Howard R. Garis - "Uncle Wiggily in the Woods"

Anonymous - "The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran"

Herman Teirlinck - "'t Bedrijf van den kwade"

Bulstrode Whitelocke - "A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II."

Horace Smith - Interludes

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INTERLUDES
BEING
TWO ESSAYS, A STORY, AND SOME VERSES


BY
HORACE SMITH

London
MACMILLAN AND CO
AND NEW YORK
1892




ESSAYS.


I. ON CRITICISM.


Criticism is the art of judging. As reasonable persons we are called
upon to be constantly pronouncing 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 gods 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 principal 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 principally 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 passion 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 pass for wit;
Care not for feeling--pass 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 scraps of paper herself had torn. About her
played her children Noise and Impudence, Dulness and Vanity, Pedantry and
Ill-manners. The goddess herself had claws like a cat. Her head, ears,
and voice resembled those of an ass." 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 nobody 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 multitudes
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
Assizes. 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
coarsest 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 Dickens 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 nobody 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."

I ought here to mention the use, or rather misuse, of words which are
often called "slang," such as "awfully jolly," "fearfully tedious,"
"horribly dull," or the expression "quite alarming," which young ladies,
I think, have now happily forgotten, and the equally silly use of the
word "howling" by young men. Such expressions mean absolutely nothing,
and are destructive of intelligent conversation. A man was being tried
for a serious assault, and had used a violent and coarse expression
towards the prosecutor. "You must be careful not to be misled by the bad
language reported to have been used by the prisoner," said the judge.
"You will find from the evidence that he has applied the same expression
to his best friend, to a glass of beer, to his grandmother, his boots,
and his own eyes."

4. _Criticism should be strong_.

I hope from the remarks I have previously made it will not be supposed
that I think all criticism should be of a flat, neutral tint, or what may
be called the washy order. On the contrary, if criticism is not strong
it cannot lift a young genius out of the struggling crowd, and it cannot
beat down some bumptious impostor. If the critic really believes that a
new poet writes like Milton, or a new artist paints like Sir Joshua, let
him say so; or if he thinks any work vile or contemptible, let him say
so; but let him say so well. Mere exaggerated language, as we have seen,
is not strength; but if there is real strength in the criticism, and it
is proportionate and appropriate, it will effect its purpose. It will
free the genius, or it will crush the humbug. A good critic should be
feared:

"Good Lord, I wouldn't have that man
Attack me in the _Times_,"

was said of Jacob Omnium.

"Yes, I am proud, I own it, when I see
Men not afraid of God afraid of me,"

Pope said, and I can fancy with what a stern joy an honest critic would
arise and slay what he believed to be false and vicious. In no time was
the need of strong criticism greater than it is at present. The press is
teeming with rubbish and something worse. Everybody reads anything that
is published with sufficient flourish and advertisement, and those who
read have mostly no power of judging for themselves, nor would they be
turned from the garbage which seems to delight them by any gentle
persuasion. It is therefore most necessary that the critic should speak
out plainly and boldly, though with temper and discretion. I suppose we
have all of us read Lord Macaulay's criticism upon Robert Montgomery's
poems. The poems are, of course, forgotten; but the essay still lives as
a specimen of the terribly slashing style. This is the way one couplet
is dealt with--

"The soul aspiring pants its source to mount,
As streams meander level with their fount."

"We take this on the whole to be the worst similitude in the world. In
the first place, no stream meanders, or can possibly meander, level with
its fount. In the next place, if streams did meander level with their
founts, no two motions can be less like each other than that of
meandering level and that of mounting upwards. After saying that
lightning is designless and self-created, he says, a few lines further
on, that it is the Deity who bids

'the thunder rattle from the skiey deep.'

His theory is therefore this, that God made the thunder but the lightning
made itself." Of course, poor Robert Montgomery was crushed flat, and
rightly. Yet before this essay was written his poems had a larger
circulation than Southey or Coleridge, just as in our own time Martin
Tupper had a larger sale than Tennyson or Browning. Fancy if Tupper had
been treated in the same vein how the following lines would have fared:--

"Weep, relentless eye of Nature,
Drop some pity on the soil,
Every plant and every creature
Droops and faints in dusty toil."

What do the plants toil at? I thought we knew they toil not, neither do
they spin. It goes on--

"Then the cattle and the flowers
Yet shall raise their drooping heads,
And, refreshed by plenteous showers,
Lie down joyful in their beds."

Whether the flowers are to lie down in the cattle beds or the cattle are
to lie down in the flower beds does not perhaps distinctly appear, but I
venture to think that either catastrophe is not so much to be desired as
the poet seems to imagine.

In the Diary of Jeames yellowplush a couplet of Lord Lytton's _Sea
Captain_ is thus dealt with--

"Girl, beware,
The love that trifles round the charms it gilds
Oft ruins while it shines."

"Igsplane this men and angels! I've tried everyway, back'ards, for'ards,
and in all sorts of tranceposishons as thus--

The love that ruins round the charms it shines
Gilds while it trifles oft,

or

The charm that gilds around the love it ruins
Oft trifles while it shines,

or

The ruin that love gilds and shines around
Oft trifles while it charms,

or

Love while it charms, shines round and ruins oft
The trifles that it gilds,

or

The love that trifles, gilds, and ruins oft
While round the charms it shines.

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