Pulito. “Talk not to them of the ‘purer pleasures of taste, and wit, and literature,’ for these are their utter abomination—snares for the youthful mind—idle perversions of talent. Speak to them of the grand display of moral power in Shakspeare’s dramas, and for an unanswerable answer, they will point to a gross expression—and consistently enough too, for theirs is the morality of words. They cannot perceive that the scope of all his principal plays is purely and symmetrically moral, or even religious—that they seldom violate the modesty of nature, though they may overstep the prudishness of an age when, ‘La pudeur s’est enfuie des cœurs, et s’est refugiée sur les lévres.’—Modesty has fled from the heart, and taken refuge on the lips. They cannot admire the overruling providence, by which his untutored genius, apparently so wild and uncontrollable, has been unerringly directed to conformity with truth and virtue. In their esteem the pious Cowper would have been more worthy, had he devoted his talents to the practical duties of ‘the clerk of the Commons,’ rather than have wasted them in the unproductive pursuits of poetry.”
Nescio. “Well, let them enjoy their opinions, provided they do not meddle with others in the gratification of their taste, or profess to judge in matters which they so virulently decry. The nightingale may not quarrel with the discordant braying of the ass, till the ‘long-eared’ either attempt to ‘discourse sweet sounds’ himself, or criticise the melody of others.”
Pulito. “‘Aye, there’s the rub!’ None are more prompt in criticising, none more forward to condemn, than these same individuals.”
Apple. “Nothing ruffles the placidity of my temper so much, and so frequently, as the confidence with which some fellows, whose ignorance is absolute, pass judgment upon works of literature and taste. There are those, who cannot tell for their lives whether Walter Scott wrote Waverly or the Commentaries, or whether the author of Hudibras, the Reminiscences, and the Analogy, be not one and the same, who yet issue their unblushing firman upon any stray volume of poetry or romance, they may have chanced to pick up and gape through. I heard one, who could not count beyond ten, declare solemnly that he had no opinion of James, or Bulwer, and that J. K. Paulding could write better than either. Another, who had never seen a book, save the Family Bible, before he came to College, averred that Sterne, Smollett, Fielding, and Richardson united, never wrote any thing fit to be read by a man of good morals, or sound sense; and thought, moreover, that Campbell’s Thanatopsis was far inferior to Bryant’s Pleasures of Hope! And still another affirmed that the plays of Shakspeare even, were ruinous to the interests of morality, and that all the other dramatists of England ought to be buried under the ruins of the stage they support. Upon sifting the fellow, however, I found he had never read a play, saving the Tempest, Comedy of Errors, and a couple of diluted operas in the London stage!”
Pulito. “And yet these are they, who sit in daily judgment upon what they have neither the sense to comprehend, nor the delicacy to appreciate. These are they, who stigmatize every thing beautiful as a rush, and all that is novel to their narrow knowledge, as extravagant and wild. ’Tis a Bœotian criticising the dialect of Athens; a Scythian carping at the figures of Praxiteles. Shall the home-bred rustic, who thinks the middle of the sky directly above his head, and supposes that a walk of a day would bring his feet to the ‘blue concave,’ attempt to teach the life-long traveller the principles of society, and decide upon the manners and customs and wonders of the world? And yet it would be as reasonable to the full as the conduct of him, who, when his knowledge is confined to particulars, attempts to play the critic—a part, which, in its very nature, implies generalization of the widest kind.”
Tristo. “How can the poor catechumen, who has not yet donned the robes of his novitiate, nor raised his eyes to the vestibule, much less stood in his sacrificial garments by the High Altar in the Temple of the Muses, presume to decide upon the value and lustre of the treasures its adyta conceal? It is as if the puny whipster, who fumes and gesticulates upon the academic stage, and whose thoughts and language are ‘a combination of disjointed things,’ should attempt to span or analyze the harmonious vastness and sweeping magnificence of an Edmund Burke.”
Pulito. “There is likewise a species of grave wiseacres—sober fools, who are quite as senseless and less amusing than fools of the more fantastic turn. They think that wisdom dwells only upon sealed lips, and that strength of mind and sobriety of purpose, is evidenced by nothing but a rueful face. These fellows (to use the old Greek phrase) ‘lift the eyebrows’ with a dull forthshowing of meditative wisdom, and a countenance
——‘of such a vinegar aspect
That they’ll not show their teeth in way of smile,
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.’