14 
LAND &> WATER 
September 19, 1918 
Life and Letters 6ij J. C Squire 
To-day 
EVERY two or three years some bold man attempts 
d history of contemporary English literature. The 
latest, the most ambitious, the most voluminous 
is Mr. Harold Williams, whose Modern English 
Writers has just been published by Sidgwick 
and Jackson at i2s. 6d. net. Mr. Williams, in a book 
of 'five hundred closely printed pages (I wish there were 
an alternative to this tiresome locution), attempts to treat 
in a solemn and scientific critical way the authors of 
the last twenty-five years. He deals with hundreds of 
them, and the indubitably historical nature of his survey 
may be attested by a few of his chapter-headings, such as 
"Poets of the Transition," "New Forces in Poetry," "Before 
Ibsen," "After Ibsen," and "The Uncertain Note," all these, 
and others, being grouped under the fovir main headings of 
"Poetry," "Irish Writers," "Literary and Intellectual 
Dramai" and "The Novel." He wanted, in fact, to "cover 
the ground" fully and conscientiously. The result is that 
he has covered a great deal of "ground" that need npt have 
been covered at all — since it was stony ground, or ground 
covered with tares and thistles, or ground from which the 
birds of the air carried away the seed — and that he has only 
glanced at some "ground" which deserve'd a great deal of 
attention. 
****** 
The statistical method of judging such books has its defects, 
but it does throw some facts into startling relief. For ex- 
ample, I observe that Mr. Williams's method and his men- 
tality between them have resulted in three pages being 
devoted to Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, who, however "literary 
and intellectual" a dramatist, will get barely three lines in 
a history a hundred years hence, whilst a mere one and a half 
pages are given to the author of A Shropshire Lad, who is 
not only a great poet himself, but has had technically a 
great growing and salutary influence upon younger writers. 
Even Francis Thompson gets less space than Mr. Jones, 
though Ernest Dowson gets more than either. Mr. Walter 
de la Mare gets one page against the two pages of Mr. Alfred 
Williams ! However, Mr.' John Trevena, Mr. Gilbert Cannan, 
and Mr. Robert Hichens are given three pages each of por- . 
tentous discussion, and Mr. Robert Bridges only half as much 
as either ; there is at least some sort of consistency about 
the author's wrong-headedness. As a dictionary of litera- 
ture good and bad-^though some good authors are omitted — 
his huge tome has merits ; as criticism it is almost worthless. 
It is not a critical history ; it is a sort of gigantic newspaper. 
SfC Sf? •!• Sf! Sft ^ 
A really good' literary history of our own tirftes, written 
in our own time, we cannot expect, and it will be a miracle if 
we get it. Many of the difficulties are as obvious as they are 
great. It is extremely hard for most men — perhaps for any 
man — to distinguish between the topical and ephemeral 
appeal and the permanent appeal in books that move him. 
An author may write things which are fine and valuable 
things for the moment, but will fade when the occasion 
passes, having no perpetual application. Most critics, 
again, have stylistic prejudices which make them unduly 
favour writing which reminds them of old things that they 
like or else (conversely) which makes them incline towards 
auN'thing, however empty, which looks new and free from what 
they regard as the dead hand of tradition. Political and 
religious bias are also liable to operate. I remember, as I 
write, the remark of a great living artist who (when discussing 
Mr. Chesterton) said that it was impossible to feel that any- 
body with Mr. Chesterton's religious views had a first-rate 
intellect. It is clear that if you begin by making postulates 
like this you are beginning at the wrong end, and you are 
likely to approach Christian writers not merely uncompre- 
hendingly, but inattentively. Again, there is the danger, 
which will particularly affect people vdth no strong pre- 
judices or tastes of their own, of taking everything seriously 
which is taken seriously by anybody else, and of compiHng 
a mere manual of literary fashions. Half onr critics are 
demonstrably liable to this fault ; if they hear two or three 
persons, sensible or otherwise, describe a book as an impor- 
tant work of art they will at once treat it as such. Mr. 
Williams, as I have suggested, errs rather in this way ; his 
book was written four or five years ago, and the result is 
that some: of his authors are already fly-blown, and that 
there are others "new" in 1913 who are so much things of 
the past that one hardly remembers who they were. But, 
granted >our sagacious, judicious, encyclopaedic, catholic 
man with an unerring eye for the abiding thing and the 
transient, for the sincere thing and the humbug, above 
fashion and away from cliques, with the brain, the heart, 
and the ear of the perfect critic, the sense of progress and of 
proportion of the perfect historian : even he (if he exist) will 
pi"obably fail to write the sort of book we are discussing. 
* * * * * • * 
The reason is of a kind which people usually forget to 
mention or even to think about. It is that such a man 
would in all probability not be in a position to tell the truth. 
Literary men of any standing usually have a large acquaint- 
ance among their colleagues, good and bad. It is possible 
to overcome a dislike of praising a man whom you detest, 
but it is difficult indeed to damn a man you like. But the 
critic who was essaying an adequate history of contemporary 
literature would probably have to do that — unless he were a . 
hermit on Lundy Island, and even then he would very likely 
have got into friendly correspondence with literary impostors. 
Most critics know men of whom they are fond, but whose 
writings they regard as worthless, men generally thought 
to be important or great (and consequently needing exposure) 
ojr negligible men who in a standard treatise would have to 
be ignored. You cannot drink with an old friend in the 
evening, and in the morning sit down and write, for publica- 
tion, sentences like "Mr. Gupp is generally treated as a 
great novelist, but he has no mind, cannot write grammar, 
assumes a grotesque pomposity which is not natural with 
him, is utterly without knowledge of human character, 
copies his descriptive patches out of Dickens, and cannot 
further be noticed here." That sort of thing cannot easily 
be said of an intimate and' old acquaintance, or of a. tenth 
cousin, or of the husband of a woman you have known from 
childhood, or of a man with whom you are accustomed to 
play billiards at your club, or even of a man you meet only 
occasionally, but get on with. Why, the difficulties are as 
great even in cases far less extreme. However much a critic 
may admire an ajithor's work, he is sure to have some reserva- 
tions. Non omnia possumus omnes : every author tries to 
do some things he cannot do and would like to be thought 
to^ have some qualities he does not possess. The more 
patently true an adverse criticism, the more it will rankle. 
If there is one thing more than another that all men dislike 
it is that their friends should know the truth about them. 
There are some people who will overcome these inhibitions, 
people wi,th shaggy hair, glowering eyes, and mouths like 
man-traps, who are' resolved to tell the whole truth whatever 
happens, even if they offend everj^body they know. But 
these ferocious priests of veracity lack just that sensitiveness 
which is so necessary to a critic and is a part pf a general 
sensitiveness ; they are invariably intense and narrow bigots. 
The proverb "De Mortuis" is not only false, but it is 
precisely the opposite of the truth. The dead are the only 
people of whom we can, not merely usefully, but also decently 
and comfortably speak evil." They are spread before us like 
• so many embalmed specimens. We can cut them about and 
examine them as fnuch as we like and they will not feel it. 
Our words cannot hurt them, or humiliate them, or impede 
their efforts to earn a living, honest or dishonest. They 
cannot even — another consideration worth mentioning — 
come up in the street and clump us on the head. About 
many of the living our tongues are and must be tied. On 
the whole, it is just as well and does not much matter. 
A man is more important than his writings ; friendship 
than the nice adjustment of critical relations. The whole 
pa'fet is behind us as a field for a judgment ; the recent 
past still invites the historian's calm estimate ; the final, 
just, and completely truthful survey of the present we 
may conveniently leave to posterity. We may' pursue 
the things we love as much as we like and advertise the 
things we believe to be valuable ; it is not a matter 
of the first consequence that we cannot in every smallest 
case say all we think about the things we hold to be trash. 
If we pretend to write as general historians we must have 
no reservations, and assist at the dissemination of no frauds. 
But if we do not, a little suppressio veri will do nobody much 
harm. At any rate, it cannot be avoided. 
