THE TWO ARNOLDS.[[3]]
Nature, it would seem, has fortunately provided against the simultaneous development of kindred genius and intellect amongst human families. Such, at least, is the general rule, and it is a beneficent one. For if a sudden frenzy were to seize the whole clans of Brown, or Smith, or Campbell, or Thomson—were the divine afflatus breathed at once upon the host, more numerous than that of Sennacherib, of the inheritors of the above names, undoubtedly such a confusion would ensue as has not been witnessed since the day of the downfall of Babel. Passing over three of these great divisions of the human race, as located in the British Islands, let us confine our illustration simply to the sons of Diarmid. Without estimating the number of Campbells who are scattered over the face of the earth, we have reason to believe that in Argyllshire alone there are fifty thousand of that name. Out of each fifty, at least twenty are Colins. If, then, a poetical epidemic, only half as contagious as the measles, were to visit our western county, we should behold the spectacle of a thousand Colin Campbells rushing frantically, and with a far cry towards Lochow, and simultaneously twangling on the clairshach. Fame, in the form of a Druidess, might announce, from the summit of Kilchurn Castle, the name of the one competitor who was entitled to the wreath; but twice five hundred Colins would press forward at the call, and the question of poetic superiority could only be decided by the dirk. Fortunately, as we have already observed, nature provides against such a contingency. Glancing over the cosmopolitan directory, she usually takes care that no two living bards shall bear precisely the same appellation; and if, sometimes, she seems to permit an unusual monopoly of some kind of talent in the same family or sept, we almost never find that the baptismal appellations correspond. Thus, in the days of James I., there were no less than three poetical Fletchers—John, the dramatist; Phineas, the author of the Purple Island; and Giles, the brother of Phineas. Also there were two Beaumonts—Francis, the ally of the greater Fletcher, and Sir John, his brother. In our own time, the poetic mantle seems to have fallen extensively on the shoulders of the Tennysons. Besides Prince Alfred, whom we all honour and admire, and to whom more than three-fourths of our young versifiers pay homage by slavishly imitating his style, there was Charles, whose volume, published about the same time as the firstling of his brother, was deemed by competent judges to exhibit remarkable promise; and within the last few months, another Tennyson—Frederick—has bounded like a grasshopper into the ring, and is now piping away as clearly as any cicala. And here, side by side, amidst the mass of minstrelsy which cumbers our table, lie two volumes, on the title-page of each of which is inscribed the creditable name of Arnold.
We have not for a considerable time held much communing with the rising race of poets, and we shall at once proceed to state the reason why. Even as thousands of astronomers are nightly sweeping the heavens with their telescopes, in the hope of discovering some new star or wandering comet, so of late years have shoals of small critics been watching for the advent of some grand poetical genius. These gentlemen, who could not, if their lives depended on it, elaborate a single stanza, have a kind of insane idea that they may win immortal fame by being the first to perceive and hail the appearance of the coming bard. Accordingly, scarce a week elapses without a shout being raised at the birth of a thin octavo. “Apollodorus, or the Seraph of Gehenna, a Dramatic Mystery, by John Tunks,” appears; and we are straightway told, on the authority of Mr Guffaw, the celebrated critic, that:—“It is a work more colossal in its mould than the undefined structures of the now mouldering Persepolis. Tunks may not, like Byron, possess the hypochondriacal brilliancy of a blasted firework, or pour forth his floods of radiant spume with the intensity of an artificial volcano. He does not pretend to the spontaneous combustion of our young friend Gander Rednag (who, by the way, has omitted to send us his last volume), though we almost think that he possesses a diviner share of the poet’s ennobling lunacy. He does not dive so sheer as the author of Festus into the bosom of far unintelligibility, plummet-deep beyond the range of comprehension, or the shuddering gaze of the immortals. He may not be endowed with the naked eagle-eye of Gideon Stoupie, the bard of Kirriemuir, whose works we last week noticed, and whose grand alcoholic enthusiasm shouts ha, ha, to the mutchkin, as loudly as the call of the trumpet that summons Behemoth from his lair. He may not, like the young Mactavish, to whose rising talent we have also borne testimony, be able to swathe his real meaning in the Titanic obscurity of the parti-coloured Ossianic mysticism. He may not, like Shakespeare, &c. &c.” And then, having occupied many columns in telling us whom Mr Tunks does not resemble, the gifted Guffaw concludes by an assurance that Tunks is Tunks, and that his genius is at this moment flaring over the universe, like the meteor-standard of the Andes!
Desirous, from the bottom of our heart, to do all proper justice to Tunks, we lay down this furious eulogium, and turn to the volume. We find, as we had anticipated, that poor Tunks is quite guiltless of having written a single line of what can, by any stretch of conscience, be denominated poetry—that the passages which Guffaw describes as being so ineffably grand, are either sheer nonsense or exaggerated conceits—and that a very excellent young man, who might have gained a competency by following his paternal trade, is in imminent peril of being rendered an idiot for life by the folly of an unscrupulous scribbler. Would it be right, under those circumstances, to tell Tunks our mind, and explain to him the vanity of his ways? If we were to do so, the poor lad would probably not believe us; for he has drunk to the dregs the poisoned chalice of Guffaw, and is ready, like another Homer, to beg for bread and make minstrelsy through innumerable cities. If we cannot hope to reclaim him, it would be useless cruelty to hurt his feelings, especially as Tunks is doing no harm to any one beyond himself. So we regard him much as one regards a butterfly towards the close of autumn, with the wish that the season of his enjoyment might be prolonged, but with the certainty that the long nights and frosty evenings are drawing nigh. Little, indeed, do the tribe of the Guffaws care for the mischief they are doing.
Or take another case. Let us suppose the appearance on the literary stage of a young man really endowed with poetic sensibility—one whose powers are yet little developed, but who certainly gives promise, conditionally on proper culture, of attaining decided eminence. Before we know anything about him, he is somehow or other committed to the grasp of the Guffaws. They do not praise—they idolise him. All the instances of youthful genius are dragged forth to be debased at his feet. He is told, in as many words, that Pope was a goose, Chatterton a charlatan, Kirke White a weakling, and Keats a driveller, compared with him,—at any rate, that the early effusions of those poets are not fit to be spoken of in the same breath with what he has written at a similar age. There are no bounds to the credulity of a poet of one-and-twenty. He accepts the laudation of those sons of Issachar as gospel, and, consequently, is rather surprised that a louder blast has not been blown through the trumpet of fame. His eulogists are so far from admitting that he has any faults, that they hold him up as a pattern, thereby exciting his vanity to such an extent that an honest exposition of his faults would appear to him a gross and malignant outrage. It is really very difficult to know what to do in such cases. On the one hand, it is a pity, without an effort, to allow a likely lad to be flyblown and spoiled by the buzzing blue-bottles of literature; on the other, it is impossible to avoid seeing that the mischief has been so far done, that any remedy likely to be effectual must cause serious pain. To tie up a Guffaw to the stake, and to inflict upon him condign punishment—a resolution which we intend to carry into effect some fine morning—would be far less painful to us than the task or duty of wounding the sensitiveness of a youth who may possibly be destined to be a poet.
Setting, for the present, the Guffaws, or literary Choctaws, aside, we have a word to say to a very different class of critics, or rather commentators; and we desire to do this in the utmost spirit of kindness. Whether Aristotle, who could no more have perpetrated a poem than have performed the leger-de-main of the Wizard of the North, was justified in writing his “Poetics,” we cannot exactly say. More than one of his treatises upon subjects with which he hardly could have been practically conversant, are still quoted in the schools; but we suspect that his authority—paramount, almost, during the middle ages, because there were then no other guides, and because he found his way into Western Europe chiefly through the medium of the Moors—is fast waning, and in matters of taste ought not now to be implicitly received. Aristotle, however, was a great man, far greater than Dr Johnson. The latter compiled a Dictionary; Aristotle, by his own efforts, aspired to make, and did make, a sort of Encyclopædia. But he composed several of his treatises, not because he conceived that he was the person best qualified to be the exponent of the subject, but because no one really qualified had attempted before him to expound it. We have seen, and perused with real sorrow, a recent treatise upon “Poetics,” which we cannot do otherwise, conscientiously, than condemn. The author is no doubt entitled to praise on account of his metaphysical ability, which we devoutly trust he may be able to turn to some useful purpose; but as to poetry, its forms, development, machinery, or application, he is really as ignorant as a horse. It is perfectly frightful to see the calmness with which one of these young students of metaphysics sits down to explain the principles of poetry, and the self-satisfied air with which he enunciates the results of his wonderful discoveries. Far be it from us, when “our young men dream dreams,” to rouse them rudely from their slumber; but we hold it good service to give them a friendly shake when we observe them writhing under the pressure of Ephialtes.
It is one thing to descant upon poetry, and another to compose it. After long meditation on the subject, we have arrived at the conclusion that very little benefit indeed is to be derived from the perusal of treatises, and that the only proper studies for a young poet are the book of nature, and the works of the greatest masters. To that opinion, we are glad to observe, one of our Arnolds seriously inclines. Matthew—whom we shall take up first, because he is an old acquaintance—has written an elaborate preface, in which he complains of the bewildering tone of the criticism of the present day. He remarks with perfect justice, that the ceaseless babbling about art has done an incalculable deal of harm, by drawing the attention of young composers from the study and contemplation of their subjects, and leading them to squander their powers upon isolated passages. There is much truth in the observations contained in the following extract, albeit it is in direct opposition to the daily practice of the Guffaws:—
“We can hardly, at the present day, understand what Menander meant when he told a man who inquired as to the progress of his comedy, that he had finished it, not having yet written a single line, because he had constructed the action of it in his mind. A modern critic would have assured him that the merit of his piece depended on the brilliant things which arose under his pen as he went along. We have poems which seem to exist merely for the sake of single lines and passages; not for the sake of producing any total impression. We have critics who seem to direct their attention merely to detached expressions,—to the language about the action, not to the action itself. I verily think that the majority of them do not in their hearts believe that there is such a thing as a total-impression to be derived from a poem at all, or to be demanded from a poet; they think the term a commonplace of metaphysical criticism. They will permit the poet to select any action he pleases, and to suffer that action to go as it will, provided he gratifies them with occasional bursts of fine writing, and with a shower of isolated thoughts and images. That is, they permit him to leave their poetical sense ungratified, provided that he gratifies their rhetorical sense and their curiosity. Of his neglecting to gratify these there is little danger; he needs rather to be warned against the danger of attempting to gratify these alone; he needs rather to be perpetually reminded to prefer his action to everything else; so to treat this, as to permit its inherent excellencies to develop themselves, without interruption from the intrusion of his personal peculiarities—most fortunate when he most entirely succeeds in effacing himself, and in enabling a noble action to subsist as it did in nature.”
It would be well for the literature of the age if sound criticism of this description were more common. Mr Arnold is undoubtedly correct in holding that the first duty of the poet, after selecting his subject, is to take pains to fashion it symmetrically, and that any kind of ornament which tends to divert the attention from the subject is positively injurious to the poem. This view, however, is a great deal too refined for the comprehension of the Guffaws. They show you a hideous misshapen image, with diamonds for eyes, rubies stuck into the nostrils, and pearls inserted in place of teeth, and ask you to admire it! Admire what? Not the image certainly, for anything more clumsy and absurd it is impossible to imagine: if it is meant that we are to admire the jewels, we are ready to do so, as soon as they are properly disposed, and made the ornaments of a stately figure. The necklace which would beseem the bosom of Juno, and send lustre even to the queen of the immortals, cannot give anything but additional hideousness to the wrinkled folds of an Erichtho. Mr Arnold, who has inherited his father’s admiration for ancient literature, makes out the best case we remember to have seen, in vindication of the Greek drama. It is as follows:—
“For what reason was the Greek tragic poet confined to so limited a range of subjects? Because there are so few actions which unite in themselves, in the highest degree, the conditions of excellence; and it was not thought that on any but an excellent subject could an excellent poem be constructed. A few actions, therefore, eminently adapted for tragedy, maintained almost exclusive possession of the Greek tragic stage; their significance appeared inexhaustible; they were as permanent problems, perpetually offered to the genius of every fresh poet. This too is the reason of what appears to us moderns a certain baldness of expression in Greek tragedy; of the triviality with which we often reproach the remarks of the chorus, where it takes place in the dialogue; that the action itself, the situation of Orestes, or Merope, or Alcmæon, was to stand the central point of interest, unforgotten, absorbing, principal; that no accessories were for a moment to distract the spectator’s attention from this; that the tone of the parts was to be perpetually kept down, in order not to impair the grandiose effect of the whole. The terrible old mythic story on which the drama was founded, stood, before he entered the theatre, traced in its bare outlines upon the spectator’s mind; it stood in his memory as a group of statuary, faintly seen, at the end of a long and dark vista: then came the Poet, embodying outlines, developing situations, not a word wasted, not a sentiment capriciously thrown in: stroke upon stroke the drama proceeded; the light deepened upon the group; more and more it revealed itself to the rivetted gaze of the spectator; until at last, when the final words were spoken, it stood before him in broad sunlight, a model of immortal beauty.”