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Books and Characters
Books and Characters
Lytton Strachey
Books and Characters
Table of Contents
Books and Characters.. .......................................................................................................................................1
Lytton Strachey. .......................................................................................................................................1
RACINE. ..................................................................................................................................................2
SIR THOMAS BROWNE. ....................................................................................................................12
SHAKESPEARE'S FINAL PERIOD. ...................................................................................................17
THE LIVES OF THE POETS[1]. ..........................................................................................................25
MADAME DU DEFFAND[2]. .............................................................................................................28
VOLTAIRE AND ENGLAND[3]. ........................................................................................................37
A DIALOGUE. ......................................................................................................................................48
VOLTAIRE'S TRAGEDIES. ................................................................................................................50
VOLTAIRE AND FREDERICK THE GREAT. ...................................................................................57
THE ROUSSEAU AFFAIR. .................................................................................................................68
THE POETRY OF BLAKE[8]. .............................................................................................................72
THE LAST ELIZABETHAN. ...............................................................................................................79
HENRI BEYLE. ....................................................................................................................................91
LADY HESTER STANHOPE. ...........................................................................................................100
MR. CREEVEY. ..................................................................................................................................104
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Books and Characters
Lytton Strachey
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Books and Characters
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BOOKS &CHARACTERS
FRENCH &ENGLISH
By
LYTTON STRACHEY
LONDON
First published May 1922
TO JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES
The following papers are reprinted by kind permission of the Editors of the Independent Review, the New
Quarterly, the Athenaeum, and the Edinburgh Review.
The 'Dialogue' is now printed for the first time, from a manuscript, apparently in the handwriting of Voltaire
and belonging to his English period .
Books and Characters
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Books and Characters
RACINE
When Ingres painted his vast 'Apotheosis of Homer,' he represented, grouped round the central throne, all the
great poets of the ancient and modern worlds, with a single exception—Shakespeare. After some persuasion,
he relented so far as to introduce into his picture a part of that offensive personage; and English visitors at the
Louvre can now see, to their disgust or their amusement, the truncated image of rather less than half of the
author of King Lear just appearing at the extreme edge of the enormous canvas. French taste, let us hope, has
changed since the days of Ingres; Shakespeare would doubtless now be advanced—though perhaps chiefly
from a sense of duty—to the very steps of the central throne. But if an English painter were to choose a
similar subject, how would he treat the master who stands acknowledged as the most characteristic
representative of the literature of France? Would Racine find a place in the picture at all? Or, if he did, would
more of him be visible than the last curl of his full−bottomed wig, whisking away into the outer darkness?
There is something inexplicable about the intensity of national tastes and the violence of national differences.
If, as in the good old days, I could boldly believe a Frenchman to be an inferior creature, while he, as simply,
wrote me down a savage, there would be an easy end of the matter. But alas! nous avons change tout cela .
Now we are each of us obliged to recognise that the other has a full share of intelligence, ability, and taste;
that the accident of our having been born on different sides of the Channel is no ground for supposing either
that I am a brute or that he is a ninny. But, in that case, how does it happen that while on one side of that 'span
of waters' Racine is despised and Shakespeare is worshipped, on the other, Shakespeare is tolerated and
Racine is adored? The perplexing question was recently emphasised and illustrated in a singular way. Mr.
John Bailey, in a volume of essays entitled 'The Claims of French Poetry,' discussed the qualities of Racine at
some length, placed him, not without contumely, among the second rank of writers, and drew the conclusion
that, though indeed the merits of French poetry are many and great, it is not among the pages of Racine that
they are to be found. Within a few months of the appearance of Mr. Bailey's book, the distinguished French
writer and brilliant critic, M. Lemaitre, published a series of lectures on Racine, in which the highest note of
unqualified panegyric sounded uninterruptedly from beginning to end. The contrast is remarkable, and the
conflicting criticisms seem to represent, on the whole, the views of the cultivated classes in the two countries.
And it is worthy of note that neither of these critics pays any heed, either explicitly or by implication, to the
opinions of the other. They are totally at variance, but they argue along lines so different and so remote that
they never come into collision. Mr. Bailey, with the utmost sang−froid, sweeps on one side the whole of the
literary tradition of France. It is as if a French critic were to assert that Shakespeare, the Elizabethans, and the
romantic poets of the nineteenth century were all negligible, and that England's really valuable contribution to
the poetry of the world was to be found among the writings of Dryden and Pope. M. Lemaitre, on the other
hand, seems sublimely unconscious that any such views as Mr. Bailey's could possibly exist. Nothing shows
more clearly Racine's supreme dominion over his countrymen than the fact that M. Lemaitre never questions
it for a moment, and tacitly assumes on every page of his book that his only duty is to illustrate and amplify a
greatness already recognised by all. Indeed, after reading M. Lemaitre's book, one begins to understand more
clearly why it is that English critics find it difficult to appreciate to the full the literature of France. It is no
paradox to say that that country is as insular as our own. When we find so eminent a critic as M. Lemaitre
observing that Racine 'a vraiment “acheve” et porte a son point supreme de perfection la tragedie , cette
etonnante forme d'art, et qui est bien de chez nous: car on la trouve peu chez les Anglais,' is it surprising that
we should hastily jump to the conclusion that the canons and the principles of a criticism of this kind will not
repay, and perhaps do not deserve, any careful consideration? Certainly they are not calculated to spare the
susceptibilities of Englishmen. And, after all, this is only natural; a French critic addresses a French audience;
like a Rabbi in a synagogue, he has no need to argue and no wish to convert. Perhaps, too, whether he willed
or no, he could do very little to the purpose; for the difficulties which beset an Englishman in his endeavours
to appreciate a writer such as Racine are precisely of the kind which a Frenchman is least able either to dispel
or even to understand. The object of this essay is, first, to face these difficulties, with the aid of Mr. Bailey's
paper, which sums up in an able and interesting way the average English view of the matter; and, in the
RACINE
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Books and Characters
second place, to communicate to the English reader a sense of the true significance and the immense value of
Racine's work. Whether the attempt succeed or fail, some important general questions of literary doctrine will
have been discussed; and, in addition, at least an effort will have been made to vindicate a great reputation.
For, to a lover of Racine, the fact that English critics of Mr. Bailey's calibre can write of him as they do,
brings a feeling not only of entire disagreement, but of almost personal distress. Strange as it may seem to
those who have been accustomed to think of that great artist merely as a type of the frigid pomposity of an
antiquated age, his music, to ears that are attuned to hear it, comes fraught with a poignancy of loveliness
whose peculiar quality is shared by no other poetry in the world. To have grown familiar with the voice of
Racine, to have realised once and for all its intensity, its beauty, and its depth, is to have learnt a new
happiness, to have discovered something exquisite and splendid, to have enlarged the glorious boundaries of
art. For such benefits as these who would not be grateful? Who would not seek to make them known to others,
that they too may enjoy, and render thanks?
M. Lemaitre, starting out, like a native of the mountains, from a point which can only be reached by English
explorers after a long journey and a severe climb, devotes by far the greater part of his book to a series of
brilliant psychological studies of Racine's characters. He leaves on one side almost altogether the questions
connected both with Racine's dramatic construction, and with his style; and these are the very questions by
which English readers are most perplexed, and which they are most anxious to discuss. His style in
particular—using the word in its widest sense—forms the subject of the principal part of Mr. Bailey's essay; it
is upon this count that the real force of Mr. Bailey's impeachment depends; and, indeed, it is obvious that no
poet can be admired or understood by those who quarrel with the whole fabric of his writing and condemn the
very principles of his art. Before, however, discussing this, the true crux of the question, it may be well to
consider briefly another matter which deserves attention, because the English reader is apt to find in it a
stumbling−block at the very outset of his inquiry. Coming to Racine with Shakespeare and the rest of the
Elizabethans warm in his memory, it is only to be expected that he should be struck with a chilling sense of
emptiness and unreality. After the colour, the moving multiplicity, the imaginative luxury of our early
tragedies, which seem to have been moulded out of the very stuff of life and to have been built up with the
varied and generous structure of Nature herself, the Frenchman's dramas, with their rigid uniformity of
setting, their endless duologues, their immense harangues, their spectral confidants, their strict exclusion of all
visible action, give one at first the same sort of impression as a pretentious pseudo−classical summer−house
appearing suddenly at the end of a vista, after one has been rambling through an open forest. 'La scene est a
Buthrote, ville d'Epire, dans une salle du palais de Pyrrhus'—could anything be more discouraging than such
an announcement? Here is nothing for the imagination to feed on, nothing to raise expectation, no wondrous
vision of 'blasted heaths,' or the 'seaboard of Bohemia'; here is only a hypothetical drawing−room conjured out
of the void for five acts, simply in order that the persons of the drama may have a place to meet in and make
their speeches. The 'three unities' and the rest of the 'rules' are a burden which the English reader finds himself
quite unaccustomed to carry; he grows impatient of them; and, if he is a critic, he points out the futility and
the unreasonableness of those antiquated conventions. Even Mr. Bailey, who, curiously enough, believes that
Racine 'stumbled, as it were, half by accident into great advantages' by using them, speaks of the 'discredit'
into which 'the once famous unities' have now fallen, and declares that 'the unities of time and place are of no
importance in themselves.' So far as critics are concerned this may be true; but critics are apt to forget that
plays can exist somewhere else than in books, and a very small acquaintance with contemporary drama is
enough to show that, upon the stage at any rate, the unities, so far from having fallen into discredit, are now in
effect triumphant. For what is the principle which underlies and justifies the unities of time and place? Surely
it is not, as Mr. Bailey would have us believe, that of the 'unity of action or interest,' for it is clear that every
good drama, whatever its plan of construction, must possess a single dominating interest, and that it may
happen—as in Antony and Cleopatra , for instance—that the very essence of this interest lies in the
accumulation of an immense variety of local activities and the representation of long epochs of time. The true
justification for the unities of time and place is to be found in the conception of drama as the history of a
spiritual crisis—the vision, thrown up, as it were, by a bull's−eye lantern, of the final catastrophic phases of a
long series of events. Very different were the views of the Elizabethan tragedians, who aimed at representing
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