Ernest Bernbaum

“ BACON AS A PRACTICAL ADVISER
To create an ideal of life is a noble task; but to penetrate some of the perplexing realities of existence is as difficult and at least as serviceable. This Bacon does with supreme success. A lawyer, judge, and statesman, he knew the vicissitudes of life and the varieties of human character. He observed his fellow men with the eye of a genius, pondered their motives with the thoughtfulness of a student, and recorded his observations with the precision of a scientist. ”

“ When a critic has conceived the leading idea of his essay, he is still in danger of obscuring its presentation. The more richly informed he is, the more he is tempted to introduce facts not strictly related to his dominant thought. But the great critical essayists, resisting that temptation, subordinate all details to the general design. Hugo, in sketching the development of the world's literature, selects only those phases which forecast the timeliness of romanticism. ”

“ Sainte-Beuve, Taine, and the other masters never present us with a "collection." They marshal their numerous facts into a system, and dominate them with a thought which, however complex, is coherent. Most of us arise from the perusal of an author with a chaotic throng of impressions. But in the mind of a true literary critic the chaos becomes order. ”

“ He points out, to be sure, that, as a matter of sober fact, marriage may interfere with extraordinary public ambition; but he gives it preference over a selfish single life, he scorns those who consider children mere "bills of charges" instead of "dearest pledges," and he calls matrimony a "discipline of humanity," that is, a school of kindness or a humane education. To study the comparative merits and defects of many conditions of human life, to mark the extent and the limitations of human faculties, and to do so with even handed justice, is his ruling purpose. ”

“ Since literary fashions change from age to age, and since the authors of these plays were, even when contemporaries, men of markedly different tastes, it is natural that the six dramas should be more or less conspicuously dissimilar. Each is great because it follows an ideal; each is great in a different way because its ideal is not that of the others. Which of these ideals is absolutely the best, is a question that critics have much debated, sometimes acrimoniously: Dryden has been pitted against Shakespeare, Goldsmith against Sheridan, Shelley against Browning, and so on. ”

“ On the one hand, no poet, not even Shakespeare, has thought more nobly of the glorious capacities of man. Man is to Milton no miserable puppet of chance, no slave of his environment (Adam and Eve sin despite ideal surroundings) , but an unhampered master of his fate, God himself endowing him with freedom of the will, and all the spirits of the universe interested in the use he may make of that liberty. On the other hand, no poet has felt more profoundly the constant peril of man's exalted state. ”

“ Bacon does more than enrich us with practical maxims applicable to particular situations; he trains us to think more wisely in the face of any and all occasions. He begins by informing, he ends by educating. His essays, valuable as discussions of special topics, are precious as exercises in a peculiar way of approaching all aspects of life. This way is one unusual and not inborn; it runs counter to the ways of the untrained mind. Just as children are apt to regard a person as either "nice" or "horrid," many of larger growth tend to look on anything as wholly good or wholly bad. ”

“ As suitable backgrounds, Shelley selects a sinister banquet, a gloomy castle at night, and a prison with instruments of torture. Yet he wishes not to fix attention upon physical horrors, but to use them to call forth in his characters extreme revelations of vice and virtue. He feels that only under such dread circumstances can the deepest potentialities of human nature be displayed. ”

“ Like the lake, the drama reflects the sky; like the stream, it reflects its banks; but it alone has tempests and measureless depths." His poet "is a tree that may be blown about by all winds and watered by every fall of dew; and bears his works as his fruits, as the fablier of old bore his fables. ”

“ Yet he urged the development of science because in his day it was relatively the most neglected and chaotic department of human endeavor, and not because he thought it absolutely and forever the most important. Newman himself does not insist more strongly than Bacon on the truth that science, though great, is not the complete satisfier of human needs. In "The Advancement of Learning," the first part of the "Instauratio Magna," Bacon pleads for the discovery and application to life, not merely of pure scientific truth, but also of clear ideals of mental, moral, and spiritual well-being. ”

“ Mazzini reproves the enemies and misinterpreters of Byron. Hugo above all shows the stimulating value of pitting one's ideas against those of others. He calls his essay his "sling and stone against the classical Goliaths"; and by making his opponents utter their arguments against him gives to his work the force of dramatic combat. Critical essays that thus add vigor to lucidity arouse and delight our minds. When we recognize how skillfully they fuse logic, imagination, and emotion, we perceive the superficiality of the distinction between so-called criticism and so-called creative literature. ”

“ Why attach one's self to a master, or graft one's self upon a model? It were better to be a bramble or a thistle, fed by the same earth as the cedar and the palm, than the fungus or the lichen of those noble trees. ”

“ The result is a portrait of mankind beneath which may be inscribed his characteristic sentence: "It is good to retain sincerity." So accurate and candid an observer of human life is instinctively disliked by persons of sentimental temperament, and they call Bacon cynical and heartless. Ignoring his realistic intention, they turn, for instance, to the essays on love and on marriage, [4] expecting eloquent praise of what love and marriage may be at the very best; and they are disappointed, perplexed, and sometimes disgusted with what they find. ”

“ We open "Paradise Lost" [1] at almost any page, and meet with phrases and allusions that are unfamiliar. Habituated by our contemporary literature and journalism to receive an easy delight from the shocking, the bizarre, and the exceptional, we are not immediately attracted by an art whose characteristics are dignity and restraint. ”

“ Time has wrought superficial changes in some of the social and political conditions he examined; but human nature and human intercourse are essentially immutable, and the impressive truth of his judgments is enduring. To this day he guides his readers in the conduct of life; and if it be too much to say that those who heed his advice will make no mistakes, it is certain that they will blunder less frequently than does the average man who knows him not. ”

“ As men and women of fashion tried to be elegant, witty, or epigrammatic in speech, he aimed to bestow like graces upon the dialogue of his personages to make Joseph Surface sententious, Charles sprightly, Lady Teazle invincible in repartee. To a society that was too fastidious to be entertained by naive simplicity, rude manners, and boisterous merriment, Sheridan wanted to reveal the comic aspects of its usual life. ”

“ He who thus comes to feel the artistic powers of Milton has taken a decisive step toward literary culture: he will thenceforth not easily be imposed upon by whatever is imaginatively weak or fantastic; and his ear, once attuned to the "grand style" of the master, will no longer delight in verse that is thin or harsh. ”

“ The reader of these six dramas who understands their main purposes will surely admire the conscientious manner in which those aims are carried out. He will perceive that the plot, characterization, and dialogue of each are designed with remarkable skill to conform to its dominant ideal. In fact, the chief reason why these plays are among the very, very few dramatic masterpieces of their time is that their authors clearly knew what they wanted to do, and came about as near to doing it as human limitations permit. ”

“ It is to warn man against his fall that the rebellion in heaven is related; and in the central books it is the glory and the weakness of human nature that we see displayed. Finally, the future history of the world is communicated to Adam, not so much to manifest the absolute power of God or the futility of Satan's hate, as to assure the children of God of his eternal love toward them. ”

“ The very intensity with which he looks up to a splendid ideal blinds his judgment regarding the apparent dishonor of his beloved sister, so that he fails to see "through the surface of crime a depth of purity unmovable." ”

“ In short, the subject is not theology but religion—not the nature of God and of Satan, but the relation of the powers of good and of evil to ourselves. Could a poet deal with a problem of more compelling and everlasting interest to us? The reader who focuses his attention upon the human beings in "Paradise Lost" will do what the poet did, and will, though accidental details may elude him, follow Milton's essential thought. ”

“ The method of Taine's essay is even more admirably logical. To understand the growth of literature, he tells us, we must know first "the visible man," next "the invisible man," then the race, environment, and epoch which determined his character, and finally the way in which those causes distribute their effects. Thus is our progress through unknown fields made easy: we are not asked to leap from point to point, or to retrace our way; our guide takes us step by step along the path of his discovery. ”

“ In them, to be sure, are superbly displayed his artistic powers, but certainly not his dominant thought. In fact, to confine oneself to them has proved a direct way to misunderstand him. Because they deal with the fallen angels, we have arising the persistent error that Satan is the hero of "Paradise Lost," and that the arch-rebel preoccupied the poet's interest. The result in our day, when belief in a personal devil is faint, is the impression that Milton devotes his genius to themes that, however picturesque, possess for us slight moral significance. ”

“ All he says of the love between husband and wife is 'Nuptial love maketh mankind!'" These accusations, which may substantially be found in one of the best known editions of the "Essays," are as inaccurate as they are typical. Any careful reader, not led astray by the usual misconception of Bacon's purpose, will observe that the kind of love which he discusses in his essay on that subject is "the wanton love which corrupteth and embaseth," the condemnation of which should hardly be considered objectionable. ”

“ The great critics do not leave us calmly indifferent; they are on occasion critics militant. Even the gentle Sainte-Beuve admonishes the "Montaignologues," who, he feels, do not understand the spirit of Montaigne. Taine manifests the novelty and importance of his method of criticism by mentioning the imperfections of the eighteenth-century method. ”

“ The descriptions of heaven and hell, which may not correspond precisely to the reader's notions of the states of bliss and of misery, will recede into the background, where they belong; and gradually there will rise before him Milton's idea of the true meaning of human life. ”

“ When he raises the curtain, Actium has already been fought and the destiny of nations decided; what remains is the personal fate of Antony and of Cleopatra, the former vainly though nobly endeavoring to reanimate his former manhood and loyalty, the latter trying amid the wreck to save her domination over him, and each tortured by lack of true faith in the other. ”

“ Hardcastle mistakes her own garden for a distant heath; he ignores the improbability of such situations as arouse instinctive laughter. It is the unsophisticated human beings who blunder in and out of these straits that he wishes to depict ”

“ The accidental predicaments into which all of us stumble, to our embarrassment and the amusement of bystanders; the blunders of well-meaning but untrained servants; the practical jokes, without malice, that ever delight youth ”

“ Johnson's words, "we desert our master and seek for companions." As if to encourage our truancy, there arise those who question whether, after all, Milton is a master. The chief of a prominent American library refuses to advise the reading of "Paradise Lost," an ultra-modern critic professes to have discovered "new literary valuations" which at last destroy the poet's long-established reputation, and respectable literary journals actually find it necessary to defend a fame that had seemed imperishable. ”

“ Unless he in his freedom throws off all worldly temptations, even the most seductive, punishment for his disloyalty to spiritual laws is visited not only upon himself but upon his innocent fellow men. ”

“ The serious-minded who, despite such babblings, conclude that he to whom every great man of letters from Dryden to Meredith has granted the crowning laurel must surely be one whom it is an honorable privilege to know, may be assured that the obstacles to familiarity with Milton are not at all insuperable. ”

“ The truth of these doctrines does not for the moment concern us. What is important for us is that each of these long essays may be summed up in a single sentence; for in each a powerful mind grasps and expresses a single idea. ”