309. , May 5, 1797; ed. cit., ii. 96…

309. , May 5, 1797; ed. cit., ii. 96

Footnote 752:

All the pieces here mentioned will be found in the Cotta ed. of Bürger’s Ausgewählte Werke. The epigram on Goethe’s doubling the part of artist and minister (ii. 78, ed. cit.) has much more satiric quality than most of the Xenien themselves possess.

Footnote 753:

Ed. cit., ii. 208. But Bürger ought to have faced the question, “If the asafœtidarian poet has travelled, and been convinced of roses, what then?” See, however, some notable things here on Style, &c.

Footnote 754:

See his Works, or separately in two volumes of Cotta’s Bibliothek. The note cited is at i. 43. Observe that Richter was by no means a partisan Wielandist.

Footnote 755:

In the Essay which opens the Miscellanies.

Footnote 756:

A not unamiable reviewer has suggested that if I would draw up a neat tabular contrast of “Classic” and “Romantic,” and put it—mounted on linen, I presume, but he did not say so—in a pocket of this volume, it would be useful, especially for examinations. I am afraid I do not regard examinations in a sufficiently orthodox spirit to make any effort to supercram their crammableness, and I hope I have more wit than to attempt to define anything. Something, however, will be found in the Interchapters of this volume which may stimulate if it does not satisfy. The rest of the Lector Benevolus may consider as destined to form part du Quart Livre, if I may speak Pantagruelically.

Footnote 757:

The chief—a kind of classic—is R. Haym’s Die Romantische Schule (Berlin, 1870). Dr. Brandes’s later work on the subject, as on much else that we touch, should not need recommendation.

Footnote 758:

Novalis Schriften (3 vols., 1 and 2, 5th ed., Berlin 1837, 3, 1st ed., ibid., 1846), i. 239. Appendix-note to Heinrich von Ofterdingen.

Footnote 759:

Translating it, with other things, in his Essay on Novalis.

Footnote 760:

Cosas de Inglaterra generally appear to have been (as he confesses, Shakespeare partly was) “dark” to Novalis. His is the famous statement that “every Englishman is an island.” Now islands form the most beautiful and delightful part of the earth’s surface: but you must go to them to know them.

Footnote 761:

P. 179.

Footnote 762:

P. 180.

Footnote 763:

P. 185.

Footnote 764:

Pp. 187, 188.

Footnote 765:

P. 190.

Footnote 766:

P. 195.

Footnote 767:

iii. 164.

Footnote 768:

iii. 164.

Footnote 769:

P. 168.

Footnote 770:

P. 174.

Footnote 771:

P. 176. All the context here is precious.

Footnote 772:

4 vols., Leipzig, 1848-52. I fear it was not widely bought, for the first edition seems never to have gone out of print.

Footnote 773:

Leipzig, 1855.

Footnote 774:

One of the unluckiest is on The Second Maiden’s Tragedy (i. 320), where he observes on the lines—

“If you can construe but your doctor’s bill, Parse your wife’s waiting-women.” “Parse? Was kann es bedeuten?” “Pierce ist dem aufmerksamen Auge leserlich genug.”

Here one can only open one’s eyes at the question, and smother one’s reply.

Footnote 775:

The Works of Friedrich (except some Juvenilia) are included in a complete edition (Vienna, 1846) in fifteen vols., of which the first eight are entirely filled with critical matter. Of August Wilhelm, besides the Sämmtliche Werke (12 vols., Leipzig, 1846), there are three vols. of French and two of Latin works, and also the Lectures, which were not published till 1884 (Heilbronn).

Footnote 776:

They were redistributed later in the Works of the brothers and in A. W.'s Kritische Schriften. But it is good to read, and possess, the original Characteristiken und Kritiken (2 vols., Königsberg, 1801).

Footnote 777:

I should think better of the criticism of Germany if it did not habitually speak of “Romeo und Juli_a_.” In the first place, it is surely common good manners not to alter an author’s title—though you may abbreviate it. In the second, which is more important, the change argues an æsthetic and gynæcologic callousness. Juli_a_ and Juli_et_ are quite different persons.

Footnote 778:

Schlegel was twenty-nine at the date of the earliest, and sixty-one when the book was published. The climacteric of accomplished youth and that of not yet absolutely declining age could not be much better hit off.

Footnote 779:

i. 74-164.

Footnote 780:

It opens the second vol., and goes to p. 81.

Footnote 781:

V. sup., p. 81. That which follows on Voss, Matthisson, and Schmidt is rather over full of citation.

Footnote 782:

I have already waived the controversy between Coleridge and the Schlegels. The fact is that the resemblance is mainly one of attitude—one of those results of “skyey influences” which constantly manifest themselves in different persons of genius and talent more or less simultaneously. And it may be added that the general presence of this attitude in Coleridge before his German visit, before either Schlegel had attained any great notoriety, or had written anything likely to penetrate to England, or even anything very characteristic, is attested not merely by the concrete document, in not so very alien material, of The Ancient Mariner, but by testimonies as to his conversation, from half a dozen different people.

Footnote 783:

It is No. 19, which describes Æsthetics as “the salt which dutiful disciples are going to put on the tail of the Ideal (enjoined upon them as so necessary to poetry), as soon as they get near enough.”

Footnote 784:

Nor had Schlegel attained the art of grasping and exhibiting a writer, not merely as Sainte-Beuve was to do, but even as Johnson had done. The “Chamfort” in this book (i. 338-365) show this.

Footnote 785:

Gespr. mit Eck., iii. 100. Effeminacy, as well as coxcombry, was frequently charged against him: and the unpopularity of both brothers as persons was very great. But this Camarina, like all such, is better unstirred.

Footnote 786:

i. 47, ed. cit. He is “the last in value as in time,” of ancient critics, “the inventor of sentimental æsthetic,” “empty of ideas.” “All which propositions I for the present content myself,” as Carlyle observes in another matter, “with modestly, but peremptorily and irrevocably, denying.”

Footnote 787:

P. 49. He bewails their “practical sterility,” their “muddle of Art and Nature” (das man Kunst und Natur so durcheinander warf), &c.

Footnote 788:

He praises the mot, “According to Burke, the Beautiful is a tolerably pretty strumpet, and the Sublime is a grenadier with a big moustache.” Who said this?

Footnote 789:

In several places, especially iii. 62, 63. There is a useful index to these lectures: but their condition requires a full table of contents.

Footnote 790:

ii. 210, 313.

Footnote 791:

The first and less complete issue, in 10 vols., was in 1821-25.

Footnote 792:

Ed. cit., vols. i. and ii.

Footnote 793:

Vols. iii., iv., v.

Footnote 794:

Vol. vi.

Footnote 795:

Vol. viii.

Footnote 796:

Ibid.

Footnote 797:

Gesammelte Werke, 6 vols., in the Cotta Library.

Footnote 798:

Most of his best things were published by 1815, and many of these had been written years before.

Footnote 799:

They fill 4 out of the 6 vols., as given in ed. cit.

Footnote 800:

I have used the second edition (Breslau, 1820). The first appeared in 1818, as a mere booklet in comparison.

Footnote 801:

Vorlesungen über Æsthetik: Leipzig, 1829.

Footnote 802:

P. 7.

Footnote 803:

De Quincey’s Essay on Schlosser (Works, vol. vii.) is disfigured by his usual rather boisterous fooling and rigmarole, but very sound in the main.

Footnote 804:

Vol. ii. Bk. VI. chap. iii. I do not yet know Molledano (R. y P. R.), Historia literaria de España, 9 (10) vols. 4to, 1769-79.

Footnote 805:

See also infra in the last chapter of the next Book. I suppose the name most likely to be missed here is that of Ugo Foscolo. The author of the Letters of Jacopo Ortis must seem, to those who think Rousseau a critic, to be another, and the commentator on Petrarch and Dante certainly was one. But I think we can do without him.

Footnote 806:

II. 216.

Footnote 807:

V. sup., p. 386.

Footnote 808:

See the Addenda-Corrigenda in this vol. for Dennis’s counter-assertion.

Footnote 809:

Certain persons would, of course, omit even the provisos here: but of them I take no keep.

Footnote 810:

The Germans did it rather earlier but not so well: the French almost if not quite as well and more voluminously, but later.

Footnote 811:

The second Essay of the Miscellanies, vol. i.

Footnote 812:

A hit, of course, at Coleridge, as, I suppose, is that above about “the nature of the poet.”

Footnote 813:

This celebrated tractate, which cannot be too much honoured as a Counsel of Perfection, may be said to have started the belief, comfortable for those who entertain it, that all who follow not their notion of “Philosophy” and “the Idea” are “Completed Bunglers.” “Perhaps so, my dear! perhaps so,” as an excellent Bishop of the Roman branch of the Catholic Church is said to have once remarked to a little vulgar boy who told him he was “no gentleman.”

Footnote 814:

Carlyle, in a very fine passage, admits their acceptance of “all true singers of every age and clime.” I fear the Devil’s Advocate’s devil, if you gave him a little time, could collect a curious dossier of contrary instances: but this matters little. They are entitled to credit for maintaining and spreading this catholic faith. But even Dryden, according to his lights, had championed it a century earlier; Gray, if he could have shaken off the deadly sin of Accidia—the deadliest to the man of letters—would have been Herder + either Schlegel, and more also, long before any of them; and Coleridge is Coleridge, however much he may have annoyed Carlyle at Highgate.

Footnote 815:

P. 233 of the vol. for the University—year 1902-3.

Footnote 816:

The rest of this Interchapter may be taken—like the two Appendices—as a sample of that fourth volume of “Critical Excursus” which I should have liked to give, had I thought that readers would endure it.

Footnote 817:

Add some other blessings, as that the periodical can contradict itself—which the book sometimes does, but should not.

Footnote 818:

I beg pardon: when I wrote the above I had not read the boast of the gentleman who could “come to a pile of new books, tear the entrails out of them, and write a 1500-word causerie, passably stylistic, all within sixty minutes”! But perhaps this also was irony?

Footnote 819:

I take my examples as usual from English; but, as usual, nothing but the consideration of space prevents me from adducing French and German parallels.

Footnote 820:

It was originally published, remember, before the death of Coleridge, and well within the period of our Book, even as to English.

Footnote 821:

It is of course impossible to appreciate this stanza fully except as a modification, and in comparison with other modifications, of the normal decasyllabic quatrain of Gondibert and Annus Mirabilis. Yet persons calling themselves critics have sometimes been amusingly indignant at the suggestion of this obvious fact.

Footnote 822:

The original form of this, in 1832-33, was less perfect, but the aim and the principle are there already.

Footnote 823:

Mr Hall Caine, in his Cobwebs of Criticism (London, 1883); Mr E. Stevenson, in a useful and unpretentious collection of Early Reviews (London, n. d.), &c., &c.

Footnote 824:

“Poetry has this much at least in common with religion, that its standards were fixed long ago by certain inspired writers, whose authority it is no longer lawful to call in question.” There may seem to be an ironic touch in this: but the whole article is written to the text.

Footnote 825:

V. sup., vol. i. p. 252.

Footnote 826:

These texts can be seen in detail in more than one modern book on Tennyson, and wholly in Mr Churton Collins’s painstaking and useful reprint of the Early Poems (London, 1900).

Footnote 827:

His books are too numerous to catalogue, and too equal in merit and defect to select from.

Footnote 828:

Tableau de la marche, &c., de la Littérature Française: Paris, 1828. It may also be found at the end of the Didot ed. of La Harpe’s Cours de Littérature.

Footnote 829:

He was a friend of my father’s in his English days, and I remember long ago seeing letters of his signed “Chasles d’Almar,” after a not uncommon French fashion.

Footnote 830:

It fills perhaps the major part of the great collection of articles called Les Œuvres et les Hommes (15 vols., Paris, 1860-95).

Footnote 831:

xi. 72.

Footnote 832:

See vol. xiii. of Les Œuvres et les Hommes.

Footnote 833:

Note that the last outrage—commune—avenges Miss Austen of Madame de Staël.

Footnote 834:

xii. 245.

Footnote 835:

Mélanges et Lettres, 4 vols., Paris: 1876-77.

Footnote 836:

Op. cit., i. 34 sq.

Footnote 837:

Printed in vol. iv.

Footnote 838:

i. 432.

Footnote 839:

i. 521.

Footnote 840:

ii. 389.

Footnote 841:

iii. 128.

Footnote 842:

iv. 151.

Footnote 843:

Not a little of the later published Pensées (Paris, 1880) is definitely literary in subject; but the book is a small one, and its contents seem to me to lack something of the absolute spontaneity and privacy of the larger and earlier collection. There are, however, noteworthy things; let me mention, as one of several for honour, the important dictum, p. 24, that “une forte mémoire ne dénature pas assez ce qu’on imite,” where Doudan trembles on the verge of that truth which so few have reached, that art is _dis_realisation. Not so good is the wish that Scott had attempted Wellington or Napoleon as a hero, for it shows that Doudan was unwilling to accept (what nevertheless, as the context shows, he half saw) the cardinal law of the Historical Novel, that the main personages must not be historical.

Footnote 844:

For an article in the Fortnightly Review (May 1880).

Footnote 845:

For the reprint and completion of that article in Miscellaneous Essays (London, 1892).

Footnote 846:

In the Avenir de la Science.

Footnote 847:

See his Derniers Essais de Critique et d’Histoire (Paris, 1894), a remarkably representative collection (though, of course, not dispensing the reader who really wishes to know, from consulting the earlier collections of the same general heading), and one specially to be recommended to those who only know the Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise. The Letters, earlier and later, I have not drawn upon.

Footnote 848:

V. sup., p. 307.

Footnote 849:

Journal des Goncourt, ii. 123.

Footnote 850:

The first of these is Les vies illustres s'éteignent sur tous les points du monde, comme les mille flambeaux d’une fête qui finit. On this Taine’s comment is, “tout homme qui a tenu une plume tressaille en la lisant.” Most true: but how about time, place and milieu? The other is an exquisite conceit about the girl-speakers in the Decameron.

Footnote 851:

In Nouveaux Lundis, and Études Critiques, respectively. M. Montégut’s deliverance is less important, for reasons to be mentioned presently. It does the panegyrics admirably.

Footnote 852:

V. sup., p. 349. Mérimée commends Taine highly to the Inconnue.

Footnote 853:

In English he translated Shakespeare, Macaulay, and Emerson.

Footnote 854:

Especially, some may say, when he does not like you, or what you like.

Footnote 855:

This was probably due to the influence of Taine, with whom (as he once told me in an interesting letter in regard to some published remarks of mine) he at one time took much critical counsel.

Footnote 856:

See the opening piece, “Du Caractère Anglais,” of Essais sur la Littérature Anglaise (Paris, 1883).

Footnote 857:

Nos Morts Contemporains, ii. 199 (Paris, 1884).

Footnote 858:

In Poètes et Artistes de l’Italie. He was much pleased with the eulogy which I was able to bestow on this. M. Scherer was not—I cannot tell why, for certainly jealousy of praise given to somebody else was not one of his faults. Probably he did not like Boccaccio—or Alaciel.

Footnote 859:

In the book already cited and its companion, Écrivains Modernes de l’Angleterre (Paris, 1885).

Footnote 860:

In the first series of Nos Morts Contemporains, but written long before “Théo’s” death, in 1865.

Footnote 861:

Écrivains Modernes de l’Angleterre, as above.

Footnote 862:

10 of Études Critiques sur la Littérature (Paris, 1863-89), besides separate ones on Diderot, on Grimm, &c. I myself translated and edited his Essays on English Literature (London, 1891).

Footnote 863:

That is, since the period of the Reformation. I do not think he knew much of older date.

Footnote 864:

It followed, that though less devoted to formulas than Taine, he was determined that all literary criticism must be connected with the exhibition of national character.

Footnote 865:

He had such a sense, both of French wit and of English humour, but within very narrow and sometimes quite arbitrarily drawn restrictions.

Footnote 866:

The best examples of this group are perhaps the Goethe, known in England by Mr. Arnold’s essay, the Taine’s English Literature, and the treatment of Renan’s Peuple d’Israël.

Footnote 867:

Gérard de Nerval ought to have been one of the best of these: but, like Mérimée and Gautier himself, he was much occupied with better things than criticism, and in it he chiefly dealt with drama.

Footnote 868:

Petit Traité de Poésie Française: Paris, 1891.

Footnote 869:

Paris, 1867: often reprinted.

Footnote 870:

Paris, 1880, and later (3 vols.)

Footnote 871:

The whole of the 2nd vol., Curiosités Esthétiques, and part of the 3rd, L’Art Romantique, of his Œuvres (4 vols., Paris, 1868), are occupied by this.

Footnote 872:

One of the few wholly agreeable pieces of anecdotage contained in the Journal des Goncourt seems to show that the accusations generally brought as to the poet having hastened his own end by reckless living were at least hasty. It seems that his mother, Madame Aupick, the most respectable of old ladies, died under the same curse of aphasia and general paralysis.

Footnote 873:

It would be difficult to say quite the same of the Œuvres Posthumes (Paris, 1887), though these also contain valuable critical matter. But much is familiar letter-writing never intended for serious perusal, and not a little bears the clear marks of brain-disease.

Footnote 874:

4 vols., Paris, 1861.

Footnote 875:

The first volume—to George Sand, with Maupassant’s Introduction— appeared in 1884: the general Correspondence followed. George Sand’s replies, as well as other things of hers, give her a right to, at least, a place in this note.

Footnote 876:

V. inf. on Mr Pater.

Footnote 877:

Two such different persons and writers as Zola himself and M. Anatole France have, in different parts of the Mémoires des Goncourt, given true and valuable testimony to one of the great merits of that much-abused and certainly much-abusable thing journalism—the facility and audacity, namely, which it confers. No doubt the facility which it gives may turn to slovenliness, and the boldness in attempting great tasks to levity: but this need not be so,—M. France himself is a convincing evidence in the one case at least. And there is no doubt that the practised habit of undertaking complicated things at short notice, and of doing the “day’s darg” in the day, protects a man from that “impossibility of getting ready,” that “not knowing how to begin” (and still less how to finish), which has sterilised even genius so frequently.

Footnote 878:

The title of the first, Mes Haines (Paris, 1866), is unlucky. Taken as a joke, it is not very good: taken seriously, it is fatal. It may not be easy to preserve the critical attitude when you love: that attitude is gone, without hope of recovery, as soon as you hate.

Footnote 879:

Paris, 1880.

Footnote 880:

All these will be found in the volume cited.

Footnote 881:

Op. cit., p. 343.

Footnote 882:

Again the enemy “has said it.” You cannot have a much better description of the highest literary art than this.

Footnote 883:

He was drowned while bathing. V. Mémoires des Goncourt.

Footnote 884:

La Critique Scientifique (Paris, 1888), followed by Études de Crit. Scient., in two series (1889 and 1890). I am under the impression that Hennequin owed something—perhaps a good deal—to Mr H. M. Posnett’s Comparative Literature (London, 1886), a book which, for the usual reason, escapes our survey. It may, however, be observed that “Comparative Literature” is a very awkward phrase, neither really representing “Littérature Comparée” nor really analogous to “Comparative Anatomy.” “Comparative Study of Literature” would be all right: otherwise “Comparative Criticism” or “Rhetoric” is wanted.

Footnote 885:

La Critique Scientifique, p. 29.

Footnote 886:

This appeared in 1895; Études de Littérature Européenne followed three years later, and La Littérature Comparée in 1900. The contributions to Petit de Julleville have been noticed (ii. 528. note).

Footnote 887:

For more on it, and on another kind of it, see below on the late Karl Hillebrand.

Footnote 888:

V. sup., p. 97 sq.

Footnote 889:

A good example of his literary work is La Fin du 18ième Siècle (2 vols., Paris, 1880). He speaks of Diderot as un essayiste à la façon Anglaise, which is complimentary—and instructive.

Footnote 890:

Histoire de la Jeune Allemagne, Littérature Étrangère, Drames et Romans de la Vie Littéraire, &c.

Footnote 891:

Montégut (v. sup., p. 445) thought better of him.

Footnote 892:

V. sup., p. 336.

Footnote 893:

The posthumous Épisodes Littéraires (Paris, 1890) contrasts very pleasantly with too many utterances “d’Outre-Tombe.”

Footnote 894:

“Call yourself Voltaire: I promise you some sensations,” was one of his boasts which became famous. It was by no means mere bragging.

Footnote 895:

Paris, 1856 onwards.

Footnote 896:

In an essay originally published in Macmillan’s Magazine for July 1886, and reprinted in Essays in English Literature (3rd. ed., London, 1896).

Footnote 897:

As I am not speaking enfarinhadomente about Wilson’s faults, I may fairly protest against an exaggeration of them. It is surely unlucky of Mr Buxton Forman (Keats’ Letters, i. 46, ed. 1900) to talk of Blackwood’s Magazine having “a monopoly of frowsy and unsavoury personal gibes” in “the possession of Christopher North,” when he had himself a few papers earlier cited Hazlitt’s almost Bedlamite Billingsgate against Southey in the Examiner.

Footnote 898:

As the 4th vol. of Essays Critical and Imaginative (4 vols., Edinburgh, 1856-57). It follows Wilson’s usual lines of a running study of the poem and those who have written about it. Much of it, as of the essay on the Agamemnon which follows, is occupied by a not uninteresting parallel-collection of translations.

Footnote 899:

Literature of Europe, chap. xiv., § 82.

Footnote 900:

It will be found in Blackwood’s Magazine, vols. xxxiv., xxxvi., and xxxvii. (Edinburgh, 1833-35).

Footnote 901:

For this is one of the metaphors which (as Théophile Gautier boasted of his own, and as so few others can boast) se suivent.

Footnote 902:

Ibid., vols. lvii., lviii. (1849).

Footnote 903:

Blackwood’s Magazine, vols. lxv.-lxviii. and lxxii. (1849-52).

Footnote 904:

There is much good as well as bad criticism here; but it is almost inevitable that the goodness should be obscured to too many tastes, and the bad intensified to almost all, by the setting of High Jinks. Yet Wilson, like Shakespeare according to Collier, “could be very serious,” and his defence of Croker against Macaulay is far more valid than has usually been allowed.

Footnote 905:

Essays, i. 387 sq.

Footnote 906:

Ibid., ii. 109 sq.

Footnote 907:

Ibid., iii. 386.

Footnote 908:

i. 179.

Footnote 909:

As De Quincey had, for one who was not a novelist, the probably unique honour of four complete editions of his Works in his last years and the generation succeeding his death, it is not easy to refer to him. But the last—Professor Masson’s of 1890—has the merit of methodical arrangement: and its tenth volume contains most of the purely critical things.

Footnote 910:

In Coleridge and Opium Eating.

Footnote 911:

As it is very dangerous to write about De Quincey, let me observe that this is a phrase of Mr Thackeray’s about another person, and implies affection and even admiration.

Footnote 912:

In his “biography” of Goethe.

Footnote 913:

Vol. x., ed. cit. Date, 1838-39.

Footnote 914:

As such it will prove interesting to compare him with Nisard or Planche, especially the latter. But the comparison will, I fear, bring out that superiority of French criticism at this time which, denying it at others, I fully admit.

Footnote 915:

The objection of some folk to this useful word may be perhaps accounted for by their spelling it “protrept_r_ic.”

Footnote 916:

This book, which often occurs in catalogues at a very moderate price, may be strongly recommended to intelligent book-buyers. It is pretty to look at, agreeable to handle, and delightful to read. Janus, another waif, in which he and Wilson collaborated, is less interesting. (For a fuller treatment of Lockhart, as of others, I may once more refer to my Essays in Criticism.)

Footnote 917:

Works, 7 vols. (London, 1851-52), ed. Derwent Coleridge; Poems and Memoir, 2 vols.; Essays, 2; Northern Worthies, 3. An eighth, of Fragments, was promised; but if it ever appeared, I have not seen it.

Footnote 918:

“The Professor,” it is hardly necessary to say, was an early and lifelong friend and neighbour of Hartley, whom he seems to have regarded with particular affection.

Footnote 919:

It is, perhaps, not officious to subjoin a reminder that we have the curious pleasure of S. T. C.'s notes on Hartley in the Biographia Borealis. One of these—an objection to the phrase “prose Shakespeare” for Heywood—is very odd, as apparently showing forgetfulness of the fact that the phrase is not his eldest son’s, but his oldest friend’s.

Footnote 920:

Miscellanies, Prose and Verse, by William Maginn, ed. R. W. Montagu. 2 vols., London, 1885.

Footnote 921:

They are scattered all over the Memoirs of Morgan O’Doherty, and often form independent items of the Miscellanies.

Footnote 922:

It would have been interesting to hear Maginn on the Revised Version “after” the Authorised.

Footnote 923:

Ed. cit., ii. 1-116. Let me guard carefully against being supposed myself to speak disrespectfully of Farmer, whose Essay will be found recently reprinted in Mr Nichol Smith’s collection. Farmer is at least as right against his adversaries as Maginn against him.

Footnote 924:

Ibid., pp. 117-144.

Footnote 925:

In prose from The Story without a Tail, and in verse from The Pewter Quart onward.

Footnote 926:

Life, p. 309 sq., ed. cit.

Footnote 927:

Life, p. 343 ed. cit.

Footnote 928:

He was thirty-eight.

Footnote 929:

One of the _in_justices is curious from a man of Scottish blood, though every Englishman would commit it, as I own I should have done till very late in my reviewing life. It is the satire on the comparison of a woman’s eyes to dew on “a bramble,” which of course in England means a bush, and in Scotland a berry. I wonder whether R. L. S. meant to appease the other poor Robert’s manes when he wrote the phrase “eyes of gold and bramble-dew,” and I should have asked him had Fate permitted.

Footnote 930:

It may seem whimsical: but I doubt whether any one of a really critical ethos would put down, even in his private diary, that a private enemy and a hostile reviewer was “a bad, a very bad man, a scandal to politics and letters.” Criticism herself would, I think, condescend to give any of her favourite children’s ears an Apollonian twitch.

Footnote 931:

Carlyle was an older man than Macaulay, but he began to publish original work later.

Footnote 932:

Any one anxious really to appreciate Carlyle’s potentia as a literary critic may be specially commended to this. It was written, of course, not merely before he developed his own style, but before the freer modern criticism had been largely developed by anybody except apart-dwelling stars like Coleridge. But it brands the author as a great critic if he chose. He did not wholly choose: and, later, he refused.

Footnote 933:

London, 1896.

Footnote 934:

Not that all Taylor’s ideas were preposterous. He and others of the Norwich School would make a good excursus. Even the “quotidian and stimulant” theory, of which Carlyle makes such fun, might have a chance with Carlyle’s own “highest aim of a nation.”

Footnote 935:

More especially those on the Nibelungenlied and Early German Poetry generally. These could hardly have been better done.

Footnote 936:

As an out-and-out Scottite and Carlylian, I would respectfully deprecate hasty judgment of this. It is a crux ansata, and you may easily get hold of the wrong handle.

Footnote 937:

“O people of Paraguay! how long will you continue idiots?” If a casual half-breed really thus put politics and life in a nut-shell, he was certainly somebody.

Footnote 938:

The different paging of the different editions makes it useless to give exact references. Nor are they wanted; for the “Contents” and Indices of Carlyle’s works are ideal.

Footnote 939:

Had he been reading Vico?

Footnote 940:

Since the text was written, a full collection of his literary criticism with many anepecdota, has appeared in Messrs Macmillan’s new edition.

Footnote 941:

Edinburgh, 1899, p. 59.

Footnote 942:

Ibid., note. p. 10.

Footnote 943:

It is all the more remarkable that the writer was “not the first comer.” He was, I believe, William Smith, the author of Thorndale and other books much prized by good judges, a man of great talents, wide reading, and admirable character.

Footnote 944:

My copy is the 2nd ed. Mr W. G. Clark’s preface to the 1st is dated “Ap. 1858,” rather less than a year after Brimley’s death.

Footnote 945:

Cf. Chesterfield’s profound remark to Mme. de Mauconseil, on Christmas Day 1755: Il me semble que le mal physique attendrit autant que le mal moral endurcit le cœur.

Footnote 946:

This idol had already had notice to quit. The Essay is of 1855, when it originally appeared in Cambridge Essays. Matthew Arnold’s admirable Preface is two years older.

Footnote 947:

The “Wordsworth” is some years earlier than the “Tennyson.” It appeared in Fraser during the summer of 1851.

Footnote 948:

He will reappear in the Appendix devoted to holders of the Oxford Chair of Poetry.

Footnote 949:

In Friends in Council.

Footnote 950:

I have slipped from N to O: but it is only next door.

Footnote 951:

London, 1902.

Footnote 952:

Essays and Reviews, London, 1876. The other papers—on Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, George Eliot—are good, but not so good, and show that difficulty of the mid-century critic in “sticking to literature,” which is the theme of this chapter.

Footnote 953:

London, 1866.

Footnote 954:

London, 1866.

Footnote 955:

That which amused me most is the employment, with the difference, of the cat-girl simile [v. sup., ii. 550]. I am sure I did not take it from him; and if we both took it from somebody else (to adopt the comfortable principles of Miss Teresa M’Whirter at the conclusion of A Legend of the Rhine), I do not know who the somebody else was.

Footnote 956:

London, 1852.

Footnote 957:

It is important to notice that he is not hostile, he is simply puzzled. The great method, which emerges first in Dryden, and which Sainte-Beuve perfected, of “shaking together” different literary examples, is still dark to him in practice, though, as has been said, he had a glimpse of its theory.

Footnote 958:

Foster’s interest in literature—real, but very strongly coloured and conditioned by his moral and religious preoccupations—may be easily appraised by reading his Essays on “A Man Writing his Own Memoirs” and “The Epithet Romantic” in Bohn’s Library.

Footnote 959:

Fox has the credit of “discovering” Browning, but there were personal reasons here. Much more, of course, were there such in A. H. Hallam’s essay on Tennyson—a rather overrated thing.

Footnote 960:

Rogers is even “mentioned in despatches”—that is, by Sainte-Beuve.

Footnote 961:

See his Early Essays in Bohn’s reprint. The criticism of certain romantic poets of the mid century would make an interesting excursus of the kind which I have indicated as (if it were possible) fit to be included in a fourth volume of this work. Horne’s New Spirit of the Age (1845), though exhibiting all the singular inadequacies, inequalities, and inorganicisms of the author of Orion, does not entirely deserve the severe contrast which Thackeray drew between it and its original as given by Hazlitt. Mrs Browning, who took some part in this, has left a substantive critical contribution in The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets, in which again the weaknesses of the writer in poetry are interestingly compensated by weaknesses in criticism, but in which again also, and much more, “the critic whom every poet must [or should] contain” sometimes asserts himself not unsuccessfully. W. C. Roscoe, whose verse is at least interesting, and has been thought something more, is critically not negligible. But perhaps the most interesting document which would have to be treated in such an excursus is Sydney Dobell’s Nature of Poetry, delivered as a lecture (it must have been something of a choke-pear for the audience) at Edinburgh in 1857. Here the author, though not nominatim, directly traverses Matthew Arnold’s doctrine in the great Preface (see next chapter), by maintaining that a perfect poem will be the exhibition of a perfect mind, and, we may suppose, a less perfect but still defensible poem the exhibition of a less perfect mind—which principle, no doubt, is, in any case, the sole possible justification of Festus and of Balder. Others (especially Sir Henry Taylor) might be added, but these will probably suffice.

Footnote 962:

The immortality of critical error—the impossibility of quelling the Blatant Beast—to which we have alluded (ii. 554, note) is again illustrated here. One might have thought that Mr Arnold had sufficiently crushed and concluded this fallacy. It has been seen again—in places where it should not have been—in these last few years.

Footnote 963:

This very generous assumption comes, I feel sure, from the blending of Wordsworth (v. sup., on him) with Aristotle.

Footnote 964:

Mr Arnold never explicitly retracted this “pyramidal” exaggeration—it was not his way; but nearly the whole of his French Critic on Goethe is a transparent “hedge,” a scarcely ambiguous palinode. For the doctrine itself, see note at end of last chapter.

Footnote 965:

I think Mr Arnold, especially after italicising these words, should really have told us as a WHAT we are to think of the author of Shakespeare’s greatest expressions.

Footnote 966:

V. sup., i. 116.

Footnote 967:

Those to the manner born or matriculated in it have generally been kind to him: but then he has given them rather considerable bribes.

Footnote 968:

He has been largely imitated in this, and I cannot help thinking that it is a pity. If a man is definitely and ostensibly “reviewing” another man’s work, he has a perfect right, subject to the laws of good manners, to discuss him quoad hoc. But illustrations of general discourses by dragging in living persons seem to be forbidden by those laws as they apply in the literary province.

Footnote 969:

This pearl of eighteenth century minor poetry occurs in the 7th (“The Wallflower”) of its author’s Fables of Flora (Chalmers, xvi. 447). I think Scott’s unequalled combination of memory and taste has used it somewhere as a motto.

Footnote 970:

Gryll Grange, chap. xiv. Cf. i. 381 note.

Footnote 971:

Vol. i. p. 380. I might, and perhaps should, have introduced an interesting expression of more moderate opinion from St Basil, the pupil of Libanius, and the fellow-student of Julian. But I am glad that I did not, because I can introduce it here with an reference to the interesting translation published with Plutarch’s How to Read Poetry (v. sup., i. 140), by Professor Paculford of the University of Washington (“Yale Studies,” No. xv.: New York, 1932). The Saint allows the study of the purer profane literature as a useful and ornamental introduction to higher things.

Footnote 972:

Not that he is wholly wrong in regard to either: while he does allow some of the almost unbelievable absurdities of Brooke’s eccentric, though far from “unimportant,” purpose-novel. But it is evident—and, indeed, confessed—that he is thinking of the ethical tone and spirit first, midmost, and almost last also.

Footnote 973:

Not, again, that the Short Studies especially can be neglected, even from our point of view.

Footnote 974:

I have purposely taken all these examples from the Selections, where they will be easily found.

Footnote 975:

The Essays comprising this, with their sequel and complement The Inner Life of Art, appeared in the Fortnightly Review (which Lewes edited) at its beginning in 1865, and have been usefully reprinted by Mr T. S. Knowlson (London, n. d.) I may observe that the cheap and useful collection (the “Scott Library”) in which this reprint appears provides a large amount of other valuable critical matter.

Footnote 976:

Chap. iii. p. 47 sq., ed. cit.

Footnote 977:

Ibid., p. 113.

Footnote 978:

Excepting (largely) the exceptions already made, and also the huge mass of his unreprinted contributions to newspapers. The Leader, under his editorship, was a pioneer of improvement in reviewing.

Footnote 979:

The posthumous Literary Studies, and Mr Hutton’s essay (v. ed. cit. on next paragraph), are the places for studying him. The study may result, without protest from me, in a high opinion of his criticism.

Footnote 980:

2 vols., London, 1894.

Footnote 981:

I fully expect to be told by some critic that there is no such book, just as I once was told that Browning wrote no such poem as James Lee.

Footnote 982:

Printed by Mr Gosse (London, 1896) privately: but I believe it has been included in the complete edition.

Footnote 983:

I have always wondered what made him think that I personally prefer plain to ornate prose. The contrary, if it were of any moment, happens to be the case, though I own I think, as even De Quincey thought, that the ornate styles are not styles of all work.

Footnote 984:

Nor do I think the “Postscript” of Appreciations, where the writer “Arnoldises” somewhat, one of his best things, good as it is.

Footnote 985:

Especially in his numerous volumes of Essays and Studies, under various names.

Footnote 986:

London, 1895.

Footnote 987:

A “pair” for Mr Symonds from the other University might be found in the late Mr Frederick Myers, who, with more philosophical and less artistic tendency, exhibited an equally flamboyant style.

Footnote 988:

Its chief monuments or repertories are Essays and Phantasies (London, 1881) and Poems, Essays, and Fragments (London, 1892).

Footnote 989:

On men like Shelley and Blake, of course, Thomson was free from most of his “Satans”: and he speaks well on them.

Footnote 990:

His Defoe, in the English Men of Letters Series, is not to be overlooked.

Footnote 991:

Manual of English Prose Literature (Edinburgh, 1872); Characteristics of English Poets, from Chaucer to Shirley (Edinburgh, 1874).

Footnote 992:

I do not know whether he contributed to anything before that remarkable periodical The Dark Blue, which, during its short life in the earliest 'Seventies, had a staff not easily surpassable, and almost reminding one of the earlier English London Magazine and of the French Globe.

Footnote 993:

Both in the English Men of Letters. The Sterne appeared in 1882; the Coleridge in 1884.

Footnote 994:

The New Fiction and other Essays on Literary Subjects (London, 1897).

Footnote 995:

See his Letters, Lectures, and Reviews: London, 1873.

Footnote 996:

Especially in Horæ Sabbaticæ.

Footnote 997:

London, 1873.

Footnote 998:

London, 1889.

Footnote 999:

London, 1893.

Footnote 1000:

I do not mean that they were rubbish there. Rubbish is only “matter in the wrong place,” and what is rubbish in a book need by no means be rubbish in a newspaper.

Footnote 1001:

London, 1880.

Footnote 1002:

2 vols., London, 1887.

Footnote 1003:

Such as even Gautier.

Footnote 1004:

This sensibleness, no doubt, ought always to characterise the “Tertium Quid” or “cross-bench” mind. It is equally indubitable that it most commonly does not.

Footnote 1005:

T. Q., vol. ii.

Footnote 1006:

I do not take special notice of R. L. Stevenson here, because his criticism, in any formal shape, belongs mainly to the earlier and tentative stage of his work, and never, to my fancy, had much fixity or grip, interesting and stimulating as it is. I ventured to tell him, when I met him first, after the appearance of The New Arabian Nights in London, that here was Apollo waiting for him, not there: and I hold to the view. Others, such as Mr Henley (with whom also I rowed in that galley—a tight and saucy one, if not exactly a galère capitaine), Mr Robert Buchanan, Sir Leslie Stephen, Prof. Bain, have passed away too recently; and yet others must fall into the numerus.

Footnote 1007:

Bk. VIII.

Footnote 1008:

In accordance with the absolute frankness which I have imposed upon myself, I shall confess here that my knowledge of the most modern German literature is much less complete than my knowledge of French and English.

Footnote 1009:

I use the Cotta ed., in 13 vols.

Footnote 1010:

The passage in the opening of the Reisebilder ought to be sufficiently well known.

Footnote 1011:

Ed. cit., vii. 172 and 215.

Footnote 1012:

Vermischte Schriften, xii. 175

Footnote 1013:

x. 225.

Footnote 1014:

They should specially not read him on Börne.

Footnote 1015:

Vol. iv., ed. cit.

Footnote 1016:

The chief are at iv. 230 and x. 250.

Footnote 1017:

Especially vii. 185 sq.

Footnote 1018:

vii. 239 sq.

Footnote 1019:

x. 216.

Footnote 1020:

An excellent subject for one of those D.Litt. theses by which we are at last going to put ourselves on the level of Germany (to the satisfaction of persons who write about Education) would be “The Reisebilder considered as an Allegory of Criticism, with some remarks on their excursions into Category.”

Footnote 1021:

Ed. Cotta. I have not yet worked with the newer, and it is said better, ed. of Reclam.

Footnote 1022:

Vols. 8-11 of the Cotta ed. It is from these that the material of Schopenhauer’s Art of Literature, translated by Mr Bailey Saunders (London, 1891), is taken. The excellence of Mr Saunders’s version is a matter of common consent. I am not quite so certain about his reconstitution of contexts, which is sometimes rather too much on a par with the taxidermic exploits of the late Mr Waterton; and he has left out some piquant things. But the advantage of opening such precious matter to merely English readers not only excuses this but makes excuse unnecessary.

Footnote 1023:

Has any other German ever written quite such good prose as Schopenhauer’s?

Footnote 1024:

P. und P., § 320, ed. cit., xi. 251.

Footnote 1025:

In chap. xxiii. of P. und P., “Über Schriftstellerei und Stil.” Mr. Bailey Saunders isolates the Style part.

Footnote 1026:

P. und P., § 384; Art. of. Lit., p. 6.

Footnote 1027:

See chap. xxii. Selbstdenken. Schopenhauer’s maxim, “Reading is a mere succedaneum (“Surrogat”) for thinking oneself,” at once shows what he means, and invites the reply, “Yes: but a man who knows how to read always makes his reading the seed of his thought.”

Footnote 1028:

§ 287. Art. of Lit., p. 11.

Footnote 1029:

§ 244. Art. of Lit. composes its section “on Criticism” of part of this context and another. The whole of the original chapter xx., “Über Urtheil, Kritik, Beifall und Ruhren,” is important, though the writer’s own soreness betrays itself, as usual, rather too much.

Footnote 1030:

For the origin of the section thus headed in Art. of Lit., see back to chap. iii. of this part of P. und P.

Footnote 1031:

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

III. and App

Footnote 1032:

§ 39.

Footnote 1033:

App. on Poetry.

Footnote 1034:

§ 51.

Footnote 1035:

V. sup., ii. 86.

Footnote 1036:

One could develop, with special relevance, the philosopher’s peremptory limitation of the attractive season of womankind to the time between the ages of eighteen and eight-and-twenty: and his positive anathema on the retroussé nose. It is astonishing how this feature disturbs critics! Cf. Lessing, Alison, Carrière, &c.

Footnote 1037:

Ed. Cotta, Works, vols. xv.-xviii. The two vols. of Letters and Pocketbooks, with which this edition has been reinforced since I wrote the text, add very much to our knowledge of Grillparzer’s personality, and something to that of his critical position: but need change nothing in the estimate above given.

Footnote 1038:

Vol. xv.

Footnote 1039:

xv. 24. The “peace” of Boccaccio and the “peace” of Dante combined!

Footnote 1040:

Ibid.

Footnote 1041:

xv. 27.

Footnote 1042:

xv. 35-45.

Footnote 1043:

P. 40.

Footnote 1044:

P. 49.

Footnote 1045:

P. 58.

Footnote 1046:

P. 62, and elsewhere.

Footnote 1047:

xv. 163. “Die Betrachtung tödtet, weil sie die Personlichkeit aufhebt: die Bemerkung erfrischt, denn sie erregt und unterstützt die Thätigkeit.” “Consideration” and “Observation” come nearest: but they are not fully adequate.

Footnote 1048:

P. 176.

Footnote 1049:

Filling the other three vols.

Footnote 1050:

xvi. 158.

Footnote 1051:

xviii. 97, 98. There is, not a judgment, but a curious mixture of compliment and fling on him, at p. 130, on which v. inf.

Footnote 1052:

xvi. 175.

Footnote 1053:

xvi. 185.

Footnote 1054:

xviii. 41.

Footnote 1055:

xviii. 47-74.

Footnote 1056:

xviii. 36. Grillparzer evidently did not care much for “woodnotes.”

Footnote 1057:

See xviii. 12-24, and other places in the index of that volume.

Footnote 1058:

See Scherer’s History of German Literature under this name. Grillparzer himself, at Schreyvogel’s death, regrets (xviii. 130) the loss of his literary opinion, and says that there is no one left in Germany with whom he could talk in the same way “except perhaps Heine, if he were not intrinsically a scurvy patronus.”

Footnote 1059:

Mr Bosanquet.

Footnote 1060:

2 vols., Leipzig, 1859. Its constant and ingenious illustration, and the substantive importance given to Poetic, are its claims to admission here.

Footnote 1061:

Of course they have their merits, and have had their uses. In material criticism often; in textual criticism sometimes; in merely dramatic criticism not seldom, they are useful to those who want these things. But then, as Mr Locker’s immortal friend at the “Travellers” said about the company next door, “One doesn’t want them, you know,” or, rather, one wants something else and something more.

Footnote 1062:

I use the Leipsic ed., 5 vols., 1871-74.

Footnote 1063:

v. 37.

Footnote 1064:

Shakespeare-studien: Stuttgart, 1866. One of M. Scherer’s best short criticisms is devoted to this book (Études, vol. vi., translated by the present writer in Essays on English Literature, by E. Scherer: London, 1891). But the original deserves reading. It is not much against it that the author relied on forgeries to some extent. The religion of “the document” almost necessarily passes into the superstition of the forgery.

Footnote 1065:

Vol. xiv. of his Works (Leipzig, 1887). The Preface is dated 1863.

Footnote 1066:

7 vols., Berlin, 1874-85. There is a newer edition, I believe. As long ago as 1868 he had published, in French and at Paris, a volume of Études Historiques et Littéraires, and he did much else.

Footnote 1067:

His Works are now obtainable in several forms, there being two complete editions (Leipzig, n. d.), which give all the work published during his lifetime, in 8 vols., and a still lengthening tail of Remains (7 vols. up to 1904), and several others of separate works. Writing on him has been exceedingly copious, “he has become a name”: but there is probably no sounder and fairer contribution to the Um-Nietzschung of Nietzsche, from a portent into an intelligible phenomenon, than Professor Pringle-Pattison’s Essay in the 2nd ed. of Man’s Place in the Cosmos (Edinburgh, 1902).

Footnote 1068:

Der Fall Wagner, p. 36 and elsewhere.

Footnote 1069:

I was pleased, in reading Nietzsche, after I had written the section above on Grillparzer, and when I had already assigned Hillebrand’s place here, to find him frequently quoting the Austrian dramatist with respect, and definitely selecting the other as the representative German critic of his time.

Footnote 1070:

V. inf. The two books which preceded this, Menschliches Allzumenschliches and Morgenröthe, are also almost purely ethical, though the extensive handling of moral philosophers in the past is necessarily literary too.

Footnote 1071:

It would be improper to dwell on this point here. I hope to do more justice to Nietzsche’s purely literary side elsewhere.

Footnote 1072:

This word has been objected to by precisians. But it has the authority of Thackeray: and if it had none, it is exactly the word wanted for a certain flagrant quality of the latest nineteenth century, and more especially for the ethos of Nietzsche. With all his originality in form, he is simply parasitic in fact. He can only deny and pervert and “topsyturvify” the established and accepted. The Uebermensch himself is much more an “_Un_mensch,” who is not to be God but an un-God. And the philosopher’s famous syllogism, “There cannot be a God, or why am I not one if there is?” amounts simply to a turning topsyturvy of the much sounder and in fact unanswerable argument, “There must be a God; for I am not one.”

Footnote 1073:

Even later his alleged doctrine of “Recurrence”—not his most repugnant to poetry, or philosophy, or religion itself—was only an echo of the carpenter in Peter Simple!

Footnote 1074:

Beleidigende Klarheit.

Footnote 1075:

Ein Geist der entnervt.

Footnote 1076:

He somewhere speaks of Stendhal and Dostoieffsky as his “two great discoveries.” A curious fling by implication at Baudelaire means, I think, only that Baudelaire had the impudence to admire Wagner.

Footnote 1077:

Falschmünzler.

Footnote 1078:

16th ed., pp. x, 756 (Città di Castello, 1902).

Footnote 1079:

One famous person may be noted exceptionally. A critic who held political and other views contrary to Mazzini’s, and who thought (as too many critics have apparently thought) that it is lawful to wreak vengeance in the literary sphere for sins committed elsewhere, would have a considerable opportunity with Mazzini himself, as a critic. He has written not a little apparently of the kind, and about very important persons—Dante, Goethe, Byron, Mr Carlyle, papers on all of whom will be found in Mr William Clarke’s useful English edition of Mazzini’s selected Essays (London, n.d.) He has said things for which, if one were a Veuillot, one could, in Veuillot’s own phrase, “promise him sensations.” But this is not our way. One soon sees (in fact, I think, he frankly confesses it in more than one place) that the writer is not thinking of these great writers as writers at all, nor of their books as books. He is thinking of their relation, actual or by ingenuity representable, towards his idol of “Collective Humanity,” and he is talking, as he is thinking, of nothing else. We have nothing here to do with Collective Humanity, but much with the Humanities, which are different: and so he escapes our jurisdiction. Perhaps a good many more modern Italians would do the same, that influence of Vico, which we noted in Signor Croce, being very strong in them.

Footnote 1080:

Saggi Critici, v. inf.

Footnote 1081:

Naples (2nd ed.), 1869.

Footnote 1082:

Naples, 1872.

Footnote 1083:

Sismondi—French-writing, Swiss-born, Italian by origin—may seem to claim admission, if only for his Littérature du Midi: but I think not.

Footnote 1084:

3 vols., Bâle, 1829-30.

Footnote 1085:

2 vols., Paris, 1851.

Footnote 1086:

2nd ed., 3 vols., Paris, 1857.

Footnote 1087:

A very large part (about two-thirds) of the 1st volume is occupied by Chateaubriand.

Footnote 1088:

Lamartine (with whom Vinet is, of course, more comfortable) and Hugo have about three-fourths of the 2nd vol. between them. In this and the 3rd, Béranger, Delavigne, Sainte-Beuve, Quinet, Michelet, and many others, figure.

Footnote 1089:

ii. 387-412.

Footnote 1090:

It is fair to say that much of his work, being posthumously published, is lecture, and might, if he had lived, have been worked up by him into a better form.

Footnote 1091:

In the article on Saint-Marc Girardin, which concludes the third volume.

Footnote 1092:

8th ed., 2 vols., Geneva, 1901.

Footnote 1093:

Nor can I recognise his description of Amiel’s treatment of a literary subject at p. xix of the Introduction—“Il l’embrasse, mais au dehors.” Alas! the Lucretian nequicquam comes in here again: but I should say that few men’s critical embraces were more intimate than Amiel’s, brief as they are.

Footnote 1094:

i. 12.

Footnote 1095:

i. 17.

Footnote 1096:

i. 69.

Footnote 1097:

i. 129.

Footnote 1098:

The entrefilet of the 7th of November 1862 on la critique indifférente, though it quite certainly is not meant wholly or even mainly for literary criticism, should not be missed.

Footnote 1099:

i. 167, April 24, 1862; and i. 176-183, January 8 and 13, April 8, 1863.

Footnote 1100:

i. 194; ii. 219.

Footnote 1101:

i. 229.

Footnote 1102:

ii. 110.

Footnote 1103:

On German “vulgarity,” p. 112 (with which an acute passage on Goethe at p. 120 should be compared); on the two poetesses, Louisa Siefert and Mme. Ackermann (141 and 174); a valiant promulgation of the truth that most fear to speak, “There is no Progress” (167); notes on M. Coppée (200); Hugo again (228); La Fontaine (232); Laprade (280); Stendhal (286).

Footnote 1104:

It does not seem necessary to follow the lines of the earlier Interchapters by summarising distributively the critical results of the period in different countries and phases. The very indefiniteness of the whole establishes a community which can be generally pointed out.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I.

THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY.

THE HOLDERS—EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MINORS—LOWTH— HURDIS—THE RALLY: COPLESTON—CONYBEARE— MILMAN—KEBLE—THE ‘OCCASIONAL [ENGLISH] PAPERS’— THE ‘PRÆLECTIONS’—GARBETT—CLAUGHTON— DOYLE—SHAIRP—PALGRAVE— “SALUTANTUR VIVI.”

(I have thought this sketch worth giving, partly as an example of the kind of excursus which might be appended, perhaps not without some advantage, and certainly in some numbers, to this History. But I give it also because it illustrates—in a manner which cannot be elsewhere paralleled at all in our own country, and to which I know no Continental parallel—by a continuous and unbroken chain of instances and applications, the course of European as well as English theory, practice, and taste in Criticism, from a period when the Neo-classic creed was still in at least apparently fullest flourishing, through nearly two whole centuries, to what, in the eye of history, is the present moment. The enforced vacation of the Chair after a single decade at most, and its filling by popular election, and not by the choice of an individual or a board, add to its representative character: and the usual publication of at least some of the results, in each case, makes that character almost uniquely discoverable in its continuity, while even the change of vehicles from Latin to English is not without its importance. There is no room here—and it would perhaps be unnecessary in any case—to anticipate the easy labour of summarising its lessons. But I think they may be said to emphasise the warning—frequently given or hinted already—that the result of the altered conditions and laws of criticism is not clear gain. No part of Mr Arnold’s best critical work was, I think, done for the Chair; and I should myself be inclined to select, as the best work actually done for it, that of Keble, who represents the combination of the old Classical-Preceptist tradition, with something of the new comparison and free expatiation, as well as very much of the purely appreciative tendency.)

[Sidenote: The holders.]

This Chair—founded by Henry Birkhead, D.C.L., a Trinity man, a Fellow of All Souls, and a member of the Inner Temple—began its operations in 1708, the conditions of its tenure (which have only recently been altered) providing for a first holding of five years, a single renewal for the same period, and a sort of rotation, in the sense that the same college could not supply two successive occupants. The actual incumbents have been: 1708-18, Trapp; 1718-28, Thomas Warton the elder; 1728-38, Spence; 1738-41, John Whitf(i)eld; 1741-51 (the most distinguished name as yet), Lowth; 1751-56, William Hawkins; 1756-66, Thomas Warton the younger; 1766-76, Benjamin Wheeler; 1776-83, Randolph; 1783-93, Holmes; 1793 to 1802, Hurdis. With the nineteenth century a brighter order begins, all but one or two of the Professors having made their mark out of the Chair as well as in it. They were: Copleston, 1802-12; Conybeare, 1812-21; Milman, 1821-31; Keble, 1831-42; Garbett (the dark star of this group, but, as we shall see, not quite lightless), 1842-52; Claughton, 1852-57; Matthew Arnold, 1857-67; Sir Francis Doyle, 1867-77; Principal Shairp, 1877-87; Mr Palgrave, 1887-95; while of living occupants Mr Courthope resigned the Chair after a single tenure; and Mr Bradley was elected to it under a statutory limitation to this term.

[Sidenote: Eighteenth century minors.]

Of these, Trapp, Spence, the younger Warton, and Arnold have received notice in the text, which would have been theirs had they never held the Chair. The lucubrations of the first held for some time an honourable place as an accepted handbook on the subject. Spence, profiting by the almost Elysian tolerance of his sensible century, and finding that neither residence nor lecturing was insisted on, seems to have resided very little, and to have lectured hardly or not at all. Tom Warton the younger, whose History would have dignified any cathedra, appears to have devoted himself during his actual tenure entirely to the classics, and never to have published any of his lectures except one on Theocritus. His father, in the interval between the respectable labours of Trapp and the philosophical silence of Spence, had earned no golden opinions, and though the repeated attacks of Amherst in Terræ Filius may have been due partly to political rancour, and partly to that ingenious and unlucky person’s incorrigible Ishmaelitism, it seems to have been admitted that the Professor’s understanding and erudition lay very open to criticism, and that his elocution and manner were not such as could shield them. Of Whitfield, Hawkins, Wheeler, Randolph, and Holmes, what I have been able to gather may best be set in a note.[1105] The first person to make any real figure in and for the Chair was the author of De Sacra Poesi Hebræorum, which at once attained not merely an English but a European reputation.

[Sidenote: Lowth.]

To discuss the Hebrew scholarship of this famous book (which was first published in 1753, and repeatedly reprinted, revised, translated, attacked, defended) would be wholly out of place here, even if the writer had not almost wholly forgotten the little Hebrew he learnt at school. It is still, I believe—even by specialists with no general knowledge of literature—admitted to have been epoch-making in its insistence on the parallelism of Hebrew poetry. But to those who take the historical view of literature and of criticism its place is secure quite apart from this. Not merely in the Renaissance, but in the Middle and even the Dark Ages, the matter of the Bible had been used to parallel and illustrate rhetorical and literary doctrines and rules. But Lowth was almost the first to treat its poetical forms from something like the standpoint of sound comparative literary criticism.[1106] Now this, as the whole tenor of our book has gone to contend, was the chief and principal thing that had to be done. If we have any advantage over the men of old, it is that we (or some of us) have at last mastered the fact that one literature or one language cannot prescribe anything to another, but that it may teach much. And this new instance of a literature—unique in special claims to reverence, unique likewise in the fact that in its best examples it could owe nothing to those Greeks and Romans who have so beneficently but so tyrannously influenced all the modern tongues—was invaluable in its quality and almost incalculable in its moment. That Lowth’s exposition resulted directly or indirectly in not a little maladroit imitation of Hebrew poetry was not his fault; his critical lesson was wholly good.

[Sidenote: Hurdis.]

Hurdis, a person now very much forgotten, had his day of interest and of something like position. He is not unfrequently quoted by writers, especially by Southey, of the great period of 1800-1830, which he a little preceded, and he has the honour—rare for so recent a writer—of a whole article[1107] on his poems in the Retrospective Review. As a poet he was mainly an imitator of his friend Cowper—a fact which, with the title of his chief work, The Village Curate, will give intending or declining readers a sufficiently exact idea of what they are undertaking or relinquishing. Easy blank verse, abundant and often not infelicitous description, and unexceptionable though slightly copybook sentiments,[1108] form his poetic or versifying staple. As a critic I regret to find that my note on him is “Chatter”: and I do not know anything of his that makes me, on reflection, think this unjust.

[Sidenote: The rally: Copleston.]

I should be half afraid that the interest which I feel in the next set of Prælections, those of Edward Copleston,—“the Provost,” as he anticipated Hawkins in being to Oxford men, even not of his own college of Oriel,—might be set down to that boulimia or morbid appetite for critical writings of which I have been accused, if I had not at hand a very potent compurgator. Keble, it is true, was a personal friend of Copleston’s. But he was not at all the man to let personal friendship, any more than personal enmity, bias his judgment; and he was admirably qualified to judge. Yet he says deliberately[1109] that the book “is by far the most distinct, and the richest in matter, of any which it has fallen to our lot to read on the subject.” I cannot myself go quite so far as that, and I doubt whether Keble himself would have gone so far when, twenty years later, he wrote his own exquisite Lectures; but I can go a long way towards it.

The future Provost and Bishop has, indeed, other critical proofs on which to rely,[1110]—the famous and excellent “Advice to a Young Reviewer,” which I fear is just as much needed, and just as little heeded, as it was a hundred years ago, the admirable smashing of the Edinburgh’s attack on Oxford, and other matters,—but the Prælections[1111] are the chief and principal thing. Keble insisted that they ought to be Englished, but I am not so sure. They form one of the severest critical treatises with which I am acquainted; and some of the features of this severity would, I think, appear positively uninviting in English dress, while they consistently and perfectly suit the toga and the sandal. But I must explain a little more fully in what this “severity” consists; for the word is ambiguous. I do not mean that Copleston rejects Pleasure as the end of Poetry; for, on the contrary, he writes Delectare boldly on his shield, and omits prodesse save as an indirect consequence. I do not mean that he is a very Draconic critic of particulars, though he can speak his mind trenchantly enough.[1112] Nor do I mean that he is a very abstract writer; for every page is strewn with concrete illustrations, very well selected, and, for the most part, un-hackneyed.

His severity is rather of the ascetic and “methodist” kind; he resembles nothing so much as a preceptist of the school of Hermogenes, who should have discarded triviality, and risen to very nearly the weight and substance of Aristotle. At the very beginning he makes a statute for himself, to cite no literature but Greek and Latin, and to use no language but these. And he never breaks either rule; for though, on rare occasions, he refers to English writers— Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Burke, Reynolds[1113]—it is a reference only to books, or poems, or passages, never a citation. And in the second place his method is throughout—constant as is his use of the actual poetic object-lesson—to proceed by general categories, not of poetic kinds (he shuns that ancient and now well-beaconed quicksand[1114]) but of qualities, constituents, means. His whole book, after a brief definition or apology for not defining, is distributed under four parts,—Of Imitation, Of the Emotions, Of Imagination (Phantasia), and Of Judgment,—though he never reached the fourth,[1115] owing to his tenure of the Chair coming to an end. After a pretty full discussion of the nature and subject of Imitation, he makes his link with his next subject by dwelling on the Imitatio morum, and so of the Passions themselves. In this part a very large share is given to the subject of Sententiæ— “sentiments,” as Keble translates it, though, as I have pointed out formerly,[1116] no single translation of the word is at all satisfactory. The section on Imagination is very interesting. Copleston is at a sort of middle stage between the restricted Addisonian and the wide Philostratean-Shakespearean-Coleridgean interpretation of the word. He expressly admits that other senses besides sight can supply the material of Phantasia; but his examples are mainly drawn from material which is furnished by the sight, and his inclusions of Allegory, Mythology, &c., with other things, sometimes smack of an insufficient discrimination between Imagination and Fancy. Indeed the fact that he is Præ-Coleridgean helps to give him his interest.

Keble mildly complains that Copleston does not make use of that doctrine of Association which he himself, writing so early, had perhaps adopted, not from Coleridge but direct from Hartley. We have, in our day, seen this doctrine worked to death and sent to the knacker’s in philosophy generally; but there is no doubt that it can never be neglected in poetry, being, perhaps, the most universal (though by no means the universal) means of approach to the sources of the poetic pleasure. It does not, however, seem to me that Copleston intended to mount so high, or go so far back: his aim was, I think, more rhetorical, according to a special fashion, than metacritical. But his mediate axioms are numerous and often very informing: and his illustrations, as has been said, abundant, really illustrative, and singularly recreative. He lays most Latin and many Greek poets under contribution; but some of his most effective examples are drawn from a poet whom he does not critically overvalue, but who has no doubt been, as a rule, critically undervalued, and for whom he himself evidently had a discriminating affection—that is to say, Claudian.

On the whole, the appearance of a book of this scope and scheme, at the very junction of the centuries and the ’isms, Classic and Romantic, is of singular interest. Until intelligent study of the Higher Rhetoric— reformed, adjusted, and extended—has been reintroduced, such another will not come. But such another might come with very great advantage, and would supply a very important tertium quid to the mere Æsthetics and to the sheer Impressionism between which Criticism has too often divided itself.

[Sidenote: Conybeare.]

There is almost as much significance in Copleston’s successor, though it is a significance of a different kind. For J. J. Conybeare was the first Professor of Poetry to bestow attention on Anglo-Saxon (Warton, even in his History, had not gone, with any knowledge, beyond Middle English), and so to complete the survey of all English Literature. Before his appointment he had held, as its first occupant, the chair of Anglo-Saxon itself; and while Professor of Poetry he was a country parson. He died suddenly and comparatively young, and his remarkable Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry[1117] were published after his death by his brother, who is actually responsible for a good part of its matter, so that the book is a composite one. It is thus mainly in its general significance— for Conybeare’s Prælections as Professor were not, so far as I know, published—that it is valuable for us. But the value thus given is unmistakable. Conybeare’s individual judgments and aperçus are always interesting, and often acute; but his real importance lies in the fact that he was almost the first—though Mitford, after Ellis, had attempted the thing as an outsider—to move back the focussing-point sufficiently to get all English Literature under view. Nothing could serve more effectually to break up the false standing-ground of the eighteenth century.

[Sidenote: Milman.]

A curious but perhaps not surprising thing about Milman’s Professorship is that it aroused the ire of an undergraduate poet of the rarest though of the most eccentric type—namely, Beddoes. If Milman really did “denounce” Death’s Jest-Book,[1118] it is a pity that his lectures were (so far as I know) never printed, or at least collected, for there might have been more such things of the fatally interesting kind which establishes the rule that Professors should not deal, in their lectures, with contemporary literature. It was certainly unlucky for a man to begin by objecting in one official capacity to Death’s Jest-Book, and to end by objecting in another to Stevens’s Wellington Monument. And that Milman had generally the character of a harsh and donnish critic is obvious, from Byron’s well-known suggestion of him as a possible candidate for the authorship of the Quarterly article on Keats, though the rhyme of “kill man” may have had something to do with this. If he wrote much literary criticism we have little of it in the volume of Essays which his son published, after his death, in 1870. Even on Erasmus—surely a tempting subject—he manages to be as little literary as is possible, and rather less than one might have thought to be; and his much better-known Histories are not more so.

[Sidenote: Keble.]

Ignorance may sneer, but Knowledge will not even smile, at the dictum that not the least critical genius that ever adorned the Oxford Chair was possessed by John Keble. There is some faint excuse for Ignorance. The actual Prælections[1119] of the author of The Christian Year, being Latin, are not read: his chief English critical works,[1120] though collected not so very long ago, were collected too late to catch that flood-tide, in their own sense, which is unfortunately, as a rule, needed to land critical works out of reach of the ordinary ebb. Moreover, there is no question but Keble requires “allowance”; and the allowance which he requires is too often of the kind least freely granted in the present day. If we have anywhere (I hope we have) a man as holy as Keble, and as learned, and as acute, he will hardly express the horror at Scott’s occasional use of strong language which Keble expresses.[1121] Our historic sense, and our illegitimate advantage of perspective, have at least taught us that to quarrel with Scott again, for not being “Catholic” enough, is almost to quarrel with Moses for not having actually led the children of Israel into Palestine. And no man, as honest as Keble was, would now echo that other accusation against the great magician (whom, remember, Keble almost adored, and of whom he thought far more highly as a poet than many good men do now) of tolerating intemperance; though some might feign it to suit a popular cant.

But in all these respects it is perfectly easy for those who have once schooled themselves to this apparently but not really difficult matter, to make the necessary allowance.[1122] And then, even in the English critical Essays—the “Scott,” the “Sacred Poetry,” the “Unpublished Letters of Warburton,” and the “Copleston”—verus incessu patet criticus.

[Sidenote: The Occasional [English] Papers.]

His general attitude to poetic criticism (he meddled little with any other) is extremely interesting. His classical training impelled him towards the “subject” theory, and the fact that his two great idols in modern English poetry were Scott and Wordsworth was not likely to hold him back. He has even drifted towards a weir, pretty clearly, one would think, marked “Danger!” by asking whether readers do not feel the attraction of Scott’s novels to be as great as, and practically identical with, that of his poems. But no “classic” could possibly have framed the definition of poetry which he puts at the outset[1123] of the Scott Essay as “The indirect expression in words, most appropriately in metrical words, of some overpowering emotion, or ruling taste, or feeling, the direct indulgence whereof is somehow repressed.” Everybody will see what this owes to Wordsworth; everybody should see how it is glossed and amplified—in a non-Wordsworthian or an extra-Wordsworthian sense. We meet the pure critical Keble again, in his enthusiastic adoption of Copleston’s preference for “Delight” (putting Instruction politely in the pocket) as the poetic criterion.[1124] And his defence of Sacred Poetry, however interested it may seem to be, coming from him, is one of the capital essays of English criticism. He makes mince-meat of Johnson, and he takes by anticipation a good deal of the brilliancy out of his brilliant successor, Mr Arnold, on this subject. The passage, short but substantial,[1125] on Spenser in this is one of the very best to be found on that critic of critics (as by an easily intelligible play he might be said to be) as well as poet of poets. Spenser always finds out a bad critic—he tries good ones at their highest.

[Sidenote: The Prælections.]

Still the Prælections themselves must, of course, always be Keble’s own touchstone, or rather his ground and matter of assay. And he comes out well. The dedication (a model of stately enthusiasm) to Wordsworth as non solum dulcissimæ poeseos verum etiam divinæ veritatis antistes, strikes the keynote of the whole. But it may be surprising to some to find how “broad” Keble is, in spite of his inflexible morality and his uncompromising churchmanship. He was kept right partly, no doubt, by holding fast as a matter of theory to the “Delight” test—pure and virtuous delight, of course, but still delight, first of all and most of all. But mere theory would have availed him little without the poetic spirit, which everywhere in him translates itself into the critical, and almost as little without the wide and (whether deliberately so or not) comparative reading of ancient and modern verse which he displays. His general definition of Poetry here is slightly different from that given above, as was indeed required by his subject and object. He presents it— at once refining and enlarging upon part of the Aristotelian one of Tragedy, and neutralising the vinum dæmonum notion at once,—as subsidium benigni numinis, the medicinal aid given by God to subdue, soften, and sanctify Passion. But his working out—necessarily, in its main lines, obvious but interesting to contrast with his successor Mr Arnold’s undogmatised and secularised application of the same idea[1126]—is less interesting to us in itself than the aperçus on different poets, ancient and modern, to which it gives rise. Few pages deserve to be skipped by the student: even technical discussion of the tenuis et arguta kind, as he modestly calls it, becomes alive under his hand on such subjects as the connection of Poetry and Irony (Præl. v.) But there is a still higher interest in such things as the contrast, in the same Prælection, of the undeviating self-consistency of Spenser in all his work, the bewildering apparent lack of central unity in Shakespeare with its resolution, and the actual inconsistency of Dryden. All the Homeric studies deserve reading, the discussion of the Odyssey in Præl. xi. being especially noteworthy, with its culmination in that delightful phrase about Nausicaa which we quoted in the last volume.[1127] Particularly wise and particularly interesting is the treatment of “Imitation” (the lower imitation) in Præl. xvi., where those who are of our mystery will not fail to compare the passage with Vida. How comfortable is it to find a poet-critic, so uncompromising on dignity of subject, who can yet admit, and that with not the faintest grudging, that it “is incredible how mightily the hidden fire is roused by single words or clauses—nay, by the sound of mere syllables, that strike the ear at a happy nick of time.”[1128] This is almost “the doctrine of the Poetic Moment” itself, though we must not urge it too far, and though it is brought in apropos of the suggestiveness to poets of antecedent poetic work. It is still sovereign against a still prevailing heresy. The abundant treatment of Æschylus[1129] is also to be carefully noted; for, as we have observed, that mighty poet had been almost neglected during the Neo-classic period.

The second score of Lectures is still technically devoted to the ancients, especially Pindar, the second and third Tragedians, Theocritus, Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace; but references to the moderns, not very rare in the first volume, become still more frequent here, and are sometimes, as those to Spenser and Bunyan in the matter of allegory,[1130] and the contrast of Jason and Macduff as bewailing their children,[1131] very notable. On his narrower subject, the judgment of Sophocles in Præl. xxviii. is singularly weighty; and I should like to have heard Mr Matthew Arnold answer on behalf of his favourite. The comparative tameness, and the want of variety and range, which some (not all, of course) feel in the “singer and child of sweet Colonos” are here put with authority by one whom no one could accuse of Sturm und Drang preferences, or of an undisciplined thirst for novelty. Only on Theocritus, perhaps, does Morality sit in banco with Taste to a rather disastrous effect, and the fact is curiously explicable. His disapproval of Scott’s strong language, and his want of ecclesiastical-mindedness, and his lenity to liquor, had not blinded Keble in the least to Scott’s poetry; he had admitted the charitable and comfortable old plea of “time, not man,” in favour of certain peccadilloes of Shakespeare; he is, in fact, nowhere squeamish to silliness. But he cannot pardon Theocritus for the Oaristys and such things, simply because the new Wordsworthian nature-worship in him is wounded and shocked insanabiliter. “Like Aristophanes,” he says, “like Catullus, like Horace, Theocritus betakes himself to the streams and the woods, not to seek rest for a weary mind, but as provocatives for a lustful one.”[1132] This new “sin against the Spirit” is most interesting.

On the other hand, this very nature-worship keeps his balance, where we might have thought he would lose it, on the subject of Lucretius. He contrasts the comparative triviality and childishness of Virgil, agreeable enough as it is, in regard to nature, with the mystic majesty of his great predecessor. The charges of atheism and indecency trouble him very little:[1133] the intense earnestness, the lofty delight in clouds and forests and the vague, the likeness to Æschylus and Dante—all these things he fixes on, and delights in. I wish he had written more on Dante himself; what he has[1134] is admirable.

As to Virgil in person, though sensible enough of his merits, he says things which would have elicited the choicest combinations of Scaligerian Billingsgate; and brings out, in a way striking and I think rather novel, the permolestum, the “serious irritation” caused by the fact that Virgil either could not or would not give Æneas any character at all, and that you feel sometimes inclined to think that he never himself had any clear idea what sort of a real man his hero was. This exaltation of the Character above the Action is very noteworthy.

But, in fact, Keble always is noteworthy, and more. Mere moderns may dismiss him, with or without a reading, as a mill-horse treader of academic rounds. He is nothing so little. He is, in fact, almost the first representative of the Romantic movement who has applied its spirit to the consecrated subjects of study; and he has shown, unfortunately to too limited a circle, how fresh, how interesting, how inspiring the results of this and of the true comparison of ancient and modern may be.[1135] Literary criticism—indeed literature itself as such—was with him, it is true, only a by-work, hardly more than a pastime. But had it been otherwise, he would, I think, twenty years before Arnold, have given us the results of a more thorough scholarship, a reading certainly not less wide, a taste nearly as delicate and catholic, a broader theory, and a much greater freedom from mere crotchet and caprice.

[Sidenote: Garbett.]

I am not quite so well acquainted with the whole work of Keble’s successor Garbett.[1136] Elected as he was, by the anti-Tractarian reaction, against the apparently far superior claims of Isaac Williams, his appointment has generally been regarded as a job; and I had to divest myself of prejudice in reading him. He has indeed nothing of his predecessor’s serene scholarship, and little of his clear and clean taste. His form puts him at a special disadvantage. Instead of Keble’s pure and flowing Latinity, you find an awkward dialect, peppered after the fashion of Cicero’s letters with Greek words, peppered still more highly with notes of exclamation, and, worst of all, full of words, and clauses, and even whole sentences, in capitals, to the destruction of all repose and dignity. He seems to have simply printed each Prælection as he gave it (the pagings are independent), and then to have batched them together without revision in volume form.[1137] But one cannot read far or fairly without perceiving that, either before his election or after it, Garbett had taken the pains to qualify by a serious study of antecedent criticism—a study, it may be added, of which there is hardly any trace in Keble. Garbett devotes especial attention to Longinus and Dryden; and though I do not (as I have formerly hinted)[1138] agree with him in regard to either,[1139] it is beyond all doubt that he had made a distinct and original attempt to grasp both as critics. He deals with Horace, of course; but it is noteworthy that he has again aimed at a systematic and fresh view, taking Horace as the master of “Art Poetic,” and comparing Boileau, &c. He has an abundant discussion of Scaliger, whom he takes as third type and (rightly) as the father of classical French criticism, while Dryden gives him his fourth. He knows the Germans—not merely Lessing and Goethe, but Kant; and whatever the failures in his execution, he can “satisfy the examiners” not merely from the point of view of those who demand acquaintance with the history and literature of the subject, but from that of those who postpone everything to what they think philosophy. He refers to the climatic view of literature,[1140] constantly combines historical and literary considerations, and is altogether a “modern.” As has been said, I disagree with him more often than I agree; but I do not think there can be any serious denial of the fact that he was worthy of the Chair and of a place here.

[Sidenote: Claughton.]

The tenure of his successor Claughton, afterwards Bishop, was but for a single term; and he seems to have left little memorial of it except a singularly elegant Latin address on the appointment of Lord Derby as Chancellor. Elegance, indeed, was Claughton’s characteristic as an orator,[1141] but I should not imagine that he had much strength or very wide or keen literary knowledge and enthusiasm. Of Mr. Arnold we have spoken.

[Sidenote: Doyle.]

There were foolish folk, not without some excuse of ignorance (if that ever be an excuse) for their foolishness, who grumbled or scoffed when he was followed by Sir Francis Doyle. There had been some hopes of Browning, which had been foiled—if by nothing else—by the discovery that an Honorary M.A. degree was not a qualification; and it must be owned that curiosity to see what Browning would do in prose on poetry was highly legitimate. Moreover, the younger generation was busy with Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Morris, who had not turned Tennyson and Browning himself out, and they knew little of Sir Francis. Better informed persons, however, reported of him as of an Oxford man of the best old type of “scholar and gentleman,” a person of very shrewd wits, of probably greater practical experience than any Professor of Poetry had ever had, and the author of certain things like The Red Thread of Honour and The Private of the Buffs, which, in their own peculiar style and division, were poetry sans phrase. The report was justified by the new Professor’s Lectures.[1142] They are frankly exoteric; but they are saved by scholarship from the charge of ever being popular in the bad sense. They adopt as frankly, and carry a little farther, that plan of making the lectures, if not exactly reviews of particular books new and old, at any rate causeries hung on particular texts and pegs, which the vernacularisation of the Chair had made inevitable, and to which Matthew Arnold himself had inclined gladly enough. They are, though not in the least degree slipshod or slovenly, quite conversational in style. But they deserve, I think, no mean place among the documents of the Chair. Their easy, well-bred common-sense, kept from being really Philistine (which epithet Sir Francis good-humouredly accepted), not merely by their good breeding, but by the aforesaid scholarship, by natural acuteness, and by an intense unaffected love for poetry, might not be a good staple. But if the electors could manage to let it come round again, as an exception, once in a generation or so, it would be well, and better than well.

[Sidenote: Shairp.]

Of Principal Shairp so many good men have said so many good things that it is almost unnecessary to add, in this special place and context, the praise (which can be given ungrudgingly) that he has always, in his critical work, had before him good intentions and high ideals. Much further addition, I fear, cannot be made. When I read his question, “Did not Shakespeare hate and despise Iago and Edmund?”[1143] when I remember how Shakespeare himself put in the mouth of the one—

“I bleed, sir, but not killed”;

in the mouth of the other—

“The wheel is come full circle; I am here”;

and—

“Yet Edmund was beloved,”

I own I sympathise with an unconventional and unsophisticated soul who, once reading this same utterance of Mr. Shairp’s, rose, strode about the room, and sitting down, ejaculated, “What are you to do? What are you to say? Where are you to go? when a Professor of Poetry, uttering such things in Oxford, is not taken out, and stoned or burnt forthwith, between Balliol and the Randolph?” And there is an only less dreadful passage[1144] of miscomprehension on the magnificent close of Tennyson’s “Love and Duty”—one of the greatest examples of the difficult “Versöhnung close,” the reconciliation of art, the relapse into peace.

But the lesson of criticism is a lesson of tolerance. A complete and careful perusal of Mr Shairp’s Aspects of Poetry, and of his other books, will indeed show that the apices of criticism, whether historical, or appreciative, or even philosophical, were beyond his climb. He shows that constant necessity or temptation of engaging in comment—eulogistic or controversial—upon the ephemera critica of the time, which has been one of the worst results of the change of the lectures from Latin to English. You could not, in the stately old vehicle, do more than occasionally decline upon such a lower level as this. Mr Shairp is always citing and fencing with (or extolling reviewer-fashion) Arnold or Bagehot, Hutton or Myers. Quotidiana quotidie moriuntur; and, though no doubt it saves much trouble to Professors if they can take out of a newspaper or a review, or even a recent book, on their way to Oxford, a text for an hour’s sermon, their state sub specie æternitatis is far from the more gracious. Oxford is constantly making new statutes now; I think one forbidding any citation from this Chair of critical or creative literature less than thirty years old would not be bad.

More happy, if not always more critical, were his dealings with things Scottish, where sympathy lifted him out of the peddling, and transformed the parochial. On Burns (even though there must have been searchings of heart there) he could sometimes, though by no means always, speak excellently; on Scott superexcellently; on Wordsworth almost as well; on the Highland poets (if we do not forget our salt-cellar) best of all, because he spoke with knowledge and not as Mr Arnold. His work is always amiable, often admirable: I wish I could say that it is always or often critical.[1145]

[Sidenote: Palgrave.]

The great achievement of Mr Shairp’s successor, Francis Turner Palgrave, in regard to literary criticism, is an indirect one, and had been mostly done years and decades before he was elected to the Chair. Indeed, I think little if anything was given to the world as the direct result of his professorial work. As an actual critic or reviewer, Palgrave was no doubt distinguished not over-favourably by that tendency to “splash” and tapage of manner which he shared with Kinglake and some other writers of the mid-nineteenth century, and which has been recently revived. But his real taste was in a manner warranted by his friendships; and his friendships must almost have kept him right if he had had less taste. He may have profited largely by these friendships in the composition of the two parts of that really Golden Treasury, which, if it does not achieve the impossible in giving everybody what he wants, all that he wants, and nothing that he does not want, is by general confession the most successful attempt in a quite appallingly difficult kind. The second part, which has of course been the most criticised, seems to me even more remarkable than the first, as showing an almost complete freedom from one easily besetting sin, the tendency not to relish styles that have come in since the critic “commenced” in criticism.

[Sidenote: Salutantur vivi.]

Of the late and the present holders of the Chair we are happily precluded from speaking critically. May the bar not soon be lifted!

-----

Footnote 1105:

Of Whitfield (or Whit_feld_, as some write) I have found nothing but that he wrote some Latin verses on William the Third. The second volume of William Hawkins’s Tracts (1758) contains, besides a ridiculous tragedy, Henry and Rosamond, an Essay on Drama, principally occupied by carpings at Mason’s Elfrida, and some Letters on Pope’s Commentary on Homer—very small critical beer. About Wheeler I find less even than about Whitfield. The piety of his son published—long after date and in our own times—1870—the Prælections of John Randolph, a man who, besides holding several other professorships at Oxford, attained to eminence in the Church, and died Bishop of London in 1813. They are very sober and respectable. There is in poetry a non contemnenda proprietas quod imitando præcipiat; and the warning, non aliunde artis suæ rudimenta desumet Criticus nisi ex sanæ Logices præceptis, might with advantage have been observed oftener than it has been. But Randolph sticks in the bark and the letter. Holmes, a poet after a fashion, a theologian, and what not, seems to have written more freely on anything than on criticism.

Footnote 1106:

He complies with the requirements of method and fashion by dealing generally with the End and Usefulness of Poetry, its Kinds and so forth. But all this we have had a thousand times. What we have here specially is a comparison, and a new comparison.

Footnote 1107:

Vol. i. p. 57 sq.

Footnote 1108:

Southey, himself a proper moral man in all conscience, but a sensible one withal, somewhere remarks, “said well but not wisely” on Hurdis’s

“Give me the steed Whose generous efforts bore the prize away, I care not for his grandsire or his dam.”

A mild echo of the revolutionary period!

Footnote 1109:

In a review in the British Critic (1814), reprinted in Papers and Reviews, Oxford and London, 1877.

Footnote 1110:

See the Remains, edited by his son. London, 1871.

Footnote 1111:

First published at the end of his tenure in 1813. My copy is the 2nd ed., Oxford, 1828.

Footnote 1112:

See remarks on Trapp, pp. 6 and 7 ed. cit.

Footnote 1113:

V. pp. 187, 197, 390, 229, 177.

Footnote 1114:

Keble, however, was right in specifying the chief exception—the admirable prælection on Epitaphs (No. 27, p. 340).

Footnote 1115:

This is all the more tantalising in that his definition of Judicium in Præl. 2 seems to promise nothing less than an inquiry into the critical and appreciative faculty as regards Poetry.

Footnote 1116:

V. vol. i.

Footnote 1117:

London, 1826.

Footnote 1118:

See Beddoes’ Letters (ed. Gosse, London, 1894), p. 68: “Mr Milman (our poetry professor) has made me quite unfashionable here by denouncing me as one of a ‘villainous school.’” These Letters are crammed with matter of literary and critical interest. I was much tempted to give them a place in the text as illustrating the critical opinions of a person in whom great wits and madness were rather blended than allied; in the transition generation—the mezzanine floor—of 1800-1830.

Footnote 1119:

Prælectiones Academicæ Oxonii habitæ annis 1832-41. Oxford, 1844. 2 vols., but continuously paged.

Footnote 1120:

Occasional Papers and Reviews, by John Keble, M.A. Oxford and London, 1877.

Footnote 1121:

Occ. Pap., p. 62.

Footnote 1122:

The place most perilously aleatory is the fling in Occ. Pap., p. 87, at “Mr Leigh Hunt and his miserable followers.”

Footnote 1123:

Occ. Pap., p. 6.

Footnote 1124:

Ibid., p. 150.

Footnote 1125:

Ibid., pp. 98-102.

Footnote 1126:

Those who make the contrast will, however, I think, find out that Arnold owes more to his forerunner than might be gathered from his published lectures.

Footnote 1127:

P. 312.

Footnote 1128:

Præl. Ac., p. 281.

Footnote 1129:

It occupies seven Prælections (xvii.-xxiii.) and some 200 pages.

Footnote 1130:

ii. 415.

Footnote 1131:

ii. 586.

Footnote 1132:

ii. 641. He has a liking for Horace; but objects to him (not quite unreasonably) as sordidior quidem in his Epicureanism, when you compare him with Lucretius.

Footnote 1133:

He allows him, as well as Byron and Shelley, the plea of vix compos in certain respects.

Footnote 1134:

ii. 678 sq. and elsewhere.

Footnote 1135:

I pass, as needless to dwell on at length, the excellence of his style and expression in these lectures. “So acute in remark, so beautiful in language,” as Newman says in the letter printed in Occ. Pap., p. xii. sq.

Footnote 1136:

My only possession is De Re Critica Prælectiones. Oxford, 1847.

Footnote 1137:

My copy, which is “from the author” to some one unknown, has not a few pen-corrections, apparently in his own hand.

Footnote 1138:

Vol. ii. p. 372.

Footnote 1139:

It is particularly unfortunate that he has endeavoured to construct a theory of Longinus as a statesman-critic, comparing him with Burke. I have already said that I do not think the identification of the author of the book with Zenobia’s prime minister in the least disproved or (with the materials at present at disposal) disprovable: but it certainly is not proved to the point of serving as basis to such a theory.

Footnote 1140:

With reference to Schlegel and Madame de Staël.

Footnote 1141:

His sermons have been disrespectfully spoken of; but I think unjustly. I heard them myself in pretty close juxtaposition with those of Pusey and Wilberforce, and even with the, in both senses, rare discourses of Mansel. In vigour and body they were nowhere beside any of these; but they could fairly hold their own in the softer ways of style.

Footnote 1142:

First Series (comprising the “Inaugural,” with two others on “Provincial Poetry” and The Dream of Gerontius), London, 1869. A second appeared in 1877.

Footnote 1143:

Aspects of Poetry (London, 1881), p. 30.

Footnote 1144:

Ibid., p. 157.

Footnote 1145:

How entirely _un_critical he was may be judged from the fact that he brackets Voltaire and Diderot as apostles of the Aufklärung in an anti-Romantic sense.

APPENDIX II.

AMERICAN CRITICISM.

AN ATTEMPT IN OUTLINE ONLY—ITS DIFFICULTIES— THE EARLY STAGES—THE ORIGINS AND PIONEERS— TICKNOR—LONGFELLOW—EMERSON—POE— LOWELL: HIS GENERAL POSITION—‘AMONG MY BOOKS’— ‘MY STUDY WINDOWS‘—‘ESSAYS ON THE ENGLISH POETS’— LAST ESSAYS—O. W. HOLMES—THE WHOLE DUTY OF CRITICS STATED BY HIM IN ALIA MATERIA— WHITMAN AND THE “DEMOCRATIC” IDEAL— MARGARET FULLER— RIPLEY—WHIPPLE—LANIER.

[Sidenote: An attempt in outline only.]

I am very well aware of the arguments which may be advanced against attempting to extend our survey of criticism across the Atlantic. I at least do not undervalue the apparently formal, but in truth real, objection that we have undertaken European criticism only: while I appreciate the opposite demur, that the space of an appendix is as uncomplimentary and as uncomplementary as total exclusion would be. But after having taken counsel of more than one American friend, by no means specially Anglophile in temper, I found that, apparently, the inclusion even in this form would be at least sometimes taken in the spirit in which it is meant, while on the other hand I had myself felt very strongly the disadvantage of excluding such a critic as Mr Lowell, who has all the characteristics of the best of our own with an inviting differentia. The bursting-point, however, of this volume is pretty nearly reached; and I must again observe that there is no invidious intention in the proportion of the notice. I have endeavoured to allot to Mr Lowell himself a space (allowing for differences of scale and type) not, I think, unfair in proportion to his English fellows; others I have had to survey more in summary. But I hope that the whole may at any rate provide a not inadequate outline-sketch of the subject; and in this hope I submit it, not merely to English readers, but to those still more nearly concerned, from some of whom this book has received attention at once of the most candid (in the better pre-Sheridanian sense of that word) and of the most searchingly competent.

[Sidenote: Its difficulties.]

The difficulties of the task are complicated by the necessity, according to our plan, of omitting living writers. The history of American criticism appears, even more than that of other departments of literature, to be very mainly a history of the present; and I could write ex abundanti on that. The “middle distance” is also well provided. But the origins are singularly obscure, and appear to be regarded with neither pride nor interest by Americans themselves. When I thought of this excursus first, some years ago, I was referred by an American friend to two articles[1146] which had appeared not long before in The International Monthly on “American Literary Criticism and the Doctrine of Evolution.” The title gave me some forebodings in its doubleness; yet this might be interpreted favourably, for how can you treat the “evolution” of a subject without treating its history? I found, however, that the author, though his papers lacked neither thought nor style, was wholly occupied with the doctrine of evolutionary criticism generally, as against judicial and appreciative; and that he did not even propose to meddle with the history of his subject save by occasional allusion. The histories of American literature have afforded me something more, but not much.

[Sidenote: The early stages.]

I do not mention this in any spirit of fault-finding, for few people are less likely than myself to need reminding that in literary and critical history, as elsewhere, you cannot make bricks without straw, and still less without clay. There was, and there could be, little attempt at important criticism in “colonial” times, and the immense material expansion of the earlier Republican period was very little more favourable to it than the quiescence and dependence of the Monarchical.[1147]

The definite entrance of the United States into the society of nations, after the second war with England and the settlement of Europe by the final suppression of Napoleon, as necessarily brought with it the organisation of critical as of other employment for the intellect. [Sidenote: The origins and pioneers.] There is something agreeably Arcadian in the idea of Longfellow, a boy of nineteen, being sent to Europe by the trustees of his college to qualify himself for a Chair of Literature; but the fact is no more and no less creditable to these functionaries than it is symbolic of the new tendencies of the time. Still, Longfellow was not actually the apostle of comparative and extensive criticism in America. Ticknor, his elder by eighteen years, had, partly no doubt by this very fact of the admission of his country to the full franchise of nations, been induced to give up the study and practice of the law, and to devote himself to literature, in the very year of Waterloo itself. And he too, after a sojourn in Europe, became, some years before his fellow at Bowdoin, Professor of Modern Languages and Belles Lettres at Harvard. Emerson, born between the two, was a little later in treading the same road than either, but he trod it; and his visit to Europe, in 1833, determined the critical writings and lectures which followed.

These three I should take to be the founders of American criticism of the adult and accomplished kind, and they represent it, interestingly enough, in three different ways. It is true that no one of them is first of all a critic, or even, as Mr. Lowell was afterwards, a critic in power at least equal to that of any other of his qualities. But this was only in the nature of things.

[Sidenote: Ticknor.]

It is not merely because Ticknor’s lifework was a literary history that one may call him first of all a literary historian. The fact that the History of Spanish Literature, more than fifty years after its publication, and nearly seventy after its inception, although the interval has been one of the fiercest in pursuing, and one of the most voluminous in recording, literary explorations, retains, and is likely to retain, its position not merely as a classic, but as an authority, shows some pre-established harmony between writer and task. Yet, though the provinces of the literary historian and the critic overlap to a very large extent,—though the historian who is not a critic must be a mere reference-monger, and the critic who is not a historian a mere bellettrist,—yet there are skirts and fringes of each province which are not necessarily part of the other. Ticknor is rather less of a critic than he is of a historian—his grouping of facts, his investigation and statement of them, his perception of origins and connections, are all a little superior to his appreciation pure and simple. Yet there are few who can afford to look down on him in this latter respect; and as historical critic and critical historian I do not know where to look for his superior, while I should have very soon done looking for his equals.

[Sidenote: Longfellow.]

Longfellow (for it will be convenient to take Emerson last) shows us, as a matter of course, a different critical phase. He never, so far as I know, wrote any connected study of literature, and I do not think that it would have been very good if he had. His lectures, which were necessarily numerous, and the articles which he wrote (I believe in no small numbers) have never taken any important position, and again I should doubt whether, if we had them or more of them, anything very remarkable would be included.[1148] Yet he had, and displayed in the intensest degree, that most agreeable and not least profitable function of the critical faculty which attaches itself to literature, assimilates it, transforms it into instruction and delight. This is noticeable in almost every page of his poems: it is the very genesis of many of them, and perhaps of the best of them: it is at once the explanation and the refutation of the charge of want of originality brought against him. So in his prose. Hyperion and Outre-Mer are permeated and saturated with it. The literature of Germany, the literature of Spain, have done more than colour the poet’s or prose-writer’s work; they have penetrated to its substance, fed it, been digested and absorbed into its very life. From The Golden Legend and The Spanish Student to the smallest fragments this process is noteworthy. And while it shows, on the part of the writer himself, processes necessary to the critic, in intenser and more poetic form, it performs on the reader “the office of the critic”— his hierophantic, initiating, inoculating office—in the most vivid and forcible manner and degree. No one who, susceptible to literature, but more or less ignorant of it, reads Longfellow but must, consciously or unconsciously, imbibe something of literature itself—of a literature far wider and deeper than that which the poet (though I speak as a lifelong lover of Longfellow’s poetry) himself creates.

[Sidenote: Emerson.]

That Emerson also is not first of all a critic is not surprising, because, as most people have seen, Emerson is not, first of all, anything but Emerson. But he is in some ways more of a critic than either of the others, and the reason why he is not more so still is that, like his master or analogue Carlyle, he rather refuses to look on literature as literature. His ethical preoccupations and his transcendentalism alike prevent him from doing this—he is Carlyle plus Vinet. In the second place, if I may say so without offence, he shows us, as neither Ticknor nor Longfellow, both of whom were too cosmopolitan, shows us, the American touch-me-not-ishness, the somewhat unnecessary affectation of nationality. The literary chauvinism of the famous lecture on “The American Scholar” is perhaps more apparent than real; but his query, “Who is Southey?” in the record of his interview with Landor, is awkward. “Southey is, say what you like about his poetry or his politics, one of the greatest men of letters of all time,” is the answer which a critic should have given to himself. Yet there is much good positive criticism in Emerson (if there can be said to be anything positive in him), and there is still more of that vague stimulative force which is so noticeable in these first great writers of America, and which is so interesting when we consider their circumstances, individual and national. In the English Traits and the Representative Men, in the lectures and elsewhere, there is always ringing to the fit ear the “Tolle, lege!” of the greater critics, with the comment which helps to make the book understood, when it is taken up and read.

[Sidenote: Poe.]

By the ’Thirties and ’Forties of the nineteenth century the European pilgrimage was no longer necessary to fetch the critical spark home. American criticism became abundant, and not merely abundant. In no case do I so much regret the necessity of compression as in that of Poe. The extreme and almost incomprehensible injustice with which the ill-fated author of Ligeia and The Haunted Palace was so long treated by his countrymen has, I believe, abated; and I have seen, in the article referred to, a complimentary, though merely passing, reference to him as a critic. But there is still room, I think, for some substantial Rettung, as Lessing would have said. The substance would have to be considerable, for the matter under consideration,[1149] which is not small in bulk, is heterogeneous, and even to some extent chaotic. More than any other part of Poe’s work it is the scapegoat of his unfavourable circumstances, of his patchy education, of his weaknesses in conduct, temper, and constitution. A great deal is mere hack-writing— chaînes de l’esclavage—stuff never meant to abide the steady judgment of posterity. You may, if you please, pick out of it the most amazing things, such[1150] as that “for one Fouqué there are fifty Molières” (I am no undervaluer of Fouqué, but I wish—I do wish—that I knew where to look for even one of the forty-nine additional Poquelins); and “for one Dickens ... five million ... Fieldings,” where perhaps five million marks of exclamation might not inadequately meet the case. Generous as is the praise which he heaps upon Mrs Browning and Mr Horne; true as much of what he says is; one feels that his observations want reducing, adjusting, co-ordinating under the calmer influence of comparative and universal criticism. There was not the slightest reason why he should get into such a frantic rage with, the “devilled kidneys” (a most pleasant and wholesome food) in that very pleasant and wholesome book Charles O’Malley; or why he should have so furiously resented Mr Lowell’s remarks on himself in the Fable for Critics, open as these are to criticism; or why he should have said or done a hundred other things of the kind. His “hungry heart and burning,” his ill-disciplined intellect and temper, drove him in all sorts of directions, and not unfrequently in the wrong ones.

Yet his critical instincts were almost always right; and not seldom they were remarkably original. Considering what the ways of poets are, and that Poe had his full share of the then prevailing American soreness towards “British” writers, I know few things in literature more pleasant and edifying at once than his enthusiastic and intelligent welcome of Tennyson. “The Rationale of Verse,” though there are faults in it, due to ignorance or carelessness in terminology, to haste, and to imperfect reading, is one of the best things ever written on English prosody, and quite astonishingly original. Although, when he takes a great deal of pains it is apt to be rather lost labour, as, for instance, in the comically laborious dissection of Longfellow’s Spanish Student (a delightful thing if taken in the proper way), the acuteness which he often shows even in such pieces, and much more in his lighter aperçus, is remarkable. The Marginalia are full of good things—I find, after reading them anew for this purpose, that my reference slips “stand like the corn arow.” His dislike of German criticism[1151] may have been half opposition to Carlyle, between whom and himself there was a gulf fixed; and he should not have said that Macaulay had more true critical spirit than both the Schlegels put together. But this very passage is worth pondering, and it was very bold at the time. I do not think he borrowed the true observation of the resemblance between Hudibras and the Satyre Menippée.[1152] His defence of the “rhetorician’s rules”[1153] is just and lively: it is not a little noteworthy that he, the most apparently irregular and spasmodic of men of genius, perfectly understands the importance of Form.

And all this, let it be remembered, was written, not merely in distress, and in disease, and sometimes in despair, but—to adapt the Dickensian and Gautieresque juxtaposition—in the ’Thirties and 'Forties, when, as we have seen, criticism in England itself had fallen into the state from which it was aroused by Matthew Arnold years after Poe’s death; when Carlyle was turning his back on it, when Macaulay was acknowledging that he was not the man for it, when the men who meddled with it were showing absolute want of comprehension of Tennyson, and passing Browning over as beneath their notice. It was written in spite of the bad influence (discernible enough, as it is, in Poe) of the swaggering, swashbuckler fashion of “British” criticism itself. It was written before—long before in most cases—Lowell came to his maturity as a critic. It is, except in flashes and indications, mostly a might-have-been. But that might-have-been, translated into fact, would, I think, have ranked with the most noteworthy critical achievements that we possess in regard to poetry and belles-lettres. On other departments Poe could probably never, in the most favourable circumstances, have laid much hold. But in his own sphere he not only did the works, but knew those who did them and how they were done.

[Sidenote: Lowell: his general position.]

On the whole, however, I suppose that a majority of the best judges would award the place of premier critic of America to Mr Lowell, and I should certainly not attempt to contest the judgment. He had, in an eminent degree, most of the qualities which our long examination has enabled us to specify as generally found in good critics; catholic and observant reading, real enthusiasm for literature, sanity of judgment, good-humour, width of view, and (though this perhaps in rather less measure than the others) methodic arrangement and grasp. He was free, not merely from the defects which are the opposites of these good qualities, but from others—the niggling and carping of the gerund-grinder and the gradus-hunter,[1154] the hideboundness of the type-and-kind critic, and above all the incomprehensible and yet all-pervading inability to like something because it is not something else. He could put his perceptions brightly and forcibly—in a way perhaps rather tempting to re-read than at once sinking into the memory, but not the less excellent, and perhaps (in criticism) rather the more uncommon, for that.

On the wrong side of the account there are of course some things to put. I shall not be suspected of wishing to banish quips and cranks from criticism, but Mr Lowell was perhaps a little too prodigal of them. His patriotism was a little aggressive—not in the way (which he had far too much critical good sense ever to tread) of overvaluing his countrymen’s literary performances, but in too often infusing into his criticism a sort of Nemo-me-impune-lacessit flavour which was quite unnecessary, and in fact almost entirely irrelevant. And lastly, as has been hinted above, his grasp was not always sure. To compare the two papers on Gray, written at no great interval of time, by him and by his slightly younger contemporary Mr Arnold, is very interesting and instructive. I am not sure that, if it were just (or indeed possible) to extract separate good critical things, like nuggets, from the two essays, and weigh the parcels against each other, the American would not prove the richer, even allowing weight for length. But Gray is not “put” in the Harvard man’s essay as he is in the Oxonian’s: the critical contact is less full and vital, the congress less complete. It may be urged, indeed, that the selection is not quite fair, because of the unusual sympathy, and as it were harmony pre-established, between the Graian and the Arnoldian temperaments; but the same slight shortcoming will be found elsewhere.[1155]

[Sidenote: Among my Books.]

Mr Lowell’s best known book of literary criticism is, no doubt, Among my Books; but though it shows his method characteristically enough, it is by no means mainly bookish: in fact, I think there is rather less in it about the literary part of the matter than in others. The famous essay on “Dryden” is of course a standard, and perhaps its author’s diploma-piece as a critic; and the “Shakespeare once More” (a title suggested by Goethe) is a very interesting literary pot-pourri. But the “Lessing” and the “Rousseau” are chiefly biographical; and such papers as “Witchcraft” and “New England,” attractive as they are, are from the literary point of view quite “off,” as literary slang has it. There is nothing to object to in this, for the general title covers subjects suggested by books, or the subjects of books, quite as amply as books-by-themselves-books; and there can be no doubt that the reader usually likes the others best. But the whole volume shows its author well as a scholar but not a pedant, a man of letters who is also a man of the world, and a judge who, though by no means ideally impartial, and even with a tolerably well-stuffed portfolio of prejudices, can give judgments not to be pooh-poohed at the worst, and at the best things worthy to take their place with the best of judge-made law in our subject.

[Sidenote: My Study Windows.]

The equally well-known My Study Windows does not contain, as the title may seem to intimate, matter of more mixed quality as regards pure literature, but the quality is still mixed. Mr Lowell was not happy in his reception of the avatar of Mr Swinburne: it is indeed so rare for a man of more than middle age to be quite at focus with a new poet, that some of the wiser or more pusillanimous of our kind decline in such cases to register a formal judgment. The “Carlyle” is much tainted by political prejudice, though it does credit to Mr Lowell’s perspicacity to have so early found out in Carlyle that real “Toryism” which was so long mistaken. But the “Chaucer” and the “Pope”—differ here and there with them as we may or must—are solid and substantive contributions to the main shelf of criticism; while in the lower ranges “The Life and Letters of James Gates Perceval” only needed more quotation and more ruthlessness to make it a pendant to Macaulay’s “Montgomery.”

[Sidenote: Essays on the English Poets.]

The Essays which have been reprinted in England, with the permission of Mr Lowell and with a Preface by his own hands, as Essays on the English Poets[1156] (including those on Lessing and Rousseau as a very welcome though not exceedingly relevant bonus or make-weight), are partly drawn from the two books just noticed. Some of them seem to have been written rather early; most were originally lectures to a university, and may have a little sacrificed literature to instruction. The best by a good deal is, I think, the “Wordsworth,”[1157] which, though there are many good essays on Wordsworth to make up for the many bad ones, deserves to rank almost with the best. It is seldom that in a single essay one finds such a capital specimen of delicate appreciation as the comparison of the fall of Goethe’s Ueber allen Gipfeln to “blossoms shaken down by a noonday breeze on turf”; so good an example of the criticism of epigram as “Wordsworth is the historian of Wordsworthshire”;[1158] and so fine and just a critical simile as the comparison of Milton’s verse to a mixed fleet of men-of-war and merchantmen, which comes shortly after. The “Milton” itself has more to do with Milton’s editor and biographer than with Milton, and is marred by that curious impatience of a reasoned prosody which appears in Mr Lowell so often. So is the Spenser—quite admirable in great part of it—by the author’s well-known and excessive depreciation of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century poetry.[1159] The “Keats” leaves off just when we are expecting the critic to begin. As if to carry out unity of cross-purpose, if of nothing more, the “Lessing” hardly says anything about Lessing’s criticism, and the “Rousseau” is chiefly about Rousseau as a man. But though, putting the “Wordsworth” aside, the contents of the volume would hardly have given us a fair idea of Mr Lowell’s critical powers by themselves, it could have been written by no bad critic as a whole, and in part could only have been written by a very good one.

[Sidenote: Last Essays.]

As nearly always, too, this critic’s last work is of his best. The “Gray” we have noticed. The “Landor” is mainly, though not wholly, personal; and the “Walton,” as a “Walton” must be and ought to be, rather of life rather than of literature. But the paper on the Areopagitica is an admirable piece, and “On the Study of Modern Languages” stands, I think, alone among the arguments on its side, distinguished at once by competent knowledge and judicial fairness in regard to ancient and modern alike.

So much critical gift, indeed, of so wide a range and so happy in its display, is seldom to be found. And though nothing is more impertinent than to recommend a representative to a constituency to which you do not yourself belong, I think that perhaps these volumes may give me the right to say that if I were an American I should vote for Mr Lowell, and that whatever might be my nationality I should say “Well done!” if he were elected.

[Sidenote: O. W. Holmes.]

To pass to yet another of the same distinguished group. There is, though a great deal of indirect, not much direct criticism in the omniform and (when the writer could keep the cant of anti-cant out) almost always agreeable trilogy of the Breakfast-Table. But there is one passage[1160] in the last of the three which, with hardly an alteration, is so admirable and final a description of the duty of the critic himself that I must borrow it with some slight interlineations. These, I am sure, Dr Holmes—if only as to a brother member of the Rabelais Club of pleasant memory—would not have refused me:—

[Sidenote: The whole duty of critics stated by him in alia materia.]

“Now the present case, as the (critic)/doctor sees it, is just exactly such a collection of paltry individual facts as never was before—a snarl and tangle of special conditions out of which it is his business to wind as much thread as he can. It is a good deal as when a painter goes to take the portrait of any sitter who happens to send for him. He has seen just such noses, and just such eyes, and just such mouths: but he never saw exactly such a face before, and his business is with that and no other person’s—with the features of the worthy father of a family before him, and not with the portraits he has seen in galleries, or books, or Mr Copley’s grand pictures of the fine old Tories, or the Apollos and Jupiters of Greek sculpture. It is the same with (critic’s subject)/the patient. His (production)/disease has features of its own; there never was and never will be another case in all respects exactly like it. If a (critic)/doctor has science without common-sense he treats a (book)/fever, but not this man’s (book)/fever. If he has common-sense without science he treats this man’s (book)/fever without knowing the general laws that govern (books and all literature)/all fevers and all vital movements.”

Which thing let it be frontlet and wristlet to whosoever meddles with criticism.

[Sidenote: Whitman and the “Democratic” ideal.]

The poet who seems to some possibly rash non-American persons to divide with Poe the prize due to the worthiest in American poetry, was also a critic—less of the professional kind, much more borné, but more concentrated, and in some ways more influential. The critical views of Walt Whitman are scattered all over his not inconsiderable works, but are to be found brought together and marshalled most aggressively in his prose Democratic Vistas, with their “General Notes,” and in the numeris lege solutis of the Song of the Exposition. According to these views, though Whitman speaks of individual writers (not merely Shakespeare but even Scott) with warm admiration, and with nothing of the curious blindness which has characterised some of his followers in the line, “English literature is not great” because it is anti-Democratic and Feudal. These “Notes” must develop something quite different, and of the nature of an antidote. All “warrior epics” are “void, inanimate, passed,” and so forth. The expression of this is often, as Whitman’s expression constantly is, admirable, and the temper of it is always intentionally wholesome and generous. If I regard it as hopelessly bad criticism, it is not (to repeat the refrain once more) because I disagree with its conclusions, but because it seems to me to start from a hopelessly wrong principle, and to proceed on hopelessly mistaken methods. That principle and those methods, mutatis mutandis, would justify me in dismissing—nay, would force me to dismiss—as void, inanimate, worthless, mischievous, something of Heine, much of Shelley, more of Hugo, and very nearly the whole of Whitman himself—four poets in four different countries born, whom, as it happens, if I were the responsible literary adviser of a new King Arthur of Poetry, I should bid him summon among the very first to his Round Table. To the critic, as I understand criticism (and if I may adapt a famous text of Scripture), Feudalism is nothing and Democracy is nothing, but the Spirit of Literature. Whitman did not think so, and unfortunately his ideas (which may have been partly suggested by Emerson) have found followers who have not always mellowed and antidoted the crude poison of theory with the generous wine of temperament and expression.

Of the remarkable, if somewhat abortive, “Transcendental” group in the latter part of the first half of the nineteenth century, George Ripley and Margaret Fuller seem to call for notice here: as specimens of later writers, Whipple and Sidney Lanier may suffice, in the impossibility of including a considerable numerus.[1161]

[Sidenote: Margaret Fuller.]

The critical writings of the Marchesa Ossoli are, I suppose, chiefly contained in the volumes of her works entitled Art, Literature, and Drama, and Life Without and Life Within. They have much interest, and I think deserve the position assigned to her[1162] as the first American woman who had regularly trained for criticism, and as being in a way the chief of all such to the present day. They have, however, certain characteristics which perhaps might be anticipated. The merely silly reproach of transcendentalism leaves “Margaret” unscathed. She does not talk nonsense. But she does talk a little vaguely and loosely; and it does seem rather difficult for her to keep her eye steadily on any one object. We know that she will overvalue Goethe; it was, as we have pointed out, the very form and pressure of the time that made her do so, and probably to no country was the gospel according to Wolfgang a more powerful and beneficent gospel than to the United States of America in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. But when we read, in English, that “the frail Philina, graceful though contemptible, presents the degradation incident to an attempt at leading an exclusively poetic life,” or that “not even in Shakespeare” has she “felt the organising power of genius as in” Ottilie of the Wahlverwandtschaften, we think a great deal more than there is room or necessity here to say. The article on Poe’s Poems is very curious; the critic appears as a sort of she-Balaam, without that unlucky prophet’s generous frankness when he found he could not help it; she cannot ban, and will not bless freely. That on Philip van Artevelde is more curious still in another way. It makes the most enormous and yet indecisive sweeps before attacking its subject, feints at the whole question of Classic v. Romantic, says more about Alfieri (who seems to have been Margaret’s favourite poet) than about Taylor, and finally despatches the nominal theme in very few and very inadequate words. She is always attractive[1163]—this “Margarita del Occidente”—this new “Margarite of America,” and the ideas which, before reading, some may have formed of her as of a sort of “mother of all such as are schoolmarms” melt at once in contact with her work. But would she ever have become a great critic? I doubt it; she certainly had not become one when she died. She was thinking of things other than the Power of the Word. Better, if anybody likes; but other.

[Sidenote: Ripley.]

Her editor, I think, and, with Emerson, certainly her teacher, the Reverend George Ripley, did very much to imbue his country with foreign literature; not a little to help it to understand that literature. Ripley has been very highly spoken of, by good authorities, for the attempts which he made to produce a higher standard and a wider range of literary scholarship in the United States: and in fact there is no doubt that the Transcendental group did yeoman’s service in this way, their work not a little resembling that done in Germany a hundred years, or a little less, earlier. But I do not know many of his later Reviews in the Tribune, and his Specimens of Foreign Literature, two volumes published at Boston in 1838 as the ushers and samples of a much larger library of the subject, are not in the least literary, but purely philosophical. They give translated extracts from Cousin, Jouffroy, and Benjamin Constant, with Introductions and rather copious notes or short excursus. The whole shows knowledge, judgment, and a real critical capacity; but these good gifts are, as has been said, devoted to the philosophic, not the literary character and achievement of their subjects, and it is very noticeable that of the nearly twenty books or parts of books which are announced as to form the intended library, more than half are purely philosophical and only a small part purely literary.

[Sidenote: Whipple.]

Of Whipple I chiefly know the two volumes of Essays and Reviews, which appeared as long ago as 1849. He must have written much else, as he did not die till 1886; but the contents of these volumes are bulky enough and varied enough, I should suppose, to afford a fair field of judgment. His countrymen have, I believe, rather outgrown him, and do not at present rank him very high; but the “perspective of the past,” as it “firms,” will probably establish him in a fair though not a very high place. He seems to me to have been one of the first American writers who set themselves to be critics without further ambitions, and took literature calmly to be their province in the judicial way. He might, no doubt, have had more style: not that his is bad, but that it is undistinguished, wanting more grace to win that prize and more vigour to win the other. He might also have had more grasp. His dicta are occasionally unfortunate: one reads that Pinkney has written “as well as Lovelace and Carew, better than Waller, Sedley, Etherege, and Dorset”; and asks for those works of Pinkney which are as good as “To Althea,” and “To Lucasta,” and “To A. L.”; better than “Phillis is my only Joy” and “To all you Ladies.”[1164] And it is strange to find a man in two minds about Keats, and sure that Barry Cornwall has “splendid traits of genius.” But these things will happen. I do not know what Whipple’s education was, but I should rather doubt whether he had been sufficiently brought up on the chief and principal things to keep his eye from wandering and “wobbling.” His article on the Elizabethan dramatists has a fatal look of being founded rather on Lamb and Hunt and Hazlitt than on Dodsley and Dilke. Still he is by no means a merely negligible quantity in our calculus. He has interesting separate things— a capital, and, for an American at the moment, very magnanimous article on Sydney Smith; two notable ones on Talfourd and “British Critics”; early, and so valuable, notices of Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair. A paper on “South’s Sermons” makes one regret that he did not turn his attention more to older literature—perhaps he would have had more doubts about the superiority of Pinkney if he had. Again, he saw, what has often to this very day been foolishly denied, the intellectual importance of Tennyson—in fact, he seems to have been on the whole more disposed to the philosophical than to the purely artistic side of poetry. Of perhaps his two most ambitious essays the “Byron” has the commonplaceness which Byron’s eulogists and detractors alike so commonly display; but the “Wordsworth” is much better. He could hardly be called a critic of genius or even of great talent, but he was fair, not ill-informed, interested and disinterested (both in the good senses) and evidently a “corn-and-seeds-man”—that is to say, a critic—“in his heart.” Which things, if they could be said of all of us, so much the better.

[Sidenote: Lanier.]

Mr Sidney Lanier was, I believe, greatly thought of, and was the object of still greater hopes on the part of those who knew him personally; and though his career was cut short, there appear in his remains such a love for literature, and such an ardent desire to keep that love pure and high, that one cannot but be well affected to him. It is, however, rather difficult to believe that he would ever have been a really great, or even a fairly catholic and competent, critic. Occasional utterances and aperçus, when the planets were kind, must at most have been his portion. In the literature of criticism, which has many strange things, there is hardly anything odder than his The English Novel and the Principle of its Development,[1165] which is simply a long, rather discursive, and wholly laudatory review of George Eliot. The selection of the individual is a matter of little consequence: I wish that I could save myself constant repetition by printing across the dog’s-ear place of these pages the warning, “Never judge a critic by your agreement with his likes and dislikes.” But the narrowing down of so mighty a theme to the glorification of any single novelist of a passing day would have been enough to throw the gravest doubts on Mr Lanier’s competence.

Unluckily there is more. “The quiet and elegant narratives of Miss Austen,” as the sole notice dealt out to its subject by the author of a treatise on the English Novel, “speaks” that author with a disastrous finality. A man need not go all lengths for Miss Austen, just as he need not for Milton or Virgil; but if in a study of Latin or English poetry as a whole he contented himself with referring obiter to “the elegant and scholarly verse of Virgil” and the “serious and careful productions of Milton,” we should know what to think of him. The oddest thing in Mr Lanier’s book, however, is his intense, his obviously genuine, and I think his quite nationally disinterested abhorrence[1166] of the “Four Masters”—of Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne. Pamela is “a silly and hideous realisation” of a really immoral idea. Fielding’s morality is similar, but “more clownish.” Sterne “spent his life in low, brutish, inane pursuits.” He “can read none of these books without feeling as if his soul had been in the rain, draggled, muddy, miserable.” He would “blot them from the face of the earth.” They are “muck.” Praise of them is simply “well-meaning ignorance.” Is it ungenerous in face of this last statement to ask whether it is well-meaning knowledge which represents “Mr B.” not once but often as not an orphan but a widower, and Pamela as the servant, not of his mother but of his wife? I know that Mr Lanier died before he could revise these lectures for publication. But the point happens to be of some, if slight, importance, and when we take it in conjunction with the facts that Mr Lanier thought admirers of Tom Jones must centre their admiration on Allworthy, and that he accounted for the unpopularity of Daniel Deronda by asserting that English society felt its satire too keenly, our old brocard of judicia ignorantium doth something buzz i’ the ear.

But Mr Lanier, though a younger man than Mr Lowell, was, to say nothing of his inferiority in genius, practically a member of an older school, corresponding, as I have already remarked, to one which not all contemporaries of his had outgone in England itself, and which, for the matter of that, we have not universally outgone even now. Since his day American criticism (except for that in all probability passing diversion into “Democratic” parochialism which has been noticed) has become very much more cosmopolitan, very much more fully developed, and in particular very much more learned. It has perhaps, of the very latest years, gone a little too much to Germany for patterns, and plunged too often into the German cul-de-sac maze of specialist monographs—a dangerous and soul-killing wilderness, wherein many positively foolish and hurtful things are done, and where at the best the places are all too often dry. Yet some of these very monographs have been executed in a manner escaping the dangers and avoiding the drynesses, and not a few both of the authors of them and of others have shown soul and sight considerably above the mere trail-hunting of the specialist. If all living American critics were to be carried off by a special epidemic, I should be sorry for two reasons—first of all, because several of them are my personal friends, and secondly, because I should have to extend this appendix to an altogether unmanageable length. But meanwhile there is no doubt that Mr Lowell handed in, once for all, the “proofs” of American criticism, and that it has nothing now to do but to go on and prosper.

-----

Footnote 1146:

Vol. ii., Nos. 1 and 2, July and August 1900 (Burlington, Vt.) The author is Mr W. M. Payne.

Footnote 1147:

In the colonial period not even the untiring industry and the microscopic enthusiasm of Professor Tyler have discovered anything critical. Mr Charles F. Richardson in American Literature, 1607-1885 (New York and London: Putnams, 1887), i. 396, says plumply, “Criticism did not exist in this country during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, nor did it make much showing until the nineteenth century was well advanced.” There is far less of it, for instance, in Washington Irving than one might expect. Perhaps some may think that an exception ought to be made for Channing. But his Essay on Milton, which is the chief critical thing of his known to me, produces that sense of bafflement which, if I remember rightly, Renan expresses in regard to him on other grounds: “We are aware that it is objected to poetry that it gives wrong views of life....” “We gaze on Satan with an awe not unmixed with mysterious pleasure....” &c., &c. With such matter we have known how to deal in the sixteenth, the seventeenth, the eighteenth century; in the nineteenth it loses significance.

Footnote 1148:

The chief source of my direct knowledge of his work of the kind is the collection called Drift-Wood, which I have known for very many years. Somewhat later—the Drift-Wood papers date from before 1840—he inserted critical introductions in his Poets and Poetry of Europe (1845).

Footnote 1149:

It fills half the third volume and all the fourth in Mr Ingram’s edition of the works (4 vols., Edinburgh, 1874).

Footnote 1150:

In the article on Lever, where some special gadfly seems to have stung Poe.

Footnote 1151:

Marg., 76.

Footnote 1152:

Ibid., 114.

Footnote 1153:

Ibid., 177.

Footnote 1154:

He comes perhaps too close to this in his paper on “The Library of Old Authors”; but there was certainly no little provocation in the editing, and even in the selection, of some of the volumes of that always comely and mainly comfortable series.

Footnote 1155:

On some minor defects it is not worth while to dwell. Lowell could see that Guest had no ear for verse: yet he was all his life long as impatient as Guest himself of that duly transferred and adapted “classical” system of English prosody which could be easily shown to justify almost all the things he himself liked, and to explain the badness of those which he thought bad. He began this impatience quite early with Poe in the Fable for Critics; and he never shook it off.

Footnote 1156:

London, n. d. The Preface is dated 1888.

Footnote 1157:

Ed. cit., pp. 184-239.

Footnote 1158:

Unfortunately the readers of that very peculiar kind of literature the “County History” are not often critical students of literature itself: so the charm of this remark may be missed.

Footnote 1159:

This intolerance of things not quite “best and principal” was almost as much a tic with him as with Mr Arnold. I was once praising some recently printed Old French poems to him. “Are they better than Chrestien?” he said. And he would not read them.

Footnote 1160:

The Poet at the Breakfast-Table, chap. v.

Footnote 1161:

The poets Bryant and Whittier have respectable reputations as critics, and, from what I know of their other work, are likely to have deserved them. But on the same ground I rather doubt whether it is necessary to investigate their criticism for the present purpose. Nor do I think that the critical work of Bayard Taylor, of which I have some knowledge, imperatively calls for notice. American Shakespeare-critics (with Richard Grant White at their head) might occupy a special excursus, not without advantage.

Footnote 1162:

As, for instance, by Professor Brander Matthews, Introduction to American Literature (New York, 1896), p. 226.

Footnote 1163:

And she can sometimes be piquant. This of the Schlegels: “Men to find plausible meaning for the deepest enigma, or to hang up each map of literature, well painted and dotted, on its proper roller,” is quite inspiriting and tempts one to regret that she was thrown away on Transcendentalism and Italomania.

Footnote 1164:

One might add the question, “What has ‘Gentle George’ Etherege to do in this galley?” though he pulls a good oar in another.

Footnote 1165:

New York, 1883. The characteristics here noted appear also in the recently and handsomely produced book on the Elizabethan period, Shakespeare and his Forerunners, 2 vols., 1903. The much earlier Science of English Verse, 1880, attempts to explain prosody by musical signs, and is thus out of the pale.

Footnote 1166:

The expressions quoted and others will be found at pp. 169-183, op. cit. Lanier, though quite unprejudiced, I think, by nationality, was badly bitten by the equally fatal though less ignoble mania of “Progress,” and by the moral heresy. He shows the same marks as do so many pre-Arnoldian English critics of the mid-nineteenth century.

INDEX.

Adolphus, John Leycester (1795-1862), 272 note. Addison, 7, 8, 38, 54, 58, 72 sq., 146, 176, 189, 194, 227 note, 231, 398. Adventurer, The, 67 sq. Advice to an Author, 158. Ægri Somnia, 337 sq. Æschylus, 46, 47, 103, 225, 226, 400. Æsthetica, Baumgarten’s, 148 sq. Æsthetics, v. Bk. vii. ch. v., ibid., ch. vii. passim. Ainger, Canon, 257 sq. Akenside, 57. Aletheophilus, 149. Alice Fell, 216 note. Alison, Archibald (1757-1839), 164-167, 291 note. Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste, 150. Amiel, Henri Frédéric (1821-1881), 388, 594-598. Among my Books, 637. Ampère, J. J. (1800-1864), 300. Ancient Mariner, The, 219. André, Yves Marc de l’Isle-, Père (1675-1764), 146, 151, 186 note. Andrieux, François G. J. S. (1759-1833), 130 note. Anima Poetæ, 218 sq., 227 sq. Anti-Jacobin, The, 286 sq. Antoniewicz, Herr J. von, 15 note, 30, 147. Appreciations, 548 sq. Ariosto, 36, 69, 77, 161, 179, 400. Aristophanes, 46, 47, 252. Aristotle, passim. Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888), 33, 37, 46 note, 55, 57, 96, 118, 120, 126, 150 note, 218, 222, 230, 245, 286, 295, 302 note, 312, 320, 326 note, 369, 420, 482, 505 note, 515-537, 589, 623. Art d’Écrire, Condillac’s, 99 note. Ashe, Thomas (1836-1889), 220 note. Asselineau, Charles (1820-1874), 453. Atala, 316. Auger, Louis S. (1772-1829), 132, 133 note, 136. Austen, Miss, 108.

Babou, Hippolyte (1824-1878), 453. Bacon, 153, 176, 232. Bagehot, Walter (1826-1877), 542, 543. Balzac (the elder), 311, 312. —-- (the younger), 303, 457. Banville, Théodore de (1823-1891), 450. Barbazan, 177. Barbey d’Aurévilly, Jules (1808-1889), 433-436. Basil, St, 538 note. Batteux, 29, 43, 131. Baudelaire, Charles (1821-1867), 452. Baumgarten, Alex. G. (1714-1762), 148-150, 392. Baviad and Mæviad, The, 286 sq. Béat de Muralt. See Muralt. Beattie, 57. Beaumont, Sir George, 205. Beddoes, 620, 621. Beers, Mr H. A., 69 note. Beiträge, Gottsched’s, 20. Benlowes, Edward (1603-1676), 6, 7. Bentley, 183 note. Bertram, Coleridge’s critique on, 213 note, 219 note. Beyle, Henri (1783-1842), 135-139, 160. Bijoux Indiscrets, Les, 94. Biographia Literaria, 201 sq. Blackwood’s Magazine, 502-504. See also De Quincey, Lockhart, Maginn, Wilson. Blair, 104, 128, 131, 157 note, 163 note, 166. Blake, William (1757-1827), 232, 236, 244, 266-269. Blankenberg, 150. Blossoms of Helicon, The, 7 note. Boas, Herr, 380 note. Boccaccio, 124. Bodmer, Johann Jakob (1698-1785), 20-28, 193, 392. Boileau, 14, 21, 124, 129, 177, 377. Bon Gaultier Ballads, The, 289. Borinski, Dr K., 16 note, sq. Borrow, George, 283 note. Bosanquet, Mr, 168, 169 note, 183 note, 573 note. Bouhours, 12, 131. Bowles, William Lisle (1762-1850), 218, 229, 279-281. Boyer [Bowyer], 218. —-- Philoxène (1827-1867), 453. Bradley, Prof., 616, 629. Braitmaier, Herr F., 15 note, and Bk. vii. ch. ii. passim, 148. Brandes, Dr, 386 note. Breitinger, Johann Jakob (1701-1776), 20-28, 148. Bridges, Mr Robert, 207 note. Brimley, George (1819-1857), 504-508. British Muse, The, 175 note. Browne, Sir T., 297. Browning, Mrs, 514 note. Brumoy, 39, 43 note. Brunetière, M., 184, 309, 455, 469. Bryant, 641 note. Brydges, Sir Samuel Egerton (1762-1837), 283, 284. Buchanan, Mr Robert, 561 note. Buchner, August (1591-1661), 17. Bunyan, 161, 163. Bürger, Gottfried August (1747-1794), 378, 379, 384, 576. Burke, Edmund (1729-1797), 162-164, 229, 400. Butler, Samuel (1612-1680), 5-7. Byron, George Gordon, Lord (1788-1824), 110, 136, 228, 234, 280-282, 371 sq., 376.

Caine, Mr Hall, 426 note. Callières, 12, 176. Campbell, Mr Dykes, 219 note, 221 note. —-- Thomas (1777-1844), 112 note, 232, 272-274. Canning, 288 sq. Capell, Edward (1713-1781), 175 note. Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881), 38, 48, 385, 387 sq., 393, 416 sq., 405-409, 537 sq. Caro, Esme Marie (1826-1887), 465, 466. Carrière, Moritz (b. 1817), 573-575. Castelvetro, viii, 195. Catullus, 124, 277. Causeries, Sainte-Beuve’s, 317 sq. Censura Literaria, 282, 283 note. Cervantes, 159, 182. Channing, William E. (1780-1842), 631 note. Character of a Small Poet, 6, 7. Characteristics, 158, 159. Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, 258, 259. Chasles, V. E. Philarète (1798-1873), 432, 433. Chateaubriand, François Aug., Vicomte de (1768-1848), 99, 109-117, 131, 194, 313-317. Chateaubriand et son Groupe Littéraire, 313-317. Chaucer, 71, 77, 174, 256, 258, 273, 409. Chenier, A., 117. —-- M. J. (1764-1811), 130, 131. Chesterfield, 504 note. Christopher North. See Wilson, John. Church, Richard William (1815-1890), 558. Cicero, 124. Claudian, 282. Claughton, Thomas Legh, Bishop of Rochester (1808-1892), 626. Coleridge, Mr Ernest, 218, 227. —-- Hartley (1796-1849), 283 note, 485-487. —-- Samuel Taylor (1772-1834), 37, 126, 142, 149, 155, 168, 194, 197 half-title, 200-233, 236, 239, 243, 249, 250, 256, 258, 278, 288, 291 note, 310, 375, 392, 393, 396 note, 411 sq., 418 note, 472, 478, 484, 487 note, 489, 536, 541, 548. Collier, J. P., 209 note. Collier, Jeremy, 257. Collins, 58. —-- Mr Churton, 427 note. Comic Writers, The English, 256, 257. “Comparative Literature,” 460 note, 462 sq. Condillac, 99 note. Congreve, 161, 239. Conti, Antonio (1677-1749), 23 and note, 51 note. Conybeare, John Josias (1779-1824), 620. Copleston, Edward, Bishop of Llandaff (1776-1849), 618-620. Corneille, 13, 37, 161, 397. Courthope, Mr, 616, 629. Cousin, Victor (1792-1867), 133. Cowper, 204, 228. Creed, The Romantic, 409, 410. Creighton, Bishop, 603. Crépet’s Poètes Français, 450 sq. Crisp, “Daddy,” 39 note, 43 note. “Criticism of Life,” 531 sq. Croce, Signor Benedetto, 152 note, 155, 169 note, 589 note. Croker, John Wilson (1780-1857), 494, 509. Cromwell, Preface to, 331 sq.

Dallas, Eneas Sweetland (1828-1879), 511-513. Dante, vi, 114, 179, 180, 210 note, 214-216, 228, 247, 248, 256, 534 sq. Danzel, 19 note, 20. Defence of Poetry, Shelley’s, 274, 275. De la Littérature, Madame de Staël’s, 101 sq. De la Littérature Allemande, 48-51. De l’Allemagne, 101 sq. De Constantia Jurisprudentis, 153. De Logomachiis Eruditorum, 18. De Meteoris Orationis, 19. De Nonnullis ad Poema Pertinentibus, 148, 149. De Studiorum Ratione, 152. De Vulgari Eloquio, 201, 210, 215, 216. Defoe, 242. Delille, 122 sq., 333. Delius, 575. Denham, 6. Denina, ix. Dennis, ix, 286, 408. De Quincey, Thomas (1785-1859), 81, 355 note, 405 note, 412, 478-482. De Sanctis, Francesco (1817-1883), 589-591. Descartes, 146. Dickens, 364 note. Diderot, Denis (1713-1784), 41, 89-97, 99, 109, 111, 117, 178, 185, 190 note, 192, 194, 217. Die Vernünftigen Tadlerinnen, 19. Dies Boreales, 473 sq. Diskurse der Maler, 19 sq. Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848), 284. Divina Commedia, The, 108. Dobell, Sydney, 514 note. Doctor, The, 235 sq. Don Quixote, 182. Doudan, Ximenès (1800-1872), 436-438. Doyle, Sir Francis Hastings Charles (1810-1888), 626, 627. Dryden, 6, 9, 14, 44 note, 54, 55, 71, 159, 179, 192, 200, 222, 229, 249, 256, 310, 330, 364, 398, 418 note, 443, 504, 513 note, 520. Du Bellay, 200. Ducange, 177. Dussault, Jean F. J. (1769-1824), 129. Dyer, 58.

Eberhard, Joh. Aug. (1739-1809), 151. Eckermann, Joh. Peter (1792-1854), 301, 366 sq. Edinburgh Review, The, 213 note, 286, 290. Egger, M., 319. Elia, 237 sq. Elton, Professor, vi. Elwin, Whitwell (1816-1900), 510. Elze, 575. Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882), 633, 634. Emile, 98. English Metrists, 83 note. English Rhythms, 235 note. Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum, 296. “Esemplastic,” } “Esenoplastic,” } 228. Essai sur le Beau, 151. Essai sur les Fictions, 102. Essai sur les Règnes de Claude et de Néron, 94. Essay on Genius, 164 note. Essay on Pope, 66. Essay on Taste, Alison’s, 164-167. —-- Gerard’s, 164 note. —-- Jeffrey’s, 164, 291 note. Essays in Criticism, 521 sq. Essays on Men and Manners, 63. Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, 160. Etienne, 130. Euripides, 200. Excursion, The, 213.

Faguet, M. Émile, 339, 469. Farmer, Dr, 488. Feletz, C. M. Dorimont, Abbé de (1767-1850), 132. Felltham, Owen, 297 note. Fénelon, 177. Feydeau, 324 note. Fichte, 417. Fiévée, 130. Finlay, Mr F. G., 62 note. Fiorentino, 348 note. Firmilian, x. Flaubert, Gustave (1821-1880), 116, 120, 189, 228, 454, 461, 545, 581. Flemming, 369. Flint, Professor, 152 note, 153 note, 156. Fontanes, Louis, Marquis de (1757-1821), 112 not, 113, 127. Fontenelle, 9, 56, 177, 195, 230. Fool of Quality, The, 539. Forman, Mr Buxton, 473 note. Foscolo, Ugo (1778-1827), 407 note. Foster, John (1731-1774), 83. —-- (1770-1843), 513. Fournier, Edouard (1819-1880), 453. Fox, W. J. (1786-1864), 513. France, M. Anatole, 455 note, 469. Franciosi, Signor, viii. Frederick the Great (1712-1786), 48-51. Freytag, Gustav (b. 1816), 578, 579. Friend, The, 219. Froude, James Anthony (1818-1894), 539. Fuller, Margaret (1810-1850), 164, 642.

Garat, Dominique Joseph (1749-1833), 130. Garbett, James (1802-1879), 625, 626. Gaspard de la Nuit, 305. Gautier, Théophile (1811-1872), 36, 120, 324 note, 338-342, 450, 475 note. Gay Science, The, 512 sq. Gaya Scienza, La, 583. Gellert, 28 and note, 50. Génie du Christianisme, 111 sq. Geoffroy, Jules-Louis (1743-1814), 128, 129. Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795), 165 note, 291 note. Gervinus, G. G. (1805-1871), 575-577. Gibbon, 323. Gifford, William (1756-1826), 232, 242, 253, 286 sq., 289 note. Gilpin, 83. Ginguené, Pierre Louis (1748-1816), 130. Girardin, Saint-Marc (1801-1873), 320, 343, 344. Globe, The, 300 sq., 367, 368. Godwin, 243, 253, 263, 270 note. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832), 50, 97, 106, 117, 168, 193, 223 note, 251, 300, 301, 366-377, 388. Goetz von Berlichingen, 50. Goncourt, Émile (1822-1867); and Jules (1830-1870), de, 124, 307 note, 452 note, 458, 459. Gosse, Mr. Edmund, 56 note, 128, 546 note. —-- M. Etienne, 128. Gottsched, 12, 19, 20, 24 and note, 193, 392. Götzen-Dammerung, 585. “Grand Style,” The, 522 sq. Gravina, 9, 56. Gray, Thomas (1716-1771), 53, 63, 81, 186, 194, 203, 212, 217, 418 note. Grillparzer, Franz (1791-1872), Bk. ix. half-title, 569-573, 582 note. Grotesques, Les, 341. Gryphius, Andreas (1616-1664), 18, 30, 31. Gudeman, Professor, vii. Guest, Edwin (1800-1880), 235 note, 637 note. Guizot, François P. G. (1787-1874), 133 note. —-- Mme., see Meulan. Gurney, Edmund (1847-1888), 559-661. Guttinguer, Ulric (1785-1886), 308 note.

Haldane, Mr, 582. Hallam, Arthur Henry (1811-1837), 513 note. —-- Henry (1777-1859), viii, 293-298, 474. Haller, 28 and note. Hamann, Johann Georg (1730-1788), 352, 353, 359. Hamburgische Dramaturgie, 34 sq., 94 note. Hamelius, Herr, 13. Hannay, Mr D., 48. —-- James (1827-1873), 511. Hardenberg, F. von, see Novalis. Hawkins, William (1722-1801), 616 note. Haym, R., 386 note. Hayward, Abraham (1801-1894), 509. —-- Thomas (d. 1779?), 175 note. Hazlitt, William (1778-1830), 224, 229, 232, 234, 238, 239, 244, 247, 248, 251-266, 273, 280, 314 note, 412 sq. Hegel, G. W. F. (1776-1831), 188. Heine, Heinrich (1799-1856), 27 note, 50, 386, 563-566, 571, 573 note. Heinsius, 40. Héloise, La Nouvelle, 98, 102. Helps, Sir Arthur (1813-1875), 509, 510. Henley, Mr W. E., 561 note. Hennequin, Émile (1859-1888), 222, 459-462. Henriade, The, 114. Herder, Johann G. (1744-1803), 49, 149, 353, 355-359, 380, 392. Héricault, Charles d’ (1823-?), 453. Heywood, 239. Hillebrand, Karl (1829-1884), 579-581, 582 note. Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise, 440 sq. Histoire du Romantisme, 341 sq. Histoire Littéraire de La France, 177. History of English Poetry (Warton’s), 70 sq. Hoeck, Theobald, 16, 17. Hoffman, François B. (1760-1828), 129, 130. Hoffmann, 565. Holmes, Oliver Wendell (1809-1884), 639, 640. —-- Robert (1748-1805), 616 note. Homer, 114, 154 sq., 162, 521 sq. Hommes et Dieux, 451. Horace, 39, 49, 73 sq. Horne, Richard Hengist (1803-1884), 263 note, 514 note. Houghton, Lord (Milnes, Richard Monckton) (1809-1885), 557. Hudibras, 104. Hueffer, Mr, 560. Hughes (editor of Spenser), 173. Hugo, Victor F. M. (1802-1885), 120, 127, 131, 185, 197 half-title, 307, 330-335, 336, 337, 345, 346, 369, 371, 434, 438, 461, 591, 593. Hume, David (1711-1776), 159-162. Hunt, James Henry Leigh (1784-1869), 232, 234, 239, 246-251, 257, 412 sq. Hurd, Richard (1720-1808), Bishop of Worcester, 1, 7, 40, 41, 53, 72-80, 93, 179, 185, 189 note, 190 note, 192, 273. Hurdis, James (1763-1801), 617, 618. Hutton, Richard Holt (1826-1897), 543, 544.

Ideen (Herder’s), 357, 358. Imagination and Fancy, 248. Inner Life of Art, The, 542. Inquiry into the Principles of Harmony in Language, 85, 86. Irving, Sir H., 96 note. —-- Washington, 631 note.

Jacques le Fataliste, 91. Janin, Jules (1804-1874), 453. Jean Paul, see Richter. Jeffrey, Francis (1773-1850), 112 note, 128 note, 232, 274 note, 289-293, 408. Johnson, 75, 85, 194, 195, 217, 222, 279, 310, 398, 408, 424, 435, 605. Joubert, Joseph (1754-1824), 1, 99, 117-126, 128, 194, 264 note, 333, 370, 390. Jouffroy, 300.

Keats, John (1795-1821), 55, 275 note. Keble, John (1792-1866), 621-625. Ker, Professor, vi. Kingsley, Charles (1819-1875), 538, 539. Kirke-White, 234. Klopstock, 28, 359 note. Klotz, 45, 47, 357. Knight’s Quarterly, 490 sq. Koberstein, 15 note. König, N. (1688-1744), 22, 23, 51 note. Kont, M., 39 note sq. Krantz, M., 146 note. Kritische Dichtkunst, K. Betrachtung, &c., see Bodmer.

La Bruyère, 8. Lacretelle, 130. La Fontaine, 124. La Harpe, 4, 12, 289, 296. Lamartine, 137 note, 346. Lamb, Charles (1775-1834), 232, 234, 236-246, 257, 412 sq. Lancaster, Henry Hill (1829-1875), 511. Landor, Walter Savage (1775-1864), 276-279. Langhorne, 533. Lanier, Sidney (1842-1881), 643, 644. Laocoön, The, 36 sq. Latouche, H. de, 348 note. Latter-Day Pamphlets, 498. Leader, The, 542 note. Le Bossu, 131. Leibnitz, 228. Lectures, Coleridge’s, 220 sq. Lectures on the Age of Elizabeth, 257, 258. Lectures on the English Poets, 252 sq. Legouvé, 130. Lemaître, M. Jules, 470. Lemcke, Professor, 419. Lemercier, L. Népomucène (1771-1840), 131, 132. Lemoyne, the Père, 116. Les Deux Masques, 451. Les Templiers, 106. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729-1781), 33-48, 94 note, 97, 117, 163 note, 176, 178, 181, 185, 187, 193, 214, 222, 249, 388, 392, 545. Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns, 201 note. Letter to John Murray, 280. Letters of Schiller and Goethe, 381 sq. Letters on Chivalry and Romance, 75 sq. Lettres d’Amabed, Les, 94. Lettres sur les Anglois et sur les François, 13, 14. Lettres sur Rousseau, 101, 102. Lewes, George Henry (1812-1878), 540-542. Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (1742-1799), 354. Littérature et Philosophie Mêlées, 331 sq. Locke, 146, 176. Lockhart, John Gibson (1794-1854), 412, 482-485. London, 561 note. London Magazine, The, 554 note. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (1807-1882), 632, 633. Longinus passim. Lope de Vega, 39 note. Lowell, James Russell (1819-1891), 286, 630, 636-639. Lowth, Robert, Bishop of London (1710-1787), 617. Lucian, 252. Lucretius, 159, 161, 200. Lydgate, Gray on, 61, 62. Lyrical Ballads, Preface to, 201 sq.

Macaulay, Thomas B. (1800-1859), 14 note, 39 note, 257, 272, 297, 489-495. Mackenzie, Henry, 345. Maginn, William (1793-1842), 166, 437-449. Magnin, C. (1793-1862), 347, 348. Maid of the Mill, The, 224. Maistre, Joseph de, 139, 305. Malebranche, 146. Mambrun, 46. Mansel, Henry Longueville (1820-1871), 557. Marginalia, Coleridge’s, 220 sq. Marius the Epicurean, 544 sq. Marivaux, 178. Marmontel, 34, 35, 131, 177. Martial, 39 and note, 381. Mason, John (1706-1763), 79-82. —-- William, 57 sq. Masson, Professor, 478 note, 480. Matthews, Professor Brander, 641 note. Maupassant, Guy de, 454 note. Mazzini, 589 note. Mélanges Littéraires (Chateaubriand’s), 112 note. Mélanges tirés d’une Petite Bibliothèque, 140. Mémoires d’un Touriste, 139. Mendelssohn, Moses (1729-1786), 32, 33. Menéndez y Pelayo, Señor, 588. Mérimée, Prosper (1803-1870), 135, 137, 348-350, 435. Meulan, Pauline de, 133 note. Michelet, Jules (1798-1874), 329, 330. Mill, John Stuart (1806-1873), 106, 514. Milman, Henry Hart (1791-1868), 509, 620, 621. Milnes, see Houghton. Milton, 8, 22 sq., 61, 114, 122, 176, 212, 229, 279, 400, 523 sq. Minto, William (1845-1893), 553, 554. Miscellanies, Æsthetic and Literary, 225. Mitford, William (1744-1827), 83-86, 491. “Modern,” the term, 3, 4. Moland, Louis (b. 1824), 453. Molière, 124, 136, 397. Monachopornomachia, 45. Monsieur Nicolas, 382. Montagu, Mrs (Elizabeth Robinson) (1720-1810), 173 note. Montaiglon, M. de (b. 1824), 310 note, 453. Montaigne, 177. Montégut, Émile (b. 1825), Bk. ix. half-title, 443 note, 444-447. Montgomery, Robert, 493. Morandi, Signor Luigi, 588. Morley, Mr John, 591. Morte Amoureuse, La, 36. Munro, H. A. J. (1819-1885), 183 note. Muralt, Louis Béat de (1665-1741), 13-15. Myers, Frederic William Henry (1843-1901), 552 note. Mylius, Christlob (1722-1754), 28 and note. My Study Windows, 637, 638.

Nerval, Gérard de (= Gérard Labrunie), 450 note. Nettleship, Henry (1839-1893), 183 note. Neveu de Rameau, Le, 91. Nicholls, 180. Nicolai, 32. Nicolas, Sir N. Harris (1799-1848), 283, 284. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900), 581-586. Nisard, Désiré (1806-1888), 335-338. Noctes Ambrosianæ, 472 sq. Nodier, Charles (1780-1844), 139, 140. North, Christopher, see Wilson, John. Nouveaux Lundis, 324 sq. “Novalis,” i.e., Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772-1801), 386-390, 565.

Observations on Poetry, 83 note. Observations on Spenser, 68 sq. Oeckhe Othoblad, see Hoeck, Theobald. Oldys, William (1696-1761), 54, 174, 175 and note. Omniana, 225. Omond, Mr T. S., 83 note. On Translating Homer, 521 sq. Opitz, 192, 298 note, 357 note, 400. Orientales, Preface to the, 85, 331 sq. Ossian, 59, 104, 112 note, 116, 135, 176, 359. Ozanam, 348 note.

Paculford, Professor, 538 note. Palgrave, Francis Turner (1824-1897), 628, 629. Paradoxe sur le Comédien, 91 sq. Parerga und Paralipomena, 566 sq. Paris, Gaston (1839-1903), 464, 465. Pascal, 124. Pater, Walter Horatio (1839-1894), 120, 183 note, 326 note, 451, 544-551. Patmore, Coventry K. D. (1823-1890), 558, 559. Patrizzi, 222, 334, 533. Pattison, Mark (1813-1884), 557. Paul et Virginie, 115. Paul, Mr Kegan, 538. Payne, Mr W. M., 631 note. Peacock, Thomas Love (1785-1866), 162 note, 274, 537. Pemberton, Henry (1694-1771), 83 note. Percy, Thomas (1729-1811), Bishop of Dromore, 53, 64-66, 192. Petrarch, 179. Petronius, 209 note. Pharonnida, 273, 290, 408. Philips, Ambrose (1675?-1749), 54 note. Phillips, Edward, 244. Philostratus, 275 note. Pindar, Peter. See Wolcot. Plain Speaker, The, 259, 260. Planche, J.B. Gustave (1808-1857), 344-347. Plato, 142, 156, 274. Plutarch, 97. Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849), 634-636. “Poetic Moment, The,” 143 sq., 532 sq. Poitou, M., 118 note. Politian, viii, 183 note, 277, 296. Pollock, Mr W. H., 96 note. Pontmartin, Armand, Comte de (1811-1890), 467, 468. Pope, 66, 67, 104, 161, 176, 194, 200, 273, 279-282, 368, 424. Port Royal, 310-313. Portraits Contemporains, 306 sq. Portraits Littéraires, Portraits de Femmes, Sainte-Beuve’s, 303 sq. Power of Numbers, The, in Prose and Poetry, 80-82. Prœlectiones Academicæ. See Copleston, Keble, &c. Preface to Lyrical Ballads, &c., 200 sq. —-- to Mr Arnold’s Poems, 517 sq. Premiers Lundis, 200 sq. Prior, 8, 173. Principles of Success in Literature, The, 540 sq. Pringle-Pattison, Professor, 514 note. Promenades dans Rome, 139. Prudhomme, M. Sully, 465. Pursuits of Literature, The, 287 sq. Posnett, Mr H. M., 460 note. Power of Sound, The, 559. Pye, 83.

Quarterly Review, The, 213 note. Quinet, Edgar (1803-1875), 329, 330. Quintilian, 124, 222, 228 note. Quintus Smyrnæus, 302 note.

Rabelais, 177-225. Racine, 115, 123, 136, 161, 311-313. Racine et Shakespeare, 155-157. Radcliffe, Mrs, 253. Raleigh, Professor, vi, 202 note, 212 note, 216 note. Ramsay, Allan, 54. Randolph, John (1749-1813), Bishop of London, 616 note. Raynouard, 106. Recreations of Christopher North, 472 sq. Reisebilder, The, 563 sq. Rejected Addresses, 289. Reliques, Percy’s, 65 sq. Rémusat, Charles de, 300. Renan, Ernest (1723-1892), 348, 439, 446. Repplier, Miss Agnes, 219 note,. Retrospective Review, The, x, 283, 286. Reynolds, Sir J., 523. Rhadamanthus, 234 note. Rhetoric, De Quincey on, 481 sq. Rhys, Mr E., 201 note, 279 note, 280 note. Richardson, 92, 93, 102, 256, 257. —--, Mr C. F., 631 note. Richter, Jean Paul F. (1763-1825), 106, 384-386. Ripley, George (1802-1880), 642. Ritson, 65. Rivarol, 287. Rogers, Henry (1806-1877), 514. Rolliad, The, 288 note. Roman Experimental, Le, 455 sq. Romania, 464 sq. Romeo and Juliet, 108. Rönnfeldt, Mr, 360 note. Ronsard, 177, 192, 298 note. Roscoe, W. C., 514 note. Rousseau, 97-99, 108, 110, 178. Rümelin, Gustav (1815-1889), 577, 578. Ruskin, John (1819-1900), 115 note, 120, 228, 539, 540. Rymer, 34, 35, 247, 297.

Saint Louis, 116 note. Saint-Victor, Paul, Comte de (1827-1881), 120, 440, 441, 450, 451. Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin (1804-1869), 46 note, 119, 126, 127, 133 note, 135, 138, 189, 197 half-title, 222, 230, 300-329, 343 note, 414 sq., 420, 431, 443, 450, 513 note, 585, 589, 592. Sainte-Palaye, 172, 177. Salons, Diderot’s, 96. Sand, George, 260 note, 435. Sandys, Dr, vii, 183 note. Satyrane’s Letters, 218 note, 219 note. Saunders, Mr Bailey, 566 note. Scaliger, 69, 222, 377. Schack, 181. Schelling, Professor, 419. Scherer, Edmond (1815-1889), 96, 443, 447-450, 594. Schiller, Joh. Chr. Friedrich (1759-1805), 105 note, 106, 193, 225, 229, 367, 368, 377-384. Schlegel, August Wilhelm (1767-1845), 29, 378, 381, 391-402, 438. —--, Johann Adolf (1721-1793), 29, 30, 43 note. —--, Johann Elias (1718-1749), 30-32, 147, 193, 359. Schlegel, Johann Heinrich, 20 note. —--, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (1772-1829), 29, 391-402, 571. Schlegels, The, 29 sq., 101 sq., 117, 133, 181, 221 note, 222, 273, 371, 391-402. Schlosser, 405. Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860), 566-568. Schreyvogel, Joseph, 573 note. Schubarth, Karl Ernst (1796-1861), 403, 404. Scienza Nuova, 152-157. Schönes Blumenfeldt, 16. Schottel, Justus G. (1612-1676), 17. Scott, Sir Walter (1771-1832), 136, 179, 232, 247, 253, 260, 263, 270-272, 290, 371 sq., 457, 533 note. Sellar, William G. (1825-1890), 183 note. Seneca, Diderot on, 94, 95. Senior, N. W. (1790-1864), 509. Sévigné, Mme. de, 52 note. Shadwell, 14. Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of (1671-1713), 157-159. Shairp, John Campbell (1819-1885), 627, 628. Shakespeare, 22, 30, 37, 41, 42, 50, 52 note, 104, 122, 127, 132, 170, 172, 173, 176, 187, 188, 220 sq., 225, 241 sq., 258, 259, 260, 297, 353, 359, 361, 376, 388, 519 sq., 533, 550. Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822), 232, 244, 260, 274, 275, 376, 387, 507. Shenstone, William (1714-1763), 53, 63, 64, 174, 202. Sidney, 229, 253, 257. Sismondi, 592 note. “Skroddles,” 59. Smith, Adam (1723-1790), 12, 157 note. —-- Mr D. Nichol, 68 note, 173 note. —-- Mr Gregory, 83 note. —-- Sydney, 509. —-- William H. (1808-1872), 502 note. Solger, Karl W. F. (1780-1819), 404. Soliman the Second, 34, 35, 188. Sophocles, 161, 162. Sorel, Ch., ix. Soret, 370 note. Southern, Henry (1799-1853), 283. Southey, Robert (1774-1843), 218 note, 225, 229, 232-237, 243, 244, 272, 617 note. Specimens, Campbell’s, 272. —-- Lamb’s, 240. Specimens of British Critics, 473 sq. Spectator, The, 20. Spence, 616. Spenser, 64, 68 sq., 71, 76 sq., 104, 173, 174, 225, 249, 256, 273, 409, 473 sq. Spirit of the Age, The, 262, 263. Sprüche in Prosa, 361 sq. Staël, A. L. Germaine Necker, Mme. de (1766-1817), 99-109, 116, 127, 194, 291 sq., 392 sq. Stapfer, M. Paul, 294 note. Stephen, Sir James (1789-1859), 514. —-- Sir J. Fitzjames (1829-1894), 557. —-- Sir Leslie, 561 note. Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768), 86-88, 176, 178, 363, 364, 435. Stevenson, Mr E., 426 note. —-- Robert Louis (1850-1894), 251, 494 note, 561 note. Stryienski, M., 135. Studies in the History of the Renaissance, 544 sq. Study of Celtic Literature, The, 521 sq. Style, Lecture on, Coleridge’s, 226 sq. —-- De Quincey on, 481 sq. Sulzer, Johann G. (1720-1779), 150, 365, 366. Swift, 176, 229, 443. Swiss-Saxon Quarrel, the, 27 sq. Symonds, John Addington (1840-1893), 551, 552.

Table Talk, Coleridge’s, 224 sq. —-- Hazlitt’s, 261. Taillandier, Saint-René (1817-1879), 465, 466. Taine, Hippolyte Adolphe (1828-1893), 107, 307 note, 440-444. Talfourd, 283 note. Tasso, 76, 179. Tassoni, 35. Taylor, Bayard, 641 note. —-- William, “of Norwich” (1765-1836), 497. Tennyson, 225, 425 sq., 484, 502-507. Terence (Diderot on), 93, 94, 161. Tertium Quid, 559 sq. Texte, Joseph (1865-1900), 97, 99, 107, 177 note, 462-464. Thackeray, William Makepeace (1811-1863), 98, 263, 452, 499-502, 555. Theocritus, 277. Theophila, 6 note. Thomson, James (I.), 176, 400. —-- James (II.) (1834-1882), 552, 553. Tickell, 58. Ticknor, George (1791-1871), 181, 348 note, 632. Tieck, Ludwig (1773-1853), 390, 391. Tollemache, Mrs L., 96 note. Traill, Henry Duff (1842-1900), 231, 232, 554-557. Trapp, 616. Tressan, Comte de, 177. Tristram Shandy, 86. Tyler, Professor, 631 note.

Uhland, Johann Ludwig (1787-1862), 402, 403. Ulrici, 575.

Vaughan, Professor, 274 note, 499. Venables, George Stovin (1810-1888), 557. Veuillot, Louis (1815-1883), 468, 469. Vico, Giambattista (1668-1744), 9 note, 146, 152-157, 185 note, 267 note, 356 note, 589 note. Vida, 36. Vigny, Alfred de, 306 note. Villemain, Abel François (1790-1865), 126, 133-135, 327. Vinet, Alexandre R. (1797-1847), 592-594. Virgil, 115, note. Vitet, Louis (1802-1873), 300. Voltaire, 37, 77, 115, 125, 138, 176, 370. Vorschule der Æsthetik, 385. Voynich, Mr, viii.

Wagner, 582 sq. Wainewright, Thomas Griffiths (1794-1852), 266 note. Walpole, Horace, 52 note. Ward, Mr Humphry, his English Poets, 531 sq. Warton, Joseph (1722-1800), 53, 66, 68, 279. —-- Thomas, the elder (1688?-1745), 616. —-- the younger (1728-1790), vii, 53, 68-72, 192, 616. Watson (the printer), 54. Weckerlin, G. R. (1584-1651), 17. Weise, Christian (1642-1708), 17, 18. Werenfels, Samuel (1625-1703), 17, 18. Wernicke, Christian (1661-1725), 17, 18. Wheeler, Benjamin, 616. Whipple, Edwin P. (1819-1886), 642, 643. Whitfeld, John, 616. Whitman, Walt (1819-1892), 640. Whittier, J. G., 641 note. Wilson, John, “Christopher North” (1785-1854), 412, 472-478, 486. Wieland, Christoph R. (1733-1813), 106, 359, 360, 385, 392, 400. Wilhelm Meister, 117, 361 sq. William Shakespeare, 336 sq. Wither, 242. Wolcot, John, “Peter Pindar” (1738-1819), 286 sq. Wolf, 156. Wolff, 147. Wonderful, The, Bodmer on, 24 sq. Wordsworth, William (1770-1850), 200-218, 229, 243, 249, 268, 290, 322, 622 sq. Woty, William (1731-1791), 6 note. Wrangham, Archdeacon, 201. Wright, Thomas (1810-1877), x, 283 note. Wynn, C. W., 234. .sp 1 .ix Xenien, The, 380 sq.

Young, 176.

Zesen, Philip von (1619-1689), 17. Zinano, vii. Zola, Émile (1840-1903), 454-458. Zürich School, the, Bk. vii. ch. ii. passim, 56.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.

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Transcriber’s Note

There is a section after the Preface which specifies corrections and additions to be made in the current volume, as well as volumes 1 and 2. These changes were not made.

No attempt was made to check the validity of each index entry’s references, however several of them seem spurious:

“Professor Pringle-Patterson” is referred to only in a note on p. 581, but the page mentioned in the Index is incorrectly given as p. 514.

The entry for “Thomas Love Peacock” refers to a note on p. 207, but he is mentioned in none of those notes. He is, however, mentioned in a footnote on p. 162. The page number has been changed.

The second page reference (p. 137) for Adam Smith was incorrect. The correct page is p. 157, and has been changed.

Notes

494.4: A passage (“What! ... in the “Bunyan”?) opens with a quotation mark, but employs a double quote for two quoted words, and fails to provide a closing quote.

160.11: The title of Hume’s “Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary” is partially italicized, with the last phrase in normal font as emphasis.

Corrections

Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.

16.33 die Anf[ang/änge] der literarischen Kritik Replaced.

20.4 Historie der Deutschen Sprache[,] Poesie Added.

24.13 philosophy from Leibni[t]z and Wolff Added.

26.39 Heilbron[n], 1883. Added.

82.38 [(]Power of Numbers Removed.

112.5 and perhaps to[o] hasty Added.

133.41 [e]ven less of a critic “in his heart” Restored.

138.23 as little more than a boy[./,] Replaced.

133.42 [th]an Cousin. Restored.

149.34 the old notion back again[,/.] Replaced.

150.23 by her eighteenth-century writers[.] Added.

201.34 It is wi[s/d]ely usual Replaced.

234.29 ii. 91[)] Removed.

243.9 “On Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney[”] Added.

272.25 one of the least agree[e]able Removed.

296.11 but in politics ecc[l]esiastical and civil Inserted.

320.18 the whole twelvemo[u/n]th Replaced.

357.40 the so-called “British[’/”] or Miltonic Replaced. scansion

378.11 as Dryden’s or Corneill[l]e’s. Removed.

394.6 rule the ro[a/o]st so absolutely Replaced.

401.21 “judging of books[”] Added.

449.27 a very useful alter[n]ative Inserted.

496.28 his strictly critical facul[i]ties Removed.

558.37 in a newspaper[.] Added.

567.36 [“]Über Urtheil, Kritik, Beifall und Ruhren,” Added.

617.47 for his grandsire or his dam[.] Added.

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