"FINES LIBRORUM."

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume VII, Issue 6, 1 March 1903, Page 461

"FINES LIBRORUM."

By "RTJSTICUS."

" When Finis comes the Book we close, And somewhat sadly Fancy goes With backward step from stage to stage Of that accomplished pilgrimage — The thorn lies thicker than the rose !

And Time will sweep both friends and foes When Finis comes." " Old World Idylls," Austin Dobson,

" said old Sam Johnson J|||^ to Sir Joshua Reynolds, Hw)l " there are two things WVf w ] l i e } 1 iam confident I can do very well. One is an introduction to any literary work, stating what it is to contain, and how it should be executed in the most perfect manner ; the other is a conclusion showing from various causes why the execution has not been equal to what the author promised to himself and to the public." I doubt if the great lexicographer had been much in request as a writer of " prefaces/ still less of " conclusions," in these marvellous polite times on which Grub-street has fallen, when criticism is synonymous with log-rolling, and the " savage and tartarly " days of tie Quarterly are of the sacred past. Be that as it may, the fashion has changed little in two centuries. The demand for " prefaces " still exists. Rarely a book of any pretensions goes on to the market without a fulsome introduction from the pen of some broken craftsman or influential Maecenas. Each author, however, must indite his " Finis " proper, and it is with these we propose to deal. As in a play much depends on the drop scene, so we cannot under-rate the value of an effective ending, whether we have in hand old Omar's " Book of Verses

underneath the Bough/ a romance of Sir Walter's, or a fin-de-siecle storiette from the blase brain of Mr Henry James. The interest of the plot is worked up, page by page, till it reaches a height in the closing chapter, and the reader lays down the book with a sigh of satisfaction and a murmur of appreciation, like the epicure who has dined well, and rises from his wine and walnuts in excellent humour with himself and the world at large. The fashions in the endings, of books are legion. There is the ending melodramatic, endings cynical and pathetic and apologetic ; endings, in sooth, to suit every taste. The yellowback, with a florid atmosphere of princes, noble lords and grand dames, of estates, town houses and Mediterranean villas, ends a la mode in the strictly Ouidesque manner. It is doubtless familiar to the reader. I spare him quotation. Again we may have our " Finis " attuned to the chimes of merry marriage bells, the sine qua non of conventional noveldom. Thousands, I may safely say, of Edwins and Angelinas fade from the tear-blurred vision of their friends in the dear, old-fashioned way. And somehow, next time we meet their facsimiles we are eager as ever

-to follow them down the same lovelit paths to the stereotyped consummation of earthly bliss. Ah, me, these amorous Edwins and Angelinas, Romeos amid Juliets, 'Arries and 'Arriets, call them what we may, the theme is the same, and the story old and oft told — old as the days when Ruth found favour in the eyes of Boaz as she gleaned in the cornfields — yet we never tire of it. Now and then our " Finis " •quest is rewarded by a gem of the harmlessly exotic type of ending where some fond swain, sighing like a furnace, voices a true lover's plaint. The ending of " The Prisoner of Zenda " is sentiment which we cannot gainsay. Rassendyl leaves us with the words : — "Shall I see her face again, the pale face and the glorious hair ? Of that "I know nothing. Fate has no hint, my heart no presentiment, But if it be never, if I can never hold sweet converse again with her, or look upon her face, or know from her her love, vfhy then this side the grave 1 shall live as becomes the man whom she loves, and for the other side I shall pray a dreamless sleep." Beshrew me if the sentiment •doesin't ring true ! Some time or other most of us have our little romances, and we retain a soft side for their ideal presentment. When I closed " The Prisoner of Zenda"' I found my pipe had gone out, and the fire burned low, and my thoughts went hack but " that's another story/ as Kipling says. After all, " il y en a tou jours line .autre," if not Rosalinde, then Juliet, for— " If she think not well of me "What care I how fair she be." Consoling, indeed, the philosophy of these gay Caroline poets in their lisping love lyrics full of quaint conceits and graceful imagery ! It has never been my fortune to discover an ending of greater delicacy and simplicity than that from Disraeli's famous novel, " Lo-

thair " :—" 1 have been in Corisande's garden, and she has given me a rose." This is a clief d'oeuvre of literary artifice ; more fragrant than, rare exotics this rose from Corisande's garden. " Yet ah/ as Omar sings— ' Yet ah, that spring should vanish with the rose, That youth's sweet scented manuscript should close 1 The Nightingale that iv the branches sang Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows ? " God wot, the mystery is passing strange ; too strange for our comprehension. " Candide " ends fittingly thus :— " Cela est bien dit, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin." The " Finis " apologetic is not a little irritating : — " In like manner, gentle reader, returning you my thanks for your patience, which lias conducted you thus far, 1 take the liberty to withdraw myself from you for the present."' One is tempted to express the irreverent wish that tihe writer may not soon emerge from his self-imposed seclusion and inflict himself on the " gentle reader/ " Gentle reader/ forsooth ! The very phrase is sycophantic if not insulting. It savours overmuch of the " mine plaudits " for our customary attitude of frigid reserve ; the enlightened reader refuses to have his vanity tickled by the doubtful compliment. One of the finest pieces of writing in our English language is that from Thackeray's pen, describing the death of Colonel Newcome, noblest type of English gentleman that literature affords us : — " At the usual evening" hour, the chapel bell began to toll, and Thomas Newcome' s hands outside the bed feebly beat time. And just as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, and lie lifted up his head a little, and quickly said, " Adsum," and fell back. It was the word we used at school when names were called, and,

10, he, whose heart was as that of a little child, had answered to his name, and stoiod in the presence of the Master. 5 ' This is Thackeray at his best, and here he is inimitable. The picture is perfect. As I read it I cannot but think of another, that English knight, that " tun " of a man, the stout Sir John, to whom life was one long, merry jest, a season of " cakes and ale," and to whom death came thus : — Quickly : — " Nay, surely he's not in Hell ; lie's in Arthur's bosom. 'A made a finer end and went away an it had been any christom child; 'a parted even just between twelve and one, c'en at turning o' the tide ; for after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way ; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a' babbled o' green fields." So the old knight died with a quip on his lips anent the flea on Bardoloh's nose, which he said was like a " black soul burning in hell fire." The effect is grim, grotesque and ludicrous ; like a Hogarth engraving from " The Rake's Progress." I cannot help thinking that Shakespeare owed not a little here to that immortal page from Plato which describes the death of Greece's earliest martyr for truth, who, as the hemlock ran its course, bade his weeping disciples remember that he owed Aesculapius a cock, and so died. " On n'entendait autour ni plaint, ni soupir C'est ainsi qu'il mourut, si c'etait la mourir." Lamartine. But I wander from my theme. There is still another type of ending, the sensational, which leaves the gasping, neurotic reader in a state bordering on nervous collapse. The thing starts towards me, silently, irresistibly. I feel its ghostly presence. lam spellbound ; held in an icy grip. My limbs tremble under me. Voice fails me. I swoon ! I die ! ugh —

splutter, splutter." And so to bed creeps the awestruck reader with a shiver and a shrug, to sleep, perchance to dream of weird and pale, wan faces, of demons dark and dread. For choice we ourselves prefer setting out with Edwin and Angelina as they wander, hand in hand, out towards the golden west and the setting sun what time the sounds of the work-a-day world are hushed, and the pensive hours of twilight lend themselves to lover's lispings. " C'est Theure exquise !" Dickens has always appeared to me a little disappointing in the ending of his novels, though in the breadth and richness of his canvas the lacking touch may pass unnoticed. " David Copperfield " provides the exception : — " And now as I close my book, subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a heavenly light by which 1 see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains. 1 turn my head and see it in its beautiful serenity beside me. My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night ; but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company. Oh, Agnes, oh, my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed ; so may I, when realities are fleeting from me like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upwards." " Trilby," quaintest of modern novels, ends in verse : " A little work, a little play To keep us going, and so, G-ood-day ! A little warmth, a little light Of love's bestowing, and so, (rood-night ! A little fun to match the sorrow Of each day's growing, and so, Good-moxrow ! A little trust that' when we die We reap our sowing, and so, Good-by ! " In the closing paragraph of DrummomxTs " Ascent of Man/ the writer reaches a high level of literary style.

'•' In the profoundest sense this is scientific doctrine. The Ascent of Man and of Society is bound up henceforth with the conflict, the intensification and the diffusion of the struggle for the Life of Others. This is the further Evolution, the page of history that lies before us, the closing act of the drama of Man. " The struggle may be short or long ;' but by all scientific analogy the result is sure. All the other Kingdoms af Nature were completed ; Evolution always attains ; always rounds off its work. It spent an eternity over the Earth, but finished it. Tt struggled for milleniums to bring the Vegetable Kingdom .up to the Flowery Plants, and attained. In the Animal Kingdom it never paused until the possibilities of organization were exhausted in the mammalia. Kindled by this past, man may surely say, ' I shall

arrive/ The succession cannot break. The further Evolution must gd on, the Higher Kingdom comefirst the blade where we are to-day ; then the ear where we shall be tomorrow ; then the full corn in the ear which awaits our children's children and which we live to hasten." • Such are a few of the endings of books jotted down haphazard in the course of reading—sufficient, perhaps, to prove that the ending of a book plays no small part in forming the impression left on the reader. We may conclude, not inappropriately with the half cynical, half pathetic words in which the author of " Vanity Fair " bids us farewell : — " Ah, vanitas vanitatum ! Which of us is happy in this world ? Which of us has his desire, or having it is satisfied ? Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets for the play is ended \"