Americanisms and Briticisms Part 5

Anstey understands the English boy, and especially the English boy of the middle cla.s.ses, so Mark Twain understands the American boy, and especially the American boy of the Mississippi Valley of forty or fifty years ago. The contrast between Tom Sawyer, who is the child of respectable parents, decently brought up, and Huckleberry Finn, who is the child of the town drunkard, not brought up at all, is made distinct by a hundred artistic touches, not the least natural of which is Huck's constant reference to Tom as his ideal of what a boy should be. When Huck escapes from the cabin where his drunken and worthless father had confined him, carefully manufacturing a ma.s.s of very circ.u.mstantial evidence to prove his own murder by robbers, he cannot help saying, "I did wish Tom Sawyer was there; I knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy touches. n.o.body could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as that." Both boys have their full share of boyish imagination; and Tom Sawyer, being given to books, lets his imagination run on robbers and pirates, having a perfect understanding with himself that, if you want to get fun out of this life, you must never hesitate to make believe very hard; and, with Tom's youth and health, he never finds it hard to make believe and to be a pirate at will, or to summon an attendant spirit, or to rescue a prisoner from the deepest dungeon 'neath the castle moat. But in Huck this imagination has turned to superst.i.tion; he is a walking repository of the juvenile folk-lore of the Mississippi Valley--a folk-lore partly traditional among the white settlers, but largely influenced by intimate a.s.sociation with the negroes. When Huck was in his room at night all by himself waiting for the signal Tom Sawyer was to give him at midnight, he felt so lonesome he wished he was dead:

"The stars was s.h.i.+ning and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold s.h.i.+vers run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving. I got so downhearted and scared I did wish I had some company. Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulders, and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I could budge it was all shrivelled up. I didn't need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes off me. I got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then I tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away. But I hadn't no confidence. You do that when you've lost a horseshoe that you've found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but I hadn't ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you'd killed a spider."

And, again, later in the story, not at night this time, but in broad daylight, Huck walks along a road:

"When I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and suns.h.i.+ny--the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome like everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves, it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits whispering--spirits that's been dead ever so many years--and you always think they're talking about _you_. As a general thing it makes a body wish _he_ was dead, too, and done with it all."

Now, none of these sentiments are appropriate to Tom Sawyer, who had none of the feeling for nature which Huck Finn had caught during his numberless days and nights in the open air. Nor could Tom Sawyer either have seen or set down this instantaneous photograph of a summer storm:

"It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest--fst! it was as bright as glory, and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about, away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down-stairs, where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know."

The romantic side of Tom Sawyer is shown in most delightfully humorous fas.h.i.+on in the account of his difficult devices to aid in the easy escape of Jim, a run-away negro. Jim is an admirably drawn character.

There have been not a few fine and firm portraits of negroes in recent American fiction, of which Mr. Cable's Bras-Coupe in the _Grandissimes_ is perhaps the most vigorous, and Mr. Harris's Mingo and Uncle Remus and Blue Dave are the most gentle. Jim is worthy to rank with these; and the essential simplicity and kindliness and generosity of the Southern negro have never been better shown than here by Mark Twain. Nor are Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and Jim the only fresh and original figures in Mr.

Clemens's book; on the contrary, there is scarcely a character of the many introduced who does not impress the reader at once as true to life--and therefore as new, for life is so varied that a portrait from life is sure to be as good as new. That Mr. Clemens draws from life, and yet lifts his work from the domain of the photograph to the region of art, is evident to any one who will give his writing the honest attention which it deserves. The chief players in _Huckleberry Finn_ are taken from life, no doubt, but they are so aptly chosen and so broadly drawn that they are quite as typical as they are actual. They have one great charm, all of them--they are not written about and about; they are not described and dissected and a.n.a.lyzed; they appear and play their parts and disappear; and yet they leave a sharp impression of indubitable vitality and individuality.

1886

II.--OF A NOVEL OF M. ZOLA'S

IN his most suggestive study of the Greek World Under Roman Sway, wherein we find the feelings, the thoughts, and the actions of those who lived in the first century explained and elucidated by constant references to similar states of feeling, thought, and action still surviving among us who live in the nineteenth century, Professor Mahaffy expresses his belief that the _Golden a.s.s_ of Apuleius does not give a true picture of the Greek life it purported to represent, but that it is rather a reflection of the depravity of the Romans to whom it was addressed; and then he adds these shrewd suggestions, to be borne in mind by all who ever consider the fiction of a foreign country or of another century: "We might as well charge all society in France with being addicted to one form of vice, because recent French fiction occupies itself almost exclusively with this as the material for its plots. The society for which such books are written must have shown that they are to its taste; the society which such books portray may be wholly different and grossly libelled by being made to reflect the vices of the author and his readers."

If French society were composed exclusively of the men and women who people most of the Parisian romances of the past fifteen or twenty years; if the inhabitants of the cities were like the miserable creatures we see in M. Zola's _Pot-Bouille_, and if the dwellers in the fields were like the horrible wretches we see in M. Zola's _La Terre_, the outlook of France would be black indeed, for no country could exist or should exist which was peopled by such a gang of monsters. But any one who knows French life, any one especially who knows the life of the larger provincial towns, knows that what M. Zola has represented as typical and characteristic is, in reality, exceptional and abnormal.

Probably there is no house in the whole of Paris occupied by as corrupt a set of tenants as those set before us in _Pot-Bouille_; and certainly there is no village in the whole of France wherein all the horrors depicted in _La Terre_ could possibly have taken place. The fact is, the French like to boast about vice as the British like to boast about virtue. I should doubt if there was any great difference in morals between the upper society of Paris and of London, except the overwhelming hypocrisy of the latter. Apparently M. Zola has at last awakened to some consciousness of the false impression produced by his work. _Le Reve_ was his attempt to produce a novel fit for the cla.s.s to which nearly all English novels are addressed.

In his recent study, _L'Argent_, there is a fairer balance than in his other books; there are decent people, kindly folk, men and women of honest hearts and willing hands. We have a cheerful glimpse of the home life of Mazaud, the stock-broker who commits suicide when he fails. The Jordans, husband and wife, are perhaps the pleasantest pair to be found in all M. Zola's novels. With the novelist's increasing fame, apparently, he is taking brighter views of humanity. And Madame Caroline, despite her lapse, might almost be called an honest woman, if this is not a paradox; she is a strong, wholesome, broad-minded creature, admirably realized. The G.o.ddess Lubricity, whom Matthew Arnold first named as the presiding deity of French fiction, is still wors.h.i.+pped in other parts of the book; and her wors.h.i.+p is out of place in this book at least, for those who are seized with the l.u.s.t for gain have little time for any other. For example, the whole story of Saccard's relations with the Baroness Sandorff is needlessly offensive and revolting; and at bottom it is essentially false. But there is a marked improvement of tone in _L'Argent_ over certain even of his later books, while the atmosphere is nowhere as foul as it was in most of his earlier novels.

There is no disputing that M. Zola is a man with a dirty mind--with a liking for dirt for its own sake. There is no disputing also that he is a novelist of most extraordinary fecundity and force. Of all the books I have read in the past ten years, I received the strongest impression from Zola's _Germinal_ and from Ibsen's _Ghosts_; and I can still hear the cry for light, and the pitiful appeal of the son to the mother with which the latter closes; and I can still feel the chill wind which whistles across the dark plain in the opening pages of the former. There is in _L'Argent_ the same power, the same splendid sweep, the same mighty movement, the same symbolic treatment of the subject, the same epic method. M. Zola thinks himself a naturalist; he has preached naturalism from the house-top; he is generally taken at his word and criticised as a naturalist, and as a fact he is not a naturalist at all.

M. Zola is not one who sees certain things in life, and who ties them together with a loose thread of plot--although this is the naturalism he approves of. He has preached it, but he has never practised it. On the contrary, M. Zola picks out a subject and reads up and crams for it, and conceives it as a whole, and devises typical characters and characteristic incidents, and co-ordinates the materials he has thus laboriously acc.u.mulated into a harmonious work of art, as closely constructed as a Greek tragedy and moving forward towards the inevitable catastrophe with something of the same irresistible impulse. No novelist of our time is affected less by what he sees in nature than M. Zola; not one is more consciously artful.

This symbolic method of M. Zola's is shown in _L'Argent_ almost as clearly as in _Germinal_, which I cannot help considering his greatest novel, despite its prolixity and the foulness of many of its episodes.

As _Germinal_ was the story of a coal-mine with a strike, so _L'Argent_ is a story of a gigantic speculation on the stock exchange, treated in the same epic fas.h.i.+on, with typical characters and all the necessary incidents. Obviously the Union Generale suggested certain particular details of Saccard's Banque Universelle. Obviously also Baron Rothschild sat for the portrait of Gundermann. There is the same use of minor figures to personify the crowd, and themselves identifiable by some broad characteristic--Moser, the bear; Pellerault, the bull; Amadrin, the speculator who foolishly blundered into a successful operation, and who has wisely held his tongue ever since; and all these minor characters (and there is a host of them) serve as a chorus, help along the main action of the tale, comment upon it, and typify the throng of men and women who are at the periphery of any great movement.

These little people are all vigorously projected; they are all adroitly contrasted one with another; they are all carried in the hand of the novelist and manuvred with unfailing effect, with a power and a certainty which no other living novelist possesses.

That many readers should be bored by all of Zola's writing I can readily understand, for it is not always easy reading. That many more should be shocked by him is even more comprehensible, for he has a thick thumb and he makes dirty marks over all his work. That some even should be annoyed by M. Zola's method or irritated by his mannerisms, I can explain without difficulty. But what I cannot comprehend is that any one having read _Une Page d'Amour_ or _Germinal_ or _L'Argent_ can deny that M.

Zola is a very great force in fiction. But there are critics in Great Britain--and even in the United States, where we are less squeamish and less hypocritical--who refuse to reckon with M. Zola, and who pa.s.s by on the other side. A man must be strong of stomach to enjoy much of M.

Zola's fiction; he must be feeble in perception if he does not feel its strength and its complex art. M. Zola's strength is often rank, no doubt, and there is a foul flavor about even his most forcible novels, which makes them unfit for the library of the clean-minded American woman. But in any exact sense of the word M. Zola's novels are not immoral, as the romances of M. Georges Ohnet are immoral, for example, or those of the late Octave Feuillet. Yet they are not spoon-meat for babes.

1891

III.--OF WOMEN'S NOVELS

The reader of _Humphrey Clinker_--if that robust and st.u.r.dy British story has any readers nowadays, when the art of fiction has become so much finer and more subtile--will remember that little Tim Cropdale "had made s.h.i.+ft to live many years by writing novels at the rate of 5 a volume; but that branch of business is now engrossed by female authors,"

so Smollett goes on to tell us, "who publish merely for the propagation of virtue, with so much ease and spirit and delicacy and knowledge of the human heart, and all in the serene tranquillity of high life, that the reader is not only enchanted by their genius but reformed by their morality." _Humphrey Clinker_ was first published in 1771, the year of its author's death; and the names of the women of England who were writing novels six-score years ago are now forgotten. How many of the insatiate devourers of fiction who feed voraciously on the paper-covered volumes of the news-stand have ever heard of the _Memoirs of Miss Sidney Biddulph_ for example? Yet Charles James Fox called this the best novel of his age; and Doctor Johnson found great interest in following the misadventures of Miss Biddulph, and declared to the auth.o.r.ess that he knew not if she had a right, on moral principles, to make her readers suffer so much. The auth.o.r.ess of the _Memoirs of Miss Sidney Biddulph_ was Frances Sheridan, now remembered only because she was the mother of the author of the _School for Scandal_.

Mrs. Sheridan was an estimable woman, and it was not to her that Smollett turned the edge of his irony. There were in his day not a few fas.h.i.+onable ladies who, in "the serene tranquillity of high life," told stories that neither enchanted by their genius nor reformed by their morality. In most of the novels written by women in the second half of the eighteenth century, the morality is but little more obvious than the genius. Like the fas.h.i.+onable English novels of the first half of this century, now as carefully forgotten as the tales of Smollett's fair contemporaries, the female fiction with which Little Tim Cropdale found himself unable to compete was a curious compound of bad morals, bad manners, and bad grammar. Although stories by female authors who "publish merely for the propagation of virtue" and for the gratification of their own vanity are still to be found in London by any one who will seek on Mr. Mudie's shelves, the standard of female fiction has been greatly elevated in England since Miss Austen put forth her first modest story.

Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot followed in due season; and it would not now be possible to draw up a list of the ten greatest British novelists without placing on it the names of two or three women, at the least. There are diligent readers of fiction who would insist that the name of Mrs. Oliphant should be inscribed among the chosen few, by reason of certain of her earlier tales of Scottish life; and there are others equally insistent that the strange romances of the English lady who calls herself a French expletive ent.i.tle the name of "Ouida" to be placed on the roll of the chosen few. Indeed, the admiration of those who do admire this lady's stories is so ardent and fervid that I sometimes wonder whether the twentieth century will not see a Ouida Society for the expounding of the inner spiritual meaning of _Under Two Flags_ and _Held in Bondage_.

In America, since the day when Susanna Rowson wrote _Charlotte Temple_, and more especially since the day when Mrs. Stowe wrote _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, no list of American novelists could fairly be drawn up on which nearly half the names would not be those of women--even when one of these names might seem to be that of a man--like Charles Egbert Craddock's, for example. Colonel Higginson recently deplored the oblivion into which we have allowed the wholesomely realistic fiction of Miss Sedgwick to fall; and it has been remarked that the vigorous New England tales of Rose Terry Cooke never met with the full measure of success they deserved. But the auth.o.r.ess of _Ramona_, the auth.o.r.ess of _That La.s.s o' Lowrie's_, the auth.o.r.ess of _Anne_, the auth.o.r.ess of _Faith Gartney's Girlhood_, the auth.o.r.ess of _Signor Monaldini's Niece_, the auth.o.r.ess of _John Ward, Preacher_, the auth.o.r.ess of the _Story of Margaret Kent_, the auth.o.r.ess of _Friend Olivia_, and the auth.o.r.esses of a dozen or of a score of other novels which have had their day of vogue, these ladies are able easily to prove that the field of fiction is being cultivated diligently by the women of America.

One of the cleverest novels recently published by any American woman is _The Anglomaniacs_, which came forth anonymously, but which Mrs. Burton Harrison has since acknowledged. It is a sketch only, a little picture of a corner of life, hardly more than an impression, but is brilliant in color and accurate in drawing. Limited as it is in scope and contracted as is its framework, it strikes me as the best reflection of certain phases of New York life since the author of the _Potiphar Papers_ made fun of the Reverend Mr. Creamcheese. It echoes the talk of those who

"tread the weary mill With jaded step and call it pleasure still."

And, better yet, it suggests the feelings which prompted the talk. At a recent meeting of the Nineteenth Century Club, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt called Mr. Ward McAllister's _Society as I Found It_ an "exposure of the 400;" and certainly it is difficult to believe that even 100 people of fas.h.i.+on could be found anywhere in New York as dull as those Mr.

McAllister saw around him, as narrow-minded and as thick-witted. Mrs.

Burton Harrison knows what is called Society quite as well as Mr.

McAllister; and as she is a clever woman, those she sees about her are often clever also. The company of Anglomaniacs to which she invites our attention are not dullards, nor are they cads, even though an ill-natured philosopher might be moved to call them sn.o.bs. A good-natured philosopher would probably find them amusing; and he would make s.h.i.+ft to enjoy their companions.h.i.+p, dropping easily into acquaintance and laughing with them quite as often as he laughed at them.

In these days, when hosts of honest people throughout the United States are reading with delighted awe long accounts of the manners and customs of a strange tribe of human creatures, the female of which is known as a "Society Lady" and the male as a "Clubman," it is pleasant to find novels of New York life written by ladies who move within the charmed circle of what is called Society, and who can write about the doings of their fellows simply and without either sn.o.bbish wonder or caddish envy. The auth.o.r.ess of _The Anglomaniacs_ and the auth.o.r.ess of _Mademoiselle Reseda_ see Society as it is, and they are not so dazzled by the unexpected glare that they need to put on sea-side spectacles to enable them to observe what is going on about them. It is an old saying that to describe well we must not know too well, for long knowledge blunts the edge of appreciation. But those who, having knowledge, seek rather to reveal than to describe, often render a more valuable service than the more superficial observers who offer us their first impressions. Something of this revelation of Society we find in Mrs.

Harrison's brilliant sketch and in the stories of "Julien Gordon."

Thackeray complained that no British novelist had dared to describe a young man's life since Fielding wrote _Tom Jones_; and Mr. Henry James, praising George Sand, notes the total absence of pa.s.sion in English novels. If this reproach is ever taken away from our fiction, it will be by some woman. Women are more willing than men to suggest the animal nature that sheathes our immortal souls; they are bolder in the use of the stronger emotions; they are more willing to suggest the possibilities of pa.s.sion lurking all unsuspected beneath the placidity of modern fine-lady existence. Perhaps they are sometimes even a little too willing: as Mr. Warner reminded us not long ago, "it may be generally said of novelists, that men know more than they tell, and that women tell more than they know."

It is by slow degrees that woman forges forward and takes her place alongside man in the mastery of the fine arts. The Muses were all women, once upon a time, but those whom they visited were all men. The first art in which the woman made herself manifestly the equal of the man was the art of vocal music--or was it that of dancing? The daughter of Herodias was mistress of both accomplishments. Then in time woman divided the stage with man; the histrionic art was possessed by both s.e.xes with equal opportunity; and who shall say that Garrick or Kean surpa.s.sed in power Mrs. Siddons or Rachel? Now prose fiction is theirs quite as much as it is man's; and when the _Critic_ recently elected by vote the twenty foremost American women of letters, many more than half were writers of novels. The readers of _Humphrey Clinker_ did not foresee Jane Austen and George Eliot and George Sand any more than little Tim Cropdale could.

1891

IV.--OF TWO LATTERDAY HUMORISTS

"WHOEVER and wherever and however situated a man is, he must watch three things--sleeping, digestion, and laughing," said Mr. Beecher; and he added with equal wisdom, "they are three indispensable necessities.

Prayers are very well, and reading the Bible very well indeed; but a man can get along without the Bible, but he can't without the other three things." When a man has a clear conscience, good digestion ought to wait on appet.i.te; and when he has a good digestion and a clear conscience, he ought to find it easy to sleep well. Yet as sleep is the only true friend that will not come at one's call, he may be wakeful despite his pure heart and quiet stomach; and in this case he may fairly resort to the Patent-office reports or the British comic papers, than which

"Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world"

are more potent soporifics. Many of the avowedly humorous publications of the day are better as a cure for sleeplessness than as a cause of laughter. Of all sad words of tongue or pen none is sadder than what is known in many a newspaper office as "comic copy." Wit cannot be made to order, and humor cannot be purchased by the yard, with a discount if the buyer takes the whole roll.

In the _History of Henry Esmond_--more veracious than many a more pretentious history of the reign of Queen Anne and of a broader truth--Thackeray speaks of the "famous beaux-esprits," who "would make many brilliant hits--half a dozen in a night sometimes--but, like sharp-shooters, when they had fired their shot, they were obliged to retire under cover till their pieces were loaded again and they got another chance at their enemy." And this figure expresses the exact fact; no wit is a breech-loader--still less is he a repeating rifle capable of discharging sixteen shots without taking thought. The readiest man must have time to reload and the most fertile must lie fallow now and again. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, even when he had most carefully prepared himself, did not sparkle in private conversation as he was able to make his characters scintillate through the long sittings of the scandalous college. If needs must and the devil drives a poor wretch to crack jokes unceasingly, then of necessity the edge of his wit will not be as keen nor the strokes of his humor as effective. And this is why the conducting of a comic paper is like the leading of a forlorn hope. Success can scarcely be more than a lucky accident. "'Tis not in mortals to command success," and if Cato and Semp.r.o.nius were joint editors of a comic weekly it may be doubted whether they would even deserve it. Nor would the author of the tragedy from which this last quotation is taken have been a satisfactory office editor of a comic weekly, although he contributed to the _Spectator_ the delightfully and delicately humorous sketch of Sir Roger de Coverley.

This is why the level of comic journalism is not as lofty as we could wish. This is why we frequently find poor jokes even in journals where every effort is made to provide good jokes. The supply is not equal to the demand, and the jokesmith often has to set his wits to work when the stock of raw material is running low. _Punch_ and _Puck_ are the representative comic weeklies of the two great branches of the English-speaking race. _Punch_ has had a great past. It may even be questioned whether those who declare its decadence do not exaggerate its former merits almost as much as they do its present failings. It is vaguely remembered that in _Punch_ Hood published the "Song of the s.h.i.+rt" and Thackeray the _Book of Sn.o.bs_, and Douglas Jerrold the _Story of a Feather_, and it is often supposed that there was a time when all the clever men of London contributed their best things every week to _Punch_. But one has only to turn over the leaves of any of the earlier volumes of the British weekly to discover that if this ever were the case, then the clever men of London were a very dull lot. _Punch_ is very much the same now that it was in the past. Hood contributed the "Song of the s.h.i.+rt," and nothing else; Douglas Jerrold wrote the _Story of a Feather_--but who reads Douglas Jerrold nowadays? A'Becket composed a _Comic History of England_, and the few of us who have read it to-day feel as d.i.c.kens felt at the time, that it is dull and machine-made. Thackeray wrote _Mr. Punch's Prize Novelists_ and the _Sn.o.b Papers_; and Thackeray was the "Fat Contributor;" and there has been no one like Thackeray since he left the paper.

But the pictures of _Punch_ are as good now as ever they were; perhaps, taking one week with another, they are better. And the letter-press is very much what it has always been--rhymes, jingles, puns in profusion, topical allusions--"comic copy," in short. Now and then there is something in _Punch_ which is still worth reading. There were Artemus Ward's papers a score of years ago, for instance, and there were more recently some of Mr. F. C. Burnand's earlier parodies and some of his earlier _Happy Thoughts_. Decidedly the most amusing prose which has appeared in _Punch_ during the past four or five years is the series of overheard conversations called _Voces Populi_.

The author of _Voces Populi_ is the "F. Anstey" who is well known in America as the writer of _Vice Versa_ and of the _Tinted Venus_. It is an open secret that the real name of "F. Anstey" is Guthrie, just as everybody knows that the real name of "Mark Twain" is Clemens. (The conjunction of these names was fortuitous, but it serves to remind me that I once heard Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson say that the two strongest chapters in the fiction of the past ten years were to be found, one in the _Giant's Robe_ of "F. Anstey" and the other in the _Huckleberry Finn_ of "Mark Twain.") The first book of an unknown author has small chance of sudden success, and _Vice Versa_ was Mr. Guthrie's first book.

Fortunately it came into the hands of Mr. Andrew Lang a few days after it was published, and Mr. Lang was so taken with its freshness, its truthfulness to boy nature, and its almost pathetic humor that he wrote a column about it in the _Daily News_--a column of the heartiest appreciation. "It was Lang's review that made the success of _Vice Versa_," said Mr. Guthrie to me once in London, two or three years ago, when we were planning to write a story together. And it was Mr. Lang who afterwards introduced the author of _Vice Versa_ to the staff of _Punch_.

In _Voces Populi_ Mr. Guthrie has gathered a score and a half of fragmentary dialogues, casual, plotless, but never pointless. They are thumbnail sketches of British character, "At a Dinner Party," "At a Wedding," "At the French Play," "At a Turkish Bath," "In an Italian Restaurant," in "Trafalgar Square" during a demonstration, and in "A Show Place." They are photographic in their accuracy, making due allowance for humorous foreshortening. They hit off the foibles of fas.h.i.+onable frivolity; they depict with unfaltering exactness the inconceivable limitations and narrowness of the middle cla.s.s; but where they are most abundantly and triumphantly successful is in the rendering of the lower orders of London. Mr. Guthrie has caught the c.o.c.kney in the very act of c.o.c.kneyism, and he has here pilloried him for all time, but wholly without bitterness or rancor. Mr. Guthrie knows his roughs, his ruffians, his house-maids, his travellers, "Third Cla.s.s--Parliamentary,"