Front matter (continued 4)

"Goodman Dull, thou hast said no word all this while."

Dull,—"Nor understood none neither, sir!"

The innocent pedant whose learning lies in the dead languages and who has a contempt for the living world is a type not extinct; but what shall we say of the Welsh curate of Windsor, Hugh Evans? In Windsor Park Mrs. Ford whispers, "Where is Nan now and her troop of fairies, and that Welsh devil Sir Hugh?"

That was her affectionate, though not respectful, way of referring to her spiritual adviser. Curate Evans was certainly not an example of what has been termed "the mild and temperate spirituality which has always characterized the Church of England." The dignity of the cloth is not in his mind as he cries, "Trib, fairies, trib, come and remember your parts, pe pold, I pray you, ... when I give the watch'ords do as I pid you."

Yet though he seemed not to put so much emphasis on character in religion as we in these more serious days think fitting, this Welsh devil of a parson had enough of the professional spirit to wish to point a moral on all proper occasions. Not too obtrusive or moral, nor carrying it to the sweating point, but a good, sound approbation of right sentiment. When Master Slender declares his resolution, "After this trick I'll ne'er be drunk while I live again but in honest, civil, godly company. If I be drunk I'll be drunk with those who fear God," the convivial curate responds, "So God judge me that shows a virtuous mind."

That Shakespeare intended any reflection on the Welsh clergy is not probable; but so late as the eighteenth century a traveler in Wales remarks that the ale house was usually kept by the parson. One wonders whether with such manifest advantages the Welsh ministers' meetings were given over to lugubrious essays on "Why we do not reach the masses."

Shakespeare uses the word Puritan once, but Malvolio was a prig rather than a true Puritan. His objection to cakes and ale was rather because revelry disturbed his slumbers than because it troubled his conscience. But when we turn to Ben Jonson's Alchemist and come across Tribulation Wholesome, from Amsterdam, we know that the battle between the stage and the conventicle has begun. We know the solid virtues of these sectaries from whom came some of the best things in England and New England. But we must not expect to find this side of their character in the literature of the next two or three centuries. Unfortunately the non-conformist conscience was offended at those innocent pleasures in which amiable writers and readers have always taken satisfaction.

Charles Lamb inclined to the opinion of his friend who held that "a man cannot have a good conscience who refuses apple dumpling." The gastronomic argument against Puritanism has always been a strong one with the English mind. It was felt that a person must be a hypocrite who could speak disrespectfully of the creature comforts. There was no toleration for the miserable pretender who would "blaspheme custard through the nose." Tribulation Wholesome was deserving only of the pillory. There was no doubt but that the viands which were publicly reprobated were privately enjoyed.

"You rail against plays to please the alderman

Whose daily custard you devour.

...You call yourselves

By names of Tribulation, Persecution,

Restraint, Long Patience and such-like, affected

Only for glory and to catch the ear

Of the disciple."

In "Bartholomew Fair" we meet Mr. Zeal of the Land Busy, an unlicensed exhorter, who has attained the liberty of prophesying, and is the leader of a little flock.

Did history keep on repeating itself, or did literary men keep on repeating each other? At any rate Mr. Zeal of the Land Busy reappears continually. He is in every particular the prototype of those painful brethren who roused the wrath of honest Sam Weller. We recognize his unctuous speech, his unfailing appetite, and even his offensive and defensive alliance with the mother-in-law.

Mr. Little-Wit introduces him as "An old elder from Banbury who puts in here at meal times to praise the painful brethren and to pray that the sweet singers may be restored; and he says grace as long as his breath lasts."

To which Mrs. Little-Wit responds, "Yes, indeed, we have such a tedious time with him, what for his diet and his clothes too, he breaks his buttons and cracks seams at every saying that he sobs out."

In answer to the anxious inquiry of his mother-in-law, Dame Pure-Craft, Little-Wit announces that he has found the good man "with his teeth fast in the cold turkey-pie in the cupboard, with a great white loaf on his left hand, and a glass of malmsey on his right." In Dame Pure-Craft he finds a stanch supporter. "Slander not the brethren, wicked one," she cries.

Zeal of the Land Busy attempts to lead his flock through the perils of Bartholomew Fair. "Walk in the middle of the way—turn neither to the right nor to the left. Let not your eyes be drawn aside by vanity nor your ears by noises." It was indeed a dangerous journey, for it was nothing less than "a grove of hobby horses and trinkets; the wares are the wares of devils, and the fair is the shop of Satan."

But, alas, though the eyes and ears were guarded, another avenue of temptation had been forgotten. The delicious odor of roast pig came from one of the booths. It was a delicate little pig, cooked with fire of juniper and rosemary branches. Mrs. Little-Wit longed for it and her husband encouraged her weakness. Dame Pure-Craft rebukes him and bids him remember the wholesome admonition of their leader.

Zeal of the Land Busy is a casuist of no mean ability, and is equal to the task of finding an exception to his own rule.

"It may offer itself by other means to the sense, as by way of steam, which I think it doth in this place, huh! huh!—yes, it doth. And it were a sin of obstinacy, high and horrible obstinacy, to resist the titillation of the famelic sense which is smell. Therefore be bold, follow the scent; enter the tents of the unclean for this once, and satisfy your wife's frailty. Let your frail wife be satisfied; your zealous mother and my suffering self will be satisfied also."

Zeal of the Land Busy was like a certain English statesman of whom it was said, "His conscience, instead of being his monitor, became his accomplice."

One characteristic of these unlicensed exhorters seems to be very persistent,—their almost superhuman fluency. Despising preparation and trusting to the inspiration of the moment, they are never left without words. Preaching without notes is not particularly difficult if one has something to say, but these exhorters attempt to preach without notes and also without ideas. They require nothing but a word to begin with. The speaker is like an army which, having broken away from its base of supplies, lives on the country through which it is marching. The hortatory guerrilla gets forage enough in one sentence to carry him on through the next. This was the homiletical method which Zeal of the Land used in his discourse at the fair. At a venture he cries out,—

"Down with Dagon!"

Leather-Head, the hobby-horse seller, asks very imprudently,—

"What do you mean, sir!"

That was enough; a torrent of impromptu eloquence is let loose.

"I will remove Dagon there, I say; that idol, that heathenish idol, that remains as I may say a beam, a very beam, not a beam of the sun, nor a beam of the moon, nor a beam of the balance, neither a house beam, nor a weaver's beam, but a beam in the eye, an exceeding great beam!"

It was the same method employed long after by Mr. Chadband in his moving address to little Joe.

"My young friend, you are to us a pearl, a diamond, you are to us a jewel. And why, my young friend?"

"I don't know," replied Joe, "I don't know nothink."

This gave Mr. Chadband his opportunity for continued speech. "My young friend, it is because you know nothing that you are to us a gem, a jewel. For what are you? Are you a beast of the field? No! Are you a fish of the river? No! You are a human boy! Oh, glorious to be a human boy! And why glorious, my young friend?"

Marvelous, to taciturn folk, is this flow of language. The little rill becomes a torrent, and soon there are waters to swim in. It seems to savor of the supernatural, being of the nature of creation out of nothing. And yet like many other wonderful things, it is easy when one knows how to do it.

The churchmen of those days joined with the wits in laughter which greeted the tinkers and the bakers who turned to prophesying on their own account. But now and then one of the zealous independents could give as keen a thrust as any which were received. It would be hard to find more delicate satire than in the description of Parson Two Tongues of the town of Fair Speech, who was much esteemed by his distinguished parishioners, My Lord Time-Server, Mr. Facing Both-Ways, and Mr. Anything. The parson was a man of good family, though his grandfather had been a waterman, and had thus learned the art of looking one way and rowing another. It is his parishioner Mr. Bye-Ends who propounds the question of ministerial ethics. "Suppose a minister, a worthy man, possessed of but a small benefice, has in his eye a greater, more fat and plump by far; he has also now an opportunity of getting it, yet so as being more studious, by preaching more zealously, and because the temper of the people requires it, by altering some of his principles, for my part I see no reason but a man may do this (provided he has a call), aye, and a great deal more besides, and be an honest man." As for changing his principles to suit the times, Mr. Bye-Ends argues that it shows that the minister "is of a self-sacrificing temper."

The argument for conformity is put so plausibly that it is calculated to deceive the very elect; and then as if by mere inadvertence we are allowed a glimpse of the seamy side. It is evident that the wits were not all banished from the conventicles.

To those who are acquainted only with the pale and interesting tea-drinking parsons of nineteenth-century English fiction, there is something surprising in the clergymen one meets in the pages of Fielding. They are all in such rude health! There is not a suggestion of nervous prostration nor of minister's sore throat. Not one of them seems to be in need of a vacation; perhaps because they are out of doors all the time. Their professional duties were doubtless done, but they are not obtruded on the reader's attention.

The odious Chaplain Thwackum is chiefly remembered for his argument with the free-thinker Square. Square having asserted that honor might exist independently of religion, Thwackum refutes him in a manner most satisfactory. "When I mention religion I mean the Christian religion, and not only the Christian religion but the Protestant religion, and not only the Protestant religion but the religion of the Church of England; and when I mention honor I mean that mode of divine grace which is dependent on that religion."

"Thwackum," says the Gentle Reader, "was, after all, an unworldly man. He was content to remain a mere hanger-on of the church when he was capable of thoughts which were really in great demand. I have been looking over a huge controversial volume by an author of that day, and I found nothing but Thwackum argument expanded and illustrated. The author was made a bishop for it."

As for Parson Trulliber, the Falstaff of divines, the less said about him the better. The curate Barnabas is a more pleasing character, though hardly an example of spirituality. He reminds one of the good parson who, in his desire for moderation, prayed that the Lord might lead his people "in the safe middle path between right and wrong."

When Joseph Andrews confessed his sins to him, Barnabas was divided between his eagerness to do his professional duty to the sinner, and the desire to prepare the punch for the company downstairs, a work in which he particularly excelled.

"Barnabas asked him if he forgave his enemies 'as a Christian ought.'

"Joseph desired to know what that forgiveness was.

"'That is,' answered Barnabas, 'to forgive them—as—it is to forgive them as—in short, to forgive them as a Christian.'

"Joseph replied 'He forgave them as much as he could.'

"'Well! Well!' said Barnabas, 'that will do!' He then demanded of him if he had any more sins unrepented of, and if he had, to repent of them as fast as he could; ... for some company was waiting below in the parlor where the ingredients for punch were all in readiness, for that no one could squeeze the oranges till he came."

Barnabas would have been shocked at the demands of the Methodists for immediate repentance, but on this occasion he was led into almost equal urgency.

But Fielding more than atones for all the rest by the creation of Parson Adams. Dear, delightful Parson Adams! to know him is to love him! In him the Church of England appears a little out at the elbows, but in good heart. With the appetite of a ploughman, and "a fist rather less than the knuckle of an ox," he represents the true church militant. He has a pipe in his mouth, and a short great coat which half conceals his cassock, which he had "torn some ten years ago in passing over a stile." But however uncanonical his attire, his heart is in the right place.

What a different world Parson Adams lived in from that of George Eliot's Amos Barton, bewildered with thoughts which he could not express. "'Mr. Barton,' said his rural parishioner, 'can preach as good a sermon as need be when he writes it down, but when he tries to preach without book he rambles about, and every now and then flounders like a sheep as has cast itself and can't get on its legs.'"

One cannot imagine Parson Adams floundering about, under any circumstances. There is a sturdy strength and directness about all he says and does. His simplicity is endearing but never savors of weakness.

He sets great store by his manuscript sermons, for which he seeks a publisher. The curate Barnabas throws cold water on his plans. The age, he says, is so wicked that nobody reads sermons;

"'Would you think it, Mr. Adams, I intended to print a volume of sermons, myself, and they had the approbation of three bishops, but what do you think the bookseller offered me?'

"'Twelve guineas,' cried Adams.

"'Nay,' answered Barnabas, 'the dog refused me a concordance in exchange.... To be concise with you, three bishops said they were the best sermons that were ever writ; but indeed there are a pretty moderate number printed already, and they are not all sold yet.'"

The theology of Parson Adams was genially human. "'Can anything,' he said, 'be more derogatory to the honor of God than for men to imagine that the all-wise Being will hereafter say to the good and virtuous, Notwithstanding the purity of thy life, notwithstanding the constant rule of virtue and goodness in which thou walkedst upon earth; still, as thou didst not believe everything in the true orthodox manner, thy want of faith shall condemn thee? Or, on the other side, can any doctrine be more pernicious in society than the persuasion that it will be a good plea for a villain at the last day,—"Lord, it is true I never obeyed any of Thy commandments; yet punish me not, for I believe in them all?"'"

This was not sound doctrine in the opinion of the itinerant bookseller. "'I am afraid,' he said, 'that you will find a backwardness in the trade to engage in a book which the clergy would be certain to cry down.'"

The good parson had the clerical weakness for reading sermons in season and out of season. At a festive gathering there was a call for speeches, to which it was objected that no one was prepared for an address; "'Unless,' turning to Adams, 'you have a sermon about you.'

"'Sir,' said Adams, 'I never travel without one, for fear of what might happen.'"

Like other clergymen, he dabbled occasionally in politics. "'On all proper seasons, such as at the approach of an election, I throw a suitable dash or two into my sermons, which I have the pleasure to hear is not disagreeable to Sir Thomas and the other honest gentlemen, my neighbors.'"

At one time he actively labored for the election of young Sir Thomas Booby, who had lately returned from his travels. He was elected, "'and a fine Parliament man he was. They tell me he made speeches of an hour long, and I have been told very fine ones; but he could never persuade Parliament to be of his opinion.'"

Estimable, eloquent Sir Thomas Booby! How many orators have found the same result following their speeches of an hour long!

To the returned traveler who had engaged in a controversy with him, Parson Adams gave expression to his literary faith.

"'Master of mine, perhaps I have traveled a great deal further than you, without the assistance of a ship. Do you imagine sailing by different cities or countries is traveling. I can go further in an afternoon than you in a twelve-month. What, I suppose you have seen the pillars of Hercules and perhaps the walls of Carthage?... You have sailed among the Cyclades and passed the famous straits which took their name from the unfortunate Helle, so sweetly described by Apollonius Rhodius; you have passed the very spot where Dædalus fell into the sea; you have doubtless traversed the Euxine, and called at Colchis to see if there was another golden fleece.'

"'Not I, truly,' said the gentleman. 'I never touched at any of these places.'

"'But I have been in all these,' replied Adams.

"'Then you have been in the Indies, for there are no such places, I'll be sworn, either in the West Indies or in the Levant.'

"'Pray, where is the Levant?' quoth Adams.

"'Oho! You're a pretty traveler and not to know the Levant. You must not tip me for a traveler, it won't go here.'

"'Since thou art so dull as to misunderstand me,' quoth Adams, 'I will inform thee. The traveling I mean is in books, the only kind of traveling by which any knowledge is acquired.'"

"There is a great deal to be said in defense of that opinion," says the Gentle Reader.

To turn from Parson Adams to the Vicar of Wakefield is to experience a change of spiritual climate. Parson Adams was a good man, and so was Dr. Primrose; otherwise they were quite different. Was piety ever made more attractive to restless, over-driven people than in the person of the dear, non-resistant vicar. Here was a man who might be reviled and persecuted,—but he never could be hurried.

The Gentle Reader rejoices in the peace of the opening chapters. "The year was spent in moral and rural amusements. We had no revolutions to fear, no fatigues to undergo, all our adventures were by the fireside, and all our migrations were from the blue bed to the brown." And good-natured Mrs. Primrose, absorbed in making pickles and gooseberry wine, and with her ability to read any English book without much spelling, was an ideal minister's wife, before the days of missionary societies and general information. It was only her frivolous daughters who were brought into society, where there was talk of "pictures, taste, Shakespeare, and the musical glasses." These subjects not then being supposed to have any esoteric, religious significance, which it was the duty of the minister's wife to discover and disseminate, she busied herself with her domestic concerns without any haunting sense that she was neglecting the weightier matters. The vicar's favorite sermons were in praise of matrimony, and he preached out of a happy experience.

This peaceful scene bears the same relation to the trials that afterwards befell the good man that the prologue to the Book of Job does to the main part of it. Satan has his will with Job, so also it happened with Dr. Primrose. His banker absconds to Amsterdam, his daughter elopes with the wicked young squire who has the father thrown into prison, where he hears of the death of his wretched daughter who has been cast off by her betrayer. Troubles came thick and fast; yet did not the vicar hurry, nor for a moment change the even tenor of his way. It was the middle of the eighteenth century, when piety was not treated as an elemental force. It did not lift up its voice and cry out against injustice. The church was the patient Griselda married to the state, and the clergyman was a teacher of resignation.

Upon learning of his daughter's abduction, Dr. Primrose calls for his Bible and his staff, but he does not indulge in any haste unbecoming a clergyman. He finds time in his leisurely pursuit to discourse most judiciously and at considerable length on the royal prerogative. He remembers his duty to the landed gentry, and on his return from his unsuccessful quest remains several days to enjoy the squire's hospitality.

Was ever poetical justice done with more placidity and completeness than in the prison scene? The vicar, feeling that he is about to die, proceeds to address his fellow wretches. He falls naturally into an old sermon on the evils of free-thinking philosophy, that being the line of the least resistance. The discourse being finished, it is without surprise and yet with real pleasure that we learn that he does not die; nor is his son, who was about to be hanged, hanged at all; on the contrary, he appears not long after handsomely dressed in regimentals, and makes a modest and distant bow to Miss Wilmot, the heiress. That young lady had just arrived and was to be married next day to the wicked young squire, but on learning that young gentleman's perfidy, "'Oh goodness!' cried the lovely girl, 'how I have been deceived.'" The vicar's son being on the spot in his handsome regimentals, they are engaged in the presence of the company, and her affluent fortune is assured to this hitherto impecunious youth. And the daughter Olivia at the same time appears, it happening that she was not dead after all, and that she has papers to show that she is the lawful wife of the young squire. And the banker who ran away with the vicar's property has been captured and the money restored. In the mean time—for happy accidents never come singly—the wretch who was in the act of carrying off the younger daughter Sophy has been foiled by the opportune arrival of Mr. Burchell. And best of all, Mr. Burchell proves not to be Mr. Burchell at all, but the celebrated Sir William Thornhill, who is loyal to the constitution and a friend of the king. The Vicar is so far restored that he leaves the jail and partakes of a bountiful repast, at which the company is "as merry as affluence and innocence could make them."

Affluence as the providential, though sometimes long delayed, reward of innocence was a favorite thesis of eighteenth-century piety.

"It may sound very absurd," says the Gentle Reader, "to those who insist that all the happenings should be realistic; but the Vicar of Wakefield is a very real character, nevertheless; and he is the kind of a person for whom you would expect things to come out right in the end."

HEN Falstaff boasted that he was not only witty himself but the cause of wit in other men, he thought of himself more highly than he ought to have thought. The very fact that he was witty prevented him from the highest efficiency in stimulating others in that direction. The atmospheric currents of merriment move irresistibly toward a vacuum. Create a character altogether destitute of humor and the most sluggish intelligence is stirred in the effort to fill the void.

When we seek one who is the cause of wit in other men we pass by the jovial Falstaff and come to the preternaturally serious Don Quixote. Here we have not the chance outcropping of "the lighter vein," but the mother lode which the humorist finds inexhaustible. Don Quixote, with a lofty gravity which never for an instant relaxes, sets forth upon his mission. His is a soul impenetrable to mirth; but as he rides he enlivens the whole country-side. Everywhere merry eyes are watching him; boisterous laughter comes from the stables of village inns; from castle windows high-born ladies smile upon him; the peasants in the fields stand gaping and holding their sides; the countenances of the priests relax, and even the robbers salute the knight with mock courtesy. The dullest La Manchan is refreshed, and feels that he belongs to a choice coterie of wits.

Cervantes tells us that he intended only a burlesque on the books of chivalry which were in vogue in his day. Had he done no more than he intended, he would have amused his own generation and then have been forgotten. It would be too much to ask that we should read the endless tales about Amadis and Orlando, only that we might appreciate his clever parody of them. A satire lasts no longer than its object. It must shoot folly as it flies. To keep on shooting at a folly after it is dead is unsportsmanlike.

But though we have not read the old books of chivalry, we have all come in contact with Quixotism. I say we have all come in contact with it; but let no selfish, conventional persons be afraid lest they catch it. They are immune. They may do many foolish things, but they cannot possibly be quixotic. Quixotism is a malady possible only to generous minds.

Listen to Don Quixote as he makes his plea before the duke and duchess. "I have redressed grievances, righted the injured, chastised the insolent, vanquished giants. My intentions have all been directed toward virtuous ends and to do good to all mankind. Now judge, most excellent duke and duchess, whether a person who makes it his study to practice all this deserves to be called a fool."

Our first instinct is to answer confidently, "Of course not! Such a character as you describe is what we call a hero or a saint." But the person whose moral enthusiasm has been tempered with a knowledge of the queer combinations of goodness and folly of which human nature is capable is more wary, and answers, "That depends."

In the case of Don Quixote it depends very much on the kind of world he lives in. If it should happen that in this world there are giants standing truculently at their castle doors, and forlorn maidens at every cross-roads waiting to be rescued, we will grant him the laurels that are due to the hero. But if La Mancha should not furnish these materials for his prowess,—then we must take a different view of the case.

The poor gentleman is mad, that is what the curate and the barber say; but when we listen to his conversation we are in doubt. If the curate could discourse half so eloquently he would have been a bishop long before this. The most that can be said is that he has some notions which are not in accordance with the facts, and that he acts accordingly; but if that were a proof of madness there would not be enough sane persons in the world to make strait-jackets for the rest. His chief peculiarity is that he takes himself with a seriousness that is absolute. All of us have thoughts which would not bear the test of strict examination. There are vagrant fancies and random impulses which, fortunately for our reputations, come to nothing. We are just on the verge of doing something absurd when we recognize the character of our proposed action; and our neighbors lose a pleasure. We comfort ourselves by the reflection that their loss is our gain. Don Quixote has no such inhibition; he carries out his own ideas to their logical conclusion.

The hero of Cervantes had muddled his wits by the reading of romances. Almost any kind of printed matter may have the same effect if one is not able to distinguish between what he has read and what he has actually experienced. One may read treatises on political economy until he mistakes the "economic man" who acts only according to the rules of enlightened self-interest for a creature of flesh and blood. One may read so many articles on the Rights of Women that he mistakes a hard-working American citizen who spends his summer in a down-town office, in order that his wife and daughter may go to Europe, for that odious monster the Tyrant Man. It is possible to read the Society columns of the daily newspapers till the reader does not know good society when he sees it. An estimable teacher in the public schools may devote herself so assiduously to pedagogical literature that she mistakes her school-room for a psychological laboratory, with results that are sufficiently tragical. There are excellent divines so learned in the history of the early church that they believe that semi-pelagianism is still the paramount issue. There were few men whose minds were, in general, better balanced than Mr. Gladstone's, yet what a fine example of Quixotism was that suggested by Queen Victoria's remark: "Mr. Gladstone always addresses me as if I were a public meeting." To address a woman as if she were a public meeting is the mistake of one who had devoted himself too much to political speeches.

A thoroughly healthy mind can endure a good deal of reading and a considerable amount of speculation with impunity. It does not take the ideas thus derived too seriously. It is continually making allowances, and every once in a while there is a general clearance. It is like a gun which expels the old cartridge as the new shot is fired. When the delicate mechanism for the expulsion of exploded opinions gets out of order the mind becomes the victim of "fixed ideas." The best idea becomes dangerous when it gets stuck. When the fixed ideas are of a noble and disinterested character we have a situation which excites at once the admiration of the moralist and the apprehension of the alienist. Perhaps this border-land between spiritual reality and intellectual hallucination belongs neither to the moralist nor to the alienist, but to the wise humorist. He laughs, but there is no bitterness or scorn in his laughter. It is mellow and human-hearted.

The world is full of people who have a faculty which enables them to believe whatever they wish. Thought is not, for them, a process which may go on indefinitely, a work in which they are collaborating with the universe. They do it all by themselves. It is the definite transaction of making up their minds. When the mind is made up it closes with a snap. After that, for an unwelcome idea to force an entrance would be a well-nigh impossible feat of intellectual burglary.

We sometimes speak of stubborn facts. Nonsense! A fact is a mere babe when compared with a stubborn theory. Let the theory, however extravagant in its origin, choose its own ground, and intrench itself in the mind of a well-meaning lady or gentleman of an argumentative turn, and I'll warrant you it can hold its own against a whole regiment of facts.

Did you ever attend a meeting of the society for the—perhaps I had better not mention the name of the society, lest I tread on your favorite Quixotism. Suffice it to say that it has a noble purpose. It aims at nothing less than the complete transformation of human society, by the use of means which, to say the least, seem quite inadequate.

After the minutes of the last meeting have been read, and the objects of the society have been once more stated with much detail, there is an opportunity for discussion from the floor.

"Perhaps there is some one who may give some new suggestions, or who may desire to ask a question."

You have observed what happens to the unfortunate questioner. What a sorry exhibition he makes of himself! No sooner does he open his mouth than every one recognizes his intellectual feebleness. He seems unable to grasp the simplest ideas. He stumbles at the first premise, and lies sprawling at the very threshold of the argument. "If what I have taken for granted be true," says the chairman, "do not all the fine things I have been telling you about follow necessarily?"

"But," murmurs the questioner, "the things you take for granted are just what trouble me. They don't correspond to my experience."

"Poor, feeble-minded questioner!" cry the members of the society, "to think that he is not even able to take things for granted! And then to set up his experience against our constitution and by-laws!"

We sometimes speak of an inconsequent, harum-scarum person, who is always going off after new ideas, as quixotic. But true Quixotism is grave, self-contained, conservative. Within its own sphere it is accurate and circumstantial. There is no absurdity in its mental processes; all that is concealed in its assumptions. Granted the reality of the scheme of knight-errantry, and Don Quixote becomes a solid, dependable man who will conscientiously carry it out. There is no danger of his going off into vagaries. He has a mind that will keep the roadway.

He is a sound critic, intolerant of minor incongruities. When the puppet-player tells about the bells ringing in the mosques of the Moorish town, the knight is quick to correct him. "There you are out, boy; the Moors have no bells; they only use kettledrums. Your ringing of bells in Sansuena is a mere absurdity." Such absurdities were not amusing; they were offensive to his serious taste.

The quixotic mind loves greatly the appearance of strict logic. It is satisfied if one statement is consistent with another statement; whether either is consistent with the facts of the case is a curious matter which it does not care to investigate. So much does it love Logic that it welcomes even that black sheep of the logical family, the Fallacy; and indeed the impudent fellow, with all his irresponsible ways, does bear a family resemblance which is very deceiving. Above all is there delight in that alluring mental exercise known as the argument in a circle. It is an intellectual merry-go-round. A hobby-horse on rockers is sport for tame intelligences, but a hobby that can be made to go round is exciting. You may see grave divines and astute metaphysicians and even earnest sociologists rejoicing in the swift sequence of their own ideas, as conclusion follows premise and premise conclusion, in endless gyration. How the daring riders clutch the bridles and exultingly watch the flying manes of their steeds! They have the sense of getting somewhere, and at the same time the comfortable assurance that that somewhere is the very place from which they started.

"Didn't we tell you so!" they cry. "Here we are again. Our arguments must be true, for we can't get away from them."

Your ordinary investigator is a disappointing fellow. His opinions are always at the mercy of circumstances over which he has no control. He cuts his coat according to his cloth, and sometimes when his material runs short his intellectual garments are more scanty than decency allows. Sometimes after a weary journey into the Unknown he will return with scarcely an opinion to his back. Not so with the quixotist. His opinions not being dependent on evidence, he does not measure different degrees of probability. Half a reason is as good as a whole one, for the result in any case is perfect assurance. All things conspire, in most miraculous fashion, to confirm him in his views. That other men think differently he admits, he even welcomes their skepticism as a foil to his faith. His imperturbable tolerance is like that of some knight who, conscious of his coat of mail, good-humoredly exposes himself to the assaults of the rabble. It amuses them, and does him no harm.

When Don Quixote had examined Mambrino's enchanted helmet, his candor compelled him to listen to Sancho's assertion that it was only a barber's basin. He was not disposed to controvert the evidence of the senses, but he had a sufficient explanation ready. "This enchanted helmet, by some strange accident, must have fallen into the possession of one who, ignorant of its true value as a helmet, and seeing it to be of the purest gold, hath inconsiderately melted down the one half for lucre's sake, and of the other half made this, which, as thou sayest, doth indeed look like a barber's basin; but to me, who know what it really is, its transformation is of no importance, for I will have it so repaired in the first town where there is a smith that it shall not be surpassed or even equaled. In the mean time I will wear it as I can, for something is better than nothing, and it will be sufficient to defend me from stones."

Where have you heard that line of argument, so satisfying to one who has already made up his mind? Yesterday, it runs, we had several excellent reasons for the opinion which we hold. Since then, owing to investigations which we imprudently entered into before we knew where we were coming out, all our reasons have been overthrown. This, however, makes not the slightest difference. It rather strengthens our general position, as it is no longer dependent on any particular evidence for its support.

We prate of the teaching of Experience. But did you ever know Experience to teach anything to a person whose ideas had set up an independent government of their own? The stern old dame has been much overrated as an instructor. Her pedagogical method is very primitive. Her instruction is administered by a series of hard whacks which the pupil is expected to interpret for himself. That something is wrong is evident; but what is it? It is only now and then that some bright pupil says, "That means that I made a mistake." As for persons of a quixotic disposition, the most adverse experience only confirms their pre-conceptions. At most the wisdom gained is prudential. After Don Quixote had made his first unfortunate trial of his pasteboard visor, "to secure it against like accidents in future he made it anew, and fenced it with thin plates of iron so skillfully that he had reason to be satisfied with his work, and so, without further experiment, resolved that it should pass for a good and sufficient helmet."

One is tempted to linger over that moment when Quixote ceased to experiment and began to dogmatize. What was the reason of his sudden dread of destructive criticism? Was he quite sincere? Did he really believe that his helmet was now cutlass proof?

For myself, I have no doubts of his knightly honor and of his transparent candor. He certainly believed that he believed; though under the circumstances he felt that it was better to take no further risks.

In his admirable discourse with Don Fernando on the comparative merits of arms and literature, he describes the effects of the invention of gunpowder.

"When I reflect on this I am almost tempted to say that in my heart I repent of having adopted the profession of knight-errantry in so detestable an age as we live in. For though no peril can make me fear, still it gives me some uneasiness to think that powder and lead may rob me of the opportunity of making myself famous and renowned throughout the world by the might of my arm and the edge of my sword."

There is here a bit of uneasiness, such as comes to any earnest person who perceives that the times are out of joint. Still the doubt does not go very deep. In an age of artillery knight-errantry is doubtless more difficult, but it does not seem impossible.

It is the same feeling that must come now and then to a gallant twentieth-century Jacobite who meets with his fellow conspirators in an American city, to lament the untimely taking off of the blessed martyr King Charles, and to plot for the return of the House of Stuart. The circumstances under which they meet are not congenial. The path of loyalty is not what it once was. A number of things have happened since 1649; still they may be treated as negligible quantities. It is a fine thing to sing about the king coming to his own again.

"But what if there isn't any king to speak of?"

"Well, at any rate, the principle is the same."

I occasionally read a periodical devoted to the elevation of mankind by means of a combination of deep breathing and concentrated thought. The object is one in which I have long been interested. The means used are simple. The treatment consists in lying on one's back for fifteen minutes every morning with arms outstretched. Then one must begin to exhale self and inhale power. The directions are given with such exactness that no one with reasonably good lungs can go astray. The treatment is varied according to the need. One may in this way breathe in, not only health and love, but, what may seem to some more important, wealth.

The treatment for chronic impecuniosity is particularly interesting. The patient, as he lies on his back and breathes deeply, repeats, "I am Wealth." This sets the currents of financial success moving in his direction.

One might suppose that a theory of finance so different from that of the ordinary workaday world would be surrounded by an air of weirdness or strangeness. Not at all. Everything is most matter of fact. The Editor is evidently a sensible person when it comes to practical details, and, on occasion, gives admirable advice.

A correspondent writes: "I have tried your treatment for six months, and I am obliged to say that I am harder up than ever before. What do you advise?"

It is one of those obstinate cases which are met with now and then, and which test the real character of the practitioner. The matter is treated with admirable frankness, and yet with a wholesome optimism. The patient is reminded that six months is a short time, and one must not expect too quick results. A slow, sure progress is better, and the effects are more lasting. This is not the first case that has been slow in yielding to treatment. Still it may be better to make a slight change. The formula, "I am Wealth," may be too abstract, though it usually has worked well. A more concrete thought might possibly be more effective. Why not try, remembering, of course, to continue the same breathings, "I am Andrew Carnegie?"

Then the practitioner adds a bit of advice which was certainly worth the moderate fee charged: "When the exercises are over, ask yourself what Andrew would do next. Andrew would hustle."

A slight acquaintance with the pseudo sciences which are in vogue at the present day reveals a world to which only the genius of Cervantes could do justice. We see Absurdity clothed, and in its right mind. It is formally correct, punctiliously exact, completely serious, and withal high-minded. Until it comes in contact with the actual world we do not realize that it is absurd.

Religion and medicine have always furnished tempting fields for persons of the quixotic temper. Perhaps it is because their professed objects are so high, and perhaps also because their achievements fall so far below what we have been led to expect. Neither spiritual nor mental health is so robust as to satisfy us with the usual efforts in their behalf. Sin and sickness are continual challenges. Some one ought to abolish them. An eager hearing is given to any one who claims to be able to do so. The temptation is great for those who do not perceive the difference between words and things to answer the demands.

It is not necessary to go for examples either to fanatics or quacks. Not to take too modern an instance, there was Bishop Berkeley! He was a true philosopher, an earnest Christian, and withal a man of sense, and yet he was the author of "Siris, a Chain of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries concerning the Virtues of Tar Water, and divers other Subjects connected together, and arising One from Another." It is one of those works which are the cause of wit in other men. It is so learned, so exhaustive, so pious, and the author takes it with such utter seriousness!

Tar is the good bishop's Dulcinea. All his powers are enlisted in the work of proclaiming the matchless virtues of this mistress of his imagination, who is "black but comely." Our minds are prepared by a lyric outburst:—

"Hail, vulgar Juice of never-fading Pine!

Cheap as thou art! thy virtues are divine,

To show them and explain (such is thy store),

There needs much modern and much ancient Lore."

For this great work the author is well equipped. Plato, Aristotle, Pliny, and the rest of the ancients appear as vanquished knights compelled to do honor to my Lady Tar.

Other specifics are allowed to have their virtues, but they grow pale before this paragon. Common soap has its admirers; they are treated magnanimously, but compelled to surrender at last. "Soap is allowed to be cleansing, attenuating, opening, resolving, sweetening; it is pectoral, vulnerary, diuretic, and hath other good qualities; which are also found in tar water.... Tar water therefore is a soap, and as such hath all the medicinal qualities of soaps." To those who put their faith in vinegar a like argument is made. It is shown that tar water is not only a superior kind of soap, but also a sublimated sort of vinegar; in fact, it appears to be all things to all men.

To those who incline to the philosophy of the ancient fire-worshipers a special argument is made. "I had a long Time entertained an Opinion agreeable to the Sentiments of many ancient Philosophers, that Fire may be regarded as the Animal Spirit of this visible World. And it seemed to me that the attracting and secreting of this Fire in the various Pores, Tubes, and Ducts of Vegetables, did impart their specifick Virtues to each kind, that this same Light, or Fire, was the immediate Cause of Sense and Motion, and consequently of Life and Health to animals; that on Account of this Solar Light or Fire, Phœbus was in the ancient Mythology reputed the God of Medicine. Which Light as it is leisurely introduced, and fixed in the viscid juice of old Firs and Pines, so setting it free in Part, that is, the changing its viscid for a volatile Vehicle, which may mix with Water, and convey it throughout the Habit copiously and inoffensively, would be of infinite Use in Physic." It appears therefore that tar water is not only a kind of soap, but also a kind of fire.

Yet is not Quixote himself more careful to avoid all appearance of extravagance? The author shrinks from imposing conclusions on another. After an elaborate argument which moves irresistibly to one conclusion, he stops short. "This regards the Possibility of a Panacea in general; as for Tar Water in particular, I do not say it is a Panacea, I only suspect it to be so." Yet he must be a churlish reader who could go with him so far and then refuse to take the next step. Nor can a right-minded person be indifferent to the moral argument in favor of "Tar Water, Temperance, and Early Hours." If tar water is to be known by the company it keeps, it is to be commended.

There is a great advantage in taking our example from another age than ours. Our enjoyment of the bishop's Quixotism does not cast discredit on any similar hobby of our own day. "However," as the author of Siris remarked, "it is hoped they will not condemn one Man's Tar Water for another Man's Pill or Drop, any more than they would hang one Man for another's having stole a Horse."

Indeed, of all quixotic notions the most extreme is that of those who think that Quixotism can be overcome by any direct attack. It is a state of mind which must be accepted as we accept any other curious fact. As well tilt against a cloud as attempt to overcome it by argument. It is a part of the myth-making faculty of the human mind. A myth is a quixotic notion which takes possession of multitudes rather than of a single person. Everybody accepts it; nobody knows why. You can nail a lie, but you cannot nail a myth,—there is nothing to nail it to. It is of no use to deny it, for that only gives it a greater vogue.

I have great sympathy for all mythical characters. It is possible that Hercules may have been an amiable Greek gentleman of sedentary habits. Some one may have started the story of his labors as a joke. In the next town it was taken seriously, and the tale set forth on its travels. After it once had been generally accepted, what could Hercules do? What good would it have been for him to say, "There's not a word of truth in what everybody is saying about me. I am as averse to a hard day's work as any gentleman of my social standing in the community. They are turning me into a sun-myth, and mixing up my private affairs with the signs of the zodiac! I won't stand it!"

Bless me! he would have to stand it! His words would but add fuel to the flame of admiration. What a hero he is; so strong and so modest! He has already forgotten those feats of strength! It is ever so with greatness. To Hercules it was all mere child's play. All the more need that we keep the stories alive in order to hand them down to our children. Perhaps we had better touch them up a bit so that they may be more interesting to the little dears. And so would begin a new cycle of myths.

After Socrates had once gained the reputation for superlative wisdom, do you think it did any good for him to go about proclaiming that he knew nothing? He was suspected of having some ulterior design. Nobody would believe him except Xanthippe.

When after hearing strange noises in the night Don Quixote sallies forth only to discover that the sounds come from fulling hammers instead of from giants, he rebukes the ill-timed merriment of his squire. "Come hither, merry sir! Suppose these mill hammers had really been some perilous adventure, have I not given proof of the courage requisite to undertake and achieve it? Am I, being a knight, to distinguish between sounds, and to know which are and which are not those of a fulling mill, more especially as I have never seen any fulling mills in my life?"

If the mill hammers could only be transformed into giants, how easy the path of reform! for it would satisfy the primitive instinct to go out and kill something. I have heard a temperance orator denounce the Demon Drink so roundly that every one in the audience was ready to destroy the monster on sight. The solution of the liquor problem, however, was quite a different matter. The young patriot who conceives of the money power under the terrifying image of an octopus resolves at once to give it battle. When elected to the legislature he meets many smooth-spoken gentlemen whose schemes are so plausible that he readily assents to them,—but not an octopus does he see. Yet I believe that were he to see an octopus he would slay it.

Perhaps there is no better test of a person's nature than his attitude toward Quixotism. The man of coarse, unfriendly humor sees in it nothing but a broad farce. He greets the misadventures of Don Quixote with a loud guffaw. What a fool he was not to know the difference between an ordinary inn and a castle!

There are persons of a sensitive and refined disposition to whom it is all a tragedy, exquisitely painful to contemplate. Alas, poor gentleman, with all his lofty ideals, to be so buffeted by a world unworthy of him!

But this refinement of sentiment comes perilously near to sentimentalism. Cervantes had the more wholesome attitude. He appreciated the valor of Don Quixote. It was genuine, though the knight, owing to circumstances beyond his own control, had been compelled to make his visor out of pasteboard. He had heroism of soul; but what of it! There was plenty more where it came from. A man who had fought at Lepanto, and endured years of Algerine captivity, was not inclined to treat manly virtue as if it were a rare and delicate fabric that must be preserved in a glass case. It was amply able to take care of itself. He knew that he couldn't laugh genuine chivalry away, even if he tried. It could stand not only hard knocks from its foes, but any amount of raillery from its friends.

The bewildered soldier who mistakes a harmless camp follower for the enemy must expect to endure the gibes of his comrades; yet no one doubts that he would have acquitted himself nobly if the enemy had appeared. The rough humor of the camp is a part of its wholesome discipline.

Quixotism is a combination of goodness and folly. To enjoy it one must be able to appreciate them both at the same time. It is a pleasure possible only to one who is capable of having mixed feelings.

When we consider the faculty which many good people have of believing things that are not so, and ignoring the plainest facts and laws of nature, we are sometimes alarmed over the future of society. If any of the Quixotisms which are now in vogue should get themselves established, what then?

Fortunately there is small need of anxiety. When the landsman first ventures on the waves he observes with alarm the keeling over of the boat under the breeze, for he expects the tendency to be followed to its logical conclusion. Fortunately for the equilibrium of society, tendencies which are viewed with alarm are seldom carried to their logical conclusion. They are met by other tendencies before the danger point is reached, and the balance is restored.

The factor which is overlooked by those who fear the ascendency of any quixotic notion is the existence of the average man. This individual is not a striking personality, but he holds the balance of power. Before any extravagant idea can establish itself it must convert the average man. He is very susceptible, and takes a suggestion so readily that it seems to prophesy the complete overthrow of the existing order of things. But was ever a conversion absolute? The best theologians say no. A great deal of the old Adam is always left over. When the average man takes up with a quixotic notion, only so much of it is practically wrought out as he is able to comprehend. The old Adam of common sense continually asserts itself. The natural corrective of Quixotism is Sancho-Panzaism. The solemn knight, with his head full of visionary plans, is followed by a squire who is as faithful as his nature will permit. Sancho has no theories, and makes no demands on the world. He leaves that sort of thing to his master. He has the fatalism which belongs to ignorant good nature, and the tolerance which is found in easy-going persons who have neither ideals nor nerves. He has no illusions, though he has all the credulity of ignorance.

He belongs to the established order of things, and can conceive no other. When knight-errantry is proposed to him, he reduces that also to the established order. He takes it up as an honest livelihood, and rides forth in search of forlorn maidens with the same contented jog with which he formerly went to the village mill. When it is explained that faithful squires become governors of islands he approves of the idea, and begins to cherish a reasonable ambition. Knight-errantry is brought within the sphere of practical politics. Sancho has no stomach for adventures. When his master warns him against attacking knights, until such time as he has himself reached their estate, he answers:—

"Never fear, I'll be sure to obey your worship in that, I'll warrant you; for I ever loved peace and quietness, and never cared to thrust myself into frays and quarrels."

When Sancho becomes governor of his snug, land-locked island, there is not a trace of Quixotism in his executive policy. The laws of Chivalry have no recognition in his administration; and everything is carried on with most admirable common sense.

It is an experience which is quite familiar to the readers of history. "All who knew Sancho," moralizes the author, "wondered to hear him talk so sensibly, and began to think that offices and places of trust inspire some men with understanding, as they stupefy and confound others."

Mother wit has a great way of evading the consequences of theoretical absurdities. Natural law takes care of itself, and preserves the balance. So long as Don Quixote can get no other follower than Sancho Panza, we need not be alarmed. There is no call for a society for the Preservation of Windmills.

After all, there is an ambiguity about Quixotism. They laugh best who laugh last; and we are not sure that satire has the last word. Was Don Quixote as completely mistaken as he seemed? He mistook La Mancha for a land of romance, and wandered through it as if it were an enchanted country.

The Commentator explains to us that in this lay the jest, for no part of Spain was so vulgarly commonplace. Its villages were destitute of charm, and its landscape of beauty. La Mancha was a name for all that was unromantic.

"I cannot make it appear so," says the Gentle Reader, who has come under the spell of Cervantes. "Don Quixote seems to be wandering through the most romantic country in the world. I can see

'The long, straight line of the highway,

The distant town that seems so near,

. . . . . . . . . .

White crosses in the mountain pass,

Mules gay with tassels, the loud din

Of muleteers, the tethered ass

That crops the dusty wayside grass,

And cavaliers with spurs of brass

Alighting at the inn;

White hamlets hidden in fields of wheat,

. . . . . . . . . .

White sunshine flooding square and street,

Dark mountain-ranges, at whose feet

The river-beds are dry with heat,—

All was a dream to me.'

"Through this enchanted country it is pleasant to wander about in irresponsible fashion, climbing mountains, loitering in secluded valleys, where shepherds and shepherdesses still make love in Arcadian fashion, meeting with monks, merchants, muleteers, and fine gentlemen, and coming in the evening to some castle where one is lulled to sleep by the splash of fountains and the tinkle of guitars; and if it should turn out that the castle is only an inn,—why, to lodge in an inn of La Mancha would be a romantic experience!"

The Spain of the sixteenth century is to us as truly a land of romance as any over which a knight-errant roamed. It seems just suited for heroic adventure.

Some day our quixotic characters may appear to the future reader thus magically conformed to the world they live in, or rather, the world may be transformed by their ideals.

"They do seem strange to us," the Gentle Reader of that day will say, "but then we must remember that they lived in the romantic dawn of the twentieth century."

N the affairs of the mind we are all "Indian givers." We will part with our most cherished convictions for a merely nominal consideration, such as "for the sake of the argument,"—even when we do not really care for arguments. But let no one be deceived into thinking that this is the end. Renunciation usually has some mental reservation, or at least some saving ambiguity.

You may see a saint, in his enthusiasm for disinterested virtue, give up all claim to personal happiness. But does he expect to be taken at his word and to live miserably ever after? Not he! Already, if he be a true saint, he has begun to enjoy the beatific vision.

I know a teacher of religion who is inclined to rebel against what seems to him to be the undue emphasis upon faith. For himself, it seems a wholesome thing to do a little doubting now and then, and he looks upon this as a religious exercise. He affirms that the characteristic attitudes of the spiritual man can be expressed in terms of skepticism as well as of belief. It is all one whether the matter be put positively or negatively. Materialism he treats as a form of dogmatism based on the appearance of things. The religious mind is incredulous of this explanation of the universe and subjects it to a destructive criticism. The soul of man is full of "obstinate questionings of sense and outward things." Yet this same person, when he forgets his argument, is apt to talk like the rest of us. After all, it is some kind of faith that he is after, even when he pursues it by the methods of skepticism. In his most radical moods he never lets his convictions slip away from him; at least, they never go so far away that he cannot get them again.

In like manner I must confess that I am an Indian giver. In giving over to Science all claim to the domain of Knowledge, and reserving to my friend the Gentle Reader only the right of way over the picturesque but less fruitful fields of Ignorance, I was actuated by the purest motives. At the time it seemed very magnanimous, and, moreover, it saved the trouble of a doubtful contest.

But now that so much has been given away, I am visited by compunctions, and, if it is not too late, I will take back part of the too generous gift. Let us make a distinction, and instead of treating knowledge as if it were indivisible, let us speak, after the manner of Swedenborg, of knowledges. The greater number of knowledges we will make over without question to Science and Philosophy; the knowledges which are concerned with laws and forces and with the multitudinous facts which are capable of classification. But for the Gentle Reader and his kind let us reserve the claim to a knowledge of some things which cannot be classified. I hardly believe that they will be missed; they are not likely to be included in any scientific inventory; their value is chiefly in personal association.

There is a knowledge of persons as well as of things, and in particular there is a knowledge of certain persons to whom one is drawn in close friendship. Emerson, in his essay on Milton, speaks of those who come to the poet with "intimate knowledge and delight." It is, after all, convenient to treat this feeling of delightful intimacy as a kind of knowledge. If it is not that, what is it?

The peculiarity of this kind of knowledge is that it is impossible to formulate it; and that the very attempt to do so is an offence. The unpardonable sin against friendship is to merge the person in a class. Think of an individual as an adult Caucasian, "an inhabitant of North America, belonging to the better classes," as to religion a moderate churchman, in politics a Republican, and you may accumulate a number of details interesting enough in a stranger. You may in this way "know where to place him." But if you do actually place him there, and treat him accordingly, he has ceased to be your friend.

A friend is unique. He belongs to no categories. He is not a case, nor the illustration of a thesis. Your interest is neither pathological nor anthropological nor statistical. You are concerned not with what he is like, but with what he is. There is an element of jealous exclusiveness in such knowledge.

In the Song of Songs, after the ecstatic praise of the beloved, the question is asked:—

"What is thy beloved more than any other beloved, that thou dost so adjure us?"

The answer is a description of his personal perfections:—

"My beloved is white and ruddy,

. . . . . . . . . .

His locks are bushy, and black as a raven.

His eyes are like doves beside the water brooks.

. . . . . . . . . .

His aspect is like Lebanon, excellent as the cedars,

His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely.

This is my beloved, and this is my friend,

O daughters of Jerusalem."

Do you think that the daughters of Jerusalem would be so tactless as to reply that they had seen a number of handsome youths with bushy black hair and languishing eyes and fine forms, and that they represented an admirable type of manly beauty? That would be to confess that they had not seen the beloved, for he was unlike all others. "My beloved is marked out with a banner among ten thousand."

The knowledge that is required is not contained in a catalogue of the points in which he resembles the nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine; it is a recognition of the incommunicable grace that is his own.

Even in ordinary social intercourse the most delicate compliment is to treat the person with whom you are talking as an exception to all rules. That he is a clergyman or a commercial traveler tells you nothing of his inner life. That is left for him to reveal, if it so pleases him. Even a king grows tired of being addressed in terms appropriate to royalty. It is a relief to travel incognito, and he is flattered when he is assured that no one suspects his station in life. It makes him feel that he is not like the ordinary run of kings.

No one likes to be pigeon-holed or reduced to a formula. We resent being classed as old or middle-aged or young. Why should we be confounded with our coevals? We may not be any better than they are; but we are different. Nor is it pleasant to have our opinions treated as if they were the necessary product of social forces. There is something offensive in the curiosity of those who are all the time asking how we came by our ideas. What if they do bear a general resemblance to those of the honest people who belong to our party and who read the same newspaper. We do not care to be reminded of these chance coincidences. Because one has found it convenient and economical to buy a ready-made suit of clothing, it does not follow that he is willing to wear the tag which contains the statement of the price and size. These labels were very useful so long as the garment was kept in stock by the dealer, but the information that they convey is now irrelevant.

This sensitiveness in regard to personal identity is strangely lacking in many modern students of literature. They treat the man of genius as a phenomenon, to be explained by other phenomena and used to illustrate a general law. They love to deal in averages and aggregates. They describe minutely the period to which a writer belongs, its currents of thought, its intellectual limitations, and its generally received notions. With a knowledge of antecedent conditions there is the expectancy of a certain type of man as the result. Our minds are prepared for some one who resembles the composite photograph which is first presented to us. We are, for example, given an elaborate account of the Puritan movement in England. We form a conception of what the Puritan was, and then we are introduced to Milton. Our preconceptions stand in the way of personal sympathy.

The method of the Gentle Reader is more direct. He is fortunate enough to have read Milton before he has read much about him, and he returns to the reading with ever fresh delight. He does not think of him as belonging to a past age. He is a perpetual contemporary. The seventeenth century gave color to his words, but it did not limit his genius.

Seventeenth century Independency might be, as a general thing, lacking in grace, but when we turn away from Praise-God-Barebones to John Milton we find it transformed into a—

"divine philosophy,

Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo's lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets."

Into its austere beauty, into its wide free spaces, into its sensuous charms, no one but Milton can conduct us. We must follow not as those who know beforehand what is to be seen or heard, but as those who are welcomed by a generous householder who brings out of his treasures things new and old.

We come upon a sublime spirit—

"Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free."

That is Milton; but it is Milton also who can sing of—

"Jest and youthful Jollity,

Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles,

Nods and Becks and wreathed Smiles

Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,

And love to live in dimple sleek,

Sport that wrinkled Care derides,

And Laughter holding both his sides."

If this be Puritanism, it is Puritanism with a difference. Did any one in a few words give such a picture of mirth—

"So buxom, blithe, and debonair?"

Was this the real Milton? Why not? His radiant youth was as real as his blindness and his old age. And Milton the political pamphleteer was real too, though his language was not always that which might have been expected from the author of "Paradise Lost." We pass lightly over pages of vituperation which any one might have written, and then come upon splendid passages which could have come from him alone. The sentiment of democratic equality is invested with a dignity which makes all the pretensions of privileged orders seem vulgar. Here is the Milton who is invoked to—

"Give us manners, virtue, freedom, power!"

In these moments we become aware of a man who was not to be explained by any general rule.

To one who takes delight in the personality of Milton, even "Paradise Lost" is not a piece of unmitigated sublimity. It is full of self-revelations. The reader who has come to share Milton's passion for personal liberty and scorn for a "fugitive and cloistered virtue" is curious to know how he will treat his new theme. In the "Areopagitica" he had frankly treated the "Fall of Man" as a "fall upward." "Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed on Psyche as an increased labor to cull out and sort asunder, were not more intermixt. And perhaps that is the doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil; that is to say, of knowing good by evil. As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil.... That virtue, therefore, which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure.... Since, therefore, the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely and with less danger scout into the region of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reasons."

What would such an adventurous spirit make

"Of man's first Disobedience and the Fruit

Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste

Brought Death into the World and all our woe,

With loss of Eden"?

What would Milton make of Adam in his sheltered Paradise? And what would one whose whole life had been a passionate protest against the idea of submission to mere arbitrary power do with the element of arbitrariness which the theology of his day attributed to the Divine Ruler? And what of Satan?

"One who brings

A mind not to be changed by Place or Time.

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

What matter where, if I be still the same?"

There is a note in that proud creed that could not be altogether uncongenial to one who in his blindness could—

"still bear up and steer

Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?

The Conscience, Friend, t' have lost them overplied

In liberty's defense, my noble task;

Of which all Europe rings from side to side.

This thought might lead me through this World's vain mask

Content though blind, had I no better Guide."

In its ostensible plot "Paradise Lost" is a tragedy; but did Milton really feel it to be so? One fancies—though he may be mistaken—that as Adam and Eve leave Paradise he hears a sigh of relief from the poet, who was himself ever a lover of "the Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty." At any rate, there is an undertone of cheer.

"Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon,

The World was all before them where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide."

Adam, when the old sheltered life is over, and the possibilities of the new life of struggle were revealed,—

"Replete with joy and wonder thus replied.

O goodness infinite, goodness immense!

That all this good of evil shall produce,

And evil turn to good; more wonderful

Than that which by creation first brought forth

Light out of darkness! full of doubt I stand,

Whether I should repent me now of sin

By me done and occasioned or rejoice

Much more that much more good thereof shall spring."

That Adam should treat the loss of Eden in such a casual manner, and that he should express a doubt as to whether the estate into which his fall plunged the race was not better than one in which no moral struggle was necessary, was not characteristic of seventeenth-century theology,—but it was just like Milton.

There is no knowledge so intimate as that possessed by the reader of one book. It is an esoteric joy. The wisdom of the ages concentrated into one personality and then graciously communicated to the disciple has a flavor of which the multitudes of mere scholars know nothing. To them Wisdom is a public character.

"Doth not Wisdom cry,

And understanding put forth her voice?

In the top of high places

Where the paths meet she standeth."

But the disciple is not content with such publicity. He shuns the crowded highways, and delights to hear wisdom speaking in confidential tones.

In a little settlement in the far West I once met a somewhat depressed-looking man who remained silent till a chance remark brought a glow of enthusiasm to his eyes.

"Oh," he cried, "you have been reading the Ruins."

My remark had been of a kind that needed no special reading to account for it. It merely expressed one of those obvious truths which are likely to occur to the majority of persons. But to him it seemed so reasonable that it could only come from the one source of wise thought with which he was acquainted.

"The Ruins" proved to be a translation of Volney's "Ruins of Empire." I fear that I must have given the impression of greater familiarity with that work than was warranted by the facts, for my new-found friend received me as a member of the true brotherhood. His tongue was unloosed, and his intellectual passions, so long pent up, were freed. Had we not both read "The Ruins"! It was to him more than a book; it was a symbol of the unutterable things of the mind. It was a passionate protest against the narrow opinions of his neighbors. It stood for all that was lifted above the petty gossip of the little community, and for all that united him to an intellectual world of which he dreamed.

As we talked I marveled at the amount of sound philosophy this lonely reader had extracted from "The Ruins." Or had it been that he had brought the wisdom from his own meditation and deposited it at this shrine? One can never be sure whether a text has suggested the thought or the thought has illuminated the text.

When it happens that the man of one book has chosen a work of intrinsic value, the result is a kind of knowledge which is of inestimable worth. It is deeply interfused with the whole imaginative life, it is involved in every personal experience.

The supreme example of such intimate knowledge was that which generations of English speaking men had of the Bible. Apart from any religious theory, this familiarity was a wonderful fact in the history of culture. It meant that the ordinary man was not simply in his youth but throughout his life brought into direct contact with great poetry, sublime philosophy, vivid history. These were not reserved for state occasions; they were the daily food of the mind. Into the plain fabric of western thought was woven a thread of Oriental sentiment. Children were as familiar with the names and incidents of remote ages and lands as with their own neighborhood.

The important things about this culture of the common people was that it came through mere reading. The Bible was printed "without note or comment." The lack of critical apparatus and of preliminary training was the cause of many incidental mistakes; but it prevented the greatest mistake of all,—that of obscuring the text by the commentary.

In these days there has been a great advance in critical scholarship. Much more is known about the Bible, at least by those who have made it the object of special study; but there is a suspicion that fewer persons know the Bible than in the days when there were no "study classes," but only the habit of daily reading.

The Protestant insistence upon publishing the Scriptures without note or comment was an effort to do away with the middle-men who stood between the Book and its readers. Private judgment, it was declared, was a sufficient interpreter even of the profoundest utterances. This is a doctrine that needs to be revived and extended till it takes in all great literature.

To come to a book as to a friend, to allow it to speak for itself, without the intrusion of a third person, this is the substance of the whole matter. There must be no hard and fast rules, no preconceived opinions. Because the author has a reputation as a humorist, let him not be received with an expectant smile. Nothing can be more disconcerting to his sensitive spirit; and besides, how can you know that he has not a very serious message to communicate? Because he is said to be capable of sublimity, do not await him with overstrained sensibilities. Perhaps you may find him much less sublime and much more entertaining than you had anticipated. If the sublime vision does come, you will appreciate it all the more if it comes upon you unawares.

"As cloud on cloud, as snow on snow, as the bird on the air, and the planet on space in its flight, so do nations of men and their institutions rest on thoughts."

If this be so, can there be any knowledge more important than the knowledge of what a man actually thinks. "A penny for your thoughts," we say lightly, knowing well that this hidden treasure cannot be bought. The world may be described in formal fashion as if it were an unchanging reality; but how the world appears to each inhabitant of it he alone can declare. Or perhaps he cannot declare it, for most of us find it impossible to tell what we really think or feel. In attempting to do it we fall into conventionality, and succeed only in telling what we think other people would like to have us think. Only now and then is one born with the gift of true self-expression. In his speech we recognize a real person, and not the confused murmur of a multitude. Institutions and traditions do not account for him; this thought is the more fundamental fact. Here is a unique bit of knowledge. There is no other way of getting at it than that of the Gentle Reader,—to shut out the rest of the world and listen to the man himself.

The Riverside Press Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.

The following typographical error was corrected by the etext transcriber:

the surprise of the Frenchman over the pirate's immaculate attire.=>the surprise of the Frenchman over the pirates' immaculate attire.