MR. FREEMAN, in contributing to the “London Mercury” some of those critical analyses which we all admire, remarked about myself (along with compliments only too generous and strictures almost entirely just) that there was very little autobiography in my writings. I hope the reader will not have reason to curse him for this kindly provocation, watching me assume the graceful poses of Marie Bashkirtseff. But I feel tempted to plead it in extenuation or excuse for this article, which can hardly avoid being egotistical. For though it concerns one of those problems of literature, of philosophy and of history that certainly interest me more than my own psychology, it is one on which I can hardly explain myself without seeming to expose myself.

That valuable public servant, “The Gentleman with the Duster,” has passed on from Downing Street, from polishing up the Mirrors and polishing off the Ministers, to a larger world of reflections in “The Glass of Fashion.” I call the glass a world of reflections rather than a world of shadows; especially as I myself am one of those tenuous shades. And the matter which interests me here is that the critic in question complains that I have been very unjust to Puritans and Puritanism, and especially to a certain ethical idealism in them, which he declares to have been more essential than the Calvinism of which I “make so much.” He puts the point in a genial but somewhat fantastic fashion by saying that the world owes something to the jokes of Mr. G. K. Chesterton, but more to the moral earnestness of John Milton. This involves rather a dizzy elevation than a salutary depression; and the comparison is rather too overwhelming to be crushing. For I suppose the graceful duster of mirrors himself would hardly feel crushed, if I told him he did not hold the mirror up to Nature quite so successfully as Shakespeare. Nor can I be described as exactly reeling from the shock of being informed that I am a less historic figure than Milton. I know not how to answer, unless it be in the noble words of Sam Weller: “That’s what we call a self-evident proposition, as the cats'-meat-man said to the housemaid when she said he was no gentleman.” But for all that I have a controversial issue with the critic about the moral earnestness of Milton, and I have a confession to make which will seem to many only too much in the personal manner referred to by Mr. Freeman.

My first impulse to write, and almost my first impulse to think, was a revolt of disgust with the Decadents and the Æsthetic pessimism of the ’nineties. It is now almost impossible to bring home to anybody, even to myself, how final that fin de siÈcle seemed to be; not the end of the century but the end of the world. To a boy his first hatred is almost as immortal as his first love. He does not realize that the objects of either can alter; and I did not know that the twilight of the gods was only a mood. I thought that all the wit and wisdom in the world was banded together to slander and depress the world, and in becoming an optimist I had the feelings of an outlaw. Like Prince Florizel of Bohemia, I felt myself to be alone in a luxurious Suicide Club. But even the death seemed to be a living or rather everlasting death. To-day the whole thing is merely dead; it was not sufficiently immortal to be damned. But then the image of Dorian Gray was really an idol, with something of the endless youth of a god. To-day the picture of Dorian Gray has really grown old. Dodo then was not merely an amusing female; she was the eternal feminine. To-day the Dodo is extinct. Then, above all, everyone claiming intelligence insisted on what was called “Art for art’s sake.” To-day even the biographer of Oscar Wilde proposes to abandon “art for art’s sake,” and to substitute “art for life’s sake.” But at the time I was more inclined to substitute “no art, for God’s sake.” I would rather have had no art at all than one which occupies itself in matching shades of peacock and turquoise for a decorative scheme of blue devils. I started to think it out, and the more I thought of it the more certain I grew that the whole thing was a fallacy; that art could not exist apart from, still less in opposition to, life; especially the life of the soul, which is salvation; and that great art never had been so much detached as that from conscience and common sense, or from what my critic would call moral earnestness. Unfortunately, by the time I had exposed it as a fallacy, it had entirely evaporated as a fashion. Since then I have taken universal annihilations more lightly. But I can still be stirred, as man always can be by memories of their first excitements or ambitions, by anything that shows the cloven hoof of that particular blue devil. I am still ready to knock him about, though I no longer think he has a cloven hoof or even a lame leg to stand on. But for all that there is one real argument which I still recognize on his side; and that argument is in a single word. There is still one word which the Æsthete can whisper; and the whisper will bring back all my childish fears that the Æsthete may be right after all. There is one name that does seem to me a strong argument for the decadent doctrine that “art is unmoral.” When that name is uttered, the world of Wilde and Whistler comes back with all its cold levity and cynical connoisseurship. The butterfly becomes a burden and the green carnation flourishes like the green bay-tree. For the moment I do believe in “art for art’s sake.” And that name is John Milton.

It does really seem to me that Milton was an artist, and nothing but an artist; and yet so great an artist as to sustain by his own strength the idea that art can exist alone. He seems to me an almost solitary example of a man of magnificent genius whose greatness does not depend at all upon moral earnestness, or upon anything connected with morality. His greatness is in a style, and a style which seems to me rather unusually separate from its substance. What is the exact nature of the pleasure which I, for one, take in reading and repeating some such lines, for instance, as those familiar ones:

So far as I can see, the whole effect is in a certain unexpected order and arrangement of words, independent and distinguished, like the perfect manners of an eccentric gentleman. Say instead “Put on in death the weeds of Dominic,” and the whole unique dignity of the line has broken down. It is something in the quiet but confident inversion of “Dying put on” which exactly achieves that perpetual slight novelty which Aristotle profoundly said was the language of poetry. The idea itself is at best an obvious and even conventional condemnation of superstition, and in the ultimate sense a rather superficial one. Coming where it does, indeed, it does not so much suggest moral earnestness as rather a moralizing priggishness. For it is dragged in very laboriously into the very last place where it is wanted, before a splendidly large and luminous vision of the world newly created, and the first innocence of earth and sky. It is that passage in which the wanderer through space approaches Eden; one of the most unquestionable triumphs of all human literature. That one book at least of “Paradise Lost” could claim the more audacious title of “Paradise Found.” But if it was necessary for the poet going to Eden to pass through Limbo, why was it necessary to pass through Lambeth and Little Bethel? Why should he go there vi Rome and Geneva? Why was it necessary to compare the dÉbris of Limbo to the details of ecclesiastical quarrels in the seventeenth century, when he was moving in a world before the dawn of all the centuries, or the shadow of the first quarrel? Why did he talk as if the Church was reformed before the world was made, or as if Latimer lit his candle before God made the sun and moon? Matthew Arnold made fun of those who claimed divine sanction for episcopacy by suggesting that when God said “Let there be light,” He also said “Let there be Bishops.” But his own favourite Milton went very near suggesting that when God said “Let there be light,” He soon afterwards remarked “Let there be Nonconformists.” I do not feel this merely because my own religious sympathies happen to be rather on the other side. It is indeed probable that Milton did not appreciate a whole world of ideas in which he saw merely the corruptions: the idea of relics and symbolic acts and the drama of the deathbed. It does not enlarge his place in the philosophy of history that this should be his only relation either to the divine demagogy of the Dogs of God or to the fantastical fraternity of the Jugglers of God. But I should feel exactly the same incongruity if the theological animus were the other way. It would be equally disproportionate if the approach to Eden were interrupted with jokes against Puritans, or if Limbo were littered with steeple-crowned hats and the scrolls of interminable Calvinistic sermons. We should still feel that a book of “Paradise Lost” was not the right place for a passage from Hudibras. So far from being morally earnest, in the best sense, there is something almost philosophically frivolous in the incapacity to think firmly and magnanimously about the First Things, and the primary colours of the creative palette, without spoiling the picture with this ink-slinging of sectarian politics. Speaking from the standpoint of moral earnestness, I confess it seems to me trivial and spiteful and even a little vulgar. After which impertinent criticism, I will now repeat in a loud voice, and for the mere lust of saying it as often as possible:

And the exuberant joy I take in it is the nearest thing I have ever known to art for art’s sake.

In short, it seems to me that Milton was a great artist, and that he was also a great accident. It was rather in the same sense that his master Cromwell was a great accident. It is not true that all the moral virtues were crystallized in Milton and his Puritans. It is not true that all the military virtues were concentrated in Cromwell and his Ironsides. There were masses of moral devotion on the other side, and masses of military valour on the other side. But it did so happen that Milton had more ability and success in literary expression, and Cromwell more ability and success in military science, than any of their many rivals. To represent Cromwell as a fiend or Milton as a hypocrite is to rush to another extreme and be ridiculous; they both believed sincerely enough in certain moral ideas of their time. Only they were not, as seems to be supposed, the only moral ideas of their time. And they were not, in my private opinion, the best moral ideas of their time. One of them was the idea that wisdom is more or less weakened by laughter and a popular taste in pleasure; and we may call this moral earnestness if we like. But the point is that Cromwell did not succeed by his moral earnestness, but by his strategy; and Milton did not succeed by his moral earnestness, but by his style.

And, first of all, let me touch on the highest form of moral earnestness and the relation of Milton to the religious poetry of his day. “Paradise Lost” is certainly a religious poem; but, for many of its admirers, the religion is the least admirable part of it. The poet professes indeed to justify the ways of God to men; but I never heard of any men who read it in order to have them justified, as men do still read a really religious poem, like the dark and almost sceptical Book of Job. A poem can hardly be said to justify the ways of God, when its most frequent effect is admittedly to make people sympathize with Satan. In all this I am in a sense arguing against myself; for all my instincts, as I have said, are against the Æsthetic theory that art so great can be wholly irreligious. And I agree that even in Milton there are gleams of Christianity. Nobody quite without them could have written the single line: “By the dear might of Him that walked the waves.” But it is hardly too much to say that it is the one place where that Figure walks in the whole world of Milton. Nobody, I imagine, has ever been able to recognize Christ in the cold conqueror who drives a chariot in the war in heaven, like Apollo warring on the Titans. Nobody has ever heard Him in the stately disquisitions either of the Council in Heaven or of Paradise Regained. But, apart from all these particular problems, it is surely the general truth that the great religious epic strikes us with a sense of disproportion; the sense of how little it is religious considering how manifestly it is great. It seems almost strange that a man should have written so much and so well without stumbling on Christian tradition.

Now in the age of Milton there was a riot of religious poetry. Most of it had moral earnestness, and much of it had splendid spiritual conviction. But most of it was not the poetry of the Puritans; on the contrary, it was mostly the poetry of the Cavaliers. The most real religion—we might say the most realistic religion—is not to be found in Milton, but in Vaughan, in Treherne, in Crashaw, in Herbert, and even in Herrick. The best proof of it is that the religion is alive to-day, as religion and not merely as literature. A Roman Catholic can read Crashaw, an Anglo-Catholic can read Herbert, in a direct devotional spirit; I gravely doubt whether many modern Congregationalists read the theology of “Paradise Lost” in that spirit. For the moment I mention only this purely religious emotion; I do not deny that Milton’s poetry, like all great poetry, can awaken other great emotions. For instance, a man bereaved by one of the tragedies of the Great War might well find a stoical serenity in the great lines beginning “Nothing is here for tears.” That sort of consolation is uttered, as nobly as it could be uttered, by Milton; but it might be uttered by Sophocles or Goethe, or even by Lucretius or Voltaire. But supposing that a man were seeking a more Christian kind of consolation, he would not find it in Milton at all, as he would find it in the lines beginning “They are all gone into the world of light.” The whole of the two great Puritan epics do not contain all that is said in saying “O holy hope and high humility.” Neither hope nor humility were Puritan specialities.

But it was not only in devotional mysticism that these Cavaliers could challenge the great Puritan; it was in a mysticism more humanistic and even more modern. They shine with that white mystery of daylight which many suppose to have dawned with Wordsworth and with Blake. In that sense they make earth mystical where Milton only made heaven material. Nor are they inferior in philosophic freedom; the single line of Crashaw, addressed to a woman, “By thy large draughts of intellectual day,” is less likely, I fancy, to have been addressed by Adam to Eve, or by Milton to Mrs. Milton. It seems to me that these men were superior to Milton in magnanimity, in chivalry, in joy of life, in the balance of sanity and subtlety, in everything except the fact (not wholly remote from literary criticism) that they did not write so well as he did. But they wrote well enough to lift the load of materialism from the English name; and show us the shining fields of a paradise that is not wholly lost.

Of such was the Anti-Puritan party; and the reader may learn more about it from the author of “The Glass of Fashion.” There he may form a general idea of how, but for the Puritans, England would have been abandoned to mere ribaldry and licence; blasted by the blasphemies of George Herbert; rolled in the mire of the vile materialism of Vaughan; tickled to ribald laughter by the cheap cynicism and tap-room familiarities of Crashaw and Treherne. But the same Cavalier tradition continued into the next age, and indeed into the next century; and the critic must extend his condemnation to include the brutal buffooneries of Bishop Ken or the gay and careless worldliness of Jeremy Collier. Nay, he must extend it to cover the last Tories who kept the tradition of the Jacobites; the careless merriment of Dean Swift, the godless dissipation of Dr. Johnson. None of these men were Puritans; all of them were strong opponents of political and religious Puritanism. The truth is that English literature bears a very continuous and splendid testimony to the fact that England was not merely Puritan. Ben Jonson in “Bartholomew Fair” spoke for most English people, and certainly for most English poets. Anti-Puritanism was the one thing common to Shakespeare and Dryden, to Swift and Johnson, to Cobbett and Dickens. And the historical bias the other way has come, not from Puritan superiority, but simply from Puritan success. It was the political triumph of the party, in the Revolution and the resultant commercial industrialism, that suppressed the testimony of the populace and the poets. Loyalty died away in a few popular songs; the Cromwellians never had any popular song to die. English history has moved away from English literature. Our culture, like our agriculture, is at once very native and very neglected. And as this neglect is regrettable, if only as neglect of literature, I will pause in conclusion upon the later period, two generations after Milton, when the last of the true Tories drank wine with Bolingbroke or tea with Johnson.

The truth that is missed about the Tories of this tradition is that they were rebels. They had the virtues of rebels; they also had the vices of rebels. Swift had the fury of a rebel; Johnson the surliness of a rebel; Goldsmith the morbid sensibility of a rebel; and Scott, at the end of the process, something of the despair and mere retrospection of a defeated rebel. And the Whig school of literary criticism, like the Whig school of political history, has omitted or missed this truth about them, because it necessarily omitted the very existence of the thing against which they rebelled. For Macaulay and Thackeray and the average of Victorian liberality the Revolution of 1688 was simply an emancipation, the defeat of the Stuarts was simply a downfall of tyranny and superstition; the politics of the eighteenth century were simply a progress leading up to the pure and happy politics of the nineteenth century; freedom slowly broadening down, etc., etc. This makes the attitude of the Tory rebels entirely meaningless; so that the critics in question have been forced to represent some of the greatest Englishmen who ever lived as a mere procession of lunatics and ludicrous eccentrics. But these rebels, right or wrong, can only be understood in relation to the real power against which they were rebelling; and their titanic figures can best be traced in the light of the lightning which they defied. That power was a positive thing; it was anything but a mere negative emancipation of everybody. It was as definite as the monarchy which it had replaced; for it was an aristocracy that replaced it. It was the oligarchy of the great Whig families, a very close corporation indeed, having Parliament for its legal form, but the new wealth for its essential substance. That is why these lingering Jacobites appear most picturesque when they are pitted against some of the princes of the new aristocratic order. That is why Bolingbroke remains in the memory, standing in his box at the performance of “Cato,” and flinging forth his defiance to Marlborough. That is why Johnson remains rigid in his magnificent disdain, hurling his defiance at Chesterfield. Churchill and Chesterfield were not small men, either in personality or in power; they were brilliant ornaments of the triumph of the world. They represented the English governing class when it could really govern; the modern plutocracy when it still deserved to be called an aristocracy also. And the whole point of the position of these men of letters is that they were denying and denouncing something which was growing every day in prestige and prosperity; which seemed to have, and indeed had, not only the present but the future on its side. The only thing it had not got on its side was the ancient tradition of the English populace. That populace was being more and more harried by evictions and enclosures, that its old common lands and yeoman freeholds might be added to the enormous estates of the all-powerful aristocracy. One of the Tory rebels has himself made that infamy immortal in the great lines of the “Deserted Village.” At least, it is immortal in the sense that it can never now be lost for lovers of English literature; but even this record was for a long time lost to the public by under-valuation and neglect. In recent times the “Deserted Village” was very much of a deserted poem. But of that I may have occasion to speak later. The point for the moment is that the psychology of these men, in its evil as well as its good, is to be interpreted not so much in terms of a lingering loyalty as of a frustrated revolution. Some of them had, of course, elements of extravagance and morbidity peculiar to their own characters; but they grew ten times more extravagant and more morbid as their souls swelled within them at the success of the shameless and the insolence of the fortunate. I doubt whether anybody ever felt so bitter against the Stuarts. Now this misunderstanding has made a very regrettable gap in literary criticism. The masterpieces of these men are represented as much more crabbed or cranky or inconsequent than they really were, because their objective is not seen objectively. It is like judging the raving of some Puritan preacher without allowing for the fact that the Pope or the King had ever possessed any power at all. To ignore the fact of the great Whig families because of the legal fiction of a free Parliament is like ignoring the feelings of the Christian martyrs about Nero, because of the legal fiction that the Imperator was only a military general. These fictions do not prevent imaginative persons from writing books like the “Apocalypse” or books like “Gulliver’s Travels.”

I will take only one example of what I mean by this purely literary misunderstanding: an example from “Gulliver’s Travels” itself. The case of the under-valuation of Swift is a particularly subtle one, for Swift was really unbalanced as an individual, which has made it much easier for critics not to keep the rather delicate balance of justice about him. There is a superficial case for saying he was mad, apart from the physical accident of his madness; but the point is that even those who have realized that he was sometimes mad with rage have not realized what he was in a rage with. And there is a curious illustration of this in the conclusion of the story of Gulliver. Everyone remembers the ugly business about the Yahoos, and the still uglier business about the real human beings who reminded the returned traveller of Yahoos; how Gulliver shrank at first from his friends, and would only gradually consent to sit near his wife. And everybody remembers the picturesque but hostile sketch which Thackeray gives of the satire and the satirist; of Swift as the black and evil blasphemer sitting down to write his terrible allegory, of which the only moral is that all things are, and always must be, valueless and vile. I say that everybody remembers both these literary passages; but, indeed, I fear that many remember the critical who do not really remember the creative passage, and that many have read Thackeray who have not read Swift.

Now it is here that purely literary criticism has a word to say. A man of letters may be mad or sane in his cerebral constitution; he may be right or wrong in his political antipathies; he may be anything we happen to like or dislike from our own individual standpoint. But there is one thing to which a man of letters has a right, whatever he is, and that is a fair critical comprehension of any particular literary effect which he obviously aims at and achieves. He has a right to his climax, and a right not to be judged without reference to his climax. It would not be fair to leave out the beautiful last lines of “Paradise Lost” as mere bathos; without realizing that the poet had a fine intention in allowing that conclusion, after all the thunder and the trumps of doom, to fall and fade away on a milder note of mercy and reasonable hope. It would not be fair to stigmatize the incident of Ignorance, damned at the very doors of heaven at the end of Bunyan’s book, as a mere blot of black Calvinist cruelty and spite, without realizing that the writer fully intended its fearful irony, like a last touch of the finger of fear. But this justice which is done to the Puritan masters of imagination has hardly been done to the great Tory master of irony. No critic I have read has noticed the real point and climax of that passage about the Yahoos. Swift leads up to it ruthlessly enough, for an artist of that sort is often ruthless; and it is increased by his natural talent for a sort of mad reality of detail, as in his description of the slowly diminished distance between himself and his wife at the dinner-table. But he was working up to something that he really wished to say, something which was well worth saying, but which few seem to have thought worth hearing. He suggests that he gradually lost the loathing for humanity with which the Yahoo parallel had inspired him, that although men are in many ways petty and animal, he came to feel them to be normal and tolerable; that the sense of their unworthiness now very seldom returns; and indeed that there is only one thing that revives it. If one of these creatures exhibits Pride——.

That is the voice of Swift, and the cry arraigning aristocracy. It is natural for a monkey to collect nuts, and it may be pardonable for John Churchill to collect guineas. But to think that John Churchill can be proud of his heap of guineas, can convert them into stars and coronets, and can carry that calm and classic face disdainful above the multitude! It is natural for she-monkeys to be mated somehow; but to think that the Duchess of Yarmouth is proud of being the Duchess of Yarmouth! It may not be surprising that the nobility should have scrambled like screaming Yahoos for the rags and ribbons of the Revolution, tripping up and betraying anybody and everybody in turn, with every dirty trick of treason, for anything and everything they could get. But that those of them who had got everything should then despise those who had got nothing, that the rich should sneer at the poor for having no part of the plunder, that this oligarchy of Yahoos should actually feel superior to anything or anybody—that does move the prophet of the losing side to an indignation which is something much deeper and nobler than the negative flippancies that we call blasphemy. Swift was perhaps more of a Jeremiah than an Isaiah, and a faulty Jeremiah at that; but in this great climax of his grim satire he is none the less a seer and a speaker of the things of God; because he gives the testimony of the strongest and most searching of human intellects to the profound truth of the meanness and imbecility of pride.

And the other men of the same tradition had essentially the same instinct. Johnson was in many ways unjust to Swift, just as Cobbett was afterwards unjust to Johnson. But looking back up the perspective of history we can all see that those three great men were all facing the same way; that they all regretted the rise of a rapacious and paganized commercial aristocracy, and its conquest over the old popular traditions, which some would call popular prejudices. When Johnson said that the devil was the first Whig, he might have merely varied the phrase by saying that he was the first aristocrat. For the men of this Tory tradition, in spirit if not in definition, distinguished between the privilege of monarchy and that of the new aristocracy by a very tenable test. The mark of aristocracy is ambition. The king cannot be ambitious. We might put it now by saying that monarchy is authority; but in its essence aristocracy is always anarchy. But the men of that school did not criticize the oligarch merely as a rebel against those above; they were well aware of his activities as an oppressor of those below. This aspect, as has already been noted, was best described by a friend of Johnson, for whom Johnson had a very noble and rather unique appreciation—Oliver Goldsmith.

A recent and sympathetic critic in the Mercury used the phrase that Mr. Belloc had been anticipated by Disraeli in his view of England as having evolved into a Venetian oligarchy. The truth is that Disraeli was anticipated by Bolingbroke and the many highly intelligent men who agreed with him; and not least by Goldsmith. The whole view, including the very parallel with Venice, can be found stated with luminous logic and cogency in the “Vicar of Wakefield.” And Goldsmith attacked the problem entirely from the popular side. Nobody can mistake his Toryism for a snobbish submission to a privilege or title:

I hope he was wrong; but I sometimes have a horrible feeling that he may have been right.

But I have here, thank God, no cause for touching upon modern politics. I was educated, as much as my critic, in the belief that Whiggism was a pure deliverance; and I hope I am still as willing as he to respect Puritans for their individual virtue as well as for their individual genius. But it moves all my memories of the unmorality of the ’nineties to be charged with indifference to the importance of being earnest. And it is for the sake of English literature that I protest against the suggestion that we had no purity except Puritanism, or that only a man like the author of “Paradise Lost” could manage to be on the side of the angels.

* * * * *

On Peace Day I set up outside my house two torches, and twined them with laurel; because I thought at least there was nothing pacifist about laurel. But that night, after the bonfire and the fireworks had faded, a wind grew and blew with gathering violence, blowing away the rain. And in the morning I found one of the laurelled posts torn off and lying at random on the rainy ground; while the other still stood erect, green and glittering in the sun. I thought that the pagans would certainly have called it an omen; and it was one that strangely fitted my own sense of some great work half fulfilled and half frustrated. And I thought vaguely of that man in Virgil, who prayed that he might slay his foe and return to his country; and the gods heard half the prayer, and the other half was scattered to the winds. For I knew we were right to rejoice; since the tyrant was indeed slain and his tyranny fallen for ever; but I know not when we shall find our way back to our own land.

Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London

A FEW OF
Messrs. Methuen’s
PUBLICATIONS

Armstrong (Warwick W). THE ART OF CRICKET. Fourth Edition. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, 6s. net.

Atkinson (T. D.). ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE. Illustrated. Sixth Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 5s. net.

Bain (F. W.)—

In the Great God’s Hair (Seventh Edition); A Draught of the Blue (Seventh Edition); An Incarnation of the Snow (Fourth Edition); A Mine of Faults (Fifth Edition); A Digit of the Moon (Fourteenth Edition); The Livery of Eve (Third Edition); A Heifer of the Dawn (Eleventh Edition); An Essence of the Dusk (Fifth Edition); The Descent of the Sun (Eighth Edition); The Ashes of a God (Third Edition); Bubbles of the Foam (Third Edition); A Syrup of the Bees (Second Edition); The Substance of a Dream (Second Edition). Fcap. 8vo, 5s. net each. An Echo of the Spheres. Wide Demy, 10s. 6d. net.

Baker (C. H. Collins). CROME. Illustrated. Quarto, £5 5s. net.

Bateman (H. M.). A Book of Drawings. Fifth Edition. Royal 4to, 10s. 6d. net. Suburbia. Demy 4to, 6s. net. More Drawings. Royal 4to, 10s. 6d. net.

Beckford (Peter). THOUGHTS ON HUNTING. In a series of Familiar Letters to a Friend. With an Introduction and Notes by J. Otho Paget. Illustrated. Fifth Edition. Demy 8vo, 6s. net.

Belloc (H.)—Paris. Illustrated. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo, 8s. 6d. net. Hills and the Sea. Thirteenth Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net. Also Fcap. 8vo, 2s. net. On Nothing. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net. Also Fcap. 8vo, 2s. net. On Everything. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net. Also Fcap. 8vo, 2s. net. On Something. Third Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net. Also Fcap. 8vo, 2s. net. First and Last. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net. This and That and the Other. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net.

Braid (James), Open Champion, 1901, 1905, 1906, 1908, and 1910. ADVANCED GOLF. Illustrated. Eleventh Edition. Demy 8vo, 14s. net.

Chandler (Arthur), D.D., late Lord Bishop of Bloemfontein. Ara Coeli; An Essay in Mystical Theology. Seventh Edition. 5s. net. Faith and Experience. Third Edition. 5s. net. The Cult of the Passing Moment. Fifth Edition. 6s. net. The English Church and Re-union. 5s. net. Scala Mundi. 4s. 6d. net.

Chesterton (G. K.)—The Ballad of the White Horse. Sixth Edition. 6s. net. All Things Considered. Fourteenth Edition. 6s. net; also Fcap. 8vo, 2s. net. Tremendous Trifles. Sixth Edition. 6s. net; also Fcap. 8vo, 2s. net. Alarms and Discursions. Second Edition. 6s. net. A Miscellany of Men. Third Edition. 6s. net. The Uses of Diversity. 6s. net. Wine, Water, and Song. Eleventh Edition. 1s. 6d. net.

Clouston (Sir T. S.). THE HYGIENE OF MIND. Illustrated. Seventh Edition. Demy 8vo, 10s. 6d. net.

Clutton-Brock (A.)—Thoughts on the War, 1s. 6d. net; What is the Kingdom of Heaven? 5s. net; Essays on Art, 5s. net; Essays on Books, 6s. net; More Essays on Books, 6s. net.

Conrad (Joseph). THE MIRROR OF THE SEA: Memories and Impressions. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net; also Fcap. 8vo, 2s. net.

Dickinson (G. Lowes). THE GREEK VIEW OF LIFE. Fourteenth Edition. Crown 8vo, 5s. net.

Dobson (J. F.). THE GREEK ORATORS. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net.

Drever (James). THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE. Third Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s. net.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INDUSTRY. Crown 8vo, 5s. net.

Einstein (A.). RELATIVITY: THE SPECIAL AND THE GENERAL THEORY. Seventh Edition. Crown 8vo, 5s. net.

SIDELIGHTS ON RELATIVITY. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.

THE MEANING OF RELATIVITY. Crown 8vo, 5s. net.

Other Books on the Einstein Theory.

SPACE—TIME—MATTER. By Hermann Weyl. Demy 8vo, 18s. net.

EINSTEIN THE SEARCHER: His Work explained in Dialogues with Einstein. By Alexander Moszkowski. Demy 8vo, 12s. 6d. net.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY. By Lyndon Bolton, M.A. Crown 8vo, 5s. net.

RELATIVITY AND GRAVITATION. By various Writers. Edited by J. Malcolm Bird. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net.

RELATIVITY AND THE UNIVERSE. By Harry Schmidt. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 5s. net.

THE IDEAS OF EINSTEIN’S THEORY. By J. H. Thirring, Ph.D. Crown 8vo, 5s. net.

Evans (Lady). LUSTRE POTTERY. With 24 Plates. Royal Quarto, £2 12s. 6d. net.

Fyleman (Rose). FAIRIES AND CHIMNEYS. Twelfth Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.

THE FAIRY GREEN. Seventh Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.

THE FAIRY FLUTE. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.

THE RAINBOW CAT AND OTHER STORIES. Fcap. 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.

Gibbins (H. de B.). THE INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND. With 5 Maps and a Plan. Twenty-seventh Edition. Crown 8vo, 5s.

Gibbon (Edward). THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Edited, with Notes, Appendices, and Maps, by J. B. Bury. Illustrated. Seven Volumes. Demy 8vo, each 12s. 6d. net. Also Seven Volumes. Unillustrated. Crown 8vo, each 7s. 6d. net.

Glover (T. R.). THE CONFLICT OF RELIGIONS IN THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE. Ninth Edition. Demy 8vo, 10s. 6d. net.

THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION AND ITS VERIFICATION. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s. net.

POETS AND PURITANS. Second Edition. Demy 8vo, 10s. 6d. net.

VIRGIL. Fourth Edition. Demy 8vo, 10s. 6d. net.

FROM PERICLES TO PHILIP. Third Edition. Demy 8vo, 10s. 6d. net.

Grahame (Kenneth), Author of “The Golden Age.” THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS. With a Frontispiece by Graham Robertson. Twelfth Edition. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net. Illustrated Edition. With drawings in colour and line, by Nancy Barnhart. Small 4to, 10s. 6d. net.

Hall (H. R.). THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE NEAR EAST FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS. Illustrated. Fifth Edition. Demy 8vo, £1 1s. net.

Herbert (A. P.). THE WHEREFORE AND THE WHY, New Rhymes for Old Children. Illustrated by George Morrow. Fcap. 4to, 3s. 6d. net.

“TINKER, TAILOR....” A Child’s Guide to the Professions. Illustrated by George Morrow. Fcap. 4to, 3s. 6d. net.

LIGHT ARTICLES ONLY. Illustrated by George Morrow. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s. net.

Holdsworth (W. S.). A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LAW. Vols. I., II., III. Each Second Edition. Demy 8vo, each £1 5s. net.

Hutton (Edward)—The Cities of Umbria (Fifth Edition); The Cities of Lombardy; The Cities of Romagna and the Marches; Florence and Northern Tuscany, with Genoa (Third Edition); Siena and Southern Tuscany (Second Edition); Venice and Venetia; The Cities of Spain (Fifth Edition); Naples and Southern Italy. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. Each 8s. 6d. net. Rome (Fourth Edition), 6s. net.

Inge (W. R.). CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM. (The Bampton Lectures for 1899). Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net.

Jenks (E.). A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LAW. Second Edition. Demy 8vo, 12s. 6d. net.

Julian (Lady), Anchoress at Norwich, A.D., 1373. REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE. A Version from the MS. in the British Museum. Edited by Grace Warrack. Seventh Edition. Crown 8vo, 5s. net.

Kidd (Benjamin). THE SCIENCE OF POWER. Ninth Edition. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net.

SOCIAL EVOLUTION. A New Ed. Demy 8vo, 8s. 6d. net.

A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s. net.

Kipling (Rudyard). BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS. 228th Thousand. Fifty-fifth Edition. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net. Also Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net; leather 7s. 6d. net. Also a Service Edition. Two Volumes. Square Fcap. 8vo. Each 3s. net.

THE SEVEN SEAS. 161st Thousand. Thirty-fourth Edition. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net. Also Fcap. 8vo. 6s. net; leather, 7s. 6d. net. Also a Service Edition. Two Volumes. Square Fcap. 8vo. Each 3s. net.

THE FIVE NATIONS. 129th Thousand. Twenty-third Edition. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net. Also Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net; leather, 7s. 6d. net. Also a Service Edition. Two volumes. Square Fcap. 8vo. Each 3s. net.

DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. 102nd Thousand. Thirty-fourth Edition. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net. Also Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net.; leather, 7s. 6d. net. Also a Service Edition. Two Volumes. Square Fcap. 8vo. Each 3s. net.

THE YEARS BETWEEN. 95th Thousand. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net. Also Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net; leather, 7s. 6d. net. Also a Service Edition. Two Volumes. Square Fcap. 8vo. Each 3s. net.

TWENTY POEMS FROM RUDYARD KIPLING. Fcap. 8vo, 1s. net.

A KIPLING ANTHOLOGY—VERSE: Selected from the Poetry of Rudyard Kipling. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net. Leather, 7s. 6d. net.

Lamb (Charles and Mary). THE COMPLETE WORKS. Edited by E. V. Lucas. A New and Revised Edition in Six Volumes. With Frontispiece. Fcap. 8vo. Each 6s. net. The Volumes are:—

I. Miscellaneous Prose. II. Elia and the Last Essays of Elia. III. Books for Children. IV. Plays and Poems. V. and VI. Letters.

Lankester (Sir Ray). SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR. First Series. Illustrated. Thirteenth Edition. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net. Also Fcap. 8vo, 2s. net.

SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR. Second Series. Illustrated. Third Edition. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net. Also as MORE SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR. Fcap. 8vo, 2s. net.

DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST. Illustrated. Third Edition. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net.

SECRETS OF EARTH AND SEA. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, 8s. 6d. net.

Lescarboura (A. C.). RADIO FOR EVERYBODY. Edited by R. L. Smith-Rose, M.Sc. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net.

Lodge (Sir Oliver)—Man and the Universe, Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net; also Fcap. 8vo, 2s. net; The Survival of Man; A Study in Unrecognised Human Faculty, Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net; also Fcap. 8vo, 2s. net; Reason and Belief, 2s. net; The Substance of Faith, 2s. net; Raymond Revised, 6s. net.

Lucas (E. V.)—The Life of Charles Lamb, two volumes, 21s. net; Edwin Austin Abbey, R.A., 2 vols., £6 6s. net; Vermeer of Delft, Fcap. 4to, 10s. 6d. net. A Wanderer in Holland, 10s. 6d. net; A Wanderer in London, 10s. 6d. net; London Revisited, 10s. 6d. net; A Wanderer in Paris, Crown 8vo, 10s. 6d. net; also Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net; A Wanderer in Florence, 10s. 6d. net; A Wanderer in Venice, 10s. 6d. net; The Open Road: A Little Book for Wayfarers, Fcap. 8vo, 6s. 6d. net; The Friendly Town: A Little Book for the Urbane, 6s. net; Fireside and Sunshine, 6s. net; Character and Comedy, 6s. net; The Gentlest Art: A Choice of Letters by Entertaining Hands, 6s. 6d. net; The Second Post, 6s. net; Her Infinite Variety: A Feminine Portrait Gallery, 6s. net; Good Company: A Rally of Men, 6s. net; One Day and Another, 6s. net; Old Lamps for New, 6s. net; Loiterer’s Harvest, 6s. net; Cloud and Silver, 6s. net; A Boswell of Baghdad and other Essays, 6s. net; 'Twixt Eagle and Dove, 6s. net; The Phantom Journal, and Other Essays and Diversions, 6s. net; Giving and Receiving, 6s. net; Specially Selected: A Choice of Essays, illustrated by G. L. Stampa, 7s. 6d. net; Urbanities, illustrated by G. L. Stampa, 7s. 6d. net; You Know What People Are, illustrated by George Morrow, 5s. net; The British School: An Anecdotal Guide to the British Painters and Paintings in the National Gallery, 6s. net: Roving East and Roving West: Notes gathered in India, Japan, and America, 5s. net.

McDougall (William). AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. Seventeenth Edition. Cr. 8vo, 8s. 6d. net.

BODY AND MIND: A History and A Defence of Animism. With Diagrams. Fifth Edition. Demy 8vo, 12s. 6d. net.

Maeterlinck (Maurice)—The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts, 6s. net and 2s. net. The Betrothal, Fcap. 6s. net, paper 3s. 6d. net; Mary Magdalene, 5s. net and 2s. net; Death, 3s. 6d. net; Our Eternity, 6s. net; The Unknown Guest, 6s. net; The Wrack of the Storm, 6s. net; The Miracle of Saint Anthony: A Play in One Act, 3s. 6d. net; The Burgomaster of Stilemonde: A Play in Three Acts, 5s. net; Mountain Paths, 6s. net; Tyltyl, Told for Children (illustrated), 21s. net. (The above books are Translated by A. Teixeira de Mattos.) Poems, 5s. net. (Done into English by Bernard Miall).

THE GREAT SECRET. (Translated by Bernard Miall), 7s. 6d. net.

Methuen (A.). AN ANTHOLOGY OF MODERN VERSE. With Introduction by Robert Lynd. Ninth Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net. Thin paper, leather, 7s. 6d. net.

SHAKESPEARE TO HARDY: An Anthology of English Lyrics. Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net. Leather, 7s. 6d. net.

Milne (A. A.). NOT THAT IT MATTERS. Third Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net.

IF I MAY. Third Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net.

THE SUNNY SIDE. Crown 8vo, 6s. net.

Norwood (Gilbert). GREEK TRAGEDY. Demy 8vo, 12s. 6d. net.

Oxenham (John). Nine Volumes of Poems. Small pott 8vo, 1s. 3d. net each volume. Bees in Amber. 2s. net. All’s Well; The King’s High Way; The Vision Splendid; The Fiery Cross; Hearts Courageous; High Altars; All Clear! Gentlemen—The King! 2s. net.

Petrie (W. M. Flinders). A HISTORY OF EGYPT. Illustrated. Six Volumes. Crown 8vo, each 9s. net. I. From the Ist to XVIth Dynasty. Ninth Edition. (10s. 6d. net). II. The XVIIth and XVIIIth Dynasties. Sixth Edition. III. XIXth to XXXth Dynasties. Second Edition. IV. Egypt under the Ptolemaic Dynasty. J. P. Mahaffy. Second Edition. V. Egypt under Roman Rule. J. G. Milne. Second Edition. VI. Egypt in the Middle Ages. Stanley Lane-Poole. Second Edition.

Pollard (A. F.). A SHORT HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR. With 19 Maps. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 10s. 6d. net.

Pollitt (Arthur W.). THE ENJOYMENT OF MUSIC. Crown 8vo, 5s. net.

Rees (J. F.). A SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 1815-1918. Crown 8vo, 5s. net.

Smith (S. C. Kaines). LOOKING AT PICTURES. Illustrated. Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net.

Stancliffe. GOLF DO’S AND DON’TS. Being a very little about a good deal; together with some new saws for old wood—and knots in the golfer’s line which may help a good memory for forgetting. Eighth Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 2s. 6d. net.

QUICK CUTS TO GOOD GOLF. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 2s. 6d. net.

Stevenson (R. L.). THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON TO HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS. Selected and Edited by Sir Sidney Colvin. Four Volumes. Fifth Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net each.

Tilden (W. T.). THE ART OF LAWN TENNIS. Illustrated. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s. net.

LAWN TENNIS FOR YOUNG PLAYERS: LAWN TENNIS FOR CLUB PLAYERS: LAWN TENNIS FOR MATCH PLAYERS. Each Fcap. 8vo, 2s. 6d. net.

Tileston (Mary W.). DAILY STRENGTH FOR DAILY NEEDS. Twenty-seventh Edition. Medium 16mo, 3s. 6d. net.

Turner (W. J.). MUSIC AND LIFE. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net.

Underhill (Evelyn). MYSTICISM. A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness. Eighth Edition. Demy 8vo, 15s. net.

THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT AND THE LIFE OF TO-DAY. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net.

Vardon (Harry). HOW TO PLAY GOLF. Illustrated. Fifteenth Edition. Crown 8vo, 5s. 6d. net.

Waterhouse (Elizabeth). A LITTLE BOOK OF LIFE AND DEATH. Selected and Arranged. Twenty-first Edition. Small Pott 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d. net; paper, 1s. 6d.

Wilde (Oscar). THE WORKS OF OSCAR WILDE. Fifteen Volumes. Fcap. 8vo, each 6s. 6d. net. Some also Fcap. 8vo, 2s. net. I. Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and the Portrait of Mr. W. H. II. The Duchess of Padua. III. Poems. IV. Lady Windermere’s Fan. V. A Woman of no Importance. VI. An Ideal Husband. VII. The Importance of being Earnest. VIII. A House of Pomegranates. IX. Intentions. X. De Profundis and Prison Letters. XI. Essays. XII. Salome, A Florentine Tragedy, and La Sainte Courtisane. XIII. A Critic in Pall Mall. XIV. Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde. XV. Art and Decoration.

A HOUSE OF POMEGRANATES. Illustrated. Crown 4to, 21s. net.

FOR LOVE OF THE KING: A Burmese Masque. Demy 8vo, 8s. 6d. net.

Wilding (Anthony F.), Lawn-Tennis Champion 1910-1911. ON THE COURT AND OFF. Illustrated. Eighth Edition. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net.

Young (G. Winthrop). MOUNTAIN CRAFT. Illustrated. Demy 8vo, £1 5s. net.

The Antiquary’s Books

Illustrated. Demy 8vo, 10s. 6d. net each volume.

Ancient Painted Glass in England; ArchÆology and False Antiquities; The Bells of England; The Brasses of England; Celtic Art in Pagan and Christian Times; Churchwardens’ Accounts; The Domesday Inquest; The Castles and Walled Towns of England; English Church Furniture; English Costume, from Prehistoric Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century; English Monastic Life; English Seals; Folk-Lore as an Historical Science; The Gilds and Companies of London; The Hermits and Anchorites of England; The Manor and Manorial Records; The MediÆval Hospitals of England; Old English Instruments of Music; Old English Libraries; Old Service Books of the English Church; Parish Life in MediÆval England; The Parish Registers of England; Remains of the Prehistoric Age in England; The Roman Era in Britain; Romano-British Buildings and Earthworks; The Royal Forests of England; The Schools of MediÆval England; Shrines of British Saints.

The Arden Shakespeare

Demy 8vo, 6s. net each volume.

An edition of Shakespeare in Single Plays. Edited with a full Introduction, Textual Notes, and a Commentary at the foot of the page. Thirty-seven Volumes are now ready.

Classics of Art

Edited by Dr. J. H. W. Laing

Illustrated. Wide Royal 8vo, from 15s. net to £3 3s. net. The Art of the Greeks; The Art of the Romans; Chardin; Donatello; George Romney; Ghirlandaio; Lawrence; Michelangelo; Raphael; Rembrandt’s Etchings; Rembrandt’s Paintings; Tintoretto; Titian; Turner’s Sketches and Drawings; Velazquez.

The “Complete” Series

Illustrated. Demy 8vo, from 5s. net to 18s. net The Complete Airman; The Complete Amateur Boxer; The Complete Association Footballer; The Complete Athletic Trainer; The Complete Billiard Player; The Complete Cook; The Complete Foxhunter; The Complete Golfer; The Complete Hockey Player; The Complete Horseman; The Complete Jujitsuan (Crown 8vo); The Complete Lawn Tennis Player; The Complete Motorist; The Complete Mountaineer; The Complete Oarsman; The Complete Photographer; The Complete Rugby Footballer, on the New Zealand System; The Complete Shot; The Complete Swimmer; The Complete Yachtsman.

The Connoisseur’s Library

Illustrated. Wide Royal 8vo, 31s. 6d. net English Coloured Books; Etchings; European Enamels; Fine Books; Glass; Goldsmiths’ and Silversmiths’ Work; Illuminated Manuscripts; Ivories; Jewellery; Mezzotints; Miniatures; Porcelain; Seals; Wood Sculpture.

Eight Books by R. S. Surtees

With the original Illustrations in Colour by J. Leech and others.

Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net and 7s. 6d. net. Ask Mamma; Handley Cross; Hawbuck Grange; Hillingdon Hall; Jorrocks’s Jaunts and Jollities; Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour; Mr. Facey Romford’s Hounds; Plain or Ringlets?

Plays

Fcap. 8vo, 3s. 6d. net Kismet; Milestones; Typhoon; An Ideal Husband; The Ware Case; General Post; The Great Adventure; The Honeymoon; Across the Border. (Crown 8vo.)

Fiction

Novels by Richard Bagot, H. C. Bailey, Arnold Bennett, G. A. Birmingham, Marjorie Bowen, Edgar Rice Burroughs, G. K. Chesterton, Joseph Conrad, Dorothy Conyers, Marie Corelli, Beatrice Harraden, R. S. Hichens, Anthony Hope, W. W. Jacobs, E. V. Lucas, Stephen McKenna, Lucas Malet, A. E. W. Mason, W. B. Maxwell, Arthur Morrison, John Oxenham, Sir Gilbert Parker, Alice Perrin, Eden Phillpotts, Richard Pryce, “Q,” W. Pett Ridge, H. G. Wells, and C.N. and A. M. Williamson.

A Complete List can be had on application.

Methuen’s Two Shilling Series

This is a series of copyright books—fiction and general literature—which has been such a popular success. If you will obtain a list of the series you will see that it contains more books by distinguished writers than any other series of the same kind. You will find the volumes at all booksellers and on all railway bookstalls.