Under the Sun. Philip Stewart Robinson
after all, the digression is as entertaining as the book proper. … We have but dipped into this thoroughly interesting and very admirable book, which tells us a very great deal about all kinds of animals from all parts of the world, and from its seas and rivers. It is full of real poetry of feeling, and contains much that philosophers and divines may ponder with exceeding advantage, and all sorts of readers will peruse with intense interest. We can scarcely give the book higher praise than this, and all this it richly deserves.”—The London Literary World.
“Even so admirable and delightful a writer as Mr. Phil. Robinson cannot afford to despise that incalculable element in human affairs which goes by the name of luck; and he may be congratulated upon the fact that his latest volume comes under the notice of the reading world at a moment when that world has been brought into a condition of pecuHar and beautiful preparedness for its reception. When Jumbo is the hero of the hour, and when, in body or in mind, millions of our countrymen, countrywomen, and country children, have been making pilgrimages to his shrine in Regent’s Park, the record of ‘Mornings at the Zoo,’ can hardly fail to exercise a powerful if melancholy fascination; and when the recorder is a man like Mr. Phil. Robinson the fascination is one that can amply justify itself to itself or to the world, and is not to be regarded as a mere spring frenzy or midsummer madness. … He is not a joke manufacturer. When the joke comes it is welcome, all the more welcome for coming spontaneously: and when it stays away, its place can easily be filled by some little tit-bit of recent scientific speculation or result of personal observation of the manners and customs of Mr. Robinson’s brute friends. For ‘Noah’s Ark’ has something more than mere humor to recommend it. The humor is, in fact, but the mere decoration of a body of knowledge; and the man with no more sense of fun than a hippopotamus might read it with edification as a contribution to ‘natural’ as well as to ‘unnatural’ history. Artemus Ward proudly remarked of himself that he had ‘a very animal mind,’ and Mr. Phil. Robinson might with even better reason indulge in the same boast. He is a true lover of beasts, birds, and fishes; and because he is a true lover he is a keen observer, and because he is a keen observer he is a pleasant writer concerning the ways and the works—one might almost say the words—of the denizens of field and forest, of air and water. ‘If you would be generous,’ he says, in his brief postscript, ‘do not think me too much in earnest when I am serious, or altogether in fun because I jest;’ and one of the pleasantest features of this pleasant work is that it does not tire us by subjecting the mind to the fatigue of maintaining one attitude too long, but, like a cunningly constructed arm-chair, enables us to be comfortable in a dozen consecutive positions. Some good books can be recommended to this person or to that; they resemble the square or the round peg which adapts itself admirably to the square or round hole. But ‘Noah’s Ark,’ if the metaphor be not too undignified, is like the ‘self-fitting candle’ which is at home in any receptacle. It is—to drop metaphor—a book for everybody.”—The Overland Mail.
THE INDIAN PRESS.
“Mr. Phil. Robinson has struck out a new path in Anglo-Indian literature. … His essays are singularly fresh and charming. They come nearer to the tender wisdom of Elia than anything which has hitherto issued from an Anglo-Indian pen. … Every one of the thirty or forty essays has some special vein of humor of its own.”—Englishman.
“Distinguished by all the graces of a style which ought some day to give Mr. Phil. Robinson a high place among our popular writers.”—The Daily News.
“Not only clever and interesting, but instructive; … altogether the best thing of its kind we have come across in print.”—The Examiner.
“To say that this is a charming book is merely to repeat what almost every reader of the Calcutta Review must have often heard said. It is altogether the very pleasantest reading of its kind that has ever appeared in India, and we would that it oftener fell to our lot to have such books to criticise.”—The Calcutta Review.
“It is given to few to describe with such appreciative grace and delicately phrased humor as Mr. Robinson. … Marked by keen observation, felicitous touches of description, and half-quaint, half-graceful bits of reflection and comment, … containing some most exquisite sketches of natural history.”—Times of India.
“A delightful little book. There is a similarity between the author’s book and his subject which may escape the notice of the ordinary reader. Where is the casual observer who, having walked through an Indian garden, has not noticed the almost total absence of flowers? Yet send a Malee into that identical Indian garden, and he wiil cull you a bouquet which for brightness and beauty can hardly be surpassed by anything in Covent Garden; and it is precisely the same with this little volume of Phil. Robinson's. A little book brimful of interest, written with much grace, and a considerable amount of quaint humor which is very refreshing. We sincerely trust he will give the public his Indian experiences in other fields which, cultivated by him, we doubt not will prove equally rich in production.”—Times of India (Second Notice).
“These most charming essays.”—The Delhi Gazette.
“Very charming; dealing with familiar things with an appreciative grace that idealizes whatever it touches. Again and again we are reminded by the dainty embodiment of some quaint fancy of the essays of Charles Lamb; … quite delicious and abounding in little descriptive touches that are almost perfect; cabinet word-pictures painted in a sentence.”—Bombay Gazette.
“Admirable little work.”—Friend of India.
“A notable little book: within a small compass a wealth of fresh thoughts”—Madras Mail.
A Preliminary Warning of the Contents of this Book
UNDER THE SUN.
Ridentem dicere verum, quid vetat?
I HAVE it not in my nature to look at the animal world merely as a congregation of beasts. Nor can I bring myself to believe that everything, whether in fur, feathers, or scales, was created for my own special benefit as a human being. Man was not created till the sixth day, and is therefore the junior among the animals. It took no better effort of creative will to produce him than to produce caterpillars. Moreover, earth was already populated before he came, and sufficiently complete without him. He was a noble afterthought. Indeed, rather than maintain that man was created “higher than the beasts,” for the increase of his own self-importance, I would believe that he was created “a little lower than the angels,” for the increase of his humility.
At any rate, I prefer to think of the things of “the speechless world” as races of fellow creatures that have a very great deal in common with ourselves, but whom the pitiless advance of human interests is perpetually dispossessing, and who are doomed to extinction under the Juggernath of civilization. Nature builds only upon ruins. The driving-wheel of Progress is Suffering.
Thus, so much the more should we feel tenderly towards the smaller lives about us, the things that the Creator has placed amongst us to enjoy the same earth as ourselves, but whom we compel to serve us so long as they can, and to die out when our end is served. Except in Holy Writ there is nothing so beautiful or so manful as the teaching of Buddha, the evangelist of universal tenderness; and approaching nature we ought to remember that it is the very Temple of temples, and that we may not minister there unless we have on the ephod of pity.
You will think, no doubt, that if I feel so seriously, I ought not