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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.

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.

"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."

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.

"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.

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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."

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:

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.

"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,

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

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

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

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

All which are as sensable as the fust passidge."

Dryden added coarseness to strength in his remarks when he wrote of one of Settle's plays:--"To conclude this act with the most rumbling piece of nonsense spoken yet--

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