Chapter III: The English Precursors (2)

On the contrary, I should say that it was not only useful as criticism, but that it was at the moment, and for the men, the _unum necessarium_ therein. Why the Time-Spirit chose Hurd[148] for his mouthpiece in this instance I know no more than those who have used this harsh language of him; this Spirit, like others, has a singular fashion of blowing where he lists. But, at any rate, he does not blow hot and cold here. Scraps and orts of Hurd’s doctrine may of course be found earlier—in Dryden, in Fontenelle, in Addison, even in Pope; but, though somebody else may know an original for the whole or the bulk of it, I, at least, do not. The three propositions—that Goths and Greeks are to be judged by their own laws and not by each other’s; that there are several unities, and that “unity of _Action_” is not the only one that affects and justifies even the fable; and that “follow Nature” is meaningless if not limited, and pestilent heresy as limited by the prevailing criticism of the day—these three abide. They may be more necessary and sovereign at one time than at another, but in themselves they are for all time, and they were for Hurd’s more than for almost any other of which Time itself leaves record.

[Sidenote: _Alleged imperfections of the group._]

Literary currishness and literary cubbishness (an ignoble but hardy and vivacious pair of brethren) have not failed almost from the first to growl and gambol over the mistakes which—in most cases save that of Gray—were made by these pioneers. Some of these mistakes they might no doubt have avoided, as he did, by the exercise of a more scholarly care. But it may be doubted whether even Gray was not saved to a great extent from committing himself by the timidity which restrained him from launching out into extensive hypotheses, and the indolence or bashfulness which held him back from extensive publication, or even writing. It was indeed impossible that any man, without almost superhuman energy and industry, and without a quite extraordinary share of learning, means, health, leisure, and long life, should have at that time informed himself with any thoroughness of the contents and chronological disposition of mediæval literature. The documents were, to all but an infinitesimal extent, unpublished; in very few cases had even the slightest critical editing been bestowed on those that were in print; and the others lay in places far distant, and accessible with the utmost difficulty, from each other; for the most part catalogued very insufficiently, or not at all, and necessitating a huge expense of time and personal labour even to ascertain their existence. At the beginning of the twentieth century any one who in these islands cannot find what he wants in a published form could in forty-eight hours obtain from the librarians at the British Museum, the Bodleian, the Cambridge Library, that of Trinity College, Dublin, and that of the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, information on the point whether what he wants is at any of them, and by exerting himself a little beyond the ordinary could visit all the five in less than a week. When the British Museum was first opened, in the middle of the last century, and Gray went to read in it “through the jaws of a whale,” it would have taken a week or so to communicate with the librarians; they would probably have had to make tedious researches before they could, if they chose to do so, reply, and when the replies were received, the inquirer would have had to spend the best part of a month or more in exhausting, costly, and not always safe journeys, before he could have got at the books.

There was, therefore, much direct excuse for the incompleteness and inaccuracy of the facts given by Percy, and Warton, and even Hurd; and not a little indirect excuse for the wildness and baselessness of their conjectures on such points as the Origin of Romance and the like. It is scarcely more than thirty or forty years—it is certainly not more than fifty or sixty—since it began to be possible for the student to acquaint himself with the texts, and inexcusable for the teacher not to do so. It is a very much shorter time than the shortest of these since theories, equally baseless and wild with those of these three, have been confidently and even arrogantly put forward about the origin of the Arthurian legends, and since mere linguistic crotchets have been allowed to interfere with the proper historical survey of European literature. The point of importance, the point of value, was that Percy, and Warton, and Hurd, not only to the huge impatience of Johnson, the common friend of the first two, devoted their attention to ballad, and romance, and saga, and mediæval treatise—not only recognised and allowed the principle that in dealing with new literary forms we must use new literary measures—not only in practice, if not in explicit theory, accepted the pleasure of the reader, and the idiosyncrasy of the book, and the “leaden rule” which adapts itself to Art and not Art to itself, as the grounds of criticism, but laid the foundations of that wider study of literary history which is not so much indispensable to literary criticism as it is literary criticism itself.

[Sidenote: _Studies in Prosody._]

To this remarkable group of general precursors may be added, for a reason previously given, a couple of pioneers in a particular branch—one contemporary with and indeed in most cases anticipating their general work; the other coming level with its latest instances. It is for the author of the missing _History of English Prosody_—which the present writer would have attempted long ago if his time and studies had been at his own disposal, and which he may yet adventure if the night and the shadows permit—to account for if he can, to set forth and analyse as he may, the curious and unique coincidences of metrical with general criticism in England. The fact of them is not contestable, and, as we have seen already, the tyranny of the absolutely syllabic, middle-paused, end-stopped couplet coincides exactly with the “prose-and-sense” dynasty in English poetry. We have seen also that most of the precursors, explicitly or incidentally, by theory or by practice, attacked or evaded this tyranny. But not one of them—though Gray’s _Metrum_ shows what he might have done if in this matter, as in others, he could only have persuaded himself to “speak out”—had the inclination or the courage to tackle the whole subject of the nature and laws of harmony in English composition. The two whom we have mentioned were bolder, and we must give them as much space as is allowable without unduly invading the province of that other _History_.

[Sidenote: _John Mason: his_ Power of Numbers _in Prose and Poetry_.]

In 1749 appeared two pamphlets, on _The Power of Numbers and the Principles of Harmony in Poetic Compositions_, and on _The Power and Harmony of Prosaic Numbers_. No author’s name is on either title-page, but they are known to be by a Dissenting minister named John[149] Mason. He seems to have given much attention to the study and teaching of elocution, and he published another pamphlet on that special subject, which attained its fourth edition in 1757.[150]

In his poetical tractate Mason plunges into the subject after a very promising fashion, by posing the question with which he has to deal as “What is the cause and source of that pleasure which, in reading either poetry or prose, we derive not only from the sound and sense of the words, but the order in which they are disposed?” or, as an alternative, “Why a sentence conveying just the same thought, and containing the very same words, should afford the ear a greater pleasure when expressed one way than another, though the difference may perhaps arise only from the transposition of a single word?” One feels, after reading only so far, that De Quincey’s well-known phrase, “This is what you can recommend to a friend!” is applicable—that whether the man gives the right answers or not he has fixed at once on the right questions, and has acknowledged the right ground of argument. Not “How ought sentences to be arranged?” not “How did A. B. C. arrange them or bid them be arranged?” but “How and why do they give the greatest _pleasure_ as the result of arrangement?”

So also, in his prose tractate, Mason starts from the position that “numerous” arrangement adds wonderfully to the _pleasure_ of the reader. To enter into the details of his working out of the principle in the two respects would be to commit that “digression to another kind” from which we have warned ourselves off. But it is not improper to say that, a hundred and fifty years ago, he had already cleared his mind of all the cant and confusion which to this day beset too many minds in regard to the question of Accent _v._ Quantity, by adopting the sufficient and final principle[151] that “that which _principally fixes and determines_ the quantities in English numbers is the accent and emphasis”; that though he is not quite so sharply happy in his definition, he evidently uses “quantity” itself merely as an equivalent for “unit of metrical value”; that he clears away all the hideous and ruinous nonsense about “elision,” observing[152] that in

“And many an amorous, many a humorous lay”

there are fourteen syllables instead of ten, and that “the ear finds nothing in it redundant, defective, or disagreeable, but is sensible of a sweetness not ordinarily found in the common iambic verse.” Further, he had anticipated[153] Hurd by giving elaborate examples of quantified analysis of prose rhythm. The minutiæ of all this, interesting as they are, are not for us; the point is that here is a man who has not the fear of Bysshe before his eyes, or the fear of anybody; who will not be “connoisseured out of his senses,” and whose brain, when his ear tells it that a line is beautiful, proceeds calmly to analyse if possible the cause of the beauty, without troubling itself to ask whether anybody has said that it ought not to exist.[154]

[Sidenote: _Mitford—his_ Harmony of Language.]

These inquiries into prosody and rhythm formed no unimportant part of the English criticism of the mid-eighteenth century.[155] The two different ways in which they were regarded by contemporaries may be easily guessed, but we have documentary evidence of them in an interesting passage of the dedication to John Gilpin[156] of the second edition of the book in which they culminated, and to which we now come. Mitford’s _Inquiry into the Principles of Harmony in Language_ represents himself as having paid a visit to Pye, afterwards Laureate; and, finding him with books of the kind before him, as having expostulated with “a votary of fancy and the Muses” for his “patience with such dull and uninteresting controversy.” Pye, it seems, replied that “interest in the subject so warmly and extensively taken by English men of letters” had excited his curiosity, which had been gratified by Foster’s elucidation of the subject itself. And Mitford, borrowing the book, soon found his own excited too.[157]

The volume of which this was the genesis, appeared first in 1774.[158] The second edition, very carefully revised and extended, was not published till 1804. It may appear at first sight unfortunate, but on reflection will probably be seen to have been a distinct advantage, that even this second edition preceded the appearance of any of the capital works of the new school except the _Lyrical Ballads_. For had it been otherwise, and had Mitford taken any notice of the new poetry, we should in all probability have had either the kind of reactionary protest which often comes from pioneers who have been overtaken and passed, or at best an attempt at awkward adjustment of two very different points of view. As it is, the book, besides exhibiting much original talent, belongs to a distinct school and platform—that of the later but still eighteenth-century Romantic beginners, while at the same time it represents a much greater knowledge of old literature, helped by Ellis’s _Specimens_, by Ritson’s work, and other products of the last years of the century, than had been possible to Shenstone, to Gray, or even to Warton.

Once more, its detailed tenets and pronouncements, with all but the general methods by which they are arrived at, belong to another story. But these general methods, and some special exemplifications of them, belong to us. Rightly or wrongly, Mitford sought his explanations of the articulate music of poetry from the laws of inarticulate music itself. For this reason, or for another, he was disposed to join the accentual and not the quantitative school of prosodists, and to express strong disapproval of the adoption of classical prosodic terms in regard to English. He is sometimes arbitrary, as when he lays down[159] “that in English every word has one syllable always made eminent by accent”; and we have to remember that he was writing after nearly a hundred years of couplet verse on Bysshian principles before we can excuse—while we can never endorse—his statement[160] that “to all who have any familiarity with English poetry a _regularity_ in the disposition of accents is its most striking characteristic.” He is rather unsound on the Pause, but lays down the all-important rule that “rhyme is a time-beater” without hesitation. He admits trisyllabic feet even in what he calls “common time”; but (in consequence of his accentual theories probably) troubles himself with “aberration” of accent (_i.e._, substitution of trochee for iamb), with redundant or extra-metrical syllables in the middle of the line, and with other epicyclic and cumbrous superfluities. But the most important thing in the whole book—the thing which alone makes it really important to _us_—is that he supports his theories by a regular examination of the whole of English verse as far as he knows it, even back to Anglo-Saxon times, and that in making the examination, he appeals not to this supposed rule or to that accepted principle, but to the _actual_ practice of the _actual_ poets as interpreted to him by his own ear.

In his errors, therefore (or in what may seem to some his errors), as well as in his felicities, Mitford exhibits himself to the full as an adherent of that changed school of poetical criticism which in the first place strives to master the actual documents, in the second to ascertain, as far as possible and as closely as possible, their chronological relation to each other, and in the third to take them as they are and explain them as well as it may, without any selection of a particular form of a particular metre at a particular time as a norm which had been painfully reached and must on no account be departed from. He shows the same leaning by his constant reference to the ear, not the rule, as the authority. The first draft of his book was published not only when Johnson was still alive, but long before the _Lives of the Poets_ appeared; and it is most interesting to see the different sides from which they attack the prosodic character, say of Milton. Johnson—it is quite evident from his earlier and more appreciative handling of the subject in the _Rambler_—approaching Milton with the orthodox decasyllabic rules in hand, found lines which most undoubtedly do not accord with those rules, and termed them harsh accordingly. Mitford approaches the lines with nothing but a listening ear, finds them “not harsh and crabbed, but musical as Apollo’s lute,” and then proceeds to construct, rightly or wrongly, such a rule as will allow and register their music.

[Sidenote: _Importance of prosodic inquiry._]

The truth is, that these inquirers both builded and pulled down better than they knew. Many persons besides Mitford have begun by thinking controversies about prosody dull and uninteresting, while only too few have allowed themselves to be converted as he did; nor is it common to the present day to find a really intelligent comprehension of the importance of the subject. On the contrary, a kind of petulant indignation is apt to be excited by any criticism of poetry which pursues these “mechanical” lines, as they are called, and the critic has sometimes even to endure the last indignity of being styled a “philologist” for his pains.

Yet nothing is more certain than that these inquiries into prosody were among the chief agencies in the revolution which came over English poetry at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the next. A sort of superstition of the decasyllable, hardened into a fanaticism of fixed pause, rigidly disyllabic feet and the rest, had grown upon our verse-writers. A large part of the infinite metrical wealth of English was hidden away and locked up under taboo. Inquiries into prosody broke this taboo inevitably; and something much more than mere metrical wealth was sure to be found, and was found, in the treasure-houses thus thrown open.

[Sidenote: _Sterne and the stop-watch._]

One expected figure of a different kind may perhaps have been hitherto missed in this part of our gallery. Sterne’s well-known outburst as to criticism, in the twelfth chapter of the third book of _Tristram Shandy_, is far too famous a thing to be passed over with the mere allusion given to it in the last volume, or with another in this. Nay, it may be said at once, from its fame and from its forcible expression, to have had, and even in a sense still to have, no small place among the Dissolvents of Judgment by Rule. “Looking only at the stop-watch” is one of those admirable and consummate _phrases_ which settle themselves once for all in the human memory, and not merely possess—as precisians complain, illegitimately—the force of an argument, but have a property of self-preservation and recurrence at the proper moment in which arguments proper are too often sadly lacking.

Further, it must be admitted that there are few better instances of the combined sprightliness and ingenuity of Sterne’s humour. “Befetiched with the bobs and trinkets of criticism” is in reality even happier than the “stop-watch,” and of an extraordinary propriety. Though he did “fetch it from the coast of Guinea,” nothing was ever less far-fetched or more home-driven. The “nothing of the colouring of Titian” is equally happy in its rebuke of the singular _negativeness_—the attention to what is _not_ there, not to what is—of Neo-Classicism; while the outburst, again world-known, as to the “tormenting cant of criticism,” and the ingenious and thoroughly English application of this cant itself to the eulogy of the curse of Ernulphus, are all too delightful, and have been too effective for good, not to deserve the heartiest acknowledgment.

At the same time the Devil’s Advocate—who is always a critic, if a critic is not always an officer of the devil—-may, nay must, point out that Sterne’s main object in the passage is not strictly literary. It is assuredly from the sentimental point of view that he attacks the Neo-Classic “fetichism”; the “generous heart” is to “give up the reins of its imagination into the author’s hands,” to “be pleased he knows not why, and cares not wherefore.” To which Criticism, not merely of the Neo-Classic persuasion, can only cry, “Softly! Before the most generous of hearts gives up the reins of imagination (which, by the way, are not entirely under the heart’s control) to an author, he must show that he can manage them, he must _take_ them, in short. And it is by no means superfluous—it is highly desirable, if not absolutely necessary—to know and care for the wherefore of your pleasing.” Nor, wide as was Sterne’s reading, and ingenious as are the uses which he makes of it, does it appear that he had any very great interest in literature as such—as being _good_, and not merely odd, or naughty, or out-of-the-way, or conducive to outpourings of heart. He might even, by a very ungenerous person, be described as by no means disinterested in his protests. For certainly his own style of writing had very little chance of being adjudged to keep time according to the classical stop-watch, of satisfying, with its angles and its dimensions, the requirements of the classical scale. So he is rather a “Hal o’ the Wynd” in the War of Critical Independence—he fights for his own hand, though he does yeoman’s service to the general cause.