A book belongs in a peculiar manner to the age and nation that produce
it. It is an emanation of the thought of the time; and if it survive
to an after-time, it remains as a landmark of the progress of the
imagination or the intellect. Some books do even more than this: they
press forward to the future age, and make appeals to its maturer
genius; but in so doing they still belong to their own--they still
wear the garb which stamps them as appertaining to a particular epoch.
Of that epoch, it is true, they are, intellectually, the flower and
chief; they are the expression of its finer spirit, and serve as a
link between the two generations of the past and the future; but of
that future--so much changed in habits, and feelings, and
knowledge--they can never, even when acting as guides and teachers,
form an essential part: there is always some bond of sympathy wanting.
A single glance at our own great books will illustrate this--books
which are constantly reprinted, without which no library can be
tolerated--which are still, generation after generation, the objects
of the national worship, and are popularly supposed to afford a
universal and unfailing standard of excellence in the various
departments of literature. These books, although pored over as a task
and a study by the few, are rarely opened and never read by the many:
they are known the least by those who reverence them most. They are,
in short, idols, and their worship is not a faith, but a superstition.
This kind of belief is not shaken even by experience. When a devourer
of the novels of Scott, for instance, takes up _Tom Jones_, he, after
a vain attempt to read, may lay it down with a feeling of surprise and
dissatisfaction; but _Tom Jones_ remains still to his convictions 'an
epic in prose,' the fiction _par excellence_ of the language. As for
_Clarissa Harlowe_ and _Sir Charles Grandison_, we have not heard of
any common reader in our generation who has had the hardihood even to
open the volumes; but Richardson as well as Fielding retains his
original niche among the gods of romance; and we find Scott himself
one of the high-priests of the worship. When wandering once upon the
continent, we were thrown for several days into the company of an
English clergyman, who had provided himself, as the best possible
model in description, with a copy of Spenser; and it was curious to
observe the pertinacity with which, from time to time, he drew forth
his treasure, and the weariness with which in a few minutes he
returned it to his pocket. Yet our reverend friend, we have no doubt,
went home with his faith in Spenser unshaken, and recommends it to
this day as the most delightful of all companions for a journey.
In the present century, the French and German critics have begun to
place this reverential feeling for the 'classics' of a language upon a
more rational basis. In estimating an author, they throw themselves
back into the times in which he wrote; they determine his place among
the spirits of his own age; and ascertain the practical influence his
works have exercised over those of succeeding generations. In short,
they judge him relatively, not absolutely; and thus convert an
unreasoning superstition into a sober faith. We do not require to be
told that in every book destined to survive its author, there are here
and there gleams of nature that belong to all time; but the body of
the work is after the fashion of the age that produced it; and he who
is unacquainted with the thought of that age, will always judge amiss.
In England, we are still in the bonds of the last century, and it is
surprising what an amount of affectation mingles with criticism even
of the highest pretensions. It is no wonder, then, that common readers
should be mistaken in their book-worship. To such persons, for all
their blind reverence, Dante must in reality be a wild beast--a fine
animal, it is true, but still a wild beast--and our own Milton a
polemical pedant arguing by the light of poetry. To such readers, the
spectacle of Ugolino devouring the head of Ruggieri, and wiping his
jaws with the hair that he might tell his story, cannot fail to give a
feeling of horror and disgust, which even the glorious wings of
Dante's angels--the most sublime of all such creations--would fail to
chase away. The poetry of the Divine Comedy belongs to nature; its
superstition, intolerance, and fanaticism, to the thirteenth century.
These last have either passed away from the modern world or they exist
in new forms, and with the first alone can we have any real healthy
sympathy.
One of our literary idols is Shakspeare--perhaps the greatest of them
all; but although the most universal of poets, his works, taken in the
mass, belong to the age of Queen Elizabeth, not to ours. A critic has
well said, that if Shakspeare were now living, he would manifest the
same dramatic power, but under different forms; and his taste, his
knowledge, and his beliefs would all be different. This, however, is
not the opinion of the book-worshippers: it is not the poetry alone of
Shakspeare, but the work bodily, which is preeminent with them; not
that which is universal in his genius, but that likewise which is
restricted by the fetters of time and country. The commentators, in
the same way, find it their business to bring up his shortcomings to
his ideal character, not to account for their existence by the manners
and prejudices of his age, or the literary models on which his taste
was formed. It would be easy to run over, in this way, the list of
all our great authors, and to shew that book-worship, as
contradistinguished from a wise and discriminating respect, is nothing
more than a vulgar superstition.
We are the more inclined to put forth these ideas, at a time when
reprints are the order of the day--when speculators, with a singular
blindness, are ready to take hold of almost anything that comes in
their way without the expense of copyright. It would be far more
judicious to employ persons of a correct and elegant taste to separate
the local and temporary from the universal and immortal part of our
classics, and give us, in an independent form, what belongs to
ourselves and to all time. A movement was made some years ago in this
direction by Mr Craik, who printed in one of Charles Knight's
publications a summary of the _Faëry Queen_, converting the prosaic
portions into prose, and giving only the true poetry in the rich and
musical verses of Spenser. A travelling companion like this, we
venture to assure our clerical friend, would not be pocketed so
wearily as the original work. The harmony of the divine poet would
saturate his heart and beam from his eyes; and when wandering where we
met him, among the storied ruins of the Rhine, he would have by his
side not the man Spenser, surrounded by the prejudices and rudenesses
of his age, but the spirit Spenser, discoursing to and with the
universal heart of nature. Leigh Hunt, with more originality--more of
the quality men call genius, but a less correct perception of what is
really wanted--has done the same thing for the great Italian poets;
and in his sparkling pages Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, and the rest of the
tuneful train, appear unfettered by the more unpleasing peculiarities
of their mortal time. But the criticism by which their steps are
attended, though full of grace and acuteness, is absolute, not
relative. They are judged by a standard of taste and feeling existing
in the author's mind: the _Inferno_ is a magnificent caldron of
everything base and detestable in human nature; and the _Orlando_, a
paradise of love, beauty, and delight. Dante, the sublime poet, but
inexorable bigot, meets with little tolerance from Leigh Hunt; while
Ariosto, exhaustless in his wealth, ardent and exulting--full of the
same excess of life which in youth sends the blood dancing and boiling
through the veins--has his warmest sympathy. This kind of criticism is
but a new form of the error we have pointed out; for both poets
receive his homage--the one praised in the spontaneous outpourings of
his heart, the other served with the rites of devil-worship.
When we talk of the great authors of one generation pressing forward
to claim the sympathy of the _maturer_ genius of the next, we mean
precisely what we say. We are well aware that some of the great
writers we have casually mentioned have no equals in the present
world; yet the present world is more mature in point of taste than
their own. That is the reason why they _are_ great authors now. Some
books last for a season, some for a generation, some for an age, or
two, or more; always dropping off when the time they reach outstrips
them. One of these lost treasures is sometimes reprinted; but if this
is done in the hope of a renewed popularity, the speculation is sure
to fail. Curious and studious men, it is true, are gratified by the
reproduction; but the general reader would prefer a book of his own
generation, using the former as materials, and separating its immortal
part from its perishing body.
And the general reader, be it remembered, is virtually the age. It is
for him the studious think, the imaginative invent, the tuneful sing:
beyond him there is no appeal but to the future. He is superstitious,
as we have seen, but his gods are few and traditional. He determines
to make a stand somewhere; and it is necessary for him to do so, if he
would not encumber his literary Olympus with a Hindoo-like pantheon of
millions. But how voracious is this general reader in regard to the
effusions of his own day! What will become of the myriads of books
that have passed through our own unworthy hands? How many of them will
survive to the next generation? How many will continue to float still
further down the stream of time? How many will attain the honour of
the apotheosis? And will they coexist in this exalted state with the
old objects of worship? This last is a pregnant question; for each
generation will in all probability furnish its quota of the great
books of the language, and, if so, a reform in the superstition we
have exposed is no longer a matter of mere expedience, but of
necessity. We are aware that all this will be pronounced rank heresy
by those who assume the style of critics, who usually make a
prodigious outcry when a great author is mutilated, even by expunging
a word which modern decency excludes from the vocabulary of social and
family intercourse. This word, however--supposing it to represent the
mortal and perishing part of an author's productions--belongs not to
him, but to his age; not to the intellectual man, but to the external
and fleeting manners of his day and generation. Such critics usually
take credit to themselves for a peculiarly large and liberal spirit;
but there seems to us, on the contrary, to be something mean and
restricted in views that regard the man as an individual, not as a
portion of the genius which belongs to the world. Yet, even as an
individual, the man is safe in his entirety, for there is no project
of cancelling the printed works extant in our libraries, public and
private. The true question simply is: Are great authors to be allowed
to become practically obsolete--and many of them have become so
already--while we stand upon the delicacies and ceremonies of
Book-worship?