Imaginary Interviews Part 19

She stopped, and the first speaker now looked at her with a compa.s.sion unalloyed by patronage, and did not ask, as he might, "What has all that to do with it?"

In fact, a sympathetic silence possessed the whole company. It was broken at last by the closest listener's saying: "After all, I don't know that Metchnikoff's book is so very blighting. It's certainly a very important book, and it produces a reaction which may be wholesome or unwholesome as you choose to think. And no matter what we believe, we must respect the honesty of the scientific att.i.tude in regard to a matter that has been too much abandoned to the emotions, perhaps. In all seriousness I wish some scientific man would apply the scientific method to finding out the soul, as you"--he turned to the light skirmisher--"suggest. Why shouldn't it be investigated?"

Upon this invitation the light skirmisher tried to imagine some psychological experiments which should bear a certain a.n.a.logy to those of the physicists, but he failed to keep the level of his suggestion.

"As I said," the closest listener remarked, "he produces a secondary state of revolt which is desirable, for in that state we begin to inquire not only where we stand, but where _he_ stands."

"And what is your conclusion as to his place in the inquiry?"

"That it isn't different from yours or mine, really. We all share the illusion of the race from the beginning that somehow our opinion of the matter affects its reality. I should distinguish so far as to say that we think we believe, and he thinks he knows. For my own part, I have the impression that he has helped my belief."

The light skirmisher made a desperate effort to retrieve himself: "Then a few more books like his would restore the age of faith."

XXI

AROUND A RAINY-DAY FIRE

A number of the Easy Chair's friends were sitting round the fire in the library of a country-house. The room was large and full of a soft, flattering light. The fire was freshly kindled, and flashed and crackled with a young vivacity, letting its rays frolic over the serried bindings on the shelves, the glazed pictures on the walls, the cups of after-luncheon coffee in the hands of the people, and the tall jugs and pots in the tray left standing on the library table. It was summer, but a cold rain was falling forbiddingly without. No one else could come, and no one could wish to go. The conditions all favored a just self-esteem, and a sense of providential preference in the accidental a.s.semblage of those people at that time and place.

The talk was rather naturally, though not necessarily, of books, and one of the people was noting that children seemed to like short stories because their minds had not the strength to keep the facts of a whole book. The effort tired them, and they gave it up, not because a book did not interest them, but because it exhausted their little powers. They were good for a leap, or a dash, or a short flight in literature, even very high literature, but they had not really the force for anything covering greater time and s.p.a.ce.

Another declared this very suggestive, and declared it in such a way that the whole company perceived he had something behind his words, and besought him to say what he meant. He did so, as well as he could, after protesting that it was not very novel, or if so, perhaps not very important, and if it was important, perhaps it was not true. They said they would take the chances; and then he said that it was merely a notion which had occurred to him at the moment concerning the new reading of the new reading public, whether it might not be all juvenile literature, adapted in mature terms to people of physical adolescence but of undeveloped thinking and feeling: not really feeble-minded youth, but aesthetically and intellectually children, who might presently grow into the power of enjoying and digesting food for men. By-and-by they might gather fort.i.tude for pleasure in real literature, in fiction which should not be a travesty of the old fairy-tales, or stories of adventures among giants and robbers and pirates, or fables with human beings speaking from the motives and pa.s.sions of animals. He mentioned fiction, he said, because the new reading of the new reading public seemed to be nearly altogether fiction.

All this had so much the effect of philosophical a.n.a.lysis that those comfortable people were lulled into self-approving a.s.sent; and putting themselves altogether apart from the new reading public, they begged him to say what he meant. He answered that there was nothing more phenomenal in the modern American life; and he paid a pretty tribute to their ignorance in owning that he was not surprised they knew nothing of that public. He promised that he would try to define it, and he began by remarking that it seemed to be largely composed of the kind of persons who at the theatre audibly interpret the action to one another. The present company must have heard them?

His listeners again a.s.sented. Was the new reading public drawn from the theatre-going, or more definitely speaking, the matinee cla.s.s?

There was something odd, there, the philosopher returned. The matinee cla.s.s was as large as ever: larger; while the new reading public, perfectly interchangeable with it in its intellectual pleasure and experiences, had suddenly outnumbered it a thousandfold. The popular novel and the popular play were so entirely of one fibre and texture, and so easily convertible, that a new novel was scarcely in every one's bread-trough before it was on the boards of all the theatres. This led some to believe that we were experiencing a revival of the drama, and that if we kept on having authors who sold half a million copies we could not help having a Shakespeare by-and-by: he must follow.

One of those listening asked, But how had these people begun so instantaneously to form themselves into this new innumerable reading public? If they were of that quality of mind which requires the translation of an unmistakable meaning from the players to the playgoers, they must find themselves helpless when grappling in solitude with the sense of a book. Why did not they go increasingly to the theatre instead of turning so overwhelmingly to the printed word?

The philosopher replied that they had not now begun to do this, but only seemed to have begun, since there really was no beginning in anything.

The readers had always been in the immense majority, because they could read anywhere, and they could see plays only in the cities and towns. If the theatre were universal, undoubtedly they would prefer plays, because a play makes far less draft upon the mental capacities or energies than the silliest book; and what seemed their effort to interpret it to one another might very well be the exchange of their delight in it. The books they preferred were of the nature of poor plays, full of "easy things to understand," cheap, common incidents, obvious motives, and vulgar pa.s.sions, such as had been used a thousand times over in literature. They were fitted for the new reading public for this reason; the constant repet.i.tion of the same characters, events, scenes, plots, gave their infantile minds the pleasure which children find in having a story told over and over in exactly the same terms. The new reading public would rebel against any variance, just as children do.

The most of the company silently acquiesced, or at least were silent, but one of them made the speaker observe that he had not told them what this innumerable unreasoning mult.i.tude had read before the present plague of handsome, empty, foolish duodecimos had infested everybody's bread-trough.

The philosopher said the actual interior form of non-literary literature was an effect of the thin spread of our literary culture, and outwardly was the effect of the thick spread of our material prosperity. The dollar-and-a-half novel of to-day was the dime novel of yesterday in an avatar which left its essence unchanged. It was even worse, for it was less sincerely and forcibly written, and it could not be so quickly worn out and thrown away. Its beauty of paper, print, and binding gave it a claim to regard which could not be ignored, and established for it a sort of right to lie upon the table, and then stand upon the shelf, where it seemed to relate itself to genuine literature, and to be of the same race and lineage. As for this vast new reading public, it was the vast old reading public with more means in its pocket of satisfying its crude, childish taste. Its head was the same empty head.

There was a sort of dreadful finality in this, and for a while no one spoke. Then some one tried in vain to turn the subject, while the philosopher smiled upon the desolation he had made; and then one of that s.e.x which when satisfied of the truth likes to have its "sense of satisfaction ache" through the increase of conviction, asked him why the English reading public, which must be so much more cultivated than our new reading public, seemed to like the same sort of puerile effects in works of imagination, the stirring incidents, the well-worn plots, the primitive pa.s.sions, and the robustious incentives. He owned the fact, but he contended that the fact, though interesting, was not so mysterious as it appeared at first sight. It could be explained that the English had never taken the imagination very seriously, and that in their dense, close civilization, packed tight with social, political, and material interests, they asked of the imagination chiefly excitement and amus.e.m.e.nt. They had not turned to it for edification or instruction, for that thrill of solemn joy which comes of vital truth profoundly seen and clearly shown. For this reason when all Europe besides turned her face to the light, some decades ago, in the pages of the great prose poets who made the age ill.u.s.trious, England preferred the smoky links and dancing camp-fires which had pleased her immature fancy, and kept herself well in the twilight of the old ideal of imagination as the mother of unrealities. There could be no doubt, the philosopher thought, that the recrudescence which her best wits recognized as the effects of this perversity, was the origin of the preposterous fiction which we now feed to the new reading public, and which we think must somehow be right because it was hers and is ours, and has the sanction of race and tradition.

It was not, he continued, a thing to shed the tear of unavailing regret for, though it was not a transitory phase, or a state of transition, for the condition that now existed had always existed. The new reading public was larger than ever before not merely because there was a fresh demand for reading, but because more people were lettered and moneyed and leisured, and did not know what otherwise to do with themselves. It was quite simple, and the fact was less to be regretted in itself than for an indirect result which might be feared from it. He paused at this, in order to be asked what this result was, and being promptly asked he went on.

It was, he said, the degradation of authorship as a calling, in the popular regard. He owned that in the past authorship had enjoyed too much honor in the reverence and affection of the world: not always, indeed, but at certain times. As long as authors were the clients and dependents of the great, they could not have been the objects of a general interest or honor. They had then pa.s.sed the stage when the simple poet or story-teller was wont to

--sit upon the ground, And tell sad stories of the deaths of kings,

to wondering and admiring circles of simple listeners, and they had not yet come to that hour of authorship when it reverted to the peasantry, now turned people, and threw itself upon the people's generous acceptance and recognition for bread and fame. But when that hour came, it brought with it the honor of a reverent and persistent curiosity concerning literature and the literary life, which the philosopher said he was afraid could not survive the actual superabundance of authors and the transformation of the novelist into the artisan. There seemed, he pursued, a fixed formula for the manufacture of a work of fiction, to be studied and practised like any other. Literature was degraded from an art to a poor sort of science, in the practical application of which thousands were seen prospering; for the immense output of our press represented the industry of hundreds and thousands. A book was concocted, according to a patent recipe, advertised, and sold like any other nostrum, and perhaps the time was already here when it was no longer more creditable to be known as the author of a popular novel than as the author of a popular medicine, a Pain-killer, a Soothing Syrup, a Vegetable Compound, a Horse Liniment, or a Germicide. Was it possible, he asked, for a reader of the last book selling a hundred thousand copies to stand in the loving or thrilling awe of the author that we used to feel for Longfellow and Tennyson, for Emerson and Carlyle, for Hawthorne and George Eliot, for Irving and Scott, or for any of their great elders or youngers? He repeated that perhaps authorship had worked its worshippers too hard, but there was no doubt that their worship was a genuine devotion. For at least a hundred and fifty years it had been eagerly offered in a full acceptance of the Schiller superst.i.tion that at the sharing of the earth the poet, representing authorship, had been so much preoccupied with higher things that he had left the fleshpots and the loaves and fishes to others, and was to be compensated with a share of the divine honors paid to Jove himself. From Goethe to Carlyle, what a long roll of G.o.ds, demiG.o.ds, and demisemiG.o.ds it was! It might have been bad for the deities, and the philosopher rather thought it was, but burning incense on the different shrines was an excellent thing for the votaries, and kept them out of all sorts of mischiefs, low pleasures, and vain amus.e.m.e.nts. Whether that was really so or not, the doubt remained whether authorship was not now a creed outworn. Did tender maids and virtuous matrons still cherish the hope of some day meeting their literary idols in the flesh? Did generous youth aspire to see them merely at a distance, and did doting sires teach their children that it was an epoch-making event when a great poet or novelist visited the country; or when they pa.s.sed afar, did they whip some favored boy, as the father of Benvenuto Cellini whipped him at sight of a salamander in the fire that he might not forget the prodigy? Now that the earth had been divided over again, and the poet in his actual guise of novelist had richly shared in its goods with the farmer, the n.o.ble, the merchant, and the abbot, was it necessary or even fair that he should be the guest of heaven? In other words, now that every successful author could keep his automobile, did any one want his autograph?

In the silence that fell upon the company at these words, the ticking of the clock under its cla.s.sic pediment on the mantel was painfully audible, and had the effect of intimating that time now had its innings and eternity was altogether out of it. Several minutes seemed to pa.s.s before any one had the courage to ask whether the degradation of authorship was not partially the result of the stand taken by the naturalists in Zola, who scorned the name of art for his calling and aspired to that of science. The hardy adventurer who suggested this possibility said that it was difficult to imagine the soul stirred to the same high pa.s.sion by the botanist, the astronomer, the geologist, the electrician, or even the entomologist as in former times by the poet, the humorist, the novelist, or the playwright. If the fictionist of whatever sort had succeeded in identifying himself with the scientist, he must leave the enjoyment of divine honors to the pianist, the farce-comedian, the portrait-painter, the emotional actor, and the architect, who still deigned to practise an art.

The philosopher smiled, and owned that this was very interesting, and opened up a fresh field of inquiry. The first question there was whether the imaginative author were not rather to blame for not having gone far enough in the scientific direction in the right scientific fashion than for having taken that course at all. The famous reproach of poetry made by Huxley, that it was mostly "sensual caterwauling," might well have given the singer pause in striking the sympathetic catgut of his lyre: perhaps the strings were metallic; but no matter. The reproach had a justice in it that must have stung, and made the lyrist wish to be an atomic theorist at any cost. In fact, at that very moment science had, as it were, caught the bread out of fiction's mouth, and usurped the highest functions of imagination. In almost every direction of its recent advance it had made believe that such and such a thing was so, and then proceeded to prove it. To this method we owed not only the possession of our present happy abundance of microbes in every sort, but our knowledge of the universe in almost every respect. Science no longer waited for the apple to fall before inferring a law of gravitation, but went about with a stick knocking fruit off every bough in the hope that something suggestive would come of it. On make-believes of all kinds it based the edifices of all kinds of eternal veracities. It behooved poetry, or fiction, which was radically the same, to return to its earliest and simplest devices if it would find itself in the embrace of science, and practise the make-beliefs of its infancy. Out of so many there were chances of some coming true if they were carried far enough and long enough. In fact, the hypothetical method of science had apparently been used in the art of advertising the works in which the appet.i.te of the new reading public was flattered. The publishers had hypothesized from the fact of a population of seventy millions, the existence of an immense body of raw, coa.r.s.e minds, untouched by taste or intelligence, and boldly addressed the new fiction to it. As in many suppositions of science their guess proved true.

Then why, the hardy listener who had spoken before inquired, was not make-believe the right method for the author, if it was the right method for the scientist and the publisher? Why should not the novelist hypothesize cases. .h.i.therto unknown to experience, and then go on by persistent study to find them true? It seemed to this inquirer that the mistake of fiction, when it refused longer to be called an art and wished to be known as a science, was in taking up the obsolescent scientific methods, and in acc.u.mulating facts, or human doc.u.ments, and deducing a case from them, instead of boldly supposing a case, as the new science did, and then looking about for occurrences to verify it.

The philosopher said, Exactly; this was the very thing he was contending for. The doc.u.ments should be collected in support of the hypothesis; the hypothesis should not be based on doc.u.ments already collected. First the inference, then the fact; was not that the new scientific way? It looked like it; and it seemed as if the favorite literature of the new reading public were quite in the spirit of the new science. Its bold events, its prodigious characters, its incredible motives, were not they quite of the nature of the fearless conjecture which imagined long and short electric waves and then spread a mesh of wire to intercept them and seize their message?

The hardy inquirer demanded: Then if so, why despise the literature of the new reading public? Why despise the new reading public, anyway?

The philosopher responded that he despised nothing, not even a thing so unphilosophical as modern science. He merely wished his interpellant to observe again that the unification of the literary spirit and the scientific spirit was degrading the literary man to the level of the scientific man. He thought this was bad for the small remnant of mankind, who in default of their former idolatry might take to the worship of themselves. Now, however bad a writer might be, it was always well for the reader to believe him better than himself. If we had not been brought up in this superst.i.tion, what would have become of the cla.s.sics of all tongues? But for this, what was to prevent the present company from making a clearance of three-fourths of the surrounding shelves and feeding that dying flame on the hearth?

At this the host, who had been keeping himself in a modest abeyance, came forward and put some sticks on the fire. He said he would like to see any one touch his bindings; which seemed to be his notion of books.

n.o.body minded him; but one of those dutyolators, who abound in a certain s.e.x, asked the philosopher what he thought we ought to do for the maintenance of author-worship among us.

He answered, he had not thought of that; his mind had been fixed upon the fact of its decay. But perhaps something could be done by looking up the author whose book had sold least during the season, and asking him candidly whether he would not like to be paid the divine honors now going begging from one big seller to another; for the decay of author-worship must be as much from the indifference of the authors as from the irreverence of the readers. If such a low-selling author did not seem to regard it as rather invidious, then pay him the divine honors; it might be a wholesome and stimulating example; but perhaps we should afterward have the demiG.o.d on our hands. Something might be safelier done by writing, as with the present company, and inquiring into "the present condition of polite learning." This would keep the sacred flame alive, and give us the comfort of refined a.s.sociation in an exquisite moment of joy from the sense of our superiority to other people. That, after all, was the great thing.

The company drew a little closer round the fire. The rain beat upon the panes, and the wind swept the wet leaves against them, while each exhaled a sigh of aspiration not unmixed with a soft regret.

XXII

THE ADVANTAGES OF QUOTATIONAL CRITICISM

The talk round the Easy Chair one day was of that strange pa.s.sion for reading which has of late possessed the public, and the contagion or infection by which it has pa.s.sed to hundreds of thousands who never read before; and then the talk was of how this prodigious force might be controlled and turned in the right way: not suffered to run to waste like water over the dam, but directed into channels pouring upon wheels that turn the mills of the G.o.ds or something like that. There were, of course, a great many words; in fact, talk is composed of words, and the people at that luncheon were there for talking as well as eating, and they did not mind how many words they used. But the sum of their words was the hope, after a due season of despair, that the present pa.s.sion for reading might be made to eventuate in more civilization than it seemed to be doing, if it could be brought back to good literature, supposing it was ever there in great strength, and the question was how to do this.

One of the company said he had lately been reading a good many books of Leigh Hunt's, and after everybody had interrupted with "Delightful!"

"Perfectly charming!" and the like, he went on to observe that one of the chief merits of Hunt seemed to be his aptness in quotation. That, he remarked, was almost a lost art with critics, who had got to thinking that they could tell better what an author was than the author himself could. Like every other power disused, the power of apt quotation had died, and there were very few critics now who knew how to quote: not one knew, as Hunt, or Lamb, or Hazlitt, or the least of the great quotational school of critics, knew. These had perhaps overworked their gift, and might have been justly accused, as they certainly were accused, of misleading the reader and making him think that the poets, whose best they quoted, putting the finest lines in italics so that they could not be missed, were as good throughout as in the pa.s.sages given.

It was this sense of having abused innocence, or ignorance, which led to the present reaction in criticism no doubt, and yet the present reaction was an error. Suppose that the poets whose best was given by quotation were not altogether as good as that? The critics never pretended they were; they were merely showing how very good these poets could be, and at the same time offering a delicate pleasure to the reader, who could not complain that his digestion was overtaxed by the choice morsels. If his pleasure in them prompted him to go to the entire poet quoted, in the hope of rioting gluttonously upon him, the reader was rightly served in one sense. In another, he was certainly not misserved or his time wasted. It would be hard for him to prove that he could have employed it more profitably.

Everybody, more or less, now sat up, and he who had the eye and ear of the table went on to remark that he had not meant to make a defence of the extinct school of quotational criticism. What he really meant to do was to suggest a way out of the present situation in which the new mult.i.tude of voracious readers were grossly feeding upon such intellectual husks as swine would not eat, and imagining themselves nourished by their fodder. There might be some person present who could improve upon his suggestion, but his notion, as he conceived it, was that something might be done in the line of quotational criticism to restore the great poets to the public favor, for he understood that good authors were now proportionately less read than they once were. He thought that a pity: and the rest of the company joined in asking him how he proposed to employ the quotational method for his purpose.

In answering he said that he would not go outside of the English cla.s.sics, and he would, for the present, deal only with the greatest of these. He took it for granted that those listening were all agreed that mankind would be advantaged in their minds or manners by a more or less familiar acquaintance with Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Burns, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Sh.e.l.ley, Keats, Tennyson, and Browning; he himself did not mind adding Scott to the list, whose poetry he found much better than his prose. To bring about an acquaintance which might very profitably ripen into intimacy, he would have each of these poets treated in the whole measure of his work as many or most of them had been topically or partially treated by the quotational critics. Some one here made him observe that he was laying out rather a large piece of work, and to this he answered, Not at all; the work had been already done. Asked then, somewhat derisively, why it need be done over again, he explained, with a modesty and patience which restored him to the regard he had lost by the derision (all had impartially united in it), that though the work had already been done, there needed some slight additions to it which would easily fit it to his purpose. He was not thinking of going in for one of those dreadful series of books which seemed the dismay alike of publisher and reader, and required rewriting of matter more than enough rewritten. In fact, he said, that for his purpose the writing was done fully and probably better than it could be done again, and it was only the reading and quoting that demanded editorial attention.

Another said he did not see how that could be, and the inventor of the brave scheme, which was still _in petto_, said that he would try to show him. We had, he contended, only too great riches in the criticisms of the poets open to our choice, but suppose we took Spenser and let Lowell introduce him to us. There would be needed a very brief biographical note, and then some able hand to intersperse the criticism with pa.s.sages from Spenser, or with amplifications of the existing quotations, such as would give a full notion of the poet's scope and quality. The story of each of his poems could be given in a few words, where the poems themselves could not be given even in part, and with the constant help of the critic the reader could be possessed of a luminous idea of the poet, such as he probably could not get by going to him direct, though this was not to be deprecated, but encouraged, after the preparatory acquaintance. The explanatory and ill.u.s.trative pa.s.sages could be interpolated in the text of the criticism without interrupting the critic, and something for Spenser might thus be done on the scale of what Addison did for Milton. It was known how those successive papers in the _Spectator_ had rehabilitated one of the greatest English poets, or, rather, rehabilitated the English public, and restored the poet and the public to each other. They formed almost an ideal body of criticism, and if they did not embody all that the reader need know of Milton, they embodied so much that he could no longer feel himself ignorant of Milton. In fact, they possessed him of a high degree of Miltonian culture, which was what one wanted to have with respect to any poet.

They might be extended with still greater quotation, and if something more yet were needed the essay on Milton which made Macaulay's reputation might be employed as a vessel to catch the overrunnings of the precious ichor.

Who could not wish to know the poetry of Keats as we already knew his life through the matchless essay of Lowell? That might be filled out with the most striking pa.s.sages of his poetry, simply let in at appropriate places, without breaking the flow of that high discourse, and forming a rich accompaniment which could leave no reader unpleasured or uninstructed. The pa.s.sages given from the poet need not be relevant to the text of the critic; they might be quite irrelevant and serve the imaginable end still better. For instance, some pa.s.sages might be given in the teeth of the critic, and made to gainsay what he had been saying.

This would probably send the reader, if he was very much perplexed, to the poet himself, which was the imaginable end. He might be disappointed one way or he might be disappointed the other way, but in the mean while he would have pa.s.sed his time, and he would have instructed if he had not amused himself.

It would be very interesting to take such a criticism as that of Lowell on Dryden and give not only the fine things from him, but the things that counted for the critic in his interesting contention that Dryden failed of being a prime poet because of the great weight of prose in him, and very good prose; or, as the critic charmingly put it, he had wings that helped him run along the ground, but did not enable him to fly. It would be most valuable for us to see how Dryden was a great literary man, but not one of the greatest poets, and yet must be ranked as a great poet. If the balance inclined now toward this opinion, and now against it, very possibly the reader would find himself impelled to turn to the poet's work, and again the imaginable end would be served.

A listener here asked why the talker went chiefly to Lowell for the ill.u.s.tration of his theory, and was frankly answered, For the same reason that he had first alluded to Leigh Hunt: because he had lately been reading him. It was not because he had not read any other criticism, or not that he entirely admired Lowell's; in fact, he often found fault with that. Lowell was too much a poet to be a perfect critic. He was no more the greatest sort of critic than Dryden was the greatest sort of poet. To turn his figure round, he had wings that lifted him into the air when he ought to be running along the ground.