Dr. Stiggins: His Views and Principles/Chapter 5

by Arthur Machen

V: Immoral Sculptures—The Domesticated Critic—The Right Place for Shakespeare.

OUR last conversation was, I think, in the main, devoted to the Drama; and I believe I succeeded in showing you that while we Free Churchmen object to the stage as it is at present conducted, we are so far from being hostile to the theatre, that one of our dearest wishes is to see it reformed, re-edified, and made an instrument of innocent and wholesome delight. In touching on the question of the drama, I could scarcely avoid dealing to some extent with literature, but before I go more fully into that great subject, I should like to say a word about an art which is not so generally in the public view; I mean sculpture.

Now I will say in the first place that there are certain aspects of this art which seem to me wholly laudable. When I pass through the public spaces and squares of our great metropolis and see the splendid statues of deceased statesmen—mostly, I am glad to say, of the Liberal persuasion—my heart thrills, and I feel that I am indeed a citizen of no mean country. Those stately figures, proud and erect, clad in no unmeaning or obsolete finery, but in the homely trousers and tight-fitting frock-coat of the modern Englishman, go far to justify the sculptor's art, and we feel that the side-whiskers and nose of such a man as Cobden deserved to be commemorated in the enduring marble. Here, too, on that shelf, you will have noticed the bust of a distinguished fellow-minister: how the brow glows with thought, how well the artist has rendered the fine flowing locks, swept back, it seems, from the forehead in some sudden access of inspiration. Nay, there are humbler walks of the art which are at least innocent; the monkey in terra-cotta swinging on his rope will certainly afford harmless amusement, and perhaps may inculcate kindness to animals; while the head of the grinning Negro boy may stimulate an interest in missionary enterprise.

But here, I think, we must draw the line. We may be held up to derision as prudes and fanatics, the oft-quoted motto, honi soit qui mal y pense, may be hurled at our heads, we may be styled prurient, unclean, and I know not what else; but in spite of all clamour and all abuse we must say once for all that we cannot tolerate the making and the display of likenesses, in marble or bronze, in ivory or terra-cotta, of the naked human form. There is a point at which all modern peoples divide the endurably coarse from the intolerably indecent and abominable. Every civilised man has a limit beyond which he will not permit himself to be carried; and, what is of at least equal importance, he has a limit beyond which he will not knowingly allow those innocences, ignorances and inexperiences which are under his guardianship or control to travel. I say that this limit is overstepped when in defiance of every principle of modesty and decency our eyes are confronted with this spectacle of nudity. A nude picture is, indeed, bad and vicious in the extreme, but what is it to the sculptured form of a large, well-shaped woman, offending our eyes with the blatant realism of bronze or marble?

I was once being entertained by one of my deacons, a comparatively wealthy tradesman. He had moved into a larger house, and was kind enough to invite me to be present at the consequent festivity. Much of the furniture, ornaments, pictures, etc., was new, and to most of it no exception could be taken. But, on looking round the drawing-room I was horrified to perceive a group of statuettes in white marble; the statuettes in question being nothing more or less than the representations of three young women, not one of whom had on a stitch of clothing. Now, as it happened, my host had three daughters, all of them modest and Christian girls, aged from sixteen to twenty two. I had watched their progress in our Sunday School, and knew them well. So after supper I took Mr. Laskin aside, and said:

"I have a suggestion to make, which I think you will find calculated to add to the pleasure of the delightful evening we have all spent."

"What is it, doctor?" he said. "Let's hear about it, by all means."

"Well," I said, "I daresay you have heard of tableaux vivants, as they are called; the idea is that people should group themselves in such a way and in such costume as to suggest some well-known picture or event. Now, I propose that your three daughters, Minnie, Lizzie and Muriel should take off all their clothes and see how well they can remind us of that pretty group I notice on the side-table."

You may imagine my host's consternation at this proposal, and it was some time before he was convinced that I had not fallen a victim to a sudden attack of mania. At last, however, my real meaning dawned upon him, and I could see that he was a good deal ashamed. The statuettes were no longer in the drawing room on my next visit.

Would that I could persuade the world to act as promptly and as sensibly as good Mr. Laskin. Yet our Art Galleries and Museums, when they are not filled with the representations of Popish Virgins and Martyrs, teem with so-called works of art such as I have just described. I sometimes see ministers of religion, schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, even mothers and aunts, conducting bands of children round the establishments which the nation is wasteful and wicked enough to support; and I confess that I view such a sight with very great misgiving, or rather, with horror. How can that be right in art which is admittedly wrong and monstrous in life? If I am not to gaze at the nude and exposed forms of the lady Sunday School teachers, why in heaven's name should this great Protestant and Christian nation subsidize exhibitions which contain dozens of such forms, forms, moreover, which in many cases add to the offence of their nakedness by the representation of lascivious and alluring attitudes and gestures? I do not see that the antiquity of many of these objects is in any way in their favour, or excuses in the slightest degree their exhibition to the public. Indeed, I should have thought that in a professedly Christian country the pagan origin of these statues would be an additional argument in the contrary direction. But if we are to be told that we are to look with respect and admiration on every relic of antiquity, as such, then of course the path is clear, and we shall revive in our midst all the unspeakable abominations that in remote times defiled the earth. We shall see re-enacted the horrid orgies of Nero, Tiberius, and Heliogabalus; shameless processions will promenade our streets, and the last shreds of decency will depart from our nation. But on the other hand, if we do not wish to see such a state of things, we shall turn a deaf ear to those who prate to us of antiquity, we shall decline to offer up the modesty of our young men and maidens at the shrine of heathen gods and goddesses. Shew me a man who puts forward the plea of "art" in this connection; I will ask him in return how he would like to see the image of his mother in a state of nudity exposed to the gaze of grinning multitudes.

And now we must enter on the consideration of a question which is more complicated and perhaps of more importance; I mean the question of literature. Here I hardly think I need defend myself or my friends from the charge of detesting or despising an art which is and has been cultivated with such success by so many members of the Free Churches. The names of Milton and Emma Jane Worboise, of Bunyan and Hocking, of Baxter and the Rev. E. P. Roe are, I think, sufficient testimony to the contrary. In poetry and fiction, in allegory and exposition we have taught the world the way of excellence, and we might be content with the testimony that such names as these afford. But we have done much more than this. Who can read such works as "John Halifax Gentleman," "Adam Bede," and "Robert Elsmere"—to name the masterpieces of the last century—and not acknowledge that these great books are Puritan to the backbone? I can never look into certain of these pages without my mind being carried back to the days of my youth, when I worshipped in an old-fashioned church situated in a great manufacturing town in the north. It was not a beautiful and ornate building such as that to which my ministry is now given; for it bore on its grey stone front the inscription—Ebenezer, 1809—and in those days the sturdy Independents of the north were not much given to architectural adornment or æsthetic superfluity. No, it was a stern and rugged building, with plain windows and square doorway; but the memory of it is still sweet to me, and I shall never forget a series of sermons preached there, sermons about "Men who got on." The preacher took such examples as Jacob, David and Jehu; and he told the old-world stories with such simple directness in his plain Yorkshire speech that to me at all events they became no mere chronicles of dead and buried kings and patriarchs, but the living histories of living men, whose careers offered as important lessons as the careers of the good citizens of Leeds itself. One was taken from the semi-mythical, wholly oriental atmosphere of the old records right into the life and bustle of modern streets; one heard the busy hum of machinery, the rattle of the loom, the tread of hurrying and eager feet. The preacher shewed us that these old heroes of the Jewish nation were in fact very near to us, that then, as now, strict attention to business, to the business in hand, was bound to ensure success, in Leeds as in Jerusalem, in Yorkshire as in Syria. Even now I can remember the glow of satisfaction that seemed to radiate from the congregation when the good minister told us that Jacob "was a good Yorkshire lad at heart. He knew well enough if you want to get on you must start well, whether it's in God's service or in man's service. Jacob was not a man for compliments and soft sawder—he had no time for that any more than we have at Leeds—he had the Pottage and the Skins ready when they were wanted, and so he became the father of a great people. He stuck to his business, and so his business stuck to him." It was to such heart-lifting discourses as this that I listened in the old grey chapel thirty years ago, and still the preacher's tones, the faint aroma of hair-oil and peppermint, the listening faces of the sturdy, well-to-do congregation, and the sweet notes of the hymn return to me when I open the leaves of "John Halifax."

So it is in a greater or less degree with the works of the other writers I have mentioned. I should like to see on the title-pages of George Eliot's wonderful books three well-known words—Beth-el I'll raise. In formal theological belief, perhaps, she was severed from us; none the less does one gather from her pages the aroma of the good, old-fashioned "meeting-houses" of the Midlands, of placid, gentle, undulating scenery, of plain red-brick country-towns, and above all of the Free Churchmen of the time and place, typical Englishmen and Englishwomen. It has been said that in all those books there is not a single idea; but I do not think that idealism offers many attractions to plain, Protestant England. When an Englishman wants to go from London to Manchester he does not take a balloon, he takes a ticket at Euston, content with his comfortable corner of the railway carriage, and not envying the adventurous aeronaut. True; the balloon is nearer to the stars; but our traveller wishes to get to Manchester!

And so the tale goes on. English fiction of the worthier, greater kind owes a debt that can never be repaid to the influence of the Puritans and their descendants; even when its authors are not mechanically of us, spiritually they are very near to us indeed. Indeed, I know of books whose authors would have disclaimed, perhaps with indignation, both Puritan sources and Puritan influence, and yet these books are among the best representatives of our moral atmosphere. Miss Yonge, for example, was technically, I believe, a member of the Establishment, and her pages are here and there tainted with Anglican doctrine. And yet I know of no work which is more distinctly representative of our principles than hers. Those doctors and ministers in the country or in country towns, always with enormous families, the daily round of life under such conditions so faithfully and patiently described, without haste, without rest, are as good in their way as anything that George Eliot accomplished, and as remote from the fever-heated and unwholesome atmosphere of Romanism and Ritualism and "art" as can be well imagined. We smell no fumes of incense here, our eyes are not dazzled with the sheen of strange vestments, with the complexities of antique architecture—for I have always felt quite sure that the church built by Ethel at Cocksmoor would have been one in which, with few alterations, I could have gladly ministered. Even when the peculiarities of the Establishment are mentioned, we suffer no shock, no repulsion. Richard, it is true, takes "Orders," but he enters the church with the quiet piety and sense with which a good Free Churchman would open a shop; whatever Miss Yonge's personal opinions may have been we do not gather from her page that she conceived of this character as called "to the awful and tremendous hierurgy of the Unbloody Sacrifice"—to use the phrase of a dreadful book which I once opened. Again, it is true that there is a "Bishop" who "consecrates" the church at Cocksmoor; but I do not think the most bigoted anti-Episcopalian need be alarmed by his appearance. Here is no mitred, mystic figure, armed with powers from worlds beyond our ken, no claimant to an imaginary apostolic succession, no maker of "sacrificing priests"; but a quiet, kindly old gentleman, who says a few pleasant words to the children; as simple and as Christian a soul as any Sunday School Superintendent. Thank heaven for it, there is no sense of mystery in Miss Yonge's work, no dark oppression of the sacramental system in the air, nothing that might serve to cherish in the young mind the workings of a vague and fantastic imagination.

Without haste, without rest, must, as I said, have been the motto of this admirable writer. She has that sense of the importance of the infinitely little which is so characteristic of the highest genius; mark how patiently she traces the daily life of each of her child characters step by step, almost hour by hour, till we rise from the book with the delightful impression of having been inhabitants of Dr. May's nursery for many years. Not a detail is withheld; a childish complaint is an episode, and the escapade of a boy at school has in it all the matter of a great tragedy, while a small practical joke comes near to wrecking one of the young lives in which we grow so absorbed, till, as I say, we seem to hear the energetic screaming of the younger children, the pleasing bellow of the sailor-lad, the incessant (and most edifying) oratory of Ethel, and the grave voice of the good Richard. If I may parody a passage from a very different writer, Miss Yonge has painted for us an eternal tea-table, and the hissing urn seems to whisper that the tea is not too strong. And then note the landscape which serves as a background to these deeply interesting events. There are no bottomless vales and boundless floods, no shoreless seas or sacred rivers, no cedarn caves or Titan woods—none of the distorted and unhealthy landscapes that presented themselves to the opium-drugged minds of the unhappy Edgar Poe and the ill-fated Coleridge. Just as I am sure that there were no magic casements in Dr. May's most comfortable residence, so I feel convinced that one might seek in vain within a large radius from the agreeable country town in which he practised for anything remotely resembling fairy lands forlorn. No, we seem to look from solid red-brick houses over placid meadows, watered by gentle and sluggish streams, bordered by well-trimmed hedges with all the gates and stiles in excellent repair. The wildest place mentioned in the book is Cocksmoor; and one understands the exquisite symbolism by which this ragged and unkempt heath stands for the wild, strange impulses and dreams which sometimes haunt and disturb the best of us, which we are to trim and tame at any cost, at any sacrifice.

I have dwelt perhaps too long on a work which has always fascinated me by its truth and its simplicity, but I have demonstrated, at all events, my admiration for really fine literature, and I think I have shewn you that a Free Church minister is by no means the tasteless boor that his enemies have pictured. Now, I am sorry to say that my task will be a less pleasant one; for it is my duty to declare that much which passes under the name of literature should, in my opinion, be ruthlessly suppressed. I will not allow that perfection in the presentation makes the nature of the thing presented of little consequence; I will not allow that the deadliest poisons may be vended openly so long as the phials containing them are curiously and "artistically" shaped; I will not allow that venomous serpents should be encouraged in our back gardens for the sake of the iridescent colours which their scales display. There are those who would suffer putrid and stagnant water to collect in our highways for the pleasure of observing the green scum which gathers over such places; but against such madness as this I, at least, will never cease to raise my voice in horror and detestation.

And I must say that on the whole modern criticism has taken this view, which I maintain to be the only possible one. After all, even the most enraged mediævalists, the most atrabilious opponents of every kind of progress are obliged to confess that the present age is an ethical one. It is by the standard of ethics that we form our judgment of most things. Dogma may be on the wane, for as the worthy ex-president of the Wesleyan Conference so truly affirmed, dogma is not practical, and the twentieth century is nothing if not practical. As Dr. Forrest, a notable example of the fine scholarship and literary culture of Presbyterianism, has observed in a recent and stimulating work:

"It is preposterous to call a state religious according as it does or does not make a formal profession of religion; for example, to call Spain Christian and America godless, as if, so long as the dogmatic of Christianity is preserved, it does not much matter about the ethic."

Considering what we know of the ethical code of America in social, commercial, and political affairs, considering the severity with which any infringement of this high moral standard is punished, especially in the Southern States; it seems to me that the illustration is almost too extravagant for Dr. Forrest's purpose, but it serves my turn, inasmuch as it insists on the supreme importance of ethics. Ethics, of course, are the natural development of a free commercial state; we are not surprised therefore to note that in the Dark Ages, when the Feudal System and the Church of Rome held down the world under a terrorism of blood and fire, there were, in our sense, no morals at all. But in commerce morals are essential, trade could not exist for a day without them, and the great commercial systems which have transformed the world from an armed camp into a peaceful factory would perish, unless sustained by a lofty ethical basis.

The world of to-day, then, is peculiarly and essentially a moral world; there is no doubt that if a Syrian Christian of the first century could revisit this earth, and compare the London and Chicago of to-day with Jerusalem of old he would be astonished at the contrast. And the moral code which governs us is itself peculiar to our age. No doubt it represents through a process of growth and development the ethics of the New Testament, but this identity is not to be discovered on the surface. Nor need this surprise us: the gigantic oak tree bears no resemblance to the acorn, and the splendid blooms in our gardens are very dissimilar from the tiny grains which we entrusted to the soil. Who, without minute and delicate observation, could identify the splendid butterfly, clad in all the colours of the rainbow, with a loathsome caterpillar crawling on the ground? So, it must not surprise us if we find in the Inspired Volume that deliberately to hurt another man's feelings is denounced to be a most capital and deadly sin, that poverty is held up to our admiration as a highly-privileged state, that the possession of a flourishing business and an immense fortune is considered as occupying much the same position as that of a man on the brink of a frightful precipice, that the saving of money and a careful consideration of future contingencies are regarded as both imbecile and wicked. We must not be surprised again when we find the Master studiously shunning the company of what we should call the respectable classes, and associating with persons, male and female, whom we should describe as drunkards, tavern-haunters, wastrels, and "Bohemians." At the same time, I need not point out to you that this is not precisely the code of to-day. We pride ourselves on our commercial prosperity, we do not wish to imitate the Popish "saints" in their superstitious views of poverty, we regard a successful and wealthy business man as a highly enviable and laudable individual, we applaud economy and prudent foresight in business matters, and, speaking for the Free Churches, I need scarcely say that we are devoted adherents of the great cause of Temperance. With the utmost stretch of my imagination, I cannot conceive of a minister of any respectable denomination drinking in a common public-house, with actors, painters, authors, or musicians, who, I am afraid, are rarely men of very sober habits; nor can I for a moment admit that it would be possible for myself, or for any of my brethren, to cultivate the society of the unhappy women who have been branded with the shameful stigma of the Divorce Court.

But ours, as I have observed, is an ethical age, and I cannot sufficiently praise the manner in which the chief literary critics of the time have absorbed the great moral principles which are, as I have said, the backbone of the modern commercial state. I do not know any of these gentlemen personally, I am sorry to say, but if we may judge from their writings, it must be, indeed, a blessed privilege to have their acquaintance, to imbibe, as from the fountain head, those precious streams of high ethical instruction which must well out alway from their lips. And they are by no means the mere pedants of the dull old days, the dry scholars with their quaint interest in purely literary theories, with their puzzle-headed and minute knowledge of antique and dusty tomes such as Chaucer and Shakespeare, learned in occult and useless lore of poesy, gravely discoursing of sonnets and epics, of rhymes and alliterations, acquainted, very likely, with the languages of ancient Greece and Rome. No; the modern critic is far from being of this grim old fellowship; as witness Mr. Arnold Bennett, who says in the columns of a great Liberal newspaper:—

"Money talks. A litterateur who, having made a profound study of fiction, can tell you the colour of the dress in which Charlotte Brontë was married, will command a higher remuneration (because he interests more people) than the critic who can but chatter amiably of the differences between the philosophy of Browning and the philosophy of Algernon Charles Swinburne."

This is sound sense, not literary pedantry; and it is a combination of sound commercial sense with a high moral standard that has made our English criticism what it is: the resolute guardian of our homes, determined at all hazards to ward off the prowling bands of so-called "stylists," "artists," "mystics," and all other dabblers in the dark caverns of impurity and disease. I am a father myself, and it has always pleased me to think of our English critics as fathers also, as writing their profound and yet attractive essays in the midst of a laughing throng of merry, happy children; pausing now and then, perhaps, and gaining inspiration and (who knows?) ideas from the cheerful prattle of the little ones. I love to think of these men who guide the great destinies of English Literature as interested in all the details of innocent child-life, as more learned, perhaps, in the shape and uses of the tiny garments of extreme infancy than in the arid history of the masterpieces, as taking a greater interest in Nelly's doll than in the author of Don Quixote, as giving greater thought to the quarrel between Phillis and Jacky (who is always naughty), than to the debates of the Tassoists and Ariostoists. Indeed, I feel sure than this fancy of mine must correspond to the truth, for in no other way can I explain the enthusiasm for the cause of youth which has so often edified me in the writings of these excellent gentlemen. Only fathers could identify themselves so absolutely with the childish mind, only fathers would perceive with such sure instinct the weak places, as it were, in the nursery wall and appreciate the need of guarding against the latent taste for decadent literature, so prevalent in infantine minds. This principle—that no book should be written or published which may, conceivably, do some harm to some young person or other—is a great one; it has been the salvation of our simple English shelves, and I hope that our criticism will always and without flinching maintain this splendid canon that the book which is not fit to enter the nursery and the schoolroom is not fit to exist at all. The field of the novelist and the poet, like that of the playwright, is an open space, a Board School playground, if you please, and I contend that the man who would defile and degrade such a paradise with his grinning deathsheads, his grotesque and frightful gurgoyles, is a villain indeed.

Yes, the Principle of the Nursery, as I think I may call it, is a principle of such vital and tremendous importance, that, for my part, I often wonder why it is not extended beyond the region of literature, in which its application has been found to have such beneficent results. Why do we not regulate our whole lives by regard to the little ones, for whose physical and spiritual welfare we are directly responsible?

For example: Why should we have any newspapers? I have said something already on this topic, when I was pointing out to you the terrible harm that must be caused to the young by a person whom I will not name, writing in a journal the title of which I do not care to give. But supposing this person saw the error of his ways, and desisted from appealing to the most morbid and dangerous sides of our nature, supposing his newspaper with its contaminating betting news and reports of stage-plays ceased to exist; how should we be the better off? Take the average daily paper; what is it in the main but a catalogue of horrors, a compendium of all the degrading and abominable vices and crimes to which man is subject? If you had children, would you wish them to be posted in the last divorce case, in the unspeakable details of the unsavoury scandal of the day? Would you wish your boys and girls at the most impressionable period of their lives to be familiar with all the degrading vice of the West End, with the aspect of Piccadilly Circus at midnight, with the proceedings of so-called "clubs," which in reality deserve a much harsher appellation? Would you have these young minds interested in the careers of murderers and assassins, in the story of their crimes, forming pictures (no doubt, of ghastly realism) of murdered women concealed in cement, of a libertine's mistress buried in a back garden, of some hapless wretch hacked to pieces by her butcher, of the dying agonies of the poisoned? The paper can be kept out of the way? Yes, but that is the excuse and the defence of the provider of moral garbage in literature, and we are agreed that such a proposition is both monstrous and futile. I leave it to your conscience as to how far you are justified in purchasing a copy of the Times to-morrow morning; for myself I have no doubt at all that the scandal of the daily paper should not be suffered to exist another day. I withdraw what I said as to the press on a former occasion; led by an irresistible argument I have been forced to see that the newspaper horror cannot, must not, be allowed to continue.

And again; why do we have fires, why do we boil water? It may be speciously urged that the little ones should be kept away from both; but I have already demonstrated the shallow folly of such a pretence as this; and as a matter of fact, it is only too common for young children to perish in terrible agony, burned or boiled alive, offered up in sacrifice to the Moloch of our selfish and abominable craving for strange luxuries, such as tea and chops. Think over this, and decide once for all whether you are prepared to insist on your roast beef at the cost of roast baby; taste, if you can, your cup of tea without detecting in it the flavour of boiled infant.

Of course, we shall be told that such things are necessaries. This I emphatically deny; this, I say, is demonstrably false, a lie that must be nailed to the counter once and for all. Many millions of human beings have lived and died without having heard of these so-called necessaries; and some of the best and most enlightened Englishmen of to-day would shrink in horror from the thought of touching such abominations. The fruits of the earth are not wanting; figs, dates, tomatoes, nuts, and cereals of all kinds are plentiful and cheap, and Mr. Eustace Miles is a standing, living, triumphant example of the superiority of a vegetarian, fruitarian, nutarian, and cereal man over the devourer of roast beef and boiled chicken. The championship of the Tennis Court was won upon cutlets that were made of nuts. Once more, I say, put out your fires, throw your kettles and saucepans into the dustbin. Else you shall have upon your soul the guilt of infanticide, and the cries of boiled and roasted babies shall disturb your midnight pillow. And moreover, if you abstain from the decadent and disgusting in literature, you will doubtless find that the savours of the orgie called dinner no longer allure you; you will put away "strong" meat and return to your innocent, happy childhood over a diet of "Riscuit" and Grape Guts.

Have not the poets always sung of a fabled Age of Gold, when iron was suffered to remain in the earth, when, in the happy childhood of the world, man found shelter beneath the oaks and ate their simple produce, washed down with water from the sparkling brook? What if this vision should again be realised, if the world, weary of its follies and its crimes, should put them off and gain a second childhood?

Let us all work prayerfully, earnestly, persistently to this glorious end; but before it can be consummated much remains to be done. I have said that so far as modern literature goes, the gates are on the whole well kept, for modern criticism does its duty with respect to the current productions of the press. But what am I to say of the general attitude towards the fiction, the poetry and the drama of the past? I am afraid my verdict cannot be a very favourable one. It fills me with amazement and horror when I read in the writings of authors (who are safe enough where modern work is concerned) a kind of glib, matter-of-fact acceptance of some of the most monstrous productions of past ages—on the ground that these abominations are "works of genius," "works of art," and I know not what else. What a monstrous inconsistency lies in the practice of forcing growing lads to acquire a knowledge of the obscenities of Aristophanes; a writer who would most deservedly be sent to gaol if he lived in our days, whom to read would spell the severest punishment, if he had written not in Greek but in plain English. Is this the way to breed English gentlemen, I ask; are we teaching our boys to become earnest and profitable Christians by forcing down their throats this filth of heathendom, this Athenian sewage? No one, surely, can sincerely think that vile and corrupting garbage is any the better because it was written more than two thousand years ago. Again, I say, it is not to be wondered at, if to the Free Churchman the word "classic" implies foul and deliberate nastiness. And yet, the very men who are most prompt in correcting any tendency of this kind in the work of to-day, are with the next breath ready to applaud the filth of some scoundrelly heathen, to smack their lips over some new edition of his plays or poems and to congratulate the editor on his notes—notes elucidating matter of which a Hottentot would be ashamed.

The case is much the same with writers who were at all events professing Christians. Take the case of Chaucer. Here is a man much of whose poetry is deliberately and brutally obscene; and not merely obscene in thought, idea, conception, but obscene in words. Not only are the images he presents to us of a profoundly disgusting and immoral character, but the words which he employs are such that if I uttered them in the public street I should with no long interval make my appearance in the nearest police station on the charge of using filthy and obscene language. And yet, mark you, the works of this writer are not merely on sale, but they are on sale in cheap editions, and for two shillings and eightpence or some such sum you can buy more disgusting language than a magistrate in a low neighbourhood has to listen to in a month. And not merely is this book on sale at a cheap rate; it is actually made a text-book, it is propounded for the study of young men and girls, who are presently examined on their knowledge of one of the grossest and vilest writers that our country ever produced. Again, I suppose the plea is that perfection in the presentation makes the nature of the thing presented of little consequence; Chaucer, I suppose, was a "stylist" and an "artist," and all the rest of it; and again I must express my wonder that critics who would indignantly reject this plea in the case of a modern writer are ready to welcome it with applause in the case of a ruffian who has been dead for five hundred years.

I could mention many other instances of this extraordinary indulgence extended to men whose only merit lies in the fact that they wore clothes of a different fashion from those in use to-day. There is the elegant and alluring lustfulness of Boccaccio, the gross vulgarity of Cervantes, the mad obscenity of Rabelais, whose every page is strewn with abominations of thought and expression which are quite unspeakable, which belong rather to a prostitute in Bedlam than to a rational human being. But I pass these over and come to the most notorious instance of all, the universally read, the almost idolised Shakespeare. Nay; I am quite aware of the obloquy I shall encounter, I know that a kind of fetish worship has gathered round the name of this dramatist, that it is accounted a heresy to mention his works save in terms of the most extravagant praise. And I must allow that Shakespeare has written many great and admirable lines; there are whole pages, indeed, in his plays which may be read both with pleasure and profit, for the beauty of expression, the moral lesson, and the fidelity to life. Such for example are the famous soliloquy beginning "To be, or not to be," and the hardly less famous moralisings of the Melancholy Jacques. But we purchase such gems as these too dearly when we consider what Shakespeare is as a whole, that throughout his works are scattered many passages of an extremely indecent nature, that his language is by no means such as we should tolerate in our drawing-rooms, and that again and again he appeals to some of the worst passions of Englishmen.

How vain is it for us to preach the wickedness of war from every pulpit, if with our next breath we bid our children study such a play as Henry V. We proclaim aloud at every opportunity the blessings of peace, we denounce militarism in high places and in low, we clamour for the reduction of the bloated armaments which suck the life-blood from the English People, and keep the rest of the world in a continual state of irritation and alarm. We resent such festivals as Empire Day, we banish the Union Jack from our schools, we hate and dread the very mention of conscription, and by our ridicule of the "Rifle Club" and similar schemes we do our very best to render our country defenceless in the event of invasion. Military habits—the smartness, the rigid carriage of the body, the prompt obedience to a superior—all these we consistently look down upon and deride, for they are at once provocative and contrary to the principles of democracy. Nay, as I have said, we have found it our duty in almost every case in which a dispute has arisen between Englishmen and those of another nation to declare our own people absolutely in the wrong, to paint them as a race of savage, sordid, and barbarian robbers. When Englishmen have won victories we allude to them as "brutal massacres of unarmed men," when Englishmen have been defeated we point out that our own race is effete, rotten, cowardly, and contemptible in every respect, and that the leaders of our armies are too imbecile to fight successfully against men, whatever their prowess may be against women and children. We have done all this, I say, and we crown our work by putting into our children's hands a book that reeks of Jingoism, Imperialism, and Patriotism; that "mafficks" on every other page, that sings the glories of all the ruffianly kings who bore rule in the Dark Ages, and never fails to applaud their most disreputable military adventures! And when to vices such as these we join the immeasurble contempt that the flunkey-soul of Shakespeare felt for the People, when we remember the outrageous and insulting manner in which the Democracy is treated in Coriolanus and Julius Cæsar; above all, when we read that most injurious and shameful attack on the great Cade in Henry VI. Part II., the measure of our just indignation brims over, and we Free Churchmen reluctantly but decisively announce to the world that Shakespeare must go. A few copies of the Works may possibly be allowed to be kept in the strong rooms of the County Council, and may be shewn to such scholars as can satisfy the official custodians that their curiosity is harmless; but the man who by a kind of malignant prophecy at once defiled the memory of the martyr in the people's cause, and contrived in doing so shamelessly to caricature and degrade the policy of the great Liberal Party of to-day, shall be no guide for our children, for those Liberal citizens of to-morrow, whom we have rescued from parson and from priest.