We have witnessed the malignant influence of illiberal criticism, not
only on literary men, but over literature itself, since it is the
actual cause of suppressing works which lie neglected, though
completed by their authors. The arts of literary condemnation, as they
may be practised by men of wit and arrogance, are well known; and it
is much less difficult than it is criminal, to scare the modest man of
learning, and to rack the man of genius, in that bright vision of
authorship sometimes indulged in the calm of their studies--a generous
emotion to inspire a generous purpose! With suppressed indignation,
shrinking from the press, such have condemned themselves to a
Carthusian silence; but the public will gain as little by silent
authors as by a community of lazy monks; or a choir of singers who
insist they have lost their voice. That undue severity of criticism
which diminishes the number of good authors, is a greater calamity
than even that mawkish panegyric which may invite indifferent ones;
for the truth is, a bad book produces no great evil in literature; it
dies soon, and naturally; and the feeble birth only disappoints its
unlucky parent, with a score of idlers who are the dupes of their rage
after novelty. A bad book never sells unless it be addressed to the
passions, and, in that case, the severest criticism will never impede
its circulation; malignity and curiosity being passions so much
stronger and less delicate than taste or truth.
And who are the authors marked out for attack? Scarcely one of the
populace of scribblers; for wit will not lose one silver shaft on game
which, struck, no one would take up. It must level at the Historian,
whose novel researches throw a light in the depths of antiquity; at
the Poet, who, addressing himself to the imagination, perishes if that
sole avenue to the heart be closed on him. Such are those who receive
the criticism which has sent some nervous authors to their graves, and
embittered the life of many whose talents we all regard.[99]
But this species of criticism, though ungenial and nipping at first,
does not always kill the tree which it has frozen over.
In the calamity before us, Time, that great autocrat, who in its
tremendous march destroys authors, also annihilates critics; and
acting in this instance with a new kind of benevolence, takes up some
who have been violently thrown down, and fixes them in their proper
place; and daily enfeebling unjust criticism, has restored an injured
author to his full honours.
It is, however, lamentable enough that authors must participate in
that courage which faces the cannon's mouth, or cease to be authors;
for military enterprise is not the taste of modest, retired, and
timorous characters. The late Mr. Cumberland used to say that authors
must not be thin-skinned, but shelled like the rhinoceros; there are,
however, more delicately tempered animals among them, new-born lambs,
who shudder at a touch, and die under a pressure.
As for those great authors (though the greatest shrink from ridicule)
who still retain public favour, they must be patient, proud, and
fearless--patient of that obloquy which still will stain their honour
from literary echoers; proud, while they are sensible that their
literary offspring is not
Deformed, unfinished, sent before its time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up.
And fearless of all critics, when they recollect the reply of Bentley
to one who threatened to write him down, "that no author was ever
written down but by himself."
An author must consider himself as an arrow shot into the world; his
impulse must be stronger than the current of air that carries him
on--else he fall!
The character I had proposed to illustrate this calamity was the
caustic Dr. KENRICK, who, once during several years, was, in his
"London Review," one of the great disturbers of literary repose. The
turn of his criticism; the airiness, or the asperity of his sarcasm;
the arrogance with which he treated some of our great authors, would
prove very amusing, and serve to display a certain talent of
criticism. The life of Kenrick, too, would have afforded some
wholesome instruction concerning the morality of a critic. But the
rich materials are not at hand! He was a man of talents, who ran a
race with the press; could criticise all the genius of the age faster
than it could be produced; could make his own malignity look like wit,
and turn the wit of others into absurdity, by placing it topsy-turvy.
As thus, when he attacked "The Traveller" of Goldsmith, which he
called "a flimsy poem," he discussed the subject as a grave political
pamphlet, condemning the whole system, as raised on false principles.
"The Deserted Village" was sneeringly pronounced to be "pretty;" but
then it had "neither fancy, dignity, genius, or fire." When he
reviewed Johnson's "Tour to the Hebrides," he decrees that the whole
book was written "by one who had seen but little," and therefore could
not be very interesting. His virulent attack on Johnson's Shakspeare
may be preserved for its total want of literary decency; and his "Love
in the Suds, a Town Eclogue," where he has placed Garrick with an
infamous character, may be useful to show how far witty malignity will
advance in the violation of moral decency. He libelled all the genius
of the age, and was proud of doing it.[100] Johnson and Akenside
preserved a stern silence: but poor Goldsmith, the child of Nature,
could not resist attempting to execute martial law, by caning the
critic; for which being blamed, he published a defence of himself in
the papers. I shall transcribe his feelings on Kenrick's excessive and
illiberal criticism.
"The law gives us no protection against this injury. The insults we
receive before the public, by being more open, are the more
distressing; by treating them with silent contempt, we do not pay a
sufficient deference to the opinion of the world. By recurring to
legal redress, we too often expose the weakness of the law, which only
serves to increase our mortification by failing to relieve us. In
short, every man should singly consider himself as a guardian of the
liberty of the press, and, as far as his influence can extend, should
endeavour to prevent its licentiousness becoming at last the grave of
its freedom."[101]
Here then is another calamity arising from the calamity of undue
severity of criticism, which authors bring on themselves by their
excessive anxiety, which throws them into some extremely ridiculous
attitudes; and surprisingly influences even authors of good sense and
temper. SCOTT, of Amwell, the Quaker and Poet, was, doubtless, a
modest and amiable man, for Johnson declared "he loved him." When his
poems were collected, they were reviewed in the "Critical Review" very
offensively to the poet; for the critic, alluding to the numerous
embellishments of the volume, observed that
"There is a profusion of ornaments and finery about this book not
quite suitable to the plainness and simplicity of the Barclean system;
but Mr. Scott is fond of the Muses, and wishes, we suppose, like
Captain Macheath, to see his ladies well dressed."
Such was the cold affected witticism of the critic, whom I intimately
knew--and I believe he meant little harm! His friends imagined even
that this was the solitary attempt at wit he had ever made in his
life; for after a lapse of years, he would still recur to it as an
evidence of the felicity of his fancy, and the keenness of his satire.
The truth is, he was a physician, whose name is prefixed as the editor
to a great medical compilation, and who never pretended that he had
any taste for poetry. His great art of poetical criticism was always,
as Pope expresses a character, "to dwell in decencies;" his acumen, to
detect that terrible poetic crime false rhymes, and to employ
indefinite terms, which, as they had no precise meaning, were
applicable to all things; to commend, occasionally, a passage not
always the most exquisite; sometimes to hesitate, while, with
delightful candour, he seemed to give up his opinion; to hazard
sometimes a positive condemnation on parts which often unluckily
proved the most favourite with the poet and the reader. Such was this
poetical reviewer, whom no one disturbed in his periodical course,
till the circumstance of a plain Quaker becoming a poet, and
fluttering in the finical ornaments of his book, provoked him from
that calm state of innocent mediocrity, into miserable humour, and
illiberal criticism.
The effect, however, this pert criticism had on poor Scott was indeed
a calamity. It produced an inconsiderate "Letter to the Critical
Reviewers." Scott was justly offended at the stigma of Quakerism,
applied to the author of a literary composition; but too gravely
accuses the critic of his scurrilous allusion to Macheath, as
comparing him to a highwayman; he seems, however, more provoked at the
odd account of his poems; he says, "You rank all my poems together as
_bad_, then discriminate some as _good_, and, to complete all,
recommend the volume as _an agreeable and amusing collection_." Had
the poet been personally acquainted with this tantalizing critic, he
would have comprehended the nature of the criticism--and certainly
would never have replied to it.
The critic, employing one of his indefinite terms, had said of
"Amwell," and some of the early "Elegies," that "they had their share
of poetical merit;" he does not venture to assign the proportion of
that share, but "the Amoebean and oriental eclogues, odes, epistles,
&c., now added, are _of a much weaker feature, and many of them
incorrect_."
Here Scott loses all his dignity as a Quaker and a poet--he asks what
the critic means by the affected phrase _much weaker feature_; the
style, he says, was designed to be somewhat less elevated, and thus
addresses the critic:--
"You may, however, be safely defied to pronounce them, with truth,
deficient either in strength or melody of versification! They
were designed to be, like Virgil's, descriptive of Nature, simple
and correct. Had you been disposed to do me justice, you might
have observed that in these eclogues I had drawn from the great
prototype Nature, much imagery that had escaped the notice of
all my predecessors. You might also have remarked that when I
introduced images that had been already introduced by others,
still the arrangement or combination of those images was my own.
The praise of originality you might at least have allowed me."
As for their _incorrectness_!--Scott points that accusation with a
note of admiration, adding, "with whatever defects my works may be
chargeable, the last is that of _incorrectness_."