Turn where we will we are confronted with blunders. Take the account given of Shakespeare. He began his metre, we are told, with the lumbering "fourteeners." He did, so far as is known, nothing of the kind. Again: "It is only by guesses that anything is dated before the Comedy of Errors at the extreme end of 1594." In answer to this it may be sufficient to say that Venus and Adonis was published in 1593, that the first part of Henry VI. was acted on 3rd March, 1592, that Titus Andronicus was acted on 25th January, 1594, and that Lucrece was entered on the Stationers' books 9th May, 1594. This is on a par with the assertion, on page 315, that Shakespeare was traditionally born on 24th April! On page 320 we are told that Measure for Measure belongs to the first group of Shakespeare's plays, to the series beginning with Love's Labour's Lost and culminating with the Midsummer Night's Dream. It is only fair to say that the Professor places a note of interrogation after it in a bracket, but that it should have been placed there, even tentatively, shows an ignorance of the very rudiments of Shakespearian criticism which is nothing short of astounding. Take, again, the account given of Burke. Our readers will probably think us jesting when we tell them that Professor Saintsbury gravely informs us that Burke supported the American Revolution. Is the Professor unacquainted with the two finest speeches which have ever been delivered in any language since Cicero? Can he possibly be ignorant that Burke, so far from supporting that revolution, did all in his power to prevent it? The whole account of Burke, it may be added, teems with inaccuracies. The American Revolution was not brought about under a Tory administration. What brought that revolution about was Charles Townshend's tax, and that tax was imposed under a Whig administration, as every well-informed Board-school lad would know. Burke did not lose his seat at Bristol owing to his support of Roman Catholic claims. If Professor Saintsbury had turned to one of the finest of Burke's minor speeches—the speech addressed to the electors of Bristol—he would have seen that Burke's support of the Roman Catholic claims was only one, and that not the most important, of the causes which cost him his seat. Similar ignorance is displayed in the remark (p. 629) that "Burke joined, and indeed headed, the crusade against Warren Hastings, in 1788." The prosecution of Warren Hastings was undertaken on Burke's sole initiative, not in 1788, but in 1785. A few lines onwards we are told that the series of Burke's writings on the French Revolution "began with the Reflections in 1790, and was continued in the Letter to a Noble Lord, [1790."] A Letter to a Noble Lord had nothing to do with the French Revolution, except collaterally as it affected Burke's public conduct, and appeared, not in 1790, but in 1795.
It seems impossible to open this book anywhere without alighting on some blunder, or on some inaccuracy. Speaking (p. 277) of Willoughby's well-known Avisa, the Professor observes that nothing is known of Willoughby or of Avisa. If the Professor had known anything about the work, he would have known that Avisa is simply an anagram made up of the initial letters of Amans, vxor, inviolata semper amanda, and that nothing is known of Avisa for the simple reason that nothing is known of the site of More's Utopia. On page 360 we are told that Phineas Fletcher's Piscatory Eclogues, which are, of course, confounded with his Sicelides, are a masque; on page 624, but this is perhaps a printer's error, that Robertson wrote a history of Charles I. On page 482, John Pomfret, the author of one of the most popular poems of the eighteenth century, is called Thomas. On page 550, Pope's Moral Essays are described as An Epistle to Lord Burlington, presumably because the last of them, the fourth, is addressed to that nobleman. On page 587 we are told that Mickle died in London: he died at Forest Hill, near Oxford. On page 556 we are informed that Prior was part author of a parody of the "Hind and Panther," and that he was "imprisoned for some years." The work referred to is wrongly described, as it only contained parodies of certain passages in Dryden's poem, and he was in confinement less than two years. On page 358, Brutus, the legendary founder of Britain, is actually described as the son of Æneas. If Professor Saintsbury were as familiar as he affects to be with Geoffrey of Monmouth, with Layamon and with the early metrical romances, he would have known that Brutus is fabled to have been the son of Sylvius, the son of Ascanius, and, consequently, the great-grandson of Æneas. Many of the Professor's critical remarks can only be explained on the supposition that he assumes that his readers will not take the trouble to verify his references or question his dogmas. We will give one or two instances. On page 468, speaking of seventeenth-century prose, he says, with reference to Milton: "The close of the Apology itself is a very little, though only a very little, inferior to the Hydriotaphia." By the Apology he can only mean the Apology for Smectymnuus, for the defence of the English people is in Latin. Now, will our readers credit that one of the flattest, clumsiest and most commonplace passages in Milton's prose writings, as any one may see who turns to it, is pronounced "only a little inferior" to one of the most majestically eloquent passages in our prose literature. That our readers may know what Professor Saintsbury's notions of eloquence are, we will transcribe the passage:
"Thus ye have heard, readers, how many shifts and wiles the prelates have invented to save their ill-got booty. And if it be true, as in Scripture it is foretold, that pride and covetousness are the sure marks of those false prophets which are to come, then boldly conclude these to be as great seducers as any of the latter times. For between this and the judgment day do not look for any arch deceivers who, in spite of reformation, will use more craft or less shame to defend their love of the world and their ambition than these prelates have done. And if ye think that soundness of reason or what force of argument so ever shall bring them to an ingenuous silence, ye think that which shall never be. But if ye take that course which Erasmus was wont to say Luther took against the pope and monks: if ye denounce war against their riches and their bellies, ye shall soon discern that turban of pride which they wear upon their heads to be no helmet of salvation, but the mere metal and hornwork of papal jurisdiction; and that they have also this gift, like a certain kind of some that are possessed, to have their voice in their bellies, which, being well drained and taken down, their great oracle, which is only there, will soon be dumb, and the divine right of episcopacy forthwith expiring will put us no more to trouble with tedious antiquities and disputes."
And this is "a very little, only a very little, inferior," to the "Hydriotaphia"!
On page 652, Swift's style, that perfection of simple, unadorned sermo pedestris—is described as marked by "volcanic magnificence." On page 300 Hooker is described as "having an unnecessary fear of vivid and vernacular expression." Vivid and vernacular expression is, next to its stateliness, the distinguishing characteristic of Hooker's style. It would be interesting to know what is meant by the remark on page 445 that Barrow's style is "less severe than South's." Another example of the same thing is the assertion on page 517 that Joseph Glanville is one of "the chief exponents of the gorgeous style in the seventeenth century." Very 'gorgeous' the style of the Vanity of Dogmatizing, of its later edition the Scepsis Scientifica, of the Sadducismus Triumphatus, of the Lux Orientalis, and of the Essays!
Indeed, the Professor's critical dicta are as amazing as his facts. We have only space for one or two samples. Cowley's Anacreontics are "not very far below Milton"(!) Dr. Donne was "the most gifted man of letters next to Shakespeare." Where Bacon, where Ben Jonson, where Milton are to stand is not indicated. Akenside's stilted and frigid Odes "fall not so far short of Collins." We wonder what Mr. Saintsbury's criterion of poetry can be. But we forget, with that criterion he has furnished us. On page 732, speaking of "a story about a hearer who knew no English, but knew Tennyson to be a poet by the hearing," he adds that "the story is probable and valuable, or rather invaluable, for it points to the best if not the only criterion of poetry." And this is a critic! We would exhort the Professor to ponder well Pope's lines:
"But most by numbers judge a poet's song,
*****
In the bright muse, tho' thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire,