most amusing books which it has ever been our fortune to meet with. Of
Mr. Frank W. Raffety we have not the honour to know anything, except
what we have gathered from this little volume and from its title-page.
But he must be a singularly interesting gentleman. His enthusiasm for
books, his portentous ignorance of them; his strenuous desire to improve
the popular taste by pleading for the best, his instinctive tendency to
make in all cases for the worst; his sublime intolerance of everything
in literature which falls short of excellence, his more than sublime
indifference to the commonest rules of grammar and syntax in expressing
that intolerance; the _naïveté_, the frankness, the recklessness with
which he displays his incompetence for the task which he has
undertaken--in these qualifications and accomplishments Mr. Raffety is
not perhaps alone, but he has certainly no superior.
Mr. Raffety aspires to guide his readers through the chief literatures
of the world. Now the task of a reviewer, who has a conscience, is not
always a cheerful one, and we confess that, when we had generally
surveyed Mr. Raffety’s work, we resolved to amuse ourselves by trying to
discover of which of the literatures, to which Mr. Raffety constitutes
himself a guide, Mr. Raffety is probably most ignorant. It is a nice
point. Let our readers judge. We will begin with Mr. Raffety and the
Classics. Of Theognis, the most voluminous of the Greek Gnomic poets, it
is said that “only a few sentences”--Mr. Raffety is presumably under the
impression that Theognis wrote in prose--“quoted in the works of Plato
and others survive.” “The Greek Anthology,” we are astounded to learn,
“is by Lord Neaves” and “is one of the best volumes in the A.C.E.R.
series.” What Mr. Raffety no doubt means is, that Lord Neaves is the
author of a monograph on the Greek anthology, as he certainly was. With
regard to Herodotus, Mr. Raffety has evidently got some information not
generally accessible. His _History_, we are told, “is a great prose
epic.... The second book is of the most interest. In other works are the
histories of Crœsus, Cyrus,” etc. It would be interesting to know
what other works besides his _History_ Herodotus has left. Of the
_Prometheus Bound_ of Æschylus Mr. Raffety gives the following
interesting account. It contains, he says, “the story of Prometheus and
his defiance of Jupiter, who condemned him to be bound to a rock, where
he died rather than yield.” We exhort Mr. Raffety, before his work
passes into a second edition, to consult his Classical Dictionary.
Of the translations recommended by Mr. Raffety we should very much like
to get a sight of the translation of Pindar by Calverley, of the joint
translation of the same classic by Messrs. E. Myers and A. Lang, and of
the joint translation of Thucydides “by Jowett and Rev. H. Dale, 2
vols.” Of Herodotus, of Æschylus, of Sophocles, of Pindar, of Polybius,
of Demosthenes, what are, by general consent, esteemed the best
translations are not so much as mentioned. Latin literature fares even
worse in the hands of our guide. Mr. Raffety appears to know no more
about Catullus than that he was a writer of epigrams. Such trifles as
the _Attis_, the _Peleus and Thetis_, the Julia and Manlius marriage
song, the _Coma Berenices_, the love lyrics and threnodies he does not
condescend to notice. In “guiding” his readers to translations of
Lucretius and Juvenal, Munro’s version of the first in prose and
Gifford’s version of the second in verse--which Conington pronounced to
be the best version of any Roman classic in our language--are not so
much as referred to. Nor, again, in the case of Plautus and Terence,
are the excellent versions of Thornton and Coleman noticed. Tacitus, who
is oddly described as “the foremost man of the day,” an estimate which
might have pleased but which would certainly have surprised him,
chronicled, we are told, “the foundation of the Christian religion.” Mr.
Raffety’s assurance on this point will probably disappoint inquisitive
readers. Equally surprising are the portions of the work dealing with
the modern literatures. In the course of these we learn that “the
_Nibelungen Lied_ is the oldest drama in Europe”; that the
_Areopagitica_ and the _Defence of the People of England_ are Milton’s
best prose writings--Mr. Raffety apparently not being aware that the
second work is in Latin, and that if he means the first _Defence_, it is
anything but one of the best of Milton’s writings. We are also informed
that Dryden was most valuable as a translator from the Greek and Latin;
Dryden’s versions from the Greek begin and end with paraphrases of four
Idylls of Theocritus, the first book of the _Iliad_ and the parting of
Hector and Andromache from the sixth, and are notoriously the very worst
things he ever did.
Sometimes Mr. Raffety fairly takes our breath away, as when he informs
us that Gray’s tomb can be seen in the little churchyard of Stoke Pogis
“with the _Elegy_ written upon it.” Can Mr. Raffety be acquainted with
the length of the _Elegy_ and with the proportions of a tombstone?
Chaucer, we are informed, wrote some poems in Italian. We should very
much like to see them, and so probably would Professor Skeat, for they
appear to have escaped the notice of all Chaucer’s editors. Swift’s
_Tale of a Tub_ was written, we are told, “against the teaching of
Hobbes!”
It is indeed impossible to open this book anywhere without alighting on
some most discreditable blunder or absurdity. Thus we are informed that
Macaulay’s essay on Burleigh treats of the time of James I.--Burleigh,
as we need hardly say, dying nearly five years before James came to the
throne, and Macaulay’s essay having no reference at all to James I.’s
time. “There is,” says Mr. Raffety, “no more stirring lyric than _The
Cotter’s Saturday Night_,” a remark which shows that Mr. Raffety does
not know what a lyric poem is. But to look for blunders in Mr. Raffety’s
pages would be to look for leaves in a summer forest. His critical
remarks and biographical notes are truly delightful. We wish we had
space to quote some of them. Of their general quality the following
profound remark is a fair specimen:--“Dante requires study, and an
endeavour after appreciation.” Mr. Raffety is always anxious to conduct
his readers by short cuts and to save them trouble. Macaulay’s _Essays_,
for example, should be read before his _History_; “they will be more
easily tackled,” he says, “than the _History_ in the first instance.”
But on the subject of Gibbon Mr. Raffety is adamant, being fully of the
late Professor Freeman’s opinion--“Whatever else is read, Gibbon must be
read.” How Gibbon is to be read, or why Gibbon is to be read, or in what
edition he should be read, Mr. Raffety does not explain.
Now, what possible end can be served by books like these, except to
misguide and misinform? Here is a writer, who certainly leaves us with
the impression that he cannot read the Greek and Latin classics in the
original, setting up as a director of classical study, and pronouncing
_ex cathedrâ_ on the merits of translations of these classics. His
knowledge of the modern literature is, as is abundantly manifest, though
we have neither space nor patience to illustrate, equally insufficient
and unsubstantial, and yet he undertakes to initiate and guide the
inexperienced in these studies. This book is presented to the public in
a most attractive form, being excellently printed on excellent paper,
and will naturally be taken seriously by those to whom it appeals. It is
for this reason that we also have felt it our duty to take it seriously.
And, as we believe that every bad book stands in the way of a good one,
we can promise Mr. Raffety, and writers like Mr. Raffety, that we shall
continue to take them seriously.
THE NEW CRITICISM[21]
[Footnote 21: _Retrospective Reviews._ A Literary Log. By Richard Le
Gallienne. 2 vols.]
Nearly two thousand years ago Horace observed that, though every calling
presupposed some qualification in those who followed it, and a man who
knew nothing of marine affairs would not undertake to manage a ship, or
a man who knew nothing of drugs to compound prescriptions, yet everybody
fancied himself competent to commence poet. Qualified or unqualified, at
it we all go, he complains, and scribble verses. But times have changed,
and those who in Horace’s day were the pests of poetry, with which they
could amuse themselves without mischief, have now become the pests of
another kind of literature in which their diversions are not quite so
harmless. Where the poetaster once stood the criticaster now stands. The
transformation of the one pest into the other, where they do not, as
they often do, become both, is easily accounted for, and as Dr. Johnson
has so excellently explained it, we cannot do better than transcribe
his words. “Criticism,” says the Doctor, “is a study by which men grow
important and formidable at a very small expense. The power of invention
has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those
sciences which may by mere labour be attained is too great to be
willingly endured; but every man can exert such judgment as he has upon
the works of others, and he whom nature has made weak and idleness keeps
ignorant may yet support his vanity by the name of critic.” But
criticasters and their patrons have improved on this--for “he whom
nature has made weak and idleness keeps ignorant” may, in our time, not
merely support his vanity, but support himself.
Till we inspected the volumes before us, we had really no conception of
the pass to which things have now come in so-called criticism. The
writer sits in judgment on most of the authors who have, during recent
years, been before the public. He passes sentence not merely on current
novelists, poets, and essayists, but on some of our classics, and on
books like the late Mr. Pater’s _Lectures on Plato and Platonism_ and
Dr. Wharton’s edition of _Sappho_. To any acquaintance with the
principles of criticism, to any conception of criticism in relation to
principles, to any learning, to any scholarship, to any knowledge of the
history of literature and of the masterpieces of literature, either in
our own language or in other languages, he has not the smallest
pretension. Nor does he allow this to be gathered simply from the work
itself, where it is, needless to say, abundantly apparent, but with a
_naïveté_ and impudence which are at once ludicrous and exasperating he
glories in his ignorance. Literature and its interpretation are to him
what the Bible and its interpretation were to the ranting sectaries of
Dryden’s satire. In its explanation knowledge and learning were folly,
nothing was needed but “grace.”
“No measure ta’en from knowledge, all from grace,
Study and pains were now no more their care,
Texts were explained by fasting and by prayer.”
So to our critic knowledge and learning are of equal unimportance--nay,
equally contemptible--and all that is needed to take the measure of
Plato and Wordsworth is, in his own words, “the capacity for
appreciation.” With this very slender outfit he sits down to the work of
criticism, to enlighten the world _de omni scibili_ in literature, from
the lyrics of _Sappho_, “the singer, a single petal of whose rose is
more than the whole rose-garden of later women singers,” to “the
statesmanlike reach and grasp” of Mr. E. Gosse’s essays.
To discuss seriously the opinions or impressions of a writer of this
kind would be as absurd as to attempt to fight gnats with a sword, and
we shall merely content ourselves with transcribing, without comment, a
few of the aphorisms with which these volumes are studded. “Criticism is
the art of praise.” “Shakespeare is the greatest English poet, not
because he created Hamlet and Lear, but because he could write that
speech about Perdita’s flowers and Claudio’s speech on death in _Measure
for Measure_.” “The perfection of prose is the essay, of poetry the
lyric, and the most beautiful book is that which contains the most
beautiful words.” These specimens will probably suffice. Mr. Le
Gallienne is also of opinion that “culture is mainly a matter of
temperament”--that “a man is born cultured,” that mere education and
study are to such a one not simply superfluities, but impertinences.
“What matters it,” he eloquently asks, “that one does not remember or
even has never read great writers? Our one concern is to possess an
organization open to great and refined impressions.” A paltry scholar,
for example, may be able to construe Sappho, but it is only “an
organization open to great and refined impressions” which can discern
(in a crib) “the pathos of eternity in some twenty words” of “this
passionate singer of Lesbos.” Plato may be studied by poor pedants, but
to an organization of this kind the binding of a volume is sufficient
enlightenment; “to merely hold in the hand and turn over its pages is a
counsel in style,” for do not “the temperate beauty, the dry beauty
beloved of Plato, find expression in the sweet and stately volume
itself” [he is “reviewing” the late Mr. Pater’s lectures on Plato],
“with its smooth night-blue binding, its rose-leaf yellow pages, its
soft and yet grave type”? The value of Mr. Le Gallienne’s judgments, of
his praise, and of his censure, which, ludicrous to relate, are quoted
by some publishers as recommendations, or “opinions of the press,” may
be estimated by these dicta, and by this theory of a critical education.
Macaulay somewhere speaks of a certain nondescript broth which, in some
Continental inns, was kept constantly boiling, and copiously poured,
without distinction, on every dish as it came up to table. The writer of
these essays appears, metaphorically speaking, to be provided with a
similar abomination. Whatever be his theme, poem, essay, novel, picture,
he contrives to serve it up with the same condiment, a sickly and
nauseous compound of preciosity and sentimentalism.
The melancholy thing about all this is the profound unconsciousness on
the part of the author of these volumes that he is exciting ridicule;
that he is, in Shakespeare’s phrase, making himself a motley to the
view. But there are considerations more melancholy still. We should not
have noticed these volumes had they not been representative and typical
of a school of so-called critics which is becoming more and more
prominent. Incredible as it may seem, there are certain sections of
literary society and of the general public which take Mr. Le Gallienne
and his dicta quite seriously, and to which the prodigious nonsense in
these volumes does not present itself as absurdity, but as the articles
of a creed. These essays have, moreover, appeared in publications the
names of some of which carry authority. It is, therefore, high time that
some stand should be made, some protest entered against writings which
cannot fail to corrupt popular taste and to degrade the standard of
popular literature. Of one thing we are very certain, that no
self-respecting literary journal which undertook to review these volumes
could allow them to pass without denunciation.
Of Mr. Le Gallienne we know nothing personally. He is, if we are rightly
informed, still a young man, and we would in all kindness exhort him to
turn the abilities which he undoubtedly possesses to better account.
There is much in these essays which shows that he was intended for
something better than to further the decadence. If, instead of sneering
at scholars, affecting to despise learning and study, indulging in silly
paradoxes, tinsel epigrams, and absurd generalisations, he would read
and think, and endeavour to do justice to himself and to his
opportunities, he might, we make no doubt, obtain an honourable
reputation. There is much which is attractive in his work, and in the
personality reflected in it. He is not a charlatan, for though he is
ignorant, he is honest. Genial and sympathetic, he has much real
critical insight, and, in going through his volumes, we have noted many
remarks which were both sound and fine. At its best his style is
excellent,--clear, lively, and engaging. Let him cease to play the
buffoon, which can only end in his gaining the applause of mere fools
and the contempt of every one else.
THE GENTLE ART OF SELF-ADVERTISEMENT
The illustrious Barnum once observed that, if a man’s capital consisted
of a shilling, one penny of that shilling should be spent in purchasing
something, and the remaining eleven-pence should be invested in
advertising what was purchased. There was, perhaps, a touch of
exaggeration in that great man’s remark, but it was founded on a
profound knowledge both of human nature and of the world. Intrinsically
nothing is valuable; things are what we make or imagine them. Even the
diamond, as a costly commodity, exists on suffrage. If a man cannot
persuade his fellow-creatures that he has genius, talent, learning,
“’twere all alike as if he had them not.” What Persius asks with a
sneer, “Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter?”--is your
knowledge nothing, unless some one else know that you are knowing?--a
wiser man would ask in all seriousness. Shakespeare was never nearer the
truth than when he wrote--
“No man is the lord of anything,
Though in and of him there be much consisting,
Till he communicates his parts to others;
Nor doth he of himself know them for aught,
Till he behold them formed in the applause
Where they are extended.”
And never was a man more mistaken than the old preacher who said to his
congregation, “If you have a talent in your napkin, you should take care
not to hide it; but if you have no talent, but only a napkin, you should
not so flourish your napkin as to create the impression that it is full
of talents.” Why, this is just what nine men in ten who court fame have
to do. Nature is kind, but seldom profuse. If she really endows a man
with what, if trumpeted, would make him famous, the odds are she couples
with her gifts pride, modesty, or self-respect, which, to say the least,
heavily handicap him in the race for reputation. When she does not endow
with the reality, she compensates by bestowing the power of acquiring
the credit for it. She is, as a rule, much too thrifty to heap on the
same man the keen pleasures of genuine enthusiasm and the sweets of
popular applause. An impartial mother, she loves all her children, and
divides her favours equally between shams and true men. This Churchill
marks in his brutal way; speaking of a certain contemporary, he
describes him as endowed with
“That low cunning which in fools supplies,
And amply too, the place of being wise,
Which Nature, kind, indulgent parent, gave
To qualify the blockhead for a knave.”
But our business is not with knaves and blockheads, but with “gentler
cattle,” and the quotation demands an apology.
The importance of the art of self-advertisement, as must be abundantly
clear from the preceding remarks, can scarcely be overestimated. Though
it is perhaps still in its infancy, its progress during the last few
years has been most encouraging. The old coarse methods so familiar to
us in the past, and still successfully practised in the present--we mean
mutual admiration cliques, log-rolling, and what is vulgarly known as
“pulling the strings”--have been greatly improved upon and refined.
Bentley’s famous remark when, explaining how it was that he took to
commentating, he said, that as he despaired of standing on his own legs
in the Temple of Fame, he got on to the shoulders of the Ancients,
appears to have suggested one of the most ingenious of modern
expedients. This consists of “getting up” a memorial to some
distinguished man--a statue, it may be, or modest bust. Some labour,
some ability, and some learning are involved in the more cumbrous device
of Bentley. But here all is simple and very easy. You are on the
shoulders of your great man at a bound, and stand side by side with him
in a trice. There is nothing which redounds to his credit which does
not redound to your own. As the Red Indian is under the impression that
in possessing himself of a scalp he possesses himself of the virtues
belonging to the former owner of the scalp, so this tribute of
enthusiastic admiration quietly assumes, without trouble, all that
enthusiastic admiration naturally implies. Is the object of your homage
a poet, a critic, a scholar, the very fact that you pay him homage is,
in itself, testimony of your own right to one or other of these
honourable titles. If, moreover it should happen that you know very
little about the writings of the author whom you have elected to honour,
this is of no consequence; for of all the disguises which ignorance can
assume, “enthusiasm” is the most effective. Nor are these the only
advantages of this particular method of getting reputation. The
collection of subscriptions and the formation of a committee bring you
into contact, or may, if judiciously managed, bring you into contact
with all your distinguished contemporaries; and we know what the proverb
says--“Noscitur a sociis”--a man is what his companions are.
But nothing is more effectual, for purposes of self-advertisement, than
a device which has lately been practised with signal success. This
consists of scraping up an acquaintance with some person, whose name is
not unknown to the public,--even a second-rate novelist will do--and
waiting till he dies. As there is a tide in the affairs of men, so, as
we all know, there is a moment at the demise of literary men when the
voracity of public curiosity knows neither distinction nor satiety. This
is the moment for the self-advertiser to nick; this is the time for him
to float, with his defunct friend, on the lips of men. He will find
readers for anything he may choose to print--that letter with its
exquisite compliments, that conversation in which his poor attainments
were so generously over-estimated, or the importance of his slight
literary services so much exaggerated. Of course, the value of such
advertisements will be in proportion to the eminence of the subject of
the reminiscences--and happy, thrice happy, those who were able to turn
men like Darwin, Tennyson, and Browning to this account; their
reputation may be regarded as made. But it is not always necessary to
wait till great men die, though it is an experiment too bold and
perilous for most aspirants to make this sort of capital out of them
while they are still alive. Still _audentes fortuna juvat_, and it has
been done. A certain minor poet published in an American magazine, not
many years ago, an article entitled “A Day with Lord Tennyson,” in which
he represented the Laureate as turning the conversation on his (the
minor bard’s) poetry. We are told how the great man, after fervently
reiterating a stanza of that minor bard which pleased him, requested his
son to take it down in writing; how that son, though the day was cold
and blowy, took it down; how Tennyson grasped, at parting, his brother
poet’s hand, and begged in transport that he would “come again and come
often.” He came, we believe, no more. But what of that? He had
accomplished a feat so simple and yet so original that it may fairly be
questioned whether what Mr. Burnum used to call his masterpiece was in
any way comparable to it. To interview a great man, even on an
assumption of equality, is, as we all know, a comparatively easy matter,
but to turn the conversation of the great man into a seasonable puff of
yourself requires a combination of qualities not often united in a
single person. The worst of feats like these is that they must have a
tendency to make great men a little shy of encouraging the acquaintance
of those to whom they can be so useful. But simplicity, as Thucydides
remarks, is one of the chief ingredients of greatness, and it is a
quality very difficult to wear out.