To recur once more to those egregious juvenilia of Addison’s, which, though not to be too much pressed as stigmata on his own memory, are a useful caricature of Neo-classicism in regard to English, some English lover of literature feels that there is much more in Chaucer than vulgar jests, now not even fashionably vulgar, and in Spenser than tiresome preaching. He looks about to support his feeling with reasons, and he “finds salvation” in the Romantic sense, more or less fully, more or less systematically, more or less universally. The ways and manners of the finding are very much the same in all countries, and have been dealt with in the first Book of this volume; the results of it, in critical form, have been set forth in that just finished, but may deserve some summary and rationale here.
In the remarkable group of English critics whom we have called “the companions” of Coleridge, and in Coleridge himself, the contemporary quality, and in some cases the direct suggestion, of that great critic appear unmistakably, while in at least most cases they are free from the chaotic or paralytic incompleteness which he hardly ever, save in the Biographia, shook off. They all show, as he does, though in varying degrees, the revolt or reaction from the hidebound failure of the baser kind of Neo-classic to appreciate—the effort really to taste, to enjoy, and so to deliver that judgment which without enjoyment is always inadequate. And it would be unjust to regard them as merely the sports and waifs of an irresistibly advancing tide. There is something of this in them,—the worst of the something being the uncritical scorn with which they sometimes regarded even the greatest of the departed or departing school—the astonishing injustice of Coleridge himself to Gibbon, and Johnson, and the Queen Anne men; of many of them to Pope; of Hazlitt even to Dryden. But they were not only carried, they swam,—swam strongly and steadily and skilfully for the land that was ahead. Their appreciation is not mere matter of fashion; it is genuine. They are honestly appetent of the milk and honey of the newly opened land of English literature for themselves, and generously eager to impart of it, and of the taste for it, to others.
But we must not—for these merits, or even for what some may think the still greater one of providing, for almost the first time in any literature, a great bulk of matter which is at once valuable criticism and delightful literature itself—make a refusal of our own critical duty as to their shortcomings, which were neither few nor inconsiderable, and which led directly to the sad and singular decadence of English criticism in the middle third of the century. The first and the greatest of these—let us fling it frankly and fairly to any partisan of the older critical dispensation who “expects his evening prey” as our history draws towards its close—was, or at any rate was a result of, the very lawlessness and rulelessness by which they had effected their and our emancipation. True, many of the rules that they threw off were bad and irrational, most perhaps were inadequate, irrelevant, requiring to be applied with all sorts of provisos and easements. But they had at any rate kept criticism methodical, and tolerably certain in its utterances. There had been a Creed; there had been not the slightest difficulty in giving reasons, though they might be doubtful ones, for a faith which, if incomplete and not really catholic, was at any rate formally constituted. With the new men it was different. Coleridge indeed boasted mediate and even higher rules and principles behind his individual judgments. But with the rest it was rather a case of sheer private judgment, of “meeting by yourself in your own house.”
Another drawback, dangerous always but intensified in danger by its connection with the former, is that, while most of them were much less intimately acquainted with the classics than the critics of former generations had been, this deficiency was not generally compensated by any of that extensive knowledge of modern literature which the ruleless or scantily ruled system of criticism imperatively requires. Nay, they were all, including even Coleridge himself and De Quincey (the two most learned, not only of these but of all English critics), very imperfectly acquainted with French literature—which, as a whole, is the best suited to qualify the study of our own, correct it, and preserve it from flaws and corruptions. Leigh Hunt knew little but Italian; and in Italian knew best the things that are of least real importance for the English student. As for Lamb, he was more than a fair Latin scholar; but he seems to have known very little Greek, and not to have had wide reading in the classics, either Greek or Latin, while he betrays hardly the slightest knowledge of, or interest in, any foreign modern literature whatever. Hazlitt’s case is worse still, for he evidently knew very little indeed, either of the classics or of foreign modern literature, except a few philosophic writers, here of next to no use. In fact, one cannot help wondering how, knowing so little, he came to judge so well—till the wonder nearly disappears, as we see how much better he would have judged if he had known more. Wilson (to look forward a little as we have done with De Quincey) had some classics: and Lockhart had not only classics, but German and Spanish. But one suspects the former to have known next to nothing of modern literature: and the latter did not use critically that which he knew. Even as regards English itself the knowledge of all these critics was very gappy and scrappy. They did not, with all their advantages of time, know anything like so much of early English literature (even putting Anglo-Saxon out of the question) as Gray had known nearly a hundred years earlier, and Mitford in their own early days.
Thus, while they had deliberately, and in the main wisely, discarded the rules which at least were supposed deductively to govern all literature, they had not furnished themselves with that comparative knowledge of different literatures, or at the very least of all the different periods of one literature, which assists literary induction, and to some extent supplies the place of the older Rules themselves. They were therefore driven to judge by the inner light alone; and as, fortunately, that inner light, in at least some of them, burnt with the clearest and brightest flame, they judged very well by it. But their system was a dangerous one when it came to be applied, as it inevitably had to be applied, in the majority of cases, when their own torches went out, by the aid of smoky farthing rush-lights in blurred horn lanterns.
Yet, allowing for these drawbacks of commission and of example in the most illiberally liberal manner, there will yet remain to their credit such a sum as hardly any other group[[810]] in any country—as none in ours certainly—can claim. Here at last, and here almost for the first time, appears that body of pure critical appreciation of the actual work of literature for which we have been waiting so long, which we have missed so sorely in ancient times, and which, in the earlier modern, has been given to us stinted and, what is worse, adulterated, by arbitrary restrictions and preoccupations. In Coleridge, in Hazlitt, in Lamb, in Leigh Hunt even, to name no others, we have real “judging of authors,” not—or at any rate not mainly—discussion of kinds, and attempts to lay down principles. They are judges, not jurists, “lawmen,” not lawmongers and potterers with codes. Appreciation and enjoyment, with their, in this case necessary, consequences, the communication of enjoyment and appreciation—these are the chief and principal things with them, and these they never fail to provide.
The same merits and drawbacks, differently adjusted and conditioned, appear in the French division of the subject. Perhaps there is nothing, even in Sainte-Beuve, of the same consummate merit, from the point of view of appreciation, as the best things of Hazlitt and Lamb: and I do not think there are any critical generalities, either in Sainte-Beuve or in any other, that quite approach the best things of Coleridge. The length and the bitterness of the Classic-Romantic quarrel threw some French critics into a mood of partisanship too extreme to be quite judicial: but on the other hand it gave us that admirably trenchant profession and confession of the faith that “nothing depends on the subject” which we have dealt with from Victor Hugo, and other things from other men. And, moreover, the interest excited by this quarrel, coming to reinforce the general French spirit of system, order, and artistic adequacy, brought about that high general level in the new appreciative criticism which attracted the admiration of Mr Arnold and others, and which certainly for a time (cir. 1830-1860) was much above the level of English. Numerous as are the writers whom I have discussed in the chapter on this subject, I feel half ashamed of not having included more, and could easily do so. But it is almost enough to say that, in accordance with that gregarious or scholastic spirit which has always characterised Frenchmen, the merits which have been so fully displayed in Sainte-Beuve are visible more or less in almost all his fellows.
There is no doubt that these merits were to some extent (as Sainte-Beuve himself allowed with equal judgment and generosity) transmitted or inherited from the Empire critics, especially Chateaubriand and, in a different way and lower sense, Villemain: while the whole secret of the method had been revealed, or concealed, in and by the “fuliginous flashes” of Diderot long before. But this sudden and enormous development of it is still rather wonderful. It cannot be put down merely to Sainte-Beuve, though Sainte-Beuve was its most eminent representative; for, as we have seen, he did not himself reach his perfection at once, or for a very long time, and critical results as good as, or better than, his own at the time had been produced by others earlier. It was a case of a plenteous and great vintage, with one growth improving beyond the rest. To this day it is impossible to read over again, well as one may have known it, any of the better critical work of France in this period without astonishment at its varied and yet even excellence. But, as has just been said, it is not always, even in its highest examples, of the very highest: and perhaps at no time is what we have so often called “grasp” a characteristic of it. It would be absurd to call it superficial: yet, if it has a tendency towards something not of the best, that tendency is towards superficiality.
Further, the French, though largely influenced by foreign nations and literatures at this period, hardly shine so much as some others do in criticism of those literatures. But, in reference to their own, they exemplify the new process of “judging by the result,” and setting forth that result, with attractiveness rivalled by hardly any, and with facility and craftsmanship rivalled perhaps by none. From the elaborate process of Sainte-Beuve to the impressionism of Gautier, and from the strong meat and drink of Nisard to the froth of Janin, whatever is provided is provided so as to give the user and consumer the least fatigue and the most delectation. The severer critics are not pedantic, and the lighter ones are seldom merely frivolous or horse-playful. Occasionally, as in Nisard’s case again, there is a solidly constructed, if not quite a solidly based, system: occasionally, as with Planche, there are serious, if disputable, philosophical starting-points. In Sainte-Beuve himself there is perhaps the greatest and most orderly accumulation of positive knowledge, never of the “marine store” kind, that any critic has brought together. But these dignified things never take leave of the Graces: and even the lightest armed of the army—even Janin and those about Janin—seldom write with the appalling absence of knowledge and of method to which we are only too well accustomed in the critics of some other countries.
The part played by Germany in this process was, of course, of the utmost importance, and it is by no means out of a pusillanimous desire to disarm the indignation or the contempt invited by some things already written that I repeat and emphasise this acknowledgment. Germans (taking their Swiss brethren with them) were among the very first to move the stagnant waters. They were among the most—they were the most—industrious engineers in continuing the process—in clearing out the water-courses and turning the new streams into them. It is impossible to exaggerate their merits in putting at the service of criticism the massive and acute intellect of Lessing, to substitute a new Preceptism for the old: the wide range and towering literary faculty of Goethe, to extend and popularise the new methods: the attractive and contagious alacrity of the Schlegels in overrunning the provinces and the empires of literature. But in the highest and purest work of criticism, as we here define it, even these their greatest are sometimes strangely wanting: and others are wanting less strangely but more disastrously. As a rule, the German is far too scientific (the epithet of praise usually selected for him and by him) in his criticism. He has curiosity, but not passionate or intimate enjoyment; intelligence, but not enthusiasm; industry, but little (and hardly at all subtle) intuition. He only gets out of the pupillary state—if he ever does so—to get into the pedagogic. And it is difficult to say which of these is the more unfavourable to true critical accomplishment.