CURRENT LITERATURE.
Essays Towards a Critical Method. By John W. Robertson. (T. Fisher Unwin.)—It is to be feared that Mr. Robertson's effort to promote "scientific criticism" is not likely to be successful. His essays are written in a pedantic style, which conceals what is essentially commonplace, and it may be questioned whether they contain any sound principle which is not already recognised by every critic worthy of the name. A wide knowledge of the best literature, freedom from prejudice, an open mind capable of receiving new impressions, and a good memory to serve as hand- maid to the judgment,—these are the gifts needed by the critic, and will be more serviceable to him than any method the wit of man is capable of suggesting. A writer on English literature and on style ought himself to show how English should be written ; but the sight of such a term on the first page as " tendential parties," will naturally make the reader apprehensive of what he is likely to find later on. And what he will find is a number of ugly words that have perhaps a rightful place in the dictionary, but not in literature, and many a laboured phrase or metaphor which may be of service as a warning to ambitious writers. If it be through the jargon with which the author falls his pages that 'a critical . method must be achieved, the longer we do without that method the better will it be for literature. Mr. Robertson no doubt has acquired a considerable amount of knowledge ; but these essays, though by no means without ability, show that the writer has gone hopelessly astray. His thoughts are cloudy, and his composition, to quote his own unjust estimate of Blanco White's noble sonnet, is "charmless and oeautiless." Mr. Robertson's method does not appear to have been of service to his own criticism. The coarseness of Fielding must be acknow- ledged and regretted; but to accuse him of "leering prurience" is to write nonsense. It will be news to most students to learn that Buckle "is still our one distinguished writer who had mastered alike history, literature, and science ;" that "The Excursion" and "The Prelude" are dead poems ; that Bunyan in our generation has had "a factitious vogue ;" that Scott's "choicest phrased humour" is "seen best in his prefaces ;" that Lord Tennyson's famous Wellington Ode consists of " operose heroics ;" that his " Rizpah " "might have been made about equally powerful in prose ;" and that Charlotte Brenta's "great fictive faculty" was "grafted on the philosophy of a spirited governess."
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