The sarcasms of Thackeray on the French writers
speak to this no less eloquently than the fluent flippancies of De
Quincey upon the Germans. [Footnote: See Thackeray's _Paris Sketch
Book_, especially the chapters on _Madame Sand and the New Apocalypse_
and _French Dramas and Melodramas_. See also De Quincey's Review of
Carlyle's translation of _Wilhelm Meister_. Works, vol. xii.] Yet, in
the one case as in the other--thanks, in no small measure, to Matthew
Arnold and Mr. Swinburne--genius, in the long run, carried the day.
And the same history has been repeated, as the literatures of Russia
and of Scandinavia have each in turn been brought within our ken.
These discoveries have all fallen within little more than half a century
since Carlyle, by the irony of fate, reviewed Richter and the _State
of German Literature_ in the pages of the _Edinburgh_. And their result
has been to modify the standards of taste and criticism in a thousand
ways. They have opened our eyes to aspects of poetry that we should
never otherwise have suspected, and unveiled to us fields of thought,
as well as methods of artistic treatment which, save by our own fault,
must both have widened and deepened our conception of poetry.
Pages:
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128