' Readers of superior judgment may disapprove of
the style in which many of these pieces are executed:
it must be expected that many lines and phrases will
MY RARE BOOK 37
not exactly suit their taste.' Expressions may seem
too familiar may seem lacking in dignity. But, 'it
is apprehended that the more conversant the reader
is with our elder writers, and with those in modern
times who have been most successful in painting
manners and passions, the fewer complaints of this
kind will he have to make.' Here is the apology for
the fashion of presentation the germ of that which
was afterwards so fully developed in famous writings
which borrowed here and there a neat and significant
phrase from this first ' Advertisement.'
The title of the ' Ancient Mariner ' begins the
table of contents, and the poem runs on to the fifty-
first page of the volume nearly a quarter of all that
the volume holds. But Coleridge's remaining con-
tributions were small and few, consisting of 'The
Nightingale,' and of but one other. That he made
even these contributions has sometimes escaped
people's notice. He had intended to do more, for
he tells us in the Biographia Literaria that, having
written the ' Ancient Mariner,' he was preparing,
among other poems, ' The Dark Ladie ' and the
' Christabel.' ' But Mr. Wordsworth's industry has
proved much more successful, and the number of his
poems so much greater, that my compositions, instead
of forming a balance, appeared rather an interpola-
38 ON BOOKS AND ARTS
tion of heterogeneous matter.' When the ' Ancient
Mariner' came to be reprinted under Coleridge's
banner alone some minor changes were made.
Some of them were gains, but some were losses.
And there was added then, what the Lyrical Ballads
does not contain, the ' Gloss ' that wonderful telling
of the story and yet departing from it which is set
forth in grave and inspired prose. ' It was an after-
thought,' Wordsworth tells us, in speaking of his
friend's poem.
Of Wordsworth's own share that far greater
share of his in the poems, it is interesting to notice
how the general title, Lyrical Ballads with a few
other Poems, is required to cover the whole of it.
For they are of two kinds Wordsworth's poems in
the volume the simple stories of humble life, which
may or may not be dramatic, in which the ' I ' of the
poet is not necessarily himself, and the poems which
record unmistakably his personal feeling and experi-
ence, such as ' The Tables Turned, an Evening
Scene,' the noble lines written near Tintern Abbey,
and the small poem which rejoices in perhaps the
longest title ever bestowed upon verse, ' Lines written
at a small distance from my house, and sent by my
little boy to the person to whom they are addressed.'
These, and one or two others, are the contributions
MY RARE BOOK 39
to which Coleridge refers when he says that ' Mr.
Wordsworth added two or three poems written in
his own character, in the impassioned, lofty, and
sustained diction which is characteristic of his
genius.'
Many of Wordsworth's verses, whether of the one
class or the other, in the Lyrical Ballads, bear
reference to the circumstances of the moment and
the place are stamped with the mark of his
Alfoxden sojourn. ' The Thorn ' arose out of his
observing on the ridge of Quantock Hill a thorn on
a stormy day. He had often passed it unnoticed in
calm. ' I said to myself, Cannot I by some inven-
tion do as much to make this Thorn prominently an
impressive object as the storm has made it to my
eyes at this moment ? I began the poem accord-
ingly, and composed it with great rapidity.' He
adds that Sir George Beaumont painted a picture
from it, which Wilkie thought his best. Wilkie
sagacious Scotsman ! did not commit himself too
much by such praise. But Wordsworth thought
the picture nobly done. The only fault of any
consequence, he said, was the woman's figure too
old and decrepit ' for one likely to frequent an
eminence on such a call.' ' Expostulation and
Reply,' which Wordsworth learned was a favourite
40 ON BOOKS AND ARTS
among the Quakers, was composed in front of the
house at Alfoxden, in the spring of 1798. 'The
Tables Turned ' was composed at the same time, in
praise of the
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.
And of ' The Last of the Flock,' the author says
that the incident occurred in the village of Holford,
close by Alfoxden.
But I think the most interesting of the records is
the record of ' We are Seven.' This was composed
while walking in the favourite grove. In Words-
worth's confession that he composed the last stanza
first, we get at the secret of how entirely the subject
had struck him from the spiritual side.
' But they are dead ; those two are dead !
Their spirits are in heaven ! '
'Twas throwing words away, for still
The little maid would have her will,
And said, ' Nay, we are seven ! '
The life of the poem lies in the instinctive thought
of immortality, and in the sense of neighbourhood
and close companionship between the quick and the
dead. It is the same thought, the same sense, that
throws its magical light on the tale of Lucy Gray,
MY RARE BOOK 41
and permits those last verses which make the whole
thing wonderful, and the common story fine
Yet some maintain that to this day
She is a living child ;
That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome wild.
O'er rough and smooth, she trips along
And never looks behind ;
And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.
The poem of ' We are Seven/ expressing a con-
ception precious to Wordsworth, yet not expressing
it exactly as he would have it expressed, was, after
its first publication, subjected to more changes than
any composition of its length. Of course the direct
address to ' dear brother Jem ' ' A little child, dear
brother Jem ' is removed. Wordsworth only
allowed it to stand at first because he relished the
joke of hitching in his friend James Tobin's name,
and this gratuitous reference to a good fellow, a bad
critic, and the brother of the author of ' The Honey-
moon,' was promptly suppressed. ' I sing a song to
them,' is substituted for a line far more effective with
the context ' I sit and sing to them.' Another line,
beautiful with the context 'And all the summer
dry' yields to the line ' And when the grass was dry.'
But at one point ' little Jane ' becomes ' sister Jane,'
perhaps happily, and, ' Quick was the little maid's
42 ON BOOKS AND ARTS
reply' gives the desired sense of readiness and
certainty better than the line it effaces. It is the
old story of careful verbal alterations some are for
the better, some are for the worse.
More than one of the graver pastoral poems are
missing, naturally enough, to my rare book. I do
not find in it that pastoral of ' Michael,' which of
itself is quite enough, it seems to me, to ensure to
its writer a fame which shall last as long as any judges
of Literature remain any judges who, caring for
style itself, care supremely for its fit association with
the sentiment it is its business to express. ' Michael '
is intensely realistic : in the best sense it is more
realistic than anything of Crabbe's, and the verse
that seems to be halting is but prosaic deliberately.
The effect is sought for, and the effect is gained.
The pathos is all the greater because the elevation
of language is so slight and infrequent. When it
occurs, it tells ! That poem belongs to the next
series of the poet's works to the little collection
published first, I think, in 1802, and assuming to
itself the title of Lyrical Ballads; Volume the
Second. There had before been no hint of a second,
and the first is complete in itself.
I said, just now, in speaking of the ' We are Seven,'
that Mr. James Tobin ' dear brother Jem ' was a
MY RARE BOOK 43
bad critic. He showed himself so in this wise.
When Lyrical Ballads was going through the
press, it was Cottle, I suppose, who gave a sight of
it to dear brother Jem. He went to Wordsworth
upon that, as one charged with a mission, and who
would not be denied. There was one poem, brother
Jem said, in the volume about to be published, which
Wordsworth must cancel. ' If published, it will
make you everlastingly ridiculous.' And Words-
worth begged to know which was the unfortunate
piece. He answered, ' It is called, " We are Seven." '
' Nay,' said Wordsworth, ' that shall take its
chance, however.' For he knew his strength. And
another generation has reversed the judgment which
Tobin's approved.
(Gentleman's Magazine, May 1882.)
BALZAC
THROUGH the ' usual channels of information '-
I mean, of course, the daily papers many readers
have become aware of the recent publication, in the
Revue de Paris, of a series of Balzac's letters. But
few have understood their importance. Their in-
terest for the student is great, for in a revelation of
their author, that is impressive and almost final,
they confirm to the full the view of Balzac which
those of us have taken (I took it myself in my little
Life of him in the ' Great Writers ' Series) who
have perceived that by his temperament and inclina-
tion, as well as by his power, he is divided widely
from those more sordid and limited realists at whose
head it was erewhile the fashion to place him.
Romance, it has been claimed often by friend and
foe alike Romance was Victor Hugo's, Materialism
was Balzac's. And now Balzac is found and one
has a right to be surprised, not of course at the kind,
but only at the degree of the manifestation he is
BALZAC 45
found in mature years to be in his own conduct
more simply and absolutely romantic than the most
visionary or most warm-hearted schoolgirl. He
works himself into a genuine and indescribably
enthusiastic, but always respectful, attachment to a
young married woman whom he has never seen,
who inquires of him about his stories, who sends
him Thomas a Kempis (which he translates later
into the Mtdecin de Campagne : ' c'est 1'Evangile en
action '), who writes to him confidentially for a year
or two before she meets him, who later receives him
as her guest in Russian Poland, and whom he marries
at last, in 1850, only several years after the death of
her husband.
The facts that have been mentioned latest have
been known since about the time of the publication
of the now familiar couple of volumes of Balzac's
Correspondence. It is the earlier and most interest-
ing part of the story that is new. The report had
previously been current that Balzac had for the first
time been made aware of Madame de Hanska's
existence when he was staying at, or passing
through, Neuchatel, in September 1833. She
announced, so it was said, her wish to be intro-
duced to him on hearing that he was at the hotel ;
and this last autumn (such is the vanity of human
46 ON BOOKS AND ARTS
effort upon matters after all not profoundly im-
portant), I established the fact, in concert with the
present proprietor of the Hotel Belle Vue at Neu-
chatel, that the old but not yet disused H6tel du
Faucon must have been the hostelry in which this
memorable meeting took place. The 'Faucon,'
which had been built just in the middle of the little
town but a few years before the date of Balzac's
visit, was then the inn at which a traveller of any
importance was sure to descend neither the ' Belle
Vue ' nor the ' Lac ' existed at that period. Let us
take courage, however our trouble was not so use-
less as I had for a moment imagined it. The actual
meeting-place of two friends, two ' lovers ' (in Walt
Whitman's sense, at all events), is in the end at
least as interesting as the meeting-place of two
strangers, who were to warm towards each other
only in future years. They met, then, we may
fairly presume, at the Faucon at Neuchatel, but met
after a correspondence by turns polite and chival-
rous, intimate and ardent.
It was no unusual thing for Balzac the historian,
above all things, of men's ambitions and of women's
hearts to receive, together with the compliments,
the confessions of the fair. In our own age an age
perhaps more enamoured of physical prowess and
BALZAC 47
presence than of intellectual or spiritual achieve-
ment I have not heard that the novelist or the
successful writer of the short story is in constant
receipt of the confidences and eulogiums of women.
These, I am informed, when bestowed liberally on
the stranger, are directed, nowadays, in chief to
the jeune premier with a rapid action and a well-
made coat. But it was otherwise two generations
ago ; and Balzac, sometimes complaining of the
embarrassment, sometimes, on the other hand, with
not a little of honest pride in the circumstances
that caused it, avows himself endowed with the
functions of a confessor. In the two volumes of
the well-known Correspondence I have referred to
before, and in such other writings as have hitherto
been accessible, it is chiefly question of a certain
anonymous ' Louise,' whom he never saw, to whom
he said many pretty things on writing-paper, and to
whom he was once minded to dedicate one of his
stories. As a rule, I believe, he left unanswered the
letters of the stranger felt, perhaps, that it was
enough that they should have been received, and,
if they contained anything that was noteworthy,
registered, very likely, in the book of his memory
for possible employment in fiction. But now it is
made clear abundantly, that in the case of Evelina
48 ON BOOKS AND ARTS
de Hanska, not only was there correspondence, inti-
mate if scarcely voluminous, before any personal
meeting, but likewise that by means of it such a tie
was created, such a mutual fascination formed, as
could hardly with ease be broken. And yet, what if
when they met in the flesh there had been as after
all there might have been disillusionment ! What
if Evelina de Hanska had proved as distasteful to
Monsieur de Balzac as Anne of Cleves to the
experienced Henry !
He was in the best of all possible moods, how-
ever, to be impressed with Madame de Hanska,
during the period of their earliest correspondence ;
for unquestionably he was wounded, unquestionably
he was sore. Among the friendships verging
sometimes on love-affairs which Balzac formed
with women, two were at this moment in the crisis
of their fate. Many years before the existence of
Madame de Hanska became known to him, Balzac
had been friend, trustful dependant, would-be lover,
probably it is difficult to express the relationship
of a certain Madame de Berny. She was a little
older than he was, and she helped him in money
troubles when he was young enough to be able to
accept her assistance without shame, and she knew
the world at a time when, if I may proffer the
BALZAC 49
phrase, he joined the inextinguishable simplicity
of the artist to the more prosaic simplicity of the
inexperienced.
At Madame de Berny's house in the Oise, Balzac
had written his brief and restrained masterpiece,
Le Cure de Tours. Her difficult virtue, and all
her other qualities and characteristics, made, con-
fessedly, much of the interest of Le Lys dans la
Vallee. That relationship of theirs into which, as
I consider, a morbid element, an exaggerated senti-
mentality, did at one time to some extent enter
was only wholly broken by Madame de Berny's
death. For two years at least she was the victim of
a mortal illness. The illness began, and the depres-
sion caused by it in Balzac began, about 1833.
But during the year 1832, Balzac, whose feeling
towards Madame de Berny ' an angel at my side '
must with long years have somewhat changed its
character during the year 1832 Balzac had passed
through an experience the end of which he speaks
of, long afterwards, as ' un des plus grands chagrins
de ma vie' And that was his experience with the
young Madame de Castries the Duchesse de Cas-
tries she became, in due time, some years later a
light of Parisian Society, fully as fascinating in the
quietude of Aix-les-Bains as amidst the distractions
D
50 ON BOOKS AND ARTS
of all the salons of the capital. It is not from the
letters that Balzac wrote to her not, at all events,
from any that have been published that we know
or can surmise how irresistible for Balzac was her
personal magnetism. It is rather from certain
amongst the letters sent by him to his life-long friend,
his sister's school friend, Madame Zulma Carraud
of Angouleme, that we are informed of the effect of
Madame de Castries' dealings with him. She was
at one time a delight, then a disillusionment, and
then (and, as it seems to me, ever afterwards) a
painful yet attractive memory. The rupture never
a quarrel avowed to the outsider ; never indeed a
rupture that was quite complete, or that was in any
way explicable save under the supposition that the
lady of the belle chevelure venitienne had a blonde's
inconstancy and a Scottish caution the rupture,
such as it was, occurred in the autumn of 1832, when
Balzac, who was to have gone over into Italy with
the lady and her brother, parted from her at Geneva,
and consoled himself (let me be permitted to hope)
as best he could, by buying, at that famous dealer's
on the Quai des Bergues, 1 a little of the ' Carl
Theodore ' (Frankenthal) porcelain that his soul
1 Since moved to the Corratorie.
BALZAC 51
loved. The ' collector,' I am informed, is heartless
but he has his compensations.
The second of the just published letters addressed
to Madame de Hanska contains sentences which are
meaningless, if it is not to Madame de Castries that
they refer. ' Only Heaven and I can ever under-
stand the frightful energy with which a heart must
be endowed, if, being full of tears that are repressed,
it must suffice still for the labours of writing.' Again
and this time why should I translate ? the cry
of a moment : ' Toutes mes passions, toutes mes cro-
yances, sont tramples' And he tells his correspondent
that Madame Recamier at least never sat, as was
supposed, for Feodora. 1 ' I met a Feodora once, but
her I shall never paint ; besides, the Peau de Chagrin
was written long before I met her.' 2 Yet again, ' I
made Feodora out of two women whom I knew, but
not intimately. Observation was enough for me
with a few confidences to boot.'
What Balzac seems to have been struck with, from
the first, in Evelina de Hanska, was her sincerity
and oneness of purpose, the truth of her devotion to
his work, and a certain similarity, an immediate
1 Feodora, the evil genius, one may say, of the Peau de Chagrin.
2 If this was Madame de Castries, the intention did not always hold
good, since more than touches of that charmer there are supposed to
be in the Duchesse de Lang-eats.
52 ON BOOKS AND ARTS
sympathy, between his nature and hers. Much of
his work, as he avows, has been done to strike the
public to provide the public with that without
which it could scarcely accord him the attention
he asked. But ' certainly there are books in which
I have loved to be myself ; and you will know well
which they are, for they are those in which my
heart has spoken.' When at length the two came
together, at Neuchatel in 1833 as in Vienna, and
in Russian Poland itself, in later years there was
nothing, it seems, in either to diminish the interest
or to break the spell. And the fascination con-
tinued. I have for my own part a little theory that
the sympathy of the woman, her deep interest in his
work, her participation in it (S/raphita and some
kindred labour, whatever be its defects, would never
have existed but for that influence of this mystic
Northerner), gave the attachment, as far as Balzac
was concerned, something of the features of an
attachment of consolation. His early adoration,
as I hold, his boyish passion, was for Madame de
Berny. And, in maturer years, his ideal, his very
dream of beauty and of charm, was Madame de
Castries Madame de Castries set, so to put it, in
the best of her backgrounds : Madame de Castries
at Aix-les-Bains. Never, I think, in Balzac's life
BALZAC 53
was that experience, or the force of it, equalled. But
in Evelina de Hanska, whether as friend or wife, he
discovered and obtained a steady rest a rest the
more assured, it may be, because she entertained for
him feelings of a deeper devotion than any that were
extended by that admirable and almost lifelong
comrade, his friend, his sister's friend, the blameless
and the wise Madame Zulma Carraud.
An idealist, anyhow, Balzac was at the beginning ;
an idealist he remained to the end. The ' amities
d'tpidenne,' as he excellently called them, attracted
him but little. In my short book about him, in the
' Great Writers ' Series, I tried to show that what
he sought for and obtained was the intimacy of the
heart. Gautier knew this. And one-sided indeed
must be those people whether the word of their
choice is intended for blame or for praise who,
judging either by life or work, think that Balzac is
properly described as ' materialist ' or ' realist,' alone
or chiefly. The Real, which is not always the hideous,
he was strong enough to face ; yet Romance was
essential to him. It is time, now, that the senti-
mental and soi-disant Romantic began to under-
stand that in Balzac there were depths of feeling and
of poetry to which they could never approach ; and
time also that those tiresome disciples of mere ugli-
54 ON BOOKS AND ARTS
ness in literary theme and literary treatment, who
account him their yet insufficient master, were
informed, roundly, that whatever the lessons he
may half-incidentally have taught them, nothing
of Balzac's greatness can ever fairly be claimed as
supporting or justifying the narrow limitations of
their sordid sect and creed.
(The Bookman, March 1894.)
GEORGE ELIOT
THE accounts of George Eliot's earlier life, which are
in general circulation, are in some respects imaginary.
' George Eliot ' Mary Ann Evans was not the
daughter of a poor clergyman, nor was she ever
' adopted ' by a wealthy one. She was the daughter
of a land surveyor in the Midland Counties, and was
brought up at her father's home, her mother dying
when Mary Ann Evans was still a child. Nor was
she ever the ' pupil ' of Mr. Herbert Spencer, nor a
frequent writer in the Westminster Review. She
made the acquaintance and the friendship of Mr.
Spencer when she was a woman, and already the
mistress of the abstruse subjects in which she then
chiefly delighted. She was for a time joint-editor of
the Westminster with Dr. Chapman ; but her writings
in that Review were neither numerous nor generally
important. After a residence of some years in
Coventry where she learned profoundly the features
of the ' Midlands/ which she afterwards described
55
56 ON BOOKS AND ARTS
Mary Ann Evans came to London. At twenty-six
years old she translated Strauss's Life of Jesus,
and seven years later, Feuerbach's Essence of Chris-
tianity ; but her efforts at creative writing were
wisely delayed. Her apprenticeship to Literature
and Philosophy was elaborate and laborious ; her
training was extensive and deep. It was not until
1858 that Scenes of Clerical Life betrayed the pre-
sence of a new artist in Fiction an artist of fresh
gifts, but of undeveloped art.
The narratives of the ' Sad Fortunes of the Reverend
Amos Barton,' of ' Janet's Repentance,' and of ' Mr.
Gilfil's Love-Story ' the Scenes of Clerical Life, in
other words impressed certain readers, and deserved
to impress them ; but not even the pathos of Mrs.
Barton's death would have given the writer lasting
reputation had the book continued to stand alone.
On re-perusal, the imperfections of its mechanism
are too apparent ; the novelist had not learned the
art of proportion, nor the art of selection and rejec-
tion. Some little books, no bigger than the Scenes of
Clerical Life, have been enough to secure for their
authors an enduring fame. Nothing more than the
Vicar of Wakefield could have been required to
keep Goldsmith's memory green. Sterne, desiring
to be immortal, was under no obligation to write
GEORGE ELIOT 57
anything more, after he had written the Sentimental
Journey. But the Scenes of Clerical Life, admirably
fresh and spontaneous as they were, gave no such
position to their author. It was not a young woman,
but it was a woman young in her art, who was at
work in them.
With Adam Bede it was otherwise. Adam Bede,
published about the beginning of 1859, was seen a *
once to be more than a touching, and more than a
popular, story. It was an achievement of complete
art, and had the power of complete art, ' to teach a
truth obliquely,' nor 'wrong the thought' as Mr.