Here it may be well to cite again the oft-quoted confession of the late
Jules Lemaitre, writer of volume after volume in which he discussed the
leading men of letters of his own time and of his own country:
"Criticism of our contemporaries is not criticism--it is conversation."
Now, conversation may be a very good thing; indeed, when it is as clear
and as sparkling as was Lemaitre's, it is an excellent thing; yet he
was right in admitting that it is not criticism, since it could not but
lack the touchstone of time, the perspective of distance, the assured
application of the eternal standards. And play-reviewing, like
book-reviewing, cannot be anything but conversation about our
contemporaries. It may descend to chaff-like chatter about the writers
of the hour and to empty gossip about their sayings and doings; or it
may have the sterner merits of brilliant conversation at its best. But
it is not really criticism in the finer sense of the word; it cannot be;
and one may go further and say that it ought not to be, since true
criticism is more or less out of place in a newspaper--because the
direct object of a newspaper is to present the news, with only the
swiftest of commentaries thereon.
The final distinction between literature and journalism is to be sought
in their diverging and irreconcilable objects. The desire of the former
is for permanence, and the aim of the latter is the immediate
impression. When literature triumphs it is for all time--more or less.
When journalism most completely achieves its purpose its success is
temporary, to be retained only by iteration and reiteration, since it
has for its target the events of the fleeting moment. If we admit this
distinction between journalism and literature, we have no difficulty in
discovering journalism in many places other than the daily and weekly
papers; very properly it fills the most of the space in the monthly
magazines, and even in the quarterly reviews; and it abounds in our
book-stores, since only a small proportion of the volumes which pour
from the press every year possess the combined substance and style, the
solidity of matter and the delightfulness of manner which lift mere
writing up to the loftier level of literature.
On the other hand, we may find literature of inexpugnable quality, not
only in the magazines, but also now and again in the newspapers. Drake's
'American Flag' and Kipling's 'Recessional' appeared in daily journals,
and so did the literary criticism of Sainte-Beuve and the dramatic
criticism of Lessing and of Lemaitre. But these were but happy
accidents, and the great newspaper editor has rarely striven to make his
journal a persistent vehicle for the publication of literature. He feels
that this is foreign to his main purpose, and he is content when his
editorial articles, and his news stories are vigorous and
picturesque--clean, clear, and cogent in their English. He knows, better
than any one else, that it is not by its external literary merits that
newspaper-writing is to be judged. What he wants above all else is the
news, all the news, and nothing but the news--accompanied, of course, by
the obligatory comment this news may deserve. He needs editorial
writers, reporters, and correspondents who are newspaper men, and not
men of letters, except in so far as these men of letters may have
accepted the special conditions of newspaper work.
Now, criticism, whether literary or dramatic, is a department of
literature, dealing with the permanent, and having little to do with the
temporary. It demands qualifications very rarely united--insight,
equipment, disinterestedness, and sympathy. So far from being easy,
criticism is quite as difficult as creation--more difficult, indeed, if
we may judge by its greater rarity. In a superbly creative period there
are sometimes three or four distinguished poets, friendly rivals, almost
contemporaneous; and even at such a time there is rarely more than one
critic worthy to be companioned with them. AEschylus and Sophocles and
Euripides followed one after the other; and in time the sole Aristotle
came forward as their critic. Corneille and Moliere and Racine labored
side by side, and only Boileau was competent to interpret and to
encourage them.
When it attains to the serene plane of Aristotle and Boileau, of Lessing
and Sainte-Beuve, criticism is actually creation. "The critical faculty
as applied to the masterpieces of literature, and still more the
critical faculty as applied to the art of literature itself, is akin to
the creative faculty of the artist," so Professor Mackail has told us.
"It does not deal with letters as something detached from life, but as
the form or substance in which life is intelligibly presented. Its
interpretation is also creation." But the criticism of dramatic
literature which is also creation, is possible only when the critical
faculty is applied to the masterpieces of dramatic literature; and
nobody knows better than the play-reviewer that masterpieces of dramatic
literature do not present themselves frequently and that they cannot be
acclaimed as masterpieces until they have stood the test of time. And
this is why a critic-creator would be a little out of place on the staff
of a newspaper, daily or weekly, whether he was assigned to deal with
the drama or with literature at large.