LETTERS OF EDWARD DOWDEN.*
ANY one who had the pleasure of corresponding with Pro- fessor Dowden will know that he was among the most delightful of letter writers, always wise, always urbane, often humorous or witty. It would not be a paradox to say that he wrote better when he wrote with ease to his friends, than when he sat down with his professorial robes about him to write welL For in his published writings there is generally a touch of the precieux, whereas in his letters the charm of spontaneity and the force of brevity are added to the wisdom or the wit to its great advantage. The editors of the book have given not a few letters from distinguished persons, with the object of making Dowden's replies intelligible, but they serve also the useful purpose of a foil; for Dowden, without any appearance of contradiction, generally manages to give a more satisfactory account of the topic under discussion. Middle- aged persons interested in literature will not have forgotten a controversy between Swinburne and Furnivall about the New Shakespeare Society, in which each party drew largely upon a copious and archaic vocabulary of abuse. There is a letter here from a literary critic, a friend of Swinburne, in which Dowden is called upon to use his influence with Furnivall to stop the " shocking scandal." Dowden replies with excellent discern- ment, saying that he took the affair to be a survival of the old " flyting such as Dunbar and Kennedy indulged in," a con- troversy into which "a large element of Rabelaisian jest entered," and follows this up with an admirable judgment on both-the combatants. Comparisons were a strong point with Dowden. Here are two good specimens :— " He spoke as if the egotism of Wordsworth and that of Charles Halle were of the same kind. Now Halle's whole playing of a piece of music means 'In what a refined way I am playing this.' Wordsworth's egotism said, There is a great sonnet,' and, he might add, wrote it.'"
That was written when the critic was only twenty-six; the following comes thirty years later :—
" Pater seems to me a very sure-footed critic, because he was so patient in his study, never writing until he had filled himself with his theme; while Matthew Arnold, who plays delightfully with ideas above his theme, never seems to use to have informed himself aright."
• Letters ("1 Edward Dowden, and his Correspondents. London: J. M. Dent and Sons. [7s. 6d. uet.j
From Dowden's occasional criticisms on Matthew Arnold it would be possible to illustrate the fairness of his mind better than from those on other men, because he was not very sympathetic to his Muse or to his theological opinions. Moreover, Arnold made a very severe attack upon Dowden's Life of Shelley, whereupon literary friends hastened to express their sympathy. To one he writes :-
" I think if you are unjust to Matt. Arnold it comes from your not feeling sufficiently how, through all his writings, runs the unity of that strong moral spirit, that strenuous regard for conduct derived in the first instance from his fattier. Whether one aces ti his rule of life or not, one can see how he was faithful to it.
he failed to condemn Shelley he would have departed from the unity of his own life."
It would be pleasant to go on quoting, for the letters abound in sane and sympathetic judgments on writers of all sorts and conditions, English and foreign, ancient and modern; from the great geniuses, especially Goethe, to the young people of yesterday ; and an excellent index (with but one fault that we have noticed, that of confounding two Mr. Bradleys) enables one to compare his earlier and later opinions. It is
interesting to find that Dowden was no less penetrating critic of himself. Of his edition of Hamlet he writes: "My
worst conscious sin is darkening, caused by stupid ingenuities." One would not have liked his enemy to say that, but it is exactly true. And of "whitewashing" he says, with no reference to his Life of Shelley, "I do that kind of thing particularly neatly, and have all shades of moral whitewash, and Christian whitewash, and aesthetic whitewash." But literature did not exhaust Dowden's interest. As readers of his poetry will know, he had a religious mind, and was early drawn to theological speculation. This comes out chiefly in the letters to his brother ; but it is never far from the surface, and colours much that he says about the mid-Victorian poets. It was characteristic of him that he respected "the Common Conscience and Reason of Man " as divinely guided ; respected Southey as a man of genius who " dutifully changes into a man of high and sustained routine "; and expressed the opinion that the influence of Swinburne, if it had not been counteracted by " great spiritual forces " at work at the same time, might have led in twenty years to our favourite poet being a Rochester. What he felt about the significance of human relations, charged with beauty and virtue, mystery and marvel, is clearly expressed in an estimate of the bad effect upon Shelley of the philosophy of Godwin, in which that emotional poet had thought to find a steadying influence :—
"How much better if, instead of trying to obtain support against his temperament by a doctrine largely false, and by rigid abstractions, he had got at the complex truths of real life, which would have worked subtly and unconsciously into his character. To approach real life cautiously and grapple with it cunningly is what the idealist needs, and this, it seems to me, is what makes Shakespeare so great."
Of the wit and humour that light up the discussion even of the more serious topics it is unfair to offer specimens, because their spontaneity is of their essence. They are of all types. We may conjecture as to one somewhat Rabelaisian jest, which its writer would have blushed to see in letter of print, that its meaning was concealed from the lady editors of the book by a learned language. We have noted the following misprints or misreadings of manuscript which should be corrected in the new edition, which we hope may soon be called for : "Indefensible" for " indefeasible " (p. 99); "staff of circumstance" for " stuff " (p. 189); " pretty " for "petty" (p. 175); and Browning's line, "Let them fight it out, friend," appears as "Let them find it out" (p. 164). On p. 218 "God in latter reason and conscience " cannot be right.
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