It is against this frantic spirit of generalization that we protest. We have a word, "criticism," whose import is sufficiently distinct, through long usage, at least, and we have an art of high importance and clearly ascertained limit, which this word is quite well enough understood to represent. Of that conglomerate science to which Mr. Mathews so eloquently alludes, and of which we are instructed that it is anything and everything at once- of this science we know nothing, and really wish to know less; but we object to our contemporary's appropriation in its behalf, of a term to which we, in common with a large majority of mankind, have been accustomed to attach a certain and very definitive idea. Is there no word but "criticism" which may be made to serve the purposes of "Arcturus"? Has it any objection to Orphicism, or Dialism, or Emersonism, or any other pregnant compound indicative of confusion worse confounded?
Still, we must not pretend a total misapprehension of the idea of Mr. Mathews, and we should be sorry that he misunderstood us. It may be granted that we differ only in terms- although the difference will yet be found not unimportant in effect. Following the highest authority, we would wish, in a word, to limit literary criticism to comment upon Art. A book is written- and it is only as the book that we subject it to review. With the opinions of the work, considered otherwise than in their relation to the work itself, the critic has really nothing to do. It is his part simply to decide upon the mode in which these opinions are brought to bear. Criticism is thus no "test of opinion." For this test, the work, divested of its pretensions as an art-product, is turned over for discussion to the world at largeand first, to that class which it especially addresses- if a history, to the historian- if a metaphysical treatise, to the moralist. In this, the only true and intelligible sense, it will be seen that criticism, the test or analysis of Art, (not of opinion,) is only properly employed upon productions which have their basis in art itself, and although the journalist (whose duties and objects are multiform) may turn aside, at pleasure, from the mode or vehicle of opinion to discussion of the opinion conveyed- it is still clear that he is "critical" only in so much as he deviates from his true province not at all.
And of the critic himself what shall we say?- for as yet we have spoken only the proem to the true epopea. What can we better say of him than, with Bulwer, that "he must have courage to blame boldly, magnanimity to eschew envy, genius to appreciate, learning to compare, an eye for beauty, an ear for music, and a heart for feeling." Let us add, a talent for analysis and a solemn indifference to abuse.
BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, author of "Voices of the Night,"
"Hyperion," amp;c. Second edition. John Owen, Cambridge.
"IL Y A A PARIER," says Chamfort, "que toute idee publique, toute convention recue, est une sottise, car elle a convenu au plus grand notore."- One would be safe in wagering that any given public idea is erroneous, for it has been yielded to the clamor of the majority,- and this strictly philosophical, although somewhat French assertion has especial bearing upon the whole race of what are termed maxims and popular proverbs; nine-tenths of which are the quintessence of folly. One of the most deplorably false of them is the antique adage, De gustibus non est disputandum- there should be no disputing about taste. Here the idea designed to be conveyed is that any one person has as just right to consider his own taste the true, as has any one other- that taste itself, in short, is an arbitrary something, amenable to no law, and measurable by no definite rules. It must be confessed, however, that the exceedingly vague and impotent treatises which are alone extant, have much to answer for as regards confirming the general error. Not the least important service which, hereafter, mankind will owe to Phrenology, may, perhaps, be recognized in an analysis of the real principles, and a digest of the resulting laws of taste. These principles, in fact, are as clearly traceable, and these laws as really susceptible of system as are any whatever.
In the meantime, the inane adage above mentioned is in no respect more generally, more stupidly, and more pertinaciously quoted than by the admirers of what is termed the "good old Pope," or the "good old Goldsmith school" of poetry, in reference to the bolder, more natural and more ideal compositions of such authors as Coetlogon and Lamartine* in France; Herder, Korner, and Uhland, in Germany; Brun and Baggesen in Denmark; Bellman, Tegner, Nyberg*(2) in Sweden; Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, and Tennyson in England; Lowell and Longfellow in America. "De gustibus non," say these "good-old school" fellows; and we have no doubt that their mental translation of the phrase is"We pity your taste- we pity every body's taste but our own."
* We allude here chiefly to the "David" of Coetlogon and only to the "Chute d'un Ange" of Lamartine.
*(2) Julia Nyberg, author of the "Dikter von Euphrosyne."
It is our purpose hereafter, when occasion shall be afforded us, to controvert in an article of some length, the popular idea that the poets, just mentioned owe to novelty, to trickeries of expression, and to other meretricious effects, their appreciation by certain readers:- to demonstrate (for the matter is susceptible of demonstration) that such poetry and such alone has fulfilled the legitimate office of the muse; has thoroughly satisfied an earnest and unquenchable desire existing in the heart of man. In the present number of our Magazine we have left ourselves barely room to say a few random words of welcome to these "Ballads," by Longfellow, and to tender him, and all such as he, the homage of our most earnest love and admiration.
The volume before us (in whose outward appearance the keen "taste" of genius is evinced with nearly as much precision as in its internal soul) includes, with several brief original pieces, a translation from the Swedish of Tegner. In attempting (what never should be attempted) a literal version of both the words and the metre of this poem, Professor Longfellow has failed to do justice either to his author or himself. He has striven to do what no man ever did well and what, from the nature of the language itself, never can be well done. Unless, for example, we shall come to have an influx of spondees in our English tongue, it will always be impossible to construct an English hexameter. Our spondees, or, we should say, our spondiac words, are rare. In the Swedish they are nearly as abundant as in the Latin and Greek. We have only "compound," "context," "footfall," and a few other similar ones. This is the difficulty; and that it is so will become evident upon reading "The Children of the Lord's Supper," where the sole readable verses are those in which we meet with the rare spondaic dissyllables. We mean to say readable as Hexameters; for many of them will read very well as mere English Dactylics, with certain irregularities.