Having written lately against the dog, several acquaintances have asked me to turn upon the cat, and they have been good enough to furnish me with instances of her faithlessness. Also, a lady with whom I recently sat at dinner, inquired of me on the pa.s.sing of the fish, whether I had ever properly considered the cow, which she esteemed a most mischievous animal.

One of them had mooed at her as she crossed a pasture and she had hastily climbed a fence. I get a good many suggestions first and last. I was once taken to a Turkish bath for no other reason--as I was afterwards told--than that it might supply me with a topic. Odd books have been put in my way.

A basket of school readers was once lodged with me, with a request that I direct my attention to the absurd selection of the poems. I have been urged to go against car conductors and customs men. On one occasion I received a paper of tombstone inscriptions, with a note of direction how others might be found in a neighboring churchyard if I were curious. A lady in whose company I camped last summer has asked me to give a chapter to it. We were abroad upon a lake in the full moon--we were lost upon a mountain--twice a canoe upset--there were the usual jests about cooking. These things might have filled a few pages agreeably, yet so far they have given me only a paragraph.

But I am not disposed toward any of these subjects, least of all the cat, upon which I look--despite the coldness of her nature--as a harmless and comforting appendage of the hearth-rug. I would no more prey upon her morals than I would the morals of the andirons. I choose, rather, to slip to another angle of the question and say a few words about cowards, among whom I have already confessed that I number myself.

In this year of battles, when physical courage sits so high, the reader--if he is swept off in the general opinion--will expect under such a t.i.tle something caustic. He will think that I am about to loose against all cowards a plague of frogs and locusts as if old Egypt had come again. But cowardice is its own punishment. It needs no frog to nip it. Even the sharp-toothed locust--for in the days that bordered so close upon the mastodon, the locust could hardly have fallen to the tender greenling we know today--even the locust that once spoiled the Egyptians could not now add to the grief of a coward.

And yet--really I hesitate. I blush. My attack will be too intimate; for I have confessed that I am not the very b.u.t.ton on the cap of bravery. I have indeed stiffened myself to ride a horse, a mightier feat than driving him because of the tallness of the monster and his uneasy movement, as though his legs were not well socketed and might fall out on a change of gaits. I have ridden on a camel in a side-show, but have found my only comfort in his hump. I have stroked the elephant. In a solemn hour of night I have gone downstairs to face a burglar. But I do not run singing to these dangers. While your really brave fellow is climbing a dizzy staircase to the moon--I write in figure--I would shake with fear upon a lower platform.

Perhaps you recall Mr. Tipp of the Elia essays. "Tipp," says his pleasant biographer, "never mounted the box of a stage-coach in his life; or leaned against the rails of a balcony; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet; or looked down a precipice; or let off a gun." I cannot follow Tipp, it may be, to his extreme tremors--my hair will not rise to so close a likeness of the fretful porcupine--yet in a measure we are in agreement. We are, as it were, cousins, with the mark of our common family strong on both of us.

There are persons who, when in your company on a country walk, will steal apples, not with a decent caution from a tree along the fence, but far afield. If there are grapes, they will not wait for a turn of the road, but will pluck them in the open. Or maybe in your wandering you come on a half-built house. You climb in through a window to look about. Here the stairs will go. The ice-box will be set against this wall. But if your companion is one of valor's minions, he will not be satisfied with this safe and agreeable research--this mild speculation on bath-rooms--this innocent placing of a stove. He must go aloft. He has seen a ladder and yearns to climb it. The footing on the second story is bad enough. If you fall between the joists, you will clatter to the bas.e.m.e.nt. It is hard to realize that such an open breezy place will ever be cosy and warm with fires, and that sleepy folk will here lie snugly a-bed on frosty mornings.

But still the brazen fellow is not content. A ladder leads horribly to the roof. For myself I will climb until the tip of my nose juts out upon the world--until it sprouts forth to the air from the topmost timbers: But I will go no farther. But if your companion sees a scaffold around a chimney, he must perch on it. For him, a dizzy plank is a pleasant belvedere from which to view the world.

The bravery of this kind of person is not confined to these few matters.

If you happen to go driving with him, he will--if the horse is of the kind that distends his nostrils--on a sudden toss you the reins and leave you to guard him while he dispatches an errand. If it were a motor car there would be a brake to hold it. If it were a boat, you might throw out an anchor. A butcher's cart would have a metal drag. But here you sit defenseless--tied to the whim of a horse--greased for a runaway. The beast Dobbin turns his head and holds you with his hard eye. There is a convulsive movement along his back, a preface, it may be, to a sudden seizure. A real friend would have loosed the straps that run along the horse's flanks. Then, if any deviltry take him, he might go off alone and have it out.

I have in mind a livery stable in Kalamazoo. Myself and another man of equal equestrianism were sent once to bring out a thing called a surrey and a pair of horses. Do you happen to be acquainted with Blat's Horse Food? If your way lies among the smaller towns, you must know its merits. They are proclaimed along the fences and up the telegraph poles. Drinking-troughs speak its virtues. Horses thrive on Blat's Food. They neigh for it. A flashing lithograph is set by way of testament wherever traffic turns or lingers. Do you not recall the picture? A great red horse rears himself on his hind legs. His forward hoofs are extended. He is about to trample someone under foot. His nostrils are wide. He is unduly excited. It cannot be food, it must be drink that stirs him. He is a fearful spectacle.

There was such a picture on the wall of the stable.

"Have you any horses," I asked nervously, jerking my thumb toward the wall, "any horses that have been fed on just ordinary food? Some that are a little tired?"

For I remembered how Mr. Winkle once engaged horses to take the Pickwickians out to Manor Farm and what mishaps befell them on the way.

"'He don't shy, does he?' inquired Mr. Pickwick.

"'Shy, sir?--He wouldn't shy if he was to meet a vagginload of monkeys with their tails burnt off.'"

But how Mr. Pickwick dropped his whip, how Mr. Winkle got off his tall horse to pick it up, how he tried in vain to remount while his horse went round and round, how they were all spilt out upon the bridge and how finally they walked to Manor Farm--these things are known to everybody with an inch of reading.

"'How far is it to Dingley Dell?' they asked.

"'Better er seven mile.'

"'Is it a good road?'

"'No, t'ant.'...

"The depressed Pickwickians turned moodily away, with the tall quadruped, for which they all felt the most unmitigated disgust, following slowly at their heels."

"Have you any horses," I repeated, "that have not been fed on Blat's Food--horses that are, so to speak, on a diet?"

In the farthest stalls, hidden from the sunlight and the invigorating infection of the day, two beasts were found with sunken chests and hollow eyes, who took us safely to our destination on their hands and knees.

As you may suspect, I do not enjoy riding. There is, it is true, one saddle horse in North Carolina that fears me. If time still spares him, that horse I could ride with content. But I would rather trust myself on the top of a wobbly step-ladder than up the sides of most horses. I am not quite of a mind, however, with Samuel Richardson who owned a hobby-horse and rode on his hearth-rug in the intervals of writing "Pamela." It is likely that when he had rescued her from an adventure of more than usual danger--perhaps her villainous master has been concealed in her closet--perhaps he has been hiding beneath her bed--it is likely, having brought her safely off, the author locked her in the b.u.t.tery against a fresh attack. Then he felt, good man, in need of exercise. So while he waits for tea and m.u.f.fins, he leaps upon his rocking-horse and prances off. As for the hobby-horse itself, I have not heard whether it was of the usual nursery type, or whether it was built in the likeness of the leather camels of a German steamship.

I need hardly say that these confessions of my cowardice are for your ear alone. They must not get abroad to smirch me. If on a country walk I have taken to my heels, you must not twit me with poltroonery. If you charge me with such faint-heartedness while other persons are present, I'll deny it flat. When I sit in the company of ladies at dinner, I dissemble my true nature, as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat.

If then, you taunt me, for want of a better escape, I shall turn it to a jest. I shall engage the table flippantly: Hear how preposterously the fellow talks!--he jests to satisfy a grudge. In appearance I am whole as the marble, founded as a rock.

But really some of us cowards are diverting persons. The lady who directed me against the cow is a most delightful woman with whom I hope I shall again sit at dinner. A witty lady of my acquaintance shivers when a cat walks in the room. A man with whom I pa.s.s the time pleasantly and profitably, although he will not admit a fear of ghosts, still will not sleep in an empty house because of possible noises. I would rather spend a Sat.u.r.day evening in the company of the cowardly Falstaff than of the bold Hotspur. If it were not for sack, villainous sack, and a few spots upon his front, you would go far to find a better companion than the fat old Knight.

Bob Acres was not much for valor and he made an a.s.s of himself when he went to fight a duel, yet one could have sat agreeably at mutton with him.

But these things are slight. It matters little whether or not one can mount a ladder comfortably. Now that motors have come in, horses stand remotely in our lives. Nor is it of great moment whether or not we fear to be out of fashion--whether we halt in the wearing of a wrong-shaped hat, or glance fearfully around when we choose from a line of forks. Superst.i.tions rest mostly on the surface and are not deadly in themselves. A man can be true of heart even if he will not sit thirteen at table. But there is a kind of fear that is disastrous to them that have it. It is the fear of the material universe in all its manifestations. There are persons, stout both of chest and limb, who fear drafts and wet feet. A man who is an elephant of valor and who has been feeling this long while a gentle contempt for such as myself, will cry out if a soft breeze strikes against his neck. If a foot slips to the gutter and becomes wet, he will dose himself. Achilles did not more carefully nurse his heel. For him the lofty dome of air is packed with malignant germs. The round world is bottled with contagion. A strong man who, in his time, might have slain the Sofi, is as fearful of his health as though the plague were up the street. Calamities beset him.

The slightest sniffling in his nose is the trumpet for a deep disorder.

Existence is but a moving hazard. Life for him, poor fellow, is but a room with a window on the night and a storm beating on the cas.e.m.e.nt. G.o.d knows, it is better to grow giddy on a ladder than to think that this majestic earth is such an universal pestilence.

The Asperities of the Early British Reviewers

Book reviewers nowadays direct their attention, for the most part, to the worthy books and they habitually neglect those that seem beneath their regard. On a rare occasion they a.s.sail an unprofitable book, but even this is often but a bit of practice. They swish a bludgeon to try their hand.

They only take their anger, as it were, upon an outing, lest with too close housing it grow pallid and shrink in girth. Or maybe they indulge themselves in humor. Perhaps they think that their pages grow dull and that ridicule will restore the balance. They throw it in like a drunken porter to relieve a solemn scene. I fancy that editors of this baser sort keep on their shelves one or two volumes for their readers' sport and mirth. I read recently a review of an historical romance--a last faltering descendant of the race--whose author in an endeavor to restore the past, had made too free a use of obsolete words. With what playfulness was he held up to scorn! Mary come up, sweet chuck! How his quaint phrasing was turned against him! What a merry fellow it is who writes, how sharp and caustic!

There's pepper on his mood.

But generally, it is said, book reviews are too flattering. Professor Bliss Perry, being of this opinion, offered some time ago a statement that "Magazine writing about current books is for the most part bland, complaisant, pulpy.... The Pedagogue no longer gets a chance at the gifted young rascal who needs, first and foremost, a premonitory whipping; the youthful genius simply stays away from school and carries his unwhipped talents into the market place." At a somewhat different angle of the same opinion, Dr. Crothers suggests in an essay that instead of being directed to the best books, we need to be warned from the worst. He proposes to set up a list of the Hundred Worst Books. For is it not better, he asks, to put a lighthouse on a reef than in the channel? The open sea does not need a bell-buoy to sound its depth.

On these hints I have read some of the book criticisms of days past to learn whether they too were pulpy--whether our present silken criticism always wore its gloves and perfumed itself, or whether it has fallen to this smiling senility from a sterner youth. Although I am usually a rusty student, yet by diligence I have sought to mend my knowledge that I might lay it out before you. Lately, therefore, if you had come within our Public Library, you would have found me in one of these attempts. Here I went, scrimping the other business of the day in order that I might be at my studies before the rush set in up town. Mine was the alcove farthest from the door, where are the mustier volumes that fit a bookish student. So if your quest was the lighter books--such verse and novels as present fame attests--you did not find me. I was hooped and bowed around the corner. I am no real scholar, but I study on a spurt. For a whole week together I may read old plays until their jigging style infects my own. I have set myself against the lofty histories, although I tire upon their lower slopes and have not yet persisted to their upper and windier ridges. I have, also, a pretty knowledge of the Queen Anne wits and feel that I must have dogged and spied upon them while they were yet alive. But in general, although I am curious in the earlier chapters of learning, I lag in the inner windings. However, for a fortnight I have sat piled about with old reviews, whose leather rots and smells, in order that I might study the fading criticisms of the past.

Until rather near the end of the eighteenth century, those who made their living in England by writing were chiefly publishers' hacks, fellows of the Dunciad sucking their quills in garrets and selling their labor for a crust, for the reading public was too small to support them. Or they found a patron and gave him a sugared sonnet for a pittance, or strained themselves to the length of an Ode for a berth in his household. Or frequently they supported a political party and received a place in the Red Tape Office. But even in politics, on account of the smallness of the reading public and the politicians' indifference to its approval, their services were of slight account. Too often a political office was granted from a pocket borough in which a restricted electorate could be bought at a trifling expense. To gain support inside the House of Commons was enough.

The greater public outside could be ignored. This att.i.tude changed with the coming of the French Revolution. Here was a new force unrealized before--that of a crowd which, being unrepresented and with a real grievance, could, when it liked, take a club and go after what it wanted.

For the first time in many years in England--such were the whiffs of liberty across the Channel--the power of an unrepresented public came to be known. It was not that the English crowd had as yet taken the club in its hands, but there were new thoughts abroad in the world, and there was the possibility to be regarded. To influence this larger public, therefore, men who could write came little by little into a larger demand. And as writers were comparatively scarce, all kinds--whether they wrote poems or prose--were pressed into service. It is significant, too, that it was in the decades subjected to the first influence of the French Revolution that the English daily paper took its start as an agent to influence public opinion.

It was therefore rather more than one hundred years ago that writers came to a better prosperity. They came out of their garrets, took rooms on the second floor, polished their bra.s.ses and became Persons. I can fancy that a writer after spending a morning in the composition of a political article on the whisper of a Cabinet Minister, wrote a sonnet after lunch, and a book review before dinner. Let us see in what mood they took their advancement! Let us examine their temper--but in book reviewing only, for that alone concerns us! In doing this, we have the advantage of knowing the final estimate of the books they judged. Like the witch, we have looked into the seeds of time and we know "which grain will grow and which will not."

In 1802, when the Edinburgh Review (which was the first of its line to acquire distinction) came into being, the pa.s.sion of the times found voice in politics. Both Whigs and Tories had been alarmed by the excesses of the French Revolution; both feared that England was drifting the way of France; each had a remedy, but opposed and violently maintained. The Tories put the blame of the Revolution on the compromises of Louis XVI, and accordingly they were hostile to any political change. The Whigs, on the other hand, saw the rottenness of England as a cause that would incite her to revolution also, and they advocated reform while yet there was time. The general fear of a revolution gave the government of England to the Tories, and kept them in power for several decades. And England was ripe for trouble. The government was but nominally representative. No Catholic, Jew, Dissenter or poor man had a vote or could hold a seat in Parliament.

Industrially and economically the country was in the condition of France in the year of Arthur Young's journey. The poverty was abject, the relief futile and the hatred of the poor for the rich was inflammatory.

George III, slipping into feebleness and insanity, yet jealous of his unconst.i.tutional power, was a vacillating despot, quarrelling with his Commons and his Ministers. Lord Eldon as Chancellor, but with as nearly the control of a Premier as the King would allow, was the staunch upholder of all things that have since been disproved and discarded. Bagehot said of him that "he believed in everything which it is impossible to believe in."

France and Napoleon threatened across the narrow channel. England still growled at the loss of her American colonies. It was as yet the England of the old regime. The great reforms were to come thirty years later--the Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, the abolishment of slavery in the colonies, the suppression of the pocket boroughs, the gross bribery of elections, the cleaning of the poor laws and the courts of justice.

It was in this dark hour of English history that the writers polished their bra.s.ses and set up as Persons. And if the leading articles that they wrote of mornings stung and snapped with venom, it is natural that the book reviews on which they spent their afternoons had also some vinegar in them, especially if they concerned books written by those of the opposition. And other writers, even if they had no political connection, borrowed their manners from those who had. It was the animosities of party politics that set the general tone. Billingsgate that had grown along the wharves of the lower river, was found to be of service in Parliament and gave a spice and sparkle even to a book review. Presently a large part of literary England wore the tags of political preference. Writers were often as clearly distinguished as were the ladies in the earlier day, when Addison wrote his paper on party patches. There were seats of Moral Philosophy to be handed out, under-secretaryships, consular appointments. It is not enough to say that Francis Jeffrey was a reviewer, he was as well a Whig and was running a Review that was Whig from the front cover to the back. Leigh Hunt was not merely a poet, for he was also a radical, and therefore in the opinions of Tories, a believer in immorality and indecency. No matter how innocent a t.i.tle might appear, it was held in suspicion, on the chance that it a.s.sailed the Ministry or endangered the purity of England. William Gifford was more than merely the editor of the Quarterly Review, for he was as well a Tory editor whose duty it was to pry into Whiggish roguery. Lockhart and Wilson, who wrote in Blackwood's, were Tories tooth and nail, biting and scratching for party. Nowadays, literature, having found the public to be its most profitable patron, works hard and even abjectly for its favor.

Although there are defects in the arrangement, it must be confessed that the divorce of literature from politics contributes to the general peace of the household.

The Edinburgh Review was founded in 1802, the Quarterly Review in 1809, Blackwood's Magazine in 1817. These three won distinction among others of less importance, and from them only I quote. In 1802, when Tory rule was strongest and Lord Eldon flourished, there was living in Edinburgh a group of young men who were for the most part briefless barristers. Their case was worse because they were Whigs. Few cases came their way and no offices.

These young men were Francis Jeffrey, Francis Horner, Henry Brougham, and there was also Sydney Smith who had just come to Edinburgh from an English country parish. The eldest was thirty-one, the youngest twenty-three.

Although all of them had brilliant lives before them, not one of them had made as yet more than a step toward his accomplishment. Sydney Smith had been but lately an obscure curate, buried in the middle of Salisbury Plain, away from all contact with the world. Francis Jeffrey had been a hack writer in London, had studied medicine, had sought unsuccessfully a government position in India, had written poor sonnets, and was now lounging with but a scanty occupation in the halls of the law courts.

Francis Horner had just come to the Scottish bar straight from his studies.

Henry Brougham, who in days to come was to be Lord Chancellor of England and to whose skill in debate the pa.s.sing of the Great Reform bill of 1832 is partly due, is also just admitted to the practice of the law.

The founding of the Review was casual. These men were accustomed to meet of an evening for general discussion and speculation. It happened one night as they sat together--the place was a garret if legend is to be believed--that Sydney Smith lamented that their discussions came to nothing, for they were all Whigs, all converted to the cause; whereas if they could only bring their opinions to the outside public they could stir opinion. From so slight a root the Review sprouted. Sydney Smith was made editor and kept the position until after the appearance of the first number, when Jeffrey succeeded him. The Review became immediately a power, appearing quarterly and striking its blows anonymously against a sluggish government, lashing the Tory writers, and taking its part, which is of greater consequence, in the promulgation of the Whig reforms which were to ripen in thirty years and convert the old into modern England. In the destruction of outworn things, it was, as it were, a magazine of Whig explosives.

The Quarterly Review was the next to come and it was Tory. John Murray, the London publisher, had been the English distributor of the Edinburgh Review.

In 1809, two considerations moved him to found in London a review to rival the Scotch periodical. First the Tory party was being hard hit by the Edinburgh Review and there was need of defense and retaliation. In the second place, John Murray saw that if his publishing house was to flourish, it must provide this new form of literature that had become so popular.

For the very shortness of the essays and articles, in which extensive conditions were summarized for quick digestion, had met with English approval as well as Scotch. People had become accustomed, says Bagehot, of taking "their literature in morsels, as they take sandwiches on a journey."

Murray appealed to George Canning, then in office, for a.s.sistance and was introduced to William Gifford as a man capable of the undertaking, who would also meet the favor of the government party. The rise of the Quarterly Review was not brilliant. It did not fill the craving for novelty, inasmuch as the Edinburgh was already in the field. Furthermore, there is not the opportunity in defense for as conspicuous gallantry as in offensive warfare.