Modern English Books of Power Part 6

In beginning the reading of Browning it is well to understand that at least half or maybe two-thirds of his work should be discarded at the outset, as it is of interest only to scholars. My suggestion to one who would learn to love Browning is to get a little book, _Lyrical Poems of Robert Browning_, by Dr. A.J. George. The editor in a preface indicates the best work of Browning, and also brings out strongly the fact that readers, and especially young readers, must be given poems which interest them. His selections of lyrics have been made from this standpoint, and his notes will be found very helpful. He develops the point that Browning's great revelation to the world through his poems was his strong and abiding a.s.surance that man has in him the principle of divinity, and that many of the experiences that the world calls failures are really the stepping stones of the ascent to that conquest of self and that development of the whole nature which means the highest life. He says also that Browning is one of the most eloquent expounders of the doctrine of the reality of a future life, in which those who live a n.o.ble and unselfish life will get their reward in an existence free from all physical ills.

In this little book will be found _Pippa Pa.s.ses_, a n.o.ble series of lyrics, which develops the idea of the silent influence of a little silk weaver of Asolo upon four sets of people in the great crises of their lives. In each episode Pippa sings a song that awakens remorse or kindles manhood or arouses patriotism or duty. It is a perfect poem. Among other lyrics given here are _Evelyn Hope_, which must be bracketed with Burns' _To Mary in Heaven_ or with Wordsworth's _Lucy_ and _Prospice_, which sounds the note of deep personal love that is as sure of immortality as of life. It is as beautiful and as inspiring as Tennyson's _Crossing the Bar_. Other poems due to Browning's love for his wife are _My Star_ and _One Word More_.

If these lyrics appeal to you, then take up some of Browning's longer poems, _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_, _Colombe's Birthday_, _A Soul's Tragedy_, _Fra Lippo Lippi_ and _Rabbi Ben Ezra_. Very few readers in these days have time or patience to read _The Ring and the Book_, but it will repay your attention, as it is the most remarkable attempt in all literature to revive the tragedy of the great and innocent love of a woman and a priest.

Among the many fine pa.s.sages in Browning, I think there is nothing which equals these lines in _O Lyric Love_, the beautiful invocation to his wife:

O lyric Love, half angel and half bird And all a wonder and a wild desire-- Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, Took sanctuary within the holier blue And sang a kindred soul out to his face-- Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!

Never may I commence my song, my due To G.o.d who best taught song by gift of thee, Except with bent head and beseeching hand-- That shall despite the distance and the dark, What was, again may be; some interchange Of grace, some splendor once thy very thought, Some benediction anciently thy smile.

The songs in _Pippa Pa.s.ses_ should be read, as they are as near perfect as Shakespeare's songs or the songs of Tennyson in _The Princess_.

MEREDITH AND A FEW OF HIS BEST NOVELS

ONE OF THE GREATEST MASTERS OF FICTION OF LAST CENTURY--"THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL," "DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS" AND OTHER NOVELS.

George Meredith is acknowledged by the best critics to be among the greatest English novelists of the last century; yet to the general reader he is only a name. Like Henry James, he is barred off from popular appreciation by a style which is "caviare to the general."

Thomas Hardy is recognized as the finest living English novelist, but there is very little comparison between himself and Meredith.

Professor William Lyon Phelps, who is one of the best and sanest of American critics, says they are both pagans, but Meredith was an optimist, while Hardy is a pessimist. Then he adds this illuminating comment: "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."

It is only within the last twenty-five years that Meredith has had any vogue in this country. At that time a good edition of his novels was issued, and critics gave the volumes generous mention in the leading magazines and newspapers. But the public did not respond with any cordiality. The novel with us has come to be looked upon mainly as a source of amus.e.m.e.nt, and a writer of fiction who demands too keen attention from his readers can never hope to be popular. Meredith, as Professor Phelps says, was a great man who, among other intellectual activities, wrote some good novels. Doubtless he did more real good to literature as the inspirer of other writers than he did with his books. For more than the ordinary working years of most men he was one of the chief "readers" for a large London publis.h.i.+ng house. To him were submitted the ma.n.u.scripts of new novels, and it was his privilege to recognize the genius of Thomas Hardy, of the author of _The Story of an African Farm_ and other now famous English novelists.

Meredith was a singularly acute critic of the work of others, but when he came to write himself he cast his thoughts in a style that has been the despair of many admirers. In this he resembled Browning, who never would write verse that was easy reading. Meredith's thought is usually clear, yet his brilliant but erratic mind was impelled to clothe this thought in the most bizarre garments. Literary paradox he loved; his mind turned naturally to metaphor, and despite the protests of his closest friends he continued to puzzle and exasperate the public. He who could have written the greatest novels of his age merely wrote stories which serve to ill.u.s.trate his theories of life and conduct. No man ever put more real thought into novels than he; none had a finer eye for the beauties of nature or the development of character. But he had no patience to develop his men and women in the clear, orthodox way. He imagined that the ordinary reader could follow his lightning flashes of illumination, his piling up of metaphor on metaphor, and the result is that many are discouraged by his methods, just as nine readers out of ten are wearied when they attempt to read Browning's longer poems. His kins.h.i.+p to Browning is strong in style and in method of thought, in his way of leaping from one conclusion to another, in his elimination of all the usual small connecting words and in his liberties with the language. He seemed to be writing for himself, not for the general public, and he never took into account the slower mental processes of those not endowed with his own vivid imagination.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEORGE MEREDITH WITH HIS DAUGHTER AND GRANDCHILDREN--FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN SHORTLY BEFORE HIS DEATH]

Meredith's life was that of a scholar; it contained few exciting episodes. He was of Welsh and Irish stock. At an early age he was sent to Germany, where he remained at a Moravian school until he was fifteen. He then returned to England to study law, but he never practiced it. For a number of years he was a regular contributor to the London MORNING POST, and in 1866 he acted as correspondent during the Austro-Italian war. For many years he served as chief reader and literary adviser to Chapman & Hall, the English publishers, and in that capacity he showed an insight that led to the development of many authors whose first work was crude and unpromising. Meredith himself began his literary career with _The Shaving of s.h.a.gpat_, a series of Oriental tales the central idea of which is the overcoming of established evil. s.h.a.gpat stands for any evil or superst.i.tion, and s.h.i.+bli Bagarag, the hero, is the reformer. This book, with its wealth of metaphor, opened the door for Meredith, but he did not score a success until he wrote _The Ordeal of Richard Feverel_, two years later. Despite its faults, this is his greatest book, and it is the one which readers should begin with. It is overloaded with aphorism in the famous "Pilgrim's Scrip," which is a diary kept by Sir Austin, the father of Richard. The boy is trained to cut women out of his life, and just when the father's theory seems to have succeeded Richard meets and falls in love with Lucy, and the whole towering structure founded on the "Pilgrim's Scrip" falls into ruin. The scene in which Richard and Lucy meet is one of the great scenes in English fiction, in which Meredith's pa.s.sionate love of nature serves to bring out the natural love of the two young people. Earth was all greenness in the eyes of these two lovers, and nature served only to deepen the love that they saw in each other's gaze and felt with thrilling force in each other's kisses. But even stronger that this scene is that last terrible chapter, in which Richard returns to his home and refuses to stay with Lucy and her child. Stevenson declared that this parting scene was the strongest bit of English since Shakespeare. It certainly reaches great heights of exaltation, and in its simplicity it reveals what miracles Meredith could work when he allowed his creative imagination full play.

Another story which is usually bracketed with this is _Diana of the Crossways_. This great novel was founded on a real incident in English history of Meredith's time. Diana Warwick was drawn from Caroline Norton, one of the three beautiful and brilliant granddaughters of Sheridan, author of _The School for Scandal_. Her marriage was disastrous, and her husband accused her of infidelity with Lord Melbourne, Prime Minister at the time. His divorce suit caused a great scandal, but it resulted in her vindication. Then later she was accused of betraying to a writer on the TIMES the secret that Sir Robert Peel had decided to repeal the corn laws. This secret had been confided to her by Sidney Herbert, one of her admirers. Meredith's novel, in which the results of Diana's treachery were brought out, resulted in a public inquiry into the charge against Caroline Norton, which found that she was innocent. But the fact that Meredith used such an incident as the climax of his story gave _Diana of the Crossways_ an enormous vogue, and did much to bring the novelist into public favor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FLINT COTTAGE, BOXHILL, THE HOME OF GEORGE MEREDITH--HIS WRITING WAS DONE IN A SMALL SWISS CHALET IN THE GARDEN]

No more brilliant woman than Diana has ever been drawn by Meredith, but despite the art of her creator it is impossible for the reader to imagine her selling for money a great party secret which had been whispered to her by the man she loved. She was too keen a woman to plead, as Diana pleaded, that she did not recognize the importance of this secret, for the defense is cut away by her admission that she was promised thousands of pounds by the newspaperman at the very time that her extravagances had loaded her with debts.

s.p.a.ce is lacking here to do more than mention three or four of Meredith's other novels that are fine works of art. These are _Rhoda Fleming_, _Sandra Belloni_, _Evan Harrington_ and _The Egoist_. Each is a masterpiece in its way; each is full of human pa.s.sion, yet tinged with a philosophy that lifts up the novels to what Meredith himself called "honorable fiction, a fount of life, an aid to life, quick with our blood." The novel to him was a means of showing man's spiritual nature, "a soul born active, wind-beaten, but ascending."

A score of novels Meredith wrote in his long life. The work of his later years was not happy. _The Amazing Marriage_ and _Lord Ormont and His Aminta_ are mere shadows of his earlier work, with all his old mannerisms intensified. But if you like Richard and Diana, then you can enlarge your acquaintance with Meredith to your own exceeding profit, for he is one of the great masters of fiction, who used the novel merely to preach his doctrine of the richness and fulness of human life if we would but see it with his eyes.

STEVENSON PRINCE OF MODERN STORY-TELLERS

HIS STORIES OF ADVENTURE AND HIS BRILLIANT ESSAYS--"TREASURE ISLAND" AND "DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE" HIS MOST POPULAR BOOKS.

It is as difficult to criticise the work of Robert Louis Stevenson as it is to find faults in the friend that you love as a brother. For with all his faults, this young Scotchman with his appealing charm disarms criticism. Nowhere in all literature may one find his like for warming the heart unless it be Charles Lamb, of gracious memory, and the secret of this charm is that Stevenson remained a child to the end of his days, with all a child's eagerness for love and praise, and with all a child's pa.s.sion for making believe that his puppets are real flesh and blood people. When such a nature is endowed with consummate skill in the use of words, then one gets the finest, if not the greatest, of creative artists.

In sheer technical skill Stevenson stands head and shoulders above all the other literary craftsmen of his day; but this skill was not used to refine his meaning until it wearied the reader, as in the case of Henry James, nor was it used to bewilder him with the richness of his resources, as was too often the case with George Meredith. With Stevenson, style had actually become the man; he could not write the simplest article in any other than a highly finished literary way.

Witness the amazingly eloquent defense of Father Damien which he dashed off in a few hours and read to his wife and his stepson before the ink was dry on the sheets.

Above all other things Stevenson was a great natural story-teller.

With him the story was the main consideration, yet in some of his short tales such as _Markheim_, or _A Lodging for the Night_, or _The Sire de Maletroit's Door_, the story itself merely serves as a thread upon which he has strung the most remarkable a.n.a.lysis of a man's soul.

He has the distinction of having written in _Treasure Island_ the best piratical story of the last century. If he could have maintained the high level of the opening chapter he would have produced a work worthy to rank with _Robinson Crusoe_. As it is, he created two villains, the blind man Pew and John Silver, who are absolutely unique in literature. The blind pirate in his malevolent fury is a creature that chills the heart, while Silver is a cheerful villain who murders with a smile. In _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ Stevenson has aroused that sense of mystery and horror which springs from the spectacle of the domination of an evil spirit over a nature essentially kind and good.

Stevenson came of a race of Scotch men of affairs. His grandfather was the most distinguished lighthouse builder of his day and his father gained prominence in the same work that demands the highest engineering skill with great executive capacity. Stevenson himself would have been an explorer or a soldier of fortune had he been born with the physical strength to fit his mental endowments. His childhood was so full of sickness that it reads like a hospital report. His life was probably preserved by the a.s.siduous care and rare devotion of an old Scotch nurse, Alison Cunningham, whom he has immortalized in his letters and in his _A Child's Garden of Verse_. The sickly boy was an eager reader of everything that fell in his way in romance and poetry. Later he devoted himself to systematic training of his powers of observation and his great capacity for expressing his thoughts.

His youth was spent in migrations to the south in winter and in efforts to thrive in Scotland's dour climate in the summer. His school training was fitful and brief, but from the age of ten the boy had been training himself in the field which he felt was to be his own.

His first literary work was essays and descriptive sketches for the magazines. Then came short stories in which he revealed great capacity. Recognition came very slowly. He was comparatively unknown after he had produced such charming work as _An Inland Voyage_ and _Travels With a Donkey_, not to mention the _New Arabian Nights_.

Popularity came with _Treasure Island_, written as a story for boys, and the one work of Stevenson's in which his creative imagination does not flag toward the end; but fame came only after the writing of _The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_--the most remarkable story of a dual personality produced in the last century. After this he wrote a long succession of stories, not one of which can be called a masterpiece because of the author's inability to finish his novels as he planned them. Lack of patience or want of sustained creative power invariably made him cut short his novels or end them in a way that exasperates the reader.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON--THE AUTHOR'S INTIMATE a.s.sOCIATES p.r.o.nOUNCE THIS PHOTOGRAPH A PERFECT PRESENTATION OF HIS MOST TYPICAL EXPRESSION]

Some months Stevenson spent in California, but this State, with its romantic history and its singular scenic beauty, appeared to have little influence on his genius. In fact, locality seemed not to color the work of his imagination. His closing years were spent in Somoa, a South Sea Island paradise, in which he reveled in the primitive conditions of life and recovered much of his early zest in physical life. Yet his best work in those last years dealt not with the palm-fringed atolls of the Pacific, but with the bleak Scotch moors which refused him a home. In his letters he dwells on the curious obsession of his imagination by old Scotch scenes and characters, and on the day of his death he dictated a chapter of _Weir of Hermiston_, a romance of the picturesque period of Scotland which had in it the elements of his best work.

It is idle to deny that Stevenson appeals only to a limited audience.

Despite his keen interest in all kinds of people, he lacked that sympathetic touch which brings large sales and wide circulation. About the time of his death his admirers declared he would supersede Scott or d.i.c.kens; but the seventeen years since his death have seen many changes in literary reputations. Stevenson has held his own remarkably well. As a man the interest in him is still keen, but of his works only a few are widely read.

Among these the first place must be given to _Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde_, partly because of the profound impression made upon the public mind by the dramatization of this tale, and partly because it appeals strongly to the sense of the mystery of conflicting personality. Next to this is _Treasure Island_, one of the best romances of adventure ever written. Readers who cannot feel a thrill of genuine terror when the blind pirate Pew comes tapping with his cane have missed a great pleasure. One-legged John Silver, in his cheerful lack of all the ordinary virtues, is a character that puts the fear of death upon the reader. The opening chapter of this story is one of the finest things in all the literature of adventure.

Of Stevenson's other work the two Scotch stories, _Kidnaped_ and _David Balfour_, always seemed to me to be among his best. The chapter on the flight of David and Allan across the moor, the contest in playing the pipes and the adventures of David and Catriona in Holland--these are things to read many times and enjoy the more at every reading. Stevenson, like Jack London, is a writer for men; he could not draw women well, When he brings one in there is usually an end of stirring adventure, just as London spoiled _The Sea Wolf_ with his literary heroine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STEVENSON'S HOME AT VALIMA, SAMOA, LOOKING TOWARD VAEA]

Of Stevenson's short stories the finest are _The Pavilion on the Links_, a tale of Sicilian vengeance and English love that is full of haunting mystery and the deadly fear of unknown a.s.sa.s.sins; _Markheim_, a brilliant example of this author's skill in laying bare the conflict of a soul with evil and its ultimate triumph; _The Sire de Maletroit's Door_, a vivid picture of the cruelty and the autocratic power of a great French n.o.ble of the fifteenth century, and _A Lodging for the Night_, a remarkable defense of his life by the vagabond poet, Villon.

Other short stories by Stevenson are worth careful study, but if you like these I have mentioned you will need no guide to those which strike your fancy.

The vogue of Stevenson's essays will last as long as that of his romances; for he excelled in this literary art of putting his personality into familiar talks with his reader. He ranks with Lamb and Thackeray, Was.h.i.+ngton Irving and Donald G. Mitch.e.l.l. Read those fine short sermons, _Pulvis et Umbra_ and _Aes Triplex_, the latter with its eloquent picture of sudden death in the fulness of power which was realized in Stevenson's own fate. Read _Books Which Have Influenced Me_, _A Gossip on Romance_ and _Talk and Talkers_. They are unsurpa.s.sed for thought and feeling and for brilliancy of style.

But above everything looms the man himself--a chronic invalid, who might well have pleaded his weakness and constant pains as an excuse for idleness and railings against fate. Stoic courage in the strong is a virtue, but how much greater the cheerful courage that laughs at sickness and pain! Stevenson writing in a sickbed stories and essays that help one to endure the blows of fate is a spectacle such as this world has few to offer. So the man's life and work have come to be a constant inspiration to those who are faint-hearted, a call to arms of all one's courage and devotion.

THOMAS HARDY AND HIS TRAGIC TALES OF WESs.e.x

GREATEST LIVING WRITER OF ENGLISH FICTION--BECAUSE OF RESENTMENT OF HARSH CRITICISMS THE PROSE MASTER TURNS TO VERSE.

No one will question the a.s.sertion that Thomas Hardy is the greatest living English writer of fiction, and the pity of it is that a man with so splendid an equipment for writing novels of the first rank should have failed for many years to give the world any work in the special field in which he is an acknowledged master. Hardy seems to have revolted from certain harsh criticism of his last novel, _Jude the Obscure_, and to have determined that he would write no more fiction for an unappreciative world. So he has turned to the writing of verse, in which he barely takes second rank. It is one of the tragedies of literature to think of a man of Hardy's rank as a novelist, who might give the world a second _Tess_ or _The Return of the Native_, contenting himself with a ponderous poem like _The Dynasts_, or wasting his powers on minor poems containing no real poetry.

Hardy's best novels are among the few in English fiction that can be read again and again, and that reveal at every reading some fresh beauties of thought or style. The man is so big, so genuine and so unlike all other writers that his work must be set apart in a cla.s.s by itself. Were he not so richly endowed his pessimism would be fatal, for the world does not favor the novelist who demands that his fiction should be governed by the same hard rules that govern real life. In the work of most novelists we know that whatever harsh fate may befall the leading characters the skies will be sunny before the story closes, and the worthy souls who have battled against malign destiny will receive their reward. Not so with Hardy. We know when we begin one of his tales that tragedy is in store for his people. The dark cloud of destiny soon obscures the heavens, and through the lowering storm the victims move on to the final scene in which the wreck of their fortunes is completed.