Kitabı oku: «Theodore Watts-Dunton: Poet, Novelist, Critic», sayfa 11

Chapter XIII
THE ‘EXAMINER’

Long before Mr. Watts-Dunton printed a line, he was a prominent figure in the literary and artistic sets in London; but, as Mr. Hake has said, it was merely as a conversationalist that he was known. His conversation was described by Rossetti as being like that of no other person moving in literary circles, because he was always enunciating new views in phrasings so polished that, to use Rossetti’s words, his improvized locutions were as perfect as ‘fitted jewels.’ Those who have been privileged to listen to his table-talk will attest the felicity of the image. Seldom has so great a critic had so fine an audience. Rossetti often lamented that Theodore Watts’ spoken criticism had never been taken down in shorthand. For a long time various editors who had met him at Rossetti’s, at Madox Brown’s, at Westland Marston’s, at Whistler’s breakfasts, and at the late Lord Houghton’s, endeavoured to persuade him to make practical use in criticism of the ideas that flowed in a continuous stream from his lips. But, as Rossetti used to affirm, he was the one man of his time who, with immense literary equipment, was without literary ambition. This peculiarity of his was eloquently described by the late Dr. Gordon Hake in his ‘New Day’: —

 
You say you care not for the people’s praise,
That poetry is its own recompense;
You care not for the wreath, the dusty bays,
Given to the whirling wind and hurried hence.
 

The first editor who secured Theodore Watts, after repeated efforts to do so, was the late Professor Minto, and this only came about because during his editorship of the ‘Examiner’ both he and Watts resided in Danes Inn, and were constantly seeing each other.

It was Minto who afterwards declared that “the articles in the ‘Examiner’ and the ‘Athenæum’ are goldmines, in which we others are apt to dig unconsciously without remembering that the nuggets are Theodore Watts’s, who is too lazy to peg out his claim.” The first article by him that appeared in Minto’s paper attracted great attention and roused great curiosity. This indeed is not surprising, for, as I found when I read it, it was as remarkable for pregnancy of thought and of style as the latest and ripest of his essays. A friend of his, belonging to the set in which he moved, who remembers the appearance of this article, has been kind enough to tell me the following anecdote in connection with it. The contributors to the paper at that time consisted of Minto, Dr Garnett, Swinburne, Edmund Gosse, ‘Scholar’ Williams, Comyns Carr, Walter Pollock, Duffield (the translator of ‘Don Quixote’), Professor Sully, Dr. Marston, William Bell Scott, William Black, and many other able writers. On the evening of the day when Theodore Watts’s first article appeared, there was a party at the house of William Bell Scott in Chelsea, and every one was asking who this new contributor was. It was one of the conditions under which the article was written that its authorship was to be kept a secret. Bell Scott, who took a great interest in the ‘Examiner,’ was especially inquisitive about the new writer. After having in vain tried to get from Minto the name of the writer, he went up to Watts, and said: “I would give almost anything to know who the writer is who appears in the ‘Examiner’ for the first time today.” “What makes you inquire about it?” said Watts. “What is the interest attaching to the writer of such fantastic stuff as that? Surely it is the most mannered writing that has appeared in the ‘Examiner’ for a long time!” Then, turning to Minto, he said: “I can’t think, Minto, what made you print it at all.” Scott, who had a most exalted opinion of Watts as a critic, was considerably abashed at this, and began to endeavour to withdraw some of his enthusiastic remarks. This set Minto laughing aloud, and thus the secret got out.

From that hour Watts became the most noticeable writer among a group of critics who were all noticeable. Week after week there appeared in this historic paper criticism as fine as had ever appeared in it in the time of Leigh Hunt, and as brilliant as had appeared in it in the time of Fonblanque. At this time Minto used to entertain his contributors on Monday evening in the room over the publisher’s office in the Strand, and I have been told by one who was frequently there that these smoking symposia were among the most brilliant in London. One can well imagine this when one remembers the names of those who used to attend the meetings.

It was through the ‘Examiner’ that Watts formed that friendship with William Black which his biographer, Sir Wemyss Reid, alludes to. Between these two there was one subject on which they were especially in sympathy – their knowledge and love of nature. At that time Black was immensely popular. In personal appearance there was, I am told, a superficial resemblance between the two, and they were constantly being mistaken for each other; and yet, when they were side by side, it was evident that the large, dark moustache and the black eyes were almost the only points of resemblance between them.

It was at the then famous house in Gower Street of Mr. Justin McCarthy that Black and Mr. Watts-Dunton first met. Speaking as an Irishman of a younger but not, I fear, of so genial a generation, I hear tantalizing accounts of the popular gatherings at the home of the most charming and the most distinguished Irishman of letters in the London of that time, where so many young men of my own country were welcomed as warmly as though they had not yet to win their spurs. No one speaks more enthusiastically of the McCarthy family than Mr. Watts-Dunton, who seems to have been on terms of friendship with them almost as soon as he settled in London. Mr. Watts-Dunton was always a lover of McCarthy’s novels, but on his first visit to Gower Street Mr. McCarthy was, as usual, full of the subject not of his own novels, but of another man’s. He urged his new friend to read ‘Under the Greenwood Tree,’ almost forcing him to take the book away with him, which he did: this was the way in which Mr. Watts-Dunton became for the first time acquainted with a story which he always avers is the only book that has ever revived the rich rustic humour of Shakespeare’s early comedies. A perfect household of loving natures, warm Irish hearts, bright Irish intellects, cultivated and rare, according to Mr. Watts-Dunton’s testimony, was that little family in Gower Street. I think he will pardon me for repeating one quaint little story about himself and Black in connection with this first visit to the McCarthys. On entering the room Mr. Watts-Dunton was much struck with what appeared to be real musical genius in a bright-eyed little lady who was delighting the party with her music. This was at the period in his own life which Mr. Watts-Dunton calls his ‘music-mad period.’ And after a time he got talking with the lady. He was a little surprised that he was at once invited by the musical lady to go to a gathering at her house. But he was as much pleased as surprised to be so welcomed, and incontinently accepted the invitation. It never entered his mind that he had been mistaken for another man, until the other man entered the room and came up to the lady. She, on her part, began to look in an embarrassed way from one to the other of the two swarthy, black-moustached gentlemen. She had mistaken Mr. Watts-Dunton for William Black, with whom her acquaintance was but slight. The contretemps caused much amusement when the husband of the lady, an eminent novelist, who knew Mr. Watts-Dunton well, introduced him to his wife. I do not know what was the end of the comedy, but no doubt it was a satisfactory one. It could not be otherwise among such people as Justin McCarthy would be likely to gather round him.

At that time, to quote the words of the same friend of Mr. Watts-Dunton, Watts used frequently to meet at Bell Scott’s and Rossetti’s Professor Appleton, the editor of the ‘Academy.’ The points upon which these two touched were as unlike the points upon which Watts and William Black touched as could possibly be. They were both students of Hegel; and when they met, Appleton, who had Hegel on the brain, invariably drew Watts aside for a long private talk. People used to leave them alone, on account of the remoteness of the subject that attracted the two. Watts had now made up his mind that he would devote himself to literature, and, indeed, his articles in the ‘Examiner’ showed that he had only to do so to achieve a great success. Appleton rarely left Watts without saying, “I do wish you would write for the ‘Academy.’ I want you to let me send you all the books on the transcendentalists that come to the ‘Academy,’ and let me have articles giving the pith of them at short intervals.” This invitation to furnish the ‘Academy’ with a couple of columns condensing the spirit of many books about subjects upon which only a handful of people in England were competent to write, seemed to Watts a grotesque request, seeing that he was at this very time the leading writer on the ‘Examiner,’ and was being constantly approached by other editors. It was consequently the subject of many a joke between Minto, William Black, Watts, and the others present at the famous ‘Examiner’ gatherings. After a while Mr. Norman MacColl, who was then the editor of the ‘Athenæum,’ invited Watts to take an important part in the reviewing for the ‘Athenæum.’ At first he told the editor that there were two obstacles to his accepting the invitation – one was that the work that he was invited to do was largely done by his friend Marston, and that, although he would like to join him, he scarcely saw his way, on account of the ‘Examiner,’ which was ready to take all the work he could produce. On opening the matter to Dr Marston, that admirably endowed writer would not hear of Watts’s considering him in the matter. The ‘Athenæum’ was then, as now, the leading literary organ in Europe, and the editor’s offer was, of course, a very tempting one, and Watts was determined to tell Minto about it. And this he did.

“Now, Minto,” he said, “it rests entirely with you whether I shall write in the ‘Athenæum’ or not.” Minto, between whom and Watts there was a deep affection, made the following reply:

“My dear Theodore, I need not say that it will not be a good day for the ‘Examiner’ when you join the ‘Athenæum.’ The ‘Examiner’ is a struggling paper which could not live without being subsidized by Peter Taylor, and it is not four months ago since Leicester Warren said to me that he and all the other readers of the ‘Examiner’ looked eagerly for the ‘T. W.’ at the foot of a literary article. The ‘Athenæum’ is both a powerful and a wealthy paper. In short, it will injure the ‘Examiner’ when your name is associated with the ‘Athenæum.’ But to be the leading voice of such a paper as that is just what you ought to be, and I cannot help advising you to entertain MacColl’s proposal.”

In consequence of this Mr. Watts-Dunton closed with Mr. MacColl’s offer, and his first article in the ‘Athenæum’ appeared on July 8, 1876.

Chapter XIV
THE ‘ATHENÆUM’

As the first review which Mr. Watts-Dunton contributed to the ‘Athenæum’ has been so often discussed, and as it is as characteristic as any other of his style, I have determined to reprint it entire. It has the additional interest, I believe, of being the most rapidly executed piece of literary work which Mr. Watts-Dunton ever achieved. Mr. MacColl, having secured the new writer, tried to find a book for him, and failed, until Mr. Watts-Dunton asked him whether he intended to give an article upon Skelton’s ‘Comedy of the Noctes Ambrosianæ.’ The editor said that he had not thought of giving the book a considerable article, but that, if Mr. Watts-Dunton liked to take it, it should be sent to him. As the article was wanted on the following day, it was dictated as fast as the amanuensis – not a shorthand writer – could take it down.

It has no relation to the Renascence of Wonder, nor is it one of his great essays, such as the one on the Psalms, or his essays on Victor Hugo, but in style it is as characteristic as any: —

‘Is it really that the great squeezing of books has at last begun? Here, at least, is the ‘Noctes Ambrosianæ’ squeezed into one volume.

Long ago we came upon an anecdote in Castellan, the subject of which, as far as we remember, is this. The library of the Indian kings was composed of so many volumes that a thousand camels were necessary to remove it. But once on a time a certain prince who loved reading much and other pleasures more, called a Brahmin to him, and said: ‘Books are good, O Brahmin, even as women are good, yet surely, of both these goods a prince may have too many; and then, O Brahmin, which of these two vexations is sorest to princely flesh it were hard to say; but as to the books, O Brahmin, squeeze ’em!’ The Brahmin, understanding well what the order to ‘squeeze ’em’ meant (for he was a bookman himself, and knew that, as there goes much water and little flavour to the making of a very big pumpkin, so there go much words and few thoughts to the making of a very big book), set to work, aided by many scribes – striking out all the idle words from every book in the library; and when the essence of them had been extracted it was found that ten camels could carry that library without ruffling a hair. And therefore the Brahmin was appointed ‘Grand Squeezer’ of the realm. Ages after this, another prince, who loved reading much and other pleasures a good deal more, called the Grand Squeezer of his time and said: ‘Thy duties are neglected, O Grand Squeezer! Thy life depends upon the measure of thy squeezing.’ Thereupon the Grand Squeezer, in fear and trembling, set to work and squeezed and squeezed till the whole library became at last a load that a foal would have laughed at, for it consisted but of one book, a tiny volume, containing four maxims. Yet the wisdom in the last library was the wisdom in the first.

The appearance of Mr. Skelton’s condensation of the ‘Noctes Ambrosianæ’ reminds us of this story, and of a certain solemn warning we always find it our duty to administer to those who show a propensity towards the baneful coxcombry of authorship – the warning that the literature of our country is already in a fair way of dying for the want of a Grand Squeezer, and that unless such a functionary be appointed within the next ten years, it will be smothered by itself. Yet our Government will keep granting pension after pension to those whom the Duke of Wellington used to call ‘the writing fellows,’ for adding to the camel’s burden, instead of distributing the same amount among an army of diligent and well-selected squeezers. We say an army of squeezers, for it is not merely that almost every man, woman, and child among us who can write, prints, while nobody reads, and, to judge from the ‘spelling bees,’ nobody even spells, but that the fecundity of man as a ‘writing animal’ is on the increase, and each one requires a squeezer to himself. This is the alarming thing. Where are we to find so many squeezers? Nay, in many cases there needs a separate sub-squeezer for the writer’s every book. Take, for instance, the case of the Carlyle squeezer – what more could be expected from him in a lifetime than that he should squeeze ‘Frederick the Great’ – that enormous, rank and pungent ‘haggis’ from which, properly squeezed, such an ocean would flow of ‘oniony liquid’ that compared with it the famous ‘haggis-deluge’ of the ‘Noctes’ which nearly drowned in gravy ‘Christopher,’ ‘the Shepherd,’ and ‘Tickler’ in Ambrose’s parlour, would be, both for quantity and flavour, but ‘a beaker full of the sweet South’? Yet what would be the squeezing of Mr. Carlyle; what would be the squeezing of De Quincey, or of Landor, or of Southey, to the squeezing of the tremendous Professor Wilson – the mighty Christopher, who for about thirty years literally talked in type upon every matter of which he had any knowledge, and upon every matter of which he had none; whose ‘words, words, words’ are, indeed, as Hallam, with unconscious irony, says, ‘as the rush of mighty waters’?

What would be left after the squeezing of him it would be hard to guess; for, says the Chinese proverb, ‘if what is said be not to the purpose, a single word is already too much.’

Mr. Skelton should have borne this maxim in mind in his manipulations upon the ‘Noctes Ambrosianæ.’ He loves the memory of the fine old Scotsman, and has squeezed this enormous pumpkin with fingers that are too timid of grip. In squeezing Professor Wilson you cannot overdo it. There are certain parts we should have especially liked squeezed away; and among these – will Mr. Skelton pardon us? – are the ‘amazingly humourous’ ones, such as the ‘opening of the haggis,’ which, Mr. Skelton tells us, ‘manifests the humour of conception as well as the humour of character, in a measure that has seldom been surpassed by the greatest masters’; ‘the amazing humour’ of which consists in the Shepherd’s sticking his supper knife into a ‘haggis’ (a sheep’s paunch filled with the ‘pluck’ minced, with suet, onions, salt, and pepper), and thereby setting free such a flood of gravy that the whole party have to jump upon the chairs and tables to save themselves from being drowned in it! In truth, Mr. Skelton should have reversed his method of selection; and if, in operating upon the Professor’s twelve remaining volumes, he will, instead of retaining, omit everything ‘amazingly humourous,’ he will be the best Wilson-squeezer imaginable.

Yet, his intentions here were as good as could be. The ‘Noctes’ are dying of dropsy, so Mr. Skelton, to save them, squeezes away all the political events – so important once, so unimportant now – all the foolish laudation, and more foolish abuse of those who took part in them. He eliminates all the critiques upon all those ‘greatest poems’ and those ‘greatest novels of the age’ written by Christopher’s friends – friends so famous once, so peacefully forgotten now. And he has left what he calls the ‘Comedy of the Noctes Ambrosianæ,’ i.e. ‘that portion of the work which deals with or presents directly and dramatically to the reader, human life, and character, and passion, as distinguished from that portion of it which is critical, and devoted to the discussion of subjects of literary, artistic, or political interest only.’ And, although Mr. Skelton uses thus the word ‘comedy’ in its older and wider meaning, it is evident that it is as an ‘amazing humourist’ that he would present to our generation the great Christopher North. And assuredly, at this the ‘delighted spirit’ of Christopher smiles delightedly in Hades. For, however the ‘Comic Muse’ may pout upon hearing from Mr. Skelton that ‘the “Noctes Ambrosianæ” belong to her,’ it is clear that the one great desire of Wilson’s life was to cultivate her – was to be an ‘amazing humourist,’ in short. It is clear, besides, that there was one special kind of humour which he most of all affected, that which we call technically ‘Rabelaisian.’ To have gone down to posterity as the great English Rabelaisian of the nineteenth century, Christopher North would have freely given all his deserved fame as a prose poet, and all the thirty thousand pounds hard cash of which he was despoiled to boot. His personality was enormous. He had more of that demonic element – of which since Goethe’s time we have heard so much – than any man in Scotland. Everybody seems to have been dominated by him. De Quincey, with a finer intellect than even his own – and that is using strong language – looked up to him as a spaniel looks up to his master. It is positively ludicrous, while reading De Quincey’s ‘Autobiographic Sketches,’ to come again and again upon the naïve refrain: ‘I think so, so does Professor Wilson.’ Gigantic as was the egotism of the Opium-eater, it was overshadowed by the still more gigantic egotism of Christopher North. In this, as in everything else, he was the opposite of the finest Scottish humourist since Burns, Sir Walter Scott. Scott’s desire was to create eccentric humourous characters, but to remain the simple Scottish gentleman himself. Wilson’s great ambition was to be an eccentric humourous character himself; for your superlative egotist has scarcely even the wish to create. He would like the universe to himself. If Wilson had created Falstaff, and if you had expressed to him your admiration of the truthfulness of that character, he would have taken you by the shoulder and said, with a smile: ‘Don’t you see, you fool, that Falstaff is I – John Wilson?’ He always wished it to be known that the Ettrick Shepherd and Tickler were John Wilson – as much Wilson as Kit North himself, or, rather, what he would have liked John Wilson to be considered. This determination to be a humourous character it was – and no lack of literary ambition – that caused him to squander his astonishing powers in the way that Mr. Skelton, and all of us who admire the man, lament.

Many articles in ‘Blackwood’ – notably the one upon Shakspeare’s four great tragedies and the one in which he discusses Coleridge’s poetry – show that his insight into the principles of literary art was true and deep – far too true and deep for him to be ignorant of this inexorable law, that nothing can live in literature without form, nothing but humour; but that, let this flowery crown of literature show itself in the most formless kind of magazine-article or review-essay, and the writer is secure of his place according to his merits.

Has Wilson secured such a place? We fear not; and if Skelton were to ask us, on our oath, why Wilson’s fourteen volumes of brilliant, eloquent, and picturesque writing are already in a sadly moribund state, while such slight and apparently fugitive essays as the ‘Coverley’ papers, the essays of Elia, and the hurried review articles of Sydney Smith, seem to have more vitality than ever, we fear that our answer would have to be this bipartite one: first, that mere elaborated intellectual ‘humour’ has the seeds of dissolution in it from the beginning, while temperamental humour alone can live; and, secondly, that Wilson was probably not temperamentally a humourist at all, and certainly not temperamentally a Rabelaisian. But let us, by way of excuse for this rank blasphemy, say what precise meaning we attach to the word ‘Rabelaisian’ – though the subject is so wide that there is no knowing whither it may lead us. Without venturing upon a new definition of humour, this we will venture to say, that true humour, that is to say, the humour of temperament, is conveniently divisible into two kinds: Cervantic humour, i.e. the amused, philosophic mood of the dramatist – the comedian; and Rabelaisian humour, i.e. the lawless abandonment of mirth, flowing mostly from exuberance of health and animal spirits, with a strong recognition of the absurdity of human life and the almighty joke of the Cosmos – a mood which in literature is rarer than in life – rarer, perhaps, because animal spirits are not the common and characteristic accompaniments of the literary temperament.

Of Cervantic humour Wilson has, of course, absolutely nothing. For this, the fairest flower in the garden, cannot often take root, save in the most un-egotistic souls. It belongs to the Chaucers, the Shakspeares, the Molières, the Addisons, the Fieldings, the Steeles, the Scotts, the Miss Austens, the George Eliots – upon whom the rich tides of the outer life come breaking and drowning the egotism and yearning for self-expression which is the life of smaller souls. Among these – to whom to create is everything – Sterne would perhaps have been greatest of all had he never known Hall Stevenson, and never read Rabelais; while Dickens’s growth was a development from Rabelaisianism to Cervantism. But surely so delicate a critic as Mr. Skelton has often proved himself to be, is not going to seriously tell us that there is one ray of dramatic humour to be found in Wilson. Why, the man had not even the mechanical skill of varying the locutions and changing the styles of his two or three characters. Even the humourless Plato could do that. Even the humourless Landor could do that. But, strip the ‘Shepherd’s’ talk of its Scottish accent and it is nothing but those same appalling mighty waters whose rush in the ‘Recreations’ and the ‘Essays’ we are so familiar with. While, as to his clumsy caricature of the sesquipedalian language of De Quincey, that is such obtrusive caricature that illusion seems to be purposely destroyed, and the ‘Opium-Eater’ becomes a fantastic creature of Farce, and not of Comedy at all.

The ‘amazing humour’ of Wilson, then, is not Cervantic. Is it Rabelaisian? Again, we fear not. Very likely the genuine Rabelaisian does not commonly belong to the ‘writing fellows’ at all. We have had the good luck to come across two Rabelaisians in our time. One was a lawyer, who hated literature with a beautiful and a pathetic hatred. The other was a drunken cobbler, who loved it with a beautiful and a pathetic love. And we have just heard from one of our finest critics that a true Rabelaisian is, at this moment, to be found – where he ought to be found – at Stratford-on-Avon. This is interesting. Yet, as there were heroes before Agamemnon, so there were Rabelaisians, even among the ‘writing fellows,’ before Rabelais; the greatest of them, of course, being Aristophanes, though, from all we hear, it may be reasonably feared that when Alcibiades, instead of getting damages out of Eupolis for libel, ‘in a duck-pond drowned him,’ he thereby extinguished for ever a Rabelaisian of the very first rank. But we can only judge from what we have; and, to say nothing of the tabooed Lysistrata, the ‘Birds’ alone puts Aristophanes at the top of all pre-Rabelaisian Rabelaisians. But when those immortal words came from that dying bed at Meudon: ‘Let down the curtain; the farce is done,’ they were prophetic as regards the literary Rabelaisians – prophetic in this, that no writer has since thoroughly caught the Rabelaisian mood – the mood, that is, of the cosmic humourist, gasping with merriment as he gobbles huge piles of meat and guzzles from huge flagons of wine. Yet, if his mantle has fallen upon no one pair of shoulders, a corner of it has dropped upon several; for the great Curé divides his qualities among his followers impartially, giving but one to each, like the pine-apple in the ‘Paradise of Fruits,’ from which every other fruit in the garden drew its own peculiar flavour, and then charged its neighbour fruits with stealing theirs. Among a few others, it may be said that the cosmic humour has fallen to Swift (in whom, however, earnestness half stifled it) Sterne, and Richter; while the animal spirits – the love of life – the fine passion for victuals and drink – has fallen to several more, notably to Thomas Amory, the creator of ‘John Buncle’; to Herrick, to old John Skelton, to Burns (in the ‘Jolly Beggars’), to John Skinner, the author of ‘Tullochgorum.’ Shakspeare, having everything, has, of course, both sides of Rabelaisianism as well as Cervantism. Some of the scenes in ‘Henry the Fourth’ and ‘Henry the Fifth’ are rich with it. So is ‘Twelfth Night,’ to go no further. Dickens’s Rabelaisianism stopped with ‘Pickwick.’ If Hood’s gastric fluid had been a thousand times stronger, he would have been the greatest Rabelaisian since Rabelais. A good man, if his juices are right, may grow into Cervantism, but you cannot grow into Rabelaisianism. Neither can you simulate it without coming to grief. Yet, of simulated Rabelaisianism all literature is, alas! full, and this is how the simulators come to grief; simulated cosmic humour becomes the self-conscious grimacing and sad posture-making of the harlequin sage, such as we see in those who make life hideous by imitating Mr. Carlyle. This is bad. But far worse is simulated animal spirits, i.e. jolly-doggism. This is insupportable. For we ask the reader – who may very likely have been to an undergraduates’ wine-party, or to a medical students’ revel, or who may have read the ‘Noctes Ambrosianæ’ – we seriously and earnestly ask him whether, among all the dreary things of this sometimes dreary life, there is anything half so dreadful as jolly-doggism.

And now we come reluctantly to the point. It breaks our heart to say to Mr. Skelton – for we believed in Professor Wilson once – it breaks our heart to say that Wilson’s Rabelaisianism is nothing but jolly-doggism of the most prepense, affected, and piteous kind. In reading the ‘Noctes’ we feel, as Jefferson’s Rip van Winkle must have felt, surrounded by the ghosts on the top of the Katskill mountains. We say to ourselves, ‘How comparatively comfortable we should feel if those bloodless, marrowless spectres wouldn’t pretend to be jolly – if they would not pretend to be enjoying their phantom bowls and their ghostly liquor!’

Though John Skinner and Thomas Amory have but a small endowment of the great master’s humour, their animal spirits are genuine. They do not hop, skip, and jump for effect. Their friskiness is the friskiness of the retriever puppy when let loose; of the urchin who runs shrieking against the shrieking wind in the unsyllabled tongue that all creatures know, ‘I live, I live, I live!’ But, whatever might have been the physical health of Wilson, there is a hollow ring about the literary cheerfulness of the ‘Noctes’ that, notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, makes us think that he was at heart almost a melancholy man; that makes us think that the real Wilson is the Wilson of the ‘Isle of Palms,’ ‘The City of the Plague,’ of the ‘Trials of Margaret Lyndsay,’ of the ‘Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life,’ Wilson, the Wordsworthian, the lover of Nature, whom Jeffrey describes when he says that ‘almost the only passions with which his poetry is conversant are the gentler sympathies of our nature – tender compassion – confiding affection, and gentleness and sorrow.’

He wished to be thought a rollicking, devil-me-care protagonist, a good-tempered giant ready to swallow with a guffaw the whole cockney army if necessary. This kind of man he may have been – Mr. Skelton inferentially says he was; all we know is that his writings lead us to think he was playing a part. A temperamental humourist, we say decidedly, he was not.

Is there, then, no humour to be found in this book? In a certain sense no doubt humour may be found there. Just as science tells us that all the stars in heaven are composed of pretty much the same elements as the familiar earth on which we live, or dream we live, so is every one among us composed of the same elements as all the rest, and one of the most important elements common to all human kind is humour. And, if a man takes to expressing in literary forms the little humour within him, it is but natural that the more vigorous, the more agile is his intellect and the greater is his literary skill, the more deceptive is his mere intellectual humour, the more telling his wit. Now, Wilson’s intellect was exceedingly and wonderfully fine. As strong as it was swift, it could fly over many a wide track of knowledge and of speculation unkenned by not a few of those who now-a-days would underrate him, dropping a rain of diamonds from his wings like the fabulous bird of North Cathay.”

No sooner had the article appeared than Appleton went to Danes Inn and saw the author of it. Appleton was in a state of great excitement, and indeed of great rage, for at that time there was considerable rivalry between the ‘Athenæum’ and the ‘Academy.’