[_26 Sep. '08_]
The death of Professor Churton Collins appears to have been attended by
painful circumstances, and one may be permitted to regret the
disappearance from the literary arena of this vigorous pundit. He had an
agreeable face, with pendant hair and the chin of a fighter. His industry
must have been terrific, and personally I can forgive anything to him who
consistently and violently works. He had also acquired much learning.
Indeed, I should suppose that on the subject of literature he was the most
learned man in Britain. Unfortunately, he was quite bereft of original
taste. The root of the matter was not in him. The frowning structure of
his vast knowledge overawed many people, but it never overawed an
artist--unless the artist was excessively young and naïve. A man may heap
up facts and facts on a given topic, and assort and label them, and have
the trick of producing any particular fact at an instant's notice, and
yet, despite all his efforts and honest toil, rest hopelessly among the
profane. Churton Collins was such a man. He had no artistic feeling. Apart
from the display of learning, which is always pleasant to the man of
letters, his essays were arid and tedious. I never heard him lecture, but
should imagine that he was an ideal University Extension lecturer. I do
not mean this to be in the least complimentary to him as a critic. His
book, "Illustrations Tennyson," was an entirely sterile exercise proving
on every page that the author had no real perceptions about literature. It
simply made creative artists laugh. They knew. His more recent book on
modern tendencies displayed in an acute degree the characteristic
inability of the typical professor to toddle alone when released from the
leading-strings of tradition.
* * * * *
I fear that most of our professors are in a similar fix. There is
Professor George Saintsbury, a regular Albert Memorial of learning. In my
pensive moments I have sometimes yearned to know as many facts about
literature as Professor Saintsbury knows, though he did once, I am told,
state that "Wuthering Heights" was written by Charlotte. (That must have
been a sadly shocking day for Mr. Clement Shorter!) I have found his
Liebig "History of French Literature" very useful; it has never failed to
inform me what I ought to think about the giants of the past. More
important, Professor Saintsbury's critical introductions to the whole
series of Dent's English edition of Balzac are startlingly just. Over and
over again he hits the nail on the head and spares his finger. I have
never understood by what magic he came to accomplish these prefaces. For
the root of the matter is no more in Professor Saintsbury than it was in
Churton Collins. He has not comprehended what he was talking about. The
proof--his style and his occasional pronouncements on questions as to
which he has been quite free to make up his mind all by himself!
* * * * *
I remember one evening discussing the talents of a certain orchestral
conductor, who also played the violin. I was talking to a member of his
orchestra, a very genuine artist. We agreed that he had conducted badly;
but, I said in his defence, "Anyhow his intentions are good. You must
admit that he has a feeling for music." "My dear fellow," exclaimed the
bandsman pettishly, "no one who had any feeling for music could possibly
stand the d----d row that that chap makes on the fiddle." I was silenced.
I recall this episode in connexion with Professor Saintsbury. No one who
had any feeling for literature could possibly put down the ---- style that
Professor Saintsbury commits. His pen could not be brought to write it.
Professor Saintsbury may be as loudly positive as he likes--his style is
always quietly whispering: "Don't listen." As to his modern
judgments--well for their own sakes professors of literature ought to bind
themselves by oaths never to say anything about any author who was not
safely dead twenty years before they were born. Such an ordinance would at
any rate ensure their dignity.
* * * * *
Yet another example is Professor Walter Raleigh. Fifty per cent. of you
will leap up and say that I am being perverse. But I am not. It has been
demonstrated to me satisfactorily, by contact with Liverpool people, that
Professor Raleigh's personal influence at that university in certain ways
made for righteousness. Nevertheless, Professor Raleigh has himself
demonstrated to me that, wherever the root of the matter may be, it is not
in _him_. One must remember that he is young, and that his underived
opinions are therefore less likely to clash with the authoritative
opinions of living creative artists on their contemporaries and
predecessors than if he were of the same generation as the Collinses and
the Saintsburys. But wait a few years. Wait until something genuinely new
and original comes along and you will see what you will see. If he wished
not to ruin his reputation among artists, among people who really create
things, he ought not to have published his books on "Style" and on
"Shakespere." He ought to have burnt them. For they are as hollow as a
drum and as unoriginal as a bride-cake: nothing but vacuity with an icing
of phrases. I am brought back again to the anecdote of the musician. No
one who had the least glimmering of an individual vision of what style
truly is could possibly have tolerated the too fearfully ingenious mess of
words that Professor Raleigh courageously calls a book on "Style." The
whole thing is a flagrant contradiction of every notion of style. It may
not be generally known (and I do not state it as a truth) that Professor
Raleigh is a distant connexion of the celebrated family of Pains,
pyrotechnicians. I would begin to go to the Empire again if I could see on
the programme: "10.20. Professor Raleigh, in his unique prestidigitatory
performance with words." Yes, I would stroll once more into the hallowed
Promenade to see that. It would be amusing. But it would have no connexion
with literature.