Thoreau's theory, in short, was one thing and himself another: of the
first, the reader will find what I believe to be a pretty faithful
statement and a fairly just criticism in the study; of the second he
will find but a contorted shadow. So much of the man as fitted nicely
with his doctrines, in the photographer's phrase, came out. But that
large part which lay outside and beyond, for which he had found or
sought no formula, on which perhaps his philosophy even looked askance,
is wanting in my study, as it was wanting in the guide I followed. In
some ways a less serious writer, in all ways a nobler man, the true
Thoreau still remains to be depicted. VILLON. I am tempted to regret that I ever wrote on this subject, not
merely because the paper strikes me as too picturesque by half, but
because I regarded Villon as a bad fellow. Others still think well of
him, and can find beautiful and human traits where I saw nothing but
artistic evil; and by the principle of the art, those should have
written of the man, and not I. Where you see no good, silence is the
best. Though this penitence comes too late, it may be well, at least, to
give it expression. The spirit of Villon is still living in the literature of France. Fat
Peg is oddly of a piece with the work of Zola, the Goncourts, and the
infinitely greater Flaubert; and, while similar in ugliness, still
surpasses them in a native power. The old author, breaking with an
_éclat de voix_ out of his tongue-tied century, has not yet been touched
on his own ground, and still gives us the most vivid and shocking
impression of reality. Even if that were not worth doing at all, it
would be worth doing as well as he has done it; for the pleasure we take
in the author's skill repays us, or at least reconciles us to the
baseness of his attitude. Fat Peg (_La Grosse Margot_) is typical of
much; it is a piece of experience that has nowhere else been rendered
into literature; and a kind of gratitude for the author's plainness
mingles, as we read, with the nausea proper to the business. I shall
quote here a verse of an old student's song; worth laying side by side
with Villon's startling ballade. This singer, also, had an unworthy
mistress, but he did not choose to share the wages of dishonour; and it
is thus, with both wit and pathos, that he laments her fall:--

  Nunc plango florem
    Ætatis teneræ
  Nitidiorem
    Veneris sidere:
  Tunc columbinam
    Mentis dulcedinem,
  Nunc serpentinam
    Amaritudinem. Verbo rogantes
    Removes ostio,
  Munera dantes
    Foves cubiculo,
        Illos abire præcipis
        A quibus nihil accipis,
        Cæcos claudosque recipis,
        Viros illustres decipis
        Cum melle venenosa. [1]

But our illustrious writer of ballades it was unnecessary to deceive; it
was the flight of beauty alone, not that of honesty or honour, that he
lamented in his song; and the nameless mediæval vagabond has the best of
the comparison. There is now a Villon Society in England; and Mr. John Payne has
translated him entirely into English, a task of unusual difficulty. I
regret to find that Mr. Payne and I are not always at one as to the
author's meaning; in such cases I am bound to suppose that he is in the
right, although the weakness of the flesh withholds me from anything
beyond a formal submission. He is now upon a larger venture, promising
us at last that complete Arabian Nights to which we have all so long
looked forward. CHARLES OF ORLEANS. Perhaps I have done scanty justice to the charm of
the old Duke's verses, and certainly he is too much treated as a fool. The period is not sufficiently remembered. What that period was, to what
a blank of imbecility the human mind had fallen, can only be known to
those who have waded in the chronicles. Excepting Comines and La Salle
and Villon, I have read no author who did not appal me by his torpor;
and even the trial of Joan of Arc, conducted as it was by chosen clerks,
bears witness to a dreary sterile folly,--a twilight of the mind peopled
with childish phantoms. In relation to his contemporaries, Charles seems
quite a lively character. It remains for me to acknowledge the kindness of Mr. Henry Pyne, who,
immediately on the appearance of the study, sent me his edition of the
Debate between the Heralds: a courtesy from the expert to the amateur
only too uncommon in these days. KNOX. Knox, the second in order of interest among the reformers, lies
dead and buried in the works of the learned and unreadable M'Crie. It
remains for some one to break the tomb and bring him forth, alive again
and breathing, in a human book. With the best intentions in the world, I
have only added two more flagstones, ponderous like their predecessors,
to the mass of obstruction that buries the reformer from the world; I
have touched him in my turn with that "mace of death," which Carlyle has
attributed to Dryasdust; and my two dull papers are, in the matter of
dulness, worthy additions to the labours of M'Crie. Yet I believe they
are worth reprinting in the interest of the next biographer of Knox. I
trust his book may be a masterpiece; and I indulge the hope that my two
studies may lend him a hint or perhaps spare him a delay in its
composition. Of the PEPYS I can say nothing; for it has been too recently through my
hands; and I still retain some of the heat of composition. Yet it may
serve as a text for the last remark I have to offer. To Pepys I think I
have been amply just; to the others, to Burns, Thoreau, Whitman, Charles
of Orleans, even Villon, I have found myself in the retrospect ever too
grudging of praise, ever too disrespectful in manner. It is not easy to
see why I should have been most liberal to the man of least pretensions. Perhaps some cowardice withheld me from the proper warmth of tone;
perhaps it is easier to be just to those nearer us in rank and mind. Such at least is the fact, which other critics may explain. For these
were all men whom, for one reason or another, I loved; or when I did not
love the men, my love was the greater to their books. I had read them
and lived with them; for months they were continually in my thoughts; I
seemed to rejoice in their joys and to sorrow with them in their griefs;
and behold, when I came to write of them, my tongue was sometimes hardly
courteous and seldom wholly just. R. L. S.


FOOTNOTE:

  [1] "Gaudeamus: Carmina vagorum selecta." Leipsic: Trübner, 1879. FAMILIAR STUDIES OF MEN AND BOOKS




I

VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES


   Après le roman pittoresque mais prosaïque de Walter Scott il restera
   un autre roman à créer, plus beau et plus complet encore selon nous. C'est le roman, à la fois drame et épopée, pittoresque mais poétique,
   réel mais idéal, vrai mais grand, qui enchâssera Walter Scott dans
   Homère.--VICTOR HUGO on "Quentin Durward."