Talking of books
Through the glass
Benny Green
Librarj Looking-Glass, a personal Anthology David Cecil (Constable £5.50)
I see that Lord David Cecil's anthology has been received by some reviewers as though it Were some kind of entrance examination paper and Lord David a suppliant for a place in the Intellectual pantheon. You know the sort of thing: "What's this? No Schopenhauer? Take that, you naughty little boy. No Goethe? No 311, og? No Engels? No Gorki? Get out of my Sight, you wretched creature." But those reviewers who have complained of insularity are themselves guilty of an insularity so crushing that it is a great wonder to me that anyone could be so foolish. Even those who Praised the book have done so with the air of °len who suspect of the text the arch-sin of cosiness, and that such a quality implies a Passivity on the part of the anthologist. , As to the suitability of Lord David's selections, I would never dream of subjecting them 1° critical scrutiny even if I thought I should, Which, by the way, I do not. As it happens, °Inch of what appears in the book is not esPeeially to my taste; if I were honest I would saY that it was outside the range of my eXPerience. But Lord David has gone to some Pains to explain how his book came about, and What function it might hope to serve for those readers who face up to it. The collection simply consists of those passages which have given Cecil some pleasure in a lifetime of reading, and Which, therefore, he thinks might give the same Pleasure to some readers. To that extent only is the anthology selective. We are not meant to guess from it who are the Top Writers, or who 11,as, slipped from the Second to the Third "ivision. Because someone has been left out, it clOes not mean that Cecil considers him a less gifted writer than someone who has been „Included. Beerbohm rates eleven entries, uickens only five, from which it would take a certifiable madman to deduce that Cecil considers Dickens only five elevenths "as gclod" as Beerbohm. But it is another aspect of the anthology /which interests me greatly, and that is its fl)batjve spirit. It seems to me that so far from _uelog guilty of passivity, Lord David has shown 'line courage, and even defiance, in his choice 0, f items. Each section, arranged alphabetically, accompanied by annotations by the antholoist, and their accumulated effect is of a r.astidious reader who, finding himself out of Joint with the times, is not at all sure that the t:Irnes have all the right on their side. For ntstance when discussing Charm, he observes at there are "ignoble periods" in history when ..nurnanity is too numbed or too barbarous to nPPreciate the Graces". It follows, therefore, !itat a true connoisseur must strive to liberate nirnself from the fads of the moment, for "there
is a provinciality in time and well as in space," and he who finds release "can regard his own period with the detachment which is a necessary foundation of wisdom." One further example among many. While discussing Faith, Lord David says that "The Kingdom of Heaven is not of this world. Those who think they can establish it here are more likely to create a hell on earth."
There are those who would reply to that with the observation that a great many people who try to achieve heaven on earth do so precisely because they believe that hell is already with us and that they are living in the middle of it. There are others who might suggest that the unchanging futility of social struggle is easier to bear with equaminity when your sensibilities are buttressed by the ramparts of Hatfield House. That is what I mean when I attach the word "courage" to the choice of entries. The anthologist must have guessed at the kind of things which would be said, but selected an honest anthology all the same, for which reason more strength to his arm. He has stuck to the guns of pleasure, as it were, than which no literary exercise is more calculated to bring down on one's head the derision of those who get angry the moment anyone states an affection for something they happen not to like.
And so we find among Lord David's friends an unfashionable gent like Charles Lamb. We find a passage by one of the anthologist's relations, Arthur Balfour, described as "the best piece of prose written by a British Prime Minister that I have ever read." Just as I am about to say that I have heard of faint praise before but this is ridiculous, I remember Messrs Taper and Tadpole, and Churchill's Marlborough and wish I had the time to muster a rebuttal. As for Beerbohm, I am surprised to report that his entries read delightfully, especially the one concerning worrying about the size of the bill when wining and dining other people. But I have come to the ingenious conclusion that Beerbohm happens to be one of those writers who look their best in the splintered glass of an anthology rather than in the full-length mirror of their own covers.
Several of the most frequent names are predictable enough. Cowper and Hazlitt, Sidney Smith, in preference to "Nietzsche and Sartre and the rest of the intellectual Foreign Legion", Alexander Pope and Santayana, Defoe and Gibbon. Lord David offers an open question as to the curious poetic efficacy of the word "Hebrides", which might, I suggest be linked to its resemblance to those other islands, the Hesperides. But before I go further, and before I reveal how much of the pleasure which Lord David is offering has conveyed itself to me, I had better stop short with two thoughts. First, how far would any of us get if challenged to compile our own anthologies? Where would we begin? And second, how very wise of Lord David to have included the notorious and if I may say so, very glorious announcement by Turgenev:
Criticism is a delightful pastime for critics and sometimes delightful for readers; but it has nothing at all to do with the process by which Art is ac-hieved.
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