THE GENTLE READER

Copyright, 1903
By Samuel McChord Crothers
All rights reserved
Published October, 1903

HEN Don Quixote was descanting on the beauty of the peerless Dulcinea, the Duchess interrupted him by expressing a doubt as to that lady's existence.

"Much may be said on that point," said Don Quixote. "God only knows whether there be any Dulcinea or not in the world. These are things the proof of which must not be pushed to extreme lengths."

But this admission does not in the least interfere with the habitual current of his thoughts, or cool the ardor of his loyalty. He proceeds after the momentary digression as if nothing had happened. "I behold her as she needs must be, a lady who contains within herself all the qualities to make her famous throughout the world; beautiful, without blemish; dignified, without haughtiness; tender, and yet modest; gracious from courtesy, and courteous from good breeding; and lastly of illustrious birth."

If in the following pages I begin by admitting that there is much to be said in behalf of the popular notion that the Gentle Reader no longer exists, let this pass simply as an evidence of my decent respect for the opinion of mankind. To my mind the Gentle Reader is the most agreeable of companions, and to make his acquaintance is one of the pleasures of life.

Of so elusive a personality it is not always possible to give a consistent account. I have no doubt that I may have occasionally attributed to him sentiments which are really my own; on the other hand, I suspect that some views that I have set down as my own may have been unconsciously derived from him. I have particular reference to the opinions expressed on the subject of Ignorance. Such confusion of mental properties the Gentle Reader will readily pardon, for there is no one in all the world so careless of the distinctions between Meum and Tuum.

HAT has become of the Gentle Reader? One does not like to think that he has passed away with the stagecoach and the weekly news-letter; and that henceforth we are to be confronted only by the stony glare of the Intelligent Reading Public. Once upon a time, that is to say a generation or two ago, he was very highly esteemed. To him books were dedicated, with long rambling prefaces and with episodes which were their own excuse for being. In the very middle of the story the writer would stop with a word of apology or explanation addressed to the Gentle Reader, or at the very least with a nod or a wink. No matter if the fate of the hero be in suspense or the plot be inextricably involved.

"Hang the plot!" says the author. "I must have a chat with the Gentle Reader, and find out what he thinks about it."

And so confidences were interchanged, and there was gossip about the Universe and suggestions in regard to the queerness of human nature, until, at last, the author would jump up with, "Enough of this, Gentle Reader; perhaps it's time to go back to the story."

The thirteenth book of Tom Jones leaves the heroine in the greatest distress. The last words are, "Nor did this thought once suffer her to close her eyes during the whole succeeding night." Had Fielding been addressing the Intelligent Modern Public he would have intensified the interest by giving an analysis of Sophia's distress so that we should all share her insomnia. But not at all! While the dear girl is recovering her spirits it is such an excellent opportunity to have uninterrupted discourse with the Gentle Reader, who doesn't take these things too hard, having long since come to "the years that bring the philosophic mind." So the next chapter is entitled An Essay to prove that an author will write better for having some knowledge of the subject on which he treats. The discussion is altogether irrelevant; that is what the Gentle Reader likes.

"It is a paradoxical statement you make," he says, trying to draw the author out. "What are your arguments?"

Then the author moderates his expressions. "To say the truth I require no more than that an author should have some little knowledge of the subject of which he treats."

"That sounds more reasonable," says the Gentle Reader. "You know how much I dislike extreme views. Let us admit, for the sake of argument, that a writer may know a little about his subject. I hope that this may not prove the opening wedge for erudition. By the way, where was it we left the sweet Sophy; and do you happen to know anything more about that scapegrace Jones?"

That was the way books were written and read in the good old days before the invention of the telephone and the short story. The generation that delighted in Fielding and Richardson had some staying power. A book was something to tie to. No one would say jauntily, "I have read Sir Charles Grandison," but only, "I am reading." The characters of fiction were not treated as transient guests, but as lifelong companions destined to be a solace in old age. The short story, on the other hand, is invented for people who want a literary "quick lunch." "Tell me a story while I wait," demands the eager devourer of fiction. "Serve it hot, and be mighty quick about it!"

In rushes the story-teller with love, marriage, jealousy, disillusion, and suicide all served up together before you can say Jack Robinson. There is no time for explanation, and the reader is in no mood to allow it. As for the suicide, it must end that way; for it is the quickest. The ending, "They were happy ever after," cannot be allowed, for the doting author can never resist the temptation to add another chapter, dated ten years after, to show how happy they were.

I sometimes fear that reading, in the old-fashioned sense, may become a lost art. The habit of resorting to the printed page for information is an excellent one, but it is not what I have in mind. A person wants something and knows where to get it. He goes to a book just as he goes to a department store. Knowledge is a commodity done up in a neat parcel. So that the article is well made he does not care either for the manufacturer or the dealer.

Literature, properly so called, is quite different from this, and literary values inhere not in things or even in ideas, but in persons. There are some rare spirits that have imparted themselves to their words. The book then becomes a person, and reading comes to be a kind of conversation. The reader is not passive, as if he were listening to a lecture on The Ethics of the Babylonians. He is sitting by his fireside, and old friends drop in on him. He knows their habits and whims, and is glad to see them and to interchange thought. They are perfectly at their ease, and there is all the time in the world, and if he yawns now and then nobody is offended, and if he prefers to follow a thought of his own rather than theirs there is no discourtesy in leaving them. If his friends are dull this evening, it is because he would have it so; that is why he invited them. He wants to have a good, cosy, dull time. He has had enough to stir him up during the day; now he wants to be let down. He knows a score of good old authors who have lived long in the happy poppy fields.

In all good faith he invokes the goddess of the Dunciad:—

The Gentle Reader nods placidly and joins in the ascription:—

I would not call any one a gentle reader who does not now and then take up a dull book, and enjoy it in the spirit in which it was written.

Wise old Burton, in the Anatomy of Melancholy, advises the restless person to "read some pleasant author till he be asleep." Many persons find the Anatomy of Melancholy to answer this purpose; though Dr. Johnson declares that it was the only book that took him out of bed two hours before he wished to rise. It is hard to draw the line between stimulants and narcotics.

This insistence on the test of the enjoyment of the dullness of a dull book is not arbitrary. It arises from the characteristic of the Gentle Reader. He takes a book for what it is and never for what it is not. If he doesn't like it at all he doesn't read it. If he does read it, it is because he likes its real quality. That is the way we do with our friends. They are the people of whom we say that "we get at them." I suppose every one of us has some friend of whom we would confess that as thinker he is inferior to Plato. But we like him no less for that. We might criticise him if we cared,—but we never care. We prefer to take him as he is. It is the flavor of his individuality that we enjoy. Appreciation of literature is the getting at an author, so that we like what he is, while all that he is not is irrelevant.

There are those who endeavor to reduce literary criticism to an exact science. To this end they would eliminate the personal element, and subject our admirations to fixed standards. In this way it is hoped that we may ultimately be able to measure the road to Parnassus by kilometers. All this is much more easily said than done. Personal likings will not stay eliminated. We admire the acuteness of the critic who reveals the unsuspected excellence of our favorite writer. It is a pleasure like that which comes when a friend is received into a learned society. We don't know much about his learning, but we know that he is a good fellow, and we are glad to learn that he is getting on. We feel also a personal satisfaction in having our tastes vindicated and our enjoyment treated as if it were a virtue, just as Mr. Pecksniff was pleased with the reflection that while he was eating his dinner, he was at the same time obeying a law of the Universe.

But the rub comes when the judgment of the critic disagrees with ours. We discover that his laws have no penalties, and that if we get more enjoyment from breaking than from obeying, then we are just that much ahead. As for giving up an author just because the judgment of the critic is against him, who ever heard of such a thing? The stanchest canons of criticism are exploded by a genuine burst of admiration.

That is what happens whenever a writer of original force appears. The old rules do not explain him, so we must make new rules. We first enjoy him, and then we welcome the clever persons who assure us that the enjoyment is greatly to our credit. But—

I asked a little four-year-old critic, whose literary judgments I accept as final, what stories she liked best. She answered, "I like Joseph and Aladdin and The Forty Thieves and The Probable Son."

It was a purely individual judgment. Some day she may learn that she has the opinion of many centuries behind her. When she studies rhetoric she may be able to tell why Aladdin is better than The Shaving of Shagpat, and why the story of "The Probable Son" delights her, while the half-hour homily on the parable makes not the slightest impression on her mind. The fact is, she knows a good story just as she knows a good apple. How the flavor got there is a scientific question which she has not considered; but being there, trust the uncloyed palate to find it out! She does not set up as a superior person having good taste; but she says, "I can tell you what tastes good."

The Gentle Reader is not greatly drawn to any formal treatises. He does not enjoy a bare bit of philosophy that has been moulded into a fixed form. Yet he dearly loves a philosopher, especially if he turns out to be a sensible sort of man who doesn't put on airs.

He likes the old Greek way of philosophizing. What a delight it was for him to learn that the Academy in Athens was not a white building with green blinds set upon a bleak hilltop, but a grove where, on pleasant days, Plato could be found, ready to talk with all comers! That was something like; no board of trustees, no written examinations, no text-books—just Plato! You never knew what was to be the subject or where you were coming out; all you were sure of was that you would come away with a new idea. Or if you tired of the Academy, there were the Peripatetics, gentlemen who were drawn together because they imagined they could think better on their legs; or there were the Stoics, elderly persons who liked to sit on the porch and discuss the "cosmic weather." No wonder the Greeks got such a reputation as philosophers! They deserve no credit for it. Any one would like philosophy were it served up in that way.

All that has passed. Were Socrates to come back and enter a downtown office to inquire after the difference between the Good and the Beautiful, he would be confronted with one of those neatly printed cards, intended to discourage the Socratic method during business hours: "This is our busy day."

The Gentle Reader also has his business hours, and has learned to submit to their inexorable requirements; but now and then he has a few hours to himself. He declines an invitation to a progressive euchre party, on the ground of a previous engagement he had made long ago, in his college days, to meet some gentlemen of the fifth century B. C. The evening passes so pleasantly, and the world seems so much fresher in interest, that he wonders why he doesn't do that sort of thing oftener. Perhaps there are some other progressive euchre parties he could cut, and the world be none the worse.

How many people there have been who have gone through the world with their eyes open, and who have jotted down their impressions by the way! How quickly these philosophers come to know their own. Listen to Izaak Walton in his Epistle to the Reader: "I think it fit to tell thee these following truths, that I did not undertake to write or publish this discourse of Fish and Fishing to please myself, and that I wish it may not displease others. And yet I cannot doubt but that by it some readers may receive so much profit that if they be not very busy men, may make it not unworthy the time of their perusal. And I wish the reader to take notice that in the writing of it I have made a recreation of a recreation; and that it might prove so to thee in the reading, and not to read dully and tediously, I have in several places mixed some innocent mirth; of which if thou be a severe, sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow thee to be a competent judge.... I am the willinger to justify this innocent mirth because the whole discourse is a kind of picture of my own disposition, at least of my disposition on such days and times as I allow myself—when Nat and I go fishing together." How cleverly he bows out the ichthyologists! How he rebukes the sordid creature who has come simply to find out how to catch fish! That is the very spirit of Simon Magus! "Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter!"

The Gentle Reader has no ulterior aims. All he wants to know is how Izaak Walton felt when he went fishing, and what he was thinking about.

"A kind of picture of a man's own disposition," that is literature. Even the most futile attempt at self-revelation evokes sympathy. I remember, as a boy, gazing at an austere volume in my grandfather's library. It was, as far as I could ascertain, an indigestible mixture of theology and philology. But my eye was caught by the title, The Diversions of Purley. I had not the slightest idea who Purley was, but my heart went out to him at once.

"Poor Purley!" I said. "If these were your diversions, what a dog's life you must have led!" I could see Purley gazing vaguely through his spectacles as he said: "Don't pity me! It's true I have had my trials,—but then again what larks! See that big book; I did it!" Only long after did I learn that my sympathy was un-called for, as Purley was not a person but a place.

Of all the devices for promoting a good understanding the old-fashioned Preface was the most excellent. It was not an introduction to the subject, its purpose was personal. In these days the Preface, where it survives, is reduced to the smallest possible space. It is like the platform of an electric car which affords the passenger a precarious foothold while he strives to obey the stern demand of the conductor that he move forward. But time was when the Preface was the broad hospitable porch on which the Author and Reader sat for an hour or so and talked over the enterprise that was before them. Sometimes they would talk so long that they almost forgot their ostensible subject.

The very title of Sir William Davenant's "Preface before Gondibert" suggests the hospitable leisure of the seventeenth century. Gondibert is a poetical masterpiece not to be lightly adventured upon. The mind must be duly prepared for it. Sir William, therefore, discourses about poetry in general, and then takes up special instances.

"I will (according as all times have applied their reverence) begin with Homer."

"Homer is an admirable point of departure, and I have no doubt but that you will also tell what you think of Virgil," says the Gentle Reader, who when he is asked to go a mile is glad to go twain.

Then follows discourse on Lucan, Statius, Tasso, and the rest.

"But I feel (sir) that I am falling into the dangerous Fit of a hot writer; for instead of performing the promise which begins this Preface, and doth oblige me (after I had given you the judgement of some upon others), to present myself to your censure, I am wandering after new thoughts; but I shall ask your pardon and return to my undertaking."

"No apologies are necessary, I assure you. With new thoughts the rule is first come, first served, while an immortal masterpiece can wait till such time as we can enjoy it together."

After some reflections on the fallibility of the clergy and the state of the country, the author proceeds to describe the general structure of his poem.

"I have now given you an account of such provisions as I have made for this new Building, and you may next please, having examined the substance, to take a view of the form." He points out the "shadowings, happy strokes, and sweet graces" of his work. This is done with an intimacy of knowledge and fullness of appreciation that could not be possible in a stranger.

"'Tis now fit, after I have given you so long a survey of the Building, to render you some account of the Builder, that you may know by what times, pains, and assistance I have already proceeded."

The time passes with much pleasure and profit until at last the host says: "And now (sir) I shall after my busy vanitie in shewing and describing my new Building, with great quietness, being almost as weary as yourself, bring you to the Back-dore."

It is all so handsomely done that the reader is prepared to begin upon the poem itself, and would do so were it not that the distinguished friend of the author, Mr. Hobbes, has prepared An Answer to the Preface—a point of politeness which has not survived the seventeenth century. Mr. Hobbes is of the opinion that there is only one point in which Gondibert is inferior to the masterpieces of antiquity, and that is that it is written in English instead of in Greek or Latin. The Preface and Answer to the Preface having been read, the further discovery is made that there is a Postscript.

The Author, it appears, has fallen on evil days, and is in prison charged with High Treason.

"I am arrived here at the middle of the Third Book which makes an equal half of the Poem, and I was now by degrees to present you (as I promised in the Preface) the several keys to the Main Building, which should convey you through such short walks as give you an easie view of the whole Frame. But 'tis high time to strike sail and cast anchor (though I have but run half my course), when at the Helme I am threatened with Death, who though he can trouble us but once seems troublesome, and even in the Innocent may beget such gravitie as diverts the Musick of Verse. I beseech thee if thou art as civill as to be pleased with what is written, not to take it ill that I run not till my last gasp.... If thou art a malicious Reader thou wilt remember my Preface boldly confessed that a main motive to this undertaking was a desire of Fame, and thou maist likewise say that I may not possibly live to enjoy it.... If thou (Reader) art one of those who has been warmed with Poetick Fire, I reverence thee as my Judge, and whilst others tax me with Vanitie as if the Preface argued my good Opinion of the Work, I appeal to thy Conscience whether it be much more than such a necessary assurance as thou hast made to thyself in like Undertakings."

The Gentle Reader feels that whatever may be the merits of Gondibert, Sir William Davenant is a gallant gentleman and worthy of his lasting friendship.

The Gentle Reader has a warm place in his heart for those whom he calls the paradisaical writers. These are the unfallen spirits who reveal their native dispositions and are not ashamed. They write about that which they find most interesting—themselves. They not only tell us what happens, but what they think and how they feel. We are made partners of their joys and sorrows. The first person singular is glorified by their use.

"But," says the Severe Moralist, "don't you frequently discover that these persons are vain?"

"Precisely so," answers the Gentle Reader, "and that's what I want to find out. How are you going to discover what an author thinks about himself if he hides behind a mask of impersonality? There is no getting acquainted with such hypocrites. In five hundred pages you may not have a glimpse of the man behind the book, though he may be bubbling over with self-conceit. There was Alexander Cruden, one of the most eccentric persons of the eighteenth century. Fully persuaded of his own greatness, he called himself Alexander the Corrector and announced that he was destined to be 'the second Joseph and a great man at court.' He haunted the ante-chambers of the nobility, but found only one nobleman who would listen to him, Earl Paulett, 'who being goutish in his feet could not run away from the Corrector as other men are apt to do.' Cruden appears to have spent his leisure moments in going about London with a large piece of sponge with which he erased any offensive chalk marks on the walls. 'This employment,' says his biographer, 'occasionally made his walks very tedious.' Now one might consult Cruden's 'Concordance of the Holy Scriptures' in vain for any hint of these idiosyncrasies of the author. Perhaps the nature of the work made this impossible. But what shall we say of writers who, having no such excuse, take pains to conceal from us what manner of men they were. Even David Hume, whose good opinion of himself is a credit to his critical sagacity, assumes an apologetic tone when he ventures upon a sketch of his own life. 'It is difficult,' he says, 'for a man to speak long about himself without vanity; therefore I shall be brief.' What obtuseness that shows in a philosopher who actually wrote a treatise on human nature! What did he know about human nature if he thought anybody would read an auto-biography that was without vanity? Vanity is one of the most lovable of weaknesses. If in our contemporaries it sometimes troubles us, that is only because two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time. But when it is all put in a book and the pure juices of self-satisfaction have been allowed to mellow for a few centuries, nothing can be more delicious."

His heart was won by a single sentence in one of Horace Walpole's letters: "I write to you as I think." To the writer who gives him this mark of confidence he is as faithful as is the Arab to the guest who has eaten salt in his tent. The books which contain the results of thought are common enough, but it is a rare privilege to share with a pleasant gentleman the act of thinking. If the thoughts are those which arise spontaneously out of the incidents of the passing day, so much the better. He therefore warmly resents Wordsworth's remark about "that cold and false-hearted, frenchified coxcomb, Horace Walpole."

"What has Horace Walpole done except to give us a picture of his own disposition and incidentally of the world he lived in? It is an instance of the ingratitude of Republics—and the Republic of Letters is the most ungrateful of them all—that this should be made the ground of a railing accusation against him. Walpole might answer as Timoleon did, when, after having restored the liberties of Syracuse, a citizen denounced him in the popular assembly. The Liberator replied: 'I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude to the gods for granting my request in permitting me to see all the Syracusans enjoy the liberty of saying what they think fit.' A man who could write letters for sixty-two years revealing every phase of feeling for the benefit of posterity earns the right of making as magnanimous a retort as that of any of Plutarch's men. He might well thank the gods for permitting him to furnish future generations with ample material for passing judgment upon him. For myself, I do not agree with Wordsworth. I have summered and wintered with Horace Walpole and he has never played me false; he has shown himself exactly as he is. To be sure, he has his weaknesses, but he is always ready to share them with his friends. I suppose that is the reason why he is accused of being frenchified. A true born Englishman would have kept his faults to himself as if they were incommunicable attributes. I am not going to allow a bit of criticism to come between us at this late day. The relation between Reader and Author is not to be treated so lightly. I believe that there is no reason for separation in such cases except incompatibility of temper."

Then he makes his way to Strawberry Hill and listens to its master describing his possession. "It is set in enameled meadows with filigree hedges,—

Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually with coaches and chaises; barges as solemn as barons of the exchequer move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham Walks bound my prospects; but thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry. Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around; and Pope's ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight."

It is pleasant to sit in the Gothic villa on Strawberry Hill and see the world pass by. The small Euphrates, the filigree hedges, and the gossiping dowagers, being in the foreground, appear more important than they do in the formal histories which have no perspective. But the great world does pass by, and the master of the house is familiar with it and recognizes every important person in the procession. Was he not a Prime Minister's son, and were not his first letters written from Downing Street?

How rapidly the procession moves, giving only time for a nod and a word! The reader is like a country cousin in the metropolis bewildered by a host of new sensations. Now and then he smiles as some one whose name has been long familiar is pointed out. The chief wonder is that there are so many notabilities of whom he has never heard before. What an unconscionable number of Duchesses there are, and each one has a history! How different the Statesmen are from what he had imagined; not nearly so wise but ever so much more amusing. Even the great William Pitt appears to be only "Sir William Quixote," and a fantastic figure he is! Strawberry Hill has its prejudices. It listens incredulously to the stories illustrative of incorruptible political virtue. They are tales to be told to Posterity.

In regard to the historical drama that unfolds there is a pleasant ambiguity. Which is it that sees behind the scenes,—the writer or the present-day reader? The reader representing Posterity has a general notion of the progress of events. He thinks he knows how things actually came out and which were the more important. He is anxious to know how they strike a contemporary. But he is chastened by the discovery of the innumerable incidents which Posterity has forgotten, but which made a great stir in their day. "The Tower guns have sworn through thick and thin that Prince Ferdinand has entirely demolished the French, and city bonfires all believe it." Prince Ferdinand "is the most fashionable man in England. Have not the Tower guns and all the parsons in London been ordered to pray for him?"

The Gentle Reader is almost tempted to look up Prince Ferdinand, but is diverted from this inquiry by a bit of gossip about the Duke of Marlborough and the silver spoons.

When he comes to the glorious year 1775 he is eager to learn the sensations of Walpole when the echoes of the "shot heard round the world" come to him. The shot is heard, but its effect is not so startling as might have been imagined. "I did but put my head into London on Thursday, and more bad news from America. I wonder when it will be bad enough to make folks think it so, without going on?" Then Walpole turns to something more interesting. "I have a great mind to tell you a Twickenham story."

It is about a certain Captain Mawhood who had "applied himself to learn the classics and free-thinking and was always disputing with the parson of the parish about Dido and his own soul."

It is not just what the Gentle Reader was expecting, but he adapts himself cheerfully to the situation.

"I was about to inquire what you thought about the American war, but we may come to that at some other time. Now let us have the Twickenham story."

The Gentle Reader loves the writers who reveal their intellectual limitations, but he does not care for those who insist upon telling him their physical ailments. He is averse to the letters and journals which are merely contributions to pathology. Indeed, he would, if he had his own way, allow the mention of only one malady, the gout. This is doubtless painful enough in the flesh, but in a book it has many pleasant associations. Its intervals seem conducive to reminiscence, and its twinges are the occasions of eloquent objurgations which light up many an otherwise colorless page.

With all his tolerance of vanity he dislikes that inverted kind which induces certain morbid persons to write out painful confessions of their own sins. He is willing to believe that they are far from perfect, but he is sceptical in regard to their claims to be the chief of sinners. It is hard to attain distinction in a line where there is so much competition.

When he finds a book of Life and Letters unreadable, he does not bring a railing accusation against either the biographer or the biographee.

They may both have been interesting persons, though the result in cold print is not exhilarating. He knows how volatile is the charm of personality, and how hard it is to preserve the best things. His friend, who is a great diner-out, says: "Those were delightful people I met at dinner yesterday, and what a capital story the judge told! I laugh every time I think about it."

"What story?" asks the Gentle Reader, eager for the crumbs that fall from the witty man's table.

"I can't remember just what it was about, or what was the point of it; but it was a good story, and you would have thought so, too, if you had heard the judge tell it."

"I certainly should," replies the Gentle Reader, "and I shall always believe, on your testimony, that the judge is one of the best story-tellers in existence."

In like manner he believes in interesting things that great men must have done which unfortunately were not taken down by any one at the time.

The Gentle Reader himself is not much at home in fashionable literary society. He is a shy person, and his embarrassment is increased by the consciousness that he seldom gets round to a book till after people are through talking about it. Not that he prides himself on this fact; for he is far from cherishing the foolish prejudice against new books.

"'David Copperfield' was a new book once, and it was as good then as it is now." It simply happens that there are so many good books that it is hard to keep up with the procession. Besides, he has discovered that the books that are talked about can be talked about just as well without being read; this leaves him more time for his old favorites.

"I have a sweet little story for you," says the charming authoress. "I am sure you like sweet little stories."

"Only one lump, if you please," says the Gentle Reader.

In spite of his genial temperament there are some subjects on which he is intolerant. When he picks up a story that turns out to be only a Tract for the Times, he turns indignantly on the author.

"Sirrah," he cries, under the influence of deep feeling, relapsing into the vernacular of romance, "you gained access to me under the plea that you were going to please me; and now that you have stolen a portion of my time, you throw off all disguise, and admit that you entered with intent to instruct, and that you do not care whether you please me or not! I've a mind to have you arrested for obtaining my attention under false pretenses! How villainously we are imposed upon! Only the other day a man came to me highly recommended as an architect. I employed him to build me a Castle in Spain, regardless of expense. When I suggested a few pleasant embellishments, the wretch refused on the ground that he never saw anything of the kind in the town he came from,—Toledo, Ohio. If he had pleaded honest poverty of invention I should have forgiven him, but he took a high and mighty tone with me, and said that it was against his principles to allow any incident that was not probable. 'Who said that it should be probable?' I replied. 'It is your business to make it seem probable.'"

He highly disapproves of what he considers the cheese-paring economy on the part of certain novelists in the endowment of their characters. "Their traits are so microscopic, and require such minute analysis, that I get half through the book before I know which is which. It seems as if the writers were not sure that there was enough human nature to go around. They should study the good old story of Aboukir and Abousir.

"'There were in the city of Alexandria two men,—one was a dyer, and his name was Aboukir; the other was a barber, and his name was Abousir. They were neighbors, and the dyer was a swindler, a liar, and a person of exceeding wickedness.'

"Now, there the writer and reader start fair. There are no unnecessary concealments. You know that the dyer is a villain, and you are on your guard. You are not told in the first paragraph about the barber, but you take it for granted that he is an excellent, well-meaning man, who is destined to become enormously wealthy. And so it turns out. If our writers would only follow this straightforward method we should hear less about nervous prostration among the reading classes." He is very severe on the whimsical notion, that never occurred to any one until the last century, of saying that the heroine is not beautiful.

"Such a remark is altogether gratuitous. When I become attached to a young lady in fiction she always appears to me to be an extraordinarily lovely creature. It's sheer impertinence for the author to intrude, every now and then, just to call my attention to the fact that her complexion is not good, and that her features are irregular. It's bad manners,—and, besides, I don't believe that it's true."

Nothing, however, so offends the Gentle Reader as the trick of elaborating a plot and then refusing to elucidate it, and leaving everything at loose ends. He feels toward this misdirected ingenuity as Miss Edgeworth's Harry did toward the conundrum which his sister proposed.

"This is quite different," he said, "from the others. The worst of it is that after laboring ever so hard at one riddle it does not in the least lead to another. The next is always on some other principle."

"Yes, to be sure," said Lucy. "Nobody who knows how to puzzle would give two riddles of the same kind; that would be too easy."

"But then, without something to guide one," said Harry, "there is no getting on."

"Not in your regular way," said Lucy.

"That is the very thing I complain of," said Harry.

"Complain! But my dear Harry, riddles are meant only to divert one."

"But they do not divert me," said Harry; "they only puzzle me."

The Gentle Reader is inclined to impute unworthy motives to the writer whose work merely puzzles him.

"The lazy unscrupulous fellow takes a job, and then throws it up and leaves me to finish it for him. It's a clear breach of contract! That sort of thing would never have been allowed in any well-governed community. Fancy what would have happened in the court of Shahriar, where story-telling was taken seriously."

Sheherazade has got Sindbad on the moving island.

"How did he get off?" asks the Sultan.

"That's for your majesty to find out," answers Sheherazade archly. "Maybe he got off, and maybe he didn't. That's the problem."

"Off with her head!" says the Sultan.

When sore beset by novelists who, under the guise of fiction, attempt to saddle him with "the weary weight of all this unintelligible world," the Gentle Reader takes refuge with one who has never deceived him.

"What shall it be?" says Sir Walter.

"As you please, Sir Walter."

"No! As you please, Gentle Reader. If you have nothing else in mind, how would this do for a start?—

It's a fine morning, and it's a gallant company! Let's go with them!"

"Let's!" cries the Gentle Reader.

ROWNING'S description of the effect of the recital of classic poetry upon a band of piratical Greeks must seem to many persons to be exaggerated:—

"Then, because Greeks are Greeks, and hearts are hearts,
And poetry is power, they all outbroke
In a great joyous laughter with much love."

Because Americans are Americans, and business is business, and time is money, and life is earnest, we take our poetry much more seriously than that. We are ready to form classes to study it and to discuss it, but these solemn assemblies are not likely to be disturbed by outbursts of "great joyous laughter."

We usually accept poetry as mental discipline. It is as if the poet said, "Go to, now. I will produce a masterpiece." Thereupon the conscientious reader answers, "Very well; I can stand it. I will apply myself with all diligence, that by means of it I may improve my mind." Who has not sometimes quailed before the long row of British Poets in uniform binding, standing stiffly side by side, like so many British grenadiers on dress parade? Who has not felt his courage ooze away at the sight of those melancholy volumes labeled Complete Poetical Works? Poetical Remains they used to call them, and there is something funereal in their aspect.

The old hymn says, "Religion never was designed to make our pleasures less," and the same thing ought to be said about poetry. The distaste for poetry arises largely from the habit of treating it as if it were only a more difficult kind of prose. We are so much under the tyranny of the scientific method that the habits of the school-room intrude, and we try to extract instruction from what was meant to give us joy. The prosaic commentary obscures the beauty of the text, so that

One of the most ruthless invasions of the prosaic faculties into the realm of poetry comes from the thirst for general information. When this thirst becomes a disease, it is not satisfied with census reports and encyclopædia articles, but values literature according to the number of facts presented. Suppose these lines from "Paradise Lost" to be taken for study:—

What an opportunity this presents to the schoolmaster! "Come now," he cries with pedagogic glee, "answer me a few questions. Where is Vallombrosa? What is the character of its autumnal foliage? Bound Etruria. What is sedge? Explain the myth of Orion? Point out the constellation on the map of the heavens. Where is the Red Sea? Who was Busiris? By what other name was he known? Who were the Memphian Chivalry?"

Here is material for exhaustive research in geography, ancient and modern, history, botany, astronomy, meteorology, chronology, and archæology. The industrious student may get almost as much information out of "Paradise Lost" as from one of those handy compilations of useful knowledge, which are sold on the railway cars for twenty-five cents. As for the poetry of Milton, that is another matter.

Next to the temptation to use a poem as a receptacle for a mass of collateral information is that to use it for the display of one's own penetration. As in the one case it is treated as if it were an encyclopædia article, in the other it is treated as if it were a verbal puzzle. It is taken for granted that the intention of the poet is to conceal thought, and the game is for the reader to find it out. We are hunting for hidden meanings, and we greet one another with the grim salutation of the creatures in the jungle: "Good hunting!" "What is the meaning of this passage?" Who has not heard this sudden question propounded in regard to the most transparent sentence from an author who is deemed worthy of study? The uninitiated, in the simplicity of his heart, might answer that he probably means what he says. Not at all; if that were so, "what are we here for?" We are here to find hidden meanings, and one who finds the meaning simple must be stopped, as Armado stops Moth, with

"Define, define, well-educated infant."

It is a verbal masquerade to which we have been invited. No knowing what princes in disguise, as well as anarchists and nihilists and other objectionably interesting persons, may be discovered when the time for unmasking comes.

Now, the effect of all this is that many persons turn away from the poets altogether. Why should they spend valuable time in trying to unravel the meaning of lines which were invented to baffle them? There are plenty of things we do not understand, without going out of our way to find them. Then, as Pope observes,

"True No-meaning puzzles more than Wit."

The poets themselves, as if conscious that they are objects of suspicion, are inclined to be apologetic, and endeavor to show that they are doing business on a sound prosaic basis. Wordsworth set the example of such painstaking self-justification. His conscience compelled him to make amends to the literal minded Public for poetic indiscretions, and to offer to settle all claims for damages. What a shame-faced excuse he makes for the noble lines on Rob Roy's grave. "I have since been told that I was misinformed as to the burial-place of Rob Roy; if so, I may plead in excuse that I wrote on apparently good authority, namely that of a well-educated lady who lived at the head of the lake."

One is reminded of the preface to the works of The Sweet Singer of Michigan: "This little book is composed of truthful pieces. All those which speak of being killed, died, or drowned are truthful songs, others are more truth than poetry."

It is against this mistaken conscientiousness that the Gentle Reader protests. He insists that the true "defense of poesy" is that it has an altogether different function from prose. It is not to be appreciated by the prosaic understanding; unless, indeed, that awkward faculty be treated to some Delsartean decomposing exercises to get rid of its stiffness.

"When I want more truth than poetry," he says, "I will go directly to The Sweet Singer of Michigan, or I will inquire of the well-educated lady who lives at the head of the lake. I do not like to have a poet troubled about such small matters."

Then he reads with approval the remarks of one of his own order who lived in the seventeenth century, who protests against those "who take away the liberty of a poet and fetter his feet in the shackles of an historian. For why should a poet doubt in story to mend the intrigues of fortune by more delightful conveyances of probable fictions because austere historians have entered into bond to truth; an obligation which were in poets as foolish and unnecessary as is the bondage of false martyrs, who lie in chains for a mistaken opinion. But by this I would imply that truth, narrative and past, is the idol of historians (who worship a dead thing), and truth operative and by effects continually alive is the mistress of poets, who hath not her existence in matter but in reason."

I am well aware that the attitude of the Gentle Reader seems to many strenuous persons to be unworthy of our industrial civilization. These persons insist that we shall make hard work of our poetry, if for no other reason than to preserve our self-respect. Here as elsewhere they insist upon the stern law that if a man will not labor neither shall he eat. Even the poems of an earlier and simpler age which any child can understand must be invested with some artificial difficulty. The learned guardians of these treasures insist that they cannot be appreciated unless there has been much preliminary wrestling with a "critical apparatus," and much delving among "original sources." This is the same principle that makes the prudent householder provide a sharp saw and a sufficient pile of cord wood as a test to be applied to the stranger who asks for a breakfast. There is much academic disapproval of one who in defiance of all law insists on enjoying poetry after his own "undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather unlettered, or ratherest unconfirmed fashion." I, however, so thoroughly sympathize with the Gentle Reader that I desire to present his point of view.

To understand poetry is a vain ambition. That which we fully understand is the part that is not poetry. It is that which passes our understanding which has the secret in itself. There is an incommunicable grace that defies all attempts at analysis. Poetry is like music; it is fitted, not to define an idea or to describe a fact, but to voice a mood. The mood may be the mood of a very simple person,—the mood of a shepherd watching his flocks, or of a peasant in the fields; or, on the other hand, it may be the mood of a philosopher whose mind has been engrossed with the most subtle problems of existence. But in each case the mood, by some suggestion, must be communicated to us. Thoughts and facts must be transfigured; they must come to us as through some finer medium. As we are told that we must experience religion before we know what religion is, so we must experience poetry. The poet is the enchanter, and we are the willing victims of his spells:—

Only the reader who yields to the charm can dream the dream. The poet may weave his story of the most common stuff, but "there's magic in the web of it." If we are conscious of this magical power, we forgive the lack of everything else. The poet may be as ignorant as Aladdin himself, but he has a strange power over our imaginations. At his word they obey, traversing continents, building palaces, painting pictures. They say, "We are ready to obey as thy slaves, and the slaves of all that have that lamp in their hands,—we and the other slaves of the lamp."

This is the characteristic of the poet's power. He does not construct a work of the imagination,—he makes our imaginations do that. That is why the fine passages of elaborate description in verse are usually failures. The verse-maker describes accurately and at length. The poet speaks a word, and Presto! change! We are transported into a new land, and our eyes are "baptized into the grace and privilege of seeing." Many have taken in hand to write descriptions of spring; and some few painstaking persons have nerved themselves to read what has been written. I turn to the prologue of the "Canterbury Tales;" it is not about spring, it is spring, and I am among those who long to go upon a pilgrimage. A description of a jungle is an impertinence to one who has come under the spell of William Blake's

Those fierce eyes glowing there in the darkness sufficiently illuminate the scene. Immediately it is midsummer, and we feel all its delicious languor when Browning's David sings of

The first essential to the enjoyment of poetry is leisure. The demon Hurry is the tempter, and knowledge is the forbidden fruit in the poet's paradise. To enjoy poetry, you must renounce not only your easily besetting sins, but your easily besetting virtues as well. You must not be industrious, or argumentative, or conscientious, or strenuous. I do not mean that you must be a person of unlimited leisure and without visible means of support. I have known some very conscientious students of literature who, when off duty, found time to enjoy poetry. I mean that if you have only half an hour for poetry, for that half hour you must be in a leisurely frame of mind.

The poet differs from the novelist in that he requires us to rest from our labors. The ordinary novel is easy reading, because it takes us as we are, in the midst of our hurry. The mind has been going at express speed all the day; what the novelist does is to turn the switch, and off we go on another track. The steam is up, and the wheels go around just the same. The great thing is still action, and we eagerly turn the pages to see what is going to happen next,—unless we are reading some of our modern realistic studies of character. Even then we are lured on by the expectation that, at the last moment, something may happen. But when we turn to the poets, we are in the land of the lotus-eaters. The atmosphere is that of a perfect day,

Into this land our daily cares cannot follow us. It is an

Once in this enchanted country, haste seems foolish. Why should we toil on as if we were walking for a wager? It is as if one had the privilege of joining Izaak Walton as he loiters in the cool shade of a sweet honeysuckle hedge, and should churlishly trudge on along the dusty highway rather than accept the gentle angler's invitation: "Pray, let us rest ourselves in this sweet, shady arbor of jessamine and myrtle; and I will requite you with a bottle of sack, and when you have pledged me, I will repeat the verses I promised you." One may, as a matter of strict conscience, be both a pedestrian and a prohibitionist, and yet not find it in his heart to decline such an invitation.

The poets who delight us with their verses are not always serious-minded persons with an important thought to communicate. When I read,

I am not a bit wiser than I was before, but I am a great deal happier; although I have not the slightest idea where Xanadu was, and only the vaguest notion of Kublai Khan.

There are poems whose charm lies in their illusiveness. Fancy any one trying to explain Rossetti's "Blessed Damozel." Yet when the mood is on us we see her as she leans

We look over the mystic ramparts and are dimly conscious that

This is not astronomy nor theology, nor any of the things we know all about—it is only poetry.

Let no one trouble me by attempting to elucidate "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came." I do not care for a Baedeker. I prefer to lose my way. I love the darkness rather than light. I do not care for a topographical chart of the hills that

The mood in which we enjoy such poetry is that described in Emerson's "Forerunners."

If our thoughts make haste to join these "fine revelers," rejoicing in the sense of freedom and mystery, delighting in the mist and the wind, careless of attaining so that we may follow the shining trails, all is well.

As there are poems which are not meant to be understood, so there are poems that are not meant to be read; that is, to be read through. There is Keats's "Endymion," for instance. I have never been able to get on with it. Yet it is delightful,—that is the very reason why I do not care to get on with it. Wherever I begin, I feel that I might as well stay where I am. It is a sweet wilderness into which the reader is introduced.

We are brought into the very midst of this pleasantness. Deep in the wood we see fair faces and garments white. We see the shepherds coming to the woodland altar.

We see the venerable priest pouring out the sweet-scented wine, and then we see the young Endymion himself:—

What happened next? What did Endymion do? Really, I do not know. It is so much pleasanter, at this point, to close the book, and dream "of idleness in groves Elysian." The chances are that when one turns to the poem again he will not begin where he left off, but at the beginning, and read as if he had never read it before; or rather, with more enjoyment because he has read it so many times:—

Shelley describes a mood such as Keats brings to us:—

He who finds himself afloat upon the "many-winding river" throws aside the laboring oar. It is enough to float on,—he cares not whither.

What greater pleasure is there than in the "Idylls of the King" provided we do not study them, but dream them. We must enter into the poet's own mood:—

It is good to be there, in that far-off time, good to come to Camelot:—

All we see of kings, and magicians, and ladies, and knights is "strange and rich and dim." Over everything is a luminous haze. There are

There is the flashing of swords, the weaving of spells, the seeing of visions. All these things become real to us; not simply the stainless king and the sinful queen, the prowess of Lancelot and the love of Elaine, but the magic of Merlin and the sorceries of Vivien, with her charms

"Of woven paces and of waving hands."

And we must stand at last with King Arthur on the shore of the mystic sea, and see the barge come slowly with the three queens, "black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream;" and hear across the water a cry,

But what good is there in all this? Why waste time on idle dreams? We hear Walt Whitman's challenge to romantic poetry:—

Away with the old romance! Make room for the modern bard, who is

"Bluffed not a bit by drain-pipes, gasometers, and artificial fertilizers."

The Gentle Reader, also, is not to be bluffed by any useful things, however unpleasant they may be, but he winces a little as he reads that the "far superber themes for poets and for art" include the teaching by the poet of how

The Muse of Poetry shrieks at the mighty lines in praise of "leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making," and the rest. Boiler-making, she protests, is a useful industry and highly to be commended, but it is not music. When asked to give a reason why she should not receive all these things as poetry, the Muse is much embarrassed. "It's all true," she says. "Leather-dressing and boiler-making are undoubted realities, while Arthur and Lancelot may be myths." Yet she is not quite ready to be off with the old love and on with the new,—it's all so sudden.

Whitman himself furnishes the best illustrations of the difference between poetry and prose. He comes like another Balaam to prophesy against those who associate poetry with beauty of form and melody of words; and then the poetic spirit seizes upon him and lifts him into the region of harmony. In the Song of the Universal he declares that—

There speaks the poet declaring the true faith, which except a man believe he is condemned everlastingly to the outer darkness. His task is selective. No matter about the murkiness of the cloud he must make us see the ray of perfect light. In the mad Babel-din he must hear and repeat the strain of pure music. As to the field of choice, it may be as wide as the world, but he must choose as a poet, and not after the manner of the man with the muck-rake.

When the poet delves in the grossness and the slag, he does so as one engaged in the search for the perfect.

"My feeling," says the Gentle Reader, "about the proper material for poetry, is very much like that of Whitman in regard to humanity—

"So I say, when drain pipes and cross-cut saws and the beef on the butcher's stalls are invested with beautiful associations and thrill my soul in some mysterious fashion, then I will make as much of these things as I do of the murmuring pines and the hemlocks. When a poet makes bank clerks and stevedores and wood-choppers to loom before my imagination in heroic proportions, I will receive them as I do the heroes of old. But, mind you, the miracle must be actually performed; I will not be put off with a prospectus."

Now and then the miracle is performed. We are made to feel the romance that surrounds the American pioneer, we hear the

"Crackling blows of axes sounding musically, driven by strong arms."

But, for the most part, Whitman, when under the influence of deep feeling, forgets his theory, and uses as his symbols those things which have already been invested with poetical associations. Turn to that marvelous dirge, "When Lilacs last in the Dooryard bloomed." There is here no catalogue of facts or events, no parade of glaring realism. Tennyson's "sweet sad rhyme" has nowhere more delicious music than we find in the measured cadence of these lines. We are not told the news of the assassination of Lincoln as a man on the street might tell it. It comes to us through suggestion. We are made to feel a mood, not to listen to the description of an event. There is symbolism, suggestion, color mystery. We inhale the languorous fragrance of the lilacs; we see the drooping star; in secluded recesses we hear "a shy and hidden bird" warbling a song; there are dim-lit churches and shuddering organs and tolling bells, and there is one soul heart-broken, seeing all and hearing all.

This is real poetry, and yet while we yield to the charm we are conscious that it is made up of the old familiar elements.

Tennyson's apology to a utilitarian age was not needed:—

The "modern touches" we can spare. The modern life we have always with us; but it is a rare privilege to enjoy the best things of the past. It is the poet who is the minister of this fine grace. The historian tells us what men of the past did, the philosopher tells us how their civilizations developed and decayed; we smile at their superstitions, and pride ourselves upon our progress. But the ethereal part has vanished, that which made their very superstitions beautiful and cast a halo over their struggles. These are the elements out of which the poet creates his world, into which we may enter. In the order of historic development chivalry must give way before democracy, and loyalty to the king must fade before the increasing sense of liberty and equality; but the highest ideals of chivalry may remain. Imaginative and romantic poetry has this high mission to preserve what otherwise would be lost. It lifts the mind above the daily routine into the region of pure joy. Whatever necessary changes take place in the world we find, in

I have said that one may be a true poet without having any very important thought to communicate, but it must be said that most of the great poets have been serious thinkers as well. They have had their philosophy of life, their thoughts about nature and about human duty and destiny. It is the function of the poet not only to create for us an ideal world and to fill it with ideal creatures, but also to reveal to us the ideal element in the actual world.

"I do not know what poetical is," says Audrey. "Is it honest in deed and word? Is it a true thing?" We must not answer with Touchstone: "No, truly! for the truest poetry is the most feigning."

The poetical interpretation of the world is not feigning; it is a true thing,—the truest thing of which we can know. The grace and sublimity which we see through the poet's eyes are real. We must, however, still insist on our main contention. The poet, if he is to hold us, must always be a poet. His thought must be in solution, and not appear as a dull precipitate of prose. He may be philosophical, but he must not philosophize. He may be moral, but he must not moralize. He may be religious, but let him spare his homilies.

"Whatever the philosopher saith should be done," said Sir Philip Sidney; "the peerless poet giveth a perfect picture of it. He yieldeth to the power of the mind an image of that of which the philosopher bestoweth but a wordish description.... The poet doth not only show the way, but doth give so sweet a prospect unto the way as will entice any man to enter it. Nay, he doth as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at first give you a cluster of grapes."

We have a right to ask our poets to be pleasant companions even when they discourse on the highest themes. Even when they have theories of their own about what we should enjoy, let us not allow them to foist upon us "wordish descriptions" of excellent things instead of poetry. When the poet invites me to go with him I first ask, "Let me taste your grapes."

You remember Mr. By-ends in the "Pilgrim's Progress,"—how he said of Christian and Hopeful, "They are headstrong men who think it their duty to rush on in their journey in all weathers, while I am for waiting for wind or tide. I am for Religion when he walks in his silver slippers in the sunshine." That was very reprehensible in Mr. By-ends, and he richly deserved the rebuke which was afterward administered to him. But when we change the subject, and speak, not of religion, but of poetry, I confess that I am very much of Mr. By-ends' way of thinking. There are literary Puritans who, when they take up the study of a poet, make it a point of conscience to go on to the bitter end of his poetical works. If they start with Wordsworth on his "Excursion," they trudge on in all weathers. They do the poem, as when going abroad they do Europe in six weeks. As the revival hymn says, "doing is a deadly thing." Let me say, good Christian and Hopeful, that though I admire your persistence, I cannot accompany you. I am for a poet only when he puts on his singing robes and walks in the sunshine. As for those times when he goes on prosing in rhyme from force of habit, I think it is more respectful as well as more pleasurable to allow him to walk alone.

Shelley's definition of poetry as "the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds" suggests the whole duty of the reader. All that is required of him is to obey the Golden Rule. There must be perfect reciprocity and fraternal sympathy. The poet, being human, has his unhappy hours, when all things are full of labor. Upon such hours the Gentle Reader does not intrude. In their happiest moments they meet as if by chance. In this encounter they are pleased with one another and with the world they live in. How could it be otherwise? It is indeed a wonderful world, transfigured in the light of thought. Familiar objects lose their sharp outlines and become symbols of universal realities. Likenesses, before unthought of, appear. Nature becomes a mirror of the soul, and answers instantly to each passing mood. Words are no longer chosen, they come unbidden as the poet and his reader

N "The Last Tournament" we are told how

That is the view which many worthy people take of the humorist. He is Sir Dagonet. Among the serious persons who are doing the useful work of the world, discovering its laws, classifying its facts, forecasting its future, this light-minded, light-hearted creature comes with his untimely jests. In their idle moments they tolerate the mock-knight, but when important business is on hand they dismiss him, as did Sir Tristram, with

"Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?"

This half-contemptuous view is very painful to the Gentle Reader who, though he may seem to some to take his poetry too lightly, is disposed to take his humor rather seriously. Humor seems to him to belong to the higher part of our nature. It is not the enjoyment of a grotesque image in a convex mirror, but, rather, the recognition of fleeting forms of truth.

"I have brought you a funny book, Gentle Reader," says the Professional Humorist.

"Thank you," he answers, struggling against his melancholy forebodings. "You will pardon me if I seem to take my pleasures sadly."

It is hard for him to force a smile as he watches the procession of jokes, each as broad as it is long. This ostentatious jocosity is not to his liking.

"Thackeray," he says, "defines humor as a mixture of love and wit. Humor, therefore, being of the nature of love, should not behave itself unseemly."

He cannot bear to see it obtruding itself upon the public. Its proper habit is to hide from observation "as if the wren taught it concealment." When a Happy Thought ventures abroad it should be as a royal personage traveling incognito.

This is a big world, and it is serious business to live in it. It makes many demands. It requires intensity of thought and strenuousness of will and solidity of judgment. Great tasks are set before us. We catch fugitive glimpses of beauty, and try to fix them forever in perfect form,—that is the task of art. We see thousands of disconnected facts, and try to arrange them in orderly sequence,—that is the task of science. We see the ongoing of eternal force, and seek some reason for it,—that is the task of philosophy.

But when art and science and philosophy have done their best, there is a great deal of valuable material left over. There are facts that will not fit into any theory, but which keep popping up at us from the most unexpected places. Nobody can tell where they come from or why they are here; but here they are. Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectnesses. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways. Everything is under the reign of strict law; but many queer things happen, nevertheless. What are we to do with all the waifs and strays? What are we to do with all the sudden incongruities which mock at our wisdom and destroy the symmetry of our ideas?

The solemnly logical intelligence ignores their existence. It does not trouble itself about anything which does not belong to its system. The system itself has such perfect beauty that it is its own excuse for being.

More sensitive and less self-centred natures do not find the way so easy. They allow themselves to be worried by the incongruities which they cannot ignore. It seems to them that whenever they are in earnest the world conspires to mock them. Continually they feel that intellect and conscience are insulted by whipper-snappers of facts that have no right to be in an orderly universe. They can expose a lie, and feel a certain superiority in doing it; but a little unclassified, irreconcilable truth drives them to their wit's end. There it stands in all its shameless actuality asking, "What do you make of me?"

Just here comes the beneficent mission of humor. It takes these unassorted realities that are the despair of the sober intelligence, and extracts from them pure joy. If life depends on the perpetual adjustment of the organism to its environment, humor is the means by which the intellectual life is sustained on those occasions when the expected environment is not there. The adjustment must be made, without a moment's warning, to an altogether new set of conditions. We are called upon to swap horses while crossing the stream. It is a method which the serious minded person does not approve. While arguing the matter he is unhorsed, and finds himself floundering in the water. The humorist accepts the situation instantly. As he scrambles upon his new nag it is with a sense of triumph, for the moment at least, he feels that he has the best of the bargain.

One may have learned to enjoy the sublime, the beautiful, the useful, the orderly, but he has missed something if he has not also learned to enjoy the incongruous, the illusive, and the unexpected. Artistic sensibility finds its satisfaction only in the perfect. Humor is the frank enjoyment of the imperfect. Its objects are not so high,—but there are more of them.

Evolution is a cosmic game of Pussy wants a corner. Each creature has its eye on some snug corner where it would rest in peace. Each corner is occupied by some creature that is not altogether satisfied and that is on the lookout for a larger sphere. There is much beckoning between those who are desirous of making a change. Now and then some bold spirit gives up his assured position and scrambles for something better. The chances are that the adventurer finds it harder to attain the coveted place than he had thought. For the fact is that there are not corners enough to go around. If there were enough corners, and every one were content to stay in the one where he found himself at the beginning, then the game would be impossible. It is well that this never happens. Nature looks after that. When things are too homogeneous she breaks them up into new and amazing kinds of heterogeneity. It is a good game, and one learns to like it after he enters into the spirit of it.

If the Universe had a place for everything and everything was in its place, there would be little demand for humor. As a matter of fact the world is full of all sorts of people, and they are not all in their proper places. There are amazing incongruities between station and character. It is not a world that has been reduced to order; it is still in the making. One may easily grow misanthropic and pessimistic by dwelling upon the misfits.

But fortunately these incongruities are not altogether tragical. There are certain moods when we rather enjoy seeing "needy nothing trimmed in jollity." We are pleased when Justice Shallow slaps Sir John Falstaff on the back and says, "Ha! it was a merry night, Sir John." We are not irritated beyond endurance because in this world where so many virtuous people have a hard time, such trifling fellows as Sir Toby and Sir Andrew have their cakes and ale. When folly puts on doctor-like airs it is not always disagreeable. We would not have Dogberry put off the watch to give place to some one who could pass the civil service examination.

The humorist, when asked what he thinks of the actual world, would turn upon his questioner as Touchstone turned upon Corin when he was asked how he liked the shepherd's life:—

"Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?" The world is not at all like the descriptions of it, and yet he cannot take a very gloomy view of it. In respect to itself it is a good world, and yet in respect that it is not finished it leaves much to be desired. Yet in respect that it leaves much to be desired, and much to be done by us, it is perhaps better for us than if it were finished. In respect that many things happen that are opposed to our views of the eternal fitness of things, it is a perplexing world. Yet in respect that we have a faculty for enjoying the occasional unfitness of things, it is delightful. On the whole, he sums up with Touchstone, "It suits my humor well."

Humor is impossible to the man of one idea. There must be at least two ideas moving in opposite directions, so that there may be a collision. Such an accident does not happen in a mind under economical management that runs only one train of thought a day.

There are many ideas that have a very insecure tenure. They hold their own as squatters. By and by Science will come along and evict them, but in the mean time these homely folk make very pleasant neighbors. All they ask is that we shall not take them too seriously. That a thing is not to be taken too seriously does not imply that it is either unreal or unimportant:—it only means that it is not to be taken that way. There is, for example, a pickaninny on a Southern plantation. The anthropologist measures his skull and calls it by a long Latin name. The psychologist carefully records his nervous reactions. The pedagogical expert makes him the victim of that form of inquisition known as "child study." The missionary perplexes himself in vain attempting to get at his soul. Then there comes along a person of another sort. At the first look, a genial smile of recognition comes over the face of this new spectator. He is the first one who has seen the pickaninny. The one essential truth about a black, chubby, kinky-haired pickaninny is that, when he rolls up his eyes till only the whites are visible, he is irresistibly funny. This is what theologians term "the substance of doctrine" concerning the pickaninny.

When Charles Lamb slipped on the London pavement, he found delight in watching the chimney sweep who stood laughing at his misfortune. "There he stood irremovable, as though the jest were to last forever, with such a maximum of glee and minimum of mischief in his mirth—for the grin of a genuine sweep hath no malice in it—that I could have been content, if the honor of a gentleman might endure it, to have remained his butt and his mockery till midnight." There were many middle-aged London citizens who could no more appreciate that kind of pleasure than a Hottentot could appreciate an oratorio. That is only saying that the average citizen and the average Hottentot have, as Wordsworth mildly puts it, "faculties which they have never used."

The high place that humor holds among our mental processes is evident when we consider that it is almost the only one that requires that we shall be thoroughly awake. In our dreams we have many æsthetic enjoyments, as vague splendors pass before us. At other times there is an abnormal sensitiveness to the sovereignty, not to say the despotism of ethics. We feel burdened with the weight of unpardonable sins. We are able also in our sleep to philosophize after a fashion which is, for the time, quite satisfactory. At such times we are sure that we have made important discoveries; if we could only remember what they were. A thousand incongruities pass through our minds, but there is one thing which we cannot do. We cannot recognize that they are incongruous. Such a discovery would immediately awaken us.

Tennyson tells how

It would be possible for the parson and his congregation to keep on with that sort of thing Sunday after Sunday. They would discover nothing absurd in the performance, so long as they were in their usual semi-somnolent condition.

Humor implies mental alertness and power of discrimination. It also implies a hospitality toward all the differences that are recognized. Psychologists speak of the Association of Ideas. It is a pleasant thought, but it is, in reality, difficult to induce Ideas to associate in a neighborly way. In many minds the different groups are divided by conventional lines, and there are aristocratic prejudices separating the classes from the masses. The Working Hypothesis, honest son of toil that he is, does not expect so much as a nod of recognition from the High Moral Principle who walks by in his Sunday clothes. The steady Habit does not associate with the high-bred Sentiment. They do not belong to the same set. Only in the mind of the humorist is there a true democracy. Here everybody knows everybody. Even the priggish Higher Thought is not allowed to enjoy a sense of superiority. Plain Common Sense slaps him on the back, calls him by his first name, and bids him not make a fool of himself.

Of the two ingredients which Thackeray mentions, the first, love, is that which gives body; the addition of wit gives the effervescence. The pleasure of wit lies in its unexpectedness. In humor there is the added pleasure of really liking that which surprises us. It is like meeting an old friend in an unexpected place. "What, you here?" we say. This is the kind of pleasure we get from Dr. Johnson's reply to the lady who asked why he had put a certain definition in his dictionary: "Pure ignorance, madam."

The fact is that long ago we made the acquaintance of one whom Bunyan describes as "a brisk young lad named Ignorance." He is a dear friend of ours, and we are on very familiar terms with him when we are at home; but we do not expect to meet him in fine society. Suddenly we turn the corner, and we see him walking arm in arm with so great a man as Dr. Samuel Johnson. At once we are at our ease in the presence of the great man; it seems we have a mutual acquaintance.

Another element in real humor is a certain detachment of mind. We must not be afraid, or jealous, or angry; in order to take a really humorous view of any character, we must be in a position to see all around it. If I were brought before Fielding's Squire Western on charge of poaching, and if I had a pheasant concealed under my coat, I should not be able to appreciate what an amusing person the squire is. I should be inclined to take him very seriously.

The small boy who pins a paper to the schoolmaster's coat tail imagines that he has achieved a masterpiece of humor. But he is not really in a position to reap the fruits of his perilous adventure. It is a fearful and precarious joy which he feels. What if the schoolmaster should turn around? That would be tragedy. Neither the small boy nor the schoolmaster gets the full flavor of humor. But suppose an old friend of the schoolmaster happens just then to look in at the door. His delight in the situation has a mellowness far removed from the anxious, ambiguous glee of the urchin. He knows that the small boy is not so wicked as he thinks he is, and the schoolmaster is not so terrible as he seems. He remembers the time when the schoolmaster was up to the same pranks. So, from the assured position of middle age, he looks upon the small boy that was and upon the small boy that is, and finds them both very good,—much better, indeed, than at this moment they find each other.

It is this sense of the presence of a tolerant spectator, looking upon the incidents of the passing hour, which we recognize in the best literature. Books that are meant simply to be funny are very short-lived. The first reception of a joke awakens false expectations. It is received with extravagant heartiness. But when, encouraged by this hospitality, it returns again and again, its welcome is worn out. There is something melancholy in a joke deserted in its old age.

The test of real literature is that it will bear repetition. We read over the same pages again and again, and always with fresh delight. This bars out all mere jocosity. A certain kind of wit, which depends for its force on mere verbal brilliancy, has the same effect. The writers whom we love are those whose humor does not glare or glitter, but which has an iridescent quality. It is the perpetual play of light and color which enchants us. We are conscious all the time that the light is playing on a real thing. It is something more than a clever trick; there is an illumination.

Erasmus, in dedicating his "Praise of Folly" to Sir Thomas More, says:—

"I conceived that this would not be least approved by you, inasmuch as you are wont to be delighted with such kind of pleasantry as is neither unlearned nor altogether insipid. Such is your sweetness of temper that you can and like to carry yourself to all men a man of all hours. Unless an overweening opinion of myself may have made me blind, I have praised folly not altogether foolishly. I have moderated my style, that the understanding reader may perceive that my endeavor is to make mirth rather than to bite."

Erasmus has here described a kind of humor that is consistent with seriousness of purpose. The characteristics he notes are good temper, insight into human nature, a certain reserve, and withal a gentle irony that makes the praise of folly not unpleasing to the wise. It is a way of looking at things characteristic of men like Chaucer and Cervantes and Montaigne and Shakespeare, and Bunyan and Fielding and Addison, Goldsmith, Charles Lamb and Walter Scott. In America, we have seen it in Irving and Dr. Holmes and James Russell Lowell.

I have left out of the list one whom nature endowed for the supreme man of humor among Englishmen,—Jonathan Swift. Charles Lamb argues against the common notion that it is a misfortune to a man to have a surly disposition. He says it is not his misfortune; it is the misfortune of his neighbors. It is our misfortune that the man who might have been the English Cervantes had a surly disposition. Dean Swift's humor would have been irresistible, if it had only been good humor.

One of the best examples of humor pervading a work of the utmost seriousness of purpose is Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." The "Pilgrim's Progress" is not a funny book; the humor is not tacked on as a moral is tacked on to a fable, nor does it appear by way of an interlude to relieve the tension of the mind. It is so deeply interfused, so a part and parcel of the religious teaching, that many readers overlook it altogether. One may read the book a dozen times without a smile, and after that he may recognize the touch of the born humorist on every page. Bunyan himself recognized the quality of his work:—

There speaks the real humorist; not the Merry Andrew laughing at his meaningless pranks, but one whose quick imagination is at play when his conscience is most overtasked. Even in the Valley of Humiliation, where the fierce Apollyon was wont to fright the pilgrims, they heard a boy singing cheerily,—

"He that is down need fear no fall."

And Mr. Great Heart said: "Do you hear him? I dare say that boy lives a merrier life, and wears more of the herb called heart's-ease in his bosom, than he that is clad in silk and velvet." It is a fine spirit that can find time, on such a strenuous pilgrimage, to listen to these wayside songs.

Take the character sketch of Mr. Fearing:—

"Now as they walked together, the guide asked the old gentleman if he did not know one Mr. Fearing that came on a pilgrimage out of his parts?

"Honest. Yes, very well, said he. He was a man that had the root of the matter in him, but he was one of the most troublesome pilgrims that ever I met in all my days.

"Great Heart. Why, he was always afraid he should come short of whither he had a desire to go. Everything frightened him that he heard anybody speak of that had but the least appearance of opposition in it. I hear that he lay roaring in the Slough of Despond for about a month together.... Well, after he had lain in the Slough of Despond a great while, as I have told you, one sunshine morning, I do not know how, he ventured and so got over; but when he was over he would scarce believe it. He had, I believe, a Slough of Despond in his mind, a slough he carried everywhere with him.... When he came to the Hill Difficulty he made no stick at that; nor did he much fear the lions; for you must know his trouble was not about such things as those.... When he was come at Vanity Fair, I thought he would have fought with all the men at the fair.... He was a man of choice spirit though he kept himself very low."

Poor Mr. Fearing. We all have been made uncomfortable by him. But we love Bunyan for that touch about the lions, for we know it is true. Easy things go hard with Mr. Fearing; but give him something difficult, like going up San Juan hill in the face of a withering fire, and Mr. Fearing can keep up with the best Rough Rider of them all. It takes Mr. Great Heart to do justice to Mr. Fearing.

It is the mission of a kindly humor to take a person full of foibles and weaknesses and suddenly to reveal his unsuspected nobleness. And there is considerable room for this kind of treatment; for there are a great many lovable people whose virtues are not chronic, but sporadic. These virtues grow up, one knows not how, without visible means of support in the general character, and in defiance of moral science; and yet it is a real pleasure to see them.

There are two very different kinds of humor. One we naturally describe as a flavor, the other as an atmosphere. We speak of the flavor of the essays of Charles Lamb. It is a discovery we make very much as Bobo made the discovery of roast pig. The mind of Charles Lamb was like a capacious kettle hanging from the crane in the fireplace; all sorts of savory ingredients were thrown into it, and the whole was kept gently simmering, but never allowed to come to the boil.

Lamb says, "C. declares that a man cannot have a good conscience who refuses apple dumpling, and I confess that I am of the same opinion." I am inclined to pass that kind of judgment on the person who does not have a comfortable feeling of satisfaction in reading for the twentieth time The Complaint on the Decay of Beggars, and the Praise of Chimney Sweepers.

Charles Lamb is not jocose. He likes to theorize. Now, your prosaic theorist has a very laborious task. He tries to get all the facts under one formula. This is very ticklish business. It is like the game of Pigs in Clover. He gets all the facts but one into the inner circle. By a dexterous thrust he gets that one in, and the rest are out.

Lamb is a philosopher who does not have this trouble. He does not try to fit all the facts to one theory. That seems to him too economical, when theories are so cheap. With large-hearted generosity he provides a theory for every fact. He clothes the ragged exception with all the decent habiliments of a universal law. He picks up a little ragamuffin of a fact, and warms its heart and points out its great relations. He is not afraid of generalizing from insufficient data; he has the art of making a delightful summer out of a single swallow. When we turn to the essay on the Melancholy of Tailors, we do not think of asking for statistics. If one tailor was melancholy, that was enough to justify the generalization. When we find a tailor who is not melancholy, it will be time to make another theory to fit his case.

This is the charm of Lamb's letter to the gentleman who inquired "whether a person at the age of sixty-three, with no more proficiency than a tolerable knowledge of most of the characters of the English alphabet amounts to, by dint of persevering application and good masters, may hope to arrive within a presumable number of years at that degree of attainment that would entitle the possessor to the character of a learned man." The answer is candid, serious, and exhaustive. No false hopes are encouraged. The difficulties are plainly set forth. "However," it is said, "where all cannot be compassed, much may be accomplished; but I must not, in fairness, conceal from you that you have much to do." The question is thoroughly discussed as to whether it would be well for him to enter a primary school. "You say that you stand in need of emulation; that this incitement is nowhere to be had but in the public school. But have you considered the nature of the emulation belonging to those of tender years which you would come in competition with?"

Do you think these dissertations a waste of time? If you do, it is sufficient evidence that you sadly need them; for they are the antitoxin to counteract the bacillus of pedantry. Were I appointed by the school board to consider the applicants for teachers' certificates, after they had passed the examination in the arts and sciences, I should subject them to a more rigid test. I should hand each candidate Lamb's essays on The Old and New Schoolmaster and on Imperfect Sympathies. I should make him read them to himself, while I sat by and watched. If his countenance never relaxed, as if he were inwardly saying, "That's so," I should withhold the certificate. I should not consider him a fit person to have charge of innocent youth.

Just as we naturally speak of the flavor of Charles Lamb, so we speak of the atmosphere of Cervantes or of Fielding. We are out of doors in the sunshine. All sorts of people are doing all sorts of things in all sorts of ways; and we are glad that we are there to see them. It is one of the

On such days it doesn't matter what happens. We are not "under the weather," but consciously superior to it. We are in no mood to grumble over mishaps,—the more the merrier. The master of the revels has made the brave announcement that his programme shall be carried out "rain or shine," and henceforth we have no anxieties.

This diffused good-humor can only come from a mind which is free from any taint of morbidness. It is that merry-heartedness that "doth good like medicine." It is an overflowing friendliness, which brings a laughter that is without scorn.

This kind of humor is possible only among persons who are thoroughly congenial, and who take mutual good-will for granted. It is for this reason that it is so difficult to translate it or to carry it from one community to another. It is customary for every nation to bring the accusation against foreigners that they are destitute of the sense of humor. Even peoples so near akin as the English and Americans cherish such suspicions. The American is likely to feel that his English friends do not receive his pleasantries with that punctuality which is the politeness of kings. They are conscientious enough and eventually do the right thing; but procrastination is the thief of wit as well as of time. But we, on our side, are equally slow, and Mr. Punch often causes anxious thoughts.

The real difficulty is not in understanding what is said but in appreciating that which should be taken for granted. The stranger does not see the serious background of sober thought and genuine admiration, into which the amusing figures suddenly intrude. The frontiersman would see no point in a story that might delight a common room in Oxford. What if a bishop did act in an undignified manner or commit a blunder? Why shouldn't he—like the rest of us? To enjoy his foibles one must first have a realizing sense of what a great man a bishop is, and how surprising it is that, now and then, he should step down from his pedestal.

On the other hand, the real humor of the frontier is missed by one who has not learned to take seriously the frontiersman's life and who has not entered into his habitual point of view.

Dickens is an example of the way in which a man's humor is limited to the sphere of his sympathies. How genial is the atmosphere which surrounds Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Sam Weller! Whatever they do, they can never go wrong. But when we turn to the "American Notes" or to the American part of "Martin Chuzzlewit," we are conscious of a difference. There is no atmosphere to relieve the dreariness. Mr. Jefferson Brick is not amusing; he is odious. The people on the Ohio River steamer do not make us smile by their absurdities. Dickens lets us see how he despises them all. He is fretful and peevish. He fails utterly to catch the humor of the frontier. He is unable to follow out the hint which Mark Tapley gave when, looking over the dreary waste of Eden on the Mississippi, he said apologetically, "Eden ain't all built yet."

To an Englishman that does not mean much, but to an American it is wonderfully appealing. Martin Chuzzlewit saw only the ignominious contrast between the prospectus and the present reality. Eden was a vulgar fraud, and that was the whole of it. The American, with invincible optimism, looking upon the same scene, sees something more! He smiles, perhaps, a little cynically at the incongruity between the prospectus and the present development, and then his fancy chuckles at what his fancy sees in the future. "Eden ain't all built yet,"—that's a fact. But just think what Eden will be when it is all built!

By the way, there is one particularly good thing about the atmosphere; it prevents our being hit by meteors. The meteor, when it strikes the upper air, usually ignites, and that is the end of it. There are some minds that have not enough atmosphere to protect them. They are pelted continually; whatever is unpleasant comes to them in solid chunks. There are others more fortunately surrounded, who escape this impact. All that is seen is a flash in the upper air. They are none the worse for passing through a meteoric shower of petty misfortunes.

The mind that is surrounded by an atmosphere of humorous suggestiveness is also favored in its outlook upon the shortcomings of mankind. Their angularities are softened and become less uniformly unpleasing. That fine old English divine, Dr. South, has a sermon in which he defends the thesis that it is a greater guilt to enjoy the contemplation of our neighbor's sins than to commit the same offences in our proper persons. That seems to me to be very hard doctrine. I am inclined to make a distinction. There are some faults which ought to be taken seriously at all times, but there are others which the neighbors should be allowed to enjoy, if they can.

Indeed, it is the genuine reformer who is seeking to right great wrongs who most needs the capacity to distinguish between grave evils and peccadillos. A measure of good-humored tolerance for human weakness is a part of his equipment for effective work. Lacking in this, he is doomed to perpetual irritation and disappointment. He mistakes friends for foes and wages a losing battle. He is likely to be the victim of a moral egoism which distorts the facts of experience and confuses his personal whims with his disinterested purposes. His great ideal is lost sight of in some petty strife. Above all, he loses the power of endurance in the time of partial failure.

The contest of wits between the inventors of projectiles and the makers of armor plate seemed at one time settled by Harvey's process for rendering the surface of the resisting steel so hard that the missiles hurled against it were shattered. The answer of the gun-makers was made by attaching a tip of softer metal to the shell. The soft tip received the first shock of the impact, and it was found that the penetrating power of the shell was increased enormously. The scientific explanation I have forgotten. I may, however, hazard an anthropomorphic explanation. If there is any human nature in the atoms of steel, I can see a great advantage in having the softer particles go before the hard, to have a momentary yielding before the inevitable crash. When they are hurtling through the air, tense and strained by the initial velocity till it seems that they must fly apart, it is a great thing to have a group of good-humored, happy-go-lucky atoms in the front, who call out cheerily: "Come along, boys! Don't take it too hard; we're in for it." And sure enough, before they have time to fall apart they are in. Those whose thoughts and purposes have most penetrated the hard prejudices of their time have learned this lesson.

Your unhumorous reformer, with painful intensity of moral self-consciousness, cries out:—