discriminating. The struggling young author, unless overweeningly
foolish, has little to fear from their hands; and, if his reputation
be once fairly established, all he chooses to write is received with
a gratitude which seems excessive to the more exacting readers of
France and England. If he be a humorist, we are always alert and
straining to see the fun; if a story-teller, we politely smother
our yawns, and say something about a keen analysis of character, a
marked originality of treatment, or a purely unconventional theme;
if a scholar, no pitfalls are dug for his unwary feet by reviewers
like Mr. Collins. Such virulent and personal attacks we consider
very uncomfortable reading, as in truth they are, and we have small
appetite at any time for a sound kernel beneath a bitter rind. Yet
surely in these days, when young students turn impatiently from the
very fountain-heads of learning, too much stress cannot be laid on
the continuity of literature, and on the absolute importance of the
classics to those who would intelligently explore the treasure-house
of English verse. Moreover, Mr. Collins has aimed a few well-directed
shafts against the ingenious system of mutual admiration, by which
a little coterie of writers, modern Della Cruscans, help each other
into prominence, while an unsuspecting public is made “the willing
dupe of puffers.” This delicate game, which is now conducted with such
well-rewarded skill by a few enterprising players, consists, not so
much in open flattery, though there is plenty of that too, as in the
minute chronicling of every insignificant circumstance of each other’s
daily lives, from the hour at which they breakfast to the amount of
exercise they find conducive to appetite, and the shape and size of
their dining-room tables. We are stifled by the literary gossip which
fills the newspapers and periodicals. Nothing is too trivial, nothing
too irrelevant, to be told; and when, in the midst of an article on
any subject, from grand-dukes to gypsies, a writer gravely stops to
explain that a perfectly valueless remark was made to him on such an
occasion by his friend such a one, whose interesting papers on such a
topic will be well remembered by the readers of such a magazine, we are
forcibly reminded of the late Master of Trinity’s sarcasm as to the
many things that are too unimportant to be forgotten.
People fed on sugared praises cannot be expected to feel an appetite
for the black broth of honest criticism. There was a time, now happily
past, when the reviewer’s skill lay simply in the clever detection
of flaws; it was his business in life to find out whatever was weak
or absurd in an author, and to hold it up for the amusement of those
who were not quick enough to see such things for themselves. Now his
functions are of a totally different order, and a great many writers
seem to think it his sole duty to bring them before the public in an
agreeable light, to say something about their books which will be
pleasant for them to read and to pass over in turn to their friends.
If he cannot do this, it is plain he has no sanction to say anything
at all. That the critic has a duty to the public itself is seldom
remembered; that his work is of the utmost importance, and second in
value only to the original conception he analyzes, is a truth few
people take the pains to grasp. Coleridge thought him a mere maggot,
battening upon authors’ brains; yet how often has he helped us to
gain some clear insight into this most shapeless and shadowy of great
men! Wordsworth underrated his utility, yet Wordsworth’s criticisms,
save those upon his own poems, are among the finest we can read; and,
to argue after the fashion of Mr. Myers, the average student would
gladly exchange The Idiot Boy, or Goody Blake and Harry Gill, for
another letter upon Dryden. As a matter of fact, the labors of the true
critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader. It
is natural that poets and novelists should devoutly believe that the
creative faculty alone is of any true service to the world, and that
it cannot rightly be put to trial by those to whom this higher gift is
rigorously denied. But the critical power, though on a distinctly lower
level than the creative, is of inestimable help in its development.
Great work thrives best in a critical atmosphere, and the clear light
thrown upon the past is the surest of guides to the future. When the
standard of criticism is high, when the influence of classical and
foreign literature is understood and appreciated, when slovenly and
ill-digested work is promptly recognized as such, then, and then
only, may we look for the full expansion of a country’s genius. To be
satisfied with less is an amiable weakness rather than an invigorating
stimulant to perfection.
Matthew Arnold’s definition of true criticism is familiar to all
his readers; it is simply “a disinterested endeavor to learn and
propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.” But by
disinterestedness he did not mean merely that a critic must have no
distinct design of flattering either his subject or his audience. He
meant that in order to recognize what is really the best a man must
free himself from every form of passion or prejudice, from every fixed
opinion, from every practical consideration. He must not look at things
from an English, or a French, or an American, standpoint. He has no
business with politics or patriotism. These things are excellent
in themselves, and may be allowed to control his actions in other
matters; but when the question at issue is the abstract beauty of a
poem, a painting, a statue, or a piece of architecture, he is expected
to stand apart from his every-day self, and to judge of it by some
higher and universal law. This is a difficult task for most men, who
do not respire easily in such exceedingly rarefied air, and who have
no especial taste for blotting out their individuality. With Macaulay,
for instance, political considerations frankly outweigh all others; he
gives us the good Whig and the wicked Tory on every page, after the
fashion of Hogarth’s idle and industrious apprentices. Mr. Bagehot,
while a far less transparent writer, manifests himself indirectly in
his literary preferences. When we have read his essay on Shakespeare,
we feel pretty sure we know his views on universal suffrage. Mr. Andrew
Lang has indeed objected vehemently to the intrusion of politics
into literature, perhaps because of a squeamish distaste for the
harsh wranglings of the political field. But Mr. Arnold was incapable
of confusing the two ideas. His taste for Celtic poetry and his
attitude towards home rule are both perfectly defined and perfectly
isolated sentiments; just as his intelligent admiration and merciless
condemnation of Heinrich Heine stand side by side, living witnesses
of a mind that held its own balance, losing nothing that was good,
condoning nothing that was evil, as far removed from weak enthusiasm on
the one hand as from frightened depreciation on the other.
It is folly to rail at the critic until we have learned his value; it
is folly to ignore a help which we are not too wise to need. “The best
that is known and thought in the world” does not stand waiting for
admission on our door-steps. Like the happiness of Hesiod, it “abides
very far hence, and the way to it is long and steep and rough.” It is
hard to seek, hard to find, and not easily understood when discovered.
Criticism does not mean a random opinion on the last new novel, though
even the most dismal of light literature comes fairly within its scope.
It means a disinterested endeavor to learn and to teach whatever wisdom
or beauty has been added by every age and every nation to the great
inheritance of mankind.
FOOTNOTES:
[11]
“But when poet Swinburne steps into the fray,
And slangs like a fish-wife, what, _what_ can one say?”
[12] Compare Charles Lamb’s letter to Coleridge: “On the whole I expect
Southey one day to rival Milton; I already deem him equal to Cowper,
and superior to all living poets besides.”
SOME ASPECTS OF PESSIMISM.
When Mr. Matthew Arnold delivered his lecture on Emerson in this
country, several years ago, it was delightful to see how the settled
melancholy of his audience, who had come for a panegyric and did not
get it, melted into genial applause when the lecturer touched at last
upon the one responsive chord which bound his subject, his hearers,
and himself in a sympathetic harmony,--I mean Emerson’s lifelong,
persistent, and unconquerable optimism. This was perhaps the more
apparent because Mr. Arnold’s addresses were not precisely the kind
with which we Americans are best acquainted; they were singularly
deficient in the oratorical flights that are wont to arouse our
enthusiasm, and in the sudden descents to colloquial anecdote by which
we expect to be amused. For real enjoyment it was advisable to read
them over carefully after they were printed, and the oftener they were
so read the better they repaid perusal; but this not being the point
of view from which ordinary humanity is apt to regard a lecture, it
was with prompt and genuine relief that the audience hailed a personal
appeal to that cheerful, healthy hopefulness of disposition which we
like to be told we possess in common with greater men. It is always
pleasant to hear that happiness is “the due and eternal result of
labor, righteousness, and veracity,” and to have it hinted to us that
we have sane and wholesome minds because we think so; it is pleasanter
still to be assured that the disparaging tone which religion assumes
in relation to this earthly happiness arises from a well-intentioned
desire to wean us from it, and not at all from a clear-sighted
conviction of its feeble worth. When Mr. Arnold recited for our benefit
a cheerless little scrap of would-be pious verse which he had heard
read in a London schoolroom, all about the advantages of dying,--
“For the world at best is a dreary place,
And my life is getting low,”--
we were glad to laugh over such dismal philosophy, and to feel within
ourselves an exhilarating superiority of soul.
But self-satisfaction, if as buoyant as gas, has an ugly trick of
collapsing when full-blown, and facts are stony things that refuse to
melt away in the sunshine of a smile. Mr. Arnold, like Mr. Emerson,
preached the gospel of compensation with much picturesqueness and
beauty; but his arguments would be more convincing if our own
observation and experience did not so mulishly stand in their way.
A recent writer in Cornhill, who ought to be editing a magazine for
Arcady, asserts with charming simplicity that man “finds a positive
satisfaction in putting himself on a level with others, and in
recognizing that he has his just share of life’s enjoyments.” But
suppose that he cannot reach the level of others, or be persuaded
that his share is just? The good things of life are not impartially
divided, like the spaces on a draught-board, and man, who is a covetous
animal, will never be content with a little, while his comrade enjoys
a great deal. Neither does he find the solace that is expected in the
contemplation of the unfortunate who has nothing; for this view of the
matter, besides being a singular plea for the compensation theory,
appeals too coarsely to that root of selfishness which we are none of
us anxious to exhibit. The average fustian-clad man is not too good to
envy his neighbor’s broadcloth, but he _is_ too good to take comfort
in his brother’s nakedness. The sight of it may quicken his gratitude,
but can hardly increase his happiness. Yet what did Mr. Arnold mean
in his poem of Consolation--which is very charming, but not in the
least consoling--save that the joys and sorrows of each hour balance
themselves in a just proportion, and that the lovers’ raptures and the
blind robber’s pain level the eternal scales. It is not a cheering bit
of philosophy, whatever might have been the author’s intention, for the
very existence of suffering darkens the horizon for thoughtful souls.
It would be an insult on the part of the lovers--lovers are odious
things at best--to offer their arrogant bliss as indemnification to the
wretch for his brimming cup of bitterness; but the vision of his seared
eyeballs and sin-laden soul might justly moderate their own expansive
felicity. Sorrow has a claim on all mankind, and when the utmost
that Mr. Arnold could promise for our consolation was that time, the
impartial,
“Brings round to all men
Some undimm’d hours.”
we did not feel that he afforded us any broad ground for
self-complacency.
The same key is struck with more firmness in that strange poem, The
Sick King in Bokhara, where the vizier can find no better remedy for
his master’s troubled mind than by pointing out to him the vast burden
of misery which rests upon the world, and which he is utterly powerless
to avert. It is hardly worth while, so runs the vizier’s argument, for
the king to vex his soul over the sufferings of one poor criminal, whom
his pity could not save, when the same tragic drama is being played
with variations in every quarter of the globe. Behold, thousands are
toiling for hard masters, armies are laying waste the peaceful land,
robbers are harassing the mountain shepherds, and little children are
being carried into captivity.
“The Kaffirs also (whom God curse!)
Vex one another night and day;
There are the lepers, and all sick;
There are the poor, who faint away.
“All these have sorrow and keep still,
Whilst other men make cheer and sing.
Wilt thou have pity on all these?
No, nor on this dead dog, O king!”
Whereupon the sick monarch, who does not seem greatly cheered by this
category, adds in a disconsolate sort of way that he too, albeit envied
of all men, finds his secret burdens hard to bear, and that not even to
him is granted the fulfillment of desire,--
“And what I would, I cannot do.”
Unless the high priests of optimism shall find us some stouter
arguments than these with which to make merry our souls, it is to be
feared that their opponents, who have at least the knack of stating
their cases with pitiless lucidity, will hardly think our buoyancy
worth pricking.
As for that small and compact band who steadfastly refuse to recognize
in “this sad, swift life” any occasion for self-congratulation, they
are not so badly off, in spite of their funereal trappings, as we are
commonly given to suppose. It is only necessary to read a page of
their writings--and few people care to read more--to appreciate how
thoroughly they enjoy the situation, and how, sitting with Hecate in
her cave, they weave delicate thoughts out of their chosen darkness.
They are full of the hopefulness of despair, and confident in the
strength of the world’s weakness. They assume that they not only
represent great fundamental truths, but that these truths are for the
first time being put forth in a concrete shape for the edification and
adherence of mankind. Mr. Edgar Saltus informs us that, while optimism
is as old as humanity, “systematic pessimism” is but a growth of the
last half century, before which transition period we can find only
individual expressions of discontent. Mr. Mallock claims that he is
the first who has ever inquired into the worth of life “in the true
scientific spirit.” But when we come to ask in what systematic or
scientific pessimism differs from the older variety which has found a
home in the hearts of men from the beginning, we do not receive any
very coherent answer. From Mr. Mallock, indeed, we hardly expect any.
It is his province in literature to propose problems which the reader,
after the fashion of The Lady or the Tiger? is permitted to solve
for himself. But does Mr. Saltus really suppose that Schopenhauer
and Hartmann have made much headway in reducing sadness to a science,
that love is in any danger of being supplanted by the “genius of
the species,” or that the “principle of the unconscious” is at all
likely to extinguish our controlling force? What have these two subtle
thinkers said to the world that the world has not practically known
and felt for thousands of years already? Hegesias, three centuries
before Christ, was quite as systematic as Schopenhauer, and his system
begot more definite results; for several of his disciples hanged
themselves out of deference for his teachings, whereas it may be
seriously doubted whether all the persuasive arguments of the Welt als
Wille und Vorstellung have ever made or are likely to make a single
celibate. Marcus Aurelius was as logically convinced of the inherent
worthlessness of life as Dr. Hartmann, and, without any scientific
apparatus whatever, he stamped his views on the face of a whole nation.
We are now anxiously warned by Mr. Saltus not to confound scientific
pessimism with that accidental melancholy which is the result of our
own personal misfortunes; but Leopardi, whose unutterable despair
arose solely from his personal misfortunes, or rather from his moral
inability to cope with them,--for Joubert, who suffered as much, has
left a trail of heavenly light upon his path,--Leopardi alone lays bare
for us the
“Tears that spring and increase
In the barren places of mirth,”
with an appalling accuracy from which we are glad to turn away our
shocked and troubled eyes.
It is a humiliating fact that, notwithstanding our avaricious greed
for novelties, we are forced, when sincere, to confess that “_les
anciens ont tout dit_,” and that it is probable the contending schools
of thought have always held the same relative positions they do
now: optimism glittering in the front ranks as a deservedly popular
favorite; pessimism speaking with a still, persistent voice to those
who, unluckily for themselves, have the leisure and the intelligence
to attend. Schopenhauer hated the Jews with all his heart for being
such stubborn optimists, and it is true that their records bear ample
witness to the strong hold they took on the pleasures and the profits
of the world. But their noblest and clearest voices, Isaias, Jeremias,
Ezekiel, speak a different language; and Solomon, who, it must be
granted, enjoyed a wider experience than most men, renders a cheerless
verdict of vanity and vexation of spirit for “all things that are done
under the sun.” The Egyptians, owing chiefly to their tender solicitude
about their tombs, have taken rank in history as a people enamoured
rather of death than of life; and from the misty flower-gardens of
Buddha have been gathered for centuries the hemlock and nightshade that
adorn the funeral-wreaths of literature.
But the Greeks, the blithe and jocund Greeks, who, as Mr. Arnold justly
observed, ought never to have been either sick or sorry,--to them,
at least, we can turn for that wholesome joy, that rational delight
in mere existence, which we have somehow let slip from our nerveless
grasp. Whether it was because this world gave him so much, such rare
perfection in all material things, or because his own conception of the
world to come promised him so exceedingly little,--for one or both of
these reasons, the average Greek preferred to cling tenaciously to the
good he had, to the hills, and the sea, and the sunshine, rather than to
“Move among shadows, a shadow, and wail by impassable streams;”
and his choice, under the circumstances, is perhaps hardly a matter for
amazement. That a people so richly endowed should be in love with life
seems to us right and natural; that amid their keen realization of its
fullness and beauty we find forever sounded--and not always in a minor
key--the same old notes of weariness and pain is a discouraging item,
when we would like to build up an exhaustive theory of happiness. Far,
far back, in the Arcadian days of Grecian piety and simplicity, the
devout agriculturist Hesiod looked sorrowfully over the golden fields,
searching vainly for a joy that remained ever out of reach. Homer, in a
passage which Mr. Peacock says is nearly always incorrectly translated,
has given us a summary of life which would not put a modern German to
the blush:--
“Jove, from his urns dispensing good and ill,
Gives ill unmixed to some, and good and ill
Mingled to many, good unmixed to none.”
Sophocles says uncompromisingly that man’s happiest fate is not to be
born at all; and that, failing this good fortune, the next best thing
is to die as quickly as possible. Menander expresses the same thought
more sweetly:--
“Whom the gods love die young;”
and Euripides, the most reverent soul ever saddened by the barrenness
of paganism, forces into one bitter line all the bleak hopelessness of
which the Greek tragedy alone is capable:--
“Life is called life, but it is truly pain.”
Even as isolated sentiments, these ever-recurring reflections diminish
perceptibly the sum of a nation’s gayety, and, if we receive the drama
as the mouthpiece of the people, we are inclined to wonder now and then
how they ever could have been cheerful at all. It is easy, on the other
hand, to point to Admetos and Antigone as two standing examples of the
great value the Greeks placed upon life; for the sacrifice of Alkestis
was not in their eyes the sordid bargain it appears in ours, and the
daughter of Œdipus goes to her death with a shrinking reluctance
seemingly out of keeping with her heroic mould. But Admetos, excuse him
as we may, is but a refinement of a common type, old as mankind, and no
great credit to its ranks. He may be found in every page of the world’s
history, from the siege of Jerusalem to the siege of Paris. À Kempis
has transfixed him with sharp scorn in his chapter On the Consideration
of Human Misery, and a burning theatre or a sinking ship betray him,
shorn of poetical disguise, in all his unadorned brutality. But to
find fault with Antigone, the noblest figure in classical literature,
because she manifests a natural dislike for being buried alive is to
carry our ideal of heroism a little beyond reason. Flesh and blood
shrink from the sickening horror that lays its cold hand upon her
heart. She is young, beautiful, and beloved, standing on the threshold
of matrimony, and clinging with womanly tenderness to the sacred joys
that are never to be hers. She is a martyr in a just cause, but without
one ray of that divine ecstasy that sent Christian maidens smiling
to the lions. Beyond a chilly hope that she will not be unwelcome to
her parents, or to the brother she has vainly striven to save from
desecration, Antigone descends
“Into the dreary mansions of the dead,”
uncheered by any throb of expectation. Finally, the manner of her
death is too appalling to be met with stoicism. Juliet, the bravest of
Shakespeare’s heroines, quails before the thought of a few unconscious
hours spent in the darkness of the tomb; and if our more exalted views
demand indifference to such a fate, we must not look to the Greeks, nor
to him who
“Saw life steadily, and saw it whole,”
for the fulfillment of our idle fancy.
Youth, health, beauty, and virtue were to the ancient mind the natural
requisites for happiness; yet even these favors were so far at best
from securing it, that “nature’s most pleasing invention, early death,”
was too often esteemed the rarest gift of all. When Schopenhauer says
of the fourth commandment, “‘Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy
days may be long in the land,’--ah! what a misfortune to hold out as a
reward for duty!” we feel both shocked and repulsed by this deliberate
rejection of what is offered us as a blessing; but it is at least
curious to note that the happy Greeks held much the same opinion. When
the sons of Cydippe--those models of filial devotion--shamed not to
yoke themselves like oxen to the cart, and with strong young arms to
drag their mother to the feast of Hera, the ancient priestess begged
of the dread goddess that she would grant them her best gift; and the
prayer was answered, not with length of days, nor with the regal power
and splendor promised of old to Paris, but with a boon more precious
still than all.
“Whereat the statue from its jeweled eyes
Lightened, and thunder ran from cloud to cloud
In heaven, and the vast company was hushed.
But when they sought for Cleobis, behold,
He lay there still, and by his brother’s side
Lay Biton, smiling through ambrosial curls,
And when the people touched them they were dead.”[13]
It is hard to assert in the face of a narrative like this that the
Greeks valued nothing as much as the mere delight of existence.