Chapter XLVII: Conclusion: § I. the Present State of Criticism (1)

§ 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.

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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
chapter i. of the last Book of the last volume generally, a most
valuable companion has been supplied since my text was written by Mr
D. Nichol Smith’s excellent edition of _Eighteenth Century Essays on
Shakespeare_. (Glasgow, 1903.)

Footnote 119:

The full title is _Observations on the Faërie Queene of Spenser_ ed. 1
(London, 1754); ed. 2, 1762 (of which is my copy). From Hughes’s
editions of 1715 to Upton’s of 1758 (_after_ Warton’s first edition) a
good deal of attention had been paid to Spenser, if not quite
according to knowledge. For a long list of imitations in the
eighteenth century see Mr H. A. Beers (_English Romanticism in the
Eighteenth Century_, London, 1899, pp. 854-55, note), who copies it
from Prof. Phelps.

Footnote 120:

i. 15, ed. cit.

Footnote 121:

Ed. cit., i. 96.

Footnote 122:

Originally issued in the years 1774-78-81. The editions of 1824 and
1840, with additional notes by Price and others, are valuable for
matter; and that of Mr W. C. Hazlitt (4 vols., London, 1871), with the
assistance of Drs Furnival, Morris, Skeat, and others, _in_valuable.
But Warton’s own part is necessarily more and more obscured in them.

Footnote 123:

_De quo fabula?_

Footnote 124:

See Appendix I.

Footnote 125:

He is, however, exquisitely characteristic in his description of
Addison’s own critical work (see the Bohn ed., ii. 383) as
“discovering his own good taste, and calculated to improve that of the
reader, but otherwise of no great merit.”

Footnote 126:

_e.g._ iii. 171: “_Men’s minds._ Men’s, for the genitive plural of
_man_, is not allowable.”

Footnote 127:

_Vide_ ed. cit., ii. 417, and especially iii. 389-91, a long note of
very great interest. I do not know whether Hurd had condescended to
take a hint from the humble dissenting Mason (_v. inf._)

Footnote 128:

He was born only twenty years after the death of Dryden, and died the
year before Tennyson was born.

Footnote 129:

My copy in 10 vols. (London, 1777) appears to be made up of different
editions of the separate books—the fifth of the _Horace_ and
_Dialogues_, the third of the _Cowley_.

Footnote 130:

These qualities are particularly shown in a really admirable note, ii.
107-15, on the method and art of criticism, with special reference to
Longinus, Bouhours, and Addison. Hurd is, however, once more, and in
more detail, too severe on Addison. It may be repeated that Lessing
pays very particular attention to Hurd in the _Hamburgische
Dramaturgie_, and speaks of him with great respect.

Footnote 131:

ii. 153.

Footnote 132:

ii. 154.

Footnote 133:

ii. 220.

Footnote 134:

Almost too liberal, as where he falls foul of Jeremias Holstenius for
saying the plain truth that “but for the _Argonautics_, there had been
no fourth book of the _Æneis_” (iii. 49).

Footnote 135:

iii. 153.

Footnote 136:

P. 464.