[894]. “Call yourself Voltaire: I promise you some sensations,” was one of his boasts which became famous. It was by no means mere bragging.
[895]. Paris, 1856 onwards.
CHAPTER II.
BETWEEN COLERIDGE AND ARNOLD.
[THE ENGLISH CRITICS OF 1830-60]—[WILSON]—[STRANGE MEDLEY OF HIS CRITICISM]—[THE ‘HOMER’ AND THE OTHER LARGER CRITICAL COLLECTIONS]—[THE ‘SPENSER’]—[THE ‘SPECIMENS OF BRITISH CRITICS’]—[‘DIES BOREALES’]—[FAULTS IN ALL], [AND IN THE REPUBLISHED WORK]—[DE QUINCEY: HIS ANOMALIES] [AND PERVERSITIES AS A CRITIC], [IN REGARD TO ALL LITERATURES]—[THEIR CAUSES]—[THE ‘RHETORIC’ AND THE ‘STYLE’]—[HIS COMPENSATIONS]—[LOCKHART]—[DIFFICULTY OF APPRAISING HIS CRITICISM]—[THE ‘TENNYSON’ REVIEW]—[ON COLERIDGE, BURNS, SCOTT, AND HOOK]—[HIS GENERAL CRITICAL CHARACTER]—[HARTLEY COLERIDGE]—[FORLORN CONDITION OF HIS CRITICISM]—[ITS QUALITY]—[DEFECTS] [AND EXAMPLES]—[MAGINN]—[HIS PARODY-CRITICISMS AND MORE SERIOUS EFFORTS]—[MACAULAY]—[HIS EXCEPTIONAL COMPETENCE IN SOME WAYS]—[THE EARLY ARTICLES]—[HIS DRAWBACKS]—[THE PRACTICAL CHOKING OF THE GOOD SEED]—[HIS LITERARY SURVEYS IN THE ‘LETTERS’]—[HIS CONFESSION]—[THE ‘ESSAYS’]—[SIMILAR DWINDLING IN CARLYLE]—[THE EARLIER ‘ESSAYS’]—[THE LATER]—[THE ATTITUDE OF THE ‘LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS’]—[THE CONCLUSION OF THIS MATTER]—[THACKERAY]—[HIS ONE CRITICAL WEAKNESS AND EXCELLENCE]—[‘BLACKWOOD,’ IN 1849, ON TENNYSON]—[GEORGE BRIMLEY]—[HIS ESSAY ON TENNYSON]—[HIS OTHER WORK]—[HIS INTRINSIC AND CHRONOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE]—[“GYAS AND CLOANTHUS”]—[MILMAN, CROKER, HAYWARD]—[SYDNEY SMITH, SENIOR, HELPS]—[ELWIN, LANCASTER, HANNAY]—[DALLAS]—[THE ‘POETICS‘]—[‘THE GAY SCIENCE’]—[OTHERS: J. S. MILL].
There are few things more[more] difficult to the conscientious writer, and few which he knows will receive so little consideration from the irresponsible reader, as those overlappings on the one hand, and throwings-back on the other, which are incumbent on all literary historians save those who are content to abjure form and method altogether. The constituents of the present chapter give a case in point. Some of them may seem unreasonably torn away from their natural companions in our last chapter dealing with English criticism; some unreasonably kept back from the society of the next. But, once more, things have not been done entirely at the hazard of the orange-peel or the die.
The English Critics of 1830-60.
There is, to the present writer at any rate, a distinct colour, or set of colours, appertaining to most of the English criticism of 1830-1860, and it seems worth while to bring this out by isolating its practitioners to a certain extent. We shall find these falling under three main divisions—the first containing the latest-writing, and in some cases hardly the least, of the great band of periodical critics, mostly Romantic in tendency, of whom Coleridge is the Generalissimo and Hazlitt the rather mutinous Chief of the Staff. Then come the mighty pair of Carlyle and Macaulay; and then a rear-guard of more or less interesting minors and transition persons. So, first of the first, let us deal with one who, not only to his special partisans and friends, seemed a very prince of critics in his day.
Wilson.