to the subject in hand, which is Whistler’s painting, and not his personal qualities. Next, it seems that Mr. Ruskin thinks it is an offence to ask 200 guineas for a picture, but where the offence lies we are not told. It might be folly to give 200 guineas for one of Whistler’s pictures, but why should he be abused for asking it? The insinuation is that it is a false pretence, and such an insinuation is not bonâ fide. Lastly, we are told that Mr. Whistler has been flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face. In the first place, this is vulgar. In the next place, it is absurd. When Sydney Smith said that someone’s writing was like a spider having escaped from the inkstand and wandered over the paper, it was an exaggerated criticism, but it was appropriate. But if Mr. Whistler flung a pot of paint anywhere, it was upon his own canvas, and not into the face of the public. Now, let anybody think what is the effect of such criticism. Is one enabled by the light of it to see the merits or faults of Whistler’s painting? And yet this was written by the greatest art critic in this country, by the man who has done more to reveal the secrets of Nature and of Art to us all than any man living, and, I had almost said, than any living or dead. But passion and arrogance are not criticism; and, in the sense in which I have used the term, such criticism is not bonâ fide. Well may Mr. Matthew Arnold say, speaking of Mr. Ruskin’s criticism upon another subject, that he forgets all moderation and proportion, and loses the balance of his mind. This, he says, “is to show in one’s criticism to the highest excess the note of provinciality.”
There was, once upon a time, a very strong Court of
Appeal. It was universally acknowledged to be so, and the memory of it still remains, and very old lawyers still love to recall its glories. It was composed of Lord Chancellor Campbell and the Lords Justices Knight-Bruce and Turner. Bethell (afterwards Lord Westbury) was an ambitious and aspiring man, and was always most caustic in his criticisms. He had been arguing before the above Court one day, and upon his turning round after finishing his argument, some counsel in the row behind him asked, “Well, Bethell, how will their judgment go?” Bethell replied, in his softest but most cutting tones, “I do not know. Knight-Bruce is a jack-pudding. Turner is an old woman. And no human being can by any possibility predict what will fall from the lips of that inexpressibly fatuous individual who sits in the middle.” This is funny, but it is vulgar, and it is not given in good faith. It is the offspring of anger and spite mixed with a desire to be clever and antithetical.
I gather from Mr. Matthew Arnold’s essays on criticism that the endeavour of the critic should be to see the object criticized “as in itself it really is,” or as in another passage he says, “Real criticism obeys an instinct prompting it to know the best that is known and thought in the world.” “In order to do or to be this, criticism,” he says, in italics, “ought to be disinterested.” He points out how much English criticism is not disinterested. He says, “We have the Edinburgh Review, existing as an organ of the old Whigs, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that; we have the Quarterly Review, existing as an organ of the Tories, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that; we have the British Quarterly Review, existing as an
organ of the political Dissenters, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that; we have the Times existing as an organ of the common satisfied well-to-do Englishman, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that. . . . Directly this play of mind wants to have more scope, and to forget the pressure of practical considerations a little, it is checked, it is made to feel the chain. We saw this the other day in the extinction so much to be regretted of the Home and Foreign Review; perhaps in no organ of criticism was there so much knowledge, so much play of mind; but these could not save it. It must needs be that men should act in sects and parties, that each of these sects and parties should have its organ, and should make this organ subserve the interest of its action; but it would be well too that there should be a criticism, not the minister of those interests, nor their enemy, but absolutely and entirely independent of them. No other criticism will ever attain any real authority, or make any real way towards its end,—the creating a current of true and fresh ideas.”
This, it must be remembered, was written in 1865. Would Mr. Matthew Arnold be happier now with the Fortnightly and the Nineteenth Century and others? There is, I think, a good deal of truth in the passage I have just quoted. I think he might have allowed that, among so many writers, each advocating his own view or the view of his party or sect, we ought to have some chance of forming a judgment. A question seems to get a fair chance of being
“Set in all lights by many minds
To close the interests of all.”
But, as I said, there is a good deal in what the writer says. The Daily News says the Government is all wrong, and the Daily Telegraph says it is all right; and if any paper ventured to be moderate it would go to the wall in a week. I think what he says is true, but there is no occasion to be so angry about it. We really are very thankful for such men as Carlyle, Ruskin, and Matthew Arnold, and I can’t help thinking they have had their proper share of praise, and have had their share of influence upon their age. The air of neglected superiority, which they assume, detracts not a little from the pleasure with which one always reads them.
Perhaps some of my conservative friends will regret the good old times in which criticism was really criticism, when a book had to run the gauntlet of a few well established critics of the club, or a play was applauded or damned by a select few in the front row of the pit. I agree to lament a past which can never return, but, on the whole, I think we are the gainers. Also, I very much incline to think that the standard of criticism is higher now than in the very palmy days when Addison wrote; or when the Edinburgh or Quarterly were first started. I incline to agree with Leslie Stephen in his Hours in a Library, that, if most of the critical articles of even Jeffrey and Mackintosh were submitted to a modern editor, he would reject them as inadequate; but I think that perhaps they excel our modern efforts in a certain reserve and dignity, and in a more matured thoughtfulness.
If criticism is an art, such as I have described it, and is subject to certain rules and conditions; if good criticism is appreciative, proportionate, appropriate, strong, natural, and bonâ fide, and bad criticism is the