THE SECOND SERIES OF " OBITER DICTA."• THE second series
of Mr. Birrell's Obiter Dicta is not much, if it be at all, inferior to the first series, and no formal eulogy therefore is requisite for literary chit-chat which deserves the epithet so prettily given to Cowper's charming letters. Still
• Obiter Dicta. Second Series. By Augustine Birrell. Loudon: Baia Stock. 1937.
lees do these brilliant and suggestive papers require anything in the way of formal criticism, though it would seem from the author's temperate preface, that his previous efforts have met with judges who, in the Prince de Ligne's words, were mains denigrerurs et non-appreciateurs. His publisher, however, is able to quote a satisfactory selection of eulogistic criticisms on those efforts ; and there can be little doubt that the present volume will prove, like its predecessor, that meat sua gratin parole. Milton, Pope, Johnson, Burke, Charles Lamb, and Emer- son, are the celebrities here shown for fire-side reflection and discussion. We shall confine our remarks to the two amongst these celebrities who can most justly be described as "authors we must ever love." These are Johnson, of course, and Charles Lamb ; and we are glad to find that, warmly as Mr. Birrell praises such universal favourites, we have a pleasant suspicion that, without overstepping the modesty of sensible admiration, he might still have praised them even more warmly. But here we must distinguish,—if that phrase, indeed, may be used for the elliptical and convenient distinguons of the French. Mr. Birrell praises the literary efforts of Johnson more highly than we should be inclined to do. He says that "for sensible men, the world offers no better reading than the Lives of the Poets," and expresses a wish that if the stately lines in which Johnson paints " what ills the scholar's life assail" be not poetry, the name of poetry may perish. Now, we feel like a schoolboy in a pastry-cook's shop, embarrassed with a choice from literary mites to pit against the Lives of the Poets as wholesome and toothsome delicacies for sensible men. At a venture, and deliberately foregoing alternatives that no one could name more easily than Mr. Birrell himself, we would take Swift's so-called Journal to Stella for choice against the clever but unequal biographies which he savours so voluptuously. We cannot, however, stay to argue the point ; nor to point out passages from Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth that might, if placed in close juxtaposition with Johnson's vigorous verses, remind the reader of Johnson's own discriminating apprecia- tion of a remarkable poem by the great scholar Bentley. Where, however, we think that Mr. Birrell might have laid his praise on with a trowel where Johnson is concerned, is the intellectual ability which the Doctor showed in con- versation. Mr. Birrell admires that conversation for the force and fury—sometimes, as in Lord Clive's case, signifying nothing—which marked it. But he goes a great deal too far when he says that Johnson had so accustomed himself to wordy warfare that he lost all sense of moral responsibility ; and he errs in speaking of Johnson's occasional outbreaks of temper and false logic as if they formed the staple of his sound and incisive discourse. Mr. Birrell errs, too, we think, in saying that, for the most part., we have only talk about other talkers. This is true enough of talkers like Macaulay, and Coleridge, and Carlyle ; and we heartily agree, °biter, with Mr. Birrell in thinking that the sage of Chelsea's intellectual stature was no higher than that of the sage of Bolt Court; but is it true of talkers like Jerrold, and Porson, and Sydney Smith ? These men had no Boswell to chronicle their sayings, but specimens enough of them exist to make it probable that they would have held their own at least against the great man whose claim to be the best of our talkers cannot in Mr. Birrell's opinion be contested. The question here raised is a fair sample of the questions which chit-chat like Obiter Dicta raises, and a volume of which so much may be predicated is obviously one that needs no recommendation to "what," Mr. Birrell says, "is facetiously called 'the reading public.' " He raises another, for instance, when he says that The Rape of the Lock and Paradise Regained are the only two faultless poems of any length in English ; and another when he says that " Homer's Riad is the best, and Pope's Homer is the second best." A writer who, like Mr. Birrell, "has never been inside the reading- room of the British Museum," might without much difficulty name other "faultless poems" and other translations of the Iliad, to show that some of his obiter dicta may be more sug- gestive than accurate. To return, however, to his view of Lamb. He smashes "with ease and affluence" the notion that this de- lightful writer, who was every inch a man, deserves to be com- passionately labelled " poor Lamb !" But the tragedy which over- shadowed his life from start to finish, and the weakness which gave him so many uncomfortable hours, fully jaetify the expres- sion. It should be used, though, with a due feeling of respect- ful admiration for the manliness with which "poor Lamb " met "all the natural shocks that flesh is heir to." The cheery stoicism with which he met the crapulous nemesis of his over- night's excesses stands out in brilliant contrast with the whining contrition and the revolting despair which Burns and Byron were prone to indulge in respectively, when each was realising that the pleasures of getting drunk are dearly paid for by the pangs of getting sober.
The other papers in Obiter Dicta are pleasant reading enough, if slightly sketchy. One, however, must be condemned for its misleading title. Mr. Birrell has a few words to say about Johnson's dictum that books should teach us to enjoy life, or endure it; or rather, to speak quite plainly, he has repeated that dictum from his paper on Johnson as a peg on which to hang a few random remarks on George Borrow and George Crabbe. We would good-humouredly ask him if he was facetiously bent on drawing the "reading public" when he labelled this trifle with such a magniloquent misnomer as "The Office of Literature"? In "The Muse of History," he opposes some recently published opinions on the subject of history by Mr. John Morley and Professor Seeley. His opposi- tion is justifiable, and he defends the position which he elects to hold with amusing skill. He would have done better, though, if he had carried on his warfare by using certain examples. No philosophy of history that was ever written, or that ever will be written, will teach men lessons like those which Thucydides teaches. The book of the son of Olorne remains the model for all historians, in spite of those extraordinary speeches of which Cicero says, " Imitari neque possim, si velim, neque velim fortasse, si possim." With no intention to mislead, Mr. Birrell's description of Carlyle's historical method as " superbly materialistic " will mislead many readers. " Superbly idealistic " would better describe the gigantic figures who loom in Carlyle's animated pages, for Mirabeau, Cromwell, and Frederick the Great. Mr. Birrell's paper, however, is capitally written, and if we think that he might have reached his conclusions by a shorter and clearer process, we are none the less willing to accept it. His paper on "Cambridge and the Poets " is also good, but it might have been made more striking. With Spenser and Milton to begin with, with Marlowe and Jenson and Dryden to follow, and with Byron, Coleridge, and Wordsworth in reserve, to say nothing of Lord Tennyson, it may be doubted if even Shake- speare's presence in the ranks of Oxford poets would have quite restored the balance. It is curious, also, to think that Oxford has no philosophers that are fit to bear the shoes of Bacon and Newton, and no scholars that, in old Greek phrase, can be named in the same month with Bentley and Porson.
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