Mystic London Part 9

First we had a bit of German in the shape of an extract from Kotzebue's "Die Schlaue Wittwe," or "Temperaments." I wish I had my programme, I would compliment by name the lad who played the charming young Frau.

Suffice it to say the whole thing went off sparkling like a firework. It was short, and made you wish for more--a great virtue in speeches and sermons. The dancing-master was perfect. Then came a bit of Colman's "Heir at Law." Dr. Pangloss--again I regret the absence of the programme--was a creation, and--notwithstanding the proximity of King's College to the Strand Theatre--the youth wisely abstained from copying even so excellent a model as Mr. Clarke. Of course, the bits of Latinity came out with a genuine scholastic ring. Then a bit of a Greek play, at which--mirabile dictu!--everybody laughed, and with which everybody was pleased. And why? Because the adjuncts of costume and properties added to the correct enunciation of the text, prevented even those, who knew little Latin and less Greek, from being one moment in the dark as to what was going on. The pa.s.sage was one from the "Birds" of Aristophanes; and the fact of a treaty being concluded between the Olympians and terrestrials, led to the introduction of some interpolations as to the Washington Treaty, which, when interpreted by the production of the American flag and English Union Jack, brought down thunders of applause.

The final chorus was sung to "Yankee Doodle," and accompanied by a fiddle. The acting and accessories were perfect; and what poor Robson used to term the "horgan" of Triballos, was wonderful. That youth would be a nice young man for a small tea party. It is to be hoped that, like Bottom the weaver, he can modulate his voice, and roar as gently as any sucking-dove.

Most wonderful, however, of all the marvels--that met me at my old school--was a scene from the "Critic," played by the most Lilliputian boys. Puff--played by Powell (I don't forget that name)--was simply marvellous. And yet Powell, if he will forgive me for saying so, was the merest whipper-snapper. Sir Christopher Hatton could scarcely have emerged from the nursery; and yet the idea of utter stolidity never found a better exponent than that same h.o.m.oeopathic boy.

Last of all came the conventional scene from Moliere's "L'Avare." Maitre Jacques was good; Harpagon more than good. I came away well satisfied, only regretting I had not brought my eldest boy to see it. My eldest boy! Egad, and I was just such as he is now, when I used to creep like a snail unwillingly to those scholastic shades. The spirit of Pangloss came upon me again as I thought of all I had seen that day,--there was nothing like it in my day. King's College keeps pace with the times.

"Tempora mutantur!" I mentally exclaimed; and added, not without a pleasant scepticism, as I gazed once more on the pippin-faced master, "I wonder whether--nos mutamur in illis?"

CHAPTER XXIX.

PSYCHOLOGICAL LADIES.

There is no doubt that the "Woman's Rights" question is going ahead with gigantic strides, not only in social and political, but also in intellectual matters. Boys and girls--or rather we ought to say young ladies and young gentlemen--are grouped together on the cla.s.s list of the Oxford Local Examination, irrespective of s.e.x. A glance at the daily papers will show us that women are being lectured to on all subjects down from physical sciences, through English literature and art, to the construction of the clavecin. We had fancied, however, that what are technically termed "the Humanities," or, in University diction, "Science"--meaning thereby ethics and logic--were still our own. Now, we are undeceived. We are reminded that woman can say, without a solecism, "h.o.m.o sum," and may therefore claim to embrace even the humanities among her subjects of study. Henceforth the realm of woman is not merely what may be called "pianofortecultural," as was once the case. It has soared even above art, literature, and science itself into what might at first sight appear the uncongenial spheres of dialectics and metaphysics.

Professor G. Croom Robertson recently commenced a course of thirty lectures to ladies on Psychology and Logic, at the Hall, 15, Lower Seymour Street, Portman Square. Urged, it may be, rather by a desire to see whether ladies would be attracted by such a subject, and, if so, what psychological ladies were like, than by any direct interest in the matters themselves, I applied to the hon. secretary, inquiring whether the inferior s.e.x were admissible; and was answered by a ticket admitting one's single male self and a party of ladies a discretion. The very entrance to the hall--nay, the populous street itself--removed my doubts as to whether ladies would be attracted by the subjects; and on entering I discovered that the audience consisted of several hundred ladies, and two unfortunate--or shall it not rather be said privileged?--members of the male s.e.x. The ladies were of all ages, evidently matrons as well as spinsters, with really nothing at all approaching a "blue stocking"

element; but all evidently bent on business. All were taking vigorous notes, and seemed to follow the Professor's somewhat difficult Scotch diction at least as well as our two selves, who appeared to represent not only the male s.e.x in general, but the London press in particular.

Professor Robertson commenced by a brief and well-timed reference to the accomplished Hypatia, familiar to ladies from Kingsley's novel--in the days when ladies used to read novels--and also the Royal ladies whom Descartes and Leibnitz found apter disciples than the savants. It was, however, he remarked, an impertinence to suppose that any apology was needed for introducing such subjects before ladies. He plunged therefore at once in medias res, and made his first lecture not a mere isolated or introductory one, but the actual commencement of his series. Unreasoned facts, he said, formed but a mere fraction of our knowledge--even the simplest processes resolving themselves into a chain of inference. Truth is the result of logical reasoning; and not only truth, but truth _for all_. The sciences deal with special aspects of truth. These sciences may be arranged in the order--1. Mathematics; 2. Physics; 3. Chemistry; 4. Biology--each gradually narrowing its sphere; the one enclosed, so to say, in the other, and each presupposing those above it. Logic was presupposed in all. Each might be expressed by a word ending in "logy,"

therefore logic might be termed the "science of sciences." The sciences were special applications of logic. Scientific men speak lightly of logic, and say truth can be discovered without it. This is true, but trivial. We may as well object to physiology because we can digest without a knowledge of it; or to arithmetic, because it is possible to reckon without it. Scientific progress has been great; but its course might have been strewn with fewer wrecks had its professors been more generally logicians. But then logic presupposes something else. We have to investigate the origin and growth of knowledge--the laws under which knowledge comes to be. Under one aspect this science--psychology--should be placed highest up in the scale; but under another it would rank later in point of development than even biology itself, because it is not every being that thinks. This twofold aspect is accounted for by the peculiarity of its subject-matter--viz., mind.

The sciences are comparatively modern. Mathematics but some 3000 or 4000 years old; physics, three centuries; chemistry, a thing of the last, biology only of the present century. But men philosophized before the sciences. The ancient Greeks had but one science--mathematics. Now men know a little of many sciences; but what we want is men to connect--to knit together--the sciences; to have their knowledge all of a piece. The knowledge of the ancient Greek directed his actions, and entered far more into his daily life than ours does. This, he observed, was philosophy. This is what we want now; and this is what is to be got from psychology. There is not a single thing between heaven and earth that does not admit of a mental expression; or, in other words, possess a subjective aspect, and therefore come under psychology.

This, in briefest outline, is a sketch of the "strong meat" offered to the psychological ladies. A single branch of psychology--that, namely, of the intellect, excluding that of feeling and action--is to occupy ten lectures, the above being number one. The other twenty will be devoted to logic.

The next lecture was devoted to an examination of the brain and nervous system, and their office in mental processes. Alas, however, how different was now the audience! Only some thirty ladies--scarcely more than one-tenth of those who were present at the opening lecture--have permanently entered for the course. It is no disrespect to the ladies to hazard the conjecture whether the subject be not a little out of range for the present. We are moving ahead rapidly, and many foolish ideas as to the intellectual differences of the s.e.xes are becoming obsolete. We have literary and artistic ladies by thousands. Scientific ladies, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, are coming well to the front.

Possibly we may have to "wait a little longer" before we get, on anything like a large scale, psychological or even logical ladies.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

SECULARISM ON BUNYAN.

It is very marvellous to observe the number of strange and unexpected combinations that are continually occurring in that moral kaleidoscope we call society. I do not suppose that I am exceptional in coming across these; nor do I use any particular industry in seeking them out. They come to me; all I do is to keep my eyes open, and note the impressions they make on me. I was humbly pursuing my way one Tuesday evening towards the abode of a phrenologist with the honest intention of discovering my craniological condition, when, in pa.s.sing down Castle Street, Oxford Market, I was made aware that Mr. G. J. Holyoake was there and then to deliver himself on the "Literary Genius of Bunyan."

This was one of the incongruous combinations I spoke of; and forthwith I pa.s.sed into the Co-operative Hall, resolving to defer my visit to the phrenologist. There are some facts of which it is better to remain contentedly ignorant; and I have no doubt my own mental condition belongs to that category.

I found the Co-operative Hall a handsome and commodious building; and a very fair audience had gathered to listen to Mr. Holyoake, who is an elderly thin-voiced man, and his delivery was much impeded on the occasion in question by the circ.u.mstance of his having a bad cold and cough. After a brief extempore allusion to the fact of the Duke of Bedford having erected a statue to Bunyan, which he regarded as a sort of compensation for his Grace ceasing to subscribe to the races, Mr.

Holyoake proceeded to read his treatise, which he had written on several slips of paper--apparently backs of circulars--and laid one by one on a chair as he finished them.

The world, he said, is a big place; but people are always forgetting what a variety of humanity it contains. Two hundred years ago, the authorities of Bedford made it very unpleasant for one John Bunyan, because they thought they knew everything, and could not imagine that a common street workman might know more. The trade of a tinker seems an unpromising preparation for a literary career. A tinker in Bedford to-day would not find himself much flattered by the attentions paid him, especially if he happened to be an old gaol-bird as well. So much the more creditable to Bunyan the ascendancy he gained. If he mended pots as well as he made sentences he was the best tinker that ever travelled.

Bunyan had no worldly notions. His doctrine was that men were not saved by any good they might do--a doctrine that would ruin the morals of any commercial establishment in a month! He declared himself the "chief of sinners;" but judged by his townsmen he was a stout-hearted, stout-minded, scrupulous man.

He was not a pleasant man to know. He had an unrelenting sincerity which often turned into severity. Yet he had much tenderness. He had a soul like a Red Indian's--all tomahawk and truth, until the literary pa.s.sion came and added humour to it. He demands in his vigorous doggerel:--

May I not write in such a style as this, In such a method, too, and yet not miss My end, thy good? Why may it not be done?

Dark clouds bring waters, when the bright bring none.

Like all men of original genius, this stout-minded pot-mender had unbounded confidence in himself. He was under no delusion as to his own powers. No man knew better what he was about. He could take the measure of all the justices about him, and he knew it. Every shallow-headed gentleman in Bedfordshire towns and villages was made to wince under his picturesque and satiric tongue. To clergymen, bishops, lawyers, and judges he gave names which all his neighbours knew. Mr. Pitiless, Mr.

Hardheart, Mr. Forget-good, Mr. No-truth, Mr. Haughty--thus he named the disagreeable dignitaries of the town of Mansoul.

At first he was regarded by his "pastors and masters" as a mere wilful, noisy, praying sectary. Very soon they discovered that he was a fighting preacher. As tinker or Christian he always had his sleeves turned up. When he had to try his own cause he put in the jury-box Mr.

True-Heart, Mr. Upright, Mr. Hate-Bad, Mr. See-Truth, and other amiable persons. His witnesses were Mr. Know-All, Mr. Tell-True, Mr. Hate-Lies, Mr. Vouch-Truth, Mr. Did-See. His Town Clerk was Mr. Do-Right, the Recorder was Mr. Conscience, the gaoler was Mr. True-Man, Lord Understanding was on the bench, and the Judge bears the dainty name of the "Golden-headed Prince."

Bunyan's adversaries are always a bad set. They live in Villain's Lane, in Blackmouth Street, or Blasphemer's Row, or Drunkard's Alley, or Rascal's Corner. They are the sons of one Beastly, whose mother bore them in Flesh Square: they live at the house of one Shameless, at the sign of the Reprobate, next door to the Descent into the Pit, whose retainers are Mr. Flatter, Mr. Impiety, Mr. False-Peace, Mr.

Covetousness, who are housed by one Mr. Simple, in Folly's Yard.

Bunyan had a perfect wealth of sectarian scurrility at his command. His epithets are at times unquotable and ferocious. When, however, his friends are at the bar, the witnesses against them comprise the choicest scoundrels of all time--Mr. Envy, Mr. Pick-thank, and others, whose friends are Lord Carnal-Delight, Lord Luxurious, Lord Lechery, Sir Having Greedy, and similar villanous people of quality. The Judge's name is now Lord Hate-Good. The Jury consist of Mr. No-Good, Mr. Malice, Mr. Love-l.u.s.t, Mr. Live-Loose, Mr. Heady, Mr. Hate-Light, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty, and Mr. Implacable, with Mr. Blindman for Foreman.

Never was such an infamous gang impanelled. Rancour and rage and vindictiveness, and every pa.s.sion awakened in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the strong by local insolence and legal injustice, is supplied by Bunyan with epithets of immense retaliative force. He is the greatest name-maker among authors. He was a spiritual Comanche. He prayed like a savage. He said himself, when describing the art of the religious rhetorician--an art of which he was the greatest master of his time:--

You see the ways the fisherman doth take To catch the fish; what engines doth he make!

Behold! how he engageth all his wits, Also his snares, lines, angles, hooks, and nets; Yet fish there be that neither hook nor line, Nor snare, nor net, nor engine can make thine; They must be grop'd for, and be tickled too, Or they will not be catch'd, whate'er you do.

Bunyan never tickled the sinner. It was not his way. He carried a p.r.o.ng.

He p.r.i.c.ked the erring. He published a pamphlet to suggest what ought to be done to holy pedestrians, whose difficulties lay rearward. He put detonating b.a.l.l.s under their feet which exploded as they stepped and alarmed them along. He lined the celestial road with horrors. If they turned their heads they saw a fiend worse than Lot's wife who was merely changed into a pillar of sweet all-preserving salt. Bunyan's unfortunate converts who looked back fell into a pit filled with fire, where they howled and burnt for evermore.

Ah! with what pleasure must the great Bedfordshire artist have contemplated his masterly pages as day by day he added to them the portrait of some new scoundrel, or painted with dexterous and loving hand the wholesome outlines of some honest man, or devised some new phrase which like a new note or new colour would delight singer or painter for generations yet to come. He must have strode proudly along his cell as he put his praise and his scorn into imperishable similes.

But Bunyan had never been great had he been merely disagreeable. He had infinite wit in him. It was his carnal genius that saved him. He wrote sixty books, and two of them--the "Siege of the Town of Mansoul" and the "Pilgrim's Progress"--exceed all ever written for creative swiftness of imagination, racy English speech, sentences of literary art, cunningness in dialogue, satire, ridicule, and surpa.s.sing knowledge of the picturesque ways of the obscure minds of common men. In his pages men rise out of the ground--they always come up on an open s.p.a.ce so that they can be seen. They talk naturally, so that you know them at once; and they act without delay, so that you never forget them. They surprise you, delight you, they interest you, they instruct you, and disappear. They never linger, they never weary you. Incidents new and strange arise at every step in his story. The scene changes like the men and their adventures. Now it is field or mora.s.s, plain or bypath, bog or volcano, castle or cottage, sandy scorching desert or cold river; the smoke of the bottomless pit or bright, verdant, delectable mountains and enchanted lands where there are no bishops, no gaols, and no tinkers; where aboundeth grapes, calico, brides, eternal conversation, and trumpets. The great magician's genius forsakes him when he comes to the unknown regions, and he knoweth no more than the rest of us. But while his foot is on the earth he steps like a king among writers. His Christian is no fool. He is cunning of fence, suspicious, sagacious, witty, satirical, abounding in invective, and broad, bold, delicious insolence. Bye-Ends is a subtle, evasive knave drawn with infinite skill.

Had Bunyan merely preached the Gospel he had no more been remembered than thousands of his day who are gratefully forgotten--had he prayed to this time he had won no statue; but his literary genius lives when the preacher is very dead.

He saw with such vividness that the very pa.s.sions and wayward moods of men stood apart and distinct in his sight, and he gave names to them and endowed them with their natural speech. He created new men out of characteristics of mind, and sent them into the world in shapes so defined and palpable that men know them for evermore. It was the way of his age for writers to give names to their adversaries. Bunyan imitated this in his life of Mr. Badman. Others did this, but Bunyan did it better than any man. His invention was marvellous, and he had besides the faculty of the dramatist.

If any man wrote the adventures of a Co-operator, he would have to tell of his meeting with Mr. Obstinate, who will not listen to him, and wants to pull him back. We all get the company of Mr. Pliable, who is persuaded without being convinced, who at the first splash into difficulty crawls out and turns back with a cowardly adroitness. We have all encountered the stupidity of Mr. Ignorance, which nothing can enlighten. We know Mr. Turnaway, who comes from the town of Apostacy, whose face we cannot perfectly see. Others merely gave names, he drew characters, he made the qualities of his men speak; you knew them by their minds better than by their dress. That is why succeeding ages have read the "Pilgrim's Progress," because the same people who met that extraordinary traveller are always turning up in the way of every man who has a separate and a high purpose, and is bent upon carrying it out.

Manners change, but humanity has still its old ways. It is because Bunyan painted these that his writing lasts like a picture by one of the old masters who painted for all time.

Such is an outline of the paper, which was interesting from its a.s.sociations, and only spoilt by the cough. We had had Bunyan in pretty well every shape possible during the last few weeks. Certainly one of the most original is this which presents the man of unbounded faith in the light of utter scepticism.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

AL FRESCO INFIDELITY.

In a series of papers like the present it is necessary, every now and then, to pause and apologize, either for the nature of the work in general, or for certain particulars in its execution calculated to shock good people whose feelings one would wish to respect. Having so long been engaged in the study of infidelity in London, I may, perhaps, be permitted to speak with something like authority in the matter; and I have no hesitation in saying that I believe the policy of shirking the subject is the most fatal and foolish one that could be adopted. Not only does such a course inspire people, especially young people, with the idea that there is something very fascinating in infidelity--something which, if allowed to meet their gaze, would be sure to attract and convince them--than which nothing is farther from the truth--not only so, however, but many of the statements and most of the arguments which sound plausibly enough on the glib tongue of a popular speaker read very differently indeed, when put down in cold-blooded letter-press, and published in the pages of a book. I protest strongly against making a mystery of London infidelity. It has spread and is spreading, I know, and it is well the public should know; but I believe there would be no such antidote to it as for people to be fully made aware how and where it is spreading. That is the role I have all along proposed to myself: not to declaim against any man or any system, not to depreciate or disguise the truth, but simply to describe. I cannot imagine a more legitimate method of doing my work.

I suppose no one will regard it in any way as an indulgence or a luxury on the part of a clergyman, who be it remembered, is, during a portion of the Sunday, engaged in ministering to Christian people, that he should devote another portion of that day to hearing Christ vilified, and having his own creed torn to pieces. I myself feel that my own belief is not shaken, but in a tenfold degree confirmed by all I have heard and seen and written of infidelity; and therefore I cannot concede the principle that to convey my experiences to others is in any way dangerous. Take away the halo of mystery that surrounds this subject, and it would possess very slender attractions indeed.

It was, for instance, on what has always appeared to me among the most affecting epochs of our Christian year, the Fifth Sunday after Easter--Christ's last Sunday upon earth--that, by one of those violent ant.i.theses, I went to Gibraltar Walk, Bethnal Green Road, to hear Mr.