THE BUREAU OF REVISION.

George William Curtis says: "Reading manuscript with a view to publication is a professional work as much as examining titles to property; and this work is done, as it should be, professionally, by the Easy Chair's' friend and fellow-laborer in letters, Dr. T. M. Coan."-Harper's Magazine, April, 1886.

Books edited for authors and publishers. Opinions on MSS. given. DR. TITUS MUNSON COAN, 110 East 56th Street, New York City.

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LI

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BOOKS OF THE MONTH

SAINTSBURY'S ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE.*

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In the "advertisement," the publishers make the welcome announcement that the present volume is to form the second of a set of four devoted to the history of English literature. The first volume, dealing with pre-Elizabethan literature, is to be the work of Mr. Stopford Brooke; the preparation of the third has been entrusted to Mr. Edmund Gosse, and that of the fourth to Professor Dowden. It may be said at once that Mr. Saintsbury has produced a most useful first-hand survey,-comprehensive, compendious, and spirited,- of that unique period of literary history when "all the muses still were in their prime." One knows not where else to look for so well-proportioned and well-ordered a conspectus of the astonishingly varied and rich products of the teeming English mind, during the century that begins with Tottel's Miscellany and the birth of Bacon, and closes with the Restoration. Mr. Saintsbury's "Short History of French Literature" was an invaluable apprenticeship for a work of this kind; and it may easily be

* A HISTORY OF ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE. By George Saintsbury. London and New York: Macmillan & Co.

believed that the earlier work, although dealing with the whole range of a great national literature, was not the more difficult exercise in self-restraint, selection, and coördination. In both works the problem of rich and racy compendiousness is solved; and the secret of the solution lies in part in the author's habit of ignoring what he calls "copy,"-i. e., the transmitted commonplaces of criticism,-and of writing "with his eye upon the object;" and in part in the rare self-restraint exercised in the treatment of first-rate works and illustrious names. To Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, he allots about sixteen pages each; Bacon he treats with scarcely more fulness than Hooker or Hobbes. Of the work of all great authors except the four greatest, he gives brief characteristic specimens. In all this he exhibits a common-sense uncommon among literary historians, who unwisely think that the preëminence of a Bacon or a Milton must be honored by a proportionable bulk of criticism and citation. Mr. Saintsbury, on the other hand, has actually discovered that people who interest themselves in literary history are usually furnished with copies or specimens of Milton, Spenser, Bacon, and Shakespeare, and that a sufficient number of able monographs upon these authors are already in the hands of the public. It would, however, be a great mistake to suppose that his treatment of these princely names is barren or perfunctory; on the contrary, his style here rises, in every case, to the height of its great argument, and he manages to say something about each which seems fresh and acceptable,-even to the muchenduring voyager or coaster of the oceans of criticism and ana in the midst of which these great works, like verdurous islands, are set. But it is as an intelligent, trustworthy, and indefatigable traveller, who has visited lands more out of the track of ordinary commerce, that our author especially commends himself to us. On the whole, therefore, the art with which, by these methods, and by omission of all but absolutely essential biographical details, he obtains space for a relatively full treatment and illustration of the great body of profoundly interesting literature of that memorable century, is highly praiseworthy. The crowning excellence of the book,-a rare and arduous excellence,-is this art of perspective which enables the author to deal, with perspicuity of outline and lucidity of detail, with a vast and confusing mass of phenomena. It may be feared that Mr. George Saintsbury's readers are not quite as grateful as they should be to an author who furnishes so much agreeable and solid instruction. His

qualities do not become mellowed, nor do his defects become less conspicuous, with the lapse of time. His books have a fascination resembling that which certain acrid fruits, not to be tasted without a grimace, possess for children. What is the secret of this somewhat astringent charm?

In the first place, Mr. Saintsbury is not at all careful to bar out his own personality, which cannot, indeed, be pronounced intrusive, but which is not exactly amiable. He makes us respect him as a man of immense industry, which we should admire more were we not so frequently in set terms reminded of it. We are not urbanely set at ease; we breathe somewhat apprehensively in presence of a powerful mind of pronounced opinions held with a sort of ill-concealed arrogance; a vigorous personality for whom literary history is a shield from behind which he can hurl an occasional javelin against one of his numerous pet aversions. When an author's personality happens to be that of a Lamb or of a DeQuincey, it is the endearing quality of the book; but Mr. Saintsbury makes us sigh for the noble impersonality of Hallam. For instance, in Mr. Saintsbury's literary creed prose poetry is "a pestilent heresy" and he cannot forgive Sidney for having committed himself to it. This is a logical and, perhaps, a wholesome doctrine; but literature may be something if not logical, and the admirers of Sidney, as well as those of DeQuincey, Ruskin, and Jean Paul, will remain illogical enough to admire poetry, even apart from the poetical form which seems, to Mr. Saintsbury, "to be the root of that matter."-Again, in dealing with Hooker, our author goes out of his way to have his fling at "a good many of our later philosophers,' -W -whose names are best known to himself,-"who leave their middles undistributed" and do a number of other illogical things of which the judicious Hooker cannot be accused.-Once more, how can the humble-minded reader feel at ease in the companionship of a tutor who holds that Milton's character was not only unamiable but not "even wholly estimable." One trembles to think what the standard of perfection of character must be, which is necessary in order to qualify for the esteem and friendship of such a critic. Indications are not wanting that argue Mr. Saintsbury a disciple of Mr. Swinburne; but how far is he from that passionate lover of letters in his attitude toward Milton ! "He must be indeed confident," said Swinburne, "of having always acted up to Milton's own ideal, and ever made of his own life a heroic poem,' who

could think himself worthy to feel sympathy with the action and the passion of such lives as Milton's or Mazzini's."

Lord Herbert of Cherbury, whose nobility

of character had appeared as well established as Sidney's, is, in Mr. Saintsbury's eyes, a coxcomb. It is curious, by the way, how many coxcombs have left their names in the literary history of that time. Turning the leaf on which the "coxcombry" of Lord Herbert's autobiography is twice recorded, one notes that old Howell was "a good deal of a coxcomb, while Walton was destitute of even a trace of coxcombry." So also the poetical Lord Oxford, the man whom knightly Sir Philip once struck, is "apparently a coxcomb," -possibly because he did not strike back. Gabriel Harvey, Spenser's friend, is "a curious coxcomb," and his experiments in classical metres are mere coxcombry." It would be interesting to know to what common characteristic Harvey's learned metrical experiments and Lord Herbert's unstudied autobiography owe this whimsical designation. Evidently Mr. Saintsbury does not enjoy hearing Aristides called the just. Milton and Lord Herbert have been eulogized, perhaps extravagantly; this circumstance seems to set our critic on edge against them.

This author was long ago censured in these columns for his mannerisms and affectations of phrase and word. Almost as noticeable as the use of the terms "coxcomb" and "coxcombry," is the frequent recurrence of the expression "purple patch." The prose works of Sydney, of Raleigh, and of Milton, are said to be afflicted with these purple eruptions, while those of Hooker are free from them. But this is nothing to the excessive use of foreign words and phrases employed either to save the trouble of finding an English equivalent, or as a pure affectation. Such phrases as adespoton, adespota, goût du terroir, apeiron, peras, etc., etc., appear upon every page. Is this " 'coxcombry?" It is to be noted, by the way, that these needless phrases are far more condemnable than the racy untranslatable foreign quotations, for the use of which Mr. Lowell is esteemed, by some, such a sinner. Nor is Mr. Saintsbury's syntax always faultless. At p. 439, where he cites an example of Lord Herbert's incorrect syntax, he perpetrates a far graver fault; and at p. 52 we find the following construction: "neither unduly prejudiced in favor of English literature nor wanting in that knowledge of other literature which is as fatal to judgment as actual prejudice,"-where the syntax reverses the meaning.

His

Mr. Saintsbury's literary judgments are usually impartial and generous, and often enthusiastic. His dislike of Milton extends itself by no means to Milton's poetry. appreciation of the highest poetical qualities, whether in prose or verse, is singularly warm and pure, despite the fact that he deems the versification "the root of that whole matter."