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EPHEMERA CRITICA
OR PLAIN TRUTHS ABOUT
CURRENT LITERATURE
BY JOHN CHURTON
COLLINS
Non verebor nominare singulos, quo facilius, propositis exemplis,
appareat, quibus gradibus fracta sit et deminuta eloquentia.
_--Dial. de Orat._
αινεων αινητα, μομφαν δι’ επισπειρων αλιτροις.
_--Pindar_
FOURTH EDITION
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND CO LTD
2 WHITEHALL GARDENS, WESTMINSTER
1902
BUTLER & TANNER,
THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS,
FROME, AND LONDON.
PREFACE
It is time for some one to speak out. When we compare the condition and
prospects of Science in all its branches, its organization, its
standards, its aims, its representatives with those of Literature, how
deplorable and how humiliating is the contrast! In the one we see an
ordered realm, in the other mere chaos. The one, serious, strenuous,
progressive, is displaying an energy as wonderful in what it has
accomplished as in what it promises to accomplish; the other, without
soul, without conscience, without nerve, aimless, listless and decadent,
appears to be stagnating, almost entirely, into the monopoly of those
who are bent on futilizing and degrading it.
Science stands where it does, not simply by virtue of the genius, the
industry, the example of its most distinguished representatives, but
because by those representatives the whole sphere of its activity is
being directed and controlled. The care of the Universities, the care of
learned societies, the care of devoted enthusiasts, its interests and
honour are watchfully and jealously guarded. The qualifications of its
teachers are guaranteed by tests prescribed by the highest authorities
on the subjects professed. To standards fixed and maintained by those
authorities is referred every serious contribution to its literature.
Even a popular lecturer, or a popular writer, who undertook to be its
exponent would be exploded at once if he displayed ignorance and
incompetence. Such, indeed, is the solidarity of its energies that it is
rather in the degrees and phases of their manifestation than in their
essence and characteristics that they vary. There is not a scientific
institution in England the regulations and aims of which do not bear the
impress of such masters as Huxley and Tyndall and their disciples; not a
work issuing from the scientific Press which is not a proof of the
influence which such men have exercised and are exercising, and of the
high standard exacted and attained wherever Science is taught and
interpreted.
It is far otherwise with Literature. Those who represent it, in a sense
analogous to that in which the men who have been referred to represent
Science, have neither voice nor influence in its organization, as a
subject of instruction, at the centres of education. They neither give
it the ply, nor in any way affect its standards and its character in
practice and production. As examples few follow them, as counsellors no
one heeds them. They constitute what is little more than an esoteric
body, moving in a sphere of its own.
And yet there is no reason at all why there should not be the same
solidarity in the activity of Literature as there is in the activity of
Science, and why the standard of aim and attainment in the one should
not be as high as in the other. But this can never be accomplished until
certain radical reforms are instituted, and the first step towards
reform is to demonstrate the necessity for it. I have done so here. I
have drawn attention to the state of things in our Universities,--in
other words, to what I must take leave to call the scandalous and
incredible indifference of the Councils of those Universities to the
appeals which have, during the last fifteen years, been made to them to
place the study of Literature, in the proper sense of the term, upon the
footing on which they have placed other studies. I have pointed out what
have been, and what must continue to be, the effects of that
indifference. I have given specimens of the books to which the
Universities are not ashamed to affix their _imprimatur_, and I have
shown that, so far from them considering even their reputation involved
in such a matter, they do not scruple to circulate works teeming with
blunders and absurdities of the grossest kind, blunders and absurdities
to which their attention has been publicly called over and over again. I
have given specimens of the kind of works which the occupants of
distinguished Chairs of Literature can, with perfect impunity, address
to students; and I would ask any scientific man what would be thought of
a Professor, say, of the Royal Naval College, or of the City and Guilds
of London Institute, who should put his name to analogous
publications--to publications, that is to say, as unsound in their
theories, as inaccurate in their facts, as slovenly and perfunctory in
general execution, as those to which I have here directed attention? If
such things are done in the green tree, what is likely to be done in the
dry? or, as Chaucer puts it, “if gold ruste, what schal yren doo?” That
is one of the questions on which these essays may, perhaps, throw some
light.
To be misrepresented and misunderstood is the certain fate of a book
like this, and I am well aware of the responsibilities incurred in
undertaking it. It is very distasteful to me to give pain or cause
annoyance to any one, and, whether I am believed or not, I can say, with
strict truth, that I have not the smallest personal bias against any of
those whom I have censured most severely. I believe, for the reasons
already explained, that Belles Lettres are sinking deeper and deeper
into degradation, that they are gradually passing out of the hands of
their true representatives, and becoming almost the monopoly of their
false representatives, and that the consequence of this cannot but be
most disastrous to us as a nation, to our reputation in the World of
Letters, to taste, to tone, to morals. It is surely a shame and a crime
in any one, and more especially in men occupying positions of influence
and authority, to assist in the work of corruption, either by
deliberately writing bad books or by conniving, as critics, at the
production of bad books; and I am very sure it has become a duty, and an
imperative duty, to expose and denounce them.
These essays are partly a protest and partly an experiment. As a protest
they explain, and, I hope, justify themselves; as an experiment they are
an attempt to illustrate what we should be fortunate if we could see
more frequently illustrated by abler hands. They are a series of studies
in serious, patient, and absolutely impartial criticism, having for its
object a comprehensive survey of the vices and defects, as well as of
the merits, characteristic of current Belles Lettres. I do not suppose
that anything I have said will have the smallest effect on the present
generation, but on the rising generation I believe that much which has
been said will not be thrown away. In any case, what I was constrained
to write I have written. And it is my last word in a long controversy.
It remains to add that most of these essays appeared originally in the
_Saturday Review_, and I desire to express my thanks to the late and
present Editors, not merely for permission to reproduce the essays, but
for much kindness besides. Three appeared in the _Pall Mall Gazette_,
and one, the first essay on “English Literature at the Universities,” in
the _Nineteenth Century_; and my thanks are due to the Editor of the
_Pall Mall Gazette_ and to Mr. Knowles. But all of them have been
carefully revised and greatly enlarged, in some cases to more than
double their original form. The introductory essay is, with the
exception of the opening pages, in which I have drawn on an old article
of mine in the _Quarterly Review_, quite new; and, indeed, that may be
said of a great part of the volume.
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION
I regret to find that I have done M. Jusserand grave injustice in
censuring him for being ignorant of the existence of the _Speculum
Meditantis_, the MS. of which was identified after the publication of
his work.
LIST OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE PRESENT FUNCTIONS OF CRITICISM 13
II. ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITIES. PART I. 45
III. ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITIES. PART II. 76
IV. ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITIES. PART III. 84
V. OUR LITERARY GUIDES. PART I. 93
VI. OUR LITERARY GUIDES. PART II. 110
VII. LOG-ROLLING AND EDUCATION 133
VIII. OUR LITERARY GUIDES. PART III. 145
IX. THE NEW CRITICISM 151
X. THE GENTLE ART OF SELF-ADVERTISEMENT 158
XI. R. L. STEVENSON’S LETTERS 165
XII. LITERARY ICONOCLASM 172
XIII. WILLIAM DUNBAR 183
XIV. A GALLOP THROUGH ENGLISH LITERATURE 193
XV. DE QUINCEY AND HIS FRIENDS 203
XVI. LEE’S LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 211
XVII. SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS 219
XVIII. LANDSCAPE IN POETRY 236
XIX. AN APPRECIATION OF FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE 250
XX. ANCIENT GREEK AND MODERN LIFE 255
XXI. THE PRINCIPLES OF CRITICISM 270
XXII. WOMEN IN GREEK POETRY 283
XXIII. MR. STEPHEN PHILLIPS’ POEMS 294
XXIV. THE ILLUSTRIOUS OBSCURE 301
XXV. VIRGIL IN ENGLISH HEXAMETERS 308
XXVI. THE LATEST EDITION OF THOMSON 318
XXVII. CATULLUS AND LESBIA 335
XXVIII. THE RELIGION OF SHAKESPEARE 351
THE PRESENT FUNCTIONS OF CRITICISM
It may sound paradoxical to say that the more widely education spreads,
the more generally intelligent a nation becomes, the greater is the
danger to which Art and Letters are exposed. And yet how obviously is
this the case, and how easily is this explained. The quality of skilled
work depends mainly on the standard required of the workman. If his
judges and patrons belong to the discerning few who, knowing what is
excellent, are intolerant of everything which falls short of excellence,
the standard required will necessarily be a high one, and the standard
required will be the standard attained. In past times, for example, the
only men of letters who were respected formed a portion of that highly
cultivated class who will always be in the minority; and to that class,
and to that class only, they appealed. A community within a community,
they regarded the general public with as much indifference as the
general public regarded them, and wrote only for themselves, and for
those who stood on the same intellectual level as themselves. It was so
in the Athens of Pericles; it was so in the Rome of Augustus; it was so
in the Florence of the Medici; and a striking example of the same thing
is to be found in our own Elizabethan Dramatists. Though their bread
depended on the brutal and illiterate savages for whose amusement they
catered, they still talked the language of scholars and poets, and
forced their rude hearers to sit out works which could have been
intelligible only to scholars and poets. Each felt with pride that he
belonged to a great guild, which neither had, nor affected to have,
anything in common with the multitude. Each strove only for the applause
of those whose praise is not lightly given. Each spurred the other on.
When Marlowe worked, he worked with the fear of Greene before his eyes,
as Shakespeare was put on his mettle by Jonson, and Jonson by
Shakespeare. We owe _Hamlet_ and _Sejanus_, _Much Ado about Nothing_ and
the _Alchemist_, not to men who bid only for the suffrage of the mob,
but to men who stood in awe of the verdict which would be passed on them
by the company assembled at the Mermaid and the Devil.
As long as men of letters continue to form an intellectual aristocracy,
and, stimulated by mutual rivalry, strain every nerve to excel, and as
long also as they have no temptation to pander to the crowd, so long
will Literature maintain its dignity, and so long will the standard
attained in Literature be a high one. In the days of Dryden and Pope, in
the days even of Johnson and Gibbon, the greater part of the general
public either read nothing, or read nothing but politics and sermons.
The few who were interested in Poetry, in Criticism, in History, were,
as a rule, those who had received a learned education, men of highly
cultivated tastes and of considerable attainments. A writer, therefore,
who aspired to contribute to polite literature, had to choose between
finding no readers at all, and finding such readers as he was bound to
respect--between instant oblivion, and satisfying a class which,
composed of scholars, would have turned with contempt from writings
unworthy of scholars. A classical style, a refined tone, and an adequate
acquaintance with the chief authors of Ancient Rome and of Modern
France, were requisites, without which even a periodical essayist would
have had small hope of obtaining a hearing. Whoever will turn, we do not
say to the papers of Addison and his circle in the early part of the
last century, or to those of Chesterfield and his circle later on, but
to the average critical work of Cave’s and Dodsley’s hack writers,
cannot fail to be struck with its remarkable merit in point of literary
execution.
But as education spreads, a very different class of readers call into
being a very different class of writers. Men and women begin to seek in
books the amusement or excitement which they sought formerly in social
dissipation. To the old public of scholars succeeds a public, in which
every section of society has its representatives, and to provide this
vast body with the sort of reading which is acceptable to it, becomes a
thriving and lucrative calling. An immense literature springs up, which
has no other object than to catch the popular ear, and no higher aim
than to please for the moment. That perpetual craving for novelty, which
has in all ages been characteristic of the multitude, necessitates in
authors of this class a corresponding rapidity of production. The writer
of a single good book is soon forgotten by his contemporaries; but the
writer of a series of bad books is sure of reputation and emolument.
Indeed, a good book and a bad book stand, so far as the general public
is concerned, on precisely the same level, as they meet with precisely
the same fate. Each presents the attraction of a new title-page. Each is
glanced through, and tossed aside. Each is estimated not by its
intrinsic worth, but according to the skill with which it has been
puffed. Till within comparatively recent times this literature was, for
the most part, represented by novels and poems, and by those light and
desultory essays, sketches and _ana_, which are the staple commodity of
our magazines. And so long as it confined itself within these bounds it
did no mischief, and even some good. Flimsy and superficial though it
was, it had at least the merit of interesting thousands in Art and
Letters, who would otherwise have been indifferent to them. It afforded
nutriment to minds which would have rejected more solid fare. To men of
business and pleasure who, though no longer students, still retained the
tincture of early culture, it offered the most agreeable of all methods
of killing time, while scholars found in it welcome relaxation from
severer studies. It thus supplied a want. Presenting attractions not to
one class only, but to all classes, it grew on the world. Its patrons,
who half a century ago numbered thousands, now number millions.
And as it has grown in favour, it has grown in ambition. It is no longer
satisfied with the humble province which it once held, but is extending
its dominion in all directions. It has its representatives in every
department of Art and Letters. It has its poets, its critics, its
philosophers, its historians. It crowds not our club-tables and
news-stalls only, but our libraries. Thus what was originally a mere
excrescence on literature, in the proper sense of the term, has now
assumed proportions so gigantic, that it has not merely overshadowed
that literature, but threatens to supersede it.
No thoughtful man can contemplate the present condition of current
literature without disgust and alarm. We have still, indeed, lingering
among us a few masters whose works would have been an honour to any age;
and here and there among writers may be discerned men who are honourably
distinguished by a conscientious desire to excel, men who respect
themselves, and respect their calling. But to say that these are in the
minority, would be to give a very imperfect idea of the proportion which
their numbers bear to those who figure most prominently before the
public. They are, in truth, as tens are to myriads. Their comparative
insignificance is such, that they are powerless even to leaven the mass.
The position which they would have occupied half a century ago, and
which they may possibly occupy half a century hence, is now usurped by a
herd of scribblers who have succeeded, partly by sheer force of numbers,
and partly by judicious co-operation, in all but dominating literature.
Scarcely a day passes in which some book is not hurried into the world,
which owes its existence not to any desire on the part of its author to
add to the stores of useful literature, or even to a hope of obtaining
money, but simply to that paltry vanity which thrives on the sort of
homage of which society of a certain kind is not grudging, and which
knows no distinction between notoriety and fame. A few years ago a man
who contributed articles to a current periodical, or who delivered a
course of lectures, had, as a rule, the good sense to know that when
they had fulfilled the purpose for which they were originally intended,
the world had no more concern with them, and he would as soon have
thought of inflicting them in the shape of a volume on the public, as he
would have thought of issuing an edition of his private letters to his
friends. Now all is changed. The first article in the creed of a person
who has figured in either of these capacities, appears to be, that he is
bound to force himself into notice in the character of an author. And
this, happily for himself, but unhappily for the interests of
literature, he is able to do with perfect facility and with perfect
impunity. Books are speedily manufactured and as speedily reduced to
pulp. A worthless book may be as easily invested with those superficial
attractions which catch the eye of the crowd as a meritorious one. As
the general public are the willing dupes of puffers, it is no more
difficult to palm off on them the spurious wares of literary charlatans,
than it is to beguile them into purchasing the wares of any other kind
of charlatan. No one is interested in telling them the truth. Many, on
the contrary, are interested in deceiving them. As a rule, the men who
write bad books are the men who criticise bad books; and as they know
that what they mete out in their capacity of judges to-day is what will
in turn be meted out to them in their capacity of authors to-morrow, it
is not surprising that the relations between them should be similar to
those which Tacitus tells us existed between Vinius and
Tigellinus--“nulla innocentiæ cura, sed vices impunitatis.”
Meanwhile all those vile arts which were formerly confined to the
circulators of bad novels and bad poems are practised without shame. It
is shocking, it is disgusting to contemplate the devices to which many
men of letters will stoop for the sake of exalting themselves into a
factitious reputation. They will form cliques for the purpose of mutual
puffery. They will descend to the basest methods of self-advertisement.
And the evil is fast-spreading. Indeed, things have come to such a pass,
that persons of real merit, if they have the misfortune to depend on
their pens for a livelihood, must either submit to be elbowed and
jostled out of the field, or take part in the same ignoble scramble for
notoriety, and the same detestable system of mutual puffery. Thus
everything which formerly tended to raise the standard of literary
ambition and literary attainment has given place to everything which
tends to degrade it. The multitude now stand where the scholar once
stood. From the multitude emanate, to the multitude are addressed
two-thirds of the publications which pour forth, every year, from our
presses.
Viviamo scorti
Da mediocrità: sceso il sapiente,
E salita è la turba a un sol confine
Che il mondo agguaglia.
Matthew Arnold very truly observed, that one of the most unfortunate
tendencies of our time was the tendency to over-estimate the
performances of “the average man.” The over-estimation of these
performances is no longer a tendency, but an established custom.
Literature, in all its branches, is rapidly becoming his monopoly. As
judged and judge, as author and critic, there is every indication that
he will proceed from triumph to triumph, and establish his cult wherever
books are read. Now the only sphere in which “the average man” is
entitled to homage is a moral one, and he is most venerable when he is
passive and unambitious. But if ambition and the love of fame are
awakened in him, he is capable of becoming exceedingly corrupt and of
forfeiting every title to veneration. He is capable of resorting to all
the devices to which men are forced to resort in manufacturing
factitious reputations, to imposture, to fraud, to circulating false
currencies of his own, and to assisting others in the circulation of
theirs. Even when he is free from these vices, so far as their
deliberate practice is concerned, he is scarcely less mischievous, if he
be uncontrolled. To say that his standard is never likely to be a high
one, either with reference to his own achievements or with reference to
what he exacts from others, and to say that the systematic substitution
of inferior standards for high ones must affect literature and all that
is involved in its influence, most disastrously, is to say what will be
generally acknowledged. And he has everything, unhappily, in his
favour--numbers, influence, the spirit of the age. For one who sees
through him and takes his measure, there are thousands who do not: for
one who could discern the justice of an exposure of his shortcomings,
there are thousands who would attribute that exposure to personal enmity
and to dishonest motives. His power, indeed, is becoming almost
irresistible. The one thing which he and his fellows thoroughly
understand is the formidable advantage of co-operation. The consequence
is that there are probably not half a dozen reviews and newspapers now
left which they are not able practically to coerce. An editor is obliged
to assume honesty in those who contribute to his columns, and also to
avail himself of the services of men who can write good articles, if
they write bad books. In the first case, it is not open to him to
question the justice of the verdict pronounced; in the second case, the
courtesy of the gentleman very naturally and properly predominates,
under such circumstances, over public considerations--and how can truth
be told? Nor is this all. Assuming that an editor is free from such
ties, he has to consult the interests of his paper, to study
popularity, and not to estrange those who are, from a commercial point
of view, the mainstays of all our literary journals, those who advertise
in them,--the publishers. “If,” said an editor to me once, “I were to
tell the truth, as forcibly as I could wish to do, about the books sent
to me for review, in six months my proprietors would be in the
bankruptcy court.” It is in the power of the publishers to ruin any
literary journal. There is probably not a single Review in London which
would survive the withdrawal of the publishers’ advertisements.
A more honourable class of men than those who form the majority of the
London publishers does not exist, nor have the interests of Literature,
as distinguished from commercial interests, ever found heartier and more
ungrudging support, than they have long found in three or four of the
leading firms, and as they are now finding in two or three of the firms
which have been more recently established. But, unhappily, this is not
everywhere the case. While the firms, to which I have referred, have
never, in any way, attempted to interfere with the independence of
reviewers, others have made no secret of their intention to make their
patronage in advertisement dependent on favourable notices of their
publications. The strain of temptation and peril to which editors are
thus exposed may be estimated by the fact that, a flattering review may,
if supplemented by similar ones, put some three hundred a year into the
pockets of their proprietors, while severity and justice would involve a
corresponding loss. It need hardly be said that no editor of a
respectable review would allow any definite understanding of this kind
to exist, or that any publisher would ever dare to suggest it, but there
can be no doubt that such considerations have to be taken into account
almost universally, and place serious restraint on freedom of judgment.
There is, it is true, another aspect of this question. Publishers must
protect themselves. Though reviews offend much more frequently on the
side of dishonest and interested puffery, they are very often made the
vehicles of equally unscrupulous rancour and spite. If they do their
readers injustice, by attempting to foist bad books on them, they do
every one concerned injustice, by damning good ones. No one could blame
a publisher for declining to support a paper which was continually
making his books the subjects of unmerited attacks. But a publisher who
attempts to prevent the truth from being told, and so secures, or seeks
to secure, currency for his spurious wares, is guilty of an act which
borders closely on fraud.
Another circumstance very favourable to the encouragement of
inferiority, and not of inferiority only, but of charlatanism and
imposture, is the increasing tendency to regard nothing of importance
compared with the spirit of tolerance and charity. An all-embracing
philanthropy exempts nothing from its protection. Every one must be
good-natured. Severity, we are told, is quite out of fashion. Such
censors as the old reviewers are now mere anachronisms. It is vain to
plead that tolerance and charity must discriminate; that, like other
virtues, they may be abused, and that in their abuse they may become
immoral; that there are higher considerations than the feelings of
individuals; and that, if to give pain or annoyance admits of no
justification but necessity, necessity may exact their infliction as an
exigent duty.
But this spirit of tolerance and charity has also become attenuated into
the spirit of mere _laissez-faire_. We have no lack of real scholars and
of real critics, who see through the whole thing, and probably deplore
it; but they make no sign, look on with a sort of amused perplexity, and
do their own work, thankful, no doubt, sometimes, when it is oppressive,
that they need not be over-scrupulous about its quality. If,
occasionally, they get a little impatient and indulge their genius,
protest goes no further than sarcasm and irony, so fine that it is
intelligible only among themselves; while the objects of their satire,
as well as the general public, missing the one and misinterpreting the
other, take it all for applause. Resistance, it is said, is useless.
Literature is a trade. What has come was inevitable: _vive la
bagatelle_, and drift with the stream.
And now let us consider what are the results of all this. The first and
most important is the degradation of criticism. Criticism is to
Literature what legislation and government are to States. If they are in
able and honest hands all goes well; if they are in weak and dishonest
hands all is anarchy and mischief. And as government in a Republic, the
true analogy to the sphere of which we are speaking, is represented not
by those who form the minority in its councils, but by those who form
the majority, so in criticism, it is not on the few but on the many
among those who represent it, that its authority and influence depend.
And what are its characteristics in the hands of its prevailing
majority--in the hands of those who are its legislators in a realm
co-extensive with the reading world? It is not criticism at all. To
criticism, in the true sense of the term, it has no claim even to
approximation. It seems to have resolved itself into something which
wants a name,--something which is partly dithyramb and partly rhetoric.
Without standards, without touchstones, without principles, without
knowledge, it appears to be regarded as the one calling for which no
equipment and no training are needed. What a master of the art has
called the final fruit of careful discipline and of much experience is
assumed to come spontaneously. A man of literary tastes is born
cultured. A critic, like a poet, is the pure product of nature. Such
canons as these “critics” have are the mysterious and somewhat
perplexing evolutions of their own inner consciousness, or derived, not
from the study of classical writers in English or in any other language,
of all of whom they are probably profoundly ignorant, but from a current
acquaintance with the writings of contemporaries, who are, in
intelligence and performance, a little in advance of themselves. But
what they lack in attainments they make up in impudence. The effrontery
of some of these “critics,” whose verdicts, ludicrous to relate, are
daily recorded as “opinions of the Press,” literally exceeds belief.
They will sit in judgment on books written in languages of whose very
alphabets they are ignorant. They will pose as authorities and pronounce
_ex cathedrâ_ on subjects literary, historical, and scientific of which
they know nothing more than what they have contrived to pick up from the
works which they are “reviewing.” Their estimates of the books, on the
merits and demerits of which they undertake to enlighten the public,
correspond with their qualifications for forming them. Books displaying
in their writers the grossest ignorance of the very rudiments of the
subjects treated, and literally swarming with blunders and absurdities,
all of which pass undetected and unnoticed, are made the subjects of
elaborate panegyrics, which would need some qualification if applied to
the very classics in the subjects under discussion. Books, on the other
hand, of unusual and distinguished merit are despatched summarily in a
few lines of equally undeserved depreciation; books written in the worst
taste and in the vilest style are pronounced to be models of both.
Sobriety, measure, and discrimination have no place either in the creed
or in the practice of these writers. They think in superlatives; they
express themselves in superlatives. It never seems to occur to them that
if criticism has to reckon with Mr. Le Gallienne it has also to reckon
with Shakespeare; that if it has to take the measure of Mr. Hall Caine,
it has likewise to take the measure of Cervantes and Fielding, and that
of some dozen prose writers and poets, it cannot be pronounced, at the
same time of each, that he is “the greatest living master of English
prose,” or “without parallel for his superlative command of all the
resources of rhythmical expression.” There is one accomplishment in
which these critics are particularly adroit, and that is in keeping out
of controversy, and so avoiding all chance of being called to account.
For this reason they deal more in eulogy than in censure, for the public
is less likely to complain of a bad book being foisted on them for a
good one, than its irate author to sit silent under reproof.
If we go a little higher, things are almost as bad, if not quite so
ridiculous. In everything but in criticism it is necessary to
specialize. A man who posed as an authority on all the literatures of
the world, and on the history of every nation in the world, would be
very justly set down as an impostor. And yet pretentions which men would
be the first to ridicule, as private individuals, they do not scruple to
claim, as critics. An historical student enriches History with a volume
throwing new and important light on some obscure episode or period; a
classical student deserves the gratitude of scholars for an invaluable
monograph; English Literature or one of the Continental Literatures is
illustrated by a series of dissertations as instructive as they are
original; or a truly memorable contribution has been made to political
philosophy, to æsthetics, or to ethics. What is their fate? It is by no
means improbable that they will be ‘reviewed,’ in the course of a few
days, by the same man for three or four, or it may be for five or six,
daily and weekly journals, and their fortune in the market made or
marred by a censor who has probably done no more than glance at their
half-cut pages, and who, if he had studied them from end to end, would
have been no more competent to take their measure than he would have
been to write them. This leads, it is needless to say, to every kind of
abuse: to works which deserve to be authorities on the subjects of which
they treat dropping at once into oblivion, to works which every scholar
knows to be below contempt usurping their places; to the deprivation of
all stimulus to honourable exertion on the part of authors of ability
and industry; to the encouragement of charlatans and fribbles; to gross
impositions on the public. A very amusing and edifying record might be
compiled partly out of a selection of the various verdicts passed
contemporaneously by reviews on particular works, and partly out of
comparisons of the subsequent fortunes of works with their fortunes
while submitted to this censorship.
But it is not these causes only which contribute to the degradation of
criticism. A very important factor is the prevalence, or rather the
predominance, of mere prejudice, the prejudice of cliques in favour of
cliques, the prejudice of cliques against cliques, the prejudice of the
veteran against or in favour of the novice, the subsequent compensation,
in corresponding prejudice on the part of the novice, when his novitiate
is over. The two things which never seem to be considered are the
interests of Literature and the interests of the public. The appearance
of a work by the member of a particular coterie is the signal, on the
one hand, for a series of preposterously intemperate eulogies, and for a
series, on the other hand, of equally intemperate depreciations, in such
organs as are accessible to both parties. If a work, with any pretension
to originality, by a previously unknown author makes its appearance, it
is pretty sure to fare in one of three ways: it will scarcely be noticed
at all; it will be made the theme of a philippic against innovating
eccentricities and newfangled notions; or it will fall into the hands of
a critic who is on the look-out for a “discovery.” Its fortune, so far
as notoriety is concerned, will, in that case, be made. The critic, thus
on his mettle and with his character for discernment at stake, will not
only become proportionately vociferous but will rally his equally
vociferous partisans. Hyperbole will be heaped on hyperbole, rodomontade
on rodomontade, till real merit will be made ridiculous, and the unhappy
author awake at last, to assume his true proportions, in a Fool’s
Paradise.
And to this pass has criticism come, and Literature generally, in almost
all its branches, is necessarily following suit. It would be no
exaggeration to say, that the sole encouragement now left to authors to
produce good books is the satisfaction of their own conscience, and the
approbation of a few discerning judges; and this attained, they must
starve if their bread depends upon their pen. It is not that a good book
will not be praised, but that bad books are praised still more; it is
not that it will fail to find fair and competent reviewers, but that for
one fair and competent reviewer it will find fifty who are unfair and
incompetent. It is on its acceptance, not with the few who can estimate
its merits, but with the many who take that estimate on trust from
judges, whose competence or incompetence they are equally unable to
gauge, that the possibility of a book yielding any return to its author
depends. The public neither can nor will distinguish. A book which has
two or three favourable press notices which are merited cannot stand
against a book having twenty or thirty which are unmerited. Nor is this
all. Measured and discriminating eulogy, which means precisely what it
expresses, and which is always the note of sound and just criticism, is
to the uninitiated poor recommendation compared with that which has no
limitation but extremes. How can the still small voice of truth expect
to get a hearing amid a bellowing Babel of its undistinguishable mimic?
What inducement has an author to aim at excellence, to spend three or
four years on a monograph or a history that it may be sold for waste
paper, when some miserable compilation, vamped up in as many weeks,
will, with a little management, give him notoriety and fill his purse?
There is not a scholar, not a discerning reader in England who will not
bear me witness when I say that, as a rule, the best books produced in
Belles Lettres are those of which the general public knows nothing, and
that he has been guided to them sometimes by pure accident, and
sometimes, it may be, by a depreciatory notice or curt paragraph in
“our library table” limbo. And what does this mean? It means that a
writer has discovered that it is impossible for him to have a
conscience, or aim at an honourable reputation, unless he can afford to
lose money. It means more; it means that publishers are obliged to
discourage the production of solid and scholarly works. It is notorious
that the Delegates of the Clarendon Press at Oxford, and one or two
firms in London, having regard to the honourable traditions of their
predecessors, have wished to maintain those traditions by encouraging
the production of such works, and have, at a great pecuniary loss,
persevered in this ambition. But no publisher can continue to multiply
books which do not pay their expenses, and whose sale begins and ends in
the remainder market.
This state of things is the more deplorable when we consider its effect,
not merely in degrading and corrupting Literature on its productive
side, but in detracting so seriously from its efficacy on its
influential side. During the last few years the rapid spread of higher
education, the popularization of liberal culture through such agencies
as the University Extension Lectures, the National Home Reading Union
and similar institutions have called into being an immense and
constantly multiplying class of serious readers and students. These
already number tens of thousands, they will before long number hundreds
of thousands. Now it is of the utmost importance that these readers, who
are quite prepared to appreciate what is excellent, should be guided to
what is excellent, and discouraged in every way from conversing with
what is bad and inferior in Literature. But how is this to be done when
those who are striving, in every way, to raise the standard of popular
taste and of popular culture, as teachers, find all their efforts
counteracted by the intense activity of those who are doing their utmost
to degrade both, as writers. It is only those engaged in education, and
more particularly in popular education, who can understand the extent of
the mischief which bookmakers and the puffers of bookmakers are doing,
who can understand the tone, the taste, the temper induced by the
habitual and exclusive perusal of the writings characteristic of these
pests,--the inaccuracies and errors, the misrepresentations and
absurdities, to which these writings give currency.
In the days of our forefathers, a reader of literary tastes, if he
wished to acquaint himself with an English classic, went to the fountain
head and read Spenser or Milton, Pope or Addison for himself. If he
desired to know what criticism had said about them, he had criticism of
authority at hand, and he consulted it. In our day it is about an even
chance whether the ordinary reader would trouble himself to turn to the
originals or not: he would probably content himself with the notices of
them in some current manual of English Literature, or with some essay or
monograph. Now, in the myriads of such publications, in vogue or out of
vogue, knocked under by their successors or scuffling with their
contemporaries, he might have the luck to light on a good guide; he
might have the luck to light on Dean Church, or Mark Pattison, or Mr.
Leslie Stephen, or Professor Courthope, or Mr. Frederic Harrison; but he
is much more likely to make his way to a luminary in the last
well-puffed “series.” The first article in the creed of the modern
book-maker seems to be that the appearance or existence of a good book
is a sufficient justification for the production of a bad one to take
its place. An excellent monograph is published, and is popular. This is
the signal for the manufacture of half a dozen inferior ones, which are
mutually destructive, and serve no end except to substitute bad books
for a good one, and to make the good one forgotten. Again, a work which
has long been classical in criticism is assumed not to be “up to date,”
and is either edited on this hypothesis, or we have another substituted
for it. This in turn yields its vogue--for fashions change quickly in
modern taste--to a similar experiment, till a third is announced. Of the
relation of criticism to principles, or indeed to anything else but to
their own whims or impressions, these iconoclasts appear to be
profoundly unaware.
It requires, needless to say, the utmost wariness and care on the part
of those who regulate, and on the part of those who are engaged in,
education, to keep this inferior literature in its place. If it were
allowed to make its way authoritatively into our schools and
Universities, or indeed into any of our educational institutions, the
consequences would be most disastrous. It is not so much that it would
disseminate error as that it would become influential in more serious
ways, æsthetically in its influence on taste, morally in its influence
on tone and character, intellectually in lowering the whole standard of
aim and attainment in studies.
That the evils which have been described admit of no remedy at present,
or perhaps in the present generation, may be fully conceded. But they
may be palliated if they cannot be cured, and they must be palliated by
the agents to whom we may ultimately look for their cure, education and
fearless criticism. As their origin may be mainly ascribed to the
failure of the Universities to adapt themselves to new conditions, so on
the willingness of the Universities to repair their error must depend
all possibility of rectifying the results of it. From its organization
at the Universities everything comprehended in the system of liberal
study takes its ply; its standards are there determined, its methods
formulated, its aims defined. As a subject of teaching, and as the
result of teaching, in its relation to theory and in its relation to
practice, it there receives an impression which is permanent. It has
been so with classical scholarship, and with Philology; it has been so
with Philosophy and Theology, with Jurisprudence and History. What has
been imparted in the lecture-rooms of Oxford and Cambridge has orally,
and by the pen, become influential wherever these subjects are
represented. There is not an educational institute in Great Britain or
in the colonies, there is not a serious magazine or review on which it
has not set its seal. We have a striking illustration of this in the
case of Modern History. Some thirty years ago it was practically
unrepresented, either at Oxford or Cambridge. Since then its study has
been organized. What has been the result? It has become one of the most
flourishing branches of learning. It has reduced chaos to order; it has
raised its teaching, and by implication its literature, to a very high
standard; it has put the _canaille_ of sciolists and fribbles into their
proper place; while disciplining energy it has directed it to fruitful
objects; it has revolutionized the study of the whole subject.
Thus the condition and fortune of everything which is affected by
education depend on the Universities. All that they do, or neglect to
do, passes into precedent. There is nothing susceptible of educational
impression which does not take its colour and its characteristics from
them. They have made the subjects which are represented in their schools
what they are, and every intelligent English citizen proud and grateful.
But, owing to a disastrous confusion between two branches of study which
are radically and essentially distinct,--Philology and Belles
Lettres,--both Oxford and Cambridge have not only left unorganized, but
assisted in the degradation of studies, which are of as much concern,
and vital concern, to national life as any which are represented in
their Schools. To leave an important department of education
unrecognised in their system, is sufficient cause for surprise and
regret; but that they should be doing all in their power to prevent any
possibility of such a defect being supplied is deplorable. And yet this
is what is being done. That Chairs, Schools and Degrees may be
established in the interests of Philology, Philology is, by a palpable
fiction, identified with Literature. As the result of what the late
Professor Huxley denounced as “a fraud upon letters,” a Chair founded in
the interests of Literature was at Oxford appropriated by the
philologists. This has been followed by the establishment of a School,
in which all that can provide for the honour of Philology is blended
with all that contributes to the degradation of Literature; while, to
give further currency and authority to this absurd complication, the
approval of a thesis, on some subject pertaining purely to Philology,
entitles the writer to the diploma, not of a Doctor in Philology, but of
a Doctor in Literature!
Meanwhile, to make confusion worse confounded, the Universities, or, to
speak more correctly, a party in the Universities, are undertaking to
provide the country with teachers for the dissemination of literary
culture,--for the interpretation of Literature in the proper sense of
the term. Whether this is done competently or incompetently depends, of
course, and must depend purely on accident, on the willingness and
ability, that is to say, of individual teachers to educate themselves.
Common standards and common aims they have none. Each does what is right
in his own eyes. As some have graduated in the classical schools, some
in the Mediæval and Modern Languages Tripos, some in Modern History,
some in Moral Science or Theology, and some in nothing, there is
naturally much variety in their methods and aims.
But it is when we turn to the works in modern Belles Lettres, and more
particularly to those dealing with English Literature, which the
University Presses publish, that we realize the full significance of
this anarchy. It would not be going too far to say, that all which is
worst in current literature, when at its worst finds in some of these
works comprehensive illustration. It is indeed almost an even chance
whether a work issuing from those Presses is excellent, whether it is
indifferent, or whether it is executed with shameful incompetence.[1]
All, therefore, so far as Belles Lettres are concerned is chaos at the
Universities, and all consequently is chaos everywhere else.