PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY.*

THE shelf of the library which is kept for " occasional " reading will be greatly enriched by the republication of the Private Diary from the Cornhill Magazine. It must be under- stood that the word "occasional" is to be taken in its sense of "incidental," and that the place the Diary claims is on that inner private shelf where lie the books which are to be read and re-read, and, above all, the books which are to be dipped into. For though the composition of each man's "dipping shelf" must needs be different, yet it is only a certain type of book which can be allowed to rest there at alL Works of fiction will be at a discount, particularly the novel of adventure. No one wants the clash of swords to reverberate perpetually in his ears. If a novel is to be found at all it must be a novel like Vanity Fair, which is not read for the story. Indeed, if it is, or ever has been, possible to "get excited" over a book, that should be its sentence of banish- ment as far as the dipping shelf is concerned. The book which may be confidently placed there, besides of course being attractive in matter, must be supremely attractive in manner. It must possess a touch of literary distinction, and there must be something that is pleasant to read on every page. Wit and humour, qualities by no means synonymous, will greatly improve it as a constant companion for odds and ends of time. While possessing all these graces, the Private Diary is most remarkable for its command of the first. There are plenty of people who can string together a series of good stories, but very few who can • Pages from a Private Diary. London : Smith, E'der. and Co.

impress on every page of their writing the indefinable some- thing which gives literary distinction. The diarist in the work before us possesses this inestimable gift, and possesses it without affectation, the bane of so much "literary" writing in the present day. "Style," "distinction," call it what you will, the touch is present here which lifts mere writing into literature.

It has been said above that many people can string a quantity of good stories together, but it may be doubted whether so many good stories are often to be found in one ',mall book. One of the best in the collection is the lament

of the lady over "the loss of a somewhat ill-bred but ex- tremely wealthy neighbour who had been very liberal in his

help to her country charities. Mr. X is *dead,' said she ; 'he was so good and kind and helpful to me in all sorts of r-ays; he was so vulgar, poor, dear fellow, we could not know him in London; but we shall meet in heaven."

Another good story is the complaint of a French Professor to Eugenia, the diarist's daughter :—" It is a grand pity our poets know so little. I am full of ideas, but the expression I

cap give them does not satisfy. You know our poet Sully

Prudhomme. He asks a question which draws tears :— Eartout scintillent lea couleurs, Dials d'oh vient cette force en elles ? Ii existe un bleu dont je meurs Parce qu'il eat dans lea prunelles.'

How much more tears should he draw, if like me he knew the answer !" The entry recalls the emendation made by a

celebrated statistician to the lines :—

" Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born."

This, said the man of figures, is incorrect, and the lines would scan just as well if the true facts were stated. They

should run :—

"Every moment dies a man One and one-sixteenth is born."

But most of the diarist's stories are too good to be capped. For instance, the tutor's letter of condolence sent to a

bereaved parent : "I am sincerely grieved to hear the sad news of your son's death. But I must inform you that he

would have had to go down in any case, as he had failed to satisfy the examiners in classical moderations." Hard to be equalled is the saying of the old Berkshire farmer: "Us won't be prosperous till us have fewer of they black parsons and more of they black pigs." Still, it is tempting to give as an. antistrophe to the advertisement, "Bull-dog for sale; will f.a. anything; very fond of children," the following from

an old newspaper: "Wanted, two apprentices. Will be treated as one of the family." But besides amusing stories, such as the above, the diarist sprinkles his pages with in-

teresting excerpts from curious books. One quotation must be given of a delightful translation of a French proverb to be found in Cotgra.ve's dictionary :—" Vogue la galere : Let the world wag, slide, goe how it will; let goe a God's name ; not a pin matter whether we sinke or swimme."

But after all, the charm of the Private Diary does not consist in the good things which so plentifully enrich its pages. Nor yet does it lie entirely in the charm of the writing. The attitude of the writer towards life, the kindly humour, the indulgent cynicism, count for something. "Lord, what fools these mortals be," says in effect the diarist ; and most handsomely does not exclude himself. Then, again, the little world of people he has drawn for us are so well

worth knowing. Take Tom, the slightly narrow, overbearing Squire, whom one knows to be such a good fellow at heart.

Few novelists have ever created a more living figure. How amusing is the meeting between Tom and the Scotch lady who " credited " herself with second-sight. One of this good lady's gifts was the power of seeing the heads of her friends "in an aura of other heads, these being the people who have most influenced" them. "We were greatly pleased," says the diarist, "at the sibyl's success with Tom. 'Only one head,' said she, 'is very plainly marked; and that is fur-

nished with a stubby chin beard; and has something odd about the eyes, not a cast, nor a squint.' 'It is a glass eye, ma'am,' said Tom, 'if, as I infer, you are describing ray gamekeeper." Eugenia, too, we know quite well, and the Incomparable Sophia is a sort of quintessence of all the minor faults and absurdities that men complain of in their wives. To how many pleasant country dinner-tables is the reader conducted. We must not, however, include among these the party at the house of the impecunious clergyman whose ex- pression, as he sipped his wine after dinner, induced the poor diarist to venture on port from an unknown cellar. "I helped myself and sipped. Then I understood. What I had taken for pride in his port was defiance in his eye."

Before we leave the Diary we must quote one entry as an example of the writer's style and manner, and of his idyllic discursiveness was looking this morning at the fine colour every- where, bright in the foreground, and fading into a fairy-like distance ; and I was groping round my mind for some fit expression of that fairy world, when there leapt to memory the familiar line—

'Tie distance lends enchantment to the view.'

I believe this is the first time I have realised what the poet meant by enchantment.' It this rate, before I die I may be able to appreciate To be or not to be.' I have been reading 'Hamlet' lately, and trying to recover the sharpness of first impressions. How strange and unlike anything else in literature is the Ghost beneath, Swear !' Shakespeare must have enjoyed it as a new thrill ; and Hamlet's queer speeches and hysteria in that scene must have been more puzzling to his audience then than now. They must have been set down purely for the self- indulgence of Shakespeare himself—indeed, like half Hamlet says. One of the best things said yet about " Hamlet " is to be found in a back number of the Pall Mall Gazette, by 'An Old Playgoer,' who was Matthew Arnold. Shakespeare created "Hamlet" with his mind running on Montaigne, and placed its action and its hero in Montaigne's atmosphere and world. What is that world ? It is the world of man viewed as a being otidoyant et divers, balancing and indeterminate, the plaything of cross-motives and shifting impulses, swayed by a thousand subtle influences, physiological and pathological. Certainly the action and the hero of the original "Hamlet" story are not such as to compel the poet to place them in this world and no other; but they admit of being placed there ; Shakespeare resolved to place them there, and they lent themselves to his resolve. The resolve once taken to place the action in the world of problem, the problem became brightened by all the force of Shake- speare's faculties, of Shakespeare's subtlety. "Hamlet" thus comes at last to be not a drama followed with perfect compre- hension and profoundest emotion, which is the ideal for tragedy, but a problem soliciting interpretation and solution' (Octo- ber 23, 1884). Let me jot down here a question proposed to be set in a college examination : From the characters of Polonius, Laertes, and Ophelia, deduce that of Mrs. Polonius.' "

As "touch and go" literary criticism what could be better than this ? Yet it has its counterpart on a hundred pages.

The Diary abruptly ends, for no reason given, with the entry for January 23rd, 1898. It is to be hoped that this is to leave a loophole for future publication. Otherwise there should have been " nne fin, une veritable fin." No excuse for the end could have served but the death of the diarist. Let us hope that this casual leaving off indicates future in- atalments, and that this is not to be our final good-bye to the delightful friend who enlivened life for one-and-twenty

pleasant months.