Interludes Part 1

Interludes.

by Horace Smith.

ESSAYS.

I. ON CRITICISM.

Criticism is the art of judging. As reasonable persons we are called upon to be constantly p.r.o.nouncing judgment, and either acting upon such judgment ourselves or inviting others to do so. I do not know how anything can be more important with respect to any matter than the forming a right judgment about it. We pray that we may have "a right judgment in all things." I am aware that it is an old saying that "people are better than their opinions," and it is a mercy that it is so, for very many persons not only are full of false opinions upon almost every subject, but even think that it is of no consequence what opinions they hold. Whether a particular action is morally right or wrong, or whether a book or a picture is really good or bad, is a matter upon which they form either no judgment or a wrong one with perfect equanimity. The secret of this state of mind is, I think, that it is on the whole too much bother to form a correct judgment; and it is so much easier to let things slide, and to take the good the G.o.ds provide you, than to carefully hold the scales until the balance is steady. But can anybody doubt that this abdication of the seat of judgment by large numbers of people is most hurtful to mankind? Does anyone believe that there would be so many bad books, bad pictures, and bad buildings in the world if people were more justly critical? Bad things continue to be produced in profusion, and worse things are born of them, because a vast number of people do not know that the things are bad, and do not care, even if they do know. What sells the endless trash published every day? Not the _few_ purchasers who buy what is vile because they like it, but the _many_ purchasers who do not know that the things are bad, and when they are told so, think there is not much harm in it after all. In short, they think that judging rightly is of no consequence and only a bore.

But I think I shall carry you all with me when I say that this society, almost by its very _raison d'etre_, desires to form just and proper judgments; and that one of the princ.i.p.al objects which we have in view in meeting together from time to time is to learn what should be thought, and what ought to be known; and by comparing our own judgments of things with those of our neighbours, to arrive at a just modification of our rough and imperfect ideas.

Although criticism is the act of judging in general, and although I shall not strictly limit my subject to any particular branch of criticism, yet naturally I shall be led to speak princ.i.p.ally of that branch of which we--probably all of us--think at once when the word is mentioned, viz., literary and artistic criticism. I think if criticism were juster and fairer persons criticized would submit more readily to criticism. It is certain that criticism is generally resented. We--none of us--like to be told our faults.

"Tell Blackwood," said Sir Walter Scott, "that I am one of the Black Hussars of Literature who neither give nor take criticism." Tennyson resented any interference with his muse by writing the now nearly forgotten line about "Musty, crusty Christopher." Byron flew into a rhapsodical pa.s.sion and wrote _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_--

"Ode, Epic, Elegy, have at you all."

He says--

"A man must serve his time to every trade Save censure. Critics all are ready made.

Take hackney'd jokes from Miller, got by rote, With just enough of learning to misquote; A mind well skilled to find or forge a fault; A turn for punning--call it Attic salt; To Jeffrey go, be silent and discreet,-- His pay is just ten sterling pounds per sheet; Fear not to lie, 'twill seem a sharper hit; Shrink not from blasphemy, 'twill pa.s.s for wit; Care not for feeling--pa.s.s your proper jest,-- And stand a critic, hated yet caress'd."

Lowell retorted upon his enemies in the famous _Fable for Critics_.

Swift, in his _Battle of the Books_, revenges himself upon Criticism by describing her. "She dwelt on the top of a snowy mountain in Nova Zembla. There Momus found her extended in her den upon the spoils of numberless volumes, half devoured. At her right hand sat Ignorance, her father and husband, blind with age; at her left Pride, her mother, dressing her up in the sc.r.a.ps of paper herself had torn. About her played her children Noise and Impudence, Dulness and Vanity, Pedantry and Ill-manners. The G.o.ddess herself had claws like a cat. Her head, ears, and voice resembled those of an a.s.s." Bulwer (Lord Lytton) flew out against his critics, and was well laughed at by Thackeray for his pains.

Poets are known as the _genus irritabile_, and I do not know that prose writers, artists, or musicians are less susceptible. Most of us will remember Sheridan's _Critic_--

Sneer: "I think it wants incident."

Sir Fretful: "Good Heavens, you surprise me! Wants incident! I am only apprehensive that the incidents are too crowded."

Dangle: "If I might venture to suggest anything, it is that the interest rather falls off in the fifth act."

Sir Fretful: "Rises, I believe you mean, sir."

Mrs. Dangle: "I did not see a fault in any part of the play from the beginning to the end."

Sir Fretful: "Upon my soul the women are the best judges after all."

In short, no one objects to a favourable criticism, and almost every one objects to an unfavourable one. All men ought, no doubt, to be thankful for a just criticism; but I am afraid they are not. As a result, to criticize is to be unpopular. Nevertheless, it is better to be unpopular than to be untruthful.

"The truth once out,--and wherefore should we lie?-- The Queen of Midas slept, and so can I."

I am going to do a rather dreadful thing. I am going to divide criticism into six heads. By the bye, I am not sure that sermons now-a-days are any better than they used to be in the good old times, when there were always three heads at least to every sermon. Criticism should be--1.

Appreciative. 2. Proportionate. 3. Appropriate. 4. Strong. 5. Natural.

6. _Bona fide_.

1. _Criticism should be appreciative_.

By this I mean, not that critics should always praise, but that they should understand. They should see the thing as it is and comprehend it.

This is the rock upon which most criticisms fail--want of knowledge. In reading the lives of great men, how often are we struck with the want of appreciation of their fellows. Who admired Turner's pictures until Turner's death? Who praised Tennyson's poems until Tennyson was quite an old man? Nay, I am afraid some of us have laughed at those who endeavoured to ask our attention to what we called the daubs of the one or the doggerel of the other. {5}This, I think, should teach us not even to attempt to criticize until we are sure that we appreciate. Yet what a vast amount of criticism there is in the world which errs (like Dr.

Johnson) from sheer ignorance. When Sir Lucius O'Trigger found fault with Mrs. Malaprop's language she naturally resented such ignorant criticism. "If there is one thing more than another upon which I pride myself, it is the use of my oracular tongue and a nice derangement of epitaphs." It was absurd to have one's English criticized by any Irishman. It is said that "it's a pity when lovely women talk of things that they don't understand"; but I am afraid that men are equally given to the same vice. I have heard men give the most confident opinions upon subjects which they don't in the least understand, which n.o.body expects them to understand, nor have they had any opportunity for acquiring the requisite knowledge. But I suppose an Englishman is nothing if he is not dictatorial, and has a right to say that the pictures in the Louvre are "orrid" or that the Colosseum is a "himposition." "I don't know what they mean by Lucerne being the Queen of the Lakes," said a Yankee to me, "but I calc'late Lake St. George is a doocid deal bigger." The criticism was true as far as it went, but the man had no conception of beauty.

"Each might his several province well command Would all but stoop to what they understand."

The receipt given for an essay on Chinese Metaphysics was, look out China under the letter C and metaphysics under the letter M, and combine your information. "Would you mind telling me, sir, if the Cambridge boat keeps time or not to-day?" said a man on the banks of the Thames to me.

He explained that he was a political-meeting reporter on the staff of a penny paper, and the sporting reporter was ill. Sometimes the want of appreciation appears in a somewhat remarkable manner, as where a really good performance is praised for its blemishes and not for its merits.

This may be done from a desire to appear singular or from ignorance. The popular estimate is generally wrong from want of appreciation. The majority of people praise what is not worthy of praise and dislike what is. So that it is almost a test of worthlessness that the mult.i.tudes approve. Baron Bramwell, in discharging a prisoner at the Old Bailey, made what he thought some appropriate observations, which were followed by a storm of applause in the crowded court. The learned judge, with that caustic humour which distinguishes him, looked up and said, "Bless me! I'm afraid I must have said something very foolish." An amusing scene occurred outside a barrister's lodgings during the Northampton a.s.sizes. Two painters decorating the exterior of the lodgings were overheard as follows:--"Seen the judge, Bill?" "Ah, I see him. Cheery old swine!" "See the sheriff too?" "Yes, I see him too. I reckon he got that place through interest. Been to church; they tell me the judge preached 'em a long sarmon. Pomp and 'umbug I call that!" This was no doubt genuine criticism, but it was without knowledge. These men were probably voters for Bradlaugh, and the judge and the sheriff were to them the embodiment of a hateful aristocracy. These painters little knew how much the judge would like to be let off even listening to the sermon, and how the sheriff had resorted to every dodge to escape from his onerous and thankless office.

It is recorded in the Life of Lord Houghton that Prince Leopold, being recommended to read Plutarch for Grecian lore, got the British Plutarch by mistake, and laid down the Life of Sir Christopher Wren in great indignation, exclaiming there was hardly anything about Greece in it.

I am sure, too, that in order to understand the work of another we must have something more than knowledge; we must have some sympathy with the work. I do not mean that we must necessarily praise the execution of it; but we must be in such a frame of mind that the success of the work would give us pleasure. I am sure someone says somewhere that a man whose first emotion upon seeing anything good is to undervalue it will never do anything good of his own. It argues a want of genius in ourselves if we fail to see it in others; unless, indeed, we do really see it, and only _say_ we don't out of envy. This is very shameful. I had rather do like some amiable people I have known, disparage the work of a friend in order to set others praising it.

Criticism should therefore be appreciative in two ways. The critic should bring the requisite amount and kind of knowledge and the proper frame of mind and temper.

2. _Criticism should be proportionate_.

By this I mean that the language in which we speak of anything should be proportioned to the thing spoken of. If you speak of St. Paul's Church, Beckenham, as vast, grand, magnificent, you have no language left wherewith to describe St. Paul's, London. If you call Millais' Huguenots sublime or divine, what becomes of the Madonna St. Sisto of Raphael? If you describe Longfellow's poetry as the feeblest possible trash, the coa.r.s.est and most unparliamentary language could alone express your contempt of Martin Tupper.

"What's the good of calling a woman a Wenus, Samivel?" asked the elder Weller. What indeed! The elder Weller probably perceived that the language would be out of all proportion to the object of Samivel's affections. Of course, something may be allowed to a generous enthusiasm, and, with regard to this fault in criticism, it should perhaps be said that exaggerated praise is not so base in its beginning or so harmful in the end as exaggerated blame. From the use of the former Dr. Johnson defended himself with his usual vigour. Boswell presumed to find fault with him for saying that the death of Garrick had eclipsed the gaiety of nations. Johnson: "I could not have said more, nor less. It is the truth. His death did eclipse, it was like a storm."

Boswell: "But why nations? Did his gaiety extend further than his own nation?" Johnson: "Why, sir, some exaggeration must be allowed. Besides, 'nations' may be said--if we allow the Scotch to be a nation, and to have gaiety,--which they have not."

But there is more in this matter of proportion than at first meets the eye. How often do we converse with a man whose language we wonder at and cannot quite make out. It is somehow unsatisfactory. We do not quite like it, yet there is nothing particular to dislike. Suddenly we perceive that there is a want of perspective, or perhaps a want of what artists call value. His mountains are mole-hills, and his mole-hills are mountains. His colouring is so badly managed that the effect of distance, light, and shade are lost. Thus a man will so insist upon the use of difficult words by George Elliot that a person unacquainted with her writings would think that the whole merit or demerit of that author lay in her vocabulary. A man will so exalt the pathos of d.i.c.kens or Thackeray that he will throw their wit and humour into the background.

Some person's only remark on seeing Turner's Modern Italy will be that the colours are cracked, or, upon reading Sterne, that he always wrote "you was" instead of "you were." "Did it ever strike you," said a friend of mine, "that whenever you hear of a young woman found drowned she always is described as having worn elastic boots?" Such persons look at all things through a distorting medium. Important things become unimportant and _vice versa_. The foreground is thrust back, the distance brought forward, and the middle distance is nowhere. The effect of an exaggerated praise generally is that an unfair reaction sets in.

Mr. Justin M'Carthy, in his _History of Our Own Times_, points out how much the character of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe has suffered from the absurd devotion of Kinglake. Kinglake writes (he says) of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe "as if he were describing the all-compelling movements of some divinity or providence." What nonsense has been talked about Millais' landscapes, Whistler's nocturnes, Swinburne poetry--all excellent enough in their way, and requiring to be praised according to their merits, with a reserve as to their faults. The practice of puffing tends to destroy all sort of proportion in criticism. When single sentences or portions of sentences of apparently unqualified praise are detached from context, and heaped together so as to induce the public to think that all praise and no blame has been awarded, of course all proportion is lost. Macaulay lashed this vice in his celebrated essay on Robert Montgomery's poems. "We expect some reserve," he says, "some decent pride in our hatter and our bootmaker. But no artifice by which notoriety can be obtained is thought too abject for a man of letters.

Extreme poverty may indeed in some degree be an excuse for employing these shifts as it may be an excuse for stealing a leg of mutton."

Upon the other hand, how unfair is exaggerated blame. I am not speaking here of that which is intentionally unfair, but of blame fairly meant and in some degree deserved, but where the language is out of all proportion to the offence.

Ruskin so belaboured the poor ancients about their landscapes that when I was a youth he had taught me to believe that Claude and Ruisdael were mere duffers. So when he speaks of Whistler, as we shall presently see, his blame is so exaggerated that it produces a revulsion in the mind of the reader. He said Whistler's painting consisted in throwing a pot of paint in the public's face. Well! we may say Whistler is somewhat sketchy and careless or wanting in colour, but it is quite possible to keep our tempers over it.

"This salad is very gritty," said a gentleman to Douglas Jerrold at a dinner party. "Gritty," said Jerrold, "it's a mere gravel path with a few weeds in it." That was very unfair on the salad.

3. _Criticism should be appropriate_.

I mean by this something different from proportionate. Sometimes the language of criticism is not that of exaggeration, but yet it is quite as inappropriate. The critic may have taken his seat too high or too low for a proper survey, or he may, by want of education or by carelessness, use quite the wrong words to express his meaning. You will hear a man say, "I was enchanted with the Biglow Papers," or "I was charmed with the hyenas at the Zoological Gardens." I think one of the distinguishing characteristics of a gentleman, and what makes the society of educated gentlemen so pleasant, is that their language is appropriate without effort. "'What a delicious shiver is creeping over those limes!' said Lancelot, half to himself. The expression struck Argemone; it was the right one." This is what makes some people's conversation so interesting. It is full of appropriate language. This is perhaps even more the case with educated ladies. I think it is Macaulay who says that the ordinary letter of an English lady is the best English style to be found anywhere.

"It would be bad _grammar_," said Cobbett, "to say of the House of Commons, 'It is a sink of iniquity, and they are a set of rascally swindlers.'" Of course, the bad grammar is almost immaterial. The expression is either a gross libel or a lamentable fact. "If a man,"

said Sydney Smith, "were to kill the minister and churchwardens of his parish n.o.body would accuse him of want of taste. The Scythians always ate their grandfathers; they behaved very respectfully to them for a long time, but as soon as their grandfathers became old and troublesome, and began to tell long stories, they immediately ate them; nothing could be more _improper_ and even _disrespectful_ than dining off such near and venerable relations, yet we could not with any propriety accuse them of bad taste." This is very humorous. To say that it is improper or disrespectful is as absurd as to say that it is bad taste. It is properly described as cruel, revolting, and abominable.

Not being at all a French scholar, and coming suddenly in view of Mont Blanc, I ventured to say to my guide, "_C'est tres joli_." "_Non_, _Monsieur_," said he, "_ce n'est pas joli_, _mais c'est curieux a voir_."

I think we were both of us rather out of it that time.

I remember an old lady of my acquaintance pointing to her new chintz of peonies and sunflowers, and asking me if I did not think it was very "chaste." I should like to have said, "Oh, yes, very, quite rococo," but I daren't.

The wife of a clergyman, writing to the papers about the "Penge Mystery,"

said that certain of the parties (whom most right-minded people thought had committed most atrocious crimes, if not actual murder) had been guilty of a breach of "les convenances de societe." This is almost equal to De Quincey's friend, who committed a murder, which at the time he thought little about. Keble said to Froude, "Froude, you said you thought Law's _Serious Call_ was a clever book; it seemed to me as if you had said the Day of Judgment will be a pretty sight."