told by a perfect stranger that they ought not to like what they do
like, and ought to like what they go to sleep over.
Schopenhauer, a man who hated much, in his ‘Parerga,’ fervently desires
a literary journal which ‘should be a dam against the unconscionable
scribbling of the age, the everlasting deluge of bad and useless books.’
He proceeds (I am quoting from Mr. Saunders’ translation):
‘If there were such a paper as I mean, every bad writer, every
brainless compiler, every plagiarist from others’ books, every hollow
and incapable place-hunter, every sham philosopher, every vain and
languishing poetaster, would shudder at the prospect of the pillory
in which his bad work would inevitably have to stand soon after
publication.’
It is an animated passage, and reeks of the shambles. How awkward for
poor so-and-so! one murmurs whilst reading. But even were the thing
possible, I demur to the ferocity. There is no need to be so angry.
A dishonest and lazy plumber does more harm in a week than all the
poetasters of the Christian era. But the thing is not possible, as the
robust sense of Schopenhauer made plain to him. He goes on:
‘The ideal journal could, to be sure, be written only by people who
joined incorruptible honesty with rare knowledge and still rarer power
of judgment, so that, perhaps, there could, at the very most, be one,
_and even hardly one_, in the whole country; but there it would stand,
like a just Areopagus, every member of which would have to be elected
by all the others.’
Who, I wonder, would elect the first member of this just Ruin? He
would, I suppose, be nominated by the subscribers of the necessary
capital, and would then proceed to gather round him, were his terms
better than his quarters, the gang we all know so well, incorruptible
as Robespierre, not quite so learned as Selden, and with powers of
judgment which can only be described as varying.
It is of course obvious that no journal, be its contributors who they
may, can exercise criminal jurisdiction over bad or stupid authors.
The hue and cry has before now been raised at the heels of a popular
author, but always to the great enrichment of the rascal. The reading
community owes no allegiance, and pays no obedience, to the critical
journals, who, if they really want to injure an author, and deprive him
of his little meed of contemporary praise and profit, should leave him
severely alone. To refer to him is to advertise him.
The principles of taste, the art of criticism, are not acquired amidst
the hurly-burly of living authors and the hasty judgments thereupon
of hasty critics, but by the study, careful and reverential, of the
immortal dead. In this study the critics are of immense use to us.
Dryden, Addison, Gray, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, Bagehot, Swinburne,
reveal to us their highest critical powers not whilst vivisecting a
contemporary, but when expounding the anatomy of departed greatness.
Teach me rightly to admire Milton and Keats, and I will find my own
criticism of living poets. Help me to enjoy, however feebly, Homer and
Dante, and I will promise not to lose my head over Pollok’s ‘Course of
Time,’ or Mr. Bailey’s ‘Festus.’ Fire my enthusiasm for Henry Vaughan
and George Herbert, and I shall be able to distinguish between the
muses of Miss Frances Ridley Havergal and of Miss Christina Rossetti.
Train me to become a citizen of the true Republic of Letters, and I
shall not be found on my knees before false gods, or trooping with the
vulgar to crown with laurel brazen brows.
In conclusion, one may say that though authors cannot be expected to
love their critics, they might do well to remember that it is not the
critics who print, but the reading community whose judgments determine
an author’s place amongst contemporary writers. It may be annoying to
be sneered at by an anonymous critic in the _Saturday Review_, but it
is quite as bad to be sneered at by a stranger in a railway carriage.
The printed sneer may be read by more people than overheard the spoken
sneer; but printed sneers are not easily transferred from writer to
reader in their original malice. One may enjoy a sneer without sneering.
Authors may also advantageously remember that we live in hurried
times, and enjoy scanty leisure for reading, and that of necessity
the greater fraction of that leisure belongs to the dead. Merely a
nodding acquaintance with Shakespeare is not maintained without a
considerable expenditure of time. The volumes with which every man of
ordinary literary taste would wish to be familiar can only be numbered
by thousands. We must therefore be allowed time, and there is always
plenty. Every good poem, novel, play, at once joins and becomes part
and parcel of the permanent stock of English literature, and some time
or another will be read and criticised. It is quite safe. Every author
of spirit repudiates with lofty scorn the notion that he writes in
obedience to any mandate from the public. It is the wretched, degraded
politician whose talk is of mandates; authors know nothing of mandates,
they have missions. But if so, they must be content to bide their time.
If a town does turn out to meet a missionary, it is usually not with
loud applause, but with large stones.
As for the critics, the majority of them no doubt only do what they
are told. It is a thousand pities the habit of reviewing so many new
books in the literary papers has become general. It is a trade thing.
Were a literary paper to have no advertising columns, do you suppose
it would review half the new books it does? Certainly not. It gets
the books, and it gets the advertisements, and then it does the best
it can for itself and its readers by distributing the former amongst
its contributors with the request that they will make as lively ‘copy’
as they can out of the materials thus provided them. The reviews are
written and printed; then begins the wail of the author: My reviewer,
says he, has not done me justice; his object appears to have been,
not to show me off, but himself. There is no sober exposition of _my_
plan, _my_ purpose, _my_ book, but only a parade of the reviewer’s
own reading and a crackling of his thorns under my pot. The author’s
complaint is usually just, but he should remember that in nine cases
out of ten his book calls for no review, and certainly would receive
none on its merits. The review is not written for those who have read
or intend to read the book, but for a crowd of people who do not mean
to read it, but who want to be amused or interested by a so-called
review of it, which must therefore be an independent, substantive
literary production.
What a mercy it would be if the critical journals felt themselves
free to choose their own subjects, new and old, and recognised that
it was their duty to help to form the taste of their readers, and not
merely to pick their provender for them or to promote the prosperity of
publishers, which, as a matter of fact, they can no longer do.
The critics who criticise in print, were they left to themselves,
would be found praising enthusiastically all they found praiseworthy
in contemporary effort. Even now, when their tempers must be sorely
tried by the dreary wilderness in which they are compelled to sojourn,
it is marvellous how quick they are to snuff the fresh, blowing airs
of genuine talent. It is slander to say that present-day critics are
grudging of praise. They are far too free with it. Had they less
hack-work, they might by chance become a little more fastidious; but
even if this were so, it would only increase their joy, delight, and
satisfaction in making the discovery that somebody or another--some
Stevenson, some Barrie, some Kipling--had actually written something
which was not only in form but in fact a new book.
Fiery souls there would no doubt always be who would insist, on
occasions, in rushing out to strike the shield of some many-editioned
living author, and defy him to mortal combat. An occasional fray of
the kind is always an agreeable incident, but a wise editor would do
his best to control the noble rage of his contributors, bidding them
remember the words of John Keats: ‘The sure way, Bailey, is first to
know a man’s faults, and then be passive.’
The time and space liberated by giving up the so-called criticism of
bad and insignificant books could be devoted to the real criticism
of the few living and the many dead classics; and, for one does
occasionally get a little weary of the grand style, with arguments
and discussions about smaller folk. If basting there must be, let it
be the basting of the brainless compilers, the plagiarists, the sham
philosophers, and the languishing poetasters of the past. Dead donkeys
are far more amusing than living ones, and make much better texts for
fierce critics than men with wives and families dependent upon them.
The vagaries of great authors have often done harm in their generation;
the follies of small ones, including the supreme and most visible of
all their follies, that of thinking themselves great, have never harmed
a human creature.
_Elliot Stock, Paternoster Row, London._