[1077]. Falschmünzler.
CHAPTER V.
REVIVALS AND COMMENCEMENTS.
[LIMITATIONS OF THIS CHAPTER]—[SPAIN]—[ITALY]—[DE SANCTIS]—[CHARACTER OF HIS WORK]—[SWITZERLAND]—[VINET]—[SAINTE-BEUVE ON HIM]—[HIS CRITICISM OF CHATEAUBRIAND AND HUGO]—[HIS GENERAL QUALITY]—[AMIEL: GREAT INTEREST OF HIS CRITICAL IMPRESSIONS]—[EXAMPLES THEREOF]—[THE PITY OF IT].
Limitations of this chapter.
Something apologetic has to be said, also, in regard to this present chapter. It is confessedly inadequate as a History, in each individual case, of the critical performances of European countries, other than England, France, and Germany; it is perhaps not so inadequate as a constituent of the present work. That the writer does not pretend to any such acquaintance with these performances as he may, he believes, claim with the others, may seem a rather damning plea: yet perhaps it is not so. For it is for the other side to show that such acquaintance was necessarily incumbent on him, and that, not possessing it, he was bound to postpone the setting forth of what he had to say until the acquisition was accomplished. I acknowledge that I am not of this opinion. In some cases, as we shall see, the critical achievements now under consideration are almost demonstrably unimportant to the general history of Criticism as yet: and in all it may, I think, be fairly contended that they are for the present negligible. For the present, no doubt, only. There probably will come a time when such a new-comer as Russian will extend to European criticism the influence which it has already begun to exercise on European literature, and when older literatures, like Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and the Scandinavian varieties, will reassert, or assert for the first time, their position. But they have hardly done so yet, save in the case of those who, like Dr Brandes, are not of our competence, as living.
Spain.
The most remarkable of the confessions of this with which I am acquainted is given by the part relating to our present subject, of that work, so freely used, and so necessarily praised, in the last volume, the Historia de las ideas estéticas en España of Señor Menéndez y Pelayo. This consists of three substantial volumes, or about a third of the whole work. Yet it is hardly too much to say that it is solely concerned with æsthetic ideas out of Spain—that it is an account of the general course of European, not of the particular course of Spanish, criticism. The foreigner and the general historian can hardly be blamed for not attempting what the native and the specialist declines. If, indeed, we were concerned with living writers, Señor Menéndez himself and others would give us most satisfactory occupation: but we are not.