Bagehot’s Literary Essays

310 F. E. L. PRIESTLEY put the Index. Given the immense importance and high quality of literary journalism in the nineteenth century, this Index will become at once a most essential, perhaps the most singly essential work of reference for the period. I can think of no other work which will be in such constant use by so wide a range of researchers in Victorian literature; praise and thanks to Professor Houghton should rise in a steady hum. His work is further welcome as a linal evidence of the coming of age of nineteenth-century scholarship, of the maturity which is turning to exactness and the provision of exact tools. All the same, I hope that the Index can be something more than a tool for scholars, that it can be a rich pleasure for the literary vagrant, that it can rouse some to seek out in Blackwood's, for example, The Young Brewer's Monitor or the "Letter from a Whig-Hater," or "A sketch of the Canadas in 1838," or "The goddess Venus in the middle ages." Or, from the Cornhill, "The Chinese arsenals and armaments," followed by IfSome peculiarities of society in America." Or, in the North British Review, IIAnimal magnetism/' "Phrenology; its place and relations," and "Sunday in the nineteenth century." CF. E. 1. PRIESTLEY) BAGEHOT'S LITERARY ESSAYS' The editor of these volumes, Dr. Norman St. John-Stevas, declares that Walter Bagehot was Victorian England's most versatile genius cr, 29). This is an intelligible claim, for Bagehot, as man of letters and man of affairs, made significant contributions to political science, banking, and economics, and-as the present volumes enable us to see-was one of the most stimulating literary critics of the age. Such a man deserves professional treatment from an editor; in the past, at the hands of R. H. Hutton, Forrest Morgan, and Mrs. Barrington, he did not always receive it. Here, Dr. St. John-Stevas provides us with the lirst two of the projected eight volumes of what will be the fullest edition that has yet been published. Neverthless, it can soon be shown that the professionally edited Bagehot is still to seek. After a preface and a short biography by the editor, and an appreciation by Sir William Haley, Dr. St. John-Stevas presents in this pair of volumes twenty-nine of Bagehot's literary articles, reviews, and essays. Seven items have never been collected before; two are attributed to Bagehot on internal evidence alone. Of the newly identified essays the longest are "Festus" from the Prospective Review of 1847, Bagehot's lirst publication, and 'Tennyson's Idylls" from the National Review of 1859; there are new, shorter articles from the Economist, the InqUirer, and the Spectator. "'"The Collected. Works of Walter Bagehot. Vol1.t1ne I and II: The Literary Essays. Edited by Norman St. John-Stevas. London: The Economist [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Pressl. 1965. Pp. 476, 400. £5 or $17.50. BAGEHOT'S LITERARY ESSAYS 311 Except for the nine essays in Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen (1858), the copy-text in each case is the original periodical article since no manuscripts survive. The editing is therefore necessarily conservative. But Dr. St. John·Stevas is inconsistent in his principles, as may be seen merely by examining his sporadic normalizing of the accidentals, especially punctuation. When he emends, moreover, he needlessly provokes our disagreement , as when he prefers {(that most miserable of human beings" to "that most miserable of miserable beings" in II, 209, and when he deletes jjat least" in II, 327. Then, too, it is ironic that the editor derives satisfaction from exposing the efforts of Hutton and Morgan to make sense out of the corrupt text of IWordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning." As we may see in the new Renan essay in II, 275-6, St. John-Stevas is capable of introducing corruptions of his own: he gives {(worthy and wanton persons" for 'Iworthy and narrow persons"; "a form of religion" for lithe form of religion"; "which he tried to adhere" for "which he tried to believe"; and "scarcely applicable" for "scarcely explicable." Variora are sometimes Hawed, too: in I, 218, n. 2, for instance...