produced such inimitable fragments under such adverse conditions—when
his learning threatened to choke his fire, when his exquisite taste
was pampered with excessive fastidiousness, and his temper and
position alienated him from the most vigorous intellectual movement of
the day? Perhaps—for the region of the might-have-been is boundless—he
would have produced a masterpiece of the 'grand style,' worthy of a
place by Milton's finest work; or, as possibly, he would have done
nothing. It is an amusing exercise of the imagination to place our
favourite authors in different countries and centuries, and to trace
their hypothetical development a century earlier. I fancy that Gray
would have buried himself still more profoundly from the political
convulsions which attracted Milton's sterner and more active spirit;
he would have studied Plotinus and Maimonides, and found sympathetic
companionship amongst the Cambridge Platonists; he would have written
some fragment of semi-mystical reverie, showing stupendous learning
and philosophic breadth of thought, and possibly have composed some
divine poems for the admiration of Henry More or John Norris. Warton,
doubtless, would at any period have enjoyed Oxford ale, and joined
in the jolly song, 'Back and side go bare, go bare;' he would have
sometimes accompanied Burton on the rambles where he was thrown into
fits of laughter by listening to the ribaldry of the bargees at the
bridge end; he would still have been an antiquarian, and his note-book
might have contributed quaint scraps of learning to the 'Anatomy of
Melancholy.' Mason, anxious not to sink the man of the world in the
country parson, would have racked his unfortunate brains for conceits
worthy to be placed beside the most fashionable compositions of
Donne or Cowley. Horace Walpole would, of course, have been at any
time the prince of gossips; he would have kept most judiciously on
the safe side in the most dangerous revolutions, and have come just
near enough to collect the most interesting scandals in the courts
of the Stuarts; but probably his lively intellect would have led him
to drop in occasionally at the meetings of the infant Royal Society,
and to have been one of the early cultivators of a taste for ancient
marbles or a judicious patron of Vandyke. It is, perhaps, harder to
assign the precise place in our own days, when the separate niches
are not so distinctly marked off, and even the Universities scarcely
afford a satisfactory refuge for the would-be recluse; but at least
one may assume that each of them would have been æsthetic to his
finger's ends, and have been thoroughly on a level with the last new
developments of taste, whether for mediæval architecture or the art
of the Renaissance, or that style which is called after Queen Anne.
The snapdragon which Cardinal Newman saw from his windows of Trinity,
and took for the emblem of his perpetual residence in the University,
was probably flourishing when Warton's residence in the same college
ceased; and Warton, in spite of that love of ale which is perhaps
more prominent than it should be in our impressions of his character,
would beyond all doubt have been a member of that school of which his
successor was the greatest ornament, and which has given a new meaning
to the old phrase High Church. It was amongst the Wartons and their
friends that the word 'Gothic,' used by earlier writers as a simple
term of abuse, came to have a more appreciative meaning; they were
the originators of the so-called romanticism made popular by Scott,
and which counts for so much in the Anglo-Catholic development.
The paradox, in short, with which I started comes simply to this: that
Gray and his friends were eclectics. This taste for the 'Gothic' was
a kind of happy thought, a lucky discovery made by men feeling round
rather vaguely for a new mode of literary and artistic enjoyment—not
quite content with the exceedingly comfortable and respectable century
in which they lived, and yet not clearly seeing how to improve upon
it. Horace Walpole, the shrewdest of all and the least of a recluse,
was, on one side, a thorough man of his time; he was a freethinker
of the Voltaire type; believed—so far as he believed in anything—in
Pope's poetry and Locke's philosophy; he sneered at enthusiasm and
sentimentalism, and at any revolutionary movement calculated directly
or indirectly to deprive Horace Walpoles of comfortable sinecures. But
he had a taste, and money to spend upon it; so he made Gothic chapels
and halls of lath and plaster, played with antiquarian researches, and
wrote a romance which was made of literary lath and plaster to match
the materials of Strawberry Hill. Gray's dilettanteism was far more
serious and systematic, but it necessarily took the same direction.
He did more than dabble in antiquarianism: he read with insatiable
appetite; he became, I suppose, profound in Gothic architecture, so
far as isolated efforts could make a man profound. But his attempts
at putting his theory in practice were clearly of the Strawberry Hill
kind. He instructs his friend to buy bits of plain coloured glass, and
arrange the tops of his windows in a 'mosaic of his own fancy,' only
observing that, to give them a 'Gothic aspect,' it will be enough
to turn the fragments 'corner-ways.' Then he manages to procure
'stucco paper' at threepence a yard, which is 'rather pretty and
nearly Gothic,' and apparently represents Gothic arches and niches. It
will produce an awkward effect, as he admits, where the pattern has to
be turned the wrong way; and, indeed, he is awake to the inadequacy
of the crude revival. Painters, as he says, make objects which are
more like goose pies than cathedrals. The new toy was still in a very
imperfect and rickety state.
One of the quaintest illustrations of the Gothicism of that time is in
Mason's 'English Garden.' It is a weary bit of didactic poetry, and a
most amiable and lenient critic, Hartley Coleridge, pronounces it to
be the dullest poem which he ever attempted to read. It is hard, says
Coleridge, to suppose it 'wholly destitute of beauties, especially'
(why especially?) 'as it consists of 2,423 lines of blank verse;' but
he does not seem to have discovered any. Had the critic persevered to
the end of the fourth book, he might at least have been rewarded by
a smile at the author. Mason tries to enliven his performance by a
story about a pattern man of taste and virtue, named Alcander, whose
tragical sorrows are soothed by religion and landscape gardening. It
is enough to notice his performances in the last capacity. Alcander,
as his name suggests, is an English country gentleman, possessed of an
ancient mansion,
Coeval with those rich cathedral fanes
(Gothic ill-named) whose harmony results
From disunited parts.
Alcander shows his taste by a restoration in the manner of the time.
Let every structure, he proclaims,
needful for a farm
Arise in castle-semblance; the huge barn
Shall with a mock portcullis awe the gate
Where Ceres entering, o'er the flail-proof floor
In golden triumph rides; some tower rotund
Shall to the pigeons and their callow young
Safe roost afford, and every buttress broad
Whose proud projection seems a mass of stone
Give space to stall the heifer and the steed.
So shall each part, though turned to rural use,
Deceive the eye with those bold feudal farms
Which fancy loves to gaze on.
He afterwards adopts a similar method
To hide the structure rude where Winter pounds
In conic pit his congelations hoar;
concealing his ice-house and dairy behind a modern 'time-struck
abbey.' Alcander thus displays those admirable qualities of head
and heart which enable him to bear with resignation the melancholy
death of a beloved object. He finally consoles himself by placing
her monument in a sham hermitage. The Gothic revival of a century
ago sounds absurd enough to our ears, and it must be confessed that
our foolery is more systematic and scientific, as it is probably
more destructive. Alcander, happily, did not 'restore' his castle,
though he surrounded it with those queer farm buildings and brand-new
ruins. Pope, it seems, had set the fashion of landscape gardening on
the little plot of ground which, as Horace Walpole tells us, he had
'twisted and twirled, and rhymed and harmonised, till it appeared two
or three sweet little lawns, opening and opening beyond one another,
the whole surrounded with thick, impenetrable woods.' Mason, Spence,
Shenstone, and other persons of literary note helped, according to
their opportunities, to promote the revolt against the old-fashioned
style in which, as Mason puts it, Folly combined with Wealth
To plan that formal, dull, disjointed scene
Which once was call'd a garden.
He denounces the stiff canals, the clipped yews and holly hedges, and
the geometric patterns of 'tonsile box' with the zeal of a reformer.
The theory seems to be that a garden ought to look as if it were not
a garden. The change of taste, however, was doubtless symptomatic
of the growing 'love of nature,' though I do not presume to discuss
its merits. It was a development parallel to the literary change
implied in the renewed taste for old ballads, for archaic poetry, or
what passed for such under the names of Ossian and Rowley, and for
Elizabethan literature.
Such tastes, however significant of the advent of a literary
revolution, did not imply any revolutionary purpose in their
cultivators. If Gray loved Spenser, he was even more enthusiastic
about Dryden, from whom he professed to have learnt the art of
versification. Cowper tried to supersede Pope's Homer. Gray declared
that nobody would ever translate Homer as well as Pope. Gray was as
orthodox in his literary as in his philosophical profession of faith;
and his most avowed disciple Mason was, on the whole, of the same
persuasion. In Warton and Beattie there is clearly some anticipation
of Scott's romanticism, but Mason's experiments were rather in the
classical direction. His 'English Garden' was his most ponderous and
unsuccessful performance. In some other efforts he showed a keenness
of style, a causticity of satire, which induced the late Mr. Dilke to
suggest him (not quite seriously, I fancy) as a possible candidate
for the questionable honour of being the real Junius. It would be
difficult indeed to imagine that Junius could by any possibility have
been a country clergyman, living for the greatest part of the year
at a distance from the political gossip of the day, however much
interested in the spread of sound Whig principles. It is amusing to
read the correspondence between Mason and his two friends Gray and
Walpole, and to note how the respectful disciple, reverently receiving
from his teachers little hints of criticism—laudatory, it is true, for
the most part, but also dashed with tolerably sharp sarcasm—gradually
develops into the rather dandified clergyman, anxious to show that
the man of the world is not altogether sunk in the rustic parson;
that he is no pedant, but a man of taste, and capable of tagging his
remarks with bits of fashionable French, and even of occasionally
repaying in kind his correspondent's affluence of the latest scandals.
Mason's clerical gown did not sit very well upon him, though he seems
to have been conscientious and independent and not without some
genuine kindliness of nature. But he always gives one the impression
of being out of place in his cassock. It would not be easy to find
a more quaint expression of the unprofessional turn of mind in a
clergyman than a defence of Christianity in one of his sermons. 'If,'
he says, 'the British Constitution will not enable a man to dispense
with religion, we must admit that nothing can;' and he proceeds to
establish a proposition which certainly would not be considered as
requiring defence in a modern pulpit—that even the Magna Charta and
the Bill of Rights did not supersede the Gospels. His claims to be a
conceivable Junius seem to depend chiefly upon the clever squib called
'Heroic Epistle' which is an amusing burlesque of the architectural
crotchets of Sir W. Chambers, and implies a want of reverence for
George III. Mason took immense pains to conceal the authorship of
this and some less successful sequels, and so far followed the steps
of Junius; but it is impossible to fancy that the great pamphleteer
would have made such a cackling over such a trifle, or have been so
sensitive to the praises of his confidant Walpole.
Gray speaks of Mason's 'insatiable reforming mouth,' and remarks
that he has no passions 'except a little malice and revenge.' There
was a good deal of acidity in his nature, developed, perhaps, by
his uncongenial position and by domestic trouble, if he had not the
rancour and force which make a great satirist; but in earlier days
Gray found in him a simple-minded and enthusiastic disciple, who read
little or nothing, but wrote abundance, 'and that with a design to
make a fortune by it.' His two poems 'Elfrida' and 'Caractacus' were
fruits of this early fluency. They have been criticised elaborately
by Hartley Coleridge, but belong, I think, to that kind and class of
literature upon which serious criticism would be rather wasted. It is
not that they are bad; rather they suggest an uncomfortable reflection
upon the quantity of real talent, as well as conscientious effort,
which may be thrown away in producing work unmistakably second-rate
and void of genuine vitality. We can better estimate the extreme
rarity and value of genius by measuring it against the achievements of
remarkable cleverness. Hastily read, or read whilst still possessing
the gloss of novelty, Mason's work might look like Gray's. Here, for
example, is the first stanza of a chorus from 'Caractacus,' which Gray
not only praised to Mason, but cites in one of his notes as a proof
that sublime odes could still be written in English:—
Hark! heard ye not yon footstep dread,
That shook the earth with thund'ring tread?
'Twas Death. In haste
The warrior past;
High towered his helmed head:
I mark'd his mail; I mark'd his shield;
I 'spyed the sparkling of his spear;
I saw his giant arm the falchion wield;
Wide wav'd the lickering blade, and fir'd the angry air.[7]
Longer quotation might be tiresome; but Mason continues to the end
with all the manner of a genuine poet, and doubtless cheated himself
as well as Gray into the impression that he had the real stuff in him.
The effect is respectable at a little distance, though the work will
not bear a moment's inspection.
The general design of the plays, however, is more to my purpose
than the merits of their execution. At that time the worship of
Shakespeare, though sometimes extravagant, had not become a mere
slavish idolatry. It was still permitted to see spots in the sun, and
not yet fashionable for poets to try to revive the Elizabethan style,
though Mason made one feeble attempt at a play 'on the English model.'
Gray, with his catholic taste, admired Racine, and began a play in
imitation of 'Britannicus;' and the faithful Mason decided that a
'medium between the French and English taste would be preferable
to either.' He had also a fancy that the ancient chorus might be
restored, so as at once to give greater opportunities for poetical
descriptions and the graceful introduction of 'moral reflections.'
Though Gray ridiculed his arguments pretty sharply, he stuck to his
plan as obstinately as Sam Weller when insisting, in defiance of
paternal remonstrances, upon a poetical conclusion to his love-letter.
Accordingly, in 'Elfrida' and 'Caractacus,' certain bands of British
virgins and druids talk the twaddle and burst into the lyrical
irrelevance which are the functions of a chorus. Mason had abundant
self-complacency; and though his plays had only a moderate success,
owing to the bad taste of the public, he felt that his ingenious
eclecticisms combined the various merits of Sophocles, Racine, and
Shakespeare. Unsuccessful authors may well invoke blessings on the man
who invented conceit. But Mason, after all, writes like a cultivated
scholar, with sensibility to poetic excellence, though without real
poetic power; and if we laugh at his taste, our grandchildren will
probably laugh with equal self-satisfaction at ours.
In truth, this fashion of writing plays not intended, or scarcely
intended, for the stage, of which Mason was one of the first
originators, is characteristic of the whole school. I will not argue
a large question here, or deny that something may be said for the
practice; and yet it seems as though a play which is not to be acted
has a more than superficial resemblance to the feudal castles which
were not meant for defence, and the abbeys in which there were to
be no monks. The form is dictated by conditions which are no longer
present to the writer's mind, and are therefore apt to be a mere
encumbrance. If you build a portcullis to let in cows, not to exclude
marauders, it is apt to become rather ludicrously unreal. If you know
that your play is to be read and not to be seen, the whole dramatic
arrangement is on the way to become a mere sham. It does not grow out
of the poetical conception, but is fitted on to it in compliance with
a fashion. Why bother yourself to make the actors tell a story, when
it is simpler and easier to tell it yourself?
In this sense literature grows more 'artificial' as it is encumbered
with more dead forms having no significance except as remnants of
extinct conditions. There was a time, we are told, when art was
perfectly spontaneous, and the critic was happily not existent. People
sang or recited by instinct, without asking how or why. That golden
age—if it ever existed since men were monkeys—had long passed away
even in the beginning of modern literature. Spenser and Shakespeare,
for example, probably thought about the principles of their art
almost as much as their modern critics, and were very consciously
trying experiments and devising new forms of expression. But as the
noxious animal called a critic becomes rampant, we have a different
phase, which seems to be illustrated by the case of Gray and his
fellows. The distinction seems to be that the critic, as he grows
more conceited, not only lays down rules for the guidance of the
imaginative impulse, but begins to think himself capable of producing
any given effect at pleasure. He has got to the bottom of the whole
affair, and can tell you what is the chemical composition of a
'Hamlet,' or an 'Agamemnon,' or an 'Iliad,' and can therefore teach
you what materials to select and how to combine them. He can give you
a recipe for an epic poem, or for communicating the proper mediæval
or classical flavour to your performance. If he is as clever a man
as Mason, he will perhaps go a little further, and show not only how
to extract the peculiar essence of a Racine or a Shakespeare, but
how to mix the result so as to produce something better than either.
In one respect he has clearly made an advance. He is beginning to
appreciate the necessity of an historical study of different literary
forms. In such quaint, old-fashioned criticism as Addison applied to
Milton, where Longinus, and Aristotle, and the learned M. Bossu are
invoked as final authorities about the 'fable' and the 'machinery'
and the character of the hero, we perceive that the critic is still
persuaded that there is one absolutely correct and infallible code
of art, applicable in all times and places. Milton and Homer are
regarded as belonging to the same class, and are to be judged by the
same laws. The later critic, taking a wider survey and rummaging
amongst the antiquarian stores to discover any pearls hidden under
Dryasdust's accumulations, began to see that there were many different
types of art, each of which possessed its own charm and characteristic
excellence. He scarcely saw at first that each form was also the
outgrowth of a particular set of conditions, and could not be produced
independently of them. It seemed easy to restore anything that struck
him as picturesque or graceful. He could give the old ballad air by an
arbitrary combination of bad spelling, or make his ruined abbey out of
a scene-painter's materials.
This early race of critics had no direct hostility to their own
century or to its early classicalism. They were not iconoclasts, but
only adding some new idols to the old pantheon. They aimed at being
men of finer and more catholic taste than their neighbours, but wished
to extend the borders of orthodoxy, to repeal the anathema which
had been pronounced upon the 'Gothicism' and barbarism of our old
authors, not to anathematise the existing order in revenge. They were
quiet, orthodox, and substantially conservative, even if nominally
Whiggish, and feared or detested revolutionary impulses of any kind
from the bottom of their hearts. Such men as Mason or the Wartons
tried literary experiments which are now of no great value, because
they represent at best the attempts of a superficial connoisseur of
talent. They did something by attracting interest to researches which
produced greater results when carried on by more thorough workers in
the same mine. But it is also true that they were amongst the first
to fall into the blunders, since repeated on a more gigantic scale by
successors, who have tried more systematically to galvanise extinct
forms into a semblance of vitality.