The atmosphere of the English port and Custom House is yet a third thing; less describable, but, I think, even more national than the others. Its spirit is expressed in the English porter; and the nearest definition of the spirit is that it is confidential and comic. Everybody is received off an English boat or train as if he were rather a scapegrace son returning to the family and being met by the old coachman. Even the Custom House officers have a sort of grin. The smell of my country smacked me in the face as I stepped on the Dover Pier. I asked a short, rather beery-looking porter if the train was coming in. He gave an extraordinary sort of roll of the shoulder and jerk of the thumb and said roguishly, ‘Yers, Sir; she’s comin’ in in ‘ere ... ar, she’s a-comin’ in.’ And he went off grinning, as if it were the greatest joke in the world that the ordinary train should come in at the ordinary place. German officials stare at you. French officials scowl at you. English officials wink at you. But they all pass the luggage.

  HIS SIGH IS A HULLABALLOO

  I BELIEVE our false notion of the French character has been very largely founded on the French cabman. And I believe that being to be a subtle if not sensitive spirit who is much misunderstood. Not all English travellers, perhaps, fall into the merely verbal error of the old lady who observed a certain coldness in the cocher whom she had ceremoniously addressed as cochon The type has been better appreciated in that admirable mystery tale, ‘Trent’s Last Case’. Mr Bentley’s hero did justice to the French cabman’s cultured vocabulary, safeguarding himself with the remarkable quotation from Keats: ‘Happy is England, sweet her artless cabmen; enough their simple loveliness for me.’ That deep-minded democrat, Mr Dooley, said that if he were a Frenchman he would be afraid of nobody but the cabdrivers; ‘and I wouldn’t be afraid of them long, for I’d be a cab-driver meself’. But it has not yet fallen in the way of any social philosopher to analyse the French eabman; if any had done so, he would have destroyed many false ideas about the French citizen For instance, the three main impressions formed by the poor old woman about her cochon probably were: (1) that he drove wildly; (2) that he shouted, cracked his whip and kicked up a general shindy; (3) that he was rude. The old woman reported this to the other old women who write authoritative books on foreign policy and imperial travel, and the result was a picture of the Frenchman as merely excitable and undisciplined; so that to speak of the French calm still seems like a paradox. But in truth our old mistake about France falls under three heads which exactly correspond to the three facts mentioned. First, many differences are accidents. They are mentally unfamiliar, but morally colourless. Thus much of the impression of wild driving (though not all) comes from the fact that the rule of the road is reversed and he who is on the right is in the right. This mere unfamiliarity has bred many fictions.

  All kinds of jests, criticisms, suggestions of vanity, looseness, stinginess, slackness, gaudiness, have been deduced from the French soldier’s red trousers. Even Mr Dooley had a fling at them. But after all there could hardly be a very profound spiritual chasm between the soldier who wore a blue coat with red trousers and the soldier who wore a red coat with blue trousers. Or again, it is a French custom to keep the windows of a restaurant mostly closed. I do not know the reason; very likely there is no reason. But certainly the reason cannot be a cloistered terror of the open air, for the same Frenchman will take his dinner and dinner-table bodily out into the street, at which the English old lady, while untravelled, might possibly faint. A man cannot be hiding behind windows when he can do without walls. Much of the misunderstanding, then, is local custom, like the rule of the road.

  Next comes the matter of noise. To some it will seem a paradox, but the noise does not come from the Frenchman being ruffled, but rather from his being unruffled. He has no nerves, as we say when we mean that he has very good ones. His amazing howls do not amaze him. Noise is the normal, like the murmur of breezes or the roll of the distant river. His sigh is a hullaballoo, his whisper a horrible yell. His fathers have followed the cannon in a hundred campaigns and he conducts his daily life like a cannonade. It is true that there mingles with this nervous immunity a touch of fierceness that is not so much emotion as merely impatience. Often it is an intellectual impatience — one might almost say a cold impatience. It is the impatience of a chess-player who cannot be bored with a long game when he already foresees the last move. But this abruptness, sometimes approaching to brutality, has less to do with the noisiness than that other element of invulnerability in the nerves. The streets of Paris do not solely or primarily prove what a racket the French can raise; they prove even more what a racket the French can endure.

  And in the matter of politeness, the truth will again appear paradoxical. What makes a poor Frenchman uncivil is the same thing that makes him civil. It is the civil or civic idea — the idea of human equality. Many rich old ladies from more aristocratic countries do really talk as if cochon were pretty much the same as cocher. If the poor man strikes back it is not to destroy the social structure, but rather to preserve it. He keeps his end up, that the floor may be level. But it is quite true, of course, since human nature is imperfect, that the combination of the democratic instinct I describe with the temperamental impatience I have already noted does produce on occasion an appearance of insolence. This charge against the French is far more well founded than the opposite charge, which it was the fashion of our fathers to bring against them. Indeed, the old stage Frenchman, with his monkeyish excitability, concealed from us the real French defects as much as the real French virtues. We missed the fact, for instance, that the French have some of the harder faults of the Scotch. But, whatever they are, they are not a nation of dancing-masters — rather of cab-drivers.

  I am profoundly persuaded that the French are going to lead Europe yet again. Their faults come from being in the core of reality, in the place where things happen. It is their misfortune that they have not the poetry of the islands, the mysticism that comes from living on the edges of things. But they are the better placed for purging democracy of some of the dreamy pedantries into which more exclusive societies have perverted it, and showing what can really be done with liberty, equality, and fraternity. As it happens, the Allies rather specially illustrate that famous trinity. Few have loved liberty so much as the English; none has understood fraternity so well as the Russians. Both have still to grasp the real meaning of equality — that mankind has been made by men.

  THE NARROWNESS OF NOVELTY

  IT is easy to miss the point of certain modern quarrels, in which I have occasionally intervened; quarrels about things that are labelled Ancient and Modern, like the hymns. Or perhaps, in the case of some of the things, not very like the hymns. Anyhow, the point of the position is this. The real objection to certain novelties is not novelty. It is something that most people do not very much associate with novelty; something which might rather be called narrowness. It is something that fixes the mind on a fashion, until it forgets that it is a fashion. Novelty of this sort narrows the mind, not only by forgetting the past, but also by forgetting the future. There is a certain natural relief and refreshment in altering things, but a wise man will remember that the things that can be altered will be altered again. There is a certain type of Modernist who manages to accept a thing at the same time as fashionable and as final. Indeed, there is a fine shade of difference between something new and something fresh. The former word may be used of something like the New Testament, which is new for ever. But the idea of Something Fresh belongs rather to the exhilarating but less stable world of Mr P. G. Wodehouse.

  We pick up a novelty as we pick up a novel; because we think we shall enjoy it, especially if it is a novel by Mr P. G. Wodehouse. But these things are fresh as the flowers of spring are fresh; that is, they are delightful when they come; but we do not disguise from ourselves that they will eventually go. Now it seems to me that much of the modern mind is narrowed by seeing some thing sacred in the mode or mood of the moment. Thus critics are not content to say that they are not in the mood for Wordsworth or for Tennyson; they talk as if Wordsworth had become worthless, intrinsically and finally worthless, because of the appearance of the stark and ruthless Mr Binks, who does happen to answer at the moment to their mood, and perhaps to the mood of the world. Thus a younger generation, which is now rapidly becoming an older generation, revolted against the Victorian poets, with a sort of illogical logic in their minds; to the effect that they could not really have been poets because they were Victorians. They were not content to say, what is perfectly reasonable, that they were tired of Tennyson. They tried to imply, what is something totally different, that Tennyson is always tiresome. But as between the man who is alleged to be tiresome and the man who is admitted to be tired, there is always the possible inference that he is too tired to enjoy anything. I am not a special worshipper either of Wordsworth or Tennyson; the point is that such merits as they have are unaffected by the accidental nervous fatigue of somebody else. Mr Binks also will some day be a venerable and traditional figure looming out of the past. He also will gain, by respectability and repetition, the formidable power of fatiguing people, and new generations shall rise up and call him tiresome. But surely we cannot admit for a moment that the brilliant — nay, blazing — qualities of Mr Binks, his stabbing actuality, his subversive subconscious attack, his instant vortical violence, his cold incandescence of intellectuality, his death-ray of blank hiatus, his dynamite explosion of dots . . . surely we cannot admit for a moment that our own Mr Binks is worthless, or ever will be worthless, merely because the world will probably pass into some other emotional atmosphere, to which his terrific talents will be less suited; in which his unique type of truth will be less seen; or in which his dazzling but concentrated spotlight will be less on the spot. Yet these tides and times of mood and fashion are moving even as we talk about them. I have already seen here and there notes written by a new generation, newer than the generation that was tired of Tennyson. I have seen critics beginning once more to praise Tennyson and strangely enough to show a most extraordinary contempt for Swinburne. I do not complain of the change to admiration; I do not even complain of the change to contempt. What I complain of is the shallowness of people who only do things for a change, and then actually talk as if the change were unchangeable. That is the weakness of a purely progressive theory, in literature as in science. The very latest opinion is always infallibly right and always inevitably wrong. It is right because a new generation of young people are tired of things, and wrong because another generation of young people will be tired of them.

  I do not call any man imaginative unless he can imagine something different from his own favourite sort of imagery. I do not call any man free unless he can walk backwards as well as forwards. I do not call any man broadminded unless he can include minds that are different from his own normal mind, let alone moods that are different from his own momentary mood. And I do not call any man bold or strong or possessed of stabbing realism or startling actuality unless he is strong enough to resist the merely neurotic effects of his own fatigue, and still see things more or less as they are; big mountains as big, and great poets as great, and remarkable acts and achievements as remarkable, even if other people are bored with them, or even if he is bored with them himself. The preservation of proportion in the mind is the only thing that keeps a man from narrow-mindedness. And a man can preserve the proportion of great things in his mind, even if they do not happen at a particular moment to be tickling his senses or exciting his nerves. Therefore I do not mind the man adoring novelties, but I do object to his adoring novelty. I object to this sort of concentration on the immortal instant, be cause it narrows the mind, just as gazing at a minute object, coming nearer and nearer, narrows the vision.

  What is wanted is the truly godlike imagination which makes all things new, because all things have been new. That would really be something like a new power of the mind. But the modern version of broadening the mind has very little to do with broadening the powers of the mind. It would be a great gift of historical imagination to be able to see everything that has happened as if it were just happening, or just about to happen. This is quite as true of literary as of political history. For literary history is full of revolutions, and we do not realize them unless we realize them as revolutionary. To admire Wordsworth merely as an antiquity is stupid, and to despise Wordsworth as an antiquity is worse than stupid; it is silly. But to admire Wordsworth as a novelty — that would be a real vision and re-creation of the past. For it is solid fact, if any fact be solid, that nearly all the young who were most alert and alive, and eager for a sort of revolutionary refreshment, men like Lamb and Hazlitt and the rest, did feel something in the first fresh gust of the new naturalism; something even in the very baldness and crudity of Wordsworth’s rural poetry, which made them feel that he had flung open the gates of freedom more widely than the French Revolution. I do not think it will be any injustice to Mr Binks (always supposing we give him also his proper welcome when he arrives) if we try to understand some of those feelings of our fathers about their favourite authors, and so learn to see those authors as they really ought to be seen. For poets are not stale; it is only critics who are stale; often excusably enough, but even then they need not brag of their own staleness.

  THE MERITS OF SHAKESPEARE’S PLOTS

  I SEE that Mr John M. Robertson has written a book about the problem of ‘Hamlet’, round which the critics still revolve with all the irresolution of which they accuse the hero. I have not read Mr Robertson’s book and am thus inhibited by a fine fantastic scruple from reviewing it. But I gather from one of the shrewdest and sanest of critics, Mr J. C. Squire, that it explains the inconsistencies of the play as mainly the rugged remains of the old romances or chronicles. It may be suggested that in truth a hero is made human when he is made inconsistent. This is true; but the explanation is at least a great improvement on the insane seriousness of the German psychologists. They talked of Hamlet not merely as a human character but as a historical character. They talked as if he had secrets not only hidden from Shakespeare’s readers, but hidden from Shakespeare. This is madness; it is merely staring at a portrait till you think it is alive. It is as if they undertook to tell me the real truth about the private life of Oberon.

  Moreover, the case of Hamlet does happen to be one in which Mr Robertson’s theory seems relatively right. I should deny any inconsistency in a dreamer doing sudden things like stabbing Polonius; they are just the sort of things a dreamer would do. But it is true that some things out of the old story seem harsh and irrelevant and it is truer still that the old story contains less than usual of the soul of the new story. I say ‘less than usual’, for I should like to point out that the general rule is rather the other way. Mr Robertson’s thesis may be true of ‘Hamlet’, but it is not so true of Shakespeare.

  Of course, much can be said by this time both for and against the national poet. But if it be hopeless to denounce Shakespeare, it may appear almost as impertinent to defend him. And yet there is one point on which he has never been defended. And it is one on which I think he should not only be defended but admired. If I were a Shakespearean student or any kind of student (the improbability of which prospect words wholly fail me to express), I should specialize in the part of Shakespeare that is certainly not Shakespeare. I mean I should plead for the merit of Shakespeare’s plots; all the more because they were somebody else’s plots. In short, I should say a word for the poet’s taste; if only his taste in theft. It is the fashion to abuse Shakespeare as a critic, if only to exalt him the more as a creator. It is the fashion to say that he built on a foundation of mere rubbish and that this lifts to a greater glory the cloud-capped pinnacles he reared upon it. I am not sure that it is such pure praise for a practical architect to say that he was totally in different to the basement and cellars, and interested exclusively in the roof and chimney-pots. But, anyhow, I am sure that Shakespeare did not forget the foundation or despise the basement or the cellars.

  Shakespeare enjoyed the old stories. He enjoyed them as tales are intended to be enjoyed. He liked reading them as a man of imagination and intelligence today likes reading a good adventure story, or still more a good detective story. This is the one possibility that the Shakespearean critics never seem to entertain. Probably they are not simple enough and therefore not imaginative enough to know what that enjoyment is. They cannot read an adventure story or indeed any story. For instance, nearly all the critics apologize, in a prim and priggish manner, for the tale on which turns the Trial Scene in ‘The Merchant of Venice’. They explain that poor Shakespeare had taken a barbarous old story and had to make the best of it. As a matter of fact, he had taken an uncommonly good story; one of the best that he could possibly have had to make the best of. It is a clear, pointed, and practical parable against usury; and if a large number of modern people do not appreciate it, it is because a large number of modern people are taught to appreciate and even admire usury. The idea of a man forfeiting part of his body (it might have been an arm or leg) is a highly philosophical satire on unlimited recovery of ruinous debts. The idea is embodied in all those truly Christian laws about wainage and livelihood which were the glory of the Middle Ages. The story is excellent, simply as an anecdote working up to a climax and ending in an unexpected retort. And the end is a truth and not merely a trick. You do prove the falsity of pedantic logic by a reductio ad absurdum.