The Crisis of the European Mind 1680-1715

by Paul Hazard

  Come here, my sweet landlady, pray how d’ye do?

  Where is Cicely so cleanly, and Prudence, and Sue?

  And where is the widow that dwelt here below?

  And the hostler that sung, about eight years ago?

  And where is your sister, so mild and so dear,

  Whose voice to her maid like a trumpet was clear?[9]

  It recalls some old-fashioned English print: the guest seated at table, the landlady:

  By my troth! she replies, you grow younger, I think.

  And pray, Sir, what wine does the gentleman drink?

  Why now let me die, Sir, or live upon trust,

  If I know to which question to answer you first.

  The whole thing is natural, homely; then, without any noticeable heightening of the tone, the answer comes, and, with it, the emotion which every mortal feels when he summons up remembrance of bygone days:

  Why, things, since I saw you, most strangely have varied,

  And the hostler is hanged, and the widow is married.

  And Prue left a child to the parish to nurse:

  And Cicely went off with a gentleman’s purse;

  And as to my sister, so mild and so dear,

  She has lain in the churchyard full many a year.

  There are other singers, too, in whom it would not be difficult to detect a strain of poetry; whether it be poetry that appealed to people when first they read it, or whether it be, that, time-mellowed after all these years, it wears for us an old-world and touching grace.

  This notwithstanding, we would still revert to our plea of extenuating circumstances; renouncing the absolute, and making the best of the relative, and agreeing with Carducci that there was never a period less poetical than the first fifty years of the eighteenth century, and that here was the starting-point of an age of sterility, and, finally, confessing that, compared with Dante or Shakespeare, the best of the poets we have mentioned are but pallid lay-figures, indeed.

  Nor can it be denied that in most other departments of literature a similar change took place. The notion of creative inspiration was completely lost. Literary composition, it was considered, was a matter of imitating, of conforming to pattern, that and nothing more.

  At all the crossroads critics were invariably found to police and regulate the traffic. Their duties were to see that authors kept to the right road, or to put them on it if they had gone astray. As Thomas Rymer—who achieved fame for discovering that Shakespeare knew nothing about tragedy—as Thomas Rymer remarked, the poets would fall into some pretty bad ways, if they did not know that the critics were there to keep an eye on them.

  Ah, those critics, what a tribe of them there were! The dead ones stood firm in their places, Aristotle, Horace, and Longinus, who had never been so fêted before. The living ones—what a host of them! Père Bouhours, Père Rapin, Père Le Bossu, learned pundits who taught you how to bring your mind to bear on intellectual matters, how speeches should be made, and poetry written, strictly according to rule, and they told you how to lay out the plan for an epic. Then came a string of English carpers and cavillers, Gerard Langbaine, Edward Bysshe, Leonard Welsted, John Dennis and a number of even smaller fry. In Italy, there was Muratori, and Crescimbeni, and Gravina, all analysing the nature and workmanship of the perfect poem, the perfect tragedy. In Germany, we have Christian Wernicke explaining that the reason why literature had attained such a high degree of perfection in France was that, in Paris, every work, no matter how distinguished its author, was immediately subjected to criticism. What zeal! What stern lawgivers! What scoldings! What wrangles! And those writers, poor browbeaten fellows, so mercilessly rated, don’t they deserve a tear? As a matter of fact, they accommodated themselves to the times tolerably well; they had a twofold satisfaction to choose from; they could hold up their heads and give their critics as good as they got, or they could hold their peace and quietly do as they were told.

  Boileau was growing old. In the preface to the 1701 edition of his works, he summed up his literary creed with a vigour that betrayed no sign of declining strength, and in these words he took his leave: “As the present edition will probably be the last I shall be able to revise, and since in all likelihood—I am now sixty-three and oppressed with many infirmities—I have not much longer to live, my readers will deem it fitting that I should take formal leave of them, thanking them for the generosity they have shown in purchasing so many volumes with such a slender title to their approbation”. The public showed no sign of getting tired of him. In that same farewell, Boileau includes an expression of thanks to M. le Comte d’Eryceira, in connection with “his translation into Portuguese verse of my Art Poétique, which he was so kind as to send me from Lisbon, together with a letter, and some French verses of his own composition”. In what country is the Art Poétique not read, discussed and translated? In what country is it not looked upon as a standard work? Boalo, the fellow that dared to talk about Tasso’s tawdry tinsel, may get roughly handled; Boileau, that vainglorious Frenchman who never knew anything, or cared about anything, outside his own country, this same Boileau is still the lawgiver of Parnassus, the one authority who stands his ground, when, everywhere else, authority is going by the board.

  He was more than a personage now; he was an institution. People went to Auteuil on purpose to get a sight of him, just as they went to the Louvre to look at the Colonnade, just as they went to look at the “chevaux de Marly”. Listen now to what a well-known woman of letters, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, has to say. She is about to join her husband, England’s ambassador at Constantinople. Someone puts into her hands a translation of a Turkish poem, and of whom should it make her think? Of Boileau! “In my opinion”, she writes, “there is a good deal of beauty in them. The epithet of stag-ey’d (though the sound is not very agreeable in English) pleases me extremely: and is I think a very lively image of the fire and indifference in his mistress’s eyes. Monsieur Boileau has very justly observed, we are never to judge of the elevation of an expression in an ancient author by the sound it carries with us: which may be extremely fine with them, at the same time, it looks low and uncouth to us.”[10]

  Boileau had never believed that a writer could do without genius. Not so his successors. They considered method more important than genius; they even went so far as to say that in order to write good verse one thing only is necessary and that is to have a most scrupulous regard for the rules. Boileau had emphasized the importance of the differentiation of genres, but to what finicking distinctions, divisions, sub-divisions, and double sub-divisions his precept was to lead! The Classic spirit had a living soul, a living purpose; pseudo-classicism was a mere formula, a recipe. That is the difference between them.

  Morals; that was what these poverty-stricken successors of the old classical school determined to take up, apparently by way of consoling themselves. The epic should have a moral purpose; its aim should be moral reform; it should impart religious truths; it is an ethical instrument; you might almost say it was a branch of theology. A good poet is described as one who so blends usefulness with pleasure that he entertains when he instructs and instructs when he entertains. Poetry is a witch, but a kindly one, a fine frenzy that puts folly to flight. The theatre, above all, should be a school. Shame on the playwright who should belittle virtue and dissemble vice. Comedy, in England, had taken on a character of its own. For its plots, it had recourse to French models, chiefly Molière; but by the way they mixed and spiced their ingredients, these playwrights contrived to give their work a flavour all its own. They went in for naughty speeches and risky situations, and their comedies were a combination of the immoral and the scandalous, of gaiety and charm. Such was the material with which a Congreve or a Vanbrugh scored such brilliant successes on the London stage. But lo, one of the cloth, Jeremy Collier, pours forth the vials of his wrath upon them. It was in 1698 that his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage appeared. Morality, sound morals, that is what we want. The theatre, lo
ok you, should display the frailty of human greatness, the fickleness of fortune, the grievous consequences of violence and injustice, the folly of pride, and the sinfulness of hypocrisy. But instead of this, what does it do? Honesty is held up to ridicule. On the English stage, blasphemy, impiety, indecency are the order of the day; even the ministers of religion are made objects of derision. The shame of the thing! The scandal of it! The strange thing is that, after the fierce disputes to which Jeremy Collier’s outburst gave rise, an alliance between the Puritanic spirit and pseudo-classic morality did in fact succeed in reforming the character of Comedy, which, having shone forth with a last frail and delicate lustre in the plays of Richard Steele, decided, since to live on in the form she loved was denied her, that the best thing was to die. It was about this time that the commedia dell’ arte came in for some severe reprobation in Italy. What was wanted was a form of comedy that should comply at once with the demands of good sense and good morals. Now, it was not in Florence, not in Rome that a writer—Niccolo Amenta was his name—appeared, who turned his back on sprightliness, wit, buffoonery, extravagances—he also turned it on pleasure and gaiety: no more licentious characters, no more coarse language, no more abandoned love-making, no more immodest serving-wenches, or rapacious lacqueys, no more wild intrigues, but, in their stead, perfect correctitude and impeccable morality.

  To possess an official government department whose main office it should be to adjudicate on matters concerned with maintaining the purity of the language, to arbitrate on matters of taste in literature—this was an idea that had occurred to no country except France, an idea she had conceived when her heart was passionately set on discipline and order. But now her neighbours were beginning to grow envious of this Académie française, whose labours had, little by little, come to assume a quasi-hieratic character. That society had acquired a prestige which no other society could boast, a distinction which no other society could bestow, and every one of its acts, the awarding of a prize, a reception, an official oration, took on the importance of a public event. The English, the most freedom-loving people in the world, ardently desired to have an Academy of their own. Among its members would be numbered Mr. Prior, England’s La Fontaine he might be called; and Mr. Pope, its Boileau, Mr. Congreve, who might be dubbed its Molière.[11] Then there was Mr. Swift, who, impatient though he was of rules in general, was willing enough to bow to an Academy.[12] The project, discussed at great length, eventually fell through. However, in 1700, the Berlin Academy did get founded, and so, later on, in 1713, did the Royal Academy of Spain; while even far-off Russia had an Academy of her own.

  The critics, who had been all for making a clean sweep of tradition where politics and religion were concerned, here showed themselves conspicuously conservative. The Ancients, they had said, had stood in the way of progress and enlightenment, but now they invoked them as tutelary deities. In all other matters, free, unfettered, individual judgment had been what they had clamoured for; but here the strict observance of authoritative rule was the only way of salvation. Instead of the freedom to experiment at large, you were confronted with rules and regulations and told to obey them. If you would write a tragedy, the action must last twenty-four hours, you must have a state apartment in a palace, the passion of love, the call of duty and a few stately heroes.

  In 1711, the English had the joy of hailing the birth, on their own soil, of another Ars Poetica; the work of a lawgiver of Parnassus. Of frail and slender build, highly strung, incredibly sensitive to the sound and scent of every breeze that blew, he was, despite these differences and a few others, a worthy successor of Boileau. His reign promised to be a lengthy one, for when he brought out his Essay on Criticism, Alexander Pope was not yet twenty-two. Reading this work, which soon became one of the most famous of its day, we seem to be witnessing the finish of a fight. In the author of the Essay on Criticism, two men co-exist side by side, but the two do not always see eye to eye. Indeed, they often contradict each other. One displays the dash and impetuosity of a strongly individualistic character, the other stands for law and order; and law and order are certainly going to carry the day. The first of these two personalities gives full rein to his youthful ardour, and expresses a feeling which exists, avowedly or not, in many an author’s bosom, the feeling, that is to say, of irritation, of impatience with the critics. Writers, we know, court their praises, but hotly resent their disapproval. Pope handles them very roughly: these people who find fault with my work, who hold me up to judgment and to censure—what right have they to do so? They gave out, one fine day, that they were going to set up as critics; that that was the calling they had chosen. But with what qualification does this choice of theirs endow them? What! Is the first fool that comes along to give himself airs, and presume to lord it over me? Is the first addled poet that comes my way, to lecture me about the quality of my verse? Shall the playwright whose work has been hissed off the stage come and tell me how to write a comedy? Now let them hear a few home truths. For one bad poet there are ten bad critics. Arrogance is no guarantee of worth; before we condemn, we should at least understand the thing we are condemning. A narrow mind, incapable of seeing with the author’s eye, only writes, can only write, in vain. What a store of qualifications we have a right to demand of those who would play the Aristarchus. Is their judgment firmly based on experience and honest work? Have they supple minds and the gift of intuition? Are they modest enough not to be jealous? Are they capable of ignoring minor defects in a work and stressing its larger merits? Do they dispense their praises with a free hand, instead of eking them out with the niggard fingers of a miser? Are they impartial? Alas, they are the hirelings of the great, the mouthpieces of political parties, and religious factions.

  These outbursts, which betoken a spirit anything but blasé , a temperament for which the worst storms are those in an inkpot, are vastly entertaining. But it is still more diverting to observe how the second Mr. Pope lays down the law to the first. The first, however, is a little too easily convinced and the fact of the matter is that he only found fault with the critics because he wanted to see them in a position of greater eminence and dignity. resulted in the emergence of something quite unfamiliar in art, a completely new form of artistic expression. Pope the disputant, but a disputant ready to listen to reason, sets forth precepts, enunciates dogmas:

  First follow Nature, and your judgment frame

  By her just standard, which is still the same:

  Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,

  One clear, unchang’d, and universal light,

  Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart,

  At once the source, and end, and test of art.

  But it must be Nature guided by Reason:

  ’Tis more to guide, than spur the Muse’s steed;

  Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed.

  The winged courser, like a gen’rous horse,

  Shows most true mettle when you check his course.

  Art is Nature still, but Nature methodized, contentedly obedient to the laws of her own devising. Therefore, let the poets conform to the laws which the Ancients derived from Nature, let them acquaint themselves with those salutary precepts which Greece, enlightened Greece, bequeathed to us:

  Hear how learn’d Greece her useful rules indites,

  When to repress, and when indulge our flights . . .

  When first young Maro in his boundless mind

  A work t’outlast immortal Rome design’d,

  Perhaps he seem’d above the Critic’s law,

  And but from Nature’s fountains scorn’d to draw:

  But when t’examine ev’ry part he came,

  Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.

  Convinc’d, amaz’d, he checks the bold design,

  And rules as strict his labour’d work confine,

  As if the Stagirite o’erlook’d each line.

  Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem;

  To copy nature is to copy them. />
  Let the poets polish their work, and repolish it again, and yet again. A truly natural style is the outcome of art, not of chance:

  True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,

  As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

  Thus speaks Pope, the lover of the classics, one nourished on the works of those whom he salutes as his illustrious predecessors: Aristotle, Horace, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Petronius, Quintilian, Longinus, Erasmus who triumphed over Gothic superstition, Vida who brought back Italian supremacy in the days of Pope Leo X, and, finally, Boileau. Then, filled with pride at this gallery of ancestors to whom he has rendered reverential homage, Pope turns to the writers of his own day, and takes it upon himself to give rules and directions, in his turn, to them.

  Obviously, it would be no bad thing to have a few works with which to give a practical demonstration of the soundness of his theories. As it turned out, this was an easy matter. Knowing to perfection how to construct an epic, what more could the poets ask:

  Excelling that of Mantua, that of Greece,

  A wond’rous, unexampled Epick Song,

  Where all is just, and beautiful, and strong,