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THE ENGLISH STAGE




_WORKS BY THE AUTHOR._

  PROFILS ANGLAIS.
  MERIMEE ET SES AMIS.
  VIOLETTE MERIAN.
  AMOURS ANGLAIS.
  LES CONTES DU CENTENAIRE.
  ETC. ETC.




  THE ENGLISH STAGE

  _Being an Account of the Victorian Drama by Augustin Filon_

  Translated from the French by Frederic Whyte with
  an Introduction by Henry Arthur Jones


  JOHN MILNE
  12 NORFOLK STREET, STRAND, LONDON

  NEW YORK
  DODD, MEAD, & COMPANY
  MDCCCXCVII




_All Rights Reserved_




CONTENTS


                                                                    PAGE

  Introduction by Mr. Henry Arthur Jones                               9

  Author's Preface                                                    31


  CHAPTER I

  A Glance back--From 1820 to 1830--Kean and Macready--The
  Strolling Player--The Critics--Sheridan Knowles and
  _Virginius_--Douglas Jerrold--His Comedies--_The Rent
  Day_--_The Prisoner of War_--_Black-Eyed Susan_--Collapse of
  the Privileged Theatres--Men of Letters come to the Rescue of
  the Drama--Bulwer Lytton--_The Lady of Lyons_--_Richelieu_--
  _Money_                                                             39


  CHAPTER II

  Macready's Withdrawal from the Stage--The Enemies of the
  Drama in 1850: Puritanism; the Opera; the Pantomime; the
  "Hippodrama"--French Plays and French Players in England--
  Actors of the Period--The Censorship--The Critics--The
  Historical Plays of Tom Taylor and the Irish Plays of Dion
  Boucicault                                                          73


  CHAPTER III

  The Vogue of Burlesque--Burnand's _Ixion_--H. J. Byron--The
  Influence of Burlesque upon the Moral Tone of the Stage--Marie
  Wilton's Debut--A Letter from Dickens--Founding of the Prince
  of Wales's--Tom Robertson, his Life as Actor and Author--His
  Journalistic Career--London Bohemia in 1865--Sothern                93


  CHAPTER IV

  First Performance of _Society_--Success of _Ours_, _Caste_,
  and _School_--How Robertson turned to account the Talent of
  his Actors, John Hare, Bancroft, and Mrs. Bancroft--Progress
  in the Matter of Scenery--Dialogue and Character-drawing--
  Robertson as a Humorist: a Scene from _School_--As a Realist:
  a Scene from _Caste_--The Comedian of the Upper Middle
  Classes--Robertson's Marriage, Illness, and Death--The "Cup
  and Saucer" Comedy--The Improvement in Actors' Salaries--The
  Bancrofts at the Haymarket--Farewell Performance--My
  Pilgrimage to Tottenham Street                                     114


  CHAPTER V

  Gilbert: compared with Robertson--His First Literary Efforts--
  The _Bab Ballads_--_Sweethearts_--A Series of Experiments--
  Gilbert's Psychology and Methods of Work--_Dan'l Druce_,
  _Engaged_, _The Palace of Truth_, _The Wicked World_,
  _Pygmalion and Galatea_--The Gilbert and Sullivan Operas           138


  CHAPTER VI

  Shakespeare again--From Macready to Irving; Phelps, Fechter,
  Ryder, Adelaide Neilson--Irving's Debut--His Career in the
  Provinces, and Visit to Paris--The role of Digby Grand--The
  role of Matthias--The Production of _Hamlet_--Successive
  Triumphs--Irving as Stage Manager--as an Editor of
  Shakespeare--His Defects as an Actor--Too great for some of
  his Parts--As a Writer and Lecturer; his Theory of Art--Sir
  Henry Irving, Head of his Profession                               156


  CHAPTER VII

  Is it well to imitate Shakespeare?--The Death of the Classical
  Drama--Herman Merivale and the _White Pilgrim_--Wills and his
  Plays: _Charles the First_, _Claudian_--Tennyson as a
  Dramatist; he comes too soon and too late--Tennyson and the
  Critics--_The Falcon_, _The Promise of May_, _The Cup_,
  _Becket_, _Queen Mary_, _Harold_                                   174


  CHAPTER VIII

  The Three Publics--The Disappearance of Burlesque and Decadence
  of Pantomime--Increasing Vogue of Farce and Melodrama--
  Improvement in Acting--The Influence of our French Actors--The
  "Old" Critics and the "New"--James Mortimer and his Two
  "Almavivas"--Mr. William Archer's Ideas and Role--The
  Vicissitudes of Adaptation                                         193


  CHAPTER IX

  The Three Principal Dramatists of To-day--Sydney Grundy; his
  First Efforts--Adaptations: _The Snowball_, _In Honour Bound_,
  _A Pair of Spectacles_, _The Bunch of Violets_--His Original
  Plays--His Style--His Humour--His Ethical Ideal--_An Old
  Jew_--_The New Woman_--A Talent which has not done growing         212


  CHAPTER X

  Henry Arthur Jones; his First Works--His Melodramas--_Saints
  and Sinners_--The Puritans and the Theatre--The Two Deacons:
  the Character of Fletcher--_Judah_--_The Crusaders_: Character
  of Palsam; the Conclusion of the Piece--_The Case of Rebellious
  Susan_--_The Masqueraders_--Return to Melodrama--Theories
  expounded by Mr. Jones in his Book: _The Renascence of the
  Drama_                                                             234


  CHAPTER XI

  Two Portraits--Mr. Pinero's Career as an Actor--His Early
  Works--_The Squire, Lords and Commons_--The Pieces which
  followed, Half-Comedy, Half-Farce--_The Profligate_; its
  Success and Defects: _Lady Bountiful_--_The Second Mrs.
  Tanqueray_: Character of Paula--Mrs. Patrick Campbell--_The
  Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith_                                           254


  CHAPTER XII

  Ibsen made known to the English Public by Mr. Edmund Gosse--
  The First Translations--Ibsen acted in London--The Performers
  and the Public--Encounters between the Critics--Mr. Archer
  once more--Affinity between the Norwegian Character and the
  English--Ibsen's Realism suited to English Taste, his
  Characters adaptable to English Life--The Women in his Plays--
  Ibsen and Mr. Jones--Present and Future Influence of Ibsen--
  Objections and Obstacles                                           277


  CHAPTER XIII

  G. R. Sims--R. C. Carton--Haddon Chambers--The Independent
  Theatre and Matinee Performance--The Drama of To-morrow--A
  "Report of Progress"--The Public and the Actors--
  Actor-Managers--The Forces that have given Birth to the
  Contemporary English Drama--Disappearance of the Obstacles to
  its becoming Modern and National--Conclusion                       300




INTRODUCTION

BY HENRY ARTHUR JONES


I have rarely had a more welcome task than that of saying a few words of
introduction to the following essays, and of heartily commending them to
the English reading public. I am not called upon, nor would it become me,
to recriticise the criticism of the English drama they contain, to reargue
any of the issues raised, or to vent my own opinions of the persons and
plays hereafter dealt with. My business is to thank M. Filon for bringing
us before the notice of the French public, to speak of his work as a whole
rather than to discuss it in detail, and to define his position in
relation to the recent dramatic movement in our country.

But before addressing myself to these main ends, I may perhaps be allowed
to call attention to one or two striking passages and individual
judgments. The picture in the first chapter of the old actor's life on
circuit is capitally done. I do not know where to look for so animated and
succinct a rendering of that phase of past theatrical life. And the
pilgrimage to the deserted Prince of Wales's Theatre also left a vivid
impression on me, perhaps quickened by my own early memories. In all that
relates to the early Victorian drama M. Filon seems to me a sure and
penetrating guide. All lovers of the English drama, as distinguished from
that totally different and in many ways antagonistic institution, the
English theatre, must be pleased to see M. Filon stripping the spangles
from Bulwer Lytton. To this day Lytton remains an idol of English
playgoers and actors, a lasting proof of their inability to distinguish
what is dramatic truth. _The Lady of Lyons_ and _Richelieu_ still rank in
many theatrical circles with _Hamlet_ as masterpieces of the "legitimate,"
and _Money_ is still bracketed with _The School for Scandal_. It is
benevolent of M. Filon to write dramatic criticism about a nation where
such notions have prevailed for half a century.

The criticism on Tennyson as a playwright seems to me equally admirable
with the criticism on Bulwer Lytton, and all the more admirable when the
two are read in conjunction. Doubtless Tennyson will never be so
successful on the boards as Lytton has been. _Becket_ is a loose and
ill-made play in many respects, and succeeded with the public only because
Irving was able to pull it into some kind of unity by buckling it round
his great impersonation of the archbishop. But _Becket_ contains great
things, and is a real addition to our dramatic literature. It would have
been a thousand pities if it had failed. On the other hand, the success of
Lytton's plays has been a real misfortune to our drama. You cannot have
two standards of taste in dramatic poetry. Just as surely as the
circulation of bad money in a country drives out all the good, so surely
does a base and counterfeit currency in art drive out all finer and higher
things that contend with it. In his measurement of those two ancient
enemies, Tennyson and Lytton, M. Filon has shown a rare power of
understanding us and of entering into the spirit of our nineteenth-century
poetic drama.

If I may be allowed a word of partial dissent from M. Filon, I would say
that he assigns too much space and influence to Robertson. Robertson did
one great thing: he drew the great and vital tragi-comic figure of Eccles.
He drew many other pleasing characters and scenes, most of them as
essentially false as the falsities and theatricalities he supposed himself
to be superseding. I shall be reminded that in the volume before us M.
Filon says that all reforms of the drama pretend to be a return to nature
and to truth. I have elsewhere shown that there is no such thing as being
consistently and realistically "true to nature" on the stage. _Hamlet_ in
many respects is farther away from real life than the shallowest and
emptiest farce. It is in the seizure and presentation of the essential and
distinguishing marks of a character, of a scene, of a passion, of a
society, of a phase of life, of a movement of national thought--it is in
the seizure and vivid treatment of some of these, to the exclusion or
falsification of non-essentials, that the dramatist must lay his claim to
sincerity and being "true to nature." And it seems to me that one has
only to compare _Caste_, the typical comedy of an English _mesalliance_,
with _Le Gendre de M. Poirier_, the typical comedy of a French
_mesalliance_, to come to the conclusion that in the foundation and
conduct of his story Robertson was false and theatrical--theatrical, that
is, in the employment of a social contrast that was effective on the
stage, but well-nigh, if not quite, impossible in life.

It is of the smallest moment to be "true to nature" in such mint and
cummin of the stage as the shutting of a door with a real lock, in the
observation of niceties of expression and behaviour, in the careful
copying of little fleeting modes and gestures, in the introduction of
certain realistic bits of business--it is, I say, of the smallest moment
to be "true to nature" in these, if the playwright is false to nature in
all the great verities of the heart and spirit of man, if his work as a
whole leaves the final impression that the vast, unimaginable drama of
human life is as petty and meaningless and empty as our own English
theatre. A fair way to measure any dramatist is to ask this question of
his work: "Does he make human life as small as his own theatre, so that
there is nothing more to be said about either; or does he hint that human
life so far transcends any theatre that all attempts to deal with it on
the boards, even the highest, even Hamlet, even OEdipus, even Faust, are
but shadows and guesses and perishable toys of the stage?"

Robertson has nothing to say to us in 1896. He drew one great character
and many pleasing ones in puerile, impossible schemes, without relation to
any larger world than the very narrow English theatrical world of 1865-70.

In his analysis of the influence of Ibsen in England and France, M. Filon
seems to touch the right note. I may perhaps be permitted a word of
personal explanation in this connection. When I came up to London sixteen
years ago, to try for a place among English playwrights, a rough
translation from the German version of _The Dolls' House_ was put into my
hands, and I was told that if it could be turned into a sympathetic play,
a ready opening would be found for it on the London boards. I knew nothing
of Ibsen, but I knew a great deal of Robertson and H. J. Byron. From these
circumstances came the adaptation called _Breaking a Butterfly_. I pray it
may be forgotten from this time, or remembered only with leniency amongst
other transgressions of my dramatic youth and ignorance.

I pass on to speak of M. Filon's work as a whole. For a generation or two
past France has held the lead, and rightly held the lead, in the European
theatre. She has done this by virtue of a peculiar innate dramatic
instinct in her people; by virtue of great traditions and thorough methods
of training; by virtue of national recognition of her dramatists and
actors, and national pride in them; and by virtue of the freedom she has
allowed to her playwrights. So far as they have abused that freedom, so
far as they have become the mere purveyors of sexual eccentricity and
perversity, so far the French drama has declined. So cunningly economic is
Nature, she will slip in her moral by hook or by crook. There cannot be an
intellectual effort in any province of art without a moral implication.

But France, though her great band of playwrights is broken up, still lords
it over the European drama, or rather, over the European theatre. There is
still a feeling among our upper-class English audiences that a play, an
author, an actor and actress, are good _because_ they are French. There
is, or has been, a sound reason for that feeling. And there is still, as
M. Filon says in his Preface, a corresponding feeling in France that
"there is no such thing as an English drama." There has been an equally
sound reason for that feeling. M. Filon has done us the great kindness of
trying to remove it. We still feel very shy in coming before our French
neighbours, like humble, honest, poor relations who are getting on a
little in the world, and would like to have a nod from our aristocratic
kinsfolk. We are uneasy about the reception we shall meet, and nervous and
diffident in making our bow to the French public. A nod from our
aristocratic relations, a recognition from France, might be of so much use
in our parish here at home. For in all matters of the modern drama England
is no better than a parish, with "porochial" judgments, "porochial"
instincts, and "porochial" ways of looking at things. There is not a
breath of national sentiment, a breath of national feeling, of width of
view, in the way English playgoers regard their drama.

M. Filon has sketched in the following pages the history of the recent
dramatic movement in England. If I were asked what was the distinguishing
mark of that movement, I should say that during the years when it was in
progress there was a steadfast and growing attempt to treat the great
realities of our modern life upon our stage, to bring our drama into
relation with our literature, our religion, our art, and our science, and
to make it reflect the main movements of our national thought and
character. That anything great or permanent was accomplished I am the last
to claim; all was crude, confused, tentative, aspiring. But there was
_life_ in it. Again I shall be reminded that dramatic reformers always
pretend that they return to nature and truth, and are generally found out
by the next generation to be stale and theatrical impostors. But if anyone
will take the trouble to examine the leading English plays of the last ten
years, and will compare them with the _serious_ plays of our country
during the last three centuries, I shall be mistaken if he will not find
evidence of the beginnings, the first shoots of an English drama of
greater import and vitality and of wider aim than any school of drama the
English theatre has known since the Elizabethans. The brilliant
Restoration comedy makes no pretence to be a national drama: neither do
the comedies of Sheridan and Goldsmith. There was no possibility of a
great national English drama between Milton and the French Revolution, any
more than there was the possibility of a great school of English poetry.
And the feelings that were let loose after the convulsions of 1793 did not
in England run in the direction of the drama. It is only within the
present generation that great masses of Englishmen have begun to frequent
the theatre. And as our vast city population began to get into a habit of
playgoing, and our theatres became more crowded, it seemed not too much to
hope that a school of English drama might be developed amongst us, and
that we might induce more and more of our theatre-goers to find their
pleasure in seeing their lives portrayed at the theatre, rather than in
running to the theatre to escape from their lives.

After considerable advances had been made in this direction, the movement
became obscured and burlesqued, and finally the British public fell into
what Macaulay calls one of its periodical panics of morality. In that
panic the English drama disappeared for the time, and at the moment of
writing it does not exist. There are many excellent entertainments at our
different theatres, and most of them are deservedly successful. But in the
very height of this theatrical season there is not a single London theatre
that is giving a play that so much as pretends to picture our modern
English life,--I might almost say that pretends to picture human life at
all. I have not a word to say against these various entertainments. I
have been delighted with some of them, and heartily welcome their success.
But what has become of the English drama that M. Filon has given so many
of the following pages to discuss and dissect? I wish M. Filon would
devote another article in the _Revue des deux Mondes_ to explain to his
countrymen what has taken place in the English theatre since his articles
were written. It needs a Frenchman to explain, and a French audience to
understand, the full comedy of the situation.

For ten years the English theatre-going public had been led to take an
increasing interest in their national drama,--I mean the drama as a
picture of life in opposition to a funny theatrical entertainment,--and
during those ten years that drama had grown in strength of purpose, in
largeness of aim, in vividness of character-painting, in every quality
that promised England a living school of drama. It began to deal with the
great realities of modern English life. It was pressing on to be a real
force in the spiritual and intellectual life of the nation. It began to
attract the attention of Europe. But it became entangled with another
movement, got caught in the skirts of the sexual-pessimistic blizzard
sweeping over North Europe, was confounded with it, and was execrated and
condemned without examination. I say without examination. Let anyone turn
to the _Times_ of November 1894, and read the correspondence which began
the assault on the modern school of English drama. Let him discover, if
he can, in the letters of those who attacked it, what notions they had as
to the relations of morality to the drama. It will interest M. Filon's
countrymen to know that British playwrights were condemned in the
interests of British morality. And when one tried to find out what
particular sort of morality the English public was trying to teach its
dramatists, one discovered at last that it was precisely that system of
morality which is practised amongst wax dolls. Not the broad, genial,
worldly morality of Shakespeare; not the deep, devious, confused, but most
human morality of the Bible; not a high, severe, ascetic morality; not
even a sour, grim, puritanic morality. No! let any candid inquirer search
into this matter and try to get at the truth of it, and ask what has been
the recent demand of the English public in this matter, and he will find
it is for a wax-doll morality.

Now, there is much to be said for the establishment of a system of
wax-doll morality, not only on the English stage, but also in the world at
large. And all of us who have properly-regulated minds must regret that,
through some unaccountable oversight, it did not occur to Providence to
carry on the due progress and succession of the human species by means of
some such system.

I say it must have been an oversight. For can we doubt that, had this
excellent method suggested itself, it would have been instantly adopted?
Can we suppose that Providence would have deliberately rejected so sweetly
pretty and simple an expedient for putting a stop to immorality, not only
on the English stage to-day, but everywhere and always?

I know there is a real dilemma. But surely those of us who are truly
reverent will suspect Providence of a little nodding and negligence in
this matter, rather than of virtual complicity with immorality--for that
is what the alternate hypothesis amounts to.

But seeing that, by reason of this lamentable oversight of Providence,
English life is not sustained and renewed by means of wax-doll morality,
what is a poor playwright to do? I am quite aware that what is going on in
English life has nothing whatever to do with what is going on at the
English theatres in the autumn of 1896. Still, like Caleb Plummer, in a
matter of this kind one would like to get "as near natur' as possible,"
or, at least, not to falsify and improve her beyond all chance of
recognition. I hope I shall not be accused of any feeling of enmity
against wax-doll morality in the abstract. I think it a most excellent,
nay, a perfect theory of morals. The more I consider it, the more eloquent
I could grow in its favour. I do not mean to practise it myself, but I do
most cordially recommend it to all my neighbours.

To return. The correspondence in the _Times_ showed scarcely a suspicion
that morality on the stage meant anything else than shutting one's eyes
alike to facts and to truth, and making one's characters behave like wax
dolls. As to the bent and purpose of the dramatist, there was so little
of the dramatic sense abroad, that an act of a play which was written to
ridicule the detestable, cheap, paradoxical affectations of vice and
immorality current among a certain section of society was censured as
being an attempt to _copy_ the thing it was _satirising_! So impossible is
it to get the average Englishman to distinguish for a moment between the
dramatist and his characters. The one notion that the public got into its
head was that we were a set of gloomy corrupters of youth, and it hooted
accordingly. Now, I do not deny that many undesirable things, many things
to regret, many extreme things, and some few unclean things, fastened upon
the recent dramatic movement. And so far as it had morbid issues, so far
as it tended merely to distress and confuse, so far as it painted vice and
ugliness for their own sakes, so far it was rightly and inevitably
condemned, nay, so far it condemned and destroyed itself. But these, I
maintain, were side-tendencies. They were not the essence of the movement.
They were the extravagances and confusions that always attend a revival,
whether in art or religion. And by the general public, who can never get
but one idea, and never more than one side of that idea, into its head at
a time, these extravagances and side-shoots are taken for the very heart
of the movement.

Take the Oxford movement. Did the great British public get a glimmer of
Newman's lofty idea of the continual indwelling miraculous spiritual
force of the Church? No. It got a notion into its head that a set of
rabid, dishonest bigots were trying to violate the purity of its
Protestant religion, so it hooted and howled, stamped upon the movement,
and went back to hug the sallow corpse of Evangelicalism for another
quarter of a century. The movement was thought to be killed. But it was
only scotched, and it is the one living force in the English Church
to-day.

Take, again, the aesthetic movement. Did the great British public get a
glimmer of William Morris's lofty idea of making every home in England
beautiful? No. It got a notion into its head that a set of idiotic <DW2>s
had gone crazy in worship of sunflowers; so it giggled and derided, and
went back to its geometric-patterned Brussels carpets, its flock
wall-papers, and all the damnable trumpery of Tottenham Court Road. The
movement was thought to be killed, but it was only scotched; and whatever
beauty there is in English interiors, whatever advance has been made in
decorating our homes, is due to that movement. Again, to compare small
things with great, in the recent attempt to give England a living national
drama, we have been judged not upon the essence of the matter, but upon
certain extravagances and side-tendencies. The great public got a notion
into its head that a set of gloomy, vicious persons had conspired to
corrupt the youth of our nation by writing immoral plays. And the untimely
accident of a notorious prosecution giving some colour to the opinion, no
further examination was made of the matter. A clean sweep was made of the
whole business, and a rigid system of wax-doll morality established
forthwith, so far, that is, as the modern prose drama is concerned. But
this wax-doll morality is only enforced against the serious drama of
modern life. It is not enforced against farce, or musical comedy. It is
only the serious dramatist who has been gagged and handcuffed. Adultery is
still an excellent joke in a farce, provided it is conveyed by winks and
nods. The whole body of a musical entertainment may reek with cockney
indecency and witlessness, and yet no English mother will sniff offence,
provided it is covered up with dances and songs. I repeat that if a
thorough examination is made of the matter, it will be found that the
recent movement has been judged upon a small side-issue.

We may hope that the English translation of M. Filon's work will do
something to reinstate us in the good opinion of our countrymen. I think,
if his readers will take his cue that during the last few years there has
been an earnest attempt on the part of a few writers to establish a living
English drama, that is, a drama which within necessary limitations and
conventions sets out with a determination to see English life as it really
is and to paint English men and women as they really are--I think if
playgoers will take that cue from M. Filon, they will get a better notion
of the truth of the case than if they still regard us as gloomy and
perverse corrupters of English youth.

A passage from George Meredith may perhaps serve to indicate the position
of the English drama at the present moment, and to point in what direction
its energies should lie when the gags and handcuffs are removed, and the
stiffness gets out of its joints. At the opening of _Diana of the
Crossways_ these memorable words occur:--

"Then, ah! then, moreover, will the novelist's art (and the dramatist's),
now neither blushless infant nor executive man, have attained its
majority. We can then be veraciously historical, honestly transcriptive.
Rose-pink and dirty drab will alike have passed away. Philosophy is the
foe of both, and their silly cancelling contest, perpetually renewed in a
shuffle of extremes, as it always is where a phantasm falseness reigns,
will no longer baffle the contemplation of natural flesh, smother no
longer the soul issuing out of our incessant strife. Philosophy bids us to
see that we are not so pretty as rose-pink, not so repulsive as dirty
drab; and that, instead of everlastingly shifting those barren aspects,
the sight of ourselves is wholesome, bearable, fructifying, finally a
delight. Do but perceive that we are coming to philosophy, the stride
toward it will be a giant's--a century a day. And imagine the celestial
refreshment of having a pure decency in the place of sham; real flesh; a
soul born active, wind-beaten, but ascending. Honourable will fiction (and
the drama) then appear; honourable, a fount of life, an aid to life, quick
with our blood. Why, when you behold it you love it,--and you will not
encourage it?--or only when presented by dead hands? Worse than that
alternative dirty drab, your recurring rose-pink is rebuked by hideous
revelations of the filthy foul; for nature will force her way, and if you
try to stifle her by drowning she comes up, not the fairest part of her
uppermost! Peruse your Realists--really your castigators, for not having
yet embraced philosophy. As she grows in the flesh when discreetly tended,
nature is unimpeachable, flower-like, yet not too decoratively a flower;
you must have her with the stem, the thorns, the roots, and the fat
bedding of roses. In this fashion she grew, says historical fiction; thus
does she flourish now, would say the modern transcript, reading the inner
as well as exhibiting the outer.

"And how may you know that you have reached to philosophy? You touch her
skirts when you share her hatred of the sham decent, her derision of
sentimentalism. You are one with her when--but I would not have you a
thousand years older! Get to her, if in no other way, by the sentimental
route:--that very winding path, which again and again brings you round to
the point of original impetus, where you have to be unwound for another
whirl; your point of original impetus being the grossly material, not at
all the spiritual. It is most true that sentimentalism springs from the
former, merely and badly aping the latter;--fine flower, or pinnacle
flame-spire, of sensualism that it is, could it do other?--and
accompanying the former it traverses tracks of desert, here and there
couching in a garden, catching with one hand at fruits, with another at
colours; imagining a secret ahead, and goaded by an appetite sustained by
sheer gratifications. Fiddle in harmonics as it may, it will have these
gratifications at all costs. Should none be discoverable, at once you are
at the Cave of Despair, beneath the funeral orb of Glaucoma, in the thick
midst of poinarded, slit-throat, rope-dependent figures, placarded across
the bosom Disillusioned, Infidel, Agnostic, Miserrimus. That is the
sentimental route to advancement. Spirituality does not light it;
evanescent dreams are its oil