DECORATIONS FOR LITERATURE.
THE notion that Literature is somehow or other neglected in England, and that the Government ought to do more for literary men than they do at present, is peculiarly per- sistent. Thackeray, in his "Snobs," spoke with indignation of the treatment of his brothers of the quill, and pointed out that the deep reverence in which literature was regarded in this country might be gauged by the munificence of the Civil List pensions allotted to literary people, and by the fact that Sir Robert Peel, at the end of the season, always asked one or two literary men to dinner. It is in much the same strain that Mr. Walter Besant complains, in the very readable column of notes which he contributes to the Manchester Examiner. The French Government has recently bestowed upon the four Americans who managed to get the Copyright Bill through Congress, the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour,—a decoration which Mr. Besant estimates as equivalent to the Grand Cross of the Bath. This fact is the peg on which Mr. Besant hangs his complaint. Has our Government, he asks, taken any notice of the
services of these gentlemen? "Not the least. Has it occurred to our people that services such as these are services to the State? Not in the least. Because, you see, our official people have no official knowledge that Litera- ture exists, or, if it exists, they officially suppose that it exists in (? on) air." "It is a truly wonderful thing," Mr. Besant goes on, "this complete severance of Court and Cabinet from Literature. It is not only the persistent refusal of any honours to science, letters, and art, which may very well be of no harm to letters, science, and art, but the practical ignorance of the existence of men devoted to these pursuits." This official contempt, says Mr. Besant, is partly the fault of the authors themselves, for they have never yet properly asserted themselves as a corporate body. Inspired by a similar sentiment, Mr. Besant took the opportunity of Mr. Lowell's death to point out how differently authors are treated in America and in England. In the United States, they are "sent abroad to represent the nation as the men of whom the country has most reason to be proud." What a contrast with their treatment in England ! "Who in modern times has ever heard of an Englishman of letters, scholar, professor, historian, poet, essayist, novelist, dramatist, receiving a post of honour or distinction because he is a man of letters?" Offices of distinction are given to lawyers and officers in the service of the State, but not to the literary man. It may be said that we have substituted open competition for patronage ; but this is only true of a small number of posts. There are still plenty which are not thrown open, and these are never by any chance given to men of letters. Browning never had anything given him, though he was not rich. Mr. Lecky has never had an honour or a distinction, and Mr. Besant does not think he has even been asked to dine at Windsor. "In Meredith we have a poet and novelist of the first rank. Is he an Earl, a Baron, a Baronet, a Knight of the Bath, a simple Knight ?" Titles ought to be kept for people of distinction, and yet our most distinguished men never get them. Such is the nature of Mr. Besant's com- plaint in regard to the neglect of literature.
From every word of this we must beg to differ in the strongest possible way. We have the greatest respect for Mr. Besant's talents as a writer, and we may feel certain that he has no personal longing to hang a red ribbon round his neck. If, however, his supposed grievance were remedied, instead of English literature gaining, it would suffer incalculably. We cannot, indeed, imagine a more fruitful source of demoralisa- tion and corruption than the kind of recognition he desires. The fact that the State has no official knowledge that litera- ture exists, is one for which we can never be too thankful. If the State is to take notice of literary men, and to reward them according to what it considers their merits, the chances of the best men getting recognised sooner or later at their proper value are sure to be very greatly damaged. Secants judicat orbis terrarurn, is a safe maxim in literature ; not so one which assumes that the Patronage Secretary of the Treasury will always be able to "spot" a true poet, and conduct him from a plain C.B., through the ascending grades of Knight Commander and Grand Cross, to the Earldom and the Garter which, we presume, are to await the supremely successful producer in the field of letters. Depend upon it, not real merit, but smug respectability, will win under such a system as Mr. Besant desires. Instead of making it easier for the best men, we shall make it harder. The publishers are easily deluded, though the ultimate in- stincts of the public are right, and it would soon become the custom in Paternoster Row never to give anything but " half- profits " to men who had not got a handle of some sort to their names, or at the very least were not Companions of the Order of the Indian Empire. Bad literature would shove good literature to the wall on the strength of its robes and ribbons, and the world would feel obliged to acquiesce in order "to maintain the authority of the State." Milton's saying, "The State shall be my Governor, but not my critic," is usually admitted to be sound. Yet what Mr. Besant is proposing to do is to make the State our critic. No doubt he will deny this, and will say that the Prime Minister shall not decide on his own individual opinion, but shall merely endorse the verdict of the world by decorating only those authors who are universally re- garded as having produced work of the highest order of merit. But though this sounds very easy in theory, in
practice the Prime Minister will have to do one of three things, to take the advice of somebody who is supposed to know a great deal about books—say, the Head Librarian of the British Museum—to estimate for himself the com- parative merits of contemporary authors ; or, lastly, to find .out what author is most popular with the public in general. No doubt occasionally the Prime Minister would have a .comparatively simple task. For example, it was easy to select the present Poet-Laureate for a peerage. He was obviously the best choice. Suppose, however, that it becomes a regular -system to decorate men of letters, and that a Prime Minister had at the present moment to make a selection. Let us assume that it had been decided in the Cabinet that something ought to be done to encourage the poets, and that among the New Year honours there should be a G.C.B., two K.C.B.'s, and two C.B.'s for the bards. Accordingly, the Prime Minister would have to make his choice. Can anything more perplexing be imagined ? Lord Tennyson would be out of the running, as already provided for, and Mr. Browning is dead. The choice, therefore, would be between Mr. Swinburne, Mr. William Morris, Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Gosse, and Mr. Lewis Morris. Picture the perplexed statesman talking the names over with the Home Secretary, it having been -decided that it was nearer his department than the Board -of Trade or the Local Government Board. 'I'm not a judge of poetry myself,' one can hear him say, • but that of course doesn't matter, as one wouldn't care to give weight to a personal predilection of that sort. Still, one mus'n't make a really bad shot, or the thing might be seriously -taken up in the papers and used against us at the elections. I wish we could think of a good local man to give the red- .ribbon to. These things are so lost in London, but in a place like Manchester or Birmingham what they'd call "the honour to the city" might turn a couple of divisions. They say Swinburne used to write very improper things, but that he's all right now. Still, wouldn't it be a risk ? Suppose he took it into his head to start that sort of thing again, we :should look awfully foolish. I remember thinking something I once saw of Mr. William Morris's very clever. What do you think of him ? You see he's a Socialist, too, and that would give an interest to the appointment. It would be a -clear proof that we didn't mix up politics with our recom- mdations for literary honours. You think he'd refuse ? Well, now, there's a man I believe the working men read a great deal,—only I can't think of his name for the moment. When I opened the Bermondsey Free Library, they told me his poetry was more read than any other,' &c. We need not pursue the perplexed imaginings of our imaginary Prime Minister any further. It is, however, in oar opinion, quite certain that his choice would be radically bad, and would cause nothing but disgust and annoyance. The truth is, we have no business whatever to give titles and decorations to literary men. They are, as a rule, far better without them. Titles and decorations are perhaps altogether inde- fensible as inconsistent with modern manners, though we incline to believe that they have still a certain utility ; but if so, they are only properly bestowed on servants -of the State. They are part of the wages of the State, out- -ward and visible signs of good conduct. But the literary man is in no true sense the servant of the public. He is not bound to write what the State wants, or to write at all. He does not wear the State's livery, or eat its bread. Though he makes his living out of the public, he cannot be content to let those who happen to control the helm of State pass a final verdict on his performance. The State was organised for other purposes than for that of judging literature. Let it perform those functions, and leave literature alone. The Americans may find it possible to give those sinecures they call Legations to men of letters : we cannot. Our Ministers have real duties to perform, and we could not trust literary men without any previous training to carry them out. Imagine the confusion that would have been produced by making Carlyle Ambassador at Berlin, or by sending Mr. Browning to Rome. One would have been "hag-ridden," and the other " Asolandoing," at the critical moment of an important negotiation. Of a truth, the State would neither make a good master to our authors, nor our authors good servants to the State. Let us keep Literature and the State apart as long as we may, and thank heaven that it is not the custom in England to make of poets Knights-Bachelors.
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