must not expect always to agree with Peacock, who not only did not
always agree with himself, but was also a man of almost ludicrously
strong prejudices. He hated paper money; whereas the only feeling that
most of us have on that subject is that we have not always as much of it
as we should like. He hated Scotchmen, and there are many of his readers
who without any claim to Scotch blood, but knowing the place and the
people, will say,
That better wine and better men
We shall not meet in May,
or for the matter of that in any other month. Partly because he hated
Scotchmen, and partly because in his earlier days Sir Walter was a
pillar of Toryism, he hated Scott, and has been guilty not merely of an
absurd and no doubt partly humorous comparison of the Waverley novels to
pantomimes, but of more definite criticisms which will bear the test of
examination as badly. His strictures on a famous verse of "The Dream of
Fair Women" are indefensible, though there is perhaps more to be said
for the accompanying gibe at Sir John Millais's endeavour to carry out
the description of Cleopatra in black (chiefly black) and white. The
reader of Peacock must never mind his author trampling on his, the
reader's, favourite corns; or rather he must lay his account with the
agreeable certainty that Peacock will shortly afterwards trample on
other corns which are not at all his favourites. For my part I am quite
willing to accept these conditions. And I do not find that my admiration
for Coleridge, and my sympathy with those who opposed the first Reform
Bill, and my inclination to dispute the fact that Oxford is only a place
of "unread books," make me like Peacock one whit the less. It is the law
of the game, and those who play the game must put up with its laws. And
it must be remembered that, at any rate in his later and best books,
Peacock never wholly "took a side." He has always provided some
personage or other who reduces all the whimsies and prejudices of his
characters, even including his own, under a kind of dry light. Such is
Lady Clarinda, who regards all the crotcheteers of Crotchet Castle with
the same benevolent amusement; such Mr. McBorrowdale, who, when he is
requested to settle the question of the superiority or inferiority of
Greek harmony and perspective to modern, replies, "I think ye may just
buz that bottle before you." (Alas! to think that if a man used the word
"buz" nowadays some wiseacre would accuse him of vulgarity or of false
English.) The general criticism in his work is always sane and vigorous,
even though there may be flaws in the particular censures; and it is
very seldom that even in his utterances of most flagrant prejudice
anything really illiberal can be found. He had read much too widely and
with too much discrimination for that. His reading had been corrected by
too much of the cheerful give-and-take of social discussion, his dry
light was softened and coloured by too frequent rainbows, the Apollonian
rays being reflected on Bacchic dew. Anything that might otherwise seem
hard and harsh in Peacock's perpetual ridicule is softened and mellowed
by this pervading good fellowship which, as it is never pushed to the
somewhat extravagant limits of the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_, so it
distinguishes Peacock himself from the authors to whom in pure style he
is most akin, and to whom Lord Houghton has already compared him--the
French tale-tellers from Anthony Hamilton to Voltaire. In these, perfect
as their form often is, there is constantly a slight want of geniality,
a perpetual clatter and glitter of intellectual rapier and dagger which
sometimes becomes rather irritating and teasing to ear and eye. Even the
objects of Peacock's severest sarcasm, his Galls and Vamps and
Eavesdrops, are allowed to join in the choruses and the bumpers of his
easy-going symposia. The sole nexus is not cash payment but something
much more agreeable, and it is allowed that even Mr. Mystic had "some
super-excellent madeira." Yet how far the wine is from getting above the
wit in these merry books is not likely to escape even the most
unsympathetic reader. The mark may be selected recklessly or unjustly,
but the arrows always fly straight to it.
Peacock, in short, has eminently that quality of literature which may be
called recreation. It may be that he is not extraordinarily instructive,
though there is a good deal of quaint and not despicable erudition
wrapped up in his apparently careless pages. It may be that he does not
prove much; that he has, in fact, very little concern to prove anything.
But in one of the only two modes of refreshment and distraction possible
in literature, he is a very great master. The first of these modes is
that of creation--that in which the writer spirits his readers away into
some scene and manner of life quite different from that with which they
are ordinarily conversant. With this Peacock, even in his professed
poetical work, has not very much to do; and in his novels, even in _Maid
Marian_, he hardly attempts it. The other is the mode of satirical
presentment of well-known and familiar things, and this is all his own.
Even his remotest subjects are near enough to be in a manner familiar,
and _Gryll Grange_, with a few insignificant changes of names and
current follies, might have been written yesterday. He is, therefore,
not likely for a long time to lose the freshness and point which, at any
rate for the ordinary reader, are required in satirical handlings of
ordinary life; while his purely literary merits, especially his grasp
of the perennial follies and characters of humanity, of the _ludicrum
humani generis_ which never varies much in substance under its
ever-varying dress, are such as to assure him life even after the
immediate peculiarities which he satirised have ceased to be anything
but history.
IX
WILSON
Among those judgments of his contemporaries which make a sort of Inferno
of the posthumous writings of Thomas Carlyle, that passed upon
"Christopher North" has always seemed to me the most interesting, and
perhaps on the whole the fairest. There is enough and to spare of
onesidedness in it, and of the harshness which comes from onesidedness.
But it is hardly at all sour, and, when allowance is made for the point
of view, by no means unjust. The whole is interesting from the literary
side, but as it fills two large pages it is much too long to quote. The
personal description, "the broad-shouldered stately bulk of the man
struck me: his flashing eye, copious dishevelled head of hair, and rapid
unconcerned progress like that of a plough through stubble," is
characteristically graphic, and far the best of the numerous pen
sketches of "the Professor." As for the criticism, the following is the
kernel passage of it:--
Wilson had much nobleness of heart and many traits of noble
genius, but the central tie-beam seemed wanting always; very
long ago I perceived in him the most irreconcilable
contradictions: Toryism with sansculottism; Methodism of a sort
with total incredulity; a noble loyal and religious nature not
strong enough to vanquish the perverse element it is born into.
Hence a being all split into precipitous chasms and the wildest
volcanic tumults; rocks over-grown indeed with tropical
luxuriance of leaf and flower but knit together at the
bottom--that was my old figure of speech--only by an ocean of
whisky punch. On these terms nothing can be done. Wilson seems
to me always by far the most _gifted_ of our literary men either
then or still. And yet intrinsically he has written nothing that
can endure. The central gift was wanting.
Something in the unfavourable part of this must no doubt be set down to
the critic's usual forgetfulness of his own admirable dictum, "he is not
thou, but himself; other than thou." John was quite other than Thomas,
and Thomas judged him somewhat summarily as if he were a failure of a
Thomas. Yet the criticism, if partly harsh and as a whole somewhat
incomplete, is true enough. Wilson has written "intrinsically nothing
that can endure," if it be judged by any severe test. An English
Diderot, he must bear a harder version of the judgment on Diderot, that
he had written good pages but no good book. Only very rarely has he even
written good pages, in the sense of pages good throughout. The almost
inconceivable haste with which he wrote (he is credited with having on
one occasion actually written fifty-six pages of print for _Blackwood_
in two days, and in the years of its double numbers he often
contributed from a hundred to a hundred and fifty pages in a single
month)--this prodigious haste would not of itself account for the
puerilities, the touches of bad taste, the false pathos, the tedious
burlesque, the more tedious jactation which disfigure his work. A man
writing against time may be driven to dulness, or commonplace, or
inelegance of style; but he need never commit any of the faults just
noticed. They were due beyond doubt, in Wilson's case, to a natural
idiosyncrasy, the great characteristic of which Carlyle has happily hit
off in the phrase, "want of a tie-beam," whether he has or has not been
charitable in suggesting that the missing link was supplied by whisky
punch. The least attractive point about Wilson's work is undoubtedly
what his censor elsewhere describes as his habit of "giving a kick" to
many men and things. There is no more unpleasant feature of the _Noctes_
than the apparent inability of the writer to refrain from sly "kicks"
even at the objects of his greatest veneration. A kind of mania of
detraction seizes him at times, a mania which some of his admirers have
more kindly than wisely endeavoured to shuffle off as a humorous
dramatic touch intentionally administered to him by his Eidolon North.
The most disgraceful, perhaps the only really disgraceful, instance of
this is the carping and offensive criticism of Scott's _Demonology_,
written and published at a time when Sir Walter's known state of health
and fortunes might have protected him even from an enemy, much more from
a friend, and a deeply obliged friend such as Wilson. Nor is this the
only fling at Scott. Wordsworth, much more vulnerable, is also much more
frequently assailed; and even Shakespeare does not come off scot-free
when Wilson is in his ugly moods.
It need hardly be said that I have no intention of saying that Scott or
Wordsworth or Shakespeare may not be criticised. It is the way in which
the criticism is done which is the crime; and for these acts of literary
high treason, or at least leasing-making, as well as for all Wilson's
other faults, nothing seems to me so much responsible as the want of
bottom which Carlyle notes. I do not think that Wilson had any solid
fund of principles, putting morals and religion aside, either in
politics or in literature. He liked and he hated much and strongly, and
being a healthy creature he on the whole liked the right things and
hated the wrong ones; but it was for the most part a merely instinctive
liking and hatred, quite un-coördinated, and by no means unlikely to
pass the next moment into hatred or liking as the case might be.
These are grave faults. But for the purpose of providing that pleasure
which is to be got from literature (and this, like one or two other
chapters here, is partly an effort in literary hedonism) Wilson stands
very high, indeed so high that he can be ranked only below the highest.
He who will enjoy him must be an intelligent voluptuary, and especially
well versed in the art of skipping. When Wilson begins to talk fine,
when he begins to wax pathetic, and when he gets into many others of his
numerous altitudes, it will behove the reader, according to his own
tastes, to skip with discretion and vigour. If he cannot do this, if his
eye is not wary enough, or if his conscience forbids him to obey his
eyes' warnings, Wilson is not for him. It is true that Mr. Skelton has
tried to make a "Comedy of the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_," in which the
skipping is done ready to hand. But, with all the respect due to the
author of _Thalatta_, the process is not, at least speaking according to
my judgment, successful. No one can really taste that eccentric book
unless he reads it as a whole; its humours arbitrarily separated and
cut-and-dried are nearly unintelligible. Indeed Professor Ferrier's
original attempt to give Wilson's work only, and not all of that work
when it happened to be mixed with others, seems to me to have been a
mistake. But of that further, when we come to speak of the _Noctes_
themselves.
Wilson's life, for more than two-thirds of it a very happy one and not
devoid of a certain eventfulness, can be summarised pretty briefly,
especially as a full account of it is available in the very delightful
work of his daughter Mrs. Gordon. Born in 1785, the son of a rich
manufacturer of Paisley and a mother who boasted gentle blood, he was
brought up first in the house of a country minister (whose parish he has
made famous in several sketches), then at the University of Glasgow, and
then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was early left possessor of a
considerable fortune, and his first love, a certain "Margaret," having
proved unkind, he established himself at Elleray on Windermere and
entered into all the Lake society. Before very long (he was twenty-six
at the time) he married Miss Jane Penny, daughter of a Liverpool
merchant, and kept open house at Elleray for some years. Then his
fortune disappeared in the keeping of a dishonest relation, and he had,
in a way, his livelihood to make. I say "in a way," because the wind
appears to have been considerably tempered to this shorn but robust
lamb. He had not even to give up Elleray, though he could not live there
in his old style. He had a mother who was able and willing to entertain
him at Edinburgh, on the sole understanding that he did not "turn Whig,"
of which there was very little danger. He was enabled to keep not too
exhausting or anxious terms as an advocate at the Scottish bar; and
before long he was endowed, against the infinitely superior claims of
Sir William Hamilton, and by sheer force of personal and political
influence, with the lucrative Professorship of Moral Philosophy in the
University of Edinburgh. But even before this he had been exempted from
the necessity of cultivating literature on a little oatmeal by his
connexion with _Blackwood's Magazine_. The story of that magazine has
often been told; never perhaps quite fully, but sufficiently. Wilson was
not at any time, strictly speaking, editor; and a statement under his
own hand avers that he never received any editorial pay, and was
sometimes subject to that criticism which the publisher, as all men know
from a famous letter of Scott's, was sometimes in the habit of
exercising rather indiscreetly. But for a very great number of years,
there is no doubt that he held a kind of quasi-editorial position, which
included the censorship of other men's work and an almost, if not quite,
unlimited right of printing his own. For some time the even more
masterful spirit of Lockhart (against whom by the way Mrs. Gordon seems
to have had a rather unreasonable prejudice) qualified his control over
"Maga." But Lockhart's promotion to the _Quarterly_ removed this
influence, and from 1825 (speaking roughly) to 1835 Wilson was supreme.
The death of William Blackwood and of the Ettrick Shepherd in the
last-named year, and of his own wife in 1837 (the latter a blow from
which he never recovered), strongly affected not his control over the
publication but his desire to control it; and after 1839 his
contributions (save in the years 1845 and 1848) were very few. Ill
health and broken spirits disabled him, and in 1852 he had to resign
his professorship, dying two years later after some months of almost
total prostration. Of the rest of the deeds of Christopher, and of his
pugilism, and of his learning, and of his pedestrian exploits, and of
his fishing, and of his cock-fighting, and of his hearty enjoyment of
life generally, the books of the chronicles of Mrs. Gordon, and still
more the twelve volumes of his works and the unreprinted contributions
to _Blackwood_, shall tell.
It is with those works that our principal business is, and some of them
I shall take the liberty of at once dismissing. His poems are now
matters of interest to very few mortals. It is not that they are bad,
for they are not; but that they are almost wholly without distinction.
He came just late enough to have got the seed of the great romantic
revival; and his verse work is rarely more than the work of a clever man
who has partly learnt and partly divined the manner of Burns, Scott,
Campbell, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, and the rest. Nor, to my fancy,
are his prose tales of much more value. I read them many years ago and
cared little for them. I re-read, or attempted to re-read, them the
other day and cared less. There seems, from the original prospectus of
the edition of his works, to have been an intention of editing the
course of moral philosophy which, with more or fewer variations,
obtained him the agreeable income of a thousand a year or so for thirty
years. But whether (as Mrs. Gordon seems to hint) the notes were in too
dilapidated and chaotic a condition for use, or whether Professor
Ferrier, his son-in-law and editor (himself, with Dean Mansel, the last
of the exact philosophers of Britain), revolted at the idea of printing
anything so merely literary, or what it was, I know not--at any rate
they do not now figure in the list. This leaves us ten volumes of
collected works, to wit, four of the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_, four of
_Essays Critical and Imaginative_, and two of _The Recreations of
Christopher North_, all with a very few exceptions reprinted from
_Blackwood_. Mrs. Gordon filially groans because the reprint was not
more extensive, and without endorsing her own very high opinion of her
father's work, it is possible to agree with her. It is especially
noteworthy that from the essays are excluded three out of the four chief
critical series which Wilson wrote--that on Spenser, praised by a writer
so little given to reckless praise as Hallam, the _Specimens of British
Critics_, and the _Dies Boreales_,--leaving only the series on Homer
with its quasi-Appendix on the Greek dramatists, and the _Noctes_
themselves.