In the fading annals of French Romanticism it is recorded that at the
first performance of an early play of the elder Dumas at the Odéon, a
band of enthusiasts, as misguided as they were youthful, were so
completely carried away that they formed a ring and danced in derision
around a bust of Racine which adorned that theater, declaring
boisterously that the elder dramatist was disgraced and disestablished:
_'Enfoncé Racine!'_
This puerile exploit took place not fourscore years ago, and already has
this play of Dumas disappeared beneath the wave of oblivion, its very
name being recalled only by special students of the history of the
French stage, while the Comédie-Française continues, year in and year
out, to act the best of Racine's tragedies, now nearly two centuries and
a half since they were first performed.
Again, in the records of the British theater of the eighteenth century,
we find mention of a countryman of John Home, who attended the first
performance of the reverend author's 'Douglas.' The play so worked upon
the feelings of this perfervid Scot that he was forced to cry out
triumphantly: "Whaur's your Wully Shakspere noo?"
And yet this Scottish masterpiece failed to establish itself finally on
the stage; and it has long since past out of men's memories, leaving
behind it only a quotation or two and a speech for boys to spout. So in
every age the disinterested observer can take note of the rise and fall
of some unlucky author or artist, painter or poet, widely and loudly
proclaimed as a genius, only to be soon forgotten, often in his own
generation. He may have soared aloft for a brief moment with starry
scintillations, like a rocket, only at last to come down like the stick,
empty and unnoticed.
The echoes of the old battle of the Ancients and Moderns have not died
away, even yet; and there is never a time when some ardent disciple is
not insisting that his immediate master must be admitted as one of the
immortals, and when some shrill youth is not ready to make room for the
new-comer by ousting any number of the consecrated chiefs of art. Now
and again, of course, the claim is allowed; the late arrival is made
welcome in the Pantheon; and there is a new planet on high. But most of
those who are urged for this celestial promotion prove to be mere
shooting-stars at best, vanishing into space before there is opportunity
to examine their spectrum and to compare it with that of the older orbs
which have made the sky glorious thru the long centuries.
It is only by comparison with these fixt stars that we can measure the
light of any new luminary which aspires to their lofty elevation. It is
only by keeping our gaze full upon them that we may hope to come to an
understanding of their immeasurable preëminence. Taine has told us that
"there are four men in the world of art and of literature exalted above
all others, and to such a degree as to seem to belong to another
race--namely, Dante, Shakspere, Beethoven, and Michelangelo. No profound
knowledge, no full possession of all the resources of art, no fertility
of imagination, no originality of intellect, sufficed to secure them
this position, for these they all had. These, moreover, are of secondary
importance; that which elevated them to this rank is their soul."
Here we have four great lights for us to steer by when we are
storm-driven on the changing sea of contemporary opinion and
contemporary prejudice; and by their aid we may hope to win safety in a
harbor of refuge.
Perhaps it is a praiseworthy striving for a permanent standard of value
which accounts for the many attempts to draw up lists of the Hundred
Best Books and of the Hundred Best Pictures. It may be admitted at once
that these lists, however inadequate they must be, and however
unsatisfactory in themselves, may have a humble utility of their own as
a first aid to the ignorant. At least, they may serve to remind a man
lost in a maze amid the clatter and the clutter of our own time, that
after all this century of ours is the heir of the ages, and that it is
for us to profit by the best that the past has bequeathed to us. Even
the most expertly selected list could do little more than this.
Nevertheless these attempts, after all, cannot fail to be more or less
misleading, since the best books and the best pictures do not number
exactly a hundred. Nor can there be any assured certainty in the
selection, since no two of those most competent to make the choice would
be likely to agree on more than half of the masterpieces they would
include.
The final and fatal defect in all these lists is that they seek to
single out an arbitrary number of works of the highest distinction,
instead of trying to find out the few men of supreme genius who were
actually the makers of acknowledged masterpieces. It is of no
consequence whether we hold that 'Hamlet' or 'Macbeth' is the most
splendid example of Shakspere's surpassing endowment, or whether we
consider the 'Fourth Symphony' or the 'Seventh' the completest
expression of Beethoven's mastery of music. What it is of consequence
for us to recognize and to grasp effectually is that Shakspere and
Beethoven are two of the indisputable chiefs, each in his own sphere.
What it imports us to realize is that there is in every art a little
group of supreme leaders; they may be two or three only; they may be
half a dozen, or, at the most, half a score; but they stand in the
forefront, and their supremacy is inexpugnable for all time.
Every one recognizes to-day that "certain poets like Dante and
Shakspere, certain composers like Beethoven and Mozart, hold the
foremost place in their art." So Taine insisted, adding that this
foremost place is also "accorded to Goethe, among the writers of our
century; to Rembrandt among the Dutch painters; to Titian among the
Venetians." And then Taine asserted also that "three artists of the
Italian renascence, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael, rise,
by unanimous consent, far above all others."
No doubt this list of supreme leaders in the arts is unduly scanted; but
there is wisdom in Taine's parsimony of praise. The great names he has
here selected for signal eulogy are those whose appeal is universal and
whose fame far transcends the boundaries of any single race.
It may have been from Sainte-Beuve that Taine inherited his catholicity
of taste and his elevation of judgment; and it was due to the influence
of Sainte-Beuve also that Matthew Arnold attained to a breadth of vision
denied to most other British critics. Arnold invited us to "conceive of
the whole group of civilized nations as being, for intellectual and
spiritual purposes, one great confederation whose members have a due
knowledge both of the past out of which they all proceed, and of one
another." He went on to suggest that for any artist or poet "to be
recognized by the verdict of such a confederation as a master is indeed
glory, a glory which it would be difficult to rate too highly. For what
could be more beneficent, more salutary? The world is forwarded by
having its attention fixt on the best things; and here is a tribunal,
free from all suspicion of national and provincial partiality, putting a
stamp on the best things and recommending them for general honor and
acceptance." Then he added the shrewd suggestion that there would be
direct advantage to each race in seeing which of its own great men had
been promoted to the little group of supreme leaders, since "a nation is
furthered by recognition of its real gifts and successes; it is
encouraged to develop them further."
Who, then, are the supreme leaders in the several departments of human
endeavor? By common consent of mankind who are the supreme soldiers, the
supreme painters, the supreme poets? To attempt to name them is as
difficult as it is dangerous; but the effort itself may be profitable,
even if the ultimate result is not wholly satisfactory. To undertake
this is not to revive the puerile debate as to whether Washington or
Napoleon was the greater man; rather it is a frank admission that both
were preëminent, with the further inquiry as to those others who may
have achieved a supremacy commensurate with theirs. To seek out these
indisputable masters is not to imitate the vain desire of the pedagog to
give marks to the several geniuses, and to grade the greatest of men as
if they were school-boys. There is no pedantry in striving to ascertain
the list of the lonely few whom the assembled nations are all willing
now to greet as the assured masters of the several arts.
The selection made by a single race or by a single century is not likely
to be widely or permanently acceptable. Long years ago the Italians were
wont to speak of the Four Poets, _quattro poete_, meaning thereby Dante,
Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso. But this was a choice far too local and
far too narrow. Of these four Italian poets perhaps only the severe
Florentine has won his way outside of the boundaries of the language he
did so much to ennoble,--altho it may be admitted that the gentle
Petrarch had also for a century a wide influence on the lyrists of other
tongues.
Lowell had a more cosmopolitan outlook on literature, when he discust
'The Five Indispensable Authors'--Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Shakspere,
and Goethe. "Their universal and perennial application to our
consciousness and our experience accounts for their permanence and
insures their immortality." We may admit that all five of the authors
designated by Lowell are truly indispensable, just as we must accept
also the incomparable position of the four leaders in the several arts
whom Taine set apart in lonely elevation. But both Taine's list and
Lowell's we feel to be too brief. The French critic had ranged thru
every realm of art to discover finally that the incontestable masters
were four and four only. The American critic, altho he limited himself
to the single art of literature, dealt with it at large, not
distinguishing between the poets and the masters of prose.
If we strike out of Lowell's list the single name of Cervantes, who was
a poet only in a special and arbitrary sense, we shall have left the
names of the four poets whose fame is world-wide--Homer, Dante,
Shakspere, Goethe--the only poets whose supremacy is admitted thruout
our modern civilization.
To these Matthew Arnold insisted on adjoining a fifth, Milton; and we
who speak the same tongue would gladly enroll the blind singer with the
other four. Indeed, we might even hold Milton to be securer in this
place than Goethe, who has not yet been a hundred years in his grave.
But if we ask the verdict of "the whole group of civilized nations,"
which Matthew Arnold himself impaneled as "free from all suspicion of
national and provincial partiality," we are met with the doubt whether
Milton has established himself among the races that inherit the Latin
tradition as securely as Dante has been accepted by the peoples of
Teutonic stock. However high our own appreciation of Milton may be, the
cosmopolitan verdict might not include him among the supreme poets.
Indeed, we may doubt whether Vergil might not have more votes than
Milton, when the struck jury is polled.
Here, perhaps, we may find our profit in applying a test suggested by
Lowell--the test of imitability. "No poet of the first class has ever
left a school, because his imagination is incommunicable," whereas "the
secondary intellect seeks for excitement in expression, and stimulates
itself into mannerism." The greater geniuses may have influenced those
who came after them by their thoughts, by what they have contributed to
the sum of human knowledge; but "they have not infected contemporaries
or followers with mannerism." Then Lowell points out that "Dante,
Shakspere, and Goethe, left no heirs either to the form or mode of their
expression."
It was in his lecture on Emerson that Matthew Arnold asked: "Who are the
great men of letters?"--meaning thereby the masters of prose. "They are
men like Cicero, Plato, Bacon, Pascal, Swift, Voltaire--writers with, in
the first place, a genius and instinct for style, writers whose prose is
by a kind of native necessity true and sound." The British critic added
that: "It is a curious thing, that quality of style, which marks the
great writer, the born man of letters. It resides in the whole tissue of
his work, and of his work regarded as a composition for literary
purposes." The six masters of prose whom Arnold chose have all of them
this quality of style; and their prose is true and sound. Altho this
list of six was selected by an Englishman, and altho it contains the
names of two Englishmen, it would be acceptable, one may venture to
believe, to the cosmopolitan tribunal, to the heirs of the Latin
tradition and to the peoples of the Teutonic stock. It may lack the
completeness and the finality of the limitation of the supreme poets to
four; but it must be taken as a not unsuccessful attempt to select the
supreme prose-writers.
Arnold excluded Emerson from the class of "great men of letters" because
the American philosopher had not the instinct for style, and because
his prose was not always true and sound. Lowell, in a letter to a
friend, protested against this, suggesting that the Oxford critic was
like Renan in that he was apt to think "the _super_fine as good as the
fine, or better even than that." Yet we may agree with the lecturer in
holding that Emerson was rather to be ranked with Marcus Aurelius as
"the friend of those who would live in the spirit," than to be classed
with Cicero and with Swift, obviously inferior in elevation and in aim,
but both of them born men of letters.
In like manner we must strike out the name of Burke from among the great
orators. A political philosopher he was of keenest insight and of
unfailing eloquence; but he was a poor speaker, and he did not often
rivet the attention of the audiences he addrest. This is why he cannot
establish a claim to inclusion among the supreme orators. Perhaps such a
claim could be made good before the cosmopolitan tribunal by two
speakers only, both belonging far back in the history of our
civilization--Demosthenes and Cicero. Both revealed the needful double
qualifications of the real orator, who shall hold his hearers in the
hollow of his hand while he is speaking, bending them to his will and
swaying them to the course he advocates, while the words he spoke then
must survive now for our delight in their style and in their substance,
a delight independent of the occasion of their utterance.
Others there are, no doubt, who were also possest of this double gift.
The French, for instance, might well urge the claim of Bossuet to be
raised to the same pinnacle; but the English and the Germans have not
yielded to the spell of his majestic periods. Perhaps we here in the
United States should not be extravagant if we set up also a claim for
Daniel Webster; but, however firm our faith, and however solid our
justification, we should be met with a silent stare from the French and
the Italians and the Spaniards, who might fail even to recognize
Webster's name. Demosthenes and Cicero alone would be hailed as the
supreme orators thruout the whole group of civilized nations.
There is close kinship between oratory and history; and as the supreme
orators are only two, one a Greek and the other a Roman, so the supreme
historians, however tightly we may restrict the selection, will include
a Greek, Thucydides, and a Roman, Tacitus. With them, and not inferior,
stands Gibbon; and perhaps these three, Thucydides, Tacitus, and Gibbon,
are all about whom there would be nowhere any dispute. But there is need
to note that Taine held Macaulay to be in no wise inferior to Gibbon.
Again, it may be well to mention also that an American authority insists
on elevating Voltaire also, as the earliest of the modern masters of
history.
So we find that the supreme historians are three at the least, and at
most four or five, just as the supreme poets are four, the supreme
masters of prose are perhaps six, and the supreme orators are only two.
And if we apply the same standards, if we disregard personal and
provincial and national predilections and preferences, if we try to take
the verdict of the cosmopolitan tribunal, we should find that the
supreme dramatists are but three--Sophocles, Shakspere, and Molière.
These three only were at once playwrights of contemporary popularity,
masters of dramaturgic craftsmanship, creators of character independent
of their own personality, makers of plays which deal with themes of an
import at once permanent and universal, and poets also, each with his
own philosophy of life.
Others there are who unite some of these qualifications, but none who
can make good a right to be ranked with the mighty three. It is true
that the power of Æschylus is as undeniable as the pathos of Euripides;
but it is always the clear-eyed Sophocles whom Aristotle accepted as the
master of all who strive for distinction in the theater. And
Aristophanes, with all his exuberance of humor and all his lyric
elevation, is, after all, too local and too temporary to be ranked with
the broad-minded Molière. So also Calderon, whom the polemic Schlegel
wisht to promote to an equality with the very greatest of dramatic
poets, is too careless of form and too medieval in spirit. Promotion
must also be denied, for one reason or another, to Ben Jonson, to
Corneille and Racine, to Schiller, to Alfieri, and to Victor Hugo.
However ardently their claims may be urged by their compatriots, the
international tribunal would refuse to admit any one of them to an
equality with Sophocles, Shakspere, and Molière, the greatest of the
Greeks, the greatest of the English, the greatest of the French, the
three races that have excelled in the arts of the theater.
Even tho no German can sustain a claim to supremacy in the drama, it is
to the Germans that the consent of the whole world now awards the
incontestable supremacy in the sister art of music. To the race that
gave birth to Bach and Beethoven, to Mozart and Schubert and Wagner, it
matters little whether the chiefs of music number two only, or whether
they may be so many as four or five. Indeed, it may be admitted at once
that the list would need to be widely extended before it would include
the name of any composer who was not a scion of the Teutonic stock.
There is a certain significance, also, in the probability that the
outsider who could best justify a claim for inclusion would be a Russian
rather than an Italian or a Frenchman. And this estimate, it may be well
to confess, is not personal to the present writer, who has no skill in
music and scant acquaintance with its intricacies; it is the outcome of
a disinterested endeavor to discover the consensus of expert opinion,
free from any racial bias.
But the northern races who excel in the art of the musician seem to be
inferior to the southern in the arts of the painter and of the
sculptor,--more particularly in the latter. The supreme sculptors are
apparently two or three: Phidias and Michelangelo, beyond all question,
and with them probably we ought also to place Donatello. Of Praxiteles
we know too little. Of most other artists in marble and in bronze we
know too much, however fine their occasional achievements,--Verrocchio's
'Colleoni,' for example. They do not sustain themselves at the lofty
level on which Michelangelo moves with certainty and ease--"the greatest
of known artists," so Mr. Lafarge has ventured to acclaim him; and just
as Shakspere is unsurpassed as a poet and also as a playwright, just as
Cicero takes a foremost place as an orator and also as a writer of
prose, so Michelangelo is mighty as a sculptor, as an architect, and as
a painter.
As a painter he has more rivals than as a sculptor. We may limit the
supreme masters of the plastic art to two, or to three at the most; but
the supreme masters of the pictorial art are twice three, at the very
least. By the side of Michelangelo there is Raphael, also an Italian;
and has any one really a right to exclude Titian from their fellowship?
Then there are Velasquez, the Spaniard, and Dürer, the German. And
farther north in the Netherlands, there are Rembrandt and Rubens; and
ought not Vandyke to be allowed to stand aloft with them? Six, at the
lowest count, and eight by the more liberal estimate, are the men who
have gone to the forefront in the art of the brush, half of them from
the north and half of them from the south; and among them all not one
who had English for his native speech, and not one whose mother-tongue
was French. Indeed, at least one German, Holbein, and two or three more
Italians would be admitted within the sacred enclosure before any
Frenchman or any Englishman could have free entry.
Those who speak French and those who speak English fare no better when
we turn from the arts of peace to the art of war. Every race takes pride
in the renown of the far-sighted and swift-striking commanders who have
led it to victory, and every race is prone to over-estimate the military
genius of its own successful soldiers. Here in the United States we
seek to set up Washington and Grant and Lee as the rivals of the most
gifted warriors that the old world has to show in all the long centuries
of its incessant warfare; and in Great Britain our kin across the sea
are led by local loyalty to do the same disservice to Marlborough and
Wellington. But if we were to search the countless treatises on battles
and campaigns written in every modern language, we should soon be forced
to record that there were five men, and only five, whom the experts of
every race united in singling out. In any list of the ten greatest
soldiers, prepared in any country in the world, these five names would
surely appear, even tho the other names on the several lists might be
those of merely national heroes. The five international masters of war
are Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Frederick, and Napoleon.
Napoleon, altho he rose to be Emperor of the French, was a Corsican by
birth and an Italian by descent. The French have ever battled bravely
for military glory; but they have not brought forth one of the supreme
soldiers. The race that speaks English has done its full share of
fighting on land and on sea, but it is on the blue water that it can
give the best account of itself. The supreme leaders in war at sea
worthy to be set by the side of the five supreme leaders in war on land
are two at the very utmost; and probably an international tribunal
would hold that Nelson alone was to be classed with Alexander, Hannibal,
Cæsar, Frederick, and Napoleon. But it is the opinion of the foremost
living expert on sea-power that Farragut deserves to be placed not far
distant from Nelson, and that the gap which separates the American
sailor from the British is smaller than that which stretches between
Farragut and the third claimant, whoever he may be and of whatever
nationality.
Turning from the art of war and from the arts of peace to the sciences
whereon all the arts are based, we find that the English and the French
are richly represented. The supreme leaders in science, the men whose
discoveries have been fecundating and fundamental, seem to be at least
seven--Euclid, Archimedes, Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, Lavoisier, and
Darwin. This list might well be larger; it could not be less; and no
matter how it might be extended it would include these seven. None of
them was merely an inventor of specific devices; all of them were
discoverers of essential principles, and thereby contributors to the
advancement of civilization and to man's mastery of knowledge.
It would be interesting, as it would be instructive, if we could also
enumerate the supreme leaders in religion; but this is a field in which
prejudice is too violent ever to permit a serene view, and there is no
hoping for an international verdict. Nor would it be possible to find
any agreement as to the supreme statesmen, leaders of men and makers of
nations. That Washington could not be excluded from any choice, however
limited, we may rest assured; but who or how many might really deserve
to be set beside him, we can only guess. National pride is as potent as
religious feeling, and there is no likelihood that rival patriotisms can
ever be reconciled.
A comparison of the several lists will serve to show the field in which
each of the great races of the world has revealed its native qualities;
and, as Matthew Arnold suggested, this is most useful, since a nation is
benefitted "by recognition of its real gifts and successes; it is
encouraged to develop them further."
And a consideration also of the character of each of the men whose names
have here been set on high as the supreme leaders of humanity will make
clear once more what is often clouded and obscured--the fact that the
true genius is never an erratic creature, irregular and irresponsible,
clamoring for indulgence and appealing for pity. He is always strong and
sane and wholesome. Clear-eyed and broad-minded, he has self-control and
common-sense.
(1905.)