action of democracy upon literature, we might indeed congratulate
ourselves. But a moment's reflection shows that to do so is to put
the cart before the horse. The wide appreciation of such delicate
and penetrating poetry is, indeed, an example of the influence of
literature on democracy, but hardly of democracy on literature. We
may examine the series of Tennyson's volumes with care, and scarcely
discover a copy of verses in which he can be detected as directly
urged to expression by the popular taste. This prime favourite of the
educated masses never courted the public, nor strove to serve it. He
wrote to please himself, to win the applause of the "little clan,"
and each round of salvos from the world outside seemed to startle him
in his obstinate retirement. If it grew easier and easier for him to
consent to please the masses, it was because he familiarised them more
and more with his peculiar accent. He led literary taste, he did not
dream of following it.
What is true of Tennyson is true of most of our recent poets. There is
one exception, however, and that a very curious one. The single English
poet of high rank whose works seem to me to be distinctly affected by
the democratic spirit, nay, to be the direct outcome of the influence
of democracy, is Robert Browning. It has scarcely been sufficiently
noted by those who criticise the style of that great writer that the
entire tone of his writings introduces something hitherto unobserved
in British poetry. That something is the repudiation of the recognised
oligarchic attitude of the poet in his address to the public. It is not
that he writes or does not write of the poor. It is a curious mistake
to expect the democratic spirit to be always on its knees adoring the
proletariat. To the true democracy all are veritably of equal interest,
and even a belted earl may be a man and a brother. In his poems Robert
Browning spoke as though he felt himself to be walking through a world
of equals, all interesting to him, all worthy of study. This is the
secret of his abrupt familiar appeal, his "Dare I trust the same to
you?" "Look out, see the gipsy!" "You would fain be kinglier, say,
than I am?" the incessant confidential aside to a cloud of unnamed
witnesses, the conversational tone, things all of which were before his
time unknown in serious verse. Browning is hail-fellow-well-met with
all the world, from queen to peasant, and half of what is called his
dramatic faculty is merely the result of his genius for making friends
with every species of mankind.
With this exception, however, the principal poetical writers of our
time seem to be unaffected by the pressure of the masses around them.
They select their themes, remain true to the principles of composition
which they prefer, concern themselves with the execution of their
verses, and regard the opinion of the millions as little or even less
than their great forerunners did that of emperor or prince-bishop.
Being born with quick intelligences into an age burdened by social
difficulties, these latter occasionally interest them very acutely, and
they write about them, not, I think, pressed into that service by the
democratic spirit, but yielding to the attraction of what is moving
and picturesque. A wit has lately said of the most popular, the most
democratic of living French poets, M. François Coppée, that his blazon
is "des rimes riches sur la blouse prolétaire." But the central fact to
a critic about M. Coppée's verse is, not the accident that he writes
about poor people, but the essential point that his rhymes are richer
and his verse more faultless than those of any of his contemporaries.
We may depend upon it that democracy has had no effect on his prosody,
and the rest is a mere matter of selection.
The fact seems to be that the more closely we examine the highest
examples of the noblest class of literature the more we become
persuaded that democracy has scarcely had any effect upon them at all.
It has not interfered with the poets, least of all has it dictated to
them. It has listened to them with respect; it has even contemplated
their eccentricities with admiration; it had tried, with its millions
of untrained feet, to walk in step with them. And when we turn from
poetry to the best science, the best history, the best fiction, we find
the same phenomenon. Democracy has been stirred to its depths by the
writings of Darwin; but who can trace in those writings the smallest
concession to the judgment or desire of the masses? Darwin became
convinced of certain theories. To the vast mass of the public these
theories were incredible, unpalatable, impious. With immense patience,
without emphasis of any kind, he proceeded to substantiate his views,
to enlarge his exposition; and gradually the cold body of democratic
opposition melted around that fervent atom of heat, and, in response
to its unbroken radiation, became warm itself. All that can be said
is that the new democratic condition is a better conductor than the
old oligarchical one was. Darwin produces his effect more steadily and
rapidly than Galileo or Spinoza, but not more surely, with exactly as
little aid from without.
As far, then, as the summits of literature are concerned--the great
masters of style, the great discoverers, the great intellectual
illuminators--it may be said that the influence of democracy upon
them is almost _nil_. It affords them a wider hearing, and therefore
a prompter recognition. It gives them more readers, and therefore
a more direct arrival at that degree of material comfort necessary
for the proper conduct of their investigations, or the full polish
of their periods. It may spoil them with its flatteries, or diminish
their merit by seducing them to over-production; but this is a question
between themselves and their own souls. A syndicate of newspapers,
or the editor of a magazine may tempt a writer of to-day, as Villon
was tempted with the wine-shop, or Coleridge with laudanum; but that
is not the fault of the democracy. Nor, if a writer of real power is
neglected, are people more or less to blame in 1892 than they were for
letting Otway starve two hundred years ago. Some people, beloved of
the gods, cannot be explained to mankind by king or caucus.
So far, therefore, as our present experience goes, we may relinquish
the common fear that the summits of literature will be submerged
by democracy. When the new spirit first began to be studied, many
whose judgment on other points was sound enough were confident that
the instinctive programme of the democratic spirit was to prevent
intellectual capacity of every kind from developing, for fear of the
ascendency which it would exercise. This is communism, and means
democracy pushed to an impossible extremity, to a point from which it
must rebound. No doubt, there is always a chance that a disturbance of
the masses may for a moment wash over and destroy some phase of real
intellectual distinction, just as it may sweep away, also for a moment,
other personal conditions. But it looks as though the individuality
would always reassert itself. The crowd that smashed the porcelain
in the White House to celebrate the election of President Andrew
Jackson had to buy more to take its place. The White House did not
continue, even under Jackson, to subsist without porcelain. In the same
way, edicts may be passed by communal councils forbidding citizens
to worship the idols which the booksellers set up, and even that
consummation may be reached, to which a prophet of our own day looks
forward, when we shall all be forced by the police to walk hand in hand
with "the craziest sot in the village" as our friend and equal; none
the less will human nature, at the earliest opportunity, throw off the
bondage, and openly prefer Darwin and Tennyson to that engaging rustic.
Indeed, all the signs of the times go to suggest that the completer the
democracy becomes, the vaster the gap will be in popular honour between
the great men of letters and "the craziest sot in the village." It is
quite possible that the tyranny of extreme intellectual popularity may
prove as tiresome as other and older tyrannies were. But that's another
story, as the new catchword tells us.
Literature, however, as a profession or a calling, is not confined to
the writings of the five or six men who, in each generation, represent
what is most brilliant and most independent. From the leaders, in
their indisputable greatness, the intellectual hierarchy descends to
the lowest and broadest class of workers who in any measure hang on
to the skirts of literature, and eke out a living by writing. It is
in the middle ranks of this vast pyramid that we should look to see
most distinctly the signs of the influence of democracy. We shall not
find them in the broad and featureless residuum any more than in the
strongly individualised summits. But we ought to discover them in the
writers who have talent enough to keep them aloft, yet not enough to
make them indifferent to outer support. Here, where all is lost or
gained by a successful appeal to the crowd as it hastens by, we might
expect to see very distinctly the effects of democracy, and here,
perhaps, if we look closely, we may see them.
It appears to me that even here it is not so easy as one would
imagine that it would be to pin distinct charges to the sleeve of
the much-abused democracy. Let us take the bad points first. The
enlargement of the possible circle of an author's readers may awaken
in the breast of a man who has gained a little success, the desire
to arrive at a greater one in another field, for which he is really
not so well equipped. An author may have a positive talent for church
history, and turning from it, through cupidity, to fiction, may, by
addressing a vastly extended public, make a little more money by his
bad stories than he was able to make by his good hagiology, and so act
to the detriment of literature. Again, an author who has made a hit
with a certain theme, or a certain treatment of that theme, may be held
nailed down to it by the public long after he has exhausted it and
it has exhausted him. Again, the complaisance of the public, and the
loyal eagerness with which it cries "Give, give," to a writer that has
pleased it, may induce that writer to go on talking long after he has
anything to say, and so conduce to the watering of the milk of wit.
Or--and this is more subtle and by no means so easy to observe--the
pressure of commonplace opinion, constantly checking a writer when he
shelves away towards either edge of the trodden path of mediocrity, may
keep him from ever adding to the splendid originalities of literature.
This shows itself in the disease which we may call Mudieitis, the
inflammation produced by the fear that what you are inspired to say,
and know you ought to say, will be unpalatable to the circulating
libraries, that "the wife of a country incumbent," that terror before
which Messrs. Smith fall prone upon their faces, may write up to
headquarters and expostulate. In all these cases, without doubt, we
have instances of the direct influence of democracy upon literature,
and that of a deleterious kind. Not one of them, however, can produce
a bad effect upon any but persons of weak or faulty character, and
these would probably err in some other direction, even at the court of
a grand duke.
On the other hand, the benefits of democratic surroundings are felt in
these middle walks of literature. The appeal to a very wide audience
has the effect of giving a writer whose work is sound but not of
universal interest, an opportunity of collecting, piecemeal, individual
readers enough to support him. The average sanity of a democracy, and
the habit it encourages of immediate, full, and candid discussion,
preserves the writer whose snare is eccentricity from going too far in
his folly. The celebrated eccentrics of past literature, the Lycophrons
and the Gongoras, the Donnes and the Gombrevilles, were the spokesmen
of small and pedantic circles, disdainful of the human herd, "sets"
whose members rejoiced in the conceits and extravagance of their
respective favourites, and encouraged these talented personages to make
mountebanks of themselves. These leaders were in most cases excessively
clever, and we find their work, or a little of it, very entertaining
as we cross the history of _belles-lettres_. But it is impossible
not to see that, for instance, each of the mysterious writers I
have mentioned would, in a democratic age, and healthily confronted
with public criticism, have been able to make a much wholesomer and
broader use of his cleverness. The democratic spirit, moreover, may be
supposed to encourage directness of utterance, simplicity, vividness,
and lucidity. I say it may be supposed to do so, because I cannot
perceive that with all our liberty the nineteenth century has proceeded
any farther in this direction than the hide-bound eighteenth century
was able to do. On the whole, indeed, I find it very difficult to
discover that democracy, as such, is affecting the quality of such good
literature as we possess in any very general or obvious way. It may be
that we are still under the oligarchic tradition, and that a social
revolution, introducing a sudden breach in our habits, and perhaps
paralysing the profession of letters for a few years, would be followed
by a new literature of a decidedly democratic class. We are speaking of
what we actually see, and not of vague visions which may seem to flit
across the spectral mirror of the future.
But when we pass from the quality of the best literature to the
quantity of it, then it is impossible to preserve so indifferent or
so optimistic an attitude. The democratic habit does not, if I am
correct, make much difference in the way in which good authors write,
but it very much affects the amount of circulation which their writings
obtain. The literature of which I have hitherto spoken is that of which
analysis can take cognisance, the writing which possesses a measure,
at least, of distinction, of accomplishment, that which, in every
class, belongs to the tradition of good work. It is very easy to draw
a rough line, not too high, above which all may fairly be treated as
literature in _posse_ if not in _esse_. In former ages, almost all
that was published, certainly all that attracted public attention and
secured readers, was of this sort. The baldest and most grotesque
Elizabethan drama, the sickliest romance that lay with Bibles and with
_billets-doux_ on Belinda's toilet-table, the most effete didactic
poem of the Hayley and Seward age, had this quality of belonging to
the literary camp. It was a miserable object, no doubt, and wholly
without value, but it wore the king's uniform. If it could have been
better written, it would have been well written. But, as a result
of democracy, what is still looked upon as the field of literature
has been invaded by camp-followers of every kind, so active and so
numerous, that they threaten to oust the soldiery themselves; persons
in every variety of costume, from court-clothes to rags, but agreeing
only in this, that they are not dressed as soldiers of literature.
These amateurs and specialists, these writers of books that are not
books, and essays that are not essays, are peculiarly the product of a
democratic age. A love for the distinguished parts of literature, and
even a conception that such parts exist, is not common among men, and
it is not obvious that democracy has led to its encouragement. Hitherto
the tradition of style has commonly been respected; no very open voice
having been as yet raised against it. But with the vast majority of
persons it remains nothing but a mystery, and one which they secretly
regard with suspicion. The enlargement of the circle of readers merely
means an increase of persons who, without an ear, are admitted to
the concert of literature. At present they listen to the traditional
sonatas and mazurkas with bored respect, but they are really longing
for music-hall ditties on the concertina. To this ever-increasing
congregation of the unmusical comes the technical amateur, with his dry
facts and exact knowledge; the flippant amateur, with his comic "bits"
and laughable miscellanies; the didactic and religious amateur, anxious
to mend our manners and save our souls. These people, whose power
must not be slighted, and whose value, perhaps, can only relatively be
denied, have something definite, something serviceable to give in the
form of a paper or a magazine or a book. What wonder that they should
form dangerous rivals to the writer who is assiduous about the way in
which a thing is said, and careful to produce a solid and harmonious
effect by characteristic language?
It was mainly during the close of the seventeenth and the beginning of
the eighteenth century that this body of technical, professional, and
non-literary writing began to develop. We owe it, without doubt, to the
spread of exact knowledge and the emancipation of speculative thought.
It was from the law first, then from divinity, then from science, and
last from philosophy that the studied graces were excluded--a sacrifice
on the altar of positive expression. If a writer on precise themes
were to adopt to-day the balanced elegance of Evelyn or Shaftesbury's
stately and harmonious periods, he would either be read for his style
and his sentiment or not at all. People would go for their information
elsewhere. No doubt, in a certain sense, this change is due to the
democracy; it is due to the quickening and rarefying of public life,
to the creation of rapid needs, to a breaking down of barriers. But so
long as the books and papers which deal with professional matters do
not utterly absorb the field, so long as they leave time and space for
pure literature, there is no reason why they should positively injure
the latter, though they must form a constant danger to it. At times of
public ferment, when great constitutional or social problems occupy
universal attention, there can be no doubt that the danger ripens into
real injury. When newspapers are full of current events in political
and social life, the graver kind of books are slackly bought, and a
"the higher criticism" disappears from the Reviews.
We can imagine a state of things in which such a crowding out should
become chronic, when the nervous system of the public should crave such
incessant shocks of actuality, that no time should be left for thought
or sentiment. We might arrive at the condition in which Wordsworth
pictured the France of ninety years ago:
_Perpetual emptiness! unceasing change!_
_No single volume paramount, no code,_
_No master spirit, no determined road;_
_But equally a want of books and men!_
When we feel inclined to forebode such a shocking lapse into
barbarism, it may help us if we reflect how soon France, in spite of,
or by the aid of, democracy, threw off the burden of emptiness. A
recollection of the intellectual destitution of that country at the
beginning of the century and of the passionate avidity with which, on
the return of political tranquillity, France threw herself back on
literary and artistic avocations, should strengthen the nerves of those
pessimists who, at the slightest approach to a similar condition in
modern England, declare that our intellectual prestige is sunken, never
to revive. There is a great elasticity in the tastes of the average
man, and when they have been pushed violently in one direction they
do not remain fixed there, but swing with equal force to the opposite
side. The æsthetic part of mankind may be obscured, it cannot be
obliterated.
The present moment appears to me to be a particularly unhappy one for
indulging in gloomy diatribes against the democracy. Books, although
they constitute the most durable part of literature, are not, in
this day, by any means its sole channel. Periodical literature has
certainly been becoming more and more democratic; and if the editors
of our newspapers gauge in any degree the taste of their readers,
that taste must be becoming more and more inclined to the formal and
distinctive parts of writing. A few years ago, the London newspapers
were singularly indifferent to the claims of books and of the men who
wrote them. An occasional stately column of the _Times_ represented
almost all the notice which a daily paper would take of a volume. The
provincial press was still worse provided; it afforded no light at all
for such of its clients as were groping their way in the darkness of
the book-market.
All this is now changed. One or two of the evening newspapers of
London deserve great commendation for having dared to treat literary
subjects, in distinction from mere reviews of books, as of immediate
public interest. Their example has at length quickened some of the
morning papers, and has spread into the provinces to such a signal
degree that several of the great newspapers of the North of England
are now served with literary matter of a quality and a fulness not
to be matched in a single London daily twenty years ago. When an
eminent man of letters dies, the comments which the London and country
press make upon his career and the nature of his work are often quite
astonishing in their fulness; space being dedicated to these notices
such as, but a few years ago, would have been grudged to a politician
or to a prize-fighter. The newspapers are the most democratic of all
vehicles of thought, and the prominence of literary discussion in their
columns does not look as though the democracy was anxious to be thought
indifferent or hostile to literature.
In all this bustle and reverberation, however, it may be said that
there is not much place for those who desire, like Jean Chapelain,
to live in innocence, with Apollo and with their books. There can be
no question, that the tendency of modern life is not favourable to
sequestered literary scholarship. At the same time, it is a singular
fact that, even in the present day, when a Thomas Love Peacock or an
Edward FitzGerald hides himself in a careful seclusion, like some rare
aquatic bird in a backwater, his work slowly becomes manifest, and
receives due recognition and honour. Such authors do not enjoy great
sales, even when they become famous, but, in spite of their opposition
to the temper of their time, in spite of all obstacles imposed by their
own peculiarities of temperament, they receive, in the long run, a fair
measure of success. They have their hour, sooner or later. More than
that no author of their type could have under any form of political
government, or at any period of history. They should not, and, in
fairness it must be said they rarely do, complain. They know that "Dieu
paie," as Alphonse Karr said, "mais il ne paie pas tous les samedis."
It is the writers who want to be paid every Saturday upon whom
democracy produces the worst effect. It is not the neglect of the
public, it is the facility with which the money can be wheedled out
of the pockets of the public on trifling occasions that constitutes
a danger to literature. There is an enormous quantity of almost
unmitigated shoddy now produced and sold, and the peril is that
authors who are capable of doing better things will be seduced into
adding to this wretched product for the sake of the money. We are
highly solicitous nowadays, and it is most proper that we should be,
about adequate payment for the literary worker. But as long as that
payment is in no sort of degree proportioned to the merit of the
article he produces, the question of its scale of payment must remain
one rather for his solicitor than for the critics. The importance of
our own Society of Authors, for instance, lies, it appears to me,
in its constituting a sort of firm of solicitors acting solely for
literary clients. But the moment we go further than this, we get into
difficulties. The money standard tends to become the standard of merit.
At a recent public meeting, while one of the most distinguished of
living technical writers was speaking for the literary profession,
one of those purveyors of tenth-rate fiction, who supply stories, as
they might supply vegetables, to a regular market, was heard to say
with scorn, "Call _him_ an author?" "Why, yes!" her neighbour replied,
"don't you know he has written so and so, and so and so?" "Well," said
the other, "I should like to know what his sales are before I allowed
he was an author."