Need I say that the significance of this historical movement in our literature is vital and profound for every man and woman before me? or that it merits the earnest consideration of every historical society organized to preserve and perpetuate the facts of our history.
Let me remind you that the literary significance of the Civil War is as noteworthy as its purely historical significance. That struggle meant far more to the South than to the North. To the North it meant the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery. To the South it meant decimated families, smoking homesteads, and the passing forever of a civilization unique in human history. But Literature loves a lost cause, provided honor be not lost. Hector, the leader of the vanquished Trojans, is the most princely figure that the Greek Homer has portrayed; the Roman Virgil is proud to trace the lineage of his people not back to the victorious Greeks but to the defeated Trojans; the English poet-laureate finds his deepest inspiration not in the victories of his Saxon ancestors over King Arthur but in King Arthur himself, the fated leader of a losing cause. And so it has always been: the brave but unfortunate reap always the richest measure of literary immortality.
In conclusion, I believe that in the organization of the Mississippi State Historical Society and in the beneficent work that it has wrought during its career of nine years, I see another indication of that growing historic consciousness without which we cannot stand unabashed before the bar of future history. "Deeds of prowess and exalted situations cannot of themselves" says Schlegel (History of Literature, Lecture I) "command our admiration or determine our judgment. A people that would rank high in our esteem must themselves be conscious of the importance of their own doings and fortunes." The invaluable work that is being done by this Society for the history of Mississippi is a part of that larger movement of which I have spoken. Both testify to the advent of that historical spirit which "cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof." If I read aright the signs of the times, the new century will not have been many years old before the history of the South will be enshrined not only in annals and chronicles but in the living letters of a nation's song and story.
[IRWIN RUSSELL—FIRST FRUITS OF THE SOUTHERN ROMANTIC MOVEMENT.]
BY W. L. WEBER.
So wide is the connotation of the word Romanticism, we may make up almost any conceivable definition and be sure we have respectable authority in agreement with the view we have taken. The fault to be found with the current definitions is that they stress the source, at the expense, of the character of that influence which transformed "the age of prose and reason" into the "Renascence of Wonder." The influence to be stressed in the use I shall wish to make of the word Romanticism is protest against the settled, conservative, classical order of things. Secondarily, it will be remembered that the source of much of the literary material used by the protestants is to be found in the remote past—remote whether in time or in charge of mental attitude.
In order to be able to throw a clearly defined portrait of Irwin Russell on the canvas of Southern literature, it will be necessary rapidly to review the main outlines of this Romantic movement in the development of English thought a period which may be shown to be the prototype of our own after-the-war literary life.
We shall not go into details. First we should recall to mind the main literary currents of English thinking from the time of Dryden to the end of the dictatorship of the great Cham himself. It will be readily remembered that fashion in literature had changed soon after Shakespeare's death and his native wood-notes wild were forgot for a time. The age of prose and reason followed. Self-consciousness was a characteristic note of the Augustan, the eighteenth century literature. Narrowness of imagination, and faithfulness in copying made up the main classical elements in many an English poet under the regime of Formalism.
"Back to nature!" was the rallying cry of a protest against this formalism—an inarticulate protest which culminated in the Romantic movement. Under the leadership of Dryden and for more than a century after him, canons of literary art based on classical models had almost undisputed sway. Aristotle filtered through Horace and Horace diluted by Boileau were prescribed by doctors who would correct and amend English speech and literature. From these masters were drawn rules so minute and so inflexible as to put to the death budding originality by the demand for "correctness." If the poet were moved to describe pastoral scenes, he must needs go to Theocritus for the names of his characters, to Virgil for the contour of his scenery. But all this classicism was counterfeit. It was "more Latin than Greek, and more French than Latin." The classical poet, as he misnamed himself, followed with slavish persistence the creed which he had adopted. It was an accepted law that "the best of the modern poets in all languages are those that have the nearest copied the ancients." He would have nothing of country life. Rough and irregular scenery were distasteful to him. Mountains he described by Gothic—his pet term of opprobrium. Scenery as well as thought must conform to the level. "Decent conformity," then, characterized the Augustan age and enthusiasm had no place in the age of Dryden and of Pope.