FRAGMENTARY, pale, momentary almost nothing- glimpsed and gone

as it were, a faint human hand thrust up, never to reappear, from beneath the rolling waters of time, he forever haunts my memory and solicits my weak imagination. Nothing is told of him but that once, abruptly, he asked a question, and received an

answer.

This was on the afternoon of April 7, 1778, at Streatham, in the well-appointed house of Mr. Thrale. Johnson, on the morning of that day, had entertained Boswell at breakfast in Bolt Court, and invited him to dine at Thrale Hall The two took coach and arrived early. It seems that Sir John Pringle had asked Boswell to ask Johnson what were the best English sermons for style. In the interval before dinner, accordingly, Boswell reeled off the names of several divines whose prose might or might not win commendation. Atterbury?' he suggested.

Johnson: Yes, Sir, one of the best.
Boswell: Tillotson?

Johnson: Why, not now. I should not advise anyone to imitate Tillotson's style; though I don't know; I should be cautious of censuring anything that has been applauded by so many suffrages. South is one of the best, if you except his peculiarities, and his violence, and sometimes coarseness of language. Seed has a very fine style; but he is not very theological. Jortin's sermons are very elegant. Sherlock's style, too, is very elegant, though he has not made it his principal study. And you may add Smalridge.

Boswell: I like Ogden's Sermons on Prayer very much, both for neatness of style and subtlety of reasoning.

Johnson: I should like to read all that Ogden has written.

Boswell: What I want to know is, what sermons afford the best specimen of English pulpit eloquence.

Johnson: We have no sermons addressed to the passions that are good for anything; if you mean that kind of eloquence.

A Clergyman (whose name I do not recollect): Were not Dodd's sermons addressed to the passions?

Johnson: They were nothing, Sir, be they addressed to what they may.

The suddenness of it! Bang!- and the rabbit that had popped from its burrow was no more.

I know not which is the more startling-the début of the unfortunate clergyman or the instantaneousness of his end. Why had n't Boswell told us there was a clergyman present? Well, we may be sure that so careful and delicate an artist had some good reason. And I suppose the clergyman was left to take us unawares because just so did he take the company. Had we been told he was there, we might have expected that sooner or later he would join in the conversation. He would have had a place in our minds. We may assume that in the minds of the company around Johnson he had no place. He sat forgotten, overlooked; so that his self-assertion startled everyone just as on Boswell's page it startles us. In Johnson's massive and magnetic presence only some very remark

able man, such as Mr. Burke, was sharply distinguishable from the rest. Others might, if they had something in them, stand out faintly. This unfortunate clergyman may have had something in him, but I judge that he lacked the gift of seeming as if he had. This deficiency, however, does not account for the horrid fate that befell him. One of Johnson's strongest and most inveterate feelings was his veneration for the Cloth. To anyone in Holy Orders he habitually listened with a grave and charming deference. To-day, moreover, he was in excellent good humor. He was at the Thrales's, where he so loved to be; the day was fine; a fine dinner was in close prospect, and he had had what he always declared to be the sum of human felicity—a ride in а coach. Nor was there in the question put by the clergyman anything likely to enrage him. Dodd was one whom Johnson had befriended in adversity; and it had always been agreed that Dodd in his pulpit was very emotional. What drew the blasting flash must have been not the question itself, but the manner in which it was asked. And I think we can guess what that

manner was.

Say the words aloud: 'Were not Dodd's sermons addressed to the passions?' They are words which, if you have any dramatic and histrionic sense, cannot be said except in a high, thin voice.

You may, from sheer perversity, utter them in a rich and sonorous baritone or bass. But if you do so, they sound utterly unnatural. To make them carry the conviction of human, utterance, you have no choice; you must pipe them.

Remember, now, Johnson was very deaf. Even the people whom he knew well, the people to whose voices he was accustomed, had to address him very loudly. It is probable that this unre

VOL. 15-NO. 767

garded, young, shy clergyman, when at length he suddenly mustered courage to 'cut in,' let his high, thin voice soar too high, insomuch that it was a kind of scream. On no other hypothesis can we account for the ferocity with which Johnson turned and rended him. Johnson did n't, we may be sure, mean to be cruel. The old lion, startled, just struck out blindly. But the force of paw and claws was not the less lethal. We have endless testimony to the strength of Johnson's voice; and the very cadence of those words "They were nothing, Sir, be they addressed to what they may,' convinces me that the old lion's jaws never gave forth a louder roar. Boswell does not record that there was any further conversation before the announcement of dinner. Perhaps the whole company had been temporarily deafened. But I am not bothering about them. My heart goes out to the poor dear clergyman exclusively.

I said a moment ago that he was young and shy; and I admit that I slipped those epithets in without having justified them to you by due process of induction. Your quick mind already will have supplied what I omitted. A man with a high, thin voice, and without power to impress anyone with a sense of his importance, a man so null in effect that even the retentive mind of Boswell did not retain his very name, would assuredly not be a self-confident man. Even if he were not naturally shy, social courage would soon have been sapped in him, and would in time have been destroyed, by experience. That he had not yet given himself up as a bad job, that he still had faint wild hopes, is proved by the fact that he did snatch the opportunity for asking that question. He must, accordingly, have been young. Was he the curate of the neighboring church? I think so.

would account for his having been invited. I see him as he sits there listening to the great Doctor's pronouncement on Atterbury and those others. He sits on the edge of a chair in the background. He has colorless eyes, fixed earnestly, and a face almost as pale as the clerical bands beneath his somewhat receding chin. His forehead is high and narrow, his hair mousecolored. His hands are clasped tight before him, the knuckles standing out sharply. This constriction does not mean that he is steeling himself to speak. He has no positive intention of speaking. Very much, nevertheless, is he wishing in the back of his mind that he could say something-something whereat the great Doctor would turn on him and say, after a pause for thought, 'Why yes, Sir. That is most justly observed' or 'Sir, this has never occurred to me. I thank you 'thereby fixing the observer forever high in the esteem of all. And now in a flash the chance presents itself. 'We have,' shouts Johnson, 'no sermons addressed to the passions, that are good for anything.' I see the curate's frame quiver with sudden impulse, and his mouth fly open, and - no, I can't bear it, I shut my eyes and ears. But audible, even so, is something shrill, followed by something thunderous.

Presently I reopen my eyes. The crimson has not yet faded from that young face yonder, and slowly down. either cheek falls a glistening tear. Shades of Atterbury and Tillotson! Such weakness shames the Established Church. What would Jortin and Smalridge have said? what Seed and South? And, by the way, who were they, these worthies? It is a solemn thought that so little is conveyed to us by names which to the paleo-Georgians conveyed so much. We discern a dim, composite picture of a big man in a big wig and a billowing black

gown, with a big congregation beneath him. But we are not anxious to hear what he is saying. We know it is all very elegant. We know it will be printed and be bound in finely-tooled full calf, and no palæo-Georgian gentleman's library will be complete without it. Literate people in those days were comparatively few; but, bating that, one may say that sermons were as much in request as novels are to-day. I wonder, will mankind continue to be capricious? It is a very solemn thought indeed that no more than a hundred and fifty years hence the novelists of our time, with all their moral and political and sociological outlook and influence, will perhaps shine as indistinctly as do those old preachers, with all their elegance, now. 'Yes, Sir,' some great pundit may be telling a disciple at this moment, 'Wells is one of the best. Galsworthy is one of the best, if you except his concern for delicacy of style. Mrs. Ward has a very firm grasp of problems, but is not very creational. Caine's books are very edifying. I should like to read all that Caine has written. Miss Corelli, too, is very edifying. And you may add Upton Sinclair.' 'What I want to know,' says the disciple, 'is, what English novels may be selected as specially enthralling.' The pundit answers: 'We have no novels addressed to the passions that are good for anything, if you mean that kind of enthrallment.' And here some poor wretch (whose name the disciple will not remember) inquires: 'Are not Mrs. Glyn's novels addressed to the passions?' and is in due form annihilated. Can it be that a time will come when readers of this passage in our pundit's life will take more interest in the poor nameless wretch than in all the bearers of those great names put together, being no more able or anxious to discriminate between, say, Mrs. Ward

and Mr. Sinclair than we are to set Ogden above Sherlock, or Sherlock above Ogden? It seems impossible. But we must remember that things are not always what they seem.

Every man illustrious in his day, however much he may be gratified by his fame, looks with an eager eye to posterity for a continuance of past favors, and would even live the remainder of his life in obscurity if by so doing he could insure that future generations would preserve a correct attitude toward him forever. This is very natural and human, but, like so many very natural and human things, very silly. Tillotson and the rest must not, after all, be pitied for our neglect of them. They either know nothing of it, or are above such terrene trifles. Let us keep our pity for the seething mass of divines who were not elegantly verbose, and had no fun or glory while they lasted. And let us keep a specially large portion for one whose lot was so much worse than merely undistin

The Owl

guished. If that nameless curate had not been at the Thrales's that day, or, being there, had kept the silence that so well became him, his life would have been drab enough, in all conscience. But at any rate, an unpromising career would not have been nipped in the bud. And that is what in fact happened, I'm sure of it. A robust man might have rallied under the blow. Not so our friend. Those who knew him in infancy had not expected that he would be reared. Better for him had they been right. It is well to grow up and be ordained, but not if you are delicate and very sensitive, and happen to annoy the greatest, the most stentorian and roughest of contemporary personages. A Clergyman never held up his head or smiled again after the brief encounter recorded for us by Boswell. He sank into a rapid decline. Before the next blossoming of Thrale Hall's almond trees he was no more. I like to think that he died forgiving Dr. Johnson.

IT is a strange fact that, although everywhere one hears complaints against the management of government or community-owned undertakings, yet in every country the number of what, for convenience' sake, we will term community-owned undertakings steadily increases. This tendency was perceptible before the war, but now the stream has become a torrent, and it is difficult to keep up with all the developments in this direction that are in progress throughout the world. The pressure of circumstances is driving even the most reluctant governments into nationalizing various services and industries, partly for revenue purposes, and partly as the only means of coping with labor unrest. Among the first economic measures taken by the new Czecho-Slovak state is the institution of a State Tobacco Monopoly.

In the United Kingdom it is apparent that nationalization of the coalmining industry affords the only possible solution of the problem of unrest among the mine workers- not because the management will necessarily be improved, but because the miners themselves are convinced that neither they nor the public will secure a 'square deal' unless the industry in which they spend (and in many cases lose) their lives is absolutely freed from every incentive to profiteering, and is regarded as a national service.

A striking instance of this tendency toward nationalization was brought to my notice a few days ago when passing

down Whitehall, where a sign-writer was at work on a shop front, obliterating the words 'Canadian Northern Railways' and substituting for them the words 'Canadian National Railways.' Here was one of the last few private undertakings still occupying premises in this classic London thoroughfare already almost wholly devoted to government offices following the general course, and becoming in its turn a state undertaking. In this instance the causes are more financial than political; but the result is the same, that is, the conversion of a privately-owned enterprise into a community-owned service. All these developments lead to an enormous expansion in the number of state or municipal officials; in other words, they swell the ranks of bureaucracy. Even so convinced a Socialist as myself would not attempt to deny the odium which attaches to the word 'bureaucracy' throughout the entire world; but as the whole trend of things is evidently toward the multiplication of community-owned enterprises, which automatically involves an increase of officials, the time has now arrived when it may be worth while to investigate the causes of the widespread unpopularity of government management, to consider what the criticisms are, how far they are justified, and to what extent it is possible to remove the causes of discontent. It will be necessary to determine whether the things criticized are peculiar to the management of community-owned concerns, or whether