725. For instance, of these four only Denina occurs in Dr Garnett’s excellent Short History of Italian Literature (London, 1898), and that for his historical, not his literary, work.
726. Huesca, 1692, 12mo.
727. Published at Saragossa, date as above. A later edition is said to be garbled.
728. Op. cit., p. 348.
729. Señor Menéndez y Pelayo, as cited before, in vols. 5 and 6 of his History.
730. P. 333.
731. This Gallicism was not universal. As Mr Ticknor (III. v., opening) says, while Moratin spoke contemptuously of the ballad of “Calaynos,” his opponent Huerta pronounced Athalie fit for nothing but its original purpose of being acted by schoolgirls.
732. One of the most important works of the Swiss school itself is Bodmer’s Sammlung Kritischer Schriften, 1741, but this is for another time. Nicolai’s Bibliothek der Schönen Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1757) and Literaturbriefe (ibid., 1759-66) perhaps show the movement best.
733. I did not think it worth while to mention Camusat in the French chapter, though he is not quite a contemptible person. He was one of the tribe of French men of letters who, for this reason or that, settled in Holland. He has the not small credit of being one of the first to attempt a Literary History (Amsterdam, 1722, 3 vols.) of France. He edited part of the literary contents of Chapelain’s letters, and did other things. But the Germans seem to have been particularly attracted by a Lettre sur les Poètes qui ont chanté la Volupté, which he wrote, I think, in connection with the work of Chaulieu, but which I have only read in German. It may have had, for them, the attraction of elegant naughtiness; but it has in reality very little either of the adjective or of the noun.
734. E.g., my friend Professor Elton, in his Augustan Ages (Edinburgh, 1899), p. 348. It is, I trust, not immoral, I am sure it is not illiberal, to edit a book without absolutely indorsing all its opinions, or insisting that all these opinions shall be one’s own.
735. My copy is the third edition, Leipsic, 1742. The first is, I think, of 1730.
736. Callières, a diplomatist and Academician, who wrote a good deal on various subjects, in his later years, has been referred to under Swift (p. 450). For more on him and his Histoire poétique de la guerre des A. et des M., v. Rigault, op. cit., pp. 213-217. As to Furetière, the agreeable author of the Roman Bourgeois seemed to me to lie too far outside any possible limits here, though, of course, there are critical touches in his work. Some might even reckon, as an important if rather excessive testimony to the rise of the novel, the curious picture of the girl Javotte—pretty but innocent to the verge of idiocy—turned into an accomplished and intelligent young lady by the mere reading of the Astrée. Furetière even defends this representation by serious argument (Roman Bourgeois, i. 171 sq., ed. Jannet, 2 vols., Paris, 1878).
737. This was James Ralph—the “Ralph to Cynthia howls” of Pope. It appeared in 1731, and deals with public amusements, from the theatre (which it defends from Prynne and Collier) to cock-fighting, auctions, and “Henley’s oratory.” It is rather amusing, and by no means, as Mr Pope calls its author, “wholly illiterate.”
738. It is notable that, since the beginning of the twentieth century, critics of the youngest school have been found Gottschedising in this sense, and proposing to judge the worth or worthlessness of criticism on similar cookery-book lines. I have seen an excellent critic rebuked by a reviewer for not “showing how to do something”—as if he were a dancing-master.
739. Gottsched, like a true Klassiker, dislikes and distrusts romance, ancient as well as modern, prose as well as verse, in and for itself. “Romance writers,” he says (at p. 167), “know as little of the rules of poetic imitation as of true morality.”
740. Thus we are to divide the Wonderful in Poetry (p. 171) into three parts—like omnis Gallia! One may hesitate whether to emend “three thousand” or “three million.”
741. He quotes a passage which he calls ein Muster des guten verblümten Ausdruckes.
742. In the 7th vol. (pp. 117-154) of his Works, 10 vols., Berne, 1774-75.
743. See The Misfortunes of Elphin.
744. I take these examples all from English merely to avoid confusion. The case in French is even clearer.
745. One word to guard against a possible supposition that the writer supposes Classicism dead. Nothing in literature dies: things only wane and wax, retire and come forward again. At this very moment there is even a sort of Classical reaction, which has shown itself in France for a long time and is showing itself in England now. When people are asking, not whether Old Mortality, and Vingt Ans Après, and Esmond, and Westward Ho! are good books, but whether the Historical novel is a good Kind,—when they argue, not that a play is decent, or sensible, or brilliant as literature, but that it is a “problem”-play, and therefore sacred—John Barleycorn is going to get up again, not to the surprise at all of historical students.
747. In judging pictures he would, indeed, have been almost equally liable to be “connoisseured out of his senses,” but the interference was less authoritative. Towards the end of the century the prophets of the Picturesque tried to invade prospects also with their preceptism: but Nature laughed at them too obviously.