LITERARY JUDGMENT.
THERE is much sound sense contained in a little book on "Judgment in Literature," by Mr. W. Basil Worafold (J. M. Dent and Co.), which we have been perusing with pleasure. Mr. Worafold's leading aim seems to have been to trace the growth of a sane and adequate criticism of literature. He surveys the criticism of the ancient world as summed up in Aristotle and Plato and in the less important criticism of Rome and Alexandria. He then passes to modern criticism, dealing particularly with • Addison, and passing on in the next chapter to the illuminating ideas of Leasing. Next he comes to contemporary criticism, and in the two final chapters; which we are inclined to rank as the best in the book, he writes concerning " The Exercise of Judgment in Literature " and literary forms. In the first of these two final chapters Mr. Won:fold. makes the point that contemporary critics interpret rather than estimate, a doctrine containing no little truth; and, indeed, the whole chapter is full of very thought- ful and interesting criticism.
What more difficult function is there than that of literary judgment? To pronounce definitely on the inherent value of a' work of art submitted to one, to tell the reading world what is to be thought of it, to lay down doctrines which have the effect of laying bare one's own mind, and exposing one to the mercy of a final court of revision just as truly as the author one is criticising. To do this sympathetically and yet dispassionately, after an honest effort 'to enfold oneself within the author's mind, with an adequate comprehension/ of the theme and of the methods of critical inquiry, and also with a knowledge of the dangerous influence exerted' by mere fashion and vogue on literary judgment. What task, we say, could be harder ? Who would care to go down to posterity with Jeffrey's or Gifford's reputation as judges of the Lake School ? And . yet Jeffrey and Gifford were able men, who had read much and well; their deficiency was an incapacity for spiritual readjustment. But if that is needed, then the 'mere acquaintance with the best models of the past is not enough ; an entirely new kind of literature may baffle you. Still more striking a portent than the slashing editors of the Edinburgh and Quarterly was the case of Byron, whose utter inability to perceive the genius of Wordsworth must always confirm Goethe's judgment that when he reasons he is a child." The mention of Goethe recalls his own extraordinary judgment, that as for Faust it was unimportant ; but that the " Farbenlehre " was indeed a work which would give him immortality. The immortality of a Spurzheim or a Combe!
It is' undoubtedly true that literary judgment is not likely to be valuable unless based on a knowledge of all that has • been thought and written of the best in the world. It is, for example, safe to maintain that no adequate judgment of serious poetry is poisible without an acquaintance with Greek poetry, in which all the poetic forms were first bodied forth with a spontaneity never afterwards known to the poet. The requisite wholeness of tissue, to use Arnold's phrase, can but imperfectly be appreciated by those who are innocent of the stately structure of Latin prose. We suspect that much of the ineffectiveness of contemporary criticism, the substitu- tion of inter2retation for valuation to which Kr. Worsfold refers, is due to the imperfect acquaintance with the, best classical literature of many of the young gentlemen who teach us in the newspapers, curtente ealamo, what we ought or ought not to admire. The world's great literature did not begin with Flaubert, or Ibsen, or Guy de Maupassant. We tremble to think what will become of literary judgment, what crudities, ugliness, and trash will overflow the world, if our Universities yield to the vulgar demand to place the " utilities " first and the humanities " second in their scheme of culture. It may not be true that "by taste ye shall be saved," but there is a far more intimate union between the great saving truths and the high serious literature of the world than is commonly assumed. The spiritual magic of the Bible itself lies partly in its sublime poetic form. Imagine it rendered in the language once proposed by Franklin, and how much of its power would be lost.
But literary judgment cannot depend for its success solely on adequate knowledge of the past. Out from the dark heavens dawns another blue day. New shapes are woven, new manifestations of genius are born. What shall the mere worshipper of the past do in face of these revolutionary facts ? Dante created a new literature expressed in what was practi- cally a new language; how apply to him your little nine-inch rule made for the past? The Elizabethan literature came as an entirely new revelation to England; how meet Hamlet or The Tempest when one had no chart to steer by in these strange, unfathomed seas of genius ? The great poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge might almost have been written hi a foreign tongue for the generation brought up in the tradition of Pope and Dryden. Here it is not enough to fall back on culture; indeed, an exclusive devotion to the old truth may most effectually hide the new one, and the large, fluid, barbarous, uncultivated natures may enter into the new kingdom of inspiration before the scribes in the temple of knowledge. No, there must be, in addition to culture, a certain attitude of the mind. The intellect of the critic must never be a hortus indiums; it must expand like the Western prairie beyond the purple rim of the horizon. It must journey with the sun, it must take in the whole canopy of stars. It must be in certain relations with the spirit and mind of the hour, and yet must be so detached that it is not dominated by the curious literary fashions or in allegiance to the little tin gods of the moment. It must neither bow in abasement to the past nor be tied by ignoble bonds to the present. While deriving its main sustenance from the rich storehouse of past achievement, it must be in active perpetual touch with the human spirit, and must under- stand that all great literature is born from life, and in its turn is nutriment for life.
It is not easy to combine these qualities of reverence for the forms and spirit of the past with an eager recognition of the claims of the new writer and the demands of the new hour. A Macaulay reared in the solid but narrow school of a purely English Whiggism is utterly unable to perceive the mAmling " of the new Transcendental philosophy of Carlyle or the Italian art of Ruskin. Browning found in a people devoted to the flawless poetry of Keats •and Tennyson but a handful of readers for his new poetry of the inner life and intellect. The clue for the critic in this maze is that the human spirit is wider than any of its manifestations, and that, while the solid results of the past are to be treasured with infinite love and care, new methods are to be respected, welcomed, and desired, and new forms are to be sanctioned, but always in the light of past excellence. A certain blend- ing (hinted at in Shelley's "Defence of Poetry ") of conservative instinct with revolutionary aspiration, one's feet on the solid rock of achievement, but one's eyes turned upward like those of Plato in the " School of Athens,"—that would appear to be the true attitude of sound literary judgment.
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