Brighton Pier

REVIEWS BRIGHTON PIER" A.S.P. WOODHOUSE Chesterton somewhere tells the story of a man who set out with a fixed determination of discovery. Presently he spied a busy coast of new and engaging appearance, from which a bridge-like structure, with a building at its seaward end, projected far over the waves. Landing with all speed, and asking no questions, he ascended the building and, not without triumphant self-congratulation, nailed there the Union Jack. When he came down, he was informed that it was Brighton Pier. Chesterton, as I remember, leaves us to pursue our own reflections on the state of mind, including a large contempt for the whole race of cartographers, which such an exploit betokens. It would be unseemly to pursue them here. For we are compelled to point out the analogy J:>etween Chesterton's discoverer and Mr. Leavis as he takes possession, for the youth of Cambridge, of John Stuart Mill's two essays on Bentham and Coleridge. The analogy fails at only one point: Mr. Leavis, to all appearance, is still up the flagpole. Now, no one who has been on Brighton Pier will deny that it is a very good place or that it commands a striking view. Indeed, one had supposed that its fame rested on precisely these facts. And all, and more than all, that Mr. Leavis claims for the importance of Mill's two essays will be readily conceded, but rather, one would imagine, as commonplaces of literary history and criticism. Certainly, in this University , on the borders of empire, there has existed time out of mind (it is one of the many good things that we owe to Alexander) a course in nineteenth-century thought for students in English honours, far more exacting than the one which Mr. Leavis advocates, and central in that course are Mill's essays on Bentham and Coleridge. Such a course, and the generous and sensible view of English studies which finds room for it, have not been without their opponents; and it is ill quarrelling among allies in the presence of the enemy. We hope, then, that Mr. Leavis will forgive the cheerfulness that breaks through in our opening remarks, and will accept our thanks (as doubtless that of many others) for supplying a convenient and not too expensive reprint of these pivotal texts, with a challenging introductory essay. The introductory essay contains (as we have implied) suggestions *Mill on Bentham and Coleridge. With an Introduction by F. R. LEAVIS. London : Chatta and Windus [Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited], 1950. Pp. 168. 7/6, $1.75. 318 Vol. XXI, no. 3, April, 1952 REVIEWS 319 for a course in nineteenth-century thought and an exposition of Mill in relation thereto. It is a characteristic performance in its virtues and defects. Like most of Mr. Leavis's "revaluations," it has a certain freshness, sometimes purchased at the expense of wholeness and balance . Like them, it is clearly not the work of an historian, scrupulously anxious to see the century in its fulness as it really was, or to let his conclusions emerge from a patient study of original documents. Such a method of making the past present to oneself is not for Mr. Leavis an important part of the discipline of English studies. Mr. Leavis's introduction suggests the pedagogue and one whose primary concern is to bring out the immediate relevance of the past to our contemporary situation. It is, of course, a question of emphasis merely. One cannot pursue Mr. Leavis's method without in fact learning a great deal about the nineteenth century, any more than one can read historically the texts he employs without recognizing their relevance at many points to the world today. To young men in a hurry Mr. Leavis's plan will commend itself. He would have them peruse Mrs. Sidney Webb's My Apprenticeship (which is, of course, useful for rapid collateral reading, as useful as Dickens's Hard Times, which on all counts Mr. Leavis greatly overrates ), omit Carlyle (as obsolete) and Ruskin (as not indeed obsolete, but easy to get up from secondary sources! ) and, concentrating on the rise and fall of Utilitarian...