Some New Literary Valuations

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Contents

PAOB

William Dean Howells as Man of Lettebs 11

Tennyson as Artist in Ltric Verse 201

II

Let us at once try him by a palmary instance. He quotes Burke — in manner and to effect that wDl presently appear; but first I give the sentence with w^hich Arnold introduces his quotation :

"At the very end of his fierce struggle with the French Revolution, after all his invectives against its false pretensions, hollowness, and madness, with his sincere conviction of its mischievousness, he can close a memorandum on the best means of combating it, some of the last pages he ever wrote — the 'Thoughts on French Affairs,' in December, 1791 — with these striking words."

It is not careful criticism on Arnold's part incidentally thus to designate Burke's paper, entitled "Thoughts on French Affairs,'' as a "memorandum on the best means of combating" the French Revolution; the fact being that Burke expressly abstains from proposing practical measures, or discussing practical measures, to be used against what he so passionately deplored. He confines himself strictly to stating the case. Also, it is not carefully critical for Arnold to call Burke's "Thoughts on French Affairs" "some of the last pages ho ever wrote." Burke lived six or seven years after writing his "Thoughts on French Affairs," and during this interval he wrote prof usely, and as heatedly as ever, in the same sense, on the

MATTHEW AENOLD AS CRITIC 81

same subject — his "Letters on a Eegicide Peace" belonging to that period. Here is Arnold's quotation from Burke — the italics are Arnold's:

"The evil is stated, in my opinion, as it exists. The remedy must be where power, wisdom, and information, I hope, are more united with good intentions than they can be with me. I have done with this subject, I believe, forever. It has given me many anxious moments for the last two years. // a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men vnll be fitted to it; the general opinions and feelings will draw that way. Every fear, every hopc^ wiU forward it; and then they who persist in opposing this mighty current in human affairs will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself than the mere designs of men. They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinaU."

Arnold follows this quotation from Burke with remarks, soon to be shown, which, implying a certain interpretation of Burke's language, express a certain appreciation of the spirit in Burke that, as Arnold supposed. Inspired the language. A twofold question is suggested: First, does Arnold understand Burke correctly! Second, granted that he understands Burke correctly, does he set a proper value on Burke's sentiment and his attitude of mindf Both these two questions bear very directly and very seriously on Arnold's qualification as critic.

It must be admitted that Burke's language is not so entirely clear as were to be desired. It partakes of that somewhat vague, somewhat elusive, character which naturally attaches to what is dictated, and not written, propria man% by the author. It has, indeed, much the apx>earance of being a mere tentative, proviisional expression, meant by the writer to serve as reminder to himself of what might later be cleared and expanded in a new and additional topic of argument on the theme which so usurped his mind and his heart. The interpretation, therefore, is not perfectly easy, not instantaneously unquestionable. The critic accordingly who deals with it is put by it excellently to the test. Did Burke, in the passage quoted, as Arnold assumes was the case, dismiss the subject — namely, the French Revolution — on which he had been long and almost fanatically engaged, in argument and declamation directed agaimt that portentous movement — did Burke dismiss his subject at last with a halfveiled admission that he may have been wrong all the while! Or did Burke, on the other hand, wearily and despondently turning away from his contention, bethink himself nevertheless, in farewell of his subject, to throw out one more consideration in support of the views that he had long so vehemently, and with such universal European Sclaty maintained!

For my own part, I am convinced that Arnold completely misunderstood Burke in this place, and interpreted him in a sense exactly contrary %o his true meaning. What, in my opinion, Burke meant was, that the French Revolution, with its violefi'ee and its impudently aggressive propagandism, had no character to commend it as a movement in rational, beneficent progress. It was as if he had said : When a great fundamental and general change likely to be permanent is destined to take place in human affairs, it will find men's minds prepared for it, the current of thought and oi)inion will have taken a direction iu favor of it, it will seem like a thing ordained and necessary, to resist it will be like resisting divine Providence, only the perverse and obstinate will set

MATTHEW ABNOLD AS CRITIC 83

themselves in futile array against it. Such conditions do not exist in the case of this French Eevolution. I counsef therefore resistance to it and to its leveling principles.

If, to the contrary of this, Arnold is right in his interpretisttion of Burke, consider what we have presented to us: "We have Burke pointing out, with labor and with passion, what he conceives to be the dangerous and destructive political tendencies let loose by the French Revolution — this, through many pages of vehement diatribe — and then, at the close of his indictment, after soberly reaffirming all that he has previously said, with the words, "The evil is stated, in my opinion, as it exists," abruptly then proceeding to unsay all at a stroke, and to write indirectly a quasirecantation of the doctrines he has taught. The idea, I confess, seems to me impossible. If the question of Burke's meaning were not otherwise decisively settled in the sense opposite to that given it by Arnold, the turn of the closing sentence would, I think, decisively settle it in that sense. Can it be conceived that Burke, in "return upon himself," would use the language he does in that sentence, would, by the obscurest implication even, virtually describe himself as perhai)S "perverse and obstinate "t There is nothing in Burke's character — nothing, I venture to say, in the whole tract of his writing — to render it credible.

Arnold seems to have been wrong historically in depicting the conditions that surrounded Burke at the moment of his supposed "return upon himself." To enhance Burke's merit in this supposed " return " of his, Arnold represents him as environed with a din of blatant outcry against the French Revolution. The

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fact is, I believe, that until Burke himself partly turned the tide of British opinion and feeling, the predominant popular sentiment was sympathetic, and not hostile, toward what was going on in France. John Morley so represents it. If Burke really was in the midst of a tempest such as Arnold describes, of antagonism to the French Revolution, then, interpreting Burke as he did, Arnold might have made his praise rhetorically much stronger by saying, A tempest that Burke had himself raised.

But it is time I show the ipsimma verba of Arnold's praise of Burke:

"That return of Burke upon himself has always seemed to me one of the finest things in English literature, or, indeed, in any literature. That is what I call living by ideas; when one side of a question has long had your earnest support, when all your feelings are engaged, when you hear all around you no language but one, when your party talks this language like a steamengine and can imagine no other — still to be able to think, still to be irresistibly carried, if so it be, by the current of thought to the opposite side of the question, and, like Balaam, to be unable to speak anything but what the Lord has put in your mouth. I know nothing more striking, and I must add that I know nothing more un-English."

Burke had a good right to do what was "un-English'* — though in this case he did not, as Arnold supposed that he did, exercise that right — for he was an Irishman.

That effusion of eulogy on Arnold's part had its occasion, I hold, in a total misapprehension of his author's meaning. But, granted that the reverse is true, granted that Arnold understood Burke rights still, was the eulogy judiciously — ^that is, in the spirit of sound criticism — ^bestowedt If Burke really had a mifigiving that he was wrong in his contention, that he had been wrong all the time, that therefore he was wrong still, when jnst before he said, "The evil is stated, in my opinion, as it exists,'' then was it, I ask, an adequate acknowledgment that he made of so very serious a possible error! Did it deserve Arnold's enthusiastic praise! In my opinion, the present is a rather important case in which both interpretative faculty and faculty to judge justly failed with Arnold. In both these two very vital respects he showed himself here not a good critic

By the way, the undeniably abrupt manner in which the quoted expressions from Burke are introduced by him at the end of his "Thoughts on French AflFairs," their apparent lack of prox>er relation to the context in which they stand, suggests what is x)erhaps a material consideration, namely, the fact that this essay was not published until after the writer's death, although written six or seven years earlier. There is reason to believe that it was submitted by Burke (in manuscript probably) for the consideration of the government. It seems to me likely that, if Burke had himself published his essay, it would not have apx)eared closing in the air, so to 8i)eak, as it now does. He would probably have drawn out into plain expression the conclusion which, as the case stands, is left simply implied. He would have said someting to this purport: Great changes in human affairs do undoubtedly occur; but they come gradually; they are led up to through successive stages of preparation ; men's minds are insensibly brought into a state of readiness to welcome them ; they do not come with shock, with convulsion ; they do not come forced upon society by impudent methods of propagandism ; in short, they arc phenomena that tlie French Eevolntion does not in the least resemble. This movement accordingly is to me hateful ; it is evil and only evil ; it is to be imphicably resisted. Howt That is a question not for me to answer. I have done my duty when I have shown the necessity of resistance. That duty I have now fully discharged. I do not expect ever to return to this subject. (But Burke did return to the subject.)

If Arnold had begun a little farther back in quoting from Burke, he would have included sentences that make against his interpretation — sentences which seem to show that Burke, when composing this paper, felt himself in direct communication with the government rather than with the general public.

"What is to be donet '' he asks, and continues:

** It would be presumption in me to do more than to make a case. Many things occur [many resisting, repressive expedients, that is to say, which might be adopted]. But as they, like all political measures, depend on disposition, temper, means, and external circumstances, for all their effect, not being well assured of those, I do not know how to let loose any speculations of mine on the subject. The evil is stated," etc.

Here Burke appears importunately urging upon the attention of the government the vital importance of taking active practical measures against a great and threatening evil, which, however, according to Arnold, he, at the same time, with admirable ^'return upon himself," advises the government may after all exist only in his own "perverse and obstinate " distempered imagination ! And Arnold exclaims, "That return of Burke upon himself has always seemed to me one of the finest things in English literature, or, indeed, in aiiy literature "! If Arnold were still living, I should feel like asking him to make a return upon himself, and at least reconsider, if he did not now decisively reject, his interpretation of Burke, and therewith his consequent dithyrambics of eulogy — this, notwithstanding that, having committed himself in print, he has allowed all his feelings to become engaged, and notwithstanding that, in the enjoyment of his vogue as authority, he hears all around him no language but one.

Ill

I HAVE devoted what may seem a disproportionate amount of attention to this one passage of Arnold -s criticism, because I have reason to believe that, without pretty full discussion of the point involved, those who have formed the habit of submission to Arnold as critic will not easily yield to acknowledge him wrong in so capital a case, and because also the mistake thus proved upon him fairly indicates the really uncritical character that belongs to the whole paper in which it occurs, namely, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time,'' With the sentiment so much insisted upon in this essay of Arnold's, that we ought to aim at seeing things as they really are, I am in the heartiest accord. Arnold x)erformed a true service in his insistence upon this. But when he taught that creative literature could not be produced until critical literature had preceded and prepared the way for it, he was propounding, as I think, the merest barren whimsy imaginable. It is always fairest to let a writer under criticism speak for himself; here, then, are Arnold's own words:

/* "Criticism first; a time of true creative activity perhaps — which, as I have said, must inevitably be preceded among us by a time of criticism — hereafter, when criticism has done its work."

To me it seems hardly necessary to do more than simply to submit that statement to any thoughtful mind, in order to have the idiosyncratic, whimsical, character of it reveal itself clearly. That is, it would seem hardly necessary, but that, as matter of fact, there the statement has stood for near half a century in the forefront of Arnold's prose writings, challenging attention and apparently commanding assent — since, in the face of it, the author has held his place of authority in contemporary English criticism. This, indeed, does not adequately state the case that exists, for that particular dictum of Arnold's constitutes the main contention of the leading essay in which it stands, and it may reasonably therefore be supposed to have played an important part in winning for its author the reputation that he enjoys.

It ought, I suppose, in fairness, to be noted that Arnold says "among us,'' thereby limiting the application of his principle to the British province in the republic of letters. It should further be noted that his title says "at the Present Time.'' The dictum is accordingly a prescription fitted by the maker of it both to a particular period and to a particular community. What was there, one is accordingly led to ask, in the then current condition of British society that tended to make Arnold think, when he wrote the present essay, that a period of criticism must come in before

Buccessful creative activity in literature could be looked fort When one tries to answer that question out of Arnold's essay, one is much at a loss. The answer, if there is answer supplied by Arnold, is diffused, as it were, through a maze of singularly unanalyzed, very digressive, dissertation. I have looked back and forth again and again, throughout the essay, always in vain, to find a statement that might be quoted here as standing for Arnold's answer to the question why, at that moment, in the then existing state of British society, there must necessarily be a period of criticism, before a period of creation, in literature.

In the lack of any such available statement furnished in Arnold's own words, perhaps it will be most satisfactory to use Arnold's explanation of what he seems to have regarded as a fact, namely, the compar-^ ative small worth of the English literature produced in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Narrowing "literature'' to "poetry'' (apparently unconscious that he is doing this), Arnold says: "The English poetry of the first quarter of this century, with plenty of energy, plenty of creative force, did not know enough." (I refrain from criticizing this with exclamation-point following.) Now bring into connection with that the following: " Byron and Goethe \ had a great productive power, but Goethe's was nour- ^ ished by a great critical effort providing the true^ materials for it and Byron's was not." Byron's productive power may or may not have been " nourished " by the "great critical effort" (quorum para magna fuU !) active everywhere around him, but the "great critical effort " certainly was not wanting.

One gathers then that, in Arnold's opinion precedent criticism was necessary in his own time in order to provide literature (or poetry) with its "true materials. '' This virtually devolves upon criticism the burden of on^'noten^ ideas, as well as of learning them and setting them in circulation. " A great matter, " truly, Arnold makes criticism. Indeed, if now we recall his dictum that poetry itself is criticism, "the criticism of life,'' there seems nothing left undone for the production of literature, when criticism has done its part. All this strain of doctrine from Arnold seems to me so self - evidently whimsical and futile that I find it difficult to deal with it seriously. Take into consideration the following — which in the essay leads up to the important announcement already quoted that the English poetry of the first quarter of the nineteenth century "did not know enough'':

** It has long seemed to me that the burst of creative activity in our literature, through the first quarter of this century, had about it, in fact, something premature; and that from this cause its productions are doomed, most of them, in spite of the sanguine hopes which accompanied and do still accompany them, to prove hardly more lasting than the productions of far less splendid epochs. And this prematureness comes from its having proceeded without having its proper data, without sufficient materials to work with."

I will ask the thoughtful reader to dwell a little on the predication, "had about it, in fact, something premature." Pay attention to the form of expression as well as to the thing expressed. "Had about it!" "Something premature!" There you have style well fitted to the absurdity of the matter. Araold, then, would have told Byron, Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, all the rest: "Ko use, gentlemeu ! Don't try to writ© your poetry yet. You will not succeed. Wait till we critics have got your true materials ready for you. Youif literary activity in exercise now will be sure to have about it something premature. In short, you do not know enough. '' All for lack of fruitful "criticism 'M The fact being that, during this i)eriod of comparatively futile literary activity, full of "energy, ''full of "creative force,'' as it was, yet having "about it something premature," Coleridge was criticizing, as well as producing, literature, in both prose and verse, was importing German criticism from that environment which Arnold thought helped Goethe so, was diffusing ideas by lectures, by monologues (replacing conversation) in clubs and drawing-rooms, monologues famous for their supposed fecundating power, with their Orphic murmur of " sum-mjective " and " om-m jective " and " sum-mject» om-mject," and with their display of wide-ranging knowledge as well as of deep-sounding philosophy ; the fact being also that meantime Wordsworth was himself a true critic, that even Shelley criticized to admirable effect, that Byron was strewing his incomparably vital letters (and journals) with sane, incisive criticism, that Jeffrey was producing by quarterly instalments in The Edinburgh Review the noblest body of sound, symx)athetic, balanced, every way adequate, criticism, literary and other, that perhaps ever has proceeded from any one British brain. And I may name also Thomas Campbell, critic as well as poet, and William Hazlitt, who has lately been coming to his own once more. On the whole, there really should not seem to have been any great famine of criticism to starve the literary producers of that time and to "doom " their

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prodactions '' to prove hardly more lasting than the productions of far less splendid epochs'' — which is the somewhat halting^ and finally somewhat weakening, damnatory sentence that Arnold feels bound to pronounce upon them.

IV

But we must keep in mind Arnold's own individual conception of criticism. "Its business is,'' Arnold holds, "simply [that adverb is uncritical here, since Arnold has assigned to criticism other functions than the one now to be named] to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and, by in its turn making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas." Very well, was not criticism, taken in this very peculiar sense, busily at work in the England of the first quarter of the nineteenth century! To go outside the circle of strictly literary activity, did not Jeremy Bentham create a great stir of thought, did he not set in motion a lively current of ideas! And James Mill! These names have lost, indeed, their pristine luster, but they were names to conjure by in their time, and their bearers created a state of ferment in English, and even in European, thought. And there was William Godwin, who, with his voluminous, though now forgotten, production, certainly set ideas in motion. There was Sir James Mackintosh, redoubtable thinker in metaphysics, in ethics, in political philosophy, and withal in philosophical history. Thomas Arnold, father of our critic, deserves mention as a man of ideas. Henry Hallam was at once an historian, and a critic, of literature — "Hallam, than whom it is impossible to find a saner and more judicious critic, '' Matthew Arnold himself says. Malthus, Ricardo, Sadler, belong to this period. Surely the opening of the nineteenth century in England was in no sense a stagnant intellectual epoch. Criticism was astir, and there was flowing a lively current of ideas. As there did not lack literary criticism proper, so then there did not lack general intellectual activity, in the England of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, to nourish and support literary creation. There seems to me to be neither historical warrant nor ground in reason and common sense, for Arnold's notion about the ^'prematureness'' of the ''burst of creative activity '' that marked the early part of the nineteenth century in England.

In truth, to be at once abrupt and brief, with occasional reliefs of genuinely valuable thought, and occasional excellent particular observations in criticism, Arnold's essay seems to me to be mainly a tissue of unsupported critical crotchets from the author, presented in a style of expression well befitting their measure of intrinsic value. In going over it carefully, I am tempted at almost every turn to point out some unvenfiable assertion or some really incredible absurdity. "Goethe,'' Arnold says, "knew life and the world, the I>oet's necessary subjects, much more comprehensively and thoroughly than Byron. He knew a great deal more of them, and he knew them much more as they really are." Bjrron died at thirty-six, Goethe reached his eighty-fourth year. Goethe accordingly had upward of half a century more time than Byron had in which to learn his " more '' of " life and the world'' ; it would be strange indeed if he did not at last come to

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know more of them than Byron ever did. But was Goethe's production dating within his first thirty-six years marked by a knowledge of " life and the world ^ superior to the knowledge of " life and the world '' displayed in B3nron's works t " Goetz von Berlichingen " and "The Sorrows of Werther '' make up the sum of the credit to Goethe's account. Compare those two productions with the volume of Byron's literary remains, and judge which writer had acquired at thirty-six more knowledge of life and the world, Goethe or Byron. Goethe, shut up in his petty toy world of Weimar, could not but have a bounded experience accordingly. In one too large part of their experience, both Goethe and Byron knew life and the world as it would have been better for both not to have known them ; but Byron moved in a larger sphere of things than ever did Goethe, and sane criticism would, I am sure, never think of contrasting the two men as Arnold's criticism contrasts them. Goethe himself, esteemed by Arnold the very fountain of wisdom, critical and other, pronounced a judgment on Byron's '' Manfred, " for example, which implies an estimate of the writer different from the estimate implied here by Arnold. "This singularly intellectual poet " Goethe called Byron in a published review of "Manfred," adding, "I can not enough admire his genius."

Arnold was writing in the latter half of the nineteenth century when he bemoaned himself that creative literature was really for the time being out of the question, and would remain so until an interval of good life-giving "criticism" should come in to render it possible. " At some epochs, " he laments, " no other creation is possible" than a "poor, starved, f ragmentary, inadequate creation/' He becomes tenderly pathetic, in what the reader feels to be a sort of self-pity on the writer's part, and says:

"In an epoch like those ['' the epochs of ^schylns and Shakespeare"] 18 no doubt the true life of a literature; there is the | promised land, toward which criticism can only beckon. That promised land it will not be ours to enter, and we shall die in the wilderness."

Dnring the x>eriod in which this lament of Arnold's was getting itself uttered, Tennyson, and Browning, and Mrs. Browning, and William Morris, and Swinburne, in poetry, Macaulay, and Ruskin, and Newman, and Martineau, and Thackeray, in prose, were producing their "poor, starved, fragmentary, inadequate '' literary creations— in happy ignorance of how much they were suffering through incapacitating sheer inanition of the mind, due to lack of the necessary precedent "criticism.''

This is not a review of Arnold's pap^r, but only an attempt, by assay of sx)ecimens, to indicate its prevailing and essential character. It would be out of the question to assemble within reasonable space exemplifications enough to show adequately the strangely digressive manner in which the discussion is conducted. But notwithstanding the Unconsidered, freakish nature of so much that is said in the paper, and notwithstanding the slipshod style in which the paper is written, it must in candor be admitted that it enforces a lesson of great value in insisting on the importance of trying to see things as they really are — this, although, as has been seen, Arnold's own practise illustrates his principle very ill. I can not refrain from expressing my amazement that any intelligent student of literatore and of literary history should possess hi' self of the notion that, at any moment whatever, f ritieism mnst necessarily precede successful creative effort. Creation is often the very best method of criticism. Cowper did more toward rectifying public taste, and bringing literary production back to nature, by simply writing his poetry, than he, or than any one perhaps, could have done by a course of criticism. And in general it may be laid down as unquestionable common sense in the matter that there is no law of relative priority in time as between criticism and creation. The two functions most naturally and most fruitfully proceed at the same time and together. This is true both for any individual producer of literature, and for the literary guild of any time or of any place taken as a body. Ko author but criticizes himself as he produces, and no author but would be the better for sound reciprocal criticism exchanged between himself and his fellows. Obviously, if there were any law of priority in time, as between creation and criticism, that law would be precisely the opposite of Arnold's contention. Creation would have to precede criticism in order to furnish criticism with material to work upon. Intellectual activity, of whatever sort, having a worthy aim — that is what is needed, what is always needed, what is needed everywhere. Create or criticize, whichever you can do better ; or create and criticize, if perchance you can do both — as probably you can if you can do either.