foregoing quotation from Carlyle. Throughout he assumes that the matter
of the poet is no less important than his manner. And here again he
dwells on an aspect of literature that previous, and later, critics
have tended to throw into the shade. That Carlyle should have been led
to assert, and even at times to exaggerate, the claims of thought in
imaginative work was inevitable; and that, not only from his
temperament, but from those principles of his teaching that we have
already noticed. If the poetry of a nation be indeed the expression
of its spiritual aims, then it is clear that among those aims must be
numbered its craving to make the world intelligible to itself, and to
comprehend the working of God both within man and around him. Not that
Carlyle shows any disposition to limit "thought" to its more abstract
forms; on the contrary, it is on the sense of "music, love, and beauty"
that he specially insists. What he does demand is that these shall be
not merely outward adornments, but the instinctive utterance of a
deeper harmony within; that they shall be such as not merely to "furnish
a languid mind with fantastic shows and indolent emotions, but to
incorporate the everlasting reason of man in forms visible to his
sense, and suitable to it". [Footnote: Miscellanies, i. 297.] The
"reason" is no less necessary to poetry than its sensible form; and
whether its utterance be direct or indirect, that is a matter for the
genius of the individual poet to decide. _Gott und Welt_, we may be
sure Carlyle would have said, is poetry as legitimate as _Der Erlkonig_
or the songs of Mignon.
In this connection he more than once appeals to the doctrine of Fichte,
one of the few writers whom he was willing to recognize as his teachers.
"According to Fichte, there is a 'divine idea' pervading the visible
universe; which visible universe is indeed but its symbol and sensible
manifestation, having in itself no meaning, or even true existence
independent of it. To the mass of men this divine idea of the world
lies hidden; yet to discern it, to seize it, and live wholly in it,
is the condition of all genuine virtue, knowledge, freedom; and the
end, therefore, of all spiritual effort in every age. Literary men are
the appointed interpreters of this divine idea; a perpetual priesthood,
we might say, standing forth, generation after generation, as the
dispensers and living types of God's everlasting wisdom, to show it
in their writings and actions, in such particular form as their own
particular times require it in. For each age, by the law of its nature,
is different from every other age, and demands a different
representation of the divine idea, the essence of which is the same
in all; so that the literary man of one century is only by mediation
and reinterpretation applicable to the wants of another." [Footnote:
Ib., p. 69. There is a similar passage in the _Lectures on Heroes_
(Lec. v.), p. 145. In each case the reference is to Fichte's Lectures
_Ueber das Wesen des Gelehrten_ (1805), especially to lectures i.,
ii., and x,; Fichte's Werke, vi. 350-371, 439-447.]
The particular form of Fichte's teaching may still sound unfamiliar
enough. But in substance it has had the deepest influence on the aims
and methods of criticism; and, so far as England is concerned, this
is mainly due to the genius of Carlyle. Compare the criticism of the
last century with that of the present, and we at once see the change
that has come over the temper and instincts of Englishmen in this
matter.
When Johnson, or the reviewers of the next generation, quitted--as
they seldom did quit--the ground of external form and regularity and
logical coherence, it was only to ask: Is this work, this poem or this
novel, in conformity with the traditional conventions of respectability,
is it such as can be put into the hands of boys and girls? To them
this was the one ground on which the matter of literature, as apart
from the beggarly elements of its form, could come under the cognizance
of the critic. And this narrowness, a narrowness which belonged at
least in equal measure to the official criticism of the French,
naturally begot a reaction almost as narrow as itself. The cry of "art
for art's sake", a cry raised in France at the moment when Carlyle was
beginning his work in England, must be regarded as a protest against
the moralizing bigotry of the classical school no less than against
its antiquated formalities. The men who raised it were themselves not
free from the charge of formalism; but the forms they worshipped were
at least those inspired by the spontaneous genius of the artist, not
the mechanical rules inherited from the traditions of the past. Nor,
whatever may be the case with those who have taken it up in our own
day, must the cry be pressed too rigorously against the men of 1830.
The very man, on whom it was commonly fathered, was known to disavow
it; and certainly in his own works, in their burning humanity and their
"passion for reforming the world", was the first to set it at defiance.
[Footnote: See Hugo's _William Shakespeare_, p. 288.]
The moralist and the formalist still make their voice heard, and will
always do so. But since Carlyle wrote, it is certain that a wider, a
more fruitful, view of criticism has gained ground among us. And, if
it be asked where lies the precise difference between such a view and
that which satisfied the critics of an earlier day, the answer must
be, that we are no longer contented to rest upon the outward form of
a work of art, still less upon its conventional morality. We demand
to learn what is the idea, of which the outward form is the harmonious
utterance; and which, just because the form is individual, must itself
too have more or less of originality and power. We are resolved to
know what is the artist's peculiar fashion of conceiving life, what
is his insight, that which he has to teach us of God and man and nature.
"Poetry", said Wordsworth, "is the breath and finer spirit of all
knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance
of all Science." [Footnote: Preface to _Lyrical Ballads_ by Wordsworth:
Works, vi. 328.] And Wordsworth is echoed by Shelley. [Footnote: "Poetry
is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference
of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to
which all science must be referred."--Shelley, _Defence of Poetry_,
p. 33.] But it is again to Carlyle that we must turn for the explicit
application of these ideas to criticism:--
"Criticism has assumed a new form...; it proceeds on other principles,
and proposes to itself a higher aim. The grand question is not now a
question concerning the qualities of diction, the coherence of
metaphors, the fitness of sentiments, the general logical truth, in
a work of art, as it was some half-century ago among most critics;
neither is it a question mainly of a psychological sort, to be answered
by discovering and delineating the peculiar nature of the poet from
his poetry, as is usual with the best of our own critics at present:
[Footnote: A striking example of this method, the blending of criticism
with biography, is to be found in Carlyle's own Essay on Burns. The
significance of the method, in such hands as those of Carlyle, is that
it lays stress on the reality, the living force, of the poetry with
which it deals. It was the characteristic method of Sainte-Beuve; and
it may be questioned whether it did not often lead him far enough from
what can properly be called criticism;--into psychological studies,
spiced with scandal, or what a distinguished admirer is kind enough
to call "indiscretions". See M. Brunetiere, _L'Evolution des Genres_,
i. 236. This book is a sketch of the history of criticism in France,
and cannot be too warmly recommended to all who are interested in such
subjects,] but it is--not indeed exclusively, but inclusively of those
two other questions--properly and ultimately a question on the essence
and peculiar life of the poetry itself. The first of these questions,
as we see it answered, for instance, in the criticisms of Johnson and
Kames, relates, strictly speaking, to the _garment_ of poetry: the
second, indeed, to its _body_ and material existence, a much higher
point; but only the last to its _soul_ and spiritual existence, by
which alone can the body... be _informed_ with significance and rational
life. The problem is not now to determine by what mechanism Addison
composed sentences and struck out similitudes; but by what far finer
and more mysterious mechanism Shakespeare organized his dramas, and
gave life and individuality to his Ariel and his Hamlet? Wherein lies
that life; how have they attained that shape and individuality? Whence
comes that empyrean fire, which irradiates their whole being, and
pierces, at least in starry gleams, like a diviner thing, into all
hearts? Are these dramas of his not verisimilar only, but true; nay,
truer than reality itself, since the essence of unmixed reality is
bodied forth in them under more expressive symbols? What is this unity
of theirs; and can our deeper inspection discern it to be indivisible,
and existing by necessity, because each work springs, as it were, from
the general elements of all thought, and grows up therefrom into form
and expansion by its own growth? Not only who was the poet, and how
did he compose; but what and how was the poem, and why was it a poem
and not rhymed eloquence, creation and not figured passion? These are
the questions for the critic." [Footnote: Miscellanies, i. 60, 61
(1827).] And, a few pages later: "As an instance we might refer to
Goethe's criticism of Hamlet.... This truly is what may be called the
poetry of criticism: for it is in some sort also a creative art; aiming,
at least, to reproduce under a different shape the existing product
of the poet; painting to the intellect what already lay painted to the
heart and the imagination." [Footnote: Ib. p. 72.]
Instances of criticism, conceived in this spirit, are unhappily still
rare. But some of Coleridge's on Shakespeare, and some of Lamb's on
the Plays of the Elizabethan Dramatists--in particular _The Duchess
of Malfi_ and _The Broken Heart_--may fairly be ranked among them. So,
and with still less of hesitation, may Mr. Ruskin's rendering of the
_Last Judgment_ of Tintoret, and Mr. Pater's studies on Lionardo,
Michaelangelo, and Giorgione. Of these, Mr. Pater's achievement is
probably the most memorable; for it is an attempt, and an attempt of
surprising power and subtlety, to reproduce not merely the effect of
a single poem or picture, but the imaginative atmosphere, the spiritual
individuality, of the artist. In a sense still higher than would be
true even of the work done by Lamb and Ruskin, it deserves the praise
justly given by Carlyle to the masterpiece of Goethe; it is "the very
poetry of criticism".
We have now reviewed the whole circle traversed by criticism during
the present century, and are in a position to define its limits and
extent. We have seen that a change of method was at once the cause and
indication of a change in spirit and in aim. The narrow range of the
eighteenth century was enlarged on the one hand by the study of new
literatures, and on the other hand by that appeal to history, and that
idea of development which has so profoundly modified every field of
thought and knowledge. In that lay the change of method. And this, in
itself, was enough to suggest a wider tolerance, a greater readiness
to make allowance for differences of taste, whether as between nation
and nation or as between period and period, than had been possible for
men whose view was practically limited to Latin literature and to such
modern literatures as were professedly moulded upon the Latin. With
such diversity of material, the absolute standard, absurd enough in
any case, became altogether impossible to maintain. It was replaced
by the conception of a common instinct for beauty, modified in each
nation by the special circumstances of its temperament and history.
But even this does not cover the whole extent of the revolution in
critical ideas. Side by side with a more tolerant--and, it may be
added, a keener--judgment of artistic form, came a clearer sense of
the inseparable connection between form and matter, and the
impossibility of comprehending the form, if it be taken apart from the
matter, of a work of art. This, too, was in part the natural effect
of the historical method, one result of which was to establish a closer
correspondence between the thought of a nation and its art than had
hitherto been suspected. But it was in part also a consequence of the
intellectual and spiritual revolution of which Rousseau was the herald
and which, during fifty years, found in German philosophy at once its
strongest inspiration and its most articulate expression. Men were no
longer satisfied to explain to themselves what Carlyle calls the
"garment" and the "body" of art; they set themselves to pierce through
these to the soul and spirit within. They instinctively felt that the
art which lives is the art that gives man something to live by; and
that, just because its form is more significant than other of man's
utterances, it must have a deeper significance also in substance and
in purport. Of this purport _Criticism of life_--the phrase suggested
by one who was at once a poet and a critic--is doubtless an unhappy,
because a pedantic definition; and it is rather creation of life, than
the criticism of it, that art has to offer. But it must be life in all
its fulness and variety; as thought, no less than as action; as energy,
no less than as beauty--
As power, as love, as influencing soul.
This is the mission of art; and to unfold its working in the art of
all times and of all nations, to set it forth by intuition, by patient
reason, by every means at his command, is the function of the critic.
To have seen this, and to have marked out the way for its performance,
is not the least among the services rendered by Carlyle to his own
generation and to ours. Later critics can hardly be said to have yet
filled out the design that he laid. They have certainly not gone beyond
it.
ENGLISH LITERARY CRITICISM.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.
(1554-1586.)
I. AN APOLOGIE FOR POETRIE.
The _Apologie_ was probably written about 1580; Gosson's pamphlet,
which clearly suggested it, having appeared in 1579. Nothing need here
be added to what has been said in the Introduction.
When the right virtuous Edward Wotton and I were at the emperor's court
together, we gave ourselves to learn horsemanship of John Pietro
Pugliano: one that with great commendation had the place of an esquire
in his stable. And he, according to the fertileness of the Italian
wit, did not only afford us the demonstration of his practice, but
sought to enrich our minds with the contemplations therein, which he
thought most precious. But with none I remember mine ears were at any
time more laden, than when (either angered with slow payment, or moved
with our learner-like admiration) he exercised his speech in the praise
of his faculty. He said, soldiers were the noblest estate of mankind,
and horsemen, the noblest of soldiers. He said, they were the masters
of war, and ornaments of peace: speedy goers, and strong abiders,
triumphers both in camps and courts. Nay, to so unbelieved a point he
proceeded, as that no earthly thing bred such wonder to a prince, as
to be a good horseman. Skill of government was but a pedanteria in
comparison: then would he add certain praises, by telling what a
peerless beast a horse was. The only serviceable courtier without
flattery, the beast of most beauty, faithfulness, courage, and such
more, that, if I had not been a piece of a logician before I came to
him, I think he would have persuaded me to have wished myself a horse.
But thus much at least with his no few words he drove into me, that
self-love is better than any gilding to make that seem gorgeous, wherein
ourselves are parties. Wherein, if Pugliano his strong affection and
weak arguments will not satisfy you, I will give you a nearer example
of myself, who (I know not by what mischance) in these my not old years
and idlest times, having slipped into the title of a poet, am provoked
to say something unto you in the defence of that my unelected vocation;
which if I handle with more good will than good reasons, bear with me,
sith the scholar is to be pardoned that followeth the steps of his
master. And yet I must say that, as I have just cause to make a pitiful
defence of poor poetry, which from almost the highest estimation of
learning is fallen to be the laughing-stock of children, so have I
need to bring some more available proofs: sith the former is by no man
barred of his deserved credit, the silly latter hath had even the names
of philosophers used to the defacing of it, with great danger of civil
war among the muses. And first, truly to all them that professing
learning inveigh against poetry may justly be objected, that they go
very near to ungratefulness, to seek to deface that which, in the
noblest nations and languages that are known, hath been the first
light-giver to ignorance, and first nurse, whose milk by little and
little enabled them to feed afterwards of tougher knowledges: and will
they now play the hedgehog that, being received into the den, drove
out his host? or rather the vipers, that with their birth kill their
parents? Let learned Greece in any of her manifold sciences, be able
to show me one book, before Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiodus, all three
nothing else but poets. Nay, let any history be brought, that can say
any writers were there before them, if they were not men of the same
skill, as Orpheus, Linus, and some other are named: who having been
the first of that country, that made pens deliverers of their knowledge
to their posterity, may justly challenge to be called their fathers
in learning: for not only in time they had this priority (although in
itself antiquity be venerable) but went before them, as causes to draw
with their charming sweetness the wild untamed wits to an admiration
of knowledge. So as Amphion was said to move stone with his poetry,
to build Thebes. And Orpheus to be listened to by beasts indeed, stony
and beastly people. So among the Romans were Livius Andronicus, and
Ennius. So in the Italian language, the first that made it aspire to
be a treasure-house of science were the poets Dante, Boccace, and
Petrarch. So in our English were Gower and Chaucer.
After whom, encouraged and delighted with their excellent foregoing,
others have followed, to beautify our mother tongue, as well in the
same kind as in other arts. This did so notably show itself, that the
philosophers of Greece durst not a long time appear to the world but
under the masks of poets. So Thales, Empedocles, and Parmenides sang
their natural philosophy in verses: so did Pythagoras and Phocylides
their moral counsels: so did Tyrtaus in war matters, and Solon in
matters of policy: or rather, they being poets, did exercise their
delightful vein in those points of highest knowledge, which before
them lay hid to the world. For that wise Solon was directly a poet,
it is manifest, having written in verse the notable fable of the
Atlantic Island, which was continued by Plato.
And truly, even Plato, whosoever well considereth, shall find, that
in the body of his work, though the inside and strength were philosophy,
the skin as it were and beauty depended most of poetry: for all standeth
upon dialogues, wherein he feigneth many honest burgesses of Athens
to speak of such matters, that if they had been set on the rack, they
would never have confessed them. Besides, his poetical describing the
circumstances of their meetings, as the well ordering of a banquet,
the delicacy of a walk, with interlacing mere tales, as Gyges' ring,
and others, which who knows not to be the flowers of poetry, did never
walk into Apollo's garden.
And even historiographers (although their lips sound of things done,
and verity be written in their foreheads) have been glad to borrow
both fashion, and perchance weight, of poets. So Herodotus entitled
his history by the name of the nine Muses: and both he, and all the
rest that followed him, either stole or usurped of poetry their
passionate describing of passions, the many particularities of battles,
which no man could affirm: or if that be denied me, long orations put
in the mouths of great kings and captains, which it is certain they
never pronounced. So that truly, neither philosopher nor historiographer
could at the first have entered into the gates of popular judgments,
if they had not taken a great passport of poetry, which, in all nations
at this day where learning flourisheth not, is plain to be seen: in
all which they have some feeling of poetry. In Turkey, besides their
law-giving divines, they have no other writers but poets. In our
neighbour country Ireland, where truly learning goeth very bare, yet
are their poets held in a devout reverence. Even among the most
barbarous and simple Indians where no writing is, yet have they their
poets, who make and sing songs which they call areytos, both of their
ancestors' deeds, and praises of their Gods. A sufficient probability,
that, if ever learning come among them, it must be by having their
hard dull wits softened and sharpened with the sweet delights of poetry.
For until they find a pleasure in the exercises of the mind, great
promises of much knowledge will little persuade them, that know not
the fruits of knowledge. In Wales, the true remnant of the ancient
Britons, as there are good authorities to show the long time they had
poets, which they called bards: so through all the conquests of Romans,
Saxons, Danes, and Normans, some of whom did seek to ruin all memory
of learning from among them, yet do their poets, even to this day,
last; so as it is not more notable in soon beginning than in long
continuing. But since the authors of most of our sciences were the
Romans, and before them the Greeks, let us a little stand upon their
authorities, but even so far as to see what names they have given unto
this now scorned skill.
Among the Romans a poet was called _vates_, which is as much as a
diviner, fore-seer, or prophet, as by his conjoined words _vaticinium_
and _vaticinari_ is manifest: so heavenly a title did that excellent
people bestow upon this heart-ravishing knowledge. And so far were
they carried into the admiration thereof, that they thought in the
chanceable hitting upon any such verses great foretokens of their
following fortunes were placed. Whereupon grew the word of _Sortes
Virgilianae_, when, by sudden opening Virgil's book, they lighted upon
any verse of his making, whereof the histories of the emperors' lives
are full: as of Albinus the governor of our island, who in his childhood
met with this verse
_Arma amens capio nee sat rationis in armis:_
and in his age performed it; which although it were a very vain and
godless superstition, as also it was to think that spirits were
commanded by such verses (whereupon this word charms, derived of
_Carmina_, cometh), so yet serveth it to show the great reverence those
wits were held in. And altogether not without ground, since both the
oracles of Delphos and Sibylla's prophecies were wholly delivered in
verses. For that same exquisite observing of number and measure in
words, and that high-flying liberty of conceit proper to the Poet, did
seem to have some divine force in it.
And may not I presume a little further, to show the reasonableness of
this word _vates_? And say that the holy David's Psalms are a divine
poem? If I do, I shall not do it without the testimony of great learned
men, both ancient and modern: but even the name Psalms will speak for
me; which being interpreted is nothing but songs. Then that it is fully
written in metre, as all learned Hebricians agree, although the rules
be not yet fully found. Lastly and principally, his handling his
prophecy, which is merely poetical. For what else is the awaking his
musical instruments? The often and free changing of persons? His notable
prosopopeias, when he maketh you, as it were, see God coming in His
majesty? His telling of the beasts' joyfulness, and hills leaping, but
a heavenly poesy: wherein almost he showeth himself a passionate lover
of that unspeakable and everlasting beauty to be seen by the eyes of
the mind, only cleared by faith? But truly now having named him, I
fear me I seem to profane that holy name, applying it to poetry, which
is among us thrown down to so ridiculous an estimation: but they that
with quiet judgments will look a little deeper into it, shall find the
end and working of it such as, being rightly applied, deserveth not
to be scourged out of the Church of God.
But now, let us see how the Greeks named it, and how they deemed of
it. The Greeks called him a poet, which name hath, as the most
excellent, gone through other languages. It cometh of this word
_poiein_, which is, to make: wherein I know not, whether by luck or
wisdom, we Englishmen have met with the Greeks, in calling him a maker:
which name, how high and incomparable a title it is, I had rather were
known by marking the scope of other sciences, than by my partial
allegation.