At present we are spared the heartrending childish deathbeds which Dickens made so painfully popular, because dying in novels has rather gone out of style. The young people live, and thrive, and wax scornful, and fill up chapter after chapter, to the exclusion of meritorious adults. What a contrast between the incidental, almost furtive manner in which Henry Kingsley introduces his delightful children into “Ravenshoe,” and the profound assurance with which Sarah Grand devotes seventy pages to a minute description of the pranks of the Heavenly Twins. Readers of the earlier novel used to feel they would like to know a little—just a little more of Gus, and Flora, and Archy, and the patient nursery cat who was quite accustomed to being held upside down, and who went out “a-walking on the leads,” when she was needed to accompany her young master to bed. Readers of “The Heavenly Twins” begin by being amused, then grow aghast, and conclude by wondering why the wretched relatives of those irrepressible children were not driven to some such expedient as that proposed by a choleric old gentleman of my acquaintance to the doting mother of an only son. “Put him in a hogshead, madam, and let him breathe through the bunghole!”

Two vastly different types of infant precocity have been recently given to the world by Mrs. Deland and Mrs. Hodgson Burnett, the only point of resemblance between their respective authors being the conviction which they share in common that children are problems which cannot be too minutely studied, and that we cannot devote too much time or attention to their scrutiny. Mrs. Deland, with less humor and a firmer touch, draws for us in “The Story of a Child,” a sensitive, highly strung, morbid and imaginative little girl, who seems born to give the lie to Schopenhauer’s comfortable verdict, that “the keenest sorrows and the keenest joys are not for women to feel.” Ellen Dale suffers as only a self-centred nature can. She thinks about her self so much that her poor little head is turned with fancied shortcomings and imaginary wrongs. Most children have these sombre moods now and again. They don’t overcome them; they forget them, which is a better and healthier thing to do. But Ellen’s humors are analyzed with a good deal of seriousness and sympathy. When she is not “agonized” over her tiny faults, she is “tasting sin with the subtle epicurean delight of the artistic temperament;” a passage which may be aptly compared with George Eliot’s tamer description of Lucy Deane trotting by her cousin Tom’s side, “timidly enjoying the rare treat of doing something naughty.” The sensations are practically the same, the methods of delineating them different.

Mrs. Burnett, on the other hand, while indulging us unstintedly in reminiscences of her own childhood, is disposed to paint the picture in cheerful, not to say roseate colors. “The One I Knew the Best of All” was evidently a very good, and clever, and pretty, and well-dressed little girl, who played her part with amiability and decorum in all the small vicissitudes common to infant years. No other children being permitted to enter the narrative, except as lay figures, our attention is never diverted from the small creature with the curls, who studies her geography, and eats her pudding, and walks in the Square, and dances occasionally at parties, and behaves herself invariably as a nice little girl should. It is reassuring, after reading the youthful recollections of Sir Richard Burton, with their irreverent and appalling candor, to be gently consoled by Mrs. Burnett, and to know with certainty that she really was such a delightful and charming child.

For Sir Richard, following the fashion of the day, has left us a spirited record of his early years, and they furnish scant food for edification. There was a time when unfledged vices, like unfledged virtues, were ignored by the biographer, and forgotten even by the more conscientious writer, who compiled his own memoirs. Scott’s account of his boyhood is graphic, but all too brief. Boswell, the diffuse, speeds over Johnson’s tender youth with some not very commendatory remarks about his “dismal inertness of disposition.” Gibbon, indeed, awakens our expectations with this solemn and stately sentence:—

“My lot might have been that of a slave, a savage, or a peasant; nor can I reflect without pleasure on the bounty of nature which cast my birth in a free and civilized country, in an age of science and philosophy, in a family of honorable rank, and decently endowed with the gifts of fortune.”

After which majestic preamble, we are surprised to see how little interest he takes in his own sickly and studious childhood, and how disinclined he is to say complimentary things about his own precocity. He writes without enthusiasm:—

“For myself I must be content with a very small share of the civil and literary fruits of a public school.”

Burton, unhappily, had no share at all, and the loss of training and discipline told heavily on him all his life. His lawless and wandering childhood, so full of incident and so destitute of charm, is described with uncompromising veracity in Lady Burton’s portly volumes. He was as far removed from the virtues of Lord Fauntleroy as from the brilliant and elaborate naughtiness of the Heavenly Twins; but he has the advantage over all these little people in being so convincingly real. He fought until he was beaten “as thin as a shotten herring.” He knocked down his nurse—with the help of his brother and sister—and jumped on her. He hid behind the curtains and jeered at his grandmother’s French. He was not pretty, and he was not picturesque.

“A piece of yellow nankin would be bought to dress the whole family, like three sticks of barley sugar.”

He was not amiable, and he was not polite, and he was not a safe child on whom to try experiments of the “Harry and Lucy” order, as the following anecdote proves:

“By way of a wholesome and moral lesson of self-command and self-denial, our mother took us past Madame Fisterre’s (the pastry cook’s) windows, and bade us look at all the good things; whereupon we fixed our ardent affections on a tray of apple puffs. Then she said: ‘Now, my dears, let us go away; it is so good for little children to restrain themselves.’ Upon this we three devilets turned flashing eyes and burning cheeks on our moralizing mother, broke the window with our fists, clawed out the tray of apple puffs, and bolted, leaving poor Mother a sadder and a wiser woman, to pay the damages of her lawless brood’s proceedings.”

It is the children’s age when such a story—and many more like it—are gleefully narrated and are gladly read. Yet if we must exchange the old-time reticence for unreserved disclosures, if we must hear all about an author’s infancy from his teething to his first breeches, and from his A B C’s to his Greek and Latin, it is better to have him presented to us with such unqualified veracity. He is not attractive when seen in this strong light, but he is very much alive.

A FORGOTTEN POET.

There has been a vast deal of moralizing on the brevity of fame ever since that far-away day when mankind became sufficiently sophisticated to covet posthumous distinction. Yet, in reality, it is not so surprising that people should be forgotten as that they should be remembered, and remembered often for the sake of one swift, brave deed that cost no effort, or of a few lovely words thrown to the world in a moment of unconscious inspiration, when the writer little dreamed he was forging a chain strong enough to link him with the future. Occasionally, too, a species of immortality is conferred upon respectable mediocrity by the affection or the abhorrence it excites. The men whom Pope rhymed about because he hated them, the men to whom Lamb wrote so delightfully because he loved them, all live for us in the indestructible land of letters. It would be a hard matter to reckon up the sum of indebtedness which is thus innocently incurred by those who have no coin of their own for payment.

Not long ago a writer of distinction was idling his way pleasantly through a volume of Mrs. Browning’s poetry, when his attention was arrested by a quotation which stood at the head of that rather nebulous effusion, “A Rhapsody of Life’s Progress.” It was but a single line,

and it was accredited to Cornelius Mathews, author of “Poems on Man.” A foot-note,—people were more generous in the matter of foot-notes forty years ago than now—gave the additional and somewhat startling information that “Poems on Man” was “a small volume by an American poet, as remarkable in thought and manner for a vital sinewy vigour as the right arm of Pathfinder.” This was stout praise. “The right arm of Pathfinder.” We all know what sinewy vigor was there; but of Cornelius Mathews, it would seem, no man knew anything at all. Yet his poems had traveled far when they lay in Mrs. Browning’s path, and of her admiration for them she had left us this unstinted proof. Moreover the one line,

had in it enough of character and sweetness to provoke an intelligent curiosity. As a scholar and a man of letters, the reader felt his interest awakened. He replaced Mrs. Browning on the book shelf, and made up his mind with characteristic distinctness he would read the poems of this forgotten American author.

It was not an easy resolution to keep. A confident appeal to the public libraries of New York and Philadelphia brought to light the astonishing fact that no copy of the “Poems on Man” was to be found within their walls. The work had been published in several editions by Harper and Brothers between the years 1838 and 1843; but no forlorn and dust covered volume still lingered on their shelves. The firm, when interrogated, knew no more about Cornelius Mathews than did the rest of the reading world. The next step was to advertise for a second-hand copy; but for a long while it seemed as though even second-hand copies had disappeared from the face of the continent. The book was so exceedingly rare that it must have been a universal favorite for the lighting of household fires. In the end, however, persevering effort was crowned with its inevitable success. “The works of Cornelius Mathews” were unearthed from some dim corner of obscurity, and suffered to see the genial light of day.

They comprise a great deal of prose and a very little verse, all bound up together, after the thrifty fashion of our fathers, in one portly volume, with dull crimson sides, and double columns of distressingly fine print. The “Poems on Man” are but nineteen in number, and were originally published in a separate pamphlet. They are arranged systematically, and are designed to do honor to American citizenship under its most sober and commonplace aspect. The author is in no way discouraged by the grayness of his atmosphere, nor by the unheroic material with which he has to deal. On the contrary, he is at home with farmers, and mechanics, and merchants; and ill at ease with painters and soldiers, to whom it must be confessed he preaches a little too palpably. It is painful to consider what bad advice he gives to the sculptor in this one vicious line,

Yet, in truth, he is neither blind to the past, nor unduly elated with the present. He feels the splendid possibilities of a young nation with all its life before it; and earnestly, and with dignity, he pleads for the development of character, and for a higher system of morality. If his verse be uneven and mechanical, and the sinewy vigor of Pathfinder be not so apparent as might have been reasonably expected, I can still understand how these simple and manly sentiments should have awakened the enthusiasm of Mrs. Browning, who was herself no student of form, and who sincerely believed that poetry was a serious pursuit designed for the improvement of mankind.

In his narrower fashion, Mr. Cornelius Mathews shared this pious creed, and strove, within the limits of his meagre art, to awaken in the hearts of his countrymen a patriotism sober and sincere. He calls on the journalist to tell the truth, on the artisan to respect the interests of his employer, on the merchant to cherish an old-time honor and honesty, on the politician to efface himself for the good of his constituency.

This is not heroic verse, but it shows an heroic temper. The writer has evidently some knowledge of things as they are, and some faith in things as they ought to be, and these twin sources of grace save him from bombast and from cynicism. Never in all the earnest and appealing lines does he indulge himself or his readers in that exultant self-glorification which is so gratifying and so inexpensive. His patriotism is not of the shouting and hat-flourishing order, but has its roots in an anxious and loving regard for the welfare of his fatherland. Occasionally he strikes a poetic note, and has moments of brief but genuine inspiration.

which lend their calm and shadowy presence to the farmer’s toil, bring with them swift glimpses of a strong pastoral world. Not a blithe world by any means. No Pan pipes in the rushes. No shaggy herdsmen sing in rude mirthful harmony. No sun-burnt girls laugh in the harvest-field. Rusticity has lost its native grace, and the cares of earth sit at the fireside of the husbandman. Yet to him belong moments of deep content, and to his clean and arduous life are given pleasures which the artisan has never known.

The most curious characteristic of Mr. Mathew’s work is the easy and absolute fashion in which it ignores the influence, and indeed the very existence of woman. The word “man” must here be taken in its literal significance. It is not of the human race that the author sings, but of one half of it alone. No troublesome flutter of petticoats disturbs his serene meditations; no echo of passion haunts his placid verse. Even in his opening stanzas on “The Child,” there is no allusion to any mother. The infant appears to have come into life after the fashion of Pallas Athene, and upon the father only depends its future weal or woe. The teacher apparently confines his labors to little boys; the preacher has a congregation of men; the reformer, the scholar, the citizen, the friend, all dwell in a cool masculine world, where the seductive voice of womankind never insinuates itself to the endangering of sober and sensible behavior. This enforced absence of “The Eternal Feminine” is more striking when we approach the realms of art. Does the painter desire subjects for his brush?

are considered amply sufficient for his needs. Does the sculptor ask for models? They are presented him in generous abundance.

Or, should he prefer less conventional types—

With all these legitimate subjects at his command, why indeed should the artist turn aside after that beguiling beauty which Eve saw reflected in the clear waters of Paradise, and which she loved with unconscious vanity or ever Adam met her amorous gaze. Only to the poet is permitted the smallest glimpse into the feminine world. In one brief half-line, Mr. Mathews coldly and chastely allows that “young Love” may whisper something—we are not told what—which is best fitted for the poetic ear.

What an old-fashioned bundle of verse it is, though written a bare half century ago! How far removed from the delicate conceits, the inarticulate sadness of our modern versifiers; from the rondeaux, and ballades, and pastels, and impressions, and nocturnes, with which we have grown bewilderingly familiar. How these titles alone would have puzzled the sober citizen who wrote the “Poems on Man,” and who endeavored with rigid honesty to make his meaning as clear as English words would permit. There is no more chance to speculate over these stanzas than there is to speculate over Hogarth’s pictures. What is meant is told, not vividly, but with steadfast purpose, and with an innocent hope that it may be of some service to the world. The world, indeed, has forgotten the message, and forgotten the messenger as well. Only in a brief foot-note of Mrs. Browning’s there lingers still the faint echo of what once was life. For such modest merit there is no second sunrise; and yet a quiet reader may find an hour well spent in the staid company of these serious verses, whose best eloquence is their sincerity.

DIALOGUES.

Dialogues have come back into fashion and favor. Editors of magazines look on them kindly, and readers of magazines accept them as philosophically as they accept any other form of instruction or entertainment which is provided in their monthly bills of fare. Perhaps Mr. Oscar Wilde is in some measure responsible for the revival; perhaps it may be traced more directly to the serious and stimulating author of “Baldwin,” whose discussions are sufficiently subtle and relentless to gratify the keenest discontent. The restless reader who embarks on Vernon Lee’s portly volume of conversations half wishes he knew people who could discourse in that fashion, and is half grateful that he doesn’t. To converse for hours on “Doubts and Pessimism,” or “The Value of the Ideal,” is no trivial test of endurance, especially when one person does three-fourths of the talking. We hardly know which to admire most: Baldwin, who elucidates a text—and that text, evolution—for six pages at a breath, or Michael, who listens and “smiles.” Even the occasional intermissions, when “Baldwin shook his head,” or “they took a turn in silence,” or “Carlo’s voice trembled,” or “Dorothy pointed to the moors,” do little to relieve the general tension. It is no more possible to support conversation on this high and serious level than it is possible to nourish it on Mr. Wilde’s brilliant and merciless epigrams. Those sparkling dialogues in which Cyril might be Vivian, and Vivian, Cyril; or Gilbert might be Ernest, and Ernest, Gilbert, because all alike are Mr. Wilde, and speak with his voice alone, dazzle us only to betray. They are admirable pieces of literary workmanship; they are more charming and witty than any contemporaneous essays. But if we will place by their side those few and simple pages in which Landor permits Montaigne and Joseph Scaliger to gossip together for a brief half hour at breakfast time, we will better understand the value of an element which Mr. Wilde excludes—humanity, with all its priceless sympathies and foibles.

Nevertheless, it is not Landor’s influence, by any means, which is felt in the random dialogues of to-day. He is an author more praised than loved, more talked about than read, and his unapproachable delicacy and distinction are far removed from all efforts of facile imitation. Our modern “imaginary conversations,” whether openly satiric, or gravely instructive, are fashioned on other models. They have a faint flavor of Lucian, a subdued and decent reflection of the “Noctes;” but they never approach the classic incisiveness and simplicity of Landor. There is a delightfully witty dialogue of Mr. Barrie’s called “Brought Back from Elysium,” in which the ghosts of Scott, Fielding, Smollett, Dickens, and Thackeray are interviewed by five living novelists, who kindly undertake to point out to them the superiority of modern fiction. In this admirable little satire, every stroke tells, every phantom and every novelist speaks in character, and the author, with dexterous art, fits his shafts of ridicule into the easy play of a possible conversation. Nothing can be finer than the way in which Scott’s native modesty, of which not even Elysium and the Grove of Bay-trees have robbed him, struggles with his humorous perception of the situation. Fielding is disposed to be angry, Thackeray severe, and Dickens infinitely amused. But Sir Walter, dragged against his will into this unloved and alien atmosphere, is anxious only to give every man his due. “How busy you must have been, since my day,” he observes with wistful politeness, when informed that the stories have all been told, and that intellectual men and women no longer care to prance with him after a band of archers, or follow the rude and barbarous fortunes of a tournament.

For such brief bits of satire the dialogue affords an admirable medium, if it can be handled with ease and force. For imparting opinions upon abstract subjects it is sure to be welcomed by coward souls who think that information broken up into little bits is somewhat easier of digestion. I am myself one of those weak-minded people, and the beguiling aspect of a conversation, which generally opens with a deceptive air of sprightliness, has lured me many times beyond my mental depths. Nor have I ever been able to understand why Mr. Ruskin’s publishers should have entreated him, after the appearance of “Ethics of the Dust,” to “write no more in dialogues.” To my mind, that charming book owes its quality of readableness to the form in which it is cast, to the breathing-spells afforded by the innocent questions and comments of the children.

Mr. W. W. Story deals more gently with us than any other imaginary conversationalist. From the moment that “He and She” meet unexpectedly on the first page of “A Poet’s Portfolio,” until they say good-night upon the last, they talk comprehensively and agreeably upon topics in which it is easy to feel a healthy human interest. They drop into poetry and climb back into prose with a good deal of facility and grace. They gossip about dogs and spoiled children; they say clever and true things about modern criticism; they converse seriously, but not solemnly, about life and love and literature. They do not resolutely discuss a given subject, as do the Squire and Foster in Sir Edward Strachey’s “Talk at a Country House;” but sway from text to text after the frivolous fashion of flesh and blood; a fashion with which Mr. Story has made us all familiar in his earlier volumes of conversations. He is a veteran master of his field; yet, nevertheless, the Squire and Foster are pleasant companions for a winter night. I like to feel how thoroughly I disagree with both, and how I long to make a discordant element in their friendly talk; and this is precisely the charm of dialogues as a medium for opinions and ideas. Whether the same form can be successfully applied to fiction is at least a matter of doubt. Laurence Alma Tadema has essayed to use it in “An Undivined Tragedy,” and the result is hardly encouraging. The mother tells the tale in a simple and touching manner; and the daughter’s ejaculations and comments are of no use save to disturb the narrative. It is hard enough to put a story into letters where the relator suffers no ill-timed interruptions; but to embody it in a dialogue—which is at the same time no play—is to provide a needless element of confusion, and to derange the boundary line which separates fiction from the drama.

A CURIOUS CONTENTION.

There is nothing very healthful in such an attitude, nothing dignified, nothing morally sustaining. Life is not easy to understand, but it seems tolerably clear that two sexes were put upon the world to exist harmoniously together, and to do, each of them, a share of the world’s work. Their relation to one another has been a matter of vital interest from the beginning, and no new light has dawned suddenly upon this century or this people. The shrill contempt heaped by a few vehement women upon men, the bitter invectives, the wholesale denunciations are as valueless and as much to be regretted as the old familiar Billingsgate which once expressed what Mr. Arnold termed “the current compliments” of theology. It is not convincing to hear that “man has shrunk to his real proportions in our estimation,” because we are still in the dark as to what these proportions are. It is doubtless true that he is “imperfect from the woman’s point of view,” and imperfect, let us conclude, from his own; but whether we have attained that sure superiority which will enable us to work out his salvation is at least a matter for dispute. There is an ancient and unpopular virtue called humility which might be safely recommended to a woman capable of writing such a passage as this, which is taken from an article published recently in the “North American Review.” “We know the weakness of man, and will be patient with him, and help him with his lesson. It is the woman’s place and pride and pleasure to teach the child, and man morally is in his infancy. Woman holds out a strong hand to the child-man, and insists, but with infinite tenderness and pity, upon helping him along.”

The fine unconscious humor of this suggestion ought to put everybody in a good temper, and clear the air with a hearty laugh. But the desire to lead other people rather than to control one’s self, though not often so naively stated, is by no means new in the history of morals. It must have fallen many times under the observation of Thomas à Kempis before he wrote this gentle word of reproof. “In judging others a man usually toileth in vain. For the most part he is mistaken, and he easily sinneth. But in judging and scrutinizing himself, he always laboreth with profit.”

And, indeed, though it be true that in civilized communities a larger proportion of women than of men live lives of cleanliness and self-restraint, yet it should be remembered that the great leaders of spiritual thought, the great reformers of minds and morals, have invariably been men. All that is best in word and example, all that is upholding, stimulating, purifying, and strenuous has been the gift of these faltering creatures, whom we are now invited to take in hand, and conduct with “tenderness and pity” on their paths. It might also be worth while to remind ourselves occasionally that although we women may be destined to do the work of the future, men have done the work of the past, and have struggled not altogether in vain, for the physical and intellectual welfare of the world. This is a point which is sometimes ignored in a very masterly manner. Eliza Burt Gamble who has written a book on “The Evolution of Woman. An Inquiry into the Dogma of her Inferiority to Man,” is exceedingly severe on theologians, priests, and missionaries, by whom she considers our sex has been held in subjection. She lays great stress on certain material facts, as, for example, the excess of male births in times of war, famine, or pestilence; and the excess of female births in periods of peace and plenty, when better nutrition brings about this higher and happier result. She asserts that there are more male than female idiots, and that reversions to a lower type are more common among men than women. She has a great deal to say about the ancient custom of wife-capture as a token of female superiority, and about the supremacy of woman in all primitive and prehistoric life, a supremacy founded upon her finer organization, and upon the altruistic principles which rule her conduct. But even in this spirited and elaborate argument no attempt is made to put side by side the work of woman and of man; no comparison is offered of their relative contributions to civilization, social progress, art, science, literature, music, or religion. Yet these are the tests by which preëminence is judged, and to ignore them is to confess a failure. “If you wish me to believe that you are witty, I must really trouble you to make a joke.” If you are better than the workers of the world, show me the fruits of your labor.

Against this reasonable demand it is urged that never in the past, or at least never since those pleasant primitive days, of which, unhappily, no distinct record has been preserved, have women been permitted free scope for their abilities. They have been kept down by the tyranny of men, and have afforded through all the centuries a living proof that the strong and good can be ruled by the weak and bad, physical force alone having given to man the mastery. It was reserved for our generation to straighten this tangled web, and to assign to each sex its proper limits and qualifications. The greatest change the world has ever seen is taking place to-day.

“However full the air may be of other sounds,” said a recent lecturer on this subject, “the cry that rises highest and swells the loudest comes from the throats of women who in the last years of the nineteenth century of the Christian era are just beginning to live. Men cannot appreciate this as we do. From time out of mind they have used their brains and their instincts as they chose, and they cannot understand the ecstacy we feel as we stretch the limbs which have been cramped so long. What does it matter if they do not? One thing is sure. New wine is not put into old bottles. The village that has become a city does not return to its villageship. The man does not put on the child’s garments again. So, whether men hate us or love us, we have outgrown the cage in which we sang. The woman of the past is dead.”

It is not highly probable that universal hate will ever supplant that older emotion which must be held responsible for the existence and the circumstances of human life. But “the woman of the past” is a broad term, and admits of a good deal of variety, The chaste Susanna and Potiphar’s wife; Cornelia and Messalina; Jeanne d’Arc and Madame de Pompadour; Hannah More and Aphra Behn, these are divergent types, and the singing bird in her cage does not stand very distinctly for any of them. Humanity is a large factor, and must be taken into serious account before we assure ourselves too confidently that the old order is passing away. For good or for ill, women have lived their lives with some approach to entirety during the slow progress of the ages. It can hardly be claimed that either Cleopatra or St. Theresa was cramped by confinement out of her broadest and amplest development.

Even if a radical change is imminent, there is no reason to be so fiercely contentious about it. Let us remember Dr. Watts, and be pacified. Our little hands were never made to tear each other’s eyes. It is possible surely to plead for female suffrage without saying spiteful and sarcastic things about men, especially as it is not their opposition, but the listless indifference of our own sex, which stands between the eager advocate and her vote. There is still less propriety in permitting this angry sentiment to bias our conceptions of morality, and we pay but a poor tribute to woman in assuming that she should be privileged to sin. The damnation of Faust and the apotheosis of Margaret make one of the most effective of stage illusions; but it is not a safe guide to practical rectitude, and we might do well to remember that it is not Goethe’s final solution of the problem. In our vehement reaction from the stringent rules of the past, we are now assuming that the seven deadly sins grow less malignant in woman’s hands, and that she can shift the burden of moral responsibility to the shoulders of that arch offender, man. The shameful evidence of the courts is bandied about in social circles, and made the subject-matter of denunciatory rhetoric on the part of those whom self-respect should silence. It does not strengthen one’s confidence in the future, to see the present lack of moderation and sanity in people who are going to reform the world. When wives and mothers meet to denounce with bitter eloquence the immorality of men, and then ask contributions for a monument to Mary Wollstonecraft, “who suffered social martyrdom in England a hundred years ago, for advocating the rights of woman,” one feels a little puzzled as to the mental attitude of these impetuous creatures. A sense of humor would save us from many discouraging outbreaks, but humor is not a common attribute of reformers. It is the peace-maker of the world, and this is the day of contentions.

THE PASSING OF THE ESSAY.

To a few of us, perhaps, such prophetic voices have but a dismal ring. We listen to their repeated cry, “The old order passeth away,” and we are sorry in our hearts, having loved it well for years, and feeling no absolute confidence in its successor. Then some fine afternoon we look abroad, and are amazed to see so much of the old order still remaining, and apparently disinclined to pass away, even when it is told plainly to go. How many times have we been warned that poetry is shaking off its shackles, and that rhyme and rhythm have had their little day? Yet now, as in the past, poets are dancing cheerfully in fetters, with a harmonious sound which is most agreeable to our ears. How many times have we been told that Sir Walter Scott’s novels are dead, stone dead; that their grave has been dug, and their epitaph written? Yet new and beautiful editions are following each other so rapidly from the press, that the most ardent enthusiast wonders wistfully who are the happy men with money enough to buy them. How many times have we been assured that realistic and psychological fiction has supplanted its gay brother of romance? Yet never was there a day when writers of romantic stories sprang so rapidly and so easily into fame. Stevenson leads the line, but Conan Doyle and Stanley Weyman follow close behind; while as for Mr. Rider Haggard, he is a problem which defies any reasonable solution. The fabulous prices paid by syndicates for his tales, the thousands of readers who wait breathlessly from week to week for the carefully doled-out chapters, the humiliating fact that “She” is as well known throughout two continents as “Robert Elsmere,”—these uncontrovertible witnesses of success would seem to indicate that what people really hunger for is not realism, nor sober truthfulness, but the maddest and wildest impossibilities which the human brain is capable of conceiving.

And so when I am told, among other prophetic items, that the “light essay” is passing rapidly away, and that, in view of its approaching death-bed, it cannot be safely recommended as “a good opening for enterprise,” I am fain, before acquiescing gloomily in such a decree, to take heart of grace, and look a little around me. It is discouraging, doubtless, for the essayist to be suddenly informed that his work is in articulo mortis. He feels as a carpenter might feel were he told that chairs and doors and tables are going out of fashion, and that he had better turn his attention to mining engineering, or a new food for infants. Perhaps he endeavors to explain that a great many chairs were sold in the past week, that they are not without utility, and that they seem to him as much in favor as ever. Such feeble arguments meet with no response. Furniture, he is assured,—on the authority of the speaker,—is distinctly out of date. The spirit of the time calls for something different, and the “best business talent”—delightful phrase, and equally applicable to a window-frame or an epic—is moving in another direction. This is what Mr. Lowell used to call the conclusive style of judgment, “which consists simply in belonging to the other parish;” but parish boundaries are the same convincing things now that they were forty years ago.

Is the essay, then, in such immediate and distressing danger? Is it unwritten, unpublished, or unread? Just ten years have passed since a well-printed little book was offered carelessly to the great English public. It was anonymous. It was hampered by a Latin title which attracted the few and repelled the many. It contained seven of the very lightest essays that ever glided into print. It grappled with no problems, social or spiritual; it touched but one of the vital issues of the day. It was not serious, and it was not written with any very definite view, save to give entertainment and pleasure to its readers. By all the laws of modern mentors, it should have been consigned to speedy and merited oblivion. Yet what happened? I chanced to see that book within a few months of its publication, and sent at once to London for a copy, thinking to easily secure a first edition. I received a fourth, and, with it, the comforting assurance that the first was already commanding a heavy premium. In another week the American reprints of “Obiter Dicta” lay on all the book counters of our land. The author’s name was given to the world. A second volume of essays followed the first; a third, the second; a fourth, the third. The last are so exceedingly light as to be little more than brief notices and reviews. All have sold well, and Mr. Birrell has established—surely with no great effort—his reputation as a man of letters. Editors of magazines are glad to print his work; readers of magazines are glad to see it; newspapers are delighted when they have any personal gossip about the author to tell a curious world. This is what “the best business talent” must call success, for these are the tests by which it is accustomed to judge. The light essay has a great deal of hardihood to flaunt and flourish in this shameless manner, when it has been severely warned that it is not in accord with the spirit of the age, and that its day is on the wane.

It is curious, too, to see how new and charming editions of “Virginibus Puerisque” meet with a ready sale. Mr. Stevenson has done better work than in this volume of scattered papers, which are more suggestive than satisfactory; yet there are always readers ready to exult over the valorous “Admirals,” or dream away a glad half-hour to the seductive music of “Pan’s Pipes.” Mr. Lang’s “Essays in Little” and “Letters to Dead Authors” have reached thousands of people who have never read his admirable translations from the Greek. Mr. Pater’s essays—which, however, are not light—are far better known than his beautiful “Marius the Epicurean.” Lamb’s “Elia” is more widely read than are his letters, though it would seem a heart-breaking matter to choose between them. Hazlitt’s essays are still rich mines of pleasure, as well as fine correctives for much modern nonsense. The first series of Mr. Arnold’s “Essays in Criticism” remains his most popular book, and the one which has done more than all the rest to show the great half-educated public what is meant by distinction of mind. Indeed, there never was a day when by-roads to culture were more diligently sought for than now by people disinclined for long travel or much toil, and the essay is the smoothest little path which runs in that direction. It offers no instruction, save through the medium of enjoyment, and one saunters lazily along with a charming unconsciousness of effort. Great results are not to be gained in this fashion, but it should sometimes be play-hour for us all. Moreover, there are still readers keenly alive to the pleasure which literary art can give; and the essayists, from Addison down to Mr. Arnold and Mr. Pater, have recognized the value of form, the powerful and persuasive eloquence of style. Consequently, an appreciation of the essay is the natural result of reading it. Like virtue, it is its own reward. “Culture,” says Mr. Addington Symonds, “makes a man to be something. It does not teach him to create anything.” Most of us in this busy world are far more interested in what we can learn to do than in what we can hope to become; but it may be that those who content themselves with strengthening their own faculties, and broadening their own sympathies for all that is finest and best, are of greater service to their tired and downcast neighbors than are the unwearied toilers who urge us so relentlessly to the field.

A few critics of an especially judicial turn are wont to assure us now and then that the essay ended with Emerson, or with Sainte-Beuve, or with Addison, or with Montaigne,—a more remote date than this being inaccessible, unless, like Eve in the old riddle, it died before it was born. Montaigne is commonly selected as the idol of this exclusive worship. “I don’t care for any essayist later than Montaigne.” It has a classic sound, and the same air of intellectual discrimination as another very popular remark: “I don’t read any modern novelist, except George Meredith.” Hearing these verdicts, one is tempted to say, with Marianne Dashwood, “This is admiration of a very particular kind.” To minds of a more commonplace order, it would seem that a love for Montaigne should lead insensibly to an appreciation of Sainte-Beuve; that an appreciation of Sainte-Beuve awakens in turn a sympathy for Mr. Matthew Arnold; that a sympathy for Mr. Arnold paves the way to a keen enjoyment of Mr. Emerson or Mr. Pater. It is a linked chain, and, though all parts are not of equal strength and beauty, all are of service to the whole. “Let neither the peculiar quality of anything nor its value escape thee,” counsels Marcus Aurelius; and if we seek our profit wherever it may be found, we insensibly acquire that which is needful for our growth. Under any circumstances, it is seldom wise to confuse the preferences or prejudices of a portion of mankind with the irresistible progress of the ages. Rhymes may go, but they are with us still. Romantic fiction may be submerged, but at present it is well above water. The essay may die, but just now it possesses a lively and encouraging vitality. Whether we regard it as a means of culture or as a field for the “best business talent,” we are fain to remark, in the words of Sancho Panza, “This youth, considering his weak state, hath left in him an amazing power of speech.”