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EPHEMERA CRITICA

OR PLAIN TRUTHS ABOUT
CURRENT LITERATURE

BY JOHN CHURTON
COLLINS

Non verebor nominare singulos, quo facilius, propositis exemplis,
appareat, quibus gradibus fracta sit et deminuta eloquentia.
—Dial. de Orat.

αινεων αινητα, μομφαν δι' επισπειρων αλιτροις.
—Pindar

Fourth Edition

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND CO LTD
2 WHITEHALL GARDENS, WESTMINSTER
1902

Butler & Tanner,
The Selwood Printing Works,
Frome, and London.

PREFACE

It is time for some one to speak out. When we compare the condition and prospects of Science in all its branches, its organization, its standards, its aims, its representatives with those of Literature, how deplorable and how humiliating is the contrast! In the one we see an ordered realm, in the other mere chaos. The one, serious, strenuous, progressive, is displaying an energy as wonderful in what it has accomplished as in what it promises to accomplish; the other, without soul, without conscience, without nerve, aimless, listless and decadent, appears to be stagnating, almost entirely, into the monopoly of those who are bent on futilizing and degrading it.

Science stands where it does, not simply by virtue of the genius, the industry, the example of its most distinguished representatives, but because by those representatives the whole sphere of its activity is being directed and controlled. The care of the Universities, the care of learned societies, the care of devoted enthusiasts, its interests and honour are watchfully and jealously guarded. The qualifications of its teachers are guaranteed by tests prescribed by the highest authorities on the subjects professed. To standards fixed and maintained by those authorities is referred every serious contribution to its literature. Even a popular lecturer, or a popular writer, who undertook to be its exponent would be exploded at once if he displayed ignorance and incompetence. Such, indeed, is the solidarity of its energies that it is rather in the degrees and phases of their manifestation than in their essence and characteristics that they vary. There is not a scientific institution in England the regulations and aims of which do not bear the impress of such masters as Huxley and Tyndall and their disciples; not a work issuing from the scientific Press which is not a proof of the influence which such men have exercised and are exercising, and of the high standard exacted and attained wherever Science is taught and interpreted.

It is far otherwise with Literature. Those who represent it, in a sense analogous to that in which the men who have been referred to represent Science, have neither voice nor influence in its organization, as a subject of instruction, at the centres of education. They neither give it the ply, nor in any way affect its standards and its character in practice and production. As examples few follow them, as counsellors no one heeds them. They constitute what is little more than an esoteric body, moving in a sphere of its own.

And yet there is no reason at all why there should not be the same solidarity in the activity of Literature as there is in the activity of Science, and why the standard of aim and attainment in the one should not be as high as in the other. But this can never be accomplished until certain radical reforms are instituted, and the first step towards reform is to demonstrate the necessity for it. I have done so here. I have drawn attention to the state of things in our Universities,—in other words, to what I must take leave to call the scandalous and incredible indifference of the Councils of those Universities to the appeals which have, during the last fifteen years, been made to them to place the study of Literature, in the proper sense of the term, upon the footing on which they have placed other studies. I have pointed out what have been, and what must continue to be, the effects of that indifference. I have given specimens of the books to which the Universities are not ashamed to affix their imprimatur, and I have shown that, so far from them considering even their reputation involved in such a matter, they do not scruple to circulate works teeming with blunders and absurdities of the grossest kind, blunders and absurdities to which their attention has been publicly called over and over again. I have given specimens of the kind of works which the occupants of distinguished Chairs of Literature can, with perfect impunity, address to students; and I would ask any scientific man what would be thought of a Professor, say, of the Royal Naval College, or of the City and Guilds of London Institute, who should put his name to analogous publications—to publications, that is to say, as unsound in their theories, as inaccurate in their facts, as slovenly and perfunctory in general execution, as those to which I have here directed attention? If such things are done in the green tree, what is likely to be done in the dry? or, as Chaucer puts it, "if gold ruste, what schal yren doo?" That is one of the questions on which these essays may, perhaps, throw some light.

To be misrepresented and misunderstood is the certain fate of a book like this, and I am well aware of the responsibilities incurred in undertaking it. It is very distasteful to me to give pain or cause annoyance to any one, and, whether I am believed or not, I can say, with strict truth, that I have not the smallest personal bias against any of those whom I have censured most severely. I believe, for the reasons already explained, that Belles Lettres are sinking deeper and deeper into degradation, that they are gradually passing out of the hands of their true representatives, and becoming almost the monopoly of their false representatives, and that the consequence of this cannot but be most disastrous to us as a nation, to our reputation in the World of Letters, to taste, to tone, to morals. It is surely a shame and a crime in any one, and more especially in men occupying positions of influence and authority, to assist in the work of corruption, either by deliberately writing bad books or by conniving, as critics, at the production of bad books; and I am very sure it has become a duty, and an imperative duty, to expose and denounce them.

These essays are partly a protest and partly an experiment. As a protest they explain, and, I hope, justify themselves; as an experiment they are an attempt to illustrate what we should be fortunate if we could see more frequently illustrated by abler hands. They are a series of studies in serious, patient, and absolutely impartial criticism, having for its object a comprehensive survey of the vices and defects, as well as of the merits, characteristic of current Belles Lettres. I do not suppose that anything I have said will have the smallest effect on the present generation, but on the rising generation I believe that much which has been said will not be thrown away. In any case, what I was constrained to write I have written. And it is my last word in a long controversy.

It remains to add that most of these essays appeared originally in the Saturday Review, and I desire to express my thanks to the late and present Editors, not merely for permission to reproduce the essays, but for much kindness besides. Three appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, and one, the first essay on "English Literature at the Universities," in the Nineteenth Century; and my thanks are due to the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette and to Mr. Knowles. But all of them have been carefully revised and greatly enlarged, in some cases to more than double their original form. The introductory essay is, with the exception of the opening pages, in which I have drawn on an old article of mine in the Quarterly Review, quite new; and, indeed, that may be said of a great part of the volume.

NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION

I regret to find that I have [done M. Jusserand grave injustice] in censuring him for being ignorant of the existence of the Speculum Meditantis, the MS. of which was identified after the publication of his work.

LIST OF CONTENTS

THE PRESENT FUNCTIONS OF CRITICISM

It may sound paradoxical to say that the more widely education spreads, the more generally intelligent a nation becomes, the greater is the danger to which Art and Letters are exposed. And yet how obviously is this the case, and how easily is this explained. The quality of skilled work depends mainly on the standard required of the workman. If his judges and patrons belong to the discerning few who, knowing what is excellent, are intolerant of everything which falls short of excellence, the standard required will necessarily be a high one, and the standard required will be the standard attained. In past times, for example, the only men of letters who were respected formed a portion of that highly cultivated class who will always be in the minority; and to that class, and to that class only, they appealed. A community within a community, they regarded the general public with as much indifference as the general public regarded them, and wrote only for themselves, and for those who stood on the same intellectual level as themselves. It was so in the Athens of Pericles; it was so in the Rome of Augustus; it was so in the Florence of the Medici; and a striking example of the same thing is to be found in our own Elizabethan Dramatists. Though their bread depended on the brutal and illiterate savages for whose amusement they catered, they still talked the language of scholars and poets, and forced their rude hearers to sit out works which could have been intelligible only to scholars and poets. Each felt with pride that he belonged to a great guild, which neither had, nor affected to have, anything in common with the multitude. Each strove only for the applause of those whose praise is not lightly given. Each spurred the other on. When Marlowe worked, he worked with the fear of Greene before his eyes, as Shakespeare was put on his mettle by Jonson, and Jonson by Shakespeare. We owe Hamlet and Sejanus, Much Ado about Nothing and the Alchemist, not to men who bid only for the suffrage of the mob, but to men who stood in awe of the verdict which would be passed on them by the company assembled at the Mermaid and the Devil.

As long as men of letters continue to form an intellectual aristocracy, and, stimulated by mutual rivalry, strain every nerve to excel, and as long also as they have no temptation to pander to the crowd, so long will Literature maintain its dignity, and so long will the standard attained in Literature be a high one. In the days of Dryden and Pope, in the days even of Johnson and Gibbon, the greater part of the general public either read nothing, or read nothing but politics and sermons. The few who were interested in Poetry, in Criticism, in History, were, as a rule, those who had received a learned education, men of highly cultivated tastes and of considerable attainments. A writer, therefore, who aspired to contribute to polite literature, had to choose between finding no readers at all, and finding such readers as he was bound to respect—between instant oblivion, and satisfying a class which, composed of scholars, would have turned with contempt from writings unworthy of scholars. A classical style, a refined tone, and an adequate acquaintance with the chief authors of Ancient Rome and of Modern France, were requisites, without which even a periodical essayist would have had small hope of obtaining a hearing. Whoever will turn, we do not say to the papers of Addison and his circle in the early part of the last century, or to those of Chesterfield and his circle later on, but to the average critical work of Cave's and Dodsley's hack writers, cannot fail to be struck with its remarkable merit in point of literary execution.

But as education spreads, a very different class of readers call into being a very different class of writers. Men and women begin to seek in books the amusement or excitement which they sought formerly in social dissipation. To the old public of scholars succeeds a public, in which every section of society has its representatives, and to provide this vast body with the sort of reading which is acceptable to it, becomes a thriving and lucrative calling. An immense literature springs up, which has no other object than to catch the popular ear, and no higher aim than to please for the moment. That perpetual craving for novelty, which has in all ages been characteristic of the multitude, necessitates in authors of this class a corresponding rapidity of production. The writer of a single good book is soon forgotten by his contemporaries; but the writer of a series of bad books is sure of reputation and emolument. Indeed, a good book and a bad book stand, so far as the general public is concerned, on precisely the same level, as they meet with precisely the same fate. Each presents the attraction of a new title-page. Each is glanced through, and tossed aside. Each is estimated not by its intrinsic worth, but according to the skill with which it has been puffed. Till within comparatively recent times this literature was, for the most part, represented by novels and poems, and by those light and desultory essays, sketches and ana, which are the staple commodity of our magazines. And so long as it confined itself within these bounds it did no mischief, and even some good. Flimsy and superficial though it was, it had at least the merit of interesting thousands in Art and Letters, who would otherwise have been indifferent to them. It afforded nutriment to minds which would have rejected more solid fare. To men of business and pleasure who, though no longer students, still retained the tincture of early culture, it offered the most agreeable of all methods of killing time, while scholars found in it welcome relaxation from severer studies. It thus supplied a want. Presenting attractions not to one class only, but to all classes, it grew on the world. Its patrons, who half a century ago numbered thousands, now number millions.

And as it has grown in favour, it has grown in ambition. It is no longer satisfied with the humble province which it once held, but is extending its dominion in all directions. It has its representatives in every department of Art and Letters. It has its poets, its critics, its philosophers, its historians. It crowds not our club-tables and news-stalls only, but our libraries. Thus what was originally a mere excrescence on literature, in the proper sense of the term, has now assumed proportions so gigantic, that it has not merely overshadowed that literature, but threatens to supersede it.

No thoughtful man can contemplate the present condition of current literature without disgust and alarm. We have still, indeed, lingering among us a few masters whose works would have been an honour to any age; and here and there among writers may be discerned men who are honourably distinguished by a conscientious desire to excel, men who respect themselves, and respect their calling. But to say that these are in the minority, would be to give a very imperfect idea of the proportion which their numbers bear to those who figure most prominently before the public. They are, in truth, as tens are to myriads. Their comparative insignificance is such, that they are powerless even to leaven the mass. The position which they would have occupied half a century ago, and which they may possibly occupy half a century hence, is now usurped by a herd of scribblers who have succeeded, partly by sheer force of numbers, and partly by judicious co-operation, in all but dominating literature. Scarcely a day passes in which some book is not hurried into the world, which owes its existence not to any desire on the part of its author to add to the stores of useful literature, or even to a hope of obtaining money, but simply to that paltry vanity which thrives on the sort of homage of which society of a certain kind is not grudging, and which knows no distinction between notoriety and fame. A few years ago a man who contributed articles to a current periodical, or who delivered a course of lectures, had, as a rule, the good sense to know that when they had fulfilled the purpose for which they were originally intended, the world had no more concern with them, and he would as soon have thought of inflicting them in the shape of a volume on the public, as he would have thought of issuing an edition of his private letters to his friends. Now all is changed. The first article in the creed of a person who has figured in either of these capacities, appears to be, that he is bound to force himself into notice in the character of an author. And this, happily for himself, but unhappily for the interests of literature, he is able to do with perfect facility and with perfect impunity. Books are speedily manufactured and as speedily reduced to pulp. A worthless book may be as easily invested with those superficial attractions which catch the eye of the crowd as a meritorious one. As the general public are the willing dupes of puffers, it is no more difficult to palm off on them the spurious wares of literary charlatans, than it is to beguile them into purchasing the wares of any other kind of charlatan. No one is interested in telling them the truth. Many, on the contrary, are interested in deceiving them. As a rule, the men who write bad books are the men who criticise bad books; and as they know that what they mete out in their capacity of judges to-day is what will in turn be meted out to them in their capacity of authors to-morrow, it is not surprising that the relations between them should be similar to those which Tacitus tells us existed between Vinius and Tigellinus—"nulla innocentiæ cura, sed vices impunitatis."

Meanwhile all those vile arts which were formerly confined to the circulators of bad novels and bad poems are practised without shame. It is shocking, it is disgusting to contemplate the devices to which many men of letters will stoop for the sake of exalting themselves into a factitious reputation. They will form cliques for the purpose of mutual puffery. They will descend to the basest methods of self-advertisement. And the evil is fast-spreading. Indeed, things have come to such a pass, that persons of real merit, if they have the misfortune to depend on their pens for a livelihood, must either submit to be elbowed and jostled out of the field, or take part in the same ignoble scramble for notoriety, and the same detestable system of mutual puffery. Thus everything which formerly tended to raise the standard of literary ambition and literary attainment has given place to everything which tends to degrade it. The multitude now stand where the scholar once stood. From the multitude emanate, to the multitude are addressed two-thirds of the publications which pour forth, every year, from our presses.

Viviamo scorti

Da mediocrità: sceso il sapiente,

E salita è la turba a un sol confine

Che il mondo agguaglia.

Matthew Arnold very truly observed, that one of the most unfortunate tendencies of our time was the tendency to over-estimate the performances of "the average man." The over-estimation of these performances is no longer a tendency, but an established custom. Literature, in all its branches, is rapidly becoming his monopoly. As judged and judge, as author and critic, there is every indication that he will proceed from triumph to triumph, and establish his cult wherever books are read. Now the only sphere in which "the average man" is entitled to homage is a moral one, and he is most venerable when he is passive and unambitious. But if ambition and the love of fame are awakened in him, he is capable of becoming exceedingly corrupt and of forfeiting every title to veneration. He is capable of resorting to all the devices to which men are forced to resort in manufacturing factitious reputations, to imposture, to fraud, to circulating false currencies of his own, and to assisting others in the circulation of theirs. Even when he is free from these vices, so far as their deliberate practice is concerned, he is scarcely less mischievous, if he be uncontrolled. To say that his standard is never likely to be a high one, either with reference to his own achievements or with reference to what he exacts from others, and to say that the systematic substitution of inferior standards for high ones must affect literature and all that is involved in its influence, most disastrously, is to say what will be generally acknowledged. And he has everything, unhappily, in his favour—numbers, influence, the spirit of the age. For one who sees through him and takes his measure, there are thousands who do not: for one who could discern the justice of an exposure of his shortcomings, there are thousands who would attribute that exposure to personal enmity and to dishonest motives. His power, indeed, is becoming almost irresistible. The one thing which he and his fellows thoroughly understand is the formidable advantage of co-operation. The consequence is that there are probably not half a dozen reviews and newspapers now left which they are not able practically to coerce. An editor is obliged to assume honesty in those who contribute to his columns, and also to avail himself of the services of men who can write good articles, if they write bad books. In the first case, it is not open to him to question the justice of the verdict pronounced; in the second case, the courtesy of the gentleman very naturally and properly predominates, under such circumstances, over public considerations—and how can truth be told? Nor is this all. Assuming that an editor is free from such ties, he has to consult the interests of his paper, to study popularity, and not to estrange those who are, from a commercial point of view, the mainstays of all our literary journals, those who advertise in them,—the publishers. "If," said an editor to me once, "I were to tell the truth, as forcibly as I could wish to do, about the books sent to me for review, in six months my proprietors would be in the bankruptcy court." It is in the power of the publishers to ruin any literary journal. There is probably not a single Review in London which would survive the withdrawal of the publishers' advertisements.

A more honourable class of men than those who form the majority of the London publishers does not exist, nor have the interests of Literature, as distinguished from commercial interests, ever found heartier and more ungrudging support, than they have long found in three or four of the leading firms, and as they are now finding in two or three of the firms which have been more recently established. But, unhappily, this is not everywhere the case. While the firms, to which I have referred, have never, in any way, attempted to interfere with the independence of reviewers, others have made no secret of their intention to make their patronage in advertisement dependent on favourable notices of their publications. The strain of temptation and peril to which editors are thus exposed may be estimated by the fact that, a flattering review may, if supplemented by similar ones, put some three hundred a year into the pockets of their proprietors, while severity and justice would involve a corresponding loss. It need hardly be said that no editor of a respectable review would allow any definite understanding of this kind to exist, or that any publisher would ever dare to suggest it, but there can be no doubt that such considerations have to be taken into account almost universally, and place serious restraint on freedom of judgment.

There is, it is true, another aspect of this question. Publishers must protect themselves. Though reviews offend much more frequently on the side of dishonest and interested puffery, they are very often made the vehicles of equally unscrupulous rancour and spite. If they do their readers injustice, by attempting to foist bad books on them, they do every one concerned injustice, by damning good ones. No one could blame a publisher for declining to support a paper which was continually making his books the subjects of unmerited attacks. But a publisher who attempts to prevent the truth from being told, and so secures, or seeks to secure, currency for his spurious wares, is guilty of an act which borders closely on fraud.

Another circumstance very favourable to the encouragement of inferiority, and not of inferiority only, but of charlatanism and imposture, is the increasing tendency to regard nothing of importance compared with the spirit of tolerance and charity. An all-embracing philanthropy exempts nothing from its protection. Every one must be good-natured. Severity, we are told, is quite out of fashion. Such censors as the old reviewers are now mere anachronisms. It is vain to plead that tolerance and charity must discriminate; that, like other virtues, they may be abused, and that in their abuse they may become immoral; that there are higher considerations than the feelings of individuals; and that, if to give pain or annoyance admits of no justification but necessity, necessity may exact their infliction as an exigent duty.

But this spirit of tolerance and charity has also become attenuated into the spirit of mere laissez-faire. We have no lack of real scholars and of real critics, who see through the whole thing, and probably deplore it; but they make no sign, look on with a sort of amused perplexity, and do their own work, thankful, no doubt, sometimes, when it is oppressive, that they need not be over-scrupulous about its quality. If, occasionally, they get a little impatient and indulge their genius, protest goes no further than sarcasm and irony, so fine that it is intelligible only among themselves; while the objects of their satire, as well as the general public, missing the one and misinterpreting the other, take it all for applause. Resistance, it is said, is useless. Literature is a trade. What has come was inevitable: vive la bagatelle, and drift with the stream.

And now let us consider what are the results of all this. The first and most important is the degradation of criticism. Criticism is to Literature what legislation and government are to States. If they are in able and honest hands all goes well; if they are in weak and dishonest hands all is anarchy and mischief. And as government in a Republic, the true analogy to the sphere of which we are speaking, is represented not by those who form the minority in its councils, but by those who form the majority, so in criticism, it is not on the few but on the many among those who represent it, that its authority and influence depend. And what are its characteristics in the hands of its prevailing majority—in the hands of those who are its legislators in a realm co-extensive with the reading world? It is not criticism at all. To criticism, in the true sense of the term, it has no claim even to approximation. It seems to have resolved itself into something which wants a name,—something which is partly dithyramb and partly rhetoric. Without standards, without touchstones, without principles, without knowledge, it appears to be regarded as the one calling for which no equipment and no training are needed. What a master of the art has called the final fruit of careful discipline and of much experience is assumed to come spontaneously. A man of literary tastes is born cultured. A critic, like a poet, is the pure product of nature. Such canons as these "critics" have are the mysterious and somewhat perplexing evolutions of their own inner consciousness, or derived, not from the study of classical writers in English or in any other language, of all of whom they are probably profoundly ignorant, but from a current acquaintance with the writings of contemporaries, who are, in intelligence and performance, a little in advance of themselves. But what they lack in attainments they make up in impudence. The effrontery of some of these "critics," whose verdicts, ludicrous to relate, are daily recorded as "opinions of the Press," literally exceeds belief. They will sit in judgment on books written in languages of whose very alphabets they are ignorant. They will pose as authorities and pronounce ex cathedrâ on subjects literary, historical, and scientific of which they know nothing more than what they have contrived to pick up from the works which they are "reviewing." Their estimates of the books, on the merits and demerits of which they undertake to enlighten the public, correspond with their qualifications for forming them. Books displaying in their writers the grossest ignorance of the very rudiments of the subjects treated, and literally swarming with blunders and absurdities, all of which pass undetected and unnoticed, are made the subjects of elaborate panegyrics, which would need some qualification if applied to the very classics in the subjects under discussion. Books, on the other hand, of unusual and distinguished merit are despatched summarily in a few lines of equally undeserved depreciation; books written in the worst taste and in the vilest style are pronounced to be models of both. Sobriety, measure, and discrimination have no place either in the creed or in the practice of these writers. They think in superlatives; they express themselves in superlatives. It never seems to occur to them that if criticism has to reckon with Mr. Le Gallienne it has also to reckon with Shakespeare; that if it has to take the measure of Mr. Hall Caine, it has likewise to take the measure of Cervantes and Fielding, and that of some dozen prose writers and poets, it cannot be pronounced, at the same time of each, that he is "the greatest living master of English prose," or "without parallel for his superlative command of all the resources of rhythmical expression." There is one accomplishment in which these critics are particularly adroit, and that is in keeping out of controversy, and so avoiding all chance of being called to account. For this reason they deal more in eulogy than in censure, for the public is less likely to complain of a bad book being foisted on them for a good one, than its irate author to sit silent under reproof.

If we go a little higher, things are almost as bad, if not quite so ridiculous. In everything but in criticism it is necessary to specialize. A man who posed as an authority on all the literatures of the world, and on the history of every nation in the world, would be very justly set down as an impostor. And yet pretentions which men would be the first to ridicule, as private individuals, they do not scruple to claim, as critics. An historical student enriches History with a volume throwing new and important light on some obscure episode or period; a classical student deserves the gratitude of scholars for an invaluable monograph; English Literature or one of the Continental Literatures is illustrated by a series of dissertations as instructive as they are original; or a truly memorable contribution has been made to political philosophy, to æsthetics, or to ethics. What is their fate? It is by no means improbable that they will be 'reviewed,' in the course of a few days, by the same man for three or four, or it may be for five or six, daily and weekly journals, and their fortune in the market made or marred by a censor who has probably done no more than glance at their half-cut pages, and who, if he had studied them from end to end, would have been no more competent to take their measure than he would have been to write them. This leads, it is needless to say, to every kind of abuse: to works which deserve to be authorities on the subjects of which they treat dropping at once into oblivion, to works which every scholar knows to be below contempt usurping their places; to the deprivation of all stimulus to honourable exertion on the part of authors of ability and industry; to the encouragement of charlatans and fribbles; to gross impositions on the public. A very amusing and edifying record might be compiled partly out of a selection of the various verdicts passed contemporaneously by reviews on particular works, and partly out of comparisons of the subsequent fortunes of works with their fortunes while submitted to this censorship.

But it is not these causes only which contribute to the degradation of criticism. A very important factor is the prevalence, or rather the predominance, of mere prejudice, the prejudice of cliques in favour of cliques, the prejudice of cliques against cliques, the prejudice of the veteran against or in favour of the novice, the subsequent compensation, in corresponding prejudice on the part of the novice, when his novitiate is over. The two things which never seem to be considered are the interests of Literature and the interests of the public. The appearance of a work by the member of a particular coterie is the signal, on the one hand, for a series of preposterously intemperate eulogies, and for a series, on the other hand, of equally intemperate depreciations, in such organs as are accessible to both parties. If a work, with any pretension to originality, by a previously unknown author makes its appearance, it is pretty sure to fare in one of three ways: it will scarcely be noticed at all; it will be made the theme of a philippic against innovating eccentricities and newfangled notions; or it will fall into the hands of a critic who is on the look-out for a "discovery." Its fortune, so far as notoriety is concerned, will, in that case, be made. The critic, thus on his mettle and with his character for discernment at stake, will not only become proportionately vociferous but will rally his equally vociferous partisans. Hyperbole will be heaped on hyperbole, rodomontade on rodomontade, till real merit will be made ridiculous, and the unhappy author awake at last, to assume his true proportions, in a Fool's Paradise.

And to this pass has criticism come, and Literature generally, in almost all its branches, is necessarily following suit. It would be no exaggeration to say, that the sole encouragement now left to authors to produce good books is the satisfaction of their own conscience, and the approbation of a few discerning judges; and this attained, they must starve if their bread depends upon their pen. It is not that a good book will not be praised, but that bad books are praised still more; it is not that it will fail to find fair and competent reviewers, but that for one fair and competent reviewer it will find fifty who are unfair and incompetent. It is on its acceptance, not with the few who can estimate its merits, but with the many who take that estimate on trust from judges, whose competence or incompetence they are equally unable to gauge, that the possibility of a book yielding any return to its author depends. The public neither can nor will distinguish. A book which has two or three favourable press notices which are merited cannot stand against a book having twenty or thirty which are unmerited. Nor is this all. Measured and discriminating eulogy, which means precisely what it expresses, and which is always the note of sound and just criticism, is to the uninitiated poor recommendation compared with that which has no limitation but extremes. How can the still small voice of truth expect to get a hearing amid a bellowing Babel of its undistinguishable mimic? What inducement has an author to aim at excellence, to spend three or four years on a monograph or a history that it may be sold for waste paper, when some miserable compilation, vamped up in as many weeks, will, with a little management, give him notoriety and fill his purse? There is not a scholar, not a discerning reader in England who will not bear me witness when I say that, as a rule, the best books produced in Belles Lettres are those of which the general public knows nothing, and that he has been guided to them sometimes by pure accident, and sometimes, it may be, by a depreciatory notice or curt paragraph in "our library table" limbo. And what does this mean? It means that a writer has discovered that it is impossible for him to have a conscience, or aim at an honourable reputation, unless he can afford to lose money. It means more; it means that publishers are obliged to discourage the production of solid and scholarly works. It is notorious that the Delegates of the Clarendon Press at Oxford, and one or two firms in London, having regard to the honourable traditions of their predecessors, have wished to maintain those traditions by encouraging the production of such works, and have, at a great pecuniary loss, persevered in this ambition. But no publisher can continue to multiply books which do not pay their expenses, and whose sale begins and ends in the remainder market.

This state of things is the more deplorable when we consider its effect, not merely in degrading and corrupting Literature on its productive side, but in detracting so seriously from its efficacy on its influential side. During the last few years the rapid spread of higher education, the popularization of liberal culture through such agencies as the University Extension Lectures, the National Home Reading Union and similar institutions have called into being an immense and constantly multiplying class of serious readers and students. These already number tens of thousands, they will before long number hundreds of thousands. Now it is of the utmost importance that these readers, who are quite prepared to appreciate what is excellent, should be guided to what is excellent, and discouraged in every way from conversing with what is bad and inferior in Literature. But how is this to be done when those who are striving, in every way, to raise the standard of popular taste and of popular culture, as teachers, find all their efforts counteracted by the intense activity of those who are doing their utmost to degrade both, as writers. It is only those engaged in education, and more particularly in popular education, who can understand the extent of the mischief which bookmakers and the puffers of bookmakers are doing, who can understand the tone, the taste, the temper induced by the habitual and exclusive perusal of the writings characteristic of these pests,—the inaccuracies and errors, the misrepresentations and absurdities, to which these writings give currency.

In the days of our forefathers, a reader of literary tastes, if he wished to acquaint himself with an English classic, went to the fountain head and read Spenser or Milton, Pope or Addison for himself. If he desired to know what criticism had said about them, he had criticism of authority at hand, and he consulted it. In our day it is about an even chance whether the ordinary reader would trouble himself to turn to the originals or not: he would probably content himself with the notices of them in some current manual of English Literature, or with some essay or monograph. Now, in the myriads of such publications, in vogue or out of vogue, knocked under by their successors or scuffling with their contemporaries, he might have the luck to light on a good guide; he might have the luck to light on Dean Church, or Mark Pattison, or Mr. Leslie Stephen, or Professor Courthope, or Mr. Frederic Harrison; but he is much more likely to make his way to a luminary in the last well-puffed "series." The first article in the creed of the modern book-maker seems to be that the appearance or existence of a good book is a sufficient justification for the production of a bad one to take its place. An excellent monograph is published, and is popular. This is the signal for the manufacture of half a dozen inferior ones, which are mutually destructive, and serve no end except to substitute bad books for a good one, and to make the good one forgotten. Again, a work which has long been classical in criticism is assumed not to be "up to date," and is either edited on this hypothesis, or we have another substituted for it. This in turn yields its vogue—for fashions change quickly in modern taste—to a similar experiment, till a third is announced. Of the relation of criticism to principles, or indeed to anything else but to their own whims or impressions, these iconoclasts appear to be profoundly unaware.

It requires, needless to say, the utmost wariness and care on the part of those who regulate, and on the part of those who are engaged in, education, to keep this inferior literature in its place. If it were allowed to make its way authoritatively into our schools and Universities, or indeed into any of our educational institutions, the consequences would be most disastrous. It is not so much that it would disseminate error as that it would become influential in more serious ways, æsthetically in its influence on taste, morally in its influence on tone and character, intellectually in lowering the whole standard of aim and attainment in studies.

That the evils which have been described admit of no remedy at present, or perhaps in the present generation, may be fully conceded. But they may be palliated if they cannot be cured, and they must be palliated by the agents to whom we may ultimately look for their cure, education and fearless criticism. As their origin may be mainly ascribed to the failure of the Universities to adapt themselves to new conditions, so on the willingness of the Universities to repair their error must depend all possibility of rectifying the results of it. From its organization at the Universities everything comprehended in the system of liberal study takes its ply; its standards are there determined, its methods formulated, its aims defined. As a subject of teaching, and as the result of teaching, in its relation to theory and in its relation to practice, it there receives an impression which is permanent. It has been so with classical scholarship, and with Philology; it has been so with Philosophy and Theology, with Jurisprudence and History. What has been imparted in the lecture-rooms of Oxford and Cambridge has orally, and by the pen, become influential wherever these subjects are represented. There is not an educational institute in Great Britain or in the colonies, there is not a serious magazine or review on which it has not set its seal. We have a striking illustration of this in the case of Modern History. Some thirty years ago it was practically unrepresented, either at Oxford or Cambridge. Since then its study has been organized. What has been the result? It has become one of the most flourishing branches of learning. It has reduced chaos to order; it has raised its teaching, and by implication its literature, to a very high standard; it has put the canaille of sciolists and fribbles into their proper place; while disciplining energy it has directed it to fruitful objects; it has revolutionized the study of the whole subject.

Thus the condition and fortune of everything which is affected by education depend on the Universities. All that they do, or neglect to do, passes into precedent. There is nothing susceptible of educational impression which does not take its colour and its characteristics from them. They have made the subjects which are represented in their schools what they are, and every intelligent English citizen proud and grateful.

But, owing to a disastrous confusion between two branches of study which are radically and essentially distinct,—Philology and Belles Lettres,—both Oxford and Cambridge have not only left unorganized, but assisted in the degradation of studies, which are of as much concern, and vital concern, to national life as any which are represented in their Schools. To leave an important department of education unrecognised in their system, is sufficient cause for surprise and regret; but that they should be doing all in their power to prevent any possibility of such a defect being supplied is deplorable. And yet this is what is being done. That Chairs, Schools and Degrees may be established in the interests of Philology, Philology is, by a palpable fiction, identified with Literature. As the result of what the late Professor Huxley denounced as "a fraud upon letters," a Chair founded in the interests of Literature was at Oxford appropriated by the philologists. This has been followed by the establishment of a School, in which all that can provide for the honour of Philology is blended with all that contributes to the degradation of Literature; while, to give further currency and authority to this absurd complication, the approval of a thesis, on some subject pertaining purely to Philology, entitles the writer to the diploma, not of a Doctor in Philology, but of a Doctor in Literature!

Meanwhile, to make confusion worse confounded, the Universities, or, to speak more correctly, a party in the Universities, are undertaking to provide the country with teachers for the dissemination of literary culture,—for the interpretation of Literature in the proper sense of the term. Whether this is done competently or incompetently depends, of course, and must depend purely on accident, on the willingness and ability, that is to say, of individual teachers to educate themselves. Common standards and common aims they have none. Each does what is right in his own eyes. As some have graduated in the classical schools, some in the Mediæval and Modern Languages Tripos, some in Modern History, some in Moral Science or Theology, and some in nothing, there is naturally much variety in their methods and aims.

But it is when we turn to the works in modern Belles Lettres, and more particularly to those dealing with English Literature, which the University Presses publish, that we realize the full significance of this anarchy. It would not be going too far to say, that all which is worst in current literature, when at its worst finds in some of these works comprehensive illustration. It is indeed almost an even chance whether a work issuing from those Presses is excellent, whether it is indifferent, or whether it is executed with shameful incompetence.[1]

All, therefore, so far as Belles Lettres are concerned is chaos at the Universities, and all consequently is chaos everywhere else.

The next appeal—for all appeals to the Universities have been vain—must be made to those who regulate the curriculums where Literature is made a subject of teaching. Let them rigorously exclude all but the best books. Let them discourage the study of such Epitomes, Manuals, and Histories as are the work of mere irresponsible book makers, and prescribe in its place the study of literary masterpieces. Without excluding the best modern poetry and prose, let most attention—for obvious reasons—be paid to the writings of the older masters. Let them lay special stress on the study of criticism,—of works treating of its principles, of works illustrating the application of its principles to particular writers; and let no work be recognised which is not of classical authority. Translations should, of course, as a rule, be avoided; but in such a subject as the principles of criticism, there is not the smallest reason why those works which are most excellent in other languages, such as the Treatise on the Sublime, and some portions of Aristotle's Poetic, such as Lessing's Laocoon, Schiller's Letters on Æsthetics, the best Essays of Sainte-Beuve should not be included.[2] Nor can it be emphasized too strongly that the theory on which all literary teaching should proceed is that its object is not so much to plant as to cultivate, not so much to convey information, which, after all, is but its medium, as to inspire, to refine, to elevate. I cannot but think, too, that the foundations of all this might be laid much earlier than they are, especially in our classical schools, by encouraging, as, according to Coleridge, Dr. Boyer used to do, the study of some of our greater writers, such as Shakespeare and Milton, side by side with that of Homer and Sophocles.

But it is in criticism, in criticism competently, honestly, and fearlessly applied, that the chief salvation lies. There is probably no review or newspaper in London which does not number among its contributors men of the first order of ability and intelligence, men who are real scholars and real critics, men who see through all that I have been describing and are sick of it. Let them not remain an impotent minority, but combine, and become influential. If popular Literature aspires to be ambitious, and trespasses on the domains of scholarship and criticism, let them submit it to the tests which it invites, let them try it by the standards which it exacts. There is no more reason for the co-existence of two standards, as is now practically the case, in the production of writings treating of our own Literature than there is in the production of writings dealing with Classical Literature. The work of any one who meddles with the last, even in the way of popularizing it, is instantly called by scholars to a strict account, and sciolism and charlatanry are exploded at once. But in the case of our own Literature there is no such solidarity. It seems to be assumed that a scholar is one thing and a man of letters another, that the difference between work which appeals to connoisseurs and work which appeals to the public is not simply a difference in degree, but a difference in kind, and that the criteria of the multitude need be the only criteria of what is addressed to the multitude. The manuscript of a History of Greek or Roman Literature, or a monograph on an ancient classic, if it were not at least solid and trustworthy, would have no chance of ever getting beyond a publisher's reader. But a History of English Literature, or a monograph on an English classic, teeming with errors in fact and with absurdities in theory and opinion, will not improbably be regarded as an authority, and pass, unrevised, into more than one edition.

The progressive degradation of Literature and of what is involved in its influence is, and must be, inevitable, unless criticism is prepared watchfully and faithfully to do its duty. Let it guard jealously the standards and touchstones of excellence as distinguished from mediocrity, even though it may be prudent to make great allowances in applying them; let it institute a rigorous censorship over books designed for the use of students at the Universities and in other educational establishments; let it permit no writer to pose in a false position, and deliberately trade on the ignorance and inexperience of his readers; let it discourage in every way the production of worthless and superfluous books, whether in poetry or in prose; and lastly, while fully recognising how much must be conceded to professional authors writing against time, having to court popularity or being fettered by conditions imposed on them by their employers, let it take care that their productions shall at least not be mischievous, either by disseminating error or by corrupting taste.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] One illustration of the indifference of the authorities of our University Presses to the interest of Literature is so scandalous that it must be specified. Fourteen years ago a series of lectures was delivered by the then Clarke Lecturer in the Hall of Trinity College, Cambridge. They were afterwards published under the title of From Shakespeare to Pope, and reviewed in the Quarterly Review for October, 1886. The lectures, as the Review showed, absolutely swarmed with blunders, many of them so gross as to be almost incredible. Ever since then the volume has been circulated by the Press, absolutely unrevised, indeed without a single correction, and is now in circulation.

[2] Cf. what Milton says in prescribing the study of masterpieces in criticism: "This would make them (students) soon perceive what despicable creatures our common rimers and play-writers be, and show them what religious, what glorious and magnificent use might be made of poetry, both in Divine and human things. From hence, and not till now, will be the right season of forming them to be able writers and composers in every excellent matter, when they shall be thus fraught with an universal insight into things."—Tractate on Education.

ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITIES

I. LANGUAGE VERSUS LITERATURE AT OXFORD

To say that the anarchy which has resulted from confusing the distinction between the study and interpretation of Literature as the expression of art and genius, and its study and interpretation as a mere monument of language, has had a most disastrous effect on education generally, would be to state very imperfectly the truth of the case. It has led to inadequate and even false conceptions of what constitutes Literature. It has led to all that is of essential importance in literary study being ignored, and all that is of secondary or accidental interest being preposterously magnified; to the substitution of grammatical and verbal commentary for the relation of a literary masterpiece to history, to philosophy, to æsthetics; to the mechanical inculcation of all that can be imparted, as it has been acquired, by cramming, for the intelligent application of principles to expression. It has led to the severance of our Literature from all that constitutes its vitality and virtue as an active power, and from all that renders its development and peculiarities intelligible as a subject of historical study. In a word, it has led to a total misconception of the ends at which literary instruction should aim, as well as of its most appropriate instruments and methods. All this is illustrated nowhere more strikingly than in the publications of the two great University Presses. It would be easy to point to editions of English classics, and to works on English Literature, bearing the imprimatur of Oxford and Cambridge, in which all that is worst in the opposite extremes of pedantry and dilettantism finds ludicrous expression.

And in thus speaking we are saying nothing more than is notorious, nothing more than is admitted, and admitted unreservedly, in the Universities themselves, or at least at Oxford. But different sections of Academic society regard the matter in different lights. The majority of the classical professors and teachers, deprecating any attempt on the part of the University to meddle with "Literature," treat the whole thing as a joke, and, so far from supposing that the reputation of the University is concerned, find infinite amusement in the constant exposures which are being made in the reviews and newspapers of the absurdities of the "English Literature party." They regard the "study of Literature" precisely as they regard the University Extension Movement—the one as a contemptible excrescence on our Academic system, the other as a contemptible excrescence on Academic curricula. Another section takes a very different view. Recognising the reasonableness of the appeals which have, during the last twelve years, been made to Oxford to place the study of Literature on the same sound footing as she has placed that of other subjects included in her courses, and discerning clearly that what is required cannot be obtained as long as the interests of Philology and those of Literature continue to collide, this party, unhappily a small minority, has pleaded for the establishment of a School of Literature. They have very properly laid stress on four points: First, that, as the chief justification for the establishment of such a School is the fact that the University is undertaking by innumerable agencies, its Press, its oral teachers both at home and abroad, to disseminate liberal instruction through the medium of English Literature, the principal object of the School should be the education of these agencies. Secondly, they have insisted that, if the interpretation of Literature is to effect what it is of power to effect, if, as an instrument of political instruction, it is to warn, to admonish, to guide, if, as an instrument of moral and æsthetic instruction, it is to exercise that influence on taste, on tone, on sentiment, on opinion, on character—on all, in short, which is susceptible of educational impression—it must both be properly defined and liberally studied; and they contend that, if it is to be so defined and so studied outside the Universities, it must first be so defined and so studied within. Thirdly, they insist that the study of our own Literature should be associated with that of ancient classical literature, for two indisputable reasons: first, because the basis of all liberal literary culture, of a high standard, must necessarily rest on competent classical attainments, and because, historically speaking, the development and characteristics of the greater part of what is most valuable in our Literature would be as unintelligible, without reference to the Greek and Roman classics, as the Literature of Rome would be without reference to that of Greece. Fourthly, they point out that, as our Literature is, in various intimate ways, associated with the Literatures of Italy, France, and Germany, and that, as an acquaintance with the classics of those countries must form an essential element in a literary education, the comparative study of those Literatures and our own ought, by all means, to be encouraged and provided for. And, fifthly, they show that what is demanded is perfectly feasible. There already exists in the University, they contend, every facility for organizing such a course of Literature as is required. All that is needed is co-ordination. In the Classical Moderations and in the Literæ Humaniores Honour Schools a liberal literary education on the classical side is already provided; two-thirds in fact of the discipline, culture, and attainments desiderated in a literary teacher it is the aim of those Schools to impart. The Taylorian Institute provides instruction in the languages and literatures of the Continent; and, if its professors could be roused into a little more activity, a youth might, in two years, if he pleased,—and that side by side with his severer studies—acquire something more than a superficial acquaintance with the language and writings of Dante and Machiavelli, of Montaigne and Molière, of Lessing and Goethe. What he could not obtain would be instruction and guidance in the study of our own Literature. In a word, all that is required to secure what this party plead for is simply the establishment of a School of English Literature, in the proper acceptation of the term, and the co-ordination of studies which are at present pursued independently. It was proposed that it should take the form of a Post-graduate Honour School, standing in the same relation to the other schools in the University as the old Law and History School used to stand to the old Literæ Humaniores School, and as the examination for the Bachelorship in Civil Law now stands to the ordinary Law School. Thus a youth who had graduated in honours in Moderations and in the Final Classical School, who had studied modern literatures at the Taylorian and our own Literature under its professor, or even by himself, would have an opportunity of displaying his qualifications for an honour diploma in Literature. But the appeals and arguments of this party have been of no avail.

Next come the philologists. They are in possession of the field. All the revenues supporting the Chairs of Language and Literature are their monopoly. They have steadily resisted all attempts on the part of what may be denominated the Liberal party to encroach on their dominions. In their eyes the Universities are simply nurseries for esoteric specialists, and to talk of bringing them into touch with national life is, in their estimation, mere cant. Their attitude towards Literature, generally, is precisely that of the classical party towards our own Literature; they regard it simply as the concern of men of letters, journalists, dilettants, and Extension lecturers. They defeated sixteen years ago an attempt to establish a Chair of English Literature by transforming it into a Chair of Language and securing it for themselves. They attempted, subsequently, to supplement what they had done by the establishment of a School of Language on the model of the Mediæval and Modern Languages Tripos at Cambridge. They were defeated by a coalition of the classical party, the Liberals, of whom we have just spoken, and a third party which insisted on a compromise between Philology and Literature. Reviving the scheme, they have, by accepting the modifications of the compromisers, just succeeded in getting it accepted. The new School of English Language and Literature is the result of that compromise.

Now it will not be disputed that if the Universities ought, in the interests of liberal culture, to provide adequately for instruction in Literature, they ought also, in the interests of science, to provide adequately for instruction in Philology. It is a branch of learning of immense importance. It is, and ought to be, the peculiar care of Universities, and nothing could be more derogatory to a University than deficiency in such a study. But it is a study in itself. As a science it has no connection with Literature. Indeed the instincts and faculties which separate the temperament of the mathematician from the temperament of the poet are not more radical and essential than the instincts and faculties which separate the sympathetic student of Philology from the sympathetic student of Literature. But no science resolves itself more easily into a pseudo-science, and it is in this degenerate form that it has become linked with Literature and been, in all ages, the butt of wits and men of letters. Nothing but anarchy can result till this mutually degrading alliance be dissolved. It has been forced on the philologists by the compromise to which reference has been made. Let them be free to rescind it. Let the "pia vota" of Professor Max Müller be fulfilled and Oxford have her School of Philology. That such a School should be established is desirable for three reasons. In the first place, it would define what is at present vague and indeterminate, the scope and functions of Philology. Secondly, it would place that study on its proper footing, and, by placing it on its proper footing, it would not only demonstrate its relation to other studies, but it would enable it to effect fully what it is competent to effect. Thirdly, it might, and probably would, do something to relieve Oxford of the opprobrium of being behind the rest of the learned world in this branch of science. The School would probably not attract many students, for Philology, unlike Literature, can never appeal to more than a small minority. If, therefore, the choice lay between the institution of a School of Philology and that of a School of Literature, there can be no doubt which should have precedence. But no such choice is offered. If the philologists were not strong enough to refuse to compromise, they are strong enough to crush any attempt to forestall them.

Let us now turn to the constitution of the School which has been the result of this arrangement, and which will authorize the University to confer, not, be it remembered, an ordinary, but an honour, degree in English Language and Literature. The following are the Regulations. The subjects for examination are four. 1. Portions of English authors. 2. The History of the English Language. 3. The History of English Literature. 4. In the case of those candidates who aim at a place in the first or second class, a Special Subject of language or literature. The portions of the authors specified are these. Beowulf, the texts printed in Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader, King Horn, Havelok; Laurence Minot, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Prologue, The Knight's Tale, The Man of Law's, The Prioress's, Sir Thopas, The Monk's, The Nun Priest's, The Pardoner's, The Clerk's, The Squire's, The Second Nun's, The Canon Yeoman's. Next come the Prologue and the first seven passus (text B) of Piers Ploughman. Then come select plays of Shakespeare, chosen apparently at haphazard, Love's Labour's Lost, Romeo and Juliet, Richard the Second, Twelfth Night, Julius Cæsar, Winter's Tale, King Lear. Then we have the following extraordinary farrago:—

Bacon's Essays.

Milton, with a special study of Paradise Lost and the Areopagitica.

Dryden's Essay on Epic (sic).

Pope's Satires and Epistles.

Johnson's Lives of the Poets—the Lives of Eighteenth-Century Poets.

Goldsmith's Citizen of the World.

Burke's Thoughts on the Present Discontents.

Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth and Coleridge), Shelley's Adonais.[3]

The second part of the examination will be on the History of the English Language. "Candidates will be examined in Gothic (the Gospel of St. Mark), and in translation from Old English and Middle English authors not specially offered."

This is to be followed by the History of English Literature, to which portion of the Regulations the following odd clause is appended: "the examination will include the History of Criticism and of style in prose and verse." Last come the special subjects designed for "those who aim at a place in the First or Second Class." Six of these consist of certain prescribed periods of English Literature. The other subjects are as follows:—

(1) Old English Language and Literature down to 1150 A.D.

(2) Middle English Language and Literature, 1150-1400 A.D.

(3) Old French Philology with special reference to Anglo-Norman French, together with a special study of the following texts:—Computus of Phillippe de Thaun, Voyage of St. Brandan, The Song of Dermot and the Earl, Les Contes moralisés de Nicole Bozon.

(4) Scandinavian Philology, with special reference to Icelandic, together with a special study of the following texts:—Gylfaginning, Laxdæla Saga, Gunnlaugssaga Ormstungu.

(5) French Literature down to 1400 A.D. in its bearing on English Literature.

(6) Italian Literature as influencing English down to the death of Milton.

(7) German Literature from 1500 A.D. to the death of Goethe in its bearing on English Literature.

(8) History of Scottish Poetry.

Such is the scheme which will, in conjunction with the similar scheme at Cambridge, supply England and the colonies with their literary professors. Let us examine it in detail. The first thing which strikes us is the contrast between the competence and judgment displayed in the organization of the philological part of the course and the confusion, inadequacy, and flimsiness so conspicuous in the literary part. Nothing could be more satisfactory than the provisions made for the study of Language. They are obviously the work of legislators who knew what they were about, and who, but for the thwarting requirements of the provisions for Literature, would have proceeded to a superstructure worthy of the foundation. A student who, in addition to having mastered the prescribed works in Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, and Middle English, is competent to translate and comment on unprepared passages from those dialects, has certainly laid the foundation of sound scholarship in an important department of Philology. In the fact that what properly belongs to his study has been relegated to the subjects out of which he has only the option of choosing one, we have a lamentable illustration of the effects of the compromise forced on the philologists. If, for the literary portion of the curriculum, a candidate could substitute the first four of the special subjects, he would have completed a thoroughly satisfactory course of Philology, so far at least as relates to the Teutonic and Romance languages.

But to pass from what concerns Philology to what concerns Literature. Now in considering this point it is necessary to remember that we are not dealing with the regulations of any subordinate institution or curriculum, with provincial Universities and seminaries, or with schemes of study in which Literature is only one out of many subjects. We are dealing with a Final Honour School at Oxford, with regulations which will inevitably form a precedent and model wherever the study of English literature shall be organized in Great Britain. We are dealing with a school which is to educate those who are to educate the country. Nothing, therefore, could be more disastrous than unsoundness and deficiency in the provisions of such an institution, nothing more deplorable than its giving countenance and authority to error and inadequacy. It is not too much to say that, if this scheme had been designed with the express object of degrading the standard of literary teaching, and of perpetuating all that is worst in present systems, it could hardly have been better adapted for its purpose. Not to dwell upon subordinate defects, it completely severs the study of our own literature from that of the ancient classical literatures. It necessitates no knowledge of any of the Continental literatures. It ignores absolutely the higher criticism. Contracting Literature within the narrowest bounds, its selection of books for special study is worthy of an Army Examination. In the wretched jumble in which Goldsmith's Citizen of the World jostles Shelley's Adonais and Burke's Thoughts on the Present Discontents Wordsworth's and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads, no attempt is made to discriminate between compositions which are representative, either critically of the work of particular authors, or historically of particular epochs, and works which have no such significance, while many of the most important departments of our prose Literature are unrepresented. Nor is this all. It affords every facility for cramming. It is adapted to test nothing but what may be mechanically acquired and mechanically imparted, what may be poured out from lectures into notebooks, and from notebooks into examination papers. Proceeding on the assumption that a literary education is merely the acquisition of positive knowledge, it neither requires nor encourages, as the prescription of an essay or thesis, or even "taste-paper," might have done, any of the finer qualities of literary culture, such, for example, as a sense of style, sound judgment, good taste, the touch of the scholar. We can assure these legislators, and we speak from knowledge, that, setting aside the philological portion of this curriculum, which is, so far as it goes, solid enough, an experienced crammer, would, in about three months furnish an astute youth with all that is requisite for graduating in this school.

But to proceed to details. Conceive the qualifications of an interpreter and critic of English Literature, a graduate in Honours in his subject, whose education has proceeded on the hypothesis that he need have no acquaintance with the classics of Greece and Rome. Would any competent scholar deny that the history of English Literature, in its mature expression, is little less than the history of the modifications of native genius and characteristics by classical influence, that the development and peculiarities of our epic, dramatic, elegiac, didactic, pastoral, much of our lyric, of our satire and of other species of our poetry is, historically speaking, unintelligible without reference to ancient classical literature? That what is true of our poetry is true of our criticism, of our oratory, sacred and secular, of our dialectic and epistolary Literature, of our historical composition, of the greater part, in short, of our national masterpieces in prose? What, indeed, the Literature of Greece was to that of Rome, the Literatures of Greece and Rome have been to ours.[4]

It was the influence of Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Menander, Diphilus, which transformed the Ludi Scenici and the Atellan farces into the tragedies of Ennius and Pacuvius and the comedies of Plautus and Terence. It was the influence of the Roman drama and of a drama modelled on the Roman which transformed, so far at least as structure and style are concerned, our similarly rude native experiments into the tragedies and comedies of Shakespeare. On the epics of Greece were modelled the epics of Rome, and on the epics of Greece and Rome are modelled our own great epics. Of our elegiac poetry, to employ the term in its conventional sense, one portion is largely indebted to Theocritus, Moschus, and Virgil, and another to Catullus and Ovid. Almost all our didactic poetry is modelled on the didactic poetry of Rome. Theocritus and Virgil have furnished the archetypes for our eclogues and pastorals. One important branch of our lyric poetry springs directly from Pindar, another important branch directly from Horace, another directly from the choral odes of the Attic dramatists and of Seneca. Our heroic satire, from Hall to Lord Lytton, is simply the counterpart—often, indeed, a mere imitation—of Roman satire. And if this is true of our satire, it is equally true of our best ethical poetry. The Epistles, which fill so large a space in the poetical literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, derive their origin from those of Horace. To the Heroides of Ovid we owe a whole series of important poems from Drayton to Cawthorn. The Greek anthology and Martial have furnished the archetypes of our epigrams and of our epitaphs. It is the same with our prose. The history of English eloquence begins from the moment when the Roman classics moulded and coloured our style, when periodic prose was modelled on Cicero and Livy, when analytic prose was modelled on Sallust, Seneca, and Tacitus. With the exception of fiction, there is no important branch of our prose composition, the development and characteristics of which are historically intelligible without reference to the ancients. How radically inadequate must any study of the principles of criticism be, which has no reference to the critical works of the Greek and Roman writers, is obvious. But it is not merely in tracing the development and explaining the peculiarities generally of our prose and of our poetry that competent classical scholarship is indispensable. Is it not notorious that in each generation, from Spenser to Tennyson, from More to Froude, our leading poets and prose writers have been, with very few exceptions, men nourished on classical literature and saturated with its influence? Many entire masterpieces, much, and in some cases the greater portion, of other masterpieces, particularly in our poetry, are simply unintelligible—we are speaking, of course, of serious critical students—except to classical scholars. Take, for example, the Faerie Queen, and the Hymns of Spenser, Milton's Paradise Lost, Comus, Lycidas, and Samson Agonistes, Pope's satires, the two great odes of Gray, Collins's odes to Fear and the Passions, Wordsworth's great Ode and his Laodamia, Shelley's Adonais and Prometheus Unbound, Landor's Hellenics, much of the poetry of Tennyson, Browning, and Matthew Arnold. Indeed it would be as preposterous to attempt any critical study of our Literature, without reference to the ancients, as it would be for a man to set up as an interpreter in Roman Literature without reference to the Greek.

And the effect of this severance of the study of the ancient classics from the study of our own is written large throughout the whole domain of education, in the instruction given in schools and institutes, in the monographs, manuals, and "editions" which pour from scholastic presses. In one of the most popular manuals now in circulation, the writer gravely tells us that "the pastoral name of Lycidas was chosen by Milton to signify purity of character," adding "in Theocritus a goat was so called λευκιτας for its whiteness," that Comus "the drinker of human blood" revelled in the palace of Agamemnon.[5] Another writer confounds the "choruses" in Shakespeare with the choruses of the Greek plays. Another, commenting on the symbolism of ivy in the wreath of a poet, tells us that it indicates "constancy."[6] Nothing is more common than to find elaborate critical comments on the Faerie Queen without the smallest reference to its connection with Aristotle's Ethics, and on Wordsworth's great Ode without any reference to Plato. But such is the confidence reposed in Professor Earle and his theory, and so determined are the legislators for the new School to exclude all connection with classical literature, that it is not admitted even as a special subject. A candidate has, as we have seen, the option of studying the influence exercised on old English literature by French, and on later literature by Italian and German; but the one thing which he has not the option of studying is the influence exercised on it by the literatures of Greece and Rome. Some of our readers may remember that a few years ago a public appeal was made for an expression of opinion on the question of associating the study of our own classics and that of the ancients. Opinions were elicited from many of the most distinguished men in England. They were all but unanimous, not merely in supporting the association, but in deprecating the severance. So wrote Mr. Gladstone, Cardinal Manning, Professor Jowett, Matthew Arnold, Lord Lytton, Mr. John Morley, Walter Pater, [Addington Symonds]; so wrote the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, the Rector of Lincoln, the President of Magdalen, the Warden of All Souls, and many others. We may add, also—for we are now at liberty to state it publicly—that this was emphatically the opinion of Robert Browning. We cannot, of course, quote these opinions in extenso,[7] and that of the late Professor Jowett and a portion of that of Mr. John Morley must suffice.

I am as strongly of opinion that in an Honour School of English Literature or Modern Literature the subject should not be separated from classical literature, as I am of opinion that English literature should have a place in our curriculum.

So writes Professor Jowett.

It seems to me to be as impossible effectively to study English literature, except in close association with the classics, as it would be to grasp the significance of mediæval or modern institutions without reference to the political creations of Greece and Rome. I should be very sorry to see the study of Greek and Latin writers displaced, or cut off from the study of our own.

So writes Mr. John Morley.

But the Professor of Anglo-Saxon and his friends, as we have seen, think otherwise, and have, unhappily for the interests of letters and education, persuaded Oxford to think otherwise too. We say advisedly the interests of letters and education. For the precedent of excluding from a School of "Literature," and that at the chief centre and nursery of liberal culture, the Literatures of Greece and Rome cannot but be detrimental to the vitality and influence of the ancient classics; and, as Froude truly observed, both the national taste and the tone of the national intellect would suffer serious decline, if they lost their authority. The reaction against philological study which has set in during the last ten years has given them a new lease of life. But the spirit of the age is against them; they have rivals in languages far easier to acquire; they are not, and never can be, in touch with the many. Let them become disassociated from our curriculums of Literature, and they will cease to be influential, They will cease to be studied seriously, to be studied even in the original, except by mere scholars.

Another absurdity, not less monstrous, in these regulations, is the absence of all provision for instruction in the principles of criticism. There is indeed an unmeaning clause about the history of criticism, and of style in verse and prose, being included in the examination; but as nothing is specified, and as no work on criticism, with the exception of Dryden's Discourse on Epic Poetry, and Johnson's Lives (of eighteenth-century poets),[8] is included in the books prescribed for special study, it is plain that this important subject has no place. Why it should not have occurred to these legislators to substitute, say, for Goldsmith's Citizen of the World and Burke's Thoughts on the Present Discontents, some work which would at least have opened the eyes of the literary professors of the future to the existence of philosophical criticism, is certainly odd. Had they prescribed select essays from Hume; and Shaftesbury's Advice to an Author, or Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric, or Burke's Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful, or even the critical portions of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, with the two essays of Wordsworth, it would have been something. But the truth is that, as they have excluded, except from the optional subjects, all literatures but the English, one absurdity has involved them in another. The course for the literary education of our future professors, proceeding on the principle that they need know no language but Gothic and Anglo-Saxon, has necessitated the elimination of all the great masterpieces of critical literature. As they are assumed to know no Greek, they can have no serious instruction in such works as Aristotle's Poetic and Rhetoric, and in the Treatise on the Sublime. As they are assumed to know no Latin, they can have no instruction in Roman criticism. On the same principle such works as Lessing's Laocoon and Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Schiller's Æsthetical Letters and Essays, Villemain's Lectures, and Sainte-Beuve's Essays, can find no place in their curriculum of study. And so it comes to pass that Dryden's Discourse on Epic Poetry and Johnson's Lives of the eighteenth-century poets, represent—proh pudor!—the course in Criticism.

Now it is not too much to say that, for a University like Oxford to confer an honour degree in English Literature on a student who need never have read a line of the works to which we have referred, is to authorize not simply superficiality, but sheer imposture. How can a teacher deal adequately even with the subject which these regulations profess to include—the history of criticism—who need have no acquaintance with the Poetic and Rhetoric, the Treatise on the Sublime, and the Institutes of Oratory? How could a teacher possibly be a competent exponent and critic of the masterpieces of our literature, who had not received a proper critical training, and how could he have any pretension to such a training when all that is best in criticism had been expressly excluded from his education?

It may be urged that he would himself supply these deficiencies, that the study of our own Literature would naturally lead him to the study of other Literatures, that intelligent curiosity, ambition, or a sense of shame would induce him to supplement voluntarily, and by his own efforts, what he needed in his profession. In some instances this would undoubtedly be the case. In the great majority of instances such a supposition would be against all analogy. As a general rule, a high honour degree in any subject represented at the Universities is final. It winds a man up for life. It determines, fixes, and colours his methods, his views, his tone, in all that relates to the subject in which he has graduated. If he chooses teaching as a profession, he has no inducement to correct, to modify, or even materially add to what has been imparted to him, for his scholastic reputation has been made, and a comfortable independence is assured. To very many men, indeed, who go up to the Universities with the intention of following teaching as a profession, a high degree is a mere investment, the one instinct in them which is not quite banausic being the conscientious thoroughness with which they impart what they have been taught. Nothing, therefore, is of more importance to education than the sound constitution of the Honour Schools of Oxford and Cambridge, and nothing could be more disastrous than the toleration in those Schools of inadequate standards, and of palpably erroneous theories of study.

But to return to the Regulations. The ridiculous disproportion between the ground covered and the work involved in the different "special subjects" open to the option of candidates, would seem to indicate, either that the regulators are very inadequately informed on those subjects, or that divided counsels have resulted in the settlement of very different standards of requirement. Compare, for instance, what is involved respectively in such subjects as "English Literature between 1700 and 1745," and "The History of Scottish Poetry." Why, a competent knowledge of the history of Scotch poetry in the fifteenth century alone would be more than an equivalent to the first subject. Not less absurd is the prescription of "English Literature between 1745 and 1797" as an alternative for "English Literature between 1558 and 1637." The prescription of such "special subjects" as the influence exercised on our Literature by the Literatures of Italy, Germany, and France, is one of the few steps in a wise direction discernible in these regulations; but, as no student is free to take more than one of them, or required to take any of them at all, their inclusion in no way affects the constitution of the School. A competent literary education is not very much furthered by a student being invited to study how our Literature has been affected by one out of the five Literatures which have influenced it. As, moreover, the integrity of a chain depends on its weakest link, so the efficiency of examinational tests, in their application to purely optional subjects, depends on that subject in the list which involves least labour. A candidate who can "get a first" out of "English Literature between 1700 and 1745," or between 1745 and 1797, will be much too wise to attempt to "get a first" out of subjects which will require treble the time and labour to master. Is it likely that candidates, anxious, naturally, from less lofty motives than the love of Literature for its own sake, to obtain an honour degree, will, after laboriously acquiring Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, which are compulsory, voluntarily specialize in a subject requiring a knowledge of Italian and German, when it is open to them to choose, as their special subject, "Old English Language and Literature down to 1150"?

The statute authorizing the foundation of this School recites that in its curriculum and examinations "equal weight" is, "as far as possible, to be given to Language and Literature, provided always that candidates who offer special subjects shall be at liberty to choose subjects connected either with Language or Literature, or with both." It would be interesting to know what this means. If by "equal weight" be meant equality in the proportions of what is prescribed for the study of Literature, and what is prescribed for the study of Language, the provision is stultified by the very constitution of the course. To suppose that the history of English Literature, and the special study of a few particular works like Shelley's Adonais, Burke's Present Discontents, and the Lyrical Ballads, is equivalent to the History of the English language, the Gospel of St. Mark in Gothic, the Beowulf, and a volume of extracts in Anglo-Saxon, King Horn, Havelok, Sir Gawain, and the prologue and seven passus of Piers Ploughman in Middle English, is palpably absurd. If by "equal weight" be meant that an examiner is to assign equal marks to candidates who distinguish themselves in Literature, and to candidates who distinguish themselves in Language, it involves gross injustice. For while the latter have every opportunity for displaying knowledge and competence, the former have not. If a student has literary tastes and sympathies, if he is conversant with the Classics, if, attracted by what is best not merely in our own but in other modern Literatures, he has indulged himself in their study, if he has made himself a good critic and acquired a good style, what chance has he of doing his attainments and accomplishments justice? But if it be meant that "equal weight" will be given, not to literary merit regarded as Sainte-Beuve and Matthew Arnold would regard it, but regarded in relation to the standard indicated by the regulations of the School, then the philologists would have just reason to complain.

As the constitution of this School is still open to amendment, it is devoutly to be hoped that Oxford will see its way to reconsidering a matter so seriously affecting the interests of education and culture. It is neither too late to remedy what has been done, nor to devise a remedy. Let it be remembered that there is an essential distinction between what should constitute an Honour School and what should constitute a Pass School, between what is to educate those who are to educate others, and what guarantees nothing more than a smattering. The present institution could be reformed in two ways. By reducing the philological part of its provisions to the level of the literary part, it could, with a little further simplification, be made into an excellent Pass School, which would supply a real want. By eliminating the literary part, and adding proportionately to the philological, it could be transformed into a perfectly satisfactory Honour School of Modern Languages. But no modification could make it into an Honour School of English Literature correspondingly adequate, for the simple reason that the study of English Literature cannot be isolated from the study of those literatures with which it is inseparably linked. The absurdity of assuming that the student of Philology could separate a single language or dialect from the group to which it belongs, that he could isolate Anglo-Saxon from Gothic, or Middle English from Anglo-Saxon, the Celtic of the Cymbry from the Celtic of the Gaels, is not greater than to assume that the study of our Literature can be severed from the study of those literatures which stand in precisely the same relation to it as one of those dialects stands to the others in the same group.

If the legislators of this School decline to reform it, then it is the duty of Oxford—a duty which she owes alike to education and to her own honour—to counteract the mischief which this institution must, by degrading throughout England and the colonies the whole level of liberal instruction and study on its most important side, inevitably do. To the herd of imperfectly and erroneously disciplined teachers which this institution will turn loose on education, let her oppose, at least, a minority which shall worthily represent her. Let her establish a proper degree or diploma in Literature. There exist, as we have already said, scattered throughout the various institutions of the University, nearly all the facilities for a complete course in this subject, and nothing more is needed than to encourage and render possible their co-ordination. Let it be open to a man who has obtained a high class in Moderations and in the Final Classical Schools, who has availed himself of the opportunities offered for the study of Modern Languages and Literatures in the Taylorian Institute, and who has studied what he would at present have to study for himself, our own Literature—let it be open to him to present himself for examination in these subjects, and to obtain, as the result of such an examination, a degree analogous to the Bachelorship of Civil Law. It would no doubt not be possible for these studies to be pursued, systematically, side by side with the work required for a high class in Moderations and Literæ Humaniores. Nor is it necessary. There need be no limit assigned to the time at which a candidate would be free to qualify himself for obtaining this diploma. As a general rule it would probably be about six months, possibly a year, after the attainment of the present degree in Arts. And, considering the high prizes open to teachers in Literature, it would be well worth a student's while to spend this additional time in preparing himself for the examination. If a post-graduate scholarship, analogous to the Craven or the Derby scholarships, could be founded for the encouragement of a comparative study of Classical and Modern Literature, an important step would, at any rate, be taken in a right direction; something would be done for the competent equipment of future Professors of Literature.

Thus would a precedent, disastrous beyond expression to the interests of liberal instruction and culture, as well as to the reputation of the University—we mean the severance of the study of Classical Literature from that of our own—be at least deprived of its authority. Thus would the mass at any rate be leavened, and such institutions in the provinces and elsewhere as have, unlike Oxford and Cambridge, had the wisdom to separate their Chairs of Language and Literature, know where to go for those who should fill them; and thus, finally, would there be some chance of the literary curriculum in Oxford ceasing to be a by-word in the Universities of the Continent and America.

Since the first edition of these essays appeared the liberality of Mr. John Passmore Edwards has supplied the scholarship here desiderated, and Oxford has instituted a University scholarship, bearing the donor's name, "for the encouragement and promotion of the study of English Literature in connection with the Classical Literatures of Greece and Rome."

FOOTNOTES:

[3] For the sort of textbook from which the student who is a candidate for "honours in English" will be required to get his knowledge of this poem, see infra, the review of the Clarendon Press Edition of Shelley's Adonais.

[4] The Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, one of the chief legislators for the new School, thinks otherwise, and we should like to place the following passage on record. In his extraordinary History of English Prose (p. 485) he writes thus: "The idea that English literature rests upon a classical basis has been formulated and industriously circulated as the watchword of a pedantic faction, and hardly any organ of current literature has proved itself strong enough, or vigilant enough, to secure itself against the insidious entrance of the above indoctrination." And so it comes to pass that we read in the account of the debate in Congregation, on the occasion of the former attempt to establish this School:—

"The proposal to add the Professors of Greek and Latin to the Board of Studies was rejected by thirty-eight votes to twenty-four, Professor Earle maintaining that the fallacious notion that English literature was derived from the classics was so strong that it was unwise to place even the Professor of Latin on the Board."—Times, May 26, 1887.

[5]

και μην πεπωκως γ', ὡς θρασυνεσθαι πλεον,

βροτειον αιμα, κωμος εν δομοις μενει

δυσπεμπτος εξω ξυγγονων Ερινυων.

—Agamem., 1159-61.

[6] For ample illustration of this, see infra the review of the Clarendon Press edition of Shelley's Adonais.

[7] They may all be found in full in a Pall Mall "Extra" (January, 1887), and in the present writer's Study of English Literature.

[8] It is amusing to notice how carefully the greater part of what is most precious and instructive in Johnson's work, the lives namely of Cowley and Dryden, and the noble critique of Paradise Lost, is expressly excluded, and the greater part of what is most trivial, and regarded by himself as trivial, the lives of the minor poets of the eighteenth century, selected instead. Macaulay ranks the lives of Cowley and Dryden, with that of Pope, as the masterpieces of the work; and Johnson himself considered the life of Cowley to be the best.

ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITIES [9]

II. TEXT BOOKS

[9] Shelley's Adonais, edited with introduction and notes by William Michael Rossetti. (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press.)

If any proof were needed of what has been insisted on over and over again, that, until the Universities provide adequately for the proper study of English Literature—for the study of it side by side with Classical Literature—there will be small hope of its finding competent critics and interpreters, it would be afforded by the volume before us. For this volume the delegates of the Oxford University Press are responsible; and in allowing it their imprimatur they have been guilty of a very grave error. No such standard of editing would have been tolerated in any other subject in which they undertake to provide books. A work pertaining to Classics, to History, to Philosophy, to Science, marked by corresponding deficiencies, would have been suppressed at once, until those deficiencies had been supplied. To Mr. Rossetti himself we attach no blame. What he was competent to do he has, for the most part, done well and conscientiously,—conscientiously, as may be judged from the fact that, while the poem itself occupies twenty pages in large type, Mr. Rossetti's dissertations and notes occupy one hundred and twenty-eight in small type. It was, indeed, his misfortune, rather than his fault, to be entrusted with a work which required a peculiar qualification, an intimate acquaintance, that is to say, with Classical Literature. That he has no pretension to this is abundantly plain from his Introduction and from every page of his notes.

When one of the Universities undertakes to provide our colleges and schools with comments and notes on a poem so saturated with classicism as Adonais, the least that could be expected from bodies who are, as it were, the guardians of classical literature, is the provision that the classical part of the work should be done at least competently; it would be hardly too much, perhaps, to expect that it should be done excellently. Of this part of Mr. Rossetti's work we scarcely know which are the worse—his sins of commission or his sins of omission. His classical qualifications for commenting on a poem as unintelligible, critically speaking, without constant reference to the Platonic dialogues, particularly to the Symposium and the Timæus, and to the Greek poets, as the Æneid would be without reference to the Homeric poems and the Argonautica of Apollonius, appear to begin and end with some acquaintance with Mr. Lang's version of Bion and Moschus. We will give a few specimens. Mr. Rossetti is greatly puzzled with Shelley's allusion to Urania in stanzas 2 to 4.

"Where was lone Urania

When Adonais died?"

"Most musical of mourners, weep again.

Lament, anew, Urania!"

"Why out of the nine sisters," he asks, "should the Muse of Astronomy be selected? Keats never wrote about astronomy." Perhaps, he suggests, Shelley was not thinking of the Muse Urania, "but of Aphrodite Urania." Yet, if so, why should she be called "musical"?—a question to be asked, no doubt, as our old friend Falstaff would say. However, after balancing the respective claims of both, he finally comes to the conclusion that the Urania of Adonais is Aphrodite. If Mr. Rossetti had been acquainted with a work to which he never even refers, but which exercised immense influence over Shelley's poem—the Symposium of Plato—it would have saved him two pages of speculation. His ignorance of this is the more surprising as Shelley has himself translated the dialogue. But Mr. Rossetti need not, in this case, have gone so far afield. Has he never read the prologue to the seventh book of Milton's Paradise Lost? In his note on the lines—

"The one remains, the many change and pass,"

it is really pitiable to find him supposing that this is an allusion to "the universal mind," and "the individuated minds which we call human beings," when any schoolboy could have told him that the allusion is, of course, a technical one to the Platonic "forms" or archetypes; while "the power" in stanza 42, the "sustaining love" in stanza 54, and the "one spirit" in stanza 43, are allusions respectively to the Aphrodite Urania in the discourse of Eryximachus in the Symposium, and to the Divine Artificer in the Timæus. And these dialogues form the proper commentary on Shelley's metaphysics in this poem.

Still more extraordinary is Mr. Rossetti's note on "wisdom the mirrored shield"—

"What was then

Wisdom, the mirrored shield?"

(st. 27), which is as follows: "Shelley was, I apprehend, thinking of the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto (!). In that poem we read of a magic shield which casts a supernatural and intolerable splendour ... a sea monster, not a dragon, so far as I recollect, becomes one of the victims of the mirrored shield." This slovenly and perfunctory mode of reference is, we may remark in passing, hardly the sort of thing to be expected in works issued from University Presses. We wonder what the Universities would say to an editor of Virgil who, in commenting on some Homeric allusion in his author, contented himself with observing that Virgil "is here thinking of the Iliad," and, "so far as I can recollect," etc. The reference is, we need hardly remark, not to any magic shield in the Orlando, but to the scutum crystallinum of Pallas Athene, as any well-informed fourth-form schoolboy would know. If Mr. Rossetti will turn to Bacon's Wisdom of the Ancients, chap. vii., he will find some information on this subject, which may be of use to him, should this work run into a second edition. Take, again, the note on the symbolism of the flowers and cypress cone in stanza 33:—

"His head was bound with pansies overblown,

And faded violets, white and pied and blue;

And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,

Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew."

Here the editor's ignorance of ancient Classical Literature has led him into a whole labyrinth of blunders and misconceptions. "The ivy," he says, "indicates constancy in friendship"! Is it credible that a Clarendon Press editor should be ignorant that ivy—doctarum hederæ præmia frontium—is the emblem of the poet? The violet, he remarks, indicates modesty. It neither indicates, nor can possibly indicate, anything of the kind. Its traditional signification, deduced perhaps from Pliny's remark (Nat. Hist., xxi. c. 38), that it is one of the longest-lived of flowers, is fidelity. But the passage of which Shelley was thinking when he wrote this stanza—a passage to which Mr. Rossetti makes no reference at all, was Hamlet, [act iv. sc. 1]: "There is pansies that's for thoughts.... I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died." So that it is quite possible that the "faded violets," associated as these flowers are with the Muses and the Graces, merely symbolize the fading and drooping towards what may be further symbolized in the cypress cone,—death. We are by no means sure, however, that the cypress cone does, as Mr. Rossetti remarks, "explain itself." Shelley, assuming he gave the image another application, was doubtless thinking of Silvanus—"teneram ab radice ferens, Silvane, cupressum," Georg. i. 20 (see, too, Spenser's Faerie Queene, I. vi. st. 14), and may possibly have been symbolizing his sympathy with the genius of the woods—have been referring to that "gazing on Nature's naked loveliness," which he describes in stanza 31. In any case, Mr. Rossetti has entirely misinterpreted the meaning of the whole passage.

Wherever classical knowledge is required—as it is in almost every stanza—he either gives no note at all, or he blunders. Thus in stanza 24 he gives no note on the use of the word "secret." In stanza 28 he has evidently not the smallest notion of the meaning of the word "obscene" as applied to ravens. The fine adaptations from Lucretius (II. 578-580) in stanza 21, and again from II. 990-1010 in stanzas 20 and 42; the adaptation from the Agamemnon (49-51) in stanza 17; from the fragments of the Polyidus of Euripides in stanza 39; from the Iliad (vi. 484) in stanza 34; from Theocritus, Idyll., i. 66, and Virg., Ecl., x. 9-10 in stanza 2; and again from Theocritus, Idyll., i. 77 seqq., from which the procession of the mourners is adapted, and on which the whole architecture of the poem is modelled—all these are alike unnoticed. Nor is Mr. Rossetti more fortunate in explaining allusions to passages in other literatures. The adaptation of the sublime passage in Isaiah (xiv. 9, 10), by which one of the finest parts of the poem was suggested, stanzas 45 and 46; the singular reminiscence in stanza 28:—

"The vultures

... Whose wings rain contagion;"

of Marlowe's Jew of Malta, act ii. sc. 1, where he speaks of the raven which

"Doth shake contagion from her sable wings;"

the obvious reminiscence of Dante, Inf., 44 seqq. in stanza 44; of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, v. 3, which forms the proper commentary on lines 7 and 8 of stanza 3; of none of these is any notice taken. On many important points of interpretation we differ toto cœlo from Mr. Rossetti. The "fading splendour," for example, in stanza 22, cannot possibly mean "fading as being overcast by sorrow and dismay" (cf. stanza 25), it simply means vanishing, receding from sight—a magnificently graphic epithet. Is Mr. Rossetti acquainted with the proleptic use of adjectives and participles? We may add that Mr. Rossetti has not even taken the trouble to ascertain who was the writer of the famous article, of which so much is said both in the preface of the poem and in the poem itself, but "presumes," etc. Et sic omnia. And sic omnia it will inevitably continue to be, until the Universities are prepared to do their duty to education by placing the study of our national Literature on a proper footing.

It is, we repeat, no reproach to Mr. Rossetti, who has distinguished himself in more important studies than the production of scholastic text-books, that he should have failed in an undertaking which happened to require peculiar qualifications. Indeed, our respect for Mr. Rossetti and our sense of his useful services to Belles Lettres would have induced us to spare him the annoyance of an exposure of the deficiencies of this work, had it not illustrated, so comprehensively and so strikingly, the disastrous effects of the severance of the study of English Literature from that of Ancient Classical Literature at our Universities.

ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITIES [10]

III. TEXT BOOKS

[10] Shakespeare—Select Plays. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press. MDCCCXC.)

More than a century and a half has passed since Pope thus expressed himself about philologists,—

"'Tis true on words is still our whole debate,

Dispute of Me or Te, of aut or at,

To sound or sink in Cano O or A,

To give up Cicero or C or K;

The critic eye, that microscope of wit,

Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit;

How parts relate to parts or they to whole,

The body's harmony, the beaming soul,

Are things which Kuster, Burmann, Wasse shall see,

When man's whole frame is obvious to a Flea."

We need scarcely say that we have far too much respect for Dr. Aldis Wright and for his distinguished coadjutor to apply such a description as this to them as individuals, for no one can appreciate more heartily than we do their monumental contribution to the textual criticism of Shakespeare, but we can make no such reserve in speaking of this edition of Hamlet. A more deplorable illustration, we do not say of the subjection of Literature to Philology, for that would very imperfectly represent the fact, but of the absolute substitution of Philology, and of Philology in the lowest sense of the term, for Literature it would be impossible to imagine. Had it been expressly designed to prove that its editors were wholly unconscious of the artistic, literary, and philosophical significance of Shakespeare's masterpiece, it could scarcely have taken a more appropriate form.

The volume contains 117 pages of Shakespeare's text, printed in large type; the text is preceded by a preface of twelve pages, and followed by notes occupying no less than 121 pages in very small type; so that the work of the poet stands in pretty much the same relation to that of his commentators as Falstaff's bread stood to his sack. In the case of a play like Hamlet, so subtle, so suggestive, so pregnant with critical and philosophical problems of all kinds, commentary on a scale like this might have been quite appropriate. But in this stupendous mass of exegesis and illustration there is, with the exception of one short passage, literally not a line about the play as a work of art, not a line about its structure and architecture, about its style, about its relations to æsthetic, about its metaphysic, its ethic, about the character of Hamlet, or about the character of any other person who figures in the drama. The only indication that it is regarded in any other light than as affording material for philological and antiquarian discussion is a short quotation, huddled in at the conclusion of the preface, from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, and an intimation that "Hamlet's madness has formed the subject of special investigation by several writers, among others by Dr. Conolly and Sir Edward Strachey."

A more comprehensive illustration of the truth of the indictment brought against philologists by Voltaire, Pope, Lessing, and Sainte-Beuve than is supplied by the notes in this volume it would be difficult to find. Dulness, of course, may be assumed, and of mere dulness we do not complain; but a combination of prolixity, irrelevance, and absolute incapacity to distinguish between what to ninety-nine persons in every hundred must be purely useless and what to ninety-nine persons in every hundred is the information which they expect from a commentator, is intolerable. We will give a few illustrations. A plain man or a student for examination comes to these lines:—

"'Tis the sport to have the enginer

Hoist with his own petar;"

and, though he knows what the general sense is wishes to know exactly what Shakespeare means. He turns to the note for enlightenment, and the enlightenment he gets is this:—

"Enginer. Changed in the quarto of 1676 to the more modern form of engineer. Compare Troilus and Cressida ii. 3. 8, "Then there's Achilles a rare enginer." For a cognate form mutiner see note on iii. 4. 83. So we have pioner for pioneer Othello iii. 3. 346. Hoist may be the participle either of the verb 'hoise' or 'hoist.' In the latter case it would be the common abbreviated form for the participles of verbs ending in a dental. Petar. So spelt in the quartos, and by all editors to Johnson, who writes 'petards.' In Cotgrave we have 'Petart: a Petard or Petarre; an Engine (made like a bell or morter) wherewith strong gates,' etc."—

And so the hungry sheep looks up and is not fed. Again, he finds—

"He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice,"

turns to the note, and reads:—

"Polacks. The quartos have 'pollax,' the two earliest folios read 'Pollax,' the third 'Polax,' the fourth 'Poleaxe.' Pope read 'Polack' and Malone 'Polacks.' The word occurs four times in Hamlet. For 'the sledded Polacks' Molke reads 'his leaded pole-axe.' But this would be an anticlimax, and the poet, having mentioned 'Norway' in the first clause, would certainly have told us with whom the 'parle' was held."

The poet Young noted how

"Commentators each dark passage shun,

And hold their farthing candles to the sun."

The Clarendon Press editors are certainly adepts in these accomplishments. Take one out of a myriad illustrations. The line in Act i. sc. 2, "The dead vast and middle of the night," is the signal for a note extending to twelve closely printed lines. "'Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart," says Francisco. If any note were needed here, it might have been devoted to pointing out to tiros the fine subjective touch. The note is this:—

"Bitter cold. Here bitter is used adverbially to qualify the adjective 'cold.' So we have 'daring hardy' in Richard II. i. 3. 43. When the combination is likely to be misunderstood, modern editors generally put a hyphen between the two words. Sick at heart. So Macbeth v. 3. 19, 'I am sick at heart.' We have also in Love's Labour's Lost ii. 1. 185, 'sick at the heart,' and Romeo and Juliet iii. 3. 72, 'heart-sick groans.'"

Now let us see how the poor student fares when real difficulties occur. Every reader of Shakespeare is familiar with the corrupt passage, Act iv. sc. 1:—

"The dram of eale

Doth all the noble substance of worth out

To his own scandal—

a passage which, as all Shakespearian scholars know, has been satisfactorily emended and explained. We turn to the notes for guidance, and find ourselves treated as poor Mrs. Quickly was treated by Falstaff, "fubbed off"—thus:—

"We leave this hopelessly corrupt passage as it stands in the two earliest quartos. The others read 'ease' for 'eale,' and modern writers have conjectured for the same word base, ill, bale, ale, evil, ail, vile, lead. For 'of a doubt' it has been proposed to substitute 'of worth out,' 'soul with doubt,' 'oft adopt,' 'oft work out,' 'of good out,' 'of worth dout,' 'often dout,' 'often doubt,' 'oft adoubt,' 'oft delase,' 'over-cloud,' 'of a pound,' and others."

This, it may be added, is the sort of stuff— incredibile dictu—that our children have to get by heart; for this Press, be it remembered, practically controls half the English Literature examinations in England. As students know quite well that nine examiners out of ten will set their questions from "the Clarendon Press notes," it is with "the Clarendon Press notes" that they are obliged to cram themselves. But to continue. Even a well-read man might be excused for not knowing the exact meaning of the following expression:—

"They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase

Soil our addition."

He turns to the notes, and having been briefly informed that clepe means "call," and addition "title," is left to flounder with what he can get out of—"Could Shakespeare have had in his mind any pun upon 'Sweyn,' which was a common name of the kings of Denmark?"

Another leading characteristic of the genus philologist, we mean the preposterous importance attached by them to the smallest trifles, finds ludicrous illustration in the following note:—

"My father, in his habit, as he lived!"

exclaims Hamlet to his mother. This is the signal for:—

"There is supposed to be a difficulty in these words, because in the earlier scenes the Ghost is in his armour, to which the word 'habit' is regarded as inappropriate. In the earlier form of the play, as it appears in the quarto of 1603, the Ghost enters 'in his nightgowne,' and as the words 'in the habit as he lived' occur in the corresponding passage of that edition, it is probable that on this occasion the Ghost appeared in the ordinary dress of the king, although this is not indicated in the stage directions of the other quartos or of the folios."

As a possible solution of this grave difficulty, we would suggest that, as the Ghost was undoubtedly in a very hot place, he might have found his nightgown less oppressive than his armour, and though it would certainly have been more decorous to have exchanged his nightgown for his uniform on revisiting the earth, yet, as the visit was to his wife, he thought perhaps less seriously about his apparel than our editors have done. We have nothing to warrant us in assuming that he was in his "ordinary dress." The choice must lie between the nightgown and the armour. But a truce to jesting.

If any one would understand the opacity and callousness which philological study induces, we would refer them to the note on Hamlet's last sublime words, "The rest is silence":—

"The quartos have 'Which have solicited, the rest is silence.' The folios, 'Which have solicited. [The rest is silence.' 'O, O,] O, O. Dyes.' If Hamlet's speech is interrupted by his death [it would be more natural] that the words 'The rest is silence' should be spoken by Horatio."

We said at the beginning of this article that there was not a word of commentary on the poetical merits of the play. We beg the editors' pardon. They have in one note, and in one note only, ventured on an expression of critical opinion. We all know the lines—

"There is a willow grows aslant a brook

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream,"

etc., etc. We transcribe the note on this passage that it may be a sign to all men of what Philology is able to effect, an omen and testimony of what must inevitably be the fate of Literature if the direction and regulation of its study be entrusted to philologists:—

"This speech of the Queen is certainly unworthy of its author and of the occasion. The enumeration of plants is quite as unsuitable to so tragical a scene as the description of Dover cliff in King Lear iv. 6. 11-24. Besides there was no one by to witness the death of Ophelia, else she would have been rescued."

As this beggars commentary, transcription shall suffice.

Now we would ask any sensible person who has followed us, we do not say in our own remarks—for they may be supposed to be the expression of biassed opinion—but in the specimens we have given of such an edition as this of Hamlet, and of such an edition as we have just reviewed of Adonais, what is likely to be the fate of English Literature, as a subject of teaching, so long as our Universities ignore their responsibilities as the centres of culture by not only countenancing, but assisting in the production and dissemination of such publications as these? How can we expect anything but anarchy wherever the subject is treated?—there an extreme of flaccid dilettantism, here an extreme of philological pedantry. Conceive the tone and temper which, especially at the impressionable age of the students for whom the book is intended, the study of Shakespeare, under such guides as the editors of this Hamlet, would be likely to induce. Is it not monstrous that young students between the ages of about fifteen and eighteen should have such text books as these inflicted on them?

The radical fault of those who regulate education in our Universities and elsewhere, and prescribe our schoolbooks, is their deplorable want of judgment. They seem to be utterly incapable of distinguishing between what is proper for pure specialists and what is proper for ordinary students. There is not a page in this edition which does not proclaim aloud, that it could never have been intended for the purposes to which it has been applied, that it is the work of technical scholars, concerned only in textual and philological criticism and exegesis, and appealing only to those who approach the study of Shakespeare in the same spirit and from the same point of view. Anything more sickening and depressing, anything more calculated to make the name of Shakespeare an abomination to the youth of England it would be impossible for man to devise. It is shameful to prescribe such books for study in our Schools and Educational Institutes.

OUR LITERARY GUIDES

I. A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE [11]

[11] A Short History of English Literature. By George Saintsbury, Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Edinburgh.

This Short History is evidently designed for the use of serious readers, for the ordinary reader who will naturally look to it for general instruction and guidance in the study of English Literature, and to whom it will serve as a book of reference; for students in schools and colleges, to many of whom it will, in all likelihood, be prescribed as a textbook; for teachers engaged in lecturing and in preparing pupils for examination. Of all these readers there will not be one in a hundred who will not be obliged to take its statements on trust, to assume that its facts are correct, that its generalizations are sound, that its criticisms and critical theories are at any rate not absurd. It need hardly be said that, under these circumstances, a writer who had any pretension to conscientiousness would do his utmost to avoid all such errors as ordinary diligence could easily prevent, that he would guard scrupulously against random assertions and reckless misstatements, that he would, in other words, spare no pains to deserve the confidence placed in him by those who are not qualified to check his statements or question his dogmas, and who naturally suppose that the post which he occupies is a sufficient guarantee of the soundness and accuracy of his work. But so far from Professor Saintsbury having any sense of what is due to his position and to his readers, he has imported into his work the worst characteristics of irresponsible journalism: generalizations, the sole supports of which are audacious assertions, and an indifference to exactness and accuracy, as well with respect to important matters as in trifles, so scandalous as to be almost incredible.

Sir Thomas More said of Tyndale's version of the New Testament that to seek for errors in it was to look for drops of water in the sea. What was said very unfairly of Tyndale's work may be said with literal truth of Professor Saintsbury's. The utmost extent of the space at our disposal will only suffice for a few illustrations. We will select those which appear to us most typical. In the chapter on Anglo-Saxon literature the Professor favours us with the astounding statement, that in Anglo-Saxon poetry "there is practically no lyric."[12] It is scarcely necessary to say that not only does Anglo-Saxon poetry abound in lyrics, but that it is in its lyrical note that its chief power and charm consists. In the threnody of the Ruin, and the Grave, in the sentimental pathos of the Seafarer, of Deor's Complaint, and of the remarkable fragment describing the husband's pining for his wife, in the fiery passion of the three great war-songs, in the glowing subjective intensity of the Judith, in the religious ecstasy of the Holy Rood and of innumerable passages in the other poems attributed to Cynewulf, and of the poem attributed to Cædmon, deeper and more piercing lyric notes have never been struck. Take such a passage as the following from the Satan, typical, it may be added, of scores of others:—

"O thou glory of the Lord! Guardian of Heaven's hosts,

O thou might of the Creator! O thou mid-circle!

O thou bright day of splendour! O thou jubilee of God!

O ye hosts of angels! O thou highest heaven!

O that I am shut from the everlasting jubilee,

That I cannot reach my hands again to Heaven,

... Nor hear with my ears ever again

The clear-ringing harmony of the heavenly trumpets." [13]

And this is a poetry which has "practically no lyric"! On page 2 the Professor tells us that there is no rhyme in Anglo-Saxon poetry; on page 18 we find him giving an account of the rhyming poem in the Exeter Book. Of Mr. Saintsbury's method of dealing with particular works and particular authors, one or two examples must suffice. He tells us on page 125 that the heroines in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women are "the most hapless and blameless of Ovid's Heroides." It would be interesting to know what connexion Cleopatra, whose story comes first, has with Ovid's Heroides, or if the term "Heroides" be, as it appears to be, (for it is printed in italics) the title of Ovid's Heroic Epistles, what connexion four out of the ten have with Ovid's work. In any case the statement is partly erroneous and wholly misleading. In the account given of the Scotch poets, the Professor, speaking of Douglas' translation of the Æneid, says, he "does not embroider on his text." This is an excellent illustration of the confidence which may be placed in Mr. Saintsbury's assertions about works on which most of his readers must take what he says on trust. Douglas is continually "embroidering on his text," indeed, he habitually does so. We open his translation purely at random; we find him turning Æneid II. 496-499:—

"Non sic, aggeribus ruptis cum spumeus amnis

Exiit, oppositasque [evicit gurgite moles],

Fertur in arva furens cumulo, camposque per omnes

Cum stabulis armenta trahit."

["Not sa fersly] the fomy river or flude

Brekkis over the bankis on spait quhen it is wode.

And with his brusch and fard of water brown

The dykys and the schorys betis down,

Ourspreddand croftis and flattis wyth hys spate

Our all the feyldis that they may row ane bate

Quhill houssis and the flokkis flittis away,

The corne grangis and standard stakkys of hay."

We open Æneid IX. 2:—

"Irim de cœlo misit Saturnia Juno

Audacem ad Turnum. Luco tum forte parentis

Pilumni Turnus sacratâ valle sedebat.

Ad quem sic roseo Thaumantias ore locuta est."

We find it turned:—

"Juno that lyst not blyn

Of hir auld malyce and iniquyte,

Hir madyn Iris from hevin sendys sche

To the bald Turnus malapart and stout;

Quhilk for the tyme was wyth al his rout

Amyd ane vale wonnder lovn and law,

Syttand at eys within the hallowit schaw

Of God Pilumnus his progenitor.

Thamantis dochter knelys him before,

I meyn Iris thys ilk fornamyt maide,

And with hir rosy lippis thus him said."

We turn to the end of the tenth Æneid and we find him introducing six lines which have nothing to correspond with them in the original. And this is a translator who "does not embroider on his text"! It is perfectly plain that Professor Saintsbury has criticised and commented on a work which he could never have inspected. The same ignorance is displayed in the account of Lydgate. He is pronounced to be a versifier rather than a poet, his verse is described as "sprawling and staggering." The truth is that Lydgate's style and verse are often of exquisite beauty, that he was a poet of fine genius, that his descriptions of nature almost rival Chaucer's, that his powers of pathos are of a high order, that, at his best, he is one of the most musical of poets. We have not space to illustrate what must be obvious to any one who has not gone to encyclopædias and handbooks for his knowledge of this poet's writings, but who is acquainted with the original. It will not be disputed that Gray and Warton were competent judges of these matters, and their verdict must be substituted for what we have not space to prove and illustrate. "I do not pretend," Gray says, "to set Lydgate on a level with his master Chaucer, but he certainly comes the nearest to him of any contemporary writer that I am acquainted with. His choice of expression and the smoothness of his verse far surpass both Gower and Occleve." Of one passage in Lydgate, Gray has observed that "it has touched the very heart strings of compassion with so masterly a hand as to merit a place among the greatest poets."[14] Warton also notices his "perspicuous and musical numbers," and "the harmony, strength, and dignity" of his verses.[15]

Turn where we will we are confronted with blunders. Take the account given of Shakespeare. He began his metre, we are told, with the lumbering "fourteeners." He did, so far as is known, nothing of the kind. Again: "It is only by guesses that anything is dated before the Comedy of Errors at the extreme end of 1594." In answer to this it may be sufficient to say that Venus and Adonis was published in 1593, that the first part of Henry VI. was acted on 3rd March, 1592, that Titus Andronicus was acted on 25th January, 1594, and that Lucrece was entered on the Stationers' books 9th May, 1594. This is on a par with the assertion, on page 315, that Shakespeare was traditionally born on 24th April! On page 320 we are told that Measure for Measure belongs to the first group of Shakespeare's plays, to the series beginning with Love's Labour's Lost and culminating with the Midsummer Night's Dream. It is only fair to say that the Professor places a note of interrogation after it in a bracket, but that it should have been placed there, even tentatively, shows an ignorance of the very rudiments of Shakespearian criticism which is nothing short of astounding. Take, again, the account given of Burke. Our readers will probably think us jesting when we tell them that Professor Saintsbury gravely informs us that Burke supported the American Revolution. Is the Professor unacquainted with the two finest speeches which have ever been delivered in any language since Cicero? Can he possibly be ignorant that Burke, so far from supporting that revolution, did all in his power to prevent it? The whole account of Burke, it may be added, teems with inaccuracies. The American Revolution was not brought about under a Tory administration. What brought that revolution about was Charles Townshend's tax, and that tax was imposed under a Whig administration, as every well-informed Board-school lad would know. Burke did not lose his seat at Bristol owing to his support of Roman Catholic claims. If Professor Saintsbury had turned to one of the finest of Burke's minor speeches—the speech addressed to the electors of Bristol—he would have seen that Burke's support of the Roman Catholic claims was only one, and that not the most important, of the causes which cost him his seat. Similar ignorance is displayed in the remark (p. 629) that "Burke joined, and indeed headed, the crusade against Warren Hastings, in 1788." The prosecution of Warren Hastings was undertaken on Burke's sole initiative, not in 1788, but in 1785. A few lines onwards we are told that the series of Burke's writings on the French Revolution "began with the Reflections in 1790, and was continued in the Letter to a Noble Lord, [1790."] A Letter to a Noble Lord had nothing to do with the French Revolution, except collaterally as it affected Burke's public conduct, and appeared, not in 1790, but in 1795.

It seems impossible to open this book anywhere without alighting on some blunder, or on some inaccuracy. Speaking (p. 277) of Willoughby's well-known Avisa, the Professor observes that nothing is known of Willoughby or of Avisa. If the Professor had known anything about the work, he would have known that Avisa is simply an anagram made up of the initial letters of Amans, vxor, inviolata semper amanda, and that nothing is known of Avisa for the simple reason that nothing is known of the site of More's Utopia. On page 360 we are told that Phineas Fletcher's Piscatory Eclogues, which are, of course, confounded with his Sicelides, are a masque; on page 624, but this is perhaps a printer's error, that Robertson wrote a history of Charles I. On page 482, John Pomfret, the author of one of the most popular poems of the eighteenth century, is called Thomas. On page 550, Pope's Moral Essays are described as An Epistle to Lord Burlington, presumably because the last of them, the fourth, is addressed to that nobleman. On page 587 we are told that Mickle died in London: he died at Forest Hill, near Oxford. On page 556 we are informed that Prior was part author of a parody of the "Hind and Panther," and that he was "imprisoned for some years." The work referred to is wrongly described, as it only contained parodies of certain passages in Dryden's poem, and he was in confinement less than two years. On page 358, Brutus, the legendary founder of Britain, is actually described as the son of Æneas. If Professor Saintsbury were as familiar as he affects to be with Geoffrey of Monmouth, with Layamon and with the early metrical romances, he would have known that Brutus is fabled to have been the son of Sylvius, the son of Ascanius, and, consequently, the great-grandson of Æneas. Many of the Professor's critical remarks can only be explained on the supposition that he assumes that his readers will not take the trouble to verify his references or question his dogmas. We will give one or two instances. On page 468, speaking of seventeenth-century prose, he says, with reference to Milton: "The close of the Apology itself is a very little, though only a very little, inferior to the Hydriotaphia." By the Apology he can only mean the Apology for Smectymnuus, for the defence of the English people is in Latin. Now, will our readers credit that one of the flattest, clumsiest and most commonplace passages in Milton's prose writings, as any one may see who turns to it, is pronounced "only a little inferior" to one of the most majestically eloquent passages in our prose literature. That our readers may know what Professor Saintsbury's notions of eloquence are, we will transcribe the passage:

"Thus ye have heard, readers, how many shifts and wiles the prelates have invented to save their ill-got booty. And if it be true, as in Scripture it is foretold, that pride and covetousness are the sure marks of those false prophets which are to come, then boldly conclude these to be as great seducers as any of the latter times. For between this and the judgment day do not look for any arch deceivers who, in spite of reformation, will use more craft or less shame to defend their love of the world and their ambition than these prelates have done. And if ye think that soundness of reason or what force of argument so ever shall bring them to an ingenuous silence, ye think that which shall never be. But if ye take that course which Erasmus was wont to say Luther took against the pope and monks: if ye denounce war against their riches and their bellies, ye shall soon discern that turban of pride which they wear upon their heads to be no helmet of salvation, but the mere metal and hornwork of papal jurisdiction; and that they have also this gift, like a certain kind of some that are possessed, to have their voice in their bellies, which, being well drained and taken down, their great oracle, which is only there, will soon be dumb, and the divine right of episcopacy forthwith expiring will put us no more to trouble with tedious antiquities and disputes."

And this is "a very little, only a very little, inferior," to the "Hydriotaphia"!

On page 652, Swift's style, that perfection of simple, unadorned sermo pedestris—is described as marked by "volcanic magnificence." On page 300 Hooker is described as "having an unnecessary fear of vivid and vernacular expression." Vivid and vernacular expression is, next to its stateliness, the distinguishing characteristic of Hooker's style. It would be interesting to know what is meant by the remark on page 445 that Barrow's style is "less severe than South's." Another example of the same thing is the assertion on page 517 that Joseph Glanville is one of "the chief exponents of the gorgeous style in the seventeenth century." Very 'gorgeous' the style of the Vanity of Dogmatizing, of its later edition the Scepsis Scientifica, of the Sadducismus Triumphatus, of the Lux Orientalis, and of the Essays!

Indeed, the Professor's critical dicta are as amazing as his facts. We have only space for one or two samples. Cowley's Anacreontics are "not very far below Milton"(!) Dr. Donne was "the most gifted man of letters next to Shakespeare." Where Bacon, where Ben Jonson, where Milton are to stand is not indicated. Akenside's stilted and frigid Odes "fall not so far short of Collins." We wonder what Mr. Saintsbury's criterion of poetry can be. But we forget, with that criterion he has furnished us. On page 732, speaking of "a story about a hearer who knew no English, but knew Tennyson to be a poet by the hearing," he adds that "the story is probable and valuable, or rather invaluable, for it points to the best if not the only criterion of poetry." And this is a critic! We would exhort the Professor to ponder well Pope's lines:

"But most by numbers judge a poet's song,

*****

In the bright muse, tho' thousand charms conspire,

Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire,

Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear."

On page 734 we are told Browning's James Lee—the Professor probably means James Lee's Wife—is amongst "the greatest poems of the century." On Wordsworth's line, judged not in relation to its context, but as a single verse—"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting"—we have the following as commentary: "Even Shakespeare, even Shelley have little more of the echoing detonation, the auroral light of true poetry"; very "echoing," very "detonating"—the rhythm of "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting." Mr. Saintsbury's notions of what constitutes detonation and auroral light in poetry appear to resemble his notions of what constitutes eloquence in prose. Nothing, we may add in passing, is more amusing in this volume than Mr. Saintsbury's cool assumption of equality as a critical authority with such a critic as Matthew Arnold, whom he sometimes patronises, sometimes corrects, and sometimes assails. The Professor does not show to advantage on these occasions, and he leaves us with the impression that if "Mr. Arnold's criticism is piecemeal, arbitrary, fantastic, and insane," the criticism which appears, where it is not mere nonsense, to take its touchstones, its standards, and its canons from those of the average Philistine is, after all, a very poor substitute. But enough of Mr. Saintsbury's "criticism," which is, almost uniformly, as absurd in what it praises as in what it censures.

The style, or, to borrow an expression from Swift, what the poverty of our language compels us to call the style, in which this book is written, is on a par with its criticism. We will give a few examples. "It is a proof of the greatness of Dryden that he knew Milton for a poet; it is a proof of the smallness (and mighty as he was on some sides, on others he was very small) of Milton that (if he really did so) he denied poetry to Dryden."[16] "What the Voyage and Travaile really is, is this—it is, so far as we know, and even beyond our knowledge in all probability and likelihood, the first considerable example of prose in English dealing neither with the beaten track of theology and philosophy, nor with the, even in the Middle Ages, restricted field of history and home topography, but expatiating freely on unguarded plains and on untrodden hills, sometimes dropping into actual prose romance and always treating its subject as the poets had treated theirs in Brut and Mort d'Arthur, in Troy-book and Alexandreid, as a mere canvas on which to embroider flowers of fancy."[17] Again, "With Anglo-Saxon history he deals slightly, and despite his ardent English patriotism—his book opens with a vigorous panegyric of England, the first of a series extending to the present day (from which an anthology De Laudibus Angliæ might be made)—he deals very harshly with Harold Godwinson."[18] "He had a fit of stiff Odes in the Gray and Collins manner." "The Hind and Panther (the greatest poem ever written in the [teeth of its subject)". "His voluminous] Latin works have been tackled by a special Wyclif Society." These are a few of the gems in which every chapter abounds.

Of Professor Saintsbury's indifference to exactness and accuracy in details and facts we need go no further for illustrations than to his dates. Such things cannot be regarded as trifles in a book designed to be a book of reference. We will give a few instances. We are informed on page 238 that Ascham's Schoolmaster was published in 1568; it was published, as its title-page shows, in 1570. Hume's Dissertations were first published, not in 1762, but in 1757. Bale's flight to Germany was not in 1547, when such a step would have been unnecessary, but in 1540. Pecock was, we are told, translated to Chichester in 1550, exactly ninety years after his death! As if to perplex the readers of this book, two series of dates are given; we have the dates in the narrative and the dates in the index, and no attempt is made to reconcile the discrepancies. Accordingly we find in the narrative that Caxton was probably born in 1415—in the index that he was born in 1422; in the narrative that Latimer, Fisher, Gascoign and Atterbury were born respectively in 1489, in 1465, about 1537 and in 1672—in the index that they were born respectively in 1485, 1459, 1525 and 1662; in the narrative Gay was born in 1688—in the index he was born in 1685. In the narrative Collins dies in 1756, and Mrs. Browning is born in 1806—in the index Collins dies in 1759, and Mrs. Browning is born in 1809. The narrative tells us that Aubrey was born in 1626, and John Dyer circa 1688—in the index that Aubrey was born in 1624 and Dyer circa 1700. In the index Mark Pattison dies in 1884—in the narrative he dies in 1889. In Professor Saintsbury's eyes such indifference to accuracy may be venial: in our opinion it is nothing less than scandalous. It is assuredly most unfair to those who will naturally expect to find in a book of reference trustworthy information.

We must now conclude, though we have very far from exhausted the list of errors and misstatements, of absurdities in criticism and absurdities in theory, which we have noted. Bacon has observed that the best part of beauty is that which a picture cannot express. It may be said, with equal truth, of a bad book, that what is worst in it is precisely that which it is most difficult to submit to tangible tests. In other words, it lies not so much in its errors and inaccuracies, which, after all, may be mere trifles and excrescences, but it lies in its tone and colour, its flavour, its accent. Professor Saintsbury appears to be constitutionally incapable of distinguishing vulgarity and coarseness from liveliness and vigour. So far from having any pretension to the finer qualities of the critic, he seems to take a boisterous pride in exhibiting his grossness.

If our review of this book shall seem unduly harsh, we are sorry, but a more exasperating writer than Professor Saintsbury, with his indifference to all that should be dear to a scholar, the mingled coarseness, triviality and dogmatism of his tone, the audacious nonsense of his generalisations, and the offensive vulgarity of his diction and style—a very well of English defiled—we have never had the misfortune to meet with. Turn where we will in this work, to the opinions expressed in it, to the sentiments, to the verdicts, to the style, the note is the same,—the note of the Das Gemeine.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Page 37.

[13]

Eá lâ drihtenes þrym! eá lâ duguða helm!

eá lâ meotodes miht! eá lâ middaneard!

eá lâ däg leóhta! eá lâ dreám godes!

eá lâ engla þreát! eá lâ upheofon!

eá lâ þät ic eam ealles leás êcan dreámes,

þät ic mid handum ne mäg heofon geræcan

ne mid eágum ne môt up lôcian

ne hûru mid eárum ne sceal æfre gehêran

þære byrhtestan bêman stefne.

—Satan. edit. Grein, 164-172.

[14] Some Remarks on Lydgate. Gray, Aldine Ed. v. 292-321.

[15] That Lydgate's verse should occasionally be rough and halting is partly to be attributed to the wretched state in which his text has come down to us from the copyists, and partly to the arbitrary way in which he varies the accent. His heroic couplets in the Storie of Thebes are certainly very unmusical. For the whole question of his versification see Dr. Schick, Introduction to his edition of The Temple of Glas, pp. liv.-lxiii., and Schipper, Altenglische Metrik, 492-500. But neither of these scholars does justice to the exquisite music of his verse at its best.

[16] Page 474.

[17] Page 150.

[18] Page 63.

OUR LITERARY GUIDES

II. A SHORT HISTORY OF MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE [19]

[19] A Short History of Modern English Literature. By Edmund Gosse. London, 1898.

The author of this work has plainly not pondered the advice of Horace, "Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis, æquam viribus." His ambitious purpose is "to give the reader, whether familiar with books or not, a feeling of the evolution of English Literature in the primary sense of the term," and he adds that "to do this without relation to particular authors and particular works seems to me impossible." This may be conceded; for, a feeling of the evolution of English or of any other literature, without reference to particular authors and particular books, would be analogous to the capacity for feeling without anything to feel. But, unfortunately, those of Mr. Gosse's readers who wish to have the feeling to which he refers will merely find the conditions without which, as he so justly observes, the said feeling is impossible. In other words, references, in the form of loose and desultory gossip, to particular authors and particular works chronologically arranged, are all that represent the "evolution" of which he is so anxious "to give a feeling."