Talks on Writing English. First Series

by Arlo Bates

The forming of standards of mechanical excellence is of course founded on the same principles as those by which we determine what I have called the laws of province. There is no hard-and-fast rule by which to define exactly the limits of one department of literature or another, and the only thing which can without qualification be said is that no one can write criticisms which are of any lasting or indeed of any transient value who is not well acquainted with the great body of good English literature.

One thing should be kept constantly in mind in writing criticisms, and that is that the critic must appreciate and hold to the point of view of the author criticised. The great point is to know what the author tried to do, and to judge how far he has succeeded in doing it. If a book is written for the general public, for instance, it is manifestly unfair to complain that it does not meet the needs of the specialists; and equally would it be unfair to find fault with the volume carefully prepared for the specialist for not being adapted to the average reader. Be sure that in writing a criticism you are clear in regard to what it is proper to expect from a given book, and in regard also to what the work is or is not as judged by the standard thus established. Criticism must first of all things be definite.

One of the powers first to be called into play in forming an estimate of any work is that of analysis. It is impossible to compare the qualities of a composition with the standard in our mind, without separating those qualities from each other. We must be able to say that this passage has Force, that that has Elegance; to see that the work as a whole possesses Force but lacks Clearness; and so on for any and all the characteristics which may be found. It is necessary to study the effect which a work produces, and again to be able to tell upon what means those effects depend. In no other way can we put ourselves in a position to estimate fairly and conclusively the value and the lasting merit of that which we criticise.

I have more than once reminded you that literary work that is worth the name is a severe labor. It has never seemed to me worth while to attempt to lure you on with delusive persuasions of easy roads to literary perfection. All literary work which is worth doing is laborious and long; and of all literature which is generally included under the head of belles-lettres it seems to me that criticism is intellectually the most severe. It is so largely a matter of pure intellect that it even seems more arduous than it is. In writing poetry or fiction, or indeed any purely creative work, the pleasure of creation arouses the emotions and kindles the fancy. One can now and then give the rein to his mind, so to say, and let the steeds of his imagination start off for a dash. In criticism the imagination has no office save that of being sympathetic and of entering into the mood of another. The strain on the attention and the judgment is constant; and that there are no more good critics is to be accounted for by the explanation—which is almost an excuse—that criticism is so difficult an art.

When all other qualifications for criticising have been considered, there remains that most elusive, most essential of all,—taste. Taste is a fine sense of the fitness of things; a perception of the proper proportion in work, and of the limits to which the expression of feeling or emotion can go. It is closely allied to a sense of humor in its quality. It is no less a delicate appreciation of the fitness of means to effect, and of the propriety of the ways by which an author has endeavored to impress his readers. Taste is the self-respect of the imagination. It determines the line beyond which the fancy cannot go with dignity.

It is that faculty by which we decide that one shade of incongruity is humorous and touching, yet that the shade but a trifle deeper is vulgar and repulsive. The knowledge how far things should be carried; sensitiveness to literary propriety; delicacy to finest differences of effect, are all dependent upon this faculty, which underlies all æsthetic perception. How to improve it, refine it, develop it, is the question of all culture. Goethe says:—

Taste should be educated by contemplation, not of the tolerably good, but of the truly excellent…. The best … when you have fully apprehended, … you will have a standard, and will know how to value inferior performances without overrating them.—Conversations.

There is little that can be added to this. The best books well read will do all for the taste that definite outward cultivation can do. The rest is a matter of inner growth. No one is fitted to criticise work until he has learned to appreciate work. Even a felon may claim to be tried by his peers, and surely an author is fairly entitled to at least this grace. The peer of an author in this sense is the man who sympathetically is able to understand him; who is trained to perceive what is the aim of a book, and so is in a position to judge how far it has succeeded or failed. Until one is conscious of having attained to this he should at least be modest in his judgments; he should define his opinions for himself, but he will not claim that infallibility which belongs only to the critic of the highest rank and which is claimed only by those of the lowest.

All this has to do with criticism as it should be, and as it is at its best. This is what men like Sainte-Beuve, Leslie Stephen, Taine, Lowell, and those of their rank have made it. If the question is that of writing what are called criticisms for the press, and especially for the daily press, the matter is not entirely the same. A newspaper is a business enterprise. The publishers have not established it in the interest of abstract virtues, and they generally care neither more nor less for ideals, whether literary or otherwise, than the broker or the banker next door. They conduct their business very much as business which depends directly upon public support is conducted everywhere. They endeavor to learn what the largest number of buyers will like, and this they endeavor to supply. If too many newspapers of to-day are nothing more or less than mental dram-shops or bagnios, the men who have not too much principle or self-respect to keep them have at least the defense, such as it is, that they print what the public proves itself most eager to buy.

The general public is neither willing nor able to enjoy genuine criticism, and the publishers do not give it to them. Criticism as it is to-day practiced as a matter of literary work, is apt to mean the writing of perfunctory book-reviews, notices of plays and concerts and pictures, all to entertain the reader or to provoke him to buy. There are a great many persons, moreover, who either have no time to read, or no mind to read the books of the day, yet who wish to appear to have opinions in regard to them. It is for this class that the great bulk of book-reviews are written. The publisher of a newspaper is aware that by furnishing what will with the unthinking pass for opinions he can on the one hand please unintelligent subscribers and on the other gratify the book publishers from whom come advertisements. There are very many reviewers who are too honest to say a thing which they do not believe, yet who are aware that if they said all that they think they would not be able to hold their places for a day. I do not wish to be unjust to the newspapers. I am too lately out of an editorial chair myself to be in a position to reflect upon them too hardly. I must say, however, that it is the aim of every newspaper to please the publishers if it is possible, and that there are not half a dozen in the country—if there are any—which are not in their reviews influenced by other considerations besides the merit of the works noticed. I should as soon think of taking my political opinions from a paid stump-speaker as my literary judgments from the book-reviews in a newspaper. The intellectual furnishing of a mind which is guided by them is like the plenishings of a room supplied with second-hand furniture purchased on the installment plan and decorated with cigarette-advertising lithographs.