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ESSAYS


_OTHER WORKS BY Mr. A. C. BENSON_

_In Verse_

POEMS, 1893

LYRICS, 1895

_In Prose_

MEMOIRS OF
ARTHUR HAMILTON, 1886

ARCHBISHOP LAUD: A STUDY,
1887

MEN OF MIGHT (in conjunction
with H. F. W. TATHAM), 1890




ESSAYS

BY
ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON
OF ETON COLLEGE

_Post aliquot, mea regna videns, mirabor aristas!_

LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1896

_All rights reserved_


    _To_
    HENRY JAMES
    THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
    BY
    HIS AFFECTIONATE FRIEND
    THE AUTHOR




PREFACE


It would be easy, if need were, to devise a theory of coherence for the
Essays here selected for re-publication, but the truth is that they are
fortuitous. The only claim that I can consistently make, is that I have
always chosen, for biographical and critical study, figures whose
personality or writings have seemed to me to possess some subtle,
evasive charm, or delicate originality of purpose or view. Mystery,
inexplicable reticence, haughty austerity, have a fascination in life
and literature, that is sometimes denied to sanguine strength and easy
volubility. I am well aware that vitality and majesty are the primary
qualities to demand both in life and literature. I have nothing but
rebellious horror for the view that languor, if only it be subtle and
serpentine, is in itself admirable. But there are two kinds of languor.
Just as the poverty of a man born needy, and incapable of acquiring
wealth, is different in kind from the poverty of one who has sacrificed
wealth in some noble cause, so the deliberate, the self-conscious
languor "about three degrees on this side of faintness," of which Keats
wrote in his most voluptuous mood, is a very different thing from the
languor of Hamlet, the fastidious despair of ever realising some lofty
conception, the prostrate indifference of one who has found the world
too strong. I do not say that the note of failure is a characteristic of
all the figures in my narrow gallery of portraits. But I will say that
they were most of them persons about whom hung an undefined promise of
greater strength than ever issued in performance. The causes of their
comparative failure are difficult to disentangle. With one perhaps it
was the want of a sympathetic _entourage_; with another a dreamy or
mystical habit of thought; with this one, the immersion in uncongenial
pursuits; with that a certain failure in physical vitality; with
another, the work, accomplished in dignified serenity, has fallen too
swiftly into neglect, and we must endeavour to divine the cause: and yet
in no case can we trace any inherent weakness, any moral obliquity, any
degrading or enervating concession.

Perhaps one of the greatest mistakes we make in literature and art is
the passionate individualism into which we are betrayed. We cannot bring
ourselves to speak or think very highly of the level of a man's work,
unless the positive and tangible results of that work are in themselves
very weighty and pure. We forget all about the inspirers and teachers of
poets and artists. How often does the poet, and the artist too, in
autobiographical allusion, speak with absorbing gratitude and devotion
of some humble name of which we take no note, as the "fons et origo" to
himself of enthusiasm and proficiency.

It is with no affectation of fastidious superiority, but with a frank
confession of conscious pettiness, that I say that this book will only
appeal to a few. The critic is no hero: he is at best but a skipping
peltast, engaged as often as not in inglorious flight. To flounder in
images, criticism is nothing but a species of mistletoe, sprouting in a
sleek bunch in the chink of a lofty forest tree. I had rather have been
Lovelace than Sainte-Beuve, and write one immortal lyric than
thirty-five volumes of the acutest discrimination. But a minority has a
right to its opinions,