Objections to its process.
I fancy that objections to this proceeding take something like the following form: “In the first place, the thing is too effeminate, too patient, too submissive,—it substitutes a mere voluptuous enjoyment, and a dilettante examination into the causes thereof, for a virile summoning of the artist-culprit before the bar of Reason to give account of his deeds. In the second, it is too facile, too fainéant. In the third, it does not give sufficient advantage to the things which we like to call ‘great.’ The moments of pleasure are too much atomised: and though it may be admitted that some yield larger, intenser, more continuous supplies of moment than others, yet this is not sufficient.” Lastly [this is probably always subaud., but seldom uttered except by the hotter gospellers], “We don’t believe in these ecstatic moments, analysed and interpreted in tranquillity; we don’t feel them, and we don’t want to feel them; and you are a nasty hedonist if you do feel them.”
Which protest could, no doubt, be amplified, could, with no doubt also, be supported to a certain extent. Nor is it (though he should placard frankly the fact that he agrees in the main with Mr Pater) exactly the business of the present historian to defend it at any length here, inasmuch as he is writing a history, not a “suasory.” Let it only be hinted in passing that the exceptions just stated seem inconclusive—that the wanters of a sense cannot plead their want as an argument that no others have it; that the process has certainly given no despicable results; that it has seldom demonstrably failed as disastrously as the antecedent rule-system; and, most of all, that nothing can be falser than the charge of fainéantise and dilettanteism. Only as “the last corollary of many of an effort” can this critical skill also be attained and maintained.
Importance of Marius the Epicurean.
At any rate, though, as often happens to a man, he became rather more of a preceptist and less of an impressionist afterwards, Mr Pater certainly exemplified this general theory and practice in a very notable manner. Marius is full of both: it is much more than the Wilhelm Meister of the New Criticism. It is this which gives the critical attitude of Flavian, the hero’s friend and inspirer, the supposed author of the Pervigilium; this, which is the literary function of “Neo-Cyrenaicism” itself—the μονόχρονος ἡδονή, the integral atom, or moment of pleasure, being taken as the unit and reference-integer of literary value; this, which gives the adjustment ad hoc of the Hermotimus. The theory and the practice take their most solid, permanent, and important form in this most remarkable book, of which I find it hard to believe that the copy, “From the Author,” which lies before me, reached me nearly twenty years ago. The Renaissance holds the first blooms and promises of them; Appreciations and the Guardian Essays the later applications and developments; but the central gospel is here.
Appreciations and the “Guardian” Essays.
That the opening essays of these two latter books happen to contain references to myself is a fact. But I fancy that this will not be the main interest of them to posterity, nor, strange as it may seem, is it their main interest to me.[[983]] The Essay on Style which opens the larger and more important book, is, I think, on the whole, the most valuable thing yet written on that much-written-about subject. It presents, indeed, as I have hinted, a certain appearance of “hedging,” especially in the return to matter as the distinction between “good art” and “great art,” which return, as easily rememberable and with a virtuous high sound in it, appears to have greatly comforted some good if not great souls. Certainly a pitcher of gold is in some senses greater than a pitcher of pewter of the same design, especially if you wish to dispose of it to Mr Polonius. A pewter amphora is again in some senses greater than a pewter cyathus. But it does not seem to me that this helps us much. How good, on the other hand, and how complete, is that improvement upon Coleridge’s dictum, which makes Style consist in the adequate presentation of the writer’s “sense of fact,” and the criticism of the documents adduced! How valuable the whole, though we may notice as to the writer’s selection of prose literature as the representative art of the nineteenth century, that this was his art, his in consummate measure, and that verse was not. Altogether, in short, a great paper,—a “furthest” in certain directions.
There is an interesting tender, or rather pilot-boat, to this Essay in the first of the Guardian Reviews on “English Literature,” where the texts are the present writer’s Specimens, Professor’s Minto’s English Poets, Mr Dobson’s Selections from Steele, and one of Canon Ainger’s many bits of yeoman’s service to Lamb. The relation is repeated between the Wordsworth Essay in Appreciations and a Wordsworth review among the Guardian sheaf: while something not dissimilar, but even more intimate, exists between the “Coleridge” Essay and the introduction to that poet in Mr Ward’s well-known book, which Introduction actually forms part of the Essay itself. In the two former cases, actual passages and phrases from the smaller, earlier, and less important work also appear in the larger and later. For Mr Pater—as was very well known, when more than thirty years ago it was debated in Oxford whether he would ever publish anything at all, and as indeed might have been seen from his very first work, by any one with an eye, but with no personal knowledge—was in no sense a ready writer, and, least of all, anxious to write as he ran, that those who run might read. There have been critics who, without repeating themselves, and even, perhaps, with some useful additions and variations, could write half a dozen times on the same subject; and indeed most literary subjects admit of such writing. But such (we need not say frivolity but) flexibility was not in accordance with Mr Pater’s temperament.