That Emerson also is not first of all a critic is not surprising, because, as most people have seen, Emerson is not, first of all, anything but Emerson. But he is in some ways more of a critic than either of the others, and the reason why he is not more so still is that, like his master or analogue Carlyle, he rather refuses to look on literature as literature. His ethical preoccupations and his transcendentalism alike prevent him from doing this—he is Carlyle plus Vinet. In the second place, if I may say so without offence, he shows us, as neither Ticknor nor Longfellow, both of whom were too cosmopolitan, shows us, the American touch-me-not-ishness, the somewhat unnecessary affectation of nationality. The literary chauvinism of the famous lecture on “The American Scholar” is perhaps more apparent than real; but his query, “Who is Southey?” in the record of his interview with Landor, is awkward. “Southey is, say what you like about his poetry or his politics, one of the greatest men of letters of all time,” is the answer which a critic should have given to himself. Yet there is much good positive criticism in Emerson (if there can be said to be anything positive in him), and there is still more of that vague stimulative force which is so noticeable in these first great writers of America, and which is so interesting when we consider their circumstances, individual and national. In the English Traits and the Representative Men, in the lectures and elsewhere, there is always ringing to the fit ear the “Tolle, lege!” of the greater critics, with the comment which helps to make the book understood, when it is taken up and read.

Poe.

By the ’Thirties and ’Forties of the nineteenth century the European pilgrimage was no longer necessary to fetch the critical spark home. American criticism became abundant, and not merely abundant. In no case do I so much regret the necessity of compression as in that of Poe. The extreme and almost incomprehensible injustice with which the ill-fated author of Ligeia and The Haunted Palace was so long treated by his countrymen has, I believe, abated; and I have seen, in the article referred to, a complimentary, though merely passing, reference to him as a critic. But there is still room, I think, for some substantial Rettung, as Lessing would have said. The substance would have to be considerable, for the matter under consideration,[[1149]] which is not small in bulk, is heterogeneous, and even to some extent chaotic. More than any other part of Poe’s work it is the scapegoat of his unfavourable circumstances, of his patchy education, of his weaknesses in conduct, temper, and constitution. A great deal is mere hack-writing—chaînes de l’esclavage—stuff never meant to abide the steady judgment of posterity. You may, if you please, pick out of it the most amazing things, such[[1150]] as that “for one Fouqué there are fifty Molières” (I am no undervaluer of Fouqué, but I wish—I do wish—that I knew where to look for even one of the forty-nine additional Poquelins); and “for one Dickens ... five million ... Fieldings,” where perhaps five million marks of exclamation might not inadequately meet the case. Generous as is the praise which he heaps upon Mrs Browning and Mr Horne; true as much of what he says is; one feels that his observations want reducing, adjusting, co-ordinating under the calmer influence of comparative and universal criticism. There was not the slightest reason why he should get into such a frantic rage with, the “devilled kidneys” (a most pleasant and wholesome food) in that very pleasant and wholesome book Charles O’Malley; or why he should have so furiously resented Mr Lowell’s remarks on himself in the Fable for Critics, open as these are to criticism; or why he should have said or done a hundred other things of the kind. His “hungry heart and burning,” his ill-disciplined intellect and temper, drove him in all sorts of directions, and not unfrequently in the wrong ones.

Yet his critical instincts were almost always right; and not seldom they were remarkably original. Considering what the ways of poets are, and that Poe had his full share of the then prevailing American soreness towards “British” writers, I know few things in literature more pleasant and edifying at once than his enthusiastic and intelligent welcome of Tennyson. “The Rationale of Verse,” though there are faults in it, due to ignorance or carelessness in terminology, to haste, and to imperfect reading, is one of the best things ever written on English prosody, and quite astonishingly original. Although, when he takes a great deal of pains it is apt to be rather lost labour, as, for instance, in the comically laborious dissection of Longfellow’s Spanish Student (a delightful thing if taken in the proper way), the acuteness which he often shows even in such pieces, and much more in his lighter aperçus, is remarkable. The Marginalia are full of good things—I find, after reading them anew for this purpose, that my reference slips “stand like the corn arow.” His dislike of German criticism[[1151]] may have been half opposition to Carlyle, between whom and himself there was a gulf fixed; and he should not have said that Macaulay had more true critical spirit than both the Schlegels put together. But this very passage is worth pondering, and it was very bold at the time. I do not think he borrowed the true observation of the resemblance between Hudibras and the Satyre Menippée.[[1152]] His defence of the “rhetorician’s rules”[[1153]] is just and lively: it is not a little noteworthy that he, the most apparently irregular and spasmodic of men of genius, perfectly understands the importance of Form.

And all this, let it be remembered, was written, not merely in distress, and in disease, and sometimes in despair, but—to adapt the Dickensian and Gautieresque juxtaposition—in the ’Thirties and 'Forties, when, as we have seen, criticism in England itself had fallen into the state from which it was aroused by Matthew Arnold years after Poe’s death; when Carlyle was turning his back on it, when Macaulay was acknowledging that he was not the man for it, when the men who meddled with it were showing absolute want of comprehension of Tennyson, and passing Browning over as beneath their notice. It was written in spite of the bad influence (discernible enough, as it is, in Poe) of the swaggering, swashbuckler fashion of “British” criticism itself. It was written before—long before in most cases—Lowell came to his maturity as a critic. It is, except in flashes and indications, mostly a might-have-been. But that might-have-been, translated into fact, would, I think, have ranked with the most noteworthy critical achievements that we possess in regard to poetry and belles-lettres. On other departments Poe could probably never, in the most favourable circumstances, have laid much hold. But in his own sphere he not only did the works, but knew those who did them and how they were done.

Lowell: his general position.

On the whole, however, I suppose that a majority of the best judges would award the place of premier critic of America to Mr Lowell, and I should certainly not attempt to contest the judgment. He had, in an eminent degree, most of the qualities which our long examination has enabled us to specify as generally found in good critics; catholic and observant reading, real enthusiasm for literature, sanity of judgment, good-humour, width of view, and (though this perhaps in rather less measure than the others) methodic arrangement and grasp. He was free, not merely from the defects which are the opposites of these good qualities, but from others—the niggling and carping of the gerund-grinder and the gradus-hunter,[[1154]] the hideboundness of the type-and-kind critic, and above all the incomprehensible and yet all-pervading inability to like something because it is not something else. He could put his perceptions brightly and forcibly—in a way perhaps rather tempting to re-read than at once sinking into the memory, but not the less excellent, and perhaps (in criticism) rather the more uncommon, for that.

On the wrong side of the account there are of course some things to put. I shall not be suspected of wishing to banish quips and cranks from criticism, but Mr Lowell was perhaps a little too prodigal of them. His patriotism was a little aggressive—not in the way (which he had far too much critical good sense ever to tread) of overvaluing his countrymen’s literary performances, but in too often infusing into his criticism a sort of Nemo-me-impune-lacessit flavour which was quite unnecessary, and in fact almost entirely irrelevant. And lastly, as has been hinted above, his grasp was not always sure. To compare the two papers on Gray, written at no great interval of time, by him and by his slightly younger contemporary Mr Arnold, is very interesting and instructive. I am not sure that, if it were just (or indeed possible) to extract separate good critical things, like nuggets, from the two essays, and weigh the parcels against each other, the American would not prove the richer, even allowing weight for length. But Gray is not “put” in the Harvard man’s essay as he is in the Oxonian’s: the critical contact is less full and vital, the congress less complete. It may be urged, indeed, that the selection is not quite fair, because of the unusual sympathy, and as it were harmony pre-established, between the Graian and the Arnoldian temperaments; but the same slight shortcoming will be found elsewhere.[[1155]]