MR. PATMORE ON DISTINCTION.
MR. COVENTRY PATMORE, in the current number of the Fortnightly Review, discourses upon the quality of " Distinction," and by way of defending himself for appre- ciating it, for which, in our opinion, he needs no defence, since we heartily agree with him in his admiration of it, he accuses us of having charged him with displaying " a singularly 'savage' and `scornful' disposition." He refers to our review of " The Unknown Eros," in our number of April 12th. With some surprise, we turned to the article and care- fully re-read it, but found no charge of the kind. We did, indeed, say that in the powerful attacks which Mr. Patmore there directs against the modern spirit, the English time- spirit of to-day, there is a good deal of harsh and scornful invective, and we quoted passages, the number of which might be considerably increased, in proof of that assertion. But we contrasted those severe invectives with the bland and gentle spirit of his earlier poetry, and only used them to show that Mr. Patmore has presented another side of his mind to the world in his latest volume ; and we neither suggested nor, indeed, imagined that that side of his mind represents his own personality any more truly than the side of his mind which was more fully reflected in his earlier works. It would have been a gross impertinence, and an impertinence of which we were certainly not guilty, to deduce any inference as to Mr. Pat- more's personal character, from the qualities exhibited in a few passages of a few poems, and, indeed, it would have been a kind of inference which we should have thought foolish and mistaken, as well as impertinent. But when a man speaks of the general multitude as " Gergesenian swine," denounces the aristocracy for giving away their power to " the sordid trader," and " the sordid trader " for sharing it with the " mechanic vain," speaks of the political demonstrations of the day as " the orgies of the multitude," and so forth, we think we may fairly impute to the poems containing these forcible and effective expressions that they are scornful and bitter ; and that scorn and bitterness, in relation to the par- ticular policy denounced, were the very qualities which Mr. Patmore availed himself of his rich poetical imagina- tion and vocabulary to embody. Not only did we not describe him as a man of singularly savage and scornful disposition, but we never even in thought attributed to him such a disposition, and we were careful to quote even from this very volume a passage of an exactly opposite tendency, entitled "Let be," showing how wise and large a charity had sometimes, even in this volume, animated his poetry. As for the word " savage," the only place in which it is used in the article is in a sentence in which we find fault with him for calling his own heart " my adulterate heart," and that merely because it dallied with pleasure. " Surely," we wrote, " the expression, my adulterate heart,' is far too savage by way of taking revenge on it for dallying with Pleasure thy pale enemy." To accuse a man of once using a too savage ex- pression, and that in inveighing against himself, is surely not to accuse him of being savage, much less of being " a savage," a charge against us as highly imaginative as the most imagina- tive element in Mr. Patmore's poetry. We did accuse Mr. Patmore of fierce partisanship in some of his scornful attacks upon democracy, but we never accused him of ferocity as a general characteristic, and never thought of making so absurd an accusation. One might as well accuse a man-eating tiger of unnatural gentleness on the strength of his having been known, on two or three exceptional occasions, to spare his victim. Mr. Patmore's style has all the distinction he himself so much admires ; but he sees criticisms upon his own poems through a magnifying glass, which transforms every fault into a crime, and every expressed divergence of taste into an expression of something like disgust.
The more important question remains as to the significance and worth of what Mr. Patmore calls " distinction." He
avows his liking for distinction, and his unwillingness to give up to the undistinguished the leadership in matters literary, artistic, or even political ; and in this we heartily agree with- him. But when he comes to define distinction, he is not, we think, quite so successful as he is in his praise of it. He makes it to consist in distinctness from others; yet not only is distinctness from others not in itself distinction, but dis- tinctness from others may often be the very opposite of distinction, indeed, a kind, and a very unpleasant kind, of vulgarity. There is no true distinction without a rare simplicity, an ease, a naturalness, a reality, an indifference to mere appearance, which always marks the bearing of those who are not coveting the good opinion of others, but in whom genuine courtesy is mingled with genuine self- confidence. Even great power and commanding genius may show themselves in a kind of distinctness from others that wholly lacks the quality of distinction. Take, for instance, the practical genius of Cromwell, or Peter the Great, or Napoleon. All these were men of distinguished genius, the last of them of high and unique genius ; but not one of them had what we should call the hall-mark of distinction on his outward life. Peter the Great was a boor; Cromwell was more or less bourgeois with all his grandeur of nature ; Napoleon was naturally vulgar, though his vulgarity was almost forgotten in the piercing glance by which he dis- criminated the right means by which his vulgar ends could best be served. Or take again literary style, what style could be more distinct and replete with genius than that of Tacitus, or that of Jean Paul Richter, or that of Carlyle P Yet we should not rank any one of these styles as marked by that " distinction " which requires for its first note, the highest simplicity ; we should not attribute to any one of them the " distinction " which we find in Virgil, or in the most luminous -efforts of Goethe, or in Ruskin, or in the highest of all English styles, that of John Henry Newman Distinction, far from 'consisting in mere distinctness, is positively inconsistent with distinctness that exaggerates difference for the sake of difference. Brusqueness, for instance, is hardly consistent with true distinction ; certainly conscious eccentricity is not. True distinction is as careful not to inflict superfluous jars on others as true politeness. The slightest trace of ostentation is wholly repugnant to true distinction. There is " distinction " in 'Gibbon's learning, but not in the roll and splendour of his diction, in which there is more than a trace of pompousness ; and nothing can be further removed from true distinction than pomp. There is distinction in Macaulay's imagination, but not in his elaborate antithesis, in which the reader feels that there is something artificial ; and the least trace of artificiality is repugnant to true distinction. There is dis- tinction in Pope's highest wit, but not in his excess of incisive- ness, where you see a laborious and self-conscious desire to excite admiration and to keep attention on the stretch, that Is altogether at variance with the simplicity and modesty of true distinction. There is true distinction, high distinction, in 'Matthew Arnold's elegies ; but in his prose there is for the most part a pride of independence, a high-steppingness, an arch implication of conscious superiority, which takes off one's admiration from the matter and fixes it too much upon the manner of the phraseology. For true distinction we require not merely distinctness, but unassuming distinctness, distinct- ness which is as modest as it is marked ; in fact, distinctness which is as unlike the peacock's flaunting self-admiration as the -note of the lark is unlike the shake of an operatic prima donna. All true distinction avoids unnecessary distinctness, any kind of distinctness which, instead of paying deference to human nature and the common forms of society, tries to display its superiority to the average man. Distinction shows itself without making a splash, without calling attention to itself, without self-consciousness. There is a deference for the feelings of others in all true distinction which avoids the friction of anything like elaborate display. But by saying this, of course, we do not mean that when a strong thing has to be said, it should be said weakly or without the adequate force, but only that no superfluity of force should be spent, as an unskilled or a vain man will spend it, in drawing attention not to the thing to be said, but to the manner of the person saying it. Mr. Patmore, in his remarks on distinction, perhaps a little ignores this. We do not at all agree with him that "in manners and art, as in life, it signifies far less what is done or said than how it is done
and said ; for the unique personality, the alone truly in- teresting and excellent thing, the " distinction " comes out in the latter only." On the contrary, the " what " is of quite first-rate importance ; only you cannot either say or do the right thing substantially without reference to the manner in which it is said or done. It matters infinitely, for instance, whether you fight for your life or prefer to die. But if it is right to fight for your life, you do not fight for it as you should, unless you fight bravely, coolly, without any violent passion. And if it is right to die, you do not die as you should, unless you die bravely, coolly, without any ()raven fear. True distinction is shown as much in the right choice of the matter to be done as in the right manner of doing it. Charles II. is said to have apologised to his courtiers for keeping them so long in dying. The manner showed distinction, but the matter showed no distinction. The poor King's mind was not fixed on the reality of the change through which he was passing. He was only thinking of how to pass through it as gracefully as possible in the view of those who were standing round his bed. There could not have been less spiritual distinction than he displayed. But if death be looked at merely as a social cere- mony, in which the chief object is to be courteous to the human figures present, the Xing succeeded. Unfortunately, that was just the point in which success was of little or no importance. There was no true distinction in Charles's death, because he did not realise what death was. There was distinction only in his display of considerateness to his attendants. But that was just the wrong direction in which to show distinction, and true distinction implies reality of aim as well as the right choice of the manner in which to embody your aim.
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