New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-11-30
printing well. man of taste is as much annoyed
by blunders in his books as by spots on his coat.
wHIPPLEs ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE


well worth writing about, and has been so largely
written about as the Age of Elizabeth, which is TO
those that have followed as the meridian
spendor of noon to the lesser light of the declining
afternoon We turn back to it as we turn back to
youth-with feelings of JOY and despair-joy In ITS
rich abundant, extravagant life, and despair at the
poverty and meanness OF our own. England has not
been barren of poets, whom, like the poor, we have
always with u.s. but no great one has risen since the
last Of the Shakespearean brotherhood went down to
the dust except Milton and Wordsworth, and Milton
and Wordsworth are not great beside Shakespeare
Nature has broken the mods into which she cast the
life and character and genius of her sons in the Age
Of Elizabeth, bet what she has spared are large
enough, paltry as they are to contain our plgmy
selves and souls. If we would enlarge our intellects
we must cease to measure them by the present
Standards and go back to the days when there were
giants on the earth, contemplation and study OF
whom added to much thinking on our part, may
possibly add cubt or two to our statures' Espe-
cially must we go back to the giants of the Age OF
Elizabeth, of whom Mr.. Whipple has something 10
say that is worth listening to now as it was ten
years ago when he first delivered 1t IN the form Oh
lectures before the Lowell Institute.
We have no faith in the Lecture per Sc, as means
of imparting information any but superficial sub
iects but as the French say there are lecturers and
lecturers The great body of this faculty here labor
first under the disadvantage of insufficient knowl-
edge and second, under the disadvantage OF sup
posing their hearers to be more ignorant than they
really are. We recall an Englshman of letters Ito
speak respectfully, who migrated to this country
few years back to enlghten on English Songs ana
Song Writers which he proposed to do by rehashing
such elementary works as Percy's Reques and
Ellis's Specimens Another lectured on Sydney, who
confessed that he had never read the Arcadia! Mr.
Whipple is not man of this SORT for he never at
tempts to pass off jeune facts as discoveries OF his
own nor does he shirk details in order to make ms
task an easy one The fault that we find with HIM
is that he avoids facts too much either because he
considers them to be already in the possession OF his
readers or because he does not consider them essen
ta TO the subject as he has handled it. There is an
ideal reader, so to say who may be supposed to be
familiar with the ground which his author goes
and there is a real reader Whose is Legionl.
who cannot be supposed to be familiar with anything
but his own ignorance. We do not say that Mr..
Whippe should have addressed himself to the last
particularly but this unfortunate must have heped
TO swell the attendance these lectures when they
were originally delivered, and as he may he induced
to buy them now in book form 1--WE hope So for his
own sake) it would have been well had he been re-
membered at the start well as his better informed
nelghbor Briefly, we think that Mr.. Whpple should
have been less sparing in doing out biography and
history to us. The majority of his readers will want
10 know more than he has chosen TO tell them OF
Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and the rest of
his Elizabethan worthless; even those who are well
read concerning them will certainly miss many
things they will look for. Neither will be disap-
pointed at the spirit of Mr.. Whippes criticism, hut
both would have liked it better if there had been
more body to it. What they mean-at any rate what
we mean-will probably suggest itself TO readers
if they will compare the impression left on their
minds by Thackeray's Lectures on the English HUI
morsts" with the impression left on their minds by
Mr.. Whippe's Literature of the Age of Elizabeth"
the first peopng the fancy with the writers of Qneen
Anne's days, and the Georges clad in their habits
as they lived real live men, with all their virtues
and vices, the last merely passing before it a sue
cesson of shadowy forms, the originals Of which
were as much larger than their descendants as men,
as they nobler as wits and poets
Dead but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their uTns"
Among the few men of letters in America who are
entitled to the of critics no one is superior to
Mr. Whipple. Others may excel him in the doubtful
accomplishment of writing sashing articles but for
judiciOus, intellectual acute criticism he stands
alone. He may occasionally miss some OF the most
obvious characteristics of what he crtcizes but he
seldom misses its inner life lie has fine sense of
FORM though it is always less in his eyes than the
spirit it reveals OF cOnceals. He must get at the
kernel the marrow OF things. lie can tell you what
stratum Of thought underes book Just geoogist
can tell you what underles the ground beneath your
feet by the rocks that crop ont here and there What
in the hands of too many critics is a switch to
be laid on the backs of authors in his becomes "A
divining rod to detect the hidden springs of their in
spration. He delights in tracing out recondite beau
ties. His sympathes are large enough to embrace
the literatures of all lands and times We would
lief read paper Of his on the Age Of Pcricles, as
these papers of his on the Age of Elizabeth. This is
high praise to pay a critic, perhaps the highest We
could pay him. but the critics who have had the
greatest weight are those who have most cOncen.
trated not those who have most scattered, their en-
ergies. If COleridge had speciality in criticism IT
was his profound insight into the genius of Shakes
peare. To see Lamb at his best we must read his
little critical notices of the Shakespearean dramasts
the least of which would be poorly paid for at pearl
a word. Mr. Lowell is most at home among the En-
glish winters of the period To be sure. Mr.
Lowell is sometimes crotehety and paradoxca
Lamb is sometimes too quaint and fanciful; while
Coleridge reminds us of Burke, at the famous feast
which Goldsmith has mmortalized, where
He went refining
And thought OF convincing while they thought OF dining
None OF those defects can DE charged To Ar Nhpple
whose chief fault want of faults His sympa-
tbes extend in too many directions to entirely sat
isfy those whose sympathies run in only one dircc
ton. We could forgive him his cool admiration for
so many things, il he would only show little warm
admiration for some one thing. Where we are warm
hearted. he is cold booded.
IL Mr.. Whippe as a critic imparts to Ms somewhat
of his GOODNESS as an author he never fails to
kindle tropic warmth in minds. His prose is
among the best of the tmesthe best, perhaps after