Part 7

At present, however, the new disciples of “earnestness” are trying hard to persuade us that we are too humorous, and that it is the spirit of universal mockery which stifles all our nobler and finer emotions. We would like to believe them, but unhappily it is only to exceedingly strenuous souls that this lawless fun seems to manifest itself. The rest of us, searching cheerfully enough, fail to discover its traces. If we are seldom capable of any sustained enthusiasm, it is rather because we yawn than because we laugh. Unlike Emerson, we are glad to be amused, only the task of amusing us grows harder day by day; and Justin McCarthy’s languid heroine, who declines to get up in the morning because she has so often been up before, is but an exhaustive instance of the inconveniences of modern satiety. When we read of the Oxford students beleaguering the bookshops in excited crowds for the first copies of Rokeby and Childe Harold, fighting over the precious volumes, and betting recklessly on their rival sales, we wonder whether either Lord Tennyson’s or Mr. Browning’s latest effusions created any such tumult among the undergraduates of to-day, or wiled away their money from more legitimate subjects of speculation. Lord Holland, when asked by Murray for his opinion of Old Mortality, answered indignantly, “Opinion! We did not one of us go to bed last night! Nothing slept but my gout.” Yet Rokeby and Childe Harold are both in sad disgrace with modern critics, and Old Mortality stands gathering dust upon our bookshelves. Mr. Howells, who ought to know, tells us that fiction has become a finer art in our day than it was in the days of our fathers, and that the methods and interests we have outgrown can never hope to be revived. So if the masterpieces of the present, the triumphs of learned verse and realistic prose, fail to lift their readers out of themselves, like the masterpieces of the past, the fault must be our own. We devote some conscientious hours to Parleyings with Certain People of Importance, and we are well pleased, on the whole, to find ourselves in such good company; but it is a pleasure rich in the temperance that Hamlet loved, and altogether unlikely to ruffle our composure. We read The Bostonians and The Rise of Silas Lapham with a due appreciation of their minute perfections; but we go to bed quite cheerfully at our usual hour, and are content to wait an interval of leisure to resume them. Could Daisy Miller charm a gouty leg, or Lemuel Barker keep us sleepless until morning? When St. Pierre finished the manuscript of Paul and Virginia, he consented to read it to the painter, Joseph Vernet. At first the solitary listener was loud in his approbation, then more subdued, then silent altogether. “Soon he ceased to praise; he only wept.” Yet Paul and Virginia has been pronounced morbid, strained, unreal, unworthy even of the tears that childhood drops upon its pages. But would Mr. Millais or Sir Frederick Leighton sit weeping over the delightful manuscripts of Henry Shorthouse or Mr. Louis Stevenson? Did the last flicker of genuine emotional enthusiasm die out with George Borrow, who lived at least a century too late for his own convenience? When a respectable, gray-haired, middle-aged Englishman takes an innocent delight in standing bare-headed in the rain, reciting execrable Welsh verses on every spot where a Welsh bard might, but probably does not, lie buried, it is small wonder that the “coarse-hearted, sensual, selfish Saxon”--we quote the writer’s own words--should find the spectacle more amusing than sublime. But then what supreme satisfaction Mr. Borrow derived from his own rhapsodies, what conscious superiority over the careless crowd who found life all too short to study the beau ties of Iolo Goch or Gwilym ab Ieuan! There is nothing in the world so enjoyable as a thorough-going monomania, especially if it be of that peculiar literary order which insures a broad field and few competitors. In a passionate devotion to Welsh epics or to Provençal pastorals, to Roman antiquities or to Gypsy genealogy, to the most confused epochs of Egyptian history or the most private correspondence of a dead author,--in one or other of these favorite specialties our modern students choose to put forth their powers, and display an astonishing industry and zeal.

There is a story told of a far too cultivated young man, who, after professing a great love for music, was asked if he enjoyed the opera. He did not. Oratorios were then more to his taste. He did not care for them at all. Ballads perhaps pleased him by their simplicity. He took no interest in them whatever. Church music alone was left. He had no partiality for even that. “What is it you _do_ like?” asked his questioner, with despairing persistency; and the answer was vouchsafed her in a single syllable, “Fugues.” This exclusiveness of spirit may be detrimental to that broad catholicity on which great minds are nourished, but it has rare charms for its possessor, and, being within the reach of all, grows daily in our favor. French poets, like Gautier and Sully Prudhomme, have been content to strike all their lives upon a single resonant note, and men of far inferior genius have produced less perfect work in the same willfully restricted vein. The pressure of the outside world sorely chafes these unresponsive natures; large issues paralyze their pens. They turn by instinct from the coarseness, the ugliness, the realness of life, and sing of it with graceful sadness and with delicate laughter, as if the whole thing were a pathetic or a fantastic dream. They are dumb before its riddles and silent in its uproar, standing apart from the tumult, and letting the impetuous crowd--“mostly fools,” as Carlyle said--sweep by them unperceived. Herrick is their prototype, the poet who polished off his little glittering verses about Julia’s silks and Dianeme’s ear-rings when all England was dark with civil war. But even this armed neutrality, this genuine and admirable indifference, cannot always save us from the rough knocks of a burly and aggressive world. The revolution, which he ignored, drove Herrick from his peaceful vicarage into the poverty and gloom of London; the siege of Paris played sad havoc with Gautier’s artistic tranquillity, and devoured the greater part of his modest fortune. We are tethered to our kind, and may as well join hands in the struggle. Vexation is no heavier than _ennui_, and “he who lives without folly,” says Rochefoucauld, “is hardly so wise as he thinks.”

CURIOSITIES OF CRITICISM.

There is a growing tendency on the part of literary men to resent what they are pleased to consider the unwarrantable interference of the critic. His ministrations have probably never been sincerely gratifying to their recipients; Marsyas could hardly have enjoyed being flayed by Apollo, even though he knew his music was bad; and worse, far worse, than the most caustic severity are the few careless words that dismiss our cherished aspirations as not even worthy of the rueful dignity of punishment. But in former days the victim, if he resented such treatment at all, resented it in the spirit of Lord Byron, who, roused to a healthy and vigorous wrath,

“expressed his royal views In language such as gentlemen are seldom known to use,”

and by a comprehensive and impartial attack on all the writers of his time proved himself both able and willing to handle the weapons that had wounded him. On the other side, those authors whose defensive powers were of a less prompt and efficient character ventured no nearer to a quarrel than--to borrow a simile of George Eliot’s--a water-fowl that puts out its leg in a deprecating manner can be said to quarrel with a boy who throws stones. Southey, who of all men entertained the most comfortable opinion of his own merits, must have been deeply angered by the treatment Thalaba and Madoc received from the Edinburgh Review; yet we cannot see that either he or his admirers looked upon Jeffrey in any other light than that of a tyrannical but perfectly legitimate authority. Far nobler victims suffered from the same bitter sting, and they too nursed their wounds in a decorous silence.

But it is very different to-day, when every injured aspirant to the Temple of Fame assures himself and a sympathizing public, not that a particular critic is mistaken in his particular case, which we may safely take for granted, but that all critics are necessarily wrong in all cases, through an abnormal development of what the catechism terms “darkness of the understanding and a propensity to evil.” This amiable theory was, I think, first advanced by Lord Beaconsfield, who sorely needed some such emollient for his bruises. In Lothair, when that truly remarkable artist Mr. Gaston Phœbus, accompanied by his sister-in-law Miss Euphrosyne Cantacuzene,--Heaven help their unhappy sponsors!--reveals to his assembled guests the picture he has just completed, we are told that his air “was elate, and was redeemed from arrogance only by the intellect of his brow. ‘To-morrow,’ he said, ‘the critics will commence. You know who the critics are? The men who have failed in literature and art.’” If Lord Beaconsfield thought to disarm his foes by this ingenious device, he was most signally mistaken; for while several of the reviews were deferentially hinting that perhaps the book might not be so very bad as it seemed, Blackwood stepped alertly to the front, and in a criticism unsurpassed for caustic wit and merciless raillery held up each feeble extravagance to the inextinguishable laughter of the world. Even now, when few people venture upon the palatial dreariness of the novel itself, there is no better way of insuring a mirthful hour than by re-reading this vigorous and trenchant satire.

Quite recently two writers, one on either side of the Atlantic, have echoed with superfluous bitterness their conviction of the total depravity of the critic. Mr. Edgar Fawcett, in The House on High Bridge, and Mr. J. R. Rees, in The Pleasures of a Book-Worm, seem to find the English language painfully inadequate for the forcible expression of their displeasure. Mr. Fawcett considers all critics “inconsistent when they are not regrettably ignorant,” and fails to see any use for them in an enlightened world. “It is marvelous,” he reflects, “how long we tolerate an absurdity of injustice before suddenly waking up to it. And what can be a more clear absurdity than that some one individual caprice, animus, or even honest judgment should be made to influence the public regarding any new book?” Moreover, he has discovered that the men and women who write the reviews are mere “underpaid vendors of opinions,” who earn their breakfasts and dinners by saying disagreeable things about authors, “their superiors beyond expression.” But it is only fair to remind Mr. Fawcett that no particular disgrace is involved in earning one’s breakfasts and dinners. On the contrary, hunger is a perfectly legitimate and very valuable incentive to industry. “God help the bear, if, having little else to eat, he must not even suck his own paws!” wrote Sir Walter Scott, with good-humored contempt, when Lord Byron accused him of being a mercenary poet; and we probably owe the Vicar of Wakefield, The Library, and Venice Preserved to their authors’ natural and unavoidable craving for food. Besides, if the reviewers are underpaid, it is not so much their fault as that of their employers, and their breakfasts and dinners must be proportionately light. When Milton received five pounds for Paradise Lost, he was probably the most underpaid writer in the whole history of literature, yet Mr. Mark Pattison seems to think that this fact redounds to his especial honor.

But there are even worse things to be learned about the critic than that he sells his opinions for food. According to Mr. Fawcett he is distinguished for “real, hysterical, vigilant, unhealthy sensitiveness,” and nurses this unpleasant feeling to such a degree that, should an author object to being ill-treated at his hands, the critic is immediately offended into saying something more abominable still. In fact, like an uncompromising mother I once knew, who always punished her children till they looked pleasant, he requires his smarting victims to smile beneath the rod. Happily there is a cure, and a very radical one, too, for this painful state of affairs. Mr. Fawcett proposes that all such offenders should be obliged to buy the work which they dissect, rightly judging that the book notices would grow beautifully less under such stringent treatment. Indeed, were it extended a little further, and all readers obliged to buy the books they read, the publishers, the sellers, and the reviewers might spare the time to take a holiday together.

Mr. Rees is quite as severe and much more ungrateful in his strictures; for, after stating that the misbehavior of the critic is a source of great amusement to the thoughtful student, he proceeds to chastise that misbehavior, as though it had never entertained him at all. In his opinion, the reviewer, being guided exclusively by a set of obsolete and worthless rules, is necessarily incapable of recognizing genius under any new development: “He usually is as little fitted to deal with the tasks he sets himself as a manikin is to growl about the anatomy of a star, setting forth at the same time his own thoughts as to how it should be formed.” Vanity is the mainspring of his actions: “He fears to be thought beneath his author, and so doles out a limited number of praises and an unlimited quantity of slur.” Like the Welshman, he strikes in the dark, thus escaping just retribution; and in his stupid ignorance he seeks to “rein in the wingèd steed,” from having no conception of its aerial powers.

Now this is a formidable indictment, and some of the charges may be not without foundation; but if, as too often happens, the “wingèd steed” is merely a donkey standing ambitiously on its hind legs, who but the critic can compel it to resume its quadrupedal attitude? If, as Mr. Walter Bagehot warned us some years ago, “reading is about to become a series of collisions against aggravated breakers, of beatings with imaginary surf,” who but the critic can steer us safely through the storm? Never, in fact, were his duties more sharply defined or more sorely needed than at present, when the average reader, like the unfortunate Mr. Boffin, stands bewildered by the Scarers in Print, and finds life all too short for their elucidation. The self-satisfied who “know what they prefer,” and read accordingly, are like the enthusiasts who follow their own consciences without first accurately ascertaining whither they are being taken. It has been well said that the object of criticism is simply to clear the air about great work for the benefit of ordinary people. We only waste our powers when we refuse a guide, and by forcing our minds hither and thither, like navigators exploring each new stream while ignorant of its course and current, we squander in idle researches the time and thought which should send us steadily forward on our road. Worse still, we vitiate our judgments by perverse and presumptuous conclusions, and weaken our untrained faculties by the very methods we hoped would speed their growth. If Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Matthew Arnold resemble each other in nothing else, they have both taught earnestly and persistently, through long and useful lives, the supreme necessity of law, the supreme merit of obedience. Mr. Arnold preached it with logical coldness, after his fashion, and Mr. Ruskin with illogical impetuosity, after his; but the lesson remains practically the same. “All freedom is error,” writes the author of Queen of the Air, who is at least blessed with the courage of his convictions. “Every line you lay down is either right or wrong: it may be timidly and awkwardly wrong, or fearlessly and impudently wrong; the aspect of the impudent wrongness is pleasurable to vulgar persons, and is what they commonly call ‘free’ execution.... I have hardly patience to hold my pen and go on writing, as I remember the infinite follies of modern thought in this matter, centred in the notion that liberty is good for a man, irrespectively of the use he is likely to make of it.”

But he does go on writing, nevertheless, long after this slender stock of patience is exhausted, and in his capacity of critic he lays down Draconian laws which his disciples seem bound to wear as a heavy yoke around their necks. “Who made Mr. Ruskin a judge or a nursery governess over us?” asks an irreverent contributor to Macmillan; and why, after all, should we abstain from reading Darwin, and Grote, and Coleridge, and Kingsley, and Thackeray, and a host of other writers, who may or may not be gratifying to our own tastes, because Mr. Ruskin has tried and found them wanting? It is not the province of a critic to bar us in a wholesale manner from all authors he does not chance to like, but to aid us, by his practiced judgment, to extract what is good from every field, and to trace, as far as in us lies, those varying degrees of excellence which it is to our advantage to discern. It was in this way that Mr. Arnold, working with conscientious and dispassionate serenity, opened our eyes to new beauty, and strengthened us against vicious influences; he added to our sources of pleasure, he helped us to enjoy them, and not to recognize his kindly aid would be an ungracious form of self-deception. If he were occasionally a little puzzling, as in some parts of Celtic Literature, where the qualities he detected fall meaningless on our ears, it is a wholesome lesson in humility to acknowledge our bewilderment. Why should the lines

“What little town by river or sea-shore, Or mountain-built with quiet citadel, Is emptied of its folk this pious morn?”

be the expression of a purely Greek form of thought, “as Greek as a thing from Homer or Theocritus;” and

“In such a night Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand, Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love To come again to Carthage,”

be as purely Celtic? Why should

“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows”

be Greek, and

“Fast-fading violets cover’d up in leaves”

be Celtic? That harmless nondescript, the general reader, be he ever so anxious for enlightenment, is forced to confess he really does not know; and if his ignorance be of the complacent order, he adds an impatient doubt as to whether Mr. Arnold knew either, just as when he “comes up gasping” from a sudden plunge into Browning, he is prompt to declare his firm conviction that the poet never had the faintest idea what he was writing about.

But there is another style of enigma with which critics are wont to harry and perplex us, and one has need of a “complication-proof mind,” like Sir George Cornewall Lewis, to see clearly through the tangle. Mr. Churton Collins, in his bitter attack on Mr. Gosse in the Quarterly Review, objected vehemently to ever-varying descriptions of a single theme. He did not think that if Drayton’s Barons’ Wars be a “serene and lovely poem,” it could well have a “passionate music running through it,” or possess “irregular force and sudden brilliance of style.” Perhaps he was right; but there are few critics who can help us to know and feel a poem like Mr. Gosse, and fewer still who write with such consummate grace and charm. It is only when we pass from one reviewer to another that the shifting lights thrown upon an author dazzle and confuse us. Like the fifty-six different readings of the first line of the Orlando Furioso, there are countless standpoints from which we are invited to inspect each and every subject; and unless we follow the admirable example of Mr. Courthope, who solves a difficulty by gently saying, “The matter is one not for argument, but for perception,” we are lost in the mazes of indecision. Thus Mr. Ruskin demonstrates most beautifully the great superiority of Sir Walter Scott’s heroines over his heroes, and by the time we settle our minds to this conviction we find that Mr. Bagehot, that most acute and exhausting of critics, thinks the heroines inferior in every way, and that Sir Walter was truly felicitous only in his male characters.

Happily, this is a point on which we should be able to decide for ourselves without much prompting; but all disputed topics are not equally intelligible. There is the vexed and vexing question of romantic and classical, conservative and liberal poetry, about which Mr. Courthope and Mr. Andrew Lang and Mr. Myers have had so much to say of late, and which is, at best, but a dimly lighted path for the uninitiated to travel. There is that perpetual problem, Mr. Walt Whitman, the despair and the stumbling-block of critics, to whose extraordinary effusions, as the Quarterly Review neatly puts it, “existing standards cannot be applied with exactness.” There is Emily Brontë, whose verses we were permitted for years to ignore, and in whom we are now peremptorily commanded to recognize a true poet. Miss Mary Robinson, who, in common with most female biographers, is an enthusiast rather than a critic, never wearies of praising the “splendid and vigorous movement” of Emily Brontë’s poems, “with their surplus imagination, their sweeping impressiveness, their instinctive music and irregular rightness of form.” On the other hand, Mr. Gosse, while acknowledging in them a very high order of merit, laments that such burning thoughts should be “concealed for the most part in the tame and ambling measures dedicated to female verse by the practice of Felicia Hemans and Letitia Landon.” So far, indeed, from recognizing the “vigorous movement” and “irregular rightness of form” which Miss Robinson so much admires, he describes A Death Scene, one of the finest in point of conception, as “clothed in a measure that is like the livery of a charitable institution.” “There’s allays two ’pinions,” says Mr. Macey, in Silas Marner; but we cannot help sometimes wishing, in the cause of perspicuity, that they were not so radically different.

As for the pure absurdities of criticism, they may be culled like flowers from every branch, and are pleasing curiosities for those who have a liking for such relics. Were human nature less complacent in its self-sufficiency, they might even serve as useful warnings to the impetuous young reviewers of to-day, and so be not without their salutary influence on literature. Whether the result of ignorance, or dullness, or bad temper, of national or religious prejudices, or of mere personal pique, they have boldly challenged the ridicule of the world, and its amused contempt has pilloried them for all time. When Voltaire sneered at the Inferno, and thought Hamlet the work of a drunken savage, he at least made a bid for the approbation of his countrymen, who, as Schlegel wittily observes, were in the habit of speaking as though Louis XIV. had put an end to cannibalism in Europe. But what did Englishmen think when Hume informed them that Shakespeare was “born in a rude age, and educated in the lowest manner, without instruction from the world or from books;” and that he could not uphold for any time “a reasonable propriety of thought”? How did they feel when William Maginn brutally declared that Keats

“the doubly dead In that he died so young,”