Chapter III: Part 3

It is, we repeat, no reproach to Mr. Rossetti, who has distinguished himself in more important studies than the production of scholastic text-books, that he should have failed in an undertaking which happened to require peculiar qualifications. Indeed, our respect for Mr. Rossetti and our sense of his useful services to Belles Lettres would have induced us to spare him the annoyance of an exposure of the deficiencies of this work, had it not illustrated, so comprehensively and so strikingly, the disastrous effects of the severance of the study of English Literature from that of Ancient Classical Literature at our Universities.

ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITIES[10]

III. TEXT BOOKS

[Footnote 10: _Shakespeare--Select Plays. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark_ (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press. MDCCCXC.)]

More than a century and a half has passed since Pope thus expressed himself about philologists,--

“‘Tis true on words is still our whole debate,
Dispute of _Me_ or _Te_, of _aut_ or _at_,
To sound or sink in _Cano_ O or A,
To give up Cicero or C or K;
The critic eye, that microscope of wit,
Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit;
How parts relate to parts or they to whole,
The body’s harmony, the beaming soul,
Are things which Kuster, Burmann, Wasse shall see,
When man’s whole frame is obvious to a _Flea_.”

We need scarcely say that we have far too much respect for Dr. Aldis Wright and for his distinguished coadjutor to apply such a description as this to them as individuals, for no one can appreciate more heartily than we do their monumental contribution to the textual criticism of Shakespeare, but we can make no such reserve in speaking of this edition of _Hamlet_. A more deplorable illustration, we do not say of the subjection of Literature to Philology, for that would very imperfectly represent the fact, but of the absolute substitution of Philology, and of Philology in the lowest sense of the term, for Literature it would be impossible to imagine. Had it been expressly designed to prove that its editors were wholly unconscious of the artistic, literary, and philosophical significance of Shakespeare’s masterpiece, it could scarcely have taken a more appropriate form.

The volume contains 117 pages of Shakespeare’s text, printed in large type; the text is preceded by a preface of twelve pages, and followed by notes occupying no less than 121 pages in very small type; so that the work of the poet stands in pretty much the same relation to that of his commentators as Falstaff’s bread stood to his sack. In the case of a play like _Hamlet_, so subtle, so suggestive, so pregnant with critical and philosophical problems of all kinds, commentary on a scale like this might have been quite appropriate. But in this stupendous mass of exegesis and illustration there is, with the exception of one short passage, literally not a line about the play as a work of art, not a line about its structure and architecture, about its style, about its relations to æsthetic, about its metaphysic, its ethic, about the character of Hamlet, or about the character of any other person who figures in the drama. The only indication that it is regarded in any other light than as affording material for philological and antiquarian discussion is a short quotation, huddled in at the conclusion of the preface, from Goethe’s _Wilhelm Meister_, and an intimation that “Hamlet’s madness has formed the subject of special investigation by several writers, among others by Dr. Conolly and Sir Edward Strachey.”

A more comprehensive illustration of the truth of the indictment brought against philologists by Voltaire, Pope, Lessing, and Sainte-Beuve than is supplied by the notes in this volume it would be difficult to find. Dulness, of course, may be assumed, and of mere dulness we do not complain; but a combination of prolixity, irrelevance, and absolute incapacity to distinguish between what to ninety-nine persons in every hundred must be purely useless and what to ninety-nine persons in every hundred is the information which they expect from a commentator, is intolerable. We will give a few illustrations. A plain man or a student for examination comes to these lines:--

“‘Tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petar;”

and, though he knows what the general sense is wishes to know exactly what Shakespeare means. He turns to the note for enlightenment, and the enlightenment he gets is this:--

“_Enginer._ Changed in the quarto of 1676 to the more modern
form of engineer. Compare _Troilus and Cressida_ ii. 3. 8,
“Then there’s Achilles a rare enginer.” For a cognate form
mutiner see note on iii. 4. 83. So we have pioner for pioneer
_Othello_ iii. 3. 346. _Hoist_ may be the participle either of
the verb ‘hoise’ or ‘hoist.’ In the latter case it would be the
common abbreviated form for the participles of verbs ending in
a dental. _Petar._ So spelt in the quartos, and by all editors
to Johnson, who writes ‘petards.’ In Cotgrave we have ‘Petart:
a Petard or Petarre; an Engine (made like a bell or morter)
wherewith strong gates,’ etc.”--

And so the hungry sheep looks up and is not fed. Again, he finds--

“He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice,”

turns to the note, and reads:--

“_Polacks._ The quartos have ‘pollax,’ the two earliest folios
read ‘Pollax,’ the third ‘Polax,’ the fourth ‘Poleaxe.’ Pope
read ‘Polack’ and Malone ‘Polacks.’ The word occurs four times
in _Hamlet_. For ‘the sledded Polacks’ Molke reads ‘his leaded
pole-axe.’ But this would be an anticlimax, and the poet,
having mentioned ‘Norway’ in the first clause, would certainly
have told us with whom the ‘parle’ was held.”

The poet Young noted how

“Commentators each dark passage shun,
And hold their farthing candles to the sun.”

The Clarendon Press editors are certainly adepts in these accomplishments. Take one out of a myriad illustrations. The line in Act i. sc. 2, “The dead vast and middle of the night,” is the signal for a note extending to twelve closely printed lines. “’Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart,” says Francisco. If any note were needed here, it might have been devoted to pointing out to tiros the fine subjective touch. The note is this:--

“_Bitter cold._ Here bitter is used adverbially to qualify the
adjective ‘cold.’ So we have ‘daring hardy’ in _Richard II._ i.
3. 43. When the combination is likely to be misunderstood,
modern editors generally put a hyphen between the two words.
_Sick at heart._ So _Macbeth_ v. 3. 19, ‘I am sick at heart.’
We have also in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ ii. 1. 185, ‘sick at the
heart,’ and _Romeo and Juliet_ iii. 3. 72, ‘heart-sick
groans.’”

Now let us see how the poor student fares when real difficulties occur. Every reader of Shakespeare is familiar with the corrupt passage, Act iv. sc. 1:--

“The dram of eale
Doth all the noble substance of worth out
To his own scandal--

a passage which, as all Shakespearian scholars know, has been satisfactorily emended and explained. We turn to the notes for guidance, and find ourselves treated as poor Mrs. Quickly was treated by Falstaff, “fubbed off”--thus:--

“We leave this hopelessly corrupt passage as it stands in the
two earliest quartos. The others read ‘ease’ for ‘eale,’ and
modern writers have conjectured for the same word base, ill,
bale, ale, evil, ail, vile, lead. For ‘of a doubt’ it has been
proposed to substitute ‘of worth out,’ ‘soul with doubt,’ ‘oft
adopt,’ ‘oft work out,’ ‘of good out,’ ‘of worth dout,’ ‘often
dout,’ ‘often doubt,’ ‘oft adoubt,’ ‘oft delase,’ ‘over-cloud,’
‘of a pound,’ and others.”

This, it may be added, is the sort of stuff--_incredibile dictu_--that our children have to get by heart; for this Press, be it remembered, practically controls half the English Literature examinations in England. As students know quite well that nine examiners out of ten will set their questions from “the Clarendon Press notes,” it is with “the Clarendon Press notes” that they are obliged to cram themselves. But to continue. Even a well-read man might be excused for not knowing the exact meaning of the following expression:--

“They clepe us drunkards, and with _swinish phrase
Soil our addition_.”

He turns to the notes, and having been briefly informed that _clepe_ means “call,” and _addition_ “title,” is left to flounder with what he can get out of--“Could Shakespeare have had in his mind any pun upon ‘Sweyn,’ which was a common name of the kings of Denmark?”

Another leading characteristic of the _genus_ philologist, we mean the preposterous importance attached by them to the smallest trifles, finds ludicrous illustration in the following note:--

“My father, in his habit, as he lived!”

exclaims Hamlet to his mother. This is the signal for:--

“There is supposed to be a difficulty in these words, because
in the earlier scenes the Ghost is in his armour, to which the
word ‘habit’ is regarded as inappropriate. In the earlier form
of the play, as it appears in the quarto of 1603, the Ghost
enters ‘in his nightgowne,’ and as the words ‘in the habit as
he lived’ occur in the corresponding passage of that edition,
it is probable that on this occasion the Ghost appeared in the
ordinary dress of the king, although this is not indicated in
the stage directions of the other quartos or of the folios.”

As a possible solution of this grave difficulty, we would suggest that, as the Ghost was undoubtedly in a very hot place, he might have found his nightgown less oppressive than his armour, and though it would certainly have been more decorous to have exchanged his nightgown for his uniform on revisiting the earth, yet, as the visit was to his wife, he thought perhaps less seriously about his apparel than our editors have done. We have nothing to warrant us in assuming that he was in his “ordinary dress.” The choice must lie between the nightgown and the armour. But a truce to jesting.

If any one would understand the opacity and callousness which philological study induces, we would refer them to the note on Hamlet’s last sublime words, “The rest is silence”:--

“The quartos have ‘Which have solicited, the rest is silence.’
The folios, ‘Which have solicited. The rest is silence.’ ‘O, O,
O, O. _Dyes._’ If Hamlet’s speech is interrupted by his death
it would be more natural that the words ‘The rest is silence’
should be spoken by Horatio.”

We said at the beginning of this article that there was not a word of commentary on the poetical merits of the play. We beg the editors’ pardon. They have in one note, and in one note only, ventured on an expression of critical opinion. We all know the lines--

“There is a willow grows aslant a brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream,”

etc., etc. We transcribe the note on this passage that it may be a sign to all men of what Philology is able to effect, an omen and testimony of what must inevitably be the fate of Literature if the direction and regulation of its study be entrusted to philologists:--

“This speech of the Queen is certainly unworthy of its author
and of the occasion. The enumeration of plants is quite as
unsuitable to so tragical a scene as the description of Dover
cliff in _King Lear_ iv. 6. 11-24. Besides there was no one by
to witness the death of Ophelia, else she would have been
rescued.”

As this beggars commentary, transcription shall suffice.

Now we would ask any sensible person who has followed us, we do not say in our own remarks--for they may be supposed to be the expression of biassed opinion--but in the specimens we have given of such an edition as this of _Hamlet_, and of such an edition as we have just reviewed of _Adonais_, what is likely to be the fate of English Literature, as a subject of teaching, so long as our Universities ignore their responsibilities as the centres of culture by not only countenancing, but assisting in the production and dissemination of such publications as these? How can we expect anything but anarchy wherever the subject is treated?--there an extreme of flaccid dilettantism, here an extreme of philological pedantry. Conceive the tone and temper which, especially at the impressionable age of the students for whom the book is intended, the study of Shakespeare, under such guides as the editors of this _Hamlet_, would be likely to induce. Is it not monstrous that young students between the ages of about fifteen and eighteen should have such text books as these inflicted on them?

The radical fault of those who regulate education in our Universities and elsewhere, and prescribe our schoolbooks, is their deplorable want of judgment. They seem to be utterly incapable of distinguishing between what is proper for pure specialists and what is proper for ordinary students. There is not a page in this edition which does not proclaim aloud, that it could never have been intended for the purposes to which it has been applied, that it is the work of technical scholars, concerned only in textual and philological criticism and exegesis, and appealing only to those who approach the study of Shakespeare in the same spirit and from the same point of view. Anything more sickening and depressing, anything more calculated to make the name of Shakespeare an abomination to the youth of England it would be impossible for man to devise. It is shameful to prescribe such books for study in our Schools and Educational Institutes.

OUR LITERARY GUIDES

I. A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE[11]

[Footnote 11: _A Short History of English Literature._ By George Saintsbury, Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Edinburgh.]

This Short History is evidently designed for the use of serious readers, for the ordinary reader who will naturally look to it for general instruction and guidance in the study of English Literature, and to whom it will serve as a book of reference; for students in schools and colleges, to many of whom it will, in all likelihood, be prescribed as a textbook; for teachers engaged in lecturing and in preparing pupils for examination. Of all these readers there will not be one in a hundred who will not be obliged to take its statements on trust, to assume that its facts are correct, that its generalizations are sound, that its criticisms and critical theories are at any rate not absurd. It need hardly be said that, under these circumstances, a writer who had any pretension to conscientiousness would do his utmost to avoid all such errors as ordinary diligence could easily prevent, that he would guard scrupulously against random assertions and reckless misstatements, that he would, in other words, spare no pains to deserve the confidence placed in him by those who are not qualified to check his statements or question his dogmas, and who naturally suppose that the post which he occupies is a sufficient guarantee of the soundness and accuracy of his work. But so far from Professor Saintsbury having any sense of what is due to his position and to his readers, he has imported into his work the worst characteristics of irresponsible journalism: generalizations, the sole supports of which are audacious assertions, and an indifference to exactness and accuracy, as well with respect to important matters as in trifles, so scandalous as to be almost incredible.

Sir Thomas More said of Tyndale’s version of the New Testament that to seek for errors in it was to look for drops of water in the sea. What was said very unfairly of Tyndale’s work may be said with literal truth of Professor Saintsbury’s. The utmost extent of the space at our disposal will only suffice for a few illustrations. We will select those which appear to us most typical. In the chapter on Anglo-Saxon literature the Professor favours us with the astounding statement, that in Anglo-Saxon poetry “there is practically no lyric.”[12] It is scarcely necessary to say that not only does Anglo-Saxon poetry abound in lyrics, but that it is in its lyrical note that its chief power and charm consists. In the threnody of the _Ruin_, and the _Grave_, in the sentimental pathos of the _Seafarer_, of _Deor’s Complaint_, and of the remarkable fragment describing the husband’s pining for his wife, in the fiery passion of the three great war-songs, in the glowing subjective intensity of the _Judith_, in the religious ecstasy of the _Holy Rood_ and of innumerable passages in the other poems attributed to Cynewulf, and of the poem attributed to Cædmon, deeper and more piercing lyric notes have never been struck. Take such a passage as the following from the _Satan_, typical, it may be added, of scores of others:--

“O thou glory of the Lord! Guardian of Heaven’s hosts,
O thou might of the Creator! O thou mid-circle!
O thou bright day of splendour! O thou jubilee of God!
O ye hosts of angels! O thou highest heaven!
O that I am shut from the everlasting jubilee,
That I cannot reach my hands again to Heaven,
... Nor hear with my ears ever again
The clear-ringing harmony of the heavenly trumpets.”[13]

And this is a poetry which has “practically no lyric”! On page 2 the Professor tells us that there is no rhyme in Anglo-Saxon poetry; on page 18 we find him giving an account of the rhyming poem in the _Exeter Book_. Of Mr. Saintsbury’s method of dealing with particular works and particular authors, one or two examples must suffice. He tells us on page 125 that the heroines in Chaucer’s _Legend of Good Women_ are “the most hapless and blameless of Ovid’s Heroides.” It would be interesting to know what connexion Cleopatra, whose story comes first, has with Ovid’s Heroides, or if the term “Heroides” be, as it appears to be, (for it is printed in italics) the title of Ovid’s Heroic Epistles, what connexion four out of the ten have with Ovid’s work. In any case the statement is partly erroneous and wholly misleading. In the account given of the Scotch poets, the Professor, speaking of Douglas’ translation of the _Æneid_, says, he “does not embroider on his text.” This is an excellent illustration of the confidence which may be placed in Mr. Saintsbury’s assertions about works on which most of his readers must take what he says on trust. Douglas is continually “embroidering on his text,” indeed, he habitually does so. We open his translation purely at random; we find him turning _Æneid_ II. 496-499:--

“Non sic, aggeribus ruptis cum spumeus amnis
Exiit, oppositasque evicit gurgite moles,
Fertur in arva furens cumulo, camposque per omnes
Cum stabulis armenta trahit.”

“Not sa fersly the fomy river or flude
Brekkis over the bankis on spait quhen it is wode.
And with his brusch and fard of water brown
The dykys and the schorys betis down,
Ourspreddand croftis and flattis wyth hys spate
Our all the feyldis that they may row ane bate
Quhill houssis and the flokkis flittis away,
The corne grangis and standard stakkys of hay.”

We open _Æneid_ IX. 2:--

“Irim de cœlo misit Saturnia Juno
Audacem ad Turnum. Luco tum forte parentis
Pilumni Turnus sacratâ valle sedebat.
Ad quem sic roseo Thaumantias ore locuta est.”

We find it turned:--

“Juno that lyst not blyn
Of hir auld malyce and iniquyte,
Hir madyn Iris from hevin sendys sche
To the bald Turnus malapart and stout;
Quhilk for the tyme was wyth al his rout
Amyd ane vale wonnder lovn and law,
Syttand at eys within the hallowit schaw
Of God Pilumnus his progenitor.
Thamantis dochter knelys him before,
I meyn Iris thys ilk fornamyt maide,
And with hir rosy lippis thus him said.”

We turn to the end of the tenth _Æneid_ and we find him introducing six lines which have nothing to correspond with them in the original. And this is a translator who “does not embroider on his text”! It is perfectly plain that Professor Saintsbury has criticised and commented on a work which he could never have inspected. The same ignorance is displayed in the account of Lydgate. He is pronounced to be a versifier rather than a poet, his verse is described as “sprawling and staggering.” The truth is that Lydgate’s style and verse are often of exquisite beauty, that he was a poet of fine genius, that his descriptions of nature almost rival Chaucer’s, that his powers of pathos are of a high order, that, at his best, he is one of the most musical of poets. We have not space to illustrate what must be obvious to any one who has not gone to encyclopædias and handbooks for his knowledge of this poet’s writings, but who is acquainted with the original. It will not be disputed that Gray and Warton were competent judges of these matters, and their verdict must be substituted for what we have not space to prove and illustrate. “I do not pretend,” Gray says, “to set Lydgate on a level with his master Chaucer, but he certainly comes the nearest to him of any contemporary writer that I am acquainted with. His choice of expression and the smoothness of his verse far surpass both Gower and Occleve.” Of one passage in Lydgate, Gray has observed that “it has touched the very heart strings of compassion with so masterly a hand as to merit a place among the greatest poets.”[14] Warton also notices his “perspicuous and musical numbers,” and “the harmony, strength, and dignity” of his verses.[15]

Turn where we will we are confronted with blunders. Take the account given of Shakespeare. He began his metre, we are told, with the lumbering “fourteeners.” He did, so far as is known, nothing of the kind. Again: “It is only by guesses that anything is dated before the _Comedy of Errors_ at the extreme end of 1594.” In answer to this it may be sufficient to say that _Venus and Adonis_ was published in 1593, that the first part of _Henry VI._ was acted on 3rd March, 1592, that _Titus Andronicus_ was acted on 25th January, 1594, and that _Lucrece_ was entered on the Stationers’ books 9th May, 1594. This is on a par with the assertion, on page 315, that Shakespeare was traditionally born on 24th April! On page 320 we are told that _Measure for Measure_ belongs to the first group of Shakespeare’s plays, to the series beginning with _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ and culminating with the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_. It is only fair to say that the Professor places a note of interrogation after it in a bracket, but that it should have been placed there, even tentatively, shows an ignorance of the very rudiments of Shakespearian criticism which is nothing short of astounding. Take, again, the account given of Burke. Our readers will probably think us jesting when we tell them that Professor Saintsbury gravely informs us that Burke supported the American Revolution. Is the Professor unacquainted with the two finest speeches which have ever been delivered in any language since Cicero? Can he possibly be ignorant that Burke, so far from supporting that revolution, did all in his power to prevent it? The whole account of Burke, it may be added, teems with inaccuracies. The American Revolution was not brought about under a Tory administration. What brought that revolution about was Charles Townshend’s tax, and that tax was imposed under a Whig administration, as every well-informed Board-school lad would know. Burke did not lose his seat at Bristol owing to his support of Roman Catholic claims. If Professor Saintsbury had turned to one of the finest of Burke’s minor speeches--the speech addressed to the electors of Bristol--he would have seen that Burke’s support of the Roman Catholic claims was only one, and that not the most important, of the causes which cost him his seat. Similar ignorance is displayed in the remark (p. 629) that “Burke joined, and indeed headed, the crusade against Warren Hastings, in 1788.” The prosecution of Warren Hastings was undertaken on Burke’s sole initiative, not in 1788, but in 1785. A few lines onwards we are told that the series of Burke’s writings on the French Revolution “began with the _Reflections_ in 1790, and was continued in the _Letter to a Noble Lord_, 1790.” _A Letter to a Noble Lord_ had nothing to do with the French Revolution, except collaterally as it affected Burke’s public conduct, and appeared, not in 1790, but in 1795.

It seems impossible to open this book anywhere without alighting on some blunder, or on some inaccuracy. Speaking (p. 277) of Willoughby’s well-known _Avisa_, the Professor observes that nothing is known of Willoughby or of _Avisa_. If the Professor had known anything about the work, he would have known that _Avisa_ is simply an anagram made up of the initial letters of _Amans_, _vxor_, _inviolata semper amanda_, and that nothing is known of Avisa for the simple reason that nothing is known of the site of More’s Utopia. On page 360 we are told that Phineas Fletcher’s _Piscatory Eclogues_, which are, of course, confounded with his _Sicelides_, are a masque; on page 624, but this is perhaps a printer’s error, that Robertson wrote a history of Charles I. On page 482, John Pomfret, the author of one of the most popular poems of the eighteenth century, is called Thomas. On page 550, Pope’s _Moral Essays_ are described as _An Epistle to Lord Burlington_, presumably because the last of them, the fourth, is addressed to that nobleman. On page 587 we are told that Mickle died in London: he died at Forest Hill, near Oxford. On page 556 we are informed that Prior was part author of a parody of the “Hind and Panther,” and that he was “imprisoned for some years.” The work referred to is wrongly described, as it only contained parodies of certain passages in Dryden’s poem, and he was in confinement less than two years. On page 358, Brutus, the legendary founder of Britain, is actually described as the son of Æneas. If Professor Saintsbury were as familiar as he affects to be with Geoffrey of Monmouth, with Layamon and with the early metrical romances, he would have known that Brutus is fabled to have been the son of Sylvius, the son of Ascanius, and, consequently, the great-grandson of Æneas. Many of the Professor’s critical remarks can only be explained on the supposition that he assumes that his readers will not take the trouble to verify his references or question his dogmas. We will give one or two instances. On page 468, speaking of seventeenth-century prose, he says, with reference to Milton: “The close of the _Apology_ itself is a very little, though only a very little, inferior to the _Hydriotaphia_.” By the _Apology_ he can only mean the _Apology for Smectymnuus_, for the defence of the English people is in Latin. Now, will our readers credit that one of the flattest, clumsiest and most commonplace passages in Milton’s prose writings, as any one may see who turns to it, is pronounced “only a little inferior” to one of the most majestically eloquent passages in our prose literature. That our readers may know what Professor Saintsbury’s notions of eloquence are, we will transcribe the passage:

“Thus ye have heard, readers, how many shifts and wiles the
prelates have invented to save their ill-got booty. And if it
be true, as in Scripture it is foretold, that pride and
covetousness are the sure marks of those false prophets which
are to come, then boldly conclude these to be as great seducers
as any of the latter times. For between this and the judgment
day do not look for any arch deceivers who, in spite of
reformation, will use more craft or less shame to defend their
love of the world and their ambition than these prelates have
done. And if ye think that soundness of reason or what force of
argument so ever shall bring them to an ingenuous silence, ye
think that which shall never be. But if ye take that course
which Erasmus was wont to say Luther took against the pope and
monks: if ye denounce war against their riches and their
bellies, ye shall soon discern that turban of pride which they
wear upon their heads to be no helmet of salvation, but the
mere metal and hornwork of papal jurisdiction; and that they
have also this gift, like a certain kind of some that are
possessed, to have their voice in their bellies, which, being
well drained and taken down, their great oracle, which is only
there, will soon be dumb, and the divine right of episcopacy
forthwith expiring will put us no more to trouble with tedious
antiquities and disputes.”

And this is “a very little, only a very little, inferior,” to the “Hydriotaphia”!

On page 652, Swift’s style, that perfection of simple, unadorned _sermo pedestris_--is described as marked by “volcanic magnificence.” On page 300 Hooker is described as “having an unnecessary fear of vivid and vernacular expression.” Vivid and vernacular expression is, next to its stateliness, the distinguishing characteristic of Hooker’s style. It would be interesting to know what is meant by the remark on page 445 that Barrow’s style is “less severe than South’s.” Another example of the same thing is the assertion on page 517 that Joseph Glanville is one of “the chief exponents of the gorgeous style in the seventeenth century.” Very ‘gorgeous’ the style of the _Vanity of Dogmatizing_, of its later edition the _Scepsis Scientifica_, of the _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, of the _Lux Orientalis_, and of the Essays!

Indeed, the Professor’s critical dicta are as amazing as his facts. We have only space for one or two samples. Cowley’s _Anacreontics_ are “not very far below Milton”(!) Dr. Donne was “the most gifted man of letters next to Shakespeare.” Where Bacon, where Ben Jonson, where Milton are to stand is not indicated. Akenside’s stilted and frigid _Odes_ “fall not so far short of Collins.” We wonder what Mr. Saintsbury’s criterion of poetry can be. But we forget, with that criterion he has furnished us. On page 732, speaking of “a story about a hearer who knew no English, but knew Tennyson to be a poet by the hearing,” he adds that “the story is probable and valuable, or rather invaluable, for it points to the best if not the only criterion of poetry.” And this is a critic! We would exhort the Professor to ponder well Pope’s lines:

“But most by numbers judge a poet’s song,

* * * * *

In the bright muse, tho’ thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire,
Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear.”

On page 734 we are told Browning’s _James Lee_--the Professor probably means _James Lee’s Wife_--is amongst “the greatest poems of the century.” On Wordsworth’s line, judged not in relation to its context, but as a single verse--“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting”--we have the following as commentary: “Even Shakespeare, even Shelley have little more of the echoing detonation, the auroral light of true poetry”; very “echoing,” very “detonating”--the rhythm of “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.” Mr. Saintsbury’s notions of what constitutes detonation and auroral light in poetry appear to resemble his notions of what constitutes eloquence in prose. Nothing, we may add in passing, is more amusing in this volume than Mr. Saintsbury’s cool assumption of equality as a critical authority with such a critic as Matthew Arnold, whom he sometimes patronises, sometimes corrects, and sometimes assails. The Professor does not show to advantage on these occasions, and he leaves us with the impression that if “Mr. Arnold’s criticism is piecemeal, arbitrary, fantastic, and insane,” the criticism which appears, where it is not mere nonsense, to take its touchstones, its standards, and its canons from those of the average Philistine is, after all, a very poor substitute. But enough of Mr. Saintsbury’s “criticism,” which is, almost uniformly, as absurd in what it praises as in what it censures.

The style, or, to borrow an expression from Swift, what the poverty of our language compels us to call the style, in which this book is written, is on a par with its criticism. We will give a few examples. “It is a proof of the greatness of Dryden that he knew Milton for a poet; it is a proof of the smallness (and mighty as he was on some sides, on others he was very small) of Milton that (if he really did so) he denied poetry to Dryden.”[16] “What the _Voyage and Travaile_ really is, is this--it is, so far as we know, and even beyond our knowledge in all probability and likelihood, the first considerable example of prose in English dealing neither with the beaten track of theology and philosophy, nor with the, even in the Middle Ages, restricted field of history and home topography, but expatiating freely on unguarded plains and on untrodden hills, sometimes dropping into actual prose romance and always treating its subject as the poets had treated theirs in _Brut_ and _Mort d’Arthur_, in _Troy-book_ and _Alexandreid_, as a mere canvas on which to embroider flowers of fancy.”[17] Again, “With Anglo-Saxon history he deals slightly, and despite his ardent English patriotism--his book opens with a vigorous panegyric of England, the first of a series extending to the present day (from which an anthology _De Laudibus Angliæ_ might be made)--he deals very harshly with Harold Godwinson.”[18] “He had a fit of stiff Odes in the Gray and Collins manner.” “_The Hind and Panther_ (the greatest poem ever written in the teeth of its subject)”. “His voluminous Latin works have been _tackled_ by a special Wyclif Society.” These are a few of the gems in which every chapter abounds.

Of Professor Saintsbury’s indifference to exactness and accuracy in details and facts we need go no further for illustrations than to his dates. Such things cannot be regarded as trifles in a book designed to be a book of reference. We will give a few instances. We are informed on page 238 that Ascham’s _Schoolmaster_ was published in 1568; it was published, as its title-page shows, in 1570. Hume’s _Dissertations_ were first published, not in 1762, but in 1757. Bale’s flight to Germany was not in 1547, when such a step would have been unnecessary, but in 1540. Pecock was, we are told, translated to Chichester in 1550, exactly ninety years after his death! As if to perplex the readers of this book, two series of dates are given; we have the dates in the narrative and the dates in the index, and no attempt is made to reconcile the discrepancies. Accordingly we find in the narrative that Caxton was probably born in 1415--in the index that he was born in 1422; in the narrative that Latimer, Fisher, Gascoign and Atterbury were born respectively in 1489, in 1465, about 1537 and in 1672--in the index that they were born respectively in 1485, 1459, 1525 and 1662; in the narrative Gay was born in 1688--in the index he was born in 1685. In the narrative Collins dies in 1756, and Mrs. Browning is born in 1806--in the index Collins dies in 1759, and Mrs. Browning is born in 1809. The narrative tells us that Aubrey was born in 1626, and John Dyer _circa_ 1688--in the index that Aubrey was born in 1624 and Dyer _circa_ 1700. In the index Mark Pattison dies in 1884--in the narrative he dies in 1889. In Professor Saintsbury’s eyes such indifference to accuracy may be venial: in our opinion it is nothing less than scandalous. It is assuredly most unfair to those who will naturally expect to find in a book of reference trustworthy information.

We must now conclude, though we have very far from exhausted the list of errors and misstatements, of absurdities in criticism and absurdities in theory, which we have noted. Bacon has observed that the best part of beauty is that which a picture cannot express. It may be said, with equal truth, of a bad book, that what is worst in it is precisely that which it is most difficult to submit to tangible tests. In other words, it lies not so much in its errors and inaccuracies, which, after all, may be mere trifles and excrescences, but it lies in its tone and colour, its flavour, its accent. Professor Saintsbury appears to be constitutionally incapable of distinguishing vulgarity and coarseness from liveliness and vigour. So far from having any pretension to the finer qualities of the critic, he seems to take a boisterous pride in exhibiting his grossness.

If our review of this book shall seem unduly harsh, we are sorry, but a more exasperating writer than Professor Saintsbury, with his indifference to all that should be dear to a scholar, the mingled coarseness, triviality and dogmatism of his tone, the audacious nonsense of his generalisations, and the offensive vulgarity of his diction and style--a very well of English defiled--we have never had the misfortune to meet with. Turn where we will in this work, to the opinions expressed in it, to the sentiments, to the verdicts, to the style, the note is the same,--the note of the _Das Gemeine_.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: Page 37.]

[Footnote 13:

Eá lâ drihtenes þrym! eá lâ duguða helm!
eá lâ meotodes miht! eá lâ middaneard!
eá lâ däg leóhta! eá lâ dreám godes!
eá lâ engla þreát! eá lâ upheofon!
eá lâ þät ic eam ealles leás êcan dreámes,
þät ic mid handum ne mäg heofon geræcan
ne mid eágum ne môt up lôcian
ne hûru mid eárum ne sceal æfre gehêran
þære byrhtestan bêman stefne.

--_Satan._ edit. Grein, 164-172.
]

[Footnote 14: _Some Remarks on Lydgate._ Gray, Aldine Ed. v. 292-321.]

[Footnote 15: That Lydgate’s verse should occasionally be rough and halting is partly to be attributed to the wretched state in which his text has come down to us from the copyists, and partly to the arbitrary way in which he varies the accent. His heroic couplets in the _Storie of Thebes_ are certainly very unmusical. For the whole question of his versification see Dr. Schick, Introduction to his edition of _The Temple of Glas_, pp. liv.-lxiii., and Schipper, _Altenglische Metrik_, 492-500. But neither of these scholars does justice to the exquisite music of his verse at its best.]

[Footnote 16: Page 474.]

[Footnote 17: Page 150.]

[Footnote 18: Page 63.]

OUR LITERARY GUIDES

II. A SHORT HISTORY OF MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE[19]

[Footnote 19: _A Short History of Modern English Literature._ By Edmund Gosse. London, 1898.]

The author of this work has plainly not pondered the advice of Horace, “Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis, æquam viribus.” His ambitious purpose is “to give the reader, whether familiar with books or not, a feeling of the evolution of English Literature in the primary sense of the term,” and he adds that “to do this without relation to particular authors and particular works seems to me impossible.” This may be conceded; for, a feeling of the evolution of English or of any other literature, without reference to particular authors and particular books, would be analogous to the capacity for feeling without anything to feel. But, unfortunately, those of Mr. Gosse’s readers who wish to have the feeling to which he refers will merely find the conditions without which, as he so justly observes, the said feeling is impossible. In other words, references, in the form of loose and desultory gossip, to particular authors and particular works chronologically arranged, are all that represent the “evolution” of which he is so anxious “to give a feeling.”

Described simply, the work is an ordinary manual of English Literature in which, with Mr. Humphry Ward’s _English Poets_, Sir Henry Craik’s _English Prose Writers_, Chambers’ _Cyclopædia of English Literature_, the _Dictionary of National Biography_, and the like before him, the writer tells again the not unfamiliar story of the course of our Literature from Chaucer to the present time. But Mr. Gosse is no mere compiler, and brings to his task certain qualifications of his own, a vague and inaccurate but extensive knowledge of our seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century Belles Lettres; and here, as a rule, he can acquit himself creditably. Though far from a sound, he is a sympathetic critic; he has an agreeable but somewhat affected style, and can gossip pleasantly and plausibly about subjects which are within the range indicated. But at this point, as is painfully apparent, his qualifications for being an historian and critic of English Literature end. The moment he steps out of this area he is at the mercy of his handbooks; so completely at their mercy that he does not even know how to use them. And it is here that Mr. Gosse becomes so irritating, partly because of the sheer audacity with which mere inferences are substituted for facts and simple assumptions for deduced generalizations, and partly because of the habitual employment of phraseology so vague and indeterminate that it is difficult to submit what it conveys to positive test. These are serious charges to bring against any writer; and if they cannot be abundantly substantiated, a still more serious charge may justly be urged against the accuser.

To turn to the work. On page 85 Mr. Gosse favours us with the following account of the _Faerie Queene_: “A certain grandeur which sustains the three great Cantos of Truth, Temperance, and Chastity fades away as we proceed.... The structure of it is loose and incoherent when we compare it with the epic grandeur of the masterpieces of Ariosto and Tasso.” It would be difficult to match this; every word which is not a blunder is an absurdity. Where are “the three great Cantos”? Can Mr. Gosse possibly be ignorant that the poem is divided into books, each book containing twelve Cantos? Assuming, however, that he has confounded books with Cantos, where is the great book dealing with ‘Truth’? As he places it before ‘Temperance,’ we presume that he means the first book and that he has confounded ‘Truth’ with ‘Holiness.’ This is pretty well, to begin with. Where, we next ask in amazement, is the ‘grandeur’ which sustains the prolix farrago of the third book, and which ‘fades away’ as we proceed to the only book which almost rivals the first and second, the fifth, and the sublimest portion of the whole work, the superb Cantos which represent all that remains of the seventh? What, we gasp, is the meaning of the ‘epic grandeur’ of Ariosto? and “the loose and incoherent structure” of the _Faerie Queene_ when compared with that of the _Orlando Furioso_? Could any poem be more loose and incoherent in structure than the _Orlando_, or any term be less appropriate to its tone and style than ‘grandeur’? On page 80 he actually tells us that Fox’s well-known _Book of Martyrs_ was written in Latin and translated by John Day, and that it is John Day’s translation of the Latin original which represents that work, confounding Fox’s _Commentarii Rerum in Ecclesiâ gestarum_, etc., printed at Basil with the _Acts and Monuments of the Church_, and making John Day, the publisher of it, the translator of it into English! And this is his account of one of the most celebrated works in our language. Of Swift’s _Sentiments of a Church of England Man_, we have the following account: “That such a tract as the _Sentiments of a Church of England Man_, with its gusts of irony, its white heat of preposterous moderation, led on towards Junius is obvious.” This is an excellent example of the confidence which may be placed in Mr. Gosse’s assertions. Of this pamphlet, it may be sufficient to say that there is not a single touch of irony or satire in it; that it stands almost alone among Swift’s tracts for its perfectly temperate and logical tone; it is a calm appeal to pure reason. There is the same audacity of assertion in classing Feltham’s _Resolves_ with Hall’s and Overbury’s Character Sketches, and Earle’s _Microcosmogonie_ as “a typical example” of “a curious school of comic or ironic portraiture, partly ethical and partly dramatic.” In 1625, we are told that Bacon completed the _Sylva Sylvarum_. If Mr. Gosse knew anything of Bacon’s philosophical writings, he would have known that the _Sylva Sylvarum_ never was and never could have been completed, for it was in itself a fragment--a mere collection of materials to be incorporated in the _Phœnomena Universi_, a work which was to have been six times larger than Pliny’s _Natural History_. In giving an account of Tillotson, he speaks of “the serene and insinuating periods” of the elegant latitudinarian who “was assiduous in saying what he had to say in the most graceful and intelligible manner possible.” A more perfect description of the very opposite of Tillotson’s style could hardly be given. Those who are acquainted with Fuller’s writings will be equally surprised to find him classed with Jeremy Taylor and Henry More, and to learn that his style is ‘florid and involved,’ distinguished by its ‘long-windedness’ and ‘exuberance.’ Has Mr. Gosse no apprehension of his readers turning to the originals and testing his statements? We have another of these bold assertions in the account of Lydgate, derived, we suspect, from a hasty generalization from a remark made about him in Mr. Ward’s _British Poets_. “Lydgate,” says Mr. Gosse, “had a most defective ear; his verses are not to be scanned. His ear was bad and tuneless.” Any one who has read Lydgate knows that, if we except his heroic couplets, a more musical poet is not to be found in the fifteenth century, or, indeed, in our language; the softness and smoothness of his verse, wherever he writes in stanzas, as he generally does, is indeed his chief characteristic. These remarks are minor illustrations of an accomplishment in which Mr. Gosse has no rival.

The Euphuists of the sixteenth century drew, for purposes of simile and illustration, on a fabulous natural history which assumed the existence of certain animals, herbs, and minerals, and of certain properties and qualities possessed by them. This gave great point and picturesqueness to their style, and though it was certainly misleading and occasionally perplexing to those who went to them for natural history, it had a most charming and imposing effect. Mr. Gosse seems to have imported a similar fiction into criticism. Of this we have a most amusing illustration on page 155. Speaking of Herrick Mr. Gosse remarks, “In the midst of these extravagances, like Meleager winding his _pure white violets_”--the Italics are ours--“into the _gaudy garland of late Greek Euphuism_, we find Robert Herrick.” Meleager’s Anthology is not extant, but the dedication is, and from that dedication we know exactly from what poets it was compiled. It ranged from about B.C. 700 till towards the close of the Alexandrian Age, for, with the exception of Antipater of Sidon, it is very doubtful whether he inserted any epigrams by his contemporaries, but he admitted a hundred and thirty-one of his own. In other words his collection comprised epigrams composed by the masters preceding the Alexandrian Age from Archilochus downwards, and by those who, during that age and afterwards, cultivated with scrupulous care the simplicity and purity of the early models. Indeed, the poets represented in his Anthology are, with one exception, the artists of Greek epigram in its purest, simplest, and chastest form. That one exception is himself. In him are first apparent the _dulcia vitia_ of the Decadence; he is full of dainty subtleties, he is almost more Oriental than Greek, his style is luscious, elaborate and florid. Such, then, was the composition of “the gaudy garland of late Greek Euphuism,” and such the nature of the “pure white violets” wound into it by Meleager. It is amusing to trace Mr. Gosse’s rodomontade to its source. In the well-known dedication to which we have referred, Meleager prettily compares the various poets, from whose works he selects, to flowers, speaking modestly of his own contributions as “early white violets.” To critics like Mr. Gosse the rest is easy. Meleager, he no doubt argued, was an excellent poet; he belonged to a late age: ‘Euphuism’--a delightfully vague term, is likely to characterise a late age; a poet who compares his verses to white violets had evidently a taste for simplicity, and presumably, therefore, was no Euphuist; a gaudy garland is an excellent set off for pure white violets. And so, to the great perplexity of scholars, but to the great satisfaction of those who enjoy a pretty sentence, Meleager will continue “to wind his pure white violets into the gaudy garland of late Greek Euphuism.”

We have a similar illustration of the same thing in Mr. Gosse’s account of Shaftesbury. We are told that he “was perhaps the greatest literary force between Dryden and Swift”; that “he deserves remembrance as the first who really broke down the barrier which excluded England from taking her proper place in the civilization of literary Europe”; that “he set an example for the kind of prose which was to mark the central years of the century”; that “his style glitters and rings, and ... yet so curious that one marvels that it should have fallen completely into neglect”; that “he was the first Englishman who developed theories of formal virtue, who attempted to harmonize the beautiful with the true and the good”; that the modern attitude of mind seems to meet us first in the graceful cosmopolitan writings of Shaftesbury; that “without a Shaftesbury there would hardly have been a Ruskin or a Pater.” Such amazing nonsense almost confounds refutation by its sheer absurdity.