Views and Reviews

Views and Reviews, by William
Ernest Henley

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Henley
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Title: Views and Reviews Essays in appreciation
Author: William Ernest Henley

Release Date: August 8, 2007 [eBook #22280]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIEWS AND
REVIEWS***

Transcribed from the 1892 David Nutt edition by David Price, email
[email protected]

VIEWS AND REVIEWS
ESSAYS IN APPRECIATION
By W. E. HENLEY
LITERATURE
LONDON Published by DAVID NUTT in the Strand 1892
* * * * *
FIRST EDITION
Printing begun 28th October 1889, ended 13th May 1890
ORDINARY ISSUE-- 1000 copies
Finest Japanese-- 20 copies
SECOND EDITION
Printing begun May 25th, ended June 18, 1892
1000 copies
Edinburgh: T. & A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty
TO THE MEN OF 'THE SCOTS OBSERVER'

PREFATORY
Suggested by one friend and selected and compiled by another, this
volume is less a book than a mosaic of scraps and shreds recovered
from the shot rubbish of some fourteen years of journalism. Thus, the
notes on Longfellow, Balzac, Sidney, Tourneur, 'Arabian Nights

Entertainments,' Borrow, George Eliot, and Mr. Frederick Locker are
extracted from originals in 'London'--a print still remembered with
affection by those concerned in it; those on Labiche, Champfleury,
Richardson, Fielding, Byron, Gay, Congreve, Boswell, 'Essays and
Essayists,' Jefferies, Hood, Matthew Arnold, Lever, Thackeray, Dickens,
M. Theodore de Banville, Mr. Austin Dobson, and Mr. George
Meredith from articles contributed to 'The Athenaeum'; those on Dumas,
Count Tolstoi's novels, and the verse of Dr. Hake from 'The Saturday
Review'; those on Walton, Landor, and Heine from 'The Scots
Observer,' 'The Academy,' and 'Vanity Fair' respectively; while the
'Disraeli' has been pieced together from 'London,' 'Vanity Fair,' and
'The Athenaeum'; the 'Berlioz' from
'The Scots Observer' and 'The
Saturday Review'; the 'Tennyson' from 'The Scots Observer' and 'The
Magazine of Art'; the 'Homer and Theocritus' from 'Vanity Fair' and the
defunct 'Teacher'; the 'Hugo' from 'The Athenaeum,' 'The Magazine of
Art,' and an unpublished fragment written for 'The Scottish Church.' In
all cases permission to reprint is hereby gratefully acknowledged; but
the reprinted matter has been subjected to such a process of revision
and reconstitution that much of it is practically new, while little or
none remains as it was. I venture, then, to hope that the result, for all
its scrappiness, will be found to have that unity which comes of method
and an honest regard for letters.
W. E. H.
Edinr. 8th May 1890

DICKENS
A 'Frightful Minus'
Mr. Andrew Lang is delightfully severe on those who 'cannot read
Dickens,' but in truth it is only by accident that he is not himself of that
unhappy persuasion. For Dickens the humourist he has a most
uncompromising enthusiasm; for Dickens the artist in drama and
romance he has as little sympathy as the most practical. Of the prose of

David Copperfield and Our Mutual Friend, the Tale of Two Cities and
The Mystery of Edwin Drood, he disdains to speak. He is almost fierce
(for him) in his denunciation of Little Nell and Paul Dombey; he
protests that Monks and Ralph Nickleby are 'too steep,' as indeed they
are. But of Bradley Headstone and Sydney Carton he says not a word;
while of Martin Chuzzlewit--but here he shall speak for himself, the
italics being a present to him. 'I have read in that book a score of times,'
says he; 'I never see it but I revel in it--in Pecksniff and Mrs. Gamp and
the Americans. But what the plot is all about, what Jonas did, what
Montague Tigg had to make in the matter, what all the pictures with
plenty of shading illustrate, I have never been able to comprehend.'
This is almost as bad as the reflection (in a magazine) that Jonas
Chuzzlewit is 'the most shadowy murderer in fiction.' Yet it is
impossible to be angry. In his own way and within his own limits Mr.
Lang is such a thoroughgoing admirer of Dickens that you are moved
to compassion when you think of the much he loses by 'being
constitutionally incapable' of perfect apprehension. 'How poor,' he cries,
with generous enthusiasm, 'the world of fancy would be, "how
dispeopled of her dreams," if, in some ruin of the social system, the
books of Dickens were lost; and if The Dodger, and Charley Bates, and
Mr. Crinkle and Miss Squeers and Sam Weller, and Mrs. Gamp, and
Dick Swiveller were to perish, or to vanish with Menander's men and
women! We