Peers may sometimes be foolish, and possibly proud;
203
FREDERIC HARRISON
but they are usually English gentlemen, and we
doubt if they talk with the purse-proud insolence
of Tittlebat Titmouse. But a man who has made
Dukes ought to know best.
But all this time we are sadly forgetting what
our grave Editor calls the " social and political
significance " of Lothair, and are thinking too
much of the many merits and occasional slips of
its literary work. As a novel it may be called good,
and that is the principal point. The story, if im-
probable and rambling, is tolerably amusing and
not outrageously absurd. The characters, though
not creations, are keen sketches of social types.
And the raving about Semitism, Popery, and the
Brotherhoods is but a tithe of what one endured
in Tancred and the Wondrous Tale. Indeed, one
has heard wilder stuff from the author's lips in
grave political speeches at times of excitement.
Even the bombast hardly equals that immortal
bit about " the elephants of Asia carrying the
artillery of Europe over the mountains of Africa
through passes which might appal the trapper of
the Rocky Mountains." Nor do we compare the
plot for sensational power with those of that gor-
geous Titan Eugene Sue; nor the mise-en-scene
for profusion with that of the inexhaustible wizard
of Monte Cristo. Still, the novel, as novels go,
is a good one.
But as to the substance of the book, for the
Editor grows impatient, it is strange how much
opinions differ. There are not wanting some who
204
ROMANCE OF THE PEERAGE
speak harshly ā the men no doubt " who have
failed." We believe them to be really unjust. But
their reasons are worth considering. " How gross
it is," said to us a serious friend of advanced views,
a Republican, when we asked his opinion of " the
novel." "If snobbishness be," he went on, "as
Thackeray defines it, the mean admiration of mean
things, was ever book so unutterably snobbish?
Was ever the fatuous pomp of grandees, the accident
not even of ancient traditions, but of mere con-
ventional rank; were ever the coarsest show of
money and what money can buy, the selfish vagaries
of a besotted caste, more stupidly and fawningly
belauded? Where find such noisy grovelling before
wealth and state? Is not a taste for liveried footmen
in themselves, and costly bindings in themselves,
essentially a mean taste? Is not the truckling to
a rich idiotic boy, and the wanton fooleries of idle
wealth, a mean thing? Can these mean things be
more meanly admired than in a book every line
of which is rank with fulsome grandiloquence ? "
" Bah, friend," said we to the serious man, " you
take all this in your fierce way, au grand serieux.
The object of a novel is to amuse. The artist
passes no judgments; his business is to paint persons
and scenes. Here we have a picture of a state of
society, more or less true to life; there is much
that is very diverting, and presents us with human
nature. The public likes to hear of the great. No
doubt you were interested yourself"
" No," said our serious friend, almost bitterly,
205
FREDERIC HARRISON
and wholly unconscious of our little rap; " I do
not judge the book by the standard of the trash in
green covers, or of the boyish freaks of a Vivian
Gray. It comes from one who has led the governing
classes, and ruled this country for years, at the close
of a long political career ' Noblesse oblige,' they
say. ' Esprit oblige,' I say. And if this be the
picture of that order, which a man of genius, who
has made it his tool, can sit down in his old age to
give to his countrymen ā if this be the sum of a
life of successful ambition and public honour ā
then, for myself, I should say, society is not likely
to hold together long, for the people will not suffer
mere selfishness in power, so soon as they know
it to be hollow and weak." And he wanted to
turn the conversation on the crisis in France.
" Nay! one moment, son of Danton by Charlotte
Corday," we said, with a smile. " What, on earth,
is the situation in France to us ? We have no
Empire here, and no revolutionists but you! But,
as to Lothair, do you not see refinement in the life
depicted } They are people of taste, there is plenty
of wit, a turn for art; in a word, what is happily
connoted by Culture! " We knew he would not
like the word, but we wanted to " draw " him,
as the young bloods do the President of the Board
of Trade.
" Culture! " said our friend, quickly. " Not in
any sense of the word that I know. It is true the
external forms of life and the habits of the lounging
class are not described with quite the vulgar ignor-
206
ROMANCE OF THE PEERAGE
ance of fashionable novelists. There is certainly-
much social grace, some cultivation of mind, and
plenty of wit in the society described. But so there
has been in almost every order on the eve of its
extinction. All the belles marquises and the fas-
cinating chevaliers of CEil-de-Bceuf did not prevent
the Court of the Louis from being utterly rotten
and mean. And this is rotten and mean. Is the
mind in it cultivated to any intelligible end .? Is
not the mere external parade of wealth dwelt on
till one nauseates ? Does not the book reek with
the stifling fumes of gold, as when the idiot puts
rails of solid gold round the tomb which covers
his useless old bones ? Is not the life vapid, aimless,
arrogant, as if the world and the human race
existed only to gratify its selfish whims .? I do not
say that its whims are gross; but that they are
fatuously selfish."
" Come, come, good fellow, you are losing your
sense of a jest," said we. " Much radicalism doth
make thee dull. Why! do you suppose now that
Lothair is as serious and earnest as yourself ? One
would fancy all radicals had a ballot-box in place
of a skull. Go, and have an operation (under
chloroform), and get the joke inserted into your
head! Have you never enjoyed a satire or a farce
at the play .? Do you really think a man of genius,
who has fooled British society to the top of its
bent, is going down on his knees to his own puppet,
in his old age .? Forbid it, human genius and success-
ful ambition ! Can you not see the exquisite fooling
207
FREDERIC HARRISON
of the characters in the comedy ? Was ever such
fatuous and yet genial self-importance as the
Duke's ā and from life they say ā so racy when
you know the facts! And did you miss that touch
of the neighbouring gentry and yeomanry escorting
the young goose home ā goose, who is absolutely
nothing but fabulously rich; so artfully prepared,
you know, when you have been just shown the
very inside of the amiable young jackanapes. Five
hundred of the gentry on horseback, many of
them ' gentlemen of high degree,' the county
squirearchy! And all the high jinks of the county
when the lad comes of age, as droll as the kowtowing
to the emperor at Pekin. Is there a story about
the Mikado of Japan as good as the games at Muriel?
And the croquet match absorbing statesmen, and
played exclusively by Dukes and Duchesses, with
gold and ivory mallets! And the gold plate at
Crecy House; and the reverences of the haughty
Catholics to the Cardinal ā Cardinal to the life, to
the very fringe of his hat strings, a photograph, too
absurd ! and the pigeon which was proud of being
shot by a Duke! and the lad who throws a sovereign
to the cabman! and the marshalled retainers and
obsequious lackeys moving ever noiselessly but
actively in the background ! O ! friend of the people,
or friend of man, if that was lost on you, we must
be sorry for you. You are like a deaf man at the
Opera. Why, it is like a scene in Japan! Turn
it all into Japanese, say ' the Mikado ' for ' Majestic
Theme'; say ' Daimios ' for dukes, put ' two-
208
ROMANCE OF THE PEERAGE
sworded retainers ' for footmen in plush, and lots
of male and female Japanese kissing the dust when
Satsuma rides forth, and, if you like, a hari-kari
instead of a London ball, and you have Lothair
in Japan, and British society, and its mighty aristo-
cracy, and the whole brother-to-the-Sun-and-
Moon business under the grotesque etiquette of
those absurd Tartars. And do you not see how
artfully the fulsome and false style is contrived to
heighten the illusion of the whole preposterous
system ? Why, there is nothing better in Voltaire
or Montesquieu. Do you take Candide and the
Lettres Persanes au pied de la lettre too, most
literal of mankind ? What of Beaumarchais and
the immortal Barber ? Do you suppose Figaro
does not see anything droll in the Count's menage\
And when the Count asks him what he, the Count,
had done to merit all those felicities, and Figaro
says ā Monseigneur, vous vous etes donne la peine
de naitre ā do you think Figaro says that, like a
solemn fool, or like a man of wit, laughing in his
sleeve ? What of Beaumarchais' comedies ? Are
they not one long joke from beginning to end, and
a rare joke, too; ay, and one which made men
think, and bore fruit! Come and be a good, tame
Jacobin, and leave the League for to-night. Go
and see Mario and Gassier in // Barbiere; read
Beaumarchais' play before dinner, and you will
then see the fun in Lothair] "
"Pish!" said our serious friend, who really
had an appointment at the League. " If it be all
I 209 p
FREDERIC HARRISON
a joke, that makes it worse. It is rather a prolonged
joke, if it he, and one which plain folk do not readily
see through. The world is ready to take all this
as a revelation in sober truth, from one who, by
his own account, has had special favour from what
vou call the Majestic Theme. To pander to the
public taste is itself a vile thing, even though you
scorn them for swallowing vour bait. To parade
(being a man in authority whom princes delight
to honour) ā to parade a worthless tvpe of life, with
a wink to the knowing that you are quite of their
mind, is not a great part. To worship a great State
with the knee and the lip, and sneer at it in vour
heart, and sneer aloud, and sneering, pocket all its
good things, and grasp at its chief seats, is rather
worse, I take it, than stupidlv to believe in it.
Figaro, no doubt, laughed at his patrons; but he
dearly loved their kitchen, and he pocketed their
ducats. And therefore he was a rogue, as well as a
slave. But I see no Figaro in the matter, and in
truth I have no time for talking now. I have an
appointment at a conference of reformers about
the land question ā the land question in England,
not in Ireland. Perhaps, indeed, you are all right!
I know nothing of literature, and never read a
novel. Write a review in praise of Lothair, and
convert me! " and the stubborn reformer went off
to his meeting on the Land Question, and quite
forgot // Barhiere, Beaumarchais, and Lothair.
" There was much truth, though, in his last
remark! " we said to ourselves, as he went off ā
210
ROMANCE OF THE PEERAGE
though it was impossible to avoid laughing at his
serious air. But we took his advice about writing
the Review, and we shall certainly send him a copy.
When our literal friend was gone off on his
mission of pulling to pieces the majestic symmetry
of our landed system, we fell into a reverie full of
the witty Barber, and many a delightful reminis-
cence of M. Got at the Fran9ais, and Ronconi at
the Opera. And then taking up Lothair to com-
mence our review, we fell into a light sleep, and
dreamt of the Barber !
O Figaro! O most audacious and deft of serving-
men, what a wicked wit it is! What a society do
you show us! What a sublime unconsciousness
of its approaching end! How the young grandees
of Spain work their own mad wills! What indes-
cribable gambols of youth! What engaging live-
liness of young blood! Any number of varlets to
be had for a few ducats, and what droll puts the
citizens seem in it all! A gallant lad gets into a
scrape, which brings down Guard and Police!
Eccol vien qui! see the insignia of a Grandee!
Scusi Eccellen-za: I see! a thousand pardons! Off
hats and up swords! Le Rol s' amuse: ā make way
there for his Grace! And all this our ingenious
Beaumarchais had the happy idea of presenting
to Paris in the last decade of the ancien regime.
Bold playwright, have a care!
And the consummate impudence of our Figaro,
211
FREDERIC HARRISON
the exquisite liberties he takes with his great
friends! strutting behind their pompous footsteps,
mimicking their gait, and laughing back at the
audience. O mad wag, they will find thee out!
Why Bartolo's self, though thou art thrusting
thy lather into his rheumy old eyes, will see thou
art mocking! And as for Almaviva, he may be a
grandee of Spain, but he is a gentleman. Barber,
and may not relish thy menial pranks!
And what a rich and golden kind of life it is in
Almaviva's palaces, if you chance to live there;
how the power of wealth can create like a con-
juror's rod; what extravaganzas of caprice money
can produce!
O che bel vivere,
Che bel piacere.
Per un Barbiere,
Di qualita ā di qualita!
All in good taste, too! from the best makers in
the Puerto del Sol ā solid, real, representing so
much human labour, so many consumable things,
so much food, clothing, etc., as the dull dogs in
political economy make out; and the cream of
it is, that each production is more useless and
bi%arre than the last. It is like an Arabian night
ā Aladdin's lamp, Peribanou's fan. Ask for what
you like ā there it is. Will his Lordship ride } See,
a troop of exquisite thoroughbred Barbs stand
pawing the turf, and champing their golden bits
whilst inimitable jockeys hold the stirrup! Would
his Grace care to sail.? Haste! ten thousand
212
ROMANCE OF THE PEERAGE
labourers, whilst thou art at luncheon, all carefully-
kept out of sight, shall make thee a spacious lake
of artificial water: a gondola of wrought pearl
floats on its perfumed breast ā its sails are of amber
satin. Will your Grace deign to take the trouble
to sink into this velvet couch ? Does his Highness
like this prospect? Presto! a majestic palace rises
with its stately saloons from out its statued terraces.
His Grace's retainers throng its porches in ob-
sequious crowds, and with the plumage of a cock-
atoo! Will his Lordship enter and deign to pass
a day beneath the chaste magnificence of his new
home ? or will his Excellency condescend to indicate
in which of his princely castles he will be served ?
And the beauty of it is, that it is all real. It is
fact. No Aladdin's palaces vanishing with the
dream. But there they stand, built by actual human
hands, and fitted up, as we say, by the best pur-
veyors in Madrid. It is a little prosaic ā it wants
the romance of Aladdin; but it gains tenfold in
being real. One of those economic bores would
calculate out for you how much sweat of man went
to the making of it all; how many millions of men
and women it would support if it were all turned
into food; how many lives have been worn out
in attaining this stupendous result. And, after all,
if your whim so be, you won't let the poor wretches
even see you; but will go and hire lodgings in the
Champs Elysees, or perhaps, after all, live in a
tent on the top of Caucasus. O it beats Crassus and
Lucullus, and dims Versailles and Monseigneurs!
213
FREDERIC HARRISON
And the best of it is, that it is all right and good
It is necessary to give a high tone to life. Authors,
statesmen, bishops even can prove it. Crassus was
a brute, Versailles was a blunder; but this ā this
is the cultured magnificence of their stately lives.
What a dream we had! We seemed to see a
Magnifico ā was it Figaro, Aladdin, Rouge Sang-
lier, or some Grand Vizier of all the cultured
magnificence of these stately lives l ā (by special
behest of the Majestic Theme) enter into the
Paradise prepared for him of old. We beheld him
in a A'ision, bepalaced for evermore in choice saloons
resplendent with ormolu and scagliola! There, as
he reclined on couches of amber-satin, dazzling
duchesses and paladins of high degree fed him with
hatchis, as seraphic as his fancies; and served him
from salvers of sapphire, expresslv manufactured
by Ruby of Bond Street. Farewell ! Barber-Grand-
Vizier! in thy day thou hast amused many, ap-
parently thyself also; why shouldest thou not
amuse us ?
Moral! Retrorsum Tonsor! satis lusisti! Get
thee behind the scenes, Barber, and let another
speak the epilogue. The historian saith: ''Small
substance in that Figaro: thin wire-drawn intrigues,
thin wire-drawn sentiments and sarcasms; a thing
lean, barren; vet which winds and whisks itself
as through a wholly mad universe, adroitlv, with a
high-sniffing air; wherein each, which is the grand
secret, mav see some image of himself and of his
own state and ways. So it runs its hundred nights,
214
ROMANCE OF THE PEERAGE
and all France runs with it; laughing applause ā
all men must laugh, and a horse-racing Anglo-
maniac noblesse loudest of all. . . . Beaumarchais
has now culminated, and unites the attributes of
several demigods." (Carlyle, French Revolution;
sub ami. 1784.)
215
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
By Edward Dowden
The study of Shakespeare and his contemporaries
is the study of one family consisting of many
members, all of whom have the same life-blood
in their veins, all of whom are recognisable by
accent and bearing, and acquired habits, and various
unconscious self-revealments as kinsmen, while
each possesses a character of his own, and traits
of mind and manners and expression which dis-
tinguish him from the rest. The interest of the
study is chiefly in the gradual apprehension, now
on this side, now on that, of the common nature
of this great family of writers, until we are in
complete intellectual possession of it, and in tracing
out the characteristics peculiar to each of its in-
dividuals. There is, perhaps, no other body of
literature towards which we are attracted bv so
much of unity, and at the same time by so much
of variety. If the school of Rubens had been com-
posed of greater men than it was, we should have
had an illustrious parallel in the history of painting
to the group of Shakespeare and his contemporaries
in the history of poetry.
The " school of Rubens " we say; we could
216
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
hardly speak with accuracy of the " school of
Shakespeare." Yet there can be little doubt that
he was in a considerable degree the master of the
inferior and younger artists who surrounded him.
It is the independence of Ben Jonson's work and
its thorough individuality, rather than comparative
greatness or beauty of poetical achievement, which
has given him a kind of acknowledged right to the
second place amongst the Elizabethan dramatists,
a title to vice-president's chair in the session of the
poets. His aims were different from those of the
others, and at a time when plays and plavwrights
were little esteemed, he had almost a nineteenth-
century sense of the dignity of art, and of his own
art in particular:
And he told them plainly he deserved the bays,
For his were called Works, where others were but Plays.
But Ford, and Webster, and Massinger, and
Beaumont and Fletcher, and the rest (who were
content, like Shakespeare, to write " plays," and
did not aspire to " works ") are really followers
of the greatest of all dramatic writers, and very
different handiwork they would probably have
turned out had thev wrought in their craft without
the teaching of his practice and example. Shake-
speare's immediate predecessors were men of no
mean powers; but they are separated by a great
gulf from his contemporaries and immediate
successors. That tragedy is proportioned to some-
thing else than the number of slaughtered bodies
217
EDWARD DOWDEN
piled upon the stage at the end of Act Five, that
comedy has store of mirth more vital, deeper,
happier, more human than springs from
Jigging veins of rhyming mother wits.
And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay ā
these were discoveries in art made by Shakespeare;
and is it too much to suppose that but for him these
discoveries might have come later by a dozen years
or thereabouts? The works of the pre-Shake-
speareans are of small interest for the most part,
except as illustrating a necessary stage of growth
in the history of the drama. They do not win
upon us with the charm, the singleness of aim, the
divine innocency, the sacred inexperience, the unc-
tion of art, which we are sensible of in the works
of Raphael's predecessors. Italian painting may be
personified under the figure of a royal maiden who,
after a period of chaste seclusion and tender vir-
ginity, came forth into the world, and was a queen
and mother of men. The English drama was,
first, a schoolboy, taught rude piety by the priests,
and rude jokes by his fellows; then a young man,
lusty, passionate, mettlesome, riotous, aspiring,
friendly, full of extravagant notions and huffing
words, given to irregular ways and disastrous
chances and desperate recoveries, but, like Shake-
speare's wild prince, containing the promise of that
grave, deep-thoughted, and magnificent manhood
which was afterwards realised.
It is, however, amongst the pre-Shakespeareans
218
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
that we find the man who, of all the EHzabethan
dramatists, stands next to Shakespeare in poetical
stature, the one man who, if he had lived longer
and accomplished the work which lay clear before
him, might have stood even beside Shakespeare,
as supreme in a different province of dramatic art.
Shakespeare would have been master of the realists
or naturalists; Marlowe, master of the idealists.
The starting-point of Shakespeare, and of those
who resemble him, is always something concrete,
something real in the moral world ā a human
character; to no more elementary components
than human characters can the products of their
art be reduced in the alembic of critical analysis;
further than these they are irreducible. The
starting-point of Marlowe, and of those who
resemble Marlowe, is something abstract ā a passion
or an idea; to a passion or an idea each work of
theirs can be brought back. Revenge is not the
subject of the Merchant of Venice; Antonio and
Shylock, Portia and Nerissa, Lorenzo and Jessica,
Bassanio and Gratiano ā these are the true subjects.
Even of Romeo and Juliet the subject is not love,
but two young and loving hearts surrounded by a
group of most living figures, and over-shadowed
by a tyrannous fate. Those critics, and they are
unfortunately the most numerous since German
criticism became a power in this country, who
attempt to discover an intention, idea, or, as they
say, motiv presiding throughout each of Shake-
speare's plays, have got upon an entirely mistaken
219
EDWARD DOWDEN
track, and they inevitably come out after laby-
rinthine wanderings at the other end of nowhere.
Shakespeare's trade was not that of preparing nuts
with concealed mottoes and sentiments in them for
German commentators to crack. Goethe, who
wrought in Shakespeare's manner (though some-
times with a self-consciousness which went hanker-
ing after ideas and intentions), Goethe saw clearly
the futility of all attempts to release from their
obscurity the secrets of his own works, as if the
mystery of what he had created were other than
the mystery of life. The children of his imagination
were bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh, not
constructions of his intellect nor embodied types
of the passions. " Wilhelm Meister is one of the
most incalculable productions " ā it is Goethe
himself who is speaking ā " I myself can scarcely
be said to have the key to it. People seek a central
point, and that is hard and not even right. I should
think a rich manifold life brought close to our eyes
would be enough in itself without any express
tendency, which, after all, is only for the intellect."
y4 rich manifold life brought close to our eyes ā that
is the simplest and truest account possible of any
or all of Shakespeare's dramas. But Marlowe
worked, as Milton also worked, from the starting-
point of an idea or passion, and the critic who might
dissect all the creatures of Shakespeare's art without
ever having the honour to discover a soul, may
really, by dexterous anatomy, come upon the souls
of Marlowe's or of Milton's creatures ā intelligent
220
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
monads somewhere seated observant in the pineal
gland.
Shakespeare and Marlowe, the two foremost
men of the EHzabethan artistic movement, remind
us in not a few particulars of the two foremost men
of the artistic movement in Germany seventy or