Familiar Studies of Men Books | Page 8

honesty or honour, that he
lamented in his song; and the nameless mediaeval vagabond has the
best of the comparison.
There is now a Villon Society in England; and Mr. John Payne has
translated him entirely into English, a task of unusual difficulty. I regret
to find that Mr. Payne and I are not always at one as to the author's
meaning; in such cases I am bound to suppose that he is in the right,
although the weakness of the flesh withholds me from anything beyond
a formal submission. He is now upon a larger venture, promising us at
last that complete Arabian Nights to which we have all so long looked
forward.
CHARLES OF ORLEANS. - Perhaps I have done scanty justice to the
charm of the old Duke's verses, and certainly he is too much treated as
a fool. The period is not sufficiently remembered. What that period was,
to what a blank of imbecility the human mind had fallen, can only be
known to those who have waded in the chronicles. Excepting Comines
and La Salle and Villon, I have read no author who did not appal me by
his torpor; and even the trial of Joan of Arc, conducted as it was by
chosen clerks, bears witness to a dreary, sterile folly, - a twilight of the
mind peopled with childish phantoms. In relation to his contemporaries,
Charles seems quite a lively character.
It remains for me to acknowledge the kindness of Mr. Henry Pyne, who,
immediately on the appearance of the study, sent me his edition of the
Debate between the Heralds: a courtesy from the expert to the amateur
only too uncommon in these days.
KNOX. - Knox, the second in order of interest among the reformers,
lies dead and buried in the works of the learned and unreadable M'Crie.
It remains for some one to break the tomb and bring him forth, alive
again and breathing, in a human book. With the best intentions in the
world, I have only added two more flagstones, ponderous like their
predecessors, to the mass of obstruction that buries the reformer from
the world; I have touched him in my turn with that "mace of death,"
which Carlyle has attributed to Dryasdust; and my two dull papers are,
in the matter of dulness, worthy additions to the labours of M'Crie. Yet
I believe they are worth reprinting in the interest of the next biographer
of Knox. I trust his book may be a masterpiece; and I indulge the hope

that my two studies may lend him a hint or perhaps spare him a delay
in its composition.
Of the PEPYS I can say nothing; for it has been too recently through
my hands; and I still retain some of the heat of composition. Yet it may
serve as a text for the last remark I have to offer. To Pepys I think I
have been amply just; to the others, to Burns, Thoreau, Whitman,
Charles of Orleans, even Villon, I have found myself in the retrospect
ever too grudging of praise, ever too disrespectful in manner. It is not
easy to see why I should have been most liberal to the man of least
pretensions. Perhaps some cowardice withheld me from the proper
warmth of tone; perhaps it is easier to be just to those nearer us in rank
of mind. Such at least is the fact, which other critics may explain. For
these were all men whom, for one reason or another, I loved; or when I
did not love the men, my love was the greater to their books. I had read
them and lived with them; for months they were continually in my
thoughts; I seemed to rejoice in their joys and to sorrow with them in
their griefs; and behold, when I came to write of them, my tone was
sometimes hardly courteous and seldom wholly just.
R. L. S.

CONTENTS.
I. VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES II. SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT
BURNS III. WALT WHITMAN IV. HENRY DAVID THOREAU:
HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS V. YOSHIDA-TORAJIRO VI.
FRANCOIS VILLON, STUDENT, POET, AND HOUSE-BREAKER
VII. CHARLES OF ORLEANS VIII. SAMUEL PEPYS IX. JOHN
KNOX AND WOMEN

CHAPTER I
- VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES

Apres le roman pittoresque mais prosaique de Walter Scott il lestera un
autre roman a creer, plus beau et plus complet encore selon nous. C'est
le roman, a la fois drame et epopee, pittoresque mais poetique, reel
mais ideal, vrai mais grand, qui enchassera Walter Scott dans Homere.

- Victor Hugo on QUENTIN DURWARD.
VICTOR HUGO'S romances occupy an important position in the
history of literature; many innovations, timidly made elsewhere, have
in them been carried boldly out to their last consequences; much that
was indefinite in literary tendencies has attained to