And frighten'd as a child might be
At the wild yell and visage strange,
And the dark words of gramarye;
but the stuff is rather threadbare, surely. The best passages are those in which, with skill not less than that of Milton, Scott marshals heroic lists of Highland proper names. Scott was a very genuine poet "within his own limitations," as has been said of another favourite, whose name I will not here repeat. His lyrics, of very unequal merit, are occasionally of wondrous beauty. I think it will be found, upon very careful study of his writings, that he published eight absolutely perfect lyrical pieces, and about as many more that were very good indeed. This is much, and to how few can so high a tribute be paid! Yet this is not quite sufficient claim to a place on the summits of English song. Scott was essentially a great prose-writer, with a singular facility in verse.
If this amiable controversy, started in the first instance at the request of the Editor of the Forum, has led us to examine a little more closely the basis of our literary convictions, and, above all, if it has led any of us to turn again to the fountain-heads of English literature, it has not been without its importance. One danger which I have long foreseen from the spread of the democratic sentiment, is that of the traditions of literary taste, the canons of literature, being reversed with success by a popular vote. Up to the present time, in all parts of the world, the masses of uneducated or semi-educated persons, who form the vast majority of readers, though they cannot and do not appreciate the classics of their race, have been content to acknowledge their traditional supremacy. Of late there have seemed to me to be certain signs, especially in America, of a revolt of the mob against our literary masters. In the less distinguished American newspapers which reach me, I am sometimes startled by the boldness with which a great name, like Wordsworth's or Dryden's, will be treated with indignity. If literature is to be judged by a plébiscite and if the plebs recognises its power, it will certainly by degrees cease to support reputations which give it no pleasure and which it cannot comprehend. The revolution against taste, once begun, will land us in irreparable chaos. It is, therefore, high time that those who recognise that there is no help for us in literature outside the ancient laws and precepts of our profession, should vigorously support the fame of those fountains of inspiration, the impeccable masters of English.
1889.
MAKING A NAME IN LITERATURE