Page:The Fleshly school of poetry - Buchanan - 1872.djvu/108



That the system by which the school of verse-writers under criticism has made itself notorious is at last defeating itself, is evident from a recent article, entitled "Coterie Glory," in the Saturday Review—a journal which, I believe, has been more than once made use of by the friends of the gentlemen in question. The author of "Coterie Glory," in a number of decisive and perfectly well-tempered remarks, surveys the whole question, and on coming to the Fleshly School, openly admits, as if on certain knowledge, that the personal friends of the poets write all the reviews. This also, observes the reviewer, was the case with the once famous "Della Cruscan School," surviving now only, if it can be called survival, in Gifford's ponderous but effective satire.

"A little circle of mutual admiration contrived, by ingenious devices of criticism, to create in the outer world what for awhile looked like real fame. Afterwards we had the 'mystic' school, to which the authors of Festus, the Roman, and other kindred spirits, chronicled in full by Mr. Gilfillan, belonged."

After glancing at the kind of poetry produced by the Fleshly School, the writer continues:—

"It is clear that poetry of this order can appeal only to a limited class. It claims to be tried by a special jury of cultivated persons. This, however, is a very dangerous position for the jurors. They who have been at the pains of mastering such special qualifications, by a natural law, soon regard them as the only canons of taste; nothing which does not conform to them has the true ring. Having conquered caviare, they find all that pleases 'the general' tasteless. Philistinism itself is not more adverse to discrimination than this Pharisaic isolation. Once in this frame of mind, men rapidly unlearn judging in favour of believing; they feel that they do right to be partisans in such a cause; they taste the keen delights of initiation into a creed hidden from the vulgar; they reject all moderating or hostile criticism from the laity without, as proceeding from men not specially qualified; they tend to pass from faith into fanaticism. Hence, also, the general attitude of criticism being of the tolerant or sceptical order already described, the believers at first write all the reviews, and man every bastion of what Goethe somewhere calls the 'critical Zion.' That it has been so in the case of our later 'Pre-Raffaelites' is denied nowhere. Crowns thus decreed may certainly and uninvidiously be described as 'Coterie Glory.'

"A curious sign, lastly, confirms the position which we have here advanced. It is the very essence of faith to be uncritical; to regard