James Payn

“ It is not every one, of course, who has an opinion of his own upon any subject, far less on that of literature, but every one can abstain from expressing an opinion that is not his own. If one has no voice, what possible compensation can there be in becoming an echo? No one, I conclude, would wish to see literature discoursed about in the same pinchbeck and affected style as are painting and music; [3] yet that is what will happen if this prolific weed of sham admiration is permitted to attain its full growth.—Nineteenth Century. ”

“ A great wit once observed, when bored by the praises of a man who spoke six languages, that he had known a man to speak a dozen, and yet not say a word worth hearing in any one of them. The humor of the remark, as sometimes happens, has caused its wisdom to be underrated; for the fact is that, in very many cases, all the intelligence of which a mind is capable is expended upon the mere acquisition of a foreign language. ”

“ Instead of being sorry for the poor folks who have "no ear," and whom "a little music in the evening" bores to extremity, they overwhelm them with reproaches for what is in fact a natural infirmity. "You Goth! you Vandal!" they exclaim, "how contemptible is the creature who has no music in his soul!" Which is really very rude. Even persons who are not musical have their feelings. "Hath not a Jew ears?"—that is to say, though they have "no ear," they understand what is abusive language and resent it.
I am not saying one word against established reputations in literature. ”

“ They can not possibly be more wrong than Johnson and Macaulay were, and it is surely better to be honest, though it may expose one to some ridicule, than to lie. The more we agree with the verdict of the generations before us on these matters, the more, it is quite true, we are likely to be right; but the agreement should be an honest one. At present very extensive domains in literature are, as it were, inclosed and denied to the public in respect to any free expression of their opinion. "They are splendid, they are faultless," cries the general voice, but the general eye has not beheld them. ”

“ IN all highly civilized communities Pretense is prominent, and sooner or later invades the regions of Literature. In the beginning, this is not altogether to be reprobated; it is the rude homage which Ignorance, conscious of its disgrace, offers to Learning; but after a while, Pretense becomes systematized, gathers strength from numbers and impunity, and rears its head in such a manner as to suggest it has some body and substance belonging to it. In England, literary pretense is more universal than elsewhere from our method of education. ”

“ If she had been a man, struggling, as she then was, for a position in literature, she would not have dared to say half as much. For, what is very curious, the advocates of the classic authors—those I mean whom antiquity has more or less hallowed—instead of pitying those unhappy wights who confess their want of appreciation of them, fly at them with bludgeons, and dance upon their prostrate bodies with clogs. ”

“ Given the age of the ordinary individual—that is to say of the gentleman "fond of books, but who has really no time for reading"—and it is easy enough to guess his literary idols. They are the gods of his youth, and, whether he has been "suckled in a creed outworn" or not, he knows no other. ”

“ The habit of mere adhesion to received opinion in any matter is most mischievous, for it strikes at the root of independence of thought; and in literature it tends to make the public taste mechanical. ”

“ In speaking of the hero of Cooper's five good novels—Leather-Stocking, Hawkeye, etc.—he remarks with quite a noble simplicity, "I think he is better than any of Scott's lot."
It is a "far cry" from the "Faerie Queen" to "Childe Harold," which, reckoning by years, is still a modern poem; yet I wonder how many persons under thirty—even of those who term it "magnificent"—have ever read "Childe Harold"? At one time it was only people under thirty who had read it; for poetry to the ordinary reader is the poetry that was popular in his youth—"no other is genuine." ”

“ My objection is to the sham admiration of them, which does their authors no good (for their circulation is now of no consequence to them) , and is injurious not only to modern writers (who are generally made the subject of base comparison) , but especially to the utterers of this false coin themselves. One can not tell falsehoods, even about one's views in literature, without injury to one's morals, yet to "tell the truth and shame the devil" is easy, as it would seem, compared with telling the truth and defying the critics. ”

“ When young gentlemen from ten to sixteen are set to study poetry (a subject for which not one in a hundred has the least taste or capability even when he reads it in his own language) in Greek and Latin authors, it is only a natural consequence that their views upon it should be slightly artificial. ”

“ These persons, however, rarely give their opinion about literary matters, except on compulsion; they are harmless and truthful. The tendency of society in general, on the other hand, is not only to praise the "Rambler" which they have not read, but to express a noble scorn for those who have read it and don't like it. ”

“ I have no quarrel with Bias and Company (though they stick at nothing, and will presently say that I don't care for these books myself) , but I venture to think that they are wrong in making dogmas of what are, after all, but matters of literary taste; it is their vehemence and exaggeration which drive the weak to take refuge in falsehood.
A good woman in the country once complained of her step-son, "He will not love his learning, though I beats him with a jackchain" ”

“ I remember, as a young man, being greatly struck by the independence of character exhibited by Miss Brontë in a certain confession she made in respect to Miss Austen's novels. It was at a period when everybody professed to adore them, and especially the great guns of literature. Walter Scott thought more highly of the genius of the author of "Mansfield Park" even than of that of his favorite, Miss Edgeworth. ”

“ As must ever be the case with readers not sufficiently masters of a language to bring the true pretensions of a work to any test of feeling, they are for ever mistaking for some pleasure conferred by the writer, what is in fact the pleasure naturally attached to the sense of a difficulty overcome. ”

“ The youth who objected to the alphabet that it seemed hardly worth while to have gone through so much to have acquired so little, was exceptionally sagacious; the more ordinary lad conceives that what has cost him so much time and trouble, and entailed so many pains and penalties, must needs have something in it, though it has never met his eye. ”

“ If you are cruel enough to press him, he will unconsciously betray the fact that he has never felt a line of poetry in his life. He honestly believes that the "Seven against Thebes" is one of the greatest works that ever was written, just as a child believes the same of the "Seven Champions of Christendom." ”

“ They are, intellectually, in a position much superior to that of a fashionable lady of my acquaintance who informed me that her daughters were going to the theatre that night to see Shakespeare's "Turning of the Screw."
The writer who has done most, without I suppose intending it, to promote hypocrisy in literature is Macaulay. His "every schoolboy knows" has frightened thousands into pretending to know authors with whom they have not even a bowing acquaintance. It is amazing that a man who had read so much should have written so contemptuously of those who have read but little ”

“ If ever I destroy myself, it will be in the bitterness of having those infernal and damnable 'good old times' extolled." One is almost tempted to say the same—when one hears their praises come from certain mouths—of the good old books. ”

“ Time has hallowed it. The great world of readers (who have never read it) used to echo the remark of Bias and Company, that this and that modern work of fiction reminded them—though at an immense distance, of course—of Godwin's masterpiece. I remember Le Fanu's "Uncle Silas," for example (from some similarity, more fanciful perhaps than real, in the isolation of its hero) , being thus compared with it. Now, "Caleb Williams" is founded on a very fine conception—one that could only have occurred, perhaps, to a man of genius ”

“ Nothing, of course, could be more futile than that, with every new generation, our old authors who have won their fame should be arraigned anew at the bar of public criticism; but, on the other hand, there is no reason why the mouths of us poor moderns should be muzzled, and still less that we "should praise with alien lips." ”

“ As a rule, I suppose, even people in society ("the drawing-rooms and the clubs") are not absolutely base, and yet one would really think so, to judge by the fear that is entertained by them of being natural. ”

“ I answer, "Lots of people," and especially those who worship the pagan divinities of literature. The same thing happens—but their fury is more excusable, because they have less natural intelligence—with the lovers of music. ”

“ There are, indeed, many who have a special facility for languages, but in their case (with a few exceptions) one may say without uncharity that the acquisition of ideas is not their object, though if they did acquire them they would probably be new ones. The majority of us, however, have much difficulty in surmounting the obstacle of an alien tongue, and when we have done so we are naturally inclined to overrate the advantages thus attained. ”

“ The poor student attempts them, but, failing—from many causes, no doubt, but also sometimes from the fact of their not being there—to find those unrivaled beauties which he has been led to expect in every sentence, he stops short, where he would otherwise have gone on. ”