a ladder comfortably. Now that motors have come in, horses stand remotely
in our lives. Nor is it of great moment whether or not we fear to be out of
fashion--whether we halt in the wearing of a wrong-shaped hat, or glance
fearfully around when we choose from a line of forks. Superstitions rest
mostly on the surface and are not deadly in themselves. A man can be true
of heart even if he will not sit thirteen at table. But there is a kind
of fear that is disastrous to them that have it. It is the fear of the
material universe in all its manifestations. There are persons, stout both
of chest and limb, who fear drafts and wet feet. A man who is an elephant
of valor and who has been feeling this long while a gentle contempt for
such as myself, will cry out if a soft breeze strikes against his neck. If
a foot slips to the gutter and becomes wet, he will dose himself. Achilles
did not more carefully nurse his heel. For him the lofty dome of air is
packed with malignant germs. The round world is bottled with contagion. A
strong man who, in his time, might have slain the Sofi, is as fearful of
his health as though the plague were up the street. Calamities beset him.
The slightest sniffling in his nose is the trumpet for a deep disorder.
Existence is but a moving hazard. Life for him, poor fellow, is but a room
with a window on the night and a storm beating on the casement. God knows,
it is better to grow giddy on a ladder than to think that this majestic
earth is such an universal pestilence.
The Asperities of the Early British Reviewers
Book reviewers nowadays direct their attention, for the most part, to the
worthy books and they habitually neglect those that seem beneath their
regard. On a rare occasion they assail an unprofitable book, but even this
is often but a bit of practice. They swish a bludgeon to try their hand.
They only take their anger, as it were, upon an outing, lest with too
close housing it grow pallid and shrink in girth. Or maybe they indulge
themselves in humor. Perhaps they think that their pages grow dull and that
ridicule will restore the balance. They throw it in like a drunken porter
to relieve a solemn scene. I fancy that editors of this baser sort keep on
their shelves one or two volumes for their readers' sport and mirth. I read
recently a review of an historical romance--a last faltering descendant of
the race--whose author in an endeavor to restore the past, had made too
free a use of obsolete words. With what playfulness was he held up to
scorn! Mary come up, sweet chuck! How his quaint phrasing was turned
against him! What a merry fellow it is who writes, how sharp and caustic!
There's pepper on his mood.
But generally, it is said, book reviews are too flattering. Professor
Bliss Perry, being of this opinion, offered some time ago a statement
that "Magazine writing about current books is for the most part bland,
complaisant, pulpy.... The Pedagogue no longer gets a chance at the gifted
young rascal who needs, first and foremost, a premonitory whipping; the
youthful genius simply stays away from school and carries his unwhipped
talents into the market place." At a somewhat different angle of the same
opinion, Dr. Crothers suggests in an essay that instead of being directed
to the best books, we need to be warned from the worst. He proposes to set
up a list of the Hundred Worst Books. For is it not better, he asks, to put
a lighthouse on a reef than in the channel? The open sea does not need a
bell-buoy to sound its depth.
On these hints I have read some of the book criticisms of days past to
learn whether they too were pulpy--whether our present silken criticism
always wore its gloves and perfumed itself, or whether it has fallen to
this smiling senility from a sterner youth. Although I am usually a rusty
student, yet by diligence I have sought to mend my knowledge that I might
lay it out before you. Lately, therefore, if you had come within our Public
Library, you would have found me in one of these attempts. Here I went,
scrimping the other business of the day in order that I might be at my
studies before the rush set in up town. Mine was the alcove farthest from
the door, where are the mustier volumes that fit a bookish student. So if
your quest was the lighter books--such verse and novels as present fame
attests--you did not find me. I was hooped and bowed around the corner. I
am no real scholar, but I study on a spurt. For a whole week together I may
read old plays until their jigging style infects my own. I have set myself
against the lofty histories, although I tire upon their lower slopes and
have not yet persisted to their upper and windier ridges. I have, also, a
pretty knowledge of the Queen Anne wits and feel that I must have dogged
and spied upon them while they were yet alive. But in general, although
I am curious in the earlier chapters of learning, I lag in the inner
windings. However, for a fortnight I have sat piled about with old reviews,
whose leather rots and smells, in order that I might study the fading
criticisms of the past.
Until rather near the end of the eighteenth century, those who made their
living in England by writing were chiefly publishers' hacks, fellows of
the Dunciad sucking their quills in garrets and selling their labor for a
crust, for the reading public was too small to support them. Or they
found a patron and gave him a sugared sonnet for a pittance, or strained
themselves to the length of an Ode for a berth in his household. Or
frequently they supported a political party and received a place in the
Red Tape Office. But even in politics, on account of the smallness of the
reading public and the politicians' indifference to its approval, their
services were of slight account. Too often a political office was granted
from a pocket borough in which a restricted electorate could be bought at a
trifling expense. To gain support inside the House of Commons was enough.
The greater public outside could be ignored. This attitude changed with
the coming of the French Revolution. Here was a new force unrealized
before--that of a crowd which, being unrepresented and with a real
grievance, could, when it liked, take a club and go after what it wanted.
For the first time in many years in England--such were the whiffs of
liberty across the Channel--the power of an unrepresented public came to be
known. It was not that the English crowd had as yet taken the club in its
hands, but there were new thoughts abroad in the world, and there was the
possibility to be regarded. To influence this larger public, therefore, men
who could write came little by little into a larger demand. And as
writers were comparatively scarce, all kinds--whether they wrote poems or
prose--were pressed into service. It is significant, too, that it was in
the decades subjected to the first influence of the French Revolution that
the English daily paper took its start as an agent to influence public
opinion.
It was therefore rather more than one hundred years ago that writers came
to a better prosperity. They came out of their garrets, took rooms on the
second floor, polished their brasses and became Persons. I can fancy that a
writer after spending a morning in the composition of a political article
on the whisper of a Cabinet Minister, wrote a sonnet after lunch, and
a book review before dinner. Let us see in what mood they took their
advancement! Let us examine their temper--but in book reviewing only, for
that alone concerns us! In doing this, we have the advantage of knowing the
final estimate of the books they judged. Like the witch, we have looked
into the seeds of time and we know "which grain will grow and which will
not."
In 1802, when the Edinburgh Review (which was the first of its line to
acquire distinction) came into being, the passion of the times found voice
in politics. Both Whigs and Tories had been alarmed by the excesses of the
French Revolution; both feared that England was drifting the way of France;
each had a remedy, but opposed and violently maintained. The Tories put the
blame of the Revolution on the compromises of Louis XVI, and accordingly
they were hostile to any political change. The Whigs, on the other
hand, saw the rottenness of England as a cause that would incite her to
revolution also, and they advocated reform while yet there was time. The
general fear of a revolution gave the government of England to the Tories,
and kept them in power for several decades. And England was ripe for
trouble. The government was but nominally representative. No Catholic,
Jew, Dissenter or poor man had a vote or could hold a seat in Parliament.
Industrially and economically the country was in the condition of France
in the year of Arthur Young's journey. The poverty was abject, the relief
futile and the hatred of the poor for the rich was inflammatory.
George III, slipping into feebleness and insanity, yet jealous of his
unconstitutional power, was a vacillating despot, quarrelling with his
Commons and his Ministers. Lord Eldon as Chancellor, but with as nearly the
control of a Premier as the King would allow, was the staunch upholder of
all things that have since been disproved and discarded. Bagehot said of
him that "he believed in everything which it is impossible to believe in."
France and Napoleon threatened across the narrow channel. England still
growled at the loss of her American colonies. It was as yet the England
of the old regime. The great reforms were to come thirty years later--the
Catholic Emancipation, the abolishment of slavery in the colonies, the
suppression of the pocket boroughs, the gross bribery of elections, the
cleaning of the poor laws and the courts of justice.
It was in this dark hour of English history that the writers polished their
brasses and set up as Persons. And if the leading articles that they wrote
of mornings stung and snapped with venom, it is natural that the book
reviews on which they spent their afternoons had also some vinegar in them,
especially if they concerned books written by those of the opposition. And
other writers, even if they had no political connection, borrowed their
manners from those who had. It was the animosities of party politics that
set the general tone. Billingsgate that had grown along the wharves of the
lower river, was found to be of service in Parliament and gave a spice and
sparkle even to a book review. Presently a large part of literary England
wore the tags of political preference. Writers were often as clearly
distinguished as were the ladies in the earlier day, when Addison wrote his
paper on party patches. There were seats of Moral Philosophy to be handed
out, under-secretaryships, consular appointments. It is not enough to say
that Francis Jeffrey was a reviewer, he was as well a Whig and was running
a Review that was Whig from the front cover to the back. Leigh Hunt was not
merely a poet, for he was also a radical, and therefore in the opinions of
Tories, a believer in immorality and indecency. No matter how innocent
a title might appear, it was held in suspicion, on the chance that it
assailed the Ministry or endangered the purity of England. William Gifford
was more than merely the editor of the Quarterly Review, for he was as well
a Tory editor whose duty it was to pry into Whiggish roguery. Lockhart and
Wilson, who wrote in Blackwood's, were Tories tooth and nail, biting and
scratching for party. Nowadays, literature, having found the public to be
its most profitable patron, works hard and even abjectly for its favor.
Although there are defects in the arrangement, it must be confessed that
the divorce of literature from politics contributes to the general peace of
the household.
The Edinburgh Review was founded in 1802, the Quarterly Review in 1809,
Blackwood's Magazine in 1817. These three won distinction among others of
less importance, and from them only I quote. In 1802, when Tory rule was
strongest and Lord Eldon flourished, there was living in Edinburgh a group
of young men who were for the most part briefless barristers. Their case
was worse because they were Whigs. Few cases came their way and no offices.
These young men were Francis Jeffrey, Francis Horner, Henry Brougham, and
there was also Sydney Smith who had just come to Edinburgh from an English
country parish. The eldest was thirty-one, the youngest twenty-three.
Although all of them had brilliant lives before them, not one of them had
made as yet more than a step toward his accomplishment. Sydney Smith had
been but lately an obscure curate, buried in the middle of Salisbury Plain,
away from all contact with the world. Francis Jeffrey had been a hack
writer in London, had studied medicine, had sought unsuccessfully a
government position in India, had written poor sonnets, and was now
lounging with but a scanty occupation in the halls of the law courts.
Francis Horner had just come to the Scottish bar straight from his studies.
Henry Brougham, who in days to come was to be Lord Chancellor of England
and to whose skill in debate the passing of the Great Reform bill of 1832
is partly due, is also just admitted to the practice of the law.
The founding of the Review was casual. These men were accustomed to meet of
an evening for general discussion and speculation. It happened one night as
they sat together--the place was a garret if legend is to be believed--that
Sydney Smith lamented that their discussions came to nothing, for they were
all Whigs, all converted to the cause; whereas if they could only bring
their opinions to the outside public they could stir opinion. From so
slight a root the Review sprouted. Sydney Smith was made editor and kept
the position until after the appearance of the first number, when Jeffrey
succeeded him. The Review became immediately a power, appearing quarterly
and striking its blows anonymously against a sluggish government, lashing
the Tory writers, and taking its part, which is of greater consequence, in
the promulgation of the Whig reforms which were to ripen in thirty years
and convert the old into modern England. In the destruction of outworn
things, it was, as it were, a magazine of Whig explosives.
The Quarterly Review was the next to come and it was Tory. John Murray, the
London publisher, had been the English distributor of the Edinburgh Review.
In 1809, two considerations moved him to found in London a review to rival
the Scotch periodical. First the Tory party was being hard hit by the
Edinburgh Review and there was need of defense and retaliation. In the
second place, John Murray saw that if his publishing house was to flourish,
it must provide this new form of literature that had become so popular.
For the very shortness of the essays and articles, in which extensive
conditions were summarized for quick digestion, had met with English
approval as well as Scotch. People had become accustomed, says Bagehot, of
taking "their literature in morsels, as they take sandwiches on a journey."
Murray appealed to George Canning, then in office, for assistance and was
introduced to William Gifford as a man capable of the undertaking, who
would also meet the favor of the government party. The rise of the
Quarterly Review was not brilliant. It did not fill the craving for
novelty, inasmuch as the Edinburgh was already in the field. Furthermore,
there is not the opportunity in defense for as conspicuous gallantry as in
offensive warfare.
It was eight years before another enduring review was started. William
Blackwood of Edinburgh had grown like Murray from a bookseller to a
publisher, and he, too, looked for a means of increasing his prestige. He
had launched a review the year previously, in 1816, but it had foundered
when it was scarcely off the ways. His second attempt he was determined
must be successful. His new editors were John G. Lockhart and John Wilson,
and the new policy, although nominally Tory, was first and last the
magazine's notoriety. It hawked its wares into public notice by sensational
articles and personal vilification. Wilson was thirty-two and Lockhart
twenty-three, yet they were as mischievous as boys. In their pages is found
the most abominable raving that has ever passed for literary criticism.
They did not need any party hatred to fire them. William Blackwood
welcomed any abuse that took his magazine out of "the calm of respectable
mediocrity." Anything that stung or startled was welcome to a place in its
pages.
So Blackwood's was published and Edinburgh city, we may be sure, set up a
roar of delight and anger. Never before had one's friends been so assailed.
Never before had one's enemies been so grilled. How pleasing for a Tory
fireside was the mud bath with which it defiled Coleridge, who was--and you
had always known it--"little better than a rogue." One's Tory dinner was
the more toothsome for the hot abuse of the Chaldee Manuscript. What stout
Tory, indeed, would doze of an evening on such a sheet! There followed
of course cases of libel. The editors even found it safer, after the
publication of the first number, to retire for a time to the country until
the city cooled.
I choose now to turn to the pages of these three reviews and set out before
you samples of their criticisms, in order that you may contrast them
with our own literary judgments. I warn you in fairness that I have been
disposed to choose the worst, yet there are hundreds of other criticisms
but little better. Of the three reviews, Blackwood's was the least
seriously political in its policy, yet its critical vilifications are the
worst. The Edinburgh Review, the most able of the three and the most in
earnest in politics, is the least vituperative. With this introduction, let
us shake the pepperpot and lay out the strong vinegar of our feast!
In the judgment of the Edinburgh Review, Tom Moore, who had just published
his "Odes and Epistles" but had not yet begun his Irish melodies, is a man
who "with some brilliancy of fancy, and some show of classical erudition
... may boast, if the boast can please him, of being the most licentious of
modern versifiers, and the most poetical of those who, in our times, have
devoted their talents to the propagation of immorality. We regard his book,
indeed, as a public nuisance.... He sits down to ransact the impure places
of his memory for inflammatory images and expressions, and commits them
laboriously in writing, for the purpose of insinuating pollution into the
minds of unknown and unsuspecting readers."
Francis Jeffrey wrote this, and Moore challenged him to fight. The police
interfered, and as Jeffrey put it, "the affair ended amicably. We have
since breakfasted together very lovingly. He has expressed penitence for
what he has written and declared that he will never again apply any little
talents he may possess to such purpose: and I have said that I shall be
happy to praise him whenever I find that he has abjured these objectionable
topics." It was Sydney Smith who said of Jeffrey he would "damn the solar
system--bad light--planets too distant--pestered with comets. Feeble
contrivance--could make a better with great ease."
Jeffrey reviewed Wordsworth and found in the "Lyrical Ballads"
"vulgarity, affectation and silliness." He is alarmed, moreover, lest
his "childishness, conceit and affectation" spread to other authors. He
proposes a poem to be called "Elegiac Stanzas to a Sucking Pig," and of
"Alice Fell" he writes that "if the publishing of such trash as this be
not felt as an insult on the public taste, we are afraid it cannot be
insulted." When the "White Doe of Rylstone" was published--no prime
favorite, I confess, of my own--Jeffrey wrote that it had the merit of
being the very worst poem he ever saw imprinted in a quarto volume. "It
seems to us," he wrote, "to consist of a happy union of all the faults,
without any of the beauties, which belong to his school of poetry. It is
just such a work, in short, as some wicked enemy of that, school might be
supposed to have devised, on purpose to make it ridiculous."
Lord Byron, on the publication of an early volume, is counselled "that he
do forthwith abandon poetry ... the mere rhyming of the final syllable,
even when accompanied by the presence of a certain number of feet ... is
not the whole art of poetry. We would entreat him to believe," continued
the reviewer, "that a certain portion of liveliness, somewhat of fancy, is
necessary to constitute a poem; and that a poem in the present day, to
be read, must contain at least one thought...." It was this attack that
brought forth Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers."
As long as Jeffrey hoped to enlist Southey to write for the Edinburgh
Review, he treated him with some favor. But Southey took up with the
Quarterly. "The Laureate," says the Edinburgh presently, "has now been
out of song for a long time: But we had comforted ourselves with the
supposition that he was only growing fat and lazy.... The strain, however,
of this publication, and indeed of some that went before it, makes us
apprehensive that a worse thing has befallen him ... that the worthy
inditer of epics is falling gently into dotage."
Now for the Quarterly Review, if by chance it can show an equal spleen!
There lived in the early days of the nineteenth century a woman by the name
of Lady Morgan, who was the author of several novels and books of travel.
Although her record in intelligence and morals is good, John Croker,
who regularly reviewed her books, accuses her works of licentiousness,
profligacy, irreverence, blasphemy, libertinism, disloyalty and atheism.
There are twenty-six pages of this in one review only, and any paragraph
would be worth the quoting for its ferocity. After this attack it was
Macaulay who said he hated Croker like "cold boiled veal."
The Quarterly reviewed Keats' "Endymion," although the writer naively
states at the outset that he has not read the poem. "Not that we have been
wanting in our duty," he writes, "far from it--indeed, we have made efforts
almost as superhuman as the story itself appears to be, to get through it;
but with the fullest stretch of our perseverance we are forced to confess
that we have not been able to struggle beyond the first of the four
books...." Finally he questions whether Keats is the author's name, for
he doubts "that any man in his senses would put his real name to such a
rhapsody."
Leigh Hunt's "Rimini" the Quarterly finds to be an "ungrammatical,
unauthorized, chaotic jargon, such as we believe was never before spoken,
much less written.... We never," concludes the reviewer, "in so few lines
saw so many clear marks of the vulgar impatience of a low man, conscious
and ashamed of his wretched vanity, and labouring, with coarse flippancy,
to scramble over the bounds of birth and education, and fidget himself into
the stout-heartedness of being familiar with a Lord." In a later review,
Hunt is a propounder of atheism. "Henceforth," says the reviewer, "... he
may slander a few more eminent characters, he may go on to deride venerable
and holy institutions, he may stir up more discontent and sedition, but he
will have no peace of mind within ... he will live and die unhonoured
in his own generation, and, for his own sake it is to be hoped, moulder
unknown in those which are to follow."
Hazlitt belongs to a "class of men by whom literature is more than at any
period disgraced." His style is suited for washerwomen, a "class of
females with whom ... he and his friend Mr. Hunt particularly delight to
associate."
Shelley, writes the Quarterly, "is one of that industrious knot of authors,
the tendency of whose works we have in our late Numbers exposed to the
caution of our readers ... for with perfect deliberation and the steadiest
perseverance he perverts all the gifts of his nature, and does all the
injury, both public and private, which his faculties enable him to
perpetrate." His "poetry is in general a mere jumble of words and
heterogeneous ideas." "The Cloud" is "simple nonsense." "Prometheus
Unbound" is a "great storehouse of the obscure and unintelligible." In the
"Sensitive Plant" there is "no meaning." And for Shelley himself, he is
guilty of a great many terrible things, including verbiage, impiety,
immorality and absurdity.