though here, as in the case of Daniel and Chapman, one may feel that the lengthy quotations, indispensable as they were for the purpose of the original lectures, have hardly left sufficient space for an all-round consideration of the author. But Bullen’s mind was always somewhat that of the anthologist. He loved, I think, to chose a writer’s best and to concentrate his attention on that, rather than to judge him by his work as a whole. This may at times have caused a certain bias in his criticisms; it certainly lent them enthusiasm and the power of imparting that enthusiasm to others.
And yet with all this there was often a marked restraint in Bullen’s judgments. He was a scholar of the older sort, one who could read Latin and Greek with sufficient ease to enjoy them, and there was a certain tinge of classical severity in his attitude towards Elizabethan literature. He had an instinctive dislike of anything “overdone,” of “fine writing” of any kind, and much as he loved the Elizabethans I do not think he was ever completely at ease about their casual and careless exuberance. It is this tinge of serverity, I think, which accounts for such a characterisation as that of Daniel’s Defence of Rhyme as “an admirable critical treatise, tasteful, judicious and convincing.” It may be all this, but surely the most remarkable thing about it is the beauty of its prose—to those at least of us who, trained rather in the mediæval than the classical tradition, are less intolerant of the purple patch. But a little severity is good where there has been so much loose-lipped praise, and Bullen himself could be a true Elizabethan at times, as when at the close of his introduction to Marston, he dragged in by the ears the great peroration of Donne’s most famous sermon, one of the longest as it is one of the most splendid sentences of English, with no more than the shameless excuse that Marston’s sermons had perished, whereas Donne’s had not—that and the true reason that he knew and delighted in it and would have others know it too!
This indeed was at the heart of all Bullen’s work, a genuine love of the best in literature and a keen desire that all should share the pleasure that he himself had found in it. And can there be any better motive for a scholar’s work than this?
R. B. McKerrow.
