BOOKS.
MR. FREDERIC HARRISON'S ESSAYS.*
THESE essays are very unequal. Those which come under the heading of "Other Literary Estimates" are far more interesting than the three from which the book takes its name. Mr. Harrison's estimate of Tennyson is not very clear. The first half of the paper is a eulogy, the second half a depreciation of his poetry. The critic first builds the tomb and then begins to slay the prophet. Daring the first process he declares that Tennyson in England holds a position analogous to that of Hugo in France, for "he and Victor both darkened the wreaths of all who claimed to be their peers." "His flower," he continues, "has truly worn a crown of light. The people, the critics, the poets, with one voice continue to cry 'Splendid is the flower,' and so say we all." He further declares that the man who called that flower a weed would be flayed alive, as Marsyas was by Apollo, and he himself would say Amen. For form and melody he allows Tennyson no equal but Milton in the English language. Suddenly Mr. Harrison changes his key. He writes " Theology " at top of the second section of his essay, and proceeds to deal the poet some very hard blows. The blows are not quite fair, for they are really aimed at Tennyson's religious belief. Like the Princes and Presidents who sought an occasion against Daniel, he can find nothing "except concerning the law of his God." Tennyson's religion, he tells us, was neither definite nor original. It was "caught up" from the Broad Church thinkers of his time, who saw "beautiful but somewhat nebulous visions." Mr. Harrison wants something more definite than "pious hopes and vague moanings about something behind the veil." He might • Tennyson, Buskin, Mill, and other Literary Bstirnates. By Frederic Harrison, London Macmillan and Co. [Ss. ed.) read the Psalms and still feel the same want. "Tennyson did nothing to make a Theodicy of his own as Dante did of the Catholic creed," he tells us. But Dante's Theodicy was exactly the part of him which is not immortal. In calling "In Memoriam" a kind of glorified Christian Year, and contemptuously declaring that "it has made Tennyson the idol of the Anglican clergyman—the world in which he was born, and the world in which his whole life was ideally passed—the idol of all cultured youth and of all vithetic women," Mr. Harrison allows religions—or may we say Positivist P—prejudice to warp his literary judgment. His bitter mood is still on him when he describes "The Princess" as "an idyll of chivalry told to a bevy of young ladies in a drawing-room with an eye to their moral improvement," yet it would be perhaps unfair to quote this piece of harsh criticism without adding that to the lyrics contained in "The Princess" the critic does ample justice.
If Mr. Harrison is grudging to Tennyson, he is certainly not so to Ruskin. The three essays which bear his name may be described as three rhapsodies ; indeed, to quote his own words about his hero, he is in "such an ecstasy of admiration, and such a fervour of sympathy, that he can no longer limit himself to the plain foot-plodding of unimpassioned prose." We quote an instance of Mr. Harrison's ecstatic vein :—" When be [Mr. Ruskin] burets the bounds of fine taste and pelts us with perfumed flowers till we almost faint under their odour and their blaze of colours it is because he is himself intoxi- cated with the joy of his blossoming thoughts and would force some of his divine afflatus into oar souls." "No writer before or since," he continues, "has ever rolled forth such mighty fantasias, or reached such pathetic melodies in words, or composed long books in one sustained strain of limpid grace." When the critic's stock of adjectives and adverbs at last gets low he speaks of the "almost audible melody of some of Ruskin's prose," and no one can fail to be struck with the almost visible beauty of some of Mr. Harrison's metaphors. Even the highest horse must tire in the end, and at last Mr. Harrison gets off and returns to "plain foot-plodding." Once more on a level with his reader he proceeds to pick to pieces various bits of prose and poetry and to show wherein lies their charm,—illustrating, with the help of the printer, the rhythmic repetition of certain vowels and consonants. We always wonder why this sort of criticism is enjoyed, how- ever good of its kind. Most of us feel the " witchery " of words, but when the spell is explained and we know how it is done we are no nearer to knowing how to do it. The con- juror's assistant may pass round his properties, but the disappointed children can never do the trick.
On the whole, we think Mr. Harrison's essays on the historical methods of Fronde and Freeman, and the one on "The New Memoirs and Letters of Gibbon," will be read with the most pleasure. Three years ago the whole of Gibbon's autobiography was published,—that is, the seven autobiographic studies which he left to his friend Lord Sheffield, and which he—or rather, as Mr. Harrison believes his daughter, Maria Holroyd—snipped and pieced into "one curious mosaic." It is difficult, as Mr. Harrison points out, to understand why the historian amused himself with so many variations on the same air. While satirising the prudery of a fastidious young lady, which led to pages of unnecessary excision, Mr. Harrison considers that both the opening and the close of the autobiography have greatly gained by the process of " amazing revision" to which it was submitted by this brilliant woman. Mr. Harrison does not attempt to form an estimate of Gibbon as a historian. He judges him only as a man—as the man his autobiography and letters show him to be—thinks him "no profound statesman nor a consummate painter of manners, neither the wit nor the philosopher he imagines himself to be," but "one of the most genial, affectionate, sane, and contented natures in literary history, with a genius for friendship, indulgent almost to a fault towards all failings, gently fond of all pleasant things and people, and willing to put up with much for the sake of an easy life. Never was any man less heroic—who less pre- tended to be heroic P—with more perfectly worldly ideals and a more instinctive repugnance to any enthusiasm." Again Mr. Harrison repeats, "Never was able man less of a hero, less of a patriot, less of a statesman." As to the historian's want of patriotism, his critic argues this want from Gibbon's
attitude at the time of the American War of Independence He supported the war while he thought his country could win, but as soon as he saw "that no reasonable man entertains any hopes of success" he decided "that it is better to be humbled than ruined." This would seem to us an instance of cool long-sightedneas, not of want of patriotism.
Fronde's historical method Mr. Harrison regards as be- longing to the older historical school, to the school of men like Hume, Robertson, Bonnet, and Voltaire, "who aimed mainly at presenting a living picture of a given epoch with artistic completeness of composition and form" — not to the new school of scientific research. He, accord- ing to Mr. Harrison, tried unsuccessfully to combine the two, but must be counted among the former. Mr. Harrison makes an able defence of literary form in his- torical composition, because that alone can appeal to the public, and the object of history writing in his eyes is to improve the public's judgment. Truth of proportion, he maintains, is more important than accuracy of detail, and he condemns those histories wherein "the pursuit of trivial facts is carried to confusion." Nevertheless, he admits the picturesque road to be full of pitfalls, and that Fronde him- self often "makes the impression of a slippery witness." The essay on Freeman's historical method is less striking. The writer delights in Freeman's theory of the unity of history, and in his belief that it is "one continuous biography of man." He exalts him, moreover, as a great politician, but he regrets the detailed method which, of necessity, restricted his horizon in the matter of time, and makes him forget Mr. Frederic Harrison's favourite dogma that "History, in its worthy sense, is the main organon of social philosophy."
The reader who gets quite through this book will certainly feel at the end that he has enjoyed his journey. Perhaps he will think he knows the touching point of the sublime and the ridiculous better than the essayist, but if he is a humble- minded reader he will feel also that be shares his knowledge with many very small men, while Mr. Harrison shares his ignorance with many very great ones.
Previous page
