STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.*
WE never read any critical essay, much less any volume of criti- cism, which did not contain remarks and opinions in which we could not perfectly acquiesce ; and we have several times found in reading this volume that, if we did not pointedly differ with Mr. Dennis, we were at least disposed to qualify or supplement his observations by some remark of our own ; but we can- not hesitate for a moment to pronounce it an excellent book. It has the charm—quite captivating in these days—of being entirely void of affectation, extravagance, or any "trick of singularity ;" and it displays sound judgment, both moral and mathetic, and a thorough mastery of the subjects with which it deals. These subjects are interesting, and are of the kind with which people who would keep abreast of the literary
table-talk of the day ought to be familiar. Mr. Dennis gives us the newest views upon lyrical poetry, and the latest bulletins from the interminable controversy respecting Pope. Most of the essays have a biographical element, but some of them —those, for example, upon our "Lyrical Poetry" and upon our "Rural Poetry "—are purely critical. In one, that upon "John Wesley under Two Aspects," Mr. Dennis passes the literary pale, and makes a brief but by no means fruitless incursion into general English history. In all cases he is an intelligent and pleasant guide, for his manner corresponds to his matter, being remarkable for simplicity, ease, and clearness. But of course, as we hinted, we do not always agree with Mr. Dennis in his estimate of poems and poets. He seems to us, for example, too enthusiastic in his estimate of Spenser's " Epitha- lamion." He declares that in this poem the lyric is "at its best," that its excellence is "incomparable," that it possesses "supreme love- liness,"—that it is, in short, "divine." To back him in this opinion, he calls in Hallam and Mr. George MacDonald. The latter pronounces it "one of the most stately, melodious, and tender poems in the world," and perhaps there is some sense, not the strictly lyrical, in which we could agree with him. Hallam is as unbounded in his admiration as Mr. Dennis. Spenser's poem "is an intoxication of ecstacy, ardent, noble, and pure." Hallam is, in general, as Mr. Dennis observes, "the calmest and least impulsive of critics," and we cannot help thinking that his calmness and lack of fervour led him in this instance to mistake for that "intoxication of ecstacy " which is accurately what one has a right to expect in a consummate nuptial lyric, the measured and unimpassioned, though lofty emotion of Spenser's poem. The last thing Spenser's elaborate lines would suggest to us is that he was himself intoxi- cated with the feeling they express, or that they could intoxicate any other person. The poet retains his perfect self-possession, and lays on touch after touch of colour with admirable patience, but with no burning rapture. Those of our readers who are acquainted with Arthur Brooke's poetical version of the story of Romeo and Juliet, and have compared it with Shakespeare's drama on the same subject, will know what we mean when we say that in Spenser's "Epithalamion " love is described in the manner of Brooke, not in the manner of Shakespeare. In the one manner, the literary artist dwells upon details, in the other, the details take fire. Spenser thus portrays the bride :—
" Tell me, ye merchants' daughters, did ye see So fair a creature in your town before ? So sweet, so lovely, and so mild as she, Adorned with beauty's grace and virtue's store ; Her goodly eyes like sapphires shining bright, Her forehead ivory-white,
Her cheeks like apples which the sun hath rudded.
Her breast like to a bowl of cream uncrudded."
This may be stately, melodious, and even tender, but it surely is not impassioned, and not being impassioned, it cannot, in our opinion, be justly described as the beat possible lyric love- poetry. The best lyric love-poetry known to us is in the love-songs of Goethe, and Burns, and they thrill and glow with rapture. Of course, when love is not the theme, the rules by which lyric poetry is to be judged undergo modification, and though intensity and strength of feeling con- tinue indispensable to high excellence, this may be attained with something less of concentration and fervency. As Mr. Dennis overrates Spenser's " Epithalamion," so he seems to us to under- rate Byron's ode, "The Isles of Greece." He almost pooh-poohs this poem. "There is a period of life," he says, "in which such
* Studies fa Exglish Literairre. By John Dennis. London : Edward Stanford. a piece as 'The Isles of Greece ' sounds sublime, and is recited with enthusiasm. Have we not all heard it shouted by school- boys, or impressively delivered by young men devoted to the- study of elocution ? Sound is dearer than thought in those early days, nor is it easy to detect the faults of a poem the lines of which glide along so smoothly." Byron's ode is, we admit, unequal. There are stanzas which injure the tone and unity of the whole by the intrusion of crude modernism—Franks, with their buying and selling kings, for instance—into a poem whose key- note is struck by reference to occurrences thousands of years old, but which, from their transcendent importance and grandeur, remain fresh in the memory of the race. But in. spite of these defects "The Isles of Greece" is a glorious lyric. There is nothing in English literature more superb than Byron's poetical use of the Persian invasion of Greece in this poem, a use all the more imaginative from its being regulated by close ad- herence to historical truth. A king (lid sit on the rocky brow
above sea-born Salamis. Byron's foot pressed the sward of the very mountains which overlook Marathon and the sea. Rigidly adhering to historical and topographical fact, the poet is severely simple in his words, rejecting all meretricious adorn- ment, all involved construction, quaintness, straining, extrava- gance; but the result is to raise lyric feeling into the higher, if less intense, rapture of epical enthusiasm. Once more—to close these random carpings of ours—we cannot wholly assent to the view Mr. Dennis takes of Wordsworth's well-known stanza :—
" One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can."
These words are quoted by Mr. Dennis to illustrate the observa- tion that when Wordsworth, "in the ardour of his love, prefers the knowledge to be gained from natural objects to that derived from books, it is because it will best teach him about man." That is to say, Wordsworth loved nature because it taught him about man, and—for this seems to be implied—was right in holding that nature could teach him more about man than books or sages. We can accept neither the one proposition nor the other. Had Wordsworth's interest in men been as importunate as that, for example, of Homer, he certainly would not have retired to the Lakes to study them ; and unless we add the ironical exposition that what "all the sages" could teach Wordsworth about men was, like what all the metaphysicians could teach Zadig, "precious little," we must deny that vernal woods can teach more than living sages. The plain truth is that an impulse from a vernal wood teaches you nothing whatever about men, except that they may be counted on to like green leaves and open air ; and the quoted stanza presents one of those instances in which, as Arnold rightly held, Wordsworth occasionally refines too far.
The reader would be much astray if he formed his idea of our general estimate of Mr. Dennis's book from these expressions of disagreement with a few of his particular opinions. The cases in which we differ with him are a very small per-centage upon those in which we agree with him. We do not recollect a single instance in which our differences go so deep as the prin- ciples on which his opinions are formed,—they apply exclusively to their application in particular instances. His affirmation of right principle is in some cases pointedly seasonable. Something like boldness was required to put in a favourable word for Mr. Elwin, the latest biographer of Pope, who, following in the wake of Lord Macaulay and Mr. Dilke, pronounces Pope mean, worth- less, and false. Mr. Elwin's procedure has provoked Mr. Ruskin to positive fury, —not, however, a very difficult thing, of late. Mr. Elwin's work is, in his view, a "scavenger-biography." Well we might reply, suppose it is,—the question is whether the work to be done was scavenger-work. If heaps of lies, tainting the air in our literary highways, were lying at Pope's door, the respect due to his genius rendered it not a whit the less necessary that the scavenger should operate upon them. "Truth," says Mr. Dennis, "is more precious than even the reputation of a poet, and there is no greater blunder than to suppose that because a man has genius, his moral failings are to be concealed or condoned." Mr. Elwin has devoted twenty years to the investigation of Pope's life. If Mr. Ruskin has devoted more time to the same enterprise, he may be entitled to pit his authority against Mr. Elwin's ; and whether be has taken little or much pains to acquire information respecting Pope, he has a right to call in question the relevancy of Mr. Elwin's facts or the validity of his arguments, but he certainly has no right to try to hoot a thoroughly informed and conscien- tious witness out of court by calling him a bad name. On the general question of the way in which the moral defects of men of genius ought to be treated there could be little difference of opinion, were it not that impetuous ardour of feeling has a practically unlimited capacity of paralysing judgment, and that the inestimable debt which every intelligent mind is conscious of -owing to men of genius produces, in every instance in which our great intellectual benefactors are accused, exactly that impatient fervour which makes reflection impossible. Given the reflection, error in the matter is hardly conceivable. There is no more merit in being born with brilliant faculties than with faculties obscure and torpid. Allowances, framed in accordance with original en- dowment and subsequent conditions of life, are due to men of genius and to men of dullness alike, and the most delicate con- sideration, the amplest charity, ought to be applied to the problem of determining in how far the circumstances of genius qualify or -explain moral shortcoming. But it is shallow philosophy and insane practice to deny, to justify, or to palliate proved moral badness, because it has been displayed by a man of genius ; and it is an absolutely impossible case that a man's genius can be so great that it becomes culpable, or indeed other -than a valuable service, to investigate, minutely and exhaustively, his moral faults. Of course, if a biographer makes more of these than is just—if he destroys the proportion and perspective of the life he describes—his book is a failure ; and Mr. Dennis thinks that Mr. Elwin has assigned too much prominence to the exposition of Pope's mendacity ; but this does not affect the question whether Pope's genius entitled him to have his lies less frankly brought to light than if he had been an ordinary man. Mr. Dennis's essay on Pope is most judicious, and full of interesting information ; but had it been a volume instead of an essay, one or two aspects of the subject might have been considered which ought not to be omitted from a com- prehensive treatment of the controversy as to Pope's character. Mr. Dennis draws no veil over the personal deformity, the life- long ill-health, the absence of domestic ties, which formed the conditions of Pope's life ; but he hardly, we think, lays sufficient stress upon the isolation in which the poet was thus placed as an influence in chilling his heart, and rendering him incapable of see- ing any romance in reality. If a man's own life has no crimson -and golden touches on its clouds, he is not likely to rise into the highest heaven of poetical invention, to find them there. But apart from depressing circumstances affecting Pope in particular, there is the question, applicable in every instance in which we -deal with men of genius, wherein is the true aim, the genuine aspiration, of such to be traced? Is it in their actions, or is it in their writings ? The truest ideal of every man of great literary genius is, we think, to be found in his books. It is the true standard of Pope which we find in the Essay on Man, the Epistle -to St. John (Lord Bolingbroke), and in the Dunriad. Even in these he is far from a perfect character,—his vindictiveness, his vanity, his, sensitive egotism, are easily read between the lines ; but it is also abundantly evident that, at the very roots of his being, there lay a sincere devotion to truth, to rectitude, to mercy, and that, therefore, how short soever he may have fallen of his own ideal amid the sharp temptations of life, he was not wholly un- sound, and deserves a seat among those immortals whom the race reveres as not only great, but at least a sincere worshipper of goodness.
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