(1865,)
Several of the Essays which are here collected and reprinted had the
good or the bad fortune to be much criticized at the time of their first
appearance. I am not now going to inflict upon the reader a reply to
those criticisms; for one or two explanations which are desirable, I
shall elsewhere, perhaps, be able some day to find an opportunity; but,
indeed, it is not in my nature,—some of my critics would rather say, not
in my power,—to dispute on behalf of any opinion, even my own, very
obstinately. To try and approach truth on one side after another, not to
strive or cry, nor to persist in pressing forward, on any one side, with
violence and self-will,—it is only thus, it seems to me, that mortals
may hope to gain any vision of the mysterious Goddess, whom we shall
never see except in outline, but only thus even in outline. He who will
do nothing but fight impetuously towards her on his own, one, favorite,
particular line, is inevitably destined to run his head into the folds
of the black robe in which she is wrapped.
So it is not to reply to my critics that I write this preface, but to
prevent a misunderstanding, of which certain phrases that some of them
use make me apprehensive. Mr. Wright, one of the many translators of
Homer, has published a letter to the Dean of Canterbury, complaining of
some remarks of mine, uttered now a long while ago, on his version of
the _Iliad_. One cannot be always studying one’s own works, and I was
really under the impression, till I saw Mr. Wright’s complaint, that I
had spoken of him with all respect. The reader may judge of my
astonishment, therefore, at finding, from Mr. Wright’s pamphlet, that I
had “declared with much solemnity that there is not any proper reason
for his existing.” That I never said; but, on looking back at my
Lectures on translating Homer, I find that I did say, not that Mr.
Wright, but that Mr. Wright’s version of the _Iliad_, repeating in the
main the merits and defects of Cowper’s version, as Mr. Sotheby’s
repeated those of Pope’s version, had, if I might be pardoned for saying
so, no proper reason for existing. Elsewhere I expressly spoke of the
merit of his version; but I confess that the phrase, qualified as I have
shown, about its want of a proper reason for existing, I used. Well, the
phrase had, perhaps, too much vivacity; we have all of us a right to
exist, we and our works; an unpopular author should be the last person
to call in question this right. So I gladly withdraw the offending
phrase, and I am sorry for having used it; Mr. Wright, however, would
perhaps be more indulgent to my vivacity, if he considered that we are
none of us likely to be lively much longer. My vivacity is but the last
sparkle of flame before we are all in the dark, the last glimpse of
color before we all go into drab,—the drab of the earnest, prosaic,
practical, austerely literal future. Yes, the world will soon be the
Philistines’! and then, with every voice, not of thunder, silenced, and
the whole earth filled and ennobled every morning by the magnificent
roaring of the young lions of the _Daily Telegraph_, we shall all yawn
in one another’s faces with the dismallest, the most unimpeachable
gravity.
But I return to my design in writing this Preface. That design was,
after apologizing to Mr. Wright for my vivacity of five years ago, to
beg him and others to let me bear my own burdens, without saddling the
great and famous University to which I have the honor to belong with any
portion of them. What I mean to deprecate is such phrases as, “his
professorial assault,” “his assertions issued _ex cathedrâ_,” “the
sanction of his name as the representative of poetry,” and so on. Proud
as I am of my connection with the University of Oxford,[1] I can truly
say, that knowing how unpopular a task one is undertaking when one tries
to pull out a few more stops in that powerful but at present somewhat
narrow-toned organ, the modern Englishman, I have always sought to stand
by myself, and to compromise others as little as possible. Besides this,
my native modesty is such, that I have always been shy of assuming the
honorable style of Professor, because this is a title I share with so
many distinguished men,—Professor Pepper, Professor Anderson, Professor
Frickel, and others,—who adorn it, I feel, much more than I do.
Footnote 1:
When the above was written the author had still the Chair of Poetry at
Oxford, which he has since vacated.
However, it is not merely out of modesty that I prefer to stand alone,
and to concentrate on myself, as a plain citizen of the republic of
letters, and not as an office-bearer in a hierarchy, the whole
responsibility for all I write; it is much more out of genuine devotion
to the University of Oxford, for which I feel, and always must feel, the
fondest, the most reverential attachment. In an epoch of dissolution and
transformation, such as that on which we are now entered, habits, ties,
and associations are inevitably broken up, the action of individuals
becomes more distinct, the shortcomings, errors, heats, disputes, which
necessarily attend individual action, are brought into greater
prominence. Who would not gladly keep clear, from all these passing
clouds, an august institution which was there before they arose, and
which will be there when they have blown over?
It is true, the _Saturday Review_ maintains that our epoch of
transformation is finished; that we have found our philosophy; that the
British nation has searched all anchorages for the spirit, and has
finally anchored itself, in the fulness of perfected knowledge, on
Benthamism. This idea at first made a great impression on me; not only
because it is so consoling in itself, but also because it explained a
phenomenon which in the summer of last year had, I confess, a good deal
troubled me. At that time my avocations led me travel almost daily on
one of the Great Eastern Lines,—the Woodford Branch. Every one knows
that the murderer, Müller, perpetrated his detestable act on the North
London Railway, close by. The English middle class, of which I am myself
a feeble unit, travel on the Woodford Branch in large numbers. Well, the
demoralization of our class,—the class which (the newspapers are
constantly saying it, so I may repeat it without vanity) has done all
the great things which have ever been done in England,—the
demoralization, I say, of our class, caused by the Bow tragedy, was
something bewildering. Myself a transcendentalist (as the _Saturday
Review_ knows), I escaped the infection; and, day after day, I used to
ply my agitated fellow-travelers with all the consolations which my
transcendentalism would naturally suggest to me. I reminded them how
Cæsar refused to take precautions against assassination, because life
was not worth having at the price of an ignoble solicitude for it. I
reminded them what insignificant atoms we all are in the life of the
world. “Suppose the worst to happen,” I said, addressing a portly
jeweler from Cheapside; “suppose even yourself to be the victim; _il n’y
a pas d’homme nécessaire_. We should miss you for a day or two upon the
Woodford Branch; but the great mundane movement would still go on, the
gravel walks of your villa would still be rolled, dividends would still
be paid at the Bank, omnibuses would still run, there would still be the
old crush at the corner of Fenchurch Street.” All was of no avail.
Nothing could moderate, in the bosom of the great English middle-class,
their passionate, absorbing, almost bloodthirsty clinging to life. At
the moment I thought this over-concern a little unworthy; but the
_Saturday Review_ suggests a touching explanation of it. What I took for
the ignoble clinging to life of a comfortable worldling, was, perhaps,
only the ardent longing of a faithful Benthamite, traversing an age
still dimmed by the last mists of transcendentalism, to be spared long
enough to see his religion in the full and final blaze of its triumph.
This respectable man, whom I imagined to be going up to London to serve
his shop, or to buy shares, or to attend an Exeter Hall meeting, or to
assist at the deliberations of the Marylebone Vestry, was even, perhaps,
in real truth, on a pious pilgrimage, to obtain from Mr. Bentham’s
executors a secret bone of his great, dissected master.
And yet, after all, I cannot but think that the _Saturday Review_ has
here, for once, fallen a victim to an idea,—a beautiful but a deluding
idea,—and that the British nation has not yet, so entirely as the
reviewer seems to imagine, found the last word of its philosophy. No, we
are all seekers still! seekers often make mistakes, and I wish mine to
redound to my own discredit only, and not to touch Oxford. Beautiful
city! so venerable, so lovely, so unravaged by the fierce intellectual
life of our century, so serene!
“There are our young barbarians, all at play!”
And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to the
moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the
Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps
ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to
perfection,—to beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen from another
side?—nearer, perhaps, than all the science of Tübingen. Adorable
dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic! who hast given thyself so
prodigally, given thyself to sides and to heroes not mine, only never to
the Philistines! home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and
unpopular names, and impossible loyalties! what example could ever so
inspire us to keep down the Philistine in ourselves, what teacher could
ever so save us from that bondage to which we are all prone, that
bondage which Goethe, in his incomparable lines on the death of
Schiller, makes it his friend’s highest praise (and nobly did Schiller
deserve the praise) to have left miles out of sight behind him;—the
bondage of “=was uns alle bändigt, DAS GEMEINE!=” She will forgive me,
even if I have unwittingly drawn upon her a shot or two aimed at her
unworthy son; for she is generous, and the cause in which I fight is,
after all, hers. Apparitions of a day, what is our puny warfare against
the Philistines, compared with the warfare which this queen of romance
has been waging against them for centuries, and will wage after we are
gone?