CHAPTER II. THE CRITICS. THE art of criticism can never be a heroic art. Of its nature and essence it is secondary, since until there is a literature to be judged, no tribunal of judgment can be formed. It is at best but the aftermath of every intellectual harvest, and it is often the very last and feeblest growth of an exhausted soil. But the more literature grows, and the more widely education is diffused, the more this secondary art will spread and flourish. It is not possible, when the world of readers is extended to the very limits of space, that they can all, or even a tithe of them, judge for themselves; it is not possible even that they should know the mere names of the books which are hurrying from all the printing-presses with a view to their edification; and thus the race of middlemen become indispensable in letters, as in so many other spheres. It has come in our own days to unparalleled importance, and is almost worthy to be counted as one of the learned professions - at least, if not one of the learned professions, as a practical byway in which a large number of intelligences nominally belonging to these, get bread and get importance. It is a dangerous art dangerous to the public, who are often badly guided, though the perils in this respect are largely modified by a native instinct, which keeps the mass tolerably right whatever advice may be lavished on it; dangerous to authors, who are often injured and irritated, and sometimes embittered beyond redemption, by assaults made in pure gaiété de cœur; and, above all, dangerous to the critics themselves, who can hardly fail, in the long run, to feel themselves as superior in reality to the writers they discuss as they seem at the moment of discussion by means of the artificial platform to which their judgeship raises them. As the office is voluntary, and as it is most frequently anonymous, it is a most fruitful source of literary impertinence and flippancy, and very destructive to every natural sentiment of respect and veneration. When a young man, fresh from college, with no particular qualification but the gift of writing tolerable prose, finds himself set up on a veiled and visionary throne, from which he can throw forth his thunderbolts on the loftiest head, with the certainty of producing more amusement the more daring his strictures and the sharper his hits may be, he would be more than mortal if he did not yield to the temptation. fore, in all ages critics have been the natural enemies, the disgust, or the terror of authors; and in proportion as they have been wittily insolent and cleverly unjust, have they been relished by the keen appetite of the public and encouraged by the crowd. There are few things so amusing as to read a really "slashing article"-except perhaps to write it. It is infinitely There easier and gayer work than a well-weighed and serious criticism, and will always be more popular. The lively and brilliant examples of the art which dwell in the mind of the reader are invariably of this class. If we remember with horror the article that was said (but with very partial truth) to have killed poor Keats, we prepare ourselves for pleasure when we see Macaulay draw a book towards him and whet the knife which is "to cut it up." In the present day of critical newspapers, those which we know as illnatured are always the most popular. It affords opportunities for making fun of the finest genius to those who are acquainted with the way of it: and in no other way can a little faculty go so far. It is not our intention by these prefatory remarks to undervalue the wonderful new development of the art of criticism which took place in the beginning of the present century. We think, indeed, that, like so many other things, having been unduly celebrated to all the echoes as something more brilliant than was ever known before, it has fallen into somewhat unmerited shadow now. Those who desire to know what criticism was before its time, may judge by such productions as Gifford's Baviad and Maviad, in which, indeed, the authors criticised are of so small an order that it is scarcely necessary to name them in a history of literature, though they might afford an amusing chapter from their very foolishness, did space permit. The follies of Della Crusca, the Laura Matildas, the Julias, the Edwins and Annas, were all swept away, it is said, by Gifford's sharp birch broom but the delicacies of style with which the critic treated his subject are remarkable, to say the least. "Most of these fashionable writers were connected with the public prints," he says of one group of harmless rhymesters; "Della Crusca was a worthy coadjutor of the mad and malignant idiot who conducted the World; Edwin and Anna Matilda were favoured contributors to several; and Laura Maria, from the sums squandered on puffs, could command a corner in all. This wretched woman, indeed, in the wane of her beauty, fell into merited poverty, exchanged poetry for politics, and wrote abusive trash against the Government, at the rate of two guineas a week, for the Morning Post." This was the style which the literary critic used in these days; and when we add that the "wretched woman" thus described had sinned no further against literature than by sending foolish verses to a newspaper, the reader will be doubly impressed by the value of this critic's corrections. Southey and Coleridge were then supporting their young households by the two guineas weekly, which each of them earned by verses in the Morning Post or Chronicle, and there was nothing either undignified or unusual in this mode of publication. But Coleridge and Southey were higher game, and Gifford does not seem to have touched them with his rude hand. He was one of those writers whom, having no other distinction, and no special place in literature, we can call only literary men. He has a kind of mild poetical standing on the score of some "copies of verses," one of which one of which-"I wish I were where Anna lies "-is very little superior to the productions he demolished so ruthlessly, and has the additional disadvantage of recalling to us, and risking a comparison with, one of the most touching of primitive ballads, the heartrending history of Helen of Kirkconnel,1 well known to all lovers of song. But except by these verses, Gifford's sole claim to recollection is his critical work, and his position as the editor of the Anti-Jacobin and the first series of the Quarterly, in which last office this bitter scribbler "put pepper into the quill "with which Mr. Wilson Croker (upon whom Macaulay afterwards executed poetic justice) did all he could to assassinate poor young Keats. Gifford had begun life very humbly, and his Anna was his housekeeper -an appropriate muse. It was, however, a much finer hand which wielded the scourge upon the larger names which in that day graced the Poets' Corner of the Morning Post and Chronicle: and the chastisement thus inflicted has taken a permanent place in literature not accorded to the poetical trifles which called it forth. George Canning is one of the most brilliant names. 1 It is not a bad lesson in literary taste to compare the awful critic's verses with those of the national poet : I wish I were where Anna lies, For I am sick of lingering here; Go and partake her humble bier. I wish I could; for when she died |