At the end of January, I became Flora's accepted fiance.

In February, I moved with the Brodies to Florence, where I was able to introduce them to all my kind and hospitable friends,—the Berensons, Mr. Charles Loeser, Mr. Herbert Horne, and Mr. Hobart Cust. Flora was in every way a great success, and commenced a little book on Nera di Bicci for Bell's Great Painters Series. She was invited to contribute to the Burlington Magazine. It was quite a primavera. Our marriage was arranged for the following February. The Brodies were to return to Hootawa after it was vacated by the American summer tenants. I was to join them for Christmas on my return from America, where I was compelled to go in order to settle my affairs. My father, Lorenzo Q. Sweat, of Chicago, evinced great pleasure at my approaching union with an old Scotch family; he promised me a handsome allowance considering his recent losses in the meat packing swindle—I mean trade. I was able to dissuade him from coming to Europe for the ceremony. After delivering two successful lectures on Pietro Cavallini in the early fall at mothers' soirees, I sailed for Liverpool.

There was deep snow on the ground when I arrived at Hootawa in the early afternoon of a cold December day. The Colonel met me at the station in the uniform of the 69th, attended by two gillies holding torches.

"There will just be enough light to glance at the pictures before tea," he said gaily, and in three-quarters of an hour I was embracing Flora and saluting her mother, who were in the hall to greet me. For the most part Hootawa was a typical old Scotch castle, with extinguisher turrets; an incongruous Jacobean addition rather enhancing its picturesque ensemble.

"You'll see better pictures here than anything in Rome," remarked the Colonel; but Flora giggled rather nervously.

In the smoking-room and library, I inspected, with assumed interest, works by the little masters of Holland, and some more admirable examples of the English Eighteenth Century School. Faithful to my promise, I pronounced every one of them to be little gems, unsurpassed by anything in the private collections of America or Europe. We passed into the drawing-room and parlour with the same success. In the latter apartment the Colonel, grasping my arm, said impressively: "Now you will see our great treasure, the Brodie Vandyck, of which Flora has so often told you. I have never lent it for exhibition, for, as you know, we are rather superstitious about it. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in 1780, offered to paint the portraits of the whole family in exchange for the picture. Dr. Waagen describes it in his well-known work. Dr. Bode came from Berlin on purpose to see it some years ago, when he left a certificate (which was scarcely necessary) of its undoubted authenticity. I was so touched by his genuine admiration, that I presented him with a small Dutch picture which he admired in the smoking-room, and thought not unworthy of placing in the Berlin Gallery. I expect you know Dr. Bode."

"Not personally," I said, as we stepped into the Long Gallery.

It was a delightful panelled room, with oak-beamed ceiling. Between the mullioned windows were old Venetian mirrors and seventeenth-century chairs. At the end, concealed by a rich crimson brocade, hung the Vandyck, the only picture on the walls.

It was the Colonel himself who drew aside the curtain which veiled discreetly the famous picture of Sir Rupert Brodie at the age of thirty- two, in the beautiful costume of the period. The face was unusually pallid; it was just the sort of portrait you would expect to walk out of its frame.

"You have never seen a finer Vandyck, I am sure," said Mrs. Brodie, anxiously. I examined the work with great care, employing a powerful pocket-glass. There was an awkward pause for about five minutes.

"Well, sir," said the Colonel, sternly, "have you nothing to say?"

"It is a very interesting and excellent work, though not by Vandyck; it is by Jamieson, his Scotch pupil; the morphic forms . . ."—but I got no further. There was a loud clap of thunder, and Flora fainted away. I was hastening to her side when her father's powerful arm seized my collar. He ran me down the gallery and out by an egress which led into the entrance hall, where some menial opened the massive door. I felt one stinging blow on my face; then, bleeding and helpless, I was kicked down the steps into the snow from which I was picked up, half stunned, by one of the gillies.

"Eh, mon, hae ye seen the bogles at Hootawa?" he observed.

"It will be very civil of you if you will conduct me to the depot, or the nearest caravanserai," I replied.

I never saw Flora again.'

* * * * *

'But what has happened about the ghost, Mr. Sweat? You never told us anything about it. Did you ever see it?' asked one of the listeners in a disappointed tone.

'Oh, I forgot; no, that was rather tragic. Sir Rupert Brodie never appeared again, not even in the spare bedroom; he seemed offended. Eventually his portrait was sent up to London, where Mr. Lionel Cust pointed out that it could not have been painted until after Vandyck's death, at which time Sir Rupert was only ten years old. Indeed, there was some uncertainty whether the picture represented Sir Rupert at all. Mr. Bowyer Nichols found fault with the costume, which belonged to an earlier date prior to Sir Rupert's birth. Colonel Brodie never recovered from the shock. He resides chiefly at Harrogate. Gradually the servants all gave notice, and Hootawa ceased to attract Americans. Poor Flora! I ought to have remembered my promise; but the habit was too strong in me. Sir Oliver Lodge, I believe, has an explanation for the non-appearance of the phantom after the events I have described. He regards it as a good instance of bypsychic duality—the fortuitous phenomenon by which spirits are often uncertain as to whom they really represent. But I am only an art critic, not a physicist.'

To HERBERT HORNE, ESQ.



THE ELEVENTH MUSE.

In the closing years of the last century I held the position of a publisher's hack. Having failed in everything except sculpture, I became publisher's reader and adviser. It was the age of the 'dicky dongs,' and, of course, I advised chiefly the publication of deciduous literature, or books which dealt with the history of decay. The business, unfortunately, closed before my plans were materialised; but there was a really brilliant series of works prepared for an ungrateful public. A cheap and abridged edition of Gibbon was to have heralded the 'Ruined Home' Library, as we only dealt with the decline and fall of things, and eschewed Motley in both senses of the word. 'Bad Taste in All Ages' (twelve volumes edited by myself) would have rivalled some of Mr. Sidney Lee's monumental undertakings. It was a memory of these unfulfilled designs which has turned my thoughts to an old notebook—the skeleton of what was destined never to be a book in being.

I have often wondered why no one has ever tried to form an anthology of bad poetry. It would, of course, be easy enough to get together a dreary little volume of unreadable and unsaleable song. There are, however, certain stanzas so exquisite in their unconscious absurdity that an inverted immortality may be claimed for them. It is essential that their authors should have been serious, because parody and light verse have been carried to such a state of perfection that a tenth muse has been created—the muse of Mr. Owen Seaman and the late St. John Hankin for example. When the Anakim, men of old, which were men of renown—Shelley, Keats, or Tennyson—become playful, I confess to a feeling of nervousness: the unpleasant, hot sensation you experience when a distinguished man makes a fool of himself. Rossetti—I suppose from his Italian origin—was able to assume motley without loss of dignity, and that wounded Titan, the late W. E. Henley, was another exception. Both he and Rossetti had the faculty of being foolish, or obscene, without impairing the high seriousness of their superb poetic gifts.

But I refer to more serious folly—that of the disciples of Silas Wegg. Some friends of mine in the country employed a ladies'-maid with literary proclivities. She was never known to smile; the other servants thought her stuck up; she was a great reader of novels, poetry, and popular books on astronomy. One day she gave notice, departed at the end of a month, left no address, and never applied for a character. Beneath the mattress of her bed was found a manuscript of poems. One of these, addressed to our satellite, is based on the scientific fact (of which I was not aware until I read her poem) that we see only one side of the moon. The ode contains this ingenious stanza:—

O beautiful moon! When I gaze on thy face Careering among the boundaries of space, The thought has often come to my mind If I ever shall see thy glorious behind.

It was my pleasure to communicate this verse to our greatest living conversationalist, a point I mention because it may, in consequence, be already known to those who, like myself, enjoy the privileges of his inimitable talk. I possess the original manuscript of the poem, and can supply copies of the remainder to the curious.

In a magazine managed by the physician of a well-known lunatic asylum I found many inspiring examples. The patients are permitted to contribute: they discuss art and literature, subject of course to a stringent editorial discretion. As you might suppose, poetry occupies a good deal of space. It was from that source of clouded English I culled the following:—

His hair is red and blue and white, His face is almost tan, His brow is wet with blood and sweat, He steals from where he can: And looks the whole world in the face, A drunkard and a man.

I think we have here a Henley manque. In robustious assertion you will not find anything to equal it in the Hospital Rhymes of that author. I was so much struck by the poem that I obtained permission to correspond with the poet. I discovered that another Sappho might have adorned our literature; that a mute inglorious Elizabeth Barrett was kept silent in Darien—for the asylum was in the immediate vicinity of the Peak in Derbyshire. Of the correspondence which ensued I venture to quote only one sentence:

'I was brought up to love beauty; my home was more than cultured; it was refined; we took in the Art Journal regularly.'

Of all modern artists, I suppose that Sir Edward Burne-Jones has inspired more poetry than any other. A whole school of Oxford poets emerged from his fascinating palette, and he is the subject of perhaps the most exquisite of all the Poems and Ballads—the 'Dedication'—which forms the colophon to that revel of rhymes. I sometimes think that is why his art is out of fashion with modern painters, who may inspire dealers, but would never inspire poets. For who could write a sonnet on some uncompromising pieces of realism by Mr. Rothenstein, Mr. John, or Mr. Orpen? Theirs is an art which speaks for itself. But Sir Edward Burne- Jones seems to have dazzled the undergrowth of Parnassus no less than the higher slopes. In a long and serious epic called 'The Pageant of Life,' dealing with every conceivable subject, I found:—

With some the mention of Burne-Jones Elicits merely howls and groans; But those who know each inch of art Believe that he can bear his part.

I don't remember what he could bear. Perhaps it referred to his election at the Royal Academy. Then, again, in a 'Vision' of the next world, a poet described how—

Byron, Burne-Jones, and Beethoven, Charlotte Bronte and Chopin are there.

I wonder if this has escaped the eagle eye of Mr. Clement Shorter. Though perhaps the most delightful nonsense, for which, I fear, this great painter is partly responsible, may be found in a recent poem addressed to the memory of my old friend, Simeon Solomon:—

More of Rossetti? Yes: You follow'd than Burne-Jones, Your depth of colour his than that of monochromes! Yes; amber lilies poured, I say, A joy for thee, than poet's bay.

But while true art refines and often stimulates, ART does, at times, I say, sit grief within our gates! Art causes men to weep at times— If you may heed these falt'ring rhymes.

A small volume of lyrics once sent to me for review afforded another flower for my garland:—

Where in the spring-time leaves are wet, Oh, lay my love beneath the shades, Where men remember to forget, And are forgot in Hades.

But I have given enough examples for what would form Part I. of the English anthology. Part II. would consist of really bad verses from really great poetry.

Auspicious Reverence, hush all meaner song,

is one of the most pompously stupid lines in English poetry. Arnold did not hesitate to quote instances from Shakespeare:—

Till that Bellona's bridegroom, lapp'd in proof, Confronted him with self-comparisons.

You would have to sacrifice Browning, because it might fairly be concluded—well, anything might be concluded about Browning. Byron is, of course, a mine. Arthur Hugh Clough is, perhaps, the 'flawless numskull,' as, I think, Swinburne calls him. Tennyson surpassed

A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman,

in many of his serious poems.

To travellers indeed the sea Must always interesting be

I have heard ascribed to Wordsworth, but wrongly, I believe. I should, of course, exclude from the collection living writers; only the select dead would be requisitioned. They cannot retort. And the entertaining volume would illustrate that curious artistic law—the survival of the unfittest, of which we are only dimly beginning to realise the significance. It is like the immortality of the invalid, now recognised by all men of science. You see it manifested in the plethora of memoirs. All new books not novels are about great dead men by unimportant little living ones. When I am asked, as I have been, to write recollections of certain 'people of importance,' as Dante says, I feel the force of that law very keenly.

To FREDERICK STANLEY SMITH, ESQ.



SWINBLAKE: A PROPHETIC BOOK, WITH HOME ZARATHRUSTS.

Every student of Blake has read, or must read, Mr. Swinburne's extraordinary essay, William Blake: a critical study, of which a new edition was recently published. It would be idle at this time of day to criticise. Much has been discovered, and more is likely to be discovered, about Blake since 1866. The interest of the book, for us, is chiefly reflex. And does not the great mouth laugh at a gift, if scheduled in an examination paper with the irritating question, 'From what author does this quotation come?' would probably elicit the reply, 'Swinburne.' Yet it occurs in one of Blake's prophetic books.

How fascinated Blake would have been with Mr. Swinburne if by some exquisite accident he had lived after him. We should have had, I fancy, another Prophetic Book; something of this kind:

Swinburne roars and shakes the world's literature— The English Press, and a good many contemporaries— Tennyson palls, Browning is found— Only a brownie— The mountains divide, the Press is unanimous— Aylwin is born— On a perilous path, on the cliff of immortality— I met Theodormon— He seemed sad: I said, 'Why are you sad— Are you writing the long-promised life— Of Dante Gabriel Rossetti?'— He sighed and said, 'No, not that— Not that, my child— I consigned the task to William Michael— Pre-Raphaelite memoirs are cheap to-day— You can have them for a sextet or an octave.'— I brightened and said, 'Then you are writing a sonnet?' He shook his head and said it was symbolical— For six and eightpence!— A golden rule: Never lend only George Borrow—

A new century had begun, and I asked Theodormon what he was doing on that path and where Mr. Swinburne was. Beneath us yawned the gulf of oblivion.

'Be careful, young man, not to tumble over; are you a poet or a biographer?'

I explained that I was merely a tourist. He gave a sigh of relief: 'I have an appointment here with my only disciple, Mr. Howlglass; if you are not careful he may write an appreciation of you.'

'My dear Theodormon, if you will show me how to reach Mr. Swinburne I will help you.'

'I swear by the most sacred of all oaths, by Aylwin, you shall see Swinburne.'

Just then we saw a young man coming along the path with a Kodak and a pink evening paper. He seemed pleased to see me, and said, 'May I appreciate you?'

I gave the young man a push and he fell right over the cliff. Theodormon threw down after him a heavy-looking book which, alighting on his skull, smashed it. 'My preserver,' he cried, 'you shall see what you like, you shall do what you like, except write my biography. Swinburne is close at hand, though he occasionally wanders. His permanent address is the Peaks, Parnassus. Perhaps you would like to pay some other calls as well.'

I assented.

We came to a printing-house and found William Morris reverting to type and transmitting art to the middle classes.

'The great Tragedy of Topsy's life,' said Theodormon, 'is that he converted the middle classes to art and socialism, but he never touched the unbending Tories of the proletariat or the smart set. You would have thought, on homoeopathic principles, that cretonne would appeal to cretins.'

'Vale, vale,' cried Charles Ricketts from the interior.

I was rather vexed, as I wanted to ask Ricketts his opinions about various things and people and to see his wonderful collection. Shannon, however, presented me with a lithograph and a copy of 'Memorable Fancies,' by C. R.

How sweet I roamed from school to school, But I attached myself to none; I sat upon my ancient Dial And watched the other artists' fun.

Will Rothenstein can guard the faith, Safe for the Academic fold; 'Twas very wise of William Strang, What need have I of Chantrey's gold?

Let the old masters be my share, And let them fall on B. B.'s corn; Let the Uffizi take to Steer— What do I care for Herbert Horne

Or the stately Holmes of England, Whose glories never fade; The Constable of Burlington, Who holds the Oxford Slade.

It's Titian here and Titian there, And come to have a look; But 'thanks of course Giorgione,' With Mr. Herbert Cook.

For MacColl is an intellectual thing, And Hugh P. Lane keeps Dublin awake, And Fry to New York has taken wing, And Charles Holroyd has got the cake.

After turning round a rather sharp corner I began to ask Theodormon if John Addington Symonds was anywhere to be found. He smiled, and said: 'I know why you are asking. Of course he is here, but we don't see much of him. He published, at the Kelmscott, the other day, "An Ode to a Grecian Urning." The proceeds of the sale went to the Arts and Krafts Ebbing Guild, but the issue of "Aretino's Bosom, and other Poems," has been postponed.'

We now reached a graceful Renaissance building covered with blossoms; on each side of the door were two blue-breeched gondoliers smoking calamus. Theodormon hurried on, whispering: 'That is where he lives. If you want to see Swinburne you had better make haste, as it is getting late, and I want you to inspect the Castalian spring.'

The walking became very rough just here; it was really climbing. Suddenly I became aware of dense smoke emerging with a rumbling sound from an overhanging rock.

'I had no idea Parnassus was volcanic now,' I remarked.

'No more had we,' said Theodormon; 'it is quite a recent eruption due to the Celtic movement. The rock you see, however, is not a real rock, but a sham rock. Mr. George Moore has been turned out of the cave, and is still hovering about the entrance.'

Looming through the smoke, which hung like a veil of white muslin between us, I was able to trace the silhouette of that engaging countenance which Edouard Manet and others have immortalised. 'Go away,' he said: 'I do not want to speak to you.' 'Come, come, Mr. Moore,' I rejoined, 'will you not grant a few words to a really warm admirer?'—but he had faded away. Then a large hand came out of the cavern and handed me a piece of paper, and a deep voice with a slight brogue said: 'If you see mi darlin' Gosse give this to him.' The paper contained these verses:—

Georgey Morgie, kidden and sly, Kissed the girls and made them cry; What the girls came out to say George never heard, for he ran away.

W. B. Y

We skirted the edge of a thick wood. A finger-post pointed to the Castalian spring, and a notice-board indicated Trespassers will be prosecuted. The lease to be disposed of. Apply to G. K. Chesterton.

Soon we came to an open space in which was situated a large, rather dilapidated marble tank. I noticed that the water did not reach further than the bathers' stomachs. Theodormon anticipated my surprise. 'Yes, we have had to depress the level of the water during the last few years out of compliment to some of the bathers, and there have been a good many bathing fatalities of a very depressing description.'

'You don't mean to say,' I replied, 'Richard le Gallienne?'

'Hush! hush! he was rescued.'

'Stephen Phillips?' I asked, anxiously.

'Well, he couldn't swim, of course, but he floated; you see he had the Sidney Colvin lifebelt on, and that is always a great assistance.'

'Not,' I almost shrieked, 'my favourite poet, the author of "Lord 'a Muzzy don't you fret. Missed we De Wet. Missed we De Wet"?'

Theodormon became very grave. 'We do not know any of their names,' he said. 'I will show you, presently, the Morgue. Perhaps you will be able to identify some of your friends. The Coroner has refused to open an inquest until Mr. John Lane can attend to give his evidence.'

I saw the Poet Laureate trying very hard to swim on his back. Another poet was sitting down on the marble floor so that the water might at least come up to his neck. Gazing disconsolately into the pellucid shallows I saw the revered and much-loved figures of Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr. Austin Dobson, and Mr. Edmund Gosse. 'Going for a dip?' said Theodormon. 'Thanks, we don't care about paddling,' Mr. Lang retorted.

'I hope it is not always so shallow,' I said to my guide.

'Oh, no; we have a new water-supply, but as the spring is in the nature of a public place, we won't turn on the fresh water until people have learnt to appreciate what is good. That handsome little marble structure which you see at the end of the garden is really the new Castalian Spring. At all events, that is where all the miracles take place. The old bath is terribly out of repair, in spite of plumbing.'

We then inspected a very neat little apartment mosaiced in gold. Round the walls were attractive drinking-fountains, and on each was written the name of the new water—I mean the new poet. Some of them I recognised: Laurence Binyon, A. E. Housman, Sturge Moore, Santayana, Arthur Symons, Herbert Trench, Henry Simpson, Laurence Housman, F. W. Tancred, Arthur Lyon Raile, William Watson, Hugh Austin.

'You see we have the very latest,' said Theodormon, 'provided it is always the best. I am sorry to say that some of the taps don't give a constant supply, but that is because the machinery wants oiling. Try some Binyon,' said my guide, filling a gold cup on which was wrought by some cunning craftsman the death of Adam and the martyrdom of the Blessed Christina. I found it excellent and refreshing, and observed that it was cheering to come across the excellence of sincerity and strength at a comparatively new source . . .

Mr. Swinburne was seated in an arbour of roses, clothed in a gold dalmatic, a birthday gift from his British Peers. Their names were embroidered in pearls on the border. I asked permission to read my address:—

There beats no heart by Cam or Isis (Where tides of poets ebb and flow), But guards Dolores as a crisis Of long ago.

A crisis bringing fire and wonder, A gift of some dim Eastern Mage, A firework still smouldering under The feet of middle age.

For you could love and hate and tell us Of almost everything, You made our older poets jealous, For you alone could sing.

In truth it was your splendid praises Which made us wake To glories hidden in the phrases Of William Blake.

No boy who sows his metric salads His tamer oats, But always steals from Swinburne's ballads The stronger notes.

'Do you play golf?' said Mr. Swinburne, handing me two little spheres such as are used in the royal game. And I heard no more; for I received a blow—whether delivered by Mr. Swinburne or the ungrateful Theodormon I do not know, but I found myself falling down the gulf of oblivion, and suddenly, with a dull thud, I landed on the remains of Howlglass. The softness of his head had really preserved me from what might have been a severe shock, because the distance from Parnassus to Fleet Street, as you know, is considerable, and the escalade might have been more serious. I reached my rooms in Half Moon Street, however, having seen only one star, with just a faint nostalgia for the realms into which for one brief day I was privileged to peep.

(1906.)



A MISLAID POET.

In the closing years of my favourite last century, when poetry was more discussed than it is now (at all events as a marketable commodity), few verse-writers were overlooked. Bosola's observation about 'the neglected poets of your time' could not be quoted with any propriety. Mr. John Lane would make long and laborious journeys on the District Railway, armed bag-a-pied, in order to discover the new and unpublished. Now he has shot over all the remaining preserves; laurels and bays, so necessary for the breed 'of men and women over-wrought,' have withered in the London soot. There was one bright creature, however, who escaped his rifle; she was brought down by another sportsman, and thus missed some of the fame which might have attached to her had she been trussed and hung in the Bodley Head. Poaching in the library at Thelema, I came across her by accident. Her song is not without significance.

In 1878 Georgiana Farrer mentioned on page 190 of her Miscellaneous Poems, 'I am old by sin entangled;' but this was probably a pious exaggeration. Only some one young and intellectually very vigorous could have penned her startling numbers. I suggest that she retained more of her youth than, from religious motives, she thought it proper to admit. In the 'eighties, when incense was burned in drawing-rooms, and people were talking about 'The Blessed Damozel,' she could write of Paradise:—

A home where Jesus Christ is King, A home where e'en Archangels sing, Where common wealth is shared by all, And God Himself lights up the Hall.

She was philosemite, and from the reference to Lord Beaconsfield we can easily date the following:—

You who doubt the truth of Scripture, Pray tell me, then, who are the Jews? Scattered in all lands and nations, Pray why their evidence refuse?

It seems to me you must be blind; Are they not daily gaining ground? We find them now in every land, And well-nigh ruling all around.

Their music is most sweet to hear; Jews were Rossini and Mozart, Mendelssohn, too, and Meyerbeer; Grisi in song could charm the heart.

The funds their princes hold in hand; Their merchants trade both near and far; Ill-used and robbed they long have been, Yet wealthy now they surely are.

In Germany who has great sway? Prince Bismarck, most will answer me; Our own Prime Minister retains A name that shows his pedigree.

Who after this will dare to say They nought in these strange people see; Do they not prove the Scripture true, And throw a light on history?

The twenty-five years that have elapsed since the poem was written must have convinced those innocent persons who 'saw nought' in our Israelitish compatriots. I never heard before that Prince Bismarck or Mozart was of Jewish extraction!

Mrs. Farrer was, of course, an evangelical, somewhat old-fashioned for so late a date; and fairly early in her volume she warns us of what we may expect. She is anxious to damp any undue optimism as to the lightness of her muse. When worldly, foolish people like Whistler and Pater were talking 'art for art's sake,' she could strike a decisive didactic blow:—

My voice like thunder may appear, Yet oft-times I have shed a tear Behind the peal, like rain in storm, To moisten those I would reform.

Then pardon if my stormy mood, Instead of blighting, does some good. Sooner a thunder-clap, think me, Than sunstroke sent in wrath on thee.

With a splendid Calvinism, too rare at that time, she would not argue beyond a certain limit; there was an edge, she realised, to every platform; an ounce of assertion is worth pounds of proof. Religious discussion after a time becomes barren:—

Then hundredfolds to sinners Must be repaid in Hell. If you think such men winners, We disagree. Farewell.

But to the person who is right (and Mrs. Farrer was never in a moment's doubt, though her prosody is influenced sometimes by the sceptical Matthew Arnold) there is no mean reward:—

I sparkle resplendent, A star in His crown, And glitter for ever, A gem of renown.

From internal evidence we can gauge her social position, while her views of caste appear in these radical days a trifle demode. Her metaphors of sin are all derived from the life of paupers:—

Paupers through their sinful folly Are workers of iniquity, Living on Jehovah's bounty, Wasting in abject poverty.

A pauper's funeral their end, No angels waft their souls on high; Rich they were thought on earth, perhaps, Yet far from wealth accursed they lie.

Who are the rich? God's Word declares, The men whose treasure is above— Those humble working gentlefolk Whose life flows on in deeds of love.

Despised in life I may remain, Misunderstood by rich and poor; An entrance yet I hope to gain To wealthy plains on endless shore.

No paupers in that heavenly land, The sons of God are rich indeed; His daughters all His treasures share; It will their highest hopes exceed.

Those paupers who are 'saved' are rewarded by material comforts such as graced the earthly home of Georgiana herself, one of the 'humble working gentlefolk.' She enjoys her own fireside with an almost Pecksniffian relish, and she profoundly observes, as she sits beside her hearth:—

Like forest trees men rise and grow: Good timber some will prove, Others decayed as fuel piled, Prepared are for that stove

That burns for ever, Tophet called, Heated by jealous heat, Adapted to destroy all chaff, And leaves unscorched the wheat.

Excellent Georgiana! She could not stand very much chaff of any kind, I suspect.

The alarming progress of ritualism in the 'eighties disturbed her considerably, though it inspired some of her more weighty verses. They should be favourites with Dr. Clifford and Canon Hensley Henson:—

Some men in our days cover over A body deformed with their sin: A cross worked in various colours, Forgetting that God looks within.

Alas! in our churches at present Simplicity seems quite despised; To represent things far above us Are heathenish customs revived.

This evil is spreading among us, And where will it end, can you tell? Join not with the misled around us, Take warning, my readers . . .

The veneration of the Blessed Virgin goaded her into composition of stanzas unparalleled in the whole literature of Protestantism:—

My readers, can you nowhere see A parallel to Israel's sin? The House of God, at home, abroad: Idols are there—that house within.

Who incense burns? are strange cakes made? What woman's chapel, decked with gold, Stands full of unchecked worshippers Like those idolaters of old?

The Blessed Virgin—blest she is That does not make her Heaven's Queen! Yet some are taught to worship her; What else does all this teaching mean?

What she denied to the Mother of God she accorded (rather daringly, I opine) to one Harriet, whose death and future are recorded in the following lines:—

Declining like the setting sun After a course divinely run, I saw a maiden passing fair Reposing on an easy chair.

A Bridegroom of celestial mien Came forth and claimed her for His Queen; One with His Father on His throne She lives entirely His own.

Harrietolatry, I thought, was confined to the members of the defunct Shelley Society. But every reader will feel the poignant truth of Mrs. Farrer's view of the Church of England—truer to-day than it could have been in the 'eighties:—

The Church of England—grand old ship— Toss'd is on a troubled sea! Her sails are rent, her decks are foul'd, Mutiny on board must be.

The winds of discord howl around, Wild disputers throw up foam, From high to low she's beat about; Frighten'd some who love her roam.

I do not know if the last word is intended for a pun, but I scarcely think it is likely.

I would like to reconstruct Mrs. Farrer's home, with its stiff Victorian chairs, its threaded antimacassars, its pictorial paper-weights, its wax flowers under glass shades, and the charming household porcelain from the Derby and Worcester furnaces. There must have been a sabbatic air of comfort about the dining-room which was soothing. I can see the engravings after Landseer: 'The Stag at Bay,' 'Dignity and Impudence'; or those after Martin: 'The Plains of Heaven,' and 'The Great Day of His Wrath'; and 'Blucher meeting Wellington,' after Maclise. I can see on each side of the mirror examples of the art of Daguerre, which have already begun to produce in us the same sentiment that we get from the early Tuscans; and on the mantelpiece a photograph of Harriet in a plush frame, the one touch of modernity in a room which was otherwise severely 1845. Then, on a bookshelf which hung above the old tea-caddy and cut- glass sugar-bowl, Georgiana's library—'Line upon Line,' 'Precept upon Precept,' 'Jane the Cottager,' 'Pinnock's Scripture History,' and a few costly works bound in the style of the Albert Memorial. The drawing-room, just a trifle damp, must have contained Mr. Hunt's 'Light of the World,' which Mrs. Farrer never quite learned to love, though it was a present from a missionary, and rendered fire and artificial light unnecessary during the winter months. Would that Mrs. Farrer's home-life had come under the magic lens of Mr. Edmund Gosse, for it would now be classic, like the household of Sir Thomas More.

Whatever its attractions, Mrs. Farrer was at times induced to go abroad, visiting, I imagine, only the Protestant cantons of Switzerland. She stayed, however, in Paris, which she apostrophises with Sibyllic candour:—

O city of pleasure, what did I see When passing through or staying in thee. Bright shone the sun above, blue was the sky, Everywhere music heard, none seemed to sigh. Beautiful carriages in Champs Elysee Filled with fair maidens on cushions easy. Such was the outer side; what was within? Most I was often told revelled in sin. Sad its fate since I left, sadder 'twill be If they go on in sin as seen by me. Let us hope, ere too late, warned by the past, They may seek pleasures more likely to last, Or, like to Babylon, it must decline, And o'er its ruins its lovers repine.

But London hardly fares much better, in spite of Mrs. Farrer's own residence, at Campden Hill, if I may hazard the locality:—

To the tomb they must go, Rich and poor all in woe, Strange motley throng. Wealth in its splendour weeps, Poverty silence keeps; None last here long. . . . So much for thee, London.

Except in a spiritual sense, her existence was not an eventful one. It was, I think, the loss of some neighbour's child which suggested:—

Nellarina, forced exotic, Born to bloom in region fair, Thou wert to me a narcotic, Hope I did thy lot to share.

Any near personal sorrow she does not seem to have experienced, I am glad to say, else she might have regarded it as a grievance the consequences of which one dares not contemplate; you feel that Some One would have heard of it in no measured terms. Certainty and content are, indeed, the dominating notes of her poetry rather than mere commonplace hope:—

I am bound for the land of Beulah, There all the guests sing Hallelujah. No longer time here let us squander, But on the good things promised ponder.

It would be futile to discuss the exact position on Parnassus of a lady whose throne was secured on a more celestial mountain, even more difficult of access. But I think we may claim for her an honourable place in that new Oxford school of poetry of which Professor Mackail officially knows little, and of which Dr. Warren (the President of Magdalen) is the distinguished living protagonist. With all her acrid Evangelicalism she was a good soul, for she was fond of animals and children, and kind to them both in her own way; so I am sure some of her dreams have been realised, even if there has reached her nostrils just a whiff of those tolerating purgatorial fires which, spelt differently, she believed to be permanently prepared for the vast majority of her contemporaries.

To MRS. CAREW.



GOING UP TOP.

During the closing years of the last century certain critics contracted a rather depressing habit of numbering men of letters, especially poets, as though they were overcoats in a cloak-room, or boys competing in an examination set by themselves. 'It requires very little discernment,' wrote the late Churton Collins, A.D. 1891, 'to foresee that among the English poets of the present century the first place will ultimately be assigned to Wordsworth, the second to Byron, and the third to Shelley.' Matthew Arnold, I fear, was the first to make these unsafe Zadkielian prognostications. He, if I remember correctly, gave Byron the first place and Wordsworth the second; but Swinburne, with his usual discernment, observed that English taste in that eventuality would be in the same state as it was at the end of the seventeenth century, which firmly believed that Fletcher and Jonson were the best of its poets.

But when is Ultimately? Obviously not the present moment. Byron does not hold the rank awarded him by the distinguished critic in 1891. The cruel test of the auctioneer's hammer has recently shown that Keats and Shelley are regarded as far more important by those unprejudiced judges, the book-dealers. Wordsworth, of course, is still one of the poets' poets, and the Spectator, that Mrs. Micawber of literature, will, of course, never desert him; but I doubt very much whether he has yet reached the harbour of Ultimately. His repellent personality has blinded a good many of us to his exquisite qualities; on the Greek Kalends of criticism, however, may I be there to see. I shall certainly vote for him if I am one of the examiners—or one of the cloak-room attendants.

It was against such kind of criticism that Whistler hurled his impatient epigram about pigeon-holes. And if it is absurd in regard to painting, how much more absurd is it in regard to the more various and less friable substances of literature. By the old ten-o'clock rule (I do not refer to Whistler's lecture), once observed in Board schools, no scripture could be taught after that hour. Once a teacher asked his class who was the wisest man. 'Solomon,' said a little boy. 'Right; go up top,' said the teacher. But there was a small pedant who, while never paying much attention to the lessons, and being usually at the bottom of the form in consequence, knew the regulations by heart. He interrupted with a shrill voice (for the clock had passed the hour), 'No, sir, please, sir; past ten o'clock, sir . . . Solon.' Thus it is, I fear, with critics of every generation, though they try very hard to make the time pass as slowly as possible.

But if invidious distinctions between great men are inexact and tiresome, I opine that it is ungenerous and ignoble to declare that when a great man has just died, we really cannot judge of him or his work because we have been his contemporaries. The caution of obituary notices seems to me cowardly, and the reviews of books are cowardly too. We have become Laodiceans. We are even fearful of exposing imposture in current literature lest we get into hot water with a publisher.

During a New Year week I was invited by Lord and Lady Lyonesse to a very diverting house-party. This peer, it will be remembered, is the well- known radical philanthropist who owed his title to a lifelong interest in the submerged tenth. Their house, Ivanhoe, is an exquisite gothic structure not unjustly regarded as the masterpiece of the late Sir Gilbert Scott: it overlooks the Ouse. Including our hosts we numbered forty persons, and the personnel, including valets, chauffeurs, and ladies'-maids brought by the guests, numbered sixty. In all, we were a hundred souls, assuming immortality for the chauffeurs and the five Scotch gardeners. On January 2nd somebody produced after dinner a copy of the Petit Parisien relating the plebiscite for the greatest Frenchman of the nineteenth century; another guest capped him with the Evening News list. The famous Pall Mall Gazette Academy of Forty was recalled with indifferent accuracy. Conversation was flagging; our hostess looked relieved; very soon we were all playing a variation of that most charming game, suck-pencil.

At first we decided to ignore the nineteenth century. The ten greatest living Englishmen were to be named by our votes. Bridge and billiard players were dragged to the polling-station in the green drawing-room. Lord Lyonesse and myself were the tellers. I shivered with excitement. One of the Ultimatelies of Churton Collins seemed to have arrived: it was Gotterdammerung—the Twilight of the Idols. And here is the result of the ballot, which I think every one will admit possesses extraordinary interest:

Hall Caine.

Marie Corelli.

Rudyard Kipling.

Lord Northcliffe.

Sir Thomas Lipton.

Hichens.

Chamberlain.

Barrie.

George Alexander.

Beerbohm Tree.

I ought to add, of course, that the guests were unusually intellectual. There were our host and hostess, their three sons—one is a scholar of King's College, Cambridge, another is at Balliol, and a third is a stockbroker; there were five M.P.'s with their wives (two Liberal Imperialists, two Liberal Unionists, and one real Radical), a Scotch peer with his wife and an Irish peer without one; a publisher and his wife; three Academicians; four journalists; an Irish poet, a horse-dealer, a picture-dealer, another stockbroker, an artist, two lady novelists, a baronet and his wife, three musicians; and Myself. I think the only point on which the sincerity of the voting might be doubted, is the ominous absence of any soldier's name on the list. Lord Lyonesse, however, is a firm upholder of the Hague Conference: like myself, he is a pro-Boer, but he will not allow any reference to military affairs, and I suspect that it was out of deference to his wishes that the guests all abstained from writing down some names of our gallant generals. Lord Kitchener, however, obtained nine votes, and I myself included Christian De Wet; but on discovery of documents he was ruled out, in spite of my pleading for him on imperialistic grounds. I thought it rather insular, too, I must confess, that Mr. Henry James and Mr. Sargent were denied to me because they are American subjects. My own final list, as pasted in the Album at Ivanhoe, along with others, was as follows:

H. G. Wells.

C. H. Shannon.

Bernard Shaw.

Thomas Hardy.

Lord Northcliffe.

Edmund Gosse.

Andrew Lang.

Oliver Lodge.

Dom Gasquet.

Reginald Turner.

Mine, of course, is the choice of a recluse: a scholar without scholarship, one who lives remote from politics, newspapers, society, and the merry-go-round of modern life. Its two chief interests lie in showing, first how far off I was from getting the prize (a vellum copy of poems, by our hostess), and secondly, that one name only, that of Lord Northcliffe, should have touched both the popular and the private imagination! I regret to say that none of the guests knew the names of Dom Gasquet or Sir Oliver Lodge. Every one, except the artist, thought C. H. Shannon was J. J. Shannon, and some of the voters were hardly convinced that Mr. Lang was still an ornament to contemporary literature. The prize was awarded to a lady whose list most nearly corresponded to the result of the general plebiscite. I need not say she was the wife of the publisher. After some suitable expressions from Lord Lyonesse, it was suggested that we should poll the servants' hall. Pencils and paper were provided and the butler was sent for. An hour was given for the election, and at half-past eleven the ballot papers were brought in on a massive silver tray discreetly covered with a red silk pocket-handkerchief, and here is the result:

Frank Richardson.

Marie Corelli.

John Roberts.

C. B. Fry.

Eustace Miles.

Robert Hichens.

T. P. O'Connor.

Lord Lyonesse.

Dr. Williams (Pink Pills for Pale People).

Hall Caine.

The prize (and this is another odd coincidence) was won by the butler himself, to whom, very generously, the publisher's wife resigned the vellum copy of our hostess's poems. From a literary point of view, it is interesting to note that Mr. Frank Richardson is the only master of belles lettres who is appreciated in the servants' hall! The other names we associate, rightly or wrongly, with something other than literature.

The following evening I suggested choosing the greatest English names in the nineteenth century (twentieth-century life being strictly excluded). Every one by this time had caught the suck-pencil fever. By general consent the suffrage was extended to the domestics: the electorate being thus one hundred. And what, you will ask, came of it all? I suggest that readers should guess. Any one interested should fill up, cut out, and send this coupon to my own publisher on April the first.

I think the Ten Greatest Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century were:

1 . . . . . . . . . .

2 . . . . . . . . . .

3 . . . . . . . . . .

4 . . . . . . . . . .

5 . . . . . . . . . .

6 . . . . . . . . . .

7 . . . . . . . . . .

8 . . . . . . . . . .

9 . . . . . . . . . .

10 . . . . . . . . . .

A prize, consisting of a copy of Books of To-Day and Books of To-Morrow, will be awarded for the best shot.



MR. BENSON'S 'PATER.'

In no other country has mediocrity such a chance as in England. The second-rate writer, the second-rate painter meets with an almost universal and immediate recognition. When good mediocrities die, if they do not go straight to heaven (from a country where the existence of Purgatory is denied by Act of Parliament), at least they run a very fair chance of burial in Westminster Abbey. 'De mortuis nil nisi bonus,' in the shape of royalties, is the real test by which we estimate the authors who have just passed away. A few of our great writers—Ruskin and Tennyson, for example—have enjoyed the applause accorded to senility by a people usually timid of brilliancy and strength, when it is contemporary. The ruins of mental faculties touch our imagination, owing, perhaps, to that tenderness for antiquity which has preserved for us the remains of Tintern Abbey. Seldom, however, does a great writer live to find himself, in the prime of his literary existence, a component part of English literature. Yet there are happy exceptions, and not the least of these was Walter Pater.

His inclusion in the English Men of Letters series, so soon after his death, somewhat dazzled the reviewers. Mr. Benson was complimented on a daring which, if grudgingly endorsed, is treated as just the sort of innovation you would expect from the brother of the author of Dodo. 'To a small soul the age which has borne it can appear only an age of small souls,' says Swinburne, and the presence of Pater, which rose so strangely beside our waters, seemed to many of his contemporaries only the last sob of a literature which they sincerely believed came to an end with Lord Macaulay.

It was a fortunate chance by which Mr. A. C. Benson, one of our more discerning critics, himself master of no mean style, should have been chosen as commentator of Pater. Among the plutarchracy of the present day a not very pretty habit prevails of holding a sort of inquest on deceased writers—a reaction against misplaced eulogy—tearing them and their works to pieces, and leaving nothing for reviewers or posterity to dissipate. From the author of the Upton Letters we expect sympathy and critical acumen. It is needless to say we are never disappointed. His book is not merely about a literary man: it is a work of literature itself. So it is charming to disagree with Mr. Benson sometimes, and a triumph to find him tripping. You experience the pleasure of the University Extension lecturer pointing out the mistakes in Shakespeare's geography, the joy of the schoolboy when the master has made a false quantity. In marking the modern discoveries which have shattered, not the value of Pater's criticisms, but the authenticity of pictures round which he wove his aureoles of prose, Mr. Benson says: 'In the essay on Botticelli he is on firmer ground.' But among the first masterpieces winged by the sportsmen of the new criticism was the Hamilton Palace 'Assumption of the Virgin' (now proved to be by Botticini), to which Pater makes one of his elusive and delightful allusions. While the 'School of Giorgione,' which Mr. Benson thinks a little passe in the light of modern research is now in the movement. The latest bulletins of Giorgione, Pater would have been delighted to hear, are highly satisfactory. Pictures once torn from the altars of authenticity are being reinstated under the acolytage of Mr. Herbert Cook. A curious and perhaps wilful error, too, has escaped Mr. Benson's notice. Referring to the tomb of Cardinal Jacopo at San Miniato, Pater says, 'insignis forma fui—his epitaph dares to say;' the inscription reads fuit. But perhaps the t was added by the Italian Government out of Reference to the English residents in Florence, and the word read fui in 1871. Troja fuit might be written all over Florence.

Then some of the architecture at Vezelay 'typical of Cluniac sculpture' is pure Viollet-le-Duc, I am assured by a competent authority. A more serious error of Pater's, for it is adjectival, not a fact, occurs in Apollo in Picardy—'rebellious masses of black hair.' This is the only instance in the parfait prosateur, as Bourget called him, of a cliche worthy of the 'Spectator.' Then it is possible to differ from Mr. Benson in his criticism of the Imaginary Portraits (the four fair ovals in one volume), surely Pater's most exquisite achievement after the Renaissance. Gaston is the failure Pater thought it was, and Emerald Uthwart is frankly very silly, though Mr. Benson has a curious tenderness for it. One sentence he abandons as absolute folly. The grave psychological error in the story occurs where the surgeon expresses compunction at making the autopsy on Uthwart because of his perfect anatomy. Surely this would have been a source of technical pleasure and interest to a surgeon, much as a butterfly-collector is pleased when he has murdered an unusually fine species of lepidoptera. Speaking myself as a vivisector of some experience, I can confidently affirm that a well- bred golden collie is far more interesting to operate upon than a mongrel sheep-dog. Nor can I comprehend Mr. Benson's blame of Denys l'Auxerrois as too extravagant and even unwholesome, when the last quality, so obvious in Uthwart, he seems to condone.

Again, Marius the Epicurean is a failure by Pater's own high standard: you would have imagined it seemed so to Mr. Benson.

Dulness is by no means its least fault. In scheme it is not unlike John Inglesant; but how lifeless are the characters compared with those of Shorthouse. Both books deal with philosophic ideas and sensations; the incidents are merely illustrative and there is hardly a pretence of sequence. In the historical panorama which moves behind Inglesant, there are at least 'tactile' values, and seventeenth-century England is conjured up in a wonderful way; how accurately I do not know. In Marius the background is merely a backcloth for mental poses plastiques. You wonder, not how still the performers are, but why they move at all. Marcus Aurelius, the delightful Lucian, even Flavian, and the rest, are busts from the Capitoline and Naples museums. Their bodies are make-believe, or straw from the loft at 'White Nights.' Cornelius, Mr. Benson sorrowfully admits, is a Christian prig, but Marius is only a pagan chip from the same block. John Inglesant is a prig too, but there is blood in his veins, and you get, at all events, a Vandyck, not a plaster cast. The magnificent passages of prose which vest this image make it resemble the ex voto Madonnas of continental churches—a shrine in literature but not a lighthouse.

I sometimes wonder what Pater would have become had he been a Cambridge man, and if the more strenuous University might have forced him into greater sympathy with modernity; or if he had been born in America, as he nearly was, and Harvard acted as the benign stepmother of his days. Such speculations are not beyond all conjecture, as Sir Thomas Browne said. I think he would have been exactly the same.

On the occasion of Pater's lecture on Prosper Merimee, his friends gathered round the platform to congratulate him; he expressed a hope that the audience was able to hear what he said. 'We overheard you,' said Oscar Wilde. 'Ah, you have a phrase for everything,' replied the lecturer, the only contemporary who ever influenced himself, Wilde declared. How admirable both of the criticisms! Pater is an aside in literature, and that is why he was sometimes overlooked, and may be so again in ages to come. Though he is the greatest master of style the century produced, he can never be regarded as part of the structure of English prose. He is, rather, one of the ornaments, which often last, long after a structure has perished. His place will be shifted, as fashions change. Like some exquisite piece of eighteenth-century furniture perchance he may be forgotten in the attics of literature awhile, only to be rediscovered. And as Fuseli said of Blake, 'he is damned good to steal from.' If he uses words as though they were pigments, and sentences like vestments at the Mass, it is not merely the ritualistic cadence of his harmonies which makes his works imperishable, but the ideas which they symbolise and evoke. Pater thinks beautifully always, about things which some people do not think altogether beautiful, perhaps; and sometimes he thinks aloud. We overhear him, and feel almost the shame of the eavesdropper.

Mr. Benson has approached Walter Pater, the man, with almost sacerdotal deference. He suggests ingeniously where you can find the self-revelation in Gaston and The Child in the House. This is far more illuminating than the recollections of personal friends whose reminiscences are modelled on those of Captain Sumph. Mr. Humphry Ward remembers Pater only once being angry—it was in the Common Room—it was with X, an elderly man! The subject of the difference was 'modern lectures.' 'Relations between them were afterwards strained.' Mr. Arthur Symons remembers that he intended to bring out a new volume of Imaginary Portraits. Fancy that! Really, when friends begin to tell stories of that kind, I begin to suspect they are trying to conceal something. Perhaps we have no right to know everything or anything about the amazing personalities of literature; but Henleys and Purcells lurk and leak out even at Oxford; and that is not the way to silence them. Just when the aureole is ready to be fitted on, some horrid graduate (Litterae inhumaniores) inks the statue. Anticipating something of the kind, Mr. Benson is careful to insist on the divergence between Rossetti and Pater, and on page eighty-six says something which is ludicrously untrue. If self-revelation can be traced in Gaston, it can be found elsewhere. There are sentences in Hippolytus Veiled, the Age of the Athletic Prizemen, and Apollo in Picardy, which not only explode Mr. Benson's suggestions, but illustrate the objections he urges against Denys l'Auxerrois. They are passages where Pater thinks aloud. If Rossetti wore his heart on the sleeve, Pater's was just above the cuff, like a bangle; though it slips down occasionally in spite of the alb which drapes the hieratic writer not always discreetly.

(1906.)



SIMEON SOLOMON.

A good many years ago, before the Rhodes scholars invaded Oxford, there lingered in that home of lost causes and unpopular names, the afterglow of the aesthetic sunset. It was not a very brilliant period. Professor Mackail and Mr. Bowyer Nichols had left Balliol. Nothing was expected of either the late Sir Clinton Dawkins or Canon Beeching; and the authorities of Merton could form no idea where Mr. Beerbohm would complete his education. Names are more suggestive than dates and give less pain. Then, as now, there were 'cultured' undergraduates, and those who were very cultured indeed, read Shelley and burned incense, would always have a few photographs after Simeon Solomon on their walls—little notes of illicit sentiment to vary the monotony of Burne-Jones and Botticelli. When uncles and aunts came up for Gaudys and Commem., while 'Temperantia' and the 'Primavera' were left in their places, 'Love dying from the breath of Lust,' 'Antinous,' and other drawings by Solomon with titles from the Latin Vulgate, were taken down for the occasion. Views of the sister University, Cambridge took their places, being more appropriate to Uncle Parker's and Aunt Jane's tastes. More advanced undergraduates, who 'knew what things were,' possessed even originals. Now the unfortunate artist is dead his career can be mentioned without prejudice.

Simeon Solomon was born in 1841. He was the third son of Michael Solomon, a manufacturer of Leghorn hats, and the first Jew ever admitted to the Freedom of London. The elder brother, Abraham, became a successful painter of popular subjects ('Waiting for the Verdict' and 'First and Third Class'), and died on the day of his election to the Academy! Rebecca a sister who was also a painter, copied with success some of Millais's pictures. At the age of sixteen Simeon exhibited at the Academy, though beyond a short training at Leigh's Art School in Newman Street he was almost self-taught. He was an early and intimate friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, with whose art he had much in common, though it is only for convenience that he is included in the school. Like Whistler, he was profoundly affected by the genius of Rossetti. Racial and other causes removed him from any real affinity to the archaistic moralatarianism of Mr. Holman Hunt. For obvious reasons the Pre-Raphaelite memoirs are silent about him, but Burne-Jones was said to have maintained, in after years, 'that he was the greatest artist of us all.' Throughout the sixties Solomon was one of those black-and-white draughtsmen whose contributions to the magazines have made the period famous in English art. He found ready purchasers for his pictures and drawings, not only among the well-to-do Hebrew community, such as Dr. Ernest Hart, his brother's brother-in-law, but with well-known Christian collectors like Mr. Leathart. He was on intimate terms with Walter Pater, of whom he executed one of the only two known portraits; and in the Greek Studies will be found a graceful reference to the 'young Hebrew painter' whose 'Bacchus' at the Academy obviously contributed to the 'gem-like' flame of which we have heard so much.

In a short-lived magazine, the Dark Blue, of July 1871, may be found a characteristic review by Swinburne of Solomon's strange rhapsody, A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep, his only literary work, now a great rarity. This is the longest, and with one exception the most interesting, tribute to Solomon ever published. 'Since the first years of his early and brilliant celebrity as a young artist of high imagination, power, and promise,' Swinburne says, 'he has been at work long enough to enable us to define at least certain salient and dominant points of his genius . . . I have heard him likened to Heine as a kindred Hellenist of the Hebrews; Grecian form and beauty divide the allegiance of his spirit with Hebrew shadow and majesty.' It would be difficult to add anything further, in praise of the unfortunate artist, to the poet's eloquent eulogy of his friend's talents. An interesting piece of autobiography is afforded in the same article, where Swinburne tells us that his own poem of 'Erotion,' in the first series of Poems and Ballads, was written for a drawing by Simeon Solomon; and in another number of the same magazine there appeared 'The End of the Month,' to accompany a new design of Solomon's, the poem appearing later in the second series of Poems and Ballads. Very few English artists—not even Millais—began life with fairer prospects. Thackeray wrote in one of the 'Roundabout Papers' for 1860: 'For example, one of the pictures I admired most at the Royal Academy is by a gentleman on whom I never, to my knowledge, set eyes. The picture is (346) "Moses," by S. Solomon. I thought it finely drawn and composed. It nobly represented to my mind the dark children of the Egyptian bondage. . . . My newspaper says: "Two ludicrously ugly women, looking at a dingy baby, do not form a pleasing object," and so good-bye, Mr. S. S.' This beautiful picture, painted when the artist was only nineteen, is now in the collection of Mr. W. G. Rawlinson, and was seen quite recently at the Franco-British Exhibition, where those familiar with his work considered it one of Solomon's masterpieces. Very few students of Thackeray realised, however, that the painter thus singled out for praise formed the subject of a sordid inquest reported in the Times of August 18th, 1905.

That Solomon's pictures were at first better known to the public than those of his now more famous associates is shown by Robert Buchanan confessing that he had scarcely seen any of their works except those of Solomon, which he proceeded to attack in the famous The Fleshly School of Poetry. As a sort of justification of the criticism, in the early seventies, the extraordinary artist had become a pariah. He was imprisoned for a short while, and on his release was placed in a private asylum by his friends. Scandal having subsided, since he showed no further signs of eccentricity, he was, by arrangement, sent out to post a letter in order that he might have a chance of quietly escaping and returning to the practice of his art. He returned to the asylum in half an hour!—a proceeding which was almost an evidence of insanity. He was subsequently officially dismissed, and from this time went steadily downhill, adding to his other vices that of intemperance. Every effort was made by friends and relatives to reclaim him. Studios were taken for him, commissions were given him, clothes were bought for him. He spent his week-ends in the lock-up. Several picture-dealers tried giving him an allowance, but he turned up intoxicated to demand advances, and the police had to be called in. He was found selling matches in the Mile End Road and tried his hand at pavement decoration without much success. The companion of Walter Pater and Swinburne became the associate of thieves and blackmailers. A story is told that one afternoon he called for assistance at the house of a well-known artist, a former friend, from whom he received a generous dole. Observing that the remote neighbourhood of the place lent itself favourably to burgling operations, Solomon visited his benefactor the same evening in company with a housebreaker. They were studying the dining-room silver when they were disturbed; both were in liquor, and the noise they made roused the sleepers above. The unwilling host good-naturedly dismissed them!

Though a very delightful book might be made of his life by some one who would not shirk the difficulties of the subject, it is unnecessary here to dwell further on a career which belongs to the history of morbid psychology rather than of painting. After drifting from the stream of social existence into a Bohemian backwater, he found himself in the main sewer. This he thoroughly enjoyed in his own particular way, and rejected fiercely all attempts at rescue or reform. To his other old friends, such as Burne-Jones and Sir Edward Poynter, there must have been something very tragic in the contemplation of his wasted talents, for few young painters were more successful. Any one curious enough to study his pictures will regret that he was lost to art by allowing an ill-regulated life to prey upon his genius. He had not sufficient strength to keep the two things separate, as Shakespeare, Verlaine, and Leonardo succeeded in doing. At the same time, it is a consolation to think that he enjoyed himself in his own sordid way. When I had the pleasure of seeing him last, so lately as 1893, he was extremely cheerful and not aggressively alcoholic. Unlike most spoilt wastrels with the artistic temperament, he seemed to have no grievances, and had no bitter stories or complaints about former friends, no scandalous tales about contemporaries who had remained reputable; no indignant feeling towards those who assisted him. This was an amiable, inartistic trait in his character, though it may be a trifle negative; and for a positive virtue, as I say, he enjoyed his drink, his overpowering dirt, and his vicious life. He was full of delightful and racy stories about poets and painters, policemen and prisons, of which he had wide experience. He might have written a far more diverting book of memoirs than the average Pre-Raphaelite volume to which we look forward every year, though it is usually silent about poor Simeon Solomon. Physically he was a small, red man, with keen, laughing eyes.

By 1887 he entirely ceased to produce work of any value. He poured out a quantity of pastels at a guinea apiece. They are repulsive and ill-drawn, with the added horror of being the shadows of once splendid achievements. Long after his name could be ever mentioned except in whispers, Mr. Hollyer issued a series of photographs of some of the fine early sanguine, Indian ink, and pencil drawings. The originals are unique of their kind. It is very easy to detect the unwholesome element which has inspired many of them, even the titles being indicative: 'Sappho,' 'Antinous,' 'Amor Sacramentum.' One of the finest, 'Love dying from the breath of Lust,' of which also he painted a picture, became quite popular in reproduction owing to the moral which was screwed out of it. Another, of 'Dante meeting Beatrice at a Child's Party,' is particularly fascinating. To the present generation his work is perhaps too 'literary,' and his technique is by no means faultless; but the slightest drawing is informed by an idea, nearly always a beautiful one, however exotic. The faceless head and the headless body of shivering models dear to modern art students were absent from Solomon's designs. His pigments, both in water-colour and oils, are always harmonious, pure in tone, and rich without being garish. We need not try to frighten ourselves by searching too curiously for hidden meanings. His whole art is, of course, unwholesome and morbid, to employ two very favourite adjectives. His work has always appealed to musicians and men of letters rather than collectors—to those who ask that a drawing or a picture should suggest an idea rather than the art of the artist. Subject with him triumphs over drawing. He is sometimes hopelessly crude; but during the sixties, when, as some one said, 'every one was a great artist,' he showed considerable promise of draughtsmanship. His pictures are less fantastic than the drawings, and aim at probability, even when they are allegorical, or, as is too often the case, odd in sentiment. He is apparently never concerned with what are called 'problems,' the articulation of forms, or any fidelity to nature beyond the human frame. Unlike many of the Pre-Raphaelites, he showed a feeling for the medium of oil. His friends and contemporaries, with the exception of Millais, and Rossetti occasionally, were always more at ease with water-colour or gouache, and you feel that most of their pictures ought to have been painted in tempera, the technique of which was not then understood. Since Millais was of French extraction, Rossetti of Italian, and Solomon of Hebrew, I fear this does not get us very much further away from the old French criticism that the English had forgotten or never learnt how to paint in oil. It must be remembered that Whistler, who in the sixties achieved some of his masterpieces, was an American.

It is strange that Solomon did not allow a sordid existence to alter the trend of his subjects, for these are always derived from poetry and the Bible, or from Catholic, Jewish, or Greek Orthodox ritual—a strange contrast to the respectable, impeccable painter, M. Degas, the doyen of European art, nationalist and anti-Semite, who finds beauty only in brasseries, in the vulgar circus, and in the ghastly wings of the opera. How far removed from his surroundings are the inspirations of the artist! I believe J. F. Millet would have painted peasants if he had been born and spent his days in the centre of New York. With the life-long friend of M. Degas—Gustave Moreau—Solomon had much in common, but the colour of the English Hebrew is much finer, and his themes are less monotonous. I can imagine many people being repelled by this troubled introspective art, especially at the present day. There is hardly room for an inverted Watts. At the same time, even those who from age and training cannot take a sentimental interest in faded rose-leaves, whose perfume is a little overpowering, may care to explore an interesting byway of art. For poor Solomon there was no place in life. Casting reality aside, he stepped back into the riotous pages of Petronius. Perhaps on the Paris boulevards, with Verlaine and Bibi la Puree, he might have enjoyed a distinct artistic individuality. Expeditions conducted by Mr. Arthur Symons might have been organized in order to view him at some popular cafe. Mr. George Moore might have written about him. But in respectable London he was quite impossible. In the temple of Art, which is less Calvinistic than artists would have us suppose, he will always have his niche. To the future English Vasari he will be a real gold-mine.

(1905.)



AUBREY BEARDSLEY.

Middle-aged, middle-class people, with a predilection for mediaeval art, still believe that subject is an important factor in a picture or drawing. I am one of the number. The subject need not be literary or historical. After you have discussed in the latest studio jargon its carpentry, valued the tones and toned the values, motive or theme must affect your appreciation of a picture, your desire, or the contrary, to possess it. That the artist is able to endow the unattractive, and woo you to surrender, I admit. Unless, however, you are a pro-Boer in art matters, and hold that Rembrandt and the Boer school (the greatest technicians who ever lived) are finer artists than Titian, you will find yourself preferring Gainsborough to Degas, and the unskilful Whistler to the more accomplished Edouard Manet. Long ago French critics invented an aesthetic formula to conceal that poverty of imagination which sometimes stares from their perfectly executed pictures, and this was eagerly accepted by certain Englishmen, both painters and writers. Yet, when an artist frankly deals with forbidden subjects, the canons regular of English art begin to thunder; the critics forget their French accent; the old Robert Adam, which is in all of us, asserts himself; we fly for the fig-leaves.

I am led to these reflections by the memory of Aubrey Beardsley, and the reception which his work received, not from the British public, but from the inner circle of advanced intellectuals. Too much occupied with the obstetrics of art, his superfluity of naughtiness has tarnished his niche in the temple of fame. 'A wish to epater le bourgeois,' says Mr. Arthur Symons, 'is a natural one.' I do not think so; at least, in an artist. Now much of Beardsley's work shows the eblouissement of the burgess on arriving at Montmartre for the first time—a weakness he shared with some of his contemporaries. This must be conceded in praising a great artist for a line which he never drew, after you have taken the immortal Zero's advice and divested yourself of the scruples.

'I would rather be an Academician than an artist,' said Aubrey Beardsley to me one day. 'It takes thirty-nine men to make an Academician, and only one to make an artist.' In that sneer lay all his weakness and his strength. Grave friends (in those days it was the fashion) talked to him of 'Dame Nature.' 'Damn Nature!' retorted Aubrey Beardsley, and pulled down the blinds and worked by gaslight on the finest days. But he was a real Englishman, who from his glass-house peppered the English public. No Latin could have contrived his arabesque. The grotesques of Jerome Bosch are positively pleasant company beside many of Beardsley's inventions. Even in his odd little landscapes, with their twisted promontories sloping seaward, he suggested mocking laughter; and the flowers of 'Under the Hill' are cackling in the grass.

An essay, which Mr. Arthur Symons published in 1897, has always been recognised as far the most sympathetic and introspective account of this strange artist's work. It has been reissued, with additional illustrations, by Messrs. Dent. Those who welcome it as one of the most inspiring criticisms from an always inspired critic, will regret that eight of the illustrations belong to the worst period of Beardsley's art. Kelmscott dyspepsia following on a surfeit of Burne-Jones, belongs to the pathology of style; it is a phase that should be produced by the prosecution, not by the eloquent advocate for the defence. Moreover, I do not believe Mr. Arthur Symons admires them any more than I do; he never mentions them in his text. 'Le Debris d'un Poete,' the 'Coiffing,' 'Chopin's Third Ballad,' and those for Salome would have sufficed. With these omissions the monograph might have been smaller; but it would have been more truly representative of Beardsley's genius and Mr. Arthur Symons's taste.

At one time or another every one has been brilliant about Beardsley. 'Born Puck, he died Pierrot,' said Mr. MacColl in one of the superb phrases with which he gibbets into posterity an art or an artist he rather dislikes. 'The Fra Angelico of Satanism,' wrote Mr. Roger Fry of an exhibition of the drawings. There seems hardly anything left even for Mr. Arthur Symons to write. Long anterior to these particular fireworks, however, his criticism is just as fresh as it was twelve years ago. I believe it will always remain the terminal essay.

The preface has been revised, and I could have wished for some further revision. Why is the name of Leonard Smithers—here simply called a publisher—omitted, when the other Capulets and Montagus are faithfully recorded? When no one would publish Beardsley's work, Smithers stepped into the breach. I do not know that the Savoy exactly healed the breach between Beardsley and the public, but it gave the artist another opportunity; and Mr. Arthur Symons an occasion for song. Leonard Smithers, too, was the most delightful and irresponsible publisher I ever knew. Who remembers without a kindly feeling the little shop in the Royal Arcade with its tempting shelves; its limited editions of 5000 copies; the shy, infrequent purchaser; the upstairs room where the roar of respectable Bond Street came faintly through the tightly-closed windows; the genial proprietor? In the closing years of the nineteenth century his silhouette reels (my metaphor is drawn from a Terpsichorean and Caledonian exercise) across an artistic horizon of which the Savoy was the afterglow. Again, why is Mr. Arthur Symons so precise about forgetting the date of Beardsley's expulsion from the Yellow Book? It was in April 1895, April 10th. A number of poets and writers blackmailed Mr. Lane by threatening to withdraw their own publications unless the Beardsley Body was severed from the Bodley Head. I am glad to have this opportunity, not only of paying a tribute to the courage of my late friend Smithers, but of defending my other good friend, Mr. John Lane, from the absurd criticism of which he was too long the victim. He could hardly be expected to wreck a valuable business in the cause of unpopular art. Quite wrongly Beardsley's designs had come to be regarded as the pictorial and sympathetic expression of a decadent tendency in English literature. But if there was any relation thereto, it was that of Juvenal towards Roman Society. Never was mordant satire more evident. If Beardsley is carried away in spite of himself by the superb invention of Salome, he never forgets his hatred of its author. It is characteristic that he hammered beauty from the gold he would have battered into caricature. Salome has survived other criticism and other caricature. And Mr. Lane once informed an American interviewer that since that April Fool's Day poetry has ceased to sell altogether. The bards unconsciously committed suicide; and the Yellow Book perished in the odour of sanctity.

Recommending the perusal of some letters (written by Beardsley to an unnamed friend) published some years ago, Mr. Arthur Symons says: 'Here, too, we are in the presence of the real thing.' I venture to doubt this. I do not doubt Beardsley's sincerity in the religion he embraced, but his expression of it in the letters. At least, I hope it was insincere. The letters left on some of us a disagreeable impression, at least of the recipient. You wonder if this pietistic friend received a copy of the Lysistrata along with the eulogy of St. Alfonso Liguori and Aphra Behn. A fescennine temperament is too often allied with religiosity. It certainly was in Beardsley's case, but I think the other and stronger side of his character should, in justice to his genius, be insisted upon, as Mr. Arthur Symons insisted upon it. If we knew that the ill-advised and unnamed friend was the author of certain pseudo-scientific and pornographic works issued in Paris, we should be better able to gauge the unimportance of these letters. Far more interesting would have been those written to Mr. Joseph Pennell, one of the saner influences; or those to Aubrey Beardsley's mother and sister.

'It was at Arques,' says Mr. Arthur Symons . . . 'that I had the only serious, almost solemn conversation I ever had with Beardsley.' You can scarcely believe that any of the conversations between the two were other than serious and solemn, because he approaches Beardsley as he would John Bunyan or Aquinas. Art, literature and life, are all to this engaging writer a scholiast's pilgrim's progress. Beside him, Walter Pater, from whom he derives, seems almost flippant—and to have dallied too long in the streets of Vanity Fair.

(1906.)



ENGLISH AESTHETICS.

The law reports in newspapers contain perhaps the only real history of England that has any relation to truth. Here, too, may be found indications of current thought, more pregnant than the observations of historians. They still afford material for the future short or longer history of the English people by the John Richard Greens of posterity. This was brought home to me by perusing two cases reported in the Morning Post, that of Mrs. Rita Marsh and the disputed will of Miss Browne. I yield to no one in my ignorance of English law, but I have seldom read judgments which seemed so conspicuously unfair, so characteristic of the precise minimum of aesthetic perception in the English people.

The hostelries of Great Britain are famous for their high charges, their badly-kept rooms, and loathsome cooking; let me add, their warm welcome. In the reign of Edward III. there was legislation on the subject. The colder and cheaper hospitality of the Continent strikes a chill, I am sometimes told by those familiar with both. The hotel selected by a certain Mrs. Rita Marsh was no exception to the ordinary English caravanserai. It was 'replete with every comfort.' The garden contained an oubliette, down which Mrs. Marsh, while walking in the evening, inadvertently fell. On the Continent the oubliettes are inside the house, and you are ostentatiously warned of their immediate neighbourhood. These things are managed better in France, if I may say so without offending Tariff Reformers.

The accident disfigured Mrs. Marsh for life; and for the loss of unusual personal attractions an English jury awarded her only 500l. The judge made a joke about it. Mr. Gill was very playful about her photograph, and every one, except, I imagine, Mrs. Marsh, seems to have been satisfied that ample justice was done. The hotel proprietors did not press their counter-claim for a bill of 191l.! Chivalrous fellows! Still, I can safely say that in France Mrs. Marsh would have been awarded at least four times that amount; though if she had been murdered the proprietors would have only been fined forty francs. But beauty to its fortunate possessors is more valuable than life itself, and the story is to me one of the most pathetic I have ever heard. To the English mind there is something irresistibly comic when any one falls, morally or physically. It is the basis of English Farce. Jokes made about those who have never fallen, 'too great to appease, too high to appal,' are voted bad taste. Caricaturists of the mildest order are considered irreligious and vulgar if they burlesque, say, the Archbishop of Canterbury for example; or unpatriotic if they hint that Lord Roberts did not really finish the Boer War when he professed to have done so. After Parnell came to grief I remember the Drury Lane pantomime was full of fire-escapes, and every allusion to the cause celebre produced roars of laughter. Mr. Justice Bigham was only a thorough Englishman when he gently rallied the jury for awarding, as he obviously thought, excessive damages. So little is beauty esteemed in England.

The case of Miss Browne was also singular. She left a trust fund 'for the erection of an ornamental structure of Gothic design, such as a market cross, tall clock, street lamp-stand, or all combined, in a central part of London, the plan whereof shall be offered for open competition, and ultimately decided upon by the Royal Institute of British Architects.' The President of the Probate Division said he was satisfied that Miss Browne was not of sound mind, and pronounced against the will, with costs out of the estate. I wonder what the Royal Institute thinks of this legal testimonial. It seems almost a pity that some one did not dispute Sir Francis Chantrey's will years ago on similar grounds. I suggest to Mr. MacColl that it might still be upset. That would settle once and for all the question whether the administration of the bequest has evinced evidence of insanity or not. A recent Royal Commission left the matter undecided. I do not, however, wish to criticise trustees, but to defend the memory of Miss Browne (who may have been eccentric in private life) from such a charge, because her testamentary dispositions were a trifle aesthetic. The will was un-English in one respect: 'no inscription of my name shall be placed on such erection.' Was that the clause which proved her hopelessly mad? The erection was to be Gothic. I know Gothic is out of fashion just now. Ruskin is quite over; the Seven Lamps exploded long ago; but Miss Browne seems to have attended before her death Mr. MacColl's lectures, knew all about 'masses' and 'tones' in architecture, and wished particular stress to be laid on 'the general outline as seen from a good distance.' This is greeted by some of the papers as particularly side-splitting and eccentric. Looking at the unlovely streets of London, never one of the more beautiful cities of Europe, where each new building seems contrived to go one better in sheer uglitude (especially since builders of Tube stations have ventured into the Vitruvian arena), you can easily suppose that poor Miss Browne, with her views about 'general outlines seen from a good distance,' must have appeared hopelessly insane. The decision of the court is not likely to encourage any further public bequests of this kind. I have cut the British Museum and the National Gallery out of my own will already. And I understand why Mr. MacColl, with his passionate pleading for a living national architecture, for official recognition of past and present English art, is thought by many good people quite odd. How he managed to attract the notice of any but the Lunacy Commissioners I cannot conceive. Valued critic, admired artist, model keeper, I only hope he will attract no further attention.