“That word, that sad word, Joy,”
is manifestly unfair. Joy is a delightful, flashing little word, as brief as is the emotion it conveys. We all know what it means, but nobody dares to preach it, as they preach three-syllabled cheerfulness, and gladness which once had a heroic sound, the “gladness that hath favour with God,” but which is now perilously close to slang. The early Christians, who had on a large scale the courage of their convictions, found in their faith sufficient warrant for content. They seem to have lived and died with a serenity, a perfect good humour, which is the highest result of the best education. But when Mr. Shaw attempted to elucidate in “Androcles and the Lion” this difficult and delicate conception, he peopled his stage with Pollyannas, who voiced their cheerfulness so clamorously that they made persecution pardonable. No public could be expected to endure such talk when it had an easy method of getting rid of the talkers.
The leniency of the law now leaves us without escape. We cannot throw our smiling neighbours to the lions, and they override us in what seems to me a spirit of cowardly exultation. Female optimists write insufferable papers on “Happy Hours for Old Ladies,” and male optimists write delusive papers on “Happiness as a Business Asset.” Reforming optimists who, ten years ago, bade us rejoice over the elimination of war,—“save on the outskirts of civilization,” now bid us rejoice over the elimination of alcohol,—save on the tables of the rich. Old-fashioned optimists, like Mr. Horace Fletcher, put faith in the “benevolent intentions” of nature,—nature busy with the scorpion’s tail. New-fashioned optimists, like Professor Ralph Barton Perry (who may not know how optimistic he is), put faith in the mistrust of nature which has armed the hands of men. Sentimental optimists, the most pervasive of the tribe, blur the fine outlines of life, to see which clearly and bravely is the imperative business of man’s soul.
For the world of thought is not one whit more tranquil than the world of action. The man whose “mind to him a kingdom is” wears his crown with as much uneasiness as does a reigning monarch. Giordano Bruno, who had troubles of his own, and who knew by what road they came, commended ignorance as a safeguard from melancholy. If, disregarding this avenue of escape, we look with understanding, and sometimes even with exhilaration, upon the portentous spectacle of life, if we have tempers so flawless that we can hold bad hands and still enjoy the game, then, with the sportsman’s relish, will come the sportsman’s reward; a reward, be it remembered, which is in the effort only, and has little to do with results.
“Il faut chanter! chanter, même en sachant
Qu’il existe des chants qu’on préfère à son chant.”
The generous illusions which noble souls like Emerson’s have cherished undismayed are ill-fitted for loose handling. Good may be the final goal of evil, but if we regard evil with a too sanguine eye, it is liable to be thrown out of perspective. In the spring of 1916, when the dark days of the war were upon us, and the toll of merchant ships grew heavier week by week with Germany’s mounting contempt for admonitions, I heard a beaming gentleman point out to a large audience, which tried to beam responsively, that the “wonderful” thing about the contest was the unselfish energy it had awakened in the breasts of American women. He dwelt unctuously upon their relief committees, upon the excellence of their hospital supplies, upon their noble response to the needs of humanity. He repeated a great many times how good it was for us to do these things. He implied, though he did not say it in rude words, that the agony of Europe was nicely balanced by the social regeneration of America. He was a sentimental Rochefoucauld, rejoicing, without a particle of guile, that the misfortunes of our friends had given us occasion to manifest our friendship.
It has been often asserted that unscrupulous optimism is an endearing trait, that the world loves it even when forced to discountenance it, and that “radiant” people are personally and perennially attractive. Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson said something of this sort, and his authority is invoked by sentimentalists who compile calendars, and birthday books, and texts to encumber our walls. They fail to distinguish the finely tempered spirit which carried Mr. Stevenson over the stony places of life, and which was beautiful beyond measure (the stones being many and hard), from the inconsequent cheerfulness which says that stones are soft. We cannot separate an author from his work, and nowhere in Stevenson’s books does he guarantee anything more optimistic than courage. The triumph of evil in “Thrawn Janet,” the hopelessness of escape from heredity in “Olalla,” the shut door in “Markheim,” the stern contempt in “A Lodging for the Night,” the inextinguishable and unpardonable hatreds in “The Master of Ballantrae,” even the glorious contentiousness of “Virginibus Puerisque,”—where in these masterful pages are we invited to smile at life? We go spinning through it, he admits, “like a party for the Derby.” Yet “the whole way is one wilderness of snares, and the end of it, for those who fear the last pinch, is irrevocable ruin.”
This is a call for courage, for the courage that lay as deep as pain in the souls of Stevenson, and Johnson, and Lamb. The combination of a sad heart and a gay temper, which is the most charming and the most lovable thing the world has got to show, gave to these men their hold upon the friends who knew them in life, and still wins for them the personal regard of readers. Lamb, the saddest and the gayest of the three, cultivated sedulously the little arts of happiness. He opened all the avenues of approach. He valued at their worth a good play, a good book, a good talk, and a good dinner. He lived in days when occasional drunkenness failed to stagger humanity, and when roast pig was within the income of an East India clerk. He had a gift, subtle rather than robust, for enjoyment, and a sincere accessibility to pain. His words were unsparing, his actions kind. He binds us to him by his petulance as well as by his patience, by his entirely human revolt from dull people and tiresome happenings. He was not one of those who
“lightly lose