BOOKS.
THE CHOICE OF BOOKS.*
TBE title of Mr. Harrison's book is somewhat misleading. The opening essay occupies only ninety-three pages of a book which comprises four hundred and forty-nine in all. The essays which follow are of a most heterogeneous character; and except for the purpose of mere book-making, of which the author himself invariably writes with such righteous scorn, it is difficult to understand why they have been included in this volume. Some of them, we should imagiue, are but little calculated to afford pleasure to the unwary whom the subject of the first essay— just now, thanks to Sir John Lubbock, a very popular one— may beguile into purchasing the book. What, the aggrieved reader may reasonably ask, have such essays as those entitled " The Opening of the Courts of Justice," " A Plea for the Tower of London," and "At Burlington House," to do with the choice of books P Mr. Harrison is careful to explain, in his preface, that the collected pieces are addressed rather to the " general reader " than to the critic and student. The " general reader " is always a somewhat vague personage, and Mr. Harrison's explana- tion helps to confuse our ideas of him. By general readers, we ourselves have hitherto understood that class of people to whom the chief periodicals of the day are not less familiar than other literature. These, however, can scarcely have been intended by the author, as they must have already made the acquaintance of the chief contents of the volume through the various magazines and newspapers in which most of the essays have appeared. We must, therefore, take Mr. Harrison to mean the more intelligent and cultured among the working classes, to whom high-class periodicals may be supposed to be less accessible than to persons of means and leisure. If it is to these that he indeed addresses himself, we cannot help thinking that he would best have con- sulted their interests and proved his sympathy by the publication only of the essay on the choice of books in the form of a pamphlet, so as to have placed it within the reach of the humblest reader. There is not mach in Mr. Harrison's opening essay which will be likely to strike those who have heard or read Sir John Lubbock's lecture, and seen the various letters it has called forth, as fresh. It is, perhaps, needless to say that Mr. Harri- son, like Comte, whom he delights to honour, writes strongly in favour of systematic study of the best authors, and has no patience with the indiscriminate and desultory reading of modern poetry and novels, which he believes to be one of our "commonest and most unwholesome habits." His advice, briefly stated, is to read only writers of the first rank in every department and every language, neglecting all the lesser ones. He is very hard on Charles Lamb for what he calls his "frivolous " depreciation of standard books, especially those of philosophy and history ; and in one of the earliest passages of his essay he falls foul of the delightful humourist for reviving "the relish for garbage unearthed from old theatrical dung- heaps." This is somewhat strange language to use about the great fellow-dramatists of Shakespeare and their immediate suc- cessors,—all of whom, though far below the master, are yet more akin to him, both by the character and quality of their genius, than any other English poet. We think it would be difficult to name a dozen native poets who could with justice be • The Choice of Boat; and other Literary Pieces By Frederic Harrison. London : Macmillan and 0o. 1886.—The Pleasures of a Bookman. By J. Rogers Bees. London : Elliot Stock. 1886.
pronounced distinctly superior to them. And there are not a few to whom the brief but most subtle comments of Lamb on the best work of the Elizabethans are even more precious than his inimitable essays. We are not surprised, however, at Mr. Harrison's want of sympathy, for we find him writing some- what depreciatingly even of Shakespeare, ranking him below Eschylus, and, in some respects, Scott, and recommending the "general reader" to confine himself to a dozen or so of his best plays. After this, we are, in some measure, pre- pared for his apparent preference of the Spanish to the English drama, and his lamentation over "the complete neglect of a literature so rich and rare." He would have us turn from the Elizabethan dramatists, whom Lamb has made so dear to many of us, and read instead the plays selected by Comte from various Spanish poets. Of Comte's favourite poet, Calderon, he naturally writes in the most enthusiastic terms, not scrupling to rank him with the mightiest. We take leave to doubt whether Mr. Harrison would have so strongly recommended the great Spanish dramatist without the sanction of the French philo- sopher whose fervent disciple he is. We have no wish to dis- parage Calderon. In originality of plot, fertility of invention, imaginative power, and subtle and varied melody of verse, he is probably without a superior. But his comparative poverty of thought will, we think, for ever exclude him from universal recognition as the equal of such masters as Dante and Shakespeare, whose reflective powers were at least as remark- able as their purely poetical ones, and certainly consti- tute no inconsiderable portion of their claim to pre-eminence. Intellectually, Calderon appears to us far inferior not only to Shakespeare, but to minor dramatists of our own, such as Webster, Ford, and Tourneur. Iu accepting Comte's guidance in the choice of poets, Mr. Harrison seems to have forgotten that philosophers have frequently proved themselves as in- competent judges in matters of poet ry as in matters of religion. We know, for example, that Locke's favourite poet was Sir Richard Black more ; and every reader of Hume's History of England will remember the queer things there said about Shakespeare.
Mr. Harrison has more to say about the poets than about other writers, and we are not disposed to quarrel with him on this account. In an age of greed and materialism such as ours, it is, perhaps, scarcely possible to overrate the beneficial results of a sound course of poetical reading. "Poetry," it has been no less truly than beautifully said, "redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man." But in urging the general reader to study the masterpieces of alien poets rather than the works of second-rate native ones, Mr. Harrison does not appear to us to make sufficient allowance for those who have not the same opportunities for the cultivation of foreign and classical tongues as himself. The subtlest qualities of any poetry can only be apprehended by those to whom the language in which it is originally written is either native or has become naturalised by long use. It is safe to assert that there are very few, even among English scholars, to say nothing of general readers, who possess anything like the same degree of familiarity with other languages that they bare with their own. Mr. Harrison recommends translations to those who are unable to read the originals ; but most people find second or even third-rate native poetry pleasanter. if not better, reading than the most approved rendering of any alien poetic masterpiece. It is, we believe, universally admitted that England is more fertile in good poets than any other country. But if we read only the few greatest, how can we have any real knowledge of the extent and variety of our poetry We do not exactly agree with Mr. Palgrave, who commends the reading of even mediocre verse, as being better than that of novels ; but we do think that the class of readers who have Mr. Harrison's chief sympathy should have some acquaintance with the best work of all our finer poets. Mr. Harrison does ample justice to the prose-writers ; not only does he omit no great name among our novelists, but he confesses to a partiality for writers like Bulwer, Marryat, and Cooper, which we scarcely expected from one who has so little toleration for Marlowe, Webster, and Ford. His essay is certainly an interesting and able contribution to an important subject ; but we doubt whether it will be so much as read by those who are as yet unacquainted with the great writers whose almost exclusive study he so strenuously recommends. It may, however, stimu- late to a renewed and closer acquaintance with the latter the enlightened few, and perhaps this is all that Mr. Harrison hopes to achieve. The limits of space forbid us to criticise in detail the remain- ing essays. In " The Romance of the Peerage" we have an amusing criticism of Lothair, in which Lord Beaconsfield's very faulty grammar and inflated diction are mercilessly exposed, though full justice is done to the wit of the book. The dialogue entitled " Culture " is not very brilliant ; it is an attack on Mr.
Matthew Arnold, but seems to us wholly destitute of either humour or wit, though the author evidently aims at both. Of the articles on the lives of Carlyle and George Eliot, it is, perhaps, unnecessary to say more than that they are, on the whole, just and appreciative, though the author might have extended to the failings of Carlyle a little more of that charity which he has shown in excess to those of George Eliot. Oue of the most re- markable essays in the volume is an eloquentdefence of the much- maligued eighteenth century. Those whose notions of the latter have been formed solely from the calumnious misrepresentations of Carlyle and his followers will find their judgment much modi- fied by a careful perusal of this essay. In claiming for the most typical poets of this century—Cowper, Burns, Gray, and others —the special distinction of being poets of humanity, or the people, the author has certainly indicated that characteristic in which Burns at least was unrivalled by any of his predecessors, if not also by any of his successors. His inclusion, however, of such poets as Beattie and Somervile among the glories of the eighteenth century is a somewhat strange comment on what he has previously said about being for the greater and not the minor lights of literature. Nor can we understand why, having mentioned such names, he should be altogether silent about Beattie's contemporary, Churchill ; for, surely, despite his habitual carelessness and manifold shortcomings, the author of The Prophecy of Famine and Gotham was a much more con- siderable man than either the poet of The Minstrel or the poet of The Chase.
The little work of Mr. Rees is written in a somewhat different spirit from Mr. Harrison's, and those who wish to sec all that can be said for and against the reading of books for their intrinsic merits alone, cannot do better than read the two works in conjunction. While Mr. Rees is so far at one with Mr. Harrison as to admit that the works of great men "best fit him for every-day existence, giving him health and strength to live his life and do his work," his deepest love is reserved for rare and out-of-the-way volumes, which are endeared to him by some special association, and over whose pages he can linger and dream, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot." Mr. Rees certainly states excellent reasons for his preference, and we think that every true book-lover will sympathise rather with him than with Mr. Harrison. His dainty little book contains six essays in all, bearing more or less relation to the pleasures of the bookworm, though that entitled " The Romance and Reality of Dedications " seems somewhat irrelevant. The opening essay, " Concerning Books and Lovers of Books," will probably be read with the greatest interest. Most book-buyers of limited means will recognise in the pic- ture of the man who " stuffs his newly purchased volume beneath his waistcoat or down into the bottom of his overcoat- pocket, until time and opportunity favour its transfer to a vacant nook on one of his shelves," a true portraiture of themselves. All the essays are genial and chatty, except the fifth one, which is entitled "Genius and Criticism," and in which the author certainly loses his temper whenever he mentions the critics. Perhaps he does well to be angry with the latter for their frequent short-sightedness with respect to the merits of new poets who are startlingly original ; but the recollection of how often the greatest writers have failed to do justice to one another might, we think, have qualified the severity of some of his remarks.
Some of the most hostile criticisms of poets have been penned by brother poets. Walt Whitman himself, in whose behalf the essay appears to have been chiefly written, has said some things about the poets of his own country, and the greater ones of ours, which are far more severe and unjust than anything which has been said about himself by his most unfriendly critics, could well be. When successful authors are pardoned for their lack of appre- ciation of their equals, a little charity might, we think, well be spared for the mistakes of reviewers.
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