[4] "Vagrant Verses." By Rosa Mulholland. London: Kegan Paul, Trench &
Co.
About Critics.
A critic is a judge: and more, he is a judge who knows better than any
author how his book should have been written; better than the artist how
his picture should have been painted; better than the musician how his
music should have been composed; better than the preacher how his sermon
ought to have been arranged; better than the Lord Chancellor how he
should decide in Equity; better than Sir Frederick Roberts how he should
have pursued Ayoob Khan; better than the whole Cabinet how they should
govern Ireland; and far better than the Pope how he should guard the
deposit of faith. This, no doubt, needs a high culture, a many-sided
genius, and the speciality of an expert in all subjects of human
intelligence and action. But all that goes for nothing with a true
critic. He is never daunted; never at a loss. If he is wrong, he is
never the worse, for he criticises anonymously. Sometimes, indeed, the
trade is dangerous. A well-known author of precocious literary
copiousness, whose volumes contain an "Appendix of Authors quoted"
almost as long as the catalogue of the Alexandrian Library, was once
invited, maliciously we are afraid, to dine in a select party of
specialists, on whose manors the author had been sporting without
license. Not only was the jury packed, but the debate was organized with
malice aforethought. Each in turn plucked and plucked until the critic
was reduced to the Platonic man--_animal bipes implume_.
Addison says, somewhere in the _Spectator_, that ridicule is assumed
superiority. Criticism is asserted superiority. Sometimes it may be
justified, as when the shoemaker told Titian that he had stitched the
shoe of a Doge of Venice in the wrong place. Sometimes it is not equally
to be justified, as in the critics of the Divine Government of the
world, to whom Butler in his "Analogy" meekly says that, if they only
knew the whole system of all things, with all the reasons of them, and
the last end to which all things and reasons are directed, they might,
peradventure, be of another opinion.
There are some benevolent critics whose life is spent in watching the
characters and conduct of all around them. They note every word and tone
and gesture; they have a formed, and not a favorable, judgment of all we
do and all we leave undone. It does not much matter which: if we did so,
we ought not to have done it; if we did not, we ought to have done so.
Such critics have, no doubt, an end and place in creation. Socrates told
the Athenians that he was their "gadfly." There is room, perhaps, for
one gadfly in a city; but in a household, wholesome companions they may
be, but not altogether pleasant. These may be called critics of moral
superiority. Again, there are Biblical critics, who spend their lives
over a text in Scripture, all equally confident, and no two agreed. An
old English author irreverently compares them to a cluster of monkeys,
who, having found a glowworm, "heaped sticks upon it, and blowed
themselves out of breath to set it alight." We commend this incident in
scientific history to whomsoever may have inherited Landseer's pallet
and brush, under the title of "Doctors in Divinity," for the Royal
Academy in next May.
This reminds us of the historical critics who have erected the treatment
of the most uncertain of all matters into the certainty of science, by
the simple introduction of one additional compound, their own personal
infallibility. The universal Church assembled in Council under the
guidance of its Head does not, cannot and what is worse, will not, know
its own history, or the true interpretation of its own records and acts.
But, by a benign though tardy provision, the science of history has
arisen, like the art of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, to recall
the Church from its deviations to the recognition of its own true
misdeeds. Such higher intelligences may be called and revered as the
Pontiffs of the Realm of Criticism.
We are warned, however, not to profane this awful Hierarchy of superior
persons by further analysis. We will, therefore, end with three canons,
not so much of criticism as of moral common sense. A critic knows more
than the author he criticises, or just as much, or at least somewhat
less.
As to the first class: Nothing we have said here is _lese majeste_ to
the true senate of learned, patient, deliberate, grave, and kindly
critics. They are our intellectual physicians, who heal the infirmities
of us common men. We submit gladly to their treatment, and learn much by
the frequent operations we have to undergo. If the surgeon be rough and
his knife sharp, yet he knows better than we, and the smart will make us
wiser and more wary, perhaps more real for the time to come. There is,
indeed, a constant danger of literary unreality. A great author is
reported to have said: "When I want to understand a subject, I write a
book about it." Unfortunately, great authors are few, and many books are
written by those who do not understand the subject either before or
after the fact. The facility of printing has deluged the world with
unreal, because shallow, books. Such medical and surgical critics are,
therefore, benefactors of the human race.
As to the second class, of those who know just as much as the author
they criticise, it would be better for the world that they were fewer or
less prompt to judge. The assumption of the critic is that he knows more
than his author; and the belief in which we waste our time over their
criticisms is that they have something to add to the book. It is dreary
work to find, after all, that we have been reading only the book itself
in fragments and in another type.
But, lastly, there is a class of critics always ready for anything, the
swashbucklers of the Press, who will write at any moment on any subject
in newspaper, magazine, or review. Wake them out of their first sleep,
and give them something to answer, or to ridicule, or to condemn. It is
all one to them. The book itself gives the terminology, and the
references, and the quotations, which may be re-quoted with a change of
words. We remember two criticisms of the same work in the same week: one
laudatory, especially of the facility and accuracy of its classical
translations; the other damnatory for its cumbrous and unscholarlike
versions. The critic of the black cap was asked by a classical friend
whether he had read the book. He said, "No, I smelt it." This
unworshipful company of critics is formidable for their numbers, their
vocabulary, and their anonymous existence. Their dwelling is not known;
but we imagine that it may be not far from Lord Bacon's House of Wisdom,
the inmates of which, when they "come forth, lift their hand in the
attitude of benediction with the look of those that pity men."
HENRY EDWARD, Cardinal Archbishop, in _Merry England_.
The Celts of South America.
The exiles of Erin wandering far from their native land, are always sure
to make their presence felt. Their power is well known in the United
States; and it is, therefore, gratifying to note the progress which the
Irish race is making amongst the people of South America, and especially
in the Argentine Republic. To our countrymen is mainly due the
development of the sheep-farming industry, which is carried on to a
greater extent than in this country or Australia. Many of them number
their acres by thousands and their flocks by hundreds of thousands. And
the pleasure which the knowledge of this prosperity gives us is
exceedingly increased by the many evidences in which we observe that
National spirit and feeling is strong, active and energetic amongst
them. In their educational institutions, and notably in Holy Cross
College at Buenos Ayres, the study of Irish history is made a special
and prominent subject of attention. In the capital, too, an Irish
Orphanage has been established, where, under the kindly care of Father
Fitzgerald, the children of the dead Irish exiles are lovingly tended
and preserved from contaminating influences. In the breasts of the
Irishmen of the River Platte there is love for the Old Land as warm and
generous as can be found in the green and fertile plains of Meath or
Tipperary. There are young men born in this country of Irish parents who
are deeply read in Irish history, and who follow with loving anxiety the
progress Ireland is making on the road to liberty. There are nearly a
quarter of a million of Irishmen in the Argentine Republic, and they may
always be relied on to aid their kindred in the Old Land. The chain of
Irish loyalty to Ireland is complete around the world.
* * * * *
The Parisians, with that fine appreciation of the fitness of things for
which they have always been famous, have changed the adjective _chic_,
by which they used to describe the attributes of the "dude" (male or
female), for the more expressive one _becarre_. As the latter word is
usually interpreted "natural," it would seem that our French cousins, in
their estimate of the "dude" species, agree with the Irish, who,
disliking to apply the epithet "fool" to any one, invariably designate a
silly person as a "natural."