BY THE LATE EDGAR A. POE.
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Our most analytic, if not altogether our best critic, (Mr. Whipple, perhaps, excepted,) is Mr. William A. Jones, author of “The Analyst.” How he would write elaborate criticisms I cannot say; but his summary judgments of authors are, in general, discriminative and profound. In fact, his papers on Emerson and on Macaulay, published in “Arcturus,” are better than merely “profound,” if we take the word in its now desecrated sense; for they are at once pointed, lucid, and just:—as summaries, leaving nothing to be desired.
Mr. Whipple has less analysis, and far less candor, as his depreciation of “Jane Eyre” will show; but he excels Mr. Jones in sensibility to Beauty, and is thus the better critic of Poetry. I have read nothing finer in its way than his eulogy on Tennyson. I say “eulogy”—for the essay in question is unhappily little more:—and Mr Whipple’s paper on Miss Barrett, was nothing more. He has less discrimination than Mr. Jones, and a more obtuse sense of the critical office. In fact, he has been infected with that unmeaning and transparent heresy—the cant of critical Boswellism, by dint of which we are to shut our eyes tightly to all autorial blemishes, and open them, like owls, to all autorial merits. Papers thus composed may be good in their way, just as an impertinent cicerone is good in his way; and the way, in either case, may still be a small one.
Boccalini, in his “Advertisements from Parnassus,” tells us that Zoilus once presented Apollo with a very caustic review of a very admirable poem. The god asked to be shown the beauties of the work; but the critic replied that he troubled himself only about the errors. Hereupon Apollo gave him a sack of unwinnowed wheat—bidding him pick out all the chaff for his pains.
Now this fable does very well as a hit at the critics; but I am by no means sure that the Deity was in the right. The fact is, that the limits of the strict critical duty are grossly misapprehended. We may go so far as to say that, while the critic is permitted to play, at times, the part of the mere commentator—while he is allowed, by way of merely interesting his readers, to put in the fairest light the merits of his author—his legitimate task is still, in pointing out and analyzing defects and showing how the work might have been improved, to aid the general cause of Letters, without undue heed of the individual literary man. Beauty, to be brief, should be considered in the light of an axiom, which, to become at once evident, needs only to be distinctly put. It is not Beauty, if it require to be demonstrated as such:—and thus to point out too particularly the merits of a work, is to admit that they are not merits altogether.
When I say that both Mr. Jones and Mr. Whipple are, in some degree, imitators of Macaulay, I have no design that my words should be understood as disparagement. The style and general conduct of Macaulay’s critical papers could scarcely be improved. To call his manner “conventional,” is to do it gross injustice. The manner of Carlyle is conventional—with himself. The style of Emerson is conventional—with himself and Carlyle. The style of Miss Fuller is conventional—with herself and Emerson and Carlyle that is to say, it is a triple-distilled conventionality:—and by the word “conventionality,” as here used, I mean very nearly what, as regards personal conduct, we style “affectation”—that is, an assumption of airs or tricks which have no basis in reason or common sense. The quips, quirks, and curt oracularities of the Emersons, Alcots and Fullers, are simply Lyly’s Euphuisms revived. Very different, indeed, are the peculiarities of Macaulay. He has his mannerisms; but we see that, by dint of them, he is enabled to accomplish the extremes of unquestionable excellences—the extreme of clearness, of vigor (dependent upon clearness) of grace, and very especially of thoroughness. For his short sentences, for his antitheses, for his modulations, for his climaxes—for every thing that he does—a very slight analysis suffices to show a distinct reason. His manner, thus, is simply the perfection of that justifiable rhetoric which has its basis in common-sense; and to say that such rhetoric is never called in to the aid of genius, is simply to disparage genius, and by no means to discredit the rhetoric. It is nonsense to assert that the highest genius would not be benefited by attention to its modes of manifestation—by availing itself of that Natural Art which it too frequently despises. Is it not evident that the more intrinsically valuable the rough diamond, the more gain accrues to it from polish?
Now, since it would be nearly impossible to vary the rhetoric of Macaulay, in any material degree, without deterioration in the essential particulars of clearness, vigor, etc., those who write after Macaulay have to choose between the two horns of a dilemma:—they must be weak and original, or imitative and strong:—and since imitation, in a case of this kind, is merely adherence to Truth and Reason as pointed out by one who feels their value, the author who should forego the advantages of the “imitation” for the mere sake of being erroneously original, “n’est pas si sage qu’il croit.”
The true course to be pursued by our critics—justly sensible of Macaulay’s excellences—is not, however, to be content with tamely following in his footsteps—but to outstrip him in his own path—a path not so much his as Nature’s. We must not fall into the error of fancying that he is perfect merely because he excels (in point of style) all his British cotemporaries. Some such idea as this seems to have taken possession of Mr. Jones, when he says:
“Macaulay’s style is admirable—full of color, perfectly clear, free from all obstructions, exactly English, and as pointedly antithetical as possible. We have marked two passages on Southey and Byron, so happy as to defy improvement. The one is a sharp epigrammatic paragraph on Southey’s political bias: