If, then, America is something vastly more than has hitherto been understood by the word nation, it is proper that we attach to that other word, patriotism, a significance broader and loftier than has been conceived till now. By so much as the idea that we represent is great, by so much are we, in comparison with it, inevitably chargeable with littleness and short-comings. For we are of the same flesh and blood as our neighbors; it is only our opportunities and our responsibilities that are fairer and weightier than theirs. Circumstances afford every excuse to them, but none to us. "E Pluribus Unum" is a frivolous motto; our true one should be, "Noblesse oblige." But, with a strange perversity, in all matters of comparison between ourselves and others, we display what we are pleased to call our patriotism by an absurd touchiness as to points wherein Europe, with its settled and polished civilization, must needs be our superior; and are quite indifferent about those things by which our real strength is constituted. Can we not be content to learn from Europe the graces, the refinements, the amenities of life, so long as we are able to teach her life itself? For my part, I never saw in England any appurtenance of civilization, calculated to add to the convenience and commodiousness of existence, that did not seem to me to surpass anything of the kind that we have in this country. Notwithstanding which—and I am far, indeed, from having any pretensions to asceticism—I would have been fairly stifled at the idea of having to spend my life there. No American can live in Europe, unless he means to return home, or unless, at any rate, he returns here in mind, in hope, in belief. For an American to accept England, or any other country, as both a mental and physical finality, would, it seems to me, be tantamount to renouncing his very life. To enjoy English comforts at the cost of adopting English opinions, would be about as pleasant as to have the privilege of retaining one's body on condition of surrendering one's soul, and would, indeed, amount to just about the same thing.

I fail, therefore, to feel any apprehension as to our literature becoming Europeanized, because whatever is American in it must lie deeper than anything European can penetrate. More than that, I believe and hope that our novelists will deal with Europe a great deal more, and a great deal more intelligently, than they have done yet. It is a true and healthy artistic instinct that leads them to do so. Hawthorne—and no American writer had a better right than he to contradict his own argument—says, in the preface to the "Marble Faun," in a passage that has been often quoted, but will bear repetition:—

"Italy, as the site of a romance, was chiefly valuable to him as < affording a sort of poetic or fairy precinct, where actualities would not be so terribly insisted on as they are, and must needs be, in America. No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, n mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land. It will be very long, I trust, before romance writers may find congenial and easily handled themes, either in the annals of our stalwart Republic, or in any characteristic and probable events of our individual lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers, need ruin to make them grow."

Now, what is to be understood from this passage? It assumes, in the first place, that a work of art, in order to be effective, must contain profound contrasts of light and shadow; and then it points out that the shadow, at least, is found ready to the hand in Europe. There is no hint of patriotic scruples as to availing one's self of such a "picturesque and gloomy" background; if it is to be had, then let it be taken; the main object to be considered is the work of art. Europe, in short, afforded an excellent quarry, from which, in Hawthorne's opinion, the American novelist might obtain materials which are conspicuously deficient in his own country, and which that country is all the better for not possessing. In the "Marble Faun" the author had conceived a certain idea, and he considered that he had been not unsuccessful in realizing it. The subject was new, and full of especial attractions to his genius, and it would manifestly have been impossible to adapt it to an American setting. There was one drawback connected with it, and this Hawthorne did not fail to recognize. He remarks in the preface that he had "lived too long abroad not to be aware that a foreigner seldom acquires that knowledge of a country at once flexible and profound, which may justify him in endeavoring to idealize its traits." But he was careful not to attempt "a portraiture of Italian manners and character." He made use of the Italian scenery and atmosphere just so far as was essential to the development of his idea, and consistent with the extent of his Italian knowledge; and, for the rest, fell back upon American characters and principles. The result has been long enough before the world to have met with a proper appreciation. I have heard regret expressed that the power employed by the author in working out this story had not been applied to a romance dealing with a purely American subject. But to analyze this objection is to dispose of it. A man of genius is not, commonly, enfeebled by his own productions; and, physical accidents aside, Hawthorne was just as capable of writing another "Scarlet Letter" after the "Marble Faun" was published, as he had been before. Meanwhile, few will deny that our literature would be a loser had the "Marble Faun" never been written.

The drawback above alluded to is, however, not to be underrated. It may operate in two ways. In the first place, the American's European observations may be inaccurate. As a child, looking at a sphere, might suppose it to be a flat disc, shaded at one side and lighted at the other, so a sightseer in Europe may ascribe to what he beholds qualities and a character quite at variance with what a more fundamental knowledge would have enabled him to perceive. In the second place, the stranger in a strange land, be he as accurate as he may, will always tend to look at what is around him objectively, instead of allowing it subjectively—or, as it were, unconsciously—to color his narrative. He will be more apt directly to describe what he sees, than to convey the feeling or aroma of it without description. It would doubtless, for instance, be possible for Mr. Henry James to write an "English" or even a "French" novel without falling into a single technical error; but it is no less certain that a native writer, of equal ability, would treat the same subject in a very different manner. Mr. James's version might contain a great deal more of definite information; but the native work would insinuate an impression which both comes from and goes to a greater depth of apprehension.

But, on the other hand, it is not contended that any American should write an "English" or anything but an "American" novel. The contention is, simply, that he should not refrain from using foreign material, when it happens to suit his exigencies, merely because it is foreign. Objective writing may be quite as good reading as subjective writing, in its proper place and function. In fiction, no more than elsewhere, may a writer pretend to be what he is not, or to know what he knows not. When he finds himself abroad, he must frankly admit his situation; and more will not then be required of him than he is fairly competent to afford. It will seldom happen, as Hawthorne intimates, that he can successfully reproduce the inner workings and philosophy of European social and political customs and peculiarities; but he can give a picture of the scenery as vivid as can the aborigine, or more so; he can make an accurate study of personal native character; and, finally, and most important of all, he can make use of the conditions of European civilization in events, incidents, and situations which would be impossible on this side of the water. The restrictions, the traditions, the law, and the license of those old countries are full of suggestions to the student of character and circumstances, and supply him with colors and effects that he would else search for in vain. For the truth may as well be admitted; we are at a distinct disadvantage, in America, in respect of the materials of romance. Not that vigorous, pathetic, striking stories may not be constructed here; and there is humor enough, the humor of dialect, of incongruity of character; but, so far as the story depends for its effect, not upon psychical and personal, but upon physical and general events and situations, we soon feel the limit of our resources. An analysis of the human soul, such as may be found in the "House of the Seven Gables," for instance, is absolute in its interest, apart from outward conditions. But such an analysis cannot be carried on, so to say, in vacuo. You must have solid ground to stand on; you must have fitting circumstances, background, and perspective. The ruin of a soul, the tragedy of a heart, demand, as a necessity of harmony and picturesque effect, a corresponding and conspiring environment and stage—just as, in music, the air in the treble is supported and reverberated by the bass accompaniment. The immediate, contemporary act or predicament loses more than half its meaning and impressiveness if it be re-echoed from no sounding-board in the past—its notes, however sweetly and truly touched, fall flatly on the ear. The deeper we attempt to pitch the key of an American story, therefore, the more difficulty shall we find in providing a congruous setting for it; and it is interesting to note how the masters of the craft have met the difficulty. In the "Seven Gables"—and I take leave to say that if I draw illustrations from this particular writer, it is for no other reason than that he presents, more forcibly than most, a method of dealing with the special problem we are considering—Hawthorne, with the intuitive skill of genius, evolves a background, and produces a reverberation, from materials which he may be said to have created almost as much as discovered. The idea of a house, founded two hundred years ago upon a crime, remaining ever since in possession of its original owners, and becoming the theatre, at last, of the judgment upon that crime, is a thoroughly picturesque idea, but it is thoroughly un-American. Such a thing might conceivably occur, but nothing in this country could well be more unlikely. No one before Hawthorne had ever thought of attempting such a thing; at all events, no one else, before or since, has accomplished it. The preface to the romance in question reveals the principle upon which its author worked, and incidentally gives a new definition of the term "romance,"—a definition of which, thus far, no one but its propounder has known how to avail himself. It amounts, in fact, to an acknowledgment that it is impossible to write a "novel" of American life that shall be at once artistic, realistic, and profound. A novel, he says, aims at a "very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience." A romance, on the other hand, "while, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart, has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer's own choosing or creation. If he think fit, also, he may so manage his atmospherical medium as to bring out and mellow the lights, and deepen and enrich the shadows, of the picture." This is good advice, no doubt, but not easy to follow. We can all understand, however, that the difficulties would be greatly lessened could we but command backgrounds of the European order. Thackeray, the Brontes, George Eliot, and others have written great stories, which did not have to be romances, because the literal conditions of life in England have a picturesqueness and a depth which correspond well enough with whatever moral and mental scenery we may project upon them. Hawthorne was forced to use the scenery and capabilities of his native town of Salem. He saw that he could not present these in a realistic light, and his artistic instinct showed him that he must modify or veil the realism of his figures in the same degree and manner as that of his accessories. No doubt, his peculiar genius and temperament eminently qualified him to produce this magical change; it was a remarkable instance of the spontaneous marriage, so to speak, of the means to the end; and even when, in Italy, he had an opportunity to write a story which should be accurate in fact, as well as faithful to "the truth of the human heart," he still preferred a subject which bore to the Italian environment the same relation that the "House of the Seven Gables" and the "Scarlet Letter" do to the American one; in other words, the conception of Donatello is removed as much further than Clifford or Hester Prynne from literal realism as the inherent romance of the Italian setting is above that of New England. The whole thing is advanced a step further towards pure idealism, the relative proportions being maintained.

"The Blithedale Romance" is only another instance in point, and here, as before, we find the principle admirably stated in the preface. "In the old countries," says Hawthorne, "a novelist's work is not put exactly side by side with nature; and he is allowed a license with regard to everyday probability, in view of the improved effects he is bound to produce thereby. Among ourselves, on the contrary, there is as yet no Faery Land, so like the real world that, in a suitable remoteness, we cannot well tell the difference, but with an atmosphere of strange enchantment, beheld through which the inhabitants have a propriety of their own. This atmosphere is what the American romancer needs. In its absence, the beings of his imagination are compelled to show themselves in the same category as actually living mortals; a necessity that renders the paint and pasteboard of their composition but too painfully discernible." Accordingly, Hawthorne selects the Brook Farm episode (or a reflection of it) as affording his drama "a theatre, a little removed from the highway of ordinary travel, where the creatures of his brain may play their phantasmagorical antics, without exposing them to too close a comparison with the actual events of real lives." In this case, therefore, an exceptional circumstance is made to answer the same purpose that was attained by different means in the other romances.

But in what manner have our other writers of fiction treated the difficulties that were thus dealt with by Hawthorne?—Herman Melville cannot be instanced here; for his only novel or romance, whichever it be, was also the most impossible of all his books, and really a terrible example of the enormities which a man of genius may perpetrate when working in a direction unsuited to him. I refer, of course, to "Pierre, or the Ambiguities." Oliver Wendell Holmes's two delightful stories are as favorable examples of what can be done, in the way of an American novel, by a wise, witty, and learned gentleman, as we are likely to see. Nevertheless, one cannot avoid the feeling that they are the work of a man who has achieved success and found recognition in other ways than by stories, or even poems and essays. The interest, in either book, centres round one of those physiological phenomena which impinge so strangely upon the domain of the soul; for the rest, they are simply accurate and humorous portraitures of local dialects and peculiarities, and thus afford little assistance in the search for a universally applicable rule of guidance. Doctor Holmes, I believe, objects to having the term "medicated" applied to his tales; but surely the adjective is not reproachful; it indicates one of the most charming and also, alas! inimitable features of his work.

Bret Harte is probably as valuable a witness as could be summoned in this case. His touch is realistic, and yet his imagination is poetic and romantic. He has discovered something. He has done something both new and good. Within the space of some fifty pages, he has painted a series of pictures which will last as long as anything in the fifty thousand pages of Dickens. Taking "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" as perhaps the most nearly perfect of the tales, as well as the most truly representative of the writer's powers, let us try to guess its secret. In the first place, it is very short,—a single episode, succinctly and eloquently told. The descriptions of scenery and persons are masterly and memorable. The characters of these persons, their actions, and the circumstances of their lives, are as rugged, as grotesque, as terrible, and also as beautiful, as the scenery. Thus an artistic harmony is established,—the thing which is lacking in so much of our literature. The story moves swiftly on, through humor, pathos, and tragedy, to its dramatic close. It is given with perfect literary taste, and naught in its phases of human nature is either extenuated or set down in malice. The little narrative can be read in a few minutes, and can never be forgotten. But it is only an episode; and it is an episode of an episode,—that of the Californian gold-fever. The story of the Argonauts is only one story, after all, and these tales of Harte's are but so many facets of the same gem. They are not, however, like chapters in a romance; there is no such vital connection between them as develops a cumulative force. We are no more impressed after reading half a dozen of them than after the first; they are variations of the same theme. They discover to us no new truth about human nature; they only show us certain human beings so placed as to act out their naked selves,—to be neither influenced nor protected by the rewards and screens of conventional civilization. The affectation and insincerity of our daily life make such a spectacle fresh and pleasing to us. But we enjoy it because of its unexpectedness, its separateness, its unlikeness to the ordinary course of existence. It is like a huge, strange, gorgeous flower, an exaggeration and intensification of such flowers as we know; but a flower without roots, unique, never to be reproduced. It is fitting that its portrait should be painted; but, once done, it is done with; we cannot fill our picture-gallery with it. Carlyle wrote the History of the French Revolution, and Bret Harte has written the History of the Argonauts; but it is absurd to suppose that a national literature could be founded on either episode.

But though Mr. Harte has not left his fellow-craftsmen anything to gather from the lode which he opened and exhausted, we may still learn something from his method. He took things as he found them, and he found them disinclined to weave themselves into an elaborate and balanced narrative. He recognized the deficiency of historical perspective, but he saw that what was lost in slowly growing, culminating power was gained in vivid, instant force. The deeds of his character could not be represented as the final result of long-inherited proclivities; but they could appear between their motive and their consequence, like the draw—aim—fire! of the Western desperado,—as short, sharp, and conclusive. In other words, the conditions of American life, as he saw it, justified a short story, or any number of them, but not a novel; and the fact that he did afterwards attempt a novel only served to confirm his original position. I think that the limitation that he discovered is of much wider application than we are prone to realize. American life has been, as yet, nothing but a series of episodes, of experiments. There has been no such thing as a fixed and settled condition of society, not subject to change itself, and therefore affording a foundation and contrast to minor or individual vicissitudes. We cannot write American-grown novels, because a novel is not an episode, nor an aggregation of episodes; we cannot write romances in the Hawthorne sense, because, as yet, we do not seem to be clever enough. Several courses are, however, open to us, and we are pursuing them all. First, we are writing "short stories," accounts of episodes needing no historical perspective, and not caring for any; and, so far as one may judge, we write the best short stories in the world. Secondly, we may spin out our short stories into long-short stories, just as we may imagine a baby six feet high; it takes up more room, but is just as much a baby as one of twelve inches. Thirdly, we may graft our flower of romance on a European stem, and enjoy ourselves as much as the European novelists do, and with as clear a conscience. We are stealing that which enriches us and does not impoverish them. It is silly and childish to make the boundaries of the America of the mind coincide with those of the United States. We need not dispute about free trade and protection here; literature is not commerce, nor is it politics. America is not a petty nationality, like France, England, and Germany; but whatever in such nationalities tends toward enlightenment and freedom is American. Let us not, therefore, confirm ourselves in a false and ignoble conception of our meaning and mission in the world. Let us not carry into the temple of the Muse the jealousies, the prejudice, the ignorance, the selfishness of our "Senate" and "Representatives," strangely so called! Let us not refuse to breathe the air of Heaven, lest there be something European or Asian in it. If we cannot have a national literature in the narrow, geographical sense of the phrase, it is because our inheritance transcends all geographical definitions. The great American novel may not be written this year, or even in this century. Meanwhile, let us not fear to ride, and ride to death, whatever species of Pegasus we can catch. It can do us no harm, and it may help us to acquire a firmer seat against the time when our own, our very own winged steed makes his appearance.



CHAPTER IV.

LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN.

Literature is that quality in books which affords delight and nourishment to the soul. But this is a scientific and skeptical age, insomuch that one hardly ventures to take for granted that every reader will know what his soul is. It is not the intellect, though it gives the intellect light; nor the emotions, though they receive their warmth from it. It is the most catholic and constant element of human nature, yet it bears no direct part in the practical affairs of life; it does not struggle, it does not even suffer; but merely emerges or retires, glows or congeals, according to the company in which it finds itself. We might say that the soul is a name for man's innate sympathy with goodness and truth in the abstract; for no man can have a bad soul, though his heart may be evil, or his mind depraved, because the soul's access to the mind or heart has been so obstructed as to leave the moral consciousness cold and dark. The soul, in other words, is the only conservative and peacemaker; it affords the only unalterable ground upon which all men can always meet; it unselfishly identifies or unites us with our fellows, in contradistinction to the selfish intellect, which individualizes us and sets each man against every other. Doubtless, then, the soul is an amiable and desirable possession, and it would be a pity to deprive it of so much encouragement as may be compatible with due attention to the serious business of life. For there are moments, even in the most active careers, when it seems agreeable to forget competition, rivalry, jealousy; when it is a rest to think of one's self as a man rather than a person;—moments when time and place appear impertinent, and that most profitable which affords least palpable profit. At such seasons, a man looks inward, or, as the American poet puts it, he loafs and invites his soul, and then he is at a disadvantage if his soul, in consequence of too persistent previous neglect, declines to respond to the invitation, and remains immured in that secret place which, as years pass by, becomes less and less accessible to so many of us.

When I say that literature nourishes the soul, I implicitly refuse the title of literature to anything in books that either directly or indirectly promotes any worldly or practical use. Of course, what is literature to one man may be anything but literature to another, or to the same man under different circumstances; Virgil to the schoolboy, for instance, is a very different thing from the Virgil of the scholar. But whatever you read with the design of improving yourself in some profession, or of acquiring information likely to be of advantage to you in any pursuit or contingency, or of enabling yourself to hold your own with other readers, or even of rendering yourself that enviable nondescript, a person of culture,—whatever, in short, is read with any assignable purpose whatever, is in so far not literature. The Bible may be literature to Mr. Matthew Arnold, because he reads it for fun; but to Luther, Calvin, or the pupils of a Sunday-school, it is essentially something else. Literature is the written communications of the soul of mankind with itself; it is liable to appear in the most unexpected places, and in the oddest company; it vanishes when we would grasp it, and appears when we look not for it. Chairs of literature are established in the great universities, and it is literature, no doubt, that the professor discourses; but it ceases to be literature before it reaches the student's ear; though, again, when the same students stumble across it in the recesses of their memory ten or twenty years later, it may have become literature once more. Finally, literature may, upon occasion, avail a man more than the most thorough technical information; but it will not be because it supplements or supplants that information, but because it has so tempered and exalted his general faculty that whatever he may do is done more clearly and comprehensively than might otherwise be the case.

Having thus, in some measure, considered what is literature and what the soul, let us note, further, that the literature proper to manhood is not proper to childhood, though the reverse is not—or, at least, never ought to be—true. In childhood, the soul and the mind act in harmony; the mind has not become preoccupied or sophisticated by so-called useful knowledge; it responds obediently to the soul's impulses and intuitions. Children have no morality; they have not yet descended to the level where morality suggests itself to them. For morality is the outcome of spiritual pride, the most stubborn and insidious of all sins; the pride which prompts each of us to declare himself holier than his fellows, and to support that claim by parading his docility to the Decalogue. Docility to any set of rules, no matter of how divine authority, so long as it is inspired by hope of future good or present advantage, is rather worse than useless: except our righteousness exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees,—that is, except it be spontaneous righteousness or morality, and, therefore, not morality, but unconscious goodness,—we shall in no wise have benefited either ourselves or others. Children, when left to themselves, artlessly and innocently act out the nature that is common to saint and sinner alike; they are selfish, angry, and foolish, because their state is human; and they are loving, truthful, and sincere, because their origin is divine. All that pleases or agrees with them is good; all that opposes or offends them is evil, and this, without any reference whatever to the moral code in vogue among their elders. But, on the other hand, children cannot be tempted as we are, because they suppose that everything is free and possible, and because they are as yet uncontaminated by the artificial cravings which the artificial prohibitions incident to our civilization create. Life is to them a constantly widening circle of things to be had and enjoyed; nor does it ever occur to them that their desires can conflict with those of others, or with the laws of the universe. They cannot consciously do wrong, nor understand that any one else can do so; untoward accidents may happen, but inanimate nature is just as liable to be objectionable in this respect as human beings: the stone that trips them up, the thorn that scratches them, the snow that makes their flesh tingle, is an object of their resentment in just the same kind and degree as are the men and women who thwart or injure them. But of duty—that dreary device to secure future reward by present suffering; of conscientiousness—that fear of present good for the sake of future punishment; of remorse—that disavowal of past pleasure for fear of the sting in its tail; of ambition—that begrudging of all honorable results that are not effected by one's self; of these, and all similar politic and arbitrary masks of self-love and pusillanimity, these poor children know and suspect nothing. Yet their eyes are much keener than ours, for they see through the surface of nature and perceive its symbolism; they see the living reality, of which nature is the veil, and are continually at fault because this veil is not, after all, the reality,—because it is fixed and unplastic. The "deep mind of dauntless infancy" is, in fact, the only revelation we have, except divine revelation itself, of that pure and natural life of man which we dream of, and liken to heaven; but we, nevertheless, in our penny-wise, pound-foolish way, insist upon regarding it as ignorance, and do our best, from the earliest possible moment, to disenchant and dispel it. We call the outrage education, understanding thereby the process of exterminating in the child the higher order of faculties and the intuitions, and substituting for them the external memory, timidity, self-esteem, and all that armament of petty weapons and defences which may enable us to get the better of our fellow-creatures in this world, and receive the reward of our sagacity in the next. The success of our efforts is pitiably complete; for though the child, if fairly engaged in single combat, might make a formidable resistance against the infliction of "lessons," it cannot long withstand our crafty device of sending it to a place where it sees a score or a hundred of little victims like itself, all being driven to the same Siberia. The spirit of emulation is aroused, and lo! away they all scamper, each straining its utmost to reach the barren goal ahead of all competitors. So do we make the most ignoble passions of our children our allies in the unholy task of divesting them of their childhood. And yet, who is not aware that the best men the world has seen have been those who, throughout their lives, retained the aroma of childlike simplicity which they brought with them into existence? Learning—the acquisition of specific facts—is not wisdom; it is almost incompatible with wisdom; indeed, unless the mind be powerful enough not only to fuse its facts, but to vaporize them,—to sublimate them into an impalpable atmosphere,—they will stand in wisdom's way. Wisdom comes from the pondering and the application to life of certain truths quite above the sphere of facts, and of infinitely more moment and less complexity,—truths which are often found to be in accordance with the spiritual instinct called intuition, which children possess more fully than grown persons. The wisdom of our children would often astonish us, if we would only forbear the attempt to make them knowing, and submissively accept instruction from them. Through all the imperfection of their inherited infirmity, we shall ever and anon be conscious of the radiance of a beautiful, unconscious intelligence, worth more than the smartness of schools and the cleverness of colleges. But no; we abhor the very notion of it, and generally succeed in extinguishing it long before the Three R's are done with.

And yet, by wisely directing the child's use of the first of the Three, much of the ill effects of the trio and their offspring might be counteracted. If we believed—if the great mass of people known as the civilized world did actually and livingly believe—that there was really anything beyond or above the physical order of nature, our children's literature, wrongly so called, would not be what it is. We believe what we can see and touch; we teach them to believe the same, and, not satisfied with that, we sedulously warn them not to believe anything else. The child, let us suppose, has heard from some unauthorized person that there are fairies—little magical creatures an inch high, up to all manner of delightful feats. He comprehends the whole matter at half a word, feels that he had known it already, and half thinks that he sees one or two on his way home. He runs up to his mother and tells her about it; and has she ever seen fairies? Alas! His mother tells him that the existence of such a being as a fairy is impossible. In old times, when the world was very ignorant and superstitious, they used to ascribe everything that happened to supernatural agency; even the trifling daily accidents of one's life, such as tumbling down stairs, or putting the right shoe on the left foot, were thought or fancied to be the work of some mysterious power; and since ignorant people are very apt to imagine they see what they believe [proceeds this mother] instead of only believing what they see; and since, furthermore, ignorance disposes to exaggeration and thus to untruth, these people ended by asserting that they saw fairies. "Now, my child," continues the parent, "it would grieve me to see you the victim of such folly. Do not read fairy stories. They are not true to life; they fill your mind with idle notions; they cannot form your understanding, or aid you to do your work in the world. If you should happen to fall in with such fables, be careful as you read to bear in mind that they are pure inventions—pretty, sometimes, perhaps, but essentially frivolous, if not immoral. You have, however, thanks to the enlightened enterprise of writers and publishers, an endless assortment of juvenile books and periodicals which combine legitimate amusement with sound and trustworthy instruction. Here are stories about little children, just like yourself, who talk and act just as you do, and to whom nothing supernatural or outlandish ever happens; and whose adventures, when you have read them, convey to you some salutary moral lesson. What more can you want? Yes, very likely 'Grimm's Tales' and 'The Arabian Nights' may seem more attractive; but in this world many harmful things put on an inviting guise, which deceives the inexperienced eye. May my child remember that all is not gold that glitters, and desire, not what is diverting merely, but what is useful and ... and conventional!"

Let us admit that, things being as they are, it is necessary to develop the practical side of the child's nature, to ground him in moral principles, and to make him comprehend and fear—nominally God, but really—society. But why, in addition to doing this, should we strangle the unpractical side of his nature,—the ideal, imaginative, spiritual side,—the side which alone can determine his value or worthlessness in eternity? If our minds were visible as our bodies are, we should behold on every side of us, and in our own private looking-glasses, such abortions, cripples, and monstrosities as all the slums of Europe and the East could not parallel. We pretend to make little men and women out of our children, and we make little dwarfs and hobgoblins out of them. Moreover, we should not diminish even the practical efficiency of the coming generation by rejecting their unpractical side. Whether this boy's worldly destination be to clean a stable or to represent his country at a foreign court, he will do his work all the better, instead of worse, for having been allowed freedom of expansion on the ideal plane. He will do it comprehensively, or as from above downward, instead of blindly, or as from below upward. To a certain extent, this position is very generally admitted by instructors nowadays; but the admission bears little or no fruit. The ideality and imagination which they have in mind are but a partial and feeble imitation of what is really signified by those terms. Ideality and imagination are themselves merely the symptom or expression of the faculty and habit of spiritual or subjective intuition—a faculty of paramount value in life, though of late years, in the rush of rational knowledge and discovery, it has fallen into neglect. But it is by means of this faculty alone that the great religion of India was constructed—the most elaborate and seductive of all systems; and although as a faith Buddhism is also the most treacherous and dangerous attack ever made upon the immortal welfare of mankind, that circumstance certainly does not discredit or invalidate the claim to importance of spiritual intuition itself. It may be objected that spiritual intuition is a vague term. It undoubtedly belongs to an abstruse region of psychology; but its meaning for our present purpose is simply the act of testing questions of the moral consciousness by an inward touchstone of truth, instead of by external experience or information. That the existence of such a touchstone should be ridiculed by those who are accustomed to depend for their belief upon palpable or logical evidence, goes without saying; but, on the other hand, there need be no collision or argument on the point, since no question with which intuition is concerned can ever present itself to persons who pin their faith to the other sort of demonstration. The reverse of this statement is by no means true; but it would lead us out of our present path to discuss the matter.

Assuming, however, that intuition is possible, it is evident that it should exist in children in an extremely pure, if not in its most potent state; and to deny it opportunity of development might fairly be called a barbarity. It will hardly be disputed that children are an important element in society. Without them we should lose the memory of our youth, and all opportunity for the exercise of unselfish and disinterested affection. Life would become arid and mechanical to a degree now scarcely conceivable; chastity and all the human virtues would cease to exist; marriage would be an aimless and absurd transaction; and the brotherhood of man, even in the nominal sense that it now exists, would speedily be abjured. Political economy and sociology neglect to make children an element in their arguments and deductions, and no small part of their error is attributable to that circumstance. But although children still are born, and all the world acknowledges their paramount moral and social value, the general tendency of what we are forced to call education at the present day is to shorten as much as possible the period of childhood. In America and Germany especially—but more in America than in Germany— children are urged and stimulated to "grow up" almost before they have been short-coated. That conceptions of order and discipline should be early instilled into them is proper enough; but no other order and discipline seems to be contemplated by educators than the forcing them to stand and be stuffed full of indigestible and incongruous knowledge, than which proceeding nothing more disorderly could be devised. It looks as if we felt the innocence and naturalness of our children to be a rebuke to us, and wished to do away with it in short order. There is something in the New Testament about offending the little ones, and the preferred alternative thereto; and really we are outraging not only the objective child, but the subjective one also—that in ourselves, namely, which is innocent and pure, and without which we had better not be at all. Now I do not mean to say that the only medicine that can cure this malady is legitimate children's literature; wise parents are also very useful, though not perhaps so generally available. My present contention is that the right sort of literature is an agent of great efficiency, and may be very easily come by. Children derive more genuine enjoyment and profit from a good book than most grown people are susceptible of: they see what is described, and themselves enact and perfect the characters of the story as it goes along.

Nor is it indispensable that literature of the kind required should forthwith be produced; a great deal, of admirable quality, is already on hand. There are a few great poems——Spenser's "Faerie Queene" is one— which no well regulated child should be without; but poetry in general is not exactly what we want. Children—healthy children—never have the poetic genius; but they are born mystics, and they have the sense of humor. The best way to speak to them is in prose, and the best kind of prose is the symbolic. The hermetic philosophers of the Middle Ages are probably the authors of some of the best children's stories extant. In these tales, disguised beneath what is apparently the simplest and most artless flow of narrative, profound truths are discussed and explained. The child reads the narrative, and certainly cannot be accused of comprehending the hidden philosophical problem; yet that also has its share in charming him. The reason is partly that true symbolic or figurative writing is the simplest form known to literature. The simplest, that is to say, in outward form,—it may be indefinitely abstruse as to its inward contents. Indeed, the very cause of its formal simplicity is its interior profundity. The principle of hermetic writing was, as we know, to disguise philosophical propositions and results under a form of words which should ostensibly signify some very ordinary and trivial thing. It was a secret language, in the vocabulary of which material facts are used to represent spiritual truths. But it differed from ordinary secret language in this, that not only were the truths represented in the symbols, but the philosophical development of the truth, in its ramifications, was completely evolved under the cover of a logically consistent tale. This, evidently, is a far higher achievement of ingenuity than merely to string together a series of unrelated parts of speech, which, on being tested by the "key," shall discover the message or information really intended. It is, in fact, a practical application of the philosophical discovery, made by or communicated to the hermetic philosophers, that every material object in nature answers to or corresponds with a certain one or group of philosophical truths. Viewed in this light, the science of symbols or of correspondences ceases to be an arbitrary device, susceptible of alteration according to fancy, and avouches itself an essential and consistent relation between the things of the mind and the things of the senses. There is a complete mental creation, answering to the material creation, not continuously evolved from it, but on a different or detached plane. The sun,—to take an example,—the source of light and heat, and thereby of physical nature, is in these fables always the symbol of God, of love and wisdom, by which the spirit of man is created. Light, then, answers to wisdom, and heat to love. And since all physical substances are the result of the combined action of light and heat, we may easily perceive how these hermetic sages were enabled to use every physical object as a cloak of its corresponding philosophical truth,—with no other liability to error than might result from the imperfect condition of their knowledge of physical laws.

To return, however, to the children, I need scarcely remark that the cause of children's taking so kindly to hermetic writing is that it is actually a living writing; it is alive in precisely the same way that nature, or man himself, is alive. Matter is dead; life organizes and animates it. And all writing is essentially dead which is a mere transcript of fact, and is not inwardly organized and vivified by a spiritual significance. Children do not know what it is that makes a human being smile, move, and talk; but they know that such a phenomenon is infinitely more interesting than a doll; and they prove it by themselves supplying the doll with speech and motions out of their own minds, so as to make it as much like a real person as possible. In the same way, they do not perceive the philosophical truth which is the cause of existence of the hermetic fable; but they find that fable far more juicy and substantial than the ordinary narrative of every-day facts, because, however fine the surface of the latter may be, it has, after all, nothing but its surface to recommend it. It has no soul; it is not alive; and, though they cannot explain why, they feel the difference between that thin, fixed grimace and the changing smile of the living countenance.

It would scarcely be practicable, however, to confine the children's reading to hermetic literature; for not much of it is extant in its pure state. But it is hardly too much to say that all fairy stories, and derivations from these, trace their descent from an hermetic ancestry. They are often unaware of their genealogy; but the sparks of that primal vitality are in them. The fairy is itself a symbol for the expression of a more complex and abstract idea; but, once having come into existence, and being, not a pure symbol, but a hybrid between the symbol and that for which it stands, it presently began an independent career of its own. The mediaeval imagination went to work with it, found it singularly and delightfully plastic to its touch and requirements, and soon made it the centre of a new and charming world, in which a whole army of graceful and romantic fancies, which are always in quest of an arena in which to disport themselves before the mind, found abundant accommodation and nourishment. The fairy land of mediaeval Christianity seems to us the most satisfactory of all fairy lands, probably because it is more in accord with our genius and prejudices than those of the East; and it fitted in so aptly with the popular mediaeval ignorance on the subject of natural phenomena, that it became actually an article of belief with the mass of men, who trembled at it while they invented it, in the most delicious imaginable state of enchanted alarm. All this is prime reading for children; because, though it does not carry an orderly spiritual meaning within it, it is more spiritual than material, and is constructed entirely according to the dictates of an exuberant and richly colored, but, nevertheless, in its own sphere, legitimate imagination. Indeed, fairy land, though as it were accidentally created, has the same permanent right to be that Beauty has; it agrees with a genuine aspect of human nature, albeit one much discountenanced just at present. The sequel to it, in which romantic human personages are accredited with fairy-like attributes, as in the "Faerie Queene," already alluded to, is a step in the wrong direction, but not a step long enough to carry us altogether outside of the charmed circle. The child's instinct of selection being vast and cordial,—he will make a grain of true imagination suffuse and glorify a whole acre of twaddle,—-we may with security leave him in that fantastic society. Moreover, some children being less imaginative than others, and all children being less imaginative in some moods and conditions than at other seasons, the elaborate compositions of Tasso, Cervantes, and the others, though on the boundary line between what is meat for babes and the other sort of meat, have also their abiding use.

The "Arabian Nights" introduced us to the domain of the Oriental imagination, and has done more than all the books of travel in the East to make us acquainted with the Asiatic character and its differences from our own. From what has already been said on the subject of spiritual intuition in relation to these races, one is prepared to find that all the Eastern literature that has any value is hermetic writing, and therefore, in so far, proper for children. But the incorrigible subtlety of the Oriental intellect has vitiated much of their symbology, and the sentiment of sheer wonder is stimulated rather than that of orderly imagination. To read the "Arabian Nights" or the "Bhagavad-Gita" is a sort of dissipation; upon the unhackneyed mind of the child it leaves a reactionary sense of depression. The life which it embodies is distorted, over-colored, and exciting; it has not the serene and balanced power of the Western productions. Moreover, these books were not written with the grave philosophic purpose that animated our own hermetic school; it is rather a sort of jugglery practised with the subject—-an exercise of ingenuity and invention for their own sake. It indicates a lack of the feeling of responsibility on the writers' part,—a result, doubtless, of the prevailing fatalism that underlies all their thought. It is not essentially wholesome, in short; but it is immeasurably superior to the best of the productions called forth by our modern notions of what should be given to children to read.

But I can do no more than touch upon this branch of the subject; nor will it be possible to linger long over the department of our own literature which came into being with "Robinson Crusoe." No theory as to children's books would be worth much attention which found itself obliged to exclude that memorable work. Although it submits in a certain measure to classification, it is almost sui generis; no book of its kind, approaching it in merit, has ever been written. In what, then, does its fascination consist? There is certainly nothing hermetic about it; it is the simplest and most studiously matter-of-fact narrative of events, comprehensible without the slightest effort, and having no meaning that is not apparent on the face of it. And yet children, and grown people also, read it again and again, and cannot find it uninteresting. I think the phenomenon may largely be due to the nature of the subject, which is really of primary and universal interest to mankind. It is the story of the struggle of man with wild and hostile nature,—in the larger sense an elementary theme,—his shifts, his failures, his perils, his fears, his hopes, his successes. The character of Robinson is so artfully generalized or universalized, and sympathy for him is so powerfully aroused and maintained, that the reader, especially the child reader, inevitably identifies himself with him, and feels his emotions and struggles as his own. The ingredient of suspense is never absent from the story, and the absence of any plot prevents us from perceiving its artificiality. It is, in fact, a type of the history of the human race, not on the higher plane, but on the physical one; the history of man's contest with and final victory over physical nature. The very simplicity and obviousness of the details give them grandeur and comprehensiveness: no part of man's character which his contact with nature can affect or develop is left untried in Robinson. He manifests in little all historical earthly experiences of the race; such is the scheme of the book; and its permanence in literature is due to the sobriety and veracity with which that scheme is carried out. To speak succinctly, it does for the body what the hermetic and cognate literature does for the soul; and for the healthy man, the body is not less important than the soul in its own place and degree. It is not the work of the Creator, but it is contingent upon creation.

But poor Robinson has been most unfortunate in his progeny, which at this day overrun the whole earth, and render it a worse wilderness than ever was the immortal Crusoe Island. Miss Edgeworth, indeed, might fairly pose as the most persistently malignant of all sources of error in the design of children's literature; but it is to be feared that it was Defoe who first made her aware of the availability of her own venom. She foisted her prim and narrow moral code upon the commonplace adventures of a priggish little boy and his companions; and straightway the whole dreary and disastrous army of sectarians and dogmatists took up the cry, and have been ringing the lugubrious changes on it ever since. There is really no estimating the mortal wrong that has been done to childhood by Maria Edgeworth's "Frank" and "The Parent's Assistant"; and, for my part, I derive a melancholy joy in availing myself of this opportunity to express my sense of my personal share in the injury. I believe that my affection for the human race is as genuine as the average; but I am sure it would have been greater had Miss Edgeworth never been born; and were I to come across any philosophical system whereby I could persuade myself that she belonged to some other order of beings than the human, I should be strongly tempted to embrace that system on that ground alone.

After what has been advanced in the preceding pages, it does not need that I should state how earnestly I deprecate the kind of literary food which we are now furnishing to the coming generation in such sinister abundance. I am sure it is written and published with good and honorable motives; but at the very best it can only do no harm. Moreover, however well intentioned, it is bad as literature; it is poorly conceived and written, and, what is worse, it is saturated with affectation. For an impression prevails that one needs to talk down to children;—to keep them constantly reminded that they are innocent, ignorant little things, whose consuming wish it is to be good and go to Sunday-school, and who will be all gratitude and docility to whomsoever provides them with the latest fashion of moral sugarplums; whereas, so far as my experience and information goes, children are the most formidable literary critics in the world. Matthew Arnold himself has not so sure an instinct for what is sound and good in a book as any intelligent little boy or girl of eight years old. They judge absolutely; they are hampered by no comparisons or relative considerations. They cannot give chapter and verse for their opinion; but about the opinion itself there is no doubt. They have no theories; they judge in a white light. They have no prejudices nor traditions; they come straight from the simple source of life. But, on the other hand, they are readily hocussed and made morbid by improper drugs, and presently, no doubt, lose their appetite for what is wholesome. Now, we cannot hope that an army of hermetic philosophers or Mother-Gooses will arise at need and remedy all abuses; but at least we might refrain from moralizing and instruction, and, if we can do nothing more, confine ourselves to plain stories of adventure, say, with no ulterior object whatever. There still remains the genuine literature of the past to draw upon; but let us beware, as we would of forgery and perjury, of serving it up, as has been done too often, medicated and modified to suit the foolish dogmatism of the moment. Hans Christian Andersen was the last writer of children's stories, properly so called; though, considering how well married to his muse he was, it is a wonder as well as a calamity that he left no descendants.



CHAPTER V.

THE MORAL AIM IN FICTION.

The producers of modern fiction, who have acquiesced more or less completely in the theory of art for art's sake, are not, perhaps, aware that a large class of persons still exist who hold fiction to be unjustifiable, save in so far as the author has it at heart not only (or chiefly) to adorn the tale, but also (and first of all) to point the moral. The novelist, in other words, should so mould the characters and shape the plot of his imaginary drama as to vindicate the wisdom and integrity of the Decalogue: if he fail to do this, or if he do the opposite of this, he deserves not the countenance of virtuous and God- fearing persons.

Doubtless it should be evident to every sane and impartial mind, whether orthodox or agnostic, that an art which runs counter to the designs of God toward the human race, or to the growth of the sentiment of universal human brotherhood, must sooner or later topple down from its fantastic and hollow foundation. "Hitch your wagon to a star," says Emerson; "do not lie and steal: no god will help." And although, for the sake of his own private interests of the moment, a man will occasionally violate the moral law, yet, with mankind at large, the necessity of vindicating the superior advantages of right over wrong is acknowledged not only in the interests of civilized society, but because we feel that, however hostile "goodness" may seem to be to my or your personal and temporary aims, it still remains the only wholesome and handsome choice for the race at large: and therefore do we, as a race, refuse to tolerate—on no matter how plausible an artistic plea—any view of human life which either professes indifference to this universal sentiment, or perversely challenges it.

The true ground of dispute, then, does not lie here. The art which can stoop to be "procuress to the lords of hell," is art no longer. But, on the other hand, it would be difficult to point to any great work of art, generally acknowledged to be such, which explicitly concerns itself with the vindication of any specific moral doctrine. The story in which the virtuous are rewarded for their virtue, and the evil punished for their wickedness, fails, somehow, to enlist our full sympathy; it falls flatly on the ear of the mind; it does not stimulate thought. It does not satisfy; we fancy that something still remains to be said, or, if this be all, then it was hardly worth saying. The real record of life—its terror, its beauty, its pathos, its depth—seems to have been missed. We may admit that the tale is in harmony with what we have been taught ought to happen; but the lessons of our private experience have not authenticated our moral formulas; we have seen the evil exalted and the good brought low; and we inevitably desire that our "fiction" shall tell us, not what ought to happen, but what, as a matter of fact, does happen. To put this a little differently: we feel that the God of the orthodox moralist is not the God of human nature. He is nothing but the moralist himself in a highly sublimated state, but betraying, in spite of that sublimation, a fatal savor of human personality. The conviction that any man—George Washington, let us say—is a morally unexceptionable man, does not in the least reconcile us to the idea of God being an indefinitely exalted counterpart of Washington. Such a God would be "most tolerable, and not to be endured"; and the more exalted he was, the less endurable would he be. In short, man instinctively refuses to regard the literal inculcation of the Decalogue as the final word of God to the human race, and much less to the individuals of that race; and when he finds a story-teller proceeding upon the contrary assumption, he is apt to put that story-teller down as either an ass or a humbug.

As for art—if the reader happen to be competent to form an opinion on that phase of the matter—he will generally find that the art dwindles in direct proportion as the moralized deity expatiates; in fact, that they are incompatible. And he will also confess (if he have the courage of his opinions) that, as between moralized deity and true art, his choice is heartily and unreservedly for the latter.

I do not apprehend that the above remarks, fairly interpreted, will encounter serious opposition from either party to the discussion; and yet, so far as I am aware, neither party has as yet availed himself of the light which the conclusion throws upon the nature of art itself. It should be obvious, however, that upon a true definition of art the whole argument must ultimately hinge: for we can neither deny that art exists, nor affirm that it can exist inconsistently with a recognition of a divinely beneficent purpose in creation. It must, therefore, in some way be an expression or reflection of that purpose. But in what does the purpose in question essentially consist?

Broadly speaking—for it would be impossible within the present limits to attempt a full analysis of the subject—it may be considered as a gradual and progressive Purification, not of this or that particular individual in contradistinction to his fellows, but of human nature as an entirety. The evil into which all men are born, and of which the Decalogue, or conscience, makes us aware, is not an evil voluntarily contracted on our part, but is inevitable to us as the creation of a truly infinite love and wisdom. It is, in fact, our characteristic nature as animals: and it is only because we are not only animal, but also and above all human, that we are enabled to recognize it as evil instead of good. We absolve the cat, the dog, the wolf, and the lion from any moral responsibility for their deeds, because we feel them to be deficient in conscience, which, is our own divinely bestowed gift and privilege, and which has been defined as the spirit of God in the created nature, seeking to become the creature's own spirit. Now, the power to correct this evil does not abide in us as individuals, nor will a literal adherence to the moral law avail to purify any mother's son of us. Conscience always says "Do not,"—never "Do"; and obedience to it neither can give us a personal claim on God's favor nor was it intended to do so: its true function is to keep us innocent, so that we may not individually obstruct the accomplishment of the divine ends toward us as a race. Our nature not being the private possession of any one of us, but the impersonal substratum of us all, it follows that it cannot be redeemed piecemeal, but only as a whole; and, manifestly, the only Being capable of effecting such redemption is not Peter, or Paul, or George Washington, or any other atomic exponent of that nature, be he who he may; but He alone whose infinitude is the complement of our finiteness, and whose gradual descent into human nature (figured in Scripture under the symbol of the Incarnation) is even now being accomplished—as any one may perceive who reads aright the progressive enlightenment of conscience and intellect which history, through many vicissitudes, displays. We find, therefore, that art is, essentially, the imaginative expression of a divine life in man. Art depends for its worth and veracity, not upon its adherence to literal fact, but upon its perception and portrayal of the underlying truth, of which fact is but the phenomenal and imperfect shadow. And it can have nothing to do with personal vice or virtue, in the way either of condemning the one or vindicating the other; it can only treat them as elements in its picture—as factors in human destiny. For the notion commonly entertained that the practice of virtue gives us a claim upon the Divine Exchequer (so to speak), and the habit of acting virtuously for the sake of maintaining our credit in society, and ensuring our prosperity in the next world,—in so thinking and acting we misapprehend the true inwardness of the matter. To cultivate virtue because its pays, no matter what the sort of coin in which payment is looked for, is to be the victims of a lamentable delusion. For such virtue makes each man jealous of his neighbor; whereas the aim of Providence is to bring about the broadest human fellowship. A man's physical body separates him from other men; and this fact disposes him to the error that his nature is also a separate possession, and that he can only be "good" by denying himself. But the only goodness that is really good is a spontaneous and impersonal evolution, and this occurs, not where self- denial has been practised, but only where a man feels himself to be absolutely on the same level of desert or non-desert as are the mass of his fellow-creatures. There is no use in obeying the commandments, unless it be done, not to make one's self more deserving than another of God's approbation, but out of love for goodness and truth in themselves, apart from any personal considerations. The difference between true religion and formal religion is that the first leads us to abandon all personal claims to salvation, and to care only for the salvation of humanity as a whole; whereas the latter stimulates is to practise outward self-denial, in order that our real self may be exalted. Such self-denial results not in humility, but in spiritual pride.

In no other way than this, it seems to me, can art and morality be brought into harmony. Art bears witness to the presence in us of something purer and loftier than anything of which we can be individually conscious. Its complete expression we call inspiration; and he who is the subject of the inspiration can account no better than any one else for the result which art accomplishes through him. The perfect poem is found, not made; the mind which utters it did not invent it. Art takes all nature and all knowledge for her province; but she does not leave it as she found it; by the divine necessity that is upon her, she breathes a soul into her materials, and organizes chaos into form. But never, under any circumstances, does she deign to minister to our selfish personal hope or greed. She shows us how to love our neighbor, never ourselves. Shakspeare, Homer, Phidias, Raphael, were no Pharisees—at least in so far as they were artists; nor did any one ever find in their works any countenance for that inhuman assumption—"I am holier than thou!" In the world's darkest hours, art has sometimes stood as the sole witness of the nobler life that was in eclipse. Civilizations arise and vanish; forms of religion hold sway and are forgotten; learning and science advance and gather strength; but true art was as great and as beautiful three thousand years ago as it is to-day. We are prone to confound the man with the artist, and to suppose that he is artistic by possession and inheritance, instead of exclusively by dint of what he does. No artist worthy the name ever dreams of putting himself into his work, but only what is infinitely distinct from and other than himself. It is not the poet who brings forth the poem, but the poem that begets the poet; it makes him, educates him, creates in him the poetic faculty. Those whom we call great men, the heroes of history, are but the organs of great crises and opportunities: as Emerson has said, they are the most indebted men. In themselves they are not great; there is no ratio between their achievements and them. Our judgment is misled; we do not discriminate between the divine purpose and the human instrument. When we listen to Napoleon fretting his soul away at Elba, or to Carlyle wrangling with his wife at Chelsea, we are shocked at the discrepancy between the lofty public performance and the petty domestic shortcoming. Yet we do wrong to blame them; the nature of which they are examples is the same nature that is shared also by the publican and the sinner.

Instead, therefore, of saying that art should be moral, we should rather say that all true morality is art—that art is the test of morality. To attempt to make this heavenly Pegasus draw the sordid plough of our selfish moralistic prejudices is a grotesque subversion of true order. Why should the novelist make believe that the wicked are punished and the good are rewarded in this world? Does he not know, on the contrary, that whatsoever is basest in our common life tends irresistibly to the highest places, and that the selfish element in our nature is on the side of public order? Evil is at present a more efficient instrument of order (because an interested one) than good; and the novelist who makes this appear will do a far greater and more lasting benefit to humanity than he who follows the cut-and-dried artificial programme of bestowing crowns on the saint and whips of scorpions on the sinner.

As a matter of fact, I repeat, the best influences of the best literature have never been didactic, and there is no reason to believe they ever will be. The only semblance of didacticism which can enter into literature is that which conveys such lessons as may be learned from sea and sky, mountain and valley, wood and stream, bird and beast; and from the broad human life of races, nations, and firesides; a lesson that is not obvious and superficial, but so profoundly hidden in the creative depths as to emerge only to an apprehension equally profound. For the chatter and affectation of sense disturb and offend that inward spiritual ear which, in the silent recesses of meditation, hears the prophetic murmur of the vast ocean of human nature that flows within us and around us all.



CHAPTER VI.

THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS.

During the winter of 1879, when I was in London, it was my fortune to attend, a social meeting of literary men at the rooms of a certain eminent publisher. The rooms were full of tobacco-smoke and talk, amid which were discernible, on all sides, the figures and faces of men more or less renowned in the world of books. Most noticeable among these personages was a broad-shouldered, sturdy man, of middle height, with a ruddy countenance, and snow-white tempestuous beard and hair. He wore large, gold-rimmed spectacles, but his eyes were black and brilliant, and looked at his interlocutor with a certain genial fury of inspection. He seemed to be in a state of some excitement; he spoke volubly and almost boisterously, and his voice was full-toned and powerful, though pleasant to the ear. He turned himself, as he spoke, with a burly briskness, from one side to another, addressing himself first to this auditor and then to that, his words bursting forth from beneath his white moustache with such an impetus of hearty breath that it seemed as if all opposing arguments must be blown quite away. Meanwhile he flourished in the air an ebony walking-stick, with much vigor of gesticulation, and narrowly missing, as it appeared, the pates of his listeners. He was clad in evening dress, though the rest of the company was, for the most part, in mufti; and he was an exceedingly fine-looking old gentleman. At the first glance, you would have taken him to be some civilized and modernized Squire Western, nourished with beef and ale, and roughly hewn out of the most robust and least refined variety of human clay. Looking at him more narrowly, however, you would have reconsidered this judgment. Though his general contour and aspect were massive and sturdy, the lines of his features were delicately cut; his complexion was remarkably pure and fine, and his face was susceptible of very subtle and sensitive changes of expression. Here was a man of abundant physical strength and vigor, no doubt, but carrying within him a nature more than commonly alert and impressible. His organization, though thoroughly healthy, was both complex and high- wrought; his character was simple and straightforward to a fault, but he was abnormally conscientious, and keenly alive to others' opinion concerning him. It might be thought that he was overburdened with self- esteem, and unduly opinionated; but, in fact, he was but overanxious to secure the good-will and agreement of all with whom he came in contact. There was some peculiarity in him—some element or bias in his composition that made him different from other men; but, on the other hand, there was an ardent solicitude to annul or reconcile this difference, and to prove himself to be, in fact, of absolutely the same cut and quality as all the rest of the world. Hence he was in a demonstrative, expository, or argumentative mood; he could not sit quiet in the face of a divergence between himself and his associates; he was incorrigibly strenuous to obliterate or harmonize the irreconcilable points between him and others; and since these points remained irreconcilable, he remained in a constant state of storm and stress on the subject.

It was impossible to help liking such a man at first sight; and I believe that no man in London society was more generally liked than Anthony Trollope. There was something pathetic in his attitude as above indicated; and a fresh and boyish quality always invested him. His artlessness was boyish, and so were his acuteness and his transparent but somewhat belated good-sense. He was one of those rare persons who not only have no reserves, but who can afford to dispense with them. After he had shown you all he had in him, you would have seen nothing that was not gentlemanly, honest, and clean. He was a quick-tempered man, and the ardor and hurry of his temperament made him seem more so than he really was; but he was never more angry than he was forgiving and generous. He was hurt by little things, and little things pleased him; he was suspicious and perverse, but in a manner that rather endeared him to you than otherwise. Altogether, to a casual acquaintance, who knew nothing of his personal history, he was something of a paradox—an entertaining contradiction. The publication of his autobiography explained many things in his character that were open to speculation; and, indeed, the book is not only the most interesting and amusing that its author has ever written, but it places its subject before the reader more completely and comprehensively than most autobiographies do. This, however, is due much less to any direct effort or intention on the writer's part, than to the unconscious self-revelation which meets the reader on every page. No narrative could be simpler, less artificial; and yet, everywhere, we read between the lines, and, so to speak, discover Anthony Trollope in spite of his efforts to discover himself to us.

The truth appears to be that the youthful Trollope, like a more famous fellow-novelist, began the world with more kicks than half-pence. His boyhood, he affirms, was as unhappy as that of a young gentleman could well be, owing to a mixture of poverty and gentle standing on his father's part, and, on his own, to "an utter lack of juvenile manhood"—whatever that may be. His father was a lawyer, who frightened away all his clients by his outrageous temper, and who encountered one mischance after another until he landed himself and his family in open bankruptcy; from which they were rescued, partly by death, which carried away four of them (including the old gentleman), and partly by Mrs. Trollope, who, at fifty years of age, brought out her famous book on America, and continued to make a fair income by literature (as she called it) until 1856, when, being seventy- six years old, and having produced one hundred and fourteen volumes, she permitted herself to retire. This extraordinary lady, in her youth, cherished what her son calls "an emotional dislike to tyrants"; but when her American experience had made her acquainted with some of the seamy aspects of democracy, and especially after the aristocracy of her own country had begun to patronize her, she confessed the error of her early way, "and thought that archduchesses were sweet." But she was certainly a valiant and indefatigable woman,—"of all the people I have ever known," says her son, "the most joyous, or, at any rate, the most capable of joy"; and he adds that her best novels were written in 1834-35, when her husband and four of her six children were dying upstairs of consumption, and she had to divide her time between nursing them and writing. Assuredly, no son of hers need apprehend the reproach—"Tydides melior matre"; though Anthony, and his brother Thomas Adolphus, must, together, have run her pretty hard. The former remarks, with that terrible complacency in an awful fact which is one of his most noticeable and astounding traits, that the three of them "wrote more books than were probably ever before produced by a single family." The existence of a few more such families could be consistent only with a generous enlargement of the British Museum.

The elder Trollope was a scholar, and to make scholars of his sons was one of his ruling ideas. Poor little Anthony endured no less than twelve mortal years of schooling—from the time he was seven until he was nineteen—and declares that, in all that time, he does not remember that he ever knew a lesson. "I have been flogged," he says, "oftener than any other human being." Nay, his troubles began before his school-days; for his father used to make him recite his infantile tasks to him while he was shaving, and obliged him to sit with his head inclined in such a manner "that he could pull my hair without stopping his razor or dropping his shaving-brush." This is a depressing picture; and there are plenty more like it. Dr. Butler, the master of Harrow, meeting the poor little draggletail urchin in the yard, desired to know, in awful accents, how so dirty a boy dared to show himself near the school! "He must have known me, had he seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging me constantly. Perhaps," adds his victim, "he did not recognize me by my face!" But it is comforting to learn, in another place, that justice overtook the oppressor. "Dr. Butler only lived to be Dean of Peterborough; but his successor (Dr. Longley) became Archbishop of Canterbury." There is a great deal of Trollopian morality in the fate of these two men, the latter of whom "could not have said anything ill- natured if he had tried."

Black care, however, continued to sit behind the horseman with harrowing persistence. A certain Dr. Drury (another schoolmaster) punished him on suspicion of "some nameless horror," of which the unfortunate youngster happened to be innocent. When, afterward, the latter fact began to be obvious, "he whispered to me half a word that perhaps he had been wrong. But, with a boy's stupid slowness, I said nothing, and he had not the courage to carry reparation farther." The poverty of Anthony's father deprived the boy of all the external advantages that might have enabled him to take rank with his fellows: and his native awkwardness and sensitiveness widened the breach. "I had no friend to whom I could pour out my sorrows. I was big, awkward and ugly, and, I have no doubt, skulked about in a most unattractive manner. Something of the disgrace of my school-days has clung to me all through life. When I have been claimed as school-fellow by some of those many hundreds who were with me either at Harrow or at Winchester, I have felt that I had no right to talk of things from most of which I was kept in estrangement. I was never a coward, but to make a stand against three hundred tyrants required a moral courage which I did not possess." Once, however, they pushed him too far, and he was driven to rebellion. "And then came a great fight—at the end of which my opponent had to be taken home to be cured." And then he utters the characteristic wish that some one, of the many who witnessed this combat, may still be left alive "who will be able to say that, in claiming this solitary glory of my school-days, I am making no false boast." The lonely, lugubrious little champion! One would almost have been willing to have received from him a black eye and a bloody nose, only to comfort his sad heart. It is delightful to imagine the terrific earnestness of that solitary victory: and I would like to know what boy it was (if any) who lent the unpopular warrior a knee and wiped his face.

After he got through his school-days, his family being then abroad, he had an offer of a commission in an Austrian cavalry regiment; and he might have been a major-general or field-marshal at this day had his schooling made him acquainted with the French and German languages. Being, however, entirely ignorant of these, he was obliged to study them in order to his admission; and while he was thus employed, he received news of a vacant clerkship in the General Post-Office, with the dazzling salary of L90 a year. Needless to say that he jumped at such an opening, seeing before him a vision of a splendid civil and social career, at something over twenty pounds a quarter. But London, even fifty years ago, was a more expensive place than Anthony imagined. Moreover, the boy was alone in the wilderness of the city, with no one to advise or guide him. The consequence was that these latter days of his youth were as bad or worse than the beginning. In reviewing his plight at this period, he observes: "I had passed my life where I had seen gay things, but had never enjoyed them. There was no house in which I could habitually see a lady's face or hear a lady's voice. At the Post-Office I got credit for nothing, and was reckless. I hated my work, and, more than all, I hated my idleness. Borrowings of money, sometimes absolute want, and almost constant misery, followed as a matter of course. I Had a full conviction that my life was taking me down to the lowest pits—a feeling that I had been looked upon as an evil, an encumbrance, a useless thing, a creature of whom those connected with me had to be ashamed. Even my few friends were half-ashamed of me. I acknowledge the weakness of a great desire to be loved—a strong wish to be popular. No one had ever been less so." Under these circumstances, he remarks that, although, no doubt, if the mind be strong enough, the temptation will not prevail, yet he is fain to admit that the temptation prevailed with him. He did not sit at home, after his return from the office, in the evening, to drink tea and read, but tramped out in the streets, and tried to see life and be jolly on L90 a year. He borrowed four pounds of a money-lender, to augment his resources, and found, after a few years, that he had paid him two hundred pounds for the accommodation. He met with every variety of absurd and disastrous adventure. The mother of a young woman with whom he had had an innocent flirtation in the country appeared one day at his desk in the office, and called out before all the clerks, "Anthony Trollope, when are you going to marry my daughter?" On another occasion a sum of money was missing from the table of the director. Anthony was summoned. The director informed him of the loss—"and, by G—!" he continued, thundering his fist down on the table, "no one has been in the room but you and I." "Then, by G—!" cried Anthony, thundering his fist down upon something, "you have taken it!" This was very well; but the thing which Anthony had thumped happened to be, not a table, but a movable desk with an inkstand on it, and the ink flew up and deluged the face and shirt-front of the enraged director. Still another adventure was that of the Queen of Saxony and the Half- Crown; but the reader must investigate these matters for himself.

So far there has been nothing looking toward the novel-writer. But now we learn that from the age of fifteen to twenty-six Anthony kept a journal, which, he says, "convicted me of folly, ignorance, indiscretion, idleness, and conceit, but habituated me to the rapid use of pen and ink, and taught me how to express myself with facility." In addition to this, and more to the purpose, he had formed an odd habit. Living, as he was forced to do, so much to himself, if not by himself, he had to play, not with other boys, but with himself; and his favorite play was to conceive a tale, or series of fictitious events, and to carry it on, day after day, for months together, in his mind. "Nothing impossible was ever introduced, or violently improbable. I was my own hero, but I never became a king or a duke, still less an Antinous, or six feet high. But I was a very clever person, and beautiful young women used to be very fond of me. I learned in this way to live in a world outside the world of my own material life." This is pointedly, even touchingly, characteristic. Never, to the day of his death, did Mr. Trollope either see or imagine anything impossible, or violently improbable, in the world. This mortal plane of things never dissolved before his gaze and revealed the mysteries of absolute Being; his heavens were never rolled up as a scroll, and his earth had no bubbles as the water hath. He took things as he found them; and he never found them out. But if the light that never was on sea or land does not illuminate the writings of Mr. Trollope, there is generally plenty of that other kind of light with which, after all, the average reader is more familiar, and which not a few, perhaps, prefer to the transcendental lustre. There is no modern novelist who has more clearly than Trollope defined to his own apprehension his own literary capabilities and limitations. He is thoroughly acquainted with both his fortes and his foibles; and so sound is his good sense, that he is seldom beguiled into toiling with futile ambition after effects that are beyond him. His proper domain is a sufficiently wide one; he is inimitably at home here; and when he invites us there to visit him, we may be sure of getting good and wholesome entertainment. The writer's familiarity with his characters communicates itself imperceptibly to the reader; there are no difficult or awkward introductions; the toning of the picture (to use the painter's phrase) is unexceptionable; and if it be rather tinted than colored, the tints are handled in a workmanlike manner. Again, few English novelists seem to possess so sane a comprehension of the modes of life and thought of the British aristocracy as Trollope. He has not only made a study of them from the observer's point of view, but he has reasoned them out intellectually. The figures are not vividly defined; the realism is applied to events rather than to personages: we have the scene described for us but we do not look upon it. We should not recognize his characters if we saw them; but if we were told who they were, we should know, from their author's testimony, what were their characteristic traits and how they would act under given circumstances. The logical sequence of events is carefully maintained; nothing happens, either for good or for evil, other than might befall under the dispensations of a Providence no more unjust, and no more far-sighted, than Trollope himself. There is a good deal of the a priori principle in his method; he has made up his mind as to certain fundamental data, and thence develops or explains whatever complication comes up for settlement. But to range about unhampered by any theories, concerned only to examine all phenomena, and to report thereupon, careless of any considerations save those of artistic propriety, would have been vanity and striving after wind to Trollope, and derivatively so, doubtless, to his readers.

Considered in the abstract, it is a curious question what makes his novels interesting. The reader knows, in a sense, just what is in store for him, —or, rather, what is not. There will be no astonishment, no curdling horror, no consuming suspense. There may be, perhaps, as many murders, forgeries, foundlings, abductions, and missing wills, in Trollope's novels as in any others; but they are not told about in a manner to alarm us; we accept them philosophically; there are paragraphs in our morning paper that excite us more. And yet they are narrated with art, and with dramatic effect. They are interesting, but not uncourteously—not exasperatingly so; and the strangest part of it is that the introductory and intermediate passages are no less interesting, under Trollope's treatment, than are the murders and forgeries. Not only does he never offend the modesty of nature,—he encourages her to be prudish, and trains her to such evenness and severity of demeanor that we never know when we have had enough of her. His touch is eminently civilizing; everything, from the episodes to the sentences, moves without hitch or creak: we never have to read a paragraph twice, and we are seldom sorry to have read it once.

Amusingly characteristic of Trollope is his treatment of his villains. His attitude toward them betrays no personal uncharitableness or animosity, but the villain has a bad time of it just the same. Trollope places upon him a large, benevolent, but unyielding forefinger, and says to us: "Remark, if you please, how this inferior reptile squirms when pressure is applied to him. I will now augment the pressure. You observe that the squirmings increase in energy and complexity. Now, if you please, I will bear down yet a little harder. Do not be alarmed, madam; the reptile undoubtedly suffers, but the spectacle may do us some good, and you may trust me not to let him do you any harm. There!—Yes, evisceration by means of pressure is beyond question painful; but every one must have observed the benevolence of my forefinger during the operation; and I fancy even the subject of the experiment (were he in a condition to express his sentiments) would have admitted as much. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I shall have the pleasure of meeting you again very shortly. John, another reptile, please!" Upon the whole, it is much to Trollope's credit that he wrote somewhere about fifty long novels; and to the credit of the English people that they paid him three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for these novels—and read them!

But his success as a man of letters was still many years in the future. After seven years in the London office, he went to Ireland as assistant surveyor, and thenceforward he began to enjoy his business, and to get on in it. He was paid sixpence a mile, and he would ride forty miles a day. He rode to hounds, incidentally, whenever he got a chance, and he kept up the practice, with enthusiasm, to within a few years of his death. "It will, I think, be accorded to me," he says, "that I have ridden hard. I know very little about hunting; I am blind, very heavy, and I am now old; but I ride with a boy's energy, hating the roads, and despising young men who ride them; and I feel that life cannot give me anything better than when I have gone through a long run to the finish, keeping a place, not of glory, but of credit, among my juniors." Riding, working, having a jolly time, and gradually increasing his income, he lived until 1842, when he became engaged; and he was married on June 11, 1844. "I ought to name that happy day," he declares, "as the commencement of my better life." It was at about this date, also, that he began and finished, not without delay and procrastination, his first novel. Curiously enough, he affirms that he did not doubt his own intellectual sufficiency to write a readable novel: "What I did doubt was my own industry, and the chances of a market." Never, surely, was self-distrust more unfounded. As for the first novel, he sent it to his mother, to dispose of as best she could; and it never brought him anything, except a perception that it was considered by his friends to be "an unfortunate aggravation of the family disease." During the ensuing ten years, this view seemed to be not unreasonable, for, in all that time, though he worked hard, he earned by literature no more than L55. But, between 1857 and 1860, he received for various novels, from L100 to L1000 each; and thereafter, L3000 or more was his regular price for a story in three volumes. As he maintained his connection with the post- office until 1867, he was in receipt of an income of L4500, "of which I spent two-thirds and put by one." We should be doing an injustice to Mr. Trollope to omit these details, which he gives so frankly; for, as he early informs us, "my first object in taking to literature was to make an income on which I and those belonging to me might live in comfort." Nor will he let us forget that novel-writing, to him, was not so much an art, or even a profession, as a trade, in which all that can be asked of a man is that he shall be honest and punctual, turning out good average work, and the more the better. "The great secret consists in"—in what?—why, "in acknowledging myself to be bound to rules of labor similar to those which an artisan or mechanic is forced to obey." There may be, however, other incidental considerations. "I have ever thought of myself as a preacher of sermons, and my pulpit as one I could make both salutary and agreeable to my audience"; and he tells us that he has used some of his novels for the expression of his political and social convictions. Again— "The novelist must please, and he must teach; a good novel should be both realistic and sensational in the highest degree." He says that he sees no reason why two or three good novels should not be written at the same time; and that, for his own part, he was accustomed to write two hundred and fifty words every fifteen minutes, by the watch, during his working hours. Nor does he mind letting us know that when he sits down to write a novel, he neither knows nor cares how it is to end. And finally, one is a little startled to hear him say, epigrammatically, that a writer should not have to tell a story, but should have a story to tell. Beyond a doubt, Anthony Trollope is something of a paradox.

The world has long ago passed its judgment on his stories, but it is interesting, all the same, to note his own opinion of them; and though never arrogant, he is generally tolerant, if not genial. "A novel should be a picture of common life, enlivened by humor and sweetened by pathos. I have never fancied myself to be a man of genius," he says; but again, with strange imperviousness, "A small daily task, if it be daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules." Beat them, how? Why, in quantity. But how about quality? Is the travail of a work of art the same thing as the making of a pair of shoes? Emerson tells us that—

"Ever the words of the gods resound, But the porches of man's ear Seldom, in this low life's round, Are unsealed, that he may hear."

No one disputes, however, that you may hear the tapping of the cobbler's hammer at any time.

To the view of the present writer, how much good soever Mr. Trollope may have done as a preacher and moralist, he has done great harm to English fictitious literature by his novels; and it need only be added, in this connection, that his methods and results in novel-writing seem best to be explained by that peculiar mixture of separateness and commonplaceness which we began by remarking in him. The separateness has given him the standpoint whence he has been able to observe and describe the commonplaceness with which (in spite of his separateness) he is in vital sympathy.

But Trollope the man is the abundant and consoling compensation for Trollope the novelist; and one wishes that his books might have died, and he lived on indefinitely. It is charming to read of his life in London after his success in the Cornhill Magazine. "Up to that time I had lived very little among men. It was a festival to me to dine at the 'Garrick.' I think I became popular among those with whom I associated. I have ever wished to be liked by those around me—a wish that during the first half of my life was never gratified." And, again, in summing up his life, he says: "I have betrayed no woman. Wine has brought to me no sorrow. It has been the companionship, rather than the habit of smoking that I loved. I have never desired to win money, and I have lost none. To enjoy the excitement of pleasure, but to be free from its vices and ill-effects—to have the sweet, and to leave the bitter untasted—that has been my study. I will not say that I have never scorched a finger; but I carry no ugly wounds."