THE ART OF CRITICISM: 7 TIMING PRAISE : BOOKS

The freedom of Chaucer is heightened, in Burns, by a fiery, reckless energy; the benignity of Chaucer deepens, in Burns, into an overwhelming sense of the pathos of things; - of the pathos of human nature, the pathos, also, of non-human nature. Instead of the fluidity of Chaucer's manner, the manner of Burns has spring, bounding swiftness. Burns is by far the greater force, though he has perhaps less charm. The world of Chaucer is fairer, richer, more significant than that of Burns; but when the largeness and freedom of Burns get full sweep, as in Tam o'Shanter, or still more in that puissant and splendid production, The Jolly Beggars, his world may be what it will, his poetic genius triumphs over it. In the world of The Jolly Beggars there is more than hideousness and squalor, there is bestiality; yet the piece is a superb poetic success. It has a breadth, truth and power which make the famous scene in Auerbach's Cellar, of Goethe's Faust, seem artificial and tame beside it, and which are only matched by Shakespeare and Aristophanes.

Here, where his largeness and freedom serve him so admirably ... here we have the genuine Burns, of whom the real estimate must be high indeed. ... [He is] a poet with thorough truth of substance and an answering truth of style, giving us a poetry sound to the core.

Matthew Arnold:

`The Study of Poetry' (1880)

NEVER begin with immediate undiluted praise of a subject. All you can do, when the first rapture ends, is hesitate, qualify, and inevitably go down from the high note you struck at the start.

Matthew Arnold knew this because he realised that the critic is out there in front of an audience and has to hold its attention. His audience is confident, patriotic, almost entirely English, and so he begins the section on Burns with a passage which appears to dismiss him as a poet who deals "perpetually with Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch manners".

In the course of a few sentences he uses the word "Scotch" 14 times - his audience relaxes, takes his side, even titters a bit in conscious superiority. It enjoys the knockabout critical comedy in which Arnold says that Burns appeals to his "partial" fellow Scots. But those readers who aren't Scottish, how can they like a poet who portrays not a beautiful, but "a harsh, a sordid, a repulsive world"?

Next, Arnold finds that Burns "comes short of the high seriousness of the great classics". He is not Dante, and neither is Chaucer. Arnold's audience, though it would prefer Chaucer to equal Dante, is comfortable with this judgement, because Arnold has just praised his poetry in terms which sound rather like the march of the British Empire:

"His poetry transcends and effaces, easily and without effort, all the romance-poetry of Catholic Christendom; it transcends and effaces all the English poetry contemporary with it, it transcends and effaces all the English poetry subsequent to it down to the age of Elizabeth."

This is Chaucer dominant, and Arnold's almost martial sense of his poetic power is meant to be compensation for a lack of high seriousness. Wilde thought the term was fatuous, and in 1895, 15 years after "The Study of Poetry", he mocked it in the sub-title to The Importance of Being Earnest: "A Trivial Comedy for Serious People". But in 1880 Arnold is sitting pretty. That big blank phrase high seriousness settles everything.

It's then that he begins to shift his ground and aim at that strain of passionate eulogy which must underpin all criticism, however often it may pick and qualify and hesitate and find fault. His account becomes a competition between Burns and Chaucer which gives precedence to the founder of English poetry and yet focuses attention on Burns. Here, Arnold has a spontaneity, a spoken directness and concentrated enthusiasm of manner which makes the "Scotch" and earlier passages mere disposable stages towards critical lift-off. A criticism that is incapable of this larkrise, this unpremeditated song, is bound to be barren. Belle-lettrism be damned, we as audience demand to be surprised by joy, inspired and uplifted. The critic must have a vision of the artist's work as a unique whole: here Arnold celebrates Burns's Promethean energy that invisibly pits him as a national force against the Union and the imperial identity which this rather suave critic otherwise held dear.

Looking, more coldly, over Arnold's performance, those unenthused slouchy spectators Jasper and McMoon are troubled:

"Puissant!" says Jasper, "a vile word, puissant".

"For the Norman barons," says McMoon. "Powerful is just about OK, but yon other critical term is dire and dead."

"Like splendid," says Jasper. "Pure Derek Nimmo. Twee. Anglican. Pathetic."

Other readers may doubt the idea of a poetry which is "sound to the core". It reeks of bible classes or public school. OTC stuff.

So beware such ways of praising a literary text. Jasper and McMoon will laugh at you.

On the other hand, look how Arnold pushes Goethe to one side (a bash at Bismarck, that?), and sets Burns high up with Shakespeare and Aristophanes. This is praise which is all the stronger for seeming to be won against the grain of Arnold's own prejudices about Scottish culture, Presbyterianism and the erotic wildness of Burns's poetry.

We admire in Arnold what he praised in Greek classical culture - a quick and flexible intelligence. Prissy and mannered and safe as Arnold can so often be, he is a critic who soars on occasion. This is one of the high spots in his much mythologised, much maligned criticism.

"Would this be a balanced verdict you're offering?" asks McMoon.

Perish the notion - but I'm glad you raised it.

! Next week: Coover's Maid, or Finding a Subject