CHAPTER V.

REVIVALS AND COMMENCEMENTS.

LIMITATIONS OF THIS CHAPTER—SPAIN—ITALY—DE SANCTIS—CHARACTER OF HIS WORK—SWITZERLAND—VINET—SAINTE-BEUVE ON HIM—HIS CRITICISM OF CHATEAUBRIAND AND HUGO—HIS GENERAL QUALITY—AMIEL: GREAT INTEREST OF HIS CRITICAL IMPRESSIONS—EXAMPLES THEREOF—THE PITY OF IT.

[Sidenote: _Limitations of this chapter._]

Something apologetic has to be said, also, in regard to this present chapter. It is confessedly inadequate as a History, in each individual case, of the critical performances of European countries, other than England, France, and Germany; it is perhaps not so inadequate as a constituent of the present work. That the writer does not pretend to any such acquaintance with these performances as he may, he believes, claim with the others, may seem a rather damning plea: yet perhaps it is not so. For it is for the other side to show that such acquaintance was necessarily incumbent on him, and that, not possessing it, he was bound to postpone the setting forth of what he had to say until the acquisition was accomplished. I acknowledge that I am not of this opinion. In some cases, as we shall see, the critical achievements now under consideration are almost demonstrably unimportant to the general history of Criticism as yet: and in all it may, I think, be fairly contended that they are for the present negligible. For the present, no doubt, only. There probably will come a time when such a new-comer as Russian will extend to European criticism the influence which it has already begun to exercise on European literature, and when older literatures, like Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and the Scandinavian varieties, will reassert, or assert for the first time, their position. But they have hardly done so yet, save in the case of those who, like Dr Brandes, are not of our competence, as living.

[Sidenote: _Spain._]

The most remarkable of the confessions of this with which I am acquainted is given by the part relating to our present subject, of that work, so freely used, and so necessarily praised, in the last volume, the _Historia de las ideas estéticas en España_ of Señor Menéndez y Pelayo. This consists of three substantial volumes, or about a third of the whole work. Yet it is hardly too much to say that it is solely concerned with æsthetic ideas _out of_ Spain—that it is an account of the general course of European, not of the particular course of Spanish, criticism. The foreigner and the general historian can hardly be blamed for not attempting what the native and the specialist declines. If, indeed, we were concerned with living writers, Señor Menéndez himself and others would give us most satisfactory occupation: but we are not.

[Sidenote: _Italy._]

The case of Italy is rather different. Here also there are notable critical names with which our scheme precludes us from dealing, but here native enterprise has not “confessed and avoided.” I do not know anything, in any other language, like the very remarkable _Antologia della Nostra Critica Moderna_ of Signor Luigi Morandi:[1078] and I certainly do not know of any such testimony to the existing critical interests of another country as the fact that sixteen editions of it appear to have been sold in little more than as many years. Yet this very book justifies our refusal. Signor Morandi has not hesitated to “throw back,” not merely to Manzoni, who was born fifteen years within the eighteenth century, but even to Baretti, whose whole life was comprised therein, and who was born in the year in which Addison died. Yet by far the larger number of his contributors are living. They have already done much to make good the claim of their country, if not to that pride of critical place which she held in the sixteenth century, at any rate to a place far higher than she could claim in the seventeenth and eighteenth: and they are likely to go farther yet. For Italy, never quite neglectful of the glories of her older literature, has of late turned to their study with a will; and in this turning, as we have seen, lies the one and certain way to a critical Renaissance.[1079]

[Sidenote: _De Sanctis._]

We must, however, give some special mention to one writer who is very remarkable in himself, and who is generally admitted to have been, as far as in one man lay, the author, or at least encourager, and guide of this renewed attention to criticism in Italy. Francesco de Sanctis is undoubtedly a very interesting person. To us his interest does not lie— to the same extent as it may to others—in the coincidence of his time and his efforts with the new struggle for, and attainment of, political unity: but we can cheerfully allow a place for this. Italy wanted to do for and by herself, in criticism as elsewhere, and he came to show her how so to do. But from our point of view his critical character is interesting somewhat differently, and somewhat differently explicable. He obviously, like Mr Arnold in England, like others elsewhere, was determined towards criticism by the influence of the French Romantics, especially Sainte-Beuve. But he blended with the general characteristics of this criticism not so much Mr Arnold’s specially literary devotion to the greater gods of ancient and modern times, not so much Sainte-Beuve’s own irresistible attraction to the character, the manners, and so forth of his subjects—as the old Italian addiction, already revived and redirected by Vico, towards philosophising. [Sidenote: _Character of his work._] In the first Essay of his most famous, influential, and characteristic book[1080] he cannot write more than a few lines without flinging his disciple neck and heels into the ocean with the question, as a chief one of Literature, “What is the destiny of the human generations?” A momentous question certainly: but one which concerns literature only as it concerns everything else from theology to therapeutics, and perhaps a little less than it concerns most of them. But this opens the old truceless war, and we must turn away from it. Let me only suggest that De Sanctis is a little unfair to the ancients when he says in the same essay that “the sense of Life begins to reveal itself in Shakespeare.” Many a dialogue and many a chorus, many an oration and many a historic passage, will rise up in judgment against him for this, at the great day of critical account.

We must not, however, be too severe on him; for a certain southern tendency to hyperbole is not one of his least engaging characteristics. He shows himself of the nineteenth-century in general, and of the tribe of Sainte-Beuve in particular, by being almost nothing if not an essayist. They complain of his _History of Italian Literature_ that, good as it is, it is too much of a bundle of Essays; his two best-known works, _Saggi Critici_[1081] and _Nuovi Saggi_,[1082] do not pretend to be anything else. The latter is chiefly devoted to Italian subjects, for De Sanctis was deeply imbued with a generous cult of his own noble literature, which is one of the best features of the Italians. The _Saggi Critici_ is more miscellaneous, and so more representative. I do not know his work quite exhaustively enough to be certain how much he knew of English; but it is rather noteworthy that in dealing with Beatrice Cenci his reference to Shelley is exceedingly slight, and might almost be called perfunctory. On the other hand, he has an interesting (first hand?) comparison between “Machbet” and Wallenstein. But French literature, and especially contemporary French literature, seems to have interested him most. He has a very vigorous and successful defence of Hugo’s Triboulet against Saint-Marc Girardin, and what seems to me the best, and the most characteristic, of all his essays is one on the _Contemplations_, where two distinct and rather opposite currents of thought and sentiment clash and ripple in the most refreshing manner. Nowhere is there a better example of that generous hyperbolical rhetoric which has been glanced at: no one has given a more amiable exhibition of that _petite fièvre cérébrale_ which has been noticed more than once, and which the great Frenchman excites in all fit minds. But while the critical De Sanctis applauds and revels, the philosophical De Sanctis has qualms. Is not (here we have an echo of Planche) Hugo’s art more musical than poetical? Poetry must have “a clear silver” sound. No sound can give you any idea: where we have Mr John Morley’s sad heresy about the “vernal wood” anticipated. So once more the _besoin de philosopher_ did a little spoil De Sanctis, and has continued, let us say, not quite to improve his countrymen and disciples. But he did a great, an effectual, and to this day an enduring and admirable work: and even Italy, high as is the standard which she has set her children, is justified also of this her child.

[Sidenote: _Switzerland._]

The accounts which I could give of nineteenth-century criticism in most other nations would be second-hand, would have to be meagre, and, for the reasons just given, as well as others to be added at the end of this chapter, would be almost superfluous; but there is one—the smallest of all—which cannot be quite passed by. Switzerland, from geographical situation and linguistic and racial circumstance, has always been exposed to whatever literary influences were felt in each and all of her three great neighbours: and her contributions to the literature of Europe, stimulated thereby, have always been more than respectable. We have somewhat unceremoniously classed not a few of the authors of these contributions according to language rather than to strict nationality. But the literary activity of the Swiss—chiefly in French, but _as_ Swiss—has been particularly great and particularly critical during the nineteenth century: and we may give some space to two[1083] famous examples of it, one in the earlier, one in the later, division of the period—to Vinet and to Amiel.

[Sidenote: _Vinet._]

Alexandra Vinet was not a long-lived man, scarcely completing his half-century. But from a very early age he was a teacher of literature, and though he devoted part of his energies to theology and other subjects, he was always, in a manner, a critic in his heart. His _Chrestomathie Française_,[1084] arranged when he was little past thirty, was one of the earliest books of the kind, and is still one of the best, as far as its time would let it be: and his _History of Eighteenth Century French Literature_[1085] is, and will remain, a minor Classic. But perhaps no book of his affords better occasion for criticising his criticism than the posthumous collection of his _Études sur la Littérature Française au Xix^{ème} Siècle_.[1086]

[Sidenote: _Sainte-Beuve on him._]

Vinet was (to give a choice of metaphors) dubbed Knight-Critic, or admitted of the Academy of Universal Criticism, at the hands of Sainte-Beuve himself—the Grandmaster of Order and Academy alike—in an article written in 1837, and at present contained in the first thirty pages or so of the _Portraits Contemporains_, vol. iii. It is written in a more patronising tone, with more meticulousness of detail, and with less easy mastery of method, than it would have been as a _Causerie_, a dozen or two dozen years later; but it is very flattering on the whole, and well enough deserved. The Master’s sword, however, as usual, in the process of dubbing, finds out, lightly but unerringly, the joints of the neophyte’s harness. “Les idées morales, religieuses, chrétiennes, eurent toujours le pas dans son esprit sur les opinions purement littéraires.” This is the same peculiarity which, with a difference, afterwards distinguished Vinet’s compatriot, M. Scherer: and it is very noticeable in the book which we have selected for comment. [Sidenote: _His criticism of Chateaubriand and Hugo._] The gown and bands of the Protestant pastor are perpetually hampering the critic’s step and gesture, and flopping up into his eyes. He admires Chateaubriand,[1087] but he is constantly stopping to tell him how sad it is that he should confuse Popish superstition with Christian verity. He admires Victor Hugo[1088]—he does him indeed much more justice than one might have expected, and than remarks on Vinet himself would sometimes lead the second-hand reader to think. But he is made unhappy as a man by Hugo’s art-for-art’s-sake attitude, by his early royalism, by his later anti-Christianity or non-Christianity: while as a professor he is shocked by single-syllable lines, by audacious metaphors (yet he himself finely says somewhere that “only one poet has a greater range of metaphor than Hugo, and that is Humanity itself”), by some real enormities and more escapades of bravado. One is sometimes tempted to laugh at such things as his review of _Les Burgraves_,[1089] with its tone of half-puzzled seriousness, till one comes again to such excellent points as the remark that “Hugo is sometimes mistakable for a parody of Hugo.”

[Sidenote: _His general quality._]

On the whole, however, I confess that I find Vinet rather estimable than enjoyable. He is distinctly _lourd_: though it would be unjust and inaccurate to call him by the dictionary equivalent of that term in English. He carries his Chair too much with him,[1090] and seems to think it necessary to set it down with an effort, and formally establish himself in it, before he makes any deliverance. I do not—I think I may at this eleventh hour ask my readers if I have not justified this claim to impartiality—object to him because he is what he calls a spiritualist in art, or because, against my own views, he pronounces[1091] that there can be no such thing as “pure” literature. I could produce from him a very large number of acute and true critical _aperçus_, like those above cited. He is never merely trivial or negligible: I do not think that he was in the least indifferent about literature. But he seems to me to leave his reader indifferent. His critical method has none of that _maestria_ which carries one away, and only sets one down again when it chooses to relax its grip. There is no stimulus in Vinet, such as we find after widely different fashions in Sainte-Beuve himself and in Planche, in Saint-Victor and in Taine—nay, even in M. Scherer. There is neither persuasion nor provocation in him: he disposes you neither to follow nor to fight.

[Sidenote: _Amiel: great interest of his critical impressions._]

Of the famous and much-discussed work of Henri François Amiel,[1092] we are fortunately concerned only with the literary criticism, the value of which Mr Arnold duly saw, though, in deference to other persons, perhaps, he did not pay so much attention thereto as to some other matters. This literary criticism is of great interest, and I may as well say at once that I think M. Scherer did not do it justice[1093] when he said of his friend that “en littérature, il reculait devant une œuvre.” He could not here mean, what is true, that Amiel’s timid and half-despairing nature recoiled before the completion of a work, for he makes it a parallel with his recoiling before avowal in love, and quotes his own words about his difficulty in “enjoying naïvely and simply.” Undoubtedly this “moral eunuchism” (for it is impossible not to think of the famous passage in _Peter Bell the Third_) is to be laid to Amiel’s charge too often; but I think conspicuously _not_ in his presentments and judgments of literature. He is here far more healthy and far more natural than anywhere else. Indeed, he is sometimes so very little sicklied over with any pale cast that he frankly and naïvely records his changes of impression about the same book as he reads. These changes are, in tolerably active and sensitive natures, so rapid and curious that some practised reviewers have made it a principle, whenever they can, first to read the book they are reviewing through, with as little interruption as possible, lest the “plate” shift or change; and, secondly, never to review it on the same day on which they read it, that the impressions may have time to blend and harmonise. The most interesting, perhaps, of Amiel’s records of experience in this kind is the group of impressions of Eugénie de Guérin, which occur together in the _Journal_ at vol. i. p. 197. He reads and re-reads her on successive September days in 1864, and reads her once more in the middle of October. The first impression (which maintains itself for the two days) is altogether one of enthusiasm, not merely in regard to the sentimental side, the _impression nostalgique_, &c., but with a delighted recognition of _verve_, _élan_, greatness of soul in this “Sévigné des Champs” [Notre Dame des Rochers will forgive!]. After the month’s interval he does not recant: but finds a rather less charming side as well. Eugénie’s existence is at once “too empty and too confined”: he wants “more air and space.” Now both these impressions are genuine and vivid: and, what is more, they are both frankly taken and expressed, without any gaucherie or “feeling faint,” any “touching the hem of the shift,” and daring no more.

[Sidenote: _Examples thereof._]

And this character of at least relative vivacity—of ease and power in enjoyment—generally distinguishes, as it seems to me, the literary entries, which have far less of what some have called the _ton amielleux_ about them than any others. The description of the style of Montesquieu[1094] is quite admirably true and fresh: and if that of Joubert[1095] is open to more exception, it is precisely because Amiel is mixing up Joubert’s utterances as a literary critic and his utterances as a philosopher, &c., too much; because he is not keeping his own saner organ of judgment mainly at work. The fastidious and morbid side does show itself in that on Rousseau, which follows immediately: but this we should expect. On Vinet,[1096] though too complimentary, as was for a dozen reasons almost inevitable, he shows extraordinary acuteness and _finesse_, as also on Sismondi.[1097] If he is less satisfactory on Chateaubriand, we can again explain it, and he does justice to _René_. The apology for Quinet[1098] is as judicious as it is sympathetic: and I know few more curious and interesting companion passages in criticism than those on Hugo and Lamartine earlier, on Corneille and Hugo later, which occur almost together in the book, though there was some time between the composition of them.[1099]

In the first of these, the juxtaposition of the citations from _Les Châtiments_ and _Jocelyn_ is a stroke of genius; in the latter batch, though it is quite clear that the judge does not completely like either the author of _Polyeucte_ or the author of _Les Misérables_, the indication of characteristics is even greater in another way, because more elaborated and responsible. On M. Cherbuliez[1100] Amiel is again of the first interest, because the slight over-valuation of compatriotism on the small scale is balanced by a distinct antagonism of “nervous impression.” And we have even a more curious “place” in the notice of _John Halifax_,[1101] which is the last of our passages in the first volume. Here Amiel’s starting-point is a vain imagination—the usual misjudgment of things English, by a man who does not know England— but the use made of it is singularly good. The second volume gives us another invaluable pair on the most antecedently _not_ to be paired of writers, About and Lotze—who nevertheless bring out between them the remarkable powers of Amiel’s mind-camera. The summer of 1869 supplies more documents on Lamennais, Heine (inadequate this latter, but again necessarily), and Renan, with admirable obituary remarks to follow on Sainte-Beuve. One side of Taine—the side up to the date almost solely in evidence—comes out two years afterwards,[1102] and the remaining references that I have are so numerous that I fear they, or rather some of them only, must be collected in a note.[1103]

[Sidenote: _The pity of it._]

We must, however, in order to take an accurate and complete view of Amiel as a critic, and not merely of Amiel’s occasional criticisms, remember that these _aperçus_, brilliant as they are, are scattered over more than thirty years, and that they form, as it were, the lucid intervals in a lifelong night of moping, the islets far scattered and estranged from another, amid the _nigras undas lethargi_. That the man who wrote them was, at the time of writing, almost invariably a sane, mentally active, “moderately cheerful” being, is, I think, absolutely beyond question; that he might, if he had chosen to write more and to give himself more freely to that which comes before the writing, have freed himself to a great extent from his Melancholia, I have no doubt. Escape from that dread yet sweet enchantress—that serpent not of old Nile but of the older Ocean that flows round the world—no man can wholly who has been born of her servants; probably no such man would ever wish to do so. But there are two gates of partial and temporary emancipation— the Gate of Humour and the Gate of Study—which she usually permits to stand open, and through which men may pass, lest her sway become tyranny. That of Humour was apparently barred to Amiel: the other evidently was not. But he would very rarely use it. We know that he had many opportunities of contributing to critical journals, and that he would not take them, but fled back to Maya and the Great Wheel. Here the other, the more popular, the more irritating, side of him comes in.

But I can see no _pose_ whatever in the literary entries. On the contrary, their freshness and spontaneity make a very remarkable contrast to almost all the rest of the book, except perhaps a few of the Nature-passages. Still, they _are_ “intervals and islets” only—there is a singular want of connection between them. Amiel seems seldom or never to have troubled himself in the least about taking any connected views of literature: he seldom or never extends the remarkable comparative power which he shows in his various companion sketches. And, further, I am not certain that if he had attempted regular studies or _causeries_ they would have been good—that he would not have maundered off into the vague instead of giving grasped views and judgments. This, however, no one can decide. What remains positive and proved is, first, that his intellect never shows to greater advantage than in his literary passages.

_Sed hæc hactenus._ I believe honestly, and not as a subterfuge to cover pusillanimity or laziness, that if I were to give here an examination of notable critics during the nineteenth century from every nation and country in Europe, I should not really advance the survey of criticism which we now possess in the very least. Until a time so recent that it falls out of our consideration, all these countries and nations have most certainly been following—until, perhaps, one which is not recent but still to come, they seem likely to follow, the same course which the Three First have pursued before them, and in most, if not in all cases, have followed their leaders in a more definite order of sequence still. All, about the second or third decade of the century, devoured Scott and Byron; all, a little (or more than a little) later, reinforced our influence by that of the French Romantic movement; most, earlier or later, devoted themselves to that German literature which had in a sense preceded ours, as it certainly had the French. In all, the Romantic leaven worked itself out, under the conditions of the literature and the individual, to spirit, or wine, or vinegar, as the case might be. In all, “Realism” and “Naturalism,” “Decadence” and “Preciousness,” showed themselves, as similar things have shown themselves many a time before, in the merry-go-round of history and of literature. Quite lately, in some—Russian, Norwegian, Belgian, _que-sais-je?_—signs of secondary fermentation have been shown, which have greatly impressed some observers. But it is as yet much too early to take serious critical account of them.

And so the long journey—the tale of length also, which recounts it—may, if it actually must not, end with a few general observations of summary and reflection, to correspond to those which we have interspersed before.

CONCLUSION

CONCLUSION.

§ I. THE PRESENT STATE OF CRITICISM.

§ II. THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER.

I.

In a letter (written on what was to prove his deathbed) which I received from my friend of nearly forty years, the late Bishop of London, in reference to the first volume of this work, he said he had often wished it possible to begin books of the kind at the end, and write backward, so as at once to engage the interest of the reader on matter more or less known to him, and to lead him on to the unknown by easy stages, instead of plunging him into a bath of strange matter. I nearly always found in Creighton’s utterances—from the time when we used to outwatch the Bear in certain lofty rooms looking over Merton Meadow, and the Broad Walk, and the river, towards the full of the moon—a _Hinterland_ as well as a foreground of meaning. And in this case, no doubt, the advantage of such a topsyturvyfication, if it were practicable, would not be confined to the reader. It is almost as important to the writer that he should not lose himself too much in “origins”—that he should keep fruit as well as root in view—nay, that, if possible, he should have a sort of Alcinous' garden of the subject before him, with its various developments simultaneously present. I hope, indeed, that I have not quite failed, as it is, to accomplish something of this tregetour-work for my own benefit and the reader’s. Yet even “beginning at the end” would have had its dangers, for in no part of the book is what we have sometimes called a “horizontal” view more necessary, or more apparently hard to maintain, than in this present. The immense mass of material which has to be selected or rejected is an obvious difficulty: and the certainty that, as readers in the earlier part have grumbled at too extensive treatment of matters of which they knew nothing, so in this later they will grumble at too curt treatment of what they do know and expect to be treated fully—is equally obvious. But these are not really formidable dragons or lions. To grapple with the first is the plain and _prima facie_ business of the adventure, and to the second the adventurer must make up his mind.

But the knight’s worst foes now, as of old, are not lions or dragons, but treacherous and deluding enchanters and enchantresses, taking advantage of his own weakness. And the difficulty of keeping a steady, achromatic, comparative estimate of the criticism of to-day and of yesterday is in this instance Archimago and Duessa at once. We have seen, again and again, during the progress of our history, how at one time—a long time ago for the most part—Criticism has been entirely bewitched by the idea of a Golden Age, when all poets were sacred and all critics gave just judgment: how, at another, a confidence, bland or pert as the case might be, has existed (and exists) that we are much wiser than our fathers. Above all, we have seen repeatedly that constant and most dangerous delusion that the fashion which has just ceased to be fashionable is a specially bad and foolish one, with its concomitant and equally unreasonable but rather less dangerous opposite, that the fashion that _is_ in is the foolishest and feeblest of all fashions. With these things we have hitherto had to cope only at long bowls, so that it has been comparatively easy to keep a critical head. We are now at closest grapple with them: and while it cannot but be difficult to escape or to conquer, it will be wellnigh impossible not to seem captured or vanquished to spectators who have themselves not fully purged their eyes with the necessary euphrasy and rue.

From these same dangers, however, the very fact of having steadily worked through the history from the beginning, yet with an abiding memory of the end, should be something of a safeguard for writer and reader alike. We have seen how justly Mr Rigmarole might pronounce all times “pretty much like our own” in respect of the faults and dangers of criticism, though this time might incline to that danger and that to this. If one—even one—lesson has emerged, it must have been that to select the favourite critical fancy of _any_ time as the _unum necessarium_ is fatal—or redeemed only by the completeness with which such a selection, when faithfully carried out, demonstrates its own futility. Yet we have seen also that the criticism of no time is wholly idle or wholly negligible—that the older periods and the older men are no “shadows,” but almost more real, because more original, than the newer—that each and all have lessons, from the times of prim and strictly limited knowledge to the times of swaggering and nearly unlimited ignorance. And we should not be quite unable to apply these.[1104]

In the preceding Book we have surveyed, in most cases virtually and in some actually, to the end of the Nineteenth century, the latest stage or stages of that modified and modernised criticism, the rise of which was traced in the first Book of the present volume, and its victorious establishment in the second. We have seen how—owing partly, no doubt, to the mere general law of flux and reflux, but partly, and perhaps mainly, to the enlarged study of literature, and the breaking down, in connection with this, of the Neo-classic standards and methods,—judging _a posteriori_, or, as Johnson, prophesying and protesting, called it, “by the event,” came to take the place of judging _a priori_, or by the rule. That in many cases the new critics would not themselves have admitted this description of their innovations we have not attempted to deny or disguise: but we have not been able to agree with them. We have, however, seen also that to satisfy the craving for generalities and for “pushing ignorance further back,” new preceptist systems, in no small number, and sometimes of great pretensions and no small complexity, have been advanced, and that the new subject of “Æsthetics”—in itself little more than a somewhat disorderly generic name for these systems—has obtained considerable recognition. But no one of these has, nor have all of them together, attained anything like that position of acknowledgment, “establishment,” and authority which was enjoyed by the Neo-classic faith: and we have seen that some of the straitest doctrinaires have condescended, while the general herd of critics have frankly preferred, to judge authors as they found them.

That the results have been in many ways satisfactory, it seems impossible for any one but the extremest of partisans to deny. The last and worst fault of any state, political or other, that of “decreeing injustice by a law,” has been almost entirely removed (at least as a general reproach) from the state of Criticism. That a work of art is entitled to be judged on its own merits or demerits, and not according as its specification does or does not happen to be previously entered and approved in an official schedule—this surely cannot but seem a gain to every one not absolutely blinded by prejudice. Nor is it the only point which ought to unite all reasonable suffrages. By the almost necessary working of the new system, the _personnel_ of Criticism has been enlarged, improved, strengthened in a most remarkable degree. The old opposition of the poet and the critic has ceased to exist. It is true indeed that, as we have seen, it never existed as an absolute law; but it was a prevailing one, and it deprived criticism of some of its most qualified recruits, or made them, if they joined, inconsistent, like Lope, and Dryden, and Johnson. Nay, Coleridge himself could hardly have been the critic he was under the older dispensation, much less those other poets, many and of many countries, who have enriched the treasury of a Goddess once thought to be the poet’s deadliest foe.

Yet, again, putting the contributions of poets, as poets, on one side, the general literary harvest of the kind has been undoubtedly more abundant, and in its choicer growths more varied, more delightful, even more instructive. A collection of the best critical results of the last fifty years only would certainly yield in these points to no similar book that could be compiled from the records of any other period, even of much greater length. From the perfected craftsmanship of Saint-Beuve, and the whole critical production of Matthew Arnold, through the work of writers unnecessary to enumerate, because all possible enumeration would almost necessarily be an injustice, you might collect—not a volume, not half a dozen, but a small, and not so very small, library, of which you could not merely say “Here be truths,” but “Here is reading which any person of ordinary intelligence and education will find nearly, if not quite, as delightful as he can find in any other department of _belles lettres_, except the very highest triumphs of prose and poetic Fiction itself.”

Now, the removal of the reproach of injustice, the removal of the reproach of dulness, these are surely good and even great things: while better, and greater still, is the at least possible institution of a new Priesthood of Literature, disinterested, teaching the world really to read, enabling it to understand and enjoy, justifying the God and the Muse to Men.

This is a fair vision; so fair, perhaps, that it may seem to be, like others, made of nothing more solid than “golden air.” That would be perhaps excessive, for, as has been pointed out above, the positive gains under this New Dispensation, both of good criticism produced and of good literature freed from arbitrary persecution, have been very great. But, as we foreshadowed in the Interchapter at the end of the last volume, there is another side to the account, a side not to be ignored. If Buddha and Mr Arnold be right, and if “Fixity” be “a sign of the Law”—then most assuredly Modern Criticism is not merely lawless, but frankly and wilfully antinomian. It is rare to find two critics of competence liking just the same things; it is rarer still to find them liking the same things for the same reason. And so it happens that the catholic ideal which this New Criticism seemed likely to establish is just as far off, and just as frequently neglected or even outraged, as in the old days of strict sectarianism, and without the same excuse. The eighteenth-century critic could render a reason, _pro tanto_ valid, for patronising Chaucer, and taking exceptions even to Milton, because neither was like Dryden. But the critic of to-day who belittles Dryden because he is not like Chaucer or Milton is utterly without excuse:—and yet he is to be found, and found in high places. If (as in another case) critics were to be for a single day what they ought to be, the world would no doubt be converted; but there certainly does not appear to be much more chance of this in the one case than in the other.

And so the enemy—who is sometimes a friendly enemy enough—has not the slightest difficulty in blaspheming,—in asking whether the criterion of pleasure does not leave the fatal difficulty: “Yes: but pleasure _to whom_?”; in demanding some test which the simple can apply; in reproaching “Romantic” critics with faction and will-worship, with inconsistency and anarchy. Nor perhaps is there any better shift than the old Pantagruelian one—to _passer oultre_. There _are_ these objections to the modern way of criticism: and probably they can never be got rid of or validly gainsaid. But there is something beyond them, which can be reached in spite of them, and which is worth the reaching.

This something is the comprehensive and catholic possession of literature—all literature and all that is good in all—which has for the first time become possible and legitimate. From Aristotle to La Harpe— even to one of the two Matthew Arnolds—the covenant of criticism was strictly similar to that of the Jewish Law,—it was a perpetual “Thou shalt not do this,” or “Thou shalt do this only in such and such a specified way.” There might be some reason for all the commandments, and excellent reason for some; but these reasons were never in themselves immortal, and they constantly tended to constitute a mortal and mortifying Letter. The mischief of this has been shown in something not far from two thousand pages, and there is no need to spend more time on it. Nor is it necessary even to argue that in the region of Art such a Law entirely lacks the justification which it may have in the region of Morals.

But it may fairly be asked, How do you propose to define _any_ principles for your New Critic? And the answers are ready, one in Hellenic, one in Hebraic phraseology. The definition shall be couched as the man of understanding would define it: and if any will do the works of the New Criticism he shall know the doctrine thereof. And the works themselves are not hard to set forth. He must read, and, as far as possible, read everything—that is the first and great commandment. If he omits one period of a literature, even one author of some real, if ever so little, importance in a period, he runs the risk of putting his view of the rest out of focus; if he fails to take at least some account of other literatures as well, his state will be nearly as perilous. Secondly, he must constantly compare books, authors, literatures indeed, to see in what each differs from each, but never in order to dislike one because it is not the other. Thirdly, he must, as far as he possibly can, divest himself of any idea of what a book _ought to be_, until he has seen what it is. In other words, and to revert to the old simile, the plate to which he exposes the object cannot be too carefully prepared and sensitised, so that it may take the exactest possible reflection: but it cannot also be too carefully protected from even the minutest line, shadow, dot, that may affect or predetermine the impression in the very slightest degree.

To carry this out is, of course, difficult; to carry it out in perfection is, no doubt, impossible. But I believe that it can be done in some measure, and could be done, if men would take criticism both seriously and faithfully, better and better—by those, at least, who start with a certain favourable disposition and talent for the exercise, and who submit this disposition to a suitable training in ancient and modern literature. And by such endeavours, some nearer approach to the “Fair Vision” must surely be probable than was even possible by the older system of schedule and precept, under which even a new masterpiece of genius, which somehow or other “forced the consign” and established itself, became a mischief, because it introduced a new prohibitive and exclusive pattern. I have said more than once that, according to the common law of flux and reflux—the Revolution which those may accept who are profoundly sceptical of Evolution—some return, not to the old Neo-classicism, but to some more dogmatic and less æsthetic criticism than we have seen for the last three generations, may be expected, and that there have been not a few signs of its arrival. But this is a History, not a Prophecy, and sufficient to the day is the evil thereof. Perhaps even the good is not quite so insufficient as the day itself, “chagrined at whatsoe’er _it is_,” may be apt to suppose.

II.

“Who would has heard Sordello’s story told.”

In these three volumes an endeavour has been made to fulfil the pledge given at their beginning, and to set before the reader, in a plain tale, what men have actually done, said, and thought in Criticism of Literature, in Judging of Authors. We have seen how the art grew up, like so many other arts, as a sort of _parergon_, as a corollary upon the strictly practical study of Rhetoric for the purpose of the orator: and how it was long held in a sort of subjection to this _techne_, which, if not exactly a _techne banausos_, certainly must rank far below the study and the fruition of the whole of literature. We have seen how, in the times called ancient, it never got wholly free from this inferior position; how, in the times called mediæval, it hardly showed any signs of life; how it revived with the general new birth, and what have been its fortunes since. There can be no need to pad this already stout volume with abstracts of our Interchapters. The story of Criticism is actually before the reader, and if he will not take it now, that it is at last given to him, because there is wanting something that is not the story, I cannot help it. No doubt there are some, perhaps there are many, who honestly and impartially think the story not worth giving, think it a story of something, at best a superfluity, generally a failure, at worst a nuisance, redeemable and excusable only (if then) by being made to serve as illustration of some philosophic theory. But I have said often enough and positively enough, though I trust not too contumaciously, that I do not think so.

And even if the record seem too often a record of failure and mistake, there is a cheerful side to this also. Most of the dangers of criticism, as this long survey must have sufficiently taught those who care to learn, are comfortably and reassuringly (if from another point of view despairingly) old. We know they will come, and we know they will go, whether in our time or in another we cannot say, but it does not much matter.

“The Whole man idly boasts to find,” no doubt. Not many have even attempted to do it; few who have attempted it have succeeded in that comparatively initial and rudimentary adventure which consists in justly finding the parts. But Criticism is, after all, an attempt, however faulty and failing, however wandering and purblind, to do both the one and the other. No Muse, or handmaid of the Muses (let it be freely confessed) has been less often justified of her children: none has had so many good-for-nothings for sons. Of hardly any have some children had such disgusting, such patent, such intolerable faults. The purblind theorist who mistakes the passport for the person, and who will not admit without passport the veriest angel; the acrid pedant who will allow no one whom he dislikes to write well, and no one at all to write on any subject that he himself has written on, or would like to write on, who dwells on dates and commas, who garbles out and foists in, whose learning may be easily exaggerated but whose taste and judgment cannot be, because they do not exist;—these are the too often justified patterns of the critic to many minds. The whole record of critical result, which we have so laboriously arranged and developed, is a record of mistake and of misdoing, of half-truths and nearly whole errors.

So say they, and so let them say: things have been said less truly. But, once more, all this is no more Criticism itself than the crimes and the faults of men are Humanity in its true and eternal idea. Criticism is the endeavour to find, to know, to love, to recommend, not only the best, but all the good, that has been known and thought and written in the world. If its corruption be specially detestable, its perfection is only the more amiable and consummate. And the record of the quest, while it is not quite the record of the quest for other Eldorados—while it has some gains to yield, some moments of adeption, some instances of those who did not fail—should surely have some interest even for the general: it should more surely have much for those few but not unworthy, faint yet pursuing, who would rather persevere in the search for the unattainable than rust in acquiescence and defeat.

For to him who has once attained, who has once even comprehended, the _ethos_ of true criticism, and perhaps to him only, the curse which Mr Browning has put in one of his noblest and most poetic passages does not apply. To him the “one fair, good, wise thing” that he has once grasped remains for ever as he has grasped it—_if_ he has grasped it at first. Not twenty, not forty years, make any difference. What has been, has been and remains. If it is not so, if there is palling and blunting, then it is quite certain either that the object was unworthy or that the subject did not really, truly, critically embrace it—that he was following some will-o'-the-wisp of fancy on the one hand, some baffling wind of doctrine on the other, and was not wholly, in brain and soul, under the real inspiration of the Muse. That this adeption and fruition of literature is to a certain extent innate may be true: that it is both idle and flagitious to simulate it if it does not exist, is true. But it can certainly be cultivated where it exists, and it probably in all cases requires cultivation in order that it may be perfect. In any fair state of development it is its own exceeding great reward,—a possession of the most precious that man can have. And the practical value of the Art of Criticism, and of the History of Criticism (which, as in other cases, is merely the exposition of the art in practice), is that it can and does assist this development; that by pointing out past errors it prevents interference with enjoyment; that it shows how to grasp and how to enjoy; that it helps the ear to listen when the horns of Elfland blow.

-----

Footnote 1:

For uniformity’s sake I have kept the title “to the present day.” That day, however, was the day of the first volume, 1900; and should the book reappear it will read “to the end of the nineteenth century.”

Footnote 2:

Especially in the phrase “the Modern Spirit”—a _Geist_ who seems to have received the blessing of a good opinion of himself, and to have no inclination to “deny” it.

Footnote 3:

As I have known this quotation challenged, I may observe that there is a Tenth book of the _Æneid_ as well as a First.

Footnote 4:

Published, not entirely, by Thyer of Manchester in 1759 (2 vols.). A handsome reprint of 1827 gives only a few of the prose “Characters”: more of these, but not the whole, were given by Mr H. Morley in his _Character-Writing of the Seventeenth Century_ (London, 1891). The verse remains may be found in Chalmers or in the Aldine (vol. ii., London, 1893).

Footnote 5:

A blank rhyme indicates “Howard”—whether Edward or Robert does not matter. But another blank requires a trisyllable to fill it.

Footnote 6:

Benlowes is a warning to “illustrated poets.” It pleased him to have his main book (_Theophila, or Love’s Sacrifice_: London, 1652, folio) splendidly decorated by Hollar and others; and the consequence is that copies of it are very rare, and generally mutilated when found. I congratulate myself on having first read Benlowes and William Woty, a minor poet of a century later, on the same day. To study _Theophila_ and _The Blossoms of Helicon_ in succession is quite a critical gaudy.

Footnote 7:

I do not make Vico my Italian example, for the same reasons which induced me to postpone him to this volume. See _inf._, chap. v.

Footnote 8:

_The_V. sup., ii. 450, 553.

Footnote 9:

_The_Op. cit. sup., ii. 425 note, p. 71. I am not certain whether this came before or after the 1897 reprint (by E. Ritter: Paris and Berne) of Muralt. But Dr Otto von Greyerz had some years earlier published a study of him (Frauenfeld, 1888), which I have not yet seen.

Footnote 10:

_The_V. sup., ii. 271.

Footnote 11:

_The_V. sup., ii. 63.

Footnote 12:

From the social-historical side he is very valuable. It is a pity, and rather a surprise, that Macaulay did not know—for if he had known he must have used—him. No foreign writer is more valuable as illustrating the astonishing coarseness and the less astonishing immorality which the Puritan curse had directly, or by reaction, brought upon England.

Footnote 13:

For the special subjects of the present chapter, putting Lessing, and even him not wholly, out of the question, there exists a remarkably “in-going” monograph, Herr Friedrich Braitmaier’s _Geschichte der Poetischen Theorie und Kritik von den Diskursen der Maler bis auf Lessing_ (Frauenfeld, 1889). This book has been of great use to me; and I do not think that any one can read it without respect for the author’s learning, his good sense, and the clearness and definiteness of his report. His _compte-rendu_ of particular authors is often larger than it need be for a fair first view; while neither it nor anything else can ever dispense the thorough student from going to originals; and he might be here and there less polemical. But these things will not displease some readers, and certainly they do not spoil the book, which, however, be it observed, is deplorably in want of an index. With it should be taken the extremely full and informing introduction—almost a book in itself—of Herr Johann von Antoniewicz to the ed. of Joh. Elias Schlegel, cited below. For almost all my German chapters I am also much indebted to the admirable _Grundriss der Geschichte d. Deutsch. Nationallit._ of Koberstein (ed. 5, by Bartsch, Leipzig: 5 vols. and index, 1872-73)—a book which, let some say what they will, is not likely soon to be really obsolete.

Footnote 14:

The text-book for German seventeenth-century criticism is that of Dr Karl Borinski, _Die Poetik der Renaissance und die Anfänge der literarischen Kritik in Deutschland_ (Berlin, 1886). This book is “choke-full” of information and indication, and the only possible faults that Momus himself could find with it are—first, that the author sometimes digresses somewhat from his path, which is itself so little trodden that one would like him to stick to it; and, secondly, that his dealings with his subject might be rather clearer and more methodic in the text, and, being what they are, are all the more in want of a clear and methodic table of contents. But I am too much indebted to him to quarrel.

Footnote 15:

_Schönes Blumenfeldt._ Lignitz, 1601, 4to.

Footnote 16:

ii. 360 note.

Footnote 17:

G. R. Weckherlin. See Borinski, p. 51. The influence of English literature on German was still pretty strong. Sidney’s _Arcadia_ was translated in 1629.

Footnote 18:

Braunschweig, 1651.

Footnote 19:

Berlin-Jena, 1656.

Footnote 20:

_Kurzer Wegweiser sur Deutsch-Tichtkunst._ Je[h]na, 1663. Some of Buchner’s original work seems to be lost, if it ever was published.

Footnote 21:

I use the Zürich reprint of 1749.

Footnote 22:

1702.

Footnote 23:

A comparison of the three contemporaries, Gravina, Werenfels, and Addison, would make an interesting critical essay.

Footnote 24:

“Some are so rigorous that they will only have a time of one _or two_ days.” I quote from Borinski, p. 364, not having seen the original.

Footnote 25:

_V. sup._, ii. 552-557.

Footnote 26:

_Op. cit._, Part I., Chaps. 1-5 and 8. His special enemy or target is Danzel’s _Gottsched und seine Zeit_ (Leipzig, 1848), an unhesitating championship of the classical champion.

Footnote 27:

1725-26. These eccentric and sometimes _baroque_ titles were a mania with German men of letters. It had become epidemic in the fifteenth century, and continued so till the eighteenth, if not longer, the last very distinguished patient being, of course, Jean Paul. In this the _feminine_ is an exaggeration of the Addisonian tendency to “fair-sex it,” as Swift says.

Footnote 28:

He _had_ a real zeal for his native tongue: and it is admitted that the _Beiträge_, by discarding the Spectatorian miscellaneousness, and concentrating attention upon letters, and by promoting, if mainly from the mere side of language, the study of elder German literature, did much good.

Footnote 29:

It has been debated whether “Sasper” or “Saspar,” by which names the Swiss critics sometimes (but very rarely) mention our poet, is a proof of ignorance or merely a phonetic accommodation. But it is admitted that the first German who felt his true inspiration and healing power was J. E. Schlegel, _v. inf._

Footnote 30:

I have been remonstrated with, in no unfriendly manner, for not discussing the origin, progress, and variations of this famous word. I can only say of this, as of some other remonstrances, that all show rather imperfect realisation of what I intended to do in this book. Such a discussion would form a most fitting part of a volume of _Abhandlungen_ or _Excursus_ on this History—a volume which, if I found any encouragement to do so, I would very gladly write, and for which I have all the materials ready. But it and its possible companions would, according to my ideas of my plan, not merely enlarge the book itself too much, but throw it out of scheme and scale, if they were introduced into the text.

Footnote 31:

Antonio Conti (1677-1749) is called author of that _Paragone_ which in vol. ii. p. 554 _sup._ I called “anonymous,” because Gottsched gave no author for it, and which was an offshoot of this correspondence in 1728-29. Conti was acquainted with Leibnitz and Newton, spent a long time both in England and in France, wrote tragedies and other things, which are imperfectly collected in his _Prose e Poesie_, Venice, vol. i., 1739; vol. ii. (posthumous), 1756. Professors D’Ancona and Bucci (_Manuale della Litt. Ital._, Firenze, 1897, iv. 379) speak highly of him. The passage which they give from him on Dante and Petrarch is respectable and erudite, but gives no very high idea of his critical powers. Milton sticks to history and tradition, but Dante does all “out of his own head.” Petrarch has in his poetry not only the sacred and the venerable, but the graceful and the delicate, &c., &c. For more on him and on König see note at end of chapter.

Footnote 32:

_Kritische Abhandlung von dem Wunderbaren in der Poesie und dessen Verbindung mit dem Wahrscheinlichen in einer Vertheidigung des Gedichtes Joh. Milton’s von dem Verlorenen Paradiese._ [By Bodmer.] 1740.

_Kritische Abhandlung von der Natur, den Absichten und dem Gebrauche der Gleichnisse._ [By Breitinger, edited (_besorget_) by Bodmer.] 1740.

_Kritische Dichtkunst. Worinnen die Poetische Malerei in Absicht auf die Erfindung im Grunde untersuchet wird_, &c. [By Breitinger.] 1740.

_Kritische Betrachtung uber die Poetischen Gemahlde der Dichter._ [By Bodmer, with an introduction by Breitinger.] 1741.

All these might, with advantage, be more accessible than they are. The _Kritische Dichtkunst_ was promised long ago as a reprint in the _Litteraturdenkmale_. The originals appear to be rare, and when they occur are dear, and at once carried off.

Footnote 33:

_V. sup._, ii. 554. As an example of Gottsched in his less sad but more furious mood, nothing can be better than the passage quoted by Herr Braitmaier (_op. cit._, p. 139) from the _Beiträge_ (xxix. 8). After much vituperation of Shakespeare (_Julius Cæsar_ had just been translated) and other English playwrights, even Addison, he winds up: “That the English stage helps in such a shameless fashion to nourish the two principal vices of the English people—cruelty and lust—is something so horrible that all honour-loving Englishmen must blush as often as they think of their theatre. There is scarcely a comedy wherein blood and murder do not come in just as if it were a tragedy, and wherein both sexes do not openly, and with the most revolting expressions, speak of things that can only occur in disreputable and forbidden houses.” Poor Gottsched!

Footnote 34:

Which, be it remembered, B. himself translated.

Footnote 35:

Heilbronn?, 1883.

Footnote 36:

These latter date from 1742.

Footnote 37:

It is well known that Germany was still intensely provincial. The “snorings under six-and-thirty monarchs,” as Heine put it unkindly, almost a century later, were not peaceful by any means.

Footnote 38:

Zürich, 1741-44.

Footnote 39:

They were numerous from 1740 to 1760, and their titles—except those of the rather well-known _Bremer Beiträge_, itself a “short title,” and the _Gelehrten Zeitungen_ of Göttingen, are mostly rather cumbrous, _e.g._, Cramer and Mylius’ _Bemühungen zur Beförderung der Kritik und des Guten Geschmacks_, Halle, 1743-47. I do not pretend to a very extensive acquaintance with them, but what I have confirms Herr Braitmaier’s statement that, excepting the Göttingen one, and this for the sake of Haller, chiefly, “All these newspapers did as good as nothing for the advancement of criticism.”

Footnote 40:

Gellert, who was a sort of “prefect” for his time in this school of modern German literature, gave at least one proof of practical wisdom which few men of letters have equalled. Frederic the Great sent for him, poured oil over him from his beard to the skirts of his clothing, and invited him again. Gellert did not go. As for the others, Christian Mylius, dying young, had the further good luck to be a friend of Lessing, who edited his _Vermischte Schriften_ (Berlin, 1754). They run from Theology to Vivisection. The chief critical piece is a tractate (1743), _Von den Reimen und dem Sylbenmasse in Schauspielen_. Mylius is against rhyme both in Tragedy and in Comedy.

Footnote 41:

I say “at least” because the youngest brother of the elder batch, Johann Heinrich, also meddled with literature. But we need take no keep of him.

Footnote 42:

A phase of, and sometimes identified with, the general “Swiss-Saxon” battle.

Footnote 43:

I only know the third edition (Leipzig, 1770), which, as well as the second, 1758-59, seems to have been a good deal revised. There are eleven _Abhandlungen_ here, two of which were new, while two others had been added in the second to the original seven.

Footnote 44:

Ed. cit. _sup._, J. E. S. _Aesthetische und Dramaturgische Schriften_. Heilbronn, 1887.

Footnote 45:

Ed. cit., pp. 96-166.

Footnote 46:

He is nearest in the _title_ of the first dissertation, “How Imitation must sometimes be _unlike_ the originals,” which may have deceived some. But he does not quite live up to this, and mainly contents himself with arguing that you may _improve upon_ your originals, embellish them, &c., to give more pleasure.

Footnote 47:

_Sämmtliche Werke._ Wien, 1838.

Footnote 48:

_V. sup._, i. 139.

Footnote 49:

Ed. cit., p. 958.

Footnote 50:

This separation of the drama (or at least of the theatre) and literature may shock some readers, but I can rely on support from persons who take a very different view of the acting theatre, and a very different interest in it from mine, yet who agree with me that the connection between literature and acted or actable drama is in no sense essential or necessary.

Footnote 51:

_Hamburgische Dramaturgie_, §§ 33-35, vol. xi. p. 233 _sq._ of the other edition which I use. There is a translation by Miss Zimmern and others of the _Dramaturgie_, the _Laocoön_, and one or two other things in Bohn’s Library.

Footnote 52:

_Œuvres_, ed. Belin (Paris, 1819), ii. 17-28. A translation—the old contemporary version revised by the present writer—will be found in Marmontel’s _Moral Tales_ (London, 1895).

Footnote 53:

_V. sup._, ii. 327, 417, 418.

Footnote 54:

Of course the _general_ drift of the piece, with the corrections it introduces in the _ut pictura poesis_ maxim, is very important indeed, and was of the very highest opportunity in supplying corrections to the different opinions on the subject of Du Bos and the Switzers. Moreover, such discussions as that of the Disgusting, &c., are undoubtedly things which we should have noticed in the first volume, and perhaps in the second. But the iron room is closing in.

Footnote 55:

_Laocoön_, xx. Ed. cit., x. 120 _sq._

Footnote 56:

Observe that it will be quite useless for the “parallel passage” marine-storekeeper to point out, even if he can, earlier uses of either image. Neither was a _stock_ image at the time of use.

Footnote 57:

_H. D._, No. (or Stück) 11 and part of 12; xi. 144 _sq._

Footnote 58:

_Semiramis_, III. vi. _sub fin._

Footnote 59:

_H. D._, No. 22 _sq._

Footnote 60:

Ibid., 29 _sq._

Footnote 61:

Ibid., 36 _sq._

Footnote 62:

Some of the original dates of Lessing’s works may be usefully grouped in a note: Early critical work, 1750 onwards; _Abhandlungen über die Fabeln_, 1759; _Laocoön_, 1766; _Hamb. Dramaturgie_, 1767-68; _Anmerkungen über das Epigramm_, 1771. But the whole thirty years of his literary life—at least until his unlucky attack of anti-theological mania towards its close—were fruitful in criticism.

Footnote 63:

This important and edifying problem has attracted much attention from scholars. M. Kont, the author of a really admirable monograph on _Lessing et l’Antiquité_ (2 vols., Paris, 1894-9), devotes almost an excursus to it. The original may be found in vol. 15 of Herr Göring’s (the collected) ed., and it is fair to say that the latter part of Lessing’s dissertation does much to save the earlier.

Footnote 64:

Again see M. Kont for comment and the “Anmerkungen über das Epigramm,” _Works_, xv. 73 _sq._ for text. Lessing also proclaimed his admiration for Martial in his preface to the early collection of his writings, in 1753.

Footnote 65:

The not uncommon ascription even of this is a result of that unjust neglect or depreciation of Scaliger and Castelvetro and the other Italians, which we have attempted _pro viribus_ to repair.

Footnote 66:

Lessing’s curiosity as to at least the English Drama was so insatiable that he actually translated part of Crisp’s (Fanny Burney’s “Daddy” Crisp’s) _Virginia_—that play, the doleful effects of whose failure or doubtful success Macaulay, according to Mrs Ellis, so much exaggerated.

Footnote 67:

That he knows and quotes the _Arte Nuevo_ is much more surprising than that he does not fully comprehend Lope’s position.

Footnote 68:

_Eth. Nic._, VII. ii. 10.

Footnote 69:

I wish that M. Kont had not fallen into a common error by saying that Bernays has “proved” Lessing’s interpretation wrong in part. When will people learn, in critical discussion, to see that to “make a thing probable” is not to “prove” it?

Footnote 70:

Apparently Lessing would not have disagreed much with the reactionary modern who said that “the only really valuable articles in the present English school curriculum are Greek and Euclid.”

Footnote 71:

Not that he did not pay some attention to Old German: but it had little effect on him, and he was evidently fonder of the fifteenth century than of the thirteenth. Nor is what has been said above to be taken as meaning that Gottsched himself neglected mediæval writers. On the contrary, he studied them very carefully as a part of his general patriotic “Germanism.” Only he did not in the least feel their drift. Opinions on Lessing’s own attitude to mediæval literature differ remarkably, but I cannot see much real appreciation in it.

Footnote 72:

_V. sup._, vol. ii. p. 523. As we have seen, J. A. Schlegel had translated the Frenchman when Lessing was barely of age.

Footnote 73:

To illustrate this before going further, we may take account both of the _Theatrical Miscellanies_, which fill vols. vii. and viii. of the _Works_, and of the similar miscellanies of a more general kind contained in vol. xiv. The latter include many short reviews and notes of the kind elsewhere noticed: the former supply by far the most remarkable instance of that extraordinary _industry_—that mania, so to speak, for assimilating all the material furnished by older and more accomplished literatures—which is the great note of this period of German culture. Much, as was almost necessary, is mere abstract, such as in vol. 7 the above-noticed analysis of Crisp’s _Virginia_ and the long article on the Tragedies of Seneca, where, however, there is not a little actual criticism of Brumoy, &c. The _Lives_ of Thomson (“Jacob” Thomson) and of Destouches show us by contrast what a great thing Dr Johnson did in elaborating the biographical-critical _causerie_: and even the _Dissertations_ on _tragédie larmoyante_ give little more than a frame of Lessing’s, the painters being Chassiron and Gellert. One article in vol. 8, “Von Johann Dryden,” might have been of the very highest critical interest; but it is a mere fragment. And the “Outlines of a History of the English Stage,” though showing Lessing’s astonishing scholarship in his favourite subject, are only outlines.

Footnote 74:

vi.-ix. of the edition cited.

Footnote 75:

This occupies more than fifty pages (91-145) of vol. vi.

Footnote 76:

Lessing is less tolerant in this case than in that of Martial. The fact is that, in spite of its outrageousness, the libel would be rather amusing if it were not so exceedingly _tautologous_—with the tautology of a certain class of _graffiti_.

Footnote 77:

Vol. ix.

Footnote 78:

P. 205.

Footnote 79:

P. 173.

Footnote 80:

xv. 73-155. The _thirteenth_ volume is wholly archæological, and contains among other things the polemic with Klotz as to the _Laocoön_, and the tractate _On Ancient Representations of Death_.

Footnote 81:

_Ueber die sogenannten Fabeln aus den Zeiten der Minnesinger_, xvi. 47-87.

Footnote 82:

P. 270. The Germans could not get nearer to the title than _Der Schwärmer oder Herumstreifer_. I suppose _Der Schlenderer_ would have been not “noble” enough. Lessing’s English does not seem to have been very idiomatic, for he says that the word “Rambler” means properly “a landlooper who has no regular abiding-place.”

Footnote 83:

_V. sup._, ii. 267.

Footnote 84:

It is curious that three great critics of the three great literary countries of modern Europe, Lessing, Sainte-Beuve, and Mr Arnold, should all have forgotten in their later years, the caution, “Be not critical _overmuch_.”

Footnote 85:

See, for instance, the art. on Hagedorn, xx. 108.

Footnote 86:

I most particularly, for instance, do _not_ wish to seem of the mind of an American Professor who announces in a periodical as I revise this book that he believes he has “overthrown most of Lessing’s ideas” in the _Laocoön_, “shown that his statements about Homer are wrong, his psychology wrong, and his reasoning often fallacious.”

Footnote 87:

Lessing did not always keep so cool. The _Briefe Antiquarischen Inhalts_ (vol. 13, ed. cit.) not unfrequently betray a rise of temperature, and at the last boil over in coarse and self-forgetful language.

Footnote 88:

_Deutsche Litteraturdenkmale._ Heilbronn, 1883. One cannot be too grateful for the admirable re-edition of this by Herr L. Geiger. Berlin, 1902.

Footnote 89:

Mr David Hannay, Introduction to _Jacob Faithful_. London, 1895.

Footnote 90:

Goethe, _Conv. Eck._, i. 125, says _none_.

Footnote 91:

As in his smartness (p. 12, ed. cit.) on the phrase (which he misattributes, but this is nothing), “Ihro Majestät Glanzen wie ein Karfunkel am Finger der Jetzigen Zeit.” “Peut-on,” asks this other Majesty with fine irony, “rien de plus mauvais? Pourquoi une escarboucle? _Est-ce que le temps a un doigt?_ Quand on le représente, on le peint avec des ailes, parcequ’il s’envole sans cesse, avec un clepsydre parceque les heures le divisent, et on arme son _bras_ d’un faulx pour désigner qu’il fauche ou détruit tout ce qui existe.” The question as to the carbuncle is, of course, an example of pure ignorance, as is the general objection to the consecrated phrase and figure of the “finger of time” and its ring. But “arms” generally have “fingers,” unless these are cut off; and how, _Ihro Majestät_, does Time work his scythe without them?

Footnote 92:

Quoted by Geiger, _op. cit._, p. xxvi.

Footnote 93:

“_Tot verba, tot pondera_.”—Ibid., p. 18.

Footnote 94:

P. 23.

Footnote 95:

By an accident not worth dilating upon I was unable to incorporate the results of careful reading of König and Conti in the text. The former’s treatise on Taste is very respectable for its time, and must then have been quite stimulating; but it belongs to the obsolete box of our matter. Taste, excellent in the palmy times of Greek literature, declined later, was revived by the Romans, lost in the Middle Ages, recovered at the Renaissance, lost again and recovered by the French, and so on. He is much cumbered (as some other excellent persons have been) about the origin of the _word_ Taste—deprives the Spaniards of the honour of inventing it, and very properly finds its origin in Græco-Roman times. It must be natural, but can be improved by acquirement. It is more _immediate_ than judgment. It extends to quite trivial things—snuff, wine, foppery in dress, sensual pleasures, &c.

Conti’s work, in the edition quoted, has the great drawback of being presented almost wholly, as far as the critical part of it is concerned, in abstracts made from MS. by the editor. It consists, besides Letters to the Doge Marco Foscarini, to Maffei, to Muratori, &c., of Treatises on “Imitation,” “Poetic Fantasy,” and the like and of animadversions on classical and Italian Poetry, on Fracastoro, on Gravina, and others. It does not come to very much.

Footnote 96:

One celebrated person, much associated with it in some ways, and referred to in passing above, will not appear here. Horace Walpole did, for such a carpet knight, real service in the general movement; but he was a literary critic _pour rire_ only. His admiration of Mme. de Sévigné is not really much more to his credit than his sapient dictum (to Bentley, Feb. 23, 1755) that _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ is “forty times more nonsensical than the worst translation of an Italian opera-book.” “Notre Dame des Rochers” talked of subjects that interested him in a manner which he could understand: Shakespeare was neither “Gothic” nor modern. So he liked the one and despised the other—uncritically in both cases.

Footnote 97:

_Choice Collection of Scots Poems._ In three Parts. Reprinted in 1 vol. (Glasgow, 1869).

Footnote 98:

_The Evergreen, The Tea-Table Miscellany._ Reprinted in 4 vols. (Glasgow, 1876).

Footnote 99:

Said to be Ambrose Philips. If so, the book, despite its uncritical and heterogeneous character, is “Namby-Pamby’s” best work by far. There is a reprint, without date (3 vols.), among the very valuable series of such things which were published by Pearson _c._ 1870.

Footnote 100:

For more on them, see chap. vi. of this book.

Footnote 101:

Ausonius, Ep. 77.

Footnote 102:

With acknowledgments to Longinus.

Footnote 103:

Mr Gosse, I find, agrees with me on this point. It is well known that ignorance of German was almost (Chesterfield, I think, in encouraging his son to the study, says roundly that it was quite) universal among Englishmen in the mid-eighteenth century.

Footnote 104:

Gray’s _Works_ (ed. Gosse, 4 vols., London, 1884), ii. p. 106, Letter xliv., dated April, without the year; but the next gives it: 1742.

Footnote 105:

Gray has been upbraided with his description (in part at least) of Boswell’s Paoli-book as “a dialogue between a green goose and a hero.” It does him no discredit; in fact, he might have summarised the whole of Boswell’s work, had he lived to see it, as that of a green goose with a semi-heroic love for heroes.

Footnote 106:

I am well aware that the “parallel-passagers” have tried their jaws on these.

Footnote 107:

After all, he may be forgiven much apparent over-valuation of Mason for this name. Whatever its meaning between the friends, it “speaks” the author of _Elfrida_ and _Caractacus_, and the _Monologues_ and the _Odes_, and all but those lines of the epitaph on his wife which Gray wrote for him. “To skroddle” should have been naturalised for “to write minor poetry.”

Footnote 108:

As printed in Mr Gosse’s edition he is made to say that the _Moral Ode_ was written “almost two hundred years _after_ Chaucer’s time.” The sense, however, as well as the use of the word “Semi-Saxon,” shows that he meant “before,” so that “after” must be a slip either of his own pen or of the later press.

Footnote 109:

See Letter to Wharton, October 7, 1757 (cxxxvi., ii., 340, ed. cit.).

Footnote 110:

I mean, of course, nobody except specialists. On the vexed question of Gray’s _direct_ knowledge of Norse, on the priority or contemporaneousness of Percy’s “Five Pieces,” and on the subject generally, an interesting treatise, Mr F. E. Finlay’s _Scandinavian Influences on the English Romantic Movement_ (Boston, U.S.A., 1903), has appeared since the text was written.

Footnote 111:

Despite the curious infuriation which such attention seems to excite in some minds by no means devoid of celestial quality. Gradually it will be seen that current views of prosody are a sort of “tell-tale” or index of the state of poetic criticism generally. They concern us here, however, only at certain moments.

Footnote 112:

My copy of him is Dodsley’s third edition, in 2 vols., of the _Poems and Essays_ (London, 1768), with the second edition of the additional volume containing the _Letters_ (London, 1769). These latter are described by Gray in the less agreeable Graian manner, as “about nothing but” the Leasowes “and his own writings, with two or three neighbouring clergymen who wrote verses also.”

Footnote 113:

Ed. cit., ii. 10-13, 158-161, and elsewhere.

Footnote 114:

Most of the quotations following are found in two Essays on “Books and Writers,” ii. 157-180, 228-239.

Footnote 115:

ii. 172; ii. 167. The first of these has been echoed, perhaps unconsciously, by more than one great Romantic writer. For the second, compare Regnier’s _regret pensif et confus, D’avoir été et n'être plus_. Shenstone’s _Letters_ (as is implied in the very terms of Gray’s sneer) deal with literary subjects freely enough; but their criticism is rarely important, though I have noted a good many places. Some of the most interesting (p. 58 _sq._, ed. cit.) concern Spenser, and Shenstone’s gradual conversion “from trifling and laughing to being really in love with him.” From another (lxii. p. 175) we learn that at any rate when writing, S. was still in the dark about “the distance of the rhymes” in _Lycidas_. There is seen in Letter xc., viii. sq., on “Fables,” an intimation (c. iii. p. 321) of the ballad plan with Percy; praise of _The Rambler_; a defence of light poetry as being still poetry, &c. &c. It is almost all interesting as an example of Critical _Education_.

Footnote 116:

By Messrs Hales & Furnivall. 3 vols. and Supplement. (London, 1867-68.) As for Percy’s Scandinavian Enquiries, see note above.

Footnote 117:

Vol. i. appeared in 1756, vol. ii. not till 1782—which gap of a quarter of a century is not imperceptible in the work itself, and must be remembered in reading the text.

Footnote 118:

On this, as on other points in this chapter and chap. v., and on