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[page 68:]
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[[Exordium]]
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IN commencing, with
the New Year, a
New Volume, we
shall be permitted to say a very few words by way of exordium
to
our usual chapter of Reviews, or, as we should prefer calling them, of
Critical Notices. Yet we speak not for the sake of the exordium,
but because we have really something to say, and know not when or where
better to say it.
That the public attention, in
America, has, of late
days, been more than usually directed to the matter of literary
criticism,
is plainly apparent. Our periodicals are beginning to acknowledge the
importance
of the science (shall we so term it?) and to disdain the flippant opinion
which so long has been made its substitute.
Time was when we imported our
critical decisions
from the mother country. For many years we enacted a perfect farce of
subserviency
to the dicta of Great Britain. At last a revulsion of feeling,
with
self-disgust, necessarily ensued. Urged by these, we plunged into the
opposite
extreme. In throwing totally off that "authority," whose voice
had
so long been so sacred, we even surpassed, and by much, our original
folly.
But the watchword now was, "a national literature!" — as if any true
literature could
be "national" — as if the world at large were not the only proper
stage
for the literary histrio. We became, suddenly, the merest and
maddest partizans in letters. Our papers spoke of "tariffs" and
"protection."
Our Magazines had habitual passages about that "truly native novelist,
Mr. Cooper," or that "staunch American genius, Mr. Paulding." Unmindful
of
the spirit of the axioms that "a prophet has no honor in his own
land" and
that "a hero is never a hero to his valet-de-chambre" — axioms
founded in reason and in truth — our reviews urged the propriety — our
booksellers the necessity, of strictly "American" themes. A foreign
subject,
at this epoch, was a weight more than enough to drag down into the very
depths of critical damnation the finest writer owning nativity in the
States;
while, on the reverse, we found ourselves daily in the paradoxical
dilemma
of liking, or pretending to like, a stupid book the better because
(sure
enough) its stupidity was of our own growth, and discussed our own
affairs.
It is, in fact, but very lately that
this anomalous
state of feeling has shown any signs of subsidence. Still it is
subsiding. Our views of literature in general having expanded, we begin
to demand the use — to inquire into the offices and provinces of
criticism
— to regard it more as an art based immoveably in nature, less as a
mere
system of fluctuating and conventional dogmas. And, with the prevalence
of these ideas, has arrived a distaste even to the home-dictation of
the
bookseller-coteries. If our editors are not as yet all
independent
of the will of a publisher, a majority of them scruple, at least, to
confess a subservience, and enter into no positive combinations
against
the minority who despise and discard it. And this is a very
great
improvement of exceedingly late date.
Escaping these quicksands, our
criticism is nevertheless
in some danger — some very little danger — of falling into [column
2:] the pit of a most detestable species of cant — the cant
of generality. This tendency has been given it, in the
first instance,
by the onward and tumultuous spirit of the age. With the increase of
the
thinking-material comes the desire, if not the necessity, of abandoning
particulars for masses. Yet in our individual case, as a nation, we
seem
merely to have adopted this bias from the British Quarterly Reviews,
upon
which our own Quarterlies have been slavishly and pertinaciously
modelled.
In the foreign journal, the review or criticism properly so termed, has
gradually yet steadily degenerated into what we see it at present —
that
is to say into anything but criticism. Originally a "review," was not
so
called as lucus a non lucendo. Its name conveyed a just idea of
its design. It reviewed, or surveyed the book whose title formed its
text,
and, giving an analysis of its contents, passed judgment upon its
merits
or defects. But, through the system of anonymous contribution, this
natural
process lost ground from day to day. The name of a writer being known
only
to a few, it became to him an object not so much to write well, as to
write
fluently, at so many guineas per sheet. The analysis of a book is a
matter
of time and of mental exertion. For many classes of composition there
is
required a deliberate perusal, with notes, and subsequent
generalization.
An easy substitute for this labor was found in a digest or compendium
of
the work noticed, with copious extracts — or a still easier, in random
comments upon such passages as accidentally met the eye of the critic,
with the passages themselves copied at full length. The mode of
reviewing
most in favor, however, because carrying with it the greatest semblance
of care, was that of diffuse essay upon the subject matter of the
publication,
the reviewer (?) using the facts alone which the publication supplied,
and using them as material for some theory, the sole concern, bearing,
and intention of which, was mere difference of opinion with the author.
These came at length to be understood and habitually practised as the
customary
or conventional fashions of review; and although the nobler
order
of intellects did not fall into the full heresy of these fashions — we
may
still assert that even Macaulay's nearest approach to criticism in its
legitimate sense, is to be found in his article upon Ranke's "History
of
the Popes" — an article in which the whole strength of the reviewer is
put forth to account for a single fact — the progress of
Romanism
— which the book under discussion has established.
Now, while we do not mean to deny
that a good essay
is a good thing, we yet assert that these papers on general topics have
nothing whatever to do with that criticism which their evil
example
has nevertheless infected in se. Because these dogmatising
pamphlets,
which were once "Reviews," have lapsed from their original
faith,
it does not follow that the faith itself is extinct — that "there shall
be no more cakes and ale" — that criticism, in its old acceptation,
does
not exist. But we complain of a growing inclination on the part of our
lighter journals to believe, on such grounds, that such is the fact —
that
because the British [page 69:] Quarterlies,
through
supineness, and our own, through a degrading imitation, have come to
merge
all varieties of vague generalization in the one title of "Review," it
therefore
results that criticism, being everything in the universe, is,
consequently,
nothing whatever in fact. For to this end, and to none other
conceivable,
is the tendency of such propositions, for example, as we find in a late
number of that very clever monthly magazine, Arcturus.
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"But now"
(the
emphasis on the now
is our own) — "But now," says Mr. Mathews, in the preface to
the
first volume of his journal, "criticism has a wider scope and a
universal
interest. It dismisses errors of grammar, and hands over an imperfect
rhyme
or a false quantity to the proof-reader; it looks now to the
heart
of the subject and the author's design. It is a test of opinion. Its
acuteness
is not pedantic, but philosophical; it unravels the web of the author's
mystery to interpret his meaning to others; it detects his sophistry,
because
sophistry is injurious to the heart and life; it promulgates his
beauties
with liberal, generous praise, because this is its true duty as the
servant
of truth. Good criticism may be well asked for, since it is the type of
the literature of the day. It gives method to the universal
inquisitiveness
on every topic relating to life or action. A criticism, now,
includes
every form of literature, except perhaps the imaginative and the
strictly
dramatic. It is an essay, a sermon, an oration, a chapter in history, a
philosophical speculation, a prose-poem, an art-novel, a dialogue; it
admits
of humor, pathos, the personal feelings of auto-biography, the broadest
views of statesmanship. As the ballad and the epic were the productions
of the days of Homer, the review is the native characteristic growth of
the nineteenth century."
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We respect the talents of Mr. Mathews, but must
dissent
from nearly all that he here says. The species of "review" which he
designates
as the "characteristic growth of the nineteenth century" is only the
growth
of the last twenty or thirty years in Great Britain. The French
Reviews, for example, which are not anonymous, are very
different
things, and preserve the unique spirit of true criticism. And
what
need we say of the Germans? — what of Winkelmann, of Novalis, of
Schelling,
of Göethe, of Augustus William, and of Frederick Schlegel? — that
their
magnificent critiques raisonnées differ from those of
Kaimes [[Kames]],
of Johnson, and of Blair, in principle not at all, (for the principles
of these artists will not fail until Nature herself expires,) but
solely
in their more careful elaboration, their greater thoroughness, their
more
profound analysis and application of the principles themselves. That a
criticism "now" should be different in spirit, as Mr. Mathews
supposes,
from a criticism at any previous period, is to insinuate a charge of
variability
in laws that cannot vary — the laws of man's heart and intellect — for
these are the sole basis upon which the true critical art is
established.
And this art "now" no more than in the days of the
"Dunciad," can,
without neglect of its duty, "dismiss errors of grammar," or "hand over
an imperfect rhyme or a false quantity to the proof-reader." What is
meant
by a "test of opinion" in the connexion here given the words by Mr. M.,
we do not comprehend as clearly as we could desire. By this phrase we
are
as completely enveloped in doubt as was Mirabeau in the castle of If.
To our imperfect appreciation it seems to form a portion of that
general
vagueness which is the tone of the whole philosophy at this
point:
— but all that which our journalist describes a criticism to be, is all
that which we sturdily maintain it is not. Criticism is not,
we think, an essay, nor a sermon, nor an oration, nor a chapter in
history,
nor a philosophical speculation, nor a prose-poem, nor an
art[[-]]novel,
nor
a dialogue. In fact, it can be nothing in the world but — a
criticism.
But if it were all that Arcturus imagines, it is not very clear why it
might not be equally "imaginative" or "dramatic" — a romance or a
melo-drama,
or both. That it would be a farce cannot be doubted.
It is against this frantic spirit of generalization
that we [column 2:] protest. We have a word,
"criticism," whose
import is sufficiently distinct, through long usage, at least; and we
have
an art of high importance and clearly-ascertained limit, which this
word
is quite well enough understood to represent. Of that conglomerate
science
to which Mr. Mathews so eloquently alludes, and of which we are
instructed
that it is anything and everything at once — of this science we know
nothing,
and really wish to know less; but we object to our contemporary's
appropriation
in its behalf, of a term to which we, in common with a large majority
of
mankind, have been accustomed to attach a certain and very definitive
idea.
Is there no word but "criticism" which may be made to serve the
purposes
of "Arcturus?" Has it any objection to Orphicism, or Dialism, or
Emersonism,
or any other pregnant compound indicative of confusion worse
confounded?
Still, we must not pretend a total
misapprehension
of the idea of Mr. Mathews, and we should be sorry that he
misunderstood us.
It may be granted that we differ only in terms — although the
difference
will yet be found not unimportant in effect. Following the highest
authority,
we would wish, in a word, to limit literary criticism to comment upon Art.
A book is written — and it is only as the book that we subject
it
to review. With the opinions of the work, considered otherwise than in
their relation to the work itself, the critic has really nothing to do.
It is his part simply to decide upon the mode in which these
opinions
are brought to bear. Criticism is thus no "test of opinion." For this
test,
the work, divested of its pretensions as an art-product, is
turned
over for discussion to the world at large — and first, to that class
which
it especially addresses — if a history, to the historian — if a
metaphysical
treatise, to the moralist. In this, the only true and intelligible
sense,
it will be seen that criticism, the test or analysis of Art, (not
of opinion,) is only properly employed upon productions which have
their
basis in art itself, and although the journalist (whose duties and
objects
are multiform) may turn aside, at pleasure, from the mode or
vehicle
of opinion to discussion of the opinion conveyed — it is still clear
that
he is "critical" only in so much as he deviates from his true
province
not at all.
And of the critic himself what shall
we say? — for
as yet we have spoken only the proem to the true epopea.
What can we better say of him than, with Bulwer, that "he must
have
courage to blame boldly, magnanimity to eschew envy, genius to
appreciate,
learning to compare, an eye for beauty, an ear for music, and a heart
for
feeling." Let us add, a talent for analysis and a solemn indifference
to
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