Hedda—Sir Robert would never even have spoken
to such baggages! Mon sieur Bergeret—an
amiable weak thing! D’Artagnan—a
true swashbuckler! Tom Jones, Faust, Don Juan—we
might not even think of them: And those poor
Greeks: Prometheus—shocking rebel.
OEdipus for a long time banished by the Censor.
Phaedra and Elektra, not even so virtuous as Mary,
who failed of being what she should be! And coming
to more familiar persons Joseph and Moses, David and
Elijah, all of them lacked his finality of true heroism—none
could quite pass muster beside Sir Robert . . .
. Long we meditated, and, reflecting that an
author must ever be superior to the creatures of his
brain, were refreshed to think that there were so
many living authors capable of giving birth to Sir
Robert; for indeed, Sir Robert and finality like his—no
doubtful heroes, no flower of author, and no mystery
is what mankind at large has always wanted from Letters,
and will always want.
As truly as that oil and water do not mix, there are
two kinds of men. The main cleavage in the whole
tale of life is this subtle, all pervading division
of mankind into the man of facts and the man of feeling.
And not by what they are or do can they be told one
from the other, but just by their attitude toward
finality. Fortunately most of us are neither
quite the one nor quite the other. But between
the pure-blooded of each kind there is real antipathy,
far deeper than the antipathies of race, politics,
or religion—an antipathy that not circumstance,
love, goodwill, or necessity will ever quite get rid
of. Sooner shall the panther agree with the
bull than that other one with the man of facts.
There is no bridging the gorge that divides these worlds.
Nor is it so easy to tell, of each, to which world
he belongs, as it was to place the lady, who held
out her finger over that gorge called Grand Canyon,
and said:
“It doesn’t look thirteen miles; but they
measured it just there! Excuse my pointing!”
1912.
“Et nous jongleurs inutiles, frivoles joueurs
de luth!”. . . Useless jugglers, frivolous
players on the lute! Must we so describe ourselves,
we, the producers, season by season, of so many hundreds
of “remarkable” works of fiction?—for
though, when we take up the remarkable works of our
fellows, we “really cannot read them!”
the Press and the advertisements of our publishers
tell us that they are “remarkable.”
A story goes that once in the twilight undergrowth
of a forest of nut-bearing trees a number of little
purblind creatures wandered, singing for nuts.
On some of these purblind creatures the nuts fell
heavy and full, extremely indigestible, and were quickly
swallowed; on others they fell light, and contained
nothing, because the kernel had already been eaten
up above, and these light and kernel-less nuts were
accompanied by sibilations or laughter. On others
