[60]. This is that “divine malice” which Nietzsche, in Ecce Homo, speaking of Heine (“one day Heine and I will be regarded as by far the greatest artists of the German language,” he says rather egotistically, but perhaps truly) considered essential to perfection. “I estimate the value of men and of races,” he added, “by their need to identify their God with a satyr,” a hard saying, no doubt, to the modern man, but it has its meaning.
[61]. Since this was written I have found that Laycock, whose subtle observation pioneered so many later ideas, long ago noted (“Some Organic Laws of Memory,” Journal of Mental Science, July, 1875) reversion to ancestral modes of handwriting.
[62]. This was written fifteen years ago, and as Carlyle has of late been unduly depreciated I would add that, while strictly to the present point, it is not put forward as an estimate of Carlyle’s genius. That I seem to have attempted twenty-five years earlier in a private letter (to my friend the late Reverend Angus Mackay) I may here perhaps be allowed to quote. It was in 1883, soon after the publication of Carlyle’s Reminiscences: “This is not Carlylese, but it is finer. The popular judgment is hopelessly wrong. We can never understand Carlyle till we get rid of the ‘great prophet’ notion. Carlyle is not (as we were once taught) a ‘great moral teacher,’ but, in the high sense, a great comedian. His books are wonderful comedies. He is the Scotch Aristophanes, as Rabelais is the French and Heine the German Aristophanes—of course, with the intense northern imagination, more clumsy, more imperfect, more profound than the Greek. But, at a long distance, there is a close resemblance to Aristophanes with the same mixture of audacity in method and conservatism in spirit. Carlyle’s account of Lamb seems in the true sense Aristophanic. His humour is, too, as broad as he dares (some curious resemblances there, too). In his lyrical outbursts, again, he follows Aristophanes, and again at a distance. Of course he cannot be compared as an artist. He has not, like Rabelais, created a world to play with, but, like Aristophanes generally, he sports with the things that are.” That youthful estimate was alien to popular opinion then because Carlyle was idolised; it is now, no doubt, equally alien for an opposite reason. It is only on extremes that the indolent popular mind can rest.
[63]. J. Beddoe, The Races of Britain, p. 254.
[64]. I once studied, as an example, colour-words in various writers, finding that every poet has his own colour formula. Variations in length of sentence and peculiarities of usage in metre have often been studied. Reference is made to some of these studies by A. Niceforo, “Metodo Statistico e Documenti Litterari,” Revista d’Italia, August, 1917.
[65]. “The Muses are the daughters of Memory,” Paul Morand tells us that Proust would say; “there is no art without recollection,” and certainly it is supremely true of Proust’s art. It is that element of art which imparts at once both atmosphere and poignant intimacy, external farness with internal nearness. The lyrics of Thomas Hardy owe their intimacy of appeal to the dominance in them of recollection (in Late Lyrics and Earlier one might say it is never absent), and that is why they can scarcely be fully appreciated save by those who are no longer very young.
[66]. The Oxford University Press publishes a little volume of Rules for Compositors and Readers in which this uniform is set forth. It is a useful and interesting manual, but one wonders how many unnecessary and even undesirable usages—including that morbid desire to cling to the ize termination (charming as an eccentricity but hideous as a rule) when ise would suffice—are hereby fostered. Even when we leave out of consideration the great historical tradition of variety in this matter, it is doubtful, when we consider them comprehensively, whether the advantages of encouraging every one to spell like his fellows overbalances the advantages of encouraging every one to spell unlike his fellows. When I was a teacher in the Australian bush I derived far less enjoyment from the more or less “correctly” spelt exercises of my pupils than from the occasional notes I received from their parents who, never having been taught to spell, were able to spell in the grand manner. We are wilfully throwing away an endless source of delight.
[67]. Le Monde Nouveau, 15th December, 1922.
[68]. Ferris Greenslet (in his study of Joseph Glanvill, p. 183), referring to the Cartesian influence on English prose style, quotes from Sprat’s History of the Royal Society that the Society “exacted from its members a close, naked, natural way of speaking, positive expressions, a native easiness, bringing all things as near the mathematic plainness as they can.” The Society passed a resolution to reject “all amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style.”
[69]. If it is asked why I take examples of a quality in art that is universal from literary personalities that to many are questionable, even morbid or perverse, rather than from some more normal and unquestioned figure, Thomas Hardy, for example, I would reply that I have always regarded it as more helpful and instructive to take examples that are still questionable rather than to fall back on the unquestionable that all will accept tamely without thought. Forty years ago, when Hardy’s genius was scarcely at all recognised, it seemed worth while to me to set forth the quality of his genius. To-day, when that quality is unquestioned, and Hardy receives general love and reverence, it would seem idle and unprofitable to do so.