Agnes Repplier

“ Members of the Known Public who explore the wilds and deeps of penny fiction to-day are less satisfied with what they see, less flippant in their methods of criticism, and less disposed to permit mankind to be amused after its own dull fashion. “Let us raise the tone of these popular journals,” is their cry, “and we shall soon have millions of readers taking rational delight in wholesome literature. Let us publish good stories at a penny apiece,—in fact, it is our plain duty to do so,—and these millions of readers will, with grateful hearts, rise up and call us blessed.” ”

“ I have seen literature of the delicately elusive order, like “The Marble Faun,” and “Elsie Venner,” and “Lamia,” devoured with a wistful eagerness that plainly revealed the awakened imagination responding with quick delight to the sweet and subtle charm of mystery. But I am impelled to doubt the attractiveness of Thackeray to the youthful mind, even when I have just been assured that “Henry Esmond” is “a lovely story;” and I am still more skeptical as to Miss Austen’s marvelous hair-strokes conveying any meaning at all to the untrained faculties of a child. ”

“ It is an amusing, barefaced, witless sort of robbery, yet surely not without its compensations; for it must be a pleasant thing to reflect in old age that the general murkiness of life has been lit up here and there by sparks struck from one’s youthful fire, and that these sparks, though they wander occasionally masterless as will-o’-the-wisps, are destined never to go out.
Are destined never to go out! In its vitality lies the supreme excellence of humor. Whatever has “wit enough to keep it sweet” defies corruption and outlasts all time ”

“ It is not the office of a novelist to show us how to behave ourselves; it is not the business of fiction to teach us anything. Scientific truths, new forms of religion, the humorous eccentricities of socialism, the countless fads of radical reformers, the proper way to live our own lives,—these matters, which are now objects of such tender regard to the story-teller, form no part of his rightful stock-in-trade. His task is simply to give us pleasure, and his duty is to give it within the not very Puritanical limits prescribed by our modern notions of decency. ”

“ For humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals. What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh! What healthy exultation, what genial warmth, what loyal brotherhood of mirth, attends the friendly sound! Yet in labeling our life and literature, as the Danes labeled their Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, “Not for amusement merely,” we have pushed one step further, and the legend too often stands, “Not for amusement at all.” ”

“ Ruskin, it may be remembered, holds somewhat different views: "There is no great art possible to a nation but that which is based on war." Yet as every man is entitled to his own opinion in such matters, there is no reason why we should quarrel with either the Russian or the Englishman for their chosen principles. But Ruskin is no greater as an essayist because he approves of war, and Tolstoï gains nothing as a novelist because he adheres to peace. The glory of the battlefield, its pathos and its horror, are all fitting subjects for the artist's pen or pencil. ”

“ The joy that is born of art is not always a simple or easily analyzed emotion. The pleasure we take in looking at the soft, white, dimpled Venus of the Capitol is something very different from that strange tugging at our heart-strings when we first see the sad and scornful beauty of the Venus of Milo, or the curious pity with which we watch the dejected Cupid of the Vatican hanging his lovely head. ”

“ We cannot endure that anything so fine and rare should slip forever from the sunshine, and that the secret stars should look down upon her maidenhood no more. Browning, too, who has been termed the poet of love, who has revealed to us every changeful mood, every stifled secret, every light and shade of human emotion,—how has he dealt with his engrossing theme? Beneath his unsparing touch, at once burning and subtle, the soul lies bare, and its passions rend it like hounds. ”

“ There is a core of truth, he grants, in the Horatian maxim that art may be profitable as well as delightful, "since it always holds that wisdom's ways are ways of pleasantness, that enduring pleasure comes only out of healthful action, and that amusement, as mere amusement, is in its own place good if it be but innocent. There is profit in art, as there is gain in godliness, and policy in an honest life. But we are not to pursue art for profit, nor godliness for gain, nor honesty because it is politic." ”

“ I do not now believe that men are born equal; I do not love universal suffrage; I mistrust all popular agitators, all intrusive legislation, all philanthropic fads, all friends of the people and benefactors of their race. I cannot even sympathize with the noble theory that every man and woman should do their share of the world's work; I would gladly shirk my own if I could. And this lamentable, unworthy view of life and its responsibilities is due to the subtle poison instilled into my youthful mind by the too strenuous counter-teaching of "Sandford and Merton." ”

“ If the poetry of Keats, a handful of scattered jewels left us by a dying boy, is, as Matthew Arnold admits, more solid and complete than Shelley’s superb and piercing song, to what is this due, save that Keats possessed, in addition to his poetic gift, the tranquil artist soul; content, as Goethe was content, to love the principle of beauty, and to be in sympathy with the great living past which has nourished, and still nourishes, the living present. ”

“ From that day until his death, forty years later, the record of his life is one perpetual heroic struggle to preserve the hard-won liberty of Epeiros, a struggle without intermission or relief, without rest for the victor or pity for the vanquished. His scornful indifference to pressing dangers was in itself the best of tonics to a people naturally brave, but taught by bitter experience to fear the inexorable Turkish yoke. Scanderbeg feared nothing; with him, indeed, fear was swallowed up in hatred. He understood perfectly the nature of the warfare in which he was engaged ”

“ What gives to the old love-songs their peculiar felicity, their undecaying brightness, is this constant sounding of a personal note; this artless candor with which we are taken by the hand and led straight into the lady’s presence, are bidden to admire her beauty and her wit, are freely reminded of her faults and her caprices, and are taught, with many a sigh and tear, and laughter bubbling throughout all, what a delicious and unprofitable pastime is the love-making of a poet. ”

“ We may not even consider “The Newcomes” and “Henry Esmond” as illustrating the degeneracy of modern fiction; yet nevertheless we may enjoy some fair half-hours in the company of Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Elton, of Catherine Morland and Elizabeth Bennet. Only, when we are searching for a shibboleth by which to test our neighbor’s intellectual worth, let not Jane Austen’s be the name, lest we be rewarded for our trouble by hearing the faint, clear ripple of her amused laughter—that gentle, feminine, merciless laughter—echoing softly from the dwelling-place of the immortals. ”

“ Life is no laughing matter, we are told, which is true; and, what is still more dismal to contemplate, books are no laughing matters, either. Only now and then some gay, defiant rebel, like Mr. Saintsbury, flaunts the old flag, hums a bar of “Blue Bonnets over29 the Border,” and ruffles the quiet waters of our souls by hinting that this age of Apollinaris and of lectures is at fault, and that it has produced nothing which can vie as literature with the products of the ages of wine and song. ”

“ But to beguile us into the grateful shades of fiction, as Jael beguiled Sisera into the shelter of her tent, and then, with deadly purpose, to transfix us with a truth as sharp and cruel as the nail with which Jael slew her guest, is a dastardly betrayal of confidence. When a novelist undertakes to sit in judgment upon his characters, for the sake of illustrating some moral lesson with which he has no need to concern himself, he rudely breaks the mystic web of illusion, and destroys the charm which binds us to his side. ”

“ Enjoyment, then, is not our common daily portion, to be stupidly ignored or carelessly cast away. It is something we must seek courageously and intelligently, distinguishing the pure sources from which it flows, and rightly persuaded that art is true and good only when it adds to our delight. For this were our poets and dramatists, our painters and novelists, sent to us,—to make us lawfully happier in a hard world, to help us smilingly through the gloom. ”

“ But art has no pillory, no stocks, no whipping-post, no exclusive methods for fixing our attention upon sin. Art gives us Lady Macbeth and Iago, and gives them to us without reproaches, without extenuation, and without any attempt to reform. It is less painful to watch the irresistible development of their respective crimes than to hear Thackeray lashing with keen scorn some poor sinner stumbling through the mazes of worldly wickedness, or to see George Eliot pursuing one of her own creations with inextinguishable severity and contempt. ”

“ It would be as reasonable to say that all English literature is lost to you, unless you truly enjoy "Comus;" that all music is lost to you, unless you delight in "Parsifal." It is the special privilege of ethical criticism to take this exclusive and didactic form; to bid you admire a thing, not because it is beautiful in itself, but because it has a subtle lesson to convey,—a lesson of which, it is urbanely hinted, you stand particularly in need. ”

“ Oscar Wilde's latest and most amusing heresy, that Nature gains her true distinction from being reproduced, with necessary modifications, by Art; that too close a copy of the original is fatal to the perfection of the younger and fairer sister; that the insignificant and sordid types in which Nature takes such reprehensible delight are to be, if possible, forgotten, rather than dandled into insulting prominence; and that not all the dreary vices of the most drearily vicious man or woman whom Zola ever drew can give that man or woman a right to breathe in the tranquil air of fiction. ”