The authority of criticism, and other essays

Prefatory Note

Although the papers contained in this volume were written from time to time and for special purposes, they will, I trust, be found to possess in the main a unity sufficient to warrant the reader in regarding them as something more than a mere collection of detached essays. I am not presumptuous enough to claim that in them I have outlined a critical philosophy, and given certain applications of it; but I think I may fairly say that I have endeavored to discuss some important critical and literary problems which must be satisfactorily dealt with before an adequate critical philosophy can be developed.

I suppose that few people will be rash enough to assert that such a philosophy exists already, and I hope that many will agree that unless it is developed in the future critics are likely to continue their uncomfortable and undignified floundering in the vii

PREFATORY NOTE

bogs of dogmatism and impressionism. Acting on these suppositions, I have ventured to investigate as well as I could such important topics — fundamental as they plainly are to a critical philosophy — as The Sanction and Scope of the Authority of Criticism; The Nature of Literature, with particular regard to its emotional basis ; The Relations of Literature to Morals ; and The Best Methods of Teaching Literature in the Schools.

To these mainly theoretical but in part practical papers I have added a few others, not merely to lend variety to the volume, but more particularly to illustrate in a somewhat concrete way the truth of principles contended for in the group of essays just specified. For example, the papers on Tennyson and Musset and on the Byron Revival will be found to bear upon the important topic of the emotional basis of literature. They were written, however, with no intention to prove a thesis, but simply as critical studies.

In conclusion, I must assure my reader

that I arrogate to myself no discoveries, and

that I am aware that I am probably as far

from having an adequate critical philosophy

vdii

PREFATORY NOTE

as he is. All I can positively affirm is that there is need of such a philosophy, and that honest groping for one on the part of men who have a high appreciation of the critic's function is perhaps the best means of attaining it.

W. P. TRENT.

Sewanee, Tenn., June 7, 1899.

*»* Thanks are hereby returned to the editors of Tlie Forum, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Bookman, for permission to reprint the first and sixth, the seventh, and the ninth essays respectively.

G.

IX

Contents

Page

The Authority of Criticise! i

The Nature of Literaturj: 141

II

Our first question is, then, w^hether M. Brunetiere is right when he asks us to distrust our individual judgment about a piece of literature, and to make a study of criticism and literary history in order to discover the proper value and rank of the work to be judged, before we venture to form or express a settled opinion concerning it. This is practically what he does ask, although he lays most stress on a particular demand ; to wit, that we shall pay special attention to the matter of genres — that is, to the different forms or categories of literature. It is also w^hat Matthew Arnold asked, although he laid most stress on the matter of general culture. But M. Lemaitre demurs at once. He says, in substance : You are leaving out of sight the main object for which men write and read books, viz., to receive pleasure and, partly, to give it. Your abstract genres, your epics and dramas, creatures of your own brains, become your tyrants and doom you to hopeless drudgery. It is no longer possible for you to take up a book and simply enjoy it. I, too, could do your kind of criticism if I had a mind to ; but if I did, I should be turned into a solemn magistrate, thinking forever of the black cap I must soon put on. — Now this demurrer has plainly its basis in common sense, and is a wholesome corrective of the claims of the academic critic when these take an extreme form. It is obvious that certain minds will always rebel at a hard and fast code of rules for critical reading, and that most minds will rebel sometimes. Not only are there books that we want to read without analysis, but there are times when we prefer simply to read a book that at other times we should be glad to analyze. We do not care to analyze The Prisoner of Zenda : it would scarcely pay us to analyze it, although one enterprising student of architecture has drawn an elaborate plan of the remarkable castle. Yet we were all eager to read it ; and we are most of us glad now that we did read it. On the other hand, lo we ought at one time or another to make a careful analytic study of Shakspere's Sonnets; yet there are some of us who like to have a pocket edition of these divine poems with us on a railway journey, when careful study is plainly out of the question.

Again, we are constantly repeating to young people the injunction that they should begin to read classical poems and novels as soon as they are able to comprehend them; but we do not say at the same time that they must wait until they understand the main facts about the *' evolution of genres" before they form an opinion of the general value and interest to themselves of the literature with which they have been brought in contact. In this case, however, we do apply a part at least, of M. Brunetiere's critical philosophy; for we rely chiefly on the verdicts of past generations in our choice of the classics we recommend to the young. Still, it remains true that the most critically minded of us cannot be critical always, and that large classes of readers can never be critical in any true sense of the word. So M. Brunetiere's principles hold good for only a small body of readers, and not at all times and seasons even for these. It is idle, however, to think that he has ever meant them to be taken strictly 1 1 by the majority, by what we call politely the reading public ; yet there is a sense in which they may be laid to heart by every one, and inculcated even in a very young child.

Ill

Reduced to their lowest terms, the principles for which most academic critics stand are, I think, three in number: (i) That due weight should be given to the collective wisdom of the past and the trained knowledge of the present ; (2) that there are more or less ascertainable degrees of value in the various genres of artistic production; and (3) that no art can be absolutely divorced from ethics.

It follows at once from the assumption of these three principles that if it can be shown that a special kind of poetry, say the epic, is of greater value (that is, makes a higher and wider appeal to the minds and hearts of men in general) than another kind, say the elegy, it is not merely a mistake of judgment to prefer the latter to the former, but also, where sufBcient knowledge is available, — a point which is covered by the first principle given above, — an ethical lapse of a more or 12 less venial character. In fine, if there were such a person as a purely academic critic of perfect fearlessness, he would affirm that to prefer Gray's Elegy to Paradise Lost is not only foolish, but wrong: for this is the sense in which he accepts the dictum that art cannot be divorced from ethics ; it being quite possible for an academic critic to acquiesce in the truth of the maxim " Art for art's sake," provided it be interpreted rationally. In other words the academic critic, while he may not judge works of art from a preconceived ethical point of view, and demand that they serve some definite ethical purpose, will, if he be consistent, assert emphatically that, as no judgment can be formed without entailing some corresponding responsibility, and as objects of art must be judged before we can determine whether the emotions produced by them are really wholesome or harmful, it follows that art, by entailing responsibilities upon all who are brought into contact with it, — and what experience in life does not entail upon us the responsibility of determining whether it be wholesome or harmful? — cannot in the last analysis be divorced from ethics.

If, now, it be urged that what we ought to examine and pass judgment upon is not the I".

object of art that produces emotions in us, but ourselves who experience these emotions, the critic will reply that he has always maintained the necessity for self-examination in cesthetic matters, but that, if a doubt be implied with regard to the possibihty of obtaining valid objective judgments in the domain of the arts, such doubt must apply as well to the ultimate validity of all other objective judgments, with the result that we are landed either in pure ideahsm or in universal scepticism. An objection, however, that is so farreaching is practically no objection at all.

But certainly this strange doctrine, that it is in some way wrong to prefer a poem, a picture, or a statue of an inferior genre to one of a superior genre, will not be admitted by many persons without considerable protest. Yet, if it be once granted that there are higher and lower forms of art, and that it is the duty of every man, not merely to act on the highest level possible, but also to expose his soul to the highest influences possible, it follows that to prefer wilfully the lower to the higher in any particular is, strictly speaking, an ethical lapse. Many of us are, of course, absolved from all blame in this regard on account of our ignorance in the premises : those of us who are not igno- 14 rant have generally tried to justify ourselves by affirming that, while there may be genres, there is no proof that one is higher than another ; that it is a mere assumption of a priori criticism to say, for example, that a fine ode like Gray's Progress of Poesy is per se superior to the same poet's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, — an opinion held, perhaps, both by Gray himself and by Matthew Arnold.

The answer made by the academic critic to this contention will naturally bring into question his first principle, viz., that due weight should be given to the collective wisdom of the past and to the trained knowledge of the present. The ode, he will say, stands at the head of all forms of lyrical poetry, because in it the subjective emotions of the poet are fused to a white heat. The ancients regarded the ode as the greatest of lyrical forms ; and modern students of poetry have as yet seen no reason to abandon this view. The finest ode of Pindar ought then to be superior to any elegy of Mimnermus, and Gray's ode should outrank his Elegy, unless in the former poem the poet has fallen below the level proper to the genre selected, and in the latter poem has risen to an equal or greater degree, — a phenomenon which seems to have occurred, if the two pieces be regarded as wholes, and which both explains and justifies the popular verdict in the matter.

This answer shows us at once how interdependent the three principles of the academic critic really are. If there are genres of higher and lower value, then it is our duty to try to put ourselves in greater sympathy with the higher than with the lower; or, in other words, we cannot, if we would, divorce art from ethics. But we cannot establish our contention that there are superior and inferior genres, unless we insist that due weight be given to that collective wisdom of the past which has established and differentiated the various genres. It is the conscious, _ or unconscious, perception of the interde-H pendence of these principles of academic criticism that has led the impressionists, who generally desire to escape from ethical responsibility, to attack with relentless vigor that deference to the judgment of the past inculcated by the first principle. They cannot well attack the second part of this principle, that due weight should be given to the trained knowledge of the present; for this would be to undermine the authority of their own privileged order of mandarins: they i6 can, however, say much about a servile dependence on an effete past.

But, if the collective wisdom of the ages be of paramount importance in ethics, philosophy, law, and all studies in which fresh material for experimentation is not being continually introduced, it is difficult to see how its authority, within reasonable limits, can be questioned with regard to criticism. That genres exist even in art is a fact as well determined as the existence of the various mental faculties. That we do not know the ultimate nature of art in the one case, or of mind in the other, does not prove that we have no need of the hypotheses of criticism and of metaphysics. That there is a hierarchy of genres is a fact as well proved as that there is a hierarchy of mental powers or of bodily functions.^ To cut the JEneid

1 With regard to this important matter of the hierarchy of the genres one cannot do better than to follow Brunetiere in quoting Taine : " Dans le monde imaginaire, comme dans le monde reel, il y a des rangs diver? parce qu'il y a des valeurs diverses. Le public et les connaisseurs assignent les uns et estiment les autres. Nous n'avons pas fait autre chose depuis cinq ans, en parcourant les ecoles (le ritalie, des Pays-Bas, et de la Grece. Nous avons toujours, et a chaque pas, porte des jugements. Sans le savoir nous avions en main un instrument de mesure. Les autres hommes sont comme nous, et en critique comme ailleurs il y a des verites acquises, Chacun reconnait 2 17 out of Latin literature would be like putting out a man's eye : to cut out Juvenal's Satires would be like amputating a finger. " Solvitur inquirendo." Ask even the most rampant impressionist — except, perhaps, the ultra-Whitmanite — which he would rather have written, Shakspere's dramas or Burns's songs, Scott's romances or Maupassant's tales, Gibbon's Decline and P'all or Macaulay's Essays, and the answer will nearly always indicate a tacit acceptance of the theory of a hierarchy of genres. **A mere instance of the force of convention," the VVhitmanite might say, " Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass put all the genres to the blush, and the academic critics, too. You will not dare to mention Shakspere and Milton in the same breath with him ! " An advocate of free love might make just such a reply to an argument in favor of monogamy.

In fact it can be easily shown that the distinctions and gradations sanctioned by the

aujourd'hui que certains poetes, comme Dante et Shakspere, certains compositeurs, comme Mozart et Beethoven, tiennent la premiere place dans leur art. On I'accorde k Goethe, parmi les ecrivains de notre siecle ; parmi les Hollandais, a Rembrandt; parmi les Venitiens, a Titien. Trois artistes de la Renaissance italienne, Leonard de Vinci, Michel-Ange, et Raphael, montent d'un consentement unanime au-dessus de tous les autres," [L*£volution des Genres, I. (De la Critique), p. 273.] 18 great critics of the past, and upheld by the arguments of the academic critics of the present, are founded on just the same basis as the distinctions and gradations established and supported by the jurist and the scientific moralist. The critic may often deal with matters of less transcendent importance than his fellow-students : but his science, in the last analysis, is as securely based as theirs; for all three ultimately rest on authority and present judgment. He has no such sanctions to rely upon as the jurist and the moralist have ; hence he is often doomed to see uninformed opinions prevail : ^ his domain is one that can be easily entered from all sides ; hence he is compelled to struggle with numerous rivals who are continually betraying the cause of the science he serves. But he feels that his position is at bottom as secure as that of any student of any semi-science can be; and he bides his time in the hope of better days.

1 " But anybody is qualified, according to everybody, for giving opinions upon poetry. It is not so in chymistry and mathematics. Nor is it so, I believe, in whist and the polka. But then these are more serious things." [Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, Feb. 17, 1845.]

IV

We have now seen what, in brief, are the contentions of the academic critic ; and we must admit that if his claim, that criticism rests for its authority on the same basis as ethics and law, be estabhshed, it is expedient for us, if not incumbent upon us, to give criticism its due influence in the formation of our literary and artistic tastes and judgments. Could we once bring ourselves to do this, we should find that the parallel between criticism and its sister semi-sciences holds very closely. Just as there are some ethical principles acted upon by all civilized men, others acted upon chiefly by certain races, others only by individuals of a high type of character, so there are principles of criticism universal, racial, and individual in their application. For example, all men have practically agreed — at least till the present generation — to regard poetry as superior, on the whole, to prose ; the French have practically agreed that the drama which preserves the unities is the best for their stage ; most highly cultured individuals are agreed in giving a greater value to the sonnet as a poetic form than would be accorded it by the average reader. In the light of these facts we must infer that there are some principles of criticism so binding upon us that we ought to endeavor not only to make an individual appHcation of them, but also to inculcate them in our children ; others which, as Americans, EngHshmen, Frenchmen, or what not, it will probably be to our advantage to follow; still others which, in all likelihood, will appeal to us more and more as we advance in culture. In short, no man who is seeking to develop his literary and artistic taste and judgment can afford to be a thoroughgoing impressionist any more than he can afford to be an absolute individualist in his daily life and conduct.

If there be any force in the above reasoning, it is plain that something at least of M. Brunetiere's teaching may be taken to heart by us all. The duty of fitting ourselves not merely to enjoy the great poetry of the world, but to prefer it to all other forms of aesthetic enjoyment, may be insisted upon with advantage. All men will not attain to such enjoyment or such preference ; but this is no reason why all men should not be admonished to make the effort to attain. No man follows perfectly the law of Christ; yet no preacher ceases to uphold that law as an ideal pattern of conduct. It is clear, then, that no man or child should be allowed to say complacently, as one so often hears it said, *' I don't care for poetry." Perhaps they cannot be made to care for it ; but their complacency may at least be shaken.

Again, it is just as certain that there are higher and lower genres of poetry as that poetry is superior, on the whole, to prose. Hence it is our duty to fit ourselves to prefer the higher genres to the lower. This, again, we shall not all attain to. Some people are so constituted that elegiac musings and speculations, such as those that make up the In Memoriam, will always attract them more than the stately march of the Paradise Lost, or the subtle beauty and keen interest of the Divine Comedy. On the other hand, one can find persons who do not care at all for such admirable elegiac verse as Lamartine's Le Lac. In either case, we may be unable to correct the bias ; but we need not fail to point out that it is an unfortunate one, if any reliance may and should be placed upon the collective wisdom of the past and the trained judgment of the present.

But our teaching need not stop here. There will always be persons who will care more for the subject-matter of a book than for the style in which it is written ; yet we should none the less insist that it is the duty of every man to fit himself to tell a good style from a bad, to enjoy an excellent style, and to eschew, whenever it is possible, the books that are clumsily written. An insistence upon this matter of taste in style has, after many generations, placed French literature in its present position of supremacy : a failure to insist upon it has left German literature where it is to-day. If we Americans and Englishmen will only cultivate our taste for style, and will remember, too, that principle upon which Matthew Arnold was forever harping, that great literature needs a sound subject-matter, we shall all be saved from many bizarre judgments and opinions. We shall not then be able to rank Whitman, true and great poet though he often was, among the dii majores of song, nor to imagine that Tennyson or Wordsworth or Shelley can rightly be mentioned in the same breath with Milton.

Yet, although we shall do well to respect the academic critic when he bids us distrust our own judgments and consult the authoritative opinions of the best critics past and present, it does not follow that we must all 23 endeavor to inform ourselves about the evolution of genres, the details of literary history, or any of the numerous matters that assume great importance in the eyes of the professional critic. Few of us have the time for such minute study: fewer still have any inclination for it. One can love and get pleasure from flowers without knowing much about botany ; similarly, one can love and get pleasure from literature without being a trained critic. The botanist and the critic, to be sure, ought, unless they become dryas-dusts, to have decided advantages over the mere lovers of flowers and of books ; but the latter are in no bad way if their minds and souls have been enlightened in a broad and general manner. This broad and I general enlightenment will begin to dawn j upon us the moment we are brought in con- ) tact with great literature and art; provided j always that our tendency to excessive indivi- | dualism is checked by proper training. Such f being the case, we are in duty bound to range | ourselves by the side of those academic critics j who offer to furnish this training which, as \ we have just seen, is by no means technical | in character.

Granting, however, that criticism has a certain authority over us with regard to the submission of our individual judgments relative to such matters as the supremacy of poetry to prose, of one genre to another, of form to formlessness, it would seem to be true also that, as we are constituted with varying tastes and aptitudes, and brought up in varying environments, we are more or less forced to form subjective opinions and thus to become impressionist critics, at least for the time being. If all criticism is, in its essence, subjective, and attains objectivity only through its subsequent acceptance by minds other than the critic's own, which in turn is a subjective procedure, it is certain that our own judgment or opinion with regard to any object of art will be of more vital importance to us than any conventional judgment or opinion can possibly be. In other words, the impressionist critic would seem to have a role as important and a province as extended as the academic critic has.

There can scarcely be two opinions with regard to this matter. The fact that there 25 are impressionist critics who are widely read and enjoyed seems of itself to prove their usefulness. It is not possible to deny that, by concentrating themselves upon some favorite author, artist, book, or painting, impressionist critics have added to the world's knowledge, and, what is more, to its enjoyment ; that they have actually forged weapons for their foes, the academic critics, to use against them. Who, for example, has done more to make contemporary France return to a proper admiration of Lamartine than that prince of impressionists, M. Lemaitre? Certainly not M. Brunetiere. But impressionists are justified in existing not only by the good they do, but also by the fact that there is an abundant range of work for them to accomphsh. There are regions in the domain of literature and art over which the academic critic has little or no control. No one should affirm, for example, that it is the duty of the academic critic to set us rules for the enjoyment or even full comprehension of that department of poetry known as " society verse." He can tell us, indeed, that it should not be ranked high in the scale of the genres ; but, if he be wise, he will scarcely undertake to tell us how much we ought to care for it, or when it will most appeal to us. 26

The reason for this proper reticence on his part is very simple. Society verse does not necessarily appeal to the natural man ; and the academic critic, in most of his reasoning, finds it necessary to give his principles of criticism the broadest basis possible. He tells us that it is human to admire the sublime and to weep at the pathetic ; but he cannot tell us with any truth that it is human to smile at the cleverness of a smart social set. The academic critic feels at home, therefore, in praising the Paradise Lost and the Antigone : he will do well to leave to the impressionist — to the man to the manner born, like the late Mr. Locker-Lampson (who indeed could theorize also on the subject in an admirable way) — the task of initiating us into the charming mysteries of society verse. The moment, however, that the impressionist goes too far in his advocacy of his favorite poet or kind of poetry, the academic critic, with his broader knowledge and wider range of thought, is ready to check him. Pope, for instance, is, in many respects, a poet of society whom it would be easy for a certain kind of impressionist to overrate, and for another kind, preferring, let us say, the poetry of nature, to underrate, even to the point of proclaiming that the brilliant satirist was no poet 27 at all. Both these extremes of judgment would surely be corrected by a competent academic critic.

But not only can the impressionist critic serve us as the best possible guide in certain well-defined regions of literature and art ; he is also the person to help us in the exploration of new regions. There are genres like the novel, the possibilities of which we are probably far from knowing thoroughly. With respect to present work in these genres, it may be questioned whether the training and methods of the academic critic fit him for doing effective service: he is at his best in dealing with genres of which the capabilities have been long tested. The impressionist, on the other hand, unfettered by rules and traditions, is likely to be sympathetic with the fresh tentatives which creative genius is continually making in what we may call the '' unclosed genres." He is the best critic for the new writers and, hence, for the majority of contemporary readers, who naturally form the clientage of the men who are making current literature. Then, again, it is the impressionist critic who is best qualified to apply to the literature of the past those fresh and novel points of view which each advancing generation supplies, — a most important 28 work when it is not undertaken in a captious and self-seeking spirit.

Now surely, if all that has been said be true, the role of the impressionist is by no means a contemptible one. Not only has he certain departments of art and literature practically under his control, but he can do his share in criticising the men and works of the past, and he has the lion's share of the critical labors of the present. He has no reason to call the academic critic by harsh names ; yet he frequently does — se-emingly because, being bound by few rules, he forgets that he is bound by any, even by those of courtesy. He generally takes up a favorite and becomes a partisan, after which he fancies that, in order to elevate his hero, he must labor not merely to subordinate, but to cast down other great men. He will praise Tintoretto while belittling Titian ; he will laud Shelley while decrying Byron ; and he pities the benighted soul that in the bonds and fetters of custom still grovels before the " crumbling idol." This is but to say that, although the role of the impressionist is a great one, he is often false to it. Narrow and bigoted critics of an academic kind there have been in abundance ; and they have done much harm, but scarcely enough to equal that done by the wild impressionists who are 29 forever running amuck through the storied realms of art and literature.