BOOKS.
AN AMERICAN CRITIC.*
THE present writer has always held that it is far better to read a great book than to read books about books. We are bound to say, however, that the charming volume which is the subject of this notice goes a long way to make us revise our verdict. At any rate, Mr. More has succeeded in giving us, as we are sure he will give to all his readers, an hour or two of real delight. He talks about great books and great writers so pleasantly, so sympathetically and with such ease and good temper that even when he is most critical we almost forget the old, and in itself sound, contention that the writer of the book about books is keeping us from the real thing, is acting the part of an intro- ducer who wastes the precious time by making speeches about the man whom he is introducing instead of "cutting the cackle" and coming at once to "the 'ow,"
The volume will be specially delightful to those people who love that narrow but splendid period which included Halifax and Congreve as well as Swift and Pope. The 18th century from 1720 to 1790, in spite of Johnson and Gray, Burke and Richardson, must be admitted to be the most arid epoch in our literature. Even the great men we have named are stiff with that east wind in which they lived and had their being. It was very different with the men who did their best work in those glorious and tremendous years between 1680-1720. Swift, Pope and Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu, in their first editions, i.e., in the first bloom of their genius, had each and all something of the glory of a sunrise, though we admit it was a sunrise a in mode de Versailles with more of pomp than of mystery.
We must leave our readers to walk by themselves, or rather hand in hand with Mr. More, the stately terraces and statue- guarded paths of the noble garden we have described. Before doing so, however, we have a word to say about two of the articles.
The first is that on Halifax, whose towering genius as a man of letters is too often neglected, as are his wisdom and patriotism in politics. Halifax's style is especially delightful. It has a great deal of the lucidity of Addison and Swift, and yet there is a touch, and a most attractive touch, in it of that quaintness which we love in the great Elizabethans, in Hooker and Donne, and even in Milton, bad prose writer as he was except in his moments of emotional inspiration. On the whole Mr. More is very sympathetic to Halifax, and touches the man's mind and character with great skill. We do not think, however, that he quite does justice to Halifax's
• With the Wile. Hy Paul Elmer • More. New York : Houghton Mifflin Company. ROB. 65.1
character of Charles II. In our opinion the sketch of Charles II. is one of the greatest things in English prose—indeed, we might say in all literature, for in our opinion the study of Charles altogether surpasses anything in St. Simon, living and magnificent as are his pictures of the men of the Court of Louis XIV. Halifax for the first time in human history has really anatomised a human soul to the very last grain. He has squeezed the sponge dry, particularly in the matter of motive. Charles II. lies before us dissected and displayed, and the wonder- ful thing is that though he has spared his friend—for friend he was—not at all, yet Charles remains at the end of it all rather a character for moderate sympathy than for an absolute repro- bation. But this great achievement is accomplished not by palliating Charles's actions, but by showing us how human a person he was, and how difficult it is in the last resort for any man who remembers his own failings, faults and temptations not to feel even of a had, base and treacherous man, "How near all this is to something hidden in me."
But though we do not think that Mr. More has given its full value to that picture of Charles's character, we are delighted to see that he is aware of the intense value, political, moral, and literary, of Halifax's aphorisms, for Halifax was not only the wisest of men as regards public affairs, but conveyed his wisdom with a poignancy to which the history of literature affords no parallel, or affords it in Voltaire alone. Over Halifax's aphorisms breathes something strange and soul-shaking such as Burton might have analysed as melancholy. Take, for example, his true but curious declaration, "The dependence of a great man upon a greater is a subjection that lower men cannot easily comprehend." Men of Washington, men of London, men of Paris, and, above all, men of the Versailles Congress, will know what that means and will recognize in it the secret history of many a Cabinet scandal and many a crisis. Almost as tremendous is the state- ment, "Men must be saved in this world by their want of faith," or again, "The hardest thing in the world is to give the thoughts due liberty and yet retain them in due discipline." But to quote from Halifax is a dangerous task for a specs- rationed reviewer. Carlyle called Herbert Spencer "an un- ending ass." Halifax might as well be described as "an un- ending political philosopher." Perhaps the most successful of all Mr. More's successes is the essay on Pope. If he does not quite do justice to Pope as a poet of the emotions, and especially of love, and dwells rather too much upon the lighter side of Pope's poetry, it is a delightful essay. Particularly happy is his quotation from Spence's anecdotes, though we think that Mr. More takes Bolingbroke's tenderness too much at its face value. Bolingbroke was one of the men in whom Burns's terrible warning stands revealed. His profligacy had indeed hardened all within and petrified the man's heart. His occa- sional assumption of sensibility made the truth all the more terrible.
Once more his reviewer must thank Mr. More for much real delight, for the introduction to some new things and for many most pleasant reminders of old friends half-forgotten. Strange as it may seem to say this of a book of collected essays, we really shall look forward to another volume. To us it is a special pleasure that this particular book should have been produced by an American, since it is one more proof of the unity of the races, and shows what diabolic nonsense it is to say that the American people are so changed and diluted by the admixture of foreigners that there is no longer any essential sympathy, moral and intellectual, between them and.us. Every educated Englishman can understand and sympathise thoroughly with Mr. More's book. No foreigner could understand it in the same sense. And yet its outlook is distinctly American and written solely with the author's eye upon the American public. Clearly he had no thought of English readers when he wrote. Nevertheless, every word goes home to us.
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