332

THE PREISLIED

XXXIX

1900 the guests, who were mostly Swiss and Germans, assembled Aet. 64 in the salon and there was music. Many of the guests

sang and played extremely well and none of the music
was trivial. Presently a girl of about 14, accompanied
quite sufficiently well by her aunt or governess, was set
to play on the violin some arrangement of the "Preislied "
from the Meistersinger. The piece was so far beyond
her powers that the
that the performance would have been
painful if we had not felt that we were merely giving the
child an opportunity of playing before some kind of
audience.

"That is very beautiful music she is playing," said Butler to me; "what is it?"

So intent was his mind upon the essential meaning of the composer that he was able to neglect the unessential defects of the performance; just as Handel walked through the absurdity of the words that were given him and seized upon and set to music the sentiment which he recognised as underlying them. Butler had heard the "Preislied" sung by Edward Lloyd at a Richter Concert some time before, but he had forgotten the fact; nevertheless the music was, I suppose, not absolutely new to his unconscious self. He must have been the only person in the room who derived any pleasure from the child's performance. When I was compiling the Note-Books I remembered this incident as an illustration of

CONVEYANCING AND THE ARTS

In conveyancing the ultimately potent thing is not the deed but the invisible intention and desire of the parties to the deed; the written document itself is only evidence of this intention and desire. So it is with music: the written notes are not the main thing, nor is even the heard performance; these are only evidences of an internal, invisible emotion that can be felt but never fully expressed. And so it is with the words of literature and with the forms and colours of painting.

Butler went to Wassen where he sketched while I visited various Swiss friends and made a short tour with Hans Faesch. We were both back in London by the end of September.

XXXIX

FERNAND HENRY

333

Aet. 64

Fernand Henry had finished his translation of the 1900 Rubáiyát and proposed to dedicate it to me. He sent the draft of his dedication for Butler's opinion.

Butler to Fernand Henry.

1 October 1900.

MY DEAR M. HENRY . . . Nothing, it seems to me, could be better or more gracefully done than the dedication as it stands, and I have no suggestions to make.

As regards your queries, "Mon cher ami " is quite right. Jones is plain "Henry Festing Jones, Esq.,' " and nothing more. The "Esq." is not de rigueur, but I see I have put it in in my dedications to other people.

"Si haute, si grave, si intensément psychologique" [applied to la poésie anglaise]. By "psychologique " I presume you mean "dealing with mental rather than with physical ideals." If so, the word may stand. Otherwise I am not sure that I apprehend the exact meaning you attach to it.

"Si nuancée et si fortement condensée" is quite right [applied to la pensée de FitzGerald].

The only word about which I am in doubt is "fresque" as applied to a poem which was written and rewritten more than even twice; whereas a fresco must be done without any pentimento, each day's task being finished once for all then and there; but this is a very small criticism and your nation has wisely taught us that "le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." I might add, in words, with which you are indeed familiar,

Were it not sinful, then, striving to mend,
To mar the subject that before was well?

So let "fresque" stand.

(Sonnet 103.)

Allow me, now, to congratulate you upon the completion of a task the arduous nature of which has been explained to me by Jones. Alas! I have never read FitzGerald's poem-it seems to me that I have hardly read anything at all-but, by Heaven, I will borrow it from Jones and read it. As for your translation, may it be crowned, as I have no doubt it will be, by that august body which did like honour to your earlier translation!

Jones tells me, to my great regret, that there is some doubt about your coming to London. I trust that your visit will not, at any rate, be very long delayed. As for me, I have just put my Odyssey through the press, and this, I very well know, will not be crowned with public approbation. "At mihi plaudo," as I am afraid I am only too apt to do.

334

"SEARCHER OF SOULS"

XXXIX

1900

"Searcher of souls " I am tempted to exclaim, in words which Aet. 64 I will venture to quote in full as thinking it likely that you may not have seen them:

Searcher of souls, you who in heaven abide,
To whom the secrets of all hearts are open,
Though I do lie to all the world beside,
From me to you no falsehood shall be spoken.
Cleanse me not, Lord, I say, from secret sin,
But from those faults which he who runs may see;
'Tis these that torture me, O Lord begin
With them and let the hidden vices be.
If you must cleanse these too, at any rate
Deal with the seen sins first, 'tis only reason,
They being so gross, to let the others wait
The leisure of some more convenient season.

And cleanse not all, even then; leave me a few,
I would not be, not quite, so pure as you.

One of my sins, which even the fastest runners have not failed to note, is a tendency to be inordinately well satisfied with my own work.

And so, my dear Sir, with much apology for having inflicted so long a letter upon you, pray believe me, Yours very truly,

S. BUTLER.

Butler was not familiar with the writings of Voltaire, so he probably did not know that among the Contes en Vers is one, "La Bégueule, Conte Moral," which begins : Dans ses écrits, un sage Italien

Dit que le mieux est l'ennemi du bien,

And in the Dictionnaire Philosophique the article "Art Dramatique" ends with this quotation :

Il meglio è l' inimico del bene.

I do not know whether we may conclude from this that the saying is of Italian origin, but if Butler had thought so he would have been even more apt to quote it than he was, and he quoted it very often.

There are a few unimportant variations in the sonnet as written in Butler's letter and as given in The NoteBooks. Probably he wrote it in the letter from memory.

In October Butler received a letter from William Rolleston who was on a visit to England and proposed a

335

Aet. 64

meeting. Rolleston was the "exceedingly humane and 1900 judicious bullock-driver at the station where Butler put up for the night on one of his excursions when looking for country in New Zealand (ante, I. p. 78). I regret that I have not found anything showing for certain that they met and I do not remember, though my impression is that they did. If so, it must have been a meeting full of strange echoes recalling half-forgotten incidents of their youth.

On the 18th October 1900 we received the first copy of The Odyssey rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original. The motto on the title page is :

From some points of view it is impossible to take the Odyssey seriously enough; from others it is impossible to take it seriously at all; but from whichever point of view it be regarded, its beauty is alike unsurpassable.

(Private letter to the author.)

In his translation of the Odyssey he followed those principles which he laid down for himself in the preface to his translation of the Iliad (ante, p. 298).

In October Fernand Henry came to London for a few days. Butler took him to the British Museum and showed him, among other things, the first edition of FitzGerald's Rubáiyát. My sister Lilian had left Nice and established herself in a flat at Hampstead; we got her to invite us and also Fernand Henry to dine with her there.

Signora Coppo, from the Rosa Rossa at Casale, was in London with her son Angelo, and we made use of the flat again to entertain them. Butler also had them to dine at the Holborn Restaurant, but a restaurant is less interesting than a private house for a foreigner who wants to see something of the life of the people.

In November Hans Faesch was in London, to make preparations for returning to Vien- tiane in the Shan States, and again we used the flat to entertain him. Early in December we saw him off from Waterloo Station for Havre en route for Vien-tiane; and this was the last time we saw him.

Some years before this, at the house of the Fuller

1900

336

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL

XXXIX

Maitlands, we had met Miss Edith Sichel; we had been Aet. 64 to her house and she and Mrs. Fuller Maitland had been

to tea with Butler and also with me. Miss Edith Sichel knew Mr. Augustine Birrell and he desired to make Butler's acquaintance. After a few attempts a meeting was arranged at Miss Sichel's house for one afternoon in December. I was also invited and arrived first. Then came Mr. and Mrs. Birrell. He recognised me for we had been undergraduates together at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He had also seen my name in some of Butler's books and had been told he was to meet me; but he had not realised that the Jones in the books was the Jones he remembered at Cambridge. When my identity had been settled Butler came. He was never at his best if he felt he was expected to show off, and on this occasion he was out of health and tired. Altogether I am afraid the meeting was not everything that Miss Sichel had hoped it would be. Butler scarcely spoke, and Birrell nobly sacrificed himself and, to avert a complete fiasco, took matters into his own hands. He gave us an account of how he had gone to Sheffield to lecture, and was entertained in the house of some wealthy people in the neighbourhood. After dinner they drove into the town and the young men of the house refused to come to the lecture they preferred to go to a show where there were sea-lions-" And quite right of them, too," said Birrell. During this Butler sat silent and uninterested, but "genial” as he probably thought. When it was over and we were preparing to take our departure, something was said about Shakespeare, whereupon all his animation returned and, as Miss Sichel said to me afterwards, Birrell and Butler carried on a conversation which, though short, was as brilliant as any she had ever heard. I am afraid I had forgotten this conversation about Shakespeare till she reminded me of it. When I saw Butler so nervous and uncomfortable I was too anxious to get him away to pay much attention to anything else.