The Nation, Vol. 14 : A Weekly Journal Devoted to Politics, Literature, Science, and Art; From January 1 to June 30, 1872 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Nation, Vol. 14: A Weekly Journal Devoted to Politics, Literature, Science, and Art; From January 1 to June 30, 1872

The present work, which, originally published in 1864, has just been translated into English, is of an entirely difi'erent cast. It follows the second method so closely that, in the sense in which words have come to have a meaning with us, its very title is a misnomer. It is one of the last books on the subject that any one would take up with the hope of finding any definite information on any point in the history of English literature. Details, so far as they are brought in at all, are the common ones that can be found any where and everywhere. They are, for the most part, accurate, because they rarely go outside of matters well known. From one end to the other of these two bulky volumes scarcely a score of dates can be met with in the text. Numbers of inferior writers are not even spoken of at all. You may find them in Warton, the author tells us in one place - these good people who speak without having anything to say. Names high in the world of letters frequently fare no better. What are we to think of a history of English literature, as it is commonly understood, which, in an account of the great revival which followed the intellectual collapse of the eighteenth century, disposes of Coleridge in a few lines, mentions Keats once, and that casually, and does not even do so much as that for other prominent writers i Evidently, indeed, some of these authors have not been spoken of because they have never been read it is equally clear in other cases that some have been read so slightly and superficially that there has been no independent criticism. Whenever, in fact, he comes to treat of inferior writers, Taine's opinions of them and their works vary little from the regular stock ideas. He generally does the correct thing, praises where everybody else praises, blames where everybody else blames. He looks upon Sterne as a sentimental scamp, finds Richardson very much of a bore, and even falls in with the fashionable de nunciation of Pope, the representative of his classical age, in quite the style of modern English criticism. Yet, with all these deficiencies, if one is pleased to call them so, the work is not simply entertaining throughout; it is instructive. It is little praise to the author to say that he has written the best history of English literature that has yet been produced; he could not well have written one worse than those already existing; and the surprise which men have felt at finding a book on this subject which they could read without yawning has apparently led some of them to ascribe to it merits which its composer would not be likely to claim for it himself. For the work is really a criticism of English literature, as it appears in a few of its greatest authors, about whom the others, so far as they are mentioned at all, are grouped. In the fifth and last book, which treats of modern writers, Taine takes six as representatives of the tendencies now existing. What, in this place, he has done avowedly and with design for the representation of ten doucies, he has practically done everywhere else for the illustration of the history of results. This is, without doubt, an incomplete way of giving an account of literature, but it is much the most attractive way; nor is it, in certain points of view, the worst as regards details of the highest importance. For the mass of men will not read books of this kind at all if they are com palled to wade through accounts of obscure authors, of whose names they have never heard, and whose writings they have neither the time nor the inclination to read.

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