'But to read it all through, papa-three times, ten times, for all one's life? Poor Mr. Bias!'

'It is a matter of opinion, my dear boy,' I said. Bias has this great advantage over you in literary matters, that he knows what he is talking about; and if he was quite sure

'Oh! but he was not quite sure: he was rather doubtful, he said, about one of the books.'

'Not the Bible, I do hope?' said I fervently.

'No, about the other. He was not quite sure but that, instead of Gil Blas, he ought to have selected Don Quixote. Now really that seems to me worse than Gil Blas.'

'You mean less excellent,' I rejoined; you are too young to appreciate the full signification of Don Quixote.'

The scoundrel murmured, 'Do you mean to tell me people read it when they are old?' but I pretended not to hear him. 'We do not all of us,' I went on, know what is good for us.

physician

Sancho Panza's

'Oh! I know that physician-well, papa. I sometimes think, if it had not been for that physician, perhaps―'

6

"Hush!' I exclaimed authoritatively; let us have no flippancy, I beg.' And so, with a dead lift as it were, I got rid of him. He left the room muttering, But to read it through-three times, ten times, for all one's life?' And I was obliged to confess to myself that such a prolonged course of study, even of Don Quixote, would have been wearisome.

Rabelais is another article of our literary faith, that is certainly subscribed to much more often than believed in. In a certain poem of Mr. Browning's (I call it the Burial of the Book, since the Latin name he has given it is unpronounceable, even if it were possible to recollect it), charmingly humorous, and which is also remarkable for impersonating an inanimate object in verse as Dickens does in prose, there occur these lines:

Yet I have known some wonder to be expressed (confidentially) as to where he found the 'jolly chapter,' and the looking for the beauties of Rabelais to be likened to searching in a huge bed of manure for a few heads of asparagus.

I have no quarrel with Bias and Company (though they stick a nothing, and will presently say that I don't care for these books myself), but I venture to think that they are wrong in making dogmas of what are, after all, but matters of literary taste; it is their vehemence and exaggeration which drive the weak to take refuge in falsehood.

A good woman in the country once complained of her stepson, He will not love his learning, though I beats him with a jackchain;' and from the application of similar aids to instruction the same result takes place in London. Only here we dissemble and pretend to love it. It is partly in consequence of this that works, not only of acknowledged but genuine excellence, such as those I have been careful to select, are, though so universally praised, so little read. The poor student attempts them, but failing-from many causes no doubt, but also sometimes from the fact of their not being there-to find those unrivalled beauties which he has been led to expect in every sentence, he stops short, where he would otherwise have gone on. He says to himself I have been deceived,' or 'I must be a born fool;' whereas he is wrong in both suppositions. I am convinced that the want of popularity of Walter Scott among the rising generation is partly due to this extravagant laudation; and I am much mistaken if another great author, more recently deceased, will not in a few years be added to the ranks of those who are more praised than read from the same cause.

The habit of mere adhesion to received opinion in any matter is most mischievous, for it strikes at the root of independence of thought; and in literature it tends to make the public taste mechanical. It is very seldom that what is called the verdict of posterity (absurdly enough, for are not we posterity ?) is ever reversed; but it has chanced to happen in a certain case quite lately. The production of The Iron Chest upon the stage has once more brought into fashion Caleb Williams. Now that is a work, though by no means belonging to the same rank as those to which I have referred, which has a fine old crusted reputation. Time has hallowed it. The great world of readers (who have never read it) used to echo the remark of Bias and Company, that this and that modern work of fiction reminded them-though at an immense distance, of course-of Godwin's masterpiece. I remember Le Fanu's Uncle Silas, for example (from some similarity, more fanciful perhaps than real, in the isolation of its hero), being thus compared with it. Now Caleb Williams is founded on a very fine conception-one that could only have occurred, perhaps, to a man of genius; the first part of it is well worked out, but towards the middle it grows feeble, and it ends in tediousness and drivel; whereas Uncle Silas is good and strong from first to last. Le Fanu has never been so popular as, in my humble judgment, he deserves to be, but of course modern readers were better acquainted with him than with Godwin. Yet nine out of ten were always heard repeating this cuckoo cry about the latter's superiority, until the Iron Chest came out, and Fashion induced them to read him for themselves; which has very properly changed their opinion.

I remember, in my own case, that, from that mere reverence for authority which I hope I share with my neighbours, I used to speak of Headlong Hall and Crotchet Castle-both great favourites of our

forefathers-with much respect, until one wet day in the country I found myself shut up with them. I won't say what I suffered; better judges of literature than myself admire them still, I know. I will only remark that I don't admire them. I don't say they are the dullest novels ever printed, because that would be invidious, and might do wrong to works of even greater pretensions; but to my mind they are dull.

When Dr. Johnson is free to confess that he does not admire Gray's Elegy, and Macaulay to avow that he sees little to praise in Dickens and Wordsworth, why should not humbler folks have the courage of their own opinions? They cannot possibly be more wrong than Johnson and Macaulay were, and it is surely better to be honest, though it may expose one to some ridicule, than to lie. The more we agree with the verdict of the generations before us on these matters, the more, it is quite true, we are likely to be right; but the agreement should be an honest one. At present very extensive domains in literature are, as it were, enclosed and denied to the public in respect to any free expression of their opinion. They are splendid, they are faultless,' cries the general voice, but the general eye has not beheld them. Nothing, of course, could be more futile than that, with every new generation, our old authors who have won their fame should be arraigned anew at the bar of public criticism; but, on the other hand, there is no reason why the mouths of us poor moderns should be muzzled, and still less that we should praise with alien lips.'

'Until Caldecott's charming illustrations of it made me laugh so much,' said a young lady to me the other day, 'I confess-though I know it's very stupid of me-I never saw much fun in John Gilpin.' She evidently expected a reproof, and when I whispered in her ear 'Nor I,' her lovely features assumed a look of positive enfranchisement.

'But am I right?' she inquired.

'You are certainly right, my dear young lady,' said I, 'not to pretend admiration where you don't feel it; as to liking John Gilpin, that is a matter of taste. It has, of course, simplicity to recommend it; but in my own case, though I'm fond of fun, it has never evoked a smile. It has always seemed to me like one of Mr. Joe Miller's stories put into tedious verse.'

I really almost thought (and hoped) that that young lady would have kissed me.

'Papa always says it is a free country,' she exclaimed, but I never felt it to be the case before this moment.'

For years this beautiful and accomplished creature had locked this awful secret in her innocent breast-that she didn't see much fun in John Gilpin. You have given me courage,' she said, 'to confess something else. Mr. Caldecott has just been illustrating in the same charming manner Goldsmith's Elegy on a Mad Dog, and

-I'm very sorry-but I never laughed at that before, either. I have pretended to laugh, you know,' she added, hastily and apologetically, "hundreds of times.'

I don't doubt it,' I replied; this is not such a free country as your father supposes.'

'But am I right?'

I say nothing about "right," I answered, except that everybody has a right to his own opinion. For my part, however, I think the Mad Dog better than John Gilpin only because it is shorter.'

Whether I was wrong or right in the matter is of no consequence even to myself; the affection and gratitude of that young creature would more than repay me for a much greater mistake, if mistake it is. She protests that I have emancipated her from slavery. She has since talked to me about all sorts of authors, from Sir Philip Sidney to Washington Irving, in a way that would make some people's blood run cold; but it has no such effect upon me-quite the reverse. Of Irving she naïvely remarks that his strokes of humour seem to her to owe much of their success to the rarity of their occurrence; the flashes of fun are spread over pages of dulness, which enhance them, just as a dark night is propitious to fireworks, or the atmosphere of the House of Commons, or a Court of Law, to a joke. She is often in error, no doubt, but how bright and wholesome such talk is as compared with the platitudes and commonplaces which one hears on all sides in connection with literature!

As a rule, I suppose, even people in society (the drawing-rooms and the clubs') are not absolutely base, and yet one would really think so, to judge by the fear that is entertained by them of being natural. I vow to Heaven,' says the prince of letter-writers, that I think the Parrots of Society are more intolerable and mischievous than its Birds of Prey. If ever I destroy myself, it will be in the bitterness of having those infernal and damnable "good old times" extolled.' One is almost tempted to say the same-when one hears their praises come from certain mouths-of the good old books. It is not every one, of course, who has an opinion of his own upon any subject, far less on that of literature, but every one can abstain from expressing an opinion that is not his own. If one has no voice, what possible compensation can there be in becoming an echo?

No one,

3

I conclude, would wish to see literature discoursed about in the same pinchbeck and affected style as are painting and music; 3 yet that is what will happen if this prolific weed of sham admiration is permitted to attain its full growth.

The slang of art-talk has reached the 'young men' in the furniture warehouses. A friend of mine was recommended a sideboard the other day as not being a Chippendale, but having a Chippendale feeling in it.'

JAMES PAYN.

NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENTS IN

THE FIELD.

MUCH has been said and written lately on the position of war correspondents with an army in the field. The new rules relating to them have raised a journalistic storm. Most newspapers have accepted them as a personal insult to the press. A few have taken a higher line, have been above a class prejudice, and have recognised what was necessary for the public good. Mr. Archibald Forbes, in the January number of this Review, dissects the much-abused rules piecemeal, and gives to the public what he presumably supposes to be, or intends that it should suppose to be, a fair statement of the case. Many will widely differ from him.

Journalism has adopted the rôle of the injured party. It has, no doubt, personally suffered. It possesses the means of making itself heard, and it has not scrupled to use them. Few, with the exception of war correspondents and soldiers, have been behind the scenes on active service. The former say they are cruelly ill-used, and have cried out indignantly: the tongues of the latter are tied. They may rush into print if they like, but to do so would go sorely against the grain, while their opinions would be considered biassed. Therefore it turns out that only one side is heard. There is, however, another.

I can lay claim, like Mr. Forbes, to having seen something of war. I have even acted for a short time as a war correspondent. I am not a soldier, and I am convinced, from personal observation in different campaigns, that every word of the new press regulations is necessary, and that, if they are withdrawn, a general in command of a force in the field will have either to incur the odium of enacting new ones for the guidance of correspondents accompanying him, or to adopt some other means for their control.

Newspaper correspondents have of late years grown to be acknowledged as a necessary part of our armies during a campaign, but their position with such forces has, in many ways, been that of guests. They have held no recognised official status. The amount of reliable news given to them from head-quarters has depended entirely on the inclination of the general in command; therefore their chief sources of information have hitherto been the general conversation of camps, and what they themselves have seen, the conclusions