In all highly civilised communities Pretence is prominent, and sooner
or later invades the regions of Literature. In the beginning, this is
not altogether to be reprobated; it is the rude homage which Ignorance,
conscious of its disgrace, offers to Learning; but after awhile,
Pretence becomes systematised, gathers strength from numbers and
impunity, and rears its head in such a manner as to suggest it has some
body and substance belonging to it. In England, literary pretence is
more universal than elsewhere from our method of education. When young
gentlemen from ten to sixteen are set to study poetry (a subject for
which not one in a hundred has the least taste or capability even when
he reads it in his own language) in Greek and Latin authors, it is only
a natural consequence that their views upon it should be slightly
artificial. The youth who objected to the alphabet that it seemed
hardly worth while to have gone through so much to have acquired so
little, was exceptionally sagacious; the more ordinary lad conceives
that what has cost him so much time and trouble, and entailed so many
pains and penalties, must needs have something in it, though it has
never met his eye. Hence arises our public opinion upon the ancient
classics, which I am afraid is somewhat different from (what painters
term) the private view. If you take the ordinary admirer of Æschylus,
for example—not the scholar, but the man who has had what he believes
to be 'a liberal education'—and appeal to his opinion upon some passage
in a British dramatist, say Shakespeare, it is ten to one that he shows
not only ignorance of the author (the odds are twenty to one about
_that_), but utter inability to grasp the point in question; it is too
deep for him, and, especially, too subtle. If you are cruel enough to
press him, he will unconsciously betray the fact that he has never felt
a line of poetry in his life. He honestly believes that the 'Seven
against Thebes' is one of the greatest works that ever were written,
just as a child believes the same of the 'Seven Champions of
Christendom.' A great wit once observed, when bored by the praises of a
man who spoke six languages, that he had known a man to speak a dozen,
and yet not say a word worth hearing in any one of them. The humour of
the remark, as sometimes happens, has caused its wisdom to be
underrated; for the fact is that, in very many cases, all the
intelligence of which a mind is capable is expended upon the mere
acquisition of a foreign tongue. As to getting anything out of it in
the way of ideas, and especially of poetical ones, that is almost never
attained. There are, indeed, many who have a special facility for
languages, but in their case (with a few exceptions) one may say
without uncharity that the acquisition of ideas is not their object,
though if they did acquire them they would probably be new ones. The
majority of us, however, have much difficulty in surmounting the
obstacle of an alien tongue; and when we have done so we are naturally
inclined to overrate the advantages thus attained. Everyone knows the
poor creature who quotes French on all occasions with a certain stress
on the accent, designed to arouse a doubt in his hearers as to whether
he was not actually born in Paris. _He_, of course, is a low specimen
of the class in question, but almost all of us derive a certain
intellectual gratification from the mastery of another language, and as
we gradually attain to it, whenever we find a meaning we are apt to
mistake it for a beauty.[1] Nay, I am convinced that many admire this
or that (even) British poet from the fact that here and there his
meaning has gleamed upon them with all the charm that accompanies
unexpectedness.
[1] Since the above was written, my attention has been called to the
following remark of De Quincey: 'As must ever be the case with readers
not sufficiently masters of a language to bring the true pretensions
of a work to any test of feeling, they are for ever mistaking for some
pleasure conferred by the writer, what is, in fact, the pleasure
naturally attached to the sense of a difficulty overcome.'
Since classical learning is compulsory with us, this bastard admiration
is much more often excited with respect to the Greek and Latin poets.
Men may not only go through the whole curriculum of a university
education, but take high honours in it, without the least intellectual
advantage beyond the acquisition of a few quotations. This is not, of
course (good heavens!), because the classics have nothing to teach us
in the way of poetical ideas, but simply because to the ordinary mind
the acquisition of a poetical idea is very difficult, and when conveyed
in a foreign language is impossible. If the same student had given the
same time—a monstrous thought, of course, but not impracticable—to the
cultivation of Shakespeare and the old dramatists, or even to the more
modern English poets and thinkers, he would certainly have got more out
of them, though he would have missed the delicate suggestiveness of the
Greek aorist, and the exquisite subtleties of the particle _de_. Having
acquired these last, however, and not for nothing, it is not surprising
that he should esteem them very highly, and, being unable to popularise
them at dinner-parties and the like, he falls back upon praise of the
classics generally.
Such are the circumstances which, more particularly in this country,
have led to a well-nigh universal habit of literary lying—of a pretence
of admiration for certain works of which in reality we know very
little, and for which, if we knew more, we should perhaps care even
less.
There are certain books which are standard, and as it were planted in
the British soil, before which the great majority of us bow the knee
and doff the cap with a reverence that, in its ignorance, reminds one
of fetish worship, and, in its affectation, of the passion for High
Art. The works without which, we are told at book auctions, 'no
gentleman's library can be considered complete,' are especially the
objects of this adoration. The 'Rambler,' for example, is one of them.
I was once shut up for a week of snowstorms in a mountain inn, with the
'Rambler' and one other publication. The latter was a Shepherd's Guide,
with illustrations of the way in which sheep are marked by their
various owners for the purpose of identification: 'Cropped near ear,
upper key bitted far, a pop on the head and another at the tail head,
ritted, and with two red strokes down both shoulders,' etc. It was
monotonous, but I confess that there were times when I felt it some
comfort in having that picture-book to fall back upon, to alternate
with the 'Rambler.'
The essay, like port wine, I have noticed, requires age for its due
appreciation. Leigh Hunt's 'Indicator' comprises some admirable essays,
but the general public have not a word to say for them; it may be urged
that that is because they had not read the 'Indicator' But why then do
they praise the 'Rambler' and Montaigne? That comforting word,
'Mesopotamia,' which has been so often alluded to in religious matters,
has many a parallel in profane literature.
A good deal of this mock worship is of course due to abject cowardice.
A man who says he doesn't like the 'Rambler,' runs, with some folks,
the risk of being thought a fool; but he is sure to be thought that,
for something or another, under any circumstances; and, at all events,
why should he not content himself, when the 'Rambler' is belauded, with
holding his tongue and smiling acquiescence? It must be conceded that
there are a few persons who really have read the 'Rambler,' a work, of
course, I am merely using as a type of its class. In their young days
it was used as a schoolbook, and thought necessary as a part of polite
education; and as they have read little or nothing since, it is only
reasonable that they should stick to their colours. Indeed, the French
satirist's boast that he could predicate the views of any man with
regard to both worlds, if he were only supplied with the simple data of
his age and his income, is quite true in the general with regard to
literary taste. Given the age of the ordinary individual—that is to say
of the gentleman 'fond of books, but who has really no time for
reading'—and it is easy enough to guess his literary idols. They are
the gods of his youth, and, whether he has been 'suckled in a creed
outworn' or not, he knows no other. These persons, however, rarely give
their opinion about literary matters, except on compulsion; they are
harmless and truthful. The tendency of society in general, on the other
hand, is not only to praise the 'Rambler' which they have not read, but
to express a noble scorn for those who have read it and don't like it.
I remember, as a young man, being greatly struck by the independence of
character exhibited by Miss Bronte in a certain confession she made in
respect to Miss Austen's novels. It was at a period when everybody
professed to adore them, and especially the great-guns of literature.
Walter Scott thought more highly of the genius of the author of
'Mansfield Park' even than of that of his favourite, Miss Edgeworth.
Macaulay speaks of her as though she were the Eclipse of
novelists—'first, and the rest nowhere'—though his opinion, it is true,
lost something of its force from the contempt he expressed for 'the
rest,' among whom were some much better ones. Dr. Whewell, a very
different type of mind, had 'Mansfield Park,' I believe, read to him on
his death-bed. And, indeed, up to the present date, some
highly-cultured persons of my acquaintance take the same view. They may
be very possibly right, but that is no reason why the people who have
never read Miss Austen's novels—and very few have—should ape the
fashion. Now, the authoress of 'Jane Eyre' did not derive much pleasure
from the perusal of the works of the other Jane. 'I know it's very
wrong,' she modestly said, 'but the fact is I can't read them. They
have not got story enough in them to engage my attention. I don't want
my blood curdled, but I like it stirred. Miss Austen strikes me as
milk-and-watery, and, to say truth, as dull.'
This opinion she has, in effect, repeated in her published writings,
but I had only heard her verbal expression of it; and I admired her
courage. If she had been a man, struggling, as she then was, for a
position in literature, she would not have dared to say half as much.
For, what is very curious, the advocates of the classic authors—those I
mean whom antiquity has more or less hallowed—instead of pitying those
unhappy wights who confess their want of appreciation of them, fly at
them with bludgeons, and dance upon their prostrate bodies with clogs.
'For who would rush on a benighted man,
And give him two black eyes for being blind?'
inquires the poet. I answer, 'lots of people,' and especially those who
worship the pagan divinities of literature. The same thing happens—but
_their_ fury is more excusable, because they have less natural
intelligence—with the lovers of music. Instead of being sorry for the
poor folks who have 'no ear,' and whom 'a little music in the evening'
bores to extremity, they overwhelm them with reproaches for what is in
fact a natural infirmity. 'You Goth! you Vandal!' they exclaim, 'how
contemptible is the creature who has no music in his soul!' Which is
really very rude. Even persons who are not musical have their feelings.
'Hath not a Jew ears?'—that is to say, though they have 'no ear,' they
understand what is abusive language and resent it.
I am not saying one word against established reputations in literature.
The very fact of their being established (even the 'Rambler,' for
example, has its merits) is in their favour; and, indeed, some of the
works I shall refer to are masterpieces. My objection is to the sham
admiration of them, which does their authors no good (for their
circulation is now of no consequence to them), and is injurious not
only to modern writers (who are generally made the subject of base
comparison), but especially to the utterers of this false coin
themselves. One cannot tell falsehoods, even about one's views in
literature, without injury to one's morals, yet to 'tell the truth and
shame the devil' is easy, as it would seem, compared with telling the
truth and defying the critics.
I have alluded to the intrepidity of Miss Bronte in this matter; and,
curiously enough, it is women who have the most courage in the
expression of their literary opinions. It may be said, of course, that
this is due to the audacity of ignorance, and a well-known line may be
quoted (for some people, as I have said, are rude) in which certain
angels (who are _not_ women) are represented as being afraid to tread
in certain places. But I am speaking of women who are great readers.
Miss Martineau once confessed to me that she could see no beauties in
'Tom Jones.' 'Of course,' she said, 'the coarseness disgusts me, but
apart from that, I see no sort of merit in it.' 'What?' I replied, 'no
humour, no knowledge of human life?' 'No; to me it is a wearisome
book.'
I disagreed with her very much upon that point, and do so still; yet,
apart from the coarseness (which does not disgust everybody, let me
tell you), there is a good deal of tedious reading in 'Tom Jones.' At
all events that expression of opinion from such lips strikes me as
noteworthy.
It may here be said that there are many English authors of old date,
some of whose beauties are unintelligible except to those who are
acquainted with the classics; and 'Tom Jones' is one of them. Many of
the introductions to the chapters, not to mention a certain travestie
of an Homeric battle, must needs be as wearisome to those who are not
scholars, as the spectacle of a burlesque is to those who have not seen
the original play. This is still more the case with our old poets,
especially Milton. I very much doubt, in spite of the universal chorus
to the contrary, whether 'Lycidas' is much admired by readers who are
only acquainted with English literature; I am quite sure it never
touched their hearts as, for example, 'In Memoriam' does.
I once beheld a young lady of great literary taste, and of exquisite
sensibility, torn to pieces (figuratively) and trampled upon by a great
scholar for venturing to make a comparison between those two poems. Its
invocation to the Muses, and the general classical air which pervades
it, had destroyed for her the pathos of 'Lycidas,' whereas to her
antagonist those very imperfections appeared to enhance its beauty. I
did not interfere, because the wretch was her husband, and it would
have been worse for her if I had, but my sympathies were entirely with
her. Her sad fate—for the massacre took place in public—would, I was
well aware, have the effect of making people lie worse than ever about
Milton. On that same evening, while some folks were talking about Mr.
Morris's 'Earthly Paradise,' I heard a scornful voice exclaim, 'Oh!
give ME "Paradise Lost,"' and with that gentleman I _did_ have it out.
I promptly subjected him to cross-examination, and drove him to that
extremity that he was compelled to admit he had never read a word of
Milton for forty years, and even then only in extracts from 'Enfield's
Speaker.'
With Shakespeare—though there is a good deal of lying about _him_—the
case is different, and especially with elderly people; for 'in their
day,' as they pathetically term it, Shakespeare was played everywhere,
and everyone went to the play. They do not read him, but they recollect
him; they are well acquainted with his beauties—that is, with the
better known of them—and can quote him with manifest appreciation. They
are, intellectually, in a position much superior to that of a
fashionable lady of my acquaintance who informed me that her daughters
were going to the theatre that night to see Shakespeare's 'Turning of
the Screw.'
The writer who has done most, without I suppose intending it, to
promote hypocrisy in literature is Macaulay. His 'every schoolboy
knows' has frightened thousands into pretending to know authors with
whom they have not even a bowing acquaintance. It is amazing that a man
who had read so much should have written so contemptuously of those who
have read but little; one would have thought that the consciousness of
superiority would have forbidden such insolence, or that his reading
would have been extensive enough to teach him at least how little he
had read of what there was to read; since he read some things—works of
imagination and humour, for example—to such very little purpose, he
might really have bragged a little less. One feels quite grateful to
Macaulay, however, for avowing his belief that he was the only man who
had read through the 'Faery Queen;' since that exonerates everybody—I
do not say from reading it, because the supposition is preposterous—but
from the necessity of pretending to have read it. The pleasure derived
from that poem to most minds is, I am convinced, analogous to that
already spoken of as being imparted by a foreign author: namely, the
satisfaction at finding it—in places—intelligible. For the few who
possess the poetic faculty it has great beauties, but I observe, from
the extracts that appear in Poetic Selections and the like, that the
most tedious and even the most monstrous passages are those which are
generally offered for admiration. The case of Spenser in this
respect—which does not stand alone in ancient English literature—has a
curious parallel in art, where people are positively found to go into
ecstasies over a distorted limb or a ludicrous inversion of
perspective, simply because it is the work of an old master, who knew
no better, or followed the fashion of his time.
Leigh Hunt read the 'Faery Queen,' by-the-bye, as almost everything
else that has been written in the English tongue, and even Macaulay
alludes with rare commendation to his 'catholic taste.' Of all authors
indeed, and probably of all readers, Leigh Hunt had the keenest eye for
merit and the warmest appreciation of it wherever found. He was
actively engaged in politics, yet was never blind to the genius of an
adversary; blameless himself in morals, he could admire the wit of
Wycherley; and a freethinker in religion, he could see both wisdom and
beauty in the divines. Moreover, it is immensely to his credit that
this universal knowledge, instead of puffing him up, only moved him to
impart it, and that next to the pleasure he took in books was that he
derived from teaching others to take pleasure in them. Witness his 'Wit
and Humour' and his 'Imagination and Fancy,' to my mind the greatest
treasures in the way of handbooks that have ever been offered to
students of English literature, and the completest antidotes to
pretence in it. How many a time, as a boy, have I pondered over this or
that passage in the originals, from Shakespeare to Suckling, and then
compared it with the italicised lines in his two volumes, to see
whether I had hit upon the beauties; and how often, alas! I hit upon
the blots![2]
[2] I remember (when 'I was but a little tiny boy') I thought that
'the fringed curtains of thine eye advance,' addressed by Prospero to
Miranda, must needs be a very fine line; imagine then my confusion, on
referring for corroboration to my 'guide, philosopher, and friend,' as
he truly was, to find this passage: 'Why Shakespeare should have
condescended to the elaborate nothingness, not to say nonsense, of
this metaphor (for what is meant by "advancing curtains"?) I cannot
conceive. That is to say, if he did condescend: for it looks very like
the interpolation of some pompous declamatory player. Pope has put it
into his _Treatise on the Bathos_.'
It is curious that Leigh Hunt, whose style has been so severely handled
(and, it must be owned, not without some justice) for its affectations,
should have been so genuine (although always generous) in his
criticisms. It was nothing to him whether an author was old or new; nor
did he shrink from any literary comparison between two writers when he
thought it appropriate (and he was generally right), notwithstanding
all the age and authority that might be at the back of one of them.
Thackeray, by the way, a very different writer and thinker, had this
same outspoken honesty in the expression of his literary taste. In
speaking of the hero of Cooper's five good novels—Leather-Stocking,
Hawkeye, etc.—he remarks with quite a noble simplicity: 'I think he is
better than any of Scott's lot.'
It is a 'far cry' from the 'Faery Queen' to 'Childe Harold,' which,
reckoning by years, is still a modern poem; yet I wonder how many
persons under thirty—even of those who term it 'magnificent'—have ever
read 'Childe Harold.' At one time it was only people under thirty who
_had_ read it; for poetry to the ordinary reader is the poetry that was
popular in his youth—'no other is genuine.'
'A dreary, weary poem called the _Excursion_,
Written in a manner which is my aversion,'
is a couplet the frankness of which has always recommended itself to me
(though I like the 'Excursion'); but, except for the rhyme, it has a
fatal facility of application to other long poems. Heaven forbid that I
should 'with shadowed hint confuse' the faith in a British classic;
but, ye gods, how men have gaped (in private) over 'Childe Harold!'
'Gil Blas,' though not a native classic, is included in the articles of
the British literary faith; not as a matter of pious opinion, but _de
fide_; a necessity of intellectual salvation. I remember an interview I
once had with a boy of letters concerning this immortal work; he is a
well-known writer now, but at the time I speak of he was only budding
and sprouting in the magazines—a lad of promise, no doubt, but given,
if not to kick against authority, to question it, and, what was worse,
to question _me_ about it, in an embarrassing manner. The natural
affability of my disposition had caused him, I suppose, to treat me as
his Father Confessor in literature; and one of the sins of omission he
confided to me was in connection with the divine Le Sage.
'I say—about "Gil Blas," you know—Bias [a great critic of that day] was
saying last night that if he were to be imprisoned for life with only
one book to read he would choose the Bible or "Gil Blas."'
'It is very gratifying to me,' said I, wishing to evade my young
friend, and also because I had no love for Bias, 'that he should have
selected the Bible, even as an alternative; and all the more so, since
I should never have expected it of him.'
'Yes, papa' (that was what the young dog was wont to call me, though he
was no son of mine—far from it); 'but about "Gil Blas"? Is it _really_
the next best book? And after he had read it—say ten times—would he not
have been rather sorry that he had not chosen—well, Shakespeare, for
instance?'
The picture of Bias with a long white beard, the growth of twenty
years, reading that tattered copy of 'Gil Blas' in his cell, almost
affected me to tears; but I made shift to answer gravely: 'Bias is a
professional critic; and persons of that class are apt to be a little
dogmatic and given to exaggeration. But "Gil Blas" is a great work. As
a picture of the seamy side of human life—of its vices and its
weaknesses at least—it is unrivalled. The archbishop——'
'Oh! I know that archbishop—_well_,' interrupted my young tormentor. 'I
sometimes think, if it hadn't been for that archbishop, we should never
perhaps have heard of "Gil Blas."'
'Tchut, tchut!' said I; 'you talk like a child.'
'But to read it _all through_, papa—three times, ten times, for all
one's life? Poor Mr. Bias!'
'It is a matter of opinion, my dear boy,' I said. 'Bias has this great
advantage over you in literary matters, that he knows what he is
talking about; and if he was quite sure——'
'Oh! but he was not quite sure: he was rather doubtful, he said, about
one of the books.'
'Not the Bible, I do hope?' said I fervently.
'No, about the other. He was not quite sure but that, instead of "Gil
Blas," he ought to have selected "Don Quixote." Now really that seems
to me worse than "Gil Blas."
'You mean less excellent,' I rejoined; 'you are too young to appreciate
the full signification of "Don Quixote."'
The scoundrel murmured, 'Do you mean to tell me people read it when
they are old?' But I pretended not to hear him. 'We do not all of us,'
I went on, 'know what is good for us. Sancho Panza's physician——'
'Oh! I know that physician—_well_, papa. I sometimes think, if it had
not been for that physician, perhaps——'
'Hush!' I exclaimed authoritatively; 'let us have no flippancy, I beg.'
And so, with a dead lift as it were, I got rid of him. He left the room
muttering, 'But to read it through—three times, ten times, for all
one's life?' And I was obliged to confess to myself that such a
prolonged course of study, even of 'Don Quixote,' would have been
wearisome.
Rabelais is another article of our literary faith, that is certainly
subscribed to much more often than believed in. In a certain poem of
Mr. Browning's (_I_ call it the Burial of the Book, since the Latin
name he has given it is unpronounceable, even if it were possible to
recollect it), charmingly humorous, and which is also remarkable for
impersonating an inanimate object in verse as Dickens does in prose,
there occur these lines:
'Then I went indoors, brought out a loaf,
Half a cheese and a bottle of Chablis,
Lay on the grass, and forgot the oaf
Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais.'
Yet I have known some wonder to be expressed (confidentially) as to
where he found the 'jolly chapter,' and the looking for the beauties of
Rabelais to be likened to searching in a huge dung-heap for a few heads
of asparagus.
I have no quarrel with Bias and Company (though they stick at nothing,
and will presently say that I don't care for these books myself), but I
venture to think that they are wrong in making dogmas of what are,
after all, but matters of literary taste; it is their vehemence and
exaggeration which drive the weak to take refuge in falsehood.
A good woman in the country once complained of her stepson, 'He will
not love his learning, though I beats him with a jack-chain;' and from
the application of similar aids to instruction, the same result takes
place in London. Only here we dissemble and pretend to love it. It is
partly in consequence of this that works, not only of acknowledged but
genuine excellence, such as those I have been careful to select, are,
though so universally praised, so little read. The poor student
attempts them, but failing—from many causes no doubt, but also
sometimes from the fact of their not being there—to find those
unrivalled beauties which he has been led to expect in every sentence,
he stops short, where he would otherwise have gone on. He says to
himself, 'I have been deceived,' or 'I must be a born fool;' whereas he
is wrong in both suppositions. I am convinced that the want of
popularity of Walter Scott among the rising generation is partly due to
this extravagant laudation; and I am much mistaken if another great
author, more recently deceased, will not in a few years be added to the
ranks of those who are more praised than read from the same cause.
The habit of mere adhesion to received opinion in any matter is most
mischievous, for it strikes at the root of independence of thought; and
in literature it tends to make the public taste mechanical. It is very
seldom that what is called the verdict of posterity (absurdly enough,
for are not _we_ posterity?) is ever reversed; but it has chanced to
happen in a certain case quite lately. The production of 'The Iron
Chest' upon the stage has once more brought into fashion 'Caleb
Williams.' Now that is a work, though by no means belonging to the same
rank as those to which I have referred, which has a fine old crusted
reputation. Time has hallowed it. The great world of readers (who have
never read it) used to echo the remark of Bias and Company, that this
and that modern work of fiction reminded them—though at an immense
distance, of course—of Godwin's masterpiece. I remember Le Fanu's
'Uncle Silas,' for example (from some similarity, more fanciful perhaps
than real, in the isolation of its hero), being thus compared with it.
Now 'Caleb Williams' is founded on a very fine conception—one that
could only have occurred, perhaps, to a man of genius; the first part
of it is well worked out, but towards the middle it grows feeble, and
it ends in tediousness and drivel; whereas 'Uncle Silas' is good and
strong from first to last. Le Fanu has never been so popular as, in my
humble judgment, he deserves to be, but of course modern readers were
better acquainted with him than with Godwin. Yet nine out of ten were
always heard repeating this cuckoo cry about the latter's superiority,
until the 'Iron Chest' came out, and Fashion induced them to read
Godwin for themselves; which has very properly changed their opinion.
I remember, in my own case, that, from that reverence for authority
which I hope I share with my neighbours, I used to speak of 'Headlong
Hall' and 'Crotchet Castle'—both great favourites of our
fore-fathers—with much respect, until one wet day in the country I
found myself shut up with them. I won't say what I suffered; better
judges of literature than myself admire them still, I know. I will only
remark that _I_ don't admire them. I don't say they are the dullest
novels ever printed, because that would be invidious, and might do
wrong to works of even greater pretensions; but to my mind they are
dull.
When Dr. Johnson is free to confess that he does not admire Gray's
'Elegy,' and Macaulay to avow that he sees little to praise in Dickens
and Wordsworth, why should not humbler folks have the courage of their
own opinions? They cannot possibly be more wrong than Johnson and
Macaulay were, and it is surely better to be honest, though it may
expose one to some ridicule, than to lie. The more we agree with the
verdict of the generations before us on these matters, the more, it is
quite true, we are likely to be right; but the agreement should be an
honest one. At present very extensive domains in literature are, as it
were, enclosed and denied to the public in respect to any free
expression of their opinion. 'They are splendid, they are faultless,'
cries the general voice, but the general eye has not beheld them.
Nothing, of course, could be more futile than that, with every new
generation, our old authors who have won their fame should be arraigned
anew at the bar of public criticism; but, on the other hand, there is
no reason why the mouths of us poor moderns should be muzzled, and
still less that we 'should praise with alien lips.'
'Until Caldecott's charming illustrations of it made me laugh so much,'
said a young lady to me the other day, 'I confess—though I know it's
very stupid of me—I never saw much fun in "John Gilpin."' She evidently
expected a reproof, and when I whispered in her ear, 'Nor I,' her
lovely features assumed a look of positive enfranchisement.
'But am I right?' she inquired.
'You are certainly right, my dear young lady,' said I, 'not to pretend
admiration where you don't feel it; as to liking "John Gilpin," that is
a matter of taste. It has, of course, simplicity to recommend it; but
in my own case, though I'm fond of fun, it has never evoked a smile. It
has always seemed to me like one of Mr. Joe Miller's stories put into
tedious verse.'
I really almost thought (and hoped) that that young lady would have
kissed me.
'Papa always says it is a free country,' she exclaimed, 'but I never
felt it to be the case before this moment.'
For years this beautiful and accomplished creature had locked this
awful secret in her innocent breast—that she didn't see much fun in
'John Gilpin.' 'You have given me courage,' she said, 'to confess
something else. Mr. Caldecott has just been illustrating in the same
charming manner Goldsmith's "Elegy on a Mad Dog," and—I'm very
sorry—but I never laughed at _that_ before, either. I have pretended to
laugh, you know,' she added, hastily and apologetically, 'hundreds of
times.'
'I don't doubt it,' I replied; 'this is not such a free country as your
father supposes.'
'But am I right?'
'I say nothing about "right,"' I answered, 'except that everybody has a
right to his own opinion. For my part, however, I think the 'Mad Dog'
better than 'John Gilpin' only because it is shorter.'
Whether I was wrong or right in the matter is of no consequence even to
myself; the affection and gratitude of that young creature would more
than repay me for a much greater mistake, if mistake it is. She
protests that I have emancipated her from slavery. She has since talked
to me about all sorts of authors, from Sir Philip Sidney to Washington
Irving, in a way that would make some people's blood run cold; but it
has no such effect upon me—quite the reverse. Of Irving she naïvely
remarks that his strokes of humour seem to her to owe much of their
success to the rarity of their occurrence; the flashes of fun are
spread over pages of dulness, which enhance them, just as a dark night
is propitious to fireworks, or the atmosphere of the House cf Commons,
or of a Court of Law, to a joke. She is often in error, no doubt, but
how bright and wholesome such talk is as compared with the platitudes
and commonplaces which one hears on all sides in connection with
literature!
As a rule, I suppose, even people in society ('the drawing-rooms and
the clubs') are not absolutely base and yet one would really think so,
to judge by the fear that is entertained by them of being natural. 'I
vow to heaven,' says the prince of letter-writers, 'that I think the
Parrots of Society are more intolerable and mischievous than its Birds
of Prey. If ever I destroy myself, it will be in the bitterness of
having those infernal and damnable "good old times" extolled.' One is
almost tempted to say the same—when one hears their praises come from
certain mouths—of the good old books. It is not everyone, of course,
who has an opinion of his own upon any subject, far less on that of
literature, but everyone can abstain from expressing an opinion that is
not his own. If one has no voice, what possible compensation can there
be in becoming an echo? No one, I conclude, would wish to see
literature discoursed about in the same pinchbeck and affected style as
are painting and music; [3] yet that is what will happen if this
prolific weed of sham admiration is permitted to attain its full
growth.
[3] The slang of art-talk has reached the 'young men' in the furniture
warehouses. A friend of mine was recommended a sideboard the other day
as not being a Chippendale, but as 'having a Chippendale _feeling_ in
it.'
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