Essays on English literature;

Preface

When I was asked by Mr. Stuart ,Eeid — to whom M. Scherer himself had some years ago indicated the essays in which he would like to be presented to the English public — whether I would undertake the present book, I was pleased with the commission for three reasons, two private and one public. In the first place, translation, though there has been some dispute as to its effect on the reader, is most undoubtedly good for the soul of the translator, especially if he be a critic by profession. Nothing creates, and nothing maintains, that sense of difference as between language and language, which is one of the most important points in criticism, so well as the effort to transfer the effect of one into the other. In the second place it had so happened that M. Scherer, not very long before his own death, had written at some length a criticism of a work of my own, which I think I may describe at once naturally and sufficiently by saying that it did not strike my perhaps prej-

VI ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE

udiced eyes as the happiest instance of his critical po-wers. Now I should certainly have preferred that M. Scherer should praise me. "Every fellow," as we know, " likes a hand." And I do not know that I can plead guilty to the charge of being pigeon-livered and lacking gall. But I had understood, years before, the differences in point of view, in taste, and so forth, which not only made it impossible for M. Scherer to sympathize with my criticism of the literature of his own language, but made it even possible for him, a most accurate and conscientious critic, to some extent to misrepresent it. Tout comprendre (as we also know) d'est tout pardonner. And consequently I was very glad to have an opportunity of raising a little pile of coals of fire on M. Scherer's defunct head; an occupation as interesting to the man of humor as it is creditable in the eyes of the philosopher and the divine.

But neither of these reasons would have induced me to undertake a task which, however useful it may be as an exercise and agreeable as a revanche, is much more troublesome than original composition, if I had not also thought that such wellnourished and robust criticism as M. Scherer's is

PEEFACB VU

particularly suited for English reading at tlie present day. This criticism is not faultless, and I have in the introduction thought it the best compliment I could pay to point out its faults as well as to acknowledge its merits. But these merits are such as particularly suit our present condition. There is a real interest, if not always an interest according to knowledge, in literature among us. The way in which almost anybody who will speak as one having authority on literary questions is followed, the audience' given to lecturers on the subject, even the somewhat comical institution of Societies, and such like crutches for cripples, are evidences of the fact. But the interest is too often divorced from thorough knowledge — seems, indeed, sometimes as if it would try to occupy the place of knowledge — and the authoritative exponents are not always careful so to qualify themselves as to make up for the shortcomings of their disciples. Dogmatism without reading at the back of it, aesthetic eccentricities without reading at the back of them, are not exactly unknown among the critics of to-day in England. Now for such things, M. Scherer's criticism is a very powerful corrective. When Mr.

VUl ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITBEATURB

Matthew Arnold praised it, I think he was a little bribed, as we are all apt to be, by the fact that it was so different in form and style from his own that the two, to a certain extent, set off and set out each other. But that it needs no illegitimate or at least adventitious advantage of this kind the examples which follow will show; and I hope that the introductory essay will at least not interfere with the presentment. When M. Scherer was approached by Mr. Eeid on the subject, he said, I am told, " Why should I pour my little pailful into the ocean of English literature ? " The meta^ phor was modest but not exact. I think it will be found that the "pail" was rather used in drawing, from no common depths, samples of that literature to be analyzed with no common science.

It may be well to say that the essays are here taken from the volumes of M. Scherer's "Etudes sur la Litterature Contemporaine," and are placed in the order in which they occur in those volumes, references to the original being given in the contents. That they are sometimes dated, and sometimes not, is in strict observance of the author's own practice. His notes are given without any indication ; my own, which I have made as

PREFACE ix

few as possible, are bracketed and signed " Trans." I should, perhaps, add that I have exercised a certain discretion in inserting or omitting passages from his authors which M. Scherer gave sometimes in the original, sometimes translated. They appear wherever they are necessary for the comprehension of the text ; where they are merely illustrative or exemplary I have economized space by omitting them. Sometimes M. Scherer allowed himself a certain liberty of compression or paraphrase, and in such cases I have generally restored the original or omitted the citation, inasmuch as a literal retranslation could serve no purpose for English readers. But once or twice, where I could not hit on the exact passage cited, I have so retranslated. I have only to add that I have stuck as close to my original as was possible. M. Scherer, though writing strong, correct, and dignified French, very seldom " sacrificed to the Graces " — an aged phrase which has, I think, a new, a special, and a rather humorous application to critical finewriting — and it was therefore deemed to be, not only unnecessary, but in bad taste to trick or frounce him in English. Nor have I endeavored entirely to obliterate the Gallic forms and flavors

X ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUBB

of the original. Unless I am mistaken, a translator, though he should never ■write what is not the language into which he is translating, should, in such a case as this, aim at conveying to those who ex hypothesi cannot read the language from which he translates some gust of its own savor.

Contents

CHAPTBH PAGE

iNTEODtlCTION xiu

I. George Eliot — "Silas Marner" (J^tudes sur

Introduction

The life of Edmond Sclierer, who was born in April of the Waterloo year and died in March 1889, was a pretty long one, and it was, as regards occupations and interests, rather curiously divided into two widely separated parts. During about thirty years — from the age of fifteen to the age of forty-five — almost all M. Scherer's thoughts and studies were directed to theology : first of all in the mood of boyish doubt, then for many years in that of fervent faith, then in that of rationalizing but still confident criticism, and lastly in an active and rather painful polemic on what may be called offensive-defensive lines in regard to his own comiplete though gradual abandonment of definite theological belief. After these jars ceased thirty other years were occupied in literary and political journalism, and (after the war of 1870) in active participation in politics. The first period left an ineffaceable impression on the last, but the last period cannot be said to have been in any respect prophesied by the first. And I do not think it superfluous or uncritical to observe that, excellent judge as M. Scherer was of literature, and, in the main, acute and sensible as were his views on politics, criticism,

XIV ESSAYS ON EKGLISH LITERATURE

both literary and political, was to him something of a pis aller. It was only when he was driven from his theological studies that he resorted to these others — to speak fancifully, they were a sort of reverse cloister to which he turned weary of things divine, as others have sought the real cloister weary of things worldly. And though he certainly never indulged in, and has, I think in one of the very essays here translated, spoken scornfully of, the habit of whining over lost faith, a kind of nostalgia of his first loves and first studies always clung to him. We can trace the theologian within the publicist, the preacher underneath the historian of so unexpected a hero as "Tyran le Blanc," and the critic of Fromentin or of Baudelaire.

The remarkable knowledge of English literature and the English language which the contents of this book display did not come to M. Scherer by accident, nor can it be said to have been merely the result of deliberate and personal fancy. He was on his father's side descended from a Swiss family which had been settled in France for about a century, but his mother was an Englishwoman. Moreover, when he was about sixteen, and was, as became a schoolboy of sixteen in 1831, inclined to Deism, self-destruction, and general despair, he was sent to England to board with a certain Kev. Thomas Loader at Monmouth. M. Gr6ard's ' per-

1 Every writer on M. Scherer must acknowledge indebtedness to M. Octave Grdard's Edmond Scherer (Paris, 1890).

INTKODTJCTION XV

haps pardonable ignorance of English ecclesiastical matters makes his account of this sojourn rather vague, but it seems most probable (I have no positive information) that the " Rev." Mr. Loader belonged to some Dissenting sect. However this may be, it is certain that he not only kept his pupil hard at work, but induced in him a fervent and, notwithstanding the final catastrophe, a solidly founded piety. When Edmond returned to Paris he studied law to please his family and philosophy to please himself. But he was resolved to become a pastor, and in his twenty -first year he obtained permission to study theology at Strasburg. He took his degrees, married early, and was ordained in April 1840, being then a pronounced and thorough believer in "I'autorite de la Bible et de la Croix." He tarried, however, for several years longer in Strasburg, and he does not seem to have undertaken any directly pastoral work, though he preached and wrote hymns with much unction. In 1845, I think, he was appointed to a professorship in the Ecole Libre de Theologie at Geneva and embarked, still in full confidence, on a course of teaching designed to establish and defend a sort of orthodox Protestanism, not admitting any ecclesiastical tradition, but solely founded on the Bible. I have neither room nor desire to trace at length what followed, nor does it concern us much. T need only say that the result was what it was, to any person having some tincture of theological

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study and some knowledge of human nature, certain to be in the case of a restless and inquiring spirit, impatient of compromise, rejecting ah initio the idea of the Church as the supernaturally appointed depository of supernatural truth, and, indeed, insisting generally that the supernatural shall allow itself to be treated as if it were not supernatural. By degrees Scherer's theology grew more and more "free," less and less orthodox. But the "complete theological shipwreck," as he has called it himself in another case, was not reached in less than fifteen years ; and it was not till 1860 or 1861 that he made, as M. Grdard says, his "profession de foi hegelienne," in which I should myself see less of Hegelianism positive than of anti-supernaturalism negative. For the rest of his life M. Scherer clung, indeed, to the Hegelian doctrine of the relativity of all things, and carried on a truceless Var with the Ding an sich. But he had nothing in his nature of the transcendentalism with which Hegel himself was still penetrated, and which unites him to the great succession of critical Pantheists. I am not here reviewing him from the philosophical standpoint, though it might be interesting to do so. The important thing for us is to remember that we have in the literary critic whom we are to survey a naufragS, a man who has distinctly taken refuge in another employment from the employment to which he had at first given himself. Unless this is remembered many points in M. Scherer's attitude,

INTRODUCTION xvii

both to politics and to literature — his two interests thenceforward — will remain dark to us, while if it be remembered these things will, I think, become reasonably plain.

To return to the course of M. Scherer's life, the last thirty years, or nearly so, give us Paris for scene, and literature and politics for subjects. The " Eevue des deux Mondes " was not shut to M. Scherer, but almost the whole of his work in both departments was given to the " Temps," then under the direction of M. NefEtzer, who was akin to him in race and general sentiments. The character of this paper was very mainly formed and settled by M. Scherer's collaboration. He was a very active journalist, though he was not, I believe, obliged to write in order to live ; and it may very likely be that his literary activity was spurred as well by some domestic troubles (of which we hear dimly) as by the necessity of making good the lost ideals. He had, as it were, at once summed up and said good-bye to his interest in religious subjects proper in his "Melanges d'Histoire E^ligieuse." Later he contributed (I believe in English, which he wrote excellently) to the "Daily News " on French politics. This matter, which again would interest me very much, again does not concern us directly here. He began as a moderate and rational opponent of the Empire. Against this he carried on a war at once vigorous and free from the mere fronde to which men of purely French blood are so liable, and

XVIU ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUEE

which not uncommonly ends in such lamentable things as the fate of his friend Prevost Paradol. But in politics, as previously in religion, M. Scherer exhibited certain weaknesses, for preservation from -which those who have escaped them should rather thank their good fortune than their merits. During the war he was called upon to play a most difficult part, and played it in a manner which cannot be too much admired, especially when we remember that he was a literary recluse, fiftyfive years old, and with very little experience of business. He, who never feared anything, was the last man likely to be a pantouflard, and to contemplate the agony of France from the safe seclusion of Geneva or London. But it could scarcely have been anticipated that he would take up and discharge to admiration the hard and hateful duty of administering the affairs of Versailles (his place of residence) during the German occupation. He seems to have done this necessary and odious work with the most admirable good sense and fortitude, standing between his countrymen and the invaders and being proof alike against the unreasonable sensitiveness of the former and the inconsiderate roughness of the latter. Such work is not always rewarded, but it speaks much for M. Scherer's townsmen and the inhabitants of the department of Seine-et-Oise generally that when the peace came they at once selected him to represent them.

INTEODUCTION xix

He very soon became a life Senator and retained the position till his death. He was a member of the Centre — rather of the Centre Gauche than otherwise, but still centrical. And yet at the same time, though universal suffrage is simply the be-all and end-all of the Government which he supported, and of which, in a way, he formed part, he grew more and more disgusted with it. Almost at the opening of his literary career, in an article here translated, he had — rather hastily, I think — given his own case away by declaring the logical necessity of this arrangement. But he had at the same time manifested a strong objection to its practical results. The acknowledgment weakened as time went on and the objections strengthened till but a very few years ago he published some positive jeremiads on the subject; yet he always declared himself a Republican. Here, too, we may observe some peculiarities which will be of service to us in our investigation proper — the investigation to which we must now turn — of M. Scherer's position as a literary critic. As we noted that his theological studies and his relinquishment of them had given a color to his work and impressed on it, what he would himself call "preoccupations" — a tendency to subordinate form to matter, a distinct inclination to the heresy of enseignement, and a certain tone of bitterness — so it is observable that his political disillusions reacted on his literary judgments. He could not believe in progress, and he

XX ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITBEATtTRE

would not believe in reaction, so that if it were worth while a parcel of the most curiously contrar dictory judgments on all subjects in which these two things are concerned might be produced from him.

We must now go back a little, and imagine him a man of forty-five, setting out in the year 1860, or thereabouts, on his career of literary critic. He had for thirty years been an omnivorous student, though not in every direction. Readers of him must have observed (what M. Greard, I think, admits) that either his knowledge of or his inclination to classical and mediaeval literature was somewhat lacking in width and depth. He is said to have studied scholastic philosophy, but I do not see many signs of it, and I should imagine that it must have been exclusively from the theological side. Even the earlier Renaissance appears to have had few attractions for him, and it is only from the seventeenth century onward that he is really at home with literature. He knew — a very rare thing with Frenchmen even now, and much rarer then — English and German, the literatures and the languages, very nearly as well as he knew French, and was even more thoroughly at home with them. I have sometimes thought, perhaps wickedly, that his declaration of love for Eacine and some other specially French authors, though no doubt quite honest (M. Scherer was nothing if not honest), had a certain unconscious touch of

INTRODUCTION XXI

affiche in it. But he knew Frencli literature of the last three centuries thoroughly, and he had a most pure and correct taste in it, while his familiarity with the other literatures gave him that power of comparison which Trenchmen have so frequently lacked. His knowledge was extremely exact and his acuteness (where he did not go wrong for reasons presently to be mentioned, in which case he never came right) was extraordinary. Above all, he had the healthy mania of always trying to bring his critical conclusions under some general law : he was never satisfied with informing the world that he liked this, and did not like that. He never (at any rate in important cases) concluded from his ignorance to someone else's knowledge, and, above all, and first of all, he never made criticism an occasion for cracking epigrams or unfurling fine writing. It is impossible to read a criticism of M. Scherer's, even when one most disagrees with it, without being informed, exercised, "breathed," as our fathers would have said. It may not be amusing, it may be irritating ; you may think that you could upset it beautifully ; but if you know enough about the subject yourself to be able to see knowledge where it exists you never can pronounce it unimportant. And there is so much criticism which crackles to deafening with epigram, which blazes to dazzling with epithet, which amuses even while irritating, and which yet is, alack ! absolutely unimportant.

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The drawbacks of M. Scherer's criticism were summed up not long ago in a really brilliant mot by a writer of the new French school, for whom, on the whole, M. Scherer had a much greater admiration than I have myself, and who was in many respects in sympathy with him. "II ne jugeait pas les ecrits," says M. Edouard Eod, " avec son intelligence ; il les jugeait avec son caractfere." I am not at all fond of critical fireworks, but this is not a firework, it is a lamp. Intelligence adapts itself, character does not; intelligence is charitable, character is apt to be a little Pharisaic ; intelligence has no prejudice, character has much. It was probably to some extent because he did not take to literary criticism till so late in life that M. Scherer manifested the raideur with which he has often been charged ; it was no doubt also partly because of those vicissitudes and experiences of soul which have been briefly noticed. But there must have been in it much of personal idiosyncrasy. We hear early of the " effet penible et angoissant que font sur cet aimable Scherer les nouvelles connaissances," and the amiable lady who wrote this had cause to know it. She had gone to meet him when he came on a preaching errand and found him "un jeune homme d'un abord glacial" who got into the carriage "sans repondre a mon accueil" (this, we may trust, was not set down to the tenue britannique with which he was also credited). Many years afterwards

INTKODUCTION XXlll

most friendly critics have expressed their regret that Scherer did not mix more with younger men of letters. One of the few unpublished personal stories I have ever heard of him was to the effect that a very few years ago, when he was in a London drawing-room, a fellow guest came up to the host and said, " Who is that Scotch clergyman ? " All his life, except to a few very intimate friends, he seems to have been more imposing than attractive, and the same may be said of his criticism. M. Eod, who is, as I have said, a witness above suspicion, records and deplores the small practical effect which this criticism had, and the kind of resentment with which it was received. One very amiable and accomplished French man of letters spoke of his fiel Protestant. I remember a legend set afloat by someone of the opposite school that a practical joker once went round to the booksellers saying that he was a collector of second editions, and wished for copies of M. Scherer's " Etudes " in that state, which nobody could give him. It is certain that these "Etudes," though containing by far the most valuable corpus of criticism which France has produced since Sainte- Beuve's " Causeries," and superior, if bulk, range, and value be taken together, to anything to be found in English literature for many years past, have never been widely popular. Probably the sale of the whole nine volumes has not equalled that of a single one of some of the collections of

XXIV ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE

clever froth which, in M. Scherer's own latter days and since, have caught the taste of Frenchmen and of those Englishmen who think that to admire the latest French thing is to be dans le mouvement, and not to admire that thing is to be out of it.

As our chief business is with M. Scherer's essays in English literature, it may be well to go through the essays here translated before resuming their author's critical position in general. Some of them are already well known in England by the eulogies of Mr. Matthew Arnold; all deserve, I think, to be very well known indeed. Their excellence increases as they go on both in writing and in matter. But they are all good, and what may be especially praised in them is the admirable critical summaries — much resembling those of Jeffrey, a critic who had many points of contact with M. Scherer — of different periods of English literature.

The apparent disproportion of the space given to George Eliot is, now that the essays are collected, likely to strike most people, especially since the somewhat extravagant estimate of the author of " Adam Bede " which was common some years ago among "thoughtful" Englishmen and foreigners has subsided, as, indeed, is usual in such cases, to a point perhaps almost as far below the just level as the excess was above it. It is the very last secret of criticism, the degree which few critics reach, to be as independent of the charms of

INTRODUCTION XXV

novelty as of those of antiquity, and to look at things new and things old from the combined standpoint which things old and new together give. But it must always be counted to M. Scherer that in the later essays — that on " Deronda " and the final one on the " Biography " — he retracted not a little, or, to speak more justly, readjusted to sounder standards, a good deal of the rather effusive and uncritical laudation of the paper which opens this volume. It was, indeed, impossible that he should not somewhat overvalue a writer whose mental history was in so many respects identical with his own, and whose final standpoint (though he has indicated the interval very subtly and accurately in the last essay) was so near his. The weak point in both, (and this, naturally enough, he has not indicated), was an insufficient devotion to the great god Nonsense, whether in his Avatar of Frivolity or in his Avatar of Passion. They could neither of them conjugate the verb desipere; the delights of hearing the chimes at midnight in the full metaphorical sense were shut off from them ; they had no fine madness. They were both (it is needless to say it in George Eliot's case to an English audience, but it may be confidently affirmed of M. Scherer also) susceptible enough to certain kinds of wit and to certain kinds of humor ; while one of them, as we know, could create both humor and wit of those kinds. But M. Scherer has wonderingly commented on the xxvi ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEKATUKE

unlucid interval of this susceptibility in whidh George Eliot wrote " Daniel Deronda," and he has shown a similar eclipse in his own case in the blind ferocity with which he attacked Baudelaire. Yet this very community of defects, as of cLualities, constitutes, of course, a security for mutual understanding, and it is nearly impossible that any better criticism of George Eliot — from the sympathetic side, yet not idolatrous — shall be written than that contained in this volume. There is much to add, no doubt, from the unfavorable side, but that can be easily done.

The second essay — that on Mill — is particularly interesting, because it was written at a time and from a point of view which are not recoverable except by a tour de force of critical -translation of one's self into other circumstances. There was no reason, political, religious, or, to a certain extent, philosophical (for M. Scherer's Hegelianism always had a touch of Scoto-Erench experiencedoctrine in it), why author and critic should not be in touch with each other. But, little of a Millite as I am myself, I should say that M. Scherer is, if anything, rather less than more just to Mill. It would be curious if, as I half think, this falling short of justice is due to the fact that Mill had never gone through M. Scherer's own soul-history, while George Eliot had. But it must also be remembered that at this time the future Senator was only beginning his purely political studies. He

INTKODTJCTION XXVU

came mucli nearer afterwards' to some views of Mill's which he here seems but half to relish.

Of the two Shakespeare essays the first is beyond all question the weaker, though they must have been written very much at the same time, considerable as is the gap which it pleased M. Scherer to set between them in the order of republication. It is fair, however, to observe that it is in some sense a preliminary dissertation, a sort of getting over of the facts and history of the subject before tackling the strictly critical work. The second, the " peg " of which is the Shakespearophobia of the excellent Herr Eumelin, is one of the best examples of M. Scherer's critical grasp. Its survey of the successive attitudes of German Shakespeare-criticism may be vulnerable in parts — it is the way of these surveys to be so and therefore, tempting as they are, both for display of skill and for the pleasure there is in doing them, some critics are rather shy of the indulgence. But this is one of the best of the kind — full of knowledge easily borne and well digested, and written with a maestria which never becomes ostentation or virtuosity. In ends, indeed, with a sort of false note, or, rather, an equivocal use of terras. To make Goethe, while inferior to Shakespeare on the whole, superior to him in universality may seem at first sight, in the literal sense, preposterous. But a moment's thought will show that M. Scherer was using "universal" in a special sense, was referring,

XXviii ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUBB

not to nature, but to the encyclopaedia. In the main no man has ever been sounder on Shakespeare than he, and that is the articulus stantis aut cadentis criticismi.