is a fixed star in the London skies, and is preparing to give his
lectures on Shakespeare and English poetry, Lamb’s kind heart warms to
his perpetually impecunious friend. He writes now to Payne Collier, with
little enthusiasm, but with great earnestness, bespeaking his interest
and assistance. He reminds Collier of his friendship and admiration for
Coleridge, and bids him remember that he and all his family attended
the poet’s lectures five years before. He tells him alluringly that this
is a brand-new course, with nothing metaphysical about it, and adds:
“There are particular reasons just now, and have been for the last
twenty years, why he [Coleridge] should succeed. He will do so with a
little encouragement.”
Doubtless; but it is worthy of note that the next time the subject is
mentioned is in a letter to Mrs. Wordsworth, written more than two
months later. The lectures are now in progress; very successful, we
hear; but--Lamb has been to none of them. He intends to go soon, of
course,--so do we always; but, in the mean while, he is treating
resolution with a good deal of zest, and making the best plea he can for
his defalcation. With desperate candor he writes:--
“I mean to hear some of the course, but lectures are not much to my
taste, whatever the lecturer may be. If read, they are dismal flat, and
you can’t think why you are brought together to hear a man read his
works, which you could read so much better at leisure yourself. If
delivered extempore, I am always in pain lest the gift of utterance
should suddenly fail the orator in the middle, as it did me at the
dinner given in honor of me at the London Tavern. ‘Gentlemen,’ said I,
and there I stopped; the rest my feelings were under the necessity of
supplying.”
We can judge pretty well from this letter just how many of those
lectures on Shakespeare Lamb was likely to hear; and all doubts are set
at rest when we find Coleridge, the following winter, endeavoring to
lure his reluctant friend to another course by the presentation of a
complimentary ticket. Even this device fails of its wonted success. Lamb
is eloquent in thanks, and lame in excuses. He has been in an “incessant
hurry.” He was unable to go on the evening he was expected because it
was the night of Kenney’s new comedy, “which has utterly failed,”--this
is mentioned as soothing to Coleridge’s wounded feelings. He has
mistaken his dates, and supposed there would be no lectures in Christmas
week. He is as eager to vindicate himself as Miss Edgeworth’s Rosamond,
and he is as sanguine as ever about the future. “I trust,” he writes,
“to hear many a course yet;” and with this splendid resolution, which
is made without a pang, he wanders brightly off to a more engaging
topic.
It is a charming little bit of comedy, and has, withal, such a
distinctly modern touch, that we might fancy it enacted in this year of
grace eighteen hundred and ninety-four by any of our weak and erring
friends.
REVIEWERS AND REVIEWED.
In these days of grace when all manner of evil-doers have their
apologists; when we are bidden to admire the artistic spirit of Nero and
the warm-hearted integrity of Henry the Eighth; when a “cult for
Domitian” and a taste for Nihilists contend with each other in our
estimation; it may not be ill-timed nor unduly venturesome to offer a
few modest arguments in behalf of those Pariahs of modern literature,
the anonymous reviewers of the press. They have been harshly abused for
so many years. They have been targets for the wrath of authors, the
scorn of satirists, the biting comments of injured genius. And now, when
milder manners and gentler modes of speech are replacing the vigorous
Billingsgate of our ancestors; when theologians and politicians make war
upon one another with some show of charity and discretion, the reviewer
alone is excluded from this semblance of goodwill, the reviewer alone--a
thing apart from brotherhood--is pelted as openly as ever. The stones
that are cast at him are so big and so hard that if he still lives, and,
in a mild way, even flourishes, it must be because of his own irritating
obtusiveness, because of his unpardonable reluctance to come forward
decently and be killed.
Now, when I read the list of his misdeeds, as they are set forth
categorically by irate novelists and poets, when I hear of his
“ferocity, incompetence and dishonesty,” I am filled with heroic
indignation and with craven fear. But when I turn from these scathing
comments to a few columns of book notices, and see for myself the
amiable effort that is made in them to say something reasonably pleasant
about every volume, I begin to think that Mr. Lang is right when he
complains that the ordinary anonymous reviewer is, as the Scotch lassie
said of a modest lover, “senselessly ceevil,” good-natured and
forbearing to a fault. If he sins, it is through indifference, and not
through brutality. He is more anxious to spare himself than to attack
his author. He has that provoking charity which is based upon unconcern,
and he looks upon a book with a gentle and weary tolerance, fatal alike
to animosity and enthusiasm. To understand the annoyance provoked by
this mental attitude, we must remember that the work which is thus
carelessly handled is, in its writer’s eyes, a thing sacred and apart;
with faults perhaps,--no great book being wholly free from them,--but
illustrating some particular attitude towards life, which places it
beyond the pale of common, critical jurisprudence. Even the novelist of
to-day sincerely believes that his point of view, his conception of his
own art, and the lesson he desires to enforce are matters of vital
interest to the public; and that it is crass ignorance on the reviewer’s
part to ignore these considerations, and to class his masterpiece with
the companion stories of less self-conscious men. What is the use of
superbly discarding all models, and of thanking Heaven daily one does
not resemble Fielding and Scott, and Thackeray, if one cannot escape
after all from the standards which these great men erected?
It is urged also against newspaper critics that they read only a small
portion of the books which they pretend to criticise. This, I believe,
is true, and it accounts for the goodhumor and charity they display. If
they read the whole, we should have a band of misanthropes who would
spare neither age nor sex, and who would gain no clearer knowledge of
their subjects through this fearful sacrifice of time and temper. “To
know the vintage and quality of a wine,” says Mr. Oscar Wilde, “one need
not drink the whole cask. One tastes it, and that is quite enough.” More
than enough for the reviewer very often, but too little to satisfy the
author, who regards his work as Dick Swiveller regarded beer, as
something not to be adequately recognized in a sip. There is a secret
and wholesome conviction in the heart of every man or woman who has
written a book that it should be no easy matter for an intelligent
reader to lay down that book unfinished. There is a pardonable
impression among reviewers that half an hour in its company is
sufficient. This is as much perhaps as they can afford to give it, and
to write a brief, intelligent, appreciative notice of a partly read
volume is not altogether the easy task it seems. That it is constantly
done, proves the reviewer to be a man skilled in his petty craft; but
we are merely paving the way to disappointment if we expect subtle
analysis, or fervent eulogy, or even very discriminating criticism from
his pen. He is not a Sainte-Beuve in the first place, and he has not a
week of leisure in the second. We might console ourselves with the
reflection that if he were a great and scholarly critic instead of an
insignificant fellow-workman, our little books would never meet his eye.
Another complaint lodged periodically by discontents is that the author
gains no real light from the comments passed upon his work, which are
irritating and annoying without being in the smallest degree helpful.
This is the substance of those sad grumblings which we heard some years
ago from Mr. Lewis Morris; and this is the argument offered by Mr.
Howells, who appears to think that Canon Farrar dealt a death-blow to
reviewers in the simple statement that he never profited by their
reviews. But at whose door lay the blame? It does not follow that,
because a lesson is unlearned, it has never been taught. The Bourbons,
it is said, gained nothing from some of the sharpest admonitions ever
given by history. It is worth while to consider, in this regard, an
extract from the Journal of Sir Walter Scott in which he mentions an
anonymous letter sent him from Italy, and full of acute, acrid
criticisms on the “Life of Bonaparte.” “The tone is decidedly hostile,”
says Sir Walter calmly, “but that shall not prevent my making use of all
his corrections, where just.” It is a hard matter perhaps for smaller
men to preserve this admirable tranquillity under assault; to say with
Epictetus, “He little knew of my other shortcomings or he would not have
mentioned these alone.” Yet after all, it is an advantage to be told
plainly what we need to know and cannot see for ourselves, I am sure
that the most valuable lesson in literary perspective I ever received
came from an anonymous reviewer, who reminded me curtly that “Mr. Saltus
and Leopardi are not twins of the intellect.” When I first saw that
sentence I felt a throb of indignation that any one should believe, or
affect to believe, that I ever for a moment supposed Mr. Saltus and
Leopardi _were_ twins of the intellect. Afterwards, when in calmer mood
I re-read the essay criticised, I was forced to acknowledge that, if
such were not my conviction, I had, to say the least, been unfortunate
in my manner of putting things. I had used the two names
indiscriminately and as if I thought one man every whit as worthy of
illustrating my text as the other. Such moments ought to be salutary,
they are so eminently cheerless. A disagreeable lesson, disagreeably
imparted, is apt to be taken to heart with very beneficial results. If
it is wasted, the fault does not lie with the surly truth-teller, whose
thankless task has been performed with most ungracious efficacy.
“Truth,” says Saville, “has become such a ruining virtue, that mankind
seems to be agreed to commend and avoid it.”
As for the real and exasperating fault of much modern writing, its
flippant and irrelevant cleverness, the critic and the reviewer stand
equally guilty of the charge. Mr. Goldwin Smith observes that the
province of criticism appears to be now limited to the saying of fine
things; and there are moments when we feel that this unkind and forcible
statement is very nearly true. The fatal and irresistible impulse to
emit sparks--like the cat in the fairy story--lures a man away from his
subject, and sends him dancing over pages in a glittering fashion that
is as useless as it is pretty. It is amazing how brightly he shines, but
we see nothing by his light. “He uses his topic,” says Mr. Saintsbury,
“as a springboard or platform on and from which to display his natural
grace and agility, his urbane learning, his faculty of pleasant wit.” We
read, and laugh, and are entertained, and seldom pause to ask ourselves
exactly what it was which the writer started out to accomplish.
Now the finest characteristic of all really good criticism is its power
of self-repression. It is work within barriers, work which drives
straight to its goal, and does not permit itself the luxury of
meandering on either side of the way. In this respect at least, it is
possible for the most modest of anonymous reviewers to follow the
example of the first of critics, Sainte-Beuve, who never allowed himself
to be lured away from the subject in hand, and never sacrificed
exactness and perspicuity to effect. If we compare his essay on the
historian Gibbon with one on the same subject by Mr. Walter Bagehot, we
will better understand this admirable quality of restraint. Mr.
Bagehot’s paper is delightful from beginning to end; keen, sympathetic,
humorous, and sparkling all over with little brilliant asides about
Peel’s Act, and the South Sea Company, and grave powdered footmen, and
Louis XIV., “carefully amusing himself with dreary trifles.” Underneath
its whimsical exaggerations we recognize clearly the truthful outlines
and general fidelity of the sketch. But Sainte-Beuve indulges in none of
these witty and wandering fancies. He is keenly alive to the proper
limitations of his subject; he has but a single purpose in mind, that of
helping you to accurately understand the character and the life’s work
of the great historian whom he is reviewing; and, while his humor plays
lambently on every page, he never makes any conscious effort to be
diverting. Nothing can be more sprightly than Mr. Bagehot’s account of
Gibbon’s early conversion to the Church of Rome, and of the horror and
alarm he awoke thereby at the manor-house of Buriton, where “it would
probably have occasioned less sensation if ‘dear Edward’ had announced
his intention of becoming a monkey.” Nothing can be more dexterous than
Mr. Bagehot’s analysis of the cautious skepticism which replaced the
brief religious fervor of youth. But when we turn back to Sainte-Beuve,
we see this little sentence driven like an arrow-point straight to the
heart of the mystery. “While he (Gibbon) prided himself on being wholly
impartial and indifferent where creeds were concerned, he cherished,
without avowing it, a secret and cold spite against religious thought,
as if it were an adversary which had struck him one day when unarmed,
and had wounded him.” A secret and cold spite. Were ever five short
words more luminously and dispassionately significant?
A sense of proportion intrudes itself so seldom into the popular
criticism of to-day, that it is hardly worth while to censure the
reviewer for not comprehending differences of degree. How should he,
when the whole tone of modern sentiment is subversive of order and
distinction; when the generally accepted opinion appears to be that we
are doing everything better than it was ever done before, and have
nothing to learn from anybody? This is a pleasant opinion to entertain,
but it is apt to be a little misleading. The old gods are not so readily
dislodged, and their festal board is not a round table at which all
guests hold equal rank. If you thrust Balzac or Tolstoi by the side of
Shakespeare, the great poet, it has been well said, will, in his
infinite courtesy, move higher and make room. But you cannot bid them
change seats at your discretion. Parnassus is not the exclusive pasture
ground of the Frenchman or of the Muscovite. “Homer often nods, but, in
‘Taras Bulba,’ Gogol never nods,” I read not long ago in a review. The
inference is plain, and quite in harmony with much that we hear every
day; but how many times already has Homer been outstripped by long
forgotten competitors! It is not indeed the nameless critic of the
newspapers who gives utterance to these startling statements. They are
signed and countersigned in magazines, and occasionally republished in
fat volumes for the comfort and enlightenment of posterity. The real
curiosities of criticism have ever emanated from men bearing the symbol
of authority. It was no anonymous reviewer who called Dante a
“Methodist parson in Bedlam,” or who said that Wordsworth’s poetry would
“never do,” or who spoke of the “caricaturist, Thackeray.” It is no
anonymous reviewer now who bids us exult and be glad over the “literary
emancipation of the West,” as though that large and flourishing portion
of the United States had hitherto been held in lettered bondage.
In fact, as one’s experience in these matters increases day by day, one
is fain to acknowledge that the work of the unknown or little known
professional critic, faulty though it be, has certain modest advantages
over the similar work of _his_ critics, the poets and novelists when
they take to the business of reviewing. There are several very
successful story-writers who are just now handling criticism after a
fashion which recalls that delightful scene in “The Monks of Thelema,”
where an effort to make the village maidens vote a golden apple to the
prettiest of their number is frustrated by the unforeseen contingency of
each girl voting for herself. In the same artless spirit, the novelist
turned critic confines his good will so exclusively to his own work, or
at best to that school of fiction which his own work represents, that,
while we cannot sufficiently admire his methods, we do not feel greatly
stimulated by their results. As for the poet umpire, he is apt to bring
an uncomfortable degree of excitability to bear upon his task. It is
readily granted that Mr. Swinburne manifests at times an exquisite
critical discernment, and a broad sympathy for much that is truly good;
but when less gifted souls behold him foaming in Berserker wrath over
insignificant trifles, they are wont to ask themselves what in the world
is the matter. We can forgive him, or at least we can strive to forgive
him, for reviling Byron, snubbing George Eliot, underrating George Sand,
ignoring Jane Austen, calling poor Steele a “sentimental debauchee,” and
asserting that the only two women worthy to stand by the side of
Charlotte Brontë,” “the fiery-hearted vestal of Haworth”--though why
“vestal,” only Mr. Swinburne knows--are her sister Emily and Mrs.
Browning. But when he has been permitted to do all this and a great deal
more, why should he fall into a passion, and use the strongest of strong
language, because there are details in which everybody does not chance
to agree with him? In so wide a world there must of necessity be many
minds, and the opinions of a poet are not always beacon fires to light
us through the gloom. Even the musician has been for some time prepared
to step into the critical arena, and Mr. E. S. Dallos, in “The Gay
Science,” quotes for us a characteristic extract from Wagner, which
probably means something, though only a very subtle intellect could
venture to say what.
“If we now consider the activity of the poet more closely, we perceive
that the realization of his intention consists solely in rendering
possible the representation of the strengthened actions of his poetized
forms through an exposition of their motives to the feelings, as well as
the motives themselves. Also by an expression that in so far engrosses
his activity, as the invention and production of this expression in
truth first render the introduction of such motives and actions
possible.”
After this splendid example of style and lucidity, it may be that even
the ordinary, every-day, unostentatious reviewer whom we so liberally
despise will be admitted to possess some few redeeming virtues.
And, in truth, patience is one of them. Think of the dull books which
lie piled upon his table! Think how many they are, and how long they
are, and how alike they are, and how serious they are, and how little we
ourselves would care to read them! If the reviewer sometimes misses what
is really good, or praises what is really bad, this does not mean that
he is incompetent, dishonest, or butcherly. It means that he is human,
that he is tired, perhaps a little peevish, and disposed to think the
world would be a merrier place if there were fewer authors in it. The
new novelist or budding poet who comes forward at this unpropitious
moment is not hailed with acclamations of delight; while the
conscientious worker who has spent long months in compiling the weighty
memoirs of departed mediocrity is outraged by the scant attention he
receives. Meanwhile the number of books increases with fearful speed.
Each is the embodiment of a sanguine hope, and each claims its meed of
praise. A fallible reviewer struggles with the situation as best he
can, saying pleasant things which are scantily merited, and sharp things
which are hardly deserved; but striving intelligently, and with
tolerable success to tell a self-indulgent public something about the
volumes which it is too lazy to read for itself.
“O dreams of the tongues that commend us,
Of crowns for the laureate pate,
Of a public to buy and befriend us,
Ye come through the Ivory Gate.
But the critics that slash us and slate,
But the people that hold us in scorn,
But the sorrow, the scathe, and the hate,
Through the portals of horn.”
PASTELS: A QUERY.
I should like to be told by one of the accomplished critics of the day
what is--or rather what is not--a pastel? Dictionaries, with their
wonted rigidity, define the word as “a colored crayon,” ignoring its
literary significance, and affording us no clue to its elusive and
mutable characteristics. When Mr. Stewart Merrill christened his pretty
little volume of translations “Pastels in Prose,” he gave us to
understand, with the assistance of Mr. Howells’ prefatory remarks, that
the name was an apt one for those brief bits of unrhymed, unrhythmical,
yet highly poetic composition in the execution of which the French have
shown such singular felicity and grace. Some of these delicate trifles
have the concentrated completeness of a picture, and for them the name
is surely not ill-chosen. Sombre, or joyous, or faintly ironical, they
bring before our eyes with vivid distinctness every outline of the scene
they portray. “Padre Pugnaccio” and “Henriquez,” by Louis Bertrand, and
that strange lovely “Captive,” by Ephraïm Mikhaël, are as admirable in
their limitations as in their finish. They show us one thing only, and
show it with swift yet comprehensive lucidity. But if “Padre Pugnaccio”
be a pastel, then, by that same token, “Solitude” is not. It is a
moderately long and wholly allegorical story, and its merits are of a
different order. As for Maurice de Guérin’s “Centaur,” that noble
fragment has nothing in common with the fragile delicacy of the pretty
little picture poems which surround it. It is a masterpiece of breadth
and virility. Its sonorous sentences recall the keener life of the
antique world, and it stands among its unsubstantial companions like a
bust of Hermes in a group of Dresden figures, all charming, but all
dwarfed to insignificance by the side of that strong young splendor. To
call “The Centaur” a pastel is as absurd as to call “Endymion” an
etching.
However, Mr. Merrill’s translations are far from defining the limits of
the term. On the contrary, we have M. Paul Bourget’s group of stories,
“Pastels of Men,” which are not prose poems at all, nor brief pen
pictures; but tales of a rather elaborate and unclean order, full of wan
sentiment, and that cheerless vice which robs the soul without
gratifying the body. Occasionally, as in the sketch of the poor old
teacher living his meagre life from hour to hour, M. Bourget draws for
us, with melancholy skill, a single scene from the painful drama of
existence. This is perhaps a pastel, since the word must be employed;
but why should an interminable and shifting tale about a rich young
widow, who cannot make up her mind in less than a hundred pages which of
her four lovers she will marry, be called by the same generic title? If
it be equally applicable to every kind of story, short or long, simple
or involved, descriptive or analytic, then it has no real meaning at
all, and becomes a mere matter of capricious selection. “Wandering
Willie’s Tale,” and “The Cricket on the Hearth” could with propriety
have been termed pastels.