Samuel Gray Ward

“ Leaving this question for the present, shall we be far wrong if we assume that the greatest literary genius Germany has produced owes the peculiar form his development took, to his coincidence with this great national characteristic? If criticism be a real and living thing, and not a dead letter, its essence consists in this,—to see what has taken place in the world under a new point of view; to find a point from which facts arrange themselves in a new and unexpected manner, so that circumstances, before isolated, are seen as a part of a new whole ”

“ He that writes in the assurance of popular applause has at any rate ample room and space to develope his genius. The crowded audience, the eager, expectant eyes, all comfort and inspire the singer. That this is not in vain, the enormous literary successes of the popular writers in France and England, of Scott and Dickens, of Sue and Dumas, loudly attest. But as we sow, we must reap. We do not apply our gold and praise in vain. We have the best specimens, but if not of the worst class, surely not of the best.
In Germany, speech has been less and thought more free than in England. ”

“ When it criticism facts, it is from an internal point of view, and because they disagree with inward experience: no fact becomes monstrous whilst it is the sign of an inward conviction. Now, not religion alone, but the whole life of man, social and political, rests upon faith; in other words, upon a form of truth commensurate to man's progress,—a relative, not an absolute truth. Exact science, on the other hand, rests on a correct observation of phenomena: its safety lies in admitting nothing which is not capable of demonstration or proof. ”

“ As the spirit that dictates this is, from many causes, unfair and depreciating, a natural consequence has been to cause all our own criticism to take the opposite ground, to over praise that which we felt to be undervalued, or invidiously regarded.
In the second place, although all original literature comes from and refers to the heart of the people, it cannot, except in a rude age, address itself to that people, except through a class capable of receiving it. If great works do not find such a class in their own age, they wait till time and their own influence create it. ”

“ France is indeed hypercritical; but French criticism is skeptical: it destroys the old faith, and leaves no basis upon which to build a new. The German, while he criticises, is never skeptical, but substitutes a living belief for that which had become dead and inert. The French Revolution could find no reconstructive element on which to pause, and rebuild a political fabric. No truth was left but such as could be found in exact science or brute strength. ”

“ It is useless to speak of exceptions: the tendency of the system is inevitable. This freedom, this license of the press, has been indispensable to England; but its advantages are dearly bought. If the German error be in criticising political action with the same scientific conscientiousness that is applied to literary or abstract questions, so that with them, as with Hamlet, action loses the name of action; the English fault is no less, of applying to literature the same dashing critique that is unscrupulously used with respect to character and opinion. ”

“ The discovery of the ancient literatures, with their inimitable monuments, acted perhaps unfavorably on the originality of Italian genius, and accounts for the brevity of that list of great authors, whose small number is as remarkable as their wonderful excellence. It is the remark of a sagacious critic, that the burning of the Alexandrian Library was perhaps no such misfortune for the world, since it would have been hard for a modern literature to have sprung up in the face of such an overwhelming mass of ancient books. ”

“ In the second or Imitative, the audience is cultivated, and form is to them the luxury and ornament of literature. In the Critical, the form becomes subservient to the matter; the audience is neither to be enchanted by the beauty, nor charmed by the luxury, of literature; it is neither devout nor cultivated; it demands to be interested and informed. Literature is no longer the business of a festival, or the ornament of elegant culture: it is the thing of every day, and to be criticised by every-day rules. ”

“ A Review is, or is supposed to be, an embodiment of this important element; exercising itself always with reference to the leading interests of the age, holding a middle place between the buzz of the newspapers and the mature judgment of the historian, less subject to the influences of passion or party than the former, and held to less strict account for severe attention to justice than the latter. Our current literary ideas and forms are of English growth. The violence of party spirit, the universal interest in politics, have in England made the great Reviews into political organs. ”

“ The human race has passionately clung to the belief. We are so in love with it, that we are always willing to sacrifice ourselves that another may enjoy it. We ask only that some one may enjoy; and that one is our idol. The principle of loyalty is based on it. What millions are willing slaves, that the passions of an Alexander or a Napoleon may meet no check in their superb development! We feel ourselves impersonated in them. There is no true lover that would not die, that the object of his love might be happy. ”

“ The true statesman, interpreting the wisest will, the best instinct of a people, uses the force delegated to him to constrain the nation in that direction. Our position is often the reverse of this. Our servants have understood and executed our sinister will, and the tardy criticism of our better judgment comes halting after. That it does come inevitably is our safety, and perhaps an adequate recompense for these evils, inseparable from our condition.
In literature also, the good of free criticism is not unmixed with evil. ”

“ From position and circumstance, as from natural character, England has enjoyed a freer and more active political existence than any other modern nation. The basis of this liberty was criticism. England alone has enjoyed freedom of the press; and naturally this criticism has been applied to the absorbing interests of politics, and the representatives of political opinions,—persons. A rigid aristocracy assailable in this way only, and freely to be attacked thus, this liberty has in England always been licentious, simply because it was the only liberty ”

“ The English were the first great nation in which the principle of a practical criticism was admitted as the political basis. There was a nearer approach to this in the polity of Greece and Rome than in any other modern state; and perhaps the only reason why this principle in those nations did not develope the modern fact of national regeneration may be found in the existence of slavery among them. So long as a person can exist in a state without rights, so long the true and only foundation of political criticism is wanting. ”

“ The modern state, like the modern man, has his being, not merely in strength, but also in principles. Of every step he is conscious, always hearing the voice of external or internal criticism. His will and natural impulse have ceased to be a law to himself or others, except so far as they, in fact or belief, square with principles. ”

“ The other arts, religious and national in their origin, are more the province of individual genius, and less strictly subject to eras and races.
Whilst literature and the arts speak by the mouths and hands of gifted individuals, they are based upon the national genius; and to this they have finally to render account. Cultivated minds may perceive the beauty and perfection of a Greek temple; but they cannot persuade a Christian people of its fitness and appropriateness for their worship. Literary men may believe the epic, or the pure dramatic, to be the most perfect of literary forms ”

“ Whilst criticism in England has been busy with daily politics; in Germany a doubtful, if not forbidden ground; it has been applied in the latter country to thought, to literature, philosophy, and art. In Germany the best and most cultivated minds have been the critics: in England these have rather been the criticized. The results are before us: of what value, they are perhaps too near to us, as yet, for us to form a definite opinion.
We do not recognize as an original element the conscious, reconstructive, self-restoring principle of criticism in the other European nations. ”

“ It is the greater or less certainty of an audience, and the nature of that audience, which rule the forms of literature, and develope or suppress the powers of the poet. It is true, a great work is written for all time, and the artist will always feel that time is necessary to his true appreciation; but still it is the nature of his immediate audience that gives the form and shape to his efforts. In the first or Inventive epoch, a devout and popular audience will demand form as the medium through which thought has always been presented to them. ”

“ This element being thus in general existence throughout the world, even those who are unmoved by the demands of religion partake of the idea of an indefinitely exalted standard towards whatever excellence they incline; and, as human exertions are limited, instead of resting with that we can easily accomplish, a longing for the indefinite springs up in every ardent breast, and finds a response, as every genuine feeling does, in nature, and demands it of art. ”

“ Unless the principle is admitted that every man is free, no good reason can be given why any man shall be free. The reason why the detrimental influence of slavery was so long inert in the ancient nations, was that the condition of slavery had never been criticised. No error becomes immediately demoralizing, until it is the subject of criticism. A hundred years ago, a man might get daily drunk, and still retain his self-respect. ”

“ In the Greek works, individual character is subordinate to the general action of the piece; when it becomes prominent, its characteristic, like that of their statues, is a charming propriety and harmony; in other words, beauty. In "Hamlet" the action of the piece is subordinate to the character of the hero; and this character is more interesting than beautiful or harmonious. The reason of this change, which affects the whole of art, may be traced to the struggle we have spoken of as the characteristic of modern character, and which, by its very nature, possesses more interest than beauty. ”

“ Certain of the arts are the nearly pure emanation and property of national genius; whilst others, in various degrees, become the property of individuals. Among the former we may reckon, first, Language, which, as far as we can judge, was more perfect in times beyond the record of literature than in later days, so that what languages we possess have been called the pieced fragments of antiquity; second, Literary forms, which also carry back their highest perfection nearly to the age of their invention ”

“ It is simply the machine whereby the rough and hasty instinct of a people is brought efficiently to bear upon the conduct of their rulers; it is the charter of a people's liberties, not because its judgments are correct, but because, like the geese of the Capitol, it awakens men to discover whether good or evil is being done, lest judgment go against them by default. It is noisy, violent, unfair, having a blind tendency, rather than a steady view, towards right. ”

“ The extravagant praise of mediocre celebrities is a necessary, and nearly as injurious, part of the system. The author is placed in a false position: he writes for all men; but he finds he must choose a party, or, giving up the hope of a nation s attention, write for a coterie.
Again, it is doubtful if the licentiousness of the press in England has not been injurious to freedom of thought, paradoxical as it may seem. The English are free of speech; but their idea of freedom of thought has been too often comprised in praising and blaming what they choose, and as loudly as they choose. ”

“ When criticism of it begins, every man is called on to make up his mind in relation to it. Supposing, then, the institution to be either false in itself, or worn out and become false, we are reduced to the necessity of either renouncing it, or of living a lie for the sake of our prejudices or our interests; a state, of which a man is always more or less clearly conscious, and which soon proves demoralizing and fatal.
In England the critical principle has lived and flourished among institutions otherwise aristocratic and stringent ”

“ In the French we have a literature of social life. The great French problem is Society. It is first in the Germans that we discover a pure tendency towards criticism, so that we may give this as the universally prevailing characteristic of their literature.
To trace the action of the critical element upon literature in long periods, let us compare some Greek work with a modern. In the "Prometheus" of Æschylus, we see gods, demigods, and personages exalted above humanity, as actors. These personages were the subject of an active religious belief in the audience ”

“ Personalities always tend to brutalize and degrade; and it is undeniable, that a brutal and savage spirit, not unaccompanied by consummate ability, has prevailed in the English political press; a spirit which would be tolerated nowhere else in the relations of life. ”

“ A critique of the development of this new tendency in the greatest minds of our era would include a Goethe and a Swedenborg in the same category.
In individual character, also, we may observe the presence of the critical element to produce the most remarkable contrast between the ancient man and the modern. The ideal ancient hero is a magnificent child, great, simply from the possession of great gifts; an Achilles, unconscious of any struggle, save with circumstance and the world. The modern idea always includes inward struggle and conquest. ”

“ We have in England the singular spectacle of a whole class of writers, many of them possessed of powers that would under other circumstances have insured them fame, content to pass their lives in obscurity, unknown to the world, which daily feeds on the produce of their indefatigable pens. ”