MR. LOWELL'S ADDRESSES.*
THE faculty of true literary criticism is the rarest, the most peculiar of gifts. Literary sympathy, the power of analysis, good taste, sound and proportionate judgment, are doubtless valuable, but they do not by themselves endow their possessor with the essential quality of criticism. The highest literary criticism before all things demands imagination. To say this sounds almost a contradiction in terms, since the critical and the imaginative faculties are so often contrasted; yet, in truth, it is so. Without imagination, the critic must leave his work half- done. Imagination is the solvent by which he reduces to their elements the subjects of his exposition. By this quality, the design and the execution, the parent thought and its expression in word or form, the abstract and the concrete,the idea and its accidents, become, in the inspiration of the poet or the painter, fused and made one in manifestation, intermingled and inter- changed. To separate them, and so to show clearly the cause and impulse of their union, the spell that originally joined them must be cast again. Like the diamond, imagination alone can work upon imagination. By the exercise of this faculty alone can the work of true criticism in the creations of man's mind be accomplished. There have been more painstaking students of literature and art than De Quincey, Charles Lamb, and Coleridge; but who will refuse to name these as the greatest of critics, and as critics in whom it is by the imagination that the analysis of the poet's and the artist's work is rendered true and living P As a poet, Mr. Lowell has given us no slight evidence of large imaginative powers, bat in his criticism this element is occa- sionally somewhat wanting. He does not seem to be so much an imaginative interpreter of many of his subjects, as a man of fine tastes expressing his likes and dislikes. He has a literary judgment of no common order; his taste is not only highly cultivated, but instinctively fine and sensitive; his power of appreciation and his sympathy are keen and strong; but here, at least, he hardly shows himself a great critic. This does not, of course, prevent his work from being, as it is, not only extremely pleasant and readable, but full of shrewd and correct opinion and sound sense. Everywhere in his writings are instances of that power of estimating a literary work at its true value which comes of wide knowledge of the great works of human genius. It is thus not to depreciate Mr. Lowell's performance, but only in order to attempt to show the qualities for which this book may rightly be praised, that we deny it the critical imaginative quality in its higher forms. The addresses included in the present volume which directly enter on the field of literary criticism are thew on Fielding, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Don Quixote. Of these, the address delivered on the unveiling of the bust of Coleridge in Westminster Abbey, is on the whole the most striking. As far as form and manner go, it is, indeed, almost perfect. On such an occasion, how difficult not to say too much or too little ! To be too critical, or to fall too much into the declamation of an oratorical panegyric, would alike be fatal. Here the censure is always kindly, always kept within bounds; the praise never idolatrous. What Mr, Lowell has to say of the charm that is exercised over our minds • Democracy. and ether Addreeses. By Ames Russell Lowell. London: Mac. mIllan and Co. 1887.
by "The Ancient Mariner" is well worth quoting as an example of this felicity of manner :—
" It is marvellous in its mastery over that delightful fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine logic of dreamland. Coleridge has taken the old ballad measure, and given to it, by an indefinable charm wholly his own, all the sweetness, all the melody and compass • of a symphony. And how picturesqne it is in the proper sense of the word ! I know nothing like it. There is not a description in it. It is all picture. Descriptive poets generally confuse us with multi- plicity of detail; we cannot see the forest for the trees; but Coleridge never errs in this way. With instinctive tact he touches the right chord of association, and is satisfied, as we also are. I should find it hard to explain the singular charm of his diction, there is so moth nicety of art and purpose in it, whether for mimic or meaning. Nor does it need any explanation, for we all feel it. The words seem common words enough, but in the order of them, in the choice, variety, and position of the vowel:sounds, they become magical. The most decrepit vocable in the language throws away its crutches to dance and sing at his piping."
Yet, delightful and true as this is, no one could speak of it as of creative imaginative criticism. The suggestion of the contrast between picturesque and descriptive poetry is doubtless striking and well put. But think of it for a moment beside De Quincey's distinction in his criticism on the knocking in Macbeth, or Lamb's famous note on Ford's terrible tragedy, and we see how great is the difference,—a difference, indeed, not of degree, but of kind.
Mr. Lowell's study of Fielding,though not containing anything remarkably new, will nevertheless attract all lovers of the first great novelist. The estimate of Fielding as a man is just and reasonable, and marked, like all Mr. Lowell's writing, by a genuine feeling for what is honourable and manly. There is in the address one curious instance of the missing of a telling allusion. As a rule, there is no each lack in these pages. All literatures and all ages are ransacked for a happy quotation or an appropriate illustration. Apropos of Fielding's humour, Mr. Lowell discusses the old problem whether in the same mind can be found the qualities of both tragedy and comedy; whether, as he puts it, Shakespeare is not "the only man in whom the rarest poetic power has worked side by side at the same bench with humour, and has not been more or less dis- enchanted by it." One naturally expects some reference to the occasion when the never-settled point was first raised in Athens, and to the famous scene when the recorder of the Symposium, as "ho was awakened towards daylight," saw that Socrates was still talking, "drinking out of a large goblet," and `. insisting that the genius of comedy was the same as that of tragedy." Yet by some chance it is not there.
Though the address on Democracy does not profess to be in any sense a philosophical defence of or apology for Democracy, it incidentally gives several very crushing rejoinders to the con- fusions and sophistries connected with this subject which have of late laid a strong hold on many minds. When Mr. Lowell mentions that he believes it to be a fact" that the British Con- stitution, under whatever disguises of prudence or decorum, is essentially democratic," he is, of course, stating what is true. He might have gone further, however, and have added that an essential and vital element of Democracy has always existed in that Constitution. The absolute equality of all men before the law has always been the principle of English law, and with this principle has been preserved not only the symbolism but the spirit of Democracy. Perhaps the most thoughtful passage in the essay is that which deals with the American Constitution. In it is put with the greatest force the spirit in which was framed that most wonderful and momentous document which is destined to play so great a part in the world's history, and which to preserve inviolate, a million men proved themselves ready to lay down their lives :— "The framers of the American Constitution were far from wishing or intending to found a democracy, in the strict sense of the word,
though, as was inevitable, every expansion of the scheme of govern. ment they elaborated has been in a democratic:11 direction. But this has been generally the slow result of growth, and not the sudden innovation of theory ; in fact, they bad a profound disbelief in theory, and knew better than to commit the folly of breakiog with the past. They were not seduced by the French fallacy that a new system of
government could be ordered like a new suit of clothes They all bad that distaste for innovation which belonged to their race, and many of them a distrust of human nature derived from their creed. The day of sentiment was over, and no dithyrambic affirmations of the Rights of Man would serve their present torn. This waa
practical question, and they addressed themselves to it as men of knowledge and judgment should. Their problem was how to adapt English principles and precedents to the new conditions of American life, and they solved it with singular discretion. They put as many obstacles as they could contrive not in the way of the people's will, but of their whim."
The two addresses given on the deaths of President Garfield and Dean Stanley respectively are almost perfect examples of such set speeches. There is never that indiscretion of lan- guage which often made Lord Beaconsfield's speeches on such occasions an extremely ineffective, not to use a stronger term. Of this happy gift in its highest form, Mr. Lowell has among English-speaking men almost a monopoly. On this side of the Atlantic, Lord Granville comes nearest; but with him, the rhetorical artifices absolutely essential to the effect of set speeches such as these must be, are never so consummately managed as by the late Minister of the United States. As Presi- dent Garfield's death was more momentous an occasion than that of Dean Stanley, so much greater was the difficulty of finding fitting words. Yet, notwithstanding this, the reader will find it bard to judge between the respective merits of these touching and beautifully worded tributes to the dead.
There are not an many readable books published in the year, that the public is likely to prove itself forgetful of Mr. Lowell's new volume of Addresses. They make, indeed, a charm- ing little book, as delightful for the interest of the subjects as for the manner of their treatment.
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