ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)
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ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901) |
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BOOK REVIEWS - POETRY (24)
The Devil’s Case (1896)
The Echo (12 December, 1894 - p.1) Apart from a small collection of Scotch studies and a novel which its author has publicly disowned, Mr. Robert Buchanan has not published any new work for some time. It is a pleasure to be able to announce that he has completed a new poem. This, which bears the characteristic title of “The Devil’s Case: a Bank Holiday Interlude,” will be published very shortly. It is written entirely in unrhymed stanzas. Besides this, Mr. Buchanan has almost ready a new prose story, which is to take the name of his famous Haymarket play, The Charlatan. Indeed, its plot is founded upon that work, and will treat of the career of an impostor who makes capital out of the modern craze for hypnotic and mesmeric séances. In this novel Mr. Buchanan has had the help of Mr. Henry Murray, brother of Mr. Christie Murray, and author of “A Song of Sixpence.” ___
The Era (15 February, 1896) MR BUCHANAN’S new poem, “The Devil’s Case: a Bank Holiday Interlude,” will, we are informed, be published next week, bearing on its title-page the name of “Robert Buchanan,” as publisher as well as author; and simultaneously will be issued a pamphlet in which the author, while dealing with the methods of publishing generally, explains his particular object in becoming his own publisher. Henceforward, we understand, all this writer’s works will be issued direct to the booksellers by himself, his contention being that the ordinary publisher is an anomaly and a nuisance—to quote his own words, “a barnacle on the bottom of the good ship Literature, yet presuming to criticise the quality of the cargo in the hold.” ___
The Derby Daily Telegraph (15 February, 1896 - p.2) When the Incorporated Society of Authors threatened to become their own publishers and put all other publishers out of court, the trade, I am afraid, only laughed. I don’t think Mr. Robert Buchanan is a member of the society, but he is a Society of Authors in himself, poet, playwright, novelist, pamphleteer, &c., &c., and I have just seen a pamphlet in which he announces that his poem, “The Devil’s Case,” to be issued next week, will bear his own name as publisher. Poor Barabbas has had to put up with a great deal since Byron christened him, but Mr. Buchanan will, I fear, be the last straw to Paternoster-row. ___
The Belfast News-Letter (24 February, 1896 - p.7) It is the firm conviction of Mr. Robert Buchanan that the ordinary publisher is a “barnacle on the bottom of the good ship Literature, yet presuming to criticise the quality of the cargo in the hold.” Therefore, his name will appear to his new poem, “The Devil’s Case: A Bank Holiday Interlude,” as publisher as well as author. In addition, he will issue a pamphlet explaining his attitude in this matter, and will for the future issue all his own works direct to the bookseller. It is to be trusted that Mr. Buchanan will not have to repent of his venture, but bankruptcy (if, indeed, that be any terror to so brave a man) has been known to lie that way. ___
The Aberdeen Journal (4 March, 1896 - p.5) Mr Robert Buchanan has caused a mild flutter of interest among book people of late by announcing that henceforward he will publish his works himself. To-night he has issued his new poem “The Devil’s Case: a Bank Holiday Interlude,” which, in my opinion, will quite sustain the reputation for eccentric genius which this Scottish author holds. A day or two ago he made a kind of “opening announcement” as publisher in a pamphlet entitled “Is Barabbas a Necessity?” directed, of course, against the publishing trade. Mr Buchanan now stands as unique as Marie Corelli, who has abandoned as futile the practice of sending her works to reviewers. Whether Mr Buchanan will follow her in this may be determined by the reception his “Devil’s Case” meets with, but I do not think it probable. ___
The Daily Chronicle (7 March, 1896 - p.3) OUR POET TO ANOTHER. “The Devil’s Case: A Bank Holiday Interlude.” By Robert Buchanan. (London: Robert Buchanan and all Booksellers. 6s.) Would you know how Bard Buchanan You may learn it for six shillings Mark the imprint—“R. Buchanan!” “Every man his own Barabbas!” Well, upon the Heath of Hampstead, Whereupon that damaged angel, And poured forth a rambling lecture, In the verse of “Hiawatha,” “Then, O indolent Reviewer!” He who runs may write it, speak it— I protest I cannot help it— “Though I’m anything but clever, What was Satan’s revelation, Simply this: that “Prince of Darkness” But, by some sad hocus-pocus, Till, on Hampstead’s sacred summit, Then he saw in Satan (so called) “Eighteen hundred years,” quoth Satan, “ ‘Love each other, help each other, “ ‘Pass from knowledge on to knowledge “ ‘Fear not, love not, and revere not (These four stanzas are authentic— Dost thou yearn for further samples, Thus, then, spoke the Prince of Bathos: “Thus, in spite of the Almighty, * * * * “ ‘Take no heed about To-morrow,’ “But the Devil, being wiser, “And To-day is, now and ever, “From which statement you may gather “This I merely state en passant, Why “Heraclitus,” O Robert? Nor is this the sole enigma Here you write a “Dedication,” Don’t you feel that these five verses Yet you did not lack idea, (See the force of bad example! ___
The Weekly Times & Echo (8 March, 1896 - p.4) THE DEVIL’S CASE.* MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN met the Devil on Hampstead Heath reading the Star by moonlight. Now the Devil was, as a consequence, prosy, and why his commencement should have horrified Mr. Robert Buchanan we cannot make out; but it did:— “God?” he cried, “If such a Ruler, “He’d have made them wholly perfect, The poet promptly took up the cudgels for the Deity, and favoured Satan with a little plagiarism of Tennyson—“Moveth to some fair Event,” and so forth, which aggravated the blasphemer into more heterodoxy and an indignant protest against the misrepresentations of him by priests, prophets and poets. Even Marlowe, he declares, painted him a monster; Milton made him “a parson, voluble and bellows-winded”; “Goethe, that superior person,” blundered; Byron “proclaimed a prosy Devil,” and even Burns, his “prince of singers,” treated him with scornful pity. Mr. Robert Buchanan alone, as the author of the “Wandering Jew,” was worthy to depict the much-maligned Lucifer:— “Do it straightway! and for ever Half in jest and half in earnest Still Mr. Robert Buchanan hesitated, but the Devil whipped him on to his skirt-tails and started perpendicularly for—well, what was after all apparently slum-London:— Pityingly he gazed upon me. “I, the eternal Prince of Darkness, “Since that hour of my accession “Thus, in spite of the Almighty, Another trip of rapid inspection of the miseries and crime of the world left the poet a little more sympathetic, and presently “half in wondering adoration” of the Devil, which encouraged the latter to make out his case as that of a respectable sort of Prometheus who was driven from Heaven for remonstrating with God for permitting evil and pain to be:— “Then my soul was wroth within me, “‘Or if pity stirs within Thee “‘Back on Thine own footsteps treading, “Then He struck me with His lightnings, Tracing the history of his connection with Adam and Eve and the well-known apple stealing case in Paradise, the Devil stoutly maintains that his ideas were friendly, but that unfortunately “spread the pestilence, Religion.” In vain the Devil inspired Zoroaster, Gautama Buddha, Osiris, and summoned Aphrodite “from the turquoise seas” to charm the denizens of the happy groves of the islands of Hellas. Things grew worse and worse, in spite of the Devil’s efforts. Christianity only meant further degeneration. “Since that hour the Fight hath lasted! “All the horde of Priests and Prophets, The Devil invented the Drama, found out printing, prompted novelists, started the newspaper, and made possible all the triumphs of science and art, and in spite of priests and lawyers and Judges, he bids the poet be sure that “This, at least, is certain: Never “Never will he kneel and listen “Patience, patience! Light is growing— The defence is a powerful one, but is it made for the first time? And if a good one, is it not possible that Mr. Robert Buchanan may have met the wrong person after all? Others surely have ventured to hint that the horrible embodiment of the Godhead which bigots and the ignorant adore is nothing but a false idol. Even of One long ago, it was said by the Pharisees “He hath a Devil”! But if Mr. Buchanan is not the first Advocatus Diaboli, he is a most excellent and forcible one. There is not a dull line from the beginning to the end of the book, and there is scarcely a page from which a verse does not cleave to the memory. We are the things of Thy making, we are the clouds of Thy breath! Thou hast set these Rulers above us, to bind us, to blind our eyes, * “THE DEVIL’S CASE: A BANK HOLIDAY INTERLUDE.” By Robert Buchanan. Published by the Author, 36, Gerrard-street, W. (6s.) ___
The Daily Chronicle (9 March, 1896 - p.7) THE DEVIL’S CASE. THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—I thank you. Tho’ your Poet, Donkey-like he makes, while prancing “Easier than Prose!” So easy? Let me, Sir, while bending meekly Sound sans sense for generations Till the Public, sick of verses, Better Prose of power and passion Pass the Form, and probe the Matter Calm and clear, not fierce and frantic, Free of tricks and rhymes redundant, Ask, however bald the Song is, Then, my Friend, you may discover POSTSCRIPT.—Since there’s no disguising Free, to men of every station, ___
The Star (9 March, 1896 - p.1) “THE DEVIL’S CASE.” TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR,—As I know that your columns are always open to the ventilation of honest grievances, I hasten to inform you that the Daily Telegraph has declined to insert the advertisement of a new poem of mine, “The Devil’s Case.” The advertisement, which included a quotation from the work itself, was thought innocent enough by the Christian Daily Chronicle, but was boycotted by a newspaper which welcomes the advertisements f Jewish moneylenders, divorce agents, and vendors of patent medicine. I merely mention the fact, leaving your readers to draw their own inference. But my troubles do not end here. More than one bookseller has imitated the Daily Telegraph and boycotted the new book and the new publisher, and to-day is added to my lot the additional humiliation of having caused Mr. William Archer, the Ghoul of dramatic criticism, to dash off a copy of verses in what he calls “my manner”! He informs me, with natural pride, that the doggrel in the Daily Chronicle is from his pen, and that he can reel off such trochaics by the yard, the manufacture of them being so “easy.” Now Mr. Archer is honest, like the Ancient, and I am far from suggesting that he remembers with any bitterness my own estimate of his literary qualifications as embodied in certain well-known criticisms. So I accept, humbly and penitently, the rebuke he gives me, and frankly admit that my verses, if they “scan” like his, and my English, if it in any way resembles his, are only fit for execration. At the same time I cannot accept as authoritative the deliverance of Mr. Archer on any question of style or grammar. That the creator of “Criticism As She Is Wrote” should presume to speak on a literary question at all is, I think, a piece of extraordinary impertinence. But a far more serious issue to myself personally, and to all who attempt, however feebly, to contribute to English literature, lies under the attempt of newspapers to boycott, and of newspaper critics like Mr. Archer to vilify and misrepresent, an honest book. “The Devil’s Case” is described in one quarter as full of the sort of “atheism” preached every Sunday in Hyde-park, and this misconception of its character is, no doubt, the reason that it has been refused the advantages of the “largest circulation.” It is news for one who has been engaged all is life, so far as his poetic work is concerned, in preaching spiritualism to a materialistic generation, to be told that he is “an atheist.” It is no news, however, to find that newspaper critics make no distinction between what is uttered dramatically and what is the expression of the writer’s own opinion. Even with the inscription on the fly-leaf to guide them,— Please remember, gentle reader, such critics persist in blundering. The case against God is stated fully, absolutely, and unreservedly in my poem, but the statement is that of the Devil—that, in other words, of the Spirit of Pity, in revolt against the cruelty and injustice of Nature, and against the established creeds. It is clearly enough intimated, however, that this is only one side of the question; it is not only intimated, but asserted and reiterated. Would it not be fair to wait until the writer had something to say on the other side, and, in the meantime, to give even the poor Devil a fair and intelligent hearing? But no! That is just what criticism will never do. Now, as hitherto, a Poet is not judged by his peers, but by men who have done absolutely nothing to warrant their speaking at all on questions of literature. If Mr. William Archer, for example, could produce any one piece of genuinely original work, however modest, if he had ever written anything or done anything beyond digging up the corpse-like Plays and festering Tales of the Continent, and contributing scraps of ungrammatical abuse to society newspapers, he might be entitled to express an opinion on a piece of serious thought written by a man who is a littérateur, not a journalist. To garble and misrepresent, to vilify and parody, is easy enough; to write even twenty lines of English or a dozen verses that will “scan” is (as Mr. Archer proves by his blundering attempt to imitate my Devil) far more difficult. I placed him in the Pillory long ago, and there he will remain, long after his daily and weakly cacklings are forgotten, as a crowning example of the honest and uninstructed Criticaster, who might have done useful journeyman’s work, but who prefers to remain “the Ghoul of Grammar and the Stage.”—Yours, &c., ROBERT BUCHANAN. ___
The Scotsman (9 March, 1896 - p.3) NEW POETRY Mr Robert Buchanan’s new poem, The Devil’s Case, assumes to hold a brief for Satan, and to defend him against all the aspersions that have been thrown upon his character from time immemorial. It is written in a jingling trochaic measure that has no distinction whatever, and, when associated with the very theological subject of the work, sounds flippant and no more. So far as the matter of the poem is concerned, it must be said at the outset that if the Devil has nothing more to say for himself than is here set forth, he is most deservedly damned. Would you know how I, Buchanan, It begins by asking, and then goes on to state how he, Buchanan, walking on Hampstead Heath, met the Devil, and was taken into his confidence, and asked to publish the “Interview.” Then comes the case. Hornie claims credit for all the good things man has ever done, and blames another supernatural power for all the evil that is in the world. It was he—he, Hornie, not he, Buchanan—who put Prometheus up to bringing down fire. It was he who prompted the building of the Pyramids. It was he who invented printing. (This, by the way, explains many things known only to those intimately connected with the press—proof-readers, compositors, sub-editors, and special correspondents.) It was he, the Devil, who “upraised the drama,” which (to spurn grammar) he might upraise it a little further, for it wants him badly just now, having only Mr. Jones. Then he, the Devil, explains his sentiments. He is democratic, and, as he puts it, in what for poetry sounds uncommonly like prose, and sloppy prose too — Tennyson I liked extremely After he, the Devil, has done, he, Buchanan, says his, Buchanan’s, prayers in the shape of a litany which might do duty in any church service. The object of all this highly respectable euchology is probably to give the book an odour of sanctity, and dissipate the sulphurous fumes that obnubilate the work as a whole—much as is the transpontine melodramas you find the dashing young hero, who has lived a life of five acts of the most godless folly, dissipation, and crime, suddenly turn round and repent, saying, “Ah, yes, we have all sinned. We have all suffered. But let this be a warning to us all to avoid the quicksands of fast life and the fate of The Roysterer of Rutherglen,” whereat the gallery, thinking that it has assisted at a demonstration of ethical science, applauds vigorously. So it is with this poem. It is cheap melodrama where it affects sublimity. One can enjoy a tasty bit of bold blasphemy, whether in trochaics or in the more stately and more truly English iambic; but the small audacities of him, Buchanan, sound weak when one thinks of the “Man’s forgiveness give—and take” of a gentler questioner of the powers beyond. The work is a piece of perverted sentiment which poses as imagination, and seeks to cheapen the great creations of Milton and Goethe. The most obvious reflection it suggests is that, for all a writer of Mr Buchanan’s calibre can say for him, the Devil would stand a better chance if he were left to conduct the case himself; for he is not without a certain ability. ___
The Star (10 March, 1896 - p.1) “THE DEVIL'S CASE.” TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR—Mr. Robert Buchanan having intimated to me his intention of sending me a presentation copy of his new poem, I thought myself bound to give him the opportunity of reconsidering that intention, in view of the fact that I had written a somewhat unfavorable notice of the book. It would no doubt have been wiser simply to have “declined with thanks” the unexpected and embarrassing gift.—Yours, &c., London, 9 March. WILLIAM ARCHER. _____
A CURIOSITY OF CRITICISM. TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR—I thought I had done with the Daily Chronicle, but this morning a thunderbolt has fallen in the shape of a leaderette in that newspaper, bewailing the suppression by a local library of Mr. Hardy’s “Great Work,” “Jude the Obscure,” and protesting that ’twould be as just and wise to suppress “Shakespeare and the Bible.” Amen to that, say I, though the said Jude never stirred me to any enthusiasm; but the mischief is, I was prejudiced against him at the beginning by the criticism (in the Chronicle!) which greeted his first advent. If your readers will turn up the file of this weirdly and wondrously edited Daily, they will discover that the Chronicle critic found in the new novel only coarseness, indecency, and moral turpitude, and that, not content with recording his contempt for it, he read into it the prurient filth of his own salaciousness, and labelled it dirty and disgraceful! Yet to-day it is a “Great Book”! ROBERT BUCHANAN. ___
The Edinburgh Evening News (10 March, 1896 - p.2) Mr Robert Buchanan having turned publisher of his own works, does not find things proceed very smoothly. One London morning paper, supposed to have the very largest circulation, won’t accept his advertisement, and in another Mr William Archer, the dramatic writer, has criticised him in trochaics after the style of Mr Buchanan’s latest book. It is a wise author who knows when to leave well alone, and most everyday publishers would be glad to have the advertisements which Mr Buchanan is receiving by way of criticism, and which he is finding so hard to bear. ___
The Daily Chronicle (11 March, 1896 - p.6) We had not thought that it would ever be our unpleasant duty to deal with Mr. Robert Buchanan personally in these columns. A letter, however, which he addressed yesterday to the Star concerning this paper compels us to make one brief, but, we think, sufficient, comment. Mr. Buchanan’s letter, so far as it relates to our criticism of “Jude the Obscure,” is a lie from beginning to end. If your readers will turn up the file of this . . . . daily, they will discover that The Chronicle critic found in the new novel only coarseness, indecency, and moral turpitude, and that, not content with recording his contempt for it, he read into it the prurient filth of his own salaciousness, and labelled it dirty and disgraceful! Yet to-day it is a “Great Book”! There is not a single word of truth in these lines. Mr. Hardy’s book was treated on the morning of its appearance—Nov. 1, 1895—not in a review, but in a leading article. The only unfavourable remarks in this article, which assigns to Mr. Hardy the highest ran k as a writer of fiction, are: (1) that some portion of the public might see in it a tragedy for Mr. Hardy, but that on this point we could not yet answer; and (2) that in one portion of the book there were “some serious risks of taste and judgment.” Our final verdict was pronounced in the following sentences:— There is an infinite beauty of style, marred by occasional infelicity; there are passages of rare spiritual beauty, and of a sad and fine irony; there is colour, quaintness, charm. The hand may have faltered, but it is the hand of a master. On two other occasions we have referred to this book. First, in a review of the literature of the year by Mr. Archer, in which he refers to it as the greatest work of 1895; and second, in the editorial note to which Mr. Buchanan refers. Having characterised Mr. Buchanan’s letter, we beg him to understand that our columns are not open to him for an expression of opinion upon this or any other matter. The only method of communication in future between ourselves and this gentleman will be through our solicitors. ___
The Star (11 March, 1896 - p.1) “THE DEVIL'S CASE.” TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR—Mr. William Archer is quite right. I did send him a presentation copy of “The Devil’s Case.” Copies have been presented also to Mr, Stead, Dr. Parker, Rev. Price Hughes, Mr. W. E. Henley, Rev. Mr. Horton, and many other individuals who would be likely to fall foul of it; and if Mr. Archer will send me the address of anyone else who will promise to give me a column or half a column of criticism, abusive or otherwise, that person also shall have a copy. Why should Mr. Archer feel “embarrassed”? I knew I was certain to get the value of the book in bold advertisement of some kind. I had not studied the ways of Barabbas for nothing.—Yours, &c., ROBERT BUCHANAN. _____
The Daily Chronicle this morning refers to Mr. Buchanan’s letter in our issue of yesterday. That letter, says our contemporary, “so far as it relates to our criticism of ‘Jude the Obscure,’ is a lie from beginning to end.” It then quotes from the letter the specific accusation against it made by Mr. Buchanan, and describes the content of its leading article in which “Jude the Obscure” was reviewed on 1 November last, declaring that the only unfavorable remarks it contained were (1) “that some portion of the public might see in it a tragedy for Mr. Hardy,” and (2) that “in one portion of the book there were ‘some serious risks of taste and judgment.’” The Chronicle concludes:— Having characterised Mr. Buchanan’s letter, we beg him to understand that our columns are not open to him for an expression of opinion upon this or any other matter. The only method of communication in future between ourselves and this gentleman will be through our solicitors. ___
The Star (12 March, 1896 - p.1) BOOKS AND BOOKMEN. Mr. Buchanan’s “The Devil’s Case.” I am sorry to read Mr. Buchanan’s letter in Monday’s Star just as I sit down to write my poor criticism upon his book “The Devil’s Case” (Buchanan) for I did hope that he would keep quiet this time — whatever reception was given him. But no! here is he foaming and fretting as of old, even still more furiously, just because Mr. Archer has written what struck me as a very genial parody, and on the whole a very just criticism, of his poem. God bless us, what does Mr. Buchanan expect? Does he expect to preach unpopular doctrine, to run amuck at all his literary brethren throughout his career, and now—having finally alienated the booksellers by becoming his own publisher—to be kissed on both cheeks and fed with the milk and honey of criticism? With what measure ye mete, &c.: Mr. Buchanan seems to look upon himself as a very ill-used person. He is for ever posing as the “outcast,” the “pariah” of the literary cliques, and so on—in this new poem—he has the amusing egotism to compare his position in contemporary literature to Lucifer’s position in the cosmogony—Lucifer, Outlaw’d by the cliques of Heaven, Yet who, one cannot but ask, is to blame for all this but Mr. Buchanan himself? After all, the world began very kindly by him,. It could hardly do more than give him a pension quite early in his career—when, if I am not mistaken, he was younger than Mr. Watson was when he received his pension. Thus officially recognised at the outset, his undoubted talents have received the fullest recognition from the public. His novels have gone into many editions, his plays have enjoyed long runs, and his collected poems (an enormous volume of five hundred and thirty-four pages even in 1884) have long taken their placer among the “standard” poets in all properly furnished libraries. I think I am right in saying that even the very critics, whom it is Mr. Buchanan’s monomania to regard as his implacable foes, estimate his abilities much more generously than he realises—and indeed deserves. For, after all, why should his contemporaries love and adore Robert Buchanan? Has he behaved so nobly by them? With the exception of Charles Reade, and perhaps another writer or two, has he ever had a good word to say for anyone but himself? His early attack on Rossetti and Swinburne is proverbial. He has persistently sneered at Tennyson, and, not content with running down the men of his own and the preceding generation, he has belittled pretty well every “new man” that has dared to succeed since. Stevenson, Pater, Kipling, even Hardy and Meredith—I believe I am right in saying that he has scoffed in his boisterous fashion at all of them. He himself refers to his unprovoked attack on Mr. William Archer airily, as though it had been a frolicsome pleasantry no one would think of minding. Snapping an d snarling at every new reputation as he has consistently done, ever unwilling to live and let live, is it to be wondered at that literary critics have come to regard him as the mad dog of literature, whom it is equally dangerous to pet or to flog—and whom, alas! it is quite impossible to muzzle? If the so-called literary “cliques” have been against him, who is to blame? After all, human nature is human nature, and Mr. Buchanan cannot expect others to be just where he has been persistently ungenerous. The feud between him and the “heavenly powers” of latter-day criticism was of his own provoking, and if he may justly complain that it has been maintained against him with a somewhat implacable bitterness, he has this to remember, that the despair and degradation of a greater poet than himself is mainly to be placed to his account. No doubt the idea that any poet could be greater than himself will seem absurd enough to Mr. Buchanan—and indeed one sighs to think what a great poet he might have been! No one in our day except Mr. Swinburne has been possessed of such tremendous lyrical fervor, and there is a poignant emotional quality about his last work, an accent of Scotch pathos, translated, so to say, into English, which, with all its careless fluency, its disregard of form, and contempt for distinction, must, I think, keep it alive. Who that has read the passionate proem to “Balda the Beautiful” can forget its splendid storm and stress and the haunting cadence of its beautiful refrain— I was born in a dream, and I dwell in a dream, Yet the most splendid chaos is not the same thing as a cosmos—and, for the most part, in everything he has attempted, despite the poetic beauty and evidences of intellectual power scattered broadcast, in spite of its tremendous energy and remarkable range of theme and mood, Mr. Buchanan’s work has somehow just missed perfect success—chiefly, so far as one can judge, from that same lack of patience and control in his art which is so painfully evident in his temper. Moreover, though Mr. Buchanan is very much of a personality in his letters to the daily papers, he curiously misses personality in his more—or should we say less?—serious work. We gain the sense of an immensely clever man, with a many-sided temperament, open to innumerable interests, and yet we cannot say that the writer either feels life newly, sees it newly, or says it newly—gives it any expression personal to himself—and such, it seems to me, are the tests of an original writer. However, it is time to leave generalities, and to say that, of its kind, Mr. Buchanan’s new poem is exceedingly effective. He himself, in his opening lines, disclaims any attempt at high poetry. “Not,” he says . . . in great heroic measures Genius of the Greeks and Germans, For my perilous subject-matter With this admission to start with, it would be absurd and unjust to measure the poem against, say, “Paradise Lost”—which one need hardly say was undertaken in a very different spirit—or even against Mr. Buchanan’s own “Wandering Jew,” which seems to me less successful, because more ambitious. As an effective, perhaps rather cheaply effective, statement of the old Manichean position, the poem is good reading. But, of course, there is nothing new in its central idea, as it is merely a long commentary on one of the Devil’s oldest names, that of Lucifer—the light-bringer who discovered all the useful arts of life, stole the fire as Prometheus, invented the printing press as Fust, and so on. Sometimes Mr. Buchanan has a really fine conception, as when he represents the Devil as being willing to worship God for ever till the moment when—he first viewed his creations and saw the misery and mismanagement thereof. Indeed, there are no few fine lines, and many touches of beauty, and the poem is at least entertaining from end to end, particularly in its piquant personal allusions. There is one such allusion near the beginning which I confess to finding more poignant than piquant, for as one reads it, it is impossible not to feel a pang of sorrow and sympathy for the man of genius who thus bares so nakedly the anguish of a disappointed heart. The poet has been wandering an afternoon among the Bank Holiday makers on Hampstead-heath:— Sad my soul had been among them, Here is the genuine “cri de cœur,” and here, too, one feels the presence of that spirit of beauty which has never long deserted the poetry of Robert Buchanan. And the same applies even still more to the tender and lovely dedication. RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. _____
MR. BUCHANAN AND THE “CHRONICLE.” TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR—The editor of the Daily Chronicle, with characteristic Christian delicacy, says that I have told “A Lie.” Now, I have not at hand that Imperial Dictionary which the Daily Chronicle, eager for the literary improvement of its readers, issues to them in cheap numbers; but, turning to my Webster, I find that a Lie may be either (1) “a criminal falsehood, a falsehood used for the purpose of deception,” or (2) “a fiction, in a ludicrous sense.” This relieves me of the necessity of imitating the Editor’s bad language, and enables me to suggest, by way of retort, that he is merely guilty of “fiction, in a ludicrous sense.” Webster, moreover, quotes Paley to show that “a man may act a lie, by pointing his finger in a wrong direction when a traveller inquires of him the road”; and this is exactly what happened when, some months ago, I asked my Fleet Street Guide whether “Jude the Obscure” was “safe” reading—as safe, say, as Shakespeare and the Bible”? This is what he said to me in the leader which he now garbles for my condemnation:— A tragedy it is. . . . But may there not lurk a second tragedy in this publication, and may not Mr. Hardy prove a second scapegoat? These are questions which frankly we are indisposed to answer offhand. That many people will answer with a broad and emphatic “Yes” is probable enough. . . . One thing, at all events, is plain. In the story of “Jude and His Woes” we have reached the very nadir of wretchedness and disaster, and there really is no room wherein another pessimist may go one step in further future. Then, after sundry irrelevant caperings and wanderings, my Guide continued: Their loves are tragic. Alas! and they are ignobly tragic. The girl marries and leaves her husband for her cousin, and her cousin for her husband. It is in this part of the story that Mr. Hardy treads on artistic cinders; the construction staggers, and there are some serious risks of taste and judgment. But the theme, if it sets a trap for his defects, displays eminently Mr. Hardy’s great qualities. . . . The hand may faltered, but it is the hand of a master. Why, may I ask, should the book prove “a tragedy” for Mr. Hardy, unless in the suggestion that he was committing literary suicide? The implication is that or nothing. How could the hand have “faltered” if it was writing a Great Book as worthy of preservation as “Shakespeare or the Bible”? Would not even he who runs while reading gather from the whole leader that “Jude the Obscure” was a highly unpleasant book, though written by a good writer? ROBERT BUCHANAN. 36, Gerrard-st., Shaftesbury-avenue, W., 11 March. P.S.—I am eagerly waiting to hear from the Daily Chromicle’s solicitors. Up to now (eleven p.m.) they have made no sign. Is this another case of “pointing the (editorial) finger in a wrong direction”? By-the-way, that leader must be Mr, Archer’s? Only the author of “Criticism as She is Wrote” could talk of construction “staggering,” “artistic cinders” (!), and a theme “setting a trap”!—R. B. ___
The Glasgow Herald (12 March, 1896 - p.10) The Devil’s Case: A Bank Holiday Interlude. By Robert Buchanan. (London: Robert Buchanan, and all Booksellers.)—Mr Robert Buchanan, who was not regarded in official circles as good enough to be the Poet Laureate of Britain, has been appointed laureate to the Devil by the Devil himself. In accepting his Satanic brief, Mr Buchanan, who acts as his own publisher, binds himself to set forth the ideas of the Devil, who is the Father of Lies. For that reason the book is necessarily a mass of poetic lying, the cool and blasphemous assumption of the Arch-Rebel being that he, and not his Divine Master, is the author of all the good that has been done in the world from the beginning until now. The plan of the poem is simple. The poet, being on Hampstead Heath on a bank holiday, lingers until it is dark, and finds a mysterious figure sitting on a fallen, withered tree, and takes it for that of a priest or parson. It is no such person, but Satan himself, reading the pink edition of the Star, which shows His Majesty’s peculiar taste. The two—Poet and Prince—soon get to talk. The Devil complains bitterly of having been always misunderstood and misrepresented, especially by priests and poets. Marlow, Milton, Calderon, Goethe, Byron, and Burns failed to do him justice:— “Even Burns, my prince of singers, He declares that his true nature has never been comprehended, and he beseeches the poet to act otherwise:— “Be the Laureate of the Devil! The poet’s answer is, “Sing your praises? Devil take me if I do!” But all the same he listens, and the book contains the case for the Prince of Evil stated by himself. He makes out a strong case, but, of course, he talks with a lying tongue. All the good that Another ought to have done, but neglected to do, was done by him, the Outcast, the maligned, the misunderstood— “I’m the father of all Science— That may be taken as en epitome of his achievements for the benefit of mankind. It was he that invented printing, originated the theatre, the modern novel, and the newspaper. All these are beneficent, and are therefore his, the Devil’s, work. The poet, in reply, tells the proud and boastful spirit that even if what he says were true, he is but an instrument doing the work of his Creator. To this he does not directly reply; and in the end, before he disappears from the poet’s sight, he says:— “Name me not the Prince of Evil— The book ends with a piece which the poet calls “The Litany. De Profundis,” which is serious, but is not free from certain dim hints of the mocking, derisive spirit—as if the Almighty, having been outraged and angered, the poet wished to soothe Him by fulsome adulation. It is not easy to understand what, if not the Devil, tempted Mr Buchanan to waste his time upon a theme so little calculated to do himself or anybody the least good. Poetically the workmanship is much beneath his best manner. He did not, however, mean to write in “great heroic measures,” but rather “in roguish, rhymeless stanzas”—trochaics, in fact—specimens of which we have quoted. Even as a satire the poem necessarily fails, for the single reason that it touches only to outrage the religious beliefs of the nation. The poet’s defence is that the poem must be regarded from a dramatic point of view. That is to say, the ideas are not the poet’s, but the devil’s own. That is a mistake. The ideas are what the poet thinks the devil would announce, if he really had a chance. This makes a difference in the point of view. ___
The Methodist Times (12 March, 1896 - p.15) A Literary Causerie. In a weary mood the other night I sat by my fire and read one of the most remarkable volumes I have ever come across—The Devil’s Case, by Robert Buchanan. It is Mr. Buchanan’s latest work, and the first question it raises in the mind of the reader is this—Is Mr. Buchanan to be taken au sérieux? The volume is published by Mr. Buchanan himself, and is accompanied by a pamphlet, given gratis to every purchaser of The Devil’s Case and sold at a shilling by itself, entitled Is Barabbas a Necessity? This pamphlet appears to be a wholesale indictment of publishers, whom Mr. Buchanan regards as parasites. This extraordinary publication also contains a vigorous attack on Paradise Lost, which Mr. Buchanan considers “a drearily bad business,” “as deadlily and unutterably dull as Peter Bell.” But my concern si not with Barabbas, the publisher, but with The Devil’s Case. This volume costs 6s., is bound in black, with the name of the book and the author in bold scarlet letters on the front cover, while between these two in silver is Lucifer’s face, surmounted by a star, and the legend—likewise in silver—underneath, “Est Diabolus in Nobis.” This was fairly sensational, so I opened the book. The frontispiece, one of six illustrations, which Mr. Buchanan describes as “grotesque,” represents Lucifer falling from heaven. The other “grotesque” illustrations are mainly caricatures of the various religions of the world; one of Osiris is really a blasphemous caricature of the Crucifixion. This is the title-page of the book:— THE DEVIL’S CASE. A Bank Holiday Interlude. By ROBERT BUCHANAN. “Diabolus Hominum Salvator.” “αὐτὸς γὰρ ὁ Σατανᾶς μετασχηματίζεται εἰς ἄγγελον φωτός.” London: ROBERT BUCHANAN, and all Booksellers. The book is written in verse—most peculiar verse. It is in four-lined, unrhymed trochaic stanzas, which seem as if they ought to be read to the accompaniment of vamping on a banjo. Mr. Buchanan was on Hampstead Heath on the night of Bank Holiday, August, 1894. After the merry-makers had gone home he met the Devil and interviewed him, found he was a much-maligned person, and wrote this marvellous volume to put the Devil’s side of the case before men. The gist of the Devil’s position seems to be that if God is omnipotent and made the world, then He made Death, and Pain, and Woe. Therefore God is a cruel tyrant, while he, the Devil, in defiance of God, invented Knowledge, Truth, Beauty, the Theatre, Printing, the Newspaper, the Telegraph, Freedom of Thought, and everything else that Mr. Buchanan admires. In fact, the Devil is “The Prince of Pity.” In order to maintain this extraordinary position Mr. Buchanan, or the Devil—for I frankly admit I don’t understand the book, and cannot quite distinguish one from the other—consistently confounds Christianity, Religion, God, with Priestcraft, and with priestcraft in its most repellent and anti-religious form. To him, Christianity is Romanism, the bloodthirsty, ignorant Romanism of the Middle Ages. He never seems to have dreamed that priestcraft is now and has always been, the worst foe of Christianity. The true Christian is always anti-clerical. It is hardly too much to say that our Lord’s fiercest denunciations were not showered on harlots and sinners, but on the recognised and orthodox and pious clergy—the Pharisees, and Scribes, and Priests. But perhaps Mr. Buchanan—or the Devil—is right. I’m sure the latter is. From his point of view nothing could be more desirable than to convince mankind that Priestcraft is Religion, that mediæval Romanism is Christianity, that the Pope is Christ’s vicar on earth. Whether Mr. Buchanan himself holds that view I have failed to discover. He loathes priestcraft, sometimes he gives one the impression that he loathes Christianity. The book is frankly and rankly blasphemous throughout, so I cannot and will not quote from it. I mention it at all only because it raises a most important and interesting problem, the obvious solution of which is much overlooked nowadays. Throughout both the pamphlet and the book—the latter of which especially is not without a certain marked literary power—Mr. Buchanan seems to assume that the frank and honest expression of his views in his own style is of some advantage to himself or to someone else. I confess I am entirely unconvinced of the truth of Mr. Buchanan’s assumption. It is better than the dishonest expression of his views, certainly. ut why express them at all? This age seems to be labouring under the delusion that if somewhat that is written be only realistically sincere, it must therefore be advantageous to somebody to write that somewhat. I entirely dispute the truth of that amiable but dangerous delusion. It is individualism gone mad. Men who labour under this form of madness forget that what is highest and best in man and for other men is realised most often when a man’s thoughts and the expression of them are modified by other men. Then we have great literature and great art, great for all times and ages, at least for all normal and healthy men and women. But the other delusion produces a vast and foul flood, doing nothing but harm to the writer and his (or her) readers. A wide, foul, and fetid stream of sex-novels and realistic dramas, and hill-top and tip-top attacks on the fundamentals of morality, filthy self-revelations of morbid, diseased, and ill-balanced minds and bodies, trying to realise their dirty souls in literature, is the result. A great artist may be realistic. but realism is not, therefore, art. From much of this sweeping condemnation Mr. Buchanan is to be excepted. There is nothing foul or filthy in his latest volume. But he is blasphemous and often sensuous; always, to my mind, morbid and ill-balanced. The book is not a contribution to literature or art. The main idea underlying it, that of an all-powerful, but cruel and despotic deity, who is defied by a weaker but independent friend of man, is the subject of Æschylus’s and Shelley’s noble dramas. After wading through Mr. Buchanan’s banjo blasphemies to open one’s Æschylus or Shelley is like soaring from the mud of Fleet-street to the empyrean on the snow-top of the Matterhorn. The book ends with a parody of the Litany. This is more poetical and somewhat less blasphemous than the banjo part. Here is a like I may venture to quote as a mild specimen:— From Churches, and Priests, and Liars, good Lord, deliver us! It would not be difficult to parody that line, inserting the names of some modern authors. The lesson the book teaches most forcibly to my mind is, that the greatest delusion under which Mr. Buchanan labours is the delusion that he is a poet, or even an “author.” He ought to abandon literature. He has no message but a nightmare. And Paradise Lost will outlive that nightmare. GENSERIC. ___
The Lichfield Mercury (13 March, 1896 - p.4) MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN, the many-sided, has just made an excursion which has awakened considerable interest in literary circles, and will engender a great deal more. Like Godwin and Richardsons of the old times, and William Morris of the present times, he has become his own publisher. He has “gone one better” than Ruskin. Publishers who have watched the literary career, which has been a chequered one, of Robert Buchanan, poet, novelist, playwright, and so forth, smile darkly when the newest addition to their order is mentioned. The only remark that can be extracted from them is, “We shall see.” ___
The Star (14 March, 1896 - p.1) “THE DEVIL'S CASE.” TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR—I should not say another word on a subject of which no one can be wearier than I am, if Mr. Le Gallienne, in his notice of “The Devil’s Case,” had not travelled far beyond his brief. He accuses me of never having had a good word for my contemporaries, with the possible exception of Charles Reade. Now, I have not only admired many of my contemporaries, but I have fought their battles, and my words are in print to prove it. Despite the persistent attacks of the superior person, I have paid life-long homage to Dickens. It was I, the “mad dog,” who first turned the tide in favor of Browning, and I have it in his own hand that I was “the most generous critic he ever had.” So far from sneering at Tennyson, I have praised him in and out of season. To Coventry Patmore, a neglected Master, to James Thomson, to Richard Jeffreys, and to many another I have spoken the right word of sympathy when it was needed. As to George Meredith, I eulogised him, too, and I can give chapter and verse to prove it; and if I cannot praise his later work, that is simply because I do not admire it. I have dedicated a book, with respectful admiration, to Thomas Hardy. I have compared W. S. Gilbert with Aristophanes, and I seriously count him as great a humorist. But why multiply illustrations? My books are open to the public. My real offence is that I do not, like Mr. Le Gallienne, go shouting at the tail of each new reputation, and buttering with sickly praise the literary parsnips of my friends; but so long as I see Logrolling and Nepotism displacing honest merit I shall frankly utter my protest. I have not, however, been content with a position of Heep-like adulation. When every petty penny-a-liner and Logroller was abusing Zola, I stood up (alone I did it!) in his defence, and with the exception of Mr. George Moore, I was the only man of letters in England who tried to save Henry Vizetelly from imprisonment and disgrace. I first proclaimed in this country the genius of Walt Whitman, and I was held up to derision in the law courts by the friends of Mr. Swinburne for having done so. And Dante Gabriel Rossetti? It is in his allusion to this unfortunate man that Mr. Le Gallienne proves how sycophantic Logrolling may be a device to hide the venom of the coward. He rakes up an article written a quarter of a century ago, and he talks of Rossetti’s “degradation.” Rossetti, with all his faults, was a man, and he would have scorned the champion who slurs his name while professing to vindicate it. Until the whole story of the great Fleshly School Dispute is written (and I am writing it) let the public, deluded by the Logrollers, continue to think that Rossetti was “snuffed out by an article.” If he had been, he would scarcely be worth considering. But Mr. Le Gallienne knows as well as I do what killed Rossetti, and so do his friends; and Mr. Le Gallienne knows, too, how faithful some of Rossetti’s friends have been to his memory! I have learned by experience how useless it is to reiterate all this. I have learned that nothing can silence scandal, and that the scandal of the feminine Literary Man is the worst. I have learned, too, that trimming and lying and logrolling is more in fashion than plain speaking. But what does it matter? Of one far purer than any of us it was said, “He hath a Devil,” and doubtless the Pharisees and Sadducees regarded the man who denounced them as merely “a mad dog.” For the rest, I suppose Mr. Le Gallienne is not by nature unkindly—he perhaps means well; he is merely, as I call him in my pamphlet, “feather-headed.” But in criticism the feather-headed person is most dangerous of all, for, without giving himself time to think, he echoes all the idle and ephemeral voices of the Hour.—Yours, &c., ROBERT BUCHANAN. ___
The Echo (14 March, 1896 - p.1) A BOOK OF THE WEEK “THE DEVIL’S CASE.” One August Bank Holiday Mr. Robert Buchanan met the Devil face to face on Hampstead Heath. The poet, so he tells us himself, had been wandering about all the afternoon among the merry-makers, full of sadness and envy by means of personal bereavement and financial troubles. To him the laws of Earth and Heaven “seemed one vast Receiving Order,” and his angry spirit rebelled against the “deaf and dumbness” of the “Old Lamp-lighter,” just then lighting up His stars. And lo! in the midst of his disillusion and distress, as the phantoms of dead friends seemed to flit past him, he discovered the Devil. His make-up was curious, certainly—a white-haired old man the Fiend appeared, “clerically- dressed, bareheaded, spectacles upon his nose,” and he was reading a pink edition—not the creamy Echo colour—of an evening paper. Truly this Devil is up to date. He is more than that, our poet assures us, he is “the real and only Devil.” All other poets have slandered him. Marlowe painted him “a monster—insolent and goggle-eyed.” “Milton’s Devil was a parson, voluble and bellow-winded, like his garrulous God Almighty, quite impossibly absurd.” Calderon’s Magico Prodigioso was “only hideousness divine.” And “Goethe, that superior person, blundered also, like his betters.” Even Byron’s was a “prosy Devil,” mixing “bad blank verse and metaphysics.” Never one has comprehended his true nature. Really he’s the “kindest-hearted creature in this Universe of Sorrows,” the “Prince of Pity,” the spirit of rebellion against the needless suffering of the world. His affection for mortals “is the cause of all his woes.” And so Mr. Buchanan is asked to be his laureate, to state “the case for the defendant.” _____ So far we have followed almost word for word Mr. Buchanan’s own proem, and, no doubt, many readers will already be inclined to turn away in disgust from this account of what may appear to them a tissue of blasphemies. More particularly, perhaps, will their gorge rise when we follow up these quotations with another, indicative of the more violent moods of the new Devil:— Well, I know that I shall triumph That is not the usual tone in which the founder of Christianity is alluded to, for a little later we hear “Not of Thee, my Jesus, spake I, but of Him they name the Christ.” Yet for all this revolting vehemence we are inclined to agree with Mr. Buchanan that “He alone blasphemes who smothers truth his conscience bids him alter.” And it is to our mind a far more serious offence that a man of letters who, even in this volume, gives us a touch of his quality in the beautiful “Dedication,” and in occasional bursts of rhetoric throughout the “Sataniad,” should waste his fine poetic gifts in religious controversy. We dislike even the form of his verse—uninspired four-lined stanzas in trochaic metre, that are in themselves a direct encouragement to slovenliness of style and of thought. It is a small matter, perhaps, that in deference to metrical exigences, Heracleitus becomes “Heraclitus;” yet this is a sign, however insignificant, of the carelessness and flippancy that too often takes possession of Mr. Buchanan’s muse. _____ But we have yet to state “The Devil’s Case.” No lover of evil is he, but a rebel against the immoral designs of that God who is “ever slaying and re-making,” and crushes like shells the worlds He has made. “Evil, Lord, is Thy creation, since Thou sufferest pain to be,” was the remark which occasioned Lucifer’s expulsion from Heaven, and he proves its truth to his laureate by showing the misery, anguish, crime, disease, famine, and death upon the earth. All these forms of suffering and sin are “God’s invention”—His bungling methods of developing His scheme of creation. Blindly, feebly, God had blunder’d, while the Devil, as “the father of all sciences,” has laboured to improve the world and increase human happiness. But “vain was all his strife for mortals,” for “the pestilence religion” spread. Egypt, beautiful Greece, and Rome—all were ruined by superstition, and at last God’s crown descended “on the brows of Death.” _____ And so, in this strange sort of Devil’s biography, we reach the figure of the Christ. On that topic the “Prince of Pity” becomes as drearily monotonous as Mr. Buchanan himself; indeed, he repeats, with slight variations, the old complaints of the poet in “The Outcast,” “The Wandering Jew,” “The City of Dreams,” and even earlier verse. Let Him rise, and keep His promise; His delusions have made this “feeble, gentle Thaumaturgist” a “winged curse.” Four lies has his folly fathered, the first, “A life hereafter shall redeem the wrongs of this;” the second, the possibility of loving a neighbour as one’s self; the third, “About the morrow take no heed, sufficient ever is the evil of the moment;” and— Lie the fourth—“Lord God the Father In the name of this “Death the Christ,” priests “have sicken’d Earth with slaughter.” Meantime, the Devil has striven to help man and banish suffering by inventions, arts, and practical philanthropy. Death alone he “cannot vanquish: Death and God perchance are one.” For the future race there may be happiness. Yet the pity! ah, the pity! For them nothing remains since there is no life beyond. Death silences all that forms our nature— Memory, consciousness, self-knowledge, _____ That is the indictment, and while some of us may resent Mr. Buchanan’s employment of poetry for didactic purposes, and more will shudder at the passionate violence of several of the phrases, it is impossible to deny that this Devil is a brilliant product of creative imagination, and that much of the language put into his mouth echoes the cry of some of the thoughtful of the present generation. It is a patent fact that evolution throughout the ages has meant the infliction of infinite pain upon half the living world. Such a method of development shocks our whole moral sense; it is quite out of keeping with our idea of a loving and just Providence. And we must all revolt against the substitute modern science offers us for immortality. Nought can perish, say our scientists. The individual is merged and lives again in the race. But, as our poet states, it is just that personal life of “loving, hoping, apprehending” for which we yearn. What comfort to us is absorption in the Infinite or re-appearance in the type? Mr. Buchanan’s Devil can only suggest practical and benevolent Epicureanism. Only for a day thou livest! But that does not satisfy our poetic Ishmael himself, as his periodic laments make clear. After all, is it necessary to give up belief in a future life? Is it not almost an essential postulate of existence? Even the Devil, when parting from his Laureate, remarks:— If the priests were right, and yonder Admittedly Mr. Buchanan has adopted a partisan attitude upon an all-enthralling problem. Have we not a right to ask the poet (if only as a relief to the eternal monotony of his plaints) to give us a poem on the side of Deity. * “The Devil’s Case.” By Robert Buchanan, author and publisher. ___
The Spectator (14 March, 1896 - pp.17-19) MR. BUCHANAN’S NEW BOOK.* MR. BUCHANAN cannot forgive those who, having heartily admired, and still heartily admiring, his earlier poems,—for example, his London Idylls, and many more that were full of force and genius,—cannot admire his later productions. But that is his own fault, not theirs. He tells us in this new production of his that “the riever’s savage blood” is in his veins. No doubt it is; but in his earlier poems he kept it down and did not let it get into his poems. Now his hand is against every man, and his only object appears to be to strike blows which will make somebody’s nerves recoil, but even so he strikes wildly, and in a fast and furious spirit that has no coherent purpose in it. The Devil’s Case: a Bank Holiday Interlude is one of the most incoherent of his productions. It has no consistent conception in it at all. One never knows what he would be at. He tells us in one place that he never dreamed that he should ever be the man to “state the case for the defendant,” whom he “loath’d with all his heart.” Nevertheless, he will “tell the truth and shame the Devil, tell it even tho’ it praise him,” and we conclude therefore that he really thinks he has been making a case for the Devil all through. That case apparently is that the Devil is the Prince of Pity, and has always endeavoured to tempt man to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, in order that he may compass his own partial deliverance from the life of constant suffering to which the Creator had doomed him. If there be anything approaching a coherent conception in the book, that is its main thought. But that conception as he presents it is full of intrinsic contradictions. It rests on the story in Genesis, but nevertheless the poet evidently rejects that story from the beginning. Indeed, he begins by assuming that the version in Genesis was a falsehood, that misery and death had prevailed everywhere long before the fall of Adam, that indeed it was the ruin which Satan found everywhere in the rudimentary worlds that God was creating which led him into rebellion, and that it was his indignation at the delusion which the Creator was palming off on Adam and Eve that induced him to tempt them also into rebellion. Then he goes on to make the Devil express his conviction that sin does not exist, that it is God’s “invention,” which is another mode of saying that there is no such thing as temptation, or indeed as moral evil at all as distinguished from suffering. And that we suppose to be as near Mr. Buchanan’s real thought as anything can be in a book which has no unity of purpose except, perhaps, to hit out in all directions against the faiths of all sorts of Christians. He states the case for the tempter while making the tempter deny the possibility of temptation. He rests it on traditions which he treats as foolish fables, and yet deals with as the assumptions of his “case.” He confounds together Scripture and a philosophy which has no sort of relation to Scripture, and welds them into an inconsistent and unimaginable whole. If there be no such thing as sin, there is no such thing as an evil spirit, and sometimes it would seem that Mr. Buchanan’s Devil is meant to be an instrument of God for the education of the human race, first by stimulating their intellectual restlessness in the largest sense, and next by stimulating their passions. But the two functions are so different that it is impossible to combine them into any coherent character, especially as the passions of selfishness and revenge, which are quite as deeply rooted in human nature as those of the flesh, appear to be denounced by Mr. Buchanan’s Satan as unworthy, and in Satan’s own case are supposed to be all swallowed up in pity. We submit that if, as Mr. Buchanan’s Satan represents, all the instincts which take the form and appearance of love are to be fostered and encouraged, without modification under the influence of that larger appreciation which the higher study of life would suggest, it is impossible to imagine a law which would control the selfish and jealous nature of man in other directions, except by the interference of a conscience which his Devil indignantly rejects as the “invention of God.” If pity, guided by intellect, is to be the conscience, why should it not control the egotism and greediness of the animal man in all directions alike? Mr. Buchanan’s Satan assumes to condemn all cruelty and violence, but to excuse all the excesses of the senses. That only shows him to be a very poor creature in point of intelligence. The larger curiosity which he so eagerly defends would soon discover that the carnal passions of man are just as cruel in the one direction as in the other, and need as much control from the conscience which he denies, as the fierce competitive instincts which lead directly to murder and war. Goethe’s Satan was a real tempter, a being who believed in sin with his whole nature, and availed himself of all the passions of man, as well as of his intellectual restlessness, to lead him into sin. Mr. Buchanan’s Satan is either a half and half Satan, who does not believe in sin at all, and therefore is not a tempter, or if he does, and only professes to disbelieve in it in order to draw human beings into it the more easily, is very far indeed from what he wishes to make himself out, a Prince of Pity, since he could not be less pitiful to man than by endeavouring to conceal from him one of the great cardinal facts of his nature. The very conception, therefore, of this wild production is thoroughly confused. Mr. Buchanan never got his own mind clear as to what sort of Satan he wished to picture. He intended, we suppose, to make him in the main the patron of all scientific investigation, the advocate of all self- knowledge. But if he had carried out this conception at all thoroughly, his Satan would have been no Devil, and Mr. Buchanan had therefore to throw in a certain pantheistic approval of all the more misleading passions, which is very far indeed from a result of true self-knowledge or true observation of life. And Mr. Buchanan’s execution of his conception is as rude and wild as his conception itself is confused. He is nothing if not clever, but his cleverness in this book is not attractive, and very seldom even in the highest sense imaginative. We have not found a single passage that reminds us of Mr. Buchanan’s earlier work, in the whole of this incongruous and very irreverent, indeed blasphemous, poem. He makes his Satan declare that “love and human kindness” are “the supremest qualities of true revolters,” but that is a conception which he does not pretend to work out. He extols Voltaire, whose revolt had no “love and human kindness” in it, and makes light of Christianity because its “love and human kindness” had no revolt in it. We have no doubt that a superficial desire to satisfy the temporary yearnings of everybody, oneself included, is the source of a very great deal not only of revolt, but of the particular kind of misery which those who believe in responsibility hold to be sin, but there is no effort made in this poem to distinguish the instincts and impulses which are gratified by inflicting immediate pain on others, from the instincts and impulses which are gratified by fulfilling the immediate desires of others,—the latter often quite as fatal as, sometimes more fatal than, the former. The whole conception of Satan is a thorough jumble, as is almost inevitable when a poet tries to create a tempter who treats the very conception of temptation as radically unmeaning. Perhaps the following passage may give as good an idea of the rhapsodic profanity of Mr. Buchanan’s poem as any other:— “Oh, the sorrow and the splendour Round him, as he look’d to Heaven, ‘Thus,’ he said, ‘throughout the ages, ‘One by one the tribes and races ‘Dead they lie, the strong, the gentle, ‘All the tears of all the martyrs ‘Where are they whose busy fingers ‘Ants upon an ant-heap, insects ‘Ev’n as Babylon departed, ‘Yea, the Cities and the Peoples ‘Ev’n as beauteous reefs of coral “First the insects that upbuilt them “O’er the reef the salt ooze gathers, ‘Shall I bend in adoration ‘Deaf to all the wails and weeping, That is a fair specimen of the whole,—the hasty rhodomontade of a clever man certainly, but verse quite unworthy of Mr. Buchanan’s early genius. *The Devil’s Case: a Bank Holiday Interlude. By Robert Buchanan. London: Robert Buchanan; and all Booksellers. ___
Reynolds’s Newspaper (15 March, 1896) BOOKS AND MAGAZINES. THE DEVIL’S CASE. (Written and published by Robert Buchanan, 36, Gerard-street, Shaftesbury-avenue, W. Price 6s.) Mr. Buchanan, has a merit rare among English writers in the present day—the courage of his opinions. Moreover, he has another qualification equally unusual he is never dull and he has always some message to convey. His latest work, “The Devil’s Case: A Bank Holiday Interlude,” is a weird and paradoxical attempt to prove that the unknown God is the author of all cruelty and evil in the world; and that all good and progress come through that mythical superstition of whom we hear so little in these days—the Devil. Prefixed to the volume is a beautiful little dedicatory poem, which we cannot refrain from quoting. It is a wholly charming, felicitous, and delicate piece of workmanship. “Look,” he said. “The Hell thou doubtedst Then, methought, the moonlit houses Dead and dying; woeful mothers Shapes sin-bloated from the cradle Everywhere Disease and Famine The Devil then proceeds to narrate his work for mankind since the dawn of civilization—work constantly thwarted, but ever advancing to its goal. “Eighteen hundred years of Europe “‘Pass from knowledge on to knowledge “‘Fear not, love not, and revere not “Only for a day thou livest! These extracts will give a better idea of a work in many ways remarkable, than any amount of description. The novelty of the volume lies in the audacity in saying in print what multitudes think in secret, and, terrified by the conventions of the world, have not the courage openly to express. A serious of striking illustrations add to the interest of the book. ___
The Spectator (21 March, 1896 - p.16) “THE DEVIL’S CASE.” SIR,—As you have informed me that you have no room for an elaborate letter, but will permit me to protest briefly against your criticism of “The Devil’s Case,” I must perforce confine myself to one or two points of importance. In the first place, let me assure you that I have never doubted the existence of evil, or sin, or temptation, although I hold that the very idea of evil is inconsistent with the idea of Omnipotence. God created man imperfect; consequently the imperfections of man, in others words his “sins,” are “God’s invention.” I assume that no sane person now believes that man has fallen from a state of innocence, or perfection? But you go further and accuse me of suggesting that all the instincts and appetites of men are to be sanctioned and encouraged! I don’t know where you discover this suggestion,—it is utterly opposed to anything I have ever thought or (I believe) written. ROBERT BUCHANAN. ___
The Era (28 March, 1896) [The article, ‘The Devil and the Dramatist’, which links The Devil’s Case to the ongoing discussion of plagiarism surrounding the play, The Romance of the Shopwalker, is available in the Letters to the Press section.] ___
The Hampshire Telegraph (28 March, 1896 - p.12) Not content with becoming his own publisher, Mr. Robert Buchanan is to be his own advertisement manager. He can hardly be called a novice in this department of literary activity, but Mr. Buchanan has certainly hit on a novel method of advertising his new book, “The Devil’s Case.” No more actual criticisms for him. With the prescience of the Scot, he supplies anticipatory criticisms—Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Balfour, Lord Rosebery, Dr. Parker, and many other celebrities are pressed into service with practical audacity and amusing cleverness. This is a delicious leaflet of criticisms which, taken in conjunction with the great charm of the Devil’s personality, should give this plea for Lucifer a boom. ___
The Freethinker (29 March, 1896 - pp. 194-195) THE DEVIL'S CASE. * MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN, original in all things, has set up as a publisher. If he could not otherwise get his volume fairly issued, I sympathise with his experiment, even while doubting if it can be commended to others from a business point of view. Although Mr. Buchanan has long since made a mark in literature, there are few publishers who would put forward such an outspoken work as The Devil’s Case. The heresy of the Wandering Jew (noticed in the Freethinker, Jan. 29, 1893), which incited the controversy in the Chronicle on the question, “Is Christianity Played Out?” is not stronger than some of the utterances in this work, and perhaps I ought at once to mention that Mr. Buchanan says at the outset: Please remember, Gentle Reader, Man makes his Devil, like his God, in his own image. Indeed, to the civilised man, the god of the savage is a devil. The Devil of Mr. Buchanan looks remarkably like a deity in distress. As there are gods many and lords many, so are there many devils, and each shows some of the idiosyncrasies of his creator. The poetic devils are the most interesting. The Mephistophilis of Kit Marlowe is like Luther’s Teufel—a downright barbaric devil, audacious and indecent, with the seven deadly sins in his train, and all unlawful things— Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits Milton’s Satan, the real hero of Paradise Lost, is a superb, self-respecting rebel against Omnipotence, who in his revolt carries a third part of the angels with him, and maintains eternal defiance amid eternal despair, holding it “better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” The Mephistopheles of Goethe’s Faust has none of Satan’s strength. He is a — * The Devil’s Case: A Bank Holiday Interlude. By Robert Buchanan. (London: Robert Buchanan, 36 Gerard-street, W.) — cultured, sneering German—ignoble, impudent, steeped in impurity, but devilish clever, and flippantly addresses the Lord himself:— Pardon, high words I cannot labor after; Mr. Buchanan’s Devil is a benevolent philanthropist, profoundly sympathetic with human suffering, whom the poet, when in distress and with youth’s illusions gone, meets on Hampstead Heath on the night after a Bank Holiday. Marlowe’s Mephistophilis wore the garb of a Franciscan friar, and Mr. Buchanan’s Devil is in clerical attire and reads the pink edition of the Star in the moonlight. The Devil’s Case is the result of the interview. The Devil calls his attention to all the suffering, disasters, and horrors in the paper, and professes himself to be anxious for their alleviation:— If there is a God, He blundered; Mr. Buchanan deems himself an efficient interviewer, and even devil’s advocate, since he holds something in common with Nickie ben:— I, the Interviewer hated He the Interviewed, for ages Power to feel and strength to suffer, Naturally, the Devil appoints Mr. Buchanan his Laureate to justify his ways to mortals. It is curious that the present Poet Laureate should have written what he himself calls “a philosophic poem of no mean kind” on Prince Lucifer; but Mr. Alfred Austin’s Prince is a maundering windbag, who is hardly worth saving or damning. Mr. Buchanan’s Devil has some grit in him. He shows the poet all the kingdoms and the religious leaders of the past, and professes to have been the inspirer of all that has tended to the welfare of humanity. This gives a good opportunity for comment upon the faiths of Greece, of Buddha, Zoroaster, Mahomet, etc., and to show the triumphs of intelligence and democracy ascribed to the Devil. The hero says:— I’m the father of all Science— While the Priests have built their Churches “Take no heed about To-morrow,” But the Devil, being wiser, Satan is, in short, like Prometheus, the spirit of human science, the civiliser, in rebellion against the cosmic necessity of things, the spirit of Freethought antagonising the dogmas of religion. This view is not so original as Mr. Buchanan seems to think. In 1869 the Italian poet, Carducci, wrote his famous Inno a Satana (“Hymn to Satan”), which excited a great rage among the clericals. The Satan of Carducci personifies the belief in reason and in human happiness opposed to Christian faith and asceticism. He sings:— Hail to thee, Satan! Sacred to thee shall rise Mr. Buchanan’s Devil compares himself with Christ. I, the Devil, as they style me, This Devil boasts a good deal, and we feel inclined to say, “The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.” It must be confessed that the orthodox have given abundant cause for this in ascribing to the Devil all the pleasures and attractions of the world, as well as the use of carnal reason, in preference to divine faith. He is, in fact, according to them, the real benefactor of mankind from the time when he tempted Eve to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. One wonders, if this is Mr. Buchanan’s Devil, what sort of Deity he possesses. We seem to get a glimpse in the fine Litany which serves as epilogue to the volume, from which I make one extract, illustrating rather the thought than the poetic power of the author:— Thou hast set these Rulers above us, to bind us, to blind our eyes; The volume is full of vigorous heresy. The poet sometimes puts in a feeble word for orthodoxy, but the answer is usually crushing. Thus, tot he argument that Evolution is working out the will of the Almighty Father, comes the reply:— Say, can any latter blessing The Devil’s advice is, therefore:— Waste not thought on the Almighty; Mr. Buchanan may disclaim the Devil’s teaching, but, for my part, I am free to say methinks the Devil hath much reason. The review of the past gives Mr. Buchanan as fine opportunities as the subject of the Wandering Jew. At times he takes advantage of them. Take, for instance, this on Voltaire:— Diabolically smiling, Nought of holy reputation Then behold, a transformation! In his hand my sword of Freedom The Devil’s Case is full of “go” throughout, and, as the ideas it suggests are in a Freethought direction, I heartily hope that the fact that Mr. Buchanan has constituted himself his own publisher will not stand in the way of its circulation. J. M. WHEELER. ___
The Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle (4 April, 1896) “The Devil’s Case” is stated in verse—indifferent verse, we are told by some critics—by Mr. Robert Buchanan, in a book with that title, which he has just issued as his own publisher. There is not much of a plot. Mr. Buchanan happens to meet with the Prince of Darkness on Hampstead Heath, and enters into conversation with him. His Satanic Majesty delivers a long harangue in praise of his own merits. Speaking in the character of an accused person, he avers he has a case which, rightly stated, must procure him an acquittal. Mr. Buchanan listens with great patience, and, after one or two feeble attempts to confute the Devil, succumbs to his eloquence, and bows down and blesses him. ___
Book-Bits (27 February, 1897 - p.122) IT is gratifying to learn that Mr. Robert Buchanan’s courageous experiment—that of publishing his own books—has succeeded. But in connection with “The Devil’s Case,” the first volume published by him, he makes the following characteristic remark: “I knew Logrollia too well to expect any rational treatment there, but I did expect a little sane consideration in my native land. There was a time when Scotland had brains of its own; now its culture seems to be only a weak reflection of the rushlights of Clapham.” Back to Reviews, Bibliography, Poetry or The Devil’s Case _____
Book Reviews - Poetry continued The Ballad of Mary the Mother (1897) to Complete Poetical Works (1901)
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