Democratic and aristocratic may not be the best terms to apply to the
two opposing types of critics,--men like Matthew Arnold or the French
critic Ferdinand Brunetière, on the one hand, both the spokesmen of
authority in letters; and men like Sainte-Beuve and Anatole France, and
the younger generation of English and American critics on the other,
men who are more tolerant of individual differences and more inclined
to seek the reason of each work within itself. Yet these terms indicate
fairly well two profoundly different types.
Brunetière is a militant and dogmatic critic, as we saw by his severe
denunciation of Zola while lecturing in this country a few years since.
One of his eulogists speaks of him as the “autocrat of triumphant
convictions.” Of democratic blood in his veins there is very little. He
reflects the old orthodox and aristocratic spirit in his dictum that
nature is not to be trusted; that both in taste and in morals what
comes natural to us and gives us pleasure is, for that very reason, to
be avoided. Nature is depraved. In morals, would we attain to virtue,
we must go counter to her; and in art and literature, would we attain
to wisdom, we must distrust what we like. This suspicion of nature
was the keynote of the old theology, which found its authority in a
miraculous revelation, and it is the keynote of the old Aristotelian
criticism, which found its authority in a body of rules deduced from
the masters. The new theology looks for a scientific basis for its
morals, or seeks for the sanction of nature herself; and democratic
criticism aims to stand upon the same basis, and cleaves to principles
and not to standards, not by yielding to the caprices of uninformed
taste, but by seeking the law and test of every work within itself.
We no longer judge of the worth of a man by his creed, but by what he
is in and of himself; by his natural virtues and aptitudes; and we no
longer condemn a work of art because it breaks with the old traditions.
Arnold was of similar temper with Brunetière. His elements of style
are “dignity and distinction,” a part of the classic tradition, a
survival from the feudal and aristocratic world, from a literature of
courts and courtiers, as distinguished from a literature of the people,
a democratic literature. Distinction of utterance, distinction of
manners, distinction of dress and equipage--they are all of a piece,
and adhere in the aristocratic and monarchical ideal. The special
antipathy of this ideal is the common; all commonness is vulgar. When
Arnold came to this country and became interested in the lives of
Grant and Lincoln, he found them both wanting in distinction,--there
was no savor of the aristocratic in their words or manners. And the
criticism is true. From all accounts, Grant presented a far less
distinguished appearance at Appomattox than did Lee; and Lincoln was
easily outshone in aristocratic graces by some members of his cabinet.
Indeed, the predominant quality of the two men was their immense
commonness. Washington and Jefferson came much nearer the aristocratic
ideal. Lincoln and Grant both had greatness of the first order, but
their type was democratic and not aristocratic. The aristocratic
ideal of excellence embraces other qualities; there is more pride,
more exclusiveness in it; it holds more by traditions and special
privileges. Lincoln had less distinction than Sumner or Chase, Grant
less than Sherman or Lee, but each had an excellence the others had
not. The choice, the refined, the cultured, belong to one class of
excellencies: the qualities of Lincoln and Grant belong to another
and more fundamental kind. Arnold himself had distinction,--he had
urbanity, lucidity, proportion, and many other classic virtues,--but
he had not breadth, sympathy, heartiness, commonness. The quality of
distinction, an air of something choice, high-bred, superfine, will
doubtless count for less and less in a country like ours. In literature
and in character we are looking for other values, for the true, the
vital, the characteristic. There is nothing in life or character more
winsome than commonness wedded to great excellence; the ordinary
crowned with the extraordinary, as in Lincoln the man, Socrates the
philosopher, Burns or Wordsworth the poet. Distinction wins admiration,
commonness wins love. The note of equality, the democratic note, is
much more pronounced in Browning than in Tennyson, in Shelley than in
Arnold, in Wordsworth than in Milton, and it is more pronounced in
American poets than in English. In times and for a people like ours,
the suggestion of something hearty and heroic in letters is more needed
than the suggestion of something fine and exquisite. Distinction is
not to be confounded with dignity or elevation, which flourishes more
or less in all great peoples. A common laboring man may show great
dignity, but never distinction. Dignity often shone in the speeches of
the old Indian chiefs, but not distinction, as the term is here used.
The more points at which a man touches his fellow man, the more
democratic he is. The breadth of his relation to the rest of the
world, that is the test. Sainte-Beuve was more truly a democratic
critic than is Brunetière. The democratic producer in literature will
differ from the aristocratic less in his standards of excellence than
in the atmosphere of human equality and commonness which he effuses.
We are too apt to associate the common with the vulgar. There is the
commonness of a Lincoln or a Grant, and there is the commonness of the
lower strata of society. There is the commonness of earth, air, and
water, and there is the commonness of dust and mud; the commonness
of the basic and the universal, and the commonness of the cheap and
tawdry. Grant’s calmness, self-control, tenacity of purpose, modesty,
comprehensiveness of mind, were uncommon in degree, not in kind. He
was the common soldier with extraordinary powers added, but the common
soldier was always visible. So with Lincoln,--his greatness was
inclusive, not exclusive.