[85] Vide Rymeri Fœdera—passim.
[86] A very recent, and very respectable, authority has furnished me with this expression.
[87] See Mr. Todd's Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer, p. 10.
"For my part," continued Lysander, speaking with the most unaffected seriousness—"for my part, nothing delights me more than modesty and diffidence, united with 'strong good sense, lively imagination, and exquisite sensibility,'[88] whether in an author or a critic. When I call to mind that our greatest sages have concluded their labours with doubt, and an avowal of their ignorance; when I see how carefully and reverently they have pushed forward their most successful inquiries; when I see the great Newton pausing and perplexed in the vast world of planets, comets, and constellations, which were, in a measure, of his own creation—I learn to soften the asperity of my critical anathemas, and to allow to an author that portion of fallibility of which I am conscious myself.
[88] It is said, very sensibly, by La Bruyere, I will allow that good writers are scarce enough; but then I ask where are the people that know how to read and judge? A union of these qualities, which are seldom found in the same person, seems to be indispensably necessary to form an able critic; he ought to possess strong good sense, lively imagination, and exquisite sensibility. And of these three qualities, the last is the most important; since, after all that can be said on the utility or necessity of rules and precepts, it must be confessed that the merit of all works of genius must be determined by taste and sentiment. "Why do you so much admire the Helen of Zeuxis?" said one to Nicostratus. "You would not wonder why I so much admired it (replied the painter) if you had my eyes."—Warton: Note to Pope's Essay on Criticism. Pope's Works, vol. i. 196, edit. 1806.
"I see then," rejoined Philemon, "that you are an enemy to Reviews."[89] "Far from it," replied Lysander, "I think them of essential service to literature. They hold a lash over ignorance and vanity; and, at any rate, they take care to bestow a hearty castigation upon vicious and sensual publications. Thus far they do good: but, in many respects, they do ill—by substituting their own opinions for those of an author; by judging exclusively according to their own previously formed decisions in matters of religion and politics; and by shutting out from your view the plan, and real tendency, of the book which they have undertaken to review, and therefore ought to analyze. It is, to be sure, amusing to read the clamours which have been raised against some of the most valuable, and now generally received, works! When an author recollects the pert conclusion of Dr. Kenrick's review of Dr. Johnson's Tour to the Hebrides,[90] he need not fear the flippancy of a reviewer's wit, as decisive of the fate of his publication!
[89] The earliest publications, I believe, in this country, in the character of Reviews were there Weekly Memorials for the Ingenious, &c. Lond. 1683, 4to.—and The Universal Historical Bibliotheque: or an Account of most of the considerable Books printed in all Languages, in the Month of January 1686. London, 1687, 4to. Five years afterwards came forth The Young Student's Library, by the Athenian Society, 1692, folio, "a kind of common theatre where every person may act, or take such part as pleases him best, and what he does not like he may pass over, assuring himself that, every one's judgment not being like his, another may chuse what he mislikes, and so every one may be pleased in their turns." Pref. A six weeks' frost is said to have materially delayed the publication. After these, in the subsequent century, appeared the Old and New Memoirs of Literature; then, the Works of the Learned; upon which was built, eclipsing every one that had preceeded it, and not excelled by any subsequent similar critical journal, The Monthly Review.
[90] After all, said the reviewing Doctor, we are of opinion, with the author himself, that this publication contains 'the sentiments of one who has seen but little:' meaning, thereby, that the book was hardly worth perusal! What has become of the said Dr. Kenrick now? We will not ask the same question about the said Dr. Johnson; whose works are upon the shelf of every reading man of sense and virtue.
"It is certainly," pursued Lysander, "a very prolific age of knowledge. There never was, at any one period of the world, so much general understanding abroad. The common receptacles of the lower orders of people present, in some degree, intellectual scenes. I mean, that collision of logic, and corruscation of wit, which arise from the perusal of a newspaper; a production, by-the-bye, upon which Cowper has conferred immortality.[91] You may remember, when we were driven by a sharp tempest of hail into the small public-house which stands at the corner of the heath—what a logomachy—what a war of words did we hear! and all about sending troops to the north or south of Spain, and the justice or injustice of the newly-raised prices of admission to Covent Garden theatre!![92] The stage-coach, if you recollect, passed by quickly after our having drunk a tumbler of warm brandy and water to preserve ourselves from catching cold; and into it glad enough we were to tumble! We had no sooner begun to be tolerably comfortable and composed than a grave old gentleman commenced a most furious Philippic against the prevailing studies, politics, and religion of the day—and, in truth, this man evinced a wonderfully retentive memory, and a fair share of powers of argument; bringing everything, however, to the standard of his own times. It was in vain we strove to edge in the great Whig and Tory Reviews of the northern and southern hemispheres! The obdurate champion of other times would not listen a moment, or stir one inch, in favour of these latter publications. When he quitted us, we found that he was a —— of considerable consequence in the neighbourhood, and had acquired his fortune from the superior sagacity and integrity he had displayed in consequence of having been educated at the free-school in the village of ——, one of the few public schools in this kingdom which has not frustrated the legitimate views of its pious founder, by converting that into a foppish and expensive establishment which was at once designed as an asylum for the poor and an academy to teach wisdom and good morals."
[91] See the opening the fourth book of "The Task;" a picture perfectly original and unrivalled in its manner.