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Books and Persons: Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911, a non-fiction book by Arnold Bennett |
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_ [_26 Sep. '08_] The death of Professor Churton Collins appears to have been attended by painful circumstances, and one may be permitted to regret the disappearance from the literary arena of this vigorous pundit. He had an agreeable face, with pendant hair and the chin of a fighter. His industry must have been terrific, and personally I can forgive anything to him who consistently and violently works. He had also acquired much learning. Indeed, I should suppose that on the subject of literature he was the most learned man in Britain. Unfortunately, he was quite bereft of original taste. The root of the matter was not in him. The frowning structure of his vast knowledge overawed many people, but it never overawed an artist--unless the artist was excessively young and naive. A man may heap up facts and facts on a given topic, and assort and label them, and have the trick of producing any particular fact at an instant's notice, and yet, despite all his efforts and honest toil, rest hopelessly among the profane. Churton Collins was such a man. He had no artistic feeling. Apart from the display of learning, which is always pleasant to the man of letters, his essays were arid and tedious. I never heard him lecture, but should imagine that he was an ideal University Extension lecturer. I do not mean this to be in the least complimentary to him as a critic. His book, "Illustrations Tennyson," was an entirely sterile exercise proving on every page that the author had no real perceptions about literature. It simply made creative artists laugh. They knew. His more recent book on modern tendencies displayed in an acute degree the characteristic inability of the typical professor to toddle alone when released from the leading-strings of tradition. * * * * * I fear that most of our professors are in a similar fix. There is Professor George Saintsbury, a regular Albert Memorial of learning. In my pensive moments I have sometimes yearned to know as many facts about literature as Professor Saintsbury knows, though he did once, I am told, state that "Wuthering Heights" was written by Charlotte. (That must have been a sadly shocking day for Mr. Clement Shorter!) I have found his Liebig "History of French Literature" very useful; it has never failed to inform me what I ought to think about the giants of the past. More important, Professor Saintsbury's critical introductions to the whole series of Dent's English edition of Balzac are startlingly just. Over and over again he hits the nail on the head and spares his finger. I have never understood by what magic he came to accomplish these prefaces. For the root of the matter is no more in Professor Saintsbury than it was in Churton Collins. He has not comprehended what he was talking about. The proof--his style and his occasional pronouncements on questions as to which he has been quite free to make up his mind all by himself! * * * * * I remember one evening discussing the talents of a certain orchestral conductor, who also played the violin. I was talking to a member of his orchestra, a very genuine artist. We agreed that he had conducted badly; but, I said in his defence, "Anyhow his intentions are good. You must admit that he has a feeling for music." "My dear fellow," exclaimed the bandsman pettishly, "no one who had any feeling for music could possibly stand the d----d row that that chap makes on the fiddle." I was silenced. I recall this episode in connexion with Professor Saintsbury. No one who had any feeling for literature could possibly put down the ---- style that Professor Saintsbury commits. His pen could not be brought to write it. Professor Saintsbury may be as loudly positive as he likes--his style is always quietly whispering: "Don't listen." As to his modern judgments--well for their own sakes professors of literature ought to bind themselves by oaths never to say anything about any author who was not safely dead twenty years before they were born. Such an ordinance would at any rate ensure their dignity. * * * * * Yet another example is Professor Walter Raleigh. Fifty per cent. of you will leap up and say that I am being perverse. But I am not. It has been demonstrated to me satisfactorily, by contact with Liverpool people, that Professor Raleigh's personal influence at that university in certain ways made for righteousness. Nevertheless, Professor Raleigh has himself demonstrated to me that, wherever the root of the matter may be, it is not in _him_. One must remember that he is young, and that his underived opinions are therefore less likely to clash with the authoritative opinions of living creative artists on their contemporaries and predecessors than if he were of the same generation as the Collinses and the Saintsburys. But wait a few years. Wait until something genuinely new and original comes along and you will see what you will see. If he wished not to ruin his reputation among artists, among people who really create things, he ought not to have published his books on "Style" and on "Shakespere." He ought to have burnt them. For they are as hollow as a drum and as unoriginal as a bride-cake: nothing but vacuity with an icing of phrases. I am brought back again to the anecdote of the musician. No one who had the least glimmering of an individual vision of what style truly is could possibly have tolerated the too fearfully ingenious mess of words that Professor Raleigh courageously calls a book on "Style." The whole thing is a flagrant contradiction of every notion of style. It may not be generally known (and I do not state it as a truth) that Professor Raleigh is a distant connexion of the celebrated family of Pains, pyrotechnicians. I would begin to go to the Empire again if I could see on the programme: "10.20. Professor Raleigh, in his unique prestidigitatory performance with words." Yes, I would stroll once more into the hallowed Promenade to see that. It would be amusing. But it would have no connexion with literature. _ |
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