CHAPTER III

The Author’s obligations to critics, and the probable

occasion--Principles of modern criticism--Mr. Southey’s works and

character.

To anonymous critics in reviews, magazines, and news-journals of various

name and rank, and to satirists with or without a name in verse or

prose, or in verse-text aided by prose-comment, I do seriously believe

and profess, that I owe full two-thirds of whatever reputation and

publicity I happen to possess. For when the name of an individual has

occurred so frequently, in so many works, for so great a length of time,

the readers of these works--(which with a shelf or two of beauties,

elegant Extracts and Anas, form nine-tenths of the reading of the

reading Public [14])--cannot but be familiar with the name, without

distinctly remembering whether it was introduced for eulogy or for

censure. And this becomes the more likely, if (as I believe) the

habit of perusing periodical works may be properly added to Averroes’

catalogue of Anti-Mnemonics, or weakeners of the memory [15]. But where

this has not been the case, yet the reader will be apt to suspect that

there must be something more than usually strong and extensive in

a reputation, that could either require or stand so merciless

and long-continued a cannonading. Without any feeling of anger

therefore--(for which indeed, on my own account, I have no pretext)--I

may yet be allowed to express some degree of surprise, that, after

having run the critical gauntlet for a certain class of faults which

I had, nothing having come before the judgment-seat in the interim, I

should, year after year, quarter after quarter, month after month--(not

to mention sundry petty periodicals of still quicker revolution,

“or weekly or diurnal”)--have been, for at least seventeen years

consecutively, dragged forth by them into the foremost ranks of the

proscribed, and forced to abide the brunt of abuse, for faults directly

opposite, and which I certainly had not. How shall I explain this?

Whatever may have been the case with others, I certainly cannot

attribute this persecution to personal dislike, or to envy, or to

feelings of vindictive animosity. Not to the former, for with the

exception of a very few who are my intimate friends, and were so before

they were known as authors, I have had little other acquaintance

with literary characters, than what may be implied in an accidental

introduction, or casual meeting in a mixed company. And as far as words

and looks can be trusted, I must believe that, even in these instances,

I had excited no unfriendly disposition. Neither by letter, nor in

conversation, have I ever had dispute or controversy beyond the common

social interchange of opinions. Nay, where I had reason to suppose my

convictions fundamentally different, it has been my habit, and I may

add, the impulse of my nature, to assign the grounds of my belief,

rather than the belief itself; and not to express dissent, till I could

establish some points of complete sympathy, some grounds common to both

sides, from which to commence its explanation.

Still less can I place these attacks to the charge of envy. The few

pages which I have published, are of too distant a date, and the extent

of their sale a proof too conclusive against their having been popular

at any time, to render probable, I had almost said possible, the

excitement of envy on their account; and the man who should envy me on

any other, verily he must be envy-mad!

Lastly, with as little semblance of reason, could I suspect any

animosity towards me from vindictive feelings as the cause. I have

before said, that my acquaintance with literary men has been limited and

distant; and that I have had neither dispute nor controversy. From my

first entrance into life, I have, with few and short intervals, lived

either abroad or in retirement. My different essays on subjects of

national interest, published at different times, first in the Morning

Post and then in the Courier, with my courses of Lectures on the

principles of criticism as applied to Shakespeare and Milton, constitute

my whole publicity; the only occasions on which I could offend any

member of the republic of letters. With one solitary exception in

which my words were first misstated and then wantonly applied to an

individual, I could never learn that I had excited the displeasure of

any among my literary contemporaries. Having announced my intention to

give a course of Lectures on the characteristic merits and defects of

English poetry in its different aeras; first, from Chaucer to Milton;

second, from Dryden inclusively to Thomson; and third, from Cowper to

the present day; I changed my plan, and confined my disquisition to the

former two periods, that I might furnish no possible pretext for the

unthinking to misconstrue, or the malignant to misapply my words, and

having stamped their own meaning on them, to pass them as current coin

in the marts of garrulity or detraction.

Praises of the unworthy are felt by ardent minds as robberies of the

deserving; and it is too true, and too frequent, that Bacon, Harrington,

Machiavel, and Spinoza, are not read, because Hume, Condillac, and

Voltaire are. But in promiscuous company no prudent man will oppugn

the merits of a contemporary in his own supposed department; contenting

himself with praising in his turn those whom he deems excellent. If

I should ever deem it my duty at all to oppose the pretensions of

individuals, I would oppose them in books which could be weighed and

answered, in which I could evolve the whole of my reasons and feelings,

with their requisite limits and modifications; not in irrecoverable

conversation, where however strong the reasons might be, the feelings

that prompted them would assuredly be attributed by some one or other

to envy and discontent. Besides I well know, and, I trust, have acted on

that knowledge, that it must be the ignorant and injudicious who extol

the unworthy; and the eulogies of critics without taste or judgment are

the natural reward of authors without feeling or genius. Sint unicuique

sua praemia.

How then, dismissing, as I do, these three causes, am I to account for

attacks, the long continuance and inveteracy of which it would require

all three to explain? The solution seems to be this,--I was in habits of

intimacy with Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Southey! This, however, transfers,

rather than removes the difficulty. Be it, that, by an unconscionable

extension of the old adage, noscitur a socio, my literary friends are

never under the water-fall of criticism, but I must be wet through with

the spray; yet how came the torrent to descend upon them?

First then, with regard to Mr. Southey. I well remember the general

reception of his earlier publications; namely, the poems published with

Mr. Lovell under the names of Moschus and Bion; the two volumes of poems

under his own name, and the Joan of Arc. The censures of the critics by

profession are extant, and may be easily referred to:--careless lines,

inequality in the merit of the different poems, and (in the lighter

works) a predilection for the strange and whimsical; in short, such

faults as might have been anticipated in a young and rapid writer, were

indeed sufficiently enforced. Nor was there at that time wanting a party

spirit to aggravate the defects of a poet, who with all the courage of

uncorrupted youth had avowed his zeal for a cause, which he deemed

that of liberty, and his abhorrence of oppression by whatever name

consecrated. But it was as little objected by others, as dreamed of by

the poet himself, that he preferred careless and prosaic lines on rule

and of forethought, or indeed that he pretended to any other art or

theory of poetic diction, except that which we may all learn from

Horace, Quinctilian, the admirable dialogue, De Oratoribus, generally

attributed to Tacitus, or Strada’s Prolusions; if indeed natural good

sense and the early study of the best models in his own language had

not infused the same maxims more securely, and, if I may venture the

expression, more vitally. All that could have been fairly deduced was,

that in his taste and estimation of writers Mr. Southey agreed far more

with Thomas Warton, than with Dr. Johnson. Nor do I mean to deny, that

at all times Mr. Southey was of the same mind with Sir Philip Sidney in

preferring an excellent ballad in the humblest style of poetry to twenty

indifferent poems that strutted in the highest. And by what have his

works, published since then, been characterized, each more strikingly

than the preceding, but by greater splendour, a deeper pathos,

profounder reflections, and a more sustained dignity of language and of

metre? Distant may the period be, but whenever the time shall come,

when all his works shall be collected by some editor worthy to be his

biographer, I trust that an appendix of excerpta of all the passages,

in which his writings, name, and character have been attacked, from

the pamphlets and periodical works of the last twenty years, may be an

accompaniment. Yet that it would prove medicinal in after times I dare

not hope; for as long as there are readers to be delighted with calumny,

there will be found reviewers to calumniate. And such readers will

become in all probability more numerous, in proportion as a still

greater diffusion of literature shall produce an increase of sciolists,

and sciolism bring with it petulance and presumption. In times of old,

books were as religious oracles; as literature advanced, they next

became venerable preceptors; they then descended to the rank of

instructive friends; and, as their numbers increased, they sank still

lower to that of entertaining companions; and at present they seem

degraded into culprits to hold up their hands at the bar of every

self-elected, yet not the less peremptory, judge, who chooses to write

from humour or interest, from enmity or arrogance, and to abide the

decision “of him that reads in malice, or him that reads after dinner.”

The same retrograde movement may be traced, in the relation which the

authors themselves have assumed towards their readers. From the lofty

address of Bacon: “these are the meditations of Francis of Verulam,

which that posterity should be possessed of, he deemed their interest:”

or from dedication to Monarch or Pontiff, in which the honour given was

asserted in equipoise to the patronage acknowledged: from Pindar’s

------’ep’ alloi--

si d’alloi megaloi: to d’eschaton koryphoutai

basilensi. Maeketi

paptaine porsion.

Eiae se te touton

upsou chronon patein, eme

te tossade nikaphorois

omilein, prophanton sophian kath’ Ellanas

eonta panta.--OLYMP. OD. I.

there was a gradual sinking in the etiquette or allowed style of

pretension.

Poets and Philosophers, rendered diffident by their very number,

addressed themselves to “learned readers;” then aimed to conciliate

the graces of “the candid reader;” till, the critic still rising as the

author sank, the amateurs of literature collectively were erected into a

municipality of judges, and addressed as the Town! And now, finally,

all men being supposed able to read, and all readers able to judge,

the multitudinous Public, shaped into personal unity by the magic of

abstraction, sits nominal despot on the throne of criticism. But, alas!

as in other despotisms, it but echoes the decisions of its invisible

ministers, whose intellectual claims to the guardianship of the Muses

seem, for the greater part, analogous to the physical qualifications

which adapt their oriental brethren for the superintendence of the

Harem. Thus it is said, that St. Nepomuc was installed the guardian of

bridges, because he had fallen over one, and sunk out of sight; thus

too St. Cecilia is said to have been first propitiated by musicians,

because, having failed in her own attempts, she had taken a dislike to

the art and all its successful professors. But I shall probably have

occasion hereafter to deliver my convictions more at large concerning

this state of things, and its influences on taste, genius and morality.

In the Thalaba, the Madoc, and still more evidently in the unique [16]

Cid, in the Kehama, and, as last, so best, the Roderick; Southey has

given abundant proof, se cogitare quam sit magnum dare aliquid in manus

hominum: nec persuadere sibi posse, non saepe tractandum quod placere

et semper et omnibus cupiat. But on the other hand, I conceive, that Mr.

Southey was quite unable to comprehend, wherein could consist the crime

or mischief of printing half a dozen or more playful poems; or to speak

more generally, compositions which would be enjoyed or passed over,

according as the taste and humour of the reader might chance to be;

provided they contained nothing immoral. In the present age periturae

parcere chartae is emphatically an unreasonable demand. The merest

trifle he ever sent abroad had tenfold better claims to its ink and

paper than all the silly criticisms on it, which proved no more than

that the critic was not one of those, for whom the trifle was written;

and than all the grave exhortations to a greater reverence for the

public--as if the passive page of a book, by having an epigram or

doggerel tale impressed on it, instantly assumed at once loco-motive

power and a sort of ubiquity, so as to flutter and buz in the ear of the

public to the sore annoyance of the said mysterious personage. But what

gives an additional and more ludicrous absurdity to these lamentations

is the curious fact, that if in a volume of poetry the critic should

find poem or passage which he deems more especially worthless, he

is sure to select and reprint it in the review; by which, on his own

grounds, he wastes as much more paper than the author, as the copies of

a fashionable review are more numerous than those of the original book;

in some, and those the most prominent instances, as ten thousand to five

hundred. I know nothing that surpasses the vileness of deciding on the

merits of a poet or painter,--(not by characteristic defects; for where

there is genius, these always point to his characteristic beauties;

but)--by accidental failures or faulty passages; except the impudence

of defending it, as the proper duty, and most instructive part, of

criticism. Omit or pass slightly over the expression, grace,

and grouping of Raffael’s figures; but ridicule in detail the

knitting-needles and broom-twigs, that are to represent trees in his

back grounds; and never let him hear the last of his galli-pots! Admit

that the Allegro and Penseroso of Milton are not without merit; but

repay yourself for this concession, by reprinting at length the two

poems on the University Carrier! As a fair specimen of his Sonnets,

quote

“A Book was writ of late called Tetrachordon;”

and, as characteristic of his rhythm and metre, cite his literal

translation of the first and second Psalm! In order to justify yourself,

you need only assert, that had you dwelt chiefly on the beauties and

excellencies of the poet, the admiration of these might seduce the

attention of future writers from the objects of their love and wonder,

to an imitation of the few poems and passages in which the poet was most

unlike himself.

But till reviews are conducted on far other principles, and with far

other motives; till in the place of arbitrary dictation and petulant

sneers, the reviewers support their decisions by reference to fixed

canons of criticism, previously established and deduced from the nature

of man; reflecting minds will pronounce it arrogance in them thus to

announce themselves to men of letters, as the guides of their taste

and judgment. To the purchaser and mere reader it is, at all events, an

injustice. He who tells me that there are defects in a new work,

tells me nothing which I should not have taken for granted without his

information. But he, who points out and elucidates the beauties of

an original work does indeed give me interesting information, such

as experience would not have authorized me in anticipating. And as to

compositions which the authors themselves announce with

Haec ipsi novimus esse nihil,

why should we judge by a different rule two printed works, only because

the one author is alive, and the other in his grave? What literary man

has not regretted the prudery of Spratt in refusing to let his friend

Cowley appear in his slippers and dressing gown? I am not perhaps

the only one who has derived an innocent amusement from the riddles,

conundrums, tri-syllable lines, and the like, of Swift and his

correspondents, in hours of languor, when to have read his more finished

works would have been useless to myself, and, in some sort, an act

of injustice to the author. But I am at a loss to conceive by what

perversity of judgment, these relaxations of his genius could be

employed to diminish his fame as the writer of Gulliver, or the Tale of

a Tub. Had Mr. Southey written twice as many poems of inferior merit, or

partial interest, as have enlivened the journals of the day, they

would have added to his honour with good and wise men, not merely or

principally as proving the versatility of his talents, but as evidences

of the purity of that mind, which even in its levities never dictated a

line which it need regret on any moral account.

I have in imagination transferred to the future biographer the duty of

contrasting Southey’s fixed and well-earned fame, with the abuse and

indefatigable hostility of his anonymous critics from his early youth to

his ripest manhood. But I cannot think so ill of human nature as not

to believe, that these critics have already taken shame to themselves,

whether they consider the object of their abuse in his moral or his

literary character. For reflect but on the variety and extent of his

acquirements! He stands second to no man, either as an historian or as

a bibliographer; and when I regard him as a popular essayist,--(for the

articles of his compositions in the reviews are, for the greater part,

essays on subjects of deep or curious interest rather than criticisms

on particular works)--I look in vain for any writer, who has conveyed so

much information, from so many and such recondite sources, with so many

just and original reflections, in a style so lively and poignant, yet so

uniformly classical and perspicuous; no one, in short, who has combined

so much wisdom with so much wit; so much truth and knowledge with

so much life and fancy. His prose is always intelligible and always

entertaining. In poetry he has attempted almost every species of

composition known before, and he has added new ones; and if we except

the highest lyric,--(in which how few, how very few even of the greatest

minds have been fortunate)--he has attempted every species successfully;

from the political song of the day, thrown off in the playful overflow

of honest joy and patriotic exultation, to the wild ballad; from

epistolary ease and graceful narrative, to austere and impetuous moral

declamation; from the pastoral charms and wild streaming lights of the

Thalaba, in which sentiment and imagery have given permanence even to

the excitement of curiosity; and from the full blaze of the Kehama,--(a

gallery of finished pictures in one splendid fancy piece, in which,

notwithstanding, the moral grandeur rises gradually above the brilliance

of the colouring and the boldness and novelty of the machinery)--to

the more sober beauties of the Madoc; and lastly, from the Madoc to

his Roderick, in which, retaining all his former excellencies of a

poet eminently inventive and picturesque, he has surpassed himself

in language and metre, in the construction of the whole, and in the

splendour of particular passages.

Here then shall I conclude? No! The characters of the deceased, like the

encomia on tombstones, as they are described with religious tenderness,

so are they read, with allowing sympathy indeed, but yet with rational

deduction. There are men, who deserve a higher record; men with whose

characters it is the interest of their contemporaries, no less than

that of posterity, to be made acquainted; while it is yet possible for

impartial censure, and even for quick-sighted envy, to cross-examine

the tale without offence to the courtesies of humanity; and while the

eulogist, detected in exaggeration or falsehood, must pay the full

penalty of his baseness in the contempt which brands the convicted

flatterer. Publicly has Mr. Southey been reviled by men, who, as I would

fain hope for the honour of human nature, hurled fire-brands against

a figure of their own imagination; publicly have his talents been

depreciated, his principles denounced; as publicly do I therefore, who

have known him intimately, deem it my duty to leave recorded, that it

is Southey’s almost unexampled felicity, to possess the best gifts of

talent and genius free from all their characteristic defects. To those

who remember the state of our public schools and universities some

twenty years past, it will appear no ordinary praise in any man to have

passed from innocence into virtue, not only free from all vicious habit,

but unstained by one act of intemperance, or the degradations akin to

intemperance. That scheme of head, heart, and habitual demeanour, which

in his early manhood, and first controversial writings, Milton, claiming

the privilege of self-defence, asserts of himself, and challenges

his calumniators to disprove; this will his school-mates, his

fellow-collegians, and his maturer friends, with a confidence

proportioned to the intimacy of their knowledge, bear witness to, as

again realized in the life of Robert Southey. But still more striking to

those, who by biography or by their own experience are familiar with the

general habits of genius, will appear the poet’s matchless industry

and perseverance in his pursuits; the worthiness and dignity of those

pursuits; his generous submission to tasks of transitory interest, or

such as his genius alone could make otherwise; and that having thus more

than satisfied the claims of affection or prudence, he should yet have

made for himself time and power, to achieve more, and in more various

departments, than almost any other writer has done, though employed

wholly on subjects of his own choice and ambition. But as Southey

possesses, and is not possessed by, his genius, even so is he master

even of his virtues. The regular and methodical tenor of his daily

labours, which would be deemed rare in the most mechanical pursuits,

and might be envied by the mere man of business, loses all semblance of

formality in the dignified simplicity of his manners, in the spring and

healthful cheerfulness of his spirits. Always employed, his friends find

him always at leisure. No less punctual in trifles, than steadfast in

the performance of highest duties, he inflicts none of those small pains

and discomforts which irregular men scatter about them, and which in

the aggregate so often become formidable obstacles both to happiness

and utility; while on the contrary he bestows all the pleasures, and

inspires all that ease of mind on those around him or connected with

him, which perfect consistency, and (if such a word might be framed)

absolute reliability, equally in small as in great concerns, cannot but

inspire and bestow; when this too is softened without being weakened

by kindness and gentleness. I know few men who so well deserve the

character which an antient attributes to Marcus Cato, namely, that

he was likest virtue, in as much as he seemed to act aright, not in

obedience to any law or outward motive, but by the necessity of a happy

nature, which could not act otherwise. As son, brother, husband,

father, master, friend, he moves with firm yet light steps, alike

unostentatious, and alike exemplary. As a writer, he has uniformly made

his talents subservient to the best interests of humanity, of public

virtue, and domestic piety; his cause has ever been the cause of pure

religion and of liberty, of national independence and of national

illumination. When future critics shall weigh out his guerdon of praise

and censure, it will be Southey the poet only, that will supply them

with the scanty materials for the latter. They will likewise not fail to

record, that as no man was ever a more constant friend, never had poet

more friends and honourers among the good of all parties; and that

quacks in education, quacks in politics, and quacks in criticism were

his only enemies. [17]