Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-11-20
REVIEW OF BOOKS.

kind to be intolerant of greatness. Though
on the one hand slavish subserviency to
superiority of circumstances is too usual TO
be remarked, ON the other hand it is
abundantly apparent that nothing delights
most men 50 much as carping criticism upon
those whose genius it has been impossible to
deny. Ia literature this mean enviousness
has always been particularly rank and
fragrant. The hatreds of literary men to one
another surpass even the hatreds of women.
Yet the most fiercely assailed literary reputa
lions have outlived not alone the injuries but
the very memories of the assailants, or the
latter are recalled in no other way than as
the feeble creatures who, Don Quixote-like,
fought windmills. The disposition to
depreciate literary excellence is as great to-
day as it has ever been; and as impotent.
The dictum of the critic has never been
less potential, and the long array of dooms
which have failed to take effect constitutes
an odd commentary on the acumen and
prophetic force of those who arrogate to
themselves the peculiar gift of intellectual
discrimination. 1t would be difficult to
name really great author VINO has not, even
in this century, been attacked and belittled in
this way. Macaulay has been overrun
with the Lilliputian hosts since his death,
and they have for many years taken special
delight in belaboring the memory of Buckle.
They have in fact invented sort of special
cant to fit his case. They could not dispute
his industry or his erudition. So they fell
foul of him on the ground that he had not
sufficiently perfected his congratulations.
Now to acquire the intellectual right to crit
icise a man like Buckle it is obvious that his
opponents ought to be able to regard him
from at least the same mental level. Buckle
was certainly not man of ordinary powers.
To the fragment of the great work to which
his life was devoted he had given the labor of
twenty years of twenty years such work as
very few of his contemporaries could have
performed. He possessed prodigieus men,
cry, in that resembling Macaulay. He was
gifted with an excellent intellectual digestion.
His conclusions are alike broad and deep.
ways to the point. He is cautious and bold,
careful yet decided, together He reaches
positive conclusions because his researches
have been profound and comprehensive. 1t is
therefore not unnatural, though inexcusable,
that the assurance of conscious understand.
ing should be decried as dogmatism, and that
the irmness due to clear and sweeping
vision should be ascribed to the eff
frontery of sciolism. These depre-
ciating criticisms really denote the ig-
norarce of the critics. not the justice of
the censure, but of course they have never
perceived this. And as criticism has its
fashions like everything else, and as they are
as destitute of sense as other fashions, so it
has become the mode to sneer at Buckle, to
pooh-pooh his views, and to wave him away
as an author greatly overrated in his time, but
now happily found out and accurately APP
praised. In this as in so many of their
fippant judgments the " advanced" critics
are wrong. Buckle is not the obsolete author
they would make him appear. 1t will be
long before any man equally well equipped
for the work he undertook is found. Genera
tions hence those who desire to understand
the tendencies of European civilization prior
to the nineteenth century, will have TO repair
to his mastery volumes. The brilliant repu-
tation which the first view of his great work
secured for him will revive and glow with in
creasing luster as time separates him from
his readers. For in literature it is the GEN.
turtles alone which obtain justice for authors
There is no difficulty in procuring candid and
unprejudiced judgments concerning the pro-
auctions of Shakespeare OF Bacon, OF
Moliere or Racine, of Dante or Petrsrch, be-
cause they are far removed from all existing
interests. But let the question be of living
author-of Matthew Arnold, or Anthony
Froude, or Victor Hugo, or of recently
living authors such as Buckle or Macaulay-
and at once the critic is warped and biased,
and becomes incapable of rendering justice
to his subject It has been SO with Buckle Pc
culiarly, and Mr. HUH has done real service,
not only to the memory of his friend but to
the public, in publishing this interesting and
valuable biography. We here see the meth
DDS by which Buckle acquired his enormous
erudition. We perceive how exceptional his
whole life was, and how all his conditions
fitted into the magnificent literary scheme to
which he had bent all his exertions. And
when we realize how vast and all-embracing
a knowledge was deemsd necessary for the
first beginning of the work which he did not
live to complete, we,feel more than ever the
impertinence and the folly of those critics who
have presumptuously questioned the informa
ton of a to whom they must have been
as mere school boys. He was a great man,
beyond serious question, and he has given
the world great work, fragmentary though
it be. That work, moreover, may well be
studied with confidence and admiration, for
assuredly no man competent to pass judg-
ment upon the question Of its merits has thus
far appeared in the critics chair, and the
powers and preparations of its author
afford an ample guarantee for the soundness
and solidity of the conclusions he has
reached.
THE CRRKD OF CuRIsTRSDoh ITs ForSBATIoEs Con-
TRAsfBD WITH ITS SUPERsTRUcruRB. by William
Rathbone Greg. Chicago: Bedford, Clarke s. Co.
San Francisco: A. l.. Bancroft& Co.
1t is somewhat singular that work which
was published in ENGLAND nearly thirty years
ago, and which has passed through four or
five editions there, should only now have
been reprinted in the United States. 1t is
the more remarkable thatit should have been
SO long overlooked, seeing that it belongs to
a class of literature for which there has been
a constantly increasing demand in this coun-
try of late years. The author, however, ia
tolerably well known on this side of the At
lantic by his books, Enismas of Life"
"Social and Literary Judgment" and
"Rocks Ahead" all of which have found
favor with this public. Mr.. Greg lie en-
phatically man of his age, insistent upon