I say that we may agree with this most cordially: and it need not cost
us much to own that the public is the "ultimate critic," if we mean no
more than this, that, since the public holds the purse, it rests
ultimately with the public to buy, or neglect to buy, an author's
books. That, surely, is obvious enough without the aid of fine
language. But if Mr. Hall Caine mean that the public, without
instruction from its betters, is the best judge of a book; if he
consent with Miss Corelli that the general public is a cultured public
with a great brain, and by the exercise of that great brain approves
itself an infallible judge of the rightness or wrongness of a book,
then I would respectfully ask for evidence. The poets and critics of
his time united in praising Campion as a writer of lyrics: the Great
Brain and Heart of the Public neglected him utterly for three
centuries: then a scholar and critic arose and persuaded the public
that Campion was a great lyrical writer: and now the public accepts
him as such. Shall we say, then, the Great Heart of the Public is the
"ultimate judge" of Campion's lyrics? Perhaps: but we might as well
praise for his cleanliness a boy who has been held under the pump.
When Martin Farquhar Tupper wrote, the Great Heart of the Public
expanded towards him at once. The public bought his effusions by tens
of thousands. Gradually the small voice of skilled criticism made
itself heard, and the public grew ashamed of itself; and, at length,
laughed at Tupper. Shall we, then, call the public the ultimate judge
of Tupper? Perhaps: but we might as well praise the continence of a
man who turns in disgust from drink on the morning after a drunken
fit.[A]
What is "The Public"?
The proposition that the Man in the Street is a better judge of
literature than the Critic--the man who knows little than the man who
knows more--wears (to my mind, at least) a slightly imbecile air on
the face of it. It also appears to me that people are either confusing
thought or misusing language when they confer the title of "supreme
critic" on the last person to be persuaded. And, again, what is "the
public?" I gather that Miss Corelli's story of _Barabbas_ has had an
immense popular success. But so, I believe, has the _Deadwood Dick_
series of penny dreadfuls. And the gifted author of _Deadwood Dick_
may console himself (as I daresay he does) for the neglect of the
critics by the thought that the Great Brain[B] of the Public is the
supreme judge of literature. But obviously he and Miss Corelli will
not have the same Public in their mind. If for "the Great Brain of the
Public" we substitute "the Great Brain of that Part of the Public
which subscribes to Mudie's," we may lose something of impressiveness,
but we shall at least know what we are talking about.
* * * * *
June 17, 1893. Mr. Gosse's View.
Astounding as the statement must appear to any constant reader of
the Monthly Reviews, it is mainly because Mr. Gosse happens to be
a man of letters that his opinion upon literary questions is worth
listening to. In his new book[C] he discusses a dozen or so: and
one of them--the question, "What Influence has Democracy upon
Literature?"--not only has a chapter to itself, but seems to lie at
the root of all the rest. I may add that Mr. Gosse's answer is a
trifle gloomy.
"As we filed slowly out of the Abbey on the afternoon of
Wednesday, the 12th of October, 1892, there must have occurred to
others, I think, as to myself, a whimsical and half-terrifying
sense of the symbolic contrast between what we had left and what
we had emerged upon. Inside, the grey and vitreous atmosphere,
the reverberations of music moaning somewhere out of sight, the
bones and monuments of the noble dead, reverence, antiquity,
beauty, rest. Outside, in the raw air, a tribe of hawkers urging
upon the edges of a dense and inquisitive crowd a large sheet of
pictures of the pursuit of a flea by a 'lady,' and more insidious
salesmen doing a brisk trade in what they falsely pretended to be
'Tennyson's last poem.' Next day we read in our newspapers
affecting accounts of the emotion displayed by the vast crowd
outside the Abbey--horny hands dashing away the tear,
seamstresses holding 'the little green volumes' to their faces to
hide their agitation. Happy for those who could see these with
their fairy telescopes out of the garrets of Fleet Street. I,
alas!--though I sought assiduously--could mark nothing of the
kind."
Nothing of the kind was there. Why should anything of the kind be
there? Her poetry has been one of England's divinest treasures: but
of her population a very few understand it; and the shrine has always
been guarded by the elect who happen to possess, in varying degrees,
certain qualities of mind and ear. It is, as Mr. Gosse puts it, by a
sustained effort of bluff on the part of these elect that English
poetry is kept upon its high pedestal of honor. The worship of it as
one of the glories of our birth and state is imposed upon the masses
by a small aristocracy of intelligence and taste.
Mr. Gissing's Testimony.
What do the "masses" care for poetry? In an appendix Mr. Gosse prints
a letter from Mr. George Gissing, who, as everyone knows, has studied
the popular mind assiduously, and with startling results. Here are a
few sentences from his letter:--
(1) "After fifteen years' observation of the poorer classes of
English folk, chiefly in London and the south, I am pretty well
assured that, whatever civilising agencies may be at work among
the democracy, poetry is not one of them."
(2) "The custodian of a Free Library in a southern city informs
me that 'hardly once in a month' does a volume of verse pass over
his counter; that the exceptional applicant (seeking Byron or
Longfellow) is generally 'the wife of a tradesman;' and that an
offer of verse to man or woman who comes simply for 'a book' is
invariably rejected; 'they won't even look at it.'"
(3) "It was needless folly to pretend that, because one or two of
Tennyson's poems became largely known through popular recitation,
therefore Tennyson was dear to the heart of the people, a subject
of their pride whilst he lived, of their mourning when he died.
My point is that _no_ poet holds this place in the esteem of the
English lower orders."
(4) "Some days before (the funeral) I was sitting in a public
room, where two men, retired shopkeepers, exchanged an occasional
word as they read the morning's news. 'A great deal here about
Lord Tennyson' said one. The 'Lord' was significant. I listened
anxiously for his companion's reply. 'Ah, yes.' The man moved
uneasily, and added at once: 'What do you think about this
long-distance ride?' In that room (I frequented it on successive
days with this object) not a syllable did I hear regarding
Tennyson save the sentence faithfully recorded."
Poetry not beloved by any one Class.
Mr. Gissing, be it observed, speaks only of the class which he has
studied: but in talking of "demos," or, more loosely, of "democracy,"
we must be careful not to limit these terms to the "lower" and
"lower-middle" classes. For Poetry, who draws her priests and warders
from all classes of society, is generally beloved of none. The average
country magnate, the average church dignitary, the average
professional man, the average commercial traveller--to all these she
is alike unknown: at least, the insensibility of each is
differentiated by shades so fine that we need not trouble ourselves to
make distinctions. A public school and university education does as
little for the Squire Westerns one meets at country dinner-tables as a
three-guinea subscription to a circulating library for the kind of
matron one comes upon at a _table d'hôte_. Five minutes after hearing
the news of Browning's death I stopped an acquaintance in the street,
a professional man of charming manner, and repeated it to him. He
stared for a moment, and then murmured that he was sorry to hear it.
Clearly he did not wish to hurt my feelings by confessing that he
hadn't the vaguest idea who Browning might be. And if anybody think
this an extreme case, let him turn to the daily papers and read the
names of those who were at Newmarket on that same afternoon when our
great poet was laid in the Abbey with every pretence of national
grief. The pursuit of one horse by another is doubtless a more
elevating spectacle than "the pursuit of a flea by a 'lady,'" but on
that afternoon even a tepid lover of letters must have found an equal
incongruity in both entertainments.
I do not say that the General Public hates Poetry. But I say that
those who care about it are few, and those who know about it are
fewer. Nor do these assert their right of interference as often as
they might. Just once or twice in the last ten or fifteen years they
have pulled up some exceptionally coarse weed on which the General
Public had every disposition to graze, and have pitched it over the
hedge to Lethe wharf, to root itself and fatten there; and terrible as
those of Polydorus have been the shrieks of the avulsed root. But as a
rule they have sat and piped upon the stile and considered the good
cow grazing, confident that in the end she must "bite off more than
she can chew."