THE "ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA" ON AMERICAN LITERATURE.* Is it not Sir
Arthur Helps who, in his quietly paradoxical way, asserts that it is easier to praise those at a distance than those near at hand? " What ! prefer strangers to our own flesh and blood ?" we can fancy the reader saying to himself ; " non- sense, the thing does not stand to human nature, nor reason either !" Nevertheless, we hold there is truth in Sir Arthur's remark. We misunderstand or misrepresent our friends, or un- charitably judge them, or suspiciously reserve our praise of them, chiefly because they are too near us. A small object kept close to the eye can shut out a large prospect, and itself becomes the more vague in outline the more persistently it is scrutinised.
"More space and freer view we want."
As with the feigned human face on Mount Athos, we must withdraw ourselves from our daily neighbours, if we would see them aright and judge them fairly. We should put them in the place of the distant. We blame them often for our own im- patience and irritation. The needful process of self-withdrawal, save in the most literal sense, demands imagination, and no faculty do the mass of men find it more difficult to call into exercise in ordinary matters. It finds too ready an outlet, as Sir Arthur hints, on things ideal or remote. Lack of it lies at the root of one-half the quarrels and severe words which disturb the social peace. We can't retreat from our doubles. Who are so bitter as erewhile bosom-friends, and how else account for the perpetual presence of the one with the other? Indifference is impossible. The one still shuts out the other's view, and limits his prospect. Hawthorne had an odd theory that love and hatred were the same at bottom, and this was his chief ground for it. And in criticism it is especially felt. Praise or blame becomes excessive ; the small object is too close to the eye, and due shading and perspective are lost. Whether it is a " puff " or a "slate," it is not hard to tell where the personal element has been supreme. No device will hide it ; the thing is of private interpretation, And we feel it. But in dealing with the products of another continent, we should fancy one powerful disturbing _element might be assumed to be absent. Nearness in that case does not-irritate or distract, does not deflect the moral compass, * Eneyelopsedia Bra:ea:mica. New Edition. Article, "American Literature." :Bdinbargh: A.danzand Charles Black.
nor favour that misjudgment which really springs from secret dissatisfaction with ourselves. Sainte-Beuve once said, "I can read a book, and in some degree enjoy it, but I cannot judge it without some knowledge of the man who wrote it." This is another and a better version of that famous saying of Addison's,— though the structure of a man's sentences may surely be judged without reference to his complexion, and his blank verse apart from the colour of his hair. These things are well in general terms, but not always so applicable in the working. It is well that each tub stand on its own bottom. How, for example, could we ever keep pace with the Americans, or judge their books, if such canons were not interpreted freely? If we may believe Mr. William Black, their perverted application of Sainte-Beuve's maxim may become uncomfortable,—very. Therefore we ought not to follow them here. This, however, is the more reason why accredited judg- ments of their literature on our side should be competent, thorough, discriminating, that they may believe in the ability of British criticism to judge by rule, and yet not belie the maxim that it is easier to praise those at a distance than those near at hand. But the article in the new edition of the Encyclopdia on "American Literature" does not attain to this, though it has been largety praised,—perhaps too much on Sir Arthur Helps's principle. For the sake of "American Literature" and British criticism, it is worth while noting a few salient points in which its writer has, in our opinion, gone wide of the mark, in spite of his careful reading, his polished style, and the air of finish which he has contrived to throw over his work.
With too much of Griswold—a bad dose to begin with—at his elbow, we are not surprised that he shouldspeedily have recourse to generalisations, which appear exhaustive, but are only mis- leading. An air-bladder will do something to support you ins. wide sea, but what if it is so slim ttiat the mere action of the water will burst it by and by? Listen to this :—"All the best Transatlantic literature is inspired by the spirit of confidence— often of over-confidence—in labour." " Prave 'ords," these. They go unqualified. Yet has not James Russell Lowell in his "Biglow Papers"—really a piece of national literature—ridiculed this very tendency ? Then, what of Irving, with his dreamy grace ; and Prescott, with his leisurely aristocratic style ; and Hawthorne, with his wistful reserve? Against all his instincts, Hawthorne reasoned himself into residence at Brook Farm. His connection with it was the outcome of second thoughts and friendly influence. The result was, as one might have deduced the man from his writings, a return to his first thoughts. He might have quoted :—
" It is not true that second thoughts are best,
But first and third, which are a riper first ;"
and he retired into confessed dislike of labour, declaring that "not he, but a spectral appearance" under his name, had carted dung, and raked hay, and sounded the horn at daybreak. He emphatically declared labour degrading now, from practical experi- ence, as before he had done from theory. And up conies Poe, with his "Raven," to croak "nevermore !" in face of the assertion. He was a born American, and yet if there is a master-idea, dif- fused like an essence through his writing, it is perhaps hatred of labour, and protest against it. We need not cite more names ; they come to the mind by scores. Let us quote a companion assertion instead:—" The great literary fault of the Americans thus comes to be impatience—the majority of them have not learnt that raw haste is half-sister to delay '—that works done least rapidly art most cherishes." This, too, is suggested by Griswold. At the time he wrote, fully a quarter of a century ago, it was truer than it is now, though not even then the whole truth. Indeed it only seized a most superficial aspect of it. But Irving, and Pres- cott, and Dana, and Willis, and Hawthorne had shown that Puritanism preserved a savour of cultured leisure about great sections of American life, that stole like a subtle aroma round its literature, and remains inseparable from it. The "Twice-told Tales" were even then delighting critics, and slowing making their way to become classics, in preparation for larger works, as though to refute for ever and categorically the view here presented to us. With the reasons that lie deeper, we are not now concerned ; but we pass on to remark that it is surely very wrong to say of that country which is, above all others, prone to find sudden escape from materialistic devotion in religious rapture, in spiritualistic theory and vague experiment of all kinds, that "in America it is extent of nature that is dwelt upon ; the in6uity of space, rather than the infinity of time, is opposed to thelimited rather than to the transient existence of man." How all this, .in relation to literature, is made to square with the sentencesadso suggested-by Griswold, to the effect that the Americans had too stringently sought the sanctions of their art in the old
burdened by a desire to receive a favourable verdict, not from the care, skill, and discrimination, we country of their birth, but from that of their ancestors, we are article so defective in knowledge as totally at a loss to conceive. The transcendental movement is said to be distinctly American, and yet its initiative is traced to Thomas Carlyle !
But from a running, fire against generalities, let us descend to particulars. N. P. Willis is written of here as though he were still living ; the well-known "Hillard" becomes " Hilliard ; " the "4' Biglow Papers" at one place are spoken of as a series of metrical pamphlets "born of the last great social and political struggle of the New World ;" Thoreau is denounced as a mere morbid solitary—which is the common view of him, we admit, however mistaken it may be—but while Emerson, still living, is liberally praised for his philanthropy, poor Thoreau, far distant,—dead,- although he surpassed his master in at least one thing, gets no praise whatever. What will Mr. Emerson say to it ? Is this encyclopmdist aware that Thoreau, in many ways—for he was not the hermit of Walden Wood in perpetuum —actually came forth and ran risks in other matters besides that of John Brown of Harper's Ferry? But dropping reference to lesser errors like these, we now advance to our decisive testing-point. This writer quotes Griswold's opinion of E. P. Whipple to the effect that he is one of the most subtle, discriminating, and profound of critics, and giving no opinion himself, quietly inserts a mark of exclamation at the passage, as one might do at a friend's foolish and exaggerated admiration of a friend. Well, we hold that Edwin Whipple is one of the most "subtle, discriminating, and profound" of critics, and confess that a patient re-perusal of his collected works in six volumes, and several shorter articles in the North-American Review, imposed upon us by this encyclopmdist, has only served to deepen our conviction. Nor are we alone in this opinion. His is no provincial fame, though special circumstances confined him long to anonymous or merely periodical writing. Macaulay said that some of Whipple's essays were the subtlest and ablest and clearest in expression that he had ever read. Miss Mitford wrote that they would bear comparison with any of their class in the older country. Prescott declared that no critic had "ever treated his topics with more discrimination and acuteness" His writings are often quoted in France, and in the French "Dictionnaire Universe' des Contemporains " he is thus
spoken of:—" Les essais de critique litteraire de M. Whipple se recomman dent par la fin esse des aperc us, l'independence des j nge- ments, et la preoccupation constante des vrais interets de 'Intelli- gence." Indeed, it is very curious—almost laughable—to find that, whilst our encyclopmdist dogmatically declares Poe's criti- cisms to be beyond measure captious and jealous and spiteful, Poe is the only person of name who has seriously tried to detract from Whipple's position ! But this is easily accounted for by the fact of Whipple's connection with the North-American Review, the mere mention of which sometimes almost made Poe mad. Poe declares that Whipple has "been infected with that transparent heresy—the cant of critical Boswellism—by dint of which we are to shut our eyes tightly to all autorial blemishes, and open them, like owls, to all autorial defects." But he was compelled to admit that his lectures on the Elizabethan dramatists were marked by acute observations, and could not deny him a place among the " Literati of New York." And after all this, it is surely too much at our time of day for any one to try to put Whipple down by a mere mark of exclamation ! As those who have benefited by the study of Whipple's writings, we were startled, and on con- sideration, determined to brace ourselves up to say a word for him in this country. We had intended to fortify our position by some extracts from his essays ; but space forbids. We can only add that his essay on Wordsworth itself would have made a reputa- tion for another man, and that delicious morsels are to be found on every page of his books, which those who read will find.
Besides his fine thought and rare instinct for the beautiful, he was a master of style, and well deserves to be recommended for study in that regard to critics in this country, instead of being contemptuously dismissed as he has been.
If the writer of "American Literature " in the " Encyclopmdia Britannica " has ever read a page of Whipple, or handled a book of his, then he absolutely disproves the maxim that it is easier to praise those at a distance than those near at hand; and seems to us to have forgotten for the moment that he had written, "One qualification for a critic is the dramatic capacity for placing him- self for the time in the position of the person who is criticised.' We fear the Americans are not the only persons who need to learn that "raw haste is half-sister to delay," and that "work done least rapidly art most cherishes." In an Eneycloptedia which appears to have been for the most part re-edited with singular regret the appearance of an this.
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