Of the work which—sometimes of the inner citizenship of the critical Rome and at the worst of its “utmost last provincial band”—was done by a great number of individuals and in no small number of periodicals, dictionaries, and what not, we cannot speak here as fully as would be pleasant,—the historian must become a “reasoned cataloguer” merely, and that by selection. Two contemporary and characteristic figures are those of Isaac Disraeli and of Sir Egerton Brydges. Both had the defects of the antiquarian quality. Rogers, though unamiable, was probably not unjust when, in acknowledging the likelihood of Isaac Disraeli’s collections enduring, he described him as “a man with half an intellect.” In formation and expression of opinion, Lord Beaconsfield’s father too often wandered from the silly to the self-evident and back again, like Addison between his two bottles at the ends of the Holland House gallery: and his numerous collectanea would certainly be more useful if they were more accurate. But the Curiosities, the Amenities, the Quarrels, and all the rest show an ardent love for literature itself, and a singularly wide knowledge of it: they are well calculated to inoculate readers, especially young readers, with both.
Sir Egerton Brydges.
Brydges’s work, less popular, is of a higher quality. His extensive editing labours were beyond price at his date; in books like the Censura Literaria much knowledge is still readily accessible, which can only be picked up elsewhere by enormous excursions of reading at large; and his original critical power was much higher than is generally allowed. Such enthusiastic admiration of Shelley as is displayed in the notes to his Geneva reprint of the English part of Phillips' Theatrum Poetarum in 1824,[[542]] is not often shown by a man of sixty-two for a style of poetry entirely different from that to which he has been accustomed. And it shows, not merely how true a training the study of older literature is for the appreciation of newer, but that there must have been something to train.
The Retrospective Review.
Moreover, this first period of enthusiastic exploration did not merely produce the lectures of Coleridge and Hazlitt, and the unsurpassed essays of Lamb, the hardly surpassed ones of Leigh Hunt. It produced also, by the combined efforts of a band of somewhat less distinguished persons, a periodical publication of very considerable bulk and of almost unique value and interest. It is not for nothing that while old magazines and reviews are usually sold for less than the cost of their binding, and not much more than their value as waste-paper, The Retrospective Review[[543]] still has respectable, though of course not fantastic, prices affixed to it in the catalogues. It was started in 1820, under the editorship of Henry Southern,[[544]] a diplomatist from the Cantabrigian Trinity, and of the antiquary afterwards so well known as Sir Harris Nicolas. Opening with a first volume of extraordinary excellence, it kept up for seven years and fourteen volumes, on a uniform principle. The second series, however, which was started after I know not what breach of continuity,[[545]] was less fortunate, and extends to two volumes only, though these contain much more matter apiece than the earlier ones. It is not uncommon to find these two volumes, and even some of the first series, wanting in library sets, which librarians should do their best to complete; for though, toward the end, the purely antiquarian matter encroached a very little upon the literary, there is not a volume from first to last which does not contain literary matter of the highest interest and value.[[546]]
The proud-looked and high-stomached persons who pronounce the best in this kind but shadows, and regard old criticism as being—far more than history in its despised days—“an old almanack,” will of course look prouder and exalt their stomachs higher at the use of such terms. So be it. Some day people will perhaps begin to understand generally what criticism is, and what is its importance. Then more—as some do already—will appreciate the interest and the value of this work of Nicolas, Palgrave, Talfourd, Hartley Coleridge, and other good men. It would be perfectly easy to make fun of it. The style may be to modern tastes a little stilted when it is ambitious, and a little jejune when it is not—in both cases after the way of the last Georgian standard prose. Although there is much and real learning, our philologers might doubtless exalt their stomachs over the neglect of their favourite study: and the fetichists of biography might discover that many a Joan is called Jane, and many a March made into February. These drawbacks and defects are more than compensated by the general character of the treatment. While not despising bibliography, the writers as a rule do not put it first, like Sir Egerton Brydges: nor do they indulge in the egotistical pot-pourri of “Chandos of Sudeley.” They have the enormous advantage, in most cases, of coming quite fresh to their work,—of being able to give a real “squeeze” direct from the original brass, with the aid of their own appreciation, unmarred and unmingled by reminiscences of this essay and that treatise, by the necessity of combating this or that authority on their subject. They look at that subject itself, and even when they show traces of a little prejudice—as in the opposite cases of the man who is rather hard on Dryden and the man who is, for the nineteenth century, astonishingly “soft” on Glover—the impression is obviously genuine and free from forgery.
What is more, these Reviewers give themselves, as a rule, plenty of room, and supply abundant extracts—things of the first importance in the case of books, then as a rule to be found only in the old editions, and in many cases by no means common now. The scope is wide. The first volume gives, inter alia, articles on Chamberlayne (one for Pharonnida and one for Love’s Victory), on Crashaw and Dryden, on Rymer and Dennis and Heinsius, on Ben Jonson and Cyrano de Bergerac, on the Urn Burial, and on such mere curiosities as The Voyage of the Wandering Knight. The papers throughout on Drama, from the Mysteries onward, and including separate articles on the great Elizabethan minors, were, till Pearson’s reprints thirty years ago, the most accessible source of information on their subjects, and are still specially notable; as are also the constituents of another interesting series on Spanish Literature. The Arcadia balances Butler’s Remains in vol. ii. Vaughan and Defoe, Imitations of Hudibras, and that luckless dramatist and mad but true poet, Lee,[[547]] have their places in the Third, where also some one (though he came a little too early to know the Chansons de gestes, and so did not put “things of Charlemagne” in their right order) has an interesting article on the Italian compilation La Spagna. I should like to continue this sampling throughout the sixteen volumes, but space commands only a note on the rest in detail.[[548]]
Nor are they afraid of more general discussion. In the above-mentioned article on John Dennis there is a long passage which I do not remember to have seen anywhere extracted, dealing in a singularly temperate and reasonable fashion with the “off-with-his-head” style of criticism put in fashion by the Edinburgh; and others will be easily found. But they do not as a rule lay themselves out much for “preceptive” criticism. It is the other new style of intelligent and well-willing interpretation to which they incline, and they carry it out with extraordinary ability and success. To supply those who may not have time, opportunity, or perhaps even inclination to read more or less out-of-the way originals with some intelligible and enjoyable knowledge of them at second-hand; to prepare, initiate, and guide those who are able and willing to undertake such reading; to supply those who have actually gone through it with estimates and judgments for comparison and appreciation—these may be said to be their three objects. Some people may, of course, think them trivial objects or unimportant; to me, I confess, they seem to be objects extremely well worth attaining, and here very well attained. The papers in the Retrospective Review, be it remembered, anticipated Sainte-Beuve himself (much more such later English and American practitioners as Mr Arnold, who was not born, and Mr Lowell, who was but a yearling when it first appeared) in the production of the full literary causerie, the applied and illustrative complement, in regard to individual books, authors, or small subjects, of the literary history proper. When people at last begin to appreciate what literary history means, there will probably be, in every country, a collection of the best essays of this kind arranged from their authors’ works conveniently for the use of the student. And when such a collection is made in England, no small part in it will be played by articles taken from the Retrospective Review.