Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 16

You may expect a series of papers in the Magazine, pointing out a mult.i.tude of his errors, and ascertaining his ignorance of English history. It was too much for my temper to be a.s.sailed both by infidels and believers. My pride could not submit to it. I shall act in my defence with a spirit which it seems they have not expected."

"_11 April, 1774._

"I received with infinite pleasure the annunciation of the great man into the capital. It is forcible and excellent; and you have my best thanks for it. You improve amazingly. The poor creature will be stupified with amazement. Inclosed is a paper for him.

Boccalini will follow. I shall fall upon a method to let David know Henry's transaction about his review. It is mean to the last degree. But what could one expect from the most ignorant and the most contemptible man alive? Do you ever see Macfarlane? He owes me a favour for his history of George III., and would give a fire for the packet. The idiot is to be Moderator for the ensuing a.s.sembly. It shall not, however, be without opposition.

"Would the paragraph about him from the inclosed leaf of the 'Edinburgh Review' be any disgrace to the _Morning Chronicle_?"

"_20th May, 1774._

"Boccalini I thought of transmitting, when the reverend historian, for whose use it was intended, made his appearance at Edinburgh.

But it will not be lost. He shall most certainly see it. David's critique was most acceptable. It is a curious specimen in one view of insolent vanity, and in another of contemptible meanness. The old historian begins to dote, and the new one was never out of dotage."

"_3 April, 1775._

"I see every day that what is written to a man's disparagement is never forgot nor forgiven. Poor Henry is on the point of death, and his friends declare that I have killed him. I received the information as a compliment, and begged they would not do me so much honour."

But Henry and his history long survived Stuart and his _critiques_; and Robertson, Blair, and Kaimes, with others he a.s.sailed, have all taken their due ranks in public esteem. What niche does Stuart occupy?

His historical works possess the show, without the solidity, of research; hardy paradoxes, and an artificial style of momentary brilliancy, are none of the lasting materials of history. This shadow of "Montesquieu," for he conceived him only to be his fit rival, derived the last consolations of life from an obscure corner of a Burton ale-house--there, in rival potations, with two or three other disappointed authors, they regaled themselves on ale they could not always pay for, and recorded their own literary celebrity, which had never taken place. Some time before his death, his asperity was almost softened by melancholy; with a broken spirit, he reviewed himself; a victim to that unrighteous ambition which sought to build up its greatness with the ruins of his fellow-countrymen; prematurely wasting talents which might have been directed to literary eminence. And Gilbert Stuart died as he had lived, a victim to intemperance, physical and moral!

FOOTNOTES:

[97] It may be curious to present Stuart's idea of the literary talents of Henry. Henry's unhappy turn for humour, and a style little accordant with historical dignity, lie fairly open to the critic's animadversion. But the research and application of the writer, for that day, were considerable, and are still appreciated. But we are told that "he neither furnishes entertainment nor instruction. Diffuse, vulgar, and ungrammatical, he strips history of all her ornaments. As an antiquary, he wants accuracy and knowledge; and, as an historian, he is dest.i.tute of fire, taste, and sentiment. His work is a gazette, in which we find actions and events, without their causes; and in which we meet with the names, without the characters of personages. He has ama.s.sed all the refuse and lumber of the times he would record." Stuart never imagined that the time would arrive when the name of Henry would be familiar to English readers, and by many that of Stuart would not be recollected.

[98] The critique on Henry, in the _Monthly Review_, was written by Hume--and, because the philosopher was candid, he is here said to have doted.

UNDUE SEVERITY OF CRITICISM.

DR. KENRICK.--SCOTT OF AMWELL.

We have witnessed the malignant influence of illiberal criticism, not only on literary men, but over literature itself, since it is the actual cause of suppressing works which lie neglected, though completed by their authors. The arts of literary condemnation, as they may be practised by men of wit and arrogance, are well known; and it is much less difficult than it is criminal, to scare the modest man of learning, and to rack the man of genius, in that bright vision of authors.h.i.+p sometimes indulged in the calm of their studies--a generous emotion to inspire a generous purpose! With suppressed indignation, shrinking from the press, such have condemned themselves to a Carthusian silence; but the public will gain as little by silent authors as by a community of lazy monks; or a choir of singers who insist they have lost their voice. That undue severity of criticism which diminishes the number of good authors, is a greater calamity than even that mawkish panegyric which may invite indifferent ones; for the truth is, a bad book produces no great evil in literature; it dies soon, and naturally; and the feeble birth only disappoints its unlucky parent, with a score of idlers who are the dupes of their rage after novelty. A bad book never sells unless it be addressed to the pa.s.sions, and, in that case, the severest criticism will never impede its circulation; malignity and curiosity being pa.s.sions so much stronger and less delicate than taste or truth.

And who are the authors marked out for attack? Scarcely one of the populace of scribblers; for wit will not lose one silver shaft on game which, struck, no one would take up. It must level at the Historian, whose novel researches throw a light in the depths of antiquity; at the Poet, who, addressing himself to the imagination, perishes if that sole avenue to the heart be closed on him. Such are those who receive the criticism which has sent some nervous authors to their graves, and embittered the life of many whose talents we all regard.[99]

But this species of criticism, though ungenial and nipping at first, does not always kill the tree which it has frozen over.

In the calamity before us, Time, that great autocrat, who in its tremendous march destroys authors, also annihilates critics; and acting in this instance with a new kind of benevolence, takes up some who have been violently thrown down, and fixes them in their proper place; and daily enfeebling unjust criticism, has restored an injured author to his full honours.

It is, however, lamentable enough that authors must partic.i.p.ate in that courage which faces the cannon's mouth, or cease to be authors; for military enterprise is not the taste of modest, retired, and timorous characters. The late Mr. c.u.mberland used to say that authors must not be thin-skinned, but sh.e.l.led like the rhinoceros; there are, however, more delicately tempered animals among them, new-born lambs, who shudder at a touch, and die under a pressure.

As for those great authors (though the greatest shrink from ridicule) who still retain public favour, they must be patient, proud, and fearless--patient of that obloquy which still will stain their honour from literary ech.o.e.rs; proud, while they are sensible that their literary offspring is not

Deformed, unfinished, sent before its time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up.

And fearless of all critics, when they recollect the reply of Bentley to one who threatened to write him down, "that no author was ever written down but by himself."

An author must consider himself as an arrow shot into the world; his impulse must be stronger than the current of air that carries him on--else he fall!

The character I had proposed to ill.u.s.trate this calamity was the caustic Dr. KENRICK, who, once during several years, was, in his "London Review," one of the great disturbers of literary repose. The turn of his criticism; the airiness, or the asperity of his sarcasm; the arrogance with which he treated some of our great authors, would prove very amusing, and serve to display a certain talent of criticism. The life of Kenrick, too, would have afforded some wholesome instruction concerning the morality of a critic. But the rich materials are not at hand! He was a man of talents, who ran a race with the press; could criticise all the genius of the age faster than it could be produced; could make his own malignity look like wit, and turn the wit of others into absurdity, by placing it topsy-turvy.

As thus, when he attacked "The Traveller" of Goldsmith, which he called "a flimsy poem," he discussed the subject as a grave political pamphlet, condemning the whole system, as raised on false principles.

"The Deserted Village" was sneeringly p.r.o.nounced to be "pretty;" but then it had "neither fancy, dignity, genius, or fire." When he reviewed Johnson's "Tour to the Hebrides," he decrees that the whole book was written "by one who had seen but little," and therefore could not be very interesting. His virulent attack on Johnson's Shakspeare may be preserved for its total want of literary decency; and his "Love in the Suds, a Town Eclogue," where he has placed Garrick with an infamous character, may be useful to show how far witty malignity will advance in the violation of moral decency. He libelled all the genius of the age, and was proud of doing it.[100] Johnson and Akenside preserved a stern silence: but poor Goldsmith, the child of Nature, could not resist attempting to execute martial law, by caning the critic; for which being blamed, he published a defence of himself in the papers. I shall transcribe his feelings on Kenrick's excessive and illiberal criticism.

"The law gives us no protection against this injury. The insults we receive before the public, by being more open, are the more distressing; by treating them with silent contempt, we do not pay a sufficient deference to the opinion of the world. By recurring to legal redress, we too often expose the weakness of the law, which only serves to increase our mortification by failing to relieve us. In short, every man should singly consider himself as a guardian of the liberty of the press, and, as far as his influence can extend, should endeavour to prevent its licentiousness becoming at last the grave of its freedom."[101]

Here then is another calamity arising from the calamity of undue severity of criticism, which authors bring on themselves by their excessive anxiety, which throws them into some extremely ridiculous att.i.tudes; and surprisingly influences even authors of good sense and temper. SCOTT, of Amwell, the Quaker and Poet, was, doubtless, a modest and amiable man, for Johnson declared "he loved him." When his poems were collected, they were reviewed in the "Critical Review" very offensively to the poet; for the critic, alluding to the numerous embellishments of the volume, observed that

"There is a profusion of ornaments and finery about this book not quite suitable to the plainness and simplicity of the Barclean system; but Mr. Scott is fond of the Muses, and wishes, we suppose, like Captain Macheath, to see his ladies well dressed."

Such was the cold affected witticism of the critic, whom I intimately knew--and I believe he meant little harm! His friends imagined even that this was the solitary attempt at wit he had ever made in his life; for after a lapse of years, he would still recur to it as an evidence of the felicity of his fancy, and the keenness of his satire.

The truth is, he was a physician, whose name is prefixed as the editor to a great medical compilation, and who never pretended that he had any taste for poetry. His great art of poetical criticism was always, as Pope expresses a character, "to dwell in decencies;" his ac.u.men, to detect that terrible poetic crime false rhymes, and to employ indefinite terms, which, as they had no precise meaning, were applicable to all things; to commend, occasionally, a pa.s.sage not always the most exquisite; sometimes to hesitate, while, with delightful candour, he seemed to give up his opinion; to hazard sometimes a positive condemnation on parts which often unluckily proved the most favourite with the poet and the reader. Such was this poetical reviewer, whom no one disturbed in his periodical course, till the circ.u.mstance of a plain Quaker becoming a poet, and fluttering in the finical ornaments of his book, provoked him from that calm state of innocent mediocrity, into miserable humour, and illiberal criticism.

The effect, however, this pert criticism had on poor Scott was indeed a calamity. It produced an inconsiderate "Letter to the Critical Reviewers." Scott was justly offended at the stigma of Quakerism, applied to the author of a literary composition; but too gravely accuses the critic of his scurrilous allusion to Macheath, as comparing him to a highwayman; he seems, however, more provoked at the odd account of his poems; he says, "You rank all my poems together as _bad_, then discriminate some as _good_, and, to complete all, recommend the volume as _an agreeable and amusing collection_." Had the poet been personally acquainted with this tantalizing critic, he would have comprehended the nature of the criticism--and certainly would never have replied to it.

The critic, employing one of his indefinite terms, had said of "Amwell," and some of the early "Elegies," that "they had their share of poetical merit;" he does not venture to a.s.sign the proportion of that share, but "the Ambean and oriental eclogues, odes, epistles, &c., now added, are _of a much weaker feature, and many of them incorrect_."

Here Scott loses all his dignity as a Quaker and a poet--he asks what the critic means by the affected phrase _much weaker feature_; the style, he says, was designed to be somewhat less elevated, and thus addresses the critic:--

"You may, however, be safely defied to p.r.o.nounce them, with truth, deficient either in strength or melody of versification! They were designed to be, like Virgil's, descriptive of Nature, simple and correct. Had you been disposed to do me justice, you might have observed that in these eclogues I had drawn from the great prototype Nature, much imagery that had escaped the notice of all my predecessors. You might also have remarked that when I introduced images that had been already introduced by others, still the arrangement or combination of those images was my own.

The praise of originality you might at least have allowed me."

As for their _incorrectness_!--Scott points that accusation with a note of admiration, adding, "with whatever defects my works may be chargeable, the last is that of _incorrectness_."

We are here involuntarily reminded of Sir Fretful, in _The Critic_:--

"I think the interest rather declines in the fourth act."

"Rises! you mean, my dear friend!"

Perhaps the most extraordinary examples of the irritation of a poet's mind, and a man of amiable temper, are those parts of this letter in which the author quotes large portions of his poetry, to refute the degrading strictures of the reviewer.

This was a fertile principle, admitting of very copious extracts; but the ludicrous att.i.tude is that of an Adonis inspecting himself at his mirror.

That provoking see-saw of criticism, which our learned physician usually adopted in his critiques, was particularly tantalizing to the poet of Amwell. The critic condemns, in the gross, a whole set of eclogues; but immediately a.s.serts of one of them, that "the whole of it has great poetical merit, and paints its subject in the warmest colours." When he came to review the odes, he discovers that "he does not meet with those polished numbers, nor that freedom and spirit, which that species of poetry requires;" and quotes half a stanza, which he declares is "abrupt and insipid." "From twenty-seven odes!"

exclaims the writhing poet--"are the whole of my lyric productions to be stigmatised for four lines which are flatter than those that preceded them?" But what the critic could not be aware of, the poet tells us--he designed them to be just what they are. "I knew they were so when they were first written, but they were thought sufficiently elevated for the place." And then he enters into an inquiry what the critic can mean by "polished numbers, freedom, and spirit." The pa.s.sage is curious:--

"By your first criticism, _polished numbers_, if you mean melodious versification, this perhaps the general ear will not deny me. If you mean cla.s.sical, chaste diction, free from tautologous repet.i.tions of the same thoughts in different expressions; free from bad rhymes, unnecessary epithets, and incongruous metaphors, I believe you may be safely challenged to produce many instances wherein I have failed.

"By _freedom_, your second criterion, if you mean daring transition, or arbitrary and desultory disposition of ideas, however this may be required in the greater ode, it is now, I believe, for the first time, expected in the lesser ode. If you mean that careless, diffuse composition, that conversation-verse, or verse loitering into prose, now so fas.h.i.+onable, this is an excellence which I am not very ambitious of attaining. But if you mean strong, concise, yet natural easy expression, I apprehend the general judgment will decide in my favour. To the general ear, and the general judgment, then, do I appeal as to an impartial tribunal." Here several odes are transcribed. "By _spirit_, your third criticism, I know nothing you can mean but enthusiasm; that which transports us to every scene, and interests us in every sentiment. Poetry without this cannot subsist; every species demands its proportion, from the greater ode, of which it is the princ.i.p.al characteristic, to the lesser, in which a small portion of it only has. .h.i.therto been thought requisite. My productions, I apprehend, have never before been deemed dest.i.tute of this essential const.i.tuent. Whatever I have wrote, I have felt, and I believe others have felt it also."

On "the Epistles," which had been condemned in the gross, suddenly the critic turns round courteously to the bard, declaring "they are written in an easy and familiar style, and seem to flow from a good and a benevolent heart." But then sneeringly adds, that one of them being ent.i.tled "An Essay on Painting, addressed to a young Artist, had better have been omitted, because it had been so fully treated in so masterly a manner by Mr. Hayley." This was letting fall a spark in a barrel of gunpowder. Scott immediately a.n.a.lyses his brother poet's poem, to show they have nothing in common; and then compares those similar pa.s.sages the subject naturally produced, to show that "his poem does not suffer greatly in the comparison." "You may," he adds, after giving copious extracts from both poems, "persist in saying that Mr. Hayley's are the best. Your business then is to prove it." This, indeed, had been a very hazardous affair for our medical critic, whose poetical feelings were so equable, that he acknowledges "Mr. Scott's poem is just and elegant," but "Mr. Hayley's is likewise just and elegant;" therefore, if one man has written a piece "just and elegant," there is no need of another on the same subject "just and elegant."