PROFESSOR MASSON'S ESSAYS.* THESE essays, with a single and comparatively
unimportant exception, have seen the light before, and are reprinted from a volume published by Mr. Masson in 1856. Besides the paper which gives its unfortunate title to the book, there are five essays on literary topics,—" Shakespeare and Goethe," "Milton's Youth," "Dryden and the Literature of the Restoration," " Dean Swift," and "how Literature may Illustrate History," which appears to be published for the first time. It will be seen from this choice of topics that the writer has eovered a wide space in our literary annals, and has indeed selected for critical comment and illustration four of the men who represent in the most striking measure the successive periods of our literature from the reign of Elizabeth to the reign of George II. There is a solidity about Mr. Masson's lightest work that is worthy of praise, at a time when thoroughness is too often sacrificed to brilliancy. The author of these essays is not brilliant, but he knows how to grasp his subject, and to employ adequately his large fund of information. His steps are slow and his movements sometimes a little heavy, but he is a trustworthy companion, and while giving careful attention to details, is not unmindful of theories. Fortunately the subjects he has selected are what, from -a literary standing-point, may be termed popular, and his style, although not altogether pleasing, is remarkable for perspicacity.
It matters not on what page we open in a volume of this kind. For those who have read the author's massive biography of Milton, or the vastly copious notes that illustrate the Cambridge edition of the poet, the paper on "Milton's Youth " will be found to contain little probably that is new ; indeed the large amount of comment and information poured out by Mr. Masson on his favourite topic since the first issue of this essay seems to render its republication superfluous. "Dryden and the Restora- tion," although in itself a tolerably familiar theme, is one that Mr. Masson would be likely to dwell upon more freshly. It is a fine subject for literary handling, and demands what the writer so conspicuously possesses, accurate and comprehensive knowledge. For forty years or more, Dryden was the most notable figure in our literature ; he ruled the world of letters like a monarch, and so far from failing with the addition of years, did some of his best and most enduring work in his old age. He -was in his sixty-seventh year when he published his translation of Virgil and wrote the "Alexander's Feast," and in his sixty-ninth year on the publication of the Fables. Indeed, if Dryden had died young, or even at mature age, he would not have occupied any permanent place in literature. Long before old age he attained a high position as a playwright. His plays were cer- tain to fill the house, and Mr. Bell observes that a new play from Dryden's pen attracted throngs of people of all classes. "The Court, the King's mistresses, the wits, the loungers of Fops' Alley, the scourers and brawlers of the pit, and the vizard masks of the .eighteen-penny gallery crowded into the theatre on these occa- -sions." The eight-and-twenty dramas which contributed so greatly to Dryden's notoriety in his life-time have no interest for readers mow. They are extremely licentious, and for the most part, ex- tremely dull, full of rant and bombast and extravagance, but not without occasional flashes of genius and signs of strength worthy of a great poet. They are the mere hack-work of a man whose -sense of what was honourable never seems to have been acute, and who too often prostituted his noble gifts for the sake of money- getting. It was not till Dryden was over fifty that he afforded evidence of the splendid powers which give him so command- ing a position in our literature. As a satirist he is unrivalled, except by Pope, and his master satire, Absolom and Achitophel, was published in 1681. The following year appeared MacFlecknoe, a poem in which his poetical rival and political opponent Shadwell is treated with withering contempt. The man who could survive an assault like that must, one would think, be either too great to heed it, or too small to comprehend it. Then followed the .Religio Laid, and when the new King brought in a new faith, Dryden, having discovered his Protestant errors, wrote the Hind and the Panther, one of the most brilliant efforts of his genius, and all the more remarkable since the absurd allegory must inevitably in weaker hands have rendered the poem ridiculous. By the The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's. With other Essays. By David -.Maroon, ILA., LL.D. Lonion Macmillan and Co 1874.
publication of this poem, says Mr. Masson, "Dryden showed that whatever his new faith had done for him, it had not changed his genius for satire. In fact, precisely as during James's reign Dryden appears personally as a solitary giant warring on the wrong side, so this poem remains as the sole literary work of any excellence in which the wretched spirit of that reign is fully represented."
In Mr. Masson's opinion, the high rank taken by Dryden among the great English poets is due to the fact "that steadily and in- dustriously for a period of forty-two years he kept in the front of national literature, such as it then was. It is because he repre- sents the entire literary development of the restoration ; it is because he fills up the whole interval between 1658 and 1701, thus connecting the age of Puritanism and Milton with the age of Queen Anne, that we give him such a place in such a list. The reason is a chronological one, rather than one of strict comparison of personal merits." This view isniore ingenious than accurate. It is not the long period of Dryden's literary supremacy that entitles him to the first place in the second class of poets, but his almostunexampled power as a poetical satirist and as a reasoner in verse, and this power, as we before said, was not displayed until he had passed his fiftieth birthday. Mr. Masson allows that except for library
purposes, no admirer of Dryden would care to save more than a small, select portion of what he wrote, and the pieces, with a few
exceptions which he mentions as worthy of preservation, were pro- duced during the last twenty years of his life, for Dryden died at the ripe age of seventy. But on the last page of his essay Mr. Masson settles this question himself, for he observes that had Dryden died before 1681, he would have been remembered as little more than a robust versifier ; and this remark, which is quite true, nullifies, as it seems to us, the prior statement that Dryden's name ranks fifth in the series of great English poets, because he kept in the front of the national literature for forty-two years.
From Dryden to Swift is no incongruous transition. Both were men of the most powerful intellects, and capable of almost any literary work except the highest ; both were consummate masters of satire ; both wrote, though in widely different styles, the purest English, both were voluminous authors in prose and verse ; both had strength enough to annihilate almost any literary foe that might venture to attack them ; both too, it will be re- membered, have had the good-fortune to have their biographies written and their works edited by Sir Walter Scott, Dryden's filling seventeen octavo volumes, and Swift's eighteen. In read- ing Mr. Masson's paper on Swift we are reminded of some pre- vious articles on this well-worn topic, and especially of a
lively essay which appeared originally in the Times from the pen of the late Samuel Phillips. Novelty in the treatment of such a
theme is scarcely to be looked for, and perhaps Mr. Masson has lived too long with Milton to appreciate the Queen-Anne men at their full worth. After living on angels' food and walking on the mountain heights of poetry, he cannot relish a daintily-cooked London dinner or a walk in trimmed gardens. Of the splendid circle of wits over whom towered Swift and his friend Pope the writer therefore says little. Swift was something more than a wit, and indeed cared so little for what to Pope was the dearest object in life—literary fame—that he took small pains to preserve his numerous effusions. What he cared most for, for he was as proud as Lucifer, was the recognition of his equality by men of intellect and rank ; he did not care to live in the study and in the club, but liked best to mingle with distinguished men and to rule them. Harley and St. John knew his value, and submitted to his caprice. He issued his orders like a monarch, chose sometimes when invited to dinner the guests that should be asked to meet him, found a number of good positions for his friends and for men of letters, and managed to serve every one but himself. For
Swift had written the Tale of a 7'nb, and his wit stood in the way of Church preferment. Mr. Masson reminds us of all this, and of much more that is illustrated in that most curious of revelations, the Journal to Stella, but his remarks for those already acquainted with the subject bear no aspect of novelty. The pain- ful story, too, of the rivals, Stella and Vanessa, has been told again and again. Mr. Masson recounts it, and gives extracts from the correspondence between Swift and Miss Vanhomrigh, but he does not attempt to explain—how is it possible to do so ?—the in- scrutable secret which made Dean Swift the most miserable of men. The writer's estimate of Swift's genius is thoroughly sound, but we are forced to add that, for the most part, it is thoroughly trite.
There is more of originality in the essay upon "Shakespeare and Goethe," and it will be read with greater interest, since many of the author's statements are likely to be disputed. Perhaps the
ordinary conception of Shakespeare is that of a serene and sweet- tempered man, of a man eminently fitted to enjoy life, and not at all likely to be shipwrecked or over much-agitated by its storms. Mr. Masson, having determined that the Sonnets are and can pos- sibly be nothing else than a poetical record of Shakespeare's own feelings and experience, regards them as a certain proof that Shakespeare's natural bias was to meditativeness and melancholy, and that it was his use "to revert when he was alone to that ultimate mood of the soul in which one hovers wistfully on the borders of the finite, vainly pressing against the barriers that separate it from the unknown ; that mood in which even what is common and under-foot seems part of a vast current mystery."
Perhaps it would be true to say that melancholy is the common mood in leisure moments of all men who really think, and who find nothing to satisfy their souls in the ordinary pursuits of life. At such times it may happen, and often does happen, that the mind turns curiously and with morbid interest to the secrets of the grave, dwelling on them until the foul imaginations conjured up make of this life a charnel-house. Shakespeare, with his supreme powers of intellect and feeling, is no doubt induced frequently to dwell on such themes, but this is only because all that has to do with humanity is to him of profoundest interest, and not, we think, because it is the habit of his mind to brood upon death and on corruption. We may allow with Mr. Masson that in this extreme familiarity with the conception of mortality Shakespeare exceeds other poets, but then we hold that this is only one form in which he shows his pre-eminence. For what other poet has given so many pictures of life and loveliness, such portraits of fair women, such tender love-episodes, such rollicking fun, such pregnant and witty sayings, such humorous situations, such wholesome work-a- day wisdom? When Mr. Masson says that Shakespeare was the greatest expresser that ever lived, we endorse the opinion, although the word strikes us as an awkward one. "No man that ever lived said such splendid things on all subjects universally ; no man that ever lived had the faculty of pouring out on all occasions such a flood of the richest and deepest language By his powers of expression, in fact, Shakespeare has beggared all his posterity, and left mere practitioners of expression nothing possible to do." The contrast drawn by the critic between the characters of Shake- speare and of the greatest intellect of Germany is ingenious, but it is one which we find it impossible to accept. Goethe, it is said, "had a stronger element of self-control than Shake- speare, and gave up at twenty-five a young, beautiful, and innocent girl, from the conviction that it was better to do so ;" while Shakespeare, at thirty-five, was the abject slave of a dark-complexioned woman, who was faithful to him, and whom he cursed in his heart. This proof that Goethe's "sensi- bilities moved from the first over a firmer basis of permanent character" strikes us as having very little in it. We know what Goethe did, and know how relaxed and even sickly his moods of sentiment often were ; but we can but guess from a darkly mysteri- ous sonnet, which has been variously interpreted, the conduct of Shakespeare. There is much, however, in this essay, whether we accept the writer's theories or not, that will amply reward the reader ; and as much may be said for the discriminating criticism on the Satan of Milton, the Mephistopheles of Goethe, and the evil spirit with whom Luther wrestled all his life-long. As the essay of a young man—The Three Devils appeared in Fraser's Magazine thirty years ago—this is a remarkable production.
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