The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1894-06-12
THE BosT BOOKS TO READ.
Conan Doyle Places Macaulay's Essays
Above All Else.


Above All Else.
Conan Doyle.
Now If had to name the one book from
which have had most pleasure and also
most profit in my reading it would be that
tattered copy of Macaulay's Essays. Worn
as it is, it is an edition de luxe" COM
pared with its predecessor. now long dog
cared and thumb-na allied into oblivion.
This one has been with me on the swelter-
ing gold coast, and formed part of my
scanty kit when I went a-whaling in the
Arctic. Honest Scotch harpooners have
aided their brains over it, and you may
still see the grease stains which show
where the second engineer grappled with
Frederick the Great.
What a splendid doorway it Is through
which q youngster may approach either
history or literature. The short, vivid
sentences. the huge range of knowledge,
the exactness of the detail, they all throw
glamor round the subject, and make the
most superficial of readers long to know
more about il. If Macaulay's hand cam
not lead a man to these pleasant paths.
then he may despair of ever finding them.
To me in my schoolboy days the book
opened up a new world. What had been
task and drudgery became in an in
slant an incursion into an enchanted Land.
loved even the faults-indeed, now that
I come to think OF it, it was the faults
which I loved best No style could be
too forid for me in those days, and no
antithesis too fiowery. 1t pleased me to
read that "a universal shout of laughter
from the Vistula to the Tagus informed
the pope that the days of the erusades
II H~if tod 10
that Lady birmingham kept a vase in
which people placed foolish verses and
Mr.. - wrote verses which were fit to
be placed in Lady Jerningham's vase"
NV bookcase alas, is 800 good miles away,
and am before it only in spirit, which is
an inconvenient way of verifying quota
tons, but when one tries to chat about
literature on the top of the Alps one must
do what one can. Those were the sort of
sentences which used to fill me with a
vague and yet enduring pleasure. A man
learns to like q palmer literary diet as he
grows older. but still, as | look over the
essays, / am filled with admiration and
wonder at the alternate power of handling
a great big subject, and of adjoining il
with delightful detaii-first q bold sweep
of the brush and then the most delicate
stippIing. And the wonderful power of
aliusion, too. which shows the reader so
many side vistas in every direction. An
admirable if somewhat old-fashioned lit
erary aud historical education might be
effected by working through every book
which is alluded to in the essays.
can remember that when visited Lon
don at the age of is the first thing did
was to make a pilgrimage TO Macaulay's
grave. II was the one great object OF in
terest which London held for me. And so
il well might be when think of all he did
for me. Ii Is not merely the knowledge
and the stimulation of fresh interests, but
il is the charming gentlemanly tone, the
broad, liberal outlook, the absence of big
otry and Of prejudice. When l burgle my
sons money box as my own was burgled
thirty years ago 1t will be to set him up
with q complete Macaulay.
OF course, they say that he is inaccurate.
They say so of Froude, also, and of every
one else who tries to turn history into
something more human than an almanac.
There is school of critics in England
whose fixed idea il that work which has
any depth must be dry. and that interest
is always sign OF supeTticIality.
The principle is bad enough and false
enough when applied to science or
history, but it reaches its most grotesque
form when applied to fiction, where inter
est is the primary object You get
stodgy, heavy novel. ill-mixed and i'll
baked. difficult reading from cover to
cover, like any one of-wesl, never mind
whom-and it will hold its own for thirty
or forty years as a classic, while a great
Charles Reade, with his passion and his
incident, will be dismissed as "mere melo-
drama" or sensational and bad art"
We have talked so much of art in fiction
that we are In imminent danger of forget
ting the object for which the art was ever
devised.
But, after all, the right thing always
survives. Literature finds its own level as
surely as water does. If every critic on
earth were 10 unite TO praise bad book or
10 damn good one il would not have the
slightest effect upon the ultimate fate of
either. The public is often misled for
time. but never for all time. Some hon.
rred names are on the wane and some are
on the rise. Reade, for one, and his
single book relative, Winwood Reade, for
another, have not yet reached their true
places in our literature.
But l have been iured away from my old
volume OF essays There Is but one which
| would subtract from ii. It is the muir
derous attack upen poor Montgomery. No
doubt ii represented style OF criticism in
vogue. bar Macauiay should have had
head and heart enough to make him rise
superior 10 such literary brutaiities. Like
sill such work, it took more from the good
name of the writer than of the subject. A
stupid book may be lett TO sink from its
own weight. After all. it represents folly
and not a crime To seattle and worry and
harrow the writer IS 10 exaggerate his Of
tense. But when that writer IS man
whose nerves have been tried by q long
task. or woman who has placed her
hopes upon her work, then police court
and q treadm.ll seem TO be the only ade-
Quate rewards Of the ferociouSly sarcastic
critic.