In fact, as one’s experience in these matters increases day by day, one is fain to acknowledge that the work of the unknown or little known professional critic, faulty though it be, has certain modest advantages over the similar work of his critics, the poets and novelists when they take to the business of reviewing. There are several very successful story-writers who are just now handling criticism after a fashion which recalls that delightful scene in “The Monks of Thelema,” where an effort to make the village maidens vote a golden apple to the prettiest of their number is frustrated by the unforeseen contingency of each girl voting for herself. In the same artless spirit, the novelist turned critic confines his good will so exclusively to his own work, or at best to that school of fiction which his own work represents, that, while we cannot sufficiently admire his methods, we do not feel greatly stimulated by their results. As for the poet umpire, he is apt to bring an uncomfortable degree of excitability to bear upon his task. It is readily granted that Mr. Swinburne manifests at times an exquisite critical discernment, and a broad sympathy for much that is truly good; but when less gifted souls behold him foaming in Berserker wrath over insignificant trifles, they are wont to ask themselves what in the world is the matter. We can forgive him, or at least we can strive to forgive him, for reviling Byron, snubbing George Eliot, underrating George Sand, ignoring Jane Austen, calling poor Steele a “sentimental debauchee,” and asserting that the only two women worthy to stand by the side of Charlotte Brontë,” “the fiery-hearted vestal of Haworth”—though why “vestal,” only Mr. Swinburne knows—are her sister Emily and Mrs. Browning. But when he has been permitted to do all this and a great deal more, why should he fall into a passion, and use the strongest of strong language, because there are details in which everybody does not chance to agree with him? In so wide a world there must of necessity be many minds, and the opinions of a poet are not always beacon fires to light us through the gloom. Even the musician has been for some time prepared to step into the critical arena, and Mr. E. S. Dallos, in “The Gay Science,” quotes for us a characteristic extract from Wagner, which probably means something, though only a very subtle intellect could venture to say what.
“If we now consider the activity of the poet more closely, we perceive that the realization of his intention consists solely in rendering possible the representation of the strengthened actions of his poetized forms through an exposition of their motives to the feelings, as well as the motives themselves. Also by an expression that in so far engrosses his activity, as the invention and production of this expression in truth first render the introduction of such motives and actions possible.”
After this splendid example of style and lucidity, it may be that even the ordinary, every-day, unostentatious reviewer whom we so liberally despise will be admitted to possess some few redeeming virtues.
And, in truth, patience is one of them. Think of the dull books which lie piled upon his table! Think how many they are, and how long they are, and how alike they are, and how serious they are, and how little we ourselves would care to read them! If the reviewer sometimes misses what is really good, or praises what is really bad, this does not mean that he is incompetent, dishonest, or butcherly. It means that he is human, that he is tired, perhaps a little peevish, and disposed to think the world would be a merrier place if there were fewer authors in it. The new novelist or budding poet who comes forward at this unpropitious moment is not hailed with acclamations of delight; while the conscientious worker who has spent long months in compiling the weighty memoirs of departed mediocrity is outraged by the scant attention he receives. Meanwhile the number of books increases with fearful speed. Each is the embodiment of a sanguine hope, and each claims its meed of praise. A fallible reviewer struggles with the situation as best he can, saying pleasant things which are scantily merited, and sharp things which are hardly deserved; but striving intelligently, and with tolerable success to tell a self-indulgent public something about the volumes which it is too lazy to read for itself.
PASTELS: A QUERY.
I should like to be told by one of the accomplished critics of the day what is—or rather what is not—a pastel? Dictionaries, with their wonted rigidity, define the word as “a colored crayon,” ignoring its literary significance, and affording us no clue to its elusive and mutable characteristics. When Mr. Stewart Merrill christened his pretty little volume of translations “Pastels in Prose,” he gave us to understand, with the assistance of Mr. Howells’ prefatory remarks, that the name was an apt one for those brief bits of unrhymed, unrhythmical, yet highly poetic composition in the execution of which the French have shown such singular felicity and grace. Some of these delicate trifles have the concentrated completeness of a picture, and for them the name is surely not ill-chosen. Sombre, or joyous, or faintly ironical, they bring before our eyes with vivid distinctness every outline of the scene they portray. “Padre Pugnaccio” and “Henriquez,” by Louis Bertrand, and that strange lovely “Captive,” by Ephraïm Mikhaël, are as admirable in their limitations as in their finish. They show us one thing only, and show it with swift yet comprehensive lucidity. But if “Padre Pugnaccio” be a pastel, then, by that same token, “Solitude” is not. It is a moderately long and wholly allegorical story, and its merits are of a different order. As for Maurice de Guérin’s “Centaur,” that noble fragment has nothing in common with the fragile delicacy of the pretty little picture poems which surround it. It is a masterpiece of breadth and virility. Its sonorous sentences recall the keener life of the antique world, and it stands among its unsubstantial companions like a bust of Hermes in a group of Dresden figures, all charming, but all dwarfed to insignificance by the side of that strong young splendor. To call “The Centaur” a pastel is as absurd as to call “Endymion” an etching.
However, Mr. Merrill’s translations are far from defining the limits of the term. On the contrary, we have M. Paul Bourget’s group of stories, “Pastels of Men,” which are not prose poems at all, nor brief pen pictures; but tales of a rather elaborate and unclean order, full of wan sentiment, and that cheerless vice which robs the soul without gratifying the body. Occasionally, as in the sketch of the poor old teacher living his meagre life from hour to hour, M. Bourget draws for us, with melancholy skill, a single scene from the painful drama of existence. This is perhaps a pastel, since the word must be employed; but why should an interminable and shifting tale about a rich young widow, who cannot make up her mind in less than a hundred pages which of her four lovers she will marry, be called by the same generic title? If it be equally applicable to every kind of story, short or long, simple or involved, descriptive or analytic, then it has no real meaning at all, and becomes a mere matter of capricious selection. “Wandering Willie’s Tale,” and “The Cricket on the Hearth” could with propriety have been termed pastels.
Nor does the matter stop here. In Mr. Gosse’s recent volume of essays, he has included two admirable criticisms on Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson’s poetry, and on Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s prose. These papers, discriminating, sympathetic, and exhaustive, are called pastels. They do not differ in any way from other critical studies of equal length and merit. They abound in agreeable quotations, and show a clear and genial appreciation of their themes. They are simply reviews of an unusually good order, and if their title be correctly applied, then it is serviceable for any piece of literary criticism which deals with a single author. Macaulay’s “Madame D’Arblay,” Mr. Birrell’s “Emerson,” Mr. Saintsbury’s “Peacock,” might all have been named pastels.
By this time the subject begins to grow perplexing. Miss Wilkins wanders far from her true gods, and from the sources of her genuine inspiration, to write a handful of labored sketches—pen pictures perhaps, albeit a trifle stiff in execution—which she calls pastels. Mr. Brander Matthews gives us, as his contribution to the puzzle, a vivid description of Carmencita dancing in a New York studio, and calls it a pastel. If we stray from prose to verse, we are tripped up at every step. Nebulous little couplets, songs of saddening subtlety, weird conceits and high-pacing rhymes are thoughtfully labeled pastels, so as to give us a clue to their otherwise impenetrable obscurity. Sullen seas, and wan twilights, and dim garden paths, relieved with ghostly lilies, and white-armed women of dubious decorum, are the chief ingredients of these poetic novelties; but here is one, picked up by chance, which reads like a genial conundrum:—
Went and came in the gloom;
It was dark in the little room.
Sudden, a flash, a glow,
And a hand and a ring I know.
Ruddy and vague, the grace—
A rose—of her lyric face.”
Now, if that be a pastel, and Mr. Gosse’s reviews are pastels, and M. Bourget’s stories are pastels, and Maurice de Guérin’s “Centaur” is a pastel, and Mr. Brander Matthews’ realistic sketches are pastels, and Ephraïm Mikhaël’s allegories are pastels, I should like to be told, by some one who knows, just where the limits of the term is set.
GUESTS.
A very charming and vivacious old lady, who had spent most of her early life in the country, once said to me that the keenest pleasure of her childhood was the occasional arrival of her mother’s guests; the keenest regret, their inevitable and too speedy departure. “They seldom stayed more than a fortnight,” she observed, plaintively; “though now and then some cousins prolonged their visits for another week. What I most enjoyed on these occasions was the increased good temper of my own family. Annoyances were laughed at, our noisy behavior was overlooked, conversation took an agreeable turn, and a delightful air of cheerfulness and good humor pervaded the entire household. It seemed to my infant eyes that life would be a matter of flawless enjoyment if we could only have visitors always in the house.”
A little of this frankly expressed sentiment will find an echo in many hearts, and perhaps awaken some pangs of conscience on the way. It is the restraint we put upon ourselves, the honest effort we make at amiability, which renders social intercourse possible and pleasant. When the restraint grows irksome, the amiability a burden, we pay to those we love best on earth the dubious compliment of being perfectly natural in their company. “What is the use of having a family if you cannot be disagreeable in the bosom of it?” was the explicit acknowledgment I once overheard of a service which seldom meets with such clear and candid recognition. Hazlitt himself could have given no plainer expression to a thought which few of us would care to trick out in all the undisguised sincerity of language.
Guests are the delight of leisure, and the solace of ennui. It is the steady and merciless increase of occupations, the augmented speed at which we are always trying to live, the crowding of each day with more work and amusement than it can profitably hold, which have cost us, among other good things, the undisturbed enjoyment of our friends. Friendship takes time, and we have no time to give it. We have to go to so many teas, and lectures, and committee meetings; we have taken up so many interesting and exacting careers; we have assumed so many duties and responsibilities, that there is not a spare corner in our lives which we are free to fill up as we please. Society, philanthropy, and culture divide our waking hours. Defrauded friendship gets a few moments now and again, and is bidden to content itself, and please not to be troublesome any more. I once rashly asked a girl of twenty if she saw a great deal of a young married woman whom she had just declared to be her dearest and most cherished friend. “I never see her at all,” was the satisfied answer, “except by chance, at a tea or a club meeting. We live so very far apart, as you know. It would take the heart of an afternoon to try and make her a visit.”
Now, to understand the charm of leisurely and sympathetic intercourse, we should read the letters of Madame de Sévigné; to appreciate the resources of ennui, we should read the novels of Jane Austen. With Madame de Sévigné guests were not useful as an alleviation of boredom; they were valuable because they added to the interest, the beauty and the zest of life. It never occurred to this charming Frenchwoman, nor to her contemporaries, that time could be better spent than in entertaining or being entertained by friends. Conversation was not then small coin, to be paid our hastily like car-fare, merely in order to get from one necessary topic to another. It was the golden mean through which a generous regard, a graceful courtesy, or a sparkling wit lent beauty and distinction to every hour of intercourse. A little group of friends in a quiet countryside, with none of the robust diversions of English rural life. It has a sleepy sound; yet such was the pleasure-giving power of hostess and of guest that this leisurely companionship was fraught with fine delight, and its fruits are our inheritance to-day, lingering for us in the pages of those matchless letters from which time can never steal the charm.
It is Miss Austen, however, who, with relentless candor, has shown us how usefully guests may be employed as an antidote for the ennui of intellectual vacuity. They are the chosen relief for that direful dullness which country gentlemen “like Sir John Middleton,” experience from lack of occupation and ideas; they are the solace of sickly, uninteresting women who desire some one to share with them the monotonous current of existence. The Middletons, we are assured, “lived in a style of equal hospitality and elegance. They were scarcely ever without some friends staying with them in the house, and they kept more company of every kind than any other family in the neighborhood.” This indulgence, it appears, while equally welcome to host and hostess, was more necessary to Sir John’s happiness than to his wife’s; for she at least possessed one other source of continual and unflagging diversion. “Sir John was a sportsman, Lady Middleton a mother. He hunted and shot, and she humored her children; and these were their only resources. Lady Middleton, however, had the advantage of being able to spoil her children all the year round, while Sir John’s independent employments were in existence only half the time.”
Guests play an important part in Miss Austen’s novels, as they did in Miss Austen’s life, and in the lives of all the hospitable country-people of her time. Moreover, the visits her heroines and their friends pay are not little trifling modern affairs of a few days or a week. Distances counted for something when they had to be traveled in a carriage or a post-chaise; and when people came to see their friends in that fashion, they came to stay. Elizabeth Bennet and Maria Lucas spend six weeks with Charlotte Collins; and Lady Catherine, it will be remembered, does not at all approve of their returning home so quickly. “I expected you to stay two months,” she says severely—they are not her guests at all—“I told Mrs. Collins so, before you came. There can be no occasion for your going so soon.” Eleanor and Marianne Dashwood begin their visit to Mrs. Jennings the first week of January, and it is April before we find them setting forth on their return. Anne Elliot goes to Uppercross for two months, though the only inducement offered her is Mary Musgrove’s prophetic remark that she does not expect to have a day’s health all autumn; and her only pastime as a visitor appears to be the somewhat dubious diversion of making herself generally useful. It is a far cry from our busy age to either Miss Austen or Madame de Sévigné. The bounteous resources of a highly cultivated leisure have never been very clearly understood by the English-speaking race. The alleviations of inactivity and ennui are no longer with us a rigorous necessity. Our vices and our virtues conspire to defraud us of that charming and sustained social intercourse which is possible only when we have the undisturbed possession of our friends; when we are so happy as to be sheltered under the same roof, to pursue the same occupations, to enjoy the same pleasures, to exchange thoughts and sentiments with entire freedom and familiarity. “I cannot afford to speak much to my friend,” says Emerson, meaning that it is a privilege he neither values nor desires. We cannot afford to speak much to our friends, though we may desire it with our whole hearts, because we have been foolish enough to persuade ourselves that we have other and better things to do.
SYMPATHY.
“Sympathy,” says Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, “is a thing to be encouraged, apart from human considerations, because it supplies us with materials for wisdom. It is probably more instructive to entertain a sneaking kindness for any unpopular person than to give way to perfect raptures of moral indignation against his abstract vices.”
These are brave words, and spoken in one of those swift flashes of spiritual insight which at first bewilder and then console us. We have our share of sympathy; hearty, healthy, human sympathy for all that is strong and successful; but the force of moral indignation—either our own or our neighbors’—has well-nigh cowed us into silence. The fashion of the day provides a procrustean standard for every form of distinction; and, if it does not fit, it is lopped down to the necessary insignificance. Those stern, efficient, one-sided men of action who made history at the expense of their finer natures; those fiery enthusiasts who bore down all just opposition to their designs; those loyal servants who saw no right nor wrong save in the will of their sovereigns; those keen-eyed statesmen who served their countries with craft, and guile, and dissimulation; those light-hearted prodigals who flung away their lives with a smile;—are none of these to yield us either edification or delight? “Do great deeds, and they will sing themselves,” says Emerson; but it must be confessed the songs are often of a very dismal and enervating character. Columbus did a great deed when he crossed the ocean and discovered the fair, unknown land of promise; yet many of the songs in which we sing his fame sound a good deal like pæans of reproach. The prevailing sentiment appears to be that a person so manifestly ignorant and improper should never have been permitted to discover America at all.
This sickly tone is mirrored in much of the depressing literature of our day. It finds amplest expression in such joyless books as “The Heavenly Twins,” the heroine of which remarks with commendable self-confidence that “The trade of governing is a coarse pursuit;” and also that “War is the dirty work of a nation; one of the indecencies of life.” She cannot even endure to hear it alluded to when she is near; but, like Athene, whose father, Zeus, “by chance spake of love matters in her presence,” she flies chastely from the very sound of such ill-doing. Now on first reading this sensitive criticism, one is tempted to a great shout of laughter, quite as coarse, I fear, as the pursuit of governing, and almost as indecent as war. Ah! founders of empires, and masters of men, where are your laurels now? “If some people in public life were acquainted with Mrs. Wititterly’s real opinion of them,” says Mr. Wititterly to Kate Nickleby, “they would not hold their heads perhaps quite as high as they do.” But in moments of soberness such distorted points of view seem rather more melancholy than diverting. Evadne is, after all, but the feeble reflex of an over-anxious age which has lost itself in a labyrinth of responsibilities. Shelley, whose rigidity of mind was at times almost inconceivable, did not hesitate to deny every attribute of greatness wherever he felt no sympathy. To him, Constantine was a “Christian reptile,” a “stupid and wicked monster;” while of Napoleon he writes with the invincible gravity of youth. “Buonaparte’s talents appear to me altogether contemptible and commonplace; incapable as he is of comparing connectedly the most obvious propositions, or relishing any pleasure truly enrapturing.”
To the mundane and unpoetic mind it would seem that there were several propositions, obvious or otherwise, which Napoleon was capable of comparing quite connectedly, and that his ruthless, luminous fashion of dealing with such made him more terrible than fate. As for pleasures, he knew how to read and relish “Clarissa Harlowe,” for which evidence of sound literary taste, one Englishman at least, Hazlitt, honored and loved him greatly. If we are seeking an embodiment of unrelieved excellence who will work up well into moral anecdotes and journalistic platitudes, the emperor is plainly not what we require. But when we have great men under consideration, let us at least think of their greatness. Let us permit our little hearts to expand, and our little eyes to sweep a broad horizon. There is nothing in the world I dislike so much as to be reminded of Napoleon’s rudeness to Madame de Staël, or of Cæsar’s vain attempt to hide his baldness. Cæsar was human; that is his charm; and Madame de Staël would have sorely strained the courtesy of good King Arthur. Had she attached herself unflinchingly to his court, it is probable he would have ended by requesting her to go elsewhere.
On the other hand, it is never worth while to assert that genius repeals the decalogue. We cannot believe with M. Waliszewski that because Catherine of Russia was a great ruler she was, even in the smallest degree, privileged to be an immoral woman, to give “free course to her senses imperially.” The same commandment binds with equal rigor both empress and costermonger. But it is the greatness of Catherine, and not her immorality, which concerns us deeply. It is the greatness of Marlborough, of Richelieu, and of Sir Robert Walpole which we do well to consider, and not their shortcomings, though from the tone assumed too often by critics and historians, one would imagine that duplicity, ambition and cynicism were the only attributes these men possessed; that they stood for their vices alone. One would imagine also that the same sins were quite unfamiliar in humble life, and had never been practised on a petty scale by lawyers and journalists and bank clerks. Yet vice, as Sir Thomas Browne reminds us, may be had at all prices. “Expensive and costly iniquities which make the noise cannot be every man’s sins; but the soul may be foully inquinated at a very low rate, and a man may be cheaply vicious to his own perdition.”
It is possible then to overdo moral criticism, and to cheat ourselves out of both pleasure and profit by narrowing our sympathies, and by applying modern or national standards to men of other ages and of another race. Instead of realizing, with Carlyle, that eminence of any kind is a most wholesome thing to contemplate and to revere, we are perpetually longing for some crucial test which will divide true heroism—as we now regard it—from those forceful qualities which the world has hitherto been content to call heroic. I have heard people gravely discuss the possibility of excluding from histories, from school histories especially, the adjective “great,” wherever it is used to imply success unaccompanied by moral excellence. Alfred the Great might be permitted to retain his title. Like the “blameless Ethiops,” he is safely sheltered from our too penetrating observation. But Alexander, Frederick, Catherine, and Louis should be handed down to future ages as the “well-known.” Alexander the Well-Known! We can all say that with clear consciences, and without implying any sympathy or regard for a person so manifestly irregular in his habits, and seemingly so devoid of all altruistic emotions. It is true that Mr. Addington Symonds has traced a resemblance between the Macedonian conqueror, and the ideal warrior of the Grecian camp, Achilles the strong-armed and terrible. Alexander, he maintains, is Achilles in the flesh; passionate, uncontrolled, with an innate sense of what is great and noble; but “dragged in the mire of the world and enthralled by the necessities of human life.” The difference between them is but the difference between the heroic conception of a poet and the stern limitations of reality.
Apart, however, from the fact that Mr. Symonds was not always what the undergraduate lightly calls “up in ethics,” it is to be feared that Achilles himself meets with scant favor in our benevolent age. “Homer mirrors the world’s young manhood;” but we have grown old and exemplary, and shake our heads over the lusty fierceness of the warrior, and the facile repentance of Helen, and the wicked wiles of Circe, which do not appear to have met with the universal reprobation they deserve. On the contrary, there is a blithe good-temper in the poet’s treatment of the enchantress, whose very name is so charming it disarms all wrath. Circe! The word is sweet upon our lips; and this light-hearted embodiment of beauty and malice is not to be judged from the bleak stand-point of Salem witch-hunters. If we are content to take men and women, in and out of books, with their edification disguised, we may pass a great many agreeable hours in their society, and find ourselves unexpectedly benefited even by those who appear least meritorious in our eyes. A frank and generous sympathy for any much maligned and sorely slandered character,—such, for instance, as Graham of Claverhouse; a candid recognition of his splendid virtues and of his single vice; a clear conception of his temperament, his ability, and his work,—these things are of more real service in broadening our appreciations, and interpreting our judgments, than are a score of unqualified opinions taken ready-made from the most admirable historians in Christendom. It is a liberal education to recognize, and to endeavor to understand any form of eminence which the records of mankind reveal.
As for the popular criticism which fastens on a feature and calls it a man, nothing can be easier or more delusive. Claverhouse was merciless and densely intolerant; but he was also loyal, brave, and reverent; temperate in his habits, cleanly in his life, and one of the first soldiers of his day. Surely this leaves some little balance in his favor. Marlborough may have been as false as Judas and as ambitious as Lucifer; but he was also the greatest of English-speaking generals, and England owes him something better than picturesque invectives. What can we say to people who talk to us anxiously about Byron’s unkindness to Leigh Hunt, and Dr. Johnson’s illiberal attitude towards Methodism, and Scott’s incomprehensible friendship for John Ballantyne; who remind us with austere dissatisfaction that Goldsmith did not pay his debts, and that Lamb drank more than was good for him, and that Dickens dressed loudly and wore flashy jewelry? I don’t care what Dickens wore. I would not care if he had decorated himself with bangles, and anklets, and earrings, and a nose-ring, provided he wrote “Pickwick” and “David Copperfield.” If there be any living novelist who can give us such another as Sam Weller, or Dick Swiveller, or Mr. Micawber, or Mrs. Gamp, or Mrs. Nickleby, let him festoon himself with gauds from head to foot, and wedge his fingers “knuckle-deep with rings,” like the lady in the old song, and then sit down and write. The world will readily forgive him his embellishments. It has forgiven Flaubert his dressing-gown, and George Sand her eccentricities of attire, and Goldsmith his coat of Tyrian bloom, and the blue silk breeches for which he probably never paid his tailor. It has forgiven Dr. Johnson all his little sins; and Lamb the only sin for which he craves forgiveness; and Scott—but here we are not privileged even to offer pardon. “It ill becomes either you or me to compare ourselves with Scott,” said Thackeray to a young writer who excused himself for some literary laxity by saying that “Sir Walter did the same.” “We should take off our hats whenever that great and good man’s name is mentioned in our presence.”
OPINIONS.
It has been occasionally remarked by people who are not wholly in sympathy with the methods and devices of our time that this is an age of keen intellectual curiosity. We have scant leisure and scant liking for hard study, and we no longer recognize the admirable qualities of a wise and contented ignorance. Accordingly, there has been invented for us in late years, a via media, a something which is neither light nor darkness, a short cut to that goal which we used to be assured had no royal road for languid feet to follow. The apparent object of the new system is to enable us to live like gentlemen, or like gentlewomen, on other people’s ideas; to spare us the labor and exhaustion incidental to forming opinions of our own by giving us the free use of other people’s opinions. There is a charming simplicity in the scheme, involving as it does no effort of thought or mental adjustment, which cannot fail to heartily recommend it to the general public, while the additional merit of cheapness endears it to its thrifty upholders. We are all accustomed to talk vaguely about “questions of burning interest,” and “the absorbing problems of the day.” Some of us even go so far as to have a tolerably clear notion of what these questions and problems are. It is but natural, then, that we should take a lively pleasure, not in the topics themselves, about which we care very little, but in the persuasions and convictions of our neighbors, about which we have learned to care a great deal. Discussions rage on every side of us, and the easy, offhand, cocksure verdicts which are so frankly confided to the world have become a recognized source of popular education and enlightenment.
I have sometimes thought that this feverish exchange of opinions received a fatal impetus from that curious epidemic rife in England a few years ago, and known as the “Lists of a Hundred Books.” Never before had such an admirable opportunity been offered to people to put on what are commonly called “frills,” and it must be confessed they made the most of it. The Koran, the Analects of Confucius, Spinoza, Herodotus, Demosthenes, Xenophon, Lewis’s History of Philosophy, the Saga of Burnt Njal, Locke’s Conduct of the Understanding,—such, and such only, were the works unflinchingly urged upon us by men whom we had considered, perhaps, as human as ourselves, whom we might almost have suspected of solacing their lighter moments with an occasional study of Rider Haggard or Gaboriau. If readers could be made by the simple process of deluging the world with good counsel, these arbitrary lists would have marked a new intellectual era. As it was, they merely excited a lively but unfruitful curiosity. “Living movements,” Cardinal Newman reminds us, “do not come of committees.” I knew, indeed, one impetuous student who rashly purchased the Grammar of Assent because she saw it in a list; but there was a limit even to her ardor, for eighteen months afterwards the leaves were still uncut. It is a striking proof of Mr. Arnold’s inspired rationality that, while so many of his countrymen were instructing us in this peremptory fashion, he alone, who might have spoken with authority, declined to add his name and list to the rest. It was an amusing game, he said, but he felt no disposition to play it.
Some variations of this once popular pastime have lingered even to our day. Lists of the best American authors, lists of the best foreign authors, lists of the best ten books published within a decade, have appeared occasionally in our journals, while a list of books which prominent people intended or hoped to read “in the near future” filled us with respect for such heroic anticipations. Ten-volume works of the severest character counted as trifles in these prospective studies. For the past year, it is true, the World’s Fair has given a less scholastic tone to newspaper discussions. We hear comparatively little about the Analects of Confucius, and a great deal about the White City, and the Department of Anthropology. Perhaps it is better to tell the public your impressions of the Fair than to confide to it your favorite authors. One revelation is as valuable as the other, but it is possible, with caution, to talk about Chicago in terms that will give general satisfaction. It is not possible to express literary, artistic, or national preferences without exposing one’s self to vigorous reproaches from people who hold different views. I was once lured by a New York periodical into a number of harmless confidences, unlikely, it seemed to me, to awaken either interest or indignation. The questions asked were of the mildly searching order, like those which delighted the hearts of children, when I was a very little girl, in our “Mental Photograph Albums.” “Who is your favorite character in fiction?” “Who is your favorite character in history?” “What do you consider the finest attribute of man?” Having amiably responded to a portion of these inquiries, I was surprised and flattered, some weeks later, at seeing myself described in a daily paper—on the strength, too, of my own confessions—as irrational, morbid, and cruel; excusable only on the score of melancholy surroundings and a sickly constitution. And the delightful part of it was that I had apparently revealed all this myself. “Do not contend in words about things of no consequence,” counsels St. Teresa, who carried with her to the cloister wisdom enough to have kept all of us poor worldlings out of trouble.
The system by which opinions of little or no value are assiduously collected and generously distributed is far too complete to be baffled by inexperience or indifference. The enterprising editor or journalist who puts the question is very much like Sir Charles Napier; he wants an answer of some kind, however incapable we may be of giving it. A list of the queries propounded to me in the last year or so recalls painfully my own comprehensive ignorance. These are a few which I remember. What was my opinion of college training as a preparation for literary work? What was my opinion of Greek comedy? Was I a pessimist or an optimist, and why? What were my favorite flowers, and did I cultivate them? What books did I think young children ought not to read? At what age and under what impulses did I consider children first began to swear? What especial and serious studies would I propose for married women? What did I consider most necessary for the all-around development of the coming young man? It appeared useless to urge in reply to these questions that I had never been to college, never read a line of Greek, never been married, never taken charge of children, and knew nothing whatever about developing young men. I found that my ignorance on all these points was assumed from the beginning, but that this fact only made my opinions more interesting and piquant to people as ignorant as myself. Neither did it ever occur to my correspondents that if I had known anything about Greek comedy or college training, I should have endeavored to turn my knowledge into money by writing articles of my own, and should never have been so lavish as to give my information away.
That these public discussions or symposiums are, however, an occasional comfort to their participants was proven by the alacrity with which a number of writers came forward, some years ago, to explain to the world why English fiction was not a finer and stronger article. Innocent and short-sighted readers, wedded to the obvious, had foolishly supposed that modern novels were rather forlorn because the novelists were not able to write better ones. It therefore became the manifest duty of the novelists to notify us clearly that they were able to write very much better ones, but that the public would not permit them to do it. Like Dr. Holmes, they did not venture to be as funny as they could. “Thoughtful readers of mature age,” we were told, “are perishing for accuracy.” This accuracy they were, one and all, prepared to furnish without stint, but were prohibited lest “the clash of broken commandments” should be displeasing to polite female ears. A great deal of angry sentiment was exchanged on this occasion, and a great many original and valuable suggestions were offered by way of relief. It was an admirable opportunity for any one who had written a story to confide to the world “the theory of his art,” to make self-congratulatory remarks upon his own “standpoint,” and to deprecate the stupid propriety of the public. When the echoes of these passionate protestations had died into silence, we took comfort in thinking that Hawthorne had not delayed to write “The Scarlet Letter” from a sensitive regard for his neighbors’ opinions; and that two great nations, unvexed by “the clash of broken commandments,” had received the book as a heritage of infinite beauty and delight. Art needs no apologist, and our great literary artist, using his chosen material after his chosen fashion, heedless alike of new theories and of ancient prejudices, gave to the world a masterpiece of fiction which the world was not too stupid to hold dear.
The pleasure of imparting opinions in print is by no means confined to professionals, to people who are assumed to know something about a subject because they have been more or less occupied with it for years. On the contrary, the most lively and spirited discussions are those to which the general public lends a willing hand. Almost any topic will serve to arouse the argumentative zeal of the average reader, who rushes to the fray with that joyous alacrity which is so exhilarating to the peaceful looker-on. The disputed pronunciation or spelling of a word, if ventilated with spirit in a literary journal, will call forth dozens of letters, all written in the most serious and urgent manner, and all apparently emanating from people of rigorous views and limitless leisure. If a letter here or there—a u, perhaps, or an l—can only be elevated to the dignity of a national issue, then the combatants don their coats of mail, unfurl their countries’ flags, and wrangle merrily and oft to the sounds of martial music. If, on the other hand, the subject of contention be a somewhat obvious statement, as, for example, that the work of women in art, science, and literature is inferior to the work of men, it is amazing and gratifying to see the number of disputants who promptly prepare to deny the undeniable, and lead a forlorn hope to failure. The impassive reader who first encounters a remark of this order is apt to ask himself if it be worth while to state so explicitly what everybody already knows; and behold! a week has not passed over his head before a dozen angry protestations are hurled into print. These meet with sarcastic rejoinders. The editor of the journal, who is naturally pleased to secure copy on such easy terms, adroitly stirs up slumbering sentiment; and time, temper, and ink are wasted without stint by people who are the only converts of their own eloquence. “Embrace not the blind side of opinions,” says Sir Thomas Browne, who, born in a contentious age, with “no genius to disputes,” preached mellifluously of the joys of toleration, and of the discomforts of inordinate zeal.
Not very long ago, I was asked by a sprightly little paper to please say in its columns whether I thought new books or old books better worth the reading. It was the kind of question which an ordinary lifetime spent in hard study would barely enable one to answer; but I found, on examining some back numbers of the journal, that it had been answered a great many times already, and apparently without the smallest hesitation. Correspondents had come forward to overturn our ancient idols, with no sense of insecurity or misgiving. One breezy reformer from Nebraska sturdily maintained that Mrs. Hodgson Burnett wrote much better stories than did Jane Austen; while another intrepid person, a Virginian, pronounced “The Vicar of Wakefield” “dull and namby-pamby,” declaring that “one half the reading world would agree with him if they dared.” Perhaps they would,—who knows?—but it is a privilege of that half of the reading world to be silent on the subject. Simple preference is a good and sufficient motive in determining one’s choice of books, but it does not warrant a reader in conferring his impressions upon the world. Even the involuntary humor of such disclosures cannot win them forgiveness; for the tendency to permit the individual spirit to run amuck through criticism is resulting in a lower standard of correctness. “The true value of souls,” says Mr. Pater, “is in proportion to what they can admire;” and the popular notion that everything is a matter of opinion, and that one opinion is pretty nearly as good as another, is immeasurably hurtful to that higher law by which we seek to rise steadily to an appreciation of whatever is best in the world. Nor can we acquit our modern critics of fostering this self-assertive ignorance, when they so lightly ignore those indestructible standards by which alone we are able to measure the difference between big and little things. It seems a clever and a daring feat to set up models of our own; but it is in reality much easier than toiling after the old unapproachable models of our forefathers. The originality which dispenses so blithely with the past is powerless to give us a correct estimate of anything that we enjoy in the present.
It is but a short step from the offhand opinions of scientific or literary men to the offhand opinions of the crowd. When the novelists had finished telling us, in the newspapers and magazines, what they thought about one another, and especially what they thought about themselves, it then became the turn of novel-readers to tell us what they thought about fiction. This sudden invasion of the Vandals left to the novelists but one resource, but one undisputed privilege. They could permit us to know and they have permitted us to know just how they came to write their books; in what moments of inspiration, under what benign influences, they gave to the world those priceless pages.
Thrice-gifted Snevellicci came on earth!”
After which, unless the unsilenced public comes forward to say just how and when and where they read the volumes, they must acknowledge themselves routed from the field.
La vie de parade has reached its utmost license when a Prime Minister of England is asked to tell the world—after the manner of old Father William—how he has kept so hale; when the Prince of Wales is requested to furnish a list of readable books; when an eminent clergyman is bidden to reveal to us why he has never been ill; when the wife of the President of the United States is questioned as to how she cooks her Thanksgiving dinner; when married women in private life draw aside the domestic veil to tell us how they have brought up their daughters, and unmarried women betray to us the secret of their social success. Add to these sources of information the opinions of poets upon education, and of educators upon poetry; of churchmen upon politics, and of politicians upon the church; of journalists upon art, and of artists upon journalism; and we must in all sincerity acknowledge that this is an enlightened age. “The voice of the great multitude,” to quote from a popular agitator, “rings in our startled ears;” and its eloquence is many-sided and discursive. Albertus Magnus, it is said, once made a head which talked. That was an exceedingly clever thing for him to do. But the head was so delighted with its accomplishment that it talked all the time. Whereupon, tradition holds, St. Thomas Aquinas grew impatient, and broke it into pieces. St. Thomas was a scholar, a philosopher, and a saint.
THE CHILDREN’S AGE.
If adults are disposed to doubt their own decreasing significance, and the increasing ascendency of children, they may learn a lesson in humility from the popular literature of the day, as well as from social and domestic life. The older novelists were so little impressed by the ethical or artistic consequence of childhood that they gave it scant notice in their pages. Scott, save for a few passages here and there, as in “The Abbot” and “Peveril of the Peak,” ignores it altogether. Miss Austen is reticent on the subject, and, when she does speak, manifests a painful lack of enthusiasm. Mary Musgrave’s troublesome little boys and Lady Middleton’s troublesome little girl seem to be introduced for no other purpose than to show how tiresome and exasperating they can be. Fanny Price’s pathetic childhood is hurried over as swiftly as possible, and her infant emotions furnish no food for speculation or analysis. Saddest of all, Margaret Dashwood is ignored as completely as if she had not reached the interesting age of thirteen. “A good-humored, well-disposed girl,” this is all the description vouchsafed her; after which, in the absence of further information, we forget her existence entirely, until we are reminded in the last chapter that she has “reached an age highly suitable for dancing, and not very ineligible for being supposed to have a lover.” In other words, she is now ready for treatment at the novelist’s hands; only, unhappily, the story is told, the final page has been turned, and her chances are over forever.
I well remember my disappointment, as a child, at being able to find so little about children in the old-fashioned novels on our bookshelves. Trollope was particularly trying, because there were illustrations which seemed to promise what I wanted, and which were wholly illusive in their character. Posy and her grandfather playing cat’s-cradle, Edith Grantly sitting on old Mr. Harding’s knee, poor little Louey Trevelyan furtively watching his unhappy parents,—I used to read all around these pictures in the hope of learning more about the children so portrayed. But they never said or did anything to awaken my interest, or played any but purely passive parts in the long histories of their grown-up relatives. I had so few books of my own that I was compelled to forage for entertainment wherever I could find it, dipping experimentally into the most unpromising sources, and retiring discomfited from the search. “Vivian Grey” I began several times with enthusiasm. The exploits of the hero at school amazed and thrilled me—as well they might; but I never comprehensively grasped his social and political career. Little Rawdon Crawley and that small, insufferable George Osborne, were chance acquaintances, introduced through the medium of the illustrations; but my real friends were the Tullivers and David Copperfield, before he went to that stupid school of Dr. Strong’s at Canterbury, and lost all semblance of his old childish self. It was not possible to grow deeply attached to Oliver Twist. He was a lifeless sort of boy, despite the author’s assurances to the contrary; and, though the most wonderful things were always happening to him, it never seemed to me that he lived up to his interesting surroundings. He would have done very well for a quiet life, but was sadly unsuited to that lively atmosphere of burglary and housebreaking. “Aladdin,” says Mr. Froude, “remained a poor creature, for all his genii.” As for Nell, I doubt if it would ever occur to a small innocent reader to think of her as a child at all. I was far from critical in those early days, and much disposed to agree with Lamb’s amiable friend that all books must necessarily be good books. Nell was, in my eyes, a miracle of courage and capacity, a creature to be believed in implicitly, to be revered and pitied; but she was not a little girl. I was a little girl myself, and I knew the difference.
It was Dickens who first gave children their prestige in fiction. Jeffrey, we are assured, shed tears over Nell; and Bret Harte, whose own pathos is so profoundly touching, describes for us the rude and haggard miners following her fortunes with breathless sympathy: