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g 32 THE LEADER. fNo. 311. ft«™«.. -
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Critics are not tne legislators, but the...
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¦" Nothing is easier than criticism." A ...
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AFTER DARK. • After Dark. By Wilklo Coll...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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G 32 The Leader. Fno. 311. Ft«™«.. -
g THE LEADER . fNo . 311 . ft «™« ..
~^.,» » Je-Iijitfltxtr^*
Uttmitott .
Critics Are Not Tne Legislators, But The...
Critics are not tne legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws— -they interpret and try to enforce them .-Edinburgh Hevieio .
¦" Nothing Is Easier Than Criticism." A ...
¦ " Nothing is easier than criticism . " A more popular or more foolish saying it is not easy to find . The currency of the fallacy is secured by the obviousness of the fact tlat men find it easy to criticise . But this no more proves criticism to be easy , than the abundance of bad painters , bad sculptors , bad architects , bad musicians , and detestable poets , proves Art to be easy . No one doubts the facility with which bad criticism may be produced ; but ' good criticism is as rare , perhaps even rarer , than good art . La critique est ais £ e , l ' art est difficile , said Destouches , in a neat epigram which has been incessantly quoted ; and quoted even loy Frenchmen as having been said by Boileau ; though if the reader will turn to the comedy of Le Glorieux , he will find the line there , with many other happy lines : among them , this also usually attributed to Boileaxj— Chasaez le nature ! , il revient au galop ( how superior to the naturam expellas furcd tamen usque recurret , which is miserably weak )! To return to Criticism , which Longinus — Wio was himself the great sublime he drew—( he wasn ' t , buttbe line is a good one ) declares to be the " last result of abundant experience , " ami which every one who reflects awhile will see to he a-very rare and admirable result , we cannot wonder if its reputation has been tarnished somewnat , and itself pronounced a thing easy , futile , andimpertinent , seeing on the one hand that bad specimens have been albundant , and on the other that bad artists have had an interest in decrying it . " When some one in the presence of Sophie ARNotfLD said , " Aujourdhui Vesprit court les rues / ' the wifty creature retorted , " & est un bruit que les sots font et " * t % r '' When we hear , as we often hear , that " Criticism is easy , art difficulty we are tempted to exclaim , " that is an opinion wWeh bad artists ^ omul gaie . " Ii is natural that the criticised should think meanly of the eritac ^ ilnless the critic is complaisant . But consider what an union of Realties good criticism demanas : it must understand clearl y and feel keenly , ^ fl ^ t / be almost as sensitive to beauty as the artist , and must be able to explain what the artist Is able only to feel . A great critic is a marvel ; a good critic israrer than a good artist ; bad critics are indeed no rarity , but the bad artists outnumber them . Does any one suppose that a Ruskin , for exathjple , is more ' easily produced than a whole body of R . A . ' s ? Will any qne niaintain that Germany has not produced more " great names in art than in criticism , and . that .-a Lessincj and a Wimckelmann are not rarer produces thaaa Cornelius , aSchw ^ nthaleb , aHubneh , or a Kaulbach ? ^ ^^ ? 1 Jetting mti < assm aboye avt , nor even in any degree on a level with it . ^ fWe are not greatly ; impressed with the value of criticism , even when " *?** admirable . We point simply to the fact that it is rareand not
, easy . In truth cntwism , even of a mediocre kind , is not very abundant ; abundant , indeed , are the essays and reviews ' about and about' book , picture ! statue , or opera ; but judgments thereon formed after thorough examination ] and pronounced with dear honest calmness , are naturally rare . Journals cannot pretend to deliver such judgments . Even supposing we , the journalists , were gifted with the requisite knowledge and the requisite faculties , the limits of a journal , and the necessary haste of journalism , would
ptevent our judging every work according to fixed principles , and the broad impartialities of evidence . "We are but " tasters" for the public- our criticisms are but " printed talk . " If we can say what we have to say honestly , and let it stand for no more than the opinion of one man , our office is performed . Nor a * e writers in Magazines and Quarterlies much better . They have indeed the requisite leisure and the requisite space , but they seldom occupy the on « or fill the other with real criticism . It is easier to wnt ^ an essay . It is easier to write about a subject . The ease is seduction and . criticism is seldom ) attempted . *
This plmdoger in favour of criticism suggests an excuse for the shortcoming which we foresee in our notice of the Magazines this month . Perhaps the reader thmks our monthly task of magazine-reviewing is an easy ond . Strange ejror I Easy 7 Why , over and above the inherent difficulties in all criticism , there are other extraneous difficulties worth mentioning . The Magazines hayq to be read ; and that'is not easy , as any one will vouch who tries rhen the multiplicity of subjects , and the exiguity of our limits would bewilder an 4 oppress the most confident mind . We have but one resource . men a man's correspondence becomes unmanageable ho adopts the simple $ &? . ??* 2 * , ft » 8 wering letters j and the majority of letters then answer them-8
e » ves ; Wo shall adopt this plan , and instead of criticising , simply note here find tlicre on article which suggests a comment . nS ^ if ^ T' ^ xaTO * ' thero ifl a cu « oua P ^ er on " The Caxtons and ©^ Wfe ?^*? . ^ . 'furious , as showing with minute detail how closely : i ^^ ¥ , K'Wv ?" ^ . ** e wanner , characters , and incidents of Stkrnb ^ Sggjf *» w * ^ dem were fully conscious of in a general way , but SSS ? S ^^ - ^ ^/^ e ^ atw than we imagined ) , and almost as Cm Wmi ^ wm ™ mth which the writer starts , that -few of the
present generation , we dare say , have ever perused Tristram Skandy , " a sunposition which actually leads him to give a biographical sketch of Stern « by way of instructing an ignorant public . In what hermitage can this writer have lived that he should fall into such gratuitous suppositions as this ? In Blackwood there is an account of Monteil , the author of I'Histnire des Francois des Divers etats , which is extremely interesting , partly for the glimpse it gives us of Monteil , and partly for tlie description of his history which we have oft . en seen noticed , but which this article , by giving us a distinct idea of what the book is , has made us anxious to read . Here is an example of " literary tasting " and its service . Before spending money and patience on a history , one is glad to know what manner of book it is ; and there are books of a certain kind which are always worth their cost , no matter how poor the mere literature may be .
In Putnam ' s Monthly we were , not unnaturally , attracted by an article on the Life of Goethe , it being instructive to see what our Transatlantic friends have to say on that subject . The writer has a profound admiration for Goethe , and a slightly mitigated contempt for the biographer , whose * shallowness ' he thus discriminatingly rebukes : — The critical parts of it we cannot estimate very highly . Mr . Lewes '* principleof art are so superficial , founded as they are on the shallowest of all philosophies ' when applied to the deeper problems of art , that his judgments of Goethe ' s works are not always worthy . Their more obvious rhetorical qualities he feels rnd appreciates ; but their interior significance , their real artistic Talue , he often misses . Cherishing a kind of phobia , as every Positivist must , against everything that does not he on the surface as plain as the nose on your face , and having adopted , at the outset , that stupid commonplace of some of the Germans / that Goethe wasaReahst while Schiller was an Idealist , he flurries -and flounders , before the Wilhelin Meisjter and . the Faust , like a frail coasting shallop suddenly driven iar to sea . EDe persists , too , in trying to measure the vast billowy waters with the lane and lead that may have served him so well among his native creeps and inlets . o
And subsequently : — Without dwelling , however , upon the mere literary - excellence of Goethe ' s performances , or even , attempting a general characterisation of Ms literary genius let us proceed to explain why he is called so emphatically the artist of his a « e . It is the more important because his biographer , true to the behests of an incompetent philosophy , seems to ignore this as part of the matter altogether , and stands dumbfounded in the presence of the pervading symbolism of Goethe ' s writings A -work of art , as -well as a product of nature , is to him a simple fact , having relations to other facts , hut no inward spiritual meaning . He iss , therefore , perpetually quarrelling with what he terms the mysticism of Goethe ( although he lias already pronounced him a great realist ) , and ia pained at the obvious lapse of his faculties irithe latter parts of the Meister and the Faust . But this " mysticism " is as much a part of his being as his clearness of vision , or his serene wisdom , and demands as much the nicest study on the part of his critics .
And that our readers may not lose the benefit of the profound insight which this critic has himself attained we conclude with a passage which follows his description of the second part of Faust : — This is , of course , the very meagerest outline of Goethe's r ichly varied magnificent representation—like a single thread drawn from a tissue of cloth of gold—and yet , we venture to say , that it will not fall upon the reader with a stronger' sense of Hie impotence of tit ? conclusion than the original does , amid all its splendid accessories of music and picture . For everybody must feel , how much soever he may be im pressed "by the miraculous vigour and variety of the poem , that it nowhere strike the highest key ; that it nowhere niters the demiurgic word ; and that the massive and beautiful world it builds up in tho realm of thought is , after all , a bubble world , destined to no continuous life , as in gorgeous sunset we see innumei able coloured lights dart and flash among the gold and silver-edged clouds , but wo do not behold the sun . Glimpses there are of the great open Becret of destiuy , in that high , doctrine of spontaneous labour for the good of others , in that immortal
line"Das Ewiff-Wcibliche zicht wns hinan ;" but the author has not surrendered himself fully ^ nd joyously to its divine inspiration . Neither he nor his age felt ,, though it might have seen , nor does our age feel while it sees , what was proclaimed eighteen hundred years ago , that out of the heart are the issues of life ; that goodness is greater than truth ; that affection is better than culture ; that wisdom is only wisdom in so far as it is a manifestation of love . We are sure Mr . Lkwes will share the critic ' s regret that Goethe " nowhere utters the demiurgic word " ( whatever that rnay be—perhaps the kov $ o [ . nra $ of the Eleusinian mysteries as practised in America ?) and we trust tlmt Mr . Lewiss will at once discard his incompetent philosophy in favour of this demiurgic depth . The only difficulty which strikes us is geometric , namely , how , in that caue , will he correlate the Infinite ?
After Dark. • After Dark. By Wilklo Coll...
AFTER DARK . After Dark . By Wilklo Collins , author of Basil , Hide and Seek , § -c . Two volume ? . Smith , Kldor and Co , After DarJc is not , as many may suppose from the title , a novel representing scenes of life which shun tho daylight—n series of pictures representing the haunts and ways of the night-Virds whose existence is the scandal of civilisation - —• hut a series of storiea told b y an Artist to his wife , when the dny is done , uml the children are in bed . The stories , with , ono exception , have already appeared in print , and having been much admired , Mr . Collins v < ry naturally thought of republishing them in somo convenient form . But judging from tho luckless attempts almost uniforml y made to frame a sorics of stories in n connected narrative , it would seem that next to the rarity of a new invention in the shape of a story , is the rarity of a new and acceptable invention in the ahape of a fiction which shall introduce a series of stones . Instead of being an extra chnrm , mi additional interest , the canvas is usually a necdloa *
impertinence , n screen of opaque verbiage , Mr . Wilkio Collins has been happy xn hia choice of a thread whereon to string tlie pearls . Without overcoming the main difficulty , without making us forget that the thread J * n inero
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), March 8, 1856, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_08031856/page/16/
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