In literature, as in opinion, it was only when moral faults were mingled with intellectual defects that he became censorious. He detested literary humbug-a pretence of knowledge without the reality, a show of philosophy masking poverty of thought; the vanity of quaintness, the "ring of false metal," the glorification of commonplace. And so again when we come to Life-the social life of the civilized community-he was the consistent teacher and the bright example of an exalted and scrupulous morality. Even the intellectual brilliancy of authors whom he intensely admired did not often blind him to ethical defects. It is true that some objects of his literary admiration-Goethe and Byron and George Sand-could scarcely be regarded as moral exemplars; but, while he praised the genius, he marked his disapproval of the moral defect. In writing of George Sand, who had so profoundly influenced his early life, he did not deny or extenuate "her passions and her errors." Byron, though he thought him "the greatest natural force, the greatest elementary power, which has appeared in our literature since Shakespeare," he roundly accused of "vulgarity and effrontery," coarseness and commonness," "affectation and brutal selfishness." In the case of Goethe, he said that "the moralist and the man of the world may unite in condemning" his laxity of life; and ever in Faust, which he esteemed the "most wonderfu work of poetry in our century," the fact that it is a "seduction-drama " marred his pleasure. In the same tone he wrote, in the last year of his life, about Renan's Abbesse-"I regret the escapade extremely; he was entirely out of his rôle in writing such a book. . . . Renan descends sensibly in the scale from having produced his Abbesse." Heine, with all his genius, "lacked the old-fashioned, laborious, eternally needful moral deliverance": he left a name blemished by "intemperate susceptibility, unscrupulousness in passion, inconceivable attacks on his enemies, still more inconceivable attacks on his friends, want of generosity, sensuality, incessant mocking." And, while he thus criticised the defective morality of writers whom he greatly admired, he was, perhaps naturally, still more severe on the moral defects of those whom he esteemed less highly. "Burns," he said, "is a beast, with splendid gleams, and the medium in which he lived, Scotch peasants, Scotch Presbyterianism, and Scotch drink, is repulsive." On Coleridge, critic, poet, philosopher, his judgment was that he "had no morals," and that his character inspired disesteem, nay, repugnance." Bulwer-Lytton he thought a consummate novel-writer, but "his was by no means a perfect nature". a strange mixture of what is really romantic and interesting with what is tawdry and gimcracky." Villette he pronounced "disagreeable, because the writer's mind. contains nothing but hunger, rebellion, and rage, and therefore that is all she can put into her book." Of Harriet Martineau, the other of the "two gifted women," whose exploits he had glorified in Haworth Churchyard, he wrote in later years that she had "undeniable talent, energy, and merit," but "what an unpleasant life and unpleasant nature!" And, so everywhere the moral element-the sense for Conduct-mingles itself with his literary judgment. But it was in his attack on Shelley, written within four months of his own death, that he most vigorously displayed his detestation of moral shortcomings, and his sense of their poisonous effect on the performances of genius. "In this article on Shelley," he wrote, "I have spoken of his life, not his poetry. Professor Dowden was too much for my patience." It can hardly be questioned that the publication of that biography did a signal disservice to the memory of the poet whom Professor Dowden idolized. The lack of taste, judgment, and humour which pervades the 1 The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, by Edward Dowden, LL.D. 1886. |