Shaftesbury.
There are few writers of whom more different opinions have been held, in regard to their philosophical and literary value, than is the case with Shaftesbury. His criticism has been less discussed, except from the purely philosophical or at any rate the technically æsthetic side; but difference is scarcely less certain here when discussion does take place. It is difficult to put the dependence of that difference in an uncontentious and non-question-begging manner, because it concerns a fundamental antinomy of the fashion in which this curious author strikes opposite temperaments. To some, every utterance of his seems to carry with it in an undertone something of this sort: “I am not merely a Person of Quality, and a very fine gentleman, but also, look you, a philosopher of the greatest depth, though of the most elegant exterior, and a writer of consummate originality and agudeza. If you are sensible people you will pay me the utmost respect; but alas! there are so many vulgar and insensible people about, that very likely you will not.” Now this kind of “air” abundantly fascinates some readers, and intrigues others; while, to yet others again, it seems the affectation, most probably of a charlatan, certainly of an intellectual coxcomb, and they are offended accordingly. It is probably unjust (though there is weighty authority for it) to regard Shaftesbury as a charlatan; but he will hardly, except by the fascination aforesaid or by some illegitimate partisanship of religious or philosophical view, escape the charge of being a coxcomb; and his coxcombry appears nowhere more than in his dealings with criticism.[[285]] From the strictest point of view of our own definition of the art, he would have very little right to entrance here at all, and would have to be pretty unceremoniously treated if he were allowed to take his trial. His concrete critical utterances—his actual appreciations—are almost Rymerical; with a modish superciliousness substituted for pedantic scurrility. “The British Muses,” quoth my lord, in his Advice to an Author,[[286]] “may well lie abject and obscure, especially being as yet in their mere infant state. They have scarce hitherto arrived to anything of stateliness or person,” and he continues in the usual style with “wretched pun and quibble,” “false sublime,” “Gothick mode of poetry,” “horrid discord of jingling rhyme,” &c. He speaks of “that noble satirist Boileau” as “raised from the plain model of the ancients.” Neither family affection, nor even family pride, could have induced him to speak as he speaks of Dryden,[[287]] if he had had any real literary taste. His sneers at Universities,[[288]] at “pedantick learning,” at “the mean fellowship of bearded boys,” deprive him of the one saving grace which Neo-classicism could generally claim. “Had I been a Spanish Cervantes, and with success equal to that comick author had destroyed the reigning taste of Gothick or Moorish Chivalry, I could afterwards contentedly have seen my burlesque itself despised and set aside.”[[289]] Perhaps there is not a more unhappily selected single epithet in the whole range of criticism than “the cold Lucretius.”[[290]]
On the other hand, both in the more speciously literary parts of his desultory discourses de quodam Ashleio, and outside of them, he has frequent remarks on the Kinds;[[291]] he is quite copious on Correctness;[[292]] and there can be no doubt that he deserves his place in this chapter by the fashion in which he endeavours to utilise his favourite pulchrum and honestum in reference to Criticism, of which he is a declared and (as far as his inveterate affectation and mannerism will let him) an ingenious defender. The main locus for this is the Third Miscellany, and its central, or rather culminating, passage[[293]] occurs in the second chapter thereof. The Beautiful is the principle of Literature as well as of Virtue; the sense whereby it is apprehended is Good Taste; the manner of attaining this taste is by a gradual rejection of the excessive, the extravagant, the vulgar.[[294]] A vague enough gospel, and not over well justified by the fruits of actual appreciation quoted above;[[295]] but not perhaps much vaguer, or possessing less justification, than most metacritic.
Hume.
The position of Hume in regard to literary criticism has an interest which would be almost peculiar if it were not for something of a parallel in Voltaire. If the literary opinions of the author of the Enquiry into Human Nature stood alone they would be almost negligible; and if he had worked them into an elaborate treatise, like that of his clansman Kames, this would probably, if remembered at all, be remembered as a kind of “awful example.” In their context and from their author, however, we cannot quite “regard and pass” Hume’s critical observations as their intrinsic merit may seem to suggest that we should do: nay, in that context and from that author, they constitute a really valuable document in more than one relation.
Examples of his critical opinions.
It cannot be said that Hume does not invite notice as a critic; on the contrary, his title of “Essays: Moral, Political,[[296]] and Literary[and Literary]” seems positively to challenge it. Yet his actual literary utterances are rather few, and would be almost unimportant but for the considerations just put. He tells us criticism is difficult;[[297]] he applies[[297]] (as Johnson did somewhat differently) Fontenelle’s remark about “telling the hours”; he illustrates from Holland the difference of excellence in commerce and in literature.[[298]] He condemns—beforehand, and with the vigour and acuteness which we should expect from him—the idea of attempting to account for the existence of a particular poet at a particular time and in a particular place.[[299]] He is shocked at the vanity, at the rudeness, and at the loose language of the ancients.[[300]] He approaches, as Tassoni[[301]] and Perrault[[302]] had approached, one of the grand cruces of the whole matter by making his Sceptic urge that “beauty and worth are merely of a relative nature, and consist of an agreeable sentiment produced by an object on a particular mind”;[[303]] but he makes no detailed use or application whatever of this as regards literature. His Essay on Simplicity and Refinement in Writing[[304]] is psychology rather than criticism, and he uses his terms in a rather curious manner. At least, I myself find it difficult to draw up any definitions of these qualities which will make Pope the ne plus ultra of justifiable Refinement, and Lucretius that of Simplicity; Virgil and Racine the examples of the happy mean in both; Corneille and Congreve excessive in Refinement, and Sophocles and Terence excessive in Simplicity.[[305]] The whole is, however, a good rationalising of the “classical” principle; and is especially interesting as noticing, with slight reproof, a tendency to too great “affectation and conceit” both in France and England—faults for which we certainly should not indict the mid-eighteenth century. The Essay On Tragedy is more purely psychological still. And though On the Standard of Taste is less open to this objection, one cannot but see that it is Human Nature, and not Humane Letters, in which Hume is really interesting himself. The vulgar censure on the reference to Bunyan[[306]] is probably excessive; for it is at least not improbable that Hume had never read a line of The Pilgrim’s Progress, and was merely using the tinker’s name as a kind of type-counter. But this very acceptance of a conventional judgment—acceptance constantly repeated throughout the Essay—is almost startling in context with the alleszermalmend tendency of some of its principles. A critic who says[[307]] that “It is evident that none of the rules of composition are fixed by reasonings a priori,” is in fact saying “Take away that bauble!” in regard to Neo-classicism altogether; and though in the very same page Hume repeats the orthodox cavils at Ariosto, while admitting his charm on the next, having thus set up the idol again, he proceeds once more to lop it of hands and feet and tumble it off its throne by saying that “if things are found to please, they cannot be faults; let the pleasure which they produce be ever so unexpected and unaccountable.” The most dishevelled of Romantics, in the reddest of waistcoats, could say no more.
In his remarks upon the qualifications and functions of the critic, Hume’s anthropological and psychological mastery is evident enough: but it is at least equally evident that his actual taste in literature was in no sense spontaneous, original, or energetic. In comparing him, say, with Johnson it is not a little amusing to find his much greater acquiescence in the conventional and traditional judgments. Indeed, towards the end of his Essay[[308]] Hume anticipates a later expression[[309]] of a perennial attitude of mind by declaring, “However I may excuse the poet on account of the manners of his age, I never can relish the composition,” and by complaining of the want of “humanity and decency so conspicuous” even sometimes in Homer and the Greek tragedies. That David, of all persons, should fail to realise—he did not fail to perceive—that the humanity of Homer was human and the decency of Sophocles was decent, is indeed surprising.