A LITERARY DISEASE AND ITS RESULTS.
SOMEWHERE in an essay on Elizabethan critics it has been written that " the age of Elizabeth was too great in creation to be even respectable in criticism." But we of to- day have not even the consolation of possessing a Shakespeare to compensate us for the hulk of a Coleridge; and it is to-day more than at any other period that the critic of contemporary art—whom an unappreciative world calls a reviewer—is a real necessity. For modern readers, as for the idle and the over- worked of all times, more books are written than they can read. To them three alternatives are possible : they must be content to read nothing that has not by its age proved its right to be read,—and that is unfair to the modern writer ; to trust to chance in their choice of books,—no less unfair to the literature of the age ; or to rely on the judgment of the modern critic. This last course the wisest of us adopt, but adopt with a certain amount of hesitation, because we find that too many critics are suffering from a strange disease. The custom of considering a question settled by p reference to the Bible, prevalent among ecclesiastics of a certain class, has its counterpart too frequently in contem- porary literary criticism. As different religions hare their different Testaments, so,Lamb and Coleridge take the place of Bible and Koran, Johnson and Hazlitt of Old and New Testament. Now whatever master. is chosen, whether the critic is a Paterian or a follower of Landor, or even a poly- theist, the works of this master embody a faith. The critic who worships—as many do—too thoroughly begins to think in inverted commas, and the man who always thinks in inverted commas never has a thought worth thinking.
This, then, is the disease to which we refer : the literary Critic of to-day has read too much and thought too little. The result is that he is so full of other men's wisdom that he has no room for his own thoughts and feelings; and criticism ought to be the expression of personal like or dislike based en personal thoughts and feelings. Johnson is just as great whether his laws and judgments were right or wrong. His thoughts were subject to certain rules, and in as far as he honestly believed in them, so far they were right—to him. But because these rules were right to him, it in no way follows that they must be right to us. A man may think that the Maid's Tragedy is greater than Othello, and to that man it is greater. It is better to be wrong by oneself than right through Coleridge. To be wrong by oneself is the result of wrong thinking; but wrong thought is many steps nearer to right thought than the borrowing of other men's opinions. There- fore there is only one excuse for the quotation of great critics: the plea that they have expressed our thoughts better than we could express them, and to make our thoughts fit their expression is a disease which results in much bad criticism.
The first evil that comes from this disease is an obvious one. Because literature is older than its critics, criticism should fit the literature that gives it birth; because it is younger, to apply the criticism of yesterday to a contemporary work of art is much the same as setting Adam's tailor to dress the modern man. The second, and perhaps the greatest, evil is the loss of the personal note in criticism, Lamb did something far more valuable than teach us appreciation of the Elizabethans ; he taught us to appreciate Lamb. We know that Lamb loved the inseparable trinity,—humour, humanity, and children ; we can only surmise that the modern reviewer has Hazlitt or Pater or some one else for his master. The third evil is one closely connected with the two preceding ones. It was the spirit of the time that made Johnson put his faith in rules ; it was the spirit of Johnson that made his work great ; and so all great critics have reflected both the spirit of their age and of themselves. Because the critic of to-day refuses to give us himself, he refuses to give us his best possession—himself—the reflection of his age; for the spirit of this age, we believe, is something greater than feeble, almost lifeless, reflections of Coleridge. In addition to these three direct evils, there are two further ills of which this worship of the past is the indirect cause. The man who has studied the critics of past ages knows that many of his predecessors were condemned in their own age, and many ridiculed after their death ; and so two fears are always with him : he fears the condemnation of to-day and the ridicule of to-morrow. Therefore his praise is half- hearted and his blame tempered by a pretence of charity, unconsciously hypocritical. Charity may be a moral virtue; it is critical dishonesty. Personally the present Writer would far rather be damned with the thoroughness Of a Jeffreys than with the faint praise of a modern reviewer. Literature should willingly pay blame as the price of praise. The second indirect result of a great past is the most dangerous of realities, the most pleasant of poses,—pessimism. The man of culture looks sometimes forward, but more often backward, for the true literature of his country, but never since the time when Johnson and the eighteenth century bowed down to Pope have critical Majorities accepted a contemporary ideal ; and so the critic, looking backwards for his ideal, naturally considers the present degenerate, and pessimism becomes a reality and a habit. Yet nothing can be more opposed to fair judgment than to begin with the assumption that the person to be judged is guilty of Writing badly.
Such is the disease and its results, and so terribly contagious is it that no literary critic can claim complete immunity from it.
Yet it must be fought with all the power that is at our command. The critic should consider, us regards his attitude towards himself, arrogance a virtue and modesty a crime. And perhaps before we end a passing wonder may be expressed that this age of commercial self-reliance and modern improvements should in its criticism display such entirely different character- istics,—the want of self-reliance, which we immodestly call modesty. For it is modesty in the critic which makes him fearful of his judgment, the cause of his leek of whole- heartedness; it is his modesty which compels him, like some shy child, to take shelter behind his elders,—the modesty of the cultured pessimist and the man who thinks in inverted commas.
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