than that he sells his opinions for food. According to Mr. Fawcett
he is distinguished for “real, hysterical, vigilant, unhealthy
sensitiveness,” and nurses this unpleasant feeling to such a degree
that, should an author object to being ill-treated at his hands, the
critic is immediately offended into saying something more abominable
still. In fact, like an uncompromising mother I once knew, who always
punished her children till they looked pleasant, he requires his
smarting victims to smile beneath the rod. Happily there is a cure,
and a very radical one, too, for this painful state of affairs. Mr.
Fawcett proposes that all such offenders should be obliged to buy the
work which they dissect, rightly judging that the book notices would
grow beautifully less under such stringent treatment. Indeed, were it
extended a little further, and all readers obliged to buy the books
they read, the publishers, the sellers, and the reviewers might spare
the time to take a holiday together.
Mr. Rees is quite as severe and much more ungrateful in his strictures;
for, after stating that the misbehavior of the critic is a source of
great amusement to the thoughtful student, he proceeds to chastise that
misbehavior, as though it had never entertained him at all. In his
opinion, the reviewer, being guided exclusively by a set of obsolete
and worthless rules, is necessarily incapable of recognizing genius
under any new development: “He usually is as little fitted to deal with
the tasks he sets himself as a manikin is to growl about the anatomy of
a star, setting forth at the same time his own thoughts as to how it
should be formed.” Vanity is the mainspring of his actions: “He fears
to be thought beneath his author, and so doles out a limited number
of praises and an unlimited quantity of slur.” Like the Welshman, he
strikes in the dark, thus escaping just retribution; and in his stupid
ignorance he seeks to “rein in the wingèd steed,” from having no
conception of its aerial powers.
Now this is a formidable indictment, and some of the charges may be
not without foundation; but if, as too often happens, the “wingèd
steed” is merely a donkey standing ambitiously on its hind legs, who
but the critic can compel it to resume its quadrupedal attitude? If,
as Mr. Walter Bagehot warned us some years ago, “reading is about to
become a series of collisions against aggravated breakers, of beatings
with imaginary surf,” who but the critic can steer us safely through
the storm? Never, in fact, were his duties more sharply defined or
more sorely needed than at present, when the average reader, like the
unfortunate Mr. Boffin, stands bewildered by the Scarers in Print, and
finds life all too short for their elucidation. The self-satisfied who
“know what they prefer,” and read accordingly, are like the enthusiasts
who follow their own consciences without first accurately ascertaining
whither they are being taken. It has been well said that the object of
criticism is simply to clear the air about great work for the benefit
of ordinary people. We only waste our powers when we refuse a guide,
and by forcing our minds hither and thither, like navigators exploring
each new stream while ignorant of its course and current, we squander
in idle researches the time and thought which should send us steadily
forward on our road. Worse still, we vitiate our judgments by perverse
and presumptuous conclusions, and weaken our untrained faculties by
the very methods we hoped would speed their growth. If Mr. Ruskin and
Mr. Matthew Arnold resemble each other in nothing else, they have
both taught earnestly and persistently, through long and useful lives,
the supreme necessity of law, the supreme merit of obedience. Mr.
Arnold preached it with logical coldness, after his fashion, and Mr.
Ruskin with illogical impetuosity, after his; but the lesson remains
practically the same. “All freedom is error,” writes the author of
Queen of the Air, who is at least blessed with the courage of his
convictions. “Every line you lay down is either right or wrong: it may
be timidly and awkwardly wrong, or fearlessly and impudently wrong; the
aspect of the impudent wrongness is pleasurable to vulgar persons, and
is what they commonly call ‘free’ execution.... I have hardly patience
to hold my pen and go on writing, as I remember the infinite follies of
modern thought in this matter, centred in the notion that liberty is
good for a man, irrespectively of the use he is likely to make of it.”
But he does go on writing, nevertheless, long after this slender stock
of patience is exhausted, and in his capacity of critic he lays down
Draconian laws which his disciples seem bound to wear as a heavy yoke
around their necks. “Who made Mr. Ruskin a judge or a nursery governess
over us?” asks an irreverent contributor to Macmillan; and why, after
all, should we abstain from reading Darwin, and Grote, and Coleridge,
and Kingsley, and Thackeray, and a host of other writers, who may or
may not be gratifying to our own tastes, because Mr. Ruskin has tried
and found them wanting? It is not the province of a critic to bar us in
a wholesale manner from all authors he does not chance to like, but to
aid us, by his practiced judgment, to extract what is good from every
field, and to trace, as far as in us lies, those varying degrees of
excellence which it is to our advantage to discern. It was in this way
that Mr. Arnold, working with conscientious and dispassionate serenity,
opened our eyes to new beauty, and strengthened us against vicious
influences; he added to our sources of pleasure, he helped us to enjoy
them, and not to recognize his kindly aid would be an ungracious form
of self-deception. If he were occasionally a little puzzling, as in
some parts of Celtic Literature, where the qualities he detected
fall meaningless on our ears, it is a wholesome lesson in humility to
acknowledge our bewilderment. Why should the lines
“What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with quiet citadel,
Is emptied of its folk this pious morn?”
be the expression of a purely Greek form of thought, “as Greek as a
thing from Homer or Theocritus;” and
“In such a night
Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand,
Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love
To come again to Carthage,”
be as purely Celtic? Why should
“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows”
be Greek, and
“Fast-fading violets cover’d up in leaves”
be Celtic? That harmless nondescript, the general reader, be he ever
so anxious for enlightenment, is forced to confess he really does not
know; and if his ignorance be of the complacent order, he adds an
impatient doubt as to whether Mr. Arnold knew either, just as when he
“comes up gasping” from a sudden plunge into Browning, he is prompt to
declare his firm conviction that the poet never had the faintest idea
what he was writing about.
But there is another style of enigma with which critics are wont to
harry and perplex us, and one has need of a “complication-proof mind,”
like Sir George Cornewall Lewis, to see clearly through the tangle. Mr.
Churton Collins, in his bitter attack on Mr. Gosse in the Quarterly
Review, objected vehemently to ever-varying descriptions of a single
theme. He did not think that if Drayton’s Barons’ Wars be a “serene and
lovely poem,” it could well have a “passionate music running through
it,” or possess “irregular force and sudden brilliance of style.”
Perhaps he was right; but there are few critics who can help us to know
and feel a poem like Mr. Gosse, and fewer still who write with such
consummate grace and charm. It is only when we pass from one reviewer
to another that the shifting lights thrown upon an author dazzle and
confuse us. Like the fifty-six different readings of the first line of
the Orlando Furioso, there are countless standpoints from which we are
invited to inspect each and every subject; and unless we follow the
admirable example of Mr. Courthope, who solves a difficulty by gently
saying, “The matter is one not for argument, but for perception,” we
are lost in the mazes of indecision. Thus Mr. Ruskin demonstrates most
beautifully the great superiority of Sir Walter Scott’s heroines over
his heroes, and by the time we settle our minds to this conviction
we find that Mr. Bagehot, that most acute and exhausting of critics,
thinks the heroines inferior in every way, and that Sir Walter was
truly felicitous only in his male characters.
Happily, this is a point on which we should be able to decide for
ourselves without much prompting; but all disputed topics are not
equally intelligible. There is the vexed and vexing question of
romantic and classical, conservative and liberal poetry, about which
Mr. Courthope and Mr. Andrew Lang and Mr. Myers have had so much to
say of late, and which is, at best, but a dimly lighted path for the
uninitiated to travel. There is that perpetual problem, Mr. Walt
Whitman, the despair and the stumbling-block of critics, to whose
extraordinary effusions, as the Quarterly Review neatly puts it,
“existing standards cannot be applied with exactness.” There is Emily
Brontë, whose verses we were permitted for years to ignore, and in
whom we are now peremptorily commanded to recognize a true poet.
Miss Mary Robinson, who, in common with most female biographers, is
an enthusiast rather than a critic, never wearies of praising the
“splendid and vigorous movement” of Emily Brontë’s poems, “with their
surplus imagination, their sweeping impressiveness, their instinctive
music and irregular rightness of form.” On the other hand, Mr. Gosse,
while acknowledging in them a very high order of merit, laments that
such burning thoughts should be “concealed for the most part in the
tame and ambling measures dedicated to female verse by the practice of
Felicia Hemans and Letitia Landon.” So far, indeed, from recognizing
the “vigorous movement” and “irregular rightness of form” which Miss
Robinson so much admires, he describes A Death Scene, one of the finest
in point of conception, as “clothed in a measure that is like the
livery of a charitable institution.” “There’s allays two ’pinions,”
says Mr. Macey, in Silas Marner; but we cannot help sometimes wishing,
in the cause of perspicuity, that they were not so radically different.
As for the pure absurdities of criticism, they may be culled like
flowers from every branch, and are pleasing curiosities for those
who have a liking for such relics. Were human nature less complacent
in its self-sufficiency, they might even serve as useful warnings to
the impetuous young reviewers of to-day, and so be not without their
salutary influence on literature. Whether the result of ignorance,
or dullness, or bad temper, of national or religious prejudices, or
of mere personal pique, they have boldly challenged the ridicule of
the world, and its amused contempt has pilloried them for all time.
When Voltaire sneered at the Inferno, and thought Hamlet the work of
a drunken savage, he at least made a bid for the approbation of his
countrymen, who, as Schlegel wittily observes, were in the habit of
speaking as though Louis XIV. had put an end to cannibalism in Europe.
But what did Englishmen think when Hume informed them that Shakespeare
was “born in a rude age, and educated in the lowest manner, without
instruction from the world or from books;” and that he could not uphold
for any time “a reasonable propriety of thought”? How did they feel
when William Maginn brutally declared that Keats
“the doubly dead
In that he died so young,”
was but a cockney poet, who wrote vulgar indecorums, “probably in
the indulgence of his social propensities”? How did they feel when
the same Maginn called the Adonais “dreary nonsense” and “a wild
waste of words,” and devoted bitter pages to proving that Shelley
was not only undeserving, but “hopeless of poetic reputation”? Yet
surely indignation must have melted into laughter, when this notable
reviewer--who has been recently reprinted as a shining light for the
new generation--added serenely that “a hundred or a hundred thousand
verses might be made, equal to the best in Adonais, without taking
the pen off the paper.” This species of sweeping assertion has been
repeated by critics more than once, to the annoyance of their friends
and the malicious delight of their enemies. Ruskin, who, with all his
gifts, seems cursed with what Mr. Bagehot calls “a mind of contrary
flexure, whose particular bent it is to contradict what those around
them say,” has ventured to tell the world that any head clerk of a
bank could write a better history of Greece than Mr. Grote, if he would
have the vanity to waste his time over it; and I have heard a man of
fair attainments and of sound scholarship contend that there were
twenty living authors who could write plays as fine as Shakespeare’s.
Jeffrey’s extraordinary blunders are too well known to need repetition,
and Christopher North was not without his share of similar mishaps;
Walpole cheerfully sentenced Scandinavian poetry in the bulk as the
horrors of a Runic savage; Madame de Staël objected to the “commonness”
of Miss Austen’s novels; Wordsworth thought Voltaire dull, and Southey
complained that Lamb’s essays lacked “sound religious feeling;” George
Borrow, whose literary tastes were at least as erratic as they were
pronounced, condemned Sir Walter Scott’s Woodstock as “tiresome,
trashy, and unprincipled,” and ranked Shakespeare, Pope, Addison,
and the Welsh bard Huw Morris together as “great poets,” apparently
without recognizing any marked difference in their respective claims.
Then there is Taine, who finds Pendennis and Vanity Fair too full of
sermons; Mr. Dudley Warner, who compares the mild and genial humor of
Washington Irving to the acrid vigor of Swift; and Mr. Howells, who,
perhaps in pity for our sense of loss, would fain persuade us that
we could no longer endure either the “mannerisms” of Dickens or the
“confidential attitude” of Thackeray, were we happy enough to see these
great men still in our midst.
Imagine, ye who can, the fiery Hazlitt’s wrath, if he but knew that
in punishment for his youthful admiration of the Nouvelle Héloïse a
close resemblance has been traced by friendly hands between himself
and its author. Think of Lord Byron’s feelings, if he could hear Mr.
Swinburne saying that it was greatly to his--Byron’s--credit that
he knew himself for a third-rate poet! Even though it be the only
thing to his credit that Swinburne has so far discovered, one doubts
whether it would greatly mollify his lordship, or reconcile him to
being classed as a “Bernesque poet,” and the companion of those two
widely different creatures, Southey and Offenbach. Perhaps, indeed, his
lively sense of humor would derive a more positive gratification from
watching his angry critic run amuck through adjectives with frenzied
agility. Such sentences as “the blundering, floundering, lumbering, and
stumbling stanzas of Childe Harold, ... the gasping, ranting, wheezing,
broken-winded verse, ... the hideous absurdities and jolter-headed
jargon,” must surely be less deeply offensive to Lord Byron’s admirers
than to Mr. Swinburne’s. They come as near to describing the noble
beauty of Childe Harold as does Southey’s senseless collection of
words to describing the cataract of Lodore, or any other cataract in
existence; and, since the days when Milton and Salmasius hurled “Latin
billingsgate” at each other’s heads, we have had no stronger argument
in favor of the comeliness of moderation.
“The most part of Mr. Swinburne’s criticism,” hints a recent reviewer,
“is surely very much of a personal matter,--personal, one may say,
in expression as well as in sensation.” He has always a “neat hand
at an epithet,” and the “jolter-headed jargon” of Byron is no finer
in its way than the “fanfaronade and falsetto of Gray.” But even the
charms of alliteration, joined to the fish-wife’s slang which has
recently so tickled the fancy of Punch,[11] cannot wholly replace
that clear-headed serenity which is the true test of a critic’s worth
and the most pleasing expression of his genius. He should have no
visible inclination to praise or blame; it is not his business, as
Mr. Bagehot puts it, to be thankful, and neither is he the queen’s
attorney pleading for conviction. Mr. Matthew Arnold, who considered
that Byron was “the greatest natural force, the greatest elementary
power, which has appeared in our literature since Shakespeare,”
presented his arguments plainly and without the faintest show of
enthusiasm. He did not feel the need of reviling somebody else in order
to emphasize his views, and he did not care to advance opinions without
some satisfactory explanation of their existence. Mr. Courthope may
content himself with saying that a matter is one not for argument, but
for perception; but Mr. Arnold gave a reason for the faith that was
in him. Mere preference on the part of a critic is not a sufficient
sanction for his verdicts, or at least it does not warrant his
imparting them to the public. Swinburne may honestly think four lines
of Wordsworth to be of more value than the whole of Byron, but that
is no reason why we should think so too. When Mr. George Saintsbury
avows a strong personal liking for some favorite authors,--Borrow and
Peacock, for instance,--he modestly states that this fact is not in
itself a convincing proof of their merit; but when Mr. Ernest Myers
says that he would sacrifice the whole of Childe Harold to preserve one
of Macaulay’s Lays, he seems to be offering a really impressive piece
of evidence. The tendency of critics to rush into print with whatever
they chance to think has resulted in readers who naturally believe that
what they think is every bit as good. Macaulay and Walter Savage Landor
are both instances of men whose unusual powers of discernment were
too often dimmed by their prejudices. Macaulay knew that Montgomery’s
poetry was bad, but he failed to see that Fouqué’s prose was good; and
Landor hit right and left, amid friends and foes, like the blinded Ajax
scourging the harmless flocks.
It is quite as amusing and far less painful to turn from the critics’
indiscriminate abuse to their equally indiscriminate praise, and to
read the glowing tributes heaped upon authors whose mediocrity has
barely saved them from oblivion. Compare the universal rapture which
greeted “the majestick numbers of Mr. Cowley” to the indifference which
gave scant welcome to the Hesperides. Mr. Gosse tells us that for half
a century Katherine Philips, the matchless Orinda, was an unquestioned
light in English song. “Her name was mentioned with those of Sappho and
Corinna, and language was used without reproach which would have seemed
a little fulsome if addressed to the Muse herself.”
“For, as in angels, we
Do in thy verses see
Both improved sexes eminently meet;
They are than Man more strong, and more than Woman sweet.”
So sang Cowley to this much admired lady; and the Earl of Roscommon, in
some more extravagant and amusing stanzas, asserted it to be his unique
experience that, on meeting a pack of angry wolves in Scythia,
“The magic of Orinda’s name
Not only can their fierceness tame,
But, if that mighty word I once rehearse,
They seem submissively to roar in verse.”
“It is easier to flatter than to praise,” says Jean Paul, but even
flattery is not always the facile work it seems.
Sir Walter Scott, who was strangely disposed to undervalue his own
merit as a poet, preserved the most genuine enthusiasm for the work of
others. When his little daughter was asked by James Ballantyne what she
thought of The Lady of the Lake, she answered with perfect simplicity
that she had not read it. “Papa says there is nothing so bad for young
people as reading bad poetry.” Yet Sir Walter always spoke of Madoc
and Thalaba with a reverence that would seem ludicrous were it not so
frankly sincere. Southey himself could not have admired them more; and
when Jeffrey criticised Madoc with flippant severity in the Edinburgh
Review, we find Scott hastening to the rescue in a letter full of
earnest and soothing praise. “A poem whose merits are of that higher
tone,” he argues, “does not immediately take with the public at large.
It is even possible that during your own life you must be contented
with the applause of the few whom nature has gifted with the rare
taste for discriminating in poetry. But the mere readers of verse must
one day come in, and then Madoc will assume his real place, at the feet
of Milton.”[12] The mere readers of verse, being in no wise responsible
for Milton’s position in literature, have so far put no one at his
feet; nor have they even verified Sir Walter’s judgment when, writing
again to Southey, he says with astonishing candor, “I am not such an
ass as not to know that you are my better in poetry, though I have had,
probably but for a time, the tide of popularity in my favor.” The same
spirit of self-depreciation, rare enough to be attractive, made him
write to Joanna Baillie that, after reading some of her songs, he had
thrust by his own in despair.
But if Sir Walter was an uncertain critic, his views on criticism
were marked by sound and kindly discretion, and his patience under
attack was the result of an evenly balanced mind, conscious of its
own strength, yet too sane to believe itself infallible. He had a
singular fancy for showing his manuscripts to his friends, and it is
quite delicious to see how doubtful and discouraging were their first
comments. Gray, when hard pressed by the “light and genteel” verses
of his companion, Richard West, was not more frugal of his doled-out
praises. But Scott exacted homage neither from his acquaintances nor
from the public. When it came--and it did come very soon in generous
abundance--he basked willingly in the sunshine; but he had no uneasy
vanity to be frightened by the shade. He would have been as sincerely
amused to hear Mr. Borrow call Woodstock “tiresome, trashy, and
unprincipled” as Matthew Arnold used to be when pelted with strong
language by the London newspapers. “I have made a study of the
Corinthian or leading-article style,” wrote the great critic, with
exasperating urbanity; “and I know its exigencies, and that they are no
more to be quarreled with than the law of gravitation.” In fact, the
most hopeless barrier to strife is the steady indifference of a man
who knows he has work to do, and who goes on doing it, irrespective of
anybody’s opinion. Lady Harriet Ashburton, who dearly loved the war of
words, in which she was sure to be a victor, was forced to confess that
where no friction was excited, even her barbed shafts fell harmless.
“It is like talking into a soft surface,” she sighed, with whimsical
despondency; “there is no rebound.”