somewhat difficult. It needs a fuller commentary and a longer series
of references than can be given here. But let us recollect that the
nature-worship and nature-study of to-day may grow to seem a complete
fallacy, a sheer persistence in affectation, and that then, to readers
of new tastes and passions, Wordsworth and Shelley will be as Pope is
now, that is to say, supported entirely by their individual merits.
At this moment, to the crowd, he is doubtless less attractive than
they are; he is on the shady side, they on the sunny side of fashion.
But the author of the end of the second book of _The Rape of the
Lock_, of the close of _The New Dunciad_, of the Sporus portrait, and
of the _Third Moral Essay_, has qualities of imagination, applied
to human character, and of distinction, applied to a formal and
delicately-elaborated style, which are unsurpassed, even perhaps by
Horace himself. Satirist after satirist has chirped like a wren from
the head of Pope; where are they now? Where is the great, the terrific,
the cloud-compelling Churchill? Meanwhile, in the midst of a generation
persistently turned away from all his ideas and all his models, the
clear voice of Pope still rings from the arena of Queen Anne.
After all, this is mere assertion, and what am I that I should pretend
to lay down the law? If we seek, on the authority of whomsoever, to
raise an infallible standard of taste, and to arrange the poets in
classes, like schoolboys, then our inquiry is futile indeed, and worse
than futile. But the interest which this controversy has undoubtedly
called forth seems to prove that there is a side on which such
questions as have been started are not unwelcome nor unworthy of
careful study. It is not useless, I fancy, to remind ourselves now and
then of the very high standard which literature has a right to demand
from its more earnest votaries. In the hurry of life, in the glare of
passing interests, we are apt to lose breadth of sympathy, and to make
our own personal and temporary enjoyment of a book the criterion of its
value. I may take up Selden's _Titles of Honour_, turn over a page or
two, and lay it down in favour of the new number of _Punch_. I must not
for this reason pledge myself to placing the comic paper of to-day in a
niche above the best work of a great Elizabethan prose writer. But when
a modern American says that he finds better poetry in Longfellow than
in Chaucer, he is doing, to a less exaggerated degree, precisely this
very thing. He feels his contemporary sympathies and limited experience
soothed and entertained by the facile numbers of _Evangeline_, and he
does not extract an equal amount of amusement and pleasure from _The
Knight's Tale_.
From one point of view it is very natural that this should be so, and
a critic would be priggish indeed who should gravely reprove such a
preference. The result would be, not to force the reader to Chaucer,
but to drive him away from poetry altogether. The ordinary man reads
what he finds gives him the pure and wholesome stimulus he needs. But
if such a reader, in the pride of his heart, should take upon himself
to dogmatise, and to tell us that Longfellow's poetry is better than
Chaucer's, we should be obliged to remind him that there are several
factors to be taken into account before he can carry us away with him
on the neck of such a theory. He has to consider how long the charm of
Chaucer has endured, and how short a time the world has had to make
up its mind about Longfellow; he has to appreciate the relation of
Chaucer to his own contemporaries, the boldness of his invasion into
realms until his day unconquered, the inevitable influence of time in
fretting, wasting, and blanching the surface of the masterpieces of the
past. To be just, he has to consider the whirligig of literature, and
to ask himself whether, in the year 2289, after successive revolutions
of taste and repetitions of performance, the works of Longfellow are
reasonably likely to possess the positive value which scholars, at all
events, still find in those of Chaucer. Not until all these, and still
more, irregularities of relative position are taken into account, can
the value of the elder and the later poet be lightly laid in opposite
balances.
There has been no great disposition to produce English candidates for
the places of any of my original dozen. The _Saturday Review_ thinks
that I ought to have included Walter Scott, and the _St. James's
Gazette_ suggests Marlowe. There is much to be said for the claims of
each of these poets, and I am surprised that no one has put in a plea
for Herrick or Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Of Marlowe, indeed, we can
to this day write nothing better than Michael Drayton wrote:
_Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs,_
_Had in him those brave translunary things_
_That our first poets had; his raptures were_
_All air and fire, which made his verses clear;_
_For that fine madness still he did retain,_
_Which rightly should possess a poet's brain._
He had the freshness and splendour of Heosphoros, the bearer of light,
the kindler of morning; as the dawn-star of our drama, he ascended the
heavens, in the auroral flush of youth, to announce the approaching
majesty of Shakespeare. But his early death, and the unexampled
character of the genius who superseded him, have for centuries
obscured the name of Marlowe, which scintillated half-extinguished
in the blaze of _Hamlet_ and _Othello_. His reputation has, however,
increased during the last generation with greater rapidity than that
of any other of our elder poets, and a time may yet come when we shall
have popularly isolated him from Shakespeare to such a degree as to
enforce a recognition of his individual greatness. At the present
moment to give him a place among the twelve might savour of affectation.
In the case of Scott, I must still be firm in positively excluding
him, although his name is one of the most beloved in literature. The
_Waverley Novels_ form Scott's great claim to our reverence, and, save
for the songs scattered through them, have nothing to say to us here.
Scott's long narrative poems are really Waverley Novels told in easy,
ambling verse, and to a great measure, I must confess, spoiled, I
think, by such telling. For old memory's sake we enjoy them still,
_Full sore amaz'd at the wondrous change,_
_And frighten'd as a child might be_
_At the wild yell and visage strange,_
_And the dark words of gramarye_;
but the stuff is rather threadbare, surely. The best passages are
those in which, with skill not less than that of Milton, Scott marshals
heroic lists of Highland proper names. Scott was a very genuine poet
"within his own limitations," as has been said of another favourite,
whose name I will not here repeat. His lyrics, of very unequal merit,
are occasionally of wondrous beauty. I think it will be found, upon
very careful study of his writings, that he published eight absolutely
perfect lyrical pieces, and about as many more that were very good
indeed. This is much, and to how few can so high a tribute be paid! Yet
this is not quite sufficient claim to a place on the summits of English
song. Scott was essentially a great prose-writer, with a singular
facility in verse.
If this amiable controversy, started in the first instance at the
request of the Editor of the _Forum_, has led us to examine a little
more closely the basis of our literary convictions, and, above all, if
it has led any of us to turn again to the fountain-heads of English
literature, it has not been without its importance. One danger which
I have long foreseen from the spread of the democratic sentiment, is
that of the traditions of literary taste, the canons of literature,
being reversed with success by a popular vote. Up to the present time,
in all parts of the world, the masses of uneducated or semi-educated
persons, who form the vast majority of readers, though they cannot
and do not appreciate the classics of their race, have been content
to acknowledge their traditional supremacy. Of late there have seemed
to me to be certain signs, especially in America, of a revolt of the
mob against our literary masters. In the less distinguished American
newspapers which reach me, I am sometimes startled by the boldness with
which a great name, like Wordsworth's or Dryden's, will be treated
with indignity. If literature is to be judged by a _plébiscite_ and if
the _plebs_ recognises its power, it will certainly by degrees cease
to support reputations which give it no pleasure and which it cannot
comprehend. The revolution against taste, once begun, will land us in
irreparable chaos. It is, therefore, high time that those who recognise
that there is no help for us in literature outside the ancient laws and
precepts of our profession, should vigorously support the fame of those
fountains of inspiration, the impeccable masters of English.
_1889._
MAKING A NAME IN LITERATURE
Making a Name in Literature
An American editor has asked me to say how a literary reputation is
formed. It is like asking one how wood is turned into gold, or how
real diamonds can be manufactured. If I knew the answer, it is not in
the pages of a review that I should print it. I should bury myself in
a cottage in the woods, exercise my secret arts, and wait for Fame
to turn her trumpet into a hunting-horn, and wake the forest-echoes
with my praises. In one of Mr. Stockton's stories a princess sets all
the wise men of her dominions searching for the lost secret of what
root-beer should be made of. The philosophers fail to discover it, and
the magicians exhaust their arts in vain. Not the slightest light is
thrown on the abstruse problem, until at last an old woman is persuaded
to reveal that it ought to be made of roots. In the same way, the only
quite obvious answer to the query, How should a literary reputation
be formed? is to reply, By thinking nothing at all about reputation,
but by writing earnestly and carefully on the subjects and in the
style most congenial to your habits of mind. But this is too obvious,
and leads to no further result. Besides, I see that the question is
not, how should be, but how is, a literary reputation formed. I will
endeavour, then, to give expression to such observations as I may have
formed on this latter subject.
A literary reputation, as here intended, is obviously not the eternal
fame of a Shakespeare, which appears likely to last for ever, nor
even that of a Dickens, which must endure till there comes a complete
revolution of taste, but the inferior form of repute which is enjoyed
by some dozens of literary people in each generation, and makes a
centre for the admiration or envy of the more enthusiastic or idler
portion of their contemporaries. There is as much cant in denying the
attractiveness of such temporary glory as there is in exaggerating its
weight and importance. To stimulate the minds of those who surround
him, to captivate their attention and excite their curiosity, is
pleasing to the natural man. We look with suspicion on the author
who protests too loudly that he does not care whether he is admired
or not. We shrewdly surmise that inwardly he cares very much indeed.
This instinctive wish for reputation is one of the great incentives to
literary exertion.
Fame and money--these are the two chief spurs which drive the author
on. The statement may sound ignoble, and the writers of every
generation persist in avowing that they write only to amuse themselves
and to do good in their generation. The noble lady in _Lothair_
wished that she might never eat, or if at all, only a little fruit by
moonlight on a bank. She, nevertheless, was always punctual at her
dinner; and the author who protests his utter indifference to money and
reputation is commonly excessively sensitive when an attack is made on
his claims in either direction. Literary reputation is relative, of
course. There may be a village fame which does not burn very brightly
in the country town, and provincial stars that look very pale in a
great city. The circumstances, however, under which all the various
degrees of fame are reached, are, I think, closely analogous, and what
is true of the local celebrity is true, relatively, of a Victor Hugo
or of a Tennyson. The importance of the reputation is shown by the
expanse of the area it covers, not by the curve of its advance. The
circle of a great man's fame is extremely wide, but it only repeats on
a vast scale the phenomena attending on the fame of a small man.
The three principal ways in which a literary reputation is formed
appear to be these: reviews, private conversation among the leaders
of opinion, and the instinctive attraction which leads the general
public to discover for itself what is calculated to give it pleasure.
I will briefly indicate the manner in which these three seem to act
at the present moment on the formation of notoriety and its attendant
success, in the case of English authors. First of all, it is not
unworthy of note that reputation, or fame, and monetary success, are
not identical, although the latter is frequently the satellite of the
former. One extraordinary example of their occasional remoteness, which
may be mentioned without impertinence on the authority of the author
himself, is the position of Mr. Herbert Spencer. In any list of living
Englishmen eminently distinguished for the originality and importance
of their books, Mr. Spencer cannot fail to be ranked high. Yet, as
every student of his later work knows, he stated in the preface of
one of those bald and inexpensive volumes in which he enshrines his
thought, that up to a comparatively recent date the sale of his books
did not cover the cost of their publication. This was the case of a man
famous, it is not too much to say, in every civilised country in the
globe.
In pure literature there is probably no second existing instance so
flagrant as this. But, to take only a few of the most illustrious
Englishmen of letters, it is matter of common notoriety that the sale
of the books of, say, Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Leslie Stephen, the Bishop
of Oxford (Dr. Stubbs) and Mr. Lecky, considerable as it may now have
become, for a long time by no means responded to the lofty rank which
each of these authors has taken in the esteem of educated people
throughout the Anglo-Saxon world. The reverse is still more curious and
unaccountable. Why is it that there are writers of no merit at all,
who sell their books in thousands where people of genius sell theirs
in scores, yet without ever making a reputation? At the time when
Tupper was far more popular than Tennyson, and Eliza Cook enjoyed ten
times the commercial success of Browning, even the votaries of these
poetasters did not claim a higher place for them, or even a high place
at all. They bought their books because they liked them, but the buyers
evidently did not imagine that purchase gave their temporary favourites
any rank in the hierarchy of fame. These things are a mystery, but the
distinction between commercial success and fame is one which must be
drawn. We are speaking here of reputation, whether attended by vast
sales or only by barren honour.
Reviews have no longer the power which they enjoyed seventy years ago,
of making or even of marring the fortunes of a book. When there existed
hundreds of private book clubs throughout the country, each one of
which proceeded to buy a copy of whatever the _Edinburgh_ recommended,
then the reviewer was a great personage in the land. We may see in
Lockhart's _Life of Scott_ that Sir Walter, even at the height of his
success, and when, as Ellis said, he was "the greatest elephant in the
world" except himself, was seriously agitated by Jeffrey's cold review
of _Marmion_, not through irritable peevishness, which was wholly
foreign to Scott's magnanimous nature, but because a slighting review
was enough to cripple a book, and a slashing review to destroy it.
There is nothing of this kind now. No newspaper exists in Great Britain
which is able to sell an edition of a book by praising it. I doubt if
any review, under the most favourable circumstances and coming from the
most influential quarter, causes two hundred copies of a book to be
bought. A signed article by Mr. Gladstone is, of course, an exception;
yet some have doubted of late whether a book may not be found so inept
and so heavy as not to stir even at the summons of that voice.
The reviews in the professional literary papers are still understood
to be useful in the case of unknown writers. A young author without a
friend, if he has merit, and above all if he has striking originality,
is almost sure to attract the notice of some beneficent reviewer, and
be praised in the columns of one or other of the leading weeklies.
These are the circumstances under which the native kindliness of the
irritable race is displayed most freely. The envy which sees merit in
a new man and determines to crush it with silence or malignant attack,
is inhuman, and practically, I fancy, scarcely exists. The entirely
unheard-of writer wounds no susceptibilities, awakens no suspicions,
and even excites a pleasurable warmth of patronage. It is a little
later on, when the new man is quite new no longer, but is becoming a
formidable rival, that evil passions are aroused, or sometimes seem to
have been aroused, in pure literary bosoms. The most sincere reviews
are often those which treat the works of unknown writers, and this is
perhaps the reason why the shrewd public still permits itself to be
moved by these when they are strongly favourable. At any rate, every
new-comer must be introduced to our crowded public to be observed at
all, and to new-comers the review is still the indispensable master of
the ceremonies.
But the power of reviews to create this form of literary reputation
has of late been greatly circumscribed. The public grows less and less
the dupe of an anonymous judgment, expressed in the columns of one of
the too-numerous organs of public opinion. A more _naïve_ generation
than ours was overawed by the nameless authority which moved behind
a review. Ours, on the contrary, is apt to go too far, and pay no
notice, because it does not know the name of a writer. The author who
writhed under the humiliation of attack in a famous paper, little
suspected that his critic was one Snooks, an inglorious creature whose
acquaintance with the matter under discussion was mainly taken from
the book he was reviewing. But, on the other hand, there is that story
of the writer of some compendium of Greek history severely handled
anonymously by the _Athenæum_, whose scorn of the nameless critic gave
way to horror and shame when he discovered him to have been no other
than Mr. Grote. On the whole, when we consider the careful, learned,
and judicial reviews which are still to be found, like grains of salt,
in the vast body of insipid criticism in the newspapers, it may be held
that the public pays less attention to the reviews than it should.
The fact seems to remain that, except in the case of entirely unknown
writers, periodical criticism possesses an ever-dwindling power of
recommendation.
It is in conversation that the fame of the best books is made. There
are certain men and women in London who are on the outlook for new
merit, who are supposed to be hard to please, and whose praise is like
rubies. It is those people who, in the smoking-room of the club, or
across the dinner-table, create the fame of writers and the success
of new books. "Seen _Polyanthus_?" says one of these peripatetic
oracles. "No," you answer; "I am afraid I don't know what _Polyanthus_
is." "Well, it's not half bad; it's this new realistic romance."
"Indeed! By whom is it written?" "Oh! a fellow called--called Binks,
I think--Binks or Bunks; quite a new man. You ought to see it, don't
you know." Some one far down the table ventures to say, "Oh! I think
it was the _Palladium_ said on Saturday that it wasn't a good book
at all, awfully abnormal, or something of that kind." "Well, you
look at it; I think you'll agree with me that it's not half bad."
Such a conversation as this, if held in a fructifying spot among the
best people, does _Polyanthus_ more good than a favourable review.
It excites curiosity, and echoes of the praise ("not half bad" is at
the present moment the most fulsome of existing expressions of London
enthusiasm) reverberate and reverberate until the fortune of the book
is made. At the same time, be it for ever remembered, there must be in
_Polyanthus_ the genuine force and merit which appeal to an impartial
judge and convert reader after reader, or else vainly does the friendly
oracle try to raise the wind. He betrays himself, most likely, by using
the expression, "a very fine book," or "beautifully written." These
phrases have a falsetto air, and lack the persuasive sincerity of the
true modern eulogium, "not half bad."
But there are reputations formed in other places than in London
dining-rooms and the libraries of clubs. There are certain books which
are not welcomed by the reviews, and which fail to please or even to
meet the eye of experts in literature, which nevertheless, by some
strange and unaccountable attraction, become known to the outer public,
and are eagerly accepted by a very wide circle of readers. I am not
aware that the late Mr. Roe was ever a favourite with the writing or
speaking critics of America. He achieved his extraordinary success not
by the aid, but in spite of the neglect and disapproval of the lettered
classes. I have no close acquaintance with Mr. Roe's novels, but I know
them well enough to despair of discovering why they were found to be so
eminently welcome to thousands of readers. So far as I have examined
them, they have appeared to me to be--if I may speak frankly--neither
good enough nor bad enough to account for their popularity. It is not
that I am such a prig as to disdain Mr. Roe's honourable industry;
far from it. But his books are lukewarm; they have neither the heat
of a rich insight into character, nor the deathly coldness of false
or insincere fiction. They are not ill-constructed, although they
certainly are not well-constructed. It is their lack of salient
character that makes me wonder what enabled them to float where scores
and scores of works not appreciably worse or better than they have sunk.
Most countries possess at any given moment an author of this class.
In England we have the lady who signs her eminently reputable novels
by the pseudonym of "Edna Lyall." I do not propose to say what the
lettered person thinks of the author of _Donovan_; I would only point
out that the organs of literary opinion do not recognise her existence.
I cannot recollect ever noticing a prominent review of one of her books
in any leading paper. I never heard them so much as mentioned by any
critical reader. To find out something about "Edna Lyall" I have just
consulted the latest edition of _Men of the Time_, but she is unknown
to that not excessively austere compendium. And now for the reverse
of the medal. I lately requested the mistress of a girls' school, a
friend of mine, to ask her elder classes to write down the name of the
greatest English author. The universal answer was "Shakespeare." What
could be more respectable? But the second question was, "Who is your
favourite English author?" And this time, by a large majority, Edna
Lyall bore off the bell.
I think this amiable lady may be consoled for the slight which _Men
of the Time_ puts upon her. It seems plain that she is a very great
personage indeed to all the girls of the time. But if you ask me how
such a subterranean reputation as this is formed, what starts it,
how it is supported, I can only say I have failed, after some not
unindustrious search, to discover. I may but conjecture that, as I
have suggested, the public instinctively feels the attraction of the
article that satisfies its passing requirement. These illiterate
successes--if I may use the word "illiterate" in its plain meaning and
without offence--are exceedingly ephemeral, and sink into the ground as
silently and rapidly as they rose from it. What has become of Mrs. Gore
and Mrs. March? Who wrote _Emilia Wyndham_, and to what elegant pen did
the girls who are now grandmothers owe _Ellen Middleton_? Alas! it has
taken only forty years to strew the poppy of oblivion over these once
thrilling titles.