FOOTNOTES:

"But most by numbers judge a poet's song,*****In the bright muse, tho' thousand charms conspire,Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire,Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear."

"But most by numbers judge a poet's song,

*****

In the bright muse, tho' thousand charms conspire,

Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire,

Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear."

On page 734 we are told Browning'sJames Lee—the Professor probably meansJames Lee's Wife—is amongst "the greatest poems of the century." On Wordsworth's line, judged not in relation to its context, but as a single verse—"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting"—we have the following as commentary: "Even Shakespeare, even Shelley have little more of the echoing detonation, the auroral light of true poetry"; very "echoing," very "detonating"—the rhythm of "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting." Mr. Saintsbury's notions of what constitutes detonation and auroral light in poetry appear to resemble his notions of what constitutes eloquence in prose. Nothing, we may add in passing, is more amusing in this volume than Mr. Saintsbury's cool assumption of equality as a critical authority with such a critic asMatthew Arnold, whom he sometimes patronises, sometimes corrects, and sometimes assails. The Professor does not show to advantage on these occasions, and he leaves us with the impression that if "Mr. Arnold's criticism is piecemeal, arbitrary, fantastic, and insane," the criticism which appears, where it is not mere nonsense, to take its touchstones, its standards, and its canons from those of the average Philistine is, after all, a very poor substitute. But enough of Mr. Saintsbury's "criticism," which is, almost uniformly, as absurd in what it praises as in what it censures.

The style, or, to borrow an expression from Swift, what the poverty of our language compels us to call the style, in which this book is written, is on a par with its criticism. We will give a few examples. "It is a proof of the greatness of Dryden that he knew Milton for a poet; it is a proof of the smallness (and mighty as he was on some sides, on others he was very small) of Milton that (if he really did so) he denied poetry to Dryden."[16]"What theVoyage and Travailereally is, is this—it is, so far as we know, and even beyond our knowledge in all probability and likelihood, the first considerable example of prose in English dealing neither with the beaten track of theology and philosophy, nor with the, even in the Middle Ages, restricted field of history andhome topography, but expatiating freely on unguarded plains and on untrodden hills, sometimes dropping into actual prose romance and always treating its subject as the poets had treated theirs inBrutandMort d'Arthur, inTroy-bookandAlexandreid, as a mere canvas on which to embroider flowers of fancy."[17]Again, "With Anglo-Saxon history he deals slightly, and despite his ardent English patriotism—his book opens with a vigorous panegyric of England, the first of a series extending to the present day (from which an anthologyDe Laudibus Angliæmight be made)—he deals very harshly with Harold Godwinson."[18]"He had a fit of stiff Odes in the Gray and Collins manner." "The Hind and Panther(the greatest poem ever written in theteeth of its subject)". "His voluminousLatin works have beentackledby a special Wyclif Society." These are a few of the gems in which every chapter abounds.

Of Professor Saintsbury's indifference to exactness and accuracy in details and facts we need go no further for illustrations than to his dates. Such things cannot be regarded as trifles in a book designed to be a book of reference. We will give a few instances. We are informed on page 238 that Ascham'sSchoolmasterwas published in 1568; it was published, as its title-page shows, in 1570. Hume'sDissertationswerefirst published, not in 1762, but in 1757. Bale's flight to Germany was not in 1547, when such a step would have been unnecessary, but in 1540. Pecock was, we are told, translated to Chichester in 1550, exactly ninety years after his death! As if to perplex the readers of this book, two series of dates are given; we have the dates in the narrative and the dates in the index, and no attempt is made to reconcile the discrepancies. Accordingly we find in the narrative that Caxton was probably born in 1415—in the index that he was born in 1422; in the narrative that Latimer, Fisher, Gascoign and Atterbury were born respectively in 1489, in 1465, about 1537 and in 1672—in the index that they were born respectively in 1485, 1459, 1525 and 1662; in the narrative Gay was born in 1688—in the index he was born in 1685. In the narrative Collins dies in 1756, and Mrs. Browning is born in 1806—in the index Collins dies in 1759, and Mrs. Browning is born in 1809. The narrative tells us that Aubrey was born in 1626, and John Dyercirca1688—in the index that Aubrey was born in 1624 and Dyercirca1700. In the index Mark Pattison dies in 1884—in the narrative he dies in 1889. In Professor Saintsbury's eyes such indifference to accuracy may be venial: in our opinion it is nothing less than scandalous. It is assuredly most unfair to those who will naturally expect to find in a book of reference trustworthy information.

We must now conclude, though we have very far from exhausted the list of errors and misstatements, of absurdities in criticism and absurdities in theory, which we have noted. Bacon has observed that the best part of beauty is that which a picture cannot express. It may be said, with equal truth, of a bad book, that what is worst in it is precisely that which it is most difficult to submit to tangible tests. In other words, it lies not so much in its errors and inaccuracies, which, after all, may be mere trifles and excrescences, but it lies in its tone and colour, its flavour, its accent. Professor Saintsbury appears to be constitutionally incapable of distinguishing vulgarity and coarseness from liveliness and vigour. So far from having any pretension to the finer qualities of the critic, he seems to take a boisterous pride in exhibiting his grossness.

If our review of this book shall seem unduly harsh, we are sorry, but a more exasperating writer than Professor Saintsbury, with his indifference to all that should be dear to a scholar, the mingled coarseness, triviality and dogmatism of his tone, the audacious nonsense of his generalisations, and the offensive vulgarity of his diction and style—a very well of English defiled—we have never had the misfortune to meet with. Turn where we will in this work, to the opinions expressed in it, to the sentiments, to the verdicts, to the style, the note is the same,—the note of theDas Gemeine.

FOOTNOTES:[12]Page 37.[13]Eá lâ drihtenes þrym! eá lâ duguða helm!eá lâ meotodes miht! eá lâ middaneard!eá lâ däg leóhta! eá lâ dreám godes!eá lâ engla þreát! eá lâ upheofon!eá lâ þät ic eam ealles leás êcan dreámes,þät ic mid handum ne mäg heofon geræcanne mid eágum ne môt up lôcianne hûru mid eárum ne sceal æfre gehêranþære byrhtestan bêman stefne.—Satan.edit. Grein, 164-172.[14]Some Remarks on Lydgate.Gray, Aldine Ed. v. 292-321.[15]That Lydgate's verse should occasionally be rough and halting is partly to be attributed to the wretched state in which his text has come down to us from the copyists, and partly to the arbitrary way in which he varies the accent. His heroic couplets in theStorie of Thebesare certainly very unmusical. For the whole question of his versification see Dr. Schick, Introduction to his edition ofThe Temple of Glas, pp. liv.-lxiii., and Schipper,Altenglische Metrik, 492-500. But neither of these scholars does justice to the exquisite music of his verse at its best.[16]Page 474.[17]Page 150.[18]Page 63.

[12]Page 37.

[13]Eá lâ drihtenes þrym! eá lâ duguða helm!eá lâ meotodes miht! eá lâ middaneard!eá lâ däg leóhta! eá lâ dreám godes!eá lâ engla þreát! eá lâ upheofon!eá lâ þät ic eam ealles leás êcan dreámes,þät ic mid handum ne mäg heofon geræcanne mid eágum ne môt up lôcianne hûru mid eárum ne sceal æfre gehêranþære byrhtestan bêman stefne.—Satan.edit. Grein, 164-172.

[13]

Eá lâ drihtenes þrym! eá lâ duguða helm!eá lâ meotodes miht! eá lâ middaneard!eá lâ däg leóhta! eá lâ dreám godes!eá lâ engla þreát! eá lâ upheofon!eá lâ þät ic eam ealles leás êcan dreámes,þät ic mid handum ne mäg heofon geræcanne mid eágum ne môt up lôcianne hûru mid eárum ne sceal æfre gehêranþære byrhtestan bêman stefne.—Satan.edit. Grein, 164-172.

Eá lâ drihtenes þrym! eá lâ duguða helm!

eá lâ meotodes miht! eá lâ middaneard!

eá lâ däg leóhta! eá lâ dreám godes!

eá lâ engla þreát! eá lâ upheofon!

eá lâ þät ic eam ealles leás êcan dreámes,

þät ic mid handum ne mäg heofon geræcan

ne mid eágum ne môt up lôcian

ne hûru mid eárum ne sceal æfre gehêran

þære byrhtestan bêman stefne.

—Satan.edit. Grein, 164-172.

[14]Some Remarks on Lydgate.Gray, Aldine Ed. v. 292-321.

[15]That Lydgate's verse should occasionally be rough and halting is partly to be attributed to the wretched state in which his text has come down to us from the copyists, and partly to the arbitrary way in which he varies the accent. His heroic couplets in theStorie of Thebesare certainly very unmusical. For the whole question of his versification see Dr. Schick, Introduction to his edition ofThe Temple of Glas, pp. liv.-lxiii., and Schipper,Altenglische Metrik, 492-500. But neither of these scholars does justice to the exquisite music of his verse at its best.

[16]Page 474.

[17]Page 150.

[18]Page 63.

[19]A Short History of Modern English Literature.By Edmund Gosse. London, 1898.

The author of this work has plainly not pondered the advice of Horace, "Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis, æquam viribus." His ambitious purpose is "to give the reader, whether familiar with books or not, a feeling of the evolution of English Literature in the primary sense of the term," and he adds that "to do this without relation to particular authors and particular works seems to me impossible." This may be conceded; for, a feeling of the evolution of English or of any other literature, without reference to particular authors and particular books, would be analogous to the capacity for feeling without anything to feel. But, unfortunately, those of Mr. Gosse's readers who wish to have the feeling to which he refers will merely find the conditions without which, as he so justly observes, the said feeling is impossible.In other words, references, in the form of loose and desultory gossip, to particular authors and particular works chronologically arranged, are all that represent the "evolution" of which he is so anxious "to give a feeling."

Described simply, the work is an ordinary manual of English Literature in which, with Mr. Humphry Ward'sEnglish Poets, Sir Henry Craik'sEnglish Prose Writers, Chambers'Cyclopædia of English Literature, theDictionary of National Biography, and the like before him, the writer tells again the not unfamiliar story of the course of our Literature from Chaucer to the present time. But Mr. Gosse is no mere compiler, and brings to his task certain qualifications of his own, a vague and inaccurate but extensive knowledge of our seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century Belles Lettres; and here, as a rule, he can acquit himself creditably. Though far from a sound, he is a sympathetic critic; he has an agreeable but somewhat affected style, and can gossip pleasantly and plausibly about subjects which are within the range indicated. But at this point, as is painfully apparent, his qualifications for being an historian and critic of English Literature end. The moment he steps out of this area he is at the mercy of his handbooks; so completely at their mercy that he does not even know how to use them. And it is here that Mr. Gosse becomes so irritating, partly becauseof the sheer audacity with which mere inferences are substituted for facts and simple assumptions for deduced generalizations, and partly because of the habitual employment of phraseology so vague and indeterminate that it is difficult to submit what it conveys to positive test. These are serious charges to bring against any writer; and if they cannot be abundantly substantiated, a still more serious charge may justly be urged against the accuser.

To turn to the work. On page 85 Mr. Gosse favours us with the following account of theFaerie Queene: "A certain grandeur which sustains the three great Cantos of Truth, Temperance, and Chastity fades away as we proceed.... The structure of it is loose and incoherent when we compare it with the epic grandeur of the masterpieces of Ariosto and Tasso." It would be difficult to match this; every word which is not a blunder is an absurdity. Where are "the three great Cantos"? Can Mr. Gosse possibly be ignorant that the poem is divided into books, each book containing twelve Cantos? Assuming, however, that he has confounded books with Cantos, where is the great book dealing with 'Truth'? As he places it before 'Temperance,' we presume that he means the first book and that he has confounded 'Truth' with 'Holiness.' This is pretty well, to begin with. Where, we next ask in amazement, is the 'grandeur' which sustains the prolix farrago of the third book, and which 'fadesaway' as we proceed to the only book which almost rivals the first and second, the fifth, and the sublimest portion of the whole work, the superb Cantos which represent all that remains of the seventh? What, we gasp, is the meaning of the 'epic grandeur' of Ariosto? and "the loose and incoherent structure" of theFaerie Queenewhen compared with that of theOrlando Furioso? Could any poem be more loose and incoherent in structure than theOrlando, or any term be less appropriate to its tone and style than 'grandeur'? On page 80 he actually tells us that Fox's well-knownBook of Martyrswas written in Latin and translated by John Day, and that it is John Day's translation of the Latin original which represents that work, confounding Fox'sCommentarii Rerum in Ecclesiâ gestarum, etc., printed at Basil with theActs and Monuments of the Church, and making John Day, the publisher of it, the translator of it into English! And this is his account of one of the most celebrated works in our language. Of Swift'sSentiments of a Church of England Man, we have the following account: "That such a tract as theSentiments of a Church of England Man, with its gusts of irony, its white heat of preposterous moderation, led on towards Junius is obvious." This is an excellent example of the confidence which may be placed in Mr. Gosse's assertions. Of this pamphlet, it may be sufficient to say that thereis not a single touch of irony or satire in it; that it stands almost alone among Swift's tracts for its perfectly temperate and logical tone; it is a calm appeal to pure reason. There is the same audacity of assertion in classing Feltham'sResolveswith Hall's and Overbury's Character Sketches, and Earle'sMicrocosmogonieas "a typical example" of "a curious school of comic or ironic portraiture, partly ethical and partly dramatic." In 1625, we are told that Bacon completed theSylva Sylvarum. If Mr. Gosse knew anything of Bacon's philosophical writings, he would have known that theSylva Sylvarumnever was and never could have been completed, for it was in itself a fragment—a mere collection of materials to be incorporated in thePhœnomena Universi, a work which was to have been six times larger than Pliny'sNatural History. In giving an account of Tillotson, he speaks of "the serene and insinuating periods" of the elegant latitudinarian who "was assiduous in saying what he had to say in the most graceful and intelligible manner possible." A more perfect description of the very opposite of Tillotson's style could hardly be given. Those who are acquainted with Fuller's writings will be equally surprised to find him classed with Jeremy Taylor and Henry More, and to learn that his style is 'florid and involved,' distinguished by its 'long-windedness' and 'exuberance.' Has Mr. Gosse no apprehension of his readers turning tothe originals and testing his statements? We have another of these bold assertions in the account of Lydgate, derived, we suspect, from a hasty generalization from a remark made about him in Mr. Ward'sBritish Poets. "Lydgate," says Mr. Gosse, "had a most defective ear; his verses are not to be scanned. His ear was bad and tuneless." Any one who has read Lydgate knows that, if we except his heroic couplets, a more musical poet is not to be found in the fifteenth century, or, indeed, in our language; the softness and smoothness of his verse, wherever he writes in stanzas, as he generally does, is indeed his chief characteristic. These remarks are minor illustrations of an accomplishment in which Mr. Gosse has no rival.

The Euphuists of the sixteenth century drew, for purposes of simile and illustration, on a fabulous natural history which assumed the existence of certain animals, herbs, and minerals, and of certain properties and qualities possessed by them. This gave great point and picturesqueness to their style, and though it was certainly misleading and occasionally perplexing to those who went to them for natural history, it had a most charming and imposing effect. Mr. Gosse seems to have imported a similar fiction into criticism. Of this we have a most amusing illustration on page 155. Speakingof Herrick Mr. Gosse remarks, "In the midst of these extravagances, like Meleager winding hispure white violets"—the Italics are ours—"into thegaudy garland of late Greek Euphuism, we find Robert Herrick." Meleager's Anthology is not extant, but the dedication is, and from that dedication we know exactly from what poets it was compiled. It ranged from aboutB.C.700 till towards the close of the Alexandrian Age, for, with the exception of Antipater of Sidon, it is very doubtful whether he inserted any epigrams by his contemporaries, but he admitted a hundred and thirty-one of his own. In other words his collection comprised epigrams composed by the masters preceding the Alexandrian Age from Archilochus downwards, and by those who, during that age and afterwards, cultivated with scrupulous care the simplicity and purity of the early models. Indeed, the poets represented in his Anthology are, with one exception, the artists of Greek epigram in its purest, simplest, and chastest form. That one exception is himself. In him are first apparent thedulcia vitiaof the Decadence; he is full of dainty subtleties, he is almost more Oriental than Greek, his style is luscious, elaborate and florid. Such, then, was the composition of "the gaudy garland of late Greek Euphuism," and such the nature of the "purewhite violets" wound into it by Meleager. It is amusing to trace Mr. Gosse's rodomontade to its source. In the well-known dedication to which we have referred, Meleager prettily compares the various poets, from whose works he selects, to flowers, speaking modestly of his own contributions as "early white violets." To critics like Mr. Gosse the rest is easy. Meleager, he no doubt argued, was an excellent poet; he belonged to a late age: 'Euphuism'—a delightfully vague term, is likely to characterise a late age; a poet who compares his verses to white violets had evidently a taste for simplicity, and presumably, therefore, was no Euphuist; a gaudy garland is an excellent set off for pure white violets. And so, to the great perplexity of scholars, but to the great satisfaction of those who enjoy a pretty sentence, Meleager will continue "to wind his pure white violets into the gaudy garland of late Greek Euphuism."

We have a similar illustration of the same thing in Mr. Gosse's account of Shaftesbury. We are told that he "was perhaps the greatest literary force between Dryden and Swift"; that "he deserves remembrance as the first who really broke down the barrier which excluded England from taking her proper place in the civilization of literary Europe"; that "he set an example for the kind of prose which wasto mark the central years of the century"; that "his style glitters and rings, and ... yet so curious that one marvels that it should have fallen completely into neglect"; that "he was the first Englishman who developed theories of formal virtue, who attempted to harmonize the beautiful with the true and the good"; that the modern attitude of mind seems to meet us first in the graceful cosmopolitan writings of Shaftesbury; that "without a Shaftesbury there would hardly have been a Ruskin or a Pater." Such amazing nonsense almost confounds refutation by its sheer absurdity.

With regard to the first statement, it may be sufficient to say that between the period of Dryden's literary activity and the publication of Swift'sBattle of the BooksandTale of a Tubwere flourishing Hobbes, Izaak Walton, Bunyan, Temple, and Locke; that between the publication of theTale of a Tuband of Shaftesbury's collected writings were flourishing Addison, Steele, De Foe, Arbuthnot, Berkeley. With regard to the second statement, it would be interesting to know how a writer who had been preceded by Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, could be described as a writer who had been the first "to break down the barrier which excluded England from taking her proper place in the civilization of literary Europe." The truth is, that Shaftesbury exercised no influence at allon Continental Literature until long after our Literature had generally become influential in France. Equally absurd and baseless is the remark that he "set an example of the kind of prose that was to mark the central years of the century." Whose prose was affected by him? Bolingbroke's? or Fielding's? or Richardson's? or Middleton's? or Johnson's? or Goldsmith's? or Hume's? or Hawkesworth's? or Sterne's? or Smollett's? or Chesterfield's? that of the writers in theMonthly Review? or in theAdventurer? or in theWorld? or in theConnoisseur? To say of Shaftesbury's style that "it glitters and rings," is to say what betrays utter ignorance of its characteristics. As a rule, it is diffuse, involved, and cumbrous, affected, but with an affectation which sedulously aims at the very opposite effects of "glittering and ringing." When he is eloquent, as in theMoralists, he imitates the style of Plato; his vice is florid verbosity; it may be doubted whether a single sentence could be found to which Mr. Gosse's description would be applicable. If, it may be added, his style had "fallen completely into neglect," it is somewhat surprising that "he should set an example for the kind of prose which was to mark the central years of the century." When we are told that he was "the first Englishman who attempted to harmonize the beautiful with the true and the good," we ask in amazement whether Mr. Gosse has ever inspected theHymnsof Spenser andthe writings of the Cambridge Platonists; and when he tells us that without a Shaftesbury there would hardly have been a Ruskin or a Pater, we would suggest to him that both Ruskin and Pater were perhaps not ignorant of the Platonic Dialogues. In the account given of Spenser, a poem is attributed to him which he never wrote. "In one of his early pieces,The Oak and The Briar, went far," etc., the oak and the briar is simply an episode in the second eclogue of theShepherd's Calendar. Mr. Gosse, probably finding it quoted in some book of selections, has jumped to the conclusion that it is a separate poem. Of Mr. Gosse's qualifications for dealing with Spenser, we have, by the way, an excellent example in the following remark: "Spenser, although he boasted of his classical acquirements, was singularly little affected by Greek or even Latin ideas." Spenser'sHymnsin honour of Love and in Honour of Beauty are simply saturated with Platonism, being indeed directly derived from thePhædrusand theSymposium, numberless passages from which are interwoven with the poems. The whole scheme of theFaerie Queenewas suggested by, and based on, Aristotle'sEthicswith elaborate particularity, Arthur, in his relation to the several knights, corresponding to the virtueμεγαλοψυχιαin its relation to the other virtues. The conclusion of the tenth canto of the first book is simply an allegorical presentation of therelation of theβιος θεωρητικοςto practical life. The "Castle of Medina" in the second book is a minutely technical exposition of the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean, modified by the Platonic theory of morals: the three mothers being theλογιστικη, theεπιθυμητικη, andθυμητικη, the three daughters, Elissa, Perissa, and Medina, being respectively the Aristotelianελλειψις, theὑπερβοληand theμεσοτης. In fact, the whole passage is simply an allegory of the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean. The whole of the ninth canto of the second book is founded on the famous passage in theTimæusdescribing the anatomy of man. In truth the poem teems with references to Plato and Aristotle, and with passages imitated from the Greek poets, as every scholar knows. And this is a poet "singularly little affected by Greek ideas!"

The same astonishing ignorance is displayed in a remark about Milton. We are told that in his youth he was "slightly subjected to influence from Spenser." If Mr. Gosse had any adequate acquaintance with Milton and Spenser, he would have known that Spenser was to Milton almost what Homer was to Virgil, that Spenser's influence simply pervades his poems, not his youthful poems only, butParadise Lostand evenParadise Regained. On page 194 we find this sentence: "From 1660 onwards ... what France originally, and then England, chose was theimitatio veterum, the Literaturein prose and verse which seemed most closely to copy the models of Latin style. Aristotle and Horace were taken, not merely as patterns, but as arbiters." It would be very interesting to know what English author took Aristotle as a pattern for style. Is Mr. Gosse acquainted with the characteristics of Aristotle's style? Should he ever become so, he will probably have some sense of the immeasurable absurdity of asserting that our prose writers from 1660 onwards took that style for their model. On a par with this is the assertion that up to 1605 Bacon had mainly issued his works in "Ciceronian Latin." Is Mr. Gosse aware of the meaning of "Ciceronian Latin"? Very "Ciceronian" indeed is Bacon's Latinity, and particularly that of theMeditationes Sacræ, the only work published in Latin by Bacon up to 1605! It is scarcely necessary to say, in passing, that such works as Bacon had published up to 1605 were, with the one exception referred to, all in English. Nothing, it may be added, is so annoying in this book as its slushy dilettantism. Mr. Gosse appears to be incapable of accuracy and precision. Thus he tells us that Chaucer's expedition to Italy in 1372 was "the first of several Italian expeditions." Chaucer, so far as is known, visited Italy, after this, exactly once. Again, he tells us that theComplaint of Marsand theParliament of Fowlsare interesting as showing that Chaucer had completely abandonedhis imitation of French models. Chaucer wrote several poems in the pure French style, and based on French models, after the date of these poems. Such would be the RondelMerciless Beautysuggested by Williamme d'Amiens, theCompleynt of Venus, partly adapted and partly translated from three Ballades by Sir Otes de Graunson, and theCompleynt to his Empty Purse, modelled on a Ballade by Eustache Deschamps, while French influence continued to modify his work throughout. On page 238 we are told that Thomson revived the Spenserian stanza; it had been revived by Pope, Prior, Shenstone, and Akenside. On page 151 we are informed that the first instalment of Clarendon's History remained unprinted till 1752, and the rest of it till 1759. If Mr. Gosse knew anything about one of the most remarkable controversies of the eighteenth century, he would have known that the greater part of it was printed and published between 1702 and 1704, and frequently reprinted between 1704 and 1731.

There is not a chapter in the book which does not teem with errors. Trissino'sSofonisbawas not the only work in which blank verse had attained any prominence in Italy about 1515; it had been employed in works equally prominent, by Rucellai in hisRosmunda, and in hisOreste, as well as in his didactic poemL'Api, and by Alamanni in hisAntigone, allof which were composed within a few years of that date. On page 120 we are told that Davies was the first to employ, on a long flight, the heroic quatrain; it had been employed by Spenser in a poem extending to nearly a thousand lines. Nor was Surrey's essay interza rima"the earliest in the language." Chaucer made the same experiment, though a little irregularly, in theCompleynt to his Lady. We are told on page 79 that Gascoigne was "the first translator of Greek tragedy." Gascoigne never translated a line from the Greek. HisJocasta, to which presumably the reference is made, is simply an adaptation of Ludovico Dolce'sGiocasta. On page 25 we are informed that "Gower's French verse has mainly disappeared." Gower is not known to have written anything in French except theBalladesand theSpeculum Meditantis, both of which are extant, as it is inexcusable in any historian of English Literature not to know. The account given on page 25 of theConfessio Amantisshows that Mr. Gosse is very imperfectly acquainted with what he so fluently criticises, or he would have been aware that the seventh book is purely episodical and has nothing whatever to do with "The lover's symptoms and experience." In the account of Pope we are informed that "Boileau discouraged love poetry and Pope did not seriouslyattempt it." Pope is the author of the most famous love poem in the eighteenth century,Eloisa to Abelard, to say nothing of theElegy to an Unfortunate Lady, of the beautiful hymn to Love in the second chorus in the tragedy ofBrutus, and the exquisite fragment supposed to have been addressed to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. "The satires of Pope," he continues, "would not have been written but for those of his French predecessor." Can Mr. Gosse possibly be ignorant that the satires of Pope are modelled on the Satires and Epistles of Horace, that they owe absolutely nothing to Boileau, not even the hint for applying Roman satire to modern times, as he had precedents in his own countrymen Dryden and Rochester?

Mr. Gosse's criticism is often very amusing, as here, speaking of Gibbon: "Perhaps he leaned on the strength of his style too much, andsacrificed the abstract to the concrete." Of all historians who have ever lived, Gibbon is the most "abstract" and has most sacrificed the "concrete" to the "abstract," as every student of history knows. On a par with this is the prodigious statement (p. 291) that there is "an absence of emotional imagination" in Burke! That excellent man, Mr. Pecksniff, was, we are told, in the habit of using any word that occurred to him as having a fine sound and rounding a sentence well, without much care for its meaning; "and this," says his biographer"he did so boldly and in such an imposing manner that he would sometimes stagger the wisest people and make them gasp again." This is precisely Mr. Gosse's method. About the propriety of his epithets and statements, so long as they sound well, he never troubles himself; sometimes they are so vague as to mean anything, as often they have no meaning at all, as here: "His [that is Shelley's] style, carefully considered, is seen to rest on a basis built about 1760, from which it is every moment springing and sparkling, like a fountain, in columns of ebullient lyricism." Could pure nonsense go further? We have another illustration of the same audacity of absurd assertion on page 260. We are there informed—Mr. Gosse is speaking of our prose literature about the centre of the eighteenth century—that "Philosophy by this time had become detached frombelles lettres; it was now quite indifferent to those who practised it, whether their sentences were harmonious or no.... Philosophy in fact quitted literature." If there was any period in our prose literature when philosophy was in the closest alliance with belles lettres, and was most studious of the graces of style, it was between about 1750 and 1771. In those years appeared Hutcheson'sSystem of Moral Philosophy, Adam Smith'sTheory of Moral Sentiments, one of the most eloquent philosophical treatises ever written, Burke'sTreatise on the Sublime and Beautiful, Reid'sInquiry into the Human Mind,Tucker'sLight of Nature Pursued, Beattie'sEssay on Truth, to say nothing of Hume'sInquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, hisPolitical Discourses, and hisNatural History of Religion, all of them works pre-eminently distinguished by the graces of style, while so far from philosophy quitting belles lettres, it was during these years that the foundations of philosophical criticism were laid by Burke, Harris, Hurd, Kames, and others. Mr. Gosse appears to have forgotten that he had himself told us (p. 205) that Shaftesbury's style set the example of the prose which was to mark the central years of the century! Thus again Burton'sAnatomy of Melancholyis "an entertaining neurotic compendium"; Bacon'sEssaysare "often mere notations ... enlarged in many cases merely to receive the impressions of a Machiavellian ingenuity." Shelley'sTriumph of Lifeis "a noble but vague gnomic poem, in which Petrarch's Trionfi are summed up and sometimes excelled." Keats' "great odes are Titanic and Titianic." On page 284 we are informed that for fifteen years after the close of 1800 "poetry may be said to have been stationary in England." When we remember that within these years appeared the best of Wordsworth's poems, the best of Coleridge's, the best of Scott's, the best of Crabbe's, the first two cantos ofChilde Harold, the best of Campbell's, the bestof Moore's, and of Southey's—we wonder what can be meant, till we read on to find that it was "on the contrary extremely active." But "its activity took the form of the gradual acceptance of the new romantic ideas, the slow expulsion of the old classic taste, and the multiplication of examples of what had once for all been supremely accomplished in the hollows of the Quantocks." In other words, its activity took the form of its activity, and its activity led to its becoming stationary. Mr. Gosse is sometimes solemnly oracular, as here: "It is a sentimental error to suppose that the winds of God blow only through the green tree; it is sometimes the dry tree which is peculiarly favourable to their passage." It is not sometimes, we submit, but always that the dry tree will be most propitious to their passage. But we like Mr. Gosse best when he is eloquent, as here: "In the chapel of Milton's brain, entirely devoted though it was to a Biblical form of worship, there were flutes and trumpets to accompany one vast commanding organ." No wonder poor Milton suffered, as we know he did suffer, from insomnia!

The statement that "so miserable is the poverty of the first half of the seventeenth century, when we have mentioned Pecock and Capgrave, there is no other prose writer to be named," is bad enough. But to sum up Pecock's work with the remark, "the matter is paradoxicaland casuistical reasoning on controversial points, in which he secures the sympathy neither of the new thought nor the old," is to demonstrate that Mr. Gosse knows nothing whatever about it. TheRepressoris in many important respects one of the most remarkable works in our early prose Literature. It would be interesting to know what is the meaning of the following: "The masterpiece of Chillingworth stands almost alone in a sort of underwood of Theophrastian character sketches." Does Mr. Gosse suppose that English prose Literature in and about 1637 is represented by Hall'sCharacters of Vices and Virtues, by Sir Thomas Overbury'sCharacters, and by Earle'sMicrocosmographie, which appeared respectively, not in and about 1637, but in 1608, in 1614, and in 1628? If this was the underwood in which Chillingworth's work stood, it stood also in a dense forest represented by some of the most celebrated prose writings of the seventeenth century, such as the greater part of the writings of Bacon and of Raleigh, theAnatomy of Melancholy, Selden'sTitles of HonourandMare Clausum, Lord Herbert of Cherbury'sDe Veritate, Feltham'sResolves, the best of Hall's writings, Purchas'Pilgrims, Barclay'sArgenis, the Histories of Speed, Stowe, Hayward, and Raleigh, Heylin'sMicrocosmus, Prynne'sHistrio-Mastix, and the famous sermons of Lancelot Andrewes, all of which appeared between 1608 and 1637. These are the sort ofremarks in which Mr. Gosse habitually indulges. We have another example in the following: "Shelley's attitude to style is in the main retrograde," a generalization based on the fact that he was no admirer of "the arabesque of the cockney school." But were Shelley's chief contemporaries admirers of the arabesque of the cockney school, or were they affected by it? Was Wordsworth, was Coleridge, or Southey, or Byron, or Crabbe, or Campbell, or Landor?—a question which Mr. Gosse probably never stopped to ask himself. On a par with this is the absurd assertion that "English poetry was born again during the autumn months of 1797." The appearance of theLyrical Balladsdid not make, but mark, an era in our poetry. The revolution of which they were the expression had been maturing, as surely but distinctly as the social and political revolution marked by the assembly of the States-General ten years before. There was hardly a note struck in theLyrical Balladswhich had not been struck in our poetry between 1740 and the date of their appearance.

To call this compilation aHistory of Modern English Literatureis ludicrous. Mr. Gosse has no conception even of the eras into which our Literature naturally falls, or of the movements which in each of those eras defined themselves. Nothing could be more misleading and inadequate than the accounts given of the historians, theologians,philosophers, and critics, many of whom—nay, whole schools of whom—are not noticed at all. Sidney's epoch-marking little treatise is dismissed in four unmeaning lines as "an urbane and eloquent essay, which labours under but one disadvantage, namely, that when it was composed in 1581 there was scarcely any poesy in England to be defended. This was posthumously printed in 1595." Ben Jonson's not less remarkableDiscoveriesare not even mentioned. How writers like Bacon, Hooker, Hobbes, Locke, and Berkeley fare we have not space to illustrate. Mr. Gosse, indeed, judging by his excursions into the realms of theology and philosophy, has certainly been wise to assign more space toThe Flower and the Leafthan is assigned to Hobbes, Barrow, Butler, and Paley put together. We have by no means exhausted the list of blunders and absurdities to be found in this book; but we have, we fear, exhausted the patience of our readers, and we must bring our examination of it to a close.

The melancholy thing about all this is the perfect impunity with which such works as these can be given to the public. We have not the smallest doubt that this book has been extolled to the skies in reviews which have not detected a single error in it, and which have accepted its generalizations and its criticisms with unquestioning credulity; and we have as little doubt that those scholars who have discernedits defects and absurdities have chosen, from motives possibly of kindness, possibly of prudence, and possibly in mere contempt, to maintain silence about them. Had it appeared twenty years ago, it would instantly have been exposed and exploded, indeed no writer would have dared to insult serious readers by such a publication. What every reader has a right to demand from those who take upon themselves to instruct him are sincerity, industry, and competence; and what no critic has a right to condone is ostentatious indifference on the part of an author to the responsibilities incurred by him in undertaking to teach the public.

The sooner Mr. Gosse, and writers like Mr. Gosse, come to understand that, however ingeniously expressed, reckless generalizations, random assertions and the specious semblance of knowledge, erudition, and authority may pass current for a time, but are certain at last to be detected and exposed, the better for themselves and the better for their readers. If, too, they wish justice to be done to the accomplishments which they really possess, they will do well to remember what is implied in the proverbNe sutor ultra crepidam, and what the Germans mean byVermessenheit.

We see no objection to Mutual Admiration Societies; they are institutions which afford much pleasure, and can, as a rule, do little harm. If vanity be a foible, it is a foible well worth cherishing, and will be treated tenderly even by a philosopher. For, of all the illusions which give a zest to life, the illusions created by this flattering passion are the most delightful and inspiring. They are so easily evoked; they respond with such impartial obsequiousness to the call of the humblest magician. He has but to speak the word—and they are made; to command—and they are created. A becomes what B and C pronounce him to be, and what A and C have done for B, that will B and A do in turn for C. It is a delicious occupation, no doubt, a feast for each, in which no crude surfeit reigns, where, in Bacon's phrase, satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable; it is like the herbage in the Paradise of the Spanish poet, "quanto mas segoza mas renace,"—the more we enjoy it the more it grows. It is an old game—"Vetus fabula per novos histriones":—

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