BOOKS.

A GREAT BOOK.*

IT has been said, and as we think most truly, that great men are commoner than great books. Great authors almost always show certain weaknesses in their work, and therefore their works are patchy. Almost the only author absolute in her perfection that we can think of is Miss Austen. A book which can claim the honour of being ranked among the great books of the world must be good throughout, good in the whole, good in the part, good in general structure, good in details. It must maintain a constancy of perfection found seldom in the arts. In the sense in which we are using the phrase we do not mean by a great book an ennobling book, or necessarily a book with the highest qualities of human genius. We mean a book which, whatever its aim, high or low, grave or gay, satirical or instructive, critical or creative, exactly accomplishes the aim of its author. It is a book which never fails in its aim. It hits the bull's-eye at every discharge.

One of the books that attain pre-eminently this intense if

• Tho Tale of a Tub. By Jonathan Swift. Edited by A. C. Guthkeleh and /). Nicol Smith. Oxford : at the Clarendon Press. Mis. net.) limited perfection is Swift's Tale of a Tub. It is not only a great tut a terrible book, a book which we must honour

but which we cannot like, a book which leaves us not happy or re-established in mind and purpose and eager for better things,

but rather one which leaves us horrified. It shows us the things

in the human mind which we would rather not see ; it tells of that of which we should all prefer to remain ignorant. Let no one imagine that we are repeating the commonplace criticism of Swift for his nastiness, for his mere obscenities and deroga- tions from those decencies which protect us from physical nausea in literature as in life. We are thinking of something quite different—of the appalling inhumanity of the man's mind and of that quality which made the trembling Vanessa give forth her agonized cry, "Surely no man ever thought like you."

The Tale of a Tub is one of the great books of the world.

That is a proposition which cannot be challenged. We are amazed as well as appalled by the frightful energy and concen- tration which mark its every page. It boils like a witch's cauldron. The flickering of the magic oils, red green and blue, the hideous iridescence of the scum, the dreadful and poisonous things that float half-hidden and half-seen are there, rising and sinking, stinking and simmering, bubbling and bursting—a horror that fascinates and is intolerable. We shrink soul.

smitten as we say with Swift himself : "Good God, what a genius Iliad when I wrote that book !"

It is difficult to know what passages to choose to maintain our contention. Although, as we have said, the obscenities of Swift can be easily exaggerated, it is very difficult to find a passage of any length which can be quoted in a newspaper with- out offence—a passage undefiled by the human Harpy. To quote such a passage would do no one any harm, but an editor may well shrink from throwing ordure in the faces of his readers.

Another difficulty of illustrative quotation is that aSwift in The Tale of a Tub was a free user, if not indeed the inventor,

of that touch-and-go elusive style which Stern—who, by the way, owed a great deal to Swift—used with so intense a fascination. Stern had, or at any rate pretended to have, as much of the milk

of human kindness as Swift had of the acidity of human malig- nancy. Hence we can take Tristram Shandy with ease and satisfaction as a holiday book, while no one who had, not the armour of extreme youth would dare to take The Tale of a Tub on a holiday. The dreadful shadow of madness is not a

good travelling companion.

As a characteristic and yet distinctly amusing example of Swift's style in The Tale of a Tub, one may take the very attrac-

tive passage in Section V. entitled "A Digression in the Modern Kind," which deals with Prefaces. After describing how Prefaces arose, a dissertation in which there occur the two delightful book titles, "My New Help of Smatterers," and "The Art of being Deep-Learned and Shallow-Read," Swift, greatly daring, proceeds to deal with puffing Prefaces, and especially with those of Dryden, who, remember, when the book was published, was alive and still able to roar in his " walks " in Wills' Coffee House :—

" This Expedient was admirable at first ; Our Great Dryden has long carried it so far as it would go and with incredible Success. He has often said to me in Confidence, that the World would have never suspected him to be so great a Poet if he had not assured them so frequently in his Prefaces that it was im- possible they could either doubt or forget it. Perhaps it may be so ; However, I much fear, his Instructions have edified out of their Place, and taught Men to grow Wiser in certain Points, where he never intended they should ; For it is lamentable to behold, with what a lazy Scorn, many of the yawning Readers in our Age, do now-a-days twirl over forty or fifty pages of Preface and Dedication (which is the usual Modern Stint) as if it were so much Latin. Though it must be allowed on the other Hand that a very considerable Number is known to proceed Critics and Wits by reading nothing else. Into which two Factions, I think, all present Readers may justly be divided. Now, for myself, I profess to be of the former Sort ; and therefore having the Modern Inclination to expatiate upon the Beauty of my own Productions and display the Bright Parts of my Dis- course; I thought best to do it in the Body of the work, where as it now lies, it makes a very considerable Addition to the Bulk of the Volume a Circumstance by no means to be neglected by a skilful Writer. Having thus paid my due Deference and Acknowledgement to an established Custom of our newest Authors, by a long Digression unsought for, and an universal Censure unprovoked ; By forcing into the Light, with much Pains and Demterity, my own Excellencies and other Men's Defaults, with great Justice to myself and- Candour to them ; I now happily resume my Subject, to the Infinite Satisfaction both of the Reader and the Author."

We wish we could quote the amazing passage which contains Swift's allusion to Cicero and the British Cabmen or the ghastly

jokes about madness. We must, however, since it proves our point, exhibit the haunting irony of the dissertation on happiness in the Digression on Madness, the passage which contains the often-quoted aphorism that happiness is but "a perpetual possession of being well-deceived" :—

" But when a Man's Fancy gets astride on his Reason, when Imagination is at Cuffs with the Senses, and corneal:on Under- standing, as well as common Sense, is Kicked out of Doors ; the first Proselyte he makes is Himself, and when that is once com- passed the Difficulty is not so great in bringing over others ; A strong Delusion always operating from without as vigorously as from within. For, Cant and Vision are to the Ear and the Eye, the same that Tickling is to the Touch. Those Entertain- ments and Pleasures we most value in Life, are such as Dupe and play the Wag with the Senses. For, if we take an Examination of what is generally understood by Happiness as it has Respect, either to the Understanding or the Senses, we shall find all its Properties and Adjuncts will herd under this short Definition : That, it is a perpetual Possession of being well Deceived. And first, with Relation to the Mind or Understanding ; 'Cs manifest, what mighty Advantages Fiction has over Truth ; and the Reason is just at our Elbow ; because Imagination can build nobler Scenes, and produce more wonderful Revolutions than Fortune or Nature will be at Expense to furnish. Nor is Man- kind so much to blame in his Choice, thus determining him if we consider that the Debate merely lies between Things past and

Things conceived ; and so the Question is only this ; Whether Things that have Place in the Imagination, may not as properly be said to Exist as those that are seated in the Memory ; which may be justly held in the Affirmative, and very much to the Advantage of the former, since This is acknowledged to be the Womb of Things, and the other allowed to be no more than the Grave. Again, if we take this Definition of Happiness, and examine it with Reference to the Senses, it will be acknowledged wonderfully adapt. How fading and insipid do all Objects accost us that are not oonveyed in the Vehicle of Delusion ? How shrunk is every Thing as it appears in the Glass of Nature 1 "

In the notes to the text is given a curious account of an almanac of Swift's period, which contains the following verse by way of title :—

"War begets Poverty, Poverty Peace : Peace rnaketh Riches flow, (Fate ne'er doth cease :) Riches produceth Pride, Pride is War's ground, War begets Poverty, etc. (The World) goes round."

To this and the wonderful passage that follows on war we can do no more than put up a signpost.

Before we leave Swift and his admirable books in which irony and imagination are used, not, according to the common custom,

as sedatives, but as irritant poisoias,we must, however, express our most hearty thanks to the Oxford Clarendon Press and to the editors, Mr. A. C. Guthkelch and Mr. D. Nicol Smith (the former of whom died, we regret to say, in 1916), for the admirable way in which they have performed their task. Besides The Tale of a Tub the present volume contains The Battle of the Books and The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, and to this rich feast are added by way of Appendix, The History of Martin, Wotton's Observations upon the Tale of a Tub, and Curll's Complete Key. Taken as a whole, the book is edited just in the spirit in which the great classics should be edited. The notes and general Apparatus Criticus give us not only all we need for understanding the book, but a great deal of general fortification, edification and enjoyment in the reading. The editors have thoroughly under- stood Swift and his work.

One word more. We are very grateful not only for the re- production of the original illustrations, but for the very agreeable drawings--or shall we say suggestions for drawings 1—which were recently discovered and which have been placed in most eases opposite the illustrations as they originally appeared. But there is no more need of words. Let all who love to see a great book, well groomed and well set forth, buy the Oxford edition of The Tale of a Tub. And here let us say with what pleasure we note that the production at the Clarendon Press has not suffered in the least by the war. Both for paper and print the book is as well produced as any pm-war volume.