Read Ebook: Ephemera Critica; Or Plain Truths About Current Literature by Collins John Churton

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Still more extraordinary is Mr. Rossetti's note on "wisdom the mirrored shield"--

"What was then Wisdom, the mirrored shield?"

"His head was bound with pansies overblown, And faded violets, white and pied and blue; And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew."

"The vultures ... Whose wings rain contagion;"

"Doth shake contagion from her sable wings;"

It is, we repeat, no reproach to Mr. Rossetti, who has distinguished himself in more important studies than the production of scholastic text-books, that he should have failed in an undertaking which happened to require peculiar qualifications. Indeed, our respect for Mr. Rossetti and our sense of his useful services to Belles Lettres would have induced us to spare him the annoyance of an exposure of the deficiencies of this work, had it not illustrated, so comprehensively and so strikingly, the disastrous effects of the severance of the study of English Literature from that of Ancient Classical Literature at our Universities.

ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITIES

More than a century and a half has passed since Pope thus expressed himself about philologists,--

"'Tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his own petar;"

and, though he knows what the general sense is wishes to know exactly what Shakespeare means. He turns to the note for enlightenment, and the enlightenment he gets is this:--

And so the hungry sheep looks up and is not fed. Again, he finds--

"He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice,"

turns to the note, and reads:--

The poet Young noted how

"Commentators each dark passage shun, And hold their farthing candles to the sun."

Now let us see how the poor student fares when real difficulties occur. Every reader of Shakespeare is familiar with the corrupt passage, Act iv. sc. 1:--

"The dram of eale Doth all the noble substance of worth out To his own scandal--

a passage which, as all Shakespearian scholars know, has been satisfactorily emended and explained. We turn to the notes for guidance, and find ourselves treated as poor Mrs. Quickly was treated by Falstaff, "fubbed off"--thus:--

"We leave this hopelessly corrupt passage as it stands in the two earliest quartos. The others read 'ease' for 'eale,' and modern writers have conjectured for the same word base, ill, bale, ale, evil, ail, vile, lead. For 'of a doubt' it has been proposed to substitute 'of worth out,' 'soul with doubt,' 'oft adopt,' 'oft work out,' 'of good out,' 'of worth dout,' 'often dout,' 'often doubt,' 'oft adoubt,' 'oft delase,' 'over-cloud,' 'of a pound,' and others."

"My father, in his habit, as he lived!"

exclaims Hamlet to his mother. This is the signal for:--

"There is supposed to be a difficulty in these words, because in the earlier scenes the Ghost is in his armour, to which the word 'habit' is regarded as inappropriate. In the earlier form of the play, as it appears in the quarto of 1603, the Ghost enters 'in his nightgowne,' and as the words 'in the habit as he lived' occur in the corresponding passage of that edition, it is probable that on this occasion the Ghost appeared in the ordinary dress of the king, although this is not indicated in the stage directions of the other quartos or of the folios."

As a possible solution of this grave difficulty, we would suggest that, as the Ghost was undoubtedly in a very hot place, he might have found his nightgown less oppressive than his armour, and though it would certainly have been more decorous to have exchanged his nightgown for his uniform on revisiting the earth, yet, as the visit was to his wife, he thought perhaps less seriously about his apparel than our editors have done. We have nothing to warrant us in assuming that he was in his "ordinary dress." The choice must lie between the nightgown and the armour. But a truce to jesting.

If any one would understand the opacity and callousness which philological study induces, we would refer them to the note on Hamlet's last sublime words, "The rest is silence":--

We said at the beginning of this article that there was not a word of commentary on the poetical merits of the play. We beg the editors' pardon. They have in one note, and in one note only, ventured on an expression of critical opinion. We all know the lines--

"There is a willow grows aslant a brook That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream,"

etc., etc. We transcribe the note on this passage that it may be a sign to all men of what Philology is able to effect, an omen and testimony of what must inevitably be the fate of Literature if the direction and regulation of its study be entrusted to philologists:--

As this beggars commentary, transcription shall suffice.

The radical fault of those who regulate education in our Universities and elsewhere, and prescribe our schoolbooks, is their deplorable want of judgment. They seem to be utterly incapable of distinguishing between what is proper for pure specialists and what is proper for ordinary students. There is not a page in this edition which does not proclaim aloud, that it could never have been intended for the purposes to which it has been applied, that it is the work of technical scholars, concerned only in textual and philological criticism and exegesis, and appealing only to those who approach the study of Shakespeare in the same spirit and from the same point of view. Anything more sickening and depressing, anything more calculated to make the name of Shakespeare an abomination to the youth of England it would be impossible for man to devise. It is shameful to prescribe such books for study in our Schools and Educational Institutes.

OUR LITERARY GUIDES

This Short History is evidently designed for the use of serious readers, for the ordinary reader who will naturally look to it for general instruction and guidance in the study of English Literature, and to whom it will serve as a book of reference; for students in schools and colleges, to many of whom it will, in all likelihood, be prescribed as a textbook; for teachers engaged in lecturing and in preparing pupils for examination. Of all these readers there will not be one in a hundred who will not be obliged to take its statements on trust, to assume that its facts are correct, that its generalizations are sound, that its criticisms and critical theories are at any rate not absurd. It need hardly be said that, under these circumstances, a writer who had any pretension to conscientiousness would do his utmost to avoid all such errors as ordinary diligence could easily prevent, that he would guard scrupulously against random assertions and reckless misstatements, that he would, in other words, spare no pains to deserve the confidence placed in him by those who are not qualified to check his statements or question his dogmas, and who naturally suppose that the post which he occupies is a sufficient guarantee of the soundness and accuracy of his work. But so far from Professor Saintsbury having any sense of what is due to his position and to his readers, he has imported into his work the worst characteristics of irresponsible journalism: generalizations, the sole supports of which are audacious assertions, and an indifference to exactness and accuracy, as well with respect to important matters as in trifles, so scandalous as to be almost incredible.

"O thou glory of the Lord! Guardian of Heaven's hosts, O thou might of the Creator! O thou mid-circle! O thou bright day of splendour! O thou jubilee of God! O ye hosts of angels! O thou highest heaven! O that I am shut from the everlasting jubilee, That I cannot reach my hands again to Heaven, ... Nor hear with my ears ever again The clear-ringing harmony of the heavenly trumpets."

"Non sic, aggeribus ruptis cum spumeus amnis Exiit, oppositasque evicit gurgite moles, Fertur in arva furens cumulo, camposque per omnes Cum stabulis armenta trahit."

"Not sa fersly the fomy river or flude Brekkis over the bankis on spait quhen it is wode. And with his brusch and fard of water brown The dykys and the schorys betis down, Ourspreddand croftis and flattis wyth hys spate Our all the feyldis that they may row ane bate Quhill houssis and the flokkis flittis away, The corne grangis and standard stakkys of hay."

"Irim de coelo misit Saturnia Juno Audacem ad Turnum. Luco tum forte parentis Pilumni Turnus sacrat? valle sedebat. Ad quem sic roseo Thaumantias ore locuta est."

We find it turned:--

"Juno that lyst not blyn Of hir auld malyce and iniquyte, Hir madyn Iris from hevin sendys sche To the bald Turnus malapart and stout; Quhilk for the tyme was wyth al his rout Amyd ane vale wonnder lovn and law, Syttand at eys within the hallowit schaw Of God Pilumnus his progenitor. Thamantis dochter knelys him before, I meyn Iris thys ilk fornamyt maide, And with hir rosy lippis thus him said."

"Thus ye have heard, readers, how many shifts and wiles the prelates have invented to save their ill-got booty. And if it be true, as in Scripture it is foretold, that pride and covetousness are the sure marks of those false prophets which are to come, then boldly conclude these to be as great seducers as any of the latter times. For between this and the judgment day do not look for any arch deceivers who, in spite of reformation, will use more craft or less shame to defend their love of the world and their ambition than these prelates have done. And if ye think that soundness of reason or what force of argument so ever shall bring them to an ingenuous silence, ye think that which shall never be. But if ye take that course which Erasmus was wont to say Luther took against the pope and monks: if ye denounce war against their riches and their bellies, ye shall soon discern that turban of pride which they wear upon their heads to be no helmet of salvation, but the mere metal and hornwork of papal jurisdiction; and that they have also this gift, like a certain kind of some that are possessed, to have their voice in their bellies, which, being well drained and taken down, their great oracle, which is only there, will soon be dumb, and the divine right of episcopacy forthwith expiring will put us no more to trouble with tedious antiquities and disputes."

And this is "a very little, only a very little, inferior," to the "Hydriotaphia"!

"But most by numbers judge a poet's song,

In the bright muse, tho' thousand charms conspire, Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire, Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear."

We must now conclude, though we have very far from exhausted the list of errors and misstatements, of absurdities in criticism and absurdities in theory, which we have noted. Bacon has observed that the best part of beauty is that which a picture cannot express. It may be said, with equal truth, of a bad book, that what is worst in it is precisely that which it is most difficult to submit to tangible tests. In other words, it lies not so much in its errors and inaccuracies, which, after all, may be mere trifles and excrescences, but it lies in its tone and colour, its flavour, its accent. Professor Saintsbury appears to be constitutionally incapable of distinguishing vulgarity and coarseness from liveliness and vigour. So far from having any pretension to the finer qualities of the critic, he seems to take a boisterous pride in exhibiting his grossness.

FOOTNOTES:

OUR LITERARY GUIDES

The author of this work has plainly not pondered the advice of Horace, "Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis, aequam viribus." His ambitious purpose is "to give the reader, whether familiar with books or not, a feeling of the evolution of English Literature in the primary sense of the term," and he adds that "to do this without relation to particular authors and particular works seems to me impossible." This may be conceded; for, a feeling of the evolution of English or of any other literature, without reference to particular authors and particular books, would be analogous to the capacity for feeling without anything to feel. But, unfortunately, those of Mr. Gosse's readers who wish to have the feeling to which he refers will merely find the conditions without which, as he so justly observes, the said feeling is impossible. In other words, references, in the form of loose and desultory gossip, to particular authors and particular works chronologically arranged, are all that represent the "evolution" of which he is so anxious "to give a feeling."

We have a similar illustration of the same thing in Mr. Gosse's account of Shaftesbury. We are told that he "was perhaps the greatest literary force between Dryden and Swift"; that "he deserves remembrance as the first who really broke down the barrier which excluded England from taking her proper place in the civilization of literary Europe"; that "he set an example for the kind of prose which was to mark the central years of the century"; that "his style glitters and rings, and ... yet so curious that one marvels that it should have fallen completely into neglect"; that "he was the first Englishman who developed theories of formal virtue, who attempted to harmonize the beautiful with the true and the good"; that the modern attitude of mind seems to meet us first in the graceful cosmopolitan writings of Shaftesbury; that "without a Shaftesbury there would hardly have been a Ruskin or a Pater." Such amazing nonsense almost confounds refutation by its sheer absurdity.

The melancholy thing about all this is the perfect impunity with which such works as these can be given to the public. We have not the smallest doubt that this book has been extolled to the skies in reviews which have not detected a single error in it, and which have accepted its generalizations and its criticisms with unquestioning credulity; and we have as little doubt that those scholars who have discerned its defects and absurdities have chosen, from motives possibly of kindness, possibly of prudence, and possibly in mere contempt, to maintain silence about them. Had it appeared twenty years ago, it would instantly have been exposed and exploded, indeed no writer would have dared to insult serious readers by such a publication. What every reader has a right to demand from those who take upon themselves to instruct him are sincerity, industry, and competence; and what no critic has a right to condone is ostentatious indifference on the part of an author to the responsibilities incurred by him in undertaking to teach the public.

LOG-ROLLING AND EDUCATION

We see no objection to Mutual Admiration Societies; they are institutions which afford much pleasure, and can, as a rule, do little harm. If vanity be a foible, it is a foible well worth cherishing, and will be treated tenderly even by a philosopher. For, of all the illusions which give a zest to life, the illusions created by this flattering passion are the most delightful and inspiring. They are so easily evoked; they respond with such impartial obsequiousness to the call of the humblest magician. He has but to speak the word--and they are made; to command--and they are created. A becomes what B and C pronounce him to be, and what A and C have done for B, that will B and A do in turn for C. It is a delicious occupation, no doubt, a feast for each, in which no crude surfeit reigns, where, in Bacon's phrase, satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable; it is like the herbage in the Paradise of the Spanish poet, "quanto mas se goza mas renace,"--the more we enjoy it the more it grows. It is an old game--"Vetus fabula per novos histriones":--

"'Twas, 'Sir, your law,' and 'Sir, your eloquence,' 'Yours Cowper's manner and yours Talbot's sense'; Thus we dispose of all poetic merit: Yours Milton's genius and mine Homer's spirit. Walk with respect behind, while we at ease Weave laurel crowns and take what name we please. 'My dear Tibullus!' if that will not do, Let me be Horace, and be Ovid you."

And there is this advantage. If a sufficient number of magicians can, or will, combine, these illusions may not only serve each magician for life, but become, for a time, simply indistinguishable from realities. Now, as we said before, we see no great harm in this. It is, to say the least, a very amiable and brotherly employment; and were it quite disinterested and honest, it would be closely allied with that virtue which St. Paul exalts above all virtues. But everything has or ought to have its limits. When Boswell attempted to defend certain Methodists who had been expelled from the University of Oxford, Johnson retorted that the University was perfectly right--"They were examined, and found to be mighty ignorant fellows." "But," said Boswell, "was it not hard to expel them? for I am told they were good beings." "I believe," replied the sage, "that they might be good beings, but they were not fit to be in the University of Oxford. A cow is a very good animal in the field, but we turn her out of a garden."

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