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order. The school, as we have Barrie's village studies, with said, has no necessary connec- their perfection and finish as tion with London, or indeed of some fine miniature, are with any city, and the most incomparable of their kind, but conspicuous modern instance that kind is a secondary one. happens to have been born a They are curiously artificial, Scotsman and a countryman. too. We see no trace of that Mr Barrie, in his earlier and shrewd understanding of the most successful work, was pro- national character which you fessedly a chronicler of small- will find in Scott and Galt, for beer, the little jealousies and save in external things like ambitions, the homely hum- dialect and habits there is ours, the minor moralities of a nothing Scottish about them. clachan. With a sure hand Tammas Haggart lives galand the kindliest humour he lantly up to his Scottish name, unveiled the souls of his taci- but contrast him with Andrew turn villagers. But in one Fairservice and see how little respect he differed from other idiomatic is his humour. He workers in the same field, such is as theatrical a figure of a as Dostoieffsky or Mr Hardy: Scot as Sir Pertinax MacSycohe was content with a surface phant. Mr Barrie's tales move presentation. In the best sense in a theological atmosphere, of the word his country folk but no one would look to them were conventional, as conven- for a picture of the grim old tional in their way as the world of the Scottish kirks. shepherds of Theocritus or the He has created an artificial shepherdesses of Watteau. and modish life of his own, and did not probe deep for the since he confines himself to the sources of life. The passions surface the artifice is wholly and humours which he so deftly delightful. 'Auld Licht Idylls handled were surface passions, and 'A Window in Thrums trivial comedies. Very wisely, may be accurately described as as we think, Mr Barrie kept comedies of manners. out of the elemental sphere, and stuck to matters where his drollery, his tenderness, his quick sense of the little ironies of life were most sure of success. It is delightful fooling, often, but it is fooling rather than inherent comedy. It is intolerably pathetio, sometimes, just as "Auld Lang Syne" in certain circumstances can be as much as a man can bear, but it is the pathos of sentiment and not of tragedy, for the issues are small. To say this is not to condemn. Mr

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Since then Mr Barrie has written many books and plays, but he has not thereby broadened his reputation. Every year has made it more certain that his gift is essentially the Cockney gift, and that he is successful only when he keeps within the prescribed limits of that guild. În "The Admirable Crichton" he was writing a comedy of manners based upon the irony of our social forms, and he produced a masterpiece. But in almost everything else while the cleverness is immense,

the faults of Cockneyism, astray in an unfamiliar world, grate on the reader. 'Sentimental Tommy' and 'Tommy and Grizel' are surely among the worst books ever written by a man of genius. Whenever Mr Barrie attempts the graver problems of life, whenever he deals with what is commonly called good society, whenever he treats of his own countrymen except in a spirit of pure fantasy, he seems to us to fail. If at his best he is worthy to rank with Lamb, at his worst he joins hands with Leigh Hunt. His latest play, "What Every Woman Knows," is a good instance of his strength and weakness. The technical cleverness of it can hardly be overstated. It runs smoothly from start to finish; it bristles with 66 'points" and swarms with "situations." There are things in the first act which show an uncanny gift of observation and that humour of fact which is too subtle to find form in words. But how stale and silly is the central idea! The theory that women and their ways are an occult science, and a smirking affectation of special knowledge therein, are familiar Cockney marks: the atrocious Tommy, if we remember rightly, was an expert on the subject. How terrible is Mr Barrie's conception of a fine lady! Above all, how wearisome is his presentation of the Scottish character! We do not wonder that his performances are sometimes acutely offensive to his countrymen. The ordinary Cockney, when the name of Scotland is mentioned, is ready

with some hackneyed fatuity— "Bang went & saxpence !" "Peebles for pleesure!" "A wee drappie!" there are about a dozen all told. Mr Barrie's attitude towards his native land is precisely the same, but his fault is greater, for, while we do not mind the stock Anglo-Saxon with red whiskers and large teeth in a French farce, we should dislike it if the author were an Englishman. He sees Scotland through Cockney eyes, and applies to a life and character, which Providence has vidence has placed at the opposite pole, the glib categories of Cockaigne. Every one of his Scotsmen pechs and hoasts and is pawky without provocation, and has the same methods of getting on as the comic Scots viewed through the the Cockney spectacles Wilkes and Churchill. A talent which is urban and artificial has narrow bounds to move in. Mr Barrie is the prime instance of how a rare and wonderful gift can, if exercised in a wrong sphere, cease both to convince and please.

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Christian religion, and he has admitted the Deity to the circle of his intimate friends. He is professedly an obscurantist and an opponent of easy rationalism, and because there is so much neglected truth in obscurantism we are sometimes inclined to wish well to Mr Chesterton. We only hope that those who hang on his lips really understand what he means. He is avowedly an exponent of the old roads of humanity, the primary things of human life. In his own eyes he treads the windy ways of earth and owes no allegiance either to Philistia or Bohemia. The odd thing is that there is a certain justification for this attitude. Before he discovered his message and took to occupying pulpits he had written some poetry, a few pages of criticism, and a chapter or two of romance, which to our mind were among the most promising work of the day. He had revealed a wild vigour of imagination and a robust vein of comedy which made us hope for a second Hazlitt or even another Fielding. But the "message" came, and from the artist he fell to the popular teacher, a descent as swift and far as Lucifer's. Being a poet he cannot get rid altogether of his poetry, but he has harnessed Pegasus between the shafts of a fourwheeler. His stock-in-trade is still the immensities, but he has made it his business to domesticate them. He is never weary of explaining how like an archangel is to the greengrocer at the corner-a thought

which may be flattering to the greengrocer but is sadly damaging to the archangel. He has so dragged the poetry that is in him through the miry ways of paradox that it has become dingy and stale. Week by week he repeats his machinemade inversions till the trick grows too easy, and the epigram becomes as trite as a pillar-box. Not that Mr Chesterton would object to the simile, for a pillar-box is to him an "immense and mystical conception," or some such silliness. He has a kind of potvaliant mysticism, which jars the ordinary reader's nerves with a sense of irreverence. It is a curious and melancholy case of a fine talent perverted. Here is a man with a feeling for the simple and spacious qualities of art, with fire and imagination in him, who in some dark freak condemns himself to play with petty counters, using all the while the rules and speech of the greater game. He wants to domesticate the sublime, and thereby succeeds in making it ridiculous. And all the while he has none of the true Cockney prettinesses, the fireside and bedside arts and graces. He harps on trivialities with the thunderous accents of a prophet, and moves among the nick-nacks in his parlour with the clumsiness of a wild animal. Moreover, as a man with a "message," he is not content with literature: he must needs have a voice in politics. Aocordingly he has exalted his limitations into a political creed. He is the devotee of

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It is in politics, however, that the faults of the Cockney attitude are most apparent and most dangerous. After all, a blunderer in literature pays the penalty himself and no one is a penny the worse, but the blunderer in politics imperils the safety of the State and the wellbeing of all his fellows. Besides, in literature the thing is not a vice. It is only to be censured when, as with Mr Barrie, it strays into spheres where it is hopelessly ill at ease, or where, as in the case of Mr Chesterton, a talent which is in its essence un-Cockney drifts into an alien Cockney world, and thereby blasphemes its gods. A little Cockneyism is no bad thing in a writer, and probably Mr Conrad is alone to-day in having none of it. A sure test of its

abuse is when a book or a play makes the ordinary man feel shy, for, let it never be forgotten, the ordinary man has a very acute sense of the relevant and the congruous. But in politics it is not too much to say that the Cockney temperament is an unqualified evil. The government of a State, if it is to be wholesome, must proceed in conformity with natural laws. The common weal must be sought at the expense of individual hard cases. The laws of economics and of national survival will not stay their course for a pretty phrase, and sentiment which may be well enough in private life will work havoc if applied to the impersonal interests of the State. It is needless to labour the point, for literature is so full of the doctrine that it has become a truism and is enshrined in a hundred proverbs. "Les vices d'un archevêque," said Cardinal Retz, "peuvent être dans une infinité de rencontres les vertus d'un chef de parti;" and we may thus state the converse : "The engaging qualities of a worthy private citizen may very often be vices in a statesman.'

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We propose to investigate the temperament rather than to cite instances, but one example may be permitted us at the start. Mr Birrell has long been one of the sanest and most agreeable of our critics. To a catholic taste and a ready sympathy he joins a style of delectable simplicity and ease. No safer guide could be found to the high places of literature,

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ation of the permanent needs of the country; they are so many sops flung to so many clamorous factions. A few rhetorical phrases, like "men before cattle," are his only contributions to the most difficult of our national problems. Mr Birrell either cannot see things as they are, or, seeing them, is resolved to outwit reality by a pleasant make-believe. In this there is a touch of the curious practical mysticism of Gladstone, the belief that two and two will make five if you only say it long enough and well enough. But more notably there is the Cockney temperament, which cannot conceive of a world different from that of good books and like-minded friends. It cannot imagine that a humour which smooths the way in private life will not make straight the path in national politics. It is

and no better companion. A critical gift so free from preciosity is not so common in these days that we can pass it lightly over. But in an evil hour for Mr Birrell's reputation the whirligig of politics brought him into office. At first he was not unhappy. The Education difficulty was no bad subject for his good-humour and good sense. Being singularly free from fanaticism, and free at the same time from the equally dangerous fault of a thin scepticism, he was well fitted to hold the balance between sects; and his patience and geniality won him a welldeserved triumph. But the Irish Chief Secretaryship folJowed on the Education Office, and Mr Birrell found himself in unfamiliar waters. The post demanded high gifts of administration, a clear eye for facts, and a power of continuous and resolute action. the disappointment of his cured by letting it alone, and friends he showed none of therefore it weakens the sancthese things. We should never tion of the law and the safehave credited him with Cock- guards of life and property. It ney faults had he not gone to is the perpetual prophet of Ireland, but Ireland has shown smooth things, and the world, that in politics he has all the which is not smooth, is apt to Cockney limitations. He can- take & formidable revenge. not bring himself to face an "The qualities of a worthy unpleasant fact. He imagines private citizen are often vices that a ready humour and pro- in a statesman." fessions of good fellowship can This, then, is one of the reconcile the secular antagon- notable marks of the temperaisms of Irish parties. A flag- ment, the incapacity to underrant defiance of the criminal stand primary passions and law is condoned on the ground crude realities. It cannot serithat popular feeling is in ously picture any world beyond favour of the criminals and the glow of its fireside. The that law must keep pace with whole earth, on its theory, is popular feeling. His legisla- made up of men who have at tive measures show no appreci- bottom the same temperament

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