LAMB.*
di THE matchless refinement of his criticism" was Swinburne's phrase for Lamb in that most endearing of essays, "Charles Lamb and George Wither." Swinburne's palate was a fine one, daintily nourished, the palate of the aristocrat of letters ; the vehemence and extravagance of his expression need not disguise from us the soundness of his judgment, least of all when he writes of Lamb : "As a critic Coleridge alone has ever equalled or excelled him in delicacy and strength of insight, and Coleridge has excelled or equalled him only when writing on Shakespeare." The editor of the present welcome selection from Lamb's literary oriticism makes a similar estimate : "Of English masters of theoretical criticism Coleridge is the greatest ; of applied, in a sense, Lamb." Perhaps the qualification, "in a sense," is needless ; perhaps, too, Coleridge is the sole, rather than the greatest, English master of critical theory ; but the estimate of these twin eminences is nevertheless a just one.
The editor, Mr. E. M. W. Tillyard, avers that the criticism which transports—creative criticism—is a higher kind than that which informs, and hovers over a fascinating question when he adds that it is also a more dangerous kind, instancing for proof Francis Thompson's famous essay on Shelley. Yet Lamb's transporting criticism itself reveals the tough lines of reason as well as the exuberant power of emotional appre- hension, his essays on Shakespeare and the theatre being as remarkable and as convincing for the one as for the other. This reasoning quality is one for which Lamb has been given too little credit in most appreciations of his critical work ; perhaps it has been overlooked, perhaps it has been deliberately ignored. The latter possibility is suggested because he is one of the few that boldly dispute the necessity of the stage production of Shakespeare's tragedies. What should our modern actor-managers make of this ?
"It may seem a paradox, but I cannot help being of opinion that the plays of Shakespeare are less calculated for performance on a stage than those of almost any other dramatist whatever. Their distinguished excellence is a reason that they should be so. There is so much in them, which comes not under the province of acting, with which eye, and tone, and gesture have nothing to do. The glory of the scenic art is to personate passion and the turns of pas- sion; and the more coarse and palpable the passion is, the more hold upon the eyes and ears of the spectator the performance obviously possesses."
He is not arguing, he says (with a disdainful concession to the dull), that Hamlet should not be acted, but how much it is made another thing by being acted ; nevertheless, it is clear enough that his private and austere conclusion is that Hamlet should not and cannot be acted. The same disdain, so foreign to his criticism of other than scenic art, appears in the passage in which he denies that common auditors sitting greedily before Othello can apprehend the grounds of that great passion, "its correspondence to a great or heroic nature, which is the only worthy object of tragedy." And Lear ? The Lear of Shakespeare cannot be acted—" it is essentially impossible to be represented on a stage."
The reasons of Lamb's proud conclusion are not strangely subtle, and are summed up in his remark that Shakespeare's characters are objects of meditation rather than interest or curiosity. His attitude is that of the poet, the creative mind that plays over Shakespeare's plays within the small infinite " 0 " of imagination, assembling, staging and dismissing the dramatis personae without the intervention of another and especially without those luxuries of invention which are demanded by, or foisted upon, the public's importunity. Lamb is, of course, giving reasons for an irrational antipathy, explaining an intuitive dislike ; many people silently acquiesce without imitating his boldness. The point to be made at present is that his criticism is by no means a mere series of brief tempera- mental impressions, sudden starry lights and brilliant glimpses ; the essays on Shakespeare and stage illusion prove his power of pursuing, developing and exhausting a theme. He lets boldness carry reason too far when he declares, in speaking of Don Quixote, that we cannot bear to see that counterfeited which we cannot bear to see in the reality ; such a dogma would damn half the activities of art and would only too easily extend its blight upon the written as • Lamb's Criticism : z Selection. By E. M. W, Tillyard MA, London : Cam- • Building the American Nation. By Nicholas Murray Butler. Cambridge : at bridge Press. ins. net.), • the University Press and New York (Scribner), 1923. llOs. 0d. net.] well as upon the acted tragedy. But indignation has spurred him here—indignation at seeing the coarseness of- pictures in which the Knight is made absurd, the creature 9f his crea- ture; usually Lamb keeps his head well enough to give reasons which are as difficult to answer as reasons can well be.
The general view of Lamb as chiefly a ." creative" critic, however, remains true. He broods darkly, his mind quickens, he speaks out of love, his words are curiously chosen—following his curious and fond thought. The thing he writes of must first sink into him and fling a myriad invisible flowing tentacles around the roots of his being ; and lying thus in ambiguous waters for many slow Tears, perhaps, it suffers sea-change, dyed and fixed with his native humours. So, when he writes, it is of himself he writes ; an acute, candid introspection occupies him and he follows that flowing thought, reflects those richer hues, and tells so much of his subject because he tells so much of its power upon himself. In this he is the most modern of critics, a psychological who had never heard of the word and would have smiled if he had. It is his delight to speak of "the beautiful obliquities of the Religio Medici," - and of" these profound sorrows, the light-and-noise-abhorring ruminations which the tongue scarce dares utter to deaf walls and chambers." He is happiest when he approaches some thing in which his temperament can enjoy the easiest freedom, as when he writes of Wither, Walton and others on whom his touch falls with such a wise affection. He tastes with infinite and enduring relish, his sense is the finest, the most scrupulous. at once luxurious and simple. His essays are a kind of critica extract of his authors, miraculously added to and transfusee with a friendly enchantment all his own. A selection oi his formal and informal criticism, however good the selection may be, suggests rather than comprises the extent of his genius for understanding and fondly transforming.
JOHN- FREEMAN.
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