His bouquet is culled in every garden, and set in leaves which have grown in all forests of literature. He is deft, apt, sprightly, and always sincerely a man. He is just and brave, and essentially a gentleman. He has the right imitative romance, and he can so blend Defoe and Dickens with a something of himself which is almost, but not quite, creative, that he can present you with a blind old Pugh or a John Silver. He is a littérateur born—and made. A verbal invention is meat and drink to him. There are places where you see him actively in pursuit of one, as when Markheim stops the clock with ‘an interjected finger,’ or when John Silver’s half-shut, cunning, and cruel eye sparkles ‘like a crumb of glass.’ Stevenson has run across the Channel for that crumb, and it is worth the journey.
Stevenson certainly had that share of genius which belongs to the man who can take infinite pains. Add to this a beautiful personal character, and an almost perfect receptivity. Add again the power of sympathetic realisation in a purely literary sense, and you have the man. Let me make my last addition clear. It is a common habit of his to think as his literary favourites would have thought He could think like Lamb. He could think like Defoe. He could even fuse two minds in this way, and make, as it were, a composite mind for himself to think with. His intellect was of a very rare and delicate sort, and whilst he was essentially a reproducer, he was in no sense an imitator, or even for a single second a plagiarist. He had an alembic of his own which made old things new. His best possession was that very real sense of proportion which was at the root of all his humour. ‘Why doesn’t God explain these things to a gentleman like me?’ There, a profound habitual reverence of mind suddenly encounters with a ludicrous perception of his own momentary self-importance. The two electric opposites meet, and emit that flash of summer lightning.
Stevenson gave rare honour to his work, and the artist who shows his self-respect in that best of ways will always be respected by the world. He has fairly won our affection and esteem, and we give them ungrudgingly. In seeming to belittle him I have taken an ungrateful piece of work in hand. But in the long run a moderately just estimate of a good man’s work is of more service to his reputation than a strained laudation can be. It is not the critics, and it is not I, who will finally measure his proportions. He seems to me to stand well in the middle of the middle rank of accepted writers. He will not live as an inventor, for he has not invented. He will not live as one of those who have opened new fields of thought. He will not live amongst those who have explored the heights and the deeps of the spirit of man. He may live—‘the stupid and ignorant pig of a public’ will settle the question—as a writer in whose works stand revealed a lovable, sincere, and brave soul and an unsleeping vigilance of artistic effort.
The most beautiful thing he has done—to my mind—is his epitaph. There are but eight lines of it, but I know nothing finer in its way:
Under the wide and starry sky
Lay me down and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will!
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be:
Home is the Sailor, home from sea,
And the Hunter home from the hill.
Sleep there, bright heart! In your waking hours you would have laughed at the exaggerated praises which do you such poor service now!
IV.—LIVING MASTERS—MEREDITH AND HALL CAINE
There is a very old story to the effect that a party of gentlemen who were compiling a dictionary described a crab as ‘a small red animal which walks backwards.’ Apart from the facts that the crab is not red, is not an animal, and does not walk backwards, the definition was pronounced to be wholly admirable. I was reminded of this bit of ancient history when, some time ago, I read a criticism on George Meredith from the pen of Mr. George Moore. Mr. Moore represented his subject as a shouting, gesticulating man in a crowd, who, in spite of great efforts to be heard, remained unintelligible. As a description of a curiously calm sage who soliloquises for his own amusement in a study this is perfect. The enormous growth in the number of unthinking readers, and the corresponding increase in our printed output, have brought about some singular conditions, and, amongst them, this: that it is possible to sustain a reputation by the mere act of being absurd.
In attempting anything like a just review of the influence of the critical press in recent years, one has to admit that in its treatment of George Meredith it has performed a very considerable and praiseworthy public service. For many years Meredith worked in obscurity so far as the general public were concerned. Here and there he won an impassioned admirer, and from his beginning it may be said that he found audience fit though few; but he owes much of the present extent of his reputation to the efforts of generous and enlightened critics, who would not let the public rest until they had at least given his genius a hearing. He is now, and has for some time been, a fashionable cult. It is not likely that in the broad sense he will ever be a popular writer, for the mass of novel-readers are an idle and pleasure-loving folk, and no mere idler and pleasure-seeker will read Meredith often or read him long at a time. The little book which the angel gave to John of Patmos, commanding that he should eat it, was like honey in the mouth, but in the belly it was bitter. To the reader who first approaches him, a book of Meredith’s offers an accurate contrast to the roll presented by the angel. It is tough chewing, but in digestion most suave and fortifying. The people who instantly enjoy him, who relish him at first bite, are rare. Fine intelligences are always rare. Personally, I am not one of the happy few. I am at my third reading of any one of Meredith’s later books before I am wholly at my ease with it. I can find a most satisfying simile (to myself). A new book of Meredith’s comes to me like a hamper of noble wines. I know the vintages, and I rejoice. I set to work to open the hamper. It is corded and wired in the most exasperating way, but at last I get it open. That is my first reading. Then I range my bottles in the cellar—port, burgundy, hock, champagne, imperial tokay; subtle and inspiring beverages, not grown in common vineyards, and demanding to be labelled. That is my second reading. Then I sit down to my wine, and that is my third; and in any book of Meredith’s I have a cellarful for a lifetime.