CRITICISM, SCHOLARSHIP, AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE.
It was a maxim of Matthew Arnold's that the main effort of the mind of
Europe in our time was a critical one. By this he meant something more
than merely literary criticism; but he certainly included that. All will
agree with him that one of the characteristics of recent times is the
desire to understand the meaning and the historical order of the forms of
literature. The great development of journalism has done much to foster
critical work; for a critical view of individual men or of isolated works
can be conveniently expressed within the compass permitted by the
periodical form of publication. The quality of this periodical criticism
is uneven. Much of it is worthless, but the fact that the best critics of
the present century--Lamb, Carlyle, Macaulay, Lockhart, Ruskin and Matthew
Arnold--have all written for periodicals, is proof sufficient that the
best as well as the worst is to be found there.
One of the features of this journalistic criticism is its anonymity, and
this doubtless encouraged the ferocity characteristic of the early school
of the _Edinburgh_, the _Quarterly_ and _Blackwood_. But the evil seems to
have worked its own cure. It would be rash to assert that there is not
incompetence and unfairness still; but at least the bludgeon school of
criticism has passed away. The cause is twofold: the fixing of an ethical
standard, and the discovery, which Matthew Arnold did much both by precept
and example to spread, that the rapier is the more deadly weapon. The
critics of the early periodicals had no tradition to guide them, and, like
settlers in a new country, they ran riot.
A good deal of uncertainty necessarily attaches to anonymous writing, and
all that is possible here is to notice shortly a few of the more eminent
names, avoiding any minute discussion. Some, like Carlyle, Macaulay and
Lockhart, have been mentioned elsewhere. It was however under their
influence, and under the gradually growing influence of Lamb, Coleridge
and Hazlitt, that the criticism of this period grew up. There has also to
be taken into account the spread of German thought, which gave to
criticism greater breath and a firmer foundation in principle, and
conduced likewise to a more careful and patient scholarship. The Germans
have not only themselves done a great work in Shakespearian criticism, but
they have induced the English to do the same. Still, an exclusive
following of the Germans would have led to mischief, and fortunately for
English criticism this tendency has been corrected by the opposite
influence of the French school. Thanks largely to Matthew Arnold, and to
the charm of Ste. Beuve, whom he helped to make known in England, the
lucidity, good form and sanity of French criticism have had their effect
as well as the laborious learning and sometimes rash theorising of the
Germans.
[Sidenote: John Payne Collier (1789-1883).]
[Sidenote: Mrs. Anna Jameson (1794-1860).]
[Sidenote: J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps (1820-1889).]
Shakespearian criticism might almost be said to be in its infancy when the
period opened. The highest reputation was speedily acquired by John Payne
Collier, whose _History of English Dramatic Poetry_ (1831) was a really
valuable contribution to the study of the drama. A later work of
Collier's however brought dishonour on his name, and threw doubt upon all
his conclusions unless they could be proved from other authorities. His
_Notes and Emendations to the Plays of Shakespeare_ (1853) professed to
give all the 'essential' readings of the Perkins Folio; but when the
mystery which for a time hung over this folio was penetrated, it proved
that the emendations in question were forgeries. Unfortunately these
'emendations' do not stand alone. Nearly all through Collier's work is
tainted with falsehood. He attempted to vitiate the old ballads as well as
Shakespeare, and perhaps even now his evil influence in retarding the
progress of sound scholarship is not wholly annulled. Mrs. Anna Jameson
was a better writer than Collier, and she enjoys an unclouded reputation.
Her _Characteristics of Shakespeare's Women_ (1832) still holds its ground
as a fine example of the critical analysis of character. She wrote other
books afterwards--_Sacred and Legendary Art_, _Legends of the Monastic
Orders_, and _Legends of the Madonna_--but none so good as her
Shakespearian criticisms. J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps did great service to
the study of English literature in general, especially by his elucidation
of the life of Shakespeare; and Alexander Dyce deserves mention for one of
the most useful editions of Shakespeare's works. The palm for learning and
research must however be assigned to the great Cambridge Shakespeare,
published between 1863 and 1866, under the editorship of W. G. Clark and
W. Aldis Wright. Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke likewise deserve to be
remembered. The _Concordance_ of the latter was until lately the standard
work of its class, and must always remain an honourable monument of
patience and thoroughness.
[Sidenote: Sir Arthur Helps (1813-1875).]
In the sphere of general criticism, a man of great reputation in the
middle of the century was Sir Arthur Helps, author of _Friends in
Council_, a collection of social and critical dialogues and essays,
published between 1847 and 1859. Many of these essays are essentially
commonplace, and the book is so long drawn out that it would be
intolerable, but for occasional vivid and forcible passages and
epigrammatic expressions. Such, for example, are the imaginary picture of
the woman taken in adultery, and the description of a great cathedral,
with a thin congregation lost in a little corner of it, a bad sermon and a
dull service: 'We look about, thinking when piety filled every corner, and
feel that the cathedral is too big for the religion, which is a dried-up
thing that rattles in that empty space.'
There remain two writers, John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold, who are as
distinctly leaders of criticism in the middle and later portions of the
period, as Carlyle and Macaulay were at the opening of it.
[Sidenote: John Ruskin (1819-1900).]
John Ruskin is an author whose multifarious activity makes it somewhat
difficult to classify him. He has written on art, literature, morals,
economics, society, in short, on nearly everything. He has written verse
as well as prose, and the unwise enthusiasm of disciples has lately
gathered together the rhymes of his youth. If however we regard Ruskin's
work as a whole, we see that its principal motive is critical, and that
his criticism is mainly directed to art. This is the case with what still
remains his greatest work, _Modern Painters_. The first volume of this
book, magnificently illustrated, excellently printed, and written with an
elaborate splendour of style almost unexampled in English, was published
in 1843 with the simple inscription, 'by a Graduate of Oxford.' The fifth
and last volume did not appear until 1860. The _Modern Painters_ is easily
first among all the English works that treat of painting. Its full merit
can hardly be appreciated until we realise how daringly original it was;
and to realise this is difficult, because of the very success of
Ruskinism. The young graduate of Oxford preached a new gospel, and set
himself in opposition at once to the established canons of art-criticism,
and to the established philosophy of his time. In the former convention
reigned supreme. 'The man who in the pre-Ruskinian era was the high priest
among connoisseurs was Sir George Beaumont; and Sir George, admirable man
as he was in other respects, when he looked at a landscape, asked, not
whether it was true to the facts of nature, but whether it accorded with
the fictions of convention. "But where is your brown tree?" he asked of
Constable when that painter gave in his adherence to the then
revolutionary course of proclaiming that trees were green.' Ruskin too
proclaimed that trees were green, and no one has done more than he to
vindicate nature's right to be what she is. It was their championship of
truth and their earnestness that drew him towards the Pre-Raphaelites, and
made him their formidable and efficient champion in _Pre-Raphaelitism_
(1851), as well as in many detached passages of his writings.
While Ruskin was elaborating and completing his _Modern Painters_, he was
likewise engaged upon works bearing on the kindred art of architecture.
His chief writings upon it are _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_ (1849)
and _The Stones of Venice_ (1851-1853). His appointment in 1869 as Slade
Professor of Fine Art at Oxford greatly stimulated his activity. His
reputation had then reached nearly its highest point. He interpreted his
duties seriously, and threw himself with ardour into the work. Quite a
number of his smaller publications--among them _Aratra Pentelici_, _The
Eagle's Nest_, _Ariadne Florentina_ and _Love's Meinie_--are the outcome
of his tenure of the professorship. His second tenure of office, beginning
in 1883, produced _The Art of England_ and _The Pleasures of England_. He
moreover made himself an art-guide to travellers in Italy; and hence his
_Mornings in Florence_ and _St. Mark's Rest_.
This great body of art-criticism is all bound together by a few
fundamental principles; and it is perhaps his fidelity to principle,
hardly less than the magnificence of his style, that has won for Ruskin a
popularity denied to other critics of art. It will be useful to regard his
critical work from two points of view: its rise in negation and
opposition, and its issue in positive doctrine.
Ruskin, like every man who has had much to teach, begins by being a
protestant. He finds that all is _not_ for the best in the best of all
possible worlds, and his effort is first to uproot what is bad, and
secondly to encourage and foster what is good. The objects of his dislike
have been so often denounced by him that all know what they are.
Materialism, utilitarianism, a sordid industry merely concerned with the
accumulation of wealth, and caring little either for its use or for the
quality of the thing produced--these have been the objects of Ruskin's
life-long hatred. The merits of his method of dealing with them must be
touched on later; here it is enough to notice that the motive for his work
on art is the pressing need to find some foundation, other than these, for
the beautiful and good. Though Ruskin was not of the Oxford movement, he
was stimulated by much the same sympathies and dislikes that produced it;
and it is interesting to note how Pre-Raphaelitism in art, Ruskin's
art-criticism, and the poetic and religious movements of the middle of
the century, all show various forms of the same revolt against the
deification of matter.
Starting with this opposition to mere material utility, Ruskin is careful
always to define art so as to bring out its spiritual significance. 'All
great Art,' he says, 'is Praise.' To him, art and religion, or art and
morality, are not so much different things as different phases of the same
thing. Beauty is measured, not by economic utility, or capacity to satisfy
a material want, but rather by transcendental utility, or capacity to
satisfy a spiritual want. In proportion as it embodies the conceptions of
a great spirit, art is great. The artist ought to be faithful to nature,
but mere imitation is not enough. Greatness consists in the something
which the artist does not exactly add to nature, but rather educes from
nature, the something which the gifted eye only can see, but which the
gifted hand can make visible to others less splendidly endowed.
In his application of these principles Ruskin is sometimes capricious,
sometimes, perhaps, presumptuous, and very often dogmatic. His caprice is
visible in his changes of opinion. We find judgments pronounced in one
edition of his works with the confidence of omniscience, and retracted in
another with frank self-contempt, but with unabated confidence. The
reasons for the one opinion seem, as a rule, just as convincing as the
reasons for the other; and while all men may legitimately change their
views, frequency of change ought to beget a certain amount of diffidence.
That Ruskin's criticism is sometimes presumptuous follows from its extreme
confidence. He discovers the meaning of every stone in a building, and of
every line and colour in a painting, in a manner hardly granted to mere
man; for, after all, the most sympathetic of critics cannot enter into
another man's mind, nor can the most learned completely realise a past
age. This dogmatism, though irritating, is generally harmless enough; but
it is not so when it results in underrating an artist like Michael Angelo,
because he will not fit into the preconceived theory, and in undue
exaltation of the comparatively little, because they sometimes furnish
just the illustrations needed.
From the same root springs the cognate fault of the intensely subjective
character of Ruskin's criticism. In a celebrated passage on the Jura in
the _Seven Lamps_, after an eloquent description of the scene, the writer
imagines it transported to some aboriginal forest of the New Continent. In
an instant it loses all its impressiveness--to him. The reason is that the
element of human association is lost; and he instantly jumps to the
conclusion that this element is an essential part of the charm of nature
to all. Few will dispute that such association is to many an important
factor in the delight in nature. But this has not been a universal
feeling. Some travellers, like Darwin on the Cordilleras or in the
Brazilian forests, have felt, in the midst of untrodden solitude and
unbroken desolation, a sense of the sublime nowhere else to be
experienced.
That which, in spite of faults, gives Ruskin's art-criticism its
superiority over all rivals is, in the first place, the fulness of
knowledge whence it springs, and, in the second place, the magnificence of
the style in which it finds expression. Ruskin's continental travels in
early manhood gave him an acquaintance with the best models, such as could
not otherwise be acquired. He was moreover himself an artist, capable of
good and accurate, if not of great work, and aware of what is possible and
what is not possible in art; and his steady confidence in the existence of
an inner meaning and a serious purpose in all art worthy of the name
saved him from the thinness of substance and the dilettante trifling too
apt to be seen in writings of that class.
But it is, first of all, beauty of style that the name of Ruskin suggests.
His prose has been lauded as the finest in the English language. The
English language contains so much that the absolutely finest is not easy
to discover; nor will men ever agree as to the relative merits of simple
and of ornate styles. There is not a little to be said for Oliver
Goldsmith, even as against John Ruskin. The latter writes what is known as
'poetic prose;' and in doing so, though he is no mere imitator, he follows
in the footsteps of men like De Quincey, who sought to obtain by prose
effects commonly associated with poetry. This was in part a reversion, but
a reversion with a difference. The eighteenth century had evolved a clear,
direct, simple structure of sentence, well adapted to appeal to the
understanding. It was not unfitted too, as many passages in Addison and
Steele and other acknowledged masters prove, for an appeal to the
emotions. Nevertheless, this was its weak side; and just as the lucid,
bright, highly intellectual verse of the eighteenth century gave place to
poetry more emotional and more varied, so the prose of the eighteenth
century had to receive its complement in a prose more ambitious in design,
more complex in structure and richer in tone. It was romanticism
overflowing, as it were, the bounds of verse. The change was not so much
the introduction of something wholly new as the grafting of old tendencies
on a new stock. The complex structure and involved harmonies and wealth of
imagination which the new writers hungered for were to be found in the
prose of Milton and of Jeremy Taylor. On the other hand, the type of
sentence established by the eighteenth century writers was too sound to be
set aside. It remained the basis, while the older magnificence and daring
were brought back and wedded to it.
Of this type of poetic prose Ruskin is the acknowledged master. Others,
like De Quincey, have rivalled, and perhaps equalled his best passages.
But excellent passages in De Quincey are much rarer than in Ruskin. The
latter has built upon a broader foundation. All the field of nature and
great part of the field of knowledge have been his. Ornate prose tends to
be descriptive; and in his descriptions Ruskin has, over the mere literary
man, the great advantage which the study of art gives. He had been
educated to observe, and he naturally saw more than others who, even if
they possessed equal sensibility, had less of this special culture.
Next in importance to his art criticisms must be ranked Ruskin's writings
on social subjects. Here his interest has been keen and his energy great.
Most of his special ideas have been denounced as Quixotic nonsense, and
some of them, it must be added, deserve a description not much more
flattering. Yet great is the merit of earnestness. Ruskin has always been
fired by indignation against wrong and falsehood, and has always believed
profoundly in the truth of his own gospel. He has had, both as a writer
and as a man, the gift of fascination. Hence, even when his audience was
scanty, it was enthusiastic; and few, whose ideas seem so unpractical,
have succeeded in persuading so many to try them. The story of his
inducing his Oxford pupils to engage in road-making is well known. The
fact that the road was and is, as he laughingly admitted, one of the worst
in the three kingdoms, does not weaken its testimony to his personal
influence; though it may throw doubt on the wisdom of his guidance. In a
similar spirit he founded the St. George's Guild. This however was no mere
by-work. It was the direct outcome of his writings on social questions,
and it was more remotely connected with his teaching of art. It was
connected with the latter through his conviction that only to a people
living wholesome lives is sound art possible. It was connected with his
social writings because his studies for them convinced him that mere
writing would do little to cure the evils he saw. Hence in the _Fors
Clavigera_ in 1871 he launched the scheme of the St. George's Guild. The
idea was to restore happiness to England. 'We will try,' said he, 'to make
some small piece of English ground beautiful, peaceful, and fruitful. We
will have no steam-engines upon it, and no railroads; we will have no
untended and unthought of creatures on it; none wretched, but the sick;
none idle, but the dead. We will have no liberty upon it, but instant
obedience to known law and appointed persons; no equality upon it, but
recognition of every betterness that we can find, and reprobation of every
worseness.' It is not surprising that plans so visionary have failed to
regenerate society; it is surprising that men should have been willing to
join in the effort to realise such a Utopia. The agricultural ventures of
the Guild are an admitted failure; one or two of the efforts to plant
village industries have had some measure of success, and seem capable of
doing good within narrow limits.
Prominent among the faults of Ruskin's social writings is a disregard of
practically unalterable facts. Railways and steam-engines may not be
objects of beauty, but until they find swifter means of locomotion and
production men will use them. To regulate their use and to reform abuse
would be the ideal of the practical social reformer. Denunciation and
banishment are the cures which occur to Ruskin. Similar faults mark his
extremely eccentric political economy; as for example his condemnation of
interest on capital and his ascription of property 'to whom proper.' This
would be attractive if we could only find some one to tell us infallibly,
or with some approach to infallibility, to whom it _is_ proper.
Historically, the stronger man has generally proved the person 'to whom
proper.' The condemnation of competition and the praise of co-operation
are open to a similar objection. They ignore the facts of human nature.
There is doubtless room for valuable work in promoting co-operation and in
regulating competition; but no worse service could be done to the human
race than to supplant the latter. Fortunately, no effort is more hopeless:
it is like that sin which Macaulay declared would be unspeakably shocking
if it could be committed, but which, happily, Providence had not put
within the reach of fallen humanity.
Ruskin's economic and social writings are certainly not to be valued for
soundness of thought or for sobriety of judgment. They have however the
beauty of style which characterises all his works, they are enriched with
memorable sentences and weighty sayings, and they are inspired by a
nobility of purpose which redeems even the most indefensible doctrine.
Unworkable as his economic principles are, it is impossible to withhold
admiration from the man who has so generously endeavoured to carry them
out; and however numerous may be his crotchets, the laugh at them must be
kindly when he has himself so genially led the laughter. It is moreover
only just to say that, however unsound his own views may be, he was one of
the first to point out the unsoundness of the old political economy. There
is no answer to his contention that a science so abstract, a science which
leaves out of account so many considerations essential to human welfare,
has no right to pronounce authoritatively upon it. The modern economist
would agree with Ruskin that we must reintroduce the factors eliminated
before we can draw conclusions trustworthy for practice.
[Sidenote: Matthew Arnold (1822-1888).]
Matthew Arnold rose into prominence as a critic somewhat later than
Ruskin, and he did his work in a different sphere. He has the unusual
distinction of being almost equally celebrated in prose and in poetry.
There are numerous writers who have won a considerable, and some even a
great reputation in both; but generally, as in the case of Scott, there is
no difficulty in subordinating the one to the other. In Arnold's case
there is a difficulty, and though the prediction may be ventured that he
will in the end take rank as a poet, he is probably best known at present
as a writer of prose.
Matthew Arnold was educated at Winchester and Rugby. He went up to Balliol
College, Oxford, in 1841, and won a fellowship at Oriel in 1845. In 1851
he became inspector of schools. Besides his ordinary routine work as
inspector he discharged the important duty of visiting and reporting upon
the schools and universities of France and Germany. From 1857 to 1867 he
was professor of poetry at Oxford. In his later years he made two visits
to America, where also he lectured. He afterwards published the addresses
under the title of _Discourses in America_.
The prose writings of Matthew Arnold may be classed under three heads.
They are all critical in spirit. In the first division the criticism is of
literature, in the second of theology, in the third of society. As regards
their chronology, the literary criticism is mainly the product of the
decade between 1860 and 1870, but from time to time all through his
literary career Arnold wrote criticism. In theology the period of his
greatest activity was from _St. Paul and Protestantism_ (1870) to _Last
Essays on Church and Religion_ (1877). Social essays, including the
educational writings under this head, are interspersed all through, but
the period of greatest activity, as regards publication, was from the
_Mixed Essays_ (1879) to the _Discourses in America_ (1885). In respect of
merit these writings can also be classified with confidence. The literary
essays are unquestionably the most valuable, the social essays rank next,
while the theological works have the least permanent worth.
Arnold's critical work may be said to begin in his poems, and these for
the most part precede his prose writings. It may be doubted whether any
English poet has written as much fine criticism in verse as Arnold.
Besides the penetrating judgments on individual writers, like Goethe,
Wordsworth and Heine, we have a discussion of the principles of art in the
_Epilogue to Lessing's Laocoon_ and, throughout, a critical view of life
as well as of literature. The volume of poems published in 1853 contained
moreover a critical preface in prose, short but highly suggestive. When
therefore Arnold was appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford, he was
already a critic of proved capacity, and he fully justified his
appointment by the lectures _On Translating Homer_ (1861), certainly the
most valuable ever delivered from that chair. But most of Arnold's
critical work was originally written for periodicals; and the scattered
essays, gathered up into volumes, are known to the world as the _Essays in
Criticism_ (1865) and the _Essays in Criticism: Second Series_ (1888).
These, with a few essays scattered through other volumes, constitute the
body of Arnold's critical work. What is its spirit and method?
To comprehend Arnold as a critic we must grasp his conception of culture.
His aim is to know the best that has been thought and said in all ages and
by all nations. No criticism was ever less negative. He sees indeed that
the pointing out of deficiencies, indirectly if not directly, is an
essential part of criticism, but it is not the end in view. Again,
Arnold's purpose is always practical. He was long regarded as a dreamer,
a 'superior person' sitting on a solitary height and on the whole proud of
the isolation. On the contrary, it was just because he was at heart
essentially English, and therefore practical, that he acquired this
reputation. Two of his favourite dogmas in criticism were the necessity of
going back to and studying the classics, and the equally crying necessity
of going beyond our own island and studying the mind of Europe. He was
never content unless he brought English opinion to the test of foreign
opinion. Hence his interest in knowing how Milton appears to a French
critic. For a similar reason he frequently went to foreign writers for the
subjects of his own criticism. In the first series of _Essays in
Criticism_, the most characteristic and the most valuable, as a whole, of
his critical writings, the subjects are principally foreign--the two de
Guerins, Heine, Joubert, Marcus Aurelius. He turns to these, not because
he thinks them better than the writers of his own country, but because he
thinks more good will come, both to himself and to England, from an
investigation of what is foreign and unfamiliar, than from an examination
of writings illustrating our own merits and charged with our own defects.
The impulse which determines his choice in criticism is revealed in his
_Letters_. He condemned Carlyle in England and Gambetta in France, each
for 'carrying coals to Newcastle;' Carlyle, because he preached
earnestness to a nation that already had enough of it, but was not equally
endowed with other good qualities; Gambetta, just because he evaporated in
words and failed to teach that very earnestness to a nation that would
have been all the better for more.
The same principle explains Arnold's insistence on the study of the
ancients. 'They can help to cure us of what is ... the great vice of our
intellect, manifesting itself in our incredible vagaries in literature, in
art, in religion, in morals: namely, that it is _fantastic_, and wants
sanity.' It was for this reason that he dwelt on things distasteful to his
countrymen, or to whomsoever he was addressing. He was eager to carry the
coals of Newcastle where they were needed, the earnestness and practical
sense of England to France, the lucidity of France and her love of ideas
to England. This, combined no doubt with personal taste, accounts for his
devotion to French literature. No one saw French weaknesses more
clearly,--'France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.' But
irrespective of the relative merits of French and German writings, he
thought the Germans a bad model for the English to follow, and the French
a good one, because they, a race of Latin culture, differ from us more
than another branch of the Teutonic stock can do. So too, in his eyes, the
highest value of the classics is just that they present us with ideals
unlike our own. 'We can hardly at the present day understand what Menander
meant when he told a man who inquired as to the progress of his comedy
that he had finished it, not having yet written a single line, because he
had constructed the action of it in his mind. A modern critic would have
assured him that the merit of the piece depended on the brilliant things
that arose under his pen as he went along.' The width of the difference
measures the value of the lesson to be learnt.
We can thus understand the seeming eccentricity, sometimes, of Arnold's
choice of subjects, and also the superficial appearance of negation in his
criticism. It is only superficial; the essence of the criticism is always
sympathy, agreement rather than difference, the recognition of merit in
preference to censure for defects. Carlyle had already placed criticism on
the basis of sympathy, but it was shown in a different way. Carlyle had a
large share of the dramatic faculty, and an intense interest in the
individual soul. Arnold's genius was social, but not dramatic. He had no
such mastery as Carlyle of the springs of individual character; but he set
himself to understand the society in which the man lived, to grasp his
idea, to look at things from his point of view, and so to explain what
otherwise would be inexplicable. It is the fruitfulness of Arnold's method
that has made the reading of the _Essays in Criticism_ an epoch in the
lives of many men who have now reached middle life.
Equally high praise must be accorded to the temper of this criticism. No
writer was ever more uniformly urbane than Arnold. 'The great thing is,'
says he, 'to write without a particle of vice or malice;' and he never
forgets his own precept. He often gave rise to controversy, and was
sometimes the object of vituperation; but, though he could write with
cutting irony, the controversy was never on his side embittered, and he
never replied in kind to the vituperation.
In his criticism Arnold laid little stress on rules, and those he did
appeal to were wide and elastic. The one thing he greatly insisted upon
was the necessity of unity of impression. No work of art could be called
great that did not produce a deep and abiding impression as a whole, and
not merely in its parts. In the details of criticism he trusted to no
rules, but rather to a taste saturated with 'the best of what has been
thought and said.' His sentiment is expressed in the well-known essay on
the study of poetry, introductory to _Ward's English Poets_. 'There can be
no more useful help,' says he, 'for discovering what poetry belongs to the
class of the truly excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to
have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and
to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry.' He followed in practice
his own precept, and determined to finish up with Shakespeare's _King
Lear_, before writing this very essay, in order to have a proper taste in
his mind while he was at work.
The rest of Arnold's works in prose are conceived in the same frame of
mind, but deal with matter less tractable to the author. The social essays
are of high quality. Arnold's campaign against Philistinism, his
insistence on lucidity, not in literature alone but in all the relations
of life, his championship of urbanity, his polemic against narrow
sectarianism, whether religious, or social, or political--all this is
important as well as interesting. The playfulness of Arnold's habitual
mode of expression helped to conceal the real earnestness of his purpose.
But in all this he had very much at heart the improvement of his
countrymen. He was by nature and instinct a teacher; and, though he was
too much an artist to obtrude it or let it spoil his work, there was a
didactic purpose under nearly all he wrote, verse as well as prose. For
this he sacrificed popularity. Knowing well that to say what is agreeable
is a surer and easier road to favour than to say what is helpful, he yet
chose the latter course.
The same purpose animates likewise Arnold's theological writings; but in
this case the want of special equipment is more serious. It is unwise of
anyone, without long years of special training, to undertake biblical
criticism. The opinion of a great Hebraist as to the facts about the book
of Isaiah is valuable; the opinion of anyone else is that of an amateur.
The motive which animated Arnold however is easily understood, and for
certain purposes his judgment is quite as worthy of respect as that of the
most accomplished theologian. Arnold's position was peculiar. While
retaining a great deal of religious sentiment he had thrown aside entirely
the positive dogmas of religion. He was strongly attached to the religion
of the Bible, Old Testament as well as New; and just because of this
attachment he wished to remove the crumbling foundation of theological
systems and find a safer basis for it. 'Our popular religion at present
conceives the birth, ministry, and death of Christ, as altogether steeped
in prodigy, brimful of miracle;--_and miracles do not happen_.' Arnold's
object was to set free Christianity, which had hardened in the mistaken
fact, and to establish it on the living idea. Undoubtedly he was well
qualified to form opinions on these fundamental questions. Neither the
clergy, nor the churches, nor specialists in biblical lore, have any
monopoly here, or any peculiar right to respect. The ultimate questions of
religion are to be settled by a review of the whole of life, for which
every man has his own special advantages as well as his own special
limitations.
Arnold's style, in prose as in poetry, is one of the elements of his
power. Though not free from mannerisms, it is easy, harmonious, scholarly
and scrupulously pure. He is content to write about plain things in a
plain manner. His great charm is the constant play of wit and humour, of
irony and satire, over his prose. The wit and irony are, as a rule,
lambent rather than piercing, but they are sometimes exceedingly keen.
Occasionally he rises to a high pitch of eloquence. There are few passages
of English prose more memorable than the celebrated apostrophe to Oxford,
the 'home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and
impossible loyalties.' Yet even there, when his feelings are most highly
strung, the comic touch comes in: 'There are our young barbarians, all at
play.' Arnold smiles at himself as he smiles at others, and by doing so
takes all offence from his wit.
[Sidenote: Dr. John Brown (1810-1882).]
[Sidenote: William Brighty Rands (1823-1882).]
Two minor names, those of Dr. John Brown and William Brighty Rands, are,
perhaps, best included among the critics. The former is most widely known
as the author of _Rab and his Friends_, a piece not easily surpassed for
mingled pathos and humour. Brown wrote a style of very high merit. In the
miscellaneous collection of his writings, which he entitled _Horae
Subsecivae_, there is much to remind the reader of Lamb. Yet he was
guiltless of imitation, and the resemblance exists because he had the same
fine humour and the same sensitiveness of perception as the earlier
writer. No one has written better than Brown about dogs; and his
comprehension of them and his power of depicting them are seen even better
in _Our Dogs_ than in the famous essay on Rab, where the human figures
divide the interest with the great mastiff. Brown's critical papers are
few, but they show that he knew how to get at the heart of his subject.
Rands is a man much less known than he deserves to be. He wrote on many
subjects, but generally under assumed names. His children's verse in
_Lilliput Levee_ (1864) is very good, and his opinions on 'life and
philosophy' in _Henry Holbeach_ (1865) are still better. This book is
thoughtful, acute in criticism, and enriched with not a few memorable
sayings. Perhaps the best essay in it is that on _Cavaliers and
Roundheads_, where the description of the Tory or Cavalier mind, with no
opinions, only dogmas, and a genial superstition which answers the purpose
of religion, is admirable; and in another essay there is an even more
delicious description of the minister of the Little Meeting, 'his heart
amply supplied with the milk of human kindness, and his creed blazing with
damnation.' Rich as English literature is, it is sensibly impoverished
when work of this quality is forgotten.
The present period has been fruitful also in departments of scholarship
cognate to literary criticism. Among scholars in the old sense of the term
the most distinguished were John Conington at Oxford and H. A. J. Munro at
Cambridge. The former had the more versatile literary gift, but the latter
was far more 'high built' in learning, and his edition of Lucretius is
admittedly one of the triumphs of English classical culture. In the same
sphere the great statesman, W. E. Gladstone, deserves mention, less
perhaps for the positive value of his _Juventus Mundi_ and Homeric
studies, than for the extraordinary energy which made such work possible
amidst the distractions of party politics. More characteristic of the age
has been the development of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English lore. Benjamin
Thorpe and Joseph Bosworth both did valuable work in this sphere. The
former edited Caedmon in 1832, and in the course of his long life
supervised editions of nearly all the more important remains of
Anglo-Saxon literature. Bosworth's name is identified with the Anglo-Saxon
Dictionary, which, though now philologically rather antiquated, was in its
time a bold undertaking. Sir Frederick Madden, a somewhat younger man,
performed for a later period the work Thorpe did for the beginning of our
literature. The accomplished Richard Chenevix Trench, for twenty years
Archbishop of Dublin, was not only an agreeable poet, but did great
service to the study of the English language. His _Study of Words_ and
_English Past and Present_ have done more to popularise philology than,
probably, any other books we possess.
The study of Eastern civilisation has been another special line of modern
research. The explorations of Layard threw a flood of light upon Nineveh,
and, in the still more remote East, Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson
achieved the remarkable feat of deciphering the Persian cuneiform
inscriptions. Curiously enough, the same thing was done independently and
almost simultaneously by Dr. Edward Hincks. Another portion of the East
was studied by E. W. Lane, the greatest English Arabic scholar of his
time, the best translator before Sir Richard Burton of the _Arabian
Nights_, and author of one of the best books on life in the East, the
_Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians_.
[Sidenote: George Borrow (1803-1881).]
Among travellers who were not scholars, David Livingstone deserves mention
for the greatness of his African discoveries, and McClintock as the chief
in his time of Arctic explorers. But in the literary sense both were far
surpassed by George Borrow, an author very hard to classify, but whom some
would be disposed, for more reasons than one, to rank among the writers of
fiction. Borrow did write stories, _Lavengro_ (1851), and its sequel, _The
Romany Rye_ (1857), where facts of his own life are bewilderingly mingled
with fiction; while it is strongly suspected that there is no small
element of romance in the books of travel on which his fame chiefly rests.
He had a remarkable gift for languages. Among other little-known tongues,
he studied the Gipsy speech, and published a volume on _The Gipsies in
Spain_ (1841), and a word-book of the English Gipsy dialect. His best book
however is _The Bible in Spain_ (1843), an exceedingly readable account of
his travels as colporteur in that country. Whether it be trustworthy as a
record of facts or not, _The Bible in Spain_ has at least induced some
whose whole interest was in tracts and colportage to read a piece of good
literature, and has delighted with entertaining adventures others who
looked for nothing better than an enlarged specimen of the tract kind.