On the Sublime | Page 5

the poetical rendering of nature, and
perhaps in the same scarcely-to-be-analysed fashion. Whether this art
can be taught or not is a question which the author treats with modesty.
Then, as now, people were denying (and not unjustly) that this art can
be taught by rule. The author does not go so far as to say that Criticism,
"unlike Justice, does little evil, and little good; that is, if to entertain for
a moment delicate and curious minds is to do little good." He does not
rate his business so low as that. He admits that the inspiration comes
from genius, from nature. But "an author can only learn from art when

he is to abandon himself to the direction of his genius." Nature must
"burst out with a kind of fine madness and divine inspiration." The
madness must be fine. How can art aid it to this end? By knowledge of,
by sympathy and emulation with, "the great poets and prose writers of
the past." By these we may be inspired, as the Pythoness by Apollo.
From the genius of the past "an effluence breathes upon us." The writer
is not to imitate, but to keep before him the perfection of what has been
done by the greatest poets. He is to look on them as beacons; he is to
keep them as exemplars or ideals. He is to place them as judges of his
work. "How would Homer, how would Demosthenes, have been
affected by what I have written?" This is practical counsel, and even
the most florid modern author, after polishing a paragraph, may tear it
up when he has asked himself, "What would Addison have said about
this eloquence of mine, or Sainte Beuve, or Mr. Matthew Arnold?" In
this way what we call inspiration, that is the performance of the heated
mind, perhaps working at its best, perhaps overstraining itself, and
overstating its idea, might really be regulated. But they are few who
consider so closely, fewer perhaps they who have the heart to cut out
their own fine or refined things. Again, our author suggests another
criterion. We are, as in Lamb's phrase, "to write for antiquity," with the
souls of poets dead and gone for our judges. But we are also to write
for the future, asking with what feelings posterity will read us--if it
reads us at all. This is a good discipline. We know by practice what will
hit some contemporary tastes; we know the measure of smartness, say,
or the delicate flippancy, or the sentence with "a dying fall." But one
should also know that these are fancies of the hour--these and the touch
of archaism, and the spinster-like and artificial precision, which seem
to be points in some styles of the moment. Such reflections as our
author bids us make, with a little self-respect added, may render our
work less popular and effective, and certainly are not likely to carry it
down to remote posterity. But all such reflections, and action in
accordance with what they teach, are elements of literary self-respect. It
is hard to be conscientious, especially hard for him who writes much,
and of necessity, and for bread. But conscience is never to be obeyed
with ease, though the ease grows with the obedience. The book
attributed to Longinus will not have missed its mark if it reminds us
that, in literature at least, for conscience there is yet a place, possibly

even a reward, though that is unessential. By virtue of reasonings like
these, and by insisting that nobility of style is, as it were, the bloom on
nobility of soul, the Treatise on the Sublime becomes a tonic work,
wholesome to be read by young authors and old. "It is natural in us to
feel our souls lifted up by the true Sublime, and, conceiving a sort of
generous exultation, to be filled with joy and pride, as though we had
ourselves originated the ideas which we read." Here speaks his natural
disinterested greatness the author himself is here sublime, and teaches
by example as well as precept, for few things are purer than a pure and
ardent admiration. The critic is even confident enough to expect to find
his own nobility in others, believing that what is truly Sublime "will
always please, and please all readers." And in this universal acceptance
by the populace and the literate, by critics and creators, by young and
old, he finds the true external canon of sublimity. The verdict lies not
with contemporaries, but with the large public, not with the little set of
dilettanti, but must be spoken by all. Such verdicts assign the crown to
Shakespeare and Molière, to Homer and Cervantes; we should not
clamorously anticipate this favourable judgment for Bryant or Emerson,
nor for the