On Translating Homer.
In discussing the first, and indeed all, of these, it is, of course, important to keep what is suitable for a History of Criticism apart from what would be suitable only for a monograph on Mr Arnold. Yet the idiosyncrasies of the greater critics are as much the subject of such a general history as their more abstract doctrines. We see, then, here something which was not difficult to discern, even in the more frugal and guarded expression of the Preface, and which, no doubt, is to some extent fostered and intensified by that freedom from the check of immediate contradiction or criticism which some have unkindly called the dangerous prerogative of preachers and professors. This something is the Arnoldian confidence—that quality which Mr Hutton, perhaps rather kindly, took for “sureness,” and which, though strangely different in tone, is not so very different in actual nature from the other “sureness” (with a prefix) of Lord Macaulay. We may think that this confidence is certainly strengthened, and perhaps to some extent caused, by a habit of turning the blind eye on subjects of which the critic does not know very much, and inspecting very cursorily those which he does not much like. But we shall see that, right or wrong, partial or impartial, capricious or systematic as he may be, Mr Arnold applies himself to the actual appreciation of actual literature, and to the giving of reasons for his appreciation, in a way new, delightful, invaluable.
“The grand style.”
The really important part or feature of the tractate for us is its famous handling of “the Grand Style.” He had used this phrase, italicising it, in the Preface itself, had declared that the ancients were its “unapproached masters,” but he had not said much about it or attempted to define it. Here he makes it almost his chief battle-charger—presenting Homer, Dante, and Milton as the greatest masters of it, if not the only sure ones, denying any regular possession of it to Shakespeare, and going far to deny most other poets, from Tennyson down to Young, the possession of it at all. It was impossible that this enigmatic critical phrase, applied so provocatively, should not itself draw the fire of critics. He could not but reply to this in his “Last Words,” but he had to make something of a confession and avoidance, with much sorrow, perhaps not without a very little anger. For those who asked “What is the Grand Style?” mockingly, he had no answer: they were to “die in their sins.” To those who asked with sincerity, he vouchsafed the answer that the grand style “arises in poetry when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or severity a serious subject.” Let us, with as much simplicity, severity, and seriousness as may be, treat both the expression and the definition.
Discussion of it.
The expression itself—the origin of which, like that of some others in our special lexicon, is to be found in the criticism not of literature, but of Art in the limited sense, and which was, I think, first made current in English by Sir Joshua Reynolds—is of course a vague one, and we must walk warily among its associations and suggestions. At one end it suggests, with advantage to itself and to us honest inquirers, the ὕψος of Longinus. At the other, it has perhaps a rather damaging suggestion of the French style noble, and a still more dangerous echo-hint of “grandiose.” And Mr Arnold himself once (Preface, ed. 1853, p. xix) uses “grandiose”, as we saw that the Latins and the French have sometimes done, as equivalent to “grand”. Coming, then, unsatisfied by these vaguenesses, to the definition, we shall perhaps think it permissible to strike out the first two members, as in the former case almost self-confessedly, in the second quite, superfluous. That the Grand Style in poetry will only arise when the stylist is poetically gifted scarcely requires even enunciation: that the nature which produces the grand style must be pro tanto and pro hac vice “noble,” is also sun-clear. Something of the Longinian circularity in one point[[966]] seems to have infected Mr Arnold here. But with the rest of the definition preliminary and prima facie inquiry has no fault to find. Let us take it that the Grand Style in poetry is the treatment of a serious subject with simplicity or severity. Even to this a fresh demurrer arises, which may be partly, but cannot be wholly, overruled. Why this antithesis, this mutual exclusion, between “simplicity” and “severity”? “Severe simplicity” is a common, and is generally thought a just, phrase: at any rate, the two things are closely related. We may note this only—adding in Mr Arnold’s favour that his special attribution of simplicity to Homer and severity to Milton would seem to indicate that by the latter word he means “gorgeousness severely restrained.”
This, with such additional and applied lights as are provided by Mr Arnold’s denunciation of affectation as fatal to the Grand Style, will give us some idea of what he wished to mean by the phrase. It is, in fact, a fresh formulation of the Classical restraint, definiteness, proportion, form, against the Romantic vague, the Romantic fantasy. This had been the lesson of the Preface, given after the preceptist manner. It is now the applied, illustrated, appreciative lesson of the Lectures. It is a doctrine like another: and, in its special form and plan, an easily comprehensible reaction from a reaction—in fact, the inevitable ebb after the equally inevitable flow. But when we begin to examine it (especially in comparison with its Longinian original) as a matter of theory, and with its own illustrations as a matter of practice, doubts and difficulties come thick upon us, and we may even feel under a sad necessity of “dying in our sins,” just as Mr Carlyle thought that, at a certain period of his career, Ignatius Loyola “ought to have made up his mind to be damned.”
To take the last first, it is difficult, on examining Mr Arnold’s instances and his comments, in the most impartial and judicial manner possible, to resist the conclusion that his definition only really fits Dante, and that it was originally derived from the study of him. To that fixed star of first magnitude in poetry it does apply as true, as nothing but true, and perhaps even as the whole truth. Nobility, quintessential poetry, simplicity in at least some senses, severity and seriousness in almost all,—who will deny these things to the Commedia? But it is very difficult to think that it applies, in anything like the same coequal and coextensive fashion, to either Homer or Milton. There are points in which Homer touches Dante; there are points in which Dante touches Milton; but they are not the same points. It may, further, be very much doubted whether Mr Arnold has not greatly exaggerated both Homer’s universal “simplicity” and his universal “seriousness.” The ancients were certainly against him on the latter point. While one may feel not so much doubt as certainty that the application of “severity” to Milton—unless it means simply the absence of geniality and humour—is still more rash.