Part 4

MR. POUND, CARICATURIST.—Mr. Ezra Pound comes in for it again—as he always does. His idiosyncrasies are the enemies of his personality, and they will always, unless he can amend them, militate against both his work and his success. Mr. Pound appears to love to give his readers the impression that he is no end of a fire-eater, and that he is a charlatan of the first-water, setting up to lecture better men on the virtues he himself has never cultivated. It is an absolutely incorrect picture, an exceedingly bad self-portrait, a malicious caricature of himself. A psycho-analyst would attribute it all to “compensation,” to an attempt on the part of Mr. Pound to disguise his qualities as defects. In brief, Mr. Pound has not the courage of his virtues. “No one,” says Mr. Hartley in the _Little Review_, “admires Ezra Pound more than I do ... but it is his celestial sneer I admire.” A sneer, celestial or mundane, is, however, the last gesture of which Mr. Pound is capable. If anything, he is too benignant, too enthusiastic, too anxious to find excuse for admiration.

THE ADMIRABLE VICTORIANS.—I am prepared to apologise if I have ever used “Victorian” in a derogatory sense. But I know I have not. I have too deep a respect for the Victorian character ever to make light of it, and especially for my own generation, that can afford to laugh at so little. Mr. Strachey’s “brilliant” essays, therefore, leave me laughing at him rather than with him. One is impelled to take him personally, and to turn the tables upon Mr. Strachey with the _argumentum ad hominem_. How do you compare with the people you write about? For it is the peculiarity of the Victorians—our grandfathers and great-grandfathers—that whatever we may feel about them in our current opinions, someone has only to sneer at them to provoke us to their defence; and what better defence can they ask than to be compared, man for man, with their critics? As a set-off to the “brilliant” essays of Mr. Strachey—how easy it is to be brilliant nowadays! I have recently read, on the loan of his great-grandson, the privately printed personal memoir of Wm. Mattingly Soundy, who died in 1862, at the full age of 96. For 24 years he was a member of his local Congregational church, and for 46 years he was deacon. During nearly the whole of that time he never missed a meeting, Sunday or week-day, and was never known to be late, though he lived two miles from the church. It is the round of a machine, you may say, and there is no wonder that the age was mechanical. But I think of the passionate mainspring that kept a “machine” going for so long without a psychological breakdown. What an intensity it must have had! What a character! If to love it is impossible, it is impossible not to admire it; and since we truly live by admiration, hope and love, it is something for the Victorians that they can still fill us with admiration. My own generation (now past as a force) has provided the soul of the world with nothing so fine.

FRENCH CLARTÉ.—M. Vannier’s _La Clarté Française_ does not throw much light upon the mysteries of French lucidity. He accepts as self-evident Rivarol’s axiom that “what is not clear is not French”—surely worthy to be the national device of France; and he analyses with admirable humour a considerable number of examples of “clarté,” and the want of it. But the mystery of lucidity remains a mystery still. Flaubert’s practice of reading his compositions aloud puts us on the most promising scent, for it is certain that the French “clarté” is eminently readable aloud and in company. A great deal of our own literature is meant for the eye and not for the ear, for the study and not for the salon, with the consequence that at its best it is the grand style simple, but at its worst shocking. Written for the ear, and meant to be read in company, French literature is never grand, but neither is it ever silly. Its range is society, while ours is solitude.

WHEN SHALL WE TRANSLATE?—There is nothing particularly “masterly” from the modern English point of view in Hobbes’s translation of Pericles’s _Funeral Oration_. His period of English prose appears to have been ill-adapted for the translation of the Greek idiom of the time of Pericles. To the usual cautions against translations in general, we ought to add the caution against translations made in dissimilar epochs. It is not at any time in the history of a language that a translation from a foreign language can safely be undertaken. In all probability, indeed, the proper period for translation is no longer in point of time than the period within which the original itself was written. If the Periclean Age lasted, let us say, fifty years, it is within a period in English history of the same length that an adequate translation can be made. Once let that period go by, and a perfect translation will be for ever impossible. And equally the result will be a failure, if the translation is attempted before its time has come. I do not think that the Hobbesian period of English was in key with the period of Periclean Greek; nor, again, do I think that our period for perfect translation has yet come. A “masterpiece” of translation of Pericles’s _Oration_ is still, in my opinion, to be done. But I am confident that we are approaching the proper period, and in proof of this I would remark on the superiority of Jowett’s translation over that of Hobbes. Jowett, as a writer of original English, nobody, I think, would compare with Hobbes of Malmesbury. Hobbes was a great pioneer, a creator of language; Jowett was only a good writer. Nevertheless, the idiom in which Jowett wrote, was more nearly perfect (that is, fully developed) English than the idiom in which Hobbes wrote. And since, in point of development, the correspondence between Periclean Greek and Jowett’s English is closer than the correspondence between Periclean Greek and Hobbes’s English, Jowett’s translation is nearer the original than Hobbes’s.

It would be a pleasant exercise in style to criticise Jowett’s translation, and a still more profitable exercise to amend it. To a mere student of comparative values in Periclean Greek and idiomatic English, some of the errors in Jowett’s translation are obvious. Such a student needs not to refer with the scholar’s precision to the original Greek to be able, with the approval of all men of taste, to pronounce that such and such a phrase or word is most certainly not what may be called Periclean _English_. It stands to the totality of reason that it is not so. We may be certain, for instance, that Pericles, were he delivering his _Oration_ in English, with all the taste and training he possessed as a Greek of his age, would never have employed such phrases as these: “commended the law-giver,” “a worthy thing,” “burial to the dead,” “reputation ... imperilled on ... the eloquence,” “who knows the facts,” “suspect exaggeration.” Pericles, we cannot but suppose both from the man and his age, spoke with studied simplicity, that is to say, with perfect naturalness. The words and phrases he used were in all probability the most ordinary to the ear of the Athenian, and well within the limits of serious conversation. But such phrases as I have mentioned are not of the same English character; they are written, not spoken phrases, and approximate more to a leading commemorative article in _The Times_ than to a speech we should all regard as excellent. It would be interesting to have Lord Rosebery’s version of Pericles’ speech, or even Mr. Asquith’s. Both, it is probable, would be nearer the original than Jowett’s, though still some distance off perfection. In another fifty years perfection will be reached.

NATURE IN MIND.—The _Quest_ contains an article by Mr. G. R. S. Mead, in which he suggests—and, perhaps, rather more than suggests—an affinity, if not an identity, between the “laws” of nature and the “laws” of mind. Ever since I read the following sentence in Coleridge’s _Biographia Literaria_: “The highest perfection of natural philosophy would consist in the perfect spiritualisation of all the laws of nature into laws of intuition and intellect,” it has been at the back of my mind as an aim to keep before philosophy. Whether or not there is a drummer in every age with whom the active thinkers keep in step, even without being aware of the fact, I can only say that more and more evidence of this tendency of thought is coming to light. Boutroux’s _Contingency of the Laws of Nature_ may be said to have most explicitly attempted the sublimation—or, dare we say, the humanisation?—of the natural laws; but Boutroux is only one of many philosophers working in the same direction. Other areas of study than that of “pure” philosophy seem to have yielded, or to be yielding, the same result. Mr. Mead quotes, for instance, some recent studies of Animism to show that Animism, which, together with Anthropomorphism, we used to dismiss as merely a primitive mode of thought, may, after all, prove to contain a truth, the truth, namely, that Nature _is_ living and intelligent, and, on that account, not so far from human nature as we had come to imagine. “The more we penetrate Matter,” says Mr. Mead, “the more akin to Mind we find it to be.” The world is a creation of mind; and the more either of the world or of mind we understand the more we understand of both. It is a thrilling idea, the conception of the world of nature as being the externalisation of an intelligence akin to our own. At the same time, it is, like all thrilling ideas, associated with considerable danger. The “superstitions” connected with it are perhaps best left under the shadow that has been cast upon them.

MR. CLIVE BELL’S POT.—Mr. Clive Bell cannot escape the charge of literary insolence by giving to his collection of essays the deprecatory name of _Pot Boilers_. That the articles he has reprinted were designed to boil Mr. Clive Bell’s pot, and did, in fact, keep it simmering, may be true enough; for the _Athenæum_, in which most of them appeared, was an eclectic journal with a surprising taste for the bad as well as for the good. Mr. Clive Bell’s modesty, however, is titular only, for not merely has he republished these ashes of his yesterday’s fire, but he imagines them to be still ablaze. “It charms me,” he says, “to notice as I read these essays, with what care and conscience they are done.... I seem consistently to have cared much for four things—Art, Truth, Liberty, and Peace.” These are things which a more modest man would have left his biographer and eulogist to say of him; and even then not even friendship would have made them true. To Art and Truth, there are, of course, a good many references in Mr. Clive Bell’s essays, but the mere mention of these names ought not to be regarded as an evidence of care for the things themselves. Cannot the names of Art and Truth be also taken in vain? In the two concluding essays of the book are to be found most clearly Mr. Clive Bell’s conception of Art. It is indistinguishable from what may be called the Bohemian conception. Art is not moral, art is not useful, art is not a relative fact; it is an absolute to which all these other things are relative. The artist, again, is not a “practical” person, and it is no use expecting of him an interest in the non-artistic affairs of the world. The war, for instance? It is only a means to art, and what should be said of artists who abandon the end to occupy themselves with the means?

But this Bohemian and superior attitude is consistent apparently with some very mundane bitterness. Mr. Clive Bell does not appreciate the war, which appears to have put him considerably out, in spite of his Kensington Olympianism. He is shocked at hearing that “this is no time for art.” But, on the other hand, he does not appear to be able to escape from the war. The penultimate essay is about _Art and the War_, and the first essay is a palinode for the state of affairs to which the war put an end. According to Mr. Clive Bell, the world before the war was in a most promising condition of renaissance—of æsthetic renaissance. “Our governing classes,” he says, “were drifting out of barbarism.... ‘Society’ was becoming open-minded, tired of being merely decent, and was beginning to prefer the ‘clever’ to the ‘good.’” But with the war all this was interrupted—probably never to be resumed; for what is the use of attempting to establish an æsthetic culture upon the state of poverty which will certainly ensue after the war? Poverty and art, he as nearly as possible says, are incompatible; it is only by means of wealth, wealth in superabundance, that art is possible. And since war is destructive of wealth, “war has ruined our little patch of civility” without bringing us anything in exchange for it. The Bohemian view of art is own brother to the Sardanapalian view of culture in general; it presupposes great wealth, while denying that art is a luxury. Art is not a luxury or an elegant amenity added to life, says Mr. Clive Bell. At the same time, it is only when Society is wealthy that art can flourish. The contradiction is obvious, and it pervades Mr. Clive Bell’s work. It is not worth dwelling on a moment.

THE CRITICISM OF POETS.—Professor Rudmose-Brown, the author of _French Literary Studies_, is under the fatal illusion that it is necessary (or, at any rate, proper), to write about poetry poetically; and his comments are too often in this style: “The illimitable night of his obscurity is strewn with innumerable stars.” But it is a style which is not only repellent in itself, but doubly repellent from its association with an exposition of poetry. Dr. Johnson has written about poetry in the proper style. He was respectful in the very distance his prose kept from poetic imagery. Cold and detached he may have seemed to be, but all good criticism, comment, and even appreciation labour of necessity under this charge. What would be said of a judge who demonstrated the emotions of the persons before him; or, equally, of a judge who did not feel them? To be a critic or judge of poetry, or of any art, requires, in the first instance, an intense sympathetic power; but, in the second instance, a powerful self-restraint in expression, manifested in poetical criticism, I should say, by a prose style free from the smallest suggestion of poetry.

“JOHN EGLINTON.”—Mr. “John Eglinton” has been called “the Irish Emerson”; but the description of the “Irish Thoreau” would fit him much better. He is transcendental, like Emerson, but after a different, and a less high-falutin’ manner—the manner of transcendental common sense. On the other hand, he shares with Thoreau the quality of passionate independence, and what may be called adventurous solitude. “John Eglinton” names his essays _Anglo-Irish_, and they answer even more accurately to the description than the compound implies; for they are essays upon the hyphen that joins them. Exactly as Thoreau was most completely at home in no other man’s land between the world and the wood, “John Eglinton” is at his easiest somewhere between England and Ireland. He is not Irish, nor is he English. He is not Anglo-Irish either; but, once more, the hyphen between them. It is this sense of difference from both elements that makes of “John Eglinton” at once so attractive, so significant, and so illuminating a writer and thinker. Being between two worlds, and with a foot in each, he understands each world in a double sense, from within and from without. To each in turn he can be both interpreter and critic; and in these delightful essays he is to be found alternately defending and attacking each of the national elements between which his perch is placed. “Candid friend” would, perhaps, be a fair description of his attitude towards both nations, if the phrase were not associated with the disagreeable. But since “John Eglinton” is anything but acid in his comments, and writes of both nations in a spirit of mingled admiration and judgment, I can think of nothing better at the moment than my image of the hyphen. He is alone between two worlds, friendly but critical equally of both.

IRISH HUMOUR.—Mr. Stephen Gwynn’s _Irish Books and Irish People_ contains an essay on “Irish Humour.” Mr. Gwynn is severe but just. He refers to the “damning effects” of the “easy fluency of wit” and the “careless spontaneity of laughter” which characterise Irish humour. It would be terrible, however, to have to admit that these divine qualities are “defects” in the accepted sense of qualities _manqués_; and the “defect” arises, I think, not from the presence of these qualities in the Irish genius, but from the absence of the counterbalancing qualities of weight, high seriousness, and good judgment. It would almost seem that the “elder gods” departed from Ireland centuries ago, leaving in sole possession the “younger gods” of irresponsible and incontinent laughter. As Mr. Gwynn says, “Irish humour makes you laugh”; it always takes one by surprise. But the laughter has no echoes in the deeper levels of consciousness; it rings true but shallow. Dogmatism on racial psychology is dangerous, and I have no wish to exacerbate feelings already too sore; but, as a literary critic, I venture my judgment that the Irish genius, as manifested in literature during the last century, is wanting in the solidity that comes only from hard work. Every Irishman, speaking roughly, is a born genius; but few Irishmen complete their birth by “making” themselves. Wit comes to them too easily to be anything but a tempting line of least resistance.

THE LITERARY DRAMA OF IRELAND.—While exceedingly painstaking, thorough, and well-documented, Mr. Boyd’s essay on _The Contemporary Drama of Ireland_ cannot be said to add much value to the value of a record. Unlike his recent volume of _Appreciations and Depreciations_, his present work carefully, and I should almost say, timidly, avoids coming to any large and personal conclusions, save in the case, perhaps, of the plays of Mr. St. John Ervine. The reason for this diffidence I take to be rather an apprehension of what he might discover were his real conclusions than any inability to arrive at them; for I cannot think that upon any other ground so usually decisive a mind would have been content to leave his readers in the dark. But what then is it that Mr. Boyd may conceivably have feared to discover? It is obvious enough, I think, to an outsider—to one, I mean, who does not belong to the coterie that calls itself the Irish literary movement; it is that the contemporary drama of Ireland is the history of a rapid decline.

Mr. Boyd is, of course, honest with his facts, and the material is thus before us for a judgment. He does not conceal from us, for instance, the illuminating circumstances that the Irish dramatic movement actually began under the impulse of the Continental movement, and that its earliest authors were desirous, not so much of creating an Irish drama, as of creating a drama for Ireland. Mr. Edward Martyn, who was undoubtedly the chief pioneer, was himself a follower of Ibsen and aimed at writing and producing what may be called Ibsen plays. But this praiseworthy attempt to reintroduce the world into Ireland was defeated by the apparently incorrigible tendency of the native Irish mind to reduce the world to the size of Dublin. In rather less than two years, during which time some six or seven plays were produced, the Irish Literary Theatre, founded by Martyn and Yeats, came to an end, to have its place taken almost immediately by the Irish _National_ Theatre, which was formed about the group of Irish players calling themselves the Irish National Drama Society. But what has been the consequence of this contraction of aim and of interest? That plays of some value as folk-drama have resulted from it nobody would deny; but equally nobody would maintain that the world has been enriched by it in its dramatic literature. Ireland, in other words, has accepted a gift from the world without returning it; her literary coterie has taken the inspiration of the Continent and converted it to a purely nationalist use.

Even against this there would be nothing to be said if it succeeded; but fortunately for the world-principle it can be shown that such a procedure ends in sterility. As the reader turns over the pages of Mr. Boyd’s faithful record of the course of the drama in Ireland, he cannot but be aware of a gradual obscuration. One by one the lamps lit by Martyn, Moore, and others, which illuminate the earlier pages, go out, leaving the reader in the later pages groping his way through petty controversies acid with personality, and through an interminable undergrowth of sickly and stunted productions about which even Mr. Boyd grows impatient. The vision splendid with which the record begins dies down to a twilight, to a darkness, and finally to black night. The world has once more been shut out.

MR. STANDISH O’GRADY.—Mr. Standish O’Grady’s _The Flight of the Eagle_ is not a romance in the ordinary sense; it is not an invented story, but an actual historical episode treated romantically. The period is Elizabethan, and the story turns mainly on the careers of Sir William Parrett, an English “Lord-Lieutenant” of Ireland, who appears to have suffered the usual fate of a popular English Governor, and Red Hugh O’Donnell or Hue Roe of Tir-Connall, which is now Donegal. If acquaintance with Irish history is ever to be made by English readers, the means must be romances of this kind. History proper is, as a rule, carefully ignored by the average reader, who must therefore have facts, if he is ever to have them, presented in the form of a story. It is only by this means, and thanks to Scott in the first instance, that the history of Scotland has penetrated in any degree beyond the border. Only by this means, again, have various countries and nations been brought home to the intellectually idle English reader by writers like Kipling. Both as a story-writer and as the first and greatest of the Irish historians of Ireland, Mr. Standish O’Grady is qualified to do for Ireland what Scott after his own fashion has done for Scotland, namely, bring his country into the historic consciousness of the world.