CHAPTER XI.
On the Practical Study of English Literature.
The ocean of literature is without limit. How then shall we be able to perform a voyage, even to a moderate distance, if we waste our time in dalliance on the shore? Our only hope is in exertion. Let our only reward be that of industry.—Ringelbergius.
HE student of English literature has indeed embarked upon a limitless ocean. A lifetime of study will serve only to make him acquainted with parts of that great expanse which lies open before him. He should pursue his explorations earnestly, and with the inquiring spirit of a true discoverer. His thirst for knowledge should be unquenchable; he should long always for that mind food which brings the right kind of mind growth. He should not rest satisfied with merely superficial attainments, but should strive for that thoroughness of knowledge without which there can be neither excellence nor enjoyment.
English literature is not to be learned from manuals. They are only helps,—charts, buoys, light-houses, if you will call them so; or they serve to you the purposes of guide-books. What do you think of the would-be tourist who stays at home and studies his Baedeker with the foolish thought that he is actually seeing the countries which the book describes? And yet I have known students, and not a few teachers, do a thing equally as foolish. With a Morley, or a Shaw, or even a Brooke in their hands, and a few names and dates at their tongues’ ends, they imagine themselves viewing the great ocean of literature, ploughing its surface and exploring its depths, when in reality they are only wasting their time “in dalliance on the shore.”
English literature does not consist in a mere array of names and dates and short biographical sketches of men who have written books. Biography is biography; literature “is a record of the best thoughts.” But the former is frequently studied in place of the latter. “For once that we take down our Milton, and read a book of that ‘voice,’ as Wordsworth says, ‘whose sound is like the sea,’ we take up fifty times a magazine with something about Milton, or about Milton’s grandmother, or a book stuffed with curious facts about the houses in which he lived, and the juvenile ailments of his first wife.”[23] Instead of becoming acquainted at first hand with books in which are stored the energies of the past, we content ourselves with knowing only something about the men who wrote them. Instead of admiring with our own eyes the architectural beauties of St. Paul’s Cathedral, we read a biography of Sir Christopher Wren.
Again, it must be borne in mind that literature is one thing, and the history of literature is another. The study of the latter, however important, cannot be substituted for that of the former; yet it is not desirable to separate the two. To acquire any serviceable knowledge of a book, you will be greatly aided by knowing under what peculiar conditions it was conceived and produced,—the history of the country, the manners of the people, the status of morals and politics at the time it was written. Between history and literature there is a mutual relationship which should not be overlooked. “A book is the offspring of the aggregate intellect of humanity,” and it gives back to humanity, in the shape of new ideas and new combinations of old ideas, not only all that which it has derived from it, but more,—increased intellectual vitality, and springs of action hitherto unknown.
In the study of literature, one should begin with an author and with a subject not too difficult to understand. A beginner will be likely to find but little comfort in Chaucer or Spenser, or even in Emerson; but after he has worked up to them he may study them with unbounded delight. For a ready understanding and correct appreciation of the great masterpieces of English literature, a knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology and history is almost indispensable. The student will find the courses of historical reading given in a former chapter of this book of much value in supplementing his literary studies.
The great works of the world’s masterminds should be studied together, with reference to the similarity of their subject-matter. For example, the reading of Shakspeare will give occasion to the study of dramatic literature in all its forms; the reading of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” will introduce us to the great epics, and to heroic poetry in general; Sir Walter Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel” will lead naturally to the romance literature of modern and mediæval times; Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” fitly illustrate the story-telling phase of poetry; the study of lyric poetry may centre around the old ballads, the poems of Robert Burns, and the religious hymns of our language; Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” introduces us to allegory, and Milton’s “Lycidas” to elegiac and pastoral poetry; and to know the best specimens of argumentative prose, we begin with the speeches of Daniel Webster and end with the orations of Demosthenes.