Celt, Literature, to which W. J. Gruffydd, lecturer in Celtic, University College, Cardiff, contributes the section on Welsh literature; and E. C. Quiggin, lecturer in Celtic, Cambridge, contributes the sections on Irish, Manx, Breton and Cornish literatures.
Bibliography
This list of the literatures of many tongues, from each of which translations have added to the common stock accessible even to those who can read with ease only one language, indicates the existence of a bewildering mass of printed matter, and just as each language has its literature—using the word to signify output, so each subject upon which men write has its literature—using the word to signify material for any one branch of study. Bibliographies are the charts by which students are enabled to navigate these vast seas of knowledge. The articles Bibliography (Vol. 3, p. 908), by A. W. Pollard, assistant librarian of the British Museum, and Index (Vol. 14, p. 373) describe the technicalities of cataloguing and classifying books and their contents.
The Britannica is itself the most complete index to the subjects treated by books and the most complete bibliographical manual for the student that could be imagined. The Index of 500,000 entries (Vol. 29) shows to what class any one of half a million facts belongs, by referring to the article in which that fact is treated. At the end of the article a list of the best books on the subject shows the student who desires to specialize just where to go for further details. No less than 203,000 books are included in these lists appended to Britannica articles and many of them are, in themselves, substantial contributions to literature. The Shakespeare bibliography would, for example, fill 30 pages of the size and type of this Guide; the bibliography of English history, by A. F. Pollard, of the University of London, 13 pages, and the bibliography of French history, by Prof. Bémont of the École des Hautes Études, Paris, 8 pages.
A group of articles of great interest to every student of literature deals with the methods and appliances by which writings are preserved and circulated. Manuscript (Vol. 17, p. 618) is by Sir E. Maunde Thompson, of the British Museum Library; Book (Vol. 4, p. 214); Book-Collecting (Vol. 4, p. 221) and Incunabula (Vol. 14, p. 369) are by A. W. Pollard, also of the British Museum Library. Libraries (Vol. 16, p. 545), equivalent to 100 pages of this Guide, is by H. R. Tedder, librarian of the Athenaeum Club, London. The articles on printing, binding, publishing and similar subjects are described in the chapter of this Guide For Printers.
With this chapter to help him the student will have little difficulty in devising his own course of reading in any one literature—starting with the general treatment, going from this to the separate biographies of the great authors mentioned in the general article, and, when there is in the national literature that he is studying some special development of a literary genre, as of the sermon in the 17th or the satire in the 18th century, turning to the article in the Britannica dealing with this form of literature, Satire, Sermon, or whatever it may be. For example, what could be more illuminating to the student of 19th century literature than the following passages-disconnected here—from the article Satire?
Goethe and Schiller, Scott and Wadsworth, are now at hand, and as imagination gains ground satire declines. Byron, who in the 18th century would have been the greatest of satirists, is hurried by the spirit of his age into passion and description, bequeathing, however, a splendid proof of the possibility of allying satire with sublimity in his Vision of Judgment.... Miss Edgeworth skirts the confines of satire, and Miss Austen seasons her novels with the most exquisite satiric traits. Washington Irving revives the manner of The Spectator, and Tieck brings irony and persiflage to the discussion of critical problems.... In all the characteristics of his genius Thackeray is thoroughly English, and the faults and follies he chastises are those especially characteristic of British society. Good sense and the perception of the ridiculous are amalgamated in him; his satire is a thoroughly British article, a little over-solid, a little wanting in finish, but honest, weighty and durable. Posterity must go to him for the humours of the age of Victoria, as they go to Addison for those of Anne’s.... In Heine the satiric spirit, long confined to established literary forms, seems to obtain unrestrained freedom to wander where it will, nor have the ancient models been followed since by any considerable satirist except the Italian Giusti. The machinery employed by Moore was indeed transplanted to America by James Russell Lowell, whose Biglow Papers represent perhaps the highest moral level yet attained by satire.
In no age was the spirit of satire so generally diffused as in the 19th century, but many of its eminent writers, while bordering on the domains of satire, escape the definition of satirist. The term cannot be properly applied to Dickens, the keen observer of the oddities of human life; or to George Eliot, the critic of its emptiness when not inspired by a worthy purpose; or to Balzac, the painter of French society; or to Trollope, the mirror of the middle classes of England. If Sartor Resartus could be regarded as a satire, Carlyle would rank among the first of satirists; but the satire, though very obvious, rather accompanies than inspires the composition.
CHAPTER XXXVII
AMERICAN LITERATURE
The list in the preceding chapter of the key articles dealing with national literatures shows that the Britannica separately treats the literary products of some 30 countries. To outline 30 courses of reading, mentioning the 3,000 critical and biographical articles, would make this Guide unwieldy. On pp. 929–937 of Vol. 29 the reader will find classified lists of these articles, and only four groups are selected here for detailed treatment: those on American, English, German and Greek literature. The main article in the literature of each of the other countries indicates the characteristic forms, the typical works of the leading writers discussed in special articles, so that courses of reading as systematic as these four can easily be planned for other countries by the reader.