Gibbon: “Perhaps he leaned on the strength of his style too much, and
_sacrificed the abstract to the concrete_.” Of all historians who have
ever lived, Gibbon is the most “abstract” and has most sacrificed the
“concrete” to the “abstract,” as every student of history knows. On a
par with this is the prodigious statement (p. 291) that there is “an
absence of emotional imagination” in Burke! That excellent man, Mr.
Pecksniff, was, we are told, in the habit of using any word that
occurred to him as having a fine sound and rounding a sentence well,
without much care for its meaning; “and this,” says his biographer “he
did so boldly and in such an imposing manner that he would sometimes
stagger the wisest people and make them gasp again.” This is precisely
Mr. Gosse’s method. About the propriety of his epithets and statements,
so long as they sound well, he never troubles himself; sometimes they
are so vague as to mean anything, as often they have no meaning at all,
as here: “His [that is Shelley’s] style, carefully considered, is seen
to rest on a basis built about 1760, from which it is every moment
springing and sparkling, like a fountain, in columns of ebullient
lyricism.” Could pure nonsense go further? We have another illustration
of the same audacity of absurd assertion on page 260. We are there
informed--Mr. Gosse is speaking of our prose literature about the centre
of the eighteenth century--that “Philosophy by this time had become
detached from _belles lettres_; it was now quite indifferent to those
who practised it, whether their sentences were harmonious or no....
Philosophy in fact quitted literature.” If there was any period in our
prose literature when philosophy was in the closest alliance with belles
lettres, and was most studious of the graces of style, it was between
about 1750 and 1771. In those years appeared Hutcheson’s _System of
Moral Philosophy_, Adam Smith’s _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, one of the
most eloquent philosophical treatises ever written, Burke’s _Treatise on
the Sublime and Beautiful_, Reid’s _Inquiry into the Human Mind_,
Tucker’s _Light of Nature Pursued_, Beattie’s _Essay on Truth_, to say
nothing of Hume’s _Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals_, his
_Political Discourses_, and his _Natural History of Religion_, all of
them works pre-eminently distinguished by the graces of style, while so
far from philosophy quitting belles lettres, it was during these years
that the foundations of philosophical criticism were laid by Burke,
Harris, Hurd, Kames, and others. Mr. Gosse appears to have forgotten
that he had himself told us (p. 205) that Shaftesbury’s style set the
example of the prose which was to mark the central years of the century!
Thus again Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_ is “an entertaining neurotic
compendium”; Bacon’s _Essays_ are “often mere notations ... enlarged in
many cases merely to receive the impressions of a Machiavellian
ingenuity.” Shelley’s _Triumph of Life_ is “a noble but vague gnomic
poem, in which Petrarch’s Trionfi are summed up and sometimes excelled.”
Keats’ “great odes are Titanic and Titianic.” On page 284 we are
informed that for fifteen years after the close of 1800 “poetry may be
said to have been stationary in England.” When we remember that within
these years appeared the best of Wordsworth’s poems, the best of
Coleridge’s, the best of Scott’s, the best of Crabbe’s, the first two
cantos of _Childe Harold_, the best of Campbell’s, the best of Moore’s,
and of Southey’s--we wonder what can be meant, till we read on to find
that it was “on the contrary extremely active.” But “its activity took
the form of the gradual acceptance of the new romantic ideas, the slow
expulsion of the old classic taste, and the multiplication of examples
of what had once for all been supremely accomplished in the hollows of
the Quantocks.” In other words, its activity took the form of its
activity, and its activity led to its becoming stationary. Mr. Gosse is
sometimes solemnly oracular, as here: “It is a sentimental error to
suppose that the winds of God blow only through the green tree; it is
sometimes the dry tree which is peculiarly favourable to their passage.”
It is not sometimes, we submit, but always that the dry tree will be
most propitious to their passage. But we like Mr. Gosse best when he is
eloquent, as here: “In the chapel of Milton’s brain, entirely devoted
though it was to a Biblical form of worship, there were flutes and
trumpets to accompany one vast commanding organ.” No wonder poor Milton
suffered, as we know he did suffer, from insomnia!
The statement that “so miserable is the poverty of the first half of the
seventeenth century, when we have mentioned Pecock and Capgrave, there
is no other prose writer to be named,” is bad enough. But to sum up
Pecock’s work with the remark, “the matter is paradoxical and
casuistical reasoning on controversial points, in which he secures the
sympathy neither of the new thought nor the old,” is to demonstrate that
Mr. Gosse knows nothing whatever about it. The _Repressor_ is in many
important respects one of the most remarkable works in our early prose
Literature. It would be interesting to know what is the meaning of the
following: “The masterpiece of Chillingworth stands almost alone in a
sort of underwood of Theophrastian character sketches.” Does Mr. Gosse
suppose that English prose Literature in and about 1637 is represented
by Hall’s _Characters of Vices and Virtues_, by Sir Thomas Overbury’s
_Characters_, and by Earle’s _Microcosmographie_, which appeared
respectively, not in and about 1637, but in 1608, in 1614, and in 1628?
If this was the underwood in which Chillingworth’s work stood, it stood
also in a dense forest represented by some of the most celebrated prose
writings of the seventeenth century, such as the greater part of the
writings of Bacon and of Raleigh, the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Selden’s
_Titles of Honour_ and _Mare Clausum_, Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s _De
Veritate_, Feltham’s _Resolves_, the best of Hall’s writings, Purchas’
_Pilgrims_, Barclay’s _Argenis_, the Histories of Speed, Stowe, Hayward,
and Raleigh, Heylin’s _Microcosmus_, Prynne’s _Histrio-Mastix_, and the
famous sermons of Lancelot Andrewes, all of which appeared between 1608
and 1637. These are the sort of remarks in which Mr. Gosse habitually
indulges. We have another example in the following: “Shelley’s attitude
to style is in the main retrograde,” a generalization based on the fact
that he was no admirer of “the arabesque of the cockney school.” But
were Shelley’s chief contemporaries admirers of the arabesque of the
cockney school, or were they affected by it? Was Wordsworth, was
Coleridge, or Southey, or Byron, or Crabbe, or Campbell, or Landor?--a
question which Mr. Gosse probably never stopped to ask himself. On a par
with this is the absurd assertion that “English poetry was born again
during the autumn months of 1797.” The appearance of the _Lyrical
Ballads_ did not make, but mark, an era in our poetry. The revolution of
which they were the expression had been maturing, as surely but
distinctly as the social and political revolution marked by the assembly
of the States-General ten years before. There was hardly a note struck
in the _Lyrical Ballads_ which had not been struck in our poetry between
1740 and the date of their appearance.
To call this compilation a _History of Modern English Literature_ is
ludicrous. Mr. Gosse has no conception even of the eras into which our
Literature naturally falls, or of the movements which in each of those
eras defined themselves. Nothing could be more misleading and inadequate
than the accounts given of the historians, theologians, philosophers,
and critics, many of whom--nay, whole schools of whom--are not noticed
at all. Sidney’s epoch-marking little treatise is dismissed in four
unmeaning lines as “an urbane and eloquent essay, which labours under
but one disadvantage, namely, that when it was composed in 1581 there
was scarcely any poesy in England to be defended. This was posthumously
printed in 1595.” Ben Jonson’s not less remarkable _Discoveries_ are not
even mentioned. How writers like Bacon, Hooker, Hobbes, Locke, and
Berkeley fare we have not space to illustrate. Mr. Gosse, indeed,
judging by his excursions into the realms of theology and philosophy,
has certainly been wise to assign more space to _The Flower and the
Leaf_ than is assigned to Hobbes, Barrow, Butler, and Paley put
together. We have by no means exhausted the list of blunders and
absurdities to be found in this book; but we have, we fear, exhausted
the patience of our readers, and we must bring our examination of it to
a close.
The melancholy thing about all this is the perfect impunity with which
such works as these can be given to the public. We have not the smallest
doubt that this book has been extolled to the skies in reviews which
have not detected a single error in it, and which have accepted its
generalizations and its criticisms with unquestioning credulity; and we
have as little doubt that those scholars who have discerned its defects
and absurdities have chosen, from motives possibly of kindness, possibly
of prudence, and possibly in mere contempt, to maintain silence about
them. Had it appeared twenty years ago, it would instantly have been
exposed and exploded, indeed no writer would have dared to insult
serious readers by such a publication. What every reader has a right to
demand from those who take upon themselves to instruct him are
sincerity, industry, and competence; and what no critic has a right to
condone is ostentatious indifference on the part of an author to the
responsibilities incurred by him in undertaking to teach the public.
The sooner Mr. Gosse, and writers like Mr. Gosse, come to understand
that, however ingeniously expressed, reckless generalizations, random
assertions and the specious semblance of knowledge, erudition, and
authority may pass current for a time, but are certain at last to be
detected and exposed, the better for themselves and the better for their
readers. If, too, they wish justice to be done to the accomplishments
which they really possess, they will do well to remember what is implied
in the proverb _Ne sutor ultra crepidam_, and what the Germans mean by
VERMESSENHEIT.
LOG-ROLLING AND EDUCATION
We see no objection to Mutual Admiration Societies; they are
institutions which afford much pleasure, and can, as a rule, do little
harm. If vanity be a foible, it is a foible well worth cherishing, and
will be treated tenderly even by a philosopher. For, of all the
illusions which give a zest to life, the illusions created by this
flattering passion are the most delightful and inspiring. They are so
easily evoked; they respond with such impartial obsequiousness to the
call of the humblest magician. He has but to speak the word--and they
are made; to command--and they are created. A becomes what B and C
pronounce him to be, and what A and C have done for B, that will B and A
do in turn for C. It is a delicious occupation, no doubt, a feast for
each, in which no crude surfeit reigns, where, in Bacon’s phrase,
satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable; it is like
the herbage in the Paradise of the Spanish poet, “quanto mas se goza
mas renace,”--the more we enjoy it the more it grows. It is an old
game--“Vetus fabula per novos histriones”:--
“’Twas, ‘Sir, your law,’ and ‘Sir, your eloquence,’
‘Yours Cowper’s manner and yours Talbot’s sense’;
Thus we dispose of all poetic merit:
Yours Milton’s genius and mine Homer’s spirit.
Walk with respect behind, while we at ease
Weave laurel crowns and take what name we please.
‘My dear Tibullus!’ if that will not do,
Let me be Horace, and be Ovid you.”
And there is this advantage. If a sufficient number of magicians can, or
will, combine, these illusions may not only serve each magician for
life, but become, for a time, simply indistinguishable from realities.
Now, as we said before, we see no great harm in this. It is, to say the
least, a very amiable and brotherly employment; and were it quite
disinterested and honest, it would be closely allied with that virtue
which St. Paul exalts above all virtues. But everything has or ought to
have its limits. When Boswell attempted to defend certain Methodists who
had been expelled from the University of Oxford, Johnson retorted that
the University was perfectly right--“They were examined, and found to be
mighty ignorant fellows.” “But,” said Boswell, “was it not hard to expel
them? for I am told they were good beings.” “I believe,” replied the
sage, “that they might be good beings, but they were not fit to be in
the University of Oxford. A cow is a very good animal in the field, but
we turn her out of a garden.”
To our certain knowledge many of those who owe their reputation to the
art to which we are referring are good beings, and we have little doubt
that most of those who are least scrupulous in practising it are good
beings also. Indeed it may be conceded at once that there is always a
strong presumption that members of Mutual Admiration Societies belong to
this class. On the reciprocity of essentially Christian virtues their
very existence depends. Whatever may be thought of their heads, their
hearts are pretty sure to be in the right place. They may, it is true,
act more in the spirit of the precept that we should do unto others as
we would they should do unto us than in that of the precept which
pronounces that it is more blessed to give than to receive. This,
however, is a trifle--one of those distinctions without differences
which are so common in Christian ethics. But for ourselves we must, as
we have said before, discriminate. To the cow in the field we have no
objection; it is of the cow in the garden that we complain.
To drop metaphor: there are certain spheres of literary activity in
which the circulation of mutual puffery by this clique or by that
clique can do comparatively little harm to any one or to anything.
There are some subjects on which every reader is not only perfectly
competent to form his own judgment, but is pretty certain to do so. He
may amuse himself by seeing what the critics have to say, and he may be
induced by them in the first instance to turn to the book which is in
question, but he is practically unaffected by any opinions unless they
happen to coincide with his own. Such is the case with books of travel,
with novels, and, as a rule, with poetry. Here the arts of the
log-roller are as harmless as the frolics of whales with tubs. No one
takes what he sees seriously except those who are engaged in the
pastime. If Mr. A cannot give the general public what it appreciates,
nothing that Mr. B can say will cajole that public into believing that
it has what it has not. Mr. C and Mr. D may vociferate, till they are
hoarse, that “Mr. E is the subtlest and most discriminating critic that
the English-speaking world has ever known”; but if Mr. E’s eulogies of
Mr. C’s verses and of Mr. D’s novels are not corroborated by the general
reader’s independent judgment, the fame of Messrs. C and D will not
extend beyond their clique. If in poetry or prose fiction trash
succeeds, as it undoubtedly does, it succeeds not because of the skill
with which it has been puffed, though this may be a factor in its
success, but because it hits the popular taste. The public is seldom
deceived except when it wishes to be deceived. Log-rolling has much to
answer for: it loads our bookstalls with nonsense and rubbish, it
impedes the production of sound literature, it degrades the standard of
taste, it degrades the standard of aim and attainment, and indirectly it
is in every way mischievous to literature. But we very much question
whether in the case of publications which appeal directly to general
readers, and are within the scope of their judgments, the fortune of a
book is in any way affected by the arts of the log-roller. Amusement
mingled with impatience is probably the prevailing sentiment when Mr. C
and Mr. D are loud in each other’s praises. We remember the amœbæan
strains of Hayley and Miss Seward in Porson’s epigram:--
_Miss Seward_: Tuneful poet, Britain’s glory;
Mr. Hayley, that is you.
_Mr. Hayley_: Ma’am, you carry all before you;
Trust me, Lichfield Swan, you do.
* * * * *
_Miss Seward_: Ode, didactic, epic, sonnet;
Mr. Hayley, you’re divine.
_Mr. Hayley_: Ma’am, I’ll take my oath upon it,
You yourself are all the nine.
Or, in a less good-natured mood, we may perhaps recall with a certain
satisfaction Pope’s cruel but pathetic picture of the minor log-rollers
of his day:--
Next plunged a feeble but a desperate pack,
With each a sickly brother at his back.
Sons of a day! just buoyant on the flood,
Then numbered with the puppies in the mud.
But there are certain subjects and certain spheres in which the arts of
the log-roller, if equally contemptible, are not quite so harmless.
During the last fifteen years the Press has been teeming with books
designed to circulate among readers who are seriously interested in
_belles lettres_ and criticism. Some of them have appeared as volumes in
a series, some as independent monographs and manuals, and some in the
humbler forms of editorial introductions and notes. Among them may be
found works of really distinguished scholars, and works in every way
worthy of such scholars; and it is no doubt works like these which have
given credit and authority generally to publications of this kind. The
popularity of these productions has been extraordinary, and their
manufacture has become one of the most lucrative of hackney employments.
Nor is this all. Their professed purpose is the dissemination of serious
instruction, is to become text-books in literary history and in literary
criticism; and, as text-books on those subjects, they have made their
way, or are making their way, not merely into our public libraries, but
also into the libraries of nearly every educational institute in
England. Indeed it would not be too much to say that if, among general
readers, about eighty in every hundred derive almost all they know about
English literature, both historically and critically, from these
volumes, in our schools and colleges, the average number of those whose
studies are and ought to be independent of them is yearly diminishing.
It is of these text-books and of the responsibilities incurred by those
who produce and circulate them that we wish to speak.
We have already commented on the distinction which must be drawn between
what is best and what is inferior in the publications to which we have
been referring; and, in truth, the difference is one not of degree but
in kind. As our desire is, in Swift’s phrase, to lash the vice but spare
the name, we shall not specify the works which we have selected as
typical of log-rolling in relation to education. Till we saw them we had
no conception of the lengths to which this sort of thing has run.
Ostensibly the works before us are critical and biographical monographs
designed to become text-books for students of English literature; they
may be more correctly described as complete epitomes of the art of
puffery. The writers begin by assuming that the objects of their
ludicrous adulation--who are, like themselves, contributors of the
average order to current periodicals, and the authors of monographs
similar to their own--are by general consent critics of classical
authority. The most deferential references are made to them in almost
every page. Now it is “Goethe and Mr. So-and-so have observed,” or
“Coleridge has remarked, but Mr. So-and-so is inclined to think,” etc.
Sometimes it assumes the form of a sort of awful reverence, as “Mr.
So-and-so is a little uncertain, but surely he more than hints,” or “Mr.
So-and-so, as we all know, was once of opinion, though he has recently
found reason to alter,” etc. We saw not long ago in the notes to a
certain edition of a classical author: “Socrates and Mr. X---- _of
Trinity_ have observed,” etc. Occasionally this homage expresses
itself--and this is more serious--in the form of long extracts from Mr.
So-and-so’s writings. Nothing is more common in works like these than to
find critics and writers of classical authority either completely
ignored, or, if cited at all, cited only in the connection which we have
indicated. That the gentlemen who are the subjects of this grotesque
flattery either have paid or will pay their friends in kind may, of
course, be taken for granted. Thus one factitious reputation builds up
another, and one bad book ushers in twenty which are worse.
Macaulay has an amusing passage in which he has collected the names of
those who, according to Horace Walpole, were “the first writers” in
England in 1753. It might have been expected that Hume, Fielding, Dr.
Johnson, Richardson, Smollett, Collins, and Gray would at least have had
a place among them. Not at all. They were Lord Bath, Mr. W. Whithed, Sir
Charles Williams, Mr. Soame Jenyngs, Mr. Cambridge, and Mr. Coventry; in
other words, a clique of politicians and men of fashion of the very
titles of whose writings even a reader tolerably well read in the
literature of those times might excusably be ignorant. We are not
exaggerating when we say that this system of strenuous and well-directed
mutual puffery is, in our own time, leading to similarly perverted
conceptions about the relative position of those who owe their celebrity
to these ignoble arts and those on whose fame Time’s test has set its
seal, not merely on the part of the general public, but on the part of
those who are responsible for the books introduced into schools and
educational institutes. We will give an illustration.
At a meeting held not long ago, for the purpose of prescribing books for
a Reading Society, the choice lay between some of Johnson’s Lives,
Select Essays by Sainte Beuve, and Select Essays by Matthew Arnold on
the one hand, and on the other certain books typical of the literature
of which we have been speaking. The debate which ensued was very
amusing. A member of the committee, a gentleman of conservative temper,
strongly urged the claims of Johnson, Sainte Beuve, and Arnold, on the
ground that it was the duty of the Society to encourage the study of
what was excellent and of classical quality, especially in criticism;
that it was not merely the information contained in a book which had to
be considered, but the style, the tone, the touch; that the monographs
proposed as an alternative could scarcely be regarded as of the first
order, either in expression or in matter, for he had observed, though he
had only glanced at them, several solecisms in grammar and several
inaccuracies of statement; and he concluded by adding that other
writings of these particular authors with which he happened to be more
familiar had not prejudiced him in their favour. Upon that, another
member of the council, who had been busily conning the Press notices
inserted in the monographs in question, pleaded their claim to
preference. “Dr. Johnson,” he remarked, “was no doubt a great man in his
day, but his day had long been over; no one read him now. Sainte Beuve
and Matthew Arnold might be classical and all that, but they were not up
to date.” He could not talk as an expert on literary matters, and
therefore he would not contradict what the former speaker had said,
“but there could be no doubt that Messrs. So-and-so,” the authors of the
monographs in question, “were very big men--bigger men, I should think
(glancing at the Press notices in his hand), than Sainte Beuve and
Matthew Arnold. At any rate, everybody has heard of them; and,” he
continued, “listen to this.” He then proceeded to read out some of the
notices, adding that it was difficult, if he might say so without
offence, to reconcile what his friend, the preceding speaker, had said
with what was said in these notices. He was a little staggered--for,
though a simple, he was a shrewd man--when the very remarkable
similarity between Mr. A’s eulogies of Mr. B and Mr. B’s eulogies of Mr.
A was pointed out to him, and when, in reference to anonymous testimony,
he was reminded that one voice may have many echoes. It was generally
felt, more especially as Mr. A or Mr. B had, we believe, more than one
acquaintance among the committee, that the debate was taking rather an
embarrassing turn. The question was then put to the vote, and the
monographs were carried by a majority of three to one.
What occurred at this meeting is occurring every day, variously
modified, wherever the choice of books is in question, whether in public
libraries or in educational institutions. A literature, the sole
credentials of which are derived from those who produce and circulate
it, is gradually superseding that of our classics. We seem in truth to
be losing all sense of the essential distinction between the writings of
the average man of letters and those of the masters.
OUR LITERARY GUIDES
III. BOOKS WORTH READING[20]
[Footnote 20: _Books Worth Reading._ A Plea for the Best and an Essay
towards Selection, with Short Introductions. By Frank W. Raffety,
London.]