THE RIGHT OF CRITICISM.
TAME a pack of beagles changing bares, it sometimes happens that a newspaper correspondence relating to a particular question raises another which goes farther afield. That is certainly the case with the letters which Sir Edward Clarke and Mr. Gosse have been writing to the Times with reference to a question originally raised by Sir Edward Clarke a few weeks ago in an address delivered at the Working Men's College. Sir Edward Clarke expressed the opinion that in the strength of the nation's literary output there has been a "very strange and lamentable decline" during the last forty years. He quoted the names of a number of books which were published in the years 1851-1860, and he remarked that in his view no book—with the possible exception of "Tess of the D'Urbervilles"—had been published during the past ten years which could be said to be better than, or indeed equal to, one of the books he mentioned. That is a view which, apart from the fact that the expression of it might conceivably be supposed to irritate the feelings of the less philosophical of latter-day authors, and so elicit immediate expressions of dissent, is certainly open to attack on serious grounds. Mr. Edmund Gosse, at the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" dinner, had something to say on Sir Edward Clarke's criticism; and in a letter to the Times a day or two afterwards asked what pretensions a "brilliant advocate" might possess to pronounce a valuable judgment on the subject at all. He followed that question with another. "By what right," he asked, "does a member of one profession bring a railing accusation against the whole of another pro- fession ? " That is surely about as wrong-headed an attitude to take on a general subject such as the value of criticism as it is possible to conceive could commend itself to a student of letters.
It is difficult to understand the frame of mind which refuses the right of criticism to the man who himself does not make writing his profession. For, after all, who is, and who has always been, the critic of literature ? The men by whom a man's work is judged, and by whose verdict he succeeds or fails, either in his lifetime or after his death, seem to fall into three classes. The first class is the smallest of alL It embraces the critic who thoroughly knows the subject with which the work he criticises deals, and who, besides knowing that particular subject, knows other subjects as well; who is able, therefore, to set up proper standards of comparison, and to estimate not only the importance of this or that new addition to literature, art, or drama, but the importance of literature, art, and drama to the life of MAIL That kind of critic pours great masses of light on the work he judges. He does not examine with the microscope, he does not dissect; he surveys the outstanding features of a wide plain and passes large, open-air judgments. His is, in most ways, the most valuable kind of criticism ; he is more likely than other men to be able to estimate the strength and the lasting qualities of what he sees. He has watched the stream of a broad river, and can foretell the tendencies of the process of denudation; he knows what will be silted over and what will become clear and per- manent. Yet as his criticism is more valuable than that of other men, so it is the more rarely met with. There is a far commoner class of criticism, valuable also, but in a lower degree. That is the criticism of the man who has made one particular subject his own, who has read, or seen, or beard all or most of the existing examples of what he criticises, and who is able at once to classify anything new relating to his particular subject. He is the specialising naturalist of the huge plain surveyed by the first class of critic. He knows all the flowers and ferns, perhaps, by heart; but his verdict on the birds or the geology of the plain would not be that of the expert. He may be able to place exactly on its proper shelf a book dealing with the Renaissance; but we should not pay the same attention to his views if be happened to write on the subject of the Celtic saga or the Franco-German War. But because we regarded him as a specialist on one subject, should we therefore be justified in disregarding absolutely his verdict on another ? Surely not. For when he ceases to be a specialist, he merely takes his place in the third and hugest class of critics,—the general public. To his verdict, considered as a member of that class, we suppose Mr. Gosse, and those who agree with him, would pay but the slightest attention. You are not able to write an essay on the dramatic unities,' we may imagine the first-night critic saying to the audience at a theatre, 'and therefore your assurance that the new play does not please you is valueless.' Is it certain that the verdict of the "untrained" public is always worth so little ? It is, at all events, seldom regarded as being worth little by the theatrical manager, or by the actor or author whose plays it pays in large numbers to see.
Of course, the verdict of the general public may often be wrong, and often is shown to be wrong by the verdict of time. In any age and in all countries, things that are immensely popular are as often as not immensely wrong,—wrong, that is, when judged by perpetual standards. That is simply because it is human to err, and because the larger, and there- fore the less individually cultivated, a mass of human beings happens to be, the larger wrongs it will do and the bigger mistakes it will make. Yet though public opinion can often be guided, it can never be ignored; not, at all events, by the man who means to make money out of it. That is a brutal ' fact which every writer sooner or later realises. And it would be absurd to deny that the multitude has a right to criticise, simply because the multitude replies that might is right, and that it chooses to do so. If, then, you concede, as you must, the right of criticism of all subjects to the multitude, how can you deny that right to its best educated members ? The question of "professions" which Mr. Gosse needlessly introduces is neither here nor there. After all, what is the "profession" of men of letters P Suppose a soldier in his moments of leisure happened to write another "Paradise Lost." Would Mr. Gosse denounce his impertinence, and consider that he had no right to pronounce a verdict on the merits of " Lycidas" P That is a question which has been asked in another form by Mr. Augustine Birrell. "When and how," he inquires, "does a writer of books become an author 'by profession'? Cervantes was a soldier, Montaigne a country gentleman, Bacon an English lawyer, Sir Walter Scott a Scotch lawyer, Isaac Walton a linen-draper, Richardson a printer, Sir Thomas Browne a doctor," and so on. If you get into difficulties when you try to fence in this or that man into one particular walk in life, you certainly do not find your task easier, or indeed saner, when you try to prevent him from looking over the hedge and saying what he sees on the other side. The fact is that to deny to the member of one pro- fession the right to "bring a railing accusation against"—that is, to criticise—another profession is to deny the right of criticism to the public, and that you cannot do. You may differ from the judgment pronounced by members of a pro- fession which is not your own; but to claim that no man may express opinions on literature because he happens to be first and foremost a lawyer is about as sensible as to say that a cobbler who sticks to his last cannot possibly know any- thing about canaries or cooking. A man muA have read much before he can become either the rare critic who floods a plain with light, or the commoner critic who apportions the space on the bookshelf; but the ultimate value of his criticism must always depend upon one thing only, and that is his power of peiception.
As to Sir Edward Clarke's original contention, that the last forty years have seen a remarkable decline in the strength of the nation's literary output, that is a matter upon which different peopie—even though they may not be professional critics—are entitled to hold different opinions. To us it seems that Sir Edward Clarke goes too far. But even if his contention can be justified by facts, which we do not think it can, to what does it amount? Merely to a statement that the tide is out. The tide will return. No nation has ever produced decade after decade even approximately the same amount of good literature. The output must vary. It is true that if Sir Edward Clarke could point to a general decline in the nation's energy, a decline in the strength of the national literary output might be held to be "lamentable," as a corroborative symptom of decaying brain-power. But the brain-power of the nation cannot be held to be decaying by any one who contemplates the immense strides made in science alone during the last fifty years of the Victorian era; and it cannot be admitted, because the national energy during the past few years has not manifested itself chiefly in the production of good books, that there is the smallest cause for alarm. The tide of English literature may not now be gaining the "painful inch" ; but it is still true of the national life that through other inlets "cornea silent, flooding in, the main."
Previous page
