Here are fragments from his 1918 Essay "A
Clergyman" ( The Oxford Book of Essays, chosen and edited
by John Gross), introducing the dangers of receiving an answer (not
that I would particularly mind if any one at the Nab-L once in a while helped me
to discover, for example, how to find a copy of Nabokov's Chapter 16 in
Speak,Memory)*.
"Boswell: What I want to know is, what
sermons afford the best specimen of English pulpit eloquence.
Johnson: We have no sermons addressed to the passions, that
are good for anything, if you mean that kind of eloquence.
A
Clergyman, whose name I do not recollect: Were not Dodd's sermons
addressed to the passions?
Johnson: They were nothing, Sir,
be they addressed to what they may."
The suddenness of it! Bang! - and the rabbit that had
popped from its burrow was no more...Literate people
in those days were comparatively few; but. bating that, one may say that sermons
were as much in request as novels are to-day. I wonder, will mankind
continue to be capricious? It is a very solemn thought indeed that no more than
a hundred-and-fifty years hence the novelists of our time, with all their moral
and political and sociological outlook and influence, will perhaps shine as
indistinctly as do those old preachers, with all their elegance, now.
"Yes,Sir," some great pundit may be telling a disciple
at this moment, "Wells is one of the best. Galsworthy is one of the best, if you
except his concern for delicacy of style. Mrs Ward has a very firm grasp of
problems, but is not very creational. - Caine's books are very edifying. I
should like to read all that Caine has written...- And you may add Upton
Sinclair.'..
'What I want to know, says the disciple, ' is what
English novels my be selected as specially enthralling?'
The pundit answers: "We have no novels addressed to the
passions that are good for anything, if you mean that kind of enthralment."
And here some poor wretch (whose name the disciple will
not remember) inquires: "Are not Mrs. Glyn's novels addressed to the passions?'
and is in due form annihilated....
Every man illustrious in his day, however much he may
be gratified by his fame, looks with an eager eye to posterity for a continuance
of past favours... 'A Clergyman' never held up his head or smiled again after
the brief encounter recorded for us by Boswell... I like to think that he died
forgiving Dr. Johnson."
.............................................................
* - "Fragmentary, pale, momentary; almost nothing;
glimpsed and gone, as it were, a faint human hand thrust up, never to reappear,
from beneath the rolling waters of Time, he forever haunts my memory and
solicits my weak imagination. Nothing is told of him but that nce, abruptly, he
asked a question, and received an answer."