That George Henry Lewes had many of the qualities of the critic it would be mere foolish paradox to deny. His Goethe and his History (if not) of Philosophy yet “of Philosophers” are sufficient proofs for any one to put in: and of his mastery of that element of criticism which goes to the making of an impresario the wonderful success with which he formed and trained his companion, George Eliot, is a still more convincing demonstration. His Principles of Success in Literature. I understand, also, that he had real merits as a dramatic critic. But his chief critical work, The Principles of Success in Literature,[[975]] betrays by its very title the presence of an element of vulgarity in him, which can indeed scarcely escape notice in other parts of his work, and which is by no means removed or neutralised by the quasi-philosophic tone of the work itself. Much may be forgiven to a man, born in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, when he uses the words “progress,” “success,” and the like: but not everything. Fame may be the last infirmity of noble minds; Success is but the first and last morbid appetite of the vulgar. And, as has been said, Lewes does not fully redeem his title by his text. There is plenty of common-sense and shrewdness. There is plenty of apparent and some real philosophy. Some, no doubt, will delight to be told that there are three Laws of Literature, that “the intellectual form is the Principle of Vision; the moral form the Principle of Sincerity; and the æsthetic form the Principle of Beauty,” and then to have these various eggs tossed and caught, in deft arrangements, for some chapters.

Indeed, there be many truths in the book, and I would most carefully guard against the idea that Lewes knowingly and deliberately recommends a mere tradesman-like view of literature. On the contrary, he strongly protests against it: and writes about Sincerity with every appearance of being sincere.[[976]] But his view of Imagination is confessedly low, and almost returns to the Addisonian standpoint of “ideas furnished by sight.” And when, with a rather rash hiatus, he promises[[977]] “for the first time to expound scientifically the Laws that constitute the Philosophy of Criticism,” we listen even less hopefully and even more doubtfully than somebody did when he understood somebody else to say that he had killed the Devil. Lewes is not unsound on the subject of imitation of the classics. He has learnt from Coleridge, or from Wordsworth, or from De Quincey, that style is the body not the dress of thought: and much that he says about it is extremely shrewd and true. But when he comes to its actual Laws and gives them as Economy, Simplicity, Sequence, Climax, and Variety, the old not at all divine despair comes upon us. All these are well, but they are not Style’s crown; they are only and hardly some of the balls and strawberry leaves of that crown. A sentence, or a paragraph, or a page may be economic, simple, sequacious, climacteric, and various, and not be good style. I am not sure that a great piece of style might not be produced to which, except by violence, no one of these epithets—I am sure that many such pieces could be produced to which not all—will apply. Once more the light and holy soul of literature has wings to fly at suspicion of these bonds—and uses them.

His Inner Life of Art.

Lewes’s best critical work by far[[978]] is to be found in the Essay on The Inner Life of Art, where he handles, without ceremony and with crushing force, the strange old and new prudery about the connection of verse and poetry, declaring plumply that the one is the form of the other. But it is noticeable that this Essay is in the main merely a catena or chrestomathy of critical extracts, united by some useful review-work. On the whole, even after dismissing or allowing for any undue “nervous impression” created by the unlucky word “Success,” it is not very possible to give him, as a critic, a position much higher than one corresponding to the position of Helps. Lewes is a Helps much unconventionalised and cosmopolitanised, not merely in externals. He is not only much more skilled in philosophical terminology, but he really knows more of what philosophy means. He has more, much more, care for literature. But the stamp of the Exhibition of 1851 is upon him also: and it is not for nothing that his favourite and most unreservedly praised models of style are drawn from Macaulay. I have no contempt for Macaulay’s style myself: I have ventured in more places than one or two to stigmatise such contempt as entirely uncritical. But the preference of this style tells us much in this context, as the preference of champagne in another.

Bagehot.

The evils of dissipation of energy have been lamented by the grave and precise in all ages: and some have held that they are specially discoverable in the most modern times. It is very probable that Criticism may charge to this account the comparatively faint and scanty service done her by one who displayed so much faculty for that service as Walter Bagehot. A man whose vocations and avocations extend (as he himself says in a letter quoted by Mr Hutton) from hunting to banking, and from arranging Christmas festivities to editing the Economist, can have but odd moments for literature. Yet this man’s odd moments were far from unprofitable. His essay on Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art in Poetry would deserve a place even in a not voluminous collection of the best and most notable of its kind. The title, of course, indicates Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning: and the paper itself may be said to have been one of the earliest frankly to estate and recognise Tennyson—the earliest of importance perhaps to estate and recognise Browning—among the leaders of mid-nineteenth century poetry. As such titles are wont to do, it somewhat overreaches itself, and certainly implies or suggests a confusion as to the meaning of “pure.” If pure is to mean “unadorned,” Wordsworth is most certainly not at his poetical best when he has most of the quality, but generally at his worst; if it means “sheer,” “intense,” “quintessential,” his best of poetry has certainly no more of it than the best of either of the other two. The classification suggests, and the text confirms, a certain “popularity” in Bagehot’s criticism. But it is popular criticism of the very best kind, and certainly not to be despised because it has something of mid-nineteenth century, and Macaulayan, materialism and lack of subtlety. This derbheit sometimes led him wrong, as in that very estimate of Gibbon which the same Mr Hutton praises, but oftener it contributed sense and sanity to his criticism. And there are not many better things in criticism than sanity and sense, especially when, as in Bagehot’s case, they are combined with humour and with good-humour.[[979]]

R. H. Hutton.