There was none of that Drawcansir work going on then that there is
now; no scalping of authors, no hacking and hewing of their Lives and
Opinions, except that they used those of Tristram Shandy, gent., rather
scurvily; which was to be expected. All, however, had a show of courtesy
and good manners. The satire was covert and artfully insinuated; the
praise was short and sweet. We meet with no oracular theories; no
profound analysis of principles; no unsparing exposure of the least
discernible deviation from them. It was deemed sufficient to recommend
the work in general terms, 'This is an agreeable volume,' or 'This is a
work of great learning and research,' to set forth the title and table
of contents, and proceed without farther preface to some appropriate
extracts, for the most part concurring in opinion with the author's
text, but now and then interposing an objection to maintain appearances
and assert the jurisdiction of the court. This cursory manner of hinting
approbation or dissent would make but a lame figure at present. We must
have not only an announcement that 'This is an agreeable or able work';
but we must have it explained at full length, and so as to silence all
cavillers, in what the agreeableness or ability of the work consists:
the author must be reduced to a class, all the living or defunct
examples of which must be characteristically and pointedly _differenced_
from one another; the value of this class of writing must be developed
and ascertained in comparison with others; the principles of taste, the
elements of our sensations, the structure of the human faculties, all
must undergo a strict scrutiny and revision. The modern or metaphysical
system of criticism, in short, supposes the question, _Why?_ to be
repeated at the end of every decision; and the answer gives birth to
interminable arguments and discussion. The former laconic mode was well
adapted to guide those who merely wanted to be informed of the character
and subject of a work in order to read it: the present is more useful
to those whose object is less to read the work than to dispute upon its
merits, and go into company clad in the whole defensive and offensive
armour of criticism.
Neither are we less removed at present from the dry and meagre mode of
dissecting the skeletons of works, instead of transfusing their living
principles, which prevailed in Dryden's Prefaces,(2) and in the
criticisms written on the model of the French school about a century
ago. A genuine criticism should, as I take it, reflect the colours, the
light and shade, the soul and body of a work: here we have nothing but
its superficial plan and elevation, as if a poem were a piece of formal
architecture. We are told something of the plot or fable, of the moral,
and of the observance or violation of the three unities of time, place,
and action; and perhaps a word or two is added on the dignity of the
persons or the baldness of the style; but we no more know, after reading
one of these complacent _tirades,_ what the essence of the work is, what
passion has been touched, or how skilfully, what tone and movement the
author's mind imparts to his subject or receives from it, than if we had
been reading a homily or a gazette. That is, we are left quite in the
dark as to the feelings of pleasure or pain to be derived from the
genius of the performance or the manner in which it appeals to the
imagination: we know to a nicety how it squares with the threadbare
rules of composition, not in the least how it affects the principles of
taste. We know everything about the work, and nothing of it. The critic
takes good care not to baulk the reader's fancy by anticipating the
effect which the author has aimed at producing. To be sure, the works so
handled were often worthy of their commentators; they had the form of
imagination without the life or power; and when any one had gone
regularly through the number of acts into which they were divided, the
measure in which they were written, or the story on which they were
founded, there was little else to be said about them. It is curious to
observe the effect which the _Paradise Lost_ had on this class of
critics, like throwing a tub to a whale: they could make nothing of it.
'It was out of all plumb--not one of the angles at the four corners was
a right angle!' They did not seek for, nor would they much relish, the
marrow of poetry it contained. Like polemics in religion, they had
discarded the essentials of fine writing for the outward form and points
of controversy. They were at issue with Genius and Nature by what route
and in what garb they should enter the Temple of the Muses. Accordingly
we find that Dryden had no other way of satisfying himself of the
pretensions of Milton in the epic style but by translating his anomalous
work into rhyme and dramatic dialogue.(3) So there are connoisseurs who
give you the subject, the grouping, the perspective, and all the
mechanical circumstances of a picture; but they never say a word about
the expression. The reason is, they see the former, but not the latter.
There are persons, however, who cannot employ themselves better than in
taking an inventory of works of art (they want a faculty for higher
studies), as there are works of art, so called, which seemed to have
been composed expressly with an eye to such a class of connoisseurs. In
them are to be found no recondite nameless beauties thrown away upon the
stupid vulgar gaze; no 'graces snatched beyond the reach of art';
nothing but what the merest pretender may note down in good set terms in
his common-place book, just as it is before him. Place one of these
half-informed, imperfectly organised spectators before a tall canvas
with groups on groups of figures, of the size of life, and engaged in a
complicated action, of which they know the name and all the particulars,
and there are no bounds to their burst of involuntary enthusiasm. They
mount on the stilts of the subject and ascend the highest Heaven of
Invention, from whence they see sights and hear revelations which they
communicate with all the fervour of plenary explanation to those who may
be disposed to attend to their raptures. They float with wings expanded
in lofty circles, they stalk over the canvas at large strides, never
condescending to pause at anything of less magnitude than a group or a
colossal figure. The face forms no part of their collective inquiries;
or so that it occupies only a sixth or an eighth proportion to the whole
body, all is according to the received rules of composition. Point to a
divine portrait of Titian, to an angelic head of Guido, close by--they
see and heed it not. What are the 'looks commercing with the skies,' the
soul speaking in the face, to them? It asks another and an inner sense
to comprehend them; but for the trigonometry of painting, nature has
constituted them indifferently well. They take a stand on the
distinction between portrait and history, and there they are spell-
bound. Tell them that there can be no fine history without portraiture,
that the painter must proceed from that ground to the one above it, and
that a hundred bad heads cannot make one good historical picture, and
they will not believe you, though the thing is obvious to any gross
capacity. Their ideas always fly to the circumference, and never fix at
the centre. Art must be on a grand scale; according to them, the whole
is greater than a part, and the greater necessarily implies the less.
The outline is, in this view of the matter, the same thing as the
filling-up, and 'the limbs and flourishes of a discourse' the substance.
Again, the same persons make an absolute distinction, without knowing
why, between high and low subjects. Say that you would as soon have
Murillo's Two Beggar Boys at the Dulwich Gallery as almost any picture
in the world, that is, that it would be one you would choose out of ten
(had you the choice), and they reiterate upon you that surely a low
subject cannot be of equal value with a high one. It is in vain that you
turn to the picture: they keep to the class. They have eyes, but see
not; and, upon their principles of refined taste, would be just as good
judges of the merit of the picture without seeing it as with that
supposed advantage. They know what the subject is _from the catalogue!_-
-Yet it is not true, as Lord Byron asserts, that execution is
everything, and the class or subject nothing. The highest subjects,
equally well executed (which, however, rarely happens), are the best.
But the power of execution, the manner of seeing nature, is one thing,
and may be so superlative (if you are only able to judge of it) as to
countervail every disadvantage of subject. Raphael's storks in the
Miraculous Draught of Fishes, exulting in the event, are finer than the
head of Christ would have been in almost any other hands. The cant of
criticism is on the other side of the question; because execution
depends on various degrees of power in the artist, and a knowledge of it
on various degrees of feeling and discrimination in you; but to commence
artist or connoisseur in the grand style at once, without any
distinction of qualifications whatever, it is only necessary for the
first to choose his subject and for the last to pin his faith on the
sublimity of the performance, for both to look down with ineffable
contempt on the painters and admirers of subjects of low life. I
remember a young Scotchman once trying to prove to me that Mrs. Dickons
was a superior singer to Miss Stephens, because the former excelled in
sacred music and the latter did not. At that rate, that is, if it is the
singing sacred music that gives the preference, Miss Stephens would only
have to sing sacred music to surpass herself and vie with her pretended
rival; for this theory implies that all sacred music is equally good,
and, therefore, better than any other. I grant that Madame Catalani's
singing of sacred music is superior to Miss Stephens's ballad-strains,
because her singing is better altogether, and an ocean of sound more
wonderful than a simple stream of dulcet harmonies. In singing the last
verse of 'God Save the King' not long ago her voice towered above the
whole confused noise of the orchestra like an eagle piercing the clouds,
and poured 'such sweet thunder' through the ear as excited equal
astonishment and rapture!
Some kinds of criticism are as much too insipid as others are too
pragmatical. It is not easy to combine point with solidity, spirit with
moderation and candour. Many persons see nothing but beauties in a work,
others nothing but defects. Those cloy you with sweets, and are 'the
very milk of human kindness,' flowing on in a stream of luscious
panegyrics; these take delight in poisoning the sources of your
satisfaction, and putting you out of conceit with nearly every author
that comes in their way. The first are frequently actuated by personal
friendship, the last by all the virulence of party spirit. Under the
latter head would fall what may be termed _political criticism._ The
basis of this style of writing is a _caput mortuum_ of impotent spite
and dulness, till it is varnished over with the slime of servility,
and thrown into a state of unnatural activity by the venom of the most
rancorous bigotry. The eminent professors in this grovelling department
are at first merely out of sorts with themselves, and vent their spleen
in little interjections and contortions of phrase--cry _Pish_ at a lucky
hit, and _Hem_ at a fault, are smart on personal defects, and sneer at
'Beauty out of favour and on crutches'--are thrown into an ague-fit by
hearing the name of a rival, start back with horror at any approach
to their morbid pretensions, like Justice Woodcock with his gouty
limbs--rifle the flowers of the Della Cruscan school, and give you
in their stead, as models of a pleasing pastoral style, Verses upon
Anna--which you may see in the notes to the _Baviad_ and _Maeviad._ All
this is like the fable of 'The Kitten and the Leaves.' But when they get
their brass collar on and shake their bells of office, they set up their
backs like the Great Cat Rodilardus, and pounce upon men and things. Woe
to any little heedess reptile of an author that ventures across their
path without a safe-conduct from the Board of Control. They snap him up
at a mouthful, and sit licking their lips, stroking their whiskers, and
rattling their bells over the imaginary fragments of their devoted
prey, to the alarm and astonishment of the whole breed of literary,
philosophical, and revolutionary vermin that were naturalised in this
country by a Prince of Orange and an Elector of Hanover a hundred
years ago.(4) When one of these pampered, sleek, 'demure-looking,
spring-nailed, velvet-pawed, green-eyed' critics makes his King and
Country parties to this sort of sport literary, you have not much chance
of escaping out of his clutches in a whole skin. Treachery becomes a
principle with them, and mischief a conscience, that is, a livelihood.
They not only _damn_ the work in the lump, but vilify and traduce the
author, and substitute lying abuse and sheer malignity for sense and
satire. To have written a popular work is as much as a man's character
is worth, and sometimes his life, if he does not happen to be on
the right side of the question. The way in which they set about
_stultifying_ an adversary is not to accuse you of faults, or to
exaggerate those which you may really have, but they deny that you have
any merits at all, least of all those that the world have given you
credit for; bless themselves from understanding a single sentence in
a whole volume; and unless you are ready to subscribe to all their
articles of peace, will not allow you to be qualified to write your
own name. It is not a question of literary discussion, but of political
proscription. It is a mark of loyalty and patriotism to extend no
quarter to those of the opposite party. Instead of replying to your
arguments, they call you names, put words and opinions into your mouth
which you have never uttered, and consider it a species of misprision
of treason to admit that a Whig author knows anything of common sense
or English. The only chance of putting a stop to this unfair mode of
dealing would perhaps be to make a few reprisals by way of example. The
Court party boast some writers who have a reputation to lose, and who
would not like to have their names dragged through the kennel of
dirty abuse and vulgar obloquy. What silenced the masked battery of
_Blackwood's Magazine_ was the implication of the name of Sir Walter
Scott in some remarks upon it--(an honour of which it seems that
extraordinary person was not ambitious)--to be 'pilloried on infamy's
high stage' was a distinction and an amusement to the other gentlemen
concerned in that praiseworthy publication. I was complaining not long
ago of this prostitution of literary criticism as peculiar to our own
times, when I was told that it was just as bad in the time of Pope and
Dryden, and indeed worse, inasmuch as we have no Popes or Drydens now on
the obnoxious side to be nicknamed, metamorphosed into scarecrows, and
impaled alive by bigots and dunces. I shall not pretend to say how far
this remark may be true. The English (it must be owned) are rather a
foul-mouthed nation.
Besides temporary or accidental biases of this kind, there seem to be
sects and parties in taste and criticism (with a set of appropriate
watchwords) coeval with the arts of composition, and that will last
as long as the difference with which men's minds are originally
constituted. There are some who are all for the elegance of an author's
style, and some who are equally delighted with simplicity. The last
refer you to Swift as a model of English prose, thinking all other
writers sophisticated and naught; the former prefer the more ornamented
and sparkling periods of Junius or Gibbon. It is to no purpose to think
of bringing about an understanding between these opposite factions. It
is a natural difference of temperament and constitution of mind. The one
will never relish the antithetical point and perpetual glitter of the
artificial prose style; as the plain, unperverted English idiom will
always appear trite and insipid to the others. A toleration, not an
uniformity of opinion, is as much as can be expected in this case;
and both sides may acknowledge, without imputation on their taste or
consistency, that these different writers excelled each in their way. I
might remark here that the epithet _elegant_ is very sparingly used
in modern criticism. It has probably gone out of fashion with the
appearance of the _Lake School,_ who, I apprehend, have no such phrase
in their vocabulary. Mr. Rogers was, I think, almost the last poet to
whom it was applied as a characteristic compliment. At present it would
be considered as a sort of diminutive of the title of poet, like the
terms _pretty_ or _fanciful_, and is banished from the _haut ton_ of
letters. It may perhaps come into request at some future period. Again,
the dispute between the admirers of Homer and Virgil has never been
settled and never will, for there will always be minds to whom the
excellences of Virgil will be more congenial, and therefore more objects
of admiration and delight than those of Homer, and _vice versa._
Both are right in preferring what suits them best, the delicacy and
selectness of the one, or the fulness and majestic flow of the other.
There is the same difference in their tastes that there was in the
genius of their two favourites. Neither can the disagreement between the
French and English school of tragedy ever be reconciled till the French
become English or the English French.(5) Both are right in what they
admire, both are wrong in condemning the others for what they admire. We
see the defects of Racine, they see the faults of Shakespear probably in
an exaggerated point of view. But we may be sure of this, that when we
see nothing but grossness and barbarism, or insipidity and verbiage, in
a writer that is the god of a nation's idolatry, it is we and not they
who want true taste and feeling. The controversy about Pope and the
opposite school in our own poetry comes to much the same thing. Pope's
correctness, smoothness, etc., are very good things and much to be
commended in him. But it is not to be expected or even desired that
others should have these qualities in the same paramount degree, to the
exclusion of everything else. If you like correctness and smoothness
of all things in the world, there they are for you in Pope. If you like
other things better, such as strength and sublimity, you know where to
go for them. Why trouble Pope or any other author for what they have
not, and do not profess to give? Those who seem to imply that Pope
possessed, besides his own peculiar, exquisite merits, all that is to
be found in Shakespear or Milton, are, I should hardly think, in good
earnest. But I do not therefore see that, because this was not the case,
Pope was no poet. We cannot by a little verbal sophistry confound the
qualities of different minds, nor force opposite excellences into a
union by all the intolerance in the world. We may pull Pope in pieces as
long as we please for not being Shakespear or Milton, as we may carp
at them for not being Pope, but this will not make a poet equal to all
three. If we have a taste for some one precise style or manner, we may
keep it to ourselves and let others have theirs. If we are more catho
and beauty, it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the variety
of books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered by no
capricious or arbitrary rules. Those who would proscribe whatever falls
short of a given standard of imaginary perfection do so, not from a
higher capacity of taste or range of intellect than others, but to
destroy, to 'crib and cabin in' all enjoyments and opinions but their
own.
We find people of a decided and original, and others of a more general
and versatile taste. I have sometimes thought that the most acute and
original-minded men made bad critics. They see everything too much
through a particular medium. What does not fall in with their own bias
and mode of composition strikes them as common-place and factitious.
What does not come into the direct line of their vision, they regard
idly, with vacant, 'lack-lustre eye.' The extreme force of their
original impressions, compared with the feebleness of those they receive
at second-hand from others, oversets the balance and just proportion
of their minds. Men who have fewer native resources, and are obliged to
apply oftener to the general stock, acquire by habit a greater aptitude
in appreciating what they owe to others. Their taste is not made a
sacrifice to their egotism and vanity, and they enrich the soil of their
minds with continual accessions of borrowed strength and beauty. I might
take this opportunity of observing, that the person of the most refined
and least contracted taste I ever knew was the late Joseph Fawcett, the
friend of my youth. He was almost the first literary acquaintance I ever
made, and I think the most candid and unsophisticated. He had a masterly
perception of all styles and of every kind and degree of excellence,
sublime or beautiful, from Milton's _Paradise Lost_ to Shenstone's
_Pastoral Ballad,_ from Butler's _Analogy_ down to _Humphrey Clinker._
If you had a favourite author, he had read him too, and knew all the
best morsels, the subtle traits, the capital touches. 'Do you like
Sterne?' 'Yes, to be sure,' he would say; 'I should deserve to be hanged
if I didn't!' His repeating some parts of _Comus_ with his fine, deep,
mellow-toned voice, particularly the lines, 'I have heard my mother
Circe with the Sirens three,' etc., and the enthusiastic comments he
made afterwards, were a feast to the ear and to the soul. He read the
poetry of Milton with the same fervour and spirit of devotion that I
have since heard others read their own. 'That is the most delicious
feeling of all,' I have heard him explain, 'to like what is excellent,
no matter whose it is.' In this respect he practised what he preached.
He was incapable of harbouring a sinister motive, and judged only from
what he felt. There was no flaw or mist in the clear mirror of his mind.
He was as open to impressions as he was strenuous in maintaining them.
He did not care a rush whether a writer was old or new, in prose or in
verse--'What he wanted,' he said, 'was something to make him think.'
Most men's minds are to me like musical instruments out of tune. Touch a
particular key, and it jars and makes harsh discord with your own. They
like _Gil Blas,_ but can see nothing to laugh at in _Don Quixote:_ they
adore Richardson, but are disgusted with Fielding. Fawcett had a taste
accommodated to all these. He was not exceptious. He gave a cordial
welcome to all sort, provided they were the best in their kind. He was
not fond of counterfeits or duplicates. His own style was laboured and
artificial to a fault, while his character was frank and ingenuous
in the extreme. He was not the only individual whom I have known to
counteract their natural disposition in coming before the public, and
by avoiding what they perhaps thought an inherent infirmity, debar
themselves of their real strength and advantages. A heartier friend or
honester critic I never coped withal. He has made me feel (by contrast)
the want of genuine sincerity and generous sentiment in some that I have
listened to since, and convinced me (if practical proof were wanting) of
the truth of that text of Scripture--'That had I all knowledge and could
speak with the tongues of angels, yet without charity I were nothing!' I
would rather be a man of disinterested taste and liberal feeling, to
see and acknowledge truth and beauty wherever I found it, than a man of
greater and more original genius, to hate, envy, and deny all excellence
but my own--but that poor scanty pittance of it (compared with the
whole) which I had myself produced!
There is another race of critics who might be designated as the _Occult
School_--_vere adepti._ They discern no beauties but what are concealed
from superficial eyes, and overlook all that are obvious to the vulgar
part of mankind. Their art is the transmutation of styles. By happy
alchemy of mind they convert dross into gold--and gold into tinsel. They
see farther into a millstone than most others. If an author is utterly
unreadable, they can read him for ever: his intricacies are their
delight, his mysteries are their study. They prefer Sir Thomas Browne
to the _Rambler_ by Dr. Johnson, and Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_
to all the writers of the Georgian Age. They judge of works of genius as
misers do of hid treasure--it is of no value unless they have it all
to themselves. They will no more share a book than a mistress with a
friend. If they suspected their favourite volumes of delighting any eyes
but their own, they would immediately discard them from the list. Theirs
are superannuated beauties that every one else has left off intriguing
with, bedridden hags, a 'stud of nightmares.' This is not envy or
affectation, but a natural proneness to singularity, a love of what
is odd and out of the way. They must come at their pleasures with
difficulty, and support admiration by an uneasy sense of ridicule and
opposition. They despise those qualities in a work which are cheap
and obvious. They like a monopoly of taste and are shocked at the
prostitution of intellect implied in popular productions. In like
manner, they would choose a friend or recommend a mistress for gross
defects; and tolerate the sweetness of an actress's voice only for the
ugliness of her face. Pure pleasures are in their judgment cloying and
insipid--
An ounce of sour is worth a pound of sweet!
Nothing goes down with them but what is _caviare_ to the multitude.
They are eaters of olives and readers of black-letter. Yet they smack of
genius, and would be worth any money, were it only for the rarity of the
thing!
The last sort I shall mention are _verbal critics_--mere word-catchers,
fellows that pick out a word in a sentence and a sentence in a volume,
and tell you it is wrong.(6) These erudite persons constantly find out
by anticipation that you are deficient in the smallest things--that
you cannot spell certain words or join the nominative case and the verb
together, because to do this is the height of their own ambition, and
of course they must set you down lower than their opinion of themselves.
They degrade by reducing you to their own standard of merit; for the
qualifications they deny you, or the faults they object, are so very
insignificant, that to prove yourself possessed of the one or free from
the other is to make yourself doubly ridiculous. Littleness is their
element, and they give a character of meanness to whatever they touch.
They creep, buzz, and fly-blow. It is much easier to crush than to
catch these troublesome insects; and when they are in your power your
self-respect spares them. The race is almost extinct:--one or two
of them are sometimes seen crawling over the pages of the _Quarterly
Review!_