principles for your New Critic? And the answers are ready, one in
Hellenic, one in Hebraic phraseology. The definition shall be couched as
the man of understanding would define it: and if any will do the works
of the New Criticism he shall know the doctrine thereof. And the works
themselves are not hard to set forth. He must read, and, as far as
possible, read everything—that is the first and great commandment. If he
omits one period of a literature, even one author of some real, if ever
so little, importance in a period, he runs the risk of putting his view
of the rest out of focus; if he fails to take at least some account of
other literatures as well, his state will be nearly as perilous.
Secondly, he must constantly compare books, authors, literatures indeed,
to see in what each differs from each, but never in order to dislike one
because it is not the other. Thirdly, he must, as far as he possibly
can, divest himself of any idea of what a book _ought to be_, until he
has seen what it is. In other words, and to revert to the old simile,
the plate to which he exposes the object cannot be too carefully
prepared and sensitised, so that it may take the exactest possible
reflection: but it cannot also be too carefully protected from even the
minutest line, shadow, dot, that may affect or predetermine the
impression in the very slightest degree.
To carry this out is, of course, difficult; to carry it out in
perfection is, no doubt, impossible. But I believe that it can be done
in some measure, and could be done, if men would take criticism both
seriously and faithfully, better and better—by those, at least, who
start with a certain favourable disposition and talent for the exercise,
and who submit this disposition to a suitable training in ancient and
modern literature. And by such endeavours, some nearer approach to the
“Fair Vision” must surely be probable than was even possible by the
older system of schedule and precept, under which even a new masterpiece
of genius, which somehow or other “forced the consign” and established
itself, became a mischief, because it introduced a new prohibitive and
exclusive pattern. I have said more than once that, according to the
common law of flux and reflux—the Revolution which those may accept who
are profoundly sceptical of Evolution—some return, not to the old
Neo-classicism, but to some more dogmatic and less æsthetic criticism
than we have seen for the last three generations, may be expected, and
that there have been not a few signs of its arrival. But this is a
History, not a Prophecy, and sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.
Perhaps even the good is not quite so insufficient as the day itself,
“chagrined at whatsoe’er _it is_,” may be apt to suppose.
II.
“Who would has heard Sordello’s story told.”
In these three volumes an endeavour has been made to fulfil the pledge
given at their beginning, and to set before the reader, in a plain tale,
what men have actually done, said, and thought in Criticism of
Literature, in Judging of Authors. We have seen how the art grew up,
like so many other arts, as a sort of _parergon_, as a corollary upon
the strictly practical study of Rhetoric for the purpose of the orator:
and how it was long held in a sort of subjection to this _techne_,
which, if not exactly a _techne banausos_, certainly must rank far below
the study and the fruition of the whole of literature. We have seen how,
in the times called ancient, it never got wholly free from this inferior
position; how, in the times called mediæval, it hardly showed any signs
of life; how it revived with the general new birth, and what have been
its fortunes since. There can be no need to pad this already stout
volume with abstracts of our Interchapters. The story of Criticism is
actually before the reader, and if he will not take it now, that it is
at last given to him, because there is wanting something that is not the
story, I cannot help it. No doubt there are some, perhaps there are
many, who honestly and impartially think the story not worth giving,
think it a story of something, at best a superfluity, generally a
failure, at worst a nuisance, redeemable and excusable only (if then) by
being made to serve as illustration of some philosophic theory. But I
have said often enough and positively enough, though I trust not too
contumaciously, that I do not think so.
And even if the record seem too often a record of failure and mistake,
there is a cheerful side to this also. Most of the dangers of criticism,
as this long survey must have sufficiently taught those who care to
learn, are comfortably and reassuringly (if from another point of view
despairingly) old. We know they will come, and we know they will go,
whether in our time or in another we cannot say, but it does not much
matter.
“The Whole man idly boasts to find,” no doubt. Not many have even
attempted to do it; few who have attempted it have succeeded in that
comparatively initial and rudimentary adventure which consists in justly
finding the parts. But Criticism is, after all, an attempt, however
faulty and failing, however wandering and purblind, to do both the one
and the other. No Muse, or handmaid of the Muses (let it be freely
confessed) has been less often justified of her children: none has had
so many good-for-nothings for sons. Of hardly any have some children had
such disgusting, such patent, such intolerable faults. The purblind
theorist who mistakes the passport for the person, and who will not
admit without passport the veriest angel; the acrid pedant who will
allow no one whom he dislikes to write well, and no one at all to write
on any subject that he himself has written on, or would like to write
on, who dwells on dates and commas, who garbles out and foists in, whose
learning may be easily exaggerated but whose taste and judgment cannot
be, because they do not exist;—these are the too often justified
patterns of the critic to many minds. The whole record of critical
result, which we have so laboriously arranged and developed, is a record
of mistake and of misdoing, of half-truths and nearly whole errors.
So say they, and so let them say: things have been said less truly. But,
once more, all this is no more Criticism itself than the crimes and the
faults of men are Humanity in its true and eternal idea. Criticism is
the endeavour to find, to know, to love, to recommend, not only the
best, but all the good, that has been known and thought and written in
the world. If its corruption be specially detestable, its perfection is
only the more amiable and consummate. And the record of the quest, while
it is not quite the record of the quest for other Eldorados—while it has
some gains to yield, some moments of adeption, some instances of those
who did not fail—should surely have some interest even for the general:
it should more surely have much for those few but not unworthy, faint
yet pursuing, who would rather persevere in the search for the
unattainable than rust in acquiescence and defeat.
For to him who has once attained, who has once even comprehended, the
_ethos_ of true criticism, and perhaps to him only, the curse which Mr
Browning has put in one of his noblest and most poetic passages does not
apply. To him the “one fair, good, wise thing” that he has once grasped
remains for ever as he has grasped it—_if_ he has grasped it at first.
Not twenty, not forty years, make any difference. What has been, has
been and remains. If it is not so, if there is palling and blunting,
then it is quite certain either that the object was unworthy or that the
subject did not really, truly, critically embrace it—that he was
following some will-o'-the-wisp of fancy on the one hand, some baffling
wind of doctrine on the other, and was not wholly, in brain and soul,
under the real inspiration of the Muse. That this adeption and fruition
of literature is to a certain extent innate may be true: that it is both
idle and flagitious to simulate it if it does not exist, is true. But it
can certainly be cultivated where it exists, and it probably in all
cases requires cultivation in order that it may be perfect. In any fair
state of development it is its own exceeding great reward,—a possession
of the most precious that man can have. And the practical value of the
Art of Criticism, and of the History of Criticism (which, as in other
cases, is merely the exposition of the art in practice), is that it can
and does assist this development; that by pointing out past errors it
prevents interference with enjoyment; that it shows how to grasp and how
to enjoy; that it helps the ear to listen when the horns of Elfland
blow.
-----
Footnote 1:
For uniformity’s sake I have kept the title “to the present day.” That
day, however, was the day of the first volume, 1900; and should the
book reappear it will read “to the end of the nineteenth century.”
Footnote 2:
Especially in the phrase “the Modern Spirit”—a _Geist_ who seems to
have received the blessing of a good opinion of himself, and to have
no inclination to “deny” it.
Footnote 3:
As I have known this quotation challenged, I may observe that there is
a Tenth book of the _Æneid_ as well as a First.
Footnote 4:
Published, not entirely, by Thyer of Manchester in 1759 (2 vols.). A
handsome reprint of 1827 gives only a few of the prose “Characters”:
more of these, but not the whole, were given by Mr H. Morley in his
_Character-Writing of the Seventeenth Century_ (London, 1891). The
verse remains may be found in Chalmers or in the Aldine (vol. ii.,
London, 1893).
Footnote 5:
A blank rhyme indicates “Howard”—whether Edward or Robert does not
matter. But another blank requires a trisyllable to fill it.
Footnote 6:
Benlowes is a warning to “illustrated poets.” It pleased him to have
his main book (_Theophila, or Love’s Sacrifice_: London, 1652, folio)
splendidly decorated by Hollar and others; and the consequence is that
copies of it are very rare, and generally mutilated when found. I
congratulate myself on having first read Benlowes and William Woty, a
minor poet of a century later, on the same day. To study _Theophila_
and _The Blossoms of Helicon_ in succession is quite a critical gaudy.
Footnote 7:
I do not make Vico my Italian example, for the same reasons which
induced me to postpone him to this volume. See _inf._, chap. v.
Footnote 8:
_The_V. sup., ii. 450, 553.
Footnote 9:
_The_Op. cit. sup., ii. 425 note, p. 71. I am not certain whether this
came before or after the 1897 reprint (by E. Ritter: Paris and Berne)
of Muralt. But Dr Otto von Greyerz had some years earlier published a
study of him (Frauenfeld, 1888), which I have not yet seen.
Footnote 10:
_The_V. sup., ii. 271.
Footnote 11:
_The_V. sup., ii. 63.
Footnote 12:
From the social-historical side he is very valuable. It is a pity, and
rather a surprise, that Macaulay did not know—for if he had known he
must have used—him. No foreign writer is more valuable as illustrating
the astonishing coarseness and the less astonishing immorality which
the Puritan curse had directly, or by reaction, brought upon England.
Footnote 13:
For the special subjects of the present chapter, putting Lessing, and
even him not wholly, out of the question, there exists a remarkably
“in-going” monograph, Herr Friedrich Braitmaier’s _Geschichte der
Poetischen Theorie und Kritik von den Diskursen der Maler bis auf
Lessing_ (Frauenfeld, 1889). This book has been of great use to me;
and I do not think that any one can read it without respect for the
author’s learning, his good sense, and the clearness and definiteness
of his report. His _compte-rendu_ of particular authors is often
larger than it need be for a fair first view; while neither it nor
anything else can ever dispense the thorough student from going to
originals; and he might be here and there less polemical. But these
things will not displease some readers, and certainly they do not
spoil the book, which, however, be it observed, is deplorably in want
of an index. With it should be taken the extremely full and informing
introduction—almost a book in itself—of Herr Johann von Antoniewicz to
the ed. of Joh. Elias Schlegel, cited below. For almost all my German
chapters I am also much indebted to the admirable _Grundriss der
Geschichte d. Deutsch. Nationallit._ of Koberstein (ed. 5, by Bartsch,
Leipzig: 5 vols. and index, 1872-73)—a book which, let some say what
they will, is not likely soon to be really obsolete.
Footnote 14:
The text-book for German seventeenth-century criticism is that of Dr
Karl Borinski, _Die Poetik der Renaissance und die Anfänge der
literarischen Kritik in Deutschland_ (Berlin, 1886). This book is
“choke-full” of information and indication, and the only possible
faults that Momus himself could find with it are—first, that the
author sometimes digresses somewhat from his path, which is itself so
little trodden that one would like him to stick to it; and, secondly,
that his dealings with his subject might be rather clearer and more
methodic in the text, and, being what they are, are all the more in
want of a clear and methodic table of contents. But I am too much
indebted to him to quarrel.
Footnote 15:
_Schönes Blumenfeldt._ Lignitz, 1601, 4to.
Footnote 16:
ii. 360 note.
Footnote 17:
G. R. Weckherlin. See Borinski, p. 51. The influence of English
literature on German was still pretty strong. Sidney’s _Arcadia_ was
translated in 1629.
Footnote 18:
Braunschweig, 1651.
Footnote 19:
Berlin-Jena, 1656.
Footnote 20:
_Kurzer Wegweiser sur Deutsch-Tichtkunst._ Je[h]na, 1663. Some of
Buchner’s original work seems to be lost, if it ever was published.
Footnote 21:
I use the Zürich reprint of 1749.
Footnote 22:
1702.
Footnote 23:
A comparison of the three contemporaries, Gravina, Werenfels, and
Addison, would make an interesting critical essay.
Footnote 24:
“Some are so rigorous that they will only have a time of one _or two_
days.” I quote from Borinski, p. 364, not having seen the original.
Footnote 25:
_V. sup._, ii. 552-557.
Footnote 26:
_Op. cit._, Part I., Chaps. 1-5 and 8. His special enemy or target is
Danzel’s _Gottsched und seine Zeit_ (Leipzig, 1848), an unhesitating
championship of the classical champion.
Footnote 27:
1725-26. These eccentric and sometimes _baroque_ titles were a mania
with German men of letters. It had become epidemic in the fifteenth
century, and continued so till the eighteenth, if not longer, the last
very distinguished patient being, of course, Jean Paul. In this the
_feminine_ is an exaggeration of the Addisonian tendency to “fair-sex
it,” as Swift says.
Footnote 28:
He _had_ a real zeal for his native tongue: and it is admitted that
the _Beiträge_, by discarding the Spectatorian miscellaneousness, and
concentrating attention upon letters, and by promoting, if mainly from
the mere side of language, the study of elder German literature, did
much good.
Footnote 29:
It has been debated whether “Sasper” or “Saspar,” by which names the
Swiss critics sometimes (but very rarely) mention our poet, is a proof
of ignorance or merely a phonetic accommodation. But it is admitted
that the first German who felt his true inspiration and healing power
was J. E. Schlegel, _v. inf._
Footnote 30:
I have been remonstrated with, in no unfriendly manner, for not
discussing the origin, progress, and variations of this famous word. I
can only say of this, as of some other remonstrances, that all show
rather imperfect realisation of what I intended to do in this book.
Such a discussion would form a most fitting part of a volume of
_Abhandlungen_ or _Excursus_ on this History—a volume which, if I
found any encouragement to do so, I would very gladly write, and for
which I have all the materials ready. But it and its possible
companions would, according to my ideas of my plan, not merely enlarge
the book itself too much, but throw it out of scheme and scale, if
they were introduced into the text.
Footnote 31:
Antonio Conti (1677-1749) is called author of that _Paragone_ which in
vol. ii. p. 554 _sup._ I called “anonymous,” because Gottsched gave no
author for it, and which was an offshoot of this correspondence in
1728-29. Conti was acquainted with Leibnitz and Newton, spent a long
time both in England and in France, wrote tragedies and other things,
which are imperfectly collected in his _Prose e Poesie_, Venice, vol.
i., 1739; vol. ii. (posthumous), 1756. Professors D’Ancona and Bucci
(_Manuale della Litt. Ital._, Firenze, 1897, iv. 379) speak highly of
him. The passage which they give from him on Dante and Petrarch is
respectable and erudite, but gives no very high idea of his critical
powers. Milton sticks to history and tradition, but Dante does all
“out of his own head.” Petrarch has in his poetry not only the sacred
and the venerable, but the graceful and the delicate, &c., &c. For
more on him and on König see note at end of chapter.
Footnote 32:
_Kritische Abhandlung von dem Wunderbaren in der Poesie und dessen
Verbindung mit dem Wahrscheinlichen in einer Vertheidigung des
Gedichtes Joh. Milton’s von dem Verlorenen Paradiese._ [By Bodmer.]
1740.
_Kritische Abhandlung von der Natur, den Absichten und dem Gebrauche
der Gleichnisse._ [By Breitinger, edited (_besorget_) by Bodmer.]
1740.
_Kritische Dichtkunst. Worinnen die Poetische Malerei in Absicht auf
die Erfindung im Grunde untersuchet wird_, &c. [By Breitinger.] 1740.
_Kritische Betrachtung uber die Poetischen Gemahlde der Dichter._ [By
Bodmer, with an introduction by Breitinger.] 1741.
All these might, with advantage, be more accessible than they are. The
_Kritische Dichtkunst_ was promised long ago as a reprint in the
_Litteraturdenkmale_. The originals appear to be rare, and when they
occur are dear, and at once carried off.
Footnote 33:
_V. sup._, ii. 554. As an example of Gottsched in his less sad but
more furious mood, nothing can be better than the passage quoted by
Herr Braitmaier (_op. cit._, p. 139) from the _Beiträge_ (xxix. 8).
After much vituperation of Shakespeare (_Julius Cæsar_ had just been
translated) and other English playwrights, even Addison, he winds up:
“That the English stage helps in such a shameless fashion to nourish
the two principal vices of the English people—cruelty and lust—is
something so horrible that all honour-loving Englishmen must blush as
often as they think of their theatre. There is scarcely a comedy
wherein blood and murder do not come in just as if it were a tragedy,
and wherein both sexes do not openly, and with the most revolting
expressions, speak of things that can only occur in disreputable and
forbidden houses.” Poor Gottsched!
Footnote 34:
Which, be it remembered, B. himself translated.
Footnote 35:
Heilbronn?, 1883.
Footnote 36:
These latter date from 1742.
Footnote 37:
It is well known that Germany was still intensely provincial. The
“snorings under six-and-thirty monarchs,” as Heine put it unkindly,
almost a century later, were not peaceful by any means.
Footnote 38:
Zürich, 1741-44.
Footnote 39:
They were numerous from 1740 to 1760, and their titles—except those of
the rather well-known _Bremer Beiträge_, itself a “short title,” and
the _Gelehrten Zeitungen_ of Göttingen, are mostly rather cumbrous,
_e.g._, Cramer and Mylius’ _Bemühungen zur Beförderung der Kritik und
des Guten Geschmacks_, Halle, 1743-47. I do not pretend to a very
extensive acquaintance with them, but what I have confirms Herr
Braitmaier’s statement that, excepting the Göttingen one, and this for
the sake of Haller, chiefly, “All these newspapers did as good as
nothing for the advancement of criticism.”
Footnote 40:
Gellert, who was a sort of “prefect” for his time in this school of
modern German literature, gave at least one proof of practical wisdom
which few men of letters have equalled. Frederic the Great sent for
him, poured oil over him from his beard to the skirts of his clothing,
and invited him again. Gellert did not go. As for the others,
Christian Mylius, dying young, had the further good luck to be a
friend of Lessing, who edited his _Vermischte Schriften_ (Berlin,
1754). They run from Theology to Vivisection. The chief critical piece
is a tractate (1743), _Von den Reimen und dem Sylbenmasse in
Schauspielen_. Mylius is against rhyme both in Tragedy and in Comedy.
Footnote 41:
I say “at least” because the youngest brother of the elder batch,
Johann Heinrich, also meddled with literature. But we need take no
keep of him.
Footnote 42:
A phase of, and sometimes identified with, the general “Swiss-Saxon”
battle.
Footnote 43:
I only know the third edition (Leipzig, 1770), which, as well as the
second, 1758-59, seems to have been a good deal revised. There are
eleven _Abhandlungen_ here, two of which were new, while two others
had been added in the second to the original seven.
Footnote 44:
Ed. cit. _sup._, J. E. S. _Aesthetische und Dramaturgische Schriften_.
Heilbronn, 1887.
Footnote 45:
Ed. cit., pp. 96-166.
Footnote 46:
He is nearest in the _title_ of the first dissertation, “How Imitation
must sometimes be _unlike_ the originals,” which may have deceived
some. But he does not quite live up to this, and mainly contents
himself with arguing that you may _improve upon_ your originals,
embellish them, &c., to give more pleasure.
Footnote 47:
_Sämmtliche Werke._ Wien, 1838.
Footnote 48:
_V. sup._, i. 139.
Footnote 49:
Ed. cit., p. 958.
Footnote 50:
This separation of the drama (or at least of the theatre) and
literature may shock some readers, but I can rely on support from
persons who take a very different view of the acting theatre, and a
very different interest in it from mine, yet who agree with me that
the connection between literature and acted or actable drama is in no
sense essential or necessary.
Footnote 51:
_Hamburgische Dramaturgie_, §§ 33-35, vol. xi. p. 233 _sq._ of the
other edition which I use. There is a translation by Miss Zimmern and
others of the _Dramaturgie_, the _Laocoön_, and one or two other
things in Bohn’s Library.
Footnote 52:
_Œuvres_, ed. Belin (Paris, 1819), ii. 17-28. A translation—the old
contemporary version revised by the present writer—will be found in
Marmontel’s _Moral Tales_ (London, 1895).
Footnote 53:
_V. sup._, ii. 327, 417, 418.
Footnote 54:
Of course the _general_ drift of the piece, with the corrections it
introduces in the _ut pictura poesis_ maxim, is very important indeed,
and was of the very highest opportunity in supplying corrections to
the different opinions on the subject of Du Bos and the Switzers.
Moreover, such discussions as that of the Disgusting, &c., are
undoubtedly things which we should have noticed in the first volume,
and perhaps in the second. But the iron room is closing in.
Footnote 55:
_Laocoön_, xx. Ed. cit., x. 120 _sq._
Footnote 56:
Observe that it will be quite useless for the “parallel passage”
marine-storekeeper to point out, even if he can, earlier uses of
either image. Neither was a _stock_ image at the time of use.
Footnote 57:
_H. D._, No. (or Stück) 11 and part of 12; xi. 144 _sq._
Footnote 58:
_Semiramis_, III. vi. _sub fin._
Footnote 59:
_H. D._, No. 22 _sq._
Footnote 60:
Ibid., 29 _sq._
Footnote 61:
Ibid., 36 _sq._
Footnote 62:
Some of the original dates of Lessing’s works may be usefully grouped
in a note: Early critical work, 1750 onwards; _Abhandlungen über die
Fabeln_, 1759; _Laocoön_, 1766; _Hamb. Dramaturgie_, 1767-68;
_Anmerkungen über das Epigramm_, 1771. But the whole thirty years of
his literary life—at least until his unlucky attack of
anti-theological mania towards its close—were fruitful in criticism.
Footnote 63:
This important and edifying problem has attracted much attention from
scholars. M. Kont, the author of a really admirable monograph on
_Lessing et l’Antiquité_ (2 vols., Paris, 1894-9), devotes almost an
excursus to it. The original may be found in vol. 15 of Herr Göring’s
(the collected) ed., and it is fair to say that the latter part of
Lessing’s dissertation does much to save the earlier.
Footnote 64:
Again see M. Kont for comment and the “Anmerkungen über das Epigramm,”
_Works_, xv. 73 _sq._ for text. Lessing also proclaimed his admiration
for Martial in his preface to the early collection of his writings, in
1753.
Footnote 65:
The not uncommon ascription even of this is a result of that unjust
neglect or depreciation of Scaliger and Castelvetro and the other
Italians, which we have attempted _pro viribus_ to repair.
Footnote 66:
Lessing’s curiosity as to at least the English Drama was so insatiable
that he actually translated part of Crisp’s (Fanny Burney’s “Daddy”
Crisp’s) _Virginia_—that play, the doleful effects of whose failure or
doubtful success Macaulay, according to Mrs Ellis, so much
exaggerated.
Footnote 67:
That he knows and quotes the _Arte Nuevo_ is much more surprising than
that he does not fully comprehend Lope’s position.
Footnote 68:
_Eth. Nic._, VII. ii. 10.
Footnote 69:
I wish that M. Kont had not fallen into a common error by saying that
Bernays has “proved” Lessing’s interpretation wrong in part. When will
people learn, in critical discussion, to see that to “make a thing
probable” is not to “prove” it?
Footnote 70:
Apparently Lessing would not have disagreed much with the reactionary
modern who said that “the only really valuable articles in the present
English school curriculum are Greek and Euclid.”
Footnote 71:
Not that he did not pay some attention to Old German: but it had
little effect on him, and he was evidently fonder of the fifteenth
century than of the thirteenth. Nor is what has been said above to be
taken as meaning that Gottsched himself neglected mediæval writers. On
the contrary, he studied them very carefully as a part of his general
patriotic “Germanism.” Only he did not in the least feel their drift.
Opinions on Lessing’s own attitude to mediæval literature differ
remarkably, but I cannot see much real appreciation in it.
Footnote 72:
_V. sup._, vol. ii. p. 523. As we have seen, J. A. Schlegel had
translated the Frenchman when Lessing was barely of age.
Footnote 73:
To illustrate this before going further, we may take account both of
the _Theatrical Miscellanies_, which fill vols. vii. and viii. of the
_Works_, and of the similar miscellanies of a more general kind
contained in vol. xiv. The latter include many short reviews and notes
of the kind elsewhere noticed: the former supply by far the most
remarkable instance of that extraordinary _industry_—that mania, so to
speak, for assimilating all the material furnished by older and more
accomplished literatures—which is the great note of this period of
German culture. Much, as was almost necessary, is mere abstract, such
as in vol. 7 the above-noticed analysis of Crisp’s _Virginia_ and the
long article on the Tragedies of Seneca, where, however, there is not
a little actual criticism of Brumoy, &c. The _Lives_ of Thomson
(“Jacob” Thomson) and of Destouches show us by contrast what a great
thing Dr Johnson did in elaborating the biographical-critical
_causerie_: and even the _Dissertations_ on _tragédie larmoyante_ give
little more than a frame of Lessing’s, the painters being Chassiron
and Gellert. One article in vol. 8, “Von Johann Dryden,” might have
been of the very highest critical interest; but it is a mere fragment.
And the “Outlines of a History of the English Stage,” though showing
Lessing’s astonishing scholarship in his favourite subject, are only
outlines.
Footnote 74:
vi.-ix. of the edition cited.
Footnote 75:
This occupies more than fifty pages (91-145) of vol. vi.
Footnote 76:
Lessing is less tolerant in this case than in that of Martial. The
fact is that, in spite of its outrageousness, the libel would be
rather amusing if it were not so exceedingly _tautologous_—with the
tautology of a certain class of _graffiti_.
Footnote 77:
Vol. ix.
Footnote 78:
P. 205.
Footnote 79:
P. 173.
Footnote 80:
xv. 73-155. The _thirteenth_ volume is wholly archæological, and
contains among other things the polemic with Klotz as to the
_Laocoön_, and the tractate _On Ancient Representations of Death_.
Footnote 81:
_Ueber die sogenannten Fabeln aus den Zeiten der Minnesinger_, xvi.
47-87.
Footnote 82:
P. 270. The Germans could not get nearer to the title than _Der
Schwärmer oder Herumstreifer_. I suppose _Der Schlenderer_ would have
been not “noble” enough. Lessing’s English does not seem to have been
very idiomatic, for he says that the word “Rambler” means properly “a
landlooper who has no regular abiding-place.”
Footnote 83:
_V. sup._, ii. 267.
Footnote 84:
It is curious that three great critics of the three great literary
countries of modern Europe, Lessing, Sainte-Beuve, and Mr Arnold,
should all have forgotten in their later years, the caution, “Be not
critical _overmuch_.”
Footnote 85:
See, for instance, the art. on Hagedorn, xx. 108.
Footnote 86:
I most particularly, for instance, do _not_ wish to seem of the mind
of an American Professor who announces in a periodical as I revise
this book that he believes he has “overthrown most of Lessing’s ideas”
in the _Laocoön_, “shown that his statements about Homer are wrong,
his psychology wrong, and his reasoning often fallacious.”
Footnote 87:
Lessing did not always keep so cool. The _Briefe Antiquarischen
Inhalts_ (vol. 13, ed. cit.) not unfrequently betray a rise of
temperature, and at the last boil over in coarse and self-forgetful
language.
Footnote 88:
_Deutsche Litteraturdenkmale._ Heilbronn, 1883. One cannot be too
grateful for the admirable re-edition of this by Herr L. Geiger.
Berlin, 1902.
Footnote 89:
Mr David Hannay, Introduction to _Jacob Faithful_. London, 1895.
Footnote 90:
Goethe, _Conv. Eck._, i. 125, says _none_.
Footnote 91:
As in his smartness (p. 12, ed. cit.) on the phrase (which he
misattributes, but this is nothing), “Ihro Majestät Glanzen wie ein
Karfunkel am Finger der Jetzigen Zeit.” “Peut-on,” asks this other
Majesty with fine irony, “rien de plus mauvais? Pourquoi une
escarboucle? _Est-ce que le temps a un doigt?_ Quand on le représente,
on le peint avec des ailes, parcequ’il s’envole sans cesse, avec un
clepsydre parceque les heures le divisent, et on arme son _bras_ d’un
faulx pour désigner qu’il fauche ou détruit tout ce qui existe.” The
question as to the carbuncle is, of course, an example of pure
ignorance, as is the general objection to the consecrated phrase and
figure of the “finger of time” and its ring. But “arms” generally have
“fingers,” unless these are cut off; and how, _Ihro Majestät_, does
Time work his scythe without them?
Footnote 92:
Quoted by Geiger, _op. cit._, p. xxvi.
Footnote 93:
“_Tot verba, tot pondera_.”—Ibid., p. 18.
Footnote 94:
P. 23.
Footnote 95:
By an accident not worth dilating upon I was unable to incorporate the
results of careful reading of König and Conti in the text. The
former’s treatise on Taste is very respectable for its time, and must
then have been quite stimulating; but it belongs to the obsolete box
of our matter. Taste, excellent in the palmy times of Greek
literature, declined later, was revived by the Romans, lost in the
Middle Ages, recovered at the Renaissance, lost again and recovered by
the French, and so on. He is much cumbered (as some other excellent
persons have been) about the origin of the _word_ Taste—deprives the
Spaniards of the honour of inventing it, and very properly finds its
origin in Græco-Roman times. It must be natural, but can be improved
by acquirement. It is more _immediate_ than judgment. It extends to
quite trivial things—snuff, wine, foppery in dress, sensual pleasures,
&c.
Conti’s work, in the edition quoted, has the great drawback of being
presented almost wholly, as far as the critical part of it is
concerned, in abstracts made from MS. by the editor. It consists,
besides Letters to the Doge Marco Foscarini, to Maffei, to Muratori,
&c., of Treatises on “Imitation,” “Poetic Fantasy,” and the like and
of animadversions on classical and Italian Poetry, on Fracastoro, on
Gravina, and others. It does not come to very much.
Footnote 96:
One celebrated person, much associated with it in some ways, and
referred to in passing above, will not appear here. Horace Walpole
did, for such a carpet knight, real service in the general movement;
but he was a literary critic _pour rire_ only. His admiration of Mme.
de Sévigné is not really much more to his credit than his sapient
dictum (to Bentley, Feb. 23, 1755) that _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ is
“forty times more nonsensical than the worst translation of an Italian
opera-book.” “Notre Dame des Rochers” talked of subjects that
interested him in a manner which he could understand: Shakespeare was
neither “Gothic” nor modern. So he liked the one and despised the
other—uncritically in both cases.
Footnote 97:
_Choice Collection of Scots Poems._ In three Parts. Reprinted in 1
vol. (Glasgow, 1869).
Footnote 98:
_The Evergreen, The Tea-Table Miscellany._ Reprinted in 4 vols.
(Glasgow, 1876).
Footnote 99:
Said to be Ambrose Philips. If so, the book, despite its uncritical
and heterogeneous character, is “Namby-Pamby’s” best work by far.
There is a reprint, without date (3 vols.), among the very valuable
series of such things which were published by Pearson _c._ 1870.
Footnote 100:
For more on them, see chap. vi. of this book.
Footnote 101:
Ausonius, Ep. 77.
Footnote 102:
With acknowledgments to Longinus.
Footnote 103:
Mr Gosse, I find, agrees with me on this point. It is well known that
ignorance of German was almost (Chesterfield, I think, in encouraging
his son to the study, says roundly that it was quite) universal among
Englishmen in the mid-eighteenth century.
Footnote 104:
Gray’s _Works_ (ed. Gosse, 4 vols., London, 1884), ii. p. 106, Letter
xliv., dated April, without the year; but the next gives it: 1742.
Footnote 105:
Gray has been upbraided with his description (in part at least) of
Boswell’s Paoli-book as “a dialogue between a green goose and a hero.”
It does him no discredit; in fact, he might have summarised the whole
of Boswell’s work, had he lived to see it, as that of a green goose
with a semi-heroic love for heroes.
Footnote 106:
I am well aware that the “parallel-passagers” have tried their jaws on
these.
Footnote 107:
After all, he may be forgiven much apparent over-valuation of Mason
for this name. Whatever its meaning between the friends, it “speaks”
the author of _Elfrida_ and _Caractacus_, and the _Monologues_ and the
_Odes_, and all but those lines of the epitaph on his wife which Gray
wrote for him. “To skroddle” should have been naturalised for “to
write minor poetry.”
Footnote 108:
As printed in Mr Gosse’s edition he is made to say that the _Moral
Ode_ was written “almost two hundred years _after_ Chaucer’s time.”
The sense, however, as well as the use of the word “Semi-Saxon,” shows
that he meant “before,” so that “after” must be a slip either of his
own pen or of the later press.
Footnote 109:
See Letter to Wharton, October 7, 1757 (cxxxvi., ii., 340, ed. cit.).
Footnote 110:
I mean, of course, nobody except specialists. On the vexed question
of Gray’s _direct_ knowledge of Norse, on the priority or
contemporaneousness of Percy’s “Five Pieces,” and on the subject
generally, an interesting treatise, Mr F. E. Finlay’s _Scandinavian
Influences on the English Romantic Movement_ (Boston, U.S.A., 1903),
has appeared since the text was written.
Footnote 111:
Despite the curious infuriation which such attention seems to excite
in some minds by no means devoid of celestial quality. Gradually it
will be seen that current views of prosody are a sort of “tell-tale”
or index of the state of poetic criticism generally. They concern us
here, however, only at certain moments.
Footnote 112:
My copy of him is Dodsley’s third edition, in 2 vols., of the _Poems
and Essays_ (London, 1768), with the second edition of the additional
volume containing the _Letters_ (London, 1769). These latter are
described by Gray in the less agreeable Graian manner, as “about
nothing but” the Leasowes “and his own writings, with two or three
neighbouring clergymen who wrote verses also.”
Footnote 113:
Ed. cit., ii. 10-13, 158-161, and elsewhere.
Footnote 114:
Most of the quotations following are found in two Essays on “Books and
Writers,” ii. 157-180, 228-239.
Footnote 115:
ii. 172; ii. 167. The first of these has been echoed, perhaps
unconsciously, by more than one great Romantic writer. For the second,
compare Regnier’s _regret pensif et confus, D’avoir été et n'être
plus_. Shenstone’s _Letters_ (as is implied in the very terms of
Gray’s sneer) deal with literary subjects freely enough; but their
criticism is rarely important, though I have noted a good many places.
Some of the most interesting (p. 58 _sq._, ed. cit.) concern Spenser,
and Shenstone’s gradual conversion “from trifling and laughing to
being really in love with him.” From another (lxii. p. 175) we learn
that at any rate when writing, S. was still in the dark about “the
distance of the rhymes” in _Lycidas_. There is seen in Letter xc.,
viii. sq., on “Fables,” an intimation (c. iii. p. 321) of the ballad
plan with Percy; praise of _The Rambler_; a defence of light poetry as
being still poetry, &c. &c. It is almost all interesting as an example
of Critical _Education_.
Footnote 116:
By Messrs Hales & Furnivall. 3 vols. and Supplement. (London,
1867-68.) As for Percy’s Scandinavian Enquiries, see note above.
Footnote 117:
Vol. i. appeared in 1756, vol. ii. not till 1782—which gap of a
quarter of a century is not imperceptible in the work itself, and must
be remembered in reading the text.
Footnote 118:
On this, as on other points in this chapter and chap. v., and on
chapter i. of the last Book of the last volume generally, a most
valuable companion has been supplied since my text was written by Mr
D. Nichol Smith’s excellent edition of _Eighteenth Century Essays on
Shakespeare_. (Glasgow, 1903.)
Footnote 119:
The full title is _Observations on the Faërie Queene of Spenser_ ed. 1
(London, 1754); ed. 2, 1762 (of which is my copy). From Hughes’s
editions of 1715 to Upton’s of 1758 (_after_ Warton’s first edition) a
good deal of attention had been paid to Spenser, if not quite
according to knowledge. For a long list of imitations in the
eighteenth century see Mr H. A. Beers (_English Romanticism in the
Eighteenth Century_, London, 1899, pp. 854-55, note), who copies it
from Prof. Phelps.
Footnote 120:
i. 15, ed. cit.
Footnote 121:
Ed. cit., i. 96.
Footnote 122:
Originally issued in the years 1774-78-81. The editions of 1824 and
1840, with additional notes by Price and others, are valuable for
matter; and that of Mr W. C. Hazlitt (4 vols., London, 1871), with the
assistance of Drs Furnival, Morris, Skeat, and others, _in_valuable.
But Warton’s own part is necessarily more and more obscured in them.
Footnote 123:
_De quo fabula?_
Footnote 124:
See Appendix I.
Footnote 125:
He is, however, exquisitely characteristic in his description of
Addison’s own critical work (see the Bohn ed., ii. 383) as
“discovering his own good taste, and calculated to improve that of the
reader, but otherwise of no great merit.”
Footnote 126:
_e.g._ iii. 171: “_Men’s minds._ Men’s, for the genitive plural of
_man_, is not allowable.”
Footnote 127:
_Vide_ ed. cit., ii. 417, and especially iii. 389-91, a long note of
very great interest. I do not know whether Hurd had condescended to
take a hint from the humble dissenting Mason (_v. inf._)
Footnote 128:
He was born only twenty years after the death of Dryden, and died the
year before Tennyson was born.
Footnote 129:
My copy in 10 vols. (London, 1777) appears to be made up of different
editions of the separate books—the fifth of the _Horace_ and
_Dialogues_, the third of the _Cowley_.
Footnote 130:
These qualities are particularly shown in a really admirable note, ii.
107-15, on the method and art of criticism, with special reference to
Longinus, Bouhours, and Addison. Hurd is, however, once more, and in
more detail, too severe on Addison. It may be repeated that Lessing
pays very particular attention to Hurd in the _Hamburgische
Dramaturgie_, and speaks of him with great respect.
Footnote 131:
ii. 153.
Footnote 132:
ii. 154.
Footnote 133:
ii. 220.
Footnote 134:
Almost too liberal, as where he falls foul of Jeremias Holstenius for
saying the plain truth that “but for the _Argonautics_, there had been
no fourth book of the _Æneis_” (iii. 49).
Footnote 135:
iii. 153.
Footnote 136:
P. 464.
Footnote 137:
Boswell, Globe ed., pp. 363, 441.
Footnote 138:
Ibid., p. 598.
Footnote 139:
_Works_, ed. cit., vol. vi., p. 196.
Footnote 140:
In _Letter VIII._, ibid., p. 266 _sq._
Footnote 141:
P. 271.
Footnote 142:
P. 273.
Footnote 143:
P. 290.
Footnote 144:
P. 299.
Footnote 145:
P. 306.
Footnote 146:
P. 309.
Footnote 147:
P. 313.
Footnote 148:
Hurd knew Gray (who, characteristically in both ways, described him as
“the last man who wore stiff-topped gloves”) pretty well (see the
references in Mr Gosse’s Index). He may have caught some heat from one
who had plenty, though he concealed it.
Footnote 149:
“Skroddles” was _William_.
Footnote 150:
My copy contains all three bound together. It is interesting, though
not surprising, to find that there was no demand for the two original
and valuable constituents, and a brisk one for the commonplace third.
Footnote 151:
_Power of Numbers_, p. 9.
Footnote 152:
Ibid., p. 27.
Footnote 153:
_Prosaic Numbers_, passim.
Footnote 154:
Mason’s very errors are interesting, as where his delight in recovered
_rhythm_—in full melody of variety—leads him to something like the old
blasphemy of _rhyme_ (“one of the lowest ornaments and greatest
shackles of modern poesy” _Power of Numbers_, p. 14).
Footnote 155:
Even at this early date Mason was able to quote not a few writers—
Pemberton, Manwaring, Malcolm, Gay, who, as well as Geddes, Foster,
Galley, and others, had dealt with this subject. In fact, the list of
such authors in the eighteenth century is quite long, though few of
them are very important. For an excellent reasoned bibliography see Mr
T. S. Omond’s _English Metrists_ (Tunbridge Wells, 1903). Henry
Pemberton, Gresham Professor of Physic, and a man of various ability,
published on the to us surprising subject of Glover’s _Leonidas_, in
1738, _Observations on Poetry_, which I had hunted in the catalogues
for a long time, when Mr Gregory Smith kindly gave me a copy. It
shows, as the election of its text may indicate, and as its date would
further suggest, no very enthusiastic or imaginative appreciation of
the Muse, but is remarkably learned, not merely in the ancients and
the modern Frenchmen, but in Italians like Minturno and Castelvetro.
Pemberton deals with Epic and Dramatic poetry—their rise, dignity,
fable, sentiment, character, language, and difference; with
Versification, where his standpoint may be guessed, from his
denouncing “the mixture of iambic and trochaic” as a blemish on
_L’Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_; with the Sublime. He is not an
inspiring or inspired writer, but holds some position, both as
influential on the Germans, who not seldom quote him, and in the
history of Prosody.
Footnote 156:
Not Cowper’s hero, but a son of “Picturesque” Gilpin. Mitford had been
a pupil of Gilpin the elder.
Footnote 157:
Foster’s (John) _Essay on the Different Nature of Accent and Quantity_
(second edition, Eton, 1763) is duly before me also, but I must not
touch it here.
Footnote 158:
As _An Essay on the Harmony of Language_. My friend, Mr T. S. Omond,
in the quite invaluable bibliography referred to above, thinks this
“clearer, shorter, more pointed” than the second. It is at any rate
well to remember that when it appeared, Johnson had ten years to live,
and Scott, Wordsworth, and Coleridge were in their nurseries.
Footnote 159:
_Harmony of Language_, second edition, p. 51.
Footnote 160:
Ibid., p. 81.
Footnote 161:
20 vols., ed. Assézat and Tourneux: Paris, 1875-76. I had known
Diderot before, not merely from Carlyle and Mr Morley, but from
Génin’s extraordinarily well-chosen _Pensées Choisies_ in the Didot
collection. But I remember very well, after more than a quarter of a
century, the delight with which I read this edition as the successive
volumes reached me at their appearance. I cannot take them down
without that anticipation of sentences at particular places of the
page which one only feels in such a case. They are quarrelling with
the edition now, of course: but that does not matter.
Footnote 162:
Cf. p. 160, vol. vi. ed. cit. “_Vous avez péché contre les règles
d’Aristote, d’Horace, de Vida, et de Le Bossu._” Even if (as so much
else in the book is) this was partly suggested by Sterne, it is none
the less a genuine fling of Diderot’s own irony and recalcitrance. And
an indignant note of the earlier edition of Brière, shocked in 1821 at
the substitution of Le Bossu (then much forgotten) for Boileau, who
was, though on the eve of dethronement, in full dictatorship, is a
valuable document for us, and for this chapter.
Footnote 163:
_Œuvres_, ed. cit., v. 211-227.
Footnote 164:
The _éloge_ dates from 1761: exactly the middle point between the
earliest of Hurd’s _Dissertations_ in 1757 and his Letters in 1765
(_v. sup._).
Footnote 165:
Ibid., 228-239.
Footnote 166:
_V. sup._, ii. p. 303.
Footnote 167:
_Œuvres_, vi. 366, 367.
Footnote 168:
Let us remember that this evil-famed book itself contains admirable
critical passages, notably (chap. xxxviii), that attack on the French
theatre which Lessing extracted in Nos. 84, 85 of the _Hamburgische
Dramaturgie_.
Footnote 169:
_Œuvres_, iii. 200-407.
Footnote 170:
Fortunately the contents and indices of the Assézat-Tourneux edition
are admirably abundant and clear: a merit not so common in French
books as some others.
Footnote 171:
_Œuvres_, viii. 339-426. The English reader has at his disposal the
excellent translation of Mr W. H. Pollock (London, 1883), with a
preface by Sir Henry Irving. I should like also to mention here Mrs L.
Tollemache’s _Diderot’s Thoughts on Art and Style_, an interesting
selection which has, I think, been more than once published.
Footnote 172:
_Œuvres_, vii. 299-410 (with appendices).
Footnote 173:
_Œuvres_, xi. 368-373.
Footnote 174:
The chief exceptions, such as a letter to Panckoucke (May 25, 1764)
and a sensible one to Chamfort (Oct. 6, same year) have a very little.
The words _Vous admirez Richardson_ to the elder Mirabeau (April 8,
1767) may raise expectations: they will be cruelly dashed. _Cf._ the
indignant renunciation of the description _homme de lettres_ a little
later (May 13), and the long and important review of his own career to
Saint-Germain, dated “1770-26/2.” The fact is, that a maniac of
egotism and self-torment cannot be a critic, the subject under
consideration being inevitably turned out of court by Self.
Footnote 175:
One book of some traditional note and interest from the eminence of
its author in other ways, Condillac’s _Art d'Écrire_ (which forms part
of his elaborate _Cours d’Étude_ for the Prince of Parma: Parma,
1769-1773), was not there noticed. It is of little intrinsic
importance, being a mere treatise on “Composition”—a common-sense and
common-place _Rhetoric_ adjusted to late French eighteenth century
standards. Its definition of style as depending on “netteté _et_
caractère,” is an obvious attempt to combine the elder with the
Buffonian ideal.
Footnote 176:
My copy is the Didot edition of the _Œuvres_, in three large vols.
(Paris, 1873). As, however, this is very cumbrous to hold, I also use
and here cite the smaller separate edition (same publishers: Paris,
1876) of the _De l’Allemagne_.
Footnote 177:
Even after publishing the two previous volumes, I find myself accused
of “_not having taken the trouble to acquaint myself with_ the fact
that the application of psychological tests has profoundly altered
criticism,” or words to that effect. εἴθ’ ὤφελ’ Ἀργοῦς μὴ διαπτάσθαι.
I only wish I had _not_ had to thread these more dismal and dangerous
Symplegades! But I am at any rate trying to save others from their
danger.
Footnote 178:
In the _Nouvelle Héloise_. The omission (perhaps due to a juvenile
unwillingness to acknowledge her idol indebted to anybody) is the more
striking because we know, and could have been sure if we did not know,
that she was early acquainted with, and enthralled by, the English
master.
Footnote 179:
I. 216 of the larger ed. cited.
Footnote 180:
220 of the larger ed. cited.
Footnote 181:
Ibid., pp. 252, 253.
Footnote 182:
Ibid., p. 257.
Footnote 183:
Ibid., p. 263.
Footnote 184:
Ibid., p. 265.
Footnote 185:
Goethe and Schiller might laugh at her; but there is no doubt that
they were secretly flattered at her interest in the things of Germany.
Footnote 186:
The Duke of Rovigo’s blunt information in his letter of expulsion,
that “the book is not French” (see the _Preface_, or any account of
Mme. de Staël), summarises his master’s terror very well.
Footnote 187:
P. 176 of the smaller edition cited; i. 80, of the larger.
Footnote 188:
“De l’art dramatique.”
Footnote 189:
Chap. xxvi. _L’idéal du caractère tragique consiste dans le triomphe
que la volonté remporte sur le destin et sur nos passions; le comique
exprime au contraire l’empire de l’instincts physique sur l’existence
morale._ From which it will follow that _Hamlet_ and _Lear_ are not
tragedies, and that _As You Like It_ and _Much Ado About Nothing_ are
not comedies.
Footnote 190:
P. 340, chap. ii. 148.
Footnote 191:
Of course not in the worst English connotation, but only in that of
“commonplace,” “ordinary,” “undistinguished.”
Footnote 192:
M. Des Essarts in the Petit de Julleville _History_.
Footnote 193:
For _René_ is only an episode of the _Génie_ itself; and _Les Martyrs_
a prose-poem in illustration of its theories.
Footnote 194:
See vol. i. p. 425.
Footnote 195:
Chateaubriand’s _Mélanges Littéraires_ contain in their later numbers
some interesting reviews, especially that of February 1819 on the
_Annales Littéraires_, which supplied almost the _Défense et
Illustration_ of the Romantic outburst. But I do not know that the
early pieces on English literature dating from the last year of the
eighteenth century, are not as important. In these the writer, either
from policy (for though he had a friendly editor in Fontanes, he was
writing under the eyes of Bonaparte’s police) or really imperfect
conversion, approximates much more to the “dunghill-and-pearl” view of
Shakspere than the innocent might think likely, and has not quite
reached his future state (_v. inf._) of illumination as to _Ossian_.
He is very severe on Young, and has a very curious passage on the
English view of the subject at the moment, which is probably not far
from the truth, and at any rate helps us to understand the
half-way-house attitude of men like Jeffrey and Campbell. The Queen
Anne men, we are told, were at a discount—Richardson was little read,
Hume and Gibbon were thought gallicisers, and so forth. But these
things are at best useful sidelights on their author’s position in the
_Génie_.
Footnote 196:
I use the 2-vol. ed. of the _Collection Didot_.
Footnote 197:
Six “books” of _dogma_, twelve of _recherches littéraires_, six of
_culte_, is the author’s own summary of his scheme (_Génie_, II. i.
1).
Footnote 198:
Ed. cit., ii. 306-326.
Footnote 199:
II. i. 5.
Footnote 200:
II. ii. 5-8.
Footnote 201:
II. ii. 10.
Footnote 202:
Vol. I. p. 235.
Footnote 203:
II. iii. 2, 3.
Footnote 204:
Vol. I. p. 257.
Footnote 205:
II. iii. 7.
Footnote 206:
II. iv.
Footnote 207:
Ibid., chap. iii.
Footnote 208:
Chap. viii. It is a pity that Chateaubriand did not live long enough
to read Mr Ruskin (who had begun to write before his death) on “The
Angel of the Sea”—one of the great conceptions whose poetic
suggestiveness he has himself here indicated.
Footnote 209:
This fills the whole of the Fifth or last Book of the Second Part, and
shows the author at nearly his best.
Footnote 210:
_Il y règne_ (_in_ Saint Louis) _une sombre imagination très propre à
la peinture de cette Egypte, pleine de souvenirs et de tombeaux, et
qui vit passer tour à tour les Pharaons, les Ptolemées, les solitaires
de la Thebaide, et les soudans des barbares_.
Footnote 211:
I have not thought it necessary to notice Chateaubriand’s literary
judgments in the _Essai sur les Révolutions_ at the beginning, or in
the _Mémoires d’Outre Tombe_ at the end of his career. The first,
interesting as it is, is too crude (_v. inf._, Bk. viii. Ch. ii.), the
second too much spoilt by “cooking of spleen,” and both too personal
and egotistic.
Footnote 212:
Chateaubriand, Joubert’s intimate friend, printed some of this
privately after the author’s death; and in 1842 Joubert’s nephew
published two vols. of _Pensées_, Letters, &c. These, with some
subsequent augmentations, had reached their 10th ed. in 1901. There is
an English translation of part by Mr Attwood, and perhaps others.
Footnote 213:
Sainte-Beuve, Sylvestre de Sacy, Saint-Marc-Girardin, Géruzez, and
Poitou—the last a scholarly lawyer and man of letters, who contributed
to the _Deux Mondes_, wrote books of various kinds, and died in 1880.
Footnote 214:
At p. 203 of the usual ed., extending to the end, and filling nearly
half the book.
Footnote 215:
P. 265 ed. cit.
Footnote 216:
P. 273-300.
Footnote 217:
P. 387.
Footnote 218:
xxiii. viii., pp. 303, 304.
Footnote 219:
Ibid., xvi., p. 305.
Footnote 220:
P. 376. But as there is in the book a sufficient index, I need not
perhaps multiply note-indications.
Footnote 221:
The numerous articles on the individual persons named and to be named—
most of which will be found indicated in the general index-volume to
the _Causeries du Lundi_, &c.—are importantly supplemented by a more
general dealing in _Chateaubriand et Son Groupe Littéraire_ (_v.
inf._, Bk. viii. Ch. ii.). This is a “standing order” of reference to
the end of the chapter.
Footnote 222:
Especially the brilliant paper in _C. du L._, i. 371-391, on _M. de
Feletz et la Crit. Litt. sous l’Empire_, February 25, 1850.
Footnote 223:
2 vols., Paris, 1839.
Footnote 224:
_v._ Victor upon William.
Footnote 225:
His chief work available in book-form is his _Cours de Littérature
Dramatique_, 6 vols., Paris, 1825.
Footnote 226:
This makes the almost inevitable coupling of him with his contemporary
and (_mutatis mutandis_) namesake, Jeffrey, a little unfair. He was a
genuine critical highwayman, who fired at the coach wherever he found
it: Jeffrey only peppered passengers who went the stages after he had
himself got down.
Footnote 227:
_Annales Littéraires_, 5 vols., Paris, 1818-1824.
Footnote 228:
I have seen things of his; but have somehow missed his _Œuvres_, 10
vols., Paris, 1828.
Footnote 229:
Andrieux deserves a note, perhaps, as having occupied a place of
strength—the chair of French Literature in the Collége de France—
during the critical time 1814-1833, and as having defended the Capitol
valiantly against the invaders. But his valiancy was greater than his
_vaillance_; and instead of criticising him it is nobler to salute
him, with M. de Jouy and some others, as respectably mistaken.
Footnote 230:
9 vols., Paris, 1811-1824. Ginguené died in 1816, and the book,
published in part posthumously from his MSS., was completed by another
hand.
Footnote 231:
It may be found subjoined to the _Pantheon Littéraire_ edition of La
Harpe vol. iii., Paris, 1840. In his _Œuvres_, 5 vols. (Paris, 1826),
and _Œuvres Posthumes_, 3 vols. (Paris, 1828-30), there is not much
else of importance.
Footnote 232:
Chap. iii., _op. cit._
Footnote 233:
Chap. vi.
Footnote 234:
4 vols., Paris, 1817. The lectures had been delivered in 1811-14. I
have had to rely on my reading of the British Museum copy, the only
one which I have ever seen in a catalogue, though rather high-priced,
having been sold before I could get it, and my advertisements for
another (it is a book worth having) not being successful. Some
accounts (_e.g._, that of Vapereau) are quite unfair to it.
Footnote 235:
_Mélanges_, 6 vols., Paris, 1828-1830.
Footnote 236:
I must find room, if only in a note, for the unfortunate Auger, who
succeeded Suard as universal provider of _éloges_ and Introductions in
the classic sense, who served as victim to one of Daudet’s most
ignoble transcripts of reality in _L’Immortel_, and whose _ton sec et
rogue_ Sainte-Beuve has somewhere despatched and impaled for ever in
one of his really immortal phrases.
Footnote 237:
Some will no doubt expect that a third, Guizot, should be joined to
them. He did much reviewing in his youth (as did his first wife,
Pauline de Meulan), and his much later companion volumes on Corneille
and Shakespeare are more than respectable. But he was perhaps even
less of a critic “in his heart” than Cousin.
Footnote 238:
Besides his better known works, such as those on Plato and Descartes,
and on the _grandes dames_ of the seventeenth century, which touch the
subject on different sides, his _Fragments Littéraires_ (Paris, 1843)
may be consulted. I fear that his summary dismissal may surprise some
and enrage others: but I cannot help it. I have nothing to do with his
psychology, and he has next to nothing to do with _my_ criticism.
Footnote 239:
_Œuvres_, Paris, 1854-1858.
Footnote 240:
_C. de L._ I. 108, _sq._ on the literary work of both Cousin and
Villemain.
Footnote 241:
It dates from the spring of 1823: I have used the complete posthumous
edition (Paris, 1854).
Footnote 242:
For so great an ironist Beyle _did_ lack humour to a surprising
degree.
Footnote 243:
P. 6, ed. cit.
Footnote 244:
P. 14 _sq._
Footnote 245:
As some have said: “When you _read_ _Twelfth Night_, you are in
Elysium; when you _see_ it, you are not even in Illyria.”
Footnote 246:
P. 19.
Footnote 247:
P. 32.
Footnote 248:
Lamartine, in a letter given in the book (p. 129 _sq._), says roundly
of Beyle: “Il n’y a selon lui et selon nous d’autres règles que les
exemples du génie”; and though I do not remember that Beyle himself
formulates this Brunonian (_v._ vol. ii. p. 95 note) trenchancy, he
evidently adopts it.
Footnote 249:
P. 180 _sq._, ed. cit. _inf._ All this passage is important,
especially the reference to B.'s habit of “taking the other side,” a
habit common with critics, but not critical.
Footnote 250:
_C. du L._, ix. 314 _sq._
Footnote 251:
It is fair to say that the oddity is Beyle’s own. See for instance
his _Lettres Inédites_, p. 235.
Footnote 252:
_Lettres Intimes de Stendhal_ (Paris, 1892).
Footnote 253:
My copy is in 2 vols. (Paris, 1879).
Footnote 254:
Himself a terrible critic in a certain sense: hardly one at all in
others, and in most parts of ours.
Footnote 255:
There is no complete edition, either of Nodier’s collected work or of
his criticism: and many of his books are not at all easy to obtain
separately. The editor of the _Tales_, &c., in the Charpentier
collection, has, however, most wisely prefixed certain capital
articles to the various volumes—_Des Types en Littérature to the
Romans_; _Quelques Observations sur la nouvelle école Littéraire to
Les Proscrits_; _Du Fantastique en Littérature_ to the _Contes_. All
these are important.
Footnote 256:
One of Crapelet’s best produced books (Paris, 1829).
Footnote 257:
The standard treatise on this is that of M. E. Krantz, _L’Esthétique
de Descartes_: Paris, 1882.
Footnote 258:
_Op. cit. sup._, Introduction.
Footnote 259:
Halle, in the year named.
Footnote 260:
Frankfort-on-the-Oder, 1750-58.
Footnote 261:
Later, Baumgarten did formally, while admitting metre as a sort of
adjunct of “perfection,” provide that a prose work such as _Telémaque_
may be a poem, while verse compositions may not,—the old notion back
again.
Footnote 262:
Frankfort: 1750 1st vol., 1758 2nd. It was never finished.
Footnote 263:
_Anfangsgründe aller schönen Wissenschaften_, 3 vols., Halle, 1748-50.
Footnote 264:
He is thought to have derived something from Arnold, _Versuch und
Anleitung zur Poesie der Deutschen_ (2nd ed., 1741), a book of which I
am still in search, while I should like to have rather fuller
opportunities than I have yet had of studying Baumgarten himself and
some others of the earlier Germans.
Footnote 265:
Leipzig, 1771-74, but mostly written much earlier. It was greatly
enlarged twenty years later. Blankenberg’s _Zusätze_ came after this
in 1796-98, and there are extensive _Appendices_ by others, making 8
vols. (1792-1808).
Footnote 266:
This book actually belongs to the nineteenth century, having been
published at Berlin in 1803-5 (4 vols.) But Eberhard was then a man
over sixty; he had published a _Theorie der schönen Künste und
Wissenschaften_ twenty years earlier, and his general position is that
of the third quarter of the eighteenth.
Footnote 267:
_V. sup._, ii. 513, note. First published in 1741, it was constantly
reprinted. André was a Jesuit, and his full name was Yves Marc _de
L’Isle_ André, whence the rigid virtue of the British Museum insists
that he shall be looked for under L.
Footnote 268:
For Vico’s æsthetic, see, in addition to Professor Flint’s admirable
_Vico_ (Edinburgh, 1882), the very interesting _Estetica_ of Signor
Benedetto Croce (Part II. chap. v. pp. 228-243: Milan, Palermo, and
Naples, 1902). This chapter, with some earlier ones, had been printed
separately as a specimen the year before. I owe copies of both, with
one of a still earlier series on _La Critica Letteraria_ (Rome, 1896),
to Signor Croce’s kindness; and the drift of the last named, which
condenses the _inesattezza_ of the term “literary criticism,” had
itself prepared me for the disapproval (not unmixed) which he
expresses of the first volume of this work as “deprived of method and
determinate object.” But as I still see, or seem to see, my own object
quite clearly defined before me, as I have found no fault in the
compass which I use, and feel the helm of my method quite solid and
obedient in my hand, I fear I must hold my course all the same. I
shall only say that the sketch of criticism or æsthetic before Vico
which precedes the chapter above referred to, shows remarkable
knowledge and faculty of statement.
Footnote 269:
The _Scienza_ first appeared in 1725, but was practically transformed
in its second ed., 1730. Its ideas on poetry were further developed
later; but anticipations of them appear even earlier in the _De
Constantia Jurisprudentis_ of 1721, if not even in the still earlier
Lectures—most of them but recently published—of 1699-1708.
Footnote 270:
_Franciscus Baco in aureo de Aug. Sci. libello_, &c., vol. ii. p. 5 of
Ferrari’s _Opere di G. Vico_ (6 vols., Milan, 1852). I owe the use of
the copy of this, with which I have worked, to the kindness of
Professor Flint.
Footnote 271:
_Omnium scientiarum artiumque commune instrumentum est nova Critica._
Ibid., p. 7.
Footnote 272:
P. 11.
Footnote 273:
Pp. 26-28.
Footnote 274:
Ed. cit., iii. 265 _sq._
Footnote 275:
P. 275, note.
Footnote 276:
Ed. cit., iv. 161-245. The earlier books are not superfluous for our
purpose.
Footnote 277:
I may observe that Vico, though an extremely consistent thinker in
reality, is apt to lay such stress on the particular side of his
thought prominent at the moment, that it may deceive the unwary and
must furnish the unscrupulous with handles. Compare, as one example of
many, the attack on the notion of poets being “_natural_ Theologians,”
at _De Const. Jurisp._ iii. 277, with the argument for their being
“_political_ Theologians” a few pages later (pp. 295, 296), comparing
also with both his later passage on “Teologia Poetica” in the second
_Scienza_ (v. 155).
Footnote 278:
Ed. cit., v. 1, 151-421, 422-461.
Footnote 279:
v. 163.
Footnote 280:
P. 168. Vico had anticipated this earlier.
Footnote 281:
iv. 200. (See the _First_ draft.)
Footnote 282:
No reasonable person will object to this the praise of Italian writers
in the _De Stud. Rat._, p. 125.
Footnote 283:
To do Vico full justice, we must admit that his object was less to
break up Homer, as they break up Cædmon and Isaiah, than to attribute
the whole work to the whole early Greek people.
Footnote 284:
On Adam Smith and Gibbon a note must suffice. The former has actually
left us nothing important in print concerning the subject, though he
is known to have lectured on it, and though to the partisans of
“psychological” criticism the _Moral Sentiments_ may seem pertinent.
His line seems to have been pretty identical with those of Hume and of
Blair, who knew and used Smith’s Lectures in preparing his own. As for
Gibbon, his great work did not give very much opportunity for touching
our subject, and he availed himself little of what it did give: though
on Byzantine literature generally, and on some individuals—Photius,
Sidonius, and others—he acquits himself well enough. His early _Essay
on the Study of Literature_ is extremely general and quite
unimportant.
Footnote 285:
These are to be found almost _passim_ in the _Characteristics_ (my
copy of which is the small 3 vol. ed., _s.l._, 1749), but chiefly in
his _Advice to an Author_ (vol. i., ed. cit., p. 105-end) and in the
_Third Miscellany_ (iii. 92-129).
Footnote 286:
i. 147.
Footnote 287:
iii. 187 _sq._
Footnote 288:
i. 224, &c.
Footnote 289:
iii. 173.
Footnote 290:
i. 35.
Footnote 291:
i. 147 _sq._
Footnote 292:
i. 157 _sq._
Footnote 293:
iii. 125.
Footnote 294:
i. 163 _sq._
Footnote 295:
The lively fashion in which Dr George Campbell in his _Philosophy of
Rhetoric_ (_v. sup._, ii. 470) beats up his lordship’s quarters, on
the score of precious and rococo style, is too much forgotten
nowadays.
Footnote 296:
The literary essays occur almost wholly in the First part (published
in 1742: my copy is the “new edition” of the _Essays and Treatises_, 2
vols.: London and Edinburgh, 1764).
Footnote 297:
_Essay on Delicacy of Taste_, pp. 5, 7, ed. cit.
Footnote 298:
_On the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences_, ibid., p. 125.
Footnote 299:
Ibid., p. 126.
Footnote 300:
P. 141 _sq._
Footnote 301:
_V. sup._, vol. ii. pp. 327, 417.
Footnote 302:
_V. sup._, vol. ii. p. 418.
Footnote 303:
_The Sceptic_, p. 186.
Footnote 304:
Pp. 217-222.
Footnote 305:
“Refinement” seems here to mean “conceit,” “elaborate diction.” But
the “simplicity” of Lucretius, in any sense in which the quality can
be said to be pushed to excess by Sophocles, is very hard to grasp.
Footnote 306:
P. 257: “Whoever would assert an equality of genius and elegance
between Ogilby and Milton, or Bunyan and Addison, would be thought to
defend no less an extravagance,” &c.
Footnote 307:
P. 258.
Footnote 308:
P. 274.
Footnote 309:
“I must take pleasure in the thing represented before I can take
pleasure in the representation,” _v. sup._, vol. i. p. 381, _infra_ on
Peacock himself.
Footnote 310:
_Essay on Tragedy_, p. 243.
Footnote 311:
I may be excused for referring to the parabasis at the beginning of
the chapter, all the more that the text above was written considerably
earlier than that digression.
Footnote 312:
_A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime
and Beautiful, with an Introductory Discourse concerning Taste: 1756._
I use the Bohn edition of the _Works_, vol. i. pp. 49-181.
Footnote 313:
_Op. cit._, p. 175 _sq._ But Burke does not seem to have reached the
larger and deeper views of Lessing on this subject.
Footnote 314:
See vol. ii. p. 485 _sq._
Footnote 315:
Of this in turn Blair was perhaps thinking when he wrote the unlucky
passage quoted in the last volume.
Footnote 316:
Part III. § iv.
Footnote 317:
Vol. ii. p. 417 _sq._
Footnote 318:
III. § xxv.
Footnote 319:
IV. § xix. i. 160, ed. cit.
Footnote 320:
In the mood in which he did that eccentric frontispiece to the
Maitland Club _Sir Bevis of Hampton_ (Edinburgh, 1838) at the
_abgeschmackt_-ness of which the late excellent Prof. Kölbing
shuddered when he edited _Arthur and Merlin_ (Leipzig, 1890, p. ix.) A
picture of _La Belle Dame sans Merci_ in the Royal Academy for 1902
seems to have been actually constructed on Mr Burke’s suggestions. For
a very witty and crushing jest on _The Sublime and Beautiful_, _v.
inf._, Bk. viii. ch. 3.
Footnote 321:
This was not the opinion of some person who has annotated the copy of
the _Essay on Taste_ (3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1780: the first appeared in
1758) which belongs to the University of Edinburgh, as “wonderfully
profound.” Other annotators, however, both of this and the _Essay on
Genius_ (1774)—for the University authorities of the past appear to
have been somewhat indifferent to the fashion in which students used
books—do not agree with him. In plain truth both pieces are rather
trying examples of that “saying an infinite deal of nothing” which is
so common in philosophical inquiries. “Facility in the conception of
an object, if it be moderate, gives us pleasure” (_Taste_, p. 29);
“The rudest rocks and mountains ... acquire beauty when skilfully
imitated in painting;” “Where refinement is wanting, taste must be
coarse and vulgar” (p. 115). “Perfect criticism requires therefore”
(p. 174) “the greatest philosophical acuteness united with the most
exquisite perfection of taste.” “The different works of men of genius
sometimes differ very much in the degree of their perfection”
(_Genius_, p. 236). “Both in genius for the arts and in genius for
science Imagination is assisted by Memory.” Certainly “here be
truths,” but a continued course of reading things like them begins
before long to inspire a considerable longing for falsehoods. Gerard,
however, though habitually dull, is less absurd than Alison, whom he
undoubtedly supplied with his principle of Association.
Footnote 322:
Ed. cit. See a little farther on a similarly uncritical criticism on
the _trahuntque siccas machinæ carinas_ of Horace.
Footnote 323:
Ibid.
Footnote 324:
The mother of Gwendolen Harleth was wiser. “Oh! my dear, any nose,”
said she, “will do to be miserable with!” and if so, why not to be
predatory? The only possible answer of course caps the absurdity. The
conventional Bandit is an Italian; the conventional Italian has an
aquiline nose: therefore, &c.
Footnote 325:
Had all æstheticians approached their subject in the spirit of our
English historian of it, much of what I have said would be quite
inapplicable. “The æsthetic theorist,” says Mr Bosanquet in his
_Preface_ (_History of Æsthetic_: London, 1892), “desires to
understand the artist, not in order to interfere with the latter, but
in order to satisfy an intellectual interest of his own.” With such an
attitude I have no quarrel: nor, I should think, need those who take
it have any quarrel with mine. I may add that from this point onwards
I shall take the liberty of a perpetual silent reference to Mr
Bosanquet’s treatment of subjects and parts of subjects which seem to
me to lie outside of my own plan. I purposely abstained from reading
his book until two-thirds of my own were published, and more than
two-thirds more of the remainder were written. And I have been amused
and pleased, though not surprised, to find that if we had planned the
two books together from the first, we could hardly have covered the
ground more completely and with less confusion. I cannot, however,
help observing that Mr Bosanquet, like almost all æstheticians I know,
except Signor Croce, though he does not neglect literature, at least
devotes most attention to the plastic arts. This is perhaps a little
significant.
Footnote 326:
The Germans, I believe, have definitely ticketed these explorers as
“The Antiquarians.”
Footnote 327:
For this see in the last vol. under Dryden, Addison, Johnson, L.
Racine, Voltaire, La Harpe, &c.: in the present the Zürichers and
Chateaubriand.
Footnote 328:
I may once more refer to Mr Nichol Smith’s valuable edition of the
Prefaces to most of these. Mrs Montagu’s famous _Essay on the Writings
and Genius of Shakespeare_ (London, 1769, and often reprinted) may
expect a separate mention. It is well intentioned but rather feeble,
much of it being pure _tu quoque_ to Voltaire, and sometimes extremely
unjust on Corneille, and even Æschylus. It is not quite ignorant; but
once more _non tali auxilio!_
Footnote 329:
See vol. ii. p. 416.
Footnote 330:
See the _Ode to the Queen_, 1706. Prior inserts a tenth line, and
makes the seamless coat an awkwardly cobbled thing of quatrain,
quatrain, couplet.
Footnote 331:
See vol. ii. p. 481.
Footnote 332:
To this context perhaps best belongs Thomas Hayward’s _British
Muse_,[333] an anthology on the lines of Poole and Bysshe, published
in 1738 and dedicated to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. [Sidenote: _T.
Hayward._] The book has a preface of some length (which is said to be,
like the dedication, the work not of the compiler but of Oldys[334]
himself), criticising its predecessors (including Gildon) rather
severely, and showing knowledge of English criticism generally; but
the point of chief interest about the book is its own interest in, and
extensive draughts from, Elizabethan Drama. Not merely “the divine and
incomparable” Shakespeare, not merely the still popular sock and
buskin of Ben Jonson and of Beaumont and Fletcher, but almost all the
others, from Massinger and Middleton down to Goffe and Gomersall,
receive attention, although, as he tells us, they were so hard to get
that you had to give between three or four pounds for a volume
containing some ten plays of Massinger. This is noteworthy; but that
his zeal was not according to full knowledge is curiously shown by the
contempt with which he speaks, not merely of Bodenham’s _Belvedere_,
but of Allot’s _England’s Parnassus_, alleging “the little merit of
the obsolete poets from which they were extracted.” Now it should be
unnecessary to say that Allot drew, almost as largely as his early
date permitted him, on “the divine and incomparable” himself, on
Spenser, and on others only inferior to these. But this carping at
forerunners is too common. If Oldys could write thus, what must have
been the ignorance of others?
Footnote 333:
3 vols., London.
Footnote 334:
It thus connects the book with _The Muses’ Library_.
Footnote 335:
Even before, at, or about the date of the _Reliques_ themselves, a
good deal was being done—_e.g._, Capell’s well-known _Prolusions_,
which gave as early as 1760 the real _Nut-Browne Maid_, Sackville’s
_Induction, Edward III._, and Davies’ _Nosce Teipsum_, and the
_Miscellaneous Pieces_ of 1764, supplying Marston’s _Poems_ and _The
Troublesome Reign of King John._
Footnote 336:
The most remarkable recent authority on this matter is of course M.
Texte, who has appeared already and will appear again in his own
place.
Footnote 337:
I hold (though as probable rather than certain) that Richardson and
Fielding knew _Marianne_ and _Le Paysan Parvenu_: but Marivaux frankly
wrote _Le Spectateur Français_.
Footnote 338:
Vol. ii. p. 545. Once more Tiraboschi must be reserved as a great
early example of the historical treatment of a national literature.
Footnote 339:
I include of course the Galician and Portuguese ballad-books.
Footnote 340:
It was explained, and in manner I think not open to any but wilful
misunderstanding, that among the branches of so-called, and not
unjustly so-called, Criticism which were excluded from this History
was the greater part of merely commentatorial “scholarship”—the
editing and interpretative part of the scholarship of the Renaissance
and the succeeding centuries. We were able, now and then, to admit
critics of the class when, like Politian in part of his work earlier,
or Bentley later, they came actually within our range. But classical
scholarship has lain more and more out of our path as the eighteenth
century proceeded, and it was not till far into the nineteenth, and
then but for a moment, that the two converged. The greatest results of
this convergence in England were given by Professors Sellar and
Nettleship, the former in his admirable series of works on the Roman
Poets, the latter in the essays referred to above, and by Mr Pater in
his dealing with Plato and other Greeks. Professor Munro, the greatest
light of the younger University, touched literature rather less than
pure scholarship, and may perhaps be thought to have been least
infallible when he touched the former nearest. I had fully perceived
the necessity for this exclusion before the appearance of Dr Sandys'
admirable _History of Classical Scholarship_; but that book, though it
has not, at the time I write, reached our present period or even that
of our last volume, will serve to do what I cannot do as much better
than I could have done it on this count as Mr Bosanquet’s on the
other.
Footnote 341: