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HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 THESE AUTHORS. 
 
" One of the last of The Sun's reviews was a criticism of the novels 
 of Anthony Trollope, which may be said to have been the first critical 
 essay that satisfactorily defines that popular author's place in English 
 literature. There have been several similar critical articles in The 
 Sun which should be sufficient to give that journal as distinguished a 
 character as Sainte-Beuve gave to the paper with which he was so 
 long connected." 
 
 Brooklyn Union. 
 
3%* 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 BY 
 
 J. C. HEYWOOD, A.M., L.L.B., 
 
 AUTHOR OF "HEKODIAS," "ANTONIUS," " SALOME," "HOW WILL IT END?' 
 ETC., ETC. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 1877. 
 
Copyright, 1877, by J. B. Lippincott & Co. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Crown of the Work. (Edward Bulwer Lytton.) 7 
 A Captivating Novelist. (William Black.) . . 23 
 A Charming Story-Teller. (Miss Thackeray.) . 39 
 An Ingenious Moralist. (George Eliot.) . . . 57 
 A Novelist who means Business. (Anthony Trollope.) 78 
 A Crude Novelist. (Rhoda Broughton.) . . .97 
 A Gossiping Novelist. (Mrs. Oliphant.) . . . 113 
 An Over-rated Poet. (Alfred Tennyson.) . . .126 
 The Poet of the Sierras. (Joaquin Miller.) . . 148 
 The Philosopher of Crime. (Nathaniel Hawthorne.) 161 
 A Man of Taste. (Henry James, Jr.) . . .183 
 An American Humorist. (Bret Harte.) . . . 197 
 A Son who would Emulate his Father. (Julian 
 
 Hawthorne.) ' . .224 
 
 Mr. Motley's Latest History. (J. Lothrop Motley.). 236 
 A Literary Curiosity. (John Walker Vilant Mac- 
 beth.) 251 
 
 A Kussian Novelist. (I. S. Turgcnieff.) . . . 265 
 
HOW THEY STRIKE ME 
 THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 THE CROWN OF THE WORK. 
 
 The Parisians, Lord Lytton's last composition, 
 is a worthy crown to the work of a long, busy, and 
 uncommonly successful life. The fragment entitled 
 " Pausanias, the Spartan," was indeed published last 
 of all, after Lord Lytton's death, but chiefly com- 
 posed many years before that event. 
 
 It is a rare thing that the later writings of a pro- 
 lific author should be his best, should even hold an 
 equal rank with those which made and established 
 his fame. This thing Lord Lytton achieved. Not 
 a few of the most competent critics will esteem his 
 final work, considered from every point of view, 
 superior to anything of its class which he had pre- 
 viously done. Long ago he had accomplished enough 
 for fame — fame that made his name familiar to the 
 best intelligence of two continents. Yet his industry 
 never languished. Within the period of about forty- 
 
8 
 
 110 W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 six years, commencing when he was twenty-one and 
 ending with his death, he wrote more than forty 
 books, a number of pamphlets, made some impor- 
 tant translations, and was for some time editor of a 
 monthly magazine, besides serving as a not undis- 
 tinguished member of Parliament for more than 
 fifteen years, and afterward as a Cabinet Minister. 
 Novelist, poet, dramatist, essayist, artist, a scholar, 
 a statesman given rather to the study than to the 
 practice of politics, he was at the same time no 
 mean metaphysician, no despicable philosopher. Ac- 
 quainted with much abstruse and obsolete learning, 
 especially that which most stimulates the imagina- 
 tion, he was fascinated by the mysteries dwelling in 
 that " cloud-land" which bounds ordinary natural 
 phenomena and the regular experience of life. Some- 
 times seemingly carried off his feet thereby, he always 
 returned safely and planted himself firmly on the 
 solid foundations of common sense, making his base 
 broader and stronger without diminishing his reach 
 into the regions of fancy. Toying with, examining, 
 using, as an artist, so much of forbidden knowledge, 
 so much of visionary theories, so much of unclassified 
 wonders as suited his purpose, yet he always did so 
 as a master magician, never as the weak and trem- 
 bling wretch who is torn and destroyed by the strange 
 powers which he has too daringly evoked. Truly, 
 Lord Lytton was a man of many sides, capable of 
 showing many phases, inclined in his youth to ex- 
 hibit but the thinner ones, to the discerning plainly 
 
THESE A UTIIOliS. 
 
 9 
 
 a crescent, growing steadily on, till full and round 
 and mellow he sank beneath the horizon, never to 
 come back again. 
 
 To say, in the sense used above, that a man is 
 many-sided, means that he has in himself the germs 
 of many characters; that by the force of his genius 
 these may be presented to the comprehension of 
 others as so many distinct personages. The works 
 of all English writers except Shakspeare mark 
 more or less definitely the limits of their powers in 
 this respect ; that is, the number and kind of char- 
 acters which they could bring into view. Between 
 many of their creations family resemblances may be 
 discovered, and they all move within parallel planes 
 more or less elevated and more or less widely sep- 
 arated. Lord Lytton preferred the higher levels. 
 He had no sympathy with vulgarity of any kind, 
 either of the rich or of the poor ; could see in it 
 nothing ludicrous or amusing. Whether his char- 
 acters were of patrician or plebeian birth he endowed 
 them with a certain natural delicacy and refinement. 
 He liked elegance, and, so far as was consistent with 
 the artistic principles which governed his composi- 
 tions, he filled his world with elegant people. In 
 youth this predilection and the egotism natural to 
 that period of life pushed him to the verge of affecta- 
 tion, that is, of foppery; in his maturer years it 
 fostered in him a kind of mild, genial, aesthetic epi- 
 cureanism. He has always a kindly feeling for a 
 man given to the most delicate enjoyments of the 
 
 2 
 
to 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 palate, sympathizes with him who finds pleasure in 
 an exquisite toilet, but cherishes more lovingly him 
 whose chief gratifications are those of the intellect, 
 who esteems genius and takes delight in the contem- 
 plation of its beautiful creations. 
 
 With the lapse of years he seemed to grow into a 
 health of mind and body more robust than that of 
 his youth; nerves and muscles became stronger with- 
 out losing their sensitiveness, so that he could gener- 
 ously admire a young fellow who would rough it for 
 pleasure, and upon occasion, like Kenelm Chillingly, 
 lick a bully. He hates slang, loves common and 
 vigorous Anglo-Saxon words and idioms. He takes 
 only brief note of trifles, rarely descends far into 
 details. In sketching a landscape he sees only the 
 more picturesque and nobler objects, uses only so 
 many strokes of his pencil as are necessary to make 
 these distinct. He cannot let the ideal form and 
 beauty of the composition escape him and concen- 
 trate his enthusiasm on some unsightly, trivial thing, 
 because minute search detects it in the scene. Yet for 
 him all nature seemed to have a kind of intelligence 
 and sensibility. He had a sort of unconfessed pagan 
 feeling, not a belief, that Dryades, Oreades, Naiades 
 lived, enjoyed, and suffered. The philosophical turn 
 of his mind led him to generalize, to extract the 
 essence of a class and crystallize it. He liked better 
 from many models to compose one Venus than to 
 make the most truthful copies of many fish-wives. 
 His imagination did not seize one phase of a low or 
 
THESE A unions. 
 
 11 
 
 eccentric character, fix it, play with it, make a puppet 
 of it, pull the wires and laugh immoderately at the 
 mechanical repetition of the same words, grimaces, 
 gestures. When his plan necessarily comprises an 
 eccentric personage the character has several phases 
 and is not vulgar. Even in people of the baser and 
 more ignorant kind he likes gradually to develop 
 latent refinement. 
 
 In his more recent works especially, this disposi- 
 tion to call passive worth into action, to educe ex- 
 cellence by the discipline of circumstances, to bring 
 good to the surface, is strongly indicated. Though, 
 while young, egotism and ambition may have tempted 
 him to seek fame for its own sake by the means 
 which appeared to him most likely to arrest hon- 
 orable attention, he seems never to have lost sight of 
 the purpose he had in view when he wrote " Pel- 
 ham." " It struck me that it would be a new, a 
 useful, and perhaps a happy moral, to show in what 
 manner we might redeem and brighten the common- 
 places of life ; to prove (what is really the fact) that 
 the lessons of society do not necessarily corrupt, and 
 that we may be both men of the world, and even to 
 a certain degree men of pleasure, and yet be some- 
 thing wiser — nobler— better." He had then, by the 
 composition of " Mortimer," " Falkland," and some 
 sketches of a like kind, rid his youthful bosom, to a 
 good measure at least, of its " perilous stuff," a false 
 and mawkish sentiment, not untainted with a sickly 
 misanthropy, " common enough to all young minds 
 
12 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 in tli mi- first bitter experience of the disappointments 
 of the world." Any overstraining and weakness of 
 sentiment apparent in his earlier, has been more than 
 atoned by the manly strength and practical wisdom 
 of his later works. 
 
 The apothegms scattered through his books, par- 
 ticularly those written in the decline of life, if col- 
 lected into one vo ume would alone entitle him to 
 a high rank as a careful and universal observer, a 
 profound and acute thinker and analyst, a liberal- 
 minded and proficient philosopher. With increasing 
 years the desire to be useful grew stronger within 
 him, and more completely regulated the action of 
 his powers. To his matnrer vision well-directed 
 genius and talent were the worthiest things to be 
 found among men's titles to distinction. Genius he 
 venerated, and for it always enforced respect. Not- 
 withstanding his own advantages of birth and station 
 he was a model republican in the world of letters, 
 or, rather, a model aristocrat, giving the highest 
 places to the best. Superior mental capacity well 
 used rendered some of his characters, though of 
 humble birth, peers of the proudest ; and by a like 
 exercise of similar faculties the noble showed his 
 best claim to honor., He loved ideality not only for 
 its beauty but for its usefulness. He made it prac- 
 tical, in accordance with the bent of his mind; for 
 he was a dramatic poet as well as a novelist, and a 
 great authority has said that "the dramatic poet is 
 eminently practical " Doubtless he understood that 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 13 
 
 ideality is actually, in some sense, as real as any 
 other quality of the human intellect; and that the 
 realists are inconsistent with tlieir own theories 
 when they strive to eliminate it. At any rate he 
 gives these gentlemen some hard knocks in a very 
 entertaining way, showing, among other things, that 
 men and women are constantly practising ideality, 
 — that is, acting a part. 
 
 " Real women ! I never met one. Never met a woman 
 who was not a sham — a sham from the moment she is told 
 to be pretty behaved, conceal her sentiments, and look fibs 
 when she does not speak them.' 1 
 
 It is Kenelm Chillingly who speaks here. But 
 the heroine of " The Parisians" writes likewise to a 
 friend : 
 
 " The impression left on my mind by the performances 
 I witnessed is that the French people are becoming dwarfed. 
 The comedies that please them are but pleasant caricatures 
 of petty sections in a corrupt society. They contain no 
 large types of human nature ; their witticisms convey no 
 luminous flashes of truth ; their sentiment is not pure and 
 noble — it is a sickly and false perversion of the impure and 
 ignoble into travesties of the pure and the noble. 
 
 " Great dramatists create great parts. One great part, 
 such as Rachel would gladly have accepted, I have not seen 
 in the dramas of the young generation. I do not complain 
 so much that French taste is less refined. I complain that 
 French intellect is lowered. The descent from Polyeucte 
 to Ruy Bias is great, not so much in the poetry of form as 
 in the elevation of thought ; but the descent from Ruy 
 
 2* 
 
14 
 
 IIO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 Bias to the best drama now produced is out of poetry alto- 
 gether, and into those flats of prose which give not even 
 the glimpse of a mountain top." 
 
 As a dramatic poet Lord Lytton mourned the 
 decadence of the spirit and the art poetical. Not 
 by his poems alone has he proved himself a poet; 
 his novels show him to be such. " Harold," for 
 instance, is a grand historical tragedy, a poem in 
 prose, the poetic form distinctly visible through the 
 graceful folds of its drapery. 
 
 He himself early avowed his indebtment to art. 
 
 " I studied with no slight attention the great works of 
 my predecessors, and attempted to derive from that study 
 certain rules and canons to serve me as a guide ; and, if 
 some of my younger contemporaries whom I could name 
 would only condescend to take the same preliminary pains 
 that I did, I am sure that the result would be much more 
 brilliant. It often happens to me to be consulted by per- 
 sons about to attempt fiction, and I invariably find that 
 they imagine they have only to sit down and write. They 
 forget that art does not come by inspiration, and that the 
 novelist, dealing constantly with contrast and effect, must, 
 in the widest and deepest sense of the word, study to be 
 an artist." 
 
 Hence every character in any one of his novels 
 was designed with artistic reference to all the others 
 and to the entire plan of the work. They were 
 drawn and arranged so as to be in proportion and 
 harmony with the grand outlines of the structure. 
 His compositions are not to be examined and judged 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 15 
 
 piecemeal, but in their integrity. His characters are 
 contrasts and foils to each other, so disposed that 
 whatever they do or say has a sufficient motive and 
 adds some necessary part in the rounded whole. 
 Their discussions of politics, ethics, aesthetics, or 
 other dry subjects, are not essays interpolated by the 
 author, but a part of the action, made interesting 
 because on the conclusions reached by them the con- 
 duct and therefore the fate of the characters is seen 
 in some measure at least to depend. These char- 
 acters are not wanting in distinctness, individuality, 
 consistency, vitality. Yet they may seem to lack 
 these qualities to a person who accepts as models 
 more striking automata going through an unvarying 
 series of extravagant actions, puppets repeating the 
 same words with unchanging inflections and eccentric 
 movements, and grotesque caricatures. A caricature 
 may attract attention when a portrait would be 
 passed without notice. Nevertheless the portrait is 
 truer to nature. An eccentric, an ill-bred, or a 
 repulsive man might make himself observed and 
 remembered where a gentleman would not be es- 
 pecially remarked. Hence, to many readers, Lord 
 Lytton's characters seem to want the strongly-marked 
 individuality found by them in the works of some 
 of his contemporaries. Doubtless the result of such 
 injudicious comparisons has often been to deprive 
 him of commendation fairly earned and to bring on 
 him ill-advised disparagement. 
 
 He had set thoughts and phrases, and his favorite 
 
16 
 
 HOW TJU:}' ST A' IKK MK, 
 
 families or classes of good and bad people, which 
 suggest the fixed course and limits of his creative 
 powers. They appear, one after another, in his suc- 
 cessive works, through which their relationship may- 
 be traced. But in dealing with them he seems 
 always to have acted more or less rigidly, according 
 to a rule recently formulated by a distinguished 
 critic, as follows: " The only means of composing a 
 natural and solid whole is to write the history of a 
 passion, or of a character, to take them up at their 
 birth, to see them increase, alter, become destroyed, 
 to understand the inner necessity of their develop- 
 ment." His imagination, which never seemed to 
 flag, was strong, vivid, wide, and far-reaching; his 
 style, with rare exceptions, pure; his diction uni- 
 formly elegant. Indeed, the diction of his person- 
 ages may appear too uniform, lacking in variety of 
 style and individual peculiarities. But then most 
 of his characters belong to the well-bred and edu- 
 cated world, where all persons talk alike. 
 
 He was no bigot, no fanatic. He believed in real 
 progress ; not in revolution or theories which, from 
 their very nature, were impracticable or destructive. 
 He had no sympathy with those who fancy that any 
 movement is an advance, and that the more violent 
 the movement the greater the progress must be. 
 
 " ' There is no sign of old age in this country, sir ; and 
 thank heaven we are not standing still !' 
 
 " £ Grasshoppers never do ; they are always hopping and 
 jumping, and making what they think "progress" till 
 
these a unions. 
 
 17 
 
 (unless they hop into the water and are swallowed up pre- 
 maturely by a carp or a frog) they die of the exhaustion 
 which hops and jumps naturally produce. May I ask you, 
 Mrs. Saunderson, for some of that rice pudding?' " 
 
 Yet he would have the dead past bury its dead, 
 and every man, whatever his rank, station, or the 
 traditions of his family, act so wisely that his advan- 
 tages of mind and position should be turned to the 
 best account, improving, controlling, establishing. 
 Especially in his last work does he exhibit states- 
 manlike views of no cheap or illiberal kind, — the 
 political wisdom garnered during a long association 
 with eminent politicians, and by personally^ observing 
 the practical workings of different systems of polity, 
 as well as the drift and the questions of political dis- 
 cussion among the people at large. 
 
 So far as a fruitful author expresses himself in 
 his creations that expression is not found in one 
 work, or in one character, but in all. The mature 
 Lord Lytton is, however, probably more completely 
 set forth in " The Parisians" than in any other of 
 his books. The seeming affectation, insincerity, 
 mysticism, cynicism expressed in subtle irony, of his 
 early days, has disappeared, and the ripe man stands 
 before us undisguised, strong, hearty, healthy, lib- 
 eral, sincere, earnest, a kindly guide, philosopher, 
 and friend. As one says who held the most affec- 
 tionate and intimate relations with him, — 
 
 " The satire of his earlier novels is a protest against false 
 social respectability ; the humor of his later ones is a pro- 
 
18 
 
 HOW THEY ST HIKE ME, 
 
 test against the disrespect of social realities. By the first 
 he sought to promote social sincerity and the free play of 
 personal character ; by the last to encourage mutual charity 
 and sympathy among all classes on whose inter-relation 
 depends the character of society itself." 
 
 But the change was something more than one of 
 purpose here so clearly and truthfully stated ; it was 
 that produced by the ripening, enriching, and uni- 
 form perfecting of a full, a many-sided character; 
 and from this stronger, more exuberant, more equably 
 teeming soil sprang the broader, higher, more robust 
 purpose. 
 
 The plan of " The Parisians," and the scene and 
 time of its action, were so chosen that practical ques- 
 tions of the highest interest and importance, both 
 political and social, were necessarily discussed by the 
 characters, and illustrated by their conduct and their 
 careers. The curtain rises at Paris in the early spring 
 of 1869. The personages are many. First appears 
 a young legitimist marquis from Brittany, poor, 
 proud, holding himself aloof from politics until 
 Henry V. shall have his rights, his head rilled with 
 old-time notions of what a gentleman may and may 
 not do, ignorant of Paris, to which he has just come, 
 and of the great active world which he had never 
 before entered ; but withal honorable, upright, sensi- 
 ble, — subject nevertheless to temptations in common 
 with all men. With, and as a foil to him, comes a 
 person of undistinguished birth, energetic, intelli- 
 gent, educated, kind-hearted, a good fellow, who 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 19 
 
 makes the best of things as he finds them, earns 
 money, and will use it for a friend. Later a cynical 
 count enters, one who adheres, theoretically at least, 
 and practically in a kind of negative way, to the 
 Orleans family. Two rival bankers, the one of pa- 
 trician the other of plebeian parentage, have not 
 unimportant parts. In contrast with these busy men 
 are nobles of the Faubourg St. Germain, looking 
 down on the Emperor and his government, always 
 conscious of their pedigree, doing nothing in and 
 enjoying nothing of Paris but its pleasures. Har- 
 monizing these contrasts, like intermediate colors in 
 a picture, are other nobles of the same quarter, some- 
 what more practical, going in for the main chance in 
 a clandestine way. Another member of the same 
 family of nobles represents still another class. Him- 
 self guiltless, to save an indiscreet but distinguished 
 lady's reputation he confesses that he has done what 
 must banish him from the society of all reputable 
 men, from Paris, from France. He changes his 
 name, wanders through the world, meeting with 
 many adventures, always conducting himself bravely, 
 honorably, and returns to Paris, still in disguise, to 
 conspire with socialists, communists, and any dis- 
 contented persons of whom he may make instru- 
 ments for the destruction of the Emperor and the 
 overthrow of the Empire. Yet another class is rep- 
 resented by a duchess of the same family on the one 
 side, on the other descended from one of the first 
 Napoleon's marshals, a strong partisan of the Em- 
 
20 
 
 110 W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 pire and admirer of Napoleon III. A high-bred 
 young Englishman, distinguished by his talents as a 
 writer, in knowledge a man of the world, in senti- 
 ments pure and noble, in character unsullied, plays 
 the lover's part. Charged with a secret mission in 
 the result of which he is mysteriously interested, he 
 searches almost hopelessly for the person whom, more 
 than himself, that mission concerns. At first sight 
 conceiving an overpowering love for a woman of 
 whose name even he is ignorant, when he becomes 
 acquainted with and finds her worthy of all homage 
 and affection he feels bound in honor not to do any- 
 thing to win her love, at least till the result of his 
 mission shall be known to himself. Yet uncon- 
 sciously he makes his passion evident to the deli- 
 cate, sensitive, poet-girl, whose heart secretly responds 
 to his throb for throb. A learned, shrewd, witty, 
 manly, professed critic and man of letters, and his 
 intelligent, amiable, sympathizing wife show talent 
 in healthy action. A young poet, effeminate, un- 
 stable, half consumed by absinthe, without principles, 
 ready to write whatever is likely to give him most 
 notoriety in regard either to politics or religion or for 
 the destruction of both, shows talent morbidly active. 
 These are admirably contrasted types of Parisian lit- 
 erary men. A prosperous lawyer, who helps his rich 
 client to pluck his poor client, acts a part not found 
 alone in this drama. A clever American colonel, 
 into whose mouth are put some supposed American- 
 isms amusingly ill chosen, and for the most part 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 21 
 
 incomprehensible to Americans save for the author's 
 marginal explanations ; this colonel's bright, pretty, 
 and admired spouse, who of course talks of women's 
 rights, but is at the same time the most dutiful, sub- 
 missive, and affectionate wife, are good enough speci- 
 mens of the American residents in Paris. A quiet, 
 thoughtful, sensible, liberal-minded German count 
 moves somewhat in the background. The good, 
 generous, beautiful girl-poet, full of genius and the 
 best kind of common sense, with whom the high- 
 bred Englishman falls in love, is the heroine. Her 
 companion, an Italian artist once, now a music- 
 teacher, a tender, affectionate Avoman with charac- 
 teristic foibles and whims; another girl, young, just 
 from school, ingenuous, sweet, a banker's daughter; 
 a handsome young woman of the nameless class, the 
 poet's sweetheart, concealing grand, womanly qual- 
 ities within her soiled character ; some good men and 
 women of the lower middle class ; some socialists, 
 communists, conspirators; some specimens of the 
 wasps, drones, and hangers-on of society, — such, 
 with those more important already named, are the 
 materials which the author brings in contact, unites, 
 incorporates, makes plastic, and forms into a well- 
 proportioned group, a drama, and that drama is what 
 Paris was from the spring of 1869 to the end of the 
 communistic rule, or rather riot, in the city. 
 
 The work was never quite finished. It was in 
 some sense like the last speech of a dying man, and 
 it ends with incomplete phrases, broken sentences. 
 
 3 
 
22 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 The narrative is interrupted toward the close by 
 gaps, periods of silence, during which the action 
 moves on unnoticed. Yet such action and its con- 
 clusion are indicated in this way with sufficient clear- 
 ness to satisfy curiosity and in a great measure content 
 the reader. 
 
 The book is thoroughly interesting. The winding 
 courses of love and political intrigues mingle their 
 currents, and run on with accelerated movement to 
 the common termination. In its completeness is pre- 
 sented a graphic sketch of " the bravest, the most 
 timid, the most ferocious, the kindest-hearted, the 
 most irrational, the most intelligent, the most con- 
 tradictory, the most consistent people whom Jove, 
 taking counsel of Venus and the Graces, Mars and 
 the Furies, ever created for the delight and terror 
 of the world, — in a word, the Parisians." 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 23 
 
 A CAPTIVATING NOVELIST. 
 
 In an honorable way, Mr. William Black has 
 drawn public attention to himself. He has made 
 rapid advances toward a foremost place among Eng- 
 lish novelists. Henceforward, however, he must 
 move with caution. His latest work is not his best. 
 Success seems to have rendered him over-desirous to 
 bring out new books. He ought strongly to resist 
 such an inclination, lest his upward course reach no 
 higher point than that attained in "A Princess of 
 Thule." 
 
 Respect for this writer's ability is excited by what 
 his books incidentally promise of yet better things, 
 as well as by what he has really achieved in them. 
 Constant suggestions of reserved power, whose limits 
 have not yet been indicated, largely augment the ad- 
 miration awakened by the power actually exercised. 
 Like most men, he can do some things better and 
 more easily than others, and he likes to do his best 
 so well that he occasionally gives the reader a little 
 too much of a good thing. This remark is more 
 especially true of his skill and inclination to describe 
 wild or sublime natural scenery and homely land- 
 scapes. What has been said of Dickens is emphati- 
 
24 
 
 IIO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 cally true of this author: " He has the painter in 
 him, and the English painter. Never, surely, did a 
 mind figure to itself with more exact detail or greater 
 energy all the parts and tints of a picture." 
 
 Read this delineation of a gathering storm at sea 
 near the coast : 
 
 " The pinnace was put about, and run toward a certain 
 dark speck that was seen floating on the waves ; while at 
 the same moment over all the west there broke a great and 
 sudden fire of yellow, — streaming down from the riven 
 clouds upon the dusky gray of the sea. In this wild light 
 the islands grew both dark and distant ; and near at hand 
 there was a glare on the water that dazzled the eyes and 
 made all things look fantastic and strange. It lasted but 
 for a moment. The clouds slowly closed, the west grew 
 gray and cold, and over all the sea there fell the leaden- 
 hued twilight again, while the bow of the boat — going this 
 way and that in search of the dead bird — seemed to move 
 forward into the waste of waters like the nose of a 
 retriever." 
 
 Look at this picture of the storm coming down : 
 
 " He was still looking far over the mystic plain of the 
 waves toward that lurid streak, when he seemed to hear a 
 strange sound in the air. It was not a distant sound, but 
 apparently a muttering as of voices all around and in front, 
 hoarse, low, and ominous. And while he still stood watch- 
 ing, with a curiosity which dulled all sense of fear, the slow 
 widening of the blackness across the sea, a puff of wind 
 smote his cheek, and brought the message that those 
 troubled voices of the waves were deepening into a roar. 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 25 
 
 Near the boat the sea was calm, and the darkening sky 
 quite still ; but it seemed as though a great circle were 
 enclosing them, and that the advancing line of storm could 
 be heard raging in the darkness without being itself visible. 
 In the intense stillness that reigned around them, this 
 great, hoarse, deepening tumult of sounds seemed to find a 
 strange echo; and then, while the men were getting the 
 boat put about and made ready for the squall, the water in 
 the immediate neighborhood became powerfully agitated, a 
 hissing of breaking waves was heard all around, and the 
 first blow of the wind struck the boat as if with a hammer." 
 
 And then in what follows notice that the author 
 is a poet as well as a painter. Observe how glee- 
 fully he rides in, diffuses himself through, becomes a 
 part of the wild action of winds and waters : 
 
 " As the boat rose and sank with the waves, and reeled 
 and staggered under the tearing wind, the Whaup, dashing 
 back the salt water from his eyes and mouth, and holding 
 on to the prow, peered into the wild gloom ahead, and was 
 near shouting joyously aloud from the mere excitement and 
 madness of the chase. It was a race with the waves ; and 
 the pinnace rolled and staggered down in a drunken fashion 
 into huge black depths only to rise clear again on the 
 hissing masses of foam ; while wind and water alike — the 
 black and riven sky, the plunging and foaming sea, and the 
 great roaring gusts of the gale that came tearing up from 
 the south — seemed sweeping onward for those dusky and 
 jagged rocks which formed the nearest line of land." 
 
 Now note how the writer is not only a poet, but a 
 dramatic poet ; how he mak^s the incidents of this 
 
 3* 
 
26 
 
 IIOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 storm into a scene in a drama, bringing human 
 hearts into its play, — swaying, wringing, holding 
 them on the rack, — suggesting vastly more than is 
 visible to the spectator : 
 
 " The darkness fell fast, and yet as far as they could see 
 there was no speck of a boat coming in from the wild and 
 moving waste of gray. To the girl standing there and 
 gazing out it seemed that the horizon of the other world — 
 that mystic margin on which in calmer moments we seem 
 to see the phantoms of those who have been taken from us 
 passing in a mournful procession, speechless and cold-eyed, 
 giving to us no sign of recognition — had come close and 
 near, and might have withdrawn behind its shadowy folds 
 all the traces of life which the sea held. Could it be that 
 the black pall of death had fallen just beyond those gloomy 
 islands, and hidden forever from mortal eyes that handful 
 of anxious men who had lately been struggling toward the 
 shore? Was the bright young life that she had grown 
 familiar with, and almost learned to love, now snatched away 
 without one mute pressure of the hand to say farewell?" 
 
 Later on is a scene more tragical, a climax at the 
 end of the last act but one, and the great, resistless 
 storm has a part in it, like relentless destiny in the 
 ancient drama : 
 
 "Then the first shock of the storm fell, — fell with a 
 crash on the fir woods, and tore through them with a voice 
 of thunder. All over now the sky was black ; and there 
 was a whirlwind whitening the sea, the cry of which could 
 be heard far out beyond the land. Then came the rain in 
 wild, fierce torrents that blew about the wet fields and 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 27 
 
 raised red channels of water in the roads. Coquette had 
 no covering of any sort. In a few minutes she was 
 drenched ; and yet she did not seem to know. She only 
 staggered on blindly, in the vain hope of reaching Saltcoats 
 before the darkness had fallen, and seeking some shelter. 
 She would not go to meet Lord Earlshope. She would 
 creep into some hovel; and then, in the morning, send a 
 message of repentance to her uncle, and go away some- 
 where, and never see any more the relations and friends 
 whom she had betrayed and disgraced. 
 
 " The storm grew in intensity. The roar of the sea 
 could now be heard far over the cry of the wind ; and the 
 rain clouds came down over the sea in huge masses and 
 were blown down upon the land in hissing torrents. Still 
 Coquette struggled on." 
 
 This on the shore. Out there in the midst of the 
 black tempest, the red lightnings, the frothing waves, 
 Lord Earlshope is drowning. His last prayer must 
 have been for Coquette. But in the raging tumult 
 no human ear could hear it. He had written her a 
 letter ; in that letter he had asked forgiveness, had 
 made such reparation as he could, and then gone 
 away on his yacht alone to avoid doing her a great 
 and irreparable wrong, sailing out into the mist and 
 the darkness which were never clearly to be lifted 
 from the termination of his short voyage and of his 
 patient and sorrowful life. 
 
 The passages quoted above from "A Daughter of 
 Heth" are fair enough samples of a large portion of 
 that book. Grand, solemn, sublime things fire this 
 author's imagination. One after another he seizes 
 
28 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 on and fixes in his pages their noblest aspects. He 
 has the Northern fancy powerfully developed. He 
 grasps the pen when Ossian would have seized the 
 harp. Both could feel inspiration from the same 
 sources. Mr. Black can, however, picture views 
 which to the ordinary observer are far from sublime. 
 To him nothing seen on the earth, in the air, or 
 amid the waves, seems to be commonplace. In every 
 vista he beholds new and strange beauties. All 
 through that journey described in the book, called 
 " The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton," he is busy 
 painting English and Scotch landscapes, — the sky, 
 the clouds, the sea when it is visible, the islands when 
 they come in sight. As he paints he tells wittily, 
 with quiet and charming humor, his simple story, — 
 that is, he places the four or five personages, care- 
 fully and distinctly drawn and sufficiently contrasted 
 in color, in each picture, so disposed that the lovers 
 are gradually brought nearer and nearer together. 
 Of course this journey is northward. His heart — 
 generally the hearts of his heroines also — yearns 
 toward the north country, longs for its airs, its 
 scenery, its odors, the simple hospitality and friend- 
 ship of its inhabitants. The sea only does he love 
 still more. He must be an enthusiastic yachtsman ; 
 delighting especially to sail along the coast of the 
 Highlands and among the Western Islands, and 
 feeling great joy in being carried on the bosom of 
 the deep. 
 
 With all his fondness for the grand and gloomy, 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 29 
 
 he is not too sombre, not over-serious, never weakly 
 sentimental, never morbidly melancholy, often sport- 
 ive, sometimes gleeful. The bright sunshine makes 
 him want to laugh with delight; the rustle of the 
 leaves incites him to sing for mere pleasure; he 
 watches the slanting rain, and unconsciously notes 
 the degree of its obliquity ; he sees the heavy drops 
 of a shower throwing lively little jets of water from 
 the shining surface of a miniature lake, and he is 
 inclined to dance. Only the pattering on the foliage 
 and a great sense of overpowering beauty all around 
 him in all these scenes keep him still. He will lose 
 nothing of it, not a breath, not a glimpse, not a 
 sound. He absorbs it all. 
 
 This passionate love for the beauties of nature, 
 this worship of its glories, make in him the land- 
 / scape painter, tempt him to give his readers some- 
 what too much of description, too many minutely- 
 delineated prospects ; tempt him also to use the same 
 graphic expressions too often. The very strength 
 and brilliancy of these expressions instantly fix 
 attention on them, and their repetition is therefore 
 the more noticeable. Bubbles are " bells of air;" 
 the moon is a " yellow" or a " golden sickle ;" from 
 windows in the evening "red" or "yellow light" 
 always shines; the trees cast shadows across a u yellow 
 road ;" the sea in sunlight is "yellow" or " golden ;" 
 a "glare of yellow fire" very often "leaps into the 
 day;" a "yellow glare" or a "yellow glory" too 
 frequently rests on sheets of water, or surrounds 
 
30 
 
 JIOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 hotels and houses ; a " white glare" not rarely lies 
 on the highway; the scent of seaweed is not unfre- 
 quently wafted through the air, and is always a 
 "cold odor;" the smell of burning peat and " resin- 
 ous odors" perfume the pages. Sudden changes in 
 the aspect of the heavens are " strange things" that 
 happen. These faults of iteration are the result of 
 a too strenuous effort to affect the reader with all the 
 intensity of the writer's impressions, as well as to 
 picture strongly their causes. They are the faults 
 of a painter who uses glaring colors somewhat too 
 lavishly ; faults, however, which it would be hyper- 
 critical to notice but for the exquisite style, harmony, 
 and finish of his works considered in their integrity. 
 
 For "The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton," 
 indeed, the author's plan evidently was so made as to 
 give him opportunities to describe almost every kind 
 of English rural scenes in summer, as they appear 
 at morning, noon, and night, together with the sun, 
 the moon, the seven stars, and the firmament gen- 
 erally, the clouds particularly, some portions of the 
 sea, some Scottish mountains, vales, and glens, rivu- 
 lets and lakes, cascades and pools, the wind and the 
 weather. Therefore lengthened and minute delinea- 
 tions of all these things in their different phases 
 cannot be censured as out of place, particularly as the 
 writer took care not to make the story, which runs 
 through the book, exciting enough to arouse the 
 reader's impatience. Yet the reader must go through 
 the scenes as the author did, in a sauntering way, 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 31 
 
 otherwise lie becomes surfeited with views of land- 
 scapes. 
 
 But in " A Princess of Thule" such sketches are 
 often interpolated at so great length that they sensi- 
 bly retard the action. The book has hardly any 
 other fault, and is, notwithstanding this, a work of 
 rare merit. It is notably fresh, pure, and whole- 
 some. The story is uncommonly interesting. The 
 reader's attention and sympathies are absorbed by the 
 play of the original, clearly sketched, and admirably 
 contrasted characters. He does not like to have his 
 regard drawn away by a loquacious neighbor who 
 will insist on pointing out to him all the beauties of 
 the scenery. He is more interested in the play than 
 in the decorations of the stage. Yet the author's 
 descriptions of Borva, Stornoway, The Lewis, the 
 mountains, the coasts, the inlets, the straits, the bays, 
 the sea, are so graphic and present so much magnifi- 
 cent beauty to the reader's imagination that in spite 
 of the story's fascinations he reads them all and con- 
 ceives an almost irresistible longing to visit the 
 northern Hebrides, to sail in a yacht among the 
 islands, to watch the ever-varying aspect of the 
 waves, the sudden changes in sky and light, and to 
 give himself up to the supreme joy of conscious ex- 
 istence and the certainty that he is, through every 
 sense, taking into, and making a part of himself, as 
 it were, some portions of all this beauty and glory. 
 The book has " the freshness and pleasant odors of 
 innumerable woods and fields," over which the sweet 
 
32 
 
 7/0 W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 sea-breezes are blowing. In it the painter recedes 
 somewhat and the poet comes forward. The author 
 has increased his scope and brought more phases of 
 his power into action. The figures are skilfully 
 grouped, strongly opposed. The outlines are flow- 
 ing and distinct. The sculptor that lies within the 
 painter had something to do with the work. Here, 
 as in his other books, the author manifests the de- 
 light which he feels in observing and pointing out 
 the symptoms of love slowly coming on. He has 
 given this, his own peculiarity, to "Queen Titania:" 
 
 " It was a pretty comedy for a time, and my lady had 
 derived an infinite pleasure and amusement from watching 
 the small and scarcely perceptible degrees by which the 
 young folks got drawn toward each other." 
 
 He knows no love except that which is wholesome 
 and has a certain nobility; he seems not even to sus- 
 pect that any other kind exists. There is no pulling 
 and hauling among his lovers; to him love is a 
 sacred thing, and he veils its mysteries. What can 
 be purer, more delicate, more beautiful, for example, 
 than the manner in which the reconciliation between 
 Sheila and her husband is effected? She will go to 
 Johnny's yacht, hoping to make better acquaintance 
 with the party on board : 
 
 " c And we shall become very great friends with them, 
 papa, and they will be glad to take us to Jura,' she said 
 with a smile, for she knew there was not much of the hos- 
 pitality of Borvabost bestuwed with ulterior motives." 
 
THESE A UTHORS. 
 
 33 
 
 She has heard from the cautious yachtsman that 
 Lavender, the young husband whom she had felt 
 compelled so sadly to abandon, was at Jura. She 
 does not know that he came from there with Johnny 
 in his vessel. So they push off and go aboard. As 
 they are about to descend into the cabin Mackenzie 
 sees Mosenberg, and at once suspects the truth. 
 
 " Mackenzie was getting very uneasy. Every moment 
 he expected Lavender would enter this confined little cabin ; 
 and was this the place for these two to meet, before a lot 
 of acquaintances? 
 
 " ' Sheila,' he said, 1 it is too close for you here, and I 
 am going to have a pipe with the gentlemen. Now if you 
 wass a good lass you would go ashore again, and go up to 
 the house, and say to Mairi that we will all come for lunch- 
 eon at one o'clock, and she must get some fish up from 
 Borvabost. Mr. Eyre, he will send a man ashore with 
 you in his own boat, that is bigger than mine, and you will 
 show him the creek to put into. Now go away, like a good 
 lass, and we will be up ferry soon — oh, yes, we will be up 
 directly at the house.'" 
 
 Sheila " wass a good lass" and she went ashore. 
 But the affectionate old King of Borva was a little 
 out of his reckoning. Lavender, unable to bear the 
 suspense of waiting on the yacht, unable also to 
 restrain his impatience to look once more at his wife, 
 though from a distance, had gone ashore. 
 
 "Sheila walked slowly up the rude little path, taking 
 little heed of the blustering wind and the hurrying clouds. 
 Her eyes were bent down, her face was very pale. When 
 
 4 
 
34 
 
 JIOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 she got to the top of the hill she looked, in a blank sort of 
 way, all around the bleak moorland, but probably she did 
 not expect to see any one there. Then she walked, with 
 rather an uncertain step, into the house. She looked into 
 the room, the door of which stood open. Her husband 
 sat there, with his arms outstretched on the table and his 
 head buried in his hands. He did not hear her approach, 
 her footfall was so light, and it was with the same silent 
 step she went into the room and knelt down beside him and 
 put her hands and face on his knee and said, simply, ' I beg 
 for your forgiveness.' 
 
 " He started up and looked at her as though she were 
 some spirit, and his own face was haggard and strange. 
 ' Sheila/ he said, in a low voice, laying his hand gently on 
 her head, ' it is I who ought to be there, and you know it. 
 But I cannot meet your eyes. I am not going to ask for 
 your forgiveness just yet. I have no right to expect it.' " 
 
 Such is the tone of the whole scene, which is too 
 long to be quoted here. 
 
 Just at this time Sheila's big-hearted father ap- 
 pears in one of his roundest and fullest phases. 
 
 •• Meanwhile the old King of Borva had been spending 
 a somewhat anxious time down in the cabin of the Phcebe. 
 Many and many a day had he been planning a method by 
 which he might secure a meeting between Sheila and her 
 husband, and now it had all come about without his aid and 
 in a manner which rendered him unable to take any pre- 
 cautions. He did not know but that some awkward acci- 
 dent might destroy all the chances of the affair. He knew 
 that Lavender was on the island. He had frankly asked 
 young Mosenberg as soon as Sheila had left the yacht. 
 
THESE A I'TTIORS. 
 
 35 
 
 . w ' Oh, yes,' the lad said, 1 he went away into the island 
 early this morning. I begged of hiin to go to your house; 
 he did not answer. But I am sure I13 will. I know he 
 will.' 
 
 " { My Kott !' Mackenzie said, ' and he has been wander- 
 ing about the island all the morning, and he will be very 
 faint and hungry, and a man is nefFer in a good temper then 
 for making up a quarrel. If I had known the last night,- 1 
 could hef had dinner with you all here, and we should hef 
 given him a good glass of whiskey, and then it wass a good 
 time to tek him up to the house.' 
 
 " ' Oh, you may depend on it, Mr. Mackenzie,' Johnny 
 Eyre said, ' that Lavender needs no stimulus of that sort to 
 make him desire a reconciliation. No, I should think not. 
 He has done nothing but brood over this affair since ever 
 he left London ; and I should not be surprised if you scarcely 
 knew him, he is so altered. You would fancy he had lived 
 ten years in that time.' 
 
 " 'Ay, ay,' Mackenzie said, not listening very attentively, 
 and evidently thinking more of what might be happening 
 elsewhere ; ' but I was thinking, gentlemen, it wass time for 
 us to go ashore and go up to the house, and hef something 
 to eat.' 
 
 " ' I thought you said one o'clock for luncheon, sir,' young 
 Mosenberg said. 
 
 " 'One o'clock !' Mackenzie repeated impatiently; 'who 
 the teffle can wait till one o'clock if you hef been walking 
 about an island since daylight with nothing to eat or 
 drink?' 
 
 " Mr. Mackenzie forgot that it was not Lavender he had 
 asked to lunch. 
 
 " ' Oh, yes,' he said, ' Sheila hass had plenty of time to 
 
3G 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 send down to Borvabost for some fish ; and by the time you 
 get up to the house you will see that it is ready.' 
 
 " ' Very well,' Johnny said, ' we can go up to the house, 
 any way.' 
 
 " He went up the companion, and he had scarcely got his 
 head above the level of the bulwarks when he called back, — 
 
 " ' I say, Mr. Mackenzie, here is Lavender on shore and 
 your daughter is with him. Do they want to come on 
 board, do you think ? Or do they want us to go ashore?' 
 
 " Mackenzie uttered a few phrases in Gaelic, and got up 
 on deck instantly. There, sure enough, was Sheila with 
 her hand on her husband's arm, and they were both look- 
 ing toward the yacht. The wind was blowing too strong 
 for them to call. Mackenzie wanted himself to pull in for 
 them, but this was overruled, and Pate was despatched. 
 
 "An awkward pause ensued. The three standing on 
 deck were sorely perplexed as to the forthcoming inter- 
 view, and as to what they should do. Were they to re- 
 joice over a reconciliation, or ignore the fact altogether, and 
 simply treat Sheila as Mrs. Lavender? Her father, indeed, 
 fearing that Sheila would be strangely excited, and would 
 probably burst into tears, wondered what he could get to 
 scold about." 
 
 And so all the indirections of the dear old man's 
 simple diplomacy had accomplished nothing. "What 
 he wanted so much to effect had been brought about 
 by accident, so far as he could see. But he was not 
 the less happy for that. 
 
 If we carefully regard the personages, they appear 
 to live. Indeed, their apparent reality attracts our 
 critical and admiring regard. They are the work of 
 
THESE AUTHORS, 
 
 37 
 
 the poet, the maker, who has created them all in 
 some phase of his own image. We want to go to 
 Borva and see the old King, grandly simple, not- 
 withstanding his diplomatic purposes and ways, open, 
 rugged, sturdy, firm almost as his own island. We 
 feel a strange inclination to kneel to Sheila as to a 
 kind of Madonna, who speaks English with the 
 sweetest quaintness of style and pronunciation. We 
 should certainly greet them and all their people with 
 the warmth of cordial affection, according to their 
 degree. We should want to meet there also Laven- 
 der, who commits so many sins of inconsideration, 
 but is a good fellow after all ; and Ingram, who 
 knows the cost of unselfishness, but practises it all 
 the same. We should be too happy and charitable 
 to wish the eccentric old aunt, Mrs. Lavender, that 
 terrible satire on a certain class, to be there. We 
 should rather see her at her house in London. But 
 Mrs. Lorraine and her mother might come, and of 
 course the young musician Mosenberg and Johnny 
 Eyre, and all the lesser people. 
 
 Almost without exception the author's style is pure 
 and simple ; his diction elegant and strong. If the 
 feeling of a poet is in him, so is that of the musician 
 also. 
 
 In Mosenberg, with his unconscious revelations 
 of genius, the writer has evidently made himself a 
 boy again. 
 
 " 1 Do you think, madame, any fine songs like that, or 
 any fine words that go to the heart of people, are written 
 
 4* 
 
38 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 about any one person ? Oh, no ! The man has a great 
 desire in him to say something beautiful or sad, and he 
 says it, not to one person, but to all the world ; and all the 
 world takes it from him as a gift. Sometimes, yes, he will 
 think of one woman, or he will dedicate the music to her, 
 or he will compose it for her wedding, but the feeling in 
 his heart is greater than any that he has for her. Can you 
 believe, madame, that Mendelssohn wrote the Hochzeitm — 
 the Wedding March — for any one wedding? No. It was 
 all the marriage joy of all the world he put into his music, 
 and every one knows that. And you hear it at this wed- 
 ding, at that wedding, but you know it belongs to something 
 far away, and more beautiful than the marriage of any one 
 bride with her sweetheart. And if you will pardon me, 
 madame, for speaking about myself, it is about some one I 
 never knew, who is far more beautiful and precious to me 
 than any one I ever knew, that I try to think when I sing 
 these sad songs, and then I think of her far away, and not 
 likely ever to see me again.' 
 
 " ' But some day you will find that you have met her in 
 real life,' Sheila said, ' and you will find her far more beau- 
 tiful and kind to you than anything you dreamed about ; 
 and you will try to write your best music to give to her. 
 And then, if you should be unhappy, you will find how 
 much worse is the real unhappiness about one you love than 
 the sentiment of a song you can lay aside at any moment.' " 
 
THESE A UTHORS. 
 
 39 
 
 A CHARMING STORY-TELLER. 
 
 In the winter of 1852-3 Mr. William Makepeace 
 Thackeray first visited Washington. While there 
 he was entertained one Sunday evening by an emi- 
 nent political editor, afterward a foreign minister, 
 whose house was the favorite Sunday evening resort 
 of statesmen and politicians, and whose wife was 
 noted for brilliant intellectual qualities. A few 
 ladies, intimate friends of the hostess, generally 
 assisted her at these informal receptions. On this 
 particular evening, Mr. Thackeray had plainly been 
 wearied by many formal presentations and much 
 formal talk, and at length retired to a corner of the 
 room where he could observe the company and all 
 that passed. The hostess sat near him, a member of 
 Congress from Massachusetts, more celebrated for 
 his wit and conversational powers than for any other 
 quality, was opposite, and with a collegian, who was 
 the fourth of the little party, helped somewhat to 
 isolate the distinguished visitor. While engaged in 
 a contest of pleasantry and repartee with the Con- 
 gressional wit, Thackeray was particularly struck by 
 the beauty, grace, and cleverness of a young lady 
 just out of a convent, where she had been educated, 
 
40 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 then enjoying her first winter in society, who, seated 
 near the middle of the parlor, was surrounded by a 
 group of men, all more or less distinguished, whom 
 she entertained with a degree of artless ease and 
 vivacity truly charming. The great satirist could 
 hardly keep his eyes off her. Several times, by 
 some movement or remark, he had called the atten- 
 tion of those near him to the youthful belle, and at 
 length, with visible warmth and tenderness, he ex- 
 claimed, " She reminds me of my girl ; and she is 
 the best fellow !" 
 
 Any appreciative reader of Miss Thackeray's 
 works cannot fail to understand and in a manner 
 respond to her father's admiration and tender affec- 
 tion for his daughter. Plainly they were enough 
 alike for the closest sympathy, sufficiently unlike for 
 mutual admiration. Profound and prolonged reflec- 
 tion is characteristic of both. By it the manly and 
 aggressive father is led to a clear perception of the 
 shams and hypocrisies of social life, and wrought 
 thereby to a degree of indignation that must find 
 vent, but which with masterly self-control he ex- 
 presses in scathing irony; while in the gentle and 
 womanly daughter the same reflection enlarges and 
 quickens her tender sympathies with what is true 
 and honest, and brings her to the discovery of many 
 hidden amiable qualities and evanescent graces. 
 They are in some measure counterparts of each 
 other. Both feel the same love for what is virtuous 
 and noble ; but in one this love excites the most 
 
these a unions. 
 
 41 
 
 unrelenting animosity against vice and meanness, 
 and impels him to attack them under all disguises 
 and in all positions with crushing sarcasms ; by it 
 the other is led to nourish and cheer, to caress and 
 magnify these objects of her affectionate veneration. 
 Both are moved by the same tenderness and pity, 
 not infrequently, however, in opposite directions — 
 the father to assail and implacably pursue the active 
 cause of wrong and endurance, the daughter to 
 shelter the wronged and suffering by spreading 
 about them wings of charity like a protecting angel. 
 The father loves truth and sincerity, and therefore 
 hates falsehood and sham ; but the hatred is often 
 the more active of the two passions, from its very 
 nature and from the nature of the man. The 
 daughter loves truth and goodness and beauty so 
 fervently that she is content as much as possible to 
 forget that there are such things as vice and roguery 
 in the world. She does not belong to the aggressive 
 sex; it is not in her nature to assail; with the in- 
 stincts of a woman she delights to foster, to develop, 
 to refine, to beautify. 
 
 The most pervading impression left by a reading 
 of Miss Thackeray's works is of an atmosphere 
 singularly pure, sunny, and tranquil. You feel well 
 assured that she is a painter ; you know that she can 
 make pictures. In the world which she presents to 
 you are sunlit fields, and shady vales, and verdant 
 knolls, and glimpses of streamlets, and the shimmer 
 of lakes, and the sea toward which the landscape 
 
42 
 
 HOW THEY ST HIKE ME, 
 
 slopes. The scene is full of harmonies; you see 
 that the air is resonant ; you almost, hear the sub- 
 bass of the surge; a feeling akin to religion fills, 
 enlarges, ennobles you; and you are quite certain 
 that but for the written revelation you must, if you 
 lived then, do as her heroine does unconsciously, 
 involuntarily be a pagan and worship the elements. 
 
 " What is this strange voice of nature that says with one 
 utterance so many unlike things ? Is it that we only hear 
 the voice of our own hearts in the sound of the waves, in 
 the sad cries of birds as they fly, of animals, the shivering 
 of trees, the creaking and starting of the daily familiar 
 things all about their homes ? This echo of the sea, which 
 to some was a complaint and a reproach, was to Reine 
 Chretien like the voice of a friend and teacher — of a re- 
 ligion, almost. To her, when she looked at the gleaming 
 immensity, it was almost actually and in truth to her the 
 great sea, upon the shores of which we say we are as 
 children playing with the pebbles. It was her formula. 
 Her prayers went out unconsciously toward the horizon, 
 as some pray looking toward heaven, in the words which 
 their fathers have used." 
 
 This author has the power of delicately graduated 
 and harmonious contrasts. In the lives that she 
 describes, as in the landscapes which she portrays, 
 clouds more or less dark temporarily obscure the 
 sun, and make the differences of light and shade. 
 Inclement weather, a gloomy drizzle, or a cheerless 
 fog give added brilliancy, intensity, and consolation 
 to the light, the warmth, and the comforts of home. 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 43 
 
 She knows what sadness and sorrow are, and she 
 knows how to make the joy that is often hidden 
 within them gradually shine forth. Her work has 
 flowing but clearly-defined outlines. The parts and 
 the colors glide imperceptibly into each other. No 
 incongruous juxtapositions shock us, no violent 
 transitions occur. It is like a finely-woven web, in 
 which all the threads are even, all the tints perfect, 
 and every fibre in its place. The moral groundwork 
 of the texture, however, is sometimes unduly en- 
 larged ; the scenes are thereby separated by distances 
 too wide; the action is not clearly enough inter- 
 twined, and may be temporarily lost to view by the 
 reader who conscientiously omits nothing. In these 
 wide patches of morality, where, indeed, a very 
 humane philosophy is cultivated, but in which the 
 interest is of a kind entirely different from that en- 
 listed by the story, lies Miss Thackeray's chief and 
 almost only defect of noticeable importance as a 
 novelist, save one, which will be considered farther 
 on. The tone of these parts of her works is, to be 
 sure, in perfect harmony with that of the particular 
 story which illustrates them ; but they suggest illus- 
 tration and application, which is itself an offence 
 against art, though meritorious in a sermon, and 
 more or less deform the symmetry of creations 
 which, but for them, would be just and comely. 
 She cannot free herself entirely from the principles 
 of the English modern school of novelists ; one of 
 the chief aims of which is to be practical and useful. 
 
44 
 
 110 W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 The utility of art seems to be the subject of an 
 English artist's reflection ; to apply it directly to 
 some demonstrably beneficial end the object of his 
 labors. Above all he would do something to 
 strengthen the British constitution, to make the 
 British social fabric more solid, to increase the com- 
 forts of the British people, to add something to the 
 glory of the British name. Miss Thackeray has, iu 
 some measure, emancipated herself from the thral- 
 dom of this national utilitarian feeling. In senti- 
 ment she is cosmopolitan while cherishing a tender 
 affection for her British home. But the influence of 
 English literature and of its modern school is man- 
 ifest in her works. Apparently possessing all the 
 qualities necessary to a complete novelist, she yet 
 permits them to be displaced alid to some extent 
 neutralized by the reflections of an amiable moralist. 
 Her benevolence compels her to instruct, her sweet 
 charity to tell you more or less directly how, by the 
 use of a wider consideration, you may be more just, 
 how you may do greater good and less evil by exer- 
 cising more thought for those who are near you, by 
 being less selfish, less absorbed in yourself and your 
 own interests, by entering more fully into the lives 
 of others through sympathy ; how, in short, you 
 may make others better and happier by being your- 
 self greater and better. This partakes of the nature 
 of an argument. It addresses itself not to imagina- 
 tion and taste, but to reason and conviction. The 
 propositions are insinuated one after another, so that 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 45 
 
 you are not alarmed by the preliminaries of an essay 
 or the sudden definitions of premises for a logical 
 demonstration. But the premises are there, the 
 proofs are supplied by the personages, the argument 
 strengthened by appeals more or less straightfor- 
 ward, and the conclusion is enforced by the catas- 
 trophe. To sustain the proofs and the argument 
 analysis follows analysis, descriptions of character 
 are prolonged and multiplied. An occasional excess 
 of analysis and description is the other noticeable 
 defect in Miss Thackeray's work to which allusion 
 was made above. This excess is greater in her 
 earlier than in her later works. In " Old Kensing- 
 ton" it reaches the extreme. That alone of her 
 stories seems to have been written to order — an order 
 requiring so many pages for so much money. But, 
 aside from any other temptation to exaggeration in 
 this respect, she is led into it by her love for the 
 picturesque and her minute observation of it. No 
 detail escapes her : 
 
 " Five o'clock on a fine Sunday, — western light stream- 
 ing along the shore, low cliffs stretching away on either 
 side, with tufted grasses and thin, straggling flowers grow- 
 ing from the loose, arid soil, — far-away promontories, flash- 
 ing amid distant shores, which the tides have not yet 
 overlapped, all shining in the sun. The waves swell 
 steadily inward, the foam sparkles when the ripples meet 
 the sands. 
 
 " The horizon is solemn dark blue, but a great streak of 
 light crosses the sea, the white sails gleam, so do the white 
 
 5 
 
46 
 
 IIO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 caps of the peasant women, and the wings of the seagulls as 
 they go swimming through the air. 
 
 " Holiday people are out in their Sunday clothes. They 
 go strolling along the shore, or bathing and screaming to 
 each other in the waters. The countrymen wear their 
 blue smocks of a darker blue than the sea, and they walk 
 by their wives and sweethearts in their gay-colored Sunday 
 petticoats. A priest goes by ; a grand lady in frills, yellow 
 shoes, red jacket, flyaway hat, and a cane. Her husband is 
 also in scarlet and yellow. Then some more women and 
 Normandy caps flapping, gossipping together, and baskets 
 and babies, and huge umbrellas. A figure, harlequin-like, 
 all stripes and long legs, suddenly darts from behind a rock 
 and frisks into the water, followed by a dog barking 
 furiously. More priests go by from the seminary at As- 
 nelles. Then perhaps a Sister of Charity, with her large 
 flat shoes, accompanied by two grand-looking bonnets. 
 
 " The little Englishman was sauntering in his odd, loose 
 clothes ; Monsieur Fontaine, the maire, tripping beside him 
 with short, quick, military steps, neat gaiters, a cane, thread 
 gloves, and a curly-rimmed Panama hat. M. Fontaine was 
 the taller of the two, but the Englishman seemed to keep 
 ahead somehow, although he only sauntered, and dragged 
 one leg lazily after the other. Pelottier, the innkeeper, 
 had been parading up and down all the afternoon with his 
 rich and hideous bride. She went mincing along, with a 
 parasol, and mittens, and gold earrings, and a great gold 
 ring on her forefinger, and a Paris cap, stuck over with 
 pins and orange-flowers. She looked daggers at Reine 
 Chretien, who had scorned Pelottier, and boxed his great 
 red ears, it was said, earrings and all. As for Reine, she 
 marched past the couple in her Normandy peasant dress. 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 47 
 
 with its beautiful old laces and gold ornaments, looking 
 straight before her, as she took the arm of her grandfather, 
 the old farmer from Tracy. 
 
 " Besides all these grown-up people there comes occa- 
 sionally a little flying squadron of boys and girls, rushing 
 along, tumbling down, shouting and screaming at the pitch 
 of their voices, to the scandal of the other children who are 
 better brought up, and who are soberly trotting in their 
 small bourcelots, and bibs and blouses, by the side of their 
 fathers and mothers. The babies are the solemnest and the 
 funniest of all, as they stare at the sea and the company 
 from their tight maillots or cocoons. 
 
 " The country folks meet, greet one another cheerfully, 
 and part with signs and jokes ; the bathers go on shouting 
 and beating the water ; the lights dance. In the distance, 
 across the sands, you see the figures walking leisurely 
 homeward before the tide overtakes them ; the sky gleams 
 whiter and whiter at the horizon, and bluer and more blue 
 behind the arid grasses that fringe the overhanging edge 
 of the cliffs. 
 
 " Four or five little boys come running up, one by one, 
 handkerchief-flying umbrella-bearer ahead, to the martial 
 sound of a penny trumpet. The little captain pursues 
 them, breathless and exhausted, brandishing his sword in 
 an agony of command. ' Soldats,' he says, addressing his 
 refractory troops ; ' soldats, souvenez-vous qu'il ne faut 
 jamais courrir. Soldats, ne courrez pas, je vous en prrrrie, 
 — une, deux, trois,' and away they march to the relief of a 
 sand fort which is being attacked by the sea. 
 
 "And so the day goes on, and the children play, and 
 while they build ' their castles of dissolving sand to watch 
 them overflow,' the air, and the sounds, and the colors in 
 
48 
 
 J 10 W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 which all these people are moving, seem to grow clearer 
 and clearer ; you can see the country people clambering the 
 cliffs behind the village, and hear the voices and the 
 laughter of the groups assembled on the embanked market- 
 place. And meanwhile M. le Maire and the Englishman 
 are walking slowly along the sands toward Tracy, with long, 
 grotesque shadows lengthening as the sun begins to set." 
 
 This is very graphic; it is also very thorough. 
 Possibly the thoroughness of the description im- 
 presses you even more than its vivacity. You are 
 struck by the conscientious exactitude with which 
 every particular of the scene is noted and clearly set 
 forth. While considering it you forget that this is 
 but a space, and a small space, in the background of 
 a picture which you came to see. Somehow it re- 
 minds you of what has been said about the English 
 and their paintings to the disparagement of both : 
 " They pride themselves on their painting ; at least 
 they study it with surprising minuteness, in the 
 Chinese fashion ; they can paint a bottle of hay so 
 exactly that a botanist will tell the species of every 
 stalk ; one artist lived three months under canvas on 
 a heath, so that he might thoroughly know heath." 
 
 To many readers such description, if kept within 
 bounds, is very pleasing ; but too much of it becomes 
 monotonous and wearisome. Beyond the measure 
 necessary for repose and contrast, it delays the action 
 of the story, distracts and diminishes the reader's 
 attention, may excite his impatience, and, possibly, 
 his disgust. In the background of a picture made 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 49 
 
 especially to represent living beings and evident 
 action, we look for a general effect, not for exact 
 copying of nature, the precise portrayal of every 
 weed and blade of grass, and flower, and tree, and 
 stone, and sand-bank, as if each had been carefully 
 counted and measured and placed in position accord- 
 ing to a mathematical survey, and the very shade of 
 its color mixed on the palette by actual comparison. 
 And yet the painted has a great advantage over the 
 printed picture. All its parts may be viewed at 
 least casually with one glance, while in the written 
 description the field of vision is traversed by one 
 minute portion after another, like a miniature pano- 
 rama. To grasp all and see it as the writer wished, 
 you must strain attention and memory alike, and 
 while this strain continues you must call in fancy to 
 light and color and vivify the whole. The more 
 prolonged and the more minute the description the 
 greater and more complicated the task imposed upon 
 the reader. In most cases the effect on his mind is 
 that of a jumble of not very intelligible sentences. 
 The best of all pictures which a writer can present 
 are those suggested in a word or described in a 
 phrase. 
 
 In some of Miss Thackeray's books, as, for in- 
 stance, in the one already mentioned, these errors are 
 fundamental ; they distort the whole plan. Others 
 are simple and pure works of art, in which the 
 reader hardly knows what most to admire, — the 
 absolutely clean and wholesome tone, the delicacy, 
 
50 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 variety, and harmony of tints, the symmetrical pro- 
 portions, or the gentle, loving, beneficent nature 
 everywhere manifest in the creation. For examples 
 look at the five short tales grouped under the one 
 title, " Five Old Friends," especially " Cinderella," 
 and the longer story, " From an Island." All that 
 she docs, whether fairly included within the limits 
 of a symmetrical form or not, bears marks of a 
 firm, strong, but very delicate artistic hand. The 
 sensibility, nice perception, and refinement every- 
 where present might easily cause her strength to be 
 undervalued. Her powers act as gently and har- 
 moniously as do the forces of nature, without their 
 tempests and convulsions. She has the germs of 
 many characters; has that kind of genius which seeks 
 various manifestations. But within all the scope of 
 her understanding there is no place where positive 
 vice may be conceived or where an ideal villain can 
 be harbored. You would infer from reading her 
 books that she was unconscious of the fact that vice 
 and villainy can exist as active forces in society. 
 She makes no use of them to produce contrasts, to 
 effect a catastrophe, or in any way. The foibles and 
 ordinary characteristics in reputable men and women 
 furnish her all needful divergencies and motives. 
 In " Out of the World" observe the contrast between 
 Dr. Rich and his wife, and how easily and naturally 
 the catastrophe is brought about through her selfish- 
 ness. Miss Thackeray deals with manhood and 
 womanhood, not with titles and wealth and vulgar- 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 51 
 
 ity. For a hero she infinitely prefers a painter to a 
 prince, and a sweet, modest, refined, misplaced gov- 
 erness is vastly more interesting in her eyes than is a 
 flaunting great lady. In her esteem talent worthily 
 used is a patent of nobility, and genius in paths of 
 rectitude a king. These constitute the aristocracy of 
 her world ; in their society she feels herself honored 
 and content. She has no railing word, no sarcasm, 
 for those who may differ from her. You cannot 
 well conceive her at enmity with any one, or hating 
 anything, in the ordinary sense of the word ; much 
 less can you imagine her descending from the pure, 
 calm, and sunny atmosphere in which she moves to 
 engage in a hand-to-hand contest with the folly, the 
 vanity, and the wickedness that make the activity 
 on a lower plane of life; but you may readily picture 
 her to your imagination mourning over unhappiness 
 and wrong-doing wherever found. 
 
 These characteristics manifest her disposition, not 
 her want of vision. She would rather lift up than 
 throw down a fellow-creature ; would rather draw 
 than drive him aright ; believes gentleness and love 
 to be the most powerful agents for correction. She 
 has Hans Christian Andersen's sympathy for souls 
 out of place, imprisoned, borne down; would lead 
 them out of their confinement into the pure ether, 
 where they may freely breathe and fully expand : 
 
 " Catherine was oppressed by circumstance, and somewhat 
 morbid by nature, as people are without the power of expan- 
 
52 
 
 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 sion. She had lived with dull people all her life, and had 
 never learnt to talk or to think. Her stepmother was a 
 tender-hearted and sweet-natured sad woman, who was 
 accustomed to only see the outside of things. Mrs. George 
 had two dozen little sentences in her repertory, which she 
 must have said over many thousand times in the course of 
 her life, and which Catherine had been accustomed hitherto 
 to repeat after her, and to think of as enough for all the 
 exigencies and philosophy of life. But now everything 
 was changing, and she was beginning to idea thoughts for 
 herself, and to want words to put them into ; and with the 
 thoughts and the words, alas ! came the longing for some 
 one to listen to her strange, new discoveries, and to tell her 
 what they meant." 
 
 Cecilia, in the "Sleeping Beauty in the Wood/' 
 Ella, in " Cinderella/' and to some extent Elizabeth, 
 in the "Story of Elizabeth/' suffer and are enlarged 
 from similar imprisonment, to say nothing of others. 
 Miss Thackeray's knowledge of human nature is 
 wide and subtle. She discriminates shades of char- 
 acter with the nicest perception ; uses as effective 
 counterpoises differences that would escape a less 
 delicate sense, or disappear under a less delicate 
 handling. She has brought forward many person- 
 ages; almost without exception they are completely 
 individualized, consistent in their inconsistencies, 
 thoroughly human ; you would say they were drawn 
 from life. Among them all you will fail to find two 
 alike. Some of them remain with you and become 
 your friends, such, for instance, as St. Julian in the 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 53 
 
 charming story " From an Island," and others. She 
 fondly loves and intuitively understands children-; 
 dogs and all dumb and helpless things have a claim 
 on her affection and consideration. She is like the 
 girls whom she so well describes : 
 
 " Some girls have the motherly element strongly developed 
 in them from their veriest babyhood, when they nurse their 
 dolls to sleep upon their soft little arms, and carefully put 
 away the little broken toy because it must be in pain." 
 
 Note how with a stroke of her vivifying brush 
 she brings out a child's features. Can you not see 
 Dulcie as she counts the hour ? 
 
 " Anne heard the clock strike from her darkened bed- 
 room, where she was lying upon the sofa resting. Dulcie, 
 playing in her nursery, counted the strokes, f Tebben, two, 
 one ; nonner one,' that was how she counted." 
 
 Or, as she sympathizes with and tries to soothe her 
 father : 
 
 " Little Dulcie saw her father looking vexed ; she climbed 
 up his leg and got on his knee, and put her round, soft 
 cheek against his. ' Sail I luboo?' said she." 
 
 Are you not a child again from pure sympathy 
 when you read little Dolly's monologue as she lies 
 abed in a dark room ? 
 
 " 1 When I am dying — I dare say I shall die about seven- 
 teen — I shall send for John Morgan, and George will come 
 from Eton, and Aunt Sarah will be crying, and, perhaps, 
 
54 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 mamma and Capt. Palmer will be there, and I shall hold 
 all their hands in mine, and say, " Now be friends for my 
 sake." And then I shall urge George to exert himself more 
 and go to church on week days ; and then to Aunt Sarah 
 I shall turn with a sad smile, and say, " Adieu, dear aunt, 
 you never understood me — you fancied me a child when I 
 had the feelings of a woman, and you sneered at me, and 
 sent me to bed at eight o'clock. Do not crush George and 
 Ilhoda as you have crushed me ; be gentle with them ;" 
 and then I shall cross my hands over my chest, and — and, 
 what then ?' " 
 
 Are these not master-touches? Here is a pic- 
 ture made with a few lines in which, with other 
 things, the very feelings of the young people are 
 visible : 
 
 " To this day Dolly remembered the light of a certain 
 afternoon in May, when all was hot and silent and sleepy 
 in the old school-room at Church House. The boards 
 cracked, the dust-motes floated ; down below, the garden 
 burned with that first summer glow of heat that makes a 
 new world out of such old, well-worn materials as twigs, 
 clouds, birds, and the human beings all round us. The 
 little girls had been at work, and practised, and multiplied, 
 and divided again ; they had recollected various facts con- 
 nected with the reign of Richard II. Mademoiselle had 
 suppressed mauy a yawn; Dolly was droning over her 
 sum — six and five made thirteen — over and over again. 
 ' That I should have been, that thou shouldst have been, 
 that he should have been,' drawled poor little Ilhoda. 
 Then a great fly hums by as the door opens, and Lady 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 55 
 
 Sarah appears with a zigzag of sunlight shooting in from 
 the passage, — a ray of hope." 
 
 This author's gossarner-like fancy adorns every 
 page, and a dewy freshness is over all. In her 
 works are exquisite qualities so subtle that they 
 escape dissection ; they cannot be seized and partic- 
 ularly defined. They are perceived only by their 
 sensible, pervading, and charming effect. They per- 
 meate the atmosphere which seems to emanate from 
 and surround her stories, and cast a spell upon the 
 refined reader. Of a like cause and effect she is her- 
 self conscious, and in " Miss Angel" has used them 
 designedly with consummate skill. So long as Count 
 Horn is acting a part, he bears about him an air, a 
 kind of magnetic influence, like a great player when 
 he comes on the scene and is said to fill the stage. 
 This atmosphere which surrounds Horn is ominous; 
 it threatens convulsion and disaster. When at length 
 his trappings are torn off, and he appears in his own 
 character, all this glamour instantly comes to an end. 
 
 " Miss Angel" is this writer's latest book. Its 
 heroine is Angelica Kauffmann, the painter, who, 
 one hundred years ago, was celebrated, flattered, and 
 caressed by the great world of London for her talents, 
 beauty, and accomplishments. The work is a biog- 
 raphy and reads like a romance; it is a romance and 
 reads like a biography. Its personages are all his- 
 torical; its scenes pass in real life. The outlines of 
 fact, selected with reference to fine symmetry, are 
 filled- in from the writer's imagination, and colored 
 
56 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 bo tluit form and tints show most pleasing harmony 
 and proportion. So exquisitely is fiction woven with 
 fact that you cannot distinguish the threads by an 
 inspection of the texture alone. You are certain that 
 the author is guiltless of affectation when she says, — 
 
 " I have been trying to tell a little story, of which the 
 characters and incidents have come to me through a win- 
 ter's gloom so vividly that as I write now I can scarcely tell 
 what is real and what is but my own imagination in it all." 
 
 The very limitations of fact and the nature of the 
 task repressed the action of any tendency which she 
 might have felt to mar the shapeliness of her work 
 by prolonged and repeated analyses, philosophical 
 reflections, and moral deductions. She had a story 
 to tell, and she has told it with such graces and em- 
 bellishments as truth and good taste allow; and thus 
 she has produced one of her most perfect achieve- 
 ments. Here, as elswhere, her style is unaffected, 
 polished, vigorous, nearly faultless, quite charming. 
 Only occasionally does she manifest an inclination to 
 fall into certain not very offensive mannerisms; very 
 rarely, indeed, does she use a word inelegantly or 
 inaccurately. Her works do praise her; they bear 
 witness to a sweet, rich, delicate, large, loving, thor- 
 oughly healthy, uncommonly pure, and very fruitful 
 nature. She is well known in America as well as in 
 Europe; but, unlike many writers of the present 
 day, Miss Thackeray's merits are greater than her 
 reputation. 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 57 
 
 AN" INGENIOUS MORALIST. 
 
 " These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as 
 they are : you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten 
 their wit, nor rectify their dispositions ; and it is these 
 people — among whom your life is passed— that it is useful 
 you should tolerate, pity, and love ; it is these, more or less 
 ugly, stupid, inconsistent people, whose movements of good- 
 ness you should be able to admire, for whom you should 
 cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. And I 
 would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist 
 who could create a world so much better than this, in which 
 we get up in the morning to do our daily work, that you 
 would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the dusty 
 streets and the common green fields — on the real breathing 
 men and women, who can be chilled by your indifference or 
 injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and helped 
 onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your out- 
 spoken, brave justice. 
 
 " So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying 
 to make things seem better than they were, — dreading 
 nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one's best 
 efforts, there is reason to dread. Falsehood is so easy, truth 
 so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility 
 in drawing a griffin, — the longer the claws and the larger 
 the wings the better ; b"ut that marvellous facility, which we 
 mistook for genius, is apt to forsake us when we want to 
 
 6 
 
58 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 draw a real, unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, 
 and you will find that even when you have no motive to be 
 false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even 
 about your own immediate feelings, — much harder than to 
 say something fine about them which is not the exact truth. 
 
 " It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that 
 I delight in many Dutch paintings, which lofty-minded 
 people despise. I find a source of delicious sympathy in 
 these faithful pictures of a monotonous, homely existence, 
 which has been the fate of so many more among my fellow- 
 mortals than a life of pomp or of absolute indigence, of 
 tragic suffering or of world-stirring actions. I turn without 
 shrinking from cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls, and 
 heroic warriors, to an old woman bending over her flower- 
 pot, or eating her solitary dinner, while the noonday light, 
 softened, perhaps, by a screen of leaves, falls on her mob- 
 cap, and just touches the rim of her spinning-wheel, and 
 her stone jug, and all those cheap, common things which 
 are the precious necessaries of life to her ; or I turn to that 
 village wedding, kept between four brown walls, where an 
 awkward bridegroom opens the dance with a high-shouldered, 
 broad-faced bride, while elderly and middle-aged friends 
 look on, with very irregular noses and lips, and probably 
 with quart pots in their hands, but with an expression of 
 unmistakable contentment and good- will. 
 
 {4 In this world there are so many of these common, coarse 
 people who have no picturesque sentimental wretchedness ! 
 It is so needful we should remember their existence, else we 
 may happen to leave them quite out of our religion and 
 philosophy, and frame lofty theories which only fit a world 
 of extremes. There are few prophets in the world, few 
 sublimely beautiful women, few heroes. I can't afford to 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 59 
 
 give all my love and reverence to such rarities ; I want a 
 great deal of those feelings for my every-day fellow-men, 
 especially for the few in the foreground of the great multi- 
 tude whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom 
 I have to make way with kindly courtesy. It is more need- 
 ful that I should have a fibre of sympathy connecting me 
 with that vulgar citizen who weighs out my sugar in a vilely- 
 assorted cravat and waistcoat than with the handsomest 
 rascal in red scarf and green feathers ; more needful that 
 my heart should swell with loving admiration at some trait 
 of gentle goodness in the faulty people who sit at the same 
 hearth with me, or in the clergyman of my own parish, 
 who is perhaps rather too corpulent, aud in other respects 
 is not an Oberlin or a Tillotson, than at the deeds of heroes 
 whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at the 
 sublimest abstract of all clerical graces that was ever con- 
 ceived by an able novelist." 
 
 Thus George Eliot defines the sphere and purpose 
 of her novels. You see she is eminently practical, a 
 teacher of charity and fellow-feeling ; makes us sym- 
 pathize with the fictitious in order that we may sym- 
 pathize with the real ; unveils the larger and better 
 aspect of common humanity, that we may see it 
 nearer and more clearly, and know that all the men 
 and women about us are of like desires, hopes, pas- 
 sions, sufferings, temptations, and virtues as our- 
 selves. For such humanity she would have us 
 " make way with kindly courtesy," not with affected 
 superiority or supercilious contempt jostle it roughly, 
 override it, or with selfish indifference pass it by on 
 the other side. Her one text is, " Love thy neighbor 
 
GO 
 
 JIOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 as thyself ;" the purpose of her expositions to prove 
 that our neighbors belong to no one class, but are 
 found in all stations; that as human beings, nothing 
 human should be to us foreign, common, or unclean. 
 She does not propose to herself simply to compose a 
 work of art, a thing of beauty, for the sake of its 
 loveliness and the joy which it shall cause forever. 
 Usefulness is her first object. She will make men 
 better, more gentle, more kindly, more considerate. 
 Art may be employed as an aid in effecting this 
 object, as fine music may be used in the churches. 
 But it must be subservient to the grand moral pur- 
 pose. If complete art cannot consist with the ethical 
 design, so much the worse for the art ; it must suffer, 
 have its position reversed, be dismembered if neces- 
 sary. The sublimely beautiful pagan temple is util- 
 ized so far and in such way as it may be to build the 
 hall for moral lectures. A frieze, an arch, a portico, 
 a capital may remain entire, but they are dissevered 
 the one from the other; plain English granite, 
 British oak, or stucco intervenes, their harmonious 
 relations and proportions are destroyed, the work of 
 art has disappeared, but its substance has become 
 useful. 
 
 Having placed before herself this proposition, 
 namely, that common men and women are endowed 
 with all the attributes of humanity, particularly those 
 which are most worthy of respect and admiration, — 
 tenderness, amiability, integrity, patience, fortitude, 
 manliness, resignation, perseverance in well-doing, a 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 61 
 
 guiding conscience, veneration, true religion ; and 
 that they should be treated with kind consideration 
 and courtesy, should have all the sympathy and 
 esteem which these qualities merit, she is impelled 
 by the incitements of a strong logical instinct to 
 demonstrate it. Hence the plan of her work becomes 
 that of a demonstrative argument, rather than the 
 argument, or plot, of a work of art. A keen, bril- 
 liant, philosophic Frenchman has declared that such 
 a plan and such a purpose are characteristic of Eng- 
 lish writers. " Hardly ever," says Henri Taine, 
 " does a book paint a man in a disinterested manner ; 
 critics, philosophers, historians, novelists, poets even, 
 give a lesson, maintain a theory, unmask or furnish 
 a vice, represent a temptation overcome, relate the 
 history of a character becoming formed. Their exact 
 and minute description of sentiments ends always in 
 approbation or blame; they are not artists, but 
 moralists." « 
 
 Even the master-poet, Milton, avows such a design 
 almost at the very -beginning of his great poem : 
 
 " What in me is dark 
 Illumine, what is low raise and support ; 
 That to the height of this great argument 
 I may assert eternal Providence, 
 And justify the ways of G-od to men." 
 
 It must be conceded that, in going her chosen way, 
 George Eliot follows in the footsteps of most illus- 
 trious predecessors. To carry out her demonstration 
 satisfactorily she is constrained to enter very much 
 
 6* 
 
02 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 into details, not of actions, but of thoughts and feel- 
 ings. The personage in her hands becomes a kind 
 of moral manikin, which, with every change of pos- 
 ture, is dissected, and the cause and manner of the 
 change minutely explained, in order that the auditory 
 may be instructed, but, above all, convinced that 
 such changes and movements are reasonable and 
 natural, philosophically, and that they lead, more or 
 less directly, to good or evil. These dissections are 
 apt to occur too often, to last too long, to seem like 
 repetitions. We would rather see the manikin move, 
 guess at the cause, take it for granted that the 
 motions are like those of nature, and draw our own 
 moral from the catastrophe, whether it be the ascent 
 of the figure on a bright canvas cloud or its descent 
 into brighter, resinous flames. When we go to see 
 the puppets play we are interested by the marvel, 
 not the mechanism. When we visit the sculptor's 
 fc exhibition room our sense of beauty is gratified and 
 excited by art ; when we are in his work-shop our 
 curiosity may be appeased by knowledge. The pur- 
 poses which lead us to the different apartments are 
 as diverse as are the kinds of satisfaction which we 
 may receive. Wishing to enjoy art, we should find 
 only offence by entering a laboratory. Should we 
 desire only fine music we would rather listen to it 
 without being compelled to hear a sermon as well. 
 But for the sake of the melody we do incline an ear 
 to the preaching also, as the preacher believed and 
 intended that we should ; and in one sense his art is 
 
THESE A UTIIORS. 
 
 G3 
 
 thereby made evident. So, for the sake of what is 
 very beautiful in George Eliot's novels, Ave read 
 many philosophic and moral disquisitions of greater 
 or less length, many long and minute expositions of 
 commonplace characters, which in real life could 
 hardly fail to be tedious, all the time somewhat impa- 
 tient for the action, which has been brought to a stand- 
 still by this interjected matter, to resume its course. 
 Most of this matter, by itself considered, is of sur- 
 passing merit, shows the author to be a person of 
 very uncommon fulness, breadth, and depth, mis- 
 tress of a very wide range of thought, intimate to a 
 surprising degree with the phases and labyrinths of 
 human nature. She says good things enough to fill 
 volumes, as has been proved. If one of these vol- 
 umes be examined by a person ignorant of the 
 author's fame, he would suppose its contents to have 
 been chiefly extracted from brilliant essays over- 
 charged with the results of large observation and 
 profound thought, with the proofs also of extraor- 
 dinary intuition. But these essays and these good 
 things which are uttered in her own person are 
 mostly out of place in a novel, if the novel be re- 
 garded and criticised as a work of art. Their intro- 
 duction is inartistic; they form excrescences more 
 or less composed of foreign matter ; they render the 
 reader, who is anxious to follow the story without 
 hindrance, restless and inattentive, so that he is in 
 no mood to value them at their proper estimate and 
 profit by them ; they destroy the momentum of the 
 
G4 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 action when it should be moving on with accelerating 
 speed and narrowing sweep to a climax. And yet 
 they would almost surely delight such readers if en- 
 countered in a book of essays, taken up as such. In 
 so doing her work, however, the author is but fol- 
 lowing the general plan which serves as a model for 
 some of the most popular living English novelists 
 besides herself ; according to which plan, taken as a 
 standard, the perfect novel would be represented by 
 an admixture of about equal parts of " The Specta- 
 tor," "The Rambler," and "Tom Jones" expurgated. 
 At the same time, she is achieving her prescribed 
 purpose, enforcing her arguments, and pleasing her 
 countrymen, if it can, indeed, be truly said to her of 
 them, " Their mood requires strong emotions ; their 
 mind asks for precise demonstrations. To satisfy 
 their mood you must not touch the surface, but 
 torture vice : to satisfy their mind you must not 
 rail in sallies, but by arguments." 
 
 It is not improbable that George Eliot would be a 
 greater artist were she a smaller woman. Her fac- 
 ulties are so many, so equally and so fully developed, 
 that she remains in a state of tranquil equipoise 
 unfavorable to that enthusiasm which, under the 
 name of inspiration, takes possession of the true 
 artist, transports and transfigures him as he stands in 
 the presence of that divine beauty which is the object 
 of his adoration, forgetful of everything other than 
 the work of rendering visible to all eyes the glori- 
 ous loveliness and ineffable might before which he 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 65 
 
 trembles in ecstasy. Her imagination is held in strict 
 subjection to her judgment; it is the handmaid, not 
 the mistress, of logic. This, in her esteem, is accord- 
 ing to the proper subordination of the faculties, and 
 the experience is what she herself calls "that delight- 
 ful labor of the" imagination which is not mere 
 arbitrariness, but the exercise of disciplined power 
 — combining and constructing with the clearest eye 
 for probabilities and the fullest obedience to knowl- 
 edge; and then, in yet more energetic alliance Avith 
 impartial nature, standing aloof to invent tests by 
 which to try its own work." 
 
 She keeps fancy in leading strings ; does not give 
 it the rein even when making an ascent ; guides it 
 mostly into level ground ; works it in harness after 
 the manner of a scientific explorer; and uses analysis 
 as the test of whatever fancy may find. She is not 
 content to give the results of such tests in their 
 crystalline form. She wants the spectators to see for 
 themselves the demonstration. And so the apparatus 
 is displayed, and the analysis made publicly. It 
 might be said that, in common with all novel-writers 
 of the same school, she shows a certain shrewd policy 
 in such manner of proceeding, if the chief object be 
 to secure commendation for what the persons of the 
 story do. The reader becomes so impatient for the 
 examination to end, and for the personage to do 
 something, that he is likely to approve that some- 
 thing when done, whatever it be; and thus he is, in 
 a way, constrained into approbation of the characters. 
 
gg HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 This is the method of the mechanical inventor and 
 the logician, not that of the poet, whose imagination 
 and intuition grasp all the parts of the creation at 
 once, see it through and through, without analysis, 
 but as with the all-seeing eye of a creator. Not 
 after the manner of this school of novelists did 
 Plomer, Virgil, Apuleius, Dante, Boccaccio, Cer- 
 vantes, and other writers of immortal stories do their 
 work. Not thus did Shakspeare demonstrate fidel- 
 ity to nature and probability in his creations. 
 
 The author makes one of her own heroes regard 
 these matters from her own point of view : 
 
 " Many men have been praised as vividly imaginative on 
 the strength of their profuseness or indifferent drawing or 
 cheap narration — reports of very poor talk going on in dis- 
 tant orbs ; or portraits of Lucifer coming down on his bad 
 errands as a large, ugly man with bat's wings and spurts of 
 phosphorescence ; or exaggerations of wantonness that seem 
 to reflect life in a diseased dream. But these kinds of in- 
 spiration Lydgate regarded as rather vulgar and vinous 
 compared with the imagination that reveals subtle actions 
 inaccessible to any sort of lens, but tracked in that outer 
 darkness though long pathways of necessary sequence by the 
 inward light which is the last refinement of energy, capable 
 of bathing even the ethereal atoms in its ideally illuminated 
 space. He for his part had tossed away all cheap inven- 
 tions where ignorance finds itself able and at ease : he was 
 enamored of that arduous invention which is the very eye 
 of research, provisionally framing its object, and correcting 
 it to more and more exactness of relation ; he wanted to 
 pierce the obscurity of those minute processes which pre- 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 G7 
 
 face human misery and joy, those invisible thoroughfares 
 which are the first lurking-places of anguish, mania, crime, 
 and that delicate poise and transition which determine the 
 growth of happy or unhappy consciousness." 
 
 Any careful student of George Eliot's writings 
 must recognize in the above quotation a very clear 
 description of the way in which she uses imagination 
 in making a book. The natural result of this method 
 is a certain formality of style, a kind of rigid exact- 
 ness, an appearance of constraint, a want of effusive 
 spontaneity. Her structures are not like the pro- ^ 
 ducts of rich nature, flowing and exuberant; they 
 are like mason-work. Each word and each sentence 
 is measured, squared, fitted. All is very solid and 
 strong, admirably done, after its kind. But the 
 building is not a temple of the muses ; it is a store- 
 house, made for utility, which must not be lessened 
 by any concession to harmony of proportion or to 
 lines of beauty. The materials are carefully selected, 
 good, durable, well polished, but the marks of the 
 chisel and of the sand-paper remain. We feel that 
 the edifice is the work of a laborious as well as a 
 skilful mechanic, not the magical creation of untram- 
 melled genius. That genius had some part in it we 
 are very sure; but we feel equally sure that this 
 genius had been reduced to servitude, enslaved by 
 practical, somewhat matter-of-fact wisdom, looking 
 to turn the captive sprite's achievements to the best 
 account. 
 
 Even nature seems to be loved by this author for 
 
(}g HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 its usefulness rather than for its beauty; or, it might 
 be said, for the beauty of its usefulness. She sym- 
 pathizes with its catholicity, its munificence, its un- 
 ostentatious benevolence. Fruit-trees with fruit, or 
 blossoms promising beneficence, berry-bushes over- 
 laden with a luscious crop, hedge-rows, foliage in the 
 shade of which cattle ruminate, excite in her the 
 same kind and degree of enthusiastic admiration as 
 do stores of clean, sweet-smelling household linen, 
 or the dairy which "was certainly worth looking at. 
 It was a scene to sicken for, with a sort of calenture 
 in hot and dusty streets — such coolness, such purity, 
 such fresh fragrance of new-pressed cheese, of firm 
 butter, of wooden vessels perpetually bathed in pure 
 water, such soft coloring of red earthenware and 
 creamy surfaces, brown wood and polished tin, gray 
 limestone and rich orange-red rust on the iron 
 weights, and hooks, and hinges." 
 
 Rarely, if ever, does she show any irrepressible 
 love for, any enthusiastic worship of, nature pure and 
 simple. She describes scenes as she would draw a 
 map for the convenience of the reader, to make her 
 story plainer and more easily understood. She is too 
 great a woman, too complete, not to admire what in 
 nature is glorious ; but this admiration is counter- 
 poised and checked this side of enthusiasm by a 
 greater interest in practical uses. For these prac- 
 tical uses, cleanly and tastefully brought about, are 
 for her eyes the world's chiefest beauty. 
 
 With such logic, such a bent for analysis, such an 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 69 
 
 instinct for diving into the undercurrents of things, 
 such aptitude for precise and perfect demonstration, 
 such a purpose to enforce moral convictions, you see 
 at once what the result must be. The author does 
 not present to you a rotund world, created myste- 
 riously in darkness, which is rent asunder only that 
 light may fall on multiform and many-colored beauty, 
 valleys and mountains, grassy knolls and bleak vol- 
 canoes, brooks and torrents, calms and tempests. She 
 fears lest you should doubt its solidity, lest you 
 should question the principle of its construction, lest 
 you should think that its streams ought to run up 
 hill, its trees bear fruit before blossoming, its har- 
 vest come before its seed-time. Therefore she carries 
 on the making in your presence, expounds its princi- 
 ples, demonstrates its philosophy, shows that it is well 
 done, convinces your judgment. She does not take 
 it for granted that you know something of human 
 nature and of the laws which govern it, something 
 of world-building, and can infer motives from actions, 
 and causes from effects. 
 
 Her world is, indeed, not made because it is good, 
 but in order that you may be taught by seeing of 
 what and how it is put together. 
 
 " You could not live among such people ; you are stifled 
 for want of an outlet toward something beautiful, great, or 
 noble ; you are irritated with these dull men and women, 
 as a kind of population out of keeping with the earth on 
 which they live, — with this rich plain where the great river 
 flows forever onward, and links the small pulse of the old 
 . 7 
 
70 
 
 JIOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 English town with the beatings of the world's mighty heart. 
 A vigorous superstition, that lashes its gods or lashes its 
 own back, seems to be more congruous with the mystery of 
 the human lot than the mental condition of these emmet- 
 like Dodsons and Tullivers. 
 
 " I share with you this sense of oppressive narrowness ; 
 but it is necessary that we should feel it, if we care to un- 
 derstand how it acted on the lives of Tom and Maggie — 
 how it has acted on young natures in many generations, 
 that in the onward tendency of human things have risen 
 above the mental level of the generation before them, to 
 which they have been nevertheless tied by the strongest 
 fibres of their hearts. The suffering, whether of martyr or 
 victim, which belongs to every historical advance of man- 
 kind, is represented in this way in every town, and by hun- 
 dreds of obscure hearths ; and we need not shrink from this 
 comparison of small things w T ith great ; for does not science 
 tell us that its highest striving is after the ascertainment of 
 a unity which shall bind the smallest things with the great- 
 est? In natural science, I have understood, there is nothing 
 petty to the mind that has a large vision of relations, and 
 to which every single object suggests a vast sum of condi- 
 tions. It is surely the same with the observation of human 
 life." 
 
 She tells you this herself. Do you not feel as if 
 in a narrow school-room with low ceiling and imper- 
 fect ventilation, longing to get out into the free air 
 of heaven, in sight of the clouds, and the green trees, 
 and the illimitable space ? But the teacher says you 
 must stay and study if you want to become good 
 men and women, and so you read on, or listen to the 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 71 
 
 lecture, for now she is showing you by experiment 
 and explanation that the smutty charcoal which you 
 shrink from touching and the radiant diamond which 
 you caress upon your bosom, are composed of the 
 same elemental matter. Whether the coal offend or 
 the diamond delight you is a secondary considera- 
 tion. You did not come here simply to see gems. 
 You must ascertain the unity of things, and hereafter 
 have more respect for the charcoal. 
 
 The poet, that is to say, the great artist, like this 
 writer, sees good in everything. Unlike her he sees 
 it through ideality, and through ideality makes it 
 known, having an unconquerable instinctive feeling 
 that by increasing and diffusing such ideality he is 
 inevitably making the world better. 
 
 It cannot be denied that George Eliot uses ideality. 
 But, as intimated above, she employs it as some part 
 of a complete apparatus for making an exact imita- 
 tion of what is real. She pursues this object with 
 grand steadiness and freshness of nerve, an ever- 
 present discrimination, a perfectly clear conception 
 of what she wants to do, an almost unfailing judg- 
 ment of modes and materials of illustration. She 
 brings to her task a very w T ide range of apparently 
 exact knowledge. You are convinced that she could 
 deliver instructive lectures on the intricacies of real- 
 estate law, on medical science and its history, on 
 statesmanship, on theology and its influence in the 
 world, on political intrigues and the tricks of dema- 
 gogues, on any of the exact sciences, on the syntax 
 
72 SOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 of the Latin and Greek languages, not disdaining 
 even to tell you how carpentry work is made, farms 
 drained and tilled, cattle and the dairy cared for, 
 quarries and mines worked, weaving done; how dif- 
 ferent men smoke their pipes differently, and the 
 indications of character therein displayed ; how topers 
 like their toddy mixed ; how men and women of all 
 classes talk and act ; how comfortable or uncomfort- 
 able it is to be shaved by a barber. You are sure 
 that her character is composed of many parts ; that 
 is to say, her humanity is large, full, and complete ; 
 that she is very catholic, very charitable, very tender- 
 hearted ; that she is kind to speechless animals and 
 all helpless things. 
 
 " 'Poor dog !' said Dinah, patting the rough, gray coat, 
 ' I've a strange feeling about the dumb things as if they 
 wanted to speak, and it was a trouble to 'em because they 
 couldn't. I can't help being sorry for the dogs always, 
 though, perhaps, there's no need. But they may well have 
 more in them than they know how to make us understand, 
 for we can't say half what we feel, with all our words.' " 
 
 You notice her love for children, and how plainly 
 she brings out their portraits by a few master-strokes. 
 
 " He drew little Bessie toward him, and set her on his 
 knee. She shook her yellow curls out of her eyes and 
 looked up at him, as she said : 
 
 " ' Zoo tome to tee ze zady ? Zoo mek her peak ? What 
 zoo do to her ? Tiss her ?' 
 
 " ' Do you like to be kissed, Bessie ?' 
 
 "'Det,' said Bessie, immediately ducking down her head 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 73 
 
 very low, in resistance to the expected rejoinder. ' We've 
 got two pups,' said young Daniel, emboldened by observing 
 the gentleman's amenities toward Bessie. ' Shall T show 
 'em yer? One's got white spots.' " 
 
 Like this is the following picture of the child- 
 woman, Tessa : 
 
 " 1 Yes,' he said ; 1 but I can hear very well — I'm not 
 deaf.' 
 
 " ' It is true ; I forgot,' said Tessa, lifting her hands 
 and clasping them. 'But Monna Lisa is deaf, and I live 
 with her. She's a kind old woman, and I'm not frightened 
 at her. And we live very well ; we have plenty of nice 
 things. I can have nuts if I like. And I'm not obliged 
 to work now. I used to have to work, and I didn't like it ; 
 but I liked feeding the mules, and I should like to see poor 
 Giannetta, the little mule, again. We've only got a goat 
 and two kids, and I used to talk to the goat a good deal, 
 because there was nobody else but Monna Lisa. But now 
 I've got something else — can you guess what it is ?' She 
 drew her head back and looked with a challenging smile at 
 Baldassarre, as if she had proposed a difficult riddle to him. 
 
 " ' No,' said he, putting aside his bowl, and looking at 
 her dreamily. It seemed as if this young, prattling thing 
 were some memory come back out of his own youth. 
 
 " ' You like me to talk to you, don't you ?' said Tessa ; 
 ' but you must not tell anybody. Shall I fetch you a bit of 
 cold sausage ?' 
 
 " He shook his head, but he looked so mild now that 
 Tessa felt quite at her ease. 
 
 " ' Well, then, I've got a little baby. Such a pretty 
 hambinetto, with little fingers and nails ! Not old yet ; it 
 
 7* 
 
74 
 
 II OW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 was born at the Nativita, Monna Lisa says. I was married 
 one Nativita, a long while ago, and nobody knew. 0, 
 Santa Madonna ! I didn't mean to tell you that.' " 
 
 " Tessa set up her shoulders and bit her lip, looking at 
 Baldassarre as if this betrayal of secrets must have an 
 exciting effect on him too. But he seemed not to care 
 much ; and perhaps that was the nature of strangers." 
 
 Note the distinctness of these delineations. You 
 would say that no explanatory lectures should be 
 needful to the comprehension of works drawn by so 
 skilful a painter. Observe that which follows, quite 
 as distinct, but of a different kind : 
 
 " On the broad marble steps of the Duomo there were 
 scattered groups of beggars and gossipping talkers ; here an 
 old crone with white hair and hard, sunburned face, encour- 
 aging a round-capped baby to try its tiny bare feet on the 
 warm marble, while a dog sitting near snuffed at the per- 
 formance suspiciously ; there a couple of shaggy-headed 
 boys leaning to watch a small, pale cripple who was cutting 
 a face on a cherry-stone ; and above them on the wide 
 platform men were making changing knots in laughing, 
 desultory chat, or else were standing in close couples gestic- 
 ulating eagerly." 
 
 You become aware that she is a keen observer of 
 traits and personal peculiarities, and that she uses 
 them adroitly to give prominence to individuality 
 when you see Mr. Tulliver, as he gives expression to 
 a novel thought, " turning his head on one side and 
 giving his horse a meditative tickling on the flank," 
 or " the wiry-faced Nolan pinching his under-lip 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 75 
 
 between his thumb and finger, and giving one of 
 those wonderful universal shrugs by which he 
 seemed to be recalling all his garments from a ten- 
 dency to disperse themselves." 
 
 You see that she wields a graphic pen ; that her 
 pictures are remarkable for fidelity to nature, which 
 is not copied more exactly in the Dutch paintings 
 that she so much admires and takes for her models. 
 She is not a sculptor, does not readily conceive form, 
 but has an eye for harmony of colors when grouping 
 details. The tones of her delineations are consonant; 
 the state of the weather, of the sky, the clouds, and 
 the earth is in unison with the sentiment of the scene. 
 Her skill in choosing fit words to suggest a figure or 
 present a side view is not easily surpassed. Her 
 humor is charming, never pointless, notably rich. 
 
 " But a man of Sir Maximus's rank is like those ante- 
 diluvian animals whom the system of things condemned to 
 carry such a huge bulk that they really could not inspect 
 their bodily appurtenances, and had no conception of their 
 own tails ; their parasites doubtless had a merry time of it, 
 and often did extremely well when the high-bred Saurian 
 himself was ill at ease." 
 
 "Arthur Donnithorne was moving about his sleeping- 
 room, seeing his well-looking British person reflected in the 
 old-fashioned mirrors, and stared at, from a dingy olive- 
 green piece of tapestry, by Pharaoh's daughter and her 
 maidens, who ought to have been minding the infant 
 Moses." 
 
 You appreciate the many clever things wdiich she 
 
70 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 Bays, and you are made certain that she appreciates 
 them herself : 
 
 " ' Sharp ! Yes ; her tongue is like a new-set razor. 
 She's quite original in her talk, too ; one of those untaught 
 wits that help to stock a country with proverbs. I told you 
 that capita] thing I heard her say about Craig — that he was 
 like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow. 
 Now, that's an iEsop's fable in a sentence.' " 
 
 The plots of her stories are generally well sus- 
 tained and interesting; would be more absorbing 
 were the reader's enthusiasm not kept in check by 
 cooling moral applications. The action is logical, 
 impelled by adequate motives. It does not, how- 
 ever, always stop at the catastrophe, but after the 
 final climax trickles along till gradually spent and 
 lost to view, as in "Romola." Yet this story, as a 
 whole, approaches nearer to a work of art than any 
 other of this author's novels. At the same time it 
 exhibits more bad taste in the use of foreign words 
 and phrases than all the others. In her works, 
 generally, she is too much tempted to use Latin and 
 Greek terms. In " Romola" the Italian language is 
 the stumbling-block. This is about the only im- 
 portant defect in her style, which, with trifling ex- 
 ceptions, is singularly pure, clear, and forcible, alike 
 free from obscurity, incompleteness of expression, 
 and superfluous words. 
 
 Her personages are mostly on one plane — the level 
 of common humanity. She neither ascends to the 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 77 
 
 sublime nor descends to what is so low, so vile, or 
 so horrible as to be repulsive. Her wit is strong, 
 keen, ready, not "of a temporary nature, but rather 
 dealing with the deeper and more lasting relations 
 of things." You perceive that if she be not an artist 
 she rarely or never transcends the limits of art; that 
 she understands what is truly pathetic; that she finds 
 great pleasure in bringing good to light; that she 
 has deep and wide religious feeling; that she knows 
 and loves gentle and careful housewifely duties; that 
 she believes and teaches "that life to be the highest 
 which is a conscious and voluntary sacrifice." You 
 feel that she is a philosopher, a philanthropist, a 
 great writer; you are not assured that she is one of 
 the greatest novelists. 
 
78 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 A NOVELIST WHO MEANS BUSINESS. 
 
 A famous writer asserts that public taste in Eng- 
 land commends great circumspection to the novelist, 
 saying to him: "Be moral. All your novels must 
 be such as may be read by young girls. We are 
 practical minds, and we would not have literature 
 corrupt practical life. We believe in family life, 
 and we would not have literature paint the passions 
 which attack family life. We are Protestants, and 
 have preserved something of the severity of our 
 fathers against enjoyment and passions. Among 
 these, love is the worst. Beware against resembling 
 in this respect the most illustrious of our neighbors. 
 Love is the hero of George Sand's novels. Married 
 or not, she thinks it beautiful, holy, sublime in itself; 
 and she says so. Don't believe this; and if you do, 
 don't say it. George Sand makes us desire to be in 
 love ; do you make us desire to be married." 
 
 These being the sentiments of educated people in 
 English society, we can understand how it is that 
 Anthony Trollope is one of the most popular of 
 English novelists. He writes as if such canons of 
 taste and morality were always in his mind. Mar- 
 riage, with money enough on the one side or the 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 79 
 
 other to make life easy, sleek, and respectable, luxu- 
 rious likewise according to the notions of men and 
 women of culture and refinement, is that for which 
 his heroes and heroines, for the most part, are made. 
 They are not mercenary. The farthest from it. 
 Gold and silver and precious stones are as dust in 
 the balance, almost an offence in their nostrils. They 
 cannot be forced to marry for money. The differ- 
 ence between nothing on the one part and uncounted 
 wealth on the other is no bar to a match. Magna- 
 nimity cannot perceive such an obstacle. According 
 to this author's own pet phrase, "Love is lord of all 
 and it is that love which always ends in marriage. 
 When either the lover or the sweetheart has this un- 
 told wealth he brings^ on the wedding without taking 
 the trouble to devise a fortune to either. When both 
 are poor, he works out an inheritance for one or the 
 other; and on the uncertainty whether this benevo- 
 lent and plainly manifested purpose will be achieved 
 hangs much of the reader's interest. Such magna- 
 nimity is admirable. It is reasonable and right. 
 There should be no marriage where it does not exist. 
 But it is uncommon nowadays ; and in so far as it is 
 uncommon in real life, it is in a fictitious personage 
 ideal. And the author's use of it in the cases men- 
 tioned is a fair illustration of the extent to which he 
 draws on ideality in the formation of his characters. 
 In the main these are very practical, and not so far 
 removed from the commonplace in their respective 
 ranks as to excite astonishment. 
 
80 
 
 110 W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 Within such limits comparatively little imagina- 
 tion is required to make a consistent and probable 
 story. Coupled with an excessive love of analyzing 
 and expounding character, Mr. Trollope possesses no 
 mean degree of inventive and logical power. The 
 comedy grows out of this very development of char- 
 acter. The incidents related which go to make up 
 the story proceed in probable, not to say necessary, 
 sequence from the premises on which the narrative is 
 founded. The novel is an argument. Each scene 
 is the natural consequence of some that have pre- 
 ceded it. Neither logical nor material probability is 
 violated. Hence the reader is never shocked, never 
 greatly disturbed. His pleasure is tranquil, equable, 
 hearty. k 
 
 Indeed, this writer's imagination appears not to be 
 excessive. He seems rather to copy than to create ; 
 to make books as a business rather than from the 
 imperious necessity of overwhelming inspiration. He 
 observes carefully, and can clearly describe what he 
 sees ; cares little for the beauties of nature or for 
 nature herself, but loves the comforts, elegancies, and 
 refinements of wealthy and well-bred people ; esteems 
 English gentlefolk, but finds no charm in low life ; 
 cannot well take the measure of or depict an eccentric 
 character ; has no affection for villains, but steals out 
 of their company as quickly as possible. 
 
 As a business man he seems to have excellent 
 judgment and much skill. He has studied the 
 market. lie has discovered what the largest public 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 81 
 
 taste demands. He makes his goods to suit it. 
 Probably in doing this he has not violently to eurb 
 the mighty impulses of poetic genius ; nor is he forced 
 to constrain his own inclination. He likes morality; 
 does not desire to feel overpowering emotions ; loves 
 the tone, temper, and manner of the British public ; 
 will not " separate himself from his conscience, and 
 lose sight of the practical/ 7 He has said to himself, 
 "Do not skim over your subject, lay stress upon it ; 
 do not pass over it lightly, impress it. Reckon also 
 that your hearers are practical minds, lovers of the 
 useful ; that they come here to be taught ; that you 
 owe them solid truths ; that their common sense, 
 somewhat contracted, does not fall in with hazardous 
 extemporizations or doubtful hints ; that they de- 
 mand worked-out refutations and complete explana- 
 tions ; and that, if they have paid to come in, it was 
 to hear advice which they might apply, and satire 
 founded on proof/ 7 And so, to satisfy at the same 
 time his conscience and his patrons, he gives ex- 
 planations, refutations, demonstrations almost with- 
 out limit over and over again. Not only his own, 
 but the consciences of his personages also, must be 
 void of offence or persuaded into acquiescence. His 
 characters carry on with themselves sound or sophis- 
 tical reasoning, according to circumstances and in- 
 clination, to an extent and degree of skill in minute 
 self-examination that would do credit to the pupils 
 in a school of metaphysics. Few of them know 
 whether they are really in love or not till they 
 
 8 , » 
 
82 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 have reasonably and coolly examined the question 
 on all sides. They are, indeed, uncommonly reason- 
 able creatures; common creatures idealized in this 
 direction. 
 
 Only by an occasional indifference to the rules of 
 English grammar does the author show that even his 
 conscience has been seared in spots : 
 
 " What would be the feelings of such a woman as her." 
 " They had become grander people than him." 
 " There are things much sweeter than them." 
 " No one knows him but I." 
 " To such a one as me." 
 
 " Instructions which no one but he himself could give to 
 the counsellor." 
 
 "A man believed to be him." 
 
 Such errors as are set forth in these citations are 
 far too common in Mr. Trol lope's works to permit 
 the supposition that they are accidental. To call 
 them inexcusable is to characterize them mildly. 
 Possibly with a purpose to make his style appear 
 homely and strong, he not unfrequently makes use, 
 in his own person, of phrases far from elegant. Let 
 one illustration suffice. In describing a very solemn 
 scene, he says, — 
 
 " When Sir Peregrine asked her whether he should seat 
 her on the sofa, she slowly picked herself up, and, with her 
 head still crouching toward the ground, placed herself where 
 she before had been sitting." 
 
 It would appear that, unconsciously or otherwise, 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 8P> 
 
 he permits himself to copy the style too often indulged 
 in by reporters. For instance : 
 
 " It was Mr. Palliser's hobby, and he was gratified at 
 having this further opportunity of ventilating it." 
 
 But it would be unfair, even by implication, to 
 accuse a reporter of writing such a sentence as the 
 following : 
 
 " It was an Alderney cow, and any man or women at 
 all understanding in cows would at once have perceived that 
 this cow was perfect in her kind." 
 
 In frequent and inelegant use of the weak and 
 utterly indefinite word "one," instead of some strong 
 definite noun or pronoun, Mr. Trollope successfully 
 competes with many rivals. The manner in which 
 he and his characters employ this despicable substi- 
 tute may be seen from a few examples : 
 
 " If one were called upon for advice, one would think so 
 much before one spoke." 
 
 " How can one talk to one's doctor openly and confi- 
 dentially when one looks upon him as one's worst enemy." 
 
 " It quiets one for the day ; makes one so much fitter for 
 one's daily trials." 
 
 The author's personages are made to talk in a 
 style quite as common, not to say low, as that to 
 which he too often falls in writing, even though 
 they be the great ones of the earth, the well bred, 
 the educated : 
 
84 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 " 4 And then the schemes which he tried on with the 
 
 bishop,' said Mrs. Proudie." 
 
 Mrs. Proudie was the bishop's wife. 
 
 " ' The bishop was too many for him,' suggested Mrs. 
 Harold Smith, very maliciously." 
 
 Mrs. Harold Smith was the wife of a gentleman 
 who gave lectures. 
 
 £fc And then the lecture was gratis, — a fact which is always 
 borne in mind by an Englishman when he comes to reckon 
 up and calculate the way in which he is treated. When 
 he pays his money he takes his choice ; he may be impa- 
 tient, or not, as he likes." 
 
 Vulgar and slang phrases like these may be found 
 upon very many of this author's pages. Should any 
 one think that too much stress is here laid upon cor- 
 rect and elegant style and language in works of fic- 
 tion, especially if he be a conscientious Englishman, 
 making or reading novels for the sake of morality 
 and instruction, let him consider that, happily or 
 otherwise, very many people who are carelessly 
 esteemed persons of intelligence and cultivation read 
 very few books except works of fiction ; that novels 
 constitute almost the only literature with which a 
 great majority of those who are " fond of books" are 
 personally acquainted ; that the English classics are 
 known to them only by reputation ; that they prob- 
 ably could not confidently name a single master of 
 English style as such ; that their notions of correct 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 85 
 
 style, good grammar, and elegant diction are received 
 from writers of novels; and that thus the novelist 
 may become responsible for the prevalence of a vul- 
 gar, coarse, slangous tone of conversation, thought, 
 and feeling in what should be polite society. A 
 popular novelist may show how good young women 
 inevitably marry good young men, and have a plenty 
 of money ; how bad young women do not marry good 
 young men, and, if they are very bad, do not marry 
 anybody ; how the good young men not only marry 
 good young women, but are sure to marry rich ones, 
 or themselves to have a large inheritance as a reward 
 for being good and getting married ; and how the bad 
 young men have a very bad time generally, and can 
 hardly find a good young woman who will even 
 listen to their suits; and yet he may do much injury 
 to the taste, tone, and delicacy of his readers. It is 
 possible to have a moral conscience, and at the same 
 time to have no literary conscience. At any rate 
 this is a fair inference from the works of some 
 writers. 
 
 As has been intimated, Mr. Trollope has the moral 
 conscience. He deals out rewards and punishments, 
 generally at least, in a way to show an earnest dispo- 
 sition to be just. Meek, simple, honest, self-denying 
 Mr. Harding gives up the wardenship of the hos- 
 pital, with all its emoluments, from a sense of duty ; 
 but he is the gainer, rather than the loser, in conse- 
 quence. All goes well with him thereafter, and he 
 dies at a good old age in the midst of his children, by 
 
 8* 
 
8G 
 
 110 W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 whom he lias always been honored. Archdeacon 
 Grantly is proud, imperious, ambitious, and fails to 
 obtain the bishopric. Mr. Slope is mean, dishonest, 
 cunning, unclean, and comes to grief. Mrs. Proud ie 
 is domineering, greedy of ecclesiastical honors, big- 
 oted, quarrelsome, without gentleness, tenderness, or 
 humility, and is so dominated and humbled that her 
 heart breaks. Eleanor is a good girl, a loving and 
 dutiful daughter, and has the reward of being twice 
 married : the first time to a rich man who leaves her 
 all his money ; the second time to a scholar, a gen- 
 tleman, and a dean. Bertram is self-willed, proud, 
 obstinate. Miss AVoddington is like him. They 
 both suffer for years, and when they have been re- 
 formed by suffering they are married. Harcourt is 
 heartless, scheming, unscrupulous, something of a 
 trickster ; he appears to prosper for a time, is sepa- 
 rated from his wife, and blows out his brains. Adela 
 is sweet, gentle, patient, generous, just, and marries 
 her first and only love. Dr. Thorne is a man of 
 sense, correct conduct, noble instincts, unswerving 
 from the standard of right, and marries a great heir- 
 ess. Mary Thorne is as good as she can be, inherits 
 a big fortune, and marries the young squire. Frank 
 Gresham persists in faithful love to his poor sweet- 
 heart in spite of opposition and temptations, and 
 finally marries, and through her comes into possession 
 of the alienated paternal estate. The De Courcys 
 are a bad lot and fare badly. Augustus Crosbie jilts 
 a good girl to marry one of them, and fares worse. 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 87 
 
 John Eames is sportively unfaithful to the woman 
 he adores and loses her. Lilly Dale persists in loving 
 an unworthy suitor and is married to no one, or was 
 not when the last book came from the press. Mr. 
 Crawley is honest after all, and his sufferings work 
 together for his good. Grace Crawley marries her 
 noble-hearted lover, as so good a girl should. Made- 
 line Stavely is an excellent young woman, and mar- 
 ries Felix Graham, an excellent young man. Lady 
 Mason has redeeming qualities, and is, therefore, 
 acquitted by the jury to undergo a modified and mild 
 punishment. Lady Laura loves Phineas, but rejects 
 him because he is poor, marries Mr. Kennedy because 
 he is rich, leads a wretched married life, is separated 
 from her husband, continues to love Phineas, who 
 long since ceased to love her, is very desolate and 
 wretched. Madame Max Gaesler is prudent, true, 
 honorable, and marries the man of her choice. And 
 so on through volume after volume. 
 
 It is, indeed, necessary for the reader to go through 
 many volumes with different titles before he can be 
 sure that he has come to the end of what the author 
 has to say about any of his characters. He seems 
 never to cease talking of them till they die, nor even 
 then in some cases. He has gathered together a 
 population in Barsetshire and is its gossip in chief. 
 His personages soon become old acquaintances, and 
 the reader feels that tranquil and agreeable interest 
 in learning of their doings and sayings that he does 
 in listening to accounts of love-making, love quar- 
 
88 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 rels, domestic unhappiness, money gains and losses 
 among his neighbors. This interest is never un- 
 pleasantly intense and exciting. The book can be 
 laid aside at bedtime without intolerable regret. It 
 does not rob the reader of needful sleep, or tempt 
 him to neglect agreeable duties. In this respect, 
 also, this writer's works are harmless. They have 
 that degree of power which induces attentive perusal, 
 and keeps the mind within reach of their healthful 
 influences. 
 
 Whoever seeks entertainment in Mr. Trollope's 
 writings will rarely be called upon to sympathize 
 with passion, rarely be subjected to the fatigue of 
 strong emotions; will run no risk of having his 
 judgment unsettled by enthusiasm. He may finish 
 the study of one book fresh, vigorous, ready to enter 
 upon that of another. He will not be disturbed or 
 delighted by children ; will not be offended by close 
 contact with very base or very humble people ; will 
 not be asked to mourn over their sorrows with out- 
 casts ; nor will his heart be broken by the sufferings 
 of the very poor and outwardly degraded, the victims 
 of this world's cruel injustice or of their own amia- 
 ble weaknesses, in whom the diviner parts of men 
 and women still survive. He will find himself in 
 the cultivated society of Barsetshire, or in other com- 
 pany equally good. He will learn how bishops and 
 churchmen of rank think, talk, act. He will come 
 to know intimately esquires, knights, baronets, 
 barons, viscounts, earls, sometimes even will see a 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 89 
 
 duke, and will hear "the royalty" mentioned. He 
 will make acquaintances with attorneys, barristers, 
 judges. He will hobnob with Cabinet ministers, 
 under secretaries, and Parliamentary whips. He 
 will feel himself quite at home among students and 
 fellows of the universities. Except on rare occa- 
 sions he will be in the temperate atmosphere of good 
 breeding, with nothing but some bad grammar and 
 frequent rather vulgar phrases to disturb his equa- 
 nimity. And he will gather much instruction. He 
 becomes more or less expert as a fox-hunter, and 
 grows to be more or less intimate with the kennel. 
 He sees how, just at the right time and in the right 
 place, a daring rider may break his arm and several 
 of his ribs. He is made aware how to make up a 
 cause for the courts of law; how Mr. ChafFenbrass 
 cross-examines a witness; and how by a similar 
 process Mr. Furnival perverts the truth. He is 
 informed as to the operations of politics ; knows 
 the real motive which by an euphemism is called 
 patriotism; learns how a leader of the opposition 
 may take the wind out of his antagonist's sails. He 
 becomes familiar with church matters, perceives that 
 the clergy are men. He discovers that even great 
 people think quite as much of money as of rank. 
 And he is taught a variety of ways, all nearly re- 
 sembling each other, in which courting may properly 
 be done. 
 
 Not only do Mr. Trollope's personages talk much 
 sound doctrine, but not unfrequently the author 
 
90 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 comes in his own character to enunciate excellent 
 common sense, and instruct his readers by disserta- 
 tions and homilies. Taking up as a text something 
 said by some one of the persons of the story, he 
 preaches his little, sometimes his rather long, ser- 
 mons : 
 
 " ' I wonder whether you ever think of the old days 
 when we used to be so happy in Keppel Street?' Ah 
 me, how often in after-life, in those successful days when 
 the battle has been fought and won, when all seems out- 
 wardly to go well — how often is this reference made to the 
 happy days in Keppel Street ! It is not the prize that can 
 make us happy; it is not even the winning of the prize, 
 though for one short half-hour of triumph that is pleasant 
 enough. The struggle, the long hot hour of the honest 
 fight, the grinding work — when the teeth are set, and the 
 skin moist with sweat and rough with dust, when all is 
 doubtful, and sometimes desperate ; when a man must 
 trust to his own manhood, knowing that those around him 
 trust to it not at all — that is the happy time of life. 
 There is no human bliss equal to twelve hours of work 
 with only six hours in which to do it. And when the ex- 
 pected pay for that work is worse than doubtful, the inner 
 satisfaction is so much the greater. Oh, those happy days 
 in Keppel Street, or it may be over in dirty lodgings in the 
 Borough, or somewhere near Marylebone workhouse — any- 
 where for a moderate weekly stipend. Those were to us, and 
 now are to others, and always will be to many, the happy 
 days of life. How bright was love, and how full of poetry ! 
 Flashes of wit glanced here and there, and how they came 
 home and warmed the cockles of the heart! And the 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 91 
 
 unfrequent bottle! Methinks that wine has utterly lost its 
 flavor since those days. There is nothing like it ; long 
 work, grinding, weary work, work without pay, hopeless 
 work ; but work in which the worker trusts himself, be- 
 lieving it to be good. Let him, like Mohammed, have one 
 other to believe in him, and surely nothing else is needed. 
 1 Ah me ! I wonder whether you ever think of the old days 
 when we used to be so happy in Keppel Street?' 
 
 " Nothing makes a man so cross as success, or so soon 
 turns a pleasant friend into a captious acquaintance. Your 
 successful man eats too much, and his stomach troubles 
 him ; he drinks too much, and his nose becomes blue. He 
 wants pleasure and excitement, and roams about looking for 
 satisfaction in places where no man ever found it. He frets 
 himself with his banker's book, and everything tastes amiss 
 to him that has not on it the flavor of gold. The straw of 
 an omnibus always stinks; the linings of the cabs are 
 filthy. There are but three houses in London at which an 
 eatable dinner may be obtained. And yet a few years since 
 how delicious was that cut of roast goose to be had for a 
 shilling at the eating-house near Golden Square ! Mrs. 
 Jones and Mrs. Green, Mrs. Walker and all the other mis- 
 tresses, are too vapid and stupid and humdrum for endur- 
 ance. The theatres are as dull as Lethe, and politics have 
 lost their salt. Success is the necessary misfortune of life, 
 but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early." 
 
 An excellent discourse, you will say, containing 
 much common sense, and sounding with the ring of 
 true manliness. But you will say, also, that you do 
 not care to have the action of an interesting scene 
 arrested in order that you may listen to it. And you 
 
Q2 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 will say, furthermore, if you reflect upon it, that its 
 introduction into such a scene is utterly inartistic; 
 that such introduction is inconsistent with the pur- 
 poses of art ; that it must destroy any work of art, 
 as such, in which it may appear. 
 
 Mr. Trollope is, indeed, not an artist; at any rate, 
 not a good artist. His business is to make books 
 for sale, the more volumes the better. These books 
 must contain an interesting story in order that buyers 
 may take them. They serve, also, as media through 
 which the public may be made acquainted with the 
 author's personal convictions, theories, sentiments. 
 These are instructive and they increase the size of the 
 work. He passes by no opportunity for interesting 
 reflections, remarks, essays, dissertations. Bertram is 
 at Jerusalem. He meets there a company of English 
 tourists. They have a picnic party in the valley of 
 Jehoshaphat, " immediately over the ashes of James 
 the Just." The occasion thus made is too good to 
 be lost. The author must introduce some remarks 
 about the peculiar characteristics of English trav- 
 ellers: 
 
 " None but Englishmen or Englishwomen do such things 
 as this. To other people is wanting sufficient pluck for 
 such enterprises ; is wanting also a certain mixture of fun, 
 honest independence, and bad taste. Let us go into some 
 church on the Continent — in Italy, we will say — where the 
 walls of the churches still boast of the great works of the 
 great masters. Look at that man standing on the very altar 
 steps while the priest is saying his mass ; look at his gray 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 93 
 
 shooting-coat, his thick shoes, his wide-awake hat stuck 
 under one arm and his stick under the other, while he holds 
 his opera-glass to his eyes. How he shuffles about to get 
 the best point of sight, quite indifferent as to clergy or laity ! 
 All that bell-ringing, incense-flinging, and breast-striking is 
 nothing to him ; he has paid dearly to be brought thither ; 
 he has paid the guide who is kneeling a little behind him ; 
 he is going to pay the sacristan who attends him ; he is 
 quite ready to pay the priest himself, if the priest would 
 only signify his wish that way ; but he has come there to 
 see that fresco, and see it he will, — respecting that he will 
 soon know more than either the priest or his worshippers. 
 Perhaps some servant of the Church, coming to him with 
 submissive, almost suppliant gesture, begs him to step back 
 just for one moment. The lover of art glares at him with 
 insulted look, and hardly deigns to notice him further ; he 
 merely turns his eye to his Murray, puts his hat down on the 
 altar-step, and goes on studying his subject. All the world 
 — German, Frenchman, Italian, Spaniard — all men of all 
 nations know that that ugly gray shooting-coat must con- 
 tain an Englishman. He cares for no one. If any one up- 
 sets him, he can do much toward righting himself ; and if 
 more be wanted has he not Lord Malmesbury or Lord Cla- 
 rendon at his back ? But what would this Englishman say 
 if his place of worship were disturbed by some wandering 
 Italian ?" 
 
 Very just, you will say; a truthful description, 
 certainly ; well worthy to take a place in the corre- 
 spondence of a newspaper or a book of travels. But 
 in the mean time the picnic is waiting. Such inter- 
 polations are of very frequent occurrence. 
 
 9 
 
D4 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 Nor is it in this respect alone that this author sins 
 against art, retards the action and dulls the interest 
 of his stories. He introduces too many characters, 
 many of them mere passing acquaintances, who serve 
 only to distract attention from the general subject 
 of thought. Sometimes a counterplot and story run 
 parallel with the principal narrative, yet have no 
 necessary connection with and no effect upon it ; as, 
 for instance, in " The Last Chronicle of Barset." 
 Here Lilly Dale, the loves of John Eames, Mrs. 
 Dobbs Broughton and her friends, Mr. Crosbie, the 
 Van Sievers, Dalrymple, Miss Desmolines, and sev- 
 eral other personages act a comedy entirely independ- 
 ent of the principal play. It would be easy to sepa- 
 rate entirely the two stories, with advantage to each. 
 Not unfrequently the author takes some of his char- 
 acters quite out of the limits which should bound his 
 plan, with no other conceivable purpose or result than 
 to make them talk with a deaf old woman in order 
 to show what funny mistakes she can make, how she 
 uses her ear-trumpet, and how hard it is to converse 
 with her. In this way he easily makes what in a 
 variety show would be called a character sketch, and 
 forces into his drama a little comedy. One example 
 of this fault may be found in " The Bertrams," 
 where the author sends Miss Todd and Ad el a to visit 
 Mrs. Leake. Mrs. Leake appears nowhere else in the 
 story, has absolutely nothing to do with the plot, nor 
 does this visit in any way affect the action. But Mrs. 
 Leake is deaf, and Mr. Trollope likes deaf women. 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 95 
 
 This gentleman has indeed little conception of 
 form ; knows little of color. He is rather a weaver 
 than a painter or a sculptor. He weaves fabrics rea- 
 sonably strong, of an equal texture, made up for the 
 most part of neutral tints, well calculated to do good 
 service. It is for this purpose that they are made; 
 and this purpose seems to be always in the author's 
 mind. " This has its advantages no doubt ; art 
 suffers by it if the public gains. Though your char- 
 acters give the best examples, your works will be 
 of less value. No matter ; you may console yourself 
 with the thought that you are moral. Your lovers 
 will be uninteresting ; for the only interest natural to 
 their age is the violence of passion, and you cannot 
 paint passion." 
 
 The characters drawn by Mr. Trollope are gen- 
 erally distinct individuals. The reader feels that he 
 has met and known such people. They never vio- 
 late probability, or such consistency as is common 
 among mankind. Their acts have sufficient motives, 
 and the author never fails to make these motives 
 known. Indeed, the reader who shall carefully study 
 all the analyses furnished for the enlightenment of 
 his understanding, and not unfrequently repeated 
 several times in the limits of one book, will probably 
 know more of their incentives than the actors them- 
 selves. Although choosing to depict society in which 
 the nobility and gentry mingle freely, as an author 
 Mr. Trollope is plainly not a snob. He values a 
 man for his manhood, not for his title or social rank. 
 
96 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 Some of his sharpest satire is aimed at members of 
 the aristocracy. 
 
 His books are altogether wholesome, contain much 
 very pleasant entertainment, and not a little good 
 instruction. He loves domestic scenes, British homes, 
 all that is most characteristic in the most agreeable 
 English life. So well has he portrayed the society 
 in which he finds such pleasure, notwithstanding 
 literary and artistic faults, that his readers will sym- 
 pathize with him when he says, — 
 
 " To me Barset has been a real county, and its city a 
 real city, and the spires and towers have been before my 
 eyes, and the voices of the people are thrown to my ears 
 and the pavements of the city ways are familiar to my 
 footsteps." 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 97 
 
 A CRUDE NOVELIST. 
 
 Rhoda Broughton" holds an acknowledged place 
 as a writer of English novels ; her books find ready 
 publishers and mady readers. These facts indicate 
 that something in these works pleases lovers of fic- 
 tion. What this something is we shall try to discover. 
 
 Time was when English readers, as well as writers, 
 held some acquaintance with English grammar, loved 
 correct and elegant diction, would not tolerate sloven- 
 liness and blunder, when a good and pure style was 
 a passport to admiration and popularity. But that 
 time seems to have passed away. The boasted gen- 
 eral diffusion of learning has made a practical knowl- 
 edge of English grammar a useless, and therefore a 
 neglected accomplishment; has shown that a fair 
 style and choice diction are matters of study or care, 
 or both, and therefore unworthy the attention of 
 genius. At any rate some novelists seem to thrive 
 and grow rich through, or spite of, the neglect of 
 these things. With the greater portion of readers 
 the only question is whether the story be interesting. 
 To be interesting it must be exciting. To be ex- 
 citing it must be vehement ; it must arouse the 
 stronger, that is, the coarser impulses and sympa- 
 
 9* 
 
98 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 fchies of mankind. Horror is a sharper and more 
 sickening sensation than terror; therefore to awaken 
 horror is deemed better than to excite terror. True, 
 the canons of art forbid the appearance of anything 
 horrible. But we have nothing to do with art; we 
 arc guided by inspiration. Licentious passions are 
 more violent than well-tempered love or chaste affec- 
 tions ; therefore licentious passions must be set free, 
 love unbridled, and affections perverted. A new 
 word, a word erroneously formed, a French phrase, 
 a German sentence, an Italian proverb, a Spanish 
 couplet, a Latin verse, a Greek term, will attract 
 more attention than any good English noun, verb, 
 or particle; therefore let the foreign expressions be 
 used whenever an opportunity can be found or made. 
 Few readers can understand their meaning; hence 
 the author will have the credit of learning and pro- 
 fundity. Such alien helps are easily obtained. Any 
 friendly sophomore can furnish them to order. The 
 pedantry is cheap, like the literature. And why 
 should not the literature be plentiful and cheap when, 
 as in restaurants where viands are sold at low prices, 
 the cold bits of yesterday may make the hash of to- 
 day, and the residue of that furnish the mince-pie for 
 to-morrow ? The name is changed, the dish is called 
 new, the substance is essentially the same. 
 
 If the style is the woman, as well as the man, 
 Rhoda Broughton must be a somewhat flippant, very 
 bright and vivacious, rather irreverent, daring, self- 
 sufficient, untutored person, possessing uncommon 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 99 
 
 natural talent, and power which has never been 
 mastered or disciplined ; whose taste is, in some 
 respects, irremediably bad, or has never received any 
 proper cultivation. She must be like a neglected 
 garden with a rich soil, where flowers and weeds 
 grow rankly together, and where the crops repeat 
 themselves rapidly, with little variation in shape, 
 color, or quality. She - has a feverish anxiety to 
 arrest attention. Many persons who may never 
 have read her books have doubtless noticed their 
 advertised titles, " Red as a Rose is She," " Cometh 
 up as a Flower/' " Not Wisely, but too Well/ 7 
 "Good-by, Sweetheart." 
 
 The peculiarity of title is not the only thing in 
 which these works resemble each other. They are 
 all made after one general plan, perhaps not pur- 
 posely, probably not even consciously. They are all 
 the fruits of one conception, and are as much alike 
 as if they had been produced at one birth. Evi- 
 dently they followed each other rapidly into the 
 world. The indiscretions of the author were too 
 swiftly repeated. The heroines are all "red as a 
 rose that is to say, they all have a most uncom- 
 fortable propensity to blush violently under any and 
 all circumstances, notwithstanding the fact that for 
 the most part they are rather hoidenish, and not at 
 all timid, very reckless in fact. These heroines fall 
 desperately in love at first sight with some uncom- 
 monly big fellow, who either lies on the ground at 
 the girl's feet, making a mould of his gigantic pro- 
 
100 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 portions in the soft herbage, while he " gazes up at" 
 her; or he stands by her side while she " gazes up 
 at" him. Sometimes the girls " beam up at," often 
 " smile up at" the lovers, rarely, perhaps never, look 
 at them. One of these heroines, Kate Chester by 
 name, seems to be a reservoir of " green light," which 
 she " shoots out of" her " green eyes" with magical 
 effects. "And she shoots out green light of intoxi- 
 cation and mischief from under the shady black hat." 
 From which it would appear that she carried intoxi- 
 cation under that hat as many a fellow carries a brick. 
 
 These big lovers are generally strong, rude men, 
 whose passions have had free scope and become pow- 
 erful. They are devourers of women, take at least 
 half a dozen on toast for breakfast every morning 
 or night; have probably done so habitually till they 
 meet the heroine, who, of course, is the bonne bouche. 
 These heroines, for the most part, are predisposed to 
 consumption. At any rate they are likely to become 
 consumptive, are brought very low, generally die, 
 but not always. Nothing can kill the heroes but an 
 accident; they are such big, hearty fellows. Of 
 course, the suggested contrast is charming. We 
 weary of its constant repetition, however. We do 
 not care, under different titles, to buy the same pic- 
 ture over and over again. We begin to desire a big 
 sweetheart and a little lover ; to see her bend him 
 over her knee when he is bad, toss him up and down 
 in her hands, and talk to him of his footie-tooties 
 when he is good ; or anything by way of a change. 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 101 
 
 As these two characters, hero and heroine, very 
 slightly varied, appear in all Miss Broughton's earlier 
 works, so do their foils. An unlucky, manly, poor 
 soldier lover, who goes away with his troop to some 
 outlandish place and is killed, or fevered and plagued 
 to death, like Robert Brandon in "Red as a Rose 
 is She," and Dick McGregor in " Cometh up as a 
 Flower ;" a quiet, well-bred, unfeeling, selfish, calcu- 
 lating, beautiful woman of the world, given to 
 hypocritical intrigues against the heroine, like Miss 
 Blessington in " Red as a Rose," etc., and Sister 
 Dolly in " Cometh up," etc. Even the more sub- 
 ordinate passages in the different books are counter- 
 parts of each other. The old Puritan mother with 
 her Calvinistic talk, reading or pretending to read, 
 and recommending to others works on hell-fire and 
 eternal damnation, with titles frightful enough to 
 raise the hair on any young girl's head, appears in 
 " Red as a Rose is She," as Mrs. Brandon, and as 
 Lady Lancaster in " Cometh up as a Flower." Not 
 even the old dog which has a part in each work is 
 spared. He, too, must die over and over, and each 
 time licking somebody's hand. 
 
 Now, this repetition of fictitious action and per- 
 sonages indicates certainly that the author writes too 
 much, produces books too rapidly; possibly, also, 
 that the vein from which she mines her materials is 
 very narrow, and scanty in varieties. These faults, 
 or deficiencies, however, are of a somewhat negative 
 kind, and need cause no feeling of irritation ; a 
 
102 
 
 JTOW THEY STRIKE ME. 
 
 remark which cannot be justly applied to the manner 
 in which much of her work is done, the almost con- 
 stant straining for effect, notable contempt for the 
 rules of grammar and taste, and many affectations. 
 
 Observe, for instance, how " one" is made to do 
 the work of all kinds of nouns and pronouns, and 
 how awkwardly the task is achieved : 
 
 " Bending down one's head over one's work sends all the 
 blood in one's body into it." 
 
 " Causing Miss Craven to give one of those starts that 
 make one feel as if one literally jumped out of one's skin, 
 and fill one with ungodly wrath against the occasion of 
 them." 
 
 " I think that one's parents ought to apologize to one for 
 bringing one, without asking one's leave, into such a disa- 
 greeable place as this world is." 
 
 " I hate going back the same way one came, it shows 
 such a want of invention." 
 
 " It strikes me as one of the few instances in which one's 
 experience tallies with what one reads in novels, the awk- 
 ward knack people have of interrupting one at the wrong 
 moment." 
 
 " One cannot fancy the world without one, can one ? One 
 knows that, not long ago, there was, and not long hence 
 there ivill be, no /; but one cannot realize it !" 
 
 "I'd rather never see a human face all the year round, 
 except my own, of course. It's always pleasant to see that, 
 looking at one in the glass — always except wheu one's nose 
 gets red." 
 
 Further citations to illustrate this all -pervading, 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 103 
 
 inexcusable, and offensive fault would be tedious. 
 Quite as inexcusable and offensive is the author's 
 mode of forming comparatives and superlatives : 
 " — replies Miss Blessington, rather sharplier than is 
 her wont;" "he only says in a kind, anxious voice, 
 and plainlier still with kind, anxious eyes ;" " and 
 leaning closelier over her ;" " and falls to weeping 
 sorelier than ever;" "it is in silence that a good, 
 brave man meetliest takes his death-blow ;" " heav- 
 ing up and down rather quicklier than usual ;" " and 
 rarelier still read any reviews ;" " as they are jogging 
 a little brisklier than usual ;" " gathering her wraps 
 closelier about her;" "on shoulders that mayhap 
 may bear it stoutlier ;" " remembering how much 
 deeplier she had sinned ;" " for he can see plainlier 
 now ;" " pursuing the hotlier the more ;" " shines 
 also hotlier." 
 
 Even when her superlatives are formed with some 
 reference to the usages of the English language they 
 are generally very rough and inelegant : " the penni- 
 lessest, improvidentest, happiest pair of sweethearts 
 in Great Britain." " The old woman of exaltedest 
 rank." 
 
 Such licenses, however, are not enough for the 
 free spirit of this author. Familiar or strange Eng- 
 lish words, even when distorted into new shapes, do 
 not suffice to express her meaning. She must use 
 terms unknown to the best dictionary makers ; as, 
 for instance, " havering," " chivies," used as a verb, 
 and " writhen :" " Dolly on a dark oak settle with a 
 
104 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 carved and writhen back." Liberty to make words 
 that look like English is, however, not enough for 
 her ambition. French and Latin commonplaces 
 and Greek terms, sometimes printed in Greek letters, 
 are forced awkwardly to do duty for some simple 
 and elegant English phrase. Occasionally she is 
 kind enough to translate the Greek terms after using 
 them, but not always : " to my Philon Hetor, or dear 
 heart." " I don't think he got any kvdos from either 
 of his dear friends for his impartiality." The use 
 of the Latin and French phrases would be more 
 excusable, were they not so evidently dragged in by 
 the collar, as it were, when no possible room for their 
 appearance can be perceived, except that the author 
 may display her possessions. To tell the truth these 
 possessions look not only thoroughly out of place, 
 but very much as if they were borrowed for the 
 occasion. 
 
 Such faults as those indicated are pardonable only 
 when committed by a very young author. They are, 
 indeed, indications of youthfulness and inexperience. 
 In Miss B rough ton's books are other signs of juven- 
 ility. Among them are plain efforts to strike the 
 reader, impatience of judicious restraints, a wasteful 
 use of power, an over-fondness for things that are 
 themselves glowing and impressive. She likes to 
 make " men's hot blood surge ;" to describe her 
 heroines in the hero's arms while " he is kissing her 
 repeatedly," or laying " his lips upon the blossom 
 of her sweet mouth ;" to tell how " he wrapped his 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 105 
 
 arms around her as she stood before him, tighter, 
 tighter, and bent down his head from its stately 
 height to her small, uplifted face, nearer, nearer, till 
 their lips met and were joined in a wedlock so fast, 
 so long-enduring, so firm, that it seemed as if they 
 never could be divorced again." 
 
 She will strain a point to show that she has no 
 false modesty : rather enjoys shocking very delicate 
 people; detests all affectations and shams except 
 those which she practises herself, suoh, for instance, 
 as her pretentious display of cheap acquaintance with 
 different lano-ua^es ; seems to delight in death as a 
 subject of apostrophe and discussion, because death is 
 a very terrible thing to most readers; in the grave, 
 corruption, mould, dust, worms, " lobbies and wood- 
 lice," also, because they are objects from which the 
 ordinary man recoils, and which thus can produce a 
 powerful sensation ; therefore she exposes them, and 
 not unfrequently almost to the point of disgust. She 
 does not shrink from asking and suggesting many 
 theological questions not at all new, and writing 
 many common enough platitudes about them ; 
 shrinks not either from mentioning sacred names 
 and speaking of sacred things in a very light and 
 flippant manner, to say the least of it. She not only 
 seems to defy all ordinary constraints, but to aim at 
 a constant demonstration of her wild freedom. 
 
 All this is evidence of a certain kind of rude 
 strength, if you please. Indeed, there can be no 
 question that, within certain narrow limits, this 
 
 10 
 
106 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 author possesses uncommon natural powers. She 
 indistinctively likes virility, wants her admirers to 
 be men, and detests sentimental creatures, as is 
 shown by her use of big lovers, and in other ways. 
 J br heroines also are strong after their kind, though 
 their kind is not generally well bred or delicate. 
 They are models which no man would wish his sis- 
 ters, no mother her daughters to copy. But to the 
 reader who does not belong to their family, whom 
 they can in no way mortify and shame by their 
 vagaries, they are fresh, interesting, full of life, 
 strong if not gentle. They are, for the most part, 
 very clearly and consistently delineated, and have a 
 marked, positive individuality. The characters of 
 the men, also, are fairly well defined, but not so 
 distinctly as are those of the women. The lover and 
 his sweetheart are the all-important personages in 
 each book ; the others are seen somewhat obscurely. 
 The author's own qualities and characteristics appear 
 more naturally in the women than in the men. We 
 conceive that in the following extract she sketches 
 herself, to some extent, at least : 
 
 " It was to me a matter of unfeigned and heart-felt 
 gratulation that my mother died in my infancy. As 
 often as I came in contact with well-drilled daughters, 
 nestling under the wing of a portly mamma, I hugged 
 myself on my freedom. My father was • more to me than 
 ten mothers. If my mother had lived, thought I, I should 
 have been only second in his affections ; some one else 
 would have been nearer his heart than I — an idea almost 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 107 
 
 too bitter to be contemplated. If I bad had a mother I 
 should have had to mend my gloves, and keep my hair 
 tidy, and practice on the piano, and be initiated into the 
 mysteries of stitching." 
 
 Miss Broughton has a happy knack at descrip- 
 tions, can write admirably when she will, depicts 
 scenes very graphically. The cleverness in the use 
 of words which crops out all through her books, 
 makes her occasional slovenliness, her conceits, her 
 outrages on the English language and on good taste, 
 all the more inexcusable. She loves nature, good, 
 strong, healthy nature, with a poet's love, and can 
 paint it with a poet's pen : 
 
 " Morning is come again. The sun cannot bear to be 
 long away from his young sweetheart, the earth, so he has 
 come back hasting, with royal pomp, with his crown of 
 gay gold beams on his head, with his flame-cloak about 
 his strong shoulders, and with a great troop of light, flaky 
 clouds — each with a reflex of his red smile on its courtier 
 face — at his back. He has come back to see himself in 
 the laughing blue eyes of her seas and streams, and to rest 
 at noontide, like a sleepy giant, on her warm green lap. 
 
 " The daily miracle — the miracle that none can contest, 
 to which all are witness, has been worked — the resurrec- 
 tion of the world. And this resurrection is not partial, 
 not limited to humanity, as that final one is toward which 
 the eyes of the Christian church have been looking stead- 
 fastly for eighteen centuries and a half ; but every beast 
 and bird and flower has shaken off Death's sweet sem- 
 blance, his gentle counterfeit, and is feeling, in bounding 
 
108 
 
 HOW TIIEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 vein and rushing sap, the ecstatic bliss of the mystery of 
 life. If we never slept, we should not know the joy of 
 waking; if we never woke, we should not know the joy of 
 sleep. How, I marvel, shall we feel the happiness of 
 heaven, if we never lose, and consequently never regain 
 it? The thrushes and blackbirds are already in the midst 
 of their glees and madrigals and part songs. They sing 
 the seme songs every day, so that they are quite perfect in 
 them ; and they are all very joyful ones. In their sweet 
 flute language there are no words expressive of sorrow or 
 pain : they know of no minor key. There were twenty 
 roses born last night, and the flowers are all rejoicing 
 greatly. They are smiling and whimpering and gossiping 
 together; the sweet peas, like pink and purple butterflies, 
 
 ' . . . . on tiptoe for a flight, 
 "With wings of delicate flush o'er virgin white,' 
 
 each half inclined to hover away with the young west wind 
 that is sighing such a little gentle story all about himself 
 into their ears. The lambs, grown so big and woolly that 
 one might almost mistake them for their mothers, are 
 leaping and racirg and plunging about in the field below 
 the house, in the giddiness of youth, unprescient of the 
 butcher." 
 
 Many, indeed most of the scenes in which Miss 
 Broughton's characters appear are exceedingly fresh, 
 vigorous, well sustained, clearly set forth, life-like. 
 The language of her personages is for the most part 
 terse, vivacious, pointed, strong, often witty, not 
 unfrequently mingled with popular slang, however, 
 and many inelegant expressions. Look, for exam- 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 109 
 
 pie, at the picture of the Brandon family at Sun- 
 day's dinner; at the description of Jock's death, in 
 " Red as a Rose is She at the passage between 
 Lenore and Paul, terminated l>y the upsetting of the 
 boat, and many others in "Good-by, Sweetheart." 
 In a circumscribed way this author uses much dra- 
 matic power ; witness many of the scenes in " Not 
 Wisely but Too Well." In the four books which 
 we have mentioned the author's merits greatly over- 
 balance her faults, are as strongly marked, and give 
 flattering promise of superior excellence in the future 
 if she can be induced to submit to certain liberal 
 rules of art and good taste, will enlarge her scope of 
 thought, her variety of character and incident, and 
 be content to bring her offspring into the world only 
 at reasonable intervals of time, and after suitable 
 periods of gestation. 
 
 This promise has to a certain extent been already 
 fulfilled. "Nancy," her last book, is in some re- 
 spects superior to any that have preceded it from the 
 same source. It is in the main more correctly writ- 
 ten, its style is in better taste, while lacking nothing 
 of the freshness and vigor which in so great a degree 
 characterize her earlier works. The heroine, who in 
 other regards is well drawn and reasonable enough, 
 has, however, one grave defect. In all her inter- 
 course with Frank Musgrave she is by far too inno- 
 cently stupid, or too stupidly innocent — incredibly 
 so. This is the greatest fault of the work. On this 
 intercourse and its results hinges the chief interest 
 
 10* 
 
110 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 of the story. The author designed to keep Nancy 
 blameless, and yet cause her to excite such suspicions 
 as to bring on the kind and degree of trouble dear 
 to novel-readers. But she failed to accomplish this 
 artistically and well through want of skill or want 
 of thought. Nancy is impossibly unsuspecting and 
 unobservant. Minor faults of the kind with which 
 we are already familiar are not infrequent : 
 
 " ' Every one knows best where his own shoe pinches,' 
 I answer vernacularly." 
 
 "None but a God-intoxicated man could tell the glories 
 of that serenely shining and suave morn." 
 
 u Turning his eyes from his own face and fixing them on 
 the less interesting object of mine." 
 
 " Perhaps she may be stupid ! Certainly she is not 
 affording." 
 
 " She continues, eyeing him with contemplated candor." 
 " But fortunately no one but I is listening to him." 
 " My legs ache mostly a good deal, and I feel dull and 
 drowsy from want of sleep." 
 
 Still, an important advance has been attempted 
 in this work with very encouraging success. Miss 
 Broughton has herself felt the necessity of working 
 a new vein, of producing something novel, of not 
 continuing to repeat the same old story. Sir Roger 
 is an admirable personage, a complete gentleman, 
 thoroughly well drawn. Several of the subordinate 
 characters are clearly and well delineated. The de- 
 scriptions of the children, Nancy's brothers and 
 sisters, their doings and sayings, could hardly be 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 surpassed. Each one of them has a distinct, com- 
 pletely individualized, consistent personality. The 
 scenes in which they take part, and in fact the 
 author's domestic scenes, almost without exception, 
 are notably life-like. 
 
 " There is no doubt that on seme days the devil reigns 
 with a more potent sway over people than on others. To- 
 night he has certainly entered into the boys. He often 
 does a little, but this evening he is holding a great and 
 mighty carnival among them. While father's strong, hard 
 voice vibrates in a loud, dull monotone through the silent 
 room, they are engaged in a hundred dumb yet ungodly 
 antics behind his back. 
 
 " Algernon has thrust his head far out between the rungs 
 of his chair-back, and affects to be unable to withdraw it 
 again, making movements of simulated suffocation. The 
 Brat is stealthily walking on his knees across the space that 
 intervenes between them to Barbara, with intent, as I too 
 well know, of unseemly pinchings. If father unbuttons 
 his eyes, or moves his head one barleycorn, we are all dead 
 men. I hold my breath in a nervous agony. Thank 
 heaven ! the harsh recitation still flows on with equable 
 loud slowness. In happy ignorance of his offspring's antics, 
 father is still asking, or rather ordering, the Almighty (for 
 there is more of command than entreaty in his tone) to 
 prosper the High Court of Parliament. Also the Brat is 
 now returning to his place, travelling with surprising noise- 
 less rapidity over the Turkey carpet, dragging his shins and 
 his feet after him. I draw a long breath of relief, and 
 drop my hot face into my spread hands. My peace, how- 
 ever, is not of long duration. I am aroused by a sort of 
 
112 
 
 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 choking snort from Tou Tou, who is beside me — a snort 
 that seems compounded of mingled laughter and pain, and, 
 looking up, detect Bobby in the act of deftly puncturing 
 one of her long bare legs with a long brass pin, which he 
 has found straying, after the vagabond manner of pins, over 
 the carpet." 
 
 Here follows, very briefly, a companion sketch : 
 
 " The devil in the boys is fairly quiescent to-night, and 
 our evening devotions pass over with tolerable peace ; the 
 only contretemps being that the Brat, having fallen asleep, 
 remains on his knees when 1 Amen' raises the rest of the 
 company from theirs, and has to be privily and heavily 
 kicked to save him from discovery and ruin." 
 
 An equal degree of cleverness is shown by the 
 author in depicting very many other scenes. Her 
 strength, her Avir, vivacity, brilliancy, the great 
 talents which she has so clearly shown, we gladly 
 admit and heartily praise. As before intimated, 
 they serve at the same time to aggravate and render 
 unpardonable her gross faults. If she will remem- 
 ber that "art does not come by inspiration," and 
 that "reading and writing (do not) come by nature," 
 taking care to cultivate, develop, master and mani- 
 fest her rare powers with propriety and taste, a very 
 brilliant future is before her. 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 113 
 
 A GOSSIPING NOVELIST. 
 
 As the production of fictitious composition in- 
 creases, the rules by which it is to be judged should 
 be applied with more and more severity, and not, as 
 seems to be the case, with less and less. These rules 
 are now well enough understood by all sagacious 
 critics. Yet many authors appear to be ignorant, or, 
 at any rate, heedless, of them. Of these, Mrs. Mar- 
 garet Oliphant is an example. She holds a con- 
 spicuous place among English novelists, though not 
 in the first rank. Her books have found much 
 favor, especially among writers of literary notices for 
 the newspapers and magazines. How far she may 
 safely be imitated, what her merits and demerits may 
 be, and what is her just rank among writers of fiction, 
 more thorough criticism alone can determine. This 
 is especially true if it be a fact that "a man's genius 
 is like a clock : it has its mechanism, and among its 
 parts a mainspring." If you " find out this spring, 
 show how it communicates movements to the others, 
 pursue this movement from part to part down to the 
 hands in which it ends," you may determine the kind 
 of work that it will do. Whether he will or not, the 
 really competent critic follows this process reversed. 
 
114 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 From the action of the hands on the dial lie works 
 back to the mainspring, notes its motive power and 
 the manner in which it is regulated. To study the 
 writing is to study the writer. 
 
 A thoroughly good novel demonstrates on the part 
 of its maker the possession of certain distinct charac- 
 teristics. He should have, to some degree at least, 
 the eve of a painter. He must be able to discrimi- 
 nate between what is picturesque in description and 
 what is unpicturesque and wearisome, as well as 
 between what is and what is not worthy to be de- 
 scribed. Moreover, he should have a sculptor's 
 keen sense of harmonious - proportions to restrain 
 him when tempted to add to his work matter which 
 in itself may be good, but which, so used, will only 
 mar the symmetry of the composition and interrupt 
 or delay the action of the story. 
 
 In a word, as the great painter is said to contain 
 the sculptor also, so the novelist should contain both 
 sculptor and painter. Mrs. Oliphant seems to con- 
 tain neither in any high degree of development. 
 Unfortunately, many authors of her class, whose 
 works are eagerly and widely read, show a shameful 
 negligence of even elementary studies. Of these 
 Mrs. Oliphant is one, as further on will more fully 
 appear. She has, howevep, unquestionable natural 
 powers. She contrives interesting, often strong, 
 stories, but mars them in the telling. Descriptions 
 abound, in place and out of place; descriptions of 
 houses, of rooms, of furniture, of wall-paper, of win- 
 
these a unions. 
 
 115 
 
 (low-curtains, of ceilings, of floors, things of which 
 any knowledge is as useless to the reader as its acqui- 
 sition by him is wearisome ; descriptions of scenes 
 and places which could not beget in him any concep- 
 tion "without the aid of maps and colored drawings; 
 descriptions of feeling, and states of feeling, and 
 conflicts of feeling, and changes of feeling, and want 
 of feeling, till he is so benumbed by the dull iteration 
 and interminable monotony that to no feeling is he 
 capable of responding. All this is done regardless 
 of the fact that the action is made to stand still, and 
 the thread of the story to be lost. 
 
 This author's imagination is, in some respects, 
 strong. It can conceive clearly individualized and 
 consistent characters in trying and dramatic juxta- 
 positions and complications, and can see plainly the 
 way to a logical conclusion. It is, however, the 
 imagination of the detective, the lawyer, the specu- 
 lator in science, not that of the poet. Like that of 
 many another English novel-w r riter, it is more like 
 a draught horse than it is like Pegasus. It is chiefly 
 employed in laboriously exaggerating the common- 
 place. Within and partly concealed by this mass 
 lies, generally, a good story. The plot is almost 
 always praiseworthy. In filling it up the overload- 
 ing, the disruptions, the violent separation of parts, 
 and the consequent deformities are produced. 
 
 Perhaps one incentive to this kind of work is that 
 the author, in common with some who hold places 
 even higher than her own in public estimation, some 
 
11(5 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 time ago discovered that a gossiping disposition 
 might be turned to profit. Although women are 
 currently mentioned as chiefly governed by this dis- 
 position, men in society, in the clubs, in the street, 
 and in their books, demonstrate the fact that many 
 of them, in this respect at least, are peers of the 
 other sex. When writers of both sexes came to per- 
 ceive that a story which might be told well in one 
 volume could also be told in three, by crowding in 
 at every practicable place the gossipy talk of some 
 old lady, some old gentleman, some young woman, 
 some young man, some persons of either sex in the 
 lower walks of life, and some equally gossipy talk of 
 the author himself about his own personages or other 
 things, and that the three volumes would fetch in 
 the market three times as much money as would the 
 one, the character of English novels was, for a time 
 at least, decided. Hence it has become some part of 
 the business of almost every English writer of fiction 
 to sell at a round price pages of such talk and such 
 scandal as in the ordinaiy haunts of men and women 
 may be had for nothing. And the nearer the written 
 page resembles what is heard in these resorts, the 
 more it is admired by a large class of readers. 
 
 In this kind of composition Mrs. Oliphant excels. 
 " Phoebe J unior," the last of her works published, is 
 a fair sample. The action almost wholly takes place 
 among ill-bred and comparatively ignorant people, 
 who are represented as dissenters. With this class the 
 author especially likes to deal. You are inclined to 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 117 
 
 believe it is the class with which she is most familiar, 
 and that her work is, in a great measure, that of a 
 reporter rather than that of an inventor. All the 
 scandal, the gossip, the petty envy and jealousy, the 
 selfishness, the clumsy matrimonial intrigues, and, 
 generally, the worst features of such a society are 
 only too well depicted. Many transitory personages 
 are introduced from time to time, who have nothing 
 whatever to do with the action of the story, solely 
 for the purpose, so far as can be discovered, of ex- 
 hibiting these traits more completely and in greater 
 variety. To what end ? That the author may show 
 how well she is acquainted with low-bred and vulgar 
 people. It is hard to perceive any other reason, 
 unless that she finds this kind of life interesting, and 
 therefore believes that it will interest others. 
 
 That she, like too many writers of her class, should 
 feel a natural sympathy with ignorance seems proba- 
 ble, when you observe that she complacently violates 
 the plainest rules of English grammar; as, for in- 
 stance : 
 
 " would have fancied it was them who were thus 
 
 spying upon him." 
 
 " It was him whom she thanked." 
 " Are you sure this is her?" 
 
 " It would be her whom he would cover with disgrace." 
 
 Many like errors may be noted in the twenty or 
 thirty books which this author has written. 
 
 Aside from such defects as have been indicated, 
 11 
 
118 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 Mrs. Oliphant's style is to be commended, because, 
 in the main, it is simple and free from obscurity. It 
 is not remarkable, however, for any special qualities 
 of excellence, but keeps on its even and rather pro- 
 saic course somewhat above respectable mediocrity. 
 - In tone, her stories are wholesome and likewise 
 respectable. She is too matter-of-fact to deal in 
 sentimentality, or to indulge morbid fancies; too 
 pure-minded to find j^lcasure in glossing impurity 
 or varnishing crime.. In this respect her works can 
 have only a healthful influence. 
 
 Most readers would doubtless agree that "The 
 Bro widows" is one of this author's best compositions. 
 Mr. Bro wnlow is a man with an honest conscience, 
 to whom a large sum of money, fifty thousand 
 pounds, was left in trust, with a condition that if the 
 person for whom the trust was created should not be 
 discovered in the course of twenty-five years, all this 
 money should become the property of Mr. Brown- 
 low and his heirs in perpetuity. The person, who, 
 if found, was to be benefited by this legacy, was a 
 woman that, long before the death of the testator, 
 had married a common soldier and disappeared. 
 What name she had taken, whither she had gone, 
 what had become of her, no one knew. Like the 
 honorable man that he was, Brownlow r made diligent 
 search for this legatee, but without avail. Gradually 
 he came to consider the fortune as his own, entered 
 on a more expensive style of living, brought up his 
 son and daughter in luxury, and was well enough 
 
THESE A UTHORS. 
 
 119 
 
 contented till within a twelvemonth of the time when 
 the twenty-five years were to expire. Then he was 
 alarmed by indications that the lost heir had ap- 
 peared in the neighborhood. Should she ascertain 
 her rights and now claim the inheritance with accrued 
 interest, Mr. Brownlow would be utterly ruined and 
 his children beggars. A terrible temptation entered 
 into him and constantly agitated his bosom. 
 
 You would suppose that any reader with sufficient 
 imagination to enjoy reading a novel, could easily 
 conceive enough of the workings of this temptation, 
 or could easily infer what they must be from the facts 
 of the case, and from the actions and words of Mr. 
 Brownlow. But our author is plainly of a different 
 opinion. Besides, the opportunity for exposition and 
 demonstration must not be lost. 
 
 " He left the breakfast-room, which was so bright, and 
 wandered away into the library, a room which, busy man as 
 he was, he occupied very seldom." 
 
 Here follows a description of the room, of its size, 
 of how the books looked, of what the view was like 
 on which the windows opened, and then : 
 
 " He went in and sat down by the table, and looked 
 round at all the shelves, and drew a blotting-book toward 
 him mechanically. What did he want with it ? He had 
 no letters to write there, — nothing to do that belonged to 
 that luxurious, leisurely place. If there was work to be 
 done, it was at the office that he ought to do it. He had 
 not the habit of writing here, — nor even of reading. The 
 
120 
 
 HOW TllKY STRIKE ME, 
 
 handsome library had nothing to do with his life. This, 
 perhaps, was why he established himself in it on the special 
 day of which we speak. It seemed to him as if any moment 
 his fine house might topple down about his ears like a house 
 of cards. He had thought over it in the High street till 
 he was sick and his head swam ; perhaps some new light 
 might fall on the subject if he was to think of it here. 
 This was why he established himself at the table, making 
 in his leisure a pretence to himself of having something to 
 do. If he had been used to any sort of guile or dishonor- 
 able dealing, the chances are it would have been easier for 
 him ; but it is hard upon a man to change the habits of his 
 life. John Brownlow had to maintain within himself a 
 fight harder than that which a man ordinarily has to fight 
 against temptation ; for the fact was this wa£ far, very far 
 from being his case. He was not tempted to do wrong. 
 It was the good impulse which in his mind had come to be 
 the thing to be struggled against. What he wanted was to 
 do what was right ; but with all the steadiness of a virtuous 
 resolution, he had set himself to struggle against his impulse 
 and to do wrong." 
 
 You see the exposition is becoming misty and con- 
 fused. The expositor is handling matters which she 
 cannot grasp and which she dees not understand; 
 is, in fact, talking nonsense. She is bewildered by 
 repeated efforts to get at and show the bottom of 
 things ; has, to speak plainly, run her investigations 
 into the mud. What but temptation to do wrong 
 can make a man of upright character and correct 
 habits of thought and action struggle against his 
 better impulses? 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 121 
 
 Not only Mr. Brownlow has thoughts and reflec- 
 tions and feelings, but Jack, his son, has reflections 
 and feelings and thoughts, and his daughter, Sara, 
 has feelings and thoughts and reflections. So has 
 Powys, so has Mrs. Preston, so has Pamela. A large 
 number of subordinate characters have them likewise. 
 You are in a maze of expositions, one so like the 
 other that you despair of ever finding your way out, 
 unless you clear the whole dreary entanglement by a 
 series of leaps. Plainly enough, in a work of this 
 kind only so much language should be used as is 
 necessary clearly and gracefully to present the com- 
 plete idea of the story, its incidents and scenes, 
 with appropriate adornments. Whatever is more 
 than this clogs the movement, which is of the very 
 essence of a good tale. In Mrs. Oliphant's books 
 the movement is so obstructed by superfluity of 
 words that, much of the time, it is altogether imper- 
 ceptible. 
 
 Mr. May, the clergyman, to meet the necessities 
 
 of Cotsdean, a, poor parishioner from whom he had 
 
 borrowed money which he cannot pay, has gradually 
 
 yielded to temptation and forged the signature of 
 
 Tozer, the grandfather of Phoebe Junior. The 
 
 fraudulent act has been discovered, but Tozer only 
 
 suspects Cotsdean. Phoebe has accidentally become 
 
 aware of the whole truth, and, in order to protect the 
 
 guilty and suffering man, has obtained possession of 
 
 the forged paper and hidden it. The personages 
 
 named and several others are present: 
 11* 
 
122 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 " ' Make her give up my bill,' said Tozer : ' I'll hear 
 nothing else till this is settled. My bill ! It's forgery ; that's 
 what it is. Don't speak to me about money. I'll have 
 him punished. I'll have him rot in prison for it. I'll not 
 cheat the law — . You people as has influence with that girl 
 make her give it to me. I can't touch him without the bill.' 
 
 " Mr. May had been placed in a chair by the two young 
 men who watched over him ; but as Tozer spoke he got 
 up, struggling wildly, almost tearing himself out of the 
 coat by which they held him. 1 Let me go !' he said. 
 ' Do you hear him ? Rot in prison ! with hard labor ! It 
 would kill me ! And it used to be hanging ! My God ! 
 my God ! won't you let me go ?' 
 
 " Tozer stopped short ; stopped by this passion which 
 was greater than his own. He looked wonderingly at the 
 livid face, the struggling figure, impressed in spite of him- 
 self. ' He's gone mad,' he said. ' Good Lord ! But he's 
 got nothing to do with it. Can't you take him away ?' 
 
 " ' Grandpapa,' said -Phoebe in his ear, £ here it is, your 
 bill : it was he who did it — and it has driven him mad. 
 Look ! I give it up to you : and there he is — that is your 
 work. Now do what you please — ' 
 
 " Trembling, the old man took the paper out of her hand. 
 He gazed, wondering, at the other, who, somehow — moved, 
 in his excitement, by a sense that the decisive moment had 
 come — stood still, too, his arm half pulled out of his coat, 
 his face wild with dread and horror. For a moment they 
 looked at each other in a common agony, neither the one 
 nor the other clear enough to understand, but both feeling 
 that some tremendous crisis had come upon them. 
 
 " ' He — done it !' said Tozer, appalled and almost speech- 
 less. ' He done it !' 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 123 
 
 " They all crowded round, a circle of scared faces. 
 J'luebe alone stood calm. She was the only one who knew 
 the whole, except the culprit, who understood nothing, 
 with that mad confusion in his eyes. But he was over- 
 awed, too, and in his very madness recognized the crisis. 
 He stood still, struggling no longer, with his eyes fixed 
 upon the homely figure of the old butter-man, who stood 
 trembling, thunderstruck, with that fatal piece of paper in 
 his hand. 
 
 " Tozer had been mad for revenge two moments be- 
 fore — almost as wild as the guilty man before him — with 
 a fierce desire to punish and make an example of the man 
 who had wronged him. But this semi-madness was ar- 
 rested by the sight of the other madman before him, and 
 by the extraordinary shock of this revelation. It took all 
 the strength out of him. He had not looked up to the 
 clergyman as Cotsdean did, but he had looked up to the 
 gentleman, his customer, as being upon an elevation very 
 different from his own, altogether above and beyond him ; 
 and the sight of this superior being, thus humbled, mad- 
 dened, gazing at him with wild terror and agony, more elo- 
 quent than any supplication, struck poor old Tozer to the 
 very soul. ' God help us all !' he cried out with a broken, 
 sobbing voice. 
 
 " He was but a vulgar old fellow, mean — it might be 
 worldly — in his way ; but the terrible mystery of human 
 wickedness and guilt prostrated his common soul with as 
 sharp an anguish of pity and shame as could have befallen 
 the most heroic. It seized upon him, so that he could say 
 or do nothing more, forcing hot and salt tears up into his 
 old eyes, and shaking him all over with a tremor as of 
 palsy. The scared faces appeared to come closer to Phoebe, 
 
124 
 
 110 W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 to whom these moments seemed like years. Had her trust 
 been vain ? Softly, but with an excitement beyond con- 
 trol, she touched him on the arm. 
 
 " ' That's true,' said Tozer, half crying ; 1 something's 
 got to be done. We can't all stand here forever, Phoebe. 
 It's him as has to be thought of. Show it to him, poor 
 gentleman, if he ain't past knowing, and burn it, and let us 
 hear of it no more.' 
 
 " Solemnly, in the midst of them all, Phoebe held up the 
 paper before the eyes of the guilty man. If he understood 
 it or not, no one could tell. He did not move, but stared 
 blankly at her and it. Then she held it over the lamp and 
 let it blaze, and drop into harmless ashes in the midst of 
 them all. Tozer dropped down into his elbow-chair, sniff- 
 ing and sobbing. Mr. May stood quite still, with a look 
 of utter dulness and stupidity coming over the face in which 
 so much terror had been. If he understood what had 
 passed, it was only in feeling, not in intelligence. He grew 
 still and dull in the midst of that strange weakness which 
 all the time was only half madness — a mixture of conscious 
 excitement and anxiety with that which passes the bounda- 
 ries of consciousness. For the moment he was stilled into 
 stupid idiotcy, and looked at them with vacant eyes." 
 
 This is a fair example of Mrs. Oliphant's best 
 work, but you see in it her repetitions of thought, 
 and the irrepressible disposition to substitute descrip- 
 tion for action. You perceive that the author her- 
 self, after exhausting her powers of concentrating 
 and intensifying, feels that something of thought 
 and emphasis, something of ardor and elevation, 
 something of condensation and completeness are 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 125 
 
 wanting, and thus, with the purpose of supplying 
 this conscious defect, she aggravates it by iteration 
 and expansion. Instead of compensating the want 
 of roundness, she attenuates the flatness. She lacks 
 the grasp to seize a whole subject all at once, to 
 place it at a proper height, and hold it there till ren- 
 dered stable and enduring. As has been intimated, 
 she can conceive with some clearness various char- 
 acters well individualized ; can so arrange them that 
 they come naturally enough into antagonistic, try- 
 ing, dramatic contact with each other ; but she can- 
 not bring these conceptions, combined so as to make 
 parts of one integral whole, clearly and strongly into 
 the light. One cause of these defects, probably, is 
 that, like many others, she writes too much. 
 
 That proper care and study might have made this 
 lady very superior as a writer to what she now is 
 seems plain ; it is equally plain that now she must 
 be classed with the business-like, not with the ar- 
 tistic, novelists. 
 
12G 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 AN OVER-RATED POET. 
 
 Mr. Tennyson enjoys a very wide reputation as 
 a poet. He has written a great many verses, and 
 these have a ready sale in the markets of the Old 
 and the New World. It does not necessarily follow 
 from this that Mr. Tennyson is a great poet. It is 
 at least possible that some part of his reputation may 
 be fictitious ; that it may have been swollen by what 
 in some sense may be considered natural causes, 
 beyond his control. 
 
 In one of his famous criticisms, Lord Macaulay 
 illustrates by a fable how a man without any active 
 fault of his own may be made to pass for what he 
 is not. According to the story a pious Brahmin was 
 induced to buy an unclean and ugly cur for sacrifice 
 by three confederate rogues, who came up one after 
 another and with a confident air of respectability 
 assured the holy man that the cur was a fine sheep. 
 Just in this way are many persons made to affect a 
 liking for metrical trash and to buy the volumes in 
 which it is offered. " They are ashamed to dislike 
 what men who speak as having authority declare to 
 be good. The author and publisher are interested in 
 crying up the book. Nobody has any strong interest 
 
THESE A I TJIORS. 
 
 127 
 
 in crying it down. Those who are best fitted to 
 guide the public opinion think it beneath them to 
 expose mere nonsense, and comfort themselves by 
 reflecting that such popularity cannot last. This 
 contemptuous lenity has been carried too far." Had 
 it suited their purpose as well, however, the three 
 rogues might with as great solemnity have assured 
 the Brahmin that a sheep was a sheep. Likewise a 
 book which is lauded by the common consent of 
 those who make opinions for people that cannot form 
 their own, may contain excellent matter and be 
 worthy of great praise. It does not follow, there- 
 fore, that even an unearned reputation may- not be 
 sustained by an author's works. But, in the main, 
 such is not the case ; and a writer conscious of real 
 power would shrink in a kind of morbid terror from 
 premature or excessive popularity. He feels in- 
 stinctively that " it is for his honor as a gentleman, 
 and, if he is really a man of talents, it will eventu- 
 ally be for his honor and interest as a writer, that his 
 works should come before the public recommended 
 by their own merits alone, and should be discussed 
 with perfect freedom." 
 
 These fictitious reputations are hurtful in a way 
 not mentioned with others by Lord Macaulay, and 
 which even his comprehensive vision seems to have 
 overlooked, namely, they fix a false standard. A 
 youth, glowing with poetic impulses, pregnant with 
 great ideas, craving the admiration and the love of 
 a universe, sees some "contemptible poet" lauded, 
 
128 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 esteemed, loved, while Shakspeare and Milton and 
 those near to them are spoken of with conventional 
 respect, and unread. He half believes that his in- 
 stincts are all wrong; half doubts whether he even 
 possesses poetic taste, since the verses of the favorite 
 weary or repel him ; tries to cultivate himself down 
 to the height of the popular writer ; is so bent by 
 this effort that he cannot use his strength; does not 
 even obtain the transient applause for which he has 
 deformed himself; becomes a mere blight, a discon- 
 tented failure. No mirror has revealed to him that 
 he is a swan ; more and more convinced that he is 
 an ugly duck, he dies in that miserable belief. But 
 for this wrong leading he might possibly have been 
 a lasting honor to his country and an ornament to its 
 literature. 
 
 That interested authors of puffing, or those who 
 ignorantly echo them, should have any conscience in 
 this matter is not to be expected. But competent 
 critics must perforce see that they have here a weighty 
 responsibility, and that "contemptuous lenity" may 
 indeed be " carried too far." 
 
 As for Mr. Tennyson, it cannot be suspected that 
 he has stooped to any bad means for fabricating a 
 public opinion to his advantage. That he has prof- 
 ited by such fabrication cannot be questioned. The 
 ranks of no profession are free from a large number 
 of persons who, unable themselves to give any cer- 
 tain voice, eagerly serve as sounding-boards to aug- 
 ment and reflect the oracular utterances of those who 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 129 
 
 assume to speak by authority. Like politicians, they 
 vote as the demagogue bids, and though they may 
 have shouted and cast their ballots against the win- 
 ning candidate, for him they are the first to throw up 
 their hats, Perhaps there is even a larger propor- 
 tion of such people among those who, with more or 
 less constancy, write for the press on subjects of lit- 
 erature and art than can be found in any other con- 
 nection. The real or supposed incompetency of the 
 general public to deal critically with these things is 
 a powerful incentive to charlatans. When a new 
 candidate for literary or artistic honors appears, the 
 leader speaks, and this echoing chorus responds. He 
 may in strong language reject the solicitant, and the 
 unhappy candidate hears the condemnation repeated 
 with various intonations of invective along the ranks 
 of sounding-boards. It may be that shortly another 
 leader, with more potent voice, welcomes and lauds 
 the same aspirant. Instantly the sounding-boards 
 give forth their hollow and louder praises. These 
 echoes have intelligence enough to perceive which, 
 for the moment, is the popular side, and vanity 
 enough to burn for distinction as its mouthpiece. 
 By this condition of things, for which neither author 
 nor publisher can be held responsible, many a writer's 
 fame has been magnified infinitely beyond its just 
 proportions ; and by this condition of things proba- 
 bly no man's reputation has been more unduly swollen 
 than Mr. Tennyson's. 
 
 It would doubtless be generally admitted by his 
 12 
 
130 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 admirers that "The Idyls of the King" are the best 
 poems in the volumes of Mr. Tennyson's works. 
 But these he never conceived ; he never brought 
 them forth. They were antiquated, unknown to the 
 public, unfamiliar to and almost forgotten by many 
 of the learned when he fathered them. They were 
 old-fashioned in dress, manner, and speech. In his 
 eye, accustomed to sleekness, they appeared gaunt 
 and inelegant. Their language was too simple and 
 straightforward ; their cadences sounded barbarous 
 to an effeminate ear. As a woman who has no chil- 
 dren, or a mother whose own offspring are weak or 
 idiotic, craving a man-child, healthy, robust, spirited, 
 even if he be also a little uncouth, gladly adopts such 
 a one and labors anxiously to soften and refine, to 
 clothe and to teach him, so Mr. Tennyson gratified 
 a certain, as yet unsatisfied, want of his nature by 
 adopting these aged orphans, of whose parents noth- 
 ing was plainly known. He fattened them with 
 sweetmeats, colored them with rouge and pearl-pow- 
 der; taught them to speak many carefully-ordered 
 modern words, clad them in courtly costumes, with 
 long-tailed coats and widely-trailing gowns. With 
 this his work began and ended, so far as these poems 
 are concerned. These epics are in no manner his 
 invention. Their ideas never took form and consist- 
 ence from his brain. Even most of the thoughts 
 that he has verbosely expressed, and many of which 
 might pass for his own because not found in the 
 original tales of the Kound Table connected with 
 
THESE A UTHORS. 
 
 131 
 
 the particular story in which he makes use of them, 
 may yet be discovered in other parts of this treasure- 
 house from which he drew thoughts and ideas alike, 
 selected, compiled, ornamented them ; doing the 
 work of a fastidious editor. Thus, in his version of 
 the " Morte D' Arthur" may be found these lines, 
 which, with others like them, have been much 
 admired : 
 
 " Thus spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere : 
 1 The sequel of to-day unsolders all 
 The goodliest fellowship of famous knights 
 Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep 
 They sleep — the men I loved. I think that we 
 Shall never more, at any future time, 
 Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds, 
 Walking about the gardens and the halls 
 Of Camelot, as in the days that were. 
 I perish by this people which I made, — 
 Tho' Merlin sware that I should come again 
 To rule once more — but let what will be, be, 
 I am so deeply smitten thro' the helm 
 That without help I cannot last till morn. 
 Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur, 
 Which was my pride : for thou rememberest how 
 In those old days, one summer noon, an arm 
 Rose up from out the bosom of the lake, 
 Clothed with white samite, mystic, wonderful, 
 Holding the sword — and how I rowed across 
 And took it, and have worn it like a king : 
 And, wheresoever I am sung or told 
 In aftertime, this also shall be known : 
 
132 
 
 J 10W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 But now delny not : take Excalibur, 
 
 And fling him far into the middle mere : 
 
 Watch what thou seest, and lightly bring me word.' " 
 
 One portion only of this is taken from the original 
 legend of the"Morte D'Arthur," as it appears in 
 the collection of Round Table stories most accessible 
 to the general reader, namely : " Leave this mourn- 
 ing and weeping," said the King, "for wit thou 
 well, if I might live myself, the death of Sir Liu an 
 would grieve me evermore : but my time hath past. 
 Therefore," said Arthur unto Sir Bcdivere, "take 
 thou Excalibur, my good sword, and go with it to 
 yonder water-side ; and when thou comcst there, I 
 charge thee throw my sword in tha£ water, and ccme 
 again and tell me what thou there seest." The fact 
 that King Arthur was smitten through the helm is 
 also related by the same tale. The original of another 
 portion of what is quoted above from Mr. Tennyson's 
 work may be read in " The Sangreal," as follows : 
 
 " When King Arthur heard this he was greatly dis- 
 pleased, for "he knew well that they might not gainsay 
 their vows. 'Alas!' said he to Sir Gawain, 'you have 
 nigh slain me with the vow and premise that ye have made, 
 for ye have bereft me of the fairest fellowship that ever 
 were seen together in any realm of the world ; for when 
 they shall depart hence, I am sure that all shall never meet 
 more in this world.' " 
 
 The source of still another portion may be found 
 in " Arthur" : 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 133 
 
 " So they rode till they came to a lake, which was a fair 
 water and broad. And in the midst of the lake Arthur 
 was aware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a 
 fair sword in the hand. ' Lo !' said Merlin, ' yonder is 
 that sword that I spake of. It belongeth to the Lady of 
 the Lake, and if she will, thou may est take it ; but if she 
 will not, it will not be in thy power to take it.' So Sir 
 Arthur and Merlin alighted from their horses, and went 
 into a boat ; and when they came to the sword that the 
 hand held Sir Arthur took it by the handle and took it to 
 him, and the arm and the hand went under water." 
 
 Thus the compilation may be traced throughout. 
 The old Gothic Temple has been re-arranged, reno- 
 vated, and adorned, if the use of such tautology as 
 that in the sixth of the lines quoted above, and the 
 frequent employment of words, merely for the sake 
 of their sound, can be called adornment. To com- 
 plete his re-arrangement and ornamentation the reno- 
 vator pillaged other noble old edifices of the same 
 class, taking a column from one, a capital from 
 another, an arch from a third. Then he framed a 
 porch and set it before the temple. And what a 
 porch ! It is all his own. No man will dispute for 
 the honor of its building. Rashly did Mr. Tenny- 
 son place this prologue. It brings into sharp con- 
 trast the invention of the real author of the u Morte 
 D'Arthur," and the almost entire want of any such 
 quality in the poet laureate. The one work is sym- 
 metrical, noble, lofty ; the other flat, poor, unshapely. 
 They stand on levels immeasurably apart. Only 
 12* 
 
134 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 when Mr. Tennyson is supported by a structure of 
 this kind, ready built, does he appear to move at the 
 altitude of grandeur. He mounts sucli edifices as 
 the fresco-pa inter or the mosaic-maker climbs the 
 scaffolding in the dome of a cathedral, and for much 
 the same purpose. 
 
 The quotation given above illustrates also some- 
 thing else, namely, Mr. Tennyson's want of any nice 
 sense of dramatic fitness, and his ability to belittle 
 what is great, confuse what is simple, and bring 
 down what is sublime. Compare, for example, the 
 manner in which he causes the story of how Arthur 
 came into possession of Excalibur to be told, with 
 the way in which it was related by its real author. 
 It is against all likelihood and propriety that a man, 
 smitten through the helm, and just recovered from a 
 long swoon, feeling moreover that "without help he 
 cannot last till morn/' should waste his precious time 
 in recalling to another, and especially to one who 
 already knew all about it — "for thou rememberest 
 how" — the way he got that famous sword. The 
 vitally pressing question was, what at the instant to 
 do with it. And yet, in the laureate's version, King 
 Arthur not only tells how he came by the weapon, 
 but is quite at leisure also to interject expletives — 
 " mystic, wonderful." To be sure they fill out Mr. 
 Tennyson's verse for him, after a fashion: 
 
 "These equal syllables alone require, 
 Though oft the ear the open vowe.s tire, 
 
THESE A UriIOliS. 
 
 135 
 
 "While expletives their feeble aid do join, 
 And ten low words oft creep in one dull line." 
 
 But Arthur was not then thinking of the "dresser 
 up of lost epics," or of his measures. Even if the 
 wounded King could then properly have told this 
 story, he could not properly have used these adjectives. 
 They weaken and degrade the whole passage. From 
 any point of view they are entirely out of character. 
 
 The distinction between a framer of verses and the 
 maker of a poem is very wide. " What distinguishes 
 the artist from the amateur," says Goethe, " is archi- 
 tectonike in the highest sense; that power of exe- 
 cution which creates, forms, and constitutes ; not the 
 profoundness of single thoughts, not the richness of 
 imagery, not the abundance of illustration." The 
 poem is a complete conception, and, like the poet, it 
 " is born, not fabricated." Its very essence is idea. 
 It does not appear as thought, but as the object and 
 suggester of thought. The distinguishing mark of 
 a poet is power of invention, the ability to conceive, 
 develop, and produce grand, original, perfectly formed 
 ideas. " A poet is a maker," says Dryden, " as the 
 word signifies, and who cannot make, that is, invent, 
 hath his name for nothing." It is in the creative 
 faculty that Mr. Tennyson is most notably deficient. 
 Just in proportion as a man possesses this faculty, 
 everything else being equal, is he a great or a small 
 maker, that is a poet. Carefully examine any or all 
 of the laureate's most popular pieces, Locksley Hall, 
 Enoch Arden, the Princess, the May Queen, or any 
 
136 
 
 HOW THEY ST JUKE ME, 
 
 others. You will perceive, instead of invention, 
 combination and construction of a kind not over- 
 ingenious « literary commonplaces instead of origin- 
 ally produced materials. 
 
 To assert that Mr. Tennyson has no invention 
 would be to say an untruth; to point out the fact 
 that his invention is feeble and comparatively fruit- 
 less is only to indicate what every critical reader may 
 discover for himself. Musically-ordered words, the 
 expression of vague and delicate feeling more or less 
 vague, the dim representation by phrases of un- 
 defined cravings which may disturb a sensitive soul, 
 all these are evidences of poetic instincts and tastes, 
 but they do not constitute a poem or prove a poet. 
 They might well be parts of a complete whole, 
 as colors might be parts of a picture. In refined, 
 delicate, attenuated expression, or rather indication, 
 of indistinct, somewhat melancholy, and very senti- 
 mental longings, Mr. Tennyson is at his best. He 
 can make pretty figures of speech, sometimes a 
 striking simile, occasionally a bold metaphor. But 
 so could Spotted-Tail or Red Cloud. Yet, were 
 either of these heroes to speak as many words as the 
 laureate has written, the whole combined would not 
 constitute a poem. He can paint word-pictures very 
 exquisitely, though not very compactly; but they 
 are made too much after the fashion of Chinese 
 paintings on rice-paper, without distinct perspectives 
 and such logical connection as to give them a plain, 
 strong, and coherent meaning. Look, for instance, 
 
THESE AUTHORS. ] 37 
 
 at "The Islet," and see to what a lame and impotent 
 conclusion he can come, or, rather, the want of con- 
 clusion, the evaporation and diffusion of thought and 
 idea with which many of his pieces terminate. For 
 examples of vague feeling vaguely expressed, read 
 "Break, break, break," or "Tears, idle tears," or 
 " The Bugle Song." He appears never to be filled 
 with welling and pent-up emotions, never bursts 
 forth in passionate utterances, never exhibits more' 
 than the faintest glow of enthusiasm. He seems to 
 be troubled with a chronic sense of emptiness, craves 
 he knows not exactly what, conceives of the most 
 irrepressible of things as absorbing their force and 
 substance, or at any rate receiving it from without, 
 not as resistlessly bursting forth from their confines. 
 Even torrents are sucked from hills and dashed 
 downward : 
 
 "and right and left 
 Sucked from the dark heart of the long hills roll 
 The torrents, dash'd to the vale." 
 
 He is generally passi ve, rarely active ; his function 
 is to take in, not to give out. He is like the moon 
 more than like the sun ; he receives and reflects, and 
 if spoken of figuratively should grammatically be 
 mentioned as she. His most contented mood is a 
 state of idle voluptuousness, such as is indicated in 
 " The Lotos-Eaters." He makes his nearest approach 
 to a manifestation of genuine passion and enthusiasm 
 when he is vindicating natural as against conven- 
 tional nobility, and real as against fictitious worth. 
 
138 
 
 HOW T1IEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 For illustrations see "Lady Clara Vere de Vere," 
 "Locksley Hall," and "Aylrner's Field." In this 
 respect he reveals instincts truly poetic, but never 
 overwhelmingly forcible. Generally, the words of 
 passion which he uses on what he judges to be fit 
 occasions, are cold ; they do not even glow ; the fire 
 is all out of them. Rarely, indeed, you may per- 
 ceive some warmth, as in " Fatima," in some portions 
 of " A Dream of Fair Women," and in " QEnone." 
 But these seem to be spasmodic utterances, the fitful 
 elevation of a pale and feeble flame. It does not 
 appear, however, that ardent passion in Mr. Tenny- 
 son is chilled by the coldness of pure and profound 
 intellect. If the reader carefully analyzes his some- 
 what voluminous writings, he will find them as 
 barren of strong and compressed thought as of 
 clearly-defined idea. Examine the following song, 
 taken at random from his collected works : 
 " Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea, 
 
 Thy tribute wave deliver : 
 No more by thee my steps shall be, 
 
 Forever and forever. 
 
 " Flow, sofdy flow, by lawn and lea, 
 A rivulet then a river ; 
 Nowhere by thee my steps shall be, 
 Forever and forever. 
 
 " But here will sigh thine alder tree, 
 And here thine aspen shiver ; 
 And here by thee will hum the bee, 
 Forever and forever. 
 
THESE A UTHORS. 
 
 139 
 
 " A thousand suns will stream on thee, 
 A thousand moons will quiver ; 
 But not by thee my steps shall be, 
 Forever and forever." 
 
 Or these, a fair sample of nine stanzas addressed 
 
 " To , after reading a Life and Letters." A 
 
 line from Shakspeare's epitaph is the text and a 
 poet the subject : 
 
 " Ah shameless ! for he did but sing 
 
 A song that pleased us from its worth ; 
 No public life was his on earth, 
 No blazon'd statesman he, nor king. 
 
 " He gave the people of his best : 
 
 His worst he kept, his best he gave, 
 My Shakespeare's curse on clown and knave 
 Who will not let his ashes rest." 
 
 This was doubtless evolved from the laureate's 
 inner consciousness, and, in effect, contains his own 
 confession. If, indeed, he has only given the people 
 of his best, and truly kept back his worst, he deserves 
 for such consideration a reward equal in value to his 
 reputation as a poet. Let any discriminating reader 
 who, pleased by the melody of carefully-framed 
 verses, has taken it for granted that the sense must 
 be as delicate and pleasing, and as much in quantity 
 as the sound, judiciously eliminate useless words from 
 Mr. Tennyson's writings, and then condense the 
 significance of what remains, after - the manner of 
 whatever figure he may choose, either by sifting for 
 
140 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 the kernels or by evaporating the dilution, and he 
 will probably be astonished at the smallness and 
 commonplace quality of the residuum. In the main 
 this author's versification is uncommonly correct. 
 Its greatest defects are that it shows marks of the 
 artificer's hammer, and that by the very use of super- 
 fluous words its pauses and cadences are made too 
 regular and monotonous. This, however, is but 
 artisan's work, and corresponds to a kind of labor 
 necessary to make any artistic creation sensible. By 
 eminent poets and critics alike it has been esteemed 
 at best one of the lower parts of the poetic art. " The 
 highest thoughts," writes Mr. Ruskin, "are those 
 which are least dependent on language, and the dig- 
 nity of any composition, and the praise to which it 
 is entitled, are in exact proportion to its independency 
 of language or expression." " If the poetry of Mil- 
 ton be examined," says Dr. Johnson, " with regard 
 to the pauses and flow of his verses into each other, 
 . it will appear that he has performed all that our 
 language would admit; and the comparison of his 
 numbers with those who have cultivated the same 
 manner of writing, will show that he excelled as 
 much in the lower as the higher parts of his art, and 
 that his skill in harmony was not less than his inven- 
 tion or his learning." In this labor, however, ample 
 scope is given for the play of elegant fancy and the 
 liveliest action of a decorative imagination. Both 
 of these qualities the laureate possesses in a high 
 degree; and he often uses them with admirable 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 141 
 
 effect in descriptions of natural scenery, as well as in 
 constructing figures of speech. 
 
 How many dramas or dramatic poems Mr. Tenny- 
 son has kept back is not known ; only recently, how- 
 ever, has he given one to the people. And because 
 this has been given, it is but fair to infer that the 
 author esteems it of his best, and is willing to have 
 his qualities as a dramatic poet judged by it. Before 
 the publication of this last work he had occasionally 
 dealt with subjects essentially dramatic, but not in 
 such a way that a deduction, as to his dramatic 
 powers, drawn from a general examination of his 
 verses, could be altered thereby. Many of his ad- 
 mirers consider " St. Simeon Stylites" to be one of 
 his best and strongest compositions. It begins well, 
 quite in the style of a dramatic monologue, a style 
 which the subject demands. But the writer could 
 not sustain this manner, could not bring into bold 
 relief the martyr's passion, could not compress and 
 intensify his language so that single words, pertinent 
 and necessary to the phrase, should, as it were, reflect 
 vistas in his past life, and, like magic mirrors, reveal 
 the history of his lengthy penance. Therefore the 
 author falls out of the dramatic into the narrative 
 style, and makes St. Simeon relate to the Almighty 
 in detail all the minute facts which the writer wished 
 him to publish to his audience. It is difficult for 
 the laureate to express clearly and forcibly an un- 
 mixed feeling; impossible for him to give voice and 
 action to the complex passions, the contending emo- 
 
 13 
 
142 
 
 HOW TUVA' STRIKE ME, 
 
 tions, the mighty transports which make up tragedy. 
 At least such must have been the conclusion to which 
 an examination of this author's performances would 
 have led an investigator before the appearance of 
 "Queen Mary." He could put together the notes 
 of a simple ballad, a kind of folk-song; he could 
 not compose an opera. He is not full enough ; has 
 not the compass or the strength even to furnish vary- 
 ing passions and affections that together shall speak 
 through all the tones of any one diapason ; much less 
 has he the power to generate from a nature rich in 
 the germs of all or many characters, ideal personages 
 in whom these affections and passions may have 
 lodgment. Such a nature he does not possess. He 
 is a harp to be played on by zephyrs, rather than 
 the potential maker of all the instruments in a whole 
 orchestra, and the educer therefrom of universal 
 harmonies. 
 
 It only remains to be seen whether Mr. Tenny- 
 son's drama, " Queen Mary," should alter our esti- 
 mate of his poetic capacities and powers. It may be 
 seen at a glance that this composition is made after 
 the fashion of plays; that is to say, it is divided into 
 acts, which are subdivided into scenes ; the text is 
 written in the form of dialogue, and in blank verse. 
 In these respects it has all the essentials of a drama. 
 But a more intimate search brings to light no dra- 
 matic spirit, no soul combining, informing, directing 
 to one common end all the members of the body. 
 It is a work of shreds and patches, rather than a 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 148 
 
 firmly-woven web from which no thread can be 
 drawn without marring the whole texture. It lacks 
 that close connection and interdependence of parts 
 which is necessary to the oneness of every creation 
 and especially requisite in a drama. The personages 
 are like automata made to utter such bits of history 
 as, spoken in due order, shall tell an intelligible 
 story. They resemble the wooden men, result of an 
 unsuccessful eifort of the gods to make beings that 
 should intelligently speak and adore them, as de- 
 scribed in the Quiche history of the creation. " They 
 moved about perfectly well, it is true ; but still the 
 heart and the intelligence were wanting. They were 
 but an essay, an attempt at men j they had neither 
 blood, nor substance, nor moisture, nor fat." Queen 
 Mary is the only person who manifests any hearty 
 emotion, and this she does very sparingly. In the 
 third act she has a soliloquy, by far the best passage 
 in the book, and almost the only one that shows any 
 dramatic vigor or fire : 
 
 " He hath awaked ! he hath awaked ! 
 He stirs within the darkness ! 
 Oh, Philip, husband ! now thy love to mine 
 Will cling more close, and those bleak manners thaw, 
 That make me shamed and tongue-tied in my love. 
 The second Prince of Peace — 
 The great unborn defender of the Faith, 
 Who will avenge me of mine enemies — 
 He comes, and my star rises. 
 The stormy Wyatts and Northumberlands, 
 
144 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 The proud ambitions of Elizabeth, 
 And all her fieriest partisans — are pale 
 Before my star ! 
 
 The light of this new learning wanes and dies : 
 The ghosts of Luther and Zuinglius fade 
 Into the deathless hell which is their doom 
 Before my star ! 
 
 His scoptre shall go forth from Ind to Ind ! 
 His sword shall hew the heretic peoples down ; 
 His faith shall clothe the world that will be his, 
 Like universal air and sunshine ! Open, 
 Ye everlasting gates ! The King is here ! — 
 My star, my son !" 
 
 This speech is entirely different from anything else 
 in the volume, and vastly excels all the rest in spirit, 
 elevation, and strength. It is like a block of porphyry 
 in a structure of freestone. How is the great superi- 
 ority of this single passage to be explained? Prob- 
 ably in this wise : The legate, Cardinal Pole, has just 
 terminated his first interview with the Queen after 
 his arrival in England. One incident of that inter- 
 view is thus mentioned by Hume : " The Queen's 
 extreme desire of having issue had made her fondly 
 give credit to any appearance of pregnancy ; and 
 when the legate was introduced to her, she fancied 
 that she felt the embryo stir in her womb. Her 
 flatterers compared the motion of the infant to that 
 of John the Baptist, who leaped in his mother's belly 
 at the salutation of the Virgin. Despatches were 
 immediately sent to inform foreign courts of this 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 145 
 
 event; orders were issued to give public thanks; 
 great rejoicings were made ; the family of the young 
 prince was already settled, for the Catholics held 
 themselves assured that the child was to be a male ; 
 and Bonner, Bishop of London, made public prayers 
 be said, that heaven would please to render him 
 beautiful, vigorous, and witty." This hint was suf- 
 ficient for the laureate, who appears to be always 
 ready to "suck" inspiration from any source. Like 
 the mother of John the Baptist, Queen Mary should 
 foretell ; and he set himself to absorb the spirit of 
 Elizabeth's prophecy, of the Virgin Mary's song, and 
 of different predictions concerning Christ. When to 
 the utmost of his capacity he had filled himself with 
 this spirit, and with the essence of the language in 
 which it took form, he wrote this monologue. Such 
 a method w r ould be quite in keeping with his manner 
 of composing the " Idyls of the King" and some 
 other things. It is not spoken of here as a matter 
 for censure, but as a matter of explanation. The 
 rest of the play he had to draw from narrative prose, 
 and faithfully enough did he copy the original. 
 Strictly speaking it has no dramatic intrigue, at any 
 rate none whatever invented by the author ; nor has 
 it, consequently, any dramatic action. It possesses 
 no quality of a drama except the external form. 
 There is an attempt at effective contrast when two 
 crones are made to babble irrelevantly in the dialect 
 of their county while the burning of Cranmer is 
 supposed to go on. This is feeble, but it is the 
 13* 
 
14G 
 
 IIOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 strongest dramatic juxtaposition in the volume. It 
 might be said that many superfluous personages ap- 
 pear, did not the absence of any intrigue make it 
 impossible to determine who is not superfluous. It 
 might also be alleged that the work is not artistically 
 constructed, is not well defined and fairly propor- 
 tioned, did not the want of any plan render it 
 impracticable to decide what are its shape and pro- 
 portions. 
 
 In this compilation the laureate has used no in- 
 vention worthy of notice ; at most he has displayed 
 very inferior talents for construction. Even the lan- 
 guage falls far below his usual level in poetic quali- 
 ties. Only one little song is in his better style, and 
 is very sweet. It shadows forth a simple and mel- 
 ancholy feeling. Queen Mary sings it : 
 
 " Hapless doom of woman happy in betrothing ! 
 Beauty passes like a breath, and love is lost in loathing: 
 Low, my lute ; speak low, my lute, but say the world is 
 nothing — 
 
 Low, lute, low ! 
 
 " Love will hover round the flowers when they first awaken ; 
 Love will fly the fallen leaf, and not be overtaken ; 
 Low, my lute ! Oh low, my lute ! we fade and are for- 
 saken — 
 
 Low, dear lute, low !" 
 
 In such work as that contained in this volume he 
 has shown himself to be not an artist, but an artisan. 
 Generally speaking, his artistic powers rarely trans- 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 147 
 
 cend the limits of an embellisher's occupation. Even 
 in this his judgment is likely enough to err ; he is 
 too lavish with his ornamentation, and too nearly 
 overspreads the whole surface. He is not an archi- 
 tect, but a decorator. Yet when he has adorned 
 with sufficient profusion what another man has built, 
 it may pass for his own edifice; when he has embel- 
 lished a commonplace cottage of his own construction, 
 it may pass for a fairy palace. Measured by the 
 standard of great poets he lacks their essential quali- 
 ties. It would appear, therefore, that even in these 
 days of speculation, no man has received so great an 
 income from the use of so small a capital as has Mr. 
 Alfred Tennyson. 
 
148 
 
 HOW THEY STRfKE ME, 
 
 THE POET OF THE SIERRAS. 
 
 Mr. Joaquin Miller's new poem, entitled " The 
 Ship in the Desert/' is the third work of the kind 
 made public by this author; the first having at- 
 tracted much attention, and received uncommon 
 praise, several years ago. Such merits as were then 
 magnified by a kind of morning halo, and were 
 landed not only for what they were, but for what 
 they promised to become ; and such defects as were 
 then kindly explained away as rather superficial than 
 radical, more apparent than real, obscurities or re- 
 fractions produced by the mists of dawn, must now 
 alike be judged in the full light of clear day, 
 stripped of all excuses, seen as they are, and meas- 
 ured by an equitable standard. 
 
 A reader of the new volume, who opens it with 
 agreeable expectations, excited by its j^redecessors, 
 must feel a keen disappointment. The first strong 
 impression which he receives, is that its author has 
 made no observable progress; that his diction has 
 not been enriched ; that his idea of form has not 
 grown more definite ; that his sensibility to harmo- 
 nies and discords has not increased. He perceives 
 no poetic or artistic development. He notes a want 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 1 19 
 
 of clearness and earnestness of purpose ; is tantalized 
 by a very annoying and prolonged succession of false 
 beginnings, a provoking number of boyish feints; 
 and when, at length, the career is actually com- 
 menced, it is followed with no steadiness of pace, but 
 is run by fits and starts. You look for unity, and 
 you find fragments, connected, to be sure, but by 
 discrepant matter. You expect to feel an ever- 
 present and dominating design ; you are distracted 
 by incongruous whims, turned hither and thither by 
 divers aims, and confused by repetitions. You hope 
 to be borne on a constantly-swelling and ever-hasten- 
 ing current ; you are carried round and round in idle 
 eddies. You see that the author has not put his talent 
 out at usury. He brings it time and again without 
 any increase. He continues to offer works of art from 
 which art is, in a great measure, absent. A little 
 thought, certainly a little reading, might have taught 
 him " that images, however beautiful, though faith- 
 fully copied from nature, and as accurately repre- 
 sented in words, do not of themselves characterize 
 the poet. They become proofs of original genius only 
 so far as they are modified by a predominant passion, 
 or by associated thoughts or images awakened by 
 that passion — when a human and intellectual life is 
 transferred to them from the poet's own spirit, 
 
 ' "Which shoots its being through earth, sea, and air.' " 
 
 To multiply images seems to be Mr. Miller's chief 
 intention, without reference to harmony or propor- 
 
150 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 tion, without much regard either for nature or proba- 
 bility. He is ignorant of, or indifferent to, the man- 
 ifestation of the truth that " good sense is the body 
 of poetic genius, fancy its drapery, motion its life, 
 and imagination the soul, that is everywhere and in 
 each, and forms all into one graceful and intelligent 
 whole." Even when dealing with swift physical move- 
 ment his poem has little or no motion ; of common 
 sense it is barren ; of fancy, scant ; and what has 
 already been said sufficiently shows that it lacks a 
 fusing, unifying, moulding imagination. 
 
 He seems to be conscious, at any rate in some small 
 degree, of the inadequacy of motive expressed in his 
 work, the lack of logical connection, the very dark 
 obscurity of the argument, and flippantly intimates 
 that these are matters with which he will not trouble 
 himself. 
 
 " And why did these same sunburnt men 
 Let Morgan gain the plain, and then 
 Pursue him to the utter sea ? 
 You ask me here impatiently, 
 And I as pertly must reply : 
 My task is but to tell a tale ; 
 To give a wide sail to the gale ; 
 To paint the boundless plain, the sky ; 
 To rhyme, nor give a reason why." 
 
 Logic is as necessary in poetry as in law. " No 
 man was ever yet a great poet without being at the 
 same time a profound philosopher," and a subtle 
 
THESE A UTHORS. 
 
 151 
 
 logician. In rhyme without reason, however, the 
 promptings of Mr. Miller's intellectual nature find 
 full play. He avows it, and his poem proves it. 
 Possibly, through indolence, he does himself great 
 injustice ; possibly he lacks the most important qual- 
 ities, the fundamental elements of a great poet. One 
 example of the confusion which results from the 
 want of any definite plan and clear logical construc- 
 tion in his poem, may be found in the fourth chap- 
 ter; in the first part of which he indicates a beautiful 
 girl, as she is rowed up the river Missouri, much 
 against her will : 
 
 " And who of all the world was she ? 
 A bride, or not a bride ? A thing 
 To love ? A prison'd bird to sing ? 
 You shall not know. That shall not be 
 Brought from the future's great profound 
 This side the happy hunting ground. 
 
 " I only saw her, heard the sound 
 Of murky waters gurgling round 
 In counter currents from the shore, 
 But heard the long, strong stroke of oar 
 Against the waters gray and vast. 
 I only saw her as she pass'd — " 
 
 Through two or more pages he goes on repeating 
 in slightly different words the same specifications of 
 this girl's appearance, especially lauding her eyes 
 and mouth ; telling how he loved her 
 
152 
 
 HOW THEY STB IKK ME, 
 
 " Above the hundred seven hills 
 Of dead and risen old new Rome;" 
 
 discussing the question whether she loved him, and 
 saving again and again that "you shall not know 
 her f 9 and then he finishes the chapter : 
 
 " I dared not dream she loved me. Nay, 
 Her love was proud ; and pride is loth 
 To look with favor, own it fond 
 Of one the world loves not to-day — 
 No matter if she loved or no, 
 God knows 1 loved enough for both, 
 And knew her as you shall not know 
 Till you have known sweet death, and you 
 Have crossed the dark ; gone over to 
 The great majority beyond." 
 
 Now, all the time that he is loving this girl so 
 devotedly in Rome, and declaring that he will not 
 tell you who she is, black men are rowing the same 
 girl up the Missouri river. Should you ask how all 
 this is to be reconciled or explained, he would tell 
 you that it is his business "to rhyme, nor give a 
 reason why." Thus, too, he begins the thirty-eighth 
 chapter of his work with these lines : 
 
 " I do recall some sad days spent 
 By borders of the Orient ;" 
 
 and goes on through this and the succeeding chapter 
 to tell, with his customary repetitions, of various 
 things which he saw in the East. Nothing in these 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 153 
 
 two chapters has the remotest relation to anything 
 else in his poem. As much matter from Paradise 
 Lost, or from the History of John Gilpin's Ride, 
 interpolated in the same place would have been no 
 more incongruous. After this excursion across the 
 Atlantic and the greater part of Europe, he resumes 
 the thread of his story and finishes it. A similar 
 want of logical perception, or of its use, is often 
 shown by Mr. Miller's similes : 
 
 " Away upon the sandy seas, 
 The gleaming, burning, boundless plain, 
 How solemn-like, how still, as when 
 The mighty-minded Genoese 
 Drew three tall ships and led his men 
 From land they might not meet again." 
 
 The poem is as deficient in depth and energy as it 
 is in continuity and motion of thought ; and a great 
 authority has said that without such depth and 
 energy other poetic characteristics "could scarce 
 exist in a high degree, and (even if this were possi- 
 ble) would give promises only of transitory flashes 
 and a meteoric power." Such flashes and such me- 
 teoric power may be seen in Mr. Miller's work, 
 together with much that is weak, childish, and com- 
 monplace. For specimens of the vain repetitions, 
 the puerilities, and the lame conclusions with which 
 the book abounds, read the concluding lines : 
 
 " This isle is all their own. No more 
 The flight by day, the watch by night. 
 14 
 
154 
 
 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 Dark In a twines about the door 
 The scarlet blooms, the blossoms white, 
 And winds red berries in her hair, 
 And never knows the name of care. 
 
 " She has a thousand birds ; they blow 
 In rainbow clouds, in clouds of snow ; 
 The birds take berries from her hand ; 
 They come and go at her command. 
 
 " She has a thousand pretty birds, 
 That sing her summer songs all day ; 
 Small black-hoofed antelope in herds, 
 And squirrels bushy-tailed and gray, 
 With round and sparkling eyes of pink r 
 And cunning-faced as you can think. 
 
 " She has a thousand busy birds ; 
 And is she happy in her isle, 
 With all her feathered friends and herds ? 
 For when has Morgan seen her smile ? 
 
 " She has a thousand cunning birds, 
 They would build nestings in her hair ; 
 She has brown antelope in herds ; 
 She never knows the name of care ; 
 Why then is she not happy there ? 
 
 " All patiently she bears her part ; 
 She has a thousand birdlings there, 
 These birds they would build in her hair ; 
 But not one bird builds in her heart. 
 
 " She has a thousand birds ; yet she 
 Would give ten thousand cheerfully, 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 1 55 
 
 All bright of plume and loud of tongue, 
 And sweet as ever trilled or sung, 
 For one small fluttered bird to come 
 And sit within her heart, though dumb. 
 
 u She has a thousand birds ; yet one 
 Is lost, and lo ! she is undone. 
 She sighs sometimes. She looks away, 
 And yet she does not weep or say. 
 
 " She has a thousand birds. The skies 
 Are fashioned for her paradise ; 
 A very queen of fairy land, 
 With all earth's fruitage at command, 
 And yet she does not lift her eyes. 
 She sits upon the water's brink 
 As mournful soul'd as you can think. 
 
 " She has a thousand birds ; and yet 
 She will look downward, nor forget 
 The fluttered white-winged turtle-dove, 
 The changeful-throated birdling, love, 
 That came, that sang through tropic trees, 
 Then flew for aye across the seas. 
 
 11 The waters kiss her feet ; above 
 Her head the trees are blossoming, 
 And fragrant with eternal spring. 
 Her birds, her antelope are there, 
 Her birds they would build in her hair : 
 She only waits her birdling, love. 
 She turns, she looks along the plain, 
 Imploring love to come again." 
 
156 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 So the poem ends. Why Morgan fled, why 
 Yasques pursued, why Ina pined, you are not told; 
 and if you ask, the author will "pertly" answer 
 that his "task" is "to rhyme, nor give the reason 
 why." Of this flight and pursuit, which are all that 
 can in any way and by any stretch of courtesy be 
 called a plot, you get no idea more definite and clear 
 than is your knowledge of their cause. If you try 
 to guess at the relation of his personages, he gives 
 you no aid, but, on the contrary, does the most he 
 can to render you uncertain and your conjectures 
 vague. It is his business to rhyme, not to reason. 
 
 This author does more than promise "transitory 
 flashes and meteoric power he exhibits both. In 
 his first work he gave pledges that he might become 
 a real, even a great poet. That he has disappointed 
 so many expectations still seems to have been his 
 own fault. He appears to have failed of great ex- 
 cellence through a lack of sincerity, industry, and an 
 inflexible purpose. He is therefore so much the 
 more to be censured. It would be unjust to blame a 
 man for not exceeding his powers. He who trifles 
 with them, and with those whose good opinion he 
 courts, can hardly be too severely condemned. To 
 satisfy the necessities of his rhyme, Mr. Miller often 
 resorts to the readiest makeshifts, without reference 
 to any consistent meaning, occasionally using for this 
 purpose some familiar collocation of words that is 
 utterly inapt, as, for instance, at the end of the fol- 
 lowing stanza : 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 Vol 
 
 " dark-eyed Ina ! All the years 
 Brought her but solitude and tears. 
 Lo ! ever looking out, she stood 
 Adown the wave, adown the wood, 
 Adown the strong stream to the south, 
 Sad-faced and sorrowful. Her mouth 
 Pushed out so pitiful. Her eyes 
 Fill'd full of sorrow and surprise." 
 
 Why surprise? She saw nothing but the un- 
 changing waste of wood and water ; she gazed on it 
 in a sad reverie without perceiving anything, in fact. 
 What surprised her? Sometimes, too, if he per- 
 ceives any significance in the phrases used to make 
 up his verse and give the proper sound at the end, 
 he completely fails to make such significance evident, 
 as in the last line of the following quotation : 
 
 " A right foot rested on the dead, 
 
 A black hand reached and clutched a beard, 
 
 Then neither prayed, nor dreamed of hope — 
 A fierce face reach'd, a fierce face peer'd — 
 No bat went whirling overhead, 
 No star fell out of Ethiope." 
 
 Why should a star fall out of Ethiope? That 
 country was more than three thousand miles away 
 from the scene described. If a star must fall on the 
 occasion, it would most probably and most poetically 
 have been one that could see what was going on there 
 in the American desert. 
 
158 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 It is hardly worth while to mention minor defects 
 in this work, some imperfect lines, some weak rhymes, 
 some rough versification, some improper use of words. 
 These are matters which in a nearly perfect poem 
 should receive due attention ; but in this composition 
 the deficiencies are so radical that no degree of finish, 
 no amount of decoration, no handiwork of fancy 
 could hide them. It does not reach such a point of 
 excellence in form and substance as to make the 
 reader care much for the more technical faults. And 
 yet the book holds detached passages that are strong 
 and truly poetic, though crude. Some of them may 
 be seen in the quotations below, brought together 
 from different parts of the volume. Examine them 
 and you can but lament that Mr. Miller should not 
 more earnestly cultivate his powers : 
 
 " What strong uncommon men were these, 
 These settlers hewing to the seas ! 
 Great horny-handed men and tan ; 
 Men blown from any border land ; 
 Men desperate and red of hand, 
 And men in love and men in debt, 
 And men who lived but to forget, 
 And men whose very hearts had died, 
 Who only sought these woods to hide 
 Their wretchedness, held in the van ; 
 Yet every man among them stood 
 Alone, along that sounding wood, 
 And every man somehow a man. 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 159 
 
 " A race of unnamed giants these, 
 That moved like gods among the trees, 
 So stern, so stubborn-browed, and slow, 
 With strength of black-maned buSalo ; 
 And each man notable and all, 
 A kingly and unconscious Saul, 
 A sort of sullen Hercules." 
 
 " They tossed the forest like a toy, 
 That great forgotten race of men, 
 The boldest band that yet has been 
 Together since the siege of Troy." 
 
 " And they descended and did roam 
 Through level'd distances set round 
 By room. They saw the Silences 
 Move by and beckon ; saw the forms, 
 The very heads of burly storms, 
 And heard them talk like sounding seas, 
 On unnamed heights, bleak-blown, and brown, 
 And torn like battlements of Mars, 
 They saw the darknesses come down, 
 Like curtains loosen'd from the dome 
 Of God's cathedral, built of stars." 
 
 " They climbed so high it seem'd eftsoon 
 That they must face the falling moon, 
 That like some flame-lit ruin lay 
 Thrown down before their weary way." 
 
 "Two sullen bullocks led the line, 
 Their great eyes shining bright like wine ; 
 
160 
 
 110 W TUFA' STRIKE ME, 
 
 Two sullen captive kings were they ; 
 That had in time held herds at bay, 
 And even now they crushed the sod 
 With stolid sense of majesty, 
 And stately stepp'd and stately trod, 
 As if 'twas something still to be 
 Kings even in captivity." 
 
 " The savage, warlike day bent low, 
 As reapers bend in gathering grain, 
 As archer bending bends yew bow, 
 And flushed and fretted as in pain. 
 Then down his shoulder slid his shield, 
 So huge, so awful, so blood-red 
 And batterd as from battle-field : 
 It settled, sunk to his left hand, 
 Sunk down and down, it touch'd the sand, 
 Then day along the land lay dead, 
 Without one candle at his head." 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 161 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHER OF CRIME. 
 
 Attention has of late been particularly drawn to 
 the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne by Mr. G. P. 
 Lathrop's book, "A Study of Hawthorne." The 
 author brings forward the results of much thought 
 upon the subject of his meditations, exhibits good, 
 though rather laborious, writing and considerable 
 analytic power. His work is very carefully and, 
 doubtless, conscientiously done ; and such work must 
 always have a certain value and interest. But, as 
 indicated by his own assertion, Mr. Lathrop was un- 
 fitted to make an impartial study of his author. " I 
 do not," says he, " enter upon this attempt as a mere 
 literary performance, but have been assisted in it by 
 an inward impulse, a consciousness of sympathy with 
 the subject, which I may perhaps consider a sort of 
 inspiration. My guide has been intuition, confirmed 
 and seldom confuted by research." A perfectly im- 
 partial verdict or decree would hardly be expected 
 from a juryman or a judge who should seek con- 
 firmation of his intuitions in the evidence given 
 during the trial of a cause. Mr. Lathrop seems to 
 have had two eminent intuitions : one to the effect 
 that Hawthorne was made up of the better parts of 
 
162 
 
 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 Milton and Bunyan ; the other that the nobler 
 qualities of Shakspeare and Goethe were combined 
 in him : 
 
 " Altogether, if one could compound Bunyan and Milton, 
 combine the realistic imagination of the one with the other's 
 passion for ideas, pour the ebullient undulating prose style 
 of the poet into the veins of the allegorist's firm, leather- 
 jerkined English, and make a modern man and author of 
 the whole, the result would not be alien to Hawthorne." 
 
 " These great abilities, subsisting with a temper so modest 
 and unaffected, and never unhumanized by the abstract en- 
 thusiasm for art, place him on a plane between Shakespeare 
 and Goethe. With less erudition than Goethe, but also 
 less of the freezing pride of art, he is infinitely more hu- 
 mane, sympathetic, holy. His creations are statuesquely 
 moulded like Goethe's, but they have the same quick music 
 of heart-throbs that Shakespeare's have." 
 
 In one respect only the intellectual power of Haw- 
 thorne seems to have been unrestrained by any de- 
 finable limits. His vocabulary appears boundless. 
 His thoughts, thoroughly elaborated, are presented to 
 the reader in their utmost development ; exquisitely 
 shaped, cleanly cut, sharply defined, wanting no- 
 thing. A reader of very quick intelligence may, 
 indeed, find this perfectness of expression somewhat 
 wearisome. He must passively receive the exuberant 
 and wholly matured products of his author, foregoing 
 the charm of that kind of co-operation which goes 
 forward when the reader's reason and imagination 
 are called upon in some way to consummate the idea 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 163 
 
 begotten in his mind by the writer's words. Slower 
 apprehensions and less fruitful fancies, however, ob- 
 tain only satisfaction from Hawthorne's fulness of 
 utterance. In reading all his writings, you will per- 
 ceive not more than one or two words that appear 
 like pets, such, for instance, as " immitigable f and 
 this rather from its rarity in other places than from 
 its frequency here. From this mastery of words, 
 this exquisite taste in diction, joined with a keen 
 sense of euphony and of dulcet rhythm, comes no 
 small part of this author's great reputation. His 
 thoughts, his invention, all the operations of his 
 mind, are confined within certain limits that can be 
 indicated with sufficient exactness. One of these 
 boundaries lies outside of the ordinary range of actual 
 and visible nature. The other is within the sphere 
 of reality, but only comprises so much of this as may 
 work, or, as an artist would say, compose harmoni- 
 ously with what he takes from beyond. Or perhaps 
 it would be more exact to allege that he protracts the 
 actual into the unreal so skilfully that no man can 
 discern where was the bourn between the two. Thi s 
 he produces effects analogous to caricature. Seizing 
 upon some salient trait of character, he exaggerates 
 it till it becomes the one feature on which the eye 
 rests, and is an index of the whole man. He takes 
 care so to mould or modify the rest of the figure as 
 to avoid even a suggestion of monstrosity, and to 
 preserve so much of natural and logical relation be- 
 tween the parts that the individuality and consistency 
 
110 W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 of the personage so far as indicated shall remain 
 complete. Generally the most exaggerated feature 
 is the one most distinguished for ugliness, visible or 
 invisible to common perceptions. With more than 
 a portrait-painter's eye he discriminates this taint, 
 which no one even suspected till it was brought into 
 view by his firm, delicate, hyperbolic brush. When 
 the figure is completed, it is so conventionally con- 
 sistent as a whole that you are willing to accept it as 
 the genuine man, and to reject the other, which has 
 hitherto passed current, as a counterfeit. In working 
 up this conventional consistency between what was 
 before manifest and what the painter has added, 
 idealizing the original after his fashion, Hawthorne 
 shows his greatest artistic skill. Judging from this 
 alone you would say he was a consummate artist. 
 This part of his work certainly has a kind of resem- 
 blance to that of Bunyan ; so it has to that of Swift 
 and De Foe. 
 
 It may well be, however, that some parts of a 
 statue or of a sculptured group may show the results 
 of exquisite manipulation, while the whole thing may 
 present unshapeliness and incongruities. Whether 
 this author's productions, considered in their entirety, 
 are master-works of art will be discussed further on. 
 Plainly enough, a moral rather than an artistic 
 standard was foremost in his mind. By this fore- 
 most standard the plans of his personages were laid 
 out ; from it as a base he measured all the degrees 
 of divergence while calculating the effect of following 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 165 
 
 the line of each; by it he determined the fate of all 
 his characters. For characters he composed, men and 
 women of a semi-transparent kind, whose true quali- 
 ties are visible, however degraded, perverted, or de- 
 formed ; who appear as they are, not as they would 
 seem to be. Extending beyond what should be 
 fleshly limits, their essences form a sort of spiritual 
 atmosphere about them which is but a part, a con- 
 tinuation, of themselves ; something as unsubstantial 
 yet as visible as a penumbra, and holding its relation 
 to the thicker shadows which they are. For, in a 
 way, the denser portions of them are like shades. 
 By making their more material forms appear on the 
 debatable ground between substance and shadow, the 
 real is more easily and gradually tempered to the 
 unreal, and an appearance of homogeneity through- 
 out the whole being is effected. 
 
 But do not think that these characters were made 
 simply for the artistic pleasure of creating. Imprac- 
 ticable as some of them may seem, they w r ere designed 
 for a practical end. They are mirrors. Do you not 
 see yourself, or some part of yourself, in some one 
 or more of them ? Among the exaggerated features 
 which characterize each, can you not discern your 
 own besetting sin draw T n out, perhaps magnified ? Do 
 you not observe, as never before, how loathsome is 
 hypocrisy, for instance ? Can you not now perceive, 
 no matter what your blindness hitherto, how inevi- 
 tably any divergence from the moral law leads to 
 misery and destruction? how the first step in a 
 
 15 
 
1G6 
 
 110 W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 wrong way is fatally followed by a second and a 
 third, and bo on till there is no turning? Are you 
 not convinced that indulgence in devilish passions 
 will make you a kind of devil? make you feel like 
 one, act like one, look like one? and that in the end 
 you will be disappointed, defeated, punished like 
 one? And lest so much of the lesson be not effect- 
 ive enough, look how you shall be laughed at in 
 your calamity, and mocked when your fear cometh. 
 Behold Judge Pyncheon, for example. Is he not a 
 worthy man? Does he not sit in honorable places? 
 Has he not been blessed with wealth and comforts 
 and the respect of his kind ? Does he not give alms 
 to beggars and larger donations to fashionable chari- 
 ties ? Is he not condescending to inferiors, courteous 
 to equals, reverential to superiors? Has not his 
 smile shone like a noonday sun along the streets or 
 glowed like a household fire in the drawing-rooms 
 of his private acquaintance? Is it not a fact that 
 " neither clergyman nor legal critic, nor inscriber of 
 tombstones, nor historian of general or local politics, 
 would venture a word against this eminent person's 
 sincerity as a Christian, or respectability as a man, 
 or integrity as a judge, or courage and faithfulness 
 as the often-tried representative of his political 
 party?" But we know him better than do his 
 townsfolk. We have seen beneath that heavy and 
 reputable-looking mask of flesh. We have some 
 knowledge of his inmost thoughts, more than we 
 shall tell, a part of which we shall insinuate, not 
 
these a unions. 
 
 167 
 
 over clearly though, so that we may keep something 
 enigmatical always before you. Where is the Judge 
 now? Within a dingy, darkening room in yonder 
 house with the seven gables. Why does he stay 
 there so long? The time appointed for that most 
 important meeting is at hand. The crowning of his 
 ambition depends upon his presence there. His 
 friends are waiting. Why does he not come out? 
 Why does he sit hour after hour in the huge arm- 
 chair with his watch in his hand? Why gazes he 
 so steadily in the direction of its dial, though the 
 darkness long since made it invisible? Ah ! all this 
 you shall know, but rather dimly, by and by. Wait 
 till we shall have laughed at him and mocked him 
 and jeered at him and reviled him through a whole 
 long chapter of some eighteen octavo pages. There 
 is mystery about his delay, at least such mystery as 
 an author can make by exciting and not gratifying 
 your curiosity. But while your curiosity is active 
 you will be attentive; and while you are attentive 
 we will preach to you, in our own way, however. 
 To be sure our way is somewhat like that of a man 
 whose enemy is at last in his power, and who can now 
 safely wag his tongue against him. But the sermon 
 is good for all that, though Judge Pyncheon has not 
 heard a word of it. At any rate he has not replied, 
 or changed his posture, or made a motion even to 
 wipe away the blood-red stain that from somewhere 
 has come upon his hitherto immaculate bosom. You 
 may think there is a kind of savagery in our treat- 
 
168 
 
 BOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 ment of this eminent personage ; that our discourse, 
 while lie is so passively sitting there, better befits a 
 barbaric triumph than a Christian pulpit or the tri- 
 bunal of a moralist. But — and now we will par- 
 tially lift the mystery — note that, at last, we have 
 got the criminal, hypocritical Judge down ; at any 
 rate he is down. He can be hypocritical no more. 
 He is dead ; that is all there was of it ; dead by a 
 rush of blood and apoplexy. Is there not reason for 
 a triumph ? 
 
 The kind of fictitious mystery wrought about and 
 exhibited in the case of Judge Pyncheon is one of 
 Hawthorne's peculiar and his most characteristic 
 means of exciting his reader's imagination, and his 
 own also. The method is akin to that with which 
 children terrify themselves and one another. He wraps 
 a sheet about some personage, makes him hold it 
 aloft with upstretched arms to give the appearance 
 of ghostly height, causes him to gibber and squeak. 
 Does not your hair rise and your flesh creep a little ? 
 His does. Like a child, for the time being, he half 
 believes in the actuality of the phantom he has 
 pieced out ; and he wins enough of your credence to 
 make you wonder at it. Then, like a child, he tears 
 up his work, perhaps derides it ; for he is not with- 
 out cynicism, though it is generally held in check by 
 more generous feelings. Mr. Higginbotham — has 
 he been murdered? Was it really he that passed the 
 toll gate just now on horseback? He did not stop 
 to shake hands and chat a little as usual ; he gravely 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 169 
 
 nodded, as one who should say, "Charge my toll," 
 and went on. " ( I never saw a man look so yellow 
 and thin as the squire does/ continued the toll- 
 gatherer. i Says I to myself, to-night, he's more like 
 a ghost or an old mummy than good flesh and 
 blood/ The peddler strained his eyes through the 
 twilight, and could just discern the horseman now 
 far ahead on the village road. He seemed to recog- 
 nize the rear of Mr. Higginbotham ; but through 
 the evening shadows, and amid the dust from the 
 horse's feet the figure appeared dim and unsubstan- 
 tial, as if the shape of the mysterious old man were 
 faintly moulded of darkness and gray light. Domin- 
 icus shivered." You do not quite shiver. Admit, 
 however, that you are in doubt. Skeptical, accord- 
 ing to reason, you yet dare not positively assert that 
 this figure is Mr. Higginbotham himself in a sheet 
 woven of dust and twilight, and not Mr. Higgin- 
 botham's ghost ; especially since you have been told 
 that, wherever he goes, this gentleman must always 
 be at home by a certain hour. 
 
 Achieving a kind of effect, like that which is 
 produced by supernatural beings without the actual 
 use of such existences, is this author's most notice- 
 able specialty. His method of accomplishing it is 
 ingenious. He contrives to associate with some 
 character a certain feature or quality, or to subject a 
 personage to some law which superstition has made 
 for such unearthly entities, or with which it has en- 
 dowed them. A ghost must be home at a given 
 
 15* 
 
170 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 time; so must Mr. Higginbotham, though, when 
 the truth is known, it is but to mind his business. 
 Mephistopheles is sharp-faced and hump-shouldered; 
 so is Mr. Chillingw r orth. Phantoms are dim and 
 not clearly defined ; so is the Spectre of the Cata- 
 combs. And so on. To be plain about it, this 
 manner of treatment produces, not mystery, but 
 mistiness, seen through which objects appear to have 
 unnatural size, or unnatural parts. Clear the fog 
 away, so that their outlines can be plainly discerned, 
 and they will assume normal proportions. Or, if 
 you still choose to consider it a mystery, it is very 
 different from that which Shakspeare and Bunyan 
 created. When Bunyan wished to make a giant or 
 a fiend, when Shakspeare wished to bring up a 
 witch or a ghost, they left no chance for a question 
 as to what the thing was. In their hands enigma 
 took shape and individuality; it was dramatic. 
 Hawthorne makes it only theatric. Something an- 
 alogous to it, as employed by him, may be seen in 
 places where melodramas are represented. Snug, the 
 Joiner, as instructed by Bottom, burlesqued it : " If 
 you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of my 
 life : no, I am no such thing ; I am a man as other 
 men are : and then, indeed, let him name his name ; 
 and tell them plainly he is Snug, the Joiner." 
 
 Let it be said, however, that Hawthorne's melo- 
 dramatic incidents and appurtenances are much more 
 deeply impressive than are those seen at the theatre. 
 Prepared for the imagination rather than for the 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 171 
 
 senses, they are not belittled, rendered ineffective, or 
 reduced to absurdity by attempts to make them 
 tangible. His characters act in ideal scenes; and, 
 with imaginary adjuncts, they present to fancy this 
 kind of theatric effect in its utmost refinement. It 
 is, indeed, the very sublimation of melodrama. But 
 it is, none the less, melodramatic as contradistin- 
 guished from dramatic. That this author might not 
 have been a dramatic poet is too much to affirm; 
 that he was not is plain. He failed to manifest the 
 most essential qualities of such an artist. Dramatic 
 juxtapositions, such as may be found in "The Scarlet 
 Letter," for instance, do not constitute a dramatic 
 work. The form, the complication, the proper 
 action, are wanting. Or, if the complication be 
 there, it lacks closeness, what may be called contem- 
 porariness, progression, a climacteric and satisfactory 
 undoing. It needs motive power and its resultant 
 movement. It is rather passive than active. It is 
 the product of a meditative, not a practical, man ; 
 and the true dramatist is, notably, practical. It is 
 as if, at what should be the dramatic starting point, 
 all the characters had been chloroformed into partial 
 inaction, and were undergoing a process of vivisec- 
 tion ; or, rather, that they were made the subjects of 
 an experiment, that, in their different organisms, the 
 man of science might note the subtle operations of 
 poison. The personages do not act : they suffer. 
 This mode of treatment is directly opposed to that 
 of the dramatic poet. 
 
172 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 The strongest bent of Hawtho/ne's mind was 
 toward analysis, not synthesis; to study results, not 
 to operate causes. Even the semi-supernatural addi- 
 tions which he applies to some of his characters are 
 used as chemists employ certain agents, the more 
 easily and distinctly to effect a separation of elements, 
 that the base of each particular compound may be 
 completely eliminated and examined. Most of his 
 works were produced by processes similar to those 
 of analytic chemistry. It would appear that during 
 his somewhat retired and meditative life he never 
 freed himself from the strong impressions made upon 
 his mind when a boy by the legends, traditions, and 
 history of his native town ; and that his method was 
 to revive these impressions in all their force by be- 
 coming again a little child in feeling, after a plan 
 which Macaulay prescribes for great poets, and then 
 to turn them to account with all the matured skill 
 and intellectual power of an experienced man. 
 Crude matter gathered by the infant was by the 
 adult passed through an alembic. The result is a 
 kind of quintessence. The Black Man in the forest, 
 the night rides, cackling and gibbering of the witches, 
 the haunting terrors of Gallows Hill, the Indians 
 lurking in the shadows and in the twilight, the 
 prowling wolves, and especially that wolf's head 
 nailed to the meeting-house, with the splashes of 
 blood beneath, at thoughts of which, doubtless, he 
 had often, when a child, drawn the bedclothes tight 
 over his head, and many other things, all germinated 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 173 
 
 in the favoring soil of his imagination and grew and 
 brought forth raw material for distillation. 
 
 Tracing the course and eifect of some moral poison 
 was his chief study; warning mankind against it, his 
 literary business. To demonstrate their truth and 
 make his warnings more impressive, he brings his 
 subjects and goes through with his prepared experi- 
 ments before you. Hester Prynne is contaminated 
 by crime ; Dimmesdale is tainted by crime and hy- 
 pocrisy ; Chillingworth is envenomed by revenge ; 
 Judge Pyncheon by an inherited virus, breaking out 
 afresh in him ; Miriam by some shadow of wrong- 
 doing, and by a momentary consent to felony; 
 Zenobia by some great indiscretion ; Hollingsworth 
 by one idea, an overruling purpose which, in the 
 name of charity, makes him most uncharitable ; the 
 Man of Adamant by bigotry ; the Seeker for the 
 Great Carbuncle by avarice, and so on. His con- 
 scious duty or his most subtle pleasure was to make 
 known and elucidate, in a dusky way, the workings 
 and fatal results of wickedness, the kind of necessity 
 which springs from wrong-doing, and its all-pervad- 
 ing blight. He seems ever ready to cry out, " Woe 
 is unto me if I preach not this gospel !" " Would 
 that I had a folio to write," he exclaims, " instead 
 of an article of a dozen pages ! Then might I ex- 
 emplify how an influence beyond our control lays its 
 strong hand on every deed we do, and weaves its 
 consequences into an iron tissue of necessity." "Ah ! 
 now I understand," says Hilda, " how the sins of 
 
174 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 generations past have created an atmosphere of sin 
 for those that follow. While there is a single guilty 
 person in the universe, each innocent one must feel 
 his innocence tortured by that guilt." And again, 
 in the Old Manse, he lifts up his voice : 
 
 " Come, all ye guilty ones, and rank yourselves in ac- 
 cordance with the brotherhood of crime. This, indeed, is 
 an awful summons. I almost tremble to look at the strange 
 partnerships that begin to be formed, reluctantly, but by 
 the invincible necessity of like to like in this part of the 
 procession. A forger from the State prison seizes the arm 
 of a distinguished financier. How indignantly does the 
 latter plead his fair reputation upon 'Change, and insist 
 that his operations, by their magnificence of scope, were 
 removed into quite another sphere of morality than those 
 of his pitiful companion ! But let him cut the connection 
 if he can. Here comes a murderer with his clanking 
 chains, and pairs himself — horrible to tell — with as pure 
 and upright a man, in all observable respects, as ever par- 
 took of the consecrated bread and wine. He is one of 
 those, perchance the most hopeless of all sinners, who prac- 
 tice such an exemplary system of outward duties that even 
 a deadly crime may be hidden from their own sight and 
 remembrance under this unreal frostwork. Yet he now 
 finds his place. Why do that pair of flaunting girls, with 
 the pert, affected laugh and the sly leer at the bystanders, 
 intrude themselves into the same rank with yonder decor- 
 ous matron and that somewhat prudish maiden ? Surely 
 these poor creatures, born to vice as their sole and natural in- 
 heritance, can be no fit associates for women who have been 
 guarded round about by all the proprieties of domestic life, 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 175 
 
 and who could not err unless they first created the oppor- 
 tunity. Oh, no ; it must be merely the impertinence of 
 those unblushing hussies, and we can only wonder how 
 such respectable ladies should have responded to a sum- 
 mons that was not meant for them. Nothing is more 
 remarkable than the various deceptions by which guilt con- 
 ceals itself from the perpetrator's conscience, and oftenest, 
 perhaps, by the splendor of its garments. Statesmen, 
 rulers, generals, and all men who act over an extensive 
 sphere, are most liable to be deluded in this way ; they 
 commit wrong, devastation, and murder on so grand a 
 scale that it impresses them as speculative rather than ac- 
 tual ; but in our procession we find them linked in detest- 
 able conjunction with the meanest criminals whose deeds 
 have the vulgarity of petty details. Here the effect of cir- 
 cumstance and accident is done away, and a man finds his 
 rank according to the spirit of his crime, in whatever shape 
 it may have been developed." 
 
 However veiled in allegory, or varied in expres- 
 sion by tones of insinuation, innuendo, or irony, this 
 is the burden of his thought, the theme of his dis- 
 course. Doubtless, the desire to unfold it in a folio 
 spurred him to write his longer works, the romances. 
 Throughout them all it is the underlying motive. 
 Running through and with this, as a kind of obli- 
 gate accompaniment, is a secondary theme that lias 
 been treated by many, but rarely with more subtle 
 effect. It is plainly enough indicated by the Italian 
 organ-grinder and his puppets : 
 
 " The Italian turned a crank ; and, behold ! every one 
 
176 
 
 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 of these small individuals started into the most curious 
 activity. The cobbler wrought upon a shoe ; the black- 
 smith hammered his iron ; the soldier waved his glittering 
 blade ; the lady raised a tiny breeze with her fan ; the jolly 
 toper swigged lustily at his bottle; a scholar opened his 
 book, with eager thirst for knowledge, arid turned his head 
 to and fro along the page ; the milkmaid energetically 
 drained her cow ; and a miser counted gold into his strong 
 box — all at the same turning of a crank. Yes, and moved 
 by the self-same impulse, a lover saluted his mistress on 
 her lips ! Possibly some cynic, at once merry and bitter, 
 had desired to signify, in this pantomimic scene, that we 
 mortals, whatever our business or amusement, — however 
 serious, however trifling — all dance to one identical tune, 
 and, in spite of our ridiculous activity, bring nothing finally 
 to pass. For the most remarkable aspect of the affair was, 
 that at the cessation of the music, everybody was petrified, 
 at once, from the most extravagant life into dead torpor. 
 Neither was the cobbler's shoe finished, nor the black- 
 smith's iron shaped out; nor was there a drop less of brandy 
 in the toper's bottle, nor a drop more of milk in the milk- 
 maid's pail, nor one additional coin in the miser's strong 
 box, nor was the scholar a page deeper in his book. All 
 were precisely in the same condition as before they made 
 themselves so ridiculous by their haste to toil, to enjoy, to 
 accumulate gold, and to become wise. Saddest of all, 
 moreover, the lover was none the happier for the maiden's 
 granted kiss." 
 
 Thus, the limitations of his work are distinctly 
 enough designated. Largely speaking, he wrought 
 upon and aimed to illustrate but one subject. He 
 
THESE A UTHORS. 
 
 177 
 
 was rather one-sided than many-sided. He was like 
 a dark lantern, shining only in one direction, and 
 there not so much to light up space as to make 
 shadows visible. Clearly and minutely as his indi- 
 vidual thoughts are worded, his deeper meaning is 
 not always obvious. He purposely enshrouds it, or 
 purposely leaves it enshrouded in mists, as, for ex- 
 ample, in "The Marble Faun." Whether this qual- 
 ity is the consequence of design or not he seems at 
 any rate conscious of it, and, in one place, at least, 
 suggests an excuse for it : " * It is true, I have an 
 idea of the character you endeavor to describe ; but 
 it is rather by dint of my own thought than your 
 expression.' ' That is unavoidable/ observed the 
 sculptor, ' because the characteristics are all nega- 
 tive/ " This quality may be agreeable, even fasci- 
 nating to some persons ; but most readers prefer not 
 to be left in the dark and forced to guess as to the 
 meaning of an author. 
 
 It is hardly to be conceived that a writer possessed 
 by this overruling purpose to study and lay bare 
 the under-currents of crime, to follow "the policy 
 of our ancestors" which, according to him, was " to 
 search out even the most secret sins, and expose 
 them to shame, without fear or favor, in the broad- 
 est light of the noonday sun who felt that " the 
 most desirable mode of existence might be that of a 
 spiritualized Paul Pry, hovering invisible round man 
 and woman, witnessing their deeds, searching into 
 their hearts, borrowing brightness from their felicity, 
 16 
 
178 
 
 110 W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 and shade from their sorrow, and retaining no emo- 
 tion peculiar to himself;" whose mental operations 
 and methods are of the class indicated in the fore- 
 going examination — it is hardly to be conceived that 
 the works of such a writer should be models of art. 
 His thoughts and imagination are not occupied in 
 designing the perfection of beauty, but in discover- 
 ing its imperfections. His enjoyments are found in 
 investigating the ruin, not in building the temple. 
 He handles the spade, not the trowel ; the scalpel 
 rather than the chisel. He is an artist only so far 
 as a scientific searcher and demonstrator is an artist 
 when he sketches and colors specimens and relics and 
 conditions, and uses these illustrations to elucidate 
 his lectures. Strictly speaking, his romances lack 
 the very essentials of art, form and congruity. The 
 action is arrested at any moment, and for any length 
 of time, that the author may read an essay, or 
 discuss the results of his analyses in a lecture. 
 " The Marble Faun," for instance, is rather a series 
 of mixed dissertations on Italian art, Italian nature, 
 and the illuminating and developing power of sin, 
 than a novel. The others are more or less like unto 
 it. To be sure there are figures in them. But they 
 are employed as are the lecturer's mummies, mani- 
 kins, and speaking machines ; by means of them he 
 more conveniently and impressively expounds his 
 theories. Possibly they may be living persons, but 
 the light is purposely so dim that you cannot be 
 certain of it. 
 
THESE A UTHORS. 
 
 In managing lights this master of melodrama 
 shows his greatest artistie faculty, as has been inti- 
 mated. Aside from the skill manifested, he in this 
 way works out effects carefully designed, and con- 
 veys to others something, intangible and shapeless, 
 indeed, but yet something, which is a unique product 
 of his imagination. " I have sometimes," says he, 
 "produced a singular and not unpleasing effect, so far 
 as my own mind was concerned, by imagining a train 
 of incidents in which the spirit and mechanism of 
 the fairy legend should be combined with the char- 
 acter and manners of familiar life." In achieving 
 combinations analogous to this his greatest work has 
 been done. To make them appear homogeneous, 
 masterly skill in handling lights and shadows is re- 
 quired. In adroit use of what a painter might call 
 chiaro-oscuro he is without a rival. But such inge- 
 nuity does not alone constitute a painter. Much that 
 is picturesque, sometimes exquisitely so, may be found 
 in his writings. But, viewing his works largely, yon 
 miss the potent forming hand of the creative artist. 
 That Hawthorne might have been such is possible ; 
 that he manifests many qualities that go with forma- 
 tive power is plain. But the word that calls spheres 
 from chaos is wanting. He is rather a conjuror than 
 a creator ; he does not make — he evokes. He is not 
 so much like Shakspeare as he is like Shakspeare's 
 witches. He does not say, " Let me make man," 
 but ; with some reader in mind, he mutters, — 
 
180 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 "Show his eyes and grieve his heart. 
 Come like shadows, so depart!" 
 
 and straightway, but solemn-paced and slow, the 
 shades appear, linger, whisper together, and vanish. 
 All this demonstrates power of a very extraordinary 
 kind ; it is, indeed, unique. But it is not the power 
 of a maker. 
 
 His fancy is delicate, active, charming, but not ro- 
 bust; and he is not so much its master as its follower. 
 Yet it has vigor enough to give a poetic turn to many 
 of his thoughts, and to impart a poetic tinge to much 
 of his work. His humor is generally tempered with 
 sarcasm ; it is rarely genial, sometimes grim, always 
 subtle. A chiseller of sepulchral monuments tells 
 him how the husband, for whom a wife had ordered 
 a gravestone, suddenly returned alive and well. 
 " i And how/ inquired I, 'did his wife bear the shock 
 of joyful surprise?' 4 Why/ said the old man, deep- 
 ening the grin of a death's head on which his chisel 
 was just then employed, 1 1 really felt for the poor 
 woman ; it was one of my best pieces of marble — 
 and to be thrown away on a living man V " What 
 he says in the preface to " Twice Told Tales" is, in 
 a greater or less degree, true of all his works : 
 
 " They have the pale tint of flowers that blossom in too 
 retired a shade — the coolness of a meditative habit, which 
 diffuses itself through the feeling and observation of every 
 sketch. Instead of passion, there is sentiment ; and, even 
 in what purport to be pictures of actual life, we have alle- 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 181 
 
 gory, not always so warmly dressed in its habiliments of 
 flesh and blood, as to be taken into the reader's mind with- 
 out a shiver. Whether from lack of power or an uncon- 
 querable reserve, the author's touches have often an effect 
 of tameness ; the merriest man can hardly contrive to laugh 
 at his broadest humor; the tenderest woman, one would 
 suppose, will hardly shed warm tears at his deepest pathos. 
 The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be 
 read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it 
 was written ; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look 
 exceedingly like a volume of blank pages." 
 
 That all manifestations of enthusiasm should be 
 wanting in the writings of a man so given to medi- 
 tation is not remarkable, but rather a thing of course. 
 Aside from internal testimony, sufficient evidence 
 exists to prove that he pondered long and deeply on 
 all subjects treated by his pen, and that none of his 
 productions were hastily or immaturely brought into 
 the world. In this lies at least a partial explanation 
 of the secret of his exquisite style. 
 
 His taste, however, was sometimes at fault; not 
 noticeably as to matters of expression, though at rare 
 intervals he uses some word or gives some word a 
 use not sanctioned by the best authorities; but in 
 collocation of incidents and suggestions, as when he 
 makes Holgrove declare his love for Phebe and Phebe 
 respond as a lover would have her, almost in the 
 same moment that the suitor has told her of Judge 
 Pyncheon's death, and while the body of that ex- 
 magistrate still sits in the next room staring at the 
 
 16* 
 
182 
 
 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 watch in its hand. Rarely, though, does he shock 
 the reader in this way. 
 
 Dumas called himself a dramatic poet ; Hawthorne 
 claimed to be a writer of fiction. Both were about 
 equally near the truth. Hawthorne invented so 
 much fiction as should serve to illustrate his doc- 
 trines; and he invented it for that purpose. It held 
 a secondary rank in his thoughts and in his affec- 
 tions, though it is probable that he was not aware 
 of the fact. He was, indeed, not a dramatic poet ? 
 not a novelist, not a historian ; he was a moralist, 
 a philosophic moralist, calling upon history, fiction, 
 and poetry to illuminate and enforce his tenets. As 
 an ingenious moral philosopher and essayist, render- 
 ing his teachings impressive by the use of fables 
 more or less elaborate, he may well take rank with 
 the most elegant and accomplished writers of his 
 class. 
 
 He is emphatically an American author, even in 
 the common and narrower sense of that phrase. He 
 has embellished the legends, traditions, and early 
 history of his native State, and given to certain places 
 a classical interest. He deserved well of his coun- 
 trymen, and his name is worthily held in honor 
 among them. 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 183 
 
 • A MAN OF TASTE. 
 
 Me. Henry James, Jr., has written two sizeable 
 books, which are valuable if not unique additions to 
 our American literature. One is entitled, "A Pas- 
 sionate Pilgrim and Other Tales;" the other 
 "Transatlantic Sketches." The first comprises six 
 stories. Of these the one named in the title is, per- 
 haps, the best, though all are interesting, and only 
 one seems unworthy of its associates in the volume, 
 namely, " The Romance of Certain Old Clothes." 
 This appears to lack the genial inspiration and, in 
 its catastrophe, the good taste which all the others 
 manifest; and alone, in all the contents of the two 
 books, it suggests immature production, or the result 
 of a matter-of-fact and uncongenial business-like 
 attempt to make something for the market. Pos- 
 sibly, however, its appearance here is advantageous, 
 in so far as it serves to produce a vivid contrast by 
 which the delicate and artistic completeness of the 
 other tales is more prominently brought out. The 
 author everywhere shows an unusual acquaintance 
 with his own powers, and easy mastery of them. 
 Thought and style are alike gracefully sustained, 
 and the diction is so uniformly fit, forcible, and ele- 
 
184 
 
 HOW TUFA' STRIKE ME, 
 
 gant, that to notice some of the few lapses which occur 
 may appear hypercritical. Yet the general excel- 
 lence makes faults conspicuous that would otherwise 
 be regarded as venial or escape attention altogether. 
 
 In a style like that indicated such phrases as "the 
 white cravat of the period/' "an Englishman of the 
 period/' "some highly improved projectile of the 
 period/' " the hat of the period," are, to say the least, 
 inelegant, and, especially if they recur not infre- 
 quently, are likely to give readers of refined and 
 sensitive taste — the very class who will most enjoy 
 reading these books — a sense of being suddenly and 
 unhandsomely let down. So of the Gallicism that 
 many writers are trying to pass oil for good English, 
 the use of the painfully general " one" in place of 
 some well individualized and known English pro- 
 noun. For instance : 
 
 "It is a pleasure that doubles one's horizoD, and one can 
 scarcely say whether it enlarges or limits one's impression 
 of the city proper." 
 
 "And the work has a deceptive air of being one of their 
 sturdy bequests, which helps one to drop a sigh over Italy's 
 long, long yesterday." 
 
 , " One would like, after five months in Rome, to be able 
 to make some general statement of one's experience, one's 
 gains. It is not easy. One has a sense of a kind of passion 
 for the place, and of a large number of gathered impressions. 
 Many of these have been intense, momentous, but one has 
 trodden on the other, and one can hardly say what has be- 
 come of them." 
 
THESE A UTHORS. 
 
 185 
 
 " One cannot describe the beauty of the Italian lakes, nor 
 would one try, if one could." 
 
 " But inns and streets in Italy are the vehicles of half 
 one's knowledge ; if one has no fancy for their lessons, one 
 may burn one's note-book." 
 
 "After all, one says to one's self, as one turns away " 
 
 It is safe to assert that a sense of euphony alone 
 would keep this author from using any other word 
 so inelegantly, to say nothing of such a sentence as 
 this : " Many of these have been intense, momentous, 
 but one has trodden on the other, and one can hardly 
 say what has become of them," where the shifting 
 significance of the term gives the reader a suggestion 
 of being paltered with by verbal jugglery. 
 
 In looking through these citations the expression, 
 "It is a pleasure that doubles one's horizon," may 
 have struck the discriminating mind as, at least, 
 ambiguous. It is rather commonly assumed by 
 persons who affect to have no personal knowl- 
 edge of the fact, that certain pleasures invariably 
 have a tendency not only to double the horizon 
 but to multiply the stars and likewise to render 
 both very unsteady, even vacillating. The gene- 
 ral sobriety of the author's work would indicate 
 that he had no such pleasure in his head when he 
 wrote. The words are, nevertheless, indiscreetly 
 chosen. 
 
 Ambiguities and obscurities, as well as inadequa- 
 cies of expression, are so uncommon in these books 
 that those which appear are all the more displeasing 
 
186 
 
 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 and inexcusable since the writer has plainly shown 
 that they might have been avoided. Two only of 
 these rare defects will be particularly noted and 
 illustrated in the following quotations: 
 
 " There is a distinct amenity, however, in my experience 
 of Italy, and I shall probably, in the future, not be above 
 sparing a light regret to several of the hours of which the 
 one I speak of was composed." 
 
 This would seem to indicate a general involution 
 and confusion of horizons, and great indistinctness 
 in the view, or in the vision, generally: 
 
 " I shall remember that, as I sat in the garden, and, look- 
 ing up from my book, saw through a gap in the shrubbery 
 the red house-tiles against the deep blue sky and the gray 
 underside of the ilex leaves turned up by the Mediterranean 
 breeze, I had a vague consciousness that I was not in the 
 Western world. 
 
 " If you should also wish to have it, you must not go to 
 Pisa ; and, indeed, we are most of us forewarned as to Pisa 
 from an early age." 
 
 The author seems to have written the passages in 
 which these negligences occur, when he was weary, 
 or, at any rate, had for the time a feeling of satiety 
 in regard to the subjects of his work, a kind of men- 
 tal, or sentimental, indigestion from overfeeding and 
 want of variety in his aliment. To write page after 
 page upon the picturesque aspects of Italy and the 
 picturesque things there and in other countries till 
 the leaves grow to a goodly volume; to sustain a 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 187 
 
 varied and fresh dissertation upon a subject always 
 the same, however its phases may change, is a work 
 that cannot be done in haste, or when, from weari- 
 ness or any other cause, the appetite for this kind of 
 beauty flags, and the discriminating and appreciating 
 powers are somnolent. One of the most noticeable 
 things about these books, therefore, is that, with 
 some very rare exceptions, such as have been men- 
 tioned, there is no want of freshness, no diminution 
 of graceful vigor, and no drooping of an aerial fancy 
 that never flies too high. 
 
 The air of frank sincerity which everywhere per- 
 vades these works brings into bolder and more offen- 
 sive relief an apparent affectation, namely, the un- 
 necessary use of foreign words and phrases. It is 
 easy to conceive that some of these strange terms 
 were introduced with the greatest candor, such, for 
 instance, as, in galleries, cathedrals, ruined castles, 
 wooded heights with classic outlines, and flowery 
 campagnas which seem the very dallying-places of 
 history, have fallen upon the author's ear with pecu- 
 liar emphasis and significance. He might naturally 
 enough feel that the same word or phrase would 
 impress his reader more forcibly than its English 
 equivalent, without considering the fact that to almost 
 all of those who see his pages, even the remembrance 
 of the associations that added power to such terms 
 when he has heard them, will be wanting ; and that 
 to some of those for w T hom he wrought, these words 
 and phrases, so far from conveying any clear mean- 
 
188 
 
 110 W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 ing, will but obscure the sentences in which they 
 appear. Yet for their use under the circumstances 
 his honesty of purpose should largely serve as an 
 excuse. 
 
 But no charity can forgive in a lover of classic 
 beauty, gentle harmonies, clear expression of ideas, 
 and the rich vigor of his mother-tongue, such wan- 
 ton violations of good taste and such imperfect 
 English utterance as are exhibited in the following 
 citations : 
 
 " Even in a season when he is fatally apt to meet a dozen 
 fellow-pilgrims returning from the shrine, each gros Jean 
 comme devaut, or to overtake a dozen more." 
 
 " And if you think he had better not be in Switzerland, 
 — rassurez-vous, — he will not be there long." 
 
 " Their aspect seems a sort of influence from the blue 
 glitter of the lake as it plays through the trees with genial 
 invraisemblan ce. ' ' 
 
 " Your sentimental tourist can never bouder long." 
 
 " And to form an idea of the etalage you must imagine," 
 etc. 
 
 " A day somehow to make one feel as if one had seen and 
 felt a great deal, — quite, as I say, like a heros de roman." 
 
 " His physiognomy was wonderfully de Vcmploi." 
 
 " Yesterday Prince Humbert's little primogenito was on 
 the Pincio in an open landau, with his governess." 
 
 " The castle is being completely remis d neuf." 
 
 " A month's tour in Switzerland is no more a jeu de prince 
 than a Sunday excursion." 
 
 " And finally the friend was produced, en costume de 
 vOle." 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 189 
 
 " That she has already flung a sort of reflet of her charm 
 over all their undried mortar and plaster." 
 
 " The sturdy little musketeer who was trying to impart a 
 reflet of authority to the neat little white house." 
 
 "A man so much de son temps as Byron was." 
 
 It may indeed be said, as some sort of extenua- 
 tion, that, in using these and other foreign terms, 
 the author could hardly have designed to mystify 
 his readers ; for he must have been conscious that 
 their significance is tolerably well known even to 
 persons who are least acquainted with the meanings 
 of outlandish words, since, having been brought 
 back, like bits of coin, by so many hasty voyagers 
 and frequently exhibited in testimony of their su- 
 perior attainments, they have gradually crept into 
 circulation at depreciated values. This is especially 
 true of certain other terms which the author uses 
 freely, and which are even more worn, common, 
 plentiful, and cheap, such, for instance, as " mise en 
 seem" " stat magni nominis umbra" "genius loci" 
 " coup de theatre" " a fortiori" "entrepreneur" " eoup 
 d'etat" "status quo" "apropos" " arriere pensee" 
 "con amore" "finesse" fldnerie" " bourgeoise" 
 etc., etc. 
 
 As has been intimated, apart from such blemishes 
 as those already pointed out, the writer's diction is 
 uncommonly fine. Only rarely does his strong de- 
 sire to give graphic expression to thought lead him 
 into extravagance, as, for example, when he speaks 
 of Rubens's paintings as " carnal cataracts." 
 
 17 
 
190 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 Pictures are the subjects of Ins inmost contempla- 
 tion. That portion of his life represented by these 
 books, more especially that part of which the 
 "Transatlantic Sketches" are the fruits, was a quest 
 for the picturesque. No knight of the Round Table 
 sought more earnestly or with more singleness of 
 purpose for the Holy Graal than did the author for 
 what would look well in a painting. He has the 
 pai liter's intelligence and taste, and the critic's dis- 
 crimination. The generous admiration which he 
 feels for a fine building, is that of the picture-maker 
 rather than that of the architect. He esteems colors 
 more than forms, yet is far from insensible to beauti- 
 ful shapes and graceful outlines. He loves these not 
 less, but those more. Yet the form which he clearly 
 perceives and instinctively estimates, is that which is 
 defined by the painter, not that which the sculptor 
 makes. Statuary has for him a subordinate charm ; 
 he notes it only incidentally. Sitting in a cathedral, 
 lie gives himself up to the music-like influences of 
 various degrees and tones of light, the shadows, the 
 colors, the picture for which the architecture serves 
 as an appropriate frame. If at the right time and 
 in the right place, a monk appears costumed har- 
 moniously with all that the physical or mental eye 
 sees grouped about him, he at once becomes the 
 central figure in the painting which the author has 
 already constructed in his own mind : 
 
 " A Dominican monk, still young, who showed us the 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 1 91 
 
 church, seemed a creature generated from its musty shadows 
 and odors. His physiognomy was wonderfully de I'emploi, 
 and his voice, which was most agreeable, had the strangest 
 jaded humility. His lugubrious salute, and sanctimonious 
 impersonal appropriation of my departing franc, would have 
 been a master touch on the stage. While we were still in 
 
 — 
 
 the church a bell rang, which he had to go and answer, and 
 as he came back and approached us along the nave, he 
 made with his white gown and hood, and his cadaverous 
 face, against the dark church background, one of those pic- 
 tures which, thank the muses, have not yet been reformed 
 out of Italy. It was strangely like the mental pictures 
 suggested in reading certain plays and poems." 
 
 The subdued tone and the harmony of colors to 
 which time and age bring all tints, whether in cos- 
 tume, in works of the brush, or in products of the 
 quarry and the forest, particularly touch the writer. 
 Their effect seems to be the strongest of any received 
 by him even at Rome, and the most pervading 
 everywhere. Its contrast with that produced by 
 the hard, fresh, brilliant coloring to which Ameri- 
 cans at home are accustomed can, to a citizen of the 
 great republic, who, like the author, is happy in the 
 possession of a highly refill ed and cultivated taste, 
 scarcely fail to be as pleasing as it is impressive. 
 Evidences of decay that has been going on for hun- 
 dreds of years, are novelties, and a stately ruin is a 
 whole romance : 
 
 " Turning back into Florence proper, you have local color 
 enough and to spare, — which you enjoy the more, doubt- 
 
192 
 
 HO W TUFA 7 STRIKE ME, 
 
 less, from standing off to get ygur light and your point of 
 view. The elder streets, abutting on all this newness, go 
 boring away into the heart of the city in narrow, dusky 
 vistas of a fascinating picturesqueness. Pausing to look 
 down thein sometimes, and to penetrate the deepening 
 shadows through which they recede, they seem to me little 
 corridors leading out from the past, as mystical as the ladder 
 in Jacob's dream ; and when I see a single figure coming 
 up toward me I am half afraid to wait till it arrives ; it 
 seems too much like a ghost, — a messenger from an under 
 world. Florence, paved with its great mosaics of slabs and 
 lined with its massive Tuscan palaces, which, in their large 
 dependence on pure symmetry for beauty of effect, repro- 
 duce more than any other modern styles the simple noble- 
 ness of Greek architecture, must have always been a stately 
 city, and not especially rich in that ragged picturesqueness 
 — the picturesqueness of poverty — on which we feast our 
 idle eyes at Rome and Naples. Except in the unfinished 
 fronts of the churches, which, however unfortunately, are 
 mere prosaic ugliness, one finds here less romantic shabbi- 
 ness than in most Italian cities. But at two or three points 
 it exists in perfection, — in just such perfection as proves 
 that often what is literally hideous may be constructively 
 delightful. On the north side of the Arno, between the 
 Ponte Vecchio and the Ponte Santa Trinita, is an ancient 
 row of houses, backing on the river, in whose yellow flood 
 they bathe their aching old feet. Anything more battered 
 and befouled, more cracked and disjointed, dirtier, drearier, 
 shabbier, it would be impossible to conceive. They look as 
 if, fifty years ago, the muddy river had risen over their 
 chimneys and then subsided again, and left them coated 
 forever with its unsightly slime. And yet, forsooth, because 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 the river is yellow, and the light is yellow, and here and 
 there, elsewhere, some mellow, mouldering surface, some 
 hint of color, some accident of atmosphere, takes up the 
 foolish tale and repeats the note, — because, in short, it is 
 Florence, it is Italy, and you are a magnanimous Yankee, 
 bred amid the micaceous sparkle of brown-stone fronts and 
 lavish of enthusiasm, these miserable dwellings, instead of 
 simply suggesting mental invocations to an enterprising 
 board of health, bloom and glow all along the line in the 
 perfect felicity of picturesqueness. Lately, during the misty 
 autumn nights, the moon has been shining on them faintly, 
 and refining away their shabbiness into something ineffably 
 strange and spectral. The yellow river sweeps along without 
 a sound, and the pale tenements hang above it like a vague 
 miasmatic exhalation. The dimmest back scene at the 
 opera, when the tenor is singing his sweetest, seems hardly 
 to belong to a more dreamily fictitious world." 
 
 You see that the writer has a genial imagination. 
 He has also a pleasant, but not overflowing fancy, 
 which for the most part undulates unobtrusively, 
 and occasionally bubbles up with sparkling effect : 
 
 " The little broken-visaged effigies of saints and kings 
 and bishops, niched in tiers along this hoary wall, are 
 prodigiously black and quaint and primitive in expression ; 
 and as you look at them with whatever contemplative ten- 
 derness your trade of hard-working tourist may have left at 
 your disposal, you fancy that somehow they are consciously 
 historical, — sensitive victims of time ; that they feel the 
 loss of their noses, their toes, and their crowns ; and that 
 when the long June twilight turns at last to a deeper gray, 
 and the quiet of the close to a deeper stillness, they begin 
 
 17* 
 
194 
 
 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 to peer sidewise out of their narrow recesses, and to con- 
 verse in some strange form of early English, as rigid, yet as 
 candid as their features and postures, moaning like a com- 
 pany of ancient paupers round a hospital fire over their 
 ashes and infirmities and losses, and the sadness of being so 
 terribly old." 
 
 He shows capacity for the enjoyment rather than 
 for the production of humor. You fancy that an 
 airy conception of it often tickles his brain, but only 
 rarely does he give it birth in appreciable form, as, 
 for instance, when speaking of the stout woman of 
 Berne : 
 
 "Another, a perfect mountain of a woman, is brought 
 forth every morning, lowered with the proper precautions, 
 with her bench, and left there till night. She is always 
 knitting a stocking ; I have an idea that she is the foumis- 
 seuse of the whole little Swiss army ; or she ought to wear 
 one of these castellated crowns which forms the coiffure of 
 ladies on monuments, and sit there before all men's eyes as 
 the embodied genius of the city — the patroness of Berne. 
 Like the piers of the arcades, she has a most fantastic thick- 
 ness, and her superfluous fleshly substance could certainly 
 furnish forth a dozen women on the American plan. I 
 suppose she is forty years old, but her tremendous bulk is 
 surmounted by a face of the most infantine freshness and 
 naivete. She is evidently not a fool ; on the contrary, she 
 looks very sensible and amiable ; her immense circumfer- 
 ence has kept experience at bay, and she is perfectly inno- 
 cent because nothing has ever happened to her." 
 
 Nature, for him, has, undoubtedly, many charms. 
 
THESE A VTIIORS. 
 
 L95 
 
 But, in his character of a sentimental tourist, at least, 
 these charms are very much heightened by sugges- 
 tions of humanity, and of what belongs or has be- 
 longed to it. He is brought into near and perfect 
 sympathy with a landscape only by a more or less 
 vivid faith that it has been peopled, and that it is 
 still a kind of abiding place for dim and dream-like 
 memories : 
 
 " At least half the merit of everything you enjoy must 
 be that it suits you absolutely ; but the larger half here, is 
 generally that it has suited some one else, and that you can 
 never flatter yourself you have discovered it. It is his- 
 toric, literary, suggestive, it has played some other part than 
 it is just then playing to your eyes." 
 
 " And the Medici were a great people ! But what re- 
 mains of it all now is a mere tone in the air, a vague ex- 
 pression in things, a hint to the questioning fancyi Call 
 it much or little, this is the interest of old places. Time 
 has devoured the doers and their doings ; there hovers over 
 the place a perfume of something done. We can build 
 gardens in America, adorned with every device of horticul- 
 ture, but we unfortunately cannot scatter abroad this strange 
 historic aroma, more exquisite than the rarest roses." 
 
 Perhaps the most valuable as well as most in- 
 teresting portions of these works are the incidental 
 reviews of master- works of painting. The frank, 
 unaffected, undogmatic style of their criticisms, the 
 nice and exact power of analysis which they mani- 
 fest, their broad and catholic spirit, the clearly 
 stated reasons by which conclusions are sustained, 
 
196 
 
 110 W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 must commend them to all, even to the readers 
 w hoso opinions may differ from those of the author. 
 His "Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales" are de- 
 serving of analysis as candid, fine, and catholic as 
 that which he himself effects. If their author goes 
 on to build worthily on the foundation thus laid, his 
 position in American literature should be a proud 
 one. 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 1 97 
 
 AN AMERICAN HUMORIST. 
 
 Mr. Bret Harte first became widely known as 
 a poet, by his " Plain Language from Truthful 
 James," if that can truthfully be called poetry. 
 This production has probably done more to make its 
 author famous than all that he has written besides. 
 Its quaint slang and forms of ungrammatical usage, 
 till then strangers east of the Rocky Mountains, its 
 suggestive way of presenting a clear picture and a 
 complete action and gratifying catastrophe, with its 
 tersely-forcible description of character and peculiar- 
 ities, were quite enough to account for the interest 
 aroused by this composition, independent of any 
 poetic qualities. 
 
 The kind of celebrity, as well as the rapidity with 
 which it was gained, were strong evidences that this 
 publication contained some insinuating power very 
 different from that of poetry. This is to be found in 
 its humor, which is of the sort particularly relished 
 by Americans, and which seems to be more especially 
 the product of frontier life. At the time when it 
 was written, the peculiar use of the relative pronoun 
 " which" — a rhetorical figure borrowed from the 
 slang of the London cockneys — and other character- 
 
198 
 
 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 istics in the style of this piece, could be seen in a 
 comic paper published in Australia. But it was 
 novel enough to be uncommonly attractive to staid 
 people on both continents, who habitually heard only 
 conventional forms of speech, and whose spirits were 
 less active than those of explorers, to whom innova- 
 tion is the rule of life. As a humorist, therefore, 
 not as a poet, Mr. Harte was first introduced to 
 people east of the Rocky Mountains. His candidacy 
 for poetic honors has since been made known; so has 
 his claim to be considered as a writer of fiction. Of 
 the seven volumes which contain his writings com- 
 pleted up to the present time (1876), three are made 
 up of verses and four of short stories in prose. He 
 therefore comes before the critic in the threefold 
 character of humorist, novelist, and poet. 
 
 In each of these characters his greatest strength 
 appears to be a wide suggestiveness. But this sug- 
 gestiveness springs from the play of " temporary 
 inclination, mood, caprice, whim, or fancy/' and 
 these are some of the definitions of humor. Even 
 the pathos, which he at times uses with rare skill, 
 manifests one of the phases of humor, which may be 
 black or white, gay or sad, tender or stern. It is a 
 common but erroneous notion that a man is a humor- 
 ist only when he makes sport for others, or in some 
 way excites their merriment. The comedian is as 
 truly a humorist when he makes his auditors weep 
 as he is when he makes them laugh. The humors 
 of noted wits have produced some of the most pa- 
 
THESE A UTIIORS. 
 
 L99 
 
 thetic compositions in the English language. In 
 these men the gay is counterbalanced by the sad, the 
 cheerful by the melancholy mood. In a certain 
 sense they are like a great dramatist; they have the 
 capacity of humors, as he has that of characters. As 
 in him the even balance and logical sense impel the 
 production of personages so opposed that a fair equi- 
 poise shall be preserved, so in them sportiveness is 
 counterbalanced with pathos. The oscillations of 
 whims and fancies carry them to an equal distance 
 on either side of the median line. In these excur- 
 sions upon the one side, something ludicrous or gro- 
 tesque attracts the humorist's gaze; upon it all his 
 attention is at once concentrated ; he hovers about it 
 like a bee in search of honey ; with microscopic eye, 
 like that of the insect, he peers into every crevice, 
 examines every elevation, explores every wrinkle, 
 investigates every excrescence, measures the obliquity 
 of every line, observes the exact angle of the squint, 
 notes the degree of dissonance in the colors of hair, 
 eyes, complexion, and clothing, gauges the perturba- 
 tions of gait, passes them all through the alembic of 
 fancy heated by meditation. The result is a humor- 
 ous picture, or any one of a dozen whimsical resem- 
 blances. Generally, persons and things are alike 
 unconscious that they are what Mr. Harte might call 
 rich leads, that they present any ludicrous or touch- 
 ing aspects; and, for the most part, other people fail 
 to see what the humorist alone discovers. 
 
 The party at Robinson's Hall, where The Rose of 
 
200 
 
 110 W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 Tuolumne had been — a " tear" her father called it — 
 had broken up : 
 
 " One enamored swain had ridden east, another west, 
 another north, another south ; and the object of their adora- 
 tion, left within her bower at Chenrisal Ridge, was calmly 
 going to bed. I regret that I am not able to indicate the 
 exact stage of that process. Two chairs were already filled 
 with delicate inwrappings and white confusion ; and the 
 young lady herself, half hidden in the silky threads of her 
 yellow hair, had at one time borne a faint resemblance to a 
 partly-husked ear of Indian corn." 
 
 Mr. McClosky is giving Mr. Ashe some pertinent 
 history of his domestic affairs, and more especially of 
 his marriage, and what followed it : 
 
 " ' Many little things sorter tended to make our home in 
 Missouri onpleasant. A disposition to smash furniture and 
 heave knives around ; an inclination to howl when drunk, 
 and that frequent ; a habitooal use of vulgar language, and 
 a tendency to cuss the casoal visitor, — seemed to pint,' 
 added Mr. McClosky, with submissive hesitation, ' that — 
 she — was — so to speak — quite onsuited to the marriage 
 relation in its holiest aspeck. 
 
 " ' At the end of two year,' continued Mr. McClosky, 
 still intent on the valise, ' I allowed I'd get a divorce. Et 
 about thet time, however, Providence sends a circus into 
 thet town, and a feller ez rode three horses to onct. 
 Hevin' allez a taste for athletic sports, she left town with 
 this feller, leavin' me and Jinny behind. I sent word to 
 her thet, if she would give Jinny to me, we'd call it quits. 
 And she did. 
 
 " ' She weut to Kansas ; from Kansas she went into Texas ; 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 201 
 
 from Texas she eventooally come to Californy. Being here, 
 I've purvided her with money when her business was slack, 
 through a friend. She's gcttin' rather old and shaky for 
 hosses, and now does the tight rope and flying trapeze. 
 Never heven' seen her perform,' continued Mr. McClosky, 
 with conscientious caution, 1 I can't say how she gets on. 
 On the bills she looks well. Thar is a poster.' " 
 
 Jenny (The Rose) heard a knock at her door, and 
 asked who was there : 
 
 " An apologetic murmur on the other side of the door 
 was the response. 
 
 " 1 Why, father ! is that you?' 
 
 " There were further murmurs, affirmative, deprecatory, 
 and persistent. 
 
 " ( Wait,' said the £ Rose.' She got up, unlocked the door, 
 leaped nimbly into bed again, and said, 1 Coma.' 
 
 " The door opened timidly. The broad, stooping shoulders 
 and grizzled head of a man past the middle age appeared ; 
 after a moment's hesitation, a pair of large, diffident feet, 
 shod with canvas slippers, concluded to follow. When the 
 apparition was complete, it closed the door softly and stood 
 there, a very shy ghost indeed, with apparently more than 
 the usual spiritual indisposition to begin a conversation. 
 The ' Rose' resented this impatiently, though, I fear, not 
 altogether intelligibly. 
 
 '"Do, father, I declare !' 
 
 " 1 You was abed, Jinny,' said Mr. McClosky, slowly, 
 glancing with a singular mixture of masculine awe and 
 paternal pride upon the two chairs and their contents, 1 you 
 was abed and ondressed. 5 
 
 " 1 1 was.' 
 
 18 
 
202 
 
 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 " ' Surely,' said Mr. McClosky, seating himself on the 
 extreme edge of the bed and painfully tucking his feet away 
 under it, ' surely.' After a pause he rubbed a short, thick, 
 stumpy beard, that bore a general resemblance to a badly- 
 worn blacking-brush, with the palm of his hand, and went 
 on, ' You had a good time, Jinny.' 
 
 " ' Yes, father.' 
 
 " ' They was all there ?' 
 
 " ' Yes ; Ranee, and York, and Ryder, and Jack.' 
 
 " ' And Jack !' Mr. McClosky endeavored to throw an 
 expression of arch inquiry into his small, tremulous eyes ; 
 but meeting the unabashed, widely opened lid of his 
 daughter, he winked rapidly and blushed to the roots of 
 his hair. 
 
 " ' Yes, Jack was there,' said Jinny, without change of 
 color or the least self-consciousness in her great gray eyes ; 
 ' and he came home with me.' She paused a moment, 
 locking her two hands under her head, and assuming a 
 more comfortable position on the pillow. 1 He asked me 
 that same question again, father, and I said " Yes." It's to 
 be — soon. We're going to live at Four Forks, in his own 
 house ; and next winter we're going to Sacramento. I 
 suppose it's all right, father, eh?' She emphasized the 
 question with a slight kick through the bedclothes, as the 
 parental McClosky had fallen into an abstract revery. 
 
 " ' Yes, surely,' said Mr. McClosky, recovering himself 
 with some confusion. After a pause he looked down at the 
 bedclothes, and patting them tenderly, continued: 'You 
 ouldn't have done better, Jinny. They isn't a girl in 
 Tuolumne ez could strike it ez rich as you hev, — even if 
 they got the chance.' He paused again, and then said : 
 'Jinny.' 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 203 
 
 « 1 Yes, father.' 
 
 " ' You're in bed, and ondressed ?' 
 « ' Yes.' 
 
 " ' You couldn't,' said Mr. McClosky, glancing hopelessly 
 at the two chairs, and slowly rubbing his chin, — 'you 
 couldn't dress yourself again, could yer?' 
 
 " ' Why, father !' 
 
 " ' Kinder get yourself into them things again ?' he added, 
 hastily. ' Not all of 'em, you know, but some of 'em. Not 
 if I helped you, — sorter stood by and lent a hand now and 
 then with a strap, or a buckle, or a necktie, or a shoestring ?' 
 he continued, still looking at the chairs, and evidently trying 
 to boldly familiarize himself with their contents. 
 
 "'Are you crazy, father?' demanded Jenny, suddenly 
 sitting up, with a portentous switch of her yellow mane. 
 Mr. McClosky rubbed one side of his beard, which already 
 had the appearance of having been quite worn away by that 
 process, and faintly dodged the question. 
 
 " ' Jinny,' he said, tenderly stroking the bedclothes as he 
 spoke, ' this yer's what's the matter. Thar's a stranger 
 down stairs — a stranger to you, lovey, but a man ez I've 
 knowed a long time. He's been here about an hour ; and 
 he'll be here until fower o'clock, when the up-stage passes. 
 Now I wants ye, Jinny dear, to get up and come down 
 stairs, and kinder help me pass the time with him. It's 
 no use, Jinny,' he went on, gently raising his hand to 
 deprecate any interruption, ' it's no use ! He won't go to 
 bed ; he won't play keerds ; whiskey don't take no effect 
 on him. Ever since I knowed him he was the most un- 
 satisfactory critter to hev round. * * 
 
 " ' You see, Jinny,' continued Mr. McClosky, apologetic- 
 ally, ' he's known me a long time.' 
 
204 
 
 HO IT THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 " But his daughter had already dismissed the question 
 with her usual directness. ' I'll be down in a few moments, 
 father.' she said after a pause ; 'but don't say anything to 
 him about it — don't say I was abed.' " 
 
 You see how the mirthful mood has predominated 
 thus far. though you have been touched by old Mc- 
 Closkey's diffidence, tenderness, and deference to- 
 ward his daughter. But now the line is clearly and 
 suddenly crossed. A pathetic impulse has seized the 
 writer. His is no longer a laughing or a mocking, 
 it is now wholly a tearful humor : 
 
 " Mr. McClosky's face beamed. 'You was allers a good 
 girl. Jinny/ he said, dropping on one knee, the better to 
 imprint a respectful kiss on her forehead. But Jenny 
 caught him by the wrists, and for a moment held him 
 captive. ' Father,' said she, trying to fix his shy eyes with 
 the clear, steady glance of her own, 'all the girls that 
 were there to-night had some one with them. Maine 
 Bobinson had her aunt, Lucy Ranee had her mother, Kate 
 Pierson had her sister — all except me had some other 
 woman. Father, dear,' her lips trembled just a little, ' I 
 wish mother hadn't died when I was so small. I wish 
 there was some other woman in the family besides me. I 
 ain't lonely with you, father dear ; but if there was only 
 some one, you know, when the time comes for John and 
 me 1 
 
 "Her voice here suddenly gave out, but not her brave 
 eyes, that were still fixed earnestly upon his face. Mr. 
 McClosky, apparently tracing out a pattern on the bed- 
 quilt, essayed words of comfort. 
 
 " ' Thar ain't one of them gals cz you've named. Jinny, 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 205 
 
 ez could do what you've done, with a whole Noah's ark of 
 relations at their backs! Thar ain't one ez wouldn't sacri- 
 fice her nearest relation to make the strike that you hev. 
 Ez to mothers, maybe, my dear, you're doing better with- 
 out one.' He rose suddenly, and walked toward the door. 
 When he reached it, he turned, and, in his old deprecating 
 manner, said : ' Don't be long, Jinny,' smiled, and van- 
 ished from the head downward, his canvas slippers assert- 
 ing themselves resolutely to the last." 
 
 Only when you come to know that Jenny is not 
 McClosky's daughter, that she was born out of wed- 
 lock of the woman whom McClosky afterward mar- 
 ried, supposing her to be a widow, and with whom, 
 when she left him to go with the man who could 
 ride three horses at once, he agreed to call it quits 
 if she would give him the child, do you perceive all 
 the pathos of this scene. 
 
 Well, Jenny went down-stairs to help entertain 
 the stranger. He was a young man, educated and 
 well bred, something of a poet also. She had never 
 seen his like before ; probably, before then he had 
 never seen her like. She talked with unconscious 
 frankness and freedom from constraint ; he, with 
 uncommon ardor. When it was time for the up- 
 stage to pass she offered to go with him to the cross 
 roads, for she felt somehow as if he needed and were 
 under her protection : 
 
 " It was a lovely night. The moon swung low, and 
 languished softly on the snowy ridge beyond. There were 
 quaint odors in the still air; and a strange incense from 
 18* 
 
206 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME. 
 
 the woods perfumed their young blood, and seemed to 
 swoon in their pulses. Small wonder that they lingered on 
 the white road, that their feet climbed unwillingly the 
 little hill where they were to part, and that, when they at 
 last reached it, even the saving grace of speech seemed to 
 have forsaken them. 
 
 " For there they stood alone. There was no sound nor 
 motion in earth, or woods, or heaven. They might have 
 been the one man and woman for whom this goodly earth 
 that lay at their feet, rimmed with the deepest azure, was 
 created. And, seeing this, they turned toward each other 
 with a sudden instinct, and their hands met, and then their 
 lips in one long kiss." 
 
 And then Jenny went home, and felt very lonely. 
 Tears gathered in her sweet eyes as she sat by the 
 window watching the stars as they paled away, and 
 the brightening east as the dawn came on : 
 
 " The straggling line of black picket fence below, that 
 had faded away with the stars, came back with the sun. 
 What was that object moving by the fence ? Jenny raised 
 her head and looked intently. It was a man endeavoring 
 to climb the pickets, and falling backward with each 
 attempt. Suddenly she started to her feet, as if the rosy 
 flushes of the dawn had crimsoned her from forehead to 
 shoulders; then she stood, white as the wall, with her 
 hands clasped upon her bosom ; then, with a single bound, 
 she reached the door, and, with flying braids and fluttering 
 skirt, sprang down stairs, and out to the garden walk. 
 When within a few feet of the fence, she uttered a cry, 
 the first she had given — the cry of a mother over her 
 stricken babe, of a tigress over her mangled cub ; and in 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 207 
 
 another moment she had leaped the fence, and knelt beside 
 Ridgeway, with his fainting head upon her breast. 
 
 "'My boy, my poor, poor boy! who has done this? 1 
 Who indeed? His clothes were covered with dust; his 
 waistcoat was torn open ; and his handkerchief, wet with 
 the blood it could not staunch, fell from a cruel stab be- 
 neath his shoulder. 
 
 " ' Ridgeway, my poor boy ! tell me what has happened.' 
 
 " Ridgeway slowly opened his heavy blue-veined lid, 
 and gazed upon her. Presently a gleam of mischief came 
 into his dark eyes, a smile stole over his lips as he whis- 
 pered slowly, — 
 
 " It — was — your kiss — did it, Jenny dear ! I had for- 
 gotten — how high-priced the article was here. Never 
 mind, Jenny!' — he feebly raised her hand to his white 
 lips, — ' it was — worth it.' and fainted away. 
 
 Jenny started to her feet, and looked wildly around her. 
 Then, with a sudden resolution, she stooped over the insen- 
 sible man, and with one strong effort lifted him in her arms 
 as if he had been a child. When her father, a moment 
 later, rubbed his eyes and awoke from his sleep upon the 
 veranda, it was to. see a goddess, erect and triumphant, 
 striding toward the house with the helpless body of a man 
 lying across that breast where man had never lain before, — 
 a goddess, at whose imperious mandate he arose, and cast 
 open the doors before her. And then, when she had laid 
 her unconscious burden on the sofa, the goddess fled ; and 
 a woman, helpless and trembling, stood before him, — a 
 woman that cried out that she had ' killed him,' that she 
 was ' wicked, wicked !' and that, even saying so, staggered, 
 and fell beside her late burden. And all that Mr. Mc- 
 Closky could do was to feebly rub his beard, and say to 
 
208 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME. 
 
 himself vaguely and incoherently, that ' Jinny had fetched 
 him.'" 
 
 This humor is a subtle, penetrating, permeating 
 fluid. It moves with electric speed, is seen here and 
 there, at times when most unexpected and in the most 
 improbable places. It pierces the thickest disguises, 
 sounds invisible depths, lights with its flashes the 
 darkest spots, reveals fascinations under the most 
 forbidding forms, affords glimpses of beauty beneath 
 the most repulsive exteriors. It gives tongue to sor- 
 rows which a dumb animal vainly tries to express, 
 furnishes words for griefs which the speaking crea- 
 ture vainly strives to conceal, and the unsuccessful 
 efforts of each equally stimulate its pathetic moods. 
 It deals with incident rather than with character, 
 with situation rather than with sequence. It is in 
 some respects antagonistic to the logical faculty, and 
 the two, largely developed, are rarely found together. 
 When associated, each in strong force, they indicate 
 a great man, who, if he have also an inventive imagi- 
 nation, may create great things, great characters, 
 great poems, great dramas. If he be also a humor- 
 ist, his different moods are manifested, for the most 
 part, each in a different personage of his creation. 
 That which the truly creative genius moulds, as their 
 principal ingredients, into complete, consistent, and 
 original works, the mere humorist uses as the fresco- 
 painter does his colors, to set off and adorn, often 
 after a grotesque fashion, the dull interior or blank 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 209 
 
 walls of some existing structure, laying on light, 
 dark, or mixed tints as his fancy may prompt. He 
 does not infuse his moods into a creation at its con- 
 ception or at its birth ; he fits them to a thing in 
 being, something ready made to his hand, something 
 that is unconsciously peculiar, or that suggests hu- 
 morous peculiarities. Set in full play by a sugges- 
 tion, his whims may take a large range, may go 
 widely from the point of departure, may even bring 
 together a semblance of something newly made ; but 
 if analyzed, new substance in the apparition is found 
 to be wanting. It has no well-knit articulations, no 
 bony system, no solid flesh, no muscular action. 
 
 That Mr. Harte is a humorist has been sufficiently 
 shown. But he is* something more than this. That, 
 in his different moods, he sometimes manifests an 
 exquisite fancy, is plain to any reader of his works. 
 He has not yet demonstrated the possession of crea- 
 tive power in any high degree, but he has given 
 indications that he holds its germ, and that it may 
 be developed. He can make a statue, so enlarging 
 and idealizing the original that his work appears to 
 be his own invention. But he cannot, at any rate he 
 has not, composed a group, or given his statue any 
 obvious relation to any other, or to anything out- 
 side of itself. His stories are like the sketches and 
 studies which a painter might make ; but the great 
 painter's ability to construct of these studies a well- 
 arranged composition, with a true interdependence of 
 parts and a unity of purpose, to the accomplishment 
 
210 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 and significance of which every stroke of the brush 
 contributes something, he has not displayed. In his 
 metrical as well as in his prose stories, he shows a 
 certain kind of dramatic faculty. He has a quick 
 perception of what is called a dramatic situation, 
 especially that kind of situation suitable to melo- 
 drama. But with the working up of one such scene 
 at a time his purpose ends ; the scene leads to nothing 
 beyond, has no necessary connection with anything 
 that precedes. Generally it is complete in itself, and 
 has clearly-defined outlines. Generally, also, it has 
 distinct, well-regulated, and vigorous action. This, 
 however, is of the simplest kind, beginning and 
 ending with the catastrophe. 
 
 He has a keen and infallible eye for a rough dia- 
 mond, and great skill in polishing it. All its facets 
 are made to reflect some shade of his humor. If the 
 diamond be very much soiled, or even somewhat 
 scarred and broken, so much the better for him ; its 
 inherent qualities are all the brighter by contrast. 
 He had the good fortune early in life to go where 
 such gems were found very rough, if discovered at 
 all, and where no one but himself was able to per- 
 ceive their worth, to cut them out of their unclean- 
 ness, and give them an advantageous setting. He 
 perceived that a rich mine of strange, strong, stirring 
 novelties was unearthed, and he had the taste and 
 judgment to prize them at their just valuation. As, 
 with the indifference of familiarity, they were thrown 
 out and disregarded by all sorts of explorers, he 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 211 
 
 gathered them up, prepared them for the foreign 
 market, like a merchant who knew their worth, and 
 expected from them large and honorable profits. He 
 especially delights in showing some touching humor- 
 ous trait in an imbecile, a drunkard, a gambler, or a 
 fallen woman. When in a pathetic mood he takes 
 them up, breaks the hard crust of degradation with 
 which they are covered and in a measure concealed, 
 washes away the filth, sometimes with tears, and at 
 the last moment reveals a human soul redeemed and 
 lighted by some divine attribute : 
 
 " ' Do you think,' said Mrs. Tretherick with an embar- 
 rassed voice and a prodigious blush, looking down, and 
 addressing the fiery curls just visible in the folds of her 
 dress, — 1 do you think you will be " dood" if I let you stay 
 in here and sit with me ?' 
 
 " ' And let me tall you mamma?' queried Carry, look- 
 ing up. 
 
 " ' And, let you call me mamma !' assented Mrs. Treth- 
 erick with an embarrassed laugh. 
 " 1 Yeth,' said Carry, promptly. 
 
 " They entered the bedroom together. Carry's eye in- 
 stantly caught sight of the trunk. 
 
 " ' Are you dowin away adain, mamma ?' she said with 
 a quick, nervous look, and a clutch at the woman's dress. 
 
 " ' No-o,' said Mrs. Tretherick, looking out of the win- 
 dow. 
 
 " ' Only playing your dowin away,' suggested Carry with 
 a laugh. ' Let me play too.' 
 
 " Mrs. Tretherick assented. Carry flew into the next 
 room, and presently reappeared, dragging a small trunk, 
 
212 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 into which she gravely proceeded to paek her clothes. Mrs. 
 Tretherick noticed that they were not many. A question 
 or two regarding them brought out some further replies 
 from the child ; and, before many minutes had elapsed, Mrs. 
 Tretherick was in possession of all her earlier history. But, 
 to do this, Mrs. Tretherick had been obliged to take Carry 
 upon her lap, pending the most confidential disclosures. 
 They sat thus a long time after Mrs. Tretherick had appa- 
 rently ceased to be interested in Carry's disclosures ; and, 
 when lost in thought, she allowed the child to rattle on 
 unheeded, and ran her fingers through the scarlet curls. 
 
 " 1 You don't hold me right, mamma,' said Carry at last, 
 after one or two uneasy shiftings of position. 
 
 " ' How should I hold you?' asked Mrs. Tretherick with 
 a half-amused, half-embarrassed laugh. 
 
 " 1 Dis way,' said Carry, curling up into position, with 
 one arm around Mrs. Tretherick's neck, and her cheek rest- 
 ing on her bosom, — 1 dis way, — dere.' After a little pre- 
 paratory nestling, not unlike some small animal, she closed 
 her eyes, and went to sleep. 
 
 " For a few moments the woman sat silent, scarcely 
 daring to breathe in that artificial attitude. And then, 
 whether from some occult sympathy in the touch, or God 
 best knows what, a sudden fancy began to thrill her. She 
 began by remembering an old pain that she had forgotten, 
 an old horror that she had resolutely put away all these 
 years. She recalled days of sickness and distrust, — days of 
 an overshadowing fear, — days of preparation for something 
 that was to be prevented, that was prevented, with mortal 
 agony and fear. She thought of a life that might have 
 been, — she dared not say had been, — and wondered. It 
 was six years ago : if it had lived it would have been as 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 213 
 
 old as Carry. The arms which were folded loosely around 
 the sleeping child began to tremble and tighten their clasp. 
 And then the deep potential impulse came, and with a half- 
 sob, half-sigh, she threw her arms out, and drew the body 
 of the sleeping child down, down, into her breast, — down 
 again and again as if she would hide it in the grave dug 
 there years before. And the gust that shook her passed, 
 and then, ah me ! the rain." 
 
 Mrs. Tretherick is one of the most respectable 
 personages of her sex to be met with in Mr. Harte's 
 works. Mrs. Decker is an unfaithful wife and a 
 detestable woman ; so is Mrs. Brown ; so is Mrs. 
 Skaggs; so is Jenny's mother. The mother of 
 " The Luck of Roaring Camp/' the mother of Tom 
 in the " Idyl of Red Gulch/' the motherly Miggles, 
 the " Outcasts of Poker Flat/' and others belong to 
 a class which cannot be mentioned in polite society. 
 Mr. John Oakhurst and Jack Hamlin are gamblers. 
 Col. Starbottle is a repulsively vulgar pretender to 
 the character of a chivalrous gentleman ; he is, more- 
 over, a drunkard and a duellist. Old Man Plunket 
 is a sot; so is Johnson, one of Mrs. Skaggs's hus- 
 bands. " The Fool of Five Forks" seems to be little 
 better than an imbecile, as does also " The Man of 
 No Account." 
 
 When these subjects pass in review, you are tempted 
 to ask whether what has been said of Sterne is true 
 of Mr. Harte : " If he goes into dirty places, it is 
 because they are forbidden, and not frequented. 
 What he seeks there is singularity and scandal. The 
 
 1!) 
 
JIOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 allurement of this forbidden fruit is not the fruit, 
 but the prohibition ; for he bites by preference where 
 the fruit is withered or worm-eaten. " Seeing, how- 
 ever, that in most of these personages he contrives 
 to uncover some generous or noble quality that has 
 escaped destruction or degradation, you may be in- 
 clined to answer your own query by the assertion 
 that uncommon humanity in the author, a magnan- 
 imity unrestrained by conventionalities, and not 
 blinded by prejudices, dictated his choice of charac- 
 ters. This, probably, is true to some extent ; but the 
 stronger reason for the use of such subjects is, doubt- 
 less, the fact that their originals, at any rate their 
 suggestions, surrounded him on every side in Cali- 
 fornia as it was when the seeds of these tales were 
 planted in his mind. He did not create ; he chose 
 from what was ready to his hand that which appealed 
 most directly to his humor. 
 
 Mr. Harte's verses have the same general char- 
 acter as his prose. In metrical composition, however, 
 his humor has not free play. His fancy is restrained 
 by the laws of versification; he is hampered by 
 rhythm and rhyme. The use of slang and the vio- 
 lation of grammatical rules are what he improperly 
 dignifies by the appellation, dialect. The disregard 
 of all canons of elegant composition, which the 
 employment of such dialect permits, gives wider and 
 freer scope to the humorist's whims ; and thus it hap- 
 pens that, so far as breadth of conception and treat- 
 ment, vigor and liveliness are concerned, some of his 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 215 
 
 best metrical writings may be found in this class. 
 Even were there a greater deficiency of poetic quali- 
 ties in the works of this sort, the strangeness and the 
 boldness of their style would, in large measure, pre- 
 vent its detection by the ordinary reader : 
 
 " Beautiful ! Sir, you may say so. Thar isn't her match 
 
 in the county. 
 Is thar, old gal, — Chiquita, my darling, my beauty ? 
 Feel of that neck, sir, — thar's velvet ! Whoa ! Steady, — 
 
 ah, will you, you vixen ! 
 Whoa ! I say. Jack, trot her out ; let the gentleman 
 
 look at her paces. 
 
 " Morgan ! — She ain't nothin' else, and I've got the papers 
 to prove it. 
 
 Sired by Chippewa Chief, and twelve hundred dollars 
 
 won't buy her. 
 Briggs of Tuolumne owned her. Did you know Briggs 
 
 of Tuolumne? — 
 Busted hisself in White Pine, and blew out his brains 
 
 down in 'Frisco ? 
 
 " Hedn't no savey — hed Briggs. Thar, Jack! that'll do, — 
 
 quit that foolin' ! 
 Nothin' to what she kin do, when she's got her work cut 
 
 out before her. 
 Hosses is hosses, you know, and likewise, too, jockeys is 
 
 jockeys ; 
 
 And 't ain't ev'ry man as can ride as knows what a hoss 
 has got in him. 
 
216 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 " Know the old ford on the Fork, that nearly got Flanigan's 
 
 leaders ? 
 
 Nasty in daylight, you bet, and a mighty rough ford in 
 low water ! 
 
 Well, it ain't six weeks ago that me and the Jedge and 
 his nevey 
 
 Struck for that ford in the night, in the rain, and the 
 water all round us ; 
 
 " Up to our flanks in the gulch, and Eattlesnake creek just 
 a bilin', 
 
 Not a plank left in the dam, and nary a bridge on the 
 river. 
 
 I had the gray, and the Jedge had his roan, and his nevey, 
 Chiquita ; 
 
 And after us trundled the rocks jest loosed from the top 
 of the canon. 
 
 " Lickity, lickity, switch, we came to the ford, and Chiquita 
 Buckled right down to her work, and afore I could yell to 
 her rider, 
 
 Took water jest at the ford, and there was the Jedge and 
 me standing, 
 
 And twelve hundred dollars of hoss-flesh afloat, and a 
 driftin' to thunder ! 
 
 "Would ye b'lieve it? that night that hoss, that ar' filly, 
 Chiquita, 
 
 Walked herself into her stall, and stood there, all quiet 
 and drippin' : 
 
 Clean as a beaver or rat, with nary a buckle of harness, 
 Just as she swam the Fork, — that hoss, that ar' filly, 
 Chiquita. 
 
these a unions. 
 
 217 
 
 " That's what I call a hoss ! and — What did you say ? — 
 Oh, the nevey? 
 Drownded, I reckon, — leastways, he never kem back to 
 deny it. 
 
 Ye see the derned fool had no seat, — ye couldn't have 
 
 made him a rider ; 
 And then, ye know, boys will be boys, and hosses — well, 
 
 hosses is hosses !" 
 
 You cannot fail to notice the movement in these 
 lines, the rush of the riders, the rocks rolling behind 
 them, the fall of the rain, the mad plunge of the 
 filly, the sweeping current, the swift coming home. 
 You perceive how vividly the scene is presented, and 
 with how few words ; how little is actually told, how 
 much suggested. Two of the suggestions especially 
 strike you : the care for the filly, the carelessness 
 for the man. You know that such indifference was 
 characteristic of the society that was then in Califor- 
 nia, and is not a poetic invention; and you know that 
 such tender care of a horse may be seen wherever 
 are jockeys. You discern likewise how much the 
 artist's task is diminished by the use of these broken 
 sentences, these dashes, exclamation and interroga- 
 tion points, by these suggestions, in fact. In his 
 more conventional versification, want of smoothness, 
 melody, and the decorations of fancy are readily 
 perceived. Verse-writing is only another process by 
 which he works the rich ores found in his California 
 mine; the subjects chosen for poetic treatment are 
 very much like those selected for prose. 
 
 19* 
 
218 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 " Drunk and senseless in his place, 
 Prone and sprawling on his face, 
 More like brute than any man 
 
 Alive or dead — - 
 By his great pump out of gear, 
 Lay the peon engineer, 
 Waking only just to hear, 
 
 Overhead, 
 Angry tones that called his name, 
 Oaths and cries of bitter blame — 
 Waked to hear all this, and waking turned and fled ! 
 
 " 1 To the man who'll bring to me,' 
 Cried Intendant Harry Lee, — 
 Harry Lee, the English foreman of the mine, — 
 ' Bring the sot alive or dead, 
 I will give to him,' he said, 
 ' Fifteen hundred pesos down, 
 Just to set the rascal's crown 
 Underneath this heel of mine : 
 
 Since but death 
 Deserves the man whose deed, 
 Be it vice or want of heed, 
 Stops the pumps that give us breath, — 
 Stops the pumps that suck the death 
 From the poisoned lower levels of the mine !' 
 
 " No one answered, lor a cry 
 From the shaft rose up on high ; 
 And shuffling, scrambling, tumbling from below, 
 Came the miners each, the bolder 
 Mounting on the weaker's shoulder, 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 219 
 
 Grappling, clinging to their hold or 
 
 Letting go, 
 As the weaker gasped and fell 
 From the ladder to the well, — 
 To the poisoned pit of hell 
 
 Down below ! 
 
 " 1 To the man who sets them free,' 
 
 Cried the foreman, Harry Lee, — 
 Harry Lee, the English foreman of the mine, — 
 
 ' Brings them out and sets them free, 
 
 I will give that man,' said he, 
 
 1 Twice that sum, who with a rope 
 
 Face to face with Death shall cope. 
 
 Let him come who dares to hope !' 
 
 1 Hold your peace !' some one replied, 
 
 Standing by the foreman's side ; 
 ' There has one already gone, whoe'er he be !' 
 
 " Then they held their breath with awe, 
 
 Pulling on the rope, and saw 
 
 Fainting figures reappear, 
 
 On the black rope swinging clear, 
 Fastened by some skilful hand from below ; 
 
 Till a score the level gained, 
 
 And but one alone remained, — 
 
 He the hero and the last, 
 
 He whose skilful hand made fast 
 The long line that brought them back to hope and cheer ! 
 
 " Haggard, gasping, down dropped he 
 At the feet of Harry Lee, — 
 
220 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 Harry Lee, the English foreman of the mine; 
 ' I have come,' he gasped, 1 to claim 
 Both rewards. Senor, my name 
 
 Is Ramon ! 
 I'm the drunken engineer, — 
 
 I'm the coward, Senor ' Here 
 
 He fell over by that sign 
 
 Dead as stone !" 
 
 It is hardly needful to call attention to the con- 
 trast as to freedom and strength, terseness and vi- 
 vacity, between these verses and the story of Chiquita; 
 or to comment upon the plain diffuseness, repetitions, 
 tautologies, and puerilities into which the necessity 
 for logical continuity of thought and the constraints 
 of more conventional versification have forced the 
 author. 
 
 He delights in melodramatic characters, melodra- 
 matic costumes, melodramatic surprises, emotions, 
 effects. He never rises to the dignity of tragic pas- 
 sion, rarely preserves, even for a short time, the re- 
 pose of the idyl, only occasionally touches what, in 
 the narrower sense of the term, is called sentimental, 
 and then most briefly. Not infrequently he gives 
 graphic and tasteful sketches of natural scenery, 
 which are never too minute, never too much pro- 
 longed. Nevertheless, the stage on which his per- 
 sonages move is, for the most part, decorated with 
 melodramatic adjuncts, bright colors, harsh contrasts, 
 lime lights, red fire, storms, floods, caverns, preci- 
 pices. 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 221 
 
 " We checked our pace, — the red road sharply rounding ; 
 We heard the troubled flow 
 Of the dark olive depths of pines, resounding 
 A thousand feet below. 
 
 " Above the tumult of the canon lifted, 
 
 The gray hawk breathless hung ; 
 Or on the hill a winged shadow drifted 
 
 Where furze and thorn-bush clung : 
 
 " Or where half-way the mountain side was furrowed 
 With many a seam and scar ; 
 Or some abandoned tunnel dimly burrowed, — 
 A mole hill seen so far. 
 
 " We looked in silence down across the distant 
 Unfathomable reach : 
 A silence broken by the guide's consistent 
 And realistic speech. 
 
 " c Walker of Murphy's blew a hole through Peters 
 For telling him he lied ; 
 Then up and dusted out of South Hornitos 
 Across the long Divide. 
 
 " ' We run him out of Strong's, and up through Eden, 
 And 'cross the ford below ; 
 And up this canon (Peters' brother leadin'), 
 And me and Clark and Joe. 
 
 " 1 He fou't us game : somehow, I disremember 
 Jest how the thing kem round ; 
 Some say 'twas wadding, some a scattered ember 
 From fires on the ground. 
 
222 
 
 110 W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 " 1 But in one minute all the hill below him 
 Was just one sheet of flame ; 
 Guardin' the crest, Sam Clark and I called to him. 
 And, — well, the dog was game ! 
 
 " ' lie made no sign : the fires of hell were round him, 
 The pit of hell below. 
 We sat and waited, but we never found him ; 
 And — then we turned to go. 
 
 " 1 And then — you see that rock that's grown so bristly 
 With chaparral and tan — 
 Suthin' crep' out : it might hev been a grizzly, 
 It might hev been a man ; 
 
 " ' Suthin 1 that howled, and gnashed its teeth and shouted 
 In smoke and dust and flame ; 
 Suthin' that sprang into the depths about it, 
 Grizzly or man, — but game ! 
 
 " ' That's all. Well, yes, it does look rather risky, 
 And kinder makes one queer 
 And dizzy looking down. A drop of whiskey 
 Ain't a bad thing right here !' " 
 
 In all this author's writings the continued and 
 often very strong and rapid movement is character- 
 istic of a humorist's fancy, which, when his atten- 
 tion is aroused, can never be kept at rest. 
 
 His diction, both in prose and verse, is not rich, 
 his vocabulary not large. He is often at a loss for 
 synonymes, and repetitions of the same words and 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 phrases are sometimes so frequent as to attract the 
 reader's attention. In each kind of writing he so 
 uses the language at his command that his meaning 
 is, at least generally, expressed with force. His pic- 
 tures are strong, clearly and sharply denned, very 
 rarely encumbered or confused by even the lightest 
 superfluous strokes. If he cannot create or construct 
 largely, he has unusual skill in augmenting and 
 coloring, in bringing salient points into high relief. 
 Yet when reading his metrical compositions you feel 
 the want of genuine poetic enthusiasm ; you miss 
 the grace and the sweep of truly poetic imagination ; 
 you perceive that the stanzas are not the irrepressible 
 product of teeming inspiration. 
 
 His prose is, in almost every respect, better than 
 his verse. In both kinds of work he constantly ex- 
 hibits the same characteristics, and the same limita- 
 tions. These are not such as circumscribe and 
 distinguish the great poet or novelist; but they 
 clearly indicate a high order and exquisite kind of 
 humorist. 
 
224 
 
 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 A SON WHO WOULD EMULATE HIS FATHER. 
 
 Nobility obliges. The son of a noble father 
 should be noble; the son of a gifted father should 
 have gifts. Such is the reasonable or unreasonable 
 sentiment of mankind, and, to a certain degree, this 
 sentiment becomes a rule by which the judgment is 
 more or less guided in determining the merit and 
 rank of a great man's son, so far as his qualities are 
 indicated by his doings. Though the rule may be 
 rational, it is often irrationally applied. For the 
 public, frequently the critics also, who sit in judg- 
 ment on the son, do not ask whether he does well, 
 or whether he does as his father did at the same age, 
 but whether the boy's first attempts are equal to the 
 sire's most perfect achievements. They test the 
 son's beginnings by the father's endings. Uncon- 
 sciously or otherwise, this rule is used more or less 
 in judging the works of Mr. Julian Hawthorne. 
 His father's name holds a lofty place on the roll of 
 American men of genius. His best works have 
 become the standard by which the achievements of 
 a Hawthorne are to- be estimated. It is forgotten 
 that "after quitting college he resided many years 
 in Salem, leading a solitary life of meditation and 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 225 
 
 study, a recluse from his own household, walking 
 out by night and passing the day alone in his room, 
 writing wild tales, most of which he burned, and 
 some of which, in newspapers, magazines, and an- 
 nuals, led a wandering, uncertain, and mostly unno- 
 ticed life"; that in 1832, when he was twenty -eight 
 years old, " he published in Boston an anonymous 
 romance, which he has never since claimed, and 
 which the public have not been able to identify." It 
 is not known, at least not remembered, that his 
 " Twice-Told Tales," published when he was thirty- 
 three years old, attracted little attention from the 
 general public, although " the book was noticed with 
 high praise in the North American Revieio by Mr. 
 Longfellow, who pronounced it the work of a man 
 of genius and of a true poet." Mr. Nathaniel Haw- 
 thorne was forty-two years old when he published 
 u Mosses from an Old Manse," and forty-six when 
 the public was stirred by " ' The Scarlet Letter/ a 
 powerful romance of early New England life, which 
 became at once exceedingly popular, and established 
 for its author a high and wide-spread reputation." 
 
 Now, if the stature of the son is to be gauged 
 by that of the father, it is but fair that the measure- 
 ments which are to be compared should be taken at 
 the same period of life. The size and strength of 
 the boy should not be contrasted, to his disadvan- 
 tage, with that of the full-grown man. A more 
 catholic method of criticism, however, would be to 
 judge the works of both by a broad and universal 
 
 20 
 
22G 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 standard, estimating each according to its individual 
 merits. After such a method should we examine 
 " Idolatry/' Mr. Julian Hawthorne's book, recently 
 published, and criticise it as a romance and as a 
 literary work. 
 
 This book bears certain general family resem- 
 blances to the composition of the elder Hawthorne ; 
 but whether these result from a filial desire to 
 honor, by imitating, a worthy sire, or are inherited 
 characteristic features of the young author's mind, 
 cannot yet be determined. He shows a strong de- 
 sire to invest his story with a certain wildness; to 
 suggest in it something phantasmal; to surround it 
 with a weird atmosphere, made at times even a little 
 lurid; to render it mysterious. But he either does 
 not comprehend the difference between the strong 
 and the weak, the artistic and the non-artistic, the 
 right and the wrong way of making a mystery, or 
 he is, as yet, unable to choose and to use the right 
 and to reject the wrong. A painting may be mys- 
 terious if its outlines and the subjects of which it is 
 composed are so badly distinguished that the specta- 
 tor cannot discover the nature, size, and shape of the 
 objects, the purpose of the colors, or the painter's 
 design. But such mystery is unattractive, unartistic, 
 does not produce the proper effect of mystery, only 
 excites indifference or contempt. Another painting 
 may be mysterious, that is, it may accomplish the 
 purpose of mystery when so used, namely, to awaken 
 what is called mysterious awe, by portraying with 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 227 
 
 striking distinctness beings of themselves mysterious, 
 but so well delineated that their apparent reality 
 causes in the beholder a certain awful dread, or a 
 kind of agreeable terror. Those who would deal 
 with the mysterious should have the magical power 
 to master and command it; should be able to give it 
 form, and consistency of character and action ; other- 
 wise it overwhelms them, and they share the fate of 
 presuming dabblers in the black art. So far as this 
 particular matter is concerned the work of the 
 author of " Idolatry" is more like the first than the 
 second painting mentioned. He seems not yet to 
 have obtained the mastery of such powers as he 
 owns. They are too apt to carry him headlong first 
 in one direction, then in another. He has not ac- 
 quired the skill, if he possesses the strength, to 
 guide the chariot which his father conducted with 
 so steady a hand. While preparing to set out he is 
 jaunty, flippant, apparently quite at his ease; shakes 
 the reins gayly, seems assured of the mastery, ap- 
 pears to have the steeds under control. So long as 
 this seeming control lasts he is not in earnest, some- 
 what vauntingly displays his insincerity, wants the 
 spectators to understand that he is not seriously 
 going into the business of driving the fiery horses, 
 is about to handle the ribbons for a lark. But 
 when, after these preliminaries, he mounts the car 
 and is launched in full career, he is more in earnest, 
 addresses himself more seriously to the work; but 
 the control is gone. Bunyan, De Foe, and others 
 
228 
 
 J10W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 have dealt with fables, mysteries, and improbabili- 
 ties in such a way as to make them appear probable 
 and plain, with the force and interest of realities. 
 But they were thoroughly zealous, ostensibly believed 
 all that they related, gave due heed to cause and 
 effect, to logical sequence therefore, made their 
 microcosms consistent, harmonious, complete; mat- 
 ters in regard to which Mr. Julian Hawthorne is 
 far too negligent. 
 
 Even when about to introduce his talisman he 
 takes pains to disenchant his readers by constantly 
 appearing in his own proper person, walks up and 
 down and sings, that they shall hear he is not afraid, 
 tells them plainly himself that he is no lion, but 
 only Snug, the joiner : 
 
 " Story-tellers labor under one disadvantage which is 
 peculiar to their profession, — the necessity of omniscience. 
 This tends to make them too arbitrary, leads them to dis- 
 regard the modesty of nature and the harmonies of reason 
 in their methods. They will pretend to know things which 
 they never could have seen or heard of, and for the truth 
 of which they bring forward no evidence ; thus forcing the 
 reader to reject, as lacking proper confirmation, what he 
 would else, from its inherent grace or sprightliness, be 
 happy to accept." 
 
 This talisman is a ring, a diamond ring, a very 
 beautiful ring, if you please, but as handled by Mr. 
 Hawthorne a useless and very clumsy piece of ma- 
 chinery. A story-teller's necessary omniscience with 
 all its disadvantages would have served him much 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 229 
 
 better. The constant juxtaposition and intermixture 
 of commonplace fact and palpable fiction, of moral 
 and philosophical platitudes, uttered in the author's 
 own person, and poetic fancies embodied in the story 
 render the work incongruous, somewhat chaotic, 
 altogether inartistic. This story is emphatically one 
 in which nothing commonplace should be suggested ; 
 which, as much as possible, should move independ- 
 ent of trite facts; which should whirl the reader 
 along its own orbit, making him forget essays, homi- 
 lies, philosophies, realities. The fable itself is fan- 
 tastic. But it is mixed with matter not at all ideal, 
 quite ponderous and cumbersome, as much out of 
 place as would be a moral, metaphysical, theological, 
 or philosophical disquisition, or an essay on hair in 
 a story of the Arabian Nights spoken by the narrator 
 in her own character. Freed of such matter, more 
 clearly defined and more equably upheld, it would 
 be a stirring and thrilling invention. Now it is 
 rather evidence of undeveloped inventive power 
 than an achievement by such power. The author 
 sometimes rises to a high plane of ingenuity, but, as 
 yet, cannot sustain himself there. He soars, falls 
 fluttering to the earth, soars again, and again de- 
 scends. It is a hopeful sign that he sometimes 
 seems to be conscious of this deficiency of strength ; 
 not hopeful that he resorts to weak and unfit devices 
 to conceal it. When he envelops his tale in a fog, 
 throws around it the mystery of obscurity, even en- 
 deavors to excite terror spite of all his assurances 
 20* 
 
230 
 
 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 that there is nothing supernatural in his world, 
 brings forward a character shrouded in a mist and 
 says : look out! probably this may be the devil ! he 
 displays rather than conceals weakness. When ha, 
 even at the end, leaves the reader in doubt as to the 
 parentage of Gnulemah, forces him to search back 
 for hints obscurely thrown out relative to a substitu- 
 tion of children, makes such substitution more doubt- 
 ful by the improbability that a father would not 
 observe the difference between his own and another 
 child at the age of one year, keeps the whole thing 
 on the verge of incomprehensibility, he excites dis- 
 content rather than satisfaction. And the matter is 
 aggravated by the unlikely bewilderment, not to say 
 stupidity, of the bank president, the fogginess through 
 which the author has seen fit to make such insinua- 
 tions as he deemed sufficient in regard to the fraud- 
 ulent exchange of babies. 
 — 
 
 The author's carelessness or hardihood in writing 
 out his story corresponds to the cleverness or bold- 
 ness of his conceptions. The action of his drama 
 passes twenty years ago. It is related to-day. And 
 speaking as of to-day, the writer says, — 
 
 " "Whoever has been in Boston remembers, or has seen, 
 the old Beacon Hill Bank, which stood, not on Beacon 
 Hill, indeed, but in that part of School Street now occupied 
 by the City Hall." 
 
 The City Hall mentioned was placed where it is 
 certainly not much less than twenty years ago, and 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 231 
 
 whoever has been in Boston only since then can 
 neither have seen nor remember the old Beacon Hill 
 Bank. 
 
 Of boldness, recklessness, want of discrimination, 
 and bad taste in the use of words, the following cita- 
 tions will suffice as an illustration : 
 
 " Seems, as we speak, we glimpse his majestic figure.' 5 
 " But sometimes — as now — let him glimpse the truth." 
 
 "On getting out of the harbor she steamed into a 
 bank of solid fog," and must have stuck fast for a 
 time, although it does not appear that she carried 
 away even her bowsprit by the shock, for she " only 
 got out of it the next morning." 
 
 " The voice replied, with a subdued gusto." 
 
 What kind of a voice is that which replies with 
 a subdued relish of anything? 
 
 " For his Berserker blood, which boiled only at heaven- 
 and-hell temperature." 
 
 From this expression it would be inferred that the 
 temperatures of heaven and of hell are at the same 
 degree, which is unquestionably heterodox ; or that 
 the temperature at which. Berserker blood boils is 
 that mean heat which would be obtained by a thor- 
 ough intermixture of the caloric existing in both 
 regions. 
 
 i: During which the old fellow closely scrutinized his in- 
 tending passenger from head to foot." 
 
232 
 
 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 If this person was " intending" to be, lie was not 
 yet a " passenger if he was already a u passenger" 
 he was not " intending" to become one. 
 
 " Quantities of red granite and many blocks of precious 
 marbles were understood to be using in the work." 
 
 Using what ? 
 
 " Scarce two minutes since their meeting, yet perhaps a 
 large proportion of their lives had meanwhile been charmed 
 away." 
 
 Here the author commits the vulgar error of using 
 " proportion" in the sense of portion. If in the last 
 citation the word " proportion" receives its proper 
 meaning, the whole sentence becomes nonsense. 
 
 " Balder knew not what to make of the look she gleamed 
 at him." 
 
 Here gleam, like glimpse, as cited above, is used 
 as an active verb. 
 
 " ' Hatred !' repeated Gnulemah, dislikingly ; ' hatred, — 
 what is it? : " 
 
 " ' It is within possibility for a man to believe himself 
 wicked, while his actual conduct is ridiculously blameless, 
 even praiseworthy !" 
 
 Which is equivalent to saying that blamelessness 
 may be worthy of ridicule — certainly an immoral 
 sentiment. 
 
 Instead of a calm and simple diction most apt to 
 give an air of truth to his fiction, and impose upon 
 the reader the effect of candor, the author's style is 
 often turgid, frequently strained : 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 233 
 
 " His soul — his own no longer — was bestridden by a 
 frantic demon, who, brimming over with hot glee, drove 
 him whirling blindly on, with an ever-growing purpose that 
 surcharged each smallest artery, and furnished a condensed 
 dart of malice wherewith to stab and stab again the op- 
 posing soul.' 5 
 
 " One tires of the best society, uncondimented with an 
 occasional foreign relish, even of doubtful digestibility." 
 
 The injudicious use of a violent ellipsis sometimes 
 shocks the sensitive reader : 
 " He was more true than had he tried to be so." 
 " But there is ever a warning voice for who will listen." 
 
 In spite of its many and glaring faults and its 
 obvious deficiencies, the book is one that promises 
 much for its author in the future, if he will but de- 
 velop, strengthen, master his powers. He has the 
 disposition of an artist; let him become one. The 
 very attempt at what, this time, he has but partially 
 achieved, namely, a well- told fantastic tale, original 
 and novel, is itself praiseworthy and encouraging. 
 He has a strong imagination which wants discipline; 
 some logical force, which needs strengthening. He 
 has a poetic fancy which should be placed under the 
 guidance of good judgment. As it stands, his story 
 is interesting; some parts of it to an uncommon 
 degree. He can make a good simile : 
 
 " ' The weight that made it fall is of the earth,' said Bal- 
 der (both he and Gnulemah had been watching the petal's 
 course). 1 The breeze that buoyed it up was from heaven, 
 and so it is with man. Were there no heavenly support, 
 
234 
 
 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 he would fall at once, but whether or not, he always tends 
 to fall.' " 
 
 He sometimes states clearly a profound truth : 
 " Properly speaking, there is no mystery about men, but 
 only a great dulness and lethargy in our perceptions of 
 them. The secret of the universe is no more a secret than 
 is the answer to a school-boy's problem. A mathematician 
 will draw you a triangle and a circle, and show you the 
 trigonometrical science latent therein. But a profounder 
 mathematician would do as much with the equation man !" 
 
 He is able to give a good, graphic, glowing descrip- 
 tion of a pretty girl : 
 
 " Hereupon was heard within a quick rustling movement; 
 the curtain was thrust aside, and a youthful woman issued 
 forth amongst the warm plants. She was within a few feet 
 of Balder Helwyse before seeming to realize his presence. 
 She caught herself motionless in an instant. The sparkle 
 of laughter in her eye sank in a black depth of wonder. 
 Her eyes filled themselves with Balder as a lake is filled with 
 sunshine ; and he, the man of the world and philosopher, 
 could only return her gaze in voiceless admiration. 
 
 " Were a face and form of primal perfection to appear 
 among men, might not its divine originality repel an ordi- 
 nary observer, used to consider beautiful such abortions of 
 the Creator's design as sin and degeneration have produced? 
 Not easily can one imagine what a real man or woman 
 would look like. Painting nor sculpture can teach us ; we 
 must learn, if at all, from living, electric flesh and blood. 
 
 " This young woman was tall and erect with youthful 
 majesty. She stood like the rejoicing upgush of a living 
 fountain. Her contour was subtile with womanly power, — 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 235 
 
 suggesting the spring of the panther, the glide of the 
 serpent. ^Warm she seemed from the bosom of nature. 
 One felt from her the influence of trees, the calm of 
 meadows, the high freedom of the blue air, the happiness 
 of hills. She might have been the sister of the sun. 
 
 " The moulding finger of God seemed freshly to have 
 touched her face. It was simple and harmonious as a 
 chord of music, yet inexhaustible in its variety. It recalled 
 no other face, yet might be seen in it the germs of a mighty 
 nation, that should begin from her, and among a myriad 
 resemblances evolve no perfect duplicate. No angel's coun- 
 tenance, but warmest human clay, which must undergo 
 some change before reaching heaven. The Sphinx, before 
 the gloom of her riddle had dimmed her primal joy, — be- 
 fore men vexed themselves to unravel God's webs from 
 without instead of from within, — might have looked thus ; 
 or such perhaps was Iris in the first flush of her divinity, — 
 fresh from him who made her immortally young and fair. 
 
 " Balder's eyes could not frankly hold their own against 
 her gaze of awful simplicity. All he had ever done amiss 
 arose and put him to the blush. Nevertheless, he would not 
 admit his inferiority ; instead of dropping his eyes he closed 
 the soul behind them, and sharpened them with a shallow, 
 out-striking light. Without understanding the change, she 
 felt it and was troubled. Loftily majestic as were her form 
 and features, she was feminine to the core, — tender and 
 finely perceptive. The incisive masculine gaze abashed her." 
 
 This passage is one of the most favorable illustra- 
 tions of the author's skill, diction, grasp of thought, 
 fancy, which the book affords. He is capable of 
 making himself a successful, possibly a great writer. 
 
236 
 
 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 MR. MOTLEY'S LATEST HISTORY. 
 
 Mr. Motley's last work, published in two vol- 
 umes, under the title, "The Life and Death of 
 John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, with a 
 view of the primary causes and movements of the 
 Thirty Years' War," is a historical rather than bio- 
 graphical composition. The author has clearly stated 
 the purpose with which he wrote : 
 
 " This work aims at being a political study. I would 
 attempt to exemplify the influence of individual humors 
 and passions — some of them among the highest and others 
 certainly the basest that agitate humanity — upon the march 
 of great events, upon general historical results at certain 
 epochs, and upon the destiny of eminent personages. It 
 may also be not uninteresting to venture a glance into the 
 internal structure and workings of a republican and federal 
 system of government, then for the- first time reproduced 
 almost spontaneously upon an extended scale. Perhaps the 
 revelation of some of its defects, in spite of the faculty and 
 vitality struggling against them, may not be without value 
 for our own country and epoch. The system of Switzer- 
 land was too limited and homely, that of Venice too purely 
 oligarchical, to have much moral for us now, or to render 
 a study of their pathological phenomena especially instruct- 
 ive. The lessons taught us by the history of the Nether- 
 laud Confederacy may have more permanent meaning. 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 237 
 
 "Moreover, the character of a very considerable states- 
 man at an all-important epoch, and in a position of vast re- 
 sponsibility, is always an historical possession of value to 
 mankind. That of him who furnishes the chief theme for 
 these pages has been either overlooked and neglected or per- 
 haps misunderstood by posterity. History has not too many 
 really important and emblematic men on its records to dis- 
 pense with the memory of Barneveld, and the writer there- 
 fore makes no apology for dilating somewhat fully upon his 
 life-work by means of much of his entirely unpublished and 
 long-forgotten utterances." 
 
 These utterances, the secret correspondence of 
 Barneveld, letters of kings, princes, ambassadors, 
 and agents, State papers and other documents, re- 
 main, for the most part, out of the common reach in 
 the archives of Holland. They are unprinted ; till 
 within a short time they were wholly inaccessible, 
 and have rarely been read. The documents relating 
 to Barneveld's trial, if the proceeding against him 
 immediately before his death can be deemed worthy 
 of this designation, were for a long time hidden from 
 all eyes. The persons who were appointed to judge 
 him bound themselves by an oath to bury the record 
 of their transactions out of sight. That they had 
 reason to be ashamed of their work and to wish the 
 manner of it to be forgotten is plainly enough shown 
 by the documents themselves, a small portion of which 
 have been published by the Historical Society of 
 Utrecht. Mr. Motley has had free access to the 
 archives, gives many extracts therefrom and a synop- 
 
 21 
 
238 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 sis of Barneveld's examination sufficiently explicit to 
 make clear the iniquity of the Commissioners. The 
 testimony which the author has thus given to the 
 world is a valuable contribution to the history of a 
 deeply interesting period. 
 
 In a general way it has long been known that the 
 Grand Pensionary and Advocate of Holland was a 
 profound lawyer, a pure patriot, a great statesman, 
 and a trustful Christian. Mr. Motley's work, or 
 rather some portions of it, bring the reader into more 
 intimate relations with the much-calumniated hero — 
 for hero he was, consistent, persevering, undaunted. 
 Through his secret correspondence the private char- 
 acter of the man, the operations of his mind, the 
 aspirations of his heart, the prophetic forecast and 
 great scope of his powerful intellect are advan- 
 tageously displayed. 
 
 " The ever-teeming brain, the restless almost omnipresent 
 hand, the fertile pen, the eloquent and ready tongue, were 
 seen, heard, and obeyed by the great European public, by 
 the monarchs, statesmen, and warriors of the time, at many 
 critical moments of history, but it was not John of Barne- 
 veld that spoke to the world. Those ' high and puissant 
 lords my masters the States-General' personified the young 
 but already majestic republic. Dignified, draped, and con- 
 cealed by that overshadowing title the informing and master 
 spirit performed its never-ending task. 
 
 " Those who study the enormous masses of original pa- 
 pers in the archives of the country will be amazed to find 
 how the penmanship, most difficult to decipher, of the Ad- 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 239 
 
 vocate meets them at every turn. Letters to monarch 8, 
 generals, ambassadors, resolutions of councils, of sovereign 
 assemblies, of trading corporations, of great Indian compa- 
 nies, legal and historical disquisitions of great depth and 
 length on questions agitating Europe, constitutional argu- 
 ments, drafts of treaties among the leading powers of the 
 world, instructions to great commissions, plans for European 
 campaigns, vast combinations covering the world, alliances 
 of empire, scientific expeditions and discoveries — papers 
 such as these, covered now with the satirical dust of centu- 
 ries, written in the small, crabbed, exasperating characters 
 which make Barneveld's handwriting almost cryptographic, 
 were once, when fairly engrossed and sealed with the great 
 seal of the haughty burgher-aristocracy, the documents 
 which occupied the close attention of the Cabinets of 
 Christendom." t 
 
 The principal title of the work is a misnomer ; 
 since the author says very little of the first sixty 
 years of the Advocate's life, contenting himself with 
 stating some general facts and a reference to what 
 has been said of the great statesman in his " former 
 publications devoted to Netherland history f with 
 an occasional glance also into the last years of the 
 sixteenth century for some thread which he desires 
 to take up. He gives a general history of events in 
 Europe with which Barneveld was in some way 
 connected during the last ten years of his career, as 
 well as those which more or less immediately fore- 
 cast and precipitated his fate; those, also, which 
 made clear the Advocate's political prescience. In 
 a competent work professedly giving a general his- 
 
240 110 W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 tory of Europe from 1609 to 1619 Barneveld could 
 not fail to be one of the central and strongest 
 figures. In Mr. Motley's essay he is hardly more 
 than this. Of this fact, and of this impracticability 
 of separating his story from that of European 
 politics and wars, the author seems to have been 
 fully conscious. 
 
 " In a picture of the last decade of Barneveld's eventful 
 life his personality may come more distinctly forward per- 
 haps than in previous epochs. It will however be diffi- 
 cult to disentangle a single thread from the great historical 
 tapestry of the Republic and of Europe in which his life 
 and achievements are interwoven. He was a public man 
 in the fullest sense of the word, and without his presence 
 and influence the record of Holland, France, Spain, Brit- 
 ain, and Germany might have been essentially modified." 
 
 The convention by which Spain virtually acknowl- 
 edged the independence of the Dutch Republic, and 
 concluded with it a truce of twelve years, was signed 
 in the spring of 1609. At this point, when, as has 
 been intimated, Barneveld was more than sixty 
 years old, Mr. Motley takes up the story. At least 
 a quarter part of the whole work is chiefly occupied 
 with the doings of Henry IV. of France during the 
 last year of his existence, from the spring of 1609 to 
 the 14th of May, 1610 ; or rather " Henry of France 
 and Navarre — soldier, statesman, wit ; above all, a 
 man and every inch a king" — is the foremost per- 
 sonage on the scene, while the voice of Barneveld as 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 241 
 
 prompter is heard from time to time. Contrasted 
 with this personage, who could justly say of himself 
 in naming the three things which caused him to 
 speak freely to the Ambassadors of the States- 
 General, " I am a great king, and I say what I 
 choose/' is the little James I. of England, while 
 other kings, emperors, princes, dukes, electors, gen- 
 erals, churchmen, ambassadors, prepare their respect- 
 ive subordinate parts for the great tragedy of the 
 Thirty Years' War. From his post of observation, 
 the Advocate swept the scene which was bounded by 
 the horizon of Europe, and with clear foresight, con- 
 summate diplomatic skill, and untiring perseverance, 
 sought so to arrange, oppose, and control the per- 
 sonages as to bring to such a catastrophe as should 
 most conduce to civil and religious freedom the drama 
 about to begin. 
 
 " It was obvious to Barneveld that the issue of the 
 Cleve-Jiilich affair, and of the tremendous religious fermen- 
 tation in Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria, must sooner or 
 later lead to an immense war. It was inevitable that it 
 would devolve upon the States to sustain their great 
 though vacillating, their generous though encroaching, 
 their sincere though most irritating, ally. And yet, thor- 
 oughly as Barneveld had mastered all the complications 
 and perplexities of the religious and political question, 
 carefully as he had calculated the value of the opposing 
 forces which were shaking Christendom, deeply as he had 
 studied the characters of Matthias and Rudolph, of Charles 
 of Denmark and Ferdinand of Gratz, of Anhalt and Maxi- 
 21* 
 
242 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 milian, of Brandenburg and Neuburgh, of James and 
 Philip, of Paul V. and Charles Emmanuel, of Sully and 
 Villeroy, of Salisbury and Bacon, of Lerma and Infantado; 
 adroitly as he could measure, weigh, and analyze all these 
 elements in the great problem which was forcing itself on 
 the attention of Europe — there was one factor with which 
 it was difficult for this austere republican, this cold, unsus- 
 ceptible statesman, to deal: the intense and imperious pas- 
 sion of a graybeard for a woman of sixteen." 
 
 The history of this imperious passion is too ro- 
 mantic to be passed over lightly by the biographer of 
 Barneveld. Its effect was undoubtedly to give the 
 Advocate much annoyance and trouble, to render the 
 great king indecisive, apparently capricious, hard to 
 manage, or to hold firmly to a prescribed course. 
 Further than this it does not appear to have had 
 any direct bearing on the life or the fate of Barne- 
 veld. The death of Henry was certainly a great 
 calamity to the cause which he so loyally supported. 
 But it is far from certain that this imperious passion 
 had any influence upon that event. Other inde- 
 pendent and more potent causes were aiming at the 
 accomplishment of this crime. Yet the author lin- 
 gers over the love of Henry for Margaret Montmo- 
 rency, and the intrigues, adventures, quarrels, and 
 political combinations and ruptures which it pro- 
 duced, as if loth to leave so sentimental a subject for 
 the dryer details of diplomatic contests, religious 
 animosities, and personal hatreds which followed 
 after, in which the last years of the Advocate's life 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 243 
 
 were passed, and by which he was finally over- 
 whelmed. In spite of all his folles, the manliness 
 and kingliness of Henry plainly exercised a fascina- 
 tion on the author which led him to enter more 
 largely into this, to the ordinary reader, most inter- 
 esting portion of his work, than his avowed purpose 
 seemed to warrant; unless his chief purpose was "to 
 exemplify the influence of individual humors and 
 passions upon the march of great events," and not 
 to write the story of the life and death of John of 
 Barneveld. Still, the reader is never for a long time 
 permitted to be unconscious of the mighty though 
 invisible presence of the Dutch statesman. His 
 untiring spirit, his penetrating genius, are to be 
 found or felt constantly at work in every political 
 centre, at the sources of power, at the springs of 
 policy, secretly or openly, with a purpose veiled or 
 clearly revealed, as circumstances or the astuteness 
 or stupidity of those with whom he had to deal 
 seemed to demand. But however clothed, this pur- 
 pose was noble, unchanged, pressed forward persist- 
 ently and with consummate skill. 
 
 While Barneveld is thus employed behind the 
 scenes, the more theatric personages and puppets are 
 fuming, lolling, colliding upon the stage, making 
 many blunders, and giving the prompter infinite 
 trouble, borne with never-failing patience. Among 
 these personages is one of powerful stature, who 
 comes more and more into view till he dominates 
 the scene and dictates the catastrophe, namely, Mau- 
 
244 
 
 IIO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 rice of Nassau. Francis Aeersens, busy, skilful, 
 unscrupulous, a visibly efficient actor under the 
 Advocate's instructions during the first acts, retires 
 as Barneveld conies personally upon the stage, and 
 subtly uses all his skill, sharpened by hatred, to 
 destroy the man who had opened the way for and 
 made him great. It is a sad commentary on human 
 nature, the rewards of friendship and of faithful 
 well doing, that Barneveld may be said to have 
 received his death blows from the two men for 
 whom he had done most, and who were each capable 
 of justly estimating his labors, his disinterestedness, 
 and his loyalty. 
 
 Perhaps in nothing more than in his persistent 
 negotiations with the King of Great Britain was the 
 Advocate's admirable temper, far-seeing statesman- 
 ship, and inexhaustible patience manifested: " He 
 had to deal on the most dangerous and delicate 
 topics of state with a prince who trembled at danger 
 and was incapable of delicacy ; to show respect for 
 a character that was despicable, to lean on a royal 
 word falser than water, to inhale almost daily the 
 effluvia from a court compared to which the harem 
 of Henry was a temple of vestals. The spectacle 
 of the slobbering James among his Kars and Hays 
 and Villierses and other minions is one at which 
 history covers her eyes and is dumb ; but the repub- 
 lican envoys, with instructions from a Barneveld, 
 were obliged to face him daily, concealing their 
 disgust, and bowing reverentially before him as one 
 
THESE A UTHORS. 
 
 245 
 
 of the arbiters of their destinies and the Solomon of 
 his epoch." 
 
 In sketching the wide-spread picture of what was 
 going forward in Europe during these last ten years 
 of Barneveld, his historian seems to have stood 
 rather too near the canvas; so near that his vision 
 did not continuously grasp all that was passing at 
 the same time. Hence some advancing and retreat- 
 ing, some repetitions, some faults of arrangement. 
 At any rate it is conceivable that the transactions, 
 essentially dramatic in themselves, might have been 
 more dramatically presented. Sometimes confusion 
 of dates is apparent, of which the most notable ex- 
 ample is in the following passage : 
 
 " The discomfited Leopold swept back at the head of his 
 mercenaries, 9000 foot and 3000 horse, through Alsace 
 and along the Danube to Linz, and so to Prague, ma- 
 rauding, harrying, and blackmailing the country as he 
 went. He entered the city on the 15th of February 1611, 
 fighting his way through crowds of exasperated burghers. 
 Sitting in full harness on horseback in the great square 
 before the cathedral, the warlike bishop compelled the 
 population to make oath to him as the Emperor's commis- 
 sary. The street fighting went on however day by day, 
 poor Rudolph meantime cowering in the Hradschin. On 
 the third day, Leopold, driven out of the town, took up a 
 position on the heights, from which he commanded it with 
 his artillery. Then came a feeble voice from the Hrad- 
 schin, telling all men that these Passau marauders and 
 their Episcopal chief were there by the Emperor's orders. 
 The triune city — the old, the new, and the Jew — was bid- 
 
NOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 den to send deputies to the palace and accept the imperial 
 decrees. No deputies came at the bidding. The Bohe- 
 mians, especially the Praguers. being in the great majority 
 Protestants knew very well that Leopold was fighting the 
 cause of the Papacy and Spain in Bohemia as well as in 
 the duchies. 
 
 " And now Matthias appeared upon the scene. The 
 Estates had already been in communication with him, 
 better hopes, for the time at least, being entertained from 
 him than from the flaccid Rudolph. Moreover a kind of 
 compromise had been made in the autumn between Matthias 
 and the Emperor after the defeat of Leopold in the duchies. 
 The real king had fallen at the feet of the nominal one by 
 proxy of his brother Maximilian. Seven thousand men of the 
 army of Matthias now came before Prague under command 
 of Colonitz. The Passauers, receiving three months' pay 
 from the Emperor, marched quietly off. Leopold disap- 
 peared for the time." 
 
 The date of the action mentioned in the last lines 
 of the above citation, as set down in the margin, is 
 October 9, 1610, more than four months before 
 Leopold had reached that city, according to the date 
 first given. This excursion to Prague and the 
 Hradschin might seem foreign to the purpose and 
 scope of the work, and it might appear that the 
 author had become interested in Leopold during the 
 residence of that personage in the duchies, and was 
 by him led astray, were it not that he designed, under 
 the title which he has chosen, to give a general his- 
 tory of the preparations for and the first movements 
 in the Thirty Years' War, indicate its causes, mar- 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 247 
 
 shal the opposing forces, and show the broad expanse 
 of its field; in short, to make this "the necessary 
 introduction to that concluding portion of his labors 
 which he has always desired to lay before the public; 
 a History of the Thirty Years' War." 
 
 The distinguished historian's love of vivacity and 
 variety sometimes leads him to give the unlearned 
 reader unnecessary trouble by rendering some per- 
 sonage indefinite through the use of different desis:- 
 nations for the same potentate ; as, for instance, in 
 calling a character Ferdinand of Styria in one place, 
 and Ferdinand of Gratz in another. Occasionally 
 the name is changed, as in the case of a certain Count 
 first mentioned as Hohenzollen, and afterward as 
 Zollen. If these are trifling they are certainly un- 
 necessary faults. At rare intervals the author's dic- 
 tion indicates carelessness or haste in writing. But 
 in the main his style is excellent, judiciously varied 
 according to the changing character of the narrative. 
 His reflections, deductions, and commentaries con- 
 cerning the events recorded are well placed, concise, 
 and significant. What he says about the feelings of 
 an ill-used ambassador will be read with interest : 
 
 " It is no wonder that the Ambassador was galled to the 
 quick by the outrage which those concerned in the Govern- 
 ment were seeking to put upon him. How could an honest 
 man fail to be overwhelmed with rage and anguish at being 
 dishonored before the world by his masters for scrupulously 
 doing his duty, and for maintaining the rights and dignity 
 of his own country ? He knew that the charges were but 
 
248 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 pretexts, that the motives of his enemies wore as base as 
 the intrigues themselves, but he also knew that the world 
 usually sides with the Government against the individual, 
 and that a man's reputation is rarely strong enough to main- 
 tain itself unsullied in a foreign land when his own Grovern- 
 ment stretches forth its hand not to shield, but to stab, 
 him." 
 
 To a statesman the period embraced in this work 
 is truly a very interesting and important study ; 
 most of all to a republican statesman, illustrating, 
 as it does in the case of the United Provinces, the 
 absolute necessity of a government which shall act, 
 especially in timec of peace and prosperity, as a co- 
 hesive principle, uniting every individual citizen to 
 every other, strong enough to resist the restlessness, 
 selfishness, party spirit, personal animosities, imagi- 
 nary wrongs, which never fail to become active and 
 aggressive so soon as any great common danger, or 
 common interest, ceases to impel all the inhabitants 
 toward a common centre and a common union for 
 protection ; that is, to make individual selfishness a 
 common bond. Had our own statesmen of revolu- 
 tionary times sufficiently studied the political history 
 of the United Netherlands it is inconceivable that 
 they would have made the error committed in at- 
 tempting to put into successful practice the Articles 
 of Confederation, thus in effect repeating an experi- 
 ment which so shortly before had led only to a series 
 of crimes and disasters so soon as the outside pressure 
 of foreign enemies was withdrawn by the establish- 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 249 
 
 ment of the twelve years' truce. The author does, 
 indeed, prolong his work somewhat beyond that 
 period, in order to comprise in this narrative the 
 immediate consequences of Barneveld's death, such 
 as the conspiracy of his sons, their fate, the Roman- 
 like nobility of his wife, and the escape of Grotius. 
 Leaving the war at the commencement, he narrows 
 the scope of vision till it embraces only that which 
 immediately concerned the great Advocate, his fam- 
 ily, and his intimate friends. Truly, the old man's 
 end nobly crowned his work. Grandly did he meet 
 his accusers, and grandly bear himself to the close. 
 Such conduct was to be expected from one of whom 
 the historian with apparent truth and justice speaks 
 as follows : 
 
 "No man can thoroughly understand the complication 
 and procession of phenomena attending the disastrous dawn 
 of the renewed war, on an even more awful scale than the 
 original conflict in the Netherlands, without studying the 
 correspondence of Barneveld. The history of Europe is 
 there. The fate of Christendom is there. The conflict of 
 elements, the crash of contending forms of religion and of 
 nationalities, is pictured there in vivid if homely colors. 
 The Advocate, while acting only in the name of a slender 
 confederacy, was in truth, so long as he held his place, the 
 prime minister of European Protestantism. There was none 
 other to rival him, few to comprehend him, fewer still to 
 sustain him. 
 
 ^ 5(s ;f; :js ;ji 
 
 " The warnings and the lamentations of Barneveld sound 
 
 22 
 
250 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 to us out of that far distant time like the voice of an in- 
 spired prophet. It is possible that a portion of the wrath 
 to come might have been averted had there been many men 
 in high places to heed his voice. I do not wish to exagge- 
 rate the power and wisdom of the man, nor to set him forth 
 as one of the greatest heroes of history. But posterity has 
 done far less than justice to a statesman and sage who 
 wielded a vast influence at a most critical period in the fate 
 of Christendom, and uniformly wielded it to promote the 
 cause of temperate human liberty, both political and relig- 
 ious. Viewed by the light of two centuries and a half of 
 additional experience, he may appear to have made mistakes, 
 but none that were necessarily disastrous or even mischiev- 
 ous. Compared with the prevailing idea of the age in 
 which he lived, his schemes of polity seem to dilate into 
 larger dimensions, his sentiments of religious freedom, 
 however limited to our modern ideas, mark an epoch in 
 human progress, and in regard to the general commonwealth 
 of Christendom, of which he was so leading a citizen, the 
 part he played was a lofty one. No man certainly under- 
 stood the tendency of his age more exactly, took a broader 
 and more comprehensive view than he did of the policy 
 necessary to preserve the largest portion of the results of the 
 past three-quarters of a century, or had pondered the rela- 
 tive value of great conflicting forces more skilfully. Had 
 his counsels been always followed ; had illustrious birth 
 placed him virtually upon a throne, as was the case with 
 William the Silent, and thus allowed him occasionally to 
 carry out the designs of a great mind with almost despotic 
 authority, it might have been better for the world." 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 251 
 
 A LITERARY CURIOSITY. 
 
 If Mr. John Walker Yilant Macbeth has any 
 enemies let them rejoice, for he hath written a book, 
 and its title is, " The Might and Mirth of Litera- 
 ture." It is a work which one may read without 
 any tiresome exercise of judgment or discrimination. 
 The author tells you what you must think of it. 
 Here is his "Introductory Notice:" 
 
 " The object of this volume is to create and fully equip 
 a new branch of study ; to discuss Figures of Speech far 
 more thoroughly than ever has been done ; to urge upon 
 pleaders, preachers, and all who write or speak English, 
 many very important practical advices ; to comment spe- 
 cially on Shakespeare, Milton, Demosthenes, and the Bible ; 
 to present a wide review of American and English liter- 
 ature ; and to make the whole subject as amusing and 
 laughter-exciting as it is instructive. Also, we have availed 
 ourselves of our familiarity with Latin, Greek, and He- 
 brew ; and with four of the modern languages, French, 
 German, Italian and Spanish." 
 
 And here is a part of his "Introduction 
 
 " This volume will thus possess strict artistic and scien- 
 tific unity. Besides — and of this assertion the severest 
 scrutiny is challenged, the affirmation being very venture- 
 
252 
 
 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 some and improbable — the author avers that this plan of 
 his has the merit, even at this late day, of the most entire 
 originality ; never before has figurative language been taken 
 as a point from which to examine a whole literature. 
 
 " This volume claims to be of the greatest value in study- 
 ing language and literature, and of special use to all public 
 speakers — for instance, to clergymen and to lawyers." 
 
 Throughout his book this author makes very fre- 
 quent mention of the Bible, and references to it, to 
 the figures of speech to be found therein, and to their 
 important bearing on theological and other questions. 
 But in liis practice he seems not to have been guided 
 by the teachings of one of these figures, and indeed 
 he appears entirely to have neglected it, namely: 
 " Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast him- 
 self as he that putteth it off." No Philistine giant 
 or Homeric hero ever boasted more loudly or more 
 pleonastically when engaging in a gentle and joyous 
 bout with a deadly enemy, than does Mr. Macbeth 
 when he begins to slash around among " Front cuts, 
 Middle cuts, End cuts," and, according to his cata- 
 logue, one hundred and twenty-two other figures. 
 The murderous Thane of Cawdor, the first known 
 end cutter of the same family name, was far from 
 being a match for him. While still in his introduc- 
 tion he says, — 
 
 " You cannot too soon form a very high opinion of the 
 many high qualities of the one syllabled words of^our 
 tongue. The quickest way to get into such an opinion is 
 
THESE A UTHORS. 
 
 253 
 
 for each reader to go a-botanizing, and form a herbarium of 
 at least a hundred such lines. Exquisitely will you be 
 rewarded. We have collected a few. Your gathering of 
 a hundred of them will, of itself, entitle you to be named a 
 person of exquisite taste ; while you will have in your pos- 
 session a pellucid fountain of enjoyment the most refined." 
 
 Then follow nineteen examples of such lines. 
 Fourteen of these examples are cited from such 
 writers as Leigh Hunt, Byron, Hey wood, Wild, 
 Chaucer, Shakspeare, Milton, Moir, Tennyson, 
 Campbell, and Sir Philip Sidney; five of them are 
 from the author's own poetry, of which two samples 
 are quoted below : 
 
 " God wept ! The tear He shed, its name was Christ." 
 
 " As far at sea is seen a peak of And, 
 Its base in cloud, but o'er its top the sun ; 
 So God, though wrapt in dusk, yet crowned with Christ ! 
 And so we're sure, as Love's great day rolls on, 
 The clouds will lift, and vales of Prime be shown." 
 
 If you look at the index you will find in its alpha- 
 betical place the following : 
 
 " Author of this volume gives us twenty-one bits 
 of poesy with due reference to the several pages 
 on which these choice bits may be found. They 
 are introduced by such phrases as these: 
 
 " ' In the subjoined, the author of this volume concludes 
 with 'suagefor assuage ;' 1 Your author lays before you this, 
 from an address to the aged ;' 1 Your author presumes to 
 
 22* 
 
254 
 
 HOW THE V STB IKE ME, 
 
 intrude on you an instance and more than one ;' ' Your 
 author inflicts on you an instance ;' ' Permit us to cool our 
 indignation by launching a moment, like Addison's man 
 and horse, into "a strain," one of our own.' 'We close 
 our discussion of the metaphor with " The Three Mourn- 
 ers," translated by us from the German of Charmisso, and 
 never presented in English before. In this translation we 
 claim the whole of the metaphor in line eighteenth ;' 1 We 
 take leave of metonymy, this elegant department of our sub- 
 ject, by giving a specimen of our own ;' ' From the Italian 
 of Giambatista Volpe permit your author to translate for 
 you the following sonnet ;' { Your author inflicts on you 
 both classes' [of epithets] ; 1 Your author ventures ;' 1 Or 
 again, your author, translating from the Spanish ;' ' Your 
 author supplies an instance:' 'Let your author inflict on 
 you these lines, that close with front rhyme ;' ' Or conde- 
 scend to read from your author ;' ' We close with an allu- 
 sion of our own ;' ' We foist on our audience an instance of 
 our own ;' ' Permit us to fancy that a pulpit orator, after a 
 vehement storm of appeal against vices, paused into a whis- 
 per and said ;' ' Permit your author one little liberty more ; 
 he, if little in reason, is abundant in rhyme !' ' We exclaim 
 in our own words.' 
 
 Mr. Macbeth esteems his work more immediately 
 under consideration quite as highly as he does his 
 poesy, and he loses no opportunity to express his 
 opinion : 
 
 " ' Let the reader of this volume, who is wise enough to 
 strive to be a student of it.' ' This chapter is by far the 
 most complete treatment of metonymy the world has ever 
 seen.' ' This is the fullest treatise on tropes that ever the 
 
THESE A UTHORS. 
 
 2*, 
 
 English or any literature has seen.' ' We have now 
 enumerated seventeen kinds of repetition. No such minute 
 specification has been made in any modern literature. But 
 we hasten to wind up this subject with a specimen from 
 our studies in those four admirable modern languages to 
 which we have given many a year's attention.' ' This 
 volume, which we present to them, is really the only book 
 in the world in which the public speaker can find his war- 
 gear described.' ' To pray to God with Aristotle and 
 Demosthenes, as in the course of our studies we have 
 naturally come on them doing.' ' Grant to us now one 
 other indulgence — of availing ourselves of our familiarity 
 with the noble and melodious Spanish literature.' ' Laying 
 before you an example, translated by us from the French 
 of Victor Hugo.' ' Our professional occupation brings 
 Old Homer before us so continually that we are led to 
 think of epithets almost every hour of the day.' ' This 
 quality of style we are constrained to urge upon you from 
 our long and so minute study of Shakespeare, the inimita- 
 ble.' ' Befittingly we close with a sweet strain from the 
 Spanish on Peace, which we translate for you.' ' At last 
 to our concluding figure have we come ; claiming, on the 
 one hand, that the treatment of our subject is by far the 
 fullest discussion it has ever received." 
 
 Is not this mirth provoking? Are you not con- 
 vinced that this book is at least worthy of the second 
 half of its title ? Can you not already clearly per- 
 ceive that the author has accomplished one of his 
 avowed purposes, and made his work "as amusing 
 and laughter-exciting as it is instructive?" The 
 book, as a matter of fact, is so fascinatingly bad . 
 
250 
 
 JIOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 Bad ? You say it makes frequent references to the 
 Bible, and surely the author's poesy is of a religious 
 kind. True, and that is one reason why the work 
 is likely to do mischief, especially to a certain class 
 of young writers whose style is yet to be formed, 
 and who are eagerly looking for guidance. Some 
 persons of little knowledge and great faith believe 
 that a man who quotes the sacred Scriptures and 
 talks against Popery and atheism can err in no 
 respect ; that his style must be a model, his taste 
 faultless, his reasoning unanswerable, his judgment 
 infallible. And yet there are such men who are safe 
 guides in nothing. Now, the author of this volume, 
 which, according to his assertion, possesses "strict 
 artistic and scientific unity," leaves his prescribed 
 limits time and again to rush at transubstantiation, 
 and to show that " the correct doctrine of metaphor 
 sweeps the doctrine of transubstantiation out of the 
 Scriptures," repeating his arguments and assertions 
 over and over. In a like way he breaks all artistic 
 bounds to enter into discussions of other theological 
 questions, and attempts to establish that "synecdoche 
 scatters the error that the Redeemer is destitute of 
 a human soul," and "how thoroughly it proves a 
 bulwark against heresy, even." Or he assails athe- 
 ism without any reference to the promised "strict 
 artistic and scientific unity" of his work, declaring, 
 among other things, that "atheism dwarfs men; 
 dwarfs, beclouds everything; disintellects the uni- 
 verse; dries literature into sandy dust." 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 257 
 
 Lest any person should mistake the motive of 
 these remarks, let it be said that we have nothing to 
 urge in favor of transubstantiation, that we cannot 
 understand how any fairly well balanced and healthy 
 man can be an atheist, and that we regard the Bible 
 with quite as much veneration as does Mr. Macbeth 
 himself. That very book, however, teaches that 
 there is a time for all things ; and the time for 
 hurling sectarian dogmas at religious opponents does 
 not coincide with that set apart for the " artistic and 
 scientific" study of figures of speech. Animadver- 
 sions upon these and very many other matters, pleas 
 for the scriptures, for Protestantism, for poetry, for 
 an improved translation of the Bible, denunciations 
 of dull preachers, of unbelievers, of free thinkers, 
 of tenets of the Roman Catholic Church, which he 
 repeats again and again without any regard for the 
 congruity of his discourse, the intelligence or the 
 patience of his readers, occupy many of his pages, 
 and swell the book to a discouraging size. As an 
 example of how these extraneous themes are intro- 
 duced, read the following : 
 
 " By the time this page has been reached, every reader 
 feels the vast importance of our subject. Think of the 
 great historical words : ' This is my body.' Ah, the tens of 
 thousands slaughtered for transubstantiation ! According 
 to Protestantism and the laws of metaphor, ' this' is literal ; 
 ' body' is literal ; ' is' stands for ' represents' — a sense em- 
 phatically given, which it has thousands of times. Accord- 
 ing to the priests, ' this' is literal ; \ body' is literal ; ' is' 
 
258 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 stands for 1 is changed into' — a sense it never has. Which 
 of the two parties is the more literal? Our subject holds 
 within it such truths, laws, applications, as would, by God's 
 blessing, have saved to the earth much of the most precious 
 blood ; and tortures so dire in their cruelty, so cowardly in 
 the circumstances of their infliction, that at the recollection 
 of them history blushes. Is our subject trivial, then ? De- 
 graded so long by lame, shallow, unphilosophical handling !" 
 
 Although the author takes care to say, from time 
 to time, that figures of speech must be the natural 
 outgrowth and expression of thoughts and emotions, 
 yet he so eulogizes the various figures of which he 
 treats as to create an impression on an inexperienced 
 reader that each figure has in itself some wonderful 
 power and beauty, even when used artificially and 
 arbitrarily. 
 
 " Give five or six days to such an examination of the 
 effect in his (Shakespeare's) hands of front-cuts, mid-cuts, 
 and end-cuts, and you will be astonished at the superb uses 
 which a master can make of even the minutest and most 
 opposite dexterities of diction." 
 
 " This line feels to us unsurpassable. Please make a 
 study of it. It owes a very great deal to the humble aid 
 of front-cut. We have not words to express the refined 
 delight which such usages of language give us. Croon it 
 over at least a hundred and fifty times." 
 
 " Enallage is the figure we proceed with — of very great 
 value ; the use of one part of speech, or of one modifica- 
 tion of a part of speech for another. We lay before you 
 twenty-six varieties, each deserving to rank as a separate 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 259 
 
 figure. Judge sternly for yourself if they lead you not 
 deep ? and with a Venus-like hand, into the inmost recesses 
 of this vast forest which we call language. The following 
 is the fullest account of enallage that has ever appeared. 
 Gather out of Scripture two hundred varieties — a feast of 
 strawberries for your own private eating ; and then a hun- 
 dred cases of each individual sort." 
 
 The only thing in the work likely to counteract 
 such erroneous impression effectually is the author's 
 style, especially when he embellishes it with speci- 
 mens of the figures w r hich he has under consideration 
 at the time : 
 
 " This use of one case for another struts about in the 
 literary realm by no less a name than XXIX., Antiptosis. 
 What dignity doth a Greek work of four syllables give to 
 the matter ! By no means was that boy beslapped aware 
 what a classical antiptosian way of speaking was his. So 
 we are informed by the rhetors that XXX., Antemeria, is 
 the use of one part of speech for another; while the use 
 of one form of noun, pronoun, or verb for another is 
 XXXI., Heterosis !" 
 
 "Is it always that the snow wreaths lie smooth in the 
 gusty nooks of the hills? Knows little of language he 
 who will deny that words can be whirled even more wildly 
 than snow flakes." 
 
 " Old age by no means so naturally suggests the thought 
 of a picture as it does the thought of the sepulchre, to 
 which the tottering step of Eld is so inevitably drawing- 
 near." 
 
 " On the other hand when the first sin volcanoes out its 
 way, Milton tells us with the deepest poetic truth." 
 
260 110 w THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 11 Mrs. Barbauld, a writer of uncommon vigor, writes of 
 the discomforts of a washing day. Not is it the hand that 
 can be impatient." 
 
 " Samuel Lover, another inimitable Irishman, also dealeth 
 sorrowfully in widows." 
 
 " Spiritualization deserves mention, however shortly; let 
 us be lubricated by Samuel Fergusson. He speaks of a 
 pretty maid : We see a material object turned to an ethereal 
 use." 
 
 " We invite all our readers to take the same reveren- 
 tial position as to the remarkable but very defensible case 
 of Balaam, which we take and defend. Not doth the 
 sacred narrative require us to hold literal speech by the 
 bodily organs and by the intellect of the animal ; but 
 speech by an angelic minister, who could speak as easily 
 from an animal's mouth as from any other place. Then 
 weigh our argument from literature and from figures — an 
 argument entirely new." 
 
 By this time the reader is probably convinced that 
 this author has very clear instinctive perceptions of 
 what was the real matter with Balaam's ass, how he 
 actually felt, and what he would be likely to do, and 
 what not to do. He seems to have written the book 
 under consideration chiefly from a desire to do some 
 preaching, to display his knowledge, more especially 
 to exhibit his " bits of poesy," and his " familiarity 
 with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and with four of 
 the modern languages, French, German, Italian, and 
 Spanish;" also to make known the scope of his 
 reading, his critical acumen, his ingenuity in detect- 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 201 
 
 ing and discovering figures of speech, and his ability 
 to instruct all mankind. To make a full exhibition 
 of all his acquisitions, he lugs in a great variety of 
 matter impertinent to his proposed subject, while he 
 fails to discriminate with reasonable nicety between 
 what are and what are not such figures of speech as 
 should properly come within even the widest treat- 
 ment, and, in some cases, between one figure and 
 another, as when he says, "We have recourse to 
 metaphor when one says, pointing to a portrait on 
 the wall, * This is Washington/ " where he evidently 
 calls ellipsis by another* name. The full sentence 
 would be, " This is a portrait of Washington." But 
 it was important to one of his arguments on the 
 text, " This is my body," and to show how " the 
 correct doctrine of metaphor sweeps the doctrine of 
 transubstantiation out of the Scriptures," that he 
 should make " is" in both cases mean " represents." 
 The* reader will perceive that the author has made 
 ostentatious show of extensive reading, but he will 
 also find reason to suspect that no small part of his 
 citations and of the comments upon them were taken 
 at second hand ; and when he comes to the passage 
 of the work quoted below he will doubt the writer's 
 accuracy : 
 
 " Metathesis next claims attention, or twisting, usually 
 at the bidding of humor, of the letters of a word into some 
 different order of arrangement. You will detect it in the 
 following four pathetic lines by Tom Moore, the Irish bard, 
 
 23 
 
2652 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 wherein he bemoans his destiny, which all of us have 
 shared, in being caught in a heavy shower umbrellaless : 
 
 " l O ever thus, from childhood's hour, 
 Has chilling fate upon me fell ; 
 There always comes a soaking shower 
 When I hain't got an umberell.' " 
 
 And when, after a citation of some lines from a 
 poem made between the years 1360 and 1370, the 
 reader finds the following comment, he is sure that 
 the author does not always use the English language 
 correctly, especially the word " refers 
 
 " In our humble opinion, no more pathetic passage in all 
 our literature ; for it refers to that sore struggle for life 
 which is going on at this hour, in the winter of 1874-75, 
 in New York, the most advanced city of our imperilled 
 civilization." 
 
 And when he perceives that the word "petite" is 
 used as if it were English, in the following quota- 
 tion, he will be convinced that the author is so 
 familiar with French that he cannot distinguish it 
 from his own language, and will therefore abstain 
 from assaulting him violently because of his blun- 
 dering pedantry and bad taste : 
 
 " The Rev. William Lisle Bowles is still remembered by 
 a petite volume of sonnets, only fourteen in number, highly 
 finished, but possessing little force." 
 
 Mr. Macbeth writes as might a man who had been 
 for a long time the pedagogue or preacher of a com- 
 
THESE A unions. 
 
 2G3 
 
 paratively ignorant community, where, from the fact 
 that all those whom he was accustomed to meet were 
 unlearned, he had towered above his fellows, and by 
 common consent had passed for Sir Oracle ; a man 
 who had received some knowledge of the classics, as 
 taught in our colleges, and possibly had made them 
 more familiar by subsequent study, followed as a 
 matter of taste or professional occupation ; and who 
 had also some acquaintance with standard and pop- 
 ular English literature, especially with certain reviews 
 and collections of witticisms ; yet who in all other 
 respects possessed little knowledge other than such 
 as could be obtained within the four walls of a 
 moderately well-stored library. 
 
 It is needless to make further quotations from 
 this book in order to show that its author's style is 
 about as bad as it can be ; or to make manifest the 
 fact that he is a very vicious guide in matters of 
 rhetorical taste and propriety. Among the figures 
 which he enumerates are many which he truly says 
 have never before been discovered and known as 
 such ; and it is safe to prophesy that, except so far 
 as his light extends, they will remain in the ob- 
 scurity where they have hitherto been. He shows a 
 notable want of such analytical and discriminating 
 power as was absolutely necessary to the successful 
 accomplishment of his plan, even had his plan not 
 transcended the practical, not to say the possible. 
 Mixed in the mass of undigested matter which he 
 has brought together hi this volume are some sound 
 
264 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 maxims and much material that a skilful rheto- 
 rician might use with profit in making a really 
 " artistic and scientific" work on figurative language. 
 But with all its present contents, and with its present 
 want of form, arrangement, and elimination, "The 
 Might and Mirth of Literature" is chiefly valuable 
 as a literary curiosity-. 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 265 
 
 A RUSSIAN NOVELIST. 
 
 The novels of Ivan Serghei'evitch TurgeniefF, of 
 which some translations have been published in this 
 country, have made that writer's name familiar to 
 many intelligent readers on this side of the Atlantic. 
 So little are Russian life and character comprehended 
 by us that these works have, in some way, the nature 
 of a revelation. This gentleman is the only author 
 of that nationality whose writings have become 
 known here to any considerable number of persons. 
 It is, indeed, true that twenty or thirty years ago a 
 story by LermontofF, entitled "A Hero of Our 
 Time," was found to be strangely fascinating, and 
 not altogether wholesome, by a few students of 
 foreign literature, who were fortunate, or unfortu- 
 nate, enough to read it. But no wide or lasting 
 impression was left by this melancholy tale as a 
 literary product of Russia. Consequently, Turge- 
 nieff is likely, in general estimation, to be held as 
 exceptional and isolated among his people, far above 
 them all in genius and refinement, and the only one 
 who has made his way into the world of letters. 
 And yet this notion is altogether erroneous, as is 
 well known to the few students who have made 
 
 23* 
 
26G 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 themselves intimately acquainted with Russian his- 
 tory, and particularly with the history and condition 
 of literature in that country. It is a fact, however, 
 that, in the judgment of well-informed critics, the 
 author under immediate consideration stands at the 
 head of writers of fiction in his native language, 
 while his works most favorably represent that class 
 of Russian literature. 
 
 Mr. Turgenieff was born in 1818 of noble parents, 
 in easy circumstances, and was educated at home, at 
 the schools of Moscow, at the University of St. Pe- 
 tersburg, and at Berlin, whither he went at the age 
 of twenty years to continue his studies, chiefly in 
 metaphysics, the classics, and history. At the age of 
 twenty-five years he began his literary career by pub- 
 lishing a small volume of poems. He became greatly 
 interested in the welfare of the serfs, and from 1846 
 to 1851 contributed sketches of serf-life to a literary 
 journal and review of Moscow. These, with some 
 others, were afterwards published in a volume called 
 " Memoirs of a Sportsman." This book awakened 
 an interest and produced an excitement in Russia 
 like that which " Uncle Tom's Cabin" caused in the 
 United States. TurgeniefFs book stimulated the 
 tendency towards emancipation, and " its author may 
 justly feel, as he does, that the happiest event of his 
 life was the reading of this book by the present em- 
 peror, who himself declared that it was one of the 
 first incitements to the decree which gave freedom 
 to thirty millions of serfs." In 1852 the emperor 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 267 
 
 Nicholas ordered that Turgenieff be confined to his 
 estate, on account of something in one* of his publi- 
 cations at which the government took offence ; but 
 he was released after two years through the interces- 
 sion of the present emperor, then the Crown-prince 
 Alexander. Since that time he has, for the most 
 part, lived in Germany and France. 
 
 Seven of this author's tales have been published 
 in this country, enough to furnish data for a toler- 
 ably correct estimate of his powers and character- 
 istics as a novel-writer. The interest of his stories 
 is, to an unusual degree, independent of plot. It 
 is chiefly maintained by very vigorous and skilful 
 development and exhibition of characters, by the 
 novelty of the scenes, which are laid in Russia, as 
 well as the manners depicted, which are Russian, 
 and the home-life of Russia which he presents, more 
 especially as it is on the estates of the better por- 
 tion of the middle class. He shows the subjects and 
 courses of thought aroused by the newly-awakened 
 and increasing desire for greater freedom, for wider 
 education, the action, the civilization, the progress 
 of the western nations : he produces representatives 
 of the different parties of students and strivers, 
 ranging from the man who follows, rather content- 
 edly, the footsteps of his fathers to the woman fully 
 " emancipated." 
 
 " The room in which they found themselves looked 
 more like a work-room than a parlor. Papers, letters, 
 many numbers of Russian reviews, whose pages were 
 
268 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 generally uncut, lay strewn over the dust-covered tables ; 
 ends of half-smoked cigarettes were scattered on all sides. 
 The mistress of the house was reclining on a leathern 
 divan ; she was still young, had fair hair somewhat dis- 
 hevelled, and was dressed in a not-entirely clean silk ; a 
 lace handkerchief covered her head, and large bracelets set 
 off her hands, which had very short, blunt fingers. She 
 rose from the divan, and putting negligently over her 
 shoulders a velvet cape, lined with yellowish ermine, she 
 said in a languishing voice to Sitnikof : ' Good morning, 
 Victor,' and shook his hand. 
 
 " ' Bazarof, Kirsanof,' he said in an abrupt tone, imi- 
 tating the manner of Bazarof in introductions. 
 
 " ' Be welcome,' replied Madame Kukshin ; and fixing on 
 Bazarof her round eyes, between which rose a poor little red 
 pug nose, she added ; ' I know you ;' and shook his hand also. 
 
 " Bazarof made a slight grimace. The insignificant 
 little figure of the emancipated woman had nothing posi- 
 tively ugly ; but the expression of her features was dis- 
 agreeable. You would gladly have asked her, ' What is the 
 matter with you ? Are you hungry ? Are you tired ? 
 Are you afraid of anything? Why these efforts?' She 
 also, like Sitnikof, felt something that continually scraped, 
 as it were, her soul. Her movements and her language 
 were at once unconstrained and awkward ; she considered 
 herself, doubtless, as a good and simple creature, yet what- 
 ever she did, she always seemed to you to have intended 
 doing something else." 
 
 Lunch was ordered, and the emancipated woman 
 went on to manifest her liberty and express her sen- 
 timents : 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 2G9 
 
 " Eudoxia rolled a cigarette between her fingers, which 
 were yellow with tobacco, passed it over her tongue, sucked 
 the end of it and bc^an to smoke. ********* 
 
 " ' I cannot remain indifferent when women are attacked,' 
 continued Eudoxia ; 'it is frightful ! frightful ! Instead 
 of attacking them, read Michelet's book De V Amour ; it is 
 admirable ! Gentlemen, let us talk of love,' she added, 
 languishingly letting her hand fall on the shapeless cushion 
 of the divan. A sudden silence followed this appeal. * * * * 
 
 " The lunch lasted some time longer. The first bottle 
 of champagne was followed by a second, by a third, and 
 even by a fourth — Eudoxia talked without interruption ; 
 Sitnikof kept pace with her. They discussed for some 
 time what marriage was, whether a prejudice or a crime ; 
 they examined the question whether men were born with 
 the same dispositions, and in what, properly speaking, in- 
 dividuality consisted. Things came to that point that 
 Eudoxia, her cheeks inflamed with wine, striking with her 
 flattened nails the keys of her discordant piano, began to 
 sing in a hoarse voice first gypsy songs ; then the romance 
 of Seymour ShifT ; ' Sleeping Grenada Dreams.' Sitnikof, 
 his head turbaned with a scarf, tried to represent the re- 
 conciled lover, when the singer pronounced these words : 
 
 ' And my lips with thine, 
 Join in burning kisses.' 
 
 " Arcadi could no longer restrain himself. ' Gentlemen, 
 he said aloud, 'this begins to remind one somewhat of 
 Bedlam.' " 
 
 You see that this author handles a sharp pen; 
 that it makes graphic delineations; that, while it 
 
270 
 
 HOW THEY STB IKE ME, 
 
 is one of the readiest and most powerful to pro- 
 mote political freedom, it is as ready and as strong 
 to repress social license. You note that his discern- 
 ment promptly distinguishes between advancement 
 and eccentric or destructive movements; and you 
 can perceive that the terrible force of his warnings 
 against such movements, as well as in regard to 
 stationary things that should be reformed, consists in 
 the clear, mirror-like pictures which he makes of 
 these things and of these movements. After the 
 same method he vigorously combats the exaggerated 
 notions, the foolhardy plans, the wild theories and 
 practices which find rapid growth among a people 
 repressed by despotism, yet wrought to a condition 
 akin to that of revolution by questions of social and 
 political amelioration. 
 
 You may judge of his skill in making portraits 
 from this specimen : 
 
 " A man of middle height, wearing an English suit of a 
 dark color, a low cravat in the latest style, and varnished 
 boots, entered the parlor. It was Paul Petrovitch Kir- 
 sanof. He seemed to be about forty-five years old : his 
 gray hair, cut very short, had the brilliant reflection of 
 new silver ; his features, of a bilious hue, but clear and 
 without wrinkles, were very regular, and of extreme deli- 
 cacy of contour. You soon noticed that he had once been 
 very handsome ; his eyes, black, clear, and oval, were es- 
 pecially remarkable. The elegant exterior of Paul Petro- 
 vitch preserved still the harmony of youth, and his step 
 had a kind of spring that usually disappears after a man is 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 271 
 
 twenty. Paul Petrovitch took out of his trousers pocket 
 his beautiful hand, with long pink nails, a hand whose 
 beauty was heightened by wristbands of a snowy whiteness, 
 fastened at the wrist by large opals, and extended it to his 
 nephew. After having given him the European ' Shake- 
 hands,' he kissed him three times in the Russian way, that 
 is, he touched his cheek three times with his perfumed 
 moustaches, and said ' Welcome.' 
 
 " His brother presented Bazarof to him ; he slightly 
 bent his slim body and smiled, but did not extend his hand, 
 and even replaced it in his trousers pocket. 
 
 " £ I had begun to believe that you would not arrive to- 
 day,' he said, in a head-voice, of an agreeable pitch, swing- 
 ing himself with a graceful air. shrugging his shoulders, 
 and showing his handsome white teeth." 
 
 Here is another portrait : 
 
 " The young Cossack brought the Cognac and some 
 schnapps on a waiter. Urban Ivanovitch took the wineglass 
 from the tray very deliberately, and looked at it for a long 
 while with deep attention, as though he were not quite sure 
 what it was he had in his hand. Then he gazed at the 
 Cossack, and asked him whether Basil was not calling him. 
 He then put on a mournful expression, drank off the Cog- 
 nac, and began very slowly taking his handkerchief out of 
 his pocket. But the Cossack had already put by the tray 
 and liquor-bottle, eaten what remained of the schnapps, and 
 succeeded in falling asleep, whilst Urban Ivanovitch was 
 still fumbling for his handkerchief, and gazing with the 
 same fixed stare at the window, then at the floor, and finally 
 at the wall." 
 
272 
 
 HO W THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 He exhibits characters with skill as masterly as is 
 that with which he presents likenesses. He seizes their 
 salient points, transfers them to his pages, and makes 
 them manifest after the manner in which they are 
 manifested in actual life. If, to reach these results, 
 he has worked through laborious analysis, he does not 
 trouble you with the process. In his method there 
 is an appearance of artlessness which gives a certain 
 color of truthfulness to what he says, and which, in 
 itself, has a peculiar charm. He seems simply and 
 ingenuously to describe things as he sees them, as 
 if by a kind of intuition. In this way he displays 
 a high order of genius, or a consummate achieve- 
 ment of art ; but such artistic achievement demon- 
 strates the possession of genius. This appearance 
 of candid narration is strengthened by occasional 
 mention of what, to us, have the air of trivial and 
 inconsequential incidents. In Russia, how r ever, such 
 mention may, and very likely does, have a local sig- 
 nificance. 
 
 In each of his stories the leading characters are, 
 generally, well contrasted. They are Russian, in- 
 terested more or less in questions of public weal, and 
 upon one side or the other of philosophical, meta- 
 physical, or social theories, such as in this country 
 would be commonly called isms. Their discussions 
 of these matters are, however, never long drawn out, 
 never heavy, never wearisome, but terse, pointed, 
 vivacious, attractive. Moreover, they have practical 
 uses, for they serve to display shades and divergen- 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 273 
 
 cies of character, and, to some extent, they control 
 the catastrophe. 
 
 Tnrg6nieff has little to do with such crimes as are 
 known to the law. His men are virtuous, or have 
 such vices as men of the world consider venial. It 
 is with eccentricities or idiosyncrasies that he marks 
 them. Some coquette is his favorite motor. She 
 impels the movement and forces the conclusion. In 
 four out of the seven stories mentioned, a coquette is 
 exhibited as the leading feminine personage. These 
 four women differ from each other in degree rather 
 than in kind. The first is cold, passionless, mis- 
 chievous, but, so far as appears, decorous. The 
 second breaks off a match, nearly destroys a young 
 man, and is willing to be as bad as she can without 
 losing her position, amusements, and comforts. The 
 third recklessly blights her husband's life and her 
 own reputation, regardless of her child, and drives 
 a pure young girl, broken-hearted, into a convent. 
 You would think her to be as vile as possible did 
 you not read of the fourth, who makes a bet with 
 her husband that she will treat a young man, who is 
 very much enamored of and betrothed to a lovely 
 girl, as Dido treated iEneas when they hunted to- 
 gether; and she wins her bet. In a devilish way 
 she breaks off this match, ruins this man, and makes 
 an innocent and unoffending family wretched. In 
 depicting these characters, the author goes on in 
 regular gradation from bad to worse. Of the three 
 other stories, one describes, among other things, the 
 
 24 
 
274 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 conduct of two young women, one of whom is in 
 all respects as bad as either of King Lear's elder 
 daughters, while the other shows every disposition 
 to emulate her sister, and in ingratitude and cruelty 
 is fully her equal. The heroines of the two remain- 
 ing tales are decent girls, but in love-affairs disobe- 
 dient to parents, devoted to their lovers, however, 
 and hesitating at no sacrifice. To some extent, in- 
 deed, they usurp the lover's place, after the first 
 declaration. 
 
 Whether Mr. TurgeniefF handles such materials 
 from choice, or from a desire to reform the character 
 of his countrywomen by showing them their own 
 images in a mirror, cannot be determined from any- 
 thing contained in the works before us. It is, how- 
 ever, charitable to suppose that, in accordance with 
 the disposition heretofore manifested by him in 
 respect to political matters, he desires to bring about 
 moral reforms, and that he is essaying to do this, 
 with regard to a certain portion of his country- 
 women, by the method in which he so effectually 
 aided political amelioration. That he has such a 
 purpose can only be inferred from the history of his 
 previous labors and their results. But even admit- 
 ting this, we cannot believe that he gives anything 
 like a just representation of the Russian women. 
 As a general rule, it is very unsafe as well as very 
 unjust to assume that the characters portrayed by 
 any novelist, always excepting the English, are 
 accurate samples of anything but the smallest 
 
THESE A UTHORS. 
 
 275 
 
 minority of the people from among whom they arc 
 supposed to be drawn. It may be that, like our 
 own Hawthorne, he delights to exhibit wrong-doing 
 working out its logical consequences, and that he 
 prefers to expose those crimes which are not techni- 
 cally such, though among the most destructive. A 
 comparison of these two writers has, indeed, been 
 suggested, but, so far as appears from the works 
 more especially under examination, such comparison 
 can hardly be sustained. It is true that Turgeniei? 
 shows a marked tendency to deal with morbid 
 sentiments; but he does this as an artist rather 
 than as a philosopher. The more morbid the sen- 
 timent the more unusual the character, and the more 
 salient the individuality of the personage. Crime, 
 of some kind, is the motive used by many story- 
 tellers, who are as diverse from Hawthorne as they 
 are from Dr. Watts or Sir Isaac Newton. 
 
 This author is practically acquainted with men 
 and things, after the manner of men of the world. 
 He knows society, has learned its lessons, and has 
 felt its inflictions. 
 
 " In General Korobine that kindliness which is common 
 to all Russians was enhanced by the special affability 
 which is peculiar to all persons whose fair fame has been 
 a little soiled." 
 
 " One unfortunate man immediately and from afar recog- 
 nizes another, but in old age he is seldom willing to asso- 
 ciate with him. Nor is that to be wondered at. He hes 
 nothing to share with him — not even hopes." 
 
276 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 " Have you ever noticed, dear reader, that people who 
 are very absent-minded in the company of their inferiors, 
 suddenly lose that manner when they enter the society of 
 their superiors ? What can be the reason of this ? Yet 
 why ask such questions?" 
 
 " He talked incessantly, putting questions to himself, 
 and arguing upon them, touching upon now the most 
 elevated, now the most ordinary subjects, and finally so 
 wearied Litvinof that he was on the point of shrieking 
 with despair. For creating a cold and dreary gloom with- 
 out escape or remedy, Pichtchalkin had not his equal, even 
 among the profound philosophers who possess this faculty 
 in the highest degree. The very appearance of his bold and 
 shiny head, his small eyes, and wofully regular nose, uncon- 
 sciously gave one the blues, while his slow and monotonous 
 baritone voice seemed made expressly to enunciate in grave 
 and measured tones such sentences as the following : Two 
 and two make four, not three or five ; water is a liquid ; 
 benevolence is praiseworthy ; credit is indispensable to the 
 State as to the individual in financial operations." 
 
 Among his personages, but, generally, in subordi- 
 nate parts, are good and lovely women. Yet, from 
 the characters of those who are the most important 
 to the story, as well as from other indications, you 
 are led to doubt whether he really venerates the 
 more beautiful sex : 
 
 " Tell a woman anything honestly and without reserve, 
 and she will have no peace until she has cooked up some 
 petty and foreign motive that explains why you expressed 
 yourself in just that way and no other." 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 277 
 
 " Do you know what the difference is between the mis- 
 takes of men and those of women ? You don't know ? I 
 will tell you. A man may say, for example, that twice 
 two makes, not four, but five ; a woman will say that twice 
 two makes — a wax-candle." 
 
 " One day he fell on his knees before a lady whom he 
 hardly knew, but who had wearied him by urging him to 
 taste some little delicacy, and began to beseech her humbly, 
 but with wrath plainly to be seen in his face, to spare him ; 
 that he had done nothing to reproach himself with in re- 
 gard of his conduct to her, and that he would never visit 
 her again. Another time, a horse ran away with one of 
 Daria Michaelovna's washerwomen down a steep hill, and 
 threw her into a pit, nearly killing her. From that time 
 Pigasoff never spoke of it except as the ' good horse,' and the 
 hill and pit began to seem to him most picturesque places." 
 
 " He told her about one of his neighbors who had grown 
 so effeminate by being tied for thirty years to his wife's 
 apron-string, that one day, when stepping over a puddle 
 he, Pigasoff, had seen him put his hands behind him and 
 lift up his coat-tails as women do their skirts." 
 
 Russian men fare little better at the hands of 
 this writer than do the women. He does not spare 
 their foibles, their follies, their extravagance. He 
 chastises them for their good, and for the good 
 of their country. You cannot doubt his patriot- 
 ism. He gives many incidental evidences of it, and, 
 if these do not convince you, note that he plainly 
 declares it : 
 
 " Our country can get along without each one of us, but 
 none of us can get along without our country. It is sad 
 
278 
 
 HOW THEY STRIKE ME, 
 
 for him who thinks he can, and doubly sad for him who 
 really does forget the manners and ideas of his country. 
 Cosmopolitanism is nonsense, a zero, a less than zero ; out- 
 side of nationality there is no art, no truth, no life, there is 
 nothing at all. Every ideal figure ought to represent a type, 
 at the risk of at once becoming insignificant and vulgar." 
 
 He entertains no sickly sentimentalism. He 
 knows and admits the hard facts, the stern con- 
 ditions of human existence ; furthermore, he accepts 
 them in a truly philosophic spirit : 
 
 " Whatever blow may fall upon a human being, he can- 
 not help — reader, forgive the brutality of the phrase — he 
 cannot help eating on that day or the next, and that is the 
 first consolation." 
 
 " I think there are only three misfortunes in the world, 
 namely, living in a cold room in winter, wearing tight 
 shoes in summer, and sleeping in the same room with a 
 crying child which one can't whip." 
 
 He frequently gives expression to religious feel- 
 ing, often to conviction, sometimes to doctrine that 
 would not be rejected by the sternest Calvinist: 
 
 "Each one of us sins in that he merely lives ; nor is 
 there a great thinker or benefactor of humanity, who, by 
 reason of his wisdom or by reason of his goodness, can 
 believe that he has a right to live." 
 
 His pathos is unaffected and truly tender. Wit- 
 ness the aged father and mother at the grave of their 
 skeptical and only son : 
 
THESE AUTHORS. 
 
 279 
 
 " This grave is that of Eugene Bazarof. Two persons, 
 a husband and his wife, bending under the weight of years, 
 often come from a little neighboring village to visit it ; 
 leaning on one another, they slowly approach the railing, 
 fall on their knees, and weep long and bitterly, keeping 
 their eyes long fixed on the mute stone which covers their 
 son ; they exchange a few words, wipe away the dust which 
 covers the tombstone, straighten a branch of fir, then begin 
 to pray again, and cannot make up their minds to leave the 
 spot where they believe themselves nearer to their son, 
 nearer to his memory." 
 
 It is plain enough that this author, in the books 
 published here, has shown no very wide range of 
 invention. His stories are, for the most part, ample 
 variations of one theme. These variations are fresh, 
 strong, and sufficiently unlike one another to give 
 the whole work to which they belong an air of new- 
 ness. Each variation presents some more or less 
 novel aspects of Russian life and manners, as well as 
 several new turns of character. If a dramatist, 
 Turgenieff would compose comedies, of the higher 
 kind, rather than tragedies. As has been intimated, 
 his plots are of the simplest sort, hardly Avorthy the 
 name ; the history of a single passion, the formation, 
 hardening, and manifestation of one or more peculiar 
 dispositions. These things are done with masterly 
 vigor and skill by a pen that with one stroke, as it 
 were, can give you a clear notion of a personage, 
 thus : " He tried to give himself dignified airs, as if 
 he were not a human being, but his own statue erected 
 
280 HO W TUFA' STRIKE ME, THESE A UTHORS. 
 
 by national subscription." In this lively presenta- 
 tion of characters a great part of the interest excited 
 by these stories may be found. But the reader also 
 sympathizes with the lovers, fears the coquette and 
 her works, and is in dread lest she accomplish her evil 
 purposes, break the young girl's heart, and do other 
 irreparable mischief. And yet the attractiveness of 
 these books is a kind of fascination wrought in a 
 subtle manner, hard to define sharply and clearly, by 
 the author's genius, rather than the all-absorbing 
 concern for the progress of the tale and the dis- 
 entanglement of the plot, in which novel-readers 
 greatly delight. 
 
 A French novel in which should be turned to 
 account materials like these which Mr. Turgenieff 
 uses, would, according to English and American 
 standards, at once be declared immoral. In this 
 respect the quality of a book lies more in the treat- 
 ment than in the subject-matter; and the Russian's 
 manner of dealing with these questionable things is 
 very different from that most common among Gallic 
 authors. On a thoroughly healthy moral organiza- 
 tion his narrations, probably, would produce no dele- 
 terious effect; but that they may not be injurious to 
 a different class of readers it would be unsafe to 
 assert. Yet, however opinions as to the merits and 
 demerits of his works may differ, all must agree that, 
 as a man of peculiar genius, of education, of refine- 
 ment, of lofty aims, and of worthy achievements, 
 Russia has good reason to be proud of him. 
 
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