_A DIGRESSION CONCERNING CRITICS_.
THOUGH I have been hitherto as cautious as I could, upon all occasions,
most nicely to follow the rules and methods of writing laid down by the
example of our illustrious moderns, yet has the unhappy shortness of my
memory led me into an error, from which I must immediately extricate
myself, before I can decently pursue my principal subject. I confess
with shame it was an unpardonable omission to proceed so far as I have
already done before I had performed the due discourses, expostulatory,
supplicatory, or deprecatory, with my good lords the critics. Towards
some atonement for this grievous neglect, I do here make humbly bold to
present them with a short account of themselves and their art, by looking
into the original and pedigree of the word, as it is generally understood
among us, and very briefly considering the ancient and present state
thereof.
By the word critic, at this day so frequent in all conversations, there
have sometimes been distinguished three very different species of mortal
men, according as I have read in ancient books and pamphlets. For first,
by this term were understood such persons as invented or drew up rules
for themselves and the world, by observing which a careful reader might
be able to pronounce upon the productions of the learned, form his taste
to a true relish of the sublime and the admirable, and divide every
beauty of matter or of style from the corruption that apes it. In their
common perusal of books, singling out the errors and defects, the
nauseous, the fulsome, the dull, and the impertinent, with the caution of
a man that walks through Edinburgh streets in a morning, who is indeed as
careful as he can to watch diligently and spy out the filth in his way;
not that he is curious to observe the colour and complexion of the ordure
or take its dimensions, much less to be paddling in or tasting it, but
only with a design to come out as cleanly as he may. These men seem,
though very erroneously, to have understood the appellation of critic in
a literal sense; that one principal part of his office was to praise and
acquit, and that a critic who sets up to read only for an occasion of
censure and reproof is a creature as barbarous as a judge who should take
up a resolution to hang all men that came before him upon a trial.
Again, by the word critic have been meant the restorers of ancient
learning from the worms, and graves, and dust of manuscripts.
Now the races of these two have been for some ages utterly extinct, and
besides to discourse any further of them would not be at all to my
purpose.
The third and noblest sort is that of the true critic, whose original is
the most ancient of all. Every true critic is a hero born, descending in
a direct line from a celestial stem, by Momus and Hybris, who begat
Zoilus, who begat Tigellius, who begat Etcætera the elder, who begat
Bentley, and Rymer, and Wotton, and Perrault, and Dennis, who begat
Etcætera the younger.
And these are the critics from whom the commonwealth of learning has in
all ages received such immense benefits, that the gratitude of their
admirers placed their origin in heaven, among those of Hercules, Theseus,
Perseus, and other great deservers of mankind. But heroic virtue itself
hath not been exempt from the obloquy of evil tongues. For it hath been
objected that those ancient heroes, famous for their combating so many
giants, and dragons, and robbers, were in their own persons a greater
nuisance to mankind than any of those monsters they subdued; and
therefore, to render their obligations more complete, when all other
vermin were destroyed, should in conscience have concluded with the same
justice upon themselves, as Hercules most generously did, and hath upon
that score procured for himself more temples and votaries than the best
of his fellows. For these reasons I suppose it is why some have
conceived it would be very expedient for the public good of learning that
every true critic, as soon as he had finished his task assigned, should
immediately deliver himself up to ratsbane or hemp, or from some
convenient altitude, and that no man’s pretensions to so illustrious a
character should by any means be received before that operation was
performed.
Now, from this heavenly descent of criticism, and the close analogy it
bears to heroic virtue, it is easy to assign the proper employment of a
true, ancient, genuine critic: which is, to travel through this vast
world of writings; to peruse and hunt those monstrous faults bred within
them; to drag out the lurking errors, like Cacus from his den; to
multiply them like Hydra’s heads; and rake them together like Augeas’s
dung; or else to drive away a sort of dangerous fowl who have a perverse
inclination to plunder the best branches of the tree of knowledge, like
those Stymphalian birds that ate up the fruit.
These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of a true
critic: that he is a discoverer and collector of writers’ faults; which
may be further put beyond dispute by the following demonstration:—That
whoever will examine the writings in all kinds wherewith this ancient
sect hath honoured the world, shall immediately find from the whole
thread and tenor of them that the ideas of the authors have been
altogether conversant and taken up with the faults, and blemishes, and
oversights, and mistakes of other writers, and let the subject treated on
be whatever it will, their imaginations are so entirely possessed and
replete with the defects of other pens, that the very quintessence of
what is bad does of necessity distil into their own, by which means the
whole appears to be nothing else but an abstract of the criticisms
themselves have made.
Having thus briefly considered the original and office of a critic, as
the word is understood in its most noble and universal acceptation, I
proceed to refute the objections of those who argue from the silence and
pretermission of authors, by which they pretend to prove that the very
art of criticism, as now exercised, and by me explained, is wholly
modern, and consequently that the critics of Great Britain and France
have no title to an original so ancient and illustrious as I have
deduced. Now, if I can clearly make out, on the contrary, that the most
ancient writers have particularly described both the person and the
office of a true critic agreeable to the definition laid down by me,
their grand objection—from the silence of authors—will fall to the
ground.
I confess to have for a long time borne a part in this general error,
from which I should never have acquitted myself but through the
assistance of our noble moderns, whose most edifying volumes I turn
indefatigably over night and day, for the improvement of my mind and the
good of my country. These have with unwearied pains made many useful
searches into the weak sides of the ancients, and given us a
comprehensive list of them {84a}. Besides, they have proved beyond
contradiction that the very finest things delivered of old have been long
since invented and brought to light by much later pens, and that the
noblest discoveries those ancients ever made in art or nature have all
been produced by the transcending genius of the present age, which
clearly shows how little merit those ancients can justly pretend to, and
takes off that blind admiration paid them by men in a corner, who have
the unhappiness of conversing too little with present things. Reflecting
maturely upon all this, and taking in the whole compass of human nature,
I easily concluded that these ancients, highly sensible of their many
imperfections, must needs have endeavoured, from some passages in their
works, to obviate, soften, or divert the censorious reader, by satire or
panegyric upon the true critics, in imitation of their masters, the
moderns. Now, in the commonplaces {84b} of both these I was plentifully
instructed by a long course of useful study in prefaces and prologues,
and therefore immediately resolved to try what I could discover of
either, by a diligent perusal of the most ancient writers, and especially
those who treated of the earliest times.
Here I found, to my great surprise, that although they all entered upon
occasion into particular descriptions of the true critic, according as
they were governed by their fears or their hopes, yet whatever they
touched of that kind was with abundance of caution, adventuring no
further than mythology and hieroglyphic. This, I suppose, gave ground to
superficial readers for urging the silence of authors against the
antiquity of the true critic, though the types are so apposite, and the
applications so necessary and natural, that it is not easy to conceive
how any reader of modern eye and taste could overlook them. I shall
venture from a great number to produce a few which I am very confident
will put this question beyond doubt.
It well deserves considering that these ancient writers, in treating
enigmatically upon this subject, have generally fixed upon the very same
hieroglyph, varying only the story according to their affections or their
wit. For first, Pausanias is of opinion that the perfection of writing
correct was entirely owing to the institution of critics, and that he can
possibly mean no other than the true critic is, I think, manifest enough
from the following description. He says they were a race of men who
delighted to nibble at the superfluities and excrescences of books, which
the learned at length observing, took warning of their own accord to lop
the luxuriant, the rotten, the dead, the sapless, and the overgrown
branches from their works. But now all this he cunningly shades under
the following allegory: That the Nauplians in Argia learned the art of
pruning their vines by observing that when an ass had browsed upon one of
them, it thrived the better and bore fairer fruit. But Herodotus holding
the very same hieroglyph, speaks much plainer and almost _in terminis_.
He hath been so bold as to tax the true critics of ignorance and malice,
telling us openly, for I think nothing can be plainer, that in the
western part of Libya there were asses with horns, upon which relation
Ctesias {85} yet refines, mentioning the very same animal about India;
adding, that whereas all other asses wanted a gall, these horned ones
were so redundant in that part that their flesh was not to be eaten
because of its extreme bitterness.
Now, the reason why those ancient writers treated this subject only by
types and figures was because they durst not make open attacks against a
party so potent and so terrible as the critics of those ages were, whose
very voice was so dreadful that a legion of authors would tremble and
drop their pens at the sound. For so Herodotus tells us expressly in
another place how a vast army of Scythians was put to flight in a panic
terror by the braying of an ass. From hence it is conjectured by certain
profound philologers, that the great awe and reverence paid to a true
critic by the writers of Britain have been derived to us from those our
Scythian ancestors. In short, this dread was so universal, that in
process of time those authors who had a mind to publish their sentiments
more freely in describing the true critics of their several ages, were
forced to leave off the use of the former hieroglyph as too nearly
approaching the prototype, and invented other terms instead thereof that
were more cautious and mystical. So Diodorus, speaking to the same
purpose, ventures no farther than to say that in the mountains of Helicon
there grows a certain weed which bears a flower of so damned a scent as
to poison those who offer to smell it. Lucretius gives exactly the same
relation.
“Est etiam in magnis Heliconis montibus arbos,
Floris odore hominem retro consueta necare.”—_Lib._ 6. {86}
But Ctesias, whom we lately quoted, has been a great deal bolder; he had
been used with much severity by the true critics of his own age, and
therefore could not forbear to leave behind him at least one deep mark of
his vengeance against the whole tribe. His meaning is so near the
surface that I wonder how it possibly came to be overlooked by those who
deny the antiquity of the true critics. For pretending to make a
description of many strange animals about India, he has set down these
remarkable words. “Among the rest,” says he, “there is a serpent that
wants teeth, and consequently cannot bite, but if its vomit (to which it
is much addicted) happens to fall upon anything, a certain rottenness or
corruption ensues. These serpents are generally found among the
mountains where jewels grow, and they frequently emit a poisonous juice,
whereof whoever drinks, that person’s brain flies out of his nostrils.”
There was also among the ancients a sort of critic, not distinguished in
specie from the former but in growth or degree, who seem to have been
only the tyros or junior scholars, yet because of their differing
employments they are frequently mentioned as a sect by themselves. The
usual exercise of these young students was to attend constantly at
theatres, and learn to spy out the worst parts of the play, whereof they
were obliged carefully to take note, and render a rational account to
their tutors. Fleshed at these smaller sports, like young wolves, they
grew up in time to be nimble and strong enough for hunting down large
game. For it has been observed, both among ancients and moderns, that a
true critic has one quality in common with a whore and an alderman, never
to change his title or his nature; that a grey critic has been certainly
a green one, the perfections and acquirements of his age being only the
improved talents of his youth, like hemp, which some naturalists inform
us is bad for suffocations, though taken but in the seed. I esteem the
invention, or at least the refinement of prologues, to have been owing to
these younger proficients, of whom Terence makes frequent and honourable
mention, under the name of Malevoli.
Now it is certain the institution of the true critics was of absolute
necessity to the commonwealth of learning. For all human actions seem to
be divided like Themistocles and his company. One man can fiddle, and
another can make a small town a great city; and he that cannot do either
one or the other deserves to be kicked out of the creation. The avoiding
of which penalty has doubtless given the first birth to the nation of
critics, and withal an occasion for their secret detractors to report
that a true critic is a sort of mechanic set up with a stock and tools
for his trade, at as little expense as a tailor; and that there is much
analogy between the utensils and abilities of both. That the “Tailor’s
Hell” is the type of a critic’s commonplace-book, and his wit and
learning held forth by the goose. That it requires at least as many of
these to the making up of one scholar as of the others to the composition
of a man. That the valour of both is equal, and their weapons near of a
size. Much may be said in answer to these invidious reflections; and I
can positively affirm the first to be a falsehood: for, on the contrary,
nothing is more certain than that it requires greater layings out to be
free of the critic’s company than of any other you can name. For as to
be a true beggar, it will cost the richest candidate every groat he is
worth, so before one can commence a true critic, it will cost a man all
the good qualities of his mind, which perhaps for a less purchase would
be thought but an indifferent bargain.
Having thus amply proved the antiquity of criticism and described the
primitive state of it, I shall now examine the present condition of this
Empire, and show how well it agrees with its ancient self {88}. A
certain author, whose works have many ages since been entirely lost, does
in his fifth book and eighth chapter say of critics that “their writings
are the mirrors of learning.” This I understand in a literal sense, and
suppose our author must mean that whoever designs to be a perfect writer
must inspect into the books of critics, and correct his inventions there
as in a mirror. Now, whoever considers that the mirrors of the ancients
were made of brass and fine mercurio, may presently apply the two
principal qualifications of a true modern critic, and consequently must
needs conclude that these have always been and must be for ever the same.
For brass is an emblem of duration, and when it is skilfully burnished
will cast reflections from its own superficies without any assistance of
mercury from behind. All the other talents of a critic will not require
a particular mention, being included or easily deducible to these.
However, I shall conclude with three maxims, which may serve both as
characteristics to distinguish a true modern critic from a pretender, and
will be also of admirable use to those worthy spirits who engage in so
useful and honourable an art.
The first is, that criticism, contrary to all other faculties of the
intellect, is ever held the truest and best when it is the very first
result of the critic’s mind; as fowlers reckon the first aim for the
surest, and seldom fail of missing the mark if they stay not for a
second.
Secondly, the true critics are known by their talent of swarming about
the noblest writers, to which they are carried merely by instinct, as a
rat to the best cheese, or a wasp to the fairest fruit. So when the king
is a horseback he is sure to be the dirtiest person of the company, and
they that make their court best are such as bespatter him most.
Lastly, a true critic in the perusal of a book is like a dog at a feast,
whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling
away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest
bones {89}.
Thus much I think is sufficient to serve by way of address to my patrons,
the true modern critics, and may very well atone for my past silence, as
well as that which I am like to observe for the future. I hope I have
deserved so well of their whole body as to meet with generous and tender
usage at their hands. Supported by which expectation I go on boldly to
pursue those adventures already so happily begun.