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Title: A history of criticism and literary taste in Europe from the earliest texts to the present day. Volume 2 (of 3)
Author: Saintsbury, George
Language: English
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
A HISTORY OF CRITICISM
AND LITERARY TASTE
_Ignorantium temeraria plerumque sunt judicia._
—POLYCARP LEYSER.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A HISTORY OF CRITICISM
AND
LITERARY TASTE IN EUROPE
_FROM THE EARLIEST TEXTS TO THE PRESENT DAY_
BY
GEORGE SAINTSBURY
M.A. OXON.; HON. LL.D. ABERD.
PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. II.
FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE DECLINE OF
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ORTHODOXY
SECOND EDITION
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MCMV
PREFACE.
In presenting the second volume of this attempt, I feel no compunction,
and offer no apology, for what may seem to some the surprisingly large
space given to English critics. That the book itself is intended
primarily for English readers would be but a poor-spirited plea; and the
greatness of English literature as a whole, though a worthier, is still
an unnecessary argument. For the fact is, that the positive value and
importance of English criticism itself are far greater than has been
usually allowed. Owing very mainly to the not unintelligible or
inexcusable, but unfortunate, initiative of Mr Matthew Arnold, it has
become a fashion to speak of this branch of our national literature, if
not even of the function of the national genius which it expresses, with
bated breath, and with humble acknowledgment of the superiority of
German, and still more of French, critics. This superiority, I say
without the slightest fear, is a fond thing vainly invented. English
criticism was rather late, and for a long time rather intermittent; nor
did it fail, after the manner of the nation, to derive fresh impulses
and new departures in the sixteenth century from Italian, in the
seventeenth and again in the nineteenth century from French, and at the
end of the eighteenth from German. But it is not true that in so much as
one of these cases it was contented slavishly to imitate; and it is not
true that, with the doubtful exception of Sainte-Beuve, foreign
countries have had any critics greater than our own, while they have,
even put together, hardly so many great ones. In everything but mere
superficial consistency Dryden is a head and shoulders above Boileau as
a critic; Coleridge a head, shoulders, and body above the Schlegels,
whom he followed. Long before Sainte-Beuve, Hazlitt had shown a genius
for real criticism, as distinguished from barren formula-making, which
no critic has surpassed. And Mr Arnold himself, with less range, equity,
and sureness than Sainte-Beuve, has a finer literary taste and touch. As
for that _general_ superiority of French criticism of which we have
heard so much, the unerring voice of actual history will tell us that it
never existed at all, except, perhaps, for a generation before 1660, and
a generation before 1860, the latter being the period which called
forth, but misled, Mr Arnold’s admiration. With this last we do not here
deal; nor with the Romantic revolt, in dealing with which it will be
pertinent to appraise the relative excellence of Lessing and Goethe as
compared with Coleridge and Hazlitt. But we have within our present
range an almost better field of comparison, in that “neo-classic” period
from Boileau to La Harpe, and from Dryden to Johnson, in which, on the
whole, and taking recognised orthodoxy only, the critics of France and
of England worshipped the same idols, subscribed the same confessions of
faith, and to no small extent even applied their principles to the same
texts and subjects. I am, after careful examination, certain myself, and
I hope that the results of that examination may make it clear to others,
that they did _not_ “order these things better in France,” that they did
not order them nearly so well.
The subject of this volume has more unity than that of the last; and I
have thought it permissible to avail myself of this fact in the
arrangement of the Interchapters. The whole of so-called Classical or
Neo-classic Criticism is so intimately connected that almost any of its
characteristic documents from Vida to La Harpe might be made the text of
a sermon on the entire phenomenon in its complete development. And in
the same way, though with an opposite effect, all general comment might,
without any grave historical or logical impropriety, have been postponed
to the end of the volume. But this would, in the first place, have
broken the uniformity of the book; in the second, it would have
necessitated a final Interchapter (or “inter-conclusion”) of portentous
and disproportionate length; and in the third, it would have too long
withheld from the reader those resting-places and intermediate views, as
from various stations on Pisgah, which seem to me to be the great
advantages and conveniences of the arrangement. I have therefore, while
keeping the historical character and distribution of the summaries of
the three centuries which happen pretty accurately to coincide with the
three stages of the whole phase, made the logical gist of the first to
concern chiefly the rise of the classical-critical attitude; of the
second that constituted creed or code which was explicitly assented to,
or implicitly accepted, by the entire period except in the case of
rebels; while in the third I have concentrated criticism of this
criticism as a whole. The three Interchapters are thus in manner
consecutive and interdependent; but they will, I hope, serve not less to
connect and illuminate the contents of the several books and of the
whole volume than to conduct the story and the argument of the entire
work duly from the beginning to the end of the appointed stage. They are
perhaps specially important here because of the mass and number of minor
figures with whom I have had to deal. I know that some excellent judges
dislike this _numerus_ and would have attention concentrated on the
chiefs. But that is not my conception of literary history.
After full consideration of the matter, I have thought it better not to
attempt any comment on criticisms of the first volume of this _History
of Criticism_. I am much indebted to many of my critics, and perhaps I
may be permitted to say that I was not a little surprised, and, to speak
as a fool, very much pleased, by the generally favourable reception
given to, rather than deserved by, an undoubtedly audacious undertaking.
In cases where those critics obliged me with a substantive correction
(as, for instance, in that relating to Trissino’s version of the _De
Vulgari Eloquio_, v. _infra_, p. 40), I have taken opportunity, wherever
it was possible, to acknowledge the obligation, and I subjoin some
_corrigenda_ and _addenda_ in a flyleaf. But beyond this I do not think
it desirable to go. In the case of merely snarling or carping censure,
the conduct of Johnson as regards Kenrick gives the absolute precedent,
even for those who have to acknowledge how far nearer their censors have
come to Kenrick than they themselves can ever hope to come to Johnson.
To those who pronounce a task impossible the best answer is to go and do
it; to those who object to style and manner one may once more plead
those disabilities of _la plus belle fille de France_ which attach also
to those who are neither French, nor girls, nor beautiful; for those who
hate jokes and literary allusions one can only pray, “God help them!”
And in the case of _bona fide_ misunderstanding the wisest thing for an
author to do is to make his meaning plainer, if he can, in the rest of
his book.
It would probably be still more idle to attempt to anticipate strictures
on the present volume. That its subject might advantageously have been
dealt with in twice or thrice the space is obvious, and perhaps I may
say without impropriety that the writer could have so treated it with no
additional labour except the mere writing—for the preparation
necessitated would have sufficed for half-a-dozen volumes. But to keep
proportion, and observe the plan, is one of those critical warnings to
which Classic and Romantic alike had much better attend. In the division
which I have adopted of eighteenth-century writers into those who, as
adherents of Neo-Classicism, are to be treated here, and those who, as
forerunners or actual exponents of Modern Criticism, are to be reserved
for our next, there must necessarily be much which invites cavil, and
not a little which excuses objection. I shall only say that the
distribution has not been made hastily; and that it may be possible to
make its principle clearer when the reserved writers have been treated.
The advantage of keeping the subject of the volume as homogeneous as
possible seemed paramount.
In writing Vol. I. it was possible, with rare exceptions, to rely upon
texts in my own possession. This has, of course, here been impossible:
though I possess a fair collection of the Italians of the Renaissance,
while I have long had many of the French and English writers of the
whole time. For the supply of deficiencies I have not only to make the
usual acknowledgment to the authorities of the British Museum—than which
surely no institution ever better deserved the patronage of its
name-giving goddesses—but also to thank those of the libraries belonging
to the Faculty of Advocates and the Society of Writers to the Signet in
Edinburgh, which bodies admit others besides their own members with
remarkable liberality. In the library of the University of Edinburgh I
suppose I may consider myself at home; but I owe cordial thanks to
Bodley’s Librarian, to the University Librarian at Cambridge, and to the
librarian of the John Rylands collection at Manchester, for information
about books which I have been unable to find elsewhere. There are one or
two mentioned in the notes which I have not been able to get hold of
yet; and I shall be extremely obliged to any reader of this history who
may happen to know their whereabouts, and will take the trouble to tell
me of it.
I am only the Satan of this journey across Chaos, and I daresay I have
been driven out of the best course by the impact of more than one
nitrous cloud. In other words, I not merely daresay, but am pretty sure,
that I have made some blunders, especially in summary of readings not
always controllable by reference to the actual books when the matter
came before me again in print. And I daresay, further, that these will
be obvious enough to specialists. I have found some such blunders even
in the first volume, where the literature of the subject was far less
extensive and, even in proportion to its extent, far more accessible;
and I have thought it best to include corrections of some of these in
the present volume, in order that those who already possess the first
may not be in an inferior position to those who acquire the new edition
of it which is, or will shortly be, ready. When the work reaches its
close (if it ever does so) will be the proper time to digest and
incorporate these alterations as Fortune may allow. The kindness of
Professor Elton, King Alfred Professor of English in University College,
Liverpool, of Professor Ker _iterum_, and of my colleague Mr Gregory
Smith, has beyond all doubt enabled me to forestall some part of these
corrections in regard to the present volume. These friends were obliging
enough to undertake between them the reading of the whole; others have
assisted me on particular points, in regard to most of which I have, I
think, made due acknowledgment in the notes. As before, I have taken
some trouble with the Index, and I hope it may be found useful.
GEORGE SAINTSBURY.
EDINBURGH, _September 1902_.
ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA TO VOLUME II.
P. 23 _sq._ A reference of Hallam’s (_Literature of Europe_, iii. 5, 76,
77) to the _Miscellanies_ of Politian has led some critics, who
apparently do not know the book itself, and have not even read Hallam
carefully, to object to its omission here. Their authority might have
saved them; for he very correctly describes these _Miscellanies_ as
“sometimes grammatical, but more frequently relating to obscure customs
and mythological allusions.” In other words, the book—which _I_ have
read—is hardly, in my sense, critical at all.
P. 80, note. When I wrote on Castelvetro I was not aware that the
Commentary on Dante (at least that on _Inf._, Cantos i.-xxix.) had been
recovered and published by Signor Giovanni Franciosi (Modena, 1886) in a
stately royal 4to (which I have now read, and possess), with the owl and
the pitcher, but without the _Kekrika_, and without the proper
resolution in the owl’s countenance. This may be metaphysically
connected with the fact that the editor is rather unhappy about his
author, and tells us that he was long in two minds about sending him out
at last to the world. He admires Castelvetro’s boldness, scholarship,
intellect; but thinks him sadly destitute of reverence for Dante, and
deplores his “lack of lively and cheerful sense of the Beautiful.” If it
were not that my gratitude to the man who gives me a text seals my mouth
as to everything else, I should be a little inclined to cry “Fudge!” at
this. Nobody would expect from any Renaissance scholar, and least of all
from Castelvetro, “unction,” mysticism, rapture at the things that give
_us_ rapture in Dante. All the more honour to him that, as in the case
of Petrarch, he thought it worth while to bestow on that vernacular,
which too many Renaissance scholars despised, the same intense desire to
understand, the same pains, the same “taking seriously,” which he showed
towards the ancients. This is the true reverence: the rest is but
“leather and prunella.”
P. 107. Some time after vol. ii. was published I came across (in the
catalogues of Mr Voynich, who might really inscribe on these documents
for motto
“Das Unzulängliche
Hier wird’s Ereignis”)
quite a nest of Zinanos, mostly written about that year 1590, which
seems to have been this curious writer’s most active time; and I bought
two of them as specially appurtenant to our subject. One is a _Discorso
della Tragedia_, appended (though separately paged and dedicated) to the
author’s tragedy of _Almerigo_; the other _Le Due Giornate della Ninfa
overo del Diletto e delle Muse_, all printed by Bartholi, at Reggio, and
the two prose books or booklets dated 1590. The _Discorso_ is chiefly
occupied with an attack on the position that Tragedy (especially
according to Aristotle) ought to be busied with true subjects only. The
_Giornate_ (which contain another reference to Patrizzi) deal—more or
less fancifully, but in a manner following Boethius, which is
interesting at so late a date—with philosophy and things in general,
rather than with literature.
P. 322, bk. IV. chap. i. I ought, perhaps, to have noticed in this
context a book rather widely spread—Sorel’s _De La Connaissance des Bons
Livres_, Paris, 1671. It contains some not uninteresting things on
literature in general, on novels, poetry, comedy, &c., on the laws of
good speaking and writing, on the “new language of French.” But it is,
on the whole, as anybody acquainted with any part of the voluminous work
of the author of _Francion_ would expect, mainly not disagreeable nor
ignorant _chat_—newspaper work before the newspaper.
P. 350. The opposition of the two “doctors” is perhaps too sharply put.
P. 436. I should like to add as a special “place” for Dennis’s
criticism, his comparatively early _Remarks on_ Prince Arthur _and
Virgil_ (title abbreviated), London, 1696. It is, as it stands, of some
elaboration; but its author tells us that he “meant” to do things which
would have made it an almost complete Poetic from his point of view. It
is pervaded with that refrain of “this _ought_ to be” and “that _must_
have been” to which I have referred in the text; and bristles with
purely arbitrary preceptist statements, such as that Criticism cannot be
ill-natured because Good Nature in man cannot be contrary to Justice and
Reason; that a man must not like what he ought not to like—a doctrine
underlying, of course, the whole Neo-classic teaching, and not that
only; almost literally cropping up in Wordsworth; and the very
formulation, in categorical-imperative, of La Harpe’s “monstrous
beauty.” The book (in which poet and critic are very comfortably and
equally yoked together) is full of agreeable things; and may possibly
have suggested one of Swift’s most exquisite pieces of irony in its
contention that Mr Blackmore’s Celestial Machines are directly contrary
to the Doctrine of the Church of England.
P. 546. Denina. This author is a good instance of the things which the
reader sometimes rather reproachfully demands, when the writer would
only too fain have supplied them. I could write more than a page with
satisfaction on Denina’s _Discorso sopra le Vicende della Litteratura_,
which, rather surprisingly, underwent its second edition in Glasgow at
the Foulis press (1763), and which not only deals at large with the
subject in an interesting manner, but accepts the _religio loci_ by
dealing specially with _Scottish_ literature. But, once more, this is
for a fourth volume—or even a fifth—things belonging to the
Thinkable-Unthinkable.
P. 554, l. 3. For the _Paragone_ see vol. iii. under Conti, Antonio.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS.
BOOK IV.
RENAISSANCE CRITICISM.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY—ERASMUS.
PAGE
The Critical starting-point of the Renaissance. 3
Influences at work: General 4
Particular 5
Weakness of Vernaculars 6
Recovery of Ancient Criticism 6
Necessity of defence against Puritanism 7
The line of criticism resultant 7
Not necessarily anti-mediæval 8
But classical 9
And anti-Puritan 9
Erasmus 10
The _Ciceronianus_ 11
The _Colloquies_ 13
The _Letters_ 15
Distribution of the Book 17
CHAPTER II.
EARLY ITALIAN CRITICS.
The beginnings 19
Savonarola 20
Pico, &c. 22
Politian 23
The _Manto_ 24
The _Ambra_ and _Rusticus_ 25
The _Nutricia_ 25
Their merits 26
And danger 26
Petrus Crinitus: his _De Poetis Latinis_ 27
Augustinus Olmucensis: his _Defence of Poetry_ 27
Paradoxical attacks on it by Cornelius Agrippa, Landi, Berni 28
Vida 29
Importance of the _Poetics_ 30
Analysis of the piece 30
Essential poverty of its theory 34
Historical and symptomatic significance 34
The alleged appeal to reason and Nature 35
The main stream started 37
Trissino 38
Division of his _Poetic_ 39
His critical value 40
Editors, &c., of the _Poetics_ 41
Pazzi 41
Robortello, Segni, Maggi, Vettori 42
Theorists: Daniello 42
Fracastoro 44
Formalists: Mutio. Tolomei and classical metres 46
Others: Tomitano, Lionardi, B. Tasso, Capriano 47
Il Lasca 48
Bembo 49
Caro 49
Varchi 49
Minturno 51
The _De Poeta_ 52
The _Arte Poetica_ 55
Their value 57
Giraldi Cinthio’s _Discorsi_ 58
On Romance 58
On Drama 59
Some points in both 59
On Satire 61
Pigna 62
Lilius Giraldus: his _De Poetis Nostrorum Temporum_ 63
Its width of range 64
But narrowness of view 64
Horror at preference of vernacular to Latin 64
Yet a real critic in both kinds 65
Short _précis_ of the dialogues 66
Their great historic value 68
CHAPTER III.
SCALIGER, CASTELVETRO, AND THE LATER ITALIAN CRITICS OF THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY.
Julius Cæsar Scaliger 69
The _Poetic_ 70
Book I.: _Historicus_ 71
Book II.: _Hyle_ 72
Books III. and IV.: _Idea_ and _Parasceve_ 73
Books V. and VI.: _Criticus_ and _Hypercriticus_ 73
Book VII.: _Epinomis_ 75
General ideas on Unity and the like 76
His Virgil-worship 77
His solid merits 78
Castelvetro 80
The Opere Varie 81
The _Poetica_ 82
On Dramatic conditions 83
On the Three Unities 83
On the freedom of Epic 84
His eccentric acuteness 84
Examples: Homer’s nodding, prose in tragedy, Virgil, minor 86
poetry
The medium and end of Poetry 86
Uncompromising championship of Delight 87
His exceptional interest and importance 88
Tasso and the controversies over the _Gerusalemme_ 89
Tasso’s Critical writings 92
And position 93
Patrizzi: his _Poetica_ 94
The _Deca Istoriale_ 95
The _Deca Disputata_ 96
The _Trimerone_ on Tasso 100
Remarkable position of Patrizzi 101
_Sed contra mundum_ 101
The latest group of sixteenth-century Critics 102
Partenio 102
Viperano 103
Piccolomini 103
Gilio 104
Mazzoni 105
Denores 106
Zinano 107
Mazzone da Miglionico, &c. 107
Summo 108
CHAPTER IV.
THE CRITICISM OF THE _PLÉIADE_.
The _Rhetorics_ of the Transition 109
Sibilet 111
Du Bellay 112
The _Défense et Illustration de la Langue Française_ 113
Its positive gospel and the value thereof 114
The _Quintil Horatien_ 116
Pelletier’s _Art Poétique_ 117
Ronsard: his general importance 119
The _Abrégé de l’Art Poétique_ 120
The _Prefaces to the Franciade_ 122
His critical gospel 125
Some minors 127
Pierre de Laudun 127
Vauquelin de la Fresnaye 128
Analysis of his _Art Poétique_ 129
The First Book 130
The Second 130
The Third 132
His exposition of _Pléiade_ criticism 133
Outliers: Tory, Fauchet, &c. 134
Pasquier: The _Recherches_ 135
His knowledge of older French literature 136
And criticism of contemporary French poetry 137
Montaigne: his references to literature 138
The Essay _On Books_ 140
CHAPTER V.
ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.
Backwardness of English Criticism not implying inferiority 144
Its cause 145
The influence of Rhetoric and other matters 146
Hawes 146
The first Tudor critics 147
Wilson: his _Art of Rhetoric_ 149
His attack on “Inkhorn terms” 149
His dealing with Figures 150
Cheke: his resolute Anglicism and anti-preciosity 151
His criticism of Sallust 152
Ascham 153
His patriotism 154
His horror of Romance 154
And of the _Morte d’Arthur_ 155
His general critical attitude to Prose 156
And to Poetry 156
The craze for Classical Metres 157
Special wants of English Prosody 157
Its kinds—
(1) Chaucerian 158
(2) Alliterative 158
(3) Italianated 159
Deficiencies of all three 159
The temptations of Criticism in this respect 160
Its adventurers: Ascham himself 160
Watson and Drant 161
Gascoigne 162
His _Notes of Instruction_ 163
Their capital value 164
Spenser and Harvey 165
The Puritan attack on Poetry 169
Gosson 169
_The School of Abuse_ 170
Lodge’s _Reply_ 170
Sidney’s _Apology for Poetry_ 171
Abstract of it 172
Its minor shortcomings 174
And major heresies 175
The excuses of both 175
And their ample compensation 176
King James’s _Reulis and Cautelis_ 176
Webbe’s _Discourse_ 178
Slight in knowledge 179
But enthusiastic 180
If uncritical 180
In appreciation 182
Puttenham’s (?) _Art of English Poesie_ 182
Its erudition 183
Systematic arrangement 184
And exuberant indulgence in Figures 185
Minors: Harington, Meres, Webster, Bolton, &c. 186
Campion and his _Observations_ 187
Daniel and his _Defence of Rhyme_ 189
Bacon 191
The _Essays_ 192
The _Advancement of Learning_ 192
Its denunciation of mere word-study 193
Its view of Poetry 194
Some _obiter dicta_ 194
The whole of very slight importance 195
Stirling’s _Anacrisis_ 196
Ben Jonson: his equipment 197
His _Prefaces_, &c. 198
The Drummond Conversations 199
The _Discoveries_ 200
Form of the book 203
Its date 204
Mosaic of old and new 204
The fling at Montaigne 205
At _Tamerlane_ 206
The Shakespeare Passage 206
And that on Bacon 206
General character of the book 208
INTERCHAPTER IV. 211
BOOK V.
THE CRYSTALLISING OF THE NEO-CLASSIC CREED.
CHAPTER I.
FROM MALHERBE TO BOILEAU.
The supplanting of Italy by France 240
Brilliancy of the French representatives 241
Malherbe 242
The _Commentary on Desportes_ 244
What can be said for his criticism 246
Its defects stigmatised at once by Regnier 247
His _Ninth Satire_ 247
The contrast of the two a lasting one 249
The diffusion of seventeenth century criticism 250
Vaugelas 251
Balzac 252
His Letters 252
His critical Dissertations 253
Ogier and the Preface to _Tyr et Sidon_ 254
Chapelain: the hopelessness of his verse 257
The interest of his criticism 257
The _Sentiments de l’Académie sur le Cid_ 258
Prefaces 259
_Sur les Vieux Romans_ 260
Letters, &c. 261
Corneille 261
The Three _Discourses_ 263
The _Examens_ 263
La Mesnardière—Sarrasin—Scudéry 264
Mambrun 266
Saint-Evremond 268
His critical quality and accomplishment 269
His views on Corneille 270
On Christian subjects, &c. 270
On Ancients and Moderns 270
Gui Patin—his judgment of Browne 272
Tallemant, Pellisson, Ménage, Madame de Sévigné 273
The _Ana_ other than Ménage’s, especially 274
The _Huetiana_ 275
_Valesiana_ 275
_Scaligerana_ 276
And _Parrhasiana_ 276
Patru, Desmarets, and others 277
_Malebranche_ 279
The history of Boileau’s reputation 280
The _Art Poétique_ 281
Its false literary history 281
Abstract of it 282
Critical examination of it 286
Want of originality 287
Faults of method 287
Obsession of good sense 288
Arbitrary proscriptions 289
Boileau’s other works 290
The _Satires_ 290
The _Epigrams_ and _Epistles_ 292
Prose—The _Héros de Roman_; the _Réflexions sur Longin_ 292
The “Dissertation on _Joconde_” 293
A “Solifidian of Good Sense” 295
The plea for his practical services 296
Historical examination of this 296
Concluding remarks on him 299
La Bruyère and Fénelon 300
The “Des Ouvrages de l’Esprit” 301
General observations 302
Judgments of authors 303
Fénelon. The _Dialogues sur l’Eloquence_ 305
_Sur les Occupations de l’Académie Française_ 306
And its challenge to correctness 307
The Abbé D’Aubignac 309
His _Pratique du Théâtre_ 309
Rapin 310
His method partly good 311
His particular absurdities as to Homer in blame 311
As to Virgil in praise 312
As to others 313
The reading of his riddle 313
Le Bossu and the Abstract Epic 314
Bouhours 315
Encyclopædias and Newspapers 316
Bayle 316
Baillet 317
The ethos of a Critical Pedant 318
Gibert 319
The Ancient and Modern Quarrel 320
Its small critical value 321
CHAPTER II.
THE ITALIAN DECADENCE AND THE SPANIARDS.
Decadence of Italian Criticism 323
Paolo Beni 324
Possevino: his _Bibliotheca Selecta_ 325
Tassoni: his _Pensieri Diversi_ 326
Aromatari 328
His _Degli Autori del Ben Parlare_ 329
Boccalini and Minors 329
Influence of the _Ragguagli_ 330
The set of Seicentist taste 331
Spanish criticism: highly ranked by Dryden? 331
The Origins—Villena 333
Santillana 333
Encina 335
Valdés 335
The beginning of regular Criticism. Humanist Rhetoricians 336
Poetics: Rengifo 337
Pinciano 338
La Cueva 341
Carvallo 341
Gonzales de Salas 341
The _Cigarrales_ of Tirso de Molina 343
Lope’s _Arte Nuevo_, &c. 344
His assailants and defenders 346
The fight over the Spanish drama 347
Cervantes and Calderon 347
Gongorism, Culteranism, &c. 349
Quevedo 349
Gracián 349
The limitations of Spanish criticism 350
CHAPTER III.
GERMAN AND DUTCH CRITICISM.
The hindmost of all 352
Origins 353
Sturm 353
Fabricius 354
Version A. 354
Version B. 354
Jac. Pontanus 355
Heinsius: the _De Tragœdiæ Constitutione_ 356
Voss 357
His _Rhetoric_ 358
His _Poetics_ 359
Opitz 360
The _Buch der Deutschen Poeterei_ 361
CHAPTER IV.
DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.
Dead water in English Criticism 365
Milton 365
Cowley 366
The Prefatory matter of _Gondibert_ 367
The “Heroic Poem” 368
Davenant’s _Examen_ 369
Hobbes’s Answer 370
Dryden 371
His advantages 372
The early Prefaces 373
The _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_ 376
Its setting and overture 376
Crites for the Ancients 377
Eugenius for the “last age” 378
Lisideius for the French 378
Dryden for England and Liberty 379
_Coda_ on rhymed plays, and conclusion 380
Conspicuous merits of the piece 381
The Middle Prefaces 382
The _Essay on Satire_ and the _Dedication of the Æneis_ 385
The Parallel of Poetry and Painting 386
The _Preface to the Fables_ 386
Dryden’s general critical position 386
His special critical method 387
Dryden and Boileau 389
Rymer 391
The _Preface to Rapin_ 392
The _Tragedies of the Last Age_ 394
The _Short View of Tragedy_ 395
The Rule of Tom the Second 397
Sprat 398
Edward Phillips 398
His _Theatrum Poetarum_ 399
Winstanley’s _Lives_ 400
Langbaine’s _Dramatic Poets_ 400
Temple 401
Bentley 401
Collier’s _Short View_ 402
Sir T. P. Blount 404
Periodicals: _The Athenian Mercury_, &c. 406
INTERCHAPTER V. 407
BOOK VI.
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ORTHODOXY.
CHAPTER I.
FROM ADDISON TO JOHNSON.
Criticism at Dryden’s death 426
Bysshe’s _Art of English Poetry_ 426
Gildon 429
Welsted 430
Dennis 431
On Rymer 432
On Shakespeare 434
On “Machines” 435
His general theory of Poetry 435
Addison 437
The _Account of the Best known English Poets_ 438
The _Spectator_ criticisms 440
On True and False Wit 441
On Tragedy 441
On Milton 443
The “Pleasures of the Imagination” 444
His general critical value 447
Steele 448
Atterbury 449
Swift 450
_The Battle of the Books_ 450
The _Tale of a Tub_ 451
Minor works 451
Pope 452
The _Letters_ 453
The Shakespeare Preface 454
Spence’s _Anecdotes_ 454
The _Essay on Criticism_ 455
The _Epistle to Augustus_ 457
Remarks on Pope as a critic 457
And the critical attitude of his group 460
Philosophical and Professional Critics 461
Trapp 462
Blair 462
The _Lectures on Rhetoric_ 463
The _Dissertation on Ossian_ 464
Kames 465
The _Elements of Criticism_ 466
Campbell 470
The _Philosophy of Rhetoric_ 470
Harris 473
The _Philological Enquiries_ 474
“Estimate” Brown: his _History of Poetry_ 476
Johnson: his preparation for criticism 477
_The Rambler_ on Milton 480
On Spenser 482
On History and Letter-writing 483
On Tragi-comedy 483
“Dick Minim” 484
_Rasselas_ 484
The Shakespeare Preface 485
The _Lives of the Poets_ 486
Their general merits 487
The _Cowley_ 489
The _Milton_ 489
The _Dryden_ and _Pope_ 490
The _Collins_ and _Gray_ 491
The critical greatness of the _Lives_ and of Johnson 493
Minor Criticism: Periodical and other 496
Goldsmith 498
Vicesimus Knox 499
Scott of Amwell 500
CHAPTER II.
THE CONTEMPORARIES OF VOLTAIRE.
Close connection of French seventeenth and eighteenth 501
century Criticism: Fontenelle
Exceptional character of his criticism 502
His attitude to the “Ancient and Modern” Quarrel 503
The _Dialogues des Morts_ 503
Other critical work 504
La Motte 507
His “Unity of Interest” 508
Rollin 509
Brumoy 509
Rémond de Saint-Mard 510
L. Racine 511
Du Bos 511
Stimulating but desultory character of his _Réflexions_ 512
Montesquieu 514
Voltaire: disappointment of his criticism 515
Examples of it 515
Causes of his failure 518
Others: Buffon 519
“Style and the man” 520
Vauvenargues 521
Batteux 522
His adjustment of Rules and Taste 523
His incompleteness 524
Marmontel 525
Oddities and qualities of his criticism 526
Others 529
Thomas, Suard, &c. 529
La Harpe 530
His _Cours de Littérature_ 530
His critical position as _ultimus suorum_ 531
The Academic Essay 533
Rivarol 534
CHAPTER III.
CLASSICISM IN THE OTHER NATIONS.
Preliminary remarks 537
Temporary revival of Italian Criticism 538
Gravina 538
Muratori: his _Della Perfetta Poesia_ 541
Crescimbeni 542
Quadrio 542
The emergence of literary history 545
Further decadence of Italian criticism 545
Metastasio 546
Neo-classicism triumphs in Spain 546
The absurdities of Artiga 547
Luzán 548
The rest uninteresting 549
Feyjóo, Isla, and others 549
Rise at last of German Criticism 550
Its school time 551
Classicism at bay almost from the first—Gottsched 552
The _Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst_ 553
Its chief idea 553
Specimen details 555
Gellert: he transacts 557
INTERCHAPTER VI.
§ I. THE NEMESIS OF CORRECTNESS 559
§ II. THE BALANCE-SHEET OF NEO-CLASSIC CRITICISM 566
---
INDEX 579
BOOK IV
RENAISSANCE CRITICISM
----------
“_Le materie da scienza, o da arte, o da istoria
comprese, possano esser convenevoli soggetti a
poesia, e a poemi, pure che poeticamente sieno
trattate._”—PATRIZZI.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY—ERASMUS.
THE CRITICAL STARTING-POINT OF THE RENAISSANCE—INFLUENCES AT WORK:
GENERAL—PARTICULAR—WEAKNESS OF VERNACULARS—RECOVERY OF ANCIENT
CRITICISM—NECESSITY OF DEFENCE AGAINST PURITANISM—THE LINE OF
CRITICISM RESULTANT—NOT NECESSARILY ANTI-MEDIÆVAL, BUT CLASSICAL AND
ANTI-PURITAN—ERASMUS—THE ‘CICERONIANUS'—THE ‘COLLOQUIES’—THE
‘LETTERS’—DISTRIBUTION OF THE BOOK.
We saw, in the second section of the Interchapter which served as
Conclusion to the first volume of this work, to what a point [Sidenote:
_The Critical starting-point of the Renaissance._] the Middle Ages had
brought the materials and the methods of Literary Criticism, and what
the new age with its combined opportunities might have done. We also
endeavoured to indicate generally, and so to speak, proleptically, what
it did _not_ do. It is now time to examine what it did: and in the
course of the examination to develop the reasons, the character, and the
consequences, both of its commission and of its abstention.[1]
-----
Footnote 1:
At the beginning of Book III. I had practically no obligations to any
general guide to confess; at the beginning of Book II. not very many.
Here, as in the case of M. Egger in regard to Book I., I have
cheerfully to acknowledge the forerunnership and help of Mr Joel Elias
Spingarn, whose _History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance_
appeared (New York and London) in 1899. I shall have occasion to
differ with Mr Spingarn here and there; and his conception of a
History of Criticism is not mine, just as, no doubt, mine is not his.
But the obligations of the second treader of a previously untrodden
path to the first are perhaps the greatest that fall to be
acknowledged in any literary task; and I acknowledge them in Mr
Spingarn’s case to the fullest extent possible.
-----
If no period has ever been more guilty of that too usual injustice to
predecessors which we noted, it is fair to acknowledge that none had
greater temptations to such injustice. The breach between the Classical
and the Dark Ages had been almost astonishingly gradual—so gradual that
it has needed no great hardiness of paradox to enable men to deny that
there was any breach at all. On the other hand, though the breach at the
Renaissance[2] is capable of being, and has sometimes been, much
exaggerated; though it was preceded by a considerable transition period,
and though mediæval characteristics survived it long and far, yet the
turning over of the new leaf is again incontestable, and was as
necessary in the order of thought as it is certain in the sequence of
fact.
-----
Footnote 2:
The complaints sometimes made as to the ambiguity and want of
authority of this term may have some justification; but convenience
and (by this time) usage must be allowed their way.
-----
It is not much more than a hundred years since the French Revolution, a
single event in one department only of things [Sidenote: _Influences at
work: General._] actual, was sufficient to precipitate a change which is
only less—which some would hold likely to be not less—than the change at
the beginning of the Dark Ages, and the change at the end of the Middle.
At the Renaissance, not one but three or four such events, in as many
different departments, brought their shock to bear upon the life and
mind of Europe. The final disappearance of the Eastern Empire, and the
apparent—perhaps, indeed, a little more than apparent—danger of a wide
and considerable barbarian invasion of even Western Europe, with the
balancing of this after a sort a little later by the extinction of the
Moorish power in Spain, coincided, as regards politics, with a general
tendency throughout Europe towards the change of feudal into centralised
monarchy. The determination (resulting no doubt from no single cause,
and taking effect after long preparation) of direct, practical, and
extensive study to the Classics, especially to Greek, affected not
merely literature, but almost everything of which literature treats. The
invention of printing enormously facilitated, not merely the study but,
the diffusion and propagation of ideas and patterns. The discovery of
America, and of the sea-route to the East, excited that spirit of
exploration and adventure which, once aroused, is sure not to limit
itself to the material world. And, lastly, the long-threatened and at
last realised protest against the corruptions of the Christian Church,
and the domination of the Pope, unsettled, directly or indirectly, every
convention, every compromise, every accepted doctrine. In fact, to use
the words of one of the greatest of English writers,[3] in what is
perhaps his most brilliant passage, “in the fabric of habit which they
had so laboriously built for themselves, men could remain no longer.”
-----
Footnote 3:
Mr Froude in the opening of his _History_.
-----
Their critical habits, as we have seen sufficiently in the last Book,
had been mainly negative; and for this reason, if for no other, a
considerable critical development would have been certain to spring up.
But there were other reasons, and powerful ones. In the first place, the
atmosphere of revolt which was abroad necessarily breeds, or rather
necessarily implies, criticism. A few, whom the equal Jove has loved,
may be able to criticise while acquiescing, approving, even loving and
strenuously championing; but this equity is not exceedingly common, and
the general tendency of acceptance, and even of acquiescence, is
distinctly uncritical. On the other hand, the rebel is driven either to
his rebellion by the exercise of his critical faculty, or to the
exercise of his critical faculty in order to justify his rebellion. I do
not myself hold that the Devil was the first critic. I have not the
slightest desire to serve myself and my subject heirs to that spirit
unfortunate; but I recognise the necessity of some argument to rebut the
filiation.
And that these generalities should become particular in reference to
Literary Criticism more especially, there were additional and momentous
inducements of two different kinds. [Sidenote: _Particular._] In the
first place, the malcontents with the immediate past must in any case
have been drawn to attack the literary side of its battlements, because
of their extreme weakness. Everywhere but in the two extremities of the
West, Italy and Scotland (the latter, owing to the very small bulk of
its literary production, and the rudimentary condition of its language,
being hardly an exception at all), the fifteenth century, even with a
generous eking from the earliest sixteenth, had been a time of literary
torpor and literary decadence, relieved only by a few—a very
few—brilliant individual performances. In England the successors of
Chaucer, not content with carrying his method and his choice of subject
no further, had almost incomprehensibly lost command of both. In France
the _rhétoriqueur_ school of poets had degenerated less in form, but had
been almost equally unable to show any progress, or even any [Sidenote:
_Weakness of Vernaculars._] maintained command, of matter. Germany was
far worse than either. If Chaucer himself could criticise, indirectly
but openly, the faults of the still vigorous and beautiful romance—of
the romance which in his own country was yet to boast Chester in verse
and Malory in prose—how much more must any one with sharp sense and
sound taste, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, have been
tempted to apply some similar process to the fossilised formalism of
_rondeau_ and _ballade_; to the lifeless and lumbering allegory of the
latest “Rose” imitations; to the “aureate,” or rather tinselled, bombast
of Chastellain and Robertet?
But, as it happened, no inconsiderable part of the newly disinterred
classics dealt with this very subject of Literary Criticism, [Sidenote:
_Recovery of Ancient Criticism._] and, having been most neglected, was
certain to be most attended to. Later mediæval practice had provided the
examples of disease: earlier classical theory was to provide the remedy.
Plato, the most cherished of the recovered treasures, had—in his own
peculiar way, no doubt—criticised very largely; the _Poetics_ and the
_Rhetoric_ were quickly set afresh before the new age in the originals;
Horace had always been known; Quintilian was, since Rhetoric had not yet
fallen into disfavour, studied direct;[4] and, before the sixteenth
century was half over, Longinus himself had been unearthed and presented
to a world which (if it had chosen to attend thereto) was also for the
first time furnished with Dante’s critical performance.[5] With such an
arsenal; with such a disposition of mind abroad; and with such real or
imagined enemies to attack, it would have been odd if the forces of
criticism, so long disorganised, and indeed disembodied, had not taken
formidable shape.
-----
Footnote 4:
The _complete_ text was, as is well known, not discovered (by Poggio
at St Gallen) till the fifteenth century had nearly filled its second
decade, but the book had been studied long before.
Footnote 5:
Very great influence on sixteenth, and even on seventeenth, century
criticism has also been frequently, and perhaps correctly, assigned to
the grammatical works and Terentian Scholia of Donatus.
-----
There was, however, yet another influence which is not very easy to
estimate, and which has sometimes perhaps been not quite rightly
estimated, but which undoubtedly had a great deal to do with the matter.
[Sidenote: _Necessity of defence against Puritanism._] Almost as soon
as—almost before indeed—the main battle of the Renaissance engaged
itself, certain phenomena, not unusual in similar cases, made their
appearance. Men of letters, humanists, students, were necessarily the
protagonists of revolt or reform. There had always, as we have seen,
been a certain jealousy of Letters on the part of the Church; and this
was not likely to be lessened in the new arrangement of circumstance.
But the jealousy was by no means confined to the party of order and of
the defence. It had been necessary, or it would have had no
rank-and-file, for the attack to enlist the descendants of the old
Lollards and other opponents of the Romish Church in different
countries. But in these, to no small extent, and in men like Calvin,
when they made their appearance, perhaps still more, the Puritan dislike
of Art, and of Literature as part of Art, was even more rampant than in
the obscurest of _obscuri viri_ on the Catholic and Conservative side.
And so men of letters had not merely to attack what they thought
unworthy and obsolete foes of literature, but to defend literature
itself from their own political and ecclesiastical allies.
The line which they took had been taken before, and was no doubt partly
suggested to them by Boccaccio in the remarkable book already referred
to[6]—the _De Genealogia Deorum_—which was repeatedly printed in the
early days of the press. [Sidenote: _The line of criticism resultant._]
There can be very little question that this anticipates the peculiar
tone of what we may call anti-Platonic Platonism, which is so noticeable
in the Italian critics of the Renaissance, and which was caught from
them by Englishmen of great note and worth, from Sidney to Milton. The
excellent historian of the subject—whom I have already quoted, and my
indebtedness to whom must not be supposed to be repudiated because I
cannot agree with him on some important points—is, I think, entirely
wrong in speaking of mediæval “distrust of literature,” while the
statement with which he supports this, that “popular literature had
fallen into decay, and, in its contemporary form, was beneath serious
consideration,”[7] is so astonishing, that I fear we must class it with
those _judicia ignorantium_ of which our general motto speaks. In his
context Mr Spingarn mentions, as examples of mediæval treatment of
literature, Fulgentius, Isidore, John of Salisbury, Dante, Boccaccio.
What “popular” (by which I presume is meant vernacular) literature was
there in the times of Fulgentius or of Isidore? Is not the statement
that “popular literature had fallen into decay” in the time of Dante
self-exploded? And the same may be said of Boccaccio. As for John of
Salisbury, he certainly, as we have seen,[8] was not much of a critic
himself; but that popular literature was decaying in his time is a
statement which no one who knows the _Chansons de Gestes_ and the
Arthurian Legend can accept for one moment; while the documents also
quoted _supra_, the _Labyrinthus_, the _Nova Poetria_, and the
rest—entirely disprove any “distrust” of letters.
-----
Footnote 6:
Vol. i. p. 457 _sq._
Footnote 7:
Spingarn, _op. cit._, p. 2. On the previous page there is the equally
surprising statement that in the Middle Ages “Poetry was disregarded
or contemned, or was valued, if at all, for qualities that least
belong to it.” What were these “qualities”?
Footnote 8:
Vol. i. p. 414 _note_
-----
The truth is, with submission to Mr Spingarn, that there never was any
such, except from the Puritan-religious side, and that this was by no
means specially conspicuous in the Middle Ages. [Sidenote: _Not
necessarily anti-mediæval,_] The “Defence of Poesy,” and of literature
generally, which animates men so different as Boccaccio and Milton, as
Scaliger and Sidney, is no direct revolt against the Middle Ages at all,
but, as has been said, a discourse _Pro Domo_, in the first place,
against the severer and more obscurantist partisans of Catholicism, who
were disposed to dislike men of letters as Reformers, and literature as
the instrument of Reformation; secondly, and much more urgently, against
the Puritan and Philistine variety of Protestantism itself, which so
soon turned against its literary leaders and allies. And the special
form which this defence took was in turn mainly conditioned, not by
anti-mediæval animus, but in part by the circumstances of the case, in
part by the character of the critical weapons which men found in their
new arsenal of the Classics.
Classical Criticism, as we have seen in the preceding volume, had
invariably in theory, and almost as invariably in practice, confined
itself wholly or mainly to the consideration of “the subject.”
[Sidenote: _but classical_]Although Aristotle himself had not denied the
special pleasure of art and the various kinds of art, although Plato, in
distrusting and denouncing, had admitted the psychagogic faculties
thereof; yet nobody except Longinus had boldly identified the chief end
of it with “transport,” not with persuasion, with edification, or
anything of the kind. Accordingly, those who looked to the ancients to
help them against the _Obscuri Viri_ on the one hand, and against good
Puritan folk like our own Ascham on the other, were almost bound to keep
the _pleasure_ of poetry and literature generally in the background; or,
if they brought it to the front at all, to extol it and defend it on
ethical and philosophical, not on æsthetic grounds. Taking a hint from
their “sweet enemy” Plato, from Plutarch, and from such neo-Platonic
utterances as that tractate of Plotinus, which has been discussed in its
place,[9] they set themselves to prove that poetry was _not_ a sweet
pleasant deceit or corrupting influence in the republic, but a
stronghold and rampart of religious and philosophical truth. [Sidenote:
_and anti-Puritan._]Calling in turn Aristotle to their assistance, and
working him in with his master and rival, they dwelt with redoubled and
at length altogether misleading and misled energy on “Action,” “Unity,”
and the like. And when they did consider form it was, always or too
often, from the belittling point of view of the ancients themselves in
spirit, and from the meticulous point of view of Horace (who had always
been known) in detail. Here and there in such a man as Erasmus (v.
_infra_), who was nothing if not sensible, we find the Gellian and
Macrobian particularisms taken up with a really progressive twist
towards inquiry as to the bearing of these particularities on the
pleasure of the reader. But Erasmus was writing in the “false dawn”; the
Puritan tyranny of Protestantism on the one side, and of the Catholic
revival on the other, had not brought back a partial night as yet; and
some of the best as well as some of the worst characteristics of the new
age inclined those of his immediate successors rather than
contemporaries, who adopted criticism directly, to quite different ways.
-----
Footnote 9:
Vol. i. pp. 67, 68.
-----
It would, however, be a glaring omission if the critical position of
Erasmus himself were not set forth at some length.[10] [Sidenote:
_Erasmus._] Standing as he does, the most eminent literary figure of
Europe on the bridge of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, nothing
if not critical as he is in his general temperament, and on the textual
and exegetical, if not on the strictly literary sides of the Art, one of
its great historical figures—his absence from this gallery would be
justly regarded as inexcusable. And if his voluminous work does not
yield us very much within the more special and fully enfranchising lines
of our system, it might be regarded as a sufficient answer to say that
the imperfection of the vernaculars, his own concentration on particular
forms of Biblical and patristic text-criticism, and that peculiar
cosmopolitanism which made him practically of no country at all, served
to draw him away from a practice in which he would, but for these
circumstances and conditions, have certainly indulged.
-----
Footnote 10:
Erasmus is still only readable as a whole, or in combination of his
really important literary work, in the folios of Beatus Rhenanus (8
vols., Basle, 1540-1) or Le Clerc (10 vols., Lyons, 1703-6). It is a
thousand pities that this more important literary work, at least, has
not been re-edited together accessibly and cheaply.
-----
It may, however, be doubted whether Erasmus would ever have made a
capital figure as a purely literary critic. Very great man of letters as
he was, and almost wholly literary as were his interests, those
interests were suspiciously directed towards the applied rather than the
pure aspects of literature—were, in short, _per se_ rather scientific
than literary proper. It is at least noteworthy that the _Ciceronianus_
(though Erasmus was undoubtedly on the right side in it) was directed
against a purely literary folly, against an exaggeration of one of the
tastes and appetites which spur on the critic. And it is almost enough
to read the _Adagia_ and _Apophthegmata_—books much forgotten now, but
written with enormous zest and pains by him, and received with
corresponding attention and respect by two whole centuries at least—to
see how much is there left out which a literary critic _pur sang_ could
not but have said.
The _Ciceronianus_, however, must receive a little fuller treatment,
both because of its intimate connection with our subject, and because
hardly any work of Erasmus, except the _Colloquies_, so definitely
estates him in the new position of critical man of letters, as
distinguished from that of philosophical or rhetorical teacher.
[Sidenote: _The_ Ciceronianus.] The piece[11] (which has for its second
title _De Optimo Dicendi Genere_) did not appear, and could not have
appeared, very early in his career. He might even, in the earlier part
of that career, have been slow to recognise the popular exaggeration
which, as in the other matter of the Reformation itself, struck his
maturer intelligence. He glances at its genesis in divers of his
letters, to Budæus, to Alciatus, and others, from 1527 onwards, and the
chief “begetter” of it seems to have been the Flemish scholar, Longolius
(Christophe de Longueil), who during the latter part of his short life
was actually very much such a fanatic as the Nosoponus of the dialogue.
This person is described by his friends Bulephorus and Hypologus as
_olim rubicundulus, obesulus, Veneribus et gratiis undique scatens_, but
now an austere shadow, who has no aspiration in life but to be
“Ciceronian.” In order to achieve this distinction, he has given his
days and nights wholly to the study of Cicero. The “copy” of his
Ciceronian lexicon would already overload two stout porters. He has
noted the differing sense of every word, whether alone or in context;
and by the actual occurrence, not merely of the word itself, but of its
form and case, he will be absolutely governed. Thus, if you are to be a
true Ciceronian, you may say _ornatus_ and _ornatissimus_, but not
_ornatior_; while, though _nasutus_ is permitted to you, both
comparative and superlative are barred. In the same way, he will only
pass the actual cases and numbers found in the Arpinate; though every
one but, let us say, the dative plural occurs, the faithful must not
presume to usurp that dative. Further, he intends to reduce the whole of
Cicero to quantitative rhythm, fully specified; and in his own writing
he thinks he has done well if he accomplishes one short period in a
winter night. The piece begins with the characteristic Erasmian
banter,—Nosoponus is a bachelor, and Bulephorus observes that it is just
as well, for _his_ wife would in the circumstances either make an
irruption into the study, and turn it topsy-turvy, or console herself
with somebody else in some other place,—but by degrees becomes more
serious, and ends with a sort of adjustment of most ancient and many
modern Latin writers to the Ciceronian point of view.
-----
Footnote 11:
First printed at Basle, 1528. Besides the general editions, there are
some separate reprints (_e.g._, Oxford, 1693). But it ought to have
shared the popular diffusion of the _Colloquies_.
-----
That Erasmus, with his usual shrewdness, hits the great blot of the
time—the merely literal and “Capernaite” interpretation of the
classics—is perhaps less surprising than that he should hit such much
later crazes as the Flaubertian devotion of a night to a clause, and the
still prevalent reluctance of many really literary persons to allow a
reasonable analogy and extension from the actual practice of authority.
It was inevitable that he should offend the pedants (from Scaliger
downwards), and be attacked by them with the usual scurrility; and it is
not quite certain that any but very few of his readers thoroughly
sympathised with him. In this as in other matters he was not so much
before his time (for the time of the wise is a _nunc stans_), as outside
of the time of his contemporaries. But even here we see that he was
still of that time as well. He has no real sympathy with the
vernaculars, nor any comprehension of the fact that they are on equal
literary terms with the classical tongues; and even in regard to
this—even when he is vindicating the freedom of the letter—his thoughts
are fixed on the letter mainly.
That it was better so, there can be no doubt. Literary criticism proper
could wait: correction of the mediæval habit of indiscriminate
acceptance of texts could not. And still, as it is, we have from Erasmus
not a little agreeable material of that kind which we have sedulously
gathered in the preceding volume; which, from men like him, we shall not
neglect in this; but for which there will be decreasingly little and
less room, both here and still more in the “not impossible” third.
Considering the very wide range in subject of the _Colloquies_,[12] it
is not quite insignificant that literary matters have but a small place
in them; there is perhaps more significance still in the nature of the
treatment where it does occur. [Sidenote: _The_ Colloquies.] The chief
_locus_ is inevitably the _Convivium Poeticum_, where, except the
account of the feast itself, and the excellent by-play with the
termagant _gouvernante_ Margaret, the whole piece is literary, and in a
manner critical. But the manner is wholly verbal; or else concerned with
the very mint and anise of form. A various reading in Terence from a
codex of Linacre’s; the possibility of eliding or slurring the
consonantal _v_; whether _Exilis_ in the Palinode to Canidia is a noun
or a verb; whether the Ambrosian rhymes are to be scanned on strict
metrical principles; the mistakes made by Latin translators of
Aristotle,—this is the _farrago libelluli_. I must particularly beg to
be understood as not in the least slighting these discussions. They had
to be done; it is our great debt on this side to the Renaissance that it
got over the doing of them for us in so many cases; they are the
necessary preliminary to all criticism—nay, they are an important part
of criticism itself. But they are only the rudiments.
-----
Footnote 12:
I use the Tauchnitz ed. (with the _Encomium Moriæ_) in 2 vols.
(Leipsic: 1829).
-----
The _Concio, sive Merdardus_, after an explanation of the offensive
sub-title (which has less of good-humoured superiority, and more of the
snappish Humanist temper, than is usual with Erasmus), declines into
similar matters of reading and rendering—here in reference not to
profane but to sacred literature. And the curious _Conflictus Thaliæ et
Barbariei_, which is more dramatically arranged than most of the
_Colloquies_, and may even have taken a hint from the French Morality of
_Science et Asnerye_,[13] loses, as it may seem to us, an opportunity of
being critical in the best and real kind. The antagonists exchange a
good deal of abuse, which on Thalia’s part extends to some mediæval
writers cited by Barbaries (among whom our poor old friend John of
Garlandia rather unfairly figures), and the piece, which is short, ends
with a contest in actual citation of verse—Leonine and scholastic enough
on the part of Barbaries, gracefully enough _pastiched_ from the
classics on the part of Thalia. But Erasmus either deliberately
declines, or simply does not perceive, the opening given for a
_critical_ indication of the charms of purity and the deformities of
barbarism.
-----
Footnote 13:
_V._ E. Fournier, _Théâtre Français avant la Renaissance_ (Paris, n.
d.), p. 334 _sq._ It is not at all impossible that the indebtedness
may be the other way. The dates of these pieces are very uncertain.
-----
To thread the mighty maze of the _Letters_[14] completely, for the
critical utterances to be picked up there, were more tempting than
strictly incumbent on the present adventurer, who has, however, not
neglected a reasonable essay at the adventure. The adroit and
good-humoured attempt to soothe the poetic discontent of Eobanus Hessus,
who thought Erasmus had not paid him proper attention,[15] contains, for
instance, a little matter of the kind, and several references to
contemporary Latin poets. The most important thing, perhaps, is the
opinion—sensible as usual with the writer—that, as the knowledge of
Greek becomes more and more extended, translation of it into Latin is
more and more lost labour. But Erasmus, as we should expect, evidently
has more at heart the questions of “reading and rendering” which fill
his correspondence with Budæus and others. To take the matter in order,
a curious glimpse of the literary manners, as well as the literary
judgments, of the time is afforded by an enclosure in a letter to John
Watson of Cambridge. Watson wanted to know what Erasmus had been doing,
and Erasmus, answering indirectly, sends him a letter on the subject by
one Adrian Barland of Louvain to his brother. [Sidenote: _The_ Letters.]
Some incidental expressions here about Euripides as _nobilissimus
poeta_, and Apuleius as producing _pestilentissimas facetias_, are more
valuable to us than the copious laudations of Barland on Erasmus’ own
work, which pass without any “Spare my blushes!” from the recipient and
transmitter. We note that the moral point of view is still uppermost,
though the observations are taken from a different angle. Aristophanes
would have regarded Euripides as much more “pestilent,” morally
speaking, than Apuleius. The long and necessarily complimentary letter
(ii. 1) to Leo the Tenth contains some praise of Politian and much of
Jerome, on whom Erasmus was then engaged; and while the language of this
correspondence naturally abounds in Ciceronian hyperbole, it is not
insignificant that Erasmus describes the Father with the Lion as _omni
in genere litterarum absolutissimus_, which, assuming any real meaning
in it, is not quite critical, though Jerome was certainly no small man
of letters. The letter to Henry Bovill (ii. 10), which contains the
famous story of “mumpsimus” and “sumpsimus,” as well as the almost
equally famous account of the studies of the University of Cambridge in
the ninth decade of the fifteenth century, contains also a notable
division of his own critics of the unfavourable kind. They are _aut adeo
morosi ut nihil omnino probent nisi quod ipsi faciunt; aut adeo stolidi
ut nihil sentiant; aut adeo stupidi ut nec legant quod carpunt; aut adeo
indocti ut nihil judicent; aut adeo gloriæ jejuni avidique ut carpendis
aliorum laboribus sibi laudem parent_. And their children are alive with
us unto this day.
-----
Footnote 14:
I use the London folio of 1642, where the letter to Hessus, the Fifth
of the Twenty-sixth book, will be found at col. 1407-10. I wish Mr
Nichols’ excellent rearrangement had been available. But even its
first volume only appeared when this book was in the printer’s hands.
Footnote 15:
Hessus, it may be not superfluous to say, was one of the authors of
the _Epistolæ Obscurorum_, and in verse one of the very best Humanists
of Germany.
-----
There is a very curious, half modest and severe, half confident
criticism of his own verses in ii. 22. He admits that there is nothing
“tumultuous” in them, “no torrent overflowing its banks,” no _deinosis_:
but claims elegance and Atticism. It would be perhaps unfair to attach
the character of deliberate critical utterance to his effusive laudation
of the style of Colet in an early letter (v. 4, dated 1498, but Mr
Seebohm has thrown doubt on these dates, and Mr Nichols appears to be
completely redistributing them), as _placidus sedatus inaffectatus,
fontis limpidissimi in morem ditissimo e pectore scatens, æqualis, sui
undique similis, apertus, simplex, modestiæ plenus, nihil usquam habens
scabri contorti conturbati_. But it is interesting, and significant of
his own performances, as is the comparison (v. 19) of Jerome and Cicero
as masters of rhetoric. The somewhat intemperate and promiscuous
contempt of mediæval writing which appears in the _Conflictus_ (_vide
supra_) reappears, with the very same names mentioned, in an epistle
(vii. 3), _Cornelio Suo_, of 1490, which, if it be rightly dated, must
be long anterior to the Colloquy. But a much more important expression
of critical opinion than any of these appears in v. 20 to Ammonius,
where Erasmus gives his views on poetry at large. They are much what we
should suspect or expect beforehand. Some folk, he says, think that a
poem is not a poem unless you poke in all the gods from heaven, and from
earth, and from under the earth. _He_ has always liked poetry which is
at no great distance from prose—_but the best prose_.[16] He likes
rhetorical poetry and poetical rhetoric. He does not care for
far-fetched thoughts; let the poet stick to his subject, but give fair
attention to smoothness of versification. “Prose and sense,” in short:
with a little rhetoric and versification added.
-----
Footnote 16:
Mihi semper placuit carmen quod a prosa, sed optima, non longe
recederet.—_Op. cit._, col. 420.
-----
But on such matters he always touches lightly, and with little
elaboration; and to see where his real interest lay we have but to turn
to the above-quoted verbal discussions with Budæus on the one hand, to
the minute and well-known account of More’s life and conversation given
to Hutten in x. 30 on the other. Nor do I think that it is worth while
to extend to the remaining two-thirds of the letters the more exact
examination which has here been given to the first third or
thereabouts.[17]
-----
Footnote 17:
Those who would like to continue this may look, among many other
places, at xii. 7 (praise of Politian); xv. 17 (jubilation over the
confusion of Humanism); xvii. 11 (ditto to Vives); xxi. 4 (a good deal
on writers both ancient and modern), and especially xxvi. 5 (above
noticed).
-----
Once more, far be it from any reasonable person to blame Erasmus, or any
of his immediate contemporaries, for not doing what it was not their
chief business to do. That chief business, in the direction of
criticism, was to shake off the critical promiscuousness of the Middle
Ages, to insist on the importance of accurate texts and exact
renderings, to stigmatise the actual barbarism, the mere _mumpsimus_,
which had no doubt too often taken the place not only of pure classical
Latinity, not only of the fine if not classical Latin of Tertullian and
Augustine and Jerome, but of that exquisite “sport” the Latin of the
early Middle Age hymns, to hammer Greek into men’s heads (or elsewhere),
to clear up the confusion of dates and times and values, which had put
the false Callisthenes on a level with Arrian, and exalted Dares above
Homer. Even the literary beauty of the classics themselves was not their
main affair;—they had to inculcate school-work rather than University
work, University work rather than the maturer study of literature. Of
the vernaculars it was best that they should say nothing: for except
Italian none was in a very good state, and Humanists were much more
likely to speak unadvisedly with their lips if they did speak on the
subject. They worked their work: well were it for all if others did the
same.
For the reasons given, then, Erasmus and those whom he represents[18]
could do little for criticism proper; and for the [Sidenote:
_Distribution of the Book._] same (or yet others closely connected) the
northern nations, of whom Erasmus is the most distinguished literary
representative, could for a long time do as little: while some of them
for a much longer did nothing at all. Of the others, the criticism of
Spain, the criticism of France, and the criticism of England were all
borrowed directly from that of Italy. The Spaniards did not begin till
so late that their results, like those of Opitz and other Germans,
cannot be properly treated till the next Book. France was stirred about
the middle of the century, and England a very little later. These two
countries, therefore, will properly have each its chapter in the present
book. But two of much more importance must first be given to those
Italian developments, in our Art or Study, on which both French and
English criticism are based. The first will deal with those who write,
roundly speaking, before Scaliger; the second with the work of that
redoubted Aristarch, with the equally—perhaps the more—important name of
Castelvetro, with the weary wrangle over the _Gerusalemme Liberata_
(which, weary as it is, is the first great critical debate over a
contemporary vernacular work of importance, and therefore within measure
not to be missed by us), and with certain of the later Italian critical
theorists, of the sixteenth and earliest seventeenth century, who are
valuable, some as continuing, some as more or less ineffectually
fighting against, the neo-classic domination.
-----
Footnote 18:
See _infra_ (pp. 27-29) on Augustinus Olmucensis (Käsenbrot) and
Cornelius Agrippa.
-----
CHAPTER II.
EARLY ITALIAN CRITICS.
THE BEGINNINGS—SAVONAROLA—PICO, ETC.—POLITIAN—THE ‘MANTO’—THE ‘AMBRA’
AND ‘RUSTICUS’—THE ‘NUTRICIA’—THEIR MERITS AND DANGER—PETRUS
CRINITUS: HIS ‘DE POETIS LATINIS’—AUGUSTINUS OLMUCENSIS: HIS
‘DEFENCE OF POETRY’—PARADOXICAL ATTACKS ON IT BY CORNELIUS AGRIPPA,
LANDI, BERNI—VIDA—IMPORTANCE OF THE ‘POETICS’—ANALYSIS OF THE
PIECE—ESSENTIAL POVERTY OF ITS THEORY—HISTORICAL AND SYMPTOMATIC
SIGNIFICANCE—THE ALLEGED APPEAL TO REASON AND NATURE—THE MAIN STREAM
STARTED—TRISSINO—DIVISION OF HIS ‘POETIC’—HIS CRITICAL
VALUE—EDITORS, ETC., OF THE ‘POETICS’—PAZZI—ROBORTELLO, SEGNI,
MAGGI, VETTORI—THEORISTS: DANIELLO—FRACASTORO—FORMALISTS: MUTIO.
TOLOMEI AND CLASSICAL METRES—OTHERS: TOMITANO, LIONARDI, B. TASSO,
CAPRIANO—IL LASCA—BEMBO—CARO—VARCHI—MINTURNO—THE ‘DE POETA’—THE
‘ARTE POETICA’—THEIR VALUE—GIRALDI CINTHIO’S ‘DISCORSI’—ON
ROMANCE—ON DRAMA—SOME POINTS IN BOTH—ON SATIRE—PIGNA—LILIUS
GIRALDUS: HIS ‘DE POETIS NOSTRORUM TEMPORUM’—ITS WIDTH OF RANGE—BUT
NARROWNESS OF VIEW—HORROR AT PREFERENCE OF VERNACULAR TO LATIN—YET A
REAL CRITIC IN BOTH KINDS—SHORT ‘PRÉCIS’ OF THE DIALOGUES—THEIR
GREAT HISTORIC VALUE.
It is not necessary to discuss, or even to expose at any length, the
causes of the relative precocity of Italian Criticism in the
Renaissance. [Sidenote: _The beginnings._] They are practically all
contained in, and can by the very slightest expense of learning and
intelligence be extracted from, the fact that Italy was at once the
cradle of Humanist study of the Classics, and the only country in Europe
which possessed a fully developed vernacular. But for the greater part
of the fifteenth century attention was diverted from actual
criticism—except of the validating or invalidating kind—by the prior and
eagerer appetite for the discovery, study, and popularising, by
translation and otherwise, of the actual authors and texts. For a long
time, indeed, this appetite showed the usual promiscuity of such
affections; and it was scarcely till the time of Vittorino da Feltre
that much critical discrimination of styles was introduced. But these
and other kindred things came surely, and brought criticism with them,
though criticism still generally of the moral and educational kind. The
Boccaccian defence was taken up by various writers of note—Bruni,[19]
Guarino, Æneas Sylvius—and before the close of the fifteenth century two
of the greatest of Florentines had indicated in different ways the main
lines which Italian criticism was to take. These two were Savonarola and
Politian.
-----
Footnote 19:
Since I wrote this, an obliging correspondent, Mr P.G. Thomas of
Liverpool, has suggested actual quotation of a passage of Bruni’s on
prose style in his _De Studiis et Literis_. If I do not give this it
is, first, because indulgence in quotation here is as the letting out
of waters; and, secondly, because the tractate is translated in Mr W.
H. Woodward’s well-known and excellent book on _Vittorino da Feltre_
(Cambridge, 1897), where other matter of interest to us will also be
found.
-----
The tendency of each could be anticipated by any one who, though
actually ignorant of it, knew the characteristics of the two men in
other ways. [Sidenote: _Savonarola._] Fra Girolamo’s, of course, is
wholly ethical-religious, mainly neo-Platonic, but already presenting
the effect of Aristotelian details on the general Platonic attitude to
Poetry. Yet he is still scholastic in his general treatment of the
subject, and still adopts that close subordination of poetry to Logic
which is as old as Averroes and Aquinas, and which, odd as it may seem
to merely modern readers, is a very simple matter when examined.[20] He
disclaims, as usual, any attack on poetry itself, urging only the abuse
of poetry; but he follows Plato in looking more than askance at it, and
Aristotle in denying its necessary association with verse. The
Scriptures are the noblest poetry; all ancient poetry is doubtfully
profitable. In fact, he regards poetry altogether as specially liable to
abuse, and dubiously admissible into, or certainly to be expelled from,
a perfect community, such as that on which the fancy of the Renaissance
was so much fixed.
-----
Footnote 20:
The connecting and explaining link, sometimes omitted, is to be found
in _Rhetoric_—the close connection of which with Logic and Grammar is
no puzzle, while the connection of poetry with it was then an accepted
fact. It is rather dangerous to say that Savonarola, in connecting
poetry with logic, was “tending towards the elimination of the
Imagination in art.” The extremely equivocal nature of the word
“Imagination” (_v._ vol. i. pp. 120, 165) needs constantly
to be pointed out. In the ancient sense, Imagination is as much
connected with Logic as anything else; in the modern, Savonarola
probably never even thought of it.
-----
Savonarola’s remarks, which are contained in his four-book tractate, _De
Scientiis_,[21] are more curious than really important. Yet they derive
some importance from the great name and influence of their propounder,
from his position at the very watershed, so to speak, of time in Europe,
if not in Italy, dividing Middle Age from Renaissance, and from the fact
that they undoubtedly summarise that dubitative, if not utterly hostile,
view of literature in general, and of poetry in particular, which, as we
have seen,[22] was borrowed by the Fathers from the ancients, and very
much intensified by the borrowers. Fra Girolamo’s attitude is a rigidly
scholastic one; and to those who omit to take account of this, or do not
understand it, his view must seem wholly out of focus, if not wholly
obscure. Poetry is a part of Rational Philosophy; and therefore its
object must be _pars entis rationis_. It differs from Rhetoric in
working purely by Example, not Enthymeme. Its end is to induce men to
live virtuously by decent representations; and as the soul loves
harmony, it uses harmonic forms. But a poet who merely knows how to play
gracefully with feet only deserves the name as an old woman deserves
that of a pretty girl.[23] Still more preposterous is the habit of
calling poetry “divine.” Cosmos becomes chaos, if you admit that.
_Scientia autem divina est cujus objectum Deus: non illa cujus objectum
exemplum._ The making of verses is only poetry _per accidens_; and as
for the Heathen poets, _magnus diaboli laqueus absconditus est_ in them.
He does not, he says, actually “damn” poetry; but the gist of his
tractatule is that poets as a rule quite misunderstand their function,
and that poetry had better keep its place, and abstain from silly, not
to say blasphemous, airs.
-----
Footnote 21:
Otherwise, _De Divisione et Utilitate Omnium Scientiarum_. I have read
this in the Wittemberg ed. of his _Philosophiæ Epitome_ (1596, 8vo).
The passages quoted and referred to will be found at p. 807 _sq._ of
this.
Footnote 22:
Vol. i. p. 380 _sq._
Footnote 23:
Or, “a pretty old woman that of a girl,” the position of the epithet
between the two nouns being ambiguous.
-----
Such a point of view was, of course, liable to be taken by persons alike
unlikely to assume the “know-nothing” attitude of the more ignorant
Catholics, the Philistine-Puritan attitude of Protestantism, or the
merely Platonic and non-Christian theory of some free-thinkers. It might
well seem to thoughtful lovers of literature that its very existence was
in danger when it was attacked from so many sides, and that it was
necessary to intrench it as strongly as possible. Nor were the materials
and the plan of the fortification far to seek. The suggestion has been
rather oddly discovered in the Geographer Strabo;[24] but authorities
much more germane to the matter were at hand. Boccaccio himself had, as
we have seen, both taken note of the danger and indicated the means of
defence: Maximus Tyrius and Plutarch, the one in a manner more, the
other in a manner less, favourable to poetry, had in effect long before
traced out the whole Camp of Refuge on lines suitable either to the
bolder or to the more timid defender of Poesy. The latter could
represent it as the philosophy of the young, as a sort of
_Kindergarten_-keeper in the vestibule of the higher mysteries, as not
necessarily bad at all, and possibly very good. The former could argue
for its equality with philosophy itself, as pursuing the same ends by
different means, and appealing, not in the least _in forma pauperis_, to
its own part of human nature.
-----
Footnote 24:
Geog. i. 11, 5, where he describes poetry as a rudimentary philosophy,
providing an introduction to life, and educating pleasantly. I do not
remember who _first_, or who successively, pointed this out before
Shaftesbury, _Advice to an Author_, Part I. sect. 3, note _sub fin._
But Castelvetro (_Op. Var._, p. 83), and Opitz (_v. inf._, p. 361),
among others, refer to it.
-----
It seems by no means improbable that this view was partly brought about
by that remarkable influencer both of early mediæval and of early
Renaissance thought, Dionysius the Areopagite. [Sidenote: _Pico, &c._]
Readers of Mr Seebohm’s _Oxford Reformers_[25] will remember the curious
and interesting extracts there given from Colet’s correspondence with
Radulphus, and the explanation of the Mosaic cosmogony as intended to
present the Divine proceedings “after the manner of a poet.” This view
Colet seems to have extracted partly from Dionysius himself, partly from
Pico della Mirandola, the most remarkable of Savonarola’s converts,
while time and place are not inconsistent with the belief that the
future Dean of St Paul’s may have come into contact with Fra Girolamo
himself. Now, this kind of envisagement of poetry, certain to turn to
spiritual account in spiritually minded persons like Colet and
Savonarola, and in mystically, if not spiritually, minded ones like
Pico, would, in the general temper of the Renaissance, of which all
three were early illustrations, as certainly turn to more or less
spiritualised philosophy—ethical, metaphysical, or purely æsthetic, as
the case might be. And we can see in it a _vera causa_ of that certainly
excessive, if not altogether mistaken, devotion to the abstract
questions, “What is a poet?” “What is poetry?” “What is drama?” and so
forth, which we perceive in almost all the Italian critics of the
mid-sixteenth century, and which is almost equally, if less originally,
present in their Elizabethan pupils and followers. If Colet himself had
paid more attention to literature, we cannot doubt that this is the line
which his own literary criticism would have taken; and as his influence,
direct or through Erasmus and More, was very great on English thought,
both at Oxford and Cambridge, it is not impossible that it may have been
exerted in this very way.
-----
Footnote 25:
More especially p. 46 _sq._ (2nd ed.) The influence of the _Somnium
Scipionis_ of Macrobius may also have been considerable.
-----
The other line (the line which, according to the definitions of the
present work, we must call the line of criticism proper), though it was
perhaps hardly in this instance traced with boldness and without
deflection, started under yet more distinguished auspices. [Sidenote:
_Politian._] The _Sylvæ_ of Politian consist, in the main, of a direct
critical survey of classical poetry couched in the, as we may think,
somewhat awkward form of verse, decked with all the ornament that could
suggest itself to the author’s rich, varied, and not seldom really
poetical fancy, and arranged with a view to actual recitation in the
lecture-room for the delight and encouragement of actual students.[26]
-----
Footnote 26:
Politian’s critical faculty shows to more advantage here than in his
attribution of the Epistles of the Pseudo-Phalaris to Lucian (see
Bentley’s immortal _Dissertation_). He had almost better—from the
literary point of view—have believed them genuine.
-----
Neither purpose nor method can be regarded as wholly favourable to
criticism. The popular _conférencier_ (for this term best expresses
Politian’s position) is sure to be rather more of a panegyrist or a
detractor, as the case may be, than of a critic; and the lecturer in
verse is sure to be thinking rather of showing his own rhetorical and
poetical gifts than of the strict merits and defects of his subject. But
if we take the _Nutricia_ or the _Rusticus_, the _Ambra_ or the _Manto_,
and compare any of them with the well-intentioned summary of the
_Labyrinthus_,[27] we shall see without the least unfairness, and fully
admitting the difference of ability and of opportunity in the two men,
the difference, from the critical point of view, of the two
stand-points.
-----
Footnote 27:
_V._ vol. i. p. 408.
-----
In the “Manto,” the first of the _Sylvæ_, the most important
characteristic of sixteenth-century Italian criticism proper, the
exaltation of Virgil, is already prominent. [Sidenote: _The_ Manto.]
Politian, indeed, was too much of a wit, and too much of a poet himself,
to let his Virgil-worship take the gross and prosaic form which it
assumed a little later in Vida. But he has proceeded a long way from the
comparatively uncritical (and yet so more critical) standpoint of Dante.
He comes to details. Cicero had won the palms of sweetness from Nestor
and of tempestuous eloquence from Ulysses (a little vague this), but
Greece consoled herself in poetry. Ennius was too rude to give Latium
the glory of that. Then came Virgil. Even with the Syracusan reed
(_i.e._, in his Eclogues) he crushes Hesiod and contends with Homer.
Calliope took him in her arms as an infant, and kissed him thrice.
Manto, the guardian nymph of his native place, hailed his advent, and
summarised in prophetic detail his achievements in verse. Her town shall
enter the lists—secure of victory—with the seven competitors for Homer’s
origin. And then a whirlwind of magniloquent peroration (charged with
epanaphora,[28] that favourite figure of the sixteenth century) extols
the poet above all poets and all wonders of the world, past, present,
and to come.
-----
Footnote 28:
_Aut_ telo, Summane, tuo traxere ruinam,
_Aut_ trucibus nimbis aut iræ obnoxia Cauri,
_Aut_ tacitis lenti perierunt dentibus ævi.
_Dum_ ver tristis hyems, autumnum proferet æstas,
_Dum_que fluet spirans refluetque reciproca Tethys,
_Dum_ mixta alternas capient elementa figuras,
_Semper_ erit magni decus immortale Maronis,
_Semper_ inexhaustis ibunt hæc flumina venis,
_Semper_ ab his docti ducentur fontibus haustus,
_Semper_ odoratos fundent hæc gramina flores.
—_Manto_, 335-337, 342-348, p. 303, _ed. cit. inf._
-----
But Politian would have been faithful neither to those individual
qualities which have been noted in him, nor to that sworn service of
Greek which was the chivalry of the true Humanist, if he had thought of
depreciating Homer. [Sidenote: _The_ Ambra _and_ Rusticus.] The “Ambra,”
a poem longer than the “Manto,” and not much less enthusiastic, is
mainly devoted to a fanciful description of the youth of the poet, and a
verse-summary of the poems. Indeed the peroration (till it is turned
into a panegyric of Ambra, a favourite villa of Lorenzo) is a brilliant,
forcible, and _true_ indication of the enormous debt of all ancient
literature, science, and in fact life, to Homer, of the universality of
his influence, and of the consensus of testimony in his favour. The
“Rusticus” is rather an independent description and panegyric of country
life, as a preface to the reading of Virgil, Hesiod, and other bucolic
and georgic writers, than a criticism or comparison of them. [Sidenote:
_The_ Nutricia.] But the “Nutricia” is again ours in the fullest sense.
Its avowed argument is _De poetica et poetis_, and, in handling this
vast and congenial theme, Politian gives the fullest possible scope at
once to his genius, to his learning, and to that intense love for
literature without which learning is but as the Carlylian
“marine-stores.” In nearly eight hundred exultant hexameters,[29] the
vigour and fulness of which enable them to carry off without difficulty
the frippery of their occasional trappings, he traces the origin of
poetry, the transition from mere stupid wonder and the miseries of
barbarism to sacred and profane verse, the elaboration of its laws in
Judea by David and Solomon, in Greece by Orpheus, the succession of the
Greek and Latin poets in the various forms (it is noteworthy that
Politian is not at all copious on the drama) through the exploits of
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio to the patronage of poetry by Lorenzo
himself.
-----
Footnote 29:
If anybody charges me with plagiarism from Mr Symonds’ “leaping,” I
had rather plead guilty than quibble. The metaphor is too obviously
the right and only one, for the peculiar motion of Politian’s verse,
to any one who has an ear. I keep, however, the order of the edition I
use (that of Signor Isidoro del Lugo, Florence, 1867), not the perhaps
more logical one of _Nutricia—Rusticus—Manto—Ambra_, which Mr Symonds
followed and which is that of Pope, _op. cit. inf._
-----
This is criticism leaning dangerously on the one side to panegyric, and
likely to be (though it is not actually) dragged to the other still more
dangerously by partisanship; but it is still criticism. [Sidenote:
_Their merits_] The liker does not “like grossly,” or in accordance with
mere tradition. He loves, as the American poet says, “not by allowance
but with personal love”; and he can give reasons for the love that is in
him. He seeks the poetic pleasure from the Muse; he obtains it from her;
and he savours it, not merely with eagerness, but with acutely sensitive
taste. Though he might not at some moments be averse to refining on the
character of poetry generally, as well as on the character of this
poetic pleasure, it is this itself that he seeks, finds, and rejoices
in. Part at least of the spirit of Longinus is on him; he is
transported, and he knows the power that transports.
At the same time, it must be difficult, for all but the extremest
Virgilians, to think that he does not err by way of excess in his
estimate of that poet; and it must be still more difficult, even for
them, not to perceive that the pitch, even if excusable in the
individual, is dangerous as an example. [Sidenote: _and danger._]
Followers will make-believe; they will give inept reasons to support
their made belief; and worst of all, by that fatal catachresis of
“imitation” which is always waiting upon the critic, they will begin to
think, and to say, that by simply copying and borrowing from Virgil and
other great ones you may go near to be thought not entirely destitute of
their so-much-praised charm. The danger very soon ceased to be a danger
only, and we find a victim to it in Vida; but before coming to him we
may divagate a little.
The _furor poeticus_ of Politian put him much beyond other Humanists in
critical respects. His contemporary and friend, [Sidenote: _Petrus
Crinitus: his_ De Poetis Latinis.] Petrus Crinitus,[30] was, if not
quite of the same caste as Politian, by no means of the mere ordinary
Humanist type. His kissing-verses, _Dum te Neæra savior_, are among the
best of their kind between Petronius and Johannes Secundus; and his
curious _pot-pourri_, _De Honesta Sapientia_, is quite worth reading,
though one may know most of its constituents well enough beforehand. Yet
the literary inquiries here are surprisingly few, and treated in no
critical spirit whatsoever, so that there is no disappointment in one
sense, though there may be in another, with his three books, _De Poetis
Latinis_. These consist of a large number of separate articles in more
or less chronological order, by no means ill-written in the
classical-dictionary fashion: _Genitus est_ here; _obiisse traditur_
there, and in such a year; _totum se dicavit poeticæ facultati_, and the
rest. The taste as expressed by preferences is not bad, and the
approaches (they are hardly more) to critical estimate, though very
obvious and mostly traditional, are sound enough and fairly supported by
quotation. But of original attempt to grasp and to render the character
of Latin poetry generally, or of any one Latin poet by himself, there is
hardly a vestige.
-----
Footnote 30:
My copy is the edition of Gryphius (Lugduni, 1554). Crinitus (Ricci or
Riccio) had dedicated it nearly fifty years earlier, and just before
his own death, I believe, to Cosmo Pazzi, Bishop of Arezzo, on
November 1, 1505.
-----
It is not at all improbable that _Poetics_ in one form or another, both
Italian and “Tedescan,” may exist in MSS. of this period: [Sidenote:
_Augustinus Olmucensis: his_ Defence of Poetry.] there is certainly
work, even in print, of which very little notice has been taken
hitherto. For instance, a few months ago my friend Mr Gregory Smith saw
in a catalogue, bought, and very kindly lent to me, a _Dialogus in
Defensionem Poetices_, printed at Venice in 1493, and written by a
certain Augustinus Moravus Olmucensis.[31] This writer’s family name in
vernacular appears to have been Käsenbrot; and he was one of the early
German Humanists whose most famous chiefs were Reuchlin earlier, Conrad
Celtes and Eobanus Hessus later, who achieved much tolerable verse, and
in the _Epistolæ Obscurorum_ one immortal piece of prose, but who were
whelmed in the deluge of the Reformation struggles, and accomplished
little of the good which they might have done to Germany. The
_Dialogus_—which has the perhaps not quite accidental interest of having
appeared in the year between the writing of Savonarola’s somewhat
dubious backing of Poetry, and the first printing of Boccaccio’s
uncompromising and generous championship thereof—cannot be said to be of
much intrinsic importance. The author gives, or rather adopts, the
definition of Poetry as “a metrical structure of true or feigned
narration, composed in suitable rhythm or feet, and adjusted to utility
_and_ pleasure.” But his text is rather rambling. A parallel with
Medicine (the piece seems to have been written at Padua, which helps it
to its place here) is not very well worked out, and the latter part is
chiefly occupied with rather dull-fantastic allegorisings of the stories
of Tiresias, the Gorgons, the geography of Hades, and so forth. Still it
is a sign, and welcome as such.
-----
Footnote 31:
A fellow-citizen and contemporary printer generally appears in
biographical dictionaries under the heading “Olmucensis.” The history
of Olmütz, by W. Müller (Vienna, 1882), has not come in my way, so I
do not know whether Augustinus appears there. The _Dialogus_ is duly
in Hain, but has not, I think, been much noticed by literary
historians.
-----
Another Transalpine may be admitted here, for reasons of time rather
than of place, to introduce two undoubted Italians. [Sidenote:
_Paradoxical attacks on it by Cornelius Agrippa, Landi, Berni._] It is
customary to mention the name at least of Cornelius Agrippa,[32] if not
exactly as a critic, at any rate as being a denouncer, though no mean
practitioner, of literature. It is perhaps a just punishment for his
blasphemy that no one who only knew this would dream that the adept of
Nettesheim was as good a man of letters as he is. It constitutes the
fourth chapter of the _De Vanitate Scientiarum_ (1527), and is a mere
piece of hackneyed railing at the art which _aures stultorum demulcet_,
which is _architectrix mendaciorum et cultrix perversorum dogmatum_,
which is _pertenuis et nuda, insulsa, esuriens, famelica_. Alas! if some
tales are true, Cornelius (who really was a clever man) found that
Occultism could starve its votaries as well as Poetry. His attack is, in
fact, nothing but an instance of that measles of the Renaissance (nor of
the Renaissance only) paradox-quackery; and it has no solid foundation
whatever. The later (1543) _Paradossi_ of Ortensio Landi[33] exhibit
more frankly the same spirit, but in regard to individuals, especially
Aristotle, rather than to poetry and literature generally. And it is
probably not absent from Berni’s _Dialogo contra i Poeti_[34] (1537, but
written earlier), in which Poetry is dismissed by this agreeable poet as
suitable enough pastime for a gentleman, but out of the question as a
regular vocation or serious business.
-----
Footnote 32:
I have used the _Opera_, 2 vols., Lugduni, 1531, 8vo. The passages
cited will be found at ii. 14 _sq._
Footnote 33:
For Landi or Lando, see an interesting paper by Mr W. E. A. Axon, in
vol. xx. of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature.
Footnote 34:
This, which is very amusing, opens the ed. of Berni’s _Opere_ in the
Sonzogno collection (Milan, 1888).
-----
But we must return to serious persons. Of the critical texts to which we
pay chief attention in this book, there are not a few which are of far
higher critical value than Vida’s _Poetics_.[35] [Sidenote: _Vida._] But
it may be doubted whether even the similarly named treatises of
Aristotle and of Horace have had a greater actual influence; and I at
least am nearly certain that no modern treatise has had, or has yet had
a chance of having, anything like so much. In the recently renewed study
of Renaissance Criticism there has been, naturally enough, a repetition
of a phenomenon familiar on such occasions—that is to say, the
deflection of attention from pretty well-known if half-forgotten
material to material which had been still more forgotten, and was hardly
known at all. Daniello, Minturno, and the rest had, since the
seventeenth century, rested almost undisturbed; even Castelvetro and
Scaliger had more or less shrunk to the position of authorities, of some
importance, in regard to ancient criticism. But Vida, owing to the
unmistakable though unacknowledged borrowing of Boileau, the franker
discipleship of Pope, and the inclusion of a very characteristic
translation by Pitt among the usual collections of “British Poets,” had
taken rank once for all. It is true that it was a rank somewhat of the
museum order, but it existed. Now, the critics who followed him and
refined upon him have been disinterred, and are enjoying their modest
second vogue; and he is comparatively neglected, though a judicious
American[36] has put him in modern dress once more between his master
Horace and his pupil Boileau.
-----
Footnote 35:
For the Latin I use Pope’s _Selecta Poemata Italorum_ (2 vols.,
London, 1740), i. 131-189, and the anonymous _Poemata Selecta
Italorum_ (Oxford, 1808), 207-266; for Pitt’s Englishing, Chalmers’s
_Poets_, xix. 633-651. The original is Rome, 1527, 4to.
Footnote 36:
Prof. A. S. Cook (Boston, 1892).
-----
Of three things, however, the one is absolutely incontestable as a fact,
and the other two are not easily, I think, to be gainsaid by competent
authority. [Sidenote: _Importance of the_ Poetics.] The first is, that
Vida anticipates in time even the earliest of the prose critics of the
new Italian school by some couple of years, while he anticipates the
main group of these critics by more than twenty. The second is, that
though no doubt he took some impulse from Politian and other Humanists,
he is practically the first to codify that extravagant Virgil-worship
which reigned throughout the Neo-Classical dispensation. The third is
that, not merely in this point but in others, he seems, by a sort of
intuition, to have anticipated, at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, almost the whole critical orthodoxy of the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth. It is this which makes the translation of
him by Pitt so interesting; because the translator is, for once, no
traitor, but _plus royaliste que le roi_—fanatically imbued with the
principles, and equipped to the finger-tips with the practice, of his
original. But for the purposes of the scholar that original itself must
of course be taken.
The temper and the faith in which Vida writes are made manifest by the
very beginning of his poem—an invocation to the Muses woven of
unexceptionable _gradus_-tags, and deftly dovetailed into a dedication
to the luckless Dauphin Francis, who had then taken his father’s place
as Charles the Fifth’s prisoner at Madrid, and to whose captivity the
poem is modestly offered as a solace or pastime. [Sidenote: _Analysis of
the piece._] These invocations accomplished _more majorum_, Vida
proceeds to occupy his First Book with a sort of general clearing of the
ground. He is ready to teach the secret of all kinds of poetry; but the
poet must very carefully inquire what are the kinds to which he himself
is best adapted and best inclined. Commissioned work is dubious, unless
under a king’s command. But there is more than this: the poetic child
must be carefully nursed in the arts suitable to his great calling. He
must be as carefully guarded from the taint of vulgar and incorrect
speech; and must be regularly initiated into Poetry—Latin first,
especially Virgil, and then Greek, especially Homer. A short historical
sketch of poetry follows; but it, like everything else, is brought round
to the deification of the Mantuan. Hence Vida (who must be pronounced
rather long in weighing anchor) diverges to a good-natured intercession
with parents and teachers not to have the boys whipped too much, telling
a moving legend of an extremely pretty[37] boy who was actually whipped
to death, or at least died of fear. Emulation, however, is quite a good
stimulus; and by degrees work will be loved for itself. But original
poetical production must not be attempted too young; there must be time
for play; the rudiments of metre and so forth must be thoroughly learnt;
and, above all, _non omnes omnia_ must be constantly kept in mind. It is
better to begin with pastorals and minor subjects; solitude and country
life are very desirable circumstances. And so Book I. closes with a
fresh invocation of the spirit of poetry and a fresh celebration of its
power.
-----
Footnote 37:
_Insignis facie ante alios_, ed. Oxon., p. 215.
-----
After this rather ample prelude the author somewhat unreasonably (seeing
that the delay has been his own doing), but in coachmanlike fashion,
says _Pergite! Pierides_, and proposes to unfold the whole of Helicon to
coming ages. The first disclosure is scarcely novel. You must invoke
Jove and the Muses; nor will one Invocation do. When in doubt always
invoke.[38] Next you should, without holding out bombastic promises,
allure your reader by a modest but sufficient description of the subject
of your poem. So far the method of turning the practice of the ancients
into a principle is impartially adjusted to Homer and Virgil alike; but
after a few score verses the partisan appears. The beginnings of the
_Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, the plunging into the midst of things with
the wrath of Achilles, and the sojourn with Calypso, instead of the rape
of Helen (why not of Hesione?) or the launching from Troy, are duly
praised. But the elaborate Homeric descriptions—as that of the car—are
boggled at; the introduction of Thersites shocks Vida (Drances seems a
far nobler figure), and the pettiness of the subjects of some of the
Homeric similes would never suit the magniloquence of the Latian
Muse.[39] In Virgil, on the other hand, he can see no fault; even the
demand of Venus for arms to clothe her bastard son, which had given
qualms to admirers of old, does not disturb Vida at all; and his poem
seems to be slipping by degrees into a mere _précis_ of the _Æneid_,
that each trait actually found in Virgil may be registered as a pattern
to poets generally. He wrenches himself free for a moment to inculcate
the following of nature; but presently lapses into an elaborate
demonstration of the beautiful way in which the Mantuan _does_ follow
nature. In short, though now and then to “save his face” an illustration
is drawn _honoris causa_ from Homer, this Second Book on the
_ordonnance_ of the poem is, till it ceases with a panegyric of Leo X.,
little more than a descant _On the Imitation of Virgil_.
-----
Footnote 38:
For a very interesting and characteristic view of this “invoking” in
the next generation, see Castelvetro, _Op. Var._, _ed. cit. inf._, pp.
79-99.
Footnote 39:
“Drances ... consiliis non futilis auctor,
Dives opum, pollens lingua et popularibus auris.
... Neque enim in Latio magno ore sonantem
Arma ducesque decet tam viles decidere in res.”
It is interesting to hear the watchword “Low!” so early.
-----
It cannot be said that the Third Book offers much difference in this
respect—though the idolatry of Virgil is in parts a little more
disguised. It is, again _more majorum_, devoted to Diction, and, the
Muses having been invited to cross the stage once more, our Mentor first
reprobates Obscurity. But though you must not be obscure, you may and
should be Figurative, and not a few of the best known of our ancient
acquaintances the Figures—Metaphor, Hyperbole, Apostrophe, and so
forth—are introduced and commended, or sometimes discommended. It is
extremely noteworthy that the warnings-off include one far from ugly
conceit—
“Aut crines Magnæ Genetricis gramina dicat.”
This, of course, is quite in accordance with the horror of a daring
metaphor—of one which runs the risk of seeming “frigid”—which we find
prevailing from Aristotle to Longinus, and even in both these great men.
To us, most assuredly, the likening of the grass to the tresses of
Mother Earth is not in the least absurd, but a very beautiful and
poetical phrase, awaking, and adjusting itself aptly to, a train of
equally poetical suggestion. But before very long the advice as to the
choice of language takes the plain and simple form, “Strip the
Ancients!” The poet is bidden to fit
“exuvias veterumque insignia”
to himself; he is to gird himself up to the “theft,” and drive the spoil
on every occasion. He who trusts to his own wit and invention is
unhesitatingly condemned and pitied. If you want to live, to have your
works escape decay, you must “steal.” Vida repeats the very word over
and over again, and without the slightest bashfulness or compunction. He
is, however, good enough to admit that, if a new word is absolutely
wanted to express something not in the ancients, it may be invented or
borrowed—say from Greek—as the older Latins had themselves done. When
one word is difficult to find or awkward if found, you must employ
Periphrasis. Compounds are permitted to a certain extent (the weakness
of Latin and its brood in this respect is well known), but never to a
greater than that of two words. _Perterricrepas_ is stigmatised by
innuendo, though the word itself is Lucretian, and though there is
absolutely no principle in the restriction. You are to tone down
ill-sounding proper names, as Sicharbas into Sichæus. But in all cases
your words are to be entirely subservient to the sense, though they may
and should be suited to it—a doctrine which lends itself of course to
extensive Virgilian illustration. And so the poem concludes with a
peroration of some length, drawing ever and ever closer to, and at last
ending in, the laudation of the unrivalled Maro.
Had it not been for the astonishing accuracy with which, as has been
said, Vida actually anticipated the dominant critical taste of something
like three hundred years, and the creative taste of about half that
period, not many more lines than we [Sidenote: _Essential poverty of its
theory._] have given pages might have been devoted to him. That the poem
as a composition is a sufficiently elegant piece of patchwork may of
course be freely granted; and it deserves perhaps less grudging praise
for the extreme fidelity and ingenuity with which it illustrates its own
doctrines. But those doctrines themselves are, whether we look at them
in gross or in detail, some of the poorest and most beggarly things to
be found in the whole range of criticism. That the prescriptions are
practically limited to those necessary for turning out the epic or
“heroic” poem does not so much matter—though it is not entirely without
significance. Vida’s idea of poetry is simply and literally shoddy.[40]
That fabric—the fact is perhaps not invariably known to those who use
the word—differs from others, not as pinchbeck differs from gold, or
cotton from silk, but in being exclusively composed of already
manufactured and worn textures which are torn up and passed afresh
through mill and loom. And this is the process—and practically the sole
process—which Vida enjoins on the poet, going so far as to pronounce
anathema on any one who dares to pursue any other.
-----
Footnote 40:
Some would plead for “mosaic.” But the mosaic worker works his tiny
cubes _himself_—he does not steal them ready made and arranged.
-----
When it is examined in detail the proceeding may excite even more
astonishment, which will be wisely directed not more to [Sidenote:
_Historical and symptomatic significance._] the original conception of
it than to the extent to which, from what followed, it seems to have hit
certain peculiarities in the æsthetic sense of mankind as regards
poetry. We may easily go wrong by devoting too much attention to the
fact of Vida’s individual selection of the poet to whom all other poets
are bound _jurare in verba_. It is certain that, from his own day to
this, Virgil has appealed to many tastes—and to some of the
greatest—secure of his result of being pronounced _altissimo poeta_.
Those who like him least cannot but admit that Dante and Tennyson among
poets, that Quintilian and Scaliger—nay, that even Boileau—among
critics, are not precisely negligible quantities. But the real
subject—not merely of astonishment but of reasonable and deliberate
determination to adopt a position of “No Surrender” in the denial of
Vida’s position—is this selection of _any_ poet, no matter who it may
be, as not only a positive pattern of all poetic excellence, but a
negative _index expurgatorius_ of all poetic delinquency. Not Homer, not
Dante, not Shakespeare himself, can be allowed the first position; and
the main principle and axiom of all sound Criticism is, that not merely
no actual poet, but no possible one, can be allowed the second. This
kind of poetical predestination—this fixing of a hard-and-fast type,
within which lies all salvation and without which lies none—is utter
blasphemy against the poetical spirit. Not only will simple imitation of
the means whereby one poet has achieved poetry not suffice to enable
another to achieve it, but this suggestion is by far the least dangerous
part of the doctrine. It will probably lead to the composition of much
bad poetry, but it will not necessarily cause the abortion, or the
mistaking when born, of any that is good. The damnatory clauses of the
creed must have, and did have, this fatal effect.
Vida and those who followed him excused themselves, were accepted by
their disciples, and have recently been eulogised by our newest
Neo-Classics, as following Nature and Reason. [Sidenote: _The alleged
appeal to Reason and Nature._] That they said—perhaps that they
thought—they followed both is unquestionable.[41] But as a matter of
fact their Law of Nature—like the Articles of War in Marryat’s novel—was
a dead letter, owing to the proviso, from the first more or less clearly
hinted at and latterly avowed, that all of Nature that was worth
imitating had already been imitated by the ancients. As for the appeal
to Reason, it is a mere juggle with words; and it is astonishing that at
this time of day any one should be deluded by it. What Reason prescribes
Invocations to the Muses? What Reason insists upon beginning at the
middle instead of at the beginning? What Reason is there in the
preference of the pale _académie_ of Drances to the Rembrandt sketch of
the demagogue whom Ulysses cudgelled? of the shield of Æneas to the car
of Achilles? of Sichæus to Sicharbas? What has Reason to say (more than
she has to say against poetic transports altogether) against the
exquisite and endlessly suggestive metaphor of “the tresses of the
Mighty Mother” for the grass, with its wave, and its light, and its
shadow, and the outline of the everlasting hills and vales as of the
sleeping body beneath it? In all these cases, and in a hundred others,
we may boldly answer “None and Nothing!” The true Reason—the Mind of the
World—has not a word to say against any of these forbidden things, or in
favour of any of those preferred ones.
-----
Footnote 41:
Cf. _Poet._, ii. 162. _Semper nutu rationis eant res._
-----
But there is, let it be freely enough granted, a false Reason which has,
no doubt, very much to say against the one and in favour of the other.
The warped and stunted common-sense, the pedestrian and prosaic
matter-of-factness, which is no doubt natural enough in a certain way to
mankind, had made little appearance during the Middle Ages. These Ages
may be called, if any one chooses, childish, they may be still more
justly called fantastic; but they were never prosaic. It might be said
of their Time-Spirit as of the albatross, that
“Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher.”
But there was no doubt about the wings. With the Renaissance, prose, in
the good sense no doubt as well as in the bad, returned; and as if to
revenge itself for the universal employment of poetry during the Middle
Ages themselves, it proceeded to lay hands even upon the poet. He might
“transport”; with Longinus before them (if Vida had him not, his
followers had), they could not very well deny this. But his methods of
transporting must be previously submitted to a kind of inspectorship;
and anything dangerous or unusual was strictly forbidden. His bolt was
not to be “shot too soon nor beyond the moon”: he was most particularly
_not_ to be “of imagination all compact.” On the contrary, his
imagination was to be alloyed with doses of the commonest common-sense.
He might not even imp his wings save with registered feathers, and these
feathers were to be neither too long nor too gay.
Such are the principles that we find in Vida, and such their inevitable
result. Only let us once more repeat, not merely that he may well, in
the admirable words of Lord Foppington, “be proud to belong to so
prevailing a party” as the Neo-Classics of the following three
centuries, but that he actually led and almost made that party himself.
A considerable time—more than a quarter of a century—had elapsed between
Politian and Vida; but from the appearance of the latter’s book to the
end of the century not more than three years on the average[42] passed
without the appearance of a critical treatise of some importance.
[Sidenote: _The main stream started._] Every now and then a short lull
would occur; but this was always made up by a greater crowd of writers
after the interval. Such “rallies” of criticism (which occurred
particularly during the fourth decade[43] of the century, about its very
centre,[44] throughout the seventh,[45] eighth,[46] and ninth[47]
decades, and just at the end[48]) were no doubt to some extent
determined by the academic habits of the Italians, and the readiness
with which members of the same academy, or different academies, took up
the cudgels against each other. The individual exercises took various
forms. A very large part of the work consists of commentaries on
Aristotle’s _Poetics_; another, closely connected, of set “Arts Poetic,”
more ostensibly original; some deal with vulgar and some with “regular”
poetry, while the concrete and comparative method is by no means
neglected, though the abstract and theoretic is on the whole preferred.
To attempt classification by kind would be a sacrifice of real to
apparent method; and to trace the development of the same ideas in
different writers would lead to inextricable confusion and criss-cross
reference. We shall probably find it best to follow the rule which has
been observed with rare exceptions throughout this History—that of
giving the gist of particular books and the opinions of particular
authors together, and leaving bird’s-eye views to the Interchapters.
-----
Footnote 42:
Mr Spingarn’s useful chronological table gives twenty-five books by
nearly as many different authors for the seventy-three years. Nor does
this list pretend to be exhaustive; for instance, it omits
Robortello’s _Longinus_ (1554), and the important _De poetis nostrorum
temporum_ of Lilius Giraldus.
Footnote 43:
Dolce’s (1535) translation of Horace; Pazzi’s (1536) of Aristotle;
Daniello’s _Poetica_ (1536), and Tolomei’s _Versi e Regole_ (1539).
Footnote 44:
Robortello’s ed. of _Poetics_ (1548), and Segni’s translation (1549);
Maggi’s ed. (1550); Muzio’s _Arte Poetica_ (1551); Giraldi Cinthio’s
_Discorsi_ (1554).
Footnote 45:
Minturno’s Latin _De Poeta_ (1559); Victorius’ Aristotle’s _Poetics_
(1560); Scaliger’s own _Poetics_ (1561); the completion of Trissino
(1563); Minturno’s Italian _Arte Poetica_ (1564), and Castelvetro’s
_Poetics_ (1570).
Footnote 46:
The work of Piccolomini and Viperano.
Footnote 47:
That of Patrizzi, Tasso, and Denores.
Footnote 48:
That of Buonamici, Ingegneri, and Summo.
-----
Only two years after the appearance of Vida’s poem appeared the next
critical Italian book of importance, the first instalment of Trissino’s
_Poetica_. [Sidenote: _Trissino._] The first instalment—for a singular
interval took place between the beginning and the completion of this
work. The first four parts were, as has just been said, published in
1529, when the main stream of Italian criticism had hardly begun to
flow; the two last not till 1563, two years after the publication of
Scaliger’s great work, and after a full generation (in the ordinary
count) of active discussion of the matters.[49] Such conditions cannot
fail to affect the homogeneity of a book. But still Trissino put it
forth as one book in different parts, not, as he might very well have
done, and as others actually did, as two books; and we are therefore
entitled, and indeed bound, with the caution just given, to treat it as
a whole. The handsome quartos,[50] well printed and beautifully
frontispieced and vignetted, of the standard edition of Trissino’s
_Opere_, are perhaps, taking them together, rather an ornament to the
shelf than a plentiful provision of furniture for the mind. The
disadvantages of _versi sciolti_ have not often been shown more
conspicuously than in the _Italia Liberata_, and the _Sofonisba_ has
little but its earliness and regularity to plead as a set-off to the
general shortcomings of the modern classical Drama. The better repute of
Italian comedy would hardly have arisen from such pieces as _I
Simillimi_; and the _Rime_ are most ordinary things. In our own division
he is of some historical account; for it is impossible not to be
grateful to the first publisher of the _De Vulgari Eloquio_, and that
praise of earliness, which he has earned in more than one respect, must
be extended to the first four parts of the _Poetica_. He boasts justly
enough that nobody, save Dante and Antonio da Tempo, was before him, and
that both of these had written in Latin.
-----
Footnote 49:
But most of this latter part had been written in 1548-49, and all must
have been before 1550, when Trissino died. Even this, however, leaves
a twenty years’ gap, which Trissino attributes to the composition of
his great (or at any rate large) poem on the Goths.
Footnote 50:
2 vols., Verona, 1729.
-----
Trissino does not, in his first instalment, busy himself with those
abstract discussions which were soon to furnish the staple of Italian
criticism. [Sidenote: _Division of his_ Poetic.] He adopts Aristotle’s
“Imitation” briefly without cavil or qualification; and then passes, in
his First Part or “Division,” to the question of choosing your language,
in which he generally follows Dante, but with an adaptation to the time.
It is not with him a question of _making_ an “Illustrious Vulgar
Tongue,” an “Italian,” but of calling by that name one already adopted.
In his further remarks on Diction he sometimes borrows, and often
expands or supplements, the very words of Dante at first, and then
passes to elaborate discussion, with examples, of the qualities of
speech—Clearness, Grandeur, Beauty, Swiftness. Next he deals with what
he calls the _costume_—character, _ethos_, suiting of style to
person—with truth, artifice, and what he calls the “fashions”—that is to
say, the alterations of quantity, &c., by dwelling, slurring, syncope,
and the like. The arrangement of this First Division is not very
logical; but, as we have seen, cross-division has been the curse of
rhetorical-formal discussion of the kind from a very early period to the
present day. The Second Division deals with pure prosody, the division
of feet, shortening (_rimozione_), as in _ciel_ for _cielo_, elision,
cæsura, &c.; the Third with arrangement of verses and stanzas; the
Fourth with the complete forms of Sonnet, Ballata, and Canzone, the
sub-varieties of which were detailed with great care and plentiful
examples.
Here what might more properly be called the First Part, consisting of
these four divisions, ends; the long subsequent Second Part (made up of
the Fifth and Sixth Divisions) has a separate Preface-dedication
referring to the gap. These parts are not, like the others, divided into
sections with headings; and, doubtless on the pattern if not of any one
particular treatise, of the spirit of many which had gone between, they
deal with general questions. The Imitation theory is handled at some
length, and with citation of Plato as well as of Aristotle; the kinds of
poetry are treated on a more general standard, and not with mere
reference to the rules of constructing each. The larger part of the
Fifth Division is given entirely to Tragedy: the Sixth begins with that
Heroic Poem which was so much on the mind of the country and the
century. But it ends chiefly on Figures—the formal heart of Trissino,
long-travelled as it has been, fondly turning to its old loves at the
last.
The contents of the treatise or treatises, especially if we take them
with Trissino’s attempts to introduce the Greek Omega and the Greek
Epsilon into Italian spelling, his grammatical “Doubts,” and his later
“Introduction to Grammar,” his dialogue _Il Castellano_, and so
forth,[51] will show his standpoint with sufficient clearness.
[Sidenote: _His critical value._] It is almost purely formal in the
minor, not to say the minim, kinds of form. He is indeed credited by
some with a position of importance, in the history of the Unities. He
is, they say, the first to refer to the observance of the Unity of Time
as a distinction from “ignorant poets,”[52] giving therewith a
disparaging glance at mediæval drama.[53] But this overlooks the fact
that he is simply repeating what Aristotle says, with an addition much
more likely[54] to refer to non-Humanist contemporaries than to the
almost forgotten “mystery.” His theory of the Heroic Poem, like his
practice in the _Italia Liberata_, is slavishly Aristotelian. The chief
evidence of real development that I can find is in his treatment of
Comedy, where the extremely rapid and contemptuous dismissal of the
Master called imperatively for some supplement, considering the
popularity of the kind in the writer’s own time and country. Possibly
reinforcing Aristotle here with Cicero, and certainly using the famous
_Suave mari magno_ of Lucretius, he succeeds in putting together a
theory of the ludicrous to which, or to some subsequent developments of
it in Italy, Hobbes’s “passion of sudden glory” has been[55] not
unjustly traced. The “sudden” seems indeed to be directly due to Maggi,
a critic who will be presently mentioned with other commentators on the
_Poetics_. And Maggi had published long before Trissino’s later
Divisions appeared, though, it may be, not before they were written.[56]
-----
Footnote 51:
All these, with the _Poetica_ and the translation of Dante, will be
found in the second volume of the edition cited. I take the
opportunity of correcting an injustice to Trissino which I committed
at i. 417, and which was brought to my notice by a reviewer in the
_Athenæum_. “Giovan- [or Giam-] battista Doria” _does_ say, in his
dedication to the Cardinal de' Medici, that Dante wrote it in Latin,
adding, however, a clause of such singular obscurity that at first
sight one takes it as meaning that Dante _himself_ translated the book
into Italian. For discussion of this see Rajna’s ed. of the _De V.
E._, p. li _sq._
Footnote 52:
II. 95. Perhaps better “unlearned,” _indotti Poeti_.
Footnote 53:
Spingarn, p. 92.
Footnote 54:
_Et ancor oggi si fa._
-----
The growth during the interval had been of three kinds, sometimes
blended, sometimes kept apart. [Sidenote: _Editors, &c., of the_
Poetics.] The first kind consisted of translations, editions, and
commentaries of and on the _Poetics_; the second, of abstract
discussions of Poetry; the third, of more or less formal “Arts” not very
different from Trissino’s own. The first class produced later, in the
work of Castelvetro, a contribution of almost the first importance to
the History and to the Art of Criticism; and it could not but exercise a
powerful influence. It belongs, however, in all but its most prominent
examples (such as that just referred to, which will be fully discussed
in the next chapter), rather to monographers on Aristotle than to
general historians of Criticism, inasmuch as it is mainly parasitic.
[Sidenote: _Pazzi._] Before any book of original critical importance
later than Trissino’s had been issued, in 1536,[57] Alessandro de’ Pazzi
published a Latin translation of the _Poetics_, which for some time held
the position of standard, and a dozen years later came three important
works on the book—Robortello’s edition of 1548, Segni’s Italian
translation of 1549, and Maggi’s edition of 1550—all showing the
attention and interest which the subject was exciting, while, still
before the later “Divisions” of Trissino appeared, Vettori in 1560 added
his edition, of greater importance than any earlier one. Long before
this the book had become a regular subject of lectures. Of these writers
Robortello, and still more Vettori (“Victorius”), were of the greatest
service to the text; Maggi, who was assisted by Lombardi, to the
discussion of the matter.[58]
-----
Footnote 55:
Spingarn, p. 102.
Footnote 56:
The discussion occupies nearly four quarto pages, ii. 127-130.
Trissino, of course, does not neglect Quintilian’s handling of the
subject in _Inst._, vi. 3, and he quotes modern as well as ancient
examples.
Footnote 57:
Dolce had translated the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace into Italian the year
before.
Footnote 58:
Mr Spingarn has extracted from MS., and published as an appendix to
his book, an interesting review of these commentators and others, by
Leonardo Salviati, a successor of theirs in 1586, and too famous in
the Tasso controversy.
-----
In the critical handling of these editors and commentators we find, as
we should expect, much of the old rhetorical trifling. [Sidenote:
_Robortello_, _Segni_, _Maggi_, _Vettori_.] For all their scorn,
expressed or implied, of the Middle Ages, they repeat the distinctions
of _poetica_, _poesis_, _poeta_, and _poema_[59] as docilely as
Martianus, or a student of Martianus, could have done a thousand or five
hundred years before, and they hand it on too as a sort of charmed
catchword to Scaliger[60] and Jonson.[61] But brought face to face as
they are with the always weighty, though by no means always
transparently clear, doctrines of Aristotle, and self-charged with the
duty of explaining and commenting them, they cannot, if they would,
escape the necessity of grappling with the more abstract and less merely
technological questions. Robortello,[62] like Maggi, though less
elaborately, has a theory of the ludicrous. Both, and others,
necessarily grapple with that _crux_ of the _katharsis_ which has not
yet ceased to be crucial. Both, with Segni, discuss the Unity of Time
and differ about it; though none of the three has yet discovered (as
indeed it is not discoverable in Aristotle or Aristotle’s literary
documents) the yet more malignant Unity of Place. Vettori would extend
the cramp in time (not of course with the twenty-four hours’ limit) from
tragedy to epic. Most of them have arrived at that besotment as to
“verisimilitude” which is responsible for the worst parts of the
Neo-Classic theory, and which, in the pleasant irony common to all
entanglements with Duessas of the kind, makes the unfortunate lovers
guilty of the wildest excesses of artificial improbability. And in all,
whether they project their reflections on their text into more general
forms or not, we can see the gradual crystallising of a theory of
poetry, heroic, or dramatic, or general.
-----
Footnote 59:
Maggi in his commentary. See Spingarn, p. 27.
Footnote 60:
_V. infra_, p. 71.
Footnote 61:
_Discoveries_, _sub fin._ (iii. 419 of Cunningham’s 3 vol. ed.)
Footnote 62:
On him see also note _infra_, pp. 49, 50.
-----
Nor was such theory left without direct and independent exposition
during the period which we are considering. [Sidenote: _Theorists:
Daniello._] The first author of one is generally taken to be Daniello,
whose _Poetica_ appeared in 1536; and I have not discovered any earlier
claimant. I do not quite understand how Mr Spingarn has arrived at the
conclusion that “in Daniello’s theory of tragedy there is no single
Aristotelian element,” especially as he himself elsewhere acknowledges
the close—almost verbal—adherence of this early writer to the Stagirite.
But it is probably true that Daniello was thinking more of the Platonic
objections and of following out the Boccaccian defence, than of merely
treading in the footprints of Aristotle. He is the first, since
Boccaccio himself, to undertake that generous, if rather wide and vague
as well as superfluous, “defence of poesy” which many Italians repeated
after him, and which was repeated after them by our Elizabethans,
notably by Sir Philip Sidney.
As his little book is somewhat rare, and as it has such good claims to
be among the very earliest vernacular disputations of a general
character on poetry in Italy, if not also in Europe, it may be well to
give some account of it. My copy has no title-page, but dates itself by
a colophon on the _recto_ of the errata-leaf at the end, with a
veto-privilege, by concession of the Pope, the seignory of Venice, and
_all_ the other princes and lords of Italy, advertised by Giovan Antonio
di Nicolini da Sabio, Venice, 1536. It fills 136 small pages of italic
type, and is in dialogue form, rather rhetorically but not inelegantly
written, and dedicated by Bernardo Daniello of Lucca to Andrea Cornelio,
Bishop-Elect of Brescia. Daniello does refer to Aristotle, and borrows
(not perhaps quite intelligently) from him; but his chief sources are
the Latins, and he sets or resets, with no small interest for us, that
note of apology for the Poets against Plato which was to dominate
Italian criticism, and after exercising some, but less, effect on
French, to be strenuously echoed in England. There are some rather
striking things in Daniello. He is sound enough on the mission of the
poet as being to delight (though he is to teach too) and also to
persuade—the ancient union of Poetics and limited Rhetoric evidently
working in him. On the relations of poetry and philosophy he might be
echoing Maximus Tyrius and Boccaccio, and very likely is thinking of the
latter. But he strikes a certain cold into us by remarking that Dante
(whom he nevertheless admires very much) was perhaps greater and more
perfect as a philosopher than as a poet; and it does not seem likely
that he was aware of the far-reaching import of his own words when he
lays it down (p. 26) that Invention, Disposition, and Elocution being
the three important things, the poet is not, as some think, limited to
any special matter. If he had meant this, of course he would have come
to one of those _arcana_ of criticism which are even yet revealed, as
matter of serene conviction, to very few critics. But he pretty
certainly did not fully understand his own assertion; and indeed slurs
it off immediately afterwards. After taking some examples from Dante and
more from Petrarch, Daniello adopts (again prophetically) the doctrine
that the Poet must practically know all arts and sciences, in order that
he may properly deal with his universal subject. He is specially to
study what is called in Latin _Decorum_ and in Italian _Convenevolezza_.
Tragedy and Comedy are to be rigidly distinguished. And so this curious
First Blast of the Trumpet of sixteenth-century vernacular criticism is
emphatic against the confusion which was to bring about the mightiest
glories of sixteenth-century literature. A large part of the small
treatise is taken up with examples, in the old rhetorical manner of
qualities, “colours,” figures, &c. The whole of the latter part of the
First Book consists of these, as does almost the whole of the Second,
with an extension into verbal criticism of the passages cited as
illustrating kinds, technical terms, and the like. Indeed the general
considerations are chiefly to be found in the first forty or fifty
pages; and it is really remarkable how much there is in this short space
which practically anticipates in summary the ideas of most of the much
more voluminous writers who follow.[63]
-----
Footnote 63:
M. Breitinger (_Les Unités d’Aristote avant Corneille_, p. 7) says,
“ce livre n’est qu’un commentaire du _Canzoniere_ de Pétrarque.” He
can hardly have read it; and most probably confused it with the
_Spositione_ by Daniello which accompanies an edition of Petrarch
(Venice, 1549), and had been partially published eight years earlier.
This is a full but rather wooden commentary, chiefly interesting to
contrast with Castelvetro’s, and as showing the Italian tendency to
expatiate rather than to appreciate.
-----
Fracastoro, physician, logician, and not ungraceful poet of the
graceless subject of _Syphilis_, deals with both Plato and Aristotle in
his dialogue _Naugerius_, and discourses deeply on the doctrine of
Imitation, the Theory of Beauty, the Aristotelian conception of the poet
as more universal and philosophical than the historian, and the Platonic
objection to the intervals between poetry and truth. [Sidenote:
_Fracastoro._] This dialogue,[64] however (the full title is _Naugerius
sive de Poetica_, its chief interlocutor being Andrea Navagero, the best
follower of Catullus in Renaissance Latin[65]), tells a certain tale by
its coupling with another, _Turrius sive de Intellectione_. It is wholly
philosophical in intent and drift: it is perhaps the very
“farthest”—comparatively early (1555) as is its date—of those Italian
excursions, in the direction of making Criticism an almost wholly
abstract and _a priori_ subject, which balance the unblushing “Convey—do
nothing but convey,” of Vida and his followers. One of its very earliest
axioms (p. 324 _ed. cit. infra_) is that “qui recte dicere de hac re
velit, prius sciat necesse est, quænam poetæ natura est, quidque ipsa
poetica, tum et quis philosophi genius,” &c. It must be admitted that
Fracastoro is among the very ablest and most thoroughgoing explorers of
these altitudes. No one has more clearly grasped, or put more forcibly,
than he has that compromise between Plato and Aristotle which has been
and will be mentioned so often as characteristic of the Italian thinkers
in this kind. Indeed, the fifty pages of his Dialogue are almost a
_locus classicus_ for the first drawing up of the creed which converted
Sidney, and to which Milton, indocile to creeds as he was, gave scarcely
grudging allegiance. It is full, too, of interest in deliverances on
minor points—the difference between the orator and the rhetor (p. 343),
the shaping of a particular kind of “orator” into a poet, his
universality and his usefulness, the limits of his permitted fiction and
the character of his charm. But Fracastoro is wholly in these generals:
it is much if he permits himself a rare illustration from an actual
poet.
-----
Footnote 64:
_Fracastorii Opera_, 2 vols., Lyons, 1591. The _Naugerius_ is at i.
319-365.
Footnote 65:
A few of these poems of Navagero will be found in Pope’s _Selecta
Poemata Italorum_ (Londoni, 1740); more in the Oxford Selection
(1808); most in _Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum_ (Florence,
1552).
-----
And always in these writers we find the old deviations, the old red
herrings drawn across the scent. Fracastoro himself, reasonable as he is
in many ways, falls into the foolish old fallacy that a good poet must
be a good man, and the less obviously ridiculous but still mischievous
demand from him of the all-accomplished acquirements once asked of the
rhetorician.
Putting aside, for the moment, such rather later and much more important
works as the _Discorsi_ of Giraldi Cinthio, the _De Poetis Nostrorum
Temporum_ of his half-namesake Lilius Giraldus, and the two capital
treatises of Minturno, one of which appeared after Trissino’s book, we
may give a few words to two Italian tractates, the _Versi e Regole della
Nuova Poesia Toscana_of Claudio Tolomei (1539) and Muzio’s or Mutio’s
Italian verse _Arte Poetica_, which was published with some other work
in 1551.[66] [Sidenote: _Formalists: Mutio. Tolomei and classical
metres._] The last is noteworthy as an early example of the vernacular
critical poem—a kind suggested by Horace, and illustrated later by
Boileau and Pope, but certainly more honoured by its practitioners than
in itself. Yet it would not be just to deny Mutio a high if rather vague
conception of poetry, and, in particular, a most salutary conviction
that the poet must _dis_realise his subjects. Tolomei’s book, on the
other hand, challenges attention as probably the beginning of that
pestilent heresy of “classical metres” which, arising in Italy, and
tainting France but slightly (as was natural considering the almost
unquantified character of the modern French language), fastened with
virulence upon England, affected some of our best wits, and was within
measurable distance of doing serious harm. The plague was so much at its
worst with us that the chapter on Elizabethan Criticism will be the
proper place for its discussion. But though Ascham himself thought it no
plague at all, it was certainly one of the very worst of these
“Italianations” to which he objected so violently; and Tolomei was its
first prophet in the country of its origin.
-----
Footnote 66:
_Rime Diverse_ (Venice, f. 68-94). The name on the title-page is
Mu_t_io, and the spelling Mu_z_io, which some books have, may lead to
confusions; for there appears to be another _Rime Diverse_ of Muzio
four years earlier, which does not contain the _Arte_. This is in
blank-verse, agreeably written, with some general observations on
Poets and Poetry, Ancient and Modern, and practical enough. Says
Mutio, _e.g._,—
La catena
Di Dante non e leggiadra, se non
Fa punto con la terza sua rima.
-----
Not a few names, some famous in European literature for other
performances of their bearers, some almost unknown except to the student
of this subject, fall into one or other of these classes, or, as very
commonly happens, qualify in a undecided manner for two, or for all.
[Sidenote: _Others: Tomitano, Lionardi, B. Tasso, Capriano._] As early
as 1545 Tomitano[67] had dwelt on the above-mentioned fallacy of the
necessary learning of poets: Lionardi,[68] nine years later, in a pair
of Dialogues expressly devoted to _Poetic Invention_, extended this in
the widest and wildest manner, so that the poet becomes a perfect
good-man-of-the-Stoics—an all-round and impeccable Grandison-Aristotle.
The same idea and others were emitted by Bernardo Tasso, good father of
a great son, who not only practised poetry to the vast extent of the
_Amadigi_, but discussed it in a formal _Ragionamento_ of the
subject.[69] Later, Capriano[70] gave the more elaborate exaltation of
poetry as a sort of Art of Arts, combining and subduing to its own
purpose all forms of Imitation, and following up Vida’s superfine
objections to Homer as trivial and undignified, and his rapturous
exaltation of the “decency” of Virgil. This book, very short, is also
rather important—more so than might be judged from some accounts of it.
It is neither paged, nor numbered in folio, but does not extend beyond
signature F ii. of a small quarto, with a brief appendix of Italian
verse. There are eight chapters—the first discussing what things are
imitable and what imitation is; the second vindicating for poetry the
portion of supreme imitative art; the third dividing it into “natural”
and “moral”; the fourth arguing that Epic or Heroic (not, as Aristotle
thinks, drama) is the highest kind of “moral” poetry; the fifth
containing, among other things, an interesting revolt against Greek; the
sixth discoursing on number and sound; the seventh exalting the good
poem above everything; and the eighth rapidly discussing the origin,
rank, necessity, parts, force, end, &c., of Poetry. Capriano does not
give himself much room, and fails, like most of these critics, in the
all-important connection of his theories with actual work; but he must
have been a man of no common independence and force of thought.[71]
-----
Footnote 67:
_Delia Lingua Toscana._ The four Books of this are rather empty
things. The first goes to show that Philosophy is necessary to the
perfect orator; the second that it is equally necessary to the perfect
poet; the third that Rhetoric is useful for writing and speaking with
eloquence; while the fourth discusses oratorical diction and its
ornaments. Few of the books cited here better justify De Quincey’s too
sweeping ban.
Footnote 68:
_Due Dialogi dell' Inventione Poetica di Alessandro Lionardi_ (Venice,
1554). No one carries the _ventosa loquacitas_ about the origin of
laws, and virtues, and opinions, and what not, farther than Lionardi;
no one is more set on defining “_the_ Historian,” “_the_ Orator,”
“_the_ Poet,” &c.; no one pays more attention to all the abstractions.
At p. 18 he has a curious catalogue, occupying the greater part of a
small quarto page, and capable of being extended to a large folio, or
many large folios, of “subjects” and “effects,” in regard to history,
enmity, discord, war, peace; in short, all the contents of the
dictionary. “Perdonatemi,,” says another interlocutor, “se interrompo
i vostri ragionamenti,” and indeed they might have gone on for ever.
But the new man has his catalogue ready, too.
Footnote 69:
Venice, 1562. It is very short and very general. There are some
literary touches in his _Lettere_ (2 vols., Venice, 1562), especially
a correspondence with Cinthio on the _Amadigi_.
Footnote 70:
_Della Vera Poetica_, Venice, 1555.
Footnote 71:
His volume appears to be almost _introuvable_ for sale; but the
British Museum has no less than three copies. I wish it would give me
one of them.
-----
More important than these to us, though less technically critical, and
therefore in some cases commending themselves less to students of the
subject from some points of view, are some poets and men of letters of
the earlier and middle parts of the century who have touched critical
subjects. [Sidenote: _Il Lasca._] I should myself regard the
Prologues[72] of Grazzini (“Il Lasca”)—in which he repeatedly and
unweariedly protests against the practice of moulding Italian comedy
upon Plautus and Terence, regardless of the utter change in manners, and
so forth—as worth shelves full of “in-the-air” treatises. For this
application of the _speculum vitæ_[73] notion, the idea of _The Muses’
Looking-glass_, which was obtained from Cicero through Donatus, was the
salvation of the time, keeping Comedy at least free from the fossilising
influences of the false Imitation. Although the unwary might reasonably
take the author of the famous caution not to read St Paul for fear of
spoiling style (there are at least half-a-dozen of the greatest pieces
of style in the world to be found in the two _Epistles to the
Corinthians_ alone) as either a silly practitioner of undergraduate
paradox or a serious dolt, yet the _Della Volgar Lingua_ of Bembo[74] is
by no possibility to be neglected in taking account of the critical
attitude of Italy at the time. [Sidenote: _Bembo._] It is of course too
purist and “precious”; it “sticks in the letter” to a perilous extent;
but there is real appreciation in it of what the writer can appreciate,
and among the things that he can appreciate are good and great things.
[Sidenote: _Caro._] Annibale Caro has (and deserves) a bad name, not
merely for the unfair manner in which he carried on his controversy with
Castelvetro (see next chapter), but for the tedious logomachy of the
controversy itself, which on his side, besides filling a regular
_Apologia_ and other pieces, overflows constantly into his letters.[75]
[Sidenote: _Varchi._] But this very controversy testifies to the zest
and the undoubted sincerity with which literary matters were dealt with
by the Italians, and it served further as a starting-point for the
elaborate _Ercolano_[76] of Varchi, who in divers lectures, &c., also
dealt with the more abstract questions of the nature of poetry, the
status of the poet, and the like. In short, the documents on the subject
have already reached the condition referred to by the warning given in
the introductory chapter to the first volume of this book, that while in
that volume we had to search for and discuss every scrap bearing on the
subject, here large classes of document would have to be treated by
summary and representation only.
-----
Footnote 72:
Especially in those to _La Strega_ and _l’Arzigoglio_ (_Commedie di A.
Grazzini_, ed. Fanfani, Florence, 1897), pp. 173 and 435. Gelli and
others do much the same.
Footnote 73:
The proper quotation is _imitatio vitæ, speculum consuetudinis, imago
veritatis_. It is given as early as by Robortello (see note opposite).
But with that intelligent operation of the _communis sensus_ which
pedants dislike, _speculum vitæ_ was what took the general.
Footnote 74:
In _Prose Scelte di P. Bembo_, ed. Costero (Milan, 1880), pp. 141-278.
Footnote 75:
Ed. Costero, 2 vols. (Milan, 1879 and 1884).
Footnote 76:
Ed. Costero (Milan, 1888).
-----
Moreover, great as are the volume and the intensity of Italian attention
to criticism in the years between 1535 and 1560, the Devil’s Advocate
may, without mere cavilling, cast disparagement upon most of its
expressions. The dealings of the scholars with the subject are no doubt
to a certain extent accidental or obligatory; they might have bestowed,
and in fact actually did bestow,[77] at least equal pains on texts not
directly, or not at all, concerning criticism. The work of Tolomei is
merely an example of those Puckish tricks which something sometimes
plays on the human intellect; that of Muzio a dilettante exercise
mainly. The treatises of the others from Daniello to Varchi hover
between abstract discussion, which sometimes approaches twaddle,
dilettante trifling which makes the same approach on another side, and
an estimable, but for literature at large comparatively unimportant,
guerilla about the virtues and qualities, the vices and defects, of the
Italian language—a language which had already seen its very best days,
and was settling down to days very far from its best. The three authors
to whom we shall now come, and who will occupy us to the end of this
chapter, escape, in one way or another, the brunt of all these
grudgements. Minturno supplies us with the most wide-ranging and
systematic handlings of poetry in its general, and of “regular” and
“vulgar” poetry in their particular, aspects that had yet been produced,
Giraldi Cinthio with some of the most original critical essays, Lilius
Giraldus with a survey of the poetical, and to some extent the literary,
state of Europe in his time, for the like of which we may look in vain
before and not too successfully since.
-----
Footnote 77:
Robortello edited Ælian and Æschylus as well as Longinus and
Aristotle; Petrus Victorius was busied very widely with the classics.
The combined treatment of Aristotle and Horace by the former in his
_Explicationes_ (Basle, 1555) is distinctly noteworthy. His dealings
with the Greek are almost pure commentary; those with the Roman,
though called a “Paraphrase,” are much freer. He begins with a sort of
expository lecture on the _Epistola ad Pisones_, introducing most of
its matter and much illustration from other authors. Then separate
short essays follow on Satire, Epigram, Comedy, _Sales_, and Elegy.
The heading “Sales” is especially worthy of attention as illustrating
that tormenting preoccupation of the classics on Wit, which
transmitted itself to the Renaissance, and is found in moderns as
recent as Whately. Robortello exercised much authority, and is shown
by M. Morel-Fatio in his recent edition of Lope de Vega’s _Arte Nuevo_
(_v. infra_, p. 343) to have furnished the Spanish poet with much, if
not most, of the miscellaneous erudition which he displays to no great
purpose. Robortello’s earlier _editio princeps_ of Longinus (ibid.,
1554) is noteworthy in a different way. He was by no means more modest
than the average Renaissance scholar; on the contrary, he is accused
of special arrogance. But this _opus redivivum, antea ignotum, e
tenebris in lucem editum_, as he calls it, seems to have puzzled, if
not actually abashed, him. He has no introduction, no regular
commentary: only side-headings of the matter, from which, he says,
“all the method of the book, and the order of the questions treated,
and the whole rationale of the teaching,” and much else, can be
learnt. The spirit was too potent for him who had called it up. Of
other mainly classical commentators, Riccoboni (_Compendium Artis
Poeticæ_, 1591) is again useful, because he combines Horace and
Aristotle, and practicalises the combination, identifying the
Aristotelian or pseudo-Aristotelian (see vol. i. p. 34) “Episode” with
the first Four Acts, the Exodus with the Fifth, &c. Maggi, Segni,
Zabarella are even farther from our sphere.
-----
Antonio Sebastiano, called Minturno (which is stated—I know not with
what correctness—in a MS. note in my copy of the _Arte Poetica_ to be
merely an “academic” surname), is a good example of that combination of
scholastic thoroughness and diligence with wider range of study which
honourably distinguishes the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,
but which, save in rare instances, went out in the later years of the
last-named age, and has too seldom been recovered since. [Sidenote:
_Minturno._] In 1559 he produced a _De Poeta_ and in 1563 an _Arte
Poetica_, one of which, as the respective titles imply, is written in
Latin and the other in Italian, but which are by no means replicas of
each other with the language changed. Both were printed at Venice; and
though they came from different presses, they range very well together,
both being in a smallish quarto, but with very close type, so that the
560 odd pages of the _De Poeta_ and the 450 odd of the _Arte_ contain
between them a vast amount of matter. The plans of the two
treatises—which are allotted naturally according to their language, the
Latin to poetry in general and to classical verse, the Italian to its
own kind—are not strikingly but slightly different. The _De Poeta_,
which is addressed to Ettore Pignatelli, Duke of Bivona, takes the
time-honoured form of a symposium or dialogue, the persons being the
poet Sannazar (who is always introduced by his Latin names of Actius
Syncerus) and his friends, and the scene the famous Villa Mergellina.
Indeed, Minturno seems to have written the book at Naples, whence he
dates it a year before that of its appearance. In the later work he
himself is the principal speaker, his antagonists or interlocutors being
Vespasiano Gonzaga in the First book, Angelo Costanzo in the Second,
Bernardino Rota in the Third, and Ferrante Carafa in the Fourth. The
dialogue-form, it may also be mentioned, is less, and that of the formal
treatise more, prominent in the _Arte_.
Both volumes have the invaluable accompaniment of side-notes—an
accompaniment which not only makes the writer’s point more easily
intelligible to the reader, but prevents the writer himself from
straying. [Sidenote: _The_ De Poeta.] But the _De Poeta_ is not
furnished with either Contents or Index, while the _Arte_ is liberally
provided with both. This, in the first case, is to be regretted, not
merely because the book is much the longer of the two, but because the
indulgences of the dialogic form are more fully taken in it. After a
suitable beginning (with a _fons_ and a _platanus_ and other
properties), the subject is opened with a panegyric of poetry. The
origins of literature were in verse; all nations practised it. A more
sensible line is taken (it will be understood that the interlocutors of
course take different views, and one judges by the general drift) on the
subject of the all-accomplishment of the poets, than is the case with
some of the writers above mentioned; but Minturno points out (which is
no doubt true enough) that poetry in a manner “holds all the Arts in
fee,” can draw upon and dignify all. On the connection of verse with
poetry he holds a middle position, close to that of Aristotle himself,
and not very different from that long after taken up by Coleridge in the
_Biographia Literaria_. He will not pronounce verse essential to poetry,
but evidently thinks that poetry would be extremely foolish to dispense
with its practically inseparable companion. The consecrated procession
of poets from Amphion and Orpheus to Homer and even Virgil is set
a-going as usual. Then the discussion, after a little skirmishing,
settles down at p. 22 to the question of Imitation; and, amid much
scholastic subdivision of its kinds and manners, the delight produced by
this is very strongly insisted on. Next, the Platonic onslaught is
discussed, and urged or repelled by turns; the defence being clearly the
author’s side, and maintained with considerable vigour, and with
plentiful examples from Homer and Virgil both. The line taken, however,
leads Minturno to lay stress on the _instructive_ power of poetry. The
poet’s purpose will, he holds, govern his imitation, and direct it so as
to excite admiration in the reader or hearer. This is possibly the
source of the next-century endeavour to elevate Admiration to the level
of Pity and Terror themselves.[78] Hence Minturno is constrained to
share the idea of the necessarily virtuous character of the poet: and,
except that he never separates the _delectare_ from the _prodesse_
altogether, he hugs the dangerous shore of the _hérésie de
l’enseignement_ too closely in his endeavour to escape the Platonic
privateers. By degrees the discussion glides into the comparison of Epic
and Tragedy, and the question whether Poetry is a matter of Art or of
Inspiration—and decides that it is both. And the First Book ends with
the pronouncement that a good poet must be a good man, but that he may
sometimes deal with not-good things.
-----
Footnote 78:
Let, however, the reader beware of being misled by the occurrence of
the _word_ “Admiratio” in the side-notes of pp. 52, 53. It is used in
quite a different sense.
-----
The Second begins with one of the demonstrations (which to us seem
otiose, but which were very important, not merely to the ideas of the
age, but as bulwarks against the Puritan and Utilitarian objections of
all times) that the poets, especially Homer and Virgil, are masters,
whether necessarily or not, of all the liberal arts and of philosophy as
well. When we remember the Philistine anti-poetics of Locke much more
than a century after Minturno’s time—nay, the still existing, if
lurking, idea that “great poet” must be (as somebody asserts that it is
or was in Irish slang) synonym for “utter fool”[79]—we shall not bear
too hardly on our author. But this discussion, in its turn, is bid to
“come up higher.” What is to be the _Institutio Poetæ_? What is he to do
and learn that he may in turn (p. 102) “delight, teach,
_transport_.”[80]
-----
Footnote 79:
Perhaps, if this be true, the Irish got it from their French friends
of the seventeenth century, among whom, according to the _Ménagiana_,
_poeta regius_ was the correct title of the King’s Fool.
Footnote 80:
Ut doceat, ut delectet, ut moveat. Suggested by Cicero on the orator.
-----
In all cases the admiration of the reader or hearer (p. 104) must
follow. But it will be obtained not quite in the same way as by the
orator, and with a difference in the different kinds of poetry. The
parts of a poem, too, are dealt with in a more or less Aristotelian
manner, but with large additions and substitutions, in view of the
greater range of literature that Minturno has before him, and of the
desire specially to bring in Virgil, of whom our critic, though not
quite such a fanatical partisan as Vida and Scaliger, is a hearty
admirer (see for instance p. 135). All the “parts” have more or less
attention in this book, both with reference to the different “kinds,”
especially epic and “heroic,” and also with regard to those general
principles of poetry which Minturno never forgets. The Third Book of
nearly 100 pages is directly devoted to tragedy; and Minturno pursues in
reference to this the same plan of following, but with a certain
independence and a great deal of expatiation, in Aristotelian footsteps.
He still lays great stress on Admiration; and it is really curious that
in thus forestalling, no doubt, Corneille’s teaching, he has by
anticipation hit at Racine and the _doucereux_ in a phrase[81] which has
been fairly guessed to have supplied Milton with a famous one[82] of his
own. He does not pay so much attention to the _crux_ of the _katharsis_
(on which most of these critics necessarily dwell more or less) in this
treatise as in the _Arte_ (_v. infra_).
-----
Footnote 81:
P. 173. _Amatorio mollique sermone effeminat._ See Spingarn, p. 70. It
should, however, be observed that Minturno is here avowedly expressing
the censure of Aristophanes on Euripides rather than his own opinion.
Footnote 82:
“Vain and amatorious.”
-----
The Fourth Book, even longer than the Third, is, like it, entirely
devoted to one subject; and the change of modern as compared with
ancient view is shown strongly by the fact that this subject is Comedy.
The admirers of Plautus and Terence, the countrymen of Ariosto and
Machiavelli, could not, indeed, be expected to turn from Comedy with the
disdainful shoulder of Aristotle; but such elaborate treatment as this
shows the hold which the subject had obtained. Yet it is ominous that
Minturno devotes especial attention to the subject of types; though, in
accordance with his usual practice, he gives much space to a general
treatment of the Ludicrous and its sources. There is also a good deal of
curious detail in this Book as to costume and theatrical arrangements
generally. The Fifth turns to Lyric, and sets forth its different kinds,
including Satire among them. And the Sixth deals with Diction and
Prosody, the section allotted to the latter being comparatively short
and interspersed between two on Style, proceeding of course a good deal
by Figures, though not in the most cut-and-dried manner, and illustrated
(as indeed are all the later Books) by abundant and unceasing quotation.
It may be observed that, as perhaps might be expected, the
dialogue-character disappears in them more and more, and the book takes
the form of a simple exposition by one or other of the personages. This
change prepares us for the arrangement of the _Arte_.
This book, as dates given and to be given show, was published
subsequently to the appearance of Scaliger’s _Poetic_, and may have been
to some extent influenced by it; but I do not think that Minturno, who
mentions Trissino and Bembo and Tolomei, ever refers to it, and he does
not give one the idea of a man who would conceal debts. [Sidenote: _The_
Arte Poetica.] In fact, his work upon the same subject had been
completed earlier. In this he has necessarily to go over some of the
same ground; but, as noted above, he repeats very little. He starts with
a general definition of poetry as an imitation of various manners and
persons in various modes, either with words or with harmonies or with
“times” separately, or with all these things together, or with part of
them. Other ternaries follow, as matter, instrument, and mode; manners,
affections, and deeds; suprahuman, human, and infrahuman; personages;
words, music, and “times”; epic, scenic, and melic; prose, verse, and
mixed narrative. These distinctions are put forth in an orderly manner,
but succinctly and without the discussion which is a feature of the
general parts of the _De Poeta_, Minturno evidently thinking that he has
sufficiently cleared the ground in that work. After some further
exposition of forms, &c., the handling is more specially directed to
Epic (_i.e._, narrative generally), and its parts and conditions are
expounded, still with a certain swiftness, but at greater length than
before. And once more the treatment concentrates itself—this time upon
Romance. The origin of the name and thing is lightly touched, and then
the great question is broached,[83] “Is Romance poetry?” Minturno will
not refuse it the name; but he cannot admit that it is the same kind of
poetry as that of which Aristotle and Horace have spoken. The
contrarieties of Romance and Heroic poetry are then carefully examined;
and while much praise is given to Ariosto, some fault is found with him,
and the mantle of the _Odyssey_ is especially refused him. In fact,
Minturno holds generally that the Romance is a defective _form_ of
poetry, ennobled by the excellence of some of its writers—a sort of
middle position which is very noteworthy. But he hardens his heart
against the irresistible historical and inductive argument which the
defenders of the Romance had already discovered, and will have it that
the laws of poetry are antecedent to poetic production (p. 32). And for
his main style of narrative poetry he returns to Epic or “Heroic”
proper, and discusses it on the old lines of Plot, Character, Manners,
Passions or Affections, &c., always with modern examples from the great
Italian poets. He also makes the very important, but very disastrous,
suggestion that the Christian religion provides all the necessary
“machinery” of Heroic,—a suggestion which was elaborately followed out
by Tasso and by Milton and by many a lesser man, and which Dryden had
thought of following, though he luckily did not.[84]
-----
Footnote 83:
Minturno mentions neither Cinthio (_v. infra_) nor Pigna—probably to
avoid the appearance of direct attack; but he must have been thinking
of one or the other or both. Something the same line was taken by
Sperone Speroni.
Footnote 84:
See next Book, p. 369.
-----
The Second Book takes up Drama in the same manner, but—as was always
made legitimate by the parasitic character of at least Italian
Tragedy—with much more reference to ancient and less to modern writers.
The Third Book deals with Lyric, the same inclusion of Satire which we
have noticed in the _De Poeta_ being made; and the Fourth with Poetic
Diction, Prosody, &c., still on the lines of the earlier treatise, but
with entire adaptation to the Italian subject. The latter books, as is
natural, are much more meticulous in their arrangement, descending, with
complete propriety, to the minutest details of rhyme and metre, as well
as, where necessary, of grammar. But Minturno never loses an opportunity
of ascending to the higher and more general considerations—the nature of
harmony, the origin and quality of rhyme, &c., the characters of kinds,
and even, to some extent, of authors. It is characteristic of him to
give an elaborate discussion of the Italian alphabet letter by letter
from the poetical point of view, and to strike off from this to a
consideration of the relations of Italian, Latin, and foreign modern
languages, the general methods of elevating style, and the question
whether there ought to be completely separate diction for poetry and
prose.
It is the presence of this contrast, or combination, in him which, as
much as anything else, has determined more attention in this place to
Minturno than to some other authors before noticed. [Sidenote: _Their
value._] In combination of thoroughness and range he seems to me to hold
a position both high and rather solitary. He has not quite the elaborate
system of Scaliger, but then he is much less one-eyed; he is less
original—has less _diable au corps_—than Castelvetro, but he is far less
eccentric and incalculable. His unfeigned belief in the noble and
general theories of poetry and the poet is set off by his sedulous
attention to particulars, as his attention to particulars is by his
escapes of relief into the region of generalisation, and by his
all-important addition of “transport” to “teach” and “delight.” He has
not reached—he has in fact declined—the historical antinomianism of
Patrizzi (_v._ next chap.); but that was inevitable, since this view was
in part a reaction from the movement which he represented, in part a
development of theories contemporary with himself. And his attitude in
regard to the _Romanzi_ is a significant sign of the turn of the tide.
Earlier, and in the neo-classics _quand même_ later, the fact that a
thing differs in kind from the accepted forms of poetry is proof that it
is not poetry at all. Minturno cannot go this length. It is poetry
inferior in kind, he still insists; but the excellence of those who have
adopted it saves it, no matter to what extent. The concession is fatal.
If Balbus builds a wall contrary to the laws of nature and architecture,
it will not be an inferior wall; it will tumble down, and not be a wall
at all. If he works a sum on the principle that two and two make five,
his answer will be hopelessly wrong. But if the wall stands, if the sum
comes right, the laws, the principles, cannot be wrong, though they may
be different from others. The infallible and exclusive Kind-rules of the
ancients are doomed to be swept away through the little gap in the dam
that Minturno has opened.
The _Discorsi_[85] of Giraldi Cinthio—famous author of _Novelle_, and
now much less famous, but perhaps not much less remarkable, producer of
the chief Italian horror-tragedy, the _Orbecche_—supply a very
interesting supplement-contrast to Minturno, whose earlier work they
preceded by but a few years, and whom they provided with a theory of
Romance to protest against. [Sidenote: _Giraldi Cinthio’s_ Discorsi.]
The exact date of the most interesting of them, and the question of
property or plagiarism in their contents, have been the subject of one
of those tedious “quarrels of authors” which are thickening upon us, but
which we shall avoid as far as possible. [Sidenote: _On Romance._]
Cinthio and a certain pupil of his, Giovanbattista Pigna, published in
the same year (1554) books on the “Romances”—_i.e._, poems like
Ariosto’s. Authorities decide in favour of the novelist, who asserts
that his book was written in 1549, while each asserted that he had
furnished the other with ideas; but it really does not matter. The point
is, that on one of the two, and very probably on both, there had dawned
the critical truth, which nobody had seen earlier, and on which Minturno
himself would have pulled down “the blanket of the dark” once more if he
could. Cinthio, it seems, first struck out the true line, and Pigna
later developed it in still greater detail. Aristotle did not know
Romance, and therefore his rules do not and cannot apply to it; while
Italian literature generally is so different in circumstances from Greek
that it must follow its own laws. Then Cinthio takes Ariosto and
Boiardo, as Aristotle himself had taken the poets that were before him,
and formulates laws from them. He does not ostracise the single-action
and single-hero poem, the Aristotelian epic. But he adds the
many-actioned and many-heroed poem like Ariosto’s, and the
chronicle-poem of successive actions by one party, of which there are
examples from Statius downward (and of which, we may add, the _Odyssey_
itself is really an example). For these two latter, which he rightly
regards as both Romantic, he and Pigna (who is more specially
_Ariostian_) gave rules accordingly, and Cinthio even illustrated his by
a poem on Hercules. Both, but especially Pigna, despite their
revolutionary tendencies in certain ways, cling to the ethical point of
view, and maintain, perhaps a little hardily, that the modern romantic
writers actually surpass the ancients in this respect.
-----
Footnote 85:
_Scritti Estetici di Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio_, 2 vols., Milan,
1864. (In Daelli’s _Biblioteca Rara_.) This edition gives extracts
from Pigna’s work, and documents respecting the quarrel.
-----
In their main contention Cinthio and Pigna were no doubt right, and much
in advance of their time. [Sidenote: _On Drama._] The reply of Minturno
that Poetry may adapt itself to the times, but cannot depart from its
own fundamental laws, is clearly a _petitio principii_. In his less
important _Discorso_ on the Drama Cinthio is hardly at all rebel to
Aristotle—indeed it is very important to observe that even in the
Romance Essay he has none of the partisan and somewhat illiberal
anti-Peripateticism which we find later in Bruno and others. There he
goes on the solid ground that Aristotle did not know the Kind for which
he does not account—that he was no more blamable than, as we may say,
supposing that he had given a definition of mammalia which excluded the
kangaroo. In the Drama Cinthio had not been brought face to face with
any similarly new facts. Italian tragedy, his own included, was
scrupulously Senecan, if not quite scrupulously Aristotelian, in general
lines. Italian comedy followed Plautus and Terence only too closely; and
though Cinthio’s lines of criticism (strengthened by the
Ciceronian-Donatist theory of the _speculum vitæ_) led him, like Il
Lasca and others, to insist on the different circumstances of Italian
literature here also, they necessitated no new lawmaking as in the case
of the _Romanzi_.
Both _Discorsi_ are full of ingenious _aperçus_, sometimes followed
out—sometimes not. [Sidenote: _Some points in both._] For instance, when
Cinthio (i. 24) cites his three examples of writers who have treated
their heroes from childhood upwards contrary to the Aristotelian
principles, he instances Xenophon in the _Cyropædia_ as well as Statius
and Silius Italicus. The instance does not in his expressed remarks, but
it might very well in his own or others’ thoughts, lead to the
consideration that whether verse is or is not essential to poetry, it is
certainly _not_ essential to Romance—with all the momentous and
far-reaching consequences of that discovery. Again he seems (i. 82) to
have appreciated, with a taste and sense rare in his age, the
impropriety of mixing up Christian and Pagan mythology. And the same
taste and sense appear, as a rule, in the minuter remarks (p. 100 _sq._)
on verse and phrase, and even on those minutest points not merely of
verbal but of literal criticism which the Italians, more sensible than
some modern critics, never despised, though they may sometimes have gone
to the other extreme. In fact, the last half, and rather more, of the
_Discorso_ is not so much concerned with the Romances as with poetic
diction and arrangement in general, or even with these matters as
concerns literature both in prose and in verse.
The dramatic _Discorso_, or rather _Discorsi_ (for we may throw in a
third piece on Satiric Composition), is much shorter than that on the
Romances, being necessarily less controversial, and therefore, as has
been said, less original. But Cinthio’s independence of mind does not
desert him even here. He is said to have been the first Italian who
dared, in the _Orbecche_ before mentioned, to disregard the Senecan
practice[86] (so tedious in all modern imitations of it, and so
crushingly exhibited in our own earliest tragic attempts) of beginning
with an entire scene, or even act, of monologue. But, as often happens,
his licences in some directions invite condonation by a tighter drawing
of the reins elsewhere. He is credited (or debited) with the first
reference in modern literature to the Unity of Time: and though it is
well always to accept these assertions of priority with a certain
suspension of judgment, it may be so. It is at any rate certain that he
does out-Aristotle Aristotle in regard to this Unity, upon which, as is
well known, the Stagirite lays very little stress. But he makes some
amends by relaxing the proscription of the happy ending, so long as the
proper purging effects of pity and terror are achieved. He also to some
extent relaxes the extremest stringency of the old rule about
trucidations _coram populo_. There _may_ be death on the stage: but
generally the _bienséances_ of domestic life should be preserved there.
On one point, in which Cinthio has had assigned to him the position of
anti-Aristotelian origin, I venture to differ as to the interpretation
of the _Poetics_ themselves, not merely from Mr Spingarn but from
Professor Butcher.[87] The later Neo-Classics, and especially the
French, may have made rank too absolute a qualification of the tragic
Hero. But I must say that I think they had their justification from
Aristotle himself, and that Cinthio is at worst but dotting the _i_'s of
the Stagirite as to σπουδαῖοι and χρηστοί. His extreme admiration of the
choruses of Seneca (in justification whereof he cites Erasmus) is not
wholly unwarranted. Few modern readers, unfortunately, know the stately
beauty of these artful odes: though of course his preference (p. 81) of
them to “all the Greeks” is wrong, and was probably occasioned by the
very small attention which most Renaissance writers paid to Æschylus.
The elaborate distinctions which he, like others, seeks to draw between
Tragedy and Comedy from artificial points of view are to some extent
justified by the very absence of such distinctions in Aristotle. They
thought it their duty to supply what they did not find.
-----
Footnote 86:
To speak correctly, Seneca prefers (_Agamemnon_, _Hercules Furens_,
_H. Œtæus_, _Medea_, _Troades_) to compose the First _Act_ of a
soliloquy and a chorus. This, when the chorus is not present, becomes
of course a monologue. In the _Hippolytus_, _Octavia_, _Thebais_, and
_Thyestes_, there _is_ dialogue in the first Act. But, even of these,
the first two begin with a lyrical monologue, which is in effect a
first _Scene_.
Footnote 87:
_Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art_, p. 232.
-----
The Discourse, or rather Letter (for it bears both titles, and in scale
and character rather deserves the latter name) on Satire is confessedly
supplementary to the other _Discorsi_, and may be at least connected
with the fact that the indefatigable author had himself attempted a
satiric piece, _Egle_. [Sidenote: _On Satire._] He lays stress on the
special connection of the Satire with the cult of Bacchus, takes into
consideration the poetical as well as the scenic form, mentions the
mixed or Varronian variety, and even extends his view to the Bucolic or
Pastoral proper. But there are only some five-and-twenty pages, and the
thing seems to have been really composed at “request of friends.”
From a critic who did so much it would be somewhat unreasonable to
demand more. In fact, though Cinthio did not go so far along the high
historic path of truth as did Patrizzi thirty years later, he set on
that path a firm foot. For the moment, and in Italy, the _romanzi_ were
the true battle-ground; just as in England, for instance, that
battle-ground was to be found a little later in the drama. At a period
so early as this, and so close to the actual revolution of the
Renaissance, it could hardly be expected that any one should reach the
vantage-ground of a comprehensive survey of _all_ literature, so as to
deduce from it the positive and enfranchising, and not even from it the
negative and disfranchising, laws of poetry. Not only had the
vernaculars, with the exception of Italian itself, hardly furnished, at
the time when Cinthio wrote, any modern literature fit to rank with the
ancient—not only was it far too late, or far too early, to expect any
one to give mediæval literature a fair chance with both—but men were
still actually disputing whether the vernaculars had a right to exist.
They were, like his namesake and clansman, to whom we come next, hinting
surprise that any man of genius and culture should employ these
vernaculars when he might write Latin, or, like one of his antagonists,
Celio Calcagnini, aspiring to the disuse of vernacular for literary
purposes altogether. In an atmosphere still so far from clear, with such
heats and mists about, it is no small credit to Cinthio that, whether
moved by mere parochial patriotism or by the secret feeling that _sua
res_ as a novelist was at question, or by anything else, he heard and
caught at the dominant of the tune of criticism proper.
Pigna’s _I Romanzi_,[88] whatever we may think of the quarrel between
him and Cinthio, is a book not to be mentioned without considerable
respect, or dismissed with mention so merely incidental as that given to
it above. [Sidenote: _Pigna._] It is mainly, but not solely, a defence
of Ariosto, and has not a few merits,—a just conception of the
essentially Romantic nature of the _Odyssey_, a very careful and in the
main sensible discussion of Prosody, and a widish comparison of
instances. The main defect of it is the besetting sin of the whole three
centuries with which this volume deals—the Obsession of the Kind.
Instead of being satisfied with the demonstration (which he and Cinthio
had reached) that Romance is not Epic, and is not bound by Epic laws,
Pigna torments himself to show that Romance _is_ Epic in this
particular, not-Epic in that, and is alternately subject to and free
from bondage: while some of his detailed investigations may raise smile,
or sigh, or shrug, according to mood or temperament. Thus for instance
he inquires (after a fashion which we shall find echoed in Ronsard) into
the character of the objects—Lance, Horn, Ring—with which _fatura_
(fairy agency) is usually associated, till we feel inclined to say, “O
learned and excellent signor, the poet may put _fatura_ in a
warming-pan—if he pleases, and can do it _poeticamente_!” But the book
is, on the whole, a good book: and Pigna deserves to rank with Cinthio
and Patrizzi as one of the Three who, alone in this first modern stage,
saw, if but afar-off and by glimpses, the Promised Land from which the
ship of criticism was to be once more driven by adverse winds for
centuries to come.
-----
Footnote 88:
Venice, 1554, 4to.
-----
A document of exceptional importance for us is provided by the two
curious dialogues _De Poetis Nostrorum Temporum_[89] of Lilius Gregorius
Giraldus, written about 1548-50, and dedicated partly to Renée of
Ferrara, the French Princess who for a time protected Marot and others,
partly to Cardinal Rangoni. [Sidenote: _Lilius Giraldus: his_ De Poetis
Nostrorum Temporum.] Lilius, who was now in a good old age (he had been
born in 1478), a Humanist of the better class, and a sincere Catholic
possessed of sufficient independence of current ill-fashions to speak
with severity of the verses of Beccadelli, would seem also to have been,
at first- or second-hand, a man of very wide literary knowledge. His
acquaintance with More[90] might be partly (as his very high estimate is
certainly) conditioned by ecclesiastical partisanship; but he speaks of
Wyatt long before _Tottel’s Miscellany_ made that poet’s works publicly
known, even in his own country, and, what is still more remarkable, of
Chaucer.[91] [Sidenote: _Its width of range._] Neither France nor
Germany is excluded with the usual Italian uppishness,[92] though
Giraldus cannot help slipping the word _barbarus_ more than once off his
tongue. And though Italy herself has, as we should expect, the lion’s
share, yet the process of sharing is not pursued to that extreme of
ridiculous arrogance which has been shown by the Greeks in their
decadence, by the French in their Augustanism, and by the Italians
themselves more than once.
-----
Footnote 89:
For the neat little edition of this by Karl Wotke (Berlin, 1894) one
must be thankful, and also for the careful bibliographical
introduction on recent work concerning Renaissance Literature.
Footnote 90:
_Op. cit._, pp. 62, 63, 70. Giraldus also knows Colet, Grocyn, and
others of the set.
Footnote 91:
“Fuere et in Britannorum idiomate et eorum vernaculo sermone aliqui
poetæ ab iis summo in pretio habiti, inter quos Galfridus Chaucerus
qui multa scripsit, et Thomas Viatus.” That he adds “_ambo_ insignes
equites” is very pardonable.
Footnote 92:
Not merely northern Humanists like Reuchlin, Erasmus, Eobanus Hessus,
and Hutten, not merely Greeks from Gemistus Pletho to Musurus and
Lascaris, but foreign vernacular writers like Ressendi, Juan de la
Mena, Marot, Martial d’Auvergne receive notice.
-----
But this real knowledge on Giraldus’ part, and the fairness of his
spirit, only serve to accentuate the drift in the course and direction
of this, the most important general summary of its kind that we meet
between the _Labyrinthus_ and the seventeenth century. [Sidenote: _But
narrowness of view._] Giraldus, though he does not absolutely exclude
the vernaculars, is perfectly convinced that poetry, and indeed
literature generally, means—first of all, and as far as its aristocracy
goes exclusively—writing in Latin; nay, with him even translation from
the classical languages is a more important thing than original
composition in the vulgar tongue. [Sidenote: _Horror at preference of
vernacular to Latin._] His contempt of this latter is thinly though
decently veiled in the passage on drama (_ed. cit._, p. 40), where,
speaking of the writers of comedy, and rightly preferring Ariosto to
Bibbiena, he says, “sed enim vernaculo sermone id plerique opus aggressi
pauci mea sententia assecuti sunt;” speaks (with a sort of visible shake
of the head, as over a good man lost) of Ariosto himself as one who
“Latino carmine aliquando ludit, sed nunc totum se vernaculis tradidit,
atque inter cetera furentem Orlandum dare curat in publicum;”[93]
patronisingly remarks of Trissino’s projected _Sophonisba_, that if the
whole of it is as good as the acts that the author recites, “erit,
_licet vernacula ipsa_, Latinorum tamen non indigna lectione,” wonders
at this George who “est ipse et Græce et Latine bene doctus, at nunc
fere in vernaculis conquiescit,” and ends with an impatient “Verum de
vernaculis jam satis,” and a mutter about _tonsores sellulariique_. He
speaks still less ambiguously later (ibid., p. 85), where cobblers and
other dregs of the people are added to barbers and mechanics in general
(as a tail to a list headed by Boiardo, Pulci, Politian, and Lorenzo de'
Medici!), and at last liberates his real feeling in a sentence, which
many very excellent men in all European countries would have indorsed
till nearly the end of the eighteenth century, “Ex quo nescioqui viri
alioqui docti _in eam hæresim_ incidere ut non modo vernaculas velint
Latinis litteris æquare verum etiam anteponere, quin et id etiam
litteris prodidere.” “Whence some persons, in other respects learned,
have fallen into such a heresy that they not only choose to make the
vernaculars equal with Latin, but even to set them above it—nay, they
have actually given literary expression to the doctrine.” A terrible
thing to Humanists, and, alas! one to which they have since had to make
up their minds! Unfortunately, the two great classical languages now
pay, and for some time to come are likely to continue paying, the
penalty of this idle miscalculation and _outrecuidance_ on the part of
their mistaken partisans; and it is the first duty of all lovers of
letters _now_ to fight for their maintenance in due place.
-----
Footnote 93:
The supposed _date_ of the conversation is, as usual in such case,
thrown a good deal back.
-----
But still the almost invincible equity of the man displays itself even
in his judgment of these unhappy schismatics; and he seems to make some
difference between the vernacular dialects and the _Sermo Etruscus_. On
Berni, Alamanni, the two “gentlewomen-poetesses,” as the Italians call
them, Vittoria Colonna and Veronica Gambara, Speroni, La Casa, Aonio
Paleario, Molza, he has things amiable and acute at once to say.
But his heart is not here, nor in the mention of the poor barbarous
foreigners who may perhaps have some better excuse than “Latins” for not
writing in the Latin tongue. [Sidenote: _Yet a real critic in both
kinds._] It is of those who do so write—Italians first of all but also
others—that he really thinks as “the poets of his time.” He can find
room for a mere grammarian (though a very excellent grammarian) like
William Lilly: he speaks of him _magnificentissime_, and if this notice
contrasts rather comically with the brief and cold reference to Erasmus,
it is fair to remember not merely that Erasmus was by no means _persona
grata_ to the Roman orthodox, but that his poetical work is really
nothing as compared with his exquisite prose.
He begins with the two Mirandolas, Pontanus, Marullus, and Sannazar, and
is copious though not uncritical on them all: _non numquam nimis
lascivire et vagari videtur_, he says of Pontanus. [Sidenote: _Short_
précis _of the dialogues_.] Recalled by his interlocutor to still
earlier writers, he has the judgment of “the Panormitan”[94]
(Beccadelli), which has been noticed, and a by no means unremarkable
one, dwelling ominously on the “facility” of Mapheus Vegius, the
egregious person who took upon himself to write a thirteenth _Æneid_.
Many forgotten worthies (among whom Filelfo and the better Aretines,
Charles and Leonard, are the least forgotten) lead us (for Bembo and
Sadolet have had their position earlier, and will have it again) to a
famous pair, Mantuan and Politian. Giraldus is decisive and refreshing
on Mantuan. This loudly over-praised poet is _extemporalis magis quam
poeta maturus_, and as to his being _alter Maro_, why “Bone Deus! quam
dispar ingenium!”[95] He is much more favourable to the author of the
_Nutricia_ and the _Manto_, but does not forget his swashing blow even
here. Politian seems to him to have written _calore potius quam arte_,
and to have used little diligence either in choosing his subjects or
correcting his work. The Strozzi and Urceus Codrus follow, with many
minor lights, from the notices of whom the judgment on Ludovicus Bigus
Pictorius of Ferrara stands out as applicable, unfortunately, to some
greater men and many as small or smaller. “Cum pius deflexit ad
religionem, ut vita melior ita carmine deterior visus est.” Then one of
the regulation pieces of flattery as to the Augustan character of the
rule of _Leo Maximus_ conducts us to notices of Naugerius and Vida,
where the moderate and deserved praise of the first would contrast oddly
(if we did not know how the pseudo-classical tradition for two hundred
years and more said vehement “ditto” to Giraldus) with the extravagant
eulogies on the polished emptiness of the latter. And then a great
_turba_ comes, among which the two Beroalds, Acciauoli and, among blind
poets, Bello, the author of the _Mambriano_, chiefly take the eye.
-----
Footnote 94:
He allows him (p. 18, ed. cit.) “sweetness and wit,” but says _nescio
quare_ as to the contemporary praise of the _Hermaphroditus_, and adds
plumply, _nec poeta bonus nec bonus orator_. The simple fact is that,
if the subjects of this notorious book were decent, nobody would see
anything but quite ordinary merit in their treatment.
Footnote 95:
Ed. cit., p. 25.
-----
We have noted the condescension to such poor vernacular creatures as
Ariosto, Bibbiena, and (with a long interval certainly) Trissino and the
author of the first _Rosmunda_. It is succeeded by another review of
persons long relinquished to dusty shelves and memories, with a few
better known names like Molza and Longolius. The praise of the great
Fracastorius is much more moderate than we might have expected—probably
Giraldus did not like his subject—and then there is a curious passage on
“fancy” verses, leonine, serpentine, and others, leading to yet another,
in which the worse side of the Renaissance—its contempt for the Middle
Ages—is shown by a scornful reference to _Architrenios et
Anti-claudianos_, which finishes the first dialogue. The second is of a
wider cast, but needs less minute account here, though it is at least as
well worth reading. It begins with the Greeks, who did so much for
Italy, from Gemistus Pletho and Chrysoloras downwards, then takes the
Spaniards and Portuguese, then our own countrymen, then the Germans and
French. Here comes the description of Erasmus as _inter Germanos Latinus
inter Latinos aliquando Germanus_; and here Giraldus frankly confesses
that he is not going to say anything about persons like Œcolampadius,
Bucer, Sturm, and Melanchthon, since they were not contented to confine
themselves to good literature, and would know too much, and trouble
Israel with Luther. But a good word is spared, justly, for the author of
the _Basia_, with a reversion to still younger men, among whom
Palingenius, Julius Cæsar Scaliger, and Castelvetro are the best known,
and with the final fling at the vernaculars above given.
Such a book, with its wonderful width of range[96] and its sometimes
equally wonderful contraction of view, is worth, to the historian of
real criticism, a dozen long-winded tractates hunting the old
red-herrings of critical theory. [Sidenote: _Their great historic
value._] The _De Poetis Nostrorum Temporum_ gives us one of those
veritable and inestimable rallying-points of which our History should be
little more than a reasoned catalogue, connected by summary of less
important phenomena. Referring duly to it, we find ourselves at the
standpoint of a man who has really wide knowledge, and who, when his
general assumptions do not interfere, has a real critical grasp. But the
chief of these assumptions is not merely that the vernaculars have not
attained equality with the classics—this, allowing for inevitable
defects of perspective and other things, would not be fatal—but that
they cannot attain such equality, much less any superiority. The point
of view—to us plain common-sense—that if Sannazar and others wrote in
Latin about Christian subjects, they should use Christian Latin, seems
to Giraldus the point of view of a kind of maniac. Without the details
and developments of Vida, he is apparently in exact accordance with that
excellent Bishop. Cicero and Virgil, not to mention others, have
achieved for literature a medium which cannot be improved upon, and all
those who adopt any other are, if not exactly wicked, hopelessly
deceived and deluded. This is the major premiss for practically every
syllogism of our critic. Where it does not come in—between vernacular
and vernacular, between Latin and Latin of the classical type—he can
judge just judgment. Where it comes in, the more perfect his logic, the
more inevitably vitiated is his conclusion.
-----
Footnote 96:
As a rough but not misleading gauge of this it may be mentioned that
Herr Wotke’s _Namenregister_ contains for less than 100 printed pages,
between four and five hundred entries, including, besides those
noticed in the text, names like those of Olympia Morata and Bilibald
Pirkheimer, Castiglione and Alciati, Conrad Celtes and Paulus Jovius,
Cardinal Perotti and Jacob Wimpheling. In fact, hardly any one in
Europe who had to do with _belles lettres_ seems to have been outside
the cognisance, in closer or vaguer kind, of Giraldus.
-----
CHAPTER III.
SCALIGER, CASTELVETRO, AND THE LATER ITALIAN
CRITICS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
JULIUS CÆSAR SCALIGER—THE ‘POETIC’—BOOK I.: ‘HISTORICUS’—BOOK II.:
‘HYLE’—BOOKS III. AND IV.: ‘IDEA’ AND ‘PARASCEVE’—BOOKS V. AND VI.:
‘CRITICUS’ AND ‘HYPERCRITICUS’—BOOK VII.: EPINOMIS—GENERAL
IDEAS ON UNITY AND THE LIKE—HIS VIRGIL-WORSHIP—HIS SOLID
MERITS—CASTELVETRO—THE OPERE VARIE—THE ‘POETICA’—ON DRAMATIC
CONDITIONS—ON THE THREE UNITIES—ON THE FREEDOM OF EPIC—HIS ECCENTRIC
ACUTENESS—EXAMPLES: HOMER’S NODDING, PROSE IN TRAGEDY, VIRGIL, MINOR
POETRY—THE MEDIUM AND END OF POETRY—UNCOMPROMISING CHAMPIONSHIP OF
DELIGHT—HIS EXCEPTIONAL INTEREST AND IMPORTANCE—TASSO AND THE
CONTROVERSIES OVER THE ‘GERUSALEMME’—TASSO’S CRITICAL WRITINGS AND
POSITION—PATRIZZI: HIS ‘POETICA’—THE ‘DECA ISTORIALE’—THE ‘DECA
DISPUTATA’—THE ‘TRIMERONE’ ON TASSO—REMARKABLE POSITION OF
PATRIZZI—‘SED CONTRA MUNDUM’—THE LATEST GROUP OF SIXTEENTH-CENTURY
CRITICS—PARTENIO—VIPERANO—PICCOLOMINI—GILIO—MAZZONI—DENORES—ZINANO—MAZZONE
DA MIGLIONICO, ETC.—SUMMO.
In the remarkable little book, a notice of which concluded the last
chapter, Lilius Giraldus, as we observed, includes—for their verse-work
nominally, as became his title, but, with his usual acuteness, obviously
perceiving that their importance lay elsewhere—both of the most famous
and influential critics of the central sixteenth century in Italy.
[Sidenote: _Julius Cæsar Scaliger._] His reference to Julius Cæsar
Scaliger (who was, indeed, not more than six years younger than himself)
contains some touches (such as the mention of him by the name he took,
but with the addition “qui primus Bordonus cognomine fuit,” and the
description of his book on Comic Metres, as “arranged with such
wonderful subtlety as not to be intelligible save to a reader well
versed in the subject”) which are of doubtful friendliness, but allows
the Veronese gladiator to be _apprime eruditus_ and capable of _carmina
elegantia_. For us nothing of Scaliger’s needs detailed notice except
the once world-famous and still famous _Poetices Libri Septem_,[97]
which appeared in 1561 after the death of Giraldus, and indeed after his
own.
-----
Footnote 97:
My copy is the second edition (apud Petrum Santandreanum, _s. l._,
1581).
-----
Scaliger was very much better qualified than Boileau to be _législateur
du Parnasse_ in the sense in which both understood Parnassus: or perhaps
it would be better to say that without a Scaliger a Boileau would have
been impossible. [Sidenote: _The_ Poetic.] He had immense learning; he
had absolute confidence in his own judgment; and within limits which, if
they reduce his positive value, make him an even more complete and
direct exponent of his own particular school and creed, he had great
acuteness, an orderly and logical spirit, and a thorough command of
method. Nothing (certain inevitable postulates being granted) can be
more luminous and intelligible than the book, in which the author,
through all his thousand pages, never loses sight, nor permits his
reader to lose sight, of the subject, the process, and the goal. That he
stands forth in the preface to his son Sylvius with an air of patronage
at once paternal and pedagogic, announcing himself as the pioneer of the
subject, dismissing those who allege Varro, as with levity ignoring the
fact that neither Varro nor anybody else in antiquity did, or could do,
anything of the kind: that he blandly sweeps away the _plebs
grammaticorum_; that he labels the _Ars Poetica_ itself as teaching
_adeo sine ulla arte ut saturæ propius esse videatur_, Aristotle as
fragmentary, Vida as _optimus poeta in theatro, claudus magister in
schola_—is all of it agreeably Scaligerian in manner. But it is far from
being untrue in fact. And there is a touch of sublimity in the _Quare
porro opera danda est nobis_, “wherefore _we_ must put our shoulders to
the wheel,” with which he concludes. “Let others grub money, or canvass
for office, or talk about the wars as parasite guests at dinner: we will
let them alone, and simply defend the nobility of our studies, the
magnanimity and simplicity of our purpose.” After this magnificent pose
and draping, and before commendatory verses (the main copy being by no
less a person than Etienne de La Boétie) comes a table of contents of
antique clearness and solidity, filling nearly a dozen pages, by means
of which, and of the more than sixty of index at the end, the study of
the text is not a little facilitated.
The First Book has the special title, _Qui et Historicus_, which it
deserves, if not exactly or exclusively in our sense of History.
[Sidenote: _Book I._: Historicus.] The critic begins, scholastically
enough, with a distribution of everything into necessary, useful, or
delightful, and proceeds to apply the classification in a beneficial
manner to literary expression in general and Poetry in particular,
ending the chapter with a characteristic gibe (for Scaliger is far from
unhumorous) at the moderns who confine the appellation “Makers” to
candle-makers.[98] Then he follows the safe road by discussing the
causes (material, formal, &c.) of poetry; and indulges in a free review
(for Scaliger, to do him justice, is _paratus nullius jurare in verba_)
of ancient opinions. Hence he sets off to a full enumeration and
examination, not merely of the kinds of poetry, but (in connection more
especially with the drama) of the theatres and games of the ancients.
Nothing escapes the extensive view of his observation, neither palinodes
nor parodies, neither centos nor enigmas. And he is intensive as well as
extensive. He rebukes, in his usual magisterial manner, the _Græculas
nugas_ of Plutarch, who explains the number of the Muses by that of the
letters in the name of their mother, Mnemosyne; and as for Plato’s blame
of poetry, _respiceat ipse sese quot ineptas quot spurcas fabellas
inserat_.[99] The distinction of _Poesis_, _Poema_, and _Poeta_, which
follows (and which many grave writers, including Ben, copy), we have
often met in kind or in itself before, nor is it quite so meticulous as
it looks. For Scaliger utilises it to stop the blunder of Plutarch and
others, who make a distinction in kind between great poems and smaller
ones. It is tempting but impossible to follow him through the
multitudinous, though far from mazy, ramifications of his plan. It must
be enough to say that he leaves few items of the dictionary of his
subject untouched, and (however inclined one may be to cry “Halt and
fight!” at not a few of his definitions) formulates them with a
roundness and a touch of confident mastery which fully explain, and to
some extent justify, the practical dictatorship which he so long
enjoyed. As thus (at the opening of chap. vi. p. 27), “Tragedy, like
Comedy established in examples of human life, differs from it in three
things—the condition of the persons, the quality of the fortunes and
actions, the end. Whence it is necessary that it should also differ in
style.” And this legislative calmness is accompanied and fortified by a
profusion of erudite example, which might well awe the disciple.
-----
Footnote 98:
This joke requires a little explanation and adaptation to get it into
English. The Latin is _miror majores nostros sibi tam iniquos fuisse
ut factoris vocem maluerint_ oleariorum cancellis _circumscribere_. In
fact, _Fattojo_ and _Fattojano_, if not _fattore_, do mean in Italian
“Oil-Press” and “Oil-Presser.”
Footnote 99:
Scaliger goes so far as to say that “it would be better never to have
read” the _Symposium_ and the _Phædrus_, because of their taint with
the _Grœcanicum scelus_.
-----
The second book, _Qui et Hyle_, gives us an important point at once, in
the fact that this _hyle_—this “material” of poetry—is [Sidenote: _Book
II._: Hyle.] frankly acknowledged to be verse.[100] The entire book is
occupied, at the rate of a chapter apiece, after the half-dozen general
ones which open it, with almost every classical metre, if not from
pyrrhic to dochmiac, at least from iambic to galliambic. A great number
of interesting dicta might be extracted from this book—as, for instance,
Scaliger’s remarkable distinction of Rhythm and Metre, as giving, the
latter the more exact _measure_ of the line, the former its continuity
and “temperament.”[101]
-----
Footnote 100:
The decision of this is all the more remarkable that Scaliger does
not, as unwary moderns might expect, make verse the _form_ of Poetry,
but the _matter_. Feet, rhythm, metre, these are the things that
Poetry works in, her stuff, her raw material. The skill of the poet in
its various applications is the form. A very little thought will show
this to be the most decisive negation possible of the Wordsworthian
heresy—anticipated by many sixteenth-century writers, from Italy to
England, and though not exactly authorised, countenanced by the
ancients, from Aristotle downwards—that verse is _not_ essential in
any way.
Footnote 101:
One cannot help thinking that this distinction, which is quite
contrary to those entertained by Aristotle and Quintilian, must have
been influenced by the cadences of the modern languages—Italian and
French—with which Scaliger was familiar. In both, but especially in
French, the actual “measuring-off” of syllables was the be-all and
end-all of metre, the easements provided in English and German by
syllabic equivalence being in French refused altogether, in Italian
replaced only by the more meagre aid of syncope and apocope.
-----
The third, _Qui et Idea_, is far longer than either of the preceding,
and is less easily describable to modern readers. [Sidenote: _Books III.
and IV._: Idea _and_ Parasceve.] Those who have read the first volume of
this book with some care will understand it without much difficulty, if
we call it a throwing of the traditional and technical treatment of
Rhetoric into a form suitable to Poetry. Prosopopœia and ethopœia; the
bearings or “colours” of time, place, race, sex, and the rest; the
considerations of chance and manners and fortune; lead us to our old
friends the Figures. To these, giving them the most liberal
interpretation possible, so as to include fresh kinds of poetry as well
as actual turns of speech, Scaliger complacently allows nearly a hundred
out of the nearly hundred and thirty chapters of this overgrown Book,
comprising by itself nearly a full quarter of the volume. Nor does even
this devotion to Figures satisfy him, for the Fourth Book, _Qui et
Parasceve_ (preparation), beginning with the characters or distinctions
of style, turns before long to more Figures, and is, in fact, a sort of
Part II. of the Third. Naturally, there is no part of the book more
difficult to analyse, but, as naturally, there is none in which analysis
is less required. Scaliger luxuriates in his opportunities of
sub-division and sub-definition; but he abounds ever more and more in
those examples which we have recognised as, from the time of Hermogenes
downwards, the “solace of this sin,” and the plentifulness of which in
Scaliger himself would, even if they stood alone, go some way to atone
for the absence of a larger examination of writers as wholes. And he
does not allow us to lack even this.
Another pair of Books, the Fifth (_Qui et Criticus_) and the Sixth (_Qui
et Hypercriticus_), together constitute the pith and body of the book in
spirit, and occupy more than a third of it in space. [Sidenote: _Books
V. and VI._: Criticus _and_ Hypercriticus.] It is here that Scaliger
lets himself and his learning loose. The Fifth Book consists of a vast
series of cross-comparisons, Homer with Virgil, Greeks with Latins,
Virgil with Greeks other than Homer, Horace and Ovid with Greeks, Latins
with other Latins, special subject-passages of the same theme from
different authors. Its sequel, the _Hypercriticus_, undertakes, for the
first time, an actual survey of _belles lettres_ as Scaliger understood
them, beginning, after an odd discussion of Plautus and Terence, with
the Renaissance Humanists (many Italians and a few Germans and French),
and then receding through three Ages (the Middle disdainfully excluded),
to Catullus and Horace. Here, of course, one may, according to taste or
temperament, most revel in, or most shudder away from, “criticism of
criticism.” Here the citation is most opulent and useful. Here, above
all, the most hostile judge must be forced to admire and acknowledge the
erudition which not merely for the first time attempts, but for the
first time completely meets the initial requirements of, a complete
examination of poetic literature on a definite and reasoned basis. But
here, inevitably, the weakness of Scaliger comes out most strongly, as
well as his strength. Not only was his judgment warped in more ways than
one by prejudice, but we are, with all the goodwill in the world, forced
before long to conclude[102] that his taste itself was radically
defective. Nor does this conclusion rest merely on his preference
(anticipated by Vida and others, and almost an article of national
faith) of Virgil to Homer. His estimate of Musæus also as far superior
to Homer, as incomparable among Greeks, as “worthy of Virgil,” speaks
this taste only too well; and the fearless good faith with which,
disdaining the “guile that lurks in generals,” he quotes line after line
as specially beautiful, delivers him into our hands, a respectable but
self-convicted victim. After this the “coldness” and “childishness” and
“unsuitability” of the Homeric epithet, the “semper-august” character of
Virgil, and innumerable other things of the kind, disturb us not.
Scaliger’s idol has spoken Scaliger’s doom in _Qui Bavium non odit_—not,
of course, that _Hero and Leander_ is itself by any means Bavian, but
that it is so in comparison with Homer. Nearly a hundred pages are given
up to this main comparison of Homer and Virgil. The others are shorter,
but always result in the same dogged maintenance of the superiority of
Latins to Greeks—that is to say, the same involuntary confession of
Scaliger’s preference of Rhetoric to Poetry. It is interesting, however,
to find him conducting his comparisons in a way in which, as in most
other cases, posterity for two centuries thronged to follow him—the
assemblage, that is to say, of passages on the same subject from
different poets.
-----
Footnote 102:
As, even throughout the neo-classic age, very orthodox neo-classics
admitted, especially in the “Musæus _v._ Homer” case.
-----
Still less can we abstract the curious and invaluable survey of the
_Hypercriticus_. Not a little of it is actual review of actual
contemporaries or very recent predecessors, and review of the ancients
takes the same form, reinforced constantly by discussed quotations.
Sometimes, as in the case of Juvenal, these are arranged into a little
anthology of “jewels five words long,” strung together with _acute et
hoc, illud valde festivum_, and the like appreciative interjections. His
preference of Juvenal to Horace is seasoned with a characteristic fling
at Erasmus (p. 876).
[Sidenote: _Book VII._: Epinomis.]
Lastly comes an _Epinomis_ or Codicil, which is divided into two parts,
and takes up some of the special points of poetical or dramatic
criticism then most interesting—the relative importance of action and
character, the parts of tragedy, the Chorus, the metres most appropriate
to the stage, and the like, ending with a sort of “gratillity” or bonus
in the shape of an examination of a codex of Terence, which we could
spare, at least in this place. More piquant, at least, are the diatribes
_de negligentia aut inscitia professorum_, directed (with a show of
respect) against Erasmus once more; the occasional flights, such as
“Variety is the _tirewoman_ of poetry”[103] (p. 906); the amusing
references to _mea poemata_, which in some parts of the book he has
obligingly, and once more with a fearlessness drawing nigh to rashness,
exposed to the arrows; and other things which are perhaps here all the
more numerous because the Book is an avowed Appendix, and, as it were,
_omnium gatherum_. They are, however, plentiful everywhere; and if it
were possible to revive the old periodical Literary Miscellanies of
commonplace-book character—a thing which will have to be done sooner or
later, if the accumulations of the last few centuries are not to became
mere Nineveh-mounds, as yet unexplored—I should like to compose a
_florilegium_ of memorabilia out of Scaliger.
-----
Footnote 103:
_Varietas poetices_ κομητικὴ, _sicut Cypassis Corinnæ_. The text has
κομωτικὴ, which I do not find.
-----
For in this great space, occupied with equal method and erudition, it
could not be but that remarkable pronouncements on the more general
questions of literary criticism, whether given _obiter_ or in definite
reference to argued questions, should emerge. [Sidenote: _General ideas
on Unity and the like._] Scaliger is, indeed, less set than most of his
predecessors in Italian criticism, and than some at least of his
successors, on these general pronouncements. “The disinterested and
philosophic treatment of æsthetic problems wholly aside from all
practical considerations,” as the tendency of Italian criticism has been
rather unguardedly characterised,[104] does not seem to have had the
first attraction for him. Yet he could not, in the wide sweep of his
net, have avoided such questions if he would; and, with his fearless
temper and eager literary interests, there is no reason to suppose that
he would have avoided them if he could. He did not explicitly enjoin the
Three Unities,[105] but he did more than any other man had done to
inculcate that unfortunate notion of “verisimilitude”[106] from which,
much more than from Aristotle, they were deduced. Not many words need be
wasted (especially as the point will recur only too often during the
volume) on the absurdity of this wresting of _Incredulus odi_. The whole
arrangements of the theatre are _invraisemblables_, no matter whether
you have electric light or cross-shaped laths with candles on them,
marquises sitting on the stage or millionaires in stage-boxes, elaborate
scenery or directions to the audience, “Here is Thebes.” You do not
murder, or (if you can help it) make love, in real life, before a
miscellaneous audience who have paid to see you do it; in real life you
do not talk in any regular stage lingo that has hitherto been invented,
whether the outward form of it be senarii, or fourteeners, or
complicated rhymed stanzas, or doggerel, or couplet, or blank verse, or
stage prose. The sixteenth century _Globe_, and the twentieth century
_Lyceum_, are alike unlike any place in which one habitually performs
any action of life from birth, through marriage, to death. That there
_is_ a stage verisimilitude, which it is dangerous or fatal to break,
need not be denied. But neither Scaliger nor any of his successors in
purism has proved that we are, or ought to be, any more shocked by
Æschylus when he shifts from Delphi to Athens than by Thackeray when he
transports us from Flanders to Chelsea.
-----
Footnote 104:
Spingarn, p. 172. “Disinterested treatment” of practical problems,
such as poems certainly are, “wholly aside from all practical
considerations,” sometimes leads to awkward results.
Footnote 105:
Mr Spingarn (p. 94) apparently states that he “formulated” them, but
the gist of the next two pages fully corrects this slip or ambiguity;
and he has himself pointed out with equal decision and correctness
that the French assumption contained in the phrase, _Unités
Scaligériennes_, is unfounded.
Footnote 106:
P. 365.
-----
We may venture indeed to suspect that Scaliger “had more wit than to be
here.” One may frequently differ with him; but he seldom runs mad on
mere theory. It is he, for instance, who, while, as we have seen, he
lays down uncompromisingly that the material of poetry is verse,
instances the _Æthiopica_ as a perfect epic. Instead of confusing poetry
and learning, as some have done, he holds the much more sensible
position that learning is useful to a poet. He takes the hard-and-fast
ethical view of the ends both of tragedy and of all poetry, and he
believes firmly in the type. But he does not bemuse himself, as some had
done and more were to do, in the explanation of _katharsis_, and the
definition of the tragic hero.
His greatest and also his most pervading critical fault is that
“deification of Virgil,” whereof, though by no means the inventor, he
was the chief prophet to the best part of three centuries. [Sidenote:
_His Virgil-worship._] Let it be admitted (with every possible emphasis
on the fact that it is no mere extorted admission but a genuine and
spontaneous opinion) that anybody is free to admire Virgil or any one
else as much as he likes. “She that is fair to him” _is_ so, and there’s
an end on’t. But if any one proceed, not merely to intimate indifference
to other fair ones, but to find positive fault with them because they
are not like her, then he becomes at once uncritical: still more so if
he erect her qualities, features, style, into abstract virtues and
positive truths, all opposites to which are sin and vileness. He may
call “Simula Silene, nervosa et lignea Dorcas,” to take two only out of
the famous list in the classic place of this matter. But he must not
declare that a girl who has a straight Grecian nose is therefore ugly,
or that softness and plumpness are not excellent things in woman.
Scaliger does this. For him Virgil is, at once, the standard of
excellence and the infallible touchstone of defect. Nay, he is actually
a better Nature; a wiser but more perfect Creation, whereby you may save
yourself the trouble of outside imitation, inasmuch as everything worth
imitating is there better done than by Nature herself. It is impossible
to exaggerate or caricature Scaliger’s Maronolatry: as the Highfliers
did in the case of Defoe’s _Shortest Way_, he would cheerfully accept
and indorse the most outrageous statement of it.
Grave, however, as is this fault, and seriously as it vitiates
Scaliger’s attitude as a critic, there is no doubt that it served in
itself as the backbone of that attitude, and gave it the stiffness which
enabled it to resist at once argument and time. A cause of disquiet to
some critics themselves, and a rallying-cry to most enemies of
criticism, has been constantly found in the apparently floating and
uncertain character of the completest critical orthodoxy. Longinus
himself, perhaps the best exponent of that orthodoxy, has been and is
charged with vagueness; and all those who follow him must lay their
account with the same accusation. In the last resort we often cannot
give a clear, definite, cut-and-dried reason for the faith that is in
us, and we still oftener had better not try to do so. Scaliger and
Scaligerism are in no such plight. Their _Sortes Virgilianæ_ are _ex
hypothesi_ decisive, and of universal application. What is found in
Virgil is good, is the best; what is different from Virgil is bad or
mediocre; what is like Virgil is good in direct proportion to the
likeness. This of itself gives confidence both to the critic and to his
disciples.
Again, Scaliger, though he has no more right to arrogate Reason and
Nature as on his side than the rest of his school, possesses, like all
of the best of them, a certain sturdy _prima facie_ common-sense.
[Sidenote: _His solid merits._] It is this which dictates his theory of
dramatic verisimilitude; this which palliates some of his Homeric and
other blasphemies. Though uncompromisingly moral, and by no means
illogical (when you have once granted his bundle of postulates), he is
not in the least metaphysical. The wayfaring man, with tolerable
intelligence and a very little trouble, can understand him perfectly.
Still more unmixed praise can be given to him from other points of view.
To any scholar his scholarship is singularly refreshing in its
thoroughness and range; he really neglects nothing proper to his
subject, though he may define that subject with a somewhat arbitrary
hand. Agree with him or differ with him as we may, it is an infinite
comfort to be brought thus in contact and confrontation with the actual
texts—to exchange the paper symbols of “the poet,” “the dramatist,” “the
satirist” in the abstract, for sound ringing coin of actual poetry,
drama, satire, told down on the counter, and tested by file and acid if
required. The literary atlas of the _Hypercriticus_ is, as has been
said, the first attempt at a complete thing of the kind since
Quintilian, and of necessity far more complete than his. In fact,
Scaliger taught the school opposed to him—the school which after many a
generation of desultory fighting at last worsted his own—the way to
conquer. History and Comparison—the twin lights of criticism, the only
road-makers across the abyss—are resorted to by him fearlessly. That he
loses the best of their light, and twists the road in the wrong
direction, by following Will-o'-the-wisps like his Virgil-worship,
matters in detail but not in principle. He has practically come back to
the safe way which Aristotle entered, but was precluded from treading
far enough, which Quintilian and Longinus trod, but on which most of the
ancients would not set foot. He has not found the last secret—the secret
of _submitting_ to History and to Comparison; he still looks upon both
as instruments to be used merely under the direction of, and in
subordination to, the purposes of _a priori_ theory. His neglect of the
vernaculars is not only wrong, but by his time absurd. His minor
prejudices (as against Erasmus) are sometimes contemptible. His actual
taste, as has been said, was probably neither delicate nor versatile.
But he has learning, logic, lucidity within his range, laborious
industry, and love of literature. The multitude which followed him
followed him partly to do evil; but it would have been a surprise, and
almost a shame, had so bold and capable a leader lacked a multitude of
followers.
As has been said, Lilius Giraldus also refers to Lodovico Castelvetro,
who at least resembled Scaliger in the characteristic Ishmaelitism of
the Renaissance critic. [Sidenote: _Castelvetro._] His quarrel with
Caro, also already referred to, was unluckily, we must not say
distinguished, but marked, by unfair play on the part of his adversary,
who “delated” him to the Inquisition for heresy; and Castelvetro had to
fly the country. His most important work appeared late, the famous
edition and translation, with commentary, of the _Poetics_[107] not
being published till a year before his death. “He was of his nature
choleric,” says his biographer; and he bestowed a good deal of this
choler not merely upon Caro, but upon the majestic Bembo and others. Yet
Castelvetro was a very remarkable critic, and perhaps deserved the
ascription of actual critical genius better than any man who has yet
been mentioned in this volume. It is but for chequered righteousness
that his practically certain formulation of the Three Unities can be
counted to him; but, as we shall see, he has other claims, from which it
is not necessary to write off anything.
-----
Footnote 107:
Vienna, 1570. My copy is the second enlarged and improved issue, which
appeared at Basle five years later. I have also the companion edition
of Petrarch (Basle, 1582), and the _Opere Varie Critiche_, published,
with a Life, by Muratori, in 4to (Lione, 1727). Besides these he wrote
an “exposition” of Dante, which was lost, and he is said, by Muratori,
to have been never tired of reading, and discovering new beauties in,
Boccaccio. Bentley, _Diss. on Phal._, ed. 1817, p. liii, defending
Castelvetro against Boyle, says that “his books have at this present
time such a mighty reputation, that they are sold for their weight in
silver in most countries of Europe.” I am glad that this is not true
now, for the _Poetic_ by itself weighs nearly 3 lb. But Europe often
makes its valuations worse. I have seen, though not bought, a copy for
a shilling in these days.
-----
His impartial attachment to both classical and vulgar tongues ranks him,
of itself, in a higher sphere than that of Scaliger; and a certain
impetuous, incalculable, _prime-sautier_ genius puts him higher still.
Even contemporaries seem to have recognised this in him, though they
sometimes shook their heads over its pronouncements.[108] It may,
indeed, sometimes seem that these pronouncements are, if not
inconsistent, difficult to connect by any central tie-beam of critical
theory. But this is almost inevitable in the case of a critic whose work
takes the form, not of regular treatises on large subjects, nor even of
connected essays on separate authors and books, but of commentaries and
_adversaria_, where the passage immediately under consideration is
uppermost in the writer’s mind, and may—not illegitimately in a
fashion—induce him to display a facet of his thought which does not seem
logically connected with other facets. This peculiarity is perhaps the
only excuse for the depreciation of Dacier, who, reinforcing his native
dulness with the superciliousness of a Frenchman in the later years of
Louis XIV., accused Castelvetro of ignorance, and even of contradiction
of Aristotle. The fact is, that Castelvetro is first of all an
independent critic, and that, though there are few less common, there
are no more valuable critical qualities than independence, even when it
is sometimes pushed to the verge of eccentricity, providing only that it
is sincere, and not ill-informed. It seems to me uncharitable, if not
flagrantly unjust, to deny Castelvetro sincerity, and either impudent or
ignorant to deny him information.
-----
Footnote 108:
See the curious remarks of Salviati, printed from MS. by Mr Spingarn
(_op. cit._, p. 316). Salviati thinks that Castelvetro too often wrote
to show off subtlety of opinion, and to be _not_ like other people.
-----
But he had also acuteness and taste. I do not know a better example in
little of the latter quality at the time than his short and scornful
description[109] of a preposterous comparison by another critic,
Bartolommeo Riccio, between the “Sparrow” of Catullus and a pretty but
commonplace poem of Navagero on a dog. [Sidenote: _The Opere Varie._]
One may sigh over the ruling passion, not to say the original sin, of
critical man, on passing from this to a tangle of recrimination and
“that’s _my_ thunder” which follows with reference to Riccio and Pigna
and Cinthio. But this passes again into a solid discussion on the
material and form of poetry, and on the office of the Muses. Many of
these animadversions are, as we should expect, purely verbal, sometimes
not beyond the powers of the _grammaticuccio_, of whom Castelvetro
himself not unfrequently talks with piquant scorn. But the comfort of
finding annotations on Virgil alternating with discourses on Dante, like
that of placing a quarto on Petrarch side by side with one on Aristotle,
more than atones for any occasional hair-splitting. We are at last in
the Jerusalem of general Literature which is the mother of us all, which
is free and universal; not in this or that separatist Samaria or
exclusive Hebron. The Platonic annotations, which are numerous, are
important, because they show just the other side of Castelvetro’s talent
from the merely verbal one—almost the whole of them being devoted to the
exposition and illustration of meaning. It is a great pity that he did
not work his notes[110] on the _Gorgias_ (which he regards expressly as
Plato’s _Rhetoric_) into a regular treatise of contrast and comparison
on this subject between Aristotle and Plato. But all these notes show us
the qualification of the commentator to deal with so difficult a subject
as the _Poetics_.
-----
Footnote 109:
_Op. Var._, p. 83 _sq._
Footnote 110:
_Op. Var._, pp. 288-306.
-----
The stout post quarto, with its vignette of an exceedingly
determined-looking owl standing on a prostrate pitcher and hooting
_Kekrika_, is dedicated to Maximilian II. [Sidenote: _The_ Poetica.] It
is arranged on a system equally simple and thorough. First comes a
section of the Greek Text; then a short Italian summary of its contents;
then the Italian translation; and then the _spositione_—the
Commentary—which may be long or short as circumstances require. Often,
on a Greek text of a few lines, it will run to as many quarto pages,
full-packed with small print. Not the least advantageous part of this
quadripartite arrangement is that the summaries—being, though very
brief, to the point—are capable of being put together as a table of
contents. This, however, but partially applies to Castelvetro’s
commentary, which is often not a little discursive from the text. The
defect was, however, supplied in the second edition by an elaborate
index specially devoted to the _Spositioni_, and consisting, not of mere
words or names with page references, but of reasoned descriptions of the
subjects, as thus—
"_Allegrezza._
“Come nasca dalla tristitia, che si sente del male del giusto, e del
bene del malvagio.
oblica, che si prende dalla miseria, o dalla felicita altrui qual sia,”
&c. &c.
This is a great help in tackling Castelvetro’s text, the book containing
some seven hundred pages, of perhaps as many words each.
No analysis of a book of such a size, so necessarily parasitic or
satellitic on another in general run, and yet branching and winding with
such a self-willed originality of its own, is possible. [Sidenote: _On
Dramatic conditions._] One might easily write a folio on Castelvetro’s
quarto. Here we can only, as in most other cases now, except those of
books or parts of books at once epoch-making in character and moderate
in bulk, give an idea of the author’s most important views on general
and particular points. It was necessary, since Castelvetro is revolving
round Aristotle, that the greater part of his treatise should deal with
the drama: and perhaps nowhere is that originality which has been
praised more visible than here, whether it lead him wrong or right. He
has undoubtedly made a step, from the mathematical towards the æsthetic
view of literature, in conditioning, as he does, his view of the Drama
by a consideration of the stage. To literary _a-priorists_ this is of
course horrible; to those who take the facts of literature, as they take
the facts of life, it is a welcome and reconciling discovery. The
conditions of the Greek stage were admittedly such as can never be
naturally reproduced, and therefore, however great and perfect the Greek
Tragedy may be in its own way, it cannot usurp the position of “best in
all ways”; and can still less pretend to dictate to other kinds that
they shall not be good at all in ways different from its own.
If the details of Castelvetro’s theory do not always correspond in
excellence to the sense and novelty of the general view, this is because
he adulterates his notion of stage requirements with that unlucky
“verisimilitude” misunderstood, which is the curse of all the
neo-classic critics, and which comes from neglect of the Aristotelian
preference of the probable-impossible to the improbable-possible.
[Sidenote: _On the Three Unities._] The huge Mysteries of the Middle
Ages, which ranged from Heaven to Hell, which took weeks to act, and
covered millennia in their action, did at least this good to the English
and some other theatres—that they familiarised the mind with the neglect
of this verisimilitude. But Castelvetro would have none of such neglect.
His play must be adjusted, not merely in Action, but in Space and Time,
as nearly as possible to the actual capacity of the stage, the actual
duration of the performance.[111] And so the Fatal Three, the Weird
Sisters of dramatic criticism, the vampires that sucked the blood out of
nearly all European tragedy, save in England and Spain, for three
centuries, make their appearance. They “enter the critical literature of
Europe,” as Mr Spingarn has very truly laid it down,[112] “from the time
of Castelvetro.”
But to balance this enslaving of the Drama (in which he far exceeds
Aristotle), Castelvetro frees the Epic from Aristotelian restrictions in
an almost equally important manner. [Sidenote: _On the freedom of
Epic._] From his references in the _Opere Varie_ to Cinthio and Pigna,
it would appear that he claimed, if not priority, an even portion with
them in the consideration of the subject of Epic Poetry. And though not
agreeing with them altogether, he certainly agrees with them in
enlarging the domains of the Epic. Poetry, he says in effect,[113] may
do anything that History can do; and, like the latter, it may deal, not
only with one action of one man, but with his life-actions, or with many
actions of many men.
-----
Footnote 111:
In fact, he subordinates the first to the other two. _They_ make it
necessary. In order to appreciate his views, it is necessary to read
the commentary on all the Aristotelian places concerned, and also on
that touching Epic.
Footnote 112:
P. 101.
Footnote 113:
_Poet. d’Arist._, p. 278.
-----
With Castelvetro, however,—and it is probably the cause why pedants like
Dacier undervalue him,—both the character of his compositions, and
probably also the character of his mind, draw him much more to
independent, though by no means always or often isolated, critical
_aperçus_ and judgments, than to theoretical discourses, with or without
illustration. [Sidenote: _His eccentric acuteness._] To put it
differently, while there is usually a theory at the back of his
appreciations, the appreciation generally stands in front of the theory.
But however this may be, that quality of “unexpectedness,” in which some
æsthetic theorists have found such a charm, belongs to him as it does to
few critics. One might, for instance, give half-a-dozen guesses to a
tolerably ingenious person without his hitting on Castelvetro’s
objection to the story of Ricciardetto and Fiordispina in the
_Orlando_.[114] That objection is not moral: not on the ground of what
is ordinarily called decorum: not on that of digression, on that of
improbability generally, on any other that is likely to occur. It is, if
you please, that as Fiordispina was a Mahometan, and Ricciardetto a
Christian, and as Christians and Mahometans do not believe in the same
kind of Fauns and Fairies, as, further, Fauns do not eat ladies or
goddesses, whether alive or dead, Ricciardetto’s explanation of his
alleged transformation of sex is not credible. In a modern writer this
would look like an absolute absence of humour, or like a clumsy attempt
at it; and I am not prepared to say that humour was a strong point with
these Italian critics as a rule. But Castelvetro strikes me as being by
no means exceptionally unprovided with it: and such a glaring lapse as
this is probably due to the intense seriousness with which these
critical questions, new as they were, presented themselves to him and to
his class.
-----
Footnote 114:
_Poet. d’Arist._, pp. 585, 586.
-----
They get, as was once said, “into logical coaches”; and are perfectly
content to be driven over no matter what minor precipices, and into no
matter what sloughs of despond, so long as they are not actually thrown
out. Yet Castelvetro at least is never dull. At one time[115] he
compares the “somnolent indecorum,” the _sconvenevolezza sonnachiosa_,
of Homer to the practice of German innkeepers (whether observed by
himself in his exile, or taken from Erasmus, one cannot say) in putting
the worst wines and viands on the table first, and the best later.
Elsewhere[116] he gives a very curious reason against that other
_sconvenevolezza_ (this sonorous word is a great favourite with him)
which he too saw in the use of prose for tragedy—namely, that in
reciting verse the speaker _naturally_ raises his voice, and so makes it
more audible to the audience. He has been blamed for adopting the notion
of rank being necessary to tragic characters, but on this see _ante_ (p.
61).
-----
Footnote 115:
Ibid., p. 576.
Footnote 116:
Ibid., p. 23.
-----
His irreverent independence in regard to Virgil is noticeable in a
critic of his time, and of course especially so if one comes [Sidenote:
_Examples: Homer’s nodding, prose in tragedy, Virgil, minor poetry._] to
him straight from Scaliger. It would not be fair to represent him as a
“Virgiliomastix,” but his finer critical sense enables him to perceive
the superiority of Homer, in respect of whom he goes so far[117] as to
say that Virgil “is not a poet.” But this—_per se_, of course,
excessive—had been provoked by the extravagance of Maronolatry from Vida
downwards: and Castelvetro does not scruple to praise the Mantuan for
his grasp, his variety of phrase, and other good things. He has an
extremely sensible passage—not novel to us, but by no means a truism to
his contemporaries or to a good many poets still—on what he who
publishes miscellaneous poetry has to expect. By the publication, says
this other Messer Lodovico, of a thing which nobody asked him for (_cosa
non richiesta_) without any necessity, he publishes at the same time his
confidence in himself, and affirms that the thing is good. “Which
thing,” goes on Castelvetro in his pitiless critical manner, “if it be
found to be faulty (_rea_) and blameworthy, it convicts him who
publishes it either of malice or of folly.” Alas! for the minor bard.
-----
Footnote 117:
_Poet. d’Arist._, p. 545. It is fair to say that the ban is only
pronounced in reference to a single point—the management of
_speeches_.
-----
His attitude[118] to the everlastingly vexed question of the connection
of verse and poetry is very sensible, and practically anticipates, with
less reluctant circumlocution, that of Coleridge, who in more things
than one comes close to Castelvetro, and who probably knew him.
[Sidenote: _The medium and end of Poetry._] He does not here contradict
Aristotle by denying that verse is un-_essential_ to poetry. But he
insists—and points out the undoubted truth that Aristotle’s practice,
whatever his theory may do, admits this—that Verse is a kind of
inseparable accident of poetry,—that it is the appropriate garb and
uniform thereof, which cannot be abandoned without impropriety. And he
takes up this attitude still more emphatically in regard to the closely
connected, and still more important, question of the _end_ of Poetry.
Here, as we have seen, the great Master of Criticism temporised.
[Sidenote: _Uncompromising championship of Delight._] He did not doubt
that this end was Delight: but in deference to idols, partly of the
Cavern, partly of the Market-place, he yokes and hampers this end with
moral improvement, with Imitation, itself for itself, and so on.
Castelvetro is much more uncompromising. One shudders, almost as much as
one rejoices, at the audacity of a critic who in mid-sixteenth-century
calmly says, “What do beginning, middle, and end matter in a poem,
provided it delights?”[119] Nay, Castelvetro has reached a point of view
which has since been attained by very few critics, and which some who
thought they had gained this peak in Darien first may be mildly
chagrined to find occupied by him—the view that there are different
_qualities_ of poetry, suited to delight different qualities of persons
and of mind.
-----
Footnote 118:
Ibid., p. 23.
Footnote 119:
_Poet. d’Arist._, p. 158.
-----
How seldom this view has been taken all critics ought to know, if they
do not. Even now he who climbs the peak must lay his account with
stone-throwing from the garrisons of other points. That Burns
administers, and has a right to administer, one delight to one class of
mind, Shelley another to another; that Béranger is not to be denied the
wine of poetry because his vintage is not the vintage of Hugo: that
Longfellow, and Cowper, and George Herbert are not to be sneered at
because their delight is the delight of cheering but not of
intoxication; that Keble is not intrinsically the less a poet because he
is not Beddoes, or Charles Wesley because he is not Charles
Baudelaire—or _vice versa_ in all the cases—these are propositions which
not every critic—which perhaps not very many critics—will admit even in
the abstract, and which in practice almost every critic falsifies and
renounces at some time or other.[120] But they are propositions which
follow fairly, and indeed inevitably, from Castelvetro’s theory of the
necessary end, Delight, and the varying adjustment of the delighting
agent to the patient’s faculty of being delighted.
He is perhaps less sound in his absolute condemnation of “knowledge” as
material for poetry. He is right in black-marking Fracastoro from this
point of view: but he is certainly not right in extending the black mark
to Lucretius. The fact is, that even he could not wrench himself
sufficiently free from the trammels of old time to see that in the
treatment lies the faculty of delighting, and that therefore, on his own
scheme, the treatment is the poetry.
-----
Footnote 120:
It is perhaps well to meet a possible, though surely not probable
objection “Do you deny _ranks_ in poetry?” Certainly not—but only the
propriety of _excluding_ ranks which do not seem, to the censor, of
the highest.
-----
There are few writers to be dealt with in this volume—none, I think,
already dealt with—to whom it would be more satisfactory to devote the
minutest handling than to Castelvetro. [Sidenote: _His exceptional
interest and importance._] He has been called by Mr Spingarn
“revolutionary.” The term, in an American mouth, probably has no
unfavourable connotation; but waiving that connotation altogether, I
should be inclined to demur to it. Even the _Vehmgericht_ (if one may
rely on the leading case of _Vgr._ v. _Philipson_, reported by Sir
Walter Scott) acquitted of High Treason those who had spoken evil of it
in countries where its authority was not acknowledged, and indeed its
name hardly known. Now, Castelvetro was dealing—as we must, for his
honour as well as for our comprehension of him, remember that he
dealt—with modern as well as with ancient literature at once, and
instead of adopting the injudicious though natural separation of
Minturno, or the one-sided treatment of Scaliger, was constantly
exploring, and always more or less keeping in view, territories not
merely in which Aristotle’s writ did not run, but which in Aristotle’s
time were No Man’s Land and _terra incognita_. He can no more be
regarded as a revolutionary or a rebel, in framing new laws for the new
facts, than a man could be regarded in either light for disregarding the
Curfew Law at the North Pole, or for disobeying sumptuary regulations as
to the use of woollen in the tropics. His _ethos_ is really that of the
self-reliant, resourceful, and adventurous explorer, as he has been
called—of the experimenter in new material and under new conditions.
That the paths he strikes out sometimes lead to _culs-de-sac_—that the
experiments he makes sometimes fail, is nothing more than is natural,
than is inevitable in the circumstances.
More generally his value is great, and we may forgive him (especially
since he did _us_ little or no harm) the binding of the Unities on the
necks of Frenchmen and Italians, in consideration of the inestimable
service which he did in standing up for Epic—that is, Romantic—Unity of
a different kind, and in formulating, in a “No Surrender” fashion, the
doctrine of Delight as the Poetic Criterion. By doing this he not merely
fought for the freedom of the long narrative poem (which, as it happens,
has been a matter of minor importance, save at rare intervals, since his
time), but he unknowingly safeguarded the freedom of the long narrative
prose romance or novel, which was to be the most important new
contribution of modern times to literature. Nor may it be amiss once
more to draw attention to a more general merit still, the inestimable
_indifference_ with which he continually handles ancient and modern
examples. Only by this—the wisest “indifference of the wise”—can true
criticism be reached. It is an indifference which neglects no change of
condition, which takes count of all features and circumstances, but
which, for that very reason, declines to allow ancient literature to
prescribe unconditionally to modern, or modern to ancient, or either to
mediæval. As to this last, Castelvetro has, and could be expected to
have, nothing to say: as to the others, he is more eloquent in practice
than in express theory. But his practice speaks his conviction, and it
is the practice by which, and by which alone, the serene temples of the
really Higher Criticism can be reached.
The last third of the century provides only one author who deserves
(though he has seldom received) at least equal attention with Scaliger
and Castelvetro: but it has, like the second, a crowd of minor critics
who must not be wholly passed over. [Sidenote: _Tasso and the
controversies over the_ Gerusalemme.] Moreover, it boasts—if such a
thing be a subject of boasting—one equally famous and weary controversy,
that over the _Gerusalemme_. This, which expects the critical historian
as its prey, and will test his powers to the utmost if haply he may
wrestle free of it at once without inadequacy and without tedium, we may
dare first: may take the interesting single figure of Patrizzi or
Patrici second, and then may sweep the rest into a conclusion, which
will itself leave not a little summarising to be done in the
Interchapter succeeding this Book.
Torquato Tasso was, in more ways than one, fated to the ordeal of
controversy. His work would, in the already unfolded state and temper of
Italian criticism on the subject of the “heroic poem,” have invited it
in any case; but he had, in a manner, inherited the adventure. His
father, Bernardo, as has been briefly recorded above, had himself taken
much interest in critical questions; and after being at first a
classicist, had come round to the position of Cinthio. It was Torquato’s
object, by argument and example alike, to reconcile the combatants. His
_Discorsi_ did not appear till late in 1587;[121] but they are said to
have been written some twenty years earlier, after the appearance of
Minturno’s Italian book. His plan is as simply obvious—shall we say as
obviously defective?—as that of the immortal contributor to the
_Eatanswill Gazette_. He, too, “combined his information.” Some kind of
Unity is to be imposed on the Romantic Variety; and though this Unity
cannot possibly be the Aristotelian, it need not be quite such a
different kind as that of Castelvetro. It is to be organic, but may
permit itself the organs of a complex animal system.
-----
Footnote 121:
At Venice, but _ad instanza_ of a Ferrarese bookseller.
-----
Nor did Tasso stick to generalities; nor did he shrink from giving
hostages to fortune, and his enemies, by embodying his ideas in
practice. These ideas we have already seen floating in various critical
minds from Fracastorius to Castelvetro. The “heroic poem”—for his theory
and his example alike consecrated that word for use, instead of either
“epic” or “romance,” for nearly two centuries—must not be pure
invention, but must avail itself of the authority of history. It must be
animated by religion, true religion—that is to say, Christianity. It
must have the supernatural. The hero must be a pious and moral, if not
necessarily faultless, character. It must not be too dogmatic—that the
poet may be free. It must deal with ancient or modern history so as to
be neither absolutely unfamiliar, nor too familiar in its atmosphere and
manners. The persons, things, and scenes must be noble and stately. It
will probably strike every one that this is an admirable receipt for a
historical novel; and thus do we constantly find blind strivings at
things that cannot yet get themselves born. But whether it is an equally
good receipt for a poem may be doubted. Some of us, at least, have no
doubt that the _Gerusalemme_, which is faithfully constructed in
accordance with it, is not nearly so good a poem as the _Orlando_, for
the graceless graces of which it was expressly devised to substitute
something more orderly and decent.
The extensive and execrable controversy which followed did not, however,
turn wholly, though it very largely turned, on the actual case of
Ariosto _v._ Tasso. But, as usually happens, the partisans of the latter
provoked it by unadvised laudations of him, and worse-advised attacks on
his great predecessor. The Florentines had not, as such, any special
reason for championing the “turnip-eating” Ariosto; but Tasso had
offended the coteries of the Della Crusca, and a Della Cruscan chief,
the Salviati already mentioned, took the field against the author of the
_Gerusalemme_. He sallied forth in turn; and the bickering became
universal. Five mortal volumes of the standard edition of Tasso appear
to be occupied with an incomplete collection of the documents on the
subject—a collection which I have not read and do not intend to read,
but which whosoever rejoices in such things may, if he likes, supplement
with all the _Histories of Italian Literature_ from Tiraboschi
downwards, and all the Lives of Tasso, especially those of Serassi in
the eighteenth century and Solerti in the nineteenth.
The most important upshot of the controversy is not itself in dispute.
The impregnable historical position of Cinthio was strangely neglected
by both sides (except by Ishmaelite outsiders like Bruno and Patrizzi);
nor was even the modified Aristotelianism and “Unitarianism” of
Castelvetro, as a rule, attempted. Both sides swore fealty to Aristotle,
and all debated what Aristotle meant—what Unity was. And, in spite of
the exceptions, this was the condition in which the question was left to
the next century.
The controversy, like that between Caro and Castelvetro, and (I fear it
must be said) like literary controversies in general, did not pass off
without a muddying of the waters. Salviati, Tasso’s chief adversary, and
author of the dialogue _L’Infarinato_ against him, had at first been a
great admirer and almost flatterer of the _Gerusalemme_, had offered the
author his friendship, had praised his scheme, and had actually proposed
to celebrate it in that very commentary on the _Poetics_ which Mr
Spingarn (who has read it in MS.) describes as actually devoted to
“undermining Tasso’s pretensions.” Exactly by what personal, or
cliquish, or patriotic offences he was induced to take the opposite
line, belongs to the obscure, dull, and disgusting history of these
literary squabbles generally, and we need not concern ourselves with it.
The points “for us” in the whole matter are, first, that the controversy
shows the strong hold which a certain conception of criticism (whether
the right one or not) had obtained of the Italian mind; and, secondly,
that the main question on which it turned—“What _sort_ of Unity heroic
poems must have?”—“In what manner must the precepts of Aristotle be
interpreted and adjusted?”—shows more than the shadow of coming
Neo-Classicism. The path of safety and truth which Giraldi and Pigna had
opened up many years earlier, and which even Castelvetro, Unitarian as
he was, had been careful to leave open—the path starting, that is to
say, from the positions that Aristotle had not all literature before
him, and that the kinds of literature which he had not before him could
not, therefore, be subject to his dicta—was now ignored or barred.
_Apparent diræ facies_, the faces of the Unities, and there is nothing
left to do, in the general opinion, but to wrangle about their exact
lineaments.
The critical work of Tasso is far from inconsiderable, and only a sense
of duty prevents the consideration of it here at greater length.
[Sidenote: _Tasso’s Critical writings_] It consists[122] of the
_Discorsi_ which, as noted above, appeared at Venice (with divers
_Lettere Poetiche_) in one of the thin small parchment-covered quartos
for which the student of this literature begins, after a time, to feel a
distinct affection. The much longer and later _Discorsi del Poema Epico_
partly repeat, partly correct, partly expand, the earlier work; and
sometimes stand in a curious relation to it.[123] But this by no means
exhausts the tale. Tasso, nothing if not conscientious, appears to have
taken his art in general, and his work in particular, very seriously
indeed. He makes extracts from Castelvetro; writes on the Allegory of
his own _Gerusalemme_, an Apology for it in dialogue, a formal Reply to
the strictures of the Della Cruscans, a tractate in answer to Patrizzi’s
defence of Ariosto, another on Poetical Differences, a long “Judgment of
the _Conquistata_,” a discourse on the Art of the Dialogue. Also he has
some curious considerations on three Canzoni of Pigna’s entitled _Le Tre
Sorelle_, written in honour of Lucrezia Bendidio, and dealing with
Sacred and Profane Love. These considerations have the additional
interest of being addressed to Leonora d’Este, and of breathing a
peculiar blend of that half-sensual, half-Platonic Renaissance rapture
of which the great _locus_ is the discourse assigned to Bembo at the end
of Castiglione’s _Courtier_, with the religiosity which we more
specially think of in Tasso. He has an elaborate lecture on a single
sonnet of La Casa,—a great favourite of Tasso’s, and deservedly so as
far as his serious poetry goes,—and some minor matter of the kind.
-----
Footnote 122:
These pieces form the major part of Cesare Guasti’s _Prose Diverse di
T. T._ (2 vols., Florence, 1875).
Footnote 123:
For instance, my attention was drawn by Mr Ker to the fact that the
description of the subject of the _third_ original _Discorso_ given at
the end of the _second_ (f. 24 original ed. vol. i. p. 48, Guasti)
does not in the least fit the actual contents, while the missing
matter is duly supplied in the later book (i. 162 _sq._, Guasti).
-----
To the writing of this not inconsiderable _corpus_ of criticism Tasso
brought, besides his own genius and the interesting association of his
creative power, really wide reading, and, as has been said, an
indefatigable interest in the subject. [Sidenote: _and position._] He
exercised a good deal of influence in the time to come—both Milton and
Dryden, for instance (the latter again and again), refer to his critical
work. Yet it may perhaps be said without presumption that this criticism
is rather more interesting to a student of Tasso, or to one who wishes
to obtain at famous hands some knowledge of the Italian sixteenth
century _ethos_ in this kind without going any further, than to the
student of criticism itself. Tasso is very fairly representative of it
in its combination of Plato and Aristotle, in its anxiety to get general
notions of poetry and poetic kinds, in its respect for the ancients, in
its ethical turn. But he is rather more representative than original or
distinct; and his criticism is not perhaps improved by the very natural
fact that sometimes avowedly, and probably in most cases really, it is
less a disinterested consideration of Poetry in general than an
apologetic of the poetry of Torquato Tasso. And as that poetry itself,
beautiful as it often is, is notoriously something of a compromise
between the Romantic and the Classical, so the criticism which is
connected with it is compromising and compromised likewise. Tasso has
many interesting observations, intelligent _aperçus_, just remarks: he
is a link, and a very early link, in the apostolic succession of those
who have held and taught the great doctrine that poetry makes the
familiar unfamiliar, the accustomed strange and new.[124] But he has not
shaken himself free enough to gain the standpoint of his friendly
antagonist Patrizzi, and to recognise, even imperfectly, that the secret
of poetry is treatment _poeticamente_, and that only the historic method
unfettered by rules will tell you what _poeticamente_ has been and is,
even thus leaving unknown what it will be.
-----
Footnote 124:
For instance in the opening of the first _Discorsi_ (f. 2, _verso_):
_Variamente tessendolo, di commune proprio, e di vecchio novo il
facevano_.
-----
At about the same time, however, a last, and the most vigorous, if not
altogether the best informed, attempt was made to put the matter on this
true historical basis. [Sidenote: _Patrizzi: his_ Poetica.] A year
(1586) before the publication of Tasso’s _Discorsi_, and of his
_Apologia_, though long after the writing of the first, and not without
reference to himself and the dispute between his partisans and those of
Ariosto, there had been printed at Ferrara, in two parts, one of the
most important and original of the numerous treatises which appeared
during this half-century or more, under the title of _Della Poetica_. It
was the work of Francesco Patrizzi (as he is generally cited in books,
though both in the title-pages of this work, and in the signature of his
Dedication, it is spelt Patrici). The inspiration of the book was, at
least partly, due to the violent anti-Peripateticism of which Patrizzi
was at this time the twin champion with Bruno;[125] and while we must no
doubt thank this party spirit for being in great part the cause of the
volume, there may be room for objecting that it somewhat obscures the
pure critical value of the treatises. That value, however, remains
great, and would be great even if there were nothing in the book but an
ill-carried-out idea. For its idea is the basing of the inquiry into
poetry, not on _a priori_ discussion of the nature of the thing, and of
its exponent the poet,—not on previous authority as to these
questions,—but on a historical examination of extant poetical
composition. It is, of course, true that an examination of the kind was
ready at hand in Scaliger’s book. But nothing was further from
Scaliger’s mind than to _base_ his inquiry on this: on the contrary, it
comes late, and is merely intended to supply illustration and texts for
verbal criticism.
Footnote 125:
Bruno himself, in more places than one, takes the same line; indeed
his statement in the _Eroici Furori_, that “the rules are derived from
the poetry, and there are as many kinds and sorts of true rules as
there are kinds and sorts of true poets,” is the conclusion of the
whole matter, and would have done his friend Sidney a great deal of
good. (The passage may be found at p. 38 of the first vol. of the
translation by I. Williams (London, 1887, or in the original, ed.
Lagarde, p. 625).) But Bruno’s genius, as erratic as it was brilliant,
could not settle to mere Rhetoric.
Patrizzi’s plan is quite different. His book consists of two parts or
“decades”—_La Deca Istoriale_ and _La Deca Disputata_; and though in
some copies (my own is an instance) the cart is perversely put before
the horse, this is evidently a mere stupidity of the binder, due to the
fact that both books, which are separately paged and title-paged, are of
the same year (1586), and perhaps to the other fact that the Dedication
of the _Disputata_ to Don Ferrando Gonzaga, Signor di Guastalla, is
dated, while that of the _Istoriale_ to Lucrezia d’Este, Duchess of
Urbino, is not. But the very first line of the _Disputata_ makes
references to the other as already done.
That the “History of Poetry” of _il gran Patricio_, as his commendatory
sonneteers love to call him, should be either completely exhaustive or
impeccably methodical, it would be unreasonable to expect. [Sidenote:
_The_ Deca Istoriale.] There are indeed some surprising touches,[126]
both of knowledge and of liberality, in his admissions of the
_Architrenius_ and the _Anticlaudianus_, of Marbod and Bede. But for the
most part he confines himself to classic and scriptural authors; and his
notices are rather those of a classical dictionary maker, or hand-list
man, than of a critical historian in the best sense. Still, all things
must have beginnings; and it is a very great beginning indeed to find
the actual documents of the matter produced and arranged in any orderly
fashion, even if we do begin a little in the air with Giubale and
Giafeto, and end a little in the dark with Gaufredo and Guntero.
-----
Footnote 126:
Especially when they are contrasted with the superciliousness (_v.
supra_) of Lilius Giraldus and Scaliger.
-----
Only when he has spent 150 pages on this arrangement does Patrizzi pass
to his Second Book, in which (once more in the true logical order) he
arranges the productions of his poets in _kinds_, of which he is a
generous and careful distributor. The much shorter Third deals with the
kinds of verses; and the Fourth with the festivals and spectacles at
which poetry was produced, the Fifth continuing this with special
reference to Games and Contests. The Sixth deals with the singing of
ancient poetry; the Seventh with its accompanying Music; the Eighth with
Rhythm; the Ninth with the Chorus; and the Tenth with the persons who
_produced_ ancient poetry—rhapsodists, priests, actors, &c.
It is, of course, to be observed that all this is strictly limited to
_Ancient_ Poetry; indeed Patrizzi repeats the very words religiously in
the title of every Book. [Sidenote: _The_ Deca Disputata.] To support
his examination with a further one of modern or even Italian “vulgar”
poetry does not seem to have occurred to him. Perhaps, indeed—since he
refers, as has been said, in the very first line of his second part to
_la lunga e faticosa istoria delle cose a poeti, a poemi, e a poetica
spettanti_ as “condetta a fine” with a sort of sigh of relief—he may
have thought that his readers would not stand it. But it is noteworthy
that in this Decade he constantly cites Italian writers, and that the
last forty pages of his Tenth Book consist of a _Trimerone_ of
controversy with Tasso himself, amicable (they were actually friends),
but by no means unanimated.
The First Book of the _Disputata_ is given up to the cause of poetry,
which Patrizzi, again in accordance with Bruno, decides to be Enthusiasm
(_Furori_[127]), relying much on Plato, especially on the Tynnichus
passage (_v. supra_, vol. i. p. 20), and even a little on Aristotle. The
Second Book attacks, with a good deal of acerbity, and some
wire-drawing, but also with learning, acuteness, and common-sense, the
Aristotelian doctrine of Imitation, and the philosopher’s order and
distribution of poetic kinds. The Third follows this up by an inquiry
whether, in a general way, Poetry is Imitation at all; the Fourth by one
whether the poet is an imitator. And the conclusion of the three,
enforced with great dialectical skill, and with a real knowledge of
Greek criticism,—that of Plato, Longinus, and the Rhetoricians, as well
as Aristotle’s,—is that Poetry is _not_ Imitation, or at any rate that
Imitation is not proper and peculiar to poets. In which point it will go
hard but any catholic student of literature, however great his respect
for Aristotle, must now “say ditto” to Patrizzi.
-----
Footnote 127:
It would be rather interesting to know whether the _Furor Poeticus_ of
the second part of the _Return from Parnassus_ has anything to do with
Patrizzi. There _need_ be no connection, of course; but the
correspondence of England and Italy at this time in matters literary
was so quick and intimate that there _might_ have been. Patrizzi’s
book appeared in the probable year of Shakespeare’s going to London,
and of the production of _Tamburlaine_. Bruno had then left England.
-----
In his Fifth Book Patrizzi tackles a matter of far greater
importance—for after all the discussion, “Is Poetry Imitation, or is it
not?” is very mainly a logomachy. As Miss Edgeworth’s philosophic boy
remarks, “You may call your hat your cadwallader,” when you have once
explained that by this term you mean “a black thing that you wear on
your head.” But the question of this Fifth Book, “Whether Poetry can be
in prose?” is of a very different kind. It goes, not to words but to
things, and to the very roots of them; it involves—if it may not be said
actually to _be_—the gravest, deepest, most vital question of literary
criticism itself; and on the answer given to it will turn the further
answer which must be given to a whole crowd of minor questions.
On this point _il gran Patricio_ has at least this quality of greatness,
that he knows his own mind with perfect clearness, and expounds it as
clearly as he knows it. His conclusion[128] is, “That verse is so proper
and so essential to every manner of poetry that, without verse, no
composition either can or ought to be Poetry.” This is refreshing,
whether we consider that Patrizzi has taken the best way of establishing
his dogma or not. He proceeds as usual by posing and examining the
places—four in number—in which Aristotle deals with the question; and
discusses them with proper exactness from the verbal point of view,
dwelling specially, as we should expect, on the term ψιλὸς for prose.
Then, as we should expect also, he enters into a still longer
examination of the very obscure and difficult passage about the Mimes
and the Socratic Dialogues. To say that the argument is conducted in a
manner wholly free from quibbling and wire-drawing would perhaps be too
much. Patrizzi—and his logic is certainly not the worse for it—was still
in the habit of bringing things to directly syllogistic head now and
then; and of this modern readers are too often impatient. But he does
succeed in convicting Aristotle of using language by no means wholly
consistent; and he succeeds still better in getting and keeping fast
hold of that really final argument which made De Quincey so angry when
Whately so forcibly put it[129]—the argument that from time immemorial
everybody, who has had no special point to prove, when speaking of a
poem has meant something in verse, that everybody, with the same
exception, has called things in verse poems.
-----
Footnote 128:
_Deca Disputata_, p. 122.
Footnote 129:
See Whately, _Rhetoric_, III. iii. 3, p. 216 (ed. 8, London, 1857),
and De Quincey, _Rhetoric_ (_Works_, ed. Masson, x. 131).
-----
Our author’s acuteness is not less seen in the selection and treatment
of the subject of his Sixth Book, which is the intimately allied
question—indeed, the same question from another point of view—“Whether
the Fable rather than the verse makes the property of the poem?” He is
equally uncompromising on this point; and has of course no difficulty in
showing—against Plutarch rather than Aristotle—that “fable” in the sense
of “_made-up_ subject” is not only not necessary to Poetry, but does not
exist in any of the most celebrated poems of the most celebrated
poets.[130] But he is not even yet satisfied in his onslaught on the
Four Places. He devotes a special Book (VII.—it is true that all the
constituents of this group of books are short) to Aristotle’s contrast
of Empedocles and Homer, labelling the latter only as poet, the former
as rather Physiologist. And with this he takes the same course,
convicting Aristotle, partly out of his own mouth,[131] partly by citing
the “clatter” (_schiamaccio_) which even his own commentators had made
on this subject. And, indeed, at the time even the stoutest
Aristotelians must have been puzzled to uphold a judgment which, taken
literally, would have excluded from the name of poetry the adored
_Georgics_ of old, and the admired _Syphilis_ of recent, times.
-----
Footnote 130:
_Deca Disputata_, p. 134 _sq._
Footnote 131:
Of course an Aristotelian advocate may justly point out that the
Master after all only says μᾶλλον ἢ ποιητὴν, without absolutely
denying the latter title to Empedocles.
-----
But, indefatigable as he is, he is still not “satiate with his victory,”
and in the Eighth Book attacks yet another facet of the same great
problem, “Whether Poetry can be based upon, or formed from, History?”
This was, as we have seen, a question which had already interested the
Italians much; and Patrizzi in handling it draws nearer and nearer to
his controversy with Tasso, whom he here actually mentions. He has
little difficulty in showing that Aristotle’s contrast between Poetry
and History itself by no means denies historical subjects to the poet,
and that Aristotle is not at all responsible for, or in accordance with,
Plutarch’s extravagant insistence on “mendacity” as a poetic _proprium_.
“All the materials comprised in Art, or Science, or study,” says he[132]
(in that manner of his which we have already called refreshing, and
which we shall meet again seldom in this volume), “can be suitable
subjects for poetry and poems, _provided that they be poetically
treated_.” Verily, a _gran Patricio_!
-----
Footnote 132:
_Deca Disputata_, p. 175.
-----
The subject of the Ninth Book is less important and more purely
antiquarian, but interesting enough. It discusses the question whether
ancient poetry necessarily involved “harmony” and “rhythm,” and what
these terms exactly mean—dancing and gestic accompaniment being
considered as well as music. Patrizzi decides, sensibly enough on the
historical comparison, that all these things, though old and not
unsuitable companions of poetry, are in no sense formative or
constitutive parts of Poetry itself.[133]
-----
Footnote 133:
_Deca Disputata_, p. 192.
-----
The title-question of the Tenth Book is, “Whether the modes of Imitation
are three?” He discusses this generally, and specially in regard to
narrative and dramatic delivery of the poetic matter, and then passes in
an appendix (which, however, he declares to be part of the book) to the
_Trimerone_ of reply to Tasso. [Sidenote: _The_ Trimerone _on Tasso_.]
This is a necessarily rather obscure summary, with some quotations, of a
fuller controversy between the two, complicated by glances at the other
literature of the _Gerusalemme_ quarrel, especially at the work of
Camillo Pellegrino.[134] To disentangle the spool, and wind it in
expository form, is out of the question here. Fortunately the piece
concludes with a tabular statement[135] of forty-three opposition theses
to Pellegrino and Tasso. A good many of these turn on rather
“pot-and-kettle” recriminations between Homerists and Ariostians; but
the general principles of comparative criticism are fairly observed in
them, and there is no acerbity of language. In fact, although on some of
the points of the controversy Patrizzi took the Della Cruscan side, it
does not seem to have interrupted his friendship with Tasso, who
attended his lectures,[136] and whose funeral he attended.
-----
Footnote 134:
Who had been _pars non minima_ in the exaltation of Tasso and
depreciation of Ariosto. See Spingarn, pp. 122, 123; and Serassi,
_Vita di Tasso_ (Rome, 1785), pp. 331-348.
Footnote 135:
_Deca Disputata_, pp. 246-249.
Footnote 136:
This was long after the publication of the _Trimerone_ (1586), and
when Patrizzi had been translated from Ferrara to a newly founded
chair of Platonic Philosophy at Rome, _V._ Serassi, _op. cit._, p.
475.
-----
The intrinsic importance of Patrizzi’s criticism may be matter of
opinion; but it will hardly be denied that both its system and its
conclusions are widely different from those of nearly all the Italian
critics whom we have yet considered, though there may be approaches to
both in Cinthio on the one hand and in Castelvetro on the other.
[Sidenote: _Remarkable position of Patrizzi._] The bickering with
Aristotle on particular points is of much less importance than the
constant implicit, and not rare explicit, reliance on the historic
method—on the poets and the poems that exist, the ideas of poetry
conveyed by common parlance, the body of the written Word in short, and
not the letter of the written Rule. I am not sure that Patrizzi ever
lays down the doctrine that “Rules follow practice, not practice rules,”
with quite the distinctness of Bruno in the passage cited above.[137]
But he makes a fight for it in a passage of the _Trimerone_,[138] and
his entire critical method involves it more or less. If he does not
quote modern literature much, it is obviously because the controversy in
which he was mixing took its documents and texts mainly from the
ancients; but he is so well acquainted with the modern literature, not
merely of his own language, that he actually cites[139] Claude Fauchet’s
_Origines de la Poésie Française_, which had appeared in 1581. That his
interest in the whole matter may have been philosophical rather than
strictly, or at least exclusively, literary is very possible—he was
actually a Professor of Philosophy; but however this may be, he has hit
on the solid causeway under the floods, and has held his way steadily
along it for as far as he chose to go. Nay, in the sentence which has
been chosen for the epigraph of this Book, he has kept it open for all
to the end of Poetry and of Time.
-----
Footnote 137:
P. 95.
Footnote 138:
Pp. 221, 222. Of course it is possible to take exception even to
_poeticamente_—to ask “Yes; but what is this?” But the demurrer is
only specious. The very adverbial form shifts the sovereignty from the
_subject_ to the _treatment_.
Footnote 139:
Ibid., p. 235.
-----
There are, however, few propositions in literature truer than this—that
it is of no present use to be wise for the future. [Sidenote: Sed contra
mundum.] If a man chooses the wisdom of the morrow, he must be content
for the morrow to appreciate him—which it does not always, though no one
but a poor creature will trouble himself much about that. Patrizzi had a
really considerable reputation, and deserved it; but in matters literary
he was two hundred years in front of his time, and his time avenged
itself by taking little practical notice of him.[140] The critical
writers of the last fifteen or twenty years of the century are fairly
numerous; and though none of them can pretend to great importance, the
names of some have survived, and the writings of some of these are worth
examination, certainly by the historian and perhaps by the student. But
the general drift of them is usually anti-Patrician and
pro-Aristotelian, in that very decidedly sophisticated interpretation of
Aristotle which was settling itself down upon the world as critical
orthodoxy. [Sidenote: _The latest group of sixteenth-century Critics._]
Among them we may mention one or two which, though actually earlier than
Patrizzi, are later than Castelvetro, and will help to complete, as far
as we can here attempt it, the conspectus of that remarkable flourishing
time of Italian critical inquiry which actually founded, and very nearly
finished, the edifice of European criticism generally for three
centuries at least. The authors to whom we return are Partenio,
Viperano, Piccolomini, Gilio da Fabriano, and Mazzoni; those to whom we
proceed are Jason Denores, Gabriele Zinano, and Faustino Summo. This
latter, who, with an odd coincidence of name, date, and purport, does
really sum up the sixteenth century for Aristotle, and so govern the
decisions of the seventeenth and eighteenth, had been immediately
preceded in the same sense by Buonamici,[141] Ingegneri,[142] and
others.
-----
Footnote 140:
The way in which Patrizzi is referred to after the lapse of a century
by Baillet and Gibert (_v. inf._, p. 320) shows at once the sort of
_magni nominis umbra_ which still made itself felt, and the absence of
any definite knowledge to give body to the shade. For his dealings
with Rhetoric, see next Book, p. 329.
Footnote 141:
_Discorsi Poetici_, 1597.
Footnote 142:
_Poesia Rappresentativa_, 1598.
-----
Partenio, like Minturno and some others, gave his thoughts on the
subject to the world in both “vulgar” and “regular”;[143] [Sidenote:
_Partenio._] but the two forms, while not identical, are closer together
than is sometimes the case, though there is in the Latin a curious
appended anthology of translation and parallel in the two languages. He
is rather a formal person (as indeed may be judged from his particular
addiction to Hermogenes as an authority), but he is not destitute of
wits. Throughout he quotes Italian as well as Latin examples, and refers
to Italian critics such as Trissino; while in one place he gives
something like a regular survey of contemporary Latin poetry by Italians
from Pontanus to Cotta. He lays special stress on the importance of
poetic diction; he thinks that Art can and should improve nature; but he
is as classical as the stiffest _perruque_ of the French anti-Romantic
school in believing Aristotle and Horace to contain everything necessary
to poetical salvation.
-----
Footnote 143:
_Della Imitatione Poetica_, Venice, 1560; _De Poetica Imitatione_,
ibid., 1565.
-----
[Sidenote: _Viperano._]
Viperano[144] (who by a natural error is sometimes cited as
Vi_tu_perano) somewhere makes the half-admission, half-boast,
_scripsimus autem varios libros de variis rebus_, and is indeed a sort
of rhetorical bookmaker who oscillates between instruction and
epideictic. This character is sufficiently reflected in his _De Arte
Poetica_. He had some influence—even as far as Spain (_v. inf._)
-----
Footnote 144:
His _De Arte Poetica_ seems to have first appeared at Antwerp in 1579:
I know it in his _Opera_, Naples, 1606.
-----
Piccolomini’s book,[145] which is a compact small quarto of 422 pages,
differs in arrangement from Castelvetro’s merely in not giving the
Greek—the _particelle_ of the original in translation being followed by
solid blocks of _annotationi_. [Sidenote: _Piccolomini._] The author was
of that well-known type of Renaissance scholar which aspired to a
generous if perhaps impossible universalism; and as he puts this
encyclopædic information at the service of his notes, they are naturally
things not easily to be given account of in any small space, or with
definite reference to a particular subject. That Piccolomini, however,
was not destitute of acuteness or judgment to back his learning,
reference to test passages will very easily show. He has not allowed the
possible force of the μᾶλλον, for instance, to escape him in the
Homer-and-Empedocles passage referred to a little earlier—indeed Maggi
had put him in the right way here. But, in this and other cases, he is
somewhat too fond of “hedging.” “We must remember this; but we must not
forget that,” &c. The inspiriting downrightness of Scaliger on the one
side, and Patrizzi on the other, is not in him; and we see the approach,
in this subject also, of a time of mere piling up of authorities, and
marshalling of arguments _pro_ and _con_, to the darkening rather than
the illumination of judgment.
-----
Footnote 145:
_Annotationi di M. Alessandro Piccolomini nel Libro della Poetica
d’Aristotele_: Vinegia. The dedication to Cardinal Ferdinand dei
Medici is dated Ap. 20, 1572, from Piccolomini’s native town of
Sienna, where he became co-adjutor-archbishop. Some of Salviati’s MS.
observations, printed by Mr Spingarn, seem to show that even
Piccolomini’s contemporaries regarded him as a little too
_polymathic_, while his _Raffaella_ exhibits the less grave side of
the Renaissance. But he was now getting an old man, and died six years
later at the full three score and ten.
-----
The _Topica Poetica_ of Giovanni Andrea Gilio da Fabriano[146] comes
well next to Piccolomini, because the pair are characteristic examples
of the two parallel lines in which, as we have seen throughout, Italian
criticism proceeds during the century. [Sidenote: _Gilio._] In plan it
presents no inconsiderable resemblance to that work of our own Puttenham
(_v. infra_) which followed it at no great interval; but it is, as its
special title will have indicated to the expert, even more definitely
rhetorical. In fact, it must be one of the very latest treatises in
which, on the partial precedent of antiquity, Poetics are brought
_directly_ under Rhetoric. We actually start with accounts, illustrated
by poetical examples in the vernacular, of the Deliberative,
Demonstrative, and Judicial kinds; we pass thence to Invention,
Imitation, and Style; and thence again to Decorum, the Proper, and so
forth, all still illustrated from the vulgar tongue mainly, but with a
Latin example here and there. And this finishes the short First Book.
The longer Second is the most strictly “topical,” with its sections (at
first sight bewildering to the modern non-expert mind) on Definition and
Etymology, on Genus and Species, on Example and Induction, on Proceeding
from Less to Greater and from Greater to Less, on Amplification,
Authority, Custom, and Love. The Third is wholly on Figures of Speech,
and the Fourth on Tropes or Figures of “Conceit.” The poetical
illustration is all-pervading, and there is an odd appendix of sonnets
from ladies of Petrarch’s time. The book is chiefly worth notice here
because, as has been said, it is one of the latest—perhaps, with the
exception of Puttenham’s own, the actually latest—of its special
subdivision that we shall have to notice,—the subdivision, that is to
say, in which the literature handled is absolutely subordinate to an
artificial system of classification, in which the stamped and registered
ticket is everything, so that, when the critic has tied it on, his task
is done.
-----
Footnote 146:
In Venetia, 1580. Why has Time, in the title-page woodcut of this, an
hour-glass as head-dress, but a scourge instead of a scythe in his
hand?
-----
Giacomo Mazzoni is perhaps better known[147] than at least some of the
subjects of this chapter, owing to his connection with [Sidenote:
_Mazzoni._] Dante. He first, in 1573, published at Cesena a brief
_Difesa di Dante_ of some fifty folios, in fairly large print, and
followed it up fourteen years later with an immense _Della Difesa_,
containing 750 pages of very small print without the index. The points
of the actual _Difesa_ are not uncurious—such as an argument that
discourses on Poetry are not improper for the philosopher, and that
Dante is a particularly philosophical poet, in fact encyclopædic. From
the Imitation point of view the Comedy can be easily defended, as it is
a real following of action, and not the mere relation of a dream: and as
dealing with _costume_ (manners) it is a comedy, not a tragedy or heroic
poem. The _Della Difesa_, on the other hand, is a wilderness of
erudition and controversy, arranged under abstract heads (“how the poets
have conducted themselves towards the predicaments of Time and Place,”
&c.), and diverging into inquiries and sub-inquiries of the most
intricate character—the trustworthiness of dreams,[148] the opinions
held of them in antiquity, the nature and kinds of allegory, Dante’s
orthodoxy—in short, all things Dantean, and very many others. If I
cannot with Mr Spingarn[149] discover “a whole new theory of poetry” in
the _Difesa_ itself, I am ready to admit that almost anything might be
discovered in the _Della Difesa_.
-----
Footnote 147:
Milton had read Mazzoni, and cites him.
Footnote 148:
There is a large folding table of the causes and kinds of visions.
Footnote 149:
_Op. cit._, p. 124.
-----
The _Poetica_ of Jason Denores[150] is remarkable from one point of view
for its thoroughgoing and “charcoal-burner” Aristotelianism, from
another for the extraordinary and meticulous precision of its
typographical arrangements. How many sizes and kinds of type there are
in Jason’s book I am [Sidenote: _Denores._] not enough of an expert in
printing to attempt to say exactly: and the arrangement of his page is
as precious as the selection of his type. Sometimes his text overflows
the opened sheet, with decent margins indeed but according to ordinary
proportions; at others (and by no means always because he requires
side-notes) it is contracted to a canal down the centre, with banks
broader than itself. It is, however, when Denores comes to the tabular
arrangement and subdivision of statement and argument, in which nearly
all these writers delight, that he becomes most eccentric. As many
divisions, so many parallel columns; under no circumstances will his
rigid equity give one section the advantage of appearing on the _recto_
of a leaf while the others are banished to the _verso_. This is all very
well when the divisions are two or three or even four. But when, as
sometimes happens, there are six or even eight, the cross-reading of the
parallel columns is at once tempting and conducive to madness. As each
column is but some half-inch broad, almost every word longer than a
monosyllable has to be broken into, and as only a single _em_ of space
is allowed between the columns, there is a strong temptation to “follow
the line.” By doing this you get such bewilderments as
“gue do-diEdip-di Laio, ttappas-menosia ra il Poe mu tio lipo, per,”
&c.,
a moderate dose of which should suffice to drive a person of some
imagination, and excessive nerves, to Bedlam. Read straight, however,
Denores is much more sedative, not to say soporific, than exciting: and
his dealings with Tragedy, the Heroic Poem, and Comedy have scarcely any
other interest than as symptoms of that determination towards
unqualified, if not wholly unadulterated, Aristotelianism which has been
remarked upon.
-----
Footnote 150:
Padua, 1588. Denores (whose name is often separated into “de Nores”)
was, like Patrizzi, a Professor of Philosophy, and, like Piccolomini,
very polymathic and polygraphic. He had a year earlier published a
_Discourse_ (which I have not) on the Philosophical Principles of
poetical kinds, and had very much earlier still, in 1553, commented
the _Epistola ad Pisones_. His son Pietro was an affectionate and
attentive disciple of Tasso’s in his last days at Rome.
-----
_Il Sogno, overo della Poesia_, by Gabriele Zinano,[151] dedicated at
Reggio on the 15th October 1590 to the above-mentioned Ferrando Gonzaga
of Guastalla, is a very tiny treatise, [Sidenote: _Zinano._] written
with much pomp of style, but apparently unnoticed by most of the
authorities on the subject. The author had studied Patrizzi (or Patrici,
as he, too, calls him), and was troubled in his mind about Imitation,
and about the equivocal position of Empedocles. He comforts himself as
he goes on, and at last comes to a sort of eclectic opportunism, which
extols the instruction _and_ delight of poetry, admits that it can
practically take in all arts and sciences, but will not admit fable as
making it without verse, or verse without fable, and denies that both,
even together, make it necessarily good. The little piece may deserve
mention for its rarity, and yet once more, as symptomatic of the hold
which critical discussion had got of the Italian mind, Zinano is
evidently full of the _Deca Istoriale_ and the _Deca Disputata_, but
alarmed at their heresies.
-----
Footnote 151:
I have not found much about Zinano near to hand, nor have I thought it
worth while to go far afield in search of him. Tiraboschi (vii., 1716,
1900) names him as a poet-miscellanist in almost every kind. My copy,
of 42 duodecimo pages, has been torn out of what was its cover, and
may have been its company.
-----
Paolo Beni, the antagonist of Summo, the champion of prose for tragedy
as well as for comedy, and a combatant in the controversy over the
_Pastor Fido_, which succeeded in time, and almost equalled in tedium,
that over the _Gerusalemme_, will come best in the next Book; and though
I have not neglected, I find little to say about, Correa[152] and
others.[153] [Sidenote: _Mazzone da Miglionico, &c._] A sign of the
times is the somewhat earlier _I Fiori della Poesia_[154] of Mazzone da
Miglionico (not to be confounded with the above-mentioned Mazzoni), a
tightly packed quarto of five hundred pages, _plus_ an elaborate index.
This is a sort of “Bysshe” _ante Bysshium_—a huge _gradus_ of poetic
tags from Virgil, Ovid, and Horace, arranged ready for anybody who
wishes to pursue the art of poetry according to the principles of Vida.
Here you may find choice of phrases to express the ideas of “going to
bed for the purpose of sleeping,” of “black and beautiful eyes,” of
“shoes that hurt the feet,” and of “horses that run rapidly.” It was
inevitable that this manual at once and _reductio ad absurdum_ of the
mechanic Art of Poetical Imitation should come—indeed, others had
preceded Mazzone, for instance Fabricius, in Germany (see next Book).
But one cannot help invoking a little woe on those by whom it came.
-----
Footnote 152:
His _Explanationes de Arte Poetica_ (Rome, 1587) are simply notes on
Horace.
Footnote 153:
I have not yet been able to see L. Gambara, _De Perfecta Poeseos
Ratione_ (Rome, 1576), and I gather that Mr Spingarn was in the same
case, as he refers not to the book, but to Baillet. According to that
invaluable person (iii. 70), Gambara must have been an early champion
of the uncompromisingly religious view of Poetry which appears in
several French seventeenth-century writers, and in our own Dennis. The
poet is not even to introduce a heathen divinity.
Footnote 154:
Venice, 1592-93.
-----
[Sidenote: _Summo._]
The twelve _Discorsi_[155] of Faustino Summo manage to cover as many
questions in their 93 leaves: the end of Poetry; the meaning of the word
_philanthropia_;[156] the last words (the purgation clause) of the
Definition of Tragedy; the possibility of a happy ending; the
representation of atrocities and deaths; the admissibility of true
fables; the necessity of unity of action; the propriety of drama in
prose; _furor poeticus_; the sufficiency of verse to make poetry; the
legitimacy of tragi-comedy and pastoral; and the quality of the _Pastor
Fido_. Summo gives us our last word here with singular propriety. He is
not quite Aristotelian to the point of infallibility, and his orthodoxy
is what may be called a learned orthodoxy—that is to say, he is careful
to quote comments or arguments of many of the writers whom we have
mentioned in this chapter and the last, from Trissino to Denores, and of
a few whom we have not. But in him this orthodoxy is in the main
_constituted_: it is out of the stage of formation and struggle; and it
is ready—all the more so that many of its documents have already passed
with authority to other countries and languages—to take its place as the
creed of Europe.
-----
Footnote 155:
Padua, 1600.
Footnote 156:
Cf. Butcher, _op. cit._, p. 297 and note.
-----
CHAPTER IV.
THE CRITICISM OF THE _PLÉIADE_.
THE ‘RHETORICS’ OF THE TRANSITION—SIBILET—DU BELLAY—THE ‘DÉFENSE ET
ILLUSTRATION DE LA LANGUE FRANÇAISE’—ITS POSITIVE GOSPEL AND THE
VALUE THEREOF—THE ‘QUINTIL HORATIEN’—PELLETIER’S ‘ART
POÉTIQUE’—RONSARD: HIS GENERAL IMPORTANCE—THE ‘ABRÉGÉ DE L’ART
POÉTIQUE’—THE ‘PREFACES TO THE FRANCIADE’—HIS CRITICAL GOSPEL—SOME
MINORS—PIERRE DE LAUDUN—VAUQUELIN DE LA FRESNAYE—ANALYSIS OF HIS
‘ART POÉTIQUE’—THE FIRST BOOK—THE SECOND—THE THIRD—HIS EXPOSITION OF
‘PLÉIADE’ CRITICISM—OUTLIERS: TORY, FAUCHET, ETC.—PASQUIER: THE
‘RECHERCHES’—HIS KNOWLEDGE OF OLDER FRENCH LITERATURE, AND CRITICISM
OF CONTEMPORARY FRENCH POETRY—MONTAIGNE: HIS REFERENCES TO
LITERATURE—THE ESSAY ‘ON BOOKS.’
There is, perhaps, no more remarkable proof of the extraordinarily
germinal character of Italian literature than the influence which it
exercised on France in the department with which we here deal.
[Sidenote: _The_ Rhetorics _of the Transition_.] It is needless to say
that the subsequent story of French literature has shown how deep and
wide is the critical vein in the French literary spirit. But up to the
middle of the sixteenth century this vein was almost absolutely
_irrepertum_—whether _sic melius situm_ or not. A few _Arts_ of Poetry
and Rhetoric had indeed been introduced across the Channel long before
we had any on this side, as we should expect in a language so much more
advanced than English, and as we have partly seen in the preceding
volume. The _Art de dittier_ of Eustache Deschamps, at the end of the
fourteenth century, had been followed[157] throughout the fifteenth by
others, some of them bearing the not uninteresting or unimportant title
of “_Seconde Rhétorique_,” as distinguishing Poetics from the Art of
Oratory. The chief of these,[158] almost exactly a century later than
the treatise of Deschamps, used to be assigned to Henri de Croy, and is
now (very likely with no more reason) handed over to Molinet. But they
were almost entirely, if not entirely, occupied with the intricacies of
the “forms” of _ballade_, &c., and included no criticism properly so
called.
Footnote 157:
See Petit de Julleville, ii. 392, who quotes four between _c._ 1405
and _c._ 1475; and for a monograph E. Langlois, _De Artibus Rhetoricæ
Rythmicæ_, Paris, 1890. To this may be added, as commentaries on this
chapter, the corresponding division in Spingarn, _op. cit._, Part II.,
pp. 172-250; the extensive and valuable Introduction to M. Georges
Pellissier’s edition of Vauquelin de la Fresnaye (Paris, 1885); and
Herr Rücktaschel’s _Einige Arts Poétiques aus der Zeit Ronsards und
Malherbes_ (Leipsic, 1889).
-----
Footnote 158:
_L’Art et Science de Rhétorique_, 1493, printed by Verard, and
reprinted by Crapelet. Another, a little later, was printed about
1500, and reprinted in the Bibliothèque Elzévirienne, _Anciennes
Poésies Françaises_, iii. 118. It is odd that M. Petit de Julleville,
who does not give the volume and page of that very extensive
collection, and misquotes its title, should speak of this as “in
prose.” It is in verse: divided under short headings, sometimes of
teaching, sometimes of example, as in this notable “Rondel équivoqué,”
Avoir, Fait Avoir Avoir, Avoir Fait-Avoir, Fait, where each word is a
line. The interpretation may be left as a treat for the reader.
-----
The spirit and substance of these treatises seems to have been caught up
and embodied, about the year 1500, in another Rhetoric,[159] which
became very popular, and was known by such titles as the “Flower” or
“Garden of Rhetoric,” but the author of which is only known by one of
those agreeably conceited _noms de guerre_ so frequent at the time, as
“‘l’Infortunaté’” Its matter appeared, without much alteration or real
extension, in the works of Pierre Fabri[160] and Gratien du Pont
(1539),[161] and the actual birth of French criticism proper is
postponed, by most if not all historians, till the fifth decade of the
century, when Pelletier translated the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace in 1545,
while Sibilet wrote an original _Art Poétique_ three years later, and
just before Du Bellay’s epoch-making _Défense_.
-----
Footnote 159:
_L’Instructif de la seconde Rhétorique_, or _Le Jardin de Plaisance_.
Footnote 160:
_Grant et vray art de pleine Rhétorique_, Rouen, 1521.
Footnote 161:
_Rhétorique Métrifiée_, Paris, 1539. Between Fabri and Gratien du Pont
appeared in 1529 Geoffrey Tory’s _Champfleury_, a more grammatical
than critical miscellany, which is elsewhere glanced at; and the very
noteworthy critical remarks prefixed by Marot to his edition of Villon
in 1533. M. Gaston Paris is assuredly right when he calls this (in his
charming little book on the author of the _Ballade des Pendus_, Paris,
1901) “un des plus anciens morceaux de critique littéraire que l’on
ait écrits en français,” and its appreciative sympathy, if not
co-extensive with the merits of the work, leaves little to desire in
the points which it touches. In fact, the mere selection of Villon and
of the _Roman de la Rose_, as the subjects of his editorial care,
shows in Master Clement the presence of a deep instinctive critical
faculty, which has only partially and incidentally developed itself.
In this, as in not a few other points, Marot himself seems to me to
have had for the most part inadequate justice from critics; though
here as elsewhere it may be allowed that time and circumstance
prevented him from doing himself justice. His intense affection for
literature and poetry, the light glancing quality of his wit and
intellect, the absence of all pomposity, pedantry, and parade, and the
shrewd sense which (in judgment if not quite in conduct) distinguished
him, go very far to constitute the equipment of the accomplished
critic. But his short life, perhaps a certain instability of
character, and the immature condition of the special state of
literature in his time, with the ever-deplorable distractions of the
religious upheaval, gave him little chance.
-----
There is little possibility of difference of opinion as to the striking
critical moment presented to us by the juxtaposition, [Sidenote:
_Sibilet._] with but a single twelvemonth between, of Sibilet and Du
Bellay. The importance of this movement is increased, not lessened, by
the fact that Sibilet himself is by no means such a copyist of Gratien
du Pont as Du Pont is of Fabri, and Fabri of the unknown “Unfortunate,”
and the “Unfortunate” of all his predecessors to Deschamps. He does
repeat the lessons of the _Rhetorics_ as to verse and rhyme, and so
forth. He has no doubt about the excellence of that “equivocal” rhyme to
which France yet clings, though it has always been unpleasing to an
English ear. And (though with an indication that they are passing out of
fashion) he admits the most labyrinthine intricacies of the ballade and
its group.[162]
-----
Footnote 162:
With the Lyons reprint (_v. infra_) of Sibilet and the _Quintil
Horatien_ is given an _Autre Art Poétique_, short and strictly
practical. It notices Ronsard, but gives the old forms.
-----
But he is far indeed from stopping here. He was (and small blame to him)
a great admirer of Marot, and he had already learnt to distrust that
outrageous “aureation” of French with Greek and Latin words which the
_rhétoriqueurs_ had begun, which the intermediate school of Scève and
Heroet were continuing,[163] and which the _Pléiade_, though with an
atoning touch of elegance and indeed of poetry, was to maintain and
increase, in the very act of breaking with other _rhétoriqueur_
traditions. He delights in Marot’s own epigrams, and in the sonnets of
Mellin de Saint-Gelais; and he is said to have anticipated Ronsard in
the adoption of the term “ode” in French, though his odes are not in the
least Pindaric (as for the matter of that Ronsard’s are not). The
epistle and the elegy give fresh intimation of his independent following
of the classics, and he pays particular attention to the eclogue, dwells
on the importance of the “version” (translation from Greek or Latin into
French verse), and in the opening of his book is not very far from that
half-Platonic, half anti-Platonic, deification of Poetry which is the
catch-cry of the true Renaissance critic everywhere. There is not very
much real, and probably still less intentional, innovation or revolt in
Sibilet; and it is precisely this that makes him so valuable. Fabri and
Gratien du Pont are merely of the old: in no important way do the form
and pressure of the coming time set their mark on them. Du Bellay is
wholly of the new: he is its champion and crusader, full of scorn for
the old. Sibilet, between them, shows, uncontentiously, the amount of
leaning towards sometimes revised or exotic novelty, and away from
immediate and domestic antiquity, which influenced the generation.
-----
Footnote 163:
It would be clearly improper to load this book with much general
French literary history. But those who would thoroughly appreciate the
position may find an endeavour to put it briefly in my _Short History_
of the subject, Book II. chaps, i., ii., and iv. (6th ed., Oxford,
1901). If they want more they had better go to MM. Darmesteter and
Hatzfeld’s admirable _Seizième Siècle_ in France (Paris, 1878), or,
best of all, to the last 150 pp. of the first vol. of Crepet’s _Poètes
Français_. M. Ch. d’Héricault’s prefaces here, with his introduction
to Marot (ed. Garnier), are not likely to be soon equalled.
-----
The position of the _Défense et Illustration de la Langue Française_ may
be said to be in the main assured and uncontested, nor do I think it
necessary to make such a curious dictum as that it is “not in any true
sense a work of literary criticism at all” the subject of much
counter-argument. [Sidenote: _Du Bellay._] In that case most undoubtedly
the _De Vulgari Eloquio_, of which it has been not much less strangely
held to be little more than a version adapted to the latitude of Paris,
is not such a work either. I think it very likely that Du Bellay knew
the _De Vulgari_, which Trissino had long before published in Italian;
but both the circumstances and the purpose of the two books seem to me
as entirely different as their position in literary criticism seems to
me absolutely secure.
Whether this be so or not, Du Bellay’s circumstances are perfectly well
known, and his purpose is sun-clear, alike before him and before his
readers. [Sidenote: _The_ Défense et Illustration de la Langue
Française.] He is justifying the vulgar tongue,[164] but he is
justifying it as Ascham and his friends were doing in England; with the
proviso that it shall be reformed upon, strengthened by, and altogether
put to school to, the classical languages in the first place, with in
the second (and here Ascham would _not_ have agreed) Italian and even
Spanish. His dealing is no doubt titularly and ostensibly directed to
the language; but his anxieties are wholly concentrated on the language
_as the organ of literature_—and specially of poetry. That he made a
mistake in turning his back, with the scorn he shows, on the older
language itself, and even on the verse-forms which had so long occupied
it, is perfectly true. This is the besetting sin of the Renaissance—its
special form of that general sin which, as we said at the outset, doth
so easily beset every age. But his scheme for the improvement is far
more original; and, except in so far as it may have been faintly
suggested by a passage of Quintilian,[165] had not, so far as I know,
been anticipated by any one in ancient or modern times. Unlike Sibilet,
and unlike preceding writers generally, he did not believe so very much
in translation—seeing justly that by it you get the matter, but nothing,
or at least not much, more.[166] He did not believe in the mere
“imitation” of the ancients either. I cannot but think that M.
Brunetière[167] has been rather unjust in upbraiding Du Bellay with the
use of this word. He does use it: but he explains it. He wishes the
ancients to be imitated in their processes, not merely in their results.
His is no Ciceronianism; no “Bembism”; none of that frank advice to
“convey” which Vida had given before him, and to which, unluckily, his
master Ronsard condescended later. “How,” he asks, “did Greek and Latin
become such great literary languages?” Were they always so? Not at all.
It was due to culture, to care, to (in the case of Latin at least)
ingenious grafting of fresh branches from Greek. So is French to graft
from Greek, from Latin, from Italian, from Spanish even—so is the
essence of the classics and the other tongues to be converted into the
blood and nourishment of French.[168]
-----
Footnote 164:
For a poet of such eminence and a book of such importance, Du Bellay
and the _Défense_ are curiously difficult of access. M. Marty-Laveaux'
ed. of the Works, with the Pléiade generally (Paris, 1876), is very
scarce and dear. M. Becq de Fouquières’ _Selections_ are, it is said,
out of print, though they can be obtained. A Versailles reprint I know
only through the British Museum Catalogue. It is odd how, in almost
all languages, reprinting, like a more agreeable, if less troublesome,
process, seems to “go by favour.”
Footnote 165:
That quoted _supra_, at i. 316.
Footnote 166:
Of course in an earlier stage you _do_ get much more. English, for
instance, profited almost infinitely by translation from French and
from Latin prose in the late fourteenth century, and throughout the
fifteenth. But French was past this stage, or nearly past it, when Du
Bellay wrote.
Footnote 167:
_L’Evolution des genres_ (Paris, 1890), p. 43 _sq._
Footnote 168:
M. Brunetière quotes this famous and striking expression, but
complains that we are not told how it is to be done. Our English
supplies a sufficient reply to this in famous words, “by reading,
marking, learning, and inwardly digesting.”
-----
Is this “not in any pure sense literary criticism at all”? Is this
“young” and “pedantic” and “too much praised” by (of [Sidenote: _Its
positive gospel and the value thereof._] all Sauls among the prophets!)
Désiré Nisard? I have a great respect for Mr Spingarn’s erudition; I
have a greater for M. Brunetière’s masterly insight and grasp in
criticism; but here I throw down the glove to both. That Du Bellay was
absolutely wrong in his scorn for _ballade_ and _rondeau_ and other
“_épiceries_” I am sure; that his master was right in looking at least
as much to the old French lexicon as to new constructions or adoptions I
am sure. But Du Bellay (half or all unawares, as is the wont of finders
and founders) has seized a secret of criticism which is of the most
precious, and which—with all politeness be it spoken—I venture to think
that M. Brunetière himself rather acknowledges and trembles at, than
really ignores. This free trade in language, in forms, in
processes,—this resolute determination to convert all the treasures of
antiquity and modernity alike into “food” for the literary organism,
“blood” for the literary veins, marrow for the literary bones,—is no
small thing. It may not be the absolute and sole secret of literary
greatness. But we can almost see that Greek, the most perfectly literary
of all languages for a time, withered and dwindled because it did not
pursue this course; that Latin followed it on too small a scale; above
all, that English owes great part of its strength, and life, and
splendid flourishing of centuries, to it. Du Bellay preached, perhaps
more or less unconsciously, what Shakespeare practised—whether
consciously or unconsciously we need neither know nor care, any more
than in all probability he knew or cared himself.
No doubt all languages and all literatures have not the digestive
strength required to swallow poison and food, bread and stones, almost
indiscriminately, assimilating all the good, and dismissing most if not
all of the evil. There are not, and never have been in England, wanting
people, from the towering head of Swift down to quite creeping things of
our own time, who have been distressed by “mob” and by “bamboozle,” by
“velleity” and by “meticulous.” No doubt in France the objection has
been still greater, and perhaps better founded on reason. But these
propositions will not affect, in the slightest degree, the other
proposition that Du Bellay, in the _Défense_, stumbled upon, and perhaps
even half-consciously realised, that view of literature, and of language
as the instrument of literature, which will have the whole to be mainly
_un grand peut-être_—a vast and endless series of explorations in
unknown seas, rather than a mathematical or chemical process of
compounding definite formulas and prescriptions, so as to reach results
antecedently certain. Very far would it have been from Nisard, who was
no doubt bribed by the militant classicism of the Pléiade, to have given
his praise had he thought this: I am even prepared to admit that Du
Bellay himself would probably not have thanked me for the compliment of
my theory. But hatred is often more sagacious than friendship. Malherbe
and those about Malherbe knew perfectly well what the real spirit of the
Pléiade was. And so does M. Brunetière, who has a scent as keen as that
of Malherbe and those about Malherbe, and is very much better read, very
much more scientifically equipped, and quite infinitely better provided
with intellectual and critical gift.[169]
-----
Footnote 169:
The small space given to the _Défense_ here may seem inconsistent with
the importance assigned to it. The fact is, however,—and this fact no
doubt explains to some extent, if it does not excuse, the views of
those who do _not_ think it very important,—that its details require
little notice. Its claim lies in its eager eloquence, in the new
position sketched above, and (negatively) in its onslaught on the
forms of French poetry for two hundred years past. Du Bellay’s
critical views reappear in the “Epistle to the Reader” in his _Olive_
(ed. Becq de Fouquières, pp. 67-76), in that prefixed to his _Vers
Traduits_ (ibid., pp. 151-157), in the vigorous defence of vernacular
verse addressed to the second of the three Valois Marguerites (ibid.,
pp. 127-129), and elsewhere.
-----
It was unlikely, or rather impossible, that so revolutionary a challenge
should lack its answer, which duly appeared a year later under the odd
title of _Le Quintil Horatien_.[170] [Sidenote: _The_ Quintil Horatien.]
This used to be attributed to Charles Fontaine, a poet of parts; but it
seems that he repudiated it, and it is now handed over to a pedagogue of
the name of Aneau. It is a dogged little book, which treats the
_Défense_ very much as if it were an impertinent school exercise, and
goes through it with the lead pencil in a fashion at once laborious,
ineffectual, and suggestive of a vain desire to substitute the birch
rod. The author, whoever he was, might have found plenty of things to
say against Du Bellay, and he is on fairly solid ground when he
indignantly protests that William of Lorris, Chartier, Villon, and
others were not the artless clowns, or positive sinners, that this
petulant-sparkling star of the Pléiade had looked awry upon. But even
here his own ignorance of the still better things before the _Rose_
disabled him: and it is by no means certain that he would have had the
wit to appreciate them if he had known them. He thinks the sonnet too
“easy,” poor man! condemns the elegy on the absurd ground that it
saddens the reader; and (committing the same fault in defence which more
modern critics have committed in attack) bases his main, if not his
whole, praise of _Ballade_ and _Chant Royal_, _Rondeau_ and _Rondel_, on
their mere difficulty. But his most unfortunate, if not his most absurd,
error was the line which, in common with most respectable persons, both
then and since, he takes up against the _verbum inusitatum_, as shown in
the new poetic diction of the _Pléiade_. This was doubly unlucky: first,
because the fifteenth-century poets whom he champions had themselves
“aureated” the language in or out of all conscience already; and
secondly, because this kind of criticism, whether it be applied to
Montaigne or Dryden, to Carlyle or Browning, is always a dangerous
delusion. Very classical critics have pecked and mocked at the author of
the _Quintil Horatien_ because he black-marks not merely words useful or
beautiful, like _sinueux_, _oblivieux_, _rasséréner_, but even such now
sterling coin as _liquide_ and _patrie_. It would be well if they, or
those like them, would think twice before condemning, as neologisms,
terms which may not impossibly seem as much matter of course to the
twenty-fourth century as _patrie_ does to the twentieth. But the author
of the _Quintil_ is really of that breed of carping critics which carps
itself out of all common-sense. He makes ponderous fun of the initial
signature I. D. B. A. (“J. du Bellay Angevin”); objects to the statement
that “nature gave us _tongues_ to speak,” because Aristotle, Galen, and
Petrus Hispanus agree that palate, throat, lips, and teeth are also
necessary to the process; to the use of _voix_ instead of _son_, where
animals are not concerned. The sea would have no voice for him—and
doubtless had none.
-----
Footnote 170:
Others call it _Le Quintil Censeur_. It appears not unnecessary to say
that “Quintil” has not, and could not have, any reference to
“Quintilian,” but refers to the Quintilius of Horace (_Art. Po._,
438). The original edition seems to be very rare: the British Museum
only possesses the Lyons reprint (with Sibilet) of 1556. It seems to
have been also reprinted with Du Bellay at Versailles in 1878, but
this I do not possess. Some make the title _Horatian_ or _Horace_.
-----
From such mere “denigration” (the censor permits himself this word as a
stone to throw at Du Bellay) no good thing [Sidenote: _Pelletier’s_ Art
Poétique.] could come: and besides, for some generation or more, the
brother stars were to fight in their courses for Pléiade criticism as
well as for Pléiade poetry. The second _Ars Poetica_ of the French
Renaissance—the first in any full modern sense—appeared in 1555 from the
hand of Jacques Pelletier, himself a spelling reformer, a professor,
and, what is more, a mathematician; but a man of versatile ability and
much eagerness to welcome any new good thing, with no small power of
starting such things. He was a pleasant poet, full of Pléiade manner
before the Pléiade had been formed; nor can even his absurd
spelling[171] quite hide the beauty of such things as
“Alors que la vermeille Aurore.”
And when, at the age of nearly forty, he wrote his _Poetic_, nobody
could charge him with being a mere theorist. He went heart and soul for
the _Pléiade_ ideas, and like Du Bellay and the rest, as indeed was
unavoidable, busied himself first of all with the reform of the
language. He recommends the formation of a regular poetic diction, and
goes so far (I do not say that it is too far) as to approve of retaining
double forms, one fully “frenchified,” one simply Latin with a French
termination (_e.g._, _repousse_ and _repulse_), the first for prosaic,
the second for poetic use. The famous Pléiade stumbling-blocks, the
compound epithet and the inverted order of words, are no
stumbling-blocks for him—he takes them triumphantly in the stride of his
revolutionary ardour: and he joins Ronsard also in the safer if not more
popular recommendation of archaism, and of adoption of didactic forms at
pleasure. No doubt he is not always wise: though the Classical school
which followed had lost the right to reproach him with abusing the
principle of suiting the sound to the sense. But still there is a great
wisdom in him. Himself an excellent rhymer, he has some of the qualms
about rhyme which were so frequent in the sixteenth century; but he is
sound on the point (in French not admitting of any serious contest) that
without rhyme poetry becomes prose, and he is more than lukewarm as to
classical metres. It is sad but not surprising that he joins Du Bellay
in condemning the delightful if not all-sufficing metrical kinds which
had produced such charming things from Lescurel to Villon; and he duly
recommends comedy, tragedy, and epic in their place. As he had himself
translated the _Epistle to the Pisos_ eleven years earlier, it is not
wonderful that he sticks very close to it. Whether, as has been said by
some, he does not know Aristotle, may not be quite certain; but it is
certain that Aristotelian doctrines make no figure in him: it will be
remembered that they had not made much even in Italy at this time. In
fact, it seems reasonable to doubt whether, despite their adoration of
Greek, the Pléiade writers ever drew much direct inspiration from the
_Poetics_, though, in Italian translations and commentaries at least, it
must have influenced them to some extent.
-----
Footnote 171:
“Vermeille” with him is “vermeilhæ”; “voix,” “voès”; “neigeux,”
“negeus”; Lucan, “Lukein,” &c.
-----
The most interesting figure of Pléiade criticism, however, is, as it
should be, Ronsard[172] himself. [Sidenote: _Ronsard: his general
importance._] The greatness of this really great poet must be
injuriously affected, but ought not to be obscured to critical judgment,
both by the fact (for which he is to blame) that he tried too many
things and wrote too much; and by the other fact (for which he is
blameless) that he attempted a new theory and practice of poetry, not,
like his younger and more fortunate contemporary Spenser, at the
beginning of a great poetic wave in his own country, but at a time when
that country’s energies were steadily settling towards prose. Yet he was
nothing if not critical. The actual amount of critical expression that
he has left us is not large: it is a pity that he did not devote to it
some of the time which he might well have spared from his too copious,
and sometimes too undistinguished, versemanship. He is, like Dryden
(whom he resembles in not a few ways so much that I should be surprised
if the parallel has not struck others), somewhat careless of outward
consistency in his critical utterances—a carelessness indicative in each
case of real critical sincerity, of the fact that the two poets were
honestly seeking the way, and had the sense not to persevere in blind
alleys when they found them blind. Above all, like the whole of his
school, he is distinguished by a critical note, which must be dwelt on
in the Interchapter succeeding this book, but which may well be
indicated here—the note that they are much more bent on the production
of new literature than on the study of old.
-----
Footnote 172:
_Œuvres Complètes_, ed. Blanchemain, 8 vols., Paris, 1857-1867. They
are not quite “complete,” but the omissions (which may be found, if
anybody wants them, in such respectable works as the _Cabinet
Satirique_ &c.) fortunately do not concern _us_.
-----
But, for all this, he is a remarkable critic, and in his critical
_aperçus_ we can ourselves perceive germs, indications, suggestions,
which might have resulted in the creation of a much larger body of
actual criticism. Indeed these are (as M. Pellissier[173] and others
have shown) actually responsible for much that is most characteristic,
and for most of what is best, in the Classical school of the next
century, which affected to despise him, as well as for other things
which, if that school had followed them out, would have saved it from
its most fatal mistakes and shortcomings.
-----
Footnote 173:
In ed. of Vauquelin (_sup. cit._), xxviii. _sq._
-----
The main critical _loci_ in Ronsard have been duly pointed out by his
editor, M. Prosper Blanchemain. [Sidenote: _The_ Abrégé de l’Art
Poétique.] They are the formal _Abrégé de l’Art Poétique_ of 1565; the
prefatory matter to his not too well-starred epic, the _Franciade_, ten
years later and onwards; and the remarkable _Caprice au Seigneur Simon
Nicolas_—a poem written late, and not, it seems, published save
posthumously. The “Abridgement”[174] answers to its name, for it only
fills just twenty Elzevirian pages. It begins in a manner which shows
(as so many other things do in Ronsard) the gaps which separated him
from, as well as the ties which united him to, the usual thought of the
Renaissance, and still more that of the seventeenth century. Although
there are of course exceptions, the general drift of Italian criticism
had been that poetry, like any other art or science, is a thing
teachable and learnable. On no other ground could the “archæolatry,”
which we have found almost universal, be maintained for a moment. Now
Ronsard, though he dwells again and again on the necessity of study,
begins with an apology for writing an Art of Poetry at all. He has had,
he says modestly, some experience and practice, and he will do his best
to give his correspondent[175] the benefit thereof. But poesy is _plus
mental que traditif_, which we may translate “more native to the mind
than communicable to it.” He accordingly converts (with an agreeable
twist) the stock invocation to the Muses into a real prayer for this
mental endowment, and with equal ingenuity freshens up the stale
_clichés_ about the divinity of Ancient poets, and about the Muses
refusing to lodge save in a virtuous and pious mind. Therefore, too,
study of these former favourites of poetry is requisite. But from these
generalities he plunges straight into extremely minute details. Greek,
Latin, and French—it is probable that he does not mention Italian
because his correspondent, Delbène, was of Italian extraction—are to be
carefully studied as languages. The rules of French prosody—among which
is here for the first time authoritatively included the alternation of
masculine and feminine rhymes—are to be carefully observed, and _e_ is
to be always elided before a vowel. It is perhaps worth noting that
Ronsard uses “cæsura” for “elision,” a catachresis in which he had
followers, and which even affected Dryden. Greek and Roman proper names
are, where possible, to be frenchified in termination. “The old words of
our romances” (this is of the first importance) are not to be ejected,
but to be chosen with care and prudence. Terms of art and technical
similes are to be sought out with extreme diligence, so as to supply
life and nerve to the book. Dialect-words may be used at need; the
example of the Greeks being invoked here—perhaps a little rashly.
Invention, says Ronsard, is the working of the Imagination; but he seems
still inclined to the old limitation of this word to the retailing of
images, and reprobates more strongly than is perhaps necessary or
desirable _ces inventions fantastiques et mélancholiques qui ne se
rapportent non plus l’une à l’autre que les songes entrecoupés des
frénétiques_. There is to be first of all (note the Frenchman) Order and
Disposition in poetical devices.
-----
Footnote 174:
_Ed. cit._, vii. 317-337
Footnote 175:
Alphonse Delbène, Abbé of Haute-Combe in Savoy.
-----
This order and this disposition are to be secured by a happy nature in
the first place, and by a careful study of good models in the second.
Among these good models, “those who have illustrated our language in the
last fifteen years” (_i.e._, since the _Défense_) are to be counted in;
and (this was added later) foreign modern languages are also to be
carefully studied for the enriching of the mother tongue. “Elocution” is
nothing else than “a propriety and splendour of words well chosen, and
ornamented with grave and short sentences, which make verses shine, like
as do precious stones, well mounted, the fingers of some great
seignior.”[176] The vocabulary must be copious and composed of
well-sifted words, with plentiful description and comparison, moulded
specially on Homer. The common form of “great” poem-making follows, with
reference to Aristotle as well as Horace, with caution against trite and
otiose epithets, against epithet-strings _à l’Italienne_, but with a
strong praise of the _mot propre_. Rhyme is treated rather briefly; and
then Ronsard drops to minutiæ of _e_'s and _h_'s, discusses Alexandrines
(which, in a later edition, he says he should have employed in the
_Franciade_ but for powerful command) and “common” (decasyllabic) verse,
and others, passes to some grammatical and orthographical cautions, and
ends with the promise, unluckily never fulfilled, of a longer _Poetic_
some day.
-----
Footnote 176:
“Jewels five words long
That on the stretched forefinger of all time
Sparkle for ever.”
—TENNYSON, _The Princess_.
-----
It may have been in part payment of this promise that he wrote the
Prefatory matter to the _Franciade_.[177] [Sidenote: _The_ Prefaces to
the Franciade.] This, which, as it stands in the modern editions, is
triform, consists of a short Preface (or _Au Lecteur_) in prose, from
the master’s own hand, to the original edition; of a verse exordium, or
rather Introduction, separate from the poem proper; and, between the
two, of a second Preface or _Treatise on Heroic Poetry_ of some length,
which we have, not as it left the author’s pen, but arranged and revised
(it is said under his direction) by Claude Binet. The critical interest
of the verse Proem lies in the enthusiastic glorification of Homer and
Virgil (who have shown the whole secret of epic-writing, and whose work
the author bids his own “adore on its knees”), and in a spirited reissue
of the cardinal doctrine of the _Pléiade_ that French is a fertile soil,
all overgrown and untilled, which must be brought under cultivation by
the unsparing labour of poets and scholars.
-----
Footnote 177:
_Ed. cit._, iii. 7-39.
-----
The first Preface begins with the time-honoured comparison, or contrast,
between History and Poetry, as dealing, the one with verity, the other
with verisimilitude. Hence Ronsard strikes off to set Homer and Virgil
far above all others, and to fix a stigma on Ariosto as presenting a
body handsome enough in members, but so counterfeit and monstrous as a
whole that it is like an unwholesome dream. He has evidently on his mind
the objections, perhaps of the ancients, perhaps of some Italians, to
the combination of historical poetry, and endeavours to meet the
objection that he comes nearer to actual history “than Virgilian art
permits” by the rather perilous excuse that Virgil only lived under a
_second_ emperor, while he himself lives under the successor of a long
line of kings, and that Charles our Lord and King insisted on no
invidious preference being shown to some of his ancestors over the
others. Indeed Ronsard is too typical a Frenchman for a sense of humour
to be exactly his strong point.
He then proceeds to name, as his example, rather “the naïve facility of
Homer than the curious diligence of Virgil”: though he ventures to
reprehend some excess of improbability in the scheme and details of the
_Iliad_, and ends with some particulars of apology and explanation. The
most curious of these are a passage giving reasons (by no means in
strict accordance with the sentence referred to above) for rejecting the
Alexandrine in favour of the decasyllable, and a pathetic appeal to the
reader _not_ to read his poem like an official document,[178] but to
accommodate his voice to its passion, and especially to raise that voice
whenever he comes to a mark of exclamation.
-----
Footnote 178:
_Plustost à la façon d’une missive, ou de quelques lettres royaux, que
d’un poème bien prononcé._
-----
The second, later, longer, and, as we have said, not quite authentic,
Preface, addressed to the _Lecteur Aprentif_, is a discourse on the
Heroic Poem in general; and as such is responsible for the specimens of
the kind with which the next century was troubled in France, if not for
those from the _Henriade_ downwards, which serve as even less cheerful
ornaments to the French literature of the eighteenth. We have seen
already how carefulness and trouble about this thing had been gathering
and growing in Italy, and how it was, in Ronsard’s own days, causing the
storm about the _Gerusalemme_. The “Maronolatry” which France shared
with Italy led to it directly; and even the championship of Homer (as in
Ronsard’s own case)—the attempt to establish two kings of the Epic
Brentford—was certain to conduce to it. Ronsard himself, however, does
not at first attempt the general question; indeed it is hardly possible
to draw attention too often to the far greater abstinence from general
and deductive consideration which at this time characterises the French
critics, as compared with the Italians. He begins with a fresh attack
(not quite in the best faith, if his own later remarks be pressed, as
perhaps they need not be) on the Alexandrine; and, by a deflection more
natural in the original than it appears in a summary, goes off to a
panegyric of periphrasis, which again was only too docilely received by
his successors of all schools for the next two centuries in France. His
examples are taken from Virgil—indeed the earlier part of this Preface,
at any rate, is as enthusiastically Virgilian as Scaliger himself could
desire. Then he puts stress once more on the significant epithet, lays
down _obiter_ the delightfully arbitrary dictum that, as the unity of
drama is the revolution of a day, so the unity of at least a war-epic is
the revolution of a year, dwells largely on his favourite distinction
between the poet and the versifier, which he justifies (not too well) by
insisting on artful variations of the narrative by speeches, dreams,
prophecies, pictures,[179] auguries, fantastic visions, and appearances
of gods and demons. All this time we have heard nothing of Homer, and
indeed have read nearly half a score pages before his name occurs as
furnishing Virgil with some of his facts and personages, just as he had
drawn his own from older stories, “comme nous faisons des contes de
Lancelot, de Tristan, de Gauvain, et d’Artus,” a passage to be noted.
The dozen or so which remain are oddly occupied by a sort of jumble of
notes and hints to the epic poet, reminding one of that valuable paper
of advice which Sir John Hawkins sent to Captain Amyas Leigh, on “all
points from the mounting of ordnance to the use of vitriol and limmons
against the scurvy.” He must describe splendid palaces and grounds,
trace heroes and heroines to gods and nymphs, dress them handsomely,
wound them in the right places,[180] not invent too much, allow himself
_enjambement_ and hiatus, use plentiful comparisons and terms of art, do
things handsomely in general, boil his very kettles with a Homeric
afflatus,[180] be thoroughly careful about study, but, above all, attend
to diction, as to which the cautions and licences of the _Abrégé_ are
repeated in fuller form, with a special injunction not to Ciceronianise
idly, but to _faire un lexicon des vieils mots d’Artus, de Lancelot, et
de Gauvain_.
-----
Footnote 179:
_Principalement des boucliers._
Footnote 180:
Odd as these things may seem, they are not fool-born jests of an idle
historian. Ronsard actually says them, though at greater length. See
p. 28, _“Su tu veux faire mourir sur-le-champ quelque capitaine, il le
faut navrer au plus mortel lieu du corps, comme le cerveau, le cœur,
la gorge_,” &c., &c.; and, p. 29, “_Car s’il fait bouillir de l’eau en
un chaudron_,” &c., &c.
-----
Ronsard will necessarily give us text for remark on the criticism of the
Pléiade in the Interchapter following this Book. [Sidenote: _His
critical gospel._] But we must say a little of his critical attitude
here. That it is of more interest than positive importance cannot easily
be denied. Not only for our purpose, but for its own, it is injured by
the very sincerity, practicalness, and common-sense of the writer’s
purpose and view. He clearly does not regard the past of French
literature with quite such a petulant contempt as that of Pelletier and
Du Bellay. But he is even more steadily and thoroughly convinced that
something better can, should, and shall be done: and it is on the doing
of this, by himself and others, that all his thoughts are fixed. He does
not give himself the time—he does not, it is evident, think it in the
least worth while—to take a critical survey of the past in any detail,
or with any general grouping. It is enough for him that Homer and Virgil
are of the greatest, and that their work is also of the greatest; and he
wishes Frenchmen to go and do likewise. He almost, if not altogether,
accepts the end as a datum; and is only troubled about the means. In
regard to some of these means his doctrine, though somewhat _ondoyant_
and even inconsistent, is surprisingly sound and original. If part of it
was accepted with advantage by his countrymen in the centuries which
followed, other parts were discarded and neglected, with an almost
incalculably disastrous result. That “lexicon of the old words of
_Lancelot_ and _Artus_” would have saved French from the drab smug
insignificance of its eighteenth-century garb; those cautions about
_enjambement_ and the like might almost have done for France what
Spenser and Shakespeare did for England.
But this comparative independence in some points was—probably from the
want of that real historical horizontality of view which, of all the
sixteenth-century critics, Cinthio, Castelvetro, and Patrizzi alone seem
in various degrees to have attained—accompanied by a singular servility
and conventionality in others. “Why, O Prince of Poets!” one feels
inclined to say, “with all reverence to your grey and laurelled head—why
should we trouble ourselves about _peintures insérées contre le dos
d’une muraille, et des harnois, et principalement des boucliers_ because
one very great poet found them useful to produce historical effects
nearly three thousand years ago, and another much lesser poet chose to
imitate him slavishly some thousand years later? Why should we do it,
even supposing the two poets to be on a level? Very likely Homer’s
warriors _had_ painted or graven bucklers. We have not. Arthur’s knights
had not—at least the paintings (assuming them to be armorial) were quite
different. Why should we have the ‘monstrous language of horses wounded
to death’? Why this childish limitation in imitation? Handsome dresses
are admirable things: but why must we be limited to lion-skins and
panther-skins and bearskins for the material? If we have got to make a
cauldron boil, let it double double, boil and bubble by all means: but
suppose we _don’t_ want to boil it?” To all this we not only get no
answer from Ronsard; but in his critical writing (not, as we have said,
extensive nor always outwardly consistent, but thoroughly uniform in
spirit) we find no trace of any such _aporia_ ever having presented
itself to his mind. _They_ did these things and produced good effects:
let _us_ do them that we may produce good. It seems a “good old rule”
enough: yet perhaps it is “a simple plan” also in more senses than one.
Good or bad, complete or incomplete, this criticism is the very soul of
the _Pléiade_. Its playwrights, such as Grévin[181] and Jean de la
Taille,[182] followed Italian practice in prefixing argumentative
discussions to their plays—reflecting on the mediæval drama, comparing,
in modest or buoyant spirit, their own work to that of the ancients, and
the like. [Sidenote: _Some minors._] A section of the school (as was
almost unavoidable, despite the “No-Surrender” resistance which French
as a language opposes to the proceeding) tried classical metres after
the principles of Tolomei: and Jacques de la Taille, the brother of
Jean, a poet and dramatist of fantastic but distinct ability, wrote a
tractate[183] in defence of them. They made closer and closer
approximations to the absolute Trinity of Unities: and though Du Bellay
in his youthful fervour had committed himself to a not unwise
antinomianism, they more and more showed themselves as the true
ancestors of the neo-classic school, by framing and insisting on
“rules.” The great men of letters who were more or less unattached, but
well-willing irregulars of the school, such as Pasquier and Montaigne,
bestow, in their different ways, increasing attention on literary
criticism and literary history. And, just before and after the junction
of the centuries, when the _Pléiade_ proper had set, and its influence
was about to wane before the narrow and arbitrary classicism of Malherbe
on the one hand, and the rococo-picaresque of the Spanish school on the
other, there appeared two formal _Arts of Poetry_, the one the complete
and final code of Pléiade Poetic, the other a rather hybrid and
nondescript product, chequering Ronsardism with a good deal of Italian
matter.
-----
Footnote 181:
In the Prefatory Discourse to his _Mort de César_ (1562). He extols
Aristotle and Horace, but does not like Seneca.
Footnote 182:
In the prefatory matter of his _Saül le Furieux_, 1572. Jean assails
the native drama, especially the Moralities, and thinks highly of
Seneca.
Footnote 183:
_La Manière de faire des vers en Français comme en Grec et en Latin_,
Paris, 1573. There is a useful abstract of this in Rücktaschel, _op.
cit._, pp. 23-27.
-----
This last,[184] the earlier to appear, in 1598, had for author Pierre de
Laudun, sometimes spoken of, from a seignory of his, as de Laudun
d’Aigaliers. [Sidenote: _Pierre de Laudun._] It is in prose, and its
author, who is roundly described by Herr Rücktaschel as a “copyist of
the purest water,” diversifies his borrowings from Sibilet, Ronsard, and
Pelletier on the one hand, from Scaliger and “Vituperani” on the other,
with plentiful examples from his own work; for he had followed one
greater man with a _Franciade_ and ante-dated another with a _Horace_. I
cannot enter any strong protest against the hard words (not confined to
those already quoted) which his German critic bestows on him.[185] His
real interest is purely that of symptom and tendency, in which respect
he shows a rather odd but not uninstructive mixture. On one side he
rejects the Ronsardising coinage of words and adoption of dialect forms,
with other Pléiade traits. On another he shows himself recalcitrant to
the coming classicastry by declaring that “we are not bound by their
laws”—_e.g._, in regard to the number of acts. On a third we find him
emphasising this attitude into an absolute refusal of the Unity of Time,
against which he says almost all the obvious and sensible things, in a
fashion to some extent redeeming what is on the whole the work of a not
very intelligent bookmaker.
-----
Footnote 184:
_L’art Poétique Français_, Paris, 1598. This, like almost all the
works noticed in this chapter, is but a little book, odd to compare
with the close-packed Italian quartos. But it is longer than most of
its fellows.
Footnote 185:
Some abatement, however, may be claimed, if only on the ground that
Laudun is absolutely sound on the vernacular question.
-----
Vauquelin de la Fresnaye has not this sudden cry of the voice in the
desert: but his _Art Poétique_ is, as a whole, a book of infinitely
greater interest and value than Laudun’s. Vauquelin was a gentleman and
lawyer of Normandy, who, born at the _château_ whence he took his name,
near Falaise, fought, amused himself, loved the country and its sports,
became President at Caen, and wrote verses of no small merit in various
kinds. [Sidenote: _Vauquelin de la Fresnaye._] His _Art Poétique_ was
more than thirty years on the stocks: and having had its keel laid in
1574, when the _Pléiade_, though a quarter of a century old, was still
in full flourishing, did not get launched till 1605, when a new age had
begun in more than chronological fashion. It is a composition of
considerable bulk, consisting of three books, each running to rather
under twelve hundred lines. Either of deliberation, or as a result of
intermittent attention during the time in which it was a-preparing,
Vauquelin arranged it (or failed to arrange it) in most admired
disorder. The precisians of the next age would have been horrified at
the promiscuous character of its observations; and some would have been
grateful to its latest editor[186] if, in addition to, or instead of,
part of the elaborate and very valuable _apparatus criticus_ of various
kinds which he has given, he had prefixed an argument. As it is, we must
make one: for the book, if not one of our very greatest _points de
repère_, is yet such a point.
-----
Footnote 186:
M. Pellissier, to whose already cited edition the references following
are made.
-----
After a prose address to the Reader, containing a rather touching
reference to the flight of time and the change of public opinion since
he had begun his work, to the cares of life, and the troubles of the
realm, and the death of old friends—he begins with the proper
invocation. [Sidenote: _Analysis of his_ Art Poétique.] Immediately
after he gives, as has been justly observed, a warning note by an
elaborate simile-description of Poesy as an ordered garden, with beds
and paths and hedges, wherein if any rude boy should trample on the
beds, desert the paths, and break down the espaliers, the gardener would
assuredly make injurious observations to him, and drive him out—the
Gardener being further identified as no less a person than the Divinity.
This comparison would of itself show that Vauquelin aims at no arrogant
originality; but he is yet more explicit. His four guides are _le fils
de Nicomache_ (Aristotle, of course; but note how Ronsard’s fatal
counsel of periphrasis has already sunk, never to be quite extracted,
into the French mind!), the “harper of Calabria” (Horace), Vida, and
Minturno.[187] But he hardly apologises for writing in French. Then,
borrowing from Cleanthes, through Seneca, the old comparison of verse to
“a trumpet which adds power to the voice,” he passes _non sine Dis_—with
abundant indulgence in mythology—to the exaltation of Number and Harmony
at large, and to theorising in the Imitation of Nature. He holds high
the banner of the Ronsardian unification of Arts; and while insisting
that even the ugly may be made interesting, if not beautiful, in the
imitation of it, repeats the old cautions about inconsistent and too
fantastic admixture of imagery. Among other followings of Ronsard we
note the earnest advice to cultivate stately descriptions and abundant
ornament. But he does not omit—though it must be allowed he does not
observe it over strictly himself—the caution to keep the thread,
“Si tu fais un Sonnet, ou si tu fais une Ode.”
-----
Footnote 187:
I agree with Mr Spingarn (p. 187) and disagree with M. Pellissier (p.
xxxviii) in thinking that this reference to Minturno is quite serious.
The French editor, indeed, speaks of Minturno rather oddly, coupling
him with Vida as “les deux _poètes_ Italiens,” and saying that both
“ne font que remâcher les préceptes des anciens,” which Vauquelin only
says of Vida. This is of more than doubtful justice as to Minturno,
and why call him a “poet”? He may have written in verse on other
occasions, for aught I know, but his two _Poetics_ are as
unquestionably in prose as Vida’s one is in verse.
-----
The praise of order and consistency gives place to remarks on diction
which repeat the Ronsardist canons and cautions, and to a fashionable
contempt (to be taken up later, as so much else was, by the thankless
Neo-Classics) of Anagrams and Acrostics. [Sidenote: _The First Book._]
The usual twinning of Homer and Virgil is succeeded by reference to some
other classics: and for a time Vauquelin seems to be confining himself
(in so far as his expatiatory manner ever admits confinement) to the
_ouvrage héroique_, whence he turns to other kinds, and the verse-forms
suitable for them. He repeats Du Bellay’s curse on _ballade_ and
_rondeau_,[188] and passes like him to a special eulogy of the Sonnet,
in which (as Du Bellay was not able to do) he is able now to produce a
stately list of French practitioners. This part of the Book, a little
after its middle, is full of literary history and allusion, the latter
touching foreign languages and literatures as well as French. And the
rest of it is occupied with a fresh and rather disorderly account of
styles and kinds, with the verse and diction proper to each, ending up
with a curious amplification of Quintilian’s story[189] about Apelles
and Antigonus, the moral of which seems to be a sort of _Medio
tutissimus ibis_
-----
Footnote 188:
_Oste moy la Ballade, oste moy le Rondeau._
Footnote 189:
_Inst. Orat._, II. xiii. 13. The anecdote in Quintilian is very
simple: Apelles paints Antigonus in profile to hide a lost eye.
Vauquelin (on uncertain authority) expands this into a long story of a
competition between Polygnotus, Scopas, and Diocles.
-----
The Second Book also has its due invocations to the Muses and the King:
and Vauquelin divagates, in his amiable way, for some hundred lines
before he settles down to paraphrase Horace’s warning about the
_scriptor cyclicus_, and to give, as examples of exordium, not merely a
refashioning in Alexandrines of the opening of Ronsard’s _Franciade_,
but a long extract from his own projected epic of the _Israëlide_.
[Sidenote: _The Second._] But as soon as he has done this (to the
extent, it is true, of some fifty lines) he affects shame at quoting
himself, and bids the poet swim in the Greek and Latin sea, especially
in Virgil. In fact, Vauquelin is much more of a Virgil-worshipper than
Ronsard, and almost as much as Vida, if not as Scaliger; and it is
curious to see in his work that unconquerable, and as it were magnetic,
repulsion from the greater poetry of Homer, and attraction towards the
lesser verse of Virgil, which more and more shows itself, from the start
of the Renaissance to the finish of the eighteenth century. Although he
again and again diverges to the prose Epic (with the usual example of
Heliodorus and the _Æthiopica_), to the artificial epic unity of a year
(which he doubtless took, after Ronsard, from Minturno), and so forth,
he as constantly returns to Virgil, describing him in one place plumply
as “second to Homer in age, but first in rank.”
Then he reverts to his Horace, and, not forgetting a hint to the poet
(one frequent with him) that he had better take French and Christian
subjects such as the crusade of St Louis, he dilutes largely the famous
clauses of his model on keeping the type of age and youth, &c. This
leads him naturally to the subject of drama, on which he is, of course,
severely Horatian; especially in regard to messengers and the avoidance
of awkward things on the stage. He has the _Pléiade_ drama, too, before
him as he writes; extols the Chorus, and again does not forget his hints
of Christian subjects. But in the sequel he leaves his ancient
authorities, and their severer tastes, rather on one side, in order to
dwell at great length on the accessories of the stage—music,
_mise-en-scène_, &c., with a not uninteresting reference—like that of
Sibilet (_v. supra_) earlier, and possibly due to it—to the moralities
of _nos vieux François_, as well as a welcome to the Ballet and to his
native _Vaux-de-Vire_. He indulges in a warm eulogy of French as a
language passing all the vulgars of Europe, and of French poetry, and
then handles Satire, a subject in which he was an expert, and which he
had treated in a prose _Discourse_, joined to his own exercises in the
kind. He connects it with the Provençal _Sirvente_, allows the
_coq-à-l'âne_ a sort of poor-relationship, and dwells on French lyric
poets at some length, once more commending Latin models and (in a
deflection, more logical than some of his, to the subject of iambic and
other metre) noticing the recent attempts at a quantified prosody. On
this subject he prudently declines to commit himself: posterity must
decide. And the rest of the Book again busies itself with various styles
and kinds, the measures proper to them, and the authors, modern as well
as ancient, who have treated them best.
These lucubrations, however, disorderly as they may seem, contain
numerous things of interest—a just remark on rhyme as practically the
equivalent of stricter metrical arrangement; observations on the prose
_Lancelot_, &c., showing that Vauquelin was not destitute of that
knowledge of the older literature of his country which distinguished
France and Frenchmen rather creditably in the Renaissance, and to which
we shall presently return. Divers contemporary authors are also
mentioned, Garnier being singled out for special (and well deserved)
praise; and there is a pleasant reminiscence of the time when
Nous passions dans Poitiers l’Avril de notre vie,
and, instead of attending to the study of the law, followed the frolics
of the Muses. The actual close of the Second Book is a neither
undignified nor ill-felt wail over the sufferings of France in the
religious wars, and an expression of confidence in the King’s powers of
healing.
[Sidenote: _The Third._]
The Third Book, after the usual decorative beginnings, returns to Drama,
and takes up Comedy, with praise for Grévin and Belleau, and a long
discussion of the nature and varieties of the kind, including
Tragi-comedy, in which, naturally, the _Bradamante_ of Garnier, the only
considerable example, is taken for study. Next a turn, half abrupt, is
made to Pastoral; and then Vauquelin returns to his favourite Satire and
to other forms, taking his texts from Horace, Vida, and his own fancy,
in a slightly bewildering manner, but to some extent carrying off the _à
propos de bottes_ of his argument by his serene indifference to it, and
the total absence of any awkward apologies or attempts to join. By
degrees he settles, or seems to be settling, to the general questions
(What is the end of poetry? Instruction or Pleasure? and the like), but
turns from them to a long catalogue of the poets of his time.
The foot-by-foot following of Horace, which is more noticeable than ever
in the last three or four hundred lines—with the licence of going off at
any tangent from Horatian texts which Vauquelin also permits
himself—would account for any amount of the desultoriness which is only
disguised (if, indeed, it can be said to be disguised) from the most
careless, in Horace himself, by the brevity of his scale and the
brilliancy of his phrase. But we do not, of course, go to Vauquelin for
an orderly treatise; we go to him that he may tell us what an
interesting and remarkable division of French men of letters knew of
criticism and thought of literature.
His answer is not the less, but the more, valuable because of its
apparent incoherence, this incoherence being itself a piece of evidence
in the case. [Sidenote: _His exposition of_ Pléiade _criticism._] The
_Pléiade_, as we have said more than once, was eagerly critical; but it
had a strictly practical object, its criticism being entirely subsidiary
and preliminary to the desire of creation. We meet here with nothing of
the rather fatally “disinterested” investigation of the Italians. Even
the ancients are studied less with a view to appreciating their beauties
than with the desire to steal their thunder.
The precepts of Vauquelin’s four guides—of Horace first and most of all,
of Aristotle occasionally, of Vida pretty often, and of Minturno
_nonnunquam_, are all adjusted to this end. Incidentally, of course,
Vauquelin shows us some general critical views—the canonisation of
Virgil, the adherence to the classical Senecan drama, the discouragement
of mediæval forms, if not entirely of mediæval subjects and language.
But, directly, he is the technical instructor, not the theoretical
critic. His _technique_, with some slight alterations, is almost purely
that of Ronsard, and displays the same admixture of the classical
tendency which the seventeenth century took up and hardened, with a
quasi-romantic breadth and licence which that century rejected. It is
easy to say, and not very difficult to see, that it might—that it
actually did—result in a practice too promiscuous at worst, at best a
little too eclectic—that French was not ready in point of time, and
perhaps not quite suited in point of temperament, for the bridle to be
flung too freely on the neck of Pegasus; and that Vauquelin is almost
directly responsible for inciting the growth of the weeds at which his
successor Boileau slashed with such a desperate hook sixty years later.
It is even possible to say, on the other side, that Du Bellay’s
questioning of rules altogether was, from the Romantic point of view,
sounder than Vauquelin’s provision of what may be called conditional
licences. We ought, however, to look at the _Art Poétique_ rather in the
light of what had gone before its long-delayed appearance than of what
followed—at the production of 1559-1600, not at that of 1600-1660. It is
in effect an _a posteriori_ rationalising and methodising of _Pléiade_
Poetry. This poetry is even now not much known in England, and its
defects—inequality, heaviness at times, pedantry, a strange and almost
irritating inability to get the wings quite free save at rare
moments—are undeniable. But there is something, in the _Art_ itself, of
the better qualities of its subjects: and to those who give themselves
the trouble to make their acquaintance, these subjects have a strange
and a peculiar charm, in their mixture of gravity and grace, of love and
lore, of paganism and piety, yea, of Classic and Romantic themselves.
The _hedone_ of the _Pléiade_ is _alethes_ as well as _oikeia_, and in
this handbook of the school Vauquelin has revealed at least some of its
secrets. Those who can do this are no contemptible, and no common,
critics.
But though Vauquelin thus sums up, in spirit as in time, the formal
criticism of the _Pléiade_, we have not yet quite done with this.
[Sidenote: _Outliers: Tory, Fauchet, &c._] It has been, throughout, the
practice of this book to take into consideration not only such formal
expressions, but also those of men who, outside formal rhetoric or
deliberate criticism, represent the literary taste of their time. The
latter part of the French sixteenth century is not poor in such. On the
contrary, the interest in literature of this kind which it displays
perhaps exceeds that shown in any country of Europe. Even Italy, despite
its immensely greater volume of formal literary discussion and academic
literary history, falls short in a certain intelligent independence of
consideration. We might draw on works of many kinds, from the eccentric
and mainly grammatical or typographical but extremely interesting
_Champfleury_ of Geoffroy Tory (which, as is well known, contains the
original of Rabelais’ Limousin scholar) as early as 1529; we might
without too great straining bring in Master Francis himself, and we
cannot justly neglect the name of Claude Fauchet, who almost deserves
that of Premier historian of literature in Europe. But, obeying that
system of representative treatment, especially in the outlying
departments, of the subject, the necessity of which grows more urgent at
every chapter and almost every page of this book, we may chiefly deal
with two writers, the one almost as much of an antiquary and historian
as Fauchet, but of greater literary faculty and a pleasanter style; the
other one of the great names of the world’s letters, and, in his own
fitful fashion, referring to literature itself frequently and
importantly enough. To those who know anything of the time this last
sentence will have already named, without naming, Etienne Pasquier and
Michel de Montaigne.
The chapters of Pasquier’s[190] _Recherches de la France_, in which he
deals with French literature, are perhaps the most interesting of the
whole. [Sidenote: _Pasquier: The_ Recherches.] He had himself been an
ardent disciple of the _Pléiade_, and a pleasant poet, in his youth; and
in his maturer years he applied to the history of literature the same
untiring research and sound good sense which made him the first
historical inquirer, as distinguished from mere chroniclers, in France.
It is not entirely unimportant that, in his preliminary remarks on the
subject, he announces his intention of devoting his seventh book to
French Poetry and his eighth to French language—a pointed if
unintentional expression of the predominance of poetry in literature
even as late as the end of the sixteenth century. His first observations
are directed to the difference between French and other modern languages
on the one hand, and ancient poetry on the other, in the matter of
rhyme, which he would derive (not without at least as much justification
of probability and history as other theorists can allege) from the
rhythmical parallelisms of prose speech, at first accidentally sweetened
by homœoteleuton, and then deliberately by rhyme itself. He is well
aware that the language of the Franks must have been German; and his
theory of French as composed of three languages, Walloon (by which he
probably means Gallic or Celtic), Latin, and Frankish, will be more
obnoxious to philological pedants than to philosophical philologists. He
knows the monorhymed _chansons_ such as _Berte aux grans Piés_, but is
disposed to put them unnecessarily late—nay, he seems to think that
there was little before the thirteenth century and Philip Augustus. Yet
he is not unaware of the much greater antiquity of the decasyllable as
compared with the Alexandrine.
-----
Footnote 190:
The _Recherches_ have not been completely reprinted, I think, since
1723. All their literary matter, however, is included in M. Léon
Feugère’s extremely useful and well-edited _Œuvres Choisies d’E. P._
(2 vols., Paris, 1849). It extends from i. 230 to ii. 134, what
follows on the University of Paris being itself not quite irrelevant.
-----
Indeed Pasquier has a not inconsiderable knowledge of mediæval poetry—a
knowledge at any rate extending far beyond that of the _Pléiade_
generally, who were as a rule content to recognise, with a certain
toleration, the _Roman de la Rose_. [Sidenote: _His knowledge of older
French literature_,] He knows and praises Helinand, the authors of the
great _Alixandre_, Thibaut de Champagne, Chrestien de Troyes, Raoul de
Houdenc—not merely, it would seem, from Fauchet’s book, but in
themselves; and he quotes _Ogier le Danois_, _Athis et Prophilias_,
_Cléomadès_, &c. Like a sensible man, he has that indispensable chapter
on Provençal literature which some would cast out of French literary
history, thereby making it unintelligible. And then he passes to the
prose Arthurian romances, and to the formal poetry of the fourteenth
century, of which he speaks without any of the exaggerated and slightly
unintelligent—certainly intolerant—contempt of Du Bellay and Vauquelin.
“_Servitude, que je ne die gêne d’esprit, admirable_,” “_ces
mignardises_” are his mild censures of them, and he gives particular
attention to Froissart and Alain Chartier, with mention of Villon and
others, and a very high eulogium of _Pathelin_. He does not, he says,
know the author (nor do we), but he will dare to say that this farce, as
a whole and in parts, _fait contrecarre_ to the comedies of both Greeks
and Romans. He is fairly copious on the men of letters of the first half
of the century, and then begins a new chapter with the picturesque and
often-quoted phrase about the “great fleet of poets” that the reign of
Henri II. brought forth, and their new style of poetry.
He gives to Maurice Scève the honour of captaining the leading ship of
this fleet; and then follow all the well-known names (and some not so
well known) of the school proper, the catalogue being capped by some
extremely interesting and valuable critical-anecdotic remarks on the
greater writers, especially Ronsard himself. [Sidenote: _and criticism
of contemporary French poetry._] One could hardly be more just on this
difficult[191] poet than is Pasquier, who allows him not merely grandeur
but sweetness to almost any extent, “quand il a voulu _doux couler_”;
calls him _grand poète entre poètes_, but admits that he was “très
mauvais censeur et aristarque de ses livres.” Then he partly returns
upon his steps in another chapter, where he approaches French poetry
from a different side, considering especially its verse-structure, with
examples from Marot downwards, and dwelling on the alternation of
masculine and feminine rhymes which Ronsard had sanctioned. On this
matter the historical equity of Pasquier is especially noticeable, as
opposed to the somewhat excessive correctness (according to pedagogic
ideas of the correct) shown by most Frenchmen. He declines to take a
side between “this new diligence and the old nonchalance.” And he makes
the very acute observation that Marot only allowed himself this
nonchalance in verse _which was not to be sung_—a proof, as he remarks,
that though Master Clement might not be Ronsard’s equal in learning, he
had a _facilité d’esprit admirable_. In yet another passage he compares
French with Italian poetry, and, emboldened by this, with Latin itself;
taking the patriotic side with equal courage and ingenuity, and ending
with the citation of some of his own Latin verses on Ronsard, and with
the sigh, “De toute cette grande compagnie qui mit la main à la plume
sous Henri II. il restait quatre, Théodore de Bèze, Ponthus de Thyard,
Louis le Caron, et moi.” Then, after a short appendix-chapter on
classical metres in French (which he would like to approve, but seems in
two minds about), he passes to language, on his treatment of which we
cannot dwell. But he never allows himself to stray far from literature,
and makes a pretext for returning at some length to his beloved
_Pathelin_.
-----
Footnote 191:
Difficult, that is, to appraise critically—not to understand.
-----
It may be observed that Pasquier, though interested in letters to an
extreme degree, enjoys more than he judges—not perhaps the worst defect
of the critic.
The agile and penetrating intelligence of Montaigne could hardly have
failed in any age to devote itself to literature; in his own age this
devotion was especially inevitable. [Sidenote: _Montaigne: his
references to literature._] That his dealings with the subject are
dealings in the height of his own fashion, it is unnecessary to say. Not
many things could be more characteristic than the Essay on Pedantry (I.
24), in which the whole spirit and motive, not merely of the _Pléiade_,
but of the sixteenth century generally, are subjected to the irregular
glancing criticism of the essayist. This single paper would enable one
to understand the fling of a man like Ben Jonson—the reverse of
unintelligent, the reverse of unhumorous, but full of erudition, and of
sixteenth-century reverence for it—at “All the essayists, even their
master Montaigne.” On the general question whether what is commonly
called pedantry is a good or a bad thing, Montaigne’s verdict comes
simply to a “Mass! I cannot tell!” He bestows hearty praise on Du
Bellay, a non-pedantic and courtier-like man of letters, who yet was
enthusiastic for learning; heartier on Adrian Turnebus, a pedant in the
common injurious sense; and in the middle of his essay he plays on study
of Greek and Latin, on quotations from Plato and Cicero, on “arming
oneself against the fear of death, at the cost and charges of
Seneca.”[192] The much longer chapter on Education, addressed to Diane
de Foix, which immediately follows, contains one of the worst
expressions of Renaissance contempt of mediæval literature, in the boast
that “of the Lancelots of the Lake, the Amadis, the Huons of Bordeaux,
with which childhood amuses itself,” he did not know so much as the
name. “My Lord Michael” is great, but even he might have been greater if
he _had_ known them.
-----
Footnote 192:
Vol. i. p. 165, ed. Courbet and Royer. _Je n’aime point cette
suffisance relative et mendiée_, he goes on with his own absolute and
unborrowed stamp of phrase and epithet.
-----
Indeed hardly anywhere does Montaigne exhibit his own undulation and
diversity more fully than in relation to letters—at one time amassing
ancient instances as if he were totally oblivious of the remarks above
about Plato and Seneca; at another criticising for himself[193] with
inimitable freshness and gusto; and at another again informing the
scholar, with much coolness, that if he will take off hood and gown,
drop Latin, and not deafen men’s ears with unmitigated Aristotle, he
will be at the level of all the world, and perhaps below it.
-----
Footnote 193:
Cf., for instance, the remarkable critical comparison of Tacitus and
Seneca in the Eighth Essay of the Third Book, towards the close (iv.
37 _ed. cit._)
-----
Even this, it will be seen, is not so very far from the cardinal
_Pléiade_ principle, that study of the ancients is an excellent thing,
but that its chief value is to equip and strengthen the student for
practice in French. And Montaigne, like the rest of his contemporaries
and compatriots, always had this “cultivation of the garden” before him.
It is well known how the real pedants of his own time objected to his
neologisms, just as Fontaine (or whoever was the author of the
_Quintil_) did to those of Du Bellay; and how large a part these
neologisms played in the development and nourishing of French prose.
Every one who knows anything of Montaigne knows his enthusiastic eulogy
of Amyot, and of the services which that _grant translateur_ had
rendered to French. And everybody should know the delicate and subtle
appreciation which he lavishes, in a fashion so different from the
indiscriminate laudations of Scaliger, on favourite passages of the
ancients, more particularly[194] on the Venus and Vulcan passage of
Virgil, and the Venus and Mars passage of Lucretius.
-----
Footnote 194:
If there is anywhere a happier critical phrase, in its particular
kind, than “cette noble _circumfusa_, mère du gentil _infusus_,” I do
not know it.
-----
Of course Montaigne’s interests, despite his exquisite literary
accomplishment, are not primarily literary. [Sidenote: _The Essay_ On
Books.] But he has given one entire Essay (II. 10), and that not of the
shortest, to Books; and he has frequent glancings at the subject,
sometimes characteristically racy, as that at the _Heptameron_, “un
gentil livre _pour son estoffe_.” The “Books” essay begins with one of
his familiar jactations of imperfection. He has some reading, but no
faculty of retention. He often intentionally plagiarises—for instance
from Plutarch and Seneca. He does not seek in books anything more than
amusement and knowledge of himself and of life. He refuses to grapple—at
any great expense of labour—with difficulties. He likes Rabelais,
Boccaccio, and Johannes Secundus for mere pastime, but repeats his
depressing scorn for romances, and confesses, as did Darwin on the score
of Shakespeare, that he cannot take the pleasure he used to take in
Ariosto and Ovid. He thinks Virgil, Lucretius, Horace, and Catullus
(especially Virgil in the _Georgics_ and the Fifth _Æneid_) at the top
of poetry—a grouping which makes us long to pin the elusive Perigourdin
down, and force him, Proteus as he is, to give us his exquisite reasons.
His judgment on Lucan is a little commonplace, “not the style but the
sentiments”—whereas the sentiments of Lucan are but Roman “common form,”
and his style, if not of the best kind, is great in a kind not the best.
He thinks Terence “the very darling and grace of Latin,” and is half
apologetic as to the equalling of Lucretius to Virgil, positively
violent (it is, he thinks, _bestise et stupidité barbarique_)[195] on
that of Virgil to Ariosto, and depressing again in regard to Plautus
(Terence _sent bien mieux son gentilhomme_). He returns again and again
to the style of Terence; and warns us of the coming classicism by his
objections to the “fantastiques élévations Espagnoles et Pétrarchistes,”
being equally “correct” in exalting (or at least in his reasons for the
exaltation, there being no doubt about the fact) Catullus above Martial.
On Greek authors as such he frankly and repeatedly declares his
incompetence to give judgment; but “now that Plutarch has been made
French,” he can as frankly yoke him once more with Seneca, and extol the
pair _super æthera_, boldly expressing his comparative distaste for
Cicero. He would like to have “a dozen of [Diogenes] Laertius,” for the
“human document,” of course; and puts Cæsar above all other historians,
including Sallust, while he has something to say of divers French
writers of the class—Froissart (who, he thinks, gives “the crude matter
of history”), Comines, Du Bellay-Langey, and others. It is to be noted
that in this place he says nothing about French poetry. And when he does
take up the subject much later, in II. 17, at the end of the “Essay on
Presumption,” he is very brief, only saying that he thinks Ronsard and
Du Bellay “hardly far from the ancient perfection.” At the beginning of
II. 36 he divides with the majority on the merits of Homer and Virgil,
though he once more admits a disqualification, which in this case is, of
course, total. And in the famous remark,[196] “Poetry is an amusement
proper for women; it is a frolic and subtle art, disguised, talkative,
quite occupied with pleasure and display, like them,” he gives no doubt
a certain measure of his critical capacity in less specially conditioned
matters.
-----
Footnote 195:
_Ed. cit._, ii. 112. Most of the expressions quoted are in the
immediate context.
Footnote 196:
III. 3, _Les Trois Commerces_, _ed. cit._, iii. 288.
-----
This capacity is, indeed, strictly limited. Montaigne is almost, if not
quite, as much set as his beloved Plutarch on the _life_-side of
literature, as the only one that really interests him; and, in addition,
he has an obstinate prosaic inclination, with which Plutarch does not
seem to be nearly so chargeable. Yet he must have found mention here,
not merely as our first very great French man of letters,[197] who has
left us literary opinions, but as the very light and glory of the French
intellect at the meeting of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and
as thus giving an index of the greatest value to its tastes and
opinions. He displays (conditioning it in the ways just mentioned, and
others, by his intense idiosyncrasy) the general literary attitude of
the time—an active, practical, striving towards performance, a rather
conventional and arbitrary admiration of the farther past, a contempt,
or at least good-natured underestimation, of the nearer, and fair, if
vague, hopes for the future. But considering the intensely critical
character of Montaigne’s intellect in most directions, its exertions in
this direction tell us even more by what they do not, than by what they
do.
-----
Footnote 197:
Rabelais is no real exception. It is needless to say that _Gargantua_
and _Pantagruel_ do contain matter touching on literature. But
Rabelais comes too early to be critical. The “Library of Saint-Victor”
and other things are simply alarums and excursions of his general
campaign against the rearguard of “monkish ignorance”; and in his
references to French poetry he does not seem to have got beyond—or to
have wished to get beyond—complacent acquiescence in _rhétoriqueur_
pedantry.
-----
CHAPTER V.
ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.
BACKWARDNESS OF ENGLISH CRITICISM NOT IMPLYING INFERIORITY—ITS CAUSE—THE
INFLUENCE OF RHETORIC AND OTHER MATTERS—HAWES—THE FIRST TUDOR
CRITICS—WILSON: HIS ‘ART OF RHETORIC’; HIS ATTACK ON “INKHORN
TERMS”—HIS DEALING WITH FIGURES—CHEKE: HIS RESOLUTE ANGLICISM AND
ANTI-PRECIOSITY—HIS CRITICISM OF SALLUST—ASCHAM—HIS PATRIOTISM—HIS
HORROR OF ROMANCE, AND OF THE ‘MORTE D’ARTHUR’—HIS GENERAL CRITICAL
ATTITUDE TO PROSE, AND TO POETRY—THE CRAZE FOR CLASSICAL
METRES—SPECIAL WANTS OF ENGLISH PROSODY—ITS KINDS: (1)
CHAUCERIAN—(2) ALLITERATIVE—(3) ITALIANATED—DEFICIENCIES OF ALL
THREE—THE TEMPTATIONS OF CRITICISM IN THIS RESPECT—ITS ADVENTURERS:
ASCHAM HIMSELF—WATSON AND DRANT—GASCOIGNE—HIS ‘NOTES OF
INSTRUCTION’—THEIR CAPITAL VALUE—SPENSER AND HARVEY—THE PURITAN
ATTACK ON POETRY—GOSSON—‘THE SCHOOL OF ABUSE’—LODGE’S
‘REPLY’—SIDNEY’S ‘APOLOGY FOR POETRY’—ABSTRACT OF IT—ITS MINOR
SHORTCOMINGS AND MAJOR HERESIES—THE EXCUSES OF BOTH, AND THEIR AMPLE
COMPENSATION—KING JAMES’S ‘REULIS AND CAUTELIS’—WEBBE’S
‘DISCOURSE’—SLIGHT IN KNOWLEDGE, BUT ENTHUSIASTIC, IF UNCRITICAL, IN
APPRECIATION—PUTTENHAM’S (?) ‘ART OF ENGLISH POESIE’—ITS
ERUDITION—SYSTEMATIC ARRANGEMENT AND EXUBERANT INDULGENCE IN
FIGURES—MINORS: HARINGTON, MERES, WEBSTER, BOLTON, ETC.—CAMPION AND
HIS ‘OBSERVATIONS’—DANIEL AND HIS ‘DEFENCE OF RHYME’—BACON—THE
‘ESSAYS’—THE ‘ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING’—ITS DENUNCIATION OF MERE
WORD-STUDY—ITS VIEW OF POETRY—SOME “OBITER DICTA”—THE WHOLE OF VERY
SLIGHT IMPORTANCE—STIRLING’S “ANACRISIS”—BEN JONSON: HIS
EQUIPMENT—HIS ‘PREFACES,’ ETC.—THE DRUMMOND CONVERSATIONS—THE
‘DISCOVERIES’—FORM OF THE BOOK—ITS DATE—MOSAIC OF OLD AND NEW—THE
FLING AT MONTAIGNE—AT ‘TAMERLANE’—THE SHAKESPEARE PASSAGE—AND THAT
ON BACON—GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE BOOK.
The fortune of England in matters political has often been noticed; and
it has at least deserved to be noticed, hardly less often, in matters
literary. One of the luckiest of these chances came at the time of the
Renaissance; when the necessary changes were effected with the minimum
of direct foreign influence, and so slowly that the natural force of the
nation and the language was able completely, or almost completely, to
assimilate the influences, both foreign and classical, that rained upon
it.
Nor was this least the case in respect of criticism.[198] The history of
this part of English literary evolution has been, until recently, much
neglected; and it can hardly be said even yet to have received
comprehensive attention. [Sidenote: _Backwardness of English Criticism
not implying inferiority._] It is all the more necessary to bestow some
time and pains on it here, with at least some fair hope of correcting an
unfair depreciation. The Baron of Bradwardine (displaying that shrewd
appreciation of contrast between English and Scottish characteristics
which belonged, if not to himself, to his creator) remarked to Colonel
Talbot that it was the Colonel’s “humour, as he [the Baron] had seen in
other gentlemen of birth and honour” in the Colonel’s country, “to
derogate from the honour of his burgonet.” Gentlemen of the most
undoubted birth and honour (as such things go in literature), from
Dryden to Matthew Arnold, have displayed this humour in regard to
English criticism. But there has been something too much of it; and it
has been taken far too literally by the ignorant. M. Brunetière has
expressed his opinion that Frenchmen would make _un véritable marché de
dupe_ if they exchanged Boileau, Marmontel, La Harpe, and Co. for
Lessing and some others. I shall not in this place express any opinion
on that question directly. But, if this book does what I shall endeavour
to make it do, it will at least show that to exchange, for any foreign
company, our own critics, from Sidney and Ben Jonson, through Dryden and
Addison, Samuel Johnson and Coleridge, Lamb and Hazlitt, to Mr Arnold
himself, would be “_un véritable marché de_”—Moses Primrose.
-----
Footnote 198:
The two chief monographs on this are Spingarn, _op. cit._, in the
division appurtenant (pp. 253-310), and Professor F. E. Schelling,
_Poetic and Verse Criticism of the Reign of Elizabeth_, Philadelphia,
1891. Haslewood reprinted most of the texts together in _Ancient
Critical Essays_, 2 vols., London, 1811-15, and Mr Arber the most
important separately in his _English Reprints_. Mr Gregory Smith is
now editing, for the Clarendon Press, the fullest collection yet
issued.
-----
It will have been sufficiently seen in the last volume that the
backwardness of English—a backwardness long exaggerated, but to some
extent real, and to no small extent healthy—was nowhere exhibited more
distinctly than in the department which supplies the materials of this
history. Until the close of the fifteenth century, and for some decades
afterwards, not a single critical treatise on English existed in the
English language, or even in Latin; the nearest approach, even in
fragment, to any utterance of the kind being the _naïf_ and interesting,
but only infantinely critical, remarks of Caxton in his prefaces.[199]
-----
Footnote 199:
Such as those on the “fair language of France,” and the strictures
passed by Margaret of England and Burgundy on the “default in mine
English” (_History of Troy_); on the “right good and fair English” of
Lord Rivers (_Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers_).
-----
The fact is that, not only until a nation is in command of a single form
of “curial” speech for literary purposes, but until sufficient
experiments have been made in at least a majority of the branches of
literature, criticism is impossible, and would, if possible, be rather
mischievous than beneficial. [Sidenote: _Its cause._] Now England,
though it possessed at least one very great author, and more than a fair
number of respectable seconds to him, was, up to 1500 at least, in
neither case. Till the end of the fourteenth century it had been
practically trilingual; it was bilingual till past the end of the
fifteenth, if not till far into the seventeenth, so far as literature
was concerned. Nor, till the towering eminence of Chaucer had helped to
bring the vernacular into prominence, was there any one settled dialect
of primacy in the vernacular itself. Further, the fifteenth century was
nearly at its end before any bulk of prose, save on religious subjects,
was written; and for another century the proportion of translation over
original work in prose was very large indeed.
At the same time the scholastic Rhetoric—which had always played to
criticism the part of a half-faithless guardian, who keeps his pupil out
of the full enjoyment of his property, yet preserves that property in
good condition to hand over to him perforce at some future time—was
still faithfully taught.[200] [Sidenote: _The influence of Rhetoric and
other matters._] The enlarged and more accurate study of the classics at
the Revival of Learning set classical criticism once more before
students in the originals; the eager study of those originals by
Continental scholars was sure to reflect itself upon England; and,
lastly, religious zeal and other motives combined, here as elsewhere, to
make men determined to get the vernacular into as complete and useful a
condition as possible. Nowhere does the intense national spirit, which
is the glory of the Tudor period, appear more strongly than in this our
scholastic and “umbratile” division of the national life.
-----
Footnote 200:
There has been some disposition to deny this, and to argue that
despite the constant use of the _word_ Rhetoric in the fifteenth
century, the teaching of the _thing_ had declined. I do not think
there is much evidence of this as regards England; and the long and
curious passage of Hawes, to be presently discussed, is strong
evidence against it. Rhetoric has no less than _eight_ chapters of the
_Pastime of Pleasure_, as against _one_ apiece for Grammar and Logic.
-----
Long, indeed, before this scholastic and regular criticism made its
appearance, and during the whole course of the fifteenth century,
critical appreciation, stereotyped and unmethodised it may be, but
genuine for all that, and stimulating, had made its appearance.
[Sidenote: _Hawes._] The extraordinary quality of Chaucer, the amiable
pastime-making of Gower, and, a little later, the busy polygraphy and
painful rhetoric of Lydgate, had, almost from the moment of Chaucer’s
death, attracted and inspired students. The pretty phrase about
Chaucer’s “gold dew-drops of speech,” which justly drew the approval of
a critic so often unjustly severe on ante-Renaissance work as Mr Arnold,
was, as is known even by tyros in the study of English literature,
repeated, expanded, varied by almost every prominent writer for a
century and a quarter at least, till it reaches, not exactly final, but
most definite and noteworthy, expression in the work of Stephen Hawes,
that curious swan-singer of English mediæval poetry. In the to us
eccentric, if not positively absurd, exposition of the _Trivium_ and
_Quadrivium_ which diversifies the account of the courtship of
Grandamour and La Bell Pucell,[201] the praise of the Three is led up to
by a discussion of Rhetoric and Poetics so elaborate and minute that it
occupies more space than is given to all the other Arts together, and
nearly double that which is given to all the rest, except a largely
extended Astronomy. Rhetoric herself, after being greeted by and
greeting her pupil in the most “aureate” style, divides herself into
five parts, each of which has its chapter, with a “Replication against
ignorant Persons” intervening, and many curious digressions such as the
description of a sort of Earthly Paradise of Literature with four
rivers, “Understanding,” “Closely-Concluding,” “Novelty,” and
“Carbuncles,”[202] and a “Tower of Virgil” in their midst. Lydgate has
been already praised for “versifying the depured rhetoric in English
language,” but he comes up once more for eulogy as “_my_ master” in the
peroration, and has in fact considerably more space than either Gower or
Chaucer. Nor, confused and out of focus as such things must necessarily
appear to us, should we forget that Hawes and his generation were not
altogether uncritically endeavouring at what was “important to
_them_”—the strengthening and enriching, namely, of English vocabulary,
the extension of English literary practice and stock.
-----
Footnote 201:
_The Pastime of Pleasure_, ed. Wright (Percy Society, London, 1845),
pp. 27-56.
Footnote 202:
This Fourth River will appear a less startling “novelty” when the
_illuminating_ power attributed to the stone is remembered.
-----
Yet their criticism could but be uncritical: and the luck above referred
to appears first in the peculiar scholastic character of the criticism
of the first English school of critics deserving the name. [Sidenote:
_The first Tudor critics._] No one of its members was exactly a man of
genius, and this was perhaps lucky; for men of genius have rarely been
observed to make the best schoolmasters. All were fully penetrated with
the Renaissance adoration of the classics; and this was lucky again,
because the classics alone could supply the training and the models just
then required by English prose, and even to some extent by English
poetry. All were very definitely set against Gallicising and
Italianising; and yet again this was lucky, because England had been
overdosed with French influence for centuries, while their opposition to
Italian did perhaps some good, and certainly little harm. But all were
thoroughly possessed by the idea that English, adjusted to classical
models as far as possible, but not denationalised or denaturalised,
ought to be raised into a sufficient medium of literary, as of familiar,
communication for Englishmen. And—with that intense Renaissance belief
in education, and a high and noble kind of education too, which puts to
shame the chattering and pottering of certain later periods on this
unlucky subject—all were determined, as far as in them lay, to bring
English up to this point. The tendency was spread over a great number of
persons, and a considerable period of time. Its representatives ranged
from healthy and large-souled, if not quite heroic or inspired, scholars
like Ascham to “acrid-quack” pedants like Gabriel Harvey. But the chief
of these representatives were the well-known trio, of whom one has just
been mentioned—Sir[203] Thomas Wilson, Sir John Cheke, and Roger Ascham.
They were all friends, they were all contemporary members (to her glory
be it ungrudgingly said) of one University, the University of Cambridge,
and though the moral character of all, and especially of the first two,
had something of the taints of self-seeking and of sycophancy, which
were the blemishes of the Tudor type of writers, all had the merits of
that type as exhibited in the man of the study rather than of the
field—intense curiosity and industry, a real patriotism, a
half-instinctive eagerness to action, a consciousness how best to adorn
the Sparta that had fallen to their lot, and a business-like faculty of
carrying their conceptions out. From various indications, positive and
indirect, it would seem that Cheke, who was the eldest, was also the
most “magnetic,” the most Socratically suggestive and germinal of the
three: but his actual literary work is of much inferior importance to
that of Ascham and Wilson.
-----
Footnote 203:
Wilson has usually been dignified in this way: but some authorities,
including the _Dict. Nat. Biog._, deny him knighthood.
-----
Wilson’s _Art of Rhetoric_[204] is, as the other dates given in the text
and notes will show sufficiently, by no means the first book of the
school; nor is it that which has, on the whole, the most interest for
us. [Sidenote: _Wilson: his_ Art of Rhetoric;] But it deserves
precedence historically because, as no other does, it keys, or gears,
the new critical tendency on to the old technical rhetoric. The first
edition appeared in 1553, dedicated to Edward VI. Wilson dates his
prologue to the second[205] on the 7th December 1560; but it does not
seem to have been published till 1563. Between the date of the first
edition and the writing of this Prologue, Wilson, an exile at Rome, had
fallen into the claws of the Inquisition as author of the book and of
another on Logic; and, as he recounts with natural palpitation, escaped
literally “so as by fire,” his prison-house being in flames.
-----
Footnote 204:
It was not actually the first in English, Leonard Coxe having preceded
him “about 1524” with an English adaptation, apparently, of
Melanchthon. But this is of no critical importance.
Footnote 205:
My copy is of this, which is the fuller.
-----
His two first Books Wilson faithfully devotes to all the old
technicalities—Invention, Disposition, Amplification, “States,” and the
rest. [Sidenote: _his attack on “Inkhorn terms.”_] But his third Book,
“Of Elocution,”[206] announces from the first an interest in the matter
very different from the jejune rehashings of the ancients (and chiefly
of those ancients least worth rehashing) which the mediæval Rhetorics
mostly give us. In fact, Wilson had shown himself alive to the
importance of the subject in the very opening of the work itself[207] by
recounting, with much gusto, how “Phavorinus the Philosopher (as Gellius
telleth the tale) did hit a young man over the thumbs very handsomely
for using over-old and over-strange words.” And as soon as he has
divided the requirements of Elocution under the four heads of Plainness,
Aptness, Composition, and Exornation, he opens the stop which has been
recognised as his characteristic one, by denouncing “strange inkhorn
terms.” He inveighs against the “far-journeyed gentlemen” who, on their
return home, as they love to go in foreign apparel, so they “powder
their talk with oversea language,” one talking French-English, another
“chopping in” with English-Italianated. Professional men, lawyers and
auditors, have their turn of censure, and a real literary “document”
follows in the censure of the “fine courtier who will talk nothing but
Chaucer.” Most copious is he against undue “Latining” of the tongue, in
illustration of which he gives a letter from a Lincolnshire gentleman
which may owe royalty either to the Limousin Scholar of Rabelais, or
even to Master Francis’ own original, Geoffrey Tory himself. And he
points the same moral (very much after the manner of Latimer, for whom,
as elsewhere appears, he had a great admiration) by divers facetious
stories from his experience, “when I was in Cambridge, and student in
the King’s College,” and from other sources. After which he falls in
with Cicero as to the qualifications of words allowable.
-----
Footnote 206:
Fol. 82.
Footnote 207:
Fol. 1, _verso_, at bottom.
-----
“Aptness” follows: and here Sir Thomas, without knowing it, has cut at a
folly of language revived three hundred years and more later than his
own time. [Sidenote: _His dealing with Figures._] For he laughs at one
who, “seeing a house fair-builded,” said to his fellow, “Good Lord, what
a handsome _phrase_ of building is this!” Wilson’s butt would have been
no little thought of by certain persons at the end of the nineteenth
century and the beginning of the twentieth. Indeed, one may seem to
remember a sentence about the merits of a “passage” in a marble
chimney-piece, which is a mere echo, conscious or unconscious, of his
“phrase.” The same temper appears in the longer remarks on Composition;
but when we come to Exornation, “a gorgeous beautifying of the tongue
with borrowed words and change of sentence,” Wilson’s lease of
originality has run out. He is still in the bondage of the Figures,
which he describes ambitiously as a kind “not equally sparpled[208]
about the whole oration, but so dissevered and parted as stars stand in
the firmament, or flowers in a garden, or pretty-devised antiques in a
cloth of Arras.” The enumeration is full of character and Elizabethan
piquancy; but it still has the old fault of beginning at the wrong end.
When a man writes even a good oration, much more that far higher thing a
good piece of prose (which may be an oration, if need serves, or
anything else), he does not say to himself, “Now I shall throw in some
hyperbaton; now we will exhibit a little anadiplosis; this is the
occasion surely for a passage of zeugma.” He writes as the spirit moves
him, and as the way of art leads. One could wish, in reading Wilson, for
another Sir Thomas, to deal with the Figurants as he has dealt with the
Chaucerists and the Lincolnshire Latinisers. But we must not expect too
much at once: and lucky are we if we often, or even sometimes, get so
bold a striking out into new paths for a true end as we find in this
_Art of Rhetoric_.
-----
Footnote 208:
One may regret “sparple” and “disparple,” which are good and
picturesque Englishings of _e_(s)_parpiller_. The forms “spar_k_le”
and “dispar_k_le,” which seem to have been commoner, are no loss, as
being equivocal.
-----
Cheke has left no considerable English work, and he seems—as it is
perhaps inevitable that at least some of the leaders in every period of
innovation should seem—to have pushed innovation itself to and over the
verge of crotchet. [Sidenote: _Cheke: his resolute Anglicism and
anti-preciosity._] He was a spelling and pronouncing reformer both in
Greek and English; and, classical scholar and teacher as he was, he
seems to have fallen in with that curious survival of “Saxon” rendering
of words not of Saxon origin, the great storehouse of which is the work
of Reginald Pecock a century earlier. But he appears to have been one of
the main and most influential sources of the double stream of tendency
observable in Wilson himself, and still more in Ascham—the tendency on
the one hand to use the classics as models and trainers in the formation
of a generally useful and practicable English style, and on the other to
insist that neither from classical nor from any other sources should
English be adulterated by “inkhorn terms,” as Wilson calls them,[209] of
any kind—that is to say, by archaisms, technicalities, preciousnesses,
fished up as it were from the bottom of the ink-pot, instead of simply
and naturally taken as they came from its surface to the pen. What
Ascham tells us that he said of Sallust is the spirit, the centre, the
kernel, of the criticism of the whole school—a dread that is to say, and
a dislike and a censure of what he calls the “uncontented care to write
better than he could.”[210] And it must be obvious that this sharply
formulated censure is itself a critical _point de repère_ of the
greatest value. It is well that it was not too much listened to—for the
greatest results of English prose and verse in the great period,
beginning a few years after Cheke’s death and continuing for an old
man’s lifetime, were the result of this “never contented care,” which
still reached something better than content. But if, at this early
period, it had had too much way given to it, if the vigorous but
somewhat sprawling infancy of Elizabethan English had been bid and let
sprawl simply at its pleasure, the consequences could not but have been
disastrous.
-----
Footnote 209:
Not that the phrase is of his invention. It seems to have been a
catchword of the time, and occurs in Bale (1543), in Peter Ashton’s
version of Jovius (1546), &c.
Footnote 210:
Of course Cheke had in his mind the passage of Quintilian concerning
Julius Florus (_v. supra_, i. 313).
-----
This criticism of Sallust, which may be found at length in Ascham’s
_Schoolmaster_,[211] is quite a _locus_ in its kind. [Sidenote: _His
criticism of Sallust._] It is not of the justest, for the prepossession
of the sentence quoted above (which stands in the forefront of it)
colours it all through. It has funny little scholastic lapses in logic,
such as the attempt to apply the old brocard _Orator est vir bonus
dicendi peritus_ to the disadvantage of Sallust, as compared not only
with Cicero but with Cæsar, on the score of morality. It would have been
pleasant to observe the countenances of Fausta and Servilia if this had
been argued in their joint presence. And the dislike of Thucydides, to
which a disliker of Sallust is almost necessarily driven, argues a
literary palate not of the most refined. But the disposition of the
supposed causes of the faults of Sallust’s style, when, having sown his
wild oats, he took to literature, and borrowed his vocabulary from Cato
and Varro, and his method from Thucydides himself, is an exceedingly
ingenious piece of critical pleading. Even if it will not hold water, it
shows us a stage of criticism advanced, in some directions, beyond
anything that classical or mediæval times can show. The other great
“place” of Cheke’s writing occurs in his letter[212] to Hoby on that
learned knight’s translation of Castiglione, with its solemn judgment
(the author, though but in middle age, was ill, and in fact almost
dying), “I am of this opinion, that our own tongue should be written
clean and pure, unmixed and unmangled with borrowing of other tongues,
wherein if we take no heed betimes, ever borrowing and never paying, she
shall be fain to keep house as a bankrupt.” The analogy, of course, is a
false one:—there is no need to pay, nor possibility of payment, any more
than a conquering monarchy needs to fear the repayment of the tribute it
draws from others, or than a sturdy plant need dread bankruptcy because
it owes nourishment to earth, and air, and the rain of heaven. But once
more the position is a definite, and not a wholly untenable, critical
position: and Cheke shows himself here as at once engineer and captain
of it.
-----
Footnote 211:
Ed. Arber, pp. 154-159.
Footnote 212:
This may be found in Arber’s Introduction to the book just cited, p.
5; or in Professor Raleigh’s ed. of Hoby (London, 1900), pp. 12, 13.
-----
The chief representative of this school is, however, beyond question,
the always agreeable, and but seldom other than admirable, author of
_Toxophilus_ and _The Schoolmaster_ himself.[213] [Sidenote: _Ascham._]
His positive achievements in English literature do not here directly
concern us; nor does the debate between those who regard him as a
Euphuist before Euphuism, and those who will have him to be the chief
example of the plain style in early Elizabethan literature. I confess
myself to be on the side of the latter; though I know what the former
mean. But it is with what Ascham thought as a critic, not with what he
did as a writer, that we are here busy; and on this there is no
reasonable opening for serious difference of opinion. Ascham’s critical
position and opinions are clear, not only from his two famous and
pleasant little books, but from the constant literary references in his
letters, ranging from elaborate lucubrations on the study of the
classics to an amusing little Cambridge fling at the older university,
where, as we learn from a letter of exactly the middle of the century,
taste was in so shocking a condition that Oxford men actually paid more
attention to Lucian and Apuleius than to Cicero and Xenophon.[214]
-----
Footnote 213:
For these two books Mr Arber’s excellent reprints can hardly be
bettered. But for our purposes the _Letters_ are also needed; and
these, with other things, will be found in Giles’s edition of the
_Works_, 3 vols. in 4, London, 1864-65.
Footnote 214:
_Quid omnes Oxonienses sequuntur plane nescio, sed ante aliquot menses
in Aula incidi in quendam illius Academiæ, qui nimium præferendo
Lucianum, Plutarchum et Herodianum, Senecam, A. Gellium, et Apuleium
utramque linguam in nimis senescentem et effœtam ætatem compingere
mihi videbatur_—Giles, i. 190. The whole letter (to Sturm) is worth
reading.
-----
[Sidenote: _His patriotism._]
The _Toxophilus_ itself is a critical document in parts, both for the
initial manifesto of his desire “to write this English matter in the
English tongue for English men,” and for the more elaborate defence of
the proceeding (a defence repeated in the numerous Latin letters
accompanying the copies of the book he sent to his friends), as well as
for one of those hits at Romance which were characteristic of
Renaissance scholars too generally, and were particularly to be expected
in very moral and rather prosaic persons like Ascham. But we necessarily
turn to the _Schoolmaster_ for a full exposition of Ascham’s critical
_ethos_, and we find it.
A tendency rather to slight poetry, one great heresy concerning it (of
which more presently), and the above-mentioned contempt or even horror
of romance—these are the worst things to be noted here. [Sidenote: _His
horror of Romance_,] All these are connected with a wider critical
heresy, which is prevalent in England to this day, and which emerges
most interestingly in this infancy of English criticism. This heresy is
the valuing of examples, and even of whole kinds, of literary art, not
according to their perfection on their own artistic standards, not
according to the quantity or quality of artistic pleasure which they are
fitted to give; but according to certain principles—patriotic,
political, ethical, or theological—which the critic holds or does not
hold, as the case may be. This fallacy being one of those proper—or, at
least, inseparably accidental—to the human intellect, is of course
perceptible enough in antiquity itself. It is, as we have seen, rife in
Plato, and more rife in Plutarch; and there is no doubt that the
devotion of the Renaissance to the greatest of Greek philosophers and
prosemen, to the most entertaining of Greek biographers and moralists,
had not a little to do with its reappearance, though the struggle of the
Reformation, and the national jealousies which this struggle bred or
helped, had more. But no one has given more notable examples of it than
Ascham by his attack on “books of feigned chivalry,” in
_Toxophilus_,[215] and his well-known censure of the _Morte d’Arthur_ in
_The Schoolmaster_.[216]
-----
Footnote 215:
P. 19, ed. Arber. The passage contains a stroke at monasticism.
Footnote 216:
P. 80, ed. Arber.
-----
Than this book there was, at Ascham’s date, no more exquisite example of
English prose in existence. There is not to this day a book, either in
prose or in verse, which has more of the true Romantic charm. [Sidenote:
_and of the_ Morte d’Arthur.] There are few better instances anywhere of
subtly combined construction of story than are to be found in some of
its parts; and, to a catholic judgment, which busies itself with the
matter and spirit of a book, there are few books which teach a nobler
temper of mind, which inculcate with a more wonderful blending of
sternness and sympathy the great moral that “the doer shall suffer,”
that “for all these things God shall bring us into judgment,” or which
display more accomplished patterns of man and sweeter examples of woman.
Yet Ascham (and he had read the book) saw in it nothing but “open
manslaughter and bold bawdry.”
Apart from this somewhat Philistine prudery—which occupies itself more
reasonably with Italian _novelle_, and the translations of them into
English—Ascham’s criticism is of a piece with that of the whole school
in all but a very few points. He differed with Wilson, and with most of
the scholars of his time, on the subject of translation, which he
rightly enough regarded as a useful engine of education, but as quite
incapable of giving any literary equivalent for the original. He agreed
both with Wilson and with Cheke as to the impropriety of adulterating
English with any foreign tongue, ancient or modern. He was, all the
same, an exceedingly fervent Ciceronian and devotee of the golden age of
Latin. And when we come in one[217] of his letters to Sturm on the name
of Pigna (_v. supra_, p. 62), the rival of Cinthio Giraldi, there seems
to be established a contact, of the most interesting, between English
and Italian criticism. But (as indeed we might have expected) no
allusion to Pigna’s view of the despised romances is even hinted: it is
his dealing with the _aureolum libellum_ of Horace that Ascham has read,
his dealings with Aristotle and Sophocles that he wishes to read.
-----
Footnote 217:
Thought to be his last, and written in Dec. 1568; ed. Giles, ii. 189.
The correspondence with Sturm is, as we should expect, particularly
literary.
-----
Putting his theory and his practice together, and neglecting for the
moment his moral “craze,” we can perceive in him a tolerably distinct
ideal of English prose, which he has only not illustrated by actual
criticism of the reviewing sort, because the material was so scanty.
[Sidenote: _His general critical attitude to Prose_,] This prose is to
be fashioned with what may be excusably called a kind of squint—looking
partly at Latin and Greek construction and partly at English vernacular
usage. It does not seem that, great as was his reverence for Cheke, he
was bitten by Cheke’s mania for absolute Teutonism; nor does he appear
to have gone to the extreme of Latimer and Latimer’s admirer, Wilson, in
caring to mingle merely familiar speech with his ordered vernacular. But
he went some way in this direction: he was by no means proof against
that Delilah of alliteration which, like a sort of fetch or ghost of the
older alliterative prosody, bewitched the mid-sixteenth-century verse
and prose of England, and had not lost hold on Spenser himself. And he
had belief in certain simple Figures of the antithetic and parallel
kind. But he was, above all, a schoolmaster—as even being dead he
spoke—to English literature; and his example and his precepts together
tended to establish a chastened, moderately classical, pattern of
writing, which in the next generation produced the admirable English
prose of Hooker, and was not without influence on the less accomplished,
but more germinal and protreptic, style of Jonson.
We must praise him less when we come to poetry. [Sidenote: _and to
Poetry._] The history of the craze for classical metre and against rhyme
in England, which practically supplies our earliest subject of purely
critical debate, is a very curious one, and may—perhaps must—be
considered from more points of view than one, before it is rightly and
completely understood. At first sight it looks like mere mid-summer
madness—the work of some Puck of literature—if not even as the incursion
into the calm domains of scholarship and criticism of that popular
_delirium tremens_, which has been often illustrated in politics.
Shifting of the standpoint, and more careful consideration, will
discover some excuses for it, as well as much method in it. But it must
be regarded long, and examined carefully, before the real fact is
discovered—the fact that, mischievous and absurd as it was in itself,
unpardonable as are the attempts to revive it, or something like it, at
this time of day, it was in its own day a kind of beneficent
“distemper”—a necessary, if morbid, stage in the development of English
prosody and English criticism.
Inasmuch as the most obvious and indubitable, as well as universal,
cause of the craze was the profound Renaissance admiration for the
classics, it was inevitable that something of the kind should make its
appearance in most European countries. [Sidenote: _The craze for
Classical Metres._] But other and counteracting causes prevented it from
assuming, in any of them, anything like the importance that it attained
in England. Unrhymed classical metres, like almost every literary
innovation of the time, had been first attempted in Italy;[218] but the
established and impregnable supremacy of forms like the Sonnet, the
Canzone, the _ottava_ and _terza rima_, put rhyme out of real danger
there. They were attempted in France.[219] But French had for centuries
possessed a perfectly well-defined system of prosody, adapted and
adequate to the needs and nature of the language. And, moreover, the
singularly _atonic_ quality of this language, its want not only of the
remotest approach to quantity but even of any decided accent, made the
experiment not merely ridiculous, as indeed it mostly was in English,
but all but impossible. Spanish was following Italian, and did not want
to follow anything else: and German was not in case to compete.
-----
Footnote 218:
_V. supra_, p. 46.
Footnote 219:
_V. supra_, p. 127.
-----
With English the patient was very much more predisposed to the disease.
[Sidenote: _Special wants of English Prosody._] Not only two, but
practically three, different systems of prosody, which were really to
some extent opposed to each other, and might well seem more opposed than
they actually were, disputed, in practice, the not too fertile or
flourishing field of English poetry. There was the true Chaucerian
system of blended English prosody, the legitimate representative of the
same composite influences which have moulded English language, and which
had been slowly developed through the half-chaotic beginnings of Middle
English verse, and then with almost premature suddenness perfected up to
a certain stage by Chaucer himself. [Sidenote: _Its kinds:_
(1)_Chaucerian._] This system combined—though not yet in perfect
freedom—the strict syllabic foot-division of the French with the
syllabic licence of Anglo-Saxon, so as to produce a system of syllabic
equivalence similar in nature to, if not yet fully in practice freer
than, that of the Greek Iambic trimeter. It admitted a considerable
variety of metres, the base-integers of which were the octosyllable and
decasyllable, with lines of six, twelve, and others occasionally,
combined in pairs or arranged in stanzas of more or less intricate
forms. But—by a historic accident which has even yet to be rather taken
as found than fully explained—nobody for more than a hundred years had
been able to produce really good regular[220] poetry in Southern English
by this metre, and certain changes in pronunciation and
vocabulary—especially the disuse of the final vocalised _e_—were putting
greater and greater difficulties in the way of its practice.
-----
Footnote 220:
There had, of course, been some charming jets of folk-song in ballad,
carol, and what not.
-----
Secondly, there was the revived alliterative metre, either genuine—that
is to say, only roughly syllabic and not rhymed, but rhythmed nearer to
the anapæstic form than to any other—or allied with rhyme, and sometimes
formed into stanzas of very considerable intricacy. [Sidenote: _(2)
Alliterative._] This, which had arisen during the fourteenth century, no
one quite knows how or where, apparently in the North, and which had
maintained a vigorous though rather artificial life during the
fifteenth, had not wholly died out, being represented partly by the
ballad metre, by doggerel twelves, fourteeners, and other long shambling
lines, and by a still lively tendency towards alliteration itself, both
in metred verse and in prose. Latterly, during Ascham’s own youth, a
sort of _rapprochement_ between these two had made the fourteeners and
Alexandrines, rather less doggerelised, very general favourites; but had
only managed to communicate to them a sort of lolloping amble, very
grievous and sickening to the delicate ear.
[Sidenote: (3) _Italianated._]
Thirdly, and in close connection with this combination, Wyatt, Surrey,
and other poets had, by imitating Italian models, especially in the
sonnet, striven to raise, to bind together, to infuse with energy and
stiffen with backbone, the ungainly shambling body of English verse: and
Surrey, again following the Italians, had tried, with some success, the
unrhymed decasyllable soon to be so famous as blank verse.
Now critical observation at the time might survey this field with view
as extensive and intensive as it could apply, and be far from satisfied
with the crops produced. [Sidenote: _Deficiencies of all three._] To
represent the first system there was nobody but Chaucer, who, great and
greatly admired as he was, was separated from the men of 1550 by a
period of time almost as long as that which separates us from Pope, and
by a much greater gulf of pronunciation and accent. Nobody could write
like Chaucer—unless the Chaucerian _Chorizontes_ are right in
attributing _The Court of Love_ to this time, in which case there was
some one who could write very much like Chaucer indeed. There was no
Langland, and nobody who could write in the least like Langland. In
sheer despair, men of talent like Skelton, when they were not
Chaucerising heavily, were indulging (of course with more dulcet
intervals now and then) in mere wild gambades of doggerel.
But it will be said, Was there not the new Italianated style of poets of
such promise as Wyatt and Surrey? There was. Yet it must be remembered
that Wyatt and Surrey themselves are, after all, poets of more promise
than performance; that their promise itself looks much more promising to
us, seeing as we do its fulfilment in Spenser and onward, than it need
have done, or indeed could do, to contemporaries; that stalwart
Protestants and stout Englishmen feared and loathed the Italianation of
anything English; and lastly, that even the prosody of Wyatt and Surrey
is, in a very high degree, experimental, tentative, incomplete. We
laugh, or are disgusted, at the twists and tortures applied by the
hexametrists to our poor mother tongue; but Wyatt at least puts almost
as awkward constraints on her.
It is not surprising that in the presence of these unsatisfying things,
and in the nonage of catholic literary criticism, men should have turned
for help to those classics which were the general teachers and helpers
of the time. [Sidenote: _The temptations of Criticism in this respect._]
There was indeed—already published just as Ascham had attained his year
of discretion—a treatise, by the greatest man of letters for some
fifteen hundred years at least, which contained the germ of a warning.
But it is not likely that Ascham or any of his good Cambridge friends
had seen Trissino’s translation of the _De Vulgari Eloquio_; and, if any
had, it would have been a stroke of genius to carry Dante’s
generalisation from the Romance tongues further. To almost any man of
the Renaissance it would have seemed half sacrilege and half madness to
examine ancient and modern literatures on the same plane, and decide
what was germane to each and what common to all. Greek Prosody had been
good enough, with very minor alterations, for Latin; how should any of
these upstart modern tongues refuse what had been good enough for both?
And let it be remembered, too, that they were only half wrong. Greek and
Latin _did_ provide up to a certain point—that of the foot as
distinguished from the metre—examples which, duly guarded, could be
quite safely followed, which indeed could not and cannot be neglected
without loss and danger for English. It was when they went further, and
endeavoured to impose the classical combinations of feet on English,
that they fell.
Yet even from the first they had glimpses and glimmerings of truth which
might have warned them; while in their very errors they often display
that combination of independence and practical spirit which is the too
often undervalued glory of English criticism. [Sidenote: _Its
adventurers: Ascham himself._] Ascham himself—besotted as he is with
wrath[221] against “our rude beggarly rhyming,” confident as he is that
the doggerel of his old friend Bishop Watson of Lincoln—
“All travellers do gladly report great praise of Ulysses,
For that he knew many men’s manners, and saw many cities,”—
exhibits[222] as “right quantitie” of syllables and true order of
versifying as either Greek or Latin—yet saw[223] that “our English
tongue doth not well receive the nature of _Carmen Heroicum_, because
_dactylus_, the aptest foot for that verse, is seldom found in English.”
Truly it is not; your dactyl is apt to play the “Waler”—to buck under an
English rider, and either throw him altogether, or force the alteration
of the pace to anapæsts. The best apparent dactylics in English—the
verses of Kingsley’s _Andromeda_—are not really dactylic-hexameters at
all, they are five-foot anapæstics, with a very strong _anacrusis_ at
the beginning, and a weak hypercatalectic syllable at the end. And with
this fatal confession of Ascham (who had not a very poetical head), that
of Campion, an exquisite poet and a keen though warped critic,
coincides, as we shall see, a generation later. But the thing had to be
done; and it was done, or at least attempted.
-----
Footnote 221:
It is curious that, in this very _début_ of English criticism, the
incivility with which critics are constantly and too justly charged
makes its appearance. Ascham would seem to have been a good-natured
soul enough. Yet he abuses rhyme and its partisans in the true “Père
Duchêne” style which some critics still affect. “To follow the Goths
in rhyming instead of the Greeks in versifying” is “to eat acorns with
swine, when we may eat wheat bread among men.” Rhymers are “a rude
multitude,” “rash, ignorant heads,” “wandering blindly in their foul
wrong way,” &c.
Footnote 222:
_Schoolmaster_, _ed. cit._, p. 73. Ascham actually _quotes_ the Greek
and the Latin of Homer and Horace, and declares Watson’s stuff to be
made as “naturally” as the one and as “aptly” as the other!
Footnote 223:
Ibid., p. 145.
-----
When the craze first took form in England we do not exactly know. Ascham
observes vaguely that “this misliking of rhyming beginneth not now of
any newfangle singularity, but hath been long been misliked, and that of
men of greatest learning and deepest judgment.”[224] [Sidenote: _Watson
and Drant._] We all think that the persons who agree with us are men of
great learning and deep judgment, so that matter may be passed over. But
apparently the thing was one, and not the best, of the fruits of that
study of the classics, and specially of Greek, which, beginning at
Oxford, passed thence to Cambridge, and was taken up so busily in
Ascham’s own college, St John’s. Thomas Watson,[225] the Bishop of
Lincoln, above referred to, was Master of the College; Ascham himself,
it is hardly necessary to say, was a fellow of it. And still descending
in the collegiate hierarchy, it was an undergraduate of St John’s,
Thomas Drant, who somewhat later drew up rules for Anglo-Classic
versifying—rules that occupied Spenser and Harvey, with the result of
producing some interesting letters and some very deplorable doggerel.
Drant seems to have been the “legislator of Parnassus” to the
innovators; but we have little work of his, and that little does not
bear on the special subject.
-----
Footnote 224:
P. 147. The extraordinary confusion of mind of the time is illustrated
by Ascham’s sheltering himself behind Quintilian!
Footnote 225:
Not to be confounded with Thomas Watson, the author of the
_Hecatompathia_, who came later, and was an Oxford man.
-----
Mischievous craze as it was, however,[226] it had the merit of turning
the attention of Englishmen to really critical study of poetry, and it
appears, more or less, as the _motif_ of most of the group of critical
writings, from Gascoigne’s _Notes of Instruction_ to Daniel’s _Defence
of Rhyme_, which we shall now discuss.
-----
Footnote 226:
Some authorities have been much too mild towards it. For instance, the
late Mr Henry Morley, who says, “Thomas Drant, of course, did not
suppose that his rules were sufficient.” This is charitable, but
outside, or rather against, the evidence.
-----
In the most interesting little treatise[227] which heads or
initials[228] the now goodly roll of books in English criticism, George
Gascoigne, though he was himself a Cambridge man, does not make any
reference to the craze. [Sidenote: _Gascoigne._] The tract was written
at the request of an Italian friend, Eduardo Donati. It is exceedingly
short; but as full of matter, and very good matter, as need be. In duty
bound Gascoigne begins with insistence on fine invention, without which
neither “thundering in rym ram ruff, quoth my master Chaucer,” nor
“rolling in pleasant words,” nor “abounding in apt vocables,” will
suffice. But he passes over this very swiftly, as over trite and obvious
expressions,[229] suitableness of phrase, &c., and attacks the great
literary question of the time, Prosody.
-----
Footnote 227:
_Certain Notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or rhyme
in English_, ed. Arber (with _The Steel Glass_, &c.), pp. 31-41,
London, 1868. Originally in the 4to edition of Gascoigne’s _Poems_
(London, 1575). Mr Spingarn sees indebtedness in it to Ronsard.
Footnote 228:
The observations of Ascham, Wilson, and the others being incidental
merely.
Footnote 229:
“If I should undertake to write in praise of a gentlewoman, I would
neither praise her crystal eye nor her cherry lip.”
-----
He begins his attack by the modest and half-apologetic request, “This
may seem a presumptuous order,” that, whatever the verse chosen be, it
be regular, and not wobbling backwards and forwards between twelve and
fourteen syllables on no principle. [Sidenote: _His_ Notes of
Instruction.] Then he enjoins the maintenance of regular and usual
accent or quantity; and in so doing insists on a standard in regard to
which not merely Wyatt and Surrey earlier, but even Spenser later, were
much less scrupulous. “Treasure,” he says, you must use with the first
syllable long and the second short: you must not make it “treasùre.” And
then he makes a very curious observation:—
“Commonly nowadays in English rhymes, for I dare not call them English
verses, we use none other order but a foot of two syllables,” to wit,
the Iamb. “We have,” he says, “in other times used other kinds of
metres,” as
"No wight | in the world | that wealth | can attain,"[230]
(_i.e._, anapæsts), while “our Father Chaucer had used the same liberty
in feet and measures that the Latinists do use,” that is to say,
syllabic equivalence of two shorts to a long. And he laments the tyranny
of the Iamb; but says, “we must take the ford as we find it.”
-----
Footnote 230:
Gascoigne does not use this division, or ¯ and ˘ but ´ and ` for long
and short, ~ (circumflex) for common, and indented lines
([dissyllabic] and [trisyllabic]) for dissyllabic and trisyllabic foot
arrangements.
-----
Then, after some particular cautions,—a renewed one as to quantifying
words aright—“understànd,” not “undérstand,” &c., as to using as many
monosyllables as possible (it is amusing to read this and remember the
opposite caution of Pope),—he comes to rhyme, and warns his scholar
against rhyme without reason. Alliteration is to be moderate: you must
not “hunt a letter to death.” Unusual words are to be employed carefully
and with a definite purpose to “draw attentive reading.” Be clear and
sensible.[231] Keep English order, and invert substantive and adjective
seldom and cautiously. Be moderate in the use also of that “shrewd
fellow, poetical licence,” who actually reads "hea|ven" for
"heavn"![232]
-----
Footnote 231:
“For the haughty obscure verse doth not much delight, and the verse
that is too easy is like a tale of a roasted horse.”
Footnote 232:
See Mitford, _Harmony of Language_, p. 105, who thinks the licence
just the other way, and indeed roundly pronounces the pronunciation in
one syllable “impossible.” A little later, again, Guest thinks the
_dis_-syllable “uncouth and vulgar.” A most documentary disagreement!
-----
As for the pause or Cæsura, Gascoigne is not injudicious. “The pause,”
he says, “will stand best in the middle” of an octosyllable, at the
fourth syllable in a “verse of ten,” at the sixth (or middle again) of
an Alexandrine, and at the eighth in a fourteener. But it is at the
discretion of the writer in Rhythm royal: “it forceth not where the
pause be till the end of the line”—and this liberty will assuredly draw
to more.
Next he enumerates stanzas:—Rhyme royal itself, ballades, sonnets,
Dizains, and Sixains, Virelays, and the “Poulter’s measure,” of twelve
and fourteen alternately, to which his own contemporaries were so
unfortunately addicted. You must “finish the sentence and meaning at the
end of every staff”: and (by the way) he has “forgotten a notable kind
of rhyme called riding rhyme, which is what our father Chaucer used in
his Canterbury tales, and in divers other delectable and light
enterprises.” It is good for “a merry tale,” Rhyme royal for a “grave
discourse,” Ballads and Sonnets for love-poems, &c., and it would be
best, in his judgment, to keep Poulter’s measure for Psalms and hymns.
And so he makes an end, “doubting his own ignorance.”
The chief points about this really capital booklet are as
follows:—Gascoigne’s recognition of the importance of overhauling
English Prosody; his good sense on the matter of the cæsura, and of
Chaucer’s adoption of the principles of equivalenced scansion; his
acknowledgment with regret of the impoverishment which, in the sterility
of the mid-sixteenth century before Spenser, was a fact, as resulting
from the tyranny of the iamb; the shrewdness of his general remarks;
and, last but not least, his entire silence about the new versifying,
the “Dranting of Verses.” [Sidenote: _Their capital value._] It is
possible (for though he was at Cambridge he seems to admit that he did
not acquire any great scholarship there) that he had not come into
contact with any one who took interest in this: but it is improbable
that it would have appealed to his robust sense of poetry, unsicklied by
Harvey’s pedantry, and not misled by Spenser’s classical enthusiasm.
At this time, however, or not long after—the _Notes_ must have been
written between 1572 and 1575, and the correspondence of Spenser and
Harvey actually appeared in 1579—these other persons were thinking a
great deal about the classical metres. The _Five Letters_ (“Three” and
“Two”[233]—not to be confused with the _Four Letters_ which Harvey
issued long afterwards about Greene) are full of the subject, and of
poetical criticism generally. They, together with the controversy which
arose over Gosson’s _School of Abuse_, and which indirectly produced
Sidney’s _Apology for Poetry_, make the years 1579-1580 as notable in
the history of English criticism as the appearances of _Euphues_ and
_The Shepherd’s Calendar_ make them in that of creative literature.
-----
Footnote 233:
See Grosart’s _Works of Gabriel Harvey_, vol. i. pp. 6-150. Parts will
be found in the Globe edition of Spenser, pp. 706-710.
-----
Spenser’s first letter informs Harvey that “they [Sidney and Dyer] have
proclaimed in their ἀρειωπάγῳ[234] [the literary _cénacle_ of Leicester
House] a general surceasing and silence of bald rhymers, and also of the
very best too: instead whereof they have, by the authority of their
whole Senate, prescribed certain laws and rules of quantities of English
syllables for English verse, having had thereof already great practice,
and drawn me to their faction.” [Sidenote: _Spenser and Harvey._] And
later, “I am more in love with English versifying than with rhyming,
which I should have done long since if I would have followed your
counsel.” He hints, however, gently, that Harvey’s own verses (these
coterie writers always keep the name “verses” for their hybrid
abortions) once or twice “make a breach in Master Drant’s rules.” Which
was, of course, a very dreadful thing, only to be “condoned _tanto
poetæ_.” He requites Harvey with a few Iambics, which he “dare warrant
precisely perfect for the feet, and varying not one inch from the Rule.”
And then follows the well-known piece beginning—
“Unhappy verse, the witness of my unhappy state,”
where certainly the state must have been bad if it was as infelicitous
as the verse.
-----
Footnote 234:
I am not responsible for the eccentricities of this form.
-----
Not such was Gabriel Harvey that he might take even a polite correction;
and his reply is a proper donnish setting-down of a clever but
presumptuous youth. He respects the Areopagus—indeed they were persons
of worship, and Harvey was a _roturier_—more than Spenser can or will
suppose, and he likes the trimeters (indeed, though poor things, they
were Spenser’s own after all, and such as no man but Spenser could have
written in their foolish kind) more than Spenser “can or will easily
believe.” But—and then follows much reviewing in the now stale
hole-picking kind, which has long been abandoned, save by the
descendants of Milbourne and Kenrick, and a lofty protestation that
“myself never saw your gorbellied master’s rules, nor heard of them
before.”
The Three Letters which follow[235] are distributed in subject between
an Earthquake (which has long since ceased to quake for us) and the
hexameters. They open with a letter from Spenser, in which he broaches
the main question, “Whether our English accent will endure the
Hexameter?” and doubts. Yet he has a hankering after it, encloses his
own—
“See ye the blindfoldèd pretty god, that feathered archer,” &c.,
and prays that Harvey would either follow the rules of the great Drant,
indorsed by Sidney, or else send his own. Harvey replies in double. The
first part is some very tragical mirth about the earthquake; the second,
“A Gallant Familiar Letter,” tackles the question of versification.
-----
Footnote 235:
In order of composition, not of publication.
-----
This gallant familiarity might possibly receive from harsh critics the
name of uneasy coxcombry; but it is at any rate clear that the author
has set about the matter very seriously. He expresses delight that
Sidney and Dyer, “the two very diamonds of her Majesty’s Court,” have
begun to help forward “the exchange of barbarous and balductum[236]
rhymes with artificial verses”; thinks their “lively example” will be
much better than Ascham’s “dead advertisement” in the _Schoolmaster_. He
would like (as should we) to have Drant’s prosody. His own Rules and
Precepts will probably not be very different; but he will take time
before drafting them finally. He thinks (reasonably enough) that before
framing a standard English Grammar or Rhetoric (therein including
Prosody), a standard orthography must first be agreed upon. And he
suggests that “we beginners” (this from the author of these truly
“barbarous and balductum” antics to the author of the _Faerie Queene_ is
distinctly precious) have the advantage, like Homer and Ennius, of
setting examples. “A New Year’s Gift to M. George Bilchaunger,” in very
doleful hexameters, follows, and after a little gird at Spenser’s “See
ye the Blindfoldèd,” another sprout of Harvey’s brain in the same kind,
which has been, perhaps, more, and more deservedly, laughed at than any
of these absurdities, except the scarcely sane jargon-doggerel of
Stanyhurst—
“What might I call this tree? a Laurell? o bonny Laurell!
Needs to thy boughs will I bow this knee, and veil my bonetto;”
with yet another—
“Since _Galateo_[237] came in, and Tuscanism gan usurp.”
He thinks that the author of this last “wanted but some delicate choice
elegant poesy” of Sidney’s or Dyer’s for a good pattern. After some
further experiments of his own, or his brother’s, in hexametring some of
Spenser’s own “emblems” in the _Calendar_, he turns to Spenser himself,
whom, it seems, he ranks next the same “incomparable and miraculous
genius in the catalogue of our very principal English Aristarchi.” He
proceeds to speak of some of that earlier work which, as in _The Dying
Pelican_, is certainly, or in the _Dreams_, possibly, lost. After which
he writes himself down for all time in the famous passage about the
_Faerie Queene_, which he had “once again nigh forgotten,” but which he
now sends home “in neither better nor worse case than he found her.” “As
for his judgment,” he is “void of all judgment if Spenser’s _Nine
Comedies_ [also lost] are not nearer Ariosto’s than that Elvish Queene
is to the _Orlando_, which” Spenser “seems to emulate, and hopes to
overgo.” And so he ends his paragraph with the yet more famous words,
“If so be the _Faery Queene_ be fairer in your eye than the Nine Muses,
and Hobgoblin run away with the garland from Apollo, mark what I say,
and yet I will not say what I thought, but there an end for this once,
and fare you well till God or some good Angel put you in a better mind!”
Which words let all who practise criticism grave in their memories, and
recite them daily, adding, “Here, but for the grace of God——!” if they
be modest and fear Nemesis.
-----
Footnote 236:
This word, which is certainly a cousin of “balderdash,” is a good
example of the slang and jargon so often mixed with their preciousness
by the Elizabethans. Nash borrowed it from Harvey to use against him;
and the eccentric Stanyhurst even employs it in his _Virgil_.
Stanyhurst’s hexameters, by the way (_vide_ Mr Arber’s Reprint in the
_English Scholars Library_, No. 10, London, 1880), are, thanks partly
to their astounding lingo, among the maddest things in English
literature; but his prose prefatory matter, equally odd in phrase, has
some method in its madness.
Footnote 237:
La Casa’s book of etiquette and behaviour.
-----
After an interval, however, Harvey returns to actual criticism, and
shows himself in rather better figure by protesting, in spite of “five
hundred Drants,” against the alteration of the quantity of English words
by accenting “Majesty” and “Manfully,” and “Carpenter” on the second
syllable. And he falls in with Gascoigne on the subject of such words as
“Heaven.” Nor could he, even if he had been far less of a pedant and
coxcomb, have given better or sounder doctrine than that with which he
winds up. “It is the vulgar and natural mother Prosody, that alone
worketh the feat, as the only supreme foundress and reformer of
Position, Diphthong, Orthography, or whatsoever else; whose affirmatives
are nothing worth if she once conclude the negative.” And for this sound
doctrine, not unsoundly enlarged upon, and tipped with a pleasant Latin
farewell to _“mea domina Immerita, mea bellissima Collina Clouta”_, let
us leave Gabriel in charity.[238]
-----
Footnote 238:
The further letters to Spenser, which Dr Grosart has borrowed from the
Camden Society’s _Letter-book of Gabriel Harvey_, touch literary
matters not seldom, but with no new important deliverances. In the
later (1592) _Four Letters_, the embroidery of railing at the dead
Greene and the living Nash has almost entirely hidden the literary
canvas.
-----
[Sidenote: _The Puritan attack on Poetry._]
Meanwhile the strong critical set of the time—so interesting, if not so
satisfying, after the absolute silence of criticism in English
earlier—was being shown in another direction by a different controversy,
to which, as we have seen, Spenser makes allusion. The points which
chiefly interested him at the moment were formal; those to which we now
come were partly of the same class though of another species, partly
transcending form.
Stephen Gosson is one of the persons of whom, as is by no means always
the case, it would really be useful to know more than we do know about
their private history and character. [Sidenote: _Gosson._] What disgust,
what disappointment, what tardy development of certain strains of temper
and disposition he underwent, we do not know; but something of the kind
there must have been to make a young man of four-and-twenty, a fair
scholar, already of some note for both dramatic and poetical writing,
and obviously of no mean intellectual powers, swing violently round, and
denounce plays, and poems, and almost literature generally, as the works
of the Devil. It is quite insufficient to ejaculate “Puritanism!” or
“Platonism!” for neither of these was a new thing, and the question is
why Gosson was not affected by them earlier or later.
Let us, however, now as always, abstain from speculation when we have
fact; and here we have at least three very notable facts—Gosson’s
_School of Abuse_,[239] with its satellite tractates, Lodge’s untitled
_Reply_,[240] and the famous _Defence of Poesy_ or _Apology for
Poetry_[241] which Sidney (to whom Gosson had rashly dedicated his book)
almost certainly intended as a counterblast, though either out of scorn,
as Spenser hints, or (more probably from what we know of him) out of
amiable and courteous dislike to requite a compliment with an insult, he
takes no direct notice of Gosson at any time.
-----
Footnote 239:
Reprinted by Mr Arber, with its almost immediately subsequent
_Apology_. I wish he had added the _Ephemerides of Phialo_ which
accompanied the _Apology_, and the _Plays Confuted_ of three years
later; for these books—very small and very difficult of access—add
something to the controversy.
Footnote 240:
Several times reprinted; most recently by the present writer in
_Elizabethan and Jacobean Pamphlets_ (London, 1892).
Footnote 241:
Also frequently (indeed oftener) reprinted as by Arber, London, 1868;
Shuckburgh, Cambridge, 1891; Cook, Boston (U.S.A.), 1890.
-----
_The School of Abuse_ (which is written in such a style as almost to
out-Euphuise the contemporary _Euphues_ itself) is critical wholly from
the moral side, and with reference to the actual, not the necessary or
possible, state of poetry. [Sidenote: The School of Abuse.] There are
even, the author says, some good plays, including at least one of his
own; but the whole of ancient poetry (he says little or nothing of
modern) is infected by the blasphemy and immorality of Paganism, and
nearly the whole of the modern stage is infected by the abuses of the
theatre—of which Gosson speaks in terms pretty well identical with those
which Puritan teachers had for some years past been using in sermon and
treatise. But outside of the moral and religious line he does not step:
he is solely occupied with the lies and the licence of poets and
players.
Lodge’s reply (the title-page of it has been lost, but it _may_ be the
_Honest Excuses_ to which Gosson refers as having been published against
him) is almost entirely an appeal to authority, seasoned with a little
personal invective. [Sidenote: _Lodge’s_ Reply.] Lodge strings together
all the classical names he can think of, with a few mediæval, to show
that Poetry, Music (which Gosson had also attacked), and even the
theatre, are not bad things. But he hardly attempts any independent
justification of them as good ones, especially from the purely literary
point of view. In fact, his pamphlet—though interesting as critical work
from the associate of great creators in drama, himself a delightful
minor poet and no contemptible pioneer of English prose fiction—is
merely one of the earliest adaptations in English of an unreal defence
to an attack, logically as unreal though actually dangerous. The
charlatan-geniuses of the Renaissance, with Cornelius Agrippa[242] at
their head, had refurbished the Platonic arguments for the sincere but
pestilent reformers of the Puritan type. Lodge and his likes, in all
countries from Italy outwards and from Boccaccio downward, accept the
measure of the shadowy daggers of their opponents, and attempt to meet
them with weapons of similar temper. The only reality of the debate is
in its accidents, not in its main purport. But the assailants, in
England at least, had for the time an unfair advantage, because the
defence could point to no great poet but Chaucer. The real answer was
being provided by one of themselves in the shape of _The Faerie Queene_.
-----
Footnote 242:
_V. supra_, p. 28.
-----
Sidney’s book, though pervaded by the same delusion, is one of far more
importance. [Sidenote: _Sidney’s_ Apology for Poetry.] It is not free
from faults—in fact, it has often been pointed out that some of Sidney’s
doctrines, if they had been accepted, would have made the best efforts
of Elizabethan literature abortive. But the defects of detail, of which
more presently, are mixed with admirable merits; the critic shows
himself able, as Gosson had not been able, to take a wide and catholic,
instead of a peddling and pettifogging, view of morality. Instead of
merely stringing authorities together like Lodge, he uses authority
indeed, but abuses it not; and while not neglecting form he does not
give exclusive attention to it.
His main object, indeed (though he does not know it), is the defence,
not so much of Poetry as of Romance. He follows the ancients in
extending the former term to any prose fiction: but it is quite evident
that he would have, in his _mimesis_, a quality of imagination which
Aristotle nowhere insists upon, and which is in the best sense Romantic.
And of this poetry, or romance, he makes one of the loftiest conceptions
possible. All the hyperboles of philosophers or of poets, on order,
justice, harmony, and the like, are heaped upon Poetry herself, and all
the Platonic objections to her are retorted or denied.[243]
-----
Footnote 243:
Our two chief English-writing authorities, Mr Symonds and Mr Spingarn,
are at odds as to Sidney’s indebtedness to the Italians. He quotes
them but sparingly—Petrarch, Boccaccio, Landino, among the older
writers, Fracastoro and Scaliger alone, I think, of the moderns—and Mr
Symonds thought that he owed them little or nothing. Mr Spingarn, on
the other hand, represents him as following them all in general, and
Minturno in particular. As usual, it is a case of the gold and silver
shield. My own reading of the Italian writers of 1530-80 leaves me in
no doubt that Sidney knew them, or some of them, pretty well. But his
_attitude_ is very different from theirs as a whole, and already
significant of some specially English characteristics in criticism.
-----
It has been said that there is no direct reference to Gosson in the
_Apology_, though the indirect references are fairly clear. [Sidenote:
_Abstract of it._] Sidney begins (in the orthodox Platonic or Ciceronian
manner) somewhat off his subject, by telling how the right virtuous
Edward Wotton, and he himself, once at the Emperor’s Court learnt
horsemanship of John Pietro Pugliano, the Imperial Equerry, and
recounting with pleasant irony some magnifying of his office by that
officer. Whence, by an equally pleasant rhetorical turn, he slips into a
defence of _his_ office—his “unelected vocation” of poet. Were not the
earliest and greatest authors of all countries, Musæus, Homer, Hesiod,
in Greece (not to mention Orpheus and Linus), Livius Andronicus and
Ennius among the Romans, Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch in Italy,
Chaucer and Gower for “our English”—were they not all poets? Even the
philosophers in Greece used poetry, and Plato himself is a poet almost
against his will. Herodotus called his nine books after the Muses; and
he and all historians have stolen or usurped things of poetry. Wales,
Ireland, “the most barbarous and simple Indians,” are cited. Nay,
further, did not the Romans call a poet _vates_, a “prophet”? and, by
presumption, may we not call David’s psalms a divine poem? Whatever some
may think,[244] it is no profanation to do so. For what is a poet? What
do we mean by adopting that Greek title for him? We mean that he is a
_maker_. All other arts and sciences limit themselves to nature; the
poet alone transcends it, improves it, makes, nay, brings it (“let it
not be deemed too saucy a comparison”) in some sort into competition
with the Creator Himself whom he imitates.
-----
Footnote 244:
Savonarola, _v. sup._, p. 20.
-----
The kinds of this imitation are then surveyed—“Divine,” “Philosophical,”
and that of the third or right sort, who only imitate to invent and
improve, which neither divine nor philosophic poets can do. These
classes are subdivided according to their matter—heroic, tragic, comic,
&c.—or according to the sorts of verses they liked best to write in,
“for, indeed, the greatest part of poets have apparelled their poetical
inventions in that numerous kind of writing which is called verse—indeed
but apparelled, verse being but an ornament and no cause to poetry.” And
again, “it is not rhyming and versing that maketh a poet.” Xenophon and
Heliodorus were both poets in prose.
Now let us “weigh this latter part of poetry first by works and then
by parts,” having regard always to the “Architectonice or
mistress-knowledge,” the knowledge of a man’s self, ethically and
politically. Philosophy, history, law, &c., are then “weighed” against
poetry at some length: and the judgment of Aristotle that Poetry is
_philosophoteron_ and _spoudaioteron_ than history, is affirmed
chiefly on the odd ground of poetical justice,—the right always
triumphing in poetry though not in fact. Instances of the moral and
political uses of poetry follow. Then for the parts. Pastoral, comedy,
tragedy, &c., are by turns surveyed and defended; and it is in the
eulogy of lyric that the famous sentence about _Chevy Chase_[245]
occurs. After this, and after a stately vindication of Poetry’s right
to the laurel, he turns to the objections of the objectors. Although
repeating the declaration that “rhyming and versing make not poetry,”
he argues that if they _were_ inseparable,[246] verse is the most
excellent kind of writing, far better than prose. As to the abuses of
poetry, they are but abuses, and do not take away the use, as is
proved by a great number of stock examples.
-----
Footnote 245:
“I must confess my own barbarousness: I never heard the old song of
Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with a
trumpet.”
Footnote 246:
“As indeed it seemeth Scaliger judgeth.”
-----
Why, then, has England grown so hard a stepmother to poets? They are bad
enough as a rule, no doubt; though Chaucer did excellently considering
his time. The _Mirror for Magistrates_ is good; so is Surrey; and _The
Shepherd’s Calendar_ “hath much poetry,” though “the old rustic
language” is bad, since neither Theocritus, nor Virgil, nor Sannazar has
it. And what is the reason of our inferiority? The neglect of rule. From
this point onwards Sidney certainly “exposes his legs to the arrows” of
those who ignore the just historic estimate. He pours ridicule on all
our tragedies except _Gorboduc_, and still more on our mongrel
tragi-comedies. We must follow the Unities, which, as it is, are
neglected even in _Gorboduc_, “how much more in all the rest?” Whence he
proceeds (unconscious how cool the _reductio ad absurdum_ will leave us)
to the famous ridicule of “Asia on the one side and Africa on the
other,” of “three ladies walking to gather flowers,” and how the same
place which was a garden becomes a rock, and then a cave with a monster,
and then a battlefield with two armies—of the course of two lives in two
hours’ space, &c. And he concludes with some remarks on versification,
which we should gladly have seen worked out. For he does not now seem to
be in that antagonistic mood towards rhyme which Spenser’s letters to
Harvey discover in him. On the contrary, he admits _two_ styles, ancient
and modern, the former depending on quantity, the latter depending on
“number,” accent, and rhyme. He indeed thinks English fit for both
sorts, and denies “neither sweetness nor majesty” to rhyme, but is, like
almost all his contemporaries and followers (except Gascoigne
partially), in a fog as to “numbers” and cæsura. The actual end comes a
very little abruptly by an exhortation of some length, half humorous,
half serious, to all and sundry, to be “no more to jest at the reverent
title of a rhymer.”
The importance of this manifesto, both symptomatically and typically,
can hardly be exaggerated. [Sidenote: _Its minor shortcomings_] It
exposes the temper of the generation which actually produced the
first-fruits of the greatest Elizabethan poetry; it served as a
stimulant and encouragement to all the successive generations of the
great age. That Sidney makes mistakes both in gross and detail—that he
even makes some rather serious mistakes from the mere “point of view of
the examiner”—is of course undeniable. He has a good deal of the merely
traditional mode of Renaissance respect for classical—and for some
modern—authority. That, for instance, there is a good deal to be said,
and that not only from the point of view of Ben Jonson, against
Spenser’s half-archaic half-rustic dialect in the _Calendar_, few would
refuse to grant. But Theocritus _did_ use dialect: it would not in the
least matter whether either he or Virgil did not; and if it did, what
has the modern and partly vernacular name of Sannazar to do with the
matter? It can only be replied that Spenser, by permitting “E. K.'s”
annotation, did much to invite this sort of criticism; and that
Englishmen’s reluctance to rely on the inherent powers of the English
language was partly justified (for hardly any dead poet but Chaucer and
no dead prose-writers but Malory and perhaps Berners deserved the title
of “great”), partly came from very pardonable ignorance.
It has been already observed that Sidney is by no means peremptory about
the “new versifying”; and in particular has absolutely none of the craze
against rhyme as rhyme which animated persons of every degree of
ability, from Milton to Stanyhurst, during more than a century. His
remarks on versification are, however, too scanty to need much comment.
There remain his two major heresies, the declaration that verse is not
inseparable from poetry, and the denunciation of tragi-comedy.
[Sidenote: _and major heresies._] In both the authority of the ancients
must again bear good part of the blame, but in both he has additional
excuses. As to the “pestilent heresy of prose poetry,” he is at least
not unwilling to argue on the hypothesis that verse _were_ necessary to
poetry, though he does not think it is. He is quite sure that verse is
anyhow a nobler medium than prose. As for the plays, there is still more
excuse for him. His classical authorities were quite clear on the point;
and as yet there was nothing to be quoted on the other side—at least in
English. Spanish had indeed already made the experiment of tragi-comic
and anti-unitarian treatment; but I do not think any of the best Spanish
examples had yet appeared, and there is great difference between the two
theatres. In English itself not one single great or even good play
certainly existed on the model at Sidney’s death; and, from what we have
of what did exist, we can judge how the rough verse, the clumsy
construction, or rather absence of construction, the entire absence of
clear character-projection, and the higgledy-piggledy of huddled horrors
and horseplay, must have shocked a taste delicate in itself and nursed
upon classical and Italian literature. [Sidenote: _The excuses of
both,_] And it is noteworthy that even _Gorboduc_, with all its
regularity and “Senecation,” does not bribe Sidney to overlook at least
some of its defects. He is here, as elsewhere,—as indeed
throughout,—neither blind nor bigoted. He is only in the position of a
man very imperfectly supplied with actual experiments and observations,
confronted with a stage of creative production but just improving from a
very bad state, and relying on old and approved methods as against new
ones which had as yet had no success.
And had his mistakes been thrice what they are, the tone and temper of
his tractate would make us forgive them three times over. [Sidenote:
_and their ample compensation._] That “moving of his heart as with a
trumpet” communicates itself to his reader even now, and shows us the
motion in the heart of the nation at large that was giving us the
_Faerie Queene_, that was to give us _Hamlet_ and _As You Like It_. What
though the illustrations sometimes make us smile? that the praise of the
moral and political effects of poetry may sometimes turn the smile into
a laugh or a sigh? Poetry after all, like all other human things, has a
body and a soul. The body must be fashioned by art—perhaps the body _is_
art; but the soul is something else. The best poetry will not come
without careful consideration of form and subject, of kind and style;
but it will not necessarily come with this consideration. There must be
the inspiration, the enthusiasm, the _afflatus_, the glow; and they are
here in Sidney’s tractate. Nor must we fail to draw attention, once
more, to the difference of the English critical spirit here shown as
regards both Italian and French.
In the decade which followed,[247] three notable books of English
criticism appeared, none of them exhibiting Sidney’s _afflatus_, but all
showing the interest felt in the subject, and one exceeding in method,
and at least attempted range, anything that English had known, or was to
know, for more than a century. [Sidenote: _King James’s_ Reulis and
Cautelis.] These were King James the First’s (as yet only “the Sixth’s”)
_Reulis and Cautelis to be observit and eschewit in Scottis Poesie_,
1585; William Webbe’s _Discourse of English Poesie_, next year; and the
anonymous _Arte of English Poesie_, which appeared in 1589, and which
(on rather weak evidence, but with no counter-claimant) is usually
attributed to George Puttenham.[248]
-----
Footnote 247:
It may be desirable to note that Sidney’s book, though very well
known, as was the wont then, in MS., to all who cared to know, was
never printed till 1595, nearly ten years after the author’s death.
Footnote 248:
All three are included in Mr. Arber’s _Reprints_, where the desirable,
or desired, biographical and bibliographical apparatus will be duly
found.
-----
The first is the slightest; but it is interesting for more than its
authorship. It was attached to James’s _Essays of a Prentice in the
Divine Art_, of which it gives some rules: it shows that Buchanan had
taken pains with his pupil; and it also exhibits that slightly
scholastic and “peddling,” but by no means unreal, shrewdness and acumen
which distinguished the British Solomon in his happier moments. It is
characteristic that James is not in the least afraid of the charge of
attending to mint, anise, and cumin. He plunges without any rhetorical
exordium into what he calls “just colours”—do not rhyme on the same
syllable, see that your rhyme is on accented syllables only, do not let
your first or last word exceed two or three syllables at most. This
dread of polysyllables, so curious to us, was very common at the time:
it was one of the things from which Shakespeare’s silent sovereignty
delivered us by such touches of spell-dissolving mastery as
“The multitudinous seas incarnadine.”
Then he passes to feet, of which he practically allows only the iamb;
while he very oddly gives the word “foot” to the syllable, not the
combination of syllables; and lays down the entirely arbitrary rule that
the number of “feet”—_i.e._, syllables—must be even, not odd. There is
to be a sharp section (“cæsura”) in the middle of every line, long or
short; and the difference of long, short, and “indifferent” (common)
feet or syllables is dwelt upon, with its influence of “flowing,” as the
King calls rhythm. Cautions on diction follow, and some against
commonplaces, which look as if the royal prentice had read Gascoigne, a
suggestion confirmed elsewhere.[249] Invention is briefly touched; and
the tract finishes with a short account of the kinds of verse:
“rhyme”—_i.e._, the heroic couplet, “quhilk servis onely for lang
historieis”; a heroical stanza of nine lines, rhymed _aabaabbab_;
_ottava rima_, which he calls “ballat royal”; rhyme royal, which he
calls “Troilus verse”; “rouncifals,” or “tumbling verse” (doggerel
alliterative, with bob and wheel); sonnets; “common” verse (octosyllable
couplets); “all kinds of broken or cuttit verse,” &c.
-----
Footnote 249:
It is, however, excessive to represent James as a mere copyist of
Gascoigne.
-----
The tract is, as has been said, interesting, because it is an honest,
and by no means unintelligent, attempt to make an English prosody, with
special reference to a dialect which had done great things in its short
day, but which had been specially affected—not to say specially
disorganised—by the revived and bastard alliteration of the fifteenth
century. Probably it was the study of French (where the iamb had long
been the only foot) which, quite as much as mere following of Gascoigne,
induced James to extend that crippling limitation to English; and the
same influence may be seen in his insistence on the hard-and-fast
section. These things (the latter of which at least rather endeared him
to Dr Guest)[250] are, of course, quite wrong; but they express the
genuine and creditable desire of the time to impose some order on the
shambling doggerel of the generation or two immediately preceding. We
find the same tendency even in Spenser, as far as rigid dissyllabic feet
and sections are concerned; and it is certainly no shame for the Royal
prentice to follow, though unknowing, the master and king of English
poetry at the time when he wrote.
-----
Footnote 250:
Who also caught at James’s “tumbling verse” as a convenient
stigmatisation for the true English equivalenced liberty.
-----
One would not, however, in any case have expected from James evidence of
the root of the matter in poetry. [Sidenote: _Webbe’s_ Discourse.] There
is more of this root, though less scholarship and also more “craze,” in
the obscure William Webbe, of whom we know practically nothing except
that he was a Cambridge man, a friend of Robert Wilmot (the author of
_Tancred and Gismund_) and private tutor to the sons of Edward Sulyard
of Flemyngs, an Essex squire. The young Sulyards must have received some
rather dubious instruction in the classics, for Webbe, in his inevitable
classical exordium, thinks that Pindar was older than Homer, and that
Horace came after—apparently a good while after—Ovid, and about the same
time as Juvenal and Persius. He was, however, really and deeply
interested in English verse; and his enthusiasm for Spenser—“the new
poet,” “our late famous poet,” “the mightiest English poet that ever
lived,” is, if not in every case quite according to knowledge,
absolutely right on the whole, and very pleasant and refreshing to read.
It is, indeed, the first thing of the kind that we meet with in English;
for the frequent earlier praises of Chaucer are almost always long after
date, always uncritical, and for the most part[251] much rather
expressions of a conventional tradition than of the writer’s deliberate
preference.
It was Webbe’s misfortune, rather than his fault, that, like his idol
(but without that idol’s resipiscence), and, like most loyal Cambridge
men, with the examples of Watson, Ascham, and Drant before them, he was
bitten with “the new versifying.” [Sidenote: _Slight in knowledge,_] It
was rather his fault than his misfortune that he seems to have taken
very little pains to acquaint himself with the actual performance of
English poetry. Even of Gower he speaks as though he only knew him
through the references of Chaucer and others: though three editions of
the _Confessio_—Caxton’s one and Berthelette’s two—were in print in his
time. His notice of Chaucer himself is curiously vague, and almost
limited to his powers as a satirist, while he has, what must seem to
most judges,[252] the astonishing idea of discovering “good proportion
of verse and meetly current style” in Lydgate, though he reproves him
for dealing with “superstitious and odd matters.” That he thinks _Piers
Plowman_ later than Lydgate is unlucky, but not quite criminal. He had
evidently read it—indeed the book, from its kinship in parts to the
Protestant, not to say the Puritan, spirit, appealed to Elizabethan
tastes, and Crowley had already printed two editions of it, Rogers a
third. But he makes upon it the extraordinary remark, “The first I have
seen that observed the quantity of our verse without the curiosity of
rhyme.” What Webbe here means by “quantity,” or whether he had any clear
deliberate meaning at all, it is impossible to see: it is needless to
say that Langland is absolutely non-quantitative in the ordinary sense,
that if “quantity” means number of syllables he observes none, and that
he can be scanned only on the alliterative-accentual system. For
Gascoigne Webbe relies on “E. K.”; brackets “the divers works of the old
Earl of Surrey” with a dozen others; is copious on Phaer, Golding, &c.,
and mentions George Whetstone and Anthony Munday in words which would be
adequate for Sackville (who is not named), and hardly too low for
Spenser; while Gabriel Harvey is deliberately ranked with Spenser
himself. Yet these things, rightly valued, are not great shame to Webbe.
If he borrows from “E. K.” some scorn of the “ragged rout of rakehell
rhymers,” and adds more of his own, he specifies nobody; and his
depreciation is only the defect which almost necessarily accompanies the
quality of his enthusiasm.
-----
Footnote 251:
Occleve—no genius, but a true man enough—deserves exception perhaps
best.
Footnote 252:
The Germans—in this, as in other matters, more hopelessly to seek in
English now than, _teste_ Porson, they were a century ago in
Greek—have followed Webbe, as indeed Warton had strangely done; and of
course some Englishmen have followed the Germans. Lydgate himself knew
better, though some of the shorter poems attributed to him are
metrically, as well as in other ways, not contemptible.
-----
His piece, though not long, is longer than those of Gascoigne, Sidney,
and King James. [Sidenote: _but enthusiastic,_] After a dedication (not
more than excusably laudatory) to his patron Sulyard, there is a curious
preface to “The Noble Poets of England,” who, if they had been inclined
to be censorious, might have replied that Master Webbe, while
complimenting them, went about to show that the objects of his
compliment did not exist. “It is,” he says, “to be wondered of all, and
is lamented of many, that, while all other studies are used eagerly,
only Poetry has found fewest friends to amend it.” We have “as sharp and
quick wits” in England as ever were Greeks and Romans: our tongue is
neither coarse nor harsh, as she has already shown. All that is wanted
is “some perfect platform or Prosodia of versifying”: either in
imitation of Greeks and Latins, or with necessary alterations. So, if
the Noble Poets would “look so low from their divine cogitations”, and
“run over the simple censure” of Master Webbe’s “weak brain,” something
might, perhaps, be done.
[Sidenote: _if uncritical,_]
The treatise itself begins with the usual etymological definition of
poetry, as “making,” and the usual comments on the word “Vates”; but
almost immediately digresses into praise of our late famous English poet
who wrote the _Shepherd’s Calendar_ and a wish to see his “English Poet”
(mentioned by E. K.), which, alas! none of us have ever seen. This is
succeeded, first by the classical and then by the English historical
sketches, which have been commented upon. It ends with fresh laudation
of Spenser.
Webbe then turns to the general consideration of poetry (especially from
the allegoric-didactic point of view), subject, kinds, &c.; and it is to
be observed that, though he several times cites Aristotle, he leans much
more on Horace, and on Elyot’s translations from him and other Latins.
He then proceeds to a rather unnecessarily elaborate study of the
_Æneid_, with large citations both from the original and from Phaer’s
translation, after which he returns once more to Spenser, and holds him
up as at least the equal of Virgil and Theocritus. Indeed the _Calendar_
is practically his theme all through, though he diverges from and
embroiders upon it. Then, after glancing amiably enough at Tusser, and
mentioning a translation of his own of the _Georgics_, which has got
into the hands of some piratical publisher, he attacks the great
rhyme-question, to which he has, from the Preface onwards, more than
once alluded. Much of what he says is borrowed, or a little advanced,
from Ascham; but Webbe is less certain about the matter than his master,
and again diverges into a consideration of divers English metres, always
illustrated, where possible, from the _Calendar_. Still harking back
again, he decides that “the true kind of versifying” might have been
effected in English: though (as Campion, with better wits, did after
him) he questions whether some alteration of the actual Greek and Latin
forms is not required. He gives a list of classical feet (fairly
correct, except that he makes the odd confusion of a trochee and a
tribrach), and discusses the liberties which must be taken with English
to adjust it to some of them. Elegiacs, he thinks, will not do:
Hexameters and Sapphics go best. And, to prove this, he is rash enough
to give versions of his own, in the former metre, of Virgil’s first and
second eclogues, in the latter of Spenser’s beautiful
“Ye dainty nymphs that in this blessed brook.”
It is enough to say that he succeeds in stripping all three of every rag
of poetry. A translation of Fabricius’[253] prose syllabus of Horace’s
rules, gathered not merely out of the _Ep. ad Pisones_ but elsewhere,
and an “epilogue,” modest as to himself, sanguine as to what will happen
when “the rabble of bald rhymes is turned to famous works,” concludes
the piece.
-----
Footnote 253:
_V. infra_, p. 354.
-----
[Sidenote: _in appreciation._]
On the whole, to use the hackneyed old phrase once more, we could have
better spared a better critic than Webbe, who gives us—in a fashion
invaluable to map-makers of the early exploration of English
criticism—the workings of a mind furnished with no original genius for
poetry, and not much for literature, not very extensively or accurately
erudite, but intensely _interested_ in matters literary, and especially
in matters poetical, generously enthusiastic for such good things as
were presented to it, not without some mother-wit even in its crazes,
and encouraged in those crazes not, as in Harvey’s case, by vanity,
pedantry, and bad taste, but by its very love of letters. Average
dispositions of this kind were, as a rule, diverted either into active
life—very much for the good of the nation—or—not at all for its
good—into the acrid disputes of hot-gospelling and Puritanism. Webbe, to
the best of his modest powers, was a devotee of literature: for which
let him have due honour.
Puttenham—or whosoever else it was, if it was not Puttenham[254]—has
some points of advantage, and one great one of disadvantage, in
comparison with Webbe. [Sidenote: _Puttenham’s (?)_ Art of English
Poesie.] In poetical faculty there is very little to choose between
them—the abundant specimens of his own powers, which the author or _The
Art of English Poesie_ gives (and which are eked out by a late copy of
one of the works referred to, _Partheniades_), deserve the gibes they
receive in one of our scanty early notices of the book, that by Sir John
Harington (_v. infra_). On the other hand, Puttenham has very little of
that engaging enthusiasm which atones for so much in his contemporary.
But this very want of enthusiasm somewhat prepares us for, though it
need not necessarily accompany, merits which we do not find in Webbe,
considered as a critic. _The Art of English Poesy_, which, as has been
said, appeared in 1589, three years later than Webbe’s, but which, from
some allusions, may have been written, or at least begun, before it, and
which, from other allusions, must have been the work of a man well
advanced in middle life, is methodically composed, very capable in range
and plan, and supported with a by no means contemptible erudition, and
no inconsiderable supply of judgment and common-sense. It was
unfortunate for Puttenham that he was just a little too old: that having
been—as from a fairly precise statement of his he must have been—born
_cir._ 1530-35, he belonged to the early and uncertain generation of
Elizabethan men of letters, the Googes and Turbervilles, and Gascoignes,
not to the generation of Sidney and Spenser, much less to that of
Shakespeare and Jonson. But what he had he gave: and it is far from
valueless.
-----
Footnote 254:
The whole of the documents in the case will be found, clearly put, in
Mr Arber’s _Introduction_. The first attribution is in Bolton (_v.
infra_) some fifteen years later than the date of the book, and not
quite positive (“as the Fame is”). But there is no other claimant who
has anything to put in: and the almost diseased aversion of “persons
of quality” (Puttenham was possibly a nephew of Sir Thomas Elyot’s,
and a Gentleman-Pensioner of the Queen’s) to avowing authorship is
well known.
-----
The book is “to-deled” (as the author of the _Ancren Riwle_ would say)
into three books—“Of Poets and Poesie,” “Of Proportion,” and “Of
Ornament.” [Sidenote: _Its erudition._] It begins, as usual, with
observations on the words poet and maker, references to the ancients,
&c.; but this exordium, which is fitly written in a plain but useful and
agreeable style, is commendably short. The writer lays it down, with
reasons, that there may be an Art of English as of Latin and Greek
poetry; but cannot refrain from the same sort of “writing at large” as
to poets being the first philosophers, &c., which we have so often
seen.[255] Indeed we must lay our account with the almost certain fact
that all writers of this period had seen Sidney’s _Defence_ at least in
MS. or had heard of it. He comes closer to business with his remarks on
the irreption of rhyme into Greek and Latin poetry; and shows a better
knowledge of leonine and other mediæval Latin verse, not merely than
Webbe, but even than Ascham. A very long section then deals with the
question—all-interesting to a man of the Renaissance—in what reputation
poets were with princes of old, and how they be now contemptible
(wherein Puttenham shows a rather remarkable acquaintance with modern
European literature), and then turns to the subject or matter of poesy
and the forms thereof, handling the latter at great length, and with a
fair sprinkle of literary anecdote. At last he comes to _English_
poetry; and though, as we might expect, he does not go behind the late
fourteenth century, he shows rather more knowledge than Webbe and (not
without slips here and elsewhere) far more comparative judgment. It
must, however, be admitted that, engaging as is his description of Sir
Walter Raleigh’s “vein most lofty, insolent, and passionate,” he does
not show to advantage in the patronising glance in passing at “that
other gentleman who wrote the late _Shepherd’s Calendar_,” contrasted
with the description of the Queen our Sovereign lady, “whose Muse easily
surmounteth all the rest in any kind on which it may please her Majesty
to employ her pen.” But here the allowance comes in: the stoutest Tory
of later days can never wholly share, though he may remotely comprehend,
the curious mixture of religious, romantic, patriotic, amatory, and
interested feelings with which the men of the sixteenth century wrote
about Gloriana.
-----
Footnote 255:
Harington, a person of humour, and a typical Englishman, perstringes
this as well as other things in his fling at the _Art_.
-----
The second book deals with Proportion, in which word Puttenham includes
almost everything belonging to Prosody in its widest sense—staff,
stanza, measure, metres, and feet, “cæsure,” rhyme, accent, cadence,
situation (by which he means the arrangement of the rhymes), and
proportion in figure. [Sidenote: _Systematic arrangement_] On most of
these heads he speaks more or less in accordance with his fellows
(though he very noticeably abstains from extreme commendation or
condemnation of rhyme), save that, for the moment, he seems to neglect
the “new versifying.” It is, however, but for a moment. After his
chapters on “proportion” in figure (the fanciful egg, wheel, lozenge,
&c., which he himself argues for, and which were to make critics of the
Addisonian type half-angry and half-sad), he deals with the subject.
About this “new versifying” he is evidently in two minds. He had glanced
at it before (and refers to the glance now)[256] as “a nice and
scholastic curiosity.” However, “for the information of our young
makers, and pleasure to those who be delighted in novelty, _and to the
intent that we may not seem by ignorance or oversight to omit_,”[257] he
“will now deal with it.” Which he does at great length; and, at any rate
sometimes, with a clearer perception of the prosodic values than any
other, even Spenser, had yet shown. But he does not seem quite at home
in the matter, and glides off to a discussion of feet—classical feet—in
the usual rhymed English verse.
-----
Footnote 256:
Here as elsewhere we may note evidences of possible revision in the
book. That there was some such revision is certain; for instance, Ben
Jonson’s copy (the existence of which is not uninteresting) contains a
large cancel of four leaves, not found in other copies known. For this
and other points of the same kind, see Mr Arber’s edition.
Footnote 257:
“Reviewing” was as yet in its infancy—a curiously lively one though,
with Nash and others coming on. Puttenham seems to have understood its
little ways rather well.
-----
The third book is longer than the first and second put together, and is
evidently that in which the author himself took most pleasure.
[Sidenote: _and exuberant indulgence in Figures._] It is called “Of
Ornament,” but practically deals with the whole question of _lexis_ or
style, so that it is at least common to Rhetoric and Poetics. In one
respect, too, it belongs more specially to the former, in that it
contains the most elaborate treatment of rhetorical figures to be found,
up to its time, in English literature. Full eighty pages are occupied
with the catalogue of these “Figures Auricular” wherein Puttenham
(sometimes rather badly served by his pen or his printer) ransacks the
Greek rhetoricians, and compiles a list (with explanations and examples)
of over one hundred and twenty. It is preceded and followed by more
general remarks, of which some account must be given.
Beginning with an exordial defence of ornament in general, Puttenham
proceeds to argue that set speeches, as in Parliament, not merely may
but ought to be couched in something more than a conversational style.
This added grace must be given by (1) Language, (2) Style, (3) Figures.
On diction he has remarks both shrewd and interesting, strongly
commending the language of the Court and of the best citizens, not
provincial speech, or that of seaports, or of universities, or in other
ways merely technical. “The usual speech of the Court and that of London
and the shires lying about London, within ten miles and not much above”
is his norm. There is also a noteworthy and very early reference to
English dictionaries, and a cautious section on neologisms introduced
from other tongues to fill wants. Style he will have reached by “a
constant and continual tenor of writing,” and gives the usual
subdivision of high, low, and middle. And so to his Figures.
The details and illustrations of the long catalogue of these invite
comment, but we must abstain therefrom. When the list is finished,
Puttenham returns to his generalities with a discussion of the main
principle of ornament, which he calls _Decorum_ or “Decency,” dividing
and illustrating the kinds of it into choice of subject, diction,
delivery, and other things, not without good craftsmanship, and with a
profusion of anecdotes chiefly of the Helotry kind. He then (rather
oddly, but not out of keeping with his classical models) has a chapter
of decorum in behaviour, turns to the necessity of concealing art, and
ends with a highly flattering conclusion to the Queen.
We have yet to mention some minorities; less briefly, the two
champions—Campion and Daniel, who brought the question of “Rhyme _v._
'Verse'” to final arbitrament of battle; the great name (not so great
here as elsewhere) of Francis Bacon; and lastly, one who, if
representative of a further stage, is far the greatest of Elizabethan
critics, and perhaps the only English critic who deserves the adjective
great before Dryden.
The earliest (1591) of these is Sir John Harington, in the prefatory
matter[258] of his translation of the _Orlando_, which contains the gibe
at Puttenham above referred to. [Sidenote: _Minors: Harington, Meres,
Webster, Bolton, &c._] It is otherwise much indebted to Sidney, from
whom, however, Harington differs in allowing more scope to allegorical
interpretation. Then comes Francis Meres, whose _Palladis Tamia_[259]
(1598) is to be eternally mentioned with gratitude, because it gives us
our one real document about the order of Shakespeare’s plays, but is
quite childish in the critical characterisation which it not
uninterestingly attempts. Webster’s equally famous, and universally
known, epitheting of the work of Shakespeare and others in the Preface
to _The White Devil_ (1612) adds yet another instance of the short sight
of contemporaries; but tempting as it may be to comment on these, it
would not become a Historian of Criticism to do so in this context. Sir
W. Vaughan in _The Golden Grove_ (1600) had earlier dealt, and
Bolton[260] in his _Hypercritica_ (1616), and Peacham in his _Complete
Gentleman_ (1622), were later to deal, with Poetry, but in terms adding
nothing to, and probably borrowed from, the utterances of Sidney, Webbe,
and Puttenham. Their contributions are “sma’ sums,” as Bailie Nicol
Jarvie says, and we must neglect them.
-----
Footnote 258:
Reprinted by Haslewood. Whetstone’s Preface to _Promos and Cassandra_
(1578) and A. Fraunce’s _Arcadian Rhetoric_ (1588) are earlier still.
The former anticipates Sidney in objecting to the irregularity of
English plays: the latter is a strong partisan of classical metres,
his practice in which is sufficiently roughly treated by Ben Jonson in
his _Conversations_, _v. infra_, p. 199.
Footnote 259:
Reprinted (in its critical section) by Mr Arber, _English Garner_, ii.
94 _sq._
Footnote 260:
Bolton’s criticism of his contemporaries is extracted in Warton (iv.
204 _sq._, ed. Hazlitt). The writer, who is dealing with History, and
speaking directly of language, disallows most of Spenser (excepting
the _Hymns_) and all Chaucer, Lydgate, Langland, and Skelton, can
“endure” Gascoigne, praises Elizabeth and James (of course), Chapman,
Daniel, Drayton, Constable, Southwell, Sackville, Surrey, Wyatt,
Raleigh, Donne, and Greville, but gives the palm for “vital,
judicious, and practicable” language to Jonson.
-----
The most interesting literary result of the “new versifying” craze is to
be found, without doubt, in the _Observations in the Art of English
Poesy_ of Thomas Campion[261] and the subsequent _Defence of Rhyme_ of
Samuel Daniel. [Sidenote: _Campion and his_ Observations.] The former
was issued in 1602, and the latter still later:—that is to say more than
twenty years after Spenser’s and Harvey’s letters, and more than thirty
after the appearance—let alone the writing—of Ascham’s _Schoolmaster_.
In the interval the true system of English prosody had put itself
practically beyond all real danger; but the critical craze had never
received its quietus. Nay, it survived to animate Milton: and there are
persons whom we could only name for the sake of honour, and who do not
seem to see that it is dead even yet. Both the writers mentioned were
true poets: and the curious thing is that the more exquisitely romantic
poet of the two was the partisan of classical prosody. But Campion—who
dedicated his book to Lord Buckhurst, the _doyen_ (except poor old
Churchyard) of English poetry at the time, and one whose few but noble
exercises in it need hardly vail their crest to any contemporary poetry
but Spenser’s and Shakespeare’s—was far too wise a man, as well as far
too good a poet, to champion any longer the break-neck and break-jaw
hexameters of Harvey and Stanyhurst. We have seen that almost from the
first there had been questions of heart among the partisans of the New
Versifying. That English is not tolerant of dactyls—that the dactyl, do
what you will, in English, will tilt itself into an anapæst with an
anacrusis—is a truth which no impartial student of metre with an ear,
and with an eye to cover the history of English poetry, can deny. Some
even of these pioneers had seen this: Campion has the boldness to
declare it in the words, “It [the dactylic hexameter] is an attempt
altogether against the nature of our language.” But though he was bold
so far, he was not quite bold enough. He could not surmount the queer
Renaissance objection to rhyme. That all the arguments against the
“barbarism” of this tell equally against Christianity, chivalry, the
English constitution, the existence of America, gunpowder,
glass-windows, coal-fires, and a very large number of other institutions
of some usefulness, never seems to have occurred to any of these good
folk. But no man can escape his time. Campion, not noticing, or not
choosing to notice, the intensely English quality of the anapæst,
limits, or almost limits, our verse to iambs and trochees. It was
possible for him—though it still appears to be difficult for some—to
recognise the tribrach, the mere suggestion of which in English verse
threw Dr Guest into a paroxysm of “!!!!’s,” but which exists as
certainly as does the iamb itself. On the contrary he shows himself in
advance of Guest, and of most behind Guest to his own time, by admitting
tribrachs in the third and fifth places. Nay, he even sees that a
trochee may take the place of an iamb (Milton’s probably borrowed
secret) in the first place, though his unerring ear (I think there is no
verse of Campion’s that is unmusical) insists on some other foot than an
iamb following—otherwise, he says, “it would too much _drink up_ the
verse.” But, on the whole, he sets himself to work, a self-condemned
drudge, to make iambic and trochaic verses without rhyme. And on these
two, with certain licences, he arranges schemes of English elegiacs,
anacreontics, and the rest. Some of the examples of these are charming
poems, notably the famous “_Rose-Cheeked Laura_,” and the beautiful
“_Constant to None_,” while Campion’s subsequent remarks on English
quantity are among the acutest on the subject. But the whole thing has
on it the curse of “flying in the face of nature.” You have only to take
one of Campion’s own poems (written mostly _after_ the _Observations_)
in natural rhyme, and the difference will be seen at once. It simply
comes to this—that the good rhymeless poems would be infinitely better
with rhyme, and that the bad ones, while they might sometimes be
absolutely saved by the despised invention of Huns and Vandals, are
always made worse by its absence.
-----
Footnote 261:
Ed. Bullen, _Works of Dr Thomas Campion_, London, 1889.
-----
In the preface of Daniel’s answering _Defence of Rhyme to all the worthy
lovers and learned professors_ [_thereof_] _within His Majesty’s
dominions_,[262] he says that he wrote it “about a year since,” upon the
“great reproach” given by Campion, and some give it the date of 1603 or
even 1602; but Dr Grosart’s reprint is dated five years later.
[Sidenote: _Daniel and his_ Defence of Rhyme.] The learned gentleman to
whom it was specially written was no less a person than William Herbert,
Earl of Pembroke, whom some of us (acknowledging that the matter is no
matter) do not yet give up as “Mr W. H.” The advocate affects, with fair
rhetorical excuse (though of course he must have known that the craze
was nearly half a century old, and had at least not been discouraged by
his patron’s uncle nearly a generation before), to regard the attack on
rhyming as something new, as merely concerned with the “measures” of
Campion. Daniel, always a gentleman, deals handsomely with his
antagonist, whom he does not name, but describes as “this detractor
whose commendable rhymes, albeit now an enemy to rhyme, have given
heretofore to the world the best notice of his worth,” and as a man “of
fair parts and good reputation.” And having put himself on the best
ground, in this way, from the point of view of morals and courtesy, he
does the same in matter of argument by refusing to attack Campion’s
“numbers” in themselves (“We could,” he says well, “have allowed of his
numbers, had he not graced his rhymes”), and by seizing the unassailable
position given by custom and nature—“Custom that is before all law;
Nature that is above all art.” In fact, not Jonson himself, and
certainly none else before Jonson, has comprehended, or at least put,
the truth of the matter as Daniel puts it, that arbitrary laws imposed
on the poetry of any nation are absurd—that the verse of a language is
such as best consorts with the nature of that language. This seems a
truism enough perhaps; but it may be very much doubted whether all
critics recognise it, and its consequences, even at the present day. And
it is certain that we may search other early English critics in vain for
a frank recognition of it. With an equally bold and sure foot he strides
over the silly stuff about “invention of barbarous ages” and the like.
Whatever its origin (and about this he shows a wise carelessness), it is
“an excellence added to this work of measure and harmony, far happier
than any proportion quantity could ever show.” It “gives to the ear an
echo of a delightful report,” and to the memory “a deeper impression of
what is delivered.” He is less original (as well as, some may think,
less happy) in distinguishing the accent of English from the quantity of
the classical tongues; but the classicisers before Campion, if not
Campion himself, had made such a mess of quantity, and had played such
havoc with accent, that he may well be excused. The universality of
rhyme is urged, and once more says Daniel (with that happy audacity in
the contemning of vain things which belongs to the born exploders of
crazes), “If the barbarian likes it, it is because it sways the
affections of the barbarian; if civil nations practise it, it works upon
their hearts; if all, then it has a power in nature upon all.” But it
will be said, “Ill customs are to be left.” No doubt: but the question
is begged. Who made _this_ custom “ill”? Rhyme aims at pleasing—and it
pleases. Suffer then the world to enjoy that which it knows and what it
likes, for all the tyrannical rules of rhetoric cannot make it
otherwise. Why are we to be a mere _servum pecus_, only to imitate the
Greeks and Latins? Their way was natural to them: let ours be so to us.
“Why should laboursome curiosity still lay affliction on our best
delights?” Moreover, to a spirit whom nature hath “fitted for that
mystery,” rhyme is no impediment, “but rather giveth wings to mount.”
The necessary historical survey follows, with a surprising and very
welcome justification of the Middle Ages against both Classics and
Renaissance. “Let us,” says this true Daniel come to judgment, “go not
further, but look upon the wonderful architecture of the State of
England, and see whether they were unlearned times that could give it
such a form?” And if politically, why not poetically? Some acute and, in
the other sense, rather sharp criticism of Campion’s details follows,
with a few apologetic remarks for mixture of masculine and feminine
rhymes on his own part: and the whole concludes in an admirable
peroration with a great end-note to it. Not easily shall we find, either
in Elizabethan times or in any other, a happier combination of solid
good sense with eager poetic sentiment, of sound scholarship with
wide-glancing intelligence, than in this little tractate of some thirty
or forty ordinary pages, which dispelled the delusions of two
generations, and made the poetical fortune of England sure.
-----
Footnote 262:
Chalmers’s _Poets_, iii. 551-560; Grosart’s _Works of Samuel Daniel_,
iv. 29-67.
-----
The contributions of “large-browed Verulam” to criticism have sometimes
been spoken of with reverence: and it is not uncommon to find, amid the
scanty classics of the subject, which until recently have been
recommended to the notice of inquirers, not merely a place, but a place
of very high honour, assigned to _The Advancement of Learning_.
[Sidenote: _Bacon._] Actual, unprejudiced, and to some extent expert,
reference to the works, however, will not find very much to justify this
estimate: and, indeed, a little thought, assisted by very moderate
knowledge, would suffice to make it rather surprising that Bacon should
give us so much, than disappointing that he should give us little or
nothing. A producer of literature who at his best has few superiors, and
a user of it for purposes of quotation, who would deserve the name of
genius for this use alone if he had no other title thereto—Bacon was yet
by no means inclined by his main interests and objects, or by his
temperament, either towards great exaltation of letters, or towards
accurate and painstaking examination of them. Indeed, it is in
him—almost first of all men, certainly first of all great modern
men—that we find that partisan opposition between literature and science
which has constantly developed since. It is true that his favourite
method of examination into “forms” might seem tempting as applied to
literature; and that it would, incidentally if not directly, have
yielded more solid results than his Will-o'-the-wisp chase of the Form
of Heat. But this very craze of his may suggest that if he had
undertaken literary criticism it would have been on the old road of
Kinds and Figures and Qualities, in which we could expect little but
glowing rhetorical generalisation from him.
Nor is the nature of such small critical matter as we actually have from
him very different. [Sidenote: _The_ Essays.] The Essays practically
give us nothing but the contents of that _Of Studies_, a piece too well
known to need quotation; too much in the early pregnant style of the
author to bear compression or analysis; and too general to repay it. For
the critic and the man of letters generally it is, in its own phrase, to
be not merely tasted, nor even swallowed, but chewed and digested; yet
its teachings have nothing more to do with the critical function of
“study” than with all others.
The _Advancement_[263] at least excuses the greatness thrust upon it in
the estimates above referred to, not merely by the apparent necessity
that the author should deal with Criticism, but by a certain appearance
of his actually doing so. [Sidenote: _The_ Advancement of Learning.]
Comparatively early in the First Book he tackles the attention to style
which sprang up at the Renaissance, opening his discussion by the
ingenious but slightly unhistorical attribution of it to Martin Luther,
who was forced to awake all antiquity, and call former times to his
succour, against the Bishop of Rome. Not a few names, for the best part
of two centuries before the great cause of _Martinus_ v. _Papam_ was
launched, from Petrarch and Boccaccio to Erasmus and Reuchlin, will put
in evidence before the tribunal of chronology against this singular
assertion; and though the Italian Humanists of the fifteenth century
might not (at least in thought) care anything for the Pope except as a
source of donatives and benefices, it is certain that most of them were
as constitutionally disinclined to abet Luther as they were
chronologically disabled from in any way abetting him. Bacon’s argument
and further survey are, however, better than this beginning. To
understand the ancients (he says justly enough) it was necessary to make
a careful study of their language. Further, the opposition of thought to
the Schoolmen naturally brought about a recoil from the barbarisms of
Scholastic style, and the anxiety to win over the general imprinted care
and elegance and vigour on preaching and writing. All this, he adds as
justly, turned to excess. [Sidenote: _Its denunciation of mere
word-study._] Men began to “hunt more after words than matter; more
after the choiceness of the phrase and the round and clean composition
of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying
and illustration of their words with tropes and figures, than after the
weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of
invention, or depth of judgment.” The Ciceronianism of Osorius, Sturm,
“Car of Cambridge,” and even Ascham, receives more or less condemnation;
and Erasmus is, of course, cited for gibes at it. On this text Bacon
proceeds to enlarge in his own stately rhetoric, coolly admitting that
it “is a thing not hastily to be condemned, to clothe and adorn the
obscurity even of philosophy itself with sensible and plausible
elocution.” But he very quickly glides off into his usual denunciations
of the schoolmen. Nor have I found anything else in this First Book
really germane to our purpose; for one cannot cite as such the desultory
observations on patronage of literature (among other branches of
learning) which fill a good part of it.
-----
Footnote 263:
It ought to be, but from certain signs perhaps is not, unnecessary to
say that the _De Augmentis_ is itself no mere Latin version of the
_Advancement_, but a large expansion of it. There seems, however, no
necessity here to deal with both.
-----
The Second Book is somewhat more fruitful in quantity, if not very much;
but the quality remains not very different. The opening “Address to the
King” contains, in an interesting first draft (as we may call it), the
everlasting grumble of the scientific man, that science is not
sufficiently endowed, the further grumble at mere book-learning, the cry
for the promotion—by putting money in its purse—of research. The Second
and Third Chapters contain some plans of books drawn up in Bacon’s warm
imaginative way, especially a great series of Histories, with the
_History of England_ for their centre. And then we come, in the Fourth
Chapter, to Poesy.
But except for Bacon’s majestic style (which, however, by accident or
intention, is rather below itself here) there is absolutely nothing
novel. [Sidenote: _Its view of Poetry._] The view (which, as we have
seen, all the Elizabethan critics adopted, probably from the
Italians)—the view is that poetry is just a part of learning licensed in
imagination; a fanciful history intended to give satisfaction to the
mind of man in things where history is not; something particularly
prevalent and useful in barbarous ages; divisible into narrative,
representative and allusive; useful now and then, but (as Aristotle
would say) not a thing to take very seriously. Yet poetry, a _vinum
dæmonum_ at the worst, a mere illusion anyhow, is still, even as such, a
refuge from, and remedy for, sorrow and toil. Of its form, as
distinguished from its matter, he says,[264] “Poetry is but a character
of style, and belongeth to arts of speech, and is not pertinent for the
present.” He attempts no defence of it as of other parts of learning,
because “being as a plant that cometh of the lust of the earth without a
formal seed, it hath sprung up and spread abroad more than any other
kind.” And he turns from it to philosophy, with the more than
half-disdainful adieu, “It is not good to stay too long in the theatre.”
-----
Footnote 264:
_Advancement of Learning_, Bk. II. iv.
-----
We might almost quit him here with a somewhat similar leave-taking; but
for his great reputation some other places shall be handled. [Sidenote:
_Some_ obiter dicta.] At XIV. 11 there are some remarks on the delusive
powers of words; at XVI. 4, 5 some on grammar and rhetoric, including a
rather interesting observation, not sufficiently expanded or worked out,
that “in modern languages it seemeth to me as free to make new measures
of verses as of dances”; in XVIII. a handling of strictly oratorical
rhetoric, with a digression to these “Colours of Good and Evil” which
interested Bacon so much; in XX. another descant on the same art; in
XXI. a puff of the _Basilikon Doron_; in XXXII. observations on the
moral influence of books; in XXXV. some general observations on
literature; and, just before the close, a well-known and often-quoted
eulogy, certainly not undeserved, of the eloquence of the English pulpit
for forty years past.
If it were not for the singular want of a clear conception of literary
Criticism, which has prevailed so long and so widely, it would hardly be
necessary to take, with any seriousness at all, a man who has no more
than this to say on the subject.[265] [Sidenote: _The whole of very
slight importance._] It is most assuredly no slight to Bacon to deny him
a place in a regiment where he never had the least ambition to serve.
That he was himself a great practitioner of literature, and so,
necessarily if indirectly, a critic of it in his own case, is perfectly
true; the remarks which have been quoted above on the Ciceronians show
that, when he took the trouble, and found the opportunity, he could make
them justly and soundly. But his purpose, his interests, his province,
his vein, lay far elsewhere. To him, it is pretty clear, literary
expression was, in relation to his favourite studies and dreams, but a
higher kind of pen-and-ink or printing-press. He distrusted the
stability of modern languages, and feared that studies couched in them
might some day or other come to be unintelligible and lost to the world.
This famous fear explains the nature and the limits of his interest in
literature. It was a vehicle or a treasury, a distributing agent or a
guard. Its functions and qualities accorded: it was to be clear, not
disagreeable, solidly constructed, intelligible to as large a number of
readers as possible. The psychological character and morphological
definition of poetry interested him philosophically. But in the art and
the beauty of poetry and literature generally, for their own sakes, he
seems to have taken no more interest than he did in the coloured pattern
plots in gardens, which he compared to “tarts.” To a man so minded, as
to those more ancient ones of similar mind whom we have discussed in the
first volume, Criticism proper could, at the best, be a pastime to be
half ashamed of—a “theatre” in which to while away the hours; it could
not possibly be a matter of serious as well as enthusiastic study.
-----
Footnote 265:
I have more than once said that controversy or polemic in detail with
other writers is forbidden here. But those who wish to see what has
been said for Bacon will find most of the references in Messrs Gayley
and Scott’s invaluable book. The panegyrists—from my honoured friend
and predecessor, Professor Masson, to Mr Worsfold—all rely on the
description of poetry above referred to, as “Feigned History,” with
what follows on its advantages and on poetical justice, &c. All this
seems to me, however admirably expressed, to be obvious and
rudimentary to the _x_th and the _n_th.
-----
Between Bacon and Ben may be best noticed the short _Anacrisis or
Censure of Poets, Ancient and Modern_,[266] by Sir William Alexander,
Earl of Stirling. [Sidenote: _Stirling’s_ Anacrisis.] It has received
high praise;[267] but even those who think by no means ill of _Aurora_,
may find some difficulty in indorsing this. It is simply a sort of
“Note,” written, as the author says, to record his impressions during a
reading of the poets, which he had undertaken as refreshment after great
travail both of body and mind. He thinks Language “but the apparel of
poesy,” thereby going even further than those who would assign that
position to verse, and suggesting a system of “Inarticulate Poetics,”
which he would have been rather put to it to body forth. He only means,
however, that he judges in the orthodox Aristotelian way, by “the fable
and contexture.” A subsequent comparison of a poem to a garden suggests
Vauquelin de la Fresnaye (_v. supra_, p. 129), whom he may have read.
Alexander is a sort of general lover in poetry; he likes this in Virgil,
that in Ovid, that other in Horace; defends Lucan against Scaliger, even
to the point of blaming the conclusion of the _Æneid_; finds “no man
that doth satisfy him more than that notable Italian, Torquato Tasso”;
admits the historical as well as the fictitious poetic subject; but
thinks that “the treasures of poetry cannot be better bestowed than upon
the apparelling of Truth; and Truth cannot be better apparelled to
please young lovers than with the excellences of poetry.” Disrespectful
language neither need nor should be used of so slight a thing, which is,
and pretends to be, nothing more than a sort of table-book entry by a
gentleman of learning as well as quality. But, if it has any
“importance” at all, it is surely that of being yet another proof of the
rapid diffusion of critical taste and practice, not of stating “theory
and methods considerably in advance of the age.” If we could take
extensively his protest against those who “would bound the boundless
liberty of the poet,” such language might indeed be justified; but the
context strictly limits it to the very minor, though then, and for long
before and after, commonly debated, question of Fiction _v._ History in
subject.
-----
Footnote 266:
To be most readily found in Rogers’s _Memorials of the Earl of
Stirling_ (vol. ii. pp. 205-210; Edinburgh, 1877), where, however, it
appears merely as one of the Appendices to a book of more or less pure
genealogy, without the slightest editorial information as to date or
_provenance_. It seems to be taken from the 1711 folio of Drummond’s
_Works_: and to have been written in 1634, between Bacon’s death and
Ben’s.
Footnote 267:
From Park, and from Messrs Gayley and Scott. I did not always agree
with my late friend Dr Grosart: but I think he was better advised when
he called it “disappointing.”
-----
Save perhaps in one single respect (where the defect was not wholly his
fault), Ben Jonson might be described as a critic armed at all points.
[Sidenote: _Ben Jonson: his equipment._] His knowledge of literature was
extremely wide, being at the same time solid and thorough. While he had
an understanding above all things strong and masculine, he was
particularly addicted, though in no dilettante fashion, to points of
form. His whole energies, and they were little short of Titanic, were
given to literature. And, lastly, if he had not the supremest poetic
genius, he had such a talent that only the neighbourhood of supremacy
dwarfs it. Where he came short was not in a certain hardness of temper
and scholasticism of attitude: for these, if kept within bounds, and
tempered by that enthusiasm for letters which he possessed, are not bad
equipments for the critic. It was rather in the fact that he still came
too early for it to be possible for him, except by the help of a
miracle, to understand the achievements and value of the vernaculars. By
his latest days, indeed,[268] the positive performance of these was
already very great. Spain has hardly added anything since, and Italy not
very much, to her share of European literature; France was already in
the first flush of her “classical” period, after a long and glorious
earlier history: and what Ben’s own contemporaries in England had done,
all men know. But mediæval literature was shut from him, as from all,
till far later; he does not seem to have been much drawn to Continental
letters, and, perhaps in their case, as certainly in English, he was too
near—too much a part of the movement—to get it into firm perspective.
-----
Footnote 268:
It may be well to point out that these days carried him far beyond the
point at which we have stopped for Italian and for French. His
solidarity with the Elizabethans proper, however, makes his inclusion
here imperative: and the fact must be taken into consideration in
judging the relative lengths of this and the preceding chapters.
-----
In a sense the critical temper in Jonson is all-pervading. It breaks out
side by side with, and sometimes even within, his sweetest lyrics; it
interposes what may be called _parabases_ in the most unexpected
passages[269] of his plays. [Sidenote: _His_ Prefaces, _&c._] _The
Poetaster_ is almost as much criticism dramatised as _The Frogs_. But
there are three “places,” or groups of places, which it inspires, not in
mere suggestion, but with propriety—the occasional Prefaces, or
observations, to and on the plays themselves, the _Conversations with
Drummond_, and, above all, the at last fairly (though not yet
sufficiently) known _Discoveries_ or _Timber_.
-----
Footnote 269:
Take as one of a hundred, and from the less read pieces, that
interesting passage in the masque of _The New World Discovered in the
Moon_, which Gifford has made more interesting by a further discovery
in Theobald’s copy:—
_Chro._ Is he a man’s poet or a woman’s poet, I pray you?
_2nd Her._ Is there any such difference?
_Fact._ Many, as betwixt your man’s tailor and your woman’s tailor.
_1st Her._ How, may we beseech you?
_Fact._ I’ll show you: your man’s poet may break out strong and deep
i' the mouth, ... but your woman’s poet must flow, and stroke the ear,
and as one of them said of himself sweetly—
“Must write a verse as smooth and calm as cream,
In which there is no torrent, nor scarce stream.”
Whereon the injured “Tibbalds”: “_Woman’s Poet, his soft
versification—Mr P——_.”
The Induction to _Every Man out of His Humour_, a very large part of
_Cynthia’s Revels_, with its principal character of Crites, and its
audacious self-praise in the Epilogue, not a little of _The Silent
Woman_, and scores of other places in play and poem, might be added.
-----
To piece together, with any elaboration, the more scattered critical
passages would be fitter for a monograph on Jonson than for a History of
Criticism. The “Address to the Readers” of _Sejanus_, which contains a
reference to the author’s lost _Observations on Horace, his Art of
Poetry_ (not the least of such losses) is a fair specimen of them: the
dedication of _Volpone_ to “the most noble and most equal sisters,
Oxford and Cambridge,” a better. In both, and in numerous other passages
of prose and verse, we find the real and solid, though somewhat partial,
knowledge, the strong sense, the methodic scholarship of Ben, side by
side with his stately, not Euphuistic, but rather too close-packed
style, his not ill-founded, but slightly excessive, self-confidence, and
that rough knock-down manner of assertion and characterisation which
reappeared in its most unguarded form in the _Conversations_ with
Drummond.
The critical utterances of these _Conversations_ are far too interesting
to be passed over here, though we cannot discuss them in full.
[Sidenote: _The Drummond Conversations._] They tell us that Ben thought
all (other) rhymes inferior to couplets, and had written a treatise
(which, again, would we had!) both against Campion and Daniel (see
_ante_). His objection to “stanzas and cross rhymes” was that “as the
purpose might lead beyond them, they were all forced.” Sidney “made
every one speak as well as himself,” and so did not keep “decorum” (cf.
Puttenham above). Spenser’s stanzas and matter did not please him.
Daniel was no poet. He did not like Drayton’s “long verses,” nor
Sylvester’s and Fairfax’s translations. He thought the translations of
Homer (Chapman’s) and Virgil (Phaer’s) into “long Alexandrines” (_i.e._,
fourteeners) were but prose: yet elsewhere we hear that he “had some of
Chapman by heart.” Harington’s _Ariosto_ was the worst of all
translations. Donne was sometimes “profane,” and “for not keeping of
accent deserved hanging”; but elsewhere he was “the first poet of the
world in some things,” though, “through not being understood, he would
perish.”[270] Shakespeare “wanted art”: and “Abram Francis (Abraham
Fraunce) in his English Hexameters was a fool.” “Bartas was not a poet,
but a verser, because he wrote not fiction.” He cursed Petrarch for
redacting verses to sonnets, “which were like Procrustes’ bed.” Guarini
incurred the same blame as Sir Philip: and Lucan was good in parts only.
“The best pieces of Ronsard were his Odes.” Drummond’s own verses “were
all good, but smelled too much of the schools.” The “silver” Latins, as
we should expect, pleased him best. “To have written Southwell’s
‘Burning Babe,’ he would have been content to destroy many of his.”
-----
Footnote 270:
These dicta, thus juxtaposed, should make all argument about
apparently one-sided judgments superfluous. If Drummond had omitted
the first or the last, we should have been utterly wrong in arguing
from the remainder.
-----
These are the chief really critical items, though there are others
(putting personal gossip aside) of interest; but it may be added, as a
curiosity, that he told Drummond that he himself “writ all first in
prose” at Camden’s suggestion, and held that “verses stood all by sense,
without colours or accent” (poetic diction or metre), “which yet at
other times he denied,” says the reporter, a sentence ever to be
remembered in connection with these jottings. Remembering it, there is
nothing shocking in any of these observations, nor anything really
inconsistent. A true critic never holds the neat, positive,
“reduced-to-its-lowest-terms” estimate of authors, in which a
criticaster delights. His view is always facetted, conditioned. But he
may, in a friendly chat, or a conversation for victory, exaggerate this
facet or condition, while altogether suppressing others; and this
clearly is what Ben did.
For gloss on the _Conversations_, for reduction to something like system
of the critical remarks scattered through the works, and for the nearest
approach we can have to a formal presentment of Ben’s critical views, we
must go to the _Discoveries_.[271]
-----
Footnote 271:
The best separate edition is that of Prof. Schelling of Philadelphia
(Boston, U.S.A., 1892). I give the pp. of this, as well as the Latin
Headings of sections, which will enable any one to trace the passage
in complete editions of the Works such as Cunningham’s Gifford. It is
strange that no one has numbered these sections for convenience of
reference.
-----
The fact that we find no less than four titles for the book—_Timber_,
_Explorata_, _Discoveries_, and _Sylva_—with others of its
peculiarities, is explained by the second fact that Jonson never
published it. [Sidenote: _The_ Discoveries.] It never appeared in print
till the folio of 1641, years after its author’s death. The
_Discoveries_ are described as being made “upon men and matter as they
have flowed out of his daily reading, or had their reflux to his
peculiar notions of the times.” They are, in fact, notes unnumbered and
unclassified (though batches of more or fewer sometimes run on the same
subject), each with its Latin heading, and varying in length from a few
lines to that of his friend (and partly master) Bacon’s shorter
_Essays_. The influence of those “silver” Latins whom he loved so much
is prominent: large passages are simply translated from Quintilian, and
for some time[272] the tenor is ethical rather than literary. A note on
_Perspicuitas—elegantia_ (p. 7) breaks these, but has nothing noteworthy
about it, and _Bellum scribentium_ (p. 10) is only a satiric exclamation
on the folly of “writers committed together by the ears for ceremonies,
syllables, points,” &c. The longer _Nil gratius protervo libro_ (pp. 11,
12) seems a retort for some personal injury, combined with the old
complaint of the decadence and degradation of poetry.[273] There is just
but rather general stricture in _Eloquentia_ (p. 16) on the difference
between the arguments of the study and of the world. “I would no more
choose a rhetorician for reigning in a school,” says Ben, “than I would
choose a pilot for rowing in a pond.”[274] _Memoria_ (p. 18) includes a
gird at Euphuism. At last we come to business. _Censura de poetis_ (p.
21), introduced by a fresh fling at Euphuism, in _De vere argutis_,
opens with a tolerably confident note, “Nothing in our age is more
preposterous than the running judgments upon poetry and poets,” with
much more to the same effect, the whole being pointed by the fling, “If
it were a question of the water-rhymer’s[275] works against Spenser’s, I
doubt not but they would find more suffrages.” The famous passage on
Shakespeare follows: and the development of Ben’s view, “would he had
blotted a thousand,” leads to a more general disquisition on the
differences of wits, which includes the sentence already referred to.
“Such [_i.e._, haphazard and inconsistent] are all the Essayists, even
their master Montaigne.” The notes now keep close to literature
throughout in substance, though their titles (_e.g._, _Ignorantia
animæ_), and so forth, may seem wider. A heading, _De Claris Oratoribus_
(p. 26), leads to yet another of the purple passages of the book—that on
Bacon, in which is intercalated a curious _Scriptorum catalogus_,
limited, for the most part, though Surrey and Wyatt are mentioned, to
prose writers. And then for some time ethics, politics, and other
subjects, again have Ben’s chief attention.[276]
-----
Footnote 272:
It may be observed that the shorter aphorisms rise to the top—at least
the beginning.
Footnote 273:
“He is upbraidingly called a poet.... The professors, indeed, have
made the learning cheap.”
Footnote 274:
It is here that Ben borrows from Petronius not merely the sentiment
but the phrase, “umbratical doctor” (see vol. i. p. 244 note).
Footnote 275:
“Taylor the Water-Poet,” certainly bad enough as a poet—though not as
a man. But the selection of Spenser as the other pole is an invaluable
correction to the sweeping attack in the _Conversations_.
Footnote 276:
Perhaps, indeed, an exception should be made in favour of the section
_De malignitate Studentium_, p. 34, which reiterates the necessity of
“the exact knowledge of all virtues and their contraries” on the part
of the poet.
-----
We return to literature, after some interval (but with a parenthetic
glance at the _poesis et pictura_ notion at p. 49), on p. 52, in a
curious unheaded letter to an unnamed Lordship on Education, much of
which is translated directly from Ben Jonson’s favourite Quintilian; and
then directly accost it again with a tractatule _De stilo et optimo
scribendi genere_, p. 54, hardly parting company thereafter. Ben’s
prescription is threefold: read the best authors, observe the best
speakers, and exercise your own style much. But he is well aware that no
“precepts will profit a fool,” and he adapts old advice to English
ingeniously, in bidding men read, not only Livy before Sallust, but also
Sidney before Donne, and to beware of Chaucer or Gower at first. Here
occurs the well-known _dictum_, that Spenser “in affecting the ancients
writ no language; yet I would have him read for his matter.” A fine
general head opens with the excellent version of Quintilian, “We should
not protect our sloth with the patronage of Difficulty,” and this is
followed by some shrewd remarks on diction—the shrewdest being that,
after all, the best custom makes, and ever will continue to make, the
best speech—with a sharp stroke at Lucretius for “scabrousness,” and at
Chaucerisms. Brevity of style, Tacitean and other, is cautiously
commended. In the phrase (_Oratio imago animi_), p. 64, “language most
shows a man,” Ben seems to anticipate Buffon, as he later does
Wordsworth and Coleridge, by insisting that style is not merely the
dress, but the body of thought.[277] All this discussion, which enters
into considerable detail, is of the first importance, and it occupies
nearly a quarter of the whole book. It is continued, the continuation
reaching till the end, by a separate discussion of poetry.
-----
Footnote 277:
He may have taken this from the Italians.
-----
It is interesting, but less so than what comes before. A somewhat
acid, though personally guarded, description of the present state of
the Art introduces the stock definition of “making,” and its corollary
that a poet is not one who writes in measure, but one who feigns—all
as we have found it before, but (as we should expect of Ben) in
succincter and more scholarly form. Yet the first requisite of the
poet is _ingenium_—goodness of natural wit; the next exercise of his
parts—“bringing all to the forge and file” (_sculpte, lime, cisèle!_);
the third Imitation—to which Ben gives a turn (not exactly new, for we
have met it from Vida downwards), which is not an improvement, by
keeping its modern meaning, and understanding by it the following of
the classics. “But that which we especially require in him is an
exactness of study and multiplicity of reading.” Yet his liberty is
not to be so narrowly circumscribed as some would have it. This leads
to some interesting remarks on the ancient critics, which the author
had evidently meant to extend: as it is, they break off short.[278] We
turn to the Parts of comedy and tragedy, where Ben is strictly
regular—the fable is the imitation of one entire and perfect action,
&c. But this also breaks off, after a discussion of fable itself and
episode, with an evidently quite disconnected fling at “hobbling poems
which run like a brewer’s cart on the stones.”
-----
Footnote 278:
This is one of the most lacrimable of the gaps. Ben must have known
other authorities besides Quintilian well: he even quotes, though only
in part, the great passage of Simylus (vol. i. p. 25 note).
-----
These _Discoveries_ have to be considered with a little general care
before we examine them more particularly. [Sidenote: _Form of the
book._] They were, it has been said, never issued by the author himself,
and we do not know whether he ever would have issued them in their
present form. On the one hand, they are very carefully written, and not
mere jottings. In form (though more modern in style) they resemble the
earlier essays of that Bacon whom they so magnificently celebrate, in
their deliberate conciseness and pregnancy. On the other hand, it is
almost impossible to doubt that some at least were intended for
expansion; it is difficult not to think that there was plenty more stuff
of the same kind in the solidly constructed and well-stored treasuries
of Ben’s intelligence and erudition. It is most difficult of all not to
see that, in some cases, the thoughts are co-ordinated into regular
tractates, in others left loose, as if for future treatment of the same
kind.
Secondly, we should like to know rather more than we do of the _time_ of
their composition. [Sidenote: _Its date._] Some of them—such as the
retrospect of Bacon, and to a less degree that of Shakespeare—_must_ be
late; there is a strong probability that all date from the period
between the fire in Ben’s study, which destroyed so much, and his
death—say between 1620 and 1637. But at the same time there is nothing
to prevent his having remembered and recopied observations of earlier
date.
Thirdly, it is most important that we rightly understand the composition
of the book. [Sidenote: _Mosaic of old and new._] It has sometimes been
discovered[279] in these _Discoveries_, with pride, or surprise, or even
scorn, that Ben borrowed in them very largely from the ancients. Of
course he did, as well as something, though less, from the Italian
critics of the age immediately before his own.[280] But in neither case
could he have hoped for a moment—and in neither is there the slightest
reason to suppose that he would have wished if he could have hoped—to
disguise his borrowings from a learned age. When a man—such as, for
instance, Sterne—wishes to steal and escape, he goes to what nobody
reads, not to what everybody is reading. And the Latins of the Silver
Age, the two Senecas, Petronius, Quintilian, Pliny, were specially
favourites with the Jacobean time. In what is going to be said no
difference will be made between Ben’s borrowings and his original
remarks: nor will the fact of the borrowing be referred to unless there
is some special critical reason. Even the literal translations, which
are not uncommon, are made his own by the nervous idiosyncrasy of the
phrase, and its thorough adjustment to the context and to his own
vigorous and massive temperament.
-----
Footnote 279:
I am most anxious not to be thought to reflect on Professor Schelling
in this remark. Dr Schelling’s indagations of Ben’s debts are most
interesting, and always made in the right spirit, while, like a good
farmer and sportsman, he has left plenty for those who come after him
to glean and bag. For instance, the very curious passage, taken
verbatim from the elder Seneca, about the Platonic Apology (cf. vol.
i. p. 237).
Footnote 280:
Yet in re-reading Jonson, just after a pretty elaborate overhauling of
the Italians, I find very little certain indebtedness of detail. Mr
Spingarn seems to me to go too far in tracing, p. 88, “small Latin and
less Greek” to Minturno’s “small Latin and _very_ small Greek,” and
the distinction of _poeta_, _poema_, _poesis_ to Scaliger or Maggi.
Fifty people might have independently thought of the first; and the
second is an application of a “common form” nearly as old as rhetoric.
-----
Of real “book-criticism” there are four chief passages, the brief flings
at Montaigne and at “_Tamerlanes_ and _Tamerchams_,” and the longer
notices of Shakespeare and Bacon.
The flirt at “all the Essayists, even their master Montaigne,” is
especially interesting, because of the high opinion which Jonson
elsewhere expresses of Bacon, the chief, if not the first, English
Essayist of his time, and because of the fact that not a few of these
very _Discoveries_ are “Essays,” if any things ever were. [Sidenote:
_The fling at Montaigne;_] Nor would it be very easy to make out a clear
distinction, in anything but name, between some of Ben’s most favourite
ancient writers and these despised persons. It is, however, somewhat
easier to understand the reason of the condemnation. Jonson’s
classically ordered mind probably disliked the ostentatious
desultoriness and incompleteness of the Essay, the refusal, as it were
out of mere insolence, to undertake an orderly treatise. Nor is it quite
impossible that he failed fully to understand Montaigne, and was to some
extent the dupe of that great writer’s fanfaronade of promiscuousness.
The “_Tamerlane_ and _Tamercham_”[281] fling is not even at first sight
surprising. [Sidenote: _at_ Tamerlane,] It was quite certain that Ben
would seriously despise what Shakespeare only laughed at—the confusion,
the bombast, the want of order and scheme in the “University Wits”—and
it is not probable that he was well enough acquainted with the even now
obscure development of the earliest Elizabethan drama to appreciate the
enormous improvement which they wrought. Nay, the nearer approach even
of such a dull thing as _Gorboduc_ to “the height of Seneca his style,”
might have a little bribed him as it bribed Sidney. He is true to his
side—to his division of the critical creed—in this also.
-----
Footnote 281:
P. 27. “The _Tamerlanes_ and _Tamerchams_ of the late age, which had
nothing in them but the scenical strutting and furious vociferation to
warrant them.” It is just worth noting that Jonson thought there was
more than this in Marlowe; and that the early edd. of _Tamburlaine_
are anonymous.
-----
The train of thought—censure of the vulgar preference—runs clear from
this to the best known passage of the whole, the section _De Shakespeare
Nostrat_. [Sidenote: _the Shakespeare Passage,_] It cannot be necessary
to quote it, or to point out that Ben’s eulogy, splendid as it is,
acquires tenfold force from the fact that it is avowedly given by a man
whose general literary theory is different from that of the subject,
while the censure accompanying it loses force in exactly the same
proportion. What Ben here blames, any ancient critic (perhaps even
Longinus) would have blamed too: what Ben praises, it is not certain
that any ancient critic, except Longinus, would have seen. Nor is the
captious censure of “Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause” the
least interesting part of the whole. The paradox is not in our present
texts: and there have, of course, not been wanting commentators to
accuse Jonson of garbling or of forgetfulness. This is quite
commentatorially gratuitous and puerile. It is very like Shakespeare to
have written what Ben says: very like Ben to object to the paradox
(which, _pace tanti viri_, is not “ridiculous” at all, but a deliberate
and effective hyperbole); very like the players to have changed the
text; and most of all like the commentators to make a fuss about the
matter.
What may seem the more unstinted eulogy of Bacon is not less
interesting. [Sidenote: _and that on Bacon_.] For here it is obvious
that Ben is speaking with fullest sympathy, and with all but a full
acknowledgment of having met an ideal. Except the slight stroke, “when
he could spare or pass by a jest,” and the gentle insinuation that
_Strength_, the gift of God, was what Bacon’s friends had to implore for
him, there is no admixture whatever in the eulogy of “him who hath
filled up all numbers,[282] and performed that in our tongue which may
be compared or preferred to insolent Greece or haughty Rome.” Indeed it
could not have been—even if Ben Jonson had not been a friend, and, in a
way, follower of Bacon—but that he should regard the Chancellor as his
chief of literary men. Bacon, unluckily for himself, lacked the
“unwedgeable and gnarled” strength of the dramatist, and also was
without his poetic fire, just as Ben could never have soared to the
vast, if vague, conceptions of Bacon’s materialist-Idealism. But they
were both soaked in “literature,” as then understood; they were the two
greatest masters of the closely packed style that says twenty things in
ten words: and yet both could, on occasion, be almost as rhetorically
imaginative as Donne or Greville. It is doubtful whether Bacon’s own
scientific scorn for words without matter surpassed Jonson’s more
literary contempt of the same phenomenon. Everywhere, or almost
everywhere, there was between them the _idem velle et idem nolle_.
-----
Footnote 282:
One cannot but remember—with pity or glee, according to mood and
temperament—how the Bacon-Shakespeare-maniacs have actually taken this
in the sense of _poetic_ “numbers.” But in truth their study is not
likely to be much in haughty Rome and its language, or to have led
them either to Petronius and his _omnium nume[ro]rum_, or to Seneca
and his _insolenti Græciæ_.
-----
A limited précis, however, and a few remarks on special points, cannot
do the _Discoveries_ justice. The fragmentary character of the notes
that compose it, the pregnant and deliberately “astringed” style in
which these notes are written, so that they are themselves the bones, as
it were, of a much larger treatise, defy such treatment. Yet it is full
of value, as it gives us more than glimpses
“Of what a critic was in Jonson lost,”
or but piecemeal shown. We shall return, in the next chapter, to his
relative position; but something should be said here of his intrinsic
character.
He does not, as must have been clearly seen, escape the “classical”
limitation. [Sidenote: _General character of the book._] With some
ignorance, doubtless, and doubtless also some contempt, of the actual
achievements of prose romance, and with that stubborn distrust of the
modern tongues for miscellaneous prose purposes, which lasted till far
into the seventeenth century, if it did not actually survive into the
eighteenth, he still clings to the old mistakes about the identity of
poetry and “fiction,” about the supremacy of oratory in prose. We hear
nothing about the “new versifying,” though no doubt this would have been
fully treated in his handling of Campion and Daniel: but had he had any
approval for it, that approval must have been glanced at. His preference
for the (stopped) couplet[283] foreshadowed that which, with beneficial
effects in some ways, if by no means in all, was to influence the whole
of English poetry, with the rarest exceptions, for nearly two centuries.
The personal arrogance which, as in Wordsworth’s case, affected all
Ben’s judgment of contemporaries, and which is almost too fully
reflected in the Drummond Conversations, would probably have made even
his more deliberate judgments of these—his judgments “for
publication”—inadequate. But it is fair to remember that Ben’s theory
(if not entirely his practice, especially in his exquisite lyrics and
almost equally exquisite masques) constrained him to be severe to those
contemporaries, from Spenser, Shakespeare, and Donne downwards. The
mission of the generation may be summed up in the three words, Liberty,
Variety, Romance. Jonson’s tastes were for Order, Uniformity,
Classicism.
-----
Footnote 283:
Daniel had frankly defended _enjambement_.
-----
He is thus doubly interesting—interesting as putting both with sounder
scholarship and more original wit what men from Ascham to Puttenham, and
later, had been trying to say before him, in the sense of adapting
classical precepts to English: and far more interesting as adumbrating,
beforehand, the creed of Dryden, and Pope, and Samuel Johnson. Many of
his individual judgments are as shrewd as they are one-sided; they are
always well, and sometimes admirably, expressed, in a style which unites
something of Elizabethan colour, and much of Jacobean weight, with not a
little of Augustan simplicity and proportion. He does not head the line
of English critics; but he heads, and worthily, that of English critics
who have been great both in criticism and in creation.[284]
-----
Footnote 284:
It seemed unnecessary to enlarge the space given to the men of Eliza
and our James, by including the merer grammarians and pedagogues, from
Mulcaster to that fervid Scot, Mr Hume, who, in 1617, extolled the
“Orthography and Congruity” of his native speech (ed. Wheatley,
E.E.T.S., 1865). Of Mulcaster, however, it deserves to be mentioned
that, not so much in his _Positions_ (1581: ed. Quick, London, 1887),
which have been, as in his _Elementarie_, which should be, reprinted,
he displays a more than Pléiade enthusiasm for the vernacular.
Unluckily this last is not easy of access, even the B.M. copy being a
“Grenville” book, and hedged round with forms and fears.
-----
INTERCHAPTER IV.
The proper appreciation of the period surveyed in the foregoing Book is
of perhaps greater importance than that of any other part of this
History. We have seen, in the three preceding Interchapters, what it was
that prevented Greek, Roman, and Mediæval criticism respectively from
attaining completeness, and how the preventives worked. We saw further,
in the last pages of the First Volume, in what condition literature, and
at least the possibilities of the criticism of literature, were left at
the beginning of the Renaissance. And now we have seen what additions
the Renaissance made—not, indeed, in detail, to literature itself, for
that belongs to another story than ours, but what additions it made—to
the criticism of literature. In mere bulk these additions were very
considerable. The extant critical writing of these hundred years (or
rather of the last seventy of them), excluding mere rhetorical
schoolbooks, probably exceeds, and very largely exceeds, the total of
classical and mediæval work on the subject which we possess, even
inclusive of schoolbooks. For the very first time Criticism, not as a
sort of half accidental and more than half shame-faced extension of
Rhetoric, but in and for itself, received a really large share of the
intellectual attention of the period.
Moreover, the advantages possessed by Renaissance critics (as we partly
also saw in the place referred to) were likewise very great. Men were
beginning really to know and really to understand antiquity; they had
the whole body of mediæval literature complete, finished, ready for
their appreciation; and they or their contemporaries were daily and
yearly building up great literatures in all the principal countries of
Europe, except Germany, and not wholly despicable literatures there and
elsewhere. The excuse of the want of comparison, which had been valid
for Greece, less valid but still partly so for Rome, and valid again,
though for different reasons, in the Middle Ages, was dwindling and
disappearing every day. There was no want of interest in the subject;
there was no want of examples, both encouraging and warning, of method.
Nor is it possible to deny that the actual accomplishment of the time
was very considerable likewise. When a century finds a certain
department of intellectual activity almost uncultivated; when it leaves
that subject in a state of active cultivation; and when, further, two
following centuries are content to opine almost wholly in the sense to
which it has generally inclined,—that century can hardly be said to have
wasted its years. Accomplishment—very remarkable and solid
accomplishment—it can certainly boast. It must be the business of this
Interchapter to examine the nature and (partly at least) the value of
that accomplishment, now that we have fully surveyed its items, and
frankly admitted a certain general result.
In considering the critical achievement of Italy, the earliest in time,
the most abundant in result, the most influential—in fact an abridgment,
and no mean abridgment, of that of Europe—we cannot but see at once that
there was a certain disadvantage accompanying the inevitableness and the
general propriety of this Italian prerogative. No other country had so
much learning; but, for this very reason, no other country was so
certain rather to over- than to under-value the importance of ancient
doctrine. No country had so perfect a literature, though other countries
had literatures older, richer, and more vigorous; but this very
perfection, while it might seem to provide a fertile field for
criticism, had two dangers. The Italians were likely to look down upon,
or simply to ignore, other literatures; and, from the failing, though
slowly and not conspicuously failing, force of their creative power,
they were likely to turn to logomachies and debating-society wrangles.
Nay, there was a third peril. No country had so little properly mediæval
literature as Italy; and none therefore was more certain to set the
fashion of ignoring or slighting that mediæval performance which is so
invaluable as a check and balance-redresser. And perhaps we might even
add a fourth—that while French and English had got practically beyond
the reach of mere dialect-jealousy, Italian had not; and that too much
of the abundant interest in literature was throughout turned upon mere
grammar and mere linguistics.
Perhaps for these reasons, perhaps for others, perhaps for none
assignable except by superfluous guess-work, Italian criticism, active
and voluminous as it was, settled very early into certain well-marked
limits and channels, and almost wholly confined itself within them,
though these channels underwent no infrequent intersection or
confluence.
The main texts and patterns of the critics of the Italian Renaissance
were three—the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace, the _Poetics_ of Aristotle, and
the various Platonic places dealing with poetry. These latter had, as we
have seen, begun to affect Italian thought, directly or by transmission
through this or that medium, before the close of the fourteenth century;
and the maintenance of the Platonic ban, the refutation of it, or the
more or less ingenious acceptance and evasion of it, with the help of
the Platonic blessing, had been a tolerably familiar exercise from the
time of Boccaccio to the time of Savonarola. But Horace and Aristotle
gave rules and patterns of much more definiteness. Of the writers of the
abundant critical literature which has been partly surveyed, some
directly comment these texts; others follow them with more or less
selection or combination; many take up separate questions suggested by
them; very few, if any, face the subject without some prepossession
derived from them.
The very earliest regular criticism, as in Vida and the first books of
Trissino, is either strictly grammatical and formal or else tends to
expatiate further in the Horatian path of rather desultory practical
hints for composition, these latter usually tending towards a more or
less slavish “Follow the ancients.” But, from the time of Daniello
onwards, more abstract views and questionings, especially in the
direction of a sort of Eirenicon between Aristotle and Plato, begin to
engage the attention of critics, sometimes as a prelude to study of
formal Poetics, sometimes to the exclusion of this. The most
thoroughgoing as well as about the ablest example of this latter kind is
probably the _Naugerius_ of Fracastoro, where this distinguished
physician and physicist, himself a skilled versifier and even something
of a poet, scarcely touches poets and poetry in the concrete more than
he might in a dialogue on physics or metaphysics, and is entirely
occupied with questions of the extremest “metapoetic,” or metacriticism.
This kind of discussion, which is prominent in the whole body of critics
from Daniello to Summo, is, with its extensions in the direction of the
Theory of the Drama, the Theory of the Heroic Poem, &c., no doubt the
most characteristic, and perhaps even the constitutive, feature of
Italian criticism. It seems to have been that which most attracted
foreign scholars, and stirred them up to emulation; it is very rarely
omitted altogether by anybody, save the merest grammarians. In fact, it
so impressed itself, during this period, upon the imagination, the
memory, the intellectual habit, not merely of Italy but of Europe, that
to this day critics who neglect it are looked at askance by many, if not
by most, of their fellows.
Questions, however, more practical than these, yet not of quite such
extreme practicality as the mere questions of grammar and dialect, of
metric and composition, did actually occupy the Italians. About the
middle of the century the lucubrations of Cinthio and Pigna on the
question of the Romances and their relation to Epic and to the
Aristotelian system, opened up the most promising prospect by far that
had ever yet been disclosed to criticism. Had these inquiries been
followed up—had they been extended from the Romance to the _novella_,
which had already become such a feature of Italian vernacular
literature—had Italy provided something not less vigorous, but more
polished, than the English Interlude and romantic mystery of the _Mary
Magdalene_ type, or the French _farce_ and _sotie_, so that a similar
investigation might have been further extended to drama—there is no
saying what might not have been achieved. But this was not permitted.
As a matter of fact, the times were not ready, nor the circumstances.
The profitable promise of the discussion on the _romanzi_ dwindled off
into the mere logomachies or personalities of the _Gerusalemme_
controversy, and into endless formula-making for the abstract Heroic
Poem. But little trace of it is seen on the vigorous and independent
mind of Castelvetro; less on the equally vigorous, still more
independent, but perhaps rather more scholastic, mind of Patrizzi. For
the former, Aristotle is still the special though not quite the
exclusive battleground, or canvas, or whatever metaphor may be
preferred; and he labours—as all these Italians do, in strange apparent,
though perhaps not real, contrast to the vagueness and far-reaching
sweep of their more abstract inquiries—under a difficulty, under a
seeming impossibility, of getting beyond disjointed observations and
comments on Aristotle, Homer, Dante, Petrarch, into a fruitful and
satisfying critical study of any poem or poet. Scaliger drills the whole
mob of formal and theoretical particulars into an orderly regiment,
indulges in plentiful criticism of the verbal and occasional kind,
attempts to take a (for him) complete historic survey, and achieves at
least a quasi-tiebeam, a bastard unity, for his work by his
all-pervading, uncompromising Virgil-worship, which gives a test for
everything, an answer for everything, a standard always at hand.
Patrizzi seems, with his double method of historical survey and
argumentative inquiry, to have at last unbarred the very gates of the
true path. But he does not proceed far along it; and astonishingly sound
as well as original as are many of his conclusions, he hardly attempts
to apply them to modern poetry, except in the _Trimerone_, where he is
too much entangled in the special quibbles and squabbles of the
controversy to which it belongs. All the rest—even interesting people
like Minturno—sometimes peep over the wall, yet confine their actual
walk within it.
Between all the schools, and from among the welter of the individuals,
there arises, in the mysterious way in which such things do arise, and
which defies all but shallow and superficial explanation, a sort of
general critical creed, every particular article of which would probably
have been signed by no two particular persons—perhaps by no one—but
which is ready to become, and in the next century does become, orthodox
and accepted as a whole. And this creed runs somewhat as follows:—
On the higher and more abstract questions of poetry (which are by no
means to be neglected) Aristotle is the guide; but the meaning of
Aristotle is not always self-evident even so far as it goes, and it
sometimes requires supplementing. Poetry is the imitation of nature:
but this imitation may be carried on either by copying nature as it is
or by inventing things which do not actually exist, and have never
actually existed, but which conduct themselves according to the laws
of nature and reason. The poet is _not_ a public nuisance, but quite
the contrary. He must, however, both delight _and_ instruct.
As for the Kinds of poetry, they are not mere working classifications
of the practice of poets, but have technically constituting
definitions from which they might be independently developed, and
according to which they ought to be composed. The general laws of
Tragedy are given by Aristotle; but it is necessary to extend his
prescription of Unity so as to enjoin three species—of Action, Time,
and Place. Tragedy must be written in verse, which, though not exactly
the constituting form of poetry generally, is almost or quite
inseparable from it. The illegitimacy of prose in Comedy is less
positive. Certain extensions of the rules of the older Epic may be
admitted, so as to constitute a new Epic or Heroic Poem; but it is
questionable whether this may have the full liberty of Romance, and it
is subject to Unity, though not to the dramatic Unity. Other Kinds are
inferior to these.
In practising them, and in practising all, the poet is to look first,
midmost, and last to the practice of the ancients. “The ancients” may
even occasionally be contracted to little more than Virgil; they may
be extended to take in Homer, or may be construed much more widely.
But taking things on the whole, “the ancients” have anticipated almost
everything, and in everything that they have anticipated have done so
well that the best chance of success is simply to imitate them. The
detailed precepts of Horace are never to be neglected; if
supplemented, they must be supplemented in the same sense.
It is less the business of the historian, after drawing up this creed,
to criticise it favourably or unfavourably, than to point out that it
had actually, by the year 1600, come very near to formulated existence.
We shall find it in actual formulation in the ensuing book; we have
already seen it in more than adumbration, governing the pronouncements
of a scholar and a man of genius like Ben Jonson thirty years later than
the close of the sixteenth century. A full estimate of its merits and
demerits must be postponed to the close of this volume. But it may be
observed at once that it is, _prima facie_, not a perfect creed by any
means. It has (and this, I think, has been too seldom noticed) a fault,
almost, if not quite, as great on the _a priori_ side as that which it
confessedly has on the _a posteriori_. It does not face the facts; it
blinks all mediæval and a great deal of existing modern literature. But,
then, to do it justice, it does not pretend to do other than blink them.
The fault in its own more special province is much more glaring, though,
as has been said, it has, by a sort of sympathy, been much more ignored.
There is no real connection between the higher and the lower principles
of Neo-Classicism. There is not merely one crevasse, not easily to be
crossed, in this glacier of Correctness; there are two or three. Let us,
for argument’s sake, concede all the points in Fracastoro’s _Naugerius_,
the Aconcagua or Everest of the school. Let us allow that to the real
lover of poetry it skills not much whether he grants or denies all its
propositions. But how are we to pass from these to the further group—to
allow that Reason, Common-Sense, Nature, will govern the poet’s mediate
and lower necessities? How from this, again, to the still other group of
dramatic, heroic, miscellaneous requirements of the Correct? How from
any of them to the entirely arbitrary warning clause that the ancients
have actually or virtually anticipated everything?
On the more obvious faults of Italian criticism in detail—its
extravagant Virgil-worship; its refusal (except in such rare and
practically isolated cases as Lilius Giraldus’ knowledge of Chaucer and
Wyatt, Patrizzi’s of Fauchet and his Old French subjects) to take any
account of foreign modern literature; its coterie-squabbling and the
rest, it would not be profitable to dwell much. But it is curious and
instructive to notice how little appreciative criticism of
contemporaries this active critical period gives. If you start a
controversy of an ancient against a modern or a modern against a
modern—of Homer against Ariosto, or of Ariosto against Tasso—there will
be plenty of persons to take a hand. For a really _appreciative_ study
of any writer, modern or ancient, I do not know where to look. Men are
so besotted, on the one hand, with their inquiries into general
principles; on the other, with their sporadic annotations, that they
cannot attempt anything of the kind.
Yet it would be an act of the grossest injustice and ingratitude to
refuse or to stint recognition of the immense services that the Italians
rendered to criticism at this time. It was, in their own stately word, a
veritable case of _risorgimento_; and of resurrection in a body far
better organised, far more gifted, than that which had gone to sleep a
thousand years before.
In the year 1500 we may look over Europe and find criticism really alive
and awake _nusquam et nullibi_—at best fast asleep, and dreaming a
little with the dreams of Gavin Douglas or (had he lived a couple of
years longer) of Savonarola, or of such more infantine persons as
Augustine Käsenbrot. In 1600 criticism is a classed and recognised
department of literature; Faustino Summo, in the very year, can quote
authority after authority, refer—as to a sort of common law of the
subject—to _dicta_ and _obiter dicta_ of nearly three generations of
distinguished judges. And Italian criticism has colonised: its colonies,
with the virtues of that kind, are showing characteristics sometimes
quite different, though derived from those of the mother country, and
are carrying the critical torch round the world. No matter for the
moment whether the more perfect way has been reached, or the less
perfect way declined upon. The time of “liking grossly,” of composing
anyhow, has passed: that of critical study of the old, and critical
reception of the new, has begun.
Never, therefore, shall I join in the anathema in which De Quincey[285]
has coupled Italian critics with Greek rhetoricians. In fact, the
Italians suffer far more unjustly than the Greeks. Castelvetro and
Patrizzi alone would be enough to clear their company handsomely:
Capriano, Cinthio Giraldi, Minturno could put in quite sufficient bail
on their own recognisances: yet others would leave the court more than
recommended to mercy.[286] I disagree with many of the principles of
most of them; I wish that even those with whom I agree had opened their
eyes wider, kept them more steadily on the object, and cared less about
fighting abstract prizes, and more about appreciating the goods which
the gods had given them in concrete literature. It was also a
misfortune, no doubt, that no man of very distinct genius and
whole-hearted devotion gave himself up to the business. Vida was a good
kind of pedant, and Trissino at heart a philologist; Daniello, Capriano,
and most of the rest, including even Minturno, down to Denores and
Summo, persons of respectable talent merely; Fracastoro, a man of
science; Cinthio, a novelist and miscellanist; Scaliger, a not quite so
good kind of more deeply-dyed pedant; Castelvetro, a scholar, with the
scholar’s quarrelsomeness; Patrizzi, a philosopher primarily; Torquato
Tasso himself, a great poet, with, for a poet, a sensible and logical
but curiously timid and hesitating mind. Not a few of them did great
things for Criticism; all together they did a really mighty thing for
her and for Literature: but they were not her sworn servants, as Lessing
and Hazlitt, as Sainte-Beuve and Arnold, were later.
-----
Footnote 285:
See vol. i. p. 321 note.
Footnote 286:
Fracastoro and Scaliger could at once obtain a writ of ease, as De
Quincey is evidently speaking of “Italian” critics in the vernacular.
I hope he was not thinking of Tasso here, or of Gravina later: but the
seventeenth and eighteenth century men are certainly in more danger of
his judgment.
-----
Let there be to them not the less but almost the more glory! It is
something—nay, it is very much—to have created a Kind. Up to their time
Criticism had been a mere Cinderella in the literary household.
Aristotle had taken her up as he had taken all Arts and Sciences. The
Rhetoricians had found her a useful handmaid to Rhetoric. Roman
_dilettanti_ had dallied with her. The solid good sense and good feeling
of Quintilian had decided that she must be “no casual mistress but a
wife” (perhaps on rather polygamic principles) to the student of
oratory. Longinus had suddenly fixed her colours on his helmet, and had
ridden in her honour the most astonishing little _chevauchée_ in the
annals of adventurous literature. The second greatest poet of the world
had done her at once yeoman’s service and stately courtesy. And yet she
was, in the general literary view, not so much _déclassée_ as not
classed at all—not “out,” not accorded the _entrées_.
This was now all over. The country which gave the literary tone and set
the literary fashions of Europe had adopted Criticism in the most
unmistakable manner—whether in the manner wisest or most perfect is not
for the present essential. Rank thus given is never lost; at any rate,
there is no recorded instance of a literary attainder for Kinds,
whatever there may be for persons.
When this criticism passes the Alps, and we pass them with it, a curious
difference is to be perceived. We leave the abstract side of the matter
almost wholly behind us—the most abstract side perhaps wholly. A little
of the Platonic generalities, relieved from the Platonic detraction, may
be indulged in _pro forma_, and Vauquelin (in that odd familiarity with
Deity which the French have always displayed) may image God as a
gardener ordering the garden of Poesy with trim walks, and neatly
planted beds, and hedges, which must not be trespassed on, or from, or
through. But the French attention almost wholly deserts such things for
the mediate generalities of kind and form; and is constantly tempted to
desert these also for the still lower and more particular questions of
language, prosody, and style. The fact is, that the circumstances have
entirely changed. The Italians, though they may not know it, are in a
state of declining vitality and creative force as regards actual
literature; even Tasso is an “old man’s child” among their greatest.
Besides, to do them justice, there is very little left for them to do
with their mere means of language and the like. It is quite different
with French and Frenchmen. If they are rashly neglectful (and Fauchet,
Pasquier, and others are soon on the spot to vindicate them to some
extent from this neglect) of their further past, there is some excuse
for impatience of the past that is nearer; and it is even natural and
human, though far from praiseworthy, that they should scorn the once
charming formal devices which latterly, in most hands, have been so
destitute of charm. But make allowance as we may for the causes, the
facts remain. French criticism is much the least important of the three
divisions which we have considered in the foregoing book. Not only does
it begin late; not only does it fail to be very fertile; but its
individual documents require a certain kindness to speak very highly of
their virtues, and a good deal of blindness to conceal their
shortcomings. I have protested above against a too low estimate of the
critical value of the _Défense et Illustration_. Its critical interest
is really great, and its critical importance really high; but this
greatness and this importance are scarcely absolute. They belong to it
as to one of our very first pieces of _revolutionary_ criticism—one of
the first in which the newly hatched and fledged critical spirit of
Europe shows itself of falcon breed, and sets out to fight and destroy
as well as to build nests and hatch young in its turn. The censure of
the _Défense_ is very mainly unjust, and its positive doctrine, though
generous, and, in the circumstances, not insalutary, is vague, not very
far-sighted, and, at the very best, extremely incomplete. What saves it
is, first, the abundant and conclusive evidence that it gives of the
critic being actually abroad in earnest, of the time of mere
acquiescence and tradition having ceased, of there being writers who are
determined to attack some kinds of writing and encourage others with
their very best will and power; and, secondly, the generous and
uncompromising championship of the vernacular, which is the greatest
glory of the Pléiade, and which, followed in other countries, gave us
the great modern literatures. Du Bellay has the credit of bringing
criticism, if we may so speak, nearer to her true object than almost any
Italian critic of his own century had done, though he does not himself
either practise or prescribe the best way of getting at that object.
The criticism of his colleague, or master, Ronsard, is, as we have seen,
injured by its small bulk, by its rather fragmentary character, by the
fact that the most considerable piece of it has passed through another
hand, and that we have only that hand’s own testimony for the
faithfulness of the rehandling, and by not a little decided
inconsistency. But it has the same militant, practical spirit as Du
Bellay’s in quality, and more of it in proportional quantity. Moreover,
it is extremely _germinal_. Those[287] who contend that the classical
French criticism of the seventeenth century was only the Pléiade
criticism of the sixteenth, denying its masters, omitting some, if not
always the worst, parts of their creed, narrowed in range, and perfected
in apparent system, have a great deal to say for themselves. Nor can
there be reasonable doubt that, though Du Bellay was the first to speak
critically, the teaching was the teaching of Ronsard throughout. Of this
teaching, the injunction to enrich the language by archaism, and
dialect, and word-coining (even by reading the forgotten romances of
Arthur), was the very best part, and the first to be discarded by the
ingratitude of the rebellious disciples, Malherbe and those about him.
The worst part, which was not discarded but retained, was the adoption
of the Italian doctrines about the hybrid kind of “Heroic” or “Long”
Poem. But in most points the criticism of Ronsard justifies itself by a
real adherence, conscious or unconscious, to the practical ideals of the
French.
-----
Footnote 287:
M. Pellissier and others have taken this line.
-----
These characteristics recur (to much greater advantage, because of its
far greater bulk, and in spite of its flagrant desultoriness) in the
work of Vauquelin de la Fresnaye. Here we have, put certainly not with
much method, but with plenty of talent, and at no unsuitable length, the
whole of the Italian teaching, in small points and in large, that had
commended itself to the French mind up to this time, with such
additions, adaptations, and corrections as vernacular needs had induced,
or vernacular genius insisted on. We see in it, very decidedly, the
obsession of the “long poem,” which France was not to outgrow for two
centuries. We see the tendency to burden criticism with innumerable
petty “rules” (or with attentions to “licence” nearly as burdensome),
which was also to beset the nation. And in general we see also what it
may not be improper (in connection with a school so fond of neologism
and word-imitation) to call the “pottering” tendency, which was the
worse side of Pléiade criticism. Vauquelin has really a great deal to
say, and much of what he has to say is sensible. He escapes many errors
of his forerunners, more of his successors, and it is comparatively
seldom that one feels inclined to put an absolute black mark against any
of his suggestions or cautions. But the whole is not only formless, but
also invertebrate. Vauquelin does not, like some of the Italians,
confine himself to grave and lofty generalisations on the highest
questions affecting Poetry. He does not, like others, or these same at
other moments, take an orderly survey of detail according to a coherent
scheme. He simply has, as the cant phrase goes, “a few remarks to offer”
on much more than a few points.
It has been already said that this provisional, tentative, and somewhat
ineffectual character is characteristic, and prophetically
characteristic, of the school. The Pléiade did not, like Ronsard’s
slightly younger contemporary Spenser and his followers in England, set
French poetry once for all on the path on which, with whatever minor
changes, it was henceforth to go. Some thirty or forty years of never
wholly successful experiment were succeeded by an unjust supplanting,
and by another thirty or forty of random tentatives, corresponding in
some ways to those of England nearly a century earlier. Only then did
France fall into a way, not by any means of perfection, but sufficiently
suited to her genius to enable her to travel fast and far in it. It is a
serious thing for Pléiade criticism that we have from it no thorough
examination of any part of French literature. No doubt such examinations
are not the strong point of Renaissance Criticism. But generally there
is more approach to them in Italian, with the scattered remarks of the
critics on Dante and Petrarch, with the controversies about the
_romanzi_ in general and the _Orlando_ and _Gerusalemme_ in particular;
there is more even in English, with the surveys, imperfect as they are,
of the earlier Elizabethans over the past of poetry, with the literature
of the “classical metres” quarrel, with the (no doubt later) remarks of
Ben on Shakespeare and others. The fault of Pléiade Criticism, in short,
is that it is at once too particularist and too little particular.[288]
-----
Footnote 288:
Some exception ought, perhaps, to be made for Pasquier: but not much.
-----
Crossing the Channel, as we lately crossed the Alps, we do not find a
simple transmission of indebtedness. It would have been surprising,
considering the strong intellectual interests of the Colet group, and
the early presence in England of such a critical force as Erasmus, if
this country had waited to receive a current merely transmitted through
France from Italy. It is possible that, later, Gascoigne may have
derived something from Ronsard, and it is quite certain that “E. K.'s”
notes on the _Calendar_ show symptoms of Pléiade influence, even in the
bad point of contempt, or at least want of respect, for Marot. But it is
exceedingly improbable that Ascham derived any impulsion from Du Bellay:
it is certain, as we have seen, that he knew Italian critics like Pigna
directly; and it is equally certain that, either by his own studies or
through Cheke, his critical impulses must have been excited
humanistically long before the French had got beyond the merely
_rhétoriqueur_ standard of Sibilet.
Hence, as well as for other reasons, English criticism develops itself,
if not with entire independence, yet with sufficient conformity to its
own needs. That practical bent which we have noticed in the French shows
itself here also; but it is conditioned differently. We had, as they had
in France, to fashion a new poetic diction; but it cannot be said that
the critics did much for this: Spenser, as much as Coriolanus, might
have said, “Alone I did it.” They did more _in re metrica_, and it so
happened that they had, quite in their own sphere, to fight an
all-important battle, the battle of the classical metres, which was of
nothing like the same importance in French or in Italian. In dealing
with these and other matters they fall into certain generations or
successive groups.
In Ascham and his contemporaries the critical attitude was induced, but
not altogether favourably conditioned, by certain forces, partly common
to them with their Continental contemporaries, partly not. They all
felt, in a degree most creditable to themselves (and contrasting most
favourably with the rather opposite feeling of men so much greater and
so much later as Bacon and Hobbes), that they must adorn their Sparta,
that it was their business to get the vernacular into as good working
order, both for prose and verse, as they possibly could. And what is
more, they had some shrewd notions about the best way of doing this. The
exaggerated rhetoric and “aureateness” of the fifteenth century had
inspired them, to a man, with a horror of “inkhorn terms,” and, if
mainly wrong, they were also partly right in feeling that the just and
deserved popularity of the early printed editions of the whole of
Chaucer threatened English with an undue dose of archaism.
Further, they were provided by the New Learning, not merely with a very
large stock of finished examples of literature, but also with a not
inconsiderable library of regular criticism. They did their best to
utilise these; but, in thus endeavouring, they fell into two opposite,
yet in a manner complementary, errors. In the first place, they failed
altogether to recognise the continuity, and in a certain sense the
_equipollence_, of literature—the fact that to blot out a thousand years
of literary history, as they tried to do, is unnatural and destructive.
In the second place, though their instinct told them rightly that Greek
and Latin had invaluable lessons and models for English, their reason
failed to tell them that these lessons must be applied, these models
used, with special reference to the nature, the history, the development
of English itself. Hence they fell, as regards verse, into the egregious
and fortunately self-correcting error of the classical metres, as
regards prose, into a fashion of style, by no means insalutary, as a
corrective and reaction from the rhetorical bombast and clumsiness of
the transition, but inadequate of itself, and needing to be counterdosed
by the fustian and the familiarity which are the worse sides of
Euphuism, in order to bring about the next stage. Lastly, these men
looked too much to the future, and not enough to the past: they did not
so much as condescend to examine the literary manner and nature even of
Chaucer himself, still less of others.
In the next generation, which gives us Gascoigne, Webbe, Puttenham, and
Sidney, the same tendencies are perceived; but the Euphuist movement
comes in to differentiate them on one side, and the influence of Italian
criticism on the other. The classical metre craze has not yet been blown
to pieces by the failure of even such a poet as Spenser to do any good
with it, the fortunate recalcitrance of the healthy English spirit, and
at last the crushing broadside of Daniel’s _Defence of Rhyme_. But it
does no very great practical harm: and prose style is sensibly
beautified and heightened. Some attempts are made, from Gascoigne
downwards, to examine the actual wealth of English, to appraise writers,
to analyse methods—attempts, however, not very well sustained, and still
conditioned by the apparent ignorance of the writers that there was
anything behind Chaucer, though Anglo-Saxon was actually studied at the
time under Archbishop Parker’s influence. Further, the example of the
Italian critics deflects the energy of our writers from the right way,
and sends them off into pretty Platonisings about the proud place due to
poetry, the stately status of the singer, and other agreeable but
unpractical aberrations. This tendency is much strengthened by the
Puritan onslaught on poetry generally and dramatic poetry in particular.
In all this there is a great deal of interest, and many scattered
_aperçus_ of great value. Gascoigne’s little treatise is almost
priceless, as showing us how English prosody was drifting on the
shallows of a hard-and-fast syllabic arrangement, when the dramatists
came to its rescue. Sidney, wrong as he is about the drama, catches hold
of one of the very life-buoys of English poetry in his praise of the
ballad. Daniel’s _Defence_ puts the root of the rhyme-matter in the most
admirable fashion. But we see that the classics are exercising on all
the men of the time influences both bad and good, and in criticism,
perhaps, rather bad than good; that the obsession of Latin in particular
is heavy on them; and that the practice, both Latin and Greek, of what
we have called beginning at the wrong end lies heaviest of all.
Nothing will show this more curiously than the words in which Sidney
anticipated (and perhaps suggested) Ben’s censure of Spenser’s diction
as to the _Shepherd’s Calendar_, especially if we remember that this was
said by a personal friend and by an ardent lover of poetry. That there
is something to be said against the dialect of the _Calendar_ all
reasonable critics will allow. As a poetic language it is, at its best,
but a preliminary exercise for the glorious medium of _The Faerie
Queene_; it is awkwardly and in some cases incorrectly blended; and,
above all, the _mere_ rusticity—the “hey-ho” and the rest—is a dangerous
and doubtful expedient. But observe that Sidney says nothing of this
kind. He “looks merely at the stop-watch.” Theocritus did not do it;
Virgil did not do it; Sannazar did not do it; therefore Spenser must not
do it. That his own elevation of a mere modern like Sannazar to this
position of a lawgiver of the most tyrannic kind—of an authority not
merely whose will is law, not merely whose prohibition is final, but
whose bare abstention from something taboos that something from the use
of all mankind for ever and ever,—that this did not strike Sidney as
preposterous in itself, and as throwing doubt on the whole method, is
wonderful. But even if he had stopped at Theocritus and Virgil, he would
have been wrong enough. Here once more is the False Mimesis, the _prava
imitatio_. Not only is the good poet to be followed in what he does, but
what he does not do serves as a bar to posterity in all time from doing
it.
There is another point in which Sidney and Ben are alike, and in which
they may even seem to anticipate that general adoption of “Reason,” of
“Good Sense” as the criterion, which the late seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries claimed as their own, and which some recent critics have
rather kindly allowed them. Sidney’s raillery of the romantic
life-drama, Ben’s reported strictures on the sea-coast of Bohemia, and
his certain ones on “Cæsar did never wrong,” &c., express the very
spirit of this cheap rationalism, which was later to defray a little
even of Dryden’s criticism, almost the whole of Boileau’s, and far too
much of Pope’s. The ancients, to do them justice, are not entirely to be
blamed for this. There is very little of it in Aristotle, who quite
understands that the laws of poetry are not the laws of history or of
science.[289] But there is a great deal of it in Horace: and, as we
shall see, the authority of the great Greek was, during the three
centuries which form the subject of this volume, more and more used as a
mere cloak for the opinions of the clever Roman. Meanwhile, such books
as those of Webbe and Puttenham, such an ordeal by battle as that fought
out by Campion and Daniel, even such critical _jaculata_ as those of
Meres and Bolton,[290] were all in different ways doing work, mistaken
sometimes in kind, but always useful in general effect.
-----
Footnote 289:
Yet even he does condescend to it too much in his notices of
“objections” towards the end of the _Poetics_.
Footnote 290:
These judgments might of course be reinforced enormously by extracts
from letters and poems commendatory, as well as from substantive
examples, of Elizabethan literature, prose or verse. But this is just
one of the points in which the constantly increasing pressure of
material makes abstinence, or at least rigid temperance, necessary as
we come downwards. Some very notable passages in creative
works—Shakespeare’s remarks on drama among the more, and Ben’s on
“men’s and women’s poets” among the less—are glanced at elsewhere:
Webster’s famous “catalogue _dé_raisonné” (yet not wholly so) of his
great companions, and his odd confession of inability to manage “the
passionate and weighty _nuntius_,” tempts fuller notice. But one must
refrain.
-----
On the general Elizabethan position, as we have seen, Jonson himself
made no great advance: in fact, he threw fresh intrenchments around it
and fresh forces into its garrison. We may even, contrary to our wont in
such cases, be rather glad that he did not enter upon a more extensive
examination of his own contemporaries, because it is quite clear that he
was not at the right point of view for making it. But it does not follow
from this that he was not a critic, and a great critic. No one who was
not this could have written the Shakespeare and the Bacon passages—in
fact, in the former case, only a great magnanimity and a true sense of
critical truth could have mixed so generous an acknowledgment with the
candid avowal of so much disapproval. And, as we have said above, even
where Ben was wrong, or at least insufficient, his critical gospel was
the thing needed for the time to come, if not for the actual time. By a
few years after his own death—by the middle of the century, that is to
say—seventy years and more of such a harvest as no other country has
ever had, had filled the barns of English to bursting with the ripest
crops of romantic luxuriance—its treasure-houses with the gold and the
ivory and the spices—if sometimes also with the apes and the peacocks—of
Romantic exploration and discovery. There was no need to invite further
acquisition—the national genius, in Ben’s own quotation, _sufflaminandus
erat_. It was his task to begin the sufflamination: and he did it, not
perhaps with a full apprehension of the circumstances, and certainly
with nothing like a full appreciation of what the age, from its
“_Tamerlanes_ and _Tamerchams_” onwards, had done; but still did it. In
his most remarkable book we see the last word of Elizabethan criticism,
not merely in point of time, but in the other sense. Ben is beyond even
Sidney, much more Webbe and Puttenham, not to mention Ascham and Wilson,
in grasp; while, if we compare him with the Continental critics of his
own time, he shows a greater sense of real literature than almost any of
them. But, at the same time, he has not occupied the true
standing-ground of the critic; he has not even set his foot on it, as
Dryden, born before his death, was to do. In him, as in all these
Renaissance critics, we find, not so much positive errors as an
inability to perceive clearly where they are and what their work is.
Passing from the performances of the several countries[291] to the
general critical upshot of the century, as we passed to those
performances from the survey of individual works, we have already
secured one perception of result. Criticism is once more constituted; it
is constituted indeed much more fully, if by no means more methodically,
than has ever been the case before. By the time of our last Italian
writer, Faustino Summo (Vauquelin is accidentally, and Ben Jonson not so
accidentally, later in the other countries, but neither represents a
stage so really advanced), Criticism has, besides its ancient books of
the Law, quite a library of modern prophets, commentators, scribes. The
strings of authorities, so specially dear to the coming century, can be
produced without any difficulty whatsoever: and however much these
authorities may differ on minor points, their general drift is
unmistakable. Isolated dissenters like Patrizzi may make good their own
fastnesses; but the general army hardly troubles itself to besiege or
even to mask them, it goes on its way to conquer and occupy the land. Of
the constitution established, or shortly to be established, in the
conquered districts, some sketch has been given, but a caution should
here once more be interposed against taking the word “established” too
literally. Still, all the dogmas of the Neo-Classic creed, its appeal to
the ancients and its appeal to Reason or Nature or Sense, its strict
view of Kinds, its conception of Licence and Rule, its Unities, are more
or less clearly evolved. And fresh particulars—such as its sharp
reaction from the allowance and even recommendation of terms of art,
archaisms, &c., which had been partly adopted by some Italians and
warmly championed by the Pléiade—are at hand. Indeed, the business of
the seventeenth century is, according to the title which we have
ventured to take for the next book, much more to crystallise what is
already passing out of the states of digestion and solution—to codify
precedent case-law—than to do anything new.
-----
Footnote 291:
It has seemed better to reserve Sturm, Fabricius, and the few other
critics of sixteenth-century Germany, till the next Book, for reasons
there to be exposed. The reasons for similarly putting off the
Spaniards have already been touched upon: and the minor nations do not
press.
-----
There is not only this important advance in at least poetical theory to
be considered, but also an advance still more important, though as yet
not formally marshalled and regimented, in the direction of critical
practice—of the application directly, to books old and new, of the
critical principles so arrived at. We have seen that, for good and
sufficient reasons, there was not so very much of this in classical
times proper, and that there was so little of it as to be almost nothing
in the Middle Ages. It did not seem necessary, in the concluding
chapters of the first volume, to multiply proofs of this, as they could
have been multiplied, merely to display acquaintance with mediæval
literature. To take two fresh ones here, each famous for other reasons,
the well-known reference of Wolfram von Eschenbach at the end of the
_Parzival_ to the “unrightness” of Chrestien de Troyes’ version, and the
godly wrath which made “Kyot” set things in better order, contains no
literary criticism at all; the matter, according to the usual mediæval
habit, is looked upon as a question of truth or falsehood, not of good
or bad literary presentment. And when the equally well-known but
anonymous scribe wrote jubilantly on the _Cursor Mundi_,
“This is the best book of all,”
it is as certain as anything can be that he was not thinking, as he
might fairly have thought, of the not small skill in compilation and
narration displayed in that mighty miscellany, but merely that it
contained a great deal of useful instruction and pleasant history. In
the notices of books and writers which accumulate during our present
period this is more and more ceasing to be the case; it has in fact
ceased to be so from almost the beginning.
Such an estimate as that given by Ascham as Cheke’s of Sallust simply
could not have suggested itself to any mediæval mind; the Humanist
practice of the fifteenth century had—quite early in the sixteenth—made
it natural enough, at least as regards ancient writers. And it was
constantly becoming more and more common as to moderns. The Italians, in
a limited and scholastic fashion, had begun it long before as to Dante;
they continued it in regard to Boccaccio and Petrarch; they were spurred
on to practise it more and more, first by the immense popularity of the
_Orlando_, and then by the rival (and deliberately urged as rival)
charms of the _Gerusalemme_. Compare for one moment the survey of books
and authors which we quoted or summarised from the _Labyrinthus_ in the
last volume with that which we have analysed from Lilius Giraldus in
this—the whole point of view, the whole method of handling, is altered.
In France and England more specially, attempts, clumsy, limited, subject
to whatever epithet of qualification any one pleases to apply, as they
may be, are made to take a backward historical view of poetry at least;
and when great work such as Ronsard’s or Spenser’s is produced, there is
a real, if rudimentary, attempt made to judge it critically. By the time
that we reach Ben Jonson—who no doubt has a strong tinge of the
seventeenth century superinduced, by nature as well as time, on his
sixteenth-century nativity—such _aperçus_ almost of the highest critical
kind in their species, as those on Bacon and Shakespeare, are possible
to at least the higher intellects,—it needs but a step to the very
highest kind, such as that of Dryden on the same Shakespeare. That what
we have called the crystallisation of a critical creed affects these
estimates not always for the best is not of real importance—the point is
that we have at last got them.
These are great things, but, still postponing criticism on this
criticism as a whole, we may point out one or two drawbacks in it which
already appear, and which are quite independent of individual
inclination on the vexed questions of Classic or Romantic, Practice or
Rule, Subject or Expression.
The first is that, to some extent unavoidably, but to a greater extent
than that excuse will cover, the criticism which we have reviewed is
criticism of poetry only. Most of it is quite openly and avowedly so.
_Poetica_, _Poetice_, _De Poetica_, _Della Poetica_, _Della Vera
Poetica_, _Art Poétique_, _Art of Poetry_, _Apology for Poetry_—these
are the very titles of the books we have been discussing. When prose
comes in at all, except on rare and mostly late occasions, it is only on
questions more abstract or less abstract connected with poetry—“Whether
Tragedy and Comedy may be written in Prose,” “Whether Verse is necessary
to Poetry,” and the like. If poetry in ancient days was, though it
received plenty of attention, sometimes injuriously postponed to
oratory, it certainly now has its revenge. Oratory itself, though
occasionally handled, obviously is so as a sort of legacy from the
ancients themselves, from a sort of feeling that it would not be decent
to say nothing about a subject on which Aristotle, and Cicero, and
Quintilian have said so much. The formal Letter, being rather a
favourite Italian institution, is not quite neglected; it receives some
attention among ourselves from Ben. Whether History can or must give
subjects for poetry is keenly debated; but the question is approached
entirely from the side of interest in Poetry, not in History. At the
very close of our period, we find so great a prose writer as Bacon
doubting the solvency of vernacular prose; a little earlier we find
Montaigne taking note of it chiefly, if at all, in regard to matter,
Pasquier hardly taking notice of it at all.
This is unfortunate, because it tends further to perpetuate the
mischievous absorption in Kinds, and to postpone the attainment of the
position from which, though the difference between prose and poetry may
be seen more sharply than ever, the common literary qualities of both,
and the way in which they affect the delight of the receiver, are at
last perceived. It is unfortunate, further, because it tends to prevent
the enjoyment of the full advantages which the modern literatures are
gradually giving to the critic in the very departments—the prose
romance, the essay, and others—where ancient criticism suffered most
from the absence of material.
Another drawback which it may seem captious, or ungenerous, or even
childish, to urge, but which really has a great deal to do with the
matter, is that, active as the period was in criticism, it did not
produce a single very great critic practising on a great scale. Its four
or five critics of greatest literary genius were (I exclude Bacon for
reasons given, and Spenser hardly comes in) Ronsard, Du Bellay, Tasso,
Sidney, and Ben Jonson. The two Frenchmen dealt with but a small part of
the subject, and from but a special point of view; Tasso was mainly
“fighting a prize,” and his own prize; Sidney’s was a very little
tractate of general, if generous, protest, and entered into no
applications; Ben’s critical remains are un-co-ordinated notes. On the
other hand, of the specially critical writers, Scaliger on the strictly
erudite and strictly classical side, Castelvetro in a sort of middle
station, and Patrizzi as a voice crying in the wilderness, are perhaps
the only three who rise distinctly above mediocrity. And, as has been
pointed out already, Scaliger is too much of a pedant, Castelvetro is a
mere commentator, and Patrizzi a philosopher militant, who carries on
one of his campaigns in the province of criticism.
The disadvantages of this are twofold. Not merely do we get no brilliant
and, at least in appearance and claim, authoritative exposition of the
subject, like that of Boileau or that of Pope later on the dogmatic
side, like those of Dryden and Johnson on the illustrative and
exemplifying; but the whole critical system comes into existence by a
process of haphazard accretion—by (to repeat a metaphor already used) an
accumulation of individual judgments at common law. No doubt this gives
a certain strength, a certain naturalness, to the creed when it is
formed. It has not been foisted on the _communis sensus_—that _sensus_
has been inured and trained to it. The extraordinary toughness and
vitality of the resultant is very likely due to this. But it caused also
some of that inconsistency and apparent irrationality which a system of
common law almost necessarily contracts as it grows: and it was more and
more driven to throw over these inconsistencies and irrationalities that
cloak of factitious Reason, or Sense, or Nature which, by the eighteenth
century, becomes the mere threadbare disguise of a decrepit Duessa.
If, and when, we arrive at the close of that century, after a somewhat
shorter halt and survey at the termination of the seventeenth, when the
deaths of Boileau and Dryden made a real break—we shall have to complete
this necessarily partial view of the whole Neo-Classic dispensation. We
have seen it here in its Period of Origins, and, without endeavouring to
add too many strokes to the picture, we may point to the fresh
illustration of that principle which has been adumbrated (I fear, from
some remarks of good critics, with insufficient perspicuity) at the
close of the last volume. We saw that the tendency of Greek criticism
was good, because, whether it was perfect criticism in itself or not, it
was exactly the criticism needed yet further to perfect the perfections
of Greek literature; and that much the same was the case in Latin. We
saw that the quiescence of Criticism in Mediæval times permitted the
gracious wilding of mediæval art to flourish unchecked and fill the
waste places of the field. But here we see a new thing, hinted at
before, the opposition, that is to say, of criticism to at least the
best creation. Sidney’s dramatic criticism simply would, if it could,
sweep Shakespeare from _rerum natura_, and he looks half askance at the
work of his own familiar friend Spenser. Ben would put the “_Tamerlanes_
and _Tamerchams_” in the dustbin. To that untamable Romantic luxuriance
which makes the glory of English literature at the time, which gives
French most of its actual strength, and which, in failing measure, still
supports the pride of Italy, the general tendency of Renaissance
criticism opposes a perpetual “Thou shalt not.” It is not too much
heeded—that would have been disastrous; but it is heeded to some extent,
and that is salutary. A kind of check is put on the too wild curvetings,
the too meteoric flights, of Pegasus. There was always the danger that
_Jeronimo_ at the beginning and Cleveland at the end might have too
truly expressed our own great age; that the odd word-coinage of the
Pléiade, and the tasteless rococo stuff of French literature about 1640,
might have done the same for France. Against this the critics raised
unceasing voices; and, though the voices were sometimes those of geese,
they really did something to save the Capitol.
BOOK V
THE CRYSTALLISING OF
THE NEO-CLASSIC CREED
-----------------------
“_It is not enough that Aristotle has said so, for Aristotle drew his
models of tragedy from Sophocles and Euripides; and, if he had seen
ours, might have changed his mind._”—DRYDEN.
CHAPTER I.
FROM MALHERBE TO BOILEAU.
THE SUPPLANTING OF ITALY BY FRANCE—BRILLIANCY OF THE FRENCH
REPRESENTATIVES—MALHERBE—THE ‘COMMENTARY ON DESPORTES’—WHAT CAN BE
SAID FOR HIS CRITICISM—ITS DEFECTS STIGMATISED AT ONCE BY
REGNIER—HIS ‘NINTH SATIRE’—THE CONTRAST OF THE TWO A LASTING ONE—THE
DIFFUSION OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CRITICISM—VAUGELAS—BALZAC—HIS
LETTERS—HIS CRITICAL DISSERTATIONS—OGIER AND THE PREFACE TO ‘TYR ET
SIDON’—CHAPELAIN: THE HOPELESSNESS OF HIS VERSE—THE INTEREST OF HIS
CRITICISM—THE ‘SENTIMENTS DE L’ACADÉMIE SUR LE CID’—PREFACES—‘SUR
LES VIEUX ROMANS’—LETTERS, ETC.—CORNEILLE—THE THREE ‘DISCOURSES’—THE
‘EXAMENS’—LA MESNARDIÈRE—SARRASIN—SCUDÉRY—MAMBRUN—SAINT-EVREMOND—HIS
CRITICAL QUALITY AND ACCOMPLISHMENT—HIS VIEWS ON CORNEILLE—ON
CHRISTIAN SUBJECTS, ETC.—ON ANCIENTS AND MODERNS—GUI PATIN: HIS
JUDGMENT OF BROWNE—TALLEMANT, PELLISSON, MÉNAGE, MADAME DE
SÉVIGNÉ—THE ‘ANA’ OTHER THAN MÉNAGE’S, ESPECIALLY THE
‘HUETIANA’—'VALESIANA'—‘SCALIGERANA’—AND ‘PARRHASIANA’—PATRU,
DESMARETS, AND OTHERS—MALEBRANCHE—THE HISTORY OF BOILEAU’S
REPUTATION—THE ‘ART POÉTIQUE’—ITS FALSE LITERARY HISTORY—ABSTRACT OF
IT—CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF IT—WANT OF ORIGINALITY—FAULTS OF
METHOD—OBSESSION OF GOOD SENSE—ARBITRARY PROSCRIPTIONS—BOILEAU’S
OTHER WORKS—THE ‘SATIRES’—THE ‘EPIGRAMS’ AND ‘EPISTLES’—PROSE: THE
‘HÉROS DE ROMAN’; THE ‘RÉFLEXIONS SUR LONGIN’—THE “DISSERTATION ON
'JOCONDE'”—A “SOLIFIDIAN OF GOOD SENSE”—THE PLEA FOR HIS PRACTICAL
SERVICES—HISTORICAL EXAMINATION OF THIS—CONCLUDING REMARKS ON HIM—LA
BRUYÈRE AND FÉNELON—THE “DES OUVRAGES DE L’ESPRIT”—GENERAL
OBSERVATIONS—JUDGMENTS OF AUTHORS—FÉNELON: THE ‘DIALOGUES SUR
L’ELOQUENCE’—'SUR LES OCCUPATIONS DE L’ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE'—AND ITS
CHALLENGE TO CORRECTNESS—THE ABBÉ D’AUBIGNAC—HIS ‘PRATIQUE DU
THÉÂTRE’—RAPIN—HIS METHOD PARTLY GOOD—HIS PARTICULAR ABSURDITIES AS
TO HOMER IN BLAME—AS TO VIRGIL IN PRAISE—AS TO OTHERS—THE READING OF
HIS RIDDLE—LE BOSSU AND THE ABSTRACT EPIC—BOUHOURS—ENCYCLOPÆDIAS AND
NEWSPAPERS—BAYLE—BAILLET—THE ETHOS OF A CRITICAL PEDANT—GIBERT—THE
ANCIENT AND MODERN QUARREL—ITS SMALL CRITICAL VALUE.
The causes of the transference of the course of critical empire,
northwards as well as westwards, from Italy to France, in the
seventeenth century, lie (except in so far as they will body themselves
forth in the plain tale of this course which follows) somewhat outside
the plan which has been traced for our History. [Sidenote: _The
supplanting of Italy by France._] They belong, in part at least, to that
“metacritic” and guesswork which we endeavour to exclude. Indeed, as
usually, and more than as usually, in such case, the old puzzle of “the
egg from the Owl, or the Owl from the egg?” besets us specially in this
division of the History of that Art for which some have had it that the
bird of Pallas is a specially suitable symbol. We can see the importance
of the establishment of the French Academy, when only the first third of
the century had passed, of the extraordinary influence of coteries like
that of the Hotel Rambouillet, of the coincidence of the towering
ambition of a youthful king and the concentrated force of his at least
partially reunited kingdom, with the existence of a remarkable knot of
great men of letters, including one critic of the most masterful, if not
quite the most masterly, type. But can there possibly be any causation
in this latter coincidence? Can we say why Conrart’s Academy, instead of
lasting for a time and then breaking up, became a national institution?
why the Rambouillet blue-stockings were more influential than those who
haunted Mrs Montagu’s peacock-room, or put rubbish into the Bath-Easton
vase? Only by guessing, or by arguing in stately circle about national
temperaments. And we endeavour to avoid both these things here.[292]
-----
Footnote 292:
I am not aware of any History of the subject of this Book as a whole:
nor even of any devoted to French seventeenth-century Criticism
extensively but exclusively. The nearest thing to this latter is M.
Bourgoin’s excellent _Les Maîtres de la Critique au 17ème Siècle_
(Paris, 1889), giving studies of Malherbe, Chapelain, Saint-Evremond,
Boileau, and La Bruyère. For the inevitable, though tedious, quarrel
of Ancients and Moderns, H. Rigault’s book on the subject (Paris,
1859) is, and is likely to remain, a standard. Monographs are, of
course, innumerable; and the very large proportionate space given in
the usual French literary histories to this period, makes these
specially pertinent. Two of the largest volumes of M. Petit de
Julleville’s book, for instance—with ample bibliographies—contain the
seventeenth century only.
-----
What is certain is, that while on the one hand Italy is scarcely less
addicted to criticism, and scarcely less fruitful of [Sidenote:
_Brilliancy of the French representatives._] critics, in the seventeenth
century than in the sixteenth, and while the authority of Scaliger,
Castelvetro, Minturno, Piccolomini, is felt[293] all over Europe, the
contemporary practitioners of the art exercise no such authority, and
are of almost the least importance. A page for every score that we gave
them in the last Book will nearly suffice in this. In France, on the
other hand, no part of the century is not full of the critical labour,
and no part is without critics to whom, whether we grant the epithets
“good” or “great” or not, we cannot possibly refuse those of
“important,” “influential”—in more than one or two cases even
“epoch-making.” In the first generation we have the half-revolution,
half-reaction of Malherbe, who, for good or for ill, determined the main
course of French poetry for two whole centuries, and great part of that
course for three. In the second we have the similar work in prose, of
Balzac by counsel and example, by example of Descartes and Pascal; the
contest over the _Cid_, and the purblind but still intentionally
business-like investigations of Hédelin-d’Aubignac; the constant debates
of the Academy: and, perhaps most important of all, the general
_engouement_ for literary discussion of pedant and fine gentleman, of
prude and coquette alike. From the third come the ambitious code-making
of Boileau; the squabble, tedious and desultory, but in intention at
least wholly critical, of the Ancients and Moderns; the immense
collections of Baillet and others; the work, not bulky but full of germ
and promise, of Saint-Evremond, Madame de Sévigné, Boileau, La Bruyère,
Fénelon. What century earlier (some may say, what century later) will
give us, in any country, a critical galaxy like this, where the stars
dart, in at least most cases, so many other rays besides those of
criticism?
-----
Footnote 293:
Felt rather than acknowledged, it is true. We by no means uncommonly
find hard words used of Scaliger, whose Homerophobia shocked orthodox
French critics of this time more than his Virgiliomania conciliated
them. Yet they owed him almost everything.
-----
It is possible—as the historian of such a subject as this could wish
that it were possible oftener—to do justice to Malherbe’s undoubtedly
prominent position in the history of criticism without wasting much
space on him. [Sidenote: _Malherbe._] The universally known phrase of
Boileau,[294] though containing an innuendo of the grossest critical
injustice, and led up to by a passage of astounding historical ignorance
or falsification, is yet substantially true. The stage of French poetry
which Malherbe started was a new stage; it was a stage not at once, but
before long, acquiesced and persevered in by all but the whole
population of the French Parnassus; and it cannot be said that seventy
years of almost unceasing effort have done more than partially
substitute a fresh one. Further, it is undoubtedly in favour of
Malherbe, though the compliment may seem a left-handed one, that he was
not a man of commanding genius in any way; that he left no important
critical work; that his creative work is very scanty, far from
consummate as a rule, and by no means all in the style he himself
approved; and that even the secondhand accounts which we have of his
doctrines are scrappy, vague, and indirect. For it is quite clear that a
man who exercises such influence, and exercises it practically at once,
in such circumstances, must have hit upon the right string, must have
coincided strangely with the general feeling, temper, aspirations, taste
of his countrymen. Our documents for these doctrines are an extensive,
but fragmentary, commentary on Desportes (the still more destructive and
characteristic handling of Ronsard seems either to be a myth or never to
have been preserved on paper), the _Life_ by Racan,[295] some phrases in
the _Letters_, the vivid and admirable attack of Regnier,[296] and the
remarks of writers in his own and the next generation.
-----
Footnote 294:
_Enfin Malherbe vint._ The edition in the _Grands Ecrivains_, by M.
Ludovic Lalanne (5 vols., Paris, 1862-69), is not only by far the
best, but in our case indispensable, as giving the full commentary on
Desportes.
Footnote 295:
The _Historiette_ of Tallemant (ed. Monmerqué, i. 236-278) is
apparently based upon a fuller version of Racan, and must be compared.
Footnote 296:
In the Ninth Satire (_v. infra_). Regnier was Desportes’ nephew, and
is said by the anecdotists (see last note) to have been incensed
against Malherbe, not merely by the latter’s literary opposition to
his uncle, but by a piece of gross rudeness of Malherbe’s to Desportes
in the latter’s own house, where Regnier himself had introduced him.
-----
All concur in showing Malherbe to us as, on the one hand, mainly a
verbal critic, and on the other, as verbal critics usually, but by no
means always or necessarily are, singularly unable to rise above the
word, or its nearest neighbour, the mere sense. Both these things made
him the natural enemy (though, for his earlier years at least, he was a
more or less disloyal follower) of the Pléiade. Their abundant
word-coinages and word-borrowings shocked him; he did not want, and
could not feel,[297] the poetic _souffle_ which they managed to give by
means, or in despite, of their vocabulary. Racan, a rather simple but
absolutely honest creature, confesses that his master _n’aimait du tout
les Grecs_, regarded Pindar especially as a maker of _galimatias_, liked
Statius and Seneca best of the Latins,[298] and (it was generous)
classed the Italians with the Greeks. On the other hand, in French, he
had at least the merit of knowing exactly what he wanted, and exactly
how to get it. He it was who first invented those rigid laws of rhyme,
which even French classicism never quite adopted—the proscription of the
different use of _a_ and _e_ in such rhymes as _ance_ and _ence_, _ent_
and _ant_; the rule against simples and compounds of them, and even
words which commonly go together, out of verse, as _père_ and _mère_. He
was equally rigid on the cæsura: and Racan is not to be suspected of
catering for laughers, though Tallemant might be, when he tells us that,
while actually in the death-struggle, Malherbe revived himself to tell
his nurse that she had used a word _qui n'ètoit pas bien Français_.
-----
Footnote 297:
The French critics, however, have perhaps taken too literally his
reported blasphemy, that he did not value a good poet above a good
player at ninepins. Malherbe was a Norman—that is to say, a
parcel-Englishman—and may well have had something of that English
humour of disparaging his own matters which is so incomprehensible to
the French.
Footnote 298:
The version in Tallemant adds that he _dis_liked Virgil. He also
scoffed at the idea of “number” (rhythm) in prose.
Footnote 299:
Ed. Lalanne, iv. 249-473. There is an elaborate and standard monograph
on this by M. Brunot, _La Doctrine de Malherbe_ (Paris, 1891); but, as
in other cases, I am obliged to postpone the comment to the text.
-----
It is, however, in the Commentary on Desportes,[299] and there only,
that we have the real Malherbe at first hand for our purpose. [Sidenote:
_The_ Commentary on Desportes.] It is a very remarkable piece, and the
first of the kind in modern times;[300] though Gellius and Macrobius no
doubt set a certain pattern for it in ancient. Nor am I acquainted with
anything more thorough in the particular species; the modern Zoilus, as
a rule, is equally inferior to Malherbe in thoroughness, acuteness, and
learning. More than 200 pages—a large page and a small type—are occupied
in M. Lalanne’s edition (the only one) with the citations and remarks,
the former being rigidly confined to the line or two (rarely more) that
Malherbe annotated. It would be almost worth while to reprint[301] the
original volume as it exists scored by the critic’s hand, and I do not
know that it would be at all unfair to Desportes; for it is not the
author who comes worst out of the exposure.
-----
Footnote 300:
There are things of Castelvetro’s in the _Opere Varie_ not wholly
dissimilar; but these were then unpublished.
Footnote 301:
I have sometimes wondered whether the fact that, according to the
Racan-Tallemant anecdote, Malherbe only “struck through” his copy of
Ronsard without annotating it, is not an involuntary testimony to the
Prince of Poets. Malherbe, for all his rancour and narrowness, was no
fool; and he must in his mind have anticipated a famous later sentence
about the eagle floating
“Beyond the arrows, shouts, and views of men.”
Desportes is not exactly an eagle, and Malherbe has better game with
him, but still not the best of the game.
-----
Whatever may be said against Malherbe, he cannot be accused of verbiage.
He constantly contents himself with a single word—_bourre_ (“padding”),
_cheville_ (“expletive”), or simply _note_ or _nota_, which expresses,
much more forcibly, the “Will the reader believe,” or “It will hardly be
credited” of our less succinct Aristarchs. It is curious how sensitive
Malherbe’s ear is to certain suggestions of real or fancied cacophony,
or absurdity, in juxtaposition of different words. There is no doubt
that the French habit of delivering verse in a sort of recitative or
singsong, running the syllables very much together, putting strong
emphasis on certain vowels and slurring others, makes things like the
famous “vaincu Loth” and “vingt culottes,” “vieillard stupide” and
“vieil as de pique” less of mere childishness with them than with us.
Malherbe seems to have a perfect obsession of this kind, especially in
the direction of alliterated syllables. Thus he annotates the harmless
line—
“Si la foi plus certaine en une âme non feinte”—
_n’en, nu, n’a_;
and, still more in the style of the two later jokes—
“Mais vous, belle tyranne, aux Nérons comparable”—
_Tira nos nez_!
Indeed, he never loses an opportunity of blackmarking this collocation
of letters in different words, a point to which the later Latin
rhetoricians had perhaps made the French specially attentive, but notice
of which, except in the rarest cases, would be thought unworthy of
anybody but a schoolboy (or a comic journalist of not the highest class)
in England.
It was perhaps a little dangerous for Malherbe to be so prodigal of the
words “pedantry” and “stupidity” as he is; while time and use have
sometimes made his peremptory judgments look rather foolish. For
instance, Desportes had used _poumons_ in the plural, as we have
practically always used “lungs” in English. “On ne dit,” says our usher,
with an almost audible bang of the ferule on the desk,—“On ne dit point
qu’un homme ait des poumons: et ne m’allègue pas qu’il y a plusieurs
lobes au poumon, car tu serais un sot.” Poor posterity! It has been (in
France) tolerably docile to Malherbe, but it has in this respect
undoubtedly written itself down an ass—or perhaps him. For no Frenchman
now would hesitate to use the word in the plural. He is constantly
objecting to _consommer_ in the sense of _consumer_; he ejaculates (with
the sort of indignant bark which we hear so often from him and from
critics of his kind) on
“Et pensant de mes faits l'étrange frénésie”
“Je ne sais si c’est allemand ou anglais: mais je sais bien que ce n’est
pas français”; stigmatises (surely with injustice?) _trop injuste Amour_
as a _mauvais vocatif_, and shows his own want of poetic imagination and
poetic sympathy by scouting as bad the beautiful epithet _amoureuse_ in
“Enflammant l’air d’amoureuse clarté,”
for which some of us would excuse Desportes many worse things than he
has actually done. On the other hand, the mere grammarian comes out in
his note on
“Où de tant de beauté ton œil eut jouissance
Que le seul souvenir chasse au loin ma souffrance,”—
“_Le seul souvenir de quoi?_”
I should rather like to give more of this; but the reader will no doubt
say _Sat prata_. [Sidenote: _What can be said for his criticism._] We
must not be too hard on it. In the first place, it is (as criticism of
the Zoilus kind is by no means always) transparently honest criticism.
Malherbe does not garble; he does not foist his own misconception, not
to say his own stupidity, on his author, and then condemn him for it; he
does not, like Boileau, fling offensive and contemptuous epithets
broadcast without anything to support them. Further, there can be not
the very slightest doubt that such an office as his could, at the time,
be very usefully filled. The French sixteenth century, like our own, had
poured, and the early French seventeenth century had, also like our own,
begun to pour, a vast and rather indiscriminately selected reinforcement
of word and phrase and image into the language. All this wanted sorting,
arranging—in some cases, though no doubt not in so many as Malherbe
thought, rejecting and clearing out. The mere French grammar, which
Vaugelas was soon to write, had not been written; and the Arts Poetic in
existence were, as we have already seen, either technical and
higgledy-piggledy, or like that of Vauquelin (which appeared just as
Malherbe was beginning his crusade, and of which it would not be
uninteresting to have a copy annotated by him as he annotated
Desportes), almost as higgledy-piggledy, and much vaguer, on all
technical points except some of the crotchets of the Pléiade. Indeed,
the best justification for Malherbe is the French poetical history of
the next thirty or forty years. He may claim some, though but little, of
the merit of such different poets as Corneille and Voiture; the defects,
where they really existed, of Boileau’s victims can seldom or never be
charged upon him, and might sometimes have been avoided by listening to
his precepts.
This, I think, is fairly generous as well as just; generosity may now
make her bow and leave justice unfettered; but justice herself need not
go beyond that admirable pronouncement of Regnier, which has been
already referred to. [Sidenote: _Its defects stigmatised at once by
Regnier._] The great satirist, the passionate poet, could hardly have
needed a personal grievance to spur him on to the composition of his
Ninth Satire, though the generosity of his character might have induced
silence had not Malherbe broken their friendship. The address to
“Rapin[302] le favori d’Apollon et des Muses”[303] begins by graceful
compliments, but turns soon and sharply on
“Ces resveurs dont la Muse insolente
Censurant les plus vieux, arrogamment se vante
De reformer les vers.”
-----
Footnote 302:
Not to be confounded with the critic and versifier, René Rapin, who
was not born till after Regnier’s death, and whom to call “favourite,
&c.,” would indeed have been a dreadful thing to do; still less with
the historian Rapin de Thoyras, who was a generation later again. This
Rapin was Nicolas, part author of the glorious _Satire Menippée_,
victor in the burlesque contest of the Flea (see Southey’s _Doctor_),
a good versifier in Latin, and no ill one in French, though he was of
the (in France not very numerous) partisans of classical metres. He
died in 1608, not long after the date of this satire.
Footnote 303:
I read my Regnier in two editions, both very desirable as books, and
of different merits otherwise. The one, that of Prosper Poitevin
(Paris, 1860), is very compact; and, besides other matter, has the old
commentary of Brossette, which is extremely interesting as expressing
the views of a disciple of Boileau on a poet whom, to do him justice,
Boileau could not but admire, though he characteristically belittled
him. The other, that of E. Courbet (Paris, 1875), has a text adjusted
in the scrupulous modern manner, and some important additions to the
biography.
-----
If we have given Malherbe the credit of being the first modern critic to
play the awful Aristarch with a contemporary in the true and full
Aristarchian manner, Regnier must deserve that of being the first poet
of genius in modern times to undertake a real _chevauchée_ in the
interests of the true criticism against the false. [Sidenote: _His_
Ninth Satire.] The Satire is not faultless; there is some divagation,
and an attempt (giving some countenance to the deplorable excesses, in
the opposite direction of insulting poverty, which Boileau and Pope
permit themselves) to set the profits and prosperity of Desportes
against the comparative neediness of Malherbe. But this neediness was
only comparative; and Regnier has the good taste never to name his
adversary, and to let the arrows find their mark without vulgar personal
abuse. The spirit of the piece is delightful; its straight hitting never
baulks the game; and the verse is often of the very first quality.
Read—I only wish I had room to quote—the passage, which only Juvenal and
Dryden have equalled, on Malherbe’s contempt alike of the Greeks and the
Pléiade (20-27); that on his elevation of the mere vernacular, as the
test of language, which follows; the denunciation of his arrogant
assumption of knowledge as being his own peculiar, which follows that;
and the famous diatribe of forty verses long, and with every other verse
a triumph, which scoffs at the anxiety—
“Prendre garde qu’un _qui_ ne heurte une diphtongue,”
which labels the whole proceeding—
“C’est proser de la rime et rimer de la prose;”
compares it to the tricks of rouging and dressing up in women, and
contrasts the natural beauties of poetry with all this powder and
pomatum.
The first hundred lines are the best part of the satire, and the
remainder is, to a certain extent, amplification and repetition. Yet it
is good art, and good sense, not merely in the scattered phrases—
“Sans juger nous jugeons,”
and
“Votre raison vous trompe, aussi bien que vos yeux,”
and
“O débile raison! où est ores ta bride,”
which hit at once the foible and the forte of the criticism of the
century; but in the final sting—
“Mais, Rapin, à leur gout si les vieux sont profanes,—
Si Virgile, le Tasse, et Ronsard sont des ânes—
Sans perdre en ces discours les temps que nous perdons,
Allons comme eux aux champs, et mangeons des chardons!”
One might write a whole essay on these wonderfully prophetic and (no
doubt to the writer half-unconsciously) many-sided[304] lines. After two
centuries Europe did “go to the fields”—and she found something better
to eat there than thistles.
-----
Footnote 304:
For instance, the _yoking_ of Virgil, Tasso, and Ronsard. This
Pisgah-sight of literature was what the Renaissance, and the whole
neo-classic period, almost invariably failed to attain.
-----
For the moment, as we have seen before in other cases, the voice crying
in the wilderness found only a wilderness to cry in. [Sidenote: _The
contrast of the two a lasting one._] Men could not mistake the vigour
and verve of Regnier’s verse, but they either disregarded his doctrine
or misunderstood it. Malherbe was their music-maker then; they
understood _him_.[305] In the contrast of these two we have practically
a contrast which subsists to the present day, and which we do not find
by any means so sharply accentuated in ancient criticism—that of the
critic who looks only at the stop-watch, and of the critic who looks
beyond it; of the critic of form and the critic of spirit. But the
curious thing is that for the last three centuries the antagonists have
behaved exactly like Hamlet and Laertes, or even like that puzzling pair
in the lower circles of the _Inferno_. They take from time to time each
other’s parts, each other’s weapons, and renew the contest with changed
persons, or at least rapiers. At first sight it may seem as if Malherbe
and, after him, Boileau were simply insisting on form and expression; as
if Regnier, and those who at longer intervals have followed him, were
those who say that “all depends upon the subject.” But a more accurate
acquaintance with the History which is to follow will show us that this
is far from being the case. Malherbe had so little opportunity of
shaping, or took such little trouble to shape, his critical ideas that
it is perhaps the safer way not to draw up any complete creed for him,
as M. Brunot and Mr Spingarn have done. But in Boileau, as we shall see,
there is a distinct attempt, which has been practically followed by all
of his side since, to prescribe expression, subject, spirit, and
everything—to insist not merely that the work shall be good, but that it
shall be good according to sealed patterns, in choice of subject as well
as in method, in method as well as in form, in form as well as in
language.
-----
Footnote 305:
There was, however, a remnant. Even Balzac called him “Le tyran des
mots et des syllabes;” even Chapelain recognised (acutely enough) the
fact that his methods were rhetorical rather than poetical; even
Tallemant practically summed him up, once and for all, in the words,
“Il n’avait pas beaucoup de génie: la méditation et l’art l’ont fait
poëte.” But the majority and the hour were with him.
-----
There can be very little doubt that the private discussions which, as we
know from Racan, Malherbe used, for years before his death, to hold with
Racan himself and others, and the letters which he also exchanged with
younger men, had a very great deal to do with the wide development of
criticism in the second third of the century. [Sidenote: _The diffusion
of seventeenth century criticism._] The fact of this development is
certain; it is vouched for by the appearance of literary subjects in the
_Ana_, and in Tallemant’s _Historiettes_, by the foundation of the
Academy, by the _Cid_ quarrel, practically by almost everything we know
of the time that concerns literature. But we must deal, according to our
wont, with the matter _par personnages_. Of such personages we have, in
the first place, Vaugelas, Balzac, Ogier, and Chapelain, to whom we may
join Ménage, Gui Patin, Tallemant himself, and the far greater names of
Saint-Evremond and Corneille. Then we can take Boileau—at least in
reputation one of the culminating points or personages of our
history—and the less exclusively critical deliverances of La Bruyère, of
Fénelon, and of Malebranche; can give some account of the
Quarrel—tenacious of life, if scarcely vivacious—of the Ancients and
Moderns; diverge to the scholastic and somewhat dismal but important
performances of La Mesnardière and others, of Hédelin and Le Bossu,
Rapin and Bouhours, and end by some account of the miscellaneous
compilations and observations of journalists and _savants_. The matter
is abundant in all conscience; it is at least sufficiently varied, and
the real greatness of some at least of the persons concerned should save
it from being insipid.
We may all the better pass directly from Malherbe to Vaugelas[306]
because this is about the last place in this _History_ where we can give
special attention to _merely_ verbal and grammatical criticism.
[Sidenote: _Vaugelas._] In this Malherbe had at least the absolute, and
almost admirable, courage of his opinions. On the one hand he transfers
the prudery of the Ciceronians (_v. supra_, p. 12) to French, and will
not allow even an analogue such as _accroît_ on the strength of
_surcroît_. On the other he bars all the delightful Pléiade diminutives,
likes not technical terms, is so horrified at any indelicate suggestion
that his countrymen really need not have ridiculed our “sho[c]king,” and
has a whole black list of “plebeian” expressions. Everything is to be
“according to rule,” and the rule is to be drawn with as few exceptions
as possible—and with as few inclusions.
-----
Footnote 306:
Those who wish for something more on this subject, without attacking
Vaugelas for themselves, may be strongly recommended to the full and
excellent article of M. Brunot in Petit de Julleville (vi. 674-690),
one of the very best papers in the book.
-----
It is no wonder that Regnier opened the full broadside of his
magnificent poetical rhetoric against this system; and it is only a pity
that nobody less fantastic than Mlle. de Gournay—Montaigne’s _fille
d’alliance_, and almost the first as almost the oddest of
blue-stockings—took up the parable more practically against it. But the
set of the tide, as we have said, was with him. La Mothe le Vayer, a
little later, in his _Considérations sur l’Eloquence Française de ce
temps_ “transacts,” though he is on the whole on the side of liberty.
And _enfin Vaugelas vint_, the Savoyard[307] who was to teach France
French. His famous _Remarques_ did not appear till 1647, when he was
fifty-two, and only three years before his death, but the book expresses
work much older.[308]
-----
Footnote 307:
He is often called this, but not quite fairly, for he was born in
Bresse.
Footnote 308:
For other grammarian-rhetoricians of 1610-1660 see M. Brunot as above.
On the _Art Poétique_ of P. de Deimier (1610), compare also
Rücktaschel _ubi sup._
-----
Vaugelas, to do him justice, has not the “pistolling ways” of Malherbe.
Usage is his standard, but, as in the old jest, the coin is no sooner in
the child’s pocket than he is told not to spend it. It is _good_ usage
only that you must follow; and the goodness of course is _penes nos_. It
would be neither interesting nor proper here to discuss Vaugelas’ merely
grammatical precepts, but it is permissible to point out that he, first
of all moderns—or at any rate more than any early modern—contributed to
bring about the disastrous idea that grammar exists independently,
instead of being a generalisation, partly from the usage which even
great writers cannot violate, partly from their own. But it is worth
observing that, according to him, you must not use technical words,
popular words, improper words (it is dreadful to say “breast,” for do we
not talk of a “breast of mutton or veal”?), poetical words in prose,
archaisms, neologisms, which last he hates more than anything else. And
when he comes to style, Purity, Clearness, Sobriety, and so forth are of
course his cardinal virtues.
Jean Guez de Balzac, who, in the rather idle nomenclature of traditional
literary history, has usually been styled “the Malherbe of French
prose,” is on the whole more important in the history of French style
than in that of French criticism. [Sidenote: _Balzac._] He was not, as
we have seen from the phrase quoted above, by any means an
indiscriminate admirer of his correspondent—in fact, though not exactly
a Gascon,[309] he was enough of a Southerner to feel nettled at the
Northern arrogance which undertook _dégasconner la France_. But he was
himself an ardent disciple of “purity,” and the principal objection that
even posterity has made to his _Socrate Chrétien_, his _Aristippe_, his
_Prince_, and most of his elaborate Letters, all of which were
fanatically admired by contemporaries, is that they are scarcely more
than pieces of epideictic, with very little substance in them.
-----
Footnote 309:
He was born in Angoulême.
-----
These same letters, moreover, contain numerous critical passages; while
a whole division of his _Works_[310] is critical. [Sidenote: _His
Letters._] The interest, however, of the most literary part of the
_Letters_, those to Chapelain, as a whole, is not so much on Balzac’s
side as on Chapelain’s; and the subjects of them will, at any rate in
part, be best treated when we come to discuss that (in the latter part
of his own lifetime and since) much-enduring writer. To Bois-Robert
Balzac confides (III. 7) that he only cares for verses as he does for
melons—both must be in absolute perfection if they are to please him;
also that the philosopher’s stone will be found as soon as the sort of
eloquence that _he_ values. The thousand pages of the _Letters_ are
sprinkled with finery of this sort; but better matter is not very
common. The somewhat hollow elegance which the French allow to be the
chief merit of Balzac does not lend itself well to real criticism: nor,
to do him justice, does he much attempt this, even to men of letters
like Conrart, Heinsius, Descartes, or to Chapelain himself. Sometimes he
drops into verbal criticism, as in VI. 57, where he consents to call
Mlle. de Gournay herself _traductrice_ and _rhétoricienne_, but not
_poétesse_ or _philosophesse_. The letter to Scudéry in reference to his
attacks on _The Cid_ is very sensible and in good taste; but (as Balzac
indeed generally is) much more ethical and “gentlemanly” than æsthetic
(XII. 20). Even when he writes directly to Corneille (XVI. 9) about
_Cinna_ he cannot get much beyond elegant generalities as to this Rome
being the Rome _de Tite Live_. So that it is not surprising, when we
come to the Chapelain Letters themselves (of which, besides a few stray
ones earlier, there are six entire Books, XVII.-XXII.) that although
most of them touch literature, and many contain critical remarks or
judgments,[311] there is little of much interest. Only now and then do
we come across such a refreshment as: “Why, sir, what prodigy do you
tell me of? Is it possible that any one with a drop of common-sense in
him can prefer the Spanish poets to the Italians? and take the visions
of a certain Lope de Vega for reasonable compositions?” (XX. 127). His
remarks on Ronsard and Malherbe, “the Martyr and the Tyrant” (XXII. 20),
are fair, and with room one might extend the anthology. But on the
whole, though Balzac was a very handsome letter-writer, and could, and
did, give all the Frank Churchills of Europe lessons in that art, he was
not very much of a critic.
-----
Footnote 310:
Pp. 509-689 of the second of two stately folios (Paris, 1665). The
_Letters_ are in the first.
Footnote 311:
Balzac himself rather mincingly deprecates this word. “Je ne donne” he
says to Chapelain (XX. 25) “jamais de jugement; mais je dis
quelquefois mon avis.”
-----
His set Critical Dissertations quite confirm this verdict. [Sidenote:
_His Critical Dissertations._] He opens them with a great deal about
Discipline, _Justesse_, _Bienséance_, the Mean, and the like. He tells
us (vol. ii. p. 537) that any one who likes Ariosto would prefer a Siren
to a beautiful woman—the answer to which challenge may be justly
suspended by the true critic till he has a Siren produced before him.
There might be much to be said for her. He has some not unpleasant
remarks on the obligatory subject of the great sonnet-duel between
Voiture’s “Uranie” and Benserade’s “Job”: but he has not, so far as I
remember, discovered the critical truth that their beauty lies in the
singular charm of the _first_ line of the one and the _last_ of the
other. He is in one place (ii. 597) almost savage with Montaigne, of
whom he says that, though he be adopted father to Mlle. de Gournay,
esteemed by Father Paul, and “_allégué par le Chancelier Baccon_”
(_sic_), he can see nothing in his Essays but equivoques and mistakes of
judgment. This, however, is said chiefly in reference to Montaigne’s
Latinity and knowledge of Latin: and elsewhere (pp. 657-662) there is a
set judgment much more favourable, though still smacking of the double
prejudice against a prophet of his own country and a man of the last
generation. But his Dissertation on or against the Burlesque[312] style,
when one remembers the excesses in which, from Scarron down to Dassoucy,
men were about to indulge, is not contemptible: and there are amusing
things in his _Barbon_, a sort of elaborate Theophrastian portrait of a
young pedant, from which Scriblerus may have borrowed.
-----
Footnote 312:
With this it is interesting to compare the disquisition written to
Balzac, and apparently at his request, _De Ludicra Dictione_ (opening
his _Opera_, fol., Amst., 1709) by François Vavasseur, a Jesuit
Professor, who also wrote not a bad book on _Epigrams_ and some other
literary work, besides sermons and theological treatises. Vavasseur is
at once refreshingly logical and audacious. The Greeks (he is bold
enough even to face the retort of “Aristophanes”?) did not use
_ludicra dictio_ or burlesque language. Nor did the Romans: for
Lucilius _desideratur_ (scarcely so much as to warrant the conclusion
to those who know the fragments well), and as for Petronius and
Apuleius, decent people never mention _them_. Secondly, the ancient
critics give no precepts for it. Thirdly, there is no reason for using
it. Fourthly, there are many reasons for _not_ using it. So that is
settled. One may like Vavasseur.
-----
Vaugelas, as we have seen, did not finally elaborate his work till some
twenty years after Malherbe’s death, and Balzac, though a correspondent
of the Norman poet, outlived him by more than a quarter of a century.
[Sidenote: _Ogier and the Preface to_ Tyr et Sidon.] But in the very
year (1628) of that death appeared a document on the other side, and
taking that side in flank at the point where it was, with the majority,
to be most victorious. This was the _Preface_ of François Ogier to the
second edition of the _Tyr et Sidon_ of Daniel d’Anchères, or rather
(for this is a mere anagram) Jean de Schélandre.[313] The play is almost
the only worthy representative, in French, of that English-Spanish drama
which set the Unities at defiance;[314] the Preface, written twenty
years after the first appearance of the play, but seven before the
author’s death, is a brief but extraordinarily remarkable vindication,
in principle, of Schélandre’s practice. Until M. Asselineau, in 1854,
published an article on the subject, and the _Bibliothèque
Elzévirienne_, two years later, included both play and preface in the
eighth volume of the invaluable _Ancien Théâtre Français_, both were
practically unknown. Even then notice of them was for a long time
confined to literary historians; and of late an attempt has been made to
put the _Preface_ aside as the mere freak of a student, in opposition to
the taste of the time and the necessities of the stage. That the general
course of literature in France followed for a time the line which Ogier
argued against, and to which Schélandre ran counter, is perfectly true.
But this is quite indifferent (except as a matter to be registered) to
history, which knows perfectly well that Athanasius and his world are
always changing places and principles. Moreover, it is quite a mistake
to think that Ogier writes merely from the study, and with no
consideration of the stage. Like Cinthio, like Patrizzi, like
Castelvetro himself, he is no mere study-theorist. On the contrary he
carries the war into the enemy’s camp with a refreshing audacity and no
small force. It is the _classical_ arrangement, he says, which _offense
le judicieux spectateur_, with its improbable and unnatural coincidences
and tallyings. How, he asks, in a passage interesting to compare with
Sidney’s satirical description of the opposite style, do the identifying
rings, the shepherd-fosterers, the good old nurses, always turn up
_comme par art de magie_ exactly at the right moment? How is it that
Creon, and the old attendant of Laius, and the Corinthian who picked
Œdipus up, all rendezvous at Athens in the nick of time? Is
verisimilitude observed even in the _Agamemnon_? Is there anything
dramatic at all—anything more than sheer narration—in the _Persæ_? Can
the extreme defenders of the Unity of Time work out the _Antigone_ on
their lines? or the _Heautontimoroumenos_? Then he proceeds to account
(not at all badly) for the practice of the ancients, and then to revert
to the only sound argument—that of Cinthio and Pigna in the matter of
the _Romanzi_, of Il Lasca in reference to Italian comedy—that Athens
and Rome, and the lives and customs of both, are _not_ modern countries
and their lives and customs, that the practice of the one can give no
final and prohibitive rule to the practice of the other.[315]
-----
Footnote 313:
Some authorities give _this_ as the anagram, the other as the name.
But it does not in the least matter.
Footnote 314:
The Pleiad tragedies (_v. supra_, p. 127) had been Senecan, but not
quite “regular”; and though Hardy broke loose from Time and Place, it
was not always very violently.
Footnote 315:
Ogier, like his Italian predecessors, is firm on the pleasure-giving
quality of dramatic art. His manner is well illustrated by his remark
that the constant arrival of messengers is more suitable to a good inn
than to a good tragedy. One wonders whether he knew the Spaniards (_v.
inf._ ch. 2).
-----
We are not in the least concerned to argue for this Preface. It is
enough to point out its bold and independent spirit, and to lay special
stress on the fact that Ogier fully admits that he is defending, if not
a heresy, an orthodoxy which is not popular, offers to explain “pourquoi
nous nous sommes jetez à quartier du chemin ordinaire,” speaks of the
Unity of Time as “cette règle que nos critiques veulent nous faire
garder si religieusement à cette heure,” indirectly condemns the Unity
of Place in his arguments, and vindicates the full tragi-comic blending
of Actions. Now, this was in 1628, eight years before the _Cid_ and the
_Sentiments de l’Académie_, even a year before Mairet’s _Sophonisbe_
earned the reputation of being the first French piece that was
absolutely “correct.” This is of itself enough to show how erroneous is
the idea, once common and still repeated, that the discussion over the
_Cid_, with Scudéry for mover, was in the nature of a surprise, and that
Chapelain, if he most certainly did not invent the Unities, introduced
them into France.
Although M. Bourgoin, and one or two others, have done something of
late years to relieve Chapelain himself of the weight—not so much of
obloquy as of contemptuous ignoring—which rested on him for nearly two
centuries, even they have for the most part lain under that curious
fear of Boileau which we shall have to notice so often. [Sidenote:
_Chapelain: the hopelessness of his verse._] Sainte-Beuve (who knew
his French seventeenth century as no other man ever has known, or
probably ever will know it, and who had in his own possession the
_MS._ Letters which do Chapelain not a little credit) takes a kind of
apologetic tone on the subject, and seems never to have made up his
mind to treat Chapelain as a whole. It is, indeed, only on the prose
side that he can be approached without fear of disaster. There are
good things even in the _Pucelle_, but they are ill to win. You may
read Le Moyne, Desmarets, Saint-Amant, not without satisfaction of the
true poetic sort, especially in the first case. I think I once got
through some part of Scudéry’s _Alaric_. But the _Pucelle_ has a
double touch-me-not-ishness—of _niaiserie_, and of what Boileau (for
once justly) calls “hardness”; there is something really impregnable
about her. And the minor pieces—fine as is the Richelieu Ode in
parts—hardly save their captainess.
Chapelain as a critic is quite another person. He still writes somewhat
heavily: and (among his other faithfulnesses to the Pléiade[316]) goes
in the teeth of Malherbe and Vaugelas by his use of classicised words.
[Sidenote: _The interest of his criticism._] But he almost deserves the
name of the first properly equipped critic of France in point of
knowledge: and (shocking as the statement may appear) I am not sure that
he was not the last, till almost within the memory of an aged man. Not
only did he know Italian literature thoroughly—that was not in his time
uncommon for Frenchmen—and Spanish—that also was not far to seek—but he
was accurately drilled in the theory and practice of Italian criticism.
He is constantly referring to it in his correspondence with Balzac; he
(that is to say, the transparently identical author of the main part at
least of the Censure of the _Cid_) not merely rests his objections on
these critics, but refers to the controversies over the _Gerusalemme_
and the _Pastor Fido_, as he does elsewhere to that between Castelvetro
and Caro. Above all, he, almost alone of his time, knew old French
literature. It has not been noticed, I think, either by M. Feillet, who
published, or by M. Bourgoin, who discusses, his most interesting and
remarkable dialogue, _Sur la Lecture des Vieux Romans_, that his
devotion to _Lancelot_ was almost certainly one of his debts to Ronsard.
For the Prince of Poets, as we saw, expressly enjoined the reading of
_Lancelot_ and the other romances in order to enrich the vocabulary.
-----
Footnote 316:
His mother was deeply devoted to this school, and had in her youth
known Ronsard personally. The gibing part of the anecdote about the
author of the _Pucelle_ being “bred a poet” was never very funny, and
is now more than very stale. The historical part remains and
flourishes.
-----
The blot on Chapelain’s critical record in the general estimation is, of
course, his[317] Censure of the _Cid_ above referred to. [Sidenote:
_The_ Sentiments de l’Académie sur le Cid.] Even those who admit that
critical like other thought is free, and that a critic is not to be
sentenced to Malebolge because he is unfortunate enough not to like the
great work of a great man, must acknowledge a certain striking poetical
justice in the spectacle of the censor of the _Cid_, for want of
correctness, being pitilessly flogged thirty years later by a correcter
than he. Nor, nowadays, do we admit much excuse in the undoubted fact
that this censure was practically forced on the Academy, and on
Chapelain, by the sordid jealousy of Richelieu.
-----
Footnote 317:
It is formally the Academy’s and not his. But there is no real doubt
that nearly all of it expresses his sentiments, and that much of it is
actually his in language. The whole history of the _Cid_ dispute is
minute and complicated, and may be found in many books. The persons
chiefly responsible for it, besides Richelieu and Chapelain, were
Georges de Scudéry, an eccentric failure of a genius, Mairet, a
playwright of talent, and Claveret, one of none. In all cases, it is
to be feared, the extraordinary success of the piece was the exciting
cause.
-----
But even in this censure it is possible, even for one who frankly puts
Corneille at the head of all French Tragedy, to acknowledge some
critical merits. The first (not perhaps quite the least) of these is
that it is strictly _civil_; the second is that, meticulous, purblind,
peddling, prudish—a score of similar epithets if you please—as it is, it
does adopt an intelligible code of critical judgment, and does apply
that code with legal propriety. Moreover, as we have seen, it is quite a
mistake to represent this code as being invented for the
occasion—suddenly foisted upon France to gratify the envy of Scudéry and
Mairet, or the less excusable malignity of Richelieu. The code had been
growing for more than a century; it had been gaining wider and wider
acquiescence every day; the protests against it, however gallantly made,
had fallen practically unheard. Eight years before we have Ogier
explicitly admitting it as the code of _nos critiques_—as the accepted
opinion. We may be fully entitled—some of us intend, for us and for our
house, to do so, whether entitled or not—to hold the Unities things
vainly invented in two cases, and mischievous, if exclusively and
universally enforced, in the third.[318] We may think the objections to
Corneille’s diction hypercritical, and the objection to Chimène’s
conduct utterly absurd.[319] But Chapelain, and those about Chapelain,
were also quite entitled to think differently, and there is no reason to
believe their opinion feigned, though they might not have put it so
forcibly save to curry favour with the Cardinal. After all, Corneille
hardly disputed their verdict except in detail; and, whether luckily or
unluckily, tried to do as they told him afterwards.
-----
Footnote 318:
Of course there is much to be said for them, rightly understood, from
the point of view of mere _theatrical_ arrangement: while mediocre
writers are more safely to be trusted with than without them. But we
are speaking of _literature_, not the theatre; and in literature the
weak brother is rather a nuisance to be extirpated, than a person to
be provided for, or conceded to.
Footnote 319:
M. Jules Lemaître’s article on the subject in Petit de Julleville (iv.
273 _sq._) most ingenuously cites the virtuous authority of M. Dumas
_fils_ in support of Chapelain, and is not far from opining in the
same sense. It is always difficult for a Frenchman to pardon an honest
love. If Chimène had been married and Rodrigue her gallant, it would
have been quite different. She might have overlooked the blood of
20,000 fathers.
-----
Chapelain’s other critical exercises are numerous: they are quite
interesting, and there ought to be some accessible collection of them,
for at present they have to be hunted up in half-a-dozen different books
or collections, some of them very hard to get at. [Sidenote:
_Prefaces._] It is probable, though disputed, that he wrote the
Introduction to a translation of _Guzman d’Alfarache_, which may have
been done in his twentieth year, and in which the author (according to
the Pléiade view) by no means magnifies his office as translator. He
certainly wrote, some years later, the prefatory panegyric to Marini’s
_Adone_, where he practises, in a fashion familiar to students of
Italian criticism, an elaborate scholastic division of kinds and
qualities, with definitions and connections of them. [Sidenote: Sur les
Vieux Romans.] We need not trouble ourselves with his Academic
discourse, against Love and for Glory, which is full of _précieuse_
personification, but pass to his most interesting works, the _Dialogue
on the Romances_ and the critical _Letters_. In the first[320] he
maintains the case of the Arthurian romances against Ménage and
Sarrasin, not with a thorough-going championship (that would be wholly
anachronistic), but with singular sense, knowledge, and even, as far as
it goes, appreciation. He does not affect to admire the composition or
the style in _Lancelot_. But he knows something of the origin (it is
extraordinary that he allows it to be, in part at least, English). He
will not allow that, barring style and expression, there is any
necessary gulf between _Lancelot_ and Homer (wherein he is a hundred
years ahead in sense of Blair, who was a hundred years ahead of him in
time), delights (taught to do so, as we said, by Ronsard) in the
vocabulary, and feels and rejoices in the point of honour (“la crainte
perpetuelle qu’ils ont de rien faire et de rien dire dont leur
reputation puisse souffrir la moindre tache”),[321] their jealousy of
their word, their devotion (so different from “our _galanterie_”) to
their ladies. _Quia multum amavit!_ Moreover, the document is connected
in a rather fascinating manner with another,[322] in which the same
interlocutors, with others, appear, which refers to it, and in which not
only does Sarrasin confess that he had been brought by Chapelain to a
state of mind different from that which is to be seen in his _Discours_
noticed below, but Chapelain himself reinforces his argument with a long
citation from, and discussion of, an episode in _Perceforest_—that huge
and interesting romance which is almost inaccessible to modern readers,
in consequence of the depraved persistence of modern scholars and
Societies in reprinting the same text in idle emulation of each other,
instead of giving what are practically _anecdota_.
-----
Footnote 320:
_De la lecture des Vieux Romans_, ed. Feillet, Paris, 1870.
Unfortunately printed in very small numbers, but still obtainable for
less than half its weight in silver.
Footnote 321:
It is really refreshing to find Mr. Burke saying ditto to M. Chapelain
some 150 years afterwards, in a sentence as well known to all the
world as that in the text is unknown to all but a few.
Footnote 322:
_S’il faut qu’un Jeune Homme soit Amoureux._ Sarrasin, _Œuvres_, _ed.
cit. inf._, 139-235.
-----
The Letters (published, with some omissions, by M. Tamizey de la Roque
in 1880, and supplemented fourteen years later by some more in the
Transactions of a learned Society[323]) are crammed with references to
books, and contain not a little real criticism. [Sidenote: _Letters,
&c._] And lastly, the famous list[324] of characterisations of French
men of letters which Chapelain drew up for Colbert’s use in allotting
pensions, though it has been laughed at in parts, is for its date (some
of its subjects, including Molière, had not yet done anything like their
best work) as sound, as sensible, and, at the same time, as benevolent a
hand-list of the kind as you shall discover in the records of the
centuries.
-----
Footnote 323:
_Mémoires de la Société de l’Histoire_, vol. xxi., Paris, 1894.
Footnote 324:
This, with other things, will be found in Chapelain’s _Mélanges de
Littérature_ (Paris, 1726).
-----
On the whole we may say that Chapelain only wanted the proverbial
“That!” to make a good and perhaps a really great critic. Not all,
though a good deal, of the deficiency must be put down to the transition
character of time, taste, literary diction, and everything, in midst of
which he found himself. The point of critical genius, the ability to
grasp and focus and methodise, must have been wanting too. But he had
knowledge, both of literature and of criticism; he had obviously
catholic, if not unerring, sympathies; he had acuteness and penetration,
if not quite combination and the architectonic; and he was entirely free
from that ill-nature which, while it may seem to assist the critic,
really disables him. _Critique manqué_, perhaps, on the whole; but still
on his day a critic and no mean one.
“Il faut observer l’Unité d’action, de lieu et de jour. Personne n’en
doute.” But, out of France at least, and perhaps in it, it is possible
that few people may know, or even doubt, whence this saying comes.
[Sidenote: _Corneille._] It would be an insult to a Frenchman of letters
to tell him that it comes from Pierre Corneille; long, it is true, after
the debate over the _Cid_, but nearly a quarter of a century before the
close of his glorious, if not too happy, life. It may be gathered—rather
from a long and large induction than from any single utterance of a
person of importance—that the French do not think very much of Corneille
as a critic; it may be further gathered from this that a man should
never submit his genius. _Tu contra audentior ito_ is the counsel of
wisdom. He has written much the best things that have been written in
favour of the “correct” theory; but its partisans (and small blame to
them) suspect him. They see the eyes of Chimène behind the mask, and
they distrust them—wisely also after their kind.
But we must not rhapsodise here on the admirable poetry of this great
poet, and the way in which the critics not merely, as somebody said in
his own day, _ont tari sa veine_, but made him in a way false to it. We
have only to do with his actual criticism; and whatever view we take of
the general question, it must be here pronounced great criticism of its
kind. The three _Discours_, and the series of _Examens_ which appeared
first in 1660, present an almost unique, an extremely touching, and (to
men of English birth) a rather incomprehensible instance of a man of
supreme genius crouching and curbing himself to obey the tendency of the
time and the dictates of “the wits.”[325] _We_ are not kneaded of this
dough. We cannot even conceive Shakespeare taking a copy of Sidney or
going to Ben, and afterwards constructing dramas as regularly as he
could, or apologising for their irregularity; Milton adjusting _Paradise
Lost_ to Dryden’s views of rhyme; nay, even Dryden himself (who is in
some ways, as we shall see, very close to Corneille) “looking first at
the stop-watch” in any way. But “things are as they are,” and (a great
saying from which sometimes the wrong inference has been drawn) “their
consequences will be what they will be.”
-----
Footnote 325:
Tennyson paid almost greater heed to his critics in detail; but he
never made any formal or general concession.
-----
The three Discourses, “De l’Utilité et des parties du Poëme Dramatique,”
“De la Tragédie,” and “Des Trois Unités,” and the _Examens_ of the
different plays, are the result of this submission.[326] [Sidenote: _The
Three_ Discourses.] Let us say at once that it is in no sense the mere
submission of a man who recants, either with tongue in cheek or simply
under fear of rack and gallows and fire. Corneille (and this is the
interesting point of the French temperament as contrasted with the
English) is really affected by authority, and by the _Zeitgeist_. He has
been honestly converted; indeed he asserts (and we may believe him to a
great extent) that he never needed conversion—it was only his green
unknowing age that made him go wrong. In the three Discourses he
examines the question with plentiful quotations from Aristotle, with
some knowledge of Italians like Castelvetro and Beni and Pazzi (Pacius)
as well as of Heinsius. He is quite aware of the weak points of the
ancients; he repeats, though he does not much dwell upon, the earlier
comments on the singular rapidity with which Agamemnon[327] follows the
beacon-fires, the astonishing patness of the turning up of the
Corinthian in the _Œdipus_. And to any one who thinks little of
Corneille as a critic I should like to prescribe the reading, marking,
and inwardly digesting of his remarks in the _Discours des Trois Unités_
on the separation of acts and scenes, and the relation of the chorus to
orchestral interludes. Elsewhere we may find the mark of the chain: as
where the poet, pretending indifference, is evidently rather unhappy
because he cannot tell exactly what the wicked Queen in _Rodogune_
(which some have thought his best play next to the _Cid_) was doing when
she was not on the stage. This inquiry is of itself almost sufficient to
show the sheer idiocy to which this kind of criticism is always on the
point of descending. But on the whole, and since Giant Unity has long
ceased even to gnash at the pilgrims, we can tolerate it.
-----
Footnote 326:
They will be found in all good editions. I always use the best, that
of M. Marty-Laveaux, where the _Discours_ appear conveniently, if
chronologically out of place, in Vol. I, and the _Examens_, each at
the head of its own play.
Footnote 327:
Let me, for one has always to guard these things, observe that no
charge is here brought against the _Agamemnon_, which is perhaps the
greatest tragedy in the world out of Shakespeare, and almost worthy to
be ranked with Shakespeare’s best. It is of the folly of the
commentators that Corneille was, and that I (_quam longo intervallo
post Cornelium!_) am thinking.
-----
The _Examens_ are of still greater importance; for we have had plenty of
inquiries in general into the qualities and requirements of Kinds,
though few from persons like Corneille. [Sidenote: _The_ Examens.] The
system of elaborate critical reviews—for that is what it comes to—of his
past work, by a great poet who has taken pains to acquaint himself with
critical method, and is almost too respectful of its utterances, is
practically a new one. There is a certain flavour of it in Spenser and
Ronsard, much more than a flavour in Tasso; but it was not till the
seventeenth century, when the critic was abroad in earnest, that it
could be done on such a scale as this. For Corneille, though he never
issued any _Examens_ till 1660, applied them to all but his very latest
plays. To the mere general reader they may be rendered distasteful by
the elaborate and most pathetic pains which Corneille takes to adjust
himself to the theories which his reason docilely accepted, but to which
his faith was always secretly recalcitrant. To the student of him, and
to the student of criticism, they must always have a great attraction.
But for the latter, if he have but a little of the “rascally
comparative” spirit, they have an attraction greater still. There is no
doubt at all that they served as pattern, at a very brief interval, to
the critical exercises of Dryden, and thereby opened a way which
criticism is treading still. And there is more in them besides this
accidental and extrinsic attraction. Corneille, though he really shows
extraordinary impartiality as well as great acumen in his examinations,
was by the mere force of nature driven to stick close to his actual
work, to observe it narrowly, if only so as to put the best face on it.
And, as we have seen, the great fault both of ancient and of mediæval
criticism was the omission or the refusal to consider individual works
of art minutely and exactly—the constant breaking off and escape to the
type. The natural partiality of authors for their own work has not
always been fortunate in its results. Here it was so.
Although we have had, and shall have, to question the exact
importance assigned by some to the _Cid_ quarrel, there can be no
doubt that it had a very important influence, extending far beyond
the chief parties concerned, and helping, very particularly, that
popularisation of criticism which is undoubtedly the work of France
in general, and of the French Academy in particular. [Sidenote: _La
Mesnardière—Sarrasin—Scudéry._] In the years almost immediately
succeeding it we have, for 1639, the _Discours de la Tragédie_ of
the ingenious and ill-fated Sarrasin, for 1640 the formal _Art
Poétique_ of La Mesnardière, a treatise specially dealing with
tragedy, strongly, almost idolatrously, Aristotelian in tone, and
characterised by a lively polemic against the Spanish and Italian
influences which had been so powerful for a generation in France.
Scudéry followed up the pamphlets which had actually given occasion
to the _Cid_ dispute, almost at the same period, with the Preface to
_Ibrahim_, as well as years afterwards in that to _Alaric_. Nay, it
was at this very time (about 1640) that the world was at least
threatened with the birth of the dullest critical treatise of the
century, that of Hédelin, though a respite of seventeen years was
actually granted.
La Mesnardière had evidently made a careful study of the Italian
critics. His very _format_—a handsome small quarto—reminds one of their
favourite shape, and contrasts curiously with the tiny duodecimos of the
sixteenth-century French critics. And he puts forth his whole strength
in arguing for the Stagirite against the blasphemies of Castelvetro,
whom, however, he declares that he honours _hors des intérêts
d’Aristote_—an odd, but very characteristic, way of putting it. La
Mesnardière, who follows out all the Aristotelian divisions, even to
Music (with engraved airs), is equally odd and equally representative in
identifying, or at least associating in his first Chapter, _Politesse_
with “Imagination.” Mere Understanding will make a Philosopher—the Poet
must be polished up into an Imaginative condition. He does not neglect
language and diction: and though he devotes himself to drama,
illustrates copiously from non-dramatic poetry, and criticises his
illustrations in the way which was becoming so common and is so
important. But a specimen passage in a footnote[328] will explain,
better than pages of discussion, the fatally parasitic character of most
of his criticism.
-----
Footnote 328:
_Art Poét._, p. 233. “Si toutefois la Fable est telle que le Poëte
n’ait pas lieu d’y recompenser la Vertu, il doit pour le moins faire
en sorte que les Personnes vertueuses soient louées publiquement.”
-----
The Sarrasin and Scudéry documents are complementary as well as
complimentary of this and of each other. For Sarrasin’s _Discours_[329]
is devoted to Scudéry’s _Amour Tyrannique_, which is so perfect that
Aristotle would have put it in the _Poetics_, instead of or beside the
_Œdipus_, if he had only known it. And La Mesnardière is just going (see
dates given) to write “divinely” on that art of poetry which those great
men, Ronsard and Du Bellay, did not know, and therefore recommended the
study of Romances.[330] Finally, “Armand” [Richelieu, of course] is _le
Dieu tutélaire des lettres_. As for the great Georges de Scudéry
himself, his Prefaces to _Ibrahim_ and _Alaric_ are quite worthy of the
“Commander of the Fort of Notre Dame de La Garde and Kept-Captain to the
King,” whose portrait guards the entrance of the stately folio of
_Alaric_. That is to say, they are an odd mixture of bombast (he leads
off that to this book with a list of critics and poets, all of whom he
has read), crotchet, and real wits. Both are worth comparing with
Davenant’s to _Gondibert_ (_v. infra_, p. 367), which came between
them.[331]
-----
Footnote 329:
In his _Œuvres_ (Paris, 1694), pp. 301-344.
Footnote 330:
This is very interesting in connection with Sarrasin’s appearance in
Chapelain’s dialogue and his own other work (_v. supra_, p. 260).
Footnote 331:
Scudéry thinks Four things necessary to Epic—the authority of History,
the observance of received Religion, the exercise of Poetic Licence in
Fiction, and the provision of Great Events. He is not uninteresting
for his connection with his sister’s prose Romances in which he had
some, if not much, share, and which he never forgets. Also, he clings
to the Pléiade technicalities to some extent—kindly, however,
explaining such words as _Hune_, _Quille_ (which, he says rather
quaintly, is _un bois courbé qui est au plus bas d’un vaisseau_), and
_Calfater_. The _Ibrahim_ preface, thirteen years earlier, exhibits
the same obliging explanation of technicalities, and the same virtuous
adherence to The Rules. “Provided,” he says, “that an Architect takes
his measures right, he is assured of the beauty of his building,”
which would seem to dissuade any one from advancing beyond the
packing-case style of architecture. And he is sure that a Romance,
like an Epic, should never go beyond one year in time.
-----
Some years later the uncompromising Aristotelianism of La Mesnardière as
to the Drama was continued and straitened yet further, in reference to
the Epic, by Pierre Mambrun,[332] who was, like so many others of these
French seventeenth-century critics, a Jesuit. [Sidenote: _Mambrun._] His
principles (which he illustrated later by a _Constantinus sive De
Idolatria debellata_) exhibit the French detestation of compromise in
the most agreeable light: whether his practice does not also illustrate
the non-epic character of the French head is another matter. Aristotle,
and the whole Aristotle, so far as the _Poetics_ go, is Mambrun’s motto;
if he cannot add “nothing but Aristotle,” that is merely because his
text is admittedly meagre as to Epic. But he does what he can. He has
read Scaliger and Voss, and has a proper respect for them as learned
men, but he is shocked at both for their worshipping of idols—at
Scaliger for wasting time on diction and metre, as well as for falling
foul of Homer, at Voss for making the persons instead of the action the
centre of Epic. On the other hand, the too famous Petronian passage is
to him a kind of inspired postscript to the _Poetics_. In his handling
of Poetry, which for him is first of all Epic Poetry, he is scholastic
as to the frame. The Material cause is Action; the Formal cause the
Fable; the Efficient cause a combination of Prudentia and Furor
Poeticus; the Final Cause _not_ pleasure but the making of statesmen. In
all these respects Homer and Virgil are perfect—Statius, Lucan, Ariosto,
Tasso, sinners. The former always observe the Unity, the Integrity, the
Magnitude of the Action. Mambrun has satisfied himself that the Action
of the _Odyssey_ only includes fifty-five days—on which principle one
would cheerfully undertake to write an _Arthuriad_, to include the whole
of Malory and more, on an “action” of the time between Agravaine’s
detection of Lancelot with the Queen and the last fight in Lyonnesse. He
thinks that a woman may be a heroine of tragedy but cannot be of Epic
(which seems unkind to Chapelain). He admits that to distinguish between
the Action and the Fable is not easy; that even in Aristotle the two are
sometimes identical. But properly the Fable is _actio culta et ornata_,
and he has an ingenious receipt for stripping the matter of episodes and
names. Epic is not Art, not Logic, not History; it is “Prudentia.” But
_Furor Poeticus_? Mambrun’s section of _Furor Poeticus_ is by far the
most interesting in his book. He distinguishes first the Kinds of Fury.
Then he points out that the Epic Poet must not be furious in
constituting his fable. Very much the reverse. “But in episodes and
descriptions and speeches I shall not deny that a little fury may be
sprinkled in”[333]—the fury-dredger, or poetic cruet, being thus
authoritatively established as an implement of the Bard. Nor does he
conceal the process. The poet thinks very hard about an episode, a
description, &c. Then the black bile warms itself, flies up, inflames
the brain, and the poet is poetically furious. But in another memorable
passage, “being strong in black bile will not necessarily make you a
poet.”[334] [Alas! it will not.] There must be discipline, &c. In short,
the book is a precious one.
-----
Footnote 332:
_De Poemate Epico._ Paris, 4to, 1652.
Footnote 333:
_Aliquantum furoris aspergi non negaverim._—_De Poem. Ep._, p. 269.
Footnote 334:
_Neque, tamen si quis atra polleat bile ... continuo is in poetis
censendus est, nisi accesserit disciplina_, &c.—Ibid., _post_.
-----
There are few critics—not such by profession, and not precisely of the
very highest rank—who, from the very first, and with an unbroken record,
have enjoyed such a reputation as has been constantly maintained by
Saint-Evremond.[335] [Sidenote: _Saint-Evremond._] Nor is there,
perhaps, a single one who has better deserved this constancy on the part
of the great inconstants, Time and Fortune. He was commended to his own
time scarcely more by birth and station as a fine gentleman and soldier,
or by his singular political and personal history, than by the admirable
quality of his writing; to the eighteenth century by his touches of
scepticism and libertinage; to the Romantic revival by his championship
of Corneille against Racine, and by the _frondeur_ spirit which made him
resist the tyranny of the classical creed. But it is also true that he
has purely critical qualities of a very uncommon kind. It is perhaps a
testimony to that spice of universal in him which has been noticed, that
the particular stamp to be put on these qualities—the particular class
to which Saint-Evremond is to be referred—is not quite matter of
agreement among those who fully agree as to his general merits. To M.
Bourgoin, for instance, his critical spirit seems to be nearer to that
of Boileau and the critics of rule than to that of Fénelon, or even La
Bruyère, and the critics of impression and _sens propre_. To me the
approximation seems to be in the other direction.
-----
Footnote 335:
There is no absolutely complete and authentic edition—that of
Desmaiseaux (frequently reprinted in the fifty years after the
author’s death, from 3 vols. 4to at London, 1705, to 12 vols. 12mo at
Paris, 1753) was at least authorised. The critical matter will be
found well arranged in the 2nd vol. of Giraud’s _Œuvres Mêlées de
Saint-E._ (3 vols., Paris, 1865). I may refer to an essay of mine,
first published in the _Fortnightly Review_ for July 1879, and
reprinted in _Miscellaneous Essays_ (2nd ed., London, 1895).
-----
The acute and learned author of _Les Maîtres de la Critique_ has, I
think, been a little deceived by superficial characteristics of form and
method. [Sidenote: _His critical quality and accomplishment._] A young
man of twenty at the date of the _Cid_, and the battle over it,
Saint-Evremond, fine gentleman as he was, no more forgot the forms of
the quarrel than the attractions of the play. He has something a little
scholastic, something of the earlier century, in his manner. Perhaps the
best piece of criticism which he has left us—the _Dissertation sur le
mot “vaste”_—recalls the known or alleged subjects of the earlier
conversations of Malherbe and Racan, and their fellows, the later of
Vaugelas and Chapelain and the young Academy. We have a formal _Jugement
sur Senèque, Plutarque, et Pétrone_, a quite academic study of
_Alexandre le Grand_, discussions of the character of tragedy generally,
and the like. But the accomplished, agile, and independent spirit of the
author is perpetually escaping from the restraints of his forms and
models, and taking its own way according to its own taste. Perhaps,
indeed, the fatal equivocation or ambiguity which seems to beset so many
critical terms has worked here also: for to the present day the word
“Taste” seems to excite quite dissimilar ideas in different minds. To
some (as to Boileau and his followers it certainly did) it seems to
suggest an antecedent law, a bar to which subjects are to be brought,
something to which it is almost improper to apply the terms “good” or
“bad,” because there is only one taste, and anything else is not taste
at all but _un_taste. In this sense, though he might not have allowed
it, I do not think that Saint-Evremond ever judged by “taste.” In the
other—where taste means the approbation and satisfaction of a competent
judge, well-gifted, well-tried, and taking pains to keep his palate
clean—I think he always judged by it. That he often gave reasons for his
judgment is nothing; one should _almost_ always do that. But one should
always also remember that these reasons may be totally inapplicable to
the next instance.
Saint-Evremond, we have said, was a great admirer of Corneille, and a
steady champion of him against Racine. His admiration has been set down
to the mere “fallacy of first love,” as we may call it—the fact that the
youth of the poet and the youth of the critic had coincided. [Sidenote:
_His views on Corneille._] This is not fair. Inviolable constancy to
first loves is not precisely the chief thing in an Epicurean
temperament. Saint-Evremond, in his various utterances on the subject,
makes it perfectly clear _why_ he preferred the older to the younger
poet; and Cornelians and Racinians alike must agree that, whether his
conclusions were right or wrong, his considerations were at any rate
genuine and adequate. The variety and vigour of the one as opposed to
the somewhat monotonous mould and soft (or, as some said, “creeping”)
sentiment of the other, form a real difference: and so throughout.
On what was then a burning subject—one which cannot be said to have been
quite put out, though its ashes only smoulder—the suitableness of
religious and especially Christian subjects for epic and drama, &c.,
Saint-Evremond’s opinion is a little tainted by his undoubted
“philosophy,” to use the word which had already become fashionable for
the various shades of unbelief. [Sidenote: _On Christian subjects, &c._]
But either from this cause, or from a general critical spirit, he
escapes the inconsistency (in which Boileau for instance is entangled)
of contending that the _deorum ministeria_ are capital things in
ancient, and very bad things in modern, poetry. His remarks on the
theory of Purgation are a little irreverent but by no means irrational;
and he makes strong play for the contention (of which, if he did not
invent it, he was one of the strongest and most original champions) that
“Admiration is a tragic passion” worthy of being seated beside Pity and
Terror, and necessary to be kept in sight even when we deal with Love.
In respect of the Ancient and Modern dispute—of all three stages of
which, _v. infra_, his long life made him a contemporary, while he
actually took a sort of skirmishing part in the two earlier—his position
is distinctly that of a true critic. [Sidenote: _On Ancients and
Moderns._] From what has been said already it will be clear that he
could not be an out-and-out Ancient; but he is as little a Modern of the
Perrault type. One sees that the Moderns gave him most pleasure, and in
the Ancients whom he really likes, such as Petronius (supposing no
merely unworthy motives to have entered into the preference), it is easy
to discern the modern element. But in neither case does he “like
grossly” and in the lump; he has his reasons and his affinities, and can
state both easily. He is even not very far from that “horizontal” view
of literature, without deceptive foreshortenings and distances, which
is, up to his time, so rare. Nothing is more striking than his remarks
on English literature—at least the English drama. Perhaps he did not
himself know much English; and something of the kind seems to be
insinuated in Dryden’s remarks[336] on the matter, though Dryden was
naturally hurt at the selection of Shadwell for commendation. But if so
he apprehended what Waller and others said to him about Ben Jonson’s
comedy with almost miraculous divination, and reflects in his account of
our tragedy rather less than the current mistakes on the subject among
Englishmen of the Restoration period themselves. And here also, as in
his remarks on Spanish and Italian, is noticeable this same horizontal
and comparative spirit.
-----
Footnote 336:
_V. inf._, p. 385 note.
-----
On his treatment of Opera I may be permitted to repeat what I wrote more
than twenty years ago, that it really contains the substance of
everything that has been said since on the literary side of the matter.
As for the “Vaste” dissertation the best thing to say is _Tolle, lege_.
I do not think it possible to have a better example of that rarest of
things, literary philology, in the true and not the distorted sense of
the substantive. The Academy opined—in fact had opined already (whence
much of the salt of the piece)—against Saint-Evremond. But his
Dissertation is, like all his criticism more or less, a really
extraordinary example of the combination of all that was best in the
French academic spirit with freedom from most of its faults. This union
of freedom and delicacy, of precision and independent play, is
Saint-Evremond’s glory as a critic, and it distinguishes him, not merely
from Boileau, but from most others between 1660 and 1800. Addison had
(and no doubt directly borrowed) something of the same touch; Fénelon,
in a different spirit, had a great deal: we shall find something of it
in Gravina. But it is very rare in the period, and it is precisely the
absence of it as a “compensation balance” which vitiates neo-classic
criticism as a whole.
It is common, if not universal, to glance at the redoubtable and
satiric doctor, Gui Patin, as at least an outlier among French
seventeenth-century critics; but the reader who, as Matthew Arnold
says, “wants criticism” will not find much of it in his very amusing
_Letters_.[337] [Sidenote: _Gui Patin—his judgment of Browne._] An
_English_ reader may be specially disappointed because he is most
likely to know the surprising, the repeated, the, to all appearance,
fully genuine, and the very felicitous remarks[338] of Patin on the
_Religio Medici_. A Frenchman who can appreciate Browne, who can see
in the _Religio_ a book not merely _tout gentil et curieux_ but _fort
délicat et tout mystique_, who can perceive its _étranges et
ravissantes pensées_, who can pronounce _il n’y a guère encore de
livre de la sorte_ (alas! we may drop the _guère_ and continue the
_encore_), who can describe the author as a _mélancolique agréable en
ses pensées_, who can say of his stupid commentators _ce livre n’a pas
besoin de tels écoliers_, and even desire ardently to be acquainted
with Sir Kenelm Digby’s reply—may seem to have handed in his
credentials as a critic once and for all. But one soon finds that
Patin’s interest in Browne was, first of all, _esprit de corps_ (which
was perhaps stronger in the Faculty of that time than in any
profession of any other), and secondly, a certain coincidence of true
but unconventional piety, different as were its forms in the two.
Elsewhere Patin is a collector, an eager student of new books, a
scholar even, with a conviction that Scaliger and Casaubon were “the
two first men of their time,” and that Salmasius was a “grand héros
des belles lettres”; but not a critic, and with a distinctly limited
idea of _belles lettres_ themselves. He speaks contemptuously of
Descartes, he barely mentions Corneille. He was, in fact, generally
too angry with antimony, opium, quinine, the English, and Mazarin, or
else too much rapt in ecstasy at the divine powers of bleeding and
purging,[339] to have time to think of poetry, or even of prose.
-----
Footnote 337:
Ed. Réveillé, Paris, 3 vols. (Paris and London, 1846).
Footnote 338:
_Ed. cit._, i. 340, 354; ii. 35, 321.
Footnote 339:
“Certainement il faut en louer Dieu,” says his editor, himself a
doctor, with a kind of shudder, in reference to Patin’s pious
gratitude for the recovery of a colleague whom he had bled
_thirty-two_ times. His exploits in the direction of _ensuita purgare_
are too appalling to particularise.
-----
Nor can we afford much space to the main body of the Academicians, of
the frequenters of “the” Hotel (_par excellence_), of the abbés, and
_marquis_, and even _marquises_ who crowd the middle of the
seventeenth-century history of France, not disagreeably for posterity.
[Sidenote: _Tallemant, Pellisson, Ménage, Madame de Sévigné._] They must
be sought in Tallemant (himself, as citations will have shown,
interested in the matter, and not inept at it) as a main and single
preserver, in a hundred other places, original and second-hand, from the
contemporary records to the essays of Sainte-Beuve and his followers. We
could fill this volume with them without the slightest difficulty; but,
as in all true history, they must “speak by their foremen,” and even
these foremen cannot have much place. The modest and amiable Pellisson,
the historian of the Academy, whose personal ugliness Boileau had the
insolent vulgarity to satirise,[340] but who had a “soul of gold,” was
by no means a bad though a too amiable critic, and had the sense and
courage not to deny Ronsard when the fashion turned against him, just as
he clove to Fouquet when it was positively, and even extremely,
dangerous to do so. Ménage, to whom his own unguardedness and the satire
of Molière[341] have given something of a ridiculous position in
literary history, had the wit to see the merit of Molière himself quite
early, possessed very wide reading, and could make judicious reflections
on it, had studied the Italian critics,[342] and could now and then (as
in the brief obituary notice of Scarron[343]) hit off his stroke
extremely well. As for Marie de Sévigné, adorable to all, and especially
adored by these two, she is generally right, and always illustrates the
saying of La Bruyère, which is quoted below, whether she is right or
not. But her critical position is so close to that of Saint-Evremond
that what we have said of him is almost equally applicable to her,
though she invests the critical attitude with her own peculiar charm.
-----
Footnote 340:
In the 8th satire. He had the extremely small grace, however, to drop
the _name_ in later editions, and it does not now appear.
Footnote 341:
_If_ the “Vadius” of the _Femmes Savantes_ is Ménage. He himself
denied it rather cleverly; but there is not much doubt.
Footnote 342:
See what he says on Castelvetro in the _Ménagiana_ (ed. La Monnoye,
Amsterdam, 1713), ii. 86.
Footnote 343:
Ibid., ii. 174.
-----
With one remarkable exception as almost a whole, and a certain number of
scattered passages in some of them,[344] the most noteworthy thing in
the other _Ana_, which has relation to Criticism, is the almost
invariable connotation of the word in them. [Sidenote: _The_ Ana _other
than Ménage’s, especially_] Vigneul-Marville,[345] noticing a book, says
that there are in it _deux remarques de critique_, one that Myconos is
not so far from Delos as Ferrari says, being only two leagues instead of
seven, and the other, that somebody else is wrong in saying that it
belongs to the Venetians since it is in the power of the Turks. Of
course in a sense these are “critical” observations; but one is a little
reminded of Hegel and philosophical instruments. More unmistakable is
the clear definition given by the author of the book above excepted.
Huet (p. 232 _ed. cit._) says explicitly that _Critique_ is “that part
of grammar which busies itself with re-establishing the text of ancient
authors in its first integrity, and purging out changes due to
ignorance,” &c. _This_, he goes on to say, is the art which Aristotle is
said to have invented; and yet, further, he frankly declares that he
himself has always looked on it as “a mean business.”[346] Yet, not
merely in the well-known _De l’Origine des Romans_, which is not
unfrequently found in connection with the _Huetiana_, but in these
themselves, he shows that he had no mean conception of the higher and
nobler branches of the Art. His remarks on the Quarrel[347] are among
the most sensible that we have, as was to be expected from a man who was
at once an excellent scholar in ancient, and a warm admirer of modern,
literature. If he is less wise on rhyme,[348] let us remember that this
is _parcius objiciendum_ to a contemporary, although a younger
contemporary, of Milton; and if he is responsible for the astonishing
statement[349] that Greek poetry “a toujours décliné depuis Homère,” let
us simply decline the attempt to construct any critical theodolite which
will show us this line of constant declension through Sappho and Pindar,
Æschylus and Aristophanes, Theocritus and the best of the Anthologists.
[Sidenote: _the_ Huetiana.] On the other hand, the assertion advanced in
the _Origine des Romans_, and defended in the _Ana_, to the effect that
a good judge of poetry is even rarer than a good poet, is too
double-edged, in its apparent flattery of our own office, for us to make
any difficulty in applauding it, while the defence itself is singularly
good. The everlasting comparison of Virgil to Theocritus and Homer has
seldom been better handled than by Huet. Indeed the whole book is worth
reading for the critical passages it contains. The _Traité des Romans_
is a little discursively and promiscuously erudite, and Huet is thinking
too much of the bastard romance of his own time, too little of the
true-bred romances of old: but he knows something even of these, and he
is well acquainted with the attempts of Cinthio and Pigna in the
previous century to make good at least the Italian form of the kind.
-----
Footnote 344:
See, for instance, in the otherwise trivial _Chevræana_, a rather
amusing string (p. 157) of criticisms passed on the great authors of
antiquity; in the _Fureteriana_ (p. 13), an acute and most just remark
on the folly of versifying scientific treatises and other things not
in the least suitable for the process; and not a few in
Vigneul-Marville—the absence of notes and justificatory citations in
ancient historians (ii. 116); the praise of Amyot (ib. 132); the
question of fully or partially formed verse in prose (ib. 188 sq.);
remarks on Sforza Pallavicini’s _Trattato dello stilo_ (ib. 260); on
“rhyme and reason” (ib. 330). (The references in this note and in the
above paragraphs of the text, except where otherwise indicated, are to
the collection of _Ana_ in ten vols. Amsterdam and Paris, An vii.)
Footnote 345:
_Ed. cit._, ii. 87.
Footnote 346:
P. 234, “_Ce travail m’a toujours paru bas, et peu digne de l’estime
qu’il s’est attirée, et de l’application d’un esprit noble et élevé._”
Footnote 347:
P. 20 and _passim_.
Footnote 348:
P. 33.
Footnote 349:
P. 31.
-----
[Sidenote: Valesiana,]
In the _Valesiana_—amid much that is merely antiquarian or linguistic,
and a fair though not excessive portion of the mere gossip and gabble
which first made these things read and afterwards brought them into
disrepute—there will be found a curious passage on the Latin hymns and
their prosody, showing how dead the ear falls at certain times to the
music of others, and the more curious selection of Palingenius and his
_Zodiacus Vitæ_ as a poem and a poet worth the pains of reading. Nor
will the reputation for robustness of seventeenth-century erudition
suffer from the patronising commendation of Baillet’s _Jugements des
Savants_ as a book which would be useful light reading for the giddy
youth of the day who declined serious study. [Sidenote: Scaligerana,]
Yet Scaliger himself (J. J., not J. C.), according to the
collection[350] standing in his name (a quaint mosaic or macaronic of
French and Latin), thought that nobody save Casaubon (and “another that
shall be nameless,” no doubt) was really learned as men had been a
hundred years earlier. He is himself nearly as untrustworthy on really
critical points as his father, and had, I think, less true critical
spirit. But he makes some amends for Julius Cæsar’s truculent assault on
the _Ciceronianus_ by confessing that Longolius (the main object of the
Erasmian satire) could not really be said to write in Ciceronian style
when he simply fitted Ciceronian phrases together.
-----
Footnote 350:
Not in the general edition above cited. My copy is that of Cologne,
1695, with no printer’s name, but with a nice red and black
title-page, an agreeable frontispiece (representing Joseph Justus, in
a chair and a long beard, addressing attentive standing periwig-pated
persons), and (as a MS. note of a former possessor informs me) a great
deal of matter not in any other ed.
-----
Another member of the group to be noted very especially is the so-called
_Parrhasiana_,[351] in the title of which “Théodore Parrhase” stands for
a _nom de guerre_ of the industrious pressman Jean Le Clerc. [Sidenote:
_and_ Parrhasiana.] It has very little in common with its class, being
in part a reasoned treatise on general points of criticism, in part a
defence of the author’s own works against the injurious remarks of
Meibomius and others. The latter we can neglect; the former contains a
really interesting exposition of general critical views by one of the
most experienced of the new class of professional critics and reviewers
at the junction of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The
distinction of the _Parrhasiana_ is that it has so little
distinction—that it is so thoroughly normal. Le Clerc is a thorough
believer in the Ancients; but he wears his rue with this difference,
that he does _not_ believe in moderns who write Greek and Latin Verses,
and that he is quite handsome and encouraging to those who do write in
their mother tongue. They may be quite, or almost, as useful, he
thinks—but as for reading for mere amusement, that is not a serious
occupation. And Le Clerc is uncompromising in the prosaism of his views
on poetry. In fact, I am not sure that there is anywhere else so _naïf_
a confession of belief in the Lower Reason only. He finds
improbabilities and absurdities, not merely in Homer, but in Virgil
himself; he holds _æternum servans sub pectore vulnus_, which some not
very fervid Maronites would admit as a great and poetic phrase, to be a
mere surplusage; and he actually condoles with poets on the unlucky
necessity under which they lie of inversions, metaphors, and so forth,
_metri gratia_. I do not know whether Mr Arnold knew the _Parrhasiana_,
and indeed should doubt it; but he certainly might have found chapter
and verse for his strictures on the age of “prose and sense” almost
anywhere in it.
-----
Footnote 351:
Also not in the collection. My copy is the Amsterdam edition, 2 vols.,
1699.
-----
Yet other groups or individuals in this abounding period might receive
notice if this history were to be in twelve volumes instead of in three.
[Sidenote: _Patru, Desmarets, and others._] There is Patru, not merely
in his time the glory of the French bar, but extolled, by Boileau and by
his enemies alike, as a sort of Quintilian and Quintilius in one[352]—as
a standard at once of style and of judgment. Yet his long life and his
constant occupation with literature, in talk and in reading, seem to
have left us hardly anything in the shape of written criticism. There is
Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, a less belauded but more interesting and
perhaps more genuine man of letters. Not merely did Desmarets compose
the epics ridiculed by Boileau, not merely was he the author of the
excellent _Visionnaires_ (the best comedy in French before Molière
except Corneille’s _Le Menteur_), not merely was he a “visionary”
himself in his latter days, and a versifier, if not a poet, always, but
he was a not inconsiderable critic. Those who choose to read his
_Défense du Poème Héroique_[353] will find in it by no means the
imbecility that they may expect, either in the dialogues defending the
Christian poem, or in the somewhat meticulous, but sharp and not
ill-deserved, “cutting-up” of Boileau which follows. But these, and much
more the Conrarts and the Costars, the Maucroix, and the rest[354] must
here be as _silencieux_ as the first in his stock epithet. And one may
confess even to doubts whether, with the amplest room and verge, they
ought to have much space in a general History of Criticism as
distinguished from one of special countries and periods. Hardly any of
them is more than one of a _numerus_; hardly any has himself actual
distinction, as persons of much inferior talents may have at other
times. The Historian of Climate must have much to say about the
delightful variety of that phenomenon which the British Isles display,
about its causes, its phases, and the like, in general; but he would be
lost, and would lose his readers in more than one sense, if he were to
attempt to describe every shower or even every wet season.[355]
-----
Footnote 352:
The suggestion of this, though not the exact phrase, will be found in
Sainte-Beuve’s essay (_Causeries du Lundi_, v. 275).
Footnote 353:
Paris, 1675.
Footnote 354:
On all these, see Tallemant, Bayle, and others down to Sainte-Beuve.
For a typical literary and critical quarrel, beginning politely and
ending in something like Billingsgate, nothing can be better than that
battle of Costar and M. de Girac, first over the dead body of Voiture
and the live one of Balzac, and then over both these departed, which
Sainte-Beuve tells in his liveliest manner at pp. 210-231 of the 12th
vol. of the _Causeries_.
Footnote 355:
To those who are acquainted with the most interesting handling of
Desmarets in M. Rigault’s so often cited book (_Querelle des Anc. et
Mod._, pp. 80-103), my reference to him may seem too low and little.
As a matter of fact, I think rather better of Desmarets than M.
Rigault did. But the latter’s purpose of enlarging—I do not say
exaggerating—his portraits of everybody who had to do with the
“quarrel” sometimes, I think, throws them a little out of proportion,
if not of focus, for a general critical history. His chapter, however,
is excellent, if not quite just; and it should have by itself sufficed
to save those who will not read originals from a blunder into which
some writers have fallen—that of crediting Desmarets with the _first_
vindication of the Christian epic, and the _first_ denunciation of
heathen mythology as a poetic stuff. The mere name of Tasso ought to
suffice as a reminder of the falsity of this; the work of Gambara (_v.
supra_, p. 107 note), though I cannot speak of it at first hand, must
be got out of the way by them; and Vauquelin de la Fresnaye (_v.
supra_, p. 131) had in France itself made the way plain, for the
author of _Clovis_. But he certainly drew a good bow in this not too
happy battle; and if he takes any pleasure in the progeniture, he may
probably claim John Dennis (_v. infra_, p. 436) as his son. That
Boileau’s treatment of him was quite unfair M. Rigault himself fully
admits; but to whom and to what (including those talents of his own
which he by turns prostitutes and cripples) is Boileau _not_ unfair?
-----
The attempts, not merely to make out a regular Æsthetic for Descartes,
but to key this on to the great critical movement of the century, will
be best dealt with later; but the greatest of the Cartesians must have a
word.
Malebranche need not occupy us long; indeed, this great philosopher and
admirable master of French has to be dealt with by us, at least in some
part, because he has been dealt with by others. [Sidenote:
_Malebranche._] The invitation to do so, if we may say it without
illiberality, seems to have consisted rather in the titles than in the
contents of his work. The Second Book of the _Recherche de la Vérité_
is, indeed, “De l’Imagination”; the Second Part of this Second Book has
much to do with _les personnes d'étude_; and the Third, Fourth, and
Fifth chapters of the Third Part deal with “the imagination of certain
authors,” especially Tertullian, Seneca, and Montaigne. But we have
seen, and shall see, how treacherous the word Imagination is, and how
people will misunderstand it, however frankly they are dealt with.
Malebranche, as he always is, is quite frank and quite clear; he tells
us definitely that imagination for him is “a little more and a little
less than sense,” that it only consists in the power possessed by the
soul of forming images of objects for itself. His quarrel with the
“persons of study” is that they _will_ read, write, and argue about the
ancients, instead of recurring to primary truths; and when he deals with
his three selected authors, it is not to criticise them from the
literary point of view (though he finds fault with “irregular movements”
in Tertullian’s figures), but to object to the paralogism of the _De
Pallio_, the ill-regulated imagination and feeble reasoning of Seneca,
the treacherous “cavalier” manner, the “criminal attraction born of
concupiscence,” the disguised pedantry, the vanity, in Montaigne.
Phrases here and there, in his own perfect style[356] (I doubt whether
any prose writer of the _grand siècle_ can give points to Malebranche),
show what a critic was lost in him; but the critic—as indeed we should
expect, and as is quite proper—_is_ lost in the philosopher, the
theologian, and the moralist.[357]
-----
Footnote 356:
As this of the very authors he censures, “Leurs paroles, toutes mortes
qu’elles sont, ont plus de vigueur que la raison de certaines gens.”
II. 300, Ed. J. Simon, Paris, 1871.
Footnote 357:
The literary _Pensées_ of Pascal are still fewer, and in dealing with
Montaigne he is even further from the literary point of view than
Malebranche. His chief utterance is a piece of characteristic scorn at
poetical _clichés_ like _bel astre_, _fatal laurier_, &c.
-----
And so to Boileau.
It is desirable that we should examine Boileau’s critical work[358] with
more than ordinary care. [Sidenote: _The history of Boileau’s
reputation._] The history of his reputation has, until recently, been on
the whole not very different from that of many other eminent men of
letters—that is to say, it has oscillated between extravagant reverence
(during the entire eighteenth century, with rare exceptions, both in
France and elsewhere) and a violent reaction (when the Romantic movement
set in). Pope and Voltaire may stand as spokesmen of the former period;
Keats and the men of 1830 of the latter. But of late years, and in
England as well as in France, the cant of criticism (which is as
protean, and as immortal, as most such Duessas) has devised another
thing. Even in the extreme Romantic time, true critics, especially
Sainte-Beuve, had recognised how germane, in wrong as in right, the
taste and temper of Boileau were to the taste and temper of literary
France generally, and to some extent of the Latin peoples old and new.
But latterly, under the powerful influence of M. Ferdinand
Brunetière—whom, though I often disagree with him, I always name for the
sake of most unaffected honour, and as a critic of whom any country and
time might have been proud—this tendency has gone much further, and we
are even asked to accept Monsieur Nicolas as an adequate representative
of the French literary genius. Let us remember what “adequate” means; it
means to a great, at least, if not to the very fullest, extent
commensurate, coextensive, and complete. And in England also there has
been not wanting an affectation of deference to this estimate—of arguing
that we ought to let the French know best in such points—that it is
wicked, rude, uncritical, to intrude English judgment into such matters.
-----
Footnote 358:
Of the immense number (estimated years ago at nearly five hundred) of
editions of the Works in whole or part, that of Berriat de Saint-Prix
in 4 vols., 1830-34, is, I believe, as nearly the standard as any.
There is, however, a magnificent modern edition of the _Œuvres
Poétiques_, edited by M. Brunetière (Paris, 1889), which I am glad to
possess. The ordinary “Collection” editions, such as that of Garnier,
though complete enough on the verse side, are apt to omit what they
think the less interesting pieces of prose.
-----
So be it, for the moment, and for the sake of argument. Let us then, as
we do always, as from this point of view it is more specially necessary
that we should do, inquire what the _actual_ criticism of this
“adequate” representative of the French genius is. [Sidenote: _The_ Art
Poétique.] And in doing this let us begin with the _Art Poétique_, that
elaborately arranged code of neo-classic correctness, the composition of
which occupied half the central decade[359] of its author’s life when he
was in the full vigour of ripe age, which summed up all the doctrine of
his earlier satires, and is practically repeated by most of his later.
-----
Footnote 359:
He was thirty-three when he began it, and thirty-eight when it was
finished. A very excellent separate edition of it is that of the
Cambridge University Press, by Mr D. Nichol Smith (1898).
-----
In making the examination we shall (not without considerable generosity)
abstain from bearing too hardly upon the flagrant ignorance of literary
history, even in his own country, which Boileau here displays.
[Sidenote: _Its false literary history._] His modern defenders (not, it
must be confessed, till those who do not defend him had made
uncompromising championship on this point impossible) practically
confess and avoid it, pass it with a half-petulant “Agreed!” They cannot
well do otherwise: for in the famous lines (I. 113-130) from
“Durant les premiers ans du Parnasse Français,”
to
“Rendit plus retenus Desportes et Bertaut,”
an amount of crass ignorance, or of impudent falsification, is amassed
which is really curious, and almost creditable, at least to the audacity
of the author’s party-spirit, or the serenity of his indifference. Even
in the oldest French poetry that we possess, much more in the _Roman de
la Rose_ (which he adduces in a note, having obviously never read it),
the “words” were _not_ “arranged without measure”; there _were_ “strict
numbers”; and there was even a pretty strict cæsura. Villon did not do
anything to “the art of the old romancers,” but wrote in precisely the
same measures as men had written in for a hundred and fifty years before
him. Marot simply adopted ballades, wrote no triolets, did nothing new
to rondeaux, while we are only unable to convict Boileau of error as to
_mascarades_, because nobody has yet discovered what, exactly, a
_mascarade_ is. The description of Ronsard’s action is rubbish: while it
is quite certain that both Desportes and Bertaut went to their graves
without the slightest doubt that he was Prince of French poets, and were
not in the least “restrained” in following him. And the history of the
French Drama in Canto Three only deserves less reprehension because it
was really not very easy at the time for a man to know much about it.
But let this suffice. And let us also exercise our perhaps undeserved
generosity on another point, that wholesale and unblushing imitation of
Horace which made the Abbé Cotin, one of Boileau’s victims, retort with
as much truth as wit, in the very form of one of Despréaux' own
insolences—
“J’appelle Horace Horace—et Boileau traducteur.”[360]
-----
Footnote 360:
Boileau did not merely “convey” from the ancients. He had the
specially ugly, though not so specially uncommon, trick of insulting a
man and stealing from him at the same time. (Cf. Théophile Gautier’s
article, in _Les Grotesques_, on his namesake.)
-----
After all, though a paradox, it is not an impossibility, that a man
should be a great critic and yet most untrustworthy on literary history,
and apt to make his own work, in great part, a mere mosaic of the work
of others.
Let us then take the _Art Poétique_ simply as criticism—not as a series
of statements of fact, not as an original or a borrowed argument—and see
how it looks this way. [Sidenote: _Abstract of it._] The first Canto
begins (in the teasing inverted style[361] which was one of Boileau’s
worst legacies to French poetry, and which itself was a “corrupt
following” of Latin) with a declaration of the necessity of genius,
which has been counted to him for much righteousness. Everybody has not
the genius for everything, and it does not follow that because you have
a genius for convivial songs you have one for Epic. But good sense and
reason are as necessary as genius. Indeed we are soon told that writing
depends on these _alone_ for its value: so that genius is like those
tickets of admission which are quite useless till they are countersigned
by somebody other than the issuer. Never try high flights or conceits.
Do not describe your subjects or objects too minutely. Cultivate
variety, but never be “low,” burlesque, or bombastic. Whatever you do,
mind cæsura and avoid hiatus. Then follows the pseudo-history referred
to above, capped by its phrase of Malherbe, in whose steps you are to
walk. Clearness of expression is of the greatest value; but as a fact it
depends on clearness of thought. Smart things will not ransom faults. If
you fear criticism, anticipate it by yourself and your friends; but
beware of flatteries, and, above all, do not take the part of your own
faults simply because your friends have noticed them. The First Canto
ends with the really excellent line, in Boileau’s true vein (for,
whatsoe’er the failings on his part as a critic, he was a satirist born
and bred)—
“Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l’admire.”
-----
Footnote 361:
“_C’est en vain qu’au Parnasse un témeraire auteur,
Pense de l’art des vers attendre la hauteur._”
-----
The Second Canto begins, _apropos_ of nothing (indeed Boileau was
frankly troubled about his “transitions”), with a discussion, partly
metaphorical, of the Idyll, Eclogue, and Pastoral, followed by a similar
account of other kinds of shorter pieces—Elegy, Ode, Sonnet, Epigram,
and others, down to Vaudeville—the Fable being absent, to the discomfort
and laborious excuse-making of the disciples. The Idyll must be neither
too pompous nor too trivial: follow Theocritus and Virgil and all will
be right. Elegy is proper for Death and Love; but you must not, in
regard to the latter, be frigid and hackneyed. Imitate Tibullus and
Ovid, and again all will be right. The ode is worthy of Achilles or
Louis; but do not be too historical—which indeed would be difficult in
regard to Achilles, and might be inconvenient in regard to Louis.
Sonnets are very difficult, but a sonnet without fault is by itself
worth an Epic.[362] The epigram may have _pointes_, which are elsewhere
to be utterly rejected. The other kinds are lightly treated till the
Satire, descending to the _vaudeville_, has a longer discussion. Satire,
the apologist _pro domo_ declares, is the voice of Truth. Lucilius,
Horace, Juvenal, are characterised. Regnier is _our_ best man; but his
style is antiquated, and his subjects and language are really
shocking.[363] Then “the Frenchman, _né malin_,” made the Vaudeville. It
is only fair to Boileau to say that, could he have foreseen the tedious
abuse of this _mot_, he would certainly either have forborne it, or have
given us a capital line or couplet to tie to the tail of the culprits.
Canto Three passes, with no less abruptness, to the drama, which
occupies the first half, the latter part being given to the Epic.
Boileau is at first vague. In fact, he does not seem at all thoroughly
to have appreciated the Aristotelian doctrine, which in the main he runs
up as his flag. Dramatic art in teaching must please and touch, which it
may do by exciting pity and terror. Do not make a long and obscure
introduction; keep the Unities as you value your dramatic salvation;
never be incredible; and let everything contribute to the development of
your story.
-----
Footnote 362:
It may be sometimes forgotten in the quotation of this famous line,
that _long poem_ was a technical term in French criticism, from the
days of the Pléiade downwards, and means definitely an Epic, or Heroic
Poem, not a long piece of verse. It is characteristic of Boileau to
hit backwards at the _modern_ epic, of which he was no admirer, in
this rather treacherous praise of the sonnet, towards which he was
equally lukewarm.
-----
The Historic Muse reappears, but in such case, as hinted above, that we
shall magnanimously abstain from further vengeance on her. If only
Boileau had omitted the unhappy note which says that _leurs pièces_
(those of his imaginary _pélerins_) _sont imprimées_, thereby suggesting
that he had read them! You must have Love: but do not be _doucereux_;
keep the stock characters; do not modernise the ancients; and if you
invent a personage let him be constant to himself. The theatre really is
very difficult. But Epic is still more so. It depends entirely upon
action, upon fable; and in order to make it noble you put in the _deorum
ministerium_.[364] Æneas’ voyage would have been quite an ordinary thing
without Juno, and Neptune, and Æolus:—
“C’est là ce qui surprend, frappe, saisit, attache.”[365]
-----
Footnote 363:
As it takes ten lines (171-180) in the French to explain our single
epithet, they need not make fun of it.
Footnote 364:
See on the Petronian passage, vol. i. p. 245, and on its mischievous
influence the present chapter, _passim_.
Footnote 365:
I like to vary Boileau’s stale criticism with his admirably fresh and
vigorous verse.
-----
But the modern deity will not do at all; and devils and angels are
worse. Do let us keep our Tritons, our Parcæ, our Pan, and our Charon!
If not, in a short time we shall not be able to tie a bandage on the
eyes of Themis, or put a balance in her hand![366] Further, be very
careful of your names. There was a person once who actually called his
hero Childebrand! Minor receipts for handling follow; and then we find
ourselves back on the stage with Comedy, as to which Boileau extols
Nature, and tells us that Molière would have been the best of comic
dramatists—if he had been other than he was.
-----
Footnote 366:
“She can do without them,” as L. Arruntius most excellently remarked
on a parallel occasion. _Vide_ i. 238.
-----
The Fourth Canto returns to the generalities of the first, and, taking
advantage of this wider scope, begins an attack, not unamusing but in
very bad taste, on Claude Perrault, architect, doctor, and, like his
more celebrated brother Charles, and a third not so well known as
either, a champion on the modern side (_v. infra_). It ends, in
accordance with the habits of the age, in an elaborate and rather
well-declaimed panegyric of the king, wherein the adroit historiographer
supplies an epilogue to the perhaps not quite so adroit critic.
For some lines in the middle Boileau, though constantly returning to the
crutch of Horace, does occupy himself with literature. His precepts may
be thus summarised. Whatever you are, be not a bad writer, and if you
_must_ be, be rather bombastic than cold; but, on the whole, degrees of
mediocrity do not much matter. Here the satirist once more comes to the
rescue and dictates the (in application insolent,[367] but)
intrinsically good couplet—
“Un fou du moins fait rire et peut nous égayer,
Mais un froid écrivain ne sait rien qu’ennuyer.”
Do not pay attention to flatterers (we had heard this before), do not
excuse your verses, but keep an open ear for every comment: though you
must be careful to separate foolish from wise criticisms. Join the solid
and useful to the pleasant. Let your morality be of the very first
water. You may introduce love; but respect principle and the young
person. Do not be jealous of your rivals; do not put literature above
its proper place; for heaven’s sake do not endeavour to make profit out
of your writings [except by pensions].[368] Be not avaricious, but
attend to Reason. If you do, Louis will give you pensions; and you will
not have to tremble, like Colletet,[369] for your dinner, which depends
on the success of a sonnet. Of this last ignoble gibe (too much
imitated, alas! by our own Pope) we need take no further notice; and we
shall say nothing more on any of the other points in Boileau which
invite unfavourable comment, but are not strictly critical. Let us judge
him as a critic only, and first on this piece.
-----
Footnote 367:
As usual Boileau gives the actual names of half a score inhabitants of
the French Grub Street, of whom Cyrano de Bergerac (he was long dead,
and Boileau was safe) has the consolation prize of being merely _fou_.
Footnote 368:
They were probably the _tribut légitime_ which a _noble esprit_ might
derive from his work.
Footnote 369:
This refers to the _son_, François (1628-1680), of a more poetic
pair—Guillaume (1598-1659) and Claudine Colletet. The former of these
was also a critic in his way, and left, besides an _Art Poétique_
(1658) of no great value, a _Histoire des Poètes Français_ which,
strangely enough, was never printed, and the MS. of which was burnt by
the Vandals of the Commune in 1871.
-----
Is it good criticism?
This of course is far too large a question to answer off-hand.
[Sidenote: _Critical examination of it._] We must hunt the answer to it
by the way of minor questions, such as, Is it original? (the least
important but of some importance). If it is not, What does it add to,
and how ingeniously and usefully does it apply, the original from which
it borrows? What methods does it use? To what extent and in what fashion
would a poet adopting it as a manual be qualified for his art? And
lastly (though perhaps some minor questions may crop up in our passage),
What incidental excellences does it contain? What is the merit of the
critical estimates which the author makes, in passing or with
deliberation, of the authors, great and small, of the past and the
present?
Let us take these questions in order, and see what answers the _Art
Poétique_, examined without prejudice, but without fear[370] or favour,
can give to them.
-----
Footnote 370:
A humourist might maintain the two opposite theses, “That Boileau has
genuine authority,” and “That the French are always craving for a
tyrant,” on the strength of a curious _catena_ of evidence from
Voltaire’s “Ça porte malheur” to Marmontel, who had presumed to speak
lightly of Despréaux, down to M. Bourgoin’s “On a difficilement raison
contre Boileau.” But to those who “bear an English heart” these
terrors are idle.
-----
As to the first question there is, to a certain extent, no difference of
opinion. [Sidenote: _Want of originality._] The injured Cotin
undoubtedly had truth on his side, in the parody quoted above, as to a
large part of the _Art Poétique_. But what has not been quite
sufficiently recognised is that this is the best part. Take away the
almost (sometimes quite) literal translations from Horace, and you will
take away Boileau’s backbone; take away the Horatian suggestions, and
you will go far to deprive his criticism of its skeleton altogether, and
leave it a mere jumble of promiscuous observations. It would be
interesting and by no means otiose—if one only had the money and the
time—to print the _Art Poétique_ with the direct Horatian borrowment in
rubric, the suggested passages in black italic, and the mere
personalities, illustrations, flatteries, lampoons, and the like, in,
say, blue. But I fear the remains in ordinary print would be wofully
small, and still more wofully unimportant. This, however, would not
matter so very much if Boileau had been strikingly original in what he
adds, or had applied the Horatian doctrine with striking appropriateness
to the altered condition of literature. One would think it impossible,
if distinguished instances to the contrary were not known, for any one
to maintain that he has done either. By far the greater part of the
achievements of modern, and practically the whole of the achievements of
mediæval, literature up to his time, are simply ignored, or, where
referred to, ridiculously misdescribed. Nay more, Horatian parallels are
got in by inventing a history of what never existed.
Nor could anything else possibly happen, considering the methods which
Boileau chose to adopt. [Sidenote: _Faults of method._] These methods
are, First, the construction of a Horatian-Aristotelian bed to which
everything has to be adjusted in point of principle; and of this it is
not necessary to say more. Secondly, the suggestion as models, at every
turn, of Latin and (much less often) Greek poets, utterly regardless of
the change of circumstances. Thirdly, the method of criticism by
Kinds—of laying down the rules for, and discussing the ends of, the
abstract Pastoral, the abstract Elegy, the abstract Sonnet, Ode, and so
forth, with only a few perfunctory eulogies of actual examples. In
regard to the first and second it is enough to quote the critic’s own
words against him, and ask him how Ovid or Tibullus can be a sufficient,
can be even a safe, guide to a French love-poet, and how the marvels of
ancient mythology can become the “machinery” of a modern epic? In regard
to the third, the old battering-ram must be once more applied. Pastoral,
Elegy, Ode, and the rest (except “Sonnet,” which is a _form_) are not
unequivocal names applied to abstractly existing things, but mere
tickets. Give me a poem, and I will tell you whether I think it a good
or a bad poem, and why. You may, after that, if you have the time and
care to take the trouble, classify it as epic or elegy, epigram or ode.
But the box in which you choose to deposit it does not really matter in
the least; and if it should so happen that there is no box ready, you
must either make, or do without, one. Is the poem good or bad as
poetry?—that is the _articulus stantis vel cadentis criticismi_.
But the most surprising thing in Boileau’s method, and the most fatal,
is the thing on which he prides himself most, and which has been most
commended in him—the perpetual appeal to Good Sense and Reason.[371]
[Sidenote: _Obsession of good sense._] It is surprising, because
Longinus, whom he strangely assumed to be a prophet after his own heart,
had warned him amply, and one might think irresistibly, some fifteen
hundred years before. “Heights of eloquence or of poetry, but especially
of poetry,” that mighty critic had said, “do not lead to persuasion _but
to ecstasy_.” Now it is with Persuasion only—in the Greek sense, which
includes intellectual conviction and practical influence—that Good Sense
and Reason, in Boileau’s sense, can deal. It is true that very glaring
offences against them may sometimes (by no means always) interfere with
Ecstasy; but the most heroic doses of either or both will never cause
it. Generally speaking—the saying has of course the danger of the double
edge, but it is true for all that—when Good Sense comes in at the door
Ecstasy flies out of the window, and when Ecstasy flies in at the
window, Good Sense and (the lower) Reason retire prudishly by the door.
At any rate, if they remain, it will be necessary for them to keep
themselves very much in the background, and wait till they are called
for. They may very well act as detectives and catchpolls when False
Ecstasy usurps the place of true; but like other police-officers they
have rather an awkward habit of mistaking their men. Every respect is of
course to be paid to them; their assistance is sometimes very welcome
and valuable even to the poet, while the prose-writer can seldom
dispense with their constant surveillance. But even the latter may
sometimes be hindered of his finest effects by looking first to them;
while the Poet who does so will never rise beyond the lower-middle
slopes of Parnassus, if he even reaches these.
-----
Footnote 371:
It is interesting and significant that Boileau’s defenders generally
drop “Good Sense,” and use, whenever they can, the more ambiguous and
high-sounding “Reason.” It is sufficient to say that their author
repeats “Good Sense” again and again, and obviously uses Reason as a
mere synonym for it.
-----
Now, unless these considerations can be got out of the way, the answer
to yet a further question, What help does Boileau give the Poet? will be
a most meagre and disappointing one. Some of the positive helps which he
offers—the rule of Good Sense, and the empty forms of Kinds—are likely
to be, in the first case positively mischievous, in the second rather
hindering than helpful. His historical doctrine is usually wrong, and,
where not wrong, inadequate. His constant prescription of “the
ancients”—not merely as _general_ guides in literature—nobody need ask
for better—but as immediate and particular models for all kinds of
literary exercise, will in its most rigorous observation make a mere
translating anachronist, and even if more freely construed, will again
hinder much more than it helps.
But the majority of Boileau’s counsels are not positive at all, they are
simply negative: and negative counsels in art, when the pupil is once
out of schoolboyhood, never did much good yet, and have often done a
great deal of harm. [Sidenote: _Arbitrary proscriptions._] Why should
his _risus ineptus_ at the name “Childebrand” proscribe that name, which
is euphonious enough to unprejudiced ears? What “sensible and
reasonable” (we may thank him for these words) criterion of sound makes
“Philis” preferable to “Toinon” or, prettier still, Toinette? It is
true, doubtless, that, for a continuance, the long Alexandrine divides
best at the middle; but what reason, what sense is there in the absolute
proscription of a penthemimeral or hephthemimeral cæsura? In what does
the welcoming of Pan and Charon, and the banishing of Ashtaroth and
Beelzebub, differ from the immortal decision that “blue uniforms are
only good for the artillery and the Blue Horse”? And so throughout.
But, it will be said, the _Art Poétique_ is not Boileau’s sole critical
deliverance. [Sidenote: _Boileau’s other works._] It is most true; in
fact, though his work is for a man who went safely beyond the three
score years and ten and half-way to the four score,[372] a rather scanty
work, it is pervaded with literature and with criticism. By a curious
contrast to those Roman satirists, of whom we spoke erstwhile, his
criticism of life is always turning to literature. The admirable
heroi-comic satire of the _Lutrin_ itself gravitates somehow or other to
the battle in the book-shop, which enables the poet to gibbet his
victims once more; not to mention that the whole fun of this very
_Lutrin_ is (though Boileau did not in the least know it) a sort of
_reductio ad absurdum_ of his own critical doctrines in the _Art_. Most
of the other pieces are either directly critical of a kind, or the
expression of brief and rather reluctantly obeyed avocations from
criticism. Let us examine them,—though with somewhat less minuteness.
-----
Footnote 372:
If I have seemed, or may seem, too bitter in any remarks on Boileau,
let me here observe that few things in literary history are more
pathetic than these last years of his, when, _ultimus suorum_, amid
the ruins of the political glories which he had celebrated, and in a
transition period between the great literature of the seventeenth
century and that of the eighteenth, with no one but his foolish
Boswell-Eckermann, Brossette, to comfort him, and no one at all to
whom to look as his successor, he held—unconquered and
unconquerable—to his principles, and died, as one of the poets to whom
he was so unjust had said,
“Sans bouger, debout et dans son rang.”
-----
The dominance of the literary subject in the _Satires_ is well known,
though it is equally notorious that illiberal personality too often
takes the place of liberal criticism. [Sidenote: _The_ Satires.]
Colletet’s poverty and parasitism; Saint-Amant’s death from fever,
brought on by his ill-success (he would have died of hunger anyhow, says
the satirist good-naturedly)—these are the subjects that interest him in
the First. In the Second to Molière, with oblique censure of, or at
least surprise at the easy versification of the dramatist, he bewails
(being evidently proud of it) his own studious “difficulty”[373] in
rhyming, jests at the stock phrases and _chevilles_ of others from
Ménage to Scudéry. Even in the Third—the old bad-dinner satire of Horace
and Regnier—he brings in a literary quarrel about Théophile and Ronsard
and Quinault. The Fifth, to Dangeau, is one of the few which have hardly
any literary touches. But he will drag the luckless Abbé de Pure into
the Sixth on the noises and nuisances of Paris, while the Seventh is
wholly literary, and is one of the earliest (1663) of his explosions at
bad poets, and the Eighth, on the follies of humanity, naturally takes
shots at the old target.
-----
Footnote 373:
That he had taught Racine _rimer difficilement_ is the well-known
boast in that uncomplimentary comparison of his pupil with Corneille,
by which he appears to have administered a sort of private unction to
his soul to atone for his public injustice.
-----
All these, however, much more the awkward Tenth, on Women, and the very
inferior Eleventh, must give place to the Ninth, an imitation of Horace,
II. vii., written in the author’s fortieth or forty-first year,
nominally to defend himself for his former attacks on his compeers, but
really, of course, to renew them. Once more his favourite equivalents
(only mentioned _infamiæ causa_) for Gyas and Cloanthus—Colletet,
Pelletier, Quinault, and the rest—appear. Once more Racan receives
partial, and Théophile almost total, insult. Here is the famous contrast
of _le clinquant du Tasse_ and _l’or de Virgile_; and here the still
more famous lines on the _Cid_, embedded in—and plainly owing their
complimentary tone to the fact that they are embedded in—an onslaught on
Chapelain. Again and again the luckless Cotin is “horsed” and justified:
while the almost equally luckless Pelletier[374] serves as a foil to
“d’Ablancourt et Patru.” The singular posthumous piece _Sur
l'Équivoque_, appended usually as the Twelfth satire, is a sort of
attempt to generalise and amplify the author’s horror of conceit and
obscurity.
-----
Footnote 374:
Not of course Boileau’s worthy predecessor in Art-Poetic writing (_v.
supra_, pp. 117, 118), but an advocate of the mid-seventeenth century,
who was unfortunate enough to commit sonnets, and to be disliked by
the satirist.
-----
To dwell on the minor pieces of verse, which are often literary, would
be here impossible; it is enough to say that they include the two
epigrams on Corneille’s _Agésilas_ and _Attila_, and numerous assaults
on Perrault. [Sidenote: _The_ Epigrams _and_ Epistles.] The _Epistles_
are not nearly so full of our matter as the _Satires_; but the Seventh
(to Racine on the success of the opposition _Phèdre_ by the hated
Pradon) and the Tenth (on his own verses) belong to us. The first of
these has been very highly, and in part quite deservedly, praised. The
reference to the death and the almost dishonoured grave of Molière,
though slightly theatrical, is both vigorous and really touching; the
eulogy of Racine himself is, in the circumstances, but allowably
excessive; and the half-flattering, half-boasting mention of his own
enjoyment of the favour of the “great,” from Louis to La Rochefoucauld,
would be tolerable if it were not mainly a vehicle for fresh abuse of
Linière and Tallemant, of Perrin and Pradon himself.
[Sidenote: _Prose—The_ Héros de Roman; _the_ Réflexions sur Longin.]
The prose is equally saturated with criticism. The dialogue on _Les
Héros de Roman_, which Fontenelle could have done admirably, Boileau has
not done very well; but his satire on the extraordinary bastard kind of
romance with which France at this time deluged Europe is not
ill-founded, though rather ill-informed.[375] The Letters are full
enough of criticism. But the two chief prose documents from which (at
least from their titles) something really important may be expected, are
the _Dissertation_ on the story of Giocondo, as told by its inventor and
by La Fontaine, and the _Réflexions sur Longin_. These last, however,
the reader need hardly trouble himself with: they may even be classed
among the impieties of criticism. Boileau, little as he could have
appreciated, did at least know the Great Unknown. He translated him; he
calls him very truly _le plus grand_, and more questionably _le plus
sévère_, of ancient critics. But these _Réflexions_ on Longinus are in
fact reflections on Charles Perrault, a very clever person, but not in
the least like Longinus: and the texts from the Περὶ Ὕψους, which are
put at the head of each chapter, often have nothing to do with the
subject at all, and in almost every case might almost as well have been
selected from the first book he picked up. In the particular dispute I
am with him, and not with Perrault; but the first exclamation of any
real lover of the real classics who reads the piece must be _Non tali
auxilio_! Boileau, as always, is arrogant and rude; as sometimes
elsewhere his scholarship is not beyond suspicion, though it had an easy
triumph over the almost total absence of the same quality in his
adversary; but, as he is very seldom, he is confused, desultory, heavy.
To those who think that criticism is the art of scolding, the
_Réflexions sur Longin_ may seem to be a creditable exercise in it:
hardly to others.
-----
Footnote 375:
Even his admirers admit his strange ignoring of the fact that
Madeleine de Scudéry _intended_ her personages to be modern—that they
were mere disguises of Condé and others, not attempts to re-create
antiquity. This of course does not exempt them from blame; but it
requires a different sort of blame.
-----
Almost the only critical essay of the proper kind that we have from this
famous critic is the other piece mentioned above—the “Dissertation on
the _Joconde_.” [Sidenote: _The “Dissertation on_ Joconde.”] The
occasion was not unpromising. A certain M. de Saint-Gilles, seriously or
otherwise, had preferred the version of Ariosto’s tale by one Bouillon
to that of La Fontaine, and the question (which had taken the form of a
bet between Saint-Gilles and La Mothe le Vayer de Bretigny) was referred
to Boileau for decision. I confess that I have never taken the trouble
to look up the works of M. de Bouillon: the specimens that Boileau gives
are quite enough, and he exercises his ferule like the vigorous and
(within limits) accurate and useful pedagogue that he is. But,
unluckily, he thinks it necessary not merely to prefer La Fontaine to
Bouillon, but to belittle Ariosto[376] in favour of La Fontaine. I defy
anybody—Frenchman or non-Frenchman—to have, within certain limits, a
greater admiration for La Fontaine than I have; and I am heretical
enough to like the _Contes_ even better than the _Fables_. But why this
miserable setting of two great things against each other? Why not like
both? This is what critics of the Boileau type cannot do: they must have
their rat-pit of false comparison, their setting-by-the-ears, their
belittling in order to exalt. It must be said that Boileau is justly
punished. His usual critical censures are so vague and general—he is so
apt to tell us that So-and-so is a bad poet without showing us _how_ he
is bad—that he escapes confutation. Not so here. In the first place he
shows, as perhaps we might have anticipated, that worst of critical
defects, an inability to “take” his author. He is very angry with the
famous grave beginning of the tavern-keeper’s much less than grave
story—the stately _Astolfo, re de' Longobardi_, and the rest. He thinks
that “le bon messer Ludovico” had forgotten, or rather did not care for,
the precept of his Horace, “Versibus exponi tragicis res comica non
vult.”
-----
Footnote 376:
The condescending praise of “Arioste _et ses fables comiques_,” in _A.
P._, iii. 291, can hardly be regarded as a set-off, especially as just
before (l. 218) he had stigmatised him, emphasising the stigma by a
note, as “follement idolâtre et païen.”
-----
Undoubtedly Messer Ludovico did not care one of his favourite turnips
for it! And, according to the key of humour in which he was writing—a
key struck before him, but never so well as by him, in Italian, familiar
in English, but unknown in French till recently—he was quite right in
this negligence. Boileau proceeds to give rules for “telling an absurd
thing in such a manner as to intimate to the reader that you do not
yourself believe it.” Very good; that is the _Lutrin_ way—a capital way
too; but not the only one. And Ariosto is at least entitled to try this
other, in which he succeeds so admirably to all who have eyes or ears
and will use them. The critic, again, is very angry with Ariosto for
making Giocondo abstain from poniarding his wife because of the love he
bore her. “Il n’y a point de passion plus tragique et plus violente que
la jalousie qui naît d’un extrème amour.” Let us not remark too unkindly
that Despréaux' knowledge of _un extrème amour_ was, by all accounts,
including his own, the reverse of experimental. His error is more
widespreading. It is part of that unlucky arrangement of “typed”
kinds—not less of character and passion than of writing—which the
neo-classic system insists upon. Your passions, like your poetic forms,
are all pigeon-holed, and their conduct prescribed to them. You must
“keep the type” once more. _Pour le bonheur du genre humain_, Ariosto
knew better.
We must not, tempting as it is, dwell on the plea that Giocondo’s honest
agony, “a quelque chose de tragique qui ne vaut rien dans un conte à
rire,” while La Fontaine’s easy-going wittol is quite a cheerful object;
on the inestimable cry of outraged verisimilitude, “Où est-ce que
Joconde trouve si vite une hostie sacrée pour faire jurer le roi?” or on
the extraordinary casuistry as to the time occupied, in the two
versions, by the climax of the triple arrangement of Fiammetta. In this,
as in the remarkable letter of reconciliation to Perrault,[377] one is
at first inclined to suspect irony; but in neither case will the
hypothesis work out. Here Boileau presents what looks like a caricature
of the “classical” criticism; yet it exactly coincides with his general
precepts elsewhere. There he gives away almost, not quite, the whole of
the Ancient case by admitting the superiority of the moderns after a
fashion which, if we took it to be ironical, would reflect upon his own
familiar friends and patterns—Molière, La Fontaine, and Racine.
-----
Footnote 377:
Written in 1700 and published next year. Letter vi. of the ordinary
collection.
-----
In fact, recent and repeated reading of Boileau has made me doubt
whether he had _any_ critical principle, except that of Good Sense.
[Sidenote: _A “Solifidian of Good Sense.”_] He almost says so in so many
words in the _Art Poétique_; his general or particular sayings elsewhere
say it over again with mere change of name and instance. If he loved the
classics, it was because the classics he knew best—the Latins of the
Augustan age—do probably observe this “good-sense” standard more than
any other great writers of any time but his own. And if he was unjust to
the great writers of the time just before his own, and savage to the
small among his contemporaries, it was because the prevailing fashion,
for two or three generations, had set in a direction which Good Sense
alone must constantly disapprove. Now Good Sense is not a high tribunal,
but a very low one,—we were better off with our old friend Furor
Poeticus, though he did sometimes talk, and encourage the talking of,
nonsense. The mere “Solifidian” of Good Sense knows nothing, and can
know nothing, about poetry.
Nay more, one may ask without real impertinence, Is Boileau’s _Art
Poétique_ in any vital and important sense an Art of Poetry at all, any
more than it is an Art of Pig-breeding, or of Pottery-making, or of
Pyrotechnics? In all these useful and agreeable pursuits—for the matter
of that in all other arts, trades, professions, employments, and
vocations—it is desirable to know what you are about, to proceed
cautiously and sensibly, to choose the right materials, to combine them
in the right way, not to go beyond your powers and means, to vary your
appeals to the public, to take good advice, to observe the practice of
proved success in the particular department, to study its kinds and
species carefully, not to launch out too far nor restrain your
operations too much, and to observe the laws of morality and propriety
throughout. But what is there specially _poetical_ in all this? Or what
does Boileau add to this to make his treatise specially poetical? A
few—decidedly few—technical cautions of the lower kind, not all of them
unquestionable; some general or mediate rules, mostly borrowed from
Horace, and not a few of them more questionable still; some literary
history which, as we have seen, is utterly worthless; and a seasoning of
mostly spiteful hits at poets he dislikes.
But, they say—and this is practically the stronghold to which they all
retire—“Look at his practical services to French literature and French
poetry. [Sidenote: _The plea for his practical services._] Look at the
badness of the styles he attacked, and the completeness with which he
cleared them away. What a reformer! What a Hercules purging the poetic
country of monsters and malefactors! Can you possibly deny this merit?”
Let nothing be denied—or, for the matter of that, affirmed—before
everything has been considered. [Sidenote: _Historical examination of
this._] What are the facts? Boileau came at the end—at the very end—of a
stage of French poetry which had been rather a long one, and
unquestionably one of very chequered and not very highly distinguished
performance. The somewhat hasty theories, and the often splendid, but
nearly always unequal, practice of the _Pléiade_, had given place to a
sort of rococo individualism, to the bastard and easily ignoble kinds of
parody and burlesque, or to corrupt followings of Spanish and Italian
practice. Many charming, and some fine, things (including that stately
passage of Chapelain’s which many classical critics, who scoff at his
name, have admired when all but literally translated in _The Deserted
Village_) had been written; but the writers had constantly dropped from
them to the trivial and the bombastic. But when Boileau began seriously
to write in 1663-64,[378] this period was in its very last stage. It
could not have lasted much, or any, longer if there had been no Boileau
at all. Of his actual victims some were long dead; others were very old
men; the younger were persons of no importance, _ephemera_, whether
critical or poetical, which would have died with the day. The smoky
torch of Théophile—a true poetic torch for all its smoke—had flickered
out nearly forty years before. Cyrano, to whom Boileau gives
contemptuous blessing in part, only that he may ban him and others more
effectively, had slept in peace for eight years. Saint-Amant, who had
real poetic gift, and who, if he was no scholar in the ancient tongues,
knew the modern in a fashion which puts Boileau’s ignorance of their
literatures to shame, had met the end described so feelingly by his
critic some three years earlier. Chapelain was a man of sixty-seven;
Cotin one of sixty. It is by attacking not the dead and decrepit, but
the young and rising, that a man shows himself a great warrior and a
useful citizen in criticism. In fact, the principles of correctness
which Boileau espoused had, as we have seen, been practically taken up
long before, even by poor creatures like the Abbé d’Aubignac, in certain
departments, and Chapelain himself had smitten in this sense before he
felt the wounds.
-----
Footnote 378:
The First and Sixth Satires are a little, and some smaller pieces
much, earlier than this, but they are indecisive and unimportant.
-----
Still less can Boileau be allowed any credit for the great achievements
which undoubtedly took place during his own middle life. The glories of
French literature in verse (and, as far as the three first go, in
poetry), about 1664, are Corneille, Racine, La Fontaine, Molière.
Corneille had been writing before Boileau was born: the only piece of
his which Boileau praises generously was produced in the year of the
critic’s birth; and that critic is silent about most of the Master’s
work, and sneers ignobly at its later examples. The magnificent genius
of Molière owed nothing to Boileau in its beginnings, and accepted
little, if anything, from his criticism in its perfection; while not all
of its results were cordially welcomed by the critic, personal friends
as they were. La Fontaine, an older man than Boileau by fifteen years,
was still more independent of him at the beginning, shows extremely
little mark of any influence from him at any time, and, for all their
friendship, experienced from him the almost unaccountable omission of
his favourite kind, the Fable (unlike the _Conte_, a perfectly
“unobjectionable” one), in the _Art Poétique_ itself. There remains
Racine, and, if the schooling and training of Racine seem to any one so
great a thing that his schoolmaster and trainer becomes, _ipso facto_,
one of the _Di majores_ of criticism, there is not much more to be said.
But there is something: and it is this. In the first place, to assume
that Racine’s genius could not have made its own way without Boileau’s
mentorship, is to pay a far worse compliment to that genius than some
not very fervent Racinians can allow; and, in the second, the spirit, if
not the letter, of his criticism is against that of Racine’s very best
work. If I cared to do so, I think I could show that _Phèdre_ herself
comes within the Bolæan[379] maledictions. As for _Athalie_, the very
admirers of Boileau have asked how, after his unsparing censure of the
religious epic, he could tolerate the religious drama?
-----
Footnote 379:
Cf. _Bolæana._ On the other hand, the Rev. J. Garbett, whom
anti-Tractarian feeling made Professor of Poetry at Oxford when Isaac
Williams was a candidate, has “Bollevian” (_De Re Critica
Prælectiones_, Oxford, 1847, _Præl._ iv. i.) I am not bigoted on the
point.
-----
Have we done? Not quite. After such a reformation, after such labours of
Hercules as we have held up to us, we are entitled to expect a new crop,
a new breed of poets rising everywhere from the purged and heartened
land. Is the poetic product of the last quarter of the seventeenth
century in France so admirable, so refreshing, such a contrast to the
period of Chapelain and Saint-Amant? I have some small acquaintance with
French literature, but I am unable to supply the names of the “Poets
like Shakespeare, Beautiful souls,” who, formed by the precepts of the
_Art Poétique_, rush in crowds upon the sight during that period. But,
it will be said, time must be given—the French poetry of the
_eighteenth_ century is the work of Boileau through his disciples. It
is: and by these fruits may he and they be justly judged. He cannot,
indeed, claim the admirable light work of Piron and the rest: some of it
very nearly, or quite, incurs his anathemas, and all is composed more or
less outside his precepts, and in accordance with the practice of La
Fontaine rather than with his. But he can claim the _Henriade_, and, _in
part_, the odes of J. B. Rousseau—he may be permitted even to assume the
laurels of Delille and of Le Brun—_Pindare_. Perhaps, despite the sacred
adage, the growth of the thorn does indicate the strength and
genuineness of the vine, and, perhaps, it can only be a fig which is so
fertile in such stately thistles.
But the real weakness of Boileau’s criticism does not fully appear till
we come to examine him on the true ground. [Sidenote: _Concluding
remarks on him._] What are his actual critical deliverances, on concrete
critical points, worth? We have seen something of the answer to this
already. A certain amount of his condemning censure—though nearly always
expressed without urbaneness, without humanity, with the hectoring and
bullying tone of an ill-conditioned schoolmaster, or the venom of a
spiteful rival—must be validated; there is no lack of bad writers at any
time, and Boileau’s provided a plentiful crop of them. But in most
instances these writers were unimportant weeds, who would have been cast
into the oven on the morrow of their flourishing, if Boileau had never
written a line. On the other hand, in regard to the two greatest
writers, in verse or drama, of his own day and country, Corneille and
Molière, he loses no opportunity of censuring the one, and accords, till
after his death, but faint and limited praise to the other. Even his
misbeloved ancients he cannot praise with the mingled enthusiasm and
acuteness that mark Longinus, or even Dionysius. The great merit of
Virgil, in his eyes, is that Virgil manages mythological “machines” so
deftly: and, if we look elsewhere at what he says of writers so
different as Æschylus and Ovid, we shall find a flat generality, with no
attempt even at the _mot propre_. Only on the satirists, at least on
Horace and Juvenal, is he better. For Boileau, as we have said, was a
satirist to the core, to the finger-tips, and here he speaks as he
feels. If we want his opinion on great modern foreign poets, we have it
explicitly on Tasso and Ariosto, implicitly in his silence about almost
everybody else.
I am not conscious of any unfairness or omission, though I do not
pretend to a mere colourless impartiality, in this survey; and after it
I think we may go back to the general question, may ask, Is this a great
or even a good critic? and may answer it in the negative. That Boileau
was important to his own time may be granted; that he was no ill
scavenger of certain sorts of literary rubbish may be granted; that he
gave help to those who chose to tread in the limited path to which
France was confining herself, so that they might tread it with somewhat
more grace, with much more of firmness and confidence than they would
otherwise have done—that, in short, he did for France something of the
same kind as that which Dryden did for England, may be granted. This is
not exactly a small thing. But before we call it a great one we must
look at the other side. Boileau did not, like Dryden, leave escapes and
safety-valves to the spirit that was too mighty for the narrower
channels of poetic style; he exhibited none of his contemporary’s
catholicity of mind and taste; he had none of his noble enthusiasms,
none of his constructive power and progressive flexibility in positive
critical estimate. The good that he did is terribly chequered by the
consideration that, in sharpening certain edges of the French mind, he
blunted and distorted others in a fashion which, after two hundred
years, has not been fully remedied. A great man of letters, perhaps; a
craftsmanlike “finisher of the law,” and no ill pedagogue in literature
certainly: but a great critic? Scarcely, I think.
Two writers at least, whom few would call lesser men of letters than
Boileau, and in whom some may see greater qualifications for criticism,
must be much more briefly dealt with, partly because in their case no
controversy is needed, partly because their actual contributions to
criticism form but a very small part of their work, and partly also
because neither aimed at for himself, or has received from posterity and
tradition, any very prominent place as a critic. [Sidenote: _La Bruyère
and Fénelon._] These are La Bruyère and Fénelon. It would not be correct
to say that either is in deliberate or conscious opposition to the
_législateur du Parnasse_. Their general conscious principles are much
the same as his; they are, like him, uncompromising defenders of the
Ancients, and though Fénelon has a private crotchet about poetic prose,
yet the non-essentiality of verse to poetry had been a general, if not a
universal, tenet with antiquity. But whether in consequence of that
impatience of despotism which those who love to mix literary and
political history have seen in the second generation of the _siècle de
Louis XIV._, as compared with the first; or from the fact that, as
compared with Boileau, they were much more of Greek,[380] and less of
purely Latin students; or simply as a result of what has been justly
attributed to both,[381] the predominance of the _sens propre_ over mere
observation of the _communis sensus_—it is certain that both, and
especially Fénelon, display much more individualism, and at the same
time much more catholicity. It may be added that they know more, and are
to some extent (though to no large one) free from that hopeless ignoring
of older French literature which was Boileau’s greatest fault.
-----
Footnote 380:
“Greek, the Alpha and Omega of all knowledge,” as Dr Folliott calls
it, is certainly not less so in criticism than elsewhere.
Footnote 381:
By M. Bourgoin in the interesting book cited above.
-----
La Bruyère’s[382] contribution is contained in the opening section, “Des
Ouvrages de l’Esprit,” of his famous _Caractères_. [Sidenote: _The “Des
Ouvrages de l’Esprit.”_] It is not very long; it is—according to the
plan of the work it is not merely entitled but obliged to be—studiously
desultory; and it is not perhaps improved by the other necessity of
throwing much of it into portraits of imaginary persons, who are
sometimes no doubt very close copies of real ones. But it contains some
open and undisguised judgments of the great writers of the past, and a
number of astonishingly original, pregnant, and monumentally phrased
observations of a general character. In fact I should not hesitate to
say that La Bruyère is, after Dryden, who had preceded him by twenty
years, the first very great man of letters in modern times who gave
himself to Criticism with a comparatively unshackled mind, and who has
put matter of permanent value in her treasuries without being a
professional rhetorician or commentator. [Sidenote: _General
observations._] We need not dwell on the famous overture _Tout est dit_,
for it is merely a brilliant example of the kind of paradox-shell or
rocket, half truth, half falsehood, which a writer of the kind explodes
at the beginning of his entertainment, to attract the attention of his
readers, and let them see the brilliancy of the stars that drop from it.
But how astonishing is it, in the 17th section, to find, two hundred
years and more ago, the full Flaubertian doctrine of the “single word”
laid down with confidence, and without an apparent sense that the writer
is saying anything new![383] No matter that soon after, in 20, we find
an old fallacy, ever new, put in the words, “Le plaisir de la critique
nous ôte celui d'être vivement touchés de très-belles choses.” If
criticism does this it is the wrong criticism—the criticism _à la_
Boileau, and not the criticism after the manner of Longinus. A man may
have spent a lifetime in reading “overthwart and endlong” (as the _Morte
d’Arthur_ says) in every direction of literature, in reading always
critically, and in reading for long years as professional reviewer, and
yet feel as keenly as ever the literary charm which age cannot wither
nor custom stale,—the “strong pleasure” of the beautiful word.
-----
Footnote 382:
Editions again innumerable; but none, I think, can compare with that
of M. Servois in the _Grands Écrivains de la France_ (Paris,
1865-1882).
Footnote 383:
“Entre toutes les différentes expressions qui peuvent rendre une seule
de nos pensées _il n’y en a qu’une_ qui soit la bonne,” &c.—_Ed.
cit._, i. 118.
-----
But how well he recovers himself, among other things, with the remarks
on the _Cid_, and the difference between the fine and the faultless at
30! with the declaration of independence immediately following in 31,
and practically drawing a cancel through the whole critical teaching of
Boileau! “Quand une lecture vous élève l’esprit, ... ne cherchez pas une
autre règle pour juger; il est bon.” How delicate his remarks in 37 on
the delicacy of touch, the illogical but impeccable concatenation, the
justice of phrase, of the best feminine writing! Not a few of his
observations are paraphrases or, as it were, echoes of Longinus himself,
whom he has assimilated as Longinus’ translator never could have done.
And if some further remarks on criticism in 63 seem to regard rather the
abuse than the nature of the art—if the famous “Un homme né Chrétien et
Français se trouve contraint dans la satire; les grands sujets lui sont
défendus,” is half a political grumble and half a paralogism, which was
to be accepted with fatal results in the next century—both this and
other things are redeemed throughout by the general independence and
freshness of the judgment, the vigour and decision of the phrase. In the
judgments of authors above referred to (which begin at 38 and continue
for some eight or nine numbers, to be resumed with special reference to
dramatists and dramas a little later), it is especially possible to
appreciate La Bruyère’s idiosyncrasy as a critic, the vivacity and power
of his natural endowments in this direction, and his drawback, arising
partly from sheer acceptance of prevailing opinion, and partly from the
fact that he is merely coasting the subject on his way to others.
In the joint or contrasted judgment of Terence and Molière the modern
man, according to his kind, may find something either to laugh or to be
irritated at. [Sidenote: _Judgments of authors._] Some would as soon
think of comparing the dribbling tap of a jar of distilled water to the
Falls of Schaffhausen. But La Bruyère practically shows himself as
conscious of the truth as his time would let him be when, allowing
Terence purity, exactness to rule, polish, elegance, character (_i.e._,
type-character), he ruins all by admitting that “il n’a manqué à lui que
d'être moins froid.” And if (as many did then, and some do now) he takes
that wrong view of style and language which permits them to accuse
Molière of “jargon,” of barbarism, he gives him fire, naïveté, a fount
of real pleasantry, exact representation (“imitation”) of manners,
imagery, and “the scourge of ridicule.” “What a man,” he says, “you
could have made of these two!” though how you can join fire and _froid_,
and what would have been left of Terence’s old-maidish neatness when
joined to such a husband, Heaven and Apollo only know! But we can see
very well that La Bruyère admires Molière because he does admire him,
and Terence because he is told to do so.
The conjunction, even in contrast, of Malherbe and Théophile has puzzled
some folk; but, as M. Servois points out, it is a mere matter of
chronology, and Boileau had done it before. And it is very noteworthy
that La Bruyère does not bear hardly on Théophile. The remark that Marot
seems more modern than Ronsard is perfectly well founded. And if there
is some oddity in his surprise that Marot, “natural and easy as he is,
did not make of Ronsard, so full of _verve_ and fire, a poet better than
either of them actually is,” it is much less odd, and much more acute,
than it looks at first sight. The judgment of Rabelais, a famous one, if
not wholly wide-eyed, keeps its eyes singularly wide open for so
artificial an age: and there is a whole volume in the double defence of
Montaigne against opposite criticisms, to the effect that he is too full
of thought for some men, and too natural in his mode of thinking for
others.
It is by no means certain that the unnamed author aimed at in 52 is
Molière, and the most fervent of “Cornelians” can hardly quarrel with
the judgment that Corneille is unequalled where he is good, but more
often unequal to himself. La Bruyère seems, though rather furtively, to
set the awful Unities at nought in this great dramatist’s favour; and he
is both just and happy in praising the variety of Corneille as compared
to the monotony of Racine. The whole article, which is a long one, is
distinctly on the Cornelian side, though far from unjust to Racine; and
one can well understand the disconcerting effect which it seems to have
produced on Voltaire.
On the whole, the only reasons for not ranking La Bruyère’s criticism
very high indeed are that there is so little of it, and that it is
obviously the work of a man to whom it is more a casual pastime than a
business—who has not thought himself out all along the line in it, but
has emitted a few observations. Still, those which express his
deliberate opinions are almost always sound, and only some of those
which he has adopted without examination are wholly or partially false.
The critical utterances of Fénelon[384] are much more voluminous, though
in part, at least, not quite so disinterested, and they are of a very
high critical interest and value. [Sidenote: _Fénelon. The_ Dialogues
sur l’Eloquence.] They are contained in two documents, the _Dialogues
sur l’Eloquence_ (which, though not known, is believed to be a work of
his early manhood, but was only published after his death by the
Chevalier Ramsay) and one of his very latest pieces, the _Mémoire sur
les Occupations de l’Académie Française_, sent in, to obey a resolution
of that body, in November 1713, with the much longer explanatory letter
of the next year thereon to Dacier.
-----
Footnote 384:
It is a pity that in the best modern account known to me, that of M.
Bourgoin, the question of Fénelon’s character and of his relations
with Bossuet is brought in. It is really quite extraneous to the
matter. Very favourable reference can be made to the notice by the
Cardinal de Bausset, prefixed to the most accessible edition of
Fénelon’s critical work (in _Œuvres Choisies_, Paris, Garnier, n.d.)
Bausset, who wrote, besides an extensive life of Fénelon, one of
Bossuet, and died in 1824, came before the Renaissance of criticism in
France: but he was no _perruque_.
-----
The first is conditioned—unfavourably it may seem for our purpose—by its
avowed limitation to _sacred_ eloquence. A young aspirant to the cloth
has fallen in love with a fashionable preacher, wishes a cooler friend
to share his enthusiasm, and, being rebuffed, elicits from that friend
by degrees a complete criticism of the rhetoric of the pulpit, and the
rules that should govern it. Since we have found discussions, even of
profane oratory, surprisingly barren in pure literary criticism of old,
this of sacred may seem still less promising. But though Fénelon’s
interest in the soul-curing part of the matter is constant and intense,
he does not allow it either to obscure or to adulterate his literary
censure. At first, in particular, the arguments of his “A” (the critical
friend who, no doubt, is Fénelon himself) not merely have nothing more
to do with the pulpit than with the bar or the Senate, but have little
if anything more to do with spoken than with written literature. The
disdainful description (at p. 5 _ed. cit._) of that epigrammatic or
enigmatic style, which is always with us, as _des tours de passe-passe_;
the excellent passage (ibid., 7-9) on Demosthenes, Isocrates, Dionysius
of Halicarnassus, and Longinus himself—on whom Fénelon speaks with far
more appreciation than Boileau, and probably with more knowledge than
Dryden; the bold attitude taken up at p. 18 on the question of the
perfect hero; the exaltation (perhaps the most noteworthy thing in the
whole) of “painting,” of bringing the visual image home to the reader,
at p. 35; the scorn of mere verbal fault-finding at p. 47; the ardent
panegyric of the literary greatness of the Bible at p. 69; and of the
Fathers at p. 86 _sq._—all these passages, which are almost pure gold of
criticism, have nothing special to do with the mere _métier_ of the
preacher. That Fénelon was neither perfect nor wholly beyond his time is
quite true. He has here a deplorable assault on Gothic Architecture
(which he repeats at greater length in the Academic letter, and for
which, if he had not been so good and great a man, one could wish the
stones of his cathedral to have fallen upon him), and his contempt
extends to mediæval literature. But the same doom is on the best of
archbishops and the most beautiful of girls: they can but give what they
have.
And Fénelon gives very much. The Memoir and Letter above referred to
were elicited by a demand on Academicians for proposals in regard to the
reorganising of the work of the Academy. [Sidenote: Sur les Occupations
de l’Académie Française.] Here, therefore, as in the other case, the
immediate purpose is special; but the general literary interests of the
critic again prevent it from being specialised in the dismal and deadly
modern sense. He does not fail to deal with the daily dreadful line of
the Dictionary; but he proposes, as supplements, divers things—a new
_Poetic_, a new _Rhetoric_, Chrestomathies from the Ancients on both
heads (things needed to this day), and above all, a complete Academic
edition of the great classics of France, with really critical
introduction and annotations, or at least a corpus of critical
observations on them.
But, as usual, it is in the incidental remarks that the value of the
piece lies; and these make it, I do not hesitate to say, the most
valuable single piece of criticism that France had yet produced. Fénelon
shows his acquaintance with other modern languages; and pays a
particular compliment to Prior, who, it must be remembered, was about
this time occupying his rather uneasy post of Ambassador. He may be too
hasty in saying that the Italians and Spaniards will perhaps never make
good tragedies or epigrams, nor the French good epics and sonnets, as he
most certainly is too ignorant in saying that “after our ancient poets”
[a very few, mostly undistinguished persons, in the latter part of the
sixteenth century] had tried classical metres and failed, “we” [the
French of course] “had to invent measures suitable to our words.” But he
is astonishingly bold in his recurrence to Pléiade principles, and in
actually urging English as a good example on the point of taking from
neighbours any word found convenient. He says plumply “de telles
usurpations _sont permises_” (p. 103 _ed. cit._) Alas! in England
itself, and after two centuries, one uses this just liberty at personal
risk. His Rhetoric section partly repeats the _Dialogues_, and is
altogether more technical or professional than literary. [Sidenote: _And
its challenge to correctness._] But his Poetical section is full of
interest. It is marred by that not quite single-minded fancy for prose
poetry which has already been glanced at, and to which we shall have to
return. But the attack on rhyme is partly excused, and the, at first
sight, bewildering remark (p. 123) that “rhyme is of itself more
difficult than all the rules of Greek and Latin prosody” is rendered
intelligible, by a remembrance of the extremely arbitrary rules which
had by this time been imposed on the French rhymer. The paragraph on
Ronsard,[385] the best known piece of the whole, is admirable in its
tempering of sympathy with censure; and the acknowledgment of the
“opposite extreme” into which French for more than a century had
fallen,[386] is one of the great epoch-making sentences of criticism. Of
course it was not attended to; but for a hundred years and more French
literature bore ever-increasing testimony to its truth.
-----
Footnote 385:
P. 125 _ed. cit._
Footnote 386:
“L’excès choquant de Ronsard nous a un peu jetés dans l’extrémité
opposée; on a appauvri, desséché et gâté notre langue.” And he
proceeds, with much humour and more truth, to stigmatise the prim
following of grammar, the “substantive hand in hand with its
adjective,” the verb “walking behind with an adverb at its heels, and
an accusative in a place unalterable.” “C’est ce,” this great _locus_
continues, “qui exclut toute suspension d’esprit, toute surprise,
toute variété, et souvent toute magnifique cadence.” 1830 could say no
more; and often said it with less authority.
-----
The censure of French drama is injured, partly by certain prejudices of
the moralist and the theologian, and partly by less accountable
crotchets. On Molière in particular, though he cannot help admiring the
greatest of his contemporary countrymen, he is something from which we
had best turn our faces, putting likewise into the wallet at our backs
(and Time’s) the complaints of _la basse plaisanterie de Plaute_, and
the statement that _on se passe volontiers d’Aristophane_. The point is
the quantity of opinion which is not for Oblivion’s alms-bag. And,
abundant as this is in Fénelon, the quality of it is more remarkable
even than the quantity. He always prefers the study of author, and book,
and piece, and phrase, to the study of Kind and the manufacture of Rule.
Though he is in no sense an Anarchist, and may even have sometimes his
cloth rather too much in his remembrance, yet he remembers likewise, and
transfers to profane things, the sacred precept, “Prove all things: hold
fast that which is good.” The fatal fault of the extremest kind of
neo-classic criticism—the weak point in all of it—is the usual refusal
to “prove” the work, even to see whether it is good or not, if it fails
to answer at first blush to certain arbitrary specifications. Fénelon is
free from this: he has escaped from the House of Bondage.
We have for some time been occupied with the critical work of great men
of letters; we must now turn to that of four men who, if they had not
been critics, would hardly have been heard of in their own day, and
would certainly not be remembered by posterity out of their own
country—or perhaps in it. As it was, all the four exercised immense
influence, not merely in France but elsewhere, and three of them saw
their work promptly translated into English, and received with almost
touching deference in the country which had Dryden to look to for
criticism, nay, by Dryden himself. The order in which we may take them
shall be determined by that of the appearance of their principal
critical works. The _Pratique du Théâtre_ of François Hédelin, Abbé
d’Aubignac, appeared in 1657; the first _Réflexions_ of Rapin in 1668;
the _Entretiens d’Ariste_ of Bouhours in 1671; and the _Traité du Poème
Epique_ of Le Bossu in 1675. All four, it is to be observed, were
clerics of one sort or another, while Rapin and Bouhours were
schoolmasters, and Hédelin was at least a private tutor. Taken together,
they exhibit the hand-book and school-book side of the criticism of
which Boileau is the contemporary satiric expositor to the world; and
their criticism cannot properly be dissociated from his. As dates
sufficiently show, they do not in any sense derive from him; nor, to do
him justice, does he from them. The whole quintet, with others of less
importance, are all the more valuable exponents of the strong
contemporary set of the tide in the direction of hard-and-fast
“classical” legislation for literature.
It is among the few and peculiar laurels of the Abbé D’Aubignac to have
failed in more kinds of literature than most men try. [Sidenote: _The
Abbé D’Aubignac._] His tragedy of _Zénobie_ (1647) was the occasion of a
well-known epigram from the great Condé, which is not the less good for
its obviousness, and which, with equal ease and justice,[387] can be
adjusted to his criticism. He is more of an Aristotelian “know-nothing”
than La Mesnardière, and has very much less talent. Not content with the
_Pratique_ (which, as has been said, was really a belated contribution
to the cabal against Corneille), he attacked two of the great
tragedian’s later plays, _Sophonisbe_ and _Sertorius_, in his
_Dissertations en forme de Remarques_ (1663), and he had many years
earlier attempted to justify Terence against the strictures of Ménage.
The historian of criticism would have been grateful to him had he
confined himself to writing tractates “On the nature of Satyrs, Brutes,
Monsters, and Demons,”[388] _Relations du Royaume de Coquetterie_, and
novels like the rather well-named _Macarise_, or _the Queen of the
Fortunate Isles_. For these we could simply have neglected.
-----
Footnote 387:
_Zénobie_ boasted herself to be impeccably “regular.” The Prince
observed that he was much obliged to the Abbé for paying such
attention to Aristotle, but that he could not excuse Aristotle for
making the Abbé write such a tragedy. This famous _mot_, like others,
is of disputed attribution. It is sometimes given to the Prince de
Rohan-Guémené.
Footnote 388:
A work of youth which appeared as early as 1627. Hédelin was never
elected to the Academy; and in 1664 endeavoured to start a new one of
his own from a coterie which he, in imitation of Conrart, had formed.
But “Trajan was” _not_ “content,” wisely enough: and France was spared
a skim-milk Forty.
-----
The _Pratique_, unfortunately, we cannot neglect wholly, because of its
position as a symptom and an influence. [Sidenote: _His_ Pratique du
Théâtre.] In reading it,[389] the generous mind oscillates between a
sense of intolerable boredom, and a certain ruth at the obviously honest
purpose and industry that underlie the heaps of misapplied learning, and
season the gabble of foolish authority-citing. He begins by a
demonstration that all great statesmen have always patronised stately
games, of which scenic representation is one. Vulgar minds have nothing
to do with it (this was a slap at Castelvetro and his horrible doctrine
of pleasing the multitude, which is a real _lethalis arundo_ in the
sides of all these Frenchmen). He is, we are rather surprised to hear,
_not_ going to theorise. All the theory has been done, and done once for
all, by the ancients. What he wants to do is to apply this theory to all
the practical contingencies. And this he does through Unities and
Episodes, through Acts and Scenes, through Narration, Discourse,
Deliberation, everything, with sleuth-hound patience on his own part,
and requiring Job’s variety on that of his readers. He is sometimes
quite fair even to Corneille, he seems to be quite well-meaning; but he
cannot help his nativity of dulness, and at his very best he is a critic
of dramaturgy, not of drama.
-----
Footnote 389:
It forms the first volume of the Amsterdam edition, in 3 vols. (1715),
of Hédelin’s critical work. The second and third, which are together
about the size of the first, include the extensive and dismal
lucubrations on Terence, &c.
-----
René Rapin, hardly as one sometimes feels inclined to think and speak of
him, was a person of an entirely different order. [Sidenote: _Rapin._]
In fact, it is very much more on isolated and particular points than on
generals that he lays himself open to reproach, though it may be
retorted that the generals, which lead logically (as they usually do) to
such absurd particulars, are thereby utterly condemned themselves. It
was specially unfortunate for Rapin that his principles and precepts
were at once caught up in England by a man like Rymer,[390] and
expounded in coarse and blunted form to a people still green and
unknowing in critical matters. [Sidenote: _His method partly good._]
There is even much in his method which deserves high praise. It is very
noteworthy that, before he presumed to draw up (or at least to give to
the world) his _Réflexions_ on the _Poetics_ and on Poetry, on
Eloquence, on History, and on Philosophy, he had preluded by elaborate
examinations of the actual documents in the shape of “Comparisons”—“Of
Homer and Virgil,” “Of Cicero and Demosthenes,” “Of Thucydides and
Livy,” “Of Plato and Aristotle.” And though this sort of “cock-fight
comparison” (as the more vernacular writers of his own time in English
might have said) is “muchwhat” (as his translator Rymer actually does
say) of a mistake, unless pursued with the greatest possible care—though
it was already hackneyed in itself and constantly in need of extending,
supplementing, blending—yet it is at any rate infinitely superior to the
examination _in vacuo_, the rattling of dry bones and abstract kinds and
qualities, to which too many of his contemporaries confined themselves.
-----
Footnote 390:
Who translated (with a preface not virulently Rymerical, _v. infra_,
p. 392) Rapin’s _Reflections upon Poetry_ almost as soon as it
appeared. Rapin was a copious theologian, an elegant and fertile Latin
versifier. Of his critical works in French, the _Comparaisons_ noted
above were produced annually between 1668 and 1671, except the
“Thucydides and Livy,” which appeared ten years later. The _Réflexions
sur l’Eloquence_ date from 1672: those, more famous, on Poetics and
Poets, from 1674. His critical _Works_ were early collected, and the
complete collection appeared in English, by various hands, including
Rymer’s, in 2 vols. (London, 1706). The Amsterdam ed. of the original
(3 vols., 1709-10) contains, in addition, a small treatise, _Du Grand
et du Sublime_, which must not be neglected, and some others, together
with the _Comparaison de Pindare_ et _d’Horace_ of the architect
Blondel.
-----
Unfortunately Rapin himself was always, consciously or unconsciously,
tending towards this other method; and even in his comparisons—much more
in the extended survey of ancient and modern writers which he subjoins
to the _Réflexions_—he is still more constantly seduced by that
labelling criticism which we have traced long ago to the “canonising”
way of the Alexandrians, and for which we have said hard things of
Fronto and others. [Sidenote: _His particular absurdities as to Homer in
blame._] Yet further, both his general style of criticism, and his
prepossessions of this or that kind, constantly draw him into pitfalls
only less absurd than those in which Rymer himself wallows. I do not
remember that Rapin ever lays it down that a hero must not be a black
man; probably the French had not been afflicted—for I suppose they did
not make Syphax black—with any poet daring enough to start the question.
But he does other things which, though less conspicuously, are quite as
really silly. In the moral section[391] of his comparison between Homer
and Virgil he has too much of the Jesuit schoolmaster, with his
reverence towards boys, to mention that terrible scene between Zeus and
Hera which had already distressed the compatriots of Aristophanes and
Martial, and which remains one of the earliest examples of absolutely
perfect poetry in a particular kind. But he makes up for it. We have, of
course, the “wine-heavy, dog-eyed, hare-hearted” line to mourn over. How
undignified of Homer to make Achilles anxious about the preservation of
the body of Patroclus from corruption! How could Ulysses, with such an
excellent wife and such an amiable son, waste time with Calypso and
dangle after Circe, to whom the pudibund Rapin applies epithets which
_our_ Decorum prevents us from repeating, and for which he deserved to
be both shipwrecked and turned into a Gryll. Was it quite nice of Priam,
as a father, to wish all his children dead so Hector were alive?
Nausicaa is too shocking. A Princess’s face should _not_ show grace, the
Jesuit thinks,[392] to men in Ulysses’ condition.
-----
Footnote 391:
Chap. vii. In the preceding chapter there is one of those sentences
which ruin this kind of criticism, by and of themselves. “Games are of
the number of those actions which may occur in the lives of heroes.”
Most certainly: but one feels that Rapin said it simply because there
are games in Homer and Virgil, and that, if there had _not_ been, he
would probably have said, “Games are _not_,” &c.
Footnote 392:
“Cette Princesse oublie sa pudeur pour écouter sa compassion....” In
the rest of the clause the English translator softens the crudity of
the French _curiosité_. But it is still more pleasant to oppose to the
nasty niceness of the French Jesuit the words of the author of _The
Christian Year_: “_Nausicaa—cujus persona nihil usquam aut venustius
habet aut pudentius veterum Poesis_” (_Præl._ xii. vol. i. p. 195,
Oxford, 1844).
-----
Whereas with Virgil it is quite different. Everybody, including the
Gods, behaves “like persons of Quality.” [Sidenote: _As to Virgil in
praise._] Even in the case of _Dido dux et Trojanus_ there is no
violation of modesty,[393] which certainly seems either a little
Escobarish towards them, or a little severe to Circe and Calypso.
Indeed, we sometimes find ourselves rather lost with Rapin’s morality.
For, in another passage (Chap. XIII.), he actually discovers _un
artifice des plus délicats et des plus fins_ in Virgil’s taking away
Dido’s character, though History had made her a Lady of very good
repute.[394] For he did it to bring into contempt the Carthaginians who
were afterwards to become odious to Rome. “A nice marality!” indeed, as
my Lord Foppington observed of another matter, not so very long after
Rapin wrote this.
-----
Footnote 393:
_Mais la pudeur ni toutes les bienséances extérieures n’y sont point
blessées._
Footnote 394:
So the English: Fr. “femme de bien.” I like to read Rapin in both
versions, contemporary as they are, and antiphonal of the sentiment of
the time, in its two chief languages.
-----
Yet even here it is fair to observe that Rapin is at least trying to
make the two ends of his “reason” and his “reflection” meet: and so it
is always:—
“His reason rooted in unreason stands,
And sense insensate makes him idly wise.”
The consequences are patent on every page, and a chapter might be not
disagreeably filled with them. [Sidenote: _As to others._] Pegasus is
admirable, but the Hippogriff is the vain imagination of a sick brain:
Camilla touching, but Bradamante absurd. Achilles retires from the
Grecian army because he is discontented; Æneas goes to Italy because he
is pious; and Medea kills her children because she is revengeful—a
passage in which it is agreeable to perceive the obvious first draught
of “I love my love with an A.” As for the moderns, Du Bartas and Ronsard
had all the genius their age was capable of—a text for a sermon as long
as this Book. “Scarce aught can be understood” of the _Agamemnon_! In
fact, quotations[395] simply leap to the eye as one reads the page.
-----
Footnote 395:
These latter are mostly from the _Réflexions sur la Poétique_
(_Œuvres_, ii. 175 _sq._) It is quite at the beginning of these that
the unlucky charge against Dante of “wanting fire” (see i. 175 _note_)
occurs; it is followed later, and perhaps to some extent explained, if
not excused, by the further criticism that he has “l’air trop
profond,” “une ordonnance triste et morne.”
-----
It is more important, if less amusing, to inquire how a man, obviously
of much ability, extremely well informed, freer, it would seem, from
mere prejudice than most of his fellows, came in this way to be
constantly stumbling over blocks that the veriest blockhead might, one
would think, have avoided, and running against blank walls, of which a
blind man might, it should seem, have been aware. [Sidenote: _The
reading of his riddle._] Rapin is, perhaps, the main and appointed Helot
of the neo-classic system. That system, instead of assembling all the
great works of literary art, and giving an impartial hearing to each,
takes one or two ancient treatises, themselves necessarily based upon
but a partial examination, spins out of them a universal code, fills in
that code, where it is wanting, with analogies and with perilous
makeshifts of “decorum,” uniformity, and the like, and then proceeds to
apply the result back to the actual works of art. It is no wonder that,
even of the ancient division of these, hardly one escapes scot-free,
except those which were originally composed by men of great, but not the
greatest, genius, on a somewhat similar scheme. Elsewhere the
unfortunate critic is constantly catching himself in those bushes which
he has himself planted, and bruising himself against obstacles which he
has elaborately set up. In a general way he grants that Homer is the
greatest of poets; but the Fetiches of “Design” and “Decorum” extort
from him the sacrifice of this in detail, and the acknowledgment that
Homer is frequently most indecorous, and that large parts of him are out
of drawing. And so of all.
Le Bossu (to whom the English sometimes give a superfluous final _t_,
whom they generally defraud of his rightful “Le,” and whom in the main
they know only from the _locus classicus_ of Sterne)[396] reapproximates
to the Aubignacian level. [Sidenote: _Le Bossu and the Abstract Epic._]
But it is fair to say that his dulness arises from a different cause. He
is not, like Hédelin, a stupid man—he is distinctly the reverse—nor is
he spiteful. He is merely the hardiest and most thoroughgoing devotee of
a certain kind of abstract criticism. He does, of course, give us
chapters on some actual illustrations of Heroic or Epic; but they are
scarcely more necessary to his book than the picture-illuminations of a
poem or a novel. Being a writer of some _esprit_, he sometimes exercises
it in rather dangerous fictions—for instance, his imagined epic of
Meridarpax, where all the mouse-stories (mouse and lion, town and
country mouse, &c.) are worked in, would be most sprightly, if it did
not look sprightlier still as an exercise in laughing at his own side.
But by far the greater bulk, and the whole vertebration and solid
substance, of his argument are devoted to Epic in the Abstract. Design,
definition, and parts; good fables and bad fables; episodes; the
biology, so to speak, of the Action, the narration, the manners and
characters, not forgetting the Machines, and at last something on the
Thoughts and Expression—which have about one-ninth of the whole. In
short, if we have not exactly Epic _in vacuo_, we have it as a dried
preparation. The complexity, anti-sensuousness, and dispassionate
character of it are almost abashing; one feels at the end that, to
hanker after an actual poem, be it _Iliad_ or _Orlando_, has something
sinful—something of the lust of the flesh.
-----
Footnote 396:
_Tristram Shandy_, iii. 12. He was not always unknown among us.
Dryden, whether out of modesty, fashion, or humour, takes leave to
call him “the best of modern critics,” and he was translated in 1695.
The mistakes referred to above are all the worse because there was
actually a French writer named Bossut, a mathematician of distinction
in the eighteenth century.
-----
We have said that Le Bossu is rather a sprightly person of a
hyper-scholastic kind. [Sidenote: _Bouhours._] His brother Father,
Bouhours, is still more so; indeed, his famous inquiry, “Si un Allemand
peut-être bel-esprit?”[397] has got him rather into trouble with a
prevailing party, in and out of Germany. Beginning with the _Entretiens
d’Ariste et d’Eugène_ (1671), a collection of chiefly verbal criticism
on French writers, he continued it with other works in _belles lettres_
and theology, the most important of which, to us, is _La Manière de Bien
Penser dans les Ouvrages d’Esprit_ (1687).[398] The book, which is not
short, consists of four Dialogues between Eudoxe and Philanthe, “deux
hommes de lettres (as the author remarks in a phrase to which Time has
given a piquant new meaning) _que la science n’a point gâtés_.” Eudoxe,
as the name indicates, is the author’s mouthpiece—a judicious admirer of
the Ancients, who can yet tolerate such moderns as Voiture. Philanthe
(also a speaking name) is a partisan of florid modernity, who is,
however, so little of a “stalwart” that he gives up Ariosto, and
intrenches himself behind Tasso and Lope. In the First dialogue Eudoxe
censures (with abundant citation, as throughout the book) Equivoques,
Hyperboles, _pointes_, _concetti_, and, generally, thoughts that are
“not _true_.” The Second and Third, starting from Longinus and
Hermogenes, discuss the true and the false in Sublimity and Wit: and the
Fourth is mainly devoted to Obscurity. Bouhours (whose influence on
subsequent critics, especially on Addison, was very great) writes
agreeably, is free from rudeness and pedantry, and is altogether rather
a favourable example of the school of Good Sense, _quand même_. But, as
favourable examples of bad schools generally do, he damages his cause
more than less favourable ones, because its drawbacks are more obvious
and intrinsic. On his principles you must ostracise the best, the
noblest, the most charming, the most _poetic_ things in poetry. _Et
c’est tout dire._
-----
Footnote 397:
_Not_, as it is constantly quoted, _peut avoir de l’esprit_. It will
be observed that the difference is considerable.
Footnote 398:
My copy is the 2nd ed. of next year in 12mo.
-----
As we approach the close of the chapter, we come upon classes and masses
of work which is at once impossible to examine in particular and, as a
whole, elusive. In [Sidenote: _Encyclopædias and Newspapers._] 1687
appeared the _Jugements des Savants_[399] of Baillet, and ten years
later the still more famous _Dictionnaire Historique et Critique_ of
Bayle, who had preluded it, from a time antecedent to that of Baillet’s
publication, by _Nouvelles de la République de Lettres_, a regular
literary review. Long before this latter the _Journal des Savants_[400]
and the _Mercure Galant_[401] in France had provided criticism, good,
bad, and indifferent, with regular outlets for itself. And in both
kinds—that of the dictionary or encyclopædia, and that of the
periodical—the flood has never ceased, but has always increased since.
Fortunately for us the impossibility of treating all this is compensated
by the fact that such treatment, if possible, would be superfluous. But
of Bayle and Baillet at least something must be said particularly, and
something also of a remarkable and much less known continuator of the
latter.
-----
Footnote 399:
The standard edition is that of La Monnoye (7 vols. 4to, Paris, 1722,
with an 8th containing Ménage’s _Anti-Baillet_ &c.)
Footnote 400:
Jan. 1665—first weekly, then monthly. It became a government
publication in 1701. Gui Patin, in the March after its appearance, is
very angry (Let. DCLXV. iii. 517, _ed. cit. sup._) with it, and says
with voice prophetic of many injured ones to come, “nous verrons si
ces prétendus censeurs, _sine suffragio populi et Quiritium_, auront
le crédit et l’autorité de critiquer ainsi tous ceux qui n'écriront
pas à leur goût.”
Footnote 401:
1672-1820. Donneau de Visé was its first editor, and Thomas Corneille
its most distinguished writer.
-----
Bayle perhaps needed nothing but better taste, greater freedom from
prejudice, and a more exclusive bent towards purely literary criticism,
to be one of the great literary critics of the world. [Sidenote:
_Bayle._] But, unluckily for himself, he had contracted, through corrupt
following doubtless of the Latins (even such respectable persons as
Pliny) and of the scholars of the Renaissance, a sort of perpetual itch
and hankering after the indecent, which, to say nothing else, is as
teasing and as tedious in the long-run as an itch for sermonising and a
hankering after instruction. Equally tedious, and in much worse taste,
is the perpetual undercurrent—not seldom becoming a very obvious
top-flood—of sceptical girding and nagging at the Bible and at religion
generally. In both these respects Bayle was followed by Voltaire. But
Voltaire, though his own literary sympathies were perhaps not his
strongest, had some. Of purely literary sympathies Bayle seldom shows
much trace—by which it is not in the least meant that he is not a man of
letters himself, for he is an excellent one, and the reproaches which
have been addressed to his style are not of much importance. But it is
not literature that he really loves: it is “philosophy” of a kind, and
gossip of almost all kinds. His wits are always bright and alert, and
his learning, though associated with so many qualities opposed to those
of the mere pedant, and not impeccable, is pretty sound. He has the
curiosity, the acuteness, the erudition, the industry of the true
critic, but he has neither the enthusiasm, nor the disinterestedness,
nor the grasp.
In both these respects, as in others, Baillet is very much a diminutive
of him. [Sidenote: _Baillet._] In fact, brightness of wit has almost
disappeared; and though Ménage—himself no infallible guide—has been both
ill-mannered and hypercritical in the strictures of the _Anti-Baillet_,
there is no doubt that the _Jugements des Savants_ is a book not to be
used without verification on particular points. But this is almost a
property, or, at worst, an inseparable accident, of these _Collectanea_;
and a fair-minded reader cannot help admiring the extraordinary industry
with which Baillet executed his task, while appreciating the
significance of this record of a division of literature which, as we saw
at the close of the last volume, had, scarcely two centuries before, the
most meagre representation of all.[402]
-----
Footnote 402:
It can scarcely be necessary to give bricks of so large and rambling a
house. “Mr Borrichius témoigne aussi que le style [_of Ovid’s
Heroides_] est fort pur” is, and has to be, the kind of thing. Perhaps
such a glut of authorities may have insensibly nauseated men of
authority, and so Baillet may have worked both ways. He is good enough
to admit (v. 461) that “one cannot say this nation [the English] is
inferior even for Poetry to several others of the North,” and he has
heard of “Abraham Cowley, John Downe ou Jean Donne, Cleveland, Edmond,
[_sic_] Waller, Jean Denham, George Herbert, le Chancelier Bacon,
Shakespeare, Fletcher, Beaumont, Ben, Johnson, Suckling, Jean Milton,”
&c. It is open to Shaconians to contend that as the comma at “Edmond”
is undoubtedly superfluous, so is that at “Bacon,” and that
Baillet—the learned Baillet—meant to rank “le Chancelier
Bacon-Shakespeare” among poets.
-----
Curiously enough the want of judgment with which Baillet has been, and
to some extent may justly be, reproached shows itself exactly in the
most unlikely place. [Sidenote: _The ethos of a Critical Pedant._] His
opening volume on the nature, legitimacy, and so forth of Criticism,
though too prolix, collects an extraordinary number of just and valuable
things, and adds to them at least something of the author’s own. His
Character of a Pedantic, Chicaning, Malicious Critic (partly borrowed
from Le Bon, partly elaborated by himself) will be found at vol. i. p.
52., and has been justified by some seven generations of the persons it
describes. It is Pedantry “to pick low and little faults, and to excite
yourself over matters which are of no importance.” It is Pedantry “to
steal from an author and insult him at the same time; to tear
outrageously those who differ with you in opinion.” It is Pedantry “to
endeavour to raise the whole world against some one who does not think
enough of Cicero.” It is Pedantry “to take occasion by an author’s
mistake to endeavour to humiliate him and ruin his reputation.” It is
Pedantry “to send your author back in a haughty manner to the lowest
class, and to menace him with whip and ferule for an error in
chronology.” It is not merely Pedantry but Chicanery “to separate
phrases in order to give them another sense,” to “impute printers’
errors,” to “neglect or change punctuation.” We need not go on to
Baillet’s signs of “Malignity”: the cap is already a good cap, a very
good cap, and one need not go far to find some one to wear it.
A boiling down of this volume—which, so far as I know, has never been
executed—would be far superior to most general works on the subject with
which I am acquainted. Nor is Baillet’s distribution of his scheme
altogether a bad one. It is in the detailed carrying out (where one
would suppose that for a man of such industry the least part of the
difficulty lay) that he is most unsatisfactory. He neglects—in a manner
surprising from one of that still scholastically educated generation of
ecclesiastics, who were wont positively to abuse division and
subdivision—the most obvious and mechanical assistances of method. His
first sketch of subdivisions, though wanting succinctness, is not ill;
but he never really carries it out, and stuffs in its stead long
collections on “Precocious Persons,” “Authors in Disguise,” and “Les
_Anti_” (books of a polemic character with titles so beginning), which
belong only to the curiosities of Criticism. Further, he never seems to
have set out, in any of the divisions, with a preliminary list of the
authors he meant to handle, so that his omissions and inclusions are
equally surprising. And, lastly, he never seems to have worked out any
preliminary calculus of the amount of space which such authors as he
does admit proportionately deserve. But the extent of his knowledge is
astounding, and the way in which he communicates it not disagreeable.
Baillet’s unmethodical prosecution of his task was in this fortunate for
us that it induced a somewhat younger contemporary, Balthasar Gibert, to
take up the rhetorical-critical side of his work, and continue it in a
book[403] not very much known but of great value. [Sidenote: _Gibert._]
In strict date it belongs to the next century, and therefore to the next
Book, but we have always taken, and shall always take, liberty of
protracting or foreshortening our views as may be desirable; and this is
avowedly a supplement to Baillet, though limited in subject, allowing,
in consequence, fuller treatment of individuals, and displaying a good
deal more originality and judgment. Gibert excellently supplies
Baillet’s admitted insufficiency as to Longinus; he is very copious on
Hermogenes, who had been coming, from Sturm downwards, into more and
more estimation; and if in his accounts of the Italians he shows a
traditional rather than an adequately comparative estimate,[404] he is
sufficiently modern to give a quite considerable abstract of “M.
Mackenze” (_sic_), _i.e._, Sir George Mackenzie’s _Idea Eloquentiæ
Forensis Hodiernæ_. That he “but yaws neither” between Rhetoric and
Criticism is a point of no importance against him; and it is a valuable
document for the gradual transformation of the one into the other.
-----
Footnote 403:
_Jugements des Savants sur les auteurs qui ont traité de la
Rhétorique_ (3 vols., Paris, 1703-16). M. Bourgoin, I think, refers to
Gibert, but the book was first brought seriously to my notice by a
very kind private communication from Professor Scott of the University
of Michigan. Luckily it is in the British Museum; but it does not seem
easy to obtain a copy for oneself. Gibert taught for some half-century
in the Collége Mazarin, and was repeatedly rector of the University of
Paris. He wrote other books,—a formal “Rhetoric” _juxta Aristotelis
doctrinam_, strictures on Rollin, &c. Gibert is, it seems, appended to
some edd. of Baillet.
Footnote 404:
See, for instance, his reference to Patrizzi, who is evidently to him
rather _magni nominis umbra_ than anything tangible.
-----
We have to terminate this chapter, as we shall have to begin the
corresponding one in the next Book, by saying something on the
famous—the much too famous—Battle of the Ancients and the Moderns; but
the space which we shall give it on both occasions will appear
strangely, and perhaps scandalously, short to some readers. [Sidenote:
_The Ancient and Modern Quarrel._] Neither idleness nor caprice,
however, can be justly charged against the contraction. In the first
place, things generally known may be justifiably passed with slighter
notice in a continuous history, which has to deal with much that is very
little known. From all sides, and in all ways, the Battle of the
Ancients and Moderns is very well known indeed. It enjoys, and for more
than a generation has enjoyed, the advantage of occupying one of the
best monographs ever written. It engaged, on repeated occasions, the
attention of the best equipped and the most readable of all French, if
not of all, critics—Sainte-Beuve. It was arranged—not ill if not wholly
well—for popular English consumption by the expert skill of Macaulay. As
a result partly of Swift’s genuine literary sympathies, partly of his
more or less accidental connections, the commentators of one of the
greatest writers not only of England, but of the world, have been driven
to expound it: as have, for more essential reasons, those of more than
two or three great or interesting writers in France—Boileau, Perrault,
Fontenelle, and others. From all this almost everybody must have learnt
something about it, and to some of all this almost everybody can fairly
be referred if he wishes to learn more.
For the matter is not really of so much importance in the History of
Criticism as it may at first sight appear to possess. [Sidenote: _Its
small critical value._] These quarrels rarely do much critical good; for
the critical issues are almost always obscured in them, first by the
_animus_ and prejudice of the combatants, and then by the mere dust of
the fighting. But this particular combat did perhaps the least good of
all; and could have done the least good. It was indeed sufficiently
inevitable: for the sort of deification with which the whole of the
sixteenth century, and most orthodox authority in the earlier
seventeenth, had regarded antiquity, was sure to breed revolt. But it
led to no conclusion; it evolved no truth. Truth is not the daughter of
Ignorance; and it is really hard to say which party shows most ignorance
in this matter. The defenders of the Ancients knew, as a rule, next to
nothing of the Moderns; and the defenders of the moderns knew a great
deal too little of the ancients. La Motte knew no Greek if Perrault[405]
knew any; and with Boileau not only to all appearance was English
literature a blank sheet, but almost the whole sheet of French
literature before his own time was either blank or inscribed with
fantastic fallacies. Still, this is not a condition entirely or commonly
unknown in squabbles of this kind. The signal distinction and
disqualification of the advocates in this famous cause is that, as a
rule, neither any of the leaders, nor any of the juniors, had taken more
than the slightest trouble to get up, or at least to understand, his
_own_ brief. The Ancients are here in a little better case than the
Moderns; but they were not in so very much better case. Most of them
knew the Latin classics fairly well; and some of them (though by no
means all, or even many) had a fair, while a few had a good,
acquaintance with Greek.[406] But, with rarest, if with any exceptions,
they persisted in exaggerating, if not in contemplating solely, that
side of Classical Literature which has been and must be admitted to be
its principal side, but which is not the only one. They would not see—or
if they saw, they expressed positive distaste for—the vaguer, more
imaginative, more “Romantic” beauty of Greek, and in a less degree of
Latin. They never dreamt of turning the tables on their antagonists, as
they might have done to no inconsiderable extent, from this point of
view. And by holding up Design, Order, Decorum, and the rest, as
paramount conditions of literary excellence, they laid themselves open
to the most inconvenient retorts from well-equipped adversaries, and
even received some on the score of Homer, badly as their adversaries
were equipped as a rule.
-----
Footnote 405:
His _Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes_ (1688-98) is most
disappointing, even to fervent opponents of “the sect of the
Nicolaitans” and fervent lovers of the _Contes de ma Mère l’Oye_. That
he knew little and that his case was bad does not matter; but I at
least cannot find the _esprit_ which apologists plead.
Footnote 406:
J. Warton (_Adventurer_, No. 49) asserts, on the authority of Ménage,
that even Rapin was “totally ignorant” of Greek. M. does not quite say
this: but he does say that R. got his Greek quotations from
Tanneguy-Lefèvre, Madame Dacier’s father (_Ménagiana_, i. 175 of the
collected ed.)
-----
On the other hand, the Moderns were, for the most part, like men who
have Toledos by their sides and choose to fight with cabbage-plants. The
French ignored the English and sneered at the Italians and Spaniards
since the Renaissance, indulging the while in placid but contemptuous
ignorance or misrepresentation of everything before it out of Italy. The
English were prepared to admit that nobody had achieved sweetness in
English numbers before Mr Waller, apologised (except Dryden and Dryden
only in a few moments) for Shakespeare, and thought Chaucer a good funny
old savage.
Out of such a welter of blundering little good could come, and no good
came save one. It is, I believe, absolutely impossible to trace, in so
much as one single filament, the extension and deepening of critical
appreciation which began in the next century to the Quarrel of the
Ancients and the Moderns. But that quarrel did excite and feed the
critical spirit and appetite, and did give signs of an as yet half-blind
craving for the possession of critical knowledge.[407]
-----
Footnote 407:
Perhaps it is still desirable, though almost for the last time, to
observe that the omission of casual criticism in non-critical work is
intentional and necessary. Nowhere could more interesting examples of
it, from Molière downwards, be produced; but this is only a
temptation, not a reason.
-----
CHAPTER II.
THE ITALIAN DECADENCE AND THE SPANIARDS.
DECADENCE OF ITALIAN CRITICISM—PAOLO BENI—POSSEVINO: HIS ‘BIBLIOTHECA
SELECTA’—TASSONI: HIS ‘PENSIERI DIVERSI’—AROMATARI—HIS ‘DEGLI AUTORI
DEL BEN PARLARE’—BOCCALINI AND MINORS—INFLUENCE OF THE RAGGUAGLI—THE
SET OF SEICENTIST TASTE—SPANISH CRITICISM: HIGHLY RANKED BY
DRYDEN?—THE ORIGINS: VILLENA—SANTILLANA—ENCINA—VALDÉS—THE BEGINNING
OF REGULAR CRITICISM: HUMANIST RHETORICIANS—POETICS:
RENGIFO—PINCIANO—LA CUEVA—CARVALLO—GONZALES DE SALAS—THE
‘CIGARRALES’ OF TIRSO DE MOLINA—LOPE’S ‘ARTE NUEVO,’ ETC.—HIS
ASSAILANTS AND DEFENDERS—THE FIGHT OVER THE SPANISH DRAMA—CERVANTES
AND CALDERON—GONGORISM, CULTERANISM, ETC.—QUEVEDO—GRACIAN—THE
LIMITATIONS OF SPANISH CRITICISM.
That the Italians, who had some half of the last Book to themselves,
will not have a tithe of the present, is due, on the part of the
historian, neither to laziness, nor to love of contrast, nor to that
rather illogical and illegitimate generosity which decrees that “the
other citizen shall have his turn.” [Sidenote: _Decadence of Italian
Criticism._] The disproportion simply corresponds to the facts. Italy,
indeed, continued to devote herself with something like enthusiasm—or at
least with the _engouement_ of dilettantism and the doggedness of
pedantry—to critical studies. Some at least of the earlier writers of
the century—aftercrops of the sixteenth—still exercised considerable
influence: and for nearly the whole of the time the great Italians of
the former age—Scaliger, Castelvetro, and others—maintained an authority
which did not pass to France till the eighteenth itself was approaching.
But little was really added to the critical canon of the central
Peninsula. Paradoxers like Beni, eccentrics of different kinds like
Tassoni and Boccalini, respectable compilers like Possevino and
Aromatari, must occupy us and receive their due. But all these belong
more or less to the first quarter of the century. The second, third, and
fourth are much less fertile, and it is not till another meeting of the
ages that we shall come to another really remarkable group, consisting
of two at least painful literary historians, among the earliest of their
kind, in Crescimbeni and Quadrio, of a real though limited critic in
Gravina, and of a remarkable combination of erudition and insight in
Muratori. And these will properly be treated in the next Book, not in
this.
Paolo Beni, who has been spoken of in the last Book,[408] and who was a
man of nearly fifty when the sixteenth century closed, had nevertheless
nearly half his literary life to spend in the seventeenth, and published
the most noteworthy of his works at this time. [Sidenote: _Paolo Beni._]
We saw that he was a strong “Torquatist,” and an innovator in respect of
recommending prose for tragedy as well as for comedy. As he grew older
the iconoclastic tendency so developed in him that he may almost be
called the leader of Rebellion in the matter of the Ancient and Modern
Quarrel; for _questa lite_, as a contemporary of Beni’s calls it, had
been fought out in Italy long before it became a burning one in France
and England. Beni was a “modern” of the extravagant kind: and his two
chief critical manifestoes, after the Dissertation on Prose Drama, were
a _Comparatione di Homero Virgilio e Torquato_,[409] where the author of
the _Gerusalemme_ (which Beni prefers to call by its other title,
_Goffredo_) is exalted far above both the ancient Poets; and an
_Anti-Crusca_,[410] in which, with the futile courage of his opinions,
he gives no more quarter to Dante and Petrarch than to Homer and Virgil
on the score of language at least, and would apparently turn “modernity”
almost into “hodiernity.” This does not argue any great critical spirit:
and we find little in Beni—only the sort of Old Bailey advocacy, or
attack, which was rapidly coming to be the disgrace of criticism. There
is not “the real integrity and perfection of the fable” in the
_Odyssey_. Even Virgil cannot approach Tasso in regularity, nice
derangement of episodes, &c., &c. The most amusing thing about Beni is
the way in which he turns the batteries of the classics on themselves.
He does not attempt to make a new Poetic for Romances, nor does he take
his favourite poem on its own merits and extol it for them. The “parts,”
the “qualities,” the “rules” are practically adopted: and it is shown—or
at least asserted—that Tasso exhibits them all in greater perfection
than the ancients. This is the line afterwards taken by Addison with
_Paradise Lost_.
-----
Footnote 408:
_V. supra_, p. 107.
Footnote 409:
Padua, 1607.
Footnote 410:
Padua, 1612.
-----
The _Bibliotheca Selecta_ of Antonio Possevino, Jesuit negotiator and
teacher, is a good example of the kind of compiling work which the great
development of Criticism was imposing on at least some critics.
[Sidenote: _Possevino. His_ Bibliotheca Selecta.] From some points of
view it also may seem to belong rather to the last Book, for Possevino,
who retired from active work in many countries to his native land and an
old age of study in 1586, brought it out first at Rome in 1593. But he
made alterations and rearrangements in it afterwards, and the edition I
have used[411] was published, with his own approval and assistance, a
few years before his death, and well within the seventeenth century. It
is a mighty folio (or rather two in one) dealing with something like the
whole range of studies, and intended, it would seem, rather for teachers
than learners; but the First Book[412] has something, and the three last
much, to do with our subject. In these three Possevino successively
discusses History at enormous length[413] and with considerable
bibliographical information, Poetry[414] at somewhat less, and finally
the Art of Letter Writing, under the special title of “Cicero,” but with
reference also to Libanius and others. Possevino, as was in fact
inevitable from his profession and his purpose, is very much cumbered
about orthodoxy and morality, especially in the poetical department; but
he does not allow himself to be wholly guided by these considerations.
Scaliger’s _Poetic_ he calls _spissum sane opus_—a happy but rather
ambiguous epithet; quotes Gambara, Minturno, Cinthio, Pigna, and
Patrizzi as main authorities, and though he says that he will _not_
quote Castelvetro, as being on the Index, evidently means that he should
be read, though he duly prescribes Caro as an antidote. He has a good
selection of extracts, mighty lists of books and authorities, and an
inserted tract (two in fact) by Macarius Mutius on Poetry and Christian
Poetry, by which he sets much store, but in which little will be found
but rhetoric.
-----
Footnote 411:
2 vols. fol., Cologne, 1607.
Footnote 412:
_De Cultura Ingeniorum._
Footnote 413:
Lib. xvi., 150 folio pp.
Footnote 414:
“_De Poesi_ et Pictura” is the title to which he calls attention, but
to which he does not fully work up.
-----
Some of the most interesting and suggestive, if not the most regular,
criticism in this part of Italian literature is to be found in the
_Pensieri Diversi_ of Alessandro Tassoni.[415] [Sidenote: _Tassoni. His_
Pensieri Diversi.] The author of the _Secchia Rapita_ was not likely to
be dull in anything that he undertook: and his undertakings were of a
sufficiently various kind.[416] In his _Considerazioni_[417] on Petrarch
he treated that revered sonneteer and his sonnets as cavalierly as he
was to treat the sacred Heroic Poem in the _Secchia_: but this kind of
_frondeur_ spirit was nothing new in Italy. The _Pensieri_, in which
their author was candidly prepared to find people discovering
“extravagance and capriciousness,” are modelled on Aristotle’s
_Problems_, and Plutarch’s _Symposiacs_ and _Roman Questions_. They deal
with curious matters “such as are wont to come into the discourse of
Gentlemen and Professors of Literature,” a phrase where the “and” is
half complimentary and half the reverse. On perusing the contents we
find that gentlemen and professors of literature talk about the radical
humours, and the reason of the spots on the moon, and why it is that
ugly ladies are loved, and a very great many other interesting things.
They do it, moreover (at least Tassoni does it for them), in a very
interesting manner—that peculiar early seventeenth-century mixture of
learning, fancy, and humour which, in still greater measure, gives
Burton and Browne their quintessenced charm. If Tassoni had pushed that
question about the _donne brutte_ home, he might have rediscovered,
against his own age, the great secret of criticism; but of this we may
treat more properly in the Interchapter. It is not till the Tenth Book
of the _Pensieri_ that he attacks literature, save by incidence and
tangent; and then he plunges full into the Battle of the Ancients and
Moderns, devoting twenty-seven out of twenty-eight chapters to an
elaborate comparison of the two periods, in every class of art, science,
and literature itself. But he preserves his invincible quaintness by
going off in the twenty-eighth to a very elaborate study of the Hangman
(_Il Boia_), which readers of Joseph de Maistre should not fail to
compare with the _Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg_.
-----
Footnote 415:
4to, Venice, 1646. There are earlier and later editions. Tassoni, who
published this first, I believe, at Rome [Carpi?] in 1620, had
preluded it (Modena, 1608) with a smaller volume of _Quisiti_.
Footnote 416:
He meddled boldly with politics, and I have a little modern edition of
his _Filippiche contra gli Spagnuoli_, &c. (Ferrara: Le Monnier, n.d.)
Footnote 417:
Modena, 1609. I have not yet met with this.
-----
Tassoni deals with the general question in the same curious indirect and
ironical fashion in which he handles the charms of _bruttezza_, and the
reason why it was specially rude (let us say, though he does not) of
Spenser to call the husband of Hellenore Mal_becco_. He begins by
advancing, and even seeming to countenance, the “Modern” argument for
Progress, as being the law of nature and so decisive of _questa lite_.
But he very soon turns round, and gives reasons and instances for the
much sounder doctrine of Fluctuation—not merely in general, but in
regard to particular Arts. Therefore it is necessary to examine these
Arts; and then he does this. Once more he becomes a “Modern” in awarding
to his countrymen the palm of grammatico-critical studies. In Logic and
Philosophy generally, he thinks they can match the Latins, and though
they yield to the Greeks, may make some fight even with them. He will
pit Guicciardini, Comines, and Giovio against any of the ancients, which
is a little rash; putting Machiavelli with others in a second rank. And
on the modern side of Oratory he urges, with his unconquerable
unexpectedness, Peter the Hermit and John of Munster! But on the Poets
this unexpectedness of his turns to the disappointing. He gives us a
very unnecessary classification of Kinds, obviously in order that he may
quote his own _Secchia_ as a new kind, the Heroi-comic. But it is
interesting to find him dividing the _Commedia_ into “Heroi-satiric” for
the _Inferno_, Heroic mixed with Hymnic for the _Paradiso_, and a
division (not, as in the _Inferno_, a _blend_) of Heroic and Satiric for
the _Purgatory_. Except on this head of _questa lite_, in which he is a
notable forerunner of later disputants, Tassoni has little that is
positively critical. And if he shows on the one hand a singularly active
and inquiring spirit, such as may any day discover fresh and promising
outlooks, he shows us also the risk of mere fantastic “problem”-raising,
to which a century of active criticism was leading a century of
Academies.[418]
Tassoni’s Petrarch-blasphemies brought him into collision with Giuseppe
Aromatari, of whose original work, including his part in this
battle,[419] I do not know much. [Sidenote: _Aromatari._] But Aromatari
was responsible, many years later, for a remarkable encyclopædia or
_corpus_, which may very well follow the _Pensieri Diversi_ as a pendant
to Possevino’s work already mentioned, and as illustrating the learned
and scholastic side. It is entitled _Degli Autori del Ben Parlare_,[420]
and, if its grammatical and Rhetorical divisions had been succeeded by a
similar collection of Poetics, it would have gone far to cover, in a
certain peculiar and limited way, the entire field of criticism. As it
is, not a few of its documents extend in the poetic direction. Its first
volume gives the promise of an almost unique thesaurus, starting with
illustrative and comparative extracts from Hesiod, Lucian, Cicero,
Xenophon, &c., then giving the whole of Dante’s _De Vulgari Eloquentia_
in the Italian, and following this with Trissino’s _Castellano_,
Tolomei’s _Cesano_, a discourse of Varchi, and “Opinions” from Mutio,
Doni, Dolce, Citadini, and others, all on the subject of the Vulgar
Tongue. Other treatises, including Bembo’s, with less famous ones by
Alunno, Delminio, and others, follow; while two whole parts are given up
to Salviati’s _Avvertimenti della Lingua_ on Boccaccio. Not seldom the
grammatical matter touches points very important indeed to criticism, as
for instance in vol. vi., where Buonmattei enters on the question (made
a burning one in France by Malherbe) whether popular or literary usage
is to be the standard of correctness.
-----
Footnote 418:
Attention was first recalled to Tassoni in recent times by M.
Hippolyte Rigault in his _Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes_. But I
was not myself introduced to the _Pensieri_ by that excellent book,
and the things in them which seem to me most interesting are not quite
those which struck M. Rigault.
Footnote 419:
This is referred to, in the extract from Leone Allacci prefixed to the
1646 ed. of Tassoni, as _libellus Patavii editus_. Tassoni seems to
have replied under a pseudonym and pretty savagely (_magis aculeatis
dentibus_).
Footnote 420:
Eight volumes, in 16 parts, of a not small quarto (Venice, 1643). This
is one of the many books for the opportunity of studying which,
without burdening shelves and lightening purse, I am indebted to the
Library of the Faculty of Advocates.
-----
The Rhetorical part has the additional interest of combining ancient and
modern matter—of being, in short, a kind of compressed _Rhetorici Græci
et Latini_ with modern additions. [Sidenote: _His_ Degli Autori del Ben
Parlare.] Sometimes the texts are given simply in whole or
part—Aristotle, Longinus, Hermogenes being thus treated—while an
Introduction to Hermogenes by Giulio Camillo Delminio shows how strongly
the authority of that master was working, and how much it had to do with
the insistence on criticism by Kinds and Qualities. Sometimes a _catena_
of authorities on particular matters is given—as in the case of Tropes
and Figures, where the chain stretches from Quintilian to Mazzoni. Only
specialists, probably, will care to investigate profoundly the huge
commentary-paraphrase of Panigarola on Demetrius Phalereus, readjusted
to the purposes of sacred Oratory, though the book had a great vogue in
its day. But one turns with more interest to the work of Patrizzi on
Rhetoric, much less known as it is than his _Della Poetica_ and _Della
Storia_. It has, however, hardly any of the interest of the _Poetica_,
being almost entirely devoted to the _subjects_ of the orator, and
philosophical rather than literary in its handling. But this great
medley of Aromatari’s shows us, better perhaps than any single book
except Baillet’s, and nearly fifty years before it, the bulk and
importance of the position which the critical consideration of
literature was taking among literary studies.
The literary side of Boccalini’s _Ragguagli di Parnasso_[421] is less
than the political. [Sidenote: _Boccalini and Minors._] But the list of
seventeenth-century treatises in Italian on critical subjects is
long.[422] Some of them are difficult to procure out of Italy, and I
doubt whether many are worth the trouble of hunting down. I am sorry
that the work of Chiodino da Monte-Melone[423] has hitherto escaped me,
because of the extreme beauty of the name, which would seem to qualify
its author for the post of Chief Rhetorician to Queen Pintiquinestra.
Pellegrino, Fioretti, Zani, Querengo, Menzini have not been or shall not
be forgotten. But I have experienced, and fear again, the sort of
disappointment which occurs when, for instance,[424] one is told, of
Carlo Rinaldini,[425] that the third part of his _Philosophia
Rationalis_ “contains a tolerable Poetic.” One attacks the mighty
double-columned folio, and finds a purely scholastic treatise of the
familiar kind, beginning with _Poetice_, _Poeta_, _Poesis_, _Poema_ as
of old. It is impossible to say _Non debes quadrillare_ in this
fashion—the company is too ancient and venerable; but it is permissible
to decline to play, on the strength of having had enough of the game
already. There is a certain established conformity of propriety between
times and books. At no time can a frank commentary on Aristotle be out
of date or out of place; at this time the Poetics of Le Bossu and
Bouhours, faulty as they are, were at any rate responsive to the form
and pressure of the day. But such work as Rinaldini’s, however
respectable, has neither the intrinsic excellence which conquers time,
nor the fleeting but real grace of temporal congruity.
-----
Footnote 421:
Venice, 1612-13.
Footnote 422:
See Professors Gayley and Scott’s invaluable book so often cited, p.
447, a passage based on Blankenburg’s older _Zusätze_ (3 vols.,
Leipsic, 1796-98).
Footnote 423:
Venice, 1613.
Footnote 424:
Blankenburg is the sinner here.
Footnote 425:
Padua, 1681, pp. 1025-1088.
-----
The _Ragguagli di Parnasso_ themselves are of less importance to us for
their actual critical utterances (which, as has been said, were not
Boccalini’s first object) than for the extraordinary influence which
they exercised on the form of criticism throughout Europe for more than
a century. [Sidenote: _Influence of the_ Ragguagli.] Suggested more or
less directly by Lucian (whose enormous effect on modern European
literature, though of course never missed entirely by any competent
person, has never yet been fully allowed for) they hit the taste of the
day straight and full. Not merely did they start the whole fleet of
“Sessions of the Poets” and the like in England, but they had a great
influence on the English prose Essayists of the early eighteenth
century;[426] while in France even the severe Boileau paid them
unacknowledged royalty. It is no uncommon experience to find that books
which in this way create a kind of “rage” at one time, become chiefly
sources of boredom at another; but Boccalini certainly illustrates the
fact, in his literary portions at any rate. He deserves some credit for
having made current, if he did not invent, the famous story of the
choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. There is some critical
appropriateness in the fable of Tasso being refused admission by
Castelvetro on the alleged strength of Aristotle’s rules, of the
reprimand bestowed by Apollo on the philosopher, and of his excuse that
he never meant his observations for “rules” at all. To this the age
might have paid more attention than it did. But one finds thinness in
the fun of Justus Lipsius attacking Tacitus for impiety, and of Thrasea
and Priscus being warned, as they value their stoical characters, not to
go and see Vittoria Colonna and Veronica Gambara too often.
-----
Footnote 426:
Henry Cary, Earl of Monmouth, translated the book in 1656.
-----
In the History of Taste as distinguished from that of Criticism the
important point of the _Seicento_ is of course that development of
floridity—of Marinism—which is associated in literary history with the
very term. [Sidenote: _The set of Seicentist taste._]But this
development was common to Italy with all Europe; and though the country
still exercised a sort of prerogative influence, “Marinism” is not so
much the mother as the elder, and not by so very much the elder, sister
of Gongorism in Spain, of the extravagances of the age before Boileau in
France, of the “metaphysical” fashion in England. It will be better to
treat these in the Interchapter, both in themselves and as fastening
“correctness,” by way of reaction, upon Europe.
Spain has never ranked very high in the general estimate as a
contributor to European criticism: and though this estimate has not been
too solidly founded, the _communis sensus_ seems here to have exercised
that mysterious power of appeal to the world-spirit which so often keeps
it from going hopelessly wrong.[427] [Sidenote: _Spanish
criticism—Highly ranked by Dryden?_] There is, however, one remarkable
piece of testimony which, if it were a little better authenticated,
would give Spanish critics a very high position as teachers. We shall
see in a future chapter that Dryden (as has indeed been generally,
though, until recent times, but vaguely, allowed) is himself one of the
great turning-points of the critical story of Europe. Now Spence says
that Bolingbroke told him that Dryden had assured _him_ that “he got
more from the Spanish critics alone than from the Italian and French and
all others together.” Unfortunately Spence speaks at second-hand; and
Bolingbroke, even if he really did say this, is always a Bardolphian
security. Moreover, Dryden, who was not at all in the habit of
concealing his indebtedness, but, on the contrary, seems to have “felt
an innocent warmth” of pleasure in mustering and marshalling his
authorities, quotes no Spanish authors. And the references (which are
fairly numerous) to Spanish plays in the _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_
neither quote, nor necessarily show knowledge of, Spanish critics at
all. It has been thought that Dryden may have read Tirso de Molina’s
_Cigarrales_ (_v. infra_); and it has occurred to me that something in
his attitude may have been derived from Lope’s _Arte Nuevo de hacer
Comedias_. But I do not believe this to be at all certain, or even very
probable.[428]
-----
Footnote 427:
Spain can boast, however, perhaps the very best _History_ of its
criticism as a whole that any European language has—if not as yet the
only good one—in the _Historia de las Ideas Estéticas en España_ of
Don Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo (Ed. 2, 9 vols., Madrid, 1890-1896).
This is fortunate for me, inasmuch as I do not pretend to any
extensive familiarity with Spanish literature beyond the early poets,
and indeed do not read the language with very great facility. Besides
Señor Menéndez I have relied chiefly on the texts and comments
recently furnished (_v. inf._) by M. Morel-Fatio (who will, I hope,
continue in so good a road), on Ticknor, on the short but valuable
notices of this period in Mr Spingarn, _op. cit._, on those in my
friend Mr Hannay’s _The Later Renaissance_ (Edinburgh and London,
1898), and on Mr James Fitzmaurice Kelly’s _History of Spanish
Literature_ (London, 1898). I am particularly obliged to Mr Kelly for
a copy of the recent (undated) Spanish translation of his book, with a
few corrections, and a preface by Señor Menéndez himself. The Spanish
critic combines, with a just praise of the book, a mild remonstrance
as to the small space which Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly has given to this
very critical subject—a fact in which I own I myself had felt some
comfort. The silence of the specialist is the shield of the
expatiator. I have not failed, wherever I could, to verify all the
critical deliverances in the text, and examine almost all, if not all,
the books mentioned; but I do not know the _circumference_ of them as
I do elsewhere. And as I began this History on the principle of going
to the sources, I think myself bound to warn the reader of any case in
which I have been obliged to modify that principle.
Footnote 428:
This was written before M. Morel-Fatio had expressed the same view in
his _Les Défenseurs de la Comedia_ (_Bulletin Hispanique_, _ubi cit.
inf._) See also on the point Mr Ker’s _Essays of Dryden_, i. lxvi, and
the references in his index to Dryden’s mention of Spanish plays. Of
course the main interest of the matter lies in the much stronger
resemblances that exist between the great English and Spanish dramas
than between any other two national branches of the European theatre.
-----
Intrinsically, however, Spanish criticism before the eighteenth century,
though not extraordinarily rich nor furnishing any documents of extreme
importance, is interesting, and in one point almost supremely so, for
circumstances if not for contents. [Sidenote: _The Origins—Villena._]
The trail begins fairly early, though the scent is scattered at
uncommonly long intervals. A glance was made towards the close of the
first volume of this book at the actual beginnings. They were due to two
persons of the greatest distinction in the early fifteenth
century—Enrique, Marquis(?)[429] de Villena and Master of Calatrava, of
the blood royal both of Aragon and Castille, and Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza,
Marquis of Santillana. The _Arte de Trobar_[430] of the former, a
treatise on the Gay Science, was sent by him, a year before his death,
in 1434, to the latter; and Santillana himself touched criticism, or at
least Poetics, both in the Preface to his _Proverbs_, and still more in
a letter to the Constable (Dom Pedro) of Portugal, written about 1455,
not long before his own death, and containing observations not merely on
Poetry in general, but on early Spanish poets up to his own times. This
document was fortunately, and most wisely, prefixed by Sanchez to his
collection of the older Spanish poets, and is easily accessible in the
re-edition of Ochoa,[431] or in the Appendix to Señor Menéndez'
_History_, vol. ii.
-----
Footnote 429:
They say now that he was not only not (as used to be said) the premier
and only Marquis of Spain, but not a Marquis at all. _Non moror: non
sum invidus_—especially as the next monographer will probably restore
the Marquisate.
Footnote 430:
I have duly looked this up in what appears to be the only accessible
place (a place valuable for other documents), the _Orígenes de La
Lengua Española_, Madrid, 1737, of Mayáns y Siscar. It is merely a
tissue of troubadours’ names, scholastic citations, and minute details
of pronunciation and versification. Señor Menéndez has reprinted part
of it in the Appendix to his second volume.
Footnote 431:
_Poesias Castellanas anteriores al siglo_ xv. (Paris, 1842) pp. 13-17.
-----
The Marquis begins, after compliments, by the usual generalities about
poetry containing “useful things covered with a very pretty coverlet,
composed, distinguished, and scanned in certain number, weight, and
measure.” [Sidenote: _Santillana._] So “as fructiferous gardens abound
and give convenient fruits,” &c., &c., with Tully to give security. But
for all his own very pretty coverlet of rhetoric, the Marquis talks very
good sense. He is sure that verse is above prose, basing himself soundly
on Isidore of Seville and his proofs from Hebrew literature, with the
Greeks to follow, and Cassiodorus to back up Isidore. Then he comes to
modern times—to Petrarch and Robert of Naples, to Boccaccio and John of
Cyprus, quoting the _De Genealogia_ itself, and therefore, in a very
interesting way, gearing on Spanish criticism, even in these its
rudiments, to Italian, then not much less rudimentary. He divides styles
properly into “sublime,” “middle,” and “low,” liberally placing all
those who write in Greek or Latin in the first class. The middle
contains those who write in any vulgar tongue; the low those who merely
botch up romances and songs for the common people, without order or
rule. Dante wrote the _Commedia “elegantemente,”_ and Boccaccio composed
proses of _grand eloquencia_ in the manner of Boethius. Santillana then
shows himself well read in Provençal, French, and Catalan, as well as
Italian. He refers to the _Roman de la Rose_ and its authors, to
“Michaute” (Machault), Otho de “Crantzon” (Granson), “Alen Charrotier,”
whom, naturally, he much admires. He thinks the Italians surpass the
French in genius, the French the Italians in art. Then he turns to
Spain, and beginning with those who have written in the Provençal style,
comes to Gallegan, Castilian, &c., later, mentions the chief poets,
gives the metres in which they have written, and ends with a
(mis)quotation of Horace[432] and a shower of classical allusions—among
others to _aquellas dueñas que en torno de la fuente Elicon
incesantemente danzan_. For even then the modern confusion of the Mount
and the Fount had begun. The piece is, if not very advanced criticism,
at any rate an early and interesting critical glance over European
poetry in the Romance tongues.
-----
Footnote 432:
_Quem nova concepit olla_ servabit odorem. It may be observed that, on
the principles of Low Latin scansion from Commodian downwards, the
first four words will do well enough.
-----
Villena, as his title shows, and Santillana to some extent, had been
considering Catalan and Galician as the chief poetic media for
Spaniards; it is different with Juan del Encina, who, in 1496,[433]
prefixed an _Arte_ to his _Cancionero_ nearly half a century after
Santillana wrote, and almost as long after an earlier _Cancionero_, that
of Baena, the compiler of which does not seem to have been tempted to
criticism. [Sidenote: _Encina._] The nine chapters of this deal with the
origin of Castilian poetry, the distinction between the art of poetry
and the _arte de trobar_, while both _have_ an art; the necessities of
the _trobador_, feet, consonance and assonance, verses and couplets,
poetic “colours,” &c., and a general conclusion on writing and reading
poetry. The book shows a certain Italian influence which distinguishes
it from earlier work; but which, when that Italian influence had been
repeated in stronger dose, seemed to later generations insufficient and
out of date. Still, it is interesting, and earlier than anything of the
kind in vernacular Italian.
-----
Footnote 433:
I have used the somewhat later Grenville copy in the British Museum
Salamanca, 1509, fol.; and Señor Menéndez' reprint in the Appendix to
his second volume, which also contains one or two other early
documents.
-----
Another half-way house may be found in the interesting _Diálogo de La
Lengua_ or _de Las Lenguas_[434] of Juan de Valdés, which has even been
called “an important monument of literary criticism.” [Sidenote:
_Valdés._] It is rather, however, linguistic than literary, though the
author deserves to rank with other national heroes of the time for his
strenuous support of the vernacular, which he thought a more “corrupted”
representative of Latin than Italian, and respecting which he held the
odd but characteristically Renaissance notion that Greek, not Basque,
was its remoter ancestor. He mentions the romances and the _Celestina_.
-----
Footnote 434:
The plural was used in the version of Mayans y Siscar (_Origenes_, _v.
supra_), which was long the only one accessible. In 1860 a better text
appeared at Madrid with the singular, which Ticknor and Mr Kelly
approve. For any one who professes no Spanish scholarship to set
himself against these authorities may seem absurd. But in the book
itself _sub finem_ the author writes “habiendo considerado _estas tres
lenguas_,” and the changes are rung on Latin, Tuscan, and Spanish
throughout.
-----
But the regular course of technical and elaborate Spanish criticism does
not begin, after these long preliminary stages, till quite the close of
the sixteenth century. [Sidenote: _The beginning of regular Criticism.
Humanist Rhetoricians._] The earlier course of that century has indeed
supplied Señor Menéndez with a tolerably fair herd of humanist
rhetoricians to fill the ninety pages of his ninth chapter. The list is
headed by Antonio de Nebrija (Nebrissensis), _De Artis Rhetoricæ
compendiosa coaptatione ex Aristotele Cicerone et Quintiliano_, in 1529.
But the only names of much interest that appear in it are those of the
famous Luis Vives, disciple of Erasmus and of Oxford, with his
anti-Ciceronianism, and with at least some admission (the passage is
quoted by Señor Menéndez at vol. iii. on p. 226 from the _De causis
Corruptarum Artium_), that it does not matter in what language a man
writes in so far as faults and impurities of diction and the duty of
avoiding them are concerned; and of the equally famous preacher Luis de
Granada, with his _Rhetorica Ecclesiastica_, a good deal later. Still,
the metrical _Rhetoric_ (1569) of Arias Montano, that “Lope of Latin
verse,” a piece of didactic much more spirited and really poetical than
Vida’s _Poetic_, on which no doubt it is modelled; and the vigorous if
mistaken scholasticism of Francesco Sanchez (“El Brocense”), in his
attempt to subject Rhetoric entirely to Logic, deserve some notice. So,
perhaps, does Alfonso Garcia Matamoros, who, though Señor Menéndez
conscientiously suspects him of not being very original, stumbled upon a
remarkable anticipation of Buffon in the definition _Est stylus habitus
orationis, a cujusque hominis natura fluens_. This is a slight but
distinct advance on the earlier one of Fox Morcillo, _De Imitatione_
(1544), which gives it as something _quæ vel pro ingenio cujusquam, vel
rei, quæ in questionem vocatur, ratione varietur_. These writers,
however, seem (except El Brocense, who dealt on more than one occasion
with the Horatian _Art_) to have given little or no attention to
Poetics, and in fact to have allowed themselves to drift a good deal to
leeward of the purely literary side of Rhetoric altogether. When the
ship bore up again for this side, the Spaniards, like everybody else in
Europe without exception, took the Italians for their schoolmasters; and
they might seem all the more certain to be docile pupils in that their
poetical practice—their practice indeed in all sorts of regular
writing—had long been under the same influence. Boscan had more or less
deliberately Italianated Spanish poetry[435] half a century before
Rengifo,[436] and Pinciano, and La Cueva, in the last decade of the
sixteenth century and the first of the seventeenth, began to theorise.
At the same time there was a very important point of difference between
Spain and all other European nations, except to some extent England. In
the contents of the Cancioneros—perhaps not in actual form very old, but
stretching back by tradition and association to the very blending-time
of Goth, and Cantabrian, and Latin—and in the drama which had been so
rapidly maturing from Naharro to Lope de Vega, the Spaniards had two
mighty, popular, and intensely anti-"regular" forms of literary
composition. The critical “dependence” therefore—the point to be fought
out—was, “Which was to prevail?”
-----
Footnote 435:
After a conversation with Navagero which he has reported, and which
is, in its way, also a critical document.
Footnote 436:
Señor Menéndez refers to two _Poetics_ anterior to Rengifo, neither of
which I have seen. The first, by Miguel Sanchez de Lima (sometimes
called de Viana), Alcala, 1580, has a slight interest in the wording
of its title, “_El Arte Poética_ en romance castillano.” The
second—which from its date (1593) would seem to be a little later than
Rengifo, though the historian mentions it first—is Hierónymo de
Mondragon’s _Arte para componer en metro castillano_ (Saragossa,
1593).
-----
Mr Spingarn’s thesis, that translation of the _Epistle to the Pisos_ is
the invariable prelude of original critical work, completes its proofs,
as far as the Latin races are concerned, by the version of Espinel which
appeared in 1591, and was followed in the very next year by Rengifo’s
_Arte Poética Española_. [Sidenote: _Poetics. Rengifo._] Of the former
there is little to say, for though Espinel was a man of literary gift
(he was the author, it may be excusable to remind the reader, of _Marcos
de Obregón_, and so a slight, though only a slight, creditor of Le
Sage), he did not add anything original to his translation. The latter
has been sometimes rather unkindly spoken of by those who do not like
formal Arts of Poetry. Those, on the other hand, who have weak places in
their hearts for such things may give Rengifo shelter therein. He
reminds one at very first sight of his Italian originals in the comely
small quarto of his _format_—the book-size of all others which retains a
certain dignity without entirely forfeiting the benefit of the
Archpriest of Hita’s celebration of _dueñas pequeñas_: he has a
beautiful folding plate of a _Labyrinto_—one of the artificial forms
which are dear because they maddened the eighteenth century—and he gives
a large _Sylva_ or rhyming dictionary. I do not know that there is much
else to be said for him, but he is a symptom.[437] So, some twenty years
later is, on the other side, the severe Cascales,[438] who in his
_Tablas Poéticas_[439] lays it down that “if any part of a fable can be
changed without loss, this fable is not well managed.” There was a
contemporary of Cascales in a country which loved not Spain, neither was
loved of her, who would have changed you every part of every one of his
fables, and left the versions so that you could not tell which was the
better.
-----
Footnote 437:
The above paragraph was written from notes taken while reading Rengifo
at the British Museum. In subsequently reading Señor Menéndez on him I
was surprised to find the learned historian protesting against the
Labyrinth, and other such things, as having been foisted in _cir._
1700-1720, and referring to the editions of 1592 and 1606 as alone
genuine. But the British Museum copy is that of 1606! Let it by us
even be said to Rengifo’s credit that, like Sidney, he felt the charm
of old romance. See M. y P., p. 320.
Footnote 438:
“The inexorable Cascales,” as Señor Menéndez calls him in a passage
which I had not read when I wrote the text. Of Cascales, as of
Pinciano (_v. infra_), the Señor thinks far more highly than I do.
Both seem to me (though Cascales more than Pinciano) to be simply
uncompromising Aristotelians who borrowed from the Italians; but, like
most borrowers and imitators, hardened and emphasised what they
borrowed. Both were forced to allow little “easements” in regard to
the drama; but only such as are consistent with Aristotle’s text,
though not with some glosses on him. And Pinciano simply translates
the Aristotelian definition of tragedy, while Cascales, doubtless with
reference to the different heresies of Castelvetro and Giraldi, is
quite Athanasian in his doctrine that poetic verities are absolutely
unchangeable, and independent of custom and time.
Footnote 439:
The book appeared in 1616; but I have had to use the reprint of 1779.
I have not seen Mesa’s _Compendio de la Poética_ (Madrid, 1607) or
Carillo’s _Libro de Erudicion poética_.
-----
Some years after Rengifo came Pinciano, and ten years later the Spanish
attempt to rival Vida and Vauquelin in the _Ejemplar Poético_ of Juan de
La Cueva. [Sidenote: _Pinciano._] The two are opposed on the point which
was rapidly becoming the burning question of Spanish literary criticism,
but which was never thoroughly faced in Spain. The great national
drama—in main part, if not in every respect, Romantic to the core—was
making progress every day; but so was the theory that you were to follow
the ancients. Alfonso Lopez, otherwise “El Pinciano,” did the latter
diligently in his _Filosofía Antigua Poética_,[440] which, besides the
authorities indicated in the title, owed much to the Italian school.
-----
Footnote 440:
Madrid, 1596.
-----
Pinciano[441] is set extraordinarily high by the Historian of Spanish
criticism, who thinks him “the only humanist of the sixteenth century
who presents a complete literary system,” contrasts him (I own that this
gives me pause) with the “intolerable pedantries” of Castelvetro, and
calls him plumply “an excellent critic.” The quotations advanced,
though, according to Señor Menéndez' admirable custom with authors
difficult of access, they are plentifully given, will perhaps hardly
justify this praise. Pinciano thinks that “the soul of poetry is the
fable”; that metre is not necessary, though it “perfects imitation”;
that imitation itself must have verisimilitude; that poetry is superior
to metaphysic; that it ranges over all the arts and sciences; that it
gives things in a new form, makes them new to the world; that a
perfectly organised fable is like a perfectly organised animal; that it
is absurd for a hero to be born, grow up, become bearded, marry, &c.,
all in one piece. He prefers the probable-impossible to the
improbable-possible, disapproves of classical metres, and so forth—all
of which we have, I think, heard before. Señor Menéndez attributes to
him _altísimo entendimiento crítico_ for rejecting the common (and
certainly absurd enough) division of comedy and tragedy by the happy or
unhappy ending, and vesting the comic element in Ridicule. And he winds
up by constituting Pinciano, with Cascales and Gonzales de Salas, “the
luminous triad of our _preceptists_ of the good age.”
-----
Footnote 441:
The _Filosofía Antigua_ is extremely rare, and does not appear to be
in the British Museum either under “Pinciano” or under Lopez, his real
name. Fortunately there is a recent reprint (Valladolid, 1894), ed. by
Professor Don Pedro Muñoz Peña, which I duly possess. It may be
observed that bibliographers and librarians are particularly hard on
the laity in the Spanish department. It is surely needless to make one
hunt in vain for an author of world-wide reputation under his
world-name till one runs him to earth as _Gómez de_ Quevedo [_y_]
_Villegas_.
-----
Recurrence to, and study of, the book itself as given by Señor Peña will
not, I think, remove the doubts about this high estimate of the
_Filosofía_ which even Señor Menéndez' own quotations may have started.
It is a book of much learning, ingenuity, and labour, the somewhat
non-natural form of which (the recounting in letters to a certain Don
Gabriel by El Pinciano[442] of conversations between himself and two
friends, Hugo and Fadrique) may, like much else in it, be due to Italian
influence. That of such writers as Fracastoro is obvious in the
philosophical aloofness of the first Epistle-dialogue, _De la Felicidad
Humana_, in which the nature of virtue, the character of the Pagan
divinities, and many other solemn things are discussed, with some
curious ones, such as whether _nobleza_ can be predicated of Lais either
for her beauty or her eminence in an _oficio deshonesto_. It is Don
Gabriel’s answer which deflects the subject with some sharpness into
_una Arte Poética en romance_, and this, beginning in the next letter,
occupies the rest of the book. The divisions are pretty usual: first,
the general qualities of, and objections to, Poetry; then its nature,
its different kinds, the Fable, Poetic diction, metre, tragedy, and
comedy; dithyrambic, epic, minor poetry; and lastly, “Actors.” Pinciano
calls these divisions modestly enough _Fragmentos_, but no just
exception can be taken to them on the ground of scrappiness. The book is
methodical enough; its _aperçus_ (as, for instance, on _furor poeticus_
and poetic diction) are often acute, and its expression not seldom has
the quaint raciness of Spanish.[443] But it still “sticks in generals”;
it still holds those generals to have been settled once for all of old;
and it still gives no sign of any catholic examination of actual poetry.
-----
Footnote 442:
Señor Peña, himself a professor (_catedrático_) of Valladolid in
Rhetoric and Poetry, explains that this surname was taken by
distinguished _alumni_ of that University, and derived from the Roman
city (Pincia) supposed to have existed on the site. Few definite dates
or facts seem to be known about Alfonso Lopez, except that he was
physician to Mary of Austria, daughter of Charles V. and widow of
Maximilian II. during her life at Madrid from 1576 to 1603, and that
he wrote, besides the _Filosofía_ and other things, a poem on Pelayo,
_languide nec eleganter_, one regrets to hear.
Footnote 443:
As where Fadrique substitutes, for the stately old image of the honey
on the edge of a bitter cup, the familiar _come quien dora una
píldora_, “as one who gilds a pill,” ed. cit., p. 120.
-----
On the other hand, La Cueva,[444] though meticulous enough, and citing
with high reverence[445] not merely Aristotle and Horace, but Scaliger
himself, Vida, Minturno, Viperano, and others, is, on the drama at
least, and especially on comedy, an utter contemner of the ancient
doctrine. [Sidenote: _La Cueva._] My friend Mr Hannay’s pithy
statement[446] of this Spanish point of view has already commended
itself to good judges,[447] and it seems to sum up the whole matter.
“The theatre was to imitate nature and to please. Poetry was to imitate
the Italians, and satisfy the orthodox but minute critic.” There had
been something of this in Castelvetro; there was more in the Spaniards,
and it was fatal to them as critics.
-----
Footnote 444:
_Ejemplar Poético_, first printed, and, I think, still only to be
found, in the _Parnaso Español_, Madrid, 1774, vol. viii.
Footnote 445:
See Spingarn, p. 146, who gives the passage.
Footnote 446:
_The Later Renaissance_, p. 39.
Footnote 447:
Cf. Spingarn, p. 233.
-----
[Sidenote: _Carvallo._]
Of the authors of this group with whom I am myself acquainted, none
seems to me to stand higher than Gonzales de Salas on the
Aristotelian-Senecan side; while few exhibit rehashings of the common
stuff to be found in all the Italian books more strikingly than Carvallo
in his _Cisne de Apolo_.[448]
-----
Footnote 448:
(With a much longer title), Medina del Campo, 1602. The quaint title
is connected with a quainter fancy, that the poet is noble as such—a
“Knight of the Swan.” Señor Menéndez makes some use of Carvallo, but
admits that he is _pedagogo adocenado_, “a common dominie.”
-----
Gonzales de Salas,[449] on the contrary, strikes me as having shown
distinct and original critical power. [Sidenote: _Gonzales de Salas._] A
foreigner is not likely to be greatly disturbed, even if he be a better
Spanish scholar than I am, by the “palpable” darkness,[450] the
“accumulation of obscurity and troublesomeness” in style, with which
Señor Menéndez reproaches Salas. It is an odd thing, but might be
paralleled elsewhere, that the foreigner, who does not know what the man
_ought_ to have said in order to convey his meaning properly, can, in
nearly all languages, arrive at that meaning more easily than the
native, who is “put off” by eccentricity and barbarisms. Words, for
instance, like _lucifugas_ and _parasangas_, which Don Marcelino holds
up to special reproach, are to an Englishman, with his Virgil and his
Xenophon in his head, perhaps easier reading than some of the
bluest-blooded words of pure Spanish. The critic is further enraged by
Salas’s devotion to Seneca, whose _Troades_ he actually translated, with
observations and exercitations thereon. But (as students of English at
least should know) there is much Romantic virtue in your Seneca along
with his Classical vice. The curious thing about Gonzales is
that—fervent Aristotelian as he is in theory, and devotee of the ancient
theatre down to the Tragic Boot—he has singular “pluckings of apples by
the banks of Ulai,” strange glimpses of the truths which his countrymen
were the best situated of all men in Europe (with hardly the exception
of Englishmen) for seeing, but which as a rule they would not see. Both
Pinciano and Cascales had eulogised Nature or _Naturaleza_; but as the
foundress or foundation of Laws which Cascales at any rate would have as
those of the Medes and Persians. Gonzales, Aristotelian as he is, on the
other hand, says in so many words,[451] “You are not bound to follow the
ancients,” “Time and taste may improve and alter art.” Señor Menéndez
thinks this liberty a Spanish trait; but we find it in some Italians,
though not many, and we certainly do not find it in all or many
Spaniards, who are much rather inclined to divide their attentions, or,
as the impudent old Greek definition has it, “to keep the wife for
convenience and decency, the mistress for pleasure.” Gonzales, I think,
saw a higher law.
-----
Footnote 449:
_Nueva Idea de la Tragedia Antigua_, &c. Madrid, 1633.
Footnote 450:
_La misma lobreguez y el mismo desconsuelo_, M. y P., iii. 364.
Footnote 451:
In the passage quoted by M. y P., iii. 366, 367.
-----
These authors, however, and others who succeeded them, though worthy
wights and good workers in labouring the lea of Spanish criticism, in no
case possess the interest which attaches in all literatures to those who
are at once eminent in creation and careful in criticism. The place of
Corneille in French, of Jonson and Dryden in English, is taken, earlier
than any of these, by one of the great and three of the greatest writers
of Spain—Tirso de Molina, Lope, Cervantes, and Calderon.
The contribution of the “creator of Don Juan” to criticism is not large,
and it comes in an odd place, but it is of importance. In the curious
medley called _Cigarrales_ [say "tales of a country-house"] _de
Toledo_,[452] Tirso has included a play of his own, _El Vergonzoso en
Palacio_, and has given us a discussion of it by the company at p. 184
of the book. [Sidenote: _The_ Cigarrales _of Tirso de Molina_.] A
“presumptuous person” attacks the poet for “licentiously deserting” the
limits and laws of comedy. He has stated the strict Unities, and is
contrasting the action of the play with them, when he is interrupted by
a certain Don Alejo, who carries the war into the enemy’s quarters
bravely. Comedy must be ended in twenty-four hours, must it? It is quite
decent and probable, is it not, that a gallant shall fall in love with a
lady, court her, treat her, win her, and marry her all in a day? Where
are all the delightful accidents of love—the hopes and the despairs—to
go? A real lover must be proved by days and months and years of
constancy. Why may not comedy present to the eye what history presents
to the understanding—much time in little? The ingenuity of the
playwright consists [I abbreviate here a good deal] in making things
probable _as they are related_. The very difference of nature from art
is that the one, from its creation, cannot vary—a pear-tree always
producing pears, an ilex its own acorns, influenced only by soil,
climate, &c. But drama varies its own laws, and grafts tragedy on
comedy. And he then boldly sets Lope, to whom he gives the title of
_reformador de la comedia nueva_, as an example of modern art against
Æschylus and Euripides and Seneca and Terence, explaining the
dramatist’s declaration, _v. infra_, that he had deserted the ancients
to please the Popular taste, as due only to his natural modesty. This is
real plain speaking: and the speech is worthy of the author of the
_Burlador de Sevilla_ and the striking _Condenado por Desconfiado_.
-----
Footnote 452:
Madrid, 1624. Noted by Señor Menéndez (who has given the whole
passage, iii. 457-60) as a specially rare book. Fortunately the
British Museum, according to a wise habit of its own in such cases
(cf. Capriano), has two copies, and M. Morel-Fatio has included the
piece which concerns us in an invaluable collection (also including
Lope’s _Arte Nuevo_ and other things) of Spanish critical documents,
which he is issuing in the _Bulletin Hispanique_ of the Faculty of
Letters of Bordeaux, and republishing separately (Paris, Fontemoing;
Bordeaux, Feret, 1901-1902). The man who gives a text attains merit
which mere commentators and historians can never hope to have imputed
to them.
-----
Tirso’s apology for his great craftsfellow was not more superfluous than
his defence of him was bold and well framed. [Sidenote: _Lope’s_ Arte
Nuevo, _&c._] Not merely in the verse _Arte Nuevo de hacer
Comedias_,[453] but elsewhere, does Lope make the somewhat undignified
and pusillanimous, but, as we have said, widely entertained, excuse
referred to. Señor Menéndez himself can only plead (a little obviously,
perhaps) that “there were two men in Lope,” the great popular Spanish
poet, and the educated versesmith, full of academic tradition. Very much
the same mixture is seen in Dryden, from whom, as we shall see,
inconsistencies quite as great as Lope’s, and much more numerous, can be
quoted. But the contrast, I think, brings out the characteristic
weakness of the Spanish critical spirit. Its historian admits frankly
that there is a good deal in Lope that is “infantine.” I should add that
he seems to me never to have taken any side of criticism with
seriousness, whereas Dryden successively took many. Both had to confess
that they had been sometimes traitors to their own best ideals of
poetry, to please the multitude; but Dryden, at least, never committed
the blasphemy of condemning his own best things as Lope did, and
thanking God that he himself knew the precious “precepts,” according to
which he did _not_ write them. The simple fact seems to be that a man of
Lope’s extraordinary facility and fecundity could not be critical. In
the time that Dryden took to write _Alexander’s Feast_ the Spanish poet
would have done you an Epic, half-a-dozen plays, and minor poems enough
to fill a volume. Señor Menéndez himself avows that he cannot pretend to
be acquainted with all the critical remarks interspersed in Lope’s
enormous and never yet collected work: and who shall venture to rival
his extensive knowledge? But we shall probably not be rash in thinking
that any real doctrine, except on details of craft, would be hard to
extract from them. The man was a genius, but not a critical genius: and
it certainly was within the resources of a very humble critical faculty
to note, as it is his chief critical glory to have noted, in theory, as
he expressed it in practice, the fact that “Points of honour move all
people mightily” on the [Spanish] stage.[454]
-----
Footnote 453:
Also reprinted by M. Morel-Fatio in the issue noticed above.
Footnote 454:
_Los casos de la honra son mejores, Porque mueven con fuerça a toda
gente_—_A.N._, 327, 328. At least one of Lope’s innumerable works, the
_Laurel de Apolo_, written late in his life (1630), is busied with the
poets of his time in the fashion of Caporali and Cervantes, but, it
would seem, in a spirit of wholly uncritical panegyric.
-----
The tractate consists of not quite 400 hendecasyllabic lines, arranged
in irregular stanzas from five to fifty lines long, and blank except for
the last two lines of each stanza, which form a rhymed couplet. It has a
rather erudite air at first sight; but M. Morel-Fatio has ruthlessly
shown that almost all, if not all, the passages which give it this
appearance are translated literally from Robortello[455] or from
Donatus. It begins by a complimentary address to the Academy of Madrid,
which had, it seems, asked the poet for the treatise, and then passes
into the slightly ignoble apology-boast, already referred to, as to his
own knowledge of the _preceptos_ and the barbarism, the _rudeza_, of the
established and popular notion of drama. He defines comedy as imitating
actions and manners of men—not royal and lofty actions like tragedy, but
humble and plebeian—gives an exceedingly perfunctory sketch of Spanish,
and a much fuller one of ancient, drama, and then relapses into his
exercises and denunciations of
“La vil chimera deste monstruo cómico,”
with a promise to “gild” the error of the vulgar, and discover, if
possible, a sort of _via media_. But one is not surprised to find that
he has almost directly to blaspheme one of the very chief of his revered
_preceptos_ by admitting that
“Buen exemplo nos da naturaleza”
of the mixing of the tragic and the comic. So, too, like a new Naaman,
he bows in the House of Rimmon by admitting that the Unity of Time
_must_ be broken, though you are to hide the breach if you can. Minor
details of dramaturgy fill a large part of the piece, with an especial
recommendation of keeping the interest of the audience on the
tenterhooks. But he cannot finish (the finale includes a boast of having
written 483 comedies
“Con una que he acabado esta semána”)
without another ungracious fling at the “vulgarity” and the “barbarism”
of the Muse he serves, and a confession, in which some have seen humour,
that all the 483, “except six,” sin gravely against true art. Certainly
humour is not an unknown quality with Spaniards; but it cannot be said
that, if Lope uses it here, he uses it gracefully.
-----
Footnote 455:
_V. sup._, pp. 49, 50 note. It is fair to say that Lope quotes
Robortello.
-----
Still Lope, if not very critical himself, was the cause of some
noteworthy criticism from others. [Sidenote: _His assailants and
defenders._] From the lively controversy which arose over the character
of his work, Señor Menéndez has extracted some documents, so exceedingly
rare, that in one instance, at any rate, they consist of a unique copy
of a reply to a libel, the original of which has perished altogether.
This is the _Expostulatio Spongiæ_ (1618) (the original and lost attack
on Lope having been called _Spongia_), by a Julius Columbarius, who
seems to have been the shadow of several gentlemen at once, the chief of
them Lope’s friend, Francesco López de Aguilar. Appended to this is a
dissertation by Alfonso Sanchez, professor of Hebrew at Alcalá, in which
the clear method and universally intelligible Latin of the schools are
utilised to put part of the Romantic case, as it was seldom put before
the end of the eighteenth century. “Nature,” says Sanchez, “gives laws;
she does not accept them.” Spaniards are men, and, for the matter of
that, Roman citizens as well. And times change: and, for all our worship
of Cicero, he would be a dinner-bell[456] if he orated in the Theatre of
Alcalá. Let poetry follow the requirements of its time. Another of these
documents is the Apology for Spanish drama, prefixed to a collection of
plays by Valencian authors in 1616, and signed by Ricardo de[l] Turia, a
_nom de guerre_ not yet certainly identified, which is a special defence
of Spanish comedy (_i.e._, “drama”) as such.
-----
Footnote 456:
_Omnes dilaberentur._ Señor Menéndez (iii. 444) gives all the
important parts, both in Latin and Spanish. R. de[l] Turia, _infra_,
has been reprinted, but the marrow of him also will be found in the
_Historia_, as well as much else: for instance, an interesting
_Invectiva y Apologia_, by Francesco de la Barreda in 1622, which is
dignified by the words: “There was no greater dramatic-poetic written
in the seventeenth century”—a large statement. But Barreda is
certainly a staunch anti-Unitarian, and has well reached the important
doctrine that “Art is merely a careful observation of classified
[_graduados_] examples.” The whole dispute, in which the more or less
great names of the Argensolas, Artieda, Cristóbal de Mesa, and others,
figure, together with the subsequent one on _culteranism_, will be
found exhaustively treated in the tenth chapter of the _Historia_, and
more summarily, but still usefully, in Ticknor. Since most of the text
was written M. Morel-Fatio, in his _Défenseurs de la Comedia_ (_v.
sup._, p. 343), has subjoined Turia to Tirso, and a certain Carlos
Boyl to both, adding a notice of the Frenchman Ogier (_v. sup._, pp.
256, 257), who is already familiar to readers of these pages. Boyl,
one of the Valencian group above referred to, wrote in “romance” form
rules of the _comedia nueva_.
-----
In face of these remarkable utterances (which could be multiplied
greatly, and the answers to them supplied) it may seem hard, if not
altogether unjustifiable, to limit the importance of Spanish criticism,
as has been done above. [Sidenote: _The fight over the Spanish drama._]
But it has to be observed that all this was a merely passing, and in
great part a merely personal, literary dispute, which had no real
effect. While the great Spanish dramatists lasted, the drama was
popular, and men invented reasons to defend it. But they founded no
school, either acceptedly orthodox or strong-reasoned in its heterodoxy:
and, when the great age passed, instead of a sounder criticism, as in
Dryden’s case, founding itself upon the results, the formal and
petrifying neo-classicism of Luzán froze all these reasonings up, just
as Boileau had earlier frozen those of the Ogiers and the Saint-Sorlins
in France. If we could validate that connection between Dryden himself
and the Spanish critics, it would be something like a Missing Link: but
we cannot.
The author of _Don Quixote_ and the author of the _Vida es Sueño_
contribute more irregularly to our matter. [Sidenote: _Cervantes and
Calderon._] The chief critical documents furnished by the former are the
long poem of the _Viaje del Parnaso_, and not so much the world-famous
passage of the burning of the romances of chivalry in Don Quixote, as
the whole problem and purpose of that immortal book itself.[457] The
_Viaje_,[458] putting aside the debated question of its literary value,
is rather a disappointing book, in its allegory of the poetic ship, with
glosses for portholes, and tercets for sweeps, and its endless, but
rather pointless, citation, generally flattering, but sometimes the
reverse, of poets and poetic kinds. Both praise and blame appear to be
distributed very much on the principle of Miss Edgeworth’s Frank, when
he proposed to give the odd piece of tart to good Henry, who had mended
his bat, or to kind Edward, who had lent him his ball. As for the
burning question of the _libros de caballerías_, Cervantes was beyond
all question right in preferring _Amadis_ and _Palmerin_; but it must be
a very matter-of-fact reader who does not see that in fact he loved them
all, however he might laugh at them. Indeed, the scene itself (_D. Q._,
I. i. 6), though it ends in almost the whole library being left to the
untender mercies of the housekeeper and the niece, makes constant
exceptions both in favour of the romances themselves (including even
such a dubious example as _Tirante the White_) and of other pieces in
verse and prose from the _Diana_ to the _Araucana_. And when the subject
is taken up again much farther on (I. iv. 21) by the Canon of Toledo,
his severe strictures on the Romances as they are change suddenly into a
splendid panegyric of what they might be. This latter passage indeed
shifts into one of the most remarkable of Cervantes’ critical
deliverances, the attack (in rougher language than Lope’s own) on
“irregular” plays, and the famous and very curious passage in which,
immediately afterwards, the curate condemns the improbabilities of the
chronicle-drama in words almost precisely similar to those which Sir
Philip Sidney had used twenty years and more earlier, and adopts the
whole “preceptist” view, with a special reference to Lope’s own
compromises and a demand for rigid licensing of plots and romances
alike, according to the principles of taste and learning, of Tully
(_secundum Donatum_) and “eloquence.” One may entertain a passing doubt
whether the chances of _Don Quixote_ itself would have been altogether
happy under such a censorship; and in this there is probably more
following of the Italians[459] than deliberate critical preference. It,
however, and other things (the famous contention that epics may be
written in prose as well as in verse, though important from its actual
illustration in the _Don_ and its effect on Fielding, is in no sense
original, and as an opinion hardly more than an echo of Scaliger) no
doubt give Cervantes a certain status. But Calderon can hardly be said
to give us anything except the odd inconsistency (to be paralleled,
though in a different kind, with Lope’s) of his alternate ridicule and
patronage of the Gongorist style.
-----
Footnote 457:
Let it be remembered that the curious passage on which Pope dwells
(_Ess. Crit._, 267 _sq._) is _not_ Cervantic, but from the spurious
and intrusive work of the mysterious Avellaneda.
Footnote 458:
Enthusiastically Englished, with much apparatus, by the late James Y.
Gibson (London, 1883). It is closely modelled on the _Viaggio di
Parnasso_ of Cesare Caporali (1531-1601).
Footnote 459:
Or of their Spanish followers, such as Pinciano and Cascales. This
opinion, formed independently from reading of _Don Quixote_, agrees
with one of much more importance, that of Señor Menéndez himself. Nay,
Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly (_op. cit._, p. 237) roundly pronounces Cervantes
“the least critical of men.”
-----
This last name introduces us to another controversy, which, though
connected in the most intimate way with our subject, is a sort of
appendix to it, and one of those appendices which, in some cases, one
must ruthlessly cut short. [Sidenote: _Gongorism, Culteranism, &c._] The
quarrels over Lope (whom, by the way, Góngora himself savagely attacked)
were succeeded by the battle of _culteranismo_, again distinguished by
that curious see-sawing which, as we have seen, marks the Spaniards on
almost all critical points. Quevedo, for instance, and the
above-mentioned Gonzales de Salas, behave like those capricious knights
of Spenser’s, who were always changing sides in the battle, and running
tilt at the very champions by whose side they had lately charged.
[Sidenote: _Quevedo._] Quevedo in particular has a most extraordinary
record in this matter. I do not think that, in my limited reading of
Spanish, I have ever laughed more over anything than over his _Cuento de
Cuentos_,[460] and his _Catechism to help to translate the jargonizing
ladies_, where he addresses himself _Al caro, diáfano, transparente e
mediano Lector_, gives instructions in the best manner of precious
speech, and advises that a wife should call her husband _mi quotidio_,
and he her _su sempiterna_, while neither will dream of speaking of a
“gota _de agua_,” but will, of course, denominate it a _podagra_. Yet
Quevedo at other times did more than condescend to cultism, or
culteranism, as it seems to be indifferently called.
-----
Footnote 460:
In his _Works_. Bibl. de Ribadeneyra.
-----
[Sidenote: _Gracián._]
The great prose apostle of the cult, as Góngora was its poet, was
Balthasar Gracián, who has not a little for us in his famous _Agudeza y
arte de ingenio_,[461] the Bible of preciosity, with its motto, _En Nada
Vulgar_, and its doctrine (II. 49), that _La semejança es origen de una
immensidad conceptuosa tirar principio de agudeza sin limite_. His name
gives an opportunity of illustrating the difficulty of treating _cosas
de España_. [Sidenote: _The limitations of Spanish criticism._] I am not
aware of any living English authorities on Spanish literature who can be
placed above Mr David Hannay and Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly. Of these, the
first says[462] that it was Gracián’s “chosen function to be the critic,
prophet, and populariser of Gongorism”; the second,[463] that “No man
ever wrote ... with more scorn of Gongorism and all its work.” Who shall
decide when doctors of this degree disagree to this extent? I am, so far
as my very poor and imperfect knowledge of the texts goes, with Mr
Hannay: but that is not to the point.
-----
Footnote 461:
In his _Works_. 2 vols., Barcelona, 1748.
-----
What, I think, is to the point, and what I may say with some general
knowledge of criticism, if with little particular knowledge of Spanish,
is that the very nature of the subject invites, excuses, necessitates
such differences. The Spaniards, if I may be pardoned a rough and ugly
metaphor, never “digested themselves,” never either kept creation and
criticism separate, or waited for the one till the other had ceased.
_Naturaleza_ and _Agudeza_ jostle each other constantly in them, with a
result of truceless war. One may even wonder whether _cultismo_,
_culteranismo_, _conceptismo_,[464] coming as they did after the great
period of natural freedom, in Lope, and Tirso, and Cervantes at his
best, did not do far more than the harm that the much-abused
“Metaphysicals” did in English. The practice of Góngora and Gracián,
even of Calderon, not seldom belied the arguments of Tirso and of the
shadowy Turia and Sanchez. When a Luzán comes in such cases it is too
fatally easy for him to say, “Well! whatever the ancients did, they did
not do _this_! There is at any rate no _jerigonza_ in Aristotle or in
Horace!” And the Spaniards had no Milton, no Shakespeare to carry them
through, as ours carried us through the worst times. Their Cervantes in
his great work was of an “off” kind, as yet not fully recognised; their
Lope was too fluent, facile, voluminous, unconvincing; their Calderon,
with all his marvellous poetical and specially lyrical power, too
unequal and perhaps too rhetorical.
-----
Footnote 462:
_Later Renaissance_, p. 172.
Footnote 463:
_Hist. Spanish Lit._, p. 340.
Footnote 464:
I am very well aware that _culteranismo_ and _conceptismo_ are perhaps
not identical, and have been asserted to be quite different. But both
alike belong to the “better-bread-than-is-made-of-wheat” division of
writing.
-----
Above all, they had the misfortune to have no critic of real authority.
The _Arte Nuevo_ is partly clever enough “technical education,” partly
bookwork, partly ignoble or inartistic compromise: and if we compare
Tasso and Lope, at no such great distance of time, we can only be struck
by the enormous advantage of the Italian in serious critical weight. The
others, the Pincianos, the Gonzales de Salas, and the rest, were
persons, if not exactly of no mark or likelihood, at any rate of no
commanding and authoritative importance, like Ben Jonson and Dryden in
England, like Boileau in France. Even such comparatively slight
examination of the actual texts as I have been able to give has shown me
that many most interesting and independently striking _aperçus_,
passages, phrases may be taken from the Spanish critics. But I cannot
say that, even after duly perusing and perpending the admirably
competent and loving examination of Señor Menéndez, I have been able to
form any high opinion of Spanish seventeenth-century criticism as a
whole.
CHAPTER III.
GERMAN AND DUTCH CRITICISM.
THE HINDMOST OF ALL—ORIGINS—STURM—FABRICIUS—VERSION A.—VERSION B.—JAC.
PONTANUS—HEINSIUS: THE ‘DE TRAGŒDIÆ CONSTITUTIONE’—VOSS—HIS
‘RHETORIC’—HIS ‘POETICS’—OPITZ—THE ‘BUCH DER DEUTSCHEN POETEREI.’
It is not necessary to add much to what has been said in the first
chapter of the last Book on the subject of Erasmus, in order to indicate
the reasons why the growth of criticism in Germany, High and Low,[465]
was far more tardy, and for a long time far scantier, than even in
England; and why, when it came, it displayed a one-eyed character which
is not visible in any other of the great European countries.[466]
[Sidenote: _The hindmost of all._] Want of unity, religious and
political troubles, Grobianism and its opposite or companion
Pedantry—all had to do with this; but the principal hindrance was the
non-existence of any considerable German vernacular literature, and the
consequent inveteracy of the habit of writing in Latin. So long as this
lasted the Germans and Dutch might be and were commentators, scholars,
grammarians—but they could hardly be critics, because they still lacked
the comparative stimulus. And it is not a little noteworthy that the
earlier development of Criticism in the Low Countries as compared with
Germany, during our present period, at least coincided with a greater
development of Dutch vernacular literature, though this is a matter
which lies out of our direct route.
-----
Footnote 465:
I do not know any general-special books on the subject of this
chapter, except those of Blankenburg, and Gayley and Scott, _cit.
sup._
Footnote 466:
Of course Olmucensis (_v. supra_, p. 27) and Cornelius Agrippa (p. 28)
in strictness belong to the subject, as does Erasmus himself. But the
last is too cosmopolitan, and the two first too unimportant, to make
the abstraction of them from this place a great wrong to the _Teutsche
Nation_. Ulrich von Hutten wrote on versification, but not
importantly.
-----
There may easily be differences of opinion as to the persons, not mere
Humanists, who shall be selected as representing the beginning of German
criticism in modern times, in so far at least as the section of Poetics
is concerned. [Sidenote: _Origins._] The choice may lie between the
famous Johann Sturm, who touches on literary matters in his letters, who
wrote on Rhetoric, and whose pupil, late in his life, drew up a
commentary on the Epistle to the Pisos in 1576; Georgius Fabricius, of
Chemnitz, the first form of whose _De Re Poetica_ appeared in 1565; and
Jacobus Pontanus, whose real name was Spanmüller, whose book on the
subject was published thirty years later, but who, as he was then a man
of over fifty, and had long been a professor, had probably dealt with
the subject, if only in lectures, much earlier.[467]
-----
Footnote 467:
The _Disputationes de Tragœdia_ of Schosser (1559) are earlier than
any of these; but they seem to be pure commentary on Aristotle. I have
not been able to see them.
-----
Sturm’s interests were more in pædagogy than in poetry, and he does not
rank high as a critic: though there is no doubt that he helped to spread
devotion to books. [Sidenote: _Sturm._] It is not in his favour that, in
the teeth of both external and internal evidence, he fights[468] for the
name _De Arte Poetica_, on the special ground that the work of Horace is
an _Ars Perfecta_ (which, put its merits as high as you please, it most
certainly is _not_), and that it has all the six parts of poetry—fable,
character, _dianoia_, _lexis_, _melopœia_, and “sight.” For the rest he
has few general remarks, and is almost wholly commentatorial. His
Rhetorical writing yields little really critical: nor in his _Letters_
have I yet found half so much criticism as is extant in that single
letter of Ascham to him, which has been noticed above.[469]
-----
Footnote 468:
_Commentarii in Art. Poet. Horat._ (Strasburg, 1576). The compiler was
Johann Lobart. Sturm’s Rhetorical works are rather numerous, and range
from the _De amissa dicendi ratione_ (ibid., 1538) onwards.
Footnote 469:
P. 155.
-----
The other two were both men of very wide influence as teachers of
Poetics: and both underwent the process—complimentary but disfiguring,
and specially usual in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—of
having their work watered out, or boiled down, by others. [Sidenote:
_Fabricius._] I do not know, and I have not considered it _tanti_ to
spend much time or labour in the attempt to discover, the exact process
by which the small four books of the first edition of Fabricius’ _De Re
Poetica_[470] became the fat volume of seven, which presents itself
under the same title thirty years later.[471] [Sidenote: _Version A._]
It seemed better to give this time and labour to the reading of the
books themselves. Version A (as we may call that of 1565) is an early
example of the kind of _gradus_ which was particularly popular among the
northern nations, though, as we have seen from the work of Mazzone da
Miglionico,[472] it was by no means unknown in Italy. In his first book
Fabricius discusses quantity, metre, and diction in general, with
plentiful examples. Book II. is an elaborate table of locutions from the
Latin poets, listed under heads as thus:—
Amor tangit. Matrimonium promittere.
” versat. ” ” inire.
” torquet. ” ” fallere.
” dat vulnus. ” ” odisse.
” mordet.
” torret.
Book III. provides the dull-witted versifier with store of _clichés_ of
the same kind, but a little more elaborate; there being, for instance,
dozens of phrases for embracing. And IV. is a sort of common place-book
of short copies of verses on everything in Heaven and Earth.
-----
Footnote 470:
_De Re Poetica_, Lib. iv. (Antwerp, 1565).
Footnote 471:
Ibid., Lib. vii. (Leipsic, 1595).
Footnote 472:
_V. sup._, p. 107.
-----
Version B (which is dated long after Fabricius’ death in 1571) is not
only much enlarged but differently arranged. [Sidenote: _Version B._]
Book I. deals as before with Quantity and Feet; Book II. with the
subject of A, Book III.; and the rest follow the same schemes,—III. B
with tags on Ages, Seasons, Heavenly Bodies, &c.; IV. with epithets
suitable to proper names; V. with ditto to common; VI. with a
_pot-pourri_ of poetical faults and beauties, &c.; while VII. gives a
sort of appendix on prosody and diction generally.
There is no need to say much on the inevitable critical result, the
obvious critical value or valuelessness, of this. There is in A a
reference to Scaliger’s _Poetic_, which had appeared a little before. As
a matter of fact Scaliger and Fabricius between them provided the
average late sixteenth-century man—sometimes even when he was a
professed critic or poet, constantly when he was merely a person of
ordinary culture—with a sort of joint poetical Thesaurus,—Scaliger doing
the historical, critical, and (of its kind) philosophical business for
him, and Fabricius keeping a general marine-store of materials, with
precepts for their use.
The _Institutiones Poeticæ_ of Spanmüller [Pontanus] appeared first in
1594. [Sidenote: _Jac. Pontanus._] Its author is quoted, among other
prophets of criticism, by the Spaniard Juan de La Cueva a dozen years
later, and, independently of its original form, the book acquired, early
in the seventeenth century, a large currency by being arranged
(_concinnata_) in the _Sacrarum Profanarumque Phraseum Thesaurus_ of J.
Buehler,[473] where it serves as theoretic handbook to another Gradus.
Indeed Pontanus’ own work has all the characteristics of a decoction or
abstract of Scaliger himself. And once more the same reflection applies.
It is impossible not to see how powerful and (beyond mere school-work,
in which they were no doubt invaluable[474]) how maleficent must have
been the influence of such works on the critical temper of the
generations influenced by them. La Bruyère’s _Tout est dit_—an ironical
fling in its author’s mouth partly, no doubt, though perhaps not quite
so even there—tended to become matter of breviary. Everything had been
said and done; all the Kinds found out; all the phrases set down; all
the poetry raised from shaft and vein and seam. You simply rearranged it
like a child’s house of wooden bricks, according to patterns provided on
the lid. The “Causes of Corrupted Arts” into which Vives inquired, “The
Lost System of Speaking” which Sturm deplored, were all to be found, and
found sufficiently, in the Ancients.
-----
Footnote 473:
_S. l._ 1633, and continually reprinted.
Footnote 474:
Let me not be supposed for one moment to depreciate Latin
verse-making. I hardly know (speaking from actual experience as a
school-master) a single study which is better for boys; and the
intelligent use of the gradus is a better discipline in observation,
critical selection, and method, than smatterings of a hundred
so-called “sciences.” But there is a time to put away childish things
as well as a time to use them.
-----
The solid qualities of the German race have not commonly distinguished
themselves in pure criticism, and to this day Lessing and Goethe are
rather captains without companies, and with at best a staff of
Schlegels, and suchlike, for lieutenants and ancients. Germans were,
however, to do something better, in this century of erudition, than the
mere preparation of fourth-form handbooks. Daniel Heinsius and Gerard
Voss may be regarded with some reason as the Jachin and the Boaz of the
temple of seventeenth-century Poetics. _The De Tragœdiæ Constitutione_
of the first, which appeared at Leyden in 1611,[475] is the succinctest
and best argued statement of the neo- and to a great extent
pseudo-Aristotelian view of Drama. The new _Institutes of Oratory_,[476]
and the much later _Poetical Institutes_[477] of the second, construct,
with a great deal of learning and a very considerable amount of good
sense, an entire neo-classical Rhetoric and Poetic. To both we must give
some attention.
-----
Footnote 475:
The copy of this which belongs to the University of Edinburgh has the
additional interest of having belonged to, and of having been given
by, Drummond of Hawthornden, and so of having been, not improbably, in
the hands of Ben Jonson.
Footnote 476:
_Commentariorum Rhetoricorum sive Oratoriarum Institutionum Libri
Sex_, 8vo, Dordrecht, 1609. But this was greatly enlarged in the 4to
of Leyden, 1643, which I use.
Footnote 477:
_De Artis Poeticæ Natura ac Constitutione_, 4to, Amsterdam, 1647.
-----
The _De Tragœdiæ Constitutione_ is beyond all doubt a very remarkable
book. [Sidenote: _Heinsius. The_ De Tragœdiæ Constitutione.] It is quite
short; only some 250 very small pages of very large print, so that there
are scarcely more than a hundred words in a page. But Heinsius writes as
one having authority; and we can read but little of him before it
becomes perfectly clear why that authority was accepted, for the rest of
the century at least, with more docility and less cavil than that of
almost any other critic. He takes the _Poetics_—as many, indeed most men
for more than half a century, had taken them—for gospel. But he neither
translates them on the one hand, nor wanders in the wilderness of
scrappy and desultory commentary on the other. Not merely does he
confine himself to that part of the book which concerns his actual
subject, but he renders this part in a fashion which may best be
described as a very rare, and very masterly, kind of lecturing. He
neither slavishly keeps nor prudishly avoids the actual words of his
author; his paraphrases are brief but lucid; he adds to Aristotle what
he thinks necessary[478] in the way of illustrations from the Greek
tragedians, citation from Horace, examples (by no means always
laudatory) from Seneca, and the like; but in such a fashion as never to
overload, or water down, the milk of the Aristotelian word. That he
always gives that milk quite “sincere” we cannot say; he emphasises the
“single revolution of the sun” more than he has any right to do, though
he does not do the same for the still more pestilent and apocryphal
Unity of Place. He may sometimes, or often in the disputable places (as
of “purgation” and so forth), miss the full meaning of Aristotle
according to the view of some judges, or impute a wrong one according to
others. But nobody, let it be repeated, can read him impartially without
seeing that he has soaked himself with the spirit of his author, has
equipped himself pretty thoroughly with the literature of his subject,
and, as a result, is speaking, as we said, with authority. There is no
clearer or more workmanlike exposition of the neo-classic, and not too
_neo_-classic, dramatic ideal than his.
-----
Footnote 478:
He has no room for much historical illustration, but what he says is
generally sound, though it is odd that in mentioning the _Christus
Patiens_ (which, of course, he attributes to Gregory Nazianzen) he
should not have noticed its _cento_ character, and though his remarks
on Muretus and Buchanan smack a little of the rival author of _Herodes
Infanticida_.
-----
Heinsius, like his successor Hédelin in France, and like Hédelin’s
successors Rymer and Dennis in England, was rash enough to forget that
though a critic is (thank Heaven!) not bound to write good poetry, he is
bound not to publish bad. [Sidenote: _Voss._] And he ventured on a
tragedy, _Herodes Infanticida_, and other things which did not meet much
quarter even from those who agreed with him in critical principles. Voss
was wiser, and confined himself to the pure erudition and comment of
which the two books referred to above are far from being the worst
examples. Indeed his unboastful scholarship, his immense reading, and
his untiring industry would seem to have fitted him quite exceptionally
for the duty; and he has actually given us in these two books, or rather
collections of books, the completest _Rhetoric_ and _Poetic_ of modern,
if not of any, times. Only two things more were needed to put these
books in a place even more unique; but Nature refused the one to Voss
personally, and the other was a thing almost unreasonable to require
from a Dutch savant of the seventeenth century. The first was positive
critical genius; and the second was an impartial appreciation of ancient
and modern literature.
[Sidenote: _His_ Rhetoric.]
The _Rhetoric_, which the author put out in its first form in 1606,
revising and enlarging it for at least thirty years, till it forms a
quarto of a thousand closely printed pages, has some seventy more of
minute index, but lacks the Table of Contents, or displayed syllabus of
section headings, for which we have so often had to be thankful in
Italian work. Voss evidently had the practice of the Roman Law
constantly before him, and he thus follows the method of the Latin
treatises in a way which makes it for the most part superfluous for us
to follow _him_, though he has plenty of modern instances and
applications. From the Fourth Book onwards, however, he deals with
Elocution and Style, chiefly of course by the way of Figures, yet,
according to his lights, in the most careful and exhaustive fashion. But
what is at once noteworthy and rather tell-tale is his unqualified
admiration for the Scaligers,—father and son. “That divine man,” “that
man, _ad unguem factus_,” that “emperor of the literary world,” that
“prince of the senate of criticism”; without some phrase of this kind he
seems unable to name them. And in fact the whole book is rather a huge
commentatorial digest of what they and others, from Aristotle downwards,
have said than anything more.
The _Poetical Institutions_ are somewhat more original, and they had
much greater influence. [Sidenote: _His_ Poetics.] The book consists
really of three separate works, a brief _De Arte Poetica_ of less than
ninety pages, of which Grotius, in a commendatory epigram prefixed to
some editions, says—
“non magnus dat tibi cuncta liber;”
of the _Institutiones_ proper in about four hundred; and of a _De
Imitatione_ which is rather shorter than the _Ars_. The first, as reason
and its title both import, is a purely general tractate, which, after
pointing out that Poetry has much in common with Oratory, and that
therefore much which concerns it has been said in the earlier book,
discusses all the old generalities about the origin, nature, moral
character, and so forth, of poetry, with expositions of most of the
_cruces_ and technical catchwords from Ψιλὸς λόγος down to _furor
poeticus_. Voss is here also very generally Scaligerian; he adheres to
the “natural” origin of poetry, love-songs, cradle-songs, &c., as
against the religious and the deliberately “imitative”; gives very wide
scope of subject to the poet, and defends him handsomely against his
enemies and detractors from Plato downwards, but is properly indignant
with naughty poets.[479]
-----
Footnote 479:
Our whole history has shown us the obsession of the _pius poeta_, the
_vir bonus_; but I think the uncompromising submission to it of the
later seventeenth and eighteenth century is as much due to the
influence of Voss as to that of any single mediate person.
-----
The _Institutions_ deal more directly with the question of Poetic Art,
and proceed by a series of section-headings in the form of Propositions,
which are then explained, commented, and defended. The first of the
Three Books deals with the matter common to all kinds of poetry; the
Second with the Drama; the Third with the Epic and the minor Kinds. All
this is old stuff rehandled. There is somewhat more originality in the
_De Imitatione_, which does not exactly correspond to any of the older
books, or parts of books, on that subject. Voss generally supposes the
question, “How is the poet to set about his work?” “How is he to apply
all these rules that we have given him?” and before very long we see
that he is really thinking of the wrong Imitation no less than Vida was.
He devotes himself (no doubt under the happier inspiration of
Quintilian) to discussing _how_ we are to imitate, how to read. But he
very soon slips into the inquiry, practical indeed but a little
undignified, “How are we to escape plagiarism?” to which one is tempted
to reply, “By not imitating in this sense at all.” That is not his
opinion. He thinks, if we may vary a well-known proverb, that the safe
way is to take all your eggs out of one basket. But you are never to
imitate bad words and thoughts; you must plan your work carefully
beforehand, correct carefully, invite criticism, but distinguish between
what is good and what is not. It is all very just in this way; but that
way has led us far from _furor poeticus_. We feel at the end of Voss’s
laborious and erudite book that we are indeed in the century of the
_Gradus_. And here, as in his other volume, we also feel that he has,
for good or for evil, caught up and uttered the gospel of
Neo-Classicism.
So far we have dealt only with Latin authors. The work of Heinsius is
mentioned, both in the text by the author, and by the introducer,
Augustinus Iskra, of the _Buch von der Deutschen Poeterei_[480] of
Martin Opitz. [Sidenote: _Opitz._] This interesting and agreeable little
book, though not exactly (as it has sometimes been incorrectly called)
the first[481] piece of German poetic in the vernacular, is entitled,
with the usual reserves, to the place of origin in _modern_ German
Poetics. It cannot be called prolix, for it only occupies sixty pages in
the recent reprint; but it is equally modest and business-like, and
helps to redeem from the utter absurdity of most of such appellations
(though it still remains absurd) the title of German Dryden which
somebody or other has given to Opitz. Augustine Iskra does not
exaggerate when he says—
“Altius scandes patria canendo
Barbyto, quam si Latium peritæ
Atticæ jungas, Syriæque Peithus
Noveris artem.”
And it is the peculiar glory of the Silesian poet that he not only sang
himself on the lyre of his country, but did his best to enable others to
do so. The spirit of genuine patriotism breathes in his dedication of
the booklet to the magistrates of his native town, Buntzlau; and that of
a modest scholarship (an adjective and substantive which make such an
agreeable couple that it is pity they should live so much apart) in the
opening of the book itself. He has not the least idea, he says, that you
can make a poet by rules and laws; nor has he any intention of doing
over again the work which Aristotle, Horace, Vida, and Scaliger have
done. [Sidenote: _The_ Buch der Deustchen Poeterei.] But he arrays
himself (to speak ecclesiastically) in a “decent tippet” of the old
stuff about Linus and Orpheus, with the Strabo passage all complete, and
a train of citations as to the nobility of the poet’s office and the
like. He comes in his fourth chapter to business. He actually quotes
Walther von der Vogelweide; and I do not think that he can be fairly
charged with that ὕβρις towards the ancient poetry of his country which
too frequently marks others in other countries. But he is evidently set
on the work of Reform—of substituting “smoothness of numbers” for the
“wild sweetness” of the folk-song. Wherein no doubt he was wrong. Not
that way did the counsels of perfection lie for the Higher Dutch; and
they have always had to come back to the woodnotes and the wood-Muses to
find poetic luck. But Opitz was entitled—was in his day almost bound—to
think differently. The interesting thing—much more interesting to us
than the details to which it led him, such as the patronage of the
Alexandrine, the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes, &c.—is
the particular source to which he turned for inspiration and guidance.
He knew, as has been said, the Italian critics, at least those in Latin,
and he probably knew the Italian poets (he cites Petrarch). But it is to
France, and specially to Ronsard, that he fondly turns. Now it need
hardly be said that in 1624 the influence of the Pléiade in its own
country, though not quite dead, was moribund; the correctness of
Malherbe, on the one hand, was doing its best deliberately to throttle
it, and the Italianated and Spaniolated extravagances which were
fashionable were choking it in another way. This is no doubt not the
only instance of a literary influence which is dead or dying in its own
country showing full vitality in another, but it is one of the most
remarkable. For, beyond question, the French influence—in successive
forms, but still French—reigned in Germany for some hundred and fifty
years; and it was Opitz who first brought it to bear.
-----
Footnote 480:
Printed at Brieg and published at Breslau in 1624; reprinted as the
first number of Niemeyer’s _Neudrucke des xvi^{ten} und xvii^{ten}
Jahrhunderts_, at Halle in 1886. The title of _Prosodia Germanica_,
which the later editions bore, does not seem to be the author’s own.
Footnote 481:
For instance, the very interesting _Grundlicher Bericht des Deutschen
Meistergesangs_ of Adam Puschmann, edited by Herr Jonas for the same
collection as No. 73 (Halle, 1888), is more than half a century older
than Opitz’s book, having appeared at Görlitz in 1571. But Puschmann,
a pupil of Hans Sachs himself, and active in the Masterschool, is only
looking back on that school, the rules and regulations of which he
lays down in the most approved fashion. “The face” of Opitz “meets the
morning’s breath.”
-----
His details, as has been said, are less interesting: yet they do not
lack interest. He begins by stickling for pure High German: and
certainly no one who, for his sins, has been condemned to read much of
late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century German—one of the ugliest
and most mongrel speeches in history, and quite astounding after the
musical sweetness of the best _Mittelhochdeutsch_—will owe him a grudge
for this. He protests against the mingle-mangle of foreign words which
was flooding the language, and even against the famous _-iren_ by which,
to the present day to some extent, Germans give a sort of spurious
naturalisation to such foreigners. He would have limits set (though he
does not forbid it altogether) to that odd custom of declining classical
names in German speech, which is also maintained to some extent, but
which sometimes made a mere Macaronic of sixteenth-century German. On
the other hand, it is curious to find him urging on Germans, who by
right were, and by practice long have been, among the busiest and most
successful of word-compounders, the _sonderliche anmuthigkeit_ of
compounds: and actually quoting the French as, next the Greeks, the
masters of such things.[482] Of course the historical student, even if
citations from Ronsard were not on the same page, would know at once
whence this comes. Still, there still remains the oddity of alleging the
undoubtedly awkward and exotic-sounding _chasse-nue_, _ébranle-rocher_,
and _irrite-mer_ as warrants and patterns for words like
_wolkentreiber_, _felsenstürmer_, and _meeraufreitzer_, which simply
seem to us natural-born, and to require no warranty but their own sound
and appearance.
-----
Footnote 482:
_Buch der Poet._, ed. cit., p. 29.
-----
But Opitz (of whom if any critic speaks disrespectfully, I fear that it
argues him uncritical) wrote not merely on the eve, but in the actual
stormy morning, of the Thirty Years’ War: and Germany had something else
to do for a long time besides listening to him. When matters settled
down again, the advice to attend to the French was rather unfortunately
“carried over” to a state of things in which French influence was still
less the influence for Germany. But this imitation, whether right or
wrong, found no important critical expression, and it would be losing
labour and space to devote either to German criticism in the last half
of the seventeenth century.
It is more remarkable that the real activity and accomplishment of Dutch
during the early part of the century did not lead to some development of
vernacular criticism. But to the best of my information[483] it did not.
The Dutch and the Germans, however, of course still continued to write
in Latin, to edit, to comment, to carry on that division of critical
work which, according to the laying out of our subject, lies, except at
particular seasons and for special ends, beyond the scope of this book.
Moreover, both Holland and some of the German Free-towns, but especially
the former country, became the adopted, as they were almost the natural,
homes of those beginners of judicial criticism, who have been noticed in
part at the conclusion of the French chapter of this Book. Bayle’s
_Nouvelles de la République de Lettres_ were Hollandish by domicile, as
was the _Bibliothèque Universelle_ of Le Clerc, while at Leipsic the
_Acta Eruditorum_ maintained the same principle of critical annals for
nearly a century. Bayle, as has been said before, was too much of a
partisan, and perhaps of a wit, for anything of his to have a judicial,
however much in some senses of the word it might have a critical,
character: but the less mercurial talents of Jean Le Clerc, which have
been characterised under the head of the _Ana_ (v. _sup._, p. 276), were
very well suited to the conduct of a critical record.
-----
Footnote 483:
I must here repeat, with additional emphasis, the caution and apology
which I put in as to Spanish. I do not know anything of _this_
language. I have been content to apply to Low Dutch the precept of a
great High Dutchman, _Entbehren sollst du_. But for our purpose I
believe it will be generally admitted that the renunciation is not
fatal, important Dutch critics having, almost to a man, written in
Latin.
-----
CHAPTER IV.
DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.
DEAD WATER IN ENGLISH CRITICISM—MILTON—COWLEY—THE PREFATORY MATTER OF
‘GONDIBERT’—THE “HEROIC POEM”—DAVENANT’S ‘EXAMEN’—HOBBES’S
ANSWER—DRYDEN—HIS ADVANTAGES—THE EARLY PREFACES—THE ‘ESSAY OF
DRAMATIC POESY’—ITS SETTING AND OVERTURE—CRITES FOR THE
ANCIENTS—EUGENIUS FOR THE “LAST AGE”—LISIDEIUS FOR THE FRENCH—DRYDEN
FOR ENGLAND AND LIBERTY—‘CODA’ ON RHYMED PLAYS, AND
CONCLUSION—CONSPICUOUS MERITS OF THE PIECE—THE MIDDLE PREFACES—THE
‘ESSAY ON SATIRE’ AND THE ‘DEDICATION OF THE ÆNEIS’—THE PARALLEL OF
POETRY AND PAINTING—THE ‘PREFACE TO THE FABLES’—DRYDEN’S GENERAL
CRITICAL POSITION—HIS SPECIAL CRITICAL METHOD—DRYDEN AND
BOILEAU—RYMER—THE ‘PREFACE TO RAPIN’—THE ‘TRAGEDIES OF THE LAST
AGE’—THE ‘SHORT VIEW OF TRAGEDY’—THE RULE OF TOM THE
SECOND—SPRAT—EDWARD PHILLIPS—HIS ‘THEATRUM POETARUM’—WINSTANLEY’S
‘LIVES’—LANGBAINE’S ‘DRAMATIC POETS’—TEMPLE—BENTLEY—COLLIER’S ‘SHORT
VIEW’—SIR T. P. BLOUNT—PERIODICALS: THE ‘ATHENIAN MERCURY,’ ETC.
The middle third, if not the whole first half, of the seventeenth
century in England was too much occupied with civil and religious broils
to devote attention to such a subject literary criticism. [Sidenote:
_Dead water in English Criticism._] Between the probable date of
Jonson’s _Timber_ (1625-37) and the certain one of Dryden’s _Essay of
Dramatic Poesy_ (1668) we have practically nothing substantive save the
interesting prefatory matter to _Gondibert_ (1650). [Sidenote: _Milton_]
Milton, the greatest man of letters wholly of the time, must indeed
during this time have conceived, or at least matured, that cross-grained
prejudice against rhyme, which is more surprising in him than even in
Campion, and which was itself even more open to Daniel’s strictures. For
not only is Milton himself in his own practice a greater and more
triumphant vindicator of rhyme than Campion, but Daniel’s strongest and
soundest argument, “Why condemn this thing in order to establish that?”
applies far more strongly to blank verse than to Campion’s artificial
metres. Custom and Nature, those greater Cæsars to whom Daniel so
triumphantly appealed, had already settled it, as they were to confirm
it later, that rhymed and unrhymed verse, each obeying the natural
evolution of English prosody, should be the twin horses to draw its car.
But Milton never developed his antipathy to rhyme (which in all
probability arose, mainly if not merely, from the fact that nearly all
the most exquisite rhymers of his time, except himself, were Cavaliers)
in any critical fashion, contenting himself with occasional flings and
_obiter dicta_.[484]
-----
Footnote 484:
The chief critical _loci_ in Milton are all among the best known
passages of his work. They are the peremptory anathema on rhyme in the
prose note added to _Paradise Lost_, in what Professor Masson has
settled to be the “Fifth Form of the First Edition”; the short Defence
of Tragedy, wholly on Italian principles but adapted to Puritan
understandings, prefixed to _Samson Agonistes_; the first description
of his own studies in _The Reason of Church Government_; the more
elaborate return upon that subject—a singular mixture of exquisite
phrasing and literary appreciation with insolent abuse—in the _Apology
for Smectymnuus_ (which is not, as some have thought, the same thing
as _The_ [Platonic] _Apology_) and divers clauses in the _Tractate of
Education_, especially the reference to “Castelvetro, Tasso, and
Mazzoni,” whom he credits with “sublime art,” and puts on a level with
Aristotle and Horace. We might add a few casual girds, such as that at
the supposed cacophony of Hall’s “Teach each” in the _Apology for
Smectymnuus_, which has been compared to Malherbe’s vellications of
Desportes (_cf. sup._, p. 245). A complete critical treatise from him
(if only he could have been prevailed upon to write in a good temper)
would have been of supreme interest: it is not so certain that it
would have been of supreme value, even if he had been in that temper.
-----
Another poet of the time, Cowley, ought to have given us criticism of
real importance. [Sidenote: _Cowley._] He had the paramount, if not
exclusive, literary interests which are necessary to a great critic; he
had the knowledge; and he was perhaps the first man in England to
possess the best kind of critical style—lighter than Daniel’s, and less
pregnant, involved, and scholastic than Jonson’s—the style of well-bred
conversational argument.[485] But he was a little bitten with the
scientific as opposed to the literary mania, and, in his own person, he
was perhaps too much of a Janus as regards literary tastes to be able to
give—or indeed to take—a clear and single view. There were, as in Lope,
two poets in Cowley, and each of these was wont to get in the way of the
other. The one was a “metaphysical” of the high flight, who at least
would, if he could, have been as intensely fantastic as Donne, and as
gracefully fantastic as Suckling. The other was a classical, “sensible,”
couplet-poet, who was working out Ben Jonson’s theories with even less
admixture of Romanticism than that which tinged Ben Jonson’s practice.
The entanglement of these was sufficiently detrimental to his poetry;
but it would have been absolutely fatal to his criticism, which must
either have perpetually contradicted itself or else have wandered in a
maze, perplexing as perplexed.
-----
Footnote 485:
He has practically given us nothing but a slight apology for sacred
verse (common in his time and natural from the author of the
_Davideis_); with a slighter seasoning of the also familiar defence of
poetry from being mere “lying,” in the Preface to the folio edition of
his Poems; some still slighter remarks on Comedy in that to _Cutter of
Coleman Street_; and hardly more than a glance at literary education
in his _Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy_.
In this last we may feel a sort of gust of the same spirit which
appears in his disciple Sprat’s _History of the Royal Society_ (_v.
infra_).
-----
It is with Davenant’s Preface to _Gondibert_, in the form of a Letter to
Hobbes, and with Hobbes’s answer to it,[486] that England strikes once
more into the main path of European critical development. [Sidenote:
_The Prefatory matter of_ Gondibert.] And it is of capital importance
that, both the writers being exiled royalists, these documents were
written at Paris in the year 1650. There was much interest there in
English affairs, while, as we have seen, the habit of literary
discussion had, for more than a generation, become ingrained in
Frenchmen. When Davenant set himself to write _Gondibert_, he was doing
exactly what Chapelain and Desmarets and the rest were doing; and when
he and his greater friend exchanged their epistles, they were doing
exactly what all the French literary world had been doing, not merely,
as is commonly thought, from the time of the _Cid_ dispute, but from one
much earlier. Taking all things together, it was natural that the
subject should be the _Heroic Poem_, which had been a favourite of
Italian and French critics for some seventy years and more, but had been
little touched in England, though the conclusion of Ben’s _Discoveries_
shapes a course for it. Hints have been given before in this History
that in the opinion of its writer the “Heroic Poem” had much in common
with that entity which was long without a literary name, but which an
admirable humourist has now enabled us to describe scientifically as a
Boojum[487]—that is to say, it was not only something undiscoverable,
but something which had a malign and, indeed, destructive influence on
those who thought they had discovered it.
-----
Footnote 486:
Both these will be found in Chalmers’ _Poets_, vi. 349-372. Hobbes’s
_Answer_ is also in Molesworth’s ed. of the _Works_, iv. 443-458. It
is there followed by a short literary letter to Edward Howard of the
_British Princes_, the most egregious of Dryden’s egregious leash of
brothers-in-law. To these may be added the brief literary passage in
the chapter of “Intellectual Virtues” in the First Part of _Leviathan_
(ibid., iii. 58) and the “Brief” of the _Rhetoric_ (referred to
_supra_, vol. i. p. 40); ibid., vi. 416-510. I have a copy of the
first edition of this, anonymous and undated, but assigned to 1655-57
by bibliographers. It does not contain the shorter _Art of Rhetoric_,
which follows in Molesworth.
Footnote 487:
This Boojum, I fear, will disturb some of my friends. But I put him
under the protection of the Powder of Pimperlimpimp, and of the
Equinoctials of Queubus.
-----
The “Heroic Poem” was to be neither pure Romance nor pure Epic, but a
sort of medley between the two. [Sidenote: _The “Heroic Poem.”_] Or,
rather, it was to be a thing of shreds and patches, strictly epic (or at
least Virgilian-epical) in theory and rules, but borrowing from Romance
whatever it could, as our Elizabethans would say, “convey cleanly”
enough in the way of additional attractions. The shreds and patches,
too, were not purely poetical: they were not taken simply from Homer and
Virgil, nor even from Horace, Virgil, Lucan, Statius, and the rest down
to that Musæus whom Scaliger thought so superior to the Chian. A great
deal of ancient critical dictum was brought in, and as Aristotle and
Horace had said less about Epic than about Drama, they were to be
supplemented from others, especially by that treacherous and somewhat
obscure passage of Petronius which has been commented on in its place.
In fact the whole of this Heroic-Poem matter is a sort of satire on
criticism by Kinds, in its attempt—and failure—to discover a kind. If
the founders of the novel (who, indeed, in some notable cases were by no
means free from the obsession) had persisted in constructing it on the
lines of the Heroic Poem, it would indeed have been all up with Fiction.
To read Tasso (who, as we might expect, is not the least reasonable) and
others, from Ronsard and Du Bellay down to Desmarets and Le Bossu (both
of whom, let it be remembered, wrote some time after Davenant)—to find
even Dryden a Martha of “machinery,” and comforting himself with a
bright new idea of getting the _deorum ministeria_ out of the limited
intelligences of angels, so that you might not know at once which side
was going to win, as you do in the ordinary Christian Epic[488]—is
curious. Nay, it is more—humorous, with that touch of “the pity of it”
which humour nearly always has.
The ingenious knight, in explaining his performance and its principles
to his friend the philosopher, takes a very high tone. Homer, Virgil,
Lucan, and Statius are passed successively in review, and receive each
his appropriate compliment, put with dignified reserves, especially in
the two latter cases. [Sidenote: _Davenant’s_ Examen.] Only two moderns
are admitted—Tasso of the Italians—“for I will yield to their opinion
who permit not Ariosto—no, not Du Bartas—in this eminent rank of the
heroicks, rather than to make way by their admission for Dante, Marino,
and others”[489]—and Spenser of our own men. But Tasso is roundly taken
to task for his fairy-tale element, Spenser for his allegory and his
archaism. And the faults of all from Homer downwards are charged against
“the natural humour of imitation.”[490]
-----
Footnote 488:
See the _Discourse on Satire_—Scott (in the edition revised by the
present writer) (London, 1882-93), xiii. 24 _sq._, or Ker (_ed. cit.
post_), ii. 33 _sq._
Footnote 489:
I do not smile so much as some may over “no, not Du Bartas.” But
though oases are far from rare in what may seem, to those who know it
not, this thirsty land of criticism, I hardly know a more delightful
“diamond of the desert” than the refusal to admit somebody else lest
you should have to admit Dante, and the subsequent “Dante, Marino,
_and others_.” When the eye is weary of italic print, or of a too
closely packed quarto page, or of François Hédelin, Abbé d’Aubignac,
in any type or _format_, it is pleasant half to shut it, and let the
dream of these “others” wave before one. I see that they must have
written in Italian; but other common measure, other link to bind them
both to the _Commedia_ and to the _Adone_, is yet to seek for me.
Footnote 490:
Lest the last note should lead any one to think that I wish to make
inept and ignoble game of Davenant, let me observe that he can write
admirable things, worthy a son, in double sense, of Oxford. Could
anything be happier than this of Spenser: “His _noble and most artful
hands_”? The mere selection of the epithets is good, the combination
of them famously so.
-----
After a by no means despicable, but somewhat rhapsodical, digression on
this—it is to be observed that Davenant uses “Imitation” in the frank
modern sense—and an apology for it as “the dangerous fit of a hot
writer,” he gives reasons, partly no doubt drawn from Italian and French
sources, why he has made his subject (1) Christian, (2) antique but not
historical, (3) foreign, (4) courtly and martial, (5) displaying the
distempers of love and ambition. Then he expounds in turn his
arrangement of five books (to correspond to acts), with cantos to answer
to scenes,[491] his arguments, his quatrain-stanza. He asserts that “the
substance is wit,” and discusses that matter at some length, and with a
noteworthy hit at conceits, which reminds us that Davenant was _à
cheval_ between the First and the Second Caroline period. He indulges in
not unpardonable loquacity about his poetic aspirations, with a fresh
glance at the great poets of old, and brings in thereby, with some
ingenuity but at too great length as a finale, the old prefatory matter
of the _Arts Poetic_ about the importance and dignity of poetry in the
world, concluding exactly where most begin, with Plato and that “divine
anger” of his which some have turned to the “unjust scandal of Poesie.”
And so a pleasant echo of Sir Philip blends agreeably with the more
prosaic tone, and time, and temper of Sir William.
-----
Footnote 491:
This attempt to get Epic as close as possible to Drama—to work all the
kinds of Imitation back into one arch-kind—appears more or less
fitfully in the whole Neo-Classic school. And we shall never quite
understand the much discussed “Heroic Play,” till we take it in
conjunction with the “Heroic Poem.”
-----
Hobbes, as we should expect, is much briefer; and those bronze sentences
of his (though he had not at this time quite brought them to their full
ring and perfect circumscription) give no uncertain sound. [Sidenote:
_Hobbes’s Answer._] He is not, he says, a poet (which is true), and when
he assigns to _Gondibert_ “various experience, ready memory, clear
judgment, swift and well-governed fancy,” it is obvious enough that all
these might be there and yet poetry be absent. He divides the kinds of
poetry “swiftly” enough, and ranges himself with his customary decision
against those who “take for poesy whatsoever is writ in verse,” cutting
out not merely didactic poetry, but sonnets, epigrams, and eclogues, and
laying it down that “the subject of a poem is the manners of men.” “They
that give entrance to fictions writ in prose err not so much,” but they
err. And accordingly he begins the discussion of verse. He does not
quarrel with Davenant, as Vida would have done, for deliberately
eschewing Invocation; and rapidly comments on the plot, characters,
description, &c., of the poem. On the head of diction he would not be
Hobbes if he could or did spare a sneer at words of no sense, words
“contunded by the schools,” and so forth. And since he _is_ Hobbes,
there is piquancy in finding him at one with Walton in the objection to
“strong lines.” He is rather striking on a subject which has been much
dwelt on of late, the blunting of poetic phrase by use. And when he says
that he “never yet saw poem that had so much shape of art, health of
morality, and vigour of beauty and expression” as _Gondibert_—when, in
the odd timorousness he had caught from Bacon, he adds, that it is only
the perishableness of the modern tongues which will prevent it from
lasting as long as the _Æneid_ or the _Iliad_—let us remember that,
though criticism is one thing and compliment another, they sometimes
live in a rather illicit _contubernium_. At any rate, there _is_
criticism, and real criticism, in the two pieces; and they are about the
first substantial documents of it in English of which as much can be
said for many years.[492]
-----
Footnote 492:
There is, of course, critical matter in Howell’s _Letters_, and in a
score or scores of other places; but it is of the kind that we must
_now_ neglect, or select from with the most jealous hand.
-----
Thus, although two of these four were of the greatest of our writers,
the third an interesting failure of greatness, and the fourth far from
contemptible, they were in all cases prevented, by this or that
disqualification, from doing much in criticism.
Dryden, on the contrary, started with every advantage, except those of a
body of English criticism behind him, and of a thorough knowledge of the
whole of English literature. [Sidenote: _Dryden._] He was a poet nearly,
if not quite, of the first class: and though his poetry had a strong
Romantic spirit in virtue of its perennial quality, it took the form and
pressure of the time so thoroughly and so kindly that there was no
internal conflict. Further, he had what by no means all poets of the
first class have had, a strong, clear, common-sense judgment, and a very
remarkable faculty of arguing the point. And, finally, if he had few
predecessors in English, and perhaps did not know much of those few
except of Jonson, he was fairly, if not exactly as a scholar, acquainted
with the ancients, and he had profited, and was to profit, by the best
doctrine of the moderns.
[Sidenote: _His advantages._]
Moreover, from a certain not unimportant point of view, he occupies a
position which is only shared in the history of criticism by Dante and
(in some estimations, though not in all) by Goethe,—the position of the
greatest man of letters in his own country, if not also in Europe, who
is at the same time the greatest critic, and who is favoured by Fortune
with a concentration of advantages as to time and circumstance. His
critical excellence has indeed never been wholly overlooked, and, except
by the unjuster partisanship of the early Romantic movement in England,
generally admitted with cheerfulness.[493] The want, however, of that
synoptic study of the subject, which it is the humble purpose of this
book to facilitate, has too often prevented his full pre-eminence from
being recognised. It may even be said that it is in criticism that
Dryden best shows that original faculty which has often been denied him
elsewhere. He borrows, indeed, as freely as everywhere: he copies, with
a half ludicrous deference, the stock opinions of the critics and the
criticasters in vogue; he gives us pages on pages of their pedantic
trivialities instead of his own shrewd and racy judgments. But, despite
of all this, there is in him (and with good luck we may perhaps not fail
to disengage it) a vein and style in “judging of Authours” which goes
straight back to Longinus, if it is not even independent of that great
ancestry.[494]
-----
Footnote 493:
Of the great critical men of letters of 1800-1850 only Leigh Hunt—the
least of them—was just to Dryden; even Hazlitt is inadequate on him.
Among our _preceptistas_ of the same or a little later date, Keble
(_Præl._ v.) mildly perstringes Dryden’s inconsistency (“_male sibi
constat D._”), but rather as poet than as critic. Garbett, his
successor and opponent, a great admirer of Dryden’s style, and one who
expresses just regret at the want of common knowledge of it, is very
severe (_Præl._ x.) on his want of philosophical profundity and
sincerity. But the reverend Professor had found nearly as much fault
on this score with Longinus.
Footnote 494:
Dryden made no mistake about Longinus. He calls him, in the _Apology_
prefixed to _The State of Innocence_, “the greatest critic among the
Greeks after Aristotle,” cites him often, and parades and uses a long
passage of the Περὶ Ὕψους in the Preface to _Troilus and Cressida_.
The references are conveniently collected in Mr Ker’s index (_v.
inf._)
-----
This vein is perceptible[495] even in the slight critical essays which
precede the _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, though of course it is much more
evident in the _Essay_ itself. [Sidenote: _The Early Prefaces._] In the
preface to the _Rival Ladies_ (written, not indeed when Dryden was a
very young man, but when, except for _Juvenilia_, he had produced
extremely little) we find his critical path clearly traced, and still
more in the three years later Preface to _Annus Mirabilis_. The
principles of this path-making are as follows: Dryden takes—without
perhaps a very laborious study of them, but, as has been said already,
with an almost touching docility in appearance—the current theories and
verdicts of the French, Italian (and Spanish?) critics whom we should by
this time have sufficiently surveyed. He does not—he never did to the
date of the glorious Preface to the _Fables_ itself—dispute the general
doctrines of the sages from Aristotle downwards. But (and this is where
the Longinian resemblance comes in) he never can help considering the
individual works of literature almost without regard to these
principles, and simply on the broad, the sound, the unshakable ground of
the impression they make on him. Secondly (and this is where the
resemblance to Dante comes in), he is perfectly well aware that
questions of diction, metre, and the like are not mere catchpenny or
claptrap afterthoughts, as ancient criticism was too apt to think them,
but at the root of the pleasure which literature gives. Thirdly (and
this is where, though Aristotle did not deny the fact, the whole
criticism of antiquity, except that of Longinus, and most of that of
modern times, swerves timorously from the truth), he knows that this
delight, this transport, counts first as a criterion. Literature in
general, poetry in particular, should, of course, instruct: but it
_must_ delight.[496]
-----
Footnote 495:
Dryden’s critical work, which until recently was accessible with ease
only in Scott’s elaborate edition of his works, or in Malone’s less
bulky, but still bulky and not excessively common, edition of the
Prose, has recently been given, with quite admirable editorial matter,
by Professor Ker (2 vols., Oxford, 1900). I wish he had included one
or two more things, especially the _Heads of an answer to Rymer_; but
it must be admitted that the authenticity of these, though I think not
doubtful, is not absolutely certain, and the correct text still less
so. See note on Rymer _infra_, and my edition of Scott, xv. 378 _sq._,
for text and history.
Footnote 496:
_Defence of an Essay of Dramatic Poesy._ Scott, _ed. cit._, xi. 295:
Ker, i. 113.
-----
The “blundering, half-witted people,” as in one of his rare bursts of
not absolutely cool contempt[497] he calls his own critics, who charged
him with plagiarising from foreign authors, entirely missed these
differences, which distinguish him from every foreign critic of his day,
and of most days for long afterwards. He may quote—partly out of that
genuine humility and generosity combined which make his literary
character so agreeable; partly from an innocent parade of learning. But
he never pays for what he borrows the slavish rent, or royalty, of
surrendering his actual and private judgment.
-----
Footnote 497:
Preface to _Miscellanies_, ii.; Scott, _ed. cit._, xii. 295; Ker, i.
263. I wish that Dryden were alive for many reasons: not least because
he would certainly pay the debt that he owes to my friend Mr Ker
_magnificentissime_. No one has vindicated him better against the
half-witted blunderers. But I am not quite so much inclined as even Mr
Ker is to father his critical _style_ on Chapelain and La Mesnardière,
Sarrasin and Scudéry, or on Corneille himself. It is not till
Saint-Evremond, perhaps even till Fénelon, that I can find in French
the indescribable _omne tulit punctum_ as in him. And both, are his
inferiors.
-----
In the Preface to the _Rival Ladies_ the poet-critic takes (as indeed he
afterwards himself fully acknowledged) a wrong line—the defence of what
he calls “verse” (that is to say, rhymed heroic couplets, not blank
verse) for play-writing. This was his mistress of the time; he rejoiced
in her caresses, he wore her colours, he fought for her beauty—the
enjoyment authorising the argument. But as he has nothing to say that
has not been better said in the _Essay_, we may postpone the
consideration of this. There is one of the slips of fact which can be
readily excused to (and by) all but bad critics,—and which bad critics
are chiefly bound to avoid, because accuracy of fact is their only title
to existence—in his mention of “Queen” _Gorboduc_ and his addition that
the dialogue in that play is rhymed; there is an interesting sigh for an
Academy (Dryden, let it be remembered, was one of the earliest members
of the Royal Society); and there is the well-known and very amiable,
though rather dangerous, delusion that the excellence and dignity of
rhyme were never known till Mr Waller taught it, and that John Denham’s
_Cooper’s Hill_ not only is, but ever will be, the exact standard of
good writing. But he knows Sidney and he knows Scaliger, and he knows
already that Shakespeare “had a larger soul of poesy than any of our
nation.” And a man who knows these three things in 1664 will go far.
The Preface to _Annus Mirabilis_[498] is again submissive in form,
independent in spirit. Dryden obediently accepts the prescription for
epic or “Heroic” poetry, and though he makes another slip of fact (or at
least of term) by saying that Chapman’s _Homer_ is written in
“Alexandrines or verses of six feet” instead of (as far as the _Iliad_
is concerned) in the fourteener, he is beautifully scholastic on the
differences between Virgil and Ovid, the Heroic and the Burlesque, “Wit
Writing” and “Wit Written.” But he does it with unconquerable
originality, the utterance of his own impression, his own judgment,
breaking through all this school-stuff at every moment; and also with a
valuable (though still inadequate) account of “the Poet’s
imagination.”[499]
-----
Footnote 498:
I have not thought it necessary to encumber the page with references
in the case of the shorter Essays, where any one can discover the
passages cited, whether he uses Scott, Malone, the originals, or Mr
Ker’s special collection, with no more labour than is good for him and
deserved by them. In the case of the longer pieces the references will
be given at least sufficiently often to make the locating of the
others easy, without turning the lower part of the page into a kind of
arithmetical table.
Footnote 499:
As including Invention, Fancy, and Elocution, but in itself merely
considered as synonymous with “Wit.” It was probably from this that
Addison (see below) started that Imagination theory of his which has
been so much overrated.
-----
Yet another point of interest is the avowed intention (carried out in
the poem, to the disgust or at least distaste of Dr Johnson) of using
technical terms. This, one of the neoclassic devices for attaining
propriety, was, as we have seen, excogitated in Italy, and warmly
championed by the Pléiade; but it had been by this time mostly
abandoned, as it was later by Dryden himself.
[Sidenote: _The_ Essay of Dramatic Poesy.]
The _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_ is much better known than it was only a
couple of decades ago,[500] and it is perhaps superfluous to say that it
is a dialogue in form, and that the interlocutors are Dryden himself
(Neander), his brother-in-law Sir Robert Howard (Crites), Sir Charles
Sedley (Lisideius), and Lord Buckhurst (Eugenius). The two last, though
at the time the wildest of scapegraces, were men of distinct poetic gift
and varied literary faculty. And Howard, though no great poet, and
possessing something of the prig, the coxcomb, and the pedant in his
composition, was a man of some ability, of real learning of a kind, and
of very distinct devotion to literature.
-----
Footnote 500:
When the present writer began his revision of Scott’s _Dryden_ in the
year 1881 there were no separate editions of the _Essay_ since the
originals. There are now, of annotated issues of it, either by itself
or with more or less of its author’s related work, no less than five
known to me,—those of Mr Thomas Arnold (Oxford, 1886), Mr Strunk (New
York, 1898), Mr Low (London, n. d.), Mr Nichol Smith (Glasgow, 1900),
and Professor Ker’s. The study of English literature in schools and
colleges has been much abused, very foolishly talked about by some of
its advocates, and no doubt not always wisely directed. But it is at
least something to be said for it that it has made such a masterpiece
as this known to probably a hundred persons for every one who knew it
twenty years ago.
-----
The _Essay_ was first published in 1668, but had been written, according
to Dryden’s statement in his Preface to Lord Buckhurst, “in the country”
(at his father-in-law Lord Berkshire’s seat of Charlton near
Malmesbury), when the author was driven out of London by the Great
Plague three years before. [Sidenote: _Its setting and overture._] He
had, he says, altered some of his opinions; but it did not much matter
in an Essay “where all I have said is problematical.” The “Address to
the Reader” promises a second part dealing with Epic and Lyric, which
never appeared, and of which only the Epic part is represented by later
works. This is a pity, for while we have treatises on Drama and Epic _ad
nauseam_, their elder and lovelier sister has been, “poor girl!
neglected.” It begins with a picturesque setting, which represents the
four interlocutors as having taken boat and shot the bridge, attracted
by the reverberation of the great battle with the Dutch in the early
part of June 1665, when Admiral Opdam’s flag-ship was blown up. Eugenius
augurs victory from the gradual dying away of the noise; and Crites
observes (in character) that he should like this victory better if he
did not know how many bad verses he should have to read on it. Lisideius
adds that he knows some poets who have got _epinikia_ and funeral
elegies all ready for either event, and the dialogue proceeds for some
time in the same way of literary banter, especial set being made at two
poets (one of whom is certainly Wild, while the other _may_ be Flecknoe)
with incidental sneers at Wither(s) and Cleveland. At last Crites brings
it to something like the quarrel of Ancient _v._ Modern. Eugenius picks
up the glove, but consents, at Crites’ suggestion, to limit the
discussion to dramatic poetry,[501] and so the “dependence” is settled.
-----
Footnote 501:
One of the very earliest evidences of the interest in dramatic
criticism felt in England, immediately after the Restoration, must be
Pepys’ note that on September 1, 1660, when he was dining at the
Bullhead, there “rose ... a dispute between Mr Moore and Dr Clerke—the
former affirming that it was essential to a tragedy to have the
argument of it true, which the Doctor denied.” The question, on the
very English terms of another dinner and a bet, was to be settled by
Pepys himself three days later. He does not tell us whether he read up
for it; but on the 4th he decided for the Doctor (_Diary_, ed.
Wheatley, i. 233).
-----
Eugenius thinks that though modern plays are better than Greek or Roman,
yet those of “the last age” (1600-1660) are better than “ours.”
[Sidenote: _Crites for the Ancients._] As for epic and lyric, the last
age must yield. And all the quartette agree that “the sweetness of
English verse was never understanded or practised” by our fathers, and
that some writers yet living first taught us to mould our thoughts into
easy and significant words, to retrench the superfluities of expression,
and to make our rhyme so properly a part of the verse that it should
never mislead the sense. Lisideius having (with the consent of the
company, subject to a slight scholastic objection from Crites) defined
or described a play as “A just and lively image of human nature,
representing its passions and humours, and the changes of fortune to
which it is subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind,” Crites
takes up his brief for the ancients. His speech is a set one, extolling
the classical conception of drama, and especially the modern-classical
Unities,
but rather a panegyric than an argument, and particularly weak in
this—that it takes no critical account of the modern drama at all.
Except Ben Jonson, “the greatest man of the last age,” not a single
modern dramatic writer of any country is so much as named.
Eugenius, though his discourse is livelier, falls into something the
same fault, or at least the counterpart of it. [Sidenote: _Eugenius for
the “last age.”_] He rallies the ancients unmercifully, and has very
good game of the stock plots and characters in Terence; but his
commendation of the moderns has a disappointing generality, and he lays
himself rather open to the good-humoured but forcible interruption of
Crites that he and Eugenius are never likely to come to an agreement,
because the one regards change as in itself an improvement, and the
other does not.
Still, Lisideius gives a new turn to the discussion by asking Eugenius
why he puts English plays above those of other nations, and whether we
ought not to submit our stage to the exactness of our next neighbours.
[Sidenote: _Lisideius for the French._] Eugenius in reply commits the
further and especial defence of the English to Neander, and Lisideius
begins his part as eulogist of the French. For some forty years, he
says, we have not had leisure to be good poets. The French have: and, by
Richelieu’s patronage and Corneille’s example, have raised their theatre
till it now surpasses ours, and the rest of Europe. Who have kept the
Unities so well? Who have avoided “that absurd thing,” the English
tragi-comedy, so completely? In tragedy they take well-known stories,
and only manageable parts of them, while Shakespeare crams the business
of thirty or forty years into two hours and a half. They make only one
person prominent, they do as much as possible behind the scenes, keep
dying off the stage altogether, and never end their plays with a
conversion, or simple change of will. Nobody, with them, appears on the
stage, unless he has some business there: and as for the beauty of their
rhyme, why, that is “already partly received by us,” and it will, no
doubt, when we write better plays, “exceedingly beautify them.”
To him, Neander—that is to say—Dryden himself.
There is a reminder (though the matter is quite different) of Daniel,
and a comforting augury for English criticism, in the swift directness
with which “the new critic” (as a Webbe of his own day might have called
him) strikes at the heart of the question. [Sidenote: _Dryden for
England and Liberty._] The French are more regular, he grants, and our
irregularities are, in some cases, justly taxed. But, nevertheless, he
is of opinion that neither our faults nor their virtues are sufficient
to place them above us. For Lisideius himself has defined a play as a
lively imitation _of nature_. And these beauties of the French stage are
beauties, not natural, but thoroughly artificial. Before Molière, where
are the humours of French comedy, save, perhaps, in _Le Menteur_ and a
few others? Elsewhere they work in comedy only by the old way of
quarrels and reconciliations, or by the conventions of Spanish
intrigue-drama. “On which lines there is not above one play to be writ:
they are too much alike to please often.”
Then, as to tragi-comedy. What is the harm of this? why should Lisideius
“imagine the soul of man more heavy than his senses?” The eye can pass,
and pass with relief, from an unpleasant to a pleasant object, in far
less time than is required on the stage. He must have stronger arguments
before he concludes that compassion and mirth destroy each other: and in
the meantime he will hold that tragi-comedy is a more pleasant way than
was known to the ancients, or any moderns who have eschewed it.
Next, and closely connected, as to single-plot _v._ plot + underplot.
Why is the former to be preferred to the latter? Because it gives a
greater advantage to the expression of passion? Dryden can only say that
he thinks “their” verse the “coldest” he has ever read, and he supports
this by a close and pleasant beating-up-the-quarters of _Cinna_ and
_Pompey_, “not so properly to be called plays as long discourses on
reason of state”; of _Polyeucte_, “as solemn as the long stops on an
organ,” of their mighty tirades and _récits_. “Whereas in tragedy it is
unnatural for any one either to speak or listen long, and in comedy
quick repartee is the chiefest grace.” Yet again “they” are praised for
making only one person considerable. Why? If variety is not mere
confusion, is it not always pleasing?[502]
The question of narrative against represented action is treated with
less boldness, and, therefore, with less success: but he comes to the
sound, if not very improving, conclusion that, if we show too much
action, the French show too little. He has an interesting rebuke,
however, here to Ben Jonson, for reprehending “the incomparable
Shakespeare.”[503] And he rises again, and makes a capital point, by
citing Corneille’s own confession of the cramping effect of the Unities,
enlarging whereon himself, he has an admirable exposure of the utterly
unnatural conditions which observance of these Unities brings about.
Then, after some remarks on prosody and the earlier use of rhyme in
English—remarks partly true, partly vitiated by imperfect knowledge—he
undertakes to produce plays as regular as theirs and with more variety,
instancing _The Silent Woman_. Of this he is proceeding to a regular
_examen_ when Eugenius requests a character of the author: and Neander,
after a little mannerly excuse, not only complies with this request, but
prefixes similar characters of Shakespeare and Fletcher.
-----
Footnote 502:
Here, to glance at the matter of Dryden and the Spaniards (_v. sup._,
p. 332, and _inf._, on Spence), is a _possible_ reminiscence of Lope’s
_Arte Nuevo_, 178-180—
_Que aquesta variedad deleyta mucho:
Buen exemplo nos da naturaleza,
Que por tal variedad tiene belleza._
Footnote 503:
Scott, xv. 337; Ker, i. 75.
-----
The first of these is universally, the second and third should be pretty
well known. [Sidenote: Coda _on rhymed plays, and conclusion_.] It must
be sufficient to say here that nothing like even the worst of the three
(that of Beaumont and Fletcher, which wants the adequacy and close grip
of the other two) had previously been seen in English, and not many
things in any other language, while to this day, with all faults, the
character of Shakespeare is one of the _apices_ of universal criticism.
The characters are followed by the _examen_—also admirable and quite new
in English, though with more pattern elsewhere. And he ends with a short
peroration, the keynote of which is, “I ask no favour from the French.”
Lisideius is going to reply; but Crites interrupting, diverts the
discussion to a particular point already glanced at—the use of rhyme in
plays. He (sensibly enough) declines to investigate very carefully
whether this was a revival of the old English custom or an imitation of
the French, but attacks its legitimacy with the usual, obvious, and
fairly sound argument that since no man without premeditation speaks in
rhyme, he ought not to do it on the stage, anticipating the retort,
“neither does he speak blank verse” by urging that this at any rate is
“nearest nature” or less _un_natural. Neander, taking up the glove for
“his _new_-loved mistress,” practically admits the weakness of his case
by first advancing the very argument as to blank verse which Crites has
disallowed by anticipation. The rest of his answer is a mixture of true
and not so true, of imperfect knowledge and ingenious argument,
constantly open to reply, but always interesting as a specimen of
critical advocacy. He represents himself as pursuing the discourse so
eagerly that Eugenius had to remind him that “the boat stood still,” and
that they had come to their destination at Somerset stairs. And with a
pleasant final patch of description the dialogue closes.
In reading it we should keep in mind what he says a quarter of a century
later to the same correspondent,[504] that he was at this time seeking
his way “in a vast ocean” of criticism without other help than the
pole-star of the ancients and the rules of the French stage amongst the
moderns. [Sidenote: _Conspicuous merits of the piece._] He has given the
reading of the pole-star to Crites, and has pointed out the dangers of
mere dead-reckoning by it. He has put into the mouth of Sedley (with a
touch of malice which that ingenious good-for-nothing must have noticed,
and which it is to his credit that he did not resent) a similar reading
of the bearings of the different French lights, and has shown how little
they assisted the English mariner—indeed, how some of them actually led
to rocks and quicksands, instead of warning off from them. In the mouth
of Buckhurst, and in his own, he has put the patriotic apology,
inclining it in the former case towards laudation of the past, and in
the latter to defence of the present: and he has allowed divers
excursions from the immediate subject—especially that on “verse,” or
rhymed heroics, as a dramatic medium. One of the chief of the many
merits of the piece is precisely this, that at the time Dryden had read
less than at a later, and was less tempted to add quotations or
comments. He was following chiefly a very safe guide—Corneille—and he
bettered his guide’s instruction. It may be said boldly that, up to the
date, nothing in the way of set appreciation—no, not in Longinus
himself—had appeared equal to the three characters of Shakespeare,
Jonson, and Fletcher; while almost greater still is the constant
application of the “leaden rule,” the taking of book, author, kind, _as
it is_, and judging it accordingly, instead of attempting to force
everything into agreement or disagreement with a prearranged schedule of
rules.
-----
Footnote 504:
In the _Discourse on Satire_. Scott, xiii. 3; Ker, ii. 17.
-----
After the publication of the _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, Dryden (English
literature can hardly give too many thanks for it) had more than thirty
well-filled years of life allowed him; and to the very last, and at the
very last, criticism had its full share of his labours. [Sidenote: _The
Middle Prefaces._] The “Prefaces of Dryden” never fail to give valuable
matter; and we shall have to notice most, if not all of them, though the
notices may be of varying length. The immediate successor and, in fact,
appendix to the _Essay_, the _Defence_ thereof, was only printed in one
edition, the second, of _The Indian Emperor_, and is very far from being
of the best. Sir Robert Howard was, as has been said, a man conceited
and testy, as Shadwell’s nickname for him in _The Sullen Lovers_, Sir
Positive Atall, hints. He seems to have been nettled by his part of
Crites, and replied with some heat in a Preface to his own play, _The
Duke of Lerma_. Dryden, who never quite learned the wisdom of Bacon’s
_dictum_, “Qui replicat multiplicat,” and who at this time had not yet
learnt the easy disdain of his later manner, riposted (1668) with more
sense but with not much more temper. The piece (which was practically
withdrawn later) contained, besides not too liberal asperities on Sir
Robert’s own work, a further “defence of Rhyme,” not like Daniel’s,
where it should be, but where it should not. It is redeemed by an
occasional admission, in Dryden’s usual and invaluable manner, that he
is quite aware of the other side, and by an unhesitating assertion of
the primacy of Delight among the Objects of Poetry.
In none of the next three or four of the pieces do we find him quite at
his best. For some few years, indeed, the popularity of his splendid, if
sometimes a little fustianish, heroics, the profits of his connection
with the theatre (which, added to other sources of revenue, made him
almost a rich man in his way), and his association with the best
society, seem to have slightly intoxicated him. He saw his error, like
other wise men, all in good time, and even the error itself was not more
than human and pardonable.
The Preface to _An Evening’s Love_ promises, but for the time postpones,
an extension of the criticism of “the last age,” and intersperses some
valuable remarks on the difference between Comedy and Farce, between Wit
and Humour, with a good deal of egotism and some downright
arrogance.[505] The _Essay of Heroic Plays_ prefixed to _The Conquest of
Granada_ (1672) is as yet unconverted as to rhyme on the stage; but
contains some interesting criticism of Davenant’s essays in the kind,
and a curious defence (recurred to later) of supernatural “machinery.”
The main gist of the Preface, besides its defence of the extravagances
of Almanzor, is an elaborate adjustment of the Heroic Play to the rules
of the much-talked-of Heroic Poem. But though there is a good deal of
self-sufficiency here, it is as nothing to the drift of the Epilogue to
the second part of the play, and of an elaborate Prose “Defence” of this
Epilogue. Here Dryden takes up the position that in “the last age,” when
men were dull and conversation low, Shakespeare and Fletcher had not,
while Jonson did not avail himself of, access to that higher society
which delighted to honour him, Dryden. Divers flings at the “solecisms,”
“flaws in sense,” “mean writing,” “lame plots,” “carelessness,”
“luxuriance,” “pedantry” of these poor creatures lead up to a statement
that “_Gentlemen_ will now be entertained with the foibles _of each
other_.” Never again do we find Dryden writing like this; and for his
having done it at all Rochester’s “Black Will with a cudgel” exacted
sufficient, as suitable, atonement in the Rose Alley ambuscade, even
from the lowest point of view. From a higher, he himself made an ample
apology to Shakespeare in the Prologue to _Aurungzebe_, and practically
never repeated the offence.
-----
Footnote 505:
“I have further to add that I seldom use the wit and language of any
romance or play which I undertake to alter; because my own invention,
as bad as it is, can furnish me with nothing so dull as what is
there.” These invocations of Nemesis are seldom unheard by the acute
ears of that satiric Goddess.
-----
The curious _State of Innocence_ (1677) (a much better thing than rigid
Miltonists admit) is preceded by an equally curious _Apology of Heroic
Poetry_, in which, yet once more, we find the insufficient sense in
which Imagination (here expressly limited to “Imaging”) was used; while
the Preface to _All for Love_ (1678) is a very little ill-tempered
towards an anonymous lampooner, who was, in fact, Rochester. _Troilus
and Cressida_ (1679) was ushered by a set preliminary _Discourse on the
Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy_. No piece illustrates more remarkably
that mixed mode of criticism in Dryden, to bring out which is our chief
design. On a canvas, not it must be confessed of much interest, woven
out of critical commonplaces from Aristotle and Longinus down to Rymer
and Le Bossu, he has embroidered a great number of most valuable
observations of his own, chiefly on Shakespeare and Fletcher, which
culminate in a set description of Fletcher as “a limb of Shakespeare”—a
thing happy in itself and productive of happy imitations since. The
Preface to the translation of Ovid’s _Epistles_ (1680) chiefly consists
of a fresh defence of that ingenious writer (for whom Dryden had no
small fancy), and the Dedication to Lord Haughton of _The Spanish Friar_
(1681) is mainly notable for an interesting confession of Dryden’s
changes of opinion about Chapman and Du Bartas (Sylvester rather), and a
sort of apology for his own dallying with these Delilahs of the theatre
in the rants of Almanzor and Maximin.
But that to the _Second Miscellany_, five years later, after a period
chiefly occupied with the great political satires, ranges with the
_Essay_, and not far below the _Fables_ Preface, among Dryden’s critical
masterpieces. The thing is not long—less than twenty pages. But it gives
a coherent and defensible, if also disputable, theory of translation, a
singularly acute, and, it would appear, original contrast of the _faire_
of Ovid and of Claudian, more detailed studies of Virgil, Lucretius
(singularly good), Horace, and Theocritus, and the best critical
stricture in English on “Pindaric” verse. After it the note of the same
year on Opera, which ushered _Albion and Albanius_, is of slight
importance.
The Dedication of the Third Miscellany (specially named _Examen
Poeticum_, as the second had been sub-titled _Sylvæ_) contains some
interesting protests against indiscriminate critical abuse, the final
formulation of a saying sketched before (“the corruption of a poet is
the generation of a critic”), illustrated from Scaliger in the past and
(not obscurely though not _nominatim_) from Rymer in the present; and,
among other things, some remarks on prosody which might well have been
fuller.
Between this and the Fables, besides some lesser things,[506] there
appeared two of the longest and most ambitious in appearance of Dryden’s
critical writings, the _Essay_ [strictly _Discourse_] _on Satire_
prefixed to the _Juvenal_, and the _Dedication of the Æneis_, with,
between them, the first writing at any length by a very distinguished
Englishman of letters, on the subject of pictorial art, in the shape of
the _Parallel of Poetry and Painting_ prefixed to the translation of Du
Fresnoy _De Arte Graphica_. [Sidenote: _The_ Essay on Satire _and the_
Dedication of the Æneis.] All, being Dryden’s, are, and could not but
be, admirably written and full of interest. But the _Juvenal_ and
_Virgil_ Prefaces are, in respect of permanent value, both intrinsically
and representively injured by an excess of critical erudition. The time
was perhaps not yet ripe for an honest and candid address straight to
the English reader. The translator was bound to recommend himself to
classical scholars by attention to the paraphernalia of what then
regarded itself as scholarship (“other brides, other paraphernalia” no
doubt), and to propitiate wits, and Templars, and the gentlemen of the
Universities, with original or borrowed discourses on literary history
and principle. Dryden fell in with the practice, and obliged his readers
with large decoctions of Rigaltius and Casaubon, Dacier and Segrais,
which are at any rate more palatable than the learned originals, but
which make us feel, rather ruefully, that boiling down such things was
not the work for which the author of _Absalom and Achitophel_ and of
_The Essay on Dramatic Poesy_ was born.
-----
Footnote 506:
Lesser, but far from negligible; for the _Character of Saint-Evremond_
is both personally and critically interesting, and the critical
biographies of Lucian and Plutarch lead straight to Johnson.
-----
As for the _Parallel_, it is of course interesting as being nearly our
first Essay, and that by a master hand, in a kind of criticism which has
later given excellent results. [Sidenote: _The Parallel of Poetry and
Painting._] But Dryden, as he most frankly admits, did not know very
much about the matter, and his work resolves itself very mainly into a
discussion of the principles of Imitation in general, applied in an
idealist manner to the two arts in particular. Again we may say, “Not
here, O Apollo!”
We have nothing left but the _Preface to the Fables_, the extraordinary
merit of which has been missed by no competent critic from Johnson to Mr
Ker. [Sidenote: _The_ Preface to the Fables.] The wonderful ease and
urbanity of it, the artfully varied forms of reply to the onslaughts of
Collier and others, are not more generally agreeable than are, in a
special division, the enthusiastic eulogy of Chaucer (all the more
entertaining because of its lack of mere pedantic accuracy in places),
and the interesting, if again not always rigidly accurate, scraps of
literary history. It winds up, as the _Essay_ had practically begun, a
volume of critical writing which, if not for pure, yet for applied,
mixed, and sweetened criticism, deserves to be put on the shelf—no
capacious one—reserved for the best criticism of the world.
We have seen, over and over again, in individual example; have already
partially summed more than once; and shall have to re-sum with more
extensive view later, the character and the faults of the critical
method which had been forming itself for some hundred and fifty years
when Dryden began his critical work. [Sidenote: _Dryden’s general
critical position._] It would be absurd to pretend that he was entirely
superior to this “Spirit of the Age”—which was also that of the age
behind him, and (with rare exceptions) of the age to come for nearly a
hundred years. But, although it may be paradoxical, it is not absurd at
all, to express satisfaction that he was not so entirely superior. He
was enabled by his partial—and, in so far as his consciousness went,
quite sincere—orthodoxy, to obtain an access to the general hearing in
England, and even to influence, long after his death, important literary
authorities, as he never could have done if he had set up for an
iconoclast. Furthermore, it was not yet time to break these idols.
Apollo winked at the neo-classical ignorance and heresy because it was
useful. We are so apt—so generously and excusably apt—to look at the
Miltons without considering the Clevelands, that we forget how
absolutely ungoverned, and in some cases how near to puerility, the
latest Elizabethan school was. We forget the slough of shambling verse
in which true poets, men like Suckling in drama, men like Lovelace in
lyric, complacently wallowed. The strait waistcoat was almost necessary,
even after the fine madness, much more after the madness not so fine, of
mid-seventeenth-century verse, and, in a less degree, prose. And so,
when we find Dryden belittling the rhymes of _Comus_ and _Lycidas_,[507]
shaking his head over Shakespeare’s carelessness, unable with Chapman,
as Ben had been with Marlowe, to see the fire for the smoke, we need not
in the least excite ourselves, any more than when we find him dallying
with the Dowsabels of Renaissance school-criticism. In the first place,
the thing had to be done; and in the second place, his manner of doing
it went very far to supply antidote to all the bane, as well as to
administer the “corsives,” as they said then, in the mildest and most
innocuous way possible.
-----
Footnote 507:
“In his _Juvenilia_ ... his rhyme is _always_ constrained or
forced.”—_Discourse on Satire._
-----
[Sidenote: _His special critical method._]
Dryden’s moly, an herb so powerful that—herein excelling its original—it
not only prevented men like Addison from becoming beasts like Rymer, but
had the virtue of turning beasts into men,—of replacing the neo-classic
jargon by the pure language of criticism,—was that plan of actual
comparison and examination of actual literature which is not merely the
_via prima_ but the _via sola_ of safety for the critic. By his time
there was assembled a really magnificent body of modern letters, in
addition to classical and mediæval. But nobody in the late seventeenth
century, except Dryden, really utilised it. Italy and Spain were sinking
into premature senility. The French[508] despised or ignored all modern
literatures but their own, and despised and ignored almost equally their
own rich and splendid mediæval stores.
-----
Footnote 508:
Chapelain might like the early romances (_v. supra_, p. 260). But here
Boileau was the spokesman of France.
-----
Dryden’s freedom from this worst and most hopeless vice is all the more
interesting because, from some of his utterances, we might have expected
him not to be free from it.[509] That theory of his as to Mr Waller;
that disastrous idea that Shakespeare and Fletcher were low people who
had not the felicity to associate with gentlemen,—might seem likely to
produce the most fatal results. But not so. He accepts Chaucer at once,
rejoices in him, extols him, just as if Chaucer had taken lessons from
Mr Waller, and had been familiar with my Lord Dorset. Back his own side
as he may in the duel of the theatres, he speaks of the great lights of
the last age in such a fashion that no one has outgone him since. He
cannot really take an author in hand, be he Greek or Latin, Italian or
French or English, without his superiority to rules and systems and
classifications appearing at once, however he may, to please fashion and
fools, drag these in as an afterthought, or rather (for Dryden never
“drags” in anything save the indecency in his comedies) draw them into
the conversation with his usual adroitness. And he is constantly taking
authors in hand in this way,—we are as certain that this, and not
twaddling about unities and machines, was what he liked doing, as we are
that he wrote comedies for money, and satires and criticism itself for
love. Now this,—the critical reading without theory, or with theory
postponed, of masses of different literatures, and the formation and
expression of genuine judgment as to what the critic liked and disliked
in them, not what he thought he ought to like and dislike,—this was what
was wanted, and what nobody had yet done. Dryden did it—did it with such
mastery of expression as would almost have commended a Rymer, but with
such genuine critical power and sympathy as would almost have carried
off the absence of merits of expression altogether. He established (let
us hope for all time) the English fashion of criticising, as Shakespeare
did the English fashion of dramatising,—the fashion of aiming at
delight, at truth, at justice, at nature, at poetry, and letting the
rules take care of themselves.
-----
Footnote 509:
They have deceived the very elect, _e.g._, M. Rigault, who in not
altogether unnatural amazement at the dictum, “Spenser wanted only to
have read the rules of Bossu,” classes (_Q. des A. et des M._, p. 311)
Dryden as an _ancien enragé_. But M. Rigault is at a wrong angle in
most of the English part of his book,—so much so as to strike a chill
into any one who has to criticise a foreign literature, lest, lacking
the grace of the Muses, he too go astray.
-----
Perhaps in no single instance of critical authorship and authority does
the great method of comparison assist us so well as in the case of
Dryden and Boileau. [Sidenote: _Dryden and Boileau._] This comparison is
absolutely fair. The two were almost exact contemporaries; they
represented—so far at least as their expressed and, in both cases, no
doubt conscientious, literary creed went—the same sect. _Enfin Malherbe
vint_ is an exact parallel, whether as a wonderful discovery or a partly
mischievous delusion, to the exploits on our numbers by Mr Waller. Both
were extremely powerful satirists. Both, though not comparable in
intrinsic merit, were among the chief men of letters of their respective
countries. Both had a real, and not merely a professional or affected,
devotion to literature. Both applied, with whatever difference of
exclusiveness and _animus_, a peculiar literary discipline, new to the
country of each. And in the case of both—it has been decided by a
consensus of the best judges, with all the facts before them up to the
present time—there was an insufficient looking before and after, a
pretension to limit literature to certain special developments.
We have seen what, in carrying out the scheme which was in effect the
scheme of both, were the defects of Boileau. Let us see what, in
contra-position to them, are the merits of Dryden.
That, though he makes mistakes enough in literary history, these
mistakes are slight in comparison with Boileau’s, matters not very much;
that, though his satiric touch was more withering even than the
Frenchman’s, he has no love of lashing merely for the sport, and never
indulges in insolent flings at harmless dulness, suffering poverty, or
irregular genius; that, though quite prone enough to flatter, he
declined to bow the knee to William of Orange, while Boileau
persistently grovelled at the feet of William’s enemy,—these things
matter even less to us. The fact, the critical fact, remains that the
faults of his time and his theory did the least harm to Dryden of all
men whom we know, while they did the most to Boileau. And the reason of
the fact is more valuable than the fact itself. Boileau, as we have
seen, has not left us a single impartial and appreciative criticism of a
single author, ancient or modern. Dryden simply cannot find himself in
presence of a man of real genius, whether he belongs to his own school
or another, without having his critical lips at once touched by Apollo
and Pallas. He was sadly ignorant about Chaucer,—a board-school child
might take him to task; but he has written about Chaucer with far more
real light and sympathy than some at least of the authors of the books
from which the board-school child derives its knowledge have shown. His
theory about Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Jonson was defective; but he has
left us criticisms of all three than which we have, and are likely to
have, no better. About the ancients he borrows from both ancients and
moderns; but it is remarkable that while Boileau’s borrowings are his
best, Dryden’s are infinitely his worst part. So the consequence is that
while Boileau is merely a _point de repère_, a historical document which
men simply strive to bring to some relation with the present and the
future, Dryden is and will remain at once a source and a model for ever.
And he is these because he had the wisdom to ask himself the question,
“Do I think this good or bad?” and the wit to answer it, instead of
asking and answering the other, “Is it good or bad according to this or
that scheme and schedule?”
We have, in short, in Dryden the first very considerable example in
England, if not anywhere, of the critic who, while possessing fairly
wide knowledge of literature, attributes no arbitrary or conventional
eminence to certain parts of it, but at least endeavours to consider it
as a whole; of the critic who is never afraid to say “Why?”; of the
critic who asks, not whether he ought to like such and such a thing, but
whether he does like it, and why he likes it, and whether there is any
real reason why he should not like it; of the critic, finally, who
tries, without prepossession or convention, to get a general grasp of
the book or author, and then to set forth that grasp in luminous
language, and with a fair display of supporting analysis and argument.
Dryden, of course, is far—very far—from being a faultless monster of
criticism. The application of his own process to his own theory will
discover in it many mistakes, independent of the imperfect knowledge
which has been already admitted, of the inconsistencies which are more
of a virtue than of a defect, and of the concessions to tradition and
fashion which are almost wholly unfortunate. Nay, more, it may be
granted that Dryden did not escape the dangers of the process itself,
the dangers of vagueness, of desultoriness, of dilettantism. But he has
the root of the matter in him. He knows that art exists to give
pleasure, and when he says “I am pleased with this,” he insists on
strong reasons being given to show that he ought not to be so. He admits
also—nay, insists on—nature, variety, individuality. He will
“connoisseur no man out of his senses,”[510] and refuses to be so
connoisseured by any, while he will give good reasons for his own and
others’ pleasure. These are the marks of the true and catholic
criticism; and Dryden has them.
-----
Footnote 510:
A phrase of Blake’s.
-----
Let us pass from him directly to one who has them not. There are few
English critics who require to be dealt with at once more carefully and
more faithfully than does Thomas Rymer. [Sidenote: _Rymer._] He has
become a name, and to become a name is to be at least on the way to
becoming a legend, if not a myth. Moreover, as his legend is (for good
reasons) far from a favourable one, it has been made more legendary by
those generous or wayward revolts against it which are not uncommon. It
has even been held proper, for some time, to shake the head of
deprecation over Macaulay’s “the worst critic that ever lived.”
Moreover, Rymer is by no means very accessible—in his critical works, of
course, for we speak not here of the _Fœdera_. Whether these were
originally published in very small numbers; whether the common-sense of
mankind rose against them and subjected them in unusual proportions to
the “martyrdom of pies”; or whether (by one of Time’s humorous revenges)
the copies have been absorbed into special collections relating to that
_altissimo poeta_ whom Rymer blasphemed, I cannot say. But it is certain
that very good libraries often possess either none or only a part of
them, and that on the rare occasions on which they appear in catalogues
they are priced at about as many pounds as they are intrinsically worth
farthings. I think I have seen notices of Rymer which evidently confused
_The Tragedies of the Last Age_ (1678) with _A Short View of Tragedy_
(1693).[511] Besides these two, Rymer, independently of smaller things
and reissues, had produced, earlier than the earlier, in 1674, a preface
to his own translation of Rapin’s _Reflections_, which completes the
trinity of his important criticism. No one of the three is long; in
fact, _The Tragedies of the Last Age_ is a very tiny book, which, short
as it is, seems to have exhausted the author before he could carry out
half his scheme.
-----
Footnote 511:
The fact is that the two are parts of the same book; and that a
_second_ edition of the first appeared in 1692, just before the
_first_ of the second next year.
-----
A careful and comparative reading of all three has given me a settled,
and I think a just, conception of Rymer as of a man of remarkable
learning for his age and country, but intensely stupid to begin with,
and Puck-led by the _Zeitgeist_ into a charcoal-burner’s faith in “the
rules.” [Sidenote: _The_ Preface to Rapin.] In the _Preface_[512] he is
less crabbed than in the two booklets; and, though he already uses the
would-be humorous hail-fellow-well-met colloquialism characteristic of
the lower Restoration style, and employed even by such a man of letters
as L’Estrange and such scholars as Collier and Bentley, he does not push
it to the same lengths of clumsy ass-play as later. He thinks that
“poets would grow negligent if Critics had not a strict eye on their
miscarriages,” yet he admits that this eye sometimes squints, and
compares some critics to “Wasps that rather annoy the Bees than terrify
the drones.” Then he skims the past, noticing Castelvetro, Malherbe, and
others, but thinks that till lately “England was as free from Critics as
from Wolves,” Ben Jonson having all the critical learning to himself.
After praise of Aristotle and a short notice of his actual author, he
then proceeds to consider the history of English poetry independently.
As for Chaucer, “our language was not then capable of any heroic
character,” nor indeed was the most polite wit of Europe “sufficient for
a great design.” Spenser had “a large spirit, a sharp judgment, and a
genius for Heroic poetry perhaps above any that ever wrote since
Virgil,” but “wanted a true idea,” and was misled by Ariosto. “They who
can love Ariosto will be ravished with Spenser, but men of juster
thoughts,” &c. His stanza is “nowise proper for our language.”
-----
Footnote 512:
Vol. ii. pp. 107-130 of the 1706 edition of Rapin in English. At p.
113 Rymer says that he will not here examine the various qualities
which make English fit above all other languages for Heroic Poesy,
“the world expecting these matters learnedly and largely discussed in
a particular treatise on that subject.” This apparently important
announcement is marginally annotated “Sheringham.” I suppose this was
Robert S., a Norfolk man (as his name imports), of Caius College, and
Proctor at Cambridge just before the Commonwealth ejection. He is
described (see _Dict. Nat. Biog._) as an “excellent linguist,” but
seems to have been more of an antiquary than of a man of letters. As
the _D. N. B._ says nothing of any such work as Rymer glances at, I
suppose the world was disappointed of it by his sudden death in May
1678, four years after Rymer wrote.
-----
Davenant and Cowley are criticised with politeness, but not very
favourably; the faults of both, as well as their designs, were what
Rymer was capable of understanding, and neither provokes him to any
rudeness on the one hand or stupidity on the other, though there is an
occasional ripple betraying an undercurrent of asperity. Then, after
some more general remarks, he takes the accepted test of the Description
of Night, and applies it with mixed commendation to Apollonius Rhodius,
with rather independent criticism to Virgil, slightingly to Ariosto, and
rather cavillingly to Tasso, with a good deal of censure to Marino, and
with more to Chapelain, with about as much to Père Le Moyne, and then
with very considerable praise to that passage of Dryden’s in the
_Conquest of Mexico_ to which Wordsworth was afterwards nearly as unjust
as Rymer himself to far greater things.[513] And with this rather
patronising “Well done our side!” he stops.
-----
Footnote 513:
I do not think that Rymer ever _intended_ to be rude to Dryden, though
his clumsy allusions to “Bays” in the _Short View_ naturally rubbed
the discrowned Laureate the wrong way for a time.
-----
Had Rymer done nothing more than this in criticism it would indeed be
absurd to call him our best critic, but it would be still more absurd to
call him our worst. There is fair knowledge, there is fair common-sense
judgment; the remarks on Chaucer are merely what might be expected, and
on Spenser rather better than might be expected; the detailed censure is
correct enough; and though there cannot be said to be any great
appreciation of poetry, there is interest in it. Above all, if the piece
stood alone, we should hardly think of detecting in it even a murmur of
the pedantic snarl which is the one unpardonable sin of a critic.
In _The Tragedies of the Last Age_ Rymer _ruit in pejus_. [Sidenote:
_The_ Tragedies of the Last Age.] He had in the interval received some
praise, which is always bad for an ill-conditioned man and dangerous for
a stupid one; he had conceived the idea of being bee as well as wasp;
and he undertook to show Beaumont and Fletcher, Shakespeare and Jonson,
their errors, though as matter of fact he lost his wind in belabouring
the twins, and had to leave the others till he had taken fifteen years’
breath. He shows himself at once in a mood of facetious truculence and
self-importance. _He_ is not going to emulate “the _Remarks_ and eternal
triflings of French Grammaticasters.” But he is going to set the
“quibble-catching” of his countrymen right, and to put an end to “the
Stage-quacks and Empirics in poetry” who despise the rules. “Fancy leaps
and frisks, and away she’s gone; while Reason rattles the chain, and
follows after,” in which flight Rymer, as often, does not seem to
perceive that he is not exactly giving Reason and himself the _beau
rôle_. Then he sets to work on three plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. In
_Rollo_ there is nothing to move pity and terror, nothing to delight,
nothing to instruct.[514] In _A King and No King_ Panthea actually
suggests kissing![515] Arbaces is so bad that he really made Rymer think
of Cassius—a withering observation which foretells what the critic was
going to say about Shakespeare, though on this occasion he was too
exhausted to say it.
-----
Footnote 514:
Rymer’s elaborate directions for removing the Romantic offence of this
play, and adjusting it to Classical correctness and decorum, are among
the most involuntarily funny things in criticism (pp. 19-24).
Footnote 515:
Rymer knew something of Old French. How horrified he would have been
if he had come across the lines in _Floriant et Florete_ (2904, 2905)—
“Si samble qu' enfes voit disant
'Baise, baise, je voil baisier!”
-----
He said it fifteen years later with no uncertain voice. The one
redeeming feature of the _Short View_ is its remarkable, if not quite
impeccable, learning. [Sidenote: _The_ Short View of Tragedy.] Rymer
really knows something about “Provencial” poetry, though he confuses it
(and thereby made Dryden confuse it) with old French, and actually
regards Philippe Mouskès—not even a Frenchman but a Fleming—as a
“troubadour.” Still, his knowledge is to be praised, and his ignorance
forgiven. Less forgivable, but still not fatal, are the singular want of
method with which he flings the result of his learning, pell-mell with
his own remarks, on the reader, and (in a yet further degree of
culpability) the vulgar jeering of his style. But all this might still
pass. His mistakes are much less, and his knowledge much greater, than
those of any critic of his age. Others have lacked method; and Bentley
was quite, Collier very nearly, as coarsely rude. On some general
points, such as the utility of the chorus in keeping playwrights to the
rules, he is not unintelligent. He is a great admirer of dumb-show, and
thinks that many of the tragical scenes, not merely in Shakespeare, but
in Jonson, would go better without words.
More than half the little book[516] is occupied with a display of his
learning—first in some general remarks on the drama, and then in a
history of it which is, with all its mistakes, better informed than
anything of the kind earlier. And then Rymer falls on _Othello_. He
grants it “a phantom of a fable.” But it is a very bad phantom.
Ridiculous that Desdemona should love a blackamoor at all; more
ridiculous that she should be attracted by his stories of adventure;
most that Othello should be made a Venetian general—and so on
throughout. But the characters are worse. Rymer simply cannot away with
Iago; and this on grounds exquisitely characteristic, not merely of him
but of the whole system, of which he is the _reductio ad absurdum_. It
is not nearly so much Iago’s _theriotes_ by which Rymer is shocked, as
his violation of the type and the general law. “He would pass upon us a
close, dissembling, false, insinuating rascal instead of an
open-hearted, frank, plain-dealing soldier—a character constantly worn
by them for some thousand years in the world.”[517] Again, “Philosophy
tells us it is a principle in the nature of Man to be grateful....
Philosophy must be [the poet’s] guide,”[518] therefore Iago is a
poetical impossibility. Rymer knows that historically all men are _not_
grateful: but never mind. The Type! the Type! the Type![519] One need
hardly go farther, but in going we cannot, in one sense, fare
worse.[520] “Godlike Romans” (as Mr Dryden had already called them) are,
in _Julius Cæsar_, “put in fools’ coats and made jack-puddings of,”
which, says Tom justly, “is a sacriledge.” Brutus and Cassius “play a
prize, a tryal of skill in huffing and swaggering like two drunken
Hectors.” In Tragedy Shakespeare “appears quite out of his element; his
brains are turned; he raves and rambles without any coherence, any spark
of reason, or any rule to control him, and set bounds to his frenzy.”
Nor does Ben fare much better. He indeed “knew to distinguish men and
manners at another rate.” In _Catiline_ “we find ourselves in Europe, we
are no longer in the land of Savages,” sighs Rymer with relief. Still
Ben, too, “gropes in the dark, and jumbles things together without head
and tail;” he, though not “in the gang of the strolling fraternity,”
like Shakespeare, “must lie a miserable heap of ruins for want of
architecture;” he “sins against the clearest light and conviction” by
“interlarding fiddle-faddle comedy and apocryphal matters.” And so
forth.
-----
Footnote 516:
It has (excluding an appended extract from the Registers of the
Parliament of Paris about Mysteries) only 168 pages of perhaps 200
words each; and much of it is quotation. But it is far longer than
_The Tragedies of the Last Age_.
Footnote 517:
_Short View_, p. 94.
Footnote 518:
Ibid., p. 144.
Footnote 519:
It is curious to read the deliberately stupid misunderstanding of
Aristotle by which this is justified.
Footnote 520:
It may be not unamusing to give an instance or two of the way in which
Nemesis has made poor Tom speak truth unconsciously,—
“They who like this author’s writing will not be offended to find so
much repeated from him” [Shakespeare].—P. 108.
“Never in the world had any pagan Poet his brains turned at this
monstrous rate.”—P. 111.
“No Pagan poet but would have found some machine for her
deliverance.”—P. 134.
“Portia is ... scarce one remove from a _Natural_. She is the own
cousin-german ... with Desdemona.”—P. 156.
-----
That Rymer was utterly deaf to the poetry of _Othello_ and of _Julius
Cæsar_, that he thinks “the neighing of a horse or the howling of a
mastiff possesses more meaning” than Shakespeare’s verse, merely
demonstrates that he understood the language of the beasts and did not
understand that of the man. [Sidenote: _The Rule of Tom the Second._] It
disqualifies him for his business, no doubt, hopelessly and of itself.
But in the nature of the case we cannot quarrel with him for this
Judgment of God; and, on his own theory, mere poetry is of so little
consequence that it does not much matter. But where he is cast
hopelessly on his own pleadings, where he shows himself (as he has been
called) utterly stupid, is in his inability to understand the fable, the
characters themselves. He cannot see that the very points which he
blunderingly picks out are the _adunata pithana_ of his own
law-giver—the improbabilities or impossibilities made plausible by the
poet’s art; and that the excess of this or that quality in Iago, in
Desdemona, in Othello, is utterly lost in, or is unerringly adjusted to,
their perfect humanity. He is not bound to feel “the pity of it”—which
he quotes, much as the pig might grunt at the pearl. But he is bound, on
Aristotelian, no less than on the most extreme Romantic, principles, to
feel that universality which Dryden had ascribed a quarter of a century
before, and for all time to come. Therefore, for once, though no
Macaulayan, I venture to indorse my unimportant name on a dictum of
Macaulay’s. I have read several critics—I trust this book may show
sufficiently that this is no idle boast. I have known several bad
critics from Fulgentius to the Abbé d’Aubignac, and from Zoilus to
persons of our own day, whom it is unnecessary to mention. But I never
came across a worse critic than Thomas Rymer.[521]
-----
Footnote 521:
His best deed was to elicit from Dryden, in _Heads of an Answer to
Rymer_ (_Works_, xv. 390), the memorable observation that "if
Aristotle had seen ours [_i.e._, "our plays"] he might have changed
his mind." One may add that, if Dryden had worked these “Heads” out,
he might have solved the whole mystery of criticism as far as in all
probability it ever can be solved, or at the very least as far as it
could be solved with the knowledge of literature at his disposal.
-----
Between its King and its Helot, our Sparta of the last forty years of
the seventeenth century does not offer many persons for exornation, with
crown or with stripe, as the case may be. Sprat in the famous passage of
his _History of the Royal Society_; Phillips and Winstanley and
Langbaine in their attempts at literary history; Sir Thomas Pope Blount
in his other attempt at a critical summary of literature; Collier in his
moral _chevauchées_ against the ethical corruption of the Drama,—these
we may legitimately notice, but at no great length. Dennis, Gildon, and
Bysshe will come better in the next Book; and it is hoped that no reader
will be so insatiable as to demand the inclusion of Milbourn or of
Hickeringill.
The Sprat passage[522] is of the very first importance in the History of
English Literature, and has at last been recognised as being so.
[Sidenote: _Sprat._] In it the gorgeous, floriated, conceited style of
the earlier century is solemnly denounced, and a “naked natural style of
writing” enjoined. But Sprat is careful to point out that this was for
the purposes of the Society—for the improvement not of literature but of
science; and he does not attempt to argue it out at all from the
literary side. The pronouncement expresses the whole sense of the time;
it is epoch-making in the history of literary taste; but it does not
give itself out as literary criticism, though the spirit of it may be
seen in half the literary criticism that follows for nearly a hundred
and fifty years.
-----
Footnote 522:
History of the Royal Society, 4to, London, 1667, p. 111 _sq._ It may
be found conveniently extracted at vol. iii. pp. 271, 272 of Sir Henry
Craik’s _English Prose Selections_ (London, 1894).
-----
The infant historians[523] also may be pretty briefly despatched.
[Sidenote: _Edward Phillips._] Edward Phillips, Milton’s nephew, was by
all accounts a most respectable person; and considering the prevalence
of Royalist opinions (especially as he shared them), he says quite as
much about his uncle as could be expected. Besides, it is just possible
that Milton was no more engaging as an uncle and schoolmaster than he
was as a husband and father. He was not alive when _Theatrum
Poetarum_[524] appeared in the winter of 1674-75, but the dignity of the
opening “Discourse of the Poets and Poetry in general” has made some
think that he had had a hand in it. I am not so sure of this. That it is
addressed to Thomas Stanley and Sir Edward Sherburne (each, for all the
learning of the former and the literary merits of both, among those
“rhyming amorists” and Cavaliers whom Milton certainly disliked, and at
least affected to disdain) need not much matter. But the style, though
often ambitious, does not seem to me above the reach of a man of some
learning and moderate ability, who had been about Milton in his youth
for years, and at intervals afterwards. Such a man would naturally take
the noble-sentiment view of Poetry, talk of the _melior natura_ and
“that noble thing education,” and the like; nor would he be at a loss
for Miltonic precedents of another kind when he felt inclined to speak
of “every single-sheeted pie-corner poet who comes squirting out an
Elegy.” [Sidenote: _His_ Theatrum Poetarum.] The piece is creditable as
a whole, and ends with a hesitating attribution of poetic merit to
Spenser and Shakespeare, in spite of the “rustic obsolete words,” the
“rough-hewn clowterly verse” of the one, and the “unfiled expressions,
the rambling and undigested fancies” of the other. The body of the
book—an alphabetical dictionary, first of ancient then of modern poets,
and lastly of poetesses, alphabetically arranged in a singularly awkward
fashion by their _prænomina_ or Christian names when Phillips knows
these, and by others when he does not—is much less important. Here again
the nephew has been robbed to give to the uncle the notices of Marlowe
and Shakespeare, in both of which the most noticeable expressions,
“Clean and unsophisticated wit” and “unvulgar style,” apply to
Shakespeare himself. Phillips has undoubted credit for appreciation of
Drummond (whom he had partially edited from the papers of Scot of
Scotstarvit many years earlier) and for singling out from the work of
Wither (which was then a by-word with Cavalier critics) _The Shepherd’s
Hunting_ for admiration. But he is much more of a list-maker than of a
critic.
-----
Footnote 523:
It is well known that Thomas Heywood, the dramatist, had planned, if
he did not actually execute, a _Lives of the Poets_ very much earlier,
and some sanguine souls have hoped that it may yet turn up. But the
famous passage about poets’ nicknames, as well as the whole cast of
Heywood’s work, suggests that, though biography may have lost
something, criticism has not lost much.
Footnote 524:
London 12mo.
-----
William Winstanley (who brought out his _Lives of the Most Famous
English Poets_[525] some dozen years later, and levied contributions on
Phillips himself in the most nonchalant manner) was a mere bookmaker, to
whom is assigned the post of manufacturer for years of “Poor Robin’s
Almanack,” and who did other hack-work. [Sidenote: _Winstanley’s_
Lives.] His book is chiefly an unmethodical compilation of anecdotes;
and as the lives of men of letters have always had more attraction than
their works, Winstanley has been found readable. His place here is
simply due to the fact that, putting archaics like Bale and Pits aside,
he is the second English Historian of Poets, if not of Poetry.
-----
Footnote 525:
8vo, London, 1686.
-----
In connection with Phillips and Winstanley (whom he avowedly follows and
acridly comments, accusing them at the same time of having stolen his
thunder from a previously published _Catalogue_) it may be well to
notice Gerard Langbaine, the somewhat famous author of the _Account of
the English Dramatic Poets_.[526] [Sidenote: _Langbaine’s_ Dramatic
Poets.] Of real criticism there is hardly even as much in Langbaine as
in his two Esaus or Jacobs, taking it which way you please. But he is
the spiritual ancestor of too many later critics; and there are still
too many people who confuse his method with that of criticism for him to
be quite left out. That he had a particular animosity to Dryden[527] is
less to his discredit than to that of the class to which he belongs.
This kind of parasite usually fastens on the fattest and fairest bodies
presented to it. Langbaine is first of all a _Quellenforscher_. Having
some reading and a good memory, he discovers that poets do not as a rule
invent their matter, and it seems to him a kind of victory over them to
point out where they got it. As a mere point of literary history there
is of course nothing to object to in this: it is sometimes interesting,
and need never be offensive. But, as a matter of fact, it too often is
made so, and is always made so in Langbaine. “I must take the freedom to
tell our author that most part of the language is stolen.” “Had Mr W.
put on his spectacles he would have found it printed thus,” &c., &c.
This hole-picking generally turns to hole-forging; and one is not
surprised to find Langbaine, after quoting at great length Dryden’s
cavillings at the men of the last age, huddling off as “some praises”
the magnificent and immortal eulogies[528] which atone for them. I am
afraid that Dante, if he had known Langbaine, would have arranged a
special _bolgia_ for him; and it would not have lacked later
inhabitants.
-----
Footnote 526:
1691: but pirated earlier.
Footnote 527:
I do not know whether this was cause or consequence of his being a
friend of Shadwell. But I am bound to note, though with much surprise,
that my friend Mr Sidney Lee finds (_D. N. B._) “no malice” in
Langbaine.
Footnote 528:
This is the odder, and the more discreditable, because one of the few
things to be counted to Langbaine for righteousness is a distinct
admiration of Shakespeare.
-----
The only too notable quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns produced some
deservedly famous literature of the critical kind in England, but its
greatest result in that way, _The Battle of the Books_, will be best
noticed, together with its author’s other works, and in the order rather
of its own publication than of its composition. [Sidenote: _Temple._]
Nor need the earlier protagonists, Temple and Bentley, occupy us much;
though the latter will give an opportunity of paying at least respects
to a kind of Criticism of which we have perforce said little. Temple, a
charming writer, and the author, at the close of his critical _Essay on
Poetry_, of one of the most exquisite sentences in English, is simply a
critic _pour rire_. The hundred pages of his _Works_[529] which are
devoted to literature, invited the exercise of Macaulay’s favourite
methods by the enormity of their ignorance, the complacency of their
dogmatism, and the blandness of their superficiality. Temple has
glimmerings—he intimates pretty plainly some contempt of at least the
French “rules”; but he will still be talking of what he has given
himself hardly the slightest pains to know.
-----
Footnote 529:
Ed. 1757, vol. iii., pp. 394-501, containing the _Poetry_, the
_Ancient and Modern Learning_, and the _Thoughts upon Reviewing that
Essay_. Some have charitably found in Temple better knowledge of the
Moderns, whom he scorned, than of the Ancients, whom he championed, on
the strength of his references to “Runes” and “Gothic Dithyrambics.” I
cannot be so amiable. It is all a mere parade of pretentious sciolism
varnished by style.
-----
This could not be said of Bentley, and the _Phalaris_ Dissertation has
been not undeservedly ranked as one of the representative pieces of
critical literature. [Sidenote: _Bentley._] It is only unfortunate that
Bentley has meddled so little with the purely literary side of the
matter; and the sense of this misfortune may be tempered by remembrance
of his dealings with Milton. He is, however, perfectly right in at least
hinting[530] that the Pseudo-Phalaris might have been convicted on
literary counts, as well as on linguistic and chronological, and that,
on grounds of style, the theory of those half-sceptics who attributed
the _Letters_ to Lucian was almost worse than the error of the true
believers. That Lucian could have written a line of this skimble-skamble
stuff is simply impossible; and it must always remain an instance of the
slight sense of style possessed by the Humanists that a really great man
of letters, like Politian, should have given countenance to the
absurdity.
-----
Footnote 530:
_Diss._, § xvi. My copy is the London ed. of 1817.
-----
From any point of critical consideration Collier’s famous book[531] must
be a most important document in the History of Criticism; and though
from some such points it may be of even greater importance than it is to
us, we can in no wise omit it. [Sidenote: _Collier’s_ Short View.] For
it is probably the earliest instance in our history where a piece of
criticism has apparently changed, to a very great extent, the face of an
important department of literature, and has really had no small part in
bringing about this change. It is, however, indirectly rather than
directly that it concerns us; for it is only here and there that Collier
takes the literary way of attack, and in that way he is not always,
though he is sometimes, happy. Curiously enough, one of his felicities
in this kind has been imputed to him for foolishness by his great
panegyrist. It is not necessary to feel that sympathy with his opinions
on ecclesiastical and political affairs which Macaulay naturally
disclaimed, and which some others may cheerfully avow, in order to see
that the Tory critic was quite right, and the Whig critic quite wrong,
in regard to the dissertations on the Greek and Latin Drama. What may be
thought of their technical scholarship does not matter. But Macaulay’s
undoubted familiarity with the classics must have had a gap in it, and
his wide knowledge of modern literature several much greater gaps, if he
did not know—first, that Collier _had_ ancient criticism on his side,
and secondly, that the allegation of ancient authority and practice
where favourable, the arguing-off of it where inconvenient, were exactly
the things to influence his generation. When everybody was looking back
on the Vossian precept, “Imitate the Ancients, but imitate them only in
what is good,” and drawing forward to the Popian axiom,
“To copy Nature is to copy _them_,”
“dissertations on the Greek and Latin Drama” were not otiose at all,
they were absolutely necessary.
-----
Footnote 531:
_A Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage._
London, 1698. The great popularity of the book caused it to be quickly
reprinted: my copy, though of the first year, is the third edition.
Collier’s rejoinder to his victims next year contains good things, but
is of less importance. And it does not matter much to us whether he
originally drew anything from the Prince de Conti’s pietist _Traité
Sur la Comédie_ (1667). The Ancients, and the Fathers, and the
Puritans were in any case quite sufficient sources.
-----
But for the most part, as is notorious, Collier is as ethical as
Plutarch or Plato. It was desirable that he should be so, and nobody but
a paradoxer will ever defend the style of play-writing which produced
such things as _Limberham_, and _The Old Bachelor_, and even _The
Relapse_—though the first be Dryden’s, and contain some good things in
the characters of Prudence and Brainsick, though the second show us the
dawn of Congreve’s wit, and though the third contain handfuls of the
sprightliest things in the English language. It is in reference to this
last, by the way, that Collier chiefly quits the path of ethical
criticism, and takes to that of literary, or at least dramatic. There is
hardly a sharper and more well-deserved beating-up of the quarters of a
ragged dramatic regiment anywhere than that (at p. 212 _sq._) on the
glaring improbabilities of Vanbrugh’s plot, the absolute want of
connection between the title part of it and the real fable—Tom Fashion’s
cheating his brother of Hoyden—and the way in which the characters are
constantly out of character in order that the author may say clever
things. But Collier has serious matters on his mind too much to give us
a great deal of this; and the other definitely literary points which I
have noted, in a very careful re-reading of the piece for this book, are
not numerous. I wish he had not called _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ (p. 125)
“a very silly play”; but how many people were there then living who
would have thought differently? I wish he had worked out his statement
(rather rash from his own point of view) at p. 148, “Poets are not
always exactly in rule.” He might have developed his views on the Chorus
(p. 150) interestingly. I have some other places; but they are not
important. The sum is, that though Collier evidently knew most critical
authorities, from Aristotle and Horace, through Heinsius and Jonson, to
Rapin, and Rymer, and Dryden himself, very well; though he could (pp.
228, 229) state the Unities, and even argue for them—this was not his
present purpose, which was simply to cleanse the stage. His interest in
other matters in fact blunted what might have been a keen interest in
literature proper. And this is thoroughly confirmed by study of his
interesting and characteristic _Essays_,[532] where, out of more than
five hundred pages, exactly four are devoted to literature, and these
give us nothing but generalities.
-----
Footnote 532:
_Essays upon Several Moral Subjects_ (3rd ed., 2 vols., London, 1698).
Nor can one make out an entirely good case (though something may be
done) for Collier in the matter of that description of Shakespeare,
which Mr Browning has maliciously chosen, as a motto for _Ferishtah’s
Fancies_, from the _Historical Dictionary_: “His genius was jocular,
but, when disposed, he could be very serious.”
-----
That Collier’s victory was very mainly due to the fact that he struck in
at the right moment, as spokesman of an already formed popular opinion,
would be a matter of reasonable certainty in any case; but the certainty
is here historical. [Sidenote: _Sir T. P. Blount._] One of many proofs
at hand is in the curious lighterfull of critical lumber which Sir
Thomas Pope Blount launched four (or eight?) years before Collier let
his fireship drive into the fleet of the naughty playwrights. In this
book,[533] dedicated to Mulgrave, that noble poet himself, Roscommon,
Cowley, and the lately published and immensely influential _Whole Duty
of Man_, are quoted to support the argument that “A poet may write upon
the subject of Love, but he must avoid obscenity.”[534]
-----
Footnote 533:
_De Re Poetica_, or _Remarks upon Poetry_, &c., 4to, London, 1694. It
is even said to have first appeared in 1690.
Footnote 534:
Both Roscommon and Mulgrave were critics in their way, and the
former’s _Essay on Translated Verse_ is one of those numerous
documents which would have been of the utmost service to us in the
last volume, but which cannot receive detailed treatment in this.
-----
Sir Thomas, however, comes within the inner, and not merely the outer,
circle of criticism for his aims and his collections, though certainly
not for any critical genius that he displays. His “Remarks upon Poetry,”
no less than the “Characters and Censures” which make up the other part
of his work, are the purest compilation: and though we are certainly not
without compilers in these days (what indeed can a Historian of
Criticism do but compile to a great extent?), there are very few of us
who are at once honest enough and artless enough to follow the method of
Blount. Whether he is arguing that good humour is essentially necessary
to a poet (how about the _genus irritabile_?) or that a poet should not
be addicted to flattery, or discussing the “Eglogue, Bucholic [sic], or
Pastoral,” whether he is following Phillips and Winstanley and borrowing
from both, in compiling a dictionary of poets, he simply empties out his
common place-book. “Dryden remarks,” “Rapin observes,” “Mr Cowley tells
us,” “Mr Rymer can nowise allow” (this is happy, for it was habitual
with Mr Rymer “nowise to allow”), such are the usherings of his
paragraphs. He is not uninteresting when he is original (_cf._ his
remarks on Waller); but one is almost more grateful to him for his
collections, which put briefly, and together, the critical dicta of a
vast number of people. Here we may read, with minimum of trouble, how
Julius Scaliger could not see anything in Catullus but what is common
and ordinary; how Dr Sprat said that till the time of Henry the Eighth
there was nothing wrote in the English language except Chaucer that a
man would care to read twice; how Scaliger once more, and Petrus
Crinitus, and Johannes Ludovicus Vives, and Eustatius Swartius, thought
Claudian quite in the first rank of poets; how Tanneguy le Fèvre shook
his head over Pindar as having “something too much the air of the
Dithyrambick”; and how Cœlius Rhodiginus was good enough to find that
same Dantes Aligerus, who displeased others, a “poet not
contemptible.”[535] These things are infinitely pleasant to read, and
give one a positive affection for Sir Thomas Pope Blount as one turns
them in the big black print of his handy quarto; yet perhaps it would be
excessive to call him a great critic. What he does, besides providing
this _gazophylacium_ for the connoisseur, is to show how wide the
interest in criticism was.
-----
Footnote 535:
The remark may with more proportion be made of Cœlius himself, a very
worthy Humanist, whom Lilius Giraldus pronounces to be _multifariam
eruditus, parum tamen in pangendis versibus versatus_.
-----
A further turn, and the last in this walk, may be furnished to us by one
of his own quotations (p. 137 of the _Characters and Censures_) of an
answer to the question, “Whether Milton and Waller were not the best
English poets, and which was the better of the two?” from _The Athenian
Mercury_, vol. v., No. 4. [Sidenote: _Periodicals_: The Athenian
Mercury, _&c._] For this curious and interesting medley of Dunton’s, and
Samuel Wesley’s, and others’, was almost the first to provide something
in English answering, or that might have answered, to the _Journal des
Savants_ and the _Mercure Galant_. Actually, the Mercury was not very
literary. I do not pretend to have examined the original volumes with
any very great care. But in the three copious books which were either
directly compiled out of it, or composed in imitation—_the Athenian
Oracle_,[536] _Athenian Sport_, and _The British Apollo_—literature
holds no very large place. The _Oracle_ does indeed give at p. 438 a
very elaborate answer to the question, “Whether the Dramatic Poets of
the Last Age exceeded those of this?” and the _Apollo_, besides a
versification of the identical query and answer which Blount had quoted,
contains a long descant on the Origin of Poetry, and a remarkably shrewd
answer to the question, “Which is the best poet—Boileau, Molière, or La
Fontaine?” But the time of literary periodicals in England was not yet,
though this was the very eve of it: and they must therefore be
postponed.[537]
-----
Footnote 536:
The _Athenian Mercury_ (1690-97) ran to twenty volumes. The _Oracle_,
from which the late Mr Underhill made his interesting selection
(London, n. d.), was issued in _four_. I have _one_ (London, 1703),
which calls itself an “Entire Collection,” as well as _Athenian Sport_
(London, 1707), and _The British Apollo_, (3rd ed., London, 1718).
Footnote 537:
An exception may perhaps be made in favour of J. [Cornand] de La
Croze’s _Works of the Learned_, which, translated wholly or mainly by
its author from the French, began to appear monthly in August 1691,
and was collected before long in a thin quarto volume. Its contents
are real reviews in almost every point—down to some sharp remarks by
the editor-reviewer on plagiarisms by the _Athenian Mercury_, and
complaints of the absence of indices to lessen the labour of
reviewing. The books reviewed are, as a rule, of no great interest;
but the summaries of their contents are generally good, and the views
advanced are at least sometimes made the subject of passably
argumentative discussion.
-----
INTERCHAPTER V.
In the present Interchapter we come to a sort of Omphalos of the whole
projected History. Here and here only, up to the present day, do we find
a Catholic Faith of criticism, not merely at last constituted, but
practically accepted over the whole literary world. In ancient times,
though it is not difficult to discern a creed of a not wholly dissimilar
character, yet that creed was arrived at in roundabout fashion, and was
never applied universally to poetry and prose as literature. In the
Middle Ages there was no such creed at all. In the century which—or
rather a certain aspect of it—will furnish us with the subject of the
last Book of the present volume, the catholic faith still maintains, and
even, as is the wont of such things, rather tightens, its hold as
received orthodoxy; but there are grumblings, and threatenings, and
upheavals on the one hand, and on the other the tendency to a dangerous
latitudinarianism. In that which, with the permission of the fates,
will, with the Dissidents of the Eighteenth, give the subject of the
next volume, there is no parallel consensus even of a prevailing party.
Take a dozen critics of any distinction, at different times and in
different countries of the seventeenth century in Europe, and ask them
to enunciate some general laws and principles of literary criticism. The
results, if not slavishly identical, would be practically the same,
putting aside particular and half unreal squabbles of Ancient and Modern
and the like. Do the same at any time for the last hundred—certainly for
the last seventy or eighty—years, and the result would be a Babel. If
any two of the utterances did not betray direct contradiction, it would
probably be because the speakers began at entirely different facets of
the subject.
Whether this literary unanimity—which resembles the ecclesiastical
unanimity, on the ruins of which it grew, not least in being a little
unreal—was a good thing or a bad thing in itself, is one of those larger
questions which we do not purpose to argue out here. The point for us is
that it existed. It was compatible, as in the other case, with a good
deal of minor difference: there might be literary Scotists and Thomists;
there might even (as in the Ancient and Modern case) be a Great Schism
of the most apparently important kind. But this was as a rule mere
jangling; and the more serious of the Moderns generally tried to make
out little more than that their favourites could claim as much, or more,
of the graces which both esteemed, as the other people’s favourites
possessed.
We have seen in the last Interchapter how something like this creed had
been achieved—though not without a good deal of opposition, and hardly,
in any case, with the result of authoritative and complete statement—in
Italy, and to some extent borrowed thence, in other countries, before
the end of the sixteenth century itself. The seventeenth did little more
than crystallise it, lay stress on particular points, fill up some gaps,
arrange, codify, illustrate. The absence of dissidence, except on the
minor points, is most remarkable. In regard to Aristotle, in particular,
there are no Patrizzis and hardly any Castelvetros. Men tack on a
considerable body of Apocrypha to the canonical books of the Stagirite,
and misinterpret not a little that he actually said. But they never take
his general authority in question, seldom the authority of any ancient,
and that of Horace least of all. The two great artificial conceptions of
the elaborate “Unities” drama, with Acts and Scenes taking the place of
the choric divisions, and of the still more artificial “Heroic Poem,”
with its Fable, its Epic Unity, its Machines, and so forth, acquire in
theory—if luckily, as, for instance, in England, by no means in
practice—greater and greater dignity. It becomes a sort of truism that
the drama is the most beautiful and ingenious, the heroic poem the
noblest, thing on which the human mind can exercise itself. But they are
difficult things, sir! very difficult things. Each is sharply isolated
as a Kind: and the other Kinds are ranged around and below them. You
never criticise any thing first in itself, but with immediate reference
to its Kind. If it does not fulfil the specifications of that Kind, it
is either cast out at once or regarded with the deepest suspicion.
Further, all the Kinds in particular, as well as Poetry itself in
general, possess, and are distinguished by, Qualities which are, in the
same way, rigidly demanded and inquired into. It is generally, if not
quite universally, admitted that a poem must please: though critics are
not quite agreed whether you are bound to please only so as to instruct.
But you must please in the Kind, by the Quality, according to the Rule.
There is no room for nondescripts; or, if they are admitted at all, they
must cease to be nondescripts, and become Heroi-comic, Heroi-satiric,
“Tragical-comical-historical-pastoral,”[538] or what not.
-----
Footnote 538:
It may be doubted whether there is anything more wonderful in
Shakespeare than the way in which this Polonian speech, at one slight
side-blow, impales sixteenth-seventeenth-century criticism, with the
due pin, on the due piece of cork, for ever.
-----
This general view may seem unorthodox to those who put faith in the
notion—to be found in some books of worth, as well as of worship—that
there was a “Romantic revolt” in the beginning of the seventeenth
century—that there was even a kind of irruption or recrudescence of
mediæval barbarism, and that the pronounced and hardened classicism of
the later century was a fresh reaction—a case of _Boileau à la
rescousse_! The texts, and the facts, and the dates, do not, to my
thinking, justify this view of history, in so far, at least, as
criticism is concerned. The crystallising of the classical creed goes on
regardless of Euphuism, earlier and later, in England, of Marinism in
Italy, of Culteranism and Conceptism in Spain, of the irregular outburst
of similar tastes in France, which marks the reign of Louis XIII. As we
have seen, Ogier, in the last named country, at the very moment of
striking a blow for Romantic drama, admits that the critics are against
him; and we have also seen how they were. In England, Sidney, at the
beginning of the great Elizabethan period, holds out hands to Jonson at
the end. The very Spanish Romantics, when they come to consider the
matter critically, make an unblushing transaction between conscientious
theory and popular practice: and such an Italian iconoclast as Beni is
classical, in the very act and process of belittling the classics.
At the same time, this accepted faith of Criticism, when we come to
examine it, is a very peculiar Catholicity. Uncompromisingly
Aristotelian in profession, its Aristotelianism, as has been recognised
by an increasing number of experts from the time of Lessing downwards,
is hopelessly adulterated. Many of the insertions and accretions are
purely arbitrary: others come from a combination of inability to forget,
and obstinate refusal frankly to recognise, the fact that the case is
quite a different case from that which Aristotle was diagnosing. But, by
the time at least when the creed became triumphant, a new Pope, a new
Court of Appeal, has been foisted in, styling itself Good Sense, Reason,
or even (though quite Antiphysic) Nature. That this anti-Pope, this
Antiphysis, was partly created by the excesses of the Euphuist-Gongorist
movements, need not be denied; but this is comparatively irrelevant. We
have traced above, in almost all their principal exponents, the curious,
and sometimes very ludicrous, attempt to conciliate that _furor
poeticus_ which the ancients had never denied, with those dictates of
good sense which the ancients were presumed to have accepted and
embodied. A professed satirist could evolve, in his happiest moments,
nothing more comic than the eirenicon of Mambrun,[539] or, rather, than
his clinical examination of the poet in fury, and his observation of the
poet in his right mind.
-----
Footnote 539:
_V. supra_, p. 268.
-----
The survey of the development of this phenomenon, or group of phenomena,
in different countries, requires less minuteness than was needed in the
last Interchapter, because the central stage of the movement is both of
less importance and of less complexity than the beginnings of it: but it
is essential to the scheme of these Interchapters, and to that of the
whole book, that some such survey should be given.
In Italy, as we have seen, the results of the period were almost
insignificant—a fact no doubt connected with, though in no sense
necessarily caused by, the declension of the Italian creative genius
after Tasso. We have, it may be hoped, established, by the slow but
irresistible process of reciting the actual history, the truth that no
constant ratio exists between periods of creation and periods of
criticism—that they may go hand in hand, or that one may follow the
other, or that both may fail to put in any important appearance, as Fate
and metaphysical aid may determine. This, for Italy, was a period of the
last kind, though not one of its very worst examples. The Italians
continued both to play at criticism in their Academies, and to
accumulate solid though second-hand work in such laboratories as those
of Aromatari. They fought out the half-mock battle of the Ancients and
Moderns, as became them, before other nations meddled with it: and they
still maintained, for long, though not for the whole time, that position
of supremacy, as masters in title to Europe, which the great
achievements of the preceding century had given them. But they added
nothing to their claims, and by degrees the supremacy passed from
them.[540]
-----
Footnote 540:
The attitude of Milton and Dryden respectively illustrates this well.
There was scarcely more than twenty years between the two poets. But
Milton looks to the Italians first, if not also last, among the
moderns, for criticism. Dryden, though he knows and cites them, does
not.
-----
That it passed to France is an accepted truth, and like most, though not
all, accepted truths, this has so much of the real quality that it is
idle to cavil at it. That it has been abused there can be little
doubt—or could be little if people would take the small trouble
necessary to ascertain the facts. I do not know who first invented the
term “Gallo-Classic,” which, to judge by those Röntgen rays which the
reader of examination-papers can apply, has sunk deep into the youthful
mind of this country. It is a bad word. I have taken leave to call it
“question-begging, clumsy, and incomplete,” before now; and I repeat
those epithets with a fresh emphasis here. It begs the question whether
“Italo-Classic” would not, in its own kind, be the properer term: it is
clumsy because the two parts of it are not used in the same sense; and
it is incomplete because it does not intimate that much beside French
influence, and that a very peculiar and sophisticated kind of Classical
influence, went to the making of the thing. But there _was_ French
influence: and for some three-quarters of a century France was the head
manufactory in which Italian, Classical, and other ideas were torn up
and remade into a sort of critical shoddy with which (as with other
French shoddy in that and other times) Europe was rather too eager to
clothe itself. Some pains have been taken in the foregoing Book to put
the reader in a position to appreciate the real rise, progress, and
history of French criticism of the Neo-classic[541] type. The survey,
whatever difference may exist as to its justice in matter of opinion,
will not, I think, be found erring in matters of fact: and it will show
that the position usually accorded to Boileau requires some
reconsideration. But Boileau was undoubtedly the greatest man of letters
who, holding these views, devoted himself specially and definitely to
the expression of them; and, for good or for ill, his name is associated
with the movement. I agree with Keats,[542] who here, as in so many
other matters, came right by genius. Those of us who do not possess this
royal key can, at any rate, if we choose to take the trouble, come right
by knowledge.
-----
Footnote 541:
“Neo-classic” itself is not a very “blessed” word; but it has been
long recognised, and the objections to it are mainly formal.
Footnote 542:
In the well-known and early lines on “Sleep and Poetry.”
-----
The Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns—though we have spoken hard words
of it—might look like revolt against the tyranny of Despréaux, and it
undoubtedly spread seeds of the more successful revolution which
followed; but the more one studies it, the more one sees that the revolt
was in the main unconscious. As we have partly shown, and as might be
shown much more fully, the Moderns were, as a rule, just as “classical”
in their ideas as the Ancients. They were as incapable of catholic
judgment; they were even more ignorant of literature as a whole: they
were at least as apt to introduce non-literary criteria; they were as
much under the obsession of the Kind, the Rule (cast-iron, not leaden),
the sweeping generalisation. Too commonly the thing comes to this—that
the man who can conjugate _tupto_ will not hear of anything which
lessens the importance of that gift, and that the man who cannot
conjugate _tupto_ will not hear of any virtue attaching to it.
Most other countries require little notice here. The Germans make
practically no figure; the Dutch confine themselves to classical study
and the popularisation of reviewing; and the Spaniards, with
characteristic indolence, refuse to work out the interesting problem
presented to them by the recalcitrance of their national drama to the
consecrated ideas of the general creed. England is of more importance. I
have tried to show that it is of very much more; but this importance
belongs entirely to one man. This one man in his time played many parts:
and as the main aim of literature is to give pleasure, and to produce
original sources thereof, we cannot perhaps say that his critical part
was the greatest. But we may almost say that it was the most important.
We can imagine English literature without the poetry of Dryden: it would
be wofully impoverished, but somebody would take up the burden, probably
before Pope. Certainly Pope would take it up, though with much more to
do. But English criticism, and, what is more, European criticism of the
best and most fruitful kind, would have had, if Dryden had been absent,
to seek some totally new source: and it is impossible to tell where that
source would have been found. There is no precedent—Lilius Giraldus and
Patrizzi between them might have produced one in Italy, but it is of the
highest significance that they did not—for Dryden’s peculiar way of
shaking different literatures and different examples of literature
together, of indicating the things that please him in all, and of at
least attempting to find out why they please him. It is this, not his
parade of Rules, and his gleanings from the books, that makes his
critical glory: and it is this in which, among critics up to his own
time, he is alone.
Yet even he does parade “rules”; even he does belaud Rapin, and Le
Bossu, and even Rymer; even he would have been, no doubt, quite as ready
to take the oath to Boileau as he was nobly determined not to take it to
William. His genius is recalcitrant to the orthodoxy of the time; but
something else in him accepts it. It is not for nothing that he never
_published_ that word of power which dissolves all the spells of
Duessa—“Had Aristotle seen our plays he might have changed his mind.”
That, however, there was, at any rate in the earlier part of the time,
much blind, and even a little conscious revolt against classicism,
independent of the Ancient and Modern quarrel, is not to be wholly
denied. I have hinted doubts as to the correctness of regarding the
Euphuist-Metaphysical extravagances in England, Marinism in Italy,
Gongorism in Spain, and the fantastic and “precious” fancies which mark
the reign of Louis XIII. and the Fronde in France, as either deliberate
reactions against classicism, or abortive births and false dawns of
Romance. They are in almost every case direct results of the Romantic or
mediæval side of the earlier Renaissance—last things, not first. But, by
the end of the century, they were almost everywhere got well under;
though in Spain, their greatest stronghold, it was not till the
eighteenth century itself was some way advanced that Luzán administered
the critical _miséricorde_, or, if we must use the language of the
country, played _despeñador_ to them. Any other interpretation of the
phenomena seems to me to distort them and make them unintelligible,
while the procession of the Metaphysical from the Spenserian stage, of
Marinism from Tasso, of Gongorism from the great Spanish age, and of the
French extravagants from the Spaniards and Marino, working not a little
on the Pléiade itself, is natural, historical, and consistent with
logic. But these very facts prepare and lead up to the triumph of
Neo-Classicism.
By dint, however, of these actions and interactions, there was actually
evolved, towards the end of the century, a sort of false Florimel or
Duessa, who was called Taste. She was rather a Protean Goddess, and
reflected the knowledge or the want of it, the real taste or the want of
it, possessed by her priests and worshippers. The Taste of Dryden and
the Taste of Rymer are two totally different things; there is even a
very considerable difference between the taste of Hédelin and the taste
of Bouhours. But in all save the very happiest minds the Taste of this
time, as far as Poetry is concerned almost wholly, and to a great extent
as regards prose, is vitiated by all manner of mistaken assumptions,
polluted by all manner of foolish and hurtful idolatries. There is the
Idol of the Kind which has been noticed; the Idol of the Quality; the
Idol of Good Sense, the most devouring of all.[543] It is agreed, and
agreed very pardonably, that it is not well to write
“And periwig with snow the baldpate woods.”
But the baser folk go on from this—and all but the very noblest have
some difficulty in preventing themselves from going on—to think that a
man should not write
“The multitudinous seas incarnadine.”
There is a sense, and a very proper sense, that, in a certain general
way, style must suit subjects: that you ought not to write to a Child of
Quality, aged five, as you would do to Queen Anne, aged fifty.[544] But
this topples over into the most absurd limitations, so that, a little
later than our actual time, we shall find Pope taking modest credit to
himself with Spence for that, though Virgil in his Pastorals “has
sometimes six or eight lines together _that are epic_,” he had been so
scrupulous as “scarce ever to have two together, even in the _Messiah_.”
Indeed it is hardly possible to find a better _reductio ad absurdum_ of
Neo-Classicism than this. You lay down (as we saw long ago that Servius
did lay it down), from a general induction of the practice of a
particular poet, such and such a rule about Virgil’s styles in his
various works. Then you turn this individual observation into a general
rule. And then you go near to find fault with the very poet from whom
you have derived it because he does not always observe it—as if his
unquestionable exceptions had not as much authority as his supposed
rules. Nor is there any doubt that this fallacy derives colour and
support from the false Good Sense, the Pseudo-Reason. The induction from
practice is hitched on to Reason so as to become a deduction and a
demonstration, and once established as that, you deduce from it anything
you like. Meanwhile Good Sense, as complaisant to the critic as stern to
the victim of his criticism, will approve or disapprove anything that
you choose to approve or disapprove, will set her seal to any arbitrary
decision, any unjust or purblind whim, and can only be trusted with
certainty to set her face invariably against the highest poetry, and
often against certain kinds not so high.[545]
-----
Footnote 543:
Perhaps there is not a more unhappy gibe in literature (which has many
such) than that in _The Rehearsal_ on Bayes, who is made to say that
“Spirits must not be confined to talk sense.” They certainly must not;
even Addison (_Sp._, 419) admits that “their sense ought to be a
little _discoloured_.” There is much virtue in this “discolour.”
Footnote 544:
It may be said that this was later. But Prior was a man of thirty-six
in 1700.
Footnote 545:
Yet it is not for the twentieth century to throw stones at the
seventeenth, till we leave off laying down rules of our own
manufacture for still earlier ages, and reproving Marlowe and the
youthful Shakespeare for being “too lyrical” in tragedy.
-----
The result of all this is that, with the exception of Dryden and
somewhat later Fontenelle (see next Book), hardly any critics of the
time achieve, with any success, the highest function of the true critic
of literature, the discovery and celebration of beautiful literary
things. It is not their business, or their wish, to set free the “lovely
prisoned soul of Eucharis.” If Eucharis will get a ticket from the
patronesses of the contemporary Almack’s, and dress herself in the
prescribed uniform, and come up for judgment with the proper courtesy,
they will do her such justice as Minerva has enabled them to do; but if
not, not. Sometimes (as in the case of the immortal Person of Quality
who took the trouble to get Spenser into order[546]) they will
good-naturedly endeavour to give her a better chance, poor thing! But
they will never kiss the Daughter of Hippocrates on the mouth, and
receive the reward thereto appropriated.[547]
-----
Footnote 546:
See _Spenser Redivivus_. London, 1686-87. The Person of Quality
“delivers” Spenser “in Heroick numbers,” as per sample—
“Then to the lady gallant Arthur said,
All grief repeated is more grievous made.”
This is “what Spenser ought to have been instead of what is to be
found in himself.”
Footnote 547:
Dryden and Fontenelle themselves are of course not quite sinless. The
latter (v. _infra_, p. 505) proposes emendations in the magnificent
couplet which he cites from _Saint-Louis_; and Dryden, let us say,
does not improve Shakespeare and Chaucer. But it was on Shakespeare
and Chaucer as they were, not as he travestied them for popular use,
that Dryden passed the immortal eulogies; and Fontenelle thought that
the couplet even as it stood “might easily _not_ have been found by
distinguished poets,” which is from him equivalent to a blare of
superlatives from our modern critics.
-----
That, on the other hand, there is observable, throughout the century, a
certain interpenetration of the older and more Romantic spirit—in the
creative work chiefly, but even there dying down, in the critical
overmastered from the first, and less and less perceptible,—this opinion
will meet with no contradiction here, but, on the contrary, with the
strongest support. All the eccentric phenomena, as they may be called,
which have been noticed from Euphuism to Gongorism, are symptoms of this
on the larger scale; and other things—the fancy of Chapelain himself for
the Romances, the lingering attraction which Gongorism exercises even on
such a man as Bouhours—confirm it. Yet even this was, as has been said,
steadily dying down; and by the end of the century the old Phœnix was
nearly in ashes, though the new bird was to take slow rebirth from them.
I am myself inclined to think that the signs of Romantic leaning in
Dryden belong to the new, not to the old, chapter of symptoms; and that
in this way England, the last, save perhaps Spain, to give up, was the
first to feel again for, the standard of Romanticism. But in this Dryden
was in advance, not merely of all his countrymen, but of all Europe; and
he did not himself definitely raise any flag of revolt. On the contrary,
he always supposed himself to be, and sometimes was, arguing for a
reasonable and liberal Classicism.
It was not in flippancy, but in logical connection with the present
subject, that attention was drawn above[548] to a certain _aporia_ of
Tassoni’s on the admitted lovesomeness, body and soul, of _le donne
brutte_, and on the tricks which _bruttezza_ and _bellezza_ play to each
other. If that ingenious poet and polemic had but pushed his inquiries a
little further, and extended them in purview as well as lineally, he
might have come to great things in criticism. It might, for instance,
have struck him whether the accepted notions of literary beauty were not
peculiarly like those of physical beauty, which were also those of his
century. These laws laid it down that “from the chin to the pit betwixt
the collar-bones there must be two lengths of the nose,” that the whole
figure must be “ten faces high,” and that “the inside of the arm, from
the place where the muscle disappears to the middle, is four noses”;
while the careful calculators noted all the while with dismay that both
the Apollo Belvidere and the Medicean Venus set these proportions at the
most godlike defiance.[549] He would (or he might) have observed that,
just as when you have settled exactly what a _bella donna_ must not
have, there is apt to sail, or slip, into the room somebody with that
particular characteristic to whom you become a hopeless slave, so, when
you have settled the qualifications of the drama with the infallibility
of Hédelin, and those of the Epic with the finality of Le Bossu, there
comes you out some impudent production which is an admirable poem, while
the obedient begettings of your rules are worthless rubbish. Tassoni, I
say, might have done this; he seems to have had quite the temper to do
it; but he did it not. It was doubtless with him, as with others, a case
of _Di terrent et Jupiter hostis_—the gods of their world and their time
forbade them.
-----
Footnote 548:
P. 325.
Footnote 549:
See the whole absurd scheme in the appendix-matter to Dryden’s
Translation of Du Fresnoy (_ed. cit. sup._, xvii. 429).
-----
But the angry gods were not wholly able to maintain their anger; and at
the other end of the century, in that Quarrel of the Ancients and
Moderns which, for all its irritating _ignorationes elenchi_, did
certainly assist in the discussion of general æsthetic problems, we
find, among other glimpses, an advance, though only a partial advance,
on this suggestion of the _Pensieri_. Perrault, who doubtless knew
Tassoni (one of his brothers had translated the _Secchia_), has a
curious passage on the diversity of the forms of feminine beauty. He
had,[550] he says, visited the gallery of a connoisseur who had
collected portraits of the most famous beauties of Europe for a century
past. There were not two of the same type of loveliness; and of the
spectators there were not two who fixed on the same portrait as the most
beautiful. But Perrault, though he has had this glimpse of the true path
opened up to him, does not dare pursue it. He is as convinced as the
rest of them that you can reduce ideas of beauty to a minimum which is
always invariable, though you may add others which vary; and he is
perfectly arbitrary in his admissions and exclusions of these latter. He
hates Gothic architecture; it may be strongly suspected that he would
fall far short of Chapelain in appreciating Romance, for all his fairy
tales. His criticisms of the Ancients belie his theory itself; for he
will not open his eyes to see the beauty of their peculiarity. His
remarks on Homer are pitiable. My always estimable and not seldom
admirable predecessor, Blair, was no doubt sadly “left to himself” when
he selected,[551] as the awful example of a man of bad taste, the person
who said that Homer was no better than “some old tale of chivalry.” But
Perrault, I fear, is a more terrible spectacle when he says that none of
the Three Tragedians will bear comparison with Corneille (and I think I
may claim the merit of not undervaluing Corneille), that nobody but
professed scholars can read Aristophanes, and that Ovid is the inferior
of Benserade. When we read these things—and except in Fontenelle, the
eternal exception, they are to be found in every espouser of the Modern
side, just as the corresponding absurdities are to be found in every
defender of the Ancients—there is nothing to say but “This is all out of
focus. Both of you see men as trees walking.”
-----
Footnote 550:
_Parallèle_, ii. 45; cf. Rigault, p. 187.
Footnote 551:
_V. infra_, p. 463.
-----
A summary of the whole merits and defects of neo-classicism must again
be postponed; though with no further prorogation than to the end of the
next Book and the present volume. As for the special defects of this
special period we have said enough; and we may conclude this
Interchapter with a glance at its special merits. They are partly of a
negative kind, but they certainly exist. In the Middle Ages, as we have
seen, there was no code of criticism at all; in the sixteenth century
only a growing approach to one, though the approach had become very near
at the last. Some outbreaks of heterodoxy—the last stand of Romance for
the time—had, as usually happens, drawn the orthodox together, had made
them sign a definite, or almost definite, instrument or confession. Just
or unjust, adequate or inadequate, even consistent or inconsistent, as
it may be, from the point of view of a very searching and all-inspecting
logic, the neo-classicism of the late seventeenth century was a thing
about which there could be no mistake. It knew its own mind about
everything which it chose to consider, and valiantly shut its eyes to
everything which it chose to ignore. For a time—a short time only, of
course, for the triumph of a religion is always the signal for the
appearance of a heresy—the majority of people had not much more doubt
about what was the proper thing to believe in and admire in literature,
than they had about the multiplication table. It became possible—and it
was done, as we shall see, first in Italy, then elsewhere—to write real
literary histories: it became still more easily possible to criticise
new books on a certain basis of accepted postulates. And it is by no
means certain that this provisional orthodoxy was not a necessary
condition of the growth of the new study of Æsthetic, which, though it
has done criticism harm as well as good, has certainly done it good as
well as harm.
Nor is it possible to deny that there was something to admire in the
creed itself. It was weakest—it was in fact exceedingly weak—on the
poetical side; but the world happened to have accumulated a remarkably
good stock of poetry in the last two centuries or so, and a fallow, or a
cessation of manufacture, was not undesirable. Prose, on the other hand,
had never been got into proper order in the vernaculars; and it was
urgently desirable that it should be so got. The very precepts of the
classical creed which were most mischievous in poetry were sovereign for
prose. Here also they might hinder the development of eccentric
excellence; but it was not eccentric excellence that was wanted. Unjust
things have been said about the poetry of the Augustan ages; just things
may be said against the criticism which mainly controlled that poetry.
But it is hardly excessive to say that every precept—not purely
metrical—contained in the _Arts_ of Boileau and of Pope, is just and
true for Prose. You may fly in the face of almost every one of these
precepts and be the better poet for it; fly in the face of almost any
one of them in prose, and you must have extraordinary genius if you do
not rue it.
Even as to poetry itself some defence may be made. This poetry needed
these rules; or rather, to speak more critically, these rules expressed
the spirit of this poetry. The later and weaker metaphysicals in
England, and fantasts in France, the Marinists and Gongorists in Spain
and Italy, had shown what happens when _Furor [vere] Poeticus_ ceases to
ply the oars, and Good Sense has not come to take the helm. It is pretty
certain that if this criticism had not ruled we should not have had good
or great Romantic poetry; we should at best have had (to take England) a
few more Dyers and Lady Winchelseas. But if it had not ruled we should
have had a less perfect Pope and less presentable minorities of this
kind, and have been by no means consoled by a supply of
eighteenth-century Clevelands. Once more, the period has the criticism
that it wants, the criticism that will enable it to give us its own good
things at their own best, and to keep off things which must almost
certainly have been bad.
BOOK VI
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ORTHODOXY
“_Voilà un tableau poétique aussi neuf, et produit
par un enthousiasme aussi vif qu’il soit
possible.... Il étoit bien aisé, même à de grands
poëtes, de ne le pas trouver._”—FONTENELLE.
CHAPTER I.
FROM ADDISON TO JOHNSON.
CRITICISM AT DRYDEN’S DEATH—BYSSHE’S ‘ART OF ENGLISH
POETRY’—GILDON—WELSTED—DENNIS—ON RYMER—ON SHAKESPEARE—ON
“MACHINES”—HIS GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY—ADDISON—THE ‘ACCOUNT OF THE
BEST KNOWN ENGLISH POETS’—THE ‘SPECTATOR’ CRITICISMS—ON TRUE AND
FALSE WIT—ON TRAGEDY—ON MILTON—THE “PLEASURES OF THE
IMAGINATION”—HIS GENERAL CRITICAL VALUE—STEELE—ATTERBURY—SWIFT—‘THE
BATTLE OF THE BOOKS’—THE ‘TALE OF A TUB’—MINOR WORKS—POPE—THE
‘LETTERS’—THE SHAKESPEARE PREFACE—SPENCE’S ‘ANECDOTES’—THE ‘ESSAY ON
CRITICISM’—THE ‘EPISTLE TO AUGUSTUS’—REMARKS ON POPE AS A CRITIC,
AND THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE OF HIS GROUP—PHILOSOPHICAL
AND PROFESSIONAL CRITICS—TRAPP—BLAIR—THE ‘LECTURES ON
RHETORIC’—THE ‘DISSERTATION ON OSSIAN’—KAMES—THE ‘ELEMENTS OF
CRITICISM’—CAMPBELL—THE ‘PHILOSOPHY OF RHETORIC’—HARRIS—THE
‘PHILOLOGICAL ENQUIRIES’—“ESTIMATE” BROWN: HIS ‘HISTORY OF
POETRY’—JOHNSON: HIS PREPARATION FOR CRITICISM—‘THE RAMBLER’
ON MILTON—ON SPENSER—ON HISTORY AND LETTER-WRITING—ON
TRAGI-COMEDY—“DICK MINIM”—‘RASSELAS’—THE SHAKESPEARE PREFACE—THE
‘LIVES OF THE POETS’—THEIR GENERAL MERITS—THE ‘COWLEY’—THE
‘MILTON’—THE ‘DRYDEN’ AND ‘POPE’—THE ‘COLLINS’ AND ‘GRAY’—THE
CRITICAL GREATNESS OF THE ‘LIVES’ AND OF JOHNSON—MINOR CRITICISM:
PERIODICAL AND OTHER—GOLDSMITH—VICESIMUS KNOX—SCOTT OF AMWELL.
The death of Dryden punctuates, with an exactness not often attainable
in literary history, the division between seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century literature in England.[552] [Sidenote: _Criticism at
Dryden’s death._] In general letters it is succeeded—not at all
immediately—by the great school of Queen Anne men. In criticism[553] one
of the greatest of these, a special pupil of Dryden, takes up the
running at this interval, and others a little later; but the succession
is steadily maintained. Dennis, an unhappily belated person, continues
his exercitations; but has very much the worse fortune, critical as well
as pecuniary, in his later days. And in the very year of the death there
appears an egregious work—extremely popular, maleficently powerful
beyond all doubt throughout the eighteenth century, and now chiefly
known to non-experts in our days by the humorous contradiction which
gave its author’s name to Shelley, and by the chance which made a
literary connection, towards the very end of its period of influence,
between three such extraordinarily assorted persons as Afra Behn, Bysshe
himself, and William Blake.[554]
-----
Footnote 552:
An interesting monograph on our subject, before and after 1700, is
Herr Paul Hamelius’s _Die Kritik in der Engl. Literatur des 17 und 18
Jahrhunderts_ (Leipsic, 1897). I was able, as I always prefer to do,
to postpone the reading of this till I had finished the English part
of this volume, and I do not think I owe Herr Hamelius much. I am all
the more glad to find that we agree on the Romantic element in Dryden
(though not as to that in Dennis), and as to reducing the importance
of French influence in England.
Footnote 553:
The excessively rare _Parliament of Critics_ (London, 1702), a copy of
which has been kindly lent me by Mr Gregory Smith, is more of what it
calls itself, a “banter,” than of a serious composition. But it
connects itself not obscurely with the Collier quarrel.
Footnote 554:
See Mr Swinburne’s _William Blake_, p. 130 note, for the _sortes
Bysshianæ_ of Blake and his wife.
-----
Edward Bysshe’s _Art of English Poetry_[555] puts the eighteenth-century
theory of this art with a rigour and completeness which can only be
attributed either to something like genius, or to a wonderful and
complete absence of it. [Sidenote: _Bysshe’s_ Art of English Poetry.]
His _Rules for Making English Verse_ are the first part of the book in
order, but much the least in bulk. Then follow, first a collection of
“the most natural and sublime thoughts of the best English poets,” or,
in other words, an anthology, reasoned under headings, from poets of the
seventeenth century, extending to about four hundred and fifty pages;
and last a Dictionary of Rhymes. The “best English poets” may be useful
to give in a note.[556] The Dictionary is preceded by a few prefatory
remarks, including one important historically, “Rhyme is _by all_
allowed to be the chief ornament of versification in the modern
languages.” The killing frost which had fallen on the flowers of
Elizabethan poetry had killed one weed at any rate—the craze against
rhyme.
-----
Footnote 555:
My copy is the Third Edition, “with large improvements,” London, 1708.
Some put the first at 1702, not 1700. Before Bysshe, Joshua Poole, a
schoolmaster, had given posthumously (1657: I have ed. 2, London,
1677), with a short dedication and a curious verse proem of his own,
and an _Institution_ signed J. D., _The English Parnassus_. This
contains a double gradus of epithets and passages (the authors named
only in a general list), an “Alphabet of [Rhyming] Monosyllables,” and
some “Forms of Compliment,” &c. The _Institution_ stoutly defends
“Rhythm” [_i.e._, rhyme], notices Sidney, Daniel, Puttenham, &c.,
shortly defines Kinds, objects to excessive enjambment (note the time,
1657) and to polysyllables, but is sensible if rather general and
scrappy.
Footnote 556:
Addison, Atterbury, Beaumont and Fletcher, Afra Behn, Blackmore, Tom
Brown, Buckingham, Cleveland, Congreve, Cowley, Creech, Davenant (2),
Denham, Dennis, Dorset, Dryden, Duke, Garth, Halifax, Harvey, Sir R.
Howard, _Hudibras_, Jonson, Lee, Milton, Mulgrave, Oldham, Otway,
Prior, Ratcliff, Rochester, Roscommon, Rowe, Sedley, Shakespeare,
Southern, Sprat, Stafford, Stepney, Suckling, Tate, Walsh, Waller,
Wycherley, and Yalden. Observe that no non-dramatic poet earlier than
Cowley is admitted.
-----
The Rules are preceded by a partly apologetic Preface, which disclaims
any wish to furnish tools to poetasters, and puts the work “under the
awful guard of the immortal Shakespeare, Milton [note that this was
before Addison’s critique], Dryden, &c.” The keynote is struck, in the
very first sentence of the text, with that uncompromisingness which
makes one rather admire Bysshe. “The Structure of our verses, whether
blank or in rhyme, consists _in a certain number of syllables; not_ in
feet composed of long and short syllables, as the verse of the Greeks
and Romans.” And he adds that, though some ingenious persons formerly
puzzled themselves in prescribing rules for the quantity of English
syllables, and composed verses by the measure of dactyls and spondees,
yet that design is now wholly exploded. In other words, he cannot
conceive classical feet without classical arrangement of feet.
“Our poetry admits, for the most part, of but three sorts of verses,
those of 10, 8, and 7 syllables. Those of 4, 6, 9, 11, 12, and 14 are
generally employed in masks and operas.” But 12 and 14 may be used in
Heroic verse with grace. Accent must be observed; and the Pause _must
be_ at or near the middle, though in Heroics it may be at the 3rd, 4th,
5th, 6th, or 7th syllable, determined by the seat of the accent. Still,
pauses at the 3rd and 7th must be used sparingly. The 2nd and 8th “can
produce no true harmony”; and he seems to have refused to contemplate
anything so awful as a pause at the 1st or 9th. After decasyllables,
octosyllables are commonest. As for lines of 9 and 11 syllables, “with
the accent on the last [_i.e._, anapæstic measures], the
disagreeableness of their measure has wholly excluded them from serious
subjects.” The refining effected since the days of Chaucer, Spenser, and
other ancient poets consists especially in the avoidance of the
concourse of vowels and in the rigid elision of the article, the
contraction of preterperfect tenses (“amaz’d,” not “amazed”), the
rejection of alliteration (an instance in Dryden is apologised for), of
splitting words closely connected at the end of a verse, and of
polysyllables.
And a very large number of minute rules follow, the one guiding
principle of which is to reduce every line to its syllabic minimum,
never allowing trisyllabic substitution.
The book, base and mechanical as it may seem, is of the first historical
importance. It will be seen, even from these few extracts, that the
excellent Bysshe has no doubts, no half-lights. The idea, which we have
seen crystallising for a century and a half, that English poetry is as
strictly and inexorably syllabic as French, and much more so than Greek
or Latin, is here put in its baldest crudity. Bysshe will have no feet
at all: and no other division within the line but at the pause, which is
to be as centripetal as possible, like the French cæsura. It follows
from this that, except the feminine or double ending, which is allowed
ostensibly as a grace to rhymes, though also in blank verse, nothing
extra to the ten, the eight, or whatever the line-norm may be, is
permitted on any account. Articles, prepositions that will stand it,
pronouns, are to be rigidly elided; weak or short syllables in the
interior of words must be slurred out. There is (only that Bysshe will
not have even the name of foot) no room for a trisyllabic foot anywhere,
in what he equally refuses to call iambic or trochaic verse.
But what is more startling still is that trisyllabic feet disappear, not
merely from the octosyllable and the heroic, but from English prosody,
or are admitted only to “Compositions for Musick and the lowest sort of
burlesque.” Dryden might have written, “After the pangs of a desperate
lover”; Prior might be writing “Dear Chloe, how blubbered is that pretty
face”: but Bysshe sternly averts _his_ face from them.
Now, if this astonishing impoverishment of English poetry had been the
isolated crotchet of a pedant or a poetaster, it would at most deserve
notice in a note. But it was nothing of the kind. “He,” this
insignificant person, “said it”: they went and did it. It expressed the
actual poetic practice of serious poets from Pope to Goldsmith: and it
expressed the deliberate theoretic creed of such a critic as Johnson.
The contrary practice of the great old poets was at best a “licence,” at
worst a “fault.” What had actually happened to French—that it had been
reduced to the iamb—what Gascoigne had lamented and protested against,
long before, was here threatened—or rather, with bland ignoring, even of
threat, laid down—as the unquestioned and unquestionable law of English.
The whole eighteenth century did not, indeed, go the entire length of
Bysshe. Prior—it is his everlasting glory in English poetical
history—took care of that, and not only saved anapæstic cadence for us,
but made it more popular than ever. But the eighteenth century
continued, charmingly as it wrote them, to be a little ashamed of its
anapæsts, to write them affectedly as a relaxation, if not even a
derogation—to indulge in them (just as it might indulge in leap-frog
with wig and long-skirted coat laid aside) avowedly for a frolic. And
about the decasyllable—not quite so rigidly about the octosyllable—it
accepted Bysshe almost without a protest. All the infinite variety of
true English prosody, all the gliding or melting trochees, all the
passion and throb which trisyllabic feet give to iambic verse, were
sacrificed, all freedom of pause was relinquished, and the decasyllable
tramped, the octosyllable tripped, as regularly and as monotonously as a
High Dutch grenadier or a Low Dutch clock.
Bysshe had been frankly formal; it is not a small merit in him that he
knew what he had to do and did it: but persons who were little if at all
above him in taste or in intellect affected to despise him for this, and
Mr Charles Gildon in his _Complete Art of Poetry_,[557] published a few
years later, is very high and mighty with Bysshe. [Sidenote: _Gildon._]
As for himself he does not think that Poetry consists even in
“colouring,” but in Design: and he hashes up his French originals into
some would-be modish dialogues, in which ladies of fashion attack and
defend poetry on the old lines, before he comes to minuter
recommendations. These differ chiefly from Bysshe’s in that they are
wordier, less peremptory, and given to substitute the vagueness of the
journalist for the precision of the schoolmaster. Nor was this by any
means Gildon’s only contribution to criticism. Among the others perhaps
the most interesting is an anonymous and undated, but apparently not
doubtful, _rifacimento_ of Langbaine,[558] which is curious as an
example of _peine du talion_. Gildon (who has employed his own or some
other “careful hand” to give himself an ingeniously, because not
extravagantly, complimentary notice in the Appendix) serves Langbaine in
Langbaine’s own fashion; and, not contented with reversing his
judgments, indulges freely in such phrases as “Mr Langbain mistakes,”
“those scurrilous and digressory remarks with which Mr Langbain has
bespattered him [Dryden],” &c. The book is in the main bibliographic and
biographic rather than critical.
-----
Footnote 557:
London, 1718.
Footnote 558:
The _Lives and Characters of the English Dramatic Poets_, &c., _First
begun by Mr Langbain, improved and continued down to this time by a
Careful Hand_ (London, printed for Tho. Leigh, &c. No date in my copy,
but the _Dict. Nat. Biog._ gives 1699).
-----
A name which has something to do with criticism, and which associates
itself naturally with those of Dennis and Gildon in the regiment of
Pope’s victims, is that of Leonard Welsted, who in 1712 published a
translation of Longinus, “with some remarks on the English Poets.”
[Sidenote: _Welsted._] Welsted’s translation, whether made directly from
the Greek or not,[559] is readable enough, and his alternative title, “A
treatise on _the Sovereign Perfection of Writing_,” is not unhappy.
Neither are his Preface and his appended “Remarks” contemptible. He can
appreciate not merely Milton but Spenser; is (how unlike Rymer!)
transported with _Othello_, and especially with its conclusion; and if
he is not superior to others in scorning “Latin rhymes,” at least has
sufficient independence to be very irreverent to Buchanan.
-----
Footnote 559:
I hope the passing suspicion is not illiberal. But why should he call
the Palmyrene “Zenobie” in English? _Cela sent furieusement son
Français._ (For the critical work of yet another who felt the lash of
Pope—James Ralph—_v. inf._, p. 554 note.)
-----
But there was a contemporary of Bysshe’s, more famous than either Gildon
or Welsted, whose soul was equally above mere prosodic precept, and to
whom, as it happens, Gildon himself pays a compliment, as to a denizen
of Grub Street, of whom Grub Street could not but feel that he did it
some honour by herding with its more native and genuine population. Of
him we must say something—not, as we might almost have said it, in
juxtaposition with the great poet and critic whom he had earlier
admired, but before coming to the lesser, but still great, successors of
Dryden, with whom he came into collision in his evil days.
If John Dennis had been acquainted with the poetry of Tennyson (at which
he would probably have railed in his best manner, in which he would
certainly have detected plagiarisms from the classics), he too might
have applied to himself the words of Ulysses, “I am become a name.”
[Sidenote: _Dennis._] Everybody who has the very slightest knowledge of
English literature knows, if only in connection with Dryden, Addison,
and Pope, the surly, narrow, but not quite ignorant or incompetent
critic, who in his younger and more genial days admired the first, and
in his soured old age attacked the second and third. But it may be
doubted whether very many persons have an acquaintance, at all
extensive, with his works. They were never collected; the _Select Works
of John Dennis_[560] mainly consist of his utterly worthless verse. Much
of the criticism is hidden away in prefaces which were seldom reprinted,
and the original editions of which have become very rare. Even good
libraries frequently contain only two or three out of more than a dozen
or a score of separate documents: and though the British Museum itself
is well furnished, it is necessary to range through a large number of
publications to obtain a complete view of Dennis as a critic.
-----
Footnote 560:
2 vols., London, 1718.
-----
That view, when obtained, may perhaps differ not a little from those
which have, in a certain general way, succeeded each other in current
literary judgment. During the reign of Pope and Addison, the scurrilous
assailant of the first, and the more courteous but in part severe censor
of the second, was naturally regarded as at best a grumbling pedant, at
worst a worthless Zoilus. The critics of the Romantic school were not
likely to be much attracted by Dennis. More recently, something of a
reaction has taken place in his favour; and it has become not unusual to
discover in him, if not exactly a Longinus or a Coleridge, yet a serious
and well-equipped critic, who actually anticipated not a little that
after-criticism has had to say.[561]
-----
Footnote 561:
See, among others, Herr Hamelius, _op. cit._ Yet it is interesting to
find that the passage of Dennis to which his panegyrist gives the
single and signal honour of extract in an appendix is purely ethical:
it is all on “the previous question.”
-----
That this more charitable view is not entirely without foundation may be
at once admitted. [Sidenote: _On Rymer._] As compared with Rymer, in
whose company he too often finds himself in modern appreciation, Dennis
shows, indeed, pretty well. He very seldom—perhaps nowhere—exhibits that
crass insensibility to poetry which distinguishes “the worst critic who
ever lived.” One of his earliest and not his worst pieces, _The
Impartial Critic_ of 1693, is an answer to Rymer himself, points out
with acuteness and vigour that “Tom the Second” would ruin the English
stage if he had his way, and even approaches the sole causeway of
criticism across the deep by advancing the argument that the
circumstances of the Greek drama were perfectly different from those of
the English.[562] Yet already there are danger-signals. That the piece
(which includes a Letter to a Friend and some dialogues) contains a
great deal of clumsy jocularity, does not much matter. But when we find
Dennis devoting some of this jocularity to Antigone’s lamentation over
her death unwedded, we feel sadly that the man who can write thus is
scarcely to be trusted on the spirit of poetry. And the admission that
Rymer’s censures of Shakespeare are “in most of the particulars very
sensible and just” is practically ruinous.[563]
-----
Footnote 562:
Had Dryden let his Cambridge admirer see the _Heads_? (_v. supra_, pp.
373, 397 notes.)
Footnote 563:
Although Dennis’s fun is heavy enough, there are some interesting
touches, as this: “Port [then a novelty in England, remember] is not
so well tasted as Claret: and intoxicates sooner.”
-----
Dennis’s answer to Collier is a little later,[564] but still earlier
than most of his better known work; and it is very characteristic of his
manner, which has not often, I think, been exactly described. As
elsewhere, so in this tract, which is entitled _The Usefulness of the
Stage to the Happiness of Mankind, to Government and to Religion_,
Dennis is uncompromisingly ethical; but he had here the excuse that
Collier, to whom he was replying, had taken the same line. There is
less, either here or elsewhere, for his method. This is to make a loud
clatter of assertions, arranged in a kind of pseudological order, which
seems to have really deceived the author, and may possibly have deceived
some of his readers, into believing it syllogistic and conclusive.
Dennis is very great at the word “must.” “As Poetry is an Art it _must_
be an imitation of nature”[565] and so forth; seldom shall you find so
many “musts” anywhere as in Dennis, save perhaps in some of his modern
analogues. Like all who argue in this fashion, he becomes unable to
distinguish fact and his own opinion. Collier, for instance, had quoted
(quite correctly) Seneca’s denunciation of the Stage. To which Dennis
replies, “It is not likely that Seneca should condemn the drama, ...
since ... he wrote plays himself.” That the identity of the philosopher
and the dramatist is not certain does not matter: the characteristic
thing is the setting of probability against fact. But with Dennis
hectoring assertion is everything. “It cannot possibly be conceived that
so reasonable a diversion as the drama can encourage or incline men to
so unreasonable a one as gaming or so brutal a one as drunkenness.” With
a man who thinks this an argument, argument is impossible.
-----
Footnote 564:
It appeared in the very year of the _Short View_ (1698). I have a
reprint of it, issued many years later (1725), but long before
Dennis’s death, together with _The Advancement and Reformation of
Modern Poetry_ and the tragedy of _Rinaldo and Armida_, all separately
titled, but continuously paged.
Footnote 565:
This is from the _Advancement and Reformation_, which contains its
author’s full definition of Poetry itself—not the worst of such
definitions. “Poetry is an Imitation of Nature by a pathetic and
numerous speech.”
-----
The fact is that, though he has, as has been admitted, a certain
advantage over Rymer, Lord Derby’s observation that “He never knew
whether it was John or Thomas who answered the bell” will too often
apply here. [Sidenote: _On Shakespeare._] Rymer himself was not
ignorant; Dennis, especially in regard to ancient criticism, was still
better instructed: and though both were bad dramatists, with, in
consequence, a conscious or unconscious bias on dramatic matters, Dennis
was not so bad as Rymer. His devotion to Dryden does him credit, though
we may suspect that it was not the best part of Dryden that he liked:
and, amid the almost frantic spite and scurrility of his later attacks
on Pope, he not unfrequently hits a weak place in the “young squab short
gentleman’s” bright but not invulnerable armour. Yet Dennis displays, as
no really good critic could do, the weaknesses of his time and school
both in generals and particulars. It is perfectly fair to compare him
(giving weight for genius of course) with Johnson, a critic whose
general views (except on port and claret) did not materially differ from
his own. And, if we do so, we shall find that while Johnson is
generally, if not invariably, “too good for such a breed,” Dennis almost
as constantly shows its worst features. He altered _The Merry Wives of
Windsor_ into _The Comical Gallant_[566]—a most illaudable action
certainly, yet great Dryden’s self had done such things before. But he
aggravated the crime by a preface, in which he finds fault with the
original as having “no less than three actions” [would there were
thirty-three!] by remarking that, in the second part of _Henry the
Fourth_, Falstaff “does nothing but talk” [would he had talked so for
five hundred acts instead of five!] and by laying down _ex cathedra_
such generalities as that “Humour, not wit, is the business of comedy,”
a statement as false as would be its converse. In his _Essay on the
Genius of Shakespeare_[567] he is not so very far from Rymer himself in
the drivelling arbitrariness of his criticism. Shakespeare has actually
made Aufidius, the general of the Volscians, a base and profligate
villain! Even Coriolanus himself is allowed to be called a traitor by
Aufidius, and nobody contradicts! The rabble in _Julius Cæsar_ and other
such things “show want of Art,” and there is a painful disregard of
Poetical Justice. The same hopeless wrong-headedness and (if I may so
say) wrong-mindedness appear in a very different work, the _Remarks on
the Rape of the Lock_.[568] I do not refer to Dennis’s mere scurrilities
about “AP—E” and the like. [Sidenote: _On “Machines.”_] But part of the
piece is quite serious criticism. Few of us in modern times care much
for the “machinery” of this brilliantly artificial poem; but fewer would
think of objecting to it on Dennis’s grounds. Machines, it seems, must
be—
i. Taken from the religion of the Poet’s
country.
ii. Allegorical in their application.
iii. Corresponding though opposed to each other.
iv. Justly subordinated and proportioned.
And Pope’s machines, we are told, fail in all these respects.
-----
Footnote 566:
London, 1702.
Footnote 567:
London, 1712.
Footnote 568:
London, 1728.
-----
Now, putting the fourth ground aside as being a mere matter of opinion
(and some who are not fervent Papists think the machines of the _Rape_
very prettily and cleverly arranged in their puppet-show way), one may
ask Dennis “Who on earth told you so?” in respect of all the others. And
if he alleged (as he might) this or that sixteenth or seventeenth
century authority, “And who on earth told _him_ so? and what authority
had the authority? Why should machines be taken only from the religion
of the country? Why should they be allegorical? Why should Machine Dick
on the one side invariably nod to Machine Harry on the other?” And even
if some sort of answer be forthcoming, “Why should the poet not do as he
please if he succeeds thereby in giving the poetic pleasure?” To which
last query of course neither Dennis nor any of his school could return
any answer, except of the kind that requires bell, book, and candle.
Nor would he have hesitated to use this, for he is a rule-critic of the
very straitest kind, a “Tantivy” of poetic Divine Right. [Sidenote: _His
general theory of Poetry._] In his three chief books of abstract
criticism[569] he endeavours to elaborate, with Longinus in part for
code, and with Milton for example, a noble, indeed, and creditable, but
utterly arbitrary and hopelessly narrow theory of poetry as
_necessarily_ religious, and as having for its sole real end the
reformation of the mind, by a sort of enlarged Aristotelian _katharsis_
as to spirit, and by attention to the strict laws of the art in form.
Poetical Justice was a sort of mediate divinity to Dennis: as we have
seen, he upbraided Shakespeare for the want of it; he remonstrated, in
the _Spectator_, No. 548, and elsewhere, with Addison for taking too
little account of it; part at least of his enthusiasm for Milton comes
from Milton’s avowed intention to make his poem a theodicy.
-----
Footnote 569:
_The Advancement and Reformation of Poetry_, 1701; _A Large Account of
the Taste in Poetry_, next year; and _Grounds of Criticism in Poetry_,
1704.
-----
A noble error! let it be repeated, with no hint or shadow of sarcasm or
of irreverence; but a fatal error as well. That Poetry, like all things
human, lives and moves and has its being in God, the present writer
believes as fervently and unhesitatingly as any Platonic philosopher or
any Patristic theologian; and he would cheerfully incur the wrath of
Savonarola by applying the epithet “divine,” in its fullest meaning, not
merely to tragedy and epic and hymn, but to song of wine and of love.
But this is not what Dennis meant at all. He meant that Poetry is to
have a definitely religious, definitely moral _purpose_—not that it is
and tends of itself necessarily _ad majorem Dei gloriam_, but that we
are to shape it according to what our theological and ethical ideas of
the glory of God are. This way easily comes bad poetry, not at all
easily good; and it excludes poetic varieties which may be as good as
the best written in obedience to it, and better. Moreover, putting
Dennis’s notion of the end of Poetry together with his notion of its
method or art (which latter is to be adjusted to some at least of the
straitest classical precepts), we can easily comprehend, and could
easily have anticipated, the narrow intolerance and the hectoring
pedantry which he shows towards all who follow not him. In a new
sense—not so very different from the old mediæval one, though put with
no mediæval glamour, and by an exponent full of eighteenth-century
prosaism, yet destitute of eighteenth-century neatness and
concinnity—Poetry becomes a part of theology; and the mere irritableness
of the man of letters is aggravated into the _odium theologicum_. Bad
poets (that is to say, bad according to Dennis) are not merely faulty
artists but wicked men; of this Dennis is sure. “And when a man is
sure,” as he himself somewhere naïvely observes, “’tis his duty to speak
with a modest assurance.” We know, from examples more recent than poor
Dennis, that, when a man is thus minded, his assurance is very apt to
eat up his modesty, taking his charity, his good manners, and some other
things, as condiments to the meal.
Dennis and Addison, though the latter did not escape the absolute
impartiality of the former’s carping, were on terms of mutual respect
which, considering all things, were creditable to both. [Sidenote:
_Addison._] During the latter part of his rather short lifetime Addison,
it is hardly necessary to say, enjoyed a sort of mild dictatorship in
Criticism as in other departments of literature; and his right to it was
scarcely disputed till near the close of the century, though Johnson
knew that he was not deep, and tells us that, in his own last days, it
was almost a fashion to look down on Addisonian criticism. If, like
others, he was displaced by the Romantic revival, he received more
lenient treatment than some, in virtue partly of his own general
moderation, partly of his championship of Milton. Yet while his original
literary gifts recovered high place during the nineteenth century, his
criticism has often been considered to possess scarcely more than
historic interest, and has sometimes been rather roughly handled—for
instance, by Mr Matthew Arnold. But a recent writer,[570] by arguing
that Addison’s treatment of the Imagination, as a separate faculty,
introduced a new principle into criticism, has at any rate claimed for
him a position which, if it could be granted, would seat him among the
very greatest masters of the art, with Aristotle and Longinus among his
own forerunners. As usual let us, before discussing these various
estimates, see what Addison actually did as a critic.[571]
-----
Footnote 570:
Mr W. Basil Worsfold in his _Principles of Criticism_ (London, 1897).
I hope that nothing which, in a politely controversial tone, I may
have to say here, will be taken as disparagement of a very interesting
and valuable essay.
Footnote 571:
The most convenient edition of Addison’s _Works_ is that of Bohn, with
Hurd’s editorial matter and a good deal more (London, 6 vols., 1862).
-----
His _début_ as such was not fortunate. He was, it is true, only
three-and-twenty when at “dearest Harry’s” request (that is to say Mr
Harry Sacheverell’s) he undertook an _Account of the greatest English
Poets_.[572] [Sidenote: _The_ Account of the Best known English Poets.]
In 1694 nobody, except Dryden, could be expected to write very good
verse, so that the poetical qualities of this verse-essay need not be
hardly dwelt upon, or indeed considered at all. We may take it, as if it
were prose, for the matter only. And thus considered, it must surely be
thought one of the worst examples of the pert and tasteless ignorance of
its school. Before Cowley nobody but Chaucer and Spenser is mentioned at
all, and the mentions of these are simply grotesque. The lines convict
Addison, almost beyond appeal, of being at the time utterly ignorant of
English literary history up to 1600, and of having read Chaucer and
Spenser themselves, if he had read them at all, with his eyes shut. The
Chaucer section reads as if it were describing _A C. Merry Tales_ or the
_Jests of George Peele_. Where Dryden, if he did not understand
Chaucer’s versification, and missed some of his poetry, could see much
even of that, and almost all the humour, the grace, the sweetness, the
“God’s plenty” of life and character that Chaucer has, Addison sees
nothing but a merry-andrew of the day before yesterday.[573] So, too,
the consummate art of Spenser, his exquisite versification, his great
ethical purpose, and yet his voluptuous beauty, are quite hidden from
Addison. He sees nothing but a tedious allegory of improbable
adventures, and objects to the “dull moral” which “lies too plain
below,” much as Temple had done before him.[574] Cowley, Milton, and
Waller are mentioned next, in at least asserted chronological order.
Cowley is “a mighty genius” full of beauties and faults,
“Who more had pleased us had he pleased us less,”
but who is a perfect “milky way” of brilliancy, and has made Pindar
himself “take a nobler flight.” Milton alternately strikes Addison with
awe, rapture, and shock at his politics. He
“Betrays a bottom odious to the sight.”
-----
Footnote 572:
It is fair to say that he never published this, and that, as Pope told
Spence, he used himself to call it “a poor thing,” and admitted that
he spoke of some of the poets only “on hearsay.” Now when Pope speaks
to Addison’s credit it is not as “what the soldier said.” It _is_
evidence, and of the strongest.
Footnote 573:
“In vain he jests in his unpolished strain,
And tries to make his readers laugh in vain.”
Footnote 574:
“His moral lay so bare that it lost the effect” (_Ess. on Po._, iii.
420, _ed. cit. sup._) Indeed it has been suggested that Addison’s debt
to Temple here is not confined to this.
-----
So we turn to Waller, who is not only “courtly” but “moves our passion,”
(what a pity that he died too soon to "rehearse Maria’s charms"!) to
Roscommon, who “makes even rules a noble poetry,” and Denham, whose
Cooper’s Hill “we must,” of course, not “forget.” “Great Dryden” is
then, not unhappily, though not quite adequately, celebrated, and the
line on his Muse—
“She wears all dresses, and she charms in all,”
is not only neat, but very largely true. When Dryden shall decay,
luckily there is harmonious Congreve: and, if Addison were not tired
with rhyming, he would praise (he does so at some length) noble
Montague, who directs his artful muse to Dorset,
“In numbers such as Dorset’s self might use,”—
as to which all that can be said is that, if so, either the verses of
Montague or the verses of Dorset referred to are not those that have
come down to us under the names of the respective authors.
To dwell at all severely on this luckless production of a young
University wit would be not only unkind but uncritical. It shows that at
this time Addison knew next to nothing[575] about the English literature
not of his own day, and judged very badly of what he pretended to know.
-----
Footnote 575:
He proposes to give an account of “_all_ the Muse possessed” between
Chaucer and Dryden; and, as a matter of fact, mentions nobody but
Spenser between Chaucer and Cowley.
-----
The prose works of his middle period, the _Discourse on Medals_ and the
_Remarks on Italy_, are very fully illustrated from the Latin poets—the
division of literature that Addison knew best—but indulge hardly at all
in literary criticism. It was not till the launching of the _Tatler_, by
Steele and Swift, provided him with his natural medium of utterance,
that Addison became critical. This periodical itself, and the less known
ones that followed the _Spectator_, all contain exercises in this
character: but it is to the _Spectator_ that men look, and look rightly,
for Addison’s credentials in the character of a critic. [Sidenote: _The_
Spectator _criticisms_.] The _Tatler_ Essays, such as the rather well
known papers on Tom Folio and Ned Softly, those in the _Guardian_, the
good-natured puff of Tom D’Urfey, &c., are not so much serious and
deliberate literary criticisms, as applications, to subjects more or
less literary, of the peculiar method of gently malicious censorship, of
laughing castigation in manners and morals, which Addison carried to
such perfection in all the middle relations of life. Not only are the
_Spectator_ articles far more numerous and far more weighty, but we have
his own authority for regarding them as, in some measure at least,
written on a deliberate system, and divisible into three groups. The
first of these groups consists of the early papers on True and False
Wit, and of essays on the stage. The second contains the famous and
elaborate criticism of Milton with other things; and the third, the
still later, still more serious, and still more ambitious, series on the
Pleasures of the Imagination. Addison is looking back from the beginning
of this last when he gives the general description,[576] and it is quite
possible that the complete trilogy was not in his mind when he began the
first group. But there is regular development in it, and whether we
agree or not with Mr Worsfold’s extremely high estimate of the third
division, it is quite certain that the whole collection—of some thirty
or forty essays—does clearly exhibit that increasing sense of what
criticism means, which is to be observed in almost all good critics. For
criticism is, on the one hand, an art in which there are so few manuals
or trustworthy short summaries—it is one which depends so much more on
reading and knowledge than any creative art—and, above all, it is
necessary to make so many mistakes in it before one comes right, that,
probably, not one single example can be found of a critic of importance
who was not a much better critic when he left off than when he began.
-----
Footnote 576:
In the last paragraph of _Sp._ 409. The whole paper has been occupied
by thoughts on Taste and Criticism: it contains the excellent
comparison of a critic to a tea-taster, and it ends with this
retrospect, and the promise of the “Imagination” Essays (_v. ed.
cit._, iii. 393).
-----
In Group One[577] Addison is still animated by the slightly desultory
spirit of moral satire, which has been referred to above; and, though
fifteen or sixteen years have passed since the _Account_, he does not
seem to be so entirely free as we might wish from the crude sciolism, if
not the sheer ignorance, of the earliest period. [Sidenote: _On True and
False Wit._] He is often admirable: his own humour, his taste, almost
perfect within its own narrow limits, and his good sense, made that
certain beforehand. But he has rather overloaded it with somewhat
artificial allegory, the ethical temper rather overpowers the literary,
and there is not a little of that arbitrary “blackmarking” of certain
literary things which is one of the worst faults of neo-classic
criticism. The Temple of Dulness is built (of course) “after the Gothic
manner,” and the image of the god is dressed “after the habit of a
monk.” Among the idolatrous rites and implements are not merely rebuses,
anagrams, verses arranged in artificial forms, and other things a little
childish, though perfectly harmless, but acrostics—trifles, perhaps, yet
trifles which can be made exquisitely graceful, and satisfying that
desire for mixing passion with playfulness which is not the worst
affection of the human heart.
-----
Footnote 577:
_Sp._ 58-63.
-----
He had led up to this batch, a few weeks earlier, by some cursory
remarks on Comedy, which form the tail of a more elaborate examination
of Tragedy, filling four or five numbers.[578] [Sidenote: _On Tragedy._]
Readers who have already mastered the general drift of the criticism of
the time before him, will scarcely need any long _précis_ of his views,
which, moreover, are in everybody’s reach, and could not possibly be put
more readably. Modern tragedies, he thinks, excel those of Greece and
Rome in the intricacy and disposition of the fable, but fall short in
the moral. He objects to rhyme (except an end-couplet or two), and,
though he thinks the style of our tragedies superior to the sentiment,
finds the former, especially in Shakespeare, defaced by “sounding
phrases, hard metaphors, and forced expressions.” This is still more the
case in Lee. Otway is very “tender”: but it is a sad thing that the
characters in _Venice Preserved_ should be traitors and rebels. Poetic
justice (this was what shocked Dennis), as generally understood, is
rather absurd, and quite unnecessary. And the tragi-comedy, which is the
product of the English theatre, is “one of the most monstrous inventions
that ever entered into a poet’s thought.” You “might as well weave the
adventures of Æneas and Hudibras into one poem” [and, indeed, one might
find some relief in this, as far as the adventures of Æneas are
concerned]. Tragedies are not even to have a double plot. Rants, and
especially impious rants, are bad. Darkened stages, elaborate scenery
and dresses, troops of supers, &c., are as bad: bells, ghosts, thunder,
and lightning still worse. “Of all our methods of moving pity and
terror, there is none so absurd and barbarous as the dreadful butchering
of one another,” though all deaths on the stage are not to be forbidden.
-----
Footnote 578:
_Sp._ 39, 40, 42, 44, 45.
-----
Now, it is not difficult to characterise the criticism which appears in
this first group, strengthened, if anybody cares, by a few isolated
examples. It contains a great deal of common sense and good ordinary
taste; many of the things that it reprehends are really wrong, and most
of what it praises is good in a way. But the critic has as yet no
guiding theory, except what he thinks he has gathered from Aristotle,
and has certainly gathered from Horace, _plus_ Common Sense itself,
with, as is the case with all English critics of this age, a good deal
from his French predecessors, especially Le Bossu and Bouhours. Which
borrowing, while it leads him into numerous minor errors, leads him into
two great ones—his denunciations of tragi-comedy, and of the double
plot. He is, moreover, essentially arbitrary: his criticism will seldom
stand the application of the “Why?” the “_Après?_” and a harsh judge
might, in some places, say that it is not more arbitrary than ignorant.
The Second Group,[579] or Miltonic batch, with which may be taken its
“moon,” the partly playful but more largely serious _examen_ of _Chevy
Chase_, is much the best known, and has been generally ranked as the
most important exhibition of Addison’s critical powers. [Sidenote: _On
Milton._] It is not, however, out of paradox or desire to be singular
that it will be somewhat briefly discussed here. By the student of
Addison it cannot be too carefully studied; for the historian of
criticism it has indeed high importance, but importance which can be
very briefly summed up, and which requires no extensive analysis of the
eighteen distinct essays that compose the Miltonic group, or the two on
_Chevy Chase_. The critic here takes for granted—and knows or assumes
that his readers will grant—two general positions:—
1. The Aristotelian-Horatian view of poetry, with a few of the more
commonplace utterances of Longinus, supplies the orthodox theory of
Poetics.
2. The ancients, especially Homer and Virgil, supply the most perfect
examples of the orthodox practice of poetry.
-----
Footnote 579:
These began in _Sp._ 267, and were the regular Saturday feature of the
paper for many weeks. References to Milton outside of them will be
found in the excellent index of the ed. cit. or in that of Mr Gregory
Smith’s exact and elegant reproduction of the _Spectator_ (8 vols.,
London, 1897).
-----
These things posed, he proceeds to examine _Chevy Chase_ at some,
_Paradise Lost_ at great, length by their aid; and discovers in the
ballad not a few, and in the epic very great and very numerous,
excellences. As Homer does this, so Milton does that: such a passage in
Virgil is a more or less exact analogue to such another in _Paradise
Lost_. Aristotle says this, Horace that, Longinus the third thing; and
you will find the dicta capitally exemplified in such and such a place
of Milton’s works. To men who accepted the principle—as most, if not
all, men did—the demonstration was no doubt both interesting and
satisfactory; and though it certainly did not start general admiration
of Milton, it stamped that admiration with a comfortable seal of
official orthodoxy. But it is actually more antiquated than Dryden, in
assuming that the question whether Milton wrote according to Aristotle
is coextensive with the question whether he wrote good poetry.
The next batch is far more important.
What _are_ the Pleasures of the Imagination? It is of the first moment
to observe Addison’s exact definition.[580] [Sidenote: _The “Pleasures
of the Imagination.”_] Sight is the “sense which furnishes the
imagination with its ideas; so that by the ‘Pleasures of the
Imagination’ or Fancy, which I shall use promiscuously, I here mean such
as arise from visible objects, either when we have them actually in our
view, or when we call up their ideas into our minds by paintings,
statues, descriptions, or any the like occasion.” We can have no images
not thus furnished, though they may be altered and compounded by
imagination itself. To make this quite sure, he repeats that he means
_only_ such pleasures as thus arise. He then proceeds, at some length,
to argue for the innocence and refinement of such pleasures, their
usefulness, and so on; and further, to discuss the causes or origins of
pleasure in sight, which he finds to be three—greatness, uncommonness,
and beauty. The pleasantness of these is assigned to such and such wise
and good purposes of the Creator, with a reference to the great modern
discoveries of Mr Locke’s essay.
-----
Footnote 580:
_Sp._ 411, ed. cit., iii. 394.
-----
Addison then goes on to consider the sources of entertainment to the
imagination, and decides that, for the purpose, art is very inferior to
nature, though both rise in value as each borrows from the other. He
adduces, in illustration, an odd rococo mixture of scene-painting and
reflection of actual objects which he once saw (p. 404). Italian and
French gardens are next praised, in opposition to the old formal English
style, and naturally trained trees to the productions of the _ars
topiaria_; while a very long digression is made to greatness in
Architecture, illustrated by this remark (p. 409), “Let any one reflect
on the disposition of mind in which he finds himself at his first
entrance into the Pantheon at Rome, ... and consider how little in
proportion he is affected with the inside of a Gothic cathedral, though
it be five times larger than the other,” the reason being “the greatness
of the manner in the one, and the meanness in the other.”
So the “secondary” pleasures of the imagination—_i.e._, those compounded
and manufactured by memory—are illustrated by the arts of sculpture and
painting, with a good passage on description generally, whence he turns
to the Cartesian doctrine of the association of ideas, and shows very
ingeniously how the poet may avail himself of this. Next comes a curious
and often just analysis of the reasons of pleasure in description—how,
for instance, he likes Milton’s Paradise better than his Hell, because
brimstone and sulphur are not so refreshing to the imagination as beds
of flowers and wildernesses of sweets. Or we may like things because
they “raise a secret ferment in the mind,” either directly, or so as to
arouse a feeling of relief by comparison, as when we read of tortures,
wounds, and deaths. Moreover, the poet may improve Nature. Let oranges
grow wild, and roses, woodbines, and jessamines flower at the same time.
As for “the fairy way of writing”[581]—that is to say, the
supernatural—it requires a very odd turn of mind. We do it better than
most other nations, because of our gloominess and melancholy of temper.
Shakespeare excels everybody else in touching “this weak superstitious
part” of his reader’s imagination. The glorifying of the imagination,
however, is by no means confined to the poet. In good historians we
“see” everything. None more gratify the imagination than the authors of
the new philosophy, astronomers, microscopists. This (No. 420) is one of
Addison’s most ambitious passages of writing, and the whole ends (421)
with a peroration excellently hit off.
-----
Footnote 581:
This phrase is originally Dryden’s (dedication to _King Arthur_, viii.
136, ed. cit.), who, however, has “kind” for “way”.
-----
It is upon these papers mainly that Mr Worsfold[582] bases his high
eulogium of Addison as “the first genuine critic,” the first “who added
something to the last word of Hellenism,” the bringer of criticism “into
line with modern thought,” the establisher of “a new principle of poetic
appeal.” Let us, as uncontroversially as possible, and without laying
any undue stress on the fact that Mr Worsfold practically omits Longinus
altogether,[583] stick, in our humdrum way, to the facts.
-----
Footnote 582:
_Op. cit._, pp. 93-107, and more largely pp. 55-93.
Footnote 583:
Students of the Stagirite may be almost equally surprised to find
Aristotle regarded as mainly, if not wholly, a critic of Form as
opposed to Thought.
-----
In the first place, supposing for the moment that Addison uses
“imagination” in our full modern sense, and supposing, secondly, for the
moment also, that he assigns the appeal to the imagination as the
special engine of the poet, is this an original discovery of his? By no
means: there are many _loci_ of former writers to negative this—there is
one that is fatal. And this is no more recondite a thing than the famous
Shakespearian description of
“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,”
as
“Of _imagination_ all compact,”
with what follows. But this is a mere question of property, plagiarism,
suggestion; and such questions are at best the exercises of literary
holiday-makers, at the worst the business of pedants and of fools.
A more important as well as a more dangerous question is this. _Does_
Addison make “the appeal to the imagination” the test of poetry? It can
only be answered that, by his own explicit words, he does nothing of the
kind. If he advances anything, it is that the appeal to the imagination
is the appeal of art generally—of prose (even of scientific) literary
art as well as of poetry, of painting, sculpture, architecture, as well
as of literature. In doing this he does a good thing: he does something
notable in the history of general æsthetics; but in so far as
literature, and especially poetry, is concerned, he scarcely goes as far
as Longinus in the well-known passage,[584] though he works out his
doctrine at much greater length, and with assistance from Descartes and
Locke.
-----
Footnote 584:
See vol. i. p. 165 _sq._
-----
But the most important and the most damaging question of all is this,
“Are not Addison and his panegyrist using words in equivocal senses?
_Does_ Imagination in Addison’s mouth bear the meaning which we, chiefly
since Coleridge’s day, attach to the word? Does it even mean what it
meant to Longinus, much more what it meant to Shakespeare?”
I have no hesitation in answering the two latter questions with an
absolute and unhesitating “No!”
It seems indeed extraordinary that, in face of Addison’s most careful
and explicit limitations, any one should delude himself into thinking
that even the Shakespearian and Addisonian Imaginations are
identical—much more that Addison’s Imagination is the supreme faculty,
creative, transcending Fancy,[585] superior to fact, not merely
compounding and refining upon, but altogether superseding and almost
scorning, ideas of sensation, which we mean by the word, and which
Philostratus or Apollonius[586] partly glimpsed. Addison tells us—tells
us over and over again—that _all_ the ideas and pleasures of the
imagination are pleasures of sense, and, what is more, that they are all
pleasures of one sense—Sight. Why he should have limited himself in this
singular manner it is hard to say; except that he was evidently full of
Locke when he wrote, and, indeed, almost entirely under the influence of
the _Essay_. That he had a contempt for music is elsewhere pretty
evident; and this probably explains his otherwise inexplicable omission
of the supplies and assistance given to Imagination by Hearing. His
morality, as well as old convention, excluded Touch, Taste, and Smell as
low and gross, though no candid philosophy could help acknowledging the
immense influence exercised upon Imagination by at least the first and
the last—Taste, because the most definite, being perhaps the least
imaginative of all. But the fact that he does exclude even these senses,
and still more rigidly excludes everything but Sense, is insuperable,
irremovable, ruthless. Addison may have been the first modern critic to
work out the appeal of art to the pleasures and ideas furnished by the
sense of sight. He is certainly nothing more.
-----
Footnote 585:
It would be unfair to lay too much stress on his identification of
Imagination and Fancy; but there is something tell-tale in it.
Footnote 586:
See vol. i. p. 118 _sq._
-----
But is he therefore to be ignored, or treated lightly, because of this
strange overvaluation of him? Certainly not. [Sidenote: _His general
critical value._]Though by no means a very great critic, he is a useful,
an interesting, and a representative one. He represents the classical
attitude tempered, not merely by good sense almost in quintessence, but
by a large share of tolerance and positive good taste, by freedom from
the more utterly ridiculous pseudo-Aristotelianisms, and by a wish to
extend a _concordat_ to everything good even if it be not “faultless.”
In his _Account_ he is evidently too crude to be very censurable: in his
first group of essays much of his censure is just. The elaborate
vindication of Milton, though now and for a long time past merely a
curiosity, is again full of good sense, displays (if not altogether
according to knowledge) a real liking for real poetic goodness, and had
an inestimable effect in keeping at least one poet of the better time
privileged and popular with readers throughout the Eighteenth Century.
As for the essay on the Pleasures of the Imagination, the fact that it
has been wrongly praised need not in the least interfere with a cordial
estimate of its real merits. It is not an epoch-making contribution to
literary criticism; it is rather one-sided, and strangely limited in
range. But it is about the first attempt at a general theory of
æsthetics in English; it is a most interesting, and a very early,
example of that application of common-sense philosophy to abstract
subjects which Locke taught to the English eighteenth century; and many
of its remarks are valuable and correct. Moreover, it did actually
serve, for those who could not, or who did not, read Longinus, as a
corrective to pure form-criticism, to Bysshe with his rigid ten
syllables, to bare good sense and conventional rule. Its Imagination was
still only that which supplies Images, and was strangely cramped
besides; but it was better than mere correctness, mere decency, mere
stop-watch.
Between Addison and Pope, Steele, Atterbury, and Swift call for notice.
[Sidenote: _Steele._] Steele has little for us.[587] There are few
things more curious than the almost entire abstinence from any
expression, in the slightest degree really critical, to be found in the
eulogy of Spenser, which he generously enough inserted in _Sp._ 540 to
express “his passion for that charming author.” The numerous friends
whom he has so justly won for himself may perhaps insist that there is
criticism of the best in this very phrase; and that the rather rash
encomium on the poet’s “old words” as being “all truly English” is
balanced by the justice of the reference to his “exquisite numbers.” But
the fact is that Steele had neither the knowledge, nor the patience, nor
the coolness for critical work.
-----
Footnote 587:
Herr Hamelius, _op. cit. sup._, p. 103, and elsewhere, thinks much
more highly of Steele than I do, and even makes him a “Romantic before
Romanticism.” Steele’s temperament was undoubtedly Romantic, and both
in essays and plays he displayed it; but he was not really critical.
-----
Atterbury gives rather more. He was himself a man of great intellectual
power, a scholar, an eloquent and delicate writer, and possessed
independent taste enough to admire Milton fervently at a time when
Addison had not yet made it wholly orthodox to admire that poet at all,
and when most Tories detested him. [Sidenote: _Atterbury._] But his
observations on Waller[588] are the very quintessence of pseudodoxy, as
to that respectable person; and, by a curious combination, though Waller
is a rhymer confirmed and complete, Atterbury joins with his admiration
for him an antipathy to rhyme—“this jingling kind of poetry,” “this
troublesome bondage, as Mr Milton well calls it.” As for this we need
say little; the danger lay not there. But it lay in the direction of
such remarks as that “English came into Waller’s hands like a rough
diamond; he polished it first,” that, “for aught I know, he stands last
as well as first in the list of refiners” [imagine the excellent Waller
as be-all and end-all of English!], that “verse before Waller was
downright prose tagged with rhyme,” &c., &c. Once more let our
impatience of this talk not be ignorant—as is the impatience of those
who nowadays cannot see music in Dryden, poetry in Pope, “cry” and
clangour now and then even in persons like Langhorne and Mickle. He
expressed an opinion; but in expressing it he showed this same ignorance
from which we should abstain. Instead of pointing out that Waller
introduced a _different_ kind of music, he insisted that Waller
substituted music for discord: instead of saying that he introduced a
new fashion of cutting the diamond, he would have it that the diamond
was merely rough before. This was the _culpa_, the _maxima culpa_ of
eighteenth-century criticism, and Atterbury illustrates and shares
it.[589]
-----
Footnote 588:
In his Preface to the Second Part of the _Poems_ (1690).
Footnote 589:
Of course he might, to some extent, have sheltered himself under
Dryden’s own authority for all this.
-----
The critical work of Swift[590] is much more important, and though a
good deal of it is inextricably mixed up with the work of Pope and of
Arbuthnot, the lion’s claw is generally perceptible enough. [Sidenote:
_Swift._] The famous _Tatler_ of September 28, 1710, on the conceptions
of English style and writing, ought to hold place in every history and
course of lectures on the subject, next to Sprat’s passage in the
_History of the Royal Society_ forty years before, as the manifesto of a
fresh stage in English style-criticism; and it practically precedes
everything that Addison, Steele, and Pope published on, or in connection
with, the subject. But long before this, in the wonderful volume which
first (1704) revealed his genius to the world, Swift had shown how
critical the Gods had made him.
-----
Footnote 590:
I have thought it useless to give references to particular editions of
the better known writings of Swift and Pope, as they are so numerous.
Of their whole works there is, in the former case, no real standard,
Scott’s being much inferior to his _Dryden_; but in the latter that of
the late Mr Elwin and Mr Courthope is not likely soon to be
superseded.
-----
_The Battle of the Books_ is one of the most eccentric documents in the
whole History of our subject. [Sidenote: The Battle of the Books.]
Directly, and on its face, it may be said to be of the first critical
importance; because it shows how very little subject, intention,
accuracy to fact, verisimilitude, and half-a-dozen other indispensables
according to certain theories, have to do with the goodness of a book.
The general characteristics of _The Battle of the Books_ in all these
named respects, and some of the unnamed ones, are deplorable. In a
tedious and idle quarrel which, at least as it was actually debated,
never need have been debated at all, Swift takes the side which, if not
the intrinsically wrong one, is the wrong one as he takes it. To
represent Bentley, or even Wotton, as enemies of the Ancients might seem
preposterous, if it were not outdone by the preposterousness of
selecting Temple as their champion. The details are often absurd—from
that ranking of “Despréaux” side by side with Cowley as a Modern
brigadier, which is probably a slip (perhaps for “Desportes”) of pen or
press, to the spiteful injustices on Dryden. The idea of the piece was
probably taken from Callières.[591] Its composition, from the rigid
“Ancient” point of view, is sadly lax; and the two most brilliant
episodes—the “Sweetness and Light” quarrel of the Spider and the Bee,
and the “machine” of the Goddess of Criticism—have little or nothing to
do with the action. But yet it is—and one knows it is—a masterpiece; and
it is pretty certain from it that in certain kinds of destructive
criticism, and even in certain kinds of what may be called
destructive-constructive, the author will be able to accomplish almost
anything that he is likely to try.
-----
Footnote 591:
_V. inf._, p. 553 note.
-----
Though the _Tale of the Tub_ is less ostensibly bookish, it shows even
greater purely critical power: for the power of the _Battle_ is mainly
that of a consummate craftsman, who can accomplish by sheer
craftsmanship whatsoever his hand findeth to do. [Sidenote: _The_ Tale
of a Tub.]In the _Tale_ the crusade against bad writing and bad writers,
which Swift carried on more or less for the whole of his middle and
later years, and in which he enlisted Addison and Pope, Arbuthnot and
Gay, is all but formally proclaimed, and is most vigorously waged with
or without proclamation. In the “Dedication to Somers” the sword is
being something more than loosened in the sheath; it flashes out in “The
Bookseller to the Reader”; it is doing sanguinary work in the great
“Epistle to Prince Posterity;” and it has only momentary rests in the
“Preface” and the “Induction”: while there is hardly a section of the
main text in which the quarters of Grub Street are not beaten up, and
the Conclusion is even as the preludes and the main body.
A shrewd judge could hardly fail to perceive, from these famous
twin-books, that a new genius of thoroughly critical character had
arisen: but such a judge might well have doubted how far its exercise
could be anything but negative. [Sidenote: _Minor works._] His doubts,
as we have already hinted, were to be justified. Indirectly, indeed, not
merely in the _Tatler_ paper above referred to and elsewhere, but by
that almost uncanny influence which he seems to have exerted in so many
ways on men only less than himself, Swift had very much to do with the
rescuing of Style, by the hands of Addison and the rest, from the
vulgarisation which it was undergoing at the close of the seventeenth
century, not merely in common writers, not merely in the hands of an
eccentric like L’Estrange, but in those of scholars like Collier and
Bentley. But even this was a task of destruction rather than of positive
construction, and he was always most at home in such tasks. The
_Meditation on a Broomstick_ and the _Tritical Essay_, though every good
reviewer should know them by heart, and will have but too many
opportunities of using his knowledge, are delivered with the backward,
not the forward, speech of the critic; the _Proposal for correcting the
English Tongue_, which falls in with the _Tatler_ paper, aims at a sort
of stationary state of language and literature alike, at proscriptions
and ostracisings; the _Letter to a Young Clergyman_ and the _Essay on
Modern Education_, though both touch on literature, are exceedingly
general in their precepts; and though all persons with a true English
appreciation of shameless puns and utter nonsense must delight in _The
Antiquity of the English Tongue_, it cannot be called serious criticism.
There is more in the _Advice to a Young Poet_: but even here Swift is
rather “running humours” on his subject than discussing it in the grave
and chaste manner.
We shall therefore hardly be wrong if, after excepting the literary
directions of the universal satiric _douche_ in the _Tale of a Tub_, and
the useful but somewhat rudimentary warnings of the _Tatler_ paper, we
see the most characteristic critical work of Swift in _Martinus
Scriblerus_ and the _Peri Bathous_, especially in the latter, which,
though it be principally attributed to Arbuthnot and Pope, is as surely
Swiftian in suggestion as if the Dean had written and published it
alone. Often as it has been imitated, and largely as its methods have
been drawn upon, it has never been surpassed as an Art of General and
Particular “Slating”: and the sections on the Figures, with the immortal
receipt for making an epic poem (the full beauty of which is lost on
those who do not know how appallingly close it is to the approved
prescriptions of the best neo-classic critics), cannot be too highly
praised. But, once more, the critic is here at hangman’s work only: he
allows himself neither to admire nor to love.
These principles, put in various ways by writers of more or less genius
for half a century, found what seemed to more than two generations
(always with a few dissidents) something like consummate expression in
certain well-known utterances of Pope. [Sidenote: _Pope._] As expression
these utterances may still receive a very high degree of admiration: as
anything else it is difficult to believe that any turn of fashion,
unless it brings with it oblivion for large districts of noble
literature, can restore them to much authority. Pope, though better read
than he seems in his poems, was by no means a learned man; and it is now
pretty generally admitted that his intellect was acute rather than
powerful. The obstinate superficiality—the reduction of everything, even
the most recondite problems of philosophy, even the most far-ranging
questions of erudition, to a jury of “common-sense” persons, decorated
with a little of the fashion of the town—which had set in, found in him
an exponent as competent to give it exquisite expression as he was
indisposed, and probably incompetent, to deepen or extend its scope. He
attained early to nearly his full powers, and it does not much matter
whether the _Essay on Criticism_ was written at the age of twenty or at
that of twenty-two. He could have improved it a little in form, but
would hardly have altered it at all in matter, if he had written it
thirty years later. The _Imitation of the Epistle of Horace to
Augustus_, which was actually written about that time, is, though
superior as verse, almost inferior as criticism, and more “out” in fact.
The two together give a sufficient view of Pope as he wished to be taken
critically. [Sidenote: _The_ Letters.] But to be perfectly fair we must
add the critical utterances in his _Letters_,[592] his Preface to
Shakespeare, and (with caution of course) the remarks attributed to him
by Spence. The Preface has received much praise; and has deserved some
even from those who follow not Pope generally. It would be unfair to
blame him for adopting the mixed “beauty and fault” system which had the
patronage of great names in antiquity, and found hardly even questioners
in his own time. And it is something that he recognises Shakespeare’s
power over the passions, the individuality of his characters, his
intuitive knowledge of the world and of nature. He is moderate and
sensible on the relations of Shakespeare and Jonson; he has practically
said all that is to be said, in an endless and tiresome controversy, by
writing, [Sidenote: _The Shakespeare Preface._] “To judge Shakespeare by
Aristotle’s rules is like trying a man by the laws of one country who
acted under those of another.” And for such utterances we may excuse, or
at least pass over with little or no comment, the remarks that
Shakespeare kept bad company, that he wrote to please the populace, that
he resembles “an ancient majestic piece of Gothic architecture [so far,
so good], where many of the details are childish, ill-placed, and
unequal to its grandeur.” The littleness of this patchy, yea-nay
criticism beside the great and everlasting appreciation of his master
Dryden speaks for itself; it is only fair to remember that the very
existence of Dryden’s for once really marmoreal inscription almost
inevitably belittled and hampered Pope. He was obliged to be different;
and internal as well as external influences made it certain that if he
were different he would be less.
-----
Footnote 592:
The most important of these is the sentence on Crashaw (with whom Pope
has some points of sympathy), that he is wanting in “design, form,
fable, which is the soul of poetry,” and “exactness or consent of
parts, which is the body,” while he grants him “pretty conceptions,
fine metaphors, glittering expressions, and something of a neat cast
of verse, which are properly the dress, gems, or loose ornaments” of
it. See my friend Mr Courthope (in his _Life_, ed. cit. of the
_Works_, v. 63), with whom, for once, I am in irreconcilable
disagreement.
-----
The _Popiana_ of Spence[593] add more to our idea of Pope’s critical
faculty, or at least of its exercises; in fact, it is possible to take a
much better estimate of Pope’s “literature” from the _Anecdotes_ than
from the _Works_. [Sidenote: _Spence’s_ Anecdotes.] Although the
Boswellian spirit was, fortunately enough for posterity, very strong in
the eighteenth century, there was no particular reason why Spence should
toady Pope—especially as he published nothing to obtain pence or
popularity from the toadying. That rather remarkable collection, or
re-collection, of Italian-Latin poetry of the Renaissance,[594] of which
not much notice has been taken by Pope’s biographers, would, of itself,
show critical interest in a part, and no unnoteworthy part, of
literature: and a few of the Spencean salvages bear directly upon this.
He need not have been ashamed of his special liking for Politian’s
_Ambra_: and he was right in thinking Bembo “stiff and unpoetical,”
though hardly in joining Sadolet with him in this condemnation. We know
perfectly well why he did not like Rabelais, for which Swift very
properly scolded him: indeed, he tells us himself, twice over, that
“there were so many things” in Master Francis, “in which he could not
see any manner of meaning driven at,” that he could not read him with
any patience. This is really more tale-telling than the constantly
quoted passage about Walsh and correctness. For, after all, everybody
aspires to be correct: only everybody has his own notions of what is
correctness. It is not everybody—and, as we see, it was not the great Mr
Pope—who could, or can, appreciate nonsense, and see how much more
sensible than sense the best of it is. It would skill but little to go
through his isolated judgments: but there are one or two which are
eloquent.
-----
Footnote 593:
Spence (whose _Anecdotes_ were printed partly by Malone, and
completely by Singer in 1820, reprinted from the latter edition in
1858, and re-selected by Mr Underhill (London, n. d.) in the last
decade of the nineteenth century) has sometimes received praise as a
critic himself. His _Polymetis_ usefully brought together classical
art and letters, and the _Anecdotes_ themselves are not without taste.
But his elaborate criticism of Pope’s _Odyssey_, published in 1726, is
of little value, neither praising nor blaming its subject for the
right things, and characterised as a whole by a pottering and peddling
kind of censorship.
Footnote 594:
_Selecta Poemata Italorum qui Latine Scripserunt. Cura cujusdam
Anonymi anno 1684 congesta, iterum in lucem data, una cum aliorum
Italorum operibus. Acccurante A. Pope._ 2 vols., London, 1740. The
title-page contains absolutely all the ostensible editorial matter,
and, as I have not got hold of the work of the Anonymus, I do not know
how much Pope added. But his collection, as I can testify from some
little knowledge of the subject, is good.
-----
Still, it is to the _Essay_ and the _Epistle_ that we must turn for his
deliberate theory of criticism, announced in youth, indorsed and
emphasised in age. [Sidenote: _The_ Essay on Criticism.] And we meet at
once with a difficulty. The possessor of such a theory ought, at least,
to have something like a connected knowledge, at least a connected view,
of literature as a whole, and to be able to square the two. All Pope
seems to have done is to take the _Arts_ of Horace, Vida, and Boileau,
to adopt as many of their principles as he understood, and as would go
into his sharp antithetic couplet, to drag their historical
illustrations head and shoulders into his scheme without caring for the
facts, and to fill in and embroider with criticisms, observations, and
precepts, sometimes very shrewd, almost always perfectly expressed, but
far too often arbitrary, conventional, and limited. He is most
unfortunate of all in the historical part, where Boileau had been
sufficiently unfortunate before him. The Frenchman’s observations on
Villon and Ronsard had been ignorant enough, and forced enough: but Pope
managed to go a little beyond them in the _Essay_, and a great distance
further still in the _Epistle_. The history of the famous passage,
“We conquered France, but felt our captive’s charms,”[595]
is like nothing on earth but the history-poetry of the despised monkish
ages, in which Alexander has twelve peers, and Arthur, early in the
sixth century, overruns Europe with a British force, and fights with a
Roman Emperor named Lucius. And the sketch of European literature in the
_Essay_, if it contains no single statement so glaringly absurd, is as
much a “tissue of gaps” as the Irishman’s coat.
-----
Footnote 595:
_Ep. to Aug._, l. 263.
-----
Attempts have been made (including some by persons deserving all
respect, and thoroughly acquainted with the subject) to give Pope a high
place, on the score of his charges to “follow nature.” Unfortunately
this is mere translation of Boileau, of Vida, and of Horace, in the
first place: and, still more unfortunately, the poet’s own arguments on
his doctrine show that what _he_ meant by “following nature,” and what
_we_ mean by it, are two quite different things. He, usually at least,
means “stick to the usual, the ordinary, the commonplace.” Just so the
legendary King of Siam, had he written an _Art of Poetry_, would have
said “Follow nature, and do not talk about such unnatural things as ice
and snow.”
Regarded merely as a manual of the art of Pope’s own poetry, without
prejudice to any other, and as a satire on the faults of other kinds,
without prejudice to the weaknesses of his own, the _Essay_ is not
merely an interesting document, but a really valuable one. Its cautions
against desertion of nature in the directions of excess, of the unduly
fantastic, are sound to this day: and its eulogies of ancient writers,
though perhaps neither based on very extensive and accurate first-hand
knowledge, nor specially appropriate to the matter in hand, contain much
that is just in itself. One of the weakest parts, as might have been
expected, is the treatment of rules, licences, and faults. The
poet-critic practically confesses the otiosity of the whole system by
admitting that a lucky licence is a rule, and that it is possible, as
one of his own most famous and happiest lines says,
“To snatch a grace beyond the reach of art.”
And when he paraphrases Quintilian to the effect that you must criticise
“With the same spirit that the author writ,”
and judge the whole, not the parts, he again goes perilously near to
jettison his whole system.
In the same way consistency is the last thing that can be claimed for
his chapters, as they may be called, on conceit, on language, “numbers”
(the most famous and the most ingenious passage of the _Essay_),
extremes, “turns,” the Ancient and Modern quarrel, &c. The passage on
Critics is among the best—for here sheer good sense (even in the
temporary, much more in the universal, meaning) tells—and the historical
sketch of them, though not too accurate, is vigorous.
The much later _Epistle_ is far more desultory, and inevitably tinged by
those personal feelings which many years of literary squabble had helped
ill-health and natural disposition to arouse in Pope. [Sidenote: _The_
Epistle to Augustus.] But its general critical attitude is not
different. He is angry with the revival of old literature which Watson
and Allan Ramsay in Scotland, Oldys and others in England, were
beginning, hints sneers even at Milton and the “weeds on Avon’s bank,”
is at least as hackneyed as he is neat in his individual criticisms on
poets nearer his own day, and defends poetry and literature generally in
a patronising and half-apologetic strain. In fact, what he has really at
heart is to be politely rude to George II.; not to give any critical
account of English literature.
But the _Essay on Criticism_ is too important a thing not to require a
little more notice here. [Sidenote: _Remarks on Pope as a critic_,] It
is extremely desultory; but so is the _Epistola ad Pisones_, and it is
by no means certain that Pope was not wise in falling back upon the
Roman method, instead of emulating the appearance of system in the _Art
Poétique_. This latter emphasises faults; Pope’s _causerie_ veils
promiscuousness in the elegant chit-chat of conversation. A bad critic
is a more dangerous person than a bad poet; and true taste is as
uncommon as true genius. Bad education is responsible for bad taste, and
we must be very careful about our own. Nature is the guide; the “rules”
are but methodised nature. We derive them, however, not from nature but
from the ancient poets, whom we must study. Even in licences we must
follow them. Bad critics are made by various causes, from ignorance and
party spirit to personal animus. A good critic is candid, modest,
well-bred, and sincere. The sort of history of criticism which concludes
the piece makes it specially surprising that Johnson should have been so
much kinder to Pope’s learning than he was to Dryden’s; but the author
of the actual _Essay on Criticism_, and the author of the unhappily but
projected _History_ of it, were too thoroughly in agreement about
poetry, and even about criticism itself, to make the latter quite an
impartial judge of the former.
When we pass from generals to particulars Pope’s cleverness at least
appears more than ever. The sharply separated, neatly flying, and neatly
ringing couplets deliver “one, two” in the most fascinating
cut-and-thrust style, not without a brilliant parry now and then to
presumed (and never very formidable) objections. The man’s perfect skill
in the execution of his own special style of poetry raises, and in this
case not delusively, the expectation that he will know his theory as
well as his practice. The “good sense,” the “reason,” are really and not
merely nominally present. A great deal of what is said is quite
undoubtedly true and very useful, not merely for reproof and correction
in point of critical and poetical sin, but actually for instruction in
critical and poetical righteousness.
But on further examination there is too often something wanting; nay,
there is too often no real root of the matter present. The preliminary
flourishes are well enough. And certainly no school will quarrel—though
each school may take the privilege of understanding the words in its own
way—with the doctrine “Follow Nature.” But
“One science only will one genius fit”
is notoriously false to nature, and if intended as a hint to the critic,
can only result in too common mistakes and injustices. So, too, when we
pass from the glowing eulogy of Nature, and of her union with Art, to
the Rules, there is a most deplorable gap. Those Rules, “discovered not
devised,” are “nature methodised.” Very good. This means, if it means
anything, a very true thing—that the Rules are extracted from observed
works of genius. But how, a most fervent admirer of the Greeks may ask,
did it happen that the Greeks discovered _all_ these rules? How,
especially, did it happen that they did so, when some kinds of
literature itself were notoriously neither discovered nor devised? And
when we get a little further, and are bidden to
“Know well each Ancient’s proper character,”
we may, or rather must, reply, “It is most necessary; but you will
neglect the Moderns at your peril.”
In short, here as elsewhere, Pope’s dazzling elocution, winged with a
distinct if narrow conception of his general purpose, flies right enough
in the inane, but makes painfully little progress when it lights on the
prosaic ground. The picture of “young Maro,” with a sort of ciphering
book before him, “totting up” Homer, Nature, and the Stagirite, and
finding them all exactly equivalent, is really far more ludicrous than
those flights of metaphysical fancy at which critics of Pope’s school
delight to gird; while the very climax of another kind of absurdity is
reached by the accordance to the Ancients, not merely of the prerogative
of laying down the rule always to be followed, but of the privilege of
making the not-to-be-imitated exception. So again, fine as is the Alps
passage, the famous doctrine of a “little learning” is an ingenious
fallacy. It is not the little learning acquired, but the vast amount of
ignorance left, that is dangerous. The admirable couplet,
“True Wit is nature to advantage drest;
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed,”
though in itself the best thing in the whole poem, is unluckily placed,
because this sensation of familiarity beneath novelty is constantly
given by those very “conceits” which Pope is denouncing. On “Language”
and “Numbers” he is too notoriously speaking to a particular brief. And
as for his more general cautions throughout, they are excellent sense
for the most part, but have very little more to do with criticism than
with any other function of life. A banker or a fishmonger, an architect,
artist, or plain man, will no doubt be the better for avoiding extremes,
partisanship, singularity, fashion, mere jealousy (personal or other),
ignorance, pedantry, vice. And if he turns critic he will find these
avoidances still useful to him, but not more specially useful than in
his former profession.
What then was the critical attitude which was expressed so brilliantly,
and which gave Pope a prerogative influence over all the orthodox
criticism of his own century in England and even elsewhere? [Sidenote:
_and the critical attitude of his group._] It can be sketched very
fairly as being a sort of compromise between a supposed following of the
ancients, and a real application, to literature in general and to poetry
in particular, of the general taste and cast of thought of the time. The
following of the Ancients—it has been often pointed out already—was, as
the Articles of the Church of England have it, a “corrupt following”:
those who said Aristotle meant now nobody more ancient than Boileau, now
no one more ancient than Vida, scarcely ever any one more ancient than
Horace. The classics as a whole were very little studied, at least by
those who busied themselves most with modern literature; and it had
entered into the heads of few that, after all, the standards of one
literature might, or rather must, require very considerable alteration
before they could apply to another.[596] But Greek and Roman literature
presented a body of poetry and of most other kinds, considerable,
admittedly excellent, and mostly composed under the influence of
distinct and identical critical principles. Very few men had a complete
knowledge of even a single modern literature; hardly a man in France
knew Old French as a whole, hardly a man in England, except mere
antiquaries, knew Old English even as a part. There was probably not a
man in Europe till Gray (and Gray was still young at Pope’s death) who
had any wide reading at once in classical literature and in the mediæval
and modern literatures of different countries. Accordingly the
principles of ancient criticism, not even in their purity fully adequate
to modern works, and usually presented, not in their purity but in
garbled and bastardised form, were all that they had to stand by.
-----
Footnote 596:
Pope, _v. supra_, p. 454, actually admitted this as regards Aristotle
and Shakespeare; yet the admission practically revokes most of the
_Essay_.
-----
This classical, or pseudo-classical, doctrine was further affected, in
the case of literature generally, by the _ethos_ of the time, and, in
the case of poetry, by the curious delusion as to hard and fast syllabic
prosody which has been noticed in connection with Bysshe. Classicism, in
any pure sense, was certainly not to blame for this, for everybody with
the slightest tinge of education knew that the chief Latin metre
admitted the substitution of trisyllabic for dissyllabic feet in every
place but one, and most knew that this substitution was even more widely
permitted by Greek in a standard metre, approaching the English still
nearer. But it had, as we have seen, been a gradually growing delusion,
for a hundred and fifty years, in almost every kind of non-dramatic
poetry.
As for the general tendency, the lines of that are clear—though the
arbitrary extension and stiffening of them remain a little
incomprehensible. Nature was to be the test; but an artificialised
Nature, arranged according to the fashion of a town-haunting society—a
Nature which submitted herself to a system of convention and
generalisation. In so far as there was any real general principle it was
that you were to be like everybody else—that singularity, except in
doing the usual thing best, was to be carefully avoided. Pope, being a
man of genius, could not help transcending this general conception
constantly by his execution, not seldom by his thought, and sometimes in
his critical precepts. But it remains the conception of his time and of
himself.
The writers whom we have been discussing, since we parted with Dennis,
have all been considerable men of letters, who in more or less degree
busied themselves with criticism. [Sidenote: _Philosophical and
Professional Critics._] We must now pass to those who, without exactly
deserving the former description, undertook the subject either, as part
of those “philosophical” inquiries which, however loosely understood,
were so eagerly and usefully pursued by the eighteenth century, or as
direct matter of professional duty. The first division supplies Lord
Kames in Scotland and “Hermes” Harris in England. Whether we are right
in reserving Shaftesbury, Hume, Adam Smith, &c., from it, so as to deal
with them from the Æsthetic side in the next volume, may be matter of
opinion.
To the second belong Trapp, Blair, and Campbell. [Sidenote: _Trapp._]
Trapp need not detain us very long; but as first occupant of the first
literary chair in England, and so the author of a volume of
_Prælections_ respectable in themselves, and starting a line of similar
work which, to the present day, has contributed admirable critical
documents, he cannot be omitted. He was the author of one of the
wittiest epigrams[597] on record, but he did not allow himself much
sparkle in his lectures.[598] Perhaps, indeed, he was right not to do
so.
-----
Footnote 597:
Individual preference, in the case of the famous pair of epigrams on
the books and the troop of horse sent by George I. to Cambridge and to
Oxford respectively, may be biassed by academical and by political
partisanship. But while it is matter of opinion whether “Tories own no
argument but force,” and whether, in certain circumstances, a
University may not justifiably “want loyalty,” no one can ever
maintain that it is not disgraceful to a university to “want
learning.” This it is which gives the superior wing and sting to
Trapp’s javelin.
Footnote 598:
_Prælectiones Poeticæ_, London, 3rd ed., 1736. The first of the first
batch was printed as early as 1711, and an English translation (not by
the author) was published in 1742. I hope to give in the next volume,
as a prelude to notice of Mr Arnold’s work in the Oxford Chair, a
survey of all the more noteworthy of his predecessors.
-----
Hugh Blair, half a century later than Trapp, in 1759, started, like him,
the teaching of modern literature in his own country. [Sidenote:
_Blair._] He had the advantage, as far as securing a popular audience
goes, of lecturing in English, and he was undoubtedly a man of talent.
The _Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres_,[599] which were delivered
with great _éclat_ for nearly a quarter of a century from the Chair of
their subject, are very far, indeed, from being devoid of merit. They
provide a very solid, if a somewhat mannered and artificial instruction,
both by precept and example, in what may be called the “full-dress plain
style” which was popular in the eighteenth century. They are as original
as could be expected. The critical examination of Addison’s style, if
somewhat meticulous, is mostly sound, and has, like Johnson’s criticisms
of Dryden and Pope, the advantage of thorough sympathy, of freedom from
the drawback—so common in such examinations—that author and critic are
standing on different platforms, looking in different directions,
speaking, one may almost say, in mutually incomprehensible tongues. The
survey of Belles Lettres is, on its own scheme, ingenious and correct:
there are everywhere evidences of love of Literature (as the lover
understands her), of good education and reading, of sound sense. Blair
is to be very particularly commended for accepting to the full the
important truth that “Rhetoric” in modern times really means
“Criticism”; and for doing all he can to destroy the notion, authorised
too far by ancient critics, and encouraged by those of the Renaissance,
that Tropes and Figures are not possibly useful classifications and
names, but fill a real arsenal of weapons, a real cabinet of reagents,
by the employment of which the practitioner can refute, or convince, or
delight, as the case may be.
-----
Footnote 599:
The first ed. is that of Edinburgh, 1783: mine is that of London,
1823.
-----
But with this, and with the further praise due to judicious borrowings
from the ancients, the encomium must cease. [Sidenote: _The_ Lectures
on Rhetoric.] In Blair’s general critical view of literature the
eighteenth-century blinkers are drawn as close as possible. From no
writer, even in French, can more “awful examples” be extracted, not
merely of perverse critical assumption, but of positive historical
ignorance. Quite early in the second Lecture, and after some remarks
(a little arbitrary, but not valueless) on delicacy and correctness in
taste, we find, within a short distance of each other, the statements
that “in the reign of Charles II. such writers as _Suckling and
Etheridge_ were held in esteem for dramatic composition,” and later,
“If a man shall assert that Homer has no beauties whatever, that he
holds him to be a dull and spiritless writer, and that he _would as
soon peruse any legend of old knight-errantry_ as the _Iliad_, then I
exclaim that my antagonist is either void of all taste,” &c. Here, on
the one hand, the lumping of Suckling and Etherege together, and the
implied assumption that not merely Suckling, but Etherege, is a
worthless dramatist, gives us one “light,” just as the similar
implication that “an old legend of knight-errantry” is necessarily an
example of dulness, spiritlessness, and absence of beauty, gives us
another. That Blair lays down, even more peremptorily than Johnson,
and as peremptorily as Bysshe, that the pause in an English line may
fall after the 4th, 5th, 6th, or 7th syllable, and no other, is not
surprising; and his observations on Shakespeare are too much in the
usual “faults-saved-by-beauties” style to need quotation. But that he
cites, with approval, a classification of the great literary periods
of the world which excludes the Elizabethan Age altogether, is not to
be omitted. It stamps the attitude.
These same qualities appear in the once famous but now little read
_Dissertation on Ossian_.[600] [Sidenote: _The_ Dissertation on Ossian.]
That, in the sense of the word on which least stress is laid in these
volumes, this “Critical Dissertation” is absolutely _un_critical does
not much matter. Blair does not even attempt to examine the evidence for
and against the genuineness of the work he is discussing. He does not
himself know Gaelic; friends (like Hector M’Intyre) have told him that
they heard Gaelic songs very like _Ossian_ sung in their youth; there
are said to be manuscripts; that is enough for him. Even when he cites
and compares parallel passages—the ghost-passage and that from the book
of Job, Fingal’s “I have no son” and _Othello_—which derive their whole
beauty from exact coincidence with the Bible or Shakespeare, he will
allow no kind of suspicion to cross his mind. But this we might let
pass. It is in the manner in which he seeks to explain the “amazing
degree of regularity and art,” which he amazingly ascribes to
Macpherson’s redaction, the “rapid and animated style,” the “strong
colouring of imagination,” the “glowing sensibility of heart,” that the
most surprising thing appears. His citations are as copious as his
praises of them are hard to indorse. But his critical argument rests
almost (not quite) wholly on showing that _Fingal_ and _Temora_ are
worked out quite properly on Aristotelian principles by way of central
action and episode, and that there are constant parallels to Homer, the
only poet whom he will allow to be Ossian’s superior. In short, he
simply applies to _Ossian_ Addison’s procedure with _Paradise Lost_. The
critical piquancy of this is double. For we know that _Ossian_ was
powerful—almost incredibly powerful—all over Europe in a sense quite
opposite to Blair’s; and we suspect, if we do not know, that Mr James
Macpherson was quite clever enough purposely to give it something of the
turn which Blair discovers.
-----
Footnote 600:
I have it with _The Poems of Ossian_, 2 vols., London, 1796. Blair had
taken Macpherson under his wing as early as 1760.
-----
The charge which may justly be brought against Blair—that he is both too
exclusively and too purblindly “belletristic”—cannot be extended to
Henry Home, Lord Kames. [Sidenote: _Kames._] Johnson, whom Kames
disliked violently, and who returned the dislike with rather
good-natured if slightly contemptuous patronage, dismissed the _Elements
of Criticism_, 1761,[601] as “a pretty Essay, which deserves to be held
in some estimation, though much of it is chimerical.”[602] The sting of
this lies, as usual, in the fact that it is substantially true, though
by no means all the truth. The _Elements of Criticism_ is a pretty book,
and an estimable one, and, what is more, one of very considerable
originality. Its subtlety and ingenuity are often beyond Johnson’s own
reach; it shows a really wide knowledge of literature, modern as well as
ancient; and it is surprisingly, though not uniformly, free from the
special “classical” purblindness of which Johnson and Blair are opposed,
but in their different ways equal, examples. Yet a very great deal of it
_is_ “chimerical,” and, what is worse, a very great deal more is,
whether chimerical or not in itself, irrelevant. It presents a
philosophical treatise, vaguely and tentatively æsthetic rather than
critical, yoked in the loosest possible manner to a bundle of
quasi-professorial exercises in Lower and Higher Rhetoric. The second
part might not improperly be termed “Critical Illustrations of
Rhetoric.” The first could only be properly entitled “Literary
Illustrations of Morals.”
-----
Footnote 601:
It had reached its eighth edition in 1807, the date of my copy.
Perhaps some may think that Kames, as being mainly an æsthetician,
ought to be postponed with Shaftesbury, Hume, &c. My reason for not
postponing is the large amount of _positive_ literary criticism in his
book.
Footnote 602:
Boswell, Globe ed., p. 132. He was elsewhere more, and less, kind.
-----
Of course this excellent Scots lawyer and ingenious “Scotch
metaphysician” had strong precedents to urge for making a muddle of
Moral Philosophy and Literary Criticism. [Sidenote: _The_ Elements of
Criticism.] It has been pointed out that Aristotle himself is not a
little exposed to the same imputation. But Kames embroils matters to an
extent never surpassed, except by those, to be found in every day, who
are incapable of taking the literary point of view at all, and who
simply treat literature as something expressing agreement or
disagreement with their moral, political, religious, or other views. He
seems himself to have had, at least once, a slight qualm. “A treatise of
ethics is not my province: I carry my view no farther than to the
elements of criticism, in order to show that the fine arts are a subject
of reasoning as well as of taste.”[603] If this was his rule he
certainly gives himself the most liberal indulgence in applying it. His
First Chapter is devoted to “Perceptions and Ideas in a Train”; the
second (an immensely long one, containing a good third of the first
volume) to “Emotions and Passions”; while the whole of the rest till the
end of the seventeenth chapter is really occupied by the same class of
subject. Kames excels in that constantly ingenious, and often acute,
dissection of human nature which was the pride and pleasure of his
century and his country, but which is a little apt to pay itself with
clever generalisations as if they were _veræ causæ_. In one place we
find a distribution of all the pleasures of the senses into pain of
want, desire, and satisfaction. In another[604] the philosopher solemnly
informs us, “I love my daughter less after she is married, and my mother
less after a second marriage; the marriage of my son or my father
diminishes not my affection so remarkably.” An almost burlesque
illustration of the procedure of the school is given in the dictum,[605]
“Where the course of nature is joined with Elevation the effect must be
delightful; and hence the singular beauty of smoke ascending in a calm
morning.” When one remembers this, and comes later[606] to the admirable
remark, “Thus, to account for an effect of which there is no doubt, any
cause, however foolish, is made welcome,” it is impossible not to say
“Thou sayest it”; as also in another case, where he lays it down that
“Were corporeal pleasures dignified over and above [_i.e._, beside the
natural propensity which incites us to them] with a place in a high
class, they would infallibly disturb the balance of the mind by
outweighing the social affections. This is a satisfactory final cause
for refusing to these pleasures any degree of dignity.”[607] I am
tempted to quote Kames’s philosophy of the use of tobacco[608] also, but
the stuff and method of his first volume must be sufficiently
intelligible already.
-----
Footnote 603:
Vol. i. chap. iii., on “Beauty”; i. 195 ed. cit.
Footnote 604:
i. 77.
Footnote 605:
i. 26.
Footnote 606:
i. 288, _note_. Kames had just before, in his chapter on “Motion and
Force” (i. 250-255), referred complacently to his own indulgence in
this foible, and had accumulated others of the same kind.
Footnote 607:
i. 359.
Footnote 608:
i. 405, 410, 411, 416, 417.
-----
The second, much more to the purpose, is considerably less interesting.
A very long chapter deals with Beauty of Language with respect to Sound,
Signification, Resemblance between Sound and Signification, and Metre.
It is abundantly stocked with well-chosen examples from a wide range of
literature, and full of remarks, generally ingenious and sometimes both
new and bold, as where at the outset Kames has the audacity to
contradict Aristotle, by implication at least, and lay it down that “of
all the fine arts, painting and sculpture only are in their nature
imitative.”[609] But it is not free from the influence of the idols of
its time. Of such, in one kind, may be cited the attribution to Milton
of “many careless lines”;[610] for if there is one thing certain in the
risky and speculative range of literary dogmatism, it is that Milton
never wrote a “careless” line in his life. If his lines are ever bad
(and perhaps they are sometimes), they are bad deliberately and of
malice. In another and more serious kind may be ranged the predominating
determination to confuse the sensual with the intellectual side of
poetry. This, of course, is Kames’s root-idea; but that it is a root of
evil may be shown sufficiently by the following passage in his
discussion of the pause—in relation to which subject he is as wrong as
nearly all his contemporaries. He is talking of a pause between
adjective and substantive.[611] What occurs to him is that “a quality
cannot exist independent of a subject, nor are they separable even in
imagination, because they make part of the same idea, and for that
reason, with respect to melody as well as to sense, it must be
disagreeable to bestow upon the adjective a sort of independent
existence by interjecting a pause between it and its substantive.” His
examples are no doubt vitiated by the obsession of the obligatory
“middle” pause, which makes him imagine one between adjective and
substantive in
“The rest, his many-coloured robe concealed,”
where the only real pause, poetic as well as grammatical, is at “rest.”
But his principle is clear, and it is as clearly a wrong principle. It
ignores the great fact glanced at above, that the pleasure of poetry is
double—intellectual _and_ sensual—and that the two parts are in a manner
independent of each other. And in the second place, even on its own
theory, it credits the mere intellect with too sluggish faculties. In
the first line which Kames suggests as “harsh and unpleasant” for this
reason,
“Of thousand bright inhabitants of air,”
the pause at “bright” is so slight a one that some might deny its
existence. But if it be held necessary, can we refuse to the _subtilitas
intellectus_ the power of halting, for the second of a second, to
conceive the joint idea of number and brightness, before it moves
further to enrich this by the notion of “inhabitants of air”? The mere
and literal Lockist may do so; but no other will. The Figures enjoy a
space which, without being surprised at it, one grudges; and the Unities
are handled rather oddly, while a digression of some fifty pages on
Gardening and Architecture speaks for itself. The conclusion on the
Standard of Taste is singularly inconclusive; and an interesting
appendix on “terms defined and explained” presents the singularity that
not, I think, one of the terms so dealt with has anything specially to
do with literature or art at all.
-----
Footnote 609:
ii. 3.
Footnote 610:
ii. 163.
Footnote 611:
ii. 129.
-----
Nevertheless, though it is easy to be smart upon Kames, and not very
difficult to expose serious inadequacies and errors both in the general
scheme and the particular execution, the _Elements of Criticism_ is a
book of very great interest and importance, and worthy of much more
attention than it has for a long time past received. To begin with, his
presentation, at the very outset of his book, of Criticism as “the most
agreeable of all amusements”[612] was one of those apparently new and
pleasant shocks to the general which are, in reality, only the
expression of an idea for some time germinating and maturing in the
public mind. Even Addison, even Pope, while praising and preaching
Criticism, had half-flouted and half-apologised for it. Swift, a great
critic on his own day, had flouted it almost or altogether in others.
The general idea of the critic had been at worst of a malignant, at best
of a harmless, pedant. Kames presented him as something quite
different,—as a man no doubt of learning, but also of position and of
the world, “amusing,” as well as exercising himself, and bringing the
fashionable philosophy to the support of his amusement.
-----
Footnote 612:
i. 33.
-----
But he did more than this. His appreciation of Shakespeare is, taking
it together (and his references to the subject are numerous and
important), the best of his age. His citations show a remarkable
relish for the Shakespearian humour, and though he cannot clear his
mind entirely from the “blemish-and-beauty” cant, which is ingrained
in the Classical theory, and which, as we saw, infected even such a
critic as Longinus, he is far freer from it than either Johnson or
Blair. In his chapter on the Unities he comes very near to Hurd[613]
(to whom, as the _Elements of Criticism_ preceded the _Letters on
Chivalry_ in time, he may have given a hint) in recognising the true
Romantic Unity of Action which admits plurality so far as the
different interests work together, or contrast advantageously. He has
a most lucid and sensible exposure of the difference between the
conditions of the Greek theatre and ours. In short, he would stand
very high if he were not possessed with the pseudological mania which
makes him calmly and gravely write[614]—“Though a cube is more
agreeable in itself than a parallelopipedon,[615] yet a large
parallelopipedon set on its smaller base is by its elevation more
agreeable, and hence the beauty of a Gothic tower.” But this _amabilis
insania_ is in itself more amiable than insane. He wants to admit the
Gothic tower, and that is the principal thing. Magdalen, and Merton,
and Mechlin may well, in consideration of his slighting in their
favour the more intrinsic charms of a cube, afford to let a smile
flicker round their venerable skylines at his methodical insistence on
justifying admiration of them by calling them large parallelopipeda
set on their smaller ends. And the cube can console herself with his
admission of her superior intrinsic loveliness.
-----
Footnote 613:
Hurd is reserved for the next volume.
Footnote 614:
ii. 457.
Footnote 615:
Kames has this spelling, which is indeed so universal that any other
may seem pedantic. Yet it is needless to say that the word so spelt is
a _vox nihili_, and should be “parallel_e_pipedon.”
-----
The faults of Blair and of Kames are both, for the most part, absent,
while much more than the merit of either, in method and closeness to the
aim, is present, in the very remarkable _Philosophy of Rhetoric_[616]
which Dr George Campbell began, and, to some extent, composed, as early
as 1750; though he did not finish and publish it till nearly thirty
years later (1777). [Sidenote: _Campbell._] It may indeed be admitted
that this piecemeal composition is not without its effect on the book,
which contains some digressions (especially one on Wit, Humour, and
Ridicule, and another on the cause of the pleasure received from the
exhibition of painful objects) more excrescent than properly episodic.
It is, moreover, somewhat weighted by the author’s strictly professional
and educational design, in retaining as much of the mere business part
of the ancient Rhetoric as would or might be useful to future preachers,
advocates, or members of Parliament. Campbell, too, is a less “elegant”
writer than Blair; and his acuteness has a less vivacious play than that
of Kames. But here concessions are exhausted; and the book, however much
we may disagree with occasional expressions in it, remains the most
important treatise on the New Rhetoric that the eighteenth century
produced. Indeed, strange as it may seem, Whately’s, its principal
formal successor in the nineteenth, is distinctly retrograde in
comparison.
-----
Footnote 616:
I use the Tegg edition, London, 1850.
-----
The New Rhetoric—the Art of Criticism—this is what Campbell really
attempts. [Sidenote: _The_ Philosophy of Rhetoric.] He is rather chary
of acknowledging his own position, and, in fact, save in his title,
seldom employs the term Rhetoric, no doubt partly from that unlucky
contempt of scholastic appellations which shows itself in his well-known
attack on Logic. But his definition of “Eloquence”—the term which he
employs as a preferred synonym of Rhetoric itself—is very important, and
practically novel. The word “Eloquence, in its greatest latitude,
denotes that art or talent by which the discourse is adapted to its
end.” Now this, though he modestly shelters it under Quintilian’s
_scientia bene dicendi_ and _dicere secundum virtutem orationis_,
asserting also its exact correspondence with Cicero’s description of the
best orator as he who _dicendo animos delectat audientium et docet et
permovet_, is manifestly far more extensive than the latter of these,
and much less vague than the former. In fact Rhetoric, new dubbed as
Eloquence, becomes the Art of Literature, or in other words Criticism.
It has been allowed that this bold and admirable challenge of the whole
province—for “discourse” is soon seen to include “writing”—is not always
so well supported. After an interesting introduction (vindicating the
challenge, and noting Kames more especially as one who, though in a
different way, had made it before him), Campbell for a time, either
because he is rather afraid of his own boldness, or to conciliate
received opinions on the matter (or, it has been suggested, because the
book was written at different times, and with perhaps slightly different
ends), proceeds to discuss various matters which have very little to do
with his general subject. Sometimes, as in the Chapter, before referred
to, on “The Nature and Use of the Scholastic Art of Syllogising,” he
wrecks himself in a galley which he had not the slightest need to enter.
The longer discourse on Evidence which precedes this is, of course,
fully justified on the old conception of Rhetoric, but digressory, or at
least excursory, on his own. The above-mentioned sections on Ridicule,
and on the æsthetic pleasure derivable from painful subjects, are
excursions into the debatable kinds between literature and Ethics,
though much less extravagant than those of Kames, and perhaps, as
excursions, not absolutely to be barred or banned; while chapters
vii.-x., which deal with the “Consideration of Hearers,” &c., &c., are
once more Aristotelian relapses, pardonable if not strictly necessary.
But not quite a third part of the whole treatise is occupied by this
First Book of the three into which it is divided; and not a little of
this third is, strictly or by a little allowance, to the point. The
remaining two-thirds are to that point without exception or digression
of any kind, so that the Aristotelian distribution is exactly reversed.
The titles of the two Books, “The Foundations and Essential Properties
of Elocution,” and “The Discriminating Properties of Elocution,” must
be taken with due regard to Campbell’s use of the last word.[617] But
they require hardly any other proviso or allowance. He first, with
that mixture of boldness and straight-hitting which is his great
merit, attacks the general principles of the use of Language, and
proceeds to lay down nine Canons of Verbal Criticism, which are in the
main so sound and so acute that they are not obsolete to the present
day. There is more that is arbitrary elsewhere, and Campbell seems
sometimes to retrograde over the line which separates Rhetoric and
Composition. But it must be remembered that this line has never been
very exactly drawn, and has, both in Scotland and in America, if not
also in England, been often treated as almost non-existent up to the
present day. In his subsequent distinction of five rhetorical
Qualities of Style—Perspicuity, Vivacity, Elegance, Animation, and
Music—Campbell may be thought to be not wholly happy. For the three
middle qualities are practically one, and it is even questionable
whether Music would not be best included with them in some general
term, designating whatever is added by style proper to Perspicuity, or
the sufficient but unadorned conveyance of meaning. As, however, is
very common, if not universal, with him, his treatment is in advance
of his nomenclature, for the rest of the book—nearly a full half of
it—is in fact devoted to the _two_ heads of Perspicuity and Vivacity,
the latter tacitly subsuming all the three minor qualities. And there
is new and good method in the treatment of Vivacity, as shown first by
the choice of words, secondly by their number, and thirdly by their
arrangement, while a section under the first head on “words considered
as sounds” comes very near to the truth. That there should be a
considerable section on Tropes was to be expected, and, as Campbell
treats it, it is in no way objectionable. His iconoclasm as to logical
Forms becomes much more in place, and much more effective, in regard
to rhetorical Figures.
-----
Footnote 617:
He had, of course, good authority for it, including that of Dryden;
but it is obviously better to limit it in the modern sense than to use
it equivocally. Mason (not Gray’s friend, but an interesting and
little-known person to whom I hope to recur in the next volume) had
already seen this, and expressly referred to it.
-----
One, however, of the best features of the work has hardly yet been
noticed; and that is the abundance of examples, and the thorough way in
which they are discussed. To a reader turning the book over without much
care it may seem inferior as a _thesaurus_ to Kames, because the
passages quoted are as a rule embedded in the text, and not given
separately, in the fashion which makes of large parts of the _Elements
of Criticism_ a sort of anthology, a collection of beauties or
deformities, as the case may be. But this is in accordance with the
singularly businesslike character of Campbell’s work throughout. And if
it also seem that he does not launch out enough in appreciation of books
or authors as wholes, let it be remembered that English criticism was
still in a rather rudimentary condition, and that the state of taste in
academic circles was not very satisfactory. It would not, of course, be
impossible to produce from him examples of those obsessions of the time
which we have noticed in his two compatriots, as we shall notice them in
the far greater Johnson. But he could not well escape these obsessions,
and he suffers from them in a very mild form.
James Harris,[618] author of _Hermes_ (and of the house of Malmesbury,
which was ennobled in the next generation), is perhaps the chief writer
whom England, in the narrower sense, has to set against Blair, Kames,
and Campbell in mid-eighteenth century. [Sidenote: _Harris._] But he is
disappointing. It would not be reasonable to quarrel with the _Hermes_
itself for not being literary, because it does not pretend to be
anything but grammatical; and the _Philosophical Arrangements_, though
they do sometimes approach literature, may plead benefit of title for
not doing so oftener. But the _Discourse on Music, Painting, and
Poetry_, and the _Philological Enquiries_—in which Philology is
expressly intimated to mean “love of letters” in the higher sense—hold
out some prospects. The performance is but little. Readers of Boswell
will remember that Johnson, though the author of _Hermes_ was very
polite to him, both personally and with the pen, used, to his henchman’s
surprise and grief, to speak very roughly of Harris, applying to him on
one occasion the famous and damning phrase, “a prig, and a bad prig,”
and elsewhere hinting doubts as to his competency in Greek. That the
reproach of priggishness was deserved (whether with the aggravation or
not) nobody can read half-a-dozen pages of Harris without allowing,—his
would-be complimentary observation on Fielding[619] would determine by
itself. But the principal note of Harris, as a critic, is not so much
priggishness as confused superficiality. These qualities are less
visible in the _Dialogue_ (which is an extremely short, not
contemptible, but also not unimportant, exercitation in the direction of
Æsthetic proper) than in the _Enquiries_, which were written late in
life, and which, no doubt, owe something of their extraordinary
garrulity to “the irreparable outrage.”
-----
Footnote 618:
_Works_, Oxford, 1841.
Footnote 619:
Note to Pt. II. chap. vii. of the _Enquiries_, p. 433, ed. cit.
-----
This book begins, with almost the highest possible promise for us, in a
Discussion of the Rise of Criticism, its various species, Philosophical,
Historical, and Corrective, &c. [Sidenote: _The_ Philological
Enquiries.] It goes on hardly less promisingly, if the mere
chapter-headings are taken, with discourses on Numbers, Composition,
Quantity, Alliteration, &c.; the Drama, its Fable and its Manners,
Diction, and, at the end of the second part, an impassioned defence of
Rules. But the Third, which promises a discussion of “the taste and
literature of the Middle Age,” raises the expectation almost to
agony-point. Here is what we have been waiting for so long: here is the
great gap going to be filled. At last a critic not merely takes a
philosophic-historic view of criticism, but actually proposes to
supplement it with an inquiry into those regions of literature on which
his predecessors have turned an obstinately blind eye. As is the
exaltation of the promise, so is the aggravation of the disappointment.
Harris’s first part, though by no means ill-planned, is very
insufficiently carried out, and the hope of goodness in the third is
cruelly dashed beforehand by the sentence, “At length, after a long and
barbarous period, when the shades of monkery began to retire,” &c. The
writer’s mere enumeration of Renaissance critics is very haphazard, and
his remarks, both on them and their successors, perfunctory in the
extreme. He hardly dilates on anybody or anything except—following the
tradition from Pope and Swift—on Bentley and his mania for correction
and conjecture.
In the second part he gives himself more room, and is better worth
reading, but the sense of disappointment continues. In fact, Harris is
positively irritating. He lays it down, for instance, that “nothing
excellent in a literary way happens merely by chance,” a thesis from the
discussion of which much might come. But he simply goes off into a loose
discussion of the effects and causes of literary pleasure, with a good
many examples in which the excellence of his precept, “seek the cause,”
is more apparent than the success of his own researches. The rest is
extremely discursive, and seldom very satisfactory, being occupied in
great part with such tenth-rate stuff as Lillo’s _Fatal Curiosity_. As
for Harris’s defence of the Rules, he does not, in fact, defend them at
all; but, as is so common with controversialists, frames an indictment,
which no sensible antagonist would ever bring, in order to refute it. He
says that “he never knew any genius cramped by rules, and had known
great geniuses miserably err by neglecting them.” A single example of
this last would have been worth the whole treatise. But Harris does not
give it. Finally, “the Taste and Literature of the Middle Age” seem to
him to be satisfactorily discussed by ridiculing the Judgment of God,
talking at some length about Byzantine writers, giving a rather long
account of Greek philosophy in its ancient stages, quoting freely from
travellers to Athens and Constantinople, introducing “the Arabians,”
with anecdotes of divers caliphs, saying something of the Schoolmen, a
little about the Provençal poets, something (to do him justice) of the
rise of accentual prosody,[620] and a very, very little about Chaucer,
Petrarch, Mandeville, Marco Polo, Sir John Fortescue, and—Sannazar! “And
now having done with the Middle Age,” he concludes—having, that is to
say, shown that, except a _pot-pourri_ of mainly historical anecdote, he
knew nothing whatever about it; or, if this seem harsh, that his
knowledge was not of any kind that could possibly condition his judgment
of literature favourably. In fact, no one shows that curious
eighteenth-century confusion of mind, which we shall notice frequently
in other countries, better than Harris. He is, as we have seen, a
fervent devotee of the Rules—he believes[621] that, before any examples
of poetry, there was an abstract schedule of Epic, Tragedy, and
everything else down to Epigram, which you cannot follow but to your
good, and cannot neglect but to your peril. Yet, on the one hand, he
feels the philosophic impulse, and on the other, the literary and
historical curiosity, before which these rules were bound to vanish.
-----
Footnote 620:
Harris deserves a good word for his prosodic studies, which may
entitle him to reappear in the next volume.
-----
[Sidenote: _“Estimate” Brown: his_ History of Poetry.]
A few allusions,[622] in contemporaries of abiding fame, have kept half
alive the name—though very few, save specialists, are likely to be
otherwise than accidentally acquainted with the work—of John Brown of
Newcastle, author of the once famous _Estimate of the Manners and
Principles of the Times_,[623] and afterwards, when he had gained
reputation by this, of a _Dissertation on the Rise of Poetry and
Music_,[624] later still slightly altered, and re-christened _History of
the Rise and Progress of Poetry_.[625] The _Estimate_ itself is one of
those possibly half-unconscious pieces of quackery which from time to
time put (in a manner which somehow or other tickles the longer ears
among their contemporaries) the old cry that _every_thing is rotten in
the state of Denmark. There is not much in it that is directly literary;
the chief point of the kind is an attack on the Universities: it may be
noted that quacks generally do attack Universities. The
_Dissertation-History_ is a much less claptrap piece, but far more
amusing to read. Brown is one of those rash but frank persons who
attempt creation as well as criticism; and those who will may hear how
“Peace on Nature’s lap reposes [why not _vice versa_?]
Pleasure strews her guiltless roses,”
and so forth. The difference of the two forms is not important. In the
second, Brown simply left out Music, so far as he could, as appealing to
a special public only. He believes in _Ossian_, then quite new. He
thinks it contains “Pictures which no civilised modern could ever
_imbibe_ in their strength, nor consequently could ever _throw out_”—an
image so excessively Georgian (putting aside the difficulty of imbibing
a picture) that one has to abbreviate comment on it. For the rest, Brown
rejoices and wallows in the naturalistic generalisation of his century.
He begins, of course, with the Savage State, lays it down that, at
religious and other festivals, men danced and sang, that then organised
professional effort supplemented unorganised, and so poets arose. Then
comes about a sort of Established Choir, whence the various kinds are
developed. And we have the Chinese—the inevitable Chinese—Fow-hi, and
Chao-hao, and all their trumpery. Negligible as an authority, Brown
perhaps deserves to rank as a symptom.
-----
Footnote 621:
“There never was a time when rules did not exist; they always made a
part of that immutable truth,” &c.—P. 450.
Footnote 622:
The best known is Cowper’s, in _Table Talk_, ll. 384, 385—
“The inestimable Estimate of Brown
Rose like a paper-kite and charmed the town.”
See also Chesterfield, to the Bishop of Waterford, April 14, 1758.
Chesterfield was no Bottom, but, being melancholy at the time, he was
tickled.
Footnote 623:
London, 1757, 8vo.
Footnote 624:
London, 1763, 4to.
Footnote 625:
Newcastle, 1764, 8vo.
-----
But we must leave minorities, and come to him who is here ὁ μέγας.
There is no reason to doubt that Johnson’s critical opinions were formed
quite early in life, and by that mixture of natural bent and influence
of environment which, as a rule, forms all such opinions. [Sidenote:
_Johnson: his preparation for criticism._] There has been a tendency to
regard, as the highest mental attitude, that of considering everything
as an open question, of being ready to reverse any opinion at a moment’s
notice. As a matter of fact, we have record of not many men who have
proceeded in this way; and it may be doubted whether among them is a
single person of first-rate genius, or even talent. Generally speaking,
the men whose genius or talent has a “stalk of carle hemp” in it find,
in certain of the great primeval creeds of the world, political,
ecclesiastical, literary, or other, something which suits their bent.
The bent of their time may assist them in fastening on to this by
attraction or repulsion—it really does not much matter which it is. In
either case they will insensibly, from an early period, choose their
line and shape their course accordingly. They will give a certain
independence to it; they will rarely be found merely “swallowing
formulas.” It is the _other_ class which does this, with leave reserved
to get rid of the said formulas by a mental emetic and swallow another
set, which will very likely be subjected to the same fate. But the hero
will be in the main _Qualis ab incepto_.
Johnson was in most things a Tory by nature, his Toryism being
conditioned, first by that very strong bent towards a sort of
transcendental scepticism which many great Tories have shown; secondly,
by the usual peculiarities of social circumstance and mental
constitution; and lastly, by the state of England in his time—a state to
discuss which were here impertinent, but which, it may be humbly
suggested, will not be quite appreciated by accepting any, or all, of
the more ordinary views of the eighteenth century.
His view of literature was in part determined by these general
influences, in part—perhaps chiefly—by special impinging currents. His
mere birth-time had not very much to do with it—Thomson, Dyer, Lady
Winchelsea, who consciously or unconsciously worked against it, were
older, in the lady’s case much older, than he was; Gray and Shenstone,
who consciously worked against it in different degrees, were not much
younger.[626] The view was determined in his case, mainly no doubt by
that natural bent which is quite inexplicable, but also by other things
explicable enough. Johnson, partly though probably not wholly in
consequence of his near sight, was entirely insensible to the beauties
of nature; he made fun of “prospects”; he held that “one blade of grass
is like another” (which it most certainly is not, even in itself, let
alone its surroundings); he liked human society in its most artificial
form—that provided by towns, clubs, parties. In the second place, his
ear was only less deficient than his eye. That he did not care for
music, in the scientific sense, is not of much importance; but it is
quite clear that, in poetry, only an extremely regular and almost
mathematical beat of verse had any chance with him. Thirdly, he was
widely read in the Latin Classics, less widely in Greek, still more
widely in the artificial revived Latin of the Renaissance and the
seventeenth century.[627] Fourthly, he was, for a man so much given to
reading—for one who ranged from Macrobius in youth to _Parismus and
Parismenus_ in age, and from _Travels in Abyssinia_ to _Prince Titi_—not
very widely read either in mediæval Latin or in the earlier divisions of
the modern languages; indeed, of these last he probably knew little or
nothing. Fifthly, the greatest poet in English immediately before his
time, and the greatest poet in English during his youth and early
manhood, had been exponents, the one mainly, the other wholly, of a
certain limited theory of English verse. Sixthly, the critical school in
which he had been brought up was strictly neo-classic. Seventhly, and to
conclude, such rebels to convention as appeared in his time were chiefly
men whom he regarded with unfriendly dislike, or with friendly contempt.
Nor can it be said that any one of the contemporary partisans of “the
Gothick” was likely to convince a sturdy adversary. Walpole was a
spiteful fribble with a thin vein of genius; Gray a sort of Mr
Facing-Both-Ways in literature, who had “classical” mannerisms worse
than any of Johnson’s own, and whose dilettante shyness and scanty
production invited ridicule. Both were Cambridge men (and Johnson did
not love Cambridge men, nor they him), and both were Whigs. Percy and
Warton were certainly not very strong as originals, and had foibles
enough even as scholars. But whether these reasons go far enough, or do
not so go, Johnson’s general critical attitude never varies in the
least.[628] It was, as has been said, probably formed quite early; it no
doubt appeared in those but dimly known contributions to periodical
literature which defrayed so ill the expense of his still more dimly
known first twenty years in London. We have from him no single treatise,
as in the cases of Dante and Longinus, no pair of treatises, as in the
case of Aristotle, to go upon. But in the four great documents of _The
Rambler_, _Rasselas_, the Shakespeare _Preface_, and the _Lives_, we see
it in the two first rigid, peremptory, in the _Preface_, curiously and
representatively uncertain, in the last conditioned by differences which
allow it somewhat freer play, and at some times making a few
concessions, but at others more pugnacious and arbitrary than before.
-----
Footnote 626:
His birth-year was 1709; Thomson’s 1700; Dyer’s perhaps the same;
Shenstone’s 1714; Gray’s 1716. Lady Winchelsea had been born as far
back as 1660.
Footnote 627:
He was perhaps the last man of very great power who entertained the
Renaissance superstition of Latin. He was horrified at the notion of
an English epitaph; and in the first agony of his stroke in 1783 he
rallied and racked his half-paralysed brains to make Latin verses as
the best test of his sanity.
Footnote 628:
Let it be noted, however, that in Johnson, as in most strong men,
there were certain leanings to the other side, certain evidences of
the “identity of contradictories.” His sense of mystery, his
religiosity, his strong passions, his tendency to violence in taste
and opinions—were all rather Romantic than Classical.
-----
The critical element in _The Rambler_ is necessarily large; but a great
deal of it is general and out of our way.[629] [Sidenote: The Rambler
_on Milton_.] Directly concerning us are the papers on the aspects
(chiefly formal) of Milton’s poetry—especially versification—on which
Addison had not spoken, with some smaller papers on lesser subjects. The
Miltonic _examen_ begins at No. 86. Johnson is as uncompromising as the
great Bysshe himself on the nature of English prosody. “The heroick
measures of the English language may be properly considered as pure or
mixed.” They are pure when “the accent rests on every second syllable
through the whole line.” In other words, “purity” is refused to anything
but the strict iambic decasyllable. Nay, he goes further; this is not
only “purity” and “the completest harmony possible,” but it ought to be
“exactly kept in distichs” and in the last line of a (verse) paragraph.
-----
Footnote 629:
The Allegory on Criticism (daughter of Labour and Truth, who gives up
her task to Time, but is temporarily personated by Flattery and
Malevolence) in No. 3 almost speaks itself in the parenthetical
description just given. Cf. also 4, on Ancient and Modern Romances;
22, another Allegory on Wit and Learning; 23, on the Contrariety of
Criticism; and 36, 37, on “Pastoral Poetry.”
-----
Nevertheless, for variety’s sake, the “mixed” measure is allowed;
“though it always injures the harmony of the line considered by itself,”
it makes us appreciate the “harmonious” lines better. And we soon
perceive that even this exceedingly grudging, and in strictness
illogical, licence is limited merely to substitution of other
dissyllabic feet for the pure iamb. In
“Thus at their shady lodge arrived, _both stood,
Both turned_,”
the rigid Johnson insists on the spondaic character, “the accent is on
two syllables together and both strong”; while he would seem to regard
“And when,” in the line
“And when we seek as now the gift of sleep,”
as a pyrrhic (“both syllables are weak”). A trochee (“deviation or
inversion of accent”) is allowed as a “mixture” in the first place, but
elsewhere is “remarkably inharmonious,” as, for instance, in Cowley’s
beautiful line,
“And the soft wings of peace _cover_ him round.”
The next paper (88) passes, after touching other matters, to “elision,”
by which he means (evidently not even taking tri-syllabic possibility
into consideration) such a case as
“Wisdom to folly as nourishment to wind.”
This licence, he says, is now disused in English poetry; and adds some
severe remarks on those who would revive or commend it. He even objects
to the redundant ending in heroic poetry.
In the third paper (90) he comes to Pauses; and once more plays the
rigour of the game. The English poet, in connecting one line with
another, is _never_ to make a full pause at less than three syllables
from the beginning or end of a verse; and in all lines pause at the
fourth or sixth syllable is best. He gives a whole paper to Milton’s
accommodation of the sound to the sense, and winds up his Miltonic
exercitations, after a very considerable interval, with a set critique
(139) of _Samson Agonistes_, partly on its general character as an
Aristotelian tragedy (he decides that it has a beginning and end, but no
middle, poor thing!) and partly on details. These papers show no
_animus_ against Milton. There are even expressions of admiration for
him, which may be called enthusiastic. But they do show that the critic
was not in range with his author. Almost every one of his axioms and
postulates is questionable.
Of the remaining critical papers in the _Rambler_ it is very important
to notice No. 121, “On the Dangers of Imitation, and the Impropriety of
imitating Spenser.” [Sidenote: _On Spenser._] Johnson’s acuteness was
not at fault in distrusting, from his point of view, the consequences of
such things as the _Castle of Indolence_ or even the _Schoolmistress_;
and he addresses a direct rebuke to “the men of learning and genius” who
have introduced the fashion.[630] In so far as his condemnation of
“echoes” goes he is undoubtedly not wrong, and he speaks of the idol of
Neo-Classicism, Virgil, with an irreverent _parrhesia_[631] which, like
many other things in him, shows his true critical power. But on Spenser
himself the other idols—the _idola specus_ rather than _fori_—blind him.
In following his namesake in the condemnation of Spenser’s language he
is, we may think, wrong; yet this at least is an arguable point. But in
regard to the Spenserian stanza things are different. Johnson calls it
“at once difficult and unpleasing; tiresome to the ear from its
uniformity, and to the attention by its length,” while he subsequently
goes off into the usual error about imitating the Italians. No truce is
here possible. That the Spenserian is not easy may be granted at once,
but Johnson was certainly scholar enough to anticipate the riposte that,
not here only, it is “hard to be good.” As for “unpleasing,” so much the
worse for the ear which is not pleased by the most exquisite harmonic
symphony in the long and glorious list of stanza-combinations. As for
monotony, it is just as monotonous as flowing water. While as for the
Italian parallel, nothing can probably be more to the glory of Spenser
than this; just as nothing can be more different than the pretty, but
cloying, rhyme even of Tasso, nay, sometimes even of Ariosto, and the
endless unlaboured beauty of Spenser’s rhyme-sound. It is no valid
retort that this is simply a difference of taste. If a man, as some men
have done, says that Spenser is pleasing and Dryden and Pope are _not_,
then the retort is valid. When the position is taken that _both_ rhythms
are pleasing, both really poetical, but poetical in a different way, the
defender of it may laugh at all assailants.
-----
Footnote 630:
He was no doubt thinking also of Gilbert West, in his _Life_ of whom
he introduces a _caveat_ against West’s Imitations of Spenser as
“successful” indeed and “amusing” but “only pretty.”
Footnote 631:
“The warmest admirers of the great Mantuan poet can extol him for
little more than the skill with which he has ... united the beauties
of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_,” and he adds a longish exposure of the
way in which Virgil, determined to imitate at all costs, has put in
his borrowed matter without regard to keeping.
-----
The criticism of the English historians which immediately follows has an
interest chiefly of curiosity, because it was written just at the
opening of the great age of the department with which it deals.
[Sidenote: _On History and Letter-writing._] Prejudices of different
kinds would always have prevented Johnson from doing full justice to
Robertson, to Hume, and, most of all, to Gibbon; but, as it is, he deals
with nobody later than Clarendon, and merely throws back to Raleigh and
Knolles. Very much the same drawback attends the criticism on Epistolary
writing: for here also it was the lot of Johnson’s own contemporaries,
in work mostly not written, and hardly in a single case published, at
the date of the _Rambler_, to remove the reproach of England. But the
paper on Tragi-Comedy (156) is much more important.
For here, as in other places, we see that Johnson, but for the
combination of influences above referred to, might have taken high, if
not the highest, degrees in a very different school of criticism.
[Sidenote: _On Tragi-comedy._] He puts the great rule _Nec quarta loqui_
into the dustbin, with a nonchalance exhibiting some slight shortness of
sight; for the very argument he uses will sweep with this a good many
other rules to which he still adheres. “We violate it,” he says coolly,
“without scruple and without inconvenience.” He is equally iconoclastic
about the Five Acts, about the Unity of Time, while he blows rather hot
and cold about tragi-comedy in the sense of the mixing of tragic and
comic scenes. But the close of the paper is the most remarkable, for it
is in effect the death-knell of the neo-classic system, sounded by its
last really great prophet. “_It ought to be the first endeavour of a
writer to distinguish nature from custom, or that which is established
because it is right from that which is right only because it is
established; that he may neither violate essential principles by a
desire of novelty, nor debar himself from the attainment of beauties
within his view by a needless fear of breaking rules which no literary
dictator had authority to enact._”
“Oh! the lands of Milnwood, the bonny lands of Milnwood, that have been
in the name of Morton twa hundred years; they are barking and fleeing,
infield and outfield, haugh and holme!” With this utterance, this single
utterance, all the ruling doctrines of sixteenth, seventeenth, and
eighteenth century criticism receive notice to quit.[632]
The well-known “Dick Minim” papers in the _Idler_ (60, 61) are excellent
fun, and perhaps Johnson’s chief accomplishment in the direction of
humour. [Sidenote: “_Dick Minim._”] The growth of criticism in Dick, his
gradual proficiency in all the critical commonplaces of his day (it is
to be observed that Johnson, like all true humourists, does not spare
himself, and makes one of Minim’s _secrets de Polichinelle_ a censure of
Spenser’s stanza), his addiction to Johnson’s pet aversion, “suiting the
sound to the sense,” and his idolatry of Milton, are all capitally done.
Indeed, like all good caricatures, the piece is a standing piece to
consult for the fashions and creeds which it caricatures. But it neither
contains nor suggests any points of critical doctrine that we cannot
find elsewhere, and it is only indirectly serious.[633]
-----
Footnote 632:
The chief remaining critical _loci_ in the _Rambler_ are the unlucky
strictures in No. 168 on “dun,” “knife,” and “blanket” in _Macbeth_ as
“low”; and the remarks on unfriendly criticism in 176.
Footnote 633:
There are, of course, other passages in the _Idler_ touching on
Criticism,—59 on the Causes of Neglect of Books, 68, 69 on
Translation, 77 on “Essay Writing,” 85 on Compilations. But they
contain nothing of exceptional importance.
-----
The Dissertation upon Poetry of Imlac in _Rasselas_ (chap. x.) may be
less amusing; but it is of course much more serious. [Sidenote:
Rasselas.] There can be no reasonable doubt that Imlac gives as much of
Johnson’s self as he chose to put, and could put, in character: while it
is at least possible that his sentiments are determined in some degree
by the menacing appearances of Romanticism. Imlac finds “with wonder
that in almost all countries the most ancient poets are reputed the
best”; that “early writers are in possession of nature and their
successors of art”; that “no man was ever great by imitation”; that he
must observe everything and observe for himself, but that he must do it
on the principle of examining, “not the individual, but the species.” He
is to remark “general properties and large appearances. He does not
number the streaks of the tulip or describe the different shapes in the
verdure of the forest,” but must “exhibit prominent and striking
features,” neglecting “minuter discriminations.” In the same way his
criticism of life must be abstracted and generalised; he must be “a
being superior to time and place”; must know many languages and
sciences; must by incessant practice of style “familiarise to himself
every delicacy of speech and grace of harmony.”
Surely a high calling and election! yet with some questionable points in
it. If the poet must not count the streaks of the tulip, if he must
merely generalise and sweep; if he must consult the laziness and dulness
of his readers by merely portraying prominent and striking features,
characteristics alike obvious to vigilance and carelessness—then even
Dryden will not do, for he is too recondite and conceited. Pope alone
must bear the bell. Lady Winchelsea’s horse in twilight, the best part
of a century earlier; Tennyson’s ashbuds in the front of March, the best
part of a century later, are equally “streaks of the tulip,” superfluous
if not even bad. Habington’s picture of the pitiless northern sunshine
on the ice-bound pilot, and Keats’s of the perilous seas through the
magic casements, must be rejected, as too unfamiliar and individual. The
poetic strangeness and height are barred _en bloc_. Convention,
familiarity, generalisation—these are the keys to the poetical kingdom
of heaven. The tenant of Milnwood has a fresh enfeoffment!
The Shakespeare Preface is a specially interesting document, because of
its illustration, not merely of Johnson’s native critical vigour, not
merely of his imbibed eighteenth-century prejudices, but of that
peculiar position of compromise and reservation which, as we have said
and shall say, is at once the condemnation and the salvation of the
English critical position at this time. [Sidenote: _The Shakespeare
Preface._] Of the first there are many instances, though perhaps none in
the _Preface_ itself quite equal to the famous note on the character of
Polonius, which has been generally and justly taken as showing what a
triumph this failure of an edition might have been. Yet even here there
is not a little which follows in the wake of Dryden’s great eulogy, and
some scattered observations of the highest acuteness, more particularly
two famous sentences which, though Johnson’s quotation is directed to a
minor matter—Shakespeare’s learning—settle beforehand, with the
prophetic tendency of genius, the whole monstrous absurdity of the
Bacon-Shakespeare theory.[634] The rest, however, is, if not exactly a
zigzag of contradiction, at least the contrasted utterance of two
distinct voices. Shakespeare has this and that merit of nature, of
passion; but “his set speeches are commonly cold and weak.” “What he
does best he soon ceases to do.” Johnson, here also, has no
superstitious reverence for the Unities, and even speaks slightly of
dramatic rules; nay, he suggests “the recall of the principles of the
drama to a new examination,” the very examination which Lessing was to
give it. But he apologises for the period when “_The Death of Arthur_
was the favourite volume,” and hints a doubt whether much of our and his
own praise of Shakespeare is not “given by custom and veneration.” “He
has corrupted language by every mode of depravation,” yet Johnson echoes
Dryden “when he describes anything you more than see it, you feel it
too.” A singular triumph of “depraved language.” In short, throughout
the piece it is now Johnson himself who is speaking, now some one with a
certain bundle of principles or prejudices which Johnson chooses to
adopt for the time.
-----
Footnote 634:
“Jonson, ... who besides that he had no imaginable temptation to
falsehood, wrote at a time when the character and acquisitions of
Shakespeare were known to multitudes. His evidence ought therefore to
decide the controversy, unless some testimony of equal force could be
opposed.”
-----
It was with these opinions on the formal and substantial nature of
poetry and of criticism that Johnson, late in life, sat down to the
_Lives of the Poets_,[635] one of the most fortunate books in English
literature. [Sidenote: _The_ Lives of the Poets.] In very few cases have
task and artist been so happily associated. For almost all his authors,
he had biographical knowledge such as no other living man had, and the
access to which has long been closed. If, now and then, his criticism
was not in touch with his subjects, this was rare: and the fact gave a
certain value even to the assertions that result—for _we_, do what we
will, cannot see Milton quite as Johnson saw him, and so his view is
valuable as a corrective. By far the greater part of these subjects
belonged to one school and system of English poetry, a school and system
with which the critic was at once thoroughly familiar and thoroughly in
sympathy. And, lastly, the form of the work, with its subdivision into a
large number of practically independent and not individually burdensome
sections, was well suited to coax a man who suffered from constitutional
indolence, and who for many years had been relieved from that pressure
of necessity which had conquered his indolence occasionally, and only
occasionally, earlier. No other man, it is true, has had quite such a
chance: but he must indeed have a sublime confidence, both in the
strength of his principles and in the competence of his talents, who
thinks that, if he had the chance, he could do the task better than
Johnson did his.
-----
Footnote 635:
With Johnson, as with some other writers, I have not thought it
necessary to specify editions. I must, however, mention Mr J. H.
Millar’s issue of the _Lives_ (London, 1896) for the sake of the
excellent _Introduction_ on Johnson’s criticism.
-----
The work, of course, is by no means equal throughout: and it could not
be expected to be. [Sidenote: _Their general merits._] Some was merely
old work, dating from a much less mature period of the writer’s genius,
and made to serve again. Some was on subjects so trivial that good
nature, or simple indolence, or, if any one pleases, an artistic
reluctance to break butterflies on so huge a wheel, made the criticisms
almost as insignificant as the criticised. Here and there extra-literary
prejudice—political-ecclesiastical, as in the case of Milton; partly
moral, partly religious, and, it is to be feared, a little personal, as
in that of Swift—distorted the presentation. And it is quite possible
that a similar distortion, due to the same causes or others, was in the
case of Gray intensified by a half-unconscious conviction that Gray’s
aims and spirit, if not his actual poetical accomplishments, were fatal
to the school of poetry to which the critic himself held.
But make allowance for all this, and with how great a thing do the
_Lives_ still provide us! In that combination of biography and
criticism, which is so natural that it is wonderful it should be so
late,[636] they are all but the originals, and are still almost the
standard. They are full of anecdote, agreeably and crisply told, yet
they never descend to mere gossip: their criticism of life is almost
always just and sound, grave without being precise, animated by the same
melancholy as that of the _Vanity of Human Wishes_, but in milder mood
and with touches of brightness. Their criticism of literature is all the
more valuable for being the criticism of their time. When we read
Johnson’s remarks on Milton’s minor poems it is foolish to rave, and it
is ignoble to sneer. The wise will rejoice in the opportunity to
understand. So when Johnson bestows what seems to us extraordinary and
unintelligible praise on John Pomfret’s _Choice_,[637] he is really
praising a moral tract couched in verse not unpleasing in itself, and
specially pleasing to his ear. When he speaks less favourably of
_Grongar Hill_, he is speaking of a piece of nature-poetry, not arranged
on his principle of neglecting the streak of the tulip, and availing
itself of those Miltonic licences of prosody which he disapproved. But
we shall never find that, when the poetry is of the stamp which he
recognises, he makes any mistake about its relative excellence: and we
shall find that, in not a few cases, he is able to recognise excellence
which belongs to classes and schools not exactly such as he approves.
And, lastly, it has to be added that for diffused brilliancy of critical
expression, subject to the allowances and conditions just given, the
_Lives_ are hardly to be excelled in any language. It is not safe to
neglect one of them, though no doubt there are some six or seven which,
for this reason or that, take precedence of the rest.
-----
Footnote 636:
There are blind attempts at it even in antiquity; but Dryden’s Lives
of Lucian and Plutarch are, like other things of his elsewhere, the
real originals here.
Footnote 637:
Let me draw special attention to “John.” I once, unwittingly or
carelessly, called him “Thomas,” and I am afraid that I even neglected
to correct the error in a second edition of the guilty book. A man who
writes “Thomas” for “John,” in the case of a minor poet, can, I am
aware, possess no virtues, and must expect no pardon. But I shall
always henceforth remember to call him “Pomfret, Mr _John_.” “Let this
expiate,” as was remarked in another case of perhaps not less mortal
sin.
-----
The “Cowley” has especial interest, because it is Johnson’s only
considerable attempt at that very important part of criticism, the
historical summary of the characteristics of a poetical period or
school. [Sidenote: _The_ Cowley.] And, though far from faultless, it is
so important and so interesting in its kind that it ranks with his
greatest Essays. Only that singular impatience of literary history, as
such, which characterised the late Mr Matthew Arnold, and which not
infrequently marred his own critical work, can have prevented him from
including, in his Johnsonian _points de repère_, the Essay which
launched, and endeavoured to make watertight, the famous definition of
the “Metaphysical” School—of the school represented earlier by Donne,
and later by Cowley himself.
The phrase itself[638] has been both too readily adopted and too
indiscriminately attacked. Taken with the ordinary meaning of
“metaphysical,” it may indeed seem partly meaningless and partly
misleading. Taken as Johnson meant it, it has a meaning defensible at
least from the point of view of the framer, and very important in
critical history. Johnson (it is too often forgotten) was a scholar; and
he used “metaphysical” in its proper sense—of that which “comes after”
the physical or natural. Now, it was, as we have seen, the whole
principle of his school of criticism—their whole critical
contention—that _they_ were “following nature.” The main objection to
the poetry of what Dryden calls the “last Age”—what we call, loosely but
conveniently, “Elizabethan” poetry—was that its ideas, and still more
its expressions, went beyond and behind nature, substituted
afterthoughts and unreal refinements for fact. It would be delightful to
the present writer to defend the Metaphysicals here—but it would not be
to the question.
-----
Footnote 638:
It was of course probably suggested by Dryden (_Essay on Satire_,
“Donne ... affects the metaphysics”), but in Johnson’s hands is much
altered and extended.
-----
Political and religious prejudice accounts, as has been said, for much
in the _Milton_. [Sidenote: _The_ Milton.] But it will not fully account
for the facts. The at first sight astonishing, and already often
referred to, criticisms on the minor poems show a perfectly honest and
genuine dislike to the form as well as to the matter, to the manner as
well as to the man. If Johnson calls _Lycidas_ “harsh,” it is because he
simply does not hear its music; he can even call the songs in _Comus_
“not very musical in their numbers.” When of the, no doubt unequal but
often splendid, sonnets he can write, “of the best it can only be said
that they are not bad,” he gives us the real value of his criticism
immediately afterwards by laying it down that “the fabric of a sonnet,
however adapted to the Italian language, has _never_ succeeded in ours.”
And when he has earlier stated that “all that short compositions can
commonly attain is sweetness and elegance,” we see in this the whole
thing. Milton is condemned under statute (though the statute is
hopelessly unconstitutional and unjust) on certain counts; on others his
judge, though capable and perfectly honest, does not know the part of
the code which justifies the accused. Johnson is listening for
couplet-music or stanzas with regular recurrence of rhyme, for lines
constituted entirely on a dissyllabic, or entirely on a trisyllabic,
basis. He does not find these things: and he has no organ to judge what
he does find.
With the lives of Dryden and Pope we are clear of all difficulties, and
the critic is in his element. The poets whom he is criticising occupy
the same platform as he does; they have in fact been themselves the
architects of that platform. [Sidenote: _The_ Dryden _and_ Pope.] There
is no fear of the initial incompatibilities which, when aggravated by
accident, lead to the apparent enormities of the _Milton_ Essay, and
which, even when not so aggravated, condition the usefulness, though
they may positively increase the interest, of the _Cowley_. But there is
more than this. In no instance, perhaps, was Johnson so well in case to
apply his biographical and critical treatment as in regard to Dryden and
Pope. With the latter he had himself been contemporary; and when he
first came to London the traditions even of the former were still fresh,
while there were many still living (Southerne the chief of them) who had
known glorious John well. Further, Johnson’s peculiar habits of living,
his delight in conversation and society, his excellent memory, and his
propensity to the study of human nature, as well as of letters,
furnished him abundantly with opportunities. Yet, again, his sympathy
with both, on general literary sides, was not unhappily mixed and
tempered by a slight, but not uncharitable or Puritanic, disapproval of
their moral characters, by regret at Dryden’s desertion of the Anglican
Church, and at the half-Romanist half-freethinking attitude of Pope to
religion.
The result of all this is a pair of the best critical Essays in the
English language. Individual expressions will of course renew for us the
sense of difference in the point of view. We shall not agree that Dryden
“found English poetry brick and left it marble,” and we shall be only
too apt to take up the challenge, “If Pope be not a poet, where is
poetry to be found?” even if we think the implied denial, to which the
challenge was a reply, an absurdity. And we may find special interest as
well as special difference in the condemnation even of these masters for
attempting Pindarics, because Pindarics “want the essential constituent
of metrical compositions, the stated recurrence of settled numbers,”
seeing in it a fresh instance of that Procrustean tyranny of suiting the
form to the bed, not the bed to the form, which distinguishes all
neo-classic criticism. But these points occur rarely. The criticism, as
a whole, is not merely perfectly just on its own scheme, but requires
very little allowance on others; nor, in the difficult and dangerous art
of comparative censorship, will any example be found much surpassing
Johnson’s parallel of the two poets.
In the _Milton_ and the _Cowley_ we find Johnson dealing with schools of
poetry which he regards as out of date and imperfect; in the _Dryden_
and the _Pope_, with subjects which are not to him subjects of any
general controversy, but which he can afford to treat almost entirely on
their merits. [Sidenote: _The_ Collins _and_ Gray.] In the _Collins_ and
the _Gray_ we find a new relation between poet and critic—the relation
of decided, though not yet wholly declared, innovation on the part of
the poets, and of conscious, though not yet quite wide-eyed and
irreconcilable, hostility on the part of the critic. The expression of
this is further differentiated by the fact that Johnson regarded Collins
with the affection of a personal friend, and the generous sympathy of
one who, with all his roughness, had a mind as nearly touched by mortal
sorrows as that of any sentimentalist; while it is pretty clear, though
we have no positive evidence for it, that he reciprocated the personal
and political dislike which Gray certainly felt for him.
The result was, in the case of Collins, a criticism rather inadequate
than unjust, and not seldom acute in its indication of faults, if
somewhat blind to merits; in that of Gray, one which cannot be quite so
favourably spoken of, though the censure which has been heaped upon
it—notably by Lord Macaulay and Mr Arnold—seems to me very far to
surpass its own injustice. Johnson’s general summing up—that Gray’s
“mind had a large grasp; his curiosity[639] was unlimited, and his
judgment cultivated; he was likely to love much where he loved at all,
but fastidious and hard to please”—is acute, just, and far from
ungenerous. That on the Elegy—“The four stanzas beginning, ‘Yet even
these bones,’ are to me original; I have never seen the notions in any
other place. Yet he that reads them here persuades himself that he has
always felt them. Had Gray written often thus, it had been vain to blame
and useless to praise him”—is a magnificent and monumental compliment,
said as simply as “Good morning.” He is absolutely right when he says
that in all Gray’s Odes “there is a kind of cumbrous splendour that we
wish away,” for there never was such an abuser of “poetic diction” (to
be a poet) as Gray was. Yet undoubtedly the Essay is not satisfactory;
it has not merely, as the _Collins_ has, blindness, but, what the
_Collins_ has not, that obvious _denigration_, that determination to
pick holes, which always vitiates a critique, no matter what learning
and genius be bestowed on it. And the probable reasons of this are
interesting. It has been said that they were possibly personal in part.
We know that Gray spoke rudely of Johnson; and there were many reasons
why Johnson might rather despise Gray, though he certainly should not
have called him “dull.”
-----
Footnote 639:
It must be remembered that this word had no unfavourable connotation
with Johnson. It meant intelligent and scholarly interest.
-----
On the whole, however, I have little doubt—and it is this which gives
the essay its real interest for me—that one main reason of Johnson’s
antipathy to Gray’s poetry was the same as that for which we like it. He
suspected, if he did not fully perceive, the romantic snake in Gray’s
classically waving grass. And he had on his own grounds good reason for
suspecting it. Gray might use Greek and Latin tags almost extravagantly.
But he sedulously eschewed the couplet; and, while preferring lyric, he
chose lyrical forms which, though Johnson was too much of a scholar to
dare to call them irregular, violated his own theories of the prompt and
orderly recurrence of rhyme, and the duty of maintaining a length of
line as even as possible. The sense of nature, the love of the despised
“prospect,” was everywhere; even the forbidden “streak of the tulip”
might be detected. And, lastly, Gray had too obvious leanings to classes
of subject and literature which lay outside of the consecrated
range—early English and French, Welsh, Norse, and the like. It is no
real evidence of critical incapacity, but of something quite the
reverse, that Johnson should have disliked Gray. He spied the great
Romantic beard under the Pindaric and Horatian muffler—and he did not
like it.
On the whole, it may be safely said that, however widely a man may
differ from Johnson’s critical theory, he will, provided that he
possesses some real tincture of the critical spirit himself, think more
and more highly of the _Lives of the Poets_ the more he reads them, and
the more he compares them with the greater classics of critical
literature. [Sidenote: _The critical greatness of the_ Lives _and of
Johnson_.] As a book, they have not missed their due meed of praise; as
a critical book, one may think that they have. The peculiarity of their
position as a body of direct critical appraisement of the poetical work
of England for a long period should escape no one. But the discussion of
them, which possesses, and is long likely to possess, prerogative
authority as coming from one who was both himself a master of the craft
and a master of English, admirable and delightful as it is and always
will be, is not, critically speaking, quite satisfactory. Mr Arnold
speaks of the Six Lives which he selected in very high terms: but he
rather pooh-poohs the others, and, even in regard to the chosen Six, he
puts upon himself—and in his amiable, but for all that exceedingly
peremptory, way, insists in putting on his readers—a huge pair of
blinkers. We are to regard the late seventeenth and the whole of the
eighteenth century as an Age of Prose: and we are to regard Johnson,
whether he was speaking of the poets of this age or of others, as the
spokesman of an age of prose. Far be it from me to deny that there is an
element of truth in this: but it is not the whole truth, and the critic
must strive, though he may not boast, to “find the whole.”
The whole truth, as it seems to me, about Johnson is that he was very
much more than the critic of an age of prose, though he was not (who has
been? even Longinus? even Coleridge?)
“The King who ruled, as he thought fit,
The universal monarchy of wit”
as regards poetic criticism. He saw far beyond prose, as in those few
words of the concluding and reconciling eulogy of Gray which have been
quoted above. It is poetry and not prose which has the gift of putting
new things so that the man who reads them ingenuously thinks that they
are merely a neat statement of what he has always thought. And Johnson
was far more than merely a critic of the eighteenth-century Neo-Classic
theory, though he was this. A most noteworthy passage in the _Rambler_
(No. 156), which I have purposely kept for comment in this place, though
it is delivered on the wrong side, shows us, as the great critics always
do show us, what a range of sight the writer had. In this he expresses a
doubt whether we ought “to judge genius merely by the event,” and,
applying this to Shakespeare, takes the odd, but for an
eighteenth-century critic most tell-tale and interesting, line that if
genius succeeds by means which are wrong according to rule, we may think
higher of the genius but less highly of the work. It is hardly necessary
to point out that this is, though in no way a discreditable, a
transparent evasion of the difficulty which is pressing on the defenders
of the Rules. “Show me,” one may without irreverence retort, “thy genius
without thy works; and I will show thee my genius by my works.” If
Shakespeare shows genius in neglecting the Rules, the inexorable voice
of Logic, greater than Fortune, greater than all other things save Fate,
will point out that the Rules are evidently not necessary, and, with
something like the Lucretian _Te sequar_, will add, “Then for what _are_
they necessary?” But Johnson’s power is only a little soured and not at
all quenched by this. He has seen what others refused—perhaps were
unable—to see, and what some flatly denied,—that a process of literary
judgment “by the event” is possible, and that its verdicts, in some
respects at any rate, cannot be challenged or reversed. These great
critical _aperçus_, though sometimes delivered half unwillingly or on
the wrong side, establish Johnson’s claim to a place not often to be
given to critics; but they do not establish it more certainly than his
surveys of his actual subjects. It was an unfortunate consequence of Mr
Arnold’s generous impatience of all but “the chief and principal
things,” and of his curious dislike to literary history as such, that he
should have swept away the minor Lives. One may not care for Stepney or
Yalden, Duke or King, much more, or at all more, than he did. But with a
really great member of the craft his admissions and omissions, his
paradoxes, his extravagances, his very mistakes pure and simple, are all
critically edifying. How does he apply his own critical theory? is what
we must ask: and, with Johnson, I think we shall never ask it in vain.
His idea of English poetry was the application to certain classes of
subjects, not rigidly limited to, but mainly arranged by, the canons of
the classical writers—of what seemed to him and his generation the
supreme form of English language and metre, brought in by Mr Waller and
perfected by Mr Pope, yet not so as to exclude from admiration the
_Allegro_ of Milton and the _Elegy_ of Gray. We may trace his
applications of this, if we have a real love of literature and a real
sense of criticism, nearly as profitably and pleasantly in relation to
John Pomfret as in relation to Alexander Pope. We may trace his failures
(as we are pleased, quite rightly in a way, to call them), the failures
arising from the inadequacy, not of his genius, but of his scheme, not
less agreeably in relation to Dyer than in relation to Dryden. We are
not less informed by his passing the _Castle of Indolence_ almost _sub
silentio_ than we are by that at first sight astounding criticism of
_Lycidas_. This Cæsar never does wrong but with just cause—to use the
phrase which was too much for the equanimity or the intelligence of his
great namesake Ben, in the work of one whom both admired yet could not
quite stomach.
Now, this it is which makes the greatness of a critic. That Johnson
might have been greater still at other times need not necessarily be
denied; though it is at least open to doubt whether any other time would
have suited his whole disposition better. But, as he is, he is great.
The critics who deserve that name are not those who, like, for instance,
Christopher North and Mr Ruskin, are at the mercy of different kinds of
caprice—with whom you must be always on the _qui vive_ to be certain
what particular watchword they have adopted, what special side they are
taking. It may even be doubted whether such a critic as Lamb, though
infinitely delightful, is exactly “great” because of the singular gaps
and arbitrariness of his likes and dislikes. Nay, Hazlitt, one of the
greatest critics of the world on the whole, goes near to forfeit his
right to the title by the occasional outbursts of almost insane
prejudice that cloud his vision. Johnson is quite as prejudiced; but his
prejudice is not in the least insane. His critical calculus is perfectly
sound on its own postulates and axioms; and you have only to apply
checks and correctives (which are easily ascertained, and kept ready) to
adjust it to absolute critical truth. And, what is more, he has not
merely flourished and vapoured critical abstractions, but has left us a
solid reasoned body of critical judgment; he has not judged literature
in the exhausted receiver of mere art, and yet has never neglected the
artistic criterion; he has kept in constant touch with life, and yet has
never descended to mere gossip. We may freely disagree with his
judgments, but we can never justly disable his judgment; and this is the
real criterion of a great critic.
Johnson is so much the eighteenth-century orthodox critic in
quintessence (though, as I have tried to show, in transcendence also)
that he will dispense us from saying very much more about the rank and
file, the ordinary or inferior examples, of the kind. [Sidenote: _Minor
Criticism: Periodical and other._] If we were able to devote this Book,
or even this volume, to the subject of the present chapter, there would
be no lack of material. Critical exercitations of a kind formed now, of
course, a regular part of the work of literature, and a very large part
of its hack-work. The _Gentleman’s Magazine_ devoted much attention to
the subject; and for a great part of the century two regular _Reviews_,
the _Critical_ and the _Monthly_,[640] were recognised organs of
literary censorship, and employed some really eminent hands, notably
Smollett and Goldsmith. The periodicals which, now in single spies, now
(about the middle of the century) in battalions, endeavoured to renew
the success of the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_, were critical by kind; and
dozens, scores, hundreds probably, of separate critical publications,
large and small, issued from the press.[641] But, with the rarest
exceptions, they must take the _non_-benefit of the warning which was
laid down in the Preface to the First Volume. Something we must say of
Goldsmith; then we may take two contrasted examples, Knox and Scott of
Amwell, of the critic in Johnson’s last days who inclined undoubtingly
to the classical, and of the critic of the same time who had qualms and
stirrings of Romanticism, but was hardly yet a heretic. And then,
reserving summary, we may close the record.
-----
Footnote 640:
Johnson’s relative estimates of the two (_Boswell_, Globe ed., pp.
186, 364) are well known; as is his apology for the _Critical_
Reviewers’ habit [he had been one himself] of not reading the books
through, as the “duller” _Monthly_ fellows were glad to do. Later
generations have perhaps contrived to be dull _and_ not to read.
Footnote 641:
For instance, here is one which I have hunted for years—_Essay on the
New Species of Writing founded by Fielding, with a word or two on
Modern Criticism_ (London? 1751). The better-known _Canons of
Criticism_ of Thomas Edwards (4th ed., London, 1750) may serve as a
specimen of another kind. It is an attack on Warburton’s
_Shakespeare_, uncommonly shrewd in all senses of the word, but, as
Johnson (_Boswell_, Globe ed., p. 87 note) justly enough said, of the
gad-fly kind mainly. A curious little book, which I do not remember to
have seen cited anywhere, is the _Essay upon Poetry and Painting_ of
Charles Lamotte (Du_d_lin (_sic_), 1742). La Motte, who was an F.S.A.,
a D.D., and chaplain to the Duke of Montagu, and who has the still
rarer honour of not appearing in the _Dict. Nat. Biog._, never, I
think, refers to his namesake, but quotes Voltaire and Du Bos
frequently. He is very anxious for “propriety” in all senses, and
seems a little more interested in Painting than in Poetry. As to the
latter, he is a good example of the devouring appetite for sense and
fact which had seized on the critics of this time (save a few rebels)
throughout Europe. The improbabilities of Tasso and of “Camoenus, the
Homer and Virgil of the Portuguese,” afflict him more, because they
amuse him less, than they do in Voltaire’s own case, and to any
liberty with real or supposed history he is simply Rhadamanthine.
“That which jars with probability—that which shocks Sense and
Reason—can never be excused in Poetry.” Mrs Barbauld and _The Ancient
Mariner_ sixty years before date!
-----
Of Goldsmith as a critic little need be said, though his pen was not
much less prolific in this than in other departments. But the angel is
too often absent, and Poor Poll distressingly in evidence. [Sidenote:
_Goldsmith._] The _Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in
Europe_ is simply “prodigious.” It is admirably written—Macaulay owes
something to its style, which he only hardened and brazened. The author
apes the fashionable philosophastering of the time, and throws in cheap
sciolism like the prince of journalists that he was. It is almost always
interesting; it is, where it touches life, not literature, sometimes
excellently acute; but there is scarcely a critical dictum in it which
is other than ridiculous. So in the _Citizen of the World_ the Author’s
Club is of course delightful; but why should a sneer at Drayton have
been put in the mouth of Lien Chi Altangi? And the miscellaneous Essays,
including the _Bee_, which contain so much of Goldsmith’s best work, are
perhaps the best evidences of his nullity here. When one thinks how
little it would cost anybody of Goldsmith’s genius (to find such an one
I confess would cost more) to write a literary parallel to the
magnificent _Reverie_, which would be even finer, it is enough to draw
iron tears down the critic’s cheek. Goldsmith on Taste, Poetry,
Metaphor, &c.,[642] is still the Goldsmith of the _Inquiry_. His
“Account of the Augustan Age,”[643] though much better, and (unless I
mistake) resorted to by some recent critics as a source of criticism
different from that mostly prevalent in the nineteenth century, has all
the limitations of its own period. And the Essay on Versification,[644]
though it contains expressions which, taken by themselves, might seem to
show that Goldsmith had actually emancipated himself from the tyranny of
the fixed number of syllables, contains others totally irreconcilable
with these, supports English hexameters and sapphics,[645] and as a
whole forces on us once more the reluctant belief that he simply had no
clear ideas, no accurate knowledge, on the subject.
-----
Footnote 642:
Essays, xii.-xvii.
Footnote 643:
_The Bee_, viii.
Footnote 644:
Essay xviii.
Footnote 645:
It is perhaps only fair to hope that this fancy, as later with Southey
and others, was a blind motion for freedom. Yet Goldsmith commits
himself to the hemistich theory of decasyllables.
-----
Vicesimus Knox[646] is a useful figure in this critical Transition
Period. [Sidenote: _Vicesimus Knox._] A scholar and a schoolmaster, he
had some of the advantages of the first state and some of the defects of
the less gracious second, accentuated in both cases by the dying
influences of a “classical” tradition which had not the slightest idea
that it was moribund. He carries his admiration for Pope to such a point
as to assure us somewhere that Pope was a man of exemplary piety and
goodness, while Gay was “uncontaminated with the vices of the world,”
which is really more than somewhat blind, and more than a little kind,
even if we admit that it is wrong to call Pope a bad man, and that Gay
had only tolerable vices. He thinks, in his Fourteenth Essay on the
“Fluctuations of Taste,” that the Augustans “arrived at that standard of
perfection which,” &c.; that the imitators of Ariosto, Spenser, and the
smaller poems of Milton are “pleasingly uncouth” [compare Scott,
_infra_, on the metrical renaissance of Dyer], depreciates Gray, and
dismisses the Elegy as “a confused heap of splendid ideas”; is certain
that Milton’s sonnets “bear no mark of his genius,” and in discussing
the versions of “the sensible[647] Sappho” decides that Catullus is much
inferior to—Philips! “The Old English Poets [Essay Thirty-Nine] are
deservedly forgotten.” Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and Occleve “seem to
have thought that rhyme was poetry, and even this constituent they
applied with extreme negligence”—the one charge which is unfair against
even Occleve, and which, in reference to Chaucer, is proof of utter
ignorance. Patriotism probably made him more favourable to Dunbar,
Douglas, and Lyndsay, though he groans over the necessity of a glossary
in their case also. In fact, Knox is but a Johnson without the genius.
Let it, however, be counted to him for righteousness that he defended
classical education, including verse-writing, against its enemies, who
even then imagined vain things.
-----
Footnote 646:
_Essays, Moral and Literary_, 2nd ed., London, 1774, 8vo.
Footnote 647:
This is perhaps the most delightful instance in (English) existence of
the change which has come over the meaning of the word.
-----
John Scott of Amwell, once praised by good wits, now much forgotten, was
a very respectable critic and a poet of “glimmerings.” [Sidenote: _Scott
of Amwell._] In fact, I am not at all sure that he does not deserve to
be promoted and postponed to the next volume, as a representative of the
rising, not the falling, tide. His Essays on poetry[648] exhibit in a
most interesting way the “know-not-what-to-think-of-it” state of public
opinion about the later years of Johnson. He defends _Lycidas_ against
the Dictator; yet he finds fault with the “daystar” for acting both as a
person and an orb of radiance, and admits the “incorrectness” of the
poem, without giving us a hint of the nature or authority of
“correctness.” He boldly attacks the consecrated _Cooper’s Hill_, and
sets the rival eminence of Grongar against it, pronouncing Dyer “a
sublime but strangely neglected poet,” yet picking very niggling holes
in this poet himself. He often anticipates, and oftener seems to be
going to anticipate, Wordsworth, who no doubt owed him a good deal; yet
he thinks Pope’s famous epigram on Wit “the most concise and just
definition of Poetry.” In _Grongar Hill_ itself he thinks the “admixture
of metre [its second, certainly, if not its first great charm] rather
displeasing to a nice ear”; and though he defends Gray against Knox, he
is altogether yea-nay about _Windsor Forest_, and attacks Thomson’s
personifications, without remembering that Gray is at least an equal
sinner, and without giving the author of the _Seasons_, and still more
of the _Castle of Indolence_, any just compensation for his enthusiasm
of nature. In fact, Scott is a man walking in twilight, who actually
sees the line of dawn, but dares not step out into it.
-----
Footnote 648:
_Critical Essays_, London, 1785, 8vo.
-----
CHAPTER II.
THE CONTEMPORARIES OF VOLTAIRE.
CLOSE CONNECTION OF FRENCH SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CRITICISM:
FONTENELLE—EXCEPTIONAL CHARACTER OF HIS CRITICISM—HIS ATTITUDE TO
THE “ANCIENT AND MODERN” QUARREL—THE ‘DIALOGUES DES MORTS’—OTHER
CRITICAL WORK—LA MOTTE—HIS “UNITY OF INTEREST”—ROLLIN—BRUMOY—RÉMOND
DE SAINT-MARD—L. RACINE—DU BOS—STIMULATING BUT DESULTORY CHARACTER
OF HIS ‘RÉFLEXIONS’—MONTESQUIEU—VOLTAIRE: DISAPPOINTMENT OF HIS
CRITICISM—EXAMPLES OF IT—CAUSES OF HIS FAILURE—OTHERS: BUFFON—“STYLE
AND THE MAN”—VAUVENARGUES—BATTEUX—HIS ADJUSTMENT OF RULES AND
TASTE—HIS INCOMPLETENESS—MARMONTEL—ODDITIES AND QUALITIES OF HIS
CRITICISM—OTHERS: THOMAS, SUARD, ETC.—LA HARPE—HIS ‘COURS DE
LITTÉRATURE’—HIS CRITICAL POSITION AS “ULTIMUS SUORUM”—THE ACADEMIC
ESSAY—RIVAROL.
The later seventeenth and at least the earlier eighteenth century in
France are perhaps more closely connected than any other literary
periods, if, indeed, they are not practically one, like the two halves
of our own so-called “Elizabethan” time. [Sidenote: _Close connection of
French seventeenth and eighteenth century criticism. Fontenelle._] And
this connection we can duly demonstrate, as far as criticism is
concerned. Boileau himself outlived the junction of the centuries by
more than a decade: and the birth of Voltaire preceded it by more than a
lustrum. The Quarrel of Ancients and Moderns—a very poor thing
certainly—revived in the new century, as if on purpose to show the
connection with the old. And, lastly, the prolonged life of one
remarkable and representative critic was almost equally distributed over
the two. Fontenelle is one of the most interesting, if not exactly one
of the most important, figures in our whole long gallery; and if he has
never yet held quite his proper place in literary history, this is due
to the facts, first, that he was a critic more than he was anything
else; and, secondly, that he forgot the great “Thou shalt not” which
Criticism lays upon her sons, and would lay (if she had any) on her
daughters. No critic is in the least bound to produce good work, or any
work, of the constructive kind: but he is bound not to produce that
which is not good. The author of _Aspar_ and the _Lettres du Chevalier
d’Her_ ... forgot this, and paid the penalty.[649]
Yet his attractions are so great that few people who have paid him much
attention have failed to be smitten with them. M. Rigault,[650] who does
not approve of him generally, is a conspicuous example of this.
[Sidenote: _Exceptional character of his criticism._] But what we must
look to is what he has actually written himself. His utterances are
almost too tempting. In such a book as this the expatiation which they
invite must be perforce denied them. Yet one may break proportion a
little in order to do something like justice to a critic whose like, for
suggestiveness, delicacy, and range, we shall hardly meet in the French
eighteenth century. It is indeed curious that of the three men of his
own earliest years from whom Voltaire inherits—Saint-Evremond, Hamilton,
and Fontenelle—every one should have surpassed him in the finer traits,
while all fall short of him in force and, as he himself said, _diable au
corps_. Saint-Evremond we have dealt with; Hamilton[651] does not come
into our story. Fontenelle is for the moment ours.
-----
Footnote 649:
The standard edition of Fontenelle (8 vols., Paris, 1790) is an
agreeable book, excellent in print and paper.
Footnote 650:
_Op. cit. sup._, especially Part I., chaps, ix. and xi.
Footnote 651:
Though there is a good deal of the critical spirit in him, too, and
the famous advice to “Bélier, mon ami” has fellows of critical
application.
-----
It must be confessed that he is an elusive if an agreeable possession.
From wisdom, from worldly-wisdom, from whim, or from what not, he seems
to have wished to be an enigma; and—to borrow one of Scott’s great
sentences—“the wish of his heart was granted to his loss, and the hope
of his pride has destroyed him”—at least has certainly made him rank
lower than he would otherwise have ranked. However _délié_—to use a word
of his own language for which we have no single English
equivalent—however watchful, mercurial, sensitive the reader’s spirit
may be, he will, over and over again in Fontenelle, meet passages where
he cannot be sure whether his author is writing merely with tongue in
cheek, or applying an all-dissolving irony, hardly inferior to Swift’s
in power, and almost superior in quietness and subtlety. Moreover, his
critical position is a very peculiar one, and constantly liable to be
misunderstood—if, indeed, it be not safer to say that it is almost
always difficult to apprehend with any certainty of escaping misprision.
The good folk who magisterially rebuke Dryden as to _Gorboduc_, because
he made mistakes about the form of the verse and the sex of the
person—even those (one regrets to say this includes M. Rigault himself)
who are shocked at that great critic’s laudatory citations of, and
allusions to, Le Bossu—need never hope to understand Fontenelle.
Few things (except that he was the author of that _Plurality of Worlds_
which happily does not concern us) are better known concerning him than
that he was a champion of the Moderns. [Sidenote: _His attitude to the
“Ancient and Modern” Quarrel._] Yet, when we come to examine his
numerous and elusive writings on the subject, the one principle of his
that does emerge is a principle which, if it chastises the Ancients with
whips, chastises the Moderns with scorpions. A man writing, as M.
Rigault wrote, in 1856, would have been a wonderful person if he had not
been misled by the great idol of Progress. But Fontenelle was at least
as far from the delusion as he was from the date. His argument is just
the contrary—that as human wisdoms and human follies, human powers and
human weaknesses, are always the same, it is absurd to suppose that any
one period can have general and intrinsic superiority over any other.
[Sidenote: _The_ Dialogues des Morts.]
Assuredly no “modern,” whether of his days or of our own, can find aught
but confusion of face in the quiet axiom of Laura at the end of her
controversy with Sappho,[652] “Croyez moi, après qu’on a bien raisonné
ou sur l’amour, ou sur telle autre matière qu’on voudra, on trouve au
bout du compte que les choses sont bien comme elles sont, et que la
réforme qu’on prétendroit y apporter gâterait tout.” _Pulveris exigui
jactus!_ but one with a fatally magical effect in the quarrels of
criticism as of other things. And the same is the lesson of the dialogue
which follows immediately—the best of the whole, and almost a sovereign
document of our library,—that between Socrates and Montaigne. Not only
is there no example in the literature of the dialogue, from Plato to Mr
Traill, much more apt than the “maieutic” feat of Socrates, by which he
induces Montaigne to commit himself to the dogma, “Partout où il y a des
hommes, il y a des sottises, et les mêmes sottises”; but the rest of the
piece is as powerfully, though as quietly, worked out as this crisis of
it. There is no Progress; there is no Degeneration. The distribution may
vary: the sum will not. Erasistratus maintains the same thesis on a
different matter a little later in his dialogue with Harvey,[653] laying
down the doctrine, outrageous to all the Royal Societies of the world
(though they were glad to welcome Fontenelle as populariser, and have
perhaps never had such an one since, except Mr Huxley), that “the things
which are not necessary perhaps do get discovered in the course of ages,
the others not.” And Charles V. preaches no very different sermon when
he “makes a hare” of Erasmus by pointing out to that dilettante
republican that _les biens de l’esprit_ are just as much things of time
and chance as crown and sceptre.[654]
-----
Footnote 652:
_Œuvres_, ed. cit., i. 234.
Footnote 653:
_Œuvres_, i. 249.
Footnote 654:
Ibid., p. 270. The _Dialogues_, it should perhaps be said, appeared
first, as early as 1683.
-----
It is, however, in Fontenelle’s actual concrete deliverances of
criticism that the resemblance to Dryden comes in most. [Sidenote:
_Other critical work._] Those who insist that such deliverances shall be
Medic-Persian, unalterable, mathematical, true without relation and
adjustment, will not like him. To take his utterances down in a
notebook, and reproduce them at the next examination (to provide for
which process seems to be held the be-all and end-all of modern
criticism), would not do at all. When Fontenelle praises Corneille at
the expense of Racine, you have to think whether he is speaking what he
thinks or merely as _le neveu de son oncle_; when he says other things,
whether he is a “Modern” at the time and to the extent of saying
something which he knows will cause the “Ancients” grinding torments;
when he sketches[655] a theory of poetic criticism of the most sweeping
_a priori_ kind from Principles of Beauty down through Kinds to Rules,
whether he really means this, or is conciliating somebody, or laughing
in his sleeve at somebody, or the like. But this—at least for some
tastes—only adds piquancy to his observations, and they have now and
then surprising justice, freshness, freedom from the prejudices of time,
country, and circumstance. The _Histoire du Théâtre Français_, for
instance, which he has prefixed to his _Vie de Corneille_, may be based
on second-hand information, and, with our fuller knowledge, it may not
be very hard to pick holes in it. But it is an extraordinary production
for a representative man of letters at a time when hardly any such man,
in any country of Europe, was free from ignorant contempt of the early
vernaculars. The brief eleven-articled “parallel between Racine and
Corneille” is of course somewhat partisan; but it will give the
partisans on the other side some trouble to prove it unjust. The
“Remarks on Aristophanes,” and on the Greek theatre generally, are
obviously “modern” and intended to tease; but they are uncommonly
shrewd, and so are the _Réflexions sur la Poétique_ and those on “Poetry
in General.” It is wonderful that even an antagonist of Boileau, and a
sworn paradoxer, should, at this time, have been able to see the beauty
of the Père Le Moyne’s splendid couplet on the Sicilian Vespers,—
“Quand du Gibel ardent les noires Euménides
Sonneront de leur cor ces Vêpres homicides,”—
where we are more than half-way from Du Bartas and Aubigné to Victor
Hugo. The mere image—this new “vision of the guarded mount,” with the
black Furies silhouetted against the flaming cone, and the explosions of
the volcano deepening the bugle-call to massacre—is fine: the means
taken to make it poetical are finer. The use of the proper names, and
the cunning arrangement of epithet and noun in _noires Euménides_ and
_Vêpres homicides_, and the sharp blasts of the long and short _o_'s in
the second line, are more than Hugonian, they are positively Miltonic:
and the couplet will serve to keep a man in Mr Arnold’s “torpid and
dismal” stage of later middle life cheerful for an evening, and
whensoever he remembers it afterwards. True, Fontenelle admits demurely
that he knows “vespers” and “Eumenides” are something of an anachronism
in conjunction, and proposes a slight alteration to suit this objection
of “correctness.” But this is his way; and the wonderful thing is that
he should have admired it at all—should have actually tasted this heady
wine of poetry. As he finishes the paragraph in his own quaint
style,[656] “Il était bien aisé, même à de grands poètes, de ne pas
trouver” this couplet: and in his time it would have been still easier
even for great critics not to do justice to it, and not to see that it
is to these things “so easy for the poet not to find” that it is the
critic’s business to look.
-----
Footnote 655:
Ed. cit., iii. 1-67.
Footnote 656:
Ed. cit., iii. 181.
-----
The general remarks on Comedy which he prefixed to a collection of his
efforts in that kind are not negligible; but in those on Eclogue,[657]
and still more in the _Digression sur Les Anciens et Les Modernes_, the
curse, or at least the gainsaying, of the Quarrel is upon him, and the
main drift is not merely digressive but aggressive and excessive. In the
_Digression_ he anticipates (as he did in so many things) the
materialist-rationalist explanations of the later eighteenth century by
climate, fibres of the brain, &c. Here he becomes scientific, and
therefore necessarily ceases to be of importance in literature.
-----
Footnote 657:
As if, however, to show that one must never speak of Fontenelle
without reserves, there are some extremely interesting things here
also. For instance, the characteristic _malice_, with a serious and
sensible side to it, of the law that the sentiments and language of
the artificial pastoral shall bear the same relation to nature as _ces
habits que l’on prend dans des ballets pour représenter les paysans_.
-----
But he always regains that importance before long—in his Discourse of
the Origin of Fable, in his Academic Discourses and Replies, in many a
fragment and isolated remark. Even in his _Eloges_—mostly devoted (there
are nearly two volumes of them) to scientific personages from Leibniz
and Newton downwards—the unconquerable critical power of the man shows
itself, subject to the limitations noted. The world is sometimes not
allowed to know anything of its greatest critics, and Fontenelle is an
example of this. But those who have won something of that knowledge of
criticism which it is the humble purpose of this book to facilitate,
will not slight the man who, at the junction of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, could flirt in the face of Ancients and Moderns
alike the suggestion (which Mr Rigmarole doubtless borrowed from him)
that all times are “pretty much like our own,” and could see and hear
the sable sisters sounding the tocsin on the flaming crest of Mongibel.
Fontenelle is elusive, but comprehensible by the imagination. La
Motte,[658] his inseparable companion in the renewed sacrilege of the
Moderns, seems an easier, but is really a harder, personage to lay hold
of. [Sidenote: _La Motte._] It is indeed not extremely difficult to
explain his attitude to the Ancients by the fact that he knew no Greek;
and his exaltation of prose by a consciousness (wherein he has left a
family by no means extinct) that his own verses were worth very little.
But it is so easy not to write verses if you cannot; and not to write
about Greek if you do not know it! And the problem is further
complicated by the facts that at least some judges, who are not exactly
the first comers, such as Fontenelle himself and Voltaire, maintained
that La Motte _could_ write verses,—and that, so far from being “a
fellow who had failed,” he had obtained the greatest scenic success of
the early eighteenth century with _Inès de Castro_, and, what is more,
had deserved it. But for once, as also again in Pope’s case, the
dangerous explanation of physical defects and constitutional weakness
seems to have some validity. The invulnerable nonchalance of his friend
Fontenelle had met the damnation of _Aspar_ by a cool tearing up of the
piece, and an undismayed advance upon the fate of the _plusquam semel
damnatus_; La Motte, at twenty or at little more, felt the similar
misfortune of _Les Originaux_ so severely that he actually went to La
Trappe for a time. Before middle life he was blind and a cripple. The
irritability which did not show itself in his temper (for he was the
most amiable of men) would seem to have transferred itself to his
literary attitude, not affecting his politeness of expression, but
inducing a sort of “rash” of paradox.
-----
Footnote 658:
My copy is the _Œuvres_ (Paris, 1754) in 10 vols. (the first divided
into two parts).
-----
To trace the vagaries of this might not be unamusing, but would
certainly be excessive here. [Sidenote: _His “Unity of Interest.”_] La
Motte, it seems to me, had considerably less natural literary taste than
Fontenelle; and of the controversy[659] (it was not his antagonist’s
fault if it was not a very acrimonious one) between him and Madame
Dacier one cannot say much more than that the lady is very aggressive,
very erudite, and very unintelligent; the gentleman very suave, rather
ignorant, and of an intelligence better, but not much better, directed;
while both are sufficiently distant from any true critical point of
view. Yet once, as was not unnatural in the case of a very clever man
who was at least endeavouring to form independent conclusions, La Motte
did hit upon a great critical truth when,[660] discussing the Three
Unities, he laid it down that there is after all only _one_ Unity which
is of real importance, and that this is the “Unity of Interest,” to
which all the others are subsidiary, and but as means to an end.
“Self-evident,” some one may say; but in how many critics have we found
the fact acknowledged hitherto? and by how many has it been frankly
acknowledged since? That the aim of the poet is to please, to satisfy
the thirst for pleasure—that is to say, to interest—all but the
extremest ethical prudery will admit. But critics, especially classical
and neo-classical critics, have always been in the mood of Christophero
Sly when he railed at the woman of the house and threatened her with
presentation at the leet,
“Because she brought stone jugs and no sealed quarts.”
Without the “sealed quart” of the Unity—of the Rule generally—these
critics will not slake, nor let others slake, their thirst. But the
affirmation of the Unity of Interest, in La Motte’s way, does inevitably
bring with it licence to use the stone jug or anything else, so only
that the good wine of poetry be made to do its good office.
-----
Footnote 659:
The main documents of which are Madame Dacier’s _Traité des causes de
la corruption du goût_ (Paris, 1714) and La Motte’s _Réflexions sur la
Critique_, which will be found in the third volume of the ed. just
mentioned.
Footnote 660:
In his _Premier Discours sur la Tragédie_, _ed. cit. sup._, iv. 23
_sq._
-----
The Quarrel left its traces for a long time on criticism, and seems to
have partly determined the composition, as late as 1730, of two books of
some note, the _Traité des Études_ of the excellent Rollin, and the
elaborate _Théâtre des Grecs_ of the Père Brumoy. [Sidenote: _Rollin._]
Of neither need we say very much. The first-named[661] had considerable
influence at home and abroad, especially in Germany; but Rollin’s
successor, Batteux, was justified in the good-humoured malice of his
observation,[662] “Je trouve à l’article de la Poésie un discours fort
sensé sur son origine et sa destination, qui doit être toute au profit
de la vertu. On y cite les beaux endroits d’Homère; on y donne la plus
juste idée de la sublime Poésie des Livres Saints; mais c'était une
définition que je demandais.” Alas! we have experienced the same
disappointment many times; nor is it Batteux himself who will cure us of
it.
-----
Footnote 661:
4 vols., Paris, 1720-1731.
Footnote 662:
_Op. cit._ _inf._, I. xx.
-----
Brumoy’s imposing quartos[663] have at least the advantage (how great a
one the same experience has shown us) of tackling a definite subject in
a business-like way. [Sidenote: _Brumoy._] His book consists of actual
translations of a certain number of Greek pieces, of analyses of all the
rest that we have, and of divers discourses. He leads off with a
forcible and well-founded complaint of the extreme ignorance of Greek
tragedy and drama generally which the Quarrel had shown; his
observations on individual writers and pieces are often very sensible;
and his “Discourse on the Parallel between the Theatres” has a bearing
which he probably did not suspect, and might not have relished. He
dwells with vigour and knowledge on the _differences_ between them in
order to show that not merely preference, as in the Quarrel, but even
strict comparison, is impossible between things so different. It could
not be but that sooner or later it would dawn, on some readers at least,
that it was even more ridiculous to try to make the two obey the same
laws.
-----
Footnote 663:
3 vols., Paris, 1730.
-----
As has been already shown in the last book, literary criticism had, even
by the middle of the seventeenth century, established so firm a hold on
French taste that the representative system becomes more and more
imperative upon the historian thereof. To represent the later days of
Fontenelle and those when Voltaire, though attaining, had not entirely
attained his almost European dictatorship of letters, three names will
serve very well; one perhaps new to many (if there be many) readers of
these pages, another one of the conscript names of literary history,
respected if not read, and the third a classic of the world—in plainer
words, Rémond de Saint-Mard, the Abbé Du Bos, and Montesquieu.
Saint-Mard has been rather badly treated by the books,—for instance,
Vapereau’s _Dictionnaire des Littératures_, often no despicable
compilation, not only dismisses him as _médiocre_, but misspells his
name Saint-Mar_c_. [Sidenote: _Rémond de Saint-Mard._] He had, however,
some influence in his own day, especially on the Germans;[664] and there
is an extremely pretty little edition[665] of his works, most of which
had been issued separately earlier. To some extent he is a follower of
Fontenelle, writes _Dialogues of Gods_, &c., _Lettres Galantes et
Philosophiques_, and the like, to please the town and the ladies, but
with a constant turning to criticism. In the “Discourse,” which precedes
his _Dialogues_ in the collected edition, there is a very odd and, as it
seems to me, a very noteworthy passage, in which, though there may be
some would-be fine-gentleman nonchalance, there is also a dawning of
that sense of the unnaturalness and inconvenience of “the rules” which
is constantly showing itself in the early eighteenth century. He
admits[666] that he has not followed his own rules; for the orthodox
dialogue ought to have one subject, led up to for some time, announced
at last. But somehow or other most of his dialogues have more. So few
ideas are fertile enough for a whole Dialogue!—a sentence which
obviously cuts away the theory of the rule, and not merely its practice.
-----
Footnote 664:
I have found him repeatedly quoted in those interesting early gropings
of the German nonage, which will be referred to in the next chapter.
Had he anything to do with Lady Mary W. Montagu’s tormentor, Rémond?
Footnote 665:
5 vols., Amsterdam, 1750. It is rather too pretty, and so rare. But it
is in the British Museum: and I have a copy (which I owe to the
kindness of Mr Gregory Smith) of the _Réflexions_ (_v. inf._) It has
only initials (“R. D. S. M.”) on the title-page.
Footnote 666:
i. 65, ed. cit. The Dialogues themselves had appeared as early as
1711.
-----
Nor are his other works by any means destitute of original ideas
worthily put. In one of his definition-descriptions of poetry,[667] if
there is something of eighteenth-century sensualism, there is much also
of the acute and practical psychology of the period. [Sidenote: _L.
Racine._]The words _do_ account—whether in “low” or “high” fashion—for
the poetic delight, as “Philosophy teaching by example” and other arid
abstractions do not. His theory elsewhere, that Custom communicates the
charm of versification (he does not quote _usus concinnat_, but
inevitably suggests it), has probably a great deal of truth in it, if it
is not the whole truth; and though we know that his explanation of the
origin of Poetry—that it came because Prose was too common—is
historically inaccurate, it is evidently only a false deduction,
uncorrected by actual historic knowledge, from the real fact that the
“discommoning of the common” _is_ a main source of the poetic pleasure.
In points such as these Rémond de Saint-Mard rises commendably above the
estimable dulness of his contemporary Louis Racine,[668] with his
admiration oddly distributed between Milton and his own papa, and in the
former case more oddly conditioned by respect for Addison and Voltaire;
his laborious rearrangement of most of the old commonplaces about poetry
and poets; and his obliging explanation that “Ces images de magiciennes
et de sorcières de Laponie ne paraissaient pas extravagantes aux Anglais
dans le temps que Milton écrivit.”
-----
Footnote 667:
The _Réflexions sur la poésie suivies de lettres_, &c., had originally
appeared in 1733-34 at The Hague. The passage is this: _On y rapproche
de nous les objets qui sont les plus éloignés—on leur donne du
corps—on les anime. Toute la Nature est agitée des mêmes passions que
nous._
Footnote 668:
6 vols., Paris, 1808. For in this kind of work one must often read six
volumes to justify the writing of six lines. And Racine, to do him
justice, if not a great genius, is no small symptom. When a Frenchman
of his time and associations reads Milton reverently, something will
happen soon.
-----
By this time “Æsthetics” were breaking the shell everywhere; but in many
cases, as we have seen, they did not consciously affect the critical
principles of writers. [Sidenote: _Du Bos._] Du Bos, a solid inquirer,
and a man of considerable ability in that striking out of wide
generalisations which delighted his time, could hardly have avoided
them. His _Réflexions Critiques sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture_[669]
have sometimes been credited with considerable precursorship on the
literary side. It is certain that he lays some stress (Part II., § 14
_sq._) on the effect of Climate upon Art, and if this “seem such dear
delight, Beyond all other,” he must have the credit due therefor from
those to whom it so seems. To those who reflect on the climatic
authorship, say of _Romeo and Juliet_ and the sonnets of La Casa, doubts
may occur. Du Bos is certainly an interesting and stimulating writer;
but his very excursions into generality seem to have precluded him from
studying any particular author carefully; and the crotchet and paradox
which appear in his more famous and later _Histoire de la Monarchie
Française_ are not absent from the _Réflexions_. These take, moreover, a
distinctly “classic” bent. Dr Johnson would have loved, and very
possibly did love, him for arguing in a masterly manner that French
poetry simply _cannot_ equal Latin, either in style or in cadence and
harmony of verse; nor perhaps would Mr Matthew Arnold on this occasion
have disdained to say ditto to Dr Johnson. Latin words are more
beautiful than French. Harmony is easier to attain in Latin than in
French. The rules are less troublesome in Latin than in French, and
their observance results in more beauties in the mother than in the
daughter. This is “Thorough” with a vengeance.[670]
-----
Footnote 669:
2 vols., Paris, 1719. In English by T. Nugent: 3 vols., 1748.
Footnote 670:
_Op. cit._, Part I., § 35. His justest strictures are on the
extravagantly syllabic quality of French prosody, and its neglect of
quantity. His ear seems to have been good for rhythm, bad for rhyme.
-----
On the great question of _katharsis_ Du Bos holds the view that art
operates by imitating the things which would have excited strong
passions in us if real, but which, as not being real, only excite weak
ones; and makes fair fight for it (Part I., § 3). [Sidenote:
_Stimulating but desultory character of his_ Réflexions.] He thinks that
while execution is everything in painting it is not everything in
poetry, but still much. He quotes English critics, especially Addison,
pretty freely, and is not far from holding with them that French drama
deals too much with love. He has some really acute remarks on what he
calls poetry of style, distinguishing this style from mere diction and
versification, and connecting this directly with his Latin-French
paradox. He even ventures close to the sin unpardonable, in the eyes of
Classicism, by arguing that the beauty of the parts of a poem
contributes more to its effect than the justness and regularity of the
plan, and that a poem may be “regular” to the _n_^{th} and yet quite a
bad poem. He has respect for the popular judgment—a respect suggesting a
not impossible acquaintance with Gravina (_v. infra_, p. 538), who had
written a good many years before him: and he distinctly postulates,
after the manner of the century, an Æsthetic Sense existing in almost
all, and capable of deciding on points of taste (Part II., § 22). He has
some direct and more indirect observations in reference to the Quarrel,
speaking with trenchant, but not too trenchant, disapproval (Part II., §
36) of those who endeavour to judge works of art by translations and
criticisms. On the main question he is pretty sound. He is good on
genius, and on what he calls the _artisan_, the craftsman _without_
genius. Taking him altogether, Du Bos may be allowed the praise of a
really fertile and original writer,[671] who says many things which are
well worth attention and which seldom received it before him, in regard
to what may be called the previous questions of criticism. His
connection of poetry with painting sometimes helps him, and seldom leads
him absolutely wrong; but it to some extent distracts him, and
constantly gives an air of desultoriness and haphazard to his
observation. It is, moreover, quite remarkable how persistently he
abides _in generalibus_, scarcely ever descending below the mediate
examination of Kinds. When he touches on individual works of art he
confines himself in the most gingerly fashion to illustration merely;
there is never an appreciation in whole or in considerable part.
-----
Footnote 671:
Why did he think that _Hudibras_ was written _par un homme de la
maison Hovvart_? [_i.e._, Howard] (i. 132). I may note here that Père
Andrè, with his _Essai sur le Beau_, is postponed, as a pure
Æsthetician, to the next volume.
-----
When Voltaire denounced Montesquieu for _lèse-poésie_, the accused, if
he had chosen, might have brought formidable counter accusations; but
there was certainly some ground for the actual charge. [Sidenote:
_Montesquieu._] When a man says[672] that “the four great poets are
Plato, Malebranche, Shaftesbury, and Montaigne,” he is evidently either
a heretic or a paradoxer; and the hundred and thirty-seventh of the
_Lettres Persanes_ gives a sad colour to the worse supposition. There is
perhaps less actual high treason to poetry here than in the remarks of
Signor Pococurante, that noble Venetian, but there is more intended; the
whole treatment is ostentatiously contemptuous. Dramatists are allowed
some merit, but poets in general “put good sense in irons, and smother
reason in ornament.” As for epic poems, connoisseurs themselves say that
there never have been but two good ones, and never will be a third.[673]
Lyric poets are contemptible creatures who deal in nothing but
harmonious extravagance and so forth. As for romances in prose, they
have the faults of poems and others to boot. Elsewhere, in Letter
xlviii., a “poet is the grotesque of the human race.” It is scarcely
surprising that, when we turn to the _Essai sur le Goût_, there is
hardly any definite reference to literature at all, and that Montesquieu
is entirely occupied in tracing or imagining abstract reasons for the
attractiveness of abstract things like “surprise,” “symmetry,”
“variety,” and even of the _je ne sais quoi_. The _je ne sais quoi_ in
an attractive, but not technically beautiful, girl is, it seems, due to
surprise at finding her so attractive, which, with all respect to the
President, seems to be somewhat “circular.” In fact, Montesquieu is
chiefly interesting to us, first, because he made no literary use of his
own theories as to climate and the rest—which later writers have used
and abused in this way; and secondly, because he shows, _in excelsis_,
that radically unliterary as well as unpoetical vein which, for all its
remarkable literary performance, is characteristic of his time.
-----
Footnote 672:
_Pensées Diverses_ (_Œuvres_, ed. Laboulaye, Paris, 1875, 7 vols., or
with Vian’s _Life_ 8), vii. 171.
Footnote 673:
It has been thought that this passage, as glancing at the _Henriade_,
was one of the reasons of Voltaire’s affection for Montesquieu. It is
perhaps worth observing that there is a strong resemblance, with some
minor differences, between Montesquieu’s attitude to literature, and
that of his friend Chesterfield.
-----
It will surprise no one who has any acquaintance with the subject that
but a few lines should have been given to Montesquieu; it may shock some
to find but a very few pages given to Voltaire.[674] [Sidenote:
_Voltaire: Disappointments of his criticism._] But while I have never
been able to rank the Patriarch’s criticism high, a reperusal of it in
sequence, for the purpose of this book, has even reduced the level of my
estimate. The fact is that, consummate literary craftsman as he was, and
wanting only the _je ne sais quoi_ itself (or rather something that we
know too well) to rank with the very greatest men of letters, Voltaire
was not a man with whom literary interest by any means predominated. It
is not merely that his anti-crusade against _l’infâme_ constantly
colours his literary, as it does all his other, judgments; and that once
at least it made him certainly indorse, and possibly enounce, the
astounding statement that the Parables in the Gospels are “coarse and
low.”[675] But when this perpetually disturbing influence is at its
least active point, we can see perfectly that neither Voltaire’s
treasure nor his heart is anywhere, with the doubtful exception of the
drama division, in literature. In mathematics and in physical science
there is no doubt that he was genuinely interested; and he was perhaps
still more interested (as indeed men of his century generally were) in
what may be vaguely called anthropology, the moral, social, and (to
some, though only to some, extent) political history of mankind. But for
literature he had very little genuine love; though the vanity in which
he certainly was not lacking could not fail to be conscious of his own
excellence as a practitioner in it; and though he could not but
recognise its power—its almost omnipotence—as a weapon. It was probably
the more human character of the drama that attracted him there.
-----
Footnote 674:
I use the thirteen-vol. ed. of the _Panthéon Littéraire_ (Paris, 1876)
because, though cumbrous individually, it is the only one that will go
in moderate shelf-room.
Footnote 675:
This comes, it is true, from the _Sentiments du Curé Meslier_ (vi.
542). But it is allowed that Voltaire rewrote this, and I should not
be surprised if he did a little more.
-----
However this may be, it is impossible, for me at least, to rank him high
as a critic: and this refusal is hardly in the least due to his famous
blasphemies against Shakespeare and Milton. [Sidenote: _Examples of
it._] As we have seen—as we shall see—it is possible to disagree
profoundly with some, nay, with many, of a critic’s estimates, and yet
to think highly of his critical gifts. But Voltaire scarcely anywhere
shows the true _ethos_ of the critic: and that “smattering erudition” of
his is nowhere so much of a smattering, and so little of an erudition,
as here. His two famous surveys of English and French literature, in the
_Lettres sur les Anglais_ and the _Siècle de Louis Quatorze_, show, on
the French side at least, a more complete ignorance of literary history
than Boileau’s own: and the individual judgments, though admirably
expressed, are banal and without freshness of grasp. The extensive
_Commentary on Corneille_ contains, of course, interesting things, but
is of no high critical value. The _Essai sur la Poésie Épique_ opens
with some excellent ridicule of “the rules”—a subject which indeed might
seem to invite the Voltairian method irresistibly; but after this and
some serious good sense of the same kind, he practically deserts to the
rules themselves. He admits _fautes grossières_ in Homer, finds
“monstrosity and absurdity up to the limits of imagination” in
Shakespeare, thinks that Virgil is “Homer’s best work,” discovers in the
supernatural of Tasso and Camoens only “insipid stories fit to amuse
children,” dismisses, as everybody knows, the great Miltonic episode of
Satan, Death, and Sin as “disgusting and abominable,” and keeps up
throughout his survey that wearisome castanet-clatter of “fault and
beauty—beauty and fault” which, whensoever and wheresoever we find it,
simply means that the critic is not able to see his subject as a whole,
and tell us whether it is foul or fair.
Perhaps no better instance of the feebleness of Voltaire’s criticism can
be found than in his dealings with Rabelais.[676] Here there are
practically no disturbing elements. Yet no one is more responsible than
Voltaire is for the common notion, equally facile and false, of Rabelais
as a freethinker with a sharp eye to the main chance, who disguised his
freethinking in a cloak of popular obscenity, who is often amusing,
sometimes admirable, but as a whole coarse, tedious, and illegible, or
at best appealing to the most vulgar taste. Take the famous sentence
that Swift is a “Rabelais de bonne compagnie,”[677] work it out either
side, and it will be difficult to find anywhere words more radically
uncritical. Or turn to the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_. Not only are
the literary articles very few, and in some of these few cases mere
_rechauffés_ of the _Lettres sur Les Anglais_, &c., but the head
“Literature” itself contains the singular statement that criticism is
_not_ literature—because nobody speaks of “une belle critique.” The
articles “Esprit” and “Goût” are attractive—especially the latter,
because it is on the critical watchword of the century: but we are sent
away, worse than empty, with some abuse of Shakespeare, and with the
statement, “No man of letters can possibly fail to recognise the
_perfected_ taste of Boileau in the _Art Poétique_.” Only, perhaps, the
article on _Art Dramatique_ is worthy of its title, and the reason of
this has been indicated.
-----
Footnote 676:
These are to be found in more places than one: the _Lettres sur les
Anglais_ (originally _Lettres Philosophiques_), those to the Prince of
Brunswick, the dialogue in which Rabelais figures with Lucian and
Erasmus, &c.
-----
The numerous _Mélanges Littéraires_ are again interesting
reading—indeed, when is Voltaire _not_ interesting, save when he is
scientific, or when he shows that “the zeal of the _devil’s_ house” can
inspire a man of genius with forty-curate-power dulness? They include
almost every kind of writing, from actual reviews (_Lettres aux Auteurs
de La Gazette Littéraire_) on books French and foreign, upwards or
downwards. But all those that are probably genuine exhibit just the same
characteristics as the more elaborate works. The reviews of Sterne and
of Churchill will show how really superficial Voltaire’s literary grip
was; though both of them (as being Voltaire’s they could not well help
doing) contain acute remarks. The too famous argument-abstract of
_Hamlet_[678] is perhaps the most remarkable example of irony exploding
through the touch-hole that literature affords. The “Parallel of Horace,
Boileau, and Pope” from such a hand might seem as if it could not be
without value: but it has very little. And perhaps nowhere does Voltaire
appear to much less critical advantage than in the _Lettre de M. de La
Visclède_ on La Fontaine, where, as in the case of Rabelais, it might be
thought that no prejudice could possibly affect him. The superfine
condemnation of the _bonhomme’s_ style, as filled with expressions _plus
faites pour le peuple que pour les honnêtes gens_ (not, let it be
observed, in the _Fables_, but in the _Contes_), could hardly tell a
more disastrous tale. Philistia by its Goliath in Paris echoes Philistia
by its common folk in London, at this special time. La Fontaine and
Goldsmith are “low.”
-----
Footnote 677:
This, the usually quoted form, runs in the _Lettres sur les A._, “un
Rabelais dans son bon sens, et vivant en bonne compagnie.”
Footnote 678:
Ed. cit., ix. 56.
-----
The fact would appear to be that, independently of that lack of purely
literary interest which has been noted above, other causes kept Voltaire
back from really original and valuable criticism. [Sidenote: _Causes of
his failure._] The sense of the necessity of clinging to and conserving
_something_, which has often been shown by iconoclasts, seems to have
directed itself in him towards literary orthodoxy: while, on the other
hand, as we have already seen, his natural acuteness refused to blink
entirely some of the absurdities of the “Rule” system. His craftsmanship
made it possible for him to succeed in certain kinds of artificial
poetry—the regular tragedy, the formal heroic poem, the light piece,
epigram, or epistle, or what not—which were specially favoured by
Classical criticism. He was not well equipped by nature for success in
any Romantic kind—not to mention that Romance was almost indissolubly
connected with those Ages of Faith which he scorned. Moreover, though no
man has committed more faults of taste, in the wider and nobler sense,
than did Voltaire, yet within a narrower and more arbitrary circle of
“taste” of the conventional kind, no one could walk with more unerring
precision. Yet again, the Great Assumption by which the neo-classics
made a changeling of their Taste with Good Sense, and mothered it on
Nature, appealed strongly to such philosophical theories as he had.
Accordingly, both in public and private,[679] the great heretic, with
very few exceptions, plays the part of a very Doctor of the Literary
Sorbonne, and leaves the attempt at a new criticism to the more
audacious innovation, and the more thorough-going naturalism, of
Diderot.[680]
-----
Footnote 679:
I have not thought it necessary to waste time and space by selecting
additional justificatory pieces from his enormous _Correspondence_.
Footnote 680:
This attitude was emphasised (perhaps by his dislike of Rousseau) in
his later years; and was handed on to men like Condorcet and La Harpe.
-----
Of the other _Di majores_ of the _philosophe_ school, Rousseau would
always have been prevented by his temperament from expressing critically
the appreciations which the same temperament might have suggested: and,
if he had been a critic at all, he would have been on the revolting and
Romantic side. [Sidenote: _Others: Buffon._] Diderot actually was so.
The critical utterances of D’Alembert,[681] chiefly if not wholly given
in his _Éloges_, express the clear understanding and by no means trivial
good sense of their writer. But, like Voltaire’s, D’Alembert’s heart was
elsewhere. Buffon remains; and by a curious accident he, though _totus
in_ the things of mere science, has left us one of the most noteworthy
phrases of literary criticism in the history of literature. Moreover,
this phrase is contained in a discourse[682] which is all literary and
almost all critical, which is very admirable within its own range and on
its own side, and which practically provides us with one of the first,
and to this day one of the best, discussions of Style as such. That we
have in these latter days “heard too much of Style” is often said, and
may be true: “where” we have _seen_ too much of it “you shall tell me”
as Seithenin said to the Prince. But we, in the restricted sense of
students of criticism, have not “seen too much” of discussions of style
hitherto. On the contrary, we have seen that the ancients were
constantly shy of it in its quiddity; that even Longinus seems to prefer
to abstract and embody one of its qualities and discuss that; and that
after the revival of criticism the old avoidances, or the old apologies
for the _phortikon ti_, were too often renewed. Buffon has none of this
prudery: though he lays the greatest possible stress on the necessity of
there being something behind style, of style being “the burin that
graves the thought.”
-----
Footnote 681:
The gibe of Gautier (_Caprices et Zigzags_, “Un tour en Belgique”),
where he calls the Sun “un astre à qui M. de Malfilâtre fait une ode
trouvée admirable par D’Alembert” contains no doubt something of
youthful Romantic naughtiness in it: but also something more. The ode
_has_ a frigid Akensidish grace; but there is too much about axes and
orbits therein: and it is to be feared that this, rather than the
poetry, attracted the _philosophe_ critic.
Footnote 682:
His Academic _Discours de Réception_ (Aug. 25, 1753). It is easily
accessible—for instance in the Didot _Œuvres Choisies_, i. 19-25.
-----
Perhaps he does not quite keep at the height of his famous and often
misquoted[683] dictum—“Le style est l’homme même”—in itself the best
thing ever said on the subject, and, as is the case with most good
things, made better by the context. [Sidenote: “_Style and the man._”]
He has been showing why only well-written books go down to posterity.
Information can be transferred; fact becomes public property; novelty
ceases to be novel. _Ces choses sont hors de l’homme; le style est_
[_de_?] _l’homme même._ In other words, the style—the form—is that
which the author adds to the matter; it is that inseparable, but
separably intelligible, element which cannot be transferred, taken
away, or lost. It is clear that Buffon would not have lent himself to
that discountenancing of the distinction of Matter and Form which some
have attempted. Perhaps his other remarks are less uniformly, though
they are often, admirable. He should not, as a man of natural science,
have congratulated the Academicians on contemning “le vain son des
mots,” which, he should have known, always has something, and may have
much, to do with style; and it is certainly inadequate to say that
style is “the _order and movement_ given to our thoughts.” There is
much that is true, but also something of mere neo-classic orthodoxy,
in his painful repetitions of the necessity of unity and greatness of
subject; and to say that “l’esprit humain ne peut rien créer” is sheer
_lèse-littérature_. Rather is it true that, except God, the human mind
is the only thing that can create, and that it shows its divine origin
thereby. But Buffon was only a man of science, and we must excuse him.
The special curse of the time[684] is curiously visible in his
enumeration, among the causes of nobility in style, of “L’attention à
ne nommer les choses que par _les termes les plus généraux_.” The
“streak of the tulip” barred again! But he is certainly right when he
says that “jamais l’imitation n’a rien créé”: though here it may be
retorted, “Yes; but imitation teaches how to discard itself, and to
begin to create,” while, as he has just extended the disability to the
human faculties generally, his point seems a blunt one. Still, his
directions for _ordonnance_ as a preliminary to style, his cautions
against _pointes_, _traits saillants_, pomposity [he might have recked
this rede a little more himself], and other things, are excellent. The
piece is extraordinary in its combination of originality, brilliancy,
and sense, and in it Science has certainly lent Literature one of the
best critical essays of the eighteenth century.
-----
Footnote 683:
It is generally quoted “Le style c’est l’homme.” There is a further
dispute whether it ought to be “_de_ l’homme même.” For what is
probably the nearest anticipation of it, _v. sup._, p. 336.
Footnote 684:
So again in the remark, not made formally, but often thrown in his
face, that certain verses were “as fine as fine _prose_.” But this
heresy, as readers of this volume will know, is only that of Fénelon
and La Motte revived.
-----
Not an unimportant document of the time for the history of criticism is
the critical attitude of that remarkable Marcellus of philosophism,
Vauvenargues.[685] The few _Réflexions Critiques_ which he has left are
very curious. Vauvenargues was a man of an absolute independence of
spirit so far as he knew; but conditioned by the limits of his
knowledge. He had neither time nor opportunity for much reading; he
probably knew little of any literature but his own. It must be
remembered also that his main bent was ethical, not literary. Such a man
should give us the form and pressure of the time in an unusual and
interesting way.
-----
Footnote 685:
His literary work has only one small section to itself, the
_Réflexions Critiques sur quelques Poètes_; but some of it appears in
the _Fragments_, the _Dialogues_, and elsewhere. All is in Gilbert’s
excellent edition of the _Œuvres_, (2 vols., Paris, 1857), some in
that volume of the Didot Collection which gives Vauvenargues’ _Maxims_
with those of La Rochefoucauld and Montesquieu.
-----
Vauvenargues does so. We find him, after a glowing and almost adequate
eulogy of La Fontaine, gibbeting him for showing _plus de style que
d’invention, et plus de négligence que d’exactitude_—not the happiest
pair of antitheses. [Sidenote: _Vauvenargues._] The subjects of his
_Tales_ are “low”—unfortunate word which “speaks” almost every one who
uses it—and they are not interesting, which is more surprising. Boileau,
on the contrary, is extolled to the skies. He has really too much genius
(like the 'Badian who was really too brave), and this excess, with a
smaller excess of fire, truth, solidity, _agrément_, may have perhaps
injured his range, depth, height, finesse, and grace. Molière again is
_trop bas_ (at least his subjects are), while La Bruyère escapes this
defect—you might as well set together Addison and Shakespeare, and no
doubt Vauvenargues would have done so. How different is Racine, who is
always “great”—“gallantly great,” let us add, like Mr Pepys in his new
suit. Voltaire, who had certainly prompted some of these sins, made a
little atonement by inducing Vauvenargues to admire Corneille to some
extent. But Corneille, he says, from his date, _could_ not have _le goût
juste_, and the parallel with Racine is one of the most interesting of
its numerous kind. J. B. Rousseau might have been nearly as good a poet
as Boileau, if Boileau had not taught him all he knew in poetry, but his
_vieux langage_ is most regrettable. Such were the opinions of a young
man of unusual ability, but with little taste in literature except that
which he found prevalent in the middle of the eighteenth century.
This middle, and the later part of it, saw in the Abbé Batteux the last
of that really remarkable, though not wholly estimable, line of
_législateurs du Parnasse_ which had begun with Boileau, and whose
edicts had been accepted, for the best part of a century, with almost
universal deference. [Sidenote: _Batteux._] Still later, and surviving
into the confines of the nineteenth century, La Harpe gives us almost
the last distinguished defender, and certainly a defender as
uncompromising as he was able, of neo-classic orthodoxy. Some attention
must be given to each of these, and to Marmontel between them, but we
need not say very much of others—except in the representative way.
Batteux began as an extoller of the _Henriade_, after many years spent
in schoolmastering and the occasional publication of Latin verses, but
before the century had reached the middle of its road. He essayed, a
little later, divers treatises[686] on Poetic and Rhetoric, all of which
were adjusted and collected in his _Principes de la Littérature_,[687]
while he also executed various minor works, the most useful of which was
_Les Quatre Poétiques_,[688] a translation, with critical notes, of
Aristotle, Horace, and Vida, with Boileau added. In so far as I am able
to judge, Batteux is about the best of the seventeenth-eighteenth
century “Preceptists.”[689] The Introduction to his introductory
tractate, _Les Beaux Arts réduits à un même Principe_, indulges in some
mild but by no means unbecoming irony on his predecessors,[690] and
expresses the candid opinion that few of them had really consulted
Aristotle at all. He admits the multiplicity and the galling character
of “rules”; but he thinks that these can be reduced to a tolerable and
innoxious, nay, in the highest degree useful, minimum, by keeping the
eye fixed on the Imitation of Nature, and of the best nature. But how is
this to guide us? Here Batteux shows real ingenuity by seizing on the
other great fetich of the eighteenth-century creed—Taste—as a regulator
to be in its turn regulated.
-----
Footnote 686:
_Les Beaux Arts réduits à un même principe_, Paris, 1746; _Cours de
Belles-Lettres_, 4 vols., Paris, 1750; _Traité de la Construction
Oratoire_, Paris, 1764.
Footnote 687:
5 vols., Paris, 1764. This is the edition I have used; later ones seem
to be in 6 vols., but without addition so far as I know.
Footnote 688:
2 vols., Paris, 1771.
Footnote 689:
It is perhaps right to warn the reader that this is not, I believe,
the general opinion.
Footnote 690:
See on Rollin, _sup._, p. 509.
-----
Indeed a careful perusal of Batteux cannot but force on us the
consideration that the mechanical age, the age of Arkwright and Watt,
was approaching, or had approached. [Sidenote: _His adjustment of Rules
and Taste._] His Rules and his Taste “clutch” each other by turns, like
the elaborate plant of the modern machinist. If the Rules are too narrow
and precise, Taste holds them open; if Taste shows any sign of getting
lawless, the Rules bring it to its bearings. It is extremely ingenious;
but the questions remain—Whether it is natural? and Whether any good
came from the exercise of the principles which it attempts to reconcile
and defend? The manner of Batteux, it must be allowed, is as much less
freezing and unsatisfactory than Le Bossu’s, as it is less arbitrary and
less aggressive than Boileau’s. These two would, in the face of fact and
history, have _identified_ Taste and a certain construction of Rule.
Batteux rather regards the two as reciprocal escapements, easing and
regulating each other. It is part of his merit that he recognises, to
some extent, the importance of observation. In fact, great part of this
introductory treatise is a naïf and interesting complaint of the
difficulty which the results of this observation are introducing into
Rule-criticism. “Rules are getting so many,” he admits in his opening
sentence; and, no doubt, so long as you find it necessary to make a new
rule whenever you find a new poet, the state of things must be more and
more parlous. But, like all his century-fellows without exception on the
Classical, and like too many on the other side, he does not think of
simply marching through the open door, and leaving the prison of Rule
and Kind behind him.
From these idols Batteux will not yet be separated: he hardens his heart
in a different manner from Pharaoh, and will not let himself go. The
_utile_ is never to be parted from the _dulce_; “the poems of Homer and
Virgil are not vain Romances, where the mind wanders at the will of a
mad imagination; they are great bodies of doctrine,” &c. Anacreon
[Heaven help us!] was himself determined to be a moral teacher.[691]
Again, there must be Action, and it must be single, united, simple, yet
of variety; the style must not be too low, or too high, &c., &c.
-----
Footnote 691:
_Op. cit._, i. 60.
-----
When Batteux has got into the old rut, he remains in it. We slip into
the well-known treatises by Kinds—Dialogue, Eclogue, Heroic Poem, and
the rest—with the equally well-known examination afterwards of
celebrated examples in a shamefaced kind of way—to the extent of two
whole volumes for poetry, and a third (actually the fourth) for prose.
Finally, we have what is really a separate tractate, _De la Construction
Oratoire_. The details in these later volumes are often excellent; but
obviously, and _per se_, they fall into quite a lower rank as compared
with the first. If we were to look at nothing but the fact, frankly
acknowledged by Batteux, that he is now considering French classical
literature only, we should be able to detect the error. In his first
volume he had at least referred to Milton.
In other words Batteux, like the rest of them, is not so much a halter
between two opinions as a man who has deliberately made up his mind to
abide by one, but who will let in as much of the other as he thinks it
safe to do, or cannot help doing. [Sidenote: _His incompleteness._] Let
him once extend his principle of observation in time, country, and kind,
and, being a reasonably ingenious and ingenuous person, he must
discover, first, that his elaborate double-check system of Rule and
Taste will not work, and, secondly, that there is not the least need of
it. You must charge epicycle on cycle before you can get, even with the
freest play of Taste, the _Iliad_ and the _Æneid_ and the _Orlando_ to
work together under any Rule. Epicycle must be added to epicycle before
you can get in the _Chanson de Roland_ and the _Morte d’Arthur_ as well.
Drop your “rule,” ask simply, “Are the things put before me said
_poeticamente_?” “Do they give me the poetic pleasure?” and there is no
further difficulty. Batteux, though, as we have seen, by no means a
bigot, would probably have stopped his ears and rent his clothes if such
a suggestion had been made to him.
Batteux is a remarkable, and probably the latest, example of
neo-classicism sitting at ease in Zion and promulgating laws for
submissive nations; in La Harpe, with an even stronger dogmatism, we
shall find, if not the full consciousness that the enemy is at the gates
of the capital, at any rate distinct evidence of knowledge that there is
sedition in the provinces.[692] [Sidenote: _Marmontel._] Between the
two, Marmontel[693] is a distinguished, and a not disagreeable, example
of that middle state which we find everywhere in the late eighteenth
century but which in France is distinguished at once by greater
professed orthodoxy, and by concessions and compromises of a specially
tell-tale kind. The critical work of the author of _Bélisaire_ and _Les
Incas_ is very considerable in bulk. He has written an Essay on Romance
in connection with the two very “anodyne” examples of the kind just
referred to; an Essay (indeed two essays) on Taste; many book reviews
for the _Observateur Littéraire_, &c.; prefaces and comments for some
specimens of French early seventeenth-century drama—Mairet’s
_Sophonisbe_, Du Ryer’s _Scévole_, &c.; and, besides other things, a
mass of articles on literary and critical subjects for the
_Encyclopédie_, which are generally known in their collected form as
_Éléments de Littérature_. He has been rather variously judged as a
critic. There is no doubt that he is a special sinner in that perpetual
gabble about _la vertu, la morale_, and the rest, which is so sickening
in the whole group; and which more than justified Mr Carlyle’s vigorous
apostrophe, “_Be_ virtuous, in the Devil’s name and his grandmother’s,
and have done with it!” He has also that apparent inconsistency,
something of which (as we have seen once for all in Dryden’s case) often
shows itself in men of alert literary interests who do not very early
work out for themselves a personal literary creed, and who are averse to
swallowing a ready-made one. But at the same time he never openly
quarrels with neo-classicism, and is sometimes one of its most egregious
spokesmen; while he is “philosophastrous,” in the special
eighteenth-century kind, to a point which closely approaches caricature.
[Sidenote: _Oddities and qualities of his criticism._] I have quoted
elsewhere, but must necessarily quote again here, his three egregious
and pyramidal reasons[694] for the puzzling excellence of English
poetry. Either, it seems, the Englishman, being a glory-loving animal,
sees that poetry adds to the lustre of nations, and so he goes and does
it; _or_ being naturally given to meditation and sadness, he needs to be
moved and distracted by the illusions of this beautiful art; _or_ [Shade
of Molière!] it is because his genius in certain respects is proper for
Poesy.
-----
Footnote 692:
He, with Condorcet and M. J. Chénier, is sometimes spoken of as
showing a classical _reaction_ against the eighteenth-century
toleration of English and other vagaries which we shall see in
Marmontel. I think “reaction” is rather too strong a word, though
“recrudescence” might do. Condorcet was only a critic _par interim_,
if even that, nor need we occupy ourselves with him: justice shall be
done (Fortune permitting) in the next volume to the person who had the
honour to be brother to André Chénier.
Footnote 693:
_Œuvres Complètes_, 7 vols., Paris 1819; _Éléments de Littérature_ by
themselves, 3 vols. in the Didot Collection.
Footnote 694:
_El. de Litt._, article _Poésie_.
-----
To comment on this would only spoil it; but let it be observed that
Marmontel _does_ admit the excellence of English poetry. So also, though
he never swerves, in consciousness or conscience, from neo-classic
orthodoxy, he insinuates certain doubts about Boileau, and quotes,[695]
at full length, two pieces of the despised Ronsard as showing lyrical
qualities in which the legislator of Parnassus is wanting. His article
_Poétique_ is, considering his standpoint, a quite extraordinarily just
summary and criticism of the most celebrated authorities on the
subject—Aristotle, Horace, Vida, Scaliger, Castelvetro, Vauquelin,
Boileau, Le Bossu, Gravina, &c.—and the attitude to Boileau,[696]
visible, as has been said, elsewhere, is extremely noteworthy. Marmontel
speaks of Despréaux with compliments: but some, even of his praises, are
not a little equivocal, and he contrives to put his subject’s faults
with perfect politeness indeed, but without a vestige of compromise.
Boileau, he says, gives a precise and luminous notion of all the kinds,
but he is not deep on a single one: his _Art_ may contribute to form the
taste if it be well understood, but to understand it well one must have
the taste already formed.
-----
Footnote 695:
Ibid., art. _Anacréontique_.
Footnote 696:
The enemy will perhaps say, parodying Hegel: “With this historian of
criticism, anybody is a critic who does not believe in Boileau.” 'A
will have a little galled me: but not seriously.
-----
It would be possible, of course,—indeed, very easy,—to select from
Marmontel’s abundant critical writings, which covered great part of a
long lifetime in their composition, a bundle of “classical” absurdities
which would leave nothing to desire. But the critic is almost always
better than his form of creed. He takes an obviously genuine, if of
necessity not at first a thoroughly well instructed, interest in the
_Histoire du Théâtre_ of the Frères Parfait, the first systematic[697]
dealing with old French literature since Fauchet and Pasquier: his
_Essai sur les Romans_, though of course considered _du côté moral_, is,
for his date, a noteworthy attempt in that comparative and historical
study of literature which was to lead to the new birth of criticism. It
is most remarkable to find him, in the early reviews of his
_Observateur_,[698] dating from the midst of the fifth decade of the
eighteenth century, observing, as to _Hamlet_ in La Place’s translation,
that the ghost-scene and the duel with Laertes inspire terror and
pathetic interest at the very reading, asking why “our poets” should
deny themselves the use of these great springs of the two tragic
passions, admiring the taste and justice of the observations to the
players, and actually finding _Titus Andronicus_, though “frightful and
sanguinary,” a thing worth serious study. That it is possible to extract
from these very places, as from others, the usual stuff about
Shakespeare’s “want of order and decency,” &c., is of no moment. _This_
is matter of course: it is not matter of course that, in the dead waist
and middle of the eighteenth century, a French critic should write of
the description of Cleopatra on the Cydnus: “Ce morceau présente
Shakespeare sous un nouveau point de vue. On n’a connu jusqu'à présent
que la force du génie de cet auteur: on ne s’attendait pas à tant de
délicatesse et de légèreté.”[699]
-----
Footnote 697:
I use this word not as synonymous with “methodical,” but as
contrasting the book with fragmentary commentaries like those of La
Monnoye and Le Duchat.
Footnote 698:
These will be found in vol. vii. of ed. cit.
Footnote 699:
M. Texte must have forgotten these remarkable passages, or perhaps not
have known them, when in M. Petit de Julleville’s large _History_ (vi.
754) he wrote that La Place’s version could only confirm readers in
the idea that Shakespeare was a chaos of monstrosity and triviality.
Evidently it had quite a different effect on Marmontel.
-----
I should like to dwell longer on Marmontel if it were only for two or
three phrases which appear in one short article,[700] “Depuis que
Pascal et Corneille, Racine et Boileau ont _épuré et appauvri_ la
langue de Marot et de Montaigne.... Boileau n’avait pas reçu de la
nature l’organe avec lequel on sent les beautés simples et touchantes
de notre divin fabuliste [La Fontaine of course].... Il est à
souhaiter qu’on n’abandonne pas ce langage du bon vieux temps ... on
ferait un joli dictionnaire des mots qu’on a tort d’abandonner et de
laisser vieillir.” It must be clear to any one who reads these phrases
that there is the germ of _mil-huit-cent-trente_ in them—the first and
hardly certain sound of the knell of narrow, colourless vocabulary and
literature in France. But enough has probably been said. It would be
difficult to make out a case for Marmontel as in any way a great
critic. He has not cleared his mind of cant enough for that. But he is
an instance, and an important instance, of the way in which the
clearing agents were being gradually thrown into the minds of men of
letters at this time, and of the reaction which they were—at first
partially and accidentally—producing. Even his _Essai sur le Goût_,
fantastically arbitrary as it is, wears at times almost an air of
irony, as if the writer were really exposing the arbitrariness and the
convention of the thing he is ostensibly praising. He is comparing and
tasting, not simply deducing: and however much he may still be
inclined to think with his master that the Satan, Sin, and Death piece
is an unimaginable horror, and the citizen scenes in Shakespeare’s
Roman plays a vulgar excrescence, he is far from the obstinate
sublimity-in-absurdity of La Harpe. He at least does not hold that a
beauty, not according to rule, has no business to be a beauty; that
the tree is not to be judged by the fruit, but the fruit by the ticket
on the tree.
-----
Footnote 700:
Under the head _Marotique_.
-----
In the _mare magnum_ of critical writing at this period, constantly fed
by books, literary periodicals, academic competitions, and what not, it
would be idle to attempt to chronicle drops—individuals who are not in
some special way interesting or representative. [Sidenote: _Others._] It
would be especially idle because—for reasons indicated more than once in
passing already—the bulk of the criticism of this time in France is
really of little value, being as doctrine make-believe, and destitute of
thoroughness, and as appreciation injured by narrowness of reading and
want of true literary interest. It cannot have been quite accidental,
although the great collaborative _Histoire de la Littérature Française_
of the late M. Petit de Julleville is not a model of methodic adequacy,
that there is no strictly critical chapter in the volume on the
eighteenth century. [Sidenote: _Thomas, Suard, &c._] Take, for instance,
two such representative men as Suard and Thomas, both of them born near
the beginning of the second generation of the century, and therefore
characteristic of its very central class and _crû_. Both enjoyed almost
the highest reputation in the second rank. Marmontel somewhere speaks of
Thomas’s _Essai sur les Éloges_ as the best piece of critical inquiry
which had appeared since Cicero on the Orator; but it is fair to
remember that Thomas had refused to stand against Marmontel for the
Academy. Suard, for many years Secretary of the Academy itself,
seriously endeavoured, and was by his contemporaries thought not to have
endeavoured in vain, to make that office a sort of Criticship Laureate
or King’s Remembrancership of Literature. He has left volumes on volumes
of critical work; and even now prefaces, introductions, &c., from his
pen may be found in the older class of standard editions of French
classics. Yet the work of neither of these would justify us in doing
more than refer to them in this fashion. It is excellently written in
the current style, inclining to declamation and solemnity in
Thomas,[701] to _persiflage_ and smartness in Suard. It says what an
academic critic of the time was supposed to say, and knows what he was
supposed to know. But it really is, in Miss Mills’ excellent figure,
“the desert of Sahara,” and a desert without many, if any, oases.
-----
Footnote 701:
_L’emphatique Thomas_, as he is duly called in that traditional
distribution of epithets which is so dear to the French mind, and
which helps to explain why it is always, in its depths, neo-classic.
-----
La Harpe is a different person. He is not very kind to Batteux.
[Sidenote: _La Harpe._] He patronises his principles, and allows his
scholarship to be sound; but finds fault with his style, calls his
criticism _commune_—“lacking in distinction” is perhaps the best
equivalent—his ideas narrow, and his prejudices pedantic. It would not
be quite just to say _De te fabula_, but this is almost as much as we
could say if we were judging La Harpe, after his own fashion of
judgment, from a different standpoint. But the historian cannot judge
thus. La Harpe is really an important person in the History of
Criticism. He “makes an end,” as Mr Carlyle used to say; in other words,
whether he is or is not the last eminent neo-classical critic of France,
he puts this particular phase of criticism as sharply and as effectively
as it can be put. Nay, he does even more than this for us; he shows us
neo-classicism at bay. Already, by the time of his later lectures, when
by the oddest coincidence he was defending Voltaire and abusing Diderot,
making head at once against the Jacobins and against that party of
revived mediævalism which was the surest antidote to Jacobinism, there
were persons—Népomucène Lemercier, and others—who held that Boileau and
Racine had killed French poetry. Against these La Harpe takes up his
testimony; and the necessity of opposition makes it all the more
decided.
His _Cours de Littérature_ is a formidable—I had almost called it an
impossible—book to tackle, composed of, or redacted from, the lectures
of many years, and unfortunately, though not unnaturally, dwelling most
fully on the parts of the subject that are of least real importance.
[Sidenote: _His_ Cours de Littérature.] Its first edition[702] was a
shelf-full in itself. It now fills, with some fragments, nearly the
whole of three great volumes of the _Panthéon Littéraire_, and nearly
two-thirds, certainly three-fifths, of this are devoted to the French
literature of the eighteenth century, a subject for which, to speak
frankly, it may be doubted whether any posterity will have time
corresponding to spare. Even in the earlier and more general parts there
are defects, quite unconnected with the soundness or unsoundness of La
Harpe’s general critical position. There is nothing which one should be
slower to impute, save on the very clearest evidence, than ignorance of
a subject of which a writer professes knowledge; and one should be slow,
not merely on general principles of good manners, but because there is
nothing which the baser kind of critic is so ready to impute. But I own
that, after careful reading and reluctantly, I have come to the
conclusion that La Harpe’s knowledge of the classics left a very great
deal to desire. That, in his survey of Epic, he omits Apollonius Rhodius
in his proper place altogether and puts him in a postscript, might be a
mere oversight, negligible by all but the illiberal: unfortunately the
postscript itself shows no signs of critical appreciation. It is more
unfortunate still that he should say that all the writers of ancient
Rome loaded Catullus with eulogy, when we know that Horace only spares
him a passing sneer, that Quintilian has no notice for anything but his
“bitterness,” and that hardly anybody but Martial does him real justice.
However, we need not dwell on this. If La Harpe was not very widely or
deeply read in old-world or in old-French literature, he certainly knew
the French literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries very
well indeed.
-----
Footnote 702:
18 vols. (Paris, 1825 _sq._)
-----
On the other hand, it is significant, and awkward, that, in dealing with
English, German, and other modern literatures, he always seems to refer
to translations, and hardly ever ventures a criticism except on the mere
matter of the poem. [Sidenote: _His critical position as_ ultimus
suorum.] Moreover, which is of even more importance for us, he was not
in the slightest doubt about his point of view either of these or of any
other literature. His censures and his praises are adjusted with almost
unerring accuracy to the neo-classic creed, as we have defined and
illustrated it in this volume. His _Introduction_ pours all the scorn he
could muster on those who contemn the art of writing. Even Shakespeare,
coarse as he is, was not without learning. That poet, Dante, and Milton
executed “monstrous” works; but in these monsters there were some
beautiful parts done according to “the principles.” And, to do him
justice, he never swerves or flinches from this. English has “an
inconceivable pronunciation.”[703] The _Odyssey_ is an _Arabian Nights’_
tale, puerile, languid, seriously extravagant, even ignoble in parts.
The sojourns with Calypso and Circe offer nothing interesting to La
Harpe. The wonderful descent to Hades is as bad as that of Æneas is
admirable. La Harpe tells us that these and other similar judgments are
proofs of his severe frankness. They certainly are; he has told us what
he is.
-----
Footnote 703:
La Harpe here anticipated the Malay chief whom Mr Wallace met in the
farthest isles of the Bird of Paradise, and who chased him therefrom
with contumely when he said he came from a place called “England.”
“Unglung,” said the chief, was not a word that a man could pronounce.
And therefore—this is La Harpe all over—there could be no such place,
and Mr Wallace was a liar.
-----
That after this he should pronounce the _Georgics_ “the most perfect
poem transmitted to us by the Ancients”; fix on the _Prometheus_ his
favourite epithet of “monstrous,” and say that it “cannot even be called
a tragedy”; think Plutarch thoroughly justified in his censure of
Aristophanes; read Thucydides with less pleasure than Xenophon; and
decide that Apuleius wrote _vers le moyen age_, which was _un
désert_,—these things do not surprise us, nor that he should tolerate
_Ossian_ after not tolerating Milton. It is in his fragment on the
last-named poet that he gives us his whole secret, with one of those
intentional, yet really unconscious, bursts of frankness which have been
already noticed. “La poésie,” he says, “ne doit me peindre que ce que je
peux comprendre, admettre, ou supposer.” That “suspension of disbelief”
in which, at no distant date, Coleridge was to discover the real poetic
effect would, it is clear, have been vehemently resisted and refused by
La Harpe, or rather it could never have entered his head as possible.
He remains therefore hopelessly self-shut out of the gates of
Poetry—only admitting and comprehending those beauties which stray into
the precinct of Rhetoric; discerning with horror “monsters” within the
gates themselves; and in his milder moments conjecturing charitably
that, if Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton had only always observed the
rules, which they sometimes slipped into, they might have been nearly as
good poets—he will not say quite—as Racine and Voltaire. Never have we
met, nor shall we ever meet again, a critical Ephraim so utterly joined
to idols. It is unnecessary—it would even be useless—to argue about him;
he must be observed, registered, and passed. Yet I do not pretend to
regret the time which I have myself spent over him. He writes well; he
sees clearly through his “monstrous” spectacles and subject to their
laws; above all, he has, what is, for some readers at any rate, the
intense and unfailing charm of “Thorough.” He is no cowardly
Braggadochio or inconstant Paridell: he is Sansfoy and Sansloy in
one—defending his Duessa, and perfectly ready to draw sword and spend
blood for her at any moment. Nor does he wield the said sword by any
means uncraftsmanly. Give him his premisses and his postulates, his
Rules, his false Reason and sham Nature, his criterion of the admissible
and comprehensible, and he very seldom makes a false conclusion. Would
that all Gloriana’s own knights were as uncompromising, as hardy, and as
deft!
Of the immense mass of Academic _Éloges_, and prize Essays generally,
composed during the eighteenth century, no extended or minute account
will be expected here. [Sidenote: _The Academic Essay._] I have myself,
speaking without the slightest exaggeration, read hundreds of them:
indeed it is difficult to find a French man of letters, of any name
during the whole time, in whose works some specimens of the kind do not
figure. But—and it is at once a reason for dealing with them generally
and a reason for not dealing with them as individuals—there is hardly
any kind of publication which more fatally indicates the defects of the
Academic system, and of that phase of criticism and literary taste of
which it was the exponent. They were written in some cases—it is but
repeating in other words what has been just said—by men of the greatest
talent; they constituted with a play of one kind or another, the almost
invariable _début_ of every Frenchman who had literary talent, great or
small. They exhibit a relatively high level of a certain kind of
literary, or at least rhetorical, attainment. But the last adjective has
let slip the dogs on them, for they are almost always rhetorical in the
worst senses of the word. Extensive reading in literature was not wanted
by the forty guards of the Capitol; original thinking was quite certain
to alarm them. The elegant nullity of the Greek Declamation, and the
_ampullæ_ of the Roman, were the best things that were likely to be
found. Yet sometimes in literature, as in philosophy, the Academic Essay
produced remarkable things. And we may give some space to perhaps its
most remarkable writer towards the close of the time, a writer
symptomatic in the very highest degree, as showing the hold which
neo-classic ideas still had in France—that is to say, Rivarol.[704]
-----
Footnote 704:
There is not, I think, even yet any complete edition of Rivarol,
though M. de Lescure some years ago devoted much attention to him. All
the work referred to below will be found in the older _Œuvres de
Rivarol_ (published by Delahays, Paris, 1857), with a useful selection
of criticisms. The present writer contributed to the _Fortnightly
Review_ for January 1879 an essay on Rivarol and Chamfort, which will
be found reprinted in _Miscellaneous Essays_ (2nd ed., London, 1895).
Chamfort himself can only be mentioned here as showing, in his
_Éloges_ on Molière and La Fontaine, how insignificant such things,
written even by such a man, can be.
-----
That “the St George of the epigram” might have been really great as a
critic there can be little doubt; besides lesser exercises in this
vocation, which are always acute if not always quite just, he has left
us two fairly solid Essays, and a brilliant literary “skit,” to enable
us to judge. [Sidenote: _Rivarol._] The last of the three, the _Almanach
des Grands Hommes de nos jours_, does, with more wit, better temper, and
better manners, what Gifford was to do a little later in England; it is
a sort of sprinkling of an anodyne but potent Keating’s powder on the
small poets and men of letters of the time just before the Revolution.
But the treatise _De l’Universalité de la Langue Française_, laid before
the Academy of Berlin in 1783, and the Preface to the writer’s
Translation of the _Inferno_, are really solid documents. Both are
prodigies of ingenuity, acuteness, and command of phrase, conditioned by
want of knowledge and by _parti pris_. How praise Dante better than by
saying that Italian took in his hands “une _fierté_ qu’elle n’eut plus
après lui”?[705] how better describe what we miss even in Ariosto, even
in Petrarch? Yet how go further astray than in finding fault with the
_Inferno_ because “on ne rencontre pas assez d’épisodes”?[706] What a
critical piercing to the joints and marrow of the fault of
eighteenth-century poetry is the remark that Dante’s verses “se tiennent
debout par la seule force du substantif et du verbe sans le concours
d’une seule épithète!” And what a falling off is there when one passes
from this to the old beauty-and-fault jangles and jars!
-----
Footnote 705:
Ed. cit., p. 277 _sq._
Footnote 706:
This is neo-classic criticism in its quintessence of corruption. What
fit reader wants, or could endure, an _episode_ between _Per me si va_
and _riveder le stelle_? You might as well demand “half an hour’s
interval for refreshments.” But your Epic must have your Episode. It
is like “Where is your brown tree?”
-----
The _Universality of French_[707] has many points of curiosity; but we
must abide by those which are strictly literary. The temptation of the
style to rhetoric, and, at the same time, “the solace of this sin,”
could hardly be better shown than in Rivarol’s phrasing of the radical
and inseparable clearness of French, as “une probité attachée à son
génie.”[708] How happy is the admission that poets of other countries
“give their metaphors at a higher strength,” “embrace the figurative
style closer,” and are deeper and fuller in colour! Yet the history,
both of French and English literature, given in each case at some
length, is inadequate and incorrect, the comparisons are childish, and
the vaticinations absurd. In fact, Rivarol was writing up to certain
fixed ideas, the chief of which was that the French literature of
1660-1780 was the greatest that had ever existed—perhaps that ever could
exist—in the world.
-----
Footnote 707:
Ed. cit., p. 79 _sq._
Footnote 708:
This, however, is _not_ in the Essay, but in a separate “Maxim.”
-----
This notion—to which it is but just to admit that other nations had
given only too much countenance and support, though England and Germany
at least were fast emancipating themselves—and the numbing effect of the
general neo-classic creed from which it was no very extravagant
deduction, mar a very large proportion[709] of French criticism during
the century, and, almost without exception, the whole of what we here
call its orthodox criticism. So long as it, or anything like it,
prevails in any country, at any time, the best criticism is impossible;
the “He followeth not _us_” interferes with all due appreciation.[710]
-----
Footnote 709:
Cf., for instance, Batteux, quite a reasonable person on the whole. He
has no doubt (i. 80, 81) of the excellence, the almost perfection, at
which French taste has arrived; he only fears that it may be
impossible to guard against falling from so high an estate. This
extraordinary self-complacency is a little less noticeable in England,
but only a little. When we thought that Mr Pope had improved even upon
Mr Dryden, and was in a sort of Upper House of Literature as compared
with Shakespeare and Chaucer, we could not throw many stones at those
who considered Voltaire a better poet than Ronsard.
Footnote 710:
The corresponding chapter to this in that “History of Critical _Ana_,”
which we must not write, would be particularly rich. Every branch of
French literature at the time is full of such things; the most amusing
of all, perhaps, being Crébillon’s malicious eulogy-satire on
_Marivaudage_ at the end of the 2nd book of _L’Ecumoire_, where Tanzäi
condemns, and Néadarné is charmed with, the juxtaposition of words
“that never met before, and thought they could not possibly get on
together,” and the depicting “not merely of what everybody has done
and said and thought, but of what they would like to have thought but
did not!”
-----
CHAPTER III.
CLASSICISM IN THE OTHER NATIONS.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS—TEMPORARY REVIVAL OF ITALIAN
CRITICISM—GRAVINA—MURATORI: HIS ‘DELLA PERFETTA
POESIA’—CRESCIMBENI—QUADRIO—THE EMERGENCE OF LITERARY
HISTORY—FURTHER DECADENCE OF ITALIAN
CRITICISM—METASTASIO—NEO-CLASSICISM TRIUMPHS IN SPAIN—THE
ABSURDITIES OF ARTIGA—LUZÁN—THE REST UNINERESTING—FEYJÓO, ISLA, AND
OTHERS—RISE AT LAST OF GERMAN CRITICISM—ITS SCHOOL TIME—CLASSICISM
AT BAY ALMOST FROM THE FIRST: GOTTSCHED—THE ‘VERSUCH EINER
CRITISCHEN DICHTKUNST’—ITS CHIEF IDEA—SPECIMEN DETAILS—GELLERT: HE
TRANSACTS.
It would be scarcely more than one of those sweeping generalisations
which attract a certain class of readers, if one were to say that,
during the eighteenth century, England and France exercised a reciprocal
influence over one another in literature, the results of which the
remaining nations did little but imitate. [Sidenote: _Preliminary
remarks._] It is certainly true that, as regards the special subject of
this particular Book—the criticism of orthodox neo-classicism in the
eighteenth century—Germany, Italy, and Spain play a part to which
justice can be very briefly done, while the rest may well be silence.
Nor will Spain and Italy at least have much more to give us when, and
if, in the next volume, we turn from the setting to the rising sun. But
it will be very different with Germany, where almost the entire interest
lies in the restless struggles and obstinate questioning which lead to
Romanticism, and which practically show themselves from the very moment
when the Swiss School aroused German criticism from its long sleep after
Opitz. What has to be said of the Gottscheds and Gellerts of the
Northern Country had better be said last, so as to bring the matter into
closer juxtaposition with the account of the Romantic Revolt itself.
Italy (which has some interest in at least the beginning of the century)
and Spain, which has very little in any part of it, must be taken first.
For some reason, or for none, the closing years of the seventeenth
century, and the opening of the eighteenth, in Italy saw a very
considerable revival of that critical spirit which, as we know, had died
away so strangely, after its vigorous flourishing a hundred years
earlier. [Sidenote: _Temporary revival of Italian Criticism._] It is
true that this new Italian criticism is of a rather tell-tale kind—that
it is, in great part at least, criticism of erudition and of retrospect.
But Gravina, Muratori, Crescimbeni, and even Quadrio, form a group of no
small interest. The first is a real critic of great, if not always
well-directed, ability; the second, something of a real critic too, with
amazing erudition; the third, the author of the first really literary
history of a national literature; and the fourth, the first pioneer—no
Lynceus, certainly, but still a pioneer-guide—in the ways of general and
comparative literary study.
Gianvincenzo Gravina is one of those persons who particularly invite the
student to idle _ægri somnia_ as to what they might have been in other
times and circumstances. [Sidenote: _Gravina._] A lawyer, a
_littérateur_, the adoptive father of Metastasio, the joint founder of
the Arcadian Academy, a critic of remarkable shrewdness, who wrote
excellent things on tragedy, and thought his own bad tragedies
excellent—he tempts one strangely. His most famous and most often quoted
critical work is _Della Ragion Poetica_,[711] but it is necessary, in
order to appreciate his criticism, to go to his _Works_[712] and read
also the _Della Tragedia_ and the _Discorso delle Favole_. The total
effect is, as with most other eighteenth-century critics, a conclusion
that the writer has not “found his way”: though he is nearer to it than
some others writing later. The _Della Ragion Poetica_ is a most
interesting labyrinth of cross-purposes. The strongly scholastic
character of Italian serious thought, which we have noticed in Rinaldini
only a few years earlier,[713] betrays itself in Gravina’s opening _del
vero e del falso_; _del reale e del finto_; and in an episodic
discussion of the origin of Idolatry, which may seem absolutely
preposterous at first sight, but which works itself into the
consideration of Fable not so ill. The admirable description of Homer as
“the potentest of mages and the wisest of enchanters, in that he makes
use of words not so much for the complacency of the ear as for the
advantage of the imagination,”[714] is balanced, at a page or two’s
distance, by a fling at the _perniciosa turba de' Romanzi_. The utility
of poetry is gravely insisted on, and we are invited as usual to the
study of the Kinds; but section xiv., on “Popular Judgment,” is instinct
with that Italian common-sense which had shown itself in various ways
during the sixteenth century, through mouths so different as those of
Castelvetro and Cinthio Giraldi, a sense almost epigrammatically
concentrated in the phrase _ne con solo popolo ne senza il popolo_. In
these passages of Gravina’s there is to be found, put not indeed quite
clearly, but unmistakably on fair allowance, a doctrine which hardly any
critic of any day has sufficiently digested—that there is something in
poetry corresponding, in measure and degree, to a poetical sentiment
which only needs waking in all but the exceptions of mankind. What
libraries of vain or positively mischievous disquisition should we have
been spared, what unintelligent laudation of Burns when the intelligent
is so easy, what unintelligent depreciation of Béranger when the
abstinence from it is surely not so difficult, what idle and obstinate
questionings about Donne or Whitman, Macaulay or Moore, and a hundred
others of the most opposite kinds, if people would only have remembered
our author’s sound and sober law[715] that "in all men there gleams
through [_traspare_] I know not what discernment of the Good "to which
poets, if they know how, can appeal!
-----
Footnote 711:
My copy is the Naples edition of 1732. But the book had appeared some
four-and-twenty years earlier at Rome (some even quote a Roman ed. of
1704).
Footnote 712:
Leipsic, 1737.
Footnote 713:
_V. sup._, p. 330.
Footnote 714:
Ed. cit., p. 12.
Footnote 715:
Ibid., p. 45.
-----
A large part of Gravina’s work in the _Ragion_ consists of an actual
historical survey of poets and poetry in the spirit which, as we have
seen and shall see, was so prevalent in his day; and his judgments, if a
little traditional, are almost always sound, whether he is dealing with
the classics or with the great Renaissance group of Italian-Latin
poets.[716] Nor should he lack due meed for the word of praise he gives
to Folengo, a writer little likely to appeal to the ordinary
eighteenth-century spirit. When one thinks of the extreme inadequacy of
French judgments of Rabelais himself at this time, it is no small merit
in Gravina to have said, of one of not the least of Rabelais’ creditors,
that “he wanted only will, not strength, to write a noble poem,” and
actually possessed learning, invention, and fancy. The first book of the
_Della Ragion Poetica_ ends thus with an author who must have seemed, to
the usual eighteenth-century critic, nearly as sad and bad and mad as
Rabelais and Shakespeare,[717] and in whom it is not now difficult to
see much Rabelaisian and even some Shakespearian quality. The second
deals with the Italian vernacular. Gravina duly admires Dante; but his
elaborate apology for rhyme is noteworthy and amusing. It was the way of
the eighteenth century to apologise for all sorts of things—from the
Bible downwards—that were not in the least need of it. He is a little
less shamefaced on the question of the vulgar tongue; and says excellent
things about the _De Vulgari_ itself—that “discourse so subtle and so
true.” Indeed he conducts his whole discussion on the Vernacular, which
is long, in accordance with the principles of the tractate, and gives to
Dante in all nearly fifty pages, or more than half of the book,
announcing his deliberate intention _giudicare spediatamente_ of the
rest from Boiardo and Ariosto downwards. The whole forms a very
interesting survey of Italian poetry, though perhaps the most
interesting of Gravina’s separate critical utterances is to be found,
not in it but, in his short Latin Letter _De Poesi_ to Maffei, in which
he speaks of La Casa as _qui alter potest haberi a Petrarca Lyricorum
princeps_. It is a bold saying, but not hard to justify, concerning the
author of _Errai gran tempo_ and _O sonno, o de la queta_.
-----
Footnote 716:
He is very interesting on these, being the principal critic, between
their own times and those modern days which have forgotten them, to
deal with the subject.
Footnote 717:
Gravina calls the opposite style to Macaronic not, as most do,
_pedantesco_, but _Fidenziano_, from Fidentio, the _nom de guerre_ of
Camillo Scrofa, author of certain egregious pedantesque pieces.
-----
The monumental work of Muratori in history and antiquities has
overshadowed his accomplishment in literature; and some respectable
books of reference hardly mention this; but it is in fact considerable.
[Sidenote: _Muratori: his_ Della Perfetta Poesia.] We have already had
occasion to refer to the service that he did in editing the
miscellaneous critical papers of Castelvetro, and he also did important
work on the Italian Theatre; but his _Della Perfetta Poesia
Italiana_[718] is a more original title-deed. There is no doubt that it
had great influence: some have even thought that Luzán (_v. infra_, p.
548) was indebted to it for the impulse which enabled him finally to
overcome the remnants of Romantic resistance in Spain, and to seat
Neo-classicism at last triumphant in the country of Don Quixote. But it
does not need this doubtful and reflected honour. The book is, given its
lights and its time, a very good book. It accepts, without much or any
demur, that notion of Good Taste which the seventeenth century
excogitated and the eighteenth almost universally accepted, postponing
inquiry whether it were the false Florimel or the true. But Muratori is
both a historian and a philosopher; and he makes good use of both his
qualifications. He contrasts, effectively enough, the supposed
infallibility of Petrarch in Taste, the variety (without deserting this)
of the sixteenth century, and the _pessimo gusto_ of that which had just
closed when he wrote. He will have it that Poetry is “a daughter and
servant of Moral Philosophy”—in which case it must be sadly admitted
that the mother is too often not justified of the daughter, and that the
service is not seldom unprofitable. But he comes (perhaps inspired by
Tasso) nearer to universal acceptance when he tells us that Poetic
Beauty is “a new and marvellously delightful Truth,” and he is specially
copious on the Fancy—so much so that one imagines it not impossible that
Addison may have seen the treatise, more particularly as there is much
about “True and False Wit” in the Second Book of the _Perfetta Poesia_.
He is, in his Third Book, liberal on the question of Useful or
Delightful—the latter will do very well if it is healthy
delight[719]—and he discusses the defects of poets, and the various
parts of poetry, with sense and discrimination. All this is of course
still too much “in the air”; it makes the old mistake of taking for
granted that _poesis_ can be in some way strained off, or distilled
from, _poeta_ and _poema_. But this defect is to some extent repaired in
the sequel, and the whole is a book far from despicable. The chief
defect of it (a defect which extends also to Gravina) is the absence of
comparative criticism—of the attempt, at least, to study literature as a
whole.
-----
Footnote 718:
Modena, 1706.
Footnote 719:
Du Bos, a little later, with the apolausticism of the French
eighteenth century, says bluntly (_op. cit. sup._, i. 275) that “the
best poem is that which interests most,” and that “one hardly ever
opens a poem for the sake of instruction.”
-----
The two historians, especially Quadrio, are freer from this defect,
though by no means free from it; but they compensate for this advantage
by a much weaker dose of really critical spirit. [Sidenote:
_Crescimbeni._] Crescimbeni is not an unimportant figure in the History
of his own literature, to which he contributed, after writing in 1700 on
_La Bellezza del Volgar Poesia_, a regular work[720] on the whole
subject as far as poetry is concerned. Part, and the best part, of this
is made up of a refashioning of the _Bellezza_. Its contents, which are
not contemptible, though too like much that we have already gone through
to require minute attention, are almost indicated by its title—an
enumeration of poetical beauties, cautions against defects and mistakes
in the application of them, and the usual analysis of Kinds. The rest of
the book is a really valuable literary encyclopædia, with extracts,
commentaries, lists, indices, &c., “all very capital” in their own way,
but somewhat out of ours.
-----
Footnote 720:
_Istoria del Volgar Poesia_, Roma, 1698 and later.
-----
If Quadrio seems to invite more attention, it is partly because of his
goodly bulk which fills the eye, and partly because of the oddity of
some of his judgments, but partly also (in a third part) because he
really intends to be critical, and because he extends his view far
beyond Italian. [Sidenote: _Quadrio._] The _Della Storia e della Ragione
d’Ogni Poesia_[721] is a sufficiently ambitious attempt; and I do not
think I know anything of the kind, by a single man, which is at any rate
more voluminous. Seven big quartos, tightly packed, give Quadrio ample
room and verge enough for proceedings alike methodical and far-ranging
in their method; and his _Distinzioni_—the sub-divisions of his
Books—leave few things unattempted. He is able to include both branches
of Patrizzi’s old division, _Disputata_ and _Istoriale_, and he extends
the purview of the latter as widely as he can, if not as happily. The
good faith, and the less than doubtful judgment, of some of his
excursions will be sufficiently, and here most interestingly,
demonstrated by some instances from his English notes. After devoting
great space to the usual general questions of the nature, origin,
position, &c., of poetry, he has a proportionately large distribution of
Kinds, extending not merely into Acrostic-land but into Cento and
Macaronic. He deals further with Poetic Art and Poetic Fury, and, in
successive _Distinzioni_, with Plot and Manners, Erudition, Verse in
general, Italian verse, &c. Then he attacks the actual contents of his
subject, and devotes the whole of a volume of 800 pages to “Melic” or
Lyric poetry. It cannot but be interesting to the reader to note who
represented English Lyric poetry to the eyes of a learned and laborious
Italian Jesuit in the second quarter of the eighteenth century; but it
is pretty safe to say that not one of a hundred guessers would name the
trio in a hundred guesses each. They are Gower, “Arthur Kelton,” and
“Wicherley.”[722]
-----
Footnote 721:
7 vols. (Bologna and Milan, 1739-1752).
Footnote 722:
I shall own frankly that, when I first read this, I had either never
heard of Arthur Kelton, or had utterly forgotten him, and thought the
name must be a muddle of “Skelton.” What is known about him may be
found in Warton, iv. 159, ed. Hazlitt (taken, as was probably
Quadrio’s knowledge of him, from Wood and Bale), and also in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_. According to the latter, his poem
in praise of the Welsh nation is not now extant or discoverable; and
though a Chronicle exists I have never seen it. What made the Jesuit
name Kelton at all is as dark to me as what made him transform Gower
and “Wicherley” into “Melic” bards.
-----
He proceeds through all the divisions in the same way. His notice of
Shakespeare is obviously a recollection of the milder view of Voltaire,
who was a friend of Quadrio’s. Dryden wrote a “tragedy” entitled _King
Arthur_; Addison is treated at length, and with evident sympathy, as
well as with at least more direct knowledge than that shown of “Il
Benjanson” (_sic_). There is a whole chapter on Milton, in which Rapin
and the Chevalier Ramsay[723] are quoted. The critic is aware of (let us
hope he had not read) Glover’s _Leonidas_; and he is naturally copious
on Pope, though his section on _The Rape of the Lock_ shades itself off
in the oddest manner into a Discourse on Hair, with references to
Apuleius and the obliging Fotis, to Dion Chrysostom, and to Firenzuola.
But Chaucer and Spenser are not (unless I have missed them) discussed by
the citer of Arthur Kelton.
-----
Footnote 723:
If I have said nothing about this excellent Scoto-French disciple of
Fénelon, author of the _Voyages de Cyrus_ (which all good little
eighteenth-century boys and girls read), and writer of French which
was admitted by Frenchmen to be the best (except Hamilton’s) written
by any non-Frenchman, it is neither from ignorance nor from
_outre-cuidance_ He takes place in criticism for a _Discourse of Epic
Poetry_, prefixed to _Télémaque_.
-----
Of course there is no need to laugh at Quadrio; and if we do it must be
done only in the most good-humoured and politest way possible. Doubtless
we all make mistakes in dealing with foreign Literatures; and those of
us who have dealt most with them have doubtless sinned most. But what is
important to notice here about the Historian of All Poetry is—first,
that he has shrewdly seen and manfully accepted, if not the necessity,
at least the immense advantage, of comparative literary study; and
secondly, that while emancipating himself to this extent, he is still
under the domination of Kinds. If he had gone to A. Kelton himself, and
had examined that worthy’s works—not to range him under Melic or Epic or
anything _quod exit in ’ic_, but—to see whether he wrote good or bad
poetry, he would at least have been in a fairer way of escape. But the
mania for Kind- and Subject-division, instead of studying poetic
treatment, can hardly be better illustrated than in Quadrio, whose
schedule of narrative poetry, for instance, is as complicated and as
meticulous as a Government return.
Yet the value of his attempt, and in a less degree of Crescimbeni’s, is
very great: and it perhaps exceeds in _general_ critical importance the
results of the exercise of the superior talent of Muratori and Gravina.
[Sidenote: _The emergence of literary history._] These latter said more
noteworthy things than the others: but they said them in a kind of
criticism which, to speak our best for it, had already done all the good
that was in it to do. Nay, their method of handling was likely to stand
in the way of real critical advance or recovery, not to help it.
Crescimbeni and Quadrio, especially the latter, recognised indeed, if
they did not themselves quite understand, or lay down in so many words
for the instruction of others, the great fact that before all things,
and for some time at any rate instead of all things, it was time for
criticism to “take stock”—that instead of theorising at large, and
controlling the theory at best by a partial study of the classics and a
very limited and arbitrary selection of the literature of the student’s
own country, it was time for him to take the whole of that literature,
to compare it with the whole of the classics, and, so far as he possibly
could, with the whole of foreign modern literature as a third standard.
That is practically what we have been doing for nearly two hundred years
past, more or less—for more than a hundred years past, pretty steadily
and with a will. It is not done yet; and it never can be done wholly,
because every generation and every country adds, in its varying measure
and degree, fresh supplies of matter which cannot be digested all at
once, but which must sooner or later be added to the rest, and may
affect conclusions drawn from that rest, as vitally as did the work of
Dante or that of Shakespeare. But it has been done, and is being done,
after a fashion in which, before the time of these two Italian
historians, it had hardly been done by anybody.
The promise, however, of this group—the elder of whose members almost
belong to the seventeenth century, while the youngest does not come
below the middle of the eighteenth—was not fulfilled. [Sidenote:
_Further decadence of Italian Criticism._] Hardly a single person among
the other (and chiefly later) Italian critics of the time has achieved,
or, so far as I have been able to inform myself, has deserved to
achieve, any great reputation. Tiraboschi indeed continued the merely
historical part of Crescimbeni’s labour with an industry probably
unparalleled in any other country. [Sidenote: _Metastasio._] Metastasio,
in his later days, occupied himself a good deal with criticism, and at
an earlier time his _Estratto dell' Arte Poetica d’Aristotile_[724]
would have deserved a good deal of attention from us. At his own date
Metastasio is partly an eminent example of that halting between two
opinions which has been so often mentioned, partly an inheritor of
others’ thoughts. He is in hardly any sense a Romantic; yet he observes,
against the Dacierian extension and hardening of Aristotle’s definition
of poetry, that if this be so “it will be very difficult to find any
writer who is not a poet”, and a little farther he has excogitated, or
borrowed from the æestheticians, the all-important doctrine that the
object of the sculptor is “not the illusion of the spectator but his own
victory over the marble.” But these things are late, transitional, and,
perhaps, as has been hinted, borrowed. The earlier critical work of the
polygraphic, polyglottic, and polypragmatic Marquis Scipione Maffei has
no distinction: and the very names[725] of Palesi, Salio, Denina,
Zanotti are unknown to all but special students of Italian literature,
and probably to not a few of these. We must come to quite modern
times—to times indeed so near our own that the rule of silence as to
living contemporaries may often come into operation—before we can find
any heirs to the glory of Castelvetro and Patrizzi, if we can find them
then.
-----
Footnote 724:
It fills the greater part of the 12th and last vol. of the Paris ed.
(1782). The passages quoted are at pp. 29, 30, and 57 of this.
Footnote 725:
For instance, of these four only Denina occurs in Dr Garnett’s
excellent _Short History of Italian Literature_ (London, 1898), and
that for his historical, not his literary, work.
-----
The singularity which in so many ways besets Spanish literature shows
itself, perhaps not least, in the fact that the establishment of the
neo-classic creed in Spain does not take place till that creed is
beginning to be, in one way or another, deserted or undermined in other
countries. [Sidenote: _Neo-classicism triumphs in Spain._] It must be
admitted that there was some excuse for Don Ignacio de Luzán Claramunt
de Suelves y Gurrea, whose _Poética_ in 1737 argued Spain’s poetry away,
far more actually than Cervantes had ever laughed away her chivalry. It
has been usual to represent Luzán as a mere populariser of Boileau in
Spain: but this is not just. Any one who has followed the course of
reading which this book represents will see that it was the _antiqua
mater_ of Spanish criticism, Italy, which really started Luzán’s
inquiries—that Muratori, and perhaps Gravina, rather than Boileau and
the French schoolmen, were his masters. Indeed it seems that he had
actually sketched, in Italian and in Italy (or at least Sicily), certain
_Ragionamenti sopra la Poesia_, nearly a decade before his Spanish book
appeared.
There was, it has been said, some excuse for him. [Sidenote: _The
absurdities of Artiga._] We have seen in the last Book that, though
isolated expressions and _aperçus_ of remarkable promise and acuteness
appear in Spanish criticism of the seventeenth century, it was always
_impar sibi_, and was constantly aiming at the establishment of a kind
of illegitimate compromise between the national drama, which the critics
would not give up, and the general theories of literature which they did
not dare—perhaps did not wish—to impugn. In fact, this state of
compromise, by yet another of the anomalies above referred to,
anticipates the similar things which we see in England and in France, in
Italy and in Germany, much later. At the same time, Spain had been a
special victim, with Gongorism and Culteranism and Conceptism, of those
contortions of the Romantic agony which, all over Europe, invited the
tyranny of neo-classicism. Also its great creative period had closed for
some considerable time. Lastly, there had survived in Spain a kind of
childishly scholastic rhetoric, which the rest of Europe, with some
slight exceptions in Italy, had long outgrown. Ticknor, the most amiable
of Historians (when Protestantism is not in point), calls by the name of
“a really ridiculous book” the _Epitome de la Eloquencia Española_ of
Don Francisco José Artiga or Artieda, to which he gives the date of
1725, but of which the British Museum copy bears a date more than thirty
years earlier.[726] People are apt to be so unkind to technical
_Rhetorics_ and _Poetics_ that I own I had a faint hope, before I
actually read this book, of being able to remonstrate with the
Ticknorian judgment: but _no puede ser_. The work is dedicated to
Francesco Borgia, Duke of Gandia—the tragic elder associations of the
name serving, to those who are susceptible to such things, as a sort of
heightening of the farce. It consists of verse-dialogues, in
octosyllabic quatrain, between a _Hijo_ and a _Padre_ by way of question
and answer. Eloquence is angelic, celestial, ethereal, elementary,
mixed, dumb, and several other things. Receipts and formulas are given
for all sorts of compositions down to visiting cards: and the style of
exposition may perhaps best be appreciated from an extract of two
quatrains—
_P._ La Imágen o Icon se haze,
bosquejando una pintúra
de algúnas cosas con otras
con propriedád y hermosúra.
And a little later the Hijo says—
_H._ En entrambos ejempláres
resplandecen las figúras:
mostradme, si [la Apostrofe] la Adversion
encierra tanta hermosúra.
One is too apt to forget, in censuring eighteenth-century flippancy and
superficiality in regard to the past, that all over Europe, more or
less, this kind of childish stuff was still actually taught.
-----
Footnote 726:
Huesca, 1692, 12mo.
-----
Luzán is at least not childish, though he betrays the insufficient
historical examination and the hasty generalising which beset the
whole school. [Sidenote: _Luzán._] He devotes the principal attention
of his folio,[727] after generalities avowedly taken from Muratori, to
Epic and Tragedy, and while using complimentary words to Lope and
Calderon, indicates, without doubt or hesitation, that his heart is
with Corneille and Racine. It is true that he is himself—as all these
Eighteenth-century “classics” are without exception, save the mere
school dogmatists or the obstinate reactionaries like La
Harpe—inconsistent. Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly[728] goes so far as to say
that there is hardly a proposition in his book which is not
contradicted elsewhere in it. But that he at least meant to be a
neo-classic, a Unitarian, a Nicolaitan, there can be no doubt, nor any
that he met with no markworthy or effectual resistance.
-----
Footnote 727:
Published at Saragossa, date as above. A later edition is said to be
garbled.
Footnote 728:
_Op. cit._, p. 348.
-----
The rest of the Spanish criticism of the eighteenth century has, save
for special students of Spanish literature, and perhaps even for them,
very little interest; [Sidenote: _The rest uninteresting._] and it is
noticeable that, from this point, even the accomplished and
indefatigable historian of the subject[729] practically breaks away from
Spain itself, and gives a history of æsthetic ideas, not as they arose,
and developed, and changed, and fell there, but rather as they went
through these phases in Europe at large. The better known names of
Spanish authors of the time, such as Isla and Feyjóo, have a certain
right to figure here, but their literary critical work is only a part,
and not a very important or interesting part, of the extension of the
_Aufklärung_, especially in the forms which it assumed in France, to the
most bigoted and conservative (except its sister Portugal) of European
countries. This process, though perhaps necessary, is not in any
department, political, religious, or other, particularly grateful to
study; for Spain lost venerable and fascinating illusions—if illusions
they were—to gain a very shallow, dubious, and second-rate civilisation
and enlightenment. And this was almost more the case in literature than
anywhere else.
-----
Footnote 729:
Señor Menéndez y Pelayo, as cited before, in vols. 5 and 6 of his
_History_.
-----
Feyjóo’s _Teátro Crίtico_, a series of Essays published between 1726 and
1738, and his _Letters_, which after a short interval he began in 1742,
and continued at intervals for eighteen years more, are more
philosophical and “moral,” in the French sense, than literary.
[Sidenote: _The rest uninteresting._] But the “Spanish Hotel de
Rambouillet”—the “Academy of good taste” which met about the middle of
the century at the house of the Countess de Lemos—included not only
Luzán, but another _littérateur_ of high rank, Luis José Velasquez,
Marquis of Valdeflores, with Nasarre y Ferriz, and others. The whole
school was rather anti-national, but Gregorio Mayáns y Siscar, their
contemporary, did great service to Spanish literature by publishing the
_Origins_, to which we have been indebted above,[730] and some by
compiling a _Rhetoric_, traditional enough, but not specially
“Gallo”-Classic. The famous Father Isla not only attacked the remnants
of extravagant style, which had sought refuge in the Spanish pulpit, in
_Fray Gerundio_, the one Spanish book of this time, which became a
European possession, but left unpublished other critical work,
especially in his poem of _Ciceron_, much of which is satirically
critical of literature. Isla was probably more of a patriot than of a
critic in his well-known attempt to claim _Gil Blas_ for Spain, not
merely in suggestion but in direct original. Nor should we omit to
mention with honour, as members of that invaluable class of restorers of
ancient literature which arose in almost all countries in the latter
half of the century, Sedano of the _Spanish Parnassus_, Sanchez of the
_Poesias Anteriores al Siglo_ XV, and Sarmiento, the first general
Historian of Old Spanish Poetry. Their work was, if a somewhat slow, a
sure and certain antidote to the Gallicism of Moratin (Luzán’s chief
successor) and others of the later time.[731]
-----
Footnote 730:
P. 333.
Footnote 731:
This Gallicism was not universal. As Mr Ticknor (III. v., opening)
says, while Moratin spoke contemptuously of the ballad of “Calaynos,”
his opponent Huerta pronounced _Athalie_ fit for nothing but its
original purpose of being acted by schoolgirls.
-----
Despite some exceptions (which only prove the rule rather more than is
usual), and despite the immense dead-lift which at one time they gave,
or helped to give, to criticism, the Germans have never been very good
critics. [Sidenote: _Rise at last of German Criticism._] There has
always been too much in them of the girl in the fable who jumped on the
floor to hunt mice, instead of attending to the more important business
and pleasure of the occasion. And though that dead-lift which has been
referred to began extremely early in the eighteenth century, its history
belongs to our next volume. It is, indeed, less easy to effect the
separation which our plan demands here than anywhere else; for hardly
had German vernacular criticism begun to exert itself once more, after
its long inertia since Opitz, than the double current of abstract
æstheticism, and of study of Romantic literature, began to appear. But
it would be impossible to omit from a gallery or panorama of
Neo-classicism such a typical specimen of the _perruque_ as Gottsched,
such an eminent example of the “man who looks over his shoulder” as
Gellert. And though we must leave substantive dealings with Bodmer,
Breitinger, and their fellows and followers to that early division of
the next volume in which, with leave of Nemesis, Germany will be
compensated for the little pride of place she has hitherto enjoyed, it
will be very proper here at least to mention the singular and
interesting process of novitiate by which the Germans vindicated their
character as the good boys of technical education; and, by sheer hard
study and omnivorous reading, put the national abilities into a
condition to turn out a Lessing and a Goethe.
The means—sufficiently obvious, but not often resorted to save by those
nations which have not “decayed through pride”—were those of abundant
translation from the more forward vernaculars, as well as from the
classics. [Sidenote: _Its school time._] The German _Sammlungen_ of the
first half of the eighteenth century[732] are very interesting things.
From French, from English, from the Latin writings of the previous
century, they selected, and batched together, critical tractates which
they thought might do them good, taking these to heart with Aristotle
and Horace, with Boileau and Vida. That the assemblage had sometimes
something of a “Groves of Blarney” character—that people like
Camusat[733] find themselves jostling Pope and Addison among writers of
Belles-Lettres, and Vossius and Casaubon among scholars, mattered not so
very much. Manure, seed, patterns (to take various lines of metaphor)
were what the German mind wanted; and it received them in plenty, and
certainly not without good result.
-----
Footnote 732:
One of the most important works of the Swiss school itself is Bodmer’s
_Sammlung Kritischer Schriften_, 1741, but this is for another time.
Nicolai’s _Bibliothek der Schönen Wissenschaften_ (Berlin, 1757) and
_Literaturbriefe_ (ibid., 1759-66) perhaps show the movement best.
Footnote 733:
I did not think it worth while to mention Camusat in the French
chapter, though he is not quite a contemptible person. He was one of
the tribe of French men of letters who, for this reason or that,
settled in Holland. He has the not small credit of being one of the
first to attempt a _Literary History_ (Amsterdam, 1722, 3 vols.) _of
France_. He edited part of the literary contents of Chapelain’s
letters, and did other things. But the Germans seem to have been
particularly attracted by a _Lettre sur les Poètes qui ont chanté la
Volupté_, which he wrote, I think, in connection with the work of
Chaulieu, but which I have only read in German. It may have had, for
them, the attraction of elegant naughtiness; but it has in reality
very little either of the adjective or of the noun.
-----
There are some very good authorities[734] who do not see much difference
between Gottsched and his adversaries of the Swiss school, Bodmer and
Breitinger. [Sidenote: _Classicism at bay almost from the first:
Gottsched._] I am not able to agree with them. That there are
characteristics in common nobody can deny,—that Gottsched is of the
evening and Bodmer and Breitinger of the morning of the same day on the
older arrangement, I do most sincerely think. And “the German
Johnson”—so _echt-deutsch_ and so little Johnsonian—is much too
characteristic and agreeable a figure not to have some substantive place
here. It is interesting no doubt—and it would give an excellent subject
for one of the many not-to-be-written _excursus_ of this history—that
he, the analogue, to some extent, in Germany, of Johnson himself in
England and of La Harpe in France, comes far earlier than these
representatives of the neo-classicism which “makes an end” in countries
far more accomplished in literature. But this is natural. The
seventeenth century in Germany had but been one long fallow, producing
nothing but not unfascinating weeds, like Lohenstein and Hoffmanswaldau,
or wildings like Grimmelshausen. But, as in other cases of fallow, the
rains of heaven had descended, and the winds had blown, and the worms
had done their work of breaking up, and the soil, if technically “foul,”
was also fertile. Its production was necessarily mixed; but it was at
any rate not subject to the desperate hook of the preceptist weeder, or
to the traditional courses of the orthodox agriculturist. The German man
of letters of 1700-1750 had the “Y” before him as few men of letters
have had.
-----
Footnote 734:
_E.g._, my friend Professor Elton, in his _Augustan Ages_ (Edinburgh,
1899), p. 348. It is, I trust, not immoral, I am sure it is not
illiberal, to edit a book without absolutely indorsing all its
opinions, or insisting that all these opinions shall be one’s own.
-----
Gottsched took the classical branch of the letter unflinchingly, and
quarrelled with others, like a good party man, as he realised that they
were taking the Romantic. [Sidenote: _The_ Versuch einer Critischen
Dichtkunst.] His _Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst_[735] is
frontispieced with a striking picture of Apollo, and the Muses, and
Pegasus looking benignly at Bellerophon(?), whom he is just pitching
off, and Mercury, probably flying, but in appearance rather tumbling,
down the Holy Hill, with a copy of Horace in his hand, and a group of
critics and poets and personified Kinds of poetry waiting to receive it
in ecstatic attitudes at the bottom. It has three separate
dedication-pages, in the largest print, to three fair ladies of the same
family,—the high-born Countess and Lady, Lady Ernestine Wilhelmine,
widowed Baroness von Plotho, born Reichsgräfinn von Manteufel, “my
especially gracious Countess and Lady”; the high-born Countess Johanna
Henrietta Constantia, born the same, “my especially gracious Countess”;
and my ditto the high-born Countess Louisa Marianne, born the same,—not
to mention a beautiful Ode, several Prefaces, an Introduction, and the
full text, with translation in German Alexandrines, of the _Ars Poetica_
itself. If writer and reader do not feel themselves safe under the
convoy of all these charming spells and periapts, it is surely a pity.
-----
Footnote 735:
My copy is the third edition, Leipsic, 1742. The first is, I think, of
1730.
-----
It would, however, be most uncritical, and entirely unjust to Gottsched,
to assert or insinuate that his apparatus is mere matter of parade.
[Sidenote: _Its chief idea._] On the contrary, the preface to the second
edition first enumerates as “the greatest connoisseurs and masters of
Poetic,” Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Scaliger, Boileau, Bossu, Dacier,
Perrault, Bouhours, Fénelon, Saint-Evremond, Fontenelle, La Motte,
Corneille, Racine, Callières, Furetière, Shaftesbury, Addison, Steele,
Castelvetro, Muralt, and Voltaire. For all of whom, except where (like
Béat de Muralt, for instance) they have been reserved for reasons,[736]
reference may be made to other pages of the present History. It
afterwards specially alleges, as additional authorities, Riccoboni’s
history of the Italian Stage, an anonymous _Paragone della Poesia
Tragica d' Italia con quella de Francia_ which I have not seen, Rapin,
Brumoy [spelt Brumo_is_], Hédelin, Rémond de Saint-Mard, an English
_anonymus_[737] on _The Taste of the Town_, Ramsay, Pope, Casaubon,
Heinsius, Voss, Rappolt, and Sebastian Regulus his Imitations of the
First Book of the _Æneis_ (which last I have not read and do not think I
intend to read). In the Preface to the Third Edition his quarrel with
the Swiss school breaks out. We shall see in future, I trust, what this
school taught; it is here of chief, if not of only, import to know what,
according to Gottsched, the “Zürichers” (_i.e._, those about Bodmer) did
_not_ teach and he did. “While I,” he says in mingled pride and
indignation, “after treating of poetry in general, have dealt with all
its Kinds, and given its own rules to each, so that beginners may turn
them out impeccably, the Zürich poetic has nothing of the sort.” “Man
would,” adds Gottsched incredulously and detesting, “thereout neither an
Ode nor a Cantata, neither an Eclogue nor an Elegy, neither a Verse
Epistle nor a Satire, neither an Epigram nor a Song of Praise, neither
an Epic nor a Tragedy, neither a Comedy nor an Opera to make
learn!”[738]
-----
Footnote 736:
Callières, a diplomatist and Academician, who wrote a good deal on
various subjects, in his later years, has been referred to under Swift
(p. 450). For more on him and his _Histoire poétique de la guerre des
A. et des M._, _v._ Rigault, _op. cit._, pp. 213-217. As to Furetière,
the agreeable author of the _Roman Bourgeois_ seemed to me to lie too
far outside any possible limits here, though, of course, there are
critical touches in his work. Some might even reckon, as an important
if rather excessive testimony to the rise of the novel, the curious
picture of the girl Javotte—pretty but innocent to the verge of
idiocy—turned into an accomplished and intelligent young lady by the
mere reading of the _Astrée_. Furetière even defends this
representation by serious argument (_Roman Bourgeois_, i. 171 _sq._,
ed. Jannet, 2 vols., Paris, 1878).
Footnote 737:
This was James Ralph—the “Ralph to Cynthia howls” of Pope. It appeared
in 1731, and deals with public amusements, from the theatre (which it
defends from Prynne and Collier) to cock-fighting, auctions, and
“Henley’s oratory.” It is rather amusing, and by no means, as Mr Pope
calls its author, “wholly illiterate.”
Footnote 738:
It is notable that, since the beginning of the twentieth century,
critics of the youngest school have been found Gottschedising in this
sense, and proposing to judge the worth or worthlessness of criticism
on similar cookery-book lines. I have seen an excellent critic rebuked
by a reviewer for not “showing how to _do_ something”—as if he were a
dancing-master.
-----
The Slurk-and-Pott objurgation which follows concerns us little. But the
passage just quoted has real weight. For it shows how, to the absolute
and half-incredulous horror of one party, and probably by the not
entirely conscious or intentional purpose of the other, the battle of
Rule-poetic against Appreciation-poetic had begun. To Gottsched the Art,
or Science, or what-not, of Poetry is a huge schedule, which may be
quite emptied of actual contents and yet retain its pre-established
compartments and the rules for filling them; to his adversaries Poetry
itself is a library, a treasury, a new world full of things and persons
that cause, or do not cause, the poetic pleasure.
It would be unnecessary to analyse this not quite “the poor last” of
Classical _Poetics_. [Sidenote: _Specimen details._] It may be
sufficient to say that Gottsched has his first or general and his second
or particular book, the first dealing with the origin and growth of
poetry, the character and taste of a poet, the species of poetic
imitation, the Wonderful in poetry, the Admirable in poetry, and the
like, the second with the usual Kinds in regular order. His occasional
utterances are, at this stage of the history, of far greater importance.
We find (p. 86) the sonnet classed with madrigals, rondeaux, and other
“little things which are worth little.” The old German _Heldengedichten_
are (p. 88), if not so good as Homer, Virgil, and Voltaire, yet not so
bad as Marino, Ariosto, Chapelain, Saint-Amand, and Milton.[739] Later
(p. 109), “Among Englishmen, who are specially inclined to excessive
fantasy, Milton in his _Paradise Lost_ has exhibited everything that man
can possibly do in this kind of _schwärmerei_.” It is well to remember
that the detested Zürichers were special admirers of Milton; but there
is no reason to suspect Gottsched of being unduly biassed by this,
either here or in the longer examination which he gives to Milton’s sins
afterwards. He is almost as severe on Ariosto (p. 209), arguing with
unruffled gravity that the discoveries of Astolfo (which he sums up as
solemnly as a judge) are not probable, and finishing with the sad
observation that the Italian’s fantasies are really more like a sick
man’s dream than like the reasonable inventions of a poet.
-----
Footnote 739:
Gottsched, like a true _Klassiker_, dislikes and distrusts romance,
ancient as well as modern, prose as well as verse, in and for itself.
“Romance writers,” he says (at p. 167), “know as little of the rules
of poetic imitation as of true morality.”
-----
The good Gottsched, in fact, is an apostle not so much even of
classicism as of that hopeless _prosaism_ to which classicism lent
itself but too easily.[740] Even Voltaire is not sufficiently
_wahrscheinlich_ for him; and he asks (pp. 183, 215) in agitated tones
whether Herr Voltaire, who has elsewhere such sound ideas on the Highest
of Beings, has not made a mistake in the magic scenes of the _Henriade_?
He is, however, no friend to prosaic diction, and stoutly defends what
he calls (p. 263) “good florid expression,”[741] giving some better
examples, from poets like Amthor and Flemming, than those who regard the
German seventeenth century as a mere desert might expect. So long as he
can get these flights under the recognised Figures, and so long as they
do not outstep “the rules of prudence” (273), all is well. But the
outstepping, as may be guessed, is not very far off. He finds it, under
the guidance of Bouhours, in Malherbe of all remarkable places, and
naturally much more in Hoffmanswaldau and Lohenstein, as well as in
Ariosto and Marino and Gracián,—being as severe on _galimatias_ and
“Phébus” as he had previously (and quite justly) been against that
medley of German-French which Opitz had long before condemned. There is,
in fact, a good deal of sense as well as of minuteness in Gottsched’s
particular rules, both as to poetry in general and as to the Kinds. In
dealing with these last he gives very extensive examples, and since
these are taken from a division of poetry not much in most readers’ way,
they are distinctly interesting. But we must not follow him into these
details; nor is it at all necessary to do so. The neo-classic critic has
at least the virtue of adhering to his own rules, and observing his own
type, with Horatian strictness. There is little danger of finding in him
a politic Achilles, a prudent youth, or an old man who is good-humoured
and does not praise the past. Gottsched says of Epic and Romance, of
Comedy and Tragedy, exactly what we should expect him to say, if not
exactly what we may think he ought to have said. He cannot understand
how Tasso could hope to “unite this Gothic taste of chivalrous books”
(p. 682) with the Greek rules of Heroic poetry; and he makes so bold as
almost to rebuke the great Voltaire for according the name of Heroic
poem to the _Lusiad_ and the _Araucana_. But there is a characteristic
note in the words, “It is time to leave the historic-critic part and
come to the dogmatic,” which, it seems, we shall find—all of it—in
Aristotle, Dacier, and Le Bossu. It is, in a different relation, like
Balzac’s _passons aux choses réelles_—“Never mind the Poems: come to the
Rules!”
-----
Footnote 740:
Thus we are to divide the Wonderful in Poetry (p. 171) into three
parts—like _omnis Gallia_! One may hesitate whether to emend “three
thousand” or “three million.”
Footnote 741:
He quotes a passage which he calls _ein Muster des guten verblümten
Ausdruckes_.
-----
Gellert, a pupil of Gottsched, at any rate for a time, and a pretty poet
in his own way, betrays that tendency to compromise, if not actually to
capitulate, which we have seen in parts of French Classicism. [Sidenote:
_Gellert: he transacts._] His principal critical tractate[742] carries a
confession in its very title, “How far the Use of the Rules extends in
Rhetoric and Poetry,” and the confession is emphasised in the text. It
comes to this—that the Rules are useful, but only generally so, and with
a “thus far and no further.” It is evident that, when this point is
reached, the Oppression of Gwenhidwy is on the eve of descending upon
the land of Gwaelod, the dykes are bursting, and the sea is flowing
in.[743] We saw just now Gottsched’s indignant horror at the idea of
writing upon poetry without giving rules to anybody how he shall do
anything. He must have been more horrified still, because there is an
element of treacherous surrender instead of bold defiance in it, at this
other view of the rules as not bad things in their way—to be followed
when it is convenient and when you please, and broken or left behind
when it is convenient, or when you please again. In fact, any such
admission at once reduces the whole Neoclassic system to an absurdity. A
law which may be obeyed or not exactly as people choose—a sealed pattern
which is followed or not at the taste and fancy of the tailor or other
craftsman—you surely cannot too soon repeal the first and throw the
second into the dustbin. And this was, as we shall see, what Germany
very speedily did.
-----
Footnote 742:
In the 7th vol. (pp. 117-154) of his _Works_, 10 vols., Berne,
1774-75.
Footnote 743:
See _The Misfortunes of Elphin_.
-----
INTERCHAPTER VI.
§ I. THE NEMESIS OF CORRECTNESS.
§ II. THE BALANCE-SHEET OF NEO-CLASSIC CRITICISM.
I.
In the present Interchapter, as in that at the close of the former
volume, it seems desirable to make the summary twofold: in the first
place, with reference to the Book which the chapter immediately follows,
so as to provide a corresponding view to that given by the Interchapters
of the two earlier Books in the volume itself; in the second, surveying
the State of Criticism—with a look before and after—at the period which
we have reached. This survey is here of even more importance than it was
on the former occasion because of the greater—in fact the almost
absolute—homogeneity of the subject. But it comes second in order, and
for the moment we must busy ourselves only with that portion or side of
Eighteenth-Century Criticism itself which has been considered in the
last three chapters.
In one way Eighteenth-Century criticism has a very notable advantage
over Seventeenth and Sixteenth. In the earliest of the three, as we saw,
criticism exists almost without a critic. Its authorities are either men
of something less (to speak kindly) than the first rank as men of
letters, or else they devote only a slight and passing attention to the
subject. In the Seventeenth this is not quite so, for Dryden is a host
in himself, and Boileau, to name nobody else, is no common man of
letters.
But in the Eighteenth the case is far more altered. English and French,
the two leading literatures of Europe, are copiously and intensely
critical, if not entirely according to knowledge. Addison, Johnson,
Pope, Voltaire, are all dictators of literature, whose fame and
authority, in the case at least of the two last, go far beyond their own
country—and they are all critics. In another country, though in a
division, for reasons, not yet noticed, Goethe, who, if any one, is the
representative man of letters in his own nation, is a critic. The second
class of names—mentioned or to be mentioned—Vico, Shaftesbury, Lessing,
Gray, Buffon, Diderot, and others, approaches very nearly, if it does
not sometimes reach, the first rank. Moreover, criticism has enormously
_multiplied_ its appearances and opportunities of appearance: it has, in
a manner, become popular. The critical Review—the periodical by means of
which it is possible, and becomes easy, to give critical account of the
literature, not merely of the past but of the present—becomes common.
The critic as such is no longer regarded as a mere pedant; he at least
attempts to take his place as a literary man of the world. If Italy and
Spain fail—even allowing for the remarkable Italian critical group at
the beginning of the century—to justify their old reputation, Germany,
on the other hand, begins that career of critical hard labour to which
she has apparently sentenced herself in perpetuity, and relieves it with
more excursions into the fairer letters than of late. The French, though
subject more severely than men of any other country to the idols of the
time, continue to justify themselves both in the lighter and the severer
critical work.
But the contribution of England is the most interesting of all. Our
position at the time may be compared, with some advantage and no danger
of straining, to that of Spain at a somewhat earlier period (see pp.
338-350). We do not indeed find, in any English critic after Dryden,
formal expressions of such weight and pregnancy in the Romantic
direction as those which the sharp-sightedness and patience of Señor
Menéndez y Pelayo have extracted from the Spanish Preceptists. But the
general tendency is even more comprehensive, if not yet catholic. In
consequence, very mainly, of Dryden’s own magnificent championship of
Shakespeare and Milton, it was, by the beginning of the eighteenth
century, felt in England that these two at any rate had to be reckoned
with; while Chaucer also had the same powerful recommendation, and
Spenser had never lost the affection of the fit, though for a time they
might be few. With these four to be somehow or other—by hook or by
crook—taken into consideration, it was impossible for the worst harm to
be done; and the peculiarities of English character, combined with the
more vigorous condition of English creative literature, made the
compromise work far better than that which had been in a manner
entertained in Spain on the subject of Lope and Calderon. It might have
been dangerous if Johnson had written the _Lives_ at the age which was
Pope’s when he wrote the _Essay on Criticism_; but this danger also the
Fortune of England—kindest of Goddesses, and most abused in her
kindness, yet justified of Fate!—averted.
We shall, it is to be hoped, be able to show in the next volume how
these conditions of Classicism in the several countries affected the
rise or resurrection of Romanticism. For the present we must confine
ourselves to the way in which they affected Classicism itself.
For the purpose we need not repeat, or even recapitulate, what has been
said of its fortunes in Germany, Italy, and Spain, save to say that in
the first-named country it only appeared to disappear, while in the
other two it suffered increasing decrepitude. England and France are
much more important and interesting subjects of consideration and
comparison.
In both, as we saw, Neo-classicism is undoubtedly the accepted orthodoxy
of the time. If that draft confession of Faith, which has been sketched
in a former page, had been laid before an assembly of the leading men of
letters in both countries, many might have taken exception to its actual
form; but as for its spirit, there is hardly a Frenchman who would have
refused to accept it, while not many Englishmen would have done so. At
the same time—until, towards the later years of the century, the
“alarums and excursions” of the Romantic rising recalled the orthodox to
strictness—a more searching examination would have revealed serious
defections and latitudinarianisms. Pope was perhaps the most orthodox
neo-classic, in criticism as in creation, of the greater men of letters
of the time; but Pope was fond of Spenser. Addison had never thoroughly
cleared his mind up about criticism; but many things in him point the
Romantic way, and we know that some of the more orthodox thought him
weak and doubtful. Voltaire, at one time, had considerable leanings
towards both Shakespeare and Milton; and we have seen how Johnson,
though he resisted and recovered himself, was at least once within
appreciable distance of that precipice of “judging by the event,” over
which, when a Classic once lets himself slip, he falls for ever and for
ever through the Romantic void.
Of lesser men we need not speak much—reference to what has been said
above of the escapades of Fontenelle and Marmontel, of Steele and Kames,
is sufficient. But all these things were as the liberalities of a
securely established orthodoxy, estated and endowed, dreading no
disturbance, and able to be generous to others—even to indulge itself a
little in licence and peccadillo. Everywhere but in England the vast
majority of men, and even in England all but a very small minority, had
no doubt about the general principles of the Neo-classic Creed. They
still judged by Rules and Kinds; they still had the notion that you must
generalise, always generalise; they still believed that, in some way or
other, Homer and Virgil—especially Virgil—had exhausted the secrets of
Epic, and almost of poetry; and, above all, they were entirely
unprepared to extend patient and unbiassed judgment to something
acknowledged, and acknowledging itself, to be _new_. On the contrary,
they must still be vindicating even things which they liked, but which
appeared to them to be novel, on the score of their being so very like
the old—as we saw in the case of Blair and _Ossian_.
The Nemesis of this their Correctness, as far as creation is concerned,
in prose to some extent, but still more in verse, has been described
over and over again by a thousand critics and literary historians. The
highest and most poetical poetry they could not write at all—except when
they had, like Collins, and Smart, and Blake, a little not merely of
_furor poeticus_, but of actual insanity in their constitution, or when
they violated their own rules by transgressing into pure nature-poetry
or into intense realism of anthropology. In their own chosen way they
could at best achieve the really poetical rhetoric, but at the same time
strictly rhetorical poetry, of Pope, and, in a lower range, of
Akenside.[744] For prose they had the luck to discover, in the Novel, a
Kind which, never having been to any great extent practised before, was
a Kind practically without rules, and so could make or neglect its rules
for itself. In another, not quite so new, their performance gave
striking instance of their limitations. The Periodical Essay was a thing
of almost infinite possibilities: but because it had happened at first
to be written in a certain form by persons of genius, they turned
practice into Kind and Rule once more, and for nearly the whole
century—not merely in England—went on imitating the _Spectator_.
-----
Footnote 744:
I take these examples all from English merely to avoid confusion. The
case in French is even clearer.
-----
In Criticism itself the effects were not wholly different, though of
course to some extent apparently dissimilar. We have seen how, during
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the necessary and ineluctable
set of the critical current towards full and free “judging of authors”
seems to have been resisted by a sort of unconscious recalcitrance on
the part of critics; yet how they are drawn nearer and nearer to it,
and, in Dryden’s case at any rate, achieve admirable results. By the
eighteenth, in all countries, the tendency becomes irresistible. The
interest in literature, the bent and occupations of men of letters great
and small, the new institution of periodicals—all combine to strengthen
it: and every kind of critical estimate, from the elaborate literary
history to the brief review, begins to be written, and is written, ever
more copiously.
This was what criticism wanted; and it could not but do good. Yet the
results illustrated, as mere abstract treatises never could have done,
the deficiencies of the common critical theory. The writers save
themselves, as a rule, from the worst mistakes by simply ignoring that
of which they are ignorant. But in regard to the things with which they
do deal the inadequacy and the hamper of their theory are sufficiently
apparent.
Of course the deficiencies of Eighteenth-century criticism are to be
easily matched with other, and sometimes opposite, deficiencies in other
times. It takes considerably more pains to get at something like a real
appreciation of its subject, something more than a bare reference to
schedule, than had been the case, either in ancient times or in the two
centuries immediately preceding. It is very much better furnished with a
critical theory (whether good or bad does not at the moment matter) than
has usually been the case with Criticism from the early years of the
nineteenth century to the early years of the twentieth. It is not even
intentionally ignorant—its ignorance only proceeds from a mistaken
estimate of things as worth or not worth knowing; and there is rarely to
be found in it the bland assumption that “I like this,” or perhaps
rather, “I choose to say I like this,” will settle everything, which has
been not entirely unknown later. But it combines, in a fashion already
perhaps sufficiently illustrated, the awkwardness of dogmatism and of
compromise; and it is perhaps more exposed to those two terrible
questions, “Why?” and “Why Not?” which are the Monkir and Nakir of all
critics and all criticism, than the criticism of any other period. It is
difficult to see how a critic such as Dennis could give any reasons for
admiring Shakespeare at all, save ethical ones; and it is quite certain
that a persistent _Te sequar_ with the “Why Not?” will dispose of almost
all the stock eighteenth-century objections both to Shakespeare and to
all other suspected persons. In a certain way La Harpe had the advantage
of all his predecessors, for he was at least consistent.
The theory not merely of the _authades kallos_, the “head-strong
beauty,” but of the “monstrous beauty”—the beauty which is beautiful but
has no business to be so, the miracle-working power which does work
miracles, but is to be forbidden as _magia nigra_, because it does not
work them according to the rules—may seem itself so monstrous as to be a
patent _reductio ad absurdum_. In fact it acted as such. Yet the logic
of it is undeniable. It had all along been the unspoken word, but the
word that ought to have been spoken, and had to be spoken some day. Nor
need we grudge the admission that it was in a certain sense better than
the practice (which had been often resorted to before, and which has not
seldom been resorted to since) of absolutely denying the beauty
altogether, with the possible result of being, after a time, honestly
unable to see it.
A certain number of points, affecting the criticism and the taste of the
Eighteenth century in particular, remains to be noticed briefly before
we pass to the consideration of the Neo-classic Dispensation generally.
In the first place, both could not fail to be influenced most powerfully
by the constant growth of literature in volume; by the appearance,
almost for the first time in large numbers, of the man of letters by
profession; and, lastly, by certain changes in general education, and so
in the quality of writers and readers. To say that the general reader
first made his appearance about 1660, in what were to be thenceforward
the two great literary countries of Europe, would be an exaggeration,
but only an exaggeration, of the truth. He certainly increased and
multiplied in both thenceforward; and, by an inevitable consequence, at
once created the vocation of the writer and determined the cast and
quality of the things written. Matters like the continued _engouement_
of the French court and French society for literature, and the alternate
exaltation and depression, the Secretaryships of State and the Grub
Street kennels, for it in England, only concern us indirectly; but they
do concern us. Prosperity and patronage enticed the literary man to
work; poverty and contempt drove him to it, if only to hack-work.
Influences came, too, from the subdivision of Kinds, the specialisation
of study required, the reduction of mere erudition among those who were
not specialists. I should suppose that, taking the average reading of
those who had any reading at all, the late sixteenth century, with a
great part of the seventeenth, was the most erudite time in the known
history of the world. The level of general erudition has been constantly
declining since, though with some fluctuations; and it was at a
specially low level during the later eighteenth century. Although it is
an auxiliary on whose aid Romantic criticism—or rather that catholic
criticism which is neither Classic nor Romantic exclusively, but both
and more than both—can by no means pride herself, there is little doubt
that the increasing neglect of the classics did help to discredit the
criticism which chiefly appealed to them; while the constantly growing
attention to certain kinds of physical science could not but tell upon
the purely literary estimate. The historical studies which were so great
a characteristic of the later century could not, again, but be powerful
unsettlers of the fixed point of view; the ever-growing popularity of
the novel was constantly lifting into greater prominence a kind of which
the ancients had practically taken no notice at all; the equally
constant development of the newspaper was always adding writers, who
knew little of ancient rules, on subjects of which the ancients had
never thought. Even without the special literary influences which we may
hope to consider in the next Book, the general trend of habit and event
made for a change in criticism; and such a change was imperatively
called for, at once by that _reductio ad absurdum_ of neo-classic
strictures, and by that illogical tolerance of certain great writers of
the past, to which we have given the joint name and status of its
Nemesis.[745]
-----
Footnote 745:
One word to guard against a possible supposition that the writer
supposes Classicism dead. Nothing in literature dies: things only wane
and wax, retire and come forward again. At this very moment there is
even a sort of Classical reaction, which has shown itself in France
for a long time and is showing itself in England now. When people are
asking, not whether _Old Mortality_, and _Vingt Ans Après_, and
_Esmond_, and _Westward Ho!_ are good _books_, but whether the
Historical novel is a good _Kind_,—when they argue, not that a play is
decent, or sensible, or brilliant as literature, but that it is a
“problem”-play, and therefore sacred—John Barleycorn is going to get
up again, not to the surprise at all of historical students.
-----
II.
We now have before us the more important, but also the more difficult,
task of summing up the achievements and the shortcomings of the whole
period covered by this volume—the _only_ period, be it remembered, in
which Criticism was regarded from the point of view of a commonly
accepted, if not very commonly understood, orthodoxy. This of itself is
an advantage, which, though it has not recently counted for very much,
will never be overlooked by true critics. Even if we drop the _quod
semper_, the _quod ubique, quod ab omnibus_ has a weight which leaves it
wholly for the other side to show case and cause against. Orthodoxy may
be really right—really _ortho_dox; on that head it has at least an even
chance against any of its opponents. Even if it is not, it has merits
which they can rarely claim. It has no temptations for the clever fool,
who is perhaps on the whole the most pestilent, intellectually, of human
beings. It demands a certain amount of self-abnegation, which is always
a good thing. It does not perhaps really offer any greater temptation to
the merely stupid than does the cheap heterodoxy of other times. Above
all, it directly tends to a certain intellectual calmness—to an absence
of fuss, and worry, and pother, which is certainly not one of the least
characteristics of the Judge. At all times the wise man would rather be
orthodox than not; and at most times, though not quite at all, the
wisest men have been orthodox, if only because they have recognised that
every opinion has some amount of truth in it, and that this truth,
_plus_ the advantages of orthodoxy just mentioned, is greatest, and
should prevail.
This will be recognised by all fair-minded persons as a handsome
allowance in any case; it is surely a particularly handsome allowance
when the arbiter happens not to be a partisan of the orthodoxy in
question. And it is quite sincere. The present writer has emerged from
the serious and consecutive examination of “classical” critics,
necessary for the writing of this volume, with a distinctly higher
opinion of them generally, with a higher opinion in most cases in
particular, than he held previously on piecemeal and imperfect
acquaintance. It is only in such a case as that of Boileau—where an
almost consummate faculty of expression masks really small critical
gifts, and where the worst faults of the critical character, personal
rudeness and spite, are continually lurking behind what seem to be
systematic judgments—that the result of the reading has gone the other
way. At the same time, if we take the true reading of _illud Syrianum_,
“Judex damnatur [_capitis_ cum [_in_]nocens [_culpatur vel minime_],”
then the case of the criticism with which we have been dealing becomes
somewhat parlous. It is all the worse because its worsening is gradual
and continuous. The sins of the earliest Renaissance criticism are sins
chiefly of neglect, and are not as a rule aggravated by commission;
while its merits are very great. We could have done nothing without it:
at best we should have had to do for ourselves all that it has done for
us. But the bad side of the matter betrays itself in the code-making of
the seventeenth century; it is but imperfectly and unsatisfactorily
disguised in the compromises of the earlier eighteenth; and it appears
in all its deformity in the La Harpian recrudescence.
The fault of the whole is undoubtedly but an aggravation of what in
Ancient Criticism could hardly be called with justice a fault at all,
though it was even there a serious defect—the absence, that is to say,
of a wide enough collection of instances from the past, and of an
elastic and tolerant system of trial and admission for the present and
future. We may _now_[746] use the word “fault” almost without
qualification, proviso, or apology. The Greek could not, and the Roman
until very late days could only to a most limited extent, exercise the
proper sweep of observation and comparison; the man of the earlier
Middle Ages was, from different causes, prevented from doing so to any
effect. But the contemporaries of Lilius Giraldus who knew (or knew of)
Chaucer and Wyatt—still more, in the next generation, those of Patrizzi
who knew Ronsard and the Pléiade—could plead no such exemption or
excuse. They had recovered the exacter knowledge of the remoter past
which the Middle Ages lacked, the critical spirit which during the
Middle Ages was asleep: and they had accumulated and were accumulating
treasures, of completed mediæval work and of modern work constantly
accruing, enough to give them every comparison, without exception, that
they could have wanted. Their guilt was deepening daily as their
opportunities increased.
-----
Footnote 746:
Cf. vol. i. p. 485.
-----
For they neglected these opportunities, they “sinned” these mercies,
almost without exception. If England in any way deserved the good
fortune that fell to her at the close of the eighteenth century and the
beginning of the nineteenth, it was because she had never wholly denied
either Chaucer or Spenser, either Shakespeare or Milton. But the just
men who thus saved her were wofully few, and they were almost all of
them followers of Naaman, who extorted a permission to bow in the house
of Rimmon, rather than of the glorious Three Children, who would do
obeisance to no graven image that any king set up. If Germany had the
honour of leading the way—or very nearly leading the way—in the Critical
Reformation, it was because, from the very beginning of her really
modern literature, she had put faith in her _Heldenbuch_ and her
_Bergreihen_. But even this faith was rather hesitating for a long time,
and it had no foothold in courtly, and curial, and academic places. The
men who were the real pioneers in the revival or commencement of that
universal study of literature which alone can lead to a universal
criticism, were as a rule mere scholars and antiquaries, men like Oldys
and Capell, La Monnoye and Sainte-Palaye, Sanchez and Sedano. Gray, the
greatest man of letters by far who at least fumbled with the key of the
enchanted garden, did but fumble with that key: and his successors Percy
and Warton, who opened what they could, were not great men of letters at
all. Abroad, and especially in France, their analogues, such as
Marmontel, never got so far even as they did. In Spain it became
fashionable to deny Lope if not Cervantes: in Italy Dante-worship was
too often, if not in most cases, lip-worship only.
The spectacle of these centuries is almost infinitely interesting and
surprising. I cannot, after having, with not a little pains, attained to
some Pisgah-sight of it, exhaust my own wonder, especially in regard to
the Eighteenth, or disentangle myself from that fatalism which I have
already—with the result of some misunderstanding in the house of no
un-friends—announced at the end of the First volume. We can understand
the Sixteenth century, with its vernaculars hardly yet fully formed,
with their greatest literature coming and to come, with an almost
excusable distaste for the immediate past, and with the full
eagerness—the honeymoon intoxication—of their intercourse with the
classics upon them—we can understand this being excessive in admitting,
in continuing, in caricaturing, the critical principles of the classics
themselves. We can also, if not quite so fully, understand how the
dwindling enthusiasms of the Seventeenth, with its still greater sense
of “the petty done, the undone vast” in the matter of mere erudition,
and its thick-coming concerns of party politics, material progress,
physical science, rivalry of nations, and the like—we can understand its
sinking, in mid-journey or thereabouts, to an “age of prose and sense,”
where the prose was as certain as the sense was sometimes problematical.
But the Eighteenth was beginning to be disengaged, to specialise, to
take stock, to disuse the Chronicle and begin the History. How, we must
ask ourselves, could men like Muratori and Gravina, like Addison and
Johnson, like Fontenelle and Du Bos, rest even partly satisfied (for
wholly, as we have seen, some of them at least were not) with literary
sealed patterns which admittedly would not fit the greatest admitted
literature of all their respective countries except France, and which
presented, to the not insufficient self-sufficiency of Frenchmen, the
proposition that, for hundreds of years, French men of letters had been
barbarians, if not idiots?
There is no explanation but Grandgousier’s, eked a little by the
remembrance that—as we shall, it is to be hoped, see in the next
volume—there _was_ a searching of hearts, a moving of the waters, not
very late, in fact very early, in the Eighteenth century itself. But, as
we have seen already, the creed of the majority, the orthodoxy of the
time, admitted no hint of this. It made a few concessions or
extensions—till it found them obviously unsafe—in the direction of
amiable but illogical compromise in particulars. It yielded up no jot of
the general creed. It was still matter of breviary _circa_ 1780, as it
had begun to be _circa_ 1580, that the Fable was the Poem (let us say
that if Homer had written an argument of the _Iliad_, and had left off
there, he would have done all that was actually necessary); that you
must follow Nature by following the ancients; that you must not use epic
verse in non-epic poetry, and so forth. In all countries, or almost
all,—the extreme literary poverty and disarray of Germany here serving
her in good stead,—these general assumptions, and the many others which
have been noticed in the foregoing pages, had narrowed down to yet
others of the particular kind—that the pause in an English verse must be
absolutely within a syllable or two of the middle; that a French
Alexandrine must not have the impudence to overflow into its neighbour;
and the like. And the whole sums itself up all the more
strikingly—because of the doubtful and argumentative tone of the
passage—in that memorable decision of Johnson’s which has been discussed
above, the decision justifying Rymer, justifying La Harpe, that we must
not “judge by the event,”—that the presence of the fig is no proof of
the nature of the fig-tree.
No very elaborate indications of the faults inseparable from this style
of criticism can be necessary. That if carried out rigorously (as in
some instances at least it was) it would simply have sterilised and
petrified the literary production of the world, is of course obvious.
That journey _au fond de l’inconnu pour trouver du nouveau_, which, with
whatever success or failure it may meet, however dangerous it may be in
some high functions and departments of Life and Thought, is the motive
principle of Art, was barred by it at once. It was no question of
“progress” in the very likely chimerical sense of improvement; there was
to be not even any _difference_. “To-morrow” was not, according to the
proverb, to be “a new day”: if the men of this school did not go as far
as Musette and pronounce that _Demain, c’est une fatuité du calendrier_,
they held that it was to be as yesterday, and much more also. It is
equally obvious that this doctrine positively invited indulgence in some
of the worst faults of criticism. The critic who nowadays compasses all
the reference shelves of the British Museum in order to find one
discrepancy with his author, and then triumphs over him, is mostly
confined to dates and names, or to more or less transparent erections of
personal opinion (or personal ignorance) into standards, which the
fairly intelligent reader takes for what they are worth. A hundred and
fifty years ago the child of Momus had much better cards in his hand.
The “exact scales of Bossu” were not only infinitely complicated and
elaborate, but people in general, however intelligent, were by no means
inclined to find any fault with them or question their justice. He had a
hundred chances, to one that he now has, of catching his author tripping
under statute, and without any actual garbling or dishonesty.
But between the dangers on the great scale and the dangers on the small,
which have been indicated in the last paragraph, there were many of
intermediate kinds. Without absolute distrust of novelty or
unfamiliarity as such on the one hand, and without a mere peddling
tendency to pick holes on the other, a critic under this dispensation
might, and almost must, find himself distracted, hampered, wellnigh
mantrapped, in his critical investigations. A dreamlike network or chain
of obsessions was upon him. To submit himself frankly to the effect of
the work and judge it as he would a prospect or a picture,[747] a
vintage or a face, was forbidden him. It was his duty, in the first
place, if the author openly classed his work in any Kind, to decide
whether it really belonged to this or to another; if the author had
omitted that ceremony, to determine the classification sedulously for
himself. Then he had to remember, or look up, the most celebrated
ancient examples of the Kind, or those modern ones which had obtained
the credit of being most like the ancients; and to decide whether the
resemblance was sufficient in general. And then he had to descend—if
descent be possible in this process of grovelling—to particulars, and
see if _they_ were “according to Cocker.” If everything were entirely
_en règle_, he was at liberty to admire and enjoy, supposing that, after
the preliminaries, he had any disposition towards admiration and
enjoyment left in him.
-----
Footnote 747:
In judging pictures he would, indeed, have been almost equally liable
to be “connoisseured out of his senses,” but the interference was less
authoritative. Towards the end of the century the prophets of the
Picturesque tried to invade prospects also with their preceptism: but
Nature laughed at them too obviously.
-----
This is not a caricature; it is absolutely exact according to the
“regulation” theory: and as the examples quoted before will have shown,
and as hundreds of others might be produced to show, it is by no means
untrue to practice. A critic, great, or generous, or happily both, might
transcend his brief, be better than his creed, as in that noble eulogy
of Gray’s _Elegy_ which makes up for much in Johnson’s _Life_ of the
poet. But these were works of supererogation; and it is not quite
certain that the exercise of them was entirely orthodox. The
“stop-watch” _was_ orthodox: it was the very centre and pulse of the
machine of neo-classic criticism.
I do not think that it is part of my duty as a Historian to support this
view by any further argument. I have given the strongest possible, in a
minute, and I believe faithful, exposition of the _actual_ survey, the
_actual_ opinions, the _actual_ processes and judgments of neo-classic
critics. If it is necessary to say any more, let it be this only. The
weakness of their position is sufficiently shown by the fact that it
could not bear the light of a historical knowledge of literature. There
was none such, so long as it lasted: and when that light shone, it fell.
The coincidences may not be causative; but it is for others to show that
they are not.
If, however, any one should conclude from these strictures that, in the
view of the present writer, the critical work of these three centuries
was only evil continually, he would make a very great mistake. Moreover,
putting all personal views out of the question, it is certain that this
could not be the case. In almost all arts and even sciences, but in Art
even more than in Science, the task set before the human faculties is a
gigantic “Rule of False,” as the older arithmetic books called it, in
which, by following out certain hypotheses, and ascertaining how and to
what extent you are led wrong by them, you at last discover the right
way. The most grotesque error is thus a benefit to Humanity, which,
indeed, sometimes shows itself conscious enough of the beneficial
character to perform the experiment over and over again. And further, in
all arts and in all sciences, but especially in the higher division of
Art, the reward of these excursions is not confined to the somewhat
negative advantage of discovering that man need go that way no more.
Corollaries and episodes—wayside windfalls of the Muses—await, not so
thinly spread, the adventurous and single-hearted practitioner of
Allegory as of Alchemy, on the acrostic as on the astrolabe. And
considering the secondary or parasitic character which so specially
belongs to Criticism, it is inevitable, not merely that these “bonuses,”
these “extras,” should be more abundant here than anywhere else, but
that the regular profits of the ordinary work should be considerable.
Unless the critic is utterly incompetent and bad—unless he is a very
Rymer, I do not say a Dennis, much less a Boileau—his mere contact with
a new work of art must result in something useful, in a critical datum
and fact for the future. It is very unlikely—if he is a person of even
rather more than average brains it is practically impossible—that the
exact equation or conjunction of his temperament, and his equipment, and
the character of the work, will ever recur. It is, _ex hypothesi_, quite
certain that it can never have occurred before. That he judges under a
certain system, even a wrong one, will not detract from the value of the
result, save in quantity. There will still be the actual fact—acquired
to the stock of critical data for the future—that a critical power, say
A, applied under the restrictions of system _m_ or _n_, to work B, has
resulted in the judgment _x_. And this result, in its own line and
sphere, is as much a “thing,” and a thing of interest, to the critical
student of literature, as a new beetle to the man of science, or a new
judgment of the House of Lords to the man of law. Nay, to such a student
it has a higher interest still: it is in rank and line (_mutatis
mutandis_ again) with the work criticised, with a picture, with a
sonata, as a thing of art itself.
And critics in these centuries, from these points of view and others,
estated criticism more richly than it could have hoped to be endowed
when the Humanists began once more to attack and defend Poetry, or when
Daniello a little later set himself down to write the first treatise of
criticism proper in a vernacular language. They attempted, and to the
best of their power arranged, the more general questions of the Art,
always with zeal, if not always with discretion; they did valuable, if
also somewhat and sometimes mistaken, work in its intermediate regions;
and slowly, grudgingly, but surely, they set themselves to the
apparently humbler but really fruitful work of actual critical
examination of literature, at first as it had been provided and already
criticised long ago, at last as it was being provided by the flying day.
Their own theories, right or wrong, they worked out with altogether
admirable patience and thoroughness, applying them, too, with a
faithfulness which must excite admiration, if it cannot command
agreement. And, as we have taken all fair pains to show, they not
unfrequently strayed and stumbled upon outside truths, leant over the
border of their somewhat narrow world and pried into others, after a
fashion which, when the due time came, was sure to start more
adventurous discoverers on wider paths of exploration.
It would be superfluous to extend this already long volume with any list
of selected specimens of individual achievement and excellence. I hope,
indeed, that this book may attract or help attention to some
critics—Capriano, Cinthio, Patrizzi, Ogier are a very few examples—who
are at present very little known: and to others, unnecessary to specify,
whose claims have, as it seems to me, been underrated or misunderstood.
But I have included, I think, no one of all the hundreds appearing in
this volume who is not profitable in some way, for example, or for
correction, or for reproof—who has not done something, if it be only in
the way of warning, to help the student of all time.
We may also advantageously compare this balance-sheet with the
balance-sheets of Ancient Criticism as given before, and of Modern in an
anticipated draft. As compared with the former, Neo-Classicism has the
disadvantage that, with at least equal if not greater narrowness, it is
almost entirely destitute of the same excuse for being narrow. The
Greeks of the great age wrote with nothing but Greek literature before
them; those of the decadence and the Romans with nothing but Greek
literature and Roman, which was for the most part a pale copy of Greek.
The men of the eighteenth century, had they chosen, could have compared,
with the practice and the theory of these two literatures, not merely
the vast, the interesting, and, as “correcting” classicism, the
inestimable literature of the Middle Ages, but at least four substantive
and important literatures of modern times, those of France, Italy,
England, and Spain. They not only did not do this as a matter of fact,
but they invariably in practice, and not seldom as a matter of express
theory, flouted and scouted the bare idea of doing it. They persisted in
applying a travesty of the system of Horace, itself travestied from
Aristotle, to these totally different products. Sometimes this resulted
in the bland absurdity of the _Battle of the Books_ attitude, sometimes
in the hardly less ludicrous compromise which, by stretching the
faults-and-beauties doctrine to its farthest possible extent, allowed
critics to make room, as it were by sufferance, for Shakespeare and
Milton, for Dante and Cervantes. They could laugh heartily at a dinner
in the style of the ancients, and their common-sense would at once have
pronounced any one fit for Bedlam who attempted to journey from London
to York bareheaded, clothed in a toga, and with sandals on foot; but in
theory, and even partly in practice, they imposed the classical uniform
on literature.
Still, they show, at least in some respects, better beside their modern
successors than it is the fashion to think. We have opened the road
which they barred, and permitted the exploration of the countries which
they forbade; but it is rather a question whether we have profited as we
should by this gain. It is still the very rarest thing to find a critic
who, by equipment or even by inclination, is himself disposed to take a
really catholic view of literature; and those who do endeavour to take
such a view are constantly regarded with distrust by the general, and
with a rather comic rancour by specialists. It follows that the modern
critic is, taking each on his own scheme, very much less well prepared
as a rule than the critic, not merely of the eighteenth century, as has
been said above, but of our period generally, and very nearly as liable
as that critic was to take hasty sweeping views in condemnation of whole
provinces of his subject.
Excesses, moreover, of this kind, which critics from the Renaissance
onwards committed, are a natural result of reaction in all histories.
And in the History of Literature a hundred years of something
approaching to Anarchy are perhaps not too much to balance three
hundred of mistakenly experimental Order. We shall see the causes and
the faults, as well as the excuses and the gains, of the Anarchy
later. For the present it is fitting to conclude, with an
acknowledgment anew of the merits of the Order also, in respect to the
faults of which we have been so frank. They are the merits of a
remarkable industry, of a commendable freedom from mere dilettantism,
of the discovery of not a few sound critical principles, and the
registration of not a few sound critical judgments, of an
experimentation and accomplishment which, even if it went wrong,
serves as an invaluable warning to other ages not to pursue the paths
which have so misled. And, yet once more, let us recognise that
adjustment of criticism to creation—mysterious or simply natural as it
may seem to different temperaments and different systems of
thought—which we have observed before, in the cautious check of
Renaissance criticism on the heady exuberance of the great Renaissance
creation, in the support given by Seventeenth-century classicism to
such mediate powers and dispositions as those of Corneille and even
Racine, of Dryden and even Pope; in the salutary deterrence of
Eighteenth-century orthodoxy, which saved us from more Beatties and
more Anne Radcliffes when the time was not ready for Keatses or for
Scotts. For so also in literature—and even in that, as some would have
it, not divinest part of literature, Criticism—do all the works of the
Lord, the lesser as well as the greater, praise Him and magnify Him
for ever.
INDEX.
(_Dates in the following entries are only given in the case of critical
writers actually belonging to the period dealt with in the volume. To
economise space, also, the kind of writing practised is only indicated
where confusion is possible._)
_Abrégé de l’Art Poétique_, 121.
Academic _Éloges_, 533, 534.
Academy, the French, 256 _sq._
_Account of the English Dramatic Poets_, 400, 401.
_Account of the greatest English Poets_, 438, 439.
_Adagia_ of Erasmus, the, 11.
Addison, Joseph (1672-1719), 271, 325, 415 _note_, 432 _sq._, 437-448,
463, 541, 561 _sq._
“Admiration,” 52, 270.
_Adone_, 259.
_Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry_, 433 _sq._
—— _of Learning_, 191 _sq._
_Advice to a Young Poet_, 452.
Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini—Pope Pius II. (1405-64), 18.
Æschylus, 61, 77.
_Æthiopica_, 77, 131.
_Agamemnon_, the, 262 _note_, 313.
Agrippa, Cornelius (1486-1535), 17 _note_, 28, 29, 352 _note_.
_Agudeza y arte de ingenio_, 349, 350.
Aguilar, Francesco López de, 346.
_A King and No King_, Rymer on, 394.
_Alaric_, 257, 265.
Alexander, Sir William, Earl of Stirling (1567?-1640), 196, 197.
_All for Love_, Preface to, 384.
_Almanack des Grands Hommes de nos jours_, 534.
_Ambra_, 24 _sq._
_Amour Tyrannique_, 266.
Amthor, 556.
Amyot, 139.
_Ana_, the, 274-277.
Anacreon, 522.
_Anacrisis_, 196, 197.
Anchères, Daniel d', see Schélandre, Jean de.
_Ancient Mariner, The_, 497 _note_.
“Ancients and Moderns,” 270, 320-322, 324, 327, 401, 412, 457, 503
_sq._
André, Père, 513 _note_.
_Andromeda_, 161.
_Anecdotes_, Spence’s, 332, 454.
_An Evening’s Love_, Preface to, 383.
_Annus Mirabilis_, Preface to, 375.
_Anticlaudianus_, 67, 96.
_Antigone_, the, 256, 432.
_Antiquity of the English Tongue, The_, 452.
_Apollo, The British_, 406.
Apollonius Rhodius, 393, 531.
_Apology of Heroic Poetry_, 384.
—— _for Poetry_, 171 _sq._
—— _for Smectymnuus_, 366.
_Apophthegmata_ of Erasmus, the, 11.
Apuleius, 14, 254 _note_, 532.
Aquinas, 20.
_Araucana_, the, 348.
Arber, Professor, Bk. IV., ch. vi., _notes passim_.
Arbuthnot, 450 _sq._
_Arcadian Rhetoric_, 186 _note_.
_Architrenius_, 67, 96.
Aretino, L., see Bruni.
—— C., 66.
Argensolas, the (Lupercio, 1565-1613; Bartolomé, 1566-1631), 346
_note_.
Arias Montano, Benito (1577-98), 336.
Ariosto, 53 _sq._, 64, 85, 91, 293 _sq._, 303, 555.
Aristophanes, 54, 254 _note_, 151, 308.
Aristotle, 6, 37, 38, 40, 41, 52 _sq._, 60 _sq._, 70, 80 _sq._, 97
_sq._, 103, 106, 213, 219, 413, 454 and _passim_.
Arnold, Matthew, 144-146, 219, 272, 277, 437, 462 _note_, 489 _sq._,
493 _sq._, 506, 512.
Aromatari, Giuseppe (1588-1660), 328, 329, 411.
_Arte de Trobar_, 333.
_Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias_, 50 _note_, 332, 343-346.
_Arte Poetica_, Minturno’s, 51 _sq._
—— Muzio’s, 46.
Arthurian Romances, Ronsard on, 124, 125.
—— Chapelain on, 260.
—— Montaigne on, 139.
Artieda, M. A. Rey de (1560-1625), 346 _note_.
Artiga, Francesco José (_fl. c._ 1690), 547, 548.
_Art of English Poesy_, Puttenham’s, 176 _sq._
_Art of Poetry_, Bysshe’s, 426 _sq._
—— Gildon’s, 429 _sq._
_Art of Rhetoric_, Wilson’s, 148-151.
_Art Poétique_, Boileau’s, 281 _sq._
—— La Mesnardière’s, 265.
—— Laudun’s, 127, 128.
—— Pelletier’s, 117 _sq._
—— Vauquelin’s, 128 _sq._
_Artus_, 124, 125.
Ascham, Roger (1515-68), 9, 46, 113, 148-162, 193, 224 _sq._
Asselineau, M., 255.
_Athalie_, 298.
_Athenæum_, the, 40 _note_.
_Athenian Mercury, The_, 406.
_Athenian Oracle, The_, 406.
_Athenian Sport_, 406.
Atterbury, Francis, Bishop of Rochester (1672-1732), 449.
Aubignac, F. Hédelin, Abbé d’(1604-76), 241, 308-310, 357, 369 _note_.
Aubigné, Agrippa d', 505.
_Aurengzebe_, Prologue to, 384.
_Autre Art Poétique_, 111 _note_.
Avellaneda, 347 _note_.
Averroes, 20.
Axon, Mr W. E. A., 29.
Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626), 191-196, 206, 232, 318
_note_.
Bacon-Shakespeare theory, 207 _note_, 318 _note_, 486.
Baillet, Adrien (1649-1706), 102 _note_, 107 _note_, 241, 316, 317-319.
Balzac, J. Guez de (1594-1655), 241, 252-254, 257.
—— Honoré de, 557.
Barbauld, Mrs, 497 _note_.
_Barbon, Le_, 254.
Barreda, Francesco de la, 346 _note_.
Bartas, Du, 199, 505.
_Basia_, 68.
Bath-Easton Vase, the, 240.
Batteux, Charles, Abbé (1713-80), 522-525, 536 _note_.
_Battle of the Books, The_, 450.
Baudelaire, 87.
Bausset, Louis Francois, Cardinal de, (1748-1824), 304 _note_.
Bayle, Pierre (1647-1706), 316, 317, 363, 364.
Béat de Muralt, 553.
Beaumont and Fletcher, 378 _sq._, 393 _sq._
_Beaux Arts réduits a un même Principe, Les_, 523.
Beccadelli, 63, 66.
Beddoes, 87.
_Bee, The_, 498.
Behn, Afra, 426.
Bellay, see Du Bellay.
Bembo, Pietro (1470-1547), 49, 455.
Ben, see Jonson.
Beni, Paolo (1552-1625), 107, 324, 325.
Benserade, Isaac de (1612-91), 254.
Bentley, Richard (1662-1742), 24 _note_, 392, 400, 401, 450, 451.
Béranger, 87, 539.
Bergerac, Cyrano de (1619-55), 285 _note_, 297.
_Bergreihen_, 569.
Berni, Francesco (1490-1536), 29.
Bertaut, 281.
_Biographia Literaria_, 52.
Blair, Hugh (1718-1800), 419, 462-465.
Blake, 391 _note_, 426.
Blanchemain, M. Prosper, 120.
Blankenburg, 329, 330 _notes_.
Blount, Sir Thomas Pope (1649-97), 404, 406.
Boccaccio, 7, 8, 22, 43, 334.
Boccalini, Trajano (1556-1613), 329, 330.
Bodmer, J. J., 551.
Boileau, Nicolas B. Despréaux (1636-1711), 29, 34, 70, 241, 247, 278
_note_, 280-300, 321, 389, 390, 411, 455 _sq._, 517, 526 _sq._, 567.
Bolingbroke, 332.
Bolton, Edmund (1573?-1633), 187.
Boscan, Juan (1500-43), 337.
Boswell, 474.
Bouhours, Dominique, Abbé (1628-1702), 308, 315, 316, 330, 417.
Bourgoin, M., 240 _note_, 256, 258, 268, 287 _note_, 301 _note_, 304
_note_, 319 _note_.
Boyl, Carlos, 346 _note_.
_Bradamante_, 132.
Breitinger, J. J., 551.
—— M. H., 44 _note_.
Brocense, El, see Sanchez, F.
Brossette, Claude (1671-1743), 247 _note_, 290 _note_.
Brown, John (1715-66), 476, 477.
Browne, Sir T., 272, 326.
Browning, Mr, 404 _note_.
Brumoy, Père Pierre (1688-1742), 509.
Brunetière, M. Ferdinand, 113 _sq._, 144, 280.
Bruni, Leonardo (often called L. _Aretino_ (1369-1444), 20.
Bruno, Giordano (1549-1600), 95 and _note_, 97 and _note_, 101.
Brunot, M., 243 _note_, 251 _note_.
_Bruttezza_, Tassoni on, 327, 417, 418.
_Buch von der Deutschen Poeterei_, 360-363.
Buckhurst, see Dorset.
Buehler, J., 355.
Buffon, Jean Louis Leclerc, Comte de (1707-1788), 202, 519-521.
Burns, 87, 539.
Burton, R., 326.
Butcher, Prof., 61.
Bysshe, Edward (_fl. c._ 1700), 107, 426-429.
Cæsar, 152.
Calcagnini, Celio, 62.
Calderon, de la Barca, &c., Pedro (1600-81), 349.
Callières, François de (1645-1717), 450.
Camoens, 497 _note_, 516, 553 _note_.
Campbell, George (1709-96), 470-473.
Campion, Thomas (?-1619), 187-189, 199, 366.
Camusat, Denis François (1695-1732), 551 _note_.
_Canons of Criticism_, the, 497 _note_.
Capell, 569.
Caporali, Cesare (1531-1601), 344 _note_, 347 _note_.
Capriano, G. P. (_fl. c._ 1550), 47, 48, 219.
_Caprice au Seig. S. Nicolas_, 129 _sq._
“Car of Cambridge”—_i.e._, Carr, Nicholas (1524-68), Greek Professor?
193.
_Caractères, Les_, 301 _sq._
Carlyle, Mr, 526.
Caro, Annibale (1507-66), 49, 91.
Carvallo, Louis Alfonso de (_fl. c._ 1600), 341.
Cascales, Francisco (?-1640), 338.
Castelvetro, Lodovico (1505-71), 17, 22 _note_, 31 _note_, 57, 80-89,
90, 91, 101, 215, 219, 233, 244 _note_, 265, 273 _note_, 326, 331,
341.
Castiglione, 93.
_Castle of Indolence_, the, 495.
_Catiline_, Rymer on, 396.
Catullus, 45, 81, 531.
Caxton, William (1442?-91?), 145.
Celtes, Conrad, 28.
Cervantes, Miguel de (1547-1616), 347-349.
Chamfort, Sebastien Roch Nicolas (1741-94), 534 _note_.
_Champfleury_, 110 _note_, 135.
Chapelain, Jean (1595-1674), 249 _note_, 252, 256-261, 297, 387 _note_,
393, 417.
Chapman, 199, 384, 387.
_Character of Saint-Evremond_, 271, 385 _note_.
Chaucer, 6, 63 and _note_, 146 _sq._, 150, 158 _sq._, 179 _sq._, 388,
390, 393, 438, 561.
Cheke, Sir John (1514-57), 148, 151-153.
Chénier, M. J., 525 _note_.
Chester, Thomas, 6.
Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope (1694-1773), 476 _note_, 514
_note_.
_Chevræana_, 274 _note_.
_Chevy Chase_, 173, 443.
_Choice_, the, 488.
Christopher North, 496.
_Christus Patiens_, 357 _note_.
Churchill, 517.
Cicero, 11, 12, 40, 48 and _note_, 53 _note_, 59, 150, 471.
_Ciceronianus_, 10-12, 193, 276.
_Cid_, the, and the censure on it, 257 _sq._
_Cigarrales de Toledo_, 332, 342, 343.
_Cinna_, 379.
Cinthio Giraldi, Giambattista (1504-73), 58-62, 81, 84, 90-92, 101,
214, 219.
_Cisne de Apolo_, 341.
_Citizen of the World_, the, 498.
“Classical Metres,” 157 _sq._
Claudian, 384, 405.
Claveret, 258 _note_.
Cleveland, 235, 377, 387, 421.
Cœlius Rhodiginus, 405.
Coleridge, 52, 145, 202, 532.
Colet, John (1467-1513), 15, 63.
Colletet family, 286 and _note_.
Collier, Jeremy (1650-1726), 392, 402-404, 433 _sq._, 451.
Collins (the poet), 490 _sq._
_Colloquies_ of Erasmus, the, 11, 13, 14.
“Columbarius, Julius,” 346.
_Comical Gallant_, the, 434.
_Comparaisons_, Rapin’s, 310 _sq._
_Comus_, 490.
_Conceptismo_, 350.
_Concio, sive Merdardus_, 13.
Condorcet, M. J. A. N. Caritat, Marquis de (1743-94), 525 _note_.
_Conflictus Thaliæ et Barbariei_, 13.
Congreve, 403.
Conrart, Valentin (1603-75), 240, 278.
Conti, Armand de Bourbon, Prince de (1629-66), 402 _note_.
_Conversations with Drummond_, 198 sq.
_Convivium Poeticum_, 13.
Cook, Prof. A. S., 30.
_Cooper’s Hill_, 375, 500.
Corneille, Pierre (1606-84), 54, 258, 261-264, 297, 304, 378 _sq._,
419, 504 _sq._, 522.
—— Voltaire’s Commentary on, 516.
—— Thomas (1625-1706), 316 _note_.
Correa, L. (_fl. c._ 1590), 107.
Costar, Pierre (1603-60), 278.
Cotin, Charles, Abbé (1604-82), 282, 287 _note_, 297.
_Cours de Littérature_, 530 _sq._
Courthope, Mr, 444 _note_, 453 _note_.
_Courtier_, the, 93.
Cowley, Abraham (1618-67), 366, 367, 393, 404, 438, 439, 450, 481, 488
_sq._
Cowper, 87, 476 _note_.
Coxe, Leonard, 148 _note_.
Craik, Sir Henry, 398 _note_.
Crashaw, Pope on, 453 _note_.
Crébillon, Fils, 536 _note_.
Creed, attempted summary of the Neo-Classic, 216, 217.
Crescimbeni, Giovanni Maria (1663-1728), 218 _note_, 324, 542. 324,
542.
Crinitus, Petrus (Pietro Riccio, 1465-1505), 27.
_Critical Review_, the, 497.
Croy, Henri de, 110.
Crusca, Ac. della, 92 _sq._
_Culteranismo_, 346 _sq._
_Cultismo_, 346 _sq._
_Cursor Mundi_, 230.
_Cynthia’s Revels_, 198 _note_.
Dacier, André (1651-1722), 81, 84.
—— Madame (Anne Lefèvre) (1654-1720), 508.
D’Alembert, Jean le Rond, _called_ (1717-83), 518.
Daniel, Samuel (1562-1619), 189-191, 199, 226, 366.
Danielle, Bernardo (_fl. c._ 1530), 42-44, 213, 219.
Dante, 6, 8, 34, 40 _note_, 82, 160, 313 _note_, 334, 369, 372, 373,
405, 532 _sq._, 534 _sq._, 540.
—— Rivarol’s _Preface_ to, 534 _sq._
Darmesteter and Hatsfeld, MM., 112 _note_.
Davenant, Sir William (1606-68), 365, 367, 371.
_Davideis_, 367 _note_.
_De Arte Poetica_, Viperano’s, 103.
_De Augmentis_, 192 _note_.
_De Divisione et Utilitate Omnium Scientiarum_, 21 _note_.
_De Genealogia Deorum_, 7.
_De Honesta Sapientia_, 27.
_De Imitatione Poetica_, 102.
_De Ludicra Dictione_, 254 _note_.
_De Perfecta Poeseos Ratione_, 107.
_De Poemate Epico_, 265-268.
_De Poeta_ (Minturno’s), 51 _sq._
_De Poetis Latinis_, 27.
_De Poetis Nostrorum Temporum_, 63 _sq._
_De Quincey_, 47 _note_, 98, 219.
_De Re Poetica_, 353 _sq._
_De Scientiis_, 21.
_De Tragœdiæ Constitutione_, 356, 357.
_De Vanitate Scientiarum_, 28, 29.
_De Vulgari Eloquio_, 40 _note_, 112, 160, 328, 540.
_Deca Disputata, La_, 95 _sq._
_Deca Istoriale, La_, 95 _sq._
_Dedication of the Æneis_, 385.
—— _of the Spanish Friar_, 384.
_Defence of Poesy_, 170 _sq._
_Defence of Rhyme_, 189-191.
_Defence of the Epilogue_ (to _Conquest of Granada_), 383.
_Défense du Poème Héroique_, 277.
_Défense et Illustration de la Langue Française_, 111 _sq._
Defoe, 277.
_Degli Autori del Ben Parlare_, 328.
Deimier, Pierre de (1576-1620), 251 _note_.
_Dell’ Imitatione Poetica_, 47 _note_.
_Della Bellezza del Volgar Poesia_, 542.
_Della Crusca_, see Crusca.
_Della Difesa di Dante_, 105.
_Della Lingua Toscana_, 47 _note_.
_Della Perfetta Poesia Italiana_, 541, 542.
_Della Poesia_, 106, 107.
_Della Ragion Poetica_, 538 _sq._
_Della Storia e della Ragione d’Ogni Poesia_, 542-545.
_Della Vera Poetica_, 47, 48.
_Delminio, G. C._, 329.
_De l’Origine des Romans_, 274, 275.
_De l’Universalité de la Langue Française_, 534 _sq._
Denham, 439.
Dennis, John (1657-1734), 387 _note_, 431-437.
Denores, Jason (_fl. c._ 1570), 106, 107, 219.
Derby, Lord, 433.
Descartes, René (1596-1650), 221, 278.
Deschamps, Eustache (? 1340-? 1410), 109.
_Deserted Village, The_, 297.
Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, Jean (1595-1676), 257, 277, 278, 369.
Desportes, Philippe (1546-1601), 242 _sq._, 281, 366 _note_, 450.
“Despréaux,” 450, and see Boileau.
_Dialogo contra i Poeti_, 29.
_Dialogo de la[s] Lengua[s]_, 335.
_Dialogues des Dieux_, 510.
—— _des Morts_, 503.
—— _sur l’Eloquence_, 305 _sq._
—— _sur les Héros de Roman_, 292.
_Dialogus in Defensionem Poetices_, 27, 28.
_Dictionnaire Philosophique_, 517.
Diderot, 518 _sq._
_Difesa di Dante_, 105.
_Digressions sur les Anciens et les Modernes_, 506.
_Dionysius Areopagita_, 22.
_Discorsi_, Cinthio’s, 581 _sq._
—— Summo’s, 108.
—— Tasso’s, 92 _sq._
_Discours de Réception_, Buffon’s, 519 _sq._
_Discours des Trois Unités_, 262 _sq._
_Discourse of English Poesy_, 176 _sq._
_Discourse on Medals_, 439.
—— _on Music, Painting, and Poetry_, 473 _sq._
—— _on Satire_, 385.
—— _on the Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy_, 384.
_Discoveries_, Jonson’s, 198 _sq._
_Dissertation on Ossian_, 464.
—— _on Phalaris_, 401, 402.
—— _on the Rise of Poetry and Music_, 474.
_Dissertation sur le mot “Vaste,”_ 269 _sq._
Donatus, Ælius, 6 _note_, 48 and _note_, 59, 345.
Donne, 199, 489.
Dorset, Earl of, 376 _sq._, 439.
Douglas, Gavin, 218.
Drant, Thomas (_d._ 1578?), 162 _sq._
Drayton, 199, 498.
Drummond (of Hawthornden), 198 _sq._, 356 _note_, 399.
Dryden, John (1631-1700), 56, 93, 119, 121, 144, 232, 237 and _motto_,
262, 264, 271, 300, 314 _note_, 322, 332, 344, 347, 369, 371-391,
393, 403, 411, 413, 416, 417, 425 _sq._, 432, 438, 439, 449, 454,
472 _note_, 485, 489 _sq._, 503, 560.
Du Bartas, 313, 369.
Du Bellay, Joachim (1524-60), 111-116, 221, 233, 369.
Du Bos, Jean Baptiste, Abbé (1670-1742), 511-513, 542 _note_.
Dunton, John (1659-1733), 406.
Du Pont, Gratien (_fl. c._ 1540), 110.
Dyer, Sir Edward, 165.
—— John, 421, 478.
Edgeworth, Miss, 97, 348.
Edwards, Thomas (1699-1757), 497 _note_.
_Ejemplar Poético_, 338, 341.
E. K., 224.
_Eléments de Littérature_, 526 _sq._
_Elements of Criticism_, the, 465-470.
_Éloges_, D’Alembert’s, 519.
—— Fontenelle’s, 506.
—— Other, 529, 533.
Elton, Professor, 552.
Encina, Juan del (1468-1534), 335.
_English Parnassus_, the, 426 _note_.
_Entretiens d’Ariste_, 308.
_Ephemerides of Phialo_, 169 _note_.
_Epistle to Augustus_, Pope’s, 453 _sq._
_Epistles_, Ovid’s, Dryden’s Preface to, 384.
_Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum_, 14 _note_.
_Epitome de la Eloquencia Española_, 547, 548.
Erasmus, Desiderius (1467-1536), 9-16, 61, 65, 75, 85, 193, 276, 352
_note_.
_Ercolano, L’_, 49.
Eschenbach, Wolfram von, 230.
Espinel, Vicente (1544-1634), 337.
_Essai sur la Poésie Epique_, 516.
—— _sur le Beau_, 513 _note_.
—— _sur le Goût_, 514, 528.
—— _sur les Éloges_, 529.
—— _sur les Romans_, 527.
_Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, 332, 376-382.
—— _of Heroic Plays_, 383.
—— _on a New Species of Writing_, 497 _note_.
—— _on Criticism_, 453 _sq._
—— _on Modern Education_, 452.
_Essay on Poetry_ (Temple’s), 401.
—— _on the Genius of Shakespeare_, 434.
—— _on Translated Verse_, 404.
—— _upon Poetry and Painting_, 497 _note_.
_Essays_, Collier’s, 404.
—— _Critical_ (Scott’s), 500.
—— Montaigne’s, 138 _sq._
—— _Moral and Literary_, 499.
_Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times_, 476.
_Estratto dell’ Arte Poetica d’Aristotile_, 546.
Etherege, 463.
Euphuism, 225 _sq._
Euripides, 14, 54.
_Evening’s Love, An_, Preface to, 383.
_Examens_, Corneille’s, 262 _sq._
_Expostulatio Spongiæ_, 346.
_Fables_, Dryden’s, Preface to, 386.
Fabri, Pierre (_fl. c._ 1520), 110.
Fabriano, see Gilio.
Fabricius, Georgius (1515-71), 108, 181, 353-355.
_Faerie, Queene_, the, 168.
“Fatura,” 63.
Fauchet, Claude (1530-1601), 101, 135.
Feillet, M., 258.
Feltre, Vittorino da, 20.
Fénelon, Francois de Salignac de La Mothe (1651-1715), 241, 272, 301,
304-308.
Feyjóo y Montenegro, Benito Geronimo (1701-64), 549.
“Fidenziano,” 540 _note_.
Fielding, 349.
_Filosofia Antigua Poética_, 338-340.
_Fingal_, 464.
Flaubert, G., 12, 302.
Flecknoe, 377.
Flemming, 556.
Fletcher, 378 _sq._
_Floriant et Florete_, 394 _note_.
Folengo, 540.
Fontaine, Ch. (1513-88?), 116.
Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de (1657-1757), 292, 416, 419, 423
_motto_, 501-507.
Fracastoro, Jeronimo (1483-1553), 44-46, 67, 88, 90, 214, 217, 219.
_Franciade_, Preface to the, 120 _sq._
Fraunce, Abraham (_fl. c._ 1590), 186 _note_, 199.
_Fray Gerundio_, 550.
Froissart, 141.
Froude, Mr, 5.
Fulgentius, 8, 397.
_Fureteriana_, 274 _note_.
Furetière, Antoine (1620-88), 553, 554 _note_.
“Furor Poeticus,” 97 and _note_, 267, 268, 295, 340, 410, 420.
“Gallo-Classic,” the term, 411.
Gambara, F. (_fl. c._ 1580), 107 _note_, 278 _note_.
Garbett, Rev. J., 298 _note_, 372 _note_.
Garnett, Dr, 546 _note_.
Gascoigne, George (1525?-77), 162 _sq._, 177, 226, 429.
Gautier, Th., 282 _note_, 519 _note_.
Gayley and Scott, Professors, 195 _note_, 329 _note_.
Gellert, Christian Furchtegott (1715-69), 557.
_Gentleman’s Magazine_, the, 497.
_Gerusalemme Liberata_, 18, 87 _sq._
Gibert, Balthasar (1662-1741), 319, 320.
Gifford, 198 _note_, 534.
Gildon, Charles (1665-1724), 429, 430.
Gilio da Fabriano Antonio (_fl. c._ 1580), 104.
Girac, Paul Thomas de (?-1663), 278 _note_.
Giraldi, Cinthio, see Cinthio.
Giraldus, Lilius, see Lilius.
Goethe, 356, 372, 560.
Goldsmith, Oliver (1728-74), 429, 498.
_Gondibert_, Preface to, 365, 367-371.
Góngora y Argote, Luis de (1561-1627), 349.
Gongorism, 331, 414.
Gonzales de Salas (_fl. c._ 1630), 341, 342, 349.
_Gorboduc_, 173, 206, 374, 503.
_Gorgias_, the, 82.
Gosson, Stephen (1555-1624), 169-171.
Gottsched, Johann Christopher (1700-66), 552-557.
Gournay, Mlle. de, 251, 253, 254.
Gower, 146 _sq._, 179 _sq._
Gracián, Balthasar (1584-1658?), 349, 350.
Granada, Luis de (1504-81), 336.
Gravina, Gianvincenzo (1664-1718), 272, 324, 513, 538-541.
Gray, 461, 478, 479, 487, 491 _sq._, 500, 569.
Grazzini, Ant. Francesco ["Il Lasca"] (1403-83), 48, 59.
Grévin, Jacques (1538?-70), 127.
Grimmelshausen, 552.
_Grongar Hill_, 488, 500.
Grosart, Dr, 196 _note_.
Grotius, 359.
_Grundlicher Bericht des Deutschen Meistergesangs_, 360 _note_.
Guarini, Battista (1537-1612), poet, 107, 199.
Guarino (?-1460), humanist, 18.
Guest, Dr, 178, 188.
Guicciardini, 331.
Habington, 485.
Hamelius, Herr, 425 _note_, 432 _note_, 448 _note_.
Hamilton, Anthony, 502.
Hannay, Mr David, 332 _note_, 341, 350.
Hardy, Alexandre (1560-1631), 255 _note_.
Harington, Sir John (1561-1612), 183 _note_, 186, 199.
Harris, James (1709-80), 473-476.
Harvey, Gabriel (1545-1630), 148, 165 _sq._
Hawes, Stephen (?-1523?), 146, 147.
Hazlitt, 145, 219, 372 _note_, 496.
_Heads of an Answer to Rymer_, 373 _note_, 397 _note_.
Hédelin, see Aubignac.
Hegel, 274, 527 _note_.
Heinsius, Daniel (1580-1655), 356, 357.
_Heldenbuch_, 569.
Heliodorus, 77, 131.
_Henriade_, the, 514 _note_, 522, 526.
_Henry IV._, Dennis on, 434.
Herbert, G., 87.
Héricault, M. Ch. d’, 112 _note_.
_Hermaphroditus_, 66 _note_.
_Hermes_, 473.
_Hermogenes_, 319, 329.
_Hero and Leander_, 74.
“Heroic Play,” the, 367 _sq._
“Heroic Poem,” the, 367 _sq._
Hessus, Eobanus, 14, 28.
Heywood, Thomas, 398 _note_.
_Histoire du Théâtre Français_, Fontenelle’s, 505.
—— the Frères Parfait’s, 527.
_Historia de las Ideas Estéticas en España_, 331-351 _passim_.
_History of the Rise and Progress of Poetry_, 476.
—— _of the Royal Society_, 398.
Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679), 40, 367-371.
Hoffmanswaldau, 552.
Home, Henry, see Kames.
Homer, 25, 31-35, 47, 52, 74, 86, 99, 122-126, 130-132, 141, 310 _sq._
Horace, 6, 9, 129 _sq._ and _passim._
Howard, Edward, 367 _note_.
—— Henry, see Surrey, Earl of.
—— J., 367 _note_.
—— Sir Robert (_d._ 1698: his birth-date and those of his brothers E.
and J. are very uncertain), 376 _sq._
Howell’s _Letters_, 371 _note_.
_Hudibras_, 513 _note_.
Huerta, Vicente Garcia de la (1730?-87), 550 _note_.
Huet, Pierre Daniel (1630-1721), bishop of Avranches, 274, 275.
_Huetiana_, 275.
Hugo, Victor, 87.
Hume, Alexander, 209 _note_.
—— David, 462.
Hunt, Leigh, 372 _note_.
Hurd, 469.
Hutten, Ulrich von (1488-1523), 352 _note_.
Iago, Rymer on, 395, 396.
_Ibrahim_, 265.
_Idler_, the, 484.
_I Fiori della Poesia_, 107.
_Il Castellano_, 40.
“Il Lasca,” see Grazzini.
_Il Sogno_, 106, 107.
“Imagination,” Addison on, 443-448.
“Imlac,” 484, 485.
_Impartial Critic, The_, 432.
_Indian Emperor, The_, Preface to, 382.
_Inés de Castro_, 507.
_Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe_, 498.
_Institutiones Oratoriæ_, Voss’s, 358-360.
—— _Poeticæ_, Spanmüller’s, 355.
_I Romanzi_, 63.
Isidore (of Seville), 8, 334.
_I Simillimi_, 38.
Iskra, Augustinus, 360, 361.
Isla, José Francisco, Father (1703-81), 550.
_Istoria del Volgar Poesia_, 542.
_Italia Liberata_, 38.
James the First (1566-1625), 177, 178.
Jerome, St, Erasmus on, 15, 16.
_Jeronimo_, 235.
Johannes Secundus, 27.
John of Garlandia, 14.
—— of Salisbury, 8.
Johnson, Samuel (1709-84), 145, 375, 429, 434, 437, 458, 465, 474,
477-496, 512, 552, 561, 571.
Jonson, Ben (1573-1637), 42, 71, 138, 144, 156, 185 _note_, 197-209,
227 _sq._, 233, 262, 271, 367, 368, 370 _sq._, 393 _sq._, 486
_note_.
_Journal des Savants_, 316.
_Jugements des Savants_, 276.
—— —— —— _sur les auteurs que ont traité de la Rhétorique_, 319, 320.
_Julius Cæsar_, Rymer on, 396.
—— Dennis on, 434.
Juvenal, Dryden’s Preface to, 385.
Kames, Henry Home, Lord (1696-1782), 465-470.
Käsenbrot, see Olmucensis.
Keats, 280, 412, 485.
Keble, 87, 312 _note_, 372 _note_.
Kelly, Mr J. Fitzmaurice, 332 _note_, 335 _note_, 348 _note_, 350.
Kelton, Arthur (_fl. c._ 1550), 542 _note_.
Ker, Mr W. P., 93 _note_, 332 _note_, 373 _sq._
Kingsley, Ch., 124, 161.
Knox, Vicesimus (1752-1821), 499.
La Boétie, E. de, 71.
La Bruyère, Jean de (1645-96), 241, 300-304, 355, 521.
_Labyrinthus_, 8, 24, 64, 231.
La Casa, 93, 167 _note_, 512, 540 _note_.
La Croze, J. Cornand de (not to be confused with his contemporary, M.
Veyssière de la Croze, a learned but fantastic philologist and
antiquary), 406 _note_.
La Cueva, Juan de (1550-1606), 338, 340, 341, 355.
La Fontaine, 293 _sq._, 298, 519, 521.
La Harpe, Jean François de (1739-1803), 530-533, 564, 571.
Lamb, Charles, 145, 496.
La Mesnardière, Hippolyte Jules Pelet de (1616-63), 265.
La Monnoye, Bernard de (1641-1728), 273 _note_, 316 _note_, 527 _note_.
La Mothe le Vayer, F. de (1588-1672), 251.
La Motte, A. Houdard de (1672-1731), 321, 507-509.
—— Charles (?-?), Irish divine and critic, 497 _note_.
_Lancelot_, 124, 260.
Landi, Ortensio (1501-60), 29.
Langbaine, Gerard (1656-92), 400, 401, 430.
Langlois, M. G., 109 _note_.
Langhorne, 449.
Langland, 179 _sq._
La Place, translator of Shakespeare, 527, 528.
Lasca, Il, see Grazzini.
La Taille, Jacques de (1541?-62?), 127.
—— Jean de (1540?-1608), 127.
Latimer, 150.
Laudun, Pierre de (1575-1629), 127, 128.
Le Bossu, René (1631-80), 300, 314, 315.
Le Clerc, Jean (1657-1736), 276, 277, 363, 364.
_Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres_, 462 _sq._
Lee, Mr Sidney, 400 _note_.
Lemaître, M. Jules, 259 _note_.
Lemercier, N., 530.
Le Moyne, Père, 257, 393, 505.
Lessing, 219, 356, 410.
L’Estrange, 392, 451.
_Le Tre Sorelle_, 93.
_Letter to a Young Clergyman_, 452.
_Letters on Chivalry_, 469.
_Letters_, Pope’s, 453.
_Lettre de M. de la Visclède_, 517.
_Lettres aux Auteurs de la Gazette Littéraire_, 517.
_Lettres Galantes et Philosophiques_, 510.
_Lettres Persanes_, 514.
_Lettres sur les Anglais_, 516.
Lilius Gregorius Giraldus (1478-1552), 63-68, 96 _note_, 413.
Lilly, William, 65.
_L’Infarinato_, 92.
“L’Infortuné,” 110.
Lionardi, Alessandro (_fl. c._ 1550), 47.
_Lives of the Poets_, Heywood’s, 398 _note_.
—— Johnson’s, 480 _sq._, 486 _sq._
—— Winstanley’s, 400.
Locke, John (1632-1704), 53, 446 _sq._, 468.
Lodge, Thomas (1558?-1625), 170, 171.
Logic and Poetry, 20 _note_.
Lohenstein, 552.
Longfellow, 87.
Longinus, 6, 34, 206, 220, 288 _sq._, 302, 319, 373, 430, 435.
Longolius (Christophe de Longueil), (1490-1522), 11, 67, 276.
Lope de Vega Carpio, Felix (1562-1635), 332, 343-347, 380 _note_.
_Love’s Labour’s Lost_, Collier on, 403.
Lucan, 199.
Lucian, 24 _note_, 330, 402.
Lucilius, 254 _note_.
Lucretius, 33, 40, 88, 139, 140, 202.
_Lutrin, Le_, 290.
Luzan Claramumt de Suelves y Gurrea, Ignacio de (1702-54), 347, 350,
414, 541, 546, 547.
_Lycidas_, 490, 500.
Lydgate, 146 _sq._, 179 _sq._
Macaulay, 320, 391 _sq._, 401 _sq._, 492, 498.
Machiavelli, 54.
“Machines” and “Machinery,” 369 _sq._, 435.
Mackenzie, Sir George, 320.
Macpherson (_Ossian_), 464.
Macrobius, 22 _note_.
Maffei, Francisco Scipione, Marquis (1676-1755), 546.
Maggi, 41, 42.
Mairet, Jean (1604-86), 115.
Maistre, Joseph de, 327.
Malebranche, Nicolas (1638-1715), 279 and _note_, 514.
Malfilâtre, 519.
Malherbe, François de (1555-1628), 115, 241-251, 257, 283, 303.
Malory, Sir Thomas, 6, 155.
Mambrun, Pierre (1600-61), 266-268, 410.
_Manière de Bien Penser dans les Ouvrages d’Esprit_, 315, 316.
_Manto_, 24 _sq._
Mantuan, 66.
_Marinism_ and Marino, 331, 393, 414.
Marlowe, 205, 399.
Marmontel, Jean François (1723-99), 287 _note_, 525-529.
Marot, Clément (1497-1544), 110 _note_, 137, 281, 304.
Marryat, 34.
Martianus Capella, 42.
_Martinus Scriblerus_, 452.
Masson, Professor, 195 _note_.
Matamoros, Alfonso Guida, 336.
Maucroix, François de (1619-1708), 278.
Mayáns y Siscar, Gregorio (1699-1781), 333 _note_, 549.
Mazzone da Miglionico (_fl. c._ 1590), 107, 108.
Mazzoni (_fl. c._ 1550), 105.
_Meditation on a Broomstick_, 451.
_Mémoire sur les Occupations de l’Académie Française_, 305 _sq._
Ménage, Gilles de (1613-92), 160, 273, 317, 321 _note_.
_Ménagiana_, 53 _note_, 273 _sq._, 321 _note_.
Menéndez y Pelayo, Señor, 331-352, _passim_.
_Mercure Galant_, 316.
Meres, Francis (1565-1647), 187.
_Merry Wives of Windsor_, Dennis on, 434.
Mesa, Cristóbal de (1540-1620), 338 _note_, 346 _note_.
Meslier, le Curé (1678-1733), 515 _note_.
Metastasio (Pietro A. D. B. Trapassi), (1698-1782), 545, 546.
Mickle, 449.
Millar, Mr J. H., 486 _note_.
Milton, John (1608-74), 7, 45, 54, 56, 93, 262, 365, 398, 399, 402, 411
_note_, 435 _sq._, 439, 443 _sq._, 449, 467, 480 _sq._, 516, 532,
555, 560.
“Minim, Dick,” 484.
Minturno, Ant. Sebastiano (_fl. c._ 1560), 50-57, 90, 129 and _note_,
215, 219.
_Miscellanies_, Dryden’s Preface to, 384 _sq._
Mitford, W., 164 _note_.
Molière, 261, 273, 298, 303, 307, 322 _note_, 378 _sq._, 521.
Molinet, Jean (_d._ 1507), 110.
Mondragon, Hieronimo de, 337 _note_.
Montagu, Mrs, 240.
Montagu (Lord Halifax), 439.
Montaigne, Michel de (1533-92), 138-142, 205, 232, 254, 279, 514.
Monte-Melone (Chiodino da), 329, 330.
Montesquieu, Charles de Sécondat, baron de la Brède, et de (1689-1755),
513, 514.
_Monthly Review_, the, 497.
Moratin, Nicolas Fernandez de (1737-80): to be distinguished from his
son and successor in classicism, Leandro Fernandez de M.,
(1760-1828), 550.
More, Sir T., 63.
Morel-Fatio, M., 50 _note_, 332 _note_, 343 _note_, 346 _note_.
Morley, Prof. H., 162 _note_.
_Morte d’Arthur_, the, 155.
Mulcaster, Richard (1530?-1611), 209 _note_.
Mulgrave, John Sheffield, Earl of, later Duke of Buckinghamshire
(1649-1721), 402.
“Mumpsimus,” 15.
Muratori, Ludovico Antonio (1672-1750), 80 _note_, 324, 541, 542.
Musæus, 74.
Mutius, Macarius, 326.
Muzio, G. (_fl. c._ 1550), 46.
Nasarre y Ferriz, 549.
_Naturaleza_, 342 _sq._
_Naugerius sive de Poetica_, 45, 214, 217.
Navagero, Andrea (Naugerius) (1483-1529), 45, 66, 81.
Nebrija, Antonio de (Nebrissensis) (_fl. c._ 1530), 336.
_New World Discovered in the Moon_, the, 198 _note_.
Nichols, Mr, 14 _note_, 15.
Nicolai, Christoph-Frederich (1733-1811), 551 _note_.
Nisard, D., 114.
_Notes of Instruction_, 162 _sq._
_Nueva Idea de la Tragedia Antigua_, 341, 342.
_Nutricia_, 24 _sq._
_Obscuri Viri_, the, 9.
_Observateur Littéraire_, 527.
_Odyssey_, the, 58, 267, 532.
_Oedipus_, the, 263.
_Of Studies_ (Bacon’s), 192.
Ogier, François (_fl. c._ 1630), 254-256, 259, 346, 347, 409.
Oldys, 457.
Olmucensis, Augustinus Moravus (Käsenbrot, _c._ 1500), 17 _note_, 27,
28, 218, 352 _note_.
Opera, Saint-Evremond on, 271.
Opitz, Martin (1597-1639), 17, 360-363, 556.
_Orbecche_, 58, 60.
_Origenes de la Lengua Española_, 333 _note_.
_Origines de la Poésie Française_, 101.
_Orlando Furioso_, 85, and see Ariosto.
_Ossian_, 464 _sq._, 532.
_Othello_, Rymer on, 395.
Ovid, 384.
Panigarola, Francesco (1548-94), 329.
_Paradise Lost_, 325, 443 _sq._
_Paradossi_, 29.
_Paragone della Poesia Tragica_, 554.
_Parallel of Poetry and Painting_, 385.
_Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes_, 321 _note_.
Parfai(c)t, François (1698-1733) and Claude (1701-77), 527.
Paris, M. Gaston, 110 _note_.
_Parnassus, The English_, 426 _note_.
_Parrhasiana_, 276, 277.
Partenio, B. (_fl. c._ 1560), 102, 103.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-62), 279 _note_.
Pasquier, Etienne (1529-1615), 135-138, 224 _note_, 232.
_Pastor Fido_, the, 107, 108.
Patin, Gui (1602-72), 272, 273, 316 _note_.
Patrizzi, Francesco (1529-97) [not to be confused with the Siennese Bp.
of Gaeta, in the generation before, who wrote on politics, &c.],
anti-Peripatetic philosopher and critic (half-title of Bk. IV.), 57,
61, 63, 90, 93, 94-102, 107, 215, 219, 230, 233, 320 _note_, 329,
413.
Patru, Olivier (1604-81), 277, 291.
Pazzi, Alessandro de (_fl. c._ 1530), 41.
Peacham, Henry (1576?-1643?), 187.
Pecock, Reginald (1395-1460), 151.
Pellegrino, C., 100.
Pel(l)etier, Jacques (1517-82), Pléiade poet and critic, 117-119.
Pel(l)etier, Jacques (_fl. c._ 1660), 17th cent. poet, 291.
Pellissier, M. Georges, 110 _note_, 129 _sq._
Pellisson, Paul (1624-93), 273.
Peña, Don P. M., 339 _sq._
_Pensieri Diversi_, Tassoni’s, 326 _sq._
Pepys, 377 _note_, 522.
_Perceforest_, 160.
Percy, 479.
_Peri Bathous_, 452.
Perrault, Charles (1628-1703), 285, 293, 321, 418, 419.
—— Claude (1613-88), 285.
—— Pierre (1608-80), 285.
“Person of Quality,” the (who rewrote Spenser), 416 _note_, 561.
Petit de Julleville, M., 110 _note_.
Petrarch, 44 and _note_, 82, 199.
Petronius, 27, 201 _note_, 254 _note_, 284.
Phalaris, the Pseudo-, 24 _note_, 401, 402.
Phillips, Edward (1630-96), 398, 399.
_Philological Enquiries_, 473 _sq._
_Philosophia Rationalis_, 330.
_Philosophical Arrangements_, 473.
_Philosophy of Rhetoric_, 470-473.
Piccolomini, Æneas Sylvius, see that name.
—— Alessandro (1508-78), 103, 104.
Pico della Mirandola (1463-94), 22, 23.
Pigna, Giovanbattista (_fl. c._ 1550), 58 _sq._, 62, 63, 81, 84, 155,
214.
Pinciano, Alfonso López, called El. P. (150-?-160-?), 338-340.
Pitt, Christopher (1699-1748), 29 _sq._
Plato, 6, 9, 38, 71, 82, 154, 213, 220, 514.
_Pléiade_, the, 110 _sq._ and Bk. IV., ch. iv., _passim_.
Plotinus, 9.
Plutarch, 22, 71, 99, 154.
_Poemata Selecta Italorum_, 29 _note_, 45 _note_.
_Poetaster_, the, 198.
_Poetics_ (_Poetica, Poética, Poétique_), of Aristotle, 6 and _passim_.
—— of Daniello, 42-44.
—— of Denores, 105, 106.
—— of Luzán, 548.
—— of Scaliger, 69-80.
—— of Sibilet, 111, 112.
—— of Trissino, 38-41.
—— of Vida, 29-37.
—— of Viperano, 103.
Poetry and Logic, 20 _note_.
Poggio Bracciolino (1380-1459), 6 _note_.
Politian (Angelo Ambrogini, surnamed Poliziano) (1557-94), 15, 23-26,
66, 402, 455.
_Polyeucte_, 379.
Pomfret, John, 488, 495.
_Pompée_, 379.
Pontanus, J. (Spanmüller) (1542-1626), 353-356.
—— J. J., 66.
Poole, Joshua (_fl. c._ 1650), 426 _note_.
Pope, Alexander (1688-1744), 29 _note_, 45 _note_, 247, 413, 415, 421,
429, 432 _sq._, 438 _note_, 452-461, 490 _sq._, 561.
Possevino, Antonio (1534-1611), 325, 326.
_Prælections Academicæ_, Garbett’s, 298 _note_, 372 _note_.
—— Keble’s, 312 _note_, 372 _note_.
—— Trapp’s, 462.
_Pratique du Théâtre_, 309, 310.
_Principes de la Littérature_, 522 _sq._
Prior, 306, 415, 428, 429.
_Promos and Cassandra_, Preface to, 186 _note_.
_Proposal for Correcting the English Tongue_, 452.
_Pucelle, La_ (Chapelain’s), 257.
Puritan objection to Literature, the, 7, 10.
Puschmann, Adam (1532-1600), 360 _note_.
Puttenham, George (_fl. c._ 1580), 104, 182-186.
Quadrio, Francisco Xavier (1695-1756), 324, 542-545.
_Quatre Poétiques, Les_, 522.
Quevedo [y] Villegas, Francisco Gómez de (1580-1645), 339 _note_, 349.
_Quintil Horatien, Le_, 116 _sq._
Quintilian, 6, 130, 151 _note_, 198 _sq._, 455, 471 and _passim_.
Rabelais, François (1495-1553), 135, 141 _note_, 150, 304, 455, 516.
Racan, H. de Bueil, Marquis de (1589-1670), 242 _sq._
Racine, Jean, 54, 290 _sq._, 298, 504 _sq._, 511, 522.
Racine, Louis (1692-1763), 511.
_Ragguagli di Parnasso_, 329-331.
Ralph, James (1605?-62), 430 _note_, 554 _note_.
_Rambler, The_, 480 _sq._
Rambouillet, the Hôtel, 240.
Ramsay, Allan, 457.
—— Andrew Michael, (Chevalier) (1686-1743), 305, 544 _note_.
Rapin de Thoyras, P. (1661-1725), 247 _note_.
—— Nicolas (1535-1608), 247.
—— René (1621-87), 247 _note_, 310-314, 321 _note_.
—— Rymer’s Preface to, 310 _note_, 392 _sq._
Rappolt, 554.
_Rasselas_, 480 _sq._
_Recherches de la France_, 135 _sq._
_Réflexions Critiques sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture_, 510-513.
—— _Critiques sur quelques Poètes_, 521.
—— Rapin’s, 310 _sq._
—— _sur la Critique_, 508.
—— _sur la Poésie_, 510, 511.
—— _sur la Poétique_, 310.
—— _sur Longin_, 292 _sq._
Regnier, Mathurin (1573-1613), 242-251, 284.
Regulus, Sebastian, 554.
_Rehearsal, The_, 415 _note_.
_Relapse, The_, Collier on, 463.
_Religio Medici_, G. Patin on, 272.
_Remarks on Italy_, 439.
—— _on the Rape of the Lock_, 435.
Rémond de Saint-Mard, see Saint-Mard.
Renaissance, the term, 4 _note_.
Rengifo, Juan Diaz _or_ Diego Garcia [they were brothers: the book
appeared under the name of the first, and is now attributed to the
second], 337, 338.
_Return from Parnassus_, 97 _note_.
_Reulis and Cautelis_, K. James’s, 176 _sq._
Riccio, Bartolommeo, 81.
—— Pietro, see Crinitus.
Riccoboni, Antonio (1541-99), 50 _note_.
Rigault, M. H., 240 _note_, 388 _note_, 502.
_Rime Diverse_, 46.
Rinaldini, Carlo (_fl. c._ 1680), 330.
_Rival Ladies_, Preface to, 374.
Rivarol, Antoine, Comte (?) de (1753-1801), 534, 535.
Robortello, Francesco (1516-67), 41, 42, 49 _note_, 50, 345.
_Rodogune_, 263.
Rollin, Charles (1661-1741), 509.
_Rollo_ (B. and F.’s), Rymer on, 394.
_Roman de la Rose_, 160 _note_.
_Roman Bourgeois_, 553 _note_.
_Romanzi_, the critical dispute on, 55 _sq._
_Romeo and Juliet_,
Ronsard, Pierre de (1524-85), 63, 119-126, 137, 162 _note_, 222, 223,
233, 244 _note_, 257 _note_, 258, 264, 304, 307, 313, 362.
Roscommon, W. Dillon, Earl of (1633-85), 404, 439.
Rousseau, J. B., 522.
—— J. J., 518.
Rücktaschel, Herr, 110 _note_, 127.
Ruskin, Mr, 496.
_Rusticus_, 24 _sq._
Rymer, Thomas (1646-1713), 357, 391-397, 405, 432 _sq._, 571.
Sadolet, 455.
Saint-Amant, M. A. de (1594-1661), 257, 297.
Saint-Evremond, Ch. de M. de Saint-Denis, Seigneur de (1610-1703), 241,
268-272, 502.
_Saint-Louis_, 505.
Saint-Mard, Rémond de (sometimes incorrectly called Raymond de
Saint-Marc) (1682-1757), 510, 511.
Sainte-Beuve, 219, 257, 277 _note_, 278 _note_, 280, 320.
Sainte-Palaye, 569.
Salisbury, John of, 8.
Sallust, Cheke on, 152.
Salviati, Leonardo (1540-89), 41 _note_, 81 _note_, 91, 92, 103 _note_,
328.
Sanchez, Alfonso, 346.
—— Francisco, “El Brocense” (1523-1601), 336.
—— T. Antonio (1732-98), 550, 569.
Sannazaro, Jacopo (1458-1530), 51, 173, 174.
Santillana, Iñigo López de Mendoza, Marquis of (1398-1458), 333, 334.
Sarrasin, J. (1605-54), 260, 265 _sq._
Savonarola, Girolamo (1452-98), 20-23, 173, 213.
Scaliger, Joseph Justus (1540-1609), 276.
—— Julius Cæsar (1484-1558), 8, 12, 17, 42, 57, 69-80, 96 _note_, 215,
219, 233, 241 _note_, 267, 355, 375, 405.
_Scaligerana_, 276.
Schélandre, Jean de (1585-1635), 255.
Schelling, Prof., 144 _note_, 200 _note_ and _sq._
_Schoolmaster, The_, 152 _sq._
_School of Abuse_, the, 169-171.
Schosser, 353 _note_.
_Science et Asnerye_, 13.
Scott, John, of Amwell (1739-83), 499, 500.
—— Professor, 519 _note_.
—— Sir Walter, 88, 502.
Scudéry, Georges de (1601-67), 256, 258, 265 _sq._
_Seconde Rhétorique_, 110.
Secundus, see Johannes.
Sedley, Sir C., 376 _sq._
Seebohm, Mr, 15, 22.
Segni, 42.
_Selecta Poemata Italorum_, 29 _note_, 45 _note_, 454 _note_.
Seneca (L. Annæus?), the tragedian, 60, 61, 342, 433.
_Sentiments du Curé Meslier_, 515 _note_.
Servois, M., 303.
Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de (1626-96), 241, 273,
274.
Shadwell, 271.
Shaftesbury, 22 _note_, 514.
Shakespeare, 177, 199 _sq._, 206 _sq._, 228 _note_, 262, 375, 378
_sq._, 393 _sq._, 399, 409 _note_, 434 _sq._, 454, 464, 480 _sq._,
485 _sq._, 516, 532, 560.
—— Johnson’s _Preface to_, 480 _sq._.
—— Pope’s _Preface to_, 453, 454.
Shelley, 87, 426.
Shenstone, 478.
_Shepherd’s Kalendar_, 173.
Sheringham, Robert (1602-78), 392 _note_.
_Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage, A_,
402-404.
_Short View of Tragedy, A_, 392 _sq._
Sibilet, Thomas (1512-89), 111, 112.
Sidney, Sir Philip (1554-86), 7, 43, 45, 171-176, 199, 226 _sq._, 262,
348, 375, 409.
_Siècle de Louis Quatorze_, 516.
_Silent Woman_, The, 380.
_Silius Italicus_, 59.
Simylus, 203 _note_.
Smart, Christopher, 562.
Smith, Adam, 462.
—— Mr Gregory, 27, 144 _note_, 426 _note_, 442 _note_, 510 _note_.
—— Mr Nichol, 281 _note_.
_Sofonisba_, 38.
_Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg_, 327.
_Somnium Scipionis_, 22 _note_.
Spanmüller, see Pontanus, J.
Spence, Joseph (1698-1768), 332, 415, 438 _note_, 454, 455.
Spenser, Edmund (1552-99), 165-169, 201 _sq._, 264, 369, 393, 399, 416,
438-448, 482 _sq._
_Spenser Redivivus_, 416, 561.
Speroni, Speron(e), (1500-88), 55 _note_.
Spingarn, Mr Joel Elias, 3 _note_, and Bk. IV. _passim_.
Sprat, Thomas, Bishop of Rochester (1635-1713), 398, 405, 456.
Stanyhurst, 167 _note_.
Statius, 58, 59.
Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729), 448.
Sterne, 205, 517.
Strabo, 22 and _note_, 361.
Sturm, Johann (1507-89), 153 _sq. notes_, 319, 353, 356.
Suard, Jean Baptiste Antoine (1733-1817), 529.
Suckling, 463.
Summo, Faustino (_fl. c._ 1600), 108, 218, 219.
_Sur la Lecture des Vieux Romans_, 258, 260.
_Sur les Héros de Roman_, 292.
Surrey, Earl of (1517?-47), 159 _sq._
Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745), 320, 449-452, 517.
Swinburne, Mr, 426 _note_.
_Sylvæ_ (Politian’s), 23-26.
Symonds, Mr J. A., 25 _note_.
_Syphilis_, 44 _note_, 99.
_Tale of a Tub, A_, 451.
Tallemant des Réaux Gédéon (1619-92), 242 _note_, 273.
_Tamburlaine_, 97 _note_.
Tanneguy le Fèvre, 321 _note_, 405.
Tasso, Bernardo (1493-1569), 47, 90.
—— Torquato (1544-95), 47, 56, 89-94, 100, 219, 220, 233, 264, 278
_note_, 324, 369, 393, 516.
Tassoni, Alessandro (1565-1635), 326-328, 417, 418.
_Taste of the Town_, the, 554.
_Tatler_, the, 439 _sq._, 450.
Taylor (the Water-Poet), 201 _note_.
_Temora_, 464.
Temple, Sir William (1628-99), 401, 438 _note_, 450.
Tennyson, 34, 262 _note_, 485.
Terence, 303.
Tertullian, 17, 279.
Texte, M., 528 _note_.
Thackeray, 77.
_Théâtre des Grecs_, 509.
_Theatrum Poetarum_, 398, 399.
Theobald, 198 _note_.
Théophile (de Viau), 291, 297, 303.
Thomas, Antoine Léonard (1732-85), 529.
—— Mr P. G., 18 _note_.
Thomson, 478.
Ticknor, 332 _note_, 335 _note_.
Tiraboschi, Jeronimo (1731-70), 545.
Tirso de Molina (Gabriel Tellez) (1585-1648), 332, 342, 343.
Tolomei, 46.
Tomitano, 47.
_Topica Poetica_, 104.
Tory, Geoffroy (1480-1533), 110, 135, 150.
_Toxophilus_, 153 _sq._
_Tragedies of the Last Age_, the, 392 _sq._
Traill, Mr, 504.
_Traité de la Construction Oratoire_, 522-524.
—— _des Etudes_, 509.
—— _du Poème Epique_, 308-310.
Trapp, Joseph (1679-1747), 462.
_Trimerone_, 100.
Trissino, Gian-Giorgio (1478-1550), 38-41, 64.
_Tritical Essay, A_, 451.
Turia, Ricardo de[l] = Luis Ferrer de Cardona or Pedro Juan de Rejaule?
see Morel-Fatio, _op. cit._ (_fl. c._ 1616), 346, 347.
_Tyr et Sidon_, 255.
Tyrius, Maximus, 22, 43.
Underhill, Mr, 406 _note_, 454 _note_.
Unities, the Three, Books IV. and V. _passim_. See especially Scaliger,
Castelvetro, Corneille, Ogier, Dryden, Johnson.
“Unity of Interest,” 508.
_Usefulness of the Stage_, the, 433.
“Vadius,” 273.
Valdeflores, the Marquis of, 549.
Valdés, Juan de (1500-44), 335.
_Valesiana_ (written by Valois, Charles de (1671-1747), on his father
Adrien), 275.
Vanbrugh, 403.
Varchi, Benedetto (1502-65), 49.
Varro, 70.
Vaugelas, C. F. de (1585-1650), 240 _sq._, 257.
Vaughan, Sir W. (1577-1648), 187.
Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, Jean (1535-1607), 128-134, 196, 220, 222,
223, 246, 278 _note_.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de (1715-47), 521, 522.
Vavasseur, François, 254 _note_.
Vegius, M., 66.
_Venice Preserved_,
_Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst_, 552 _sq._
Vettori, Pietro = Petrus Victorius (_fl. c._ 1560), 41 _sq._
_Viaje del Parnaso_, 347.
Vida, Marco Girolamo, Bishop of Alba (1480-1546), 26, 29-37, 66, 68,
70, 129 and _note_, 203, 213, 455 _sq._
_Vie de Corneille_, Fontenelle’s, 505.
Vigneul-Marville, 275.
Villena, Enrique de (1384-1434), 333.
Villon, François (_fl. c._ 1460), 110 _note_, 281.
Viperano (_fl. c._ 1580), 103, 128, 341.
Virgil, 24-26, 30-35, 47, 52 _sq._, 74-78, 86, 122-126, 131, 139, 140,
310 _sq._, 415, 482.
—— Dryden’s Preface to, 385.
Visé or Vizé, Jean Donneau de (1640-1710), 316 _note_.
Vittorino da Feltre, 18.
Vives, Juan Luis (1492-1540), 336, 356.
Vogelweide, Walther von der, 361.
Voiture, Vincent (1598-1648), 246.
Voltaire, François Arouet de (1694-1778), 287 _note_, 317, 513-518,
556.
Voss, Gerard J. (1577-1649), 267, 356-360.
Wallace, Mr A. R., 532 _note_.
Waller, 271, 322, 375 _sq._, 439, 449.
Walpole, Horace, 479.
Warton, Joseph, 321 _note_
—— Thomas, 179 _note_, 479.
Watson, James (King’s printer in Scotland, 1711-22), 457.
—— John (correspondent of Erasmus and Master of Christ’s), 14.
—— Thomas, Bishop of Lincoln, 161.
Webbe, William (_fl. c._ 1580), 178-182.
Webster, John, 187.
Welsted, Leonard (1688-1742), 430, 431.
Wesley, Ch., 87.
—— Samuel, 406.
West, Gilbert, 482 _note_.
Whately, 98, 470.
Whetstone, George (_fl. c._ 1580), 186 _note_.
_Wie weit sich der Nutzen der Regeln in d. Beredsamkeit und Poesie
erstrecke_, 557.
Wild, 377.
Wilson, [Sir] Thomas (?-1581), 148-151.
Winchelsea, Lady, 421, 478, 485.
Winstanley, William (1628?-90?), 399, 400.
Wither, 377, 399.
Woodward, Mr, 18 _note_.
Wordsworth, 72 _note_, 202.
_Works of the Learned_, the, 406 _note_.
Worsfold, Mr, 195 _note_, 437 _sq._
Wotke, Herr, 63 _note_.
Wotton, 450.
Wyatt, Sir Thomas (1503-42), 63, 159 _sq._
Wycherley, 543.
Xenophon, 59.
Yalden, 495.
Zabarella (Professor of Philosophy in latter half of 16th century; not
to be confused with the scholastic Cardinal 150 years earlier), 50
_note_.
_Zénobie_, 309.
Zinano, Gabriele (_fl. c._ 1590), 106, 107.
Zoilus, 397.
Zürichers, the, 554 _sq._
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
There was no opening half-title in the source used to prepare this text.
Only the validity of index references to _footnotes_ have been checked.
A number of them, listed below, were incorrect.
Index Notes
1: _Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias_ refers to a note on p. 50, but there
is no mention there.
2: Camoens refers to a note on p. 553, but there is no mention.
3: Cotin should refer to the text on p. 287 not to a note.
4: Courthope refers incorrectly to a note on p. 444. It should be p. 449
5: Crescimbeni references a non-existent note on p. 218.
6 _De Vulgari Eloquio_ references a note on p 40. The nearest mention is
in the text of p. 38.
7 John Dennis references a note p. 387, but should have been p. 278.
8 Donatus references notes on p. 48 which do not seem pertinent.
9: Herr Hamelius, refers to a note, apparently out of order, which
should be p. 432, not p. 452.
10 Keble mentions a note on p. 312, where he is not mentioned. The same
note is referenced in the entry for _Prælections Academicæ_.
11: La Casa should refer to the text on p. 540, not to a note.
12: _Roman de la Rose_ refers a non-existent note. It _is_ mentioned at
p. 110n, p. 281, and p. 334.
13: _Romeo and Juliet_ has no references. The sole reference appears on
p. 512.
14: Professor Scott refers to a note on p. 519. The note appears on p.
319.
15: _Syphilis_ should refer to the text on p. 44, not to a note there.
16: P.G. Thomas refers to a note on p. 18. The sole reference is to a
note on p. 20.
17: _Venice Preserved_ has no references. It is mentioned on p. 442.
Corrections
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and
are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.
19.21 SHORT [“/‘]PRÉCIS’ OF THE DIALOGUES Replaced.
63.33 [“]Fuere et in Britannorum Added.
125.49 [‘/“]Su tu veux faire mourir Replaced.
168.34 _[“]mea domina Immerita_ Added.
180.27 platform or Prosodia of versifying[”]: Added.
180.29 from their divine cogitations[”], Added.
198.34 I pray you[?] Added,
220.21 in that odd famil[i]arity Added.
228.3 the three centur[i]es Inserted.
235.1 a perpetual [“]Thou shalt not.” Restored.
291.39 for his public injustice[.] Added.
306.15 of the Acade[n/m]y Replaced.
331.34 (Ed. 2, 9 vols., Madrid, 1890-1896[)] Added.
431.9 more native and genuine population[.] Added.
516.13 Essai sur la Poésie [E/É]pique Replaced.
522.35 Les Beaux Arts r[e/é]duits à un même principe Replaced.
525.39 _[E/É]léments de Littérature_ Replaced.
526.3 _[E/É]léments de Littérature_ Replaced.
545.37 in any other country[.] Added.
588.16 Leandro Fernandez de M., [(]1760-1828) Added.
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