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Page 51
In "George Sand," which completes the volume, we have Mr Arnold no
longer as harbinger of another, but in the character, in which after
all he is most welcome, of speaker on his own account. His estimate of
this prolific _amuseuse_ will probably in the long-run seem
excessive to the majority of catholic and comparative critics; nor is
it at all difficult to account for the excess. Mr Arnold belonged
exactly to the generation to which in England, even more than in
France, George Sand came as a soothing and sympathetic exponent of
personal sorrows. Even the works of her "storm-and-stress" period were
not too far behind them; and her later calmer productions seem to have
had, at least for some natures among the "discouraged generation of
1850" (to which, as we have said, Mr Arnold himself by his first
publications belonged), something of that healing power which he has
assigned, in larger measure and with greater truth, to Wordsworth. A
man is never to be blamed for a certain generous overvaluation of
those who have thus succoured him; it would be as just to blame him
for thinking his mother more beautiful, his father wiser than they
actually were. And Mr Arnold's obituary here has a great deal of
charm. The personal and biographical part is done with admirable
taste, not a grain too much or too little of that _moi_ so
_ha�ssable_ in excess, so piquant as a mere seasoning, being
introduced: and the panegyric is skilful in the extreme. To be sure,
Mr Hamerton reappears, and Mr Arnold joins in the chorus of delight
because the French peasant no longer takes off his hat. Alas! there is
no need to go to the country of _La Terre_ to discover this sign
of moral elevation. But the delusion itself is only another proof of
Mr Arnold's constancy to his early ideas. And looking back on the
whole volume, one is almost tempted to say that, barring the first
_Essays in Criticism_ itself, he had written no better book.
Before very long the skill in selecting and editing which had been
first applied to Johnson's _Lives_ found extended opportunities.
Mr Arnold had much earlier, in the _Essays in Criticism_,
expressed a wish that the practice of introducing books by a critical
and biographical Essay, which had long been naturalised in France, and
had in former times not been unknown in England, should be revived
among us. His words had been heard even before he himself took up the
practice, and for about the usual time--your thirty years is as a
matter of fact your generation--it flourished and prospered, not let
us hope to the great detriment of readers, and certainly to the modest
advantage of the public man when vexed by want of pence. Nor can it
exactly be said to have ceased--though for some years grumbles have
been uttered. "Why," says one haughty critic,--"why mar a beautiful
edition of So-and-so's works by incorporating with them this or that
man's estimate of their value?" "The publishers," says an inspired
_communiqu�_, "are beginning to recognise that the public has no
need of such things in the case of works of established repute, of
which there is nothing new to be said." No doubt both these are
genuine utterances: no doubt the haughty critic would have steadily
refused to "mar" the book by _his_ estimate if he had been asked
to do so; no doubt the particular firm of publishers were not in the
least influenced by a desire to save the ten, twenty, fifty, or a
hundred guineas which this or that man might have demanded for saying
nothing new.
But Mr Arnold did not agree with these severe folk. He thought--and
not a few good wits have thought with him--not only that these
Introductions are an opportunity for men like himself, with original
gifts of thought and style, to display these gifts, but that the
mighty public, for all its knowledge of everything that has been
thought and said about everybody, might find something new to it even
in the observations of lesser folk. As a matter of fact, of course,
and neither to talk nor to quote nonsense, the utility of such
Introductions, even if moderately well done, is unmistakable. Not one
in a thousand of the probable readers of any book has all the
information which even a fairly competent introducer will put before
him; not one in a hundred knows the previous estimates of the author;
not many possess that acquaintance with his whole work which it is
part of the business of the introducer to acquire, and adjust for the
better understanding of the particular book. Of course, if an
Introduction is imperfectly furnished with fact and thought and
reading--if it is desultory, in bad taste, and so forth--it had better
not be there. But this is only saying that a bad Introduction is a bad
thing, which does not get us much beyond the intellectual edification
of the niece of Gorboduc. Unless the introducer is a boggler, the
Introduction will probably do good to those who want it and can be
neglected by those who don't; while in the rarer and better cases it
will itself acquire, or even possess from the first, that very value
as a _point de rep�re_ which Mr Arnold had discussed. It will be
good relatively and good in itself,--a contribution at once to the
literature of knowledge and to the literature of power.
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