Confessions and Criticisms by Julian Hawthorne

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The "Arabian Nights" introduced us to the domain of the Oriental
imagination, and has done more than all the books of travel in the East to
make us acquainted with the Asiatic character and its differences from our
own. From what has already been said on the subject of spiritual intuition
in relation to these races, one is prepared to find that all the Eastern
literature that has any value is hermetic writing, and therefore, in so
far, proper for children. But the incorrigible subtlety of the Oriental
intellect has vitiated much of their symbology, and the sentiment of sheer
wonder is stimulated rather than that of orderly imagination. To read the
"Arabian Nights" or the "Bhagavad-Gita" is a sort of dissipation; upon the
unhackneyed mind of the child it leaves a reactionary sense of depression.
The life which it embodies is distorted, over-colored, and exciting; it
has not the serene and balanced power of the Western productions.
Moreover, these books were not written with the grave philosophic purpose
that animated our own hermetic school; it is rather a sort of jugglery
practised with the subject---an exercise of ingenuity and invention for
their own sake. It indicates a lack of the feeling of responsibility on
the writers' part,--a result, doubtless, of the prevailing fatalism that
underlies all their thought. It is not essentially wholesome, in short;
but it is immeasurably superior to the best of the productions called
forth by our modern notions of what should be given to children to read.

But I can do no more than touch upon this branch of the subject; nor will
it be possible to linger long over the department of our own literature
which came into being with "Robinson Crusoe." No theory as to children's
books would be worth much attention which found itself obliged to exclude
that memorable work. Although it submits in a certain measure to
classification, it is almost _sui generis_; no book of its kind,
approaching it in merit, has ever been written. In what, then, does its
fascination consist? There is certainly nothing hermetic about it; it is
the simplest and most studiously matter-of-fact narrative of events,
comprehensible without the slightest effort, and having no meaning that is
not apparent on the face of it. And yet children, and grown people also,
read it again and again, and cannot find it uninteresting. I think the
phenomenon may largely be due to the nature of the subject, which is
really of primary and universal interest to mankind. It is the story of
the struggle of man with wild and hostile nature,--in the larger sense an
elementary theme,--his shifts, his failures, his perils, his fears, his
hopes, his successes. The character of Robinson is so artfully generalized
or universalized, and sympathy for him is so powerfully aroused and
maintained, that the reader, especially the child reader, inevitably
identifies himself with him, and feels his emotions and struggles as his
own. The ingredient of suspense is never absent from the story, and the
absence of any plot prevents us from perceiving its artificiality. It is,
in fact, a type of the history of the human race, not on the higher plane,
but on the physical one; the history of man's contest with and final
victory over physical nature. The very simplicity and obviousness of the
details give them grandeur and comprehensiveness: no part of man's
character which his contact with nature can affect or develop is left
untried in Robinson. He manifests in little all historical earthly
experiences of the race; such is the scheme of the book; and its
permanence in literature is due to the sobriety and veracity with which
that scheme is carried out. To speak succinctly, it does for the body what
the hermetic and cognate literature does for the soul; and for the healthy
man, the body is not less important than the soul in its own place and
degree. It is not the work of the Creator, but it is contingent upon
creation.

But poor Robinson has been most unfortunate in his progeny, which at this
day overrun the whole earth, and render it a worse wilderness than ever
was the immortal Crusoe Island. Miss Edgeworth, indeed, might fairly pose
as the most persistently malignant of all sources of error in the design
of children's literature; but it is to be feared that it was Defoe who
first made her aware of the availability of her own venom. She foisted her
prim and narrow moral code upon the commonplace adventures of a priggish
little boy and his companions; and straightway the whole dreary and
disastrous army of sectarians and dogmatists took up the cry, and have
been ringing the lugubrious changes on it ever since. There is really no
estimating the mortal wrong that has been done to childhood by Maria
Edgeworth's "Frank" and "The Parent's Assistant"; and, for my part, I
derive a melancholy joy in availing myself of this opportunity to express
my sense of my personal share in the injury. I believe that my affection
for the human race is as genuine as the average; but I am sure it would
have been greater had Miss Edgeworth never been born; and were I to come
across any philosophical system whereby I could persuade myself that she
belonged to some other order of beings than the human, I should be
strongly tempted to embrace that system on that ground alone.

After what has been advanced in the preceding pages, it does not need that
I should state how earnestly I deprecate the kind of literary food which
we are now furnishing to the coming generation in such sinister abundance.
I am sure it is written and published with good and honorable motives; but
at the very best it can only do no harm. Moreover, however well
intentioned, it is bad as literature; it is poorly conceived and written,
and, what is worse, it is saturated with affectation. For an impression
prevails that one needs to talk down to children;--to keep them constantly
reminded that they are innocent, ignorant little things, whose consuming
wish it is to be good and go to Sunday-school, and who will be all
gratitude and docility to whomsoever provides them with the latest fashion
of moral sugarplums; whereas, so far as my experience and information
goes, children are the most formidable literary critics in the world.
Matthew Arnold himself has not so sure an instinct for what is sound and
good in a book as any intelligent little boy or girl of eight years old.
They judge absolutely; they are hampered by no comparisons or relative
considerations. They cannot give chapter and verse for their opinion; but
about the opinion itself there is no doubt. They have no theories; they
judge in a white light. They have no prejudices nor traditions; they come
straight from the simple source of life. But, on the other hand, they are
readily hocussed and made morbid by improper drugs, and presently, no
doubt, lose their appetite for what is wholesome. Now, we cannot hope that
an army of hermetic philosophers or Mother-Gooses will arise at need and
remedy all abuses; but at least we might refrain from moralizing and
instruction, and, if we can do nothing more, confine ourselves to plain
stories of adventure, say, with no ulterior object whatever. There still
remains the genuine literature of the past to draw upon; but let us
beware, as we would of forgery and perjury, of serving it up, as has been
done too often, medicated and modified to suit the foolish dogmatism of
the moment. Hans Christian Andersen was the last writer of children's
stories, properly so called; though, considering how well married to his
muse he was, it is a wonder as well as a calamity that he left no
descendants.

CHAPTER V.

THE MORAL AIM IN FICTION.

The producers of modern fiction, who have acquiesced more or less
completely in the theory of art for art's sake, are not, perhaps, aware
that a large class of persons still exist who hold fiction to be
unjustifiable, save in so far as the author has it at heart not only (or
chiefly) to adorn the tale, but also (and first of all) to point the
moral. The novelist, in other words, should so mould the characters and
shape the plot of his imaginary drama as to vindicate the wisdom and
integrity of the Decalogue: if he fail to do this, or if he do the
opposite of this, he deserves not the countenance of virtuous and God-
fearing persons.

Doubtless it should be evident to every sane and impartial mind, whether
orthodox or agnostic, that an art which runs counter to the designs of God
toward the human race, or to the growth of the sentiment of universal
human brotherhood, must sooner or later topple down from its fantastic and
hollow foundation. "Hitch your wagon to a star," says Emerson; "do not lie
and steal: no god will help." And although, for the sake of his own
private interests of the moment, a man will occasionally violate the moral
law, yet, with mankind at large, the necessity of vindicating the superior
advantages of right over wrong is acknowledged not only in the interests
of civilized society, but because we feel that, however hostile "goodness"
may seem to be to my or your personal and temporary aims, it still remains
the only wholesome and handsome choice for the race at large: and
therefore do we, as a race, refuse to tolerate--on no matter how plausible
an artistic plea--any view of human life which either professes
indifference to this universal sentiment, or perversely challenges it.

The true ground of dispute, then, does not lie here. The art which can
stoop to be "procuress to the lords of hell," is art no longer. But, on
the other hand, it would be difficult to point to any great work of art,
generally acknowledged to be such, which explicitly concerns itself with
the vindication of any specific moral doctrine. The story in which the
virtuous are rewarded for their virtue, and the evil punished for their
wickedness, fails, somehow, to enlist our full sympathy; it falls flatly
on the ear of the mind; it does not stimulate thought. It does not
satisfy; we fancy that something still remains to be said, or, if this be
all, then it was hardly worth saying. The real record of life--its terror,
its beauty, its pathos, its depth--seems to have been missed. We may admit
that the tale is in harmony with what we have been taught ought to happen;
but the lessons of our private experience have not authenticated our moral
formulas; we have seen the evil exalted and the good brought low; and we
inevitably desire that our "fiction" shall tell us, not what ought to
happen, but what, as a matter of fact, does happen. To put this a little
differently: we feel that the God of the orthodox moralist is not the God
of human nature. He is nothing but the moralist himself in a highly
sublimated state, but betraying, in spite of that sublimation, a fatal
savor of human personality. The conviction that any man--George
Washington, let us say--is a morally unexceptionable man, does not in the
least reconcile us to the idea of God being an indefinitely exalted
counterpart of Washington. Such a God would be "most tolerable, and not to
be endured"; and the more exalted he was, the less endurable would he be.
In short, man instinctively refuses to regard the literal inculcation of
the Decalogue as the final word of God to the human race, and much less to
the individuals of that race; and when he finds a story-teller proceeding
upon the contrary assumption, he is apt to put that story-teller down as
either an ass or a humbug.

As for art--if the reader happen to be competent to form an opinion on
that phase of the matter--he will generally find that the art dwindles in
direct proportion as the moralized deity expatiates; in fact, that they
are incompatible. And he will also confess (if he have the courage of his
opinions) that, as between moralized deity and true art, his choice is
heartily and unreservedly for the latter.

I do not apprehend that the above remarks, fairly interpreted, will
encounter serious opposition from either party to the discussion; and yet,
so far as I am aware, neither party has as yet availed himself of the
light which the conclusion throws upon the nature of art itself. It should
be obvious, however, that upon a true definition of art the whole argument
must ultimately hinge: for we can neither deny that art exists, nor affirm
that it can exist inconsistently with a recognition of a divinely
beneficent purpose in creation. It must, therefore, in some way be an
expression or reflection of that purpose. But in what does the purpose in
question essentially consist?

Broadly speaking--for it would be impossible within the present limits to
attempt a full analysis of the subject--it may be considered as a gradual
and progressive Purification, not of this or that particular individual in
contradistinction to his fellows, but of human nature as an entirety. The
evil into which all men are born, and of which the Decalogue, or
conscience, makes us aware, is not an evil voluntarily contracted on our
part, but is inevitable to us as the creation of a truly infinite love and
wisdom. It is, in fact, our characteristic nature as animals: and it is
only because we are not only animal, but also and above all human, that we
are enabled to recognize it as evil instead of good. We absolve the cat,
the dog, the wolf, and the lion from any moral responsibility for their
deeds, because we feel them to be deficient in conscience, which, is our
own divinely bestowed gift and privilege, and which has been defined as
the spirit of God in the created nature, seeking to become the creature's
own spirit. Now, the power to correct this evil does not abide in us as
individuals, nor will a literal adherence to the moral law avail to purify
any mother's son of us. Conscience always says "Do not,"--never "Do"; and
obedience to it neither can give us a personal claim on God's favor nor
was it intended to do so: its true function is to keep us innocent, so
that we may not individually obstruct the accomplishment of the divine
ends toward us as a race. Our nature not being the private possession of
any one of us, but the impersonal substratum of us all, it follows that it
cannot be redeemed piecemeal, but only as a whole; and, manifestly, the
only Being capable of effecting such redemption is not Peter, or Paul, or
George Washington, or any other atomic exponent of that nature, be he who
he may; but He alone whose infinitude is the complement of our finiteness,
and whose gradual descent into human nature (figured in Scripture under
the symbol of the Incarnation) is even now being accomplished--as any one
may perceive who reads aright the progressive enlightenment of conscience
and intellect which history, through many vicissitudes, displays. We find,
therefore, that art is, essentially, the imaginative expression of a
divine life in man. Art depends for its worth and veracity, not upon its
adherence to literal fact, but upon its perception and portrayal of the
underlying truth, of which fact is but the phenomenal and imperfect
shadow. And it can have nothing to do with personal vice or virtue, in the
way either of condemning the one or vindicating the other; it can only
treat them as elements in its picture--as factors in human destiny. For
the notion commonly entertained that the practice of virtue gives us a
claim upon the Divine Exchequer (so to speak), and the habit of acting
virtuously for the sake of maintaining our credit in society, and ensuring
our prosperity in the next world,--in so thinking and acting we
misapprehend the true inwardness of the matter. To cultivate virtue
because its pays, no matter what the sort of coin in which payment is
looked for, is to be the victims of a lamentable delusion. For such virtue
makes each man jealous of his neighbor; whereas the aim of Providence is
to bring about the broadest human fellowship. A man's physical body
separates him from other men; and this fact disposes him to the error that
his nature is also a separate possession, and that he can only be "good"
by denying himself. But the only goodness that is really good is a
spontaneous and impersonal evolution, and this occurs, not where self-
denial has been practised, but only where a man feels himself to be
absolutely on the same level of desert or non-desert as are the mass of
his fellow-creatures. There is no use in obeying the commandments, unless
it be done, not to make one's self more deserving than another of God's
approbation, but out of love for goodness and truth in themselves, apart
from any personal considerations. The difference between true religion and
formal religion is that the first leads us to abandon all personal claims
to salvation, and to care only for the salvation of humanity as a whole;
whereas the latter stimulates is to practise outward self-denial, in order
that our real self may be exalted. Such self-denial results not in
humility, but in spiritual pride.

In no other way than this, it seems to me, can art and morality be brought
into harmony. Art bears witness to the presence in us of something purer
and loftier than anything of which we can be individually conscious. Its
complete expression we call inspiration; and he who is the subject of the
inspiration can account no better than any one else for the result which
art accomplishes through him. The perfect poem is found, not made; the
mind which utters it did not invent it. Art takes all nature and all
knowledge for her province; but she does not leave it as she found it; by
the divine necessity that is upon her, she breathes a soul into her
materials, and organizes chaos into form. But never, under any
circumstances, does she deign to minister to our selfish personal hope or
greed. She shows us how to love our neighbor, never ourselves. Shakspeare,
Homer, Phidias, Raphael, were no Pharisees--at least in so far as they
were artists; nor did any one ever find in their works any countenance for
that inhuman assumption--"I am holier than thou!" In the world's darkest
hours, art has sometimes stood as the sole witness of the nobler life that
was in eclipse. Civilizations arise and vanish; forms of religion hold
sway and are forgotten; learning and science advance and gather strength;
but true art was as great and as beautiful three thousand years ago as it
is to-day. We are prone to confound the man with the artist, and to
suppose that he is artistic by possession and inheritance, instead of
exclusively by dint of what he does. No artist worthy the name ever dreams
of putting himself into his work, but only what is infinitely distinct
from and other than himself. It is not the poet who brings forth the poem,
but the poem that begets the poet; it makes him, educates him, creates in
him the poetic faculty. Those whom we call great men, the heroes of
history, are but the organs of great crises and opportunities: as Emerson
has said, they are the most indebted men. In themselves they are not
great; there is no ratio between their achievements and them. Our judgment
is misled; we do not discriminate between the divine purpose and the human
instrument. When we listen to Napoleon fretting his soul away at Elba, or
to Carlyle wrangling with his wife at Chelsea, we are shocked at the
discrepancy between the lofty public performance and the petty domestic
shortcoming. Yet we do wrong to blame them; the nature of which they are
examples is the same nature that is shared also by the publican and the
sinner.

Instead, therefore, of saying that art should be moral, we should rather
say that all true morality is art--that art is the test of morality. To
attempt to make this heavenly Pegasus draw the sordid plough of our
selfish moralistic prejudices is a grotesque subversion of true order. Why
should the novelist make believe that the wicked are punished and the good
are rewarded in this world? Does he not know, on the contrary, that
whatsoever is basest in our common life tends irresistibly to the highest
places, and that the selfish element in our nature is on the side of
public order? Evil is at present a more efficient instrument of order
(because an interested one) than good; and the novelist who makes this
appear will do a far greater and more lasting benefit to humanity than he
who follows the cut-and-dried artificial programme of bestowing crowns on
the saint and whips of scorpions on the sinner.

As a matter of fact, I repeat, the best influences of the best literature
have never been didactic, and there is no reason to believe they ever will
be. The only semblance of didacticism which can enter into literature is
that which conveys such lessons as may be learned from sea and sky,
mountain and valley, wood and stream, bird and beast; and from the broad
human life of races, nations, and firesides; a lesson that is not obvious
and superficial, but so profoundly hidden in the creative depths as to
emerge only to an apprehension equally profound. For the chatter and
affectation of sense disturb and offend that inward spiritual ear which,
in the silent recesses of meditation, hears the prophetic murmur of the
vast ocean of human nature that flows within us and around us all.

CHAPTER VI.

THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS.

During the winter of 1879, when I was in London, it was my fortune to
attend, a social meeting of literary men at the rooms of a certain eminent
publisher. The rooms were full of tobacco-smoke and talk, amid which were
discernible, on all sides, the figures and faces of men more or less
renowned in the world of books. Most noticeable among these personages was
a broad-shouldered, sturdy man, of middle height, with a ruddy
countenance, and snow-white tempestuous beard and hair. He wore large,
gold-rimmed spectacles, but his eyes were black and brilliant, and looked
at his interlocutor with a certain genial fury of inspection. He seemed to
be in a state of some excitement; he spoke volubly and almost
boisterously, and his voice was full-toned and powerful, though pleasant
to the ear. He turned himself, as he spoke, with a burly briskness, from
one side to another, addressing himself first to this auditor and then to
that, his words bursting forth from beneath his white moustache with such
an impetus of hearty breath that it seemed as if all opposing arguments
must be blown quite away. Meanwhile he flourished in the air an ebony
walking-stick, with much vigor of gesticulation, and narrowly missing, as
it appeared, the pates of his listeners. He was clad in evening dress,
though the rest of the company was, for the most part, in mufti; and he
was an exceedingly fine-looking old gentleman. At the first glance, you
would have taken him to be some civilized and modernized Squire Western,
nourished with beef and ale, and roughly hewn out of the most robust and
least refined variety of human clay. Looking at him more narrowly,
however, you would have reconsidered this judgment. Though his general
contour and aspect were massive and sturdy, the lines of his features were
delicately cut; his complexion was remarkably pure and fine, and his face
was susceptible of very subtle and sensitive changes of expression. Here
was a man of abundant physical strength and vigor, no doubt, but carrying
within him a nature more than commonly alert and impressible. His
organization, though thoroughly healthy, was both complex and high-
wrought; his character was simple and straightforward to a fault, but he
was abnormally conscientious, and keenly alive to others' opinion
concerning him. It might be thought that he was overburdened with self-
esteem, and unduly opinionated; but, in fact, he was but overanxious to
secure the good-will and agreement of all with whom he came in contact.
There was some peculiarity in him--some element or bias in his composition
that made him different from other men; but, on the other hand, there was
an ardent solicitude to annul or reconcile this difference, and to prove
himself to be, in fact, of absolutely the same cut and quality as all the
rest of the world. Hence he was in a demonstrative, expository, or
argumentative mood; he could not sit quiet in the face of a divergence
between himself and his associates; he was incorrigibly strenuous to
obliterate or harmonize the irreconcilable points between him and others;
and since these points remained irreconcilable, he remained in a constant
state of storm and stress on the subject.

It was impossible to help liking such a man at first sight; and I believe
that no man in London society was more generally liked than Anthony
Trollope. There was something pathetic in his attitude as above indicated;
and a fresh and boyish quality always invested him. His artlessness was
boyish, and so were his acuteness and his transparent but somewhat belated
good-sense. He was one of those rare persons who not only have no
reserves, but who can afford to dispense with them. After he had shown you
all he had in him, you would have seen nothing that was not gentlemanly,
honest, and clean. He was a quick-tempered man, and the ardor and hurry of
his temperament made him seem more so than he really was; but he was never
more angry than he was forgiving and generous. He was hurt by little
things, and little things pleased him; he was suspicious and perverse, but
in a manner that rather endeared him to you than otherwise. Altogether, to
a casual acquaintance, who knew nothing of his personal history, he was
something of a paradox--an entertaining contradiction. The publication of
his autobiography explained many things in his character that were open to
speculation; and, indeed, the book is not only the most interesting and
amusing that its author has ever written, but it places its subject before
the reader more completely and comprehensively than most autobiographies
do. This, however, is due much less to any direct effort or intention on
the writer's part, than to the unconscious self-revelation which meets the
reader on every page. No narrative could be simpler, less artificial; and
yet, everywhere, we read between the lines, and, so to speak, discover
Anthony Trollope in spite of his efforts to discover himself to us.

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