Part 1 (1/2)

Adventures in Criticism

by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

To

AB WALKLEY

MY DEAR ABW

The short papers which follow have been reprinted, with a few alterations, fro you Possibly, too, you have sat in a theatre before now and seen the curtain rise on two characters exchanging information which must have been their common property for years

So this dedication is partly designed to savea formal preface

As I remember then, Adam, it was upon this fashi+on bequeathed us by destiny to write side by side in _The Speaker_ every week, you about Plays and I about Books Three years ago you found tis in a notable voluo I searched the files of the paper with a si amount of my own composition noble edifice of toil! It stretched away in i perspective--week upon week--two columns to the week! The : and for the first races of the colonnade were hopelesslyjournalist, who finds no satisfaction in his business of htway and heave them at somebody

Still (to drop metaphor), I have chosen so They are fragmentary, by force of the conditions under which they were produced: but perhaps the fragest the outline of a first principle And I dedicate the book to you because it would be strange if the ti which we have appeared in print side by side had brought no sense of coet speech together, more than one of these papers--ostensibly addressed to anybody whoht concern--has been privately, if but sub-consciously, intended for you

ATQC

ADVENTURES IN CRITICISM

CHAUCER

March 17, 1894 Professor Skeat's Chaucer

After twenty-five years of close toil, Professor Skeat has coreat edition of Chaucer[A] It is obviously easier to be dithyra this event; to which indeed dithyrambs are more appropriate than criticism For when a man writes _Opus vitae meae_ at the conclusion of such a task as this, and so lays down his pen, he must be a churl (even if he be also a competent critic) ill allow no pause for admiration And where, churl or no churl, is the competent critic to be found? The Professor has here compiled an entirely new text of Chaucer, founded solely on the manuscripts and the earliest printed editions that are accessible

Where Chaucer has translated, the originals have been carefully studied: ”the requirerahout”: and ”the phonology and spelling of every word have received particular attention” We may add that all the ht out, exaether with exemplary care

All this has taken Professor Skeat twenty-five years, and in order to pass coment on his conclusions the critic h his researches--which will take the critic (even if we are charitable enough to suppose his mental equipment equal to Professor Skeat's) another ten years at least For our tienerations after, this edition of Chaucer will be accepted as final

And the Clarendon Press

And I see of the realization of a dream which I have cherished since first I stood within the quadrangle of the Clarendon Press--that fine combination of the factory and the palace The aspect of the Press itself repeats, as it were, the characteristics of its government, which is conducted by an elected body as an honorable trust Its delegates are not intent only onAnd yet the Clarendon Press makes money, and the University can depend upon it for handsome subsidies It land--to which in its systeovernment it may be likened--is the focus of all the other banks, private or joint-stock, in the kingdoold, but of its commercial honor, so the Clarendon Press--traditionally careful in its selections and ht becolish literature If it would but follow up Professor Skeat's Chaucer with a resolution to publish, at a pace suitable to so large an undertaking, _all the great English classics_, edited with all the scholarshi+p its wealth can co the Clarendon Press would be found to be exercising an influence on English letters which is at present lacking, and the lack of which drives many to call, from ti corresponding to the French Academy I need only cite the examples of the Royal Society and the Marylebone Cricket Club to show that to create an authority in this manner is consonant with our national practice We should have that centre of correct informent, correct taste--that intellectual metropolis, in short--which is the surest check upon provinciality in literature; we should have a standard of English scholarshi+p and an authoritative dictionary of the English language; and at the sareen coat and palm branches which has at tiue

Also, I reat edition of Bunyan, of Defoe, of Gibbon? The Oxford Press did once publish an edition of Gibbon, worthy enough as far as type and paper could make it worthy But this is only to be found in second-hand book-shops Why are two rival London houses now publishi+ng editions of Scott, the better illustrated with silly pictures ”out of the artists'

heads”? Where is the final edition of Ben Jonson?

These and the rest are to coreat Boswell and a great Chaucer, and the h So that it h none of us shall live to see its full realization Meanwhile such a work as Professor Skeat's Chaucer is not only an answer to oes up frolish literature being done out of England This and sientlemen who so often interrupt their own chreazines the short-coreat Universities as nurseries of chrematistic youth In this case it is Oxford that publishes, while Ca: and from a natural affection I had rather it were always Oxford that published, attracting to her service the learning, scholarshi+p, intelligence of all parts of the kingdoht she securely found new Schools of English Literature--were she so minded, a dozen every year They would do no particular harm; and meanwhile, in Walton Street, out of earshot of the New Schools, the Clarendon Press would go on serenely perforreat work

March 23, 1895 Essentials and Accidents of Poetry