[Speech of Leslie Stephen at the annual banquet of the Royal
Academy, London, April 29, 1893, in response to the toast,
"Literature." Sir Frederic Leighton, President of the Academy,
spoke of Literature as "that in which is garnered up the heat that
feeds the spiritual life of men." In the vein of personal
compliment he said: "For literature I turn to a distinguished
writer whose acute and fearless mind finds a fit vehicle in clear
and vigorous English and to me seems winged by that vivid air which
plays about the Alpine peaks his feet have in the past so dearly
loved to tread--I mean my friend, Mr. Leslie Stephen."]
MR. PRESIDENT, YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MY LORDS, AND
GENTLEMEN:--When a poet or a great imaginative writer has to speak
in this assembly he speaks as to brethren-in-arms, to persons with
congenial tastes and with mutual sympathies, but when, instead of the
creative writer, the Academy asks a critic to speak to them, then
nothing but your proverbial courtesy can conceal the fact that they must
really think they are appealing to a natural enemy. I have the
misfortune to be a critic [laughter], but in this assembly I must say I
am not an art critic. Friends have made a presumptuous attempt to fathom
the depth of my ignorance upon artistic subjects, and they have thought
that in some respects I must be admirably qualified for art criticism.
[Laughter.]
As a literary critic I have felt, and I could not say I was surprised to
find how unanimously critics have been condemned by poets and artists of
all generations. I need only quote the words of the greatest authority,
Shakespeare, who in one of his most pathetic sonnets reckons up the
causes of the weariness of life and speaks of the spectacle of--
"Art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctor-like), controlling skill."
The great poet probably wrote these words after the much misrepresented
interview with Lord Bacon in which the Chancellor explained to the poet
how "Hamlet" should have been written, and from which it has been
inferred that he took credit for having written it himself. [Laughter.]
Shakespeare naturally said what every artist must feel; for what is an
artist? That is hardly a question to be asked in such an assembly, where
I have only to look round to find plenty of people who realize the ideal
artist, persons who are simple, unconventional, spontaneous,
sweet-natured [laughter], who go through the world influenced by
impressions of everything that is beautiful, sublime, and pathetic.
Sometimes they seem to take up impressions of a different kind
[laughter]; but still this is their main purpose--to receive impressions
of images, the reproduction of which may make this world a little better
for us all. For such people a very essential condition is that they
should be spontaneous; that they should look to nothing but telling us
what they feel and how they feel it; that they should obey no external
rules, and only embody those laws which have become a part of their
natural instinct, and that they should think nothing, as of course they
do nothing, for money; though they would not be so hard-hearted as to
refuse to receive the spontaneous homage of the world, even when it came
in that comparatively vulgar form. [Laughter.]
But what is a critic? He is a person who enforces rules upon the artist,
like a gardener who snips a tree in order to make it grow into a
preconceived form, or grafts upon it until it develops into a
monstrosity which he considers beautiful. We have made some advance upon
the old savage. The man who went about saying, "This will never do," has
become a thing of the past. The modern critic if he has a fault has
become too genial; he seems not to distinguish between the functions of
a critic and the founder of a new religious sect. [Laughter.] He erects
shrines to his ideals, and he burns upon them good, strong, stupefying
incense. This may be less painful to the artist than the old-fashioned
style; but it may be doubted whether it is not equally corrupting, and
whether it does not stimulate a selfishness equally fatal to spontaneous
production; whether it does not in the attempt to encourage originality
favor a spurious type which consists merely in setting at defiance real
common sense, and sometimes common decency.
I hope that critics are becoming better, that they have learned what
impostors they have been, and that their philosophy has been merely the
skilful manipulation of sonorous words, and that on the whole, they must
lay aside their magisterial role and cease to suppose they are persons
enforcing judicial decisions or experts who can speak with authority
about chemical analysis. I hope that critics will learn to lay aside all
pretension and to see only things that a critic really can see, and
express genuine sympathy with human nature; and when they have succeeded
in doing that they will be received as friends in such gatherings as the
banquet of the Royal Academy. [Cheers.]