HARDY THE NOVELIST BY DAVID CECIL THIS study was composed as a
course of lectures. I fear that, transferred to the printed page,
its mode of expression may seem at once too colloquial and too
declamatory, too loose in structure and too emphatic in phrase, not
to jar on a fastidious taste. If so, I hope my critics will
remember that it was designed to be heard by an audience, not
perused by a solitary reader and will grant me their indulgence.
May I also take this occasion to thank the Master and Fellows of
Trinity College, Cambridge, first for doing me the honour of
inviting me to deliver the Clark Lectures, and secondly for the
warmth of their welcome to me during my sojourn in their stately
courts. D.C. CERTAINLY it is gratifying to be asked to deliver the
Clark Lectures. Yet, when I first sat down seriouslyto consider the
task before me, gratification changed to despondency. For these
lectures meant literary criticism and, somehow, I found myself
disinclined to add to the already formidable bulk of literary
criticism. That spirit of disillusionment which, we are told, is
characteristic of the present age, had begun, like the thin rays of
a winter daybreak, to penetrate the antique seclusion of my College
rooms, revealing their contents in a grey and. disenchanting light.
I examined the rows of critical books which lined my shelves sound
old fashioned works with titles like Towards a Theory of Comedy and
i8th Century Influences in Romantic Poetry, or lively modern
cantankerous books called Rhythm as Pattern and fEefragedy of
Coleridge and was filled with a sense of futility. It is true that
they were, most of them, ingenious and learned works and reading
them was a pleasant enough occupation. Nor was it more harmful, I
dare say, than gazing out of the window and watching the tawny
leaves drift and circle one after another down the waters of the
River Thames, But it was about as fruitful. For what, after all,
was the good of it? How far did all this erudition and industry and
illtemper make any difference to my appreciation of letters ? What
living connection was there between thesebooks and the feeling
stirred in me by reading Hamlet or The Ancient Mariner? The answer,
I am afraid, is that there was very little. The reason that so much
criticism is unprofitable is that the critics do not stick to their
subject This subject is books. In every generation certain books
are written which are works of art, which we read not fo any
ulterior motivenot for instruction or edificationbu for the same
reason that we go to a picture gallery or conceit: because reading
them is in itself a satisfying experience. These books are the
critics subject they art what he starts with, they are the cause
and justification oi his existence. It is his function to
illuminate our appreciation of them, to define the nature of the
satisfaction they give, to analyse the circumstances conditioning
their production and the arts by which they make their impressior
This ought to be enough, work for any one man. Critics, however,
seldom seem to think so.
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