AUGUSTINE BIRRELL’S “Obiter Dicta,” published in 1884, decided conclusively in the mind of England and America that, no matter what he may do at the bar or in parliament, he belongs not to law or to public life, but to literature. The book was the work of a pupil of Charles Lamb who believed with his master that the surest way to serve is to begin by pleasing. The superiority of Carlyle and the intensity of Ruskin had made giving pleasure seem a matter of minor importance or of no importance at all. These great men, each of whom was in his own way as certainly a prophet as Isaiah or Ezekiel, set what, for men of less intellect and no inspiration, was a bad example. As a result of stereotyped imitation of it, the world became weary of the artificial fervor of the mere Mahdis of inspiration. Being so, it was ready to receive Birrell and give him a hearing when, instead of crying aloud in the street of Nineveh, he renounced sackcloth and ashes for himself and his readers by quoting Dr. John Brown’s story of the Scotch dog whose master said in explaining his gravity: “Oh, sir, life is full of sairiousness to him—he can just never get eneugh o’ fechtin’.”
The world cannot escape its fighters, and though it must needs be that the offense of fechtin’ comes, the woe pronounced on those by whom it cometh, is sairiousness,—perhaps due to the movement of the soul, but frequently “connoting indigestion, physical and intellectual.”
Birrell would have none of such seriousness. He thought it worth while to please, and he has succeeded so well that in the sixteen years since he began writing, he has won a well-assured place among those whose essays are certain to survive and become classics.
He was born January 19th, 1850, at Wavertree, near Liverpool, and educated at Cambridge, graduating with honors in law and history in 1872. He was called to the bar in 1875, and in 1889 returned to Parliament from West Fife. He has done noteworthy work as a writer of biography and on legal subjects, but his special field is essay writing.
