it is said, at F. Schlegel) and the rather ill-natured but clever
_Charade_ (282). Schiller was happy in 346 on Gottsched as Tantalus:
but any one could, and can, shoot Gottsched sitting.
Footnote 749:
4 vols. in the Cotta collection. This also contains Schiller’s
correspondence with Körner, which should be compared.
Footnote 750:
1795-96.
Footnote 751:
Letter 309, May 5, 1797; ed. cit., ii. 96.
Footnote 752:
All the pieces here mentioned will be found in the Cotta ed. of
Bürger’s _Ausgewählte Werke_. The epigram on Goethe’s doubling the
part of artist and minister (ii. 78, ed. cit.) has much more satiric
quality than most of the _Xenien_ themselves possess.
Footnote 753:
Ed. cit., ii. 208. But Bürger ought to have faced the question, “If
the asafœtidarian poet has travelled, and been convinced of roses,
what then?” See, however, some notable things here on Style, &c.
Footnote 754:
See his _Works_, or separately in two volumes of Cotta’s _Bibliothek_.
The note cited is at i. 43. Observe that Richter was by no means a
partisan Wielandist.
Footnote 755:
In the Essay which opens the _Miscellanies_.
Footnote 756:
A not unamiable reviewer has suggested that if I would draw up a neat
tabular contrast of “Classic” and “Romantic,” and put it—mounted on
linen, I presume, but he did not say so—in a pocket of this volume, it
would be useful, especially for examinations. I am afraid I do not
regard examinations in a sufficiently orthodox spirit to make any
effort to supercram their crammableness, and I hope I have more wit
than to attempt to define anything. Something, however, will be found
in the Interchapters of this volume which may stimulate if it does not
satisfy. The rest of the _Lector Benevolus_ may consider as destined
to form part _du Quart Livre_, if I may speak Pantagruelically.
Footnote 757:
The chief—a kind of classic—is R. Haym’s _Die Romantische Schule_
(Berlin, 1870). Dr. Brandes’s later work on the subject, as on much
else that we touch, should not need recommendation.
Footnote 758:
_Novalis Schriften_ (3 vols., 1 and 2, 5th ed., Berlin 1837, 3, 1st
ed., ibid., 1846), i. 239. Appendix-note to _Heinrich von
Ofterdingen_.
Footnote 759:
Translating it, with other things, in his Essay on Novalis.
Footnote 760:
_Cosas de Inglaterra_ generally appear to have been (as he confesses,
Shakespeare partly was) “dark” to Novalis. His is the famous statement
that “every Englishman is an island.” Now islands form the most
beautiful and delightful part of the earth’s surface: but you must go
to them to know them.
Footnote 761:
P. 179.
Footnote 762:
P. 180.
Footnote 763:
P. 185.
Footnote 764:
Pp. 187, 188.
Footnote 765:
P. 190.
Footnote 766:
P. 195.
Footnote 767:
iii. 164.
Footnote 768:
iii. 164.
Footnote 769:
P. 168.
Footnote 770:
P. 174.
Footnote 771:
P. 176. _All_ the context here is precious.
Footnote 772:
4 vols., Leipzig, 1848-52. I fear it was not widely bought, for the
first edition seems never to have gone out of print.
Footnote 773:
Leipzig, 1855.
Footnote 774:
One of the unluckiest is on _The Second Maiden’s Tragedy_ (i. 320),
where he observes on the lines—
“If you can construe but your doctor’s bill,
_Parse_ your wife’s waiting-women.”
“_Parse?_ Was kann es bedeuten?”
“_Pierce_ ist dem aufmerksamen Auge
leserlich genug.”
Here one can only open one’s eyes at the question, and smother one’s
reply.
Footnote 775:
The _Works_ of Friedrich (except some _Juvenilia_) are included in a
complete edition (Vienna, 1846) in fifteen vols., of which the first
eight are entirely filled with critical matter. Of August Wilhelm,
besides the _Sämmtliche Werke_ (12 vols., Leipzig, 1846), there are
three vols. of French and two of Latin works, and also the _Lectures_,
which were not published till 1884 (Heilbronn).
Footnote 776:
They were redistributed later in the _Works_ of the brothers and in A.
W.'s _Kritische Schriften_. But it is good to read, and possess, the
original _Characteristiken und Kritiken_ (2 vols., Königsberg, 1801).
Footnote 777:
I should think better of the criticism of Germany if it did not
habitually speak of “Romeo und Juli_a_.” In the first place, it is
surely common good manners not to alter an author’s title—though you
may abbreviate it. In the second, which is more important, the change
argues an æsthetic and gynæcologic callousness. Juli_a_ and Juli_et_
are quite different persons.
Footnote 778:
Schlegel was twenty-nine at the date of the earliest, and sixty-one
when the book was published. The climacteric of accomplished youth and
that of not yet absolutely declining age could not be much better hit
off.
Footnote 779:
i. 74-164.
Footnote 780:
It opens the second vol., and goes to p. 81.
Footnote 781:
_V. sup._, p. 81. That which follows on Voss, Matthisson, and Schmidt
is rather over full of citation.
Footnote 782:
I have already waived the controversy between Coleridge and the
Schlegels. The fact is that the resemblance is mainly one of
_attitude_—one of those results of “skyey influences” which constantly
manifest themselves in different persons of genius and talent more or
less simultaneously. And it may be added that the _general_ presence
of this attitude in Coleridge before his German visit, before either
Schlegel had attained any great notoriety, or had written anything
likely to penetrate to England, or even anything very characteristic,
is attested not merely by the concrete document, in not so very alien
material, of _The Ancient Mariner_, but by testimonies as to his
conversation, from half a dozen different people.
Footnote 783:
It is No. 19, which describes Æsthetics as “the salt which dutiful
disciples are going to put on the tail of the Ideal (enjoined upon
them as so necessary to poetry), _as soon as they get near enough_.”
Footnote 784:
Nor had Schlegel attained the art of grasping and exhibiting a writer,
not merely as Sainte-Beuve was to do, but even as Johnson had done.
The “Chamfort” in this book (i. 338-365) show this.
Footnote 785:
_Gespr. mit Eck._, iii. 100. Effeminacy, as well as coxcombry, was
frequently charged against him: and the unpopularity of both brothers
as persons was very great. But this Camarina, like all such, is better
unstirred.
Footnote 786:
i. 47, ed. cit. He is “the last in value as in time,” of ancient
critics, “the inventor of sentimental æsthetic,” “empty of ideas.”
“All which propositions I for the present content myself,” as Carlyle
observes in another matter, “with modestly, but peremptorily and
irrevocably, denying.”
Footnote 787:
P. 49. He bewails their “practical sterility,” their “muddle of Art
and Nature” (_das man Kunst und Natur so durcheinander warf_), &c.
Footnote 788:
He praises the _mot_, “According to Burke, the Beautiful is a
tolerably pretty strumpet, and the Sublime is a grenadier with a big
moustache.” Who said this?
Footnote 789:
In several places, especially iii. 62, 63. There is a useful index to
these lectures: but their condition requires a full table of contents.
Footnote 790:
ii. 210, 313.
Footnote 791:
The first and less complete issue, in 10 vols., was in 1821-25.
Footnote 792:
Ed. cit., vols. i. and ii.
Footnote 793:
Vols. iii., iv., v.
Footnote 794:
Vol. vi.
Footnote 795:
Vol. viii.
Footnote 796:
Ibid.
Footnote 797:
_Gesammelte Werke_, 6 vols., in the Cotta Library.
Footnote 798:
Most of his best things were published by 1815, and many of these had
been written years before.
Footnote 799:
They fill 4 out of the 6 vols., as given in ed. cit.
Footnote 800:
I have used the _second_ edition (Breslau, 1820). The first appeared
in 1818, as a mere booklet in comparison.
Footnote 801:
_Vorlesungen über Æsthetik_: Leipzig, 1829.
Footnote 802:
P. 7.
Footnote 803:
De Quincey’s Essay on Schlosser (_Works_, vol. vii.) is disfigured by
his usual rather boisterous fooling and rigmarole, but very sound in
the main.
Footnote 804:
Vol. ii. Bk. VI. chap. iii. I do not yet know Molledano (R. y P. R.),
_Historia literaria de España_, 9 (10) vols. 4to, 1769-79.
Footnote 805:
See also _infra_ in the last chapter of the next Book. I suppose the
name most likely to be missed here is that of Ugo Foscolo. The author
of the _Letters of Jacopo Ortis_ must seem, to those who think
Rousseau a critic, to be another, and the commentator on Petrarch and
Dante certainly was one. But I think we can do without him.
Footnote 806:
II. 216.
Footnote 807:
_V. sup._, p. 386.
Footnote 808:
See the Addenda-Corrigenda in this vol. for Dennis’s
counter-assertion.
Footnote 809:
Certain persons would, of course, omit even the provisos here: but of
them I take no keep.
Footnote 810:
The Germans did it rather earlier but not so well: the French almost
if not quite as well and more voluminously, but later.
Footnote 811:
The second Essay of the _Miscellanies_, vol. i.
Footnote 812:
A hit, of course, at Coleridge, as, I suppose, is that above about
“the nature of _the poet_.”
Footnote 813:
This celebrated tractate, which cannot be too much honoured as a
Counsel of Perfection, may be said to have started the belief,
comfortable for those who entertain it, that all who follow not their
notion of “Philosophy” and “the Idea” are “Completed Bunglers.”
“Perhaps so, my dear! perhaps so,” as an excellent Bishop of the Roman
branch of the Catholic Church is said to have once remarked to a
little vulgar boy who told him he was “no gentleman.”
Footnote 814:
Carlyle, in a very fine passage, admits their acceptance of “all true
singers of every age and clime.” I fear the Devil’s Advocate’s devil,
if you gave him a little time, could collect a curious _dossier_ of
contrary instances: but this matters little. They _are_ entitled to
credit for maintaining and spreading this catholic faith. But even
Dryden, according to his lights, had championed it a century earlier;
Gray, if he could have shaken off the deadly sin of Accidia—the
deadliest to the man of letters—would have been Herder + either
Schlegel, and more also, long before any of them; and Coleridge is
Coleridge, however much he may have annoyed Carlyle at Highgate.
Footnote 815:
P. 233 of the vol. for the University—year 1902-3.
Footnote 816:
The rest of this Interchapter may be taken—like the two Appendices—as
a sample of that fourth volume of “Critical Excursus” which I should
have liked to give, had I thought that readers would endure it.
Footnote 817:
Add some other blessings, as that the periodical can contradict
itself—which the book sometimes does, but should not.
Footnote 818:
I beg pardon: when I wrote the above I had not read the boast of the
gentleman who could “come to a pile of new books, tear the entrails
out of them, and write a 1500-word _causerie_, passably stylistic, all
within sixty minutes”! But perhaps this also was irony?
Footnote 819:
I take my examples as usual from English; but, as usual, nothing but
the consideration of space prevents me from adducing French and German
parallels.
Footnote 820:
It was originally published, remember, before the death of Coleridge,
and well within the period of our Book, even as to English.
Footnote 821:
It is of course impossible to appreciate this stanza fully except as a
modification, and in comparison with other modifications, of the
normal decasyllabic quatrain of _Gondibert_ and _Annus Mirabilis_. Yet
persons calling themselves critics have sometimes been amusingly
indignant at the suggestion of this obvious fact.
Footnote 822:
The original form of this, in 1832-33, was less perfect, but the aim
and the principle are there already.
Footnote 823:
Mr Hall Caine, in his _Cobwebs of Criticism_ (London, 1883); Mr E.
Stevenson, in a useful and unpretentious collection of _Early Reviews_
(London, n. d.), &c., &c.
Footnote 824:
“Poetry has this much at least in common with religion, that its
standards were fixed long ago by certain inspired writers, whose
authority it is no longer lawful to call in question.” There may seem
to be an ironic touch in this: but the whole article is written to the
text.
Footnote 825:
_V. sup._, vol. i. p. 252.
Footnote 826:
These texts can be seen in detail in more than one modern book on
Tennyson, and wholly in Mr Churton Collins’s painstaking and useful
reprint of the _Early Poems_ (London, 1900).
Footnote 827:
His books are too numerous to catalogue, and too equal in merit and
defect to select from.
Footnote 828:
_Tableau de la marche, &c., de la Littérature Française_: Paris, 1828.
It may also be found at the end of the Didot ed. of La Harpe’s _Cours
de Littérature_.
Footnote 829:
He was a friend of my father’s in his English days, and I remember
long ago seeing letters of his signed “Chasles _d’Almar_,” after a not
uncommon French fashion.
Footnote 830:
It fills perhaps the major part of the great collection of articles
called _Les Œuvres et les Hommes_ (15 vols., Paris, 1860-95).
Footnote 831:
xi. 72.
Footnote 832:
See vol. xiii. of _Les Œuvres et les Hommes_.
Footnote 833:
Note that the last outrage—_commune_—avenges Miss Austen of Madame de
Staël.
Footnote 834:
xii. 245.
Footnote 835:
_Mélanges et Lettres_, 4 vols., Paris: 1876-77.
Footnote 836:
_Op. cit._, i. 34 _sq._
Footnote 837:
Printed in vol. iv.
Footnote 838:
i. 432.
Footnote 839:
i. 521.
Footnote 840:
ii. 389.
Footnote 841:
iii. 128.
Footnote 842:
iv. 151.
Footnote 843:
Not a little of the later published _Pensées_ (Paris, 1880) is
definitely literary in subject; but the book is a small one, and its
contents seem to me to lack something of the absolute spontaneity and
_privacy_ of the larger and earlier collection. There are, however,
noteworthy things; let me mention, as one of several for honour, the
important dictum, p. 24, that “une forte mémoire _ne dénature pas_
assez ce qu’on imite,” where Doudan trembles on the verge of that
truth which so few have reached, that art is _dis_realisation. Not so
good is the wish that Scott had attempted Wellington or Napoleon as a
hero, for it shows that Doudan was unwilling to accept (what
nevertheless, as the context shows, he half saw) the cardinal law of
the Historical Novel, that the main personages must _not_ be
historical.
Footnote 844:
For an article in the _Fortnightly Review_ (May 1880).
Footnote 845:
For the reprint and completion of that article in _Miscellaneous
Essays_ (London, 1892).
Footnote 846:
In the _Avenir de la Science_.
Footnote 847:
See his _Derniers Essais de Critique et d’Histoire_ (Paris, 1894), a
remarkably representative collection (though, of course, not
dispensing the reader who really wishes to know, from consulting the
earlier collections of the same general heading), and one specially to
be recommended to those who only know the _Histoire de la Littérature
Anglaise_. The _Letters_, earlier and later, I have not drawn upon.
Footnote 848:
_V. sup._, p. 307.
Footnote 849:
_Journal des Goncourt_, ii. 123.
Footnote 850:
The first of these is _Les vies illustres s'éteignent sur tous les
points du monde, comme les mille flambeaux d’une fête qui finit_. On
this Taine’s comment is, “tout homme qui a tenu une plume tressaille
en la lisant.” Most true: but how about time, place and _milieu_? The
other is an exquisite conceit about the girl-speakers in the
_Decameron_.
Footnote 851:
In _Nouveaux Lundis_, and _Études Critiques_, respectively. M.
Montégut’s deliverance is less important, for reasons to be mentioned
presently. It does the _panegyrics_ admirably.
Footnote 852:
_V. sup._, p. 349. Mérimée commends Taine highly to the _Inconnue_.
Footnote 853:
In English he translated Shakespeare, Macaulay, and Emerson.
Footnote 854:
Especially, some may say, when he does not like you, or what you like.
Footnote 855:
This was probably due to the influence of Taine, with whom (as he once
told me in an interesting letter in regard to some published remarks
of mine) he at one time took much critical counsel.
Footnote 856:
See the opening piece, “Du Caractère Anglais,” of _Essais sur la
Littérature Anglaise_ (Paris, 1883).
Footnote 857:
_Nos Morts Contemporains_, ii. 199 (Paris, 1884).
Footnote 858:
In _Poètes et Artistes de l’Italie_. He was much pleased with the
eulogy which I was able to bestow on this. M. Scherer was not—I cannot
tell why, for certainly jealousy of praise given to somebody else was
not one of his faults. Probably he did not like Boccaccio—or Alaciel.
Footnote 859:
In the book already cited and its companion, _Écrivains Modernes de
l’Angleterre_ (Paris, 1885).
Footnote 860:
In the first series of _Nos Morts Contemporains_, but written long
before “Théo’s” death, in 1865.
Footnote 861:
_Écrivains Modernes de l’Angleterre_, as above.
Footnote 862:
10 of _Études Critiques sur la Littérature_ (Paris, 1863-89), besides
separate ones on Diderot, on Grimm, &c. I myself translated and edited
his _Essays on English Literature_ (London, 1891).
Footnote 863:
That is, since the period of the Reformation. I do not think he knew
much of older date.
Footnote 864:
It followed, that though less devoted to formulas than Taine, he was
determined that all literary criticism must be connected with the
exhibition of national character.
Footnote 865:
He _had_ such a sense, both of French wit and of English humour, but
within very narrow and sometimes quite arbitrarily drawn restrictions.
Footnote 866:
The best examples of this group are perhaps the _Goethe_, known in
England by Mr. Arnold’s essay, the _Taine’s English Literature_, and
the treatment of Renan’s _Peuple d’Israël_.
Footnote 867:
Gérard de Nerval ought to have been one of the best of these: but,
like Mérimée and Gautier himself, he was much occupied with better
things than criticism, and in it he chiefly dealt with drama.
Footnote 868:
_Petit Traité de Poésie Française_: Paris, 1891.
Footnote 869:
Paris, 1867: often reprinted.
Footnote 870:
Paris, 1880, and later (3 vols.)
Footnote 871:
The whole of the 2nd vol., _Curiosités Esthétiques_, and part of the
3rd, _L’Art Romantique_, of his _Œuvres_ (4 vols., Paris, 1868), are
occupied by this.
Footnote 872:
One of the few wholly agreeable pieces of anecdotage contained in the
_Journal des Goncourt_ seems to show that the accusations generally
brought as to the poet having hastened his own end by reckless living
were at least hasty. It seems that his mother, Madame Aupick, the most
respectable of old ladies, died under the same curse of aphasia and
general paralysis.
Footnote 873:
It would be difficult to say quite the same of the _Œuvres Posthumes_
(Paris, 1887), though these also contain valuable critical matter. But
much is familiar letter-writing never intended for serious perusal,
and not a little bears the clear marks of brain-disease.
Footnote 874:
4 vols., Paris, 1861.
Footnote 875:
The first volume—to George Sand, with Maupassant’s Introduction—
appeared in 1884: the general Correspondence followed. George Sand’s
replies, as well as other things of hers, give her a right to, at
least, a place in this note.
Footnote 876:
_V. inf._ on Mr Pater.
Footnote 877:
Two such different persons and writers as Zola himself and M. Anatole
France have, in different parts of the _Mémoires des Goncourt_, given
true and valuable testimony to one of the great merits of that
much-abused and certainly much-_abusable_ thing journalism—the
facility and audacity, namely, which it confers. No doubt the facility
which it gives may turn to slovenliness, and the boldness in
attempting great tasks to levity: but this need not be so,—M. France
himself is a convincing evidence in the one case at least. And there
is no doubt that the practised habit of undertaking complicated things
at short notice, and of doing the “day’s darg” in the day, protects a
man from that “impossibility of getting ready,” that “not knowing how
to begin” (and still less how to finish), which has sterilised even
genius so frequently.
Footnote 878:
The title of the first, _Mes Haines_ (Paris, 1866), is unlucky. Taken
as a joke, it is not very good: taken seriously, it is fatal. It may
not be easy to preserve the critical attitude when you love: that
attitude is gone, without hope of recovery, as soon as you hate.
Footnote 879:
Paris, 1880.
Footnote 880:
All these will be found in the volume cited.
Footnote 881:
_Op. cit._, p. 343.
Footnote 882:
Again the enemy “has said it.” You cannot have a much better
description of the highest literary art than this.
Footnote 883:
He was drowned while bathing. _V._ _Mémoires des Goncourt_.
Footnote 884:
_La Critique Scientifique_ (Paris, 1888), followed by _Études de Crit.
Scient._, in two series (1889 and 1890). I am under the impression
that Hennequin owed something—perhaps a good deal—to Mr H. M.
Posnett’s _Comparative Literature_ (London, 1886), a book which, for
the usual reason, escapes our survey. It may, however, be observed
that “Comparative _Literature_” is a very awkward phrase, neither
really representing “Littérature _Comparée_” nor really analogous to
“Comparative Anatomy.” “Comparative _Study of_ Literature” would be
all right: otherwise “Comparative _Criticism_” or “_Rhetoric_” is
wanted.
Footnote 885:
_La Critique Scientifique_, p. 29.
Footnote 886:
This appeared in 1895; _Études de Littérature Européenne_ followed
three years later, and _La Littérature Comparée_ in 1900. The
contributions to Petit de Julleville have been noticed (ii. 528.
note).
Footnote 887:
For more on it, and on another kind of it, see below on the late Karl
Hillebrand.
Footnote 888:
_V. sup._, p. 97 _sq._
Footnote 889:
A good example of his literary work is _La Fin du 18ième Siècle_ (2
vols., Paris, 1880). He speaks of Diderot as _un essayiste à la façon
Anglaise_, which is complimentary—and instructive.
Footnote 890:
_Histoire de la Jeune Allemagne, Littérature Étrangère, Drames et
Romans de la Vie Littéraire_, &c.
Footnote 891:
Montégut (_v. sup._, p. 445) thought better of him.
Footnote 892:
_V. sup._, p. 336.
Footnote 893:
The posthumous _Épisodes Littéraires_ (Paris, 1890) contrasts very
pleasantly with too many utterances “d’Outre-Tombe.”
Footnote 894:
“Call yourself Voltaire: I promise you some sensations,” was one of
his boasts which became famous. It was by no means mere bragging.
Footnote 895:
Paris, 1856 onwards.
Footnote 896:
In an essay originally published in _Macmillan’s Magazine_ for July
1886, and reprinted in _Essays in English Literature_ (3rd. ed.,
London, 1896).
Footnote 897:
As I am not speaking _enfarinhadomente_ about Wilson’s faults, I may
fairly protest against an exaggeration of them. It is surely unlucky
of Mr Buxton Forman (_Keats’ Letters_, i. 46, ed. 1900) to talk of
_Blackwood’s Magazine_ having “a monopoly of frowsy and unsavoury
personal gibes” in “the possession of Christopher North,” when he had
himself a few papers earlier cited Hazlitt’s almost Bedlamite
Billingsgate against Southey in the _Examiner_.
Footnote 898:
As the 4th vol. of _Essays Critical and Imaginative_ (4 vols.,
Edinburgh, 1856-57). It follows Wilson’s usual lines of a running
study of the poem and those who have written about it. Much of it, as
of the essay on the _Agamemnon_ which follows, is occupied by a not
uninteresting parallel-collection of translations.
Footnote 899:
_Literature of Europe_, chap. xiv., § 82.
Footnote 900:
It will be found in _Blackwood’s Magazine_, vols. xxxiv., xxxvi., and
xxxvii. (Edinburgh, 1833-35).
Footnote 901:
For this is one of the metaphors which (as Théophile Gautier boasted
of his own, and as so few others can boast) _se suivent_.
Footnote 902:
Ibid., vols. lvii., lviii. (1849).
Footnote 903:
_Blackwood’s Magazine_, vols. lxv.-lxviii. and lxxii. (1849-52).
Footnote 904:
There is much good as well as bad criticism here; but it is almost
inevitable that the goodness should be obscured to too many tastes,
and the bad intensified to almost all, by the setting of High Jinks.
Yet Wilson, like Shakespeare according to Collier, “could be very
serious,” and his defence of Croker against Macaulay is far more valid
than has usually been allowed.
Footnote 905:
Essays, i. 387 _sq._
Footnote 906:
Ibid., ii. 109 _sq._
Footnote 907:
Ibid., iii. 386.
Footnote 908:
i. 179.
Footnote 909:
As De Quincey had, for one who was not a novelist, the probably unique
honour of four complete editions of his _Works_ in his last years and
the generation succeeding his death, it is not easy to refer to him.
But the last—Professor Masson’s of 1890—has the merit of methodical
arrangement: and its tenth volume contains most of the _purely_
critical things.
Footnote 910:
In _Coleridge and Opium Eating_.
Footnote 911:
As it is very dangerous to write about De Quincey, let me observe that
this is a phrase of Mr Thackeray’s about another person, and implies
affection and even admiration.
Footnote 912:
In his “biography” of Goethe.
Footnote 913:
Vol. x., ed. cit. Date, 1838-39.
Footnote 914:
As such it will prove interesting to compare him with Nisard or
Planche, especially the latter. But the comparison will, I fear, bring
out that superiority of French criticism at _this_ time which, denying
it at others, I fully admit.
Footnote 915:
The objection of some folk to this useful word may be perhaps
accounted for by their spelling it “protrept_r_ic.”
Footnote 916:
This book, which often occurs in catalogues at a very moderate price,
may be strongly recommended to intelligent book-buyers. It is pretty
to look at, agreeable to handle, and delightful to read. _Janus_,
another waif, in which he and Wilson collaborated, is less
interesting. (For a fuller treatment of Lockhart, as of others, I may
once more refer to my _Essays in Criticism_.)
Footnote 917:
_Works_, 7 vols. (London, 1851-52), ed. Derwent Coleridge; _Poems and
Memoir_, 2 vols.; _Essays_, 2; _Northern Worthies_, 3. An eighth, of
_Fragments_, was promised; but if it ever appeared, I have not seen
it.
Footnote 918:
“The Professor,” it is hardly necessary to say, was an early and
lifelong friend and neighbour of Hartley, whom he seems to have
regarded with particular affection.
Footnote 919:
It is, perhaps, not officious to subjoin a reminder that we have the
curious pleasure of S. T. C.'s notes on Hartley in the _Biographia
Borealis_. One of these—an objection to the phrase “prose Shakespeare”
for Heywood—is very odd, as apparently showing forgetfulness of the
fact that the phrase is not his eldest son’s, but his oldest friend’s.
Footnote 920:
_Miscellanies, Prose and Verse_, by William Maginn, ed. R. W. Montagu.
2 vols., London, 1885.
Footnote 921:
They are scattered all over the _Memoirs of Morgan O’Doherty_, and
often form independent items of the _Miscellanies_.
Footnote 922:
It would have been interesting to hear Maginn on the Revised Version
“after” the Authorised.
Footnote 923:
Ed. cit., ii. 1-116. Let me guard carefully against being supposed
myself to speak disrespectfully of Farmer, whose Essay will be found
recently reprinted in Mr Nichol Smith’s collection. Farmer is at least
as right against _his_ adversaries as Maginn against him.
Footnote 924:
Ibid., pp. 117-144.
Footnote 925:
In prose from _The Story without a Tail_, and in verse from _The
Pewter Quart_ onward.
Footnote 926:
_Life_, p. 309 _sq._, ed. cit.
Footnote 927:
_Life_, p. 343 ed. cit.
Footnote 928:
He was thirty-eight.
Footnote 929:
One of the _in_justices is curious from a man of Scottish blood,
though every Englishman would commit it, as I own I should have done
till very late in my reviewing life. It is the satire on the
comparison of a woman’s eyes to dew on “a bramble,” which of course in
England means a _bush_, and in Scotland a _berry_. I wonder whether R.
L. S. meant to appease the other poor Robert’s _manes_ when he wrote
the phrase “eyes of gold and bramble-dew,” and I should have asked him
had Fate permitted.
Footnote 930:
It may seem whimsical: but I doubt whether any one of a really
critical _ethos_ would put down, even in his private diary, that a
private enemy and a hostile reviewer was “a bad, a very bad man, a
scandal to politics and letters.” Criticism herself would, I think,
condescend to give any of her favourite children’s ears an Apollonian
twitch.
Footnote 931:
Carlyle was an older man than Macaulay, but he began to publish
original work later.
Footnote 932:
Any one anxious really to appreciate Carlyle’s _potentia_ as a
literary critic may be specially commended to this. It was written, of
course, not merely before he developed his own style, but before the
freer modern criticism had been largely developed by anybody except
apart-dwelling stars like Coleridge. But it brands the author as a
great critic _if he chose_. He did not wholly choose: and, later, he
refused.
Footnote 933:
London, 1896.
Footnote 934:
Not that all Taylor’s ideas were preposterous. He and others of the
Norwich School would make a good excursus. Even the “quotidian and
stimulant” theory, of which Carlyle makes such fun, might have a
chance with Carlyle’s own “highest aim of a nation.”
Footnote 935:
More especially those on the _Nibelungenlied_ and Early German Poetry
generally. These could hardly have been better done.
Footnote 936:
As an out-and-out Scottite _and_ Carlylian, I would respectfully
deprecate hasty judgment of this. It is a _crux ansata_, and you may
easily get hold of the wrong handle.
Footnote 937:
“O people of Paraguay! how long will you continue idiots?” If a casual
half-breed really thus put politics and life in a nut-shell, he was
certainly somebody.
Footnote 938:
The different paging of the different editions makes it useless to
give exact references. Nor are they wanted; for the “Contents” and
Indices of Carlyle’s works are ideal.
Footnote 939:
Had he been reading Vico?
Footnote 940:
Since the text was written, a full collection of his literary
criticism with many _anepecdota_, has appeared in Messrs Macmillan’s
new edition.
Footnote 941:
Edinburgh, 1899, p. 59.
Footnote 942:
Ibid., note. p. 10.
Footnote 943:
It is all the more remarkable that the writer was “not the first
comer.” He was, I believe, William Smith, the author of _Thorndale_
and other books much prized by good judges, a man of great talents,
wide reading, and admirable character.
Footnote 944:
My copy is the 2nd ed. Mr W. G. Clark’s preface to the 1st is dated
“Ap. 1858,” rather less than a year after Brimley’s death.
Footnote 945:
Cf. Chesterfield’s profound remark to Mme. de Mauconseil, on
Christmas Day 1755: _Il me semble que le mal physique attendrit autant
que le mal moral endurcit le cœur_.
Footnote 946:
This idol had already had notice to quit. The Essay is of 1855, when
it originally appeared in _Cambridge Essays_. Matthew Arnold’s
admirable _Preface_ is two years older.
Footnote 947:
The “Wordsworth” is some years earlier than the “Tennyson.” It
appeared in _Fraser_ during the summer of 1851.
Footnote 948:
He will reappear in the Appendix devoted to holders of the Oxford
Chair of Poetry.
Footnote 949:
In _Friends in Council_.
Footnote 950:
I have slipped from N to O: but it is only next door.
Footnote 951:
London, 1902.
Footnote 952:
_Essays and Reviews_, London, 1876. The other papers—on Macaulay,
Carlyle, Ruskin, George Eliot—are good, but not so good, and show that
difficulty of the mid-century critic in “sticking to _literature_,”
which is the theme of this chapter.
Footnote 953:
London, 1866.
Footnote 954:
London, 1866.
Footnote 955:
That which amused me most is the employment, with the difference, of
the cat-girl simile [_v. sup._, ii. 550]. I am sure I did not take it
from him; and if we both took it from somebody else (to adopt the
comfortable principles of Miss Teresa M’Whirter at the conclusion of
_A Legend of the Rhine_), I do not know who the somebody else was.
Footnote 956:
London, 1852.
Footnote 957:
It is important to notice that he is not _hostile_, he is simply
puzzled. The great method, which emerges first in Dryden, and which
Sainte-Beuve perfected, of “shaking together” different literary
examples, is still dark to him in practice, though, as has been said,
he had a glimpse of its theory.
Footnote 958:
Foster’s interest in literature—real, but very strongly coloured and
conditioned by his moral and religious preoccupations—may be easily
appraised by reading his Essays on “A Man Writing his Own Memoirs” and
“The Epithet Romantic” in Bohn’s Library.
Footnote 959:
Fox has the credit of “discovering” Browning, but there were personal
reasons here. Much more, of course, were there such in A. H. Hallam’s
essay on Tennyson—a rather overrated thing.
Footnote 960:
Rogers is even “mentioned in despatches”—that is, by Sainte-Beuve.
Footnote 961:
See his _Early Essays_ in Bohn’s reprint. The criticism of certain
romantic poets of the mid century would make an interesting excursus
of the kind which I have indicated as (if it were possible) fit to be
included in a fourth volume of this work. Horne’s _New Spirit of the
Age_ (1845), though exhibiting all the singular inadequacies,
inequalities, and _inorganicisms_ of the author of _Orion_, does not
entirely deserve the severe contrast which Thackeray drew between it
and its original as given by Hazlitt. Mrs Browning, who took some part
in this, has left a substantive critical contribution in _The Greek
Christian Poets and the English Poets_, in which again the weaknesses
of the writer in poetry are interestingly compensated by weaknesses in
criticism, but in which again also, and much more, “the critic whom
every poet must [or should] contain” sometimes asserts himself not
unsuccessfully. W. C. Roscoe, whose verse is at least interesting, and
has been thought something more, is critically not negligible. But
perhaps the most interesting document which would have to be treated
in such an excursus is Sydney Dobell’s _Nature of Poetry_, delivered
as a lecture (it must have been something of a choke-pear for the
audience) at Edinburgh in 1857. Here the author, though not
_nominatim_, directly traverses Matthew Arnold’s doctrine in the great
Preface (see next chapter), by maintaining that a perfect poem _will
be_ the exhibition of a perfect mind, and, we may suppose, a less
perfect but still defensible poem the exhibition of a less perfect
mind—which principle, no doubt, is, in any case, the sole possible
justification of _Festus_ and of _Balder_. Others (especially Sir
Henry Taylor) might be added, but these will probably suffice.
Footnote 962:
The immortality of critical error—the impossibility of quelling the
Blatant Beast—to which we have alluded (ii. 554, note) is again
illustrated here. One might have thought that Mr Arnold had
sufficiently crushed and concluded this fallacy. It has been seen
again—in places where it should not have been—in these last few years.
Footnote 963:
This very generous assumption comes, I feel sure, from the blending of
Wordsworth (_v. sup._, on him) with Aristotle.
Footnote 964:
Mr Arnold never explicitly retracted this “pyramidal” exaggeration—it
was not his way; but nearly the whole of his _French Critic on Goethe_
is a transparent “hedge,” a scarcely ambiguous palinode. For the
doctrine itself, see note at end of last chapter.
Footnote 965:
I think Mr Arnold, especially after italicising these words, should
really have told us as a WHAT we are to think of the author of
Shakespeare’s greatest expressions.
Footnote 966:
_V. sup._, i. 116.
Footnote 967:
Those to the manner born or matriculated in it have generally been
kind to him: but then he has given them rather considerable bribes.
Footnote 968:
He has been largely imitated in this, and I cannot help thinking that
it is a pity. If a man is definitely and ostensibly “reviewing”
another man’s work, he has a perfect right, subject to the laws of
good manners, to discuss him _quoad hoc_. But illustrations of general
discourses by dragging in living persons seem to be forbidden by those
laws as they apply in the literary province.
Footnote 969:
This pearl of eighteenth century minor poetry occurs in the 7th (“The
Wallflower”) of its author’s _Fables of Flora_ (Chalmers, xvi. 447). I
think Scott’s unequalled combination of memory and taste has used it
somewhere as a motto.
Footnote 970:
_Gryll Grange_, chap. xiv. Cf. i. 381 note.
Footnote 971:
Vol. i. p. 380. I might, and perhaps should, have introduced an
interesting expression of more moderate opinion from St Basil, the
pupil of Libanius, and the fellow-student of Julian. But I am glad
that I did not, because I can introduce it here with an reference to
the interesting translation published with Plutarch’s _How to Read
Poetry_ (_v. sup._, i. 140), by Professor Paculford of the University
of Washington (“Yale Studies,” No. xv.: New York, 1932). The Saint
allows the study of the purer profane literature as a useful and
ornamental _introduction_ to higher things.
Footnote 972:
Not that he is wholly wrong in regard to either: while he does allow
some of the almost unbelievable absurdities of Brooke’s eccentric,
though far from “unimportant,” purpose-novel. But it is evident—and,
indeed, confessed—that he is thinking of the ethical tone and spirit
first, midmost, and almost last also.
Footnote 973:
Not, again, that the _Short Studies_ especially can be neglected, even
from our point of view.
Footnote 974:
I have purposely taken all these examples from the _Selections_, where
they will be easily found.
Footnote 975:
The Essays comprising this, with their sequel and complement _The
Inner Life of Art_, appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_ (which Lewes
edited) at its beginning in 1865, and have been usefully reprinted by
Mr T. S. Knowlson (London, n. d.) I may observe that the cheap and
useful collection (the “Scott Library”) in which this reprint appears
provides a large amount of other valuable critical matter.
Footnote 976:
Chap. iii. p. 47 _sq._, ed. cit.
Footnote 977:
Ibid., p. 113.
Footnote 978:
Excepting (largely) the exceptions already made, and also the huge
mass of his unreprinted contributions to newspapers. _The Leader_,
under his editorship, was a pioneer of improvement in reviewing.
Footnote 979:
The posthumous _Literary Studies_, and Mr Hutton’s essay (_v._ ed.
cit. on next paragraph), are the places for studying him. The study
may result, without protest from me, in a high opinion of his
criticism.
Footnote 980:
2 vols., London, 1894.
Footnote 981:
I fully expect to be told by some critic that there is no such book,
just as I once was told that Browning wrote no such poem as _James
Lee_.
Footnote 982:
Printed by Mr Gosse (London, 1896) privately: but I believe it has
been included in the complete edition.
Footnote 983:
I have always wondered what made him think that I personally prefer
plain to ornate prose. The contrary, if it were of any moment, happens
to be the case, though I own I think, as even De Quincey thought, that
the ornate styles are not styles of all work.
Footnote 984:
Nor do I think the “Postscript” of _Appreciations_, where the writer
“Arnoldises” somewhat, one of his best things, good as it is.
Footnote 985:
Especially in his numerous volumes of Essays and Studies, under
various names.
Footnote 986:
London, 1895.
Footnote 987:
A “pair” for Mr Symonds from the other University might be found in
the late Mr Frederick Myers, who, with more philosophical and less
artistic tendency, exhibited an equally _flamboyant_ style.
Footnote 988:
Its chief monuments or repertories are _Essays and Phantasies_
(London, 1881) and _Poems, Essays, and Fragments_ (London, 1892).
Footnote 989:
On men like Shelley and Blake, of course, Thomson was free from most
of his “Satans”: and he speaks well on them.
Footnote 990:
His _Defoe_, in the _English Men of Letters_ Series, is not to be
overlooked.
Footnote 991:
_Manual of English Prose Literature_ (Edinburgh, 1872);
_Characteristics of English Poets, from Chaucer to Shirley_
(Edinburgh, 1874).
Footnote 992:
I do not know whether he contributed to anything before that
remarkable periodical _The Dark Blue_, which, during its short life in
the earliest 'Seventies, had a staff not easily surpassable, and
almost reminding one of the earlier English _London Magazine_ and of
the French _Globe_.
Footnote 993:
Both in the _English Men of Letters_. The _Sterne_ appeared in 1882;
the _Coleridge_ in 1884.
Footnote 994:
_The New Fiction and other Essays on Literary Subjects_ (London,
1897).
Footnote 995:
See his _Letters, Lectures, and Reviews_: London, 1873.
Footnote 996:
Especially in _Horæ Sabbaticæ_.
Footnote 997:
London, 1873.
Footnote 998:
London, 1889.
Footnote 999:
London, 1893.
Footnote 1000:
I do not mean that they were rubbish there. Rubbish is only “matter in
the wrong place,” and what is rubbish in a book need by no means be
rubbish in a newspaper.
Footnote 1001:
London, 1880.
Footnote 1002:
2 vols., London, 1887.
Footnote 1003:
Such as even Gautier.
Footnote 1004:
This sensibleness, no doubt, ought always to characterise the “Tertium
Quid” or “cross-bench” mind. It is equally indubitable that it most
commonly does not.
Footnote 1005:
_T. Q._, vol. ii.
Footnote 1006:
I do not take special notice of R. L. Stevenson here, because his
criticism, in any formal shape, belongs mainly to the earlier and
tentative stage of his work, and never, to my fancy, had much fixity
or grip, interesting and stimulating as it is. I ventured to tell him,
when I met him first, after the appearance of _The New Arabian Nights_
in _London_, that _here_ was Apollo waiting for him, not there: and I
hold to the view. Others, such as Mr Henley (with whom also I rowed in
that galley—a tight and saucy one, if not exactly a _galère
capitaine_), Mr Robert Buchanan, Sir Leslie Stephen, Prof. Bain, have
passed away too recently; and yet others must fall into the _numerus_.
Footnote 1007:
Bk. VIII.
Footnote 1008:
In accordance with the absolute frankness which I have imposed upon
myself, I shall confess here that my knowledge of the most modern
German literature is much less complete than my knowledge of French
and English.
Footnote 1009:
I use the Cotta ed., in 13 vols.
Footnote 1010:
The passage in the opening of the _Reisebilder_ ought to be
sufficiently well known.
Footnote 1011:
Ed. cit., vii. 172 and 215.
Footnote 1012:
_Vermischte Schriften_, xii. 175
Footnote 1013:
x. 225.
Footnote 1014:
They should specially not read him on Börne.
Footnote 1015:
Vol. iv., ed. cit.
Footnote 1016:
The chief are at iv. 230 and x. 250.
Footnote 1017:
Especially vii. 185 _sq._
Footnote 1018:
vii. 239 _sq._
Footnote 1019:
x. 216.
Footnote 1020:
An excellent subject for one of those D.Litt. theses by which we are
at last going to put ourselves on the level of Germany (to the
satisfaction of persons who write about Education) would be “The
_Reisebilder_ considered as an Allegory of Criticism, with some
remarks on their excursions into Category.”
Footnote 1021:
Ed. Cotta. I have not yet worked with the newer, and it is said
better, ed. of Reclam.
Footnote 1022:
Vols. 8-11 of the Cotta ed. It is from these that the material of
_Schopenhauer’s Art of Literature_, translated by Mr Bailey Saunders
(London, 1891), is taken. The excellence of Mr Saunders’s version is a
matter of common consent. I am not quite so certain about his
reconstitution of contexts, which is sometimes rather too much on a
par with the taxidermic exploits of the late Mr Waterton; and he has
left out some piquant things. But the advantage of opening such
precious matter to merely English readers not only excuses this but
makes excuse unnecessary.
Footnote 1023:
Has any other German ever written quite such good prose as
Schopenhauer’s?
Footnote 1024:
_P. und P._, § 320, ed. cit., xi. 251.
Footnote 1025:
In chap. xxiii. of _P. und P._, “Über Schriftstellerei und Stil.” Mr.
Bailey Saunders isolates the Style part.
Footnote 1026:
_P. und P._, § 384; _Art. of. Lit._, p. 6.
Footnote 1027:
See chap. xxii. _Selbstdenken_. Schopenhauer’s maxim, “Reading is a
mere _succedaneum_ (“Surrogat”) for thinking oneself,” at once shows
what he means, and invites the reply, “Yes: but a man who knows how to
read always makes his reading the seed of his thought.”
Footnote 1028:
§ 287. _Art. of Lit._, p. 11.
Footnote 1029:
§ 244. _Art. of Lit._ composes its section “on Criticism” of part of
this context and another. The whole of the original chapter xx., “Über
Urtheil, Kritik, Beifall und Ruhren,” is important, though the
writer’s own soreness betrays itself, as usual, rather too much.
Footnote 1030:
For the origin of the section thus headed in _Art. of Lit._, see back
to chap. iii. of this part of _P. und P._
Footnote 1031:
Book III. and App.
Footnote 1032:
§ 39.
Footnote 1033:
App. on Poetry.
Footnote 1034:
§ 51.
Footnote 1035:
_V. sup._, ii. 86.
Footnote 1036:
One could develop, with special relevance, the philosopher’s
peremptory limitation of the attractive season of womankind to the
time between the ages of eighteen and eight-and-twenty: and his
positive anathema on the _retroussé_ nose. It is astonishing how this
feature disturbs critics! Cf. Lessing, Alison, Carrière, &c.
Footnote 1037:
Ed. Cotta, Works, vols. xv.-xviii. The two vols. of _Letters_ and
_Pocketbooks_, with which this edition has been reinforced since I
wrote the text, add very much to our knowledge of Grillparzer’s
personality, and something to that of his critical position: but need
change nothing in the estimate above given.
Footnote 1038:
Vol. xv.
Footnote 1039:
xv. 24. The “peace” of Boccaccio and the “peace” of Dante combined!
Footnote 1040:
Ibid.
Footnote 1041:
xv. 27.
Footnote 1042:
xv. 35-45.
Footnote 1043:
P. 40.
Footnote 1044:
P. 49.
Footnote 1045:
P. 58.
Footnote 1046:
P. 62, and elsewhere.
Footnote 1047:
xv. 163. “Die Betrachtung tödtet, weil sie die Personlichkeit aufhebt:
die Bemerkung erfrischt, denn sie erregt und unterstützt die
Thätigkeit.” “Consideration” and “Observation” come nearest: but they
are not fully adequate.
Footnote 1048:
P. 176.
Footnote 1049:
Filling the other three vols.
Footnote 1050:
xvi. 158.
Footnote 1051:
xviii. 97, 98. There is, not a judgment, but a curious mixture of
compliment and fling on him, at p. 130, on which _v. inf._
Footnote 1052:
xvi. 175.
Footnote 1053:
xvi. 185.
Footnote 1054:
xviii. 41.
Footnote 1055:
xviii. 47-74.
Footnote 1056:
xviii. 36. Grillparzer evidently did not care much for “woodnotes.”
Footnote 1057:
See xviii. 12-24, and other places in the index of that volume.
Footnote 1058:
See Scherer’s _History of German Literature_ under this name.
Grillparzer himself, at Schreyvogel’s death, regrets (xviii. 130) the
loss of his literary opinion, and says that there is no one left in
Germany with whom he could talk in the same way “except perhaps Heine,
if he were not intrinsically a scurvy _patronus_.”
Footnote 1059:
Mr Bosanquet.
Footnote 1060:
2 vols., Leipzig, 1859. Its constant and ingenious _illustration_, and
the substantive importance given to Poetic, are its claims to
admission here.
Footnote 1061:
Of course they have their merits, and have had their uses. In material
criticism often; in textual criticism sometimes; in merely _dramatic_
criticism not seldom, they are useful to those who want these things.
But then, as Mr Locker’s immortal friend at the “Travellers” said
about the company next door, “One _doesn’t_ want them, you know,” or,
rather, one wants something else and something more.
Footnote 1062:
I use the Leipsic ed., 5 vols., 1871-74.
Footnote 1063:
v. 37.
Footnote 1064:
_Shakespeare-studien_: Stuttgart, 1866. One of M. Scherer’s best short
criticisms is devoted to this book (_Études_, vol. vi., translated by
the present writer in _Essays on English Literature_, by E. Scherer:
London, 1891). But the original deserves reading. It is not much
against it that the author relied on forgeries to some extent. The
religion of “the document” almost necessarily passes into the
superstition of the forgery.
Footnote 1065:
Vol. xiv. of his _Works_ (Leipzig, 1887). The Preface is dated 1863.
Footnote 1066:
7 vols., Berlin, 1874-85. There is a newer edition, I believe. As long
ago as 1868 he had published, in French and at Paris, a volume of
_Études Historiques et Littéraires_, and he did much else.
Footnote 1067:
His Works are now obtainable in several forms, there being two
_complete_ editions (Leipzig, n. d.), which give all the work
published during his lifetime, in 8 vols., and a still lengthening
tail of _Remains_ (7 vols. up to 1904), and several others of separate
works. Writing on him has been exceedingly copious, “he has become a
name”: but there is probably no sounder and fairer contribution to the
_Um-Nietzschung_ of Nietzsche, from a portent into an intelligible
phenomenon, than Professor Pringle-Pattison’s Essay in the 2nd ed. of
_Man’s Place in the Cosmos_ (Edinburgh, 1902).
Footnote 1068:
_Der Fall Wagner_, p. 36 and elsewhere.
Footnote 1069:
I was pleased, in reading Nietzsche, after I had written the section
above on Grillparzer, and when I had already assigned Hillebrand’s
place here, to find him frequently quoting the Austrian dramatist with
respect, and definitely selecting the other as the representative
German critic of his time.
Footnote 1070:
_V. inf._ The two books which preceded this, _Menschliches
Allzumenschliches_ and _Morgenröthe_, are also almost purely ethical,
though the extensive handling of moral philosophers in the past is
necessarily literary too.
Footnote 1071:
It would be improper to dwell on this point here. I hope to do more
justice to Nietzsche’s purely literary side elsewhere.
Footnote 1072:
This word has been objected to by precisians. But it has the authority
of Thackeray: and if it had none, it is exactly the word wanted for a
certain flagrant quality of the latest nineteenth century, and more
especially for the _ethos_ of Nietzsche. With all his originality in
form, he is simply parasitic in fact. He can only deny and pervert and
“topsyturvify” the established and accepted. The _Uebermensch_ himself
is much more an “_Un_mensch,” who is not to be God but an un-God. And
the philosopher’s famous syllogism, “There cannot be a God, or why am
_I_ not one if there is?” amounts simply to a turning topsyturvy of
the much sounder and in fact unanswerable argument, “There must be a
God; for _I_ am not one.”
Footnote 1073:
Even later his alleged doctrine of “Recurrence”—not his most repugnant
to poetry, or philosophy, or religion itself—was only an echo of the
carpenter in _Peter Simple_!
Footnote 1074:
_Beleidigende Klarheit._
Footnote 1075:
_Ein Geist der entnervt._
Footnote 1076:
He somewhere speaks of Stendhal and Dostoieffsky as his “two great
discoveries.” A curious fling by implication at Baudelaire means, I
think, only that Baudelaire had the impudence to admire Wagner.
Footnote 1077:
_Falschmünzler._
Footnote 1078:
16th ed., pp. x, 756 (Città di Castello, 1902).
Footnote 1079:
One famous person may be noted exceptionally. A critic who held
political and other views contrary to Mazzini’s, and who thought (as
too many critics have apparently thought) that it is lawful to wreak
vengeance in the literary sphere for sins committed elsewhere, would
have a considerable opportunity with Mazzini himself, as a critic. He
has written not a little apparently of the kind, and about very
important persons—Dante, Goethe, Byron, Mr Carlyle, papers on all of
whom will be found in Mr William Clarke’s useful English edition of
Mazzini’s selected Essays (London, n.d.) He has said things for which,
if one were a Veuillot, one could, in Veuillot’s own phrase, “promise
him sensations.” But this is not _our_ way. One soon sees (in fact, I
think, he frankly confesses it in more than one place) that the writer
is not thinking of these great writers as writers at all, nor of their
books as books. He is thinking of their relation, actual or by
ingenuity representable, towards his idol of “Collective Humanity,”
and he is talking, as he is thinking, of nothing else. We have nothing
here to do with Collective Humanity, but much with the Humanities,
which are different: and so he escapes our jurisdiction. Perhaps a
good many more modern Italians would do the same, that influence of
Vico, which we noted in Signor Croce, being very strong in them.
Footnote 1080:
_Saggi Critici_, _v. inf._
Footnote 1081:
Naples (2nd ed.), 1869.
Footnote 1082:
Naples, 1872.
Footnote 1083:
Sismondi—French-writing, Swiss-born, Italian by origin—may seem to
claim admission, if only for his _Littérature du Midi_: but I think
not.
Footnote 1084:
3 vols., Bâle, 1829-30.
Footnote 1085:
2 vols., Paris, 1851.
Footnote 1086:
2nd ed., 3 vols., Paris, 1857.
Footnote 1087:
A very large part (about two-thirds) of the 1st volume is occupied by
Chateaubriand.
Footnote 1088:
Lamartine (with whom Vinet is, of course, more _comfortable_) and Hugo
have about three-fourths of the 2nd vol. between them. In this and the
3rd, Béranger, Delavigne, Sainte-Beuve, Quinet, Michelet, and many
others, figure.
Footnote 1089:
ii. 387-412.
Footnote 1090:
It is fair to say that much of his work, being posthumously published,
_is_ lecture, and might, if he had lived, have been worked up by him
into a better form.
Footnote 1091:
In the article on Saint-Marc Girardin, which concludes the third
volume.
Footnote 1092:
8th ed., 2 vols., Geneva, 1901.
Footnote 1093:
Nor can I recognise his description of Amiel’s treatment of a literary
subject at p. xix of the Introduction—“Il l’embrasse, mais au dehors.”
Alas! the Lucretian _nequicquam_ comes in here again: but I should say
that few men’s critical embraces were more intimate than Amiel’s,
brief as they are.
Footnote 1094:
i. 12.
Footnote 1095:
i. 17.
Footnote 1096:
i. 69.
Footnote 1097:
i. 129.
Footnote 1098:
The _entrefilet_ of the 7th of November 1862 on _la critique
indifférente_, though it quite certainly is not meant wholly or even
mainly for literary criticism, should not be missed.
Footnote 1099:
i. 167, April 24, 1862; and i. 176-183, January 8 and 13, April 8,
1863.
Footnote 1100:
i. 194; ii. 219.
Footnote 1101:
i. 229.
Footnote 1102:
ii. 110.
Footnote 1103:
On German “vulgarity,” p. 112 (with which an acute passage on Goethe
at p. 120 should be compared); on the two poetesses, Louisa Siefert
and Mme. Ackermann (141 and 174); a valiant promulgation of the truth
that most fear to speak, “There is no Progress” (167); notes on M.
Coppée (200); Hugo again (228); La Fontaine (232); Laprade (280);
Stendhal (286).
Footnote 1104:
It does not seem necessary to follow the lines of the earlier
Interchapters by summarising distributively the critical results of
the period in different countries and phases. The very indefiniteness
of the whole establishes a community which can be generally pointed
out.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I.
THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY.
THE HOLDERS—EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MINORS—LOWTH— HURDIS—THE RALLY:
COPLESTON—CONYBEARE— MILMAN—KEBLE—THE ‘OCCASIONAL [ENGLISH] PAPERS’—
THE ‘PRÆLECTIONS’—GARBETT—CLAUGHTON— DOYLE—SHAIRP—PALGRAVE—
“SALUTANTUR VIVI.”
(_I have thought this sketch worth giving, partly as an example of the
kind of excursus which might be appended, perhaps not without some
advantage, and certainly in some numbers, to this History. But I give it
also because it illustrates—in a manner which cannot be elsewhere
paralleled at all in our own country, and to which I know no Continental
parallel—by a continuous and unbroken chain of instances and
applications, the course of European as well as English theory,
practice, and taste in Criticism, from a period when the Neo-classic
creed was still in at least apparently fullest flourishing, through
nearly two whole centuries, to what, in the eye of history, is the
present moment. The enforced vacation of the Chair after a single decade
at most, and its filling by popular election, and not by the choice of
an individual or a board, add to its representative character: and the
usual publication of at least some of the results, in each case, makes
that character almost uniquely discoverable in its continuity, while
even the change of vehicles from Latin to English is not without its
importance. There is no room here—and it would perhaps be unnecessary in
any case—to anticipate the easy labour of summarising its lessons. But I
think they may be said to emphasise the warning—frequently given or
hinted already—that the result of the altered conditions and laws of
criticism is not clear gain. No part of Mr Arnold’s best critical work
was, I think, done for the Chair; and I should myself be inclined to
select, as the best work actually done for it, that of Keble, who
represents the combination of the old Classical-Preceptist tradition,
with something of the new comparison and free expatiation, as well as
very much of the purely appreciative tendency._)
[Sidenote: _The holders._]
This Chair—founded by Henry Birkhead, D.C.L., a Trinity man, a Fellow of
All Souls, and a member of the Inner Temple—began its operations in
1708, the conditions of its tenure (which have only recently been
altered) providing for a first holding of five years, a single renewal
for the same period, and a sort of rotation, in the sense that the same
college could not supply two successive occupants. The actual incumbents
have been: 1708-18, Trapp; 1718-28, Thomas Warton the elder; 1728-38,
Spence; 1738-41, John Whitf(i)eld; 1741-51 (the most distinguished name
as yet), Lowth; 1751-56, William Hawkins; 1756-66, Thomas Warton the
younger; 1766-76, Benjamin Wheeler; 1776-83, Randolph; 1783-93, Holmes;
1793 to 1802, Hurdis. With the nineteenth century a brighter order
begins, all but one or two of the Professors having made their mark out
of the Chair as well as in it. They were: Copleston, 1802-12; Conybeare,
1812-21; Milman, 1821-31; Keble, 1831-42; Garbett (the dark star of this
group, but, as we shall see, not quite lightless), 1842-52; Claughton,
1852-57; Matthew Arnold, 1857-67; Sir Francis Doyle, 1867-77; Principal
Shairp, 1877-87; Mr Palgrave, 1887-95; while of living occupants Mr
Courthope resigned the Chair after a single tenure; and Mr Bradley was
elected to it under a statutory limitation to this term.
[Sidenote: _Eighteenth century minors._]
Of these, Trapp, Spence, the younger Warton, and Arnold have received
notice in the text, which would have been theirs had they never held the
Chair. The lucubrations of the first held for some time an honourable
place as an accepted handbook on the subject. Spence, profiting by the
almost Elysian tolerance of his sensible century, and finding that
neither residence nor lecturing was insisted on, seems to have resided
very little, and to have lectured hardly or not at all. Tom Warton the
younger, whose _History_ would have dignified any _cathedra_, appears to
have devoted himself during his actual tenure entirely to the classics,
and never to have published any of his lectures except one on
Theocritus. His father, in the interval between the respectable labours
of Trapp and the philosophical silence of Spence, had earned no golden
opinions, and though the repeated attacks of Amherst in _Terræ Filius_
may have been due partly to political rancour, and partly to that
ingenious and unlucky person’s incorrigible Ishmaelitism, it seems to
have been admitted that the Professor’s understanding and erudition lay
very open to criticism, and that his elocution and manner were not such
as could shield them. Of Whitfield, Hawkins, Wheeler, Randolph, and
Holmes, what I have been able to gather may best be set in a note.[1105]
The first person to make any real figure in and for the Chair was the
author of _De Sacra Poesi Hebræorum_, which at once attained not merely
an English but a European reputation.
[Sidenote: _Lowth._]
To discuss the Hebrew scholarship of this famous book (which was first
published in 1753, and repeatedly reprinted, revised, translated,
attacked, defended) would be wholly out of place here, even if the
writer had not almost wholly forgotten the little Hebrew he learnt at
school. It is still, I believe—even by specialists with no general
knowledge of literature—admitted to have been epoch-making in its
insistence on the parallelism of Hebrew poetry. But to those who take
the historical view of literature and of criticism its place is secure
quite apart from this. Not merely in the Renaissance, but in the Middle
and even the Dark Ages, the matter of the Bible had been used to
parallel and illustrate rhetorical and literary doctrines and rules. But
Lowth was almost the first to treat its poetical forms from something
like the standpoint of sound comparative literary criticism.[1106] Now
this, as the whole tenor of our book has gone to contend, was the chief
and principal thing that had to be done. If we have any advantage over
the men of old, it is that we (or some of us) have at last mastered the
fact that one literature or one language cannot _prescribe_ anything to
another, but that it may _teach_ much. And this new instance of a
literature—unique in special claims to reverence, unique likewise in the
fact that in its best examples it could owe nothing to those Greeks and
Romans who have so beneficently but so tyrannously influenced all the
modern tongues—was invaluable in its quality and almost incalculable in
its moment. That Lowth’s exposition resulted directly or indirectly in
not a little maladroit _imitation_ of Hebrew poetry was not his fault;
his critical lesson was wholly good.
[Sidenote: _Hurdis._]
Hurdis, a person now very much forgotten, had his day of interest and of
something like position. He is not unfrequently quoted by writers,
especially by Southey, of the great period of 1800-1830, which he a
little preceded, and he has the honour—rare for so recent a writer—of a
whole article[1107] on his poems in the _Retrospective Review_. As a
poet he was mainly an imitator of his friend Cowper—a fact which, with
the title of his chief work, _The Village Curate_, will give intending
or declining readers a sufficiently exact idea of what they are
undertaking or relinquishing. Easy blank verse, abundant and often not
infelicitous description, and unexceptionable though slightly copybook
sentiments,[1108] form his poetic or versifying staple. As a critic I
regret to find that my note on him is “Chatter”: and I do not know
anything of his that makes me, on reflection, think this unjust.
[Sidenote: _The rally: Copleston._]
I should be half afraid that the interest which I feel in the next set
of Prælections, those of Edward Copleston,—“_the_ Provost,” as he
anticipated Hawkins in being to Oxford men, even not of his own college
of Oriel,—might be set down to that _boulimia_ or morbid appetite for
critical writings of which I have been accused, if I had not at hand a
very potent compurgator. Keble, it is true, was a personal friend of
Copleston’s. But he was not at all the man to let personal friendship,
any more than personal enmity, bias his judgment; and he was admirably
qualified to judge. Yet he says deliberately[1109] that the book “is by
far the most distinct, and the richest in matter, of any which it has
fallen to our lot to read on the subject.” I cannot myself go quite so
far as that, and I doubt whether Keble himself would have gone so far
when, twenty years later, he wrote his own exquisite Lectures; but I can
go a long way towards it.
The future Provost and Bishop has, indeed, other critical proofs on
which to rely,[1110]—the famous and excellent “Advice to a Young
Reviewer,” which I fear is just as much needed, and just as little
heeded, as it was a hundred years ago, the admirable smashing of the
_Edinburgh’s_ attack on Oxford, and other matters,—but the
_Prælections_[1111] are the chief and principal thing. Keble insisted
that they ought to be Englished, but I am not so sure. They form one of
the _severest_ critical treatises with which I am acquainted; and some
of the features of this severity would, I think, appear positively
uninviting in English dress, while they consistently and perfectly suit
the toga and the sandal. But I must explain a little more fully in what
this “severity” consists; for the word is ambiguous. I do not mean that
Copleston rejects Pleasure as the end of Poetry; for, on the contrary,
he writes _Delectare_ boldly on his shield, and omits _prodesse_ save as
an indirect consequence. I do not mean that he is a very Draconic critic
of particulars, though he can speak his mind trenchantly enough.[1112]
Nor do I mean that he is a very abstract writer; for every page is
strewn with concrete illustrations, very well selected, and, for the
most part, un-hackneyed.
His severity is rather of the ascetic and “methodist” kind; he
resembles nothing so much as a preceptist of the school of
Hermogenes, who should have discarded triviality, and risen to very
nearly the weight and substance of Aristotle. At the very beginning
he makes a statute for himself, to cite no literature but Greek and
Latin, and to use no language but these. And he never breaks either
rule; for though, on rare occasions, he refers to English writers—
Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Burke, Reynolds[1113]—it is a reference
only to books, or poems, or passages, never a citation. And in the
second place his method is throughout—constant as is his use of the
actual poetic object-lesson—to proceed by general categories, not of
poetic kinds (he shuns that ancient and now well-beaconed
quicksand[1114]) but of qualities, constituents, means. His whole
book, after a brief definition or apology for not defining, is
distributed under four parts,—Of Imitation, Of the Emotions, Of
Imagination (Phantasia), and Of Judgment,—though he never reached
the fourth,[1115] owing to his tenure of the Chair coming to an end.
After a pretty full discussion of the nature and subject of
Imitation, he makes his link with his next subject by dwelling on
the _Imitatio morum_, and so of the Passions themselves. In this
part a very large share is given to the subject of _Sententiæ_—
“sentiments,” as Keble translates it, though, as I have pointed out
formerly,[1116] no single translation of the word is at all
satisfactory. The section on Imagination is very interesting.
Copleston is at a sort of middle stage between the restricted
Addisonian and the wide Philostratean-Shakespearean-Coleridgean
interpretation of the word. He expressly admits that other senses
besides sight can supply the material of _Phantasia_; but his
examples are mainly drawn from material which _is_ furnished by the
sight, and his inclusions of Allegory, Mythology, &c., with other
things, sometimes smack of an insufficient discrimination between
Imagination and Fancy. Indeed the fact that he is Præ-Coleridgean
helps to give him his interest.
Keble mildly complains that Copleston does not make use of that doctrine
of Association which he himself, writing so early, had perhaps adopted,
not from Coleridge but direct from Hartley. We have, in our day, seen
this doctrine worked to death and sent to the knacker’s in philosophy
generally; but there is no doubt that it can never be neglected in
poetry, being, perhaps, the most universal (though by no means _the_
universal) means of approach to the sources of the poetic pleasure. It
does not, however, seem to me that Copleston intended to mount so high,
or go so far back: his aim was, I think, more rhetorical, according to a
special fashion, than metacritical. But his mediate axioms are numerous
and often very informing: and his illustrations, as has been said,
abundant, really illustrative, and singularly recreative. He lays most
Latin and many Greek poets under contribution; but some of his most
effective examples are drawn from a poet whom he does not critically
overvalue, but who has no doubt been, as a rule, critically undervalued,
and for whom he himself evidently had a discriminating affection—that is
to say, Claudian.
On the whole, the appearance of a book of this scope and scheme, at the
very junction of the centuries and the ’isms, Classic and Romantic, is
of singular interest. Until intelligent study of the Higher Rhetoric—
reformed, adjusted, and extended—has been reintroduced, such another
will not come. But such another might come with very great advantage,
and would supply a very important _tertium quid_ to the mere Æsthetics
and to the sheer Impressionism between which Criticism has too often
divided itself.
[Sidenote: _Conybeare._]
There is almost as much significance in Copleston’s successor, though it
is a significance of a different kind. For J. J. Conybeare was the first
Professor of Poetry to bestow attention on Anglo-Saxon (Warton, even in
his _History_, had not gone, with any knowledge, beyond Middle English),
and so to complete the survey of all English Literature. Before his
appointment he had held, as its first occupant, the chair of Anglo-Saxon
itself; and while Professor of Poetry he was a country parson. He died
suddenly and comparatively young, and his remarkable _Illustrations of
Anglo-Saxon Poetry_[1117] were published after his death by his brother,
who is actually responsible for a good part of its matter, so that the
book is a composite one. It is thus mainly in its general significance—
for Conybeare’s Prælections as Professor were not, so far as I know,
published—that it is valuable for us. But the value thus given is
unmistakable. Conybeare’s individual judgments and _aperçus_ are always
interesting, and often acute; but his real importance lies in the fact
that he was almost the first—though Mitford, after Ellis, had attempted
the thing as an outsider—to move back the focussing-point sufficiently
to get _all_ English Literature under view. Nothing could serve more
effectually to break up the false standing-ground of the eighteenth
century.
[Sidenote: _Milman._]
A curious but perhaps not surprising thing about Milman’s Professorship
is that it aroused the ire of an undergraduate poet of the rarest though
of the most eccentric type—namely, Beddoes. If Milman really did
“denounce” _Death’s Jest-Book_,[1118] it is a pity that his lectures
were (so far as I know) never printed, or at least collected, for there
might have been more such things of the fatally interesting kind which
establishes the rule that Professors should not deal, in their lectures,
with contemporary literature. It was certainly unlucky for a man to
begin by objecting in one official capacity to _Death’s Jest-Book_, and
to end by objecting in another to Stevens’s Wellington Monument. And
that Milman had generally the character of a harsh and donnish critic is
obvious, from Byron’s well-known suggestion of him as a possible
candidate for the authorship of the _Quarterly_ article on Keats, though
the rhyme of “kill man” may have had something to do with this. If he
wrote much literary criticism we have little of it in the volume of
_Essays_ which his son published, after his death, in 1870. Even on
Erasmus—surely a tempting subject—he manages to be as little literary as
is possible, and rather less than one might have thought to be; and his
much better-known _Histories_ are not more so.
[Sidenote: _Keble._]