chapter twenty-three.

At the beginning of the second chapter of _Dr. Thorne_, one of the best of Trollope's novels, we are petted in this manner:--

"A few words must still be said about Miss Mary before we rush into our story; the crust will then have been broken, and the pie will be open to the guests."

At the three hundred and seventy-second page of the late Marion Crawford's entertaining story, _The Prima Donna_, the course of the narrative is thus interrupted:--

"Now at this stage of my story it would be unpardonable to keep my readers in suspense, if I may suppose that any of them have a little curiosity left. Therefore, I shall not narrate in detail what happened Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, seeing that it was just what might have been expected to happen at a week-end party during the season when there is nothing in the world to do but to play golf, tennis, or croquet, or to write or drive all day, and to work hard at bridge all the evening; for that is what it has come to."

Finally, in the first chapter of Mr. Winston Churchill's novel, _Coniston_, the author pleads with his reader in this style:--

"The reader is warned that this first love-story will, in a few chapters, come to an end; and not to a happy end--otherwise there would be no book. Lest he should throw the book away when he arrives at this page, it is only fair to tell him that there is another and much longer love-story later on, if he will only continue to read, in which, it is hoped, he may not be disappointed."

Imagine Turgenev or Flaubert scribbling anything similar to the interpolations quoted above! When a great French novelist does condescend to speak to his reader, it is in a tone, that so far from belittling his own art, or sugaring the expectation of his listener, has quite the contrary effect. On the second page of _Père Goriot_, we find the following solemn warning:--

"Ainsi ferez-vous, vous qui tenez ce livre d'une main blanche, vous qui vous enfoncez dans un molleux fauteuil en vous disant: 'Peut-être ceci va-t-il m'amuser.' Après avoir lu les secrètes infortunes du père Goriot, vous dînerez avec appétit en mettant votre insensibilité sur le compte de l'auteur, en le taxant d'exagération, en l'accusant de poésie. Ah! sachez-le: ce drame n'est ni une fiction ni un roman. _All is true_, il est si véritable, que chacun peut en reconnaître les éléments chez soi, dans son coeur peut-être."

The chief objection to these constant remarks to the reader, so common in great English novels, is that they for the moment destroy the illusion. Suppose an actress in the midst of Ophelia's mad scene should suddenly pause and address the audience in her own accents in this wise: "I observe that some ladies among the spectators are weeping, and that some men are yawning. Allow me to say to those of you who dislike tragic events on the stage, that I shall remain here only a few moments longer, and shall not have much to say; and that if you will only be patient, the grave-diggers will come on before long, and it is probable that their conversation will amuse you."

The two reasons given above, the fear that a novel unexplained by author's comment will not justify itself morally, and that at all hazards the gentle reader must be placated and entertained, undoubtedly partly explain a long tradition in the course of English fiction. But while we may protest against this sort of thing in general, it is well to remember that we must take our men of genius as we find them, and rejoice that they have seen fit to employ any channel of expression. There are many different kinds of great novels, as there are of great poems. The fact that Tennyson's poetry belongs to the first class does not in the least prevent the totally different poetry of Browning from being ranked equally high. _Joseph Vance_ is a very different kind of novel from _The Return of the Native_, but both awaken our wonder and delight. There are some books that inspire us by their art, and there are others that inspire us by their ideas. Turgenev was surely a greater artist than Tolstoi, but _Anna Karenina_ is a veritable piece of life.

I do not say that William De Morgan is not a great artist, because, if I should say it, I should not know exactly what I meant. But the immense pleasure that his books give me is another kind of pleasure than I receive from _The Scarlet Letter_. _Joseph Vance_ is not so much a beautifully written or exquisitely constructed novel as it is an encyclopædia of life. We meet real people, we hear delightful conversation, and the tremendously interesting personality of the author is everywhere apparent. The opinion of many authors concerning immortality is not worth attention; but I should very much like to know Mr. De Morgan's views on this absorbing subject. And so I turn to the fortieth chapter of _Joseph Vance_ with great expectations. The reader is advised to skip this chapter, a sure indication of its importance. For, like all humorists, Mr. De Morgan is a bit shamefaced when he talks about the deepest things, the things that really interest him most. It surely will not do to have Dr. Thorpe talk like the Reverend Mr. Capstick, although they both eagerly discuss what we call the supernatural. Capstick is an ass, but he has one characteristic that we might, to a certain extent, imitate; he sees no reason to apologise for conversing on great topics, or to break up such a conversation with an embarrassed laugh. Most of us are horribly afraid of being taken for sanctimonious persons, when there is really not the slightest danger. We are always pleasantly surprised when we discover that our friends are at heart just as serious as we are, and that they, too, regret the mask of flippancy that our Anglo-Saxon false modesty compels us to wear. But, as some one has said, you cannot expect your audience to take your views seriously unless you express them with seriousness. Mr. De Morgan, like Robert Browning, would doubtless deny that Dr. Thorpe spoke only the author's thoughts; but just as you can hear Browning's voice all through those "utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine," so I feel confident that amid all the light banter of this charming talk in the fortieth chapter, the following remark of Dr. Thorpe expresses the philosophy of William De Morgan, and at the same time the basal moral principle underlying this entire novel:--"The highest good is the growth of the Soul, and the greatest man is he who rejoices most in great fulfilments of the will of God."

For although Mr. De Morgan belongs, like Dickens, to the great humorists, who, while keenly conscious of the enormous difference between right and wrong, regard the world with a kindly smile for human weakness and folly, he is mainly a psychologist. To all of his novels he might appropriately have prefixed the words of the author of _Sordello_: "My stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul; little else is worth study." All the characters that he loves show _soul-development_; the few characters that are unlovely have souls that do not advance. Joseph, Lossie, Janey, Alicia, Charles Heath, Rosalind, Athelstan, have the inner man renewed day by day; one feels that at physical death such personalities proceed naturally into a sphere of eternal progress. On the other hand, Joey's soul stands still; so do the souls of Violet, Lavinia Straker, Mrs. Vereker, Mrs. Eldridge, Judith, and Mrs. Craik. Why should they live for ever? They would always be the same. This is the real distinction in these novels between people that are fundamentally good and those that are fundamentally bad; whether their badness causes tragedy or merely constant irritation. It is an original manner of dividing virtue from vice, but it is illuminating.

The events in Mr. De Morgan's books are improbable, but the people are probable. The same might be said of Shakespeare. It is highly improbable that Christopher Vance could have risen to fortune through his sign-board, or that Fenwick should have been electrocuted at the feet of his wife's daughter. But Christopher Vance, Fenwick, and Sally behave precisely as people would behave in such emergencies in real life. In many ways I think Christopher Vance is the most convincing character in all the novels; at any rate, I had rather hear him talk than any of the others. There is no trace of meanness in him, and even when he is drunk he is never offensive or disgusting. The day after he has returned intoxicated from a meeting of the Board of Arbitrators, he seems rather inquisitive as to his exact condition, and asks his son:--

"I wasn't singin' though, Nipper, was I?" I said certainly not! "Not 'a Landlady of France she loved an Officer, 'tis said,' nor 'stick 'em up again in the middle of a three-cent pie'?"

"Neither of them--quite certain." My father seemed reassured. "That's _something_, anyhow," said he. "The other Arbitrators was singin' both. Likewise 'Rule Britannia.' Weak-headed cards, the two on 'em!"

The scene at Christopher Vance's death-bed, when Joseph finally discloses the identity of the boy who threw the piece of glass into the eye of the Sweep, touches the depths of true pathos. One feels the infinite love of the father for the little son who defended him. He is quite rightly prouder of that exploit than of all the Nipper's subsequent learning.

While the imaginary events in this novel bear no sort of relation to the circumstances of the author's own life, I cannot help launching the mere guess that the father of William De Morgan was, to a certain extent, a combination of Christopher Vance and Dr. Thorpe. For Augustus De Morgan was not only a distinguished mathematical scholar, he was well-known for the keenness of his wit. He had the learning and refinement of Dr. Thorpe, and the shrewd, irresistible humour of old Vance. At all events, this striking combination in the novelist can be traced to no more probable source.

The influence of good women on men's lives is repeatedly shown; it is indeed a leading principle in three of the books. One of the most notable differences in novels that reflect a pessimistic _Weltanschauung_ from those that indicate the contrary may be seen right here. How completely the whole significance of the works of Guy de Maupassant would change had he included here and there some women who combined virtue with personal charm! "Were there no women, men would live like gods," said a character in one of Dekker's plays; judged by much modern fiction, one would feel like trying the experiment. But what would become of Mr. De Morgan's novels, and of the attitude toward life they so clearly reflect, if they contained no women? Young Joseph Vance was fortunate indeed in having in his life the powerful influence of two such characters as Lossie Thorpe and Janey Spencer. They were what a compass is to a shipman, taking him straight on his course through the blackest storms. It was for Lossie that he made the greatest sacrifice in his whole existence; and nothing pays a higher rate of moral interest than a big sacrifice. It was Janey who led him from the grossness of earth into the spiritual world, something that Lossie, with all her loveliness, could not do. Both women show that there is nothing inherently dull in goodness; it may be accompanied with some _esprit_. We are too apt to think that moral goodness is represented by such persons as the Elder Brother in the story of the Prodigal Son, when the parable indicates that the younger brother, with all his crimes, was actually the more virtuous of the two. It took no small skill for Mr. De Morgan to create such an irresistibly good woman as Lossie, make his hero in love with her from boyhood, cause her to marry some one else, and then to unite the heart-broken hero with another girl; and through these tremendous upheavals to make all things work together for good, and to the reader's complete satisfaction. This could not possibly have been accomplished had not the author been able to fashion a woman, who, while totally unlike Lossie in every physical and mental aspect, was spiritually even more attractive. I am not sure which of the two girls has the bigger place in their maker's heart; I suspect it is Lossie; but to me Janey is not only a better woman, I really have a stronger affection for her.

In _Alice-for-Short_, the hero is again blessed with two guardian angels, his sister and his second wife. Mr. De Morgan is extremely generous to his favourite men, in permitting either their second choice or their second experiment in matrimony to prove such an amazing success. Comparatively few novelists dare to handle the problem of happy second marriages; the subject for some reason does not lend itself readily to romance. Josh Billings said he knew of absolutely nothing that would cure a man of laziness; but that a second wife would sometimes help. Although he said this in the spirit of farce, it is exactly what happens in Mr. De Morgan's books. Janey is not technically a second wife, but she is spiritually; and she rescues Joseph from despair, restores his ambition and capacity to work, and after her death is like a guiding star. Alice is a second wife, both in her husband's heart and in the law; and her influence on Charles Heath provides exactly the stimulus needed to save him from himself. Fenwick marries for the second time, and although his wife is in one sense the same person, in another she is not; she is quite different in everything except constancy from the wretched girl he left sobbing on the verandah in India. And what would have become of Fenwick without the mature Rosalind? Salvation, in Mr. De Morgan's novels, often assumes a feminine shape. They are not books of Friendship, like _The Cloister and the Hearth_, _Trilby_, and _Es War_; with all their wonderful intelligence and play of intellect, they would seem almost barren without women. And he is far more successful in depicting love after marriage than before. One of the most charming characteristics of these stories is the frequent representation of the highest happiness known on earth--not found in the passion of early youth, but in a union of two hearts cemented by joy and sorrow in the experience of years. No novelist has ever given us better pictures of a good English home; more attractive glimpses into the reserveless intimacy of the affairs of the hearth. The conversations between Christopher Vance and his wife, between Sir Rupert and Lady Johnson, between Fenwick and Rosalind, are decidedly superior to the "love-making" scenes. Indeed, the description of the walk during which young Dr. Vereker definitely wins Sally, is disappointing. It is perhaps the only important episode in Mr. De Morgan's novels that shows more effort than inspiration.

The style in these books, despite constant quotation, is not at all a literary style. Joseph Vance is called "an ill-written autobiography," because it lacks entirely the conventional manner. Many works of fiction are composed in what might be called the terminology of the art; just as works in science and in sport are compelled to repeat constantly the same verbal forms. The astonishing freshness and charm of Mr. De Morgan's method consist partly in his abandonment of literary precedent, and adhering only to actual observation. It is as though an actor on the stage should suddenly drop his mannerism of accent and gesture, and behave as he would were he actually, instead of histrionically, happy or wretched. Despite the likeness to Dickens in characters and atmosphere, _Joseph Vance_ sounds not only as though its author had never written a novel previously, but as though he had never read one. It has the strangeness of reality. There is no lack of action in these huge narratives: the men and women pass through the most thrilling incidents, and suffer the greatest extremes of passion, pain, and joy that the human mind can endure. We have three cases of drowning, one tremendous fire; and in _Somehow Good_--which, viewed merely as a story, is the best of them--a highly eventful plot; and, spiritually, the characters give us an idea of how much agony the heart can endure without quite breaking. But though the bare plot seems almost like melodrama, the style is never on stilts. In the most awful crises, the language has the absolute simplicity of actual circumstance. When Rosalind recognises her husband in the cab, we wonder why she takes it so coolly. Some sixty pages farther along, we come upon this paragraph:--

"Nevertheless, these were not so absolute that her demeanour escaped comment from the cabby, the only witness of her first sight of the 'electrocuted' man. He spoke of her afterwards as that squealing party down that sanguinary little turning off Shepherd's Bush Road he took that sanguinary galvanic shock to."

Our author is fond of presenting events of the most momentous consequence through the lips of humble and indifferent observers. It is only the cabman's chance testimony which shows us that even Rosalind's superb self-control had the limit determined by real womanhood; and in _Joseph Vance_, the great climax of emotion, when Lossie visits her maligned old lover, is given with unconscious force through the faulty vernacular of the "slut" of a servant-maid, who is utterly unaware of the angels that ministered over that scene; and then by the broken English of the German chess-player, equally blind to the divine presence. Compare these two crude testimonies, which make the ludicrous blunders made by the Hostess in that marvellous account of the death of Falstaff, and you have a veritable harmony of the Gospels. Some novelists use an extraordinary style to describe ordinary events; Mr. De Morgan uses an ordinary style to describe extraordinary events.

Even in his latest book, _It Never Can Happen Again_,[2] the least cheerful of all his productions, the title is intended to be as comforting as Charles Reade's caption, _It Is Never Too Late to Mend_. In this story, Mr. De Morgan descends into hell. Delirium tremens has never been pictured with more frightful horror than in the awful night when the mad wretch is bent on murder. No scene in any naturalistic novel surpasses this in vivid detail. Indeed, all of Mr. De Morgan's books might well be circulated as anti-alcohol tracts; the real villain in his tragedies is Drink. Even though drunkenness in a certain aspect supplies comedy in _Joseph Vance_, drink is, after all, the ruin of old Christopher, and we are left with no shade of doubt that this is so. Mr. De Morgan's unquestionable optimism does not blink the dreadful aspects of life, any more than did Browning's. The scene in the hospital, where the fingers without finger-nails clasp the mighty hand in the rubber glove, is as loathsomely horrible as anything to be found in the annals of disease. And the career of Blind Jim, entirely ignorant of his divine origin and destiny, is a series of appalling calamities. He has lost his sight in a terrible accident; he is run over by a waggon, and loses his leg; he is run over by an automobile, and loses his life. He has also lost, though he does not know it, what is far dearer to him than eyes, or legs, or life,--his little daughter. And yet we do not need the spirit voice of the dead child to assure us that all is well. Indeed, the tragic history of Jim and Lizarann is not nearly so depressing as the humdrum narrative of the melancholy quarrel between Mr. and Mrs. Challis. In previous novels, the author has been pleased to show us domestic happiness; here we have the dreary round of perpetual discord. Of course no one can complain of Mr. De Morgan for his choice in this matter; it is certainly true that not all marriages are happy, even though the majority of them (as I believe) are. The difficulty is that the triangle in this book--husband, wife, and beautiful young lady--has no corner of real interest. It is not entirely the fault of either Mr. or Mrs. Challis that they separate; there is much to be said on both sides. What we object to is the fact that it is impossible to sympathise with either of them; this is not because each is guilty, but because neither is interesting. We do not much care what becomes of them. And as for Judith, the technical virgin who causes all the trouble, she is a very dull person. We do not need this book to learn that female beauty without brains fascinates the ordinary man. The best scenes are those where Blind Jim and Lizarann appear; they are a couple fully worthy of Dickens at his best. Unfortunately they do not appear often enough to suit us, and they both die. We could more easily have spared Mr. and Mrs. Challis, the latter's abominable tea-gossip friend, and that old hypocritical tiger-cat, Mrs. Challis's mother. Why does Mr. De Morgan make elderly women so disgustingly unattractive? Does his sympathy with life desert him here? The entire Challis household, including the satellites of relationship and propinquity, are hardly worth the author's skill or the reader's attention. One would suppose that a brilliant novelist, like Challis, pulled from the domestic orbit by a comet like Judith, would be for a time in an interesting, if not an edifying, position; but he is not. Perhaps Mr. De Morgan wishes to show with the impartiality of a true chronicler of life that a married man, drawn away by his own lust, and enticed, can be just as dull in sin as in virtue. Yet the long dreary family storm ends in sunshine; the discordant pair are redeemed by Love,--the real motive power of this story,--and one feels that it can never happen again. In spite of Mr. De Morgan's continual onslaught on creeds, Athelstan Taylor, who believes the whole Apostles' Creed, compares very favourably with Challis, who believes only the first seven and the last four words of it, apparently the portion accepted by Mr. De Morgan: and by their fruits ye shall know them. It is certainly a proof of the fair-mindedness of our novelist, that he has created orthodox believers like Lossie's husband and Athelstan Taylor, big wholesome fellows, both of them; and has deliberately made both so irresistibly attractive. The professional parson is often ridiculed in modern novels; it is worth noting that in this story the only important character in the whole work who combines intelligence with virtue is the Reverend Athelstan Taylor.

[2] Through the kindness of Messrs. Henry Holt and Co., I have had the privilege of reading this novel in proof sheets.

Seldom have any books shown so intimate a knowledge of the kingdom of this world and at the same time reflected with such radiance the kingdom of heaven. It is noteworthy and encouraging that a man who portrays with such humorous exactitude the things that are seen and temporal, should exhibit so firm a faith in the things that are unseen and eternal. In _Joseph Vance_ we have the growth of the soul from an environment of poverty and crime to the loftiest heights of nobility and self-denial; and the theme in the Waldstein Sonata triumphantly repeats the confidence of Dr. Thorpe, who regards death not as a barrier, but as a gateway. In _Alice-for-Short_, the mystery of the spirit-world completely envelops the humdrum inconsistencies that form the daily round, the trivial task; this is seen perhaps not so much in the "ghosts," for they speak of the past; but the figure of old Verrinder--whose heart revolves about the Asylum like the planet around the sun--and the waking of old Jane from her long sleep, seem to symbolise the impotence of Time to quench the divine spark of Love. This story is called a "dichronism"; but it might have been called a _dichroism_, for from one viewpoint it reflects only the clouded colour of earth, and from another a celestial glory. In _Somehow Good_ the ugliest tragedy takes its place in the unapparent order of life. It is not that good finally reigns in spite of evil; the final truth is that in some manner good is the very goal of ill. The agony of separation has tested the pure metal of character; and the fusion of two lives is made permanent in the frightful heat of awful pain. The fruit of a repulsive sin may be Beauty, like a flower springing from a dung-hill. "What became of the baby?... _The_ baby--_his_ baby--_his_ horrible baby!" "Gerry darling! Gerry _dearest_! do think...."

II

THOMAS HARDY

The father of Thomas Hardy wished his son to enter the church, and this object was the remote goal of his early education. At just what period in the boy's mental development Christianity took on the form of a meaningless fable, we shall perhaps never know; but after a time he ceased to have even the faith of a grain of mustard seed. This absence of religious belief has proved no obstacle to many another candidate for the Christian ministry, as every habitual church-goer knows; or as any son of Belial may discover for himself by merely reading the prospectus of summer schools of theology. There has, however, always been a certain cold, mathematical precision in Mr. Hardy's way of thought that would have made him as uncomfortable in the pulpit as he would have been in an editor's chair, writing for salary persuasive articles containing the exact opposite of his individual convictions. But, although the beauty of holiness failed to impress his mind, the beauty of the sanctuary was sufficiently obvious to his sense of Art. He became an ecclesiastical architect, and for some years his delight was in the courts of the Lord. Instead of composing sermons in ink, he made sermons in stones, restoring to many a decaying edifice the outlines that the original builder had seen in his vision centuries ago. For no one has ever regarded ancient churches with more sympathy and reverence than Mr. Hardy. No man to-day has less respect for God and more devotion to His house.

Mr. Hardy's professional career as an architect extended over a period of about thirteen years, from the day when the seventeen-year-old boy became articled, to about 1870, when he forsook the pencil for the pen. His strict training as an architect has been of enormous service to him in the construction of his novels, for skill in constructive drawing has repeatedly proved its value in literature. Rossetti achieved positive greatness as an artist and as a poet. Stevenson's studies in engineering were not lost time, and Mr. De Morgan affords another good illustration of the same fact. Thackeray was unconsciously learning the art of the novelist while he was making caricatures, and the lesser Thackeray of a later day--George du Maurier--found the transition from one art to the other a natural progression. Hopkinson Smith and Frederic Remington, on a lower but dignified plane, bear witness to the same truth. Indeed, when one studies carefully the beginnings of the work of imaginative writers, one is surprised at the great number who have handled an artist's or a draughtsman's pencil. A prominent and successful playwright of to-day has said that if he were not writing plays, he should not dream of writing books; he would be building bridges.

Mr. Hardy's work as an ecclesiastical architect laid the real foundations of his success as a novelist; for it gave him an intimate familiarity with the old monuments and rural life of Wessex, and at the same time that eye for precision of form that is so noticeable in all his books. He has really never ceased to be an architect. Architecture has contributed largely to the matter and to the style of his stories. Two architects appear in his first novel. In _A Pair of Blue Eyes_ Stephen Smith is a professional architect, and in coming to restore the old Western Church he was simply repeating the experience of his creator. No one of Mr. Hardy's novels contains more of the facts of his own life than _A Laodicean_, which was composed on what the author then believed to be his death-bed; it was mainly dictated, which I think partly accounts for its difference in style from the other tales. The hero, Somerset, is an architect whose first meeting with his future wife occurs through his professional curiosity concerning the castle; and a considerable portion of the early chapters is taken up with architectural detail, and of his enforced rivalry with a competitor in the scheme for restoration. Not only does Mr. Hardy's scientific profession speak through the mouths of his characters, but old and beautiful buildings adorn his pages as they do the landscape he loves. In _Two on a Tower_ the ancient structure appears here and there in the story as naturally and incidentally as it would to a pedestrian in the neighbourhood; in _A Pair of Blue Eyes_ the church tower plays an important part in a thrilling episode, and its fall emphasises a Scripture text in a diabolical manner. The old church at Weatherbury is so closely associated with the life history of the men and women in _Far from the Madding Crowd_ that as one stands in front of it to-day the people seem to gather again about its portal....

But while Mr. Hardy has drawn freely on his knowledge of architecture in furnishing animate and inanimate material for his novels, the great results of his youthful training are seen in a more subtle and profounder influence. The intellectual delight that we receive in the perusal of his books--a delight that sometimes makes us impatient with the work of feebler authors--comes largely from the architectonics of his literary structures. One never loses sight of Hardy the architect. In purely constructive skill he has surpassed all his contemporaries. His novels--with the exception of _Desperate Remedies_ and _Jude the Obscure_--are as complete and as beautiful to contemplate as a sculptor's masterpiece. They are finished and noble works of art, and give the same kind of pleasure to the mind as any superbly perfect outline. Mr. Hardy himself firmly believes that the novel should first of all be a story: that it should not be a thesis, nor a collection of reminiscences or _obiter dicta_. He insists that a novel should be as much of a whole as a living organism, where all the parts--plot, dialogue, character, and scenery--should be fitly framed together, giving the single impression of a completely harmonious building. One simply cannot imagine him writing in the manner of a German novelist, with absolutely no sense of proportion; nor like the mighty Tolstoi, who steadily sacrifices Art on the altar of Reality; nor like the great English school represented by Thackeray, Dickens, Trollope, and De Morgan, whose charm consists in their intimacy with the reader; they will interrupt the narrative constantly to talk it over with the merest bystander, thus gaining his affection while destroying the illusion. Mr. Hardy's work shows a sad sincerity, the noble austerity of the true artist, who feels the dignity of his art and is quite willing to let it speak for itself.

His earliest novel, _Desperate Remedies_, is more like an architect's first crude sketch than a complete and detailed drawing. Strength, originality, and a thoroughly intelligent design are perfectly clear; one feels the impelling mind behind the product. But it resembles the _plan_ of a good novel rather than a novel itself. The lines are hard; there is a curious rigidity about the movement of the plot which proceeds in jerks, like a machine that requires frequent winding up. The manuscript was submitted to a publishing firm, who, it is interesting to remember, handed it over to their professional reader, George Meredith. Mr. Meredith told the young author that his work was promising; and he said it in such a way that the two men became life-long friends, there being no more jealousy between them than existed between Tennyson and Browning. Years later Mr. Meredith said that he regarded Mr. Hardy as the real leader of contemporary English novelists; and the younger man always maintained toward his literary adviser an attitude of sincere reverence, of which his poem on the octogenarian's death was a beautiful expression. There is something fine in the honest friendship and mutual admiration of two giants, who cordially recognise each other above the heads of the crowd, and who are themselves placidly unmoved by the fierce jealousy of their partisans. In this instance, despite a total unlikeness in literary style, there was genuine intellectual kinship. Mr. Meredith and Mr. Hardy were both Pagans and regarded the world and men and women from the Pagan standpoint, though the deduction in one case was optimism and in the other pessimism. Given the premises, the younger writer's conclusions seem more logical; and the processes of his mind were always more orderly than those of his brilliant and irregular senior. There is little doubt (I think) as to which of the two should rank higher in the history of English fiction, where fineness of Art surely counts for something. Mr. Hardy is a great novelist; whereas to adapt a phrase that Arnold applied to Emerson, I should say that Mr. Meredith was not a great novelist; he was a great man who wrote novels.

Immediately after the publication of _Desperate Remedies_, which seemed to teach him, as _Endymion_ taught Keats, the highest mysteries of his art, Mr. Hardy entered upon a period of brilliant and splendid production. In three successive years, 1872, 1873, and 1874, he produced three masterpieces--_Under the Greenwood Tree_, _A Pair of Blue Eyes_, and _Far from the Madding Crowd_; followed four years later by what is, perhaps, his greatest contribution to literature, _The Return of the Native_. Even in literary careers that last a long time, there seem to be golden days when the inspiration is unbalked by obstacles. It is interesting to contemplate the lengthy row of Scott's novels, and then to remember that _The Heart of Midlothian_, _The Bride of Lammermoor_ and _Ivanhoe_ were published in three successive years; to recall that the same brief span covered in George Eliot's work the production of _Scenes of Clerical Life_, _Adam Bede_, and _The Mill on the Floss_; and one has only to compare what Mr. Kipling accomplished in 1888, 1889, and 1890 with any other triennial, to discover when he had what the Methodists call "liberty." Mr. Hardy's career as a writer has covered about forty years; omitting his collections of short tales, he has written fourteen novels; from 1870 to 1880, inclusive, seven appeared; from 1881 to 1891, five; from 1892 to 1902, two; since 1897 he has published no novels at all. With that singular and unfortunate perversity which makes authors proudest of their lamest offspring, Mr. Hardy has apparently abandoned the novel for poetry and the poetic drama. I suspect that praise of his verse is sweeter to him than praise of his fiction; but, although his poems are interesting for their ideas, and although we all like the huge _Dynasts_ better than we did when we first saw it, it is a great pity from the economic point of view that the one man who can write novels better than anybody else in the same language should deliberately choose to write something else in which he is at his very best only second rate. The world suffers the same kind of economic loss (less only in degree) that it suffered when Milton spent twenty years of his life in writing prose; and when Tolstoi forsook novels for theology.

It is probable that one reason why Mr. Hardy quit novel-writing was the hostile reception that greeted _Jude the Obscure_. Every great author, except Tennyson, has been able to endure adverse criticism, whether he hits back, like Pope and Byron, or whether he proceeds on his way in silence. But no one has ever enjoyed or ever will enjoy misrepresentation; and there is no doubt that the writer of _Jude_ felt that he had been cruelly misunderstood. It is, I think, the worst novel he has ever written, both from the moral and from the artistic point of view; but the novelist was just as sincere in his intention as when he wrote the earlier books. The difficulty is that something of the same change had taken place in his work that is so noticeable in that of Björnson; he had ceased to be a pure artist and had become a propagandist. The fault that marred the splendid novel _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_ ruined _Jude the Obscure_. When Mr. Hardy wrote on the title-page of _Tess_ the words, "A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented," he issued defiantly the name of a thesis which the story (great, in spite of this) was intended to defend. To a certain extent, his interest in the argument blinded his artistic sense; otherwise he would never have committed the error of hanging his heroine. The mere hanging of a heroine may not be in itself an artistic blunder, for Shakespeare hanged Cordelia. But Mr. Hardy executed Tess because he was bound to see his thesis through. In the prefaces to subsequent editions the author turned on his critics, calling them "sworn discouragers of effort," a phrase that no doubt some of them deserved; and then, like many another man who believes in himself, he punished both critics and the public in the Rehoboam method by issuing _Jude the Obscure_. Instead of being a masterpiece of despair, like _The Return of the Native_, this book is a shriek of rage. Pessimism, which had been a noble ground quality of his earlier writings, is in _Jude_ merely hysterical and wholly unconvincing. The author takes obvious pains to make things come out wrong; as in melodramas and childish romances, the law of causation is suspended in the interest of the hero's welfare. Animalism, which had partially disfigured _Tess_, became gross and revolting in _Jude_; and the representation of marriage and the relations between men and women, instead of being a picture of life, resembled a caricature. It is a matter of sincere regret that Mr. Hardy has stopped novel-writing, but we want no more _Judes_. Didactic pessimism is not good for the novel.

_The Well-Beloved_, published in 1897, but really a revision of an earlier tale, is in a way a triumph of Art. The plot is simply absurd, almost as whimsical as anything in _Alice in Wonderland_. A man proposes to a young girl and is rejected; when her daughter is grown, he proposes to the representative of the second generation, and with the same ill fortune. When _her_ daughter reaches maturity, he tries the third woman in line and without success. His perseverance was equalled only by his bad luck, as so often happens in Mr. Hardy's stories. And yet, with a plot that would wreck any other novelist, the author constructed a powerful and beautifully written novel. It is as though the architect had taken a wretched plan and yet somehow contrived to erect on its false lines a handsome building. The book has naturally added nothing to his reputation, but as a _tour de force_ it is hard to surpass.

It is pleasant to remember that a man's opinion of his own work has nothing to do with its final success and that his best creations cannot be injured by his worst. Tolstoi may be ashamed of having written _Anna Karenina_, and may insist that his sociological tracts are superior productions, but we know better; and rejoice in his powerlessness to efface his own masterpieces. We may honestly think that we should be ashamed to put our own names to such stuff as _Little Dorrit_, but that does not prevent us from admiring the splendid genius that produced _David Copperfield_ and _Great Expectations_. Mr. Hardy may believe that _Jude the Obscure_ represents his zenith as a novelist, and that his poems are still greater literature; but one reading of _Jude_ suffices, while we never tire of rereading _Far from the Madding Crowd_ and _The Return of the Native_. Probably no publisher's announcement in the world to-day would cause more pleasure to English-speaking people than the announcement that Thomas Hardy was at work on a Wessex novel with characters of the familiar kind.

For _The Dynasts_, which covers the map of Europe, transcends the sky, and deals with world-conquerors, is not nearly so great a world-drama as _A Pair of Blue Eyes_, that is circumscribed in a small corner of a small island, and treats exclusively of a little group of commonplace persons. Literature deals with a constant--human nature, which is the same in Wessex as in Vienna. As the late Mr. Clyde Fitch used to say, it is not the great writers that have great things happen to them; the great things happen to the ordinary people they portray. Mr. Hardy selected a few of the southwestern counties of England as the stage for his prose dramas; to this locality he for the first time, in _Far from the Madding Crowd_, gave the name Wessex, a name now wholly fictitious, but which his creative imagination has made so real that it is constantly and seriously spoken of as though it were English geography. In these smiling valleys and quiet rural scenes, "while the earth keeps up her terrible composure," the farmers and milkmaids hold us spellbound as they struggle in awful passion. The author of the drama stands aloof, making no effort to guide his characters from temptation, folly, and disaster, and offering no explanation to the spectators, who are thrilled with pity and fear. But one feels that he loves and hates his children as we do, and that he correctly gauges their moral value. The very narrowness of the scene increases the intensity of the play. The rustic cackle of his bourg drowns the murmur of the world.

Mr. Hardy's knowledge of and sympathy with nature is of course obvious to all readers, but it is none the less impressive as we once more open books that we have read many times. There are incidentally few novelists who repay one so richly for repeated perusals. He seems as inexhaustible as nature herself, and he grows stale no faster than the repetition of the seasons. It is perhaps rather curious that a man who finds nature so absolutely inexorable and indifferent to human suffering should love her so well. But every man must love something greater than himself, and as Mr. Hardy had no God, he has drawn close to the world of trees, plains, and rivers. His intimacy with nature is almost uncanny. Nature is not merely a background in his stories, it is often an active agent. There are striking characters in _The Return of the Native_, but the greatest character in the book is Egdon Heath. The opening chapter, which gives the famous picture of the Heath, is like an overture to a great music-drama. The _Heath-motif_ is repeated again and again in the story. It has a personality of its own, and affects the fortunes and the hearts of all human beings who dwell in its proximity. If one stands to-day on the edge of this Heath at the twilight hour, just at the moment when Darkness is conquering Light--the moment chosen by Mr. Hardy for the first chapter--one realises its significance and its possibilities. In _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_ the intercourse between man and nature is set forth with amazing power. The different seasons act as chorus to the human tragedy. In _The Woodlanders_ the trees seem like separate individualities. To me a tree has become a different thing since I first read this particular novel.

Even before he took up the study of architecture, Mr. Hardy's unconscious training as a novelist began. When he was a small boy, the Dorchester girls found him useful in a way that recalls the services of that reliable child, Samuel Richardson. These village maids, in their various love-affairs, which necessitated a large amount of private correspondence, employed young Hardy as amanuensis. He did not, like his great predecessor, compose their epistles; but he held the pen, and faithfully recorded the inspiration of Love, as it flowed warm from the lips of passionate youth. In this manner, the almost sexless boy was enabled to look clear-eyed into the very heart of palpitating young womanhood, and to express accurately its most gentle and most stormy emotions; just as the white voice of a choir-child repeats with precision the thrilling notes of religious passion. These early experiences were undoubtedly of the highest value in later years; indeed, as the boy grew a little older, it is probable that the impression deepened. Mr. Hardy is fond of depicting the vague, half-conscious longing of a boy to be near a beautiful woman; everyone will remember the contract between Eustacia and her youthful admirer, by which he was to hold her hand for a stipulated number of minutes. Mr. Hardy's women are full of tenderness and full of caprice; and whatever feminine readers may think of them, they are usually irresistible to the masculine mind. It has been said, indeed, that he is primarily a man's novelist, as Mrs. Ward is perhaps a woman's; he does not represent his women as marvels of intellectual splendour, or in queenly domination over the society in which they move. They are more apt to be the victims of their own affectionate hearts. One female reader, exasperated at this succession of portraits, wrote on the margin of one of Mr. Hardy's novels that she took from a circulating library, "Oh, how I _hate_ Thomas Hardy!" This is an interesting gloss, even if we do not add meanly that it bears witness to the truth of the picture. Elfride, Bathsheba, Eustacia, Lady Constantine, Marty South, and Tess are of varied social rank and wealth; but they are all alike in humble prostration before the man they love. Mr. Hardy takes particular pleasure in representing them as swayed by sudden and constantly changing caprices; one has only to recall the charming Bathsheba Everdene, and her various attitudes toward the three men who admire her--Troy, Boldwood, and Gabriel Oak. Mr. Hardy's heroines change their minds oftener than they change their clothes; but in whatever material or mental presentment, they never lack attraction. And they all resemble their maker in one respect; at heart every one of them is a Pagan. They vary greatly in constancy and in general strength of character; but it is human passion, and not religion, that is the mainspring of their lives. He has never drawn a truly spiritual woman, like Browning's Pompilia.

His best men, from the moral point of view, are closest to the soil. Gabriel Oak, in _Far from the Madding Crowd_, and Venn, in _The Return of the Native_, are, on the whole, his noblest characters. Oak is a shepherd and Venn is a reddleman; their sincerity, charity, and fine sense of honour have never been injured by what is called polite society. And Mr. Hardy, the stingiest author toward his characters, has not entirely withheld reward from these two. Henry Knight and Angel Clare, who have whatever advantages civilisation is supposed to give, are certainly not villains; they are men of the loftiest ideals; but if each had been a deliberate black-hearted villain, he could not have treated the innocent woman who loved him with more ugly cruelty. Compared with Oak and Venn, this precious pair of prigs are seen to have only the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees; a righteousness that is of little help in the cruel emergencies of life. Along with them must stand Clym Yeobright, another slave to moral theory, who quite naturally ends his days as an itinerant preacher. The real villains in Mr. Hardy's novels, Sergeant Troy, young Dare, and Alec D'Urberville, seem the least natural and the most machine-made of all his characters.

Mr. Hardy's pessimism is a picturesque and splendid contribution to modern fiction. We should be as grateful for it in this field as we are to Schopenhauer in the domain of metaphysics. I am no pessimist myself, but I had rather read Schopenhauer than all the rest of the philosophers put together, Plato alone excepted. The pessimism of Mr. Hardy resembles that of Schopenhauer in being absolutely thorough and absolutely candid; it makes the world as darkly superb and as terribly interesting as a Greek drama. It is wholly worth while to get this point of view; and if in practical life one does not really believe in it, it is capable of yielding much pleasure. After finishing one of Mr. Hardy's novels, one has all the delight of waking from an impressive but horrible dream, and feeling through the dissolving vision the real friendliness of the good old earth. It is like coming home from an adequate performance of _King Lear_, which we would not have missed for anything. There are so many make-believe pessimists, so many whose pessimism is a sham and a pose, which will not stand for a moment in a real crisis, that we cannot withhold admiration for such pessimism as Mr. Hardy's, which is fundamental and sincere. To him the Christian religion and what we call the grace of God have not the slightest shade of meaning; he is as absolute a Pagan as though he had written four thousand years before Christ. This is something almost refreshing, because it is so entirely different from the hypocrisy and cant, the pretence of pessimism, so familiar to us in the works of modern writers; and so inconsistent with their daily life. Mr. Hardy's pessimism is the one deep-seated conviction of his whole intellectual process.

I once saw a print of a cartoon drawn by a contemporary Dresden artist, Herr Sascha Schneider. It was called "The Helplessness of Man against Destiny." We see a quite naked man, standing with his back to us; his head is bowed in hopeless resignation; heavy manacles are about his wrists, to which chains are attached, that lead to some fastening in the ground. Directly before him, with hideous hands, that now almost entirely surround the little circle where he stands in dejection, crawls flatly toward him a prodigious, shapeless monster, with his horrid narrow eyes fixed on his defenceless human prey. And the man is so conscious of his tether, that even in the very presence of the unspeakably awful object, _the chains hang loose_! He may have tried them once, but he has since given up. The monster is Destiny; and the real meaning of the picture is seen in the eyes, nose, and mouth of the loathsome beast. There is not only no sympathy and no intelligence there; there is an expression far more terrible than the evident lust to devour; there is plainly the _sense of humour_ shown on this hideous face. The contrast between the limitless strength of the monster and the utter weakness of the man, flavours the stupidity of Destiny with the zest of humour.

Now this is a correct picture of life as Mr. Hardy sees it. His God is a kind of insane child, who cackles foolishly as he destroys the most precious objects. Some years ago I met a man entirely blind. He said that early in life he had lost the sight of one eye by an accident; and that years later, as he held a little child on his lap, the infant, in rare good humour, playfully poked the point of a pair of scissors into the other, thus destroying his sight for ever. So long an interval had elapsed since this second and final catastrophe, that the man spoke of it without the slightest excitement or resentment. The child with the scissors might well represent Hardy's conception of God. Destiny is whimsical, rather than definitely malicious; for Destiny has not sufficient intelligence even to be systematically bad. We smile at Caliban's natural theology, as he composes his treatise on Setebos; but his God is the same who disposes of man's proposals in the stories of our novelist.

"In which feat, if his leg snapped, brittle clay, And he lay stupid-like,--why, I should laugh; And if he, spying me, should fall to weep, Beseech me to be good, repair his wrong, Bid his poor leg smart less or grow again,-- Well, as the chance were, this might take or else Not take my fancy.... 'Thinketh, such shows nor right nor wrong in Him, Nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong and Lord."

Mr. Hardy believes that, morally, men and women are immensely superior to God; for all the good qualities that we attribute to Him in prayer are human, not divine. He in his loneliness is totally devoid of the sense of right and wrong, and knows neither justice nor mercy. His poem _New Year's Eve_[3] clearly expresses his theology.

[3] See Appendix.

Mr. Hardy's pessimism is not in the least personal, nor has it risen from any sorrow or disappointment in his own life. It is both philosophic and temperamental. He cannot see nature in any other way. To venture a guess, I think his pessimism is mainly caused by his deep, manly tenderness for all forms of human and animal life and by an almost abnormal sympathy. His intense love for bird and beast is well known; many a stray cat and hurt dog have found in him a protector and a refuge. He firmly believes that the sport of shooting is wicked, and he has repeatedly joined in practical measures to waken the public conscience on this subject. As a spectator of human history, he sees life as a vast tragedy, with men and women emerging from nothingness, suffering acute physical and mental sorrow, and then passing into nothingness again. To his sympathetic mind, the creed of optimism is a ribald insult to the pain of humanity and devout piety merely absurd. To hear these suffering men and women utter prayers of devotion and sing hymns of adoration to the Power whence comes all their anguish is to him a veritable abdication of reason and common sense. God simply does not deserve it, and he for one will have the courage to say so. He will not stand by and see humanity submit so tamely to so heartless a tyrant. For, although Mr. Hardy is a pessimist, he has not the least tincture of cynicism. If one analyses his novels carefully, one will see that he seldom shows scorn for his characters; his contempt is almost exclusively devoted to God. Sometimes the evil fate that his characters suffer is caused by the very composition of their mind, as is seen in _A Pair of Blue Eyes_; again it is no positive human agency, but rather an Æschylean conception of hidden forces, as in _The Return of the Native_; but in neither case is humanity to blame.

This pessimism has one curious effect that adds greatly to the reader's interest when he takes up an hitherto unread novel by our author. The majority of works of fiction end happily; indeed, many are so badly written that any ending cannot be considered unfortunate. But with most novelists we have a sense of security. We know that, no matter what difficulties the hero and heroine may encounter, the unseen hand of their maker will guide them eventually to paths of pleasantness and peace. Mr. Hardy inspires no such confidence. In reading Trollope, one smiles at a cloud of danger, knowing it will soon pass over; but after reading _A Pair of Blue Eyes_, or _Tess_, one follows the fortunes of young Somerset in _A Laodicean_ with constant fluctuation of faint hope and real terror; for we know that with Mr. Hardy the worst may happen at any moment.

However dark may be his conception of life, Mr. Hardy's sense of humour is unexcelled by his contemporaries in its subtlety of feeling and charm of expression. His rustics, who have long received and deserved the epithet "Shakespearian," arouse in every reader harmless and wholesome delight. The shadow of the tragedy lifts in these wonderful pages, for Mr. Hardy's laughter reminds one of what Carlyle said of Shakespeare's: it is like sunshine on the deep sea. The childlike sincerity of these shepherd farmers, the candour of their repartee and their appraisal of gentle-folk are as irresistible as their patience and equable temper. Everyone in the community seems to find his proper mental and moral level. And their infrequent fits of irritation are as pleasant as their more solemn moods. We can all sympathise (I hope) with the despair of Joseph Poorgrass: "I was sitting at home looking for Ephesians and says I to myself, 'Tis nothing but Corinthians and Thessalonians in this danged Testament!"

III

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

Born in a little village in Ohio over seventy years ago, and growing up with small Latin and less Greek, Mr. Howells may fairly be called a self-educated man. Just why the epithet "self-made" should be applied to those non-college-graduates who succeed in business, and withheld from those who succeed in poetry and fiction, seems not entirely clear. Perhaps it is tacitly assumed that those who become captains of industry achieve prominence without divine assistance; whereas men of letters, with or without early advantages, and whether grateful or not, have unconscious communication with hidden forces. Be this as it may, the boy Howells had little schooling and no college. All the public institutions in the world, however, are but a poor makeshift in the absence of good home training; and the future novelist's father was the right sort of man and had the right sort of occupation to stimulate a clever and ambitious son. The elder Howells was the editor of a country newspaper, which, like a country doctor, makes up in variety of information what it loses in spread of influence. The boy was a compositor before he was a composer, as plenty of literary men since Richardson have been; he helped to set up lyrics, news items, local gossip, the funny column, and patent medicine advertisements. From mechanical he passed to original work, both in his father's office and in other sanctums about the state; sometimes acting not only as contributor, but "moulding public opinion" from the editor's chair. And indeed he has never entirely stepped out of the editorial rôle. During an amazingly busy life as novelist, dramatist, poet, and foreign diplomat, Mr. Howells has acted as editorial writer on the _Nation_, the _Atlantic_, the _Cosmopolitan Magazine_, and _Harper's Monthly_. I think he would sometimes be appalled at the prodigious amount of merely "timely" articles that he has written, were it not for the fact that during his long career he has never published a single line of which he need feel ashamed.

Type-setters and printers are commonly men of ideas, who have interesting minds, and are good to talk with. Mr. Howells was certainly no exception to the rule, and to the foundation of his early education as a compositor and journalist he added four years of study of the Italian language and literature in the pleasant environment of Venice. He has always been a man of peace; and it is interesting to remember that during the four years of tumultuous and bloody civil war, Mr. Howells was serving his country as a United States Consul in Italy, and at the same time preparing to add to the kind of fame she most sorely needs. The "woman-country" never meant to him what it signified to Browning; but it has always been an inspiration, and he would have been a different person without this foreign influence. Besides some critical and scholarly works on Italian literature, much of his subsequent writing has been done beyond the Alps, and the plot of one of his foremost novels develops on the streets of Florence. And in another and wholly delightful story, we have the keen pleasure of seeing Italian life and society through the eyes of Lydia Blood.

He formally began a literary career by the composition of a volume of poems, as Blackmore, Hardy, Meredith, and many other novelists have seen fit to do. He is not widely known as a poet to-day, though all his life he has written more or less verse without achieving distinction; for he is essentially a _prosateur_. In 1872, twelve years after the appearance of his book of poems, came his first successful novel, _Their Wedding Journey_. This story is written in the style that is responsible for its author's fame and popularity; it is thoroughly typical of the whole first part of his novel-production. It has that quiet stingless humour, clever dialogue, and wholesome charm, that all readers of Mr. Howells associate with his name. In other words, it is a clear manifestation of his own personality. Now as to the permanent value and final place in literature of these American novels, critics may differ; but there can be only one opinion of the man who wrote them.

The personality of Mr. Howells, as shown both in his objective novels and in his subjective literary confessions, is one that irresistibly commands our highest respect and our warmest affection. A simple, democratic, unaffected, modest, kindly, humorous, healthy soul, with a rare combination of rugged virility and extreme refinement. It is exceedingly fortunate for America that such a man has for so many years by common consent, at home and abroad, been regarded as the Dean of American Letters. He has had more influence on the output of fiction in America than any other living man. This influence has been entirely wholesome, from the standpoint of both morals and Art. He has consistently stood for Reticent Realism. He has ridiculed what he is fond of calling "romantic rot," and his own novels have been a silent but emphatic protest against "mentioning the unmentionable." Every now and then there has risen a violent revolt against his leadership, the latest outspoken attack coming from a novelist of distinction, Gertrude Atherton. In the year 1907 she relieved her mind by declaring that Mr. Howells has been and is a writer for boarding-school misses; that he has never penetrated deeply into life; and that not only has his own timidity prevented him from courageously revealing the hearts of men and women, but that his position of power and influence has cast a blight on American fiction. Thanks to him, she insists, American novels are pale and colourless productions, and are known the world over for their tameness and insipidity. Mrs. Atherton has been supported in this revolt by many very young literary aspirants, who lack her wisdom and her experience, and whose chief dislike of Mr. Howells, when finally analysed, seems to be directed against his intense ethical earnestness. For, at heart, Mr. Howells resembles most Anglo-Saxon novelists in being a moralist.

It is true that American novelists and playwrights are at one great disadvantage as compared with contemporary Continental writers. Owing to the public conscience, they are compelled to work in a limited field. The things that we leave to medical specialists and to alienists are staple subject-matter in high-class French and German fiction. In a European dictionary there is no such word as "reserve." French writers like Brieux protest that American conceptions of French morals are based on the reading of French books whose authors have no standing in Paris, and whose very names are unknown to their countrymen. But this protest fades before facts. The facts are that Parisian novelists and dramatists of the highest literary and social distinction, who are awarded national prizes, admitted to the French Academy, and who receive all sorts of public honours, write and publish books, which, if produced in the United States by an American, would bar him from the houses and from the society of many decent people, and might cause his arrest. At any rate, he would be regarded as a criminal rather than as a hero. I have in mind plays by Donnay, recently elected to the French Academy; plays by Capus, who stands high in public regard; novels by Regnier, who has received all sorts of honours. These men are certainly not fourth- and fifth-class writers; they are thoroughly representative of Parisian literary taste. Regnier has not hesitated to write, and the editors have not hesitated to accept, for the periodical _L'Illustration_, which goes into family circles everywhere, a novel that could not possibly be published in any respectable magazine in America. I do not say that Americans are one peg higher in morality than Frenchmen; it may be that we are hypocrites, and that the French are models of virtue; but the difference in moral tone between the average American play or novel and that produced in Paris is simply enormous.

The modern German novel is no better than the French. Last night I finished reading Sudermann's long and powerful story, _Das hohe Lied_. I could not help thinking how entirely different it is in its subject-matter, in its characters, in its scenes, and in its atmosphere, from the average American novel. Now of course the subject that arouses the most instant interest from all classes of people, both young and old, innocent and guilty, is the subject of sex. A large number of modern successful French and German novels and plays contain no other matter of any real importance--and would be intolerably dull were it not for their dealing with sexual crimes. The Continental writer is barred by no restraint; when he has nothing to say, as is very often the case, he simply plays his trump card. The American, however, is not permitted to penetrate beyond the bounds of decency; which shuts him off from the chief field where European writers dwell. He must somehow make his novel interesting to his readers, just as a man is expected to make himself interesting in social conversation, without recourse to pruriency or obscenity.

Leaving out of debate for a moment the moral aspect of Art, is it necessarily true that novels which plunge freely into sex questions are a more faithful representation of life than those that observe the limits of good taste? I think not. The men and women in many Continental stories have apparently nothing to do except to gratify their passions. All the thousand and one details that make up the daily routine of the average person are sacrificed to emphasise one thing; but this, even in most degraded Sybarites, would be only a part of their actual activity. I believe that _A Modern Instance_ is just as true to life as _Bel-Ami_. It would really be a misfortune if Mrs. Atherton could have her way; for then American novelists would copy the faults of European writers instead of their virtues. The reason why French plays and French novels are generally superior to American is not because they are indecent; and we shall never raise our standard merely by copying foreign immorality. The superiority of the French is an intellectual and artistic superiority; they excel us in literary style. If we are to imitate them, let us imitate their virtues and not their defects, even though the task in this case be infinitely more difficult.

And, granting what Mrs. Atherton says, that the reticence of American fiction is owing largely to the influence of Mr. Howells, have we not every reason to be grateful to him? Has not the modern novel a tremendous influence in education, and do we really wish to see young men and women, boys and girls, reading stories that deal mainly with sex? Is it well that they should abandon Dickens, Thackeray, and Stevenson, for the novel in vogue on the Continent? It is often said that French fiction is intended only for seasoned readers, and is carefully kept from youth. But this is gammon, and should deceive only the grossly ignorant. As if anything nowadays could be kept from youth! With the exception of girls who are very strictly brought up, young people in Europe have the utmost freedom in reading. In one of Regnier's novels, which purports to be autobiographical, the favourite bedside book of the boy in his teens is _Mademoiselle de Maupin_. In a secret ballot vote recently taken by a Russian periodical, to discover who are the most popular novelists with high-school boys and girls in Russia, it appeared that of all foreign writers Guy de Maupassant stood first. Is this really a desirable state of affairs? Suppose it be true, as it probably is, that the average Russian, German, or French boy of seventeen is intellectually more mature than his English or American contemporary--are we willing to make the physical and moral sacrifice for the merely mental advance? Is it not better that our boys should be playing football and reading _Treasure Island_, than that they should be spending their leisure hours in the manner described by Regnier?

Mr. Howells's creed in Art is perhaps more open to criticism than his creed in Ethics. His artistic creed is narrow, strict, and definite. He has expressed it in his essays, and exemplified it in his novels. His two doctrinal works, _Criticism and Fiction_, and _My Literary Passions_, resemble Zola's _Le Roman Expérimental_ in dogmatic limitation. The creed of Mr. Howells is realism, which he has not only faithfully followed in his creative work, but which he uses as a standard by which to measure the value of other novelists, both living and dead. As genius always refuses to be measured by any standard, and usually defies classification, Mr. Howells's literary estimates of other men's work are far more valuable as self-revelation than as adequate appraisal. Indeed, some of his criticisms seem bizarre. Where works of fiction do not run counter to his literary dogmas, he is abundantly sympathetic and more than generous; many a struggling young writer has cause to bless him for powerful assistance; apparently there has never been one grain of envy, jealousy, or meanness in the mind of our American dean. But, broadly speaking, Mr. Howells has not the true critical mind, which places itself for the moment in the mental attitude of the author criticised; he is primarily a creative rather than a critical writer. Here he is in curious opposition to his friend and contemporary, Henry James. Mr. James is a natural-born critic, one of the best America has ever produced. His essay on Balzac was a masterpiece. His intellectual power is far more critical than creative; as a novelist, he seems quite inferior to Mr. Howells. And his best story, the little sketch, _Daisy Miller_, was properly called by its author a "study."

Mr. Howells's literary career has two rather definite periods. The break was caused largely by the influence of Tolstoi. The earlier novels are more purely artistic; they are accurate representations of American characters, for the most part joyous in mood, full of genuine humour, and natural charm. A story absolutely expressive of the author as we used to know him is _The Lady of the Aroostook_. As a sympathetic and delightful portrayal of a New England country girl, this book is one of his best productions. The voyage across the Atlantic; the surprise caused by Lydia's name and appearance, and homely conversation. "I want to know!" cried Lydia. The second surprise caused by her splendid singing voice. The third surprise caused to the sophisticated young gentleman by discovering that he was in love with her. His rapture at his glorious good-fortune in saving the drunken wretch from drowning, thus acting as hero before his lady's eyes; her virginal experiences in Italy; the final happy consummation--all this is in Mr. Howells's best vein, the Howells of thirty years ago. The story is full of observation, cerebration, and human affection. As Professor Beers has remarked, if Mr. Howells knows his countrymen no more intimately than does Henry James, at least he loves them better. This charming novel was rapidly followed in the next few years by a succession of books that are at once good to read, and of permanent value as reflections of American life, manners, and morals. These were _A Modern Instance_, _A Woman's Reason_, _The Rise of Silas Lapham_, and _Indian Summer_; making a literary harvest of which not only their author, but all Americans, have reason to be justly proud.

Somewhere along in the eighties Mr. Howells came fully within the grasp of the mighty influence of Tolstoi, an influence, which, no matter how beneficial in certain ways, has not been an unmixed blessing on his foreign disciples. What the American owes to the great Russian, and how warm is his gratitude therefor, any one may see for himself by reading _My Literary Passions_. It is indeed difficult to praise the maker of _Anna Karenina_ too highly; but nobody wanted Mr. Howells to become a lesser Tolstoi. When we wish to read Tolstoi, we know where to find him; we wish Mr. Howells to remain his own self, shrewdly observant, and kindly humorous. The latter novels of the American show the same kind of change that took place in Björnson, that has also characterised Bourget; it is the partial abandonment of the novel as an art form, and its employment as a social, political, or religious tract. Mr. Howells's saving sense of humour has kept him from dull extremes; but when _A Hazard of New Fortunes_ appeared, we knew that there was more in the title than the writer intended; our old friend had put on Saul's armour. As has been suggested above, this change was not entirely an individual one; it was symptomatic of the development of the modern novel all over the world. But in this instance it seemed particularly regrettable. We have our fill of strikes and labour troubles in the daily newspaper, without going to our novelist for them. With one exception, it is probable that not a single one of Mr. Howells's novels published during the last twenty years is as good, from the artistic and literary point of view, as the admirable work he produced before 1889. The exception is _The Kentons_ (1902), in which he returned to his earlier manner, in a triumphant way that showed he had not lost his skill. Indeed, there is no trace of decay in the other books of his late years; there is merely a loss of charm.

I think that _Indian Summer_, despite its immense popularity at the time of publication, has never received the high praise it really deserves. It is written in a positive glow of artistic creation. I believe that of all its author's works, it is the one whose composition he most keenly enjoyed. The conversations--always a great feature of his stories--are immensely clever; I suspect that as he wrote them he was often agreeably surprised at his own inspiration. The three characters, the middle-aged man and woman, and the romantic young girl, are admirably set off; no one has ever better shown the fact that it is quite possible for one to imagine oneself in love when really one is fancy-free. The delicate shades of jealousy in the intimate talks between the two women are exquisitely done; the experience of the grown woman contrasting finely with the imagination of the young girl. The difference between a man of forty and a woman of twenty, shown here not in heavy tragedy, but in the innumerable, convincing details of daily human intercourse, is finely emphasised; and we can feel the great relief of both when the engagement tie is broken. This story in its way is a masterpiece; and anyone who lacks enthusiasm for its author ought to read it again.

His most powerful novel is probably _A Modern Instance_. This, like many American and English fictions, first appeared in serial form--a fact that should be known before one indulges in criticism. The old objection to this method was that it led the writer to attempt to end each section dramatically, leaving the reader with a sharp appetite for more. The movement of the narrative, when the book was finally published as a whole, resembled a series of jumps. Someone has said, that even so fine a novel as _Far from the Madding Crowd_ was a succession of brilliant leaps; whether or not this was caused by its original serial printing, I do not know. This difficulty would never appear in Mr. Howells, at all events; because his stories do not impress us by their special dramatic scenes, or supreme moments, but rather by their completeness. The other objection, however, has some force here--the fact that details may be extended beyond their artistic proportion, in a manner that does not militate against the separate instalments, but is seen to mar the book as a whole. The logging camp incident in _A Modern Instance_ is prolonged to a fault. Proportion is sacrificed to realism. From this point of view, it is well to remember that _The Newcomes_ appeared in single numbers, whereas _Henry Esmond_ was published originally as a complete work.

But this slight defect is more than atoned for by the power shown in the depiction of character. This is a study of degeneration, not dealing with remote characters in far-off historical situations, but brought home to our very doors. One feels that this dreadful fate might happen to one's neighbours--might happen to oneself. It seems to me a greater book in every way than _Romola_, though I am not prepared to say that Mr. Howells is a greater novelist than George Eliot. There is all the difference between Tito Melema and Bartley Hubbard that there is between a fancy picture and a portrait. Mr. Howells is fond of using Shakespearian quotations as titles; witness _The Counterfeit Presentment_, _The Undiscovered Country_, _The Quality of Mercy_, and _A Modern Instance_. Now the word "modern," as every student of Shakespeare knows, means in the poet's works almost the opposite of what it signifies to-day. "Full of wise saws and modern instances" is equivalent to saying prosaically, "full of sententious proverbs and old, trite illustrations." In the Shakespearian sense, Mr. Howells's title might be translated "A Familiar Example"--for it is not only a story of modern American life, it portrays what is unfortunately an instance all too familiar. Bartley Hubbard is the typical representative of the "smart" young American. He is not in the least odious when we first make his acquaintance. His skill in address and in adaptation to society assure his instant popularity; and at heart he is a good fellow, quite unlike a designing villain. He would rather do right than do wrong, provided both are equally convenient. He simply follows the line of least resistance. Nor is he by nature a Bohemian; he loves Marcia, is proud of her fresh beauty, and enjoys domestic life. Then he has the fascinating quality of true humour. His conversations with his wife, when he is free from worry, are exceedingly attractive to the impersonal listener. He is just like thousands of clever young American journalists--quick-witted, enterprising, energetic, with a sure nose for news; there is, in fact, only one thing the matter with Bartley. Although, when life is flowing evenly, he does not realise his deficiency, he actually has at heart no moral principle, no ethical sense, no honour. The career of such a man will depend entirely upon circumstances; because his standard of virtue is not where it should be, within his own mind, but without. Like many other men, he can resist anything but temptation. Whether he will become a good citizen or a blackleg, depends not in the least upon himself, but wholly upon the events through which he moves. Had he married exactly the right sort of girl, and had some rich uncle left the young couple a fortune, it is probable that neither his friends, nor his wife, nor even he himself, would have guessed at his capacity for evil. He would have remained popular in the community, and died both lamented and respected. But the difficulty is that he did not marry wisely, and he subsequently became short of cash. Now, as some writer has said, it does not matter so much whether a man marries with wisdom or the reverse, nor whether he behaves in other emergencies with prudence or folly; what really matters is how he behaves himself _after_ the marriage, or after any other crisis where he may have chosen foolishly. But Bartley, like many other easy-going youths, was no man for adverse circumstances. Almost imperceptibly at first his degeneration begins; his handsome figure shows a touch of grossness; the refinement in his face becomes blurred; drinking ceases to be a pleasure, and becomes a habit. Meanwhile, as what he calls his bad luck increases, quarrels with his wife become more frequent; try as he will, there is always a sheaf of unpaid bills at the end of the month; his home loses its charm. The mental and spiritual decline of the man is shown repulsively by his physical appearance. No one who has read the book can possibly forget his broad back as he sits in the courtroom, and the horrible ring of fat that hangs over his collar. The devil has done his work with such technique that Bartley as we first see him, and Bartley as we last see him, seem to be two utterly different and distinct persons and personalities; it is with an irrepressible shudder that we recall the time when this coarse, fat sot was a slender, graceful young man, who charmed all acquaintances by his ease of manner and winsome conversation. And yet, as one looks back over his life, every stage in the transition is clear, logical, and wholly natural.

From another point of view this novel is a study of the passion of jealousy. No other American novel, so far as I know, has given so accurate a picture of the gradual and subtle poisoning produced by this emotion, and only one American play,--Clyde Fitch's thoughtful and powerful drama, _The Girl with the Green Eyes_. It is curious that jealousy, so sinister and terrible in its effects on character, should usually appear on the stage and in fiction as comic. It is seldom employed as a leading motive in tragedy, though Shakespeare showed its possibilities; but one frequently sees it in broad farce. Of all the passions, there is none which has less mirth than jealousy. It is fundamentally tragic; and in _A Modern Instance_, we see the evil transformation it works in Marcia, and its force in accelerating her husband's degeneration. Marcia is an example of the wish of Keats--she lives a life of sensations rather than of thoughts; and jealousy can be conquered only by mental power, never by emotional. Marcia has no intellectual resources; her love for her husband is her whole existence. She has no more mind than many another American country girl who comes home from boarding-school. As one critic has pointed out, "she has not yet emerged from the elemental condition of womanhood." Jealousy is, of course, an "animal quality," and Marcia, without knowing it, is simply a tamed, pretty, affectionate young animal. Her jealousy is entirely without foundation, but it causes her the most excruciating torment, and constantly widens the breach between herself and the man she loves. If she had only married Halleck! She would never have been jealous with him. But jealousy is like an ugly weed in a beautiful garden; it exists only where there is love. And a girl like Marcia could never have returned the love of a stodgy man like Halleck. One cannot help asking three vain questions as one contemplates the ruins of her happiness and sees the cause. If she had never met Bartley, and had married Halleck, would she have been better off? are we to understand that she is finally saved by Halleck? and if so, what is the nature of her salvation?

The old sceptical lawyer, Marcia's father, is one of the most convincing characters that Mr. Howells has ever drawn. Those who have lived in New England know this man, for they have seen him often. He is shrewd, silent, practical, undemonstrative, yet his unspoken love for his daughter is almost terrible in its intensity, and finally brings him to the grave. Although he admires young Bartley's cleverness, he would have admired him more had he been less clever. He has a sure instinct against the young man from the start, and knows there can be only one outcome of such a marriage; because he is better acquainted with the real character of husband and wife than they are with themselves. Squire Gaylord is a person of whose creation any novelist in the history of fiction might be proud.

When _A Modern Instance_ was first published, a contemporary review called it "a book that all praise but none like." I imagine that the unpleasant sensations it awakens in every reader are like those roused by Mr. Barrie's _Sentimental Tommy_. The picture is simply too faithful to be agreeable. Everyone beholds his own faults and tendencies clearly portrayed, and the result is quite other than reassuring. The book finds us all at home. But, as Gogol, the great Russian, used to say, quoting an old Slavonic proverb, "We must not blame the mirror if the face looks ugly."

It is both instructive and entertaining to try the effect of this novel on a representative group of American college undergraduates. Those who had lived in New England villages, and were familiar with the scenes described, were loud in their praises of the background, and of the Gaylord family. One young man remarked--he was at Yale--"I know a young journalist who was last year at Harvard, who is going to the devil in very much the same way." Another said, with an experience hardly consonant with his years, that he had known women just as jealous as Marcia. Most of them, however, believed that her jealousy was grossly exaggerated; it looks so like folly to those yet untouched by the passion of love. Another truthful and modest youth said pathetically, "I am too young to appreciate this book." Still another remarked with rare lucidity and definiteness of penetration, "In reading this story somehow something struck me unfavourably." Minor improbabilities in the novel produced the greatest shock--the hot-scotch episode seemed quite impossible, and Mr. Howells was thought to be a poor judge of the effects of whiskey. But the criticism I enjoyed most came from the undergraduate who said in all sincerity, "I think this is a very good book for young ladies to read before getting married." So indeed it is.

In the year 1902, by the publication of _The Kentons_, Mr. Howells gave us a most delightful surprise. It was like the return of an old friend from a far journey. In literature it was as though Björnson should publish a story like _A Happy Boy_, or as though Mr. Hardy should give us a tale like _Under the Greenwood Tree_. _The Kentons_ is a thoroughly charming international novel, containing the pleasant adventures of an Ohio family on the ocean liner and in Europe, written in the _Aroostook_ style, sparkling with humour, and rich in sympathy and tenderness. Political, social, and ethical problems are conspicuously absent, and the only material used by the writer is human nature. This is one of the best books he has ever written; it has all the charm of _Their Wedding Journey_, plus the wisdom and observation that come only by years. It is wholesome, healthy, realistic; a thoroughly representative American novel from a master's hand. In a French _roman_, Bittredge would of course have been a libertine, and one of the girls ruined by him. In _The Kentons_, he is merely _fresh_, and though he causes some trouble, everybody in the end is better off for the experience. Mr. Howells seems especially to dislike _Frechheit_ in young men, and he has made the vulgarity and assurance of Bittredge both offensive and absurd. We have too many Bittredges in the United States; and some of them do not lose their bittredgidity with advancing years.

The five members of the Kenton family are wonderfully well drawn, and are just such people as we fortunately meet every day. The purity and sweetness of married and family life are beautifully exemplified here; they are exactly what we see in thousands of American homes, and constitute the real answer to modern attacks on the conjugal relation. The judge and his wife are two companions, growing old together in simplicity and innocence, happy in the truest sense--loving each other far more in age than in youth, which is perfectly natural in life if not in fiction; because every day they become more necessary to each other and have common interests extending over many years. The scene in their bedroom, as they talk together before slumber, while the old Judge winds up his watch, is a veritable triumph of Art.

The younger daughter Lottie is a vivid portrait of the typical American high-school girl, slangy, superficial, flirtatious, not quite vulgar, and in every emergency with young men fully capable of taking care of herself. After a round of joyous, heart-free, and innocent familiarities with various youthful admirers, she finally becomes an admirable wife and housekeeper. Her sister Ellen is of an opposite temperament, pale, slight, and non-athletic. She is entirely different from the Booth Tarkington or Richard Harding Davis heroine, and in her purity, delicacy, and refinement, takes us back to old-fashioned fiction. As a spectator on the steamer says of her, "that pale girl is adorable." In her shyness and extraordinary loveliness she reminds us of Turgenev's spiritual Lisa. The scene in the night, where her young brother steals to her bed and pours into her sympathetic ears all the troubled passion and sorrow, all the embarrassment and suffering of his sensitive boy's heart, is exceedingly beautiful and tender. He knows _she_ will understand. And at last it is Ellen, and not Lottie, who becomes the fashionable, aristocratic, New York woman--preserving in her wealthy environment all the fruits of the spirit.

Boyne, the small boy, the "kid brother," is a fine illustration of the enthusiasm for humanity so characteristic of Mr. Howells. It is instructive to compare this little man with the young brother of Daisy Miller. Both are at the age most trying to their elders, and both are faithfully portrayed; but Randolph C. Miller is made particularly obnoxious, even odious, while one cannot help loving Boyne. The difference is that one is drawn with the finger of scorn and the other with the insight of sympathy. Mr. Howells calls Boyne "a mass of helpless sweetness though he did not know it." His romantic love for the young queen of Holland and the burning mortification he suffers thereby, are sufficiently easy to understand. The contrast between the high seriousness with which he takes himself, and the impression he makes on others, is something that every man who looks back will remember. As the novelist puts it, "He thought he was an iceberg when he was merely an ice cream of heroic mould."

_The Kentons_, like some other novels by Mr. Howells, may seem to many readers superficial, because it is so largely taken up with the trivial details of daily existence. It is really a profound study of life, made by an artist who has not only the wisdom of the head, but the deeper wisdom of the heart.

IV

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

For over half a century this intellectual athlete has been one of the busiest men in the world. A partisan fighter born and bred, he has been active in every political Skandinavian struggle; in religious questions he has fought first on one side and then on the other, changing only by honest conviction, and hitting with all his might every time; to him the word "education" is as a red rag to a bull, for he believes that it has been mainly bad, and if people will only listen, he can make it mainly good; in a passion of chivalry, he has drawn his pen for the cause of Woman, whose "sphere" he hopes to change--the most modern and the most popular of all the vain attempts to square the circle; his powerful voice has been heard on the lecture platform, not only in his own beloved country, but all over Europe and in America; he has served for years as Theatre-Director, in the determination to convert the playhouse, like everything else he touches, into a vast moral force. In addition to all the excitement of a life spent in fighting, his purely literary activity has been enormous in quantity and astonishing in range. His numerous dramas treat of all possible themes, from the old Sagas to modern divorce laws; and after exhausting all earthly material, he has boldly advanced into the realm of the supernatural; his splendid play, _Beyond Human Power_, holds the boards in most European cities, and has exercised a profound influence on modern drama. His novels are as different in style and purpose as it is possible for the novels of one man to be; and some of them are already classics. A man with such an endowment, with such tremendous convictions, with buoyant optimism and terrific energy, has made no small stir in the world, and it will be a long time before the name of Björnstjerne Björnson is forgotten.

Had he not possessed, in addition to a fine mind, a magnificent physical frame, he would long since have vanished into that spiritual world that has interested him so deeply. But he has the physique of a Norse god. Many instances of his bodily strength and endurance have been cited; it is sufficient to remember that even after his mane of hair had become entirely grey he regularly took his bath by standing naked under a mountain waterfall. Let that suffice, as one trial of it would for most of us. He came honestly by his health and vigour, born as he was on a lonely mountain-side in Norway. It was in the winter of 1832 that this sturdy baby gave his first cry for freedom, his father being a village pastor, whose flock were literally scattered among steep and desolate rocks, where the salient feature of the landscape during nine months of the year was snow. More than once the good shepherd had to seek and save that which was lost. For society, the little boy had a few pet animals and the dreams engendered by supreme loneliness. But when he was six years old, the father was fortunately called to a pastorate in a beautiful valley on the west coast, surrounded by noble and inspiring scenery, the effect of which is visibly seen in all his early stories. We cannot help comparing this vale of beauty, trailing clouds of glory over Björnson's boyhood, with the flat, wet, dismal gloom of East Prussia, that oppressed so heavily the child Sudermann, and made Dame Care look so grey.

At the grammar school, at the high school, and at the university he showed little interest in the curriculum, and no particular aptitude for study; but before leaving college he had already begun original composition, and at the age of twenty-four he published a masterpiece. This was the pastoral romance, _Synnövé Solbakken_, which for sheer beauty of style and atmosphere he has never surpassed. For some years preceding the date of its appearance there had been a lull in literary activity in Norway. Out of this premonitory hush of stillness came a beautiful voice, which by the newness and freshness of its tones aroused immediate interest. Everybody listened, enchanted by the strange harmony. Men saw that a new prophet had arisen in Israel. The absolute simplicity of the style, the naïveté of the story, the naturalness of the characters, the short, passionate sentences like those of the Sagas, the lyrically poetic atmosphere, appealed at once to the Norwegian heart. Why is it that we are surprised in books and in plays by simple language and natural characters? It must be that we are so accustomed to literary conventions remote from actual life, that when we behold real people and hear natural talk in works of art our first emotion is glad astonishment. For the same reason we praise certain persons for displaying what we call common sense. Be this as it may, no one believed that a pastoral romance could be so vigorous, so fresh, and so true. Of all forms of literature, pastoral tales, whether in verse or in prose, have been commonly the most artificial and the most insipid; but here was the breath of life. I can recommend nothing better for the soul weary of the closeness of modern naturalism than a course of reading in the early work of Björnson.

He followed this initial success with three other beautiful prose lyrics--_Arne_, _A Happy Boy_, and _The Fisher Maiden_. These stories exhibit the same qualities so strikingly displayed in _Synnövé Solbakken_. In all this artistic production Björnson is an impressionist, reproducing with absolute fidelity what he saw, both in the world of matter and of spirit. We may rely faithfully on the correctness of these pictures, whether they portray natural scenery, country customs, or peasant character. We inhale Norway. We can smell the pines. The nipping and eager air, the dark green resinous forests--we feel these as plainly as if we were physically present in the Land of the Midnight Sun. The kindly simplicity of the peasants, the village ceremonies at weddings and funerals, the cheerful loneliness with sheep on mountain pasture, and the subdued but universal note of deep rural piety, make one feel as though the whole community were bound by gold chains about the feet of God. Björnson says, "The church is in the foreground of Norwegian peasant life." And indeed everything seems to centre around God's acre, and the spire of the meeting-house points in the same direction as the stories themselves. Many beautiful passages affect us like noble music; our eyes are filled with happy tears.

In view of the strong and ardent personality of the author, it is curious that these early romances should be so truly objective. One feels his personality in a general way, as one feels that of Turgenev; but the young writer separates himself entirely from the course of the story; he nowhere interferes. The characters apparently develop without his assistance, as the events take place without any manipulation. As a work of objective art, _Synnövé Solbakken_ approaches flawless perfection. It has one plot, which travels in one direction--forward. The persons are intensely Norwegian, but there their similarity ends. Each is individualised. The simplicity of the story is so remarkable that to some superficial and unobservant readers it has seemed childish. The very acme of Art is so close to nature that it sometimes is mistaken for no art at all, like the acting of Garrick or the style of Jane Austen. Adverse criticisms are the highest compliments. Language is well managed when it expresses profound thoughts in words clear to a child.

The love scenes in this narrative are idyllic; in fact, the whole book is an idyl. It seems radiant with sunshine. It is as pure as a mountain lake, and as refreshing. And besides the artistic unity of the work, that satisfies one's standards so fully, there is an exquisite something hard to define; a play of fancy, a veil of poetic beauty lingering over the story, that makes us feel when we have closed the book as if we were gazing at a clear winter sunset.

Björnson has the creative imagination of the true poet. In the wonderful prologue to _Arne_ he gives the trees separate personalities, in a manner to arouse almost the envy of Thomas Hardy. Indeed, the author of _The Woodlanders_ has never felt the trees more intensely than the Norwegian novelist. The prose style unconsciously breaks into verse form at times, with the natural grace and ease of a singing bird. Not the least charming incidents in Björnson's romances are the frequent lyrics, that spring up like cowslips in a pasture.

"Punctual as Springtide forth peep they."

* * * * *

The novels in Björnson's second period are so totally unlike those we have just been considering that if all his work had been published anonymously, no one would have ventured to say that the same man had written _A Happy Boy_ and _In God's Way_. There came a pause in his creative activity. He wrote little imaginative literature, and many thought the well of his inspiration had gone dry. Really he was passing through a belated _Sturm und Drang_; a tremendous intellectual struggle and fermentation had set in, from which he emerged mentally a changed man, with a new outfit of opinions and ideas. At nearly the same time his great contemporary Tolstoi was also in the Slough of Despond, but he climbed out on the other side and set his face towards the Celestial City. Björnson's floundering ultimately carried him in precisely the opposite direction. While Tolstoi was studying the New Testament, Björnson applied himself to Darwin, Mill, and Spencer, and became completely converted from the Christianity of his youth. Many minds would have been temporarily paralysed by such a result, and would finally have become either pessimistic or coldly critical. But Björnson simply could not endure to be a gloomy, cynical spectator of life, like his countryman, Ibsen, any more than he could leave his native land and calmly view its nakedness from the comfortable environment of Munich or Rome. Björnson has the sort of intellect that cannot remain in equilibrium. He was ever a fighter, and cannot live without something to fight for. The natural optimism of his temperament, so opposed in every way to the blank despair of Ibsen, made him see in his new views the way of salvation. He is just as sure he is right now as he was when he held opinions exactly the contrary. With joyful ardour he became the champion and propagandist of democracy in politics and of free thought in religion; apparently adopting Spencer's saying, "To the true reformer no institution is sacred, no belief above criticism." For the word "reformer" precisely describes Björnson; like the chief characters in his later novels, he is an apostle of reform, zealous, tireless, and tiresome.

Lowell, in his fine essay on Gray, said that one reason why the eighteenth century was so comfortable was that "responsibility for the universe had not yet been invented." Now Björnson feels this responsibility with all the strength of his nature, and however admirable it may be as a moral quality, it has vitiated his artistic career. As he renounced Christianity for agnosticism, so he renounced romance for realism. The novels written since 1875 are not only unlike his early pastoral romances in literary style; they are totally different productions in tone, in spirit, and in intention. And, from the point of view of art, they are, in my opinion, as inferior to the work of his youth as Hawthorne's campaign _Life of Pierce_ is inferior to _The Scarlet Letter_. In every way Björnson is farther off from heaven than when he was a boy.

In addition to many short sketches, his later period includes three realistic novels. These are: _Flags Are Flying in Town and Harbour_, translated into English with the title, _The Heritage of the Kurts_, for it is a study in heredity; _In God's Way_,[4] loudly proclaimed as his masterpiece, and _Mary_. The first two originally attracted more attention abroad than at home. The _Flags_ hung idly in Norway, and the orthodox were not anxious to get in God's way. But the second book produced considerable excitement in England, which finally reacted in Christiania and Copenhagen; it is still hotly discussed. In these three novels the author has stepped out of the rôle of artist and become a kind of professor of pedagogy, his speciality being the education of women. In _Flags_ the principal part of the story is taken up with a girls' school, which gives the novelist an opportunity to include a confused study of heredity, and to air all sorts of educational theory. The chief one appears to be that in the curriculum for young girls the "major" should be physiology. Hygiene, which so many bewildered persons are accepting just now in lieu of the Gospel, plays a heavy part in Björnson's later work. The gymnasium in _Flags_ takes the place of the church in _Synnövé_; and acrobatic feats of the body are deemed more healthful than the religious aspirations of the soul. Kallem, a prominent character of the story _In God's Way_, usually appears walking on his hands, which is not the only fashion in which he is upside down. The book _Flags_ is, frankly speaking, an intolerable bore. The hero, Rendalen, who also appears in the subsequent novel, is the mouthpiece of the new opinions of the author; a convenient if clumsy device, for whenever Björnson wishes to expound his views on education, hygiene, or religion, he simply makes Rendalen deliver a lecture. Didactic novels are in general a poor substitute either for learning or for fiction, but they are doubly bad when the author is confused in his ideas of science and in his notions of art. One general "lesson" emerges from the jargon of this book--that men should suffer for immorality as severely as women, a doctrine neither new nor practicable. The difficulty is that with Björnson, as with some others who shout this edict, the equalising of the punishment takes the form of leaving the men as they are, and issuing a general pardon to the women. Rendalen, the head-master of the school, is constantly bringing up this topic, and he makes it the chief subject for discussion in the girls' debating society! These females are going to be emancipated. A pseudo-scientific twist is also given to this novel by the introduction of mesmerism and hypnotic influence, matters in which the author is deeply interested. We are given to understand that a large number of women are annually ruined, not by their lack of moral conviction and will power, but simply by the hypnotic influence of men. One may perhaps reasonably doubt the ultimate value of a wide dissemination of this great idea, especially in a young ladies' seminary. To the unsympathetic reader, the one question that will keep him afloat in all this welter, is not concerned with pedagogy; it is the honest attempt to discover why the book bears its strange title. Unfortunately he will not find out until the last leaf. Then

"the connexion of which with the plot one sees."

[4] In the original the title is "In God's Ways."

It is pleasant to take up the volume _In God's Way_, for, however disappointing it may be to those who know the young Björnson, it is vastly superior to _Flags_. It is what is called to-day a "strong" novel, and has naturally evoked the widest variation of comment. By many it has been greeted with enthusiastic admiration and by many with outspoken disgust. Psychologically, it is indeed powerful. The characters are interesting, and they develop in a way that may or may not be God's, but resemble His in being mysterious. One cannot foresee in the early chapters what is going to happen to the _dramatis personæ_, nor what is to be our final attitude toward any of them. Think of the impression made on us by our first acquaintance with Josephine, or Kallem, or Ragni, or Ole; and then compare it with the state of our feelings as we draw near the end. Not one of these characters remains the same; each one develops, and develops as he might in actual life. Björnson does not approach his men and women from an easy chair, in the descriptive manner; once created, we feel that they would grow without his aid.

For all this particular triumph of art, _In God's Way_ is plainly a didactic novel, with the author preaching from beginning to end. The "fighting" quality in the novelist gets the better of his literary genius. We have a story in the extreme realistic style, marked by occasional scenes of great beauty and force; but the exposition of doctrine is somewhat vague and confused, and the construction of the whole work decidedly inartistic. Two general points, however, are made clear: First, that one may walk in God's way without believing in God. Religion is of no importance in comparison with conduct, nor have the two things any vital or necessary connexion. This is a modern view, and perhaps a natural reaction from the strictness of Björnson's childhood training. Second, that virtue is a matter entirely of the heart, bearing no relation whatever to the statute-book. A woman may be legally an adulteress and yet absolutely pure. This also is quite familiar to us in the pages of modern dramatists and novelists. Björnson has taken an extraordinary instance to prove his thesis, a thesis that perhaps needs no emphasis, for human nature is only too well disposed to make its moral creed coincide with its bodily instincts.

The same theme--mental as opposed to physical female chastity--is the leading idea of _Mary_, a novel that has had considerable success in Norway and in Germany, but has only this year been translated into English. This work of his old age shows not the slightest trace of decay. It is an interesting and powerful analysis of a girl's heart, written in short, vigorous sentences. Mary, after taking plenty of time for reflexion, and without any solicitation, deliberately gives herself to her lover, in a manner exactly similar to a scene in Maupassant's novel, _Notre Coeur_. Her fiancé is naturally amazed, as there has been nothing leading up to this; she comes to him of her own free will. Her theory of conduct (which exemplifies that of Björnson) is that a woman is the sovereign mistress of her own body, and can do what she pleases. There is nothing immoral in a woman's free gift of herself to her lover, provided she does it out of her royal bounty, and not as a weak yielding to masculine pursuit. The next day Mary is grievously disappointed to discover that, instead of the homage and worship she expected, the erstwhile timid lover glories in the sense of possession. She fears that she cannot live an absolutely independent life with such a husband--and Björnson's gospel is, of course, the untrammelled freedom of woman. So, although she is about to become a mother, she deliberately cancels the engagement to the putative child's father; this puzzles him even more than her previous conduct, though he is forced to acquiesce. Then, in a final access of despair, as she is about to commit suicide, she is rescued by a man whose love is like the moth's for the star--who tells her that no matter what she has done, she is the noblest, purest woman on earth, and the chaste queen of his heart. Thus, by a stroke of good fortune, rather than by anything inevitable in the story, the book ends happily, with Mary and her second adoring lover in the very delirium of joy. It is evident that the novel is nothing but a _Tendenz-Roman_; Björnson wishes us to approve of his heroine's conduct throughout--of the entirely unnecessary sacrifice of her virtue, of the subsequent sacrifice of her reputation, and of her remorseless joy in the arms of another man. Such is to be the doctrine of sex equality; men are not to be made more virtuous, but the freedom of women is not only to be pardoned, but approved.

In comparing the three late with the four early novels, the most striking change is instantly apparent to anyone who reads _Synnövé Solbakken_ and then opens _In God's Way_. It is the sudden and depressing change of air, from the mountains to the sick-room. The abundance of medical detail in the later novel is almost nauseating, and would be wholly so were it not absurd. One has only to compare the invigorating scenery and the simple love scenes in _Synnövé_ with the minute examination of Ragni's spittle (for tuberculosis) in the other book--but enough is said. Despite all that has been written in praise of Björnson's "courage" in dealing with problems of sex and disease, I sympathise with the cry of his friend in 1879:--

"Come back again, dear Björnson, come back!"

It is easy to see that the influence of modern English scepticism cannot account entirely for the revolution in the Norwegian's mind and art. We can clearly observe an attraction much nearer, that has drawn this luminous star so far out of its course. It is none other than the mighty Ibsen. Ibsen's analysis of disease, his examination of marriage problems, his Ishmaelite attacks on the present structure of civilised society--all this has had its effect on his contemporary and countryman. As a destructive force Ibsen was stronger than Björnson, because he was ruthless. But one had the courage of despair, while the other has the courage of hope. Björnson does not believe in Fate and is not afraid of it. He loves and believes in humanity. His gloomiest books end with a vision. There is always a rift in the clouds. Throughout all his career he has set his face steadfastly toward what he has taken to be the true light. Such men compel admiration, no matter whose colours they bear. And however much we may deplore his present course, we cannot now echo the cry of his friend and say, "Come back!" The language of the poet better expresses our attitude:--

"Life's night begins: let him never come back to us! There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain, Forced praise on our part--the glimmer of twilight, Never glad confident morning again! Best fight on well, for we taught him--strike gallantly, Menace our heart ere we master his own; Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us, Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!"

V

MARK TWAIN

During the last twenty years, a profound change has taken place in the attitude of the reading public toward Mark Twain. I can remember very well when he was regarded merely as a humorist, and one opened his books with an anticipatory grin. Very few supposed that he belonged to literature; and a complete, uniform edition of his _Works_ would perhaps have been received with something of the mockery that greeted Ben Jonson's folio in 1616. Professor Richardson's _American Literature_, which is still a standard work, appeared originally in 1886. My copy, which bears the date 1892, contains only two references in the index to Mark Twain, while Mr. Cable, for example, receives ten; and the whole volume fills exactly nine hundred and ninety pages. Looking up one of the two references, we find the following opinion:--

"But there is a class of writers, authors ranking below Irving or Lowell, and lacking the higher artistic or moral purpose of the greater humorists, who amuse a generation and then pass from sight. Every period demands a new manner of jest, after the current fashion.... The reigning favourites of the day are Frank R. Stockton, Joel Chandler Harris, the various newspaper jokers, and 'Mark Twain.' But the creators of 'Pomona' and 'Rudder Grange,' of 'Uncle Remus and his Folk-lore Stories,' and 'Innocents Abroad,' clever as they are, must make hay while the sun shines. Twenty years hence, unless they chance to enshrine their wit in some higher literary achievement, their unknown successors will be the privileged comedians of the republic. Humour alone never gives its masters a place in literature; it must coexist with literary qualities, and must usually be joined with such pathos as one finds in Lamb, Hood, Irving, or Holmes."

It is interesting to remember that before this pronouncement was published, _Tom Sawyer_ and _Huckleberry Finn_ had been read by thousands. Professor Richardson continued: "Two or three divisions of American humour deserve somewhat more respectful treatment," and he proceeds to give a full page to Petroleum V. Nasby, another page to Artemus Ward, and two and one-half pages to Josh Billings, while Mark Twain had received less than four lines. After stating that, in the case of authors like Mark Twain, "temporary amusement, not literary product, is the thing sought and given," Professor Richardson announces that the department of fiction will be considered later. In this "department," Mark Twain is not mentioned at all, although Julian Hawthorne receives over three pages!

I have quoted Professor Richardson at length, because he is a deservedly high authority, and well represents an attitude toward Mark Twain that was common all during the eighties. Another college professor, who is to-day one of the best living American critics, says, in his _Initial Studies in American Letters_ (1895), "Though it would be ridiculous to maintain that either of these writers [Artemus Ward and Mark Twain] takes rank with Lowell and Holmes, ... still it will not do to ignore them as mere buffoons, or even to predict that their humours will soon be forgotten." There is no allusion in his book to _Tom Sawyer_ or _Huckleberry Finn_, nor does the critic seem to regard their creator as in any sense a novelist. Still another writer, in a passing allusion to Mark Twain, says, "Only a very small portion of his writing has any place as literature."

Literary opinions change as time progresses; and no one could have observed the remarkable demonstration at the seventieth birthday of our great national humorist without feeling that most of his contemporaries regarded him, not as their peer, but as their Chief. Without wishing to make any invidious comparisons, I cannot refrain from commenting on the statement that it would be "ridiculous" to maintain that Mark Twain takes rank with Oliver Wendell Holmes. It is, of course, absolutely impossible to predict the future; the only real test of the value of a book is Time. Who now reads Cowley? Time has laughed at so many contemporary judgements that it would be foolhardy to make positive assertions about literary stock quotations one hundred years from now. Still, guesses are not prohibited; and I think it not unlikely that the name of Mark Twain will outlast the name of Holmes. American Literature would surely be the poorer if the great Boston Brahmin had not enlivened it with his rich humour, his lambent wit, and his sincere pathos; but the whole content of his work seems slighter than the big American prose epics of the man of our day.

Indeed, it seems to me that Mark Twain is our foremost living American writer. He has not the subtlety of Henry James or the wonderful charm of Mr. Howells; he could not have written _Daisy Miller_, or _A Modern Instance_, or _Indian Summer_, or _The Kentons_--books which exhibit literary quality of an exceedingly high order. I have read them over and over again, with constantly increasing profit and delight. I wish that Mr. Howells might live for ever, and give to every generation the pure intellectual joy that he has given to ours. But the natural endowment of Mark Twain is still greater. Mr. Howells has made the most of himself; God has done it all for Mark Twain. If there be a living American writer touched with true genius, whose books glow with the divine fire, it is he. He has always been a conscientious artist; but no amount of industry could ever have produced a _Huckleberry Finn_.

When I was a child at the West Middle Grammar School of Hartford, on one memorable April day, Mark Twain addressed the graduating-class. I was thirteen years old, but I have found it impossible to forget what he said. The subject of his "remarks" was Methuselah. He informed us that Methuselah lived to the ripe old age of nine hundred and sixty-nine. But he might as well have lived to be several thousand--nothing happened. The speaker told us that we should all live longer than Methuselah. Fifty years of Europe are better than a cycle of Cathay, and twenty years of modern American life are longer and richer in content than the old patriarch's thousand. Ours will be the true age in which to live, when more will happen in a day than in a year of the flat existence of our ancestors. I cannot remember his words; but what a fine thing it is to hear a speech, and carry away an idea!

I have since observed that this idea runs through much of his literary work. His philosophy of life underlies his broadest burlesque--for _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_ is simply an exposure of the "good old times." Mark Twain believes in the Present, in human progress. Too often do we apprehend the Middle Ages through the glowing pages of Spenser and Walter Scott; we see only glittering processions of ladies dead and lovely knights. Mark Twain shows us the wretched condition of the common people, their utter ignorance and degradation, the coarseness and immorality of technical chivalry, the cruel and unscrupulous ecclesiastical tyranny, and the capricious insolence of the barons. One may regret that he has reversed the dynamics in so glorious a book as Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, but, through all the buffoonery and roaring mirth with which the knights in armour are buried, the artistic and moral purpose of the satirist is clear. If I understand him rightly, he would have us believe that _our_ age, not theirs, is the "good time"; nay, ours is the age of magic and wonder. We need not regret in melancholy sentimentality the picturesqueness of bygone days, for we ourselves live, not in a material and commonplace generation, but in the very midst of miracles and romance. Merlin and the Fay Morgana would have given all their petty skill to have been able to use a telephone or a phonograph, or to see a moving picture. The sleeping princess and her castle were awakened by a kiss; but in the twentieth century a man in Washington touches a button, and hundreds of miles away tons of machinery begin to move, fountains begin to play, and the air resounds with the whir of wheels. In comparison with to-day, the age of chivalry seems dull and poor. Even in chivalry itself our author is more knightly than Lancelot; for was there ever a more truly chivalrous performance than Mark Twain's essay on Harriet Shelley, or his literary monument to Joan of Arc? In these earnest pages, our national humorist appears as the true knight.

Mark Twain's humour is purely American. It is not the humour of Washington Irving, which resembles that of Addison and Thackeray; it is not delicate and indirect. It is genial, sometimes outrageous, mirth--laughter holding both his sides. I have found it difficult to read him in a library or on a street-car, for explosions of pent-up mirth or a distorted face are apt to attract unpleasant attention in such public places. Mark Twain's humour is boisterous, uproarious, colossal, overwhelming. As has often been remarked, the Americans are not naturally a gay people, like the French; nor are we light-hearted and careless, like the Irish and the Negro. At heart, we are intensely serious, nervous, melancholy. For humour, therefore, we naturally turn to buffoonery and burlesque, as a reaction against the strain and tension of life. Our attitude is something like that of the lonely author of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, who used to lean over the parapet of Magdalen Bridge, and shake with mirth at the obscene jokes of the bargemen. We like Mark Twain's humour, not because we are frivolous, but because we are just the reverse. I have never known a frivolous person who really enjoyed or appreciated Mark Twain.

The essence of Mark Twain's humour is Incongruity. The jumping frog is named Daniel Webster; and, indeed, the intense gravity of a frog's face, with the droop at the corners of the mouth, might well be envied by many an American Senator. When the shotted frog vainly attempted to leave the earth, he shrugged his shoulders "like a Frenchman." Bilgewater and the Dolphin on the raft are grotesquely incongruous figures. The rescuing of Jim from his prison cell is full of the most incongruous ideas, his common-sense attitude toward the whole transaction contrasting strangely with that of the romantic Tom. Along with the constant incongruity goes the element of surprise--which Professor Beers has well pointed out. When one begins a sentence, in an apparently serious discussion, one never knows how it will end. In discussing the peace that accompanies religious faith, Mark Twain says that he has often been impressed with the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces. Exaggeration--deliberate, enormous hyperbole--is another feature. Rudyard Kipling, who has been profoundly influenced by Mark Twain, and has learned much from him, often employs the same device, as in _Brugglesmith_. Irreverence is also a noteworthy quality. In his travel-books, we are given the attitude of the typical American Philistine toward the wonders and sacred relics of the Old World, the whole thing being a gigantic burlesque on the sentimental guide-books which were so much in vogue before the era of Baedeker. With such continuous fun and mirth, satire and burlesque, it is no wonder that Mark Twain should not always be at his best. He is doubtless sometimes flat, sometimes coarse, as all humorists since Rabelais have been. The wonder is that his level has been so high. I remember, just before the appearance of _Following the Equator_, I had been told that Mark Twain's inspiration was finally gone, and that he could not be funny if he tried. To test this, I opened the new book, and this is what I found on the first page:--

"We sailed for America, and there made certain preparations. This took but little time. Two members of my family elected to go with me. Also a carbuncle. The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humour is out of place in a dictionary."

Although Mark Twain has the great qualities of the true humorist--common sense, human sympathy, and an accurate eye for proportion--he is much more than a humorist. His work shows high literary quality, the quality that appears in first-rate novels. He has shown himself to be a genuine artist. He has done something which many popular novelists have signally failed to accomplish--he has created real characters. His two wonderful boys, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, are wonderful in quite different ways. The creator of Tom exhibited remarkable observation; the creator of Huck showed the divine touch of imagination. Tom is the American boy--he is "smart." In having his fence whitewashed, in controlling a pool of Sabbath-school tickets at the precise psychological moment, he displays abundant promise of future success in business. Huck, on the other hand, is the child of nature, harmless, sincere, and crudely imaginative. His reasonings with Jim about nature and God belong to the same department of natural theology as that illustrated in Browning's _Caliban_. The night on the raft with Jim, when these two creatures look aloft at the stars, and Jim reckons the moon _laid_ them, is a case in point.

"We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or just happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to _make_ so many. Jim said the moon could a _laid_ them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn't say nothing against it, because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the nest."

Again, Mark Twain has so much dramatic power that, were his literary career beginning instead of closing, he might write for us the great American play that we are still awaiting. The story of the feud between the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons is thrillingly dramatic, and the tragic climax seizes the heart. The shooting of the drunken Boggs, the gathering of the mob, and its control by one masterful personality, belong essentially to true drama, and are written with power and insight. The pathos of these scenes is never false, never mawkish or overdone; it is the pathos of life itself. Mark Twain's extraordinary skill in descriptive passages shows, not merely keen observation, but the instinct for the specific word--the one word that is always better than any of its synonyms, for it makes the picture real--it creates the illusion, which is the essence of all literary art. The storm, for example:--

"It was my watch below till twelve, but I wouldn't a turned in anyway if I'd had a bed, because a body don't see such a storm as that every day in the week, not by a long sight. My souls, how the wind did scream along! And every second or two there'd come a glare that lit up the white-caps for a half a mile around, and you'd see the islands looking dusty through the rain, and the trees thrashing around in the wind; then comes a _h-wach_!--bum! bum! bumble-umble-umbum-bum-bum-bum--and the thunder would go rumbling and grumbling away, and quit--and then _rip_ comes another flash and another sockdolager. The waves 'most washed me off the raft sometimes, but I hadn't any clothes on, and didn't mind. We didn't have no trouble about snags; the lightning was glaring and flittering around so constant that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or that and miss them."

_Tom Sawyer_ and _Huckleberry Finn_ are prose epics of American life. The former is one of those books--of which _The Pilgrim's Progress_, _Gulliver's Travels_, and _Robinson Crusoe_ are supreme examples--that are read at different periods of one's life from very different points of view; so that it is not easy to say when one enjoys them the most--before one understands their real significance or after. Nearly all healthy boys enjoy reading _Tom Sawyer_, because the intrinsic interest of the story is so great, and the various adventures of the hero are portrayed with such gusto. Yet it is impossible to outgrow the book. The eternal Boy is there, and one cannot appreciate the nature of boyhood properly until one has ceased to be a boy. The other masterpiece, _Huckleberry Finn_, is really not a child's book at all. Children devour it, but they do not digest it. It is a permanent picture of a certain period of American history, and this picture is made complete, not so much by the striking portraits of individuals placed on the huge canvas, as by the vital unity of the whole composition. If one wishes to know what life on the Mississippi really was, to know and understand the peculiar social conditions of that highly exciting time, one has merely to read through this powerful narrative, and a definite, coherent, vivid impression remains.

By those who have lived there, and whose minds are comparatively free from prejudice, Mark Twain's pictures of life in the South before the war are regarded as, on the whole, nearer the truth than those supplied by any other artist. One reason for this is the aim of the author; he was not trying to support or to defend any particular theory--no, his aim was purely and wholly artistic. In _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, a book by no means devoid of literary art, the red-hot indignation of the author largely nullified her evident desire to tell the truth. If one succeeds in telling the truth about anything whatever, one must have something more than the _desire_ to tell the truth; one must know how to do it. False impressions do not always, probably do not commonly, come from deliberate liars. Mrs. Stowe's astonishing work is not really the history of slavery; it is the history of abolition sentiment. On the other hand, writers so graceful, talented, and clever as Mr. Page and Mr. Hopkinson Smith do not always give us pictures that correctly represent, except locally, the actual situation before the war; for these gentlemen seem to have _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ in mind. Mark Twain gives us both points of view; he shows us the beautiful side of slavery,--for it had a wonderfully beautiful, patriarchal side,--and he also shows us the horror of it. The living dread of the Negro that he would be sold down the river, has never been more vividly represented than when the poor woman in _Pudd'nhead Wilson_ sees the water swirling against the snag, and realises that she is bound the wrong way. That one scene makes an indelible impression on the reader's mind, and counteracts tons of polemics. The peculiar harmlessness of Jim is beautiful to contemplate. Although he and Huck really own the raft, and have taken all the risk, they obey implicitly the orders of the two tramps who call themselves Duke and King. Had that been a raft on the Connecticut River, and had Huck and Jim been Yankees, they would have said to the intruders, "Whose raft is this, anyway?"

Mark Twain may be trusted to tell the truth; for the eye of the born caricature artist always sees the salient point. Caricatures often give us a better idea of their object than a photograph; for the things that are exaggerated, be it a large nose, or a long neck, are, after all, the things that differentiate this particular individual from the mass. Everybody remembers how Tweed was caught by one of Nast's cartoons.

Mark Twain is through and through American. If foreigners really wish to know the American spirit, let them read Mark Twain. He is far more American than their favourite specimen, Walt Whitman. The essentially American qualities of common sense, energy, enterprise, good-humour, and Philistinism fairly shriek from his pages. He reveals us in our limitations, in our lack of appreciation of certain beautiful things, fully as well as he pictures us in coarser but more triumphant aspects. It is, of course, preposterous to say that Americans are totally different from other humans; we have no monopoly of common sense and good-humour, nor are we all hide-bound Philistines. But there is something pronounced in the American character, and the books of Mark Twain reveal it. He has also more than once been a valuable and efficient champion. Without being an offensive and blatant Jingo, I think he is content to be an American.

Mark Twain is our great Democrat. Democracy is his political, social, and moral creed. His hatred of snobbery, affectation, and assumed superiority is total. His democracy has no limits; it is bottom-less and far-reaching. Nothing seems really sacred to him except the sacred right of every individual to do exactly as he pleases; which means, of course, that no one can interfere with another's right, for then democracy would be the privilege of a few, and would stultify itself. Not only does the spirit of democracy breathe out from all his greater books, but it is shown in specific instances, such as _Travelling with a Reformer_; and Mark Twain has more than once given testimony for his creed, without recourse to the pen.

At the head of all American novelists, living and dead, stands Nathaniel Hawthorne, unapproached, possibly unapproachable. His fine and subtle art is an altogether different thing from the art of our mighty, democratic, national humorist. But Literature is wonderfully diverse in its content; and the historian of American Letters, in the far future, will probably find it impossible to omit the name of Mark Twain.

VI

HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ

In a private letter to a friend, written in 1896, the late Mr. Charles Dudley Warner remarked: "I am just reading _Children of the Soil_, which I got in London before I sailed. It confirms me in my very high opinion of him. I said the other day that I think him at the head of living novelists, both in range, grasp of a historical situation, intuition and knowledge of human nature. Comparisons are always dangerous, but I know no historical novelist who is his superior, or who is more successful in creating characters. His canvas is very large, and in the beginning of his historical romances the reader needs patience, but the picture finally comes out vividly, and the episodes in the grand story are perfectly enthralling. Of his novels of modern life I cannot speak too highly. The subtlety of his analysis is wonderful, and the shades of character are delineated by slight but always telling strokes. There is the same reality in them that is in his romances. As to the secret of his power, who can say? It is genius (I still believe in that word) but re-enforced by very hard labour and study, by much reading, and by acute observation."

This letter may serve as an excellent summary of the opinions of many intelligent American critics concerning a writer whose name was unknown to us in 1890, and of whom the whole world was talking in 1895.[5] One reason--apart from their intrinsic excellence--for the Byronic suddenness of the fame of the Polish Trilogy, was the psychological opportuneness of its appearance. In England and in America the recent Romantic Revival was at its flood; we were all reading historical romances, and were hungry for more. Sienkiewicz satisfied us by providing exactly what we were looking for. In his own country he was idolised, for his single pen had done more than many years of tumultuous discussion, to put Poland back on the map of Europe. At the exercises commemorating the five hundredth anniversary of the University of Cracow, the late President Gilman, who had the well-deserved honour of speaking for the universities of America, said: "America thanks Poland for three great names: Copernicus, to whom all the world is indebted; Kosciuszko, who spilled his blood for American independence; and Sienkiewicz, whose name is a household word in thousands of American homes, and who has introduced Poland to the American people."[6]

[5] His name does not appear in standard English biographical dictionaries or literary reference books for 1893 or 1894.

[6] See an interesting article in the _Outlook_ for 3 August, 1901, _A Visit to Sienkiewicz_, by L. E. Van Norman.

Sienkiewicz was born in 1845. After student days at Warsaw, he came over in 1876-1877 to California, in a party that included Madame Modjeska. They attempted to establish a kind of socialistic community, which bears in the retrospect a certain resemblance to Brook Farm. Fortunately for the cause of art, which the world needs more than it does socialism, the enterprise was a failure. Sienkiewicz returned to Poland, and began his literary career; Madame Modjeska became one of the chief ornaments of the English stage for a quarter of a century. Her ashes now rest in the ancient Polish city where President Gilman uttered his fine tribute to the friend of her youth.

The three great Polish romances were all written in the eighties; and at about the same time the author was also engaged in the composition of purely realistic work, which displays his powers in a quite different form of art, and constitutes the most original--though not the most popular--part of his literary production. The _Children of the Soil_, which some of the elect in Poland consider his masterpiece, is a novel, constructed and executed in the strictest style of realism; _Without Dogma_ is still farther removed from the Romantic manner, for it is a story of psychological analytical introspection. Sienkiewicz himself regards _Children of the Soil_ as his favourite, although he is "not prepared to say just why." And _Without Dogma_ he thinks to be "in many respects my strongest work." It is evident that he does not consider himself primarily a maker of stirring historical romance. But in the nineties he returned to this form of fiction, producing his Roman panorama called _Quo Vadis_, which, although it has made the biggest noise of all his books, is perhaps the least valuable. Like _Ben Hur_, it was warmed over into a tremendously successful melodrama, and received the final compliment of parody.[7] Toward the close of the century, Sienkiewicz completed another massive historical romance, _The Knights of the Cross_, which, in its abundant action, striking characterisation, and charming humour, recalled the Trilogy; this was followed by _On the Field of Glory_, and we may confidently expect more, though never too much; he simply could not be dull if he tried.

[7] One of the most grotesque and laughable burlesques ever seen on the American stage was the travesty of _Quo Vadis_, with the heroine Lithia, who drew a lobster on the sand: the strong man, Zero, wrenched the neck off a wild borax.

In a time like ours, when literary tabloids take the place of wholesome mental food, when many successful novels can be read at a sitting or a lying--requiring no exertion either of soul or body--the portentous size of these Polish stories is a magnificent challenge. If some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested, what shall we do with Sienkiewicz? In Mr. Curtin's admirable translation, the Trilogy covers over twenty-five hundred closely printed pages; the _Knights of the Cross_ over seven hundred and fifty, _Children of the Soil_ over six hundred and fifty; _Without Dogma_ (Englished by another hand) has been silently so much abridged in translation that we do not know what its actual length may be. We do not rebel, because the next chapter is invariably not a task, but a temptation; but when we wake up with a start at the call _Finis_, which magic word transfers us from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, and contemplate the vast fabric of our dream, we cannot help asking if there is any law in the construction that requires so much material. Gogol, in his astonishing romance, _Taras Bulba_, which every lover of Sienkiewicz should read, gives us the same impression of Vastness, in a book Lilliputian in size. Nor is there any apparent reason why the Polish narratives should stop on the last page, nor indeed stop at all. Combat succeeds combat, when in the midst of the hurly-burly, the Master of the Show calls time. It is his arbitrary will, rather than any inevitable succession of events, that shuts off the scene: the men might be fighting yet. This passion for mere detail mars the first part of _With Fire and Sword_; one cannot see the forest for the trees.

One reason for this immensity is the author's desire to be historically accurate, the besetting sin of many recent dramas and novels. Before beginning to write, Sienkiewicz reads all the authorities and documentary evidence he can find. The result is plainly seen in the early pages of _With Fire and Sword_, which read far more like a history than like a work of fiction--note the striking contrast in _Pan Michael_! The _Knights of the Cross_ appeared with maps. The topography of _Quo Vadis_ was so carefully prepared that it almost serves as a guide-book to ancient Rome. Now the relation of History to Fiction has never been better stated than by Lessing: "The dramatist uses history, not because it has happened, but because it has so happened that he could scarcely find anything else better adapted to his purpose." No work of fiction has ever gained immortality by its historical accuracy.

Everyone notices that the works of Sienkiewicz are Epics rather than Novels. Even bearing Fielding clearly in mind, there is no better illustration to be found in literary history. The Trilogy bears the same relation to the wars of Poland that the Iliad bears to the struggle at Troy. The scope and flow of the narrative, the power of the scenes, the vast perspective, the portraits of individual heroes, the impassioned poetry of the style--all these qualities are of the Epic. The intense patriotism is thrilling, and makes one envy the sensations of native readers. And yet the reasons for the downfall of Poland are made perfectly clear.

Is the _romanticist_ Sienkiewicz an original writer? In the narrow and strict sense of the word, I think not. He is eclectic rather than original. He is a skilful fuser of material, like Shakespeare. At any rate, his most conspicuous virtue is not originality. He has enormous force, a glorious imagination, astonishing facility, and a remarkable power of making pictures, both in panorama and in miniature; but his work shows constantly the inspiration not only of his historical authorities, but of previous poets and novelists. Those who are really familiar with the writings of Homer, Shakespeare, Scott, and Dumas, will not require further comment on this point. The influence of Homer is seen in the constant similes, the epithets like "incomparable bowman," and the stress laid on the deeds of individual heroes; a thing quite natural in Homeric warfare, but rather disquieting in the days of villainous saltpetre. The three swordsmen in _With Fire and Sword_--Pan Yan, Pan Podbienta, and Pan Michael--infallibly remind us of Dumas's three guardsmen; and the great duel scenes in the same story, and in the _Knights of the Cross_, are quite in the manner of the Frenchman. Would that other writers could employ their reminiscences to such advantage! In the high colouring, in the management of historical events, and in patriotic enthusiasm, we cannot help thinking of Scott. But be the debt to Dumas and to Scott as great as one pleases to estimate, I am free to acknowledge that I find the romances of the Pole more enthralling than those of either or both of his two great predecessors.

With reference to the much-discussed character of Zagloba, I confess I cannot join in the common verdict that pronounces him a "new creation in literature." Those who believe this delightful person to be something new and original have simply forgotten Falstaff. If one will begin all over again, and read the two parts of _Henry IV_, and then take a look at Zagloba, the author of his being is immediately apparent. Zagloba is a Polish Falstaff, an astonishingly clever imitation of the real thing. He is old, white-haired, fat, a resourceful wit and humorist, better at bottles than at battles, and yet bold when policy requires: in every essential feature of body and mind he resembles the immortal creation of Shakespeare. Sienkiewicz _develops_ him with subtle skill and affectionate solicitude, even as Dickens developed Mr. Pickwick; the Zagloba of _Pan Michael_ is far sweeter and more mellow than when we make his acquaintance in the first volume of the Trilogy; but the last word for this character is the word "original." The real triumph of Sienkiewicz in the portrayal of the jester is in the fact that he could imitate Falstaff without spoiling him, for no other living writer could have done it. A copy that can safely be placed alongside the original implies art of a very high class. To see Zagloba is to realise the truth of Falstaff's remark, "I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men."

Sienkiewicz himself perhaps does not appreciate how much he owes to Shakespeare, or possibly he is a bit sensitive on the subject, for he explains, "If I may be permitted to make a comparison, I think that Zagloba is a better character than Falstaff. At heart the old noble was a good fellow. He would fight bravely when it became necessary, whereas Shakespeare makes Falstaff a coward and a poltroon."[8] If the last two epithets were really an accurate description of Falstaff, he would never have conquered so many millions of readers.[9]

[8] See Mr. Van Norman's article.

[9] It would be well for Sienkiewicz (and others) to read the brilliant essay that appeared, "by another hand," in the First Series of Mr. Birrell's _Obiter Dicta_.

In power of description on a large scale, Sienkiewicz seems to take a place among the world's great masters of fiction. The bigger the canvas, the more impressive he becomes. His pictures of the boundless steppes by day and night, and in the varying seasons of the year, leave permanent images in the mind. Especially in huge battle scenes is his genius resplendent. It is as if we viewed the whole drama of blood from a convenient mountain peak. The awful tumult gathers and breaks like some hideous storm. So far as I know no writer has ever excelled this Verestchagin of the pen except Tolstoi--and Tolstoi's power lies more in the subjective side of the horrors of war. The Russian's skill is more intellectual, more psychological, of a really higher order of art. For in the endeavour to make the picture vivid, Sienkiewicz becomes at times merely sensational. There is no excuse for his frequent descent into loathsome and horrible detail. The employment of human entrails as a necklace may be historically accurate, but it is out of place in a work of art. The minute description of the use of the stake is another instance of the same tendency, and the unspeakably horrid torture of Azya in _Pan Michael_ is a sad blot on an otherwise splendid romance. The love of the physically horrible is an unfortunate characteristic of our Polish novelist, for it appears in _Quo Vadis_ as well as in the Trilogy. The greatest works appeal to the mind rather than the senses. _Pan Michael_ is a great book, not because it reeks with blood and abounds in hell's ingenuity of pain, but because it presents the character of a hero made perfect through suffering; every sword-stroke develops his spirit as well as his arm. Superfluous events, so frequent in the other works, are here omitted; the story progresses steadily; it is the most condensed and the most human book in the Trilogy. Again, in _The Deluge_, the author's highest skill is shown not in the portrayal of moving accidents by flood and field, but in the regeneration of Kmita. He passes through a long period of slow moral gestation, which ultimately brings him from darkness to light.

To non-Slavonic readers, who became acquainted with Sienkiewicz through the Trilogy, it was a surprise to discover that at home he was equally distinguished as an exponent of modern realism. The acute demand for anything and everything from his pen led to the translation of _The Family of Polanyetski_, rechristened in English (one hardly knows why) _Children of the Soil_; this was preceded by the curious psychological study, _Without Dogma_. It is extremely fortunate that these two works have been made accessible to English readers, for they display powers that would not otherwise be suspected. It is true that English novelists have shone in both realism and romance: we need remember only Defoe, Dickens, and Thackeray. But at the very moment when we were all thinking of Sienkiewicz as a reincarnation of Scott or Dumas, we were compelled to revise previous estimates of his position and abilities. Genius always refuses to be classified, ticketed, or inventoried; just as you have got your man "placed," or, to change the figure, have solemnly and definitely ushered him to a seat in the second row on the upper tier, you discover that he is much bigger than or quite different from your definition of him. Sienkiewicz is undoubtedly one of the greatest living masters of the realistic novel. In the two stories just mentioned above, the most minute trivialities in human intercourse are set forth in a style that never becomes trivial. He is as good at external description as he is at psychological analysis. He takes all human nature for his province. He belongs not only to the "feel" school of novelists, with Zola, but to the "thought" school, with Turgenev. The workings of the human mind, as impelled by all sorts of motives, ambitions, and passions, make the subject for his examination. In the Trilogy, he took an enormous canvas, and splashed on myriads of figures; in _Without Dogma_, he puts the soul of one man under the microscope. The events in this man's life are mainly "transitions from one state of spiritual experience to another." Naturally the mirror selected is a diary, for _Without Dogma_ belongs to a school of literature illustrated by such examples as the _Sorrows of Werther_ and _Amiel's Journal_. It must be remembered that we have here a study primarily of the Slav character. The hero cleverly diagnoses his own symptoms as _Slave Improductivité_. He is perhaps puzzling to the practical Philistine Anglo-Saxon: but not if one has read Turgenev, Dostoievsky, or Gorky. Turgenev's brilliant analysis of Rudin must stand for all time as a perfect portrait of the educated Slav, a person who fulfils the witty definition of a Mugwump, "one who is educated beyond his capacity." We have a similar character here, the conventional conception of Hamlet, a man whose power of reasoning overbalances his strength of will. He can talk brilliantly on all kinds of intellectual topics, but he cannot bring things to pass. He has a bad case of _slave improductivité_. The very title, _Without Dogma_, reveals the lack of conviction that ultimately destroys the hero. He has absolutely no driving power; as he expresses it, _he does not know_. If one wishes to examine this sort of mind, extremely common among the upper classes of Poles and Russians, one cannot do better than read attentively this book. Every futile impulse, every vain longing, every idle day-dream, is clearly reflected. It is a melancholy spectacle, but fascinating and highly instructive. For it is not merely an individual, but the national Slavonic character that is revealed.

Sienkiewicz is not only a Romanticist and a Realist--he is also a Moralist. The foundations of his art are set deep in the bed-rock of moral ideas. As Tolstoi would say, he has the right attitude toward his characters. He believes that the Novel should strengthen life, not undermine it; ennoble, not defile it; for it is good tidings, not evil. "I care not whether the word that I say pleases or not, since I believe that I reflect the great urgent need of the soul of humanity, which is crying for a change. People must think according to the laws of logic. And because they must also live, they want some consolation on the road of life. Masters after the manner of Zola give them only dissolution, chaos, a disgust for life, and despair."[10] This is the signal of a strong and healthy soul. The fact is, that at heart Sienkiewicz is as stout a moralist as Tolstoi, and with equal ardour recognises Christianity as the world's best standard and greatest need. The basis of the novel _Children of the Soil_ is purely Christian. The simple-hearted Marynia is married to a man far superior to her in mental endowment and training, as so often happens in Slavonic fiction; she cannot follow his intellectual flights, and does not even understand the processes of his mind. She has no talent for metaphysical discussion, and no knowledge of modern science. But although her education does not compare with that of her husband, she has, without suspecting it, completely mastered the art of life; for she is a devout and sincere Christian, meek and lowly in heart. He finally recognises that while he has more learning, she has more wisdom; and when the book closes, we see him a pupil at her feet. All his vain speculations are overthrown by the power of religion manifested in the purity, peace, and contentment of his wife's daily life. And now he too--

"Leads it companioned by the woman there. To live, and see her learn, and learn by her, Out of the low obscure and petty world.... To have to do with nothing but the true, The good, the eternal--and these, not alone, In the main current of the general life, But small experiences of every day, Concerns of the particular hearth and home: To learn not only by a comet's rush But a rose's birth,--not by the grandeur, God-- But the comfort, Christ."

This idea is revealed positively in _Children of the Soil_, and negatively in _Without Dogma_. The two women, Marynia and Aniela, are very similar. Aniela's intellect is elementary compared with that of her brilliant lover, Leon Ploszowski. But her Christian faith turns out to be a much better guide to conduct than his flux of metaphysics. She is a good woman, and knows the difference between right and wrong without having to look it up in a book. When he urges her to a _liaison_, and overwhelms her objections with a fine display of modern dialectic, she concludes the debate by saying, "I cannot argue with you, because you are so much cleverer than I; but I know that what you want me to do is wrong, and I will not do it."

[10] Taken here and there from his essay on Zola.

We find exactly the same emphasis when we turn to the historical romance _Quo Vadis_. The whole story is a glorification of Christianity, of Christian ethics and Christian belief. The despised Christians have discovered the secret of life, which the culture of Petronius sought in vain. It was hidden from the wise and prudent, and revealed unto babes. The influence of Lygia on Vinicius is, with a totally different environment, precisely the same as the influence of Marynia on Pan Stanislav.

Sienkiewicz seems to have much the same Christian conception of Love as that shown in so many ways by Browning. Love is the _summum bonum_, and every manifestation of it has something divine. Love in all its forms appears in these Polish novels, as it does in Browning, from the basest sensual desire to the purest self-sacrifice. There is indeed a streak of animalism in Sienkiewicz, which shows in all his works; but, if we may believe him, it is merely one representation of the great passion, which so largely controls life and conduct. Love, says Sienkiewicz, with perhaps more force than clearness, should be the foundation of all literature. "L'amour--c'est un droit éternel, une force vitale, c'est le génie--bienfaiteur de notre globe: l'harmonie. Sienkiewicz croit que l'amour, ainsi compris, est le fondement de la littérature polonaise--et que cet amour devrait l'être pour toute la littérature."[11] Some light may be thrown on this statement by a careful reading of _Pan Michael_.

[11] Sent to me by Dr. Glabisz.

Sienkiewicz is indeed a mighty man--someone has ironically called him a literary blacksmith. There is nothing decadent in his nature. Compared with many English, German, and French writers, who seem at times to express an anæmic and played-out civilisation, he has the very exuberance of power and an endless wealth of material. It is as if the world were fresh and new. And he has not only delighted us with the pageantry of chivalry, and with the depiction of our complex modern civilisation, he has for us also the stimulating influence of a great moral force.

VII

HERMANN SUDERMANN

Walking along Michigan Avenue in Chicago one fine day, I stopped in front of the recently completed hall devoted to music. On the façade of this building had been placed five names, supposed to represent the five greatest composers that the world has thus far seen. It was worth while to pause a moment and to reflect that those five men were all Germans. Germany's contribution to music is not only greater than that of any other nation, it is probably greater than that of all the other countries of the earth put together, and multiplied several times. In many forms of literary art,--especially perhaps in drama and in lyrical poetry,--Germany has been eminent; and she has produced the greatest literary genius since Shakespeare. To-day the Fatherland remains the intellectual workshop of the world; men and women flock thither to study subjects as varied as Theology, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Music. All this splendid achievement in science and in culture makes poverty in the field of prose fiction all the more remarkable. For the fact is, that the total number of truly great world-novels written in the German language, throughout its entire history, can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

In the making of fiction, from the point of view solely of quality, Germany cannot stand an instant's comparison with Russia, whose four great novelists have immensely enriched the world; nor with Great Britain, where masterpieces have been produced for nearly two hundred years; nor with France, where the names of notable novels crowd into the memory; and even America, so poor in literature and in genuine culture, can show at least one romance that stands higher than anything which has come from beyond the Rhine. Germany has no reason to feel ashamed of her barrenness in fiction, so pre-eminent is she in many other and perhaps nobler forms of art. But it is interesting to enquire for a moment into possible causes of this phenomenon, and to see if we can discover why Teutonic fiction is, relatively speaking, so bad.

One dominant fault in most German novels is a lack of true proportion. The principle of selection, which differentiates a painting from a photograph, and makes the artist an Interpreter instead of a Recorder, has been forgotten or overlooked. The high and holy virtue of Omission should be cultivated more sedulously. The art of leaving out is the art that produces the real illusion--where, by the omission of unessential details, things that are salient can be properly emphasised. And what German novels lack is emphasis. This cannot be obtained by merely spacing the letters in descriptions and in conversations; it can be reached only by remembering that prose fiction is as truly an art form as a Sonata. Instead of novels, the weary reader gets long and tiresome biographies of rather unimportant persons; people whom we should not in the least care to know in real life. We follow them dejectedly from the cradle to the grave. Matters of no earthly consequence either to the reader, to the hero, or to the course of the plot, are given as much prominence as great events. In _Jörn Uhl_, to take a recent illustration, the novel is positively choked by trivial detail. Despite the enormous vogue of this story, it does not seem destined to live. It will fall by its own weight.

Another great fault is an excess of sentimentality. For the Germans, who delight in destroying old faiths of humanity, and who remorselessly hammer away at the shrines where we worship in history and religion, are, notwithstanding their iconoclasm, the most sentimental people in the world. Many second-and third-rate German novels are ruined for an Anglo-Saxon reader by a lush streak of sentimental gush, a curious blemish in so intellectual and sceptical a race. This excess of soft material appears in a variety of forms; but to take one common manifestation of it, I should say that the one single object that has done more than anything else to weaken and to destroy German fiction, is the Moon. The Germans are, by nature and by training, scientific; and what their novels need is not the examination of literary critics, but the thoughtful attention of astronomers. The Moon is overworked, and needs a long rest. An immense number of pages are illumined by its chaste beams, for this satellite is both active and ubiquitous. It behaves, it must be confessed, in a dramatic manner, but in a way hopelessly at variance with its methodical and orderly self. In other words, the Moon, in German fiction, is not astronomical, but decorative. I have read some stories where it seems to rise on almost every page, and is invariably full. When Stevenson came to grief on the Moon in _Prince Otto_, he declared that the next time he wrote a novel, he should use an almanac. He unwittingly laid his finger on a weak spot in German fiction. The almanac is, after all, what is most sorely needed. Even Herr Sudermann, for whom we entertain the highest respect, places in _Es War_ a young crescent Moon in the eastern sky! But it is in his story, _Der Katzensteg_, that the lunar orb plays its heaviest rôle. It rises so constantly that after a time the very words "_der Mond_" get on one's nerves. At the climax, when the lover looks down on the stream, he there beholds the dead body of his sweetheart. By some scientific process, "unknown to me and which 'twere well to know," she is floating on her back in the water, while the Moon illumines her face, leaving the rest of her remains in darkness. This constitutes a striking picture; and is also of material assistance to the man in locating the whereabouts of the girl. He descends, rescues her from the flood, and digs a grave in which to bury her. The Moon actively and dramatically takes part in this labour. Finally, he has lowered the corpse into the bottom of the cavity. The Moon now shines into the grave in such a manner that the dead woman's face is bright with its rays, whereas the rest of her body and the walls of the tomb are in obscurity. This phenomenon naturally makes a powerful impression on the mourner's mind.

If such things can happen in the works of a writer like Sudermann, one can easily imagine the reckless behaviour of the Moon in the common run of German fiction. The Moon, in fact, is in German novels what the calcium light is in American melodrama. If one "assists" at a performance of, let us say, _No Wedding Bells for Her_, and can take his eye a moment from the stage, he may observe up in the back gallery a person working the calcium light, and directing its powerful beams in such a fashion that no matter where the heroine moves, they dwell exclusively on her face, so that we may contemplate her features convulsed with emotion. Now in _Der Katzensteg_, the patient Moon follows the heroine about with much the same assiduity, and accuracy of aim. Possibly Herr Sudermann, since the composition of that work, has really consulted an almanac; for in _Das hohe Lied_, the Moon is practically ignored, and never gets a fair start. Toward the end, I felt sure that it would appear, and finally, when I came to the words, "The weary disk of the full moon (_matte Vollmondscheibe_) hung somewhere in the dark sky," I exclaimed, "Art thou there, truepenny?"--but the next sentence showed that the author was playing fast and loose with his old friend. "It was the illuminated clock of a railway-station." Can Sudermann have purposely set a trap for his moon-struck constituency?

From the astronomical point of view, I have seldom read a novel that contained so much moonlight as _Der Katzensteg_, and I have never read one that contained so little as _Das hohe Lied_. Perhaps Sudermann is now quietly protesting against what he himself may regard as a national calamity, for it is little less than that. Be this as it may, the lack of proportion and the excess of sentimentality are two great evils that have militated against the final success of German fiction.

Hermann Sudermann was born at a little village in East Prussia, near the Russian frontier. The natal landscape is dull, depressing, gloomy, and the skies are low and threatening. The clouds return after the rain. Dame Care has spread her grey wings over the flat earth, and neither the scenery nor the quality of the air are such as to inspire hope and vigour. The boy's parents were desperately poor, and the bitter struggles with poverty so frequently described in his novels are reminiscent of early experiences. In the beautiful and affectionate verses, which constitute the dedication to his father and mother, and which are placed at the beginning of _Frau Sorge_, these privations of the Sudermann household are dwelt on with loving tenderness. At the age of fourteen, the child was forced to leave school, and was apprenticed to a chemist--something that recalls chapters in the lives of Keats and of Ibsen. But, like most boys who really long for a good education, Sudermann obtained it; he continued his studies in private, and later returned to school at Tilsit. In 1875 he attended the University at Königsberg, and in 1877 migrated to the University of Berlin. His first impulse was to become a teacher, and he spent several years in a wide range of studies in philosophy and literature. Then he turned to journalism, and edited a political weekly. He finally forsook journalism for literature, and for the last twenty years he has been known in every part of the intellectual world.

Like Mr. J. M. Barrie, Signor D'Annunzio, and other contemporaries, Sudermann has achieved high distinction both as a novelist and as a dramatist. Indeed, one of the signs of the times is the recruiting of playwrights from the ranks of trained experts in prose fiction. It may perhaps be regarded as one more evidence of the approaching supremacy of the Drama, which many literary prophets have foretold. After he had published a small collection of "Zwanglose Geschichten," called _Im Zwielicht_, Sudermann issued his first real novel, _Dame Care_ (_Frau Sorge_). This was followed by two tales bound together under the heading _Geschwister_, one of them being the morbidly powerful story, _The Wish_ (_Der Wunsch_). Soon after came _Der Katzensteg_, translated into English with the title, _Regina_. Then, after a surprisingly short interval, came his first play, _Die Ehre_ (1889), which appeared in the same year as his rival Hauptmann's first drama, _Vor Sonnenaufgang_. _Die Ehre_ created a tremendous sensation, and Sudermann was excitedly read and discussed far beyond the limits of his native land. He reached a wild climax of popularity a few years later with his play _Heimat_ (English version _Magda_), which has been presented by the greatest actresses in the world, and is familiar to everybody. With the exception of the long novel, _Es War_ (English translation, _The Undying Past_), which appeared in 1894, Sudermann devoted himself exclusively to the stage for almost twenty years, and most of us believed he had definitely abandoned novel-writing. From 1889 to 1909, he produced nineteen plays, nearly every one of them successful. Then last year he astonished everybody by publishing a novel of over six hundred closely printed pages, called _Das hohe Lied_, translated into English as _The Song of Songs_. This has had an enormous success, and for 1908-1909, is the best selling work of fiction in the large cities of Germany.

The immense vogue of his early plays had much to do with the wide circulation of his previously published novels. Despite the now universally acknowledged excellence of _Frau Sorge_, it attracted, at the time of its appearance, very little attention. It is going beyond the facts to say with one German critic that "it dropped stillborn from the press"; but it did not give the author anything like the fame he deserved. After the first night of _Die Ehre_, the public became inquisitive. A search was made for everything the new author had written, and the two novels _Frau Sorge_, and the very recent _Katzensteg_, were fairly pounced upon. The small stock on hand was immediately exhausted, and the presses poured forth edition after edition. At first _Der Katzensteg_ received the louder tribute of praise; it was hailed by many otherwise sane critics as the greatest work of fiction that Germany had ever produced. But after the tumult and the shouting died, the people recognised the superiority of the former novel. To-day _Der Katzensteg_ is, comparatively speaking, little read, and one seldom hears it mentioned. _Frau Sorge_, on the other hand, has not only attained more editions than any other work, either play or novel, by its author, but it bears the signs that mark a classic. It is one of the very few truly great German novels, and it is possible that this early written story will survive everything that Sudermann has since produced, which is saying a good deal. It looks like a fixed star.

Sudermann's four novels, _Frau Sorge_, _Der Katzensteg_, _Es War_, and _Das hohe Lied_, show a steady progression in Space as well as in Time. The first is the shortest; the second is larger; the third is a long book; the fourth is a leviathan. If novelists were heard for their much speaking, the order of merit in this output would need no comment. But the first of these is almost as superior in quality as it is inferior in size. When the author prepared it for the press, he was an absolutely unknown man. Possibly he put more work on it than went into the other books, for it apparently bears the marks of careful revision. It is a great exception to the ordinary run of German novels in its complete freedom from superfluous and clogging detail. Turgenev used to write his stories originally at great length, and then reduce them to a small fraction of their original bulk, before offering them to the public. We thus receive the quintessence of his thought and of his art. Now _Frau Sorge_ has apparently been subjected to some such process. Much of the huge and varied cargo of ideas, reflections, comments, and speculations carried by the regulation German freight-novel of heavy draught, has here been jettisoned. Then the craft itself has been completely remodelled, and the final result is a thing of grace and beauty.

_Frau Sorge_ is an admirable story in its absolute unity, in its harmonious development, and in its natural conclusion. I do not know of any other German novel that has a more attractive outline. It ought to serve as an example to its author's countrymen.

It is in a way an anatomy of melancholy. It is written throughout in the minor key, and the atmosphere of melancholy envelops it with as much natural charm as though it were a beautiful piece of music. The book is profoundly sad, without any false sentiment and without any revolting coarseness. It is as far removed from the silly sentimentality so common in Teutonic fiction, as it is from the filth of Zola or of Gorky. The deep melancholy of the story is as natural to it as a cloudy sky. The characters live and move and have their being in this grey medium, which fits them like a garment; just as in the early tales of Björnson we feel the strong sunshine and the sharp air. The early environment of the young author, the depressing landscape of his boyhood days, the daily fight with grim want in his father's house--all these elements are faithfully reflected here, and lend their colour to the narrative. And this surrounding melancholy, though it overshadows the whole book, is made to serve an artistic purpose. It contrasts favourably with Ibsen's harsh bitterness, with Gorky's maudlin dreariness, and with the hysterical outbursts of pessimism from the manikins who try to see life from the mighty shoulders of Schopenhauer. At the very heart of the work we find no sentiment of revolt against life, and no cry of despair, but true tenderness and broad sympathy. It is the clear expression of a rich, warm nature.

The story is realistic, with a veil of Romanticism. The various scenes of the tale seem almost photographically real. The daily life on the farm, the struggles with the agricultural machine, the peat-bogs, the childish experiences at school, the brutality of the boys, the graphic picture of the funeral,--these would not be out of place in a genuine experimental novel. But we see everything through an imaginative medium, like the impalpable silver-grey mist on the paintings of Andrea del Sarto. The way in which the difficult conception of _Frau Sorge_--part woman, part vague abstraction--is managed, reminds one in its shadowy nature of Nathaniel Hawthorne. This might have been done clumsily, as in a crude fairy-tale, but it exhibits the most subtle art. The first description of Frau Sorge by the mother, the boy's first glimpse of the supernatural woman, his father's overcoat, the Magdalene in church, the flutter of Frau Sorge's wings,--all this gives us a realistic story, and yet takes us into the borderland between the actual and the unknown. From one point of view we have a plain narrative of fact; from another an imaginative poem, and at the end we feel that both have been marvellously blended.

The simplicity of the style gives the novel a high rank in German prose. It has that naïve quality wherein the Germans so greatly excel writers in other languages. It is a surprising fact that this tongue, so full of difficulties for foreigners, and which seems often so confused and involved, can, in the hands of a master, be made to speak like a little child. The literary style of _Frau Sorge_ is naïve without ever being trivial or absurd. It is pleasant to observe, by the way, that to some extent this book is filling the place in American educational programmes of German that _L'Abbé Constantin_ has for so long a time occupied in early studies of French. Both novels are masterpieces of simplicity.

But what we remember the most vividly, years after we have finished this story, is not its scenic background, nor its unearthly charm, nor the grace of its style; it is the character and temperament of the boy-hero. It is the first, and possibly the best, of Sudermann's remarkable psychological studies. The whole interest is centred in young Paul. He is not exactly the normal type of growing boy,--compare him with Tom Sawyer!--but because he is not ordinary, it does not follow that he is unnatural. To many thoroughly respectable Philistine readers, he may appear not only abnormal, but impossible; but the book was not intended for Philistines. I believe that this boy is absolutely true to life, though I do not recall at this moment any other novel where this particular kind of youth occupies the centre of the stage.

For _Frau Sorge_ is a careful study and analysis of _bashfulness_, a characteristic that causes more exquisite torture to many boys and girls than is commonly recognised. Many of us, when we laugh at a boy's bashfulness, are brutal, when we mean to be merely jocular. Paul is intensely self-conscious. He is not at all like a healthy, practical, objective child, brought up in a large family, and surrounded by the noisy progeny of neighbours. His life is perforcedly largely subjective. He would give anything could he associate with schoolmates with the ease that makes a popular boy sure of his welcome. His accursed timidity makes him invariably show his most awkward and unattractive side. He is not in the least a _Weltkind_. He has none of the coarseness and none of the clever shirking of work and study so characteristic of the perfectly normal small boy. He does his duty _without any reservations_, and without understanding why. The narrative of his mental life is deeply pathetic. It is impossible to read the book without a lump in the throat.

Paul is finally saved from himself by the redeeming power of love. The little heroine Elsbeth is shadowy,--a merely conventional picture of hair, complexion, and eyes,--but she is, after all, _das Ewigweibliche_, and draws Paul upward and onward. She rescues him from the Slough of Despond. There is no touch of cynicism here. Sudermann shows us the healing power of a good woman's heart.

The next novel, _Der Katzensteg_, is more pretentious than _Frau Sorge_, but not nearly so fine a book. It abounds in dramatic scenes, and glows with fierce passion. It seems more like a melodrama than a story, and it is not surprising that its author immediately discovered--perhaps in the very composition of this romance--his genius for the stage. It is a historical novel, but the chief interest, as always in Sudermann, is psychological. The element of Contrast--so essential to true drama, and which is so strikingly employed in _Die Ehre_, _Sodoms Ende_, _Heimat_, and _Johannes_--is the mainspring of _Der Katzensteg_. We have here the irrepressible conflict between the artificial and the natural. The heroine of the story is a veritable child of nature, with absolutely elemental passions, as completely removed from civilisation as a wild beast. She was formerly the mistress of the hero's father, and for a long time is naturally regarded with loathing by the son. But she transfers her dog-like fidelity from the dead parent to the morbid scion of the house. The more cruelly the young man treats her, the deeper becomes her love for him. Nor does he at first suspect the hold she has on his heart. He imagines himself to be in love with the pastor's daughter in the village, who has been brought up like a hothouse plant. This simpering, affected girl, who has had all the advantages of careful nurture and education, is throughout the story contrasted with the wild flower, Regina. The contrast is thorough--mental, moral, physical. The educated girl has no real mind; she has only accomplishments. Her morality has nothing to do with the heart; it is a bundle of conventions. And finally, while Regina has a magnificent, voluptuous physique, the hero discovers--by the light of the moon--that the lady of his dreams is too thin! This is unendurable. He rushes away from the town to the heights where stands his lonely dwelling, cursing himself for his folly in being so long blind to the wonderful charm and devotion of the passionate girl who, he feels sure, is waiting for him. He hastens on the very wings of love, wild with his new-found happiness. But the very fidelity of the child of nature has caused her death. She stood out on the bridge--_der Katzensteg_--to warn her lover of his danger. There she is shot by her drunken father, and the impatient lover sees her dead body in the stream below.

Now he has leisure to reflect on what a fool he has been. He sees how much nobler are natural passions than artificial conventions. Regina had lived "on the other side of good and evil," knowing and caring nothing for the standards of society. The entire significance of the novel is summed up in this paragraph:--

"And as he thought and pondered, it seemed to him as if the clouds which separate the foundations of human being from human consciousness" (that is, things as they are from our conceptions of them,--_den Boden des menschlichen Seins vom menschlichen Bewusstsein_) "were dispersed, and he saw a space deeper than men commonly see, into the depths of the unconscious. That which men call Good and Bad, moved restless in the clouds around the surface; below, in dreaming strength, lay the _Natural_ (_das Natürliche_). 'Whom Nature has blessed,' he said to himself, 'him she lets safely grow in her dark depths and allows him to struggle boldly toward the light, without the clouds of Wisdom and Error surrounding and bewildering him.'"

But there is nothing new or original in this doctrine, however daring it may be. One can find it all in Nietzsche and in Rousseau. The best thing about the novel is that it once more illustrates Sudermann's sympathy for the outcast and the despised.

An extraordinarily powerful study in morbid psychology is shown in one of his short stories, called _Der Wunsch_. The tale is told backward. It begins with the discovery of a horrible suicide, the explanation of which is furnished to the prostrated lover by the dead woman's manuscript. A man and his wife, at first happily married, encounter the dreadful obstacles of poverty and disease; the fatal illness of his wife plunges the husband into a hard, bitter melancholy. From this he is partially saved by the appearance of his wife's younger sister on the scene, who comes to take care of the sick woman. The close companionship of the two, previously fond of each other, and now united daily by their care of the invalid, results in love; but both are absolutely loyal to the suffering wife. They cannot help thinking, however, of the wonderful happiness that might be theirs, were the man free; nevertheless, they do everything possible to solace the last hours of the woman for whom they feel an immense compassion. One night, as the sister watches at the bedside, and gazes on the face of her sister, she suddenly feels the uncontrollable and fatal _wish_--"Would that she might die!" She is so smitten with remorse that after the death of the invalid she commits suicide. For although her wish had nothing to do with this event, she nevertheless regards herself as a murderer, and goes to self-execution. The physician remarks that this psychological _wish_ is not uncommon; that during his professional services he has often seen it legibly written on the faces of relatives by the bedside--sometimes actuated by avarice, sometimes by other forms of personal greed.

The next regular novel, _Es War_, is the study of a past sin on a man's character, temperament, and conduct. The hero, Leo, has committed adultery with the wife of a disagreeable husband, and, being challenged by the latter to a duel, has killed him. Thus having broken two of the commandments, he departs for South America, where for four years he lives a joyous, care-free, savage existence, with murder and sensuality a regular part of the day's work. It is perhaps a little hard on South America that Leo could live there in such liberty and return to Germany unscathed by the arm of the law; but this is essential to the story. He returns a kind of Superman, rejoicing in his magnificent health and absolutely determined to repent nothing. He will not allow the past to obscure his happiness. But unfortunately his friend Ulrich, whom he has loved since childhood with an affection passing the love of women, has married the guilty widow, in blissful unconsciousness of his friend's guilt. And here the story opens. It is a long, depressing, but intensely interesting tale. At the very close, when it seems that wholesale tragedy is inevitable, the clouds lift, and Leo, who has found the Past stronger than he, regains something of the cheerfulness that characterises his first appearance in the narrative. Nevertheless _es war_; the Past cannot be lightly tossed aside or forgotten. It comes near wrecking the lives of every important character in the novel. Yet the idea at the end seems to be that although sin entails fearful punishment, and the scars can never be obliterated, it is possible to triumph over it and find happiness once more. The most beautiful and impressive thing in _Es War_ is the friendship between the two men--so different in temperament and so passionately devoted to each other. A large group of characters is splendidly kept in hand, and each is individual and clearly drawn. One can never forget the gluttonous, wine-bibbing Parson, who comes eating and drinking, but who is a terror to publicans and sinners.

Last year appeared _Das hohe Lied_, which, although it lacks the morbid horror of much of Sudermann's work, is the most pessimistic book he has ever written. The irony of the title is the motive of the whole novel. Between the covers of this thick volume we find the entire detailed life-history of a woman. She passes through much debauchery, and we follow her into many places where we should hesitate to penetrate in real life. But the steps in her degradation are not put in, as they so often are in Guy de Maupassant, merely to lend spice to the narrative; every event has a definite influence on the heroine's character. The story, although very long, is strikingly similar to that in a recent successful American play, _The Easiest Way_. Lilly Czepanek is not naturally base or depraved. The manuscript roll of her father's musical composition, _Das hohe Lied_, which she carries with her from childhood until her final submission to circumstances, and which saves her body from suicide but not her soul from death, is emblematic of the _élan_ which she has in her heart. With the best intentions in the world, with noble, romantic sentiments, with a passionate desire to be a rescuing angel to the men and women whom she meets, she gradually sinks in the mire, until, at the end, her case is hopeless. She struggles desperately, but each struggle finds her stock of resistance reduced. She always ends by taking the easiest way. Like a person in a quicksand, every effort to escape sinks the body deeper; or, like a drowning man, the more he raises his hands to heaven, the more speedy is his destruction. Much of Lilly's degradation is caused by what she believes to be an elevating altruistic impulse. And when she finally meets the only man in her whole career who respects her in his heart, who really means well by her, and whose salvation she can accomplish along with her own,--one single evening, where she begins with the best of intentions and with a sincere effort toward a higher plane, results in complete damnation. Then, like the heroine in _The Easiest Way_, she determines to commit suicide, and really means to do it. But the same weakness that has made it hitherto impossible for her to triumph over serious obstacles, prevents her from taking this last decisive step. As she hears the splash of her talisman in the cold, dark water, she realises that she is not the stuff of which heroines are made, either in life or in death.

"And as she heard that sound, then she knew instantly that she would _never_ do it.--No indeed! Lilly Czepanek was _no_ Heroine. _No_ martyr of her love was Lilly Czepanek. No Isolde, who in the determination not to be, sees the highest self-assertion. She was only a poor brittle, crushed, broken thing, who must drag along through her days as best she can."

And with this realisation she goes wearily back to a rich lover she had definitely forsaken, knowing that in saving her life she has now lost it for ever.

This is the last page of the story, but unfortunately it does not end here. Herr Sudermann has chosen to add one paragraph after the word "_Schluss_." By this we learn that in the spring of the following year the aforesaid rich lover _marries_ Lilly, and takes her on a bridal trip to Italy, which all her life had been in her dreams the celestial country. She is thus saved from the awful fate of the streets, which during the whole book had loomed threatening in the distance. But this ending leaves us completely bewildered and depressed. It seems to imply that, after all, these successive steps in moral decline do not make much difference, one way or the other; for at the very beginning of her career she could not possibly have hoped for any better material fate than this. The reader not only feels cheated; he feels that the moral element in the story, which through all the scenes of vice has been made clear, is now laughed at by the author. This is why I call the book the most pessimistic of all Sudermann's writings. A novel may take us through woe and sin, and yet not produce any impression of cynicism; but one that makes a careful, serious study of subtle moral decay through over six hundred pages, and then implies at the end that the distinction between vice and virtue is, after all, a matter of no consequence, leaves an impression for which the proverbial "bad taste in the mouth" is utterly inadequate to describe. Some years ago, Professor Heller, in an admirable book on Modern German Literature, remarked, in a comparison between Hauptmann and Sudermann, that the former has no working theory of life, which the latter possessed. That Hauptmann's dramas offer no solution, merely giving sordid wretchedness; while Sudermann shows the conquest of environment by character. Or, as Mr. Heller puts it, there is the contrast between the "driving and the drifting." I think this distinction in the main will justify itself to anyone who makes a thoughtful comparison of the work of these two remarkable men. Despite the depreciation of Sudermann and the idolatry of Hauptmann, an attitude so fashionable among German critics at present, I believe that the works of the former have shown a stronger grasp of life. But the final paragraph of _Das hohe Lied_ is a staggering blow to those of us who have felt that Sudermann had some kind of a _Weltanschauung_. It is like Chopin's final movement in his great Sonata; mocking laughter follows the solemn tones of the Funeral March.

Up to this last bad business, _Das hohe Lied_ exhibits that extraordinary power of psychological analysis that we have come to expect from Sudermann. Lilly, apart from her personal beauty, is not, after all, an interesting girl; her mind is thoroughly shallow and commonplace. Nor are the numerous adventures through which she passes particularly interesting. And yet the long book is by no means dull, and one reads it with steady attention. The reason for this becomes clear, after some reflexion. Not only are we absorbed by the contemplation of so masterly a piece of mental analysis, but what interests us most is the constant attempt of Lilly to analyse herself. We often wonder how people appear to themselves. The unspoken dialogues between Lilly and her own soul are amazingly well done. She is constantly surprised by herself, constantly bewildered by the fact that what she thought was one set of motives, turns out to be quite otherwise. All this comes to a great climax in the scene late at night when she writes first one letter, then another--each one meaning to be genuinely confessional. Each letter is to give an absolutely faithful account of her life, with a perfectly truthful depiction of her real character. Now the two letters are so different that in one she appears to be a low-lived adventuress, and in the other a noble woman, deceived through what is noblest in her. Finally she tears both up, for she realises that although each letter gives the facts, neither tells the truth. And then she sees that the truth cannot be told; that life is far too complex to be put into language.

In the attempts of German critics years ago to "classify" Sudermann, he was commonly placed in one of the three following groups. Many insisted that he was merely a Decadent, whose pleasure it was to deal in unhealthy social problems. That his interest in humanity was pathological. Others held that he was a fierce social Reformer, a kind of John the Baptist, who wished to reconstruct modern society along better lines, and who was therefore determined to make society realise its own rottenness. He was primarily a Satirist, not a Decadent. Professor Calvin Thomas quoted (without approbation) Professor Litzmann of Bonn, who said that Sudermann was "a born satirist, not one of the tame sort who only tickle and scratch, but one of the stamp of Juvenal, who swings his scourge with fierce satisfaction so that the blood starts from the soft, voluptuous flesh." A reading of _Das hohe Lied_ will convince anyone that Sudermann, wherever he is, is not among the prophets. Finally, there were many critics who at the very start recognised Sudermann as primarily an artist, who chooses to paint the aspects of life that interest him. This is undoubtedly the true viewpoint. We may regret that he prefers to analyse human characters in morbid and abnormal development, but that, after all, is his affair, and we do not have to read him unless we wish to. Professor Thomas, in an admirable article on _Das Glück im Winkel_, contributed in 1895 to the New York _Nation_, said, "Sudermann is a man of the world, a psychologist, and an artist, not a voice crying in the wilderness. The immortality of Juvenal or Jeremiah would not be to his taste." It is vain to quarrel with the direction taken by genius; however much we may deplore its course. Sudermann is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of Germany's living writers, and every play or novel from his pen contains much material for serious thought.

VIII

ALFRED OLLIVANT

In the month of September, 1898, there appeared in America a novel with the attractive title, _Bob, Son of Battle_. Unheralded by author's fame or by the blare of advertisement, it was at first unnoticed; but in about a twelvemonth everybody was talking about it. It became one of the "best sellers"; unlike its companions, it has not vanished with the snows of yesteryear. At this moment it is being read and reread all over the United States. I do not believe there is a single large town in our country where the book is unknown, or where a reference to it fails to bring to the faces of intelligent people that glow of reminiscent delight aroused by the memory of happy hours passed in the world of imagination. It seemed so immensely superior to the ordinary run of new novels, that we gazed with pardonable curiosity at the unfamiliar signature on the title-page. Who was this writer who knew so much of the nature of dogs and men? Where had he found that extraordinarily vivid style, and what experiences had he passed through that gave him his subtle insight into character? But all that we could then discover was that Alfred Ollivant was an Englishman, and that _Bob_ was his first novel. We decided that he must have lived long, observed all kinds of dogs, and a large variety of men, women, and children; and that for some reason best known to himself he had chosen to print nothing until he had descended into the vale of years. For only the other day we were not surprised to find that _Joseph Vance_ was the winter fruit of a man nearly seventy; that book at any rate was the expression of a man who had had life, and had it abundantly.

Our astonishment was keen indeed when we learned that the author of _Bob_ was a boy just out of his teens, who had written his wonderful book in horizontal pain and weakness. He had entered the army, receiving his commission as a cavalry officer in 1893, at the age of nineteen; a few weeks after this event, a fall from his horse injured his spine, previously affected by some mysterious malady; this accident abruptly checked his chosen military career, and made him a man of letters. Literature owes a great deal to enforced idleness, whether the writer be sick or in prison. The wind bloweth where it listeth; and we perceived once more that genius does not always accompany good health, or maturity, or ambition; it seems to select with absolute caprice the individuals through whom it speaks. And so this first-born child of the brain was delivered, like human infants, on a bed of suffering; being, to complete the analogy, none the less healthy on that account. The book was begun in 1894, when the author was twenty years old; during intervals of physical capacity in 1895 and 1896, it was continued, and was submitted to the publishers in 1897.

It was to have been published in the autumn, but the London firm decided to postpone its appearance one year. The author employed these months in completely rewriting the story, which he had named _Owd Bob_. Meanwhile, the New York publishers, who had a copy of the original manuscript, fearing that the title _Owd Bob_ lacked magnetism, wisely rechristened it _Bob, Son of Battle_. And so, in September, 1898, the novel in its first form, but with a new name, was printed in America; simultaneously in England it appeared in a new form, but with the old name. In other words, the London first edition, _Owd Bob_, is a thoroughly revised version of the American first edition, _Bob, Son of Battle_, although they were published at the same time. It does not seem as though the author could have improved a book that so completely satisfies us as it stands; and Americans, to whom _Owd Bob_ is unknown, may not believe that it can be superior to _Bob, Son of Battle_. Nevertheless it is. The two versions are of course alike in general features of the plot and in outline; but no one who has read both can hesitate an instant. One has only to compare the manner in which Red Wull made his _début_ in America with the chapter where he first appears (in a totally different way) in the English edition, to see how clearly second thoughts were best.

And yet, despite the enormous popularity of _Bob, Son of Battle_ in the United States, and despite the fact that Englishmen had the opportunity to read the story in a still finer form, it has not until very recently made any impression on British readers or on London critics. Is it possible that a book, like a dog, may be killed by a bad name? The novel was written by an Englishman, the scenes were laid in Britain, it dealt with manners and customs peculiarly English, and it was aimed directly at an English public. And yet, for nearly ten years after its publication, _Owd Bob_ remained in obscurity.[12] But its day is coming, and the prophet will yet receive honour in his own country. In 1908 it was reprinted in a seven-pence edition, of which fifty thousand copies have already seen the light. This is nothing to the American circulation; but it is promising. Bearing in mind the futility of literary prophecy, I still believe that the day will come when _Owd Bob_ will be generally recognised as belonging to English literature.

[12] A year or two ago I asked one of the foremost English dramatists, one of the foremost English novelists, and one of the foremost English critics, men whose names are known everywhere in America, if they had read _Bob_; not one of them had ever heard of the book.

The splendid fidelity and devotion of the dog to his master have certainly been in part repaid by men of letters in all stages of the world's history. A valuable essay might be written on the dog's contributions to literature; in the poetry of the East, hundreds of years before Christ, the poor Indian insisted that his four-footed friend should accompany him into eternity. We know that this bit of Oriental pathos impressed Pope:--

"But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company."

One of the most profoundly affecting incidents in the _Odyssey_ is the recognition of the ragged Ulysses by the noble old dog, who dies of joy. During the last half-century, since the publication of Dr. John Brown's _Rab and his Friends_ (1858), the dog has approached an apotheosis. Among innumerable sketches and stories with canine heroes may be mentioned Bret Harte's brilliant portrait of _Boonder_; Maeterlinck's essay on dogs; Richard Harding Davis's _The Bar Sinister_; Stevenson's whimsical comments on _The Character of Dogs_; Kipling's _Garm_; and Jack London's initial success, _The Call of the Wild_.[13] But all these latter-day pamphlets, good as they are, fail to reach the excellence of _Bob, Son of Battle_. It is the best dog story ever written, and it inspires regret that dogs cannot read.

[13] One may fairly class with this literature the remarkable speech on dogs delivered in his youth in a courtroom by the late Senator Vest. The speech won the case against the evidence.

No one who knows Mr. Ollivant's tale can by any possibility forget the Grey Dog of Kenmuir--the perfect, gentle knight--or the thrilling excitement of his successful struggles for the cup. He is indeed a noble and beautiful character, with the Christian combination of serpent and dove. But Owd Bob in a slight degree shares the fate of all beings who approach moral perfection. He reminds us at times of Tennyson's Arthur in the _Idylls of the King_, though he fortunately delivers no lectures. Lancelot was wicked, and Arthur was good; but Lancelot has the touch of earth that makes him interesting, and Arthur has more than a touch of boredom. In _Paradise Lost_ the spotless Raphael does not compare in charm with the picturesque Foe of God and Man. The real hero in Milton, as I suspect the poet very well knew, is the Devil; and if Mr. Ollivant had ignored both English and American godfathers, and called his novel _The Tailless Tyke_, no reader could have objected. Red Wull is the Satan of this canine epic; he has for us a fascination at once horrible and irresistible. The author seems to have felt that the Grey Dog was overshadowed; and he has saved our active sympathy for him by the clever device of making him at one time dangerously ill, when we realise how much we love him; and finally by throwing him under awful suspicion, that we may experience--as we certainly do--the enormous relief of beholding him guiltless. But in spite of our best instincts, Red Wull is the protagonist. Dog and master have never been matched in a more sinister manner than Adam McAdam and the Tailless Tyke. Bill Sikes and his companion are nothing to it, and we cannot help remembering that to the eternal disgrace of dogs, Bill Sikes's last friend forsook him. Compared with Red Wull, the Hound of the Baskervilles is a pet lapdog. When Adam and Wullie appear upon the scene, we look alive, even as their virtuous enemies were forced to do, for we know something is bound to happen. When the little man is greeted with a concert of hoots and jeers, we cannot repress some sympathy for him, akin to our feeling toward the would-be murderer Shylock, silent and solitary under the noisy taunts of the feather-headed Gratiano. This bitter and lonely wretch is a real character, and his strange personality is presented with extraordinary skill. There is not a single false touch from first to last; and the little man with the big dog abides in our memory. Red Wull is the hero of a hundred fights; his tremendous and terrible exploits are the very essence of piratical romance. After he has slain the two huge beasts of the showman, McAdam exclaims with a sob of paternal pride, "Ye play so rough, Wullie!"

And the death of the Tailless Tyke is positively Homeric. The other dogs, all his ruthless enemies, whisper to each other and silently steal from the room. They know that the hour has struck, and that this will be the last fight. The whole pack set upon him, each one goaded by the remembrance of some murdered relative, or by some humiliating scar. Red Wull asks nothing better than meeting them all; and the unequal combat becomes a frightful carnage. At the very end, as much exhausted by the labour of killing as by his own wounds, the great dog--now red indeed--hears his master's familiar cry, "Wullie, to me!" and with a super-canine effort he raises his dying form from the bottom of the writhing mass, shakes off the surviving foes, and slowly staggers to McAdam's feet. Like Samson, the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.

Mr. Ollivant's next book, _Danny_, also a dog story, was not nearly so effective. The human characters command the most attention, though the old man with the weeping eye becomes a bit wearisome. The passages of pure nature description are often exquisitely written, and prove that at heart the author is a poet. But in the narrative portions there is an unfortunate attempt to conceal the slightness of the story by preciosity and affectation in the style. For the simple truth is that in _Danny_ there is no story worth the telling. We recall distinctly the lovely young wife and her grim ironclad of a husband, but just what happened between the covers of the book escapes us. Although Mr. Ollivant believes in _Danny_, in spite of or because of its lack of popularity, he was so dissatisfied with the American edition that he suppressed it. Such an act is an indication of the high artistic standard that he has set for himself; ambitious as he is, he would rather merit fame than have it.

While the readers of _Bob_ and of _Danny_ were guessing what kind of a dog the young author would select for his next novel, he surprised us all by writing an uncaninical work. This story, adorned with happy illustrations, and printed in big type, as though for the eyes of children, was called _Red-Coat Captain_, and was enigmatically located in "That Country." Every American publisher to whom the manuscript was offered, rejected it, saying emphatically that it was nonsense; and if there had not been a strain of idealism in the Head of the firm that reconsidered and finally printed it, the book would probably never have felt the press. Mr. Ollivant was sure that the story would appeal at first only to a very few, and he requested the publisher not only to refrain from issuing any advertisement, but to make the entire first edition consist of only three copies--one for the archives of the House, one for the author, and one for a believing friend. The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light; and the shrewd man of business did not take the petition very seriously. The verdict Nonsense has been loudly ratified by many reviewers and readers; to the few it has been wisdom, to the many foolishness. For, as was said years ago of a certain poem, "The capacity to understand such a work must be spiritual." It matters not how clever one may be, how well read, how sensitive to artistic beauties and defects; qualities of a totally different nature must be present, and even then the time and place must be right, if one is to seize the inner meaning of _Red-Coat Captain_. I was about to say, the inner meaning of a story _like_ _Red-Coat Captain_, but I was stopped by the thought that no story like it has ever been published, and perhaps never will be. Both conception and expression are profoundly original, and, in spite of some failure of articulation, the work is strongly marked with genius. It is an allegory based on the eleventh and twelfth commandments, which we have good authority for believing are worth all the ten put together. From one point of view it is a book for children; the mysterious setting of the tale is sure to appeal to certain imaginative boys and girls. But the early chapters, dealing with the pretty courtship and the honeymoon, will be fully appreciated only by those who have some years to their credit or otherwise. There is in this story the ineffable charm and fragrance of purity. It is the lily in its author's garden.

Mr. Ollivant's latest novel is the most conventional of the four, and wholly unlike any of its predecessors. It is a rattling, riotous romance, placed in the troublous times of the Napoleonic wars. The mighty shadow of Nelson falls darkly across the narrative, but the author has not committed the sin--so common in historical romances--of making a historical character the chief of the _dramatis personæ_. The title rôle is played by _The Gentleman_, and he is a hero worthy of Cooper or of Stevenson. Marked by reckless audacity, brilliant in swordplay and in horsemanship, clever in turn of speech, gifted with the manner of a pre-Revolution Duke--what more in the heroic line can a reader desire? The architecture of the novel and the staccato paragraphs infallibly remind one of Victor Hugo, whom, however, Mr. Ollivant does not know. Nor, outside of the works of Stevenson, have we ever seen a story minus love so steadily interesting. It is an amphibious book, and those who like fighting on land and sea may have their fill. The percentage of mortality is high; soldiers and sailors die numerously, and the hideous details of death are worthy of _La Débâcle_; there is a welter of gore. If this were all that could be said, if the fascination of this romance depended wholly on the crowded action, it would simply be one more exciting tale added to the hundreds published every year; good to read on train and turbine, but not worth serious attention or criticism. But the incidents, while frequent and thrilling, are not, at least to the discriminating reader, the main thing, as the Germans say. Nor is the construction, clever enough, nor the characters, real as they are; the main thing is the style, which, quite different from that in his former books, is yet all his own. The style, in the best sense of the word, is pictorial; it transforms the past into the present. The succession of events rolls off like a glowing panorama. It is perhaps natural that many reviewers should have praised _The Gentleman_ more highly than all the rest of Mr. Ollivant's work put together; but, notwithstanding its wider appeal, it lacks the permanent qualities of _Bob_, and (I believe) of _Red-Coat Captain_, for they are original.

That Mr. Ollivant is now on the road to physical health will be good news. He has already done work that no one else can do, and we cannot spare him. His four novels indicate versatility as well as much greater gifts; and he should be watched by all who take an interest in contemporary literature and who believe that the future is as rich as the past. _Bob_ looks like the best English novel that has appeared between _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_ in 1891, and _Joseph Vance_ in 1906. Nothing but bodily obstacles can prevent its author from going far.

IX

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Stevenson spent his life, like an only and lonely child, in playing games with himself. Most boys who read romances have the dramatic instinct; they must forthwith incarnate the memories of their reading, and anything will do for a _mise en scene_. The mudpuddle becomes an ocean, where the pirate ship is launched; a scrubby apple tree has infinite possibilities. Armed with a wooden sword, the child sallies forth in the rain, and fiercely cuts down the mulleins; could we only see him without being seen, we should observe the wild light in his eye, and the frown of battle on his brow. He walks cautiously in the underbrush, to surprise the ambushed foe; and it is with rapture that he goes to sleep in a tent, pitched six yards from the kitchen door. This spirit of adventure remains in some men's hearts, even after the hair has grown grey or gone; they hear the call of the wild, lock up the desk, go into the woods, and there rejoice in a process of decivilisation.

In order to enjoy life, one must love it; and nobody ever loved life more than Stevenson. "It is better to be a fool than to be dead," said he. To him the world was always picturesque, whether he saw it through the mists of Edinburgh, or amid the snows of Davos, or in the tropical heat of Samoa. "Where is Samoa?" asked a friend. "Go out of the Golden Gate," replied Stevenson, "and take the first turn to the left." This counsel makes up in joyous imagination what it lacks in latitude and longitude. Everything in Stevenson's bodily and mental life was an adventure, to be begun in a spirit of reckless enthusiasm. In his travels with a donkey, he was a beloved vagabond, whose wayside acquaintances are to be envied; in compulsory expeditions in search of health, he set out with as much zest as though he were after buried treasure; everything was an adventure, and his marriage was the greatest adventure of all. He read books with the same enthusiasm with which he tramped, or paddled in a canoe; every new novel he opened with the spirit of an explorer, for who knows in its pages what people one may meet? William Archer sent him a copy of Bernard Shaw's story, _Cashel Byron's Profession_, and Stevenson wrote in reply from Saranac Lake, "Over Bashville the footman I howled with derision and delight; I dote on Bashville--I could read of him for ever; _de Bashville je suis le fervent_--there is only one Bashville, and I am his devoted slave.... It is all mad, mad and deliriously delightful.... It is HORRID FUN.... (I say, Archer, my God, what women!)" What would authors give for a reading public like that?

Prone in bed, when his attention was not diverted by a hemorrhage, he lived amid the pageantry of gorgeous day-dreams, presented on the stage of his brain. We know that Ben Jonson saw the Romans and Carthaginians fighting, marching and countermarching, across his great toe. Stevenson would have understood this perfectly. No pain or sickness ever daunted him, or held him captive; his mind was always in some picturesque or immensely interesting place. In composition, he seemed to have a double consciousness; he moulded his sentences with the fastidious care of a great artist; at the same moment he felt the growing sea-breeze, and knew that his hero would very soon have to shorten sail.

It is pleasant to remember that a man who had such genius for friendship, who so generously admired the literary work of his contemporaries, and who loved the whole world of saints and sinners, received such widespread homage in return. His career as a man of letters extended over twenty years; and during the last eight his name was actually a household word. To be sure, he published much work of a high order without getting even a hearing; his _Inland Voyage_, _Travels with a Donkey_, _Virginibus Puerisque_, _Familiar Studies_, _New Arabian Nights_, and even _Treasure Island_, attracted very little attention; he remained in obscurity. But when, in the year 1886, appeared the _Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, he found himself famous; the thrilling excitement of the story, combined with its powerful moral appeal, simply conquered the world. And although his own plays were failures, he had the satisfaction of knowing that thousands of people in theatres were spellbound by the modern Morality made out of his novel. Few writers have become "classics" in so short a time; during the years that remained to him, he was compelled to prepare a superb edition of his _Complete Works_. Without ever appealing to the animal nature of humanity, he had the keen satisfaction of reigning in the hearts of uncultivated readers, and of receiving the almost universal tribute of refined critics. There are authors who are the delight of a bookish few, and there are authors with an enormous public and no reputation. There are poets like Donne, and prose-masters like Browne, precious to the men and women of patrician taste; and there are some familiar examples of the other kind, needless to call by name. Stevenson pleases us all; for he always has a good story, and the subtlety of his art gives to his narrative imperishable beauty.

Stevenson's appearance as a novelist was in itself an adventure. He seemed at first as obsolete as a soldier of fortune. He was as unexpected and as picturesque among contemporary writers of fiction as an Elizabethan knight in a modern drawing-room. When he placed _Treasure Island_ on the literary map, Realism was at its height in some localities, and at its depth in others. But it was everywhere the standard form, in which young writers strove to embody their visions. Zola had just made an address in which he remarked that Walter Scott was dead, and that the fashion of his style had passed away. The experimental novel would go hand in hand with the advance of scientific thought. And there were many who believed that Zola spoke the truth. This state of affairs was a tremendous challenge to Stevenson, and he accepted it in the spirit of chivalry. The very name of his first novel, _Treasure Island_, was like the flying of a flag. Those critics who saw it must have smiled, and shaken their wise heads, for had not the time for such follies gone by? Stevenson was fully aware of what he was doing; in the midst of contemporary fiction he felt as impatient and as ill at ease as a boy, imprisoned in a circle of elders, whose conversation does not in the least interest him. His sentiments are clearly shown in a letter to the late Mr. Henley, written shortly after the appearance of _Treasure Island_, and which is important enough to quote somewhat fully:--

"I do desire a book of adventure--a romance--and no man will get or write me one. Dumas I have read and reread too often; Scott, too, and I am short. I want to hear swords clash. I want a book to begin in a good way; a book, I guess, like _Treasure Island_, alas! which I have never read, and cannot though I live to ninety. I would God that someone else had written it! By all that I can learn, it is the very book for my complaint. I like the way I hear it opens; and they tell me John Silver is good fun. And to me it is, and must ever be, a dream unrealised, a book unwritten. O my sighings after romance, or even Skeltery, and O! the weary age which will produce me neither!