Kingsley.

At any rate, all these three distinguished persons showed the Carlylian-Peacockian will-worship in their different ways, to an extent which makes them, as critics, little more than extremely interesting curiosities. Kingsley, the least strong, intellectually speaking, of the three, shows it strongly enough. His saying (reported, I think, by the late Mr Kegan Paul), when one of his children asked who and what was Heine, “A bad man, my dear, a bad man,” is a specially interesting blend of the doctrine formulated by Peacock with the old Platonic-Patristic “the poet-is-a-good man” theory. Heine was not quite “a proper moral man” in his early years, certainly: though one might have thought that those later ones in the Matraszen-Gruft would have atoned in the eyes of the sternest inquisitor. But “bad” would have been a harsh term for him at any time. Still, it emphasises the speaker’s inability to distinguish between morality and genius, between the man and the work. This inability was pretty universal with him, and it makes Kingsley’s own work as criticism almost wholly untrustworthy, though often very interesting and stimulating to readers who have the proper correctives and antidotes ready: it even (which is not so very common a thing) affects his praise nearly as much as his blame. You must be on your guard against it, when he extols Euphues and the Fool of Quality[[972]] as much as when he depreciates Shelley.

Froude.

There was less sentimental and ethical prejudice in Mr Froude than in his brother-in-law, but his political and, in a wide, not to say loose, sense philosophical, prejudices were even stronger, and he drew nearer to Carlyle than did either Kingsley or Ruskin in a certain want of interest in literature as literature.[[973]]

Mr Ruskin.

We reach, however, as every one will have anticipated, the furthest point of our “eccentric” in Mr Ruskin. His waywardness is indeed a point which needs no labouring, but it is never displayed more incalculably to the unwary, more calculably to those who have the clue in their hands, than in reference to his literary judgments. Injustice would be done to Rapin and Rymer if we did not give some of the enormous paradoxes and paralogisms to which he has committed himself in this way: but the very abundance of them is daunting, and fortunately his work is not so far from the hands of probable readers as the dustbin-catacombs where those poor old dead lie. “Indignation is a poetical feeling if excited by serious injury, but not if entertained on being cheated out of a small sum of money.” You may admire the budding of a flower, but not a display of fireworks. Contrast the famous exposure of the “pathetic fallacy” with Scott’s supposed freedom from it, and you will find some of the most exquisite unreasons in literature. The foam in Kingsley’s song must not be “cruel,” but the Greta may be “happy,” simply because Ruskin does not mind finding fault with Kingsley, but has sworn to find no fault with Scott—perhaps also because he, very justly, likes sea-foam. Squire Western is not “a character,” because Ruskin had determined that only persons “without a fimetic taint” can create character, and Fielding had a fimetic taint. And dramatic poetry “despises external circumstance” because Scott did not despise external circumstance, and explanation is wanted why he could not write a play. Whether, with the most delicious absurdity, he works out a parallel between a “fictile” Greek vase (which is also, one hears, “of the Madonna”) and “fiction,” or is very nearly going to worship a locomotive when it makes a nasty noise and convinces him of its diabolism, this same exquisite unreason is always at the helm. It very often, generally indeed, is committed in admiration of the right things; it is always delightful literature itself. But it never has the judicial quality, and therefore it is never Criticism.[[974]]

G. H. Lewes.