Australian Essays Adams, Francis W. L. (1862-1893) University of Sydney Library Sydney, Australia 2003 http://purl.library.usyd.edu.au/setis/id/adaessa © University of Sydney Library. The texts and images are not to be used for commercial purposes without permission Source Text: Prepared from the print edition published by William Inglis & Co. Melbourne 1886. 167pp. All quotation marks are retained as data. First Published: 1886 setis australian etexts criticism essays 1870-1889 Australian Essays Melbourne William Inglis & Co. 1886 To Matthew Arnold in England. ‘Master, with this I send you, as a boy that watches from below some cross-bow bird swoop on his quarry carried up aloft, and cries a cry of victory to his flight with sheer joy of achievement—So to you I send my voice across the sundering sea, weak, lost within the winds and surfy waves, but with all glad acknowledgment fulfilled and honour to you and to sovran Truth!’ January, 1886. Contents. PAGE. PREFACE ix. MELBOURNE AND HER CIVILIZATION I THE POETRY OF ADAM LINDSAY GORDON II THE SALVATION ARMY 27 SYDNEY AND HER CIVILIZATION 50 CULTURE 73 “DAWNWARDS,” A DIALOGUE INTRODUCTION 90 I. 97 II. 105 III. 114 IV. 122 V. 138 VI. 146 Preface. IT would be absurd to suppose that it will not seem clear, to whatever readers this little book may find here, that one of the principal characters of the Dialogue is a man for whom we all, I think, feel more interest, admiration, and respect than any other among us. That this is so in reality, I must beg to deny, and I hope that, when I state that I neither have myself, nor know anyone who has, the honour of his acquaintance—nay, that I have never even seen him—I hope that I shall stand acquitted of all charges of personality. As for the other characters, there will too, I daresay, be found people ready to declare who are the originals, and to explain everything which is inconsistent with their theory by ascribing it to designed mystification on the part of the Author. For this, it seems, is an occupation like another. The Author believes that so much of a man's life as is public belongs to the public, and is at the fair use of the public's literary analysts, videlicet the critics, and that it is by no means an unfair use, to take such a life and freely present it in that individual form which it actually has to us in our moments of imagination and reflection. It seems, then, to him foolish, in considering, (to take it in the form of a well-known example), a book like D'Israeli's “Lothair” or “Endymion,” to be trying to identify the characters with actual men. D'Israeli simply uses as much of actual men and actual events as he requires for his criticism of the time he is portraying, and is careless of the rest. I see here no attempt at mystification. I simply see an artist picking out the choicest materials he has to hand. As regards both the Dialogue and the Essays, I would like to point out that they are professedly didactic, and, as such, are of course cast into the form which I believe most calculated to achieve their object. I am sure that I have neither the intention nor the wish to impugn the competency of the australian Press to deal with things australian. I am myself a member, a very humble member of it, and am quite ready to do myself the sincere pleasure of praising it. At the same time I cannot blind myself to the fact that its criticism is not (let us say) ideal. The “business of criticism,” says the first of living critics, “is simply to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its turn making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas.” Well now, I cannot, I say, look upon this australian Press, of which I am so humble a member, as the creator of such a current; and, (I will make a clean breast of it at once!), bright and charming as I have always found him in the “Echoes of the Week” and places of like resort, I have viewed the triumphal approach of Mr. Sala to us, and his even more triumphal progress among us, with (as someone will presently be saying of me)— “with a jaundiced eye.” And why? The truth, the real truth, is, (May I be forgiven for saying so?), that I do not believe that even Mr. Sala can help us australian pressmen, (since I dare to place myself in a company which includes such stupendous personages as “The Vagabond” and the Editor of the Melbourne Herald), to create that “current of true and fresh ideas” to which we have alluded. Truth, alas, is the private property of no man —not even of Mr. George Augustus Sala. And I confess to finding myself at the point of wishing that, even for mere variety's sake, we should hear more than we do of the ideas of such personages as Goethe, Emerson, Renan, Arnold, and so on: writers, of course, familiar to us all, and whom I, at any rate must still continue to consider as not wholly exhausted. They may not have the depth of thought, the accuracy of detail, the exquisite tact of expression which distinguish the genial littérateur, and make his work, as one of my fellow pressmen said the other day, “epoch-making,” but I really do still continue—I must still continue—to think that, despite all these disadvantages, they are still capable of helping us a little to that critical haven where our souls would be—to the source of “a current of true and fresh ideas.” September, 1885. Australian Essays. Melbourne, and Her Civilizátion, As They Strike an Englishman. IT is difficult to speak of Melbourne fitly. The judgment of neither native nor foreigner can escape the influence of the phenomenal aspect of the city. Not fifty years ago its first child, Batman's, was born; not forty, it was a city; a little over thirty, it was the metropolis of a colony; and now (as the inscription on Batman's grave tells us) “Circumspice!” To natives their Melbourne is, and is only, “the magnificent city, classed by Sir George Bowen as the ninth in the world,” “one of the wonders of the world.” They cannot criticise, they can only praise it. To a foreigner, however, who, with all respect and admiration for the excellencies of the Melbourne of to-day as compared with the Melbourne of half-a-century ago, has travelled and seen and read, and cares very little for glorifying the amour-propre of this class or of that, and very much for really arriving at some more or less accurate idea of the significance of this city and its civilization; to such a man, I say, the native melodies in the style of “Rule Britannia” which he hears everywhere and at all times are distasteful. Nay, he may possibly have at last to guard himself against the opposite extreme, and hold off depreciation with the one hand as he does laudation with the other! The first thing, I think, that strikes a man who knows the three great modern cities of the world—London, Paris, New York—and is walking observingly about Melbourne is, that Melbourne is made up of curious elements. There is something of London in her, something of Paris, something of New York, and something of her own. Here is an attraction to start with. Melbourne has, what might be called, the metropolitan tone. The look on the faces of her inhabitants is the metropolitan look. These people live quickly: such as life presents itself to them, they know it: as far as they can see, they have no prejudices. “I was born in Melbourne,” said the wife of a small bootmaker to me once, “I was born in Melbourne, and I went to Tasmania for a bit, but I soon came back again. I like to be in a place where they go ahead.” The wife of a small bootmaker, you see, has the metropolitan tone, the metropolitan look about her; she sees that there is a greater pleasure in life than sitting under your vine and your fig-tree; she likes to be in a place where they go ahead. And she is a type of her city. Melbourne likes to “go ahead.” Look at her public buildings, her New Law Courts not finished yet, her Town Hall, her Hospital, her Library, her Houses of Parliament, and above all her Banks! Nay, and she has become desirous of a fleet and has established a “Naval Torpedo Corps” with seven electricians. All this is well, very well. Melbourne, I say, lives quickly: such as life presents itself to her, she knows it: as far as she can see, she has no prejudices. As far as she can see.—The limitation is important. The real question is, how far can she see? how far does her civilization answer the requirements of a really fine civilization? what scope in it is there (as Mr. Arnold would say) for the satisfaction of the claims of conduct, of intellect and knowledge, of beauty and manners? Now in order the better to answer this question, let us think for a moment what are the chief elements that have operated and are still operating in this Melbourne and her civilization.