It is disappointing, therefore, to discover the distorted and unjust viewpoint of the Britannica. An aggressive insular spirit is shown in both the general literary articles and in the biographies. The importance of English writers is constantly exaggerated at the expense of foreign authors. The number of biographies of British writers included in the Encyclopædia far overweighs the biographical material accorded the writers of other nations. And superlatives of the most sweeping kind are commonly used in describing the genius of these British authors, whereas in the majority of cases outside of England, criticism, when offered at all, is cool and circumscribed and not seldom adverse. There are few British writers of any note whatever who are not taken into account; but many authors of very considerable importance belonging to France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and the United States are omitted entirely.
In the Encyclopædia’s department of literature, as in other departments of the arts, the pious middle-class culture of England is carefully and consistently forced to the front. English provincialism and patriotism not only dominate the criticism of this department, but dictate the amount of space which is allotted the different nations. The result is that one seeking in this encyclopædia adequate and unprejudiced information concerning literature will fail completely in his quest. No mention whatever is made of many of the world’s great novelists (provided, of course, they do not happen to be British); and the information given concerning the foreign authors who are included is, on the whole, meagre and biased. If, as is natural, one should judge the relative importance of the world’s novelists by the space devoted to them, one could not escape the impression that the literary genius of the world resides almost exclusively in British writers.
This prejudiced and disproportionate treatment of literature would not be so regrettable if the Britannica’s criticisms were cosmopolitan in character, or if its standard of judgment was a purely literary one. But the criteria of the Encyclopædia’s editors are, in the main, moral and puritanical. Authors are judged not so much by their literary and artistic merits as by their bourgeois virtue, their respectability and inoffensiveness. Consequently it is not even the truly great writers of Great Britain who are recommended the most highly, but those middle-class literary idols who teach moral lessons and whose purpose it is to uplift mankind. The Presbyterian complex, so evident throughout the Encyclopædia’s critiques, finds in literature a fertile field for operation.
Because of the limitations of space, I shall confine myself in this chapter to modern literature. I have, however, inspected the manner in which the older literature is set forth in the Encyclopædia Britannica; and there, as elsewhere, is discernible the same provincialism, the same theological point of view, the same flamboyant exaggeration of English writers, the same neglect of foreign genius. As a reference book the Britannica is chauvinistic, distorted, inadequate, disproportioned, and woefully behind the times. Despite the fact that the Eleventh Edition is supposed to have been brought up to date, few recent writers are included, and those few are largely second-rate writers of Great Britain.
Let us first regard the gross discrepancies in space between the biographies of English authors and those of the authors of other nations. To begin with, the number of biographies of English writers is nearly as many as is given all the writers of France and Germany combined. Sir Walter Scott is given no less than thirteen columns, whereas Balzac has only seven columns, Victor Hugo only a little over four columns, and Turgueniev only a little over one column. Samuel Richardson is given nearly four columns, whereas Flaubert has only two columns, Dostoievsky less than two columns, and Daudet only a column and a third! Mrs. Oliphant is given over a column, more space than is allotted to Anatole France, Coppée, or the Goncourts. George Meredith is given six columns, more space than is accorded Flaubert, de Maupassant and Zola put together! Bulwer-Lytton has two columns, more space than is given Dostoievsky. Dickens is given two and a half times as much space as Victor Hugo; and George Eliot, Trollope, and Stevenson each has considerably more space than de Maupassant, and nearly twice as much space as Flaubert. Anthony Hope has almost an equal amount of space with Turgueniev, nearly twice as much as Gorky, and more than William Dean Howells. Kipling, Barrie, Mrs. Gaskell, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Felicia Hemans are each accorded more space than either Zola or Mark Twain.... Many more similar examples of injustice could be given, but enough have been set down to indicate the manner in which British authors are accorded an importance far beyond their deserts.
Of Jane Austen, to whom is given more space than to either Daudet or Turgueniev, we read that “it is generally agreed by the best critics that Miss Austen has never been approached in her own domain.” What, one wonders, of Balzac’s stories of provincial life? Did he, after all, not even approach Miss Austen? Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford “is unanimously accepted as a classic”; and she is given an equal amount of space with Dostoievsky and Flaubert!
George Eliot’s biography draws three and a half columns, twice as much space as Stendhal’s, and half again as much as de Maupassant’s. In it we encounter the following astonishing specimen of criticism: No right estimate of her as an artist or a philosopher “can be formed without a steady recollection of her infinite capacity for mental suffering, and her need of human support.” Just what these conditions have to do with an æsthetic or philosophic judgment of her is not made clear; but the critic finally brings himself to add that “one has only to compare Romola or Daniel Deronda with the compositions of any author except herself to realize the greatness of her designs and the astonishing gifts brought to their final accomplishment.”
The evangelical motif enters more strongly in the biography of George Macdonald, who draws about equal space with Gorky, Huysmans, and Barrès. Here we learn that Macdonald’s “moral enthusiasm exercised great influence upon thoughtful minds.” Ainsworth, the author of those shoddy historical melodramas, Jack Sheppard and Guy Fawkes, is also given a biography equal in length to that of Gorky, Huysmans, and Barrès; and we are told that he wrote tales which, despite all their shortcomings, were “invariably instructive, clean and manly.” Mrs. Ewing, too, profited by her pious proclivities, for her biography takes up almost as much space as that of the “moral” Macdonald and the “manly” Ainsworth. Her stories are “sound and wholesome in matter,” and besides, her best tales “have never been surpassed in the style of literature to which they belong.”
Respectability and moral refinement were qualities also possessed by G. P. R. James, whose biography is equal in length to that of William Dean Howells. In it there is quite a long comparison of James with Dumas, though it is frankly admitted that as an artist James was inferior. His plots were poor, his descriptions were weak, and his dialogue was bad. Therefore “his very best books fall far below Les Trois Mousquetaires.” But, it is added, “James never resorted to illegitimate methods to attract readers, and deserves such credit as may be due to a purveyor of amusement who never caters to the less creditable tastes of his guests.” In other words, say what you will about James’s technique, he was, at any rate, an upright and impeccable gentleman!
Even Mrs. Sarah Norton’s lofty moral nature is rewarded with biographical space greater than that of Huysmans or Gorky. Mrs. Norton, we learn, “was not a mere writer of elegant trifles, but was one of the priestesses of the ‘reforming’ spirit.” One of her books was “a most eloquent and rousing condemnation of child labor”; and her poems were “written with charming tenderness and grace.” Great, indeed, are the rewards of virtue, if not in life, at least in the Encyclopædia Britannica.