Literary Causeries

By BONAMY DOBREE

Mn. FRANK Lucas has real talents as a literary causeur, and illus- trates with a great deal of charm his own notion that literary criticism when properly carried out "becomes a mixture of portrait-painting and autobiography, of table-talk and poetry." He has an encouraging dislike of cant, and we greet with joy his implied contention that neither in life nor in literature should one always wear an inflexible, wise face like Solomon in the old tapestry. So the excursions he takes us with Langland and Hesiod, with Ronsard, Montaigne, Herbert, Dorothy Cs )erne, Crabbe, 13eddoes pere et fits, Flaubert and Proust era delightful wanderings over varied country, while his final chapter "Of Silence" is, in effect, an annotated anthology of that seductive subject. It it, a pleasure to float through his pages without effort (for that he never demands of you), carried along by his dulcet prose, with its slight smack of being comfortingly familiar : "But here, indeed, we have passed from proverbs to poetry, from Polonius to Hamlet. It is, indeed, only when silence becomes beautiful that it becomes really interesting to U8 now. Yet how often that is ! But it is the poets who have found it out : even the rhythm of their verses, in a way of its own, puts into practice their discovery. The music, the sonority, the trumpet-calls and organ-notes of poetry we all know : we think less often of its gracious silences. The poet rises--' conamtere omnes,' a hush falls round him."

Is it a little sentimental ? Well, why should we not sometimes indulge that side of us ? It is a pleasant vice of which Heaven will not often make an instrument to plague us.

Mr. Lucas, one feels, is a genial fellow-traveller, but he has bad attacks of the spleen ; something has soured him against his contemporaries, and every now and then a vicious snarl at them disfigures his most seductive pages, and one wishes

he could have suppressed his chapter on modern criticism. For, alas, it only exemplifies his own saying that "the naked human rage for superiority is not pretty, when its wrappings of politeness slip down and leave it bare." It appears that he loathes his contemporaries, and abominates all criticism that is not of his variety, namely, amiable gossip. Indeed,

he does not seem to understand what criticism is, the eager pursuit of peuple passionately interested in something, wanting to find out all about it, the why of this, the how of

that, with all the relentless dissecting of his own emotions which the literary critic must practise. Mr. Lucas shrinks in spinsterish horror from this :

"Nor is the objection simply to overmuch anatomy and intro- spection in reading literature or seeing drama ; too much criticism seems to me to lead also to a certain dulling of real sensitiveness in another way as well. For it is not the most sensitive who chatter most about their artistic sensations. There is such a thing as reticence. 'What is set out for show is half sold.' Here, too, it is apt to be the Regans and Gonerils who talk most glibly. That, at least, is my own conclusion, after years of lecturing : there are feelings one does not want to publish, feelings that one has blunted by doing so."

Here sentimentality has actually become a vice, a cover under which to funk thought. Poor C.ordelia, that she should have to turn University don !

The rage Mr. Lucas feels against his contemporaries, especially Mr. Eliot and Mr. Read, not only makes him forget his urbanity, it plunges him into gross unfairness, makes him contradict himself, and leads him to strange statements. Let us avert our eyes from his discourtesy, and come to his unfairness. When, for example, Mr. Eliot says that Crashaw within his realm was a perfect poet, but that Shelley and

Studies : French and English. By F. L. Lucas. (Cassell. 10s. 8d.) Keats, much larger figures, never grew to perfection, Mr. Lucas distorts this to mean that Mr. Eliot thinks Crashaw greater than Shelley or Keats. He is d ',ermined to be blind to Mr. Eliot. When Mr. Eliot emits a sigh of regret that no Marvell is alive now by saying " c'etait un.e belle ame, comme on ne fait plus a Londres," Mr. Lucas so far loses his sense of humour as solemnly to demand, "How on earth do we know (even if Marvell, for that matter, had been fait ft Londres ' ) ? " As for contradictions, he girds at the idea that art should he impersonal, yet claims for Shakespeare that he " achieved " impersonality more cornpktely than Flaubert. He denies his own previous statements as to the value for art of a view of life. In his fury against Mr. Read, he eointnits himself to the view that Candide is an attack upon the human spirit ! We wonder what Voltaire would have thought of that. In fact, as Vanbrugh remarked of Collier's diatribe, his play in the tennis court is so wild, one does not know where to answer him : indeed, he is so feckless that though he twits Mr. Eliot for inaccuracy, he himself flagrantly misquotes Cong,reve.

His main objection to modern critics seems to be that they dogmatize. Do not all critics worthy of the name do so ? As Remy de Gourmont pointed out, criticism is triger en dogme one's impressions. If you do not like it, you can leave it alone, for, after all, have not critics the right to amuse themselves in their way as much as Mr. Lucas does in his ? Why this intolerance ? After all, Mr. Eliot and Mr. Read do not claim infallibility. What they say is, if you have an idea, state it roundly : it may be wrong, but at least it is something to work on. You may, of course, prefer Mr. Lucas's way :

"Contrasting Goethe, say, with Wordsworth, we may admit this view contains some truth ; though remembering Socrates or Montaigae or Hardy, we must add that it is far from containing the whole truth."

Is this very illuminating ? Is it not better to say boldly with Mr. Eliot that Hamlet is an artistic failure ? (If it is not, by

the way, why are there such mountains of controversy about it ?) It is a pity that Mr. Lucas, with his really pretty gift for fair weather yachting, should embark on perilous seas, which, as a matter of fact, hold no allurement for him.

And surely, on his own principles of finding what is good in a man's writings, would it not be better to say, as most of us less fanatical mortals do, that, although we often disagree with Mr. Eliot's point of view and with Mr. Read's judge- ments, both have contributed something very valuable to criticism, and done much, even by way of reaction, to bring us to that state of clarity Mr. Lucas so much admires in the French, and the absence of which he so much deplores in his own countrymen ? Instead he prefers deliberately to misinterpret them, by truncated passages and false impress- ions. In this way it. is easy to make any critic look a fool. Let us try the method with Mr. Lucas on Spenser :

"Ha has no sense of construction . . . rambling chaos. He has no sense of character. His ideas . . . are often nothing short of imbecile : seldom has a man written who was lees capable of the most rudimentary thinking."

"Really," another such as Mr. Lucas might say, "these insufferable modern critics getting on their tripods I Must they make out that one of our greatest poets was nothing more than a contemptible half-wit ? " We say once more that it is a pity Mr. Lucas should have marred his pleasant and often witty book with such a regrettable display of ill-temper.