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037 - A Sentimental Journey Through Literature · Reviews

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  Speaker 1: Section thirty six of Refuse by Oscar Wilde. Theos is
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Lizzie Driver. Reviews by Oscar Wilde, edited by
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  Speaker 1: Robert Ross. Section thirty six, A sentimental Journey through Literature
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  Speaker 1: Paul Marl Gazette, December first, eighteen eighty six. This is
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  Speaker 1: undoubtedly an interesting book, not merely through its eloquence and earnestness,
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  Speaker 1: but also through the wonderful catholicity of taste that it displays.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Nell has a passion for panegeric. His eulogy on
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  Speaker 1: Keats is closely followed by a eulogy on Whitman, and
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  Speaker 1: his praise of Lord Tennyson is equalled only by his
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  Speaker 1: praise of mister Robert Buchanan. Sometimes, we admit would like
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  Speaker 1: a little more fineness of discrimination, a little more delicacy
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  Speaker 1: of perception. Sincerity of utterance is valuable in a critic,
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  Speaker 1: but sanity of judgment is more valuable still, and mister
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  Speaker 1: Nell's judgments are not always distinguished by their sobriety. Many
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  Speaker 1: of The essays, however, are well worth reading. The burst
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  Speaker 1: is certainly that on the poetic interpretation of Nature, in
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  Speaker 1: which mister Nell claims that what is called by mister
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  Speaker 1: Rusking the pathetic fallacy of literature is in reality of
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  Speaker 1: vital emotional truth. But to the essays on Hugo and
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  Speaker 1: mister Browning are also good. The little paper entitled Rambles
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  Speaker 1: by the Cornish Seas is a real marvel of delightful description,
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  Speaker 1: and the monograph of Chatterton has a good deal of merit.
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  Speaker 1: Though we must protest very strongly against mister Nearles's idea
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  Speaker 1: that Chatterton must be modernized before he can be appreciated.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Nearl has absolutely no right whatsoever to alter Chatterton's
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  Speaker 1: young damoiselle's and a last fell into youthful damsels and
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  Speaker 1: weapon fell. For Chatterton's archaisms were an essential part of
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  Speaker 1: his inspiration and his method. Mister Nearl, in one of
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  Speaker 1: his essays speaks of much severity of those who prefer
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  Speaker 1: sound to sense in poetry, and no doubt this is
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  Speaker 1: a very wicked thing to do. But he himself is
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  Speaker 1: guilty of a much graversin against art, when in his
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  Speaker 1: desire to emphasize the meaning of Chattertan, he destroys Chatterton's music.
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  Speaker 1: In the modernized version he gives of the Wonderful Song
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  Speaker 1: to Alia. He mars, by his corrections, the poem's metrical
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  Speaker 1: beauty ruins the rhymes and robs the music of its echo.
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  Speaker 1: Nineteenth century restorations have done quite enough harm to English
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  Speaker 1: architecture without English poetry being treated in the same manner,
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  Speaker 1: And we hope that when mister Nearle writes again about Chatterton,
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  Speaker 1: he will quote from the poets verse, not from a
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  Speaker 1: publisher's version. This, however, is not, by any means the
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  Speaker 1: chief blot of mister Nearl's book. The fault of his
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  Speaker 1: book is that it tells us far more about his
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  Speaker 1: own personal feelings than it does about the qualities of
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  Speaker 1: the various works of art that are criticized. It is,
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  Speaker 1: in fact, a diary of the emotions suggested by literature,
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  Speaker 1: rather than any real addition to literary criticism. And we
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  Speaker 1: fancy that many of the poets about whom he writes
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  Speaker 1: so eloquently would not be a little surprised at the
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  Speaker 1: qualities he finds in their work. Byron, for instance, who
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  Speaker 1: spoke with such contempt of what he called twaddling about
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  Speaker 1: trees and babbling o'er green fields Byron who cried away
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  Speaker 1: with his cant about nature. A good poet can imbue
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  Speaker 1: a pack of cards with more poetry than inhabits. The
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  Speaker 1: Forests of America is claimed to mister Nell as a
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  Speaker 1: true nature worshiper and pantheist, along with Wordsworth, Ann Shelley,
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  Speaker 1: And we wonder what Keats would have thought of a
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  Speaker 1: critic who gravely suggests that Endymion is a parable of
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  Speaker 1: the development of the individual soul. There are two ways
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  Speaker 1: of misunderstanding a poem. One is to misunderstand it, and
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  Speaker 1: the other to praise it for qualities that it does
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  Speaker 1: not possess. The latter is mister Nearle's method, and in
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  Speaker 1: his anxiety to glorify the artist, he often does so
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  Speaker 1: at the expense of the work of art. Mister Nell
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  Speaker 1: is consistently the victim of his own eloquence. So facile
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  Speaker 1: is his style that it constantly betrays him into crude
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  Speaker 1: and extravagant statements. Rhetoric and over emphasis are the dangers
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  Speaker 1: that mister Nearle has not always succeeded in avoiding it
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  Speaker 1: is extravagant, for instance, to say that all great poetry
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  Speaker 1: has been pictorial, or that Coleridge's Knight's Grave is worth
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  Speaker 1: many Kubula khans, or that Byron has the splendid imperfection
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  Speaker 1: of an Esculus, or that we had lately one dramatist
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  Speaker 1: living in England, and only one who could be compared
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  Speaker 1: to Hugo, and that was Richard hengus Horn, And that
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  Speaker 1: to find an English dramatist of the same order before him,
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  Speaker 1: we must go back to Sheridan, if not to otway.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Nearl again has a curious habit of classing together
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  Speaker 1: the most incongruous names and comparing the most incongruous works
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  Speaker 1: of art. What is gained by telling us that Sardana
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  Speaker 1: Pallas is perhaps hardly equal to Sheridan, that Lord Tennyson's
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  Speaker 1: Ballad of the Revenge and his ode on the Death
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  Speaker 1: of the Duke of Wellington are worthy of a place
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  Speaker 1: beside Thompson's Ruled Britannia, That Edgar Allan, Poe Disraeli and
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  Speaker 1: mister Alfred Austin are artists of note whom we may
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  Speaker 1: affiliate and Byron, And that as Sappho and Milton had
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  Speaker 1: not hygenius, they would have been justly reproached as sensational.
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  Speaker 1: And surely it is a crude judgment that classes Baudelaire
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  Speaker 1: of all poets with Marini and medieval troubadours, and a
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  Speaker 1: crude style that writes of Girta, Shelley, Scott and Wilson,
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  Speaker 1: for immortal should not thus intrude upon the immortals, even
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  Speaker 1: though he be guilty of holding with them that Caine
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  Speaker 1: is one of the finest poems in the English language.
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  Speaker 1: It is only fair, however, to add that mister Nerl
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  Speaker 1: subsequently makes more than ample amends for having opened Parnassus
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  Speaker 1: to the public in this reckless manner, by calling Wilson
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  Speaker 1: an offel feeder, on the ground that he once wrote
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  Speaker 1: a severe criticism of some of Lord Tennyson's early poems.
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  Speaker 1: For mister Nele does not mince his words. On the contrary,
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  Speaker 1: he speaks with much scorn of all eupheism and delicacy
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  Speaker 1: of expression, and prefer in the affectation of nature to
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  Speaker 1: the affectation of art. He thinks nothing of calling other
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  Speaker 1: people law of Bridegraham's jackasses and the like this, we think,
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  Speaker 1: is to be regretted, especially in a writer so cultured
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  Speaker 1: as mister Knowell, For though indignation may make a great poet,
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  Speaker 1: bad temper always makes a poor critic. On the whole,
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  Speaker 1: mister Nel's book has an emotional rather than an intellectual interest.
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  Speaker 1: It is simply a record of the moods of a
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  Speaker 1: man of letters, and its criticisms merely reveal the critic
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  Speaker 1: without illuminating what he would criticize for us. The best
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  Speaker 1: that we can say of it is that it is
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  Speaker 1: a sentimental journey through literature. The worst and I can
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  Speaker 1: say of it that it has all the merits of
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  Speaker 1: such an expedition. Essays and Poetry and Poets by the
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  Speaker 1: Honorable Rhoda Knell Kagan Paul, end of section thirty six.
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  Speaker 1: A Sentimental Journey through Literature