SCHLEGEL'S LECTURES ON THE DRAMA. NEW EDITION.

Wu are happy to see a new edition of these admirable Le et ures, which, thirty years ago, introduced a new style of criticism into Germany, the effects of which on the literature of that country can hardly be too highly estimated. That they have not operated a similar reforma- tion in the spirit of criticism in England, is as true as that much needs to be reformed ; but because SCHLEGEL, by his enthusiastic . appreciation of the genius of SHAKSPERE, and his just and beauti-'.. ful disquisitions on his works, has substantiated a lasting claim to time regard of English readers, there can be little doubt of his in- creasing estimation lunongst us, and the consequent growth of his critical influence. SCHLEGEL was one of the first labourers in the field of resthetical philosophy who endeavoured to shake the mind free ftom the trammels of precedent and artificial criteria in works of taste—to call it off from potty considerations, and raise it to a high and enlarged apprehension of the spirit and end of Art. Nor was. - it only by his own example that he sought to recommend this new . tone in criticism, but by frequent arguments and disputations • specially directed to the point ; matter by no means bargained for - in a work professing to be devoted to a particular branch of litera- • ture. Whether SCHLEGEL in vindicating Nature may not, through warmth in a great cause, have been led sometimes into aspersing. Art unduly, may be made matter for consideration. No one can he more alive than we are to the pedantic absurdities into which his pursuit of logical forms and love of analysis led ARISTOTLE in the Poetics ; where his time, for example, is taken up in such discoveS. • ries as that the " end" is that point " after which nothing mores can come." But it is equally clear to our mind that the synthetis cal part of criticism, or that which regards the creations of AS with reference to their integral features, though by far the nobler , moiety, is not perfect or self-sufficient ; and that the analytical function is no less essential. It is by analysis that SCHLEGEL ar- rives at a great part of the truths which give these volumes their high value : . by analysis he demonstrates the false importance at- tached to the mystic " unities ;" by analysis he refutes the French • critics and overthrows their rules of art ; finally, by analysis he triumphs over the analysts themselves, and by his use of it makes apparent their over-use. We are not here invalidating in any de- gree the high character challenged for SCHLEGEL'S system of cri- ticism ; which indeed, if it realizes the elevated views of art that the author so fervently advocates, combines also, as we have shown, no little of that commoner though equally desir- able species of excellence which it was rather his cue to depre- ciate : we only mean to point the reader's attention in the direction of a prejudice which, if the revolution now sought to • be achieved in the affairs of literature and criticisni be too vehemently thrust on, is not unlikely to succeed to that which it is designed to supplant. In building up the new rera we shall gain no iota of strength for the work from any particle of injustice done to a preceding age. That the last was, as respects criticism, essentially a microscopic age, we grant freely ; we must therefore grant that it was an age of false criticism ; for the half-part of any thing can never be true—no more than the half of any truth can be that truth : when, however, it is proposed to put a telescope into our hands as the nobler instrument of observation, though we accept it with gratitude, we do not therefore cry "away with microscopes!" We are grateful also for microscopes. 5Nature invites us to criticize her works with glasses of every focus—why not Art? If in con- sidering the anatomy of a fly, or viewing the minute arrangements in the bell of a cowslip, we were to forget the glory of the stars and the harmony of the universe, doubtless we should make a bad use of our eyes. But what fear of this? On the contrari, those minute investigations, when made, not ultimate, but mediate ob- jects in philosophy, tend only to magnify the glory and to perfect the harmony of the creation to our senses; which, measuring all things comparatively, must estimate the grandeur of the whole in proportion to the fineness of the parts with which they are conver- sant. A work of genius is a work of harmony and proportion—a little universe, in which all fibres are trembling responsively, every clement is workine together. Such a work demands a criticism at

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once comprehensive and particular—a criticism like itself, not alone greatly-conceiving, but minutely-working; not alone telesco- pic, but microscopic. Art has her minute touches as well as her master-strokes; poetry her flowers as well as her eagle-flights ; nay, the minute touches may be the master-strokes, and the flowers as divine, duly thought on, as the flights. To botanize in this vase, is unless a part of the philosophy of criticism than to star- gaze, . and helps, not obstructs, the formation of whole views :

• nor does it by any- meats follow that when the sight is contracted the mind is narrowed ; one might as well fear to miss the general •

scope of SITARSPERE'S Plays by reading them in the diamond edi- tion. The faculties of the human mind, be assured, lose none of their resiliency by compression ; they rather come from it with more rebounding : like the angelic host, they can, as they list, span the empyrean or hold counsel in a nutshell.

We do not of course mean to deny that the intellectual, like the

bodily eye, must become .short-sighted by cosstant restriction to petty objects : we only mean to impress on those who might other- wise possibly forget, that all large views include small views, and that it is not by overlooking the latter that the former are best un- derstood. To quote a fusty observation of a great writer,

" God views from whole to parts, but human soul Blast rise from individual to the whole."

Whether one, however, should grasp the whole at once, or only rise to it " from individual," it is certain both that the parts, as configur- ing that whole, are separately worth analysis, and that the mind, in so analyzing and separately considering them, cannot but build (build- ing being its instinctive vocation, like the ant's) some definite system or scheme of its o'wn upon them. Such system or scheme may be—in its nature mast be—grossly defective, being nothing snore than a classification the materials for which are perpetually fluc- tuating with the progress of the human mind. But though a mere reflected light, and shifting according to the phases of the object which generates it, may not such a criticsm have also a moon-like vicegerency—useful in its season ? Criticism, indeed, of one kind or another—be it ARISTOTLE'S or SCHLEGF,L's—en n challenge no higher rank for itself than this. It is a mere moon—a moon that takes itself, too often, for a sun. What it seems to give out it adopts only, and all its truth is borrowed from the object to which it affects to lend. Criticism is judicial and nothing shore; it is only genius which is legislative. Criticism can originate no laws of art, but it sits on the bench, and must administer those which genius itself evolves and practically establishes. All works of true genius, however, (and we speak only of those,) are, despite the utmost eccentricity they can exhibit, constructed according to rules of infinite particularity and nicest application—rules unknown to him that conforms to them—rules obeyed in unconscious deference to the less apparent though not less controlling principles of our nature : and to discover those rules, and raise them into definite and substantive forms, is, we will not say amongst the best tri- umphs of criticism, but certaiely amongst the subtilest and most curious operations of a mind, to which, as we have already re- marked, building—were it but air-castles—is an instinct and a necessity. It is only when criticism mistakes this operation for an authentic oracular utterance, binding on genius itself, that it wrongs the world of art. There may be excellent reasons why Jupiter should have just four moons; and it would be of no sort of utility, but of some sort of interest, to discover those reasons : be, however, who having discovered them should proceed to uni- versalize their application, and to contend, for example, that Saturn with his belt was less commodiously lighted, would wrong the world of Nature. No ! let bins rather apply himself to the discovery of Saturn's secret, and find out the excellent reasons for the belt. Let him set no limit, in fact, to his discoveries in Nature, but be chary of his advice to her. Very far, therefore, is it front our creed to think that laws should be prescribed to genius, or that those prin- ciples which criticism, with her laborious building firculty, extracts and raises up into regular structures out of the inspired works of the ancients, or any other bygone age of men, should be east into manacles for the inheritors of their spirit. We only would not de- bar the critical mind -from its privilege of scrutinizing the world of Art, and even making what maps of it it pleases; let it be ever so inquisitive or ever so methodical, it is inoffensive while it is pas- sive : the Inquisition itself would be terrorless without its torture. As long as the power of analysis is associated with the higher fa- culty of comprehensive judgment, it must work not only inoffZaisively but beneficially ; so connected, it cannot terminate in pedantry or intolerance, and must always be ready to exchange the coinage of' its adoption for any other stamped in the mint of genius : and to admit, for instance, that " the spirit if poetry, which, though im- perishable, wanders as it were through different bodies, so often as it is newly born in the human race, must, from the nutrimental

substance of an altered age, be fashioned into a body of a different conformation."'

We have been led into these observations, not from thinking them specially applicable to SCHLEGEL, but from noticing of late, iii various writings and speakings apparently founded on his views, the germ of an error, which, if not early rooted up, IS as likely to con- found criticism as any other. We do not doubt that we live in an age of a great and beneficial revolution for Art and Criticism—one which has by no means yet fulfilled the measure of its improve- ments ; but this revolution, like all others, may have its excesses, and we fancy we already perceive souse of them. There is a dispo- sition, very ungenerous, in our young men of the present day, to run down indiscriminately all the writers of the last age. Let it be granted that the authority of the latter in the republic of letters was, at the commencement of this century, a source of unmitigated evil ; that it was absolutely necessary to humble that authority its order to establish a new and improved constitution in literature and Introduce to public reverence a quite different and so far contemned order of men. But has not this been now effectually done ? Is not the enemy completely routed? and, instead of going on firing in amongst them with supererogatory slaughter, would it not be for mild and moral conquerors like us—us of the milk-white * Schlegel id supra, Lect. xii, . charity and the new lights—rather to " check our thunder in mid volley," parcere vials, and even (as a worleof grace not incompa- tible with our meek professions) help a few poor devils to the hose. pital ? Victory, not carnage, was the object of this rebellion ; and that attained, we shall do well to consider whether or not some of our old bugbears have been too roughly handled and even deserve some compensation at our hands. To poor Dr. JOHNSON, as the late beadle, the boys in our opinion, have dealt an inordinate measure of revenge. There was not in the parish, before this rising, a worthier or a better beadle than he. That his cocked-hat and formidable official weapon were inconsistent with liberty, we at once admit ; but we confess, when we hear, one after another, the lean youngsters of our new commonwealth that usurp his place, loading his memory with abuse, and at the same time know for a thing most clear, that all such starvelings together, though they were crammed under his very mantle, like the seven ordinary men in DANIEL LAMBERT'S waist- coat, could not make up the quantity of his merit whether as a beadle or a man—our bile rises, and we feel as much disposed to take up arms against the new parochial authorities as ever we were against the old. The deposition of our beloved beadle was indis. pensable to liberty ' • but now that he is gathered to his fathers, and can no longer knock down the wrong boy, we reed his me- mory with affection, and hate any one who speaks of him disre- spectfully. Dr. JOHNSON, pima homo, was of the very quintessential salt of the carth--a man all manly, pure-minded, high-souled, to be re- vered. As a moral writer he propounded nothing new, but he spoke the old wisdom with a deep mouths and a serious heart—sought to do good in his generation, and did it ; and the writer of whom this thing is to be said is one whose natne is written on a monument more durable than brass—a monument which no new wisdom n and no new wiseacres will at any time supplant, but which from its dark and solitary quarter will loom on posterity noticed and noticeable fbr ever.

It is as a critic that JOHNSON has excited most rancour amongst the emancipated sons of those flogged fathers whom his lung whip collected to their daily task. The emancipated, however, should sometimes pause in their career of vengeance, and before scratching the old slave-driver's eyes entirely out, ask themselves candidly—what sort of fellows their fathers were, and whether they deserved their .freedom ? Amongst those poets whose reputation his strictures could in any sensible mariner affect, how many were there, let us ask, visited with injury ? Let us have a list of the killed and wounded ; for, upon our honour, we don't know their names. Was any WORDSWORTH condemned to twenty years' ob. scanty by insensibility to merit or malicious ridicule ? was any KEATS sent to a young grave ? did he blacken the name of any LEIGH HUNT with foul vituperation and assiduous mendacity? Dr. JOHNSON'S sensibility to the higher order of poetry may have been very defective; his prejudices may also have been strong ; but there was in any case an abiding honesty, and, we will add, a scru- pulous sense of' justice, founded in his characteristic love of truth, which—by those not themselves prejudiced—may be dis- covered, as in his other writings, so in these relating to the Poets, and even in those very portions of them usually considered least consonant to justice. Amongst the poets, therefore, wills whose works he had to deal—we niean those contemporary with himself, and .whom his criticisms could affect for good or evil—we find, first of all, hardly one of any original merit, or for whom the smallest sympa- thy can at this day be sincerely professed ; and secondly, we find, that such as there be, either conic off altogether Null in his pages, or get such trivial injuries in comparison NVitil vhat have since en borne from critics with halfhis wit and no partiae of his honesty, as make us wonder where the indignation comes !bons that conti- nues to pursue so distant an offender while it con make matters up so readily at home.

As a specimen of the stupid and slavish way in which any thing disparaging to Dr. JOHNSON is caught up now-a-days by those gaping lackwits who are never wanting as e,unductors when something electrical in the way of a lie has to be thrown off; we will only refer to the notion so commonly bandied about respecting some dire injustice done to ComaNs, by persons who perhaps never read either COLLINS or the Doctor. Any one who will take the trouble to look at the critique on COLLINS'S poems, will hardly foil to per- ceive that it is chiefly remarkable for a deep admiration of the poet's genius, and an endeavour to justify that admiration by au appeal to the highest sources of' feeling and imagination. But to return from this brief ati empt to indicate a vein of preju- dice and injustice which—in a manner analogous to the intolerance of the new holders of political franchise—begins rather to disgrace the triumph of this vaunted ;era of our literary regeneration. The

question, like most others, is bilateral, and our maintenance of the silver side of the shield is without disparagement to the veracity of those who assert the golden reverse l'rom a contrary point of

view. Certainly, ELS long as regard is had to justice and truth in dealing with the claims of a past age, too much importance can-

not be attached to the new views in art and criticism of Willa

SCHLEGEL was amongst the earliest and most ineritorioste apostles. Those views have been warmly and ably enforced, for one, by his present editor, Mr. It. II. llonNE, though not beyond their real merit. In an Introduction prefixed to this edition, Mr.

HORSE justly rebukes the petty spirit in criticism, which, fastening only on points parallel to its own intellectual dimensions, can

never rise to the comprehension of' a great whole in art or litera- ture, but by its contractile property turns every thing to miniature. Amongst many excellent observations, we find it remarked, as a significant circumstance, that while " analysis " is a Familiar every- day word, as describing an operation that all minds are more or less intent on performing, "synthesis "—which describes another operation that, in criticism at least, must be held of more than equal importance—has " become nearly obsolete, and seems to have sunk into a pedantic, unnecessary, and scholastic figure." Let us hope, therefore, that this representative of an idea so de- serving of the popular fitvour denied it—this unjustly exiled “synthesis"—this ostracized Aristides of a word—may prove to be amongst those of which it has been sung,

"Multarenascentur gine jam cecidere."

The reader will also find in this Introduction of Mr. IioaxE many striking and judicious remarks on the present state of the English stage; which we only regret we cannot transcribe, owing to the length to which we have already extended this article. They are, however, such as might be expected to proceed from the author of Como de