Tom Taylor [pp. 283-284]

TOM TA YLOR. 283
TOM TA YL OR.
ONDON literary society may justly regret
Mr. Tom Taylor. He was not, it is true,
a great artist, even in the lines that he had
chosen, and very little, if any, of his work can be
classed as a permanent addition to the English
reservoir of thought. He was a considerable
playwright, rather than a great dramatist. We
should not rank him as a tragedian at all, though
he had an art of making pathetic scenes; and,
as a comedian, which was probably his true line,
he was rather skillful than original, rather a man
who wrote for the stage than one who wrote
either for all time or even for his own generation.
Still, he composed a great many dramas, most
of which succeeded, having, at the worst, a cer tain quality of interestingness, all of which dis play a clear appreciation of the necessities of the
stage, and of the powers of his actors and the
limitations on those powers, and two or three of
which may live for a considerable time. "The
Ticket-of-Leave Man," indeed, is better than
that, and, had it been written in a less conscious
age, when men were more easily moved, might
have been reckoned a performance of the first
class, and have given its author an enduring
reputation. There is a function in literature akin
to that of a manager in a theatre, a distributive
rather than a creative one, which requires very
considerable and very varied capacities, and Mr.
Taylor fulfilled that exceedingly well. He was a
good playwright, who knew what his customers
wanted, and gave it them, without ever pandering
to them; an honest and capable, though overkindly critic, whose judgments, ephemeral as they
were, constantly influenced artists; and a very
good versifier-indeed, a poet, if one could by
that word describe a man who did not intend his
verses to live beyond their day. In fact, he was
a man of varied powers, who did the work he
elected to do-which was work slightly below
what he could have done- very well indeed.
This may seem scant praise, but it is all of it
true; and it is not intended to be scant, but to
imply that Mr. Taylor did well and in an intellectual way work a little below him, which inferior artists could have done, though in a far inferior way. It is well for the second-class work of
the world that there are men conscious of a possibility of higher aims who yet will do this.
We should give Mr. Taylor just the same
praise as editor of "Punch." There is probably
no position in the world more difficult than that
of the editor of an English comic paper, with a
great reputation already made. He must secure
an audience, that is, must make his paper sell,
and must, therefore, prepare a supply of the goo, humored, domestic or political, but, in either
case, very patent and intelligible, fun which the
British lower middle-class appreciates, and will
pay for. It is a very good public in its way; it
is easy-tempered, intelligent, and quick about
ordinary things, such as it knows well, and ex tremely amused by a joke it comprehends; but
it will not do the author's or actor's thinking for
him, it will not ponder-except when called upon
to sympathize with some rather ghastly form of
suffering-and it will not endure the smallest in fraction of its idea of the proper and becoming,
whether the infraction take the form of a jest for
or against chastity, or for or against religion, or
for or against the more important social conve nances. Cham would succeed in London as
little as Rochefort, and Rochefort as little as
Veuillot. The public which buys comic papers
will have the pulpit, and poverty-except in its
extreme form of pauperism-and Cremorne, all
kept out of sight together, and obtain its fun
either out of politics or out of decent middleclass interiors and the sights of respectable
streets, or it will cease to buy at once. "Punch,"
which is as much an institution as the "Times,"
could be destroyed as a property in a single number. The editor must do all his work in perpetual recollection of that fetter-a most valuable
fetter, be it understood, which no admirer of
" Punch " wishes to relax, but a real fetter on the
humorist-and also of another, not quite so visible. The editor of "Punch" is like a West-End
clergyman, who desires, first of all, to benefit
his parish, but who can not quite forget, as
he preaches, that people accustomed to much
stronger intellectual food are listening to him,
not altogether lost in reverential awe. The artists and writers in "Punch" can not forget the
cultivated public altogether; must show themselves equal to entertaining them also, if only to
foster their own self-respect, and so have occasionally to play to two audiences at once-one
fastidious to the last degree, and one content if
only it may have its solid, respectable fun. A
third of the diners like and understand ortolans
and quenelles, and two thirds are connoisseurs in
beef, and both must be sent away filled. It is
difficult for the chef, and it is part of the very
curious history of "Punch "-perhaps the most
separate paper that ever existed-that the double
demand is so fairly, though, of course, often imperfectly, supplied. It is much to keep up such
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