(June 1823.)
This is the age of societies.There is scarcely one Englishman in ten who has not belonged to some association for distributing books, or for prosecuting them; for sending invalids to the hospital, or beggars to the treadmill; for giving plate to the rich, or blankets to the poor.To be the most absurd institution among so many institutions is no small distinction; it seems, however, to belong indisputably to the Royal Society of Literature.At the first establishment of that ridiculous academy, every sensible man predicted that, in spite of regal patronage and episcopal management, it would do nothing, or do harm.And it will scarcely be denied that those expectations have hitherto been fulfilled.
I do not attack the founders of the association.Their characters are respectable; their motives, I am willing to believe, were laudable.But I feel, and it is the duty of every literary man to feel, a strong jealousy of their proceedings.
Their society can be innocent only while it continues to be despicable.Should they ever possess the power to encourage merit, they must also possess the power to depress it.Which power will be more frequently exercised, let every one who has studied literary history, let every one who has studied human nature, declare.
Envy and faction insinuate themselves into all communities.They often disturb the peace, and pervert the decisions, of benevolent and scientific associations.But it is in literary academies that they exert the most extensive and pernicious influence.In the first place, the principles of literary criticism, though equally fixed with those on which the chemist and the surgeon proceed, are by no means equally recognised.Men are rarely able to assign a reason for their approbation or dislike on questions of taste; and therefore they willingly submit to any guide who boldly asserts his claim to superior discernment.It is more difficult to ascertain and establish the merits of a poem than the powers of a machine or the benefits of a new remedy.Hence it is in literature, that quackery is most easily puffed, and excellence most easily decried.
In some degree this argument applies to academies of the fine arts; and it is fully confirmed by all that I have ever heard of that institution which annually disfigures the walls of Somerset House with an acre of spoiled canvas.But a literary tribunal is incomparably more dangerous.Other societies, at least, have no tendency to call forth any opinions on those subjects which most agitate and inflame the minds of men.The sceptic and the zealot, the revolutionist and the placeman, meet on common ground in a gallery of paintings or a laboratory of science.They can praise or censure without reference to the differences which exist between them.In a literary body this can never be the case.Literature is, and always must be, inseparably blended with politics and theology; it is the great engine which moves the feelings of a people on the most momentous questions.It is, therefore, impossible that any society can be formed so impartial as to consider the literary character of an individual abstracted from the opinions which his writings inculcate.It is not to be hoped, perhaps it is not to be wished, that the feelings of the man should be so completely forgotten in the duties of the academician.The consequences are evident.The honours and censures of this Star Chamber of the Muses will be awarded according to the prejudices of the particular sect or faction which may at the time predominate.Whigs would canvass against a Southey, Tories against a Byron.Those who might at first protest against such conduct as unjust would soon adopt it on the plea of retaliation; and the general good of literature, for which the society was professedly instituted, would be forgotten in the stronger claims of political and religious partiality.
Yet even this is not the worst.Should the institution ever acquire any influence, it will afford most pernicious facilities to every malignant coward who may desire to blast a reputation which he envies.It will furnish a secure ambuscade, behind which the Maroons of literature may take a certain and deadly aim.The editorial WE has often been fatal to rising genius;though all the world knows that it is only a form of speech, very often employed by a single needy blockhead.The academic WEwould have a far greater and more ruinous influence.Numbers, while they increase the effect, would diminish the shame, of injustice.The advantages of an open and those of an anonymous attack would be combined; and the authority of avowal would be united to the security of concealment.The serpents in Virgil, after they had destroyed Laocoon, found an asylum from the vengeance of the enraged people behind the shield of the statue of Minerva.And, in the same manner, everything that is grovelling and venomous, everything that can hiss, and everything that can sting, would take sanctuary in the recesses of this new temple of wisdom.
The French academy was, of all such associations, the most widely and the most justly celebrated.It was founded by the greatest of ministers: it was patronised by successive kings; it numbered in its lists most of the eminent French writers.Yet what benefit has literature derived from its labours? What is its history but an uninterrupted record of servile compliances--of paltry artifices--of deadly quarrels--of perfidious friendships?