66 the day is misspent if they do the United States can provide. not carry away with them We know well enough that, as some trophy, however small. a result of the war, we are When they are content with faced with many difficulties. an insignificant prey, not much We know also that if we do harm is done, except to them- not trust too fondly to the selves. Unfortunately, they Government, if we recognise sometimes fly at bigger game. that all benefits come not Not long ago a visitor to a from legislation but from a northern cathedral noticed that change of heart in the people, a piece of beautiful carving in we shall overcome our diffistone had been wrenched from culties. Meanwhile we do not the door of the Chapter-house. ask the good opinion nor the "The Americans have been help of the United States. So here," said the visitor to the long as we pay our annual verger. "Yes," replied the tribute they can have nothing verger, a party of sixty came to say to us. A report, lately to see the cathedral the other issued by the British Federaday. I could not keep an eye tion of Industries, tells us what upon them all, and I discovered the United States think of us. only when they were gone the "Even in the most friendly damage they had done." Not quarters," we are told, "the even the wealth of those whose general impression seems to be standard of living is the highest that England is down and out. known to history can restore All our difficulties are exaggerthe damage thus wantonly done. ated, and the progress we have And until this indelicate habit made towards reconstruction is corrected, the United States ignored. We are painted as cannot hope to live on terms of being at the mercy of Comintimacy with civilised Europe, munists. One hears that our whose standard of living may plants are out-of-date, our be unhappily depressed. methods antiquated, we cannot compete, our spirit of initiative has deserted us, and the British workman neither can nor will work." It is a pleasant picture, painted in the colours of amiability. But if the Americans count upon our being down and out, they will have a rude awakening. Not for one moment would we give our tradition, our respect for intelligence, our care for things of the mind, for all the gold which is stored in the treasury of New York. There is very little that money can buy, and no sane man would demand from the gods the gift of Midas. We would rather have a dinner of herbs with contentment and a little wine than all the dry banquets which the enslaved riches of VOL. CCXVIII.-NO. MCCCXXII. Of course, we have suffered more than they from the war. They, indeed, had not much to do with the war, except to make money out of it. We risked 2 M all our money and all our men of military age, and we have not yet had time to rebuild the fabric of our life and trade. Presently we shall recover completely-we have travelled far on the road to recovery, and until that time arrives we are content that our deeds shall speak for us. The British Federation of Industries suggests that "one or two Englishmen of the highest standing should visit the United States, and in a series of speeches in different parts of the country correct the harm done to British interests." For our part we have no faith in propaganda of this sort. The Americans will go on believing what they want to believe about us and about themselves. It would be hardly worth while, were it possible, to correct the false news they listen to, the false statements that they make. We should be content to discover the Englishmen who write articles in the American Press to the discredit the discredit of their country, and put them in a moral pillory. For the rest, we believe that we are merely at the beginning of a great career, and we shall not waste a minute in envying those who, without literature and without art, have attained to "the highest standard of living in the country's history, and therefore the highest in all history." It is unfortunate for Mr Stainer that his little book on The Conversations of Jonson Drummond' (Oxford: Blackwell) should have appeared so soon after the important work of Messrs Herford and Simpson, which might easily have resolved most of his doubts. He is a dogmatic and explosive critic, who delights to end his sentences with notes of exclamation. His method of criticism is simplicity itself. He makes up his mind what are the questions which Drummond would have asked Jonson and how Jonson would have answered, and not finding in the Conversations' his method followed he pronounces the 'Conversations' a forgery. He knows what he would have done had he been a poet, like Jonson, visiting a friend after a tramp of four hundred miles. He would have sat him down, like the poor victim of an interview, and given the reporter who faced him a brief account of his life and travels. "Did Jonson really speak of his youth," he asks, "and yet not give the name of his father and mother? Had he forgotten the name of his wife and son? Had he nothing fresh to tell of his early education, of his rank when a soldier, of his early writings? . . . Was there nothing to tell Drummond of the adventure of walking to Scotland? No villages, no inns, no friends, not eather!" Ingenu even ΟΥ no further than 1 not deal in the facts and statistics which are dear to journalists. Therefore the Conversations' which Drummond wrote down are forgeries. It takes two to make a conversation, and if the conversation be recorded, it is perforce the work of both. The chief discourser, who in these 'Conversations' is Jonson, selects such topics as come by hazard to his mind. He talks as he thinks, and he thinks perchance more about the art of Shakespeare, or the lack of it, and about the bad temper of Marston, or of the accent which Donne did not keep, than about the names of his father and mother, or even about the weather. And when Jonson had talked, loudly and not always soberly, Drummond took up his part of the task. He made another selection. He put down upon paper the few scattered sayings which he remembered, or which chimed with his fancy. And so the Conversations came about, much to the displeasure of Mr Stainer, who cannot understand the result of this double process of selection. For us, the general tenor and shape of the record are clear proofs of its authenticity. Thus and thus only would a lettered and fussy worshipper of the great set down upon paper what a great man had told him. Mr Stainer, in attempting to destroy the authenticity of an accepted document, wishes to have it both ways. If he admits the truth of a statement, he declares that the statement has been taken from a book, and that therefore the Conversations' are an obvious forgery. If, on the other hand, he discovers a false statement, he declares that none but a forger would have been at the pains to write it down. It is not after so simple a fashion that the human mind works. A statement is not forged because Ben Jonson makes it twice, nor because, in the medley of talk, it is imperfectly remembered or incorrectly written down by Drummond. Nor, when he descends to particulars, is he more happily inspired than when he clings to general principles. Jonson's impresa fills him with a wild fury. Jonson describes his impresa," he says, " which writes him down an ass." Why does it? Mr Stainer does not explain. He merely says that it is "an impertinent adaptation" of some words in the Epistle to Selden, which has not a word of a broken compass. He is full of contempt for those who, after his burning denunciation, would accept the 'Conversations' as genuine, because Jonson told Drummond that he was Master of Arts in both Universities. Only a forger could have made this statement, because Jonson was inducted formally in the degree of Master of Arts on 19th July 1619. This was after Jonson's return from Scotland!" The italics and the note of 66 exclamation are Mr Stainer's. Henslowe removes all possiUnfortunately for his argu- bility of doubt. ment, the degree had been conferred upon Jonson long before, at the suggestion of Lord Pembroke. It was merely the induction which took place after Jonson's return from Hawthornden. It is unnecessary to correct all Mr Stainer's foolish arguments. We have but space to deal with one or two. Here is one which is typical of Mr Stainer's method. Jonson tells Drummond that since his coming to England, being appealed to the fields, he had killed his adversary." Mr Stainer's comment is of high value. "The name of Jonson's adversary is not given," says he triumphantly. "This alone indicates that the passage was written at a late date." Why should the absence of the name indicate so much as that? It might indicate either that Jonson thought it not worth while to repeat the name of Gabriel Spencer, or that Drummond had heard and forgotten it. "The name was unknown," goes on Mr Stainer irrelevantly, Then he is troubled because Ben Jonson tells Drummond that he was accused of popery and treason before the Council by Northampton. Another plain proof of forgery. For Northampton was a Roman Catholic!' So he was at times; at other times he was a violent anti-Catholic, either with sincerity or with the design of covering up the traces of his Catholicism. The man who was active in the trial of Guy Fawkes might easily have persecuted Ben Jonson. Again writes Mr Stainer, with the jubilation of italics (after quoting from the 'Conversations': 'He married a wife who was a shrew yet honest; five years he had not bedded with her, but remained with my Lord Albany "), "Jonson's wife was dead when he visited Scotland.” Why should she not be dead? Her death did not belie what Jonson said, and there is no reason why he should not have told Drummond this simple anecdote though his wife lay in her grave. It would have been more difficult for a forger to invent it. Mr Stainer is no less unlucky when he attempts to show that Jonson's quarrel with Inigo Jones was of a later date than the Conversations.' If he will consult Messrs Herford and Simpson, he will see that the feud was already old in 1619. Thus he goes on, page after page, with his irrelevancies and inaccu racies, nor does he seem to is a better hand at assumption take his task very seriously. He tries hard to prove-unsuccessfully, of course-that Drummond was not in Scotland at the time he held the Conversations' with Jonson, and then suddenly throws up the sponge. "Let me say at once -thus he writes" that, as far as I am concerned, the question as to whether Drummond was in Scotland really is not very important. It requires too much research." Indeed it does from Mr Stainer, who than research. Having started upon his quest, he does not carry it on to the end, nor attempt to discover the cause of the mystery. "It is not my task," he confesses, "to inquire why a Scotch antiquarian should dabble in forgery." Still less is it our task to inquire why Mr Stainer, M.A., should have given himself the trouble to write as foolish a piece of literary criticism as we have ever seen. |