The Works of Max Beerbohm, Max Beerbohm [epub read online books .txt] 📗

for me from the grocer’s shop. Autumn will make the boughs of my mountain-ash scarlet, and, later, the asbestos in my grate will put forth its blossoms of flame. The infrequent cart of Buszard or Mudie will pass my window at all seasons. Nor will this be all. I shall have friends. Next door, there is a retired military man who has offered, in a most neighbourly way, to lend me his copy of the Times. On the other side of my house lives a charming family, who perhaps will call on me, now and again. I have seen them sally forth, at sundown, to catch the theatre-train; among them walked a young lady, the charm of whose figure was ill concealed by the neat waterproof that overspread her evening dress. Some day it may be⁠ ⁠… but I anticipate. These things will be but the cosy accompaniment of my days. For I shall contemplate the world.

I shall look forth from my window, the laburnum and the mountain-ash becoming mere silhouettes in the foreground of my vision. I shall look forth and, in nay remoteness, appreciate the distant pageant of the world. Humanity will range itself in the columns of my morning paper. No pulse of life will escape me. The strife of politics, the intriguing of courts, the wreck of great vessels, wars, dramas, earthquakes, national griefs or joys; the strange sequels to divorces, even, and the mysterious suicides of land-agents at Ipswich⁠—in all such phenomena I shall steep my exhaurient mind. Delicias quoque bibliothecae experiar. Tragedy, comedy, chivalry, philosophy will be mine. I shall listen to their music perpetually and their colours will dance before my eyes. I shall soar from terraces of stone upon dragons with shining wings and make war upon Olympus. From the peaks of hills I shall swoop into recondite valleys and drive the pigmies, shrieking little curses, to their caverns. It may be my whim to wander through infinite parks where the deer lie under the clustering shadow of their antlers and flee lightly over the grass; to whisper with white prophets under the elms or bind a child with a daisy-chain or, with a lady, thread my way through the acacias. I shall swim down rivers into the sea and outstrip all ships. Unhindered I shall penetrate all sanctuaries and snatch the secrets of every dim confessional.

Yes! among books that charm, and give wings to the mind, will my days be spent. I shall be ever absorbing the things great men have written; with such experience I will charge my mind to the full. Nor will I try to give anything in return. Once, in the delusion that Art, loving the recluse, would make his life happy, I wrote a little for a yellow quarterly and had that succès de fiasco which is always given to a young writer of talent. But the stress of creation soon overwhelmed me. Only Art with a capital H gives any consolations to her henchmen. And I, who crave no knighthood, shall write no more. I shall write no more. Already I feel myself to be a trifle outmoded. I belong to the Beardsley period. Younger men, with months of activity before them, with fresher schemes and notions, with newer enthusiasm, have pressed forward since then. Cedo junioribus. Indeed, I stand aside with no regret. For to be outmoded is to be a classic, if one has written well. I have acceded to the hierarchy of good scribes and rather like my niche.

Chicago, 1895.

The Works of Max Beerbohm A Bibliography by John Lane Preface

After some considerable experience in the field of bibliography I cannot plead as palliation for any imperfections that may be discovered in this, that it is the work of a ’prentice hand. Difficult as I found my self-imposed task in the case of the Meredith and Hardy bibliographies, here my labour has been still more herculean.

It is impossible for one to compile a bibliography of a great man’s works without making it in some sense a biography⁠—and indeed, in the minds of not a few people, I have found a delusion that the one is identical with the other.

Mr. Beerbohm, as will be seen from the page headed “Personalia,” was born in London, August 24, 1872. In searching the files of the Times I naturally looked for other remarkable occurrences on that date. There was only one worth recording. On the day upon which Mr. Beerbohm was born, there appeared, in the first column of the Times, this announcement:

“On [Wednesday], the 21st August, at Brighton, the wife of V. P. Beardsley, Esq., of a son.”

That the same week should have seen the advent in this world of two such notable reformers as Aubrey Beardsley and Max Beerbohm is a coincidence to which no antiquary has previously drawn attention. Is it possible to overestimate the influence of these two men in the art and literature of the century?

Like two other great essayists, Addison and Steele, Mr. Beerbohm was educated at Charterhouse, and, like the latter, at Merton College, Oxford. At Charterhouse he is still remembered for his Latin verses, and for the superb gallery of portraits of the masters that he completed during his five years’ sojourn there. There are still extant a few copies of his satire, in Latin elegiacs, called Beccerius, privately printed at the suggestion of Mr. A. H. Tod, his form-master. The writer has said “Let it lie,” however, and in such a matter the author’s wish should surely be regarded. I have myself been unable to obtain a sight of a copy, but a more fortunate friend has furnished me with a careful description of the opusculum, which I print in its place in the bibliography.

He matriculated at Merton in 1890, and immediately applied himself to the task he had set before him, namely, a gallery of portraits of the Dons.

I am aware