|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 19
You may say that the soul's travailings are no affair of yours; proving
thereby that you have indeed but a lowly conception of the duty of the
novelist. I only remember one reference, in all your works, to that
controversy which occupies the chief of our attention--the great controversy
on Creation or Evolution. Your Jane Bennet cries: 'I have no idea of there
being so much Design in the world as some persons imagine.' Nor do you touch
on our mighty social question, the Land Laws, save when Mrs. Bennet appears as
a Land Reformer, and rails bitterly against the cruelty 'of settling an estate
away from a family of five daughters, in favour of a man whom nobody cared
anything about.' There, madam, in that cruelly unjust performance, what a text
you had for a _Tendenz-Roman_. Nay, you can allow Kitty to report that a
Private had been flogged, without introducing a chapter on Flogging in the
Army. But you formally declined to stretch your matter out, here and there,
'with solemn specious nonsense about something unconnected with the story.' No
'padding' for Miss Austen! In fact, madam, as you were born before Analysis
came in, or Passion, or Realism, or Naturalism, or Irreverence, or Religious
Open-mindedness, you really cannot hope to rival your literary sisters in the
minds of a perplexed generation. Your heroines are not passionate, we do not
see their red wet cheeks, and tresses dishevelled in the manner of our frank
young Maenads. What says your best successor, a lady who adds fresh lustre to
a name that in fiction equals yours? She says of Miss Austen: 'Her heroines
have a stamp of their own. They have a _certain gentle self-respect and
humour and hardness of heart_... Love with them does not mean a passion as
much as an interest, deep and silent.' I think one prefers them so, and that
Englishwomen should be more like Anne Elliot than Maggie Tulliver. 'All the
privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest when existence or
when hope is gone,' said Anne; perhaps she insisted on a monopoly that neither
sex has all to itself. Ah, madam, what a relief it is to come back to your
witty volumes, and forget the follies of to-day in those of Mr. Collins and of
Mrs. Bennet! How fine, nay, how noble is your art in its delicate reserve,
never insisting, never forcing the note, never pushing the sketch into the
caricature! You worked without thinking of it, in the spirit of Greece, on a
labour happily limited, and exquisitely organised. 'Dear books,' we say, with
Miss Thackeray--'dear books, bright, sparkling with wit and animation, in
which the homely heroines charm, the dull hours fly, and the very bores are
enchanting.'
IX.
To Master Isaak Walton.
Father Isaak,--When I would be quiet and go angling it is my custom to carry
in my wallet thy pretty book, 'The Compleat Angler.' Here, methinks, if I find
not trout I shall find content, and good company, and sweet songs, fair
milkmaids, and country mirth. For you are to know that trout be now scarce,
and whereas he was ever a fearful fish, he hath of late become so wary that
none but the cunningest anglers may be even with him.
It is not as it was in your time, Father, when a man might leave his shop in
Fleet Street, of a holiday, and, when he had stretched his legs up Tottenham
Hill, come lightly to meadows chequered with waterlilies and lady-smocks, and
so fall to his sport. Nay, now have the houses so much increased, like a
spreading sore (through the breaking of that excellent law of the
Conscientious King and blessed Martyr, whereby building beyond the walls was
forbidden), that the meadows are all swallowed up in streets. And as to the
River Lea, wherein you took many a good trout, I read in the news sheets that
'its bed is many inches thick in horrible filth, and the air for more than
half a mile on each side of it is polluted with a horrible, sickening stench,'
so that we stand in dread of a new Plague, called the Cholera. And so it is
all about London for many miles, and if a man, at heavy charges, betake
himself to the fields, lo you, folk are grown so greedy that none will suffer
a stranger to fish in his water.
So poor anglers are in sore straits. Unless a man be rich and can pay great
rents, he may not fish, in England, and hence spring the discontents of the
times, for the angler is full of content, if he do but take trout, but if he
be driven from the waterside, he falls, perchance, into evil company, and
cries out to divide the property of the gentle folk. As many now do, even
among Parliament, men, whom you loved not, Father Isaak, neither do I love
them more than Reason and Scripture bid each of us be kindly to his neighbour.
But, behold, the causes of the ill content are not yet all expressed, for even
where a man hath licence to fish, he will hardly take trout in our age, unless
he be all the more cunning. For the fish, harried this way and that by so many
of your disciples, is exceeding shy and artful, nor will he bite at a fly
unless it falleth lightly, just above his mouth, and floateth dry over him,
for all the world like the natural _ephemeris_. And we may no longer angle
with worm for him, nor with penk or minnow, nor with the natural fly, as was
your manner, but only with the artificial, for the more difficulty the more
diversion. For my part I may cry, like Viator in your book, 'Master, I can
neither catch with the first nor second Angle: I have no fortune.'
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|