New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1896-07-19
III
EARLY VICTORIAN CRITICISM.

Before that criticism reached its aim, II was to
pass through an intermediate period, it was to
illustrate interlude, with all the peculiar
quality expressed by that epithet An nterlude
is defined by the authorities as something to
relieve the tedium between two works Of more
serious import 1t would be manifestly absurd
to BADLY classify men like Coleridge Hazlitt
Lamb De Quincy and Hunt sustaining any
such inferior role. Yet the criticism to which
Mr. Vaughan passes after Johnson. and OF which
we are more deliberately reminded by Mr.. Brim-
ley Johnsons little Life of Leigh Hunt" has
exactly the qualities which 60 to relieve tedium
the qualities of lghtness, Of vivacity, OF whim-
sicality These distinguished will stand
among the first writer's Of English criticism
and they are the first masters Of It with
whom the reader Of the present time feels
intimately at home Yet It is Interesting
to note that while they have scholarship,
while they exerted authority as much as, If not
more, than their moro imposing predecessors.
they are all personal writers all authors from
whom 1t IL Impossible to disassociate particular
traits from whom no one would wish TO take par
ticular elements Of charm. Where they stopped
short of the aim to which allusor has been
made and at which later critics were to arrive,
was in permitting their prose to be over-coored
10y their dosyncrasies.
The truth is they could not help them
selves. HaZlitt. sane as he was was never
theless subject to accessions OF arptrars
feeling, which were characteristic Of nine-tenths
Of the writing nen of his time, and strong as he
in calm judgment. he. too, has to be read to-
day with qualifications with reservations, with a
certain caution. De Quincy. standing as he
does high up in the court of English literature
stands there more a writer Of imaginative
prose than as master of pure criticism. Cole
ridge, putting his finger on the truth more swift
~, more accurately. perhaps. than any other
writer in England was drenched in his own
idiosyncrasies and is TO be sifted In the light or
these. Leigh Hunt went further-further we
might say, even. than Charles Lamb-in TINS
very direction. Mr. Johnson's biography en-
phasizes the Judgment. 1t shows again the
freakishness. the impulsiyeness the artlessness
Of Hunt. 1t shows also it may be observed in
passing an attractive figure. a man whom to
know is to like in spite Of his faults, to respect
in spite of his weakness.
While the criticism Of England in the nine
teenth century was forming itself; while it
was gradually emerging from the academic
standards of the eighteenth century and
finding its way back to the intuitive methods OF
Sidney: while it was travelling toward the scien-
tifc basis of the present day. it was fermenting,
and 1t went beyond Sidney In personal feeling.
1t became dogmatc In its tendency than
It had been In Johnson: II became fluid, spark
ling nervous and faulty instrument. whose Writ
ues nevertheless great quivering
with the force of downright genius, that Its
faults were forgotten and are very nearly for
gotten TO this day. Faults they were however.
and while the reader may feel so in diffident
way, as he goes through the pages Of Mr.. John
sons clever memoir of Hunt, he Is absolutely
sure Of 1t when he turns to the tiny volume in
which couple Of Matthew Arnold's essays and
one by John Morley have been printed together.