Altogether somewhat impar sibi.
Still, I am bound to say that he conveys to my mind the impression of not quite having his soul bound up in the exercise of his critical function. He was a little too fond of extending his love of books to those which, as Lamb would say, are no books—of giving the children’s bread unto dogs. Occasionally, moreover, that want of the highest enthusiasm and sympathy, the highest inspiration, which—after the rather ungracious and ungrateful suggestion of Coleridge—it has been usual to urge against him, and which cannot be wholly disproved, does appear. Some would say that this was due to his enormous reading, and to the penal servitude for life to what was mostly hack-work, which fate and his own matchless sense of duty imposed upon him. I do not think so; but of course if it be said that no one with the more translunary fancies, the nobler gusts, could have so enslaved himself, an authority[[453]] who takes so high a ground must be allowed his splendid say. Anyhow, and on the whole, we must return to the position that Southey does not hold a very high position among English critics, and that it is easier to give plausible reasons for the fact than entirely to understand it.[[454]]
Lamb.
In criticising the criticism of Charles Lamb[[455]] one has to walk warily; for is he not one of the most justly beloved of English writers, and are not lovers apt to love more well than wisely? I shall only say that if any be an “Agnist,” I more. Ever since I can remember reading anything (the circumstance would not have seemed trivial to himself), I have read and revelled in, and for nearly forty years I have possessed in fee, a copy of the original Elia of 1823, in the black morocco coat which it put on, at least seven years before Lamb’s death, in 1827. I have also read its contents, and all other attainable Agnalia, in every edition in which I have come across them, with introductions by “Thaunson and Jaunson,” in and on all sorts of shapes and types and papers and bindings. I have never wearied of reading them; I am sure I never shall weary as long as eye and brain last. That Lamb is one of the most exquisite and delightful of critics, as of writers, is a proposition for which I will go to the stake; but I am not prepared to confess him as one of the very greatest in his critical capacity.
His “occultism”
The reasons for this limitation are to be found in two passages of his friend Hazlitt—a ruthless friend enough, but one who seldom goes wrong in speaking of friend or foe, unless under the plain influence of a prejudice which here had not the slightest reason for existing. The passages (referred to again elsewhere) are that on “the Occult School” in the “Criticism”[[456]] and one in the “Farewell.”[[457]] The first speaks of those “who discern no beauties but what are concealed from superficial eyes, and overlook all that are obvious to the vulgar part of mankind.” “If an author is utterly unreadable they can read him for ever.” “They will no more share a book than a mistress with a friend.” “Nothing goes down with them but what is caviare to the multitude,” &c. The other, in which Lamb is actually named, contrasts his “surfeit of admiration,” the antiquation of his favourites after some ten years, with the “continuity of impression” on which Hazlitt prided himself.
and alleged inconstancy.