Jacob Omnium.

“Yes, I am proud, I own it, when I see
Men not afraid of God afraid of me,”

Pope said, and I can fancy with what a stern joy an honest critic would arise and slay what he believed to be false and vicious.  In no time was the need of strong criticism greater than it is at present.  The press is teeming with rubbish and something worse.  Everybody reads anything that is published with sufficient flourish and advertisement, and those who read have mostly no power of judging for themselves, nor would they be turned from the garbage which seems to delight them by any gentle persuasion.  It is therefore most necessary that the critic should speak out plainly and boldly, though with temper and discretion.  I suppose we have all of us read Lord Macaulay’s criticism upon Robert Montgomery’s poems.  The poems are, of course, forgotten; but the

essay still lives as a specimen of the terribly slashing style.  This is the way one couplet is dealt with—

“The soul aspiring pants its source to mount,
As streams meander level with their fount.”

“We take this on the whole to be the worst similitude in the world.  In the first place, no stream meanders, or can possibly meander, level with its fount.  In the next place, if streams did meander level with their founts, no two motions can be less like each other than that of meandering level and that of mounting upwards.  After saying that lightning is designless and self-created, he says, a few lines further on, that it is the Deity who bids

‘the thunder rattle from the skiey deep.’

His theory is therefore this, that God made the thunder but the lightning made itself.”  Of course, poor Robert Montgomery was crushed flat, and rightly.  Yet before this essay was written his poems had a larger circulation than Southey or Coleridge, just as in our own time Martin Tupper had a larger sale than Tennyson or Browning.  Fancy if Tupper had been treated in the same vein how the following lines would have fared:—

“Weep, relentless eye of Nature,
   Drop some pity on the soil,
Every plant and every creature
   Droops and faints in dusty toil.”

What do the plants toil at?  I thought we knew they toil not, neither do they spin.  It goes on—

“Then the cattle and the flowers
   Yet shall raise their drooping heads,
And, refreshed by plenteous showers,
   Lie down joyful in their beds.”

Whether the flowers are to lie down in the cattle beds or the cattle are to lie down in the flower beds does not perhaps distinctly appear, but I venture to think that either catastrophe is not so much to be desired as the poet seems to imagine.

In the Diary of Jeames yellowplush a couplet of Lord Lytton’s Sea Captain is thus dealt with—

      “Girl, beware,
The love that trifles round the charms it gilds
Oft ruins while it shines.”

“Igsplane this men and angels!  I’ve tried everyway, back’ards, for’ards, and in all sorts of tranceposishons as thus—

The love that ruins round the charms it shines
Gilds while it trifles oft,

or

The charm that gilds around the love it ruins
Oft trifles while it shines,

or

The ruin that love gilds and shines around
Oft trifles while it charms,

or

Love while it charms, shines round and ruins oft
The trifles that it gilds,

or

The love that trifles, gilds, and ruins oft
While round the charms it shines.

All which are as sensable as the fust passidge.”

Dryden added coarseness to strength in his remarks when he wrote of one of Settle’s plays:—“To conclude this act with the most rumbling piece of nonsense spoken yet—

‘To flattering lightning our feigned smiles conform,
Which, backed with thunder, do but gild a storm.’

Conform a smile to lightning, make a smile imitate lightning; lightning sure is a threatening thing.  And this lightning must gild a storm; and gild a storm by being backed by thunder.  So that here is gilding by conforming, smiling lightning, backing and thundering.  I am mistaken if nonsense is not here pretty thick sown.  Sure the poet writ these two lines aboard some smack in a storm, and, being sea-sick, spewed up a good lump of clotted nonsense at once.”  Dryden wrote in a fit of rage and spite, and it is not necessary to be vulgar in order to be strong; but it is really a good thing to expose in plain language the meandering nonsense which, unless detected, is apt to impose upon careless readers, and so to encourage writers in their bad habits.

A young friend of mine imagined that he could make his fame as a painter.  Holding one of his pictures before his father, and his father saying it was roughly and carelessly done, he said, “No, but, father, look; it looks better if I hold it further off.”  “Yes, Charlie, the further you hold it off the better it looks.”  That was severe, but strong and just.  The young man had no real genius for painting, and his father knew it.

It must be remembered that criticism cannot be strong unless it be the real opinion of the writer.  If the critic is hampered by endeavouring to make his own views square with those of the writer, or the publisher, or the public, he cannot speak out his mind, but is half-hearted in his work.

5.  Natural.

Criticism should be natural, that is, not too artificial.  This is a somewhat difficult matter upon which to lay down any rules; but one often feels what a terrible thing

it is when one wants to admire something to be told, “Oh, but the unities are not preserved,” or this or that is quite inadmissible by all the rules of art.

“Hallo! you chairman, here’s sixpence; do step into that bookseller’s shop, and call me a day-tall critic.  I am very willing to give any of them a crown to help me with his tackling to get my father and my uncle Toby off the stairs, and to put them to bed.”

“And how did Garrick speak the soliloquy last night?”  “Oh, against all rule, my lord, most ungrammatically!  Betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus—stopping as if the point wanted settling; and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended his voice a dozen times, three seconds, and three fifths, by a stop watch, my lord, each time.”  Admirable grammarian!  “But, in suspending his voice, was the sense suspended likewise?  Did no expression of attitude or countenance fill up the chasm?  Was the eye silent?  Did you narrowly look?”  “I looked only at the stop watch, my lord.”  Excellent observer!”  And what about this new book that the whole world makes such a rout about?”  “Oh, it is out of all plumb, my lord, quite an irregular thing!  Not one of the angles at the four corners was a right angle.  I had my rule and compasses, my lord, in my pocket.”  Excellent critic!  “And for the epic poem your lordship bid me look at; upon taking the length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and trying them at home upon an exact scale of Bossu’s, ’tis out, my lord, in every one of its