Victorian Literary Critics: George Henry Lewes, Walter Bagehot, Richard Holt Hutton, Leslie Stephen, Andrew Lang, George Saintsbury and Edmund Gosse

259 Pages·1984·6.45 MB·English

by  Harold Orel (auth.)

VICTORIAN LITERARY CRITICS
By the same author
THE WORLD OF VICTORIAN HUMOR
SIX ESSAYS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH
LITERATURE AND THOUGHT (co-editor)
THOMAS HARDY'S EPIC-DRAMA: A Study of The Dynasts
THOMAS HARDY'S PERSONAL WRITINGS (editor)
THE DEVELOPMENT OF WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS,
1885-1900
BRITISH POETRY 1880-1920: Edwardian Voices
(co-editor)
THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY WRITER AND HIS
AUDIENCE (co-editor)
ENGLISH ROMANTIC POETS AND THE
ENLIGHTENMENT
IRISH HISTORY AND CULTURE: Aspects of a People's
Heritage
THE FINAL YEARS OF THOMAS HARDY, 1912-1928
THOMAS HARDY: The Dynasts, New Wessex Edition (editor)
THE SCOTTISH WORLD (co-editor)
RUDYARD KIPLING: INTERVIEWS AND
RECOLLECTIONS (2 vols) (editor)
THE LITERARY ACHIEVEMENT OF REBECCA WEST
VICTORIAN LITERARY
CRITICS
George Henry Lewes, Walter Bagehot,
Richard Holt Hutton, Leslie Stephen,
Andrew Lang, George Saintsbury
and Edmund Gosse
by
HAROLD OREL
M
MACMILLAN
© Harold Orel 1984
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1St edition 1984
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published 1984 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-349-17460-7 ISBN 978-1-349-17458-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-17458-4
To Frank and Marjorie Pinion
Contents
List of Plates VUI
Acknowledgement IX
Introduction
I George Henry Lewes 5
2 Walter Bagehot 31
3 Richard Holt Hutton 58
4 Leslie Stephen go
5 Andrew Lang 124
6 George Saintsbury 151
7 Edmund Gosse In
Notes 202
Bibliographies 221
Index 235
Vll
List of Plates
1 George Henry Lewes, by Anne Gliddon, 1840 (National
Portrait Gallery)
2 Walter Bagehot
3 Richard Holt Hutton
4 Leslie Stephen, by W. Rothenstein (National Portrait
Gallery)
5 Andrew Lang, by H. Furniss (National Portrait Gallery)
6 George Saintsbury, from a painting by Sir William
Nicholson
7 George Saintsbury
8 Edmund Gosse, by J. S. Sargent, 1886 (National Portrait
Gallery)
viii
Acknowledgement
This investigation was supported by University of Kansas General
Research allocation no. 3675-XO-oo38.
IX
Introduction
We know so much about Matthew Arnold's contribution to literary
criticism, and so little about his contemporaries who wrote as
professional men of letters, that a book of this sort, reviewing the
careers of seven major bookmen, has become a needed contribution
to our understanding of the Victorian landscape. It is much too easy
to assume that Arnold's most striking formulations - his definition of
culture, his handy dichotomy of Hebraist versus Hellenist, his attack
on Philistines and a large assortment of barbarians, his notion that
poetry is a criticism oflife, his firm conviction that we must acquaint
ourselves with the best that has been thought and said in the world,
his touchstones of literary perfection - were wholly original; that,
indeed, Arnold was as contemptuous of his fellow critics as he was of
members of the middle class who read and understood superficially
the finest productions of Western culture. In fact, Arnold learned
from his contemporaries, and read their writings with great care.
The more we know about those critics who actively pursued their
literary pleasures through the pages of widely read periodicals
(including the newspapers that printed their reviews of dramatic
productions and equally ephemeral writings in a wide variety of
fields), collections of essays, full-length studies, and textbook surveys
of several national literatures, the better able are we to see Arnold
plain.
For this kind of survey of Victori an letters, it has not been deemed
necessary to summarise, still one more time, the major tenets of
Arnold's critical essays, or to express reservations about various
inconsistencies and elements of an unpleasant (and occasionally
unearned) snobbism. Arnold's influence on Victorian thought was,
on the whole, salutary, and the shock that he administered to set
modes of viewing both the past and the present highly necessary.
Moreover, Arnold's receptivity to new developments in Continental
literature, although more rigidly selective and narrowly based than
perhaps even he perceived, was of enormous benefit to those who