LONDON TOWN TALK.

Globe, Volume VI, Issue 686, 31 August 1876, Page 3

LONDON TOWN TALK.

We extract the following items from the London Letter of the Argus, dated July 7th:— In the literary world there is just now i good deal of scandal afloat. Mr Robert Buchanan (the gentleman who has been setting the Americans to rights about the merits of their own Walt Whitman) has brought an action against the Examiner for an attack on him in that paper, written by Mr Swinburne. He considers it to be "personal." Under cross-examination he confessed to having himself delicately alluded to Mr Swinburne's bibulous tastes in the following lines : "To the door with the boy. Call a cab. He is tipsy. And they carried the naughty young gentleman out." He also, he allows, thus depicted Mr Tennyson : " With his trousers unbraced and shirt-collar undone, He lolled at his ease like a good-natured bear." If these lines are perhaps a little personal, I hardly think that their poetical beauty is an excuse for it. Mr Buchanan's counsel re*d extracts from Mr Swinburne's works till he brought " the blush of shame into the honest cheek " of the Judge, who begged him to desist, Except that it was incidentally proved in the course of the trial that the devil is a native of North Britain, nothing satisfactory has resulted from Mr Buchanan's action. He has realised, it is true, £l5O in the way of damages ; but the public has also realised that a very little brain goes a very long way to making a " well-known author," and that " literature" is sometimes a synonym for "clique." If the " fleshly school "are to do the world any serious harm, it will not certainly be with the carnal weapon of intelligence. Speaking of authors versus critics, by the bye, you will, by next mail (perhaps even by this), receive Mr Browning's new poem of " Pacchiaritto, and how he worked in dietemper," in which are some very pretty personalities. Pegasus is really angry, it seems, with the curs that yelp at his heels ; the whole world of reviewers are likened to a mob in a flower garden—- " While treading down rose and ranunculus, You Tommy make room for your-uncleus." After which he proceeds to indicate ring leaders—- " Dwarfs are saucy," says Dickens, and sauced in Your own sauce " Everybody who is acquainted with the diminutive stature of Mr Alfred Austin will supply the name and the rhyme. The story upon which the verse is founded I think I long ago retailed to you, but, if not, here it is : Mr A. A. is very small, but supposed by some persons to be endowed with a great gift of satire. He once sat at table between a lady who appreciated him and a Scotch gentleman who didn't. After dinner, s=aid the lady to the Scotchman, " Don't you think that Mr Austin is charmingly satirical?' " Madam, I have generally observed," was the reply, " that dwarfish and deformed persons are mostly saucy." A very good story to tell against a man with a waspish tongue, but not, in my opinion, " pretty " for the second best poet in England to allude to thus in a serious production. Some of the ballads in the book, now for the first time reprinted, will meet with a hearty welcome.

It is strange that in the same letter in which I speak of the death of George Saud, I have also to record that of Harriet Martineau. England has lost in the latter a woman as highly gifted (although in a very different way) as France has to regret in the former, I was myself an intimate friend of Harriet Martineau for many years, and knew nothing but kindness and good of her. I was one of the favoured few who were permitted to read her " autobiography," which has lain printed at a bookseller's at Windermere for twenty years, and which will presently speak to the public for herself as regards nsr work in the world. Then will be understood how honest was that diligent pen of hers, how noble her aims, and how selfsacrificing her way of life. But only those who knew her can speak of her gentle heart. The philosophic and politico-economic character of her chief writings, and especially the antitheological views more recently expressed in them, have given an impression of hardness to her character which is altogether false. Even the notion of her being " masculine " is incorrect, except ao far as steadiness of purpose, deep and extensive learning, and intrepidity of opinion are masculine. She was, indeed, essentially «' motherly ;" prompt with advice and help to all young persons ; affectionate to children ; fond of homely puisuits (including knitting and cribbage), and a most genial hostess and companion. She thought little of herself as a novelist, or even as a writer of short stories with a purpose—in which last, as a matter of fact, she was without a rival; her modesty as to her own taleuts was extreme ; aud where it was possible, as in her philosophic works, she gave credit of what she did, not to herself, but to her teachers. If there was one thing on which she prided herself, it was on her merits as a journalist. Comparatively few personß were aware of much she wrote for the Daily News, and yet a great majority of the articles in that paper on the American war were, I believe, from her pen, and almost all its excellent obituary notices. In when she was ! flrst taken ill [with enlargement of the heart, and was indeed '• given over" by the doctors, she sent her own " notice" to be placed in the editor's drawer, along with the rest, and it was published accordingly last Thursday, untouched by any hand but her own. Its closing words, " She declined throughout this and subsequent years, and died " (the blank being left for the date alone), have a strange sound now that the hand is cold that penned them. It is curious that she lived more than twenty years after she thus wrote, and though in retirement, probably saw more of the national life—or at all events of those who influence it—than any woman in England. Notwithstanding i her large views, immense range of acquaint i ance, aud the calls upon her time that ill-

health always exacts, she never forgot an old friend or a young one. It is a small thing, and yet characteristic enough to be mentioned here, that she would remember the birthday of a child of the present writer, and as regularly as the date came round would forward her some little gift, often one of her own juvenile stories.

Mr Buskin is funnier than ever. In thie month's (July 1) Fors Clavigera he gives a full account of his '• St George's Company," which if not, pecuniarily, much more prosperous than other joint-stock companies, has certainly magnificent aims. Its obj ct i? "the health, wealth, aDd long life of the British nation," which, ?ays Mr Ruskin, " it. at present unhealthy, poor, and likely to perish from the face of the earth." The company who have Ket themselves to work to set Great Britain on her legs consist of thirty persons, ''none of them rich, several of them sick, and the leader of them at all events not likely to live long." This is a bad look out; but, on the other hand, it is a satisfaction to reflect that Eng land is no worse off thau other countries. "A civilised nation in modern Europe consists, in broad terms," Mr Ruskin tells us, " of A, a mass of half taught, diseontented, and mostly penniless populace, calling itself the people; of B, a thing which it calls a Government—meaning an apparatus for collecting and spending money ; and 0, a small number of capitalists, many of them rogues, and most of them stupid persons, who have no idea of any object of human existence other than money-making, gambling, or champagne-bibbing; a certain quantity of literary men, saying anything they can get paid to say ; of clergymen, saying anything they have been taught to say ; and of nobility saying nothing at all." This is the material, then, to be worked upon ; and there is no wonder that such a community gets into debt. The St George's Company propose to themselves (" and if the God they believe in lives, they will assuredly succeed in their proposition ") to amend all this, and to begin with, they are setting by a store to pay off the national debt. "A store," explains Mr Ruskin, "means, it is true, a quantity of anything, But the heap of broken bottles which I hear is accumulating under the principal cliff of Snowdon, through the contributions of tourists from the summit, is not properly to be called a store, though a bin full of old wine is. * * * A store is, for squirrels, of nuta ; for bees, of honey ; for men, of food, clothes, fuel, &c ; and for elevated persons, of books and pictures." I conclude, therefore, judging from " the Master's " views, that Great Britain and Ireland are to be saved by a judicious collection, per the St George's Company (as the charitable advertisements have it), of books and pictures. Now, " the wretches," says Mr Ruskin, " who have at present the teaching of the people in their hands," are opposed to this benevolent scheme, and insist upon the Government buying, instead of books and pictures, " iron plates two feet thick, gunpowder, and red tape." It is a great thing to knew exactly what is doing, and where we are, before setting to work to regenerate the universe. "The Master" is conscious of some personal shortcomings in his own circumstances. "Scholars,"heßays, "can generally live on less food than a ploughman, and there is no conceivable reason why they should have more. It is true I have more myself, but that is because I have been ill-bred. * * * * People cry out upon me for asking 10s for a year's ' Fors' bus never object to the clerk of Mr Barber (solicitor to the company),, asking a guinea for opening his study door to me five times, charging the same to St George's account." This is "excellent fooling " so long as Mr Ruskin confines himself to making a fool of himself, but the language he uses to others is not to be excused on the mere ground of folly. In this number of tbe magazine there is printed a letter which Mr Frederic Harrison has been so sanguine as to write to Mr Ruskin in hopes of getting an apology out of that gentleman for certain abusive language. " I owe you, and the age owes you," he writes, "profound gratitude for much noble teaching, and it is very sad to me to find you reviling other teachers to whom we owe much, and who know a thousand things "about! which you have told us nothing. Indiscriminate abuse of all that the human race has now become wounds my ear as if I heard one cursing our fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. If ' you believe (o) that the entire system of modern life is corrupted with the ghastliest forms of injustice and untruth,' I wonder that you believe in God, or any future, in effort at all, or in"anything but despair I say nothing about others whose views you may wish to class under the gtneral title, 'evolution,' or of a lady whom I am sorry to see you speak of as ' Cobbe' , . . but I should like to know on what grounds you think yourself entitled to call Mr Herbert Spencer and Mr John Stuart Mill geese (ft)." This temperate, and I must add, eloquent letter, Mr Ruskin answers by two or three sentences—" (a) I do not believe, I know that the entire system of modern life is thus corrupted ; " and " (b) I know a goose when I see one." One device of the proprietor of the Fors Clavigera, instanced in the present number, I much admire ; he insults able men, and gets them to write long replies to his philippics, which he embodies in his own letterpres?, and they often form the most interesting part of it. It is quite a novel system of getting profit out of proceedings which have in less skilful hands only succeeded in producing actions for libel. A living jackass is said to be preferable to a dead lion ; and I fear it must be said that it is also preferable to a living lion who has in his old age become a jackass, and does nothing bnt bray, and that in a very malicious, ear-piercing, and offensive manner.