Famous Reviews, Selected and Edited with Introductory Notes Part 12

These inadvertences, and many others which might be noticed, being chiefly confined to the notes, do not, perhaps, detract much from the value of the text: we now turn to some of a different kind, which bear hard on the editor, and prove that his want of knowledge is not compensated by any extraordinary degree of attention. It is not sufficient for Mr. Weber to say that many of the errors which we shall point out are found in the old copy. It was his duty to reform them. A facsimile of blunders no one requires. Modern editions of our old poets are purchased upon the faith of a corrected text: this is their only claim to notice; and, if defective here, they become at once little better than waste-paper....

There is something extremely capricious in Mr. Weber's mode of proceeding: words are tampered with which are necessary to the right understanding of the text, while others, which reduce it to absolute jargon, are left unmolested....

We might carry this part of our examination to an immense extent; but we forbear. Enough, and more than enough, is done to show that a strict revision of the text is indispensible; and, if it should fall to the lot of the present editor to undertake it, we trust that he will evince somewhat more care than he manifests in the conclusion of the work before us. It will scarcely be credited that Mr. Weber should travel through such a volume as we have just pa.s.sed, in quest of errata, and find only one. "Vol. ii (he says), p. 321, line 12, for satiromastrix read satiromastix!"

We could be well content to rest here; but we have a more serious charge to bring against the editor, than the omission of points, or the misapprehension of words. He has polluted his pages with the blasphemies of a poor maniac, who, it seems, once published some detached scenes of the "Broken Heart." For this unfortunate creature, every feeling mind will find an apology in his calamitous situation; but--for Mr. Weber, we know not where the warmest of his friends will seek either palliation or excuse.

ON KEATS

[From _The Quarterly Review_, April, 1818]

Reviewers have sometimes been accused of not reading the works which they affected to criticise. On the present occasion we shall antic.i.p.ate the author's complaint, and honestly confess that we have not read his work. Not that we have been wanting in our duty--far from it--indeed, we have made efforts almost as superhuman as the story itself appears to be, to get through it; but with the fullest stretch of our perseverence, we are forced to confess that we have not been able to struggle beyond the first of the four books[1] of which this Poetic Romance consists. We should extremely lament this want of energy, or whatever it may be, on our parts, were it not for one consolation--namely, that we are no better acquainted with the meaning of that book through which we have so painfully toiled than we are with that of the three which we have not looked into.

[1] _Endymion: A Poetic Romance_. By John Keats. London, 1818.

It is not that Mr. Keats (if that be his real name, for we almost doubt that any man in his senses would put his real name to such a rhapsody) it is not, we say, that the author has not powers of language, rays of fancy, and gleams of genius--he has all these; but he is unhappily a disciple of the new school of what has been somewhere called c.o.c.kney poetry; which may be defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language.

Of this school Mr. Leigh Hunt, as we observed in a former number, aspires to be the hierophant. Our readers will recollect the pleasant recipes for harmonious and sublime poetry which he gave us in his preface to _Rimini_, and the still more facetious instances of his harmony and sublimity in the verses themselves; and they will recollect above all the contempt of Pope, Johnson, and such like poetasters and pseudo-critics, which so forcibly contrasted itself with Mr. Leigh Hunt's approbation of

--All the things itself had wrote, Of special merit though of little note.

The author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt, but he is more unintelligible, almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and absurd than his prototype, who, though he impudently presumed to seat himself in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by his own standard, yet generally had a meaning. But Mr. Keats had advanced no dogmas which he was bound to support by examples, his nonsense therefore is quite gratuitous; he writes it for its own sake, and being bitten by Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism, more than rivals the insanity of his poetry.

Mr. Keats's preface hints that his poem was produced under peculiar circ.u.mstances....

The two first books, and indeed the two last, are not of such completion as to warrant their pa.s.sing the press. p. vii.

Thus, "the two first books" are, even in his own judgment, unfit to appear, and "the two last" are, it seems, in the same condition--and as two and two make four, and as that is the whole number of books, we have a clear and, we believe, a very just estimate of the entire work.

Mr. Keats, however, deprecates criticism on this "immature and feverish"

work in terms which are themselves sufficiently feverish; and we confess that we should have abstained from inflicting upon him any of the tortures of the "_fierce h.e.l.l_" of criticism, which terrify his imagination, if he had not begged to be spared in order that he might write more; if we had not observed in him a certain degree of talent which deserves to be put in the right way, or which, at least, ought to be warned of the wrong; and if, finally, he had not told us that he is of an age and temper which imperiously require mental discipline.

Of the story we have been able to make out but little; it seems to be mythological, and probably relates to the loves of Diana and Endymion; but of this, as the scope of the work has altogether escaped us, we cannot speak with any degree of certainty: and must therefore content ourselves with giving some instances of its diction and versification.-- And here again we are perplexed and puzzled.--At first it appeared to us, that Mr. Keats had been amusing himself and wearying his readers with an immeasurable game at _bouts rimes_; but, if we recollect rightly, it is an indispensable condition at this play, that the rhymes when filled up shall have a meaning; and our author, as we have already hinted, has no meaning. He seems to us to write a line at random, and then he follows not the thought excited by this line, but that suggested by the _rhyme_ with which it concludes. There is hardly a complete couplet inclosing a complete idea in the whole book. He wanders from one subject to another, from the a.s.sociation, not of ideas, but of sounds, and the work is composed of hemistichs which, it is quite evident, have forced themselves upon the author by the mere force of the catchwords on which they turn....

Be still the unimaginable lodge For solitary thinkings; such as dodge Conception to the very bourne of heaven, Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven, That spreading in this dull and clodded earth Gives it a touch ethereal--a new birth. p. 17.

_Lodge, dodge--heaven, leaven--earth, birth_; such, in six words, is the sum and substance of six lines.

We come now to the author's taste in versification. He cannot indeed write a sentence, but perhaps he may be able to spin a line. Let us see.

The following are specimens of his prosodial notions of our English heroic metre.

Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon, The pa.s.sion poesy, glories infinite, p. 4.

So plenteously all weed-hidden roots, p. 6.

... By this time our readers must be pretty well satisfied as to the meaning of his sentences and the structures of his lines: we now present them with some of the new words with which, in imitation of Mr. Leigh Hunt, he adorns our language.

We are told that "turtles _pa.s.sion_ their voices" (p. 15); that "an arbour was _nested_" (p. 23); and a lady's locks "_gordian'd_" up (p.

32); and to supply the place of nouns thus verbalised Mr. Keats, with great fecundity, sp.a.w.ns new ones; such as "men-slugs and human _serpentry_" (p. 14); "_honey-feel_ of bliss" (p. 45); "wives prepare _needments_" (p. 13)--and so forth.

Then he has formed new verbs by the process of cutting off their tails, the adverbs, and affixing them to their foreheads; thus "the wine out-sparkled" (p. 10); the "mult.i.tude up-follow'd" (p. 11); and "night up-took" (p. 29). "The wind up-blows" (p. 32); and the "hours are down-sunken" (p. 36).

But if he sinks some adverbs in the verbs he compensates the language with adverbs and adjectives which he separates from the parent stock.

Thus, a lady "whispers _pantingly_ and close," makes "_hus.h.i.+ng_ signs,"

and steers her skiff into a "_ripply_ cove" (p. 23); a shower falls "_refreshfully_" (p. 45); and a vulture has a "_spreaded_ tail" (p. 44).

But enough of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his simple neophite.--If anyone should be bold enough to purchase this "Poetic Romance," and so much more patient than ourselves, as to get beyond the first book, and so much more fortunate as to find a meaning, we entreat him to make us acquainted with his success; we shall then return to the task which we now abandon in despair, and endeavour to make all due amends to Mr.

Keats and to our readers.

CROKER ON SYDNEY SMITH

[From _The Quarterly Review_, February, 1810]

This sermon[1] is written on the characters and duties of the clergy.

Perhaps it would have produced more effect upon the Yorks.h.i.+re divines had it come from one who had lived longer among them, and of the correspondence of whose life with his doctrines, they had better opportunities of judging; one whom, from long experience, they knew to be neither sullied by the little "affectations," nor "agitated by the little vanities of the world," whose strict observance of "those decencies and proprieties," which persons in their profession "owe to their situation in society," they had remarked through a long course of years. Whether the life of Mr. Smith would form an ill.u.s.tration of his own precepts remains to be proved. But, if we rightly recollect dates, he is still to his neighbours a sort of unknown person, and hardly yet tried in his new situation of a parish priest. We therefore think, in spite of all the apologies with which he has prefaced his advice, that a more judicious topic might easily have been selected.

[1] A sermon preached before His Grace the Archbishop of York, and the clergy, at Malton, at the Visitation, Aug., 1809. By the Rev. Sydney Smith, A.M., Rector of Foston, in Yorks.h.i.+re, and late Fellow of New College, Oxford. Carpenter, 1809.

In the execution of this sermon there is little to commend. As a system of duties for any body of clergy, it is wretchedly deficient:--and really, when we call to mind the rich, the full, the vigorous, eloquent, and impa.s.sioned manner in which these duties are recommended and inforced in the writings of our old divines, we are mortified beyond measure at the absolute poverty, crudeness, and meanness of the present attempt to mimic them. As a composition, it is very imperfect: it has nearly the same merits, and rather more than the same defects, which characterise his former publications. Mr. Smith never writes but in a loose declamatory way. He is careless of connection, and not very anxious about argument. His sole object is to produce an effect at the moment, a strong first impression upon an audience, and if that can be done he is very indifferent as to what may be the result of examination and reflection....

If Mr. Smith is not only not a Socinian, but if in his heart he doubts as to the least important point of the most abstruce and controverted subject on which our articles have decided, if, in short, he is not one of the most rigorously orthodox divines that exists, he has been guilty of the grossest and most disgusting hypocrisy--he has p.r.o.nounced in the face of the public to which he appeals, and of the church to which he belongs, in the most solemn manner, and on the most solemn subject, a direct, intentional, and scandalous falsehood--he has acted in a way utterly subversive of all confidence among men; and the greater part of the wretches who retire from a course of justice degraded for perjury rank higher in the scale of morality, than an educated man holding a respectable place in society, who could thus trifle with the most sacred obligations. He could be induced to this base action only by a base motive, that of obviating any difficulties which a suspicion of his holding opinions different from those avowed by the establishment, might throw in the way of his preferment: and of rendering himself a possible object of the bounty of "his worthy masters and mistresses," whenever the golden days arrive, in which they shall again dispense the favours of the crown. Such must be the case, if Mr. Smith is not sincere. There is no alternative. Now this is scarcely to be believed of any gentleman of tolerably fair character, still less of a teacher of morality and religion, who holds forth in all his writings the most refined sentiments of honour and disinterestedness.

The style of his profession of faith, however, partakes very much of the most offensive peculiarities of his manner. It is abrupt and violent to a degree which not only shocks good taste, but detracts considerably from the appearance of sincerity. It seems as if he considered his creed as a sort of nauseous medicine which could only be taken off at a draught, and he looks round for applause at the heroic effort by which he has drained the cup to its very dregs.

But the pa.s.sage about the verse in St. John is yet more extraordinary.

Has Mr. Smith really gone through the controversy upon this subject? And even if he has, is this the light way in which a man wholly unknown in the learned world, is ent.i.tled to contradict the opinion of some of the greatest scholars of Europe? We have, however, the mere word of the facetious rector of Foston, opposite to the authority and the arguments of a Porson and a Griesbach. It is at his command, unsupported by the smallest attempt at reasoning, that we are to set aside the opinion of men whose lives have been spent in the study of the Greek language, and of biblical criticism, and which has been acquiesced in by many of the most competent judges both here and abroad. Such audacity (to call it by no coa.r.s.er name) is in itself only calculated to excite laughter and contempt: coupled as it is with a most unprovoked and unwarrantable mention of the name of the Bishop of Lincoln, it excites indignation. We feel no morbid sensibility for the character of a mitred divine: but we cannot see a blow aimed at the head of one of the chiefs of the church, a pious, learned, and laborious man, by the hand of ignorance and presumption, without interposing, not to heal the wound, for no wound has been made, but to chastise the a.s.sailant. The Bishop of Lincoln gives up these verses, not carelessly, and unadvisedly, but doubtless because he is persuaded that the cause of true Religion can never be so much injured as by resting its defence upon pa.s.sages liable to so much suspicion; and because he knows, that the doctrine of the Trinity by no means depends upon that particular pa.s.sage, but may be satisfactorily deduced from various other expressions, and from the general tenor of holy writ. Indeed, if we were not prevented from harbouring any such suspicion by Mr. Smith's flaming profession of the _iotal_ accuracy of his creed; and if we could doubt the orthodoxy of the divine, without impugning the honesty of the man, we should be inclined to suspect that his defence of the verses proceeded from a concealed enemy. We are not unaware that the question cannot even yet be regarded as finally and incontrovertibly settled, but we apprehend the truth to be that Mr.

Smith, not having read one syllable upon the subject, but having accidentally heard that there was a disputed verse in St. John relative to the doctrine of the Trinity, and that it had been given up by the Bishop of Lincoln, thought he could not do better than by one dash of the pen, to show his knowledge of controversy, and the orthodoxy of his belief, at the expense of that prelate's character for discretion and zeal....

The next note is mere political, an ebullition of party rage, in which Mr. Smith abuses the present ministry with great bitterness, talks of "wickedness," "weakness," "ignorance," "temerity," after the usual fas.h.i.+on of opposition pamphlets, and clamours loudly against what, with an obstinacy of misrepresentation hardly to be credited, he persists in terming the "persecuting laws" against the Roman Catholics.... He is very anxious that his political friends should not desist from urging the question--an act of tergiversation and unconsistency which, he thinks, would ruin them in the estimation of the public. Yet, if we mistake not, these gentlemen, at least that portion of them with which Mr. Smith (as we are told) is most closely connected, gave up, without a blush, India, Reform, and Peace, all of which they taught us to believe were vital questions in which the honour or the security of the country was involved. But Catholic emanc.i.p.ation has some peculiar recommendations. It is odious to the people, and painful to the King, and therefore it cannot be delayed, without an utter sacrifice of character....

Now we are by no means so eager on Mr. Smith in what he would term the cause of _religious freedom_. We belong to that vulgar school of timid churchmen, to whom the elevation of a vast body of sectaries to a level with the establishment, is a matter of very grave consideration, if not of alarm. We think that something is due to the prejudices (supposing them to be no more than prejudices) of nine-tenths of the people of England; and we are even so childish (for which we crave Mr. Smith's pardon) as to pay some regard to the feelings of the King, in whose personal mortification, we fairly own, we should not take the smallest pleasure....

We now take leave of the sermon and its notes. But, before we conclude, we are desirous ... to convey to Mr. Smith a little salutary advice ...

to remind him that unmeasured severity of invective against others, will naturally produce, at the first favourable opportunity, a retort of similar harshness upon himself; and that unless he feels himself completely invulnerable, the conduct which he has. .h.i.therto pursued, is not only uncharitable and violent, but foolish. He should be told that, although he possesses some talents, they are by no means, as he supposes, of the first order. He writes in a tone of superiority which would hardly be justifiable at the close of a long and successful literary career. His acquirements are very moderate, though he wants neither boldness nor dexterity in displaying them to the best advantage; and he is far, very far indeed, from being endowed with that powerful, disciplined, and comprehensive mind, which should ent.i.tle him to decide authoritatively and at once upon the most difficult parts of subjects so far removed from one another as biblical criticism and legislation. His style is rapid and lively, but hasty and inaccurate; and he either despises or is incapable of regular and finished composition.

Humour, indeed (we speak now generally, of all these performances which have been ascribed to him by common consent), is his strong point; and here he is often successful; but even from this praise many deductions must be made. His jokes are broad and coa.r.s.e; he is altogether a mannerist, and never knows where to stop. The [Greek: _Paedenagan_]

seems quite unknown to him. His pleasantry does not proceed from keen and well-supported irony; just, but unexpected comparisons; but depends, for effect, chiefly upon strange polysyllabic epithets, and the endless enumeration of minute circ.u.mstances. In this he, no doubt, displays considerable ingenuity, and a strong sense of what is ludicrous; but his good things are almost all prepared after one receipt. There is some talent, but more trick, in their composition. The thing is well done, but it is of a low order; we meet with nothing graceful, nothing exquisite, nothing that pleases upon repet.i.tion and reflection. In everything that Mr. Smith attempts, in all his "bravura" pa.s.sages, serious or comic, one is always shocked by some affectation or absurdity; something in direct defiance of all those principles which have been established by the authority of the best critics, and the example of the best writers: indeed, bad taste seems to be Mr. Smith's evil genius, both as to sentiment and expression. It is always hovering near him, and, like one of the harpies, is sure to pounce down before the end of the feast, and spoil the banquet, and disgust the guests.

The present publication is by far the worst of all his performances, avowed or imputed. Literary merit it has none; but in arrogance, presumption, and absurdity, it far outdoes all his former outdoings.

Indeed, we regard it as one of the most deplorable mistakes that has ever been committed by a man of supposed talents....