Much unlike the books of which we have been speaking, but in its own way as attractive, is Mr. Atlay’s “Victorian Chancellors”, a collection of model biographies, of interest not only to lawyers but to lovers of history. Atlay makes no claim that his undertaking is to be regarded as a continuation of Lord Campbell’s “Lives”, and his methods are absolutely different from those of Campbell, who is amusing but so palpably unfair and often inaccurate that full faith and credit cannot be given to him. I regret that the “Lives of the Chief Justices of the Supreme Court” have not been written by some competent lawyer of our time, with sufficient leisure and a taste for authorship, as fair and free from personal prejudice as Atlay’s work proves him to be. The “Lives” that have hitherto appeared are by no means satisfactory. Flanders, Van Santvoord, and Tyler, the biographer of Roger Brooke Taney, are painstaking enough and undoubtedly conscientious, but they are of the old school, dull in style, with little or no sense of historical perspective. The biographies of Jay and of Marshall are not adequate; they do not reveal the men to us with that distinctness which is necessary to hold the reader’s attention. The “Lives” of Chase are weak and flimsy. Some of the great Associate Justices might be included in the series—Story, Curtis, Nelson, Miller; and perhaps others—famous for long and faithful judicial service if not for surpassing legal ability. Somehow our modern writers are not at their best in biography; those of sufficient skill and industry, like Henry Adams and James Ford Rhodes, are led to devote themselves to general history which affords a broader field. Moreover, a Justice of the Supreme Court is not as closely identified with politics and the administration of the government as an English Chancellor usually is, and the dry technical details of the career of a mere lawyer are not tempting to the man of letters.
There is a different corner, in a darker part of the library, where one may well linger when the wind is in the east and teeth are in need of gnashing. One of the discomforts of advanced years is that you are unable to do any gnashing without inflicting more pain upon the gnasher than is actually worth while. In this corner are gathered together some of the few books which cannot be loved; wall-flowers of literature, which never made the bookman’s heart palpitate with any fond emotion.
Here let us approach with hesitation and timidity, for however dry and disagreeable a book may be, still it is a book. “Somebody loved it”. The man who evolved it, who brought it forth, who labored over it, who corrected the proofs, was pleased with it; deformed and misshapen though it may be in the eyes of others, it was beautiful to him. Moreover, much may after all be learned from the poorest of books; and the food from which I would turn in scorn, may to another be palatable. Therefore I wish it to be clearly understood that in making what are called “derogatory” remarks about any book, I am guiltless of the offence of setting up my own judgment and preference against the view and opinion of any one else whomsoever; I am merely expressing my own personal feelings. If it be asserted by some one who chances not to agree with me, that these feelings are of no importance to any one but to myself, I may reply that I admit it and that no one is obliged to read what I have written; and should he complain that he has paid “very hard cash” for my book and has a right to full consideration, I will answer, as Mr. Lang answered somebody,—that he should read Mazzini, and learn that man has no rights worth mentioning, only duties. Moreover I would say to him that if he can prove that he paid for the volume its full price, and did not pick it up at a discount in some second-hand book shop, that refuge of lame, halt and blind books, or at a bargain counter in a department store, I will cheerfully refund his money, provided he will furnish me with a sworn affidavit declaring solemnly that he sincerely admires the book which I detest. But even the omnivorous reader must like some books better than others. If, as was truly said, no cigars are bad, some are certainly more smokeable than others, and some pretty women are prettier than other pretty women. If the books I do not like were the only books in the world, I suppose that I would be fond of them as Frederick was of Ruth until he beheld the loveliness of Major-General Stanley’s numerous daughters.
One of the black sheep of my flock is called “Random Reminiscences: by Charles H. E. Brookfield”, published in 1902. The author is the son of Thackeray’s Brookfield, and his portrait shows what manner of man he must be. How any rational human being could write out or cause to be published such a flat, stale and unprofitable mess, passes understanding. The most wretched of anecdotes are retailed, and if he chances upon a fairly good one he spoils it in the telling. “I am not aware”, he says in his preface, “that I have included in this volume anything which appears to me of importance; I trust that I have not either committed the impertinence of expressing any views.” This may have been meant in a facetious way, but it is obviously so true that one is impelled to ask why on earth he wrote it. He is so proud of his pointless stories that he makes one long to go out and kill something, thus creating a counter-irritant. How can any one fail to give way to inextinguishable laughter over this final outburst of glee: “Thanks to Dr. Walther and his treatment, I put on nearly 2 stone weight in a little over two months. I was 10 stone 4 before I went, and 12 stone 2 when I left. And I am over 12 stone to-day, three years later”. From his humor I should think that he was heavier. I have been waiting patiently for a second edition to ascertain whether he has grown to any extent, but none has appeared. No wonder that he finished his autobiography with a quotation from a newspaper which said of him, on his supposed decease: “But, after all, it is at his club that he will be most missed”. Jolly dog, how he must have warmed the cockles of their hearts with his merry jests!
In the same corner with the jovial Brookfield and his “twelve stone” are gathered together the various biographies whose titles begin with “The True” or “The Real”. I confess that I have not read through “The True Thomas Jefferson”, although I am burdened with two copies, but I have ploughed through “The True Abraham Lincoln”, and found it an ordinary piece of hack-work, marred by blunders. The calm assumption which leads a writer to proclaim that he alone portrays “the true” and “the real”, as if all other accounts were false, is condemnatory at the outset. As for Jeaffreson’s lot,—“The Real Lord Byron” and “The Real Shelley”,—they are monuments of dullness, the subjects overloaded with petty details of no value to any one. Mr. John Cordy Jeaffreson, who was always publishing “Books About” something or somebody, has presented to mankind his “Recollections”, conspicuous chiefly for its covert sneers at Thackeray, whom he hated, and studied disparagement of the personal character of that giant who towered so far above Jeaffresonian pigmies. Jeaffreson’s books belong to the Sawdust School of literature. He has not even the brightness of Percy Fitzgerald, who has so long made the most of his stock in trade, a certain friendship and association with Dickens, and who in his two volumes of “Memories of an Author” is almost as bad as Jeaffreson at his best. It is true that Dickens had a personal liking for Fitzgerald, when the latter was a contributor to “All The Year Round”, but I believe that Charles Dickens the Younger not many years ago expressed some doubts as to the intimacy of the two men.
Jeaffreson was a weak and self-important person, jealous of his betters. George Somes Layard says, in his interesting “Life of Shirley Brooks”,[[3]] that Jeaffreson in his “Book of Recollections” wrote “with ill concealed envy of a far abler and more successful man than himself” a silly fling at Brooks concerning the name “Shirley”; and elsewhere refers to the “Recollections” as a “querulous and pawky book”. The characterization is undeniably just; plainly in accord with the opinion of the reading public; and the two pawky volumes rest peacefully in the trash corner.
In company with Jeaffreson will be found everything written by Mr. William Carew Hazlitt, who, in a long life of devotion to the accumulation of miscellaneous information of doubtful value and to the parading of the name of Hazlitt, has caused a vast number of pages to be covered with typographical records of his diligence and of his unfailing capacity for making blunders. Full forty years ago he was unlucky enough to come into close contact with the keen lance of one James Russell Lowell, who riddled his editions of Webster and of Lovelace, included in John Russell Smith’s “Library of Old Authors”. Lowell wrote that “of all Mr. Smith’s editors, Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt is the worst. He is at times positively incredible, worse even than Mr. Halliwell, and that is saying a good deal.”[[4]] Whether Hazlitt was worth flaying as Lowell flayed him, may be questioned. But Hazlitt still goes on, in his Boeotian way; always inept; sometimes so offensive that, as in the case of his “Four Generations of a Literary Family” it has been necessary to withdraw the work from circulation.[[5]] An example of his “foolish notions” may be seen in one of his latest books, “The Book-Collector” (1904) which has a sub-title composed of fifty-one words. Mr. Hazlitt announces the astonishing generalization that the autograph collector does not care for books or for manuscripts beyond the extent of a fly leaf or inscribed title-page, and that he is a modern and inexcusable Bagford who tears out the inscription and throws away the book. He cites the case of “a copy of Donne’s Sermons, with a brilliant portrait of the author—and a long inscription by Izaak Walton presenting the volume to his aunt. It was in the pristine English calf binding, as clean as when it left Walton’s hands en route to his kinswoman, and such a delightful signature. What has become of it? It is sad even to commit to paper the story—one among many. An American gentleman acquired it, tore the portrait and leaf of inscription out, and threw the rest away”.
I believe him—to use the language of a mighty hunter—to be a meticulous prevaricator. If the tale be true, and I should like to have Mr. William Carew Hazlitt under cross-examination for a while, it only shows that there may be a few vandals in the tribe of autograph collectors, but no true collector would ever be guilty of such a wanton crime. Bagford tore out title-pages, but that affords no evidence that book-lovers are habitually given to the folly of tearing out title-pages. As for the case being “one of many”, I deny it; if he had known of another instance he would have gloried in the description of it. But he never knew law, logic or truth, and upon his indictment for silliness it would be necessary only to offer in evidence his books,—and rest.
But why should I get so very cross about poor old Hazlitt? The wisest thing I can do is to recite to him the touching verses of “You are old, Father William” and remonstrate gently with him in regard to his pernicious habit of incessantly standing upon his head. It will be a good plan to return to the favorite corner and soothe my ruffled spirits by reading Percy Greg’s comical “History of the United States”, or better still, the dear little story which Roswell Field wrote about “The Bondage of Ballinger”.
Whether so famous a poem as Young’s Night Thoughts is entitled to the privileges of the pit of Acheron, may be matter for dispute; but as Goldsmith said of those gloomy lucubrations, a reader speaks of them with exaggerated applause or contempt as his disposition “is either turned to mirth or melancholy”. We have preserved “tired nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep”, and “procrastination is the thief of time,” but we know that the didactic parson’s famous poem is “hardly ever read now except under compulsion.” My chief grievance against the man who was compelled to