Robert Buchanan | Page 7

many of the apostles of progress--hirsute men for the
most part, of all characters and of all nations. When my holidays
occurred I saw a good deal of these gentlemen. Two of them I
remember vividly, who generally came together: one a little miniature
of a man with tiny feet and hands and an enormous head, generally
covered by a chimney-pot hat three or four sizes too large for it; the
other a mighty fellow, of gigantic stature, with a chest fit for Hercules
and a voice like a trumpet. The first was Louis Blanc, a famous exile:
the second was Caussidière, who had been chief of the police in Paris
during the last Revolution. Both spoke English fairly, and Blanc wrote
it like an Englishman. It was during a visit of this strange pair that I
first heard the 'Marseillaise.' Sung by Caussidière in stentorian tones,

with kindling eyes and excited gestures, it sounded like a wild
conjuration. I listened to these men for hours, as they talked of their
country and its sorrows, and named the wondrous words, 'Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity.'
"In after years I met Louis Blanc again, and by that time only the
faintest trace of a foreign accent remained to show that he was a
Frenchman. He was at once the keenest and most enthusiastic of little
men, neat in his person, brilliant in his talk, and cultured to the
finger-nails. He loved England, which had so long afforded him a home,
and hated nothing in the world but one thing, the Empire, and one man,
the Emperor. He preached the great Socialistic doctrine of solidarity, in
writings which were as brilliant as they were closely reasoned; he was
an enemy of tyranny in any form; and he lived long enough to see the
foulest tyranny of modern times, a tyranny of the senses, ignominiously
overthrown at Sedan.
"Another friend of my father, and a constant visitor at our house, was
Lloyd Jones, lecturer, debater, and journalist. An Irishman with the
mellowest of voices, he delighted my young soul with snatches of
jovial song, 'The Widow Machree,' 'The Leather Bottél,' and the
modern burlesque of that royal ballad, 'The Pewter Quart,' written, I
think, by Macguire, and originally published in Blackwood--
'Here, boy, take this handful of brass,
Across to the Goose and the Gridiron pass,
Pay the coin on the counter out,
And bring me a pint of foaming stout,
Put it not into bottle or jug,
Cannikin, rumkin, flagon, or mug,
Into nothing at all, in short,

Except the natural Pewter Quart!'
"Jones 'troll'd' rather than sang, with robust strength and humour. I
found out when I was a year or two older, that he knew and loved the
obscurer early poets, and could recite whole passages from their works
by heart. George Wither was a great favourite of his, and he had a fine
collection of that poet's works, many of them very scarce. It was a great
treat to hear him sing Wither's charming ballad--
'Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?
If she be not fair to me,
What care I how fair she be?'
or to hear him recite the same poet's naïve, yet lively invocation to the
Muse, written in prison--
'By a Daisy whose leaves spread,
Shut when Titan goes to bed,
By a lush upon a tree,
She could more infuse in me
Than all Nature's wonders can
In some other wiser man!'
I owe Lloyd Jones this debt, that he first taught me to love old songs
and homespun English poetry. He was a large-hearted, genial man, not
to be forgotten in any chronicle of the Socialistic cause.
"It was not, as I have hinted, until I was taken by my parents to reside
in Scotland that I came face to face with the Dismal Superstition
against which my father and these men, his friends, were passionately

struggling. I then learned for the first time that to fight for human good,
to be honest and fearless, to love the Light, was to be branded as an
Enemy of Society and an Atheist. I saw my father so branded, and I
have not forgotten my first horror when children of my own age
avoided me, on the score that I was the son of an 'infidel.' But I learned
now that there was more real religion, more holy zeal for Humanity, in
these revolters against the popular creed than in most of the Christians
who preach one faith and practise another.
"Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum.
"The world has advanced somewhat since those early days of which I
have been writing. There is no sign as yet, however, that the warning
uttered long ago by Lucretius, and echoed by the minority