PROFESSOR SAINTSBURY: FROM THE HISTORY OF THE THREE BLIND MICE (PERIODS OF EUROPEAN NONSENSE)
COMING to the conclusion of the whole matter, the present writer, who has more than once gone over all that has been written on the subject—with the exception of some things in Romansch and Czech—while he has been engaged on this task, must refuse to discuss at length the motives of the mice or the far-reaching results to their seemingly (though not to the literary critic or historian who has adopted the comparative method) eccentric and ill-timed trick of ‘running after,’ both of which have engaged the attention of some very excellent persons to the exclusion of all other aspects of the problem. Whoever looks at such things with one eye open for the swing of the pendulum will not be easily persuaded that the cleaving blade—for, let it be repeated, the Farmer’s Wife is worthiest of attention here—has not the fullest significance of all, from the lever de rideau of the ‘running after’ to the noisy epilogue of the ‘Never saw such a thing in my life.’ To some, whose engouement for the Classical is not entirely absurd, the structure of the three shorn rodents, in their new simplicity and austerity of outline, will come almost as a ‘Pisgah-sight.’ As a reaction from the fulltailed Romanticism that scampered blindly and heedlessly after what seemed rather a new crotchet than a true ideal, their attitude—not unforeseen at the time when the ‘Carving-knife’ was first menacingly brandished—can at least be tolerated. But to the other extremists, who from their stucco citadel of the sham Romantic have derided the ‘cutting-off,’ and have hailed with contempt the new-old, perhaps to them unfamiliar, form of the blind three, the present writer can hold out no eirenicon. With the exception of some worthy persons who ought to have known better, and who shall be nameless here, the scoffers were for the most part half-educated journalists and other hangers-on to letters, who imagine that it is possible to write a clear lucid style without so much as a glance at Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and who cannot be expected.... Etc., Etc.
MR JAMES STEPHENS: ‘SEUMAS BEG AGAIN’
ALONG the road I met a red-nosed man
Who stumbled as he walked. He said to me:
‘You keep away from that pub if you can;
It’s all gone queer.’ I said I didn’t see
What could be wrong with Doolan’s. ‘I can’t think,’
Said he, ‘what we’ll have next. I went in there,
Five minutes since; I’d scarcely got my drink
Before three angels with long shining hair
Came in. The first two took the dominoes
And played daft tunes upon them, while the third
Sang songs and balanced bottles on his nose.
’Fore Stephens’ time, such things never occurred!
I said I didn’t believe him. But I did.
He only whispered: ‘Got a tanner, kid?’
A LECTURE NOT YET WRITTEN
OR DELIVERED BY
PROFESSOR SIR A. T. QUILLER-COUCH:
ON THE DIRECT METHOD
(To be included afterwards in ‘The Art of Lecturing’)
BEAR with me, gentlemen, while I return, not unrefreshed by an eight months’ interval—‘apart sat on a hill retired,’ to the argument of my last lecture but one, wherein we found that the Capital Difficulty of Criticism consisted in keeping to the matter in hand. ‘When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires.’ So Bacon, in his letter of expostulation to Coke; and we shall do well to perpend the passage without taking to ourselves that plea of ‘having a large and fruitful mind’ which Bacon, in his wisdom, presented to Coke. Let us hold by the words of a writer whom our Tripos is gradually restoring to popular favour, Quintilian—‘it is enough for us to mind our present business.’ Suffer me then to proffer a personal experience. Once, when an undergraduate, I ... [anecdote omitted] ... an unforgettable experience, at least to one who is willing to pass among you as a sentimental old Victorian. But let us tune our instruments. And this brings me—for, believe me, gentlemen, I must eventually arrive somewhere—to the point I wish to make. It is this, that if we examine our literature curiously, we shall find there a certain thread, a cord of silver, twisting its way through all Letters and linking up one noble author with another. Let me remind you that this thread was first spun in Greece ... [passages on compulsory Greek, the Education Act of 1870, and the Teaching of English in Schools—omitted]. You may realise, gentlemen, how this tradition has been kept alive by men often sundered from one another by generations, if you allow me to bring before you several illuminating passages from diverse authors whose names are not pronounced here for the first time.... [Quotations from Aristotle, Longinus, Cervantes, Lessing, Sainte-Beuve, Newman, and Walter de la Mare omitted.] One and all of these craftsmen, whom it is our business to study, tell us that we shall abjure the direct method only at our peril, that ultimately we shall come by more profit if we keep to the narrow road and leave the hedgerows and fields beyond innocent of our feet. It will not be easy. But—and I thank heaven for it!—literature is not easy; and even in these days, when the Correspondence School flourisheth and Pelman is in the land, no one, not I nor another, can make it so.