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