BOOKS.
THE BROAD STONE OF HONOUR.* IF we might venture on so bold a comparison, we should liken this work to a magnificent and ancient cathedral, wherein are many things grotesque and quaint as well as beautiful to see, but where the sense of beauty no less than the sense of quaintness is interfused and penetrated by a solemn influence which, for want of a better name occurring to us, we may call the genius loci. Mr. Digby has himself reminded us of the demeanour of Chaucer's Pilgrims on arriving at Canterbury ; how, after dinner was ordered at the inn, they all proceeded to the cathedral ; how the knight, with the better sort of the company, went devoutly, in great order, to the shrine of St. Thomas ; and how the miller and his companions ran staring about the church, pretending to blazon the arms painted on the glass windows, and entering into a dispute about heraldry. We would gladly imi- tate in the case of Mr. Digby's book the demeanour of the Knight and his company, but at the same time, and we say this rather as an apology for the rambling nature of our own remarks than as imputing any blame to Mr. Digby, the Broad Stone of Honour is a very rambling book indeed. But what can be more delightful than a " ramble " through a land of lovely scenery ? What is more charming than a " ramble " through the fields of all that is fair and beautiful in literature? Montaigne was a rambling author, and so was Burton, and so was Lamb ; and we think that within the compass of a brief article like this it would not be easy to give more than a rambling criticism of each and any of these delightful writers. So must it be, at all events, with our remarks on Mr. Digby's book ; and if these remarks should seem random as well as rambling, we would crave the reader's pardon, as well as the author's, for our sole object is to persuade the former to read this book himself, feeling sure, if we succeed in doing so, of obtaining at least his forgiveness.
As to the central thought or ground idea, if the phrase be not a barbarism, of the Broad Stone of Honour, we are, or we hope we are, entirely at one with Mr. Digby, seeing that the lessons which he would inculcate may be best summed up in the Apostle's words :—" Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, what- soever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good repute ; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Brief as our space is, we felt that it would not be right to omit or abridge the above quotation, and a somewhat similar feeling, we fancy, has led Mr. Digby to enrich his book with a golden treasury of quotations, given in full, which we would not barter for a wilderness of references. It is true that these quotations are not always quite so germane to the matter as they are beautiful and interesting in themselves. But we care very little for that, even as we care very little or nothing for mistakes or pen-slips, the like of which we would not endure for a moment in the writings of a Mahaffy or a Schliemann. So far as genuine scholarship is concerned, Mr. Digby has " the root of the matter " in him, and we smile with good humour at that battle of Delia or Delos, in which it pleases him to say Socrates fought. Just as little do we care for the historical accuracy or inaccuracy of Mr. Digby's account of the death of Aristotle, and of Alexander's "fix" at Nysa. The Muse of history whom Mr. Digby worships is the Muse of Plutarch, and not the Muse of Thucydides. Minor blemishes of this kind are not unfrequent in these volumes, and resemble the inaccuracies which Lord Byron
* The Broad Slone of Honour; or, the True Sense and Practice of Chivalry. By Kenehn Henry Digby, Esq. London: Bernard QuarItch. 1877. amused himself by noting in Lord Bacon's Apophthegms. The better scholar and the better historian a reader is, the more readily will he be inclined to excuse and extenuate this sort of error in a writer of Mr. Digby's stamp and scope. The accuracy which we demand, and strenuously demand, from a Mommsen or a Porson, it would be silly to ask for from a Montaigne, a Plutarch, or a Captain Roland Caxton. We add the fictitious name to give ourselves the opportunity of saying that had the chivalrous gentleman who bore it ever wielded his brother's learned pen, he would have written such a work as the Broad Stone of Honour. And sooth to say, we doubt if Augustine Caxton himself could have "given odds," as Milton says, to Kenelm Digby. The admirable use which the latter makes of Plato, to mention only one Greek author, though, like an Attic bee, he draws the sweets from many, forms one of the greatest beauties-of this book ; while the spirit which flashes from it, intermittently, perhaps, but ever and anon right unmistakably, breathes much of that martial ardour which distinguishes Augustine Caxton's chivalrous brother. The strong religious feelings of Mr. Digby veil, but do not conceal the desire of battle which flames in his heart, and we like him all the better for it. Whether we should entirely agree with the estimate that he has formed of those legions of worthies whom, in num- bers almost numberless, he has unearthed to do them honour, is a matter of no consequence. Nor need we be over-careful to warn the fastidious reader that a man need have some stomach for such things, to be able to look siccis oculis at the end- less array of saints and sages that will pass before him in battalions. If such a reader—and we advise him to do so—should purchase a copy of the Broad Stone of Honour, and should afterwards, in weariness and vexation of spirit, com- plain that the " ramble " was too hard for him,—" Friend," should we reply, " we have done thee no harm. The book that thou halt purchased is of the books published by Master Bernard Quaritch, and if thou keepest it for a little, thou wilt put money in thy purse thereby." Perhaps, indeed, in the way of mere book- buying, there is scarcely a better investment at present than the purchase of a large-paper copy of the work before us.
It becomes us not, however, as critics to do nothing else but praise, so we beg to say that of the five volumes of the Broad Stone of Honour we like the third least. Mr. Digby, as he eagerly and earnestly protests, is unfitted for polemical strife ; but we do not care to remind him too curiously that the blows which he aims at the men of science, whom he confounds at times with his own naughty brain-children, modern Frenchmen and ancient Sophists, are hardly fair. But the formidable phalanx which he so quixotically attacks is strong enough, in all conscience, to defend itself, and it cannot be said that the assailant's shafts are tipt with poison. Warburton's friend, poor Hurd, had stirred Mr. Digby's bile, by asserting that so far as the barbarous volumes of chivalry were concerned, no reader of sense need trouble himself, as a French writer had put together in a very learned and elaborate manner all that is requisite to be known on this subject. " Oh !" exclaims our author, to whom these " barbarous volumes " are as dear as they were to the Knight of La Mancha, " oh that it were lawful for once in our life to swear by a saint, like a bad Christian, or by a dog, like a sage, or by all the greater or lesser gods, like a foul heathen ! If ever a knight could be guilty of such a sin, it would be after reading Bishop Hurd ! Why, in the name of common-sense [we like this touch amazingly] does the bishop or his admiring reader think it requisite that they should know all or anything about chivalry ? " Even with regard to the great and illustrious men whom Mr. Digby by implication condemns, we feel sure that the best of these will pardon their assailant, in view of the spirit wherewith he is so clearly animated. What that spirit is—as distinguished from,we mean, or superadded, shall we say ? to the deep religious spirit of Roman Catholicism, which lives along each line of this book—lies in a belief in the perennial nature of that " glory of youth " which in Wordsworth's famous ode "fades into the light of common day," but to Mr. Digby's more enthusiastic mind seems able to overleap the billows of time, and to pass in triumph to that other shore which lies beyond the viewless stream that rounds our little life.
As a specimen of Mr. Digby's lighter and, at the same time, more erudite vein, we would quote, if we bad space, the whole of his eulogy on rowing. With the concluding words of this passage no son of Oxford, except one—most eloquent, alas ! and most unwise—will quarrel :—" nag dyip ,emus Avote alludes to a hapPY society, in which the object of ambition was not who should make the best oration or become the most able sycophant, cixit' O'g ds ipi•ru; leen: Aptaro5-. Happy ambition,which could not conceive a higher dignity than to be elected king over the oars, like Jason, airz TpagJEVil, vs mai i•vpiy!" But although the note of gaiety is
often perceptible in these volumes, and although the author be- lieves that the secret of our happiness may be found " in a simple obedience to those principles which are productive of immortal
youth, constituting the spring and flower of the mind," yet none the less is the general flow of his melodious prose as melancholy as it is musical. Mr. Digby holds of Il Penseroso more than of L'Allegro, and he notices how the best writings of the best geniuses that the world has seen, not excepting even such cheery fellows as Homer and Herodotus, are, if not exactly " sicklied o'er," at least o'erspread with a pale cast of divinest melancholy, and are instinct with that " tone of mind," which a wise man will anticipate, and which "should belong to one who approaches the termination of a voyage." The voyage that Mr. Digby alludes to, and which we have transferred to life itself, is the writing of this book of his —a voyage which, "if not successful in the issue, was at least pursued with gladness—a work which was commenced in youth, and which is in some measure associated with the happy dreams of that sweet age, of that golden hour in the human course when the rosy light of each morning brings with it fresh, undaunted hope, the expectation of some- thing still more worthy of the sentiment of life than any past experience of splendour or of joy." " And if," he adds, " for a moment the eventful scenes of history should have betrayed a rude tongue to utter words opposed to love and gentleness, here it shall be seen that they did not spring from unfeeling levity of heart, that they were not aimed in the spirit of disdain and insult ; the closing scene shall make amends, shall witness no pretence of triumph, no effort to arouse hostility." Mr. Digby is as good as his word, and here we part from him. He is, we believe, an octogenarian, and we sincerely regret we know no more about him. It is only, therefore, with reference to the work before us, with reference to the public portion, so to speak, of Mr. Digby's life, that we feel justified in saying, without impertinence, that Mr. Digby may say with clear and quiet satisfaction, "Nuns dimittis." Popularity and praise he is likely enough indifferent to ; ad Deum provocat, non ad populum. But this book of his, this Broad Stone of Honour, is not only sui generis, but is in sue genere opus magnum. It may not attract a host of readers from the east and west, but it will, nay, it has become a part and parcel of the imperial literature of England, and is a work which no Englishman of culture would willingly let die. We will not use the hackneyed phrase, and say that it is a work which no gentleman and scholar should be without. We are well aware that many men to whom neither name could be refused will find themselves unable to sympathise with much that is in it. But this we will say, that if we found a copy of the Broad Stone of Honour on the book-shelves of a man whom we did not know, we should look with confidence upon this alone as good prima fade evidence that the owner was a scholar and a gentleman. If we do not add a third title of re- spect, it is because the recollection of a famous line in Browning's Christmas Eve and Easter Day warns us against the danger of taking the name of " Christian " in vain.
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