Augustine Birrell

“ It ought not to be difficult for any of us, if we but struggle a little, to keep a man’s nose out of his novel. But, for all that, it is certain that true literary sway is borne but by the dead. Living authors may stir and stimulate us, provoke our energies, and excite our sympathy, but it is the dead who rule us from their urns.
Authority has no place in matters concerning books and reading, else it would be well were some proportion fixed between the claims of living and dead authors.
There is no sillier affectation than that of old-worldism. ”

“ Amongst the poets of the eighteenth century Swift sits secure, for he can never go out of fashion.
His hatred of mankind seems [Pg 8] genuine; there is nothing falsetto about it. He is always in sober, deadly earnest when he abuses his fellow-men. What an odd revenge we have taken! His gospel of hatred, his testament of woe—his ‘Gulliver,’ upon which he expended the treasures of his wit, and into which he instilled the concentrated essence of his rage—has become a child’s book, and has been read with wonder and delight by generations of innocents. ”

“ Every good poem, novel, play, at once joins and becomes part and parcel of the permanent stock of English literature, and some time or another will be read and criticised. It is quite safe. Every author of spirit repudiates with lofty scorn the notion that he writes in obedience to any mandate from the public. It is the wretched, degraded politician whose talk is of mandates; authors know nothing of mandates, they have missions. ”

“ Alfred Austin lately addressed these consolatory words:
‘Friend, be not fretful if the voice of fame,
Along the narrow way of hurrying men,
Where unto echo echo shouts again,
Be all day long not noisy with your name.’
No; it is the shouted authors who are most discontented; the men who have best availed themselves of all the resources of civilization, who belong to syndicates, employ agents, have a price-current, and know what it is to be paid half a dozen times over for the same thing. ”

“ Literature is a [Pg 207] solace and a charm. I will not stop for a moment in my headlong course to compare it with tobacco; though if it ever came to the vote, mine would be cast for letters. Men and women have been born in America, as in Great Britain and Ireland, who have written books, poems, and songs which have lightened sorrow, eased pain, made childhood fascinating, middle-age endurable, and old age comfortable. They will go on being born and doing this in both places. What reader cares a snap of his finger where the man was cradled who makes him for awhile forget himself. ”

“ In the face of the proverb about the pavement of the way to hell, I am prepared to maintain that good intentions are better than bad, and that evil is the wretch who is not full of good intentions and holy plans at the beginning of each New Year. Time, like a fruitful plain, then lies stretched before you; the eye rests on tuneful groves, cool meadow-lands, and sedgy streams, whither you propose to wander, and where you promise yourself many happy, well-spent hours. ”

“ The ‘Fables’ are light and lively, and might safely be recommended to all who are fond of an easy quotation. To lay them down is never difficult, and if, after having done so, Swift’s ‘Confession of the Beasts’ is taken up, how vast the difference! There are, we know, those in whose nature there is too much of the milk of human kindness to enable them to enjoy Swift when he shows his teeth; but however this may be, we confess, if we are to read at all, we must prefer Swift’s ‘Beasts’ Confession’ to all the sixty-five fables of Gay put together. ”

“ The critics who criticise in print, were they left to themselves, would be found praising enthusiastically all they found praiseworthy in contemporary effort. Even now, when their tempers must be sorely tried by the dreary wilderness in which they are compelled to sojourn, it is marvellous how quick they are to snuff the fresh, blowing airs of genuine talent. It is slander to say that present-day critics are grudging of praise. They are far too free with it. ”

“ To turn your back upon your own time is simply to provoke living wags, with rudimentary but effective humour, to chalk opprobrious epithets upon your person. But, on the other hand, to depend upon your contemporaries for literary sustenance, to be reduced to scan the lists of ‘Forthcoming Works’ with a hungry eye, to complain of a dearth of new poems, and new novels, and new sermons, is worse than affectation—it is stupidity. ”

“ The best time to study at leisure the habits and manners of the candidate for Parliament is shortly before an anticipated dissolution. Even as once in a series of years the astronomer furbishes up his telescope and observes the transit of a planet across the surface of the sun, so, as a General Election approaches, and when, consequently, candidates are numerous, the curious observer of human nature in all its wayward manifestations hastens to some place where experience has taught him candidates will be found gathered together. ”

“ They want to be classics in their own lifetime, and to be spoken and written of as if they were already embalmed in the memory of a grateful nation. To speak or write lightly of departed genius is offensive, but people who have the luck to be alive must not expect to be taken quite so seriously. ”

“ Thrale; and as for his not writing to Burke, it is notorious that the Doctor never could be got to write to anybody for information.
Dr. Hill’s two volumes are as delightful books as ever issued from the press. In them Dr. Johnson is to be seen in every aspect of his character, whilst a complete study may be made from them of the enormous versatility of his style. It is hard to say what one admires most—the ardour of his affection, the piety of his nature, the friendliness of his disposition, the playfulness of his humour, or his love of learning and of letters. ”

“ I know that, like everyone else, I am going on towards death and nothingness. I weigh the circumstances of life, and, whatever they may be, they appear to me miserably vain, and, for all that, I cannot resign myself. ”

“ But though paradox may cease to charm, and a tutored intellect seem to sober age a better guide than a lawless fancy, and a chastened style a more comfortable thing than impassioned prose and pages of bravura, still, after all, ‘the days of our youth are the days of our glory,’ and for a reader who is both young and eager [Pg 69] the Selections Grave and Gay of Thomas de Quincey will always be above criticism, and belong to the realm of rapture. ”

“ The Almighty, so he flatters himself, cannot escape him. When there is no one else to have recourse to, when all other means fail, there still remains—God. When your father, and your mother, and your aunt, and your companion, and your maid, are all wearied to death by your exhaustless vanity, you have still another string to your bow. ”

“ Here we all are, Heaven knows how many million of us, speaking, writing and spelling the English language more or less ungrammatically in a world as full as it can hold of sorrows and cares, and fustian and folly. ”

“ What days those were that gave us brand-new from the press ‘Philip’ and ‘The Four Georges,’ ‘The Mill on the Floss’ and ‘Silas Marner,’ ‘Evan Harrington’ and ‘Rhoda Fleming,’ ‘Maud,’ ‘The Idylls of the King,’ and ‘Dramatis Personæ,’ Mr. Arnold’s New Poems, the ‘Apologia pro Vitâ Suâ,’ and ‘Verses on Various Occasions,’ four volumes of ‘Frederick the Great,’ and ‘The Origin of Species’! One wonders in the retrospect how human stupidity was proof against such an onslaught of wit, such a shower of golden fancies. ”

“ Like sea-birds, they come screaming and flapping their wings, and settle down at the same hotel, which for days resounds with their cheerful cries. This is quite the best place to observe them. In the smoking-room at night, after their oratorical labours are over, they are very great, very proud, very happy. ”

“ It is of course obvious that no journal, be its contributors who they may, can exercise criminal [Pg 225] jurisdiction over bad or stupid authors. The hue and cry has before now been raised at the heels of a popular author, but always to the great enrichment of the rascal. The reading community owes no allegiance, and pays no obedience, to the critical journals, who, if they really want to injure an author, and deprive him of his little meed of contemporary praise and profit, should leave him severely alone. ”

“ A more fascinating picture-book cannot be imagined, for to the charm of colour and design is added all the feeling which only a book can impart. Such a book as this marks an epoch, and ought to be the beginning of a time when even sale-catalogues shall take pains to be splendid.
When the library of the Baron de Lacarelle came to be dispersed at [Pg 153] his death a few years ago, the auctioneer’s catalogue, as issued by Charles Porquet, of the Quai Voltaire, made a volume which, wherever it goes, imparts dignity to human endeavour, and consecrates a virtuoso’s whim. ”

“ Are we to stand by and hear our nature libelled, and our purest affections beslimed, without a word of protest? ‘I think I would rather have had a potato and a friendly word from Goldsmith than have been beholden to the Dean for a guinea and a dinner.’ So would I. But no one of the Dean’s numerous critics was more keenly alive than Thackeray to the majesty and splendour of Swift’s genius, and to his occasional flashes [Pg 15] of tenderness and love. That amazing person, Lord Jeffrey, in one of his too numerous contributions to the Edinburgh Review, wrote of the poverty of Swift’s style. ”

“ Miss Mathilde Blind, in the introduction to her animated and admirable translation of the now notorious ‘Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff,’ asks an exceedingly relevant question—namely, ‘Is it well or is it ill done to make the world our father confessor?’ Miss Blind does not answer her own question, but passes on her way content with the observation that, be it well or ill done, it is supremely interesting. ”

“ What a mercy it would be if the critical journals felt themselves free to choose their own subjects, new and old, and recognised that it was their duty to help to form the taste of their readers, and not merely to pick their provender for them or to promote the prosperity of publishers, which, as a matter of fact, they can no longer do. ”

“ Now that our century has entered upon its last decade, and draws near the hour which will despatch it to join its too frequently and most unjustly despised predecessor, it is pleasing to note how well it has learnt to play the old man’s part. One has only to compare the Edinburgh Review of, say, October, 1807, with its last number, to appreciate the change that has come over us. Cocksureness, once the badge of the tribe of critics, is banished to the schoolroom. The hearty hatreds of our early days would ill befit a death-bed. ”

“ Dinner with a sick woman you may venture to suppose not much better than solitary. After dinner, what remains but to count the clock and hope for that sleep which I can scarce expect? Night comes at last, and some hours of restlessness and confusion bring me again to a day of solitude. ”

“ It lacks one quality only—imagination. There is not a fine phrase, a magical line to be found in it, such as may occasionally be found in—let us say—Butler. Yet, as a whole, Swift is a far more enjoyable poet than Butler.
Swift has unhappily written some abominable verses, which ought never to have been set up in type; but the ‘Legion Club,’ the verses on his own death, ‘Cadenus and Vanessa,’ the ‘Rhapsody on Poetry,’ the tremendous lines on the ‘Day of Judgment,’ and many others, all belong to enjoyable poetry, and can never lose their freshness, their charm, their vitality. ”

“ There is a noticeable desire to make humanity or the reading public our residuary legatee, to endow it with our experiences, to enrich it with our egotisms, to strip ourselves bare in the market-place—if not for the edification, at all events for the amusement, of man. All this is accomplished by autobiography. ”

“ Marie Bashkirtseff, who was always ready to barter everything for something she called Fame.
‘If I don’t win fame,’ says she over and over again, ‘I will kill myself.’
Miss Blind is, no doubt, correct in her assertion that, as a painter, Mlle. Bashkirtseff’s strong point was expression. Certainly, she had a great gift that way with her pen. Amidst a mass of greedy utterances, esurient longings, commonplace ejaculations, and unlovely revelations, passages occur in this journal which bid us hold. ”

“ There is no better living representative of the great clan of sensible men and women who delight in reading for the pleasure it gives them than Mr. Stephen. If he is only pleased, it is quite shocking what he will put up with, and even loudly commend.
‘We are indeed told dogmatically that a novelist should never indulge in little asides to a reader. ”

“ A spendthrift is a fool.
‘Clear your mind of cant and never debauch your understanding. The only liberty worth turning out into the street for, is the liberty to do what you like in your own house and to say what you like in your own inn. All work is bondage. ”

“ The stage is a glass for the world to view itself in; people ought, therefore, to see themselves as they are; if it makes their faces too fair, they won’t know they are dirty, and, by consequence, will neglect to wash them. ”

“ AUTHORS AND CRITICS.
At the gracious Christmas season of the year we are reminded by nearly every post of our duty towards our neighbours, meaning thereby not merely those who live within what Wordsworth, with greater familiarity than precision, has defined as ‘an easy walk,’ but, with few exceptions, mainly of a party character, all mankind. The once wide boundaries of an Englishman’s sphere of hatred are sorely circumscribed. ”

“ Ferriar’s happy motto puts the reader in a sweet temper to start with, for he sees at once that the author is no pedantic, soured churl, but a good fellow who is going to make a little sport with a celebrated wit, and show you how a genius fills his larder. ”

“ An occasional fray of the kind is always an agreeable incident, but a wise editor would do his best to control the noble rage of his contributors, bidding them remember the words of John Keats: ‘The sure way, Bailey, is first to know a man’s faults, and then be passive.’
The time and space liberated by giving up the so-called criticism of bad and insignificant books could be devoted to the real criticism of the few living and the many dead classics; and, for one does occasionally get a little weary of the grand style, with arguments and discussions about smaller folk. ”

“ No one but a dabbler in literature will be apt to think he could have done the same—but noble with the nobility of Burke? A noble passage ought to do more for a reader than compel his admiration or win his assent ”

“ Of the first we are compelled to think too well, and of the last we are disposed to think too ill, to receive much genuine pleasure from the perusal, or to judge fairly of the merit of either. One candidate for literary fame who happens to be of our acquaintance writes finely and like a man of genius, but unfortunately has a foolish face, which spoils a delicate passage ”

“ What is the good of being educated and laboriously acquiring foreign tongues and lingoes—getting to know, for instance, what a ‘freight’ train is and what a bobolink—if I am to be prevented by a diseased patriotism from reading whatever I choose in any language I can? ”

“ ROGER NORTH’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
The Cambridge wit who some vast amount of years ago sang of Bohn’s publications, ‘so useful to the student of Latin and Greek,’ hit with unerring precision the main characteristic of those very numerous volumes. Utility was the badge of all that tribe, save, indeed, of those woeful ‘Extra Volumes’ which are as much out of place amongst their grave brethren as John Knox at a ballet. ”