Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-04-10
SHAM LITERARY ADMIRATION.

to admire Paradise Lost" and every
| body pretends to do so and yet it Is
perfectly safe assertion that not one in five
hundred has ever read the poem through.
! The same may be said of Spenser and
Chaucer, and indeed of most of the older
poets and prose writers. We confess that
nothing Macauley ever wrote amazed
us so much as his positively full
some praise of the prose writings
| of Milton. Addison is another writer
who has been foisted on a generation
that does not in its heart believe in him
through the overbearing dogmatism of old
Samuel johnson, himself one of the most
intolerable of literary prigs. Who ever
reads % Rasselas" in these days? Who ever
read it with pleasure in any days? And
who can wade through the ponderoLs YER
biage of the q Rambler" and the {" Idler y?
There is Wordsworth again, of whom it is
the fashion nowadays to speak as though
he was the poet of higher culture, whose
writings every member of the illuminate is
in duty bound to extol How many peo-
pie honestly like Wordsworth OF course
there are sonnets here and there, and occa-
sienal short poems of his which deserve to
be remembered, but who has ever been
delighted with the sc Excursion, and who
ever read "Peter Bell without feel
ing equally depressed by the imbecility
of the conception and the clumsiness OF
the execution? No doubt this is fiat
blasphemy, but blasphemy has ceased to
be terrible, for this is an iconoclastic age,
and there are few things better worth
doing than the SCATTERING of mean and SER
vile conventionalisms. Fashionable and
hereditary literary tastes and likings are
pretty certain to be false and foolish. II
people who read would declare frankly
who their favorite authors were, how many
sounding regulations would shriyel, and
how many modest ones would rise into
notice. There are few or none of us who
are not so much slaves to this tendency
]
cases with scores of volumes in which we
find no enjoyment, and which represent
nothing more than fashionable agreement
to make believe that the author was
great writer.
Anything that tends to break down this
servilty, and restore independence of liter
airy judgment to the world, is an aid to
mental progress of the most important
| kind. For there can be no doubt that the
| sluggishness which leads men to take opin-
ions at second hand is one of the main
causes of the slow growth of human intel
ligence and civilization. We find by COM
parative anatomy that nature abandons
organs and limbs which cease to be en-
ployed, and that in course of time these
organs and limbs are reproduced in an
aborted way, and as mere rudiments. In
the same manner the capacity to form in
dependent judgments is lost if the faculty
is never exercised, and the individual be-
comes incapable of doing anything more
than to repeat automatically the opinions of
others. Fashions in literature, as in all other
matters, are the direct effects of aborted
judgments. 1t is evident that in a highly
individualized society there would be no
fashions such as now govern the world, for
men and women would refuse to initiate
one another without reasons ascertained,
and each one would refer to his or her own
judgment for the determination of what
ever question was presented. And this
general NATURALIZATION is the highest and
best expression of the truest progress and
civilization. How far we are yet from it
may be perceived when we consider the
extent to which fashion, whether in htera-
ture, or art, or costume, still rules society
SO little advance has been made that when
bold writer like Mr.. Payn tells the world
how insineere and hypocritical are its ac.
cepted literary canons, the first feeling
evoked is one of establishment at the
temerity of the assertion. Yet it is very
certain that such trenchant and merciless
criticism is the only thing that can
break the letters of custom in which the
majority move. There is indeed a marked
tendency even among the most highly edu.
Gated people to crystalline and harden into
castles controlled by conventions and such
castles are quite as impenetrable by the
spirit of progress as are the more sordid cir
cles of uneducated dulness and barbarism.
Constant criticism of accepted doctrines is
the only guarantee for vital movement.
The literary gods of one generation ought
not to be worshiped by another, and when
they are something is generally wrong.
The world may not realize its obligations
to those who assail its literary shans, but |
for all that they are among its best friends,
and we wish there were more of them.