Chapter IV: Part 4

With regard to the first statement, it may be sufficient to say that between the period of Dryden’s literary activity and the publication of Swift’s _Battle of the Books_ and _Tale of a Tub_ were flourishing Hobbes, Izaak Walton, Bunyan, Temple, and Locke; that between the publication of the _Tale of a Tub_ and of Shaftesbury’s collected writings were flourishing Addison, Steele, De Foe, Arbuthnot, Berkeley. With regard to the second statement, it would be interesting to know how a writer who had been preceded by Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, could be described as a writer who had been the first “to break down the barrier which excluded England from taking her proper place in the civilization of literary Europe.” The truth is, that Shaftesbury exercised no influence at all on Continental Literature until long after our Literature had generally become influential in France. Equally absurd and baseless is the remark that he “set an example of the kind of prose that was to mark the central years of the century.” Whose prose was affected by him? Bolingbroke’s? or Fielding’s? or Richardson’s? or Middleton’s? or Johnson’s? or Goldsmith’s? or Hume’s? or Hawkesworth’s? or Sterne’s? or Smollett’s? or Chesterfield’s? that of the writers in the _Monthly Review_? or in the _Adventurer_? or in the _World_? or in the _Connoisseur_? To say of Shaftesbury’s style that “it glitters and rings,” is to say what betrays utter ignorance of its characteristics. As a rule, it is diffuse, involved, and cumbrous, affected, but with an affectation which sedulously aims at the very opposite effects of “glittering and ringing.” When he is eloquent, as in the _Moralists_, he imitates the style of Plato; his vice is florid verbosity; it may be doubted whether a single sentence could be found to which Mr. Gosse’s description would be applicable. If, it may be added, his style had “fallen completely into neglect,” it is somewhat surprising that “he should set an example for the kind of prose which was to mark the central years of the century.” When we are told that he was “the first Englishman who attempted to harmonize the beautiful with the true and the good,” we ask in amazement whether Mr. Gosse has ever inspected the _Hymns_ of Spenser and the writings of the Cambridge Platonists; and when he tells us that without a Shaftesbury there would hardly have been a Ruskin or a Pater, we would suggest to him that both Ruskin and Pater were perhaps not ignorant of the Platonic Dialogues. In the account given of Spenser, a poem is attributed to him which he never wrote. “In one of his early pieces, _The Oak and The Briar_, went far,” etc., the oak and the briar is simply an episode in the second eclogue of the _Shepherd’s Calendar_. Mr. Gosse, probably finding it quoted in some book of selections, has jumped to the conclusion that it is a separate poem. Of Mr. Gosse’s qualifications for dealing with Spenser, we have, by the way, an excellent example in the following remark: “Spenser, although he boasted of his classical acquirements, was singularly little affected by Greek or even Latin ideas.” Spenser’s _Hymns_ in honour of Love and in Honour of Beauty are simply saturated with Platonism, being indeed directly derived from the _Phædrus_ and the _Symposium_, numberless passages from which are interwoven with the poems. The whole scheme of the _Faerie Queene_ was suggested by, and based on, Aristotle’s _Ethics_ with elaborate particularity, Arthur, in his relation to the several knights, corresponding to the virtue μεγαλοψυχια in its relation to the other virtues. The conclusion of the tenth canto of the first book is simply an allegorical presentation of the relation of the βιος θεωρητικος to practical life. The “Castle of Medina” in the second book is a minutely technical exposition of the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean, modified by the Platonic theory of morals: the three mothers being the λογιστικη, the επιθυμητικη, and θυμητικη, the three daughters, Elissa, Perissa, and Medina, being respectively the Aristotelian ελλειψις, the ὑπερβολη and the μεσοτης. In fact, the whole passage is simply an allegory of the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean. The whole of the ninth canto of the second book is founded on the famous passage in the _Timæus_ describing the anatomy of man. In truth the poem teems with references to Plato and Aristotle, and with passages imitated from the Greek poets, as every scholar knows. And this is a poet “singularly little affected by Greek ideas!”

The same astonishing ignorance is displayed in a remark about Milton. We are told that in his youth he was “slightly subjected to influence from Spenser.” If Mr. Gosse had any adequate acquaintance with Milton and Spenser, he would have known that Spenser was to Milton almost what Homer was to Virgil, that Spenser’s influence simply pervades his poems, not his youthful poems only, but _Paradise Lost_ and even _Paradise Regained_. On page 194 we find this sentence: “From 1660 onwards ... what France originally, and then England, chose was the _imitatio veterum_, the Literature in prose and verse which seemed most closely to copy the models of Latin style. Aristotle and Horace were taken, not merely as patterns, but as arbiters.” It would be very interesting to know what English author took Aristotle as a pattern for style. Is Mr. Gosse acquainted with the characteristics of Aristotle’s style? Should he ever become so, he will probably have some sense of the immeasurable absurdity of asserting that our prose writers from 1660 onwards took that style for their model. On a par with this is the assertion that up to 1605 Bacon had mainly issued his works in “Ciceronian Latin.” Is Mr. Gosse aware of the meaning of “Ciceronian Latin”? Very “Ciceronian” indeed is Bacon’s Latinity, and particularly that of the _Meditationes Sacræ_, the only work published in Latin by Bacon up to 1605! It is scarcely necessary to say, in passing, that such works as Bacon had published up to 1605 were, with the one exception referred to, all in English. Nothing, it may be added, is so annoying in this book as its slushy dilettantism. Mr. Gosse appears to be incapable of accuracy and precision. Thus he tells us that Chaucer’s expedition to Italy in 1372 was “the first of several Italian expeditions.” Chaucer, so far as is known, visited Italy, after this, exactly once. Again, he tells us that the _Complaint of Mars_ and the _Parliament of Fowls_ are interesting as showing that Chaucer had completely abandoned his imitation of French models. Chaucer wrote several poems in the pure French style, and based on French models, after the date of these poems. Such would be the Rondel _Merciless Beauty_ suggested by Williamme d’Amiens, the _Compleynt of Venus_, partly adapted and partly translated from three Ballades by Sir Otes de Graunson, and the _Compleynt to his Empty Purse_, modelled on a Ballade by Eustache Deschamps, while French influence continued to modify his work throughout. On page 238 we are told that Thomson revived the Spenserian stanza; it had been revived by Pope, Prior, Shenstone, and Akenside. On page 151 we are informed that the first instalment of Clarendon’s History remained unprinted till 1752, and the rest of it till 1759. If Mr. Gosse knew anything about one of the most remarkable controversies of the eighteenth century, he would have known that the greater part of it was printed and published between 1702 and 1704, and frequently reprinted between 1704 and 1731.

There is not a chapter in the book which does not teem with errors. Trissino’s _Sofonisba_ was not the only work in which blank verse had attained any prominence in Italy about 1515; it had been employed in works equally prominent, by Rucellai in his _Rosmunda_, and in his _Oreste_, as well as in his didactic poem _L’Api_, and by Alamanni in his _Antigone_, all of which were composed within a few years of that date. On page 120 we are told that Davies was the first to employ, on a long flight, the heroic quatrain; it had been employed by Spenser in a poem extending to nearly a thousand lines. Nor was Surrey’s essay in _terza rima_ “the earliest in the language.” Chaucer made the same experiment, though a little irregularly, in the _Compleynt to his Lady_. We are told on page 79 that Gascoigne was “the first translator of Greek tragedy.” Gascoigne never translated a line from the Greek. His _Jocasta_, to which presumably the reference is made, is simply an adaptation of Ludovico Dolce’s _Giocasta_. On page 25 we are informed that “Gower’s French verse has mainly disappeared.” Gower is not known to have written anything in French except the _Ballades_ and the _Speculum Meditantis_, both of which are extant, as it is inexcusable in any historian of English Literature not to know. The account given on page 25 of the _Confessio Amantis_ shows that Mr. Gosse is very imperfectly acquainted with what he so fluently criticises, or he would have been aware that the seventh book is purely episodical and has nothing whatever to do with “The lover’s symptoms and experience.” In the account of Pope we are informed that “Boileau discouraged love poetry and Pope did not seriously attempt it.” Pope is the author of the most famous love poem in the eighteenth century, _Eloisa to Abelard_, to say nothing of the _Elegy to an Unfortunate Lady_, of the beautiful hymn to Love in the second chorus in the tragedy of _Brutus_, and the exquisite fragment supposed to have been addressed to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. “The satires of Pope,” he continues, “would not have been written but for those of his French predecessor.” Can Mr. Gosse possibly be ignorant that the satires of Pope are modelled on the Satires and Epistles of Horace, that they owe absolutely nothing to Boileau, not even the hint for applying Roman satire to modern times, as he had precedents in his own countrymen Dryden and Rochester?

Mr. Gosse’s criticism is often very amusing, as here, speaking of Gibbon: “Perhaps he leaned on the strength of his style too much, and _sacrificed the abstract to the concrete_.” Of all historians who have ever lived, Gibbon is the most “abstract” and has most sacrificed the “concrete” to the “abstract,” as every student of history knows. On a par with this is the prodigious statement (p. 291) that there is “an absence of emotional imagination” in Burke! That excellent man, Mr. Pecksniff, was, we are told, in the habit of using any word that occurred to him as having a fine sound and rounding a sentence well, without much care for its meaning; “and this,” says his biographer “he did so boldly and in such an imposing manner that he would sometimes stagger the wisest people and make them gasp again.” This is precisely Mr. Gosse’s method. About the propriety of his epithets and statements, so long as they sound well, he never troubles himself; sometimes they are so vague as to mean anything, as often they have no meaning at all, as here: “His [that is Shelley’s] style, carefully considered, is seen to rest on a basis built about 1760, from which it is every moment springing and sparkling, like a fountain, in columns of ebullient lyricism.” Could pure nonsense go further? We have another illustration of the same audacity of absurd assertion on page 260. We are there informed--Mr. Gosse is speaking of our prose literature about the centre of the eighteenth century--that “Philosophy by this time had become detached from _belles lettres_; it was now quite indifferent to those who practised it, whether their sentences were harmonious or no.... Philosophy in fact quitted literature.” If there was any period in our prose literature when philosophy was in the closest alliance with belles lettres, and was most studious of the graces of style, it was between about 1750 and 1771. In those years appeared Hutcheson’s _System of Moral Philosophy_, Adam Smith’s _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, one of the most eloquent philosophical treatises ever written, Burke’s _Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful_, Reid’s _Inquiry into the Human Mind_, Tucker’s _Light of Nature Pursued_, Beattie’s _Essay on Truth_, to say nothing of Hume’s _Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals_, his _Political Discourses_, and his _Natural History of Religion_, all of them works pre-eminently distinguished by the graces of style, while so far from philosophy quitting belles lettres, it was during these years that the foundations of philosophical criticism were laid by Burke, Harris, Hurd, Kames, and others. Mr. Gosse appears to have forgotten that he had himself told us (p. 205) that Shaftesbury’s style set the example of the prose which was to mark the central years of the century! Thus again Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_ is “an entertaining neurotic compendium”; Bacon’s _Essays_ are “often mere notations ... enlarged in many cases merely to receive the impressions of a Machiavellian ingenuity.” Shelley’s _Triumph of Life_ is “a noble but vague gnomic poem, in which Petrarch’s Trionfi are summed up and sometimes excelled.” Keats’ “great odes are Titanic and Titianic.” On page 284 we are informed that for fifteen years after the close of 1800 “poetry may be said to have been stationary in England.” When we remember that within these years appeared the best of Wordsworth’s poems, the best of Coleridge’s, the best of Scott’s, the best of Crabbe’s, the first two cantos of _Childe Harold_, the best of Campbell’s, the best of Moore’s, and of Southey’s--we wonder what can be meant, till we read on to find that it was “on the contrary extremely active.” But “its activity took the form of the gradual acceptance of the new romantic ideas, the slow expulsion of the old classic taste, and the multiplication of examples of what had once for all been supremely accomplished in the hollows of the Quantocks.” In other words, its activity took the form of its activity, and its activity led to its becoming stationary. Mr. Gosse is sometimes solemnly oracular, as here: “It is a sentimental error to suppose that the winds of God blow only through the green tree; it is sometimes the dry tree which is peculiarly favourable to their passage.” It is not sometimes, we submit, but always that the dry tree will be most propitious to their passage. But we like Mr. Gosse best when he is eloquent, as here: “In the chapel of Milton’s brain, entirely devoted though it was to a Biblical form of worship, there were flutes and trumpets to accompany one vast commanding organ.” No wonder poor Milton suffered, as we know he did suffer, from insomnia!

The statement that “so miserable is the poverty of the first half of the seventeenth century, when we have mentioned Pecock and Capgrave, there is no other prose writer to be named,” is bad enough. But to sum up Pecock’s work with the remark, “the matter is paradoxical and casuistical reasoning on controversial points, in which he secures the sympathy neither of the new thought nor the old,” is to demonstrate that Mr. Gosse knows nothing whatever about it. The _Repressor_ is in many important respects one of the most remarkable works in our early prose Literature. It would be interesting to know what is the meaning of the following: “The masterpiece of Chillingworth stands almost alone in a sort of underwood of Theophrastian character sketches.” Does Mr. Gosse suppose that English prose Literature in and about 1637 is represented by Hall’s _Characters of Vices and Virtues_, by Sir Thomas Overbury’s _Characters_, and by Earle’s _Microcosmographie_, which appeared respectively, not in and about 1637, but in 1608, in 1614, and in 1628? If this was the underwood in which Chillingworth’s work stood, it stood also in a dense forest represented by some of the most celebrated prose writings of the seventeenth century, such as the greater part of the writings of Bacon and of Raleigh, the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Selden’s _Titles of Honour_ and _Mare Clausum_, Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s _De Veritate_, Feltham’s _Resolves_, the best of Hall’s writings, Purchas’ _Pilgrims_, Barclay’s _Argenis_, the Histories of Speed, Stowe, Hayward, and Raleigh, Heylin’s _Microcosmus_, Prynne’s _Histrio-Mastix_, and the famous sermons of Lancelot Andrewes, all of which appeared between 1608 and 1637. These are the sort of remarks in which Mr. Gosse habitually indulges. We have another example in the following: “Shelley’s attitude to style is in the main retrograde,” a generalization based on the fact that he was no admirer of “the arabesque of the cockney school.” But were Shelley’s chief contemporaries admirers of the arabesque of the cockney school, or were they affected by it? Was Wordsworth, was Coleridge, or Southey, or Byron, or Crabbe, or Campbell, or Landor?--a question which Mr. Gosse probably never stopped to ask himself. On a par with this is the absurd assertion that “English poetry was born again during the autumn months of 1797.” The appearance of the _Lyrical Ballads_ did not make, but mark, an era in our poetry. The revolution of which they were the expression had been maturing, as surely but distinctly as the social and political revolution marked by the assembly of the States-General ten years before. There was hardly a note struck in the _Lyrical Ballads_ which had not been struck in our poetry between 1740 and the date of their appearance.

To call this compilation a _History of Modern English Literature_ is ludicrous. Mr. Gosse has no conception even of the eras into which our Literature naturally falls, or of the movements which in each of those eras defined themselves. Nothing could be more misleading and inadequate than the accounts given of the historians, theologians, philosophers, and critics, many of whom--nay, whole schools of whom--are not noticed at all. Sidney’s epoch-marking little treatise is dismissed in four unmeaning lines as “an urbane and eloquent essay, which labours under but one disadvantage, namely, that when it was composed in 1581 there was scarcely any poesy in England to be defended. This was posthumously printed in 1595.” Ben Jonson’s not less remarkable _Discoveries_ are not even mentioned. How writers like Bacon, Hooker, Hobbes, Locke, and Berkeley fare we have not space to illustrate. Mr. Gosse, indeed, judging by his excursions into the realms of theology and philosophy, has certainly been wise to assign more space to _The Flower and the Leaf_ than is assigned to Hobbes, Barrow, Butler, and Paley put together. We have by no means exhausted the list of blunders and absurdities to be found in this book; but we have, we fear, exhausted the patience of our readers, and we must bring our examination of it to a close.

The melancholy thing about all this is the perfect impunity with which such works as these can be given to the public. We have not the smallest doubt that this book has been extolled to the skies in reviews which have not detected a single error in it, and which have accepted its generalizations and its criticisms with unquestioning credulity; and we have as little doubt that those scholars who have discerned its defects and absurdities have chosen, from motives possibly of kindness, possibly of prudence, and possibly in mere contempt, to maintain silence about them. Had it appeared twenty years ago, it would instantly have been exposed and exploded, indeed no writer would have dared to insult serious readers by such a publication. What every reader has a right to demand from those who take upon themselves to instruct him are sincerity, industry, and competence; and what no critic has a right to condone is ostentatious indifference on the part of an author to the responsibilities incurred by him in undertaking to teach the public.

The sooner Mr. Gosse, and writers like Mr. Gosse, come to understand that, however ingeniously expressed, reckless generalizations, random assertions and the specious semblance of knowledge, erudition, and authority may pass current for a time, but are certain at last to be detected and exposed, the better for themselves and the better for their readers. If, too, they wish justice to be done to the accomplishments which they really possess, they will do well to remember what is implied in the proverb _Ne sutor ultra crepidam_, and what the Germans mean by VERMESSENHEIT.

LOG-ROLLING AND EDUCATION

We see no objection to Mutual Admiration Societies; they are institutions which afford much pleasure, and can, as a rule, do little harm. If vanity be a foible, it is a foible well worth cherishing, and will be treated tenderly even by a philosopher. For, of all the illusions which give a zest to life, the illusions created by this flattering passion are the most delightful and inspiring. They are so easily evoked; they respond with such impartial obsequiousness to the call of the humblest magician. He has but to speak the word--and they are made; to command--and they are created. A becomes what B and C pronounce him to be, and what A and C have done for B, that will B and A do in turn for C. It is a delicious occupation, no doubt, a feast for each, in which no crude surfeit reigns, where, in Bacon’s phrase, satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable; it is like the herbage in the Paradise of the Spanish poet, “quanto mas se goza mas renace,”--the more we enjoy it the more it grows. It is an old game--“Vetus fabula per novos histriones”:--

“’Twas, ‘Sir, your law,’ and ‘Sir, your eloquence,’
‘Yours Cowper’s manner and yours Talbot’s sense’;
Thus we dispose of all poetic merit:
Yours Milton’s genius and mine Homer’s spirit.
Walk with respect behind, while we at ease
Weave laurel crowns and take what name we please.
‘My dear Tibullus!’ if that will not do,
Let me be Horace, and be Ovid you.”

And there is this advantage. If a sufficient number of magicians can, or will, combine, these illusions may not only serve each magician for life, but become, for a time, simply indistinguishable from realities. Now, as we said before, we see no great harm in this. It is, to say the least, a very amiable and brotherly employment; and were it quite disinterested and honest, it would be closely allied with that virtue which St. Paul exalts above all virtues. But everything has or ought to have its limits. When Boswell attempted to defend certain Methodists who had been expelled from the University of Oxford, Johnson retorted that the University was perfectly right--“They were examined, and found to be mighty ignorant fellows.” “But,” said Boswell, “was it not hard to expel them? for I am told they were good beings.” “I believe,” replied the sage, “that they might be good beings, but they were not fit to be in the University of Oxford. A cow is a very good animal in the field, but we turn her out of a garden.”

To our certain knowledge many of those who owe their reputation to the art to which we are referring are good beings, and we have little doubt that most of those who are least scrupulous in practising it are good beings also. Indeed it may be conceded at once that there is always a strong presumption that members of Mutual Admiration Societies belong to this class. On the reciprocity of essentially Christian virtues their very existence depends. Whatever may be thought of their heads, their hearts are pretty sure to be in the right place. They may, it is true, act more in the spirit of the precept that we should do unto others as we would they should do unto us than in that of the precept which pronounces that it is more blessed to give than to receive. This, however, is a trifle--one of those distinctions without differences which are so common in Christian ethics. But for ourselves we must, as we have said before, discriminate. To the cow in the field we have no objection; it is of the cow in the garden that we complain.

To drop metaphor: there are certain spheres of literary activity in which the circulation of mutual puffery by this clique or by that clique can do comparatively little harm to any one or to anything. There are some subjects on which every reader is not only perfectly competent to form his own judgment, but is pretty certain to do so. He may amuse himself by seeing what the critics have to say, and he may be induced by them in the first instance to turn to the book which is in question, but he is practically unaffected by any opinions unless they happen to coincide with his own. Such is the case with books of travel, with novels, and, as a rule, with poetry. Here the arts of the log-roller are as harmless as the frolics of whales with tubs. No one takes what he sees seriously except those who are engaged in the pastime. If Mr. A cannot give the general public what it appreciates, nothing that Mr. B can say will cajole that public into believing that it has what it has not. Mr. C and Mr. D may vociferate, till they are hoarse, that “Mr. E is the subtlest and most discriminating critic that the English-speaking world has ever known”; but if Mr. E’s eulogies of Mr. C’s verses and of Mr. D’s novels are not corroborated by the general reader’s independent judgment, the fame of Messrs. C and D will not extend beyond their clique. If in poetry or prose fiction trash succeeds, as it undoubtedly does, it succeeds not because of the skill with which it has been puffed, though this may be a factor in its success, but because it hits the popular taste. The public is seldom deceived except when it wishes to be deceived. Log-rolling has much to answer for: it loads our bookstalls with nonsense and rubbish, it impedes the production of sound literature, it degrades the standard of taste, it degrades the standard of aim and attainment, and indirectly it is in every way mischievous to literature. But we very much question whether in the case of publications which appeal directly to general readers, and are within the scope of their judgments, the fortune of a book is in any way affected by the arts of the log-roller. Amusement mingled with impatience is probably the prevailing sentiment when Mr. C and Mr. D are loud in each other’s praises. We remember the amœbæan strains of Hayley and Miss Seward in Porson’s epigram:--

_Miss Seward_: Tuneful poet, Britain’s glory;
Mr. Hayley, that is you.

_Mr. Hayley_: Ma’am, you carry all before you;
Trust me, Lichfield Swan, you do.

* * * * *

_Miss Seward_: Ode, didactic, epic, sonnet;
Mr. Hayley, you’re divine.

_Mr. Hayley_: Ma’am, I’ll take my oath upon it,
You yourself are all the nine.

Or, in a less good-natured mood, we may perhaps recall with a certain satisfaction Pope’s cruel but pathetic picture of the minor log-rollers of his day:--

Next plunged a feeble but a desperate pack,
With each a sickly brother at his back.
Sons of a day! just buoyant on the flood,
Then numbered with the puppies in the mud.

But there are certain subjects and certain spheres in which the arts of the log-roller, if equally contemptible, are not quite so harmless.

During the last fifteen years the Press has been teeming with books designed to circulate among readers who are seriously interested in _belles lettres_ and criticism. Some of them have appeared as volumes in a series, some as independent monographs and manuals, and some in the humbler forms of editorial introductions and notes. Among them may be found works of really distinguished scholars, and works in every way worthy of such scholars; and it is no doubt works like these which have given credit and authority generally to publications of this kind. The popularity of these productions has been extraordinary, and their manufacture has become one of the most lucrative of hackney employments. Nor is this all. Their professed purpose is the dissemination of serious instruction, is to become text-books in literary history and in literary criticism; and, as text-books on those subjects, they have made their way, or are making their way, not merely into our public libraries, but also into the libraries of nearly every educational institute in England. Indeed it would not be too much to say that if, among general readers, about eighty in every hundred derive almost all they know about English literature, both historically and critically, from these volumes, in our schools and colleges, the average number of those whose studies are and ought to be independent of them is yearly diminishing. It is of these text-books and of the responsibilities incurred by those who produce and circulate them that we wish to speak.

We have already commented on the distinction which must be drawn between what is best and what is inferior in the publications to which we have been referring; and, in truth, the difference is one not of degree but in kind. As our desire is, in Swift’s phrase, to lash the vice but spare the name, we shall not specify the works which we have selected as typical of log-rolling in relation to education. Till we saw them we had no conception of the lengths to which this sort of thing has run. Ostensibly the works before us are critical and biographical monographs designed to become text-books for students of English literature; they may be more correctly described as complete epitomes of the art of puffery. The writers begin by assuming that the objects of their ludicrous adulation--who are, like themselves, contributors of the average order to current periodicals, and the authors of monographs similar to their own--are by general consent critics of classical authority. The most deferential references are made to them in almost every page. Now it is “Goethe and Mr. So-and-so have observed,” or “Coleridge has remarked, but Mr. So-and-so is inclined to think,” etc. Sometimes it assumes the form of a sort of awful reverence, as “Mr. So-and-so is a little uncertain, but surely he more than hints,” or “Mr. So-and-so, as we all know, was once of opinion, though he has recently found reason to alter,” etc. We saw not long ago in the notes to a certain edition of a classical author: “Socrates and Mr. X---- _of Trinity_ have observed,” etc. Occasionally this homage expresses itself--and this is more serious--in the form of long extracts from Mr. So-and-so’s writings. Nothing is more common in works like these than to find critics and writers of classical authority either completely ignored, or, if cited at all, cited only in the connection which we have indicated. That the gentlemen who are the subjects of this grotesque flattery either have paid or will pay their friends in kind may, of course, be taken for granted. Thus one factitious reputation builds up another, and one bad book ushers in twenty which are worse.

Macaulay has an amusing passage in which he has collected the names of those who, according to Horace Walpole, were “the first writers” in England in 1753. It might have been expected that Hume, Fielding, Dr. Johnson, Richardson, Smollett, Collins, and Gray would at least have had a place among them. Not at all. They were Lord Bath, Mr. W. Whithed, Sir Charles Williams, Mr. Soame Jenyngs, Mr. Cambridge, and Mr. Coventry; in other words, a clique of politicians and men of fashion of the very titles of whose writings even a reader tolerably well read in the literature of those times might excusably be ignorant. We are not exaggerating when we say that this system of strenuous and well-directed mutual puffery is, in our own time, leading to similarly perverted conceptions about the relative position of those who owe their celebrity to these ignoble arts and those on whose fame Time’s test has set its seal, not merely on the part of the general public, but on the part of those who are responsible for the books introduced into schools and educational institutes. We will give an illustration.

At a meeting held not long ago, for the purpose of prescribing books for a Reading Society, the choice lay between some of Johnson’s Lives, Select Essays by Sainte Beuve, and Select Essays by Matthew Arnold on the one hand, and on the other certain books typical of the literature of which we have been speaking. The debate which ensued was very amusing. A member of the committee, a gentleman of conservative temper, strongly urged the claims of Johnson, Sainte Beuve, and Arnold, on the ground that it was the duty of the Society to encourage the study of what was excellent and of classical quality, especially in criticism; that it was not merely the information contained in a book which had to be considered, but the style, the tone, the touch; that the monographs proposed as an alternative could scarcely be regarded as of the first order, either in expression or in matter, for he had observed, though he had only glanced at them, several solecisms in grammar and several inaccuracies of statement; and he concluded by adding that other writings of these particular authors with which he happened to be more familiar had not prejudiced him in their favour. Upon that, another member of the council, who had been busily conning the Press notices inserted in the monographs in question, pleaded their claim to preference. “Dr. Johnson,” he remarked, “was no doubt a great man in his day, but his day had long been over; no one read him now. Sainte Beuve and Matthew Arnold might be classical and all that, but they were not up to date.” He could not talk as an expert on literary matters, and therefore he would not contradict what the former speaker had said, “but there could be no doubt that Messrs. So-and-so,” the authors of the monographs in question, “were very big men--bigger men, I should think (glancing at the Press notices in his hand), than Sainte Beuve and Matthew Arnold. At any rate, everybody has heard of them; and,” he continued, “listen to this.” He then proceeded to read out some of the notices, adding that it was difficult, if he might say so without offence, to reconcile what his friend, the preceding speaker, had said with what was said in these notices. He was a little staggered--for, though a simple, he was a shrewd man--when the very remarkable similarity between Mr. A’s eulogies of Mr. B and Mr. B’s eulogies of Mr. A was pointed out to him, and when, in reference to anonymous testimony, he was reminded that one voice may have many echoes. It was generally felt, more especially as Mr. A or Mr. B had, we believe, more than one acquaintance among the committee, that the debate was taking rather an embarrassing turn. The question was then put to the vote, and the monographs were carried by a majority of three to one.

What occurred at this meeting is occurring every day, variously modified, wherever the choice of books is in question, whether in public libraries or in educational institutions. A literature, the sole credentials of which are derived from those who produce and circulate it, is gradually superseding that of our classics. We seem in truth to be losing all sense of the essential distinction between the writings of the average man of letters and those of the masters.

OUR LITERARY GUIDES

III. BOOKS WORTH READING[20]

[Footnote 20: _Books Worth Reading._ A Plea for the Best and an Essay towards Selection, with Short Introductions. By Frank W. Raffety, London.]

Were it not for its melancholy significance, this would be one of the most amusing books which it has ever been our fortune to meet with. Of Mr. Frank W. Raffety we have not the honour to know anything, except what we have gathered from this little volume and from its title-page. But he must be a singularly interesting gentleman. His enthusiasm for books, his portentous ignorance of them; his strenuous desire to improve the popular taste by pleading for the best, his instinctive tendency to make in all cases for the worst; his sublime intolerance of everything in literature which falls short of excellence, his more than sublime indifference to the commonest rules of grammar and syntax in expressing that intolerance; the _naïveté_, the frankness, the recklessness with which he displays his incompetence for the task which he has undertaken--in these qualifications and accomplishments Mr. Raffety is not perhaps alone, but he has certainly no superior.

Mr. Raffety aspires to guide his readers through the chief literatures of the world. Now the task of a reviewer, who has a conscience, is not always a cheerful one, and we confess that, when we had generally surveyed Mr. Raffety’s work, we resolved to amuse ourselves by trying to discover of which of the literatures, to which Mr. Raffety constitutes himself a guide, Mr. Raffety is probably most ignorant. It is a nice point. Let our readers judge. We will begin with Mr. Raffety and the Classics. Of Theognis, the most voluminous of the Greek Gnomic poets, it is said that “only a few sentences”--Mr. Raffety is presumably under the impression that Theognis wrote in prose--“quoted in the works of Plato and others survive.” “The Greek Anthology,” we are astounded to learn, “is by Lord Neaves” and “is one of the best volumes in the A.C.E.R. series.” What Mr. Raffety no doubt means is, that Lord Neaves is the author of a monograph on the Greek anthology, as he certainly was. With regard to Herodotus, Mr. Raffety has evidently got some information not generally accessible. His _History_, we are told, “is a great prose epic.... The second book is of the most interest. In other works are the histories of Crœsus, Cyrus,” etc. It would be interesting to know what other works besides his _History_ Herodotus has left. Of the _Prometheus Bound_ of Æschylus Mr. Raffety gives the following interesting account. It contains, he says, “the story of Prometheus and his defiance of Jupiter, who condemned him to be bound to a rock, where he died rather than yield.” We exhort Mr. Raffety, before his work passes into a second edition, to consult his Classical Dictionary.

Of the translations recommended by Mr. Raffety we should very much like to get a sight of the translation of Pindar by Calverley, of the joint translation of the same classic by Messrs. E. Myers and A. Lang, and of the joint translation of Thucydides “by Jowett and Rev. H. Dale, 2 vols.” Of Herodotus, of Æschylus, of Sophocles, of Pindar, of Polybius, of Demosthenes, what are, by general consent, esteemed the best translations are not so much as mentioned. Latin literature fares even worse in the hands of our guide. Mr. Raffety appears to know no more about Catullus than that he was a writer of epigrams. Such trifles as the _Attis_, the _Peleus and Thetis_, the Julia and Manlius marriage song, the _Coma Berenices_, the love lyrics and threnodies he does not condescend to notice. In “guiding” his readers to translations of Lucretius and Juvenal, Munro’s version of the first in prose and Gifford’s version of the second in verse--which Conington pronounced to be the best version of any Roman classic in our language--are not so much as referred to. Nor, again, in the case of Plautus and Terence, are the excellent versions of Thornton and Coleman noticed. Tacitus, who is oddly described as “the foremost man of the day,” an estimate which might have pleased but which would certainly have surprised him, chronicled, we are told, “the foundation of the Christian religion.” Mr. Raffety’s assurance on this point will probably disappoint inquisitive readers. Equally surprising are the portions of the work dealing with the modern literatures. In the course of these we learn that “the _Nibelungen Lied_ is the oldest drama in Europe”; that the _Areopagitica_ and the _Defence of the People of England_ are Milton’s best prose writings--Mr. Raffety apparently not being aware that the second work is in Latin, and that if he means the first _Defence_, it is anything but one of the best of Milton’s writings. We are also informed that Dryden was most valuable as a translator from the Greek and Latin; Dryden’s versions from the Greek begin and end with paraphrases of four Idylls of Theocritus, the first book of the _Iliad_ and the parting of Hector and Andromache from the sixth, and are notoriously the very worst things he ever did.

Sometimes Mr. Raffety fairly takes our breath away, as when he informs us that Gray’s tomb can be seen in the little churchyard of Stoke Pogis “with the _Elegy_ written upon it.” Can Mr. Raffety be acquainted with the length of the _Elegy_ and with the proportions of a tombstone? Chaucer, we are informed, wrote some poems in Italian. We should very much like to see them, and so probably would Professor Skeat, for they appear to have escaped the notice of all Chaucer’s editors. Swift’s _Tale of a Tub_ was written, we are told, “against the teaching of Hobbes!”

It is indeed impossible to open this book anywhere without alighting on some most discreditable blunder or absurdity. Thus we are informed that Macaulay’s essay on Burleigh treats of the time of James I.--Burleigh, as we need hardly say, dying nearly five years before James came to the throne, and Macaulay’s essay having no reference at all to James I.’s time. “There is,” says Mr. Raffety, “no more stirring lyric than _The Cotter’s Saturday Night_,” a remark which shows that Mr. Raffety does not know what a lyric poem is. But to look for blunders in Mr. Raffety’s pages would be to look for leaves in a summer forest. His critical remarks and biographical notes are truly delightful. We wish we had space to quote some of them. Of their general quality the following profound remark is a fair specimen:--“Dante requires study, and an endeavour after appreciation.” Mr. Raffety is always anxious to conduct his readers by short cuts and to save them trouble. Macaulay’s _Essays_, for example, should be read before his _History_; “they will be more easily tackled,” he says, “than the _History_ in the first instance.” But on the subject of Gibbon Mr. Raffety is adamant, being fully of the late Professor Freeman’s opinion--“Whatever else is read, Gibbon must be read.” How Gibbon is to be read, or why Gibbon is to be read, or in what edition he should be read, Mr. Raffety does not explain.

Now, what possible end can be served by books like these, except to misguide and misinform? Here is a writer, who certainly leaves us with the impression that he cannot read the Greek and Latin classics in the original, setting up as a director of classical study, and pronouncing _ex cathedrâ_ on the merits of translations of these classics. His knowledge of the modern literature is, as is abundantly manifest, though we have neither space nor patience to illustrate, equally insufficient and unsubstantial, and yet he undertakes to initiate and guide the inexperienced in these studies. This book is presented to the public in a most attractive form, being excellently printed on excellent paper, and will naturally be taken seriously by those to whom it appeals. It is for this reason that we also have felt it our duty to take it seriously. And, as we believe that every bad book stands in the way of a good one, we can promise Mr. Raffety, and writers like Mr. Raffety, that we shall continue to take them seriously.

THE NEW CRITICISM[21]

[Footnote 21: _Retrospective Reviews._ A Literary Log. By Richard Le Gallienne. 2 vols.]

Nearly two thousand years ago Horace observed that, though every calling presupposed some qualification in those who followed it, and a man who knew nothing of marine affairs would not undertake to manage a ship, or a man who knew nothing of drugs to compound prescriptions, yet everybody fancied himself competent to commence poet. Qualified or unqualified, at it we all go, he complains, and scribble verses. But times have changed, and those who in Horace’s day were the pests of poetry, with which they could amuse themselves without mischief, have now become the pests of another kind of literature in which their diversions are not quite so harmless. Where the poetaster once stood the criticaster now stands. The transformation of the one pest into the other, where they do not, as they often do, become both, is easily accounted for, and as Dr. Johnson has so excellently explained it, we cannot do better than transcribe his words. “Criticism,” says the Doctor, “is a study by which men grow important and formidable at a very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may by mere labour be attained is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert such judgment as he has upon the works of others, and he whom nature has made weak and idleness keeps ignorant may yet support his vanity by the name of critic.” But criticasters and their patrons have improved on this--for “he whom nature has made weak and idleness keeps ignorant” may, in our time, not merely support his vanity, but support himself.

Till we inspected the volumes before us, we had really no conception of the pass to which things have now come in so-called criticism. The writer sits in judgment on most of the authors who have, during recent years, been before the public. He passes sentence not merely on current novelists, poets, and essayists, but on some of our classics, and on books like the late Mr. Pater’s _Lectures on Plato and Platonism_ and Dr. Wharton’s edition of _Sappho_. To any acquaintance with the principles of criticism, to any conception of criticism in relation to principles, to any learning, to any scholarship, to any knowledge of the history of literature and of the masterpieces of literature, either in our own language or in other languages, he has not the smallest pretension. Nor does he allow this to be gathered simply from the work itself, where it is, needless to say, abundantly apparent, but with a _naïveté_ and impudence which are at once ludicrous and exasperating he glories in his ignorance. Literature and its interpretation are to him what the Bible and its interpretation were to the ranting sectaries of Dryden’s satire. In its explanation knowledge and learning were folly, nothing was needed but “grace.”

“No measure ta’en from knowledge, all from grace,
Study and pains were now no more their care,
Texts were explained by fasting and by prayer.”

So to our critic knowledge and learning are of equal unimportance--nay, equally contemptible--and all that is needed to take the measure of Plato and Wordsworth is, in his own words, “the capacity for appreciation.” With this very slender outfit he sits down to the work of criticism, to enlighten the world _de omni scibili_ in literature, from the lyrics of _Sappho_, “the singer, a single petal of whose rose is more than the whole rose-garden of later women singers,” to “the statesmanlike reach and grasp” of Mr. E. Gosse’s essays.

To discuss seriously the opinions or impressions of a writer of this kind would be as absurd as to attempt to fight gnats with a sword, and we shall merely content ourselves with transcribing, without comment, a few of the aphorisms with which these volumes are studded. “Criticism is the art of praise.” “Shakespeare is the greatest English poet, not because he created Hamlet and Lear, but because he could write that speech about Perdita’s flowers and Claudio’s speech on death in _Measure for Measure_.” “The perfection of prose is the essay, of poetry the lyric, and the most beautiful book is that which contains the most beautiful words.” These specimens will probably suffice. Mr. Le Gallienne is also of opinion that “culture is mainly a matter of temperament”--that “a man is born cultured,” that mere education and study are to such a one not simply superfluities, but impertinences. “What matters it,” he eloquently asks, “that one does not remember or even has never read great writers? Our one concern is to possess an organization open to great and refined impressions.” A paltry scholar, for example, may be able to construe Sappho, but it is only “an organization open to great and refined impressions” which can discern (in a crib) “the pathos of eternity in some twenty words” of “this passionate singer of Lesbos.” Plato may be studied by poor pedants, but to an organization of this kind the binding of a volume is sufficient enlightenment; “to merely hold in the hand and turn over its pages is a counsel in style,” for do not “the temperate beauty, the dry beauty beloved of Plato, find expression in the sweet and stately volume itself” [he is “reviewing” the late Mr. Pater’s lectures on Plato], “with its smooth night-blue binding, its rose-leaf yellow pages, its soft and yet grave type”? The value of Mr. Le Gallienne’s judgments, of his praise, and of his censure, which, ludicrous to relate, are quoted by some publishers as recommendations, or “opinions of the press,” may be estimated by these dicta, and by this theory of a critical education.

Macaulay somewhere speaks of a certain nondescript broth which, in some Continental inns, was kept constantly boiling, and copiously poured, without distinction, on every dish as it came up to table. The writer of these essays appears, metaphorically speaking, to be provided with a similar abomination. Whatever be his theme, poem, essay, novel, picture, he contrives to serve it up with the same condiment, a sickly and nauseous compound of preciosity and sentimentalism.

The melancholy thing about all this is the profound unconsciousness on the part of the author of these volumes that he is exciting ridicule; that he is, in Shakespeare’s phrase, making himself a motley to the view. But there are considerations more melancholy still. We should not have noticed these volumes had they not been representative and typical of a school of so-called critics which is becoming more and more prominent. Incredible as it may seem, there are certain sections of literary society and of the general public which take Mr. Le Gallienne and his dicta quite seriously, and to which the prodigious nonsense in these volumes does not present itself as absurdity, but as the articles of a creed. These essays have, moreover, appeared in publications the names of some of which carry authority. It is, therefore, high time that some stand should be made, some protest entered against writings which cannot fail to corrupt popular taste and to degrade the standard of popular literature. Of one thing we are very certain, that no self-respecting literary journal which undertook to review these volumes could allow them to pass without denunciation.

Of Mr. Le Gallienne we know nothing personally. He is, if we are rightly informed, still a young man, and we would in all kindness exhort him to turn the abilities which he undoubtedly possesses to better account. There is much in these essays which shows that he was intended for something better than to further the decadence. If, instead of sneering at scholars, affecting to despise learning and study, indulging in silly paradoxes, tinsel epigrams, and absurd generalisations, he would read and think, and endeavour to do justice to himself and to his opportunities, he might, we make no doubt, obtain an honourable reputation. There is much which is attractive in his work, and in the personality reflected in it. He is not a charlatan, for though he is ignorant, he is honest. Genial and sympathetic, he has much real critical insight, and, in going through his volumes, we have noted many remarks which were both sound and fine. At its best his style is excellent,--clear, lively, and engaging. Let him cease to play the buffoon, which can only end in his gaining the applause of mere fools and the contempt of every one else.

THE GENTLE ART OF SELF-ADVERTISEMENT

The illustrious Barnum once observed that, if a man’s capital consisted of a shilling, one penny of that shilling should be spent in purchasing something, and the remaining eleven-pence should be invested in advertising what was purchased. There was, perhaps, a touch of exaggeration in that great man’s remark, but it was founded on a profound knowledge both of human nature and of the world. Intrinsically nothing is valuable; things are what we make or imagine them. Even the diamond, as a costly commodity, exists on suffrage. If a man cannot persuade his fellow-creatures that he has genius, talent, learning, “’twere all alike as if he had them not.” What Persius asks with a sneer, “Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter?”--is your knowledge nothing, unless some one else know that you are knowing?--a wiser man would ask in all seriousness. Shakespeare was never nearer the truth than when he wrote--

“No man is the lord of anything,
Though in and of him there be much consisting,
Till he communicates his parts to others;
Nor doth he of himself know them for aught,
Till he behold them formed in the applause
Where they are extended.”