Max Beerbohm, I dare say (and I believe it has been said before), is the most subtly gifted English essayist since Charles Lamb. It is not surprising that he has (now for many years) been referred to as "the incomparable Max," for what other contemporary has never once missed fire, never failed to achieve perfection in the field of his choice? Whether in caricature, short story, fable, parody, or essay, he has always been consummate in grace, tact, insouciant airy precision. I hope you will not miss "No. 2 The Pines" (in And Even Now, from which this selection also comes), a reminiscence of his first visit to Swinburne in 1899. That beautiful (there is no other word) essay shows an even ampler range of Mr. Beerbohm's powers: a tenderness and lovely grace that remind one, almost against belief, that the gay youth of the '90's now mellows deliciously with the end of the fifth decade. He was so enormously old in 1896, when he published his first book and called it his Works; he seems much younger now: he is having his first childhood.
This portrait of the unfortunate cleric annihilated by Dr. Johnson is a triumphant example of the skill with which a perfect artist can manœuver a trifle, carved like an ivory trinket; in such hands, subtlety never becomes mere tenuity.
Max Beerbohm was born in London in 1872; studied at Charterhouse School and Merton College, Oxford; and was a brilliant figure in the Savoy and Yellow Book circles by the time he was twenty-four. His genius is that of the essay in its purest distillation: a clear cross-section of life as seen through the lens of self; the pure culture (in the biological sense) of observing personality.
I have often wondered how it came about (though the matter is wholly nonpertinent) that Mr. Beerbohm married an American lady—quite a habit with English essayists, by the way: Hilaire Belloc and Bertrand Russell did likewise. Who's Who says she was from Memphis, which adds lustre to that admirable city.
He now lives in Italy.
FRAGMENTARY, pale, momentary; almost nothing; glimpsed and gone; as it were, a faint human hand thrust up, never to reappear, from beneath the rolling waters of Time, he forever haunts my memory and solicits my weak imagination. Nothing is told of him but that once, abruptly, he asked a question, and received an answer.
This was on the afternoon of April 7th, 1778, at Streatham, in the well-appointed house of Mr. Thrale. Johnson, on the morning of that day, had entertained Boswell at breakfast in Bolt Court, and invited him to dine at Thrale Hall. The two took coach and arrived early. It seems that Sir John Pringle had asked Boswell to ask Johnson "what were the best English sermons for style." In the interval before dinner, accordingly, Boswell reeled off the names of several divines whose prose might or might not win commendation. "Atterbury?" he suggested. "Johnson: Yes, Sir, one of the best. Boswell: Tillotson? Johnson: Why, not now. I should not advise any one to imitate Tillotson's style; though I don't know; I should be cautious of censuring anything that has been applauded by so many suffrages.—South is one of the best, if you except his peculiarities, and his violence, and sometimes coarseness of language.—Seed has a very fine style; but he is not very theological. Jortin's sermons are very elegant. Sherlock's style, too, is very elegant, though he has not made it his principal study.—And you may add Smalridge. Boswell: I like Ogden's Sermons on Prayer very much, both for neatness of style and subtility of reasoning. Johnson: I should like to read all that Ogden has written. Boswell: What I want to know is, what sermons afford the best specimen of English pulpit eloquence. Johnson: We have no sermons addressed to the passions, that are good for anything; if you mean that kind of eloquence. A Clergyman, whose name I do not recollect: Were not Dodd's sermons addressed to the passions? Johnson: They were nothing, Sir, be they addressed to what they may."
The suddenness of it! Bang!—and the rabbit that had popped from its burrow was no more.
I know not which is the more startling—the début of the unfortunate clergyman, or the instantaneousness of his end. Why hadn't Boswell told us there was a clergyman present? Well, we may be sure that so careful and acute an artist had some good reason. And I suppose the clergyman was left to take us unawares because just so did he take the company. Had we been told he was there, we might have expected that sooner or later he would join in the conversation. He would have had a place in our minds. We may assume that in the minds of the company around Johnson he had no place. He sat forgotten, overlooked; so that his self-assertion startled every one just as on Boswell's page it startles us. In Johnson's massive and magnetic presence only some very remarkable man, such as Mr. Burke, was sharply distinguishable from the rest. Others might, if they had something in them, stand out slightly. This unfortunate clergyman may have had something in him, but I judge that he lacked the gift of seeming as if he had. That deficiency, however, does not account for the horrid fate that befell him. One of Johnson's strongest and most inveterate feelings was his veneration for the Cloth. To any one in Holy Orders he habitually listened with a grace and charming deference. To-day, moreover, he was in excellent good humor. He was at the Thrales', where he so loved to be; the day was fine; a fine dinner was in close prospect; and he had had what he always declared to be the sum of human felicity—a ride in a coach. Nor was there in the question put by the clergyman anything likely to enrage him. Dodd was one whom Johnson had befriended in adversity; and it had always been agreed that Dodd in his pulpit was very emotional. What drew the blasting flash must have been not the question itself, but the manner in which it was asked. And I think we can guess what that manner was.
Say the words aloud: "Were not Dodd's sermons addressed to the passions?" They are words which, if you have any dramatic and histrionic sense, cannot be said except in a high, thin voice.