In fine, Heine is a dangerous model, no doubt; yet even as a model he gave something to Criticism which it had not possessed before, which even Voltaire was unable to give it, because his laughter was too far removed from tears. Heine’s humour too often turned to the humoursome: but it was always present. And Humour is to the critic very nearly what Unction is to the preacher, in its virtue as well as in its danger. Moreover if he could certainly hate he could as certainly love—could not help loving. And when you find Love and Humour together, they and you are not far from the critical Kingdom of Heaven.[[1020]]
Schopenhauer.
The critical work of Schopenhauer[[1021]] is partly to be found in his great book, but it there assumes forms which are not of those with which we chiefly busy ourselves, while the critical sections of the Parerga und Paralipomena[[1022]] are ours—“stock, lock, and barrel”—a familiar metaphor which ceases to be hackneyed in face of the peculiar combativeness of Schopenhauer’s thought and style. They have all the refreshing quality of audacious originality and crisp phrase,[[1023]] and they have perhaps less than is the case elsewhere the perverseness—in fact, the mere ill-temper—which was the result, partly of his dreary creed, partly of the injustice with which he considered himself to be treated by the Verdammte Race.
Vividness and originality of his critical observation.
In these latter moods he is sometimes very amusing, as where he speaks of “a disgusting jargon like the French,”[[1024]] or whenever he mentions Fichte, Schelling, or Hegel; but in them few men are critical, and Schopenhauer is certainly not one of the few. One might make a not uninteresting critical postil or annotatiuncula on the enthusiasm of this pessimist for Scott: but it would be a slight divagation. Read all that he has to say on Style;[[1025]] it is the best thing, I think, that has ever been written on that subject in German, and one of the best things ever written in any language. It is conspicuously free from the old jest (repeated after Diderot on Beccaria so often) that there is nothing of his subject in his treatment; and we may forgive him for denouncing Parenthesis, when we remember the misconduct of the Germans towards that delightfullest of Figures. Among his numerous judgments, of more wisdom than mercy, none is better suited for these times (in which the evil, bad in his own, has grown worse) than his condemnation of the idea that “the last work is always the best,” that “what is written later is always an improvement on what was written before.”[[1026]] Nor is Schopenhauer’s anathema on reading pure and simple too strong, if it be taken with the grain of salt always necessary as seasoning to his strong meat—which grain is in this place the addition, “what is not worth reading, and what is merely new.”[[1027]]
Nor (as though he could leave no literary fault of his and our time untransfixed) does he spare the labour lost on biography and inquiry into originals and the like—“the analysing,” as he calls it, “of clay and paint instead of admiring the shape and colour of the vase.”[[1028]] No critic, who is not very uncertain of himself, need be annoyed by the characteristic observation on the critical faculty, “there is for the most part no such thing.”[[1029]] For each of us may flatter himself that he is the exception, and need have no doubt about the rule. And, as a matter of fact, Schopenhauer proceeds to show that there is a critical faculty, and that he knows very well what it is, and that he has it. If he condemns comparison, it is only what we have so often called the wrong comparison; he lays the very strongest emphasis on the Golden Rule of Criticism—that a poet, or any writer, is to be judged by his best things. On the old subject of the value of immediate and popular recognition, he is perhaps too interested a judge: and there is also evident temper in his exhortation to critics to “scourge mercilessly,” his doctrine that “Politeness in criticism is injurious.” As the world goes, the critic who accepts it as his first duty to scourge mercilessly, to neglect politeness, is quite as likely to scourge the few good books as the many bad, and will certainly do himself irreparable harm. So, also, while recognising the nobility of much that Schopenhauer has written on genius,[[1030]] we shall perhaps think that his encomia on arrogance and his disapproval of modesty are slightly unnecessary. Let us, at any rate, first light our largest lantern, and go out in the brightest day our climate allows, to find these modest men.
Die Welt als Wille, &c.