THE DECLINE OF INTELLECT

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4301, 9 March 1901, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE DECLINE OF INTELLECT

(Andrew Lang, in the “Critic.”)

The human intellect, like “the Service,” has long been, “going to the dogs.” Old-fashioned people tell us that “nobody reads anything but newspapers and novels.” Many critic!* in the serial reviews apologise for noticing a work that is not avowedly a work of fiction. Most reviewers have long dropped the hypocrisy of pretending to own any acquaintance with the subjects of historical, antiquarian, anthropological, mythological. and other ■ erudite books. They frankly avow their ignorance, unashamed. Poetry is still "a drug in the market/’ except when some new bard is welcomed as an exquisite blend of Shakespoa.ro and Racine. “Literary gossip” is concerned only with the wealth attained by a few manufacturers of fustian. Lately’ I saw a grown man reading Solly’s “Memoirs,” in French, too, and, like the Ancient Mariner, “I blessed him unawares,” so unusual was the spectacle. The'classics of all languages, as a lady lately declared in print, have become “glorified school-books.” Everyone admits that tbps is the condition of our intellectual affairs —that is, as far as literature is concerned. If evidence is desired, we might call into court the author of “How to Write for tho Magazines.” “Tho stylo most ■ in' vogue,” remarks this literary expert, “ia what is known, as the ‘popular’ style”— a rather “self-evident remark,” as the dustman said when tho cook told him that he was no gentleman. He who would embrace the popular style “must not indulge in fine work which is above the head of the person who spends his, penny on ‘Answers' or ‘Pearson’s.’” That person, that capitalist who lays out his per toy may be a dustman or a duke. But, intellectually, it must be difficult for a writer not to soar above his head. Wo are even warned “not to write about things that the sixpenny reader of the “Strand” or the “Lady’s Realm” cannot understand owing to limited education or capacity.” One may venture to. hint that it is not so much the education, or the natural capacity of, the “sixpenny reader” that is at fault, as his intellectual interest. The sixpenny reader would probably understand “Macbeth” or. “Hamlot” (which one sixpenny reader “did not call a very deep play”), but tho sixpenny reader does not want to understand. He is in a state of abject intellectual indolence. With Mr Darwin I believe that the mental faculties even of the lowest savages, or sixpenny readers, are much on a level with our own. Tho Australian blackfellow, untutored, has no words for numerals above fiveBut when educated, he can count sheep up to thousands, as well as the Ettrick shepherd could have done. Uneducated. the savage has been to lazy to count above five, though otherwise extremely clover, where his private interests are engaged. . Now the sixpenny student is like the blackfellow: ho is indolent, not incapable. “ Tho public,” exclaims our author, “will only read scrappy stuff, short tales, snatchy articles. The author who would made his bread must write, therefore, short tales, more or less poor, and scrappy articles.” Our author offers Mr Kipling and the late Mr G. W. Steovens as examples in “the popular style.” Absolute popularity, the ideal style, is that of essays in “Tit-bits”, on “Extraordinary Disappearances on Weddingday.” “Interviews” are also popular; ♦they may be done on the living subject, or may be “faked” out of such compilations as “Men of the Time.” It is to this abysm that our intellectual interests have descended in the course of 1800-1900. The situation is bad for unlucky authors, like the' present writer, who want to “make their broad.” How are-- we to do it ? It is too late for us to learn “the popular style.” On the level of the sixpenny reader wo cannot keep, if rye would; we are compelled to puzzle him by allusions to things once familiar, to events, persons, proverbs of which he never heard. We cannot swim with him in that ocean of ignorance where ho complacently wallows. If the times of this ignorance endure, heaven help English literature!