It is impossible to put down a book like the history of the French
Academy, by Pellisson and D’Olivet, which M. Charles Livet has lately
re-edited, without being led to reflect upon the absence, in our own
country, of any institution like the French Academy, upon the probable
causes of this absence, and upon its results. A thousand voices will be
ready to tell us that this absence is a signal mark of our national
superiority; that it is in great part owing to this absence that the
exhilarating words of Lord Macaulay, lately given to the world by his
very clever nephew, Mr. Trevelyan, are so profoundly true: “It may
safely be said that the literature now extant in the English language is
of far greater value than all the literature which three hundred years
ago was extant in all the languages of the world together.” I dare say
this is so; only, remembering Spinoza’s maxim that the two great banes
of humanity are self-conceit and the laziness coming from self-conceit,
I think it may do us good, instead of resting in our pre-eminence with
perfect security, to look a little more closely why this is so, and
whether it is so without any limitations.
But first of all I must give a very few words to the outward history of
the French Academy. About the year 1629, seven or eight persons in
Paris, fond of literature, formed themselves into a sort of little club
to meet at one another’s houses and discuss literary matters. Their
meetings got talked of, and Cardinal Richelieu, then minister and
all-powerful, heard of them. He himself had a noble passion for letters,
and for all fine culture; he was interested by what he heard of the
nascent society. Himself a man in the grand style, if ever man was, he
had the insight to perceive what a potent instrument of the grand style
was here to his hand. It was the beginning of a great century for
France, the seventeenth; men’s minds were working, the French language
was forming. Richelieu sent to ask the members of the new society
whether they would be willing to become a body with a public character,
holding regular meetings. Not without a little hesitation,—for
apparently they found themselves very well as they were, and these seven
or eight gentlemen of a social and literary turn were not perfectly at
their ease as to what the great and terrible minister could want with
them,—they consented. The favors of a man like Richelieu are not easily
refused, whether they are honestly meant or no; but this favor of
Richelieu’s was meant quite honestly. The Parliament, however, had its
doubts of this. The Parliament had none of Richelieu’s enthusiasm about
letters and culture; it was jealous of the apparition of a new public
body in the State; above all, of a body called into existence by
Richelieu. The King’s letters-patent, establishing and authorizing the
new society, were granted early in 1635; but, by the old constitution of
France, these letters-patent required the verification of the
Parliament. It was two years and a half—towards the autumn of
1637—before the Parliament would give it; and it then gave it only after
pressing solicitations, and earnest assurances of the innocent
intentions of the young Academy. Jocose people said that this society,
with its mission to purify and embellish the language, filled with
terror a body of lawyers like the French Parliament, the stronghold of
barbarous jargon and of chicane.
This improvement of the language was in truth the declared grand aim for
the operations of the Academy. Its statutes of foundation, approved by
Richelieu before the royal edict establishing it was issued, say
expressly: “The Academy’s principal function shall be to work with all
the care and all the diligence possible at giving sure rules to our
language, and rendering it pure, eloquent, and capable of treating the
arts and sciences.” This zeal for making a nation’s great instrument of
thought,—its language,—correct and worthy, is undoubtedly a sign full of
promise,—a weighty earnest of future power. It is said that Richelieu
had it in his mind that French should succeed Latin in its general
ascendency, as Latin had succeeded Greek; if it was so, even this wish
has to some extent been fulfilled. But, at any rate, the _ethical_
influences of style in language,—its close relations, so often pointed
out, with character,—are most important. Richelieu, a man of high
culture, and, at the same time, of great character felt them profoundly;
and that he should have sought to regularize, strengthen, and perpetuate
them by an institution for perfecting language, is alone a striking
proof of his governing spirit and of his genius.
This was not all he had in his mind, however. The new Academy, now
enlarged to a body of forty members, and meant to contain all the chief
literary men of France, was to be a _literary tribunal_. The works of
its members were to be brought before it previous to publication, were
to be criticized by it, and finally, if it saw fit, to be published with
its declared approbation. The works of other writers, not members of the
Academy, might also, at the request of these writers themselves, be
passed under the Academy’s review. Besides this, in essays and
discussions the Academy examined and judged works already published,
whether by living or dead authors, and literary matters in general. The
celebrated opinion on Corneille’s _Cid_, delivered in 1637 by the
Academy at Richelieu’s urgent request, when this poem, which strongly
occupied public attention, had been attacked by M. de Scudéry, shows how
fully Richelieu designed his new creation to do duty as a supreme court
of literature, and how early it in fact began to exercise this function.
One[5] who had known Richelieu declared, after the Cardinal’s death,
that he had projected a yet greater institution than the Academy, a sort
of grand European college of art, science, and literature, a Prytaneum,
where the chief authors of all Europe should be gathered together in one
central home, there to live in security, leisure and honor;—that was a
dream which will not bear to be pulled about too roughly. But the
project of forming a high court of letters for France was no dream;
Richelieu in great measure fulfilled it. This is what the Academy, by
its idea, really is; this is what it has always tended to become; this
is what it has, from time to time, really been; by being, or tending to
be this, far more than even by what it has done for the language, it is
of such importance in France. To give the law, the tone to literature,
and that tone a high one, is its business. “Richelieu meant it,” says M.
Sainte-Beuve, “to be a _haut jury_,”—a jury the most choice and
authoritative that could be found on all important literary matters in
question before the public; to be, as it in fact became in the latter
half of the eighteenth century, “a sovereign organ of opinion.” “The
duty of the Academy is,” says M. Renan, “_maintenir la délicatesse de
l’esprit français_”—to keep the fine quality of the French spirit
unimpaired; it represents a kind of “_maîtrise en fait de bon ton_”—the
authority of a recognized master in matters of tone and taste. “All
ages,” says M. Renan again, “have had their inferior literature; but the
great danger of our time is that this inferior literature tends more and
more to get the upper place. No one has the same advantage as the
Academy for fighting against this mischief;” the Academy, which, as he
says elsewhere, has even special facilities, for “creating a form of
intellectual culture _which shall impose itself on all around_.” M.
Sainte-Beuve and M. Renan are, both of them, very keen-sighted critics;
and they show it signally by seizing and putting so prominently forward
this character of the French Academy.
-----
Footnote 5:
La Mesnardière.
-----
Such an effort to set up a recognized authority, imposing on us a high
standard in matters of intellect and taste, has many enemies in human
nature. We all of us like to go our own way, and not to be forced out of
the atmosphere of commonplace habitual to most of us;—“_was uns alle
bändigt_,” says Goethe, “_das Gemeine_.” We like to be suffered to lie
comfortably in the old straw of our habits, especially of our
intellectual habits, even though this straw may not be very clean and
fine. But if the effort to limit this freedom of our lower nature finds,
as it does and must find, enemies in human nature, it finds also
auxiliaries in it. Out of the four great parts, says Cicero, of the
_honestum_, or good, which forms the matter on which _officium_, or
human duty, finds employment, one is the fixing of a _modus_ and an
_ordo_, a measure and an order, to fashion and wholesomely constrain our
action, in order to lift it above the level it keeps if left to itself,
and to bring it nearer to perfection. Man alone of living creatures, he
says, goes feeling after “_quid sit_ ordo, _quid sid quod_ deceat, _in
factis dictisque qui_ modus—the discovery of an _order_, a law of _good
taste_, a _measure_ for his words and actions.” Other creatures
submissively follow the law of their nature; man alone has an impulse
leading him to set up some other law to control the bent of his nature.
This holds good, of course, as to moral matters, as well as intellectual
matters: and it is of moral matters that we are generally thinking when
we affirm it. But it holds good as to intellectual matters too. Now,
probably, M. Sainte-Beuve had not these words of Cicero in his mind when
he made, about the French nation, the assertion I am going to quote;
but, for all that, the assertion leans for support, one may say, upon
the truth conveyed in those words of Cicero, and wonderfully illustrates
and confirms them. “In France,” says M. Sainte-Beuve, “the first
consideration for us is not whether we are amused and pleased by a work
of art or mind, nor is it whether we are touched by it. What we seek
above all to learn is, whether _we were right_ in being amused with it,
and in applauding it, and in being moved by it.” Those are very
remarkable words, and they are, I believe, in the main quite true. A
Frenchman has, to a considerable degree, what one may call a conscience
in intellectual matters; he has an active belief that there is a right
and a wrong in them, that he is bound to honor and obey the right, that
he is disgraced by cleaving to the wrong. All the world has, or
professes to have, this conscience in moral matters. The word
_conscience_ has become almost confined, in popular use, to the moral
sphere, because this lively susceptibility of feeling is, in the moral
sphere, so far more common than in the intellectual sphere; the
livelier, in the moral sphere, this susceptibility is, the greater
becomes a man’s readiness to admit a high standard of action, an ideal
authoritatively correcting his everyday moral habits; here, such willing
admission of authority is due to sensitiveness of conscience. And a like
deference to a standard higher than one’s own habitual standard in
intellectual matters, a like respectful recognition of a superior ideal,
is caused, in the intellectual sphere, by sensitiveness of intelligence.
Those whose intelligence is quickest, openest, most sensitive, are
readiest with this deference; those whose intelligence is less delicate
and sensitive are less disposed to it. Well, now we are on the road to
see why the French have their Academy and we have nothing of the kind.
What are the essential characteristics of the spirit of our nation? Not,
certainly, an open and clear mind, not a quick and flexible
intelligence. Our greatest admirers would not claim for us that we have
these in a preeminent degree; they might say that we had more of them
than our detractors gave us credit for; but they would not assert them
to be our essential characteristics. They would rather allege, as our
chief spiritual characteristics, energy and honesty; and, if we are
judged favorably and positively, not invidiously and negatively, our
chief characteristics are, no doubt, these:—energy and honesty, not an
open and clear mind, not a quick and flexible intelligence. Openness of
mind and flexibility of intelligence were very signal characteristics of
the Athenian people in ancient times; everybody will feel that. Openness
of mind and flexibility of intelligence are remarkable characteristics
of the French people in modern times; at any rate, they strikingly
characterize them as compared with us; I think everybody, or almost
everybody, will feel that. I will not now ask what more the Athenian or
the French spirit has than this, nor what shortcomings either of them
may have as a set-off against this; all I want now to point out is that
they have this, and that we have it in a much lesser degree.
Let me remark, however, that not only in the moral sphere, but also in
the intellectual and spiritual sphere, energy and honesty are most
important and fruitful qualities; that, for instance, of what we call
genius energy is the most essential part. So, by assigning to a nation
energy and honesty as its chief spiritual characteristics,—by refusing
to it, as at all eminent characteristics, openness of mind and
flexibility of intelligence,—we do not by any means, as some people
might at first suppose, relegate its importance and its power of
manifesting itself with effect from the intellectual to the moral
sphere. We only indicate its probable special line of successful
activity in the intellectual sphere, and, it is true, certain
imperfections and failings to which, in this sphere, it will always be
subject. Genius is mainly an affair of energy, and poetry is mainly an
affair of genius; therefore, a nation whose spirit is characterized by
energy may well be eminent in poetry;—and we have Shakespeare. Again,
the highest reach of science is, one may say, an inventive power, a
faculty of divination, akin to the highest power exercised in poetry;
therefore, a nation whose spirit is characterized by energy may well be
eminent in science;—and we have Newton. Shakespeare and Newton: in the
intellectual sphere there can be no higher names. And what that energy,
which is the life of genius, above everything demands and insists upon,
is freedom; entire independence of all authority, prescription, and
routine,—the fullest room to expand as it will. Therefore, a nation
whose chief spiritual characteristic is energy, will not be very apt to
set up, in intellectual matters, a fixed standard, an authority, like an
academy. By this it certainly escapes certain real inconveniences and
dangers, and it can, at the same time, as we have seen, reach undeniably
splendid heights in poetry and science. On the other hand, some of the
requisites of intellectual work are specially the affair of quickness of
mind and flexibility of intelligence. The form, the method of evolution,
the precision, the proportions, the relations of the parts to the whole,
in an intellectual work, depend mainly upon them. And these are the
elements of an intellectual work which are really most communicable from
it, which can most be learned and adopted from it, which have,
therefore, the greatest effect upon the intellectual performance of
others. Even in poetry, these requisites are very important; and the
poetry of a nation, not eminent for the gifts on which they depend,
will, more or less, suffer by this shortcoming. In poetry, however, they
are, after all, secondary, and energy is the first thing; but in prose
they are of first-rate importance. In its prose literature, therefore,
and in the routine of intellectual work generally, a nation with no
particular gifts for these will not be so successful. These are what, as
I have said, can to a certain degree be learned and appropriated, while
the free activity of genius cannot. Academies consecrate and maintain
them, and, therefore, a nation with an eminent turn for them naturally
establishes academies. So far as routine and authority tend to embarrass
energy and inventive genius, academies may be said to be obstructive to
energy and inventive genius, and, to this extent, to the human spirit’s
general advance. But then this evil is so much compensated by the
propagation, on a large scale, of the mental aptitudes and demands which
an open mind and a flexible intelligence naturally engender, genius
itself, in the long run, so greatly finds its account in this
propagation, and bodies like the French Academy have such power for
promoting it, that the general advance of the human spirit is perhaps,
on the whole, rather furthered than impeded by their existence.
How much greater is our nation in poetry than prose! how much better, in
general, do the productions of its spirit show in the qualities of
genius than in the qualities of intelligence! One may constantly remark
this in the work of individuals; how much more striking, in general,
does any Englishman,—of some vigor of mind, but by no means a poet,—seem
in his verse than in his prose! His verse partly suffers from his not
being really a poet, partly, no doubt, from the very same defects which
impair his prose, and he cannot express himself with thorough success in
it. But how much more powerful a personage does he appear in it, by dint
of feeling, and of originality and movement of ideas, than when he is
writing prose! With a Frenchman of like stamp, it is just the reverse:
set him to write poetry, he is limited, artificial, and impotent; set
him to write prose, he is free, natural, and effective. The power of
French literature is in its prose-writers, the power of English
literature is in its poets. Nay, many of the celebrated French poets
depend wholly for their fame upon the qualities of intelligence which
they exhibit,—qualities which are the distinctive support of prose; many
of the celebrated English prose-writers depend wholly for their fame
upon the qualities of genius and imagination which they
exhibit,—qualities which are the distinctive support of poetry. But, as
I have said, the qualities of genius are less transferable than the
qualities of intelligence; less can be immediately learned and
appropriated from their product; they are less direct and stringent
intellectual agencies, though they may be more beautiful and divine.
Shakspeare and our great Elizabethan group were certainly more gifted
writers than Corneille and his group; but what was the sequel to this
great literature, this literature of genius, as we may call it,
stretching from Marlow to Milton? What did it lead up to in English
literature? To our provincial and second-rate literature of the
eighteenth century. What on the other hand, was the sequel to the
literature of the French “great century,” to this literature of
intelligence, as by comparison with our Elizabethan literature, we may
call it; what did it lead up to? To the French literature of the
eighteenth century, one of the most powerful and pervasive intellectual
agencies that have ever existed,—the greatest European force of the
eighteenth century. In science, again, we had Newton, a genius of the
very highest order, a type of genius in science, if ever there was one.
On the continent, as a sort of counterpart to Newton, there was
Leibnitz; a man, it seems to me (though on these matters I speak under
correction), of much less creative energy of genius, much less power of
divination than Newton, but rather a man of admirable intelligence, a
type of intelligence in science, if ever there was one. Well, and what
did they each directly lead up to in science? What was the intellectual
generation that sprang from each of them? I only repeat what the men of
science have themselves pointed out. The man of genius was continued by
the English analysts of the eighteenth century, comparatively powerless
and obscure followers of the renowned master. The man of intelligence
was continued by successors like Bernouilli, Euler, Lagrange, and
Laplace, the greatest names in modern mathematics.
What I want the reader to see is, that the question as to the utility of
academies to the intellectual life of a nation is not settled when we
say, for instance: “Oh, we have never had an academy and yet we have,
confessedly, a very great literature.” It still remains to be asked:
“What sort of a great literature? a literature great in the special
qualities of genius, or great in the special qualities of intelligence?”
If in the former, it is by no means sure that either our literature, or
the general intellectual life of our nation, has got already, without
academics, all that academics can give. Both the one and the other may
very well be somewhat wanting in those qualities of intelligence out of
a lively sense for which a body like the French Academy, as I have said,
springs, and which such a body does a great deal to spread and confirm.
Our literature, in spite of the genius manifested in it, may fall short
in form, method, precision, proportions, arrangement,—all of them, I
have said, things where intelligence proper comes in. It may be
comparatively weak in prose, that branch of literature where
intelligence proper is, so to speak, all in all. In this branch it may
show many grave faults to which the want of a quick, flexible
intelligence, and of the strict standard which such an intelligence
tends to impose, makes it liable; it may be full of haphazard,
crudeness, provincialism, eccentricity, violence, blundering. It may be
a less stringent and effective intellectual agency, both upon our own
nation and upon the world at large, than other literatures which show
less genius, perhaps, but more intelligence.
The right conclusion certainly is that we should try, so far as we can,
to make up our shortcomings; and that to this end, instead of always
fixing our thoughts upon the points in which our literature, and our
intellectual life generally, are strong, we should from time to time,
fix them upon those in which they are weak, and so learn to perceive
clearly what we have to amend. What is our second great spiritual
characteristic,—our honesty,—good for, if it is not good for this? But
it will,—I am sure it will,—more and more, as time goes on, be found
good for this.
Well, then, an institution like the French Academy,—an institution owing
its existence to a national bent towards the things of the mind, towards
culture, towards clearness, correctness, and propriety in thinking and
speaking, and, in its turn, promoting this bent,—sets standards in a
number of directions, and creates, in all these directions, a force of
educated opinion, checking and rebuking those who fall below these
standards, or who set them at nought. Educated opinion exists here as in
France; but in France the Academy serves as a sort of center and
rallying-point to it, and gives it a force which it has not got here.
Why is all the _journeyman-work_ of literature, as I may call it, so
much worse done here than it is in France? I do not wish to hurt any
one’s feelings; but surely this is so. Think of the difference between
our books of reference and those of the French, between our biographical
dictionaries (to take a striking instance) and theirs; think of the
difference between the translations of the classics turned out for Mr.
Bohn’s library and those turned out for M. Nisard’s collection! As a
general rule, hardly any one amongst us, who knows French and German
well, would use an English book of reference when he could get a French
or German one; or would look at an English prose translation of an
ancient author when he could get a French or German one. It is not that
there do not exist in England, as in France, a number of people
perfectly well able to discern what is good, in these things, from what
is bad, and preferring what is good; but they are isolated, they form no
powerful body of opinion, they are not strong enough to set a standard,
up to which even the journeyman-work of literature must be brought, if
it is to be vendible. Ignorance and charlatanism in work of this kind
are always trying to pass off their wares as excellent, and to cry down
criticism as the voice of an insignificant, over-fastidious minority;
they easily persuade the multitude that this is so when the minority is
scattered about as it is here; not so easily when it is banded together
as in the French Academy. So, again, with freaks in dealing with
language; certainly all such freaks tend to impair the power and beauty
of language; and how far more common they are with us than with the
French! To take a very familiar instance. Every one has noticed the way
in which the _Times_ chooses to spell the word “diocese;” it always
spells it diocess,[6] deriving it, I suppose, from _Zeus_ and _census_.
The _Journal des Débats_ might just as well write “diocess” instead of
“diocèse,” but imagine the _Journal des Débats_ doing so! Imagine an
educated Frenchman indulging himself in an orthographical antic of this
sort, in face of the grave respect with which the Academy and its
dictionary invest the French language! Some people will say these are
little things; they are not; they are of bad example. They tend to
spread the baneful notion that there is no such thing as a high, correct
standard in intellectual matters; that every one may as well take his
own way; they are at variance with the severe discipline necessary for
all real culture; they confirm us in habits of wilfulness and
eccentricity, which hurt our minds, and damage our credit with serious
people. The late Mr. Donaldson was certainly a man of great ability, and
I, who am not an Orientalist, do not pretend to judge his _Jashar_: but
let the reader observe the form which a foreign Orientalist’s judgment
of it naturally takes. M. Renan calls it a _tentative malheureuse_, a
failure, in short; this it may be, or it may not be; I am no judge. But
he goes on: “It is astonishing that a recent article” (in a French
periodical, he means) “should have brought forward as the last word of
German exegesis a work like this, composed by a doctor of the University
of Cambridge, and universally condemned by German critics.” You see what
he means to imply: an extravagance of this sort could never have come
from Germany, where there is a great force of critical opinion
controlling a learned man’s vagaries, and keeping him straight; it comes
from the native home of intellectual eccentricity of all kinds,[7]—from
England, from a doctor of the University of Cambridge:—and I dare say he
would not expect much better things from a doctor of the University of
Oxford. Again, after speaking of what Germany and France have done for
the history of Mahomet: “America and England,” M. Renan goes on, “have
also occupied themselves with Mahomet.” He mentions Washington Irving’s
_Life of Mahomet_, which does not, he says, evince much of an historical
sense, a _sentiment historique fort élevé_; “but,” he proceeds, “this
book shows a real progress, when one thinks that in 1829 Mr. Charles
Forster published two thick volumes, which enchanted the English
_révérends_, to make out that Mahomet was the little horn of the he-goat
that figures in the eighth chapter of Daniel, and that the Pope was the
great horn. Mr. Forster founded on this ingenious parallel a whole
philosophy of history, according to which the Pope represented the
Western corruption of Christianity, and Mahomet the Eastern; thence the
striking resemblances between Mahometanism and Popery.” And in a note M.
Renan adds: “This is the same Mr. Charles Forster who is the author of a
mystification about the Sinaitic inscriptions, in which he declares he
finds the primitive language.” As much as to say: “It is an Englishman,
be surprised at no extravagance.” If these innuendoes had no ground, and
were made in hatred and malice, they would not be worth a moment’s
attention; but they come from a grave Orientalist, on his own subject,
and they point to a real fact;—the absence, in this country, of any
force of educated literary and scientific opinion, making aberrations
like those of the author of _The One Primeval Language_ out of the
question. Not only the author of such aberrations, often a very clever
man, suffers by the want of check, by the not being kept straight, and
spends force in vain on a false road, which, under better discipline, he
might have used with profit on a true one; but all his adherents, both
“reverends” and others, suffer too, and the general rate of information
and judgment is in this way kept low.
-----
Footnote 6:
The _Times_ has now (1868) abandoned this spelling and adopted the
ordinary one.
Footnote 7:
A critic declares I am wrong in saying that M. Renan’s language
implies this. I still think that there is a shade, a _nuance_ of
expression, in M. Renan’s language, which does imply this; but, I
confess, the only person who can really settle such a question is M.
Renan himself.
-----
In a production which we have all been reading lately, a production
stamped throughout with a literary quality very rare in this country,
and of which I shall have a word to say presently—_urbanity_; in this
production, the work of a man never to be named by any son of Oxford
without sympathy, a man who alone in Oxford of his generation, alone of
many generations, conveyed to us in his genius that same charm, that
same ineffable sentiment which this exquisite place itself conveys,—I
mean Dr. Newman,—an expression is frequently used which is more common
in theological than in literary language, but which seems to me fitted
to be of general service; the _note_ of so and so, the note of
catholicity, the note of antiquity, the note of sanctity, and so on.
Adopting this expressive word, I say that in the bulk of the
intellectual work of a nation which has no center, no intellectual
metropolis like an academy, like M. Sainte-Beuve’s “sovereign organ of
opinion,” like M. Renan’s “recognized authority in matters of tone and
taste,”—there is observable a _note of provinciality_. Now to get rid of
provinciality is a certain stage of culture; a stage the positive result
of which we must not make of too much importance, but which is,
nevertheless, indispensable, for it brings us on to the platform where
alone the best and highest intellectual work can be said fairly to
begin. Work done after men have reached this platform is _classical_;
and that is the only work which, in the long run, can stand. All the
_scoriæ_ in the work of men of great genius who have not lived on this
platform are due to their not having lived on it. Genius raises them to
it by moments, and the portions of their work which are immortal are
done at these moments; but more of it would have been immortal if they
had not reached this platform at moments only, if they had had the
culture which makes men live there.
The less a literature has felt the influence of a supposed center of
correct information, correct judgment, correct taste, the more we shall
find in it this note of provinciality. I have shown the note of
provinciality as caused by remoteness from a center of correct
information. Of course the note of provinciality from the want of a
center of correct taste is still more visible, and it is also still more
common. For here great—even the greatest—powers of mind most fail a man.
Great powers of mind will make him inform himself thoroughly, great
powers of mind will make him think profoundly, even with ignorance and
platitude all round him; but not even great powers of mind will keep his
taste and style perfectly sound and sure, if he is left too much to
himself, with no “sovereign organ of opinion” in these matters near him.
Even men like Jeremy Taylor and Burke suffer here. Take this passage
from Taylor’s funeral sermon on Lady Carbery:—
“So have I seen a river, deep and smooth, passing with a still foot and
a sober face, and paying to the _fiscus_, the great exchequer of the
sea, a tribute large and full; and hard by it a little brook, skipping
and making a noise upon its unequal and neighbor bottom; and after all
its talking and bragged motion, it paid to its common audit no more than
the revenues of a little cloud or a contemptible vessel: so have I
sometimes compared the issues of her religion to the solemnities and
famed outsides of another’s piety.”
That passage has been much admired, and, indeed, the genius in it is
undeniable. I should say, for my part, that genius, the ruling divinity
of poetry, had been too busy in it, and intelligence, the ruling
divinity of prose, not busy enough. But can any one, with the best
models of style in his head, help feeling the note of provinciality
there, the want of simplicity, the want of measure, the want of just the
qualities that make prose classical? If he does not feel what I mean,
let him place beside the passage of Taylor this passage from the
Panegyric of St. Paul, by Taylor’s contemporary, Bossuet:—
“Il ira, cet ignorant dans l’art de bien dire, avec cette locution rude,
avec cette phrase qui sent l’étranger il ira en cette Grèce polie, la
mère des philosophes et des orateurs; et malgré la résistance du monde,
il y établira plus d’Eglises que Platon n’y a gagné de disciples par
cette éloquence qu’on a crue divine.”
There we have prose without the note of provinciality—classical prose,
prose of the center.
Or take Burke, our greatest English prose-writer, as I think; take
expressions like this:—
“Blindfold themselves, like bulls that shut their eyes when they push,
they drive, by the point of their bayonets, their slaves, blindfolded,
indeed, no worse than their lords, to take their fictions for
currencies, and to swallow down paper pills by thirty-four millions
sterling at a dose.”