The Common Reader
variety of his perceptions, his complexity, his confusion, his self, in
short. There is little of all this in the works of Wordsworth and Scott
and Jane Austen. From what, then, arises that sense of security which
gradually, delightfully, and completely overcomes us? It is the power of
their belief—their conviction, that imposes itself upon us. In
Wordsworth, the philosophic poet, this is obvious enough. But it is
equally true of the careless Scott, who scribbled masterpieces to build
castles before breakfast, and of the modest maiden lady who wrote
furtively and quietly simply to give pleasure. In both there is the same
natural conviction that life is of a certain quality. They have their
judgement of conduct. They know the relations of human beings towards
each other and towards the universe. Neither of them probably has a word
to say about the matter outright, but everything depends on it. Only
believe, we find ourselves saying, and all the rest will come of itself.
Only believe, to take a very simple instance which the recent
publication of _The Watsons_ brings to mind, that a nice girl will
instinctively try to soothe the feelings of a boy who has been snubbed
at a dance, and then, if you believe it implicitly and unquestioningly,
you will not only make people a hundred years later feel the same thing,
but you will make them feel it as literature. For certainty of that kind
is the condition which makes it possible to write. To believe that your
impressions hold good for others is to be released from the cramp and
confinement of personality. It is to be free, as Scott was free, to
explore with a vigour which still holds us spell-bound the whole world
of adventure and romance. It is also the first step in that mysterious
process in which Jane Austen was so great an adept. The little grain of
experience once selected, believed in, and set outside herself, could be
put precisely in its place, and she was then free to make of it, by a
process which never yields its secrets to the analyst, into that
complete statement which is literature.
So then our contemporaries afflict us because they have ceased to
believe. The most sincere of them will only tell us what it is that
happens to himself. They cannot make a world, because they are not free
of other human beings. They cannot tell stories because they do not
believe the stories are true. They cannot generalise. They depend on
their senses and emotions, whose testimony is trustworthy, rather than
on their intellects whose message is obscure. And they have perforce to
deny themselves the use of some of the most powerful and some of the
most exquisite of the weapons of their craft. With the whole wealth of
the English language at the back of them, they timidly pass about from
hand to hand and book to book only the meanest copper coins. Set down at
a fresh angle of the eternal prospect they can only whip out their
notebooks and record with agonised intensity the flying gleams, which
light on what? and the transitory splendours, which may, perhaps,
compose nothing whatever. But here the critics interpose, and with some
show of justice.
If this description holds good, they say, and is not, as it may well be,
entirely dependent upon our position at the table and certain purely
personal relationships to mustard pots and flower vases, then the risks
of judging contemporary work are greater than ever before. There is
every excuse for them if they are wide of the mark; and no doubt it
would be better to retreat, as Matthew Arnold advised, from the burning
ground of the present to the safe tranquillity of the past. “We enter on
burning ground,” wrote Matthew Arnold, “as we approach the poetry of
times so near to us, poetry like that of Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth,
of which the estimates are so often not only personal, but personal with
passion,” and this, they remind us, was written in the year 1880.
Beware, they say, of putting under the microscope one inch of a ribbon
which runs many miles; things sort themselves out if you wait;
moderation and a study of the classics are to be recommended. Moreover,
life is short; the Byron centenary is at hand; and the burning question
of the moment is, did he, or did he not, marry his sister? To sum up,
then—if indeed any conclusion is possible when everybody is talking at
once and it is time to be going—it seems that it would be wise for the
writers of the present to renounce for themselves the hope of creating
masterpieces. Their poems, plays, biographies, novels are not books but
notebooks, and Time, like a good schoolmaster, will take them in his
hands, point to their blots and erasions, and tear them across; but he
will not throw them into the waste-paper basket. He will keep them
because other students will find them very useful. It is from notebooks
of the present that the masterpieces of the future are made. Literature,
as the critics were saying just now, has lasted long, has undergone many
changes, and it is only a short sight and a parochial mind that will
exaggerate the importance of these squalls, however they may agitate the
little boats now tossing out at sea. The storm and the drenching are on
the surface; and continuity and calm are in the depths.
As for the critics whose task it is to pass judgement upon the books of
the moment, whose work, let us admit, is difficult, dangerous, and often
distasteful, let us ask them to be generous of encouragement, but
sparing of those wreaths and coronets which are so apt to get awry, and
fade, and make the wearers, in six months time, look a little
ridiculous. Let them take a wider, a less personal view of modern
literature, and look indeed upon the writers as if they were engaged
upon some vast building, which being built by common effort, the
separate workmen may well remain anonymous. Let them slam the door upon
the cosy company where sugar is cheap and butter plentiful, give over,
for a time at least, the discussion of that fascinating topic—whether
Byron married his sister—and, withdrawing, perhaps, a handsbreadth from
the table where we sit chattering, say something interesting about
literature. Let us buttonhole them as they leave, and recall to their
memory that gaunt aristocrat, Lady Hester Stanhope, who kept a
milk-white horse in her stable in readiness for the Messiah and was for
ever scanning the mountain tops, impatiently but with confidence, for
signs of his approach, and ask them to follow her example; scan the
horizon; see the past in relation to the future; and so prepare the way
for masterpieces to come.
[Footnote 15: How violent these are two quotations will show. “It [Told
by _an Idiot_] should be read as the _Tempest_ should be read, and as
_Gulliver’s Travels_ should be read, for if Miss Macaulay’s poetic gift
happens to be less sublime than those of the author of the _Tempest_,
and if her irony happens to be less tremendous than that of the author
of _Gulliver’s Travels_, her justice and wisdom are no less noble than
theirs.”—_The Daily News._
The next day we read: “For the rest one can only say that if Mr. Eliot
had been pleased to write in demotic English _The Waste Land_ might not
have been, as it just is to all but anthropologists, and literati, so
much waste-paper.”—_The Manchester Guardian._]