profit. This does not apply to the greatest, who stand apart, as they always have stood and will stand; but many a lesser man, who in happier circumstances might have played tunes that even we would have praised, is led astray to grind out the common airs of the market. SHEPHERD. Licht, randy, freevolous kin' o' tunes, I trow. NORTH. No, James-on the contrary. If you will consider your most recent observations you will perceive that the tunes are all remarkably dull and dismal. The majority of the popular writers of these times are engaged in probing-with neither experience of life nor knowledge of books to guide them-the mysteries of human unhappiness. This is more particularly the case, as you have forcibly hinted, with the female writers. SHEPHERD. Gude guide us! That women, wha suld be the source o' a' the blitheness an' sweetness o' existence, suld spend their time— their spring-time, ower aften, puir things-in pokin' aboot the dirty dubs o' camsteeriness an' deprawvity! TICKLER. Pooh! They only follow the lead of the men-they are imitative beings. When the lead is changed to gaiety and fun, they will follow. SHEPHERD. I'm thinking it'll be at a distance. The humour o' womenan' they hae muckle gin ye've the gumption to perceive it—is for life an' the play o' conversation: they dinna ken-or ony w'y, verra few o' them kens-hoo to create the circumstances for it an' pit it on paper. Susan Ferrier was ane o' the few. 'Od, but yon was a wumman wi' the ee o' a hawk for the redeek'lus. But hoo wad ye define the characteristics o' contemporary leeterature, Mr North-or rather o' fiction, since that seems to be baith the beginnin' an' the end o't a'? NORTH. Outwardly, bustle without energy. Inwardly, the conceit of introspection. TICKLER. Imperfect, but a very tolerable definition, North. SHEPHERD. It's a hantle better than ony you culd mak yoursel', Mr Tickler. But here comes ane wha can define by the yaird. Guid e'en to ye, Mr De Quinshy. [Enter the ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. He salutes the company and sits down. Ye've come in the nick o' time, sir, to gie's your opeenion o' contemporary fiction. [ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER looks at SHEPHERD in silence, then taking a small box from his pocket swallows a pill. ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. You will excuse me, my dear Mr Hogg, that I have allowed myself to take a slight precaution before answering your question. The subject you mention is one which has the power, or rather, I should say, the invariable quality, of depressing my spirits to an almost intolerable depth; and unless I counteract that effect by a small, or infinitesimal, dose of this preparation of the poppy, which I keep about me when I am likely to be a participator in literary conversation, I am apt to be reduced to a condition in which I am driven to contemplate suicide a contemplation equally perverse and in our present condition of being happily or unhappily for I would not be understood to pass a hasty comment on our advantages and disadvantages ineffective. SHEPHERD. Man, ye talk brawly aboot naething; but I was speirin' your opeenion o' contemporary fiction. ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. True, Mr Hogg, and I was about to impart it to you, unworthy of your attention as it may be. My opinion, in short, is that the sufferings I may go so far as to say the tortures-of contemporary fiction are to be accounted for, or explained by, what I will venture to call the superlatively dismal dictum or suggestion that fiction ought to be an exact copy of life. I regard the man who first propounded this melancholy counsel to have been the author of more widely spread dulness, the annihilator of more gaiety and relaxation, than any man who ever lived. SHEPHERD. Ay, a dull dowg he maun hae been. TICKLER. Unfortunately it was Shakespeare. SHEPHERD. Na, na, Mr Tickler, ye're no' to mak' fules o' Mr De Quinshy an' me ye're no' to faither it on Weel'um. TICKLER. "To hold the mirror up to Nature NORTH. No, Southside; that was the advice to the players, meant merely to correct their extravagance. A decent mirror, more every spot and wrinkle The modern realism is over, does not show to a wholesome eye on a human face unless it looks too close. to art what the modern photography is to painting: it shows many needless details, while it misses the air, the character, the inner fire and purpose, of a man or of life. Art selects and distinguishes, and even for the sake of truth it is necessary to exaggerate here and to ignore there that the whole may be fair. Realism in the false contemporary sense is an impossible ideal, and were it possible it would be undesirable. But we must not forget, Mr De Quincey, that there has been a reaction against it, and that once more romance flourishes. [ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER takes another pill. SHEPHERD. Mr North, ye suldna hae gar'd him dae that: he'll hae nae appeteet for his supper. ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. I had forgotten that I had previously fortified myself, Mr Hogg; but indeed the taking of an opium pill is an automatic action with me when I hear the mention of contemporary socalled romance. I hardly know which kind of it is the most tedious and irritating - the romance which is concerned with other ages, while it is full of sentiments and attitudes to life which are entirely characteristic of this age; the romance which takes for its hero an ordinary young man of this period and sets him in surroundings impossible and incredible; or the romance which is merely a record of unnecessary and disgusting slaughter. TICKLER. But a moment since, Mr De Quincey, you complained of the idea that fiction should copy life: now you are condemning these romances because they do not fulfil that condition. NORTH. Fiction By your leave, Southside, there is no contradiction. may or should represent life with more clearly defined issues and with fewer ugly and irrelevant blemishes than it has, but it must not picture obvious impossibilities. The introduction of a writer's own sentiments among the actions of a previous age is always a dangerous practice, and those authors who rely on a superficial knowledge of history together with an intimate knowledge of the requirements of their more foolish contemporaries in the way of sentiment and "situations"-as I believe the word is for the accomplishment of plausible imitations of Sir Walter and his French successor Dumas, are unlikely to achieve a success other than commercial. My objection is that they neglect their own times, or at least the ordinary habits and manners of their own times, so completely. It is noticeable that Sir Walter Scott made his greatest novels out of his, or at least out of times within the memory of men then living. SHEPHERD. Hech, sirs, but that's a sad accoont o' maitters. Can ye no' mind ony exception? NORTH. Yes, James, and a great one. Mr Meredith sees the romance of the life round him as well as its problems and its oppositions of character. Witness Harry Richmond, as stirring and manifold a romance as there has been in English since Sir Walter died. SHEPHERD. I maun e'en confess it, sir; I canna un'erstaun' the fallow ava', NORTH. Mr You should try, James: it would come with habit. Meredith has said that to live now, romance must be reinforced by intellectual interest. And as the world grows older in thought and knowledge that is very possibly true. SHEPHERD. An' hadna the novelles o' oor time intellec' ? NORTH. They had, James, and so had those of a later period now past -the novels of Dickens and of Thackeray. That is a fact which the critics of this day seem to doubt. SHEPHERD. The sumphs! Thackeray wi'out an intellec'! NORTH. They forget, my dear Shepherd, that to be present a thing does not need to be naked. For example, behind Thackeray's often trivial incidents and trivial talk there is a reserve of intellectual power which the wise man feels a power incomparably greater, even as it is more modestly employed, than that of nine-tenths of the more noisily intellectual writers, English or French, whom these critics admire. But touching this revival of romance, Mr De Quincey, do you think the taste is genuine and will last? ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. Not, my dear sir, if we may judge by the transference of romance to the stage. I have lately witnessed the performance of several versions of Dumas' 'Three Musketeers,' and if we may suppose, as I think that without want of charity we may, that the literary tastes of the players are representative rather of the majority than the minority of their fellow-countrymen, then it is significant that these players, with very few exceptions indeed, do not seem to have an atom, a breath, a scintilla of romance in their compositions. SHEPHERD. The stage! Div ye gang aften to the playhouse, sir? For my pairt I hae been waur shockit at thir modern fawrces than I was thon time I saw the opera in the thirties. Pooh! TICKLER. SHEPHERD. I ken fine, Mr Tickler, that ye wad be weel pleased aneuch, ye auld sinner that ye are, at thae fawrces an' "musical comedies." But what say ye, sir? NORTH. I confess, James, that I am parcus cultor et infrequens of the modern playhouse. It seems to me that the managers, being aware that ideas are few, use a careful economy in them, so that when a play of one sort is successful, ten theatres will immediately fit themselves with plays exactly like it. As for example, "The Three Musketeers." One of these days, by some strange conjunc tion of accidents, an intelligent play will be produced, and then, alas! for the playgoing public, it will be a black day if none but intelligent plays are to be produced for a twelvemonth. ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. The public will be as a lost sheep, seeking for the shepherd of sentiment and the watch-dog of coincidence. SHEPHERD. O man! It'll no hae far to gang. But I'm weary o' the stage. What think ye o' modern poetry, Mr De Quinshy? [ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER fingers his pill-box, but finally replaces it in his pocket. ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. A great poet died but lately, Mr Hogg NORTH. A very great poet. The name of Tennyson will be revered so long as the memory of English literature endures. But what would Alfred have been but for the sage counsel of "crusty Christopher"? The discipline was painful to the young poet at the time, but he was wise enough to profit by it. His note of patriotism, I am glad to think, has been well caught up by Mr Kipling. ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. A wonderfully vigorous and versatile writer, sir; but we still have one great poet of the older generation. SHEPHERD. Ye mean Mr Swinburne? He's a wee thing ower luscious for ma taste. ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. Mine he pleases to perfection. NORTH. A vice of most of the others, as of their brothers the novelists, is introspection and the possession by vague and ill-understood ideas. For example, there's Mr Davidson SHEPHERD. A Scotsman-speak weel o'm NORTH. Mr Davidson can write pretty songs that might almost have been made by you, James. But he must needs expound theories and philosophies, and so he comes to grief. SHEPHERD. Ken ye, sir, that in Glesca, o' a' places, they hae a Ballant Club, an' the maist feck o' the members writes verra tolerable verse? Oor freen', Mr Neil Munro, he's ane o' them. so? NORTH. Is it even I am heartily glad to hear it. Ingenuas didicisse feliciter artes, and so forth. But I wish the Odontist had been spared to belong to the club you speak of. SHEPHERD. Ay, puir auld Pultusky wad hae been blythe to jine sic an association. |