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SCIENTIA
LIBRARY VERITAS
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
E-PLURIBUS-UNUM
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Liberty & Authority in
Matters of Taste
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE
DELIVERED IN THE
SHELDONIAN THEATRE, OXFORD, ON THE
15th OF FEBRUARY, 1896
BY
WILLIAM JOHN COURTHOPE
C.B., M.A., HON. D.LITT. (DURHAM)
PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
+
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO.
1896
One Shilling Net
Liberty and Authority in
Matters of Taste
:
:
Liberty & Authority in
Matters of Taste
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE
DELIVERED IN THE
SHELDONIAN THEATRE, OXFORD, ON THE
15th OF FEBRUARY, 1896
BY
WILLIAM JOHN COURTHOPE
C.B., M.A., HON. D.LITT. (DURHAM)
PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO.
1896
The Rights of Translation and Reproduction are Reserved
•
13.6 pam R
рат
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BUNGAY."
LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY
IN
MATTERS OF TASTE
EVEN those of my predecessors who have been
called with higher qualifications than myself to dis-
course on Poetry before the University of Oxford
must, on contemplating their duties, have felt that
they had to face a problem of peculiar difficulty. The
Professor of Poetry enjoys what I believe is the
unique honour of being raised to his Chair by the
vote of Convocation. Yet though he may thus be
said to represent the oldest seat of learning in the
British Empire on a subject of the deepest interest to
the human imagination, he finds himself launched on
this wide sea of thought without chart or compass or
any kind of external instruction to guide him in the
course which he is expected to steer. He is, indeed,
bound to deliver three lectures yearly during his
tenure of the Chair. But as to the subject-matter of
these lectures he is under no obligation. Whether he
should examine and discuss the general principles of
poetry; whether he should rather dwell on the
6
LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY
practice of individual poets; whether he should draw
his illustrations exclusively from the acknowledged
classics of literature, or should also handle the debate-
able questions of modern art; in all these points he is
left entirely to his own discretion.
If he seeks for a solution of his difficulty in the
definitions of language, he is at once met by an ambi-
guity of terms. We can have no doubt as to the
meaning of the words Logic and Natural Science, nor
as to the limitations imposed on those who give in-
struction in these subjects. But the word Poetry
may be used to signify either the outward form in
which imaginative thought is expressed by means
of metrical language, or that inward conception
of the mind preliminary to creation which is shared
by the poets with the professors of the other fine
arts. Thus we may without impropriety speak of
the Poetry of Painting and even of the Poetry of
Architecture.
:
Perhaps with natural piety the newly elected
Professor of Poetry looks for guidance to the inten-.
tions or the character of the Founder of his Chair.
But here too search is in vain of him little is
known that is definite, nothing that is remarkable.
Henry Birkhead must have been born in the first
quarter of the seventeenth century, for he took his
degree of M.A. in 1639. He appears to have been
affected by the religious difficulties of his time, for
shortly after taking his degree he became a Jesuit,
but, soon returning to the Church of England and
to Oxford, he was elected a Fellow of All Souls.
IN MATTERS OF TASTE
He was known as a skilful philologist. He was also
a writer of Latin verse, but there is no particular
merit in the compositions of this kind which he has
left behind him. When the Civil War broke out he
was prominent among the little group of Oxford
scholars and poets who attached themselves to the
cause of the king, and the most distinguished of
whom were John Cleveland and William Cartwright.
The characteristic features in the poetry of these
men are well known. They helped to develop what
Addison calls the style of False Wit, and Johnson
the school of Metaphysical Poetry. Their object
was to give distinction to any theme, however trivial,
by adorning it with a multitude of far-fetched
metaphors, similes, and allusions. A specimen of
their art survives in a small volume of poems, written
by them in co-operation to celebrate the memory of Sir
Bevill Grenvill, who was killed in a skirmish with the
Parliamentary forces at Lansdown Hill. Birkhead's
contribution to this poetical garland was not abso-
lutely the worst; but he was the champion of a losing
cause, alike in politics and in poetry. He saw the
execution of the king for whom he had fought and
written; the establishment of the Commonwealth ;
the Restoration of the Monarchy; the Revolution of
1688. Living till 1695, he witnessed the influence
of the school of Cowley decline before the rising
school of Dryden; and a Chair, which owed its
existence to the liberality of one so deeply imbued
with the spirit of the Middle Ages, was filled by its
first Professor almost at the same time as English
.8
LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY
society began to listen to the criticism of the Tatler
and Spectator.
The history of the Founder, then, throws no light on
the duties attaching to this Chair. Nor can any clear
notion of rule or system be gathered from the practice
The list of the Professors
of those who have held it.
of Poetry indeed furnishes us with name after name
intimately associated with great changes in the poetical
taste of this country. Prominent in the early history
of the Chair we observe the figure of Joseph Spence,
author of the Polymetis, and of the better known
Anecdotes, which so vividly illustrate the literary
character of an age that found its standard in the
poetry of Pope. Spence is followed after a short
interval by Lowth, who enlarged the range of taste
by his lectures on Hebrew Poetry, and attracted the
attention of the world of letters by his dispute with
Warburton, Pope's commentator and biographer.
Later in the century appears Thomas Warton, the
historian of English Poetry, and perhaps the earliest
pioneer of the Romantic Revival, which refreshed
with a new stream of thought and sentiment the
exhausted classicism of those times. Coming to the
present century, we admire the fine and balanced
taste of Milman, the writer of the polished Newdigate
prize poem on "The Belvedere Apollo," beginning:
Heard ye the arrow hurtle through the sky?
Heard ye the dragon monster's dying cry?
and containing the truly beautiful lines descriptive of
the statue :
IN MATTERS OF TASTE
9
For mild he seemed as in Elysian bowers,
Wasting in careless ease the joyous hours,
Haughty as bards have sung, with princely sway
Curbing the fierce, flame-breathing steeds of day,
Beauteous as vision seen in dreamy sleep
By holy maid on Delphi's haunted steep,
Mid the dim twilight of the laurel grove,
Too fair to worship, too divine to love.
Next to Milman in point of succession, and equal to
him in scholarship and refinement, the author of the
Christian Year lent indirectly the aid of his criti-
cism to the Lake School, then still struggling against
the current of contemporary taste. Keble's Prælec-
tiones, delivered as they were in Latin, appealed to a
necessarily limited audience, but a new note was
struck when Matthew Arnold, a name always
cherished with affectionate admiration in Oxford,
began to lecture in English. With him the classical
genius of poetry revived under new auspices. The
attention of the public at large was directed to the
form of the Greek drama as a vehicle for the expres-
sion of modern thought. Attic wit amused itself
with applying the standards of Hellenic culture to
every department of English life. It seems to me but
yesterday that I listened in statu pupillari to the
famous dictum pronounced from this Chair, that
"there were no Wraggs by the Ilissus." Neverthe-
less the stream of taste, diverted for the moment, has
in our own generation shown a tendency to flow back
into national channels, nor do I know of any book
which has done more to accomplish this change than
The Golden Treasury of English Song, a work of
Uorm
10
LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY
Greek beauty, which will always remain as a monu-
ment of the critical refinement and the large sym-
pathy of my predecessor, Francis Palgrave.
When I consider all this ambiguity in the meaning
of terms, this silence as to the intentions of the
Founder of the Chair, this diversity of taste and
practice among those who have held it, it appears
to me that the first question to be decided is, how
far it is possible to speak on Poetry with the con-
fidence which is expected from one who discharges
Professorial duties. I accordingly propose in this my
Inaugural Lecture to ask my audience to consider
with me the question of Liberty and Authority in
Matters of Taste, so that we may determine from this
point of view what limits Reason imposes on the Art
of Poetry, and to what extent we can apply in the
domain of Imagination those scientific methods which
are properly applied to the objects of Sense. But I
can imagine that an objection may be made on the
very threshold of such an inquiry. It may be said
The question you raise is one that contains its own
answer. There can be no established law in the
sphere of Art and Taste.
The Mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
In everything relating to aloenois, taste, perception,
the individual is free. Genius is the sole lawgiver
in Art; and though the critic may serve the artist
by sharpening the faculty of perception, yet if he
attempts to measure works of art by any external
IN MATTERS OF TASTE
11
standard, he ignores the proverbial and accepted
wisdom of all ages: πάντων μέτρον ἄνθρωπος: De
gustibus non est disputandum.
This is a formidable objection; the more so because
it is an echo of the prevailing philosophy of the day
which we recognise by the name of Culture. The
philosophy of Culture is based on self-consciousness ;
that is to say, in this philosophy, the consciousness
of freedom in the individual mind is made the
standard and starting-point for all speculation about
Religion and Art. Let me cite, as an example of
what I mean by self-consciousness, a striking passage
from the chapter in Sartor Resartus, called "The
Everlasting No "
: "The Everlasting No has said:
Behold thou art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe
is mine; to which my whole Me now makes answer,
I am not thine, but free and for ever hate thee.'
In the same spirit, though in a less obscure and
poetical style, Matthew Arnold defines Criticism to
be the free faculty that advances in the mind the
growth of an inward Perfection; and, quite logically
from his own premises, he identifies Poetry with the
Idea as it exists in the individual mind and contrasts
""
72
it with dogmatic Religion. The future of poetry,
he says, "is immense, because in poetry, where it is
worthy of its high destinies, our race as time goes
on will find an ever surer and surer stay. Our
religion has materialised itself in the fact, in the
supposed fact, and now the fact is failing it. But for
poetry the idea is everything, the rest is a world of il-
lusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotions
12
LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY
AN E
to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part
of our religion to-day is its unconscious poetry."
But the opinion of those who hold with the maxim
De gustibus non est disputandum is supported by a
yet stronger ally in the prevailing taste of the age.
It seems to be a necessary characteristic of a highly
civilised society, that in proportion as it grows im-
patient of Authority in Belief it insists upon Novelty
in Imagination. Everywhere we hear the question
asked: May we know what this new doctrine whereof
thou speakest is? And from all quarters, in satisfaction
of the demand, comes the answer, in the revelations
of the new Humourist, the new Dramatist, the new
Woman. The same feeling is paramount even in
those whose imagination is accustomed to dwell in
the higher regions of art and taste, and I know not
where it is more eloquently expressed than in the
words of an Oxford scholar whose works live in the
minds of many of us as his memory is fresh in our
affections. "For us," says Walter Pater,
"the
Renaissance is the name of a many-sided but yet
united movement in which the love of the things of
the intellect and the imagination for their own sake,
the desire of a more liberal and comely way of con-
ceiving life, make themselves felt, urging those who
experience this desire to search out first one and then
another means of intellectual or imaginative enjoy-
ment, and directing them not merely to the discovery
of old and forgotten sources of this enjoyment, but to
divine new sources of it, new experiences, new sub-
jects of poetry, new sources of art.”
IN MATTERS OF TASTE
13
What, then, is to be said in regard to this maxim,
De gustibus non est disputandum, supported as it is
by the philosophy of those who preach the gospel of
self-culture, and impelled by the powerful current
of the public taste? I do not think that there can
be the slightest doubt as to the answer. To any one
who raises such a preliminary objection as I have
supposed, I would reply: You have stated strongly
one side of the truth, but you have ignored, com-
pletely ignored, the other. You have asserted the
claims of individual liberty, and up to a certain point
I agree with you. I do not deny that spiritual
liberty is founded on consciousness, and hence the
self-consciousness of the age is part of the problem
we are considering. I do not deny that the prevail-
ing rage for novelty must also be taken into account.
Liberty, variety, novelty, are all necessary to the
development of Art. Without novelty there can be
no invention, without variety there can be no charac-
ter, without liberty there can be no life. Life,
character, invention, these are of the essence of
Poetry. But while you have defended with energy
the freedom of the Individual, you have said nothing
of the authority of Society. And yet the conviction
of the existence of this authority is a belief perhaps
even more firmly founded in the human mind than
the sentiment as to the rights of individual liberty.
If Henry Birkhead had not believed that the prin-
ciples of poetry were, like those of all other arts or
sciences, capable, up to a certain point at all events,
of definition and demonstration, would he, being in
14
LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY
..
possession of all his senses, have bequeathed his
property for the endowment of this Chair? If the
University of Oxford, as a corporate body, had not
shared his opinion, would it have accepted his bene-
faction? Could the long succession of those who
have filled this Chair have been maintained, if the
great majority of the Professors of Poetry, however
various their opinions, however opposite their tastes,
had not felt sure that there was in taste, as in science,
a theory of false and true, in art, as in conduct, a
rule of right and wrong? And even among those
who have asserted most strongly the inward and
relative nature of poetry, do you think there was
one so completely a sceptic as to imagine that he
was the sole proprietor of the perception he sought to
embody in words; one who doubted his power, by
means of these accepted symbols, to communicate to
his audience his own ideas and feelings about ex-
ternal things? Yet until some man shall have been
found bold enough to defend a thesis so preposterous,
we must continue to believe that there is a positive
standard, by which those at least who speak a
common language may reason about questions of
taste.
There is no doubt a point at which the principle
De gustibus non est disputandum must be strictly
applied. Our English law recognises this. We know
that when a man pursues his own taste so far as to
publish in writing that which is decided to be con-
trary to the law of the land, the plea of the offender
that he only wrote what seemed beautiful to him, or
IN MATTERS OF TASTE
15
what he believed to be true, will not avail for his
protection. Tastes of that kind we do not dispute
about; we punish them. It is seldom indeed in
England that any individual so far oversteps the
large liberties allowed him by the law as to translate
into action opinions which are recognised as dan-
gerous to the community. But beyond those appet-
ites which are proscribed as illegal there are secret
proceedings of thought and perception which, while
they elude the clumsy vigilance of the law, may
poison the atmosphere about us-tastes that corrupt,
sentiments that emasculate, affectations that debase,
the whole spirit and character of society. To treat
these with easy tolerance is only a sign of social
cowardice. A nation which has a just sense of its
own greatness and liberty must also have a sense of
what is ideally noble and beautiful, and must not be
afraid to condemn any departure from this standard.
And indeed all experience shows that the instinct of
every society impels it to assert its authority in
questions relating to imagination and art. Nature
bids us judge in matters of taste: the difficulty is
how to judge rightly. Since, then, this is the object
of our inquiry, I will ask you in the first place very
briefly to glance at the different kinds of external
tribunal by which Society has endeavoured to decide
questions of taste, in order that we may see how far
we can accept their authority.
Perhaps the form of external authority which
most readily occurs to each of us is the Academy after
the French model. No one will deny a grandeur
16
LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY
{
to the constitution and history of this great body.
You will remember what was the object of its crea-
tion as described by Richelieu, its founder: "The
main function of the Academy shall be to work with
all possible care and diligence at giving sure rules to
our language, and rendering it pure, eloquent, and
capable of treating the arts and sciences." And
Renan, giving a slight emphasis to the idea of
Richelieu, says: The duty of the Academy is to
preserve the delicacy of the French language." As
far as regards the intellectual history of France, these
strictly conservative duties have been performed with
splendid fidelity and success. The Academy has
admitted within its walls almost every great French
writer since the day of its foundation, so that on
literary grounds it may justly claim to speak with
the representative authority of France. In the stan-
dard of taste which it has consistently upheld the
French nation has seen the image of its own genius.
One doubts whether to admire the Academy most
for the thoroughness with which it has realised the
idea of Richelieu, by carrying the rules of the French
language through the anarchy of the Revolution, or
for the courage with which it has maintained the
standard of Renan, by preserving the delicacy of
French thought in the days of M. Zola.
I do not wonder that so great a triumph should
have profoundly impressed the imagination of English
critics, or that we should frequently hear the opinion
expressed, that it would be an excellent thing if we
could have an institution of the same kind in Eng-
IN MATTERS OF TASTE
17
(6
land. Those who speak in this way usually support
themselves by the authority of Matthew Arnold, and
refer to a lecture delivered, I believe, from this Chair,
on the Literary Influence of Academies. But they
seem to me to misunderstand the mind of that
eminent critic, because though all his arguments
point to the foundation of an Academy in England,
he concludes as follows: An Academy quite
like the French Academy, a sovereign organ of
the highest literary opinion, a recognised authority
in matters of intellectual tone and taste, we shall
hardly have, and perhaps we ought not to wish to
have it." That is the conclusion of common sense,
and the most elementary considerations show why it
must be so.
The French Academy is an effect, not a cause; it is
the product mainly of certain intellectual qualities of
the French people. It was founded as an institution
because, at a certain point of their history, the French
people became conscious that they possessed these
qualities, and a number of representative men began
to form themselves into a society for the purpose of
discussing questions of taste and expression. They
had no intention of initiating or legislating: they
came together to discuss and to judge. The English
people do not possess that analytical and logical
genius which would enable them to constitute a
representative assembly for the same purpose.
But if the French Academy derives its representa-
tive character from the nature of the French intellect,
the official prestige and authority it possesses come
18
LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY
to it solely from a political source. It was in fact,
the offspring of the French Monarchy. It was
established by the king; for a long time the king
retained and exercised the power of veto in its
elections: it would have been impossible to make
it a really comprehensive and representative as-
sembly if all the best minds of France had not first
found a natural centre of attraction in the Court.
Even therefore if the qualities of the English genius
facilitated, instead of hindering, the constitution of
an Academy like the French, the decentralisation of
English institutions and our habits of individual
liberty would necessarily prevent such a body from
exercising any authority.
I might dwell on other Courts, of the nature of
Academies, by means of which Society at different
times has attempted to pronounce judgment in matters
of taste. Such, for example, is the Coterie, which
may be defined as a miniature Academy without
official status, and which under various conditions has
exercised great influence in Italy, France, and Eng-
land. But as the Coterie represents no body of
opinion beyond itself, and as it flourishes most in an
aristocratic form of society, it is unnecessary to speak
of it in detail, and I pass on to consider a tribunal
with whose decrees we are all familiar, the Court of
Public Opinion.
Public opinion delivers judgment either collectively,
or representatively by means of an anonymous press.
When it acts collectively it is certainly one of the
most remarkable of human phenomena, and I think
IN MATTERS OF TASTE
19
1
that the spectacle of vast bodies of men giving
simultaneous expression to their consciousness of
what is right furnishes the strongest refutation that
could be desired of the fallacy in the maxim, De
gustibus non est disputandum. Such are the
judgments pronounced by the spectators in a
theatre, or by the audience at a public meeting when
they express their approval of or dissent from the
opinions of an orator. On these occasions the
verdict of public opinion is, for the moment at least,
irresistible. The dramatist is not obliged to regard
it as final: he may reason with his judges, as
Aristophanes did in the Clouds; he may even pro-
claim his contempt for their taste, as Ben Jonson did
in his Ode to Himself after the failure of his New
Inn; but he knows that there is no higher court to
which he can appeal.
It must be allowed that, as a tribunal of taste,
public opinion, or perhaps I should rather say popu-
lar opinion, possesses certain great virtues. For
one thing, the taste of the people is almost always
natural, and natural taste is the foundation of good
taste. When a whole society-at least a society
which is both historic and free-judges collectively,
its instincts will not allow it to go very far astray.
It will reject what is nasty and unwholesome; it will
favour such tastes as are on the whole manly, and
healthy, and vigorous. The judges in the gallery of a
theatre, who hiss the villain of a play for his evil
sentiments, are representatives of the authority of
popular opinion. Critics of this stamp will also show
themselves intolerant of such fundamental faults of
20
LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY
taste as affectation and conceit, which pass unscathed
the judgment, for example, of the Coterie. When a
dramatist or any other kind of artist shows that he
is thinking more of his own nature than of human
nature, any large audience will be quick to find him
out. Nor is the collective verdict of the public ever
consciously unjust, because, as it judges in the mass,
it is not affected by those petty personal motives of
envy, jealousy, and resentment which so often disturb
the reason of private critics.
But public opinion as a court of justice has certain
obvious limitations and weaknesses. Like the old
Teutonic assemblies of freemen which announced their
decisions by the shouts of the multitude and the
clashing of shields, its powers are restricted to simple
approval or rejection. Moreover its judgments are
always arbitrary, being founded on emotion, not on
reason. The standard by which it judges may be
constituted out of the merest prejudice and ignor-
ance, yet as it knows of no other, it will regard its
own canon as conclusive. In no other tribunal is the
last word of the despot so decisively uttered: "Sic
volo, sic jubeo, stat pro ratione voluntas.
Again, even when it decides more deliberately
through the anonymous criticism of the press, public
opinion is subject to weaknesses, arising from hurry
and superficiality, which lower its authority as a tri-
bunal of taste. To judge rightly in matters of taste
we must have time. An enduring work of art is the
product of meditation and labour, and by the nature
of things it cannot be measured by a mere ephemeral
standard. The press can and does judge with admir-
Y
IN MATTERS OF TASTE
21
able accuracy of the mass of novels, poems, plays, and
pictures, which men read, glance at, talk about, and
forget its methods of swift intuition and general-
isation are inadequate to estimate the work of a
Raphael or a Milton.
:
I think that from the facts I have attempted to
put before you two conclusions may safely be drawn.
One is, that society in all ages has been constantly
attempting to assert its authority in matters of taste;
the other is, that no form of social organisation of
which the world has had experience is likely to be
accepted as a tribunal of taste in such a country as
England. The Academy of the French pattern is de-
fective because it is the offspring of centralisation ;
the Coterie is defective because it is not representative;
Public Opinion is defective because it has no recognised
standard of judgment, and also because its judgments
are too rough and ready to be applicable to the
higher creations of Art. It may indeed be doubted
whether for such a society as ours, so full of self-
consciousness and the spirit of individual liberty, so
charged with party feeling, divided between so many
sections and interests, any representative body could
ever be formed which would be recognised as giving
expression to the deliberate sense of the community
on purely aesthetic questions. Yet one thing we may
surely hope for the growth of an educated Public
Conscience in matters of taste which shall exercise a
general influence on private judgment. Perhaps the
most signal of the services performed by Matthew
Arnold was the constancy with which he insisted on the
22
LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY
This
necessity of exercising right reason within the sphere
of criticism. This is no mere rhetorical phrase. For not
only is it possible to apply right methods of reason-
ing in art and taste, but certain evil consequences
inevitably ensue when these methods are neglected.
Every critic who attempts to decide a disputed point
of taste must satisfy two conditions; in the first
place he must judge judicially, that is to say, he
must strive to regard the object of his criticism
scientifically and apart from prejudice; in the second
place he must verify his own conclusions by reference
to some recognised standard of authority.
seems almost like the statement of a truism, and yet
how rare it is to find these two requirements both
fulfilled! How often, on the one hand, does private
dislike and prejudice intervene to cut off the critic
from the sight of his object; how often, on the other,
is he satisfied with the unassisted decision of his own
consciousness ! And what are the consequences?
Let me illustrate by two notable examples what
happens when critics content themselves with satisfy-
ing one of the essential conditions of good criticism
without attending to the other.
Probably no literary judgment ever produced more
disastrous results in the interests of good taste than
the article in the Quarterly Review on Keats' Endy-
mion. Here the issue as between Liberty and Autho-
rity was raised in a very trenchant manner. Keats
was an innovator. Both in his treatment of his sub-
ject, in his diction, and in his versification, he came
into violent collision with the canons of composition
IN MATTERS OF TASTE
23
accepted in his day. Yet in the points of taste which
called for a decision there was really nothing new.
The question, for example, as to the right of coining
new words or reviving disused words in poetry was
as old as Horace; it had been debated in Italy by
Castiglione in his Courtier; it had been raised in
France by the Pleiad, and afterwards discussed by
almost every French critic; it was familiar in England
since the publication of Lyly's Euphues. The ruling
on the point is given with admirable clearness in
Horace's Ars Poetica—
Multa renascentur quæ jam cecidere, cadentque
Quæ nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus,
Quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi.
•
Usus; usage; the genius of the language; there
was the law. The sole question was whether Keats
had violated the law, and if so, with what amount of
justification. Nothing could have been simpler than
to apply the test of right reason. But how did
Croker deliver judgment? In the first place he
announced that he had only read one book of Endy-
mion, which was quite enough for him. In the next
place, as to the particular point at issue, he decided as
follows:-
"By this time our readers must be pretty well
satisfied as to the meaning of Mr. Keats's sentences
and the structure of his lines. We now present
them with some of the new words with which, in
imitation of Mr. Leigh Hunt, he adorns our lan-
guage. We are told that turtles passion their
6
24
LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY
voices;' that an arbour was nested; and a lady's locks
gordianed up; and to supply the names of the nouns
thus verbalised, Mr. Keats with great fecundity
spawns new ones: such as 'men-slugs and human
serpentry'; the honey-feel of bliss; wives prepare
needments; and so forth."
Now as to the substance of this judgment we can-
not doubt that Croker was right. He had satisfied
one of the conditions of sound criticism in referring
to a positive standard of authority, and, like all sane
critics before him, he had taken usage as the standard
of measurement. Keats had offended against the
genius of the English language with crudeness,
violence, and affectation. But could anything be
more unjudicial than the manner in which Croker
told him so, without making any allowance for the
fact that he was a young man, and evidently a young
man of genius? More unfortunate still in the in-
terests of criticism was the fact that Croker's judg-
ment, besides being offensive and contemptuous in
tone, was in certain points incorrect. The standard
of usage by which he measured was simply the
standard recognised in his own day without reference
to the historic growth of the language, and he showed
ignorance in supposing Keats to have been merely
coining new words. Hence the "cockney school” as
he called the innovators, while they justly complained
of his manners, could also point to his mistakes. They
hardened themselves in impenitence, and began to
criticise by rules of their own the practice of the
prevailing school, whom, with a ludicrous self-import-
IN MATTERS OF TASTE
25
ance, they called the disciples of "one Boileau."
The general reader was puzzled with the dispute, but
when he turned to Endymion, and found there such
an exquisite passage as
Whence come ye, jolly Satyrs, whence come ye,
So many, and so many, and such glee?
he was amazed at the blindness of the Quarterly
Reviewer, and concluding that he must be entirely
wrong, rejected his whole standard of measurement
—though it was really a just one-to the irreparable
damage of good taste and common sense.
This is an example of the consequences of not
judging judicially. As an illustration of the results
of judging by a merely private standard, I think I
shall not be mistaken in citing Matthew Arnold's
lecture on the Literary Influence of Academies.
You will remember that he there criticises a great
number of English authors, amongst others Addison,
Jeremy Taylor, Burke, and Mr. Ruskin, from whose
works he quotes passages as samples of bad taste in
writing. Now it is plain that Matthew Arnold is
here judging judicially. All the examples he pro-
duces are really examples of bad taste. All of them
are selected with great fineness of perception and
great accuracy of instinct. But whereas the kind of
taste they exhibit is extremely diverse, specific, and
characteristic of the individual, Matthew Arnold
chooses for his own purposes to ascribe their defects
to one single source, and that a national one. He
says: Adopting Dr. Newman's expressive word,
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'
I say that in the bulk of the intellectual work of a
nation which has no centre, no intellectual metropolis
like an Academy-like M. Sainte-Beuve's sovereign
organ of opinion,' like M. Renan's recognised au-
thority in matters of tone and taste '-there is ob-
servable a note of provinciality. Now to get rid of
provinciality is a certain stage of culture, a stage the
positive results of which we must not make of too
much importance, but which is nevertheless indis-
pensable; for it brings us on to the platform, where
alone the best and highest intellectual work can be
said to begin." There have been some who shrank
from bringing an indictment against a whole nation.
Matthew Arnold had no such diffidence. But what
is the supposed standard by which he judges? The
note of provinciality? How can the genius of a great
nation be called provincial? Of what central society
is a nation a province? Is it not plain that when
Matthew Arnold produces a rhetorical effect by a
phrase like this, he is judging by a measure recog-
nised only by himself? The world would not have
accepted Quintilian's judgment on Seneca's style as
conclusive, if he had not criticised it by canons which
the world could understand.
Thus then we are brought to the practical question
-What is the final authority to which right reason
should refer in judging of matters of taste? I do
not think that we can be in doubt about the answer.
In every art the standard is the example of the great
artist, the practice of those who are acknowledged to
be masters in the art. Not, however, because they
IN MATTERS OF TASTE
27
are arbitrary dictators. There are, I think, two para-
mount reasons why the standard must be settled by
them. One is that argument from antiquity which is so
admirably stated by Sir Joshua Reynolds in his Dis-
courses on Painting. He says: "The modern who
recommends himself as a standard may justly be sus-
pected as ignorant of the true end, and unacquainted
with the proper object, of the art which he professes.
To follow such a guide will not only retard the
student but mislead him. On whom then can he
rely, or who will show him the path that leads to
excellence? The answer is obvious: those great
masters who have travelled the same road with suc-
cess are the most likely to conduct others. The
works of those who have stood the test of ages have
a claim to that respect and veneration to which no
modern can pretend. The duration and stability of
their fame is sufficient to evince that it has not been
suspended upon the slender thread of fashion and
caprice, but bound to the human heart by every tie
of sympathetic approbation."
But there is, it seems to me, another reason even
more powerful than the argument from antiquity,
though it merely presents a different side of the same
truth: great artists are the standards of art because
they are old no doubt, but also because they are
representative. I take all great poetry to be not so
much what Plato thought it, the utterance of indi-
vidual genius, half inspired, half insane, as the
enduring voice of the soul and conscience of man
living in society. The great poets and orators of
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LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY
ነ
Greece and Rome are justly accepted as our masters
in eloquence, because their works present in an ideal
form lasting records of the thoughts and emotions
which the human heart experiences in the various
vicissitudes of active life. For example, Milton says,
in words which are a living part of our language,
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble minds)
To scorn delights and live laborious days.
But is it not a striking thought that, between
two and three thousand years before, the same
sublime logic should be found in the words with
which Homer makes Sarpedon animate the courage
of Glaucus, and which have scarcely lost anything
of their original nobility, in the version of Homer's
English translator ?
Could all our care elude the gloomy grave
Which claims alike the fearful and the brave,
For lust of fame I would not vainly dare
In fighting fields to urge the soul to war.
But since, alas! ignoble age must come,
Disease, and death's inexorable doom,
The life that others pay let us bestow,
And give to Fame what we to Nature owe.
Brave though we fall, and honoured if we live,
Or let us glory gain, or glory give.
We watch the conflict between divine and human
law in the Antigone of Sophocles, and we realise the
eternal truth of the dramatic situation when we pass
to the history of England and see it repeated in the
tragedy of Alice Lisle. How intelligible seems the
dispute between the Just and Unjust Argument in
IN MATTERS OF TASTE
29
the Clouds of Aristophanes to the old English Tory!
Why do we feel a peculiar sublimity in the famous
oath of Demosthenes on the souls of those who
fought at Marathon and Salamis? Is it not because
we too cherish the memories of the men who perished
under Nelson and Wellington in a later defence of
European liberty? And when we read the ever
memorable lines of Virgil,
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;
Hæ tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem,
what Englishman is not proud to feel how justly
they may be applied to those who administer the
government of India?
I conceive that it is this political spirit—I use the
word political in its wide Greek sense-which has
given a special character to the study of the classics
in the English Universities since the days of Erasmus
and Colet, of Cheke and Ascham. Our ideal of
classical education differs alike from the æsthetic ideal
of the Italian Humanists, who deified the ancients
as absolute lawgivers in the sphere of abstract
form, and from the scientific ideal of the German
Universities, which regard the dead languages as one
of the many departments of abstract knowledge.
We in England, on the contrary, look on the classics
as a great school of taste, and we consider the educa-
tion of taste itself as a means to a practical, a
political end. We have not allowed the necessarily
Pagan genius of the Greek and Roman writers to
undermine the foundations of the Christian faith.
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LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY
but treating their works as living creations of
humanity, interpreting their spirit and character
with the kindred sympathy of freemen, we have
familiarised ourselves for centuries with the principles
that governed their imagination. We appreciate
their singular felicity in the choice of subject, the
chastened elegance of their composition, the har-
monious purity of their style.
Testimony is borne to the efficacy of this system of
University education by the most illustrious of those
who have pursued a different object. "The office of
the English Universities," says Döllinger, "is by
means of the study of classics and mathematics, com-
bined with logic and moral philosophy and a college
education to turn out for the benefit of the State and
Society the cultivated and independent gentleman.
I will not conceal the fact that these renovated and
improved editions of the old and unfortunately ex-
tinct German bursaries, the colleges of Oxford and
Cambridge, have many a time as I observed their
working on the spot awakened in me feelings of
envy, and led me to long for the time when we
might again have something of the kind; for I could
plainly perceive that their effect was to make in-
struction take root in the mind, and become a part
of it, and that their influence extended beyond the
mere communication of knowledge, to the ennobling
elevation of the life and character."
What member of the English Universities, above all
what member of the University of Oxford, would wish
to see an education which has borne such fruit as
IN MATTERS OF TASTE
31
this displaced in favour of a system calculated to
promote mere self-culture? Year by year the Univer-
sities send to the Bar, to the Public Services, to the
great army of Journalism, bands of recruits who diffuse
the influence of their own tastes, and help to direct the
movements of popular opinion. Were there to be any
breach between the educated taste of the Universities,
and the natural taste of the public at large, the
whole system of irrigation in English æsthetic culture
would be tainted at its source. The taste of the Uni-
versities would become more monastic, more epi-
curean; the taste of the public would grow more
rude, more barbarous. It should surely therefore be
the object of all patriotic endeavour to strengthen the
established principle of authority in matters of taste,
and to widen its base so as to meet the necessities of
our imperial society.
A great opportunity of advancing in this direc-
tion seems to be offered by the foundation of the
new Oxford School of English Language and Litera-
ture. For while the ancient classics must always
remain our primal authority in determining what
are the principles of good taste, it is in the classics
of our own country that we can best study the manner
in which these principles have been and should be
applied. The tablets of the English School are still
almost a blank : it will depend upon the first teachers
and examiners what shall be written in them. You
may make it a genuine school of taste, which shall
show the student what is the true standard of excel-
lence in English writing, and how he may measure
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LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY
for himself the aberrations of eccentric genius. In
that case the School will follow the lines of Literæ
Humaniores. You will cause the greatest English
writers to be studied mainly for the purpose
of understanding their spirit and character; you
will show each of them in his just propor-
tions, and the place which he occupies in our
literature as a whole; how he was affected by,
how he represented, and how he himself influenced,
the movement of his own age. In such a school the
exact study of language will be, as it is in Litera
Humaniores, of the highest value in helping to un-
lock the secrets of thought, and in exhibiting the
orderly development of the laws of taste and harmony.
Language is the instrument of thought, and, like the
winged sandals of Mercury, it may aid the mind to
mount into the higher regions of thought and imagina-
tion. But it would be an error to take Mercury's
sandals as the source of his divinity, and some-
thing of the kind would happen, if, as might be done
in the English School, the study of language were
allowed to predominate over the study of literature.
The study of language in itself is, like every branch
of science, of the highest intellectual interest. But
were it to be raised above literature, or even studied
apart from literature, I venture to say that you would
be wasting an unequalled opportunity; for you would
be introducing a foreign educational principle which
can never acclimatise itself in the genius of England
and Oxford. You might under such conditions get a
school of archæological research, which would doubt-
IN MATTERS OF TASTE
33
less be of use and interest to the special student; but
you would not get, what you may still get, a school
capable of exercising a national influence in the
discipline of English taste.
I have now arrived at something like a practical
conclusion to the inquiry with which I started. A
question is naturally raised by the scepticism of
an old society, whether any law or authority can
be recognised as binding in matters of taste. The
universal instinct, which in every society prompts.
men to insist on their right of judging in such
matters, seems to point to the existence of some
principle of authority in the constitution of human
nature. But in what way can this authority be
enforced? I have shown that it is idle to expect
Englishmen to submit their private liberty of judg-
ment to any external tribunal of taste. It would
appear, however, to be a less hopeless task, by close
attention to great works of art, to create a conscious-
ness of what is truly beautiful, and so to form a
canon of taste which shall impose itself on the indi-
vidual judgment. A public conscience of this kind
must be the product of education, and the education
which is required is precisely that which has been
long established in the English Universities.
As for the particular functions of this Chair in
promoting, the education of taste, several conditions
have to be regarded. I do not think that the duties
of a Professor of Poetry lie mainly in the illustra-
tion of technical principles; for in poetry, even
less than in the other arts, is great work the
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LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY
མ
result of mere attention to rules; it is the result
of the inspiration, corrected by the severe self-
discipline, of genius. Moreover, the rare occasions
on which the Professor of Poetry makes his appearance
in the lecture-room must preclude him from giving
that minute and systematic teaching in the subject
which is rather the function of a resident Professor of
Literature. On the other hand, there are questions of
taste constantly and naturally rising out of the doubts
of a self-conscious society-conflicts between Liberty
and Authority, between Novelty and Tradition-
which suggest subjects that may be profitably con-
sidered from this Chair. I shall therefore hold
myself at liberty to treat Poetry in that wide and
general sense of the word which makes it co-extensive
with the creative power of the Imagination, and I
shall devote my lectures mainly to examining the
laws and conditions on which the life of Poetry
depends. This may be done in a variety of ways:
by dwelling on the principles of great poetry; by
observing the manner in which these have been
applied by great poets; by analysing the causes of
national movements of imagination; and by tracing
the development of individual genius. Much also may
be learned from the fate of poets, who in all ages have
fallen victims to Affectation, Exaggeration, Conceit,
False Wit, False Sentiment, in a word to all the im-
mortal fallacies by which the fascination of novelty
bewitches the weakness and inexperience of taste. I
am aware that the task I propose to myself is one of
great difficulty. To define the laws of Good Taste
IN MATTERS OF TASTE
35
becomes always harder as civilised society moves
farther away from the primal sources of poetical
inspiration. But at least we shall be looking in the
right direction if we take for our standard the prin-
ciple which Pericles recommended to the Athenians
—φιλοσοφοῦμεν ἄνευ μαλακίας: We pursue culture
in a manly spirit.
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