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Page 50
"Falkland," which follows, is less purely literary, but yet closely
connected with literature. One thinks with some ruth of its original
text, which was a discourse on Falkland by that modern Lucius Gary,
the late Lord Carnarvon--the most curious and pathetic instance of a
man of the nineteenth century speaking of one who was almost his exact
prototype, in virtues and graces as in weaknesses and disabilities of
temperament, during the seventeenth. It would, of course, have been
indecent for Mr Arnold to bring this parallel out, writing as he did
in his own name and at the moment, and I do not find any reference to
it in the _Letters_; but I can remember how strongly it was felt
at the time. His own interest in Falkland as the martyr of Sweetness
and Light, of lucidity of mind and largeness of temper, was most
natural, and its sources most obvious. It would be cruel, and is quite
unnecessary, to insist on the too certain fact that, in this instance
at any rate, these excellent qualities were accompanied by a distinct
weakness of will, by a mania for sitting between two stools, and by
that--it may be lovable, it may be even estimable--incapacity to
think, to speak, to behave like a man of this world, which besets the
conscientious idealist who is not a fanatic. On the contrary, let us
not grudge Mr Arnold a hero so congenial to himself, and so little
repulsive to any of us. He could not have had a better subject; nor
can Falkland ever hope for a _vates_ better consecrated, by
taste, temper, and ability, to sing his praises.
Then we are back again in pure literature, with the two notable
_Quarterly_ articles, already glanced at, on M. Scherer as "A
French Critic on Milton" and "A French Critic on Goethe." There was a
very strong sympathy, creditable to both, between the two. M. Scherer
went further than Mr Arnold in the negative character of his views on
religion; but they agreed as to dogma. His literary criticism was
somewhat harder and drier than Mr Arnold's; but the two agreed in
acuteness, lucidity, and a wide, if not quite a thoroughgoing, use of
the comparative method. Both were absolutely at one in their
uncompromising exaltation of "conduct." So that Mr Arnold was writing
quite _con amore_ when he took up his pen to recommend M. Scherer
to the British public, which mostly knew him not at that time.
But he did not begin directly with his main subject. He had always, as
we have seen, had a particular grudge at Macaulay, who indeed
represented in many ways the tendencies which Mr Arnold was born to
oppose. Now just at this time certain younger critics, while by no
means championing Macaulay generally, had raised pretty loud and
repeated protests against Mr Arnold's exaggerated depreciation of the
_Lays_ as "pinchbeck"; and I am rather disposed to think that he
took this opportunity for a sort of sally in flank. He fastens on one
of Macaulay's weakest points, a point the weakness of which was
admitted by Macaulay himself--the "gaudily and ungracefully
ornamented" (as its author calls it) _Essay on Milton_. And he
points out, with truth enough, that its "gaudy and ungraceful
ornament" is by no means its only fault--that it is bad as criticism,
that it shows no clear grasp of Milton's real merits, that it ignores
his faults, that it attributes to him qualities which were the very
reverse of his real qualities. He next deals slighter but still
telling blows at Addison, defends Johnson, in passing, as only
negatively deficient in the necessary qualifications, not positively
conventional like Addison, or rhetorical like Macaulay, and then with
a turn, itself excellently rhetorical in the good sense, passes to M.
Scherer's own dealings with the subject. Thenceforward he rather
effaces himself, and chiefly abstracts and summarises the "French
Critic's" deliverances, laying special stress on the encomiums given
to Milton's style. The piece is one of his most artfully constructed;
and I do not anywhere know a better example of ingenious and
attractive introduction of a friend, as we may call it, to a new
society.
The method is not very different in "A French Critic on Goethe,"
though Carlyle, the English "awful example" selected for contrast, is
less maltreated than Macaulay, and shares the disadvantageous part
with Lewes, and with divers German critics. On the whole, this essay,
good as it is, seems to me less effective than the other; perhaps
because Mr Arnold is in less accord with his author, and even seems to
be in two minds about that author's subject--about Goethe himself.
Earlier, as we have partly seen, he had, both in prose and in verse,
spoken with praise--for him altogether extraordinary, if not
positively extravagant--of Goethe; he now seems a little doubtful, and
asks rather wistfully for "the just judgment of forty years," the calm
revised estimate of the Age of Wisdom. But M. Scherer's estimate is in
parts lower than he can bring himself to admit; and this turns the
final passages of the essay into a rather unsatisfactory chain of "I
agree with this," "I do not agree with that." But the paper retains
the great merit which has been assigned to its predecessor as a piece
of ushering; and that, we must remember, was what it was designed to
be.
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