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From The Saint Pauls Magazine - April 1872, pp. 386-395 CRITICISM AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS. _____ AMONG the many things which modern ingenuity has tried to manipulate into a science must be classed what is usually called Criticism; but, for my own part, I am inclined to think that Criticism means to belong to the Fine Arts, and to elude the scientific arrangement altogether.
There was a time, of course, when books, pictures, and music were judged by a certain set of fixed rules, each incontestable as the law of gravitation; when contemporary persons could appraise the value of an æsthetic article as easily as a grocer finds out the weight of a pound of sugar; when, in fact, critics knew their business thoroughly, being in the secret of the manufacture. Sometimes the critical scales were entrusted to one man, say to Voltaire, or John Dryden, or Addison. Again, public opinion was guided by a kind of joint stock company, like Pope, Swift, & Co., or Gifford & Co., or Jeffrey, Brougham, & Co. In all cases alike judgment was infallible; there was no appeal. And the laws on which sentence was founded were, curiously enough, considered so unimpeachable, that one no more thought of questioning them than believers think of questioning the divine laws of Confucius, or the miracles of Mahomet, or the revelations of the Apocalypse. Moreover, these laws had all the weight of mystery. No one had ever read the golden book where they were enshrined. They were written in an unknown tongue; the high-priest of criticism sat on the tripod, and interpreted. In this way, things amazing and awful came to pass. At one time it was decreed here in England that Abraham Cowley was a mighty genius; and at another it was settled, there in France, that Shakspere was a rude unsavoury monster. The Oracle spake, and Klopstock was crowned. The public listened and approved. No unordained person dared to interfere in so profound a matter. The little murmur of protest that rose when impostors like Keats were punished, soon died away in the loud roar greeting the coronation of divinities like Mr. Sotheby. Criticism, in fact, was a semi-religious rite performed by a priesthood, guided partly by a set of divine rules, partly by a kind of corybantic inspiration.
Recent scepticism has tried to demolish much—the Pentateuch and some of the miracles, for example; but it has never yet demolished the brazen idols of Criticism. The public press has advanced a great deal, freeing men’s minds and widening their knowledge; but, strange to say, it has not yet advanced to the point of refusing to shelter that worst class of priestcraft, which pronounces anonymous judgments. It is quite true, however, that now-a-days it does not much matter, since critics are thoroughly disorganised, and each fellow, on a tripod of his own, delivers judgment to a special circle; so that publishing a book or showing a picture is simply another sort of “running the gauntlet.” But it is surely high time, in this questioning age, to ask on what grounds this critical priesthood still exists at all; why it presumes to give judgment, often with such reckless disregard of consequences; what use it is to any soul under the sun; and how, having once proved it as thorough a humbug as the Delphic oracle itself, we are to get rid of it in the speediest possible manner?
To begin with, what is Criticism?
Strictly speaking, of course, it is the application of certain tests, by which we may ascertain the value of specific articles, just as we find out the quality of gold. These tests, applied to literature and art, have produced most astounding results, without really enlightening mankind at all. It was all very well when the work was cut and dried. At one time, for example, Criticism did almost all her work by a cabalistic yard-measure called the “Unities.” Nothing could be easier. Whenever an epic poem or a tragedy was brought up for judgment, out came the yard-measure, and the matter was decided in a moment. The thing either did or did not conform to the Unities, and was praised or damned accordingly; and in those days, we may remark en passant, Shakspere was nowhere. Latterly, however, such tests as this have been abandoned in despair. It is recognised as a privilege of genius to break all set rules, and so ride triumphant over them. There is no absolute axiom of criticism which some great man may not falsify in practice to-morrow. Here again, therefore, we ask with some asperity, what is Criticism?
No science certainly. No list of set rules to be applied by a priesthood. No sum as easy to manage as the multiplication table. What then?
Criticism, now-a-days, simply means (it is doubtful whether at any time it has meant much more) the impression produced on certain minds by certain products. If Jones paints a picture, and it is noticed unfavourably in the Peckham Review, the criticism does not come right up out from Delphi, but consists simply of so much “copy” in the handwriting of Robinson. If Brown composes a poem, and it is wildly eulogised in the Stokeinpogis Chronicle, let him first bethink himself, before he become too bumptious, that the eulogy in question is simply the result of an individual impression, say on the mind of Smith. In any of these cases it is quite clear that the value of the criticism depends on the amount of honesty and intelligence possessed by Robinson and Smith respectively. To get anything like a fair insight into the truth, we must take care to ascertain at least a few preliminaries:
1. How old the critic is, and what is the bent of his intellect?
2. What are his favourite authors? What is his chief study?
3. Has he ever written or painted himself, and, if so, is he at all soured?
4. Is he personally acquainted with the author or painter criticised? and if so, are his relations with him friendly, or the reverse?
5. Is he usually honest in the expression of his opinions? &c. &c.
These seem unlimited questions, but, in point of fact, they are virtually answered in all criticism that has any weight. They are least answered, of course, in anonymous criticism; but, even then, they are partially settled to the public satisfaction. One may calculate to a nicety, for example, what effect such and such a new work will produce on the editor of the Times, or of the Spectator, or of the Saturday Review. A work of high and daring originality, unpopular in form, will be utterly ignored by the leading journal, patronized (if it contain no offence to the Broad Church) in the Spectator, and gibed and grinned at in the Saturday Review. Behind and beyond the natural style and temper of these professional critics, there lie of course the mysterious workings of private liking and prejudice. Now and then, when we see the unpopular tone taken in the Times, we know what enormous secret influence must have been used to get that tone taken. There is no one of these journals, there is no one of the men who write these journals, quite free of undue influence in some direction or other; conscious or unconscious—it is there. There is, in fact, no end to the questions we must definitely answer before we ascertain the value of any published opinion. It is in all cases the record of an impression only; but how has that impression been taken? How rare it is to find a man in whose capability of receiving an honest influence we can place full reliance! It is not dishonesty we have to fear, but certain unconscious weaknesses. Even in the cases of such men as Mr. Mill, or Mr. Herbert Spencer, or Sainte-Beuve, or M. Taine, we must have our doubts. We almost trust them, but now and then we pause. And then, when the critical moment comes, what is their “impression” worth? Personally, much; scientifically, not a rap!
It is great fun—fun given to poor mortality, alas! too seldom—to see the advent of some outrageous Genius, some
prodigy of the Euphocion order, starting up to the horror of criticism, and carrying all the masses before him by simple charm. Wonderful is that gift of producing on thousands of people precisely the same set of favourable impressions; wonderful is that gift, whether possessed by a Dickens, a Tennyson, or a Tupper. Fortunately the great mass of people are their own “tasters,” judging for themselves at first hand, and they won’t be guided by the literary priests, however so wise; and it is simply delicious to observe how reputations grow, in spite of all the priesthood do to tramp them down. Let no man despair merely because the few who write abuse him. The abuse simply means that he is not wanted by Smith, Brown, and Jones; while all the time he is being eagerly waited for by all the legions of the Robinsons, to whom every word he drops is a revelation. Longfellow has ceased to be a favourite with reviewers, but he has his compensations. George Eliot is praised by every reviewer in the country, but the public knows, for all that, that she has never fulfilled her original promise. Dickens was abused by genteel journals, but what cared he?
Every author or artist, in fact, is a gauge to tell how many people there are in the world of about his own ratio of intelligence—minus the creative faculty. There are one hundred thousand Tuppers. There are (it is seriously calculated) one hundred Stuart Mills and half-a-dozen Herbert Spencers. In art, the Faeds and Friths are innumerable; the Millais numerous; and the Poynters infinitesimal. For many years, Browning paid the public large sums, as it were, for the privilege of publishing poems; only there was no article in the agreement that the poems in question were to be read; and now, the public has turned the tables, and is paying all the money back for the privilege of reading those very poems. The Mutual Admiration School of Poetry is scarcely read out of London, and produces no impression whatever on the public; the fact being that sensualists and spooneys are not so common as some critics persist in telling us. Luckily, we say, criticism can only do mischief up to a certain point, and cannot do that mischief long. It may delay a reputation, but it cannot kill it. The public, in the long run, will have its own way, and choose its own favourite, and will choose according to the direct impression made by the favourite in question.
But what a boon it would be to the public if the gentlemen who “do” criticism, instead of assuming the priestly robe and sitting veiled on a tripod, were simply and fearlessly to tell us how certain works have affected them, what they like and dislike in them, how they seem to stand in relation to other literature. What time this would save! What lying it would avoid! To speak with authority is “parlous” indeed. Who gains anything when Anonymous writes that Browning’s last poem is sheer balderdash, or that Simeon Solomon’s last picture is divinely original! Who says so? That is what we want to get at. If it be Smith, let Smith come forward and sign his name. Of course, much in criticism is self-convincing, quite apart from the writer’s identity; and the best and most convincing criticism of all, in the case of a book, is free and ungarbled extract from the work under notice: extract can seldom be unfair. But in how many cases should we be on our guard if we knew what critic was administering judgment. Take an instance. Mr. Grote devotes a lifetime to the study of Plato, and at last produces a great work on the subject. This work, being sent to the Megatherium for review, is handed over to Tomkins, who is fresh from the university, where, so far from making any mark, he was considered a dull fellow, and has drifted into the most irresponsible of all businesses, that of anonymous reviewing. TOMKINS’S QUALIFICATIONS. 1. He is 25 years of age, and with little experience either of men or books.
2. He was crammed for his degree, and knows little of Greek beyond the alphabet.
3. He has quick intelligence, great power of hiding his ignorance, and little honesty.
4. He is mentally incapable of conceiving a Platonic proposition, &c.
Here, it will be admitted, we should know what to think of Tomkins’s criticism on Grote, if he candidly prefixed to it the above list of qualifications; yet ten to one Tomkins, under his anonymous guise, manages so cleverly to conceal his ignorance that we feel perfectly satisfied when he concludes: “Passing over certain errors and repetitions pardonable in a work of such magnitude, as well as the pedantic mode of spelling some words more familiar to us in their Latinized shape, we may record our opinion that this work has given us real pleasure,—an opinion in which, we are sure, every scholar will join. We have already expressed our disapproval of certain passages, and have indicated where they need revision; these revisions made, the work will stand as a monument of English scholarship and a complete manual of the subject.”
Take another instance. A man of genius, to whom this generation does scant justice, Mr. William Gilbert, publishes a story, in which the real life of the lower classes in our country is pictured for us with a fidelity which would be terrible, if it were not illuminated by the most subtle and delicate humour. This story goes to the Dilletante Gazette, and in course of time is handed over to Chesterfield Junior, Esq., of the Inner Temple. CHESTERFIELD JUNIOR’S QUALIFICATIONS FOR “CRITICISING” “DE PROFUNDIS.”*
1. He is 30 years of age, a literary man about town, and his tastes are elegant.
2. His notion of the working man is that he is a “rough;” and his notion of life generally is that it is a series of dinings-out, unpleasantly varied by sullen requisitions on the part of the lower classes for “goods received.”
3. He is utterly destitute of beneficence; he has not even a dramatic perception of what beneficence is.
4. His favourite author is Thackeray; but he enjoys the “fun” of Dickens, &c.
5. He is utterly and hopelessly unconscious of the limited nature of his own literary vision.
Chesterfield Junior’s criticism on the marvellous tale of common life would probably amount to this;—“We have here a study, in the manner of Defoe, of one of the least interesting forms of life generated by our over-crowded cities. No one can doubt the cleverness of the hard literal drawing; but to us it is simply unpleasant. It is a photograph, not a picture. It altogether lacks beauty, and has not one flash of the illuminating humour which distinguishes Dickens’s work in the same direction.” In this case, be it noted, every word is the record of a genuine impression on a mind to whose sympathies the object does not appeal. Just suppose that, in addition to the natural antipathy, Chesterfield Junior had the least bit of personal animosity to his author, and he would hardly plead guilty to conscious injustice if he wrote in terms of entire condemnation: “Mr. Gilbert is a realist of the penny-a-liner type, without one gleam of genius, and his book is the most vulgar and unpleasant production we have read for a long time. Led by the natural gravitation of his mind to the study of what is low and common, and incapable of anything but a vulgarising treatment, he solicits our interests in the futures of a virtuous washerwoman, a drummer, and an irreclaimable thief. Trash like this is simply intolerable to any person of refined tastes.” Poor Chesterfield Junior! He means no harm. He is only a sheep with a silk ribbon on his neck, bleating his mutton-like defiance. A few people are deceived, and say to themselves, “This Mr. Gilbert must be a very unpleasant writer!” We, who know better, only smile, saying, “Chesterfield Junior has put his poor little foot into it again, as is again and again the custom of creatures without eyes.”
On the other hand, let the same work fall into the hands of Addison Redivivus, whose qualifications are great beneficence, vast experience of the lower classes, a natural repugnance to all false sentiment and fine writing, and that sort of intelligence which gives as well as takes illumination; and we shall speedily hear, perhaps, that “De Profundis” is, for sheer perfection in the rarest of all styles, a work with scarcely a peer, possessing both truth and beauty, bearing on every page the sign of a masterly understanding and of the finest intellectual humour, and leaving on the competent reader’s mind an impression in the highest sense imaginative and poetical. Who would be right—Chesterfield Junior or Addison Redivivus?
Criticism, we repeat, in no science. Neither Chesterfield nor Addison can settle the matter by any fixed rule. They merely chronicle their impression pro or contra, and the value of the impression depends on our knowledge of the person impressed. Well, if criticism is no science, what is it? It seems to me that criticism, as the representation of the effect particular works have on particular individuals, is rapidly securing its place as one of the Fine Arts, and that its value is in exact proportion to the amount of artistic self-portraiture attained by the critic.
We have half-a-dozen tolerable critics in England, but we have none nearly equal as an artist to the person whom I shall use to illustrate my proposition. Now that Sainte-Beuve is gone, the finest living specimen is M. Taine, whose works are winning appreciation here as well as in France. M. Taine has great intelligence, culture, literary experience. His faculty of composition may be described as almost creative. Wherein, then, does this faculty consist? It consists, I am sure, in the man’s unequalled power of representing his own qualifications; of illustrating to us, by a thousand delicate lights and shades, the quality of his own mind and its limitations; and of revealing to us, as frequently as possible, the nature of his education and its effect on his tastes. Sooner or later, he enables us to become on intimate terms with him. He conceals little or nothing. He lays bare the most secret sources of his sympathies and his antipathies. He invariably discards the “editorial” tone. And when once we know him thoroughly, nothing can be more delightful than his way of playing with his theme. We know almost by instinct where he will be right and where he may be wrong. His work belongs to the Fine Arts, and at times approaches masterly portrayal.
“The following,” M. Taine says in effect, “are my qualifications:—
“1. I am not too young for self-restraint, nor too old for sympathy, and I have had an excellent education.
“2. I am a Frenchman, educated under the Empire, and (more or less unconsciously) ‘æstheticised.’
“3. I have the French hatred of ‘institutions,’ and the French deficiency in the religious faculty.
“4. My passion for symmetry may lead you to believe me a formal person; but I am in reality a loose thinker, dexterously manœuvring impressions under the guise of a finished style.
“5. Form, as form, almost always fascinates me, but I try most to sympathise where the subject is most shapeless.
“6. I am thoroughly conscious of my limitations, and seldom try to conceal them.
“7. In spite of my seeming power of surveying large surfaces (the result of my instinct of symmetrical arrangement), my faculty is microscopic, and examines every work of art inch by inch, phrase by phrase, afterwards piecing the criticism together into the form of a verdict on the whole work.”
Much more might be added; but the point is, that M. Taine, being a thorough artist, tells us all the above, directly or indirectly, and makes us alive to it at every step. He never allows us for a moment to lose sight of himself; and he is at his best when he is least impersonal, and most candid in portraying his emotions.
How delicious it is, for example, to find a critic showing his own intellectual physiognomy in this way, when beginning to criticise a great English philosopher:— “When at Oxford some years ago, during the meeting of the British Association, I met, amongst the few students still in residence, a young Englishman, a man of intelligence, with whom I became intimate. He took me in the evening to the New Museum, well filled with specimens. Here short lectures were delivered, new models of machinery were set to work; ladies were present and took an interest in the experiments; on the last day, full of enthusiasm, God save the Queen was sung. I admired this zeal, this solidity of mind, this organisation of science, these voluntary subscriptions, this aptitude for association and for labour, this great machine pushed on by so many arms, and so well fitted to accumulate, criticise, and classify facts. But yet, in this abundance, there was a void; when I read the Transactions, I thought I was present at a congress of heads of manufactories. All these learned men verified details and exchanged recipes. It was as though I listened to foremen, busy in communicating their processes for tanning leather or dyeing cotton: general ideas were wanting. I used to regret this to my friend; and in the evening, by his lamp, amidst that great silence in which the university town lay wrapped, we both tried to discover its reasons.”
“One day I said to him: You lack philosophy—I mean, what the Germans call metaphysics. You have learned men, but you have no thinkers. Your God impedes you. He is the Supreme Cause, and you dare not reason on causes, out of respect for Him. He is the most important personage in England, and I see clearly that he merits his position; for he forms part of your constitution, he is the guardian of your morality, he judges in final appeal on all questions whatsoever, he replaces with advantage the prefects and gendarmes with whom the nations on the Continent are still encumbered. Yet this high rank has the inconvenience of all official positions; it produces a cant, prejudices, intolerance, and courtiers. Here, close by us, is poor Mr. Max Müller, who, in order to acclimatise the study of Sanscrit, was compelled to discover in the Vedas the worship of a moral God, that is to say, the religion of Paley and Addison. Some time ago, in London, I read a proclamation of the Queen, forbidding people to play cards, even in their own houses, on Sundays. It seems that, if I were robbed, I could not bring my thief to justice without taking a preliminary religious oath; for the judge has been known to send a complainant away who refused to take the oath, deny him justice, and insult him into the bargain. Every year, when we read the Queen’s speech in your papers, we find there the compulsory mention of Divine Providence, which comes in mechanically, like the apostrophe to the immortal gods on the fourth page of a rhetorical declamation; and you remember that once, the pious phrase having been omitted, a second communication was made to Parliament for the express purpose of supplying it. All these cavillings and pedantry indicate to my mind a celestial monarchy; naturally, it resembles all others; I mean that it relies more willingly on tradition and custom than on examination and reason. A monarchy never invited men to verify its credentials.”—Taine’s History of English Literature, trans. by Henry Van Laun, vol. ii., pp. 478—479 (Essay on John Stuart Mill). Even if the above did not occur at the end of two large volumes, full of self-portraiture more or less indirect, it would reveal to us, as by a sun-picture, the man with whom we have to deal. Herein lies the delightful Art of it. We certainly do get some formal ideas in the end about Mr. Mill, but our real interest for the time being is in M. Taine. How subtle he is! how thoroughly French! How just and kind he is in other places to Tennyson and Thackeray: but how much more he loves De Musset and Balsac! He becomes our personal friend, and every word he utters has weight. His egotism is charming; we could hear him talk for hours.
In England here, critics for the most part assume the editorial tone, and are proportionally uninteresting. To the long list of critics who write without edification, either because they decline self-revelation or are unpleasant when revealed, may be added, in modern times, the names of Mr. Lewes, late editor of the Fortnightly Review, and the Duke of Argyll. These gentlemen sign their articles, but utterly fail to attract us, they are so thoroughly, so transparently, editorial. Critics of the higher class, on the other hand, may be found in Mr. Arthur Helps, Mr. Matthew Arnold, and (with a strong editorial leaven) in Mr. R. H. Hutton, who has recently published two volumes of essays. Mr. Arnold may or may not be an interesting being, but he never for a moment represents himself as what he is not. We know him as thoroughly as if we had been to school with him. We do not get angry with what he says, so much as with his insufferable manner of saying it. Mr. Helps is, once and for ever, the optimist man of the world. Mr. R H. Hutton shows us, as in a mirror, his deep-seated prejudice, his quick sympathy with ideas as distinguished from literary clothing, and his genial love of microscopic délicatesse. We know at once that this last critic will pass Hugo by, and adore Tennyson; that he will find great pleasure in the poetry of Mr. Keble; and that his sympathy with revolt will take no more violent form than a predilection for the critical poems of Mr. Arnold!
And just in so far as they tell us so much, just in so far as they suffer us to see their prejudices and their limitations, are these gentlemen good critics—critics rapidly advancing their profession to a place among the Fine Arts. Let them come!—the more the merrier! We would sooner take the opinion of Mr. Hutton, or Mr. Helps, or Mr. Arnold, or even Mr. Sala,—any of these gentlemen individually —than that of any unknown oracle, from the Times downwards. Besides, unknown oracles can be bought; but to buy clever men is not so easy. It is on these very grounds that the public should only smile good-humouredly when Brown, Robinson, and Co. take to puffing each other. We have lately had the spectacle of a group of drawing-room poets undertaking to blow the trumpet for each other till the world should ring again. And why not? There was no “editorial” deception. The thing was not criticism, but it was Fine Art, and everybody enjoyed the self-revelation of Mr. Swinburne as a man totally without perception of the meaning of words and the right measure of flattery, and the self-revelation of Mr. Swinburne’s friends as gentlemen gone mad with secret emotion-hatching. The knowledge so acquired is invaluable. We can hardly, in fact, grumble at any nonsense if it be signed, and if the signer shows us the sort of man he is.
In many cases, the anonymous is a mere cloak, and everybody knows whom it conceals. The public bowed before the judgment of Jeffrey and Brougham, not that of the Edinburgh Review; before the judgment of Gifford and Southey, not that of the Quarterly Review. Nowadays, nevertheless, the anonymous pen has multiplied itself so prodigiously, that the air rings with fiats and acclaims, and Heaven knows who is uttering them! It is wonderful how Genius gets along, and escapes being put down; wonderful how fairly the oracles speak, in spite of their irresponsibility. Still, the only criticism worth a rap belongs to the Fine Artist, and the only critic who really carries us away is he whose personality we entirely respect.
There seems no end to the extension of so-called criticism as a creative form of composition {as valuable in its way as lyrical poetry or autobiography), wherein we have the representation of certain known products on certain competent or incompetent natures. The man who criticises may attract us by the tints of his own individuality, and the play of his own soul, as successfully as the man who sings or the man who paints. His work is merely the final record of an impression which, before reaching him, has passed through the colouring matter of the poet’s or painter’s mind. To conclude, then, scientific criticism is fudge, as sheer fudge as scientific poetry, as scientific painting; but criticism does belong to the Fine Arts, and for that reason its future prospects are positively unlimited. WALTER HUTCHESON. ___ (Note:
Buchanan chose to open his 1873 collection of essays, Master-Spirits, with ‘Criticism As One Of The Fine Arts’. However, he cut the paragraph towards the end which mentions Swinburne. The edited version is available at the Internet Archive.) _____ Back to Essays |
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