And, assuredly, if the creative arts are duly humbled in the universal
contemplation of Nature, if they are accused, if they are weighed, if
they are found wanting; if they are excused by nothing but our intimate
human sympathy with dear and interesting imperfection; if poetry stands
outdone by the passion and experience of an inarticulate soul, and
painting by the splendour of the day, and building by the forest and the
cloud, there is another art also that has to be humiliated, and this is
the art and science of criticism, confounded by its contemplation of such
a poet. Poor little art of examination and formula! The miracle of day
and night and immortality are needed to rebuke the nobler arts; but our
art, the critic's, mine to-day, is brought to book, and its heart is
broken, and its sincerity disgraced, by the paradoxes of the truth. Not
in the heavens nor in the sub-celestial landscape does this minor art
find its refutation, but in the puzzle between a man and his gift; and in
part the man is ignoble and leads us by distasteful paths, and compels us
to a reluctant work of literary detection. Useful is the critical
spirit, but it loses heart when (to take a very definite instance) it has
to ask what literary sincerity--what value for art and letters--lived in
Swinburne, who hailed a certain old friend, in a dedication, as "poet and
painter" when he was pleased with him, and declared him "poetaster and
dauber" when something in that dead man's posthumous autobiography
offended his own self-love; when, I say, criticism finds itself called
upon, amid its admiration, to do such scavenger work, it loses heart as
well as the clue, and would gladly go out into the free air of greater
arts, and, with them, take exterior Nature's nobler reprobation.
Pages:
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51