"Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and
elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the study
of Addison," said Doctor Johnson a many years ago; and Doctor Johnson's
own style, elaborate if not artificial, and orotund if not polysyllabic,
might no doubt have been improved if the writer of the _Rambler_ had
given more of his days and nights to the study of the chief writer of
the _Spectator_. Doctor Johnson's advice is still quoted often, perhaps
it is still followed sometimes. Yet it is outworn and not for to-day. We
have nowadays better weapons than the Brown Bess Johnson appreciated so
highly--breech-loading rifles incomparably superior to the smooth-bore
he praises. Owing in part, no doubt, to the influence of Addison and to
the advice of Johnson, we have had writers of late whose style is easier
than Addison's, more graceful, more varied, more precise. Set a page of
one of Addison's little apologues beside a page of one of Hawthorne's
tales, and note how much more pellucid Hawthorne's style is, how much
more beautiful, how much more distinguished. Contrast one of Addison's
criticisms with one of Matthew Arnold's, and observe not only how much
more complete is the terminology of the art now than it was when the
_Spectator_ was appearing twice a week, but also how much more acute and
how much more flexible the mind of the later critic than the mind of the
earlier.
Compare Addison's essays with those which Mr. George William Curtis has
recently collected into a volume, _From the Easy Chair_, and you will
see no reason to adopt any theory of literary degeneracy in our day. We
are all of us the heirs of the ages, no doubt, but it is in an unusual
degree that Mr. Curtis is the inheritor of the best traditions of the
English essay. He is the direct descendant of Addison, whose style is
overrated; of Steele, whose morality is humorous; of Goldsmith, whose
writing was angelic, and of Irving, whose taste was pretty. Mr. Curtis
recalls all of these, yet he is like none of them. Humorous as they are
and charming, he is somewhat sturdier, of a more robust fibre, with a
stronger respect for plain living and high thinking, with a firmer grasp
on the duties of life.
For the most part these essays of Mr. Curtis's are pleasant papers of
reminiscence, of gentle moralizing, and of kindly satire; but he is a
swift and a careless reader who does not detect the underlying
preachment which is at the core of most of them. Mr. Curtis is not
content to scourge lightly the snobbery and the vulgarity which cling to
the fringe of fashion, and sometimes get nearer to the centre of
society; he also sets up a high standard of morality in public life. The
divorce between Politics and Society--in the narrower meaning of the
words--is not wholesome for either party. Mr. Curtis reminds us that
"good government is one of the best things in the world," and that the
wise man "knows that good things of that kind are not cheap." This is a
quotation from the highly instructive and permanently pertinent paper
on "Honestus at the Caucus," which begins with the assertion that "a man
who is easily discouraged, who is not willing to put the good seed out
of sight and wait for results, who desponds if he cannot obtain
everything at once, and who thinks the human race lost if he is
disappointed, will be very unhappy if he persists in taking part in
politics. There is no sphere in which self-deception is easier."
There are but few essays with a political intention in this delightful
little book. The rest are papers mainly about people, about "Edward
Everett in 1862," and about "Emerson Lecturing," and about "Dickens
Reading," and about "Robert Browning in Florence," and about "Wendell
Phillips at Harvard," and about "A Little Dinner with Thackeray," and
about Thoreau, who had "a staccato style of speech, every word coming
separately and distinctly as if preserving the same cool isolation in
the sentence that the speaker did in society." Not a few of them have to
do with the players of the past, with the vocalists who are now but
memories of dead and gone delight, with the performers on musical
instruments--"Thalberg and other Pianists," "At the Opera in 1864,"
"Jenny Lind." Was the gentle Jenny Lind really a vocalist, or was she
only a singer of songs, unforgetable now because she sang them? As we
read these reminders of past delights we find ourselves wondering how
Jenny Lind would please the denizens of certain Unmusical Boxes at the
Metropolitan Opera-house, "who have an insatiable desire to proceed with
their intellectual cultivation by audible conversation during the
performance."
In the thick of the tussle of life here in this huge city of ours, where
strident voices fill the market-place, the mellow note of the essayist
is heard distinctly as he leans back in his Easy Chair, modulating every
syllable with exquisite felicity. And perhaps the author of the
_Potiphar Papers_ is in his way quite as characteristic of New York as
any of the more self-seeking notorieties who din into our ears the
catalogue of their merits. In a great city there is room for all, for
the boss and the heeler and the tough, as well as for the _Tatler_, the
_Spectator_, the _Idler_, the _Rambler_, and the _Citizen of the World_.
A citizen of the world, Mr. Curtis is, beyond all question, really
cosmopolitan; and, as Colonel Higginson told us a dozen years ago, "to
be really cosmopolitan a man must be at home even in his own country."
When Colonel Higginson came to New York last year to deliver before the
Nineteenth Century Club the lecture on _The New World and the New Book_,
which gives its title to a recent collection of his essays, this epigram
was quoted by the president of the club in introducing the speaker of
the evening. It is perhaps now the best known of Colonel Higginson's
many sharp sayings; it is better known probably than his assertion that
the American has "a drop more of nervous fluid" than the Englishman--an
assertion which Matthew Arnold failed to understand but did not fail to
denounce. No doubt it is hard for a writer as witty as Colonel Higginson
to find one or two of his acute sentences quivering in the public
memory, while others as well aimed fall off idly. But it is with the
epigram as with the lyric; we shoot an arrow in the air, it falls to
earth we know not where; and we can rarely foretell which shaft is going
to split the willow wand.
Colonel Higginson need not be ashamed to go down to posterity as the
author of one phrase, for many a writer is saved from oblivion by a
single apothegm; nor need he be afraid of this fate, for there are "good
things" a-plenty in this new volume, and some of them are certain to do
good service in international combat, and to go hustling across the
Atlantic again and again. There is an arsenal of epigram in the little
essay called "Weapons of Precision," and it is pleasant to see that
their effective range is more than 3000 miles. At that distance they
have already wounded Mr. Andrew Lang, and forced from him a cry of pain.
So sensitive did Mr. Lang show himself to these transatlantic darts that
he allowed himself to reveal his ignorance of Colonel Higginson's work,
of the Peabody Museum, and of various other men and things in America--a
knowledge of which was a condition precedent to debate on the question.
This question is very simple: Is there such a man as an American? Has he
ever done anything justifying his existence? Or is he simply a
second-rate, expatriated Englishman, a colonist who is to say ditto
forever and a day? If we are only debased duplicates of the Poor
Islanders, then our experiment here is a failure, and our continued
existence is not worth while. If we are something other than English,
then it may be as well to understand ourselves, and to throw off any
lingering bond of colonialism. This is what Colonel Higginson's book was
intended to help us to do. "Nothing is further," he has said in his
preface, from his "wish than to pander to any petty national vanity,"
his sole desire being to assist in creating a modest and reasonable
self-respect. "The Civil War bequeathed to us Americans, twenty-five
years ago, a great revival of national feeling; but this has been
followed in some quarters, during the last few years, by a curious
relapse into something of the old colonial and apologetic attitude." No
doubt this attitude is not characteristic of the best; it is to be seen
only in the East--chiefly in New York and in Boston--chiefly among the
half-educated, for the man of wide culture looks for light rather to
Paris and Berlin than to London.
Colonel Higginson proves abundantly, with a cloud of witnesses, that one
of the differences between the American and the Englishman is the
former's greater quickness. We are lighter and swifter in our
appreciation of humor, for example. Indeed, it is amusing to observe
that we speak of the English as obtuse in humor, just as they speak of
the Scotch. I think that Colonel Higginson succeeds also in showing that
there is greater fineness of taste in literature and in art in America;
at least we do not take our dime novels seriously, while in England the
leading weekly reviews really consider the stories of Miss Marryat and
of Mr. Farjeon.
Of course "the added drop of nervous fluid" must be paid for somehow; in
all international comparisons the great law of compensations holds good.
Recently a leading American scientist told me that he thought there was,
in American scientific work, a lack of the energy he had observed in the
English. It was of pure science he was speaking; as far as applied
science is concerned, there seems to be no lack of energy visible in the
United States. That this criticism is just I cannot deny, having no wish
to fall into the pitfall of discussing a subject of which I have no
knowledge whatever. But if there is a possible loss of energy, there is
an indisputable gain in mental flexibility, in openness of mind. There
are Philistines in the United States, as there are in Great Britain, a
many of them on both sides of the Atlantic; but between the British
Philistine and the American there is an essential difference. The
British Philistine knows not the light, and he hates it and he refuses
to receive it. The American Philistine knows not the light, but he is
not hostile, and he is not only ready to receive it, but eager. This is
a difference which goes to the root of the matter.
I have delayed so long over the subject of Colonel Higginson's book that
I have now no space to speak of its style or of its separate chapters.
"Weapons of Precision" I have already praised; it is a protest against
vulgarity of style--against the bludgeon and the boomerang as arms of
debate; it is a series of swift, rapier-like thrusts, to be considered
by all who think that our language is inferior to the French in point
and in brilliancy. Indeed, the whole book may be commended to those who
can enjoy style and wit and learning and a knowledge of the world and a
wisdom derived from men as well as from books. Especially may the
essays on the "Shadow of Europe," on the "Perils of American Humor," on
the "Evolution of an American," and on the "Trick of Self-Depreciation"
be recommended to all who are downcast about the position of literature
and of the arts in these United States, or about the United States as a
nation. These essays are tonic and stimulant; and if their Americanism
may seem to some aggressive, this is a failing which might become more
common than it is without becoming dangerous--if always it were
characterized by knowledge as wide as Colonel Higginson's and by wit as
keen.
To no one may I venture to recommend Colonel Higginson's book more
urgently than to Miss Agnes Repplier, who has sent forth a second volume
of her entertaining magazine articles grouped under the excellent title
of _Points of View_. Miss Repplier is very clever and very colonial.
Although a Philadelphian, she has apparently never heard of the
Declaration of Independence. From the company she keeps it is perhaps
not an unfair inference to suggest that she seems to be sorry that she
is not herself a Poor Islander. She is a well-read woman, with all
literature open before her, yet she quotes almost altogether from the
contributors to the contemporary British magazines; and we feel that if
birds of a feather flock together we have here in the eagle's nest by
some mischance hatched a British sparrow.
Miss Repplier's subjects are excellent--"A Plea for Humor," "Books that
Have Hindered Me," "Literary Shibboleths," "Fiction in the Pulpit," and
the like; and she discusses them with ready humor and feminine
individuality. She quotes abundantly and often aptly--and apt quotation
is a difficult art. But the writers from whom she quotes are not always
of that compliment. Bagehot had the gift of the winged phrase, and a
quotation from his masculine prose is always welcome. But a glance down
the list of the others from whom Miss Repplier quotes will show that she
mischooses often. She seems to lack the sense of literary perspective;
and for her one writer is apparently as good as another--so long as he
is a contemporary Englishman.
There is no index to Miss Repplier's book, but I have found amusement
in making out a hasty list of those from whom she quotes. I do not vouch
for its completeness or for its absolute accuracy, but it will serve to
show that she is more at home in Great Britain than in the United
States, and that her mind travels more willingly in the little
compartments of a British railway carriage than in the large parlor cars
of her native land. Besides Bagehot she cites Mr. Lang, Mr. Birrell, Mr.
Shorthouse, Mr. Frederic Harrison, Mr. Radford, Mr. Swinburne, Mr.
George Saintsbury, Mr. Gosse, Mr. James Payn, Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Pater, Mr.
Froude, Mr. Oscar Wilde, and Miss "Vernon Lee." There is also one
quotation from Doctor Everett, and one more from Doctor Holmes, or
perhaps two. But there is nothing from Lowell, than whom a more quotable
writer never lived. In like manner we find Miss Repplier discussing the
novels and characters of Miss Austen and of Scott, of Dickens, of
Thackeray, and of George Eliot, but never once referring to the novels
or characters of Hawthorne. Just how it was possible for any clever
American woman to write nine essays in criticism, rich in references
and quotations, without once happening on Lowell or on Hawthorne, is to
me inexplicable.
Colonialism is scarcely an adequate explanation for this devotion to the
first-rate, second-rate, and third-rate writers of a foreign country to
the neglect of the first-rate writers of her own. Perhaps the secret is
to be sought rather in Miss Repplier's lack of literary standards. In
literature as in some other things a woman's opinion is often personal
and accidental; it depends on the way the book has happened to strike
her; the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence. Miss
Repplier fails to apprehend the distinction between the authors who are
to be taken seriously and the writers who are not to be taken
seriously--between the man of letters who is somebody and the scribbler
who is merely, in the French phrase, _quelconque_--nobody in particular.
There is no need to go over the list of the persons from whom Miss
Repplier quotes, and with whose writings she seems to have an equal
familiarity; certain names on it are those of comic personalities not to
be accorded the compliment of serious criticism.
Despite Miss Repplier's reliance on those British authors who have come
to America to enlighten us with lectures in words of one syllable--to
borrow a neat phrase of Colonel Higginson's--her _Points of View_ are
well chosen, and the outlook from them is pleasant. She writes brightly
always, and often brilliantly. She does herself injustice by her
deference to those whom she invites to her board, for she is better
company than her guests. Her criticism one need not fully agree with to
call it generally sensible and well put, and sometimes necessary.
Perhaps her best pages contain her protest against critical shams and
literary affectations. She has no patience with the man who, while
really liking Mr. Haggard's tales of battle, murder, and sudden death,
absurdly pretends to a preference for Tolstoi and Ibsen, whom his soul
abhors. She has pleasant humor in her remark that those who read _Robert
Elsmere_ nowadays would think it wrong to enjoy _Tom Jones_, while the
people who enjoyed _Tom Jones_--when it first came out--would have
thought it wrong to read _Robert Elsmere_; and "that the people who,
wishing to be on the safe side of virtue, think it wrong to read
either, are scorned greatly as lacking true moral discrimination."
A bias in favor of one's own countrymen is absurd when it leads us to
accept native geese for swans of Avon; but even then it is more
creditable than a bias in favor of foreigners. So it is to be hoped that
some of Miss Repplier's Philadelphian friends will take her to
Independence Hall next Fourth of July and show her the bell that
proclaimed liberty throughout the land. Then, on their way home, they
might drop into a book-store and make Miss Repplier a present of Colonel
Higginson's _The New World and the New Book_, and of Mr. Henry Cabot
Lodge's _Studies in History_ (wherein is to be found his acute account
of "Colonialism in America"), and also of that volume of Lowell's prose
which contains the famous essay "On a Certain Condescension in
Foreigners."
1892