yet come to that hour of authorship when it reverted to the peasantry,
now turned people, and threw itself upon the people's generous
acceptance and recognition for bread and fame. But when that hour came,
it brought with it the honor of a reverent and persistent curiosity
concerning literature and the literary life, which the philosopher said
he was afraid could not survive the actual superabundance of authors and
the transformation of the novelist into the artisan. There seemed, he
pursued, a fixed formula for the manufacture of a work of fiction, to be
studied and practised like any other. Literature was degraded from an
art to a poor sort of science, in the practical application of which
thousands were seen prospering; for the immense output of our press
represented the industry of hundreds and thousands. A book was
concocted, according to a patent recipe, advertised, and sold like any
other nostrum, and perhaps the time was already here when it was no
longer more creditable to be known as the author of a popular novel than
as the author of a popular medicine, a Pain-killer, a Soothing Syrup, a
Vegetable Compound, a Horse Liniment, or a Germicide. Was it possible,
he asked, for a reader of the last book selling a hundred thousand
copies to stand in the loving or thrilling awe of the author that we
used to feel for Longfellow and Tennyson, for Emerson and Carlyle, for
Hawthorne and George Eliot, for Irving and Scott, or for any of their
great elders or youngers? He repeated that perhaps authorship had worked
its worshippers too hard, but there was no doubt that their worship was
a genuine devotion. For at least a hundred and fifty years it had been
eagerly offered in a full acceptance of the Schiller superstition that
at the sharing of the earth the poet, representing authorship, had been
so much preoccupied with higher things that he had left the fleshpots
and the loaves and fishes to others, and was to be compensated with a
share of the divine honors paid to Jove himself. From Goethe to Carlyle,
what a long roll of gods, demigods, and demisemigods it was! It might
have been bad for the deities, and the philosopher rather thought it
was, but burning incense on the different shrines was an excellent thing
for the votaries, and kept them out of all sorts of mischiefs, low
pleasures, and vain amusements. Whether that was really so or not, the
doubt remained whether authorship was not now a creed outworn. Did
tender maids and virtuous matrons still cherish the hope of some day
meeting their literary idols in the flesh? Did generous youth aspire to
see them merely at a distance, and did doting sires teach their children
that it was an epoch-making event when a great poet or novelist visited
the country; or when they passed afar, did they whip some favored boy,
as the father of Benvenuto Cellini whipped him at sight of a salamander
in the fire that he might not forget the prodigy? Now that the earth had
been divided over again, and the poet in his actual guise of novelist
had richly shared in its goods with the farmer, the noble, the merchant,
and the abbot, was it necessary or even fair that he should be the guest
of heaven? In other words, now that every successful author could keep
his automobile, did any one want his autograph?
In the silence that fell upon the company at these words, the ticking of
the clock under its classic pediment on the mantel was painfully
audible, and had the effect of intimating that time now had its innings
and eternity was altogether out of it. Several minutes seemed to pass
before any one had the courage to ask whether the degradation of
authorship was not partially the result of the stand taken by the
naturalists in Zola, who scorned the name of art for his calling and
aspired to that of science. The hardy adventurer who suggested this
possibility said that it was difficult to imagine the soul stirred to
the same high passion by the botanist, the astronomer, the geologist,
the electrician, or even the entomologist as in former times by the
poet, the humorist, the novelist, or the playwright. If the fictionist
of whatever sort had succeeded in identifying himself with the
scientist, he must leave the enjoyment of divine honors to the pianist,
the farce-comedian, the portrait-painter, the emotional actor, and the
architect, who still deigned to practise an art.
The philosopher smiled, and owned that this was very interesting, and
opened up a fresh field of inquiry. The first question there was whether
the imaginative author were not rather to blame for not having gone far
enough in the scientific direction in the right scientific fashion than
for having taken that course at all. The famous reproach of poetry made
by Huxley, that it was mostly "sensual caterwauling," might well have
given the singer pause in striking the sympathetic catgut of his lyre:
perhaps the strings were metallic; but no matter. The reproach had a
justice in it that must have stung, and made the lyrist wish to be an
atomic theorist at any cost. In fact, at that very moment science had,
as it were, caught the bread out of fiction's mouth, and usurped the
highest functions of imagination. In almost every direction of its
recent advance it had made believe that such and such a thing was so,
and then proceeded to prove it. To this method we owed not only the
possession of our present happy abundance of microbes in every sort, but
our knowledge of the universe in almost every respect. Science no longer
waited for the apple to fall before inferring a law of gravitation, but
went about with a stick knocking fruit off every bough in the hope that
something suggestive would come of it. On make-believes of all kinds it
based the edifices of all kinds of eternal veracities. It behooved
poetry, or fiction, which was radically the same, to return to its
earliest and simplest devices if it would find itself in the embrace of
science, and practise the make-beliefs of its infancy. Out of so many
there were chances of some coming true if they were carried far enough
and long enough. In fact, the hypothetical method of science had
apparently been used in the art of advertising the works in which the
appetite of the new reading public was flattered. The publishers had
hypothesized from the fact of a population of seventy millions, the
existence of an immense body of raw, coarse minds, untouched by taste or
intelligence, and boldly addressed the new fiction to it. As in many
suppositions of science their guess proved true.
Then why, the hardy listener who had spoken before inquired, was not
make-believe the right method for the author, if it was the right method
for the scientist and the publisher? Why should not the novelist
hypothesize cases hitherto unknown to experience, and then go on by
persistent study to find them true? It seemed to this inquirer that the
mistake of fiction, when it refused longer to be called an art and
wished to be known as a science, was in taking up the obsolescent
scientific methods, and in accumulating facts, or human documents, and
deducing a case from them, instead of boldly supposing a case, as the
new science did, and then looking about for occurrences to verify it.
The philosopher said, Exactly; this was the very thing he was contending
for. The documents should be collected in support of the hypothesis; the
hypothesis should not be based on documents already collected. First the
inference, then the fact; was not that the new scientific way? It looked
like it; and it seemed as if the favorite literature of the new reading
public were quite in the spirit of the new science. Its bold events, its
prodigious characters, its incredible motives, were not they quite of
the nature of the fearless conjecture which imagined long and short
electric waves and then spread a mesh of wire to intercept them and
seize their message?
The hardy inquirer demanded: Then if so, why despise the literature of
the new reading public? Why despise the new reading public, anyway?
The philosopher responded that he despised nothing, not even a thing so
unphilosophical as modern science. He merely wished his interpellant to
observe again that the unification of the literary spirit and the
scientific spirit was degrading the literary man to the level of the
scientific man. He thought this was bad for the small remnant of
mankind, who in default of their former idolatry might take to the
worship of themselves. Now, however bad a writer might be, it was always
well for the reader to believe him better than himself. If we had not
been brought up in this superstition, what would have become of the
classics of all tongues? But for this, what was to prevent the present
company from making a clearance of three-fourths of the surrounding
shelves and feeding that dying flame on the hearth?
At this the host, who had been keeping himself in a modest abeyance,
came forward and put some sticks on the fire. He said he would like to
see any one touch his bindings; which seemed to be his notion of books.
Nobody minded him; but one of those dutyolators, who abound in a certain
sex, asked the philosopher what he thought we ought to do for the
maintenance of author-worship among us.
He answered, he had not thought of that; his mind had been fixed upon
the fact of its decay. But perhaps something could be done by looking up
the author whose book had sold least during the season, and asking him
candidly whether he would not like to be paid the divine honors now
going begging from one big seller to another; for the decay of
author-worship must be as much from the indifference of the authors as
from the irreverence of the readers. If such a low-selling author did
not seem to regard it as rather invidious, then pay him the divine
honors; it might be a wholesome and stimulating example; but perhaps we
should afterward have the demigod on our hands. Something might be
safelier done by writing, as with the present company, and inquiring
into "the present condition of polite learning." This would keep the
sacred flame alive, and give us the comfort of refined association in an
exquisite moment of joy from the sense of our superiority to other
people. That, after all, was the great thing.
The company drew a little closer round the fire. The rain beat upon the
panes, and the wind swept the wet leaves against them, while each
exhaled a sigh of aspiration not unmixed with a soft regret.
XXII
THE ADVANTAGES OF QUOTATIONAL CRITICISM
The talk round the Easy Chair one day was of that strange passion for
reading which has of late possessed the public, and the contagion or
infection by which it has passed to hundreds of thousands who never read
before; and then the talk was of how this prodigious force might be
controlled and turned in the right way: not suffered to run to waste
like water over the dam, but directed into channels pouring upon wheels
that turn the mills of the gods or something like that. There were, of
course, a great many words; in fact, talk is composed of words, and the
people at that luncheon were there for talking as well as eating, and
they did not mind how many words they used. But the sum of their words
was the hope, after a due season of despair, that the present passion
for reading might be made to eventuate in more civilization than it
seemed to be doing, if it could be brought back to good literature,
supposing it was ever there in great strength, and the question was how
to do this.
One of the company said he had lately been reading a good many books of
Leigh Hunt's, and after everybody had interrupted with "Delightful!"
"Perfectly charming!" and the like, he went on to observe that one of
the chief merits of Hunt seemed to be his aptness in quotation. That, he
remarked, was almost a lost art with critics, who had got to thinking
that they could tell better what an author was than the author himself
could. Like every other power disused, the power of apt quotation had
died, and there were very few critics now who knew how to quote: not one
knew, as Hunt, or Lamb, or Hazlitt, or the least of the great
quotational school of critics, knew. These had perhaps overworked their
gift, and might have been justly accused, as they certainly were
accused, of misleading the reader and making him think that the poets,
whose best they quoted, putting the finest lines in italics so that they
could not be missed, were as good throughout as in the passages given.
It was this sense of having abused innocence, or ignorance, which led to
the present reaction in criticism no doubt, and yet the present reaction
was an error. Suppose that the poets whose best was given by quotation
were not altogether as good as that? The critics never pretended they
were; they were merely showing how very good these poets could be, and
at the same time offering a delicate pleasure to the reader, who could
not complain that his digestion was overtaxed by the choice morsels. If
his pleasure in them prompted him to go to the entire poet quoted, in
the hope of rioting gluttonously upon him, the reader was rightly served
in one sense. In another, he was certainly not misserved or his time
wasted. It would be hard for him to prove that he could have employed it
more profitably.
Everybody, more or less, now sat up, and he who had the eye and ear of
the table went on to remark that he had not meant to make a defence of
the extinct school of quotational criticism. What he really meant to do
was to suggest a way out of the present situation in which the new
multitude of voracious readers were grossly feeding upon such
intellectual husks as swine would not eat, and imagining themselves
nourished by their fodder. There might be some person present who could
improve upon his suggestion, but his notion, as he conceived it, was
that something might be done in the line of quotational criticism to
restore the great poets to the public favor, for he understood that good
authors were now proportionately less read than they once were. He
thought that a pity: and the rest of the company joined in asking him
how he proposed to employ the quotational method for his purpose.
In answering he said that he would not go outside of the English
classics, and he would, for the present, deal only with the greatest of
these. He took it for granted that those listening were all agreed that
mankind would be advantaged in their minds or manners by a more or less
familiar acquaintance with Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton,
Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Burns, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley,
Keats, Tennyson, and Browning; he himself did not mind adding Scott to
the list, whose poetry he found much better than his prose. To bring
about an acquaintance which might very profitably ripen into intimacy,
he would have each of these poets treated in the whole measure of his
work as many or most of them had been topically or partially treated by
the quotational critics. Some one here made him observe that he was
laying out rather a large piece of work, and to this he answered, Not at
all; the work had been already done. Asked then, somewhat derisively,
why it need be done over again, he explained, with a modesty and
patience which restored him to the regard he had lost by the derision
(all had impartially united in it), that though the work had already
been done, there needed some slight additions to it which would easily
fit it to his purpose. He was not thinking of going in for one of those
dreadful series of books which seemed the dismay alike of publisher and
reader, and required rewriting of matter more than enough rewritten. In
fact, he said, that for his purpose the writing was done fully and
probably better than it could be done again, and it was only the reading
and quoting that demanded editorial attention.
Another said he did not see how that could be, and the inventor of the
brave scheme, which was still _in petto_, said that he would try to show
him. We had, he contended, only too great riches in the criticisms of
the poets open to our choice, but suppose we took Spenser and let Lowell
introduce him to us. There would be needed a very brief biographical
note, and then some able hand to intersperse the criticism with passages
from Spenser, or with amplifications of the existing quotations, such as
would give a full notion of the poet's scope and quality. The story of
each of his poems could be given in a few words, where the poems
themselves could not be given even in part, and with the constant help
of the critic the reader could be possessed of a luminous idea of the
poet, such as he probably could not get by going to him direct, though
this was not to be deprecated, but encouraged, after the preparatory
acquaintance. The explanatory and illustrative passages could be
interpolated in the text of the criticism without interrupting the
critic, and something for Spenser might thus be done on the scale of
what Addison did for Milton. It was known how those successive papers in
the _Spectator_ had rehabilitated one of the greatest English poets, or,
rather, rehabilitated the English public, and restored the poet and the
public to each other. They formed almost an ideal body of criticism, and
if they did not embody all that the reader need know of Milton, they
embodied so much that he could no longer feel himself ignorant of
Milton. In fact, they possessed him of a high degree of Miltonian
culture, which was what one wanted to have with respect to any poet.
They might be extended with still greater quotation, and if something
more yet were needed the essay on Milton which made Macaulay's
reputation might be employed as a vessel to catch the overrunnings of
the precious ichor.
Who could not wish to know the poetry of Keats as we already knew his
life through the matchless essay of Lowell? That might be filled out
with the most striking passages of his poetry, simply let in at
appropriate places, without breaking the flow of that high discourse,
and forming a rich accompaniment which could leave no reader unpleasured
or uninstructed. The passages given from the poet need not be relevant
to the text of the critic; they might be quite irrelevant and serve the
imaginable end still better. For instance, some passages might be given
in the teeth of the critic, and made to gainsay what he had been saying.
This would probably send the reader, if he was very much perplexed, to
the poet himself, which was the imaginable end. He might be disappointed
one way or he might be disappointed the other way, but in the mean while
he would have passed his time, and he would have instructed if he had
not amused himself.
It would be very interesting to take such a criticism as that of Lowell
on Dryden and give not only the fine things from him, but the things
that counted for the critic in his interesting contention that Dryden
failed of being a prime poet because of the great weight of prose in
him, and very good prose; or, as the critic charmingly put it, he had
wings that helped him run along the ground, but did not enable him to
fly. It would be most valuable for us to see how Dryden was a great
literary man, but not one of the greatest poets, and yet must be ranked
as a great poet. If the balance inclined now toward this opinion, and
now against it, very possibly the reader would find himself impelled to
turn to the poet's work, and again the imaginable end would be served.
A listener here asked why the talker went chiefly to Lowell for the
illustration of his theory, and was frankly answered, For the same
reason that he had first alluded to Leigh Hunt: because he had lately
been reading him. It was not because he had not read any other
criticism, or not that he entirely admired Lowell's; in fact, he often
found fault with that. Lowell was too much a poet to be a perfect
critic. He was no more the greatest sort of critic than Dryden was the
greatest sort of poet. To turn his figure round, he had wings that
lifted him into the air when he ought to be running along the ground.
The company laughed civilly at this piece of luck, and then they asked,
civilly still, if Leigh Hunt had not done for a great many poets just
what he was proposing to have done. What about the treatment of the
poets and the quotations from them in the volumes on _Wit and Humor,
Imagination and Fancy_, _A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla_, and the rest?
The talker owned that there was a great deal about these which was to
his purpose, but, upon the whole, the criticism was too desultory and
fragmentary, and the quotation was illustrative rather than
representative, and so far it was illusory. He had a notion that Hunt's
stories from the Italian poets were rather more in the line he would
have followed, but he had not read these since he was a boy, and he was
not prepared to answer for them.
One of the company said that she had read those Italian poets in Leigh
Hunt's version of them when she was a girl, and it had had the effect of
making her think she had read the poets themselves, and she had not
since read directly Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, or Tasso. She regarded
that as an irreparable injury, and she doubted whether, if the great
English poets could be introduced in that manner, very many people would
pursue their acquaintance for themselves. They would think they were
familiar with them already.
Yes, the talker assented, if that were the scheme, but it was not; or,
at least, it was only part of the scheme. The scheme was to give the
ever-increasing multitude of readers a chance to know something of the
best literature. If they chose to pursue the acquaintance, very good; if
they chose not to pursue the acquaintance, still very good; they could
not have made it at all without being somewhat refined and enlightened.
He felt very much about it as he felt about seeing Europe, which some
people left unseen because they could not give all the time to it they
would like. He always said to such people, Go if they could only be gone
a month. A day in Rome, or London, or Paris, was a treasure such as a
lifetime at home could not lay up; an hour of Venice or Florence was
precious; a moment of Milan or Verona, of Siena or Mantua, was beyond
price. So you could not know a great poet so little as not to be
enriched by him. A look from a beautiful woman, or a witty word from a
wise one, distinguished and embellished the life into which it fell, so
that it could never afterward be so common as it was before.
Why, it was asked from a silence in which all the ladies tried to think
whether the speaker had her in mind or not, and whether he ought really
to be so personal, why could not Mr. Morley's _English Men of Letters_
series be used to carry out the scheme proposed; and its proposer said
he had nothing to say against that, except perhaps that the frames might
be too much for the pictures. He would rather choose a critical essay,
as he had intimated, for the frame of each picture; in this sort of
thing we had an endless choice, both new and old. If he had any
preference it would be for the older-fashioned critics, like Hazlitt or
perhaps like De Quincey; he was not sure, speaking without the book,
whether De Quincey treated authors so much as topics, but he had the
sense of wonderful things in him about the eighteenth-century poets:
things that made you think you knew them, and that yet made you burn to
be on the same intimate terms with them as De Quincey himself.
His method of knowing the poets through the critics, the sympathetic
critics, who were the only real critics, would have the advantage of
acquainting the reader with the critics as well as the poets. The
critics got a good deal of ingratitude from the reader generally, and
perhaps in their character of mere reviewers they got no more than they
merited, but in their friendly function of ushers to the good things,
even the best things, in the authors they were studying, they had a
claim upon him which he could not requite too generously. They acted the
part of real friends, and in the high company where the reader found
himself strange and alone, they hospitably made him at home. Above all
other kinds of writers, they made one feel that he was uttering the good
things they said. Of course, for the young reader, there was the danger
of his continuing always to think their thoughts in their terms, but
there were also great chances that he would begin by-and-by to think
his own thoughts in terms of his own.
The more quotational the critics were, the better. For himself the
speaker said that he liked that old custom of printing the very finest
things in italics when it came to citing corroborative passages. It had
not only the charm of the rococo, the pathos of a bygone fashion, but it
was of the greatest use. No one is the worse for having a great beauty
pointed out in the author one is reading or reading from. Sometimes one
does not see the given beauty at first, and then he has the pleasure of
puzzling it out; sometimes he never sees it, and then his life is
sublimed with an insoluble conundrum. Sometimes, still, he sees what the
critic means, and disagrees with him. In this case he is not likely to
go to the end of his journey without finding a critic whom he agrees
with about the passage in question.
After all, however, it was asked by one that had not spoken before (with
that fine air of saying a novel thing which people put on who have not
spoken before), would not the superficial knowledge of the poets
imparted by quotational criticism result in a sort of pseudo-culture
which would be rather worse than nothing, a kind of intellectual plated
ware or aesthetic near-silk?
The talker said he thought not, and that he had already touched upon
some such point in what he had said about going to Europe for a few
months. He offered the opinion that there was no such thing as
pseudo-culture; there was culture or there was not; and the reader of a
quotational criticism, if he enjoyed the quotations, became, so far,
cultivated. It could not be said that he knew the poets treated of, but
neither could it be said that he was quite ignorant of them. As a
matter of fact, he did know them in a fashion, through a mind larger and
clearer than his own.