It would be interesting to know whether Johnson ever read, in bed or out, a book called Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit. It was published in the spring of 1579 by Gabriel Cawood, 'dwelling in Paules Churchyard,' and was followed one year later by a second part, Euphues and his England. These books were the work of John Lyly, a young Oxford Master of Arts. According to the easy orthography of that time (if the word orthography may be applied to a practice by virtue of which every man spelled as seemed right in his own eyes), Lyly's name is found in at least six forms: Lilye, Lylie, Lilly, Lyllie, Lyly, and Lylly. Remembering the willingness of i and y to bear one another's burdens, we may still exclaim, with Dr. Ingleby, 'Great is the mystery of archaic spelling!' Great indeed when a man sometimes had more suits of letters to his name than suits of clothes to his back. That the name of this young author was pronounced as was the name of the flower, lily, seems the obvious inference from Henry Upchear's verses, which contain punning allusions to Lyly and Robert Greene:—

'Of all the flowers a Lillie once I lov'd Whose laboring beautie brancht itself abroad,' etc.

Original editions of the Anatomy of Wit and its fellow are very rare. Probably there is not a copy of either book in the United States. This statement is ventured in good faith, and may have the effect of bringing to light a hitherto neglected copy.[1] Strange it is that princely collectors of yore appear not to have cared for Euphues. Surely one would not venture to affirm that John, Duke of Roxburghe, might not have had it if he had wanted it. The book is not to be found in his sale catalogue; he had Lyly's plays in quarto, seven of them each marked 'rare,' and he had two copies of a well-known book called Euphues Golden Legacie, written by Thomas Nash. The Perkins Sale catalogue shows neither of Lyly's novels. List after list of the spoils of mighty book-hunters has only a blank where the Anatomy of Wit ought to be. From this we may argue great scarcity, or great indifference, or both. In the compact little reprint made by Professor Arber one may read this moral tale, which was fashionable when Shakespeare was a youth of sixteen. For convenience it will be advisable to speak of it as a single work in two parts, for such it practically is.

[1] The writer of this paper once sent to that fine scholar and gracious gentleman, Professor Edward Arber, to inquire whether in his opinion one might hope to buy at a modest price a copy of either the first or the second part of Euphues. Professor Arber's reply was amusingly emphatic: 'You might as well try to purchase one of Mahomet's old slippers.' But in July of 1896 there were four copies of this old novel on sale at one New York bookstore. One of the copies was of great beauty, consisting of the two parts of the story bound up together in a really sumptuous fashion. The price was not large as prices of such books go, but on the other hand ''a was not small.'

To pronounce upon this romance is not easy. We read a dozen or two of pages, and say, 'This is very fantastical humours.' We read further, and are tempted to follow Sir Hugh to the extent of declaring, 'This is lunatics.' One may venture the not profound remark that it takes all sorts of books to make a literature. Euphues is one of the books that would prompt to that very remark. For he who first said that it takes all sorts of people to make a world was markedly impressed with the differences between those people and himself. He had in mind eccentric folk, types which deviate from the normal and the sane. So Euphues is a very Malvolio among books, cross-gartered and wreathed as to its countenance with set smiles. The curious in literary history will always enjoy such a production. The verdict of that part of the reading world which keeps a book alive by calling for fresh copies of it after the old copies are worn out is against Euphues. It had a vivacious existence between 1579 and 1636, and then went into a literary retirement lasting two hundred and thirty-six years. When it again came before the public it was introduced as 'a great bibliographical rarity.' Its fatal old-fashionedness hangs like a millstone about its neck. In the poems of Chaucer and the dramas of Shakespeare are a thousand touches which make the reader feel that Chaucer and Shakespeare are his contemporaries, that they have written in his own time, and published but yesterday. Read Euphues, and you will say to yourself, 'That book must have been written three hundred years ago, and it looks its age.' Yet it has its virtues. One may not say of it, as Johnson said of the Rehearsal, that it 'has not wit enough to keep it sweet.' Neither may he, upon second thought, conclude that 'it has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction.' It has, indeed, a bottom of good sense; and so had Malvolio. It is filled from end to beginning with wit, or with what passed for wit among many readers of that day. Often the wit is of a tawdry and spectacular sort,—mere verbal wit, the use of a given word not because it is the best word, the most fitting word, but because the author wants a word beginning with the letter G, or the letter M, or the letter F, as the case may be. On the second page of Greene's Arbasto is this sentence: 'He did not so much as vouchsafe to give an eare to my parle, or an eye to my person.' Greene learned this trick from Lyly, who was a master of the art. The sentence represents one of the common forms in Euphues, such as this: 'To the stomach quatted with dainties all delicates seem queasie.' Sometimes the balance is preserved by three words on a side. For example, the companions whom Euphues found in Naples practiced arts 'whereby they might either soake his purse to reape commodotie, or sooth his person to winne credite.' Other illustrations are these: I can neither 'remember our miseries without griefe, nor redresse our mishaps without grones.' 'If the wasting of our money might not dehort us, yet the wounding of our mindes should deterre us.' This next sentence, with its combination of K sounds, clatters like a pair of castanets: 'Though Curio bee as hot as a toast, yet Euphues is as cold as a clocke, though hee bee a cocke of the game, yet Euphues is content to bee craven and crye creake.'

Excess of alliteration is the most obvious feature of Lyly's style. That style has been carefully analyzed by those who are learned in such things. The study is interesting, with its talk of alliteration and transverse alliteration, antithesis, climax, and assonance. In truth, one does not know which to admire the more, the ingenuity of the man who constructed the book, or the ingenuity of the scholars who have explained how he did it. Between Lyly on the one hand, and the grammarians on the other, the reader is almost tempted to ask if this be literature or mathematics. Whether Lyly got his style from Pettie or Guevara is an important question, but he made it emphatically his own, and it will never be called by any other name than Euphuism. The making of a book on this plan is largely the result of astonishing mental gymnastics. It commands respect in no small degree, because Lyly was able to keep it up so long. To walk from New York to Albany, as did the venerable Weston not so very long since, is a great test of human endurance. But walking is the employment of one's legs and body in God's appointed way of getting over the ground. Suppose a man were to undertake to hop on one leg from New York to Albany, the utility or the aesthetic value of the performance would be less obvious. The most successful artist in hopping could hardly expect applause from the right-minded. He would excite attention because he was able to hop so far, and not because he was the exponent of a praiseworthy method of locomotion. Lyly gained eminence by doing to a greater extent than any man a thing that was not worth doing at all. One is more astonished at Lyly's power of endurance as author than at his own power of endurance as reader. For the volume is actually readable even at this day. Did Lyly not grow wearied of perpetually riding these alliterative trick-ponies? Apparently not. The book is 'executed' with a vivacity, a dash, a 'go,' that will captivate any reader who is willing to meet the author halfway. Euphues became the rage, and its literary style the fashion. How or why must be left to him to explain who can tell why sleeves grow small and then grow big, why skirts are at one time only two and a half yards around and at another time five and a half or eight yards around. An Elizabethan gentleman might be too poor to dress well, but he would squander his last penny in getting his ruff starched. Lyly's style bristles with extravagances of the starched ruff sort, which only serve to call attention to the intellectual deficiencies in the matter of doublet and hose.

Of plot or story there is but little. The hero, Euphues, who gives the title to the romance, is a young, clever, and rich Athenian. He visits Naples, where his money and wit attract many to his side. By his careless, pleasure-seeking mode of life he wakens the fatherly interest of a wise old gentleman, Eubulus, who calls upon him to warn him of his danger. The conversation between the two is the first and not the least amusing illustration of the courtly verbal fencing with which the book is filled. The advice of the old man only provokes Euphues into making the sophistical plea that his style of living is right because nature prompts him to it; and he leaves Eubulus 'in a great quandary' and in tears. Nevertheless, the old gentleman has the righteous energy which prompts him to say to the departing Euphues, already out of hearing, 'Seeing thou wilt not buy counsel at the first hand good cheap, thou shalt buy repentance at the second hand, at such unreasonable rate, that thou wilt curse thy hard pennyworth, and ban thy hard heart.' Euphues takes to himself a new sworn brother, one Philautus, who carries him to visit his lady-love, Lucilla. Lucilla is rude at first, but becomes enamored of Euphues's conversational power, and finally of himself. In fact, she unceremoniously throws over her former lover, and tells her father that she will either marry Euphues or else lead apes in hell. This causes a break in the friendship between Euphues and Philautus, and there is an exchange of formidably worded letters, in which Philautus reminds Euphues that all Greeks are liars, and Euphues quotes Euripides to the effect that all is lawful in love. Lucilla, who is fickle, suddenly dismisses her new cavalier for yet a third, while Euphues and Philautus, in the light of their common misfortune, fall upon each other's necks and are reconciled. Both profess themselves to have been fools, while Euphues, as the greater and more recent fool, composes a pamphlet against love. This he calls a 'cooling-card.' It is addressed primarily to Philautus, but contains general advice for 'all fond lovers.' Euphues's own cure was radical, for he says, 'Now do I give a farewell to the world, meaning rather to macerate myself with melancholy, than pine in folly, rather choosing to die in my study amidst my books than to court it in Italy in the company of ladies.' He returns to Athens, applies himself to the study of philosophy, becomes public reader in the University, and, as crowning evidence that he has finished sowing his wild oats, produces three volumes of lectures. Realizing how much of his own youth has been wasted, he writes a pamphlet on the education of the young, a dialogue with an atheist, and these, with a bundle of letters, make up the first part of the Anatomy of Wit. From one of the letters we learn that Lucilla was as frail as she was beautiful, and that she died in evil report. The story, including the diatribe against love, is about as long as The Vicar of Wakefield. It begins as a romance and ends as a sermon.

The continuation of the novel, Euphues and his England, is a little over a third longer than Part One. The two friends carry out their project of visiting England. After a wearisome voyage they reach Dover, view the cliffs and the castle, and then proceed to Canterbury. Between Canterbury and London they stop for a while with a 'comely olde gentleman,' Fidus, who keeps bees and tells good stories. He also gives sound advice as to the way in which strangers should conduct themselves. A lively bit of writing is the account which Fidus gives of his commonwealth of bees. It is not according to Lubbock, but is none the less amusing. In London the two travelers become favorites at the court. Philautus falls in love, to the great annoyance of Euphues, who argues mightily with him against such folly. The two gentlemen expend vast resources of stationery and language upon the subject. They quarrel violently, and Euphues becomes so irritated that he must needs go and rent new lodgings, 'which by good friends he quickly got, and there fell to his Pater noster, where awhile,' says Lyly innocently, 'I will not trouble him in his prayers.' They are reconciled later, and Philautus obtains permission to love; but he has discovered in the mean time that the lady will not have him. The account of his passion, how it 'boiled and bubbled,' of his visit to the soothsayer to purchase love charms, his stately declamations to Camilla and her elaborate replies to him, of his love letter concealed in a pomegranate, and her answer stitched into a copy of Petrarch,—is all very lively reading, much more so than that dreary love-making between Pyrocles and Philoclea, or between any other pair of the many exceedingly tiresome folk in Sidney's Arcadia. Grant that it is deliciously absurd. It is not to be supposed that a clever eighteen-year-old girl, replying to a declaration of love, will talk in the language of a trained nurse, and say: 'Green sores are to be dressed roughly lest they fester, tettars are to be drawn in the beginning lest they spread, Ringworms to be anointed when they first appear lest they compass the whole body, and the assaults of love to be beaten back at the first siege lest they undermine at the second.' Was ever suitor in this fashion rejected! It makes one think of some of the passages in the History of John Buncle, where the hero pours out a torrent of passionate phrases, and the 'glorious' Miss Noel, in reply, begs that they may take up some rational topic of conversation; for example, what is his view of that opinion which ascribes 'primaevity and sacred prerogatives' to the Hebrew language.

But Philautus does not break his heart over Camilla's rejection. He is consoled with the love of another fair maiden, marries her, and settles in England. Euphues goes back to Athens, and presently retires to the country, where he follows the calling of one whose profession is melancholy. Like most hermits of culture, he leaves his address with his banker. We assume this, for he was very rich; it is not difficult to be a hermit on a large income. The book closes with a section called 'Euphues Glasse for Europe,' a thirty-page panegyric on England and the Queen.

They say that this novel was very popular, and certain causes of its popularity are not difficult to come at. A large measure of the success that Euphues had is due to the commonplaceness of its observations. It abounds in proverbs and copy-book wisdom. In this respect it is as homely as an almanac. John Lyly had a great store of 'miscellany thoughts,' and he cheerfully parted with them. His book succeeded as Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy and Watts' On the Mind succeeded. People believed that they were getting ideas, and people like what they suppose to be ideas if no great effort is required in the getting of them. It is astonishing how often the world needs to be advised of the brevity of time. Yet every person who can wade in the shallows of his own mind and not wet his shoe-tops finds a sweet melancholy and a stimulating freshness in the thought that time is short. John Lyly said, 'There is nothing more swifter than time, nothing more sweeter,'—and countless Elizabethan gentlemen and ladies underscored that sentence, or transferred it to their commonplace books,—if they had such painful aids to culture,—and were comforted and edified by the discovery that brilliant John Lyly had made. This glib command of the matter-of-course, with a ready use of the proverb and the 'old said saw,' is a marked characteristic of the work. It emphasizes the youth of its author. We learn what could not have been new even in 1579, that 'in misery it is a great comfort to have a companion;' that 'a new broom sweepeth clean;' that 'delays breed dangers;' that 'nothing is so perilous as procrastination;' that 'a burnt child dreadeth the fire;' that it is well not to make comparisons 'lest comparisons should seem odious;' that 'it is too late to shut the stable door when the steed is stolen;' that 'many things fall between the cup and the lip;' and that 'marriages are made in heaven, though consummated on earth.' With these old friends come others, not altogether familiar of countenance, and quaintly archaic in their dress: 'It must be a wily mouse that shall breed in the cat's ear;' 'It is a mad hare that will be caught with a tabor, and a foolish bird that stayeth the laying salt on her tail, and a blind goose that cometh to the fox's sermon.' Lyly would sometimes translate a proverb; he does not tell us that fine words butter no parsnips, but says, 'Fair words fat few,'—which is delightfully alliterative, but hardly to be accounted an improvement. Expressions that are surprisingly modern turn up now and then. One American street urchin taunts another by telling him that he doesn't know enough to come in when it rains. The saying is at least three hundred years old, for Lyly says, in a dyspeptic moment, 'So much wit is sufficient for a woman as when she is in the rain can warn her to come out of it.'

Another cause of the popularity of Euphues is its sermonizing. The world loves to hear good advice. The world is not nervously anxious to follow the advice, but it understands the edification that comes by preaching. With many persons, to have heard a sermon is almost equivalent to having practiced the virtues taught in the sermon. Churches are generally accepted as evidences of civilization. A man who is exploiting the interests of a new Western town will invariably tell you that it has so many churches. Also, an opera-house. The English world above all other worlds loves to hear good advice. England is the natural home of the sermon. Jusserand notes, almost with wonder, that in the annual statistics of the London publishers the highest numbers indicate the output of sermons and theological works. Then come novels. John Lyly was ingenious; he combined good advice and storytelling. Not skillfully, hiding the sermon amid lively talk and adventure, but blazoning the fact that he was going to moralize as long as he would. He shows no timidity, even declares upon one of his title-pages that in this volume 'there is small offense by lightness given to the wise, and less occasion of looseness proffered to the wanton.' Such courage in this day would be apt seriously to injure the sale of a novel. Did not Ruskin declare that Miss Edgeworth had made virtue so obnoxious that since her time one hardly dared express the slightest bias in favor of the Ten Commandments? Lyly knew the public for which he acted as literary caterer. They liked sermons, and sermons they should have. Nearly every character in the book preaches, and Euphues is the most gifted of them all. Even that old gentleman of Naples who came first to Euphues because his heart bled to see so noble a youth given to loose living has the tables turned upon him, for Euphues preaches to the preacher upon the sovereign duty of resignation to the will of God.

A noteworthy characteristic is the frequency of Lyly's classical allusions. If the only definition of pedantry be 'vain and ostentatious display of learning,' I question if we may dismiss Lyly's wealth of classical lore with the word 'pedantry.' He was fresh from his university life. If he studied at all when he was at Oxford, he must have studied Latin and Greek, for after these literatures little else was studied. Young men and their staid tutors were compelled to know ancient history and mythology. Like Heine, they may have taken a 'real delight in the mob of gods and goddesses who ran so jolly naked about the world.' In the first three pages of the Anatomy of Wit there are twenty classical names, ten of them coupled each with an allusion. Nobody begins a speech without a reference of this nature within calling distance. Euphues and Philautus fill their talk with evidences of a classical training. The ladies are provided with apt remarks drawn from the experiences of Helen, of Cornelia, of Venus, of Diana, and Vesta. Even the master of the ship which conveyed Euphues from Naples to England declaims about Ulysses and Julius Caesar. This naturally destroys all dramatic effect. Everybody speaks Euphuism, though classical allusion alone is not essentially Euphuistic. John Lyly would be the last man to merit any portion of that fine praise bestowed by Hazlitt upon Shakespeare when he said that Shakespeare's genius 'consisted in the faculty of transforming himself at will into whatever he chose.' Lyly's genius was the opposite of this; it consisted in the faculty of transforming everybody into a reduplication of himself. There is no change in style when the narrative parts end and the dialogue begins. All the persons of the drama utter one strange tongue. They are no better than the characters in a Punch and Judy show, where one concealed manipulator furnishes voice for each of the figures. But in Lyly's novel there is not even an attempt at the most rudimentary ventriloquism.

What makes the book still less a reflection of life is that the speakers indulge in interminably long harangues. No man (unless he were a Coleridge) would be tolerated who talked in society at such inordinate length. When the characters can't talk to one another they retire to their chambers and declaim to themselves. They polish their language with the same care, open the classical dictionary, and have at themselves in good set terms. Philautus, inflamed with love of Camilla, goes to his room and pronounces a ten-minute discourse on the pangs of love, having only himself for auditor. They are amazingly patient under the verbal inflictions of one another. Euphues, angry with Philautus for having allowed himself to fall in love, takes him to task in a single speech containing four thousand words. If Lyly had set out with the end in view of constructing a story by putting into it alone 'what is not life,' his product would have been what we find it now. One could easily believe the whole affair to have been intended for a tremendous joke were it not that the tone is so serious. We are accustomed to think of youth as light-hearted: but look at a serious child,—there is nothing more serious in the world. Lyly was twenty-six years when he first published. Much of the seriousness in his romance is the burden of twenty-six years' experience of life, a burden greater perhaps than he ever afterward carried.

Being, as we take it, an unmarried man, Lyly gives directions for managing a wife. He believes in the wholesome doctrine that a man should select his own wife. 'Made marriages by friends' are dangerous. 'I had as lief another should take measure by his back of my apparel as appoint what wife I shall have by his mind.' He prefers in a wife 'beauty before riches, and virtue before blood.' He holds to the radical English doctrine of wifely submission; there is no swerving from the position that the man is the woman's 'earthly master,'[2] but in taming a wife no violence is to be employed. Wives are to be subdued with kindness. 'If their husbands with great threatenings, with jars, with brawls, seek to make them tractable, or bend their knees, the more stiff they make them in the joints, the oftener they go about by force to rule them, the more froward they find them; but using mild words, gentle persuasions, familiar counsel, entreaty, submission, they shall not only make them to bow their knees, but to hold up their hands, not only cause them to honor them, but to stand in awe of them.' By such methods will that supremest good of an English home be brought about, namely, that the wife shall stand in awe of her husband.

[2] Lady Burton's Dedication of her husband's biography,—'To my earthly master,' etc.

The young author admits that some wives have the domineering instinct, and that way danger lies. A man must look out for himself. If he is not to make a slave of his wife, he is also not to be too submissive; 'that will cause her to disdain thee.' Moreover, he must have an eye to the expenditure. She may keep the keys, but he will control the pocket-book. The model wife in Ecclesiastes had greater privileges; she could not only consider a piece of ground, but she could buy it if she liked it. Not so this well-trained wife of Lyly's novel. 'Let all the keys hang at her girdle, but the purse at thine, so shalt thou know what thou dost spend, and how she can spare.' But in setting forth his theory for being happy though married, Lyly, methinks, preaches a dangerous doctrine in this respect: he hints at the possibility of a man's wanting, in vulgar parlance, to go on a spree, expresses no question as to the propriety of his so doing, but says that if a man does let himself loose in this fashion his wife must not know it. 'Imitate the kings of Persia, who when they were given to riot kept no company with their wives, but when they used good order had their queens even at the table.' In short, the wife was to duplicate the moods of her husband. 'Thou must be a glass to thy wife, for in thy face must she see her own; for if when thou laughest she weep, when thou mournest she giggle, the one is a manifest sign she delighteth in others, the other a token she despiseth thee.' John Lyly was a wise youth. He struck the keynote of the mode in which most incompatible marriages are played when he said that it was a bad sign if one's wife giggled when one was disposed to be melancholy.

An interesting study is the author's attitude toward foreign travel. It would appear to have been the fashion of the time to indulge in much invective against foreign travel, but nevertheless—to travel. Many men believed with young Valentine that 'home keeping youth have ever homely wits,' while others were rather of Ascham's mind when he said, 'I was once in Italy, but I thank God my stay there was only nine days.' Lyly came of a nation of travelers. Then as now it was true that there was no accessible spot of the globe upon which the Englishman had not set his foot. Nomadic England went abroad; sedentary England stayed at home to rail at him for so doing. Aside from that prejudice which declared that all foreigners were fools, there was a well-founded objection to the sort of traveling usually described as seeing the world. Young men went upon the continent to see questionable forms of pleasure, perhaps to practice them. Whether justly or not, common report named Italy as the higher school of pleasurable vices, and Naples as the city where one's doctorate was to be obtained. Gluttony and licentiousness are the sins of Naples. Eubulus tells Euphues that in that city are those who 'sleep with meat in their mouths, with sin in their hearts, and with shame in their houses.' There is no limit to the inconveniences of traveling. 'Thou must have the back of an ass to bear all, and the snout of a swine to say nothing.... Travelers must sleep with their eyes open lest they be slain in their beds, and wake with their eyes shut lest they be suspected by their looks.' Journeys by the fireside are better. 'If thou covet to travel strange countries, search the maps, there shalt thou see much with great pleasure and small pains, if to be conversant in all courts, read histories, where thou shalt understand both what the men have been and what their manners are, and methinketh there must be much delight where there is no danger.' Perhaps Lyly intended to condemn traveling with character unformed. A boy returned with more vices than he went forth with pence, and was able to sin both by experience and authority. Lest he should be thought to speak with uncertain voice upon this matter Lyly gives Euphues a story to tell in which the chief character describes the effect of traveling upon himself. 'There was no crime so barbarous, no murder so bloody, no oath so blasphemous, no vice so execrable, but that I could readily recite where I learned it, and by rote repeat the peculiar crime of every particular country, city, town, village, house, or chamber.' Here, indeed, is no lack of plain speech.

In the section called 'Euphues and his Ephoebus' twenty-nine pages are devoted to the question of the education of youth. It is largely taken from Plutarch. Some of the points are these: that a mother shall herself nurse her child, that the child shall be early framed to manners, 'for as the steele is imprinted in the soft waxe, so learning is engraven in ye minde of an young Impe.' He is not to hear 'fonde fables or filthy tales.' He is to learn to pronounce distinctly and to be kept from 'barbarous talk,' that is, no dialect and no slang. He is to become expert in martial affairs, in shooting and darting, and he must hunt and hawk for his 'honest recreation.' If he will not study, he is not to be 'scourged with stripes, but threatened with words, not dulled with blows, like servants, the which, the more they are beaten the better they bear it, and the less they care for it.' In taking this position Lyly is said to be only following Ascham. Ascham was not the first in his own time to preach such doctrine. Forty years before the publication of The Schoolmaster, Sir Thomas Elyot, in his book called The Governour, raised his voice against the barbarity of teachers 'by whom the wits of children be dulled,'—almost the very words of John Lyly.

Euphues, besides being a treatise on love and education, is a sort of Tudor tract upon animated nature. It should be a source of joy unspeakable to the general reader if only for what it teaches him in the way of natural history. How much of what is most gravely stated here did John Lyly actually believe? It is easy to grant so orthodox a statement of physical fact as that 'the Sunne doth harden the durte, and melte the waxe;' but ere the sentence be finished, the author calls upon us to believe that 'Perfumes doth refresh the Dove and kill the Betill.' The same reckless extravagance of remark is to be noted whenever bird, beast, or reptile is mentioned. The crocodile of Shakespeare's time must have been a very contortionist among beasts, for, says Lyly, 'when one approacheth neere unto him, [he] gathereth up himselfe into the roundnesse of a ball, but running from him, stretcheth himselfe into the length of a tree.' Perhaps the fame of this creature's powers grew in the transmission of the narrative from the banks of the Nile to the banks of the Thames. The ostrich was human in its vanity according to Lyly; men and women sometimes pull out their white hairs, but 'the Estritch, that taketh the greatest pride in her feathers, picketh some of the worst out and burneth them.' Nay, more than that, being in 'great haste she pricketh none but hirselfe which causeth hir to runne when she would rest.' We shall presently expect to hear that ostriches wear boots by the straps of which they lift themselves over ten-foot woven-wire fences. But Lyly used the conventional natural history that was at hand, and troubled himself in no respect to inquire about its truth or falsity.

There is yet another cause of the popularity of this book in its own time, which has been too little emphasized. It is that trumpet blast of patriotism with which the volume ends. We feel, as we read the thirty pages devoted to the praise of England and the Queen, that this is right, fitting, artistic, and we hope that it is tolerably sincere. Flattery came easily to men in those days, and there was small hope of advancement for one who did not master the art. But there is a glow of earnestness in these paragraphs rather convincing to the skeptic. Nor would the book be complete without this eulogy. We have had everything else; a story for who wanted a story, theories upon the education of children, a body of mythological divinity, a discussion of methods of public speaking, advice for men who are about to marry, a theological sparring match, in which a man of straw is set up to be knocked down, and is knocked down, a thousand illustrations of wit and curious reading, and now, as a thing that all men could understand, the author tells Englishmen of their own good fortune in being Englishmen, and is finely outspoken in praise of what he calls 'the blessed Island.'

This is an old-fashioned vein, to be sure,—the ad captandum trick of a popular orator bent upon making a success. It is not looked upon in all places with approval. 'Our unrivaled prosperity' was a phrase which greatly irritated Matthew Arnold. Here in America, are we not taught by a highly fastidious journal that we may be patriotic if we choose, but we must be careful how we let people know it? We mustn't make a fuss about it. We mustn't be blatant. The star-spangled banner on the public schools is at best a cheap and vulgar expression of patriotism. But somehow even this sort of patriotism goes with the people, and perhaps these instincts of the common folk are not entirely to be despised. Many a reader of Euphues, who cared but little for its elaborated style, who was not moved by its orthodoxy, who didn't read books simply because they were fashionable, must have felt his pulse stirred by Lyly's chant of England's greatness. For Euphues is John Lyly, and John Lyly's creed was substantially that of the well-known hero of a now forgotten comic opera, 'I am an Englishman.'

In the thin disguise of the chief character of his story the author describes the happy island, its brave gentlemen and rich merchants, its fair ladies and its noble Queen. The glories of London, which he calls the storehouse and mart of all Europe, and the excellence of English universities, 'out of which do daily proceed men of great wisdom,' are alike celebrated. England's material wealth in mines and quarries is amply set forth, also the fine qualities of the breed of cattle, and the virtues of English spaniels, hounds, and mastiffs; for these constitute a sort of good that all could appreciate. He is satirical at the expense of his countrymen's dress,—'there is nothing in England more constant than the inconstancie of attire,'—but praises their silence and gravity at their meals. They have wise ministers in the court, and devout guardians of the true religion and of the church. 'O thrice happy England, where such councilors are, where such people live, where such virtue springeth.'

In the paragraphs relating to the queen, Lyly grows positively eloquent. He praises her matchless beauty, her mercy, patience, and moderation, and emphasizes the fact of her virginity to a degree that would have satisfied the imperial votaress herself if but once she had considered her admirer's words: 'O fortunate England that hath such a Queen; ungratefull, if thou pray not for her; wicked, if thou do not love her; miserable, if thou lose her.' He calls down Heaven's blessings upon her that she may be 'triumphant in victories like the Palm tree, fruitful in her age like the Vine, in all ages prosperous, to all men gracious, in all places glorious: so that there be no end of her praise, until the end of all flesh.'

With passages such as these, this interesting book draws to a conclusion. A most singular and original book, worthy to be read, unless, indeed, the reading of these out-of-the-way volumes were found to encroach upon time belonging by right of eminent intellectual domain to Chaucer and to Shakespeare, to Spenser and to Milton. That Euphues is in no exact sense a novel admits of little question. It is also a brilliant illustration of how not to write English. Nevertheless it is very amusing, and its disappearance would be a misfortune, since it would eclipse the innocent gayety of many a man who loves to bask in that golden sunshine which streams from the pages of old English books.



THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FAIR-MINDED MAN

It is by no means necessary that one be a man of letters in order to write a good book. Some very admirable books have been written by men who gave no especial thought to literature as an art. They wrote because they were so fortunate as to find themselves in possession of ideas, and not because they had determined to become authors. Literature as such implies sophistication, and people who devote themselves to literature do so from a variety of motives. But these writers of whom I now speak have a less complex thought back of their work. They do not, for example, propose pleasure to the reader as an object in writing. Their aim is single. They recount an experience, or plead a cause. Literature with them is always a means to an end. They are like pedestrians who never look upon walking as other than a rational process for reaching a given place. It does not occur to them that walking makes for health and pleasure, and that it is also an exercise for displaying a graceful carriage, the set of the shoulders, the poise of the head.

To be sure one runs the risk of being deceived in this matter. The actress who plays the part of an unaffected young girl, for aught that the spectator knows to the contrary may be a pronounced woman of the world. Not every author who says to the public 'excuse my untaught manner' is on this account to be regarded as a literary ingenu. His simplicity awakens distrust. The fact that he professes to be a layman is a reason for suspecting him. He is probably an adept, a master of the wiles by which readers are snared.

But aside from the cases in which deception is practiced, or at least attempted, there is in the world a respectable body of literature which is not the work of literary men. Its chief characteristic is sincerity. The writers of these books are so busy in telling the truth that they have no time to think of literature.

Among the more readable of these pieces is that unpretentious volume in which Dr. Joseph Priestley relates the story of his life. For in classing this book with the writings of authors who are not men of letters one surely does not go wide of the mark. There is a sense in which it is entirely proper to say that Priestley was not a literary man. He produced twenty-five volumes of 'works,' but they were for use rather than for art. He wrote on science, on grammar, on theology, on law. He published controversial tracts: 'Did So-and-So believe so-and-so or something quite different?' and then a discussion of the 'grounds' of this belief. He made 'rejoinders,' 'defenses,' 'animadversions,' and printed the details of his Experiments on Different Kinds of Air. This is distinctly uninviting. Let me propose an off-hand test by which to determine whether or no a given book is literature. Can you imagine Charles Lamb in the act of reading that book? If you can; it's literature; if you can't, it isn't. I find it difficult to conceive of Charles Lamb as mentally immersed in the Letter to an Anti-paedobaptist or the Doctrine of Phlogiston Established, but it is natural to think of him turning the pages of Priestley's Memoir, reading each page with honest satisfaction and pronouncing the volume to be worthy the title of A BOOK.

It is a plain unvarnished tale and entirely innocent of those arts by the practice of which authors please their public. There is no eloquence, no rhetoric, no fine writing of any sort. The two or three really dramatic events in Priestley's career are not handled with a view to producing dramatic effect. There are places where the author might easily have become impassioned. But he did not become impassioned. Not a few paragraphs contain unwritten poems. The simple-hearted Priestley was unconscious of this, or if conscious, then too modest to make capital of it. He had never aspired to the reputation of a clever writer, but rather of a useful one. His aim was quite as simple when he wrote the Memoir as when he wrote his various philosophical reports. He never deviated into brilliancy. He set down plain statements about events which had happened to him, and people whom he had known. Nevertheless the narrative is charming, and the reasons of its charm are in part these:—

In the first place the book belongs to that department of literature known as autobiography. Autobiography has peculiar virtues. The poorest of it is not without some flavor of life, and at its best it is transcendent. A notable value lies in its power to stimulate. This power is very marked in Priestley's case, where the self-delineated portrait is of a man who met and overcame enormous difficulties. He knew poverty and calumny, both brutal things. He had a thorn in the flesh,—for so he himself characterized that impediment in his speech which he tried more or less unsuccessfully all his life to cure. He found his scientific usefulness impaired by religious and political antagonisms. He tasted the bitterness of mob violence; his house was sacked, his philosophical instruments destroyed, his manuscripts and books scattered along the highway. But as he looked back upon these things he was not moved to impatience. There is a high serenity in his narrative as becomes a man who has learned to distinguish between the ephemeral and the permanent elements of life.

Yet it is not impossible that autobiography of this sort has an effect the reverse of stimulating upon some people. It is pleasanter to read of heroes than to be a hero oneself. The story of conquest is inspiring, but the actual process is apt to be tedious. One's nerves are tuned to a fine energy in reading of Priestley's efforts to accomplish a given task. 'I spent the latter part of every week with Mr. Thomas, a Baptist minister, ... who had no liberal education. Him I instructed in Hebrew, and by that means made myself a considerable proficient in that language. At the same time I learned Chaldee and Syriac and just began to read Arabic' This seems easy in the telling, but in reality it was a long, a monotonous, an exhausting process. Think of the expenditure of hours and eyesight over barbarous alphabets and horrid grammatical details. One must needs have had a mind of leather to endure such philological and linguistic wear and tear. Priestley's mind not only cheerfully endured it but actually toughened under it. The man was never afraid of work. Take as an illustration his experience in keeping school.

He had pronounced objections to this business, and he registered his protest. But suppose the alternative is to teach school or to starve. A man will then teach school. I don't know that this was quite the situation in which Priestley found himself, though he needed money. He may have hesitated to enter a profession which in his time required a more extensive muscular equipment than he was able to furnish. The old English schoolmasters were 'bruisers.' They had thick skins, hard heads, and solid fists. The symbols of their office were a Greek grammar and a flexible rod. They were skillful either with the book or the birch. It has taken many years to convince the world that the short road to the moods and tenses does not necessarily lie through the valley of the shadow of flogging. Perhaps Priestley objected to school-mastering because it was laborious. It was indeed laborious as he practiced it. One marvels at his endurance. His school consisted of about thirty boys, and he had a separate room for about half-a-dozen young ladies. 'Thus I was employed from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon, without any interval except one hour for dinner; and I never gave a holiday on any consideration, the red letter days excepted. Immediately after this employment in my own school-rooms I went to teach in the family of Mr. Tomkinson, an eminent attorney, ... and here I continued until seven in the evening.' Twelve consecutive hours of teaching, less one hour for dinner! It was hardly necessary for Priestley to add that he had 'but little leisure for reading.'

He laid up no money from teaching, but like a true man of genius spent it upon books, a small air-pump, an electrical machine. By training his advanced pupils to manipulate these he 'extended the reputation' of his school. This was playing at science. Several years were yet to elapse before he should acquire fame as an original investigator.

This autobiography is valuable because it illustrates the events of a remarkable time. He who cares about the history of theological opinion, the history of chemical science, the history of liberty, will read these pages with keen interest. Priestley was active in each of these fields. Men famous for their connection with the great movements of the period were among his friends and acquaintance. He knew Franklin and Richard Price. John Canton, who was the first man in England to verify Franklin's experiments, was a friend of Priestley. So too were Smeaton the engineer, James Watt, Boulton, Josiah Wedgewood, and Erasmus Darwin. He knew Kippis, Lardner, Parr, and had met Porson and Dr. Johnson. His closest friend for many years was Theophilus Lindsey. One might also mention the great Lavoisier, Magellan the Jesuit philosopher, and a dozen other scientific, ecclesiastical, and political celebrities. The Memoir, however, is almost as remarkable for what it does not tell concerning these people as for what it does. Priestley was not anecdotal. And he is only a little less reticent about himself than he is about others. He does indeed describe his early struggles as a dissenting minister, but the reader would like a little more expansiveness in the account of his friendships and his chemical discoveries. These discoveries were made during the time that he was minister at the Mill-hill Chapel, Leeds. Here he began the serious study of chemistry. And that without training in the science as it was then understood. At Warrington he had heard a series of chemical lectures by Dr. Turner of Liverpool, a gentleman whom Americans ought to regard with amused interest, for he was the man who congratulated his fellows in a Liverpool debating society that while they had just lost the terra firma of thirteen colonies in America, they had gained, under the generalship of Dr. Herschel, a terra incognita of much greater extent in nubibus. Priestley not only began his experiments without any great store of knowledge, but also without apparatus save what he devised for himself of the cheapest materials. In 1772 he published his first important scientific tract, 'a small pamphlet on the method of impregnating water with fixed air.' For this he received the Copley medal from the Royal Society. On the first of August, 1774, he discovered oxygen. Nobody in Leeds troubled particularly to inquire what this dissenting minister was about with his vials and tubes, his mice and his plants. Priestley says that the only person who took 'much interest' was Mr. Hey, a surgeon. Mr. Hey was a 'zealous Methodist' and wrote answers to Priestley's theological papers. Arminian and Socinian were at peace if science was the theme. When Priestley departed from Leeds, Hey begged of him the 'earthen trough' in which all his experiments had been made. This earthen trough was nothing more nor less than a washtub of the sort in common local use. So independent is genius of the elaborate appliances with which talent must produce results.

The discoveries brought fame, especially upon the Continent, and led Lord Shelburne to invite Priestley to become his 'literary companion.' Dr. Price was the intermediary in effecting this arrangement. Priestley's nominal post was that of 'librarian,' and he now and then officiated as experimentalist extraordinary before Lord Shelburne's guests. The compensation was not illiberal, and the relation seems to have been as free from degrading elements as such relations can be. Priestley was not a sycophant even in the day when men of genius thought it no great sin to give flattery in exchange for dinners. It was never his habit to burn incense before the great simply because the great liked the smell of incense and were accustomed to it. On the other hand, Shelburne appears to have treated the philosopher with kindness and delicacy, and the situation was not without difficulties for his lordship.

Among obvious advantages which Priestley derived from this residence were freedom from financial worry, time for writing and experimenting, a tour on the Continent, and the privilege of spending the winter season of each year in London.

It was during these London visits that he renewed his acquaintance with Dr. Franklin. They were members of a club of 'philosophical gentlemen' which met at stated times at the London Coffee House, Ludgate Hill. There were few days upon which the Father of Pneumatic Chemistry and the Father of Electrical Science did not meet. When their talk was not of dephlogisticated air and like matters it was pretty certain to be political. The war between England and America was imminent. Franklin dreaded it. He often said to Priestley that 'if the difference should come to an open rupture, it would be a war of ten years, and he should not live to see the end of it.' He had no doubt as to the issue. 'The English may take all our great towns, but that will not give them possession of the country,' he used to say. Franklin's last day in England was given to Priestley. The two friends spent much of the time in reading American newspapers, especially accounts of the reception which the Boston Port Bill met with in America, and as Franklin read the addresses to the inhabitants of Boston, from the places in the neighborhood, 'the tears trickled down his cheeks.' He wrote to Priestley from Philadelphia just a month after the battle of Lexington, briefly describing that lively episode, and mentioning his pleasant six weeks voyage with weather 'so moderate that a London wherry might have accompanied us all the way.' At the close of his letter he says: 'In coming over I made a valuable philosophical discovery, which I shall communicate to you when I can get a little time. At present I am extremely hurried.' In October of that year, 1775, Franklin wrote to Priestley about the state of affairs in America. His letter contains one passage which can hardly be hackneyed from over-quotation. Franklin wants Priestley to tell 'our dear good friend,' Dr. Price, that America is 'determined and unanimous.' 'Britain at the expense of three millions has killed 150 yankees this campaign, which is 20,000 l. a head; and at Bunker's Hill, she gained a mile of ground, all of which she lost again, by our taking post on Ploughed Hill. During the same time 60,000 children have been born in America.' From these data Dr. Price is to calculate 'the time and expense necessary to kill us all, and conquer the whole of our territory.' Then the letter closes with greetings 'to the club of honest whigs at the London Coffee House.'

Seven years later Franklin's heart was still faithful to the club. He writes to Priestley from France: 'I love you as much as ever, and I love all the honest souls that meet at the London Coffee House.... I labor for peace with more earnestness that I may again be happy in your sweet society.' Franklin thought that war was folly. In a letter to Dr. Price, he speaks of the great improvements in natural philosophy, and then says: 'There is one improvement in moral philosophy which I wish to see: the discovery of a plan that would induce and oblige nations to settle their disputes without first cutting one another's throats.'

Priestley lamented that a man of Franklin's character and influence 'should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers.' Franklin acknowledged that he had not given much attention to the evidences of Christianity, and asked Priestley to recommend some 'treatises' on the subject 'but not of great length.' Priestley suggested certain chapters of Hartley's Observations on Man, and also what he himself had written on the subject in his Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion. Franklin had promised to read whatever books his friend might advise and give his 'sentiments on them.' 'But the American war breaking out soon after, I do not believe,' says Priestley, 'that he ever found himself sufficiently at leisure for the discussion.'

Priestley valued his own scientific reputation not a little for the weight it gave, among skeptics, to his arguments in support of his religious belief. He found that all the philosophers in Paris were unbelievers. They looked at him with mild astonishment when they learned that he was not of the same mind. They may even have thought him a phenomenon which required scientific investigation. 'As I chose on all occasions to appear as a Christian, I was told by some of them that I was the only person they had ever met with, of whose understanding they had any opinion, who professed to believe Christianity.' Priestley began to question them as to what they supposed Christianity was, and with the usual result,—they were not posted on the subject.

In 1780 Priestley went to Birmingham. In the summer of 1791 occurred that remarkable riot, perhaps the most dramatic event in the philosopher's not unpicturesque career. This storm had long been gathering, and when it broke, the principal victim of its anger was, I verily believe, more astonished than frightened. The Dissenters were making unusual efforts to have some of their civil disabilities removed. Feeling against them was especially bitter. In Birmingham this hostility was intensified by the public discourses of Mr. Madan, 'the most respectable clergyman of the town,' says Priestley. He published 'a very inflammatory sermon ... inveighing against the Dissenters in general, and myself in particular.' Priestley made a defense under the title of Familiar Letters to the Inhabitants of Birmingham. This produced a 'reply' from Madan, and 'other letters' from his opponent. Being a conspicuous representative of that body which was most 'obnoxious to the court' it is not surprising that Priestley should have been singled out for unwelcome honors. The feeling of intolerance was unusually strong. It was said—I don't know how truly—that at a confirmation in Birmingham tracts were distributed against Socinianism in general and Priestley in particular. Very reputable men thought they did God service in inflaming the minds of the rabble against this liberal-minded gentleman. Priestley's account of the riot in the Memoir is singularly temperate. It might even be called tame. He was quite incapable of posing, or of playing martyr to an audience of which a goodly part was sympathetic and ready to believe his sufferings as great as he chose to make them appear. One could forgive a slight outburst of indignation had the doctor chosen so to relieve himself. 'On occasion of the celebration of the anniversary of the French revolution, on July 14, 1791, by several of my friends, but with which I had little to do, a mob, encouraged by some persons in power, first burned the meeting-house in which I preached, then another meeting-house in the town, and then my dwelling-house, demolishing my library, apparatus, and as far as they could everything belonging to me.... Being in some personal danger on this occasion I went to London.'

A much livelier account from Priestley's own hand and written the next day after the riot is found in a letter to Theophilus Lindsay. 'The company were hardly gone from the inn before a drunken mob rushed into the house and broke all the windows. They then set fire to our meeting-house and it is burned to the ground. After that they gutted, and some say burned the old meeting. In the mean time some friends came to tell me that I and my house were threatened, and another brought a chaise to convey me and my wife away. I had not presence of mind to take even my MSS.; and after we were gone the mob came and demolished everything, household goods, library, and apparatus.' The letter differs from the Memoir in saying that 'happily no fire could be got.' Priestley afterwards heard that 'much pains was taken, but without effect, to get fire from my large electrical machine which stood in the Library.'

It is rather a curious fact that Priestley was not at the inn where the anniversary was celebrating. While the company there were chanting the praises of liberty he was at home playing backgammon with his wife, a remarkably innocent and untreasonable occupation. Mr. Arthur Young visited the scene of the riot a few days later and had thoughts upon it. 'Seeing, as I passed, a house in ruins, on inquiry I found that it was Dr. Priestley's. I alighted from my horse, and walked over the ruins of that laboratory which I had left home with the expectation of reaping instruction in; of that laboratory, the labours of which have not only illuminated mankind but enlarged the sphere of science itself; which has carried its master's fame to the remotest corner of the civilized world; and will now with equal celerity convey the infamy of its destruction to the disgrace of the age and the scandal of the British name.' It is not necessary to supplement Arthur Young's burst of indignation with private bursts of our own. We can afford to be as philosophic over the matter as Priestley was. That feeling was hot against him even in London is manifest from the fact that the day after his arrival a hand-bill was distributed beginning with the words: 'Dr. Priestley is a damned rascal, an enemy both to the religious and political constitution of this country, a fellow of a treasonable mind, consequently a bad Christian.' The 'bad Christian' thought it showed 'no small degree of courage' in Mr. William Vaughan to receive him into his house. 'But it showed more in Dr. Price's congregation at Hackney to invite me to succeed him.' The invitation was not unanimous, as Priestley with his characteristic passion for exactness is at pains to tell the reader. Some of the members withdrew, 'which was not undesirable.'

People generally looked askance at him. If he was upon one side of the street the respectable part of the world made it convenient to pass by on the other side. He even found his relations with his philosophical acquaintance 'much restricted.' 'Most of the members of the Royal Society shunned him,' he says. This seems amusing and unfortunate. Apparently one's qualifications as a scientist were of little avail if one happened to hold heterodox views on the Trinity, or were of opinion that more liberty than Englishmen then had would be good for them. Priestley resigned his fellowship in the Royal Society.

One does not need even mildly to anathematize the instigators of that historic riot. They were unquestionably zealous for what they believed to be the truth. Moreover, as William Hutton observed at the time, 'It's the right of every Englishman to walk in darkness if he chooses.' The method employed defeated its own end. Persecution is an unsafe investment and at best pays a low rate of interest. No dignified person can afford to indulge in it. There's the danger of being held up to the laughter of posterity. It has happened so many times that the unpopular cause has become popular. This ought to teach zealots to be cautious. What would Madan have thought if he could have been told that within thirty years one of his own coadjutors in this affair would have publicly expressed regret for the share he had in it? Madan has his reward, three quarters of a column in the Dictionary of National Biography. But to-day Priestley's statue stands in a public square of Birmingham opposite the Council House. Thus do matters get themselves readjusted in this very interesting world.

Rutt's Life of Priestley (that remarkable illustration of how to make a very poor book out of the best materials) contains a selection of the addresses and letters of condolence which were forthcoming at this time. Some of them are stilted and dull, but they are actual 'documents,' and the words in them are alive with the passion of that day. They make the transaction very real and close at hand.

Priestley was comparatively at ease in his new home. Yet he could not entirely escape punishment. There were 'a few personal insults from the lowest of the rabble.' Anxiety was felt lest he might again receive the attentions of a mob. He humorously remarked: 'On the 14th of July, 1792, it was taken for granted by many of my neighbors that my house was to come down just as at Birmingham the year before.' The house did not come down, but its occupant grew ill at ease, and within another two years he had found a new home in the new nation across the sea.

It is hardly exact to say that he was 'driven' from England, as some accounts of his life have it. Mere personal unpopularity would not have sufficed for this. But at sixty-one a man hasn't as much fight in him as at forty-five. He is not averse to quiet. Priestley's three sons were going to America because their father thought that they could not be 'placed' to advantage in a country so 'bigoted' as their native land was then. 'My own situation, if not hazardous, was become unpleasant, so that I thought my removal would be of more service to the cause of truth than my longer stay in England.'

The sons went first and laid the foundations of the home in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. The word 'Susquehanna' had a magic sound to Englishmen. On March 30, 1794, Priestley delivered his farewell discourse. April 6 he passed with his friends the Lindsays in Essex Street, and a day later went to Gravesend. For the details of the journey one must go to his correspondence.

His last letters were written from Deal and Falmouth, April 9 and 11. The vessel was six weeks in making the passage. The weather was bad and the travelers experienced everything 'but shipwreck and famine.' There was no lack of entertainment, for the ocean was fantastic and spectacular. Not alone were there the usual exhibitions of flying-fish, whales, porpoises, and sharks, but also 'mountains of ice larger than the captain had ever seen before,'—for thus early had transatlantic captains learned the art of pronouncing upon the exceptional character of a particular voyage for the benefit of the traveler who is making that voyage. They saw water-spouts, 'four at one time.' The billows were 'mountain-high, and at night appeared to be all on fire.' They had infinite leisure, and scarcely knew how to use it. Mrs. Priestley wrote 'thirty-two large pages of paper.' The doctor read 'the whole of the Greek Testament and the Hebrew Bible as far as the first book of Samuel.' He also read through Hartley's second volume, and 'for amusement several books of voyages and Ovid's Metamorphoses.' 'If I had [had] a Virgil I should have read him through, too. I read a great deal of Buchanan's poems, and some of Petrarch's de remediis, and Erasmus's Dialogues; also Peter Pindar's poems, ... which pleased me much more than I expected. He is Paine in verse.'

On June 1 the ship reached Sandy Hook. Three days later Dr. and Mrs. Priestley 'landed at the Battery in as private a manner as possible, and went immediately to Mrs. Loring's lodging-house close by.' The next morning the principal inhabitants of New York came to pay their respects and congratulations; among others Governor Clinton, Dr. Prevoost, bishop of New York; Mr. Osgood, late envoy to Great Britain; the heads of the college; most of the principal merchants, and many others; for an account of which amenities one must read Henry Wansey's Excursion to the United States in the Summer of 1794, published by Salisbury in 1796, a most amusing and delectable volume.

Priestley missed seeing Vice-president John Adams by one day. Adams had sailed for Boston on the third. But he left word that Boston was 'better calculated' for Priestley than any other part of America, and that 'he would find himself very well received if he should be inclined to settle there.'

Mrs. Priestley in a letter home says: 'Dr. P. is wonderfully pleased with everything, and indeed I think he has great reason from the attentions paid him.' The good people became almost frivolous with their dinner-parties, receptions, calls, and so forth. Then there were the usual addresses from the various organizations,—one from the Tammany Society, who described themselves as 'a numerous body of freemen, who associate to cultivate among them the love of liberty, and the enjoyment of the happy republican government under which they live.' There was an address from the 'Democratic Society,' one from the 'Associated Teachers in the City of New York,' one from the 'Republican Natives of Great Britain and Ireland,' one from the 'Medical Society.'

The pleasure was not unmixed. Dr. Priestley the theologian had a less cordial reception than Dr. Priestley the philosopher and martyr. The orthodox were considerably disturbed by his coming. 'Nobody asks me to preach, and I hear there is much jealousy and dread of me.' In Philadelphia at a Baptist meeting the minister bade his people beware, for 'a Priestley had entered the land.' But the heretic was very patient and earnest to do what he might for the cause of 'rational' Christianity. The widespread infidelity distressed him. He mentioned it as a thing to be wondered at that in America the lawyers were almost universally unbelievers. He lost no time in getting to work. On August 27, when he had been settled in Northumberland only a month, he wrote to a friend that he had just got Paine's Age of Reason, and thought to answer it. By September 14 he had done so. 'I have transcribed for the press my answer to Mr. Paine, whose work is the weakest and most absurd as well as most arrogant of anything I have yet seen.'

Priestley was fully conscious of the humor of his situation. He was trying to save the public, including lawyers, from the mentally debilitating effects of reading Paine's Age of Reason, while at the same time all the orthodox divines were warning their flocks of the danger consequent upon having anything to do with him.

Honors and rumors of honors came to him. He was talked of for the presidency of colleges yet to be founded, and was invited to professorships in colleges that actually were. He went occasionally to Philadelphia, a frightful journey from Northumberland in those days. Through his influence a Unitarian society was established. He gave public discourses, and there was considerable curiosity to see and hear so famous a man. 'I have the use of Mr. Winchester's pulpit every morning ... and yesterday preached my first sermon.' He was told that 'a great proportion of the members of Congress were present,' and we know that 'Mr. Vice-President Adams was a regular attendant.'

In company with his friend Mr. Russell, Priestley went to take tea with President Washington. They stayed two hours 'as in any private family,' and at leavetaking were invited 'to come at any time without ceremony.'

About a year later Priestley saw again Washington, who had finished his second term of office. 'I went to take leave of the late president. He seemed not to be in very good spirits. He invited me to Mt. Vernon, and said he thought he should hardly go from home twenty miles as long as he lived.'

Priestley was not to have the full measure of the rest which he coveted. He had left England to escape persecution, and persecution followed him. Cobbett, who had assailed him in a scurrilous pamphlet at the time of his emigration, continued his attacks. Priestley was objectionable because he was a friend of France. Moreover he had opinions about things, some of which he freely expressed,—a habit he had contracted so early in life as to render it hopeless that he should ever break himself of it. Cobbett's virulence was so great as to excite the astonishment of Mr. Adams, who said to Priestley, 'I wonder why the man abuses you;' when a hint from Adams, Priestley thought, would have prevented it all. But it was not easy to control William Cobbett. Adams may have thought that Cobbett was a being created for the express purpose of being let alone. There are such beings. Every one knows, or can guess, to what sort of animal Churton Collins compared Dean Swift, when the Dean was in certain moods. William Cobbett, too, had his moods.

Yet it is impossible to read Priestley's letters between 1798 and 1801 without indignation against those who preyed upon his peace of mind. He writes to Lindsay: 'It is nothing but a firm faith in a good Providence that is my support at present: but it is an effectual one.' His 'never failing resource' was the 'daily study of the Scriptures.' In moments of depression he loved to read the introduction to Hartley's second volume, those noble passages beginning: 'Whatever be our doubts, fears, or anxieties, whether selfish or social, whether for time or eternity, our only hope and refuge must be in the infinite power, knowledge and goodness of God.'

Priestley was indeed a remarkable man. His services to science were very great. He laid the foundations of notable structures which, however, other men were to rear. He might have been a greater man had he been less versatile. And yet his versatility was one source of his greatness. He clung to old-fashioned notions, defending the doctrine of 'philogiston' after it had been abandoned by nearly every other chemist of repute. For this he has been ridiculed. But he was not ridiculous, he was singularly open-minded. He knew that his reputation as a philosopher was under a cloud. 'Though all the world is at present against me, I see no reason to despair of the old system; and yet, if I should see reason to change my opinion, I think I should rather feel a pride in making the most public acknowledgment of it.' These are words which Professor Huxley might well have quoted in his beautiful address on Priestley delivered at Birmingham, for they are the perfect expression and symbol of the fair-minded man.

He was as modest as he was fair-minded. When it was proposed that he should accompany Captain Cook's expedition to the South Seas, and the arrangements were really completed, he was objected to because of his political and religious opinions. Dr. Reinhold Foster was appointed in his stead. He was a person 'far better qualified,' said Priestley. Again when he was invited to take the chair of Chemistry at Philadelphia he refused. This for several reasons, the chief of which was that he did not believe himself fitted for it. One would naturally suppose that the inventor of soda-water and the discoverer of oxygen would have been able to give lectures to young men on chemistry. But Priestley believed that he 'could not have acquitted himself in it to proper advantage.' 'Though I have made discoveries in some branches of chemistry, I never gave much attention to the common routine of it, and know but little of the common processes.'

Priestley still awaits a biographer. The two thick volumes compiled by Rutt more than sixty-three years ago have not been reprinted, nor are they likely to be. But a life so precious in its lessons should be recorded in just terms. It would be an inspiring book, and its title might well be 'The Story of a Man of Character.' Not the least of its virtues would consist in ample recognition of Joseph Priestley's unwavering confidence that all things were ordered for the best; and then of his piety, which prompted him to say, as he looked back upon his life: 'I am thankful to that good Providence which always took more care of me than ever I took of myself.'



CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT

Hero-worship is appropriate only to youth. With age one becomes cynical, or indifferent, or perhaps too busy. Either the sense of the marvelous is dulled, or one's boys are just entering college and life is agreeably practical. Marriage and family cares are good if only for the reason that they keep a man from getting bored. But they also stifle his yearnings after the ideal. They make hero-worship appear foolish. How can a man go mooning about when he has just had a good cup of coffee and a snatch of what purports to be the news, while an attractive and well-dressed woman sits opposite him at breakfast-table, and by her mere presence, to say nothing of her wit, compels him to be respectable and to carry a level head? The father of a family and husband of a federated club woman has no business with hero-worship. Let him leave such folly to beardless youth.

But if a man has never outgrown the boy that was in him, or has never married, then may he do this thing. He will be happy himself, and others will be happy as they consider him. Indeed, there is something altogether charming about the personality of him who proves faithful to his early loves in literature and art; who continues a graceful hero-worship through all the caprices of literary fortune; and who, even though his idol may have been dethroned, sets up a private shrine at which he pays his devotions, unmindful of the crowd which hurries by on its way to do homage to strange gods.

Some men are born to be hero-worshipers. Theophile Gautier is an example. If one did not love Gautier for his wit and his good-nature, one would certainly love him because he dared to be sentimental. He displayed an almost comic excess of emotion at his first meeting with Victor Hugo. Gautier smiles as he tells the story; but he tells it exactly, not being afraid of ridicule. He went to call upon Hugo with his friends Gerard de Nerval and Petrus Borel. Twice he mounted the staircase leading to the poet's door. His feet dragged as if they had been shod with lead instead of leather. His heart throbbed; cold sweat moistened his brow. As he was on the point of ringing the bell, an idiotic terror seized him, and he fled down the stairs, four steps at a time, Gerard and Petrus after him, shouting with laughter. But the third attempt was successful. Gautier saw Victor Hugo—and lived. The author of Odes et Ballades was just twenty-eight years old. Youth worshiped youth in those great days.

Gautier said little during that visit, but he stared at the poet with all his might. He explained afterwards that one may look at gods, kings, pretty women, and great poets rather more scrutinizingly than at other persons, and this too without annoying them. 'We gazed at Hugo with admiring intensity, but he did not appear to be inconvenienced.'

What brings Gautier especially to mind is the appearance within a few weeks of an amusing little volume entitled Le Romantisme et l'editeur Renduel. Its chief value consists, no doubt, in what the author, M. Adolphe Jullien, has to say about Renduel. That noted publisher must have been a man of unusual gifts and unusual fortune. He was a fortunate man because he had the luck to publish some of the best works of Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Theophile Gautier, Alfred de Musset, Gerard de Nerval, Charles Nodier, and Paul Lacroix; and he was a gifted man because he was able successfully to manage his troop of geniuses, neither quarreling with them himself nor allowing them to quarrel overmuch with one another. Renduel's portrait faces the title-page of the volume, and there are two portraits of him besides. There are fac-similes of agreements between the great publisher and his geniuses. There is a famous caricature of Victor Hugo with a brow truly monumental. There is a caricature of Alfred de Musset with a figure like a Regency dandy,—a figure which could have been acquired only by much patience and unremitted tight-lacing; also one of Balzac, which shows that that great novelist's waist-line had long since disappeared, and that he had long since ceased to care. What was a figure to him in comparison with the flesh-pots of Paris!

One of the best of these pictorial satires is Roubaud's sketch of Gautier. It has a teasing quality, it is diabolically fascinating. It shows how great an art caricature is in the hands of a master.

But the highest virtue of a good new book is that it usually sends the reader back to a good old book. One can hardly spend much time upon Renduel; he will remember that Gautier has described that period when hero-worship was in the air, when the sap of a new life circulated everywhere, and when he himself was one of many loyal and enthusiastic youths who bowed the head at mention of Victor Hugo's name. The reader will remember, too, that Gautier was conspicuous in that band of Romanticists who helped to make Hernani a success the night of its first presentation. Gautier believed that to be the great event of his life. He loved to talk about it, dream about it, write of it.

There was a world of good fellowship among the young artists, sculptors, and poets of that day. They took real pleasure in shouting Hosanna to Victor Hugo and to one another. Even Zola, the Unsentimental, speaks of ma tristesse as he reviews that delightful past. He cannot remember it, to be sure, but he has read about it. He thinks ill of the present as he compares the present with 'those dead years.' Writers then belonged to a sort of heroic brotherhood. They went out like soldiers to conquer their literary liberties. They were kings of the Paris streets. 'But we,' says Zola in a pensive strain, 'we live like wolves each in his hole.' I do not know how true a description this is of modern French literary society, but it is not difficult to make one's self think that those other days were the days of magnificent friendships between young men of genius. It certainly was a more brilliant time than ours. It was flamboyant, to use one of Gautier's favorite words.

Youth was responsible for much of the enthusiasm which obtained among the champions of artistic liberty. These young men who did honor to the name of Hugo were actually young. They rejoiced in their youth. They flaunted it, so to speak, in the faces of those who were without it. Gautier says that young men of that day differed in one respect from young men of this day; modern young men are generally in the neighborhood of fifty years of age.

Gautier has described his friends and comrades most felicitously. All were boys, and all were clever. They were poor and they were happy. They swore by Scott and Shakespeare, and they planned great futures for themselves.

Take for an example Jules Vabre, who owed his reputation to a certain Essay on the Inconvenience of Conveniences. You will search the libraries in vain for this treatise. The author did not finish it. He did not even commence it,—only talked about it. Jules Vabre had a passion for Shakespeare, and wanted to translate him. He thought of Shakespeare by day and dreamed of Shakespeare by night. He stopped people in the street to ask them if they had read Shakespeare.

He had a curious theory concerning language. Jules Vabre would not have said, As a man thinks so is he, but, As a man drinks so is he. According to Gautier's statement, Vabre maintained the paradox that the Latin languages needed to be 'watered' (arroser) with wine, and the Anglo-Saxon languages with beer. Vabre found that he made extraordinary progress in English upon stout and extra stout. He went over to England to get the very atmosphere of Shakespeare. There he continued for some time regularly 'watering' his language with English ale, and nourishing his body with English beef. He would not look at a French newspaper, nor would he even read a letter from home. Finally he came back to Paris, anglicized to his very galoshes. Gautier says that when they met, Vabre gave him a 'shake hand' almost energetic enough to pull the arm from the shoulder. He spoke with so strong an English accent that it was difficult to understand him; Vabre had almost forgotten his mother tongue. Gautier congratulated the exile upon his return, and said, 'My dear Jules Vabre, in order to translate Shakespeare it is now only necessary for you to learn French.'

Gautier laid the foundations of his great fame by wearing a red waistcoat the first night of Hernani. All the young men were fantastic in those days, and the spirit of carnival was in the whole romantic movement. Gautier was more courageously fantastic than other young men. His costume was effective, and the public never forgot him. He says with humorous resignation: 'If you pronounce the name of Theophile Gautier before a Philistine who has never read a line of our works, the Philistine knows us, and remarks with a satisfied air, "Oh yes, the young man with the red waistcoat and the long hair." ... Our poems are forgotten, but our red waistcoat is remembered.' Gautier cheerfully grants that when everything about him has faded into oblivion this gleam of light will remain, to distinguish him from literary contemporaries whose waistcoats were of soberer hue.

The chapter in his Histoire du Romantisme in which Gautier tells how he went to the tailor to arrange for the most spectacular feature of his costume is lively and amusing. He spread out the magnificent piece of cherry-colored satin, and then unfolded his design for a 'pour-point,' like a 'Milan cuirass.' Says Gautier, using always his quaint editorial we, 'It has been said that we know a great many words, but we don't know words enough to express the astonishment of our tailor when we lay before him our plan for a waistcoat.' The man of shears had doubts as to his customer's sanity.

'Monsieur,' he exclaimed, 'this is not the fashion!'

'It will be the fashion when we have worn the waistcoat once,' was Gautier's reply. And he declares that he delivered the answer with a self-possession worthy of a Brummel or 'any other celebrity of dandyism.'

It is no part of this paper to describe the innocently absurd and good-naturedly extravagant things which Gautier and his companions did, not alone the first night of Hernani, but at all times and in all places. They unquestionably saw to it that Victor Hugo had fair play the evening of February 25, 1830. The occasion was an historic one, and they with their Merovingian hair, their beards, their waistcoats, and their enthusiasm helped to make it an unusually lively and picturesque occasion.

I have quoted a very few of the good things which one may read in Gautier's Histoire du Romantisme. The narrative is one of much sweetness and humor. It ought to be translated for the benefit of readers who know Gautier chiefly by Mademoiselle de Maupin and that for reasons among which love of literature is perhaps the least influential.

It is pleasant to find that Renduel confirms the popular view of Gautier's character. M. Jullien says that Renduel never spoke of Gautier but in praise. 'Quel bon garcon!' he used to say. 'Quel brave coeur!' M. Jullien has naturally no large number of new facts to give concerning Gautier. But there are eight or nine letters from Gautier to Renduel which will be read with pleasure, especially the one in which the poet says to the publisher, 'Heaven preserve you from historical novels, and your eldest child from the smallpox.'

Gautier must have been both generous and modest. No mere egoist could have been so faithful in his hero-worship or so unpretentious in his allusions to himself. One has only to read the most superficial accounts of French literature to learn how universally it is granted that Gautier had skillful command of that language to which he was born. Yet he himself was by no means sure that he deserved a master's degree. He quotes one of Goethe's sayings,—a saying in which the great German poet declares that after the practice of many arts there was but one art in which he could be said to excel, namely, the art of writing in German; in that he was almost a master. Then Gautier exclaims, 'Would that we, after so many years of labor, had become almost a master of the art of writing in French! But such ambitions are not for us!'

Yet they were for him; and it is a satisfaction to note how invariably he is accounted, by the artists in literature, an eminent man among many eminent men in whose touch language was plastic.



STEVENSON: THE VAGABOND AND THE PHILOSOPHER

A certain critic said of Stevenson that he was 'incurably literary;' the phrase is a good one, being both humorous and true. There is comfort in the thought that such efforts as may have been made to keep him in the path of virtuous respectability failed. Rather than do anything Stevenson preferred to loaf and to write books. And he early learned that considerable loafing is necessary if one expects to become a writer. There is a sense in which it is true that only lazy people are fit for literature. Nothing is so fruitful as a fine gift for idleness. The most prolific writers have been people who seemed to have nothing to do. Every one has read that description of George Sand in her latter years, 'an old lady who came out into the garden at mid-day in a broad-brimmed hat and sat down on a bench or wandered slowly about. So she remained for hours looking about her, musing, contemplating. She was gathering impressions, absorbing the universe, steeping herself in Nature; and at night she would give all this forth as a sort of emanation.' One shudders to think what the result might have been if instead of absorbing the universe George Sand had done something practical during those hours. But the Scotchman was not like George Sand in any particular that I know of save in his perfect willingness to bask in the sunshine and steep himself in Nature. His books did not 'emanate.' The one way in which he certainly did not produce literature was by improvisation. George Sand never revised her work; it might almost be said that Robert Louis Stevenson never did anything else.

Of his method we know this much. He himself has said that when he went for a walk he usually carried two books in his pocket, one a book to read, the other a note-book in which to put down the ideas that came to him. This remark has undoubtedly been seized upon and treasured in the memory as embodying a secret of his success. Trusting young souls have begun to walk about with note-books: only to learn that the note-book was a detail, not an essential, in the process.

He who writes while he walks cannot write very much, but he may, if he chooses, write very well. He may turn over the rubbish of his vocabulary until he finds some exquisite and perfect word with which to bring out his meaning. This word need not be unusual; and if it is 'exquisite' then exquisite only in the sense of being fitted with rare exactness to the idea. Stevenson wrote so well in part because he wrote so deliberately. He knew the vulgarity of haste, especially in the making of literature. He knew that finish counted for much, perhaps for half. Has he not been reported as saying that it wasn't worth a man's while to attempt to be a writer unless he was quite willing to spend a day if the need were, on the turn of a single sentence? In general this means the sacrifice of earthly reward; it means that a man must work for love and let the ravens feed him. That scriptural source has been distinctly unfruitful in these latter days, and few authors are willing to take a prophet's chances. But Stevenson was one of the few.

He laid the foundations of his reputation with two little volumes of travel. An Inland Voyage appeared in 1878; Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, in 1879. These books are not dry chronicles of drier facts. They bear much the same relation to conventional accounts of travel that flowers growing in a garden bear to dried plants in a herbarium. They are the most friendly and urbane things in modern English literature. They have been likened to Sterne's Sentimental Journey. The criticism would be better if one were able to imagine Stevenson writing the adventure of the fille de chambre, or could conceive of Lawrence Sterne writing the account of the meeting with the Plymouth Brother. 'And if ever at length, out of our separate and sad ways, we should all come together into one common-house, I have a hope to which I cling dearly, that my mountain Plymouth Brother will hasten to shake hands with me again.' That was written twenty years ago and the Brother was an old man then. And now Stevenson is gone. How impossible it is not to wonder whether they have yet met in that 'one common-house.' 'He feared to intrude, but he would not willingly forego one moment of my society; and he seemed never weary of shaking me by the hand.'

The Inland Voyage contains passages hardly to be matched for beauty. Let him who would be convinced read the description of the forest Mormal, that forest whose breath was perfumed with nothing less delicate than sweet brier. 'I wish our way had always lain among woods,' says Stevenson. 'Trees are the most civil society.'

Stevenson's traveling companion was a young English baronet. The two adventurers paddled in canoes through the pleasant rivers and canals of Belgium and North France. They had plenty of rain and a variety of small misadventures; but they also had sunshine, fresh air, and experiences among the people of the country such as they could have got in no other way. They excited not a little wonder, and the common opinion was that they were doing the journey for a wager; there seemed to be no other reason why two respectable gentlemen, not poor, should work so hard and get so wet.

This was conceived in a more adventurous vein than appears at first sight. In an unsubdued country one contends with beasts and men who are openly hostile. But when one is a stranger in the midst of civilization and meets civilization at its back door, he is astonished to find how little removed civilization is from downright savagery. Stevenson and his companion learned as they could not have learned otherwise how great deference the world pays to clothes. Whether your heart is all right turns out a matter of minor importance; but—are your clothes all right? If so, smiles, and good beds at respectable inns; if not, a lodging in a cow-shed or beneath any poor roof which suffices to keep off the rain. The voyagers had constantly to meet the accusation of being peddlers. They denied it and were suspected afresh while the denial was on their lips. The public mind was singularly alert and critical on the subject of peddlers.

At La Fere, 'of Cursed Memory,' they had a rebuff which nearly spoiled their tempers. They arrived in a rain. It was the finest kind of a night to be indoors 'and hear the rain upon the windows.' They were told of a famous inn. When they reached the carriage entry 'the rattle of many dishes fell upon their ears.' They sighted a great field of snowy table-cloth, the kitchen glowed like a forge. They made their triumphal entry, 'a pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a limp India-rubber bag upon his arm.' Stevenson declares that he never had a sound view of that kitchen. It seemed to him a culinary paradise 'crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen, who all turned round from their sauce-pans and looked at us with surprise.' But the landlady—a flushed, angry woman full of affairs—there was no mistaking her. They asked for beds and were told to find beds in the suburbs: 'We are too busy for the like of you!' They said they would dine then, and were for putting down their luggage. The landlady made a run at them and stamped her foot: 'Out with you—out of the door,' she screeched.

I once heard a young Englishman who had been drawn into some altercation at a continental hotel explain a discreet movement on his own part by saying: 'Now a French cook running amuck with a carving knife in his hand would have bean a nahsty thing to meet, you know.' There were no knives in this case, only a woman's tongue. Stevenson says that he doesn't know how it happened, 'but next moment we were out in the rain, and I was cursing before the carriage entry like a disappointed mendicant.'

'It's all very fine to talk about tramps and morality. Six hours of police surveillance (such as I have had) or one brutal rejection from an inn door change your views upon the subject, like a course of lectures. As long as you keep in the upper regions, with all the world bowing to you as you go, social arrangements have a very handsome air; but once get under the wheels and you wish society were at the devil. I will give most respectable men a fortnight of such a life, and then I will offer them twopence for what remains of their morality.'

Stevenson declares that he could have set the temple of Diana on fire that night if it had been handy. 'There was no crime complete enough to express my disapproval of human institutions.' As for the baronet, he was horrified to learn that he had been taken for a peddler again; and he registered a vow before Heaven never to be uncivil to a peddler. But before making that vow he particularized a complaint for every joint in the landlady's body.

To read An Inland Voyage is to be impressed anew with the thought that some men are born with a taste for vagabondage. They are instinctively for being on the move. Like the author of that book they travel 'not to go any where but to go.' If they behold a stage-coach or a railway train in motion they heartily wish themselves aboard. They are homesick when they stop at home, and are only at home when they are on the move. Talk to them of foreign lands and they are seized with unspeakable heart-ache and longing. Stevenson met an omnibus driver in a Belgian village who looked at him with thirsty eyes because he was able to travel. How that omnibus driver 'longed to be somewhere else and see the round world before he died.' 'Here I am,' said he. 'I drive to the station. Well. And then I drive back again to the hotel. And so on every day and all the week round. My God, is that life?' Stevenson opined that this man had in him the making of a traveler of the right sort; he might have gone to Africa or to the Indies after Drake. 'But it is an evil age for the gipsily inclined among men. He who can sit squarest on a three-legged stool, he it is who has the wealth and glory.'

In his Travels with a Donkey the author had no companionship but such as the donkey afforded; and to tell the truth this companionship was almost human at times. He learned to love the quaint little beast which shared his food and his trials. 'My lady-friend' he calls her. Modestine was her name; 'she was patient, elegant in form, the color of an ideal mouse and inimitably small.' She gave him trouble, and at times he felt hurt and was distant in manner towards her. Modestine carried the luggage. She may not have known that R. L. Stevenson wrote books, but she knew as by instinct that R. L. Stevenson had never driven a donkey. She wrought her will with him, that is, she took her own gait. 'What that pace was there is no word mean enough to describe; it was something as much slower than a walk as a walk is slower than a run.' He must belabor her incessantly. It was an ignoble toil, and he felt ashamed of himself besides, for he remembered her sex. 'The sound of my own blows sickened me. Once when I looked at her she had a faint resemblance to a lady of my acquaintance who had formerly loaded me with kindness; and this increased my horror of my cruelty.'