"Sir Walter Scott," he said, "wrote as a stream flows, but I do all my brainwork like a wrung sponge." He had his peculiarities about payment for his work. When he wrote a certain article, to appear in the Magazine of Art, he would neither give the article for nothing nor receive its market price. He simply insisted on "a penny a line, neither more nor less." This article, on "The Black Arts" (the arts of engraving, &c.), from which we reproduce a sentence of the MS. in facsimile, will be included in Mr. Spielmann's forthcoming biography of Mr. Ruskin.

MR. R. D. BLACKMORE was a writer who ever refused to be gazed at by the public for whom he wrote. He wrote novels for a living, but grew pears and peaches for his pleasure. The novels paid best. Yet even these, it may be suspected, owed most of their success to the author's descriptions of nature. Blackmore drew characters that live, as John Ridd and Lorna Doone and Clara Vaughan bear witness. But the spell which he threw over his readers is inseparable from the West Country settings in which he placed his dramas. He knew Devonshire and all the morning and evening beauty of its lanes and valleys, and his own brisk delight in it went into his writing. He created a Blackmore country, and tourists have streamed thither ever since the days of Lorna Doone. Yet Blackmore was a Berkshire, not a Devon, man.

MR. BLACKMORE lived to be tired of the praises lavished on Lorna Doone. The success of that book was really something of a millstone round his neck. He felt he could not repeat it, yet he felt it was not his best. The devotion of the public to Lorna was a beautiful, yet maddening, obstacle to further progress, which Blackmore never overcame. Only in Perlycross did he again seem to hit the bull's-eye. Not long ago Mr. Blackmore saw his indocile, unswerving readers snap up 150,000 sixpenny copies of their first love. It grieved him, and he returned to his peaches.

In its obituary notice of Mr. Blackmore, the Times says of Lorna Doone: "Its merits were seen and appreciated at once." This is hardly true of the publishers, for no fewer than eighteen firms, it is said, rejected the book, which the author put away in a drawer for a year. Nor were the public much more discerning when the novel at last appeared. They let it alone until the title got absurdly mixed up with the marriage of Princess Louise and the Marquis of Lorne. From that day the book began to be inquired for, and its merits soon won the recognition Lorna Doone deserved.

We have recorded in another column our deep regret at the death of Mr. G. W. Steevens. The love and admiration that he inspired is shown by the messages of condolence that have flashed to this country from all over the civilised world. He was buried at midnight, in order that the officers at Ladysmith might have an opportunity of attending his funeral. Lord Roberts, amid the engrossing character of his present task, found time to telegraph his sorrow. Lord Kitchener has made the following statement to a correspondent of the Daily Mail:

I was anxious to tell you how very sorry I was to hear of the death of Mr. Steevens. He was with me in the Soudan, and, of course, I saw a great deal of him and knew him well. He was such a clever and able man. He did his work as correspondent so brilliantly, and he never gave the slightest trouble -I wish all correspondents were like him. I suppose they will try to follow in his footsteps. I am sure I hope they will. He was a model correspondent, the best I have ever known, and I should like you to say how greatly grieved I am at his death. The Daily Mail, towards the success of which Mr.

Steevens contributed so much, published the following tribute from Mr. Henley :

We cheered you forth-brilliant and kind and brave,
Under your country's triumphant flag you fell,
It floats, dear heart, over no dearer grave-
Brilliant and brave and kind, hail and farewell.

THE following "In Memoriam" lines accompanied the Morning Post's memoir of Mr. Steevens:

The pages of the Book quickly he turned.
He saw the languid Isis in a dream

Flow through the flowery meadows, where the ghosts
Of them whose glorious names are Greece and Rome
Walked with him. Then the dream must have an end,
For London called, and he must go to her,
To learn her secrets-why men love her so,
Loathing her also. Yet again he learned
How God, who cursed us with the need of toil
Relenting, made the very curse a boon.
There came a call to wander through the world
And watch the ways of men. He saw them die

In fiercest fight, the thought of victory
Making them drunk like wine; he saw them die
Wounded and sick, and struggling still to live

To fight again for England, and again

Greet those who love them. Well indeed he knew
How good it is to live, how good to love,
How good to watch the wondrous ways of men-
How good to die, if ever there be need.
And everywhere our England in his sight
Poured out her blood and gold, to share with all
Her heritage of freedom won of old.
Thus quickly did he turn the pages o'er
And learn the goodness of the gift of life;
And when the Book was ended, glad at heart-
The lesson learned, and every labour done-
Find at the end life's ultimate gift of rest.

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live, and gladly die

And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

He said one evening at his happy home in Merton Abbey, before he started on his last journey, that, when out in the Soudan, he crooned himself to sleep night after night with those lines which had been set to music by his friend. It is fitting that he should lie at rest out there in the spacious country, "under the wide and starry sky."

THE American Bookman's "Letter Box" contains the following question this month: "What is the significance of the word decadence when it is applied to style?" It may be worth while to preserve the answer furnished by Théophile Gautier, to whose style, as also to Beaudelaire's, the word was applied in the early fifties:

The style of decadence is nothing else than art arrived at that extreme point of maturity produced by those civilisations which are growing old with their oblique suns-a style that is ingenious, complicated, learned, full of shades of meaning and research, always pushing further the limits of language, borrowing from all the technical vocabularies, taking colours from all palettes, notes from all keyboards, forcing itself to express in thought that which is most ineffable, and in form the vaguest and most fleeting contours; listening, that it may translate them, to the subtle confidences of the neuropath, to the avowals of ageing and depraved passion, and to the singular This hallucinations of the fixed idea verging on madness. style of decadence is the last effort of language, called

upon to express everything, and pushed to the utmost extremity. We may remind ourselves, in connexion with it, of the language of the later Roman Empire, already mottled with the greenness of decomposition, and, as it were, gamey, and of the complicated refinements of the Byzantine school, the last form of Greek art fallen into deliquescence. Such is the inevitable and fatal idiom of peoples and civilisations where factitious life has replaced the natural life, and developed in man unknown wants. Besides, it is no easy matter, this style despised of pedants, for it expresses new ideas with new forms and words that have not yet been heard. In opposition to the classic style, it admits of shading, and these shadows teem and swarm with the larvae of superstitions, the haggard phantoms of insomnia, nocturnal terrors, remorse which starts and turns back at the slightest noise, monstrous dreams stayed only by impotence, obscure phantasies at which the daylight would stand amazed, and all that the soul conceals of the dark, the unformed, and the vaguely horrible, in its deepest and furthest recesses.

MR. GEORGE MOORE has written a play which he has called "A Tale of the Town." It will be produced first at a Dublin theatre.

NEXT week will be performed, for the first time, at the Deutches Theatre, Berlin, Gerhart Hauptmann's new play, "Schluck und Jauch," written in the Silesian dialect. The plot is described as slight and fantastic-an elaboration of Lamb's little chimney-sweep who found himself in a ducal bed. Schluck and Jauch are boy and girl, and are met on the country road by a fine company from the neighbouring castle bent on amusing themselves. Schluck is invited to the castle, and is treated as if he were a prince. He succumbs to the dazzling illusion, but is finally sent back to his native fields with Jauch for his sweetheart, and a cottage and fields for his support. The burlesque scenes and situations evolved are said to be distinctly comical.

LAST October we gave some account of the retrospects and prospects of M. J. K. Huysmans, and referred to his intention to retire to Ligugé to pass the remainder of his days in solitude. It is now stated that M. Huysmans will definitely join the Benedictine Order on March 19.

"On

that date," he says, "I shall put on the clothes of an oblate, and shall thus have mounted the first step of the celestial ladder." We note, however, that M. Huysmans does not intend to put off the clothes of a novelist. As an oblate, indeed, M. Huysmans will not have to wear the dress of the order at all times, nor will he live within the walls of the monastery. He will reside in his own house

at Ligugé, and one of his first occupations will be to complete his biography of St. Lydwine of Schiedam, and his novel, L'Oblat.

HUYSMANS' career has been a strange one. The routine of many years' quill-driving at the Ministry of the Interior did not weaken his capacity for violent mental and spiritual experiences. In Là-Bas Huysmans looked down. into the fetid abyss of Parisian Satanism. Through pessimism, mysticism, satanism, and what not, Huysmans reached Catholicism. It would be stupid and unjust to question the sincerity of Huysmans' conversion, but one feels that his is a life that must be lived out before it can be understood.

MR. EDWARD MARSTON has this week given some interesting reminiscences to the Daily Chronicle. Charles Reade had a fine way with him when dealing with his publisher. He wanted £3,500 for Hard Cash, and this is how he wrote to Mr. Marston:

Dickens has pronounced it incomparably my best production, and, looking at the research and labour I have bestowed, I should not be compensated by the sum I ask,

MR. MARSTON seems to regret the demise of the threevolume novel, and his view of the new six-shilling system is compact and interesting:

The truth is this: of an average novel the libraries buy as few as they possibly can, frequently not as many as they used to buy in the three-volume form; and if they will not set the example the public assuredly will not buy. I am aware, of course, that there are exceptions, but only sufficient to prove the rule. In the three-volume days the risk of producing an average novel was reduced to a minimum. Now it can hardly be produced at all, except with a positive certainty of loss, for now there is nobody to buy, and borrow they cannot, because the libraries confine their purchases almost wholly to the books by authors who have been fortunate enough to get a hold on the public. All others-good, bad, or indifferent-are alike shunted. This is, of course, good for the libraries, but surely it is bad for young authors and too venturesome publishers.

YOUNG novelists and would-be novelists might do well to ponder the advice just given by Herr Gustav Freytag to a student who had sent him the MS. of a novel for his opinion. Herr Freytag excused himself for not reading the novel, and then wrote (his words have a direct application to many a young man now in business, or in a non-literary profession, who "thinks seriously of taking to literature"):

Even if you possessed the greatest poetical power, and a talent for narrative as great as that of Walter Scott, Dickens, and others of the best, you ought not at present to think of putting your scientific studies into the background, and risk your future existence on novel writing or other poetical activity. You must first, by serious work and the position it may make for you among your fellowmen, ripen to manhood, and you must gain a certain mastery over life before you can have the right to idealise in an artistic work the fate of man. On the path you now are inclined to follow you will only reap disappointment and probably a speedy decline of your powers.

In the empty and uncertain existence of an "author," you will only learn to know the time imperfectly and from the wrong side. Observation alone does not educate a man, it needs above all a firm position in a circle of worldly interests and clear duties. As a young author you would, after a half-success, only be able to gain a tolerably secure place as a journalist, a profession very unfavourable to artistic creation. My warning is the result of what I have observed during my life of the fate of many young writers, and it is a truth which I have repeatedly had cause to state; for the number of those who, like you, would like to choose the pleasant game of free invention instead of the selfdenial and exertion of scientific research, is very great.

Whether your talent is strong enough to support your whole life, I can say as little as any other man. If the impulse you have lasts, and the strength to carry it out, it will in any case break through all obstacles; and, if you now do your nearest duty perfectly, you may trust the future.

On this subject Mr. Andrew Lang is also pessimistic in Longman's Magazine. Nobody, he bewails, can give to writers "security of tenure":

There are good reasons why educated young men should beware, more than ever, of drifting into either journalism or literature without some more regular profession or occupation or source of income. They may be superannuated at thirty-five, or the "fashionable age" may come to be fixed even earlier. Even novelists with a vogue must see that a vogue is often ephemeral. Above all, times unpropitious for the providers of mere luxuries are coming upon us and books are the first luxuries which people cut down, The "softness" of the penman's "job"

attracts people; it is amusing, too, and offers a promise of notoriety, if not of fame. But it becomes less and less of a stable and permanent job; the recruit of to-day is a veteran (and often not "a useful veteran") the day after to-morrow. Lawyers, doctors, dentists are not superannuated so rapidly. My sermon is accurate, but, like other sermons, will be unprofitable.

AN Edgbaston correspondent asks for the authorship of the following lines:

Thou art dead-who lived so well.
Thou art dead: but who can tell
Of the wondrous blood of thee,
Enriched by thy fertility?
In the veins of each sweet child
Runs a torrent undefiled, &c.

THE Rev. Walter Hobhouse, head master of Durham Grammar School, has been appointed editor of the Guar lian, in succession to Mr. Lathbury.

Bibliographical.

RUSKIN, Blackmore, G. W. Steevens, Canon Dixon, and W. E. Tirebuck-all have passed from us since this column last appeared. In the case of Mr. Blackmore and Mr. Steevens there is not much for bibliography to do, the achievement of each having been limited-in the one case from choice, in the other from necessity. In Mr. Ruskin's case the bibliographers had long been on the writer's track. The author of Modern Painters, like all great modern men of letters, had enjoyed fame during his lifetime, and had had both his biography and his bibliography "brought up to date." Canon Dixon, it is safe to say, had no great vogue. His work in verse was known to, and spoken kindly of, by a few, including Mr. Swinburne; but it will hardly attract much bibliographical enthusiasm. The latest volume from his pen that I have handled was his little collection of Songs and Odes, in the "Shilling Garland" (1896). Previously to that we had had (in 1891) a second edition of the most considerable of his performances

Mano: a Poetical History in Four Books, which first saw the light in 1883. In 1891 also we had the fourth (and, I suppose, last) volume of his Church of England from the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction. He is enshrined, of course, in that elaborate "omnium gatherum," The Poets and the Poetry of the Century, wherein he is celebrated by that penetrating and authoritative critic, Mr. Alfred Miles. But even that distinction, perhaps, will not secure to him the popular appreciation which, I fancy, whatever they may say, all verse-writers are anxious to obtain. Mr. Tirebuck was a native of Liverpool, where he became connected with the journalistic profession, and was for some years on the staff of the Liverpool Mail. Some six years ago he retired from journalism. He was the author of some critical and biographical works, among which may be mentioned Great Minds in Art, published in Mr. Fisher Unwin's "Lives Worth Living" series in 1888. He also wrote many novels, of which Saint Margaret was the first.

Somebody with leisure should set to work and write the history of the Literary or Dramatic Sequel. Mr. George Alexander reopens the St. James's Theatre on February 1 with Mr. Hawkins's dramatisation of his own Rupert of Hentzau, and the manager announces that he will give, during the "run" of "Rupert," afternoon performances of "The Prisoner of Zenda," so that those enthusiasts who like to pass the afternoon and evening of a day in Ruritania can do so. This is excellent as an idea, however it may prove in practice; and one wonders why something of the sort has not occurred to somebody before. Have modern playgoers ever been invited to witness in the same twenty-four hours representations of the two parts of

"Henry IV."; or, still worse, the three parts of "Henry VI."? Something might be said, from the educational point of view, for playing "Julius Caesar" in the afternoon and "Antony and Cleopatra" in the evening of a day; but exertion of that sort is impossible, perhaps, to anybody but schoolgirls. Could any average person survive immediately-successive performances of "Our American Cousin" and "Lord Dundreary Married and Settled," of "The Ticket-of-Leave Man" and "The Ticket-of-Leave Man's Wife," and other such daring combinations? In the case of prose fiction, the thing is different. If the sequel in book form bores you, you can put it down.

My reference last week to the late Mr. C. P. Mason and his educational works has brought me several interesting communications-one, for example, from an experienced schoolmaster in the N.E. district, who testifies eloquently to the merits of Mr. Mason's books on English grammar; another, from a dweller in County Down, Ireland, who was a pupil of Mr. Mason's at Denmark Hill Grammar School between 1853 and 1857, and who evidently has many pleasant recollections of his stay there. "Living in this part of the kingdom," he writes, "I have, through all these years, heard little or nothing of our old schoolmaster or of any of my schoolfellows. Would it be possible to get the 'old boys' of Denmark Hill together? I would go all the way to London for such a re-union." I should be very glad to hear from "old boys" on this subject.

Two correspondents are so kind as to address me on the subject of my remarks on a proposed selection from Mr. George Meredith's prose epigrams. Both remind me of the production in Boston, U.S.A., in 1888 (with an introduction, fifty pages long, by Mr. R. F. Gilman), of an anthology called The Pilgrim's Scrip; or, Wit and Wisdom of George Meredith. I was, of course, aware of the existence of that book, though I have never seen a copy of it. And one of my correspondents, writing from Edgbaston, Birmingham, says: "It may serve to illustrate the short term of life books have in America, when I say that I searched New York and Boston for a copy of this some six or eight years ago, and even in the publisher's own shop

was unable to find one."

I can quite believe that "Mr. Richard Mansfield, the New York actor, has written a volume of essays composed of studies in dramatic literature and other matters dealing with the stage." Mr. Mansfield is a very clever man, and particularly nimble with his pen. I have on my shelves a play which he wrote (and produced in America) on the subject of Don Juan. But why call him "the New York actor"? He is not an American. His youth and early professional life were spent in England. He was educated at Derby School, and learned his "art" in the British provinces.

Prof. Goldwin Smith is showing great cerebral activity in his old age. The other day he gave us two solid volumes on the United Kingdom, and now we are promised one on Shakespeare the Man. That naturally reminds us that we still await Mr. Frank Harris's book on the same subject and with the same, or nearly the same, title. Why tarrieth it? Invincible is this desire to penetrate into the personality of the Bard, despite Matthew Arnold's confident assertion that it is not to be discovered. I remember that Mr. Gerald Massey used to lecture a good many years ago on "The Moral Shakespeare." But Mr. Arnold was right, I believe, after all.

It is pleasant to know that "The Golden Legend" (not Longfellow's, i'faith) is to be included in the pretty "Temple Classics," and that the text will be vouched for by Mr. F. S. Ellis. There is evidently a revival of interest in the work, for it is only fifteen months or so since an elegant little volume, called Leaves from the Golden Legend, was put upon the English book market. Mr. Ellis's text, I take it, will be complete.

THE BOOKWORM.

Reviews.

Theology of the Day.

Christian Mysticism (Bampton Lectures for 1899). By William Ralph Inge, M.A. (Methuen. 12s. 6d. net.) Idealism and Theology: a Study of Presuppositions (Donellan Lectures, 1897-8). By Charles F. d'Arcy, B.D. (Hodder & Stoughton. 68.)

The Apostle Paul's Reply to Lord Halifax. By Walter Wynn. (Elliot Stock.)

A Free Inquiry into the Origin of the Fourth Gospel. By P. G. Sense, M.A. (Williams & Norgate. 7s. 6d.) Introduction to the New Testament. By F. Godet, D.D. Translated by William Affleck, B.D. (T. & T. Clark.) The First Three Gospels in Greek, Arranged in Parallel Columns. By Colin Campbell, D.D. Second edition. (Williams & Norgate. 5s.) ·

MYSTICISM, in its wide sense-the immediate stretching forth of the soul towards the Divine-is an air breathed by all religions, alike of East and West. Christian mysticism, in these Bampton lectures, Dr. Inge traces through St. Augustine and Plotinus (who, outside the Church, was the perfecter of Platonism) to Plato, "the father of European mysticism":

Both the great types of mystics may appeal to himthose who try to rise through the visible to the invisible, through Nature to God, and those who distrust sensuous representations as tending "to nourish appetites which ought to starve," who look upon this earth as a place of banishment, upon material things as a veil which hides God's face from us, and who bid us flee away from

hence as quickly as may be," to "seek yonder," in the realm of the ideas, the heart's true home.

The true Christian mysticism is distinguished from Platonism pure and simple, inasmuch as it "follows St. Paul in choosing as its ultimate goal the fulness of Christ, and not the emptiness of indifferentiated Godhead."

In an appendix to this learned and temperate treatise Mr. Inge considers the erotic mysticism to the revival of which, particularly among English Roman Catholics, so great an impetus was given by the appearance of Mr. Coventry Patmore's Unknown Eros odes; though of Patmore the Bampton lecturer has nothing to say. His conclusions are eminently sane and uninteresting:

We are forced to remember that in our mysteriously constituted minds the highest and lowest emotions lie very near together; and those who have chosen a life of detachment from earthly ties must be especially on their guard against the "occasional revenges which the lower nature, when thwarted, is always plotting against the higher. In Idealism and Theology the Rev. Charles F. d'Arcy reviews the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion from the standpoint of modern idealism. "Christian

theism is the final philosophy "-so boldly does he enunciate his thesis. To him idealism is "the true steppingstone to an appreciation of the philosophic value of theology." Christian theism is to be established "by making use of idealism to gain a higher position." All that is valuable in idealism "will be found to have taken its place in the higher system." It is not possible to do more in this place than to indicate the standpoint of this notable book. Materialism, as a system, no longer holds what it had won. The fallacy it involves inevitably betrays itself to the earnest thinker. Matter may, indeed, win recognition, but its recognition implies a something, not itself, which recognises it and reasons about it. that-call it mind or spirit-is, therefore, logically antecedent to it-nay, we are within our right in going further and proclaiming matter to be altogether contingent. may, if we like, suppose it really to exist; but all we

And

We

perceive is our own sensations and the relations between them. "Matter is thus explicable in terms of mind, while mind is not explicable in terms of matter.'

Is the world, therefore, phantasmal-a mere show of fireworks let off against a background of nothingness? No, it is real; for it is a common possession: the appeal is to the experience, not of one, but of many. For at this point the idealist breaks away from the tyranny of mere logic, which would identify the universe with the individual percipient, and acknowledges himself to be one of many similar beings. Finally, as the idealist teaches that every element in the material world implies a spiritual principle which makes it possible, so Mr. d'Arcy seeks "to make plain the principles which underlie the possibility of a spiritual universe in which mind stands over against mind and will against will." This design he works out with an ingenuity that may or may not carry conviction to the reader-for in this matter temperament is everything but must certainly excite interest and admiration.

We step down on to another plane in opening The Apostle Paul's Reply to Lord Halifax. The general aim of the Rev. Walter Wynn, its author, may be gathered from the title. The Epistle to the Galatians is an eager protestation of the liberty of Christians from the vexatious ceremonialism of the Jewish law. It is possible to apply the argument of its writer against ceremonialism in the Christian churches, at least by way of analogy. Quite a strong case, as is fully realised by the apologists of sacerdotal Christianity, may thus be made out. But Mr. Wynn seems not to understand that the Apostle is addressing himself to the consideration of one particular ceremonial system; and further, that the argument from analogy can render, at the most, but a probable conclusion. His manner, too, is unfortunate; it is singularly ill-fitted to persuade. Neither can one who reverences the genius who did more than any one man, save his Master, to mould the mind of Christendom, easily stomach the wordy, acrimonious paraphrase by which Mr. Wynn, projecting himself into the person of the Apostle of the Gentiles, would present to the English Church Union the true sense of his deathless words. Besides, Mr. Wynn lets his prepossessions run so furiously away with him! St. Paul wrote: "Paul an Apostle. . . . In the course of six solid pages of elaboration, we read: "Peter did not ordain me, nor James, nor any of the church officials at Jerusalem." Upon which two comments may fairly be made that the writer of the Epistle does relate that at the conclusion of his three years' retreat in Arabia (upon which he entered shortly after receiving a revelation of his apostolic commission on his way to Damascus) he went up to Jerusalem, and there for some time remained in communion with Peter and other "church officials "-at which time he may very well have received holy orders by the laying on of hands; and, secondly, that the denial of his apostolate does not imply a negation of his priesthood, any more than-to take an historical parallel-in the days of the Great Schism the refusal to recognise a certain papal election implied a doubt as to the episcopal consecration of the putative pope. Of course, it is not for a reviewer in a secular paper to set himself to prove any theory of the Christian ministry. Our attitude towards the questions

which rend the National Church at this moment is neutral. Judging Mr. Wynn's paraphrase, therefore, merely upon its merits, we find it ill-adapted to win assent from those to whom it is addressed, and too bitterly declamatory not to meet with a welcome from the more violent of those whose views tally with his own.

Mr. Sense is a man with a theory, which he would crown with a practical corollary. His theory is that the Gospel known by the name of the Beloved Disciple was in its main outline the composition of Cerinthus. Now Cerinthus was a heretic; whose teaching, as we learn from Irenæus, was in effect, that upon the man Jesus descended at His baptism, in the form of a dove, Christ-an emana