Classic Poem

The Author's obligations to critics, and the probable
occasion--Principles of modern criticism--Mr. Southey's works and
character.


To anonymous critics in reviews, magazines, and news-journals of various
name and rank, and to satirists with or without a name in verse or
prose, or in verse-text aided by prose-comment, I do seriously believe
and profess, that I owe full two-thirds of whatever reputation and
publicity I happen to possess. For when the name of an individual has
occurred so frequently, in so many works, for so great a length of time,
the readers of these works--(which with a shelf or two of beauties,
elegant Extracts and Anas, form nine-tenths of the reading of the
reading Public)--cannot but be familiar with the name, without
distinctly remembering whether it was introduced for eulogy or for
censure. And this becomes the more likely, if (as I believe) the
habit of perusing periodical works may be properly added to Averroes'
catalogue of Anti-Mnemonics, or weakeners of the memory. But where
this has not been the case, yet the reader will be apt to suspect that
there must be something more than usually strong and extensive in
a reputation, that could either require or stand so merciless
and long-continued a cannonading. Without any feeling of anger
therefore--(for which indeed, on my own account, I have no pretext)--I
may yet be allowed to express some degree of surprise, that, after
having run the critical gauntlet for a certain class of faults which
I had, nothing having come before the judgment-seat in the interim, I
should, year after year, quarter after quarter, month after month--(not
to mention sundry petty periodicals of still quicker revolution,
"or weekly or diurnal")--have been, for at least seventeen years
consecutively, dragged forth by them into the foremost ranks of the
proscribed, and forced to abide the brunt of abuse, for faults directly
opposite, and which I certainly had not. How shall I explain this?

Whatever may have been the case with others, I certainly cannot
attribute this persecution to personal dislike, or to envy, or to
feelings of vindictive animosity. Not to the former, for with the
exception of a very few who are my intimate friends, and were so before
they were known as authors, I have had little other acquaintance
with literary characters, than what may be implied in an accidental
introduction, or casual meeting in a mixed company. And as far as words
and looks can be trusted, I must believe that, even in these instances,
I had excited no unfriendly disposition. Neither by letter, nor in
conversation, have I ever had dispute or controversy beyond the common
social interchange of opinions. Nay, where I had reason to suppose my
convictions fundamentally different, it has been my habit, and I may
add, the impulse of my nature, to assign the grounds of my belief,
rather than the belief itself; and not to express dissent, till I could
establish some points of complete sympathy, some grounds common to both
sides, from which to commence its explanation.

Still less can I place these attacks to the charge of envy. The few
pages which I have published, are of too distant a date, and the extent
of their sale a proof too conclusive against their having been popular
at any time, to render probable, I had almost said possible, the
excitement of envy on their account; and the man who should envy me on
any other, verily he must be envy-mad!

Lastly, with as little semblance of reason, could I suspect any
animosity towards me from vindictive feelings as the cause. I have
before said, that my acquaintance with literary men has been limited and
distant; and that I have had neither dispute nor controversy. From my
first entrance into life, I have, with few and short intervals, lived
either abroad or in retirement. My different essays on subjects of
national interest, published at different times, first in the Morning
Post and then in the Courier, with my courses of Lectures on the
principles of criticism as applied to Shakespeare and Milton, constitute
my whole publicity; the only occasions on which I could offend any
member of the republic of letters. With one solitary exception in
which my words were first misstated and then wantonly applied to an
individual, I could never learn that I had excited the displeasure of
any among my literary contemporaries. Having announced my intention to
give a course of Lectures on the characteristic merits and defects of
English poetry in its different aeras; first, from Chaucer to Milton;
second, from Dryden inclusively to Thomson; and third, from Cowper to
the present day; I changed my plan, and confined my disquisition to the
former two periods, that I might furnish no possible pretext for the
unthinking to misconstrue, or the malignant to misapply my words, and
having stamped their own meaning on them, to pass them as current coin
in the marts of garrulity or detraction.

Praises of the unworthy are felt by ardent minds as robberies of the
deserving; and it is too true, and too frequent, that Bacon, Harrington,
Machiavel, and Spinoza, are not read, because Hume, Condillac, and
Voltaire are. But in promiscuous company no prudent man will oppugn
the merits of a contemporary in his own supposed department; contenting
himself with praising in his turn those whom he deems excellent. If
I should ever deem it my duty at all to oppose the pretensions of
individuals, I would oppose them in books which could be weighed and
answered, in which I could evolve the whole of my reasons and feelings,
with their requisite limits and modifications; not in irrecoverable
conversation, where however strong the reasons might be, the feelings
that prompted them would assuredly be attributed by some one or other
to envy and discontent. Besides I well know, and, I trust, have acted on
that knowledge, that it must be the ignorant and injudicious who extol
the unworthy; and the eulogies of critics without taste or judgment are
the natural reward of authors without feeling or genius. Sint unicuique
sua praemia.

How then, dismissing, as I do, these three causes, am I to account for
attacks, the long continuance and inveteracy of which it would require
all three to explain? The solution seems to be this,--I was in habits of
intimacy with Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Southey! This, however, transfers,
rather than removes the difficulty. Be it, that, by an unconscionable
extension of the old adage, noscitur a socio, my literary friends are
never under the water-fall of criticism, but I must be wet through with
the spray; yet how came the torrent to descend upon them?

First then, with regard to Mr. Southey. I well remember the general
reception of his earlier publications; namely, the poems published with
Mr. Lovell under the names of Moschus and Bion; the two volumes of poems
under his own name, and the Joan of Arc. The censures of the critics by
profession are extant, and may be easily referred to:--careless lines,
inequality in the merit of the different poems, and (in the lighter
works) a predilection for the strange and whimsical; in short, such
faults as might have been anticipated in a young and rapid writer, were
indeed sufficiently enforced. Nor was there at that time wanting a party
spirit to aggravate the defects of a poet, who with all the courage of
uncorrupted youth had avowed his zeal for a cause, which he deemed
that of liberty, and his abhorrence of oppression by whatever name
consecrated. But it was as little objected by others, as dreamed of by
the poet himself, that he preferred careless and prosaic lines on rule
and of forethought, or indeed that he pretended to any other art or
theory of poetic diction, except that which we may all learn from
Horace, Quinctilian, the admirable dialogue, De Oratoribus, generally
attributed to Tacitus, or Strada's Prolusions; if indeed natural good
sense and the early study of the best models in his own language had
not infused the same maxims more securely, and, if I may venture the
expression, more vitally. All that could have been fairly deduced was,
that in his taste and estimation of writers Mr. Southey agreed far more
with Thomas Warton, than with Dr. Johnson. Nor do I mean to deny, that
at all times Mr. Southey was of the same mind with Sir Philip Sidney in
preferring an excellent ballad in the humblest style of poetry to twenty
indifferent poems that strutted in the highest. And by what have his
works, published since then, been characterized, each more strikingly
than the preceding, but by greater splendour, a deeper pathos,
profounder reflections, and a more sustained dignity of language and of
metre? Distant may the period be, but whenever the time shall come,
when all his works shall be collected by some editor worthy to be his
biographer, I trust that an appendix of excerpta of all the passages,
in which his writings, name, and character have been attacked, from
the pamphlets and periodical works of the last twenty years, may be an
accompaniment. Yet that it would prove medicinal in after times I dare
not hope; for as long as there are readers to be delighted with calumny,
there will be found reviewers to calumniate. And such readers will
become in all probability more numerous, in proportion as a still
greater diffusion of literature shall produce an increase of sciolists,
and sciolism bring with it petulance and presumption. In times of old,
books were as religious oracles; as literature advanced, they next
became venerable preceptors; they then descended to the rank of
instructive friends; and, as their numbers increased, they sank still
lower to that of entertaining companions; and at present they seem
degraded into culprits to hold up their hands at the bar of every
self-elected, yet not the less peremptory, judge, who chooses to write
from humour or interest, from enmity or arrogance, and to abide the
decision "of him that reads in malice, or him that reads after dinner."

The same retrograde movement may be traced, in the relation which the
authors themselves have assumed towards their readers. From the lofty
address of Bacon: "these are the meditations of Francis of Verulam,
which that posterity should be possessed of, he deemed their interest:"
or from dedication to Monarch or Pontiff, in which the honour given was
asserted in equipoise to the patronage acknowledged: from Pindar's

------'ep' alloi--
si d'alloi megaloi: to d'eschaton kory-
phoutai basilensi. Maeketi
paptaine porsion.
Eiae se te touton
upsou chronon patein, eme
te tossade nikaphorois
omilein, prophanton sophian kath' El-
lanas eonta panta.--OLYMP. OD. I.

there was a gradual sinking in the etiquette or allowed style of
pretension.

Poets and Philosophers, rendered diffident by their very number,
addressed themselves to "learned readers;" then aimed to conciliate
the graces of "the candid reader;" till, the critic still rising as the
author sank, the amateurs of literature collectively were erected into a
municipality of judges, and addressed as the Town! And now, finally,
all men being supposed able to read, and all readers able to judge,
the multitudinous Public, shaped into personal unity by the magic of
abstraction, sits nominal despot on the throne of criticism. But, alas!
as in other despotisms, it but echoes the decisions of its invisible
ministers, whose intellectual claims to the guardianship of the Muses
seem, for the greater part, analogous to the physical qualifications
which adapt their oriental brethren for the superintendence of the
Harem. Thus it is said, that St. Nepomuc was installed the guardian of
bridges, because he had fallen over one, and sunk out of sight; thus
too St. Cecilia is said to have been first propitiated by musicians,
because, having failed in her own attempts, she had taken a dislike to
the art and all its successful professors. But I shall probably have
occasion hereafter to deliver my convictions more at large concerning
this state of things, and its influences on taste, genius and morality.

In the Thalaba, the Madoc, and still more evidently in the unique
Cid, in the Kehama, and, as last, so best, the Roderick; Southey has
given abundant proof, se cogitare quam sit magnum dare aliquid in manus
hominum: nec persuadere sibi posse, non saepe tractandum quod placere
et semper et omnibus cupiat. But on the other hand, I conceive, that Mr.
Southey was quite unable to comprehend, wherein could consist the crime
or mischief of printing half a dozen or more playful poems; or to speak
more generally, compositions which would be enjoyed or passed over,
according as the taste and humour of the reader might chance to be;
provided they contained nothing immoral. In the present age periturae
parcere chartae is emphatically an unreasonable demand. The merest
trifle he ever sent abroad had tenfold better claims to its ink and
paper than all the silly criticisms on it, which proved no more than
that the critic was not one of those, for whom the trifle was written;
and than all the grave exhortations to a greater reverence for the
public--as if the passive page of a book, by having an epigram or
doggerel tale impressed on it, instantly assumed at once loco-motive
power and a sort of ubiquity, so as to flutter and buz in the ear of the
public to the sore annoyance of the said mysterious personage. But what
gives an additional and more ludicrous absurdity to these lamentations
is the curious fact, that if in a volume of poetry the critic should
find poem or passage which he deems more especially worthless, he
is sure to select and reprint it in the review; by which, on his own
grounds, he wastes as much more paper than the author, as the copies of
a fashionable review are more numerous than those of the original book;
in some, and those the most prominent instances, as ten thousand to five
hundred. I know nothing that surpasses the vileness of deciding on the
merits of a poet or painter,--(not by characteristic defects; for where
there is genius, these always point to his characteristic beauties;
but)--by accidental failures or faulty passages; except the impudence
of defending it, as the proper duty, and most instructive part, of
criticism. Omit or pass slightly over the expression, grace,
and grouping of Raffael's figures; but ridicule in detail the
knitting-needles and broom-twigs, that are to represent trees in his
back grounds; and never let him hear the last of his galli-pots! Admit
that the Allegro and Penseroso of Milton are not without merit; but
repay yourself for this concession, by reprinting at length the two
poems on the University Carrier! As a fair specimen of his Sonnets,
quote

"A Book was writ of late called Tetrachordon;"

and, as characteristic of his rhythm and metre, cite his literal
translation of the first and second Psalm! In order to justify yourself,
you need only assert, that had you dwelt chiefly on the beauties and
excellencies of the poet, the admiration of these might seduce the
attention of future writers from the objects of their love and wonder,
to an imitation of the few poems and passages in which the poet was most
unlike himself.

But till reviews are conducted on far other principles, and with far
other motives; till in the place of arbitrary dictation and petulant
sneers, the reviewers support their decisions by reference to fixed
canons of criticism, previously established and deduced from the nature
of man; reflecting minds will pronounce it arrogance in them thus to
announce themselves to men of letters, as the guides of their taste
and judgment. To the purchaser and mere reader it is, at all events, an
injustice. He who tells me that there are defects in a new work,
tells me nothing which I should not have taken for granted without his
information. But he, who points out and elucidates the beauties of
an original work does indeed give me interesting information, such
as experience would not have authorized me in anticipating. And as to
compositions which the authors themselves announce with

Haec ipsi novimus esse nihil,