Last of the Barons | Page 8

often find the most neglected in the
book,--namely, the composition; and this, simply because in England
painting is recognized as an art, and estimated according to definite
theories; but in literature we judge from a taste never formed, from a
thousand prejudices and ignorant predilections. We do not yet
comprehend that the author is an artist, and that the true rules of art by
which he should be tested are precise and immutable. Hence the
singular and fantastic caprices of the popular opinion,--its
exaggerations of praise or censure, its passion and reaction. At one
while, its solemn contempt for Wordsworth; at another, its absurd
idolatry. At one while we are stunned by the noisy celebrity of Byron,
at another we are calmly told that he can scarcely be called a poet. Each
of these variations in the public is implicitly followed by the vulgar
criticism; and as a few years back our journals vied with each other in
ridiculing Wordsworth for the faults which he did not possess, they vie
now with each other in eulogiums upon the merits which he has never
displayed.
These violent fluctuations betray both a public and a criticism utterly
unschooled in the elementary principles of literary art, and entitle the
humblest author to dispute the censure of the hour, while they ought to
render the greatest suspicious of its praise.
It is, then, in conformity, not with any presumptuous conviction of his
own superiority, but with his common experience and common-sense,
that every author who addresses an English audience in serious earnest
is permitted to feel that his final sentence rests not with the jury before
which he is first heard. The literary history of the day consists of a
series of judgments set aside.
But this uncertainty must more essentially betide every student,
however lowly, in the school I have called the Intellectual, which must
ever be more or less at variance with the popular canons. It is its hard

necessity to vex and disturb the lazy quietude of vulgar taste; for unless
it did so, it could neither elevate nor move. He who resigns the Dutch
art for the Italian must continue through the dark to explore the
principles upon which he founds his design, to which he adapts his
execution; in hope or in despondence still faithful to the theory which
cares less for the amount of interest created than for the sources from
which the interest is to be drawn; seeking in action the movement of
the grander passions or the subtler springs of conduct, seeking in repose
the colouring of intellectual beauty.
The Low and the High of Art are not very readily comprehended. They
depend not upon the worldly degree or the physical condition of the
characters delineated; they depend entirely upon the quality of the
emotion which the characters are intended to excite,--namely, whether
of sympathy for something low, or of admiration for something high.
There is nothing high in a boor's head by Teniers, there is nothing low
in a boor's head by Guido. What makes the difference between the two?
The absence or presence of the Ideal! But every one can judge of the
merit of the first, for it is of the Familiar school; it requires a
connoisseur to see the merit of the last, for it is of the Intellectual.
I have the less scrupled to leave these remarks to cavil or to sarcasm,
because this fiction is probably the last with which I shall trespass upon
the Public, and I am desirous that it shall contain, at least, my avowal
of the principles upon which it and its later predecessors have been
composed. You know well, however others may dispute the fact, the
earnestness with which those principles have been meditated and
pursued,--with high desire, if but with poor results.
It is a pleasure to feel that the aim, which I value more than the success,
is comprehended by one whose exquisite taste as a critic is only
impaired by that far rarer quality,--the disposition to over- estimate the
person you profess to esteem! Adieu, my sincere and valued friend; and
accept, as a mute token of gratitude and regard, these flowers gathered
in the Garden where we have so often roved together. E. L. B.
LONDON, January, 1843.
PREFACE TO THE LAST OF THE BARONS
This was the first attempt of the author in Historical Romance upon
English ground. Nor would he have risked the disadvantage of
comparison with the genius of Sir Walter Scott, had he not believed

that that great writer and his numerous imitators had left altogether
unoccupied the peculiar field in Historical Romance which the Author
has here sought to bring into cultivation. In "The Last of the Barons,"
as in "Harold," the aim has been to illustrate the