Famous Reviews, Selected and Edited with Introductory Notes Part 11

But Lockhart was "more than a satirist and a snarler." His polished jibes were more mischievous than brutal. "This reticent, sensitive, attractive, yet dangerous youth ... slew his victims mostly by the midnight oil, not by any blaze of gaiety, or in the acc.u.mulative fervour of social sarcasm. From him came most of those sharp things which the victims could not forget.... Lockhart put in his sting in a moment, inveterate, instantaneous, with the effect of a barbed dart, yet almost, as it seemed, with the mere intention of giving point to his sentences, and no particular feeling at all."

Carlyle describes him as "a precise, brief, active person of considerable faculty, which however, had shaped itself _gigmanically_ only. Fond of quizzing, yet not _very_ maliciously. Has a broad, black brow, indicating force and penetration, but the lower half of the face diminis.h.i.+ng into the character at best of distinctness, almost of triviality."

There is certainly a good deal of perversity about the _abuse_ of Vathek, so startlingly combined with almost immoderate eulogy: to which the discriminating enthusiasm of his Coleridge affords a pleasing contrast.

It should be noticed that Lockhart has also been credited with the bitter critical part of the _Jane Eyre_ review, printed below--of which any man ought to have been ashamed--as Miss Rigby (afterwards Lady Eastlake) is believed to have written "the part about the governess." He probably had a hand in the Blackwood series on "The c.o.c.kney School of Poetry" (see below); and, in some ways, those reviews are more characteristic.

SIR WALTER SCOTT

(1771-1832)

It would be out of place here to enter upon any biography or criticism of the author of _Waverley_, or for that matter of Jane Austen. It is sufficient to notice that Scott has found something generous to say (in diaries, letters, or formal criticism) on every writer he had occasion to mention, and that in his somewhat neglected, but frequently quoted, _Lives of the Novelists_, a striking pre-eminence was given to women; particularly Mrs. Radcliffe and Clara Reeve. Indeed, the essay on Mrs.

Radcliffe, a "very novel and rather heretical revelation" is "probably the best in the whole set."

We remember, too, the famous pa.s.sage in his _General Preface to the Waverley Novels_:--"without being so presumptuous as to hope to emulate the rich humour, pathetic tenderness and admirable tact of my accomplished friend, I felt that something might be attempted for my own country, of the same kind with that which Miss Edgeworth so fortunately achieved for Ireland";--an ambition of which the modesty only equals the success achieved.

In "appreciating" Jane Austen, indeed, Scott is far more cautious, if not apologetic, than any critic of to-day would dream of being; but, when we remember the prejudices then existing against women writers (despite the popularity of Madame D'Arblay) and the well-nigh universal neglect accorded the author of _Pride and Prejudice_, we should perhaps rather marvel at the independent sincerity of his p.r.o.nounced praise. The article, at any rate, has historic significance, as the first serious recognition of her immortal work.

RICHARD WHATELY

(1787-1863)

The "dogmatical and crotchety" Archbishop of Dublin was looked at askance by the extreme Evangelicals of his day (though Thomas Arnold has eulogised his holiness), and there is no doubt that his theology, however able and sincere, was mainly inspired by the "daylight of ordinary reason and of historical fact," opposed to the dogmas of tradition. He combated sceptical criticism by an ingenious parody ent.i.tled "Historical Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte," and his epigram on the majority of preachers--that "they aim at nothing and they hit it," proves his freedom from any touch of sacerdotalism. His "Rhetoric," his "Logic," and his "Political Economy" were praised by so eminent a judge as John Stuart Mill, though criticised by Hamilton; and Lecky remarks on the "admirable lucidity of his style."

His work, however, was as a whole too fragmentary to become standard, and he regarded it himself as "the mission of his life to make up cartridges for others to fire."

We may notice that in writing of _Jane Austen_, only six years after Scott, though still measured and judicial, he permits himself a much more a.s.sured att.i.tude of applause; and the article affords most valuable indication of the steady progress by which her masterpieces achieved the supremacy now acknowledged by all.

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE

(1809-1898)

It would be no less impertinent, and unnecessary, to dwell in these pages upon the political, or literary, work of the greatest of modern premiers. It is sufficient to recall the certainty which used to follow a notice by Gladstone of a large and immediate rise in sales. Mr. John Morley remarking that Gladstone's "place is not in literary or critical history, but elsewhere," reminds us that his style was sometimes called Johnsonian, though without good ground.... Some critics charged him in 1840 with "prolix clearness." "The old charge," says Mr. Gladstone upon this, was obscure compression. I do not doubt that both may be true, and the former may have been the result of a well-meant effort to escape from the latter.

Mr. Morley, again, selects the essay on Tennyson for especial praise.

Though one is apt to forget it, the Laureate did not meet with anything like immediate recognition; and, though coming twenty-eight years after the appreciation by J.S. Mill, this article does not a.s.sume the supremacy afterwards accorded the poet by common consent.

SAMUEL WILBERFORCE

(1805-1873)

"One of the most conspicuous and remarkable figures" of his generation the versatile Bishop of Oxford is said to have come "next to Gladstone as a man of inexhaustible powers of work." Known from his Oxford days as Soapy Sam, he was involved through no fault of his own, in some of the odium attached to the "Essays and Reviews" and "Colenso" cases: his private life was embittered by the secession to Rome of his two brothers, his brother-in-law, his only daughter, and his son-in-law. "He was an unwearied ecclesiastical politician, always involved in discussions and controversies, sometimes, it was thought, in intrigues; without whom nothing was done in convocation, nor, where Church interests were involved, in the House of Lords." The energy with which he governed his diocese for twenty-four years earned for him the t.i.tle of "Romodeller [Transcriber's note: sic] of the Episcopate."

The attempt, by a man whose "relaxations" were botany and ornithology, but who had no claims to be called an expert, to defeat Darwin on his own ground--and the dignified horror of a Churchman at some deductions from evolution--is eminently characteristic of the period.

The earnest criticism of Newman's conversion to Rome concerns one of the most striking events of his generation, and ill.u.s.trates the "church"

att.i.tude on such questions.

ANONYMOUS

We have hinted already that the responsibility for this group of ill-mannered recriminations may probably be distributed between Gifford, Croker, and Lockhart. It is curious to notice that the second attack on Scott appeared after his admission to the ranks of contributors; and the author of _Waverley_ is perhaps the one man said to have friends both on the _Edinburgh_ and the _Quarterly_. That on Leigh Hunt, always the pet topic of Toryism, from whom he certainly provoked some retaliation, is only paralleled in _Blackwood_. We have included the _Shakespeare_ and the _Moxon_ as attractively brief samples on the approved model of savage banter, and the _Jane Eyre_ as perhaps the most flagrant example of bad taste to be found in these merciless pages. It was George Henry Lewis, by the way, who so much offended Charlotte Bronte by the greeting, "There ought to be a bond between us, for we have both written naughty books."

It is interesting to find Thackeray among those it was permitted to praise: though the "moral" objection to his "realism" reveals a strange att.i.tude.

We may notice, with some surprise, that the att.i.tude towards George Eliot is nearly as hostile as towards Charlotte Bronte.

GIFFORD ON WEBER'S "FORD"

[From _The Quarterly Review_, December, 1811]

... When it is determined to reprint the writings of an ancient author, it is usual, we believe, to bestow a little labour in gratifying the natural desire of the reader to know something of his domestic circ.u.mstances. Ford had declared in the t.i.tle-pages of his several plays, that he was of the Inner Temple; and, from his entry there, Mr.

Malone, following up the inquiry, discovered that he was the second son of Thomas Ford, Esq., and that he was baptized at Ilsington, in Devons.h.i.+re, the 17th of April, 1586. To this information Mr. Weber has added nothing; and he hopes that the meagreness of his biographical account will be readily excused by the reader who has examined the lives of his (Ford's) dramatical contemporaries, in which we are continually "led to lament that our knowledge respecting them amounts to little better than nothing." It would surely be unjust to appear dissatisfied at the imperfect account of an ancient author, when all the sources of information have been industriously explored. But, in the present case, we doubt whether Mr. Weber can safely "lay this flattering unction to his soul"; and we shall therefore give such a sketch of the poet's life, as an attentive examination of his writings has enabled us to compile....

Reversing the observation of Dryden on Shakespeare, it may be said of Ford that "he wrote laboriously, not luckily": always elegant, often elevated, never sublime, he accomplished by patient and careful industry what Shakespeare and Fletcher produced by the spontaneous exuberance of native genius. He seems to have acquired early in life, and to have retained to the last a softness of versification peculiar to himself.

Without the majestic march of verse which distinguishes the poetry of Ma.s.singer, and with none of that playful gaiety which characterises the dialogue of Fletcher, he is still easy and harmonious. There is, however, a monotony in his poetry, which those who have perused his scenes long together must have inevitably perceived. His dialogue is declamatory and formal, and wants that quick chace of replication and rejoinder so necessary to effect in representation. If we could put out of our remembrance the singular merits of "The Lady's Trial," we should consider the genius of Ford as altogether inclined to tragedy; and even there so large a proportion of the pathetic pervades the drama, that it requires the "humours" of Guzman and Fulgoso, in addition to a happy catastrophe, to warrant the name of comedy. In the plots of his tragedies Ford is far from judicious; they are for the most part too full of the horrible, and he seems to have had recourse to an acc.u.mulation of terrific incidents, to obtain that effect which he despairs of producing by pathos of language. Another defect in Ford's poetry, proceeding from the same source, is the alloy of pedantry which pervades his scenes, at one time exhibited in the composition of uncouth phrases, at another in perplexity of language; and he frequently labours with a remote idea, which, rather than throw it away, he obtrudes upon his reader, involved in inextricable obscurity. We cannot agree with the editor in praising his delineation of the female character: less than women in their pa.s.sions, they are more than masculine in their exploits and sufferings; but, excepting Spinella in "The Lady's Trial," and perhaps Penthea, we do not remember in Ford's plays, any example of that meekness and modesty which compose the charm of the female character....

Mr. Weber is known to the admirers of our antient literature by two publications which, although they may not be deemed of great importance in themselves, have yet a fair claim to notice. We speak of the battle of Flodden Field, and the Romances of the fourteenth century: which, as far as we have looked into them, appear very creditable to his industry and accuracy: his good genius, we sincerely regret to say, appears in a great measure to have forsaken him from the moment that he entered upon the task of editing a dramatic poet.

In the mechanical construction of his work Mr. Weber has followed the last edition of Ma.s.singer, with a servility which appears, in his mind, to have obviated all necessity of acknowledging the obligation: we will not stop to enquire whether he might not have found a better model; but proceed to the body of the work. As we feel a warm interest in everything which regards our ancient literature, on the sober cultivation of which the purity, copiousness, and even harmony of the English language must, in no small degree, depend, we shall notice some of the peculiarities of the volumes before us, in the earnest hope that while we relieve Ford from a few of the errors and misrepresentations with which he is here enc.u.mbered, we may convince Mr. Weber that something more is necessary to a faithful editor than the copying of printers' blunders, and to a judicious commentator, than a blind confidence in the notes of every collection of old plays.

Mr. Weber's attempts at explanation (for explanations it seems, there must be) are sometimes sufficiently humble. "Carriage," he tells us, "is behaviour." It is so; we remember it in our spelling-book, among the words of three syllables, we have therefore no doubt of it. But you must have, rejoins the editor; and accordingly, in every third or fourth page, he persists in affirming that "carriage is behaviour." In the same strain of thankless kindness, he a.s.sures us that "fond is foolish,"

"but, except," "content, contentment," and _vice versa_, "period [Transcriber's note: 'peroid' in original], end," "demur, delay," "ever, always," "sudden, quickly," "quick, suddenly," and so on through a long vocabulary of words of which a girl of six years old would blush to ask the meaning....

The confidence which Mr. Weber reposes in Steevens, not only on one but on every occasion, is quite exemplary: the name alone operates as a charm, and supersedes all necessity of examining into the truth of his a.s.sertions; and he gently reminds those who occasionally venture to question it, that "they are ignorant and superficial critics." Vol. ii, p. 256.--"I have seen Summer go up and down with _hot codlings!_ Mr.

Steevens observes that a codling _antiently_ meant an immature apple, and the present pa.s.sage _plainly_ proves it, as none but immature apples could be had in summer," all this wisdom is thrown away. We can a.s.sure Mr. Weber, on the authority of Ford himself, that "hot codlings" are _not_ apples, either mature or immature. Steevens is a dangerous guide for such as do not look well about them. His errors are specious: for he was a man of ingenuity: but he was often wantonly mischievous, and delighted to stumble for the mere gratification of dragging unsuspecting innocents into the mire with him. He was, in short, the very Puck of commentators....

No writer, in our remembrance, meets with so many "singular words" as the present editor. He conjectures, however, that _unvamp'd_ means _disclosed_. It means not stale, not patched up. We should have supposed it impossible to miss the sense of so trite an expression.... Mr.

Weber's acquaintance with our dramatic writers extends, as the reader must have observed, very little beyond the indexes of Steevens and Reed.

If he cannot find the word of which he is in quest, in them, he sets it down as an uncommon expression, or a coinage of his author....