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النشر الإلكتروني

ON COTEMPORARY CRITICISM.

NEVER did heretics and schismatics in any age and country complain more bitterly of inquisitors, high commission courts, and star chambers, than the present race of authors do of their critics. Dramatists, poets, novelists, historians, philosophers, and mathematicians, join in one sweeping accusation against the injustice of reviewers; those who are condemned of course appeal against the sentence; those who are lauded delare that eulogy is given to the quality which least deserved praise, and that their real merit has eluded the critic's search. That most anomalous body, "the reading public," is appealed to by both parties, its tribunal is daily beset by clamorous appellants, who claim the reversal of the sentence pronounced upon their works, declaring that the condemnation was the result of envy, party spirit, or sheer incapacity. The authors are unanimous in their complaints ; the critics, on the other hand, seem agreed that the present scribbling generation is very unreasonable, they declare that they are ready to find the praise, if authors produce the merit, but until then they declare that they must deal out eulogy with caution, lest they might flatter mediocrity into the conceit of greatness. There is no doubt that both parties have good grounds for complaint. The qualified nature of criticism in the present day is truly annoying; a review of any work of imagination in the Athenæum, or Gazette, is just like Canning's administration, a mixture of liberality and illiberality, which can satisfy nobody; here a bit of praise, there a bit of blame, and an endless repetition of Goldsmith's immortal conclusion, "the picture would have been better if the artist had taken more pains." On the other hand, it must be confessed that mediocrity is the general character of modern literature; we scarcely meet with a work which might not be produced "by many men, many women, and many children."

、 In old times it was usual to congratulate a friend on his appearance in print; in the present day we should rather felicitate our friends for what they have left unwritten. We never go into company without feeling tempted to say to our several acquaintances, VOL. X.-NO. V.-MAY, 1837.

"Good sir, how thankful should the world be for your sparing them the infliction of an epic poem." "You cannot think, dear madam, how much obliged we feel for your withholding a stupid novel." "Good master or miss, you have shewn more sense than I thought you possessed by suppressing your miscellany, a word or title which publishers assert is derived from Miss-selling-any." "Worthy speculator, our heart is rejoiced by your keeping to yourself plans for draining the ocean, or making a railroad to the moon."

Why is there this contest between authors and critics? and, still more, why does "the reading public" regard the contest with indifference? Simply because frankness is wanting in our literary judges; they cannot, or rather they will not, give sentence by the unalterable rules of right and wrong. Nature has given a broad, but not a limitless charter to genius and imagination, but every school of criticism, however honest, restricts the charter by a set of bye-laws, sometimes at variance with its letter, always inconsistent with its spirit.

Mediocrity has blighted judgment as well as invention; reviewers will not say that black is black, or white is white; they find it necessary to detract from the darkness of the one, and the clearness of the other. But great as is this evil, it is far from being the worst that besets modern criticism. Reviewing is now in too many instances a mere trade, and no very honest one. We speak not merely of the paid paragraphs notoriously inserted for money in most newspapers, they are advertisements, and the world is fast learning the trick that is played by putting them in a place where they appear to be original articles. Neither do we speak of critiques written by an author on his friends, and inserted in a periodical by securing the good-will of the editor. There is a far more general system of trading criticism in vogue ; it flourishes, and is likely to flourish; we shall describe it, not to expose the secrets of trade, but simply to show the philosophic process by which public instructors are formed in modern times.

Trading criticism does not exclude learn

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ing or talent, though it gets on very well without either. It has no need of study to prepare its decisions, no toil is required to discover the object and tendency of a work under consideration, and still less to determine its general bearing on the progress of mind; it wants not an opinion to guide, but an opinion to sell; it has to produce an article, not for the public treasury, but the private shop. There must be dirt and mud to fling at enemies there must be incense to gratify good paymasters. “The reading public" knows little, and cares less, about the process; all it wants is a ready-made opinion, and trading criticism has a plentiful supply of opinions of all sorts and sizes in its warehouse. Trading criticism is by no means indolent, it cannot afford to waste a single hour; nay, it has a fixed price for its very minutes. It has to raise a new faith and worship in order to secure for itself the profitable post of priest at the shrine. Byron, Scott, Bulwer, Talfourd, and others, have been successively its gods for a day, and were all the worse for listening to its delusive suggestions. Let the idol of the hour produce such a satire as the Siamese Twins, such a romance as Devereux, or such a drama as the Duchess de la Vallière, trading criticism is ready to raise the work to the very pinnacle of glory. Ere the genius wakes the critic is by his bed-side, aids his dressing, administers soothing flattery while he shaves, worms himself into the patron's confidence by pretending to hang enraptured on his words, and promises vengeance on the heretics who refuse to bow down before the new divinity. "My lear sir, you should not feel sore at the eview in the Weekly Censor, the author is cold-blooded, mathematical, and calculating; besides the editor's journal is opposed by one to which you are known to be favourable,-party spirit blinded him to your merits, the world understands all that kind of thing. You shall see in the next number of our journal how the hostile criticism will be answered. Entrust me with your revenge, I will carry the war into the enemy's camp, and take care that impunity shall no longer be an incentive to injustice."

Poor genius yields to the soothing accents of trading criticism, it mutters some few words about envy being the regular attendant of merit, and the neglect that intellectual supremacy meets from cotem

poraries; it declares that the hostile review mistook in one place, and misrepresented in another; and though it does not care in the least for such a very weak attack, it is of opinion that the eyes of the world ought to be opened to the criminality or the incapacity of those who attempt to guide the public taste.

Trading criticism has now succeeded; genius is caught in the toils, it has condescended to be pitied, and can never again assume an independent part. It relies not on its own merits, but on the venal exertions of a hireling; Ion, or La Vallière, must be supported, because they are the pets of their parents, and trading criticism promises faithfully to undertake the task.

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The promise is fulfilled to the letter; the enthusiasm the trading critic shews to his patron is without bounds or moderation. He commences his task at once, the whole vocabulary of praise is exhausted in his search for epithets of admiration. intellectual genealogy of the author is placed before us with a fulness of description which leaves Arabian and Highland pedigrees far behind; the titles of former works are enumerated, their merits asserted with oracular solemnity, and the writer's claims to public gratitude and everlasting fame established by "confirmation strong as proof of Holy Writ." Loud lamentations are uttered, and bitter tears shed over the wickedness that would detract from such merit, and the apathy of the public to such wondrous deserts. At length, all the resources of eloquence are exhausted, and trading criticism winds up the Roman warrior by proposing that we should bear the new divinity to the capitol, and shew our gratitude to the gods by offering up a whole hecatomb of gainsayers as a holo

caust.

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Waverley could not tell what to make of the Highland phrase," the chief with his tail on ;" had he lived in our day, and looked at a column of literary advertisements, he would have seen genius with its tail on," in the list of notices appended to every new book. A successful writer of the present day rides in triumph like the Roman consul with a slave in his chariot; but the hireling does not as of old exclaim, "Remember that you are a man,” the modern lesson is, "Believe that you are a god."

But the puffing is not all on one side; the author thinks it but just to praise the

critic who has laboured so hard in his service. Would you know the journal on whose honesty least dependence can be placed, go into a literary company and find out that which is most praised. The authors know that those who raise idols feel always a strong desire to destroy their handy work. Trading criticism has censure, abuse, and vilification for sale, as well as praise; and woe be to its protégé if, trusting to his pride of place, he forgets the hands that raised him to his elevation.

Poor Robert Montgomery !-he had a fair portion of poetical taste, considerable skill in smooth versification, and more power of expression than of thought. Trading criticism undertook to place him on a pedestal beside Milton. His great poem, the Omnipresence of the Deity, became itself an omnipresence; turn where you would, it stared you in the face; every body was persuaded that Montgomery would be, if he was not already, the Christian Byron, and serious apprehensions were entertained for the safety of all publishers in London, but one; it was supposed that they would die of apoplexy through sheer envy of the fortunate individual who had purchased the copyright of the wonderful poem. Montgomery, like Jehurun, "waxed fat and kicked;" he would not allow trading criticism to stand on terms of equality, he told the venal hireling that as a slave he should keep his distance, and in an instant the architects of his fame began to undermine the foundations of their own edifice. “There once was a man," says a Coptic legend, "who ascended Cleopatra's Needle, by a ladder of ropes, and when he got to the top, kicked away the cordage; but his head was turned by the dizzy height, he fell down and was dashed to pieces." Such was Montgomery's fate; in the hour of his prosperity he literally "played the devil," that is to say, he wrote Satan, and quarrelled with the reviewers: one of the traders, who had been the first to baptize him a Milton, added an epithet to the word; Montgomery became "the Brummagem Milton;" the phrase was decisive, the poor idol was hurled from its pedestal amid a tempest of laughter and hisses, and then trading criticism turned off to find some new object of worship and profit.

It was a thousand pities that St. John Long did not start as a poet; he had trade criticism fettered fast in his service, for he bought the horses that drew its chariot.

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It is with no pleasant feelings that we record this degradation of criticism, but we write of what the world has seen as well as ourselves; were we to enter still deeper into the 66 secrets of the prison house" we could

a tale unfold," which would more than justify the contempt with which the world treats the squabbles of critics and authors.

A less disgraceful, but scarcely less injurious, style of criticism is becoming very common: indifference is its great characteristic, the leading principle is not to "commit the paper:"-" censure not an author too severely, he may have powerful friends:"-" praise him not too lavishly,

he

may have bitter enemies." The indifferent critic is a rigid formalist, he has catalogued all the phases that imagination ought to assume, and he has prepared a theory of invention far more precise than any that has yet been devised by geologists. He knows the primitive ideas from the alluvial deposits, and his chief care is that the stratum should not be disturbed. The indifferent critic is of course conceited, a kind of literary and very often a literal dandy; he affects perfect nonchalance, for enthusiasm would dislocate his system, and he lisps out his prettyish commonplaces with a delicate effeminacy which is just suited to the atmosphere of a lady's boarding school. Before men of letters can estimate a critic of this class, these doubts respecting the sex must be solved.

Come we now to the slashing critic; with all his faults he is a very amusing fellow, too much indeed like an Irishman in a fair, resolved to beat somebody, and caring little whether it be friend or enemy. His first object is to have the laugh at his side, as to the argument it never enters into his head; no scruple checks him, onward he dashes through thick and thin, the spectators are

but too happy to be amused, and long before his career is terminated the fun of the spectacle has made all parties forget its object.

But the slashing frequently degenerates into the butchering critic; his object then is only to inflict pain, though he hopes that the public will laugh at the contortions of his victim. The butcher is restrained by no principle; if he cannot cut up the author he attacks the man, and if there is not yet food enough for malice he falls foul of his family through all past generations. He is of course a politician; he writes for his party, and, like the Indian warrior, hopes to win the chieftainship of his tribe by exhibiting a goodly array of scalps, and to terrify opponents by dexterous flourishes of his tomahawk. But the butchering trade is on the decline; the indifferent lady-like critic is driving him from the field, by sneering at the stains that his bloody trade has left upon his clothes.

Far different from all these classes is the grave erudite critic ;—make room for the learned doctor;-let him be received with all due reverence. Lord help the historian whose work he is going to review! The erudite critic will drag the whole British Museum about his ears. He will tell you how Sir Walter Scott mistook the colour of Saladin's charger, did not rightly understand the statutes of the Templars, gave a wrong hood to his monk, made heraldic errors in emblazoning shields; and, after edifying you with a thousand such minute details, ends with the exclamation, "Behold how popular writers falsify history!" But do not trust to the accuracy of this walking encyclopædia; he is very likely to venture on misquotation, for no one but such a pedant as himself would dream of disturbing the venerable dust on the original chronicles. If, however, his misstatements are detected, he shields himself under Dominie Sampson's plea, "I was oblivious;" and the good-natured world, already amazed that " one small head could carry all he knew," laments that the wondrous scholar cannot know every thing.

The historical novel is the true game for your erudite critic, he will prove to you that the author has totally mistaken the character of the epoch he has chosen for his fiction. But he is enraptured with the wisdom of the choice. 66 Oh, what a fine subject has been spoiled! Had Bulwer studied the chronicles, how many anecdotes

he might have called to illustrate the character of the Italians during Rienzi's reign! but he did not read deeply, he only skimmed the surface, and his picture is consequently like nothing that ever existed." He does not confine himself to these generalities, he enters into the most petty details of manners and costume; these are differently stated in many instances, but he chooses those whom the author has neglected, for his first purpose in criticism is to display the extent of his own learning. With genius or energy the erudite critic has no sympathy; he cannot conceive how any body could find poetry in the character of Attila, or inspiration in the ruins of Pompeii. He execrates Martin Luther because abhorrence of humbug was the chief characteristic of that singular man, and he looks coldly upon the reformation because it diminished the number of his beloved chronicles. The race of the erudite critics was once almost extinct, but it has been revived since the study of German became popular, for the Germans are natural members of the school, and they can always supply its followers with a goodly number of ready-made references.

That poets and novelists pay little regard to the recommendations or the censures of erudite criticism is notorious, and in truth we cannot blame them. The mere scholar is no more fit to pass sentence on the man of genius, than the mathematician is to judge of a piece of music. There is no doubt that reminiscences form a considerable portion of experience, and that the most wondrous inventions of fiction are those that have been based on close observation of actual life; but books are not experience, neither are chronicles living testimonies; in fact, knowledge of actual life is necessary to the revival of the past or the approximation of the distant. Between the mere acquisition of knowledge and the exhibition of its elements moving, living, and breathing, there is a great gulf fixed, and the erudite critic is about the last person likely to discover the secret channels by which memory flows into imagination.

It is not extraordinary, under these circumstances, that writers of fiction should have recourse to trading criticism for a supply of puffers; a train of worshippers, each bound to the service of his respective idol. Disgusted by the attempt to confine the living soul under the ribs of death, to limit them to the dry bones of history,

many have openly set antiquarian truth at defiance, and have found followers to applaud them for asserting the inherent privileges of genius. The erudite school of criticism has generated the servile, which, more in appearance than reality, identifies itself with trading criticism. The servile class is on the increase, and it has elements of popularity with which the erudite cannot compete. The reading public is not inclined to be troubled too much with the task of thinking; the erudite critic is too fond of abstruse reasoning and scholastic logic, the servile dazzles his reader with a few pompous phrases which seem to mean everything and really mean nothing; but the world is pleased to avoid labour, and though your pure no-meaning puzzles more than wit,” it satisfies those on whom meaning would impose the disagreeable task of mental exertion.

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There remains a school of criticism, rare in all ages, and almost unheard in our own; severe, vigilant, impartial, yet ever ready to foster rising merit, and encourage the earliest efforts of genius "to imp its feeble wing;" acknowledging no law but conscience, no aim but truth. Such criticism would be the ally of genius, not its rival, and much less its enemy: it would not check the onward movement of mind, but would go forward with the intellectual progress, share in the triumph and partake the gale." Invention would belong to the critic as well as to the author, and both would join in exploring the untravelled paths of space.

There is no mistake more common and more fatal than to suppose that the proper business of criticism is to measure roads and set up land marks, to map past discoveries and not shew the way to acquire new lands. There is a dialectical as well as a poetic process of invention, and it has often realized what the former has failed to accomplish.

The geographical critic has more than once anticipated the discoveries of the traveller, and astronomical reasoning had taught that a planet was wanting in our system, long before telescopes discovered that its place was supplied by the asteroids. While genius acts, true criticism deliberates; both work in their proper vocation, and there is no reason why one should interfere with the other. Dialectical invention is employed in the establishment of principle, poetic invention in the acquisition of fact; when they are in harmony,

the dialectician explains the creations of the poet, and the poet realizes the predictions of the dialectician.

Let us not be accused of an unworthy effort to depreciate our critical cotemporaries, when we complain that the total neglect of dialectics is the source from which all the evils of which we complain have flowed. Vague generalities are the staple of modern reviews, logical principles are the only sure basis of a valuable criticism. In our last number we showed that Victor Hugo's errors, the faults that obscure his brilliant genius and make his gorgeous creations mere phantasmagoria that "overcome us like a summer cloud," and excite "our special wonder," but disappear unregretted and forgotten, result simply from his neglect of statistical laws, from his refusal to acknowledge that fiction is purely a generalisation of facts. His servile critics-and he has a tail that the proudest Highland chief might envy-not only excuse his faults, but call upon us to admire the wondrous powers of creative genius; we say that they are ignorant both of the nature and functions of genius, because invention is a process regulated by known laws, and the only staple on which it can work is reminiscence.

In superadding the title of Monthly Critic to that of Court Magazine, we have been chiefly actuated by a desire to establish what we conceive to be a beneficial school of criticism, one that would not merely report progress but aid development. Besides giving an impartial view of the current literature of the day, it should rescue all that is really valuable from the fleeting publications which now come like shadows, so depart," and register every new acquisition made to the domain, however small and apparently trifling.

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We make no profession of critical faith, we register no creed, we sign no articles: in the progressive advance of mind we hold that it would be injudicious to 66 trace the wizard ring," and say genius shall not pass the circumference without condemnation. Truth alone shall be our standard of measurement; but while we steadfastly adhere to all fixed principles, we shall zealously labour as intelligence is developed to extend and improve our scale. More eager to applaud than to censure, more desirous to encourage than to chastise, we shall ever be ready to give merit its meed, to cheer the modest and raise the humble. Above

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