefixed by a few words, within brackets, setting forth what principles, party, or interest it represented--whether English or foreign. Mr. Ashurst put the prospectus into the hands of Robert Buchanan, father of the late Robert Buchanan, and the earlier issues followed the plan I had defined. The object was to collect intelligent and responsible opinion.

In 1866 the _Contemporary Review_ announced that it would "represent the best minds of the time on all contemporary questions, free from narrowness, bigotry, and sectarianism." It professed "to represent those who are not afraid of modern thought, in its varied aspects and demands, and scorn to defend their faith by mere reticence, or by the artifices commonly acquiesced in." This manifesto of 1866 far surpa.s.sed in liberality any profession then known in the evangelical world. It was at the time a bold p.r.o.nouncement. When it is considered that Samuel Morley was the most influential of the supporters of the _Contemporary_, it shows that intellectual Nonconformity was abreast of the age--as Nonconformity never was before.

In 1877 I was taken by Thomas Woolner, the sculptor, to dine at Mr.

Alfred Tennyson's (Lord Tennyson later). I believe my invitation was owing to Mrs. Tennyson's desire to make inquiries of me concerning the advantages of Co-operation in rural districts, in which, like the Countess of Warwick, she was interested. The Poet Laureate gave me a gla.s.s of sack, the royal beverage of poets, of more exquisite flavour than I had tasted before. I did not wonder that it was conducive to n.o.ble verse--where the faculty of it was present Mr. Knowles, now Sir James, founder of the _Nineteenth Century and After_, was of the party, and the new review--then projected--being mentioned, it came to pa.s.s that my name was put down among possible contributors. The _Nineteenth Century_ proposed to go further, and include a still wider range of subjects, with free discussion on personal responsibility. Its prospectus said "it would go on lines absolutely impartial and unsectarian." The Prefatory Poem, written by Tennyson twenty-seven years ago, which may not be in the memory of many now, was this:--

"Those that of late had fleeted far and fast, To touch all sh.o.r.es, now leaving to the skill Of others their old craft, seaworthy still, Have chartered this; where, mindful of the past, Our true co-mates regather round the mast; Of diverse tongues, but with a common will, Here in this roaming moor of daffodil And crocus, to put forth and brave the blast.

For some, descending from the sacred peak Of h.o.a.r, high-templed Faith, have leagued again Their lot with ours to rove the world about, And some are wilder comrades, sworn to seek If any golden harbour be for men In seas of Death and sunless gulfs of Doubt."