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    EDINBURGH JOURNAL
    CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS



    CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL

    CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S
    INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.


    No. 448. NEW SERIES. SATURDAY, JULY 31, 1852. PRICE 1-1/2_d._




    BOOK-WORSHIP.


    A book belongs in a peculiar manner to the age and nation that produce
    it. It is an emanation of the thought of the time; and if it survive
    to an after-time, it remains as a landmark of the progress of the
    imagination or the intellect. Some books do even more than this: they
    press forward to the future age, and make appeals to its maturer
    genius; but in so doing they still belong to their own--they still
    wear the garb which stamps them as appertaining to a particular epoch.
    Of that epoch, it is true, they are, intellectually, the flower and
    chief; they are the expression of its finer spirit, and serve as a
    link between the two generations of the past and the future; but of
    that future--so much changed in habits, and feelings, and
    knowledge--they can never, even when acting as guides and teachers,
    form an essential part: there is always some bond of sympathy wanting.

    A single glance at our own great books will illustrate this--books
    which are constantly reprinted, without which no library can be
    tolerated--which are still, generation after generation, the objects
    of the national worship, and are popularly supposed to afford a
    universal and unfailing standard of excellence in the various
    departments of literature. These books, although pored over as a task
    and a study by the few, are rarely opened and never read by the many:
    they are known the least by those who reverence them most. They are,
    in short, idols, and their worship is not a faith, but a superstition.
    This kind of belief is not shaken even by experience. When a devourer
    of the novels of Scott, for instance, takes up _Tom Jones_, he, after
    a vain attempt to read, may lay it down with a feeling of surprise and
    dissatisfaction; but _Tom Jones_ remains still to his convictions 'an
    epic in prose,' the fiction _par excellence_ of the language. As for
    _Clarissa Harlowe_ and _Sir Charles Grandison_, we have not heard of
    any common reader in our generation who has had the hardihood even to
    open the volumes; but Richardson as well as Fielding retains his
    original niche among the gods of romance; and we find Scott himself
    one of the high-priests of the worship. When wandering once upon the
    continent, we were thrown for several days into the company of an
    English clergyman, who had provided himself, as the best possible
    model in description, with a copy of Spenser; and it was curious to
    observe the pertinacity with which, from time to time, he drew forth
    his treasure, and the weariness with which in a few minutes he
    returned it to his pocket. Yet our reverend friend, we have no doubt,
    went home with his faith in Spenser unshaken, and recommends it to
    this day as the most delightful of all companions for a journey.

    In the present century, the French and German critics have begun to
    place this reverential feeling for the 'classics' of a language upon a
    more rational basis. In estimating an author, they throw themselves
    back into the times in which he wrote; they determine his place among
    the spirits of his own age; and ascertain the practical influence his
    works have exercised over those of succeeding generations. In short,
    they judge him relatively, not absolutely; and thus convert an
    unreasoning superstition into a sober faith. We do not require to be
    told that in every book destined to survive its author, there are here
    and there gleams of nature that belong to all time; but the body of
    the work is after the fashion of the age that produced it; and he who
    is unacquainted with the thought of that age, will always judge amiss.
    In England, we are still in the bonds of the last century, and it is
    surprising what an amount of affectation mingles with criticism even
    of the highest pretensions. It is no wonder, then, that common readers
    should be mistaken in their book-worship. To such persons, for all
    their blind reverence, Dante must in reality be a wild beast--a fine
    animal, it is true, but still a wild beast--and our own Milton a
    polemical pedant arguing by the light of poetry. To such readers, the
    spectacle of Ugolino devouring the head of Ruggieri, and wiping his
    jaws with the hair that he might tell his story, cannot fail to give a
    feeling of horror and disgust, which even the glorious wings of
    Dante's angels--the most sublime of all such creations--would fail to
    chase away. The poetry of the Divine Comedy belongs to nature; its
    superstition, intolerance, and fanaticism, to the thirteenth century.
    These last have either passed away from the modern world or they exist
    in new forms, and with the first alone can we have any real healthy
    sympathy.

    One of our literary idols is Shakspeare--perhaps the greatest of them
    all; but although the most universal of poets, his works, taken in the
    mass, belong to the age of Queen Elizabeth, not to ours. A critic has
    well said, that if Shakspeare were now living, he would manifest the
    same dramatic power, but under different forms; and his taste, his
    knowledge, and his beliefs would all be different. This, however, is
    not the opinion of the book-worshippers: it is not the poetry alone of
    Shakspeare, but the work bodily, which is preeminent with them; not
    that which is universal in his genius, but that likewise which is
    restricted by the fetters of time and country. The commentators, in
    the same way, find it their business to bring up his shortcomings to
    his ideal character, not to account for their existence by the manners
    and prejudices of his age, or the literary models on which his taste
    was formed. It would be easy to run over, in this way, the list of
    all our great authors, and to shew that book-worship, as
    contradistinguished from a wise and discriminating respect, is nothing
    more than a vulgar superstition.

    We are the more inclined to put forth these ideas, at a time when
    reprints are the order of the day--when speculators, with a singular
    blindness, are ready to take hold of almost anything that comes in
    their way without the expense of copyright. It would be far more
    judicious to employ persons of a correct and elegant taste to separate
    the local and temporary from the universal and immortal part of our
    classics, and give us, in an independent form, what belongs to
    ourselves and to all time. A movement was made some years ago in this
    direction by Mr Craik, who printed in one of Charles Knight's
    publications a summary of the _Faëry Queen_, converting the prosaic
    portions into prose, and giving only the true poetry in the rich and
    musical verses of Spenser. A travelling companion like this, we
    venture to assure our clerical friend, would not be pocketed so
    wearily as the original work. The harmony of the divine poet would
    saturate his heart and beam from his eyes; and when wandering where we
    met him, among the storied ruins of the Rhine, he would have by his
    side not the man Spenser, surrounded by the prejudices and rudenesses
    of his age, but the spirit Spenser, discoursing to and with the
    universal heart of nature. Leigh Hunt, with more originality--more of
    the quality men call genius, but a less correct perception of what is
    really wanted--has done the same thing for the great Italian poets;
    and in his sparkling pages Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, and the rest of the
    tuneful train, appear unfettered by the more unpleasing peculiarities
    of their mortal time. But the criticism by which their steps are
    attended, though full of grace and acuteness, is absolute, not
    relative. They are judged by a standard of taste and feeling existing
    in the author's mind: the _Inferno_ is a magnificent caldron of
    everything base and detestable in human nature; and the _Orlando_, a
    paradise of love, beauty, and delight. Dante, the sublime poet, but
    inexorable bigot, meets with little tolerance from Leigh Hunt; while
    Ariosto, exhaustless in his wealth, ardent and exulting--full of the
    same excess of life which in youth sends the blood dancing and boiling
    through the veins--has his warmest sympathy. This kind of criticism is
    but a new form of the error we have pointed out; for both poets
    receive his homage--the one praised in the spontaneous outpourings of
    his heart, the other served with the rites of devil-worship.

    When we talk of the great authors of one generation pressing forward
    to claim the sympathy of the _maturer_ genius of the next, we mean
    precisely what we say. We are well aware that some of the great
    writers we have casually mentioned have no equals in the present
    world; yet the present world is more mature in point of taste than
    their own. That is the reason why they _are_ great authors now. Some
    books last for a season, some for a generation, some for an age, or
    two, or more; always dropping off when the time they reach outstrips
    them. One of these lost treasures is sometimes reprinted; but if this
    is done in the hope of a renewed popularity, the speculation is sure
    to fail. Curious and studious men, it is true, are gratified by the
    reproduction; but the general reader would prefer a book of his own
    generation, using the former as materials, and separating its immortal
    part from its perishing body.

    And the general reader, be it remembered, is virtually the age. It is
    for him the studious think, the imaginative invent, the tuneful sing:
    beyond him there is no appeal but to the future. He is superstitious,
    as we have seen, but his gods are few and traditional. He determines
    to make a stand somewhere; and it is necessary for him to do so, if he
    would not encumber his literary Olympus with a Hindoo-like pantheon of
    millions. But how voracious is this general

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