foe but that most dangerous of all foes-herself, destined to a majestic future if she will shun the excess and perversion of the principles that made her great, prate less about the enemies of the past, and strive more against the enemies of the present, resist the mob and the demagogue as she resisted Parliament and King, rally her power from the race for gold and the delirium of prosperity to make firm the foundations on which that prosperity rests, and turn some fair proportion of her vast mental forces to other objects than material progress and the game of party politics." ing the rank and file may have been, they were led by officers who did not understand their business. But nothing will serve them but to go about and to tell all and sundry that they were the authors of victory. They believe one another, though nobody else believes them, and they will end by making themselves supremely ridiculous. That they should give a comic interpretation of the letters A.E.F., and repeat that it means "After England Fails,' cannot distress us. We know too well what our sufferings were and what were our achievements to care a jot what the Americans say. But what of them! Who shall respect those who respect themselves so little as to babble such things as these? But they have highest standard of living in the country's history, and therefore the highest in all history." We are not likely to forget this eloquent statement. We can but ask whether it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul. Such was Parkman's warning. The United States did not heed it. They went on their way towards wealth gaily, and without knowing what they meant or what they did. Though they have attained the highest standard of living ever seen, they have guided their lives by other standards equally dangerous. Their vanity persuades them to believe that, if they be present when any deed is done, they did it. It is this strange hallucination which causes them to boast aloud that they won the war. That they did nothing of the sort is proved by the number of the killed and wounded in each of the Allied Armies, by the plain record of events. They achieved less than the smallest of the British dominions. It may not be their fault. They came late into the war, untrained and uninstructed, and however will "the In private, as in public, the Americans lack delicacy. In public they proclaim aloud that they won the war. In private, in spite of their grandeur, in spite of their "highest standard of living," they addict themselves to the collection of souvenirs. The souvenirs which they collect belong naturally to others. This fact does not deter them from the chase. Many of them, no matter where they are entertained, think that the day is misspent if they do the United States can provide. not carry away with them We know well enough that, as some trophy, however small. a result of the war, we are When they are content with faced with many difficulties. an insignificant prey, not much We know also that if we do harm is done, except to them- not trust too fondly to the selves. Unfortunately, they Government, if we recognise sometimes fly at bigger game. Not long ago a visitor to a northern cathedral noticed that a piece of beautiful carving in stone had been wrenched from the door of the Chapter-house. 66 The Americans have been here," said the visitor to the verger. "Yes," replied the verger, a party of sixty came to see the cathedral the other day. I could not keep an eye upon them all, and I discovered only when they were gone the damage they had done." Not even the wealth of those whose standard of living is the highest known to history can restore the damage thus wantonly done. And until this indelicate habit is corrected, the United States cannot hope to live on terms of intimacy with civilised Europe, whose standard of living may be unhappily depressed. Not for one moment would we give our tradition, our respect for intelligence, our care for things of the mind, for all the gold which is stored in the treasury of New York. There is very little that money can buy, and no sane man would demand from the gods the gift of Midas. We would rather have a dinner of herbs with contentment and a little wine than all the dry banquets which the enslaved riches of VOL. CCXVIII.-NO. MOCCXXII. that all benefits come not 2 M a 66 all our money and all our men of military age, and we have not yet had time to rebuild the fabric of our life and trade. Presently we shall recover completely-we have travelled far on the road to recovery,—and until that time arrives we are content that our deeds shall speak for us. The British Federation of Industries suggests that one or two Englishmen of the highest standing should visit the United States, and in a series of speeches in different parts of the country correct the harm done to British interests." For our part we have no faith in propaganda of this sort. The Americans will go on believing what they want to believe about us and about themselves. It would be hardly worth while, were it possible, to correct the false news they listen to, the false statements that they make. We should be content to discover the Englishmen who write articles in the American Press to the discredit of their country, and put them in a moral pillory. For the rest, we believe that we are merely at the beginning of a great career, and we shall not waste a minute in envying those who, without literature and without art, have attained to "the highest standard of living in the country's history, and therefore the highest in all history." It is unfortunate for Mr Stainer that his little book on The Conversations of Jonson and Drummond' (Oxford: Blackwell) should have appeared so soon after the important work of Messrs Herford and Simpson, which might easily have resolved most of his doubts. He is a dogmatic and explosive critic, who delights to end his sentences with notes of exclamation. His method of criticism is simplicity itself. He makes up his mind what are the questions which Drummond would have asked Jonson and how Jonson would have answered, and not finding in the 'Conversations' his method followed he pronounces the Conversations' a forgery. He knows what he would have done had he been a poet, like Jonson, visiting a friend after a tramp of four hundred miles. He would have sat him down, like the poor victim of an interview, and given the reporter who faced him a brief account of his life and travels. "Did Jonson really speak of his youth," he asks, "and yet not give the name of his father and mother? Had he forgotten the name of his wife and son ? Had he nothing fresh to tell of his early education, of his rank when a soldier, of his early writings? Was there nothing to tell Drummond of the adventure of walking to Scotland! No villages, no inns, no friends, not even the weather!" Ingenuousness can go no further than this. Jonson did not deal in ، He the facts and statistics which admits the truth of a stateare dear to journalists. There- ment, he declares that the fore the Conversations' which statement has been taken from Drummond wrote down are a book, and that therefore the forgeries. Conversations' are an obvious forgery. If, on the other hand, he discovers a false statement, he declares that none but a forger would have been at the pains to write it down. It is not after so simple a fashion that the human mind works. A statement is not forged because Ben Jonson makes it twice, nor because, in the medley of talk, it is imperfectly remembered or incorrectly written down by Drummond. Nor, when he descends to particulars, is he more happily inspired than when he clings to general principles. Jonson's impresa fills him with a wild fury. Jonson describes his impresa," he says, which writes him down an ass." Why does it? Mr Stainer does not explain. He merely says that it is "an impertinent adaptation" of some words in the Epistle to Selden, which has not a word of a broken compass. He is full of contempt for those who, after his burning denunciation, would accept the Conversations as genuine, because Jonson told Drummond that he was Master of Arts in both Universities. Only a forger could have made this statement, because Jonson was inducted formally in the degree of Master of Arts on 19th July 1619. "This was after Jonson's return from Scotland! The italics and the note of It takes two to make a conversation, and if the conversation be recorded, it is perforce the work of both. The chief discourser, who in these Conversations' is Jonson, selects such topics as come by hazard to his mind. talks as he thinks, and he thinks perchance more about the art of Shakespeare, or the lack of it, and about the bad temper of Marston, or of the accent which Donne did not keep, than about the names of his father and mother, or even about the weather. And when Jonson had talked, loudly and not always soberly, Drummond took up his part of the task. He made another selection. He put down upon paper the few scattered sayings which he remembered, or which chimed with his fancy. And so the 'Conversations' came about, much to the displeasure of Mr Stainer, who cannot understand the result of this double process of selection. For us, the general tenor and shape of the record are clear proofs of its authenticity. Thus and thus only would a lettered and fussy worshipper of the great set down upon paper what a great man had told him. Mr Stainer, in attempting to destroy the authenticity of an accepted document, wishes to have it both ways. If he , 66 exclamation are Mr Stainer's. Unfortunately for his argument, the degree had been conferred upon Jonson long before, at the suggestion of Lord Pembroke. It was merely the induction which took place after Jonson's return from Hawthornden. 66 It It is unnecessary to correct all Mr Stainer's foolish arguments. We have but space to deal with one or two. Here is one which is typical of Mr Stainer's method. Jonson tells Drummond that "since his coming to England, being appealed to the fields, he had killed his adversary." Mr Stainer's comment is of high value. The name of Jonson's adversary is not given," says. he triumphantly. "This alone indicates that the passage was written at a late date." Why should the absence of the name indicate so much as that? might indicate either that Jonson thought it not worth while to repeat the name of Gabriel Spencer, or that Drummond had heard and forgotten it. "The name was unknown," goes on Mr Stainer irrelevantly, 66 even to Gifford when he edited Jonson's works in 1816." It was not unknown to Jonson, who might have given it, if he chose, nor to Henslowe, nor to the Rolls of the Middlesex Sessions. And Mr Stainer cannot get out of it on the plea that the Benjamin Jonson mentioned in the Session's papers was not the poet but another man of the same name, for Then he is troubled because Ben Jonson tells Drummond that he was accused of popery and treason before the Council by Northampton. Another plain proof of forgery. For Northampton was a Roman Catholic!" So he was at times; at other times he was a violent anti-Catholic, either with sincerity or with the design of covering up the traces of his Catholicism. The man who was active in the trial of Guy Fawkes might easily have persecuted Ben Jonson. Again writes Mr Stainer, with the jubilation of italics (after quoting from the 'Conversations': He married a wife who was a shrew yet honest; five years he had not bedded with her, but remained with my Lord Albany "), "Jonson's wife was dead when he visited Scotland.” Why should she not be dead! Her death did not belie what Jonson said, and there is no reason why he should not have told Drummond this simple anecdote though his wife lay in her grave. It would have been more difficult for a forger to invent it. Mr Stainer is no less unlucky when he attempts to show that Jonson's quarrel with Inigo Jones was of a later date than the 'Conversations.' If he will consult Messrs Herford and Simpson, he will see that the feud was already old in 1619. Thus he goes on, page after page, with his irrelevancies and inaccu |