John Churton Collins

“ The first and most important is the degradation of criticism. Criticism is to Literature what legislation and government are to States. If they are in able and honest hands all goes well; if they are in weak and dishonest hands all is anarchy and mischief. And as government in a Republic, the true analogy to the sphere of which we are speaking, is represented not by those who form the minority in its councils, but by those who form the majority, so in criticism, it is not on the few but on the many among those who represent it, that its authority and influence depend. ”

“ Scarcely a day passes in which some book is not hurried into the world, which owes its existence not to any desire on the part of its author to add to the stores of useful literature, or even to a hope of obtaining money, but simply to that paltry vanity which thrives on the sort of homage of which society of a certain kind is not grudging, and which knows no distinction between notoriety and fame. ”

“ Indeed the instincts and faculties which separate the temperament of the mathematician from the temperament of the poet are not more radical and essential than the instincts and faculties which separate the sympathetic student of Philology from the sympathetic student of Literature. But no science resolves itself more easily into a pseudo-science, and it is in this degenerate form that it has become linked with Literature and been, in all ages, the butt of wits and men of letters. Nothing but anarchy can result till this mutually degrading alliance be dissolved. ”

“ If the legislators of this School decline to reform it, then it is the duty of Oxford—a duty which she owes alike to education and to her own honour—to counteract the mischief which this institution must, by degrading throughout England and the colonies the whole level of liberal instruction and study on its most important side, inevitably do. To the herd of imperfectly and erroneously disciplined teachers which this institution will turn loose on education, let her oppose, at least, a minority which shall worthily represent her. Let her establish a proper degree or diploma in Literature. ”

“ Bacon has observed that the best part of beauty is that which a picture cannot express. It may be said, with equal truth, of a bad book, that what is worst in it is precisely that which it is most difficult to submit to tangible tests. In other words, it lies not so much in its errors and inaccuracies, which, after all, may be mere trifles and excrescences, but it lies in its tone and colour, its flavour, its accent. Professor Saintsbury appears to be constitutionally incapable of distinguishing vulgarity and coarseness from liveliness and vigour. ”

“ Now it will not be disputed that if the Universities ought, in the interests of liberal culture, to provide adequately for instruction in Literature, they ought also, in the interests of science, to provide adequately for instruction in Philology. It is a branch of learning of immense importance. It is, and ought to be, the peculiar care of Universities, and nothing could be more derogatory to a University than deficiency in such a study. But it is a study in itself. As a science it has no connection with Literature. ”

“ It seems to be assumed that a scholar is one thing and a man of letters another, that the difference between work which appeals to connoisseurs and work which appeals to the public is not simply a difference in degree, but a difference in kind, and that the criteria of the multitude need be the only criteria of what is addressed to the multitude. The manuscript of a History of Greek or Roman Literature, or a monograph on an ancient classic, if it were not at least solid and trustworthy, would have no chance of ever getting beyond a publisher's reader. ”

“ The history of English eloquence begins from the moment when the Roman classics moulded and coloured our style, when periodic prose was modelled on Cicero and Livy, when analytic prose was modelled on Sallust, Seneca, and Tacitus. With the exception of fiction, there is no important branch of our prose composition, the development and characteristics of which are historically intelligible without reference to the ancients. How radically inadequate must any study of the principles of criticism be, which has no reference to the critical works of the Greek and Roman writers, is obvious. ”

“ And this, happily for himself, but unhappily for the interests of literature, he is able to do with perfect facility and with perfect impunity. Books are speedily manufactured and as speedily reduced to pulp. A worthless book may be as easily invested with those superficial attractions which catch the eye of the crowd as a meritorious one. As the general public are the willing dupes of puffers, it is no more difficult to palm off on them the spurious wares of literary charlatans, than it is to beguile them into purchasing the wares of any other kind of charlatan. ”

“ To the old public of scholars succeeds a public, in which every section of society has its representatives, and to provide this vast body with the sort of reading which is acceptable to it, becomes a thriving and lucrative calling. An immense literature springs up, which has no other object than to catch the popular ear, and no higher aim than to please for the moment. That perpetual craving for novelty, which has in all ages been characteristic of the multitude, necessitates in authors of this class a corresponding rapidity of production. ”

“ In pointing out that criticism should not confine itself merely to the investigation of technical excellence, and to all that is implied in the doctrine of Art for Art's sake, but should recognise that there are limits beyond which the artist should not exercise his technical skill, he recalls us to principles which it is well that criticism should not forget. We quite agree with him that there is now an increasing tendency to recognise these limits, and to lay most stress on the interpretation of the ideal element in literature and art. ”

“ A critic, like a poet, is the pure product of nature. Such canons as these "critics" have are the mysterious and somewhat perplexing evolutions of their own inner consciousness, or derived, not from the study of classical writers in English or in any other language, of all of whom they are probably profoundly ignorant, but from a current acquaintance with the writings of contemporaries, who are, in intelligence and performance, a little in advance of themselves. ”

“ Six love stories stand out conspicuous in the records of poetry—those which find expression in the Elegies of Propertius, in the Sonnets and Canzoni of Dante and Petrarch, in the Sonnets of Camoens, in the Astrophel and Stella of Sidney, in the Sonnets of Shakespeare. But never has passion, never has pathos, thrilled in intenser or more piercing utterance than in the poems which that fatal "Clytemnestra quadrantaria"—to employ the phrase which may actually have been applied to her—inspired, and in which the rapture and loathing and despair of Catullus found a voice. ”

“ The few who were interested in Poetry, in Criticism, in History, were, as a rule, those who had received a learned education, men of highly cultivated tastes and of considerable attainments. A writer, therefore, who aspired to contribute to polite literature, had to choose between finding no readers at all, and finding such readers as he was bound to respect—between instant oblivion, and satisfying a class which, composed of scholars, would have turned with contempt from writings unworthy of scholars. ”

“ To a thoughtful reader there is, perhaps, no sadder spectacle than those sixteen volumes which represent all that remains to us of Thomas De Quincey. What superb powers, what noble and manifold gifts, what capacity for invaluable and imperishable achievements had Nature lavished on this extraordinary man! Metaphysics might for all time have been a debtor to that vigorous, acute, and subtle intellect, at once so speculative and logical, so inquisitive and discriminating. Æsthetic criticism might have found in him a second Lessing, and literary criticism a superior Sainte-Beuve. ”

“ Is it not notorious that in each generation, from Spenser to Tennyson, from More to Froude, our leading poets and prose writers have been, with very few exceptions, men nourished on classical literature and saturated with its influence? Many entire masterpieces, much, and in some cases the greater portion, of other masterpieces, particularly in our poetry, are simply unintelligible—we are speaking, of course, of serious critical students—except to classical scholars. ”

“ That what is true of our poetry is true of our criticism, of our oratory, sacred and secular, of our dialectic and epistolary Literature, of our historical composition, of the greater part, in short, of our national masterpieces in prose? What, indeed, the Literature of Greece was to that of Rome, the Literatures of Greece and Rome have been to ours. ”

“ We entirely absolve Professor Colvin from any suspicion of being actuated by unworthy motives in publishing them. It is abundantly clear that he has not published them to puff himself, that his labour has been a labour of love, and that he believed himself to be piously fulfilling a duty to his friend. But they ought never to have been given to the world. More than two-thirds have nothing whatever to justify their appearance in print, and merely show, what will surprise those who knew Stevenson by his literary writings, how vapid, vulgar and commonplace he could be. ”

“ Why, this is just what nine men in ten who court fame have to do. Nature is kind, but seldom profuse. If she really endows a man with what, if trumpeted, would make him famous, the odds are she couples with her gifts pride, modesty, or self-respect, which, to say the least, heavily handicap him in the race for reputation. When she does not endow with the reality, she compensates by bestowing the power of acquiring the credit for it. She is, as a rule, much too thrifty to heap on the same man the keen pleasures of genuine enthusiasm and the sweets of popular applause. ”

“ Now it is of the utmost importance that these readers, who are quite prepared to appreciate what is excellent, should be guided to what is excellent, and discouraged in every way from conversing with what is bad and inferior in Literature. But how is this to be done when those who are striving, in every way, to raise the standard of popular taste and of popular culture, as teachers, find all their efforts counteracted by the intense activity of those who are doing their utmost to degrade both, as writers. ”

“ But when we are told that he will stand the third in a trio with Burns and Scott, and when we have to listen to serious appeals to Edinburgh to raise a statue to him beside the author of Marmion and the Waverley Novels, all who truly appreciate his work may well tremble for the reaction which is certain to succeed such extravagant overestimation. The truth is that poor Stevenson, himself one of the simplest, sincerest and most modest of men, got involved with a clique who may be described as manufacturers of factitious reputations,—the circulators of a false currency in criticism. ”

“ Indeed, a good book and a bad book stand, so far as the general public is concerned, on precisely the same level, as they meet with precisely the same fate. Each presents the attraction of a new title-page. Each is glanced through, and tossed aside. Each is estimated not by its intrinsic worth, but according to the skill with which it has been puffed. Till within comparatively recent times this literature was, for the most part, represented by novels and poems, and by those light and desultory essays, sketches and ana, which are the staple commodity of our magazines. ”

“ Incredible as it may seem, there are certain sections of literary society and of the general public which take Mr. Le Gallienne and his dicta quite seriously, and to which the prodigious nonsense in these volumes does not present itself as absurdity, but as the articles of a creed. These essays have, moreover, appeared in publications the names of some of which carry authority. It is, therefore, high time that some stand should be made, some protest entered against writings which cannot fail to corrupt popular taste and to degrade the standard of popular literature. ”

“ Matthew Arnold very truly observed, that one of the most unfortunate tendencies of our time was the tendency to over-estimate the performances of "the average man." The over-estimation of these performances is no longer a tendency, but an established custom. Literature, in all its branches, is rapidly becoming his monopoly. As judged and judge, as author and critic, there is every indication that he will proceed from triumph to triumph, and establish his cult wherever books are read. ”

“ Is the object of your homage a poet, a critic, a scholar, the very fact that you pay him homage is, in itself, testimony of your own right to one or other of these honourable titles. If, moreover it should happen that you know very little about the writings of the author whom you have elected to honour, this is of no consequence; for of all the disguises which ignorance can assume, "enthusiasm" is the most effective. ”

“ When we think of the many amiable and industrious tutors at Oxford and Cambridge who, unless they are put on their guard, will unsuspiciously fill their note-books with the nonsense of this volume, and impart it, by degrees, to the listening credulity of youth, we feel we have no alternative but to perform a plain, if painful, duty. We repeat, we absolve the author from all blame; the sole culprit is the editor. ”

“ What the author of the best critical treatise in the Greek language pronounced to be the final fruit of long experience, culture, and study, directed and illumined by certain natural qualifications, has now come to be represented by the idle and irresponsible gossip of any one who can gossip agreeably. Agreeable gossip and good criticism are, as Sainte-Beuve and others have shown, far from being incompatible, the misfortune is that they should be confounded; but confounded they are, and the confusion is the curse of current literature. ”

“ Here we have the poet, and that poet Shakespeare, admitting the world into the innermost secrets of his life, taking his contemporaries, without the least reserve, into his confidence, inviting and assisting them to the study of his own morbid anatomy, and, in a word, stripping himself bare with all the shameless abandon of Jean Jacques and of Casanova. Everything that we know of Shakespeare seems to discountenance the probability of his having any such intention. ”

“ But a History of English Literature, or a monograph on an English classic, teeming with errors in fact and with absurdities in theory and opinion, will not improbably be regarded as an authority, and pass, unrevised, into more than one edition.
The progressive degradation of Literature and of what is involved in its influence is, and must be, inevitable, unless criticism is prepared watchfully and faithfully to do its duty. Let it guard jealously the standards and touchstones of excellence as distinguished from mediocrity, even though it may be prudent to make great allowances in applying them ”

“ All, therefore, so far as Belles Lettres are concerned is chaos at the Universities, and all consequently is chaos everywhere else.
The next appeal—for all appeals to the Universities have been vain—must be made to those who regulate the curriculums where Literature is made a subject of teaching. Let them rigorously exclude all but the best books. Let them discourage the study of such Epitomes, Manuals, and Histories as are the work of mere irresponsible book makers, and prescribe in its place the study of literary masterpieces. ”

“ How can a teacher deal adequately even with the subject which these regulations profess to include—the history of criticism—who need have no acquaintance with the Poetic and Rhetoric, the Treatise on the Sublime, and the Institutes of Oratory? How could a teacher possibly be a competent exponent and critic of the masterpieces of our literature, who had not received a proper critical training, and how could he have any pretension to such a training when all that is best in [68] criticism had been expressly excluded from his education? ”